game, and Minong is far from the mainland. I have heard that there is
great store of copper in the rocks. The Ojibwas say that the island was
made by the giant Kepoochikan. Once upon a time the fish quarrelled with
Kepoochikan and tried to drown him by making a great flood. But he built
a big floating island and made it rich with copper and there he took his
family and all the kinds of birds and beasts there are. When the water,
which had spread over the whole earth, stopped rising, he told a gull to
dive down to the bottom and bring up some mud. The gull could not dive so
far, but drowned before he reached the bottom. Then Kepoochikan sent a
beaver. The beaver came up almost drowned, but with a ball of mud
clutched tight in his hands. Kepoochikan took the mud and made a new
earth, but he kept the island Minong for his home. After many years there
was another giant, the great Nanibozho, who was chief of all the Indians
on the new land Kepoochikan had made. Nanibozho is a good manito and
Kepoochikan a bad one. They went to war, and Nanibozho threw a great
boulder from the mainland across at Kepoochikan and conquered him. The
boulder is here on Minong yet they say. Since then Nanibozho has guarded
the copper of Minong, though some say his real dwelling place is on
Thunder Cape. Off the shore and in the channels of Minong he has set
sharp rocks to destroy the canoes that approach the island, and he has
many spirits to help him guard the treasure.”
“That is only a tale, of course,” said Hugh somewhat disdainfully. “We of
the ship _Otter_ camped here several days and we saw or heard no spirits.
We found nothing to fear.”
“You sought no copper,” was the retort. “It is said that sometimes
Kepoochikan and Nanibozho fight together on the rocks and hurl great
boulders about. Strange tales there are too of the thick forest, of the
little lakes and bays. There is one place called the Bay of Manitos,
where, so I have heard, dwell giant Windigos and great serpents and huge
birds and spirits that mock the lonely traveller with shouts and threats
and laughter.”
“Surely you do not believe such tales, Blaise,” Hugh protested, “or fear
such spirits.”
“I know that neither Kepoochikan nor Nanibozho made the world,” the
younger boy replied seriously. “My father and the priests taught me that
the good God made the world. But whether the tales of giants and spirits
are true, I know not. That I do not fear them I have proved by coming
here with you.”
To that remark Hugh had no answer. To believe or be inclined to believe
such tales and yet to come to the enchanted island, to come with only one
companion, surely proved his half-brother’s courage. Indeed the older boy
had no thought of questioning the younger’s bravery. He had come to know
Blaise too well.
XVI
THE CACHE
The night being clear, the boys did not trouble to prepare a shelter.
They merely cut some balsam branches and spread them smoothly on the
beach. Strange to say, the more superstitious half-breed lad fell asleep
immediately, while the white boy, who had scorned the notion of giants
and manitos, found sleep long in coming. That night seemed to him the
loneliest he had ever spent. Camp, on the trip down and up the main
shore, had, to be sure, usually been made far from the camps of other
men. But there _were_ men, both red and white, on that shore. When the
lake was not too rough, there was always the chance that the sound of
human voices and the dip of paddles might be heard at any time during the
night, as a canoe passed in the starlight.
Here, however, the whole length and breadth of the great island,—which
the two lads believed even larger than it really is, some fifty miles in
length and twelve or fourteen broad at its widest part,—there lived, so
far as they knew, not one human being. Never before had Hugh felt so
utterly lonely, such a small, insignificant human creature in an unknown
and unfeeling wilderness of woods, waters and rocks. The island was far
more beautiful and hospitable now than it had appeared when he visited it
before, but then, almost uncannily lonely and remote though the place had
seemed, he had had the companionship of Baptiste and Captain Bennett and
the rest of the ship’s crew.
Yet what was there to fear? It was not likely that Isle Royale contained
any especially fierce beasts. There were wolves and lynxes, but they were
skulking, cowardly creatures, and, in the summer at least, must find
plentiful prey of rabbits and other small animals. Moose too there were
and perhaps bears, but both were harmless unless attacked and cornered.
It was not the thought of any animal enemy that caused Hugh’s uneasiness,
as he lay listening to the night sounds. His feeling was rather of
apprehension, of dread of some unknown evil that threatened his comrade
and himself. He tried to shake off the unreasonable dread, but everything
about him seemed to serve to intensify the feeling, the low, continuous
murmur of the waves on the rocks, the swishing rustle of the wind in the
trees, the long-drawn, eerie cries of two loons answering one another
somewhere up the bay, the lonely “hoot-ti-toot” of an owl. Once from the
wooded ridges above him, there came with startling clearness the shrill
screech of a lynx. But all these sounds were natural ones, heard many
times during his adventurous journey. Why, tonight, did they seem to hold
some new and fearful menace?
Disgusted with himself, he resolved to conquer the unreasonable dread.
Will power alone could not triumph over his unrest, but physical
weariness won at last and he fell asleep. A brief shower, from the edge
of a passing storm-cloud, aroused him once, but the rain did not last
long enough to wet his blanket, and he was off to sleep again in a few
minutes.
Hugh woke with a start. Dawn had come, but the little cove was shrouded
in white mist. Beside him on the balsam bed, Blaise was sitting upright,
his body rigid, his bronze face tense. He was listening intently. Hugh
freed his arms from his blanket and raised himself on his elbow. Blaise
turned his head.
“You heard it?” he whispered.
“Something waked me. What was it?”
“A gun shot.”
“Impossible!”
“I heard it clearly. I had just waked.”
“Near by?”
“Not very far away. Up there somewhere.”
Blaise pointed to the now invisible woods above the sheer cliff that
formed the central shore of the cove between the beaches. “It is hard to
be quite sure of the direction in this fog, and there was only one shot.”
For some minutes the two lads sat still, listening, but the sound was not
repeated. It seemed incredible that any human being should be so near on
the big island where neither white men nor Indians were ever known to
come intentionally. Hugh was inclined to think Blaise mistaken. The
younger boy had certainly heard some sharp sound, but Hugh could scarcely
believe it was the report of a gun.
However, the mere suspicion that any other man might be near by was
enough to make the boys proceed with the greatest caution. Veiled by the
fog,—which had been caused by the warm shower falling on the lake during
the night,—they could be seen only by someone very near at hand, but
there were other ways in which they might be betrayed. The sound of their
voices or movements, the smell of the smoke from their cooking fire might
reveal their presence. The secret nature of their quest made them anxious
that their visit to the island should not become known. So they lighted
no fire, breakfasting on the cold remains of last night’s corn porridge
sprinkled with maple sugar. They talked little and in whispers, and took
care to make the least possible noise.
Having decided to give at least one more day to the search for the furs,
the lads climbed the steep slope and made their way to the head of the
fissure. Up there the fog was much less thick than down in the cove. The
crack in the rock had narrowed to a mere slit almost choked with tree
roots upon which fallen leaves and litter had lodged. Near the edge, in a
depression where there was a little soil, stood a clump of birch sprouts
growing up about the stump of an old broken tree. In their search for
some blaze or mark that might guide them, the two thought they had
examined every tree in the vicinity.
That morning, as he was about to pass the clump of birches, Hugh happened
to notice what a rapid growth the sprouts had made that season. The sight
of the new growth suggested something to him. He began to pull apart and
bend back the little trees to get a better view of the old stump. There,
concealed by the young growth, was the mark he sought. A piece of the
ragged, gray, lichen-scarred bark had been sliced away, and on the bare,
crumbly wood had been cut a transverse groove with an arrow point.
Hugh promptly summoned Blaise. The cut in the old stump seemed to prove
that the furs might not, after all, have been stolen from the hole in the
rocks. The arrow pointed directly along the overgrown crack, which the
lads traced for fifty or sixty feet farther, when it came abruptly to an
end. They had come to a hollow or gully. The crack showed distinctly in
the steep rock wall, but the bottom of the hollow and the opposite
gradual slope were deep with soil and thick with growth. The rift, which
widened at the outer end into a cleft, ran, it was apparent, clear
through the rock ridge that formed the shore cliff. The searchers had now
reached the lower ground behind that ridge. Which way should they turn
next?
That question was answered promptly. The abrupt face of the rock wall was
well overgrown with green moss and green-gray lichens. In one place the
short, thick growth had been scratched away to expose a strip of the gray
stone about an inch wide and six or seven inches long. The clean-cut
appearance of the scratch seemed to prove that it had been made with a
knife or some other sharp instrument. So slowly do moss and lichens
spread on a rock surface that such a mark would remain clear and distinct
for one season at least, probably for several years. There was no arrow
point here, but the scratch was to the left of the crack. The boys turned
unhesitatingly in that direction.
The growth in this low place was dense. They had to push their way among
old, ragged birches and close standing balsams draped with gray beards of
lichen which were sapping the trees’ life-blood. Everywhere, on the steep
rock wall, on each tree trunk, they sought for another sign. For several
hundred yards they found nothing, until they came to a cross gully
running back towards the lake. In the very entrance stood a small, broken
birch. The slender stem was not completely severed, the top of the tree
resting on the ground.
“There is our sign,” said Blaise as soon as he caught sight of the birch.
“It is only a broken tree,” Hugh protested. “I see nothing to show that
it is a sign.”
“But I see something,” Blaise answered promptly. “First, there is the
position, right here where we need guidance. The tree has been broken so
that it points down that ravine. The break is not old, not weathered
enough to have happened before last winter. Yet it happened before the
leaves came out. They were still in the bud. It was in late winter or
early spring that tree was broken.”
“Just about the time father must have been on the island,” Hugh
commented.
Blaise went on with his explanation. “What broke the tree? The wind?
Sound birches are not easily broken by wind. They sway, they bend,
sometimes they are tipped over at the roots. But the stem itself is not
broken unless it is rotten or the storm violent. Here are no signs of
strong wind. There are no other broken trees near this one.”
“That is true,” murmured Hugh looking about him.
“Now we will look at the break,” Blaise continued confidently. “See, the
trunk is sound, but it has been cut with an axe, cut deep and bent down.
And here, look here!” His usually calm voice was thrilling with
excitement. He was pointing to some small cuts in the white bark just
below the break.
“J. B., father’s initials!” cried Hugh.
Blaise laid his finger on his lips to remind his companion that caution
must still be observed. They had heard no further sound and had seen no
sign of a human being, but the half-breed lad had not forgotten the sharp
report that had so startled him in the dawn. It was best to move silently
and speak with lowered voice.
Blaise led the way down the narrow cross gully, so narrow that where a
tree grew,—and trees seemed to grow everywhere on this wild island where
they could push down a root,—there was scarcely room to get by. After a
few hundred yards of such going, the ravine began to widen. The walls
became higher and so sheer that nothing could cling to them but moss,
lichens and sturdy crevice plants. Under foot there was no longer any
soil, only pebbles and broken rock fragments. Ahead, beyond the deep
shadow of the cleft, lay sunlit water. This was evidently another of the
fissures that ran down through the outer rock ridge to the water,
fissures that were characteristic of that stretch of shore.
“We are coming back to the lake through another crack much like the one
where the old boat lies,” said Hugh. “We must be off the trail somewhere.
There is no place here to hide furs.”
Blaise, who was still ahead, did not answer. He was closely scanning the
rock wall on either side. A moment later, he paused and gave a little
grunt of interest or satisfaction.
“What is it?” Hugh asked.
Blaise took another step forward, and pointed to the right hand wall. A
narrow fissure extended from top to bottom. So narrow was the crack that
Hugh rather doubted whether he could squeeze into it.
“I will go first, I am smaller,” Blaise suggested. “If I cannot go
through, we shall know that no man has been in there.”
Slender and lithe, Blaise found that he could wriggle his way through
without much difficulty. The heavier, broader-shouldered Hugh found the
task less easy. He had to go sidewise and for a moment he thought he
should stick fast, but he managed to squeeze past the narrowest spot, to
find himself in an almost round hollow. This hole or pit in the outer
ridge was perhaps twenty feet in diameter with abrupt rock walls and a
floor of boulders and pebbles, among which grew a few hardy shrubs. It
was open to the sky and ringed at the top with shrubby growth. Hugh
glanced about him with a keen sense of disappointment. Surely the furs
were not in this place.
Blaise, on the other side of a scraggly ninebark bush, seemed to be
examining a pile of boulders and rock fragments. The older boy rounded
the bush, and disappointment gave way to excitement. By what agency had
those stones been heaped in that particular spot? They had not fallen
from the wall beyond. The pit had no opening through which waves could
wash. Had that heap been put together by the hand of man? Was it indeed a
cache?
Without a word spoken, the two lads set about demolishing the stone pile.
One after another they lifted each stone and threw it aside. As he rolled
away one of the larger boulders, Hugh could not restrain a little cry. A
bit of withered cedar had come to light. With eager energy he flung away
the remaining stones. There lay revealed a heap of something covered with
cedar branches, the flat sprays, withered but still aromatic, woven
together closely to form a tight and waterproof covering. Over and around
them, the stones had been heaped to conceal every sprig.
With flying fingers, the boys pulled the sprays apart. There were the
bales of furs each in a skin wrapper. The brothers had found the hidden
cache and their inheritance. Both lads were surprised at the number of
the bales. If the pelts were of good quality, no mean sum would be
realized by their sale. They would well repay in gold for all the long
search. Yet, to do the boys justice, neither was thinking just then of
the worth of the pelts. Their feeling was rather of satisfaction that
they were really carrying out their father’s last command. The long and
difficult search was over, and they had not failed in it.
They lifted the packages from a platform of poles resting on stones. The
whole cache had been cleverly constructed. No animal could tear apart the
bales, and, even in the severest storm, no water could reach them. Over
them the branches had formed a roof strong enough to keep the top stones
from pressing too heavily upon the furs.
“But where is the packet?” cried Hugh. “It must be inside one of the
bales, but which one I wonder.”
“I think it is this one,” Blaise replied.
The package he was examining seemed to be just like the others, except
that into the rawhide thong that bound it had been twisted a bit of
scarlet wool ravelled from a cap or sash. Blaise would have untied the
thong, but the impatient Hugh cut it, and stripped off the wrapping. The
bale contained otter skins of fine quality. Between two of the pelts was
a small, flat packet. It was tied with a bit of cedar cord and sealed
with a blotch of pitch into which had been pressed the seal of the ring
Hugh now wore.
“Shall we open this here and now, Blaise?” Hugh asked.
“That is for you to say, my brother. You are the elder.”
“Then I think we had best open it at once.”
Hugh broke the seal and was about to untie the cord, when from somewhere
above the rim of the pit, there rang out a loud, long-drawn call,
“Oh-eye-ee, oh-eye-ee-e.” It was not the cry of an animal. It was a human
voice.
XVII
THE SEALED PACKET
Hastily Hugh thrust the unopened packet into the breast of his deerskin
tunic, and looked up apprehensively at the border of green about the rim
of the pit. The man who had shouted could not be far away. There might be
others even nearer. If anyone should push through that protecting fringe
of growth, he would be looking directly down on the two lads. The bales
would be in plain view.
Hugh thought quickly. “We must conceal the furs again, Blaise,” he
whispered, “until we can find some way to get them to the boat.”
Blaise nodded. “We will take them away at night.”
Rapidly and with many an apprehensive glance upward, the two replaced the
bales on the platform of poles, covered the heap with the cedar boughs
and built up the stones around and over the whole. They were in too great
haste to do as careful a piece of work as Jean Beaupré had done. Their
rock pile would scarcely have stood close scrutiny without betraying
something suspicious. From above, however, its appearance was innocent
enough, and no chance comer would be likely to descend into the hole.
Squeezing through the narrow slit, the brothers examined the cleft that
ran down in a steep incline of rock fragments to the water. The simplest
plan would be to bring the boat in there. With strangers likely to appear
at any moment, it would be best to wait until nightfall. The two decided
to return to the cove where they had camped, and wait for darkness.
Back through the fissure and over the low ground behind the shore ridge,
they made their way cautiously, silently. They went slowly, taking pains
to efface any noticeable tracks or signs of their passage, and watching
and listening alertly for any sight or sound of human beings. A rustling
in the bushes caused both to stand motionless until they caught sight of
the cause, a little, bright-eyed squirrel or a gray-brown snowshoe rabbit
with long ears and big hind feet. Both boys would have liked that fresh
meat for the dinner pot, but they had no wish to attract attention by a
shot.
When they reached the top of the cliff, they found that the fog had
entirely disappeared, driven away by a light breeze. As they went down
the steep, open slope to the little beach, they knew themselves to be
exposed to the view of anyone who might happen to be looking out from the
woods bordering the cove. Anxiously they scanned woods, rocks and lake,
but saw no sign of any human being. Not a living creature but a fish duck
peacefully riding the water was to be seen. The boat and supplies were
undisturbed.
The boys stayed quietly in the cove during the remaining hours of
daylight. The beach was partially hidden from the water by the end of the
shore ridge, and screened on the land side by the dense growth of trees
and bushes bordering the pebbles. Beyond the beach was a vertical rock
cliff sheer to the water from its forested summit. Then came another
short stretch of pebbles bounded by a low rock wall and protected by the
jutting mass of rock, only scantily wooded, that formed the dividing line
between the twin coves. To anyone standing over there or among the trees
at the edge of the high central cliff, the boys and their boat would have
been in plain sight. The shot Blaise had heard in the early dawn had come
from somewhere above that cliff, but it was not likely that the man who
had fired that shot was still there. Doubtless he had been hunting. At
any rate the lads had no better place to wait for darkness to come. They
were at least far enough from the pit so their discovery by wandering
Indians or white hunters need not lead to the finding of the furs. As the
day wore on, the brothers cast many an anxious glance around the shores
of the cove. They were startled whenever a squirrel chattered, a
woodpecker tapped loudly on a branch, or two tree trunks rubbed against
one another, swayed by a stronger gust of wind.
As their food was ill adapted to being eaten raw, they permitted
themselves a small cooking fire, taking care to use only thoroughly dry
wood and to keep a clear flame with as little smoke as possible. After
the kettle had been swung over the fire, Hugh drew from his breast the
packet and examined the outside carefully. The wrapping was of oiled
fish-skin tied securely.
“Shall we open it, Blaise?” he asked again.
The younger boy cast a quick glance about him, at the rock slope they had
descended, the dense bushes beyond the pebbles, the forest rim along the
summit of the high central cliff, the rough, wave-eaten rock mass across
the cove. Then his eyes returned to his companion’s face and he nodded
silently.
Curious though he was, Hugh was deliberate in opening the mysterious
packet. He untied the cord and removed the outer cover carefully not to
tear it. Within the oiled skin wrapper was still another of the finest,
whitest, softest doeskin, tied with the same sort of bark cord. The cord
had been passed through holes in a square of paper-thin birch bark. On
the bark label was written in the same faint, muddy brown ink Blaise had
used:
“To be delivered to M. René Dubois,
At Montreal.
Of great importance.”
Hugh turned over the packet. It was sealed, like the outer wrapper, with
drops of pitch upon which Jean Beaupré’s seal had been pressed. For
several minutes the boy sat considering what he ought to do. Then he
looked up at his half-brother’s equally grave face.
“I don’t like to open this,” Hugh said. “It is addressed to M. René
Dubois of Montreal and it is sealed. I think father intended me to take
it to Monsieur Dubois with the seals unbroken. Doubtless he will open it
in my presence and tell me what it contains.”
Blaise nodded understandingly. He had lived long enough in civilization
to realize the seriousness of breaking the seals of a packet addressed to
someone else. “That Monsieur Dubois, do you know him?” he inquired.
“No, I didn’t know my father had any friends in Montreal. He never lived
there, you know. His old home was in Quebec, where I was born. I don’t
remember that I ever heard of Monsieur René Dubois, but my relatives in
Montreal may know him. Probably I can find him. If I can’t, then I think
it would be right to open this packet, but not until I have tried. Shall
I take charge of this, Blaise?”
“You are the elder and our father said you must take the packet to
Montreal.”
To the impatient Hugh the wait until the sun descended beyond the woods
of the low point across the water seemed long indeed. He found it hard to
realize that only two nights before he and Blaise had reached the point
and had tied up there. They had surely been lucky to find the cache of
furs so soon.
Not until the shadows of the shore lay deep upon the water did the lads
push off the bateau. They paddled silently out of the little cove and
close under the abrupt, riven rocks, taking care not to let a blade
splash as it dipped and was withdrawn. The water was rippled by the
lightest of breezes, and the moon was bright. The deep cleft where Jean
Beaupré’s wrecked boat lay was in black darkness, though. Hugh could not
even make out the stern. His mind was busy with thoughts of the father he
had known so slightly, with speculations about his coming to the island,
about the way he had left it. Through what treachery had he received his
death blow?