SANDY PLAYS A LONE HAND
“Wake up! Wake up!”
A light was shining in Dick’s face and he was being shaken roughly by
the shoulders. Something had fallen near the bed—a dull clatter of some
sort. Then a voice raised slightly, then more voices, and, presently, as
Dick half-sat, half-reclined on his spruce couch, endeavoring to rub the
sleep from his eyes and collect his befuddled senses, he perceived what
seemed to be at first a miracle.
The tepee was full of people. It seemed incredible, but true it was. The
narrow confines of the room, in which he had spent the previous
thirty-six hours, most of them alone, now fairly bustled with life. To
his great amazement, he saw Sandy, Toma, Corporal Richardson, Factor
MacClaren and two half-breeds, employed as servants at Fort Good Faith.
They were all standing or sitting about, everyone, apparently, talking
at once.
Dick made another quick dab at his eyes to make sure that his vision had
not suddenly played him false. Was he suffering from some sort of a
delusion? Was he seeing and hearing things? What did it all mean?
“That boy could sleep through an earthquake,” Sandy’s uncle declared,
detaching himself from the little group and walking over beside Dick.
“My boy,” he inquired, placing a solicitous hand on Dick’s head, “how
are you feeling? Sandy tells me that you have been quite seriously
hurt.”
For the third time, Dick rubbed at his eyes.
“What has happened?” he cried in a hollow, unnatural voice.
A general laugh followed this plaintive inquiry.
“It means,” Corporal Richardson enlightened him, “that everything is all
right, Dick. We’ve come to take you back to the post.”
“But how——” began Dick.
“Sandy brought the news to us last night.”
Dick turned reproachful eyes in the direction of his chum.
“I like your nerve,” he said coldly, “and that’s no joke either. You
said you’d come back before dark, and all the time you were scheming and
planning to sneak back to the post. I suppose it didn’t matter to you
how much Toma and I worried.”
“No such thing,” Sandy retorted hotly. “I wouldn’t have gone back to the
post at all if I hadn’t come across Malemute Slade. I thought he was
dying.”
“Malemute Slade!” Dick stared incredulously.
“I think,” Factor MacClaren broke in, “that you’d better let me
straighten out this tangle.”
“No, Uncle Walter,” Sandy protested, “I can do that better myself.” He
walked over and sat down on the bed beside Dick.
“When I left here,” he commenced, “you know what my intention was: to
follow the tracks of the man who had been hurt and, if possible, to find
him. Well, I had no difficulty in getting back to the place where Toma
and I had been. The trail wasn’t very hard to follow. There were
blood-stains in the snow, and here and there, I could tell where the man
had sat down to rest.
“I had been out on the trail—well, it couldn’t have been much more than
an hour—when the tracks led me to an old dilapidated-looking cabin.
Right away, I had a feeling that the man would be there, and I had a
horrible suspicion that I would find him dead.
“I knocked at the door,” Sandy continued breathlessly, “but there was no
answer. So I went in. I couldn’t see anything at first, it was so dark
inside. There was only one small window. But pretty soon my eyes became
accustomed to the light. There was a bunk, stove and two wooden benches
in the room. A man was lying in the bunk with some blankets pulled
around him.
“The wounded man had started a fire, but it had gone out and it was
quite cold in the room. At first, I just stood there looking around,
almost too frightened to move. When I walked over to the bunk, I was
trembling all over. I had scarcely strength enough to pull down the
blankets, which were tucked around the man’s head.”
Sandy paused and looked around him. His face was gray and drawn.
Evidently, the memory was not a very pleasant one.
“The man,” he resumed in a low voice, “was Malemute Slade.”
Dick jumped.
“Sandy!” he cried in a stricken voice. “Don’t tell me he’s dead!”
“Of course not,” smiled the speaker. “We wouldn’t all be so blamed
cheerful if he was. But when I found him, he was delirious, and I don’t
mind telling you that I was nearly frightened stiff.
“I was so excited, that I don’t know exactly what I did. I remember
starting the fire and trying to bathe his wound in some warm snow-water.
He was wounded in his right arm, which was badly swollen and almost
black from infection.”
“Did Malemute Slade recognize you?” Dick asked.
“No, he was too sick for that. But he kept asking for water, sometimes
sitting up and staring wildly about him. I gave him all the water he
would drink, and late in the afternoon his fever subsided and he fell in
a deep sleep.
“You can bet,” Sandy went on, “that I had been doing a lot of thinking.
I couldn’t let him stay there like that. I was afraid he was going to
die. I decided that the best thing I could do was to go back to the fort
for help before it was too late.
“Shortly before dark, I banked my fire and started out. I knew I
couldn’t be very far from the Run River trail, probably not more than
two miles west of it. I found the trail, after a good deal of trouble,
and reached Fort Good Faith soon after midnight.”
“Where is Malemute Slade now?” Dick wanted to know.
“He ought to be at the post by this time,” Corporal Richardson replied.
“As soon as Sandy appeared and told us the news, I called for a little
party of volunteers and we started out. The cabin, where Malemute Slade
lay wounded, is between here and the Run River trail, so, of course, we
stopped there first, bundled him up and sent him back in a hurry. Then
we came on here for you, Dick. There is a dog team and sleigh waiting
for you outside.”
“I wonder how Slade happened to get wounded?” came Dick’s next question.
“I don’t know,” the corporal replied. “We won’t be able to find that out
until Slade is sufficiently recovered to tell us. However, I know this:
It’s a bullet wound, and the weapon his assailant used was fired at
close range. The hole in his arm is a large one. I’m afraid the bone is
shattered.”
“Will he get well again?” Dick asked.
“Yes; I think so. With proper care and attention, he’ll be around again
in a few weeks, although I doubt very much whether he’ll be able to use
his right arm for a long, long time.”
“I’d like to get my hands on the man who shot him,” Sandy stated
belligerently.
Everybody laughed at this assertion except Toma, who had good cause to
remember a certain experience only a few months before, when he had been
somewhat roughly treated by the young Scotchman.
“Well, there’s no use of wasting any more time here,” said Factor
MacClaren. “I suggest that we roll our friend, Dick, up in a nice little
bundle and proceed on our way. Averse to a sleigh-ride, Dick?”
“Not at all.”
“You may change your mind before we reach the Run River trail,” the
factor warned him. “It’s pretty rough in places.”
“My foot’s better, and I won’t mind it at all,” said Dick cheerfully.
The sun had just slipped up over the horizon when the small cavalcade,
with Corporal Richardson in the lead, set out. In a short while, a
brilliant flood of sunshine lay over the land. Out of the west came a
warm chinook, stirring the spruce and pine branches over their heads.
“Spring is coming,” rejoiced Sandy, sniffing the air and prancing about
Dick’s sleigh like a young colt. “Won’t it be glorious, Dick, when the
grass and flowers start to grow?”
“And the rivers and streams commence running again,” Dick added. “We’ll
go fishing then, won’t we, Sandy?”
“You bet!”
Sandy appeared to be so happy, indeed, that it occurred to Dick
presently, watching him gamboling about, that there must be some other
explanation for his friend’s high spirits than the mere fact that Spring
was approaching.
“What’s up, Sandy?” he inquired a moment later as the young man came
cavorting back to the sleigh. “Anyone would think that you’d just been
elected King of Scotland.”
“Nothing like that, Dick, on my word. I’m just feeling fine.”
“Sandy, you’re lying to me.”
“Not I.”
“You might as well tell me,” persisted Dick, “because I’ll be sure to
find out anyway. I can tell by the way you act and by the expression on
your face that something out of the ordinary has happened. Out with it!”
Sandy hesitated, then moved closer to his friend.
“It’s not exactly a secret, but we thought we wouldn’t tell you until we
got back to the post. However, now that you’ve become so suspicious, I
don’t see any harm in it. Are you prepared for a shock?”
“Certainly. Go right ahead.”
Sandy looked about him to make sure that they were not overheard, then
leaned forward, as he walked beside the sleigh, and fairly hissed the
words in Dick’s ear:
“We’ve got back the map of the lost mine!”
“No!” shouted Dick.
“It’s a fact. Corporal Richardson found it this morning on the body of
Malemute Slade.”
For a brief second, Dick stared incredulously, wonderingly at his
friend, then removed his parka and threw it high in the air.