the canoe-owners had not gone very far, but it was quite far enough. If
he could have framed any reasonable excuse for it, he would have urged
the immediate borrowing of the canoe, and an equally immediate departure
from the spot of grisly associations. Indeed, he did go so far as to
suggest it, and was brought up standing, as he more than half expected
to be, against Miss Millington's conscience.
"Why, certainly we couldn't do anything like that!" she protested. "It
would be highway robbery! We must wait until they return. Surely they
won't be gone very long."
There was no help for it except in telling her the shocking truth, and
Prime was not equal to that. So he reconciled himself as best he could
to the enforced delay, hoping that the tender conscience would not
demand too much time.
Almost at once the owner of the conscience suggested that they make a
round through the adjoining forest in an attempt to discover the camp of
the missing men. Prime acceded cheerfully enough, though he was
impatient to examine the canoe-load, in which he was hoping there might
prove to be a supply of tobacco. For the better part of the forenoon
they quartered the forest around and about between the river and the
lake in widening circles, missing nothing but the glade of horrors,
which Prime took good care to avoid. At noon they came back to the
canoe-landing and made a frugal meal on the remains of their own store
of food.
"We are too punctiliously foolish," Prime declared when the second meal
without its tobacco aftermath had been endured. "You say we are obliged
to wait, and in that case we shall have to borrow, sooner or later. I
don't see any reason why we shouldn't begin it now. We can explain
everything, you know; and, besides, I have money with which to pay for
what we take."
"But your money isn't Canadian money," was the ready objection voiced by
the tender conscience.
Prime's laugh did not ring quite true. "That is where you are mistaken,"
he retorted. "It is good English gold, in sovereigns."
If the young woman were surprised to learn that a man who had expected
to motor out of Canada in a day or two at the most had supplied himself
with a stock of English sovereigns, she did not question the fact. But
for fear she might, Prime went on hastily:
"I always like to be prepared for all kinds of emergencies when I leave
home, and this time I wasn't sure just where I was going to bring up,
you know--after Grider had changed his mind as to our starting-point."
The evasion served its purpose, and the young woman assented to an
immediate examination of the canoe-load. Prime helped her down the steep
bank, and they began to rummage, spreading their findings out on the
little beach. As Prime had intimated, there was a liberal stock of
provisions--jerked deer-meat, smoke-cured bacon, flour, meal, salt,
baking-powder, tea, and sugar, but no coffee, a few tins of vegetables,
a small sack of potatoes, and, last but not least, a canvas-covered mass
of something which they decided was pemmican.
Rummaging further, the precious tobacco came to light--two huge twists
of it hidden in the centre of one of the two remaining blanket-rolls.
Prime stopped right where he was, crumbled a bit of the dried leaf in
his hands, and made a cigarette, his companion looking on with a little
lip-curl which might have been of derision or merely of amusement.
"Is it good?" she asked, when he had inhaled the first deep breath.
"It's vile!" he returned. "At the same time, it is so much better than
nothing that I could do a Highland fling for pure joy. Take my advice,
Miss Millington, and never become a slave to the tobacco habit."
"'Miss Millington,'" she repeated, half musingly. "Doesn't that strike
you as being a trifle absurd at this distance from a drawing-room?"
[Illustration: "Is it good?" she asked, when he had inhaled the first
deep breath.]
"It surely does," he admitted frankly; "and so, for that matter, does
'Mr. Prime.'"
She looked up at him with a charming little grimace.
"I'll concede the 'Lucetta' if you will concede the 'Donald.'"
"It's a go," he laughed. "It is the last of the conventions, and we'll
tell it good-by without a whimper." With the goodly array of foodstuff
spread out upon the sand, and with his back carefully turned upon the
pool of dread, he felt that he could afford to be light-hearted.
There was only a little more of the rummaging to be done. A
canvas-covered roll unlashed from its place beneath a canoe-stay proved
to be a square of duck large enough to make a small sleeping-tent.
Inside of this roll there was an ample stock of cartridges for the two
repeating rifles lying cased in their canvas covers in the bottom of the
boat, and an Indian-tanned deerskin used as a wrapping for the
ammunition. With the guns there was a serviceable woodsman's axe. In
the bow, where Prime had dropped the two savage-looking hunting-knives,
there were a few utensils: a teapot, a camper's skillet large enough to
be worth while, tin cup and plates, an empty whiskey-bottle, and a
basin--the latter presumably for the dough-mixing.
After they had their findings lying on the sand the tender conscience
came in play again, and nothing would do but everything must be put back
just as they had found it, Prime drawing the line, however, at a portion
of the tobacco and enough of the food to serve for supper and breakfast.
During the remainder of the afternoon they left the canoe-load
undisturbed, but when evening came Prime borrowed the basin, the cups,
plates, and the larger skillet. Farther along he borrowed the canvas
roll and the axe and set up the tiny sleeping-tent, placing it so that
Lucetta, if she were so minded, could see the fire.
Just before she retired the young woman made a generous protest.
"You mustn't do all the borrowing for me," she insisted. "Go right down
there and get one of those blanket-rolls for yourself. I shan't sleep a
wink if you don't."
The next morning there were more speculations, on the young woman's
part, as to the whereabouts of the canoe-owners, with much wonderment at
their protracted absence and the singular abandonment of their entire
outfit, even to the weapons. Whereat Prime invented all sorts of
theories to account for this curious state of affairs, all of them much
more ingenious than plausible.
For himself, the mystery was scarcely less unexplainable. Why two men,
evidently outfitted for a long journey, should stop by the way, build
five fires that were plainly not camp-fires, and then fall to and fight
each other to death over a bag of English sovereigns, were puzzles that
he did not attempt to solve in his own behalf. It was enough that the
facts had befallen, and that the net result for a pair of helpless
castaways was a well-stocked canoe which Lucetta's acid-proof honesty
was still preventing them from appropriating.
After a breakfast served with the garnishings afforded by the
Heaven-sent supplies, Prime uncased the two rifles and looked them
over. They were United States products of an early edition, but were
apparently serviceable and in good order. In the canvas case of one of
the guns there was a packet of fish-lines and hooks. At Lucetta's
suggestion a few shots were fired as a signal for the lost canoe-owners.
Nothing coming of this, they tried a little target practice, selecting
the largest tree in sight for a mark, and both missing it with
monotonous regularity. Later in the day Prime brought the talk around by
degrees to the expediencies. How much of the present good weather must
they waste in waiting for the hypothetical return of the absentees?
Perhaps some accident had happened; perhaps the absentees would never
turn up. Who could tell?
Domestic Science, with gymnasium-teaching on the side, fought the
suggestion to which all this pointed. They had no manner of right to
take the canoe and its belongings without the consent of the owners.
What was the hurry? By waiting they would be sure to obtain the help
they were needing, and another day or two must certainly end the
suspense.
Prime went as far as he could without telling the shocking truth. With
the dead men's pool so near at hand he was shudderingly anxious to be
gone, but the young woman's logic was unanswerable and the delay was
extended. A single small advance marked this second day. Along toward
evening Prime unloaded the canoe, and together they made a few heroic
attempts to acquire the art of paddling. It was apparently a lost art so
far as they were concerned. The big birch-bark, lightened of its load,
did everything but what it was expected to do, yawing and careening
under the unskilful handling in a most disconcerting manner.
"If I could only rig up some way to row the thing!" Prime exclaimed,
when they had contrived to drift and seesaw half a mile or more down the
almost currentless first reach of the stream.
"You couldn't," asserted the more practical young woman. "The sides are
as thin as paper, and they wouldn't hold rowlocks if you could make
them. Besides, who ever heard of rowing a birch-bark canoe?"
"Somebody will hear of it, if I ever live to work this vacation trip of
ours into a story--No, no; paddle the other way! We want to turn around
and go back!"
They got the hang of it a little better after a while, the young woman
catching the knack first; and after much labor they won back to their
camping-place on the small peninsula. Over the evening fire Prime
unwrapped the deerskin they had found in the canvas-roll.
"We shall have to have moccasins of some sort," he announced. "That
flimsy boat isn't going to stand for shoes with heels on them. Does
domestic science include a semester in shoemaking? I can assure you in
advance that literature doesn't."
Lucetta took the leather and sat for a time regarding it thoughtfully.
"No needle, no thread, no pattern," she mused. "And if we cut it and
spoil it there won't be enough left for two pairs."
"If you have an idea, try it; I'll stand the expense of the leather,"
chuckled Prime, with large liberality.
But now the young woman was hesitating on another score.
"This leather belongs to the owners of the canoe; I don't know that we
have any right to cut it," she objected.
Prime was tempted to say things objurgatory of these phantom owners who
would not down, but he didn't. Every fresh reference to the two dead men
gave him an impulse to glance over his shoulder at the silent pool in
the eddy, and the longer the thing went on the less able he was to
control the prompting.
"You forget that we are able to pay for all damages," was what he really
did say, and at that the young woman removed a shoe, placed a neatly
stockinged foot on the skin and marked around it with a bit of charcoal
taken from the fire, leaving a generous margin. Borrowing Prime's
pocket-knife she cut to the line, made tiny buttonholes all around the
piece, and threaded them with a drawing-string made of the soft leather.
"You've got it!" exclaimed the unskilled one in open-eyed admiration,
after the one-piece slipper was fashioned and tried on. "You are a
wonder! I shouldn't have thought of that in a month of Sundays. It's
capital!"
There was enough material in the single skin to make the two pairs, with
something left over, and Prime put his on at once with a sigh of relief
born of the grateful chance to get rid of the civilized shoes. Past that
there was more talk about the ever-thickening mysteries, and again
Lucetta refused to accept the Grider explanation, while Prime clung to
it simply because he could not invent any other. Yet it was borne in
upon him that the mystery was edging away from the Grider hypothesis in
spite of all he could do. There was nothing to connect the two canoemen,
fighting over the purse of gold, with Grider, or with the abduction of a
school-teacher and a writer of stories; yet there were pointings here,
too, if one might read them. Why were the five fires lighted in the
glade unless it were for a signal of some sort? Prime wished from the
bottom of his heart that he could set the keen mentality of his
companion at work on this latest phase of the mystery, but with the dead
men lying stiff and still at the bottom of their pool less than a
stone's throw away, his courage failed him and his lips were sealed.
VI
CANOEDLINGS
ON the fifth morning--their third at the peninsula camp--Prime
registered a solemn vow to make this the last day of the entirely
unnecessary delay. More and more he was tormented by the fear that the
dead men might escape from their weightings and rise to become a menace
to Lucetta's sanity or his own; and, though he had been given the best
possible proof that his companion was above reproach in the matter of
calm courage and freedom from hysteria, he meant to take no chances--for
her or for himself.
At his suggestion they began the day by making another essay at the
paddling, embarking in the emptied canoe shortly after breakfast.
Gaining a little facility after an hour or so, they headed the
birch-bark downstream past the point which they had reached the previous
afternoon, and soon found themselves in a quickening current. Prime,
kneeling in the bow, gave the word, and Lucetta obeyed it.
"We'll try the quick water," he flung back to her. "We'll have to have
the experience, and we had better get it with the empty canoe, rather
than with the load."
This seemed logical, but it led to results. In a short time the shores
grew rocky and there was no safe place to land. Moreover, the little
river was now running so swiftly that they were afraid to try to turn
around. Rapid after rapid was passed in vain struggles to stop the
triumphal progress, and if the canoe's lading had been aboard, Prime
would have been entirely happy, since every rapid they shot was taking
them farther away from the scene of the tragedy. But the lading was not
aboard.
"We've got to do something to head off this runaway!" the bowman shouted
back over his shoulder in one of the quieter raceways. "We're leaving
our commissary behind."
"Anything you say," chimed in the steers-woman from the stern of the
dancing runaway. "My knees are getting awfully tired, but I can stand it
as long as you can."
"That is the trouble," Prime called back.
"We're staying with it too long. The next pool we come to, you paddle
like mad, all on one side, and I'll do the same. We've simply _got_ to
turn around!"
The manoeuvre worked like a charm. A succession of the eddy-pools came
rushing up from down-stream, and in the third of them they contrived to
get the birch-bark reversed and pointed up-stream. Then it suddenly
occurred to the young woman that they had had their trouble for nothing;
that the same end might have been gained if they had merely turned
themselves around and faced the other way. Her shriek of laughter made
Prime stop paddling for the moment.
"I need a guardian--we both need guardians!" he snorted, when she told
him what she was laughing at, and then they dug their paddles in a
frantic effort to stem the swift current.
It was no go--less than no go. In spite of all they could do the
birch-bark refused to be driven up-stream. What was worse, it began to
drift backward, slowly at first, but presently at a pace which made them
quickly turn to face the other way lest they be smashed in a rapid. A
mile or more fled to the rear before they could take breath, and two
more rapids were passed, up which Prime knew they could never force the
canoe with any skill they possessed or were likely to acquire.
Taking advantage of the next lull in the unmanageable flight, he shouted
again.
"We'll have to go ashore! We are getting so far away now that we shall
never get back. You're steering: try it in the next quiet place we come
to, and I'll do all I can to help."
The "next quiet place" proved to be a full half-mile farther along, and
they had a dozen hairbreadth escapes in more of the quick stretches
before they reached it. Prime lived years in moments in the swifter
rushes. Knowing his own helplessness in the water, he was in deadly fear
of a capsize, not from any unmanly dread of death but because he had a
vivid and unnerving picture of Lucetta's predicament if she should
escape and be left alone and helpless in the heart of the forest
wilderness. He drew his first good breath after the runaway canoe had
been safely beached on the shore of an eddy and they had tottered
carefully out of it to drag it still higher upon the shelving bank.
"My heavens!" he panted, throwing himself down to gasp at leisure. "I
wouldn't go through that again for a farm in Paradise! Weren't you
scared stiff?"
"I certainly was," was the frank admission. The young woman had taken
her characteristic attitude, sitting down with her chin propped in her
hands.
"But, just the same, you didn't forget to paddle!" Prime exulted. "You
are a comrade, right, Lucetta! It's a thousand pities you aren't a man!"
"Isn't it?" she murmured, without turning her head.
"Do you know--I was simply paralyzed at the thought of what would happen
if we should upset--not so much at the thought of what would be certain
to happen to me, but on your account."
"The protective instinct," she remarked; "it is like a good many other
things which we have outgrown--or are outgrowing--quite useless, but
stubbornly persistent."
"You mean that you don't need it?"
"I haven't needed it yet, have I?"
"No," he admitted soberly. "So far, you have had the nerve, and more
than your share of the physique."
"I have had better training, perhaps," she offered, as if willing to
make it easier for him. "A little farther along you will begin to
develop, while I shall stand still."
But Prime would not let it rest at that.
"I have always maintained that most women have a finer nerve, and finer
courage, than most men; I am speaking now of the civilized average. You
are proving my theory, and I owe you something. But to get back to
things present; doesn't it occur to you that we have gotten ourselves
into a rather awkward mess?"
"It does, indeed. We must be miles from anything to eat, and if you know
of any way to take this canoe up-stream I wish you would tell me; I
don't."
"It will be by main strength and awkwardness, as the Irishman played the
cornet, if we do it at all," Prime decided.
"And if, in the meantime, the owners come back and find it gone----"
Prime got up stiffly. "I have a feeling that they haven't come back yet,
and it is growing fast into a feeling that they are not going to come
back at all. Shall we try a towing stunt?"
They tried it, though they had no towline and were reduced to the
necessity of dragging the canoe along in the shallows, each with a hand
on the gunwale. This did not answer very well, and after fighting for a
half-hour in the first of the rapids and getting thoroughly wet and
bedraggled they had to give it up and reverse the process, letting the
birch-bark drift down to the safe dockage again.
While they were resting from their labors, and the hampered half of the
towing squad was wringing the water from her skirts, Prime looked at his
watch.
"Heavens and earth!" he exclaimed. "It is noon already! I thought I was
beginning to feel that way inside. Why didn't we have sense enough to
take a bite along with us when we left camp this morning?"
"Oh, if you are going into the whys, why didn't we have sense enough to
know that we couldn't handle the canoe? How far have we come?"
Prime shook his head. "You couldn't prove it by me. A part of the time
it seemed to me that we were bettering a mile a minute." He got up and
hobbled back and forth on the little beach to work the canoe-cramp out
of his knees. "It looks to me as if we are up against it good and hard;
the canoe is here, and the dunnage is up yonder. Which do we do: carry
the canoe to the dunnage, or the dunnage to the canoe? It's a heavenly
choice either way around. What do you say?"
Lucetta voted at once for the canoe-carrying, if it were at all
possible. So much, she said, they owed to the owners, who had every
right to expect to find their property where they had left it. Again
Prime was tempted to say hard things about the ghosts which so
stubbornly refused to be laid, and again he denied himself.
"The canoe it is," he responded grimly, but by the time they had dragged
the light but unwieldy craft out of the water and part way up the bank
they were convinced that the other alternative was the only one. A
short portage they might have made, or possibly a long one, if they had
known enough to turn the birch-bark bottom-side up and carry it on their
heads _voyageur_-fashion. But they still had this to learn.
"It's a frost," was Prime's decision after they had tugged and stumbled
a little way with the clumsy burden knocking at their legs. "The
mountain won't go to Mohammed--that much is perfectly plain. Are you
game for a long portage with the camp outfit? It seems to be the only
thing there is left for us to do."
The young woman was game, and since they were on the wrong side of the
river they put the canoe into the water again and paddled to the other
side, leaving the birch-bark drawn out upon the bank of the eddy-pool.
From that they went on, hunger urging them and the water-softened
moccasins holding them back and making them pick their way like children
in the first few days of the barefoot season. The distance proved to be
about three miles and they made it in something over an hour. The embers
of their morning fire were still alive, and the belated midday meal was
quickly cooked and despatched.
"Now for the hard part of it," Prime announced, as he began to pack the
camp outfit. "You sit right still and rest, and I'll get things ready
for the tote."
"Then you have determined to ride roughshod over the rights of the
people who own the things?" the young woman asked.
Prime turned his back deliberately upon the pool of dread.
"Necessity knows no law, and we can't stay here forever waiting for
something to turn up. Somebody has given us a strong-hand deal, for what
reason God only knows, and we've got to fight out of it the best way we
can. We'll take these things, and we are willing to pay for them if
anybody should ask us to; but in any event we are going to take them,
because it is a matter of life and death to us. I'll shoulder all the
responsibility, moral and otherwise."
She laughed a little at this. "More of the protective instinct? I can't
allow that--my conscience is my own. But I suppose you are right. There
doesn't seem to be anything else to do. And you needn't fit all of
those packs to your own back; I propose to carry my share."
He protested at that, and learned one more thing about Lucetta
Millington: up to a certain point she was as docile and leadable as the
woman of the Stone Age is supposed to have been, and beyond that she was
adamant.
"You said a little while ago it was a pity I wasn't a man: it is the
woman's part nowadays to ask no odds. Will you try to remember that?"
Here was a hint of a brand-new Lucetta, and Prime wondered how he had
contrived to live twenty-eight years in a world of women only to be
brought in contact for the first time with the real, simon-pure article
in the heart of a Canadian wilderness. Nevertheless he took her at her
word and made a small pack for her, with a carrying-strap cut from the
remains of the deerskin. At the very best the portage promised to demand
three trips, which was appalling.
It was well past the middle of the afternoon when they reached the canoe
at the end of the first carry. The three-mile trudge had been made in
silence, neither of the amateur carriers having breath to spare for
talk. Since they had the tent and one of the blanket-rolls and
sufficient food, Prime was for putting off the remaining double carry to
another day, but again Lucetta was adamant.
"If we do that we shall lose all day tomorrow," was the form her protest
took; "and now that we have started we had better keep on going."
"Oh, what is the frantic hurry?" Prime cut in. "You said your school
didn't begin until September. Haven't we the entire, unspoiled summer
ahead of us?"
"Clothes," she remarked briefly. "Yours may last all summer, but mine
won't--not if we have to go on tramping through the woods every day."
Prime's laugh was a shout. "We'll be blanket Indians, both of us, before
we get out of this. I feel that in my bones, too. But about the second
carry; we'll make it if you say so. It will at least give us a good
appetite for supper."