THE KNIFE IN THE TREE
Next morning as they sat munching corn bread and strips of caribou
broiled on the coals, Gordon Duncan put down his coffee cup and turned to
Johnny.
“Young man,” he began, “in the home of my childhood on the crags of the
Scottish Highlands, the word stranger spelled welcome. Here we have no
home worthy of the name. Even this we are leaving for the unknown that
lies just beyond. Your way leads down the river; or if you can so shape
your course that it may be so, we would be glad to have you join us.”
There was a gentleness and a warmth in the old man’s tone that went to
the boy’s heart. Before making reply, however, he turned toward the girl.
At once he was rewarded by that frank and friendly smile.
“I am going nowhere in particular,” he said. “I am thankful for human
companionship, more thankful than I can tell. Yesterday I was in a bad
way. It may be that you have come between me and starvation. I should be
ungrateful indeed did I not remain with you with a hope that I might in
some way repay your kindness.”
“Young man,” in Gordon Duncan’s eyes shone a gleam of light, “in this
world one seldom repays a kindness, an act of courtesy or a friendly lift
along the way, but one may always pass it on to some other member of the
great human family. He—but we are talking too long. The trail beckons.”
Packs were soon made. Johnny was surprised at the lightness of the
sleeping bags used by his friends. “Scarcely five pounds apiece,” he told
himself. Bacon, cornmeal, coffee, a few dried beans, three cans of
condensed milk, such was the food supply of these wanderers. Each took in
his pack as much caribou as he could comfortably carry. When Johnny saw
that the girl proposed to carry a full third of the load, he offered to
carry her caribou meat.
As she received his offer, her face flushed and her lips parted as if
with a quick retort. Then, seeming to sense the spirit in which the offer
was made, she allowed those same lips to open in a friendly smile as she
said:
“I am used to the load. Without it I should not be hungry at noontime. It
is enough if you break trail for us.”
Johnny soon realized the truth of this last remark. The effect of the
slight thaw of two days before was gone. The snow on the sloping
hillside, hard packed as it was by many an Arctic blast, offered a
surface so smooth and hard that more than once his feet shot from beneath
him and he went speeding straight down to the gentler slopes a hundred
feet below.
To avoid following his example the old man with his hunting knife cut
steps across the perilous places.
Noon found them nearing a clump of pines. As they came close to it, some
object quite like a rolling ball of snow moved swiftly before them.
At once Faye’s pack was off her shoulder and her stout arms stringing her
bow as she whispered,
“Birds. Ptarmigan. A whole covey of them!”
Next moment she and Johnny were off in swift pursuit.
After a half hour’s exciting chase, they returned with four of these
white quail of the Arctic. To Johnny’s chagrin, Faye had out-shot him
three to one.
“But you are not used to these birds,” she said generously. “You’ll learn
soon enough.”
The days were growing long. There seemed little reason for haste. For,
where were they going, after all? They took time to build a fire and
prepare a hearty meal. The birds they saved for supper. For the present
they feasted on caribou meat.
“It is well,” said Gordon Duncan, “to build up muscle, fat and bone while
you may. So you will be able in the time of want to withstand the pangs
of hunger. Savage people everywhere know this. We in our sleek
complacency of plenty too soon forget.”
It was mid-afternoon when the thing happened which was destined to change
the entire order of their lives and carry them away on a mad quest that
might well end in disaster and death.
It often happens as one travels along life’s pathway that he comes of a
sudden to that which is to change the very nature of his being. But does
he know it? More often than otherwise he does not. It was even so now. As
the wandering trio came over the crest of a ridge and began to descend
into a valley down a narrow run that led them back to the river, they saw
before them a scraggy pine of unusual height. Surrounded as it was by a
low growth of cottonwoods, it seemed a beacon.
To one member of the party it was a beacon. Hardly had Gordon Duncan’s
eyes fallen upon it than he suddenly pressed a hand to his forehead to
exclaim:
“The tree! As I live! The very tree!”
“Why Grandfather! What—” The girl looked at him in alarm.
He was gone. Leading on at a pace that was hard to follow, he headed
directly for the lone pine.
Once there, he dropped on hands and knees to point at some object
protruding from the gnarled trunk of the giant tree.
“The knife!” he said hoarsely. “The knife!”
At that he fell backward, panting for breath.
All the splendid color left Faye Duncan’s cheeks as she bent over his
prostrate form and began struggling with the buttons of his mackinaw and
shirt.
“It’s his heart,” she said. “There’s nothing much we can do. He’ll come
round presently. But some day—”
She did not finish, but the wrinkles that came in her brow told all.
“But what does it mean?” said Johnny pointing to the hilt of a hunting
knife that protruded a short two inches from the trunk of the pine. “Must
have been there twenty years. A few years more and it would have been
completely buried.”
If Faye Duncan knew what that knife meant and why it had stirred up such
violent emotions in her grandfather’s breast, she did not say so. She sat
staring at the thing that had brought tragedy so near.
Giving up the problem, Johnny kindled a small fire, then put water on to
boil for coffee.
Presently the old man sat up to stare dully about him. The instant his
eyes fell upon the knife hilt they were alight once more.
“Twenty-one years!” he muttered, pressing his forehead once more.
“Twenty-one years! All these years, and now I have found it—perhaps too
late.”
At that he began fumbling at an inside coat pocket. In the end he drew
forth a small square packet. Having unrolled a wad of thin oiled cloth,
he unfolded a square of soft white skin. On this, done perhaps in pencil
and later traced with India ink, were many lines and strangely shaped
figures. Here and there words were written.
Drawn involuntarily to his side, the boy and girl stared at the map with
surprised and eager eyes.
Johnny read words written there: “The river,” “Mountains,” “The Pass,”
“The cabin,” he read. And last, but not least, “Green Gold.”
Apparently quite unconscious of their presence, the old man placed a
trembling finger on a certain spot and mumbled:
“We are here. The trail leads downstream, four miles perhaps. The river
forks there. We cross the river below the fork, and ascend the upper
fork. The trail leads over the mountains. The cabin lies beyond the
mountain, the cabin and green gold. A mine of green gold. That was
Timmie’s dream. But then, perhaps he was mad. But there was green gold,
quantities of it, and so heavy, so—”
He looked up and for the first time became conscious of Faye and Johnny.
“We’ve found the tree,” he said simply, as if they should know all about
it. “The trail leads downstream a little way, then across the river.”
By the haunted look in her eyes, Johnny read that Faye Duncan knew little
regarding the strange turn affairs had taken.
“It’s his heart,” she whispered. “We must keep him quiet.”
“Yes,” she said to Gordon Duncan, “the trail leads downstream. We will
take it to-morrow. For the night we will camp beneath this friendly old
giant of a tree and rest.”
“Rest!” said Gordon Duncan, a great weariness overtaking him. “Rest.
That’s what we need. And then,” with a fresh eagerness, “then the long,
long trail. Green gold it was, green like the copper in the bed of the
stream, but gold, real gold.”
Johnny assisted in arranging a comfortable resting place for him, then he
nursed his small fire along until it was a laughing, roaring young
conflagration.
“The trail leads downstream and across the river,” he thought to himself.
“Fine chance!” He could catch the rush of waters a hundred yards away.
That was the river. He had tried crossing that rushing torrent once, and
had come near losing his life.
“Never again!” he told himself. “Unless in a boat. And where in all this
wild land does one get so much as a birchbark canoe?”
As if reading his thoughts the old man sat up quite suddenly.
“Somewhere down the river,” he said, “the land slopes away into low
hills. Here the river is less rapid. It freezes over. If we get there
before the breakup, we may cross on the ice. But that,” he added, “is a
long, long trail.”