THE ESCAPE
It was the old battle between love and duty. The pile of covered
newspapers lay unheeded beside the young man's chair. He pictured
Jean Fitzpatrick in every conceivable peril of the winter on those
desolate barrens--as the prisoner of Indians, of trappers, as the
prey of wild beasts, as the prey of men. He writhed at his impotence,
and cursed the day that had seen his rescue on Death Trail. Better
a skeleton without flesh, he thought, than a living being whose
every thought tortured him to desperation.
And, yet, there was something in the idea of escape that seemed
shameful to him. If he had done wrong, he must take his medicine;
if he had failed, he must atone for the failure according to the
decrees of his superior. That was the discipline in him responding
to the discipline of Fitzpatrick. It was the iron McTavish to the
fore rather than the passionate flesh-and-blood McTavish.
A grim smile lighted his features for a moment, as he thought of
Laura, the factor's daughter, innocently placing in his hands the
means of setting at naught her father's commands. Her naive zeal
for his welfare might react to her own loss.
The thing that at last decided Donald was the abiding sense of
injustice that had all along burned in him against this humiliating
confinement. Had he been actually unfaithful to duty, he would have
put the thought of escape away harshly. As it was, the inherent
fear of that great, inevitable Juggernaut, the Company, stirred in
him. But he crushed it down resolutely. This was an affair of
persons, not of companies... He would go!
To-night was the fifth after Jean's departure. There was much to
be done before he could be ready. Then, too, something might have
happened to Peter to prevent his reaching the rendezvous on time.
Donald decided that he would go the next night.
The manner Peter Rainy had indicated was the only feasible one for
escape. The room in which the captive was confined was one of some
twenty-odd built along the strong wall that surrounded the post.
Across the narrow corridor that connected the row of rooms on the
inside, the heavy masonry of the wall jutted out roughly. At the
end of the corridor, a stout door was locked and bolted at night,
so that during the dark hours the window was the only means of
egress.
Next morning, after breakfast, Donald called the old Indian servant
to him.
"Michael," he said, "this Is just the time for me to do some work
on my outfit. My fur suit is badly in need of repair, and one of
my showshoes needs restringing near the curl. I want to be all
ship-shape when my time is up. Will you bring them to me?"
The Indian's instant acquiescence gave the young man a pang. Such
was his reputation for honor among these men that his jailer had
often declared he could leave the doors unlocked and still have a
prisoner in the morning. Now, Donald was about to blast this old
man's faith. He shrugged his shoulders helplessly, however, and
thought no more on the subject. Once his decision had been made,
he would hold fast by it to the end.
McTavish had spoken truly. His hunting suit of white caribou was
badly frayed and worn after his blind wanderings in the forest,
and not only did one snowshoe need restringing, but both were loose
from his frequent awkward falls. Even old Michael, whose eyes were
weak, could see these things.
With _atibisc_--fine, tough sinews of the caribou--Donald strung
the defective toe, and then made a not very successful shift at
tightening the center webbing of _askimoneiab_, or heavy, membranous
moose filling. The mending of his clothes was a comparatively simple
matter by means of needle and thread.
All day he worked at this, so planning that evening should find
the task uncompleted, as an excuse for Michael to leave the equipment
over night.
As fortune would have it, snow began to fall shortly before sundown,
and McTavish was robbed of the stars for guidance once he should
be free. But the heavy, swirling curtain of flakes made his work
inside the fort much easier. At dinner-time, the wind had risen,
and the storm outside was of such fury that only the hardiest Indian
or trapper would have ventured out in it. This gave the captive
some concern, but he realized that he must either go now, or else
lose his opportunity.
As was his custom, Michael sat up smoking with a few cronies in a
near-by room until about ten o'clock. Then, he let his friends out
of the corridor, and securely fastened the door behind them with
lock and bolt. After that, he looked into McTavish's room, to find
the Scotchman almost ready for bed. With his customary respectful
good-night, he shut and locked the door, and shuffled on to his
own quarters.
Immediately, now, Donald dressed himself quickly, and then put out
the lamp, which had made a square glow on the snow outside. Presently,
the light in Michael's room, also, went out. McTavish, crossing
the floor noiselessly in his moccasins, sat down in his chair, and
smoked his new pipe, for the better part of an hour. By that time,
a gentle buzzing, varied with wheezes and whines, attested that
Michael was asleep.
Forthwith, Donald stepped cautiously to the window. He was fully
acquainted with its peculiarities; he had studied them all day. It
was one of those squares of wood and glass set into a frame without
any means of opening either by lifting or swinging. To escape, he
would have to push the window bodily from its frame.
But then what? The bars were outside, and not two inches away.
Following a plan already matured, he took a block of wood from the
box beside the little, pot-bellied iron stove. This he wrapped in
a blanket, and used as a battering ram, at first gently, but,
presently, with more force, since the noise of the storm without
almost negatived any other sound. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Each
corner of the window, in turn, moved an eighth of an inch from its
long resting-place, with many groans and snappings of wood and ice.
But, resolutely, he kept to the work, stopping every now and then
to listen and make sure that Michael was still breathing heavily.
At last, the window was at the edge of its deep casement, and Donald
now devoted his entire attention to the lower corners. Tapping them
gently, he got them gradually to swing off the frame, and the blast
came rushing in. The window now appeared as though swung from hinges
at the top. McTavish pushed it until it came to rest against the
iron bars outside. There was an inch and a half of space beneath
the outswung frame.
Then, the prisoner changed his tools. Going to the stove, he returned
with the poker, and the end of this he set firmly against the last
bar to the right. A quick, mighty effort, and the sawed iron
snapped noiselessly, and bent outward and upward. One after another,
he gave the remaining four the same treatment. Eventually, they
all stood out six inches from their almost imperceptible stumps.
Now, to get rid of the window. Donald resorted once again to his
muffled block of wood, and tapped at the top until the frame dropped
silently off into the snow. To bend the bars back so as to allow
his exit was now an easy matter, and soon accomplished. With his
snowshoes in his hands, he wriggled head first through the square
opening, and landed easily on the heaped snow.
With nimble fingers, the snowshoes were quickly strapped on, when
an idea occurred to him. He groped on the ground until he found
the window.
This he lifted up and inserted in the frame, driving it home with
a few sharp blows. Then, he bent the iron bars back down until each
fitted nicely over its stump. Whimsically, he imagined old Michael's
amazement and superstitious fear when he should find the animal
gone, but the trap itself still unsprung.
But what was that? Where did that light come from? McTavish was
just bending the last bar into place when he saw the glow on the
snow about him, and looked up in terror. There, in the room, with
lamp held high and terror on his face, stood the old Indian, gazing
on the undisturbed bed. Even as Donald looked, Michael, the instinct
of the hunter still strong in him, leaped toward the window, the
only possible means of escape.
With a curse the fugitive shrank back, then sprang into the storm
as fast as he could struggle against it. But so strong was the wind
that he could scarcely move, and all the while he could feel the
Indian's eyes striving to pierce through the snow curtain to him.
And then, five minutes later, came the sound of a bell being
violently tolled, and he knew that Michael had given the alarm.
That night of terrible storm the few men still left in the fort
dreamed of battle and murder and Indian attacks, as they had been
in the old days; fires were heaped high, and frightened children
were quieted. What then was the chill that gripped them by the
heart when above the howling of the blast the old warning tocsin
broke out! Hands clutched at guns and clothing, and the women and
children ran to the windows, sick for fear lest the fort be afire.
But there was no glow brightening and growing lurid through the
snow curtain. Commanding their dependents to light lamps and dress,
the men made all speed to the vestibule of the old soldiers'
quarters, where McTavish had been confined, on top of which the
bell whirled over and over, its unaccustomed voice thin and shrill
with cold. It was twenty years since that bell had sounded a general
alarm, and the men, wild with anxiety, rushed in upon Michael.
Meanwhile, McTavish was experiencing a fearful trial. During the
day, his plans of campaign had been worked out thoroughly and had
appeared simple. But, now, confused, battered, whirled ruthlessly
about, a plaything in the mighty wind, he was scarcely able to tell
his right from his left, and, had it not been for Michael's zeal
in giving the alarm, this story might have ended here.
With the sound of the bell to give him direction, McTavish bore
off to the left. There, the snow had been drifted high against the
wall. More than that, the path that ran along the latter had
contributed materially to the height of the bank, and McTavish
counted on this means of scaling the fifteen-foot obstruction...
Would he ever find the place?
At last, he felt the ascent under his feet, and struggled up. With
a thankfulness that he had never before experienced, he found but
three feet of wall confronting him at the top, and swung his feet
over quickly. What fortune awaited him on the long drop to earth,
he did not know. He remembered the spot in summer as a grassy mound,
with a few small rocks showing here and there. With fatalistic
indifference, he pushed himself off, and, after a breathless second,
struck the hard snow crust, and went through it with a crash,
snowshoes and all, sinking to his ankles. It took but a moment to
extricate himself, and he now turned his back to the wind, which
was theoretically from the north--"theoretically," because in a
genuine blizzard the wind has been known to blow upon the bewildered
traveler from four directions inside a minute. Everywhere one turns,
he is met by a breath-taking blast.
The old Beaver Trail started south of the fort, alongside the little
hillock where Jean had been tobogganing the day of her disappearance,
and thence ran for miles, crossing the little streams and ponds
where the beaver villages had been built. Because most of the beaver
colonies had been broken up along this route, the trail had been
superseded by another, called the New Trail; hence this was an
unfrequented, almost untraveled, path that Peter Rainy had named.
Donald McTavish knew every shrub, tree, and stone within a mile of
Fort Severn in any direction, after the summer spent there, and
to-night he relied upon his recognition of inanimate objects to
lead him aright. A ghostly spruce with a wedge-shaped bite out of
its stiff foliage told him he was a hundred feet to the right; a
flat-topped rock, suddenly stumbled upon, convinced him that for
five minutes he had been walking back toward the fort.
The alarm-bell had ceased ringing now, and he could hear nothing
but the shriek of the wind, the hollow roaring of it in the woods,
and the hiss and whish of driving snow. The folds of his _capote_
protected him partially from the stinging particles, and his
gauntleted hands shielded his eyes somewhat.
Not another man in Fort Severn could have found the old Beaver
Trail that night, and many a time during the hour Donald blessed
the memory of Jean Fitzpatrick and their many excursions in the
vicinity of the post. By devious zigzags and retracings, he suddenly
found himself face to face with a ten-foot stump that Indians had
long ago carved into a sort of totem, which had been left standing
as a curiosity. There, the trail began, and he was able to make
faster time, although all evidence of a footway were, of course,
obliterated. As he went deeper into the forest, the wind became
steadier and less changeable in direction, and the snow lost the
worst of its sting.
Still guided by old, friendly landmarks, Donald drew near the
rendezvous. He knew the place well. It was slightly off the trail,
behind a bowlder. At last he reached it and peered around. There,
sleeping in a huddle, his feet to a camp-fire, the sleigh snow-banked
as a wind break, and the dogs curled in a black-and-white, steaming
bundle, Peter Rainy lay unconcernedly.
With a cry of joy, Donald awakened his faithful servant, and, in
the comparative shelter of the rock, told his story briefly.
"Quick, kick the dogs up!" he cried. "We must push on at once. I
am followed."