SHADOWING
Loseis and Mary-Lou rode hard through the river-meadows and over the
gravelly ridges. There was no danger that anyone who followed would be
able to pick out the prints of their horses’ hoofs in the confusion of
tracks left by the fur train. When they gained the shelter of the wooded
country, some six miles from the Post, Loseis pulled up to a walk. It is
impossible to think at a gallop. She wished to canvass all the
possibilities of the situation again.
She thought: The further they went along the trail before striking
across, the harder it would be to get over. Therefore if they intended
to come this way they would turn off as soon as possible. They would now
be behind me. . . . But I do not _know_ that Gault intends to ride after
the fur, though that is the likeliest thing for him to do. How foolish I
would look if I dashed ahead to warn Conacher, and then Gault never
came. Gault might be planning to steal back to the Post, and seize it.
Or he might have some devilish trick in mind that would never occur to
me. . . . I will not ride on until I make sure that he is on this trail.
It is impossible to hide with horses alongside a traveled trail. The
horses are certain to betray you by whinnying at the approach of other
horses. Therefore, Loseis was obliged to ride on four miles further to
the Slavi village at the foot of the lake. Here she sent Mary-Lou across
the river with instructions to turn the horses out, and to lose herself
amongst the Slavis.
Loseis walked back along the wooded trail, looking for a suitable place
of concealment. The river ran close alongside. On the river there was a
fringe of berry bushes at the base of the trees; but the water sparkled
through the interstices of the stems. No room to hide there. The other
side was more open; a thick brown carpet of pine needles that smothered
all undergrowth. Loseis began to run in feverish impatience. Suppose she
was surprised before she could hide herself.
At last in a place where the sun broke through, she came upon a thick
clump of the high-bush cranberry on the inshore side of the trail. She
walked up and down the trail surveying it from every angle. It would
serve! She crept in, careful to leave no tell-tale marks of her passage.
She constructed herself a little cave amongst the leaves, that would
permit of a certain freedom of movement without betraying her by a
rustle. Here she crouched within two yards of the trail.
It was very difficult to compose her impatient blood to wait. The
swollen river moved down, whispering and sucking under the bank.
Overhead a smooth, smoky-colored whisky-jack fluttered like a shadow
from branch to branch, cocking a suspicious eye down at her. Would he
betray her? thought Loseis anxiously. However he made up his mind after
awhile that she was a fixture, and faded away. In the distance Loseis
could hear the children and the dogs of the Slavi village. A dozen times
within a quarter hour Loseis looked at her watch; and each time put it
to her ear to make sure it had not stopped.
A whole hour passed, and another one on top of that. Loseis was
beginning to ask herself if she were not on a fool’s errand. What ought
she to do? What ought she to do? Then she heard a sound that caused all
uncertainty to vanish: hoof-beats on the hard-packed trail. It was then
two o’clock. As the sound drew closer her brow knitted; only one horse;
that was not what she had expected; why should they send one man in
pursuit of Conacher?
A minute later Etzooah rode by in the trail. He was not hurrying himself
at all; his horse was single-footing it gently; and the Indian rode with
his near leg thrown over the saddle horn, his body all relaxed and
shaking in the untidy native style. Etzooah, unaware of being observed,
looked thoroughly well pleased with himself. He hummed a chant under his
breath, and from force of habit his beady black eyes watched on every
side of him. Sharp as they were they perceived nothing amiss in the
clump of high-bush cranberry.
When he had passed, Loseis after making sure that there were no more
coming, issued out of her hiding place, and started back for her horse,
considering. Her first impulse was to ride after Etzooah, but she
dismissed it with a shake of the head. No! No personal danger threatened
Conacher from Etzooah’s coming. This was just part of some tricky game
that Gault was playing. Etzooah might safely be left to Conacher to
handle. She must find out what Gault was about. There lay the real
danger.
Obtaining her horse, and bidding Mary-Lou to remain where she was,
Loseis rode back towards the post. Having ridden about two miles, an
intuition warned her to dismount and lead her horse, that she might not
give undue warning of her passage. Shortly afterwards the mare suddenly
threw up her head and whickered. A moment later Loseis heard more
hoof-beats; several horses this time, pounding in a measured way that
suggested they were being ridden by men.
Turning her horse, Loseis mounted and rode back a hundred yards or so to
a small stream that fell into the river. Dismounting in the water, she
cut her mare sharply across the withers, sending her galloping on in the
direction of the Indian village. Wading up the little stream, she
presently climbed the bank, and making a detour among the pines, pressed
herself close in to the stem of a young tree, with branches growing down
to the ground. It was not a perfect hiding-place; she was further from
the trail.
The riders approached. They were walking their horses now. Gault, Moale
and one of the Crees; the other, Watusk, was missing. They had left
their pack-horses behind them. So they are not going far! thought
Loseis. Gault’s face, when he was alone with his men, wore an expression
that he had never permitted Loseis to see; a look of naked brutality
that made the girl shiver. It is the natural expression of that face,
she thought.
Even before she could see their faces, Loseis heard Gault and Moale
talking back and forth. The first words she heard distinctly were spoken
by Gault. He said:
“It must have been somewhere along here. I heard a horse run off along
the trail. I had not heard it before that. Sounded like some one might
have been waiting here.”
“A loose horse startled away by our coming,” suggested Moale. “There are
plenty of them along the river.”
“They don’t often run alone,” Gault pointed out.
“A Slavi, then. I suspect they prowl up and down this trail.”
“We don’t want them prowling around us,” growled the trader.
“Let Musqua cry like the Weh-ti-go,” said Moale.
The Cree, grinning, threw back his head and uttered the long-drawn,
wailing screech that is supposed to be the cry of that dreadful spirit.
“They will say that it is Blackburn,” said Moale chuckling.
There was a silence.
“We mustn’t go too far,” said Gault. “Or we’ll be on top of the Slavi
village.”
“What are you looking for?” asked Moale.
“A dead tree alongside the trail that we can pull over.”
For some reason these words struck a cold fear into Loseis’ breast. The
riders passed out of earshot.
The trail wound in and out among the trunks as woodland trails do, and
you could never see more than twenty-five yards or so ahead or behind.
As soon as the men had gone, Loseis issued from her hiding-place, and
started to follow on foot. She could still hear the murmur of their
voices but not what they said. The leisureliness of their progress
puzzled her. They were not going much further. What could they be up to?
And the remaining Cree; what had become of him?
She heard them pass through the little stream that crossed the trail. A
short distance beyond they stopped, apparently for the purpose of
holding a consultation. Loseis approached as close as she dared, but
could not make out their words. After awhile they left the trail. From
the sounds that reached her, Loseis understood that they were leading
their horses away amongst the trees. She went forward as far as the
stream, and ascended the bed of it, thus keeping roughly parallel with
the course they were taking.
For a couple of hundred yards back from the river, the forest was
perfectly flat, and for the most part clear of undergrowth. The ground
then rose steeply, and on the hillside young trees and bushes crowded
up. The little stream came down through a ravine full of bowlders.
Loseis, concentrating on the faculty of hearing, gathered that men and
horses had made their way back to the foot of the rise, where they had
gone into camp for a spell.
She climbed up the side of the ravine to a point well above their heads,
and then edged cautiously around the hill until she was directly over
the voices. Thereupon she began to let herself down softly, softly, an
inch at a time, choosing every foothold with circumspection, snaking her
body through the bushes with care not to create the slightest rustling.
Loseis as a child had not played with the Slavi children for nothing.
She discovered at last that they had established themselves at the base
of a gigantic bowlder embedded in the side of the hill. The smoke of
their little fire was rising over the top. Loseis, descending from
above, worked her body by slow degrees out on top of the bowlder, where
she lay perfectly hidden, about fifteen feet above their heads. It would
have been too risky to attempt to peep over the edge of the stone, but
whether she could see them was immaterial to her, so she could hear.
Her cautious progress around the hillside had consumed a good bit of
time, and when she arrived above the camp it was still. For a long time
she could hear nothing but the uneasy nosing of the horses, that had no
forage in that spot. They must have been tied, for they did not move
about. Loseis knew the men were still below her, for she detected a
faint aroma of tobacco, apart from the fumes of burning pine. At last,
startlingly, Gault’s quiet voice resolved itself out of the stillness.
He might have been speaking to herself.
“No, don’t put any more on. If any of the Slavis happen to be traveling
up on the bench, the smoke would attract them. Just keep it going until
we’re ready to eat.”
Moale asked: “When will you eat?”
Gault replied: “We can only eat once. Put it off until evening.”
Then silence again. Loseis feared that that which she so desired to hear
must already have been talked out between them.
By and by she heard a horse single-footing it rapidly in the trail.
“Here comes Watusk,” said Moale.
From the sounds which succeeded Loseis made out that Musqua had been
stationed alongside the trail to intercept Watusk. They could presently
be heard approaching with the horse, through the trees below. As soon as
they were within speaking distance Gault said sharply:
“Well?”
A voice, presumably Watusk’s, replied: “Blackburn’s daughter, and the
Beaver girl are at the post.”
The listening Loseis smiled to herself.
“Did you see them?” asked Gault.
“N’moya. They were in the house. How could I look in the house without
showing myself? There was smoke coming out of the chimney. For an hour I
watched it from the branches of a pine tree where the trail goes over
the hill.”
“Maybe Blackburn’s daughter had left the Indian behind.”
“N’moya.”
“Watusk is right,” put in Moale’s voice. “After everybody else was gone,
no Indian would stay there alone; not with that new-made grave in
sight!”
“It is well,” grumbled Gault.
There was more talk about eating. Gault indifferently told the breeds
they could take theirs if they wanted, but they would get no more until
morning.
More time passed. As is always the case with men waiting an event, they
found but little to say to each other. Sometimes the Crees discussed
their own concerns in low tones. Sometimes they all fell silent for so
long that Loseis supposed they had fallen asleep. Then suddenly Gault
and Moale took up the thread of a conversation as if it had been dropped
but a moment before.
“Couldn’t we hang a noose in the trail?” asked Moale.
“No way of keeping a noose spread,” returned Gault. “It’s better to
stretch the tracking line across the trail from tree to tree at such a
height that it will catch him under the chin. I hope it breaks his damn
neck. Most likely though, it will only yank him off his horse.”
Loseis’ blood slowly congealed as she listened. There could be no doubt
who the “him” was that they referred to.
“Then we’ll jump on him,” Gault went on; “and tie him up, and lay him in
the trail, and pull the tree over. I’ve got it all figured out. The
branches of that tree will stick out over the edge of the bank,
consequently the trunk will lie flat on the ground and break his back.”
“It may not kill him outright,” suggested Moale.
Loseis heard a horrible chuckle. Gault said: “Oh, I’ll stick around
until he dies. I don’t care if he lingers a bit. I hope he’ll have sense
enough to take in what I’ve got to tell him. If he lingers too long I’ll
stop his breath. You fellows can ride on. I’ve got the best horse. I’ll
overtake you. We’ll all have to ride like hell to get to Fort Good Hope
in time to establish a proper alibi.”
There was a brief silence, then:
“But there won’t be any trouble. Unless he’s found to-morrow, the
coyotes and the wolverines will have picked him clean. And in any case
the fallen tree, the broken back will tell their own tale. I’ll recover
the letter, of course, before I leave him.”
“Hadn’t we better keep a watch alongside the trail?” Moale asked
uneasily.
“Why?”
“He might come along before dark?”
“Impossible. I told Etzooah after he had located the camp, not to show
himself until the position of the sun showed eight o’clock. You can
trust a Slavi to keep cover. If Conacher jumped on his horse that minute
and ran him the whole way he couldn’t get back here till near midnight.”
At last they had named their intended victim!
“My only fear is that it may be daylight before he gets here,” said
Gault. “But of course we’ll get him anyhow.”
“He may suspect a trick, and not come at all.”
“Oh, sure!” said Gault unconcernedly. “But we had a damn persuasive
argument to use. If he don’t come by daylight we’ll go after him.”
“And afterwards,” said Moale, “what you going to do afterwards?”
Again the chuckle! “By and by I’ll ride back to Blackburn’s Post to
resume my courtship.”
“She’ll be mourning for the other one then.”
“What of it? It wouldn’t be the first time that a woman consoled herself
with the next best thing. It’s a very good time to tackle a woman. She’s
tender then.”
Loseis had heard enough. She commenced to work herself backward off the
rock. She inched her way up hill in the same manner that she had come
down. She was doubly careful now, for another life beside her own
depended on her success. When she had got high enough to be out of
earshot, she turned in the other direction from that she had come, and
making a wide detour, regained the trail a good furlong beyond Gault’s
camp, and set off to recover her horse.