"And the grey hair above your eyes, Larry?" asked Jack, in an awed
voice.
"_That_ came the time I mentioned when I gave you your revolver, and you
remarked you would hate to be in a position where you might _wish_ you
had one. I told you I had been there myself. It was last August, on a
lonely trail far east of here. I had lain down during the intense heat
of the day to sleep, only to wake to see his peering eyes, to feel that
my feet were tied together, my hands caught in his vise-like clutch,
bound together. Then I was dragged to a tree and lashed to it by yards
of leather strapping, and all the time looking into the barrel of his
revolver. He searched every stitch of clothing I had on, but he did
not find the map. I was not armed, was perfectly helpless, and he left
me lashed to that tree, naked all but my trousers and socks. I was
there forty hours. The black flies came in swarms, the mosquitoes in
thousands, and the second night timber wolves barked in the distance.
Towards morning they came nearer, nearer. The agony from the insects
made me desperate, but it was the yapping of those wolves that drove me
crazy. I chewed through the leather straps binding my shoulder, chewed
the shoulder with it, boy, and broke loose, with the blood running from
every fly-bite, my eyes blinded with their poison, my throat cracked
with thirst. I staggered to the river to drink, drink, drink, to lie
in its cool waters, then to drink again, again, again."
Jack's face blanched, his hands turned stiff with cold, at the horror of
the tale.
"When I could really see with my eyes," continued Larry, "I discovered,
while looking into the still river, that this powder had puffed itself
above my ears."
"And the map?" questioned Jack.
"Oh, the map? Well, he didn't get _that_," answered Larry, in something
of his natural voice. "You see, I had once an accident, breaking through
the ice on the lake. The map got wet and was almost destroyed, so I
copied it out on cotton with marking ink, and sewed it inside the lining
of my coat, and it did not crackle, as the paper map would have done had
he passed his hands over it. Why, he never suspected it was there."
Jack drew a great breath of relief. "I wouldn't care if he did get it,
Larry, so long as he left you alive."
"Oh, he's too cowardly to kill a man outright; don't be afraid of that.
But he's after the King's Coin, all right," was the reply.
"And he don't get King's Coin, not while I live--me," said the low voice
of Fox-Foot, as, with squared shoulders and set teeth, he gripped his
paddle firmly and started up the long stretch of Ten-mile Lake.
* * * * * * * *
All that night Larry and Jack slept in the canoe, while the Chippewa boy
paddled noiselessly, mile after mile. Above them the loons laughed, and
herons called, and in the dense forest ashore foxes barked and owls
hooted. A beautiful bow of light arched itself in the north, its long,
silvery fingers stretching and darting up to the sky's zenith. But the
Indian paddled on. Those wild sounds and scenes were his birthright, and
he knew no fear of them.
At daylight he beached the canoe so motionlessly the sleepers never
stirred, and he wakened them only when he had the coffee made and a
huge pan of delicious bacon fried above the coals. Both of the paleface
friends then arose, yawned, stretched, stripped and plunged into the
lake, to swim about for a few moments, and then to jump into their
shirts and sweaters, and fall upon the coffee and bacon with fine
relish.
"I believe," said Jack, devouring his third helping, "that my eyes are
better. They don't ache or smart in the least to-day."
"Eye bad?" asked Fox-Foot.
Jack explained.
"I cure, me, if you like. Root good for bad eye grows here, north," said
the Chippewa.
"Better let him try," urged Larry. "He knows all these things. His
flower seeds have evidently put the kibosh on the man in the mackinaw."
"I get root, you try. No harm," said the Indian. "You scairt put in your
eye, then just smell it, and tie round your head."
"I'll try it, by all means," asserted Jack.
So, at noon, while Larry and Jack cooked the dinner, Fox-Foot penetrated
the woods, returning with some crooked little brown roots, which he
bound about Jack's forehead and made him inhale. They exuded a peculiar
sweetish odor, that seemed to wash the eyeball like water, and when the
afternoon was half spent, Jack remarked that his eyelids had ceased to
smart.
"One week, maybe, be all right," answered the Indian. And his words
proved correct. Daily he gathered fresh roots, treating Jack's eyes as
skilfully as the oldest medicine man of his tribe could have done, until
the poor red rims faded white, and the bloodshot eyeballs grew clear
and bluish. Jack was beside himself with gratitude and delight, his one
regret being that there was no possible way of mailing a letter to his
parents telling them the good news. This week was one of work, sometimes
toil. Often they encountered rapids over which they must portage. Once
it was a whole mile through brush and rock and deep, soft mosses, but
still they struggled on, until one evening, as they pitched camp and
lighted their fire, Fox-Foot said coolly:
"You know this place, Larry?"
"No," was the answer, "never saw it before."
"The reason you say that," said the Indian, "is 'cause you come and go
over that bluff behind us. Lake Nameless just twenty yards 'cross that
bluff."
"_What_!" yelled Larry.
"I bring you in other side. Bluff separate this river and Lake Nameless.
There is your cache," laughed Fox-Foot, throwing a pebble and striking a
point of red rock ten yards away.
Larry and Jack fairly stumbled over their own feet to get there. Every
mark that Matt Larson had left to identify the hiding-place of his
treasure still remained undisturbed. The round white pebble placed near
the shelving rock, the three-cornered flint, the fine, tiny grey bits of
stone set like a bird's eggs in a nest of lichen, the two standing pines
with a third fallen, storm-wrecked, at their roots--every landmark was
there, intact.
Larry almost flew for the pick, and began to hack away at loose rocks,
swinging the pick above shoulder as a woodsman swings an axe. Two feet
below the surface, the pick caught in a web of cloth. In another minute
Larry lifted out an old woollen jersey undershirt, that had been
fastened up bag-wise. He snatched his knife, ripped open the sleeves,
and the setting sun shot over a huge heap of yellow richness, quarts
and quarts of heavy golden nuggets--_the King's Coin_. Larry sat down
limply, wiping the oozing drops from his forehead. The two boys stood
gazing at the treasure as if fascinated. Then Jack moistened his lips
with his tongue, drew the back of his hand across his blinking eyes,
moistened his lips again, but no words seemed to come to him. It was
Fox-Foot who spoke first. Touching one splendid nugget almost
contemptuously with the toe of his moccasin, he sneered "It is the
curse of the paleface, this gold. 'Most every white man he sell the
soul within his body for gold, gold, but not so Larry. _I_ know him.
He prize this thing because it is the reward of pluck, of work, of
great patience, of what white men call 'grit.'"
"Thank you, Foxy," said Larry, rising and extending his fine hand, which
grasped the Indian's with a warm, true grip. "You mean that--mean it
with all your loyal young redskin heart. Yes, boys, I hope it is for the
love of pluck, the pride of 'grit,' that I value this thing. I hope it
is not greed, not avarice, not--"
"_Never_!" interrupted Jack's ringing voice. "Never any greed of gold in
you, Larry. You best and bulliest of men alive, but I _am_ glad the gold
is yours. You deserve every ounce of it," and Jack was clinging to his
handsome young uncle's other hand with a heartiness that rang as true
as the nuggets lying at his feet. Presently he stooped to lift one. Its
rugged yellow bulk reflected the dying sun. It was a goodly thing
to look at, rare, precious, beautiful. Then he dropped it among its
fellows, his fingers curled into his palms. Unconsciously his hands
moulded themselves into fists, and each fist rested with a peculiar
bulldog movement above each sturdy hip. His eyes met Larry's.
"We'll have a tough fight for it," he said, meaningly, "but that gold is
going to get past the man in the mackinaw."
"It certainly will, if you're going to act as you look now," laughed
Larry. "Why, boy, you look as if you would stop at nothing to outwit our
unpleasant follower."
"I shall stop at very little," said Jack doggedly. "Your gold will get
to the front, Larry, if I have full fling in the matter."
"Fling away, son," was the reply. "Only always remember: don't _use_
your revolver unless he is killing you."
"Or killing you or Fox-Foot," supplemented the boy.
"Same thing," said Larry. "We are all one in this matter, but I don't
want you to be sorry in after years that you pulled a gun too quickly,
that is all."
"No gun," joined Fox-Foot, slyly. "You leave the man to me. I fix him."
"I guess that's right," answered Larry. "Foxy's the boy to trip up Mr.
Mackinaw in his nice little race for what does not belong to him. Now,
boys, for supper, but we'll tuck away these pretty little playthings
first."
The nuggets were divided into two stout canvas sacks, which were never
to leave the lynx eyes of these three adventurers. They were to eat off
those sacks, sleep on them, sit on them, think of them, dream of them,
work for them, swim for them, fight for them. That was the vow that
these three sturdy souls and manly hearts made one to another, before
they sat down to bacon and beans, in the vast wilderness of the North,
that glorious summer night.
"Downy pillow, this!" growled Larry, as he folded his sweater over a
gold sack to get at least a semblance of softness for his ear to burrow
into.
"Never mind, Larry, you can swap it for a good slice of 'down' when
we get to the front," said Jack from the depths of his blankets. "It
strikes me that it will be the cause of your sleeping on 'down' for
the rest of your life."
"I shall never sleep or rest for long, son, nor do I want a downy life,
but there is a difference between rose leaves and these bulky nuggets
prodding a fellow in the neck."
"You sleep on blankets, I sleep on the wampum," said Fox-Foot,
extracting with his slim brown fingers the "pillow" from beneath
Larry's tired head.
"All right, Foxy," murmured the man, sleepily. "The gold only goes to
itself when it goes to you. You're gold right through and through.
Good-night."
"Good-night," came Jack's voice.
"How," answered the Chippewa, after the quaint custom of his tribe.