Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover]
[Illustration: Motionless before her stood a figure wrapped in the usual
Indian blanket. p. 100]
TWO ON THE TRAIL
A STORY OF CANADA SNOWS
BY
E. E. COWPER
AUTHOR or "THE MOONRAKERS," "KITTIWAKE'S CASTLE,"
"CREW OF THE SILVER FISH," ETC.
WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY
W. PAGET
LONDON
THE SHELDON PRESS
NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C. 2
New York and Toronto: The Macmillan Company
1922
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. The Log House
II. A Surprise that Brings Suspicion
III. Nell Makes up her Mind
IV. The Howl Of The Wolf
V. "Little Eyes has a Forked Tongue"
VI. Green Eyes in the Darkness
VII. A Midnight Battle
VIII. The Mysterious Camp Fire
IX. How the Great Bull Fled for his Life
X. The Camp on the Wolf's Tooth Rocks
XI. The Hunters
XII. The Flight Continues
XIII. A Race For Life
XIV. Rifle Shots
XV. In which the Ice Goes out, and the Trail Leads Home
TWO ON THE TRAIL
CHAPTER I
THE LOG HOUSE
"Do you suppose anything has happened to him?" asked the boy; "do you,
Nell?"
He had been asking that question a great many times a day for a good
many days. Every time he asked it his sister said, "Oh no, of course
not," and set about any sort of work to prove she was not thinking
anxious thoughts. At last, however, her answer was rather slower in
coming, and on this particular occasion no answer came till David
touched her arm.
"Do you, Nell?" he urged.
"I don't know. I shouldn't think so," she said, but instead of getting
busy she sat still and stared at the red-hot stove, her strong hard
hands clasped round her knees, and a frown on her forehead--actually
doing nothing at all but just think!
This state of things was surprising enough to make "Da," as she called
her young brother, more persistent than ever. He was a big, strong,
square-shouldered boy of twelve, or thereabouts, and his sister was to
him very much what the Captain of the First Eleven might be to a boy in
an English school. She was wonderful. She could do anything and
everything that he understood and that came into his life, as
well--better than anyone he knew. Besides the jobs that men left
over--in his experience--and which Nell did as cleverly as the mother
who had died about five years before.
Da had entire confidence in her, and who shall say he had not a right
to, considering all that he saw and knew about her!
She was fifteen; a head and shoulders taller than himself, and
apparently as strong as their father. Her dark red hair was short as his
own. That is to say, as short as hair can be where people have no shops
and do their own hair-cutting. Her eyes were greenish grey and sharp as
the keen, still eyes of the grey lynx that got trapped once in a way in
the snares set for mink and martens.
David admired her hair and eyes with all his heart, chiefly because she
was the only member of their small family like that--he and his father
having darkish eyes and hair. Nell was supposed to have taken after a
Scottish ancestress, with a vigorous character, not after the fair
little mother with yellow hair and blue eyes; and when people start off
like that in an independent manner they usually take a line of their own
all through.
In fact, Nell Lindsay was a girl to be trusted; dependable and clever,
which was a very good thing, because she needed every bit of it in the
present crisis.
She and her young brother were alone in the log house--or shack--more
than a hundred miles from any settlement. The two nearest were
Abbitibbi House on the lake, away to the eastward, and Brunswick House,
north on Moose River. Possibly the distance was equal, and Nell
calculated it at a hundred and fifty miles either way.
That is nothing much in a country of railways, or even of good roads,
but it is a long way over trackless waste, pathless forest, and
snow--without guide, without help from human company.
When Nell did not answer David's persistent questions any longer, it was
because she was thinking about the one hundred and fifty miles--and
more--that lay between the shack and friends. It was friends she wanted.
There were men nearer than that, but Nell was not sure they were
friends, and therein lay the whole trouble, you see.
Over all that wilderness of forest and waste, river and lake, there
lived trappers who had marked out certain districts as their own
particular trapping grounds. Some were Indians, some white men who had
taken up this life for the freedom and profit of making money by selling
pelts--that is skins--to the traders who bought them up for the big
Companies.
It was an understood thing that the trappers did not poach on each
other's grounds. If they tried they ran the risk of being shot by the
rightful owner. They were rough men, and followed rough laws of their
own making.
The traders came round in early spring and bought up the fur. Or
perhaps the trappers took great bundles of pelts away to the trading
posts, got their money and spent it enjoying themselves to make up for
the hardships of winter. But Andrew Lindsay was never one of these. He
bought his flour, tea, bacon, and tobacco from the traders, sold his
pelts and kept his money, so that after a bit it came to be common talk
that he had saved a lot and hidden it in, or near, the log house. He
was not the sort of man to imagine that people might think this. He
loved the wild lands for the beauty and grandeur, and hated the work of
an office and the close life in towns. This feeling had driven him
north from San Francisco when he was first married. Here he had been in
the Dominion, winter and summer, ever since, but he had not lost sight
of the importance of education for his boy, and the money was saving up
for that. David was to be an engineer. The years of work had paid very
well and Nell knew her father's plan. Also she knew about the money, and
that this was perhaps the last winter they would spend in the shack
among the woods on the steep hills that ran for over a thousand miles
from the northern frontier of Ontario to the Watchish Mountains in
North-East Territory. The girl was content either way. Whatever her
father decided was right, she thought. The winter was coming to an end
very soon--it was the last week in March--and he had gone on his last
round to look at traps on the more distant runways. The last, because
fur gets thin and poor, and loses its thick beauty when the terrible
cold of winter is giving before spring.
And then, when it was the last thing they would have thought of, this
blow had fallen--Lindsay had not come back. He had gone out into the
glittering light of the snowy world, with his gun, his double-lined fur
sleeping bag, and food enough for four days. _Eight_ days had passed,
and he had not returned.
Now that is how matters stood on a certain afternoon as the grey dusk
began to creep through the trees and close in round the lonely log
house. It was a difficult position for the girl, but she never for a
moment gave way to impatience.
This house of theirs was as different from an English home as could well
be--which mattered not at all to the young Lindsay pair, because they
had no idea what an English house was like.
This house was built of rough logs--one big room in the middle and
either end partitioned off, thus making two small bedrooms. This was
considered luxurious, as most of the trappers had but one room in the
shack, for sleeping and eating, and work, too. The walls were just
rough logs inside as well as out, the cracks between were stuffed in
with mud and the coarse moss that grows up north. Over this skins were
hung, on the floor big skins were laid. From the rafters bacon hung and
onions grown in the summer. In the corners stood sacks of potatoes and
flour. The former is very important food in a country that is frozen up
about seven months of the year, because when you cannot get green stuff
there is risk of scurvy, and raw potatoes are the cure for that. They
must be kept from the least touch of frost, of course, otherwise they go
rotten.
On the floor in one corner was a pile of skins smaller and more valuable
than the grey wolf, the black bear, and the yellow puma of the hills,
that hung on the walls.
As Nell sat by the big stove thinking, her keen eyes wandered from one
possession to another. Finally they rested on the dog and considered him
thoughtfully.
Now this dog was not the kind you would expect to find in a trapper's
hut, because he was close-haired, while the dogs used to pull sledges in
all parts of the north lands have thick coats and bushy tails. They are
called "huskies" and have a lot of wolf in their composition. In the
very far north they train in teams of four up to twelve and are
wonderfully clever at their work, taking a great pride in it, and
refusing to let other dogs take their place in the line. But if they
are strong and clever they are also exceedingly savage, and if one of
their number gets badly hurt--so that he cannot defend himself--they set
upon him and eat him, just as wolves do when one of the pack is
disabled.
"Robin Lindsay," as Nell called him, was in no way that kind of dog. He
was nearly black, with a broad chest and smooth, close coat. He had
ears that drooped forward like a hound's, a wrinkled forehead, and wise
brown eyes. Certainly he was all sorts of dog, but it was all of the
best, which mattered a great deal in that terribly lonely place. Andrew
Lindsay had brought him home one day, four years ago, having bought him
from a man who was going to make an end of what he thought was a useless
puppy.
Now he lay on the thick grey skin of a wolf, his nose between his
paws--watching Nell's face with little twitches of his thoughtful
forehead. He knew there was something the matter, and waited.
"What shall you do, Nell, if Dad doesn't come back to-night?" asked
David, stopping in his work of carving a tiny little sled out of wood.
"You'll have to do something, shan't you?"
Nell got up from her seat on the bench, walked slowly to the door, slid
back the heavy bolt, opened the door and looked out. A raw chill
entered and seemed to creep into every corner on the instant. Robin
rose to his feet, stalked after his mistress and sniffed the doorstep
enquiringly.
"I thought so," said the girl as she shut out the bitter dusk.
"Thought what?"
"I thought it was snowing, and it is."
"I suppose you mean that will wipe out Dad's trail? Is that it?" asked
the boy.
"It wouldn't make a scrap of difference to Robin, he'd follow a trail
through inches of snow. You simply can't bluff him. He always knows.
No, I wasn't thinking about the trail exactly--not in that sort of way,
anyhow--it's not much good hunting a trail when you pretty well know
where it's going to lead you at the start. I mean, Da, that I guess
where Dad is. When I'm certain I'll tell you most likely. Matter of
fact I was _hoping_ for snow."
"You were!"
"It'll come in useful if I'm not mistaken," said Nell in a conclusive
tone.
David stared at her, puzzled. He believed she was the cleverest girl
alive, but he did not even remotely understand what she was talking
about. On the face of the situation snow was the most tiresome
impediment to any sort of move. He knew it might be expected now,
because when the bitterest, glittering frost began to give way to the
cold that comes between winter and spring, the snow was softer underfoot
and falls might be constantly expected. Slight as the change was, the
wind had not the same icy breath. Not that one felt warmer, on the
contrary, the faint tinge of damp made the air cold beyond description,
but probably there was not quite the same danger of frost-bite for the
face and hands.
David knew all these things as a matter of course. He had been born and
brought up in the country. But he did not see what the snow could have
to do with the present trouble! However, it was better to go on carving
his sled than show ignorance, so he waited, glancing up at his sister
every few seconds, as she paced slowly away from the stove and back to
it again, in a kind of thoughtful sentry-go.
Then Robin growled, deep down in his throat. He had not settled down
again on his bed, but sat up watching Nell's promenade. He had lifted
his muzzle and sniffed the air with a delicate, sensitive movement as
though he were feeling something very gently.
Then he growled--very low and deep.