SURPRISED AND CAPTURED
"Twenty paces to a hackmatack tree, north," read Jamie. He drew from
his pocket the little compass Doctor Joe had given him, and took the
direction.
"That's the way she goes, the way the needle points," he said to
himself. "I'll pace un off. North is the way she goes first."
But an obstacle presented itself. The northern face of the rock was
irregular, and from end to end fully thirty feet in length. From what
point of the rock was the northerly line to begin? Where should he
begin to pace? Finally he selected a middle point as the most
probable.
"'Twill be from here," he decided. "They'd never be startin' the line
from anywheres but the middle."
Holding the compass in his hand that he might make no mistake, and
trembling with the excitement of one about to make a great discovery,
he paced to the northward, stretching his short legs to the longest
possible stride, until he counted twenty paces. It brought him not to
a hackmatack tree, but to the middle of several spruce trees. He
returned to the rock and tried again. This time he was led to a tangle
of brush to the left of the spruce trees into which his former effort
had taken him. He was vastly puzzled.
"'Tis something I does wrong," he mused. "Doctor Joe were sayin' the
compass points right, and she is right. 'Tis wonderful strange
though."
He experimented again and discovered that if he did not hold the
compass perfectly level the needle did not swing properly. In his
excitement he had doubtless tipped the compass, and with the needle
thus bound he had been led astray.
He climbed to the top of the rock, and placing his compass in a level
position, permitted the needle to swing to a stationary position. He
extracted a match from the tin box in his pocket and laid it upon the
compass dial exactly parallel with the needle. Lying on his face, he
squinted his eye along the match to a distant tree. Rising, he
observed the tree that he might make no mistake, and returning to the
face of the rock strode twenty of his best paces in the direction of
the tree. Again he was disappointed. There was no hackmatack tree at
the end of his line.
"Maybe he was a big man that does the pacin' and takes longer paces,"
he said to himself. "I'll go a bit farther."
He looked directly ahead, but saw no hackmatack within a reasonable
extension of his twenty paces to account for the longer strides the
original pacer may have taken. Much discouraged, he was about to
return again to the rock when suddenly his eye fell upon a small and
scarcely noticeable hackmatack six paces to the right of his north
line and a little beyond him.
"That must be he, now!" he exclaimed. "'Tis the only hackmatack I sees
hereabouts. 'Tis _sure_ he! I'll pace un back to the rock! If the
tree's nuth'ard from the rock, the rock'll be south'ard from the tree.
I'll try pacin' that way."
With his compass Jamie sighted from the tree to the rock, and to his
satisfaction the rock, lying due south, fell within his line of
sight, but at the extreme easterly end of its northerly face instead
of at the centre, the point from which he had run his original line.
He now paced the distance, which proved to be a little farther than
twenty of Jamie's longest strides, which he accounted for again by
reasoning that a man could take longer steps than he could stretch
with his short legs.
Then for the first time Jamie observed two stones, one on top of the
other, at the foot of the rock and at the very place to which his
compass had directed him. He lifted the stones and an examination
proved that they had not long since been placed in the position in
which he found them. Both had marks of earth upon them on the lower
side, but the stone which was below rested upon the carpet of caribou
moss which covered the ground and prevented it from coming in contact
with the earth. It could not, therefore, have been stained with soil
in the place where Jamie now found it.
"They was put there as a pilot mark! They shows the true mark of the
place to pace from," he soliloquized, replacing them in the position
in which he had found them. "I'll take un as a pilot, whatever, and
see how she comes out on the next track."
He returned to the little hackmatack tree and again consulted the
paper.
"Forty paces west to a round rock," he read, observing, "that won't be
so hard now as findin' the hackmatack tree. 'Twill be easier to see,
whatever."
Methodically he gathered some stones and erected a small pedestal upon
which to rest his compass while he ran his westerly line. Loose stones
of proper size were hard to find. The smaller ones were frozen fast to
the ground, and the larger ones were too heavy for him to move. But
presently he collected a sufficient number of small stones to form a
pedestal a foot and a half high.
Upon the top of this he levelled his compass, and turned it until the
needle, swinging freely, rested upon the north point on the dial.
Then, as before, he placed a match upon the face of the compass to
form a line from the "E" to the "W" on the dial. Crouching down upon
the ground Jamie sighted, as before, to a distant tree, but as he did
so be became suddenly aware that the light was fading. He had been
much longer than he had realized, consuming a great deal of time in
examining the signs around the big rock and in taking his distances
from the rock.
"This line is sure right the first time," he said. "'Twill not take me
much longer, and I finds the round rock now. If I finds un I'll be
sure I'm goin' the right way, and I'll be right handy to the cache."
Thirty-nine of Jamie's paces brought him to the tree upon which he had
taken sight, and looking a little way beyond he saw, to his great joy,
a round rock.
Jamie was trembling with excitement as he ran eagerly to the rock.
This was the second direction laid down upon the paper! There could be
no doubt that he was right! Everything answered the description! He
would surely find the cache now! What a surprise it would be to Doctor
Joe and the boys if he came walking into camp triumphantly bearing Lem
Horn's silver fox skin.
"Sixty paces south," he next read from his directions.
He placed his compass upon the top of the round rock, which rose
perhaps three feet above the ground, and repeated his former method,
again sighting to a convenient tree. Twilight was perceptibly
thickening. At this season darkness falls early in Labrador, and now,
because of a heavily clouded sky, it was following twilight quickly.
"I'll keep at un till I finds the cache. I'll find un before I goes
back to camp whatever," he determined. "'Twill be easy enough gettin'
to camp even if 'tis dark before I gets there. The brook's handy by,
and I'll just go to un and follow un down to camp. I hope they'll not
be worryin' about me, but if they does 'twill not be for long. I'll
soon be there now."
The distance from the round rock to the tree upon which he had sighted
proved to be but thirty of his short paces. Here he was compelled to
pile stones again upon which to build a resting-place for his compass
before taking another sight. Small stones such as he could lift were
not easily found, and when at length he was prepared to take the sight
the gloom had grown so thick that he had difficulty in locating a tree
that he judged was sufficiently far away to cover the remaining
distance. Thirty more paces, however, brought him to the tree, and to
his unbounded joy a lone white birch stood just beyond.
Within three paces of the birch the mysterious cache was hidden.
Here, however, the directions failed to be sufficiently explicit.
Either through oversight or purposely the bearings from the birch were
omitted.
Jamie paced first to one tree and then to another; any of several
trees might be the correct one. They were all thickly branched spruce
trees capable of concealing the coveted cache. Jamie was puzzled, and
every moment it was growing darker. He looked up into the branches of
one and then another, hoping to see a bag suspended from a limb, but
if a bag were there it blended so completely with the foliage that
even its outlines were not revealed.
"I'll have to climb un all," said Jamie finally, "and I'll have to be
spry about un too or 'twill be fair dark before I gets to climb the
last of un."
For his first effort he chose a tree three paces beyond the birch and
in a line with the rock. He had no difficulty in shinning up the trunk
until he reached a lower limb, and then he quite easily drew himself
up.
Climbing through the thick screen of branches he looked eagerly for
the coveted hidden mystery, not stopping until he was well into the
tree top and had made quite certain that no cache was hidden there.
Then, as he looked up toward the sky, he felt a snowflake on his face.
"Snowin'!" he exclaimed. "I'll have to be hurryin' now. If it snows
hard Doctor Joe sure will be gettin' worried about me."
At that moment Jamie heard the breaking of a twig. He paused and
listened. Presently he heard footsteps, and a moment later a man's
voice. Through the gathering darkness appeared the figures of two men,
and even at that distance Jamie knew they were not Bay folk. They
travelled less silently, and the tread of heavy boots is quite unlike
that of moccasined feet.
Jamie crouched close to the tree trunk. He scarcely breathed. The
approaching figures came directly toward the white birch.
"It's lucky we saw them fellers first," said a gruff voice. "They'd
sure suspicioned somethin' if they'd got a glim on us. They never seen
us comin' over, and they'll never find our boat where we hid her."
"If they found that there writin' you went and left in the tin can you
were tellin' about, they've like as not follered the directions you
give and found the swag," growled the other. "That won't be very
lucky for us."
"They'd never find her," assured the first speaker. "They'd have to
find the rock first, and she's a good two mile from shore. They'd
never find her in a dog's age. Here we be. Here's the white birch."
"Well, where's the tree you went and hid the stuff in?"
"Here she is." The man indicated a tree next to that in which Jamie
was perched. "Here, take my leg and gimme a boost. I'll go up and get
it."
Jamie scarcely dared breathe. He could see one of the men make a
stirrup of his hands, and the other man step into it and swing into
the tree. Up he climbed to a point directly opposite Jamie, and so
near Jamie could hear him breathe.
"Got her, Bill?" asked the man below.
"You bet I got her! She's here all right, just like I said she'd be,"
answered the man in the tree.
Jamie's heart sank. After all his hopes and efforts he became suddenly
aware that he could not return to camp triumphantly bearing Lem Horn's
silver fox pelt as he had pictured himself doing. Lem would never get
the pelt again. Every one in the Bay would go on believing that Indian
Jake had shot Lem and stolen the pelt. And he had been so near setting
all this right!
It never entered his head that the cache could contain anything else
than the pelt. Because he wished Indian Jake to be innocent of the
crime, he had come to believe that he _was_ innocent, even though
Indian Jake himself had not denied having the stolen property in his
possession, and everybody, save only himself and David and Andy,
believed Indian Jake had it.
"Here she be safe and sound and as good as ever," said the man as he
dropped from the lower limb of the tree to the ground. "Let's open her
up and have a drink, Hank."
"I'll go you, Bill. My throat feels as long as a camel's and as dry as
a snake's back."
Jamie could see the man called Bill stooping over the small bag to
untie it, and presently draw forth a bottle.
"Here she be, and the other three bottles too," said Bill. "You open
her up, Hank, while I see if the roll is there and the other stuff."
Bill ran his arm in the bag.
"Yes, it's all right," he assured. "I guess the Captain didn't miss
the money before the ship sailed, and there ain't any way of his
gettin' word in to the boss about it now before next spring. We're
safe enough to take it back and make our divvy. There won't be any
search made for it now."
"Naw, we're safe enough now." Hank tipped the bottle to his lips, and
handed it to Bill. "The boss ain't missed his liquor neither, and
there won't be any to miss pretty soon the way you're pulin' at it."
"I don't know's I took any more'n you did," said Bill petulantly,
corking the bottle and returning it to the bag. "It was a good move to
play safe anyhow and hide the swag until we made sure the boss
wouldn't go searching through our stuff for it. I don't know's he'd
suspicion us any more'n the rest of the crew, but he'd search
everybody's stuff if the Captain had give him a tip."
"You bet he would!" agreed Hank. "We just played in luck right
through. They won't blame us for that other job, will they? They ain't
likely to go makin' a search for that, be they?"
"Naw!" said Bill. "That other feller, whatever his name is, has got
'em on his trail for that. We ain't in it. They'll never suspicion us
for that. We made a slick job of that."
"Well, let's beat it back," said Hank. "It's snowin' and it's goin' to
snow hard. The sooner we gets back to camp the better we'll be off."
Bill swung the bag over his shoulder, when suddenly he stopped and
exclaimed:
"What's that?"
Jimmy had sneezed, and again he sneezed.
"Some sneak in that there tree!" and Bill with an oath dropped his bag
and seized his rifle, which he had leaned against the tree in which
Jimmy was perched. "I'll put a bullet up there! That'll settle that
feller, whoever he is!"