that way. But you are no strange woman, Lucetta. If I can't do more for
you, I couldn't very well do less. We are partners, and thus far we
have shared things as they have come along--the good and the bad. What
is troubling me most now is the same thing that was troubling me last
night: I don't know what I am going to feed you. You need a meat broth
of some kind."
"Not any more of the smoked venison, please!" she begged.
"No, it ought to be fresh meat of some sort. By and by, if the fever
doesn't come back, I'll take the gun and see if I can't get a rabbit. I
saw three yesterday morning while I was out chewing leaves. You won't be
afraid to be left alone for a little while, will you?"
"After what we have been through, I think I shall never be afraid of
anything again," she averred soberly. "And to think that I was once
afraid of a mouse!"
"That is nothing," he laughed; "you probably will be afraid of a mouse
again when you get back to an environment in which the mouse is properly
an object of terror. I shan't think any the less of you if that does
happen."
She smiled up at him.
"Men always talk so eloquently about the womanly woman: just what do
they mean by that, Donald? Is it the mouse-coward?"
"It differs pretty widely with the man, I fancy," he returned. "I know
my own ideal."
"She is the imaginary girl whose picture you are going to show me when
we get out?"
He laughed happily. "You mustn't make me talk about that girl now,
Lucetta. Some day I'll tell you all about her. Perhaps it is only fair
to say that she is not so terribly imaginary as she might be."
"Of course not--if you have her picture," was the quiet reply; and a
little while after that she told him she was sleepy again, and that he
might take the gun and go after a rabbit if that was what he wished to
do.
She did go to sleep, but Prime did not go hunting until after the midday
meal; and thus it happened that when Lucetta awoke, along in the
afternoon, she found herself alone. For an hour or two she was content
to lie quietly, waiting for Prime to return, but when the afternoon
drew to a close and he still failed to put in an appearance she got up,
rather totteringly, and replenished the camp-fire.
Another hour passed and she began to grow anxious. The spruce grove was
plunged in shadows, but the sun had not yet set for the upper regions of
the air. By the time it was fully dark she knew that Prime was lost, and
in this new terror she was able to forget, in some measure at least, the
effects of her late illness. Bestirring herself once more, she put more
wood on the fire, hoping that it might blaze high enough to serve as a
signal for the wanderer.
It was all she could do, and having done it she sat down to wait, her
anxiety growing sharper as the evening wore on and there was neither
sight nor sound to foreshadow the lost one's return.
XVIII
HEIGHTS AND DEPTHS
If she had not known it before, Lucetta was to learn now that sickness
of any sort is but a poor preparation for a battle of anxiety and
endurance. On the one other occasion when she had been thrown upon her
own resources Prime had been at least visibly present, and his
helplessness had given her strength to fight off the terrors. But now
she was alone and the terrors pressed thickly.
What if something had happened to the rabbit-hunter? She knew his utter
lack of gun dexterity, and her terrified imagination conjured up
harrowing pictures of the missing one lying wounded and helpless in some
distant forest solitude, a victim of his unselfish effort to provide not
for his own needs but for hers. The thought was a keen torture, but she
could not banish it, and as the hours lengthened it threatened to drive
her mad. There was nothing she could do save to keep the fire burning
brightly, and this she did, breaking the monotony of the unnerving
suspense from time to time by collecting dry wood to heap upon the
blaze.
It was nearly midnight before the agony came to a sudden end. She was
lying on the blanket pallet, with her face hidden in the crook of an
elbow when she looked up and saw Prime standing beside her. It was not
in human nature to undergo the revulsion from the depths of despair
calmly.
"Donald!" she shrieked faintly, and forgetting her weakness, she sprang
up and flung herself into his arms, sobbing in an ecstasy of relief.
He took it in good brotherly fashion, and if the fraternal attitude was
not strictly sincere, it was made to appear so.
"There, there, little woman," he comforted, "you mustn't turn loose that
way--you'll make yourself sick again. It's all over now, and I got your
rabbit. See, here it is"--drawing it from his pocket and dangling it
before her as if it were a new toy and she a child to be hastily
diverted.
The diversion was not needed; she was freeing herself from the clasp of
the remaining reassuring arm, and her cheeks were aflame.
"I didn't know I could be so silly! Please don't hold it against me,
Donald," she begged. "If you only knew what I have been through since it
grew dark! You'll forgive me and--and not remember it after we--after
we----"
His weariness fell from him like a castoff garment. "Not if you don't
want me to, Lucetta. But it was rather--er--pleasant, you know--to find
that some one really cared enough about what had become of me to--to
sort of forget herself for a moment."
The firelight was strong, and if he saw the adoring look that flashed
into the gray eyes he was magnanimous enough, or modest enough, to pass
it over to the sudden transition from despair to relief.
"It must have been something fierce for you," he went on; "but I did the
best I could after I had been idiotic enough to get lost. Of course,
since I had the gun with me, it was hours before I got sight of a
rabbit; and even then I had to shoot at half a dozen of them before I
could manage to hit one. By that time it was getting on toward sunset,
and I had lost the brook which I had taken for a guide."
"I knew you would," she broke in. "But that wasn't the worst of it. I
kept imagining that you had shot yourself accidentally, and every time I
closed my eyes I could see you lying wounded and helpless!"
"You poor little worrier!" he pitied; "I knew you would be scared stiff
if I didn't get back by dark, and in my hurry I bore too far to the
left; a great deal too far, as it turned out, for when I reached the
river I recognized the place. It was just this side of the grove where
we were camping when the canoe was stolen."
"Horrors!" she gasped faintly. "And you have walked all that distance?"
"No," he grinned; "I ran a good part of it. When I came in a few minutes
ago I was dead from the waist down; but I am all right now. You sit down
and drink broth while I skin this rabbit. It's a juicy one--as fat as
butter."
Fifteen minutes later the rabbit was stewing in the larger skillet, and
Prime found time to ask Lucetta how she was feeling.
"Just plain hungry," she returned. "The fever hasn't come back any more,
and if I ever have a medicine-chest of my own there will be boneset in
it; great, big, smelly packages of it. Aren't you going to let me make a
bit of bread to eat with that delicious gravy broth?"
"If it won't tire you too much," he consented, and at that he sat back
and watched her while she mixed the bread, a housewifely little figure
kneeling before the fire and patting the dough into a cake with hands
that not all the rough work of the adventure weeks had made misshapen.
Somewhat beyond this they made their post-midnight meal, and were once
more light-hearted and care-free. In the aftermath of it, when Prime had
lighted his homemade pipe, they were even buoyant enough to plan for the
future.
"We'll go on again to-morrow, shan't we?" the young woman assumed. "We
can't be so very far from the towns now, with the river grown so
large."
"I fancy we are nearer than we thought we were," Prime replied. "Over to
the west, where I went this afternoon, there is another and still larger
river. On its banks the timber has all been cut off and there is nothing
but second and third growth. It is a safe bet that the two rivers come
together a little below here, and if we are not stopped by our inability
to cross the bigger river----"
"We are not going to be stopped," she prophesied hopefully. "I have a
feeling that our troubles, or the worst of them, are all over."
Prime smiled. "The joyous reaction is still with you, but that is all
right and just as it should be. We'll keep on going until we come to a
town or a railroad, and then----"
She was sufficiently light-hearted to laugh with him when he glanced
down at his torn and travel-worn clothes.
"And then we shall be arrested for tramps," she finished for him. "There
is one consolation--neither of us will look any worse than the other."
"When we find a town we shall find clothes," he asserted. "Luckily we
have English money to buy with."
"Would you--would you spend that money?" she asked, half fearfully.
"Why not? I'd hock the dead men themselves if we had them and there
wasn't any other way to raise the wind. But I have some good,
old-fashioned American money, too."
"I shall have to borrow of you when we get to where we can buy things,"
she said, with a sudden access of shyness that was new to him. "I had a
purse with a little money in it that night at Quebec, but it
disappeared."
"What is mine is yours, Lucetta; surely you don't have to be told that,
at this stage of the game."
"Thank you," she said softly. "That goes with everything else you have
done for me." Then, after a pause: "Will you tell the other girl about
this--about this adventure of ours, Donald?"
"Don't you think I ought to tell her? Isn't it her right to know?"
She took time to consider.
"I'm not sure; women are singular about some things; they don't always
understand. Perhaps they don't care to understand--too much. Then there
is always the difficulty of explaining things just as they were. I could
tell better if I knew the girl. Is she young?"
"Why, y-yes--some years younger than I am. But she is all kinds of
sensible."
"Is she in New York?"
"No," he answered soberly. "She is not in New York."
She took it as a hint that she was not to ask any more questions about
the girl and changed the subject abruptly.
"Shall you go and look for Mr. Grider after we find a railroad?"
"Not immediately. I shall first see you safe at home in your
girls'-school town in Ohio," he assured her firmly.
"Oh, that won't be necessary," she protested. "I have travelled alone
many times. And I have my return ticket; or I shall have it when I get
back to Quebec."
"Nevertheless, I am going home with you," Prime insisted stubbornly.
"It is up to me to see you out of this, and I shall make a job of it
while I am about it. When it is done I shall come back to Canada to find
out who shanghaied us and what for. And when I find the people who did
it they are going to pay for it."
"Even if they include Mr. Grider?"
"Yes, by Jove! Even if the man higher up happens to be Watson Grider. I
don't mind the kidnapping so much for myself, but the man doesn't live,
Lucetta, who can make you go through what you have gone through in the
past month and get away with it."
"I don't ask you to fight for me, Donald," she interposed. "And,
besides, it hasn't been all bad--or has it?"
"We have agreed every little while, between jolts, that it hasn't. I'll
go further now, and say that it is the finest, truest, happiest thing
that has ever happened to me--hardships and all."
"You mean because it has given you new working material?"
"No; I wasn't thinking so much of that, though the new material, and
more especially the new angle, are worth something, of course. But there
are bigger consequences than these--for me--Lucetta." Then he broke off
and plunged headlong into something else. "How much of an income should
a man have before he can ask a girl to marry him? Does the Domestic
Science course include any such practical data as that?"
"Is that all you are waiting for?" she inquired, ignoring his question.
"Have you asked the girl?"
"No; I haven't asked her yet. And the money is the main thing that I
shall be waiting for from this time on."
"I should say it would depend entirely upon the girl--upon what she had
been used to."
"I think--she hasn't--been used to having things made so very soft for
her," he answered rather uncertainly. "But she has at least one ambition
that is going to ask for a good chunk of money at first, until
she--until she gets ready to--to settle down."
"And that is----?"
The suggestive query was never answered.
[Illustration: "None o' that, now! Ye'll be puttin' yer hands up ower
yer heids--the baith o' ye--or it'll be the waur f'r ye!"]
As Prime laid his pipe aside and was about to speak, the dark
backgrounding of shadows beyond the circle of firelight filled suddenly
with a rush of men. Prime saw the glint of the firelight upon a pair of
brown gun-barrels, and when he mechanically reached for his own weapon a
harsh voice with a broad Scottish burr in it broke raggedly into the
stillness.
"None o' that, now! Ye'll be puttin' yer hands up ower yer heids--the
baith o' ye--or it'll be the waur f'r ye! I'd have ye know I'm an
under-sheriff o' this deestrict, and ye'll be reseestin' the officers o'
the law at yer eril!"
XIX
IN DURANCE VILE
PRIME stood up, spreading his empty hands in reasonable token of
submission.
"If you are an officer of the law we have no notion of resisting you,"
he said placably. "What is the charge against us?"
"Ye'll be knowin' that weel enough, I'm thinkin'. Whaur's Indian Jules
and the Cambon man? Maybe ye can tell me that! Aiblins ye'd better not,
though. I'll gie ye fair warnin' that whatever ye say'll be used against
ye."
There seemed to be nothing for it but an unconditional surrender. Prime
looked the posse over appraisively as the men composing it moved forward
into the circle of firelight. The under-sheriff was what his speech
declared him to be--a Scotchman; stubby, square-built, clean-shaven,
with a graying fringe of hair over his ears, a hard-lined mouth, shrewd
eyes under penthouse brows, and a portentous official frown. His posse
men were apparently either "river hogs" or saw-mill hands--rough-looking
young fellows giving the impression that they would obey orders with
small regard for consequences. Prime saw nothing hopeful in the
Scotchman's face, but it occurred to him that a too easy yielding might
be construed as an admission of guilt.
"I take it that a false arrest and imprisonment is actionable in Canada,
as well as in the United States," he threw out coolly, helping Lucetta
to her feet. "We'll be glad to have you take us with you--but not as
prisoners." And thereupon he briefed for the square-built one the story
of the kidnapping and its results.
"And ye're expectin' me to believe any such fule's rubbish as that?"
snapped the Scotchman wrathfully when the tale was told.
"You can believe it or not, as you choose; it is the plain truth. We'll
go along with you cheerfully, and be grateful enough to you or to
anybody who will show us the way out of this wilderness. But, as to the
crime you are charging us with, there isn't a particle of evidence, and
you know it."
"There's evidence to hang the baith of ye! Ye've admitted that the
half-breeds are baith deid; and John Baptist will sweer that ye had
their canoe and Cambon's gun. For the matter o' that, ye're not denyin'
it, yerself."
"We are merely wasting time," put in Prime quietly. "You evidently have
no wish to be convinced; and if you are willing to take the chance of
making a false arrest you may have your own way. Let me say first,
though, that this lady is just recovering from a severe attack of fever,
and you will be held strictly accountable if you make her endure any
unreasonable hardships."
"'Tis not for you to make terms," was the irascible rejoinder, and then
to his men: "Tie their hands, and we'll be goin'."
"One moment," Prime interposed; and stooping swiftly he caught up the
rifle. "You may do anything you please to me, but the first man who lays
a hand on the lady is going to get himself killed."
The under-sheriff screwed out a bleak smile at the naive simplicity of
the threat. "And if we say 'Yes,' and truss you up first," he
suggested, "what'll ye be doin' then?"
"I shall take your word for it as from one gentleman to another," was
Prime's quick concession, and with that he dropped the gun and held out
his hands.
They bound him securely with buckskin thongs, and at a word from the
Scotchman the camp dunnage was gathered up, the fire trodden out, and a
shift was made to the river-bank. A three-quarter moon, riding high,
showed the two captives a large birchbark drawn out upon the sands. The
embarkation was quickly accomplished, the under-sheriff planting himself
amidships with his two prisoners, and the four posse-men taking the
paddles as if they had been bred to it.
After an hour or more of swift downstream gliding the current quickened
and a sound like the wind sweeping through the tree-tops warned the
voyagers that they were approaching a rapid. At this the canoe was sent
ashore and the Scotchman changed places with his bow-man, letting the
change stand even after the slight hazard of quick water was passed.
Prime soon saw that his new guard was nodding, and bent to whisper to
his fellow captive:
"This is mighty hard for you--after yesterday and last night," he
protested. "Can't you shift a little and lean against me?"
"I am doing quite well," was the low-toned answer. And then: "What is
going to come of all this, Donald?"
"We shall get out of the woods for one thing. And for another we are
going to hope that a real court will not be so obstinately suspicious as
this Scotchman. But, whatever lies ahead, we must just stand by and face
it out--together. They can't punish us for a crime that we didn't
commit."
There was silence for another half-hour, and then Lucetta whispered
again.
"Which pocket is your penknife in?" she asked.
"The right-hand pocket of my waistcoat. What are you going to do?"
"I am going to cut the thongs. It is barbarously cruel for them to leave
you tied this way!"
"No," he forbade. "That would only make matters worse. The buckskin is
not hurting me much. Lean your head against my shoulder and see if you
can't get a little sleep."
At the morning breakfast halt Prime tried to extract a bit of
geographical information from the Scotchman. It was given grudgingly.
During the night they had passed from their own river to the larger
Riviere du Lievres and they were still twenty-four hours or more from
their destination--a place with a long French name that Prime did not
catch and which the Scotchman would not repeat. For the first time in
their wanderings the two castaways ate a meal that they had not prepared
for themselves; and Prime, observing anxiously, was glad to note that
Lucetta's wilderness appetite seemed to be returning.
Throughout the day, during which the crew took turns paddling and
sleeping, the big birch-bark held to its down-stream course. But now the
scenery was changing with each fresh looping of the crooked river, the
River of the Hares. Recent timber-cuttings appeared; the river
broadened into lake-like reaches; here and there upon the banks there
were lumber camps; in the afternoon a small town was passed, and later
the site of another that had been destroyed by a landslide.
With an eye single to his purpose, the Scotchman made no noon stop, and
the supper fire was built on the right-hand bank of the broadened stream
at a spot where there were no signs of human habitation. As at the
breakfast, Prime's bonds were taken off to permit him to feed himself,
and when the voyage was resumed they were not put on again.
"The wumman tells me ye can't swim, and I'm takin' her word for it," was
the gruff explanation. "If ye go overboard in the night, I'll juist lat
ye droon."
With his hands free, Prime asked if he might smoke. The permission was
given, and, since they had confiscated Prime's store of tobacco with the
remainder of the dunnage, the Scotchman opened his heart and his
tobacco-pouch in the prisoner's behalf, filling his own pipe at the same
time. When the dottles were glowing, the under-sheriff thawed another
degree or so.
"D'ye mean to tell me that ye're goin' to hold to that rideeculous story
of yours in the coort?" he questioned. "It may do for auld Sandy
Macdougal, the under-sheriff; but ye'll no be expectin' a jury to listen
till it."
Prime laughed soberly. "I wish, for your sake and our own, Mr.
Macdougal, that we had a more believable story to tell. But facts are
hard matters to evade. Things have happened to us precisely as I have
tried to tell you. We were drugged in Quebec and abducted--carried off
in an air-machine, as well as we can reason it out--and that is all
there is to it. We don't know any more than you do what we were
kidnapped for--or by whom."
"Weel, ye're a main lang ways from Quebec the noo--some twa hunnerd
miles or mair. And ye're not dressed for the timmer."
"Hardly," said Prime.
Macdougal jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward Lucetta. "Is the
wumman yer wife?"
"No; we are distant cousins, though we had never met before the morning
when we found ourselves on the shore of the big lake."
"Ye mean that ye were strangers to each ither?"
"Just that. Up to that moment neither had known of the existence of the
other."
The Scotchman stared hard at Prime from beneath his shaggy brows.
"Young man, ye'll juist be tellin' me what's yer business, when ye're
not trollopin' round in the timmer with a young wumman that's yer
cousin, and that ye never saw or heard of before."
"I am a fiction-writer," Prime admitted, not without some little anxiety
as to the effect the statement might have upon the hard-headed
under-sheriff.
"Ou, ay! That's it, is it? A story-writer? And, besides that, ye're the
biggest fule leevin' to tell it to me. Ye'll no be expectin' me to
believe anything ye're sayin', after that! A novel-writer--losh!"
"One of the greatest Scotchmen the world ever saw was a novel-writer,"
Prime ventured to suggest.
"And it's varra little to his credit, let me tell ye that, young man!
'Tis mair becomin' to Sir Walter that he was sheriff depute o'
Selkirkshire and clerk o' session for abune twenty-five year on end.
That's a canty story for ye!"
Prime saw that he was making no headway with the Macdougal, and after
the pipes were out he tried to compose himself to sleep. Some time later
on, Macdougal changed places with one of the paddlers, and, seizing her
opportunity, Lucetta crept back to take her place beside Prime. They
talked in whispers for a while, each trying to cheer the other. The
morning of new and more threatening involvements was only a short night
distant, and in the light of the month of hardship and mystery they
could only fear the worst and hope for the best.
"You must try to get what sleep you can," Prime urged at the last,
arranging the nearest blanket-roll for her back-support. "We shall be up
against it again in the morning, and we both ought to have clear heads
and a good, cold nerve. Snuggle down and shut your eyes. I am going to
do the same after I've smoked another pipe."
He kept his word, dropping off shortly after the big canoe had entered a
long straight reach with twinkling lights on either shore to prove that
the moving world was once more coming within shouting distance. How long
he slept he did not know, but when he awoke the canoe was stopped in
midstream, and was lying stem to stern beside a larger craft, in the
hold of which throbbing machinery seemed to be running idle.
Vaguely he gathered the impression that the canoe had been held up by
the motorcraft; then he realized that a fierce altercation was going on
between a big man who was leaning over the side to grip the gunwale of
the birch bark and Under-sheriff Macdougal.
"I'll fight it out with you in any court you like, you stubborn
blockhead!" Prime heard the big man bellow at Macdougal, and then the
canoe was passed swiftly aft, somebody reached over the side and lifted
him bodily into the cockpit of the motorboat, and a moment later he
found Lucetta beside him, staring wildly and clinging to him as if he
were her only hope.