On the day following our flight from the hollow, MacCaskill and I awoke
with dry mouths, tormenting heads, and irritated bodies, the result
of camping within the influence of the coast. Had Akshelah not been
with us, we should have done no travelling that day. She collected
some plants, squeezed their feeble juices into a tin mug, and made us
swallow the abominable mixture. We were both violently sick, but at the
end of an hour the fever left us. The exercise of walking restored us
completely, though it was very possible that the healthy air, which met
our faces as we ascended, had much to do with the cure.
For five days we journeyed over the Bad Lands, and during the whole
of that time we did not sight a living thing, except insects in their
millions, some white-headed eagles and magpies, and a few loons over
the water, which was everywhere abundant. The country was heaped with
rocks, interspersed with bluffs of arctic pine, and spruce, scraggy and
stunted, the roots buried in thick tufts of the monotonous white moss.
Only a few plants, resembling bunches of yellow feather, sucked an
existence in sheltered niches; and a little bleached flowering grass,
as dry as the rock, wearied our eyes all that journey.
At the end of the fifth day we came to the summit of an endless ridge,
and looked down upon a gully, the sight of which made our hearts beat
faster, because, by my father’s plan, we believed that we were then
standing outside the door of Bonanza.
A narrow stream trickled among the rocks, and green banks of turf rose
on each side invitingly. Here the vegetation was far more luxuriant;
there were thickets of cranberry bush, hung with yellow and scarlet
fruit, with raspberries nearer the water. Akshelah caught some arctic
trout, strange-looking fish, having great fins like wings; we picked
berries by handfuls, and fared luxuriously. When we settled to rest
upon the cool, clean grass, I felt more content than at any time since
our landing at Gull.
We noticed one curious thing while walking along the gulley to the
camping-ground we had selected. We passed into a belt of cold wind,
blowing strongly across the gulley, just as in swimming one enters an
icy cold current of water. We escaped this wind almost directly, but
we had time to observe that no vegetation flourished where it crossed.
This wind cut a clean dry track across the coulee, and where it struck
the rocks it was gradually wearing a cave by the power of its blast.
It was chilly, and as we sat round our fire after supper this passage
of wind began to trouble me. I went on thinking, and presently
exclaimed involuntarily, because I never liked to show that I
cultivated an imagination:
“Is there anything in dreams?”
MacCaskill looked at me over his pipe, and I added:
“Can anyone dream of a place he has never seen?”
“Oh, no,” answered Akshelah. “When we sleep we see our people, who have
gone to the Great Spirit’s country. Our people do not speak to us; but
when they come they make signs, so that we may know that the season is
good for them, and that they are having plenty of hunting. The ghost of
the brave smokes the ghost of his pipe, but the man himself, and the
pipe itself, have been destroyed in the fire.”
MacCaskill was no deep thinker. He merely discharged a cloud of smoke,
grunted, and expressed his opinion that dreams were “no use anyhow.”
I saw before me two shining walls of rock, towering and shutting out
the light, and I shivered, because the wind, which was whistling past,
became very cold. I understood more than I could express, and when I
tried to think again, my mind stopped short at an improvised bed in
a cleft of the rock, a few bushes tossing just above, and the wind
always pouring, and rushing, and moaning.
“I guess we’re almost there,” I said abruptly, and the factor started,
looked at me curiously, and removed his pipe.
“I had a mind to say that.” He spoke more slowly than usual. “That
yonder should be the Canyon of the North Wind, and up there we should
strike Mosquito Pass. We’ll know to-morrow.”
Akshelah interposed. Without looking at us, she held out her arms
against the faintly blue sky, and called:
“You see the ridge where the sun-colours are resting? I saw a man stand
there, but while I looked he was gone. He is coming this way.”
We stood up and looked, straining our eyes along the defile, but could
see nothing, and MacCaskill was disposed to think the girl mistaken.
“It’s no use shifting,” he said. “He will have seen our fire.”
“He is coming slowly,” said Akshelah.
Again she pointed, and now we saw the dark object crawling down the
slope.
“See!” exclaimed the girl. “He is very weak.”
Directly the man entered the line of wind, the current swept him
off his legs. We did not go out to help him, because we could not
anticipate meeting a friend. Presently, the figure blundered up, and
we recognised the ugly face of Jim Morrison. As usual, his own demands
were uppermost.
“Gimme some grub; do ye now,” he whined, sinking upon the grass. “I’m
’most starved.”
“You have come through plenty of berries,” said Akshelah scornfully.
“And you can pick ’em for yourself,” added MacCaskill. “We ain’t
runnin’ a gen’ral store to fellers that start trackin’ us. Your pard
Leblanc with ye, I guess?”
The sailor blasphemously asserted that they had not followed, but had
escaped from the hollow after us, and had not dared to return, because
they feared punishment for their share of the work on the _Carillon_.
“All the boys have run,” declared Morrison, but we knew this was a lie.
“We did track ye jest a piece,” he confessed at last.
“Ye don’t track another piece,” said the factor. “Ye get back to your
pard, and sling yourselves out er this country before morning. We don’t
call for a couple of dogs sniffin’ after us.”
At first, when a hoarse cry came along the defile, a distant human
shout of undeniable fear, I suspected another plot; but Morrison, who
had been stripping a bush with both hands, and gulping down the fruit
in a beast-like manner, stopped and turned his head, blenching with
unmistakable terror.
“’Twas Gedeon!” he gasped.
He went on to explain that he had left the half-breed, who had broken
down with hunger and fever, upon the rocks on the far side of the
ridge. Akshelah busily dispersed and stamped out our fire, and
MacCaskill began to aid her, while I looked on stupidly, remembering
that I was seeing how men live.
“Maybe he saw something to fright him,” muttered the factor, but not
as though he believed in what he said; while Morrison forgot his own
demands, and began to whimper.
We determined to go to Leblanc’s assistance, more, I fancy, because we
were curious to discover what other force might be in the field, than
from any desire to save the half-breed, whom we knew had been in this
place twice before together with his master. We made a cache of our
tools and supplies beneath a bush, scattered the dying embers of our
fire, and began the ascent, passing on this occasion above the spot
where the wind struck. The night was perfectly calm, the light soft
and clear, although, it being well after midnight, a few shadows were
faintly marked under the rocks. That the half-breed was alive soon
became evident, because his shoutings and frightened appeals scarcely
ceased for a moment. Presently Morrison sang out, and Leblanc’s note
altered.
“Jim! Jim! I’ve ben hit wi’ a knife!”
Morrison was inclined to consider his own well-being, but we pushed him
ahead of us. Hard by a patch of strong-smelling bush we found Leblanc,
half in the light, half in the dim shadow, and writhing like a worm.
An examination showed us that the man had been stabbed in the fleshy
part of the shoulder; it was a very slight wound, the would-be murderer
having evidently aimed at the back of the neck, and been frustrated by
a sudden move.
“Who did it, pard?” Morrison called huskily, and backing away
uselessly. “Who come to hit yer?”
“The country’s chocked wi’ ghosts!” wailed Leblanc, his face ghastly.
“Old ghosts, an’ young ghosts, mostly old. One hit me dirty wi’ a knife
as I set right here. I never see him. He hit quick, an’ was away. He’d
have come to hit again if ye hadn’t scared him. Jim, I be bleedin’
dreadful!”
“Dirty coward!” muttered MacCaskill. “Ain’t nothing much worse’n a
mosquito prick. Do ye good, ole woman. Let the fever outer ye.”
“I be dyin’,” went on Leblanc, blubbering. “I ain’t got religion. Jim,
tell us if there’s a God.”
“There’s a God for decent folk. None for the like of you,” said the
factor. “Shake yourself up, and tell who hit ye.”
“I didn’t see nobody. I heard a move, an’ made to turn, when it come
right inter me shoulder all hot. A ghost it was, sure. They tell how
awful some of ’em do bite. I don’t know where I be a-goin’, not havin’
religion, an’ don’t know whater say. Oh, Jim, tell us whater say!”