THE BLAZED ROAD
As Dexter had expected, the boy's departing foot tracks were clearly
defined in the wet earth, and after breakfast he packed up and
started to follow. Alison seemed rather disquieted by his cool
assurance, but she was ready to leave when he gave the word, and for
the present, at least, she made no effort to delay him or to
interfere with his plans.
The trail ran off in a generally northwest direction, leading through
a scraggly patch of jack pines, across a grassy meadow, and thence
through a winding defile that crawled upward at a sharp slant and
came out at length on a barren slope of rock. The snow had almost
disappeared during the last week, the few remaining white areas being
found only in deep-wooded hollows and on the shady north hillsides.
Where there was topsoil of loam, however, a forest-trained eye found
little difficulty in tracing the imprints of feet that had gone
ahead. But when he reached the granite outcrop, Dexter was brought
suddenly to a halt.
The fugitive's boot soles were studded with hobnails, and there
should have been a few faint scratches left here and there to
indicate his direction of travel; but after a minute inspection of
the ground about him, the corporal shook his head, and turned with a
baffled frown to meet Alison's questioning gaze.
"I hardly gave Archie credit for being so smart," he remarked acidly.
"I'll bet it was you who thought this out for him, and advised him to
take off his boots if he struck rocks."
She faced him with her head slightly tilted, and there was mockery in
the fleeting smile she gave him. But she kept discreetly silent, and
neither admitted nor denied his accusation.
The corporal scrutinized her thoughtfully, with one eyebrow elevated;
and then, lightly shrugging his shoulders, he moved onward to seek
for the lost trail.
The bare surface of rock reached upward to the snow crests, and
extended in a northerly direction around the curve of the steep
mountainside. Archie might have climbed still higher, or circled
across the pitch of the slope, or gradually worked his way downward
to the forested valley below. Whichever course he had taken he must
eventually pass beyond the rocks, and even if he kept on traveling in
his stocking feet, he was certain to leave some trace of himself when
he finally touched soft earth again. Dexter had only to swing around
the circumference of the rock slope, and somewhere in moist soil or
snow patch he was confident of picking up the broken line of foot
tracks.
It meant a loss of time and effort to cast around an interrupted
trail, but there was nothing else to be done, and the corporal gave
no hint of annoyance as he pushed ahead.
A survey of the country told him that the easiest course of travel
would be found along the valley bottoms. The fugitive would be
anxious to make the fastest possible progress, and also he would
instinctively dread the thought of exposing himself conspicuously on
the barren mountain slopes. As soon as he imagined he had left a
sufficient gap in his trail, he probably had quit the rock slope and
struck downward into the concealing forest. This at least was the
most probable supposition, so Dexter bent his steps down the
hillside, and presently found himself in a deep, moist hollow,
threading his way through dense timber.
He was striding along silently, his restless glance searching the
ground before him, when all at once he stopped under a giant white
fir that towered in solitary majesty above the tops of the
neighboring spruce and pine. On the dark, seamy trunk of the ancient
tree there showed a faint, weathered mark, like a wrinkle in the
bark. Any other than a trained woodsman would have passed by
unobserving. Alison apparently did not know why her companion had
halted, even when she saw him bend forward to look at the old tree.
"What is it?" she asked as she read the eager curiosity in Dexter's
face.
"Ancient trail blaze," he said. "All this is unmapped wilderness,
yet somebody found the way through here before us--many years ago."
"Who? When?"
"I don't know. Some old-time explorer, perhaps. The tree probably
has added many inches to its girth since that mark was entrusted to
its keeping."
The girl moved forward to inspect the tiny line that was no more than
a slight puckering of the bark. "You mean--that's a blaze--left
there by somebody?"
Dexter nodded. "A fresh ax cut first glazes itself over with a film
of pitch," he said. "Then the bark begins to draw itself together,
and finally covers the wound. The annual rings of growth add their
covering year by year, until the original scar is buried deep in the
wood. In the end nothing is left to show what had happened, save a
tiny wrinkle in the bark. But the mark itself is never lost, even if
the tree should live for hundreds of years. Let's see."
He unbelted his keen bladed ax, and yielding the tool with his left
hand, he began to chop into the sapwood, first above and then below
the time-healed scar. In a few moments he was able to split out a
long, thick slab; and with tense interest he leaned forward to see
what might lie underneath.
"Look!" he exclaimed.
On the surface of white wood exposed, faint characters were
discernible. He made out the carved tracery of a letter "W," and
there were other lines that he could not quite decipher. For a
moment he peered at the section of scribed wood, and then quietly
nodded his head.
"I never heard of surveyors going through this part of the
wilderness," he observed musingly, "yet this looks like a surveyor's
line tree." He counted the growth rings, and looked with thoughtful
eyes into the shadowy stillness beyond. "More than half a century
ago some man passed through here and cut his blaze and left direction
marks behind him," he said in a hushed voice. "The man probably is
dead, and I don't suppose he ever knew that he had rendered a service
to a later generation of the Canadian mounted."
"What do you mean?" asked the girl wonderingly.
"Let's look farther, and find out," Dexter temporized.
He moved forward again, walking slowly, and keeping sharp lookout
about him: and two hundred yards farther on he halted with a
smothered laugh to indicate a tall, thick-trunked spruce that stood
amid a clump of smaller trees. "The blaze," he said, and pointed to
an indented line in the rough bark.
Again he chopped out a block of wood, and presently reached an inner
ring that bore dimly scratched characters similar to those found
under the bark of the fir.
"Another 'W,'" Alison said with pursed lips, as she bent closer to
look. "There's something else--I can't quite make out. What does it
mean?"
"Some private mark, no doubt. It probably has no especial meaning
now--after fifty years. But the important fact--these are line
trees--undoubtedly."
"Yes?" she asked with a puzzled frown.
The corporal strode forward without answering, and presently showed
his companion a third tree, the bark of which showed the seamed mark
of an ancient blaze. His smile widened with satisfaction, and this
time he did not halt. "The open road," he remarked: "I wish I could
thank the old timer who stuck up the street signs."
"Where will they take us?" Alison asked with a dubious glance.
"To the lost pass, I hope. Nobody would have bothered to blaze a
permanent trail, unless he knew where he was going. And the only
place worth going from here would be the pass."
He walked a distance farther, and then suddenly checked himself and
pointed to the ground. In the dark mold by a tiny rivulet of snow
water, he showed her the clearly defined imprint of a nail-studded
foot. "Your brother!" he remarked. "He came down from the rock
slope, as I thought he might, and has put his boots back on. And now
he's ahead of us, traveling our direction."
The girl looked askance at the tell-tale track. "It--you can't be
sure it is his," was all she could think to say.
Dexter laughed. "I ought to know his boot marks after all the miles
I've tramped with him. It's Archie."
He led the way forward again, walking as fast as he could through the
dense timber. The rediscovered footprints soon turned away from the
line of blazed trees, and he gathered that the fugitive had crossed
the ancient trail by accident and was guiding his course by other
landmarks. Dexter considered possibilities, and decided to place his
trust in the old-time ax scars. He was confident that sooner or
later he would be led to the mountain pass, and as he felt equally
certain that Archie was making towards the same destination, it
struck him as being foolish to stray from the clearly marked path to
chase a faint foot-trail that might at any time leave him groping in
the air.
All that day he and Alison labored onward through the silent
wilderness, breaking their way through matted thickets, passing up
long, dark glens that twisted aimlessly among the lower mountains,
ascending steep hill slopes, climbing along the brink of cliffs where
a misstep would have landed them into yawning gulfs below, crossing
the scarp of saw-backed ridges, and finally attaining the edge of
timberline under a thawing snow-field, whence they gazed afar through
an open gap between the surrounding snow caps.
Dusk was approaching, but there was still light enough left to make
out the dim, gray line of the northern horizon, distantly framed by
the shadow of flanking mountain peaks. Dexter looked off from the
heights, feeling the stir of the free north breeze, and nodded
soberly to himself.
"The outlet!" he said at length. "The road is open from here, and
the new country's beyond."
He moved forward again, across the slope of the look-out mountain,
and presently struck descending ground, which he knew went down into
the forested valley on the other side of the range. And before he
had gone any distance he again discovered fresh marks in the earth to
tell of hobnailed boots that had passed that way before him. Quietly
he called Alison's attention. "Archie!" he said. "He used his own
method, and evidently came around from a different direction; but
he's also found the pass. He can't be so many hours ahead of us."
The girl cast an apprehensive glance into the twilight shadows, but
her lips were closed, and when the corporal went on she followed
mutely at his heels. He increased his stride, intending to travel as
far as possible before darkness halted him, failing to remember that
his companion's frailer strength might not be able to keep the pace
he set. But he was aware presently that she was breathing quickly,
stumbling along behind him. He turned questioningly.
"Tired?" he asked.
"We've been on our feet since early dawn," she reminded him.
Dexter regarded her in momentary suspicion. She would do anything to
delay him, of course. On the other hand, there were drooping,
pathetic lines about her mouth and eyes to tell him that she actually
was on the verge of physical exhaustion. After reflection he decided
that he might as well call a halt. It would soon be too dark to
follow a trail, and besides, he felt rather done up himself. Morning
would be soon enough to continue his journey.
In their path stood a great, dead spruce, rearing its barkless white
column stark and ghostly in the gathering twilight. The corporal
built his evening fire in the shelter of the giant tree, and after he
and his companion had eaten supper, the blankets were spread on
either side of the mighty trunk; and Dexter, for his part, sank
instantly to sleep.
He was even more wearied than he had imagined, and he lay in quiet
slumber, his ears deaf to the familiar forest sounds: the stirring of
the north breeze in the pines, the far-flung screech of a snowy owl,
the scurry of tiny feet in the brush, the babble of rivulets
trickling down the mountainsides. A wolf howled somewhere in the
distance, but there was nothing in the long-drawn note to alarm his
senses, and he slept on as serenely as though he were bunking in the
guarded barracks at Crooked Forks. The hours of darkness slipped by
without his knowledge; but at length, some time before approaching
dawn, he turned under his blanket with a startled movement, and
opened his eyes, instantly wakeful, to stare about him.
There was no disturbing sound, and as he gazed up blankly at the
starlit sky, he could not help wondering why the alarm clock of his
mind had aroused him at this particular instant. Far down on the
south-western horizon he made out the bright star Spica in the
constellation of Virgo. By the position of the star he knew it was
nearly seven in the morning.
For some unaccountable reason, a feeling of uneasiness took
possession of him, and he turned on his side to glance across the
hollow where the fire had been burning. And then he sat bolt
upright, to stare in the darkness. Alison was gone.
Dexter scrambled to his feet, and crossed over to pick up the girl's
discarded blanket. The woolen covering had been cast aside in a
heap, and was wet with the morning dew. He inferred that she had
left some while before. It had not occurred to him that she might
break her pledged word, and he had not thought it necessary to keep
an eye on her. But now he could not escape the fact that his
confidence had been misplaced. She had stolen away in the night,
just as her brother had done.
The corporal stood motionless, peering grimly into the all-shrouding
darkness. The breeze had died, and the night-prowling creatures no
longer stirred abroad in the forest. Utter silence had shut down
upon the earth. Dexter looked towards the north, knowing it must be
that direction that the girl had fled. By this time, no doubt she
was hurrying through the lower pass, miles away.
He was on the point of gathering up his pack, intending to strike
down the slope in pursuit, when all at once he stopped breathing and
threw up his head with a jerk to listen. A whisper of sound reached
him through the hush of darkness, and his startled ears identified
the faint tones of a human voice.
It was a queer, disembodied voice, a tiny fluttering in the air, like
ventriloquial speech, coming seemingly from infinite distances,
without any point of direction. Small and unreal as it sounded,
actual words came floating to him.
"Help!" said the ghostly cry. "David! Help!"