A BLEAK PROSPECT.
Drenched and exhausted, they waded ashore. They wrung the water out of
their dripping garments, eyeing each other soberly. His mouth grim, Toma
turned and waved defiance at their two enemies, who stood watching them
from the opposite side.
Dick was too overcome, too utterly sick at heart even for speech. His
mind dwelt upon their awful plight. No catastrophe, except death itself,
could have been more terrible. Canoe, supplies, guns—everything they
possessed—had gone to the bottom of the river. In one stroke, fate had
delivered a fearful blow. They were face to face with starvation, that
grimmest of all spectres of the wild. They were two hundred miles from
the nearest trading post—and food. The country through which they must
pass was unsettled, except for roving bands of Indians, and here and
there, probably, a white hunter or prospector. Without rifles, it would
be very difficult to obtain game. They had not even matches with which
to light a fire.
Standing there, shivering and despondent, Sandy addressed his chums:
“We’re alive, and that’s about all. An hour ago the odds were in our
favor. Not now. The tables have been turned. The advantage is theirs. At
least, they have rifles and matches.”
Despondently, they turned out their pockets. Each of the boys had a
hunting knife. Dick had three fish hooks and a line. Sandy produced a
watch, compass, and an emergency kit containing bandages and medicine.
Toma pulled out an odd assortment of articles, including three wire
nails, a mouth-organ, a bottle of perfume, a mirror, and a package of
dried dates. That was all, not counting a small amount of money which
each one carried.
“The prospect doesn’t look very bright,” sighed Dick. “Fish will have to
keep us alive until we get back to the post. Toma,” he turned eagerly
upon the young Indian, “do you know how to start a fire without
matches?”
“Yes,” Toma nodded.
“Well, that will help some. We haven’t any salt to eat with our fish,
but in this sort of emergency I guess we can’t complain. One thing that
pleases me, that makes all this endurable, is that Wolf Brennan and Toby
McCallum are not apt to bother us any more. We’re on opposite sides of
the river, and by the time they can build a raft, we’ll be a good many
miles ahead of them. If you fellows are willing, I’d just as soon walk
all night.”
“But we can’t walk without food,” Sandy reminded him. “We must stop,
catch a few fish, and make a fire. In time the sun will dry out our
clothing, so we don’t need to worry about that.”
Toma led the way as they pushed on. It was late when they stopped. Dick
immediately repaired to the river, where he caught four trout. In the
meantime, Sandy watched Toma making a fire. It was a slow process. The
young Indian walked up through the woods, and from the stem of a number
of weeds he gathered a handful of pith. Next he procured dry moss, and,
from the shore of the river, a hard rock about the size of a man’s hand.
Proceeding with these materials to a place sheltered from the wind and
handy to fuel, he squatted down, holding the rock in one hand and his
knife in the other. With the ball of pith on the ground in front of him,
working with incredible speed, he struck knife and rock together,
sending a shower of red sparks upon the inflammable substance below.
Presently, it began to smoulder. Lying prone, he blew upon it gently.
Delicate, fine pencils of smoke arose, then a tiny flame, no larger than
that made by a match, flamed up from the pith. With a quick motion,
still continuing to blow, Toma sprinkled over his embryo fire a quantity
of dry moss. The little flame rose higher. He added a few tiny twigs and
the outer husks of the weeds, from which he had taken the pith. Within
five minutes their campfire was blazing brightly, and when Dick returned
with the trout, he stood there staring in wonderment.
“Did you do that, Toma?”
“Yes, I do ’em.”
“What with?” Dick inquired curiously.
“The steel of his hunting knife and an ordinary rock,” explained Sandy.
“Struck them together and made sparks. The sparks ignited a little ball
of fluff he gathered from some weeds in the woods.”
“That not ordinary rock,” Toma pointed out. “That what Indian call
fire-rock. Make spark easy. Not always you find rock like that. If I use
different kind of rock, it take much longer.”
When they had eaten their supper, consisting of the four trout, baked
over the fire, they all felt much more cheerful. Dick and Sandy spent an
interesting half-hour receiving instructions in the art of fire making.
Both soon discovered that it was not as easy as it looked. Each made
several futile attempts before he finally succeeded. When they left
camp, setting out upon their lonely night’s journey, much to the young
Indian’s amusement, Dick took the fire-rock with him.
“We find plenty more rock like that along the river,” Toma told him.
“Why you carry that extra load?”
“It’s not heavy,” Dick grinned. “Besides it fits nicely into my left
hip-pocket. I don’t intend to take any chances about finding another
rock as good as this. I know I can make a fire with this one and I might
not be so fortunate with some other kind.”
Toma laughed again as they made their way through the enveloping spring
twilight. The air was exhilarating and the quiet earth was touched with
a solemn beauty. Not a breath of air stirred through the fir and balsam
along the slope. A fragrant earth smell uprose from the rich soil. They
passed shrubs that flamed with white and crimson flowers. Dick became so
impressed with the loveliness of it all that for a time he quite forgot
about their dilemma. Later, when he did remember it, it didn’t seem so
terrible after all.
“We’ll fool them yet,” he announced cheerily. “If we can manage to get
food as we go along, there’s no reason why we can’t arrive at Half Way
House in time to upset Frazer’s plans.”
“We must do it,” replied Sandy soberly.
“It won’t be easy,” warned Dick.
“I know that. It makes me all the more anxious to succeed. I’m not very
apt to forget this experience for a long time. If the factor really is
up to some underhanded work—and the actions of Brennan and McCallum have
indicated that pretty plainly—I, for one, intend to get to the bottom of
it.”
“That’s the spirit,” applauded Dick. “We’ll show him. We’ll go till we
drop. If anything happens to one of us, the other two must carry on.”
They paused at that and shook hands all around. Then they went on more
grimly and doggedly. All night they tramped. When the early morning sun
blazed a new trail across the blue field of the sky, they made a second
camp, started another fire with flint and steel and devoured hungrily,
almost ravenously, the six trout which Dick had the good fortune to
catch in a deep, quiet pool near the shore of the river.
In catching the trout, Dick had used clams for bait. Watching him, the
operation had given Sandy an idea. He set out along the shore, returning
at the end of an hour with thirty large clams, which he placed in a hole
he had scooped out in the sand.
“When we’ve had a few hours sleep,” he told Dick and Toma proudly, “I’ll
roast these fellows in the hot ashes and we’ll have a change of diet.”
“Not a bad idea,” Dick rejoined. “I’m almost hungry enough to eat them
right now.”
They slept longer than they had intended. It was late afternoon when
they awoke. The warm sun, beating down upon their tired bodies, had kept
them as warm and comfortable as if they had been wrapped in blankets. So
refreshed were they when they had clambered up from their couches of
white sand that Toma was moved to remark:
“Not bad idea to sleep daytime an’ travel night. At night fellow sleep
by campfire with no blankets get cold. No rest good.”
“True,” agreed Dick. “We’ll do most of our travelling at night. Wish I
knew what time it was. Too bad the water spoiled Sandy’s watch. By the
look of that sun, I’d say it was about three o’clock in the afternoon.”
Toma squinted up at it and shook his head.
“Five o’clock,” he corrected. “Soon as we get something to eat, better
tramp some more. Dick, you give ’em me fishhook and line an’ mebbe by
time you an’ Sandy get fire ready an’ bake clams, I catch some more
fish.”
Toma had better luck even than Dick. A few minutes before the clams were
baked, he appeared upon the scene with eight speckled beauties, none of
which weighed less than two pounds. They cleaned and baked them all,
wrapped up five in Dick’s moose-hide coat, made a pack of it, and
started out upon their journey.
They went jubilantly. It was many hours before the sun swung down toward
the northwestern horizon. Just as the twilight waned and the half-night
of the Arctic dropped its mantle over the earth, Toma, who was twenty
yards in the lead, suddenly stopped short and threw up his hands,
shouting for his two companions to hurry. When they reached his side, he
pointed down at the loose sand at his feet.
“Go—ood Heavens!” stammered Dick.
In the sand, plainly distinguishable, were the imprints of naked human
feet.