A HAVEN OF REFUGE
“It is going to storm.” The old Scot dropped his paddle to the bottom of
the dugout long enough to turn up the collar of his jacket, then he took
up the mechanical swing of his brawny arms that had done so much in the
days that had just passed to speed the three adventurers on into the
Northland.
“Going to be a bad one!” Johnny threw a fleeting glance at the girl
before him. Like her grandfather, she performed wonders. She had kept up
the steady, monotonous swing of paddle until Johnny thought she must be
working in her sleep. The muscles of her arms had grown hard as a man’s.
They had found the Corporal’s cottonwood dugout a good one. For three
days it had carried them straight on into the great unknown.
“After all, she’s only a girl,” he told himself, thinking once more of
the girl. “This storm will be a bad one. Wish we’d come to shelter. The
map shows a cabin or something down here somewhere. Be easy enough to
pass it in the storm. Map don’t show which bank. Wish—”
Just then the advance guard of the storm struck. A rattling drive of
cutting snow, a sudden gust that set their canoe on side, and it was
gone.
“But there will be other blasts and worse ones,” he told himself.
In this he was right. A half hour had not passed before they were
shooting along through a veritable wall of driving white. One of those
sudden and terrible storms that haunt the Arctic had come driving down
from the North.
“Have to go ashore and try to get up something of a camp,” said the old
Scot, as with the greatest difficulty he unbent his benumbed fingers.
“Can’t stand this. Cold and damp will get us. Wind off that ice water is
terrible.”
Once more Johnny looked at the girl. Gripping her paddle, she still swung
her arms in rhythmic motion.
“Half froze,” he thought, with a tightening of the throat. “She’s doing
and enduring all for the good of people she has not seen.”
Just then there was a stir in the prow of the canoe. Tico, the dog given
to Faye by the Corporal, had crept from his snug corner to lift his nose
to the air, point toward the farther shore, and let out an unhappy wail.
“Something over there.” The girl spoke now for the first time in a half
hour. “Maybe game. That’s something. Our food supply is very low. Better
go over.”
Neither the old Scot nor Johnny questioned her judgment. Turning the
canoe half about, they struck for that distant shore.
It was a perilous journey. The moment they left the sheltering bank,
waves began crashing over the gunwale.
The boat was half filled when the girl, dropping her paddle, began to
bale. The men toiled unremittingly at the oars.
“Wind’s with us. Be there soon,” Johnny said cheeringly.
“Wa-roo!” answered the dog. Standing high in the prow, he appeared to
direct their course.
They were still half a boat length from shore when with a mighty leap the
dog, clearing the boat, landed on the ice that edged the water and at
once shot away into the forest.
“Tico! Tico!” the girl cried. “Come back! Come back!”
Wind and water drowned her cries. The dog did not return.
“All we can do is to follow him,” said Johnny as he made the boat fast to
a bough that hung far out over ice and water, then tested the ice with an
axe.
“Here, let me have those,” he said as Gordon Duncan was about to throw
his bundle of bows and arrows ashore.
“Guess you better carry them,” said Gordon Duncan. “Can’t be too careful
of your artillery in such a land.”
After a dangerous slide or two they were on land.
Following the dog’s steps in the snow, Johnny led the way into the
tangled brush. To his great joy he found indications of a rough trail.
“May have been made by moose or caribou, for all that,” he told himself.
“What was that?” the girl exclaimed suddenly, stopping short.
From behind them had come a cracking sound.
Dropping the bundle of arrows he carried, Johnny sprang back over the
trail.
“It’s gone!” There was a touch of despair in his voice as he called to
his companions. “The boat’s gone! The branch tore away.”
Never in his life had he felt more miserable. No food, no blankets, no
shelter in a strange land, hundreds of miles from known human habitation,
with a blizzard tearing at them.
“And it’s all my fault,” he said. “It was I who tied the boat. I should
have tested the moorings.”
“No,” said Gordon Duncan. There was force and dignity in his tone. “It is
not entirely your fault. We were there to offer counsel. And this is not
the end. It is but the beginning. We have bows and arrows. There is game
here as elsewhere. There is always a way to prepare a shelter and make a
fire.”
“But first we must find Tico,” said the girl, who had just come up to
them. “I can’t imagine what madness has seized him.”
“Dogs,” said Gordon Duncan, “are sometimes wiser than humans. There may
be something in his actions that is worth investigating. Let us be
going.”
In this he was more right than he knew.
They had not gone a hundred yards when the trail widened. Another hundred
yards, and a dark bulk loomed through the whirling snow.
“A cabin or a boulder,” said Johnny a little breathlessly.
“Either will prove a boon,” said the old Scot. “A shelter in the time of
storm.”
“A cabin! A cabin!” the girl cried joyously as the dog came bounding back
to meet her.
And such a cabin as it proved to be! Built of massive logs, with a door
that required the strength of two to swing it wide, what a haven! It was
equipped with rude bunks, a hand hewn table and chairs and a massive
stone fireplace.
“This,” said Gordon Duncan, a note of deep, silent joy creeping into his
voice, “is the very place we were to leave the canoe and strike away
across the tundra. Truly we have been guided by a great good God.”
“God, and Tico,” whispered the girl as she sank down upon a chair. There
was no suggestion of irreverence in her tone.
“Aye, and the dog,” said the old Scot. “I doubt not that many times the
great Creator finds a dog’s course more easy to direct than that of a
human.”
A hasty survey of the cabin revealed many delightful surprises. Built, no
doubt, by some trader and trapper of bygone days, it had been fashioned
to shut out the rigor of winter and the tearing rush of wild northern
gales. It had been equipped with massive iron cooking utensiles which
were still serviceable. It had, beyond doubt, been used by the Mounted
Police as a temporary station, for, hidden away among the rafters were
blankets, a coffee pot, a small quantity of flour and baking powder, a
can of coffee, a sack of beans and a square of bacon.
“Man! Did I not tell you?” exclaimed the joyous Scot. “’Twas God’s hand
that led us. ’Tis a royal feast we’ll have.
“No better fritters were ever made than those moulded by the hands of the
bonny lassie here. Bacon, fritters, coffee beside a fire that laughs up a
generous chimney. Who could ask for more?”
Johnny joined with the old Scot in his rejoicing. He had not, however,
forgotten that their boat was irretrievably lost and that it was many,
many weary miles back, even to the cabin where they had enjoyed their
last real night’s sleep.
Being young and strong, possessed of a healthy body and a vigorous mind,
he did not trouble about the future for long, but springing out into the
storm, began dragging in dry brush and logs.
“Ah, now the storm may laugh and the wind crack her cheeks!” exclaimed
the Scot as he attacked the branches with an axe he had found in the
corner.
Bacon, fritters and coffee might seem a meager feast. But to those who
had lived for days on caribou steak, rabbits, partridge and squirrel, it
was indeed a rich repast. Even Tico enjoyed it beyond his power to
express.
When at last the feast was over and the heavy pots and pans hung in their
places Johnny piled three great spruce logs in the center of the
fireplace, thrust dry branches and wind wrecked splintered fragments in
the niches between, then with his friends sat down to watch with dreamy
eyes the leaping, laughing, roaring flames.
The old Scot was soon nodding in his chair. Lower and lower his head sank
upon his breast until only the tangled gray of hair and beard were
visible.
Softly, on tiptoe, the girl went to bend over his chair. As she tiptoed
back to her place beside the boy, she whispered:
“Sleeping.”
Johnny nodded.
For a long time, save for the roar of the wind outside answered by the
crackle of the fire within, there was silence. But who can say what
communion may be had between hearts loyal and true in moments of silence?
When the girl spoke her tone was deep and low. “I am afraid for him. His
heart,” she said, glancing toward the sleeping patriarch, “Some day—”
She did not finish, but once more sat starring at the fire.
“This,” she said at last, “is to be his one great adventure. He has the
heart of youth, of a knight, a Crusader. We have always lived quietly on
our farm, except for these trips into the forest. Always since he was a
boy, he has told me, he has longed for an opportunity to render a great
service. He believes this is his great opportunity, his crowded hour,
this and his final search for old Timmie and his green gold. What a
triumph it will be if he accomplishes all!” Again she stared at the fire.
Johnny nodded. He understood.
“We will do all we can to help him realize his highest hope,” he said
huskily.
A moment later, as the wind shook the cabin, the girl’s mood changed. She
found herself longing for the home of many simple comforts she had left
to follow her grandfather on this strange and uncertain quest.
“You have never seen our home,” she said dreamily. “It’s not a palace,
but it’s home. Just a cottage with vines climbing up the front and with
fine old fashioned roses, yellow, pink and red, on either side. There’s a
cozy little parlor with a reed organ in one corner. Grandfather loves to
sing to it on a Sunday afternoon, those old, old fashioned tunes that are
so quaint and so—so sort of wonderful. You should hear him boom them out.
“My room,” she went on as if speaking to herself, “looks out upon a field
of red clover at the side, and at the back is a clump of forest. The
squirrels are so tame that they come to perch on my window sill and beg
for sweets and nuts.”
As she ceased speaking Johnny looked at her and realized as never before
that she was, despite her rugged face and splendid untiring muscles, only
a girl very far from the nest that she called home.
“But,” she exclaimed suddenly as if waking from a dream, “we must not
turn back! We must go on! Go on for him!” She nodded toward the sleeping
grandfather. “And for the little brown people who, but for us, may
starve.”
Three days the storm raged on. Restful days these were, but not idle
ones. Some of their arrows had gone downstream with their ill-fated
cottonwood boat. Fortunately they found within the cabin two steel sled
runners and a home-made feather duster. The dusters were made of wild
goose feathers. No better for arrows can be found. With the aid of fire
and such tools as were at hand, they succeeded in cutting the sled
runners into bits and fashioning them into arrow heads. Dry fir furnished
them shafts for the arrows. Long hours, working side by side over the
table, the boy and girl, directed by the old man, worked at the task of
making arrows. Cutting, scraping, shaping, pounding, forging, binding,
with grimy hands but gleaming eyes they worked on and on until when the
storm broke and the sun came out they found themselves better armed than
ever before.
“So we may say the storm was a blessing in disguise,” said Gordon Duncan.
“To-morrow we must be on our way,” he said as he gazed upon the fading
tints of their first red sunset in the wilderness. “We must hurry. The
caribou may come and pass to their northern feeding grounds before us.
Then indeed our little brown friends will starve.”
“And we with them,” Johnny wanted to add, but did not.
That night, by the light of the fire, Johnny spent a full hour studying
three maps he had spread out on the table. More than once a sudden
exclamation escaped his lips. At last he rose and began pacing the floor.
The old Scot was asleep in his chair. Faye Duncan had watched Johnny with
keen interest. Now as she caught the light of a quizzical smile playing
across his face, she said,
“What is it?”
“Why look!” he replied, leading her to the table. “See, here are three
maps, the one done on white leather by your grandfather so many years
ago, the roughly drawn one by the Corporal to guide us on this trip, and
an old general map of the country which I found here in the cabin.
“It’s strange,” he said, straightening up, “but when you trace the two
routes out, the one your grandfather proposed to follow in his search for
that more or less mythical partner of his—”
“Don’t say that!” Her finger touched his lips. “It’s all very real to
him.”
“Well, anyway, we are now across the river, and if we follow the route
the Corporal has marked out for us we will be going almost directly
toward the spot your grandfather has marked for Timmie’s cabin.
“So,” he said, reading the surprise and joy in her eye, “the longest way
round is the shortest way home, after all! See!” He pointed to a spot on
the map. “See. There is the camp of the Eskimo. And here, just a short
way across the tundra, then over these low mountains, is Timmie’s cabin
and the—the green gold.”
“So in choosing to be of service to the natives, Grandfather was really
serving himself,” the girl said as they returned to their places before
the fire. “How often life is like that.”
“Green gold.” She repeated the words thoughtfully after a time. “Do you
suppose there is any such thing?”
“Yes, of course there is,” said Johnny. “They use it for making jewelry,
rings, watch-cases and the like. But where it comes from I haven’t the
least notion.”
“Is—is it very valuable?”
“Why yes, it must be.”
“And if there was a lot of it, a mine or something, and Grandfather has a
share, we would be—might be—”
“Quite rich.”
“Oh!” Her eyes shone.
“You know,” she said after some time, “we are quite poor and
we—Grandfather might need money badly to—to defend—”
Johnny waited long for the rest of that sentence. It never came.
“Well,” he said at last, “to-morrow it’s the long, long trail once more.”