A MYSTERIOUS SHOT
Twenty minutes later, as Hubert Stane returned along the river bank, he
saw the girl emerge from the tent, and begin to arrange her own sodden
attire where the heat of the fire would dry it. The girl completed her
task just as he arrived at the camp, and stood upright, the rich blood
running in her face. Then a flash of laughter came in her grey eyes.
"Well?" she asked, challenging his gaze.
"You make a very proper man," he answered, laughing.
"And I am as hungry as two!" she retorted. "I have eaten nothing for
many hours. I wonder if----"
"What a fool I am," he broke in brusquely. "I never thought of that. I
will do what I can at once."
Without further delay he began to prepare a meal, heating an already
roasted partridge on a spit, and making coffee, which, with biscuit he
set before her.
"It is not exactly a Savoy supper, but----"
"It will be better," she broke in gaily, "for I was never so hungry in
my life."
"Then eat! There are one or two little things I want to attend to, if
you will excuse me."
"Certainly," she replied laughingly. "It will be less embarrassing if
there is no witness of my gluttony."
Stane once more left the camp, taking with him a hatchet, and presently
returned dragging with him branches of young spruce with which he
formed a bed a little way from the tent, and within the radius of the
heat from the fire. On this he threw a blanket, and his preparation for
the night completed, turned to the girl once more.
"I never enjoyed a meal so much in my life," she declared, as she
lifted the tin plate from her lap. "And this coffee is delicious. Won't
you have some, Mr. Stane?"
"Thank you, Miss a--Miss----"
"Yardely is my name," she said quickly, "Helen Yardely." He took the
coffee as she handed it to him in an enamelled mug, then he said: "How
did you come to be adrift, Miss Yardely?"
As he asked the question a thoughtful look came on the girl's beautiful
face.
"I was making a little trip by myself," she said slowly, "to see a
beaver dam in a creek a little below our encampment, and some one shot
at me!"
"Shot at you!" Stane stared at her in amazement as he gave the
exclamation.
"Yes, twice! The second shot broke my paddle, and as I had no spare
one, and as I cannot swim, I could do nothing but drift with the
current."
"But who can have done such a thing?" cried the young man.
"I have not the slightest idea, unless it was some wandering Indian,
but I am quite sure it was not an accident. I saw the first shot strike
the water close to the canoe. It came from some woods on the left bank,
and I cried out to warn the shooter whom I could not see. It was about
four minutes after when the second shot was fired, and the bullet hit
the shaft of the paddle, so that it broke on my next stroke, and I was
left at the mercy of the river."
"And no more shots were fired?"
"None!"
Stane sat there with a very thoughtful look upon his face; and after a
moment Miss Yardely spoke again.
"What do you think, Mr. Stane?"
He shook his head. "I do not know what to think, Miss Yardely," he said
slowly, "but it looks as if the thing had been done deliberately."
"You mean that some one tried to kill me?"
"No, not that," was the reply. "You would offer too fair a mark for any
one accustomed to handling a rifle to miss. I mean that there was a
deliberate attempt to set you adrift in the canoe. The first shot, you
say, struck the water near you, the second smashed your paddle, and
after that there was no more firing. Why? The only answer is that the
shooter had accomplished his object."
"It certainly has that appearance," answered the girl. "But why should
any one do a thing like that?"
"That is quite beyond me. It was so brutal a thing to do!"
"Some roaming Indian possibly," suggested Miss Yardely thoughtfully.
"But as you asked just now, why? Indians are not so rich in cartridges
that they can afford to waste them on a mere whim."
"No, perhaps not," said the girl. "But I can think of no one else." She
was silent for a moment, then she added, "Whoever did the vile thing
frightened me badly. It is not nice to sit helpless in a canoe drifting
out into such a wilderness as this." She waved her hand round the
landscape as she spoke, and gave a little shudder. "You see I never
knew what was coming next. I passed some islands and hoped that I might
strike one of them, but the current swept me clear, and for hours I sat
staring, watching the banks go by, and wondering how long it would be
before I was missed; and then, I suppose I must have fallen asleep,
because I remember nothing more until just before I was thrown into the
water."
"It was a very fortunate thing you struck those rocks," said Stane
meditatively.
"Fortunate, Mr. Stane? Why?"
"Because in all probability I should not have seen you if you had not;
and a few miles below here, there are some bad rapids, and below them
the river makes a leap downwards of nearly a hundred feet."
"A fall?" cried the girl, her face blanching a little, as she flashed a
glance downstream. "Oh, that would have been terrible! It was fortunate
that you were here."
"Very," he agreed earnestly, "and I am beginning to think that it was
providential; though all day I have been cursing my luck that I should
have been in this neighbourhood at all. I have no business here."
"Then why----" she began, and stopped as if a little afraid that her
question was too frankly curious.
It was so that Stane understood the interrupted utterance. He laughed a
little, and then answered:
"You need not mind asking, Miss Yardely; because the truth is that my
presence in this neighbourhood is due to a mystery that is almost as
insoluble as the one that brought you drifting downstream. On the night
after you arrived at Fort Malsun, I was waiting at my tent door
for--er--a man whom I expected a visit from, when I was knocked on the
head by an Indian, and when I came to, I found I was a prisoner, under
sentence of deportation. We travelled some days, rather a roundabout
journey, as I have since guessed, and one morning I awoke to find my
captors had disappeared, leaving me with my canoe and stores and arms
absolutely untouched."
"That was a strange adventure, Mr. Stane."
"So I think," answered Stane with conviction.
"What do you think was the reason for your deportation?"
"I do not know," answered Stane thoughtfully. "My chief captor said it
was an order, but that may have been a lie; and such wildly possible
reasons that I can think of are so inherently improbable that it is
difficult to entertain any of them. And yet----"
He broke off, and an absent look came in his eyes. The girl waited,
hoping that he would continue, and whilst she did so for one moment
visioned Miskodeed in all her wild barbaric beauty and her mind,
recalling Ainley's words upon the matter of the girl's relation to the
man before her, wondered if there lay the reason. Stane still remained
silent, showing no disposition to complete his thought; and it was the
girl who broke the silence.
"You say you were waiting for a man when you were seized, Mr. Stane;
tell me, was the man Gerald Ainley?"
The young man was a little startled by her question, as his manner
showed; but he answered frankly: "Yes! But how did you guess that?"
Helen Yardely smiled. "Oh, that was quite easy. You were the topic of
conversation at the dinner-table on the very night that you
disappeared; and I gathered that to the factor you were something of a
mystery, whilst no one except Mr. Ainley knew anything whatever about
you. As you and he were old acquaintances, what more natural than that
you should be waiting for him? I suppose he did not come?"
"If he did, I never saw him--and I waited for him two nights!"
"Two!" cried Helen. "Then he could not have wanted to come."
"I rather fancy he did not," replied Stane with a bitter laugh.
"You wished to see him very much?" asked the girl quickly. "It was
important that you should?"
"I wished to question him upon a matter that was important to me."
"Ah!" said the girl in a tone that was full of significance. Stane
looked at her sharply, and then asked a question:
"What are you thinking, Miss Yardely?"
"Oh, I was just thinking that I had guessed one of your wildly possible
reasons, Mr. Stane; and to tell the truth, if Mr. Ainley was really
anxious to avoid answering your questions, it does not seem to me so
inherently improbable as you appear to think."
"What convinces you of that, Miss Yardely?"
"Well," she replied quickly, "you say the Indian told you that it was
an order. I ask myself--whose order? There were very few people at Fort
Malsun to give orders. I think of them in turn. The factor? You were a
stranger to him! My uncle? He never heard of you except in gossip over
the dinner-table the night you were deported. Gerald Ainley? He knew
you! He had made appointments with you that he twice failed to
keep--which, quite evidently, he had no intention of keeping. He
had--may I guess?--some strong reason for avoiding you; and he is a man
of some authority in the Company and moving to still greater. He would
not know the Indians who actually carried you away; but Factor Rodwell
would, and factors are only human, and sooner or later Gerald Ainley
will be able to considerably influence Mr. Rodwell's future.
Therefore--well, Q.E.D.! Do you not agree with me?"
"I find your argument convincing," answered Stane, grimly. Then he
lapsed into thoughtful silence, whilst the girl watched him, wondering
what was in his mind. Presently she knew, for most unexpectedly the
young man gave vent to a short laugh.
"What a fool the man is!" he declared. "He must know that we shall meet
again some time!... But, Miss Yardely, I am keeping you from your rest!
We must start betimes in the morning if I am to take you back to your
uncle."
"If you take me back----?"
"There is no question of that," he answered promptly. "I could not
dream of leaving you here."
"I was about to say you would very likely meet Gerald Ainley. He has
joined my uncle's party."
"So much the better," cried Stane. "I shall certainly go."
There was a flash in his blue eyes, a grim look in his face, and
instinctively Helen Yardely knew that the matter which lay between this
man and Gerald Ainley was something much more serious than forced
deportation. What it was she could not guess, and though after she had
retired to the tent she lay awake thinking of the matter, when she fell
asleep she was as far off as ever from anything that offered a solution
of the question which troubled her. And outside, staring into the fire,
his strong face the index of dark thoughts, Hubert Stane sat through
the short night of the Northland summer, never once feeling the need of
sleep, reviewing from a different angle the same question as that which
had perplexed the mind of the girl in the tent.
At the first hint of dawn, Stane rose from his seat, gathered up the
girl's now dry raiment, and put it in a heap at the tent door, then
procuring a canvas bucket of water he set that beside the clothes and
busied himself with preparing breakfast. After a little time Helen
emerged from the tent. Her eyes were bright, her beautiful face was
radiant with health, and it was clear that she was no worse for her
experience of the day before.
"Good morning, Mr. Stane," she said in gay salutation, "you are the
early bird. I hope you slept well."
"May I reciprocate the hope, Miss Yardely?"
"Never better, thank you. I think hunger and adventure must be
healthful. I slept like the Seven Sleepers rolled into one; I feel as
fresh as the morning, and as hungry as--well, you will see," she ended
with a laugh.
"Then fall to," he said, joining in the laughter. "The sooner the
breakfast is over the sooner we shall start."
"I warn you I am in no hurry," she retorted gaily. "I quite like this.
It is the real thing; whilst my uncle's camps are just civilization
imposing itself on the wilderness."
"But your uncle! You must think of him, Miss Yardely. You have now been
away an afternoon and a night. He will be very anxious."
"Yes!" she said, "that's the pity of it. If it were not for that----"
She broke off suddenly, gave a little laugh, and for no apparent reason
her face flushed rosily. "But you must restore me to the bosom of my
family soon!"
"More's the pity!" said Stane to himself under his breath; his
heart-beats quickening as he looked at her radiant face and laughing
eyes; whilst openly he said: "I will do my best. You will be able to
help me to paddle against the current, and no doubt in a little time we
shall meet a search-party coming to look for you."
"Then my little jaunt will be over! But you must not surrender me until
you have seen my uncle, Mr. Stane."
Stane laughed. "I will hold you against the world until then, Miss
Yardely."
"And perhaps you will see Gerald Ainley, as you wish," she said,
glancing at him to watch the effect of her words.
The laughter died swiftly from his face, and a stern light came into
his eyes. "Yes," he said grimly, "perhaps I shall. Indeed that is my
hope."
Helen Yardely did not pursue the matter further. Again she glimpsed
depths that she did not understand, and as she ate her breakfast, she
glanced from time to time at her companion, wondering what was between
him and Ainley, and wondering in vain.
Breakfast finished, they struck camp, launched the canoe and began to
paddle upstream. The current was strong, and their progress slow, but
after some three hours they arrived at the junction of the two rivers.
Then Stane asked a question.
"Which way did you come, Miss Yardely? Down the main stream or the
other one?"
The girl looked towards the meeting of the waters doubtfully. "I do not
know," she said. "I certainly do not remember coming through that rough
water."
"Your uncle's party had of course travelled some way since I left Fort
Malsun?"
"Oh yes; we had made long journeys each day and we were well on our way
to--wait a moment. I shall remember the name--to--to old Fort Winagog."
"Winagog?" said Stane.
"Yes! That is the name. I remember my uncle mentioning it yesterday."
"Then you came down the main stream for a certainty, for the old fort
stands on a lake that finds an outlet into this river, though it is
rather a long way from here. We will keep straight on. No doubt we
shall strike either your uncle's camp or some search party presently."
As it happened the conclusion he reached was based on a miscalculation.
The only waterway to old Fort Winagog that he knew was from the main
river and up the stream that formed the outlet for the lake. But there
was another that was reached by a short portage through the woods from
the subsidiary stream from which he turned aside, a waterway which fed
the lake, and which cut off at least a hundred and twenty miles.
Knowing nothing of this shorter route he naturally concluded that Helen
Yardely's canoe had come down the main stream, and took the wrong
course in the perfect assurance that it was the right one.
So hugging the left bank they passed the junction of the rivers, and a
little further on crossed to the other side to seek shelter from a
rising wind, under the high bank. And less than an hour later the
canoe, carrying Gerald Ainley and his Indian, swept out of the
tributary stream into the broader current, and they drove downstream,
unconscious that every stroke of the paddle was taking them further
from the girl whom they sought.