THREE BEAR SKINS
Early next morning, before Gordon Duncan was astir, and while the girl
still slept the sleep of exhaustion, the Indians crept from beneath their
caribou skins and journeyed forth in quest of food.
Within the hour they returned. And such a load as they carried on their
backs! Three bear skins and two hundred pounds of meat they cast down
upon the ground. Then kicking off the hungry dogs, they cut away broad
slices to throw them in the midst of the fighting pack.
“Three bears!” said Faye when she saw them. “How can they have killed
them so soon?”
“Not kill,” said the Indian who understood English. “Dead, that one, two,
three bear.”
“Dead! Then there is someone about.”
“No. Not anyone.”
“Then who killed them?” She was examining one of the skins. The marks she
found there had not been made by bullets, but by arrows.
“White man no save,” said the Indian, shaking his head. “That one
Indian,” nodding to his companion, “how you say it? Him one doctor, one
shamin. Plenty spirits help him. Spirit eagle, spirit white fox, spirit
old man, long time dead, never shoot rifle, always bow and arrow, that
one help him.
“So this one morning he say, that one (another nod toward his companion),
that one say, ‘Spirit of old man, kill bear for my dinner. Kill one, two,
three bear. Kill him.’ That’s all. See old man’s tracks, mine. So big!”
He stretched out his arms at full length.
“He is trying to tell you,” said Gordon Duncan, “that his companion has a
familiar spirit; that he is in league with the ghost of an old man and
that the ghost, at his request, has killed three bears.”
Faye shook her head. She did not believe it.
“Neither do I.” Her grandfather smiled. “But we have the meat. It is
enough. Now we may resume our journey in search of Timmie and the green
gold.”
Had Faye been alone she most certainly would have visited the valley of
dead bears. Had she done so, she must surely have recognized at once the
footprints of her lost pal and the “great banshee.”
But, looking at the drawn face of her aged sire and realizing what long
miles must still lie before him, she permitted him to have his way
without a word.
All day the dogs followed the faint trail left by the fleeing Timmie and
his wolfhounds. That night they camped beneath a sheltering cliff that
lay at the foot of a heavily timbered hill. At the crest of that hill was
a cabin, and in that cabin Johnny Longbow slept. Had a shot been fired by
one of the Indians he must have heard it. No shot was fired. There was
food in abundance. Besides, there was nothing to kill.
So, early next morning, they prepared again for the trail.
“Wonder why they carry those raw skins along,” Faye said to Gordon Duncan
as the natives lashed the three bear pelts to their sled. “They weigh as
much as our whole kit. And what possible good can they be?”
“Faye,” the old man rumbled, “to a native of this land a pelt of any kind
is a precious thing. All year round he dresses in skins, always he sleeps
beneath them. His home in summer is built of them, and in winter they
form the floor mat which protects his feet from the cold earth. His dog
harness is made of skins, his sled lashed together with them. To these
Indians a pelt is a thing of great value. To cast it away is to offend
the spirit of the dead bear.”
All that he said was true enough. Too soon he was to discover the real
reason these sturdy little brown men were willing to put their own
shoulders to the harness that the skins might remain upon the sled.
As they broke camp that day, Faye found herself wondering about many
things. Would they come up with Timmie? Did he carry on his sled the
strange collection of green gold antiques? Was he truly attempting to run
away with the gold? If so, why? And what of Johnny, her good pal of the
long trail? They had experienced many adventures together. Would their
trails ever cross again? She could not quite believe him dead.
“Adventures,” she thought. “How little enjoyment one gets from an
adventure when he has no one to share it!”
Adventure came soon enough that day. But first they arrived at that which
appeared to be an impasse in their journey.
The trail that morning led for three miles across a barren tundra. There
it lost itself in a tangled wilderness of trees and bushes. The trusty
dogs did not so much as falter. Their senses were sure; their aim true.
But what was this? After an hour of travel through the silent forest they
came to an abrupt halt. Before them lay a tangled mass of freshly cut
boughs.
“He made camp here last night,” said Faye as her heart gave a great leap.
“Per—perhaps he is still here.”
Certainly she hoped this might be true. The trail had been long, very,
very long, and she was weary. It was not the weariness that comes from
one day of strenuous toil, but the bone weariness of the long, long
trail.
“He’s gone!” Gordon Duncan said a moment later. “Gone down the river.”
“Not—not down the river!” Faye passed round the pile of brush, to drop
weakly to earth as she read unmistakable signs of a raft built and pushed
off from the shore.
“To think,” she said, her eyes reflecting the tragedy of her heart, “he
was here working while we slept! And now he is gone; gone forever. And we
have come all this way but to know defeat!”
“We must follow,” said Gordon Duncan.
“The break-up will come. We will perish!”
“We must trust God, and go.”
“But how?”
The Indians answered this question. Producing their bear skins they began
cutting willows.
“We make skin boat,” they said. “Tie wood together so; stretch skin so;
sew it this way; not leak. Very good boat. Ride water. Ice not break.
Very strong. Very good.”
“Wonderful!” said Gordon Duncan. “God sent you to us.”
“Eh-eh, the Great Spirit,” said the Indian.
Late that afternoon, in a boat that might have been made by some
primitive man three thousand years before, they glided from the shore and
away through the water that ran above the surface of six foot ice which,
soon enough, would rise and go booming and crowding and grinding toward
the sea.
Faye’s heart missed a beat as she took her place in the prow. They were
facing grave dangers. Would this be her last ride?
And yet it was to be a race, a race between a raft and a skin boat on a
turbulent river. Races are always thrilling. Soon her nerves were all
a-tingle.