In deadly fear of hearing a shot or a shout from behind, Fred did not
stop running until he was out of sight of the cabin. He knew the
direction from which the hunters would be sure to return, and he posted
himself in ambush, in a spot whence he could keep watch in front and
rear.
Fortunately, he was not pursued. Fortunately, too, he had not very
long to wait there, for it was bitter cold. In the course of half an
hour, he discerned two black specks crossing a strip of barrens to the
north.
Fred ran to meet them. The hunters had no deer, but each of them
carried a great bunch of partridges.
"What's the matter? Is the camp on fire?" shouted Macgregor, as Fred
dashed up.
He had to stop to regain breath before he could gasp out an account of
what had happened.
"The diamonds!" Maurice exclaimed.
"But, don't you see, this makes it certain that Horace never left that
cabin alive!" Fred said heavily.
It looked like it, indeed, and no one found anything to say.
Macgregor's face had grown very grim.
"Anyhow, Horace risked his life for those stones,--perhaps lost
it,--and we 're not going to let those wretches carry them off," he
said. "Besides, the diamonds are the least important thing. Those
fellows have got our cabin, grub, ammunition, everything. We're
stranded if we don't get them back."
"We must take them by surprise," said Fred. "I'd been thinking that we
might come up to the cabin quietly, throw the door open suddenly, and
hold them up."
"They have four rifles," suggested Maurice.
"Yes, but they won't be ready to use them," said the Scotchman. "It's
the only way."
He threw open the chamber of his rifle, glanced in, then fumbled in his
pockets.
"Lend me a couple of cartridges, Maurice."
"Don't say you haven't any! I used the last of mine on those
partridges."
"Then we're done!" Peter exclaimed, and he struck his hand furiously on
the breech of the empty repeater. "Not a shot between us."
They looked at one another hopelessly.
"Come, we've got to do something--or starve in the snow," said Peter,
at last. "We'll hold them up, anyhow--with empty guns."
"But suppose they fire on us?" Fred asked.
"At the first move any one makes toward a gun, we'll jump for him. The
cabin's too small to use rifles in, and if it comes to a
rough-and-tumble, why, we'll just have to keep our end up. But I don't
think it will come to that. We'll have them bluffed."
Certainly it seemed a long chance to take, but, as Peter said, it was
better than starving in the snow. They laid down the partridges, and
began to move toward the cabin.
"Take the axe, if it's by the door, Fred," Macgregor advised. "You'll
go first, and open the door. We'll aim over your shoulders. And
remember, at the first hostile movement, jump for them with clubbed
rifles and the axe."
They went on, rather slowly. The cabin came in view, with no one in
sight, and they made a détour through the hemlocks so as to get as
close to the door as possible without showing themselves.
"Now for it!" muttered Macgregor.
With hearts beating tumultuously, they burst out from the evergreen
screen. But they had taken only two or three steps, when the cabin
door opened a few inches, and four black rifle barrels were thrust out.
"_Halte-là_!" shouted one of the Canadians.
The boys stopped in their tracks. They could see nothing of the men
within, nothing except those four ominous muzzles in the streak of
firelight that shone through the crack.
"What do you mean?" cried Macgregor boldly. "Don't you know who we
are? Put those guns away, and let us in!"
He ventured another step, but a second voice roared from the doorway,
"Stop!"
It was Mitchell. Peter stopped suddenly. The hoarse voice bellowed
again, "Git!"
"What's the matter with you?" Peter persisted. "That is our cabin.
Let us come in, I say."
[Illustration: "THAT IS OUR CABIN. LET US COME IN, I SAY"]
"Git, _I_ say!" Mitchell repeated. "After this, we'll shoot on sight.
I give ye till I count three. One--two--"
"Back off. We 're caught!" Peter muttered.
They backed away slowly. When they were at the edge of the thickets,
Mitchell shouted again:--
"When we're gone, you can come back! Now keep away for your own good!"
The cabin door closed as they stepped back into the undergrowth.
Macgregor's face was black as he tucked the useless rifle under his
arm. They were all boiling with rage and mortification.
"If we'd only turned those scoundrels out yesterday!" Peter muttered.
"We couldn't foresee this," said Maurice. "Those fellows evidently
knew that the diamonds were here--or strongly suspected it. They must
have heard of it from your sick Indian, or from the third trapper.
They must have been astonished to find us on the spot."
"Very likely," said Fred, "but the present question is what we're going
to do to-night."
"We must make the best camp we can in the snow," remarked Maurice.
"I don't see how we'll cut wood without an axe," said Peter. "It's
going to be a savage cold night. We have no blankets, either. Lucky
we shot those partridges."
But when they came to the spot where they had dropped the partridges, a
fresh disappointment awaited them. The famished sledge dogs had found
them. There was nothing left of the fourteen grouse except a litter of
feathers and a few blood-stains on the snow.
Their night was to be supperless as well as cold, it seemed. Darkness
was already falling, with the weird desolation that the winter night
always brings down on the wilderness. It had been always impressive,
but now, as they faced the night without food or shelter, it was
appalling.
Destitute of an axe, they would have to make a camp where they could
find fuel, and they scattered to look for it. It was rapidly growing
too dark to search, but Fred presently came upon a large, dead spruce,
lying half buried in snow, but spiked thickly with dry branches. He
was breaking these off by the armfuls when the other boys came up in
answer to his calls.
They trampled down the snow, gathered birch bark and spruce splinters,
and laid the kindling against the big back log. Maurice set about
pulling twigs for a couch, in case the temperature permitted them to
sleep.
"How about matches? I haven't one on me," said Fred, in sudden anxiety.
Macgregor discovered four rather damp ones in his pockets; Maurice had
a dozen or more, but the snow had got into his pocket, and wet them.
They used up five matches in lighting the fire, but finally the birch
bark flared up, curling, and the spruce twigs began to crackle.
They were sure, at any rate, of a fire, and this little success raised
their spirits wonderfully. They started at once to bring in all the
loose wood they could find; but it proved to be little, for snow
covered everything except the largest logs. However, they counted on
the big spruce trunk to burn all night.
Without an axe, it was impossible to build any sort of shelter; so they
sat down close beside the fire, and huddled together to escape the
cold, which was growing hourly more piercing.
In spite of all their efforts, the fire was a poor one. The spruce
trunk proved rotten and damp, and merely smouldered and smoked. The
dead branches went off in a rapid flame, and they had to economize them
to make them last the night out.
That was a terrible night. The temperature must have gone far below
zero. A foot away from the fire, they could hardly feel its warmth;
their backs and feet were numb, and their faces smoked and scorching.
Two of the boys were tired with a long snowshoe tramp, and all of them
were hungry. Macgregor's feet were still far from being in a condition
to stand further exposure; they would have frozen again easily, and he
kept them as close to the wretched fire as possible. Sleep was out of
the question, for they would have frozen to death at six feet away from
the fire. They sat with their arms round each other, as close to the
blaze as possible, and turned now their faces and now their backs to
the warmth.
Fortunately, there was no wind. About midnight a pallid moon came up
behind light clouds. Far in the woods they heard strange, lugubrious
noises, moans, hootings, and once a shrill, savage scream.
Now and then they talked, but they were too miserable from the cold to
say much. In spite of the cold, they grew drowsy. Fred could have
gone dead asleep if he had allowed himself to. He got up, stamped, and
engaged in a rather spiritless bout of wrestling with Peter. Then they
all straggled off to try to find more wood.
Finally, that night of horror wore itself away. The light of a pale,
cold dawn began to show.
Feeling twenty years older, they scattered to bring wood again. They
built up the fire to a roaring blaze that gave some real warmth.
"Aren't those fellows likely to make off the first thing this morning,
and take all our outfit with them?" said Maurice.
"They're almost certain to. We must keep watch on the cabin," said
Fred.
"We must hope they don't," added Peter. "We'd have to follow
them--follow them till we dropped or captured them. For they'd be
taking away our lives with them."
In view of this danger, they sent Maurice at once to reconnoiter the
place, which was not more than a quarter of a mile distant. He was
gone nearly half an hour, and on his return reported that smoke was
rising from the cabin, but that there were no signs that the men
intended to depart.
And he had had a stroke of luck. A couple of partridges had flown up
and perched stupidly on a log, so close to him that he had been able to
knock one of them over with a cleverly thrown club.
In less than a minute that partridge's feathers were scattered on the
snow, and it was cut up and roasting on sharp sticks before the fire.
Too ravenous to wait until it was thoroughly cooked, the boys began to
eat it, but Maurice made a wry face at his second mouthful.
"No salt!" he remarked.
The half-cooked flesh was nauseous without salt, and hungry though they
were, they got it down with difficulty. It did them good, however, and
they all felt more capable of facing the situation.
"The first thing we must do," said Peter, "is to find a better
camping-place, put up some sort of shelter, and gather plenty of wood."
"Why, you don't expect to live like this long?" cried Fred, looking
startled.
"It's hard to say. You know we're fearfully handicapped. Our only
chance is to get those fellows off their guard, for if we strike once
and fail, we'll probably never get another chance. We must lie low,
and make them think that we've gone away, or that we're dead. We'll
put our new camp half a mile away, or more, and one of us must keep
watch near the cabin from sunrise to sunset."
It sounded disheartening, but they could think of no other plan.
Eventually, Maurice went to stand guard, while Fred and Macgregor
searched for a camp-site.
They could not find what they wanted. Dead timber in any quantity was
scarce. At the end of a couple of hours Fred went to relieve Maurice,
and found him walking round and round a tree in order to keep from
freezing.
"I thought I might get a chance to collar the axe," said Maurice, with
chattering teeth. "But they've carried it inside. They've taken in
the rest of the venison, too, and they've even got the dogs inside the
shanty. Afraid we'd shoot them, I suppose."
Maurice tramped off to aid Peter in his search, while Fred stamped
about in the trees. No one was in sight about the hut, but after a
long time one of the French Canadians came out and went down to the
river with a pail for water.
It made Fred's blood boil to think of the warmth and comfort in that
cabin, from which they had been so treacherously turned out. He
puzzled his brain to devise some plan of retaliation, but he could
think of nothing except setting fire to the place, and that would
destroy the supplies of friend and foe alike.
His feet grew numb, and he adopted Maurice's plan of running round in a
circle. He fancied that his ears and nose were frosted, and he rubbed
them with snow. A long time passed; he wondered what had become of his
companions. It was nearly noon when Maurice hurried up with his face
full of consternation. "The fire is out," he said, "and we've used the
last match!"