The cave became still. Snuggled down in her bed in the canoe Betty had
fallen asleep as readily as if in her bed in the owner’s suite aboard
the _Wanderer_. Sleep pressed on my eyelids, too; my body, tired from
the unwonted exertions of the day, demanded insistently the boon of
recreating slumber.
I fought off my drowsiness, however, and lay curled up on my bed of
boughs, facing the cave’s mouth, and tried to think. Yet though I
realized that I was awake it all seemed like a dream, such a dream as
youth dreams when the call of Romance and Adventure still is real.
I was Gardner Pitt, writing man; my accustomed environment, the
carefully barbered, denaturalized life of my set in New York. No, that
must be a mistake. That New York existence seemed too far away to be a
part of my present life. That was the dream; this the reality. I was
Gardner Pitt, but I was not a writer; I was simply a hundred and sixty
pounds of man, and I was sleeping on a pile of brush at the mouth of a
cavern, in which slept a woman guarded by my presence. And it all
seemed so natural, so vital and true a field for a man’s activities,
that for the time nothing else had significance. True, this was not my
woman that I was guarding, but another’s. But no thought of this
entered my mind at the time. I did not think at all beyond the problem
of escaping from Brack.
I placed my pistol in my right hand, determined to lie awake through
the night.
I must have fallen asleep immediately after this, because when I was
awakened by the rays of the morning sun slanting into the cave, the
pistol lay with my relaxed hand upon it. I started up with a sensation
of guilt.
With my pistol in my hand I peered out of the cave, more than half
expecting to find Brack calmly awaiting me with his tantalizing smile
in its place. But no human presence disturbed the primitive peace of
that hillside that morning. A covey of feeding grouse lifted their
heads and looked at me without fear. Birds were singing, the sun was
bright and warm, and down on the blue water of the bay a pair of tiny
ducks played.
I turned to look at Betty and was greeted by the sight of a very
tousled, half-awake little head, peering over the side of the canoe.
“‘Mornin’,” murmured the little head sleepily.
“‘Mornin’,” I replied.
“Oo-oo-ah!” The little head yawned tremendously. “Wha’ time is ’t?”
It was 7:02 by my watch as I consulted it.
“Oo-o-wah!” Little head looked at me appealingly. “Do we got to get up
so early when we play Injun?”
“Only the hunting Injun’s got to get up so early. Other Injuns sleep
as long as they please.”
“Hunting? What for?”
“Oh, for a nice, big white yacht, for one thing. I’ll be gone only a
short while. In the meantime you sleep.”
“O-um-mum,” murmured the little head and sank comfortably out of sight
in the canoe.
Parting the brush that hid the cave, I stepped out and went down the
hillside a short distance. Looking back I was pleased to find that the
cave was so well hidden that unless one knew its location it might be
passed close by without its existence being suspected. Save for the
possibility that man who had taken the rifle was one of Brack’s gang
the cave offered a fairly safe hiding place.
My first move was to assure myself that the yacht was not anchored
near by. I went cautiously up the bay for half a mile, scrutinizing
each inlet in vain for a sight of the _Wanderer’s_ white sides. I then
swung up into the hills, marching a circle around the cave, impelled
by the instinctive desire to ascertain the possible presence of any
enemy.
At a distance of a city block from the cave I found a tiny spring
sending its rivulet down the hillside to the bay, and as I lay down to
drink I saw huddled beneath a tiny fir a flock of grouse watching me
from a distance of ten or twelve feet.
Instinct promptly whispered: “Food” and I recalled the scant supply I
had taken from the cabin, and reached for my pistol. The pistol,
however, would roar like a cannon in that morning stillness and my
supply of ammunition was limited to the ten cartridges in the
magazine.
Lying motionless I looked around until my eyes fell upon a club. It
was out of reach, but the foolish birds, confident that they were
hidden, sat still while I secured the club and hurled it with all my
might into their midst. I leaped forward instantly, and in the roar
and flurry of the covey’s rising pounced upon two fluttering birds
which my club had stunned.
Betty was up and wide awake when I returned to the cave. She had made
her hair into one thick braid which hung down her back, and her face
was rosy from sound sleep. She shuddered first at the sight of the
birds.
“Oh, the poor, pretty things!” she murmured, stroking their feathers.
“I wish you hadn’t hurt them.”
“I didn’t hurt them,” I replied. “They never knew what struck them. I
didn’t like to do it, but we must find our own food, or surrender to
Brack.”
She looked at the birds wistfully and said nothing as I led her to the
spring. I left her splashing the ice-cold water upon her face and
proceeded to dress the birds. When I returned to the cave she was
waiting with her sleeves rolled up and a set look in her eyes.
“I can cook them,” she said firmly. “That’s my share of the game. You
cut them in two and put a stick through the pieces and hold them
before a hot fire that doesn’t smoke.”
“Any fire that we have must not smoke,” I said. “The smoke would show
above the trees and be seen.”
“Then we must have perfectly dry wood,” she said quickly. “A small
fire and dry; that doesn’t smoke.”
We set about gathering the wood together. Between two stones at the
cave’s opening we built our fire, watching it jealously, to see that
only the minimum of smoke arose from it in the clear air. Betty put
her conscience to rest as she regarded the dressed grouse, composed
mainly of succulent breast.
“They must be intended for food,” she said, “or they wouldn’t be made
as they are.”
I agreed with her emphatically, and with a skewered half bird in each
hand we sat down before the fire and proceeded with our cookery.
Freshly killed spruce grouse, roasted before an uncertain fire, and
without salt, do not make ideal breakfast food, a fact which we
discovered soon after the birds were done.
“I believe,” said Betty, when she had nibbled at half a bird, “I have
had enough.”
“I have other viands in my pocket.”
“To be saved for future reference,” she laughed.
“We’ll wrap the rest of this wild poultry up in nice clean leaves and
save it for another meal.”
“We will. It will be tasty when cold.”
At the spring where we went to wash down the meal with drafts of
water, Betty’s eyes began to twinkle and the corners of her lips
twitched suspiciously.
“Well, we’ve perfectly beautiful drinking water, at least,” she said,
and smothered her laughter behind both hands.
“Now then,” she said briskly, when we were back in the cave, “are we
going to occupy this apartment for some time, or do we continue our
travels of last night?”