A PIECE OF WRECKAGE
The canoe drew near the first of the islands and the Indian directed it
inshore and in a quiet bay as the canoe floated quietly out of the
current, they lifted up their voices and shouted again and again.
Except for the swirl of the waters everything was perfectly still, and
any one on the island must have heard the shouting; but there came no
response.
"No good!" said the Indian, and turned the bow of the canoe to the
river once more.
Island after island they inspected and hailed; meanwhile keeping a
sharp look out on either side of the river, but in vain. They were
hoarse with shouting when the last of the islands was reached, and on
Ainley's face a look of anxiety manifested itself. Landing at the tail
of the island the Indian hunted around until he found a dry branch, and
this he threw into the water and stood to watch its course as it went
down river. The drift of it seemed to be towards a bar on the eastern
bank, and towards that, distant perhaps a couple of miles, the course
of their canoe was directed. When they reached it, again the Indian
landed, and began to inspect the flotsam on the edge of the bank
closely. Ainley watched him with apprehension. Presently the Indian
stooped, and after two or three attempts fished something from the
water. He looked at it keenly for a moment, then he gave a shout, and
began to walk along the bar towards the canoe.
As he came nearer, the white man saw that the object he carried was the
spoon end of a paddle. When close at hand the Indian held it out for
his inspection.
"Him broke," he said in English. "And the break quite fresh."
There was no question as to that. Notwithstanding that the paddle had
been in the water, the clean wood of the fracture showed quite plainly,
and whilst Ainley was looking at it the Indian stretched a finger and
pointed to a semi-circular groove which ran across the broken end.
"Him shot!" he announced quite calmly.
"Are you sure?" asked Ainley, betraying no particular surprise.
The Indian nodded his head gravely, and fitted his little finger in the
groove.
"Bullet-mark!"
Ainley did not dispute the contention, nor apparently was he greatly
troubled by the Indian's contention. He looked round a little
anxiously.
"But where is the canoe?" he asked. "And Miss Yardely?"
The Indian waved a hand down river. "Canoe miss this bar, and go in the
current like hell to the meeting of the waters. Better we keep straight
on and watch out."
As they started down river again, Ainley's face took on a settled look
of anxiety. It was now close on midnight, but very light, and on either
bank everything could be clearly seen. They kept a sharp look out, but
found no further trace of the missing canoe, and the early dawn found
them in a quickening current, racing for the point where the tributary
river joined the main stream.
Presently it came in sight, and between walls of spruce and a foaming
crest of water they swept into the broader river, which rolled its
turbid way towards its outfall in one of the great Northern lakes. The
canoe pranced like a frightened horse at the meeting of the waters, and
when they were safely through it, Ainley looked back and questioned his
companion.
"Would Miss Yardely's canoe come through that?"
"Like a dry stick," answered the Indian, letting the canoe drift for a
moment in order to swing into the main current of the broader stream.
Ainley looked ahead. Downstream the river narrowed and the low broad
banks about them gradually rose, until they were like high ramparts on
either hand. The Indian pointed towards the tree-crowned cliffs.
"No good there," he said. "We land here, and make grub; walk down and
see what water like."
It seemed to Ainley the only sensible thing to do, and he did not
demur. Accordingly, the Indian, seeing a favourable beach, turned the
canoe inshore, and whilst his companion was preparing breakfast, the
white man walked downstream towards the ramparts of rocks through which
the river ran. When he reached them he looked down at the water. It ran
smooth and glassy and swift, whirling against the rocky sides a good
foot higher than between the earthen banks upstream. He followed the
gorge, forgetting that he was tired, forgetting the preparing
breakfast, a look of extreme anxiety upon his face. Three-quarters of
an hour's walking brought him to the end of the gorge, and for a mile
or two the country opened out once more, the river running wide between
low-lying banks to disappear in the lee of a range of hills above which
hung a veil of mist. He stood regarding the scene for a few minutes and
then, the anxiety on his face more pronounced than ever, made his way
back to the place where the Indian awaited him. The Indian had already
eaten, and whilst he himself breakfasted he told him what he had seen.
The native listened carefully, and in the end replied in his own
language.
"Good! We go through the cliffs, in place of making the portage. It is
the swifter way, and if the white Klootchman come this way, she has
gone through these gates of the waters. We follow, but not very far,
for again we come to the hills, and to a place where the earth is rent,
and the waters fall down a wall that is higher than the highest spruce.
If the Klootchman's canoe go there--it is the end."
Falls! So that was the meaning of that mist among the hills. There the
river plunged into a chasm, and if Helen Yardely's canoe had been swept
on in the current it was indeed the end. Ainley's anxiety mounted to
positive fear. He pushed from him the fried deer-meat and bacon which
the other had prepared for him, and rose suddenly to his feet.
"Let us be going!" he said sharply, and walked restlessly to and fro
whilst his companion broke camp. A few minutes later they were afloat
again, and after a little time there was no need to paddle. The current
caught them and flung them towards the limestone gateway at express
speed. In an amazingly short time they had passed through the gorge,
and were watching the banks open out on either side of them.
There was no sign of life anywhere, no indication that any one had
passed that way since time began. As they sped onward a peculiar throb
and rumble began to make itself heard. It increased as they neared the
range of hills towards which they were making, and as the banks began
to grow rocky, and the water ahead broken by boulders, the Indian
looked for a good place to land.
He found it on the lee side of a bluff where an eddy had scooped a
little bay in the steep bank, and turning the canoe inside it, they
stepped ashore. Making the canoe secure they climbed to the top of the
bank and began to push their way down stream. The rapids, as Ainley
noted, grew worse. Everywhere the rocks stood up like teeth tearing the
water to tatters, and the rumble ahead grew more pronounced. Standing
still for a moment, they felt the earth trembling beneath their feet,
and the white man's face paled with apprehension. A tangle of spruce
hid the view of the river as it skirted a big rock, and as the river
evidently made a swerve at this point, they struck a bee-line through
the timber. The rumble, of which they had long been conscious, of the
suddenest seemed to become a roar, and, as they came to an open place
where they could see the water again, they understood the reason.
The river but a few feet below them, bordered by shelving terraces of
rock, suddenly disappeared. Rolling glassily for perhaps fifty yards,
with scarce a ripple on its surface, the water seemed to gather itself
together, and leap into a gorge, the bottom of which was ninety feet
below. Ainley stood looking at the long cascade for a full minute, a
wild light in his eyes, then he looked long and steadily at the gorge
through which the river ran after its great leap. His face was white
and grim, and his mouth was quivering painfully.
Then without a word he turned and began to hurry along the line of the
gorge. The Indian strode after him.
"Where go to?" he asked.
"The end of the gorge," was the brief reply.
The Indian nodded, and then looked back. "If canoe can go over there it
smash to small bits."
"Oh, I know it, don't I?" cried Ainley savagely. "Hold your tongue,
can't you?"
An hour's wild walking brought them to the end of the gorge, and
looking down the rather steep face of the hill, to the widening river,
the white man carefully surveyed the banks. After a time he found what
he was looking for--a pile of debris heaped against a bluff, whose hard
rock resisted the action of the water. It was about a quarter of a mile
away and on the same bank of the river as himself. Still in silence he
began to drop down the face of the hill, and sometimes climbing over
moss-grown rocks, sometimes wading waist-high in the river itself, he
made his way to the heap of debris. It was the drift-pile made by the
river, which at this point cast out from its bosom logs and trees and
all manner of debris brought over the falls and down the gorge, a great
heap piled in inextricable confusion as high as a tall fir tree, and as
broad as a church.
Feverishly, Gerald Ainley began to wade round its wide base; and the
Indian also joined in the search, poking among the drift-logs and
occasionally tumbling one aside. Then the Indian gave a sharp grunt,
and out of the pile dragged a piece of wreckage that was obviously part
of the side and bow of a canoe. He shouted to Ainley, who hurried
scramblingly over a heap of the obstructing logs, and who, after one
look at that which the Indian had retrieved, stood there shaking like
wind-stricken corn; his face white and ghastly, his eyes full of agony.
The Indian put a brown finger on a symbol painted on the bows, with the
letters H. B. C. beneath. Both of them recognized the piece of wreckage
as belonging to the canoe in which Helen Yardely had left the camp, and
the Indian, with a glance at the gorge which had vomited the wreckage,
gave emphatic utterance to his belief.
"All gone."
Gerald Ainley made no reply. He had no doubt that what the Indian said
was true, and the truth was terrible enough. Turning away he began anew
to search the drift-pile, looking now for the body of a dead girl,
though with but little hope of finding it. For an hour he searched in
vain, then began to scramble down river, searching the bank. A mile
below the first drift-pile he came upon a second, caught by a sand-bar,
that, thrusting itself out in the water, snared the smaller debris.
This also he searched diligently, with no result; and after wandering a
little further down the river without finding anything, returned to
where the Indian awaited him.
"We will go back," he said, and these were the only words he spoke
until they reached their canoe again.
The Indian cooked a meal, of which Ainley partook with but little care
for what he was eating, his eyes fixed on the ochre-coloured water as
it swept by, his face the index of unfathomable thoughts. After the
meal they began to track their canoe upstream, until they reached water
where it would be possible to paddle, one of them towing with a line,
and the other working hard with the paddle to keep the canoe's nose
from the bank. A little way before they reached the limestone ramparts
through which they had swept at such speed a few hours before, the
Indian, who was at the towline, stopped and indicated that they must
make a portage over the gorge, since the configuration of the cliffs
made it impossible to tow the canoe through. In this task, a very hard
one, necessitating two journeys, one with the canoe and one with the
stores, they were occupied the remainder of the day, and when they
pitched camp again and had eaten the evening meal, the Indian promptly
fell asleep.
But there was no sleep for Gerald Ainley. He sat there staring at the
water rushing by, reflecting the crimson flare of the Northern night.
And it was not crimson that he saw it, but ochre-coloured as he had
seen it earlier in the day, hurrying towards the rapids below, and to
that ninety-foot leap into the gorge. And all the time, in vision, he
saw a canoe swept on the brown flood, a canoe in which crouched a
chestnut-haired girl, her grey eyes wide with fear; her hands
helplessly clasped, as she stared ahead, whilst the canoe danced and
leaped in the quickening waters hurrying towards the ramparts below,
which for aught she knew might well be the gates of death.
Sometimes the vision changed, and he saw the canoe in the rapids below
the ramparts, and waited in agony for it to strike one of the ugly
teeth of rock. Again and again it seemed that it must, but always the
current swept it clear, and it moved on at an increasing pace, swept in
that quick mill-race immediately above the falls. On the very edge he
saw it pause for a brief fraction of time and then the water flung it
and the white-faced girl into the depths beneath, and he saw them
falling, falling through the clouds of spray, the girl's dying cry
ringing through the thunder of the waters. He cried out in sudden
agony.
"My God! No!"
Then at the sound of his own cry, the vision left him for a time, and
he saw the river as it was, rosy in the light of the midnight sun. A
sound behind him caused him to turn round. The Indian, awakened by his
cry of anguish, had sat up and was staring at him in an odd way.
"It is all right, Joe," he said, and with a grunt the Indian lay down
to sleep again.
Ainley could not remain where he was to become again the prey of
terrible imaginations. Rising to his feet, he stumbled out of the camp,
and began to walk restlessly along the bank of the river. He was
body-tired, but his mind was active with an activity that was almost
feverish. Try as he would he could not shut out the visions which
haunted him, and as fast as he dismissed one, a new one was conjured
up. Now, as already shown, it was the canoe with the girl dancing to
destruction, now that final leap; then again it was that broken piece
of flotsam by the drift-pile at the end of the gorge; and later, in
some still reach far down the river, a dead girl, white-faced, but
peaceful, like drowned Ophelia.
He walked far without knowing it, driven by the secret agonies within,
and all the time conscious that he could not escape from them. Then
that befell which put a term to these agonizing imaginings. As he
walked he came suddenly on the ashes of a camp fire. For a moment he
stared at it uncomprehendingly. Then his interest quickened, as the
state of the ashes showed some one had camped at this place quite
recently. He began to look about him carefully, walking down the
shelving bank to the edge of the river. At that point there was a
stratum of soft clay, which took and preserved the impression of
everything of weight which rested upon it; and instantly he perceived a
number of footmarks about a spot where a canoe had been beached twice.
Stooping he examined the footmarks minutely. There was quite a jumble
of them, mostly made by a long and broad moccasined foot, which was
certainly that of a man; but in the jumble he found the print of
smaller feet, which must have been made by a youth or girl. A quick
hope kindled in his heart as he began to trace these prints among the
others. He had little of the craft of the wilds, but one thing quickly
arrested his attention--the smaller footprints all pointed one way and
that was down the bank towards the water. Now why should that be? Had
the person who had made those footprints not been in the canoe when the
owner had landed to pitch camp? And if such were the case, and the
maker of them was indeed a woman, what was she doing here, alone in the
wilderness?
Had Helen Yardely been saved by some fortunate chance, and wandering
along the river bank, stumbled on the camp of some prospector or
trapper making his way to the wild North? His mind clutched at this new
hope, eagerly. Hurriedly he climbed the sticky bank and began
feverishly to search for any sign that could help him. Then suddenly
the hope became a certainty, for in the rough grass he saw something
gleam, and stooping to recover it, found that it was a small enamelled
Swastiki brooch similar to one which he had seen three days before at
Miss Yardely's throat.
As he saw this he gave a shout of joy, and a moment later was hurrying
back along the bank to his own encampment. As he went, almost at a run,
his mind was busy with the discovery he had made. There were other
brooches in the world like this, thousands of them no doubt, but there
were few if any at all in this wild Northland, and not for a single
moment did he question that this was the one that Miss Yardely had
worn. And if he were right, then the girl was safe, and no doubt was
already on her way back to her uncle's camp in the care of whatever man
had found her.
Excitedly he broke on the slumbers of his Indian companion, and after
showing him the brooch, bade him accompany him to the place where he
had found it, and there pointed to the footmarks on the river bank.
"Can you read the meaning of those signs?"
The Indian studied them as a white man would a cryptogram, and
presently he stood up, and spoke with the slow gravity of his race.
"The Klootchman she came from the river. The man he carry her from the
water in his arms."
"How do you know that, Joe?"
The Indian pointed to certain footprints which were much more deeply
marked than the others.
"The man he carry heavy weight when he make these, and the Klootchman
she weigh, how much? One hundred and ten pounds, sure. He not carry
that weight back to the canoe, because the Klootchman she walk." He
pointed again, this time to the smaller footprints, and to Ainley,
reading the signs through the Indian's eyes, the explanation amounted
to a demonstration.
"Yes, yes, I understand," he cried, "but in that case where is she?"
The Indian looked up and down the river, then waved a hand upstream.
"The man he take her back to camp."
"Then why did we not meet them as we came down?"
A puzzled expression came on the Indian's face. For a moment he stood
considering the problem, then he shook his head gravely.
"I not know."
"We must get back to the camp at once, Joe. We must find out if Miss
Yardely has returned. We know now that she is alive, and at all costs
we must find her. We will start at once for there is no time to lose."
He turned on his heel and led the way back to the canoe, and half an
hour later they were paddling upstream towards the junction of the
rivers, the Indian grave and imperturbable; Ainley with a puzzled,
anxious look upon his handsome face.