THE WHITE FLAG
Hugh had thought, when he saw those first snowflakes, that he understood
a little of what was before them. He had later to learn that winter as
he knew it and winter as it could be in northern Minnesota were two very
different matters. To lose all their possessions at just the season when
cold weather was closing in was a mishap desperate indeed, yet the boys,
after a moment of being stunned by the gravity of the situation, faced
it gayly.
That same night Hugh insisted on going out to look for the fishing
basket that he had thrown aside when he ran to the rescue of Hulda. With
Nicholas to help him, he managed to find it, so, that evening at least,
they did not have to go supperless to bed. Early next morning they arose
to search the ruins of the storehouse for anything that might have
escaped destruction. Part of a side of bacon was found wedged under a
fallen beam and a very small quantity of flour, happening to be in a tin
container, had not been consumed. That was the whole extent of their
salvage.
The snow had only been falling fitfully during the night, but about the
middle of the morning the storm settled down, like a blinding white
curtain that shut off all the rest of the world. Once or twice the
rising wind tore the dense veil apart, showing them the stormy lake, the
bowing woods and Jasper Peak for a fleeting moment, before all was
blotted out again. The boys had managed to mend the hole burned in the
roof and to shut off the door that had once led into the storehouse, and
now were warming themselves at the fire after their severe labors
outside. Dick went to the window and took a long survey of the snow.
“If I know anything of Minnesota weather,” he remarked, “this is the
sort of storm that will last for days, three or four, at least, and then
it will clear and get cold, colder than anything you ever dreamed
of—thirty—forty—fifty below zero, maybe. If we should start now, we
might be able to get to Rudolm, but if we wait until the snow is deep we
could not even attempt it. What do you say, Hugh, shall we go or stay?”
“I don’t know,” answered Hugh from beside the fire; “do you want to go?”
“I do not,” returned Dick promptly, “but we have got to decide which is
the wiser thing to do.”
Hugh looked up at the calendar on the wall.
“Oscar has been gone two weeks and three days,” he said, “so his time
for proving up on the claim will be over in five days. Jake arranged his
plan well. He meant to burn the cabin and just give himself time to get
down to the Land Office to make trouble over Oscar’s statement that the
land is improved and so tie the whole thing up. He knows we have lost
our stores; he is watching from over there to see if we go. He will
still have time to put the thing through if we do.”
“Then let’s stay,” decided Dick with determination. “We have food enough
for two days and we’ll whistle for luck for the other three. Fortunately
we have plenty of wood.”
“And let’s make a big smoke in the chimney,” said Hugh, “so that when
the storm lifts for a second Jake can see that we are still here and are
going to stay.”
It was a welcome idea and quickly carried out. Certainly if Half-Breed
Jake had any curiosity as to whether the cottage was still inhabited, he
had no need to cross the valley to find out, on that day at least. Dick
and Hugh built up such a roaring blaze that there was danger of their
setting fire to the cabin again; then they sat down before it, toasting
their shins and reflecting on the probable disappointment of the Pirate
of Jasper Peak.
The hours passed very slowly, for the two had little to do and had
chosen to have no midday meal, but to eat of their scanty stock only
night and morning. The storm increased; the snowfall was no longer
steady, but came in whirling gusts, piling high before the cabin door.
About the middle of the afternoon, Dick took his rifle and sallied forth
with Nicholas in desperate hope of bringing home some game. He was gone
two hours, returning at last empty-handed.
“And very lucky I was to get home at all,” he said as he came in,
stamping the snow off his big boots. “I vow I have been walking in a
circle for five miles: it was only Nicholas who ever got me here again.”
All night the wind screamed in the chimney and fairly rocked the walls
of their little dwelling. The snow seemed twice as deep when they fought
their way out to the stable to attend to the wants of Hulda. Her placid
air was somewhat reassuring, although Hugh observed wisely:
“She really doesn’t know just how things are.”
The pail of milk that they carried back between them was even more
comforting, for it was plain that with Hulda’s help they could not quite
starve.
“We can get pretty hungry, though,” observed Hugh grimly as he saw
Nicholas disposing of his share in three laps and then looking up to beg
mutely for more.
There could be no thought now of going out to shoot. The snow was
drifted over the window sills and banked against the door and still
filled the air in white clouds driven by the roaring wind. The spring,
their one water supply, was as inaccessible as though it had been ten
miles away, so they melted snow in a pot over the fire and found it a
most unsatisfactory process, since, as Dick said, “A bucketful of snow
makes about a thimbleful of water.”
Their supply of food was quite gone by the fourth day, in spite of all
their care, so there was nothing left but the milk night and morning.
“That won’t keep one very long,” Hugh remarked.
He had been obliged to gulp down his share in the stable, being much too
hungry to wait until he got back to the house. Dick immediately followed
his example and, when he had finished, stood eying the storm through the
narrow slit of a window.
“It can’t last a great deal longer, it simply can’t,” he asserted.
Hugh, shaking down hay for Hulda, envied her the pleasure with which she
ate it and answered gloomily:
“Perhaps it can’t, but I am beginning to think that it will.”
This day also wore by somehow and at last night came.
“There certainly will be a change by morning,” Hugh assured himself as
he fell asleep.
When he awoke, however, and got up at once to press his face against the
snow-blurred window he saw just the same blinding, swirling storm. It
looked like some sort of dream that would go on and on and never end.
Dick, awaking, sat up quickly, but, on looking at Hugh’s face, forebore
to ask any questions.
“You had better lie down again,” he advised, dropping his head once more
upon the pillow. “It is wiser to spend as much time sleeping as you
possibly can.”
Stumbling out through the drifts to Hulda, Hugh began suddenly to
realize such weakness that he wondered whether he could make the journey
again without dropping in the snow. Through the day he noticed that Dick
no longer prowled from door to window, looking at the storm. He sat,
instead, immovable in the big chair by the fire, only stirring now and
then to add fresh logs to the blaze. The strain of his journey through
the wood, his anxiety about his brother, with these present hardships,
had tended to break him sooner than Hugh. He tried to speak some words
of broken apology when Hugh went about the work of the cabin alone, but
the truth was plain enough, that he could scarcely move. Nicholas lay
listlessly in a corner, following Hugh always with great hungry eyes.
Night seemed to come with unbelievable slowness, even though the winter
days had grown so short.
They crawled into bed at last, too weak and dispirited, almost, to bid
each other good-night. Hugh tossed and turned upon his bunk; he was too
hungry to sleep. Suddenly sitting bolt upright, he addressed Dick, who
was awake also, even though he lay so still.
“Dick,” he said sharply, “are you sorry we stayed?”
“No,” came the answer promptly. “No, by George, I’m not sorry, no matter
what happens.”
“Nor I,” said Hugh, and lay down again, quieted somehow, so that soon he
went to sleep.
He awoke, hours later, with a vague knowledge that something was wrong.
After rubbing the drowsiness from his eyes and thinking a little, he
decided that, even under his mountain of blankets, he was very cold. He
got up hastily, huddled on all of his clothes, even to his mackinaw
coat, and went into the other room to crouch before the hearth. The fire
was not yet dead, but such warmth as it could give made little
impression upon the terrible benumbing chill that filled the cottage.
Nicholas, shivering and whining, came to his side and the two crept
close together, each getting a little comfort from the other. Dick was
still asleep; they could hear his breathing in the utter quiet, and the
clock tick-ticking above them on the wall. In the flickering light Hugh
could see the hands moving slowly until they pointed to twelve.
It was midnight, the last hour of Oscar’s last day. The cabin was safe,
the claim was his, the first step of his great plan was made certain at
last.
“We’ve beaten Jake,” cried Hugh, in a quick whisper and threw his arms
about Nicholas in a great hug of delight. Then he got up stiffly and
went to the window to survey the weather. He pushed aside the curtain,
rubbed a clear space in the thick frost on the pane and looked out. He
gasped and looked once more, with a cry of amazement, as though some
strange vision had been presented to his eyes. Yet all he saw was calm,
quiet night, a world of glittering snowfields and a clear sky all alight
with stars.
“Dick, Dick,” he shouted, and his comrade jumped up hastily.
“What is it?” he asked. “Oh, brr-rr, but it is cold.”
He came to Hugh’s side, looked out also and gave the same gasp of joy.
“I didn’t know,” he cried, his voice almost breaking, “I didn’t know
that stars could shine so bright, Hugh!”
What happened next would have shocked Linda Ingmarsson, careful
housekeeper that she was, and might even have given some pain to Oscar’s
tidy Swedish soul. For both boys, fully dressed, got into one bunk
together, with Nicholas between them, “just for company,” as Hugh said.
The big dog accomplished wonders in the matter of doubling up his long
legs, so that the combined supply of blankets sufficed to cover them
all. Gradually, as they began to be a little warmer, both the boys
relaxed a little from their long anxiety during the storm. The claim was
safe, there was a chance that they could go into the woods in the
morning and shoot a partridge or two, if they could manage to drag
themselves that far. And now the storm was over, certainly Oscar would
come soon. Hugh did not think upon these matters long, however, for he
was growing very drowsy.
“Listen,” said Dick at last, rousing himself very sleepily; “what is
that sound at the door? Look, Nicholas hears it too.”
The dog had raised his head and was sniffing anxiously, but without
moving, as though he, too, were too weary to stir. Hugh listened and
heard a sound outside like a soft shuffling in the snow.
“I don’t care what it is,” he announced. “There is nothing on earth that
can make me get up now that I am warm and sleepy at last. Here,
Nicholas, spare me a bit more blanket. I am going to sleep for a hundred
years and dream of a million ham sandwiches.”
He dropped off almost while he was still speaking and Dick, apparently
no more energetic than he, closed his eyes also. Nicholas lay with
cocked ears listening until the soft sounds gradually ceased, then he,
too, dropped into the unheeding slumber that held them all until
daylight.
When Hugh awoke his first thought was that it was a pleasant dream he
had had of the storm’s being over and the stars visible. Yet when he sat
up and saw bright sunlight pouring through the windows of the little
cabin he knew that it must be true and sprang from his bunk with a
hurrah of delight. The air was of a more bitter cold than anything he
had ever imagined, the breath rose from his nostrils in two columns like
steam and was frozen in white crystals all along the edge of the blanket
where Dick still lay. Nicholas jumped down after him, shook himself by
way of making a morning toilet and ran to sniff and snuffle under the
door. There returned to Hugh a vague recollection of the sounds he had
heard in the night, so that he undid the fastenings hurriedly and threw
the door open. The dazzling sparkle of the snow almost blinded him for a
moment, while the rush of intense cold made him draw his breath in quick
gasps. Yet nothing could blind his eyes to what lay upon the doorstep—a
big sack of flour, a bag of dried beans and the frozen carcass of a
deer.
The sight of food when one is nearly starved has sometimes a strange and
disquieting effect. Hugh was ashamed of the savage eagerness with which
he fell upon the treasures and dragged them within. He kept thinking
that they must vanish from his sight even as he held them and wished
earnestly that Dick were not asleep that he might ask him whether he saw
them too. It seemed too bad to wake him if the gifts did not turn out to
be real. Yet the food remained very solid and genuine in his hands, even
while he was preparing it for cooking and cutting off a venison steak.
It afforded presently a perfume more delicious than all the sweets of
Araby, when at last the meat began to broil. Nicholas lay with his nose
almost in the fire, his eyes never moving from the feast as Hugh turned
it over and over before the blaze.
“You are going to have the first one,” said Hugh. “You deserve it if
ever a dog did. You are the only one of the three of us that has not
grumbled.”
The second steak was nearly ready, flapjacks were browning in the pan
and the beans had been buried in the coals to bake for another meal,
when Dick awoke. Hugh laughed delightedly at the sight of him, sitting
bolt upright among the blankets, his mouth and eyes both round with
unbelieving astonishment.
“What is it, Hugh?” he asked, sniffing delightedly. “I could live on
that smell for a week. Did the witches or the angels bring it?”
“I don’t know,” laughed Hugh delightedly, “but however it came, it’s
real. Get up quickly or I will eat it all without you.”
They speculated long over every possible source for the mysterious gift,
but could come to no conclusion. On examining the space before the
cottage they saw that some one had come on snowshoes up the hill and had
removed them to walk in the narrow trampled path that the boys had made,
deep in the drifts, up to their door. They could see where the snowshoes
had been stuck upright against a bank while the owner came up to the
doorstone: the footsteps were short, shuffling ones made by moccasined
feet.
“But no Indian man that ever I saw walks with such a short stride as
that,” Dick insisted, staring thoughtfully at the marks in the snow,
“and think what a load he must have carried!”
Hugh had a sudden rapid memory of two figures he had seen that first day
he walked through the streets of Rudolm, a swift, silent Indian striding
ahead and behind him his wife bearing just such a load as this on her
bent shoulders and by the deerskin strap across her forehead. Yet he did
not speak of the thought in his mind, it was far too fantastic and
impossible.
They dined like lords that day, but spent most of the time still hugging
the fire, for the cold was as fierce as had been the storm that went
before it. The sun shone brilliantly, turning everything to diamond and
silver and making their little world, as they looked out upon it, a
strange and unfamiliar place. Jasper Peak opposite was sheathed in white
from base to summit, with high-banked drifts and curving blue-shadowed
hollows. The lake’s surface was blue again, an odd clear greenish blue,
for it was ice. During the tumult of the storm it could not freeze over,
but now was a glistening expanse, with white broken rifts here and
there, where the floating masses of ice had been caught and frozen in.
The long shore showed sharp lines of dark and white in its crowded pine
trees with their burden of snow.
An hour after noon they had gone out to clear a path to the stable, a
heavy task in snow that had drifted six and seven feet high wherever
shelter offered. Nicholas, running about them, floundered shoulder deep
in even the open places and more than once succeeded in burying himself
entirely.
“Hugh,” said Dick at last—he had been leaning on his shovel and staring
across the ravine—“I wish you would look over there at the pirates’
cabin and tell me what you see.”
Hugh turned to look as he was bid, yet for a moment saw only the
half-buried shack and the group of pointed, snow-covered pines behind
it.
“I don’t see anything,” he answered. “What do you think is there?”
“Come over by me so that the chimney is in line with those trees. Don’t
you see now, something fluttering on a pole?”
Hugh came close and looked again, long and carefully.
“Why, they have a flag flying,” he exclaimed at last, “and, Dick, it’s a
white one!”
“That’s it,” cried Dick excitedly. “I thought I saw it this morning, but
with the sun in our eyes I couldn’t make it out. It is plain enough now;
it looks as though they wanted help.”
“They deserve to get it, don’t they?” commented Hugh bitterly, digging
his shovel very deep into the snow.
They finished clearing the path in silence, then walked slowly back to
the cottage. They sat before the fire for a little, each deep in the
same thought.
“He shot Oscar’s dog,” Hugh suddenly broke out. “He made it so that
Oscar couldn’t go to war, he—he—Dick, does a man who can do such things
deserve any help?”
“He has done worse things than any you know about,” returned Dick, “and
I know now that he had a hand in that Indian Kaniska’s leaving us to
starve in the woods; he has done every sort of thing, but—but—”
As if with one movement, they both looked up at Oscar’s snowshoes
hanging on the wall.
“There is only one pair,” observed Hugh. “We can’t both go.”
“Then,” said Dick, and neither had occasion to tell the other that a
final conclusion had been reached, “then we will have to draw straws.
And it is very generous of me to give you even a chance, because I know
I am better on snowshoes than you.”
“I have tried them in the Adirondacks,” Hugh replied. “I am not so
clumsy with them as you seem to think. Well, straws it is. The longest
one goes.”
They arranged the straws with great show of fairness and secrecy and
drew.
“Oh, Hugh, you have all the luck!” exclaimed Dick in bitter
disappointment as he gazed at his abbreviated straw and at Hugh’s
irrepressible grin of satisfaction.
“It is really better,” was Hugh’s answer, in which he tried to keep the
excited delight from his tone. “We have not either of us come through
this last week feeling any too husky, but it has been harder on you
because it was your second try at starving. If we weren’t both of us so
well fed now, I think we would quarrel.”
“It isn’t fair,” cried Dick jealously. “After all, you ought to stay
here. Some one must milk Hulda and I don’t know how.”
“Nonsense,” returned Hugh rudely. “For myself, I never want to see milk
again. Where is that extra revolver? Lend me your mittens, they are
drier than mine.”
He strapped on the snowshoes, ordered Nicholas back in spite of the
delighted preparations the dog was making to join the expedition, bade
Dick a sympathizing good-by and turned his face stoutly toward Jasper
Peak. The dry, stinging cold was so intense as almost to take his breath
away, but he was growing a little more used to it at last. The big
snowshoes seemed awkward at first; he soon fell into the proper swing,
however, and made good speed down the hill to the edge of the stream.
The brook itself had disappeared completely under snow which was so soft
that here he sank and floundered in spite of the snowshoes. It was
difficult going up the steep incline on the other side, but in his
eagerness and curiosity he managed to climb quickly.
There was no sign of life about Jake’s cabin, only the white flag—it
looked like a torn shirt—was still fluttering from its rough pole beside
the chimney. There were footprints about the door, those same heavy,
shuffling steps that he had seen before their own cabin. He knocked
loudly and stood waiting, thinking of the last time he had stood upon
that doorstep. There was a pause and such silence that he could hear his
heart hammering excitedly against his ribs. Then a sound of slow,
dragging feet came from within, there was a fumbling at the lock, the
door opened and a broad awkward figure appeared on the threshold.
Somehow, in spite of his surprise, he felt that he had half expected to
see that swarthy face and wide, strange, mirthless smile. It was
Laughing Mary.