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THE PIRATE OF JASPER PEAK


------------------------------------------------------------------------

                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
                  NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
                        ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

                        MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
                       LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
                               MELBOURNE

                   THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
                                TORONTO

------------------------------------------------------------------------


[Illustration: Close to the hearth a big chair had been drawn and in
this some one was sitting.]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE PIRATE OF JASPER PEAK

by

ADAIR ALDON

Author of “The Island of Appledore,” etc.

With Frontispiece






New York
The Macmillan Company
1918
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1918
By the Macmillan Company

Set up and electrotyped.
Published, September, 1918

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                CONTENTS

               I. A Stranger in a Strange Land
              II. The Brown Bear’s Skin
             III. Laughing Mary
              IV. The Heart of the Forest
               V. Oscar Dansk
              VI. The Promised Land
             VII. Whither Away?
            VIII. A Night’s Lodging
              IX. Peril at the Bridge
               X. First Blood to the Pirate
              XI. The White Flag
             XII. A Highway through the Hills

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                       THE PIRATE OF JASPER PEAK




                               CHAPTER I

                      A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND


The long Pullman train, an hour late and greatly begrudging the time for
a special stop, came sliding into the tiny station of Rudolm and
deposited a solitary passenger upon the platform. The porter set Hugh
Arnold’s suitcase on the ground and accepted his proffered coin, all in
one expert gesture, and said genially:

“We’re way behind time on this run, but we come through on the down trip
at six in the morning, sharp. You-all will be going back with us
to-morrow, I reckon.”

“No,” replied Hugh, as he came down from the car step and gathered up
his belongings. “No, I’m going to stay.”

“Stay?” repeated the porter. “Oh—a week, I suppose. No one really stays
at Rudolm except them that are born there and can’t get away.”

Hugh shook his head.

“I am going to stay all winter,” he said.

“The whole winter! Say, do you know what winter _is_ up here?” the man
exclaimed. “For the love of—”

A violent jolt of the train was the engineer’s reminder that friendly
converse was not in order when there was time to be made up.

“All right, sah, good-by. I hope you like staying, only remember—we go
through every day at six in the morning less’n we’re late. _Good_-by.”

The train swept away, leaving Hugh to look after it for a moment before
he turned to take his first survey of Rudolm and the wide sheet of blue
water upon whose shore it stood.

Red Lake, when he and his father had first looked it up on the map,
seemed a queer, crooked place, full of harbors and headlands and hidden
coves, the wider stretches extending here and there to fifteen, twenty,
twenty-five miles of open water, again narrowing to mere winding
channels choked with islands. Hugh would have liked to say afterward
that he knew even from the map that this was a region promising
adventures, that down the lake’s winding tributaries he was going to be
carried to strange discoveries, but, as a matter of fact, he had no such
foreknowledge.

Indeed, it was his father who observed that the lake looked like a
proper haunt for pirates and Hugh who reminded him that pirates were not
ever to be found so far north. All the books he had seen, pictured them
as burying treasure on warm, sunny, sandy beaches, or flying in pursuit
of their prey on the wings of the South Sea winds. Pirates in the wooded
regions to the north of the Mississippi Valley, pirates where the snow
lay so deep and the lake was frozen for nearly half the year, where only
through a short summer could the waters be plied by “a low, raking,
black hulk” such as all pirates sail—it was not to be thought of! Even
now, when Hugh stood on the station platform and caught his first
glimpse of the real Red Lake, saw the wide blue waters flecked with
sunny whitecaps, the hundred pine-covered islands and the long miles of
wooded shore, even then he had no thought of how different he was to
find this place from any other he had ever seen. Both lake and town
seemed to him to promise little.

For Rudolm, set in its narrow valley between the Minnesota hills, looked
as though it had been dropped from some child’s box of toys, so small
and square were the houses and so hit-or-miss was the order in which
they stood along the one wide, crooked street. There were no trees
growing beside the rough wooden sidewalks, the street was dusty and the
sun, even although it was October, seemed to him to shine with a
pitiless glare. He walked slowly along the platform, wondering why Dick
Edmonds had not come to meet him, thinking that Rudolm seemed the
dullest and most uninteresting town in America and trying to stifle the
rising wish that he had never come.

A soft pad, pad on the boards behind him made him turn his head as a man
walked swiftly past. Hugh saw that his shapeless black hat had a
speckled feather stuck into the band and that he wore, instead of shoes,
soft rounded moccasins edged with a gay embroidery of beads. Plainly the
man was an Indian. At the thought the boy’s heart beat a little faster.
He had not known there would be Indians!

His own being in Rudolm was simple enough, although somewhat unexpected.
Hugh’s father was a doctor, enrolled in the Medical Reserve since the
beginning of the war but not until this month ordered away to France.
The problem of where Hugh should live during his absence was a difficult
one since Hugh had no mother and there were no immediate relatives to
whom he could go. He had finished school but had been judged rather too
young for college, and, so his father maintained in spite of frantic
pleading, much too young to enlist.

“I’m sixteen,” was the boy’s insistent argument, but—

“Wait until you have been sixteen more than two days,” was his father’s
answer.

“I could go with the medical unit, I know enough from helping you to be
some use as a hospital orderly,” Hugh begged, “I would do anything just
to go to France.”

“They need men in France, not boys just on the edge of being men,” Dr.
Arnold replied, “when you have had one or two years’ worth of experience
and judgment, then you will be some help to them over there. But not
now.”

“The war will be over by then,” wailed Hugh.

“Don’t fear,” his father observed grimly, “there is going to be enough
of it for all of us to have our share.”

So there the discussion ended and the question of what Hugh was to do
came up for settlement. There was a distant cousin of his father’s in
New York—but this suggestion was never allowed to get very far. Hugh had
never met the cousin and did not relish the idea of going to live with
him, “sight unseen” as he put it, on such short notice. It was his own
plan to go to Rudolm where lived the two Edmonds brothers, John, cashier
of the bank there and a great friend of his father’s, and Dick, a boy
four years older than himself, whom he had met but once yet knew that he
liked immensely. Several times John Edmonds had written to Dr. Arnold—

“If Hugh ever wants to spend any time ‘on his own’ we could find him a
job here in Rudolm, I know. It is a queer little place, just a mining
and lumbering town full of Swedes, but he might like the hunting and the
country and find it interesting for a while.”

It was the idea of spending the time “on his own” that made Hugh feel
that thus the period of his father’s absence might chance to seem a
little shorter and the soreness of missing him might grow a little less.
John Edmonds had answered their letters most cordially and had said that
all could be arranged and Hugh need only telegraph the day of his
arrival. The final preparations had been hastened by the coming of Dr.
Arnold’s sailing orders; the two had bidden each other good-by and good
luck with resolute cheerfulness and Hugh had set forth on his long
journey northward. He had never seen the Great Lakes nor the busy inland
shipping ports with their giant freighters lying at the docks, nor the
rising hills of the Iron Range through which his way must lead, but he
noticed them very little. His thoughts were very far away and fixed on
other things. Even now, as he walked slowly up Rudolm’s one street he
was not dwelling so much on his forlorn wonder why he did not see his
friends, but was thinking of a great transport that must, almost at that
hour, be nosing her way out of “an Atlantic port,” of the swift
destroyers gathering to convoy her, of the salt sea breezes blowing
across her deck, blowing sharp from the east, from over the sea—from
France. For he was certain, from all that he could gather, that his
father was sailing to-day and was launching upon his new venture at
almost the same time that Hugh was entering upon his own.

Somewhat disconsolately the boy trudged on up the hot empty highway,
seeing ahead of him the big, ramshackle building that must be the hotel
and beyond that, at the end of the road, the shining blue of the lake.
He was vaguely conscious that, at every cottage window, white-headed
children of all sizes and ages bobbed up to stare at him and ducked
shyly out of sight again when they caught his eye. Between two houses he
looked down to a sunny field where a woman with a three-cornered yellow
kerchief on her head was helping some men at work. She did not look like
an American woman at all, Hugh thought as he stopped to watch her, but
walked on abashed when even she paused to look at him, leaning on her
rake and shading her eyes with her hand. He rather liked her looks,
somehow, even at that distance, she seemed so strong, in spite of her
slenderness and she handled her rake with such vigorous sunburned arms.

He raised his eyes to the circle of hills that hemmed in the little town
rising steeply from beyond the last row of houses and the irregular
patchwork of little fields. They were oddly shaped hills, rolling range
beyond range, higher and higher until, far in the distance there loomed
the jagged mass of one big enough to be called a mountain. The nearer
slopes were covered with heavy woods of pine and birch, the dense trees
broken here and there by great masses of rock, black, gray or, more
often, strange clear shades of red.

“Red Lake derives its name,” so the atlas had stated in its
matter-of-fact fashion, “from the peculiar color of the jasper rock that
appears in such quantity along its shores.”

Hugh had never seen anything quite like that clear vermilion shade that
glowed dully against the black-green of the pines. Across the slope of
the nearest hill, showing clear like a clean-cut scar, there stretched a
steep white road that wound sharply up to the summit and disappeared. He
began to feel vaguely that although the town attracted him little, the
road might lead to something of greater promise.

There were some men lounging before the door of the hotel when he
reached it, miners or lumberjacks wearing high boots and mackinaw coats.
They were talking in low tones and eyeing Hugh with open curiosity. Just
as he came to the steps, two figures shuffled silently past him, one,
the Indian he had seen at the station, the other, a broad-shouldered,
broad-waisted woman stooping under the heavy burden she carried on her
back. The man, erect and unimpeded, strode quickly forward, but she
stopped a moment to readjust the deerskin strap which passed over her
forehead and supported the heavy weight of her pack. She turned her
swarthy face toward Hugh and greeted him with a broad, friendly smile,
then bowed her head once more and trudged on after her master. The boy,
not used to the ways of Indian husbands and their wives, stood staring
after the two in shocked astonishment.

“That’s Kaniska, the best guide around here, and his squaw,” he heard
one of the men say to another. “She’s the only Indian hereabouts the
only one I ever heard of, really, that smiles at every one she meets.
They are all of them queer ducks; no matter how well you know them you
never can tell what they are thinking about. I believe she is the very
queerest of them all. The Swedes here call her Laughing Mary.”

The two dark figures slipped out of sight around a corner and Hugh went
up the steps into the hotel. The big, untidy room was apparently empty
except for a bluebottle fly buzzing against the window. A faint snore,
however, made Hugh aware that he was not alone and drew his attention to
the office clerk, sitting behind the high desk, his head back, his heels
up, sound asleep. The men outside had ceased talking, the entire village
was so quiet that Hugh could actually hear a katydid singing its last
summer song loudly and manfully down in the field.

“I never saw such a town before,” he thought bitterly, “the whole place
is either dead or asleep!”

He rapped sharply on the desk to arouse the clerk and was delighted to
see him awake with a guilty jump.

“Can you tell me where I can find—” he began, but a voice at his elbow
interrupted him.

Turning, he saw that the woman he had noticed in the field had left her
work to come hurrying after him, and now stood, a little breathless, at
his side. She had very kindly blue eyes, he observed, and a rather heavy
Swedish face that lit up wonderfully when she smiled.

“You are Hugh Arnold, is it not so?” she said. “John Edmonds has told me
that you would be here.”

“Oh, yes,” cried Hugh with relief, “I was just asking for him. Can you
tell me where he is?”

The clerk, a sandy-haired, freckled youth, leaned over the desk and
spoke eagerly.

“Why, haven’t you heard—?” he said, but the woman cut him short.

“I will tell the boy of that,” she announced with decision, then added
to Hugh, “The two Edmonds are not here now, and it is best that you
should come to stay at my house until they come again. This hotel is no
fit place for you.”

To this last frank statement the clerk agreed with surprising warmth.

“We have some queer customers here at times,” he admitted, “and I won’t
deny there’s a sight of them is ugly ones. There’s that fellow from
Jasper Peak blew in last evening and kept me up all night. When he and
his friends are here there’s always something doing.”

“Do not begin to talk of them, Jethro Brown,” the woman said a little
impatiently, “or you will keep us here all day, and this boy is wanting
his dinner, I make no doubt.”

The clerk laughed a little, although without much merriment.

“I guess you are right, Linda,” he replied, “and talk of that gang is
only words wasted. You’d better go along home with Mrs. Ingmarsson,
sonny, you couldn’t be in better hands.”

Much nettled at being called “sonny” by this person so little older than
himself, Hugh merely nodded stiffly, took up his suitcase and followed
Linda Ingmarsson to the door. Jethro, however, stopped them before they
could get outside.

“How about your baggage,” he inquired, “got a trunk or anything at the
station?”

Hugh was not certain whether his trunk had arrived with him or not, so
the clerk volunteered to telephone and find out. While he was doing so,
Hugh stood waiting in the doorway, looking idly down the street and at
the hills beyond. He noticed again the line of white highway that
fascinated him curiously as it slanted upward through the dense woods.
He turned to his companion who stood so silent beside him and ventured a
question.

“What is that road, please?” he asked; “where does it go?”

Linda Ingmarsson looked up quickly toward the hill, while her face took
on a new expression, wistful, sad, but somehow proud as well.

“That is my young brother Oscar’s road,” she said; “now it goes nowhere
but some day—some day it will go far.”

Hugh could not make very much out of this answer, but did not have time
to ponder it long. Jethro announced that all was well with the baggage,
so Hugh and Linda went out together. It was a relief to him to think
that he was with a person who knew at least who he was and why he had
come.

“You are very good,” he began shyly as they came out on the steps; “you
should not—” but the rest of his sentence was never spoken.

The hot sleepy silence was broken suddenly by a shrill steam whistle,
followed by another and another. A strident siren joined them; then came
a deep blast from some steamer on the lake; then a loud clanging of
bells added their voices to the tumult. For full five minutes the
deafening noise continued until Hugh’s ears beat with it and his head
rang. The street had become alive with people, women with aprons over
their heads, men in overalls, scores of children, as though each of the
little houses had sent forth a dozen inhabitants. Down at a far corner
Hugh saw the two Indians come into view again, the man with his head up,
listening, like a deer, the woman with a pleading hand laid upon his
arm. He brushed her aside roughly, and disappeared beyond the turn, she
following meekly after. No one noticed them except himself, Hugh felt
certain, since every face was turned northward to the wooded rocky hill
that overhung the town. Puffs of white steam rose here and there among
the trees, showing the mine buildings or the lumber mills from which the
whistling came.

This was no ordinary blowing of signals to mark the noon hour: the
excitement, the anxious faces, the hideous insistence of the noise all
told him that. Just at the instant that he felt he could not endure the
tumult longer, silence fell.

“What is it, what is it?” he gasped his inquiry, and one of the men
standing by the steps, the one who had spoken of Laughing Mary, began to
explain.

“You see—about four days ago—” The words were cut off by a new outbreak
of the clamor. It rose higher this time and lasted longer, it rolled
back from the hills and seemed to echo from the ground itself. Twice it
fell and twice broke out once more, a long fifteen minutes of
unendurable bedlam. The man, undismayed, called his explanations into
Hugh’s ear, sometimes drowned out by the uproar, sometimes left shouting
alone in a moment of throbbing silence. What Hugh caught came in broken
fragments.

“Two fellows—hunting—gone four days now—lost some way—these
hills—blowing all the whistles at once—hoped—might hear—”

The screaming and clanging finally died away, leaving one long-drawn
siren to drop alone, while Hugh’s informant also lowered his voice to
ordinary speech.

“We do that hereabouts when people get lost. Every whistle in three
counties is blowing right now, so if they don’t hear one and follow it,
they may another. Sometimes it brings them back, more often it doesn’t.
It’s an ugly thing to get lost in these hills.”

“How long did you say they had been gone?” asked Hugh.

“Three—four—no, by George, it’s five days. There’s their pile of mail
that’s been collecting on the window ledge, and those first letters are
five days old.”

The man glanced at a pile of envelopes that lay just inside the window.
The upper one was yellow and caught Hugh’s involuntary attention as he
stood by the door. The people were dispersing and the excitement
evidently was over.

The telegraph envelope was one of those transparent-faced ones, showing
the name and address inside. Half unconsciously Hugh read, “John
Edmonds, Rudolm, Minnesota.” He turned with a gasp and looked closer. A
little of the typewritten line was visible below, “Thanks for letter,
will arrive—”

It was his own message that had never been received. His two friends,
his only two friends within a thousand miles, were the men who had
vanished into the forest.




                               CHAPTER II

                         THE BROWN BEAR’S SKIN


It was not until some hours after his dismaying discovery that Hugh was
able to get any particulars of what had really happened to John and Dick
Edmonds. A dozen people at once tried to tell him of the affair, putting
in much comment on what they themselves thought and what they had said
to friends at the time, with most confusing results. Although he was so
bewildered, he began at least to understand one thing, that Rudolm was
not at all the town he had believed it to be. He had considered it
lonely, empty of friends, dull and lifeless, and behold, it was quite
otherwise! In fifteen minutes—probably the exact length of time required
by little Nels Larson to travel the whole length of the street and tell
every one of the newcomer who was a friend of the lost Edmonds—words of
kindliness and sympathy began to pour in upon him. Long before the
small, unofficial towncrier had come to the last house, the first
sunburned face had appeared in Linda Ingmarsson’s doorway, and the first
heavy Swedish voice had asked for “that boy that vas Edmonds friendt.”
The shyness and reserve that usually stood firm between these people and
any stranger, melted away at the sight of some one who was in trouble.
It was, at last, by the very greatness of their proffered kindness that
Hugh began to realize how serious his trouble was.

It was only the last visitor who gave him the actual facts of the
affair, Nels Larson, Senior, a little elderly Swede with a wrinkled skin
and puckered eyes that were mere pin-pricks of blue. He chanced to be
left alone with Hugh and proved so shy and slow of speech that he was
able to answer direct questions and make the truth clear without
complicating it with opinions of his own. He said that the two Edmonds
boys had gone hunting, and expected, so far as any one knew, to be gone
but a day, that they had possibly meant to meet an Indian guide in the
woods but had left Rudolm alone save for their dog. That one day of
their absence had passed, and two, without causing any anxiety, that
search had been made on the third day and the fourth and fifth, but
without result.

“But does no one know which way they went?” asked Hugh desperately.
“Couldn’t they have got to some other town? Couldn’t they just have
taken a wrong road? Aren’t people often lost that long and still able to
get back?”

The other slowly shook his head.

“There’s no town between here and Canada,” he said; “no, indeed, nor for
a hundred miles north of the border either. And there are no houses in
the direction the Edmonds boys went, nor camps—and roads, bless you,
these woods don’t have roads. Just trees—and trees—and trees—and Heaven
help the man who loses his bearings amongst them!”

“Are people still looking for them?” cried Hugh; “surely they haven’t
given up hope yet!”

“There is no hope,” Nels answered with a sigh; “we would look for a year
if it would be of any use; but why go on searching when we know they
cannot be found?”

He got to his feet to go, leaving Hugh still sitting, stunned, trying to
think what this cruel news must mean to him. At the door Nels paused
and, even without the encouragement of a question, actually volunteered
a remark of his own.

“There is something I must tell you also,” he said, “for others may say
it to you and perhaps not with kindness. It is that John Edmonds left
his accounts in bad shape at the bank, that his books are confused and
there is talk of money missing. So there are some people, and presently
there will be more and more, who say that even if he is not dead in the
woods he will never come back.”

“That is not true,” cried Hugh, springing from his seat, “that cannot
possibly be true.”

“No,” returned Nels, “I do not think it can be. There are many rascals
in this neighborhood, but John Edmonds is not one of them.”

He put on his battered old hat that was so big it came far down over his
ears, took up his thick umbrella, opened the door and went out. Hugh sat
by the table, his chin in his hand, thinking deeply long after Nels had
gone. It was hard to know what to believe, what to think and above all
what to do.

He could hear Linda Ingmarsson talking to her children in the next room
and presently one small boy came in and seated himself, without saying a
word, on a chair by the door. He seemed to think that politeness
demanded his sitting with the guest, although to talk to him was far
beyond his power. Linda’s husband stood at the door a moment, but went
away again. He was a big, quiet man, seeming much like an overgrown
edition of his small son. Hugh, beginning to look about him, concluded
that this room was quite the cleanest place that he had ever seen. The
boards of the floor were worn smooth with much scrubbing, the copper
kettles on the shelves winked in the firelight. In one corner stood a
quaintly carved cupboard, painted a most brilliant blue, that must
surely have come from Sweden, or have been made by the patient labor of
Ingmarsson’s great rough hands. In the center of the table was another
bit of carving, a really beautiful wooden bowl with a raised wreath of
water lilies fashioned about its edge. It was full of moss and gay red
bunches of partridge berries. The Ingmarsson child saw Hugh’s eyes
resting upon it and, with a mighty effort, managed to speak.

“My Uncle Oscar, he made it,” the youngster said in his little Swedish
voice; “he brought it to us with the berries in it the last time he came
from the mountain.”

It was his only attempt at conversation and, although bravely
undertaken, lapsed immediately into frightened silence.

Linda, entering just then, finally broke the quiet of Hugh’s
reflections.

“Supper will soon be ready,” she said. “Carl, take the visitor upstairs
and show him where to put his things.”

The small guide went obediently before Hugh, climbed the narrow stairs
and opened the door of the guest’s room, a tiny place with sloping
ceiling and square dormer windows, everything shining with the same
cleanliness so evident below. Carl opened the cupboard doors, pulled out
the drawers of the press and finally, evidently thinking that
hospitality demanded his speaking again, pointed to a picture on the
wall.

“That is the two Edmonds,” he said; “did you know them?”

Hugh, looking closely at the faded little photograph, managed to
recognize Dick Edmonds, but had no knowledge of the older brother whom
he had never seen. Beside Dick, with his nose in his master’s hand,
stood a big, white dog.

“That is Nicholas,” announced Karl; “he came from Russia. We Swedes do
not like Russians, but we all loved Nicholas. John Edmonds said he used
to belong to a prince in Russia, so he was different from our dogs. He
used to laugh and call him the Grand Duke. With men and other dogs
Nicholas was very proud but he always would play with us. So we liked
him. And how he could run!”

“He is a beauty,” Hugh agreed heartily; “I should like to see him.”

He turned toward the window where the hinged sash stood open and through
which he could look out at the sunset and at the distant mountain black
against a flaming sky. He could see most of the little town also where
the children were running home and men were coming from their work and
gay voices could be heard calling greetings from one doorway to another.
The tiny houses had a comfortable, cozy look, now that he knew what
warm-hearted people lived within. Carl came to his side, seeming to feel
more at ease, and began to point out one place after another.

“That is Nels Larson’s house,” he said, “and that is the landing where
the boats come in from the lake and that,” pointing to the mountain, “is
Jasper Peak. My Uncle Oscar lives way out beyond there.”

“He lives on the mountain?” said Hugh; “that must be very far away.”

“No, not on the mountain,” corrected Carl, “beyond it. On the mountain
there lives a—a—another man.”

“What sort of a man?” inquired Hugh, caught by the little boy’s change
of tone.

“Oh, a strange man. He is half Indian; people call him a pirate; his
name is Jake.”

“Has he no other name?” asked Hugh; “is every one so afraid of him as
you are?”

“His whole name is Half-Breed Jake, and, yes, every one is afraid of him
except just my mother and her brother Oscar and maybe Dick Edmonds and
the dog Nicholas. Every one else.”

“Does he live out there on the mountain all alone?” Hugh inquired.

“Yes, he will not let any one live near him. He will not let any one
shoot in his woods or fish in his streams or paddle a canoe on his end
of the lake.”

“And are they all his?” In spite of being so absorbed in other things
Hugh was growing interested.

“Not really his, he just says they are,” Carl explained vaguely. “No one
dares go near his place now after—after some things that have happened.
The Indians will do anything he says, they and even some of the Swedes
say that the bullets from his gun can shoot farther than any other
man’s, and that his ill will can find you out no matter where you hide.
Yes, we call him the Pirate of Jasper Peak.”

“But you say your Uncle Oscar lives out there too?”

“Oh, yes,” assented Carl, “but you know with my Uncle Oscar it is all
different.”

Linda called from below, causing her small son to rush clattering down
the stairs and leave Hugh alone. He stood long by the window watching
the sunset fade and pondering deeply.

“So there can be pirates this far north after all,” he was thinking,
“and father was right.”

With the thought came a sudden pang of homesickness, a longing for his
father, for the comfortable, ordinary life at home, for everything that
was usual and familiar. What would become of him here, he wondered, what
could be the end of this venture “on his own”? What a strange place it
was to which his journey had led him, what strange people he had met or
heard of that day, the clumsy, friendly Swedes, kind-hearted Linda
Ingmarsson, that mysterious Jake out on the mountain, that brother Oscar
whose road it was that climbed the hill. He ran through the list over
and over and found that his mind, with odd insistence, kept coming back
to the road that “now went nowhere but some day would go far.”

The announcement that supper was ready interrupted his reflections,
after which he received a pressing invitation from Carl to go with him
to get the mail. Rudolm knew no such luxury as a postman, it went every
night to fetch its letters at the general store where John Benson sold
meat and calico and mackinaw coats. The little postmistress who sorted
the mail behind her own official counter was an expert at her task, for
no one besides herself could make head or tail of some of the Swedish
and Finnish scrawls that came from the Old Country or the
French-Canadian flourishes on the addresses of the picture postcards. No
one else could have remembered that Baptiste Redier liked to have his
papers accumulate for six months while he was away at the lumber camp,
or that Gus Sorenson must not be trusted with the Malmsteads’ mail if he
had been drinking, or that it was a kind act to pretend to look through
the pigeonholes when an Indian asked for mail, even though it was well
known that none of these Chippewas ever got a letter. “Stamp-stamp,”
would go the marking machine behind the window, “stamp”—a long pause and
then another brisk “stamp-stamp.” No matter in what a hurry were the
patrons of the Rudolm postoffice, they must wait, every man, woman and
child of them, until Miss Christina had read all the postals.

The little place was already crowded when Hugh arrived, mostly with men
and children, for the women did not often come for the mail, it was
their hour for washing dishes. Hugh sat down on a bench in the corner to
listen to the talk going on about him in all degrees of broken English.
It concerned mostly the lost Edmonds boys, but occasionally drifted back
to the universal subject, the war, for this was the time when the
American army was gathering in France, when Russia was crumbling, when
the first pinch of winter was beginning to be felt abroad and the cry
was going up over all the world to America for bread. By and by the
general talk died away and all began to listen to some one who was
airing a grievance very loudly on the other side of the room. He was a
big man with a rough corduroy coat and a rougher voice which he raised
very loud in the height of his indignation.

“I tell you there wasn’t a better bale of furs in the whole Green River
country. I got some myself, trapping, and bought some from the Indians,
and there wasn’t one pelt but was a beauty, but the brown bear skin was
the best of all. Five hundred dollars I would ’a’ got for them, just
that little bale, not a cent less—and when I come to myself again every
hide and hair of them was gone!”

“And you can’t tell who took them?” questioned one of his audience.

“I can’t tell but I could guess right enough. I didn’t see nobody, only
a billion or two stars when I was hit over the head in the dark, and
that was all. There’s only one man around here who will do that kind of
dirty work and he hails from Jasper Peak. That’s the kind of fur trading
he likes to do, let some other man go through the snow and the cold,
spending his good money, risking his life, tramping along his line of
traps or from one Indian camp to another, wheedling the red rascals into
selling their furs, and just as a fellow’s nearly home again, dreaming
about the profit there’s going to be this time, here comes some one
sneaking behind in the dark and the whole thing’s gone!”

“You was lucky he did not shoot you, Ole Peterson,” commented another
friend. “He does not care much who he shoots, that Jake he doesn’t.”

“I would just like to meet up with him somewhere,” Peterson returned
quickly. “A man can’t do nothing when they sneak up on him in the dark,
but if I ever have the chance, why, I’ll just show him once. I wouldn’t
have sold those furs for less than seven hundred dollars, I swear. And
that bear skin, I tell you, was a prize.”

“Wass it so beeg?” asked an old Swede, sitting in the corner near Hugh.

“No, sir, it wasn’t big, but it was rare. Just a bear cub it was, but a
cub that had turned out blond by some freak and surprised his old black
mother some, I’ll be bound. Not the brown, even, that grizzly bears are,
but a light, gold, yellow brown. The Indian who had it vowed he wouldn’t
sell it, not for any price, but at last I got it away from him. And I’d
like just to meet the fellow that stole it from me. Shooting would be
too good, I’d—”

Miss Christina opened her window at this point and put an end to the
fearful threats of Ole Peterson. Hugh received his mail almost the first
of all, a short and very hasty note from his father, which did not say
openly that they were about to embark but contained more than one veiled
hint to that effect. He read it through three times, trying to make the
most of the censored information it contained. Then, his attention
caught by the complete silence that had fallen around him, he looked up
to see what had happened.

Nothing, apparently, had really occurred except that a newcomer had
entered abruptly and banged the door behind him. Yet as he strode over
to the middle of the room every person in the crowded place drew back,
the big Swedes elbowing the quick Canadians, the children standing on
tip-toes to peer under the arms or around the shoulders of their
protecting elders. The space that had been filled a moment before by a
chattering, friendly group, became all in an instant silent and empty
with the big man standing quite alone.

He was very big, as Hugh noticed at first glance, taller than any other
man there, and strong and heavy in proportion. One of his broad
shoulders sagged a little under the strap of a heavy pack which he
presently unbuckled and dropped upon the floor. His hair was very long
and black under his slouch hat and his skin was so dark that Hugh felt
sure he must be an Indian.

“Any mail for me?” he called across to the postmistress without
troubling himself to turn around.

Miss Christina had disappeared somewhere into the protecting depths of
the postoffice department. Her voice rose, trembling, from behind the
partition.

“I think so,” she said, “but it’s been here some time. I will have to
look it out.”

“No hurry,” returned the man with an insolent laugh at the quavering of
her voice; “don’t disturb yourself so much. I can wait.”

He threw himself down upon one of the benches and pushed back his hat.
Hugh felt something like a shudder when he first saw his eyes; they were
blue, a pale unlovely blue that looked terrifyingly strange, set in his
dark face.

“Hello, friends,” the stranger continued genially. “I thought I would
look in and get my mail before I was off down-State to sell my furs.
I’ve got a fine lot this year, the best that’s come out of Canada for a
long while.”

There was no answer, unless one could call little Eva Stromberg’s
frightened squeak a reply, or the uneasy shifting of old Nels Larson’s
big feet.

“Would you like to see what I’ve got?” the man went on, seemingly quite
untroubled by the lack of friendliness. “You won’t see anything so fine
again for quite a month of Sundays, nor anything that’s worth so much
money, you poor penny-pinchers. Come here, sis,” he added to one of the
smaller children; “you would like to see my furs, now, wouldn’t you?”

The little girl, afraid to disobey, advanced with something of the air
of a charmed bird, and came trembling to his side. He opened the big
pack and spread out its contents on the floor.

“That’s otter,” he said to her; “don’t be frightened, just feel of it.
Isn’t it silky and soft?”

She passed her hand obediently over the silvery brown surface and then,
bursting into terrified sobs, ran to take refuge behind her father. The
stranger, undisturbed, went on spreading out his wares.

“This wolf skin now should bring me something big,” he said. “Of course
wolf isn’t much compared to otter but I’ve never seen finer fur. Step
up, folks, and look, it’s a dead wolf that isn’t going to bite you.”

It was Hugh alone who felt sufficient curiosity to come nearer. A wolf
skin, an otter skin! He had never seen one before. He came closer and
closer as the man unrolled more and more of the soft, furry pelts.

“Now this—”

He stopped, for even he must take notice of the gasp that went through
the crowd, a gasp of surprise and indignant protest. Only Hugh, eager
and excited, took no notice of the strange tension in the air, so
astonished was he at the sight of what lay in the man’s hands.

“Why,” he blurted out, “it’s Ole Peterson’s brown bear skin!”

A quiver seemed to run through the whole of the crowd, while the silence
became so complete that Miss Christina’s clock upon the wall went
tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, three times before any one seemed to
move or before the storm of the stranger’s fury broke forth.

“Whose did you say?” he snarled, rising suddenly and standing over Hugh,
a threatening, towering figure. “Whose did you say it was?”

Hugh thought afterwards that never, as long as he lived, would he forget
how terrible were those shifty, pale-blue eyes in that lowering face. He
could never say it was real courage, but only rash, hot anger that made
him answer defiantly,

“I said it was Ole Peterson’s. He told us it was the only one in the
country and that it was stolen from him.”

The man gave a queer, harsh laugh.

“Ole, come here,” he ordered.

There came out from the corner a very different Peterson from the
reckless, angry person who had voiced his wrongs a few moments before.
This poor creature was fairly sallow with terror, and was apparently
trying to make his large figure as small and inconspicuous as possible.
He swallowed convulsively two or three times before he was able to
speak.

“What is it, Jake?” he questioned meekly.

The man called Jake flung the skin toward him.

“Is that yours?” he asked in a tone that said plainly, “Claim it if you
dare.”

Ole passed his hand lovingly over the lustrous brown gold of the thick
fur. He held it up so that all could see the shape of the chubby little
bear cub whose coat it once had been, and the dark hairy paws that still
dangled from it. He smoothed the dark shadings of the fur and looked at
them with longing.

“Is it yours?” Jake insisted, turning from Hugh to advance a threatening
step toward Ole.

“No,” said Peterson at last in a frightened husky voice. “No, it ain’t
mine, Jake.”

“Then what the—?” The stranger made one stride toward Hugh and caught
his shoulder in a grasp that made the bones grind together. The boy
looked about him desperately, surely some one of all these men would
come forward to his aid. He saw pity in the eyes of many of them, and
one or two making a movement toward him and then drawing back. It needed
only that to prove to him at last that this was the much-feared Pirate
of Jasper Peak.

Yet before either could move further, before Jake could finish his
question, help came from an unexpected quarter. The door beside them
opened and closed quickly, and Linda Ingmarsson came in. The wind had
blown her yellow hair from under her kerchief, her cheeks were glowing
and her eyes bright. She made a single step to Hugh’s side and laid her
strong, firm fingers on Jake’s crushing hand. He withdrew it as quickly
as though something had stung him.

“So you are at your old bullying ways,” she said scornfully; “you found
long ago that there was one woman not afraid of you, now you find a boy.
It is like you to believe that he would fear you as the rest do, but
this time you are wrong. And you know that there is nothing that can
make you so angry as to find some one you cannot terrify.”

He muttered something but did not speak aloud.

“Come,” she said to Hugh, and, “Come, Carl,” she added as she held out
her hand to her small son and moved toward the door. But Jake barred the
way.

“He tried to tell me that bear skin wasn’t mine,” he blustered. “He said
it was Ole Peterson’s, but Peterson vows it isn’t his. What do you make
of that? Has he any right to call me a thief?”

Linda answered quite undisturbed.

“He is a shrewder boy than are we Swedes,” she said, “and has been quick
to see the truth. Yet he is not the only one to know you for a thief.”

The man’s blazing eyes narrowed into slits and his grating, harsh voice
was full of suppressed fury.

“There are not many who have dared to call me that, Linda Ingmarsson,”
he said, “and whoever does it, whether man, woman or boy, will live to
be bitterly sorry. John Edmonds did, and where is he? Out there in the
woods, I hear, lost, dead beyond a doubt, he and his brother, the
worthless two of them. I heard the whistles blowing as I came down the
valley, and I thought to myself, ‘You can blow them until they split,
but you will never call him back.’” He lowered his voice, yet still
spoke so that all could hear—“He didn’t want to be called back.”

“John Edmonds and his brother will come back,” insisted Linda steadily,
“for they have friends who believe in them and will help them still.
Whatever John has left in confusion he will make plain and straight when
he returns.”

“What friends has he?” cried Jake scornfully. “Before another day has
passed every one in Rudolm Valley will know just why they went, both of
them, and then where will their friends be?”

“There is still my brother Oscar,” returned Linda.

“And do you think your brother Oscar can save them? He does not even
know what has happened, and if he did, what help could he give?” Jake
laughed harshly. “He is having all that he can do to save himself, these
days, has Oscar Dansk.”

Hugh could feel Linda’s hand tighten on his arm as though, in spite of
herself, she winced under the last words. He stepped in front of her to
face their common enemy, but she spoke before he could.

“The Edmonds are not friendless,” she declared. “No matter what all the
world may say there will still be some of us who know they are honest
and who will find and save them in the end.”

She moved to the door, and Jake, seeing that he could no longer block
her way, suddenly stepped back and flung it open with a great flourish.

“I wish you luck,” he said; “it will be a long task, finding and saving
two men who either have fled the country or are already dead.”

Linda turned back to speak her last word as she and Hugh and Carl went
out together into the dark.

“I know they have not fled the country,” she said, “and I am certain
they are not dead. Had anything happened to them, their dog would have
been here to tell us. So I know they are alive since Nicholas has not
come back.”




                              CHAPTER III

                             LAUGHING MARY


Hugh sat in his little room for a long time that night, reviewing his
adventures of this scant half day in Rudolm. He found it very difficult
to decide what to do, in the light of this unexpected turn of his
affairs, the disappearance of the two Edmonds. Of one thing he was hotly
certain, that John Edmonds had not vanished of his own will. The very
fact of Hugh’s being there, urged to come by both the brothers, showed
that their absence was entirely unplanned. He was less certain, however,
of the chances of their ever coming safe home again. Linda Ingmarsson
was sure they would, but she was only one woman holding her opinion
against a score of men. He wished that he could make some effort of his
own to find his friends, wished it more and more as he went slowly over
the situation and realized how desperate it was. What could he do, a
boy, alone, knowing nothing of woodcraft and the cruel mysteries of the
forest? Nothing, reason told him plainly, absolutely nothing.

Quite evidently he must go back to that cousin in New York who was to
help him if things went wrong. That things had gone wrong, from the
moment of his getting off the train, onward through his terrifying
interview with Half-Breed Jake, was not to be denied. This seemed to be
one of the few certain facts in the whirling confusion of his affairs.
He recollected now how the friendly porter had felt misgivings as to the
length of his stay in Rudolm and had reminded him that the train that
would carry him back to the world he knew, would go through at six
o’clock in the morning. After long pondering, he decided to take it.

Just as he was about to go to bed he heard a sound at the window, a
handful of pebbles striking against the glass. He got up to look out and
saw some one standing on the doorstep below.

“It is I, Jethro Brown,” called a cautious voice. “Can you come down? I
want to talk to you.”

Hugh took up his candle and stole on tiptoe down the stairs. All of the
Ingmarssons were sound asleep. He contrived to shoot back the bolts and
open the front door without a sound. The clerk from the hotel, looking
more lank and awkward than ever in the candle light, stood waiting
outside.

“I saw your window was bright and I had some things to tell you,” he
said. “I am sorry to bring you down.”

Hugh blew out the candle and they sat down together on the doorstep.

“It is all right,” he said; “you wouldn’t have found me to-morrow. I am
going away early in the morning.”

“Going?” echoed the other in a tone of the greatest disappointment and
dismay. Then he heaved a deep sigh.

“Well,” he remarked, “I suppose it is the only thing you can do, but
somehow I had kind of hoped you were going to stay.”

“Why?” Hugh stared in astonishment, for what difference could it make to
any one whether he remained in Rudolm or went away?

Jethro sat staring at the ground between his feet and shuffled them
uneasily several times.

“That Half-Breed Jake has been at the hotel all evening,” he said at
last. “He has been talking a long time about the Edmonds boys and how
they have disappeared because they had to. It is true that John’s books
at the bank were pretty badly mixed and they have had an expert up to go
over them, but nothing has been proved yet, one way or the other. It
seemed to me, at last, that Jake talked rather too much. He always hated
the Edmonds boys, they were too square and honest and they had blocked
him more than once in some of his devilment. If there is a mean or a
cruel or a crooked way of doing a thing, he will do it. That’s Jake.”

“But why is every one so afraid of him?” inquired Hugh. “He is only one
man against all of you.”

“It is just part of living here to be afraid of him, I suppose, and to
try to keep out of trouble with him,” Jethro answered slowly. “The
Indians fear him so much that they will do anything he says; he
understands them as very few men do and he uses his knowledge to get
what he wants. A man who can control these Chippewas has a lot of power.
There is a white deer that ranges these woods once in a long time and is
supposed to bring bad luck. The Indians have a saying that whoever sees
the white deer or opposes Half-Breed Jake is sure to die inside a year.”

“But the Swedes have better sense than that!” exclaimed Hugh.

“The Swedes are very superstitious too, and once they are convinced of a
thing it is hard to make them change. And it does seem that whoever
stands in Jake’s way is cursed with bad fortune until he gives it up.
There are only a few that ever dared stand out against him, such as the
Edmonds boys, and where are they?”

Hugh sat quiet, watching the moon come up over the eastern rim of the
valley. He found Jethro as talkative as the Swedes were silent, but he
felt no very great interest in these accounts of Half-Breed Jake, a man
whom he instinctively hated and would, he hoped, never see again. Only
wonder as to why Jethro wished him to stay in Rudolm and what all these
details had to do with himself, held his lagging attention.

“Do you see that road,” Jethro went on heatedly, “that road yonder that
leads over the hill? That would have meant a lot to the people here, but
it came to nothing. It was to be built through the woods as far as
Jasper Peak and would have opened up the country at the upper end of the
lake. Jake stopped it. He calls all that country his, and is bound to
keep the fishing and the hunting and trapping for himself. He killed the
plan with open threats and secret lies: at first the men went at it with
a rush, but in the end somehow the whole thing fell through. It was the
first time he ever scored a real victory off Oscar Dansk.”

Hugh turned, his interest caught at last.

“That is one person I want to know about,” he said. “Who is this Oscar
Dansk?”

“He is Linda Ingmarsson’s younger brother,” Jethro answered. “You know
that much and it is hard to tell you a great deal more. Oscar isn’t like
the rest of us. I don’t quite know what to say about him; he is always
dreaming about something big, some way. His father must have been quite
a great person back in Sweden; he was poor to the end of his life, just
as every one in Rudolm is poor, but you can see that Oscar and Linda are
not quite the same kind of people as the rest.”

“He doesn’t live here in Rudolm?” Hugh said.

“Not now, he lives out beyond Jasper Peak. He is proving up on some kind
of a claim, homesteading, right in the country that Half-Breed Jake
calls his. He was here in April when war was declared and went down
pell-mell to Duluth to enlist, wanted to go into the Navy, I think,
these Swedes all do. But they wouldn’t take him, or for the army either,
I don’t know why. He came back in a few days, looking grim and set and
not saying a word to any one. He went right off into the woods again and
we’ve scarcely seen him since. It was a cruel disappointment, I think,
as bad as when he couldn’t build his road.”

“But why did he care so much about the road?”

Hugh’s curiosity about that mysterious highway had grown greater and
greater, yet even now it was not to be satisfied.

“He had something big in his mind,” Jethro said vaguely, “so big I never
quite understood it. He was a fellow who could always see farther than
the rest of us, I think. John Edmonds used to say he did, although even
he lost faith in the plan about the road at last, and that nearly broke
Oscar’s heart. Some people even said they had quarreled, but I don’t
believe it. Oscar wasn’t the sort to bear a grudge.”

Jethro thrust his hands deep into his pockets and turned at last to face
Hugh squarely.

“That is what I am getting at,” he said. “Oscar Dansk can find John and
Dick Edmonds if any man on earth can do it. But some one would have to
go out through the woods to tell him, otherwise it might be weeks before
he hears what has happened. And the only person to go is you.”

“I?” cried Hugh in amazement, “_I?_ Why, that’s impossible.”

“All right,” said the other briefly, “I was afraid maybe you would take
it that way. Of course, after all, you oughtn’t to try it. Well,
good-night.”

He shambled off into the dark, leaving Hugh still staring in
astonishment. He wished that he had not said quite so decisively that
the plan was impossible, so that at least he might have heard more of
it. How strange it was that, after leading up to the subject so long,
Jethro should have dropped it so quickly. Probably he himself knew that
it was impossible as well as did Hugh.

Very slowly he went up to bed, still wondering. It was in vain that he
tried to compose his mind to sleep: he could not, for thinking of what
Jethro had said. For an hour he tossed and turned and puzzled and
pondered. At last he got up and went to the window, thinking that he
might feel sleepy if he sat there for a while.

The moon was very bright now, so that all the little square houses
showed plainly, as did the white expanse of the empty street. Nothing
stirred in all of the sleeping town; the very quiet and peace did indeed
make him feel drowsy almost at once. He yawned a great yawn and was just
about to turn from the window when a moving shadow caught his eye. Some
one was coming down the deserted street, some one who walked noiselessly
but swiftly and with great determination. It was a woman, he could see,
an Indian squaw, with broad, bent shoulders and heavy dark hair. Even at
that distance and in the deceiving moonlight he felt certain that it was
the woman he had seen before, Laughing Mary.

She turned in at the gate and came hurrying up the path, but she did not
reach the door. Two men followed her, one lithe and stooping, the other
tall and moving with great strides—there was no doubt in Hugh’s mind
that it was Half-Breed Jake. He seized the woman by the shoulder and
whirled her about just as, very plainly, she was on the point of
mounting the doorstep and knocking at the door. There followed an
altercation, whispered, yet so full of fierceness and passionate gesture
that Hugh, at his window, could feel the fury of their quarrel even
there. It was almost like watching a dance of shadows, so noiseless did
they manage to be, although now and then he caught a low-voiced
sentence, couched in guttural Chippewa, and once, to his surprise, he
heard his own name, spoken very distinctly by Laughing Mary.

She was not smiling now but speaking volubly, gesticulating, urging and
insisting something, to which Jake slowly and determinedly shook his
head. She kept pointing to the bale of furs still under his arm and
seemed to be voicing her desire with such violence in the face of his
continued refusal that finally, in angry impatience, he raised his arm
as though to strike her. She winced and cowered, but still persisted,
advancing her dark wrinkled face almost into his to utter her last word.
Whatever she said seemed to have effect, for Jake’s arm dropped to his
side and, muttering angrily, he stooped down to open his pack and give
her what she demanded. What the coveted article was, Hugh could not see,
for the Indian husband, Kaniska, was standing in the way.

Then all three went out quickly through the gate, as silent and as swift
as ghosts. For the first time, Hugh noticed that Jake, who walked
behind, moved with a slight unevenness in his giant stride.

It had grown so late that Hugh in spite of his curiosity and excitement
was sleepy at last. He lay down again, going over and over once more the
puzzles of the day. What ought he to do? What had these strange people
to do with him? Why did Jethro say that he was the only one to go on
that impossible errand, why did the fellow not go himself? If there were
really a chance of his helping the Edmonds boys, Hugh would have risked
anything gladly, but this plan was such absolute madness! No, thought
Hugh, he had made up his mind, he would not change it again, he would go
to-morrow.

He arose at five, packed his belongings and, on hearing Linda stirring
in the kitchen, went down to explain to her. She heard him through in
silence and without protest.

“I suppose you must know best,” was her only comment.

When he made an attempt to thank her for all her kindness, she refused
to listen.

“The Edmonds boys are my friends,” she said, “and for them I would do
much. This was nothing.”

She came to the door to bid him good-by and stood watching him as he
went down the path to the gate. The morning mist lay heavy in the little
valley and stretched upward in wreaths over the hills. The air was cold,
so that he turned up his coat-collar and walked very briskly. Once he
looked back and saw that Linda Ingmarsson had come out to the gate and
stood leaning over it almost as though she were about to call him back.
She made no sign, however, so he turned once more and walked on toward
the station. He found that he was early, that the little building was
still locked and that he must sit down on the narrow bench at the edge
of the platform and wait. The mist lifted, little by little, until he
began to see the miles of blue water, the hills and the vast unbroken
forest sweeping down to the water’s edge. How would it be, he thought
with a shudder, to be lost in that unending maze of green?

Presently he heard footsteps coming up the stairs and around the corner
of the building. He glanced up quickly and saw that it was Jethro Brown
again, wearing a dingy straw hat on the back of his head and carrying a
suitcase. He loitered at the other end of the platform and would not
have come near, but Hugh arose from his seat and went straight to him.

“You must tell me,” he said, “why you thought I was the only one to
carry that news to Oscar Dansk. I have thought of nothing else all
night.”

Jethro flushed.

“I shouldn’t ever have spoken of it at all,” he stammered, “I don’t know
what possessed me. I just got to thinking and felt that something ought
to be done, that some one ought to go. But I should not have come to
you, of course you couldn’t do it.”

“If I did go,” Hugh persisted, “how would I ever find the way?”

He did not really know himself why he asked the question.

The other turned and pointed.

“You would follow that road to the top of the hill and where it ends you
would find a trail that runs across the range of forest beyond. It leads
to a little Chippewa village on Two Rivers; there’s an Indian boy there,
Shokatan, who could guide you the rest of the way. He got to be quite a
friend of mine when he came in to the Indian school near here and he
knows English, though he probably won’t be willing to speak it now. I
could give you a letter and I know he would help you.”

It was plain that Jethro had thought it all out.

Hugh still stood pondering.

“Why don’t any of the Swedes go?” he asked, “aren’t they willing?”

“They are willing enough,” Jethro returned, “but they have given up.
They say there is no hope. Once they have made up their minds there is
no changing them.”

“And why,” questioned Hugh bluntly, “don’t you go yourself?”

“Oh,” Jethro answered simply, “I forgot to tell you that. Of course I
would go only I am leaving to-day. I’ve enlisted. I’ve got my orders.
I’m going to Fort Snelling.”

“Oh,” cried Hugh, “how did you manage? My father wouldn’t let me. How
old are you?”

“I am a little under age but I made them take me,” replied Jethro.
“There wasn’t much trouble about getting consent, I haven’t any one that
my going would make any difference to.”

Hugh’s whole view of the affair underwent a sudden and tremendous
change. If Jethro was going to the war, why, that made everything
different! He must think and think quickly, for, far off among the
hills, he heard the whistle of the approaching train.

“Well,” Jethro said, breaking into his reverie, “I will be taking the
forward coach when the train comes in, so I may not see you again.
Good-by.”

He reached out his huge, red hand and Hugh shook it, still half dazed.

“Did you write that letter to the Indian?” he said, and, as the other
nodded, “Give it to me. I haven’t decided yet but I—I might need it.”

Jethro pulled a paper from his pocket and handed it to him.

“No, no,” he cried, immediately after, “it is not the right thing at all
for you to go. Do not think about it again. Here’s the train. Good-by.”

“Good-by,” said Hugh, still in doubt, “good-by and good luck.”

Jethro strode away down the platform just as the big locomotive came
thundering in. Hugh was turning slowly toward the Pullman coaches at the
further end when he heard quick short footsteps behind him and little
Carl Ingmarsson very red and breathless came panting up.

“I wanted to say good-by,” he said; “we never knew you were going until
Mother told us.” He laid his square, firm little hand in Hugh’s.

“It was good of you to come,” returned Hugh. “What did your mother say
about my going?”

“She didn’t say much,” Carl replied, “I think she had been crying.”

“Crying?” echoed Hugh; “why?” This seemed the most amazing thing of all
the surprises that had come to him.

“I think she didn’t want you to go,” the little boy answered, “I don’t
understand it. She doesn’t often cry.”

So there was more than one person who wanted him to help and was
confident of his success. And even Half-Breed Jake and Laughing Mary
seemed to feel that he was in some way involved in the matter. Should he
go or stay? Time was passing.

The grinning porter looked at him doubtfully, then picked up his stool
and climbed up the steps of the last car. The long train, with its
shining brass rails, hooded vestibules and sleepy passengers peering
from the windows, looked as though it had come from another world than
this wild, wooded country where such strange things could come to pass.
The brakeman glanced inquiringly over his shoulder and shouted,

“All aboard!”

The bell began to jangle, the wheels creaked and groaned, the heavy cars
slowly gathered headway—there was still time to run and catch the last
step, but Hugh did not move. The line of cars, with a final echoing
whistle, slid away into the morning mist and disappeared behind the
shoulder of a hill, leaving him behind, committed at last to his
adventure.




                               CHAPTER IV

                        THE HEART OF THE FOREST


Linda Ingmarsson was standing at the door when Hugh and Carl came up the
path. She did not seem to be at all surprised to see him.

“I met Jethro Brown at the station,” he explained briefly. “He told me,
oh, quite a lot of things. I decided not to take the train, to go into
the woods instead.”

Linda shook her head gravely.

“I think I know what he told you,” she said. “It is a mad plan. You
ought not to go.”

“But I’m going,” returned Hugh, and she smiled.

“Yes, I believe you are going,” she answered, “and perhaps I would not
stop you if I could.”

The children came clattering in and Ingmarsson appeared by the door, so
there was no more discussion just then. Later, however, when the various
members of the family had set off to work or to school, Linda came up to
Hugh’s room bringing an armful of things for him, a pack such as hunters
carry, heavy boots, thick wool socks, a mackinaw coat.

“You will need all these,” she said. “It may be that you will be gone
some time.”

She advised him as to which of his own possessions were the most
necessary to take with him and showed him how to pack them in the
smallest possible space.

“Leave all of your other things here,” she directed, “and most of your
money, too; you will have little need of it where you are going and—you
might meet Half-Breed Jake in the forest.”

“Does he do that kind of stealing too?” Hugh asked.

“He does every kind,” was her brief reply.

Hugh accomplished the rest of his preparations in silence except for one
question.

“Is your brother Oscar old?” he inquired.

Linda laughed.

“I am not so very old myself,” she answered, “and he is much younger
than I, not a great deal older than you, I should think. You are not
quite a grown man yet, and he has only just ceased being a boy. That is
all the difference.”

She put the last thing into his pack and helped him to pull the straps
tight.

“We are ready now,” she said, “and I know you would like to go at once,
but it is not wise. It is a long day’s journey even to Two Rivers, and
if you set out now you could not reach there until hours after midnight.
So you had better start at daylight to-morrow.”

It was before dawn next day when she knocked softly at his door. When he
had slipped downstairs and had a hasty breakfast in the kitchen, she
went out upon the steps with him and gave him the most explicit
directions as to how he was to go. She had never been so far as Jasper
Peak or the end of the lake where her brother lived, but she could tell
him, almost mile by mile, the way to the Indian encampment where the
Chippewa boy, Shokatan, could put him on the next stage of his journey.

“You should not go,” she said again at the last, but the light of
excitement danced in her eyes as plainly as in Hugh’s.

He shouldered his pack, adjusted the straps and held out his hand to say
good-by. The spotless house, as he looked about it for the last time,
seemed a very homelike little place even though he had known it for only
a day. The white, scrubbed floor, the bright blue cupboard, the picture
on the wall of the Edmonds boys and their great white dog—how soon would
he see them all again?

Even in early-rising Rudolm there was no one yet abroad to see him go.
He went out the gate, past a half dozen houses, across a stretch of
meadow, came out at last upon the road, Oscar’s road, and set off up the
hill.

The sun was just coming up over the ridge to the eastward, the birds
were beginning to chirp in the thickets and the tall, scattered pine
trees were bowing their heads in the autumn wind. Very little of all
this did Hugh notice for he had eyes of wonder and interest only for the
road upon which he was traveling. It wound up the slope, grass-grown in
many places, as though very few feet had trodden it in the past year. It
was built of stone and gravel, well built too, as he could easily
perceive, for it mounted the hillside in easy grades with wide, even
curves, and it still showed the weed-filled ditches that had been dug to
drain it and it spanned a little stream on a high, stout bridge. Hugh
tramped on up the slope, crossed the summit of the hill and was about to
descend on the other side when—

“Oh!” he cried suddenly and stood still in surprise.

He had known that the road would not carry him far, but he had not
realized that it would end as abruptly as though sheared off with a
knife. The dense wall of trees and underbrush that had hemmed it in on
both sides had closed together before him and completely blocked the
way. He could actually see the sharp line where the gravel roadbed ended
and the soft leaf-mold began, while just before him he spied in the
grass a broken ax and a rusty pick, as though the last workman had
ceased his labors so suddenly as to have even left his tools. Hugh had
to stand and look for some minutes before he could distinguish the
narrow trail threading its way off among the trees, the path that he
must now follow.

Down the hillside it led him, over great tree trunks, under low-hanging
branches, through thickets that seemed almost impenetrable. The noonday
sun began to feel hot, even among the trees, and the air seemed close
and heavy as he progressed further and further into the valley. It was a
great relief to hear suddenly the cool patter of what sounded like
falling water and a great disappointment to find that it came only from
a grove of quaking aspen trees where the wind among the leaves made just
the sound of rain. Once past these, however, the going was a little
easier, for on the next hill the birches and poplars gave way to solid
pine forest and the trail led upward between black trunks and over a
carpet of fallen needles. He came out, at last, on the summit of the
slope and stopped a moment to look back. Nothing but hills beyond hills,
forest beyond forest could be seen; the little town of Rudolm had
utterly disappeared. Only a sharp glint of blue at the end of the valley
and the rising bulk of the mountain to the westward showed the familiar
landmarks of Red Lake and Jasper Peak.

He sat down here to eat his lunch and to rest a little, for his knees
were beginning to weary and the pack was heavy on his unaccustomed
shoulders. When he arose at length and trudged on he found that he could
no longer make such good time; he had perhaps set too fast a pace at
first and worn himself out too soon. It was a long, long way over the
next ridge and down into the valley beyond, so long that the sun had
disappeared and the hollows were beginning to fill with shadow when he
came finally to the foot of the steep incline. The long, gray northern
twilight held, however, so that he had no real difficulty in following
the trail, faint as it was, that led him to the edge of a stream,
skirted its bank and brought him, just as heavy darkness fell, within
sight of a row of fires that must belong to the Chippewa encampment.

Indian dwellings are far more picturesque than imposing, so at least
Hugh concluded as he approached the huddle of teepees, mere shelters of
skins and blankets stretched over birch poles. A woman was cooking by
the nearest fire; she sat back upon her heels and gazed at him stolidly,
but made no answer when he asked for the boy Shokatan. Some children
came crawling out from one of the tents and also stared at him but not a
word could he get from them. He stood irresolute, not quite knowing what
to do, when another squaw, who sat at the second fire, holding a baby,
suddenly turned and greeted him with a strange, vacant smile, which he
recognized at once as Laughing Mary’s. Again he asked for Shokatan, and
she pointed silently at a boy who was coming toward him from the edge of
the stream where he had evidently been fishing.

“Jethro Brown sent me to you and gave me this letter,” began Hugh, but
he received no answer, only the same stolid stare. The boy held out his
hand for the paper, turned it over and over without making even a
pretense of reading it, then grunted, “No English,” and, turning, walked
away.

It was an awkward moment for Hugh and a most discouraging one.
Apparently he was to get no help here for the continuing of his journey,
while the thought of trying to go back, through the dark, in his present
weary state was quite too appalling. Almost without thinking, he
unbuckled his pack, laid it down on the grass and seated himself at the
nearest fire. Two children and an old man moved over to make room for
him, yet no one said a word or regarded his presence with the least
surprise. Presently a woman, he thought it was Laughing Mary, but in the
uncertain light could not make sure, came over and put down some food
before him.

He was hungry enough to have eaten anything, but he thought then and
long afterward that it was just as well that he should never know of
what that savory stew was made. It might be—no, he concluded firmly, he
would make no guess as to what it was—nectar and ambrosia was what it
tasted like and he ate it all. Afterward he went down to the river to
wash his hands and to have a long drink of the cool, running water.
Looking back at the camp he thought what a curious picture it made with
the leaping fires, the shadowy teepees and the black figures moving
noiselessly to and fro.

Somebody startled him by touching his arm as he sat staring. It was the
boy, Shokatan, carrying Hugh’s pack which he had left beside the fire.
Not a word did the Indian speak, but he motioned to a canoe that lay
bottom upward on the grassy bank, and, by a grunt, indicated that he
wished Hugh’s help in lifting it. With some wonder, Hugh arose to assist
him, and in a moment had set it afloat on the rippling shallows of the
little stream. The Indian produced two paddles and slipped into his
place in the stern; Hugh laid his pack in the bottom of the boat, took
up a paddle and knelt in the bow, as they launched forth through the
reeds and out into the current. Another stream flowed into the first
just below the camp, making quite a wide brawling little river that
swept away into the dark.

Nothing had yet been said, but Hugh began to realize that this was the
second stage of his journey. Shokatan, feigning complete ignorance of
all English speech, as is the obstinate Indian habit, had nevertheless
read the letter unobserved and had agreed to help Hugh on his way.
Silently the canoe slipped out into the stream, was caught by the
current and with the aid of the two steady paddles shot swiftly onward
upon its course. There was no talk as they sped along, as the dripping
paddles rose and fell and mile after mile of river and forest dropped
behind them.

The stars began to come out above them and lay reflected in long drifts
of shimmering light as they crossed a quiet pool. Hugh began to see more
and more clearly the white birches on the shore, the reeds and rocking
lily-pads and the two lines of ripples that slanted outward from their
swiftly moving bow. There was a long, long reach of steady paddling
while the river grew ever wider in its twisted course toward the lake.

Hugh’s blade rose and dipped with the weary regularity of a machine and
his eyes were falling to with sleepiness. But he was startled suddenly
broad awake when they rounded a sharp bend and came full upon a gigantic
moose, its great shoulders, bearded chin and wide sweep of antlers
outlined sharp and black against the starlit water. The huge creature
stood knee deep in the cool flood, a long string of wet lily pads still
hanging from its dripping jaw. It looked so big as to seem scarcely real
and, for a second, stood as still as though carved in stone. Then, with
so mighty a splashing that the spent waves rocked the canoe, the great
beast plunged to the shore, scrambled up the bank and was off through
the forest with a stamping and crashing that could have been heard a
mile away.

“Ah-h-h—!” sighed Hugh, letting out the breath that excitement had
imprisoned within him for a full minute.

Again they went on in silence, the sound of the paddle behind Hugh being
the only proof that he was not alone in this whole forest-covered world.
Past one curve and then another they went, until they began to hear a
new sound ahead of them, a dull muffled roar that he did not in the
least understand. He was about to ask what it was when the Indian spoke
at last, a single inarticulate word which was evidently meant as a
warning. For in an instant they began to move faster and faster, the
sound grew louder, and they plunged, all in one breathless second, down
a foaming slope of shouting white rapids. Great black bowlders
shouldered up through the water, threatening them in a thousand
directions, but somehow the frail canoe threaded its way like magic in
and out among the rocks and came safe into the calm pool below. Before
Hugh could speak they had swept into another reach of tossing water and
then another, the canoe staggering back and forth in the furious
current, but coming finally out into the quiet stream again.

Then at last, warmed to friendliness perhaps by Hugh’s calm acceptance
of the dangers of the rapids, the Indian behind him spoke. His English,
learned at the Indian school near Rudolm, was nearly as good as Hugh’s
own, yet had the guttural burr of all Chippewa speech.

“You are going to Oscar Dansk’s?” he asked.

“I wish to,” answered Hugh without looking around. “Can you take me
there?”

“No,” was the immediate answer; “the white deer has been seen in the
woods near Jasper Peak and we Chippewas will not go where the white deer
goes.”

“But I must go on,” insisted Hugh. “How can I ever find the way without
you?”

“I will take you to the lake,” was the reply, “and around Harbin’s
Channel into the upper end of the lake you can paddle alone. You can
keep this canoe; it belongs to Oscar Dansk; he left it at Two Rivers,
for his last journey he made overland.”

They went on and on, until Hugh, knowing long since that it was past
midnight, began to feel that morning must be close at hand. They passed
more rapids, threaded narrow stretches of river, then wider ones, but
still the dark held and the journey seemed never to come to an end. At
last the Indian spoke again.

“That squaw whom you whites call Laughing Mary told me to tell you, I do
not know why, that the man of Jasper Peak passed through Two Rivers only
a few hours before you, and must be camping in these woods. I think that
is his fire now.”

Far off through the black tree trunks there could be seen a faint red
glare that grew brighter as they went along.

“Do you mean Half-Breed Jake?” inquired Hugh anxiously. “Was he alone?”

“There were two Indians with him,” replied Shokatan. “Yes, that is their
camp. It is better that they should not see us go by.”

They came nearer, saw the firelight flickering among the trees, saw two
black figures stretched upon the ground rolled in their blankets and
sound asleep. One man only was sitting upright, his back against a pine,
his face toward the stream, but he, too, seemed wrapped in deepest
slumber. The canoe floated so slowly that it seemed scarcely moving, the
Indian’s paddle dipped and dipped again without a sound. Foot by foot
they worked their way along, skirting the bank where the shadows lay,
sliding past like shadows themselves. The fire flared high, one of the
burning logs broke and settled with a crash, the man beside it awoke.
Both boys held their breath, while the canoe floated with the current;
slowly, slowly it crawled into the thick pool of shade cast by a big
maple that overhung the bank. The man, it was the Indian Kaniska,
listened as though vaguely conscious that something was stirring,
stooped to mend the fire, then stopped to listen again and to peer into
the dark. Almost imperceptibly the canoe moved on, was swallowed up in
denser shadow, slipped past a bend in the stream and left the camp out
of sight.

The moment of danger had roused Hugh into full wakefulness now and,
although he was unbelievably weary, he bent to his paddling with
redoubled energy. The trees seemed to recede on either hand, showing
overhead a myriad of stars, the river widened and they came out at last
on the vast dark flood of the open lake. The canoe’s bow wavered a
little, then turned toward shore where Shokatan, grasping an overhanging
branch, pulled it up to the bank and stepped out.

“The rest of the way you go alone,” he said. “Around that point, through
the channel, then when you are in the open lake again make for the
nearest sandy beach. You will see Oscar Dansk’s house on the hill
above.”

Before Hugh could speak, to protest against being left, to thank the
Indian for his help, he had pushed out the boat again and had
disappeared into the underbrush. Wearily the boy took up his paddle once
more and drove the canoe steadily onward parallel to the wooded shore.

He was thinking of what might be before him and of the strange journey
that lay behind, but for the most part his tired brain was concentrated
on the rise and dip, rise and dip of the paddle. One detail of his
night’s adventures alone seemed to stand out in his mind, only because
it was the one thing of all others that he could not understand. When,
at Two Rivers, Laughing Mary had turned to greet him in the firelight,
he had noticed that her baby was wrapped in something brownish yellow,
that even in the half darkness he was certain must be the brown
bear-cub’s skin. He was too worn out either to reason the matter out or
to drop it entirely from his mind.

Above him the stars were paling at last and the sky growing gray. He
came to the headland where the lake seemed suddenly to end and where
Jasper Peak, which towered directly over him now, sent a long rocky spur
down to the water’s edge. Through Harbin’s Channel he crept, out into
the second stretch of open water, a wide expanse, beginning to show blue
instead of gray as the sky grew brighter. Over at his right he could see
a little inlet and a line of sandy beach, above it a steep wooded hill
with a cottage at the very summit. The miles of woods beyond, the bays
and bold capes that bounded the lake, the undiscovered country claimed
by the Pirate of Jasper Peak, for these he had no eyes and no interest
as he struggled wearily toward his journey’s end.

Gently the canoe grounded its bow upon the sand, just where a narrow
trail led off among the trees and up the hill. With a great sigh of
relief, Hugh stepped ashore, shouldered his pack, and went slowly up
through the dawn to his first meeting with Oscar Dansk.




                               CHAPTER V

                              OSCAR DANSK


Hugh walked very slowly as he made his way up the path, for he was worn
out, weary enough to drop by the wayside and sleep there for half a day.
He was stiff from kneeling all night in the canoe, his shoulders were
lame from the weight of his pack and from the long miles of paddling,
his brain whirled from want of sleep. On he trudged, past the groups of
overhanging maples, scarlet and gold after the autumn frosts, past a
huge mass of red jasper rock with a spring bubbling out at the foot of
it, up the hill at last and to the open space where the cottage stood.

It was a little square building of logs, chinked with plaster, with two
small sheds behind it and a chimney of rough field stones. Small and
rude as the cottage seemed, it had the same air of neatness and homely
comfort that Hugh had noticed about the little Swedish houses in Rudolm.
A plume of smoke was rising from the chimney and, at the open window, a
white curtain was blowing in the morning wind. Before he reached the
door, it opened and Oscar Dansk came out upon the wide stone step. The
moment their eyes met Hugh knew they were to become fast friends.

There seemed no more natural thing in the world than to sit down upon
the doorstep—Hugh’s tired legs could not have carried him farther—and
tell Oscar immediately all about why he had come. The other seemed to
understand at once just what had happened, just why Hugh had come to
find him and just what he himself was expected to do. He shook his head
gravely when he heard how long the Edmonds boys had been gone.

“Five days when you first heard,” he said; “that makes seven now and
another night. It is bad, but not hopeless. If they are alive we will
find them.”

“Your sister thinks they are alive,” repeated Hugh, for he had already
spoken of Linda’s theory about the dog.

“Yes,” replied Oscar, “I know that Nicholas, if anything had happened to
his masters, I am certain he would have come back. I think Linda is
right.”

Hugh, half blind with weariness as he was, had already begun to notice
how like his sister Oscar was. All things that were attractive in her
were present in Oscar, with much more besides. There was fire in his
blue eyes where hers held only kindliness, there was no heaviness, nor
any sadness in his expression, but spirit and courage and love of high
adventure. He was taller and straighter than Linda, also, with more
clear-cut features. As he sat on the doorstone, with the sun shining on
his bright fair hair, and his strong hands clasped upon his knee, he
looked as though he were indeed, as Jethro had said, “a person who could
see further than others.”

“It is not right,” he said at last, “for me to let you sit here talking,
when the first thing you should do is to have breakfast and then sleep
the clock around.”

He got up and led the way into the cottage, with Hugh following eagerly,
curious to see what sort of an abode it was. There were two tiny rooms
inside with so wide a doorway between that they were practically one.
Linda Ingmarsson’s fingers must surely have sewed those curtains at the
windows, the braided rugs on the floor and the blue and white quilts on
the two narrow bunks. She must also have given her brother the pot of
red geraniums that stood on the sill of the sunniest window. But she had
never seen the little log cottage, so she could not have been
responsible for the spotless cleanliness of everything.

Never before had Hugh sat down to such an odd breakfast, nor, even at
the Indian camp, had he ever eaten with such ravenous appetite. There
was half a partridge stewed in brown gravy, wild rice, flapjacks instead
of bread, blueberries and, strange to say, thick, rich cream.

“The blueberries? Yes, it is pretty late for them, but you still can
find a few in the hollows,” said Oscar, misunderstanding Hugh’s
surprise. “Oh, you mean the cream? Why, that is nothing; I have a cow.”

“But how did she get here?” Hugh persisted. “By water, or through the
woods?”

He thought of the journey that he himself had made and decided that, for
a four-footed creature, both routes were equally impossible.

“She must have been born hereabouts,” Oscar answered. “I found her
running wild in the woods when she was still a calf. I brought her home
and built her a stable and fed her for a month or two and then”—here he
indulged in the silent chuckle that Hugh was to learn was his only form
of laughter—“and then Half-Breed Jake sent over to say that she was
his.”

“Was she?” Hugh wished to know. He felt a great interest in what had
occurred between Oscar and the pirate.

“In a way she might have been called so. You see, old Mat Henderson had
a little farm up on the spur of Jasper Peak, where Jake lives now. I
don’t know how Henderson got his live stock in; I believe he chartered a
little steamer to bring them up the lake and through Harbin’s Channel.
That was before the pirates came; boats do not come through there now.
Henderson was a queer old soul; he had lots of money, people said, and
just came away up here so that he could live alone. The next thing we
knew Half-Breed Jake and some Indians were living on the place, claiming
that Henderson had sold it to them and that very soon after the sale—he
had died. There wasn’t anything to be proved, so we had to let it go.
But we’ll know some day.”

He had spoken quietly until the last words, when his tone turned
suddenly to bitter earnestness and he dropped his big sunburned hand
upon the table with such force that the tin plates danced in their
places. His clear face clouded with anger and he sat silent, staring out
through the little window. Hugh was almost frightened at the sudden
sternness of his face.

“But the cow?” he hinted gently.

Oscar hesitated, then the grimness of his face relaxed and he smiled.

“They cared for Henderson’s stock after a fashion,” he said, “for they
knew it might be a starvation winter for them otherwise. The calf they
evidently did not want to feed and turned it out into the woods. When
they feared that I would get some good out of it they came over to fetch
it. But they went home empty-handed.”

Hugh had a quick recollection of Half-Breed Jake standing in the
postoffice with the brown bear’s skin in his hand and of the shrinking
claimant, Ole Peterson, slipping away into a corner. There were not many
people, he thought, who could successfully dispute a question of
ownership with the Pirate of Jasper Peak.

He had finished his breakfast and began to feel, once more, an
overwhelming sleepiness. In spite of the brightness of the morning sun
making squares upon the floor, in spite of the pressing nature of his
errand and the mystery of the green forest outside, his eyes were
dropping shut. One question, however, loomed so large in his mind that
it must be spoken.

“I wish you would tell me, Oscar,” he said, the name coming as readily
to his tongue as though the friendship were years old, “I wish I knew
why you choose to live here all alone.”

The man’s face flushed a little under his sunburn and his blue eyes,
once again, took on that stern look.

“It is too long a story, Hugh,” was all he answered. “Before I tell you
about it you must have your sleep.”

The hands of the big Swedish clock in the corner of Oscar’s kitchen must
have come very near to making a complete round before Hugh awoke. He had
been dreaming so vividly that for a moment he was bewildered and sat up
rubbing his eyes and wondering where he was. He remembered in a moment,
however, and scrambled quickly out of bed. The cottage was quite silent
save for the ticking of the clock and the crackling of the fire on the
hearth. Hugh went to the little window at the foot of his bunk and
looked out. When he had come up the trail that morning he had noticed
little save that the hillside was steep and the forest dense, but now
that he could see across the little plateau upon which the cottage stood
and down into the next valley, he looked and looked again.

The country through which he had come on his journey from Rudolm had
seemed to him all alike, one narrow ravine after another with close
tangled woods, precipitous slopes and rocky summits in endless
succession. But here he was looking out into a broad green basin where
the hills drew back from the lake in a gigantic semicircle, leaving the
half-wooded slope to drop gently to wide green meadows and a winding
stream. Over to the north the hills closed in a little, but still left a
broad valley through which flowed away toward Canada the river that was
the lake’s outlet. Groups of trees extended downward from the woods and
stood knee deep in the wild grass of the sloping meadows. A cheerful
tinkle sounded below the cottage, heralding the fact that Oscar was
driving up his cow from the luxuriant pasture land, to be stabled for
the night.

“It is a nice place,” thought Hugh. “I do not wonder Oscar likes to live
here, but—well, winters must be pretty long and lonely.”

Oscar came in presently and they had supper before the blazing fire, a
meal as odd and delicious as breakfast had been. After supper there was
much work to be done in which Hugh lent a hand, wood to be cut and
carried in, water to be fetched from the spring half way down the hill,
the cow, Hulda, to be fed and milked. The long twilight was nearly at an
end and Hugh already feeling sleepy again before they finished at last.
Oscar, it seemed, had spent most of the day in searching the nearest
hillsides for traces of John Edmonds and his brother, but had to report
blank failure so far.

“But if they are alive they are in this region,” he said. “They would
not have gone far north, for the woods and swamps in that direction are
almost impassable. Nor, if Edmonds wanted to hide for any reason, would
he go toward the east end of Red Lake where there are more settlements
and the Indian reservations.”

He brought out a rude map made evidently by himself, showing in rough
drawing the western end of the lake and the watercourses.

“We will divide it off into squares,” he said, “and search one square of
country every day. Then, if we don’t find where they are, we will at
least know where they are not. We will begin with this one to-morrow.”

“Wouldn’t it be quicker just to follow up the main streams and the most
likely valleys first?” asked Hugh.

Oscar was slowly rolling up the map and putting it in its place.

“It would be quicker—and we might miss them on the way,” he said. “If we
are to do the thing thoroughly, we had better not hurry too much.”

Hugh was to learn that this was Oscar’s method of doing all things. He
did not agree just then that it was the best, but, on looking back
afterward, he wondered at his own stupidity.

“Will we meet Half-Breed Jake, do you think?” was all he asked, however.

“No,” returned Oscar, “that fellow and his Indian friends are nearly
always away at this time of year. You say you saw them in the woods, but
they must have gone back again, for there has not been a sign of life
about their cabin. His place is over opposite us on the spur of Jasper
Peak; you can see it plainly enough by daylight. Every season about this
time they go down-State to sell their furs and have a final spree before
they come back for the winter. He is an ugly neighbor, Half-Breed Jake
is, when he has just had his fling. He does not ever like to stay away
very long, for he likes to watch the place and drive out any one that
might try to settle hereabouts.”

“But he hasn’t driven you out,” said Hugh. “Has he tried?”

“Oh, yes, he has tried,” replied Oscar cheerfully, “but he hasn’t
succeeded yet.”

They set out very early the next morning, having arisen before sun-up to
get their work done and to cook the dinner they were to carry with them.
Oscar took down his spare rifle from where it hung upon the wall and
gave it to Hugh.

“You may have a chance at a partridge or even a deer,” he said. “You had
better take it along.”

They walked down past the spring into the thickly wooded ravine with its
little stream that separated them from Jasper Rock. At one point they
could look up and see even more plainly than from the hill above, the
Pirate’s cabin. It was a tumbledown log building with a few rude
outhouses and ragged fences. A black hen rose suddenly from a tuft of
weeds at their feet and ran squawking up the hill toward her unlovely
home.

“I hardly know how his stock keeps alive while he is gone,” observed
Oscar, “but the creatures are all half wild, anyway, and used to ranging
the woods and foraging for themselves.”

After they had tramped some distance, Oscar decreed that they were to
separate.

“See,” he said, showing Hugh the map, “here are these two little streams
flowing on each side of this hill, and joining where we are now. You
follow this one, going up and down the slope on one side of the ravine
to find traces of where the boys might have passed by or camped. When
you reach the swampy land where the stream rises, turn back and come
down the other side. Then when you get to where the two streams meet,
follow up the other branch in the same way. It will take you nearly all
day to do that and to come back here, where it is easy enough to find
the way home.”

Hugh agreed to follow these instructions carefully and went off, a good
deal elated at being trusted to search alone. He found the ravine narrow
and the going very rough. He clambered laboriously up and down, up and
down, finding nothing but some very old deer tracks and the footprints
of some little wood animals that he could not identify. Before long he
grew hot and rather tired and sat down by the stream to rest. He began
to wonder if there were not some easier way of performing the task and
presently decided that there was. The valley was so small that he felt
he could easily examine both slopes at once; then, when he reached the
marsh, he could cut across the intervening hill and follow the other
fork down to the point of junction. His journey from Rudolm had made him
feel quite like an experienced woodsman already, so that he felt very
confident that he had thought of a better plan than Oscar’s. He pushed
on resolutely and reached the headwaters of the creek about noon. There
he ate his lunch, rested a little and then turned gayly to clamber up
the hill.

It was a longer and a steeper climb than he had bargained for. More than
once he thought he was at the top and even beginning to descend on the
other side, only to discover that there was another ascent to be made.
He went upward for what seemed to him an endless time, and began to be
very weary. At last he reached the summit, but found that the trees were
so tall and thick that he could see no distance even from there, and a
slight, a very slight doubt began to arise in his mind as to whether he
had done the wisest thing in following a plan of his own.

He saw a great mass of rock rising among the trees not a quarter of a
mile away and decided that he had better climb to the top of it and get
his bearings before going any further. It was a hard scramble through
the thickets and up the side of the giant red bowlder, but Hugh
accomplished it in ever increasing haste. He wished to assure himself as
quickly as possible that all his calculations were correct. He was
panting with hurry and excitement when he came out upon the top of the
rock and turned his face toward where Jasper Peak should be.

Somehow it is rather a terrible thing to look for so reliable a landmark
as a mountain or a lake and not to find it.

“They must be there, they must be there,” he kept repeating half aloud;
but, no, there was nothing to be seen but hills and hills, endless miles
of green in every direction and all utterly unfamiliar. For a full
minute Hugh stood gaping, before there came over him the sickening
knowledge that he was lost.

He had thought the forest beautiful on his night journey with Shokatan,
it had seemed to him mysterious, wonderful, teeming with adventure. But
now it seemed only dark, threatening and cruel, as though it existed
merely to shelter dangers and hidden enemies, as though the rolling
hills and valleys swept up to his feet to drown him in a sea of green.

“I mustn’t get excited,” he kept telling himself, “I must keep my head.”

But even as he so thought, he knew that his brain was reeling and that
his bewilderment was increasing every moment.

“I will go back just the way I came,” was his first plan, but it proved
impossible to follow. He found traces here and there of where he had
passed before, yet the way was so twisted and uncertain that, after an
hour of struggling through the underbrush he finally came out on the
same ridge again and faced the same mass of red rock. He climbed the
steep bowlder once more to make sure that he had not been mistaken and,
on seeing again that vast pitiless expanse of forest, all calmness
suddenly left him. He slid down the rock in a wild scramble, landed on
all-fours among the brambles, picked himself up and started down the
opposite side of the hill at a run.

He was quite unconscious of the fact that he had dropped Oscar’s rifle
and had left it behind him. He never had any idea of where he went or in
what direction. He ran until he could drag his leaden feet no longer,
then he lay panting upon the ground until he could get up and run again.
Finally he became so exhausted that he could only walk and had to stop
to rest every few minutes, but still he pressed obstinately on,
determined to get somewhere, anywhere.

Once he found himself, not knowing how he got there, floundering at the
edge of a wide marsh and noticed footmarks in the soft ground beside him
as though some great creature of the woods had passed there not very
long before. The prints were very large and clear in the wet earth, but
he scarcely noticed them so far gone was he in weariness and despair.
Slowly he dragged himself on, past a dense poplar thicket, over a
dried-up watercourse, up a hill, through the close undergrowth at the
top—and stood still with a cry that was almost a sob. Below him spread a
wide valley, green and open and full of sunshine, at its foot, in
exactly the opposite quarter from where it should be, lay the shining
blue of the lake. Oscar’s little house, still in quite the wrong
direction, stood on the ridge at his right, the door open, the curtains
flying, the red roof basking in the sun. A pleasant homelike tinkle came
up from the grassy slope below him where the contented Hulda was grazing
peacefully.

“_Gee!_” said Hugh and sat down abruptly on the grass. “Gee, but I’m
glad to see this place again!”

It looked indeed, to his weary desperate eyes, like a true bit of
Paradise. He thought quickly of the name at which he had laughed a
little when he saw it written in Oscar’s hand upon the map. It was,
after all, not so much amiss to call the valley “The Promised Land.”




                               CHAPTER VI

                           THE PROMISED LAND


There was not a great deal said, that night, about Hugh’s first
experiment as a woodsman, for Oscar seemed to be the sort of person who
knew when it was kinder not to ask questions. One look at his white,
anxious face when he came home long after dark, one glimpse of his smile
of delight and relief when he found that Hugh had returned safely after
all, these caused the boy enough remorse without the wasting of any
words. That he had lost Oscar’s rifle was to Hugh the bitterest and most
irretrievable mishap of the whole day. He might tell himself over and
over that he would replace it when he went back to Rudolm, but how soon
would that be and how desperately might not the weapon be needed before
that time?

When they set out again next day, Oscar gave his directions without any
added warning that this time Hugh had better not improve upon them with
additions of his own. He trusted the boy to carry out his share of the
search alone and made no comment when this time they met successfully at
the place that he had chosen.

All of that day they searched, and all of the next, but with no results.

“It is a good thing that Jake is really gone,” said Oscar, “for
otherwise I would not dare go so far and leave the cottage alone. This
way we can cover twice as much ground and so must surely find the boys
at last.”

They went further and further afield each day and finally, carrying
blankets and provisions, they penetrated far to the northward, slept in
the woods two nights and returned in a wide circle that covered the
forest for many miles. Footprints of Indians they found, and of moose
and deer, but of traces that two white men had passed that way, they saw
no single one. They came home worn and dispirited, each one trying to
talk cheerfully to raise the hopes of the other.

The next day they were too weary to set forth again. It was Sunday, a
week from the day that Hugh had come through the forest from Rudolm. The
day came somewhat as a surprise to him, for he had quite forgotten that
there were such things as calendars and days of the week. He noticed
that Oscar slept later that morning and reduced the household tasks of
both of them to as few as possible. He did not however suspect any other
reason beyond weariness until, at the end of the afternoon, he came out
to go to the spring for water and found his friend seated on the
doorstone, reading his Bible in the thorough, painstaking manner with
which he did everything.

“But how do you know when it is Sunday?” Hugh demanded when Oscar
explained that this was his weekly custom.

“Why, I keep count,” he replied, “and then I somehow think that I ought
to feel that it is Sunday in the air. Doesn’t it look like a Sunday
to-day?”

Now that Hugh thought of the matter it did. It was only chance, of
course, but the sun was mild and clear, the blue lake was like a mirror
and the flaming trees in the forest unstirred by any wind. Even though
he knew better, he felt that, if he listened intently enough, he might
hear church bells ring.

“Aren’t you ever mistaken when you think it feels like a Sunday?” Hugh
asked curiously.

“Oh, yes,” Oscar admitted, “I feel that I should know, but I don’t. Last
year when I went down to Rudolm I found that I was three days out and
had been having Sunday on a Wednesday for a month. How Linda laughed at
me!”

“Did you ever know how you happened to lose count?” Hugh inquired idly.

He had sat down upon the doorstep also, where he could see, on one side,
the open sunlit valley and, on the other, the narrow ravine with its
little stream that ran between them and Jasper Peak.

“Yes, I knew how I missed count,” Oscar answered, smiling a little
queerly as he looked down at one of his big rough hands. Whether he
would have gone on to explain is not certain, for just then another
thought drifted into Hugh’s mind and he asked another question.

“You say you are sure that Half-Breed Jake is away?”

“Yes,” returned Oscar. “Why?”

“Because sometimes I think I see something moving about in the clearing
near their house.”

“But I have looked for days for any sign of life there and have seen
nothing,” Oscar insisted. “Perhaps you saw their chickens or their cow.
They are usually gone at this time of year, but yet, I do not understand
it. If Jake had anything to do with the Edmonds boys’ disappearance—and
I am certain he had—he would be staying. And you say you saw him in the
woods. No, I do not understand it. Perhaps he is in Rudolm helping still
to spread the report that John Edmonds’ accounts are short and that he
ran away.”

“Do you think we will ever find them?” Hugh asked, the discouragement of
the whole week suddenly welling up in his voice.

“I do not know,” Oscar admitted, yet trying to speak cheerfully. “We can
only go on looking until we make sure it is hopeless.”

He closed his book since Hugh’s continued questions had evidently made
reading impossible. They sat together looking down the valley, so green
and quiet in the sun. A lovely place, but a very lonely one, Hugh was
thinking.

“I should think you would have a dog, Oscar,” he observed aloud. “It
would be such company for you.”

The grimness of Oscar’s tone as he answered startled Hugh into turning
square about.

“I had one,” he said, “and Jake killed him.”

“What,” exclaimed the boy, “are they so bad as that?”

“They are as bad as anything you can think of,” his friend answered.

He looked down again at his hand and Hugh noticed that over the back of
it ran a long puckered scar that extended upward under his sleeve.

“That was the time when I lost count of Sunday,” Oscar went on. “It was
before I had been here very long and Jake and his friends were bound to
run me out. You see I am proving up on a claim to this land; I have to
live here just so long, build a house and keep up a certain amount of
cultivation. They thought that if they could drive me away and burn down
the cottage they could jump the claim. They know better now.”

“Was it—was it hard to teach them better?” Hugh inquired eagerly.

“It took me three days, no, four or five, I never quite knew. They lay
in the woods at the edge of the clearing and shot whenever I came near
the door or window. See there,” he laid his finger upon a rough groove
that showed in the window ledge, “that is some of their work and there
are more marks around the door and even inside. Little Hendrik—that was
the dog—and I stood the siege for two days; he was a great help, for he
waked me twice in the night when I had dropped asleep and the Indians
were stealing across the clearing. We stood them off easily enough for a
while, but it got to be bad when our water gave out.”

Oscar told the story as calmly as though it concerned some one quite
other than himself. He would indeed have dropped the narrative there had
Hugh not urged him on with impatient questions.

“Yes, by the third day we were badly off. So when it was twilight I let
little Hendrik out to go down to the spring and drink. Would you think
it mattered to them whether a little black dog lived or not? They knew
that I—I liked him a good deal, I suppose, for they killed him halfway
across the clearing. I heard a shot and a yelp and ran out to him, but
when I got there he was dead.”

“You ran out? Didn’t they shoot at you?” Hugh exclaimed.

“Yes, and hit me too, but I didn’t even notice it at the time. I carried
little Hendrik back, and if I was determined to hold out before, I was a
hundred times more determined then. It rained that night and I caught a
little water in a bucket by the window, so I had that to go on, but I
never really knew quite how long the fight lasted. The bullet had plowed
across the back of my hand and along my arm and had broken the bone just
above the elbow. It got very sore and made me lightheaded, so for a
while it seemed to be always glaring daytime and for a while always
night. And then I seemed to wake up from a long sleep and found the sun
just coming up and a fresh wind blowing off the lake and the pirates
gone. The clock had run down and I had lost the place on the calendar
and that was how I got Sunday three days wrong.”

“And Jake and the Indians, did they all get away?”

“There were seven that came, and it seemed to me that I could still
count seven afterward where I saw them walking around their cabin over
there. But I heard when I went to Rudolm that there was not a sound man
amongst them, and that two of them had got enough of pirating forever
and did not come back to these parts. And while it is pretty hard to see
for certain, I believe Jake limps still.”

“I think he does,” said Hugh, remembering that tall figure striding away
in the moonlight down Rudolm’s single street.

“Over yonder under that maple,” continued Oscar, “is where I buried
little Hendrik, so now I have no company but Hulda. She is not much good
to talk to, Hulda isn’t, but she is a nice cow in her way. It has been
good to have you here, Hugh, for it has been a little lonely since
little Hendrik was gone.”

He laid his scarred hand on Hugh’s knee and looked very steadily out
across the hills. Hugh sat very straight, staring at the Pirate’s house
with new and fascinated interest, thinking very deeply. Presently he
broke out again.

“Oscar,” he said, “why do you live here all alone? You are in danger,
you are not happy, what good is it going to do you in the end?”

His friend answered with a little hesitation, his words coming almost
shyly at first, but gradually gathering headway as he put into speech
the thought that possessed his whole heart.

“It is on account of those people back in Rudolm. They, and my father
with them, came over from Sweden, thinking, like children in a fairy
tale, that they were coming to a new world where they were to be rich
and happy always. My father was the biggest man amongst them, I think it
must have been he who persuaded them to come. He was so bitterly unhappy
afterward to see how poor and disappointed they were. He gave me the
best education he could and encouraged me to work for an even better one
after he died; he said more than once that he hoped I could help his
comrades since he never could.”

“How did they find such a place as Rudolm to come to?” Hugh asked.

“A good many Swedes had settled in this part of the country, for it is
like their own, the same sort of hills and woods full of birch trees and
lakes and little rivers. And there was at that time a great cry that
these mountains were fabulously rich in iron, some even said in gold and
silver, but the iron was thrilling enough. All who could came flocking
into Rudolm valley to stake out a claim or to buy one, expecting to grow
rich in a single night. My father spent all the money he had from
selling his farm in Sweden to buy a few stony acres—where now Linda and
her children work all day long to cut the hay.”

“And there were no mines?”

“A few, one or two that were worth working if one had the money to put
into them. Some millionaire or other owns what there are, and those
Swedes who spent everything they had to buy themselves a hole in the
ground, they work for him and live as best they can.”

“Why didn’t they all go back to Sweden again?” Hugh inquired.

“They were too proud,” said Oscar. “Would it be easy, do you think,
after your whole village had turned out to do you honor, after your
gateway had been dressed with wreaths and branches and all your
neighbors had come in to wish you good-by and good luck and to envy you
a little, in a friendly way, for your boldness and spirit in going to
America to make your fortune, would it be easy to go back and say you
were ruined? No, one and all of them went stubbornly to work and never a
complaint went back to the Old Country.”

“But I don’t quite see—” began Hugh.

He could not understand what all this had to do with Oscar’s living on a
lonely hilltop in the forest.

“Linda and I often talked the whole matter over,” Oscar went on, “and
wondered what could be done, but we never saw a way. Then one day, when
I had been hunting, I came as far as this valley which Jake had just
begun trying to hold; it was then I saw suddenly whence help could come.
There are only rocky bits of ground to be tilled near Rudolm, but here
is land, and prosperity for all even though it will not come in a single
day. I thought it out as I lay by my campfire that night, and in the
morning I could hardly get home quickly enough to tell them of my plan.”

“And wouldn’t they listen?”

Hugh had moved close up to him to make sure of missing no single word.
He was beginning to see the reasons for some of the things he had
noticed in Rudolm, the tiny houses, the narrow fields, the heavy sad
faces. He thought of the road, “Oscar’s road,” that went to the top of
the first hill, and stopped.

“It was hard to make them heed, for they had been deceived once, but in
the end they began to listen. The first step needed was to build a road
through the forest so that the new valley should not be buried beyond
the reach of the world. We got together a little money, the men came
with their horses, their axes and picks and, at the summer Festival,
with laughing and singing and a few tears too, so great a plan did it
seem to some, we began to push our way into the wilderness. But the
labor was harder than they thought and the men began to be discouraged
and to quarrel and to mutter among themselves, ‘That mad Oscar Dansk, he
and his father, they were both dreamers of dreams.’ So the work went
slower and slower until we came at last to the top of the hill.

“You see it was Jake who had commenced to make trouble. He began to
think that this valley where he hunted and fished would be lost to him
if settlers came. He threatened openly that any man who worked longer on
the road would be shot in the dark some night, and he got the women
whispering that the whole affair was a mad scheme that could come to
nothing. So they doubted and hesitated and finally lost heart. And that
was the end of our road-building.”

“But not the end forever, surely,” Hugh said.

“No, for I made up my mind that if I could not persuade them at that end
I could show them at this. I staked out a claim for a farm of my own,
and I mean to live here until it is mine and those people in Rudolm see
that it can be done and that Jake’s threats must come to nothing in the
end. It takes fourteen months to prove up on a claim, but my time is
almost done.”

“And you have lived in this lonely place so long as that,” Hugh
exclaimed. “How did you ever hold to that one idea for all this time?”

“I did not,” admitted Oscar, “for I went off on a wild goose chase, but
I came back again. When I went down to Rudolm last April and knew that
war was declared, there was nothing I thought of but that I must be a
soldier or a sailor as quickly as chance would let me. I rushed down to
Duluth to enlist; my scheme for helping Rudolm was forgotten as though
it had never been.”

Oscar’s tale stopped suddenly short. Hugh, looking down, saw his big
hand clench suddenly upon his knee until the knuckles were white and the
cords stood out along his wrist. For a moment the boy did not dare to
speak.

“Wouldn’t they take you, Oscar?” he said gently at last.

“They wouldn’t take me,” was the heavy answer, as though even now the
disappointment was too keen to dwell upon. “It was on account of what
that fight with the pirates had done to my arm, the bone had been
injured so that the elbow will only move halfway. I never believed it
amounted to anything, but every man at the recruiting station thought
otherwise.”

“What did you say to them?”

“Say—I have no notion what I said. I shouted and cursed at them, for
such anger possessed me as I had never known before. Finally I flung out
of the building and down the street, not knowing or caring where I went.
I wandered all night, I think, for when at last I came out on the docks
where the Great Lakes’ freighters were loading, it was beginning to be
morning. I saw iron and steel and flour and wheat all being dropped into
those great holds, to be carried overseas, so some one told me, to help
toward the winning of the war. I sat there long in a sort of daze, and
watched the steamers loading, but at last, through my anger, through the
sight that was before my eyes I began to see this valley again and to
dream of what might come out of it to help us win the war.”

“Iron—mines?” ventured Hugh inquiringly after Oscar had sat quiet a
minute, seeing his vision again, perhaps.

“No, there is iron in plenty near Rudolm and in the ranges to the
eastward, enough for all the munition factories we have. No, no, what
are mines alongside of a great valley lying fallow, ready to help feed a
starving world? Can’t you see those wild grass meadows cut up into great
square fields of green, can’t you see those slopes all yellow with grain
and rippling like water under the autumn winds? It’s not iron—it’s not
gold—it’s wheat, man, wheat!”

Hugh leaned forward, thrilling to the fervor of Oscar’s tone. He looked
at the wide valley brimming with sunshine and abundant fertility, and
thought of what a gift it might offer to famine-stricken France as she
cried to America for aid. He drew a long breath.

“It is a wonderful idea, Oscar,” he said. “But can you do it?”

“I will do it,” said Oscar with all his slow Swedish determination
sounding in his voice. “I saw it all as I stood and watched a big, black
freighter steaming away into the dawn toward—where I wanted to go. I saw
that if you serve, you serve, and some other than yourself settles where
you are to be the most useful. So I went over to the Land Office and
explained what I wanted to do and asked to double the size of my claim.”

“They should have given you the whole valley,” Hugh said.

“They didn’t,” his friend replied drily. “They didn’t take any stock in
me at all. I think they thought I was trying to dodge military service
for they sent over to the recruiting office to see if the facts I gave
agreed at both places. An officer came over himself to say, ‘If there is
anything for that shouting madman to spend his energies on, in the name
of Heaven, give it to him.’ So they let me register for as much as I
wanted and told me to go back and hold it if I could. They were pretty
sure I couldn’t.”

“But you will, oh, Oscar, I know you will,” Hugh said. “And now I see
why you have called it the Promised Land.”

Oscar laughed a little shamefacedly.

“It is a foolish name perhaps and we will find another when the settlers
come. But now I call it that just to—to keep my courage up. If you have
not something big to think of while you are waiting, the loneliness
might eat into your very soul.”

“And after the settlers come the road will follow?” said Hugh.

“I have thought many times of how it will be,” answered Oscar, leaning
forward to point. “The road will come winding down that hillside, white
and smooth and dusty with much travel. There by that group of pines will
be Linda’s house, with a space for children to play in the meadow below.
Nels Larson’s place will be there just north of it by that knoll, and
Ole Peterson’s across the stream. And by the bend of the river there
will be a little town with a school and white houses with gardens and a
church with a square spire, just as it used to be in Sweden. I have
pictured it a hundred times as I sit here by the door. I know every
house and field and meadow, just how it will all be. Sometimes I think I
can almost hear the church bells ring already or the children calling to
each other as they go across the fields to school.”

“It looks homelike, somehow, even without any houses in it,” observed
Hugh after a long survey of the quiet landscape. “Oh, Oscar, how like
home it looked the day that I was lost and came over that hill at last!”

He hesitated a moment, for very little had been said of his adventure in
the wood. He had not even let himself think of it often and, half
defiant, half ashamed, had avoided the subject, but now let his spoken
remorse come with a rush.

“I am so sorry that I did not do just as you told me. You looked for me
for hours, I know, and I have never owned that it was all my fault. And
I lost your rifle, too; I feel so dreadfully about that. I thought that
I could save time and that you were too careful.”

He sat thinking for a second, then added in a sudden burst of
illumination:

“Perhaps that was why my father wouldn’t let me go to France, because he
knew I hadn’t sense enough to obey orders. I understand now what he
meant by my not having enough judgment. Oh, Oscar, I am so ashamed!”

“It iss all right.” The Swedish accent in Oscar’s voice sounded very
distinctly as it was apt to do when he was moved. “It was my fault as
much as yours; I should have warned you that you would be tempted to do
just such a thing. When I waited for you and you did not come—well, I am
not so often frightened, but I was afraid then. It is no little thing to
be lost in these woods. I wish—I wish—”

He did not finish his sentence, but Hugh knew that he was thinking of
the Edmonds boys and of how the search for them was growing more
hopeless every day. He, too, felt that despair was not far off, but he
had a feeling that, if either of them spoke of it, the idea of failure
would suddenly become a real thing instead of a dreaded possibility. He
tried to turn the talk to another subject and spoke the first words that
entered his mind. It was the most careless of questions, but it led to
such unexpected consequences that he used to wonder, later, why the
clock had not ceased ticking or the rising breeze stopped blowing to
listen as he spoke.

“Have you seen any wolves about here lately, or that white deer that the
Indians say is in the forest?”

“Wolves never come so far south as this in summer,” answered Oscar, then
added sharply, “Why?”

“Because when I was lost I stopped by a marsh and—I haven’t really
thought of it very clearly since—but there were footprints in the ground
that were much too big to have been made by a fox, I am sure, so I
thought they were a wolf’s.”

Oscar leaned toward him, his blue eyes suddenly burning with excitement.

“What sort of footprints?” he questioned tersely. “How big? That makes
all the difference in the world.”

“Why, I don’t know,” stammered Hugh; “just footprints of some big
animal. They weren’t very plain.”

In wild haste Oscar fumbled in his pockets, pulled out a pencil and, so
great was his eagerness, drew his rough outlines on the blank page of
his Bible.

“If a fox had made them they would be this big,” he said; “and if a
wolf, like this. Were they as big, bigger than that? As big as this?”

Hugh looked over his shoulder and pointed unhesitatingly to the third
drawing.

“They were as large as that, or even larger,” he stated. “Oh, what does
it mean?”

Oscar drew a long breath.

“There is but one creature that could have made them,” said he; “that is
the dog Nicholas. He is very large, and white, as large as a deer. Now
we have something to go upon at last.”

He glanced quickly toward the west and frowned as he noted that the sun
was low.

“It is too late to go now,” he said, “and would hardly be worth while,
for I suppose the marks were days old when you saw them. We will have
supper, and go to bed early for a start at sunrise to-morrow.”

Rising, he went into the cabin and, as Hugh could plainly hear, began to
whistle gayly as he stirred the fire and brought out the frying pan. He
seemed much more cheerful already now that there was, at last, a little
hope. Hugh took up his pail and went to finish his long interrupted task
of fetching water from the spring.

He came running up the path a few minutes later, spilling the water in
wild splashes, and burst in at the cottage door.

“Oscar,” he cried, “did you say that you were sure Jake was still away?”

“Yes,” answered Oscar, looking up from the fire; “he can’t be back yet.”

“But he is,” insisted Hugh excitedly. “I thought so, and now I know.
Just this minute I saw three men walk across the clearing and there is
smoke coming from the chimney of the cabin on Jasper Peak. Just come to
the door and see.”




                              CHAPTER VII

                             WHITHER AWAY?


It rained in the night, and blew so fiercely that the windows of the
little house rattled and the door shook upon its hinges. When Hugh got
up in the morning, all eagerness for the expedition, there was watery
sunlight showing, but great gusts of wind were still thundering down the
valley and the air was raw and chilly. The smiling autumn landscape of
scarlet and gold was totally transformed; the flaming leaves had
disappeared in one stormy night and the brown woods stood bare and bleak
and cold.

“I wish this storm had waited just one day longer,” said Oscar as they
were having breakfast before the welcome blaze of the big fire. “There
may even be snow now before many hours.”

He did not say, “If only you had remembered one day sooner what you saw
in the wood!” Hugh felt that the thought must be in his mind, so large
did it loom in his own. But Oscar’s fashion of never wasting words was
contagious, so he, too, said nothing.

As he opened the door to go out and feed Hulda, he heard, above the
booming of the wind, a steady dull roar that was quite new to his ears.

“That is the stream that runs this side of Jasper Peak,” Oscar
explained. “You could hardly believe how one night’s rain can carry it
over its banks. Even less of a storm than this will sometimes make it
impassable. Fortunately, where I want to go to-day is on this side and I
will not have to try to cross it. But I may not be back until long after
dark.”

It was not like Oscar to say “I” when there were two to talk about. Hugh
noted this with a sinking of the heart.

“Oscar,” he cried, turning back from the door, “am I not going, too?”

Oscar slowly shook his head.

“I’m so sorry,” he said with evident understanding of Hugh’s
disappointment, “but you see if Jake is really back we can’t risk
leaving the cabin alone. The claim is nearly established now and the
closer we come to the end, the closer we come to trouble. There is bound
to be one more row before the thing finally goes through.”

“What sort of a row, Oscar?”

Oscar looked down at his scarred hand and smiled reflectively.

“A row like the others we have had,” he said quietly, “only this time a
really good one. Good-by.”

He took up his pack and went out without another word. The furious wind
seemed to seize him and whirl him away the moment he stepped outside the
door. Hugh had not answered his farewell, for he was disappointed and
indignant at being left behind and he did not mind how plainly Oscar saw
it. After all, it was he himself who had seen the footprints by the
marsh; he ought to be the person to go and look for them again. He went
out to feed Hulda, slamming the door smartly behind him and never
looking at Oscar, who was still in sight, trudging along the open ridge
above the valley. Hugh understood now why Oscar had asked so many
questions about the region where the footprints had been seen, about how
long the boy had walked before he came in sight of the cabin, about the
contour of the land and the direction in which the shadows fell.

Hugh, as he moved sulkily toward the shed, began composing bitter
speeches to be launched at Oscar when he should return. He stopped for a
moment and looked across at Jasper Peak and the shack high up on its
rocky shoulder. Yes, there was the plume of smoke again, torn and
whirled about by the wind, but still sending up its ominous signal. He
turned to open the shed door. He would tell Oscar plainly that—that—But,
after all, why should Oscar have gone at all? It was a forlorn hope at
the best for which he was risking everything, leaving in Hugh’s
safe-keeping property that was infinitely valuable in the light of the
purpose it was to serve. A sudden change of feeling overcame Hugh,
filling him with shame for his blind ill-temper.

He ran back to the top of the hill to see Oscar just about to disappear
into the forest. It was too far for a shout to carry, but, yes, Oscar
looked back just as he plunged into the wood. Hugh raised his arm high
in a gesture of farewell and Oscar waved his woolen cap in
generous-hearted understanding. Thus good feeling was reëstablished
between them before they parted, parted for a longer time than either of
them could have thought.

Hugh went back to attend to Hulda’s wants for the day. She was a patient
cow, but even she looked around at him in reproachful surprise over the
awkwardness of his good offices.

“And I suppose I will have to try to milk her to-night,” he reflected
with some misgiving. He was not sure that her patience and forbearance
were great enough for him to attempt such a feat.

As he returned to the cabin he was wondering how he was to spend the
lonely day. There were, he found, however, any number of things to be
done, pans to be cleaned, water to be carried, some last weeds and dried
stalks to be cleared from Oscar’s vegetable garden and in the small
field that he had cultivated. Oscar had managed to raise quite a store
of wheat, had ground it by hand in the rude little mill that he had
constructed himself and had put it aside for use during the winter. He
had potatoes, too, and beans, turnips and other vegetables that could be
dried or stored, so that the supplies that must be carried so
laboriously from Rudolm need be the fewest possible.

After he had finished his work in the cabin and had cooked his dinner,
trying to imitate Oscar’s skill in tossing flapjacks and not succeeding
very well, Hugh took an ax and went out to the edge of the forest to cut
wood. Gathering the winter’s fuel was an endless task, one upon which he
and Oscar spent all of their extra time. He looked across at Jasper Peak
again as he came out, but a curtain of rain was falling between him and
the mountain and the cabin opposite was invisible. It was growing colder
and colder, the wind coming in icy gusts and the roar of the flooded
stream becoming louder as darkness fell. Hugh worked actively all
afternoon, as much for the sake of keeping warm and occupied, as for
what he might accomplish. He had a generous store of wood to reward him
for his heavy toil when at last it grew so late that he could see to
wield the ax no longer. He walked heavily back to the cabin, wet and
weary and wishing that Oscar would come home. In the shelter of the
trees he had not noticed the wind and was amazed at its strength when he
crossed the open ridge and ran for the cabin door.

On looking at the clock he realized that he had spent more time in the
forest than he had intended and that he must make haste about his
evening tasks. The fire was nearly out and did not wish to burn, for the
wood was wet and the wind, whistling down the chimney, filled the room
with sparks and smoke. He grew impatient and irritated at last, kicked
the logs into place and received in return such a puff of ashes in his
face that he was nearly choked. As he went to the door for a breath of
fresh air, he remembered, with sudden dismay, that he must milk Hulda.

For a long time after, Hugh preferred not to remember that interview
between himself and the indignant cow. Even when he did think of it, he
realized that Hulda showed the greatest forbearance and that the kick
she gave him was probably an involuntary one, administered when cow
nature could endure no more. She looked around at him a moment later
with apology in her mild brown eyes, encouraging him to forget his
smarting knee, to sit down upon the stool and attempt the task again. At
last he straightened his aching back and stood gazing with pride at the
bucket half full of foaming milk.

“You are a good cow, Hulda,” he confided to her; “there are not many who
would stand for what you have.”

Very carefully he carried his prize back to the house, slipping and
stumbling on the wet path, but taking the greatest care that not a drop
should be spilled. He felt prouder of having milked Hulda without
assistance than of anything he had ever before achieved; he did wish
that Oscar would come home to see. He stood a minute by the cabin door,
trying with vain eyes to peer through the darkness. Nothing was visible,
hardly even the hand he held before his face, nothing would pierce that
heavy blackness but the rushing of the flooded stream and the calling of
the wind. With a great sigh he turned at last, fumbled for the latch of
the door and stepped inside.

The fire had burned up during his absence, making the room look warm and
cozy, a welcome sight after the storm and rain without. He lit the lamp
upon the table, then looked up uneasily at the clock on the wall. Its
hands pointed to nine. He carried the lamp to the window, drew back the
curtains and set it on the sill.

“I wish Oscar would come,” he said aloud.

So busy had he been that he had not had his supper yet. His unaccustomed
hands and his great hunger both served to make the process a lengthy
one, so that when he had finished and set things in order again, it was
nearly eleven. To tell the truth, he had kept himself occupied as long
as he could in an effort to ignore the fact that the storm, bad as it
had been all day, was growing worse. Rain thundered on the roof of the
cabin with a noise that was almost deafening, paused a moment, then came
pouring down again. The windows shook and the lamp flared and flickered
in the sudden gusts that seemed to be trying to snatch the little
dwelling from its foundations. Once during a momentary pause in the
tumult he heard the sharp crack and then the slow crashing of a tree
blown down in the forest. How could a storm be so terrible and still
grow ever worse? Oh, why did not Oscar come home?

He built up the dying fire and established himself in the rough armchair
to wait. He blinked up at the clock; it was midnight now. In spite of
his discomfort, in spite of all his anxiety and his determination to
keep awake, he fell into a doze.

A sound aroused him, he had no idea just how much later. It was a
strange noise at the door, one that at first made him think that here
was Oscar come home at last. He jumped up and ran eagerly to admit him,
but stopped with his hand almost upon the latch. It was not Oscar, it
was no human being that was making that panting sound outside, that
pushing and shouldering of some huge body against the door. His heart
seemed to stand still as he waited for a second, watching the rude
boards shake and tremble under the impact of that strange pressure.
Something sniffed and snuffled along the crack at the threshold,
something padded back and forth out there in the dark, then the soft
fumbling and shouldering began again.

“If I push the table across the door—” thought Hugh, but the idea came a
second too late.

The latch suddenly gave way, the door flew open, letting in a blast of
wind and rain and blowing out the lamp, so that the cabin was left in
inky darkness. A vast white form sprang into the room, knocking Hugh
into a corner, striking against a chair and upsetting it with a crash.
Then there was utter silence, broken only by a quick panting over by the
inner doorway where the invading creature must be standing.

With a great effort Hugh managed to close the door against the fury of
the wind. Still there was quiet, no movement from that corner whence the
quick breathing came. Very slowly he took up the lamp, managed to steady
his shaking hand and fumble for a match. He set the lamp on the table,
lit the wick and turned the light full upon his strange visitor. Even
when he saw the creature clearly he could not, for a moment, grasp what
it really was. It was a dog, but such an enormous dog as Hugh had never
seen before. Its shaggy coat was white, and so wet with the rain that
water dripped from it and ran pattering to the floor. Motionless, it
stood there, still panting from the effort of forcing its way in, and
gazing steadily at Hugh with its great melancholy black eyes. He had
never seen such an animal before, still there was something
familiar—yes, he could have no doubt. It was the dog of the picture,
Dick Edmonds’ dog, it was Nicholas!

The two stood long, staring at each other without moving, then the dog
advanced very slowly and began sniffing delicately at the edge of Hugh’s
coat. For all his size, he seemed to be shy and nervous, jumping back
when the boy sought to lay a hand on his long head, advancing again when
he was not looking to sniff at his clothes again and determine whether
this was friend or foe. All his dignity disappeared, however, when Hugh
brought some food and set it upon the hearth before him. He fell upon it
with wolfish ferocity, as though he had not eaten a full meal in weeks.
He tore at the meat, crunched the bones and looked gratefully up at Hugh
from time to time, wagging his long brush of a tail that swept the
floor. But he did not eat all the food, ravenous as he seemed to be.
When the first edge of his starvation was dulled, when the warmth of the
fire had dried and warmed him so that he ceased to shiver, he stopped
eating, went to the door and whined to be gone.

“What’s the matter, old fellow, aren’t you happy here?” Hugh asked,
whereat the dog came to him, nuzzled his hand with his long wet nose,
then ran to the door again.

His insistence was so great that at last Hugh felt forced to lift the
latch, open the door and let him go. He bounded over the sill and
disappeared instantly into the dark. Not for long, however, for Hugh had
not had time to close the door before he was back again, shoving his
nose beseechingly into the boy’s hand, jumping about him and whining
again and again. There was no doubting what it was he wished.

“It’s a nice night for you to be asking me to go out with you,”
remonstrated Hugh, “but—well, you are Dick Edmonds’ dog and we have been
looking for you and him for a long time.”

He stepped back into the cabin with Nicholas at his heels and took up
his coat and cap. At the sight of this, the dog’s joy knew no bounds; he
leaped about so that the furniture of the little cabin rocked and swayed
under the force of his gigantic delight. Hugh put on his warmest
clothes, got out a pack and put into it blankets, food, matches,
anything he could think of that might be needed. He had no idea how far
Nicholas would lead him, how long he would be gone or what he should
find. At the last minute he took Oscar’s revolver down from the wall;
there had been two, but one his friend had evidently taken with him. He
quenched the fire, put out the light and was finally ready. With
Nicholas running ahead, barking in loud delight now that his desire was
understood at last, they set out into the storm.

The rain was still driving in sheets across the hill and the wind
sweeping furiously along the open spaces. The darkness was so dense that
at first Hugh could do nothing but feel his way down the trail which
Nicholas so unhesitatingly followed. When his eyes became a little more
used to the dark, however, and the trees began to shelter him from the
stinging rain, he could make out the windings of the steep path, could
distinguish the dog, white and ghostly, traveling steadily ahead of him,
and finally could see the foaming white flood of the stream that poured
downward to the lake between him and Jasper Peak. Nicholas advanced to
the very edge of the creek, stopped and looked back.

“You don’t mean that we are to cross that?” exclaimed Hugh in dismay,
gazing down at the tossing water.

Such, however, was plainly Nicholas’ intention, for without further
hesitation he plunged in and began to swim across. The wild current
caught him and whirled him down the stream, as Hugh could just make out.
The black mass of a floating log shot by and barely missed him, but none
the less he struggled on and finally, a dim white form in the dark,
scrambled out upon the opposite bank.

What a dog could just barely accomplish was certainly impossible for a
boy with a heavy pack. Hugh remembered that half a mile up the stream a
huge tree had fallen across from bank to bank, making a bridge by which
he might get over if the rush of the flood had not carried it away.
Nicholas, whining with anxiety, followed along on the other shore, as
Hugh made his way with difficulty to where the tree should be. Yes, it
was still there, high out of water at each end but with the furious
current pouring across it in the middle. It looked like none too safe a
crossing, but it was the only one. He attempted, at first, to walk
upright, but soon found that impossible, so stooped, and was at length
reduced to crawling painfully along on hands and knees. The cold water
swirled about him as he approached the center of the stream, the current
seemed trying, with direct intent, to tear loose his hold and wash him
away. The tree-trunk quivered and trembled under the mighty force that
was hurled against it, but it held under his weight as slowly he crawled
along, felt the current lessen, came into quieter water and was at last
safe on the other side, with Nicholas standing up to lick his face.

“Now, then, where next?” questioned Hugh as the dog immediately set off
up the mountain. The rain and wind were less violent on this side of the
ravine, so that their progress was quicker as they climbed upward. It
was fortunate that it was so dark, Hugh thought, for it seemed as though
they were about to pass uncomfortably close to the Pirate’s cabin. He
plodded on, stumbling over roots, scrambling through bushes, finding the
way very rough indeed. It was not until they came to the edge of a
clearing and saw before him a little house with one lighted window and
with Nicholas standing waiting on the doorstep that he realized what was
to be the goal of this strange night journey.

Even then he thought of turning back. The perils of the rain-swept
forest and of the swollen floods were as nothing to the dangers lurking
in that evil dwelling that blinked at him with one staring red eye. Had
not Nicholas run quickly through the dark to lick his hand, had he not
thought once more of the lost Edmonds brothers and how he had pledged
himself to help them, it is possible that he might not have gone on. Yet
at last he stepped out of the woods, and, very firm and straight, walked
across the clearing to the house.

He stopped for a moment upon the step and listened. There was not a
sound from within. Was the place empty, or had some one heard him coming
and was waiting, in stealthy quiet, until he should enter? What was
that, a sigh perhaps, more like a stifled moan? Without further
hesitation he pushed open the door and stepped inside.




                              CHAPTER VIII

                           A NIGHT’S LODGING


It had been the intense darkness of the night outside that had made the
cabin window look bright, for the room into which Hugh came was lit only
by a dying fire. Close to the hearth a big chair had been drawn and in
this some one was sitting, some one who whispered and muttered to
himself and stirred uneasily but did not look round. Nicholas ran to him
and began licking the thin hand that hung limply over the arm of the
chair. A lantern stood on the table, but it had evidently burned out. A
canvas pack, half-emptied, with its blankets trailing out upon the
floor, lay on a bench. It was quite evident that, besides the man in the
chair, there was no one in the cabin.

Hugh went over to him, but still he did not look up. The boy touched the
hand that Nicholas was licking and found it burning with fever. The man
was very thin; he had on the rough clothes that every one wears in the
woods, but he was fair-skinned and as unlike Half-Breed Jake and his
companions as it was possible to be. It needed no very long reflection
to make it clear to Hugh that this was John Edmonds.

Although it was quite true that Hugh did not know very much of the
woodcraft and that, at milking Hulda, he had come very near to being a
flat failure, there were still some crises to which he was equal, for he
was not a country doctor’s son for nothing. He had helped his father
more than once in emergencies very like this one, so that he was not
long at a loss what to do. John Edmonds must certainly be got to bed,
but one look at the bunks against the walls and the filthy rags that lay
piled upon them, assured Hugh that the floor was infinitely preferable.
He unpacked his own blankets, gathered up those that lay on the bench
and made a bed upon the rough board flooring. It required almost
unbelievable effort to arouse John Edmonds and move him, helplessly weak
as he was, to the improvised couch. Hugh did not stop to rekindle the
lantern, but flung more wood upon the fire and by its light went about
the task of getting his patient partly undressed and of making him more
comfortable.

During these ministrations, poor Nicholas, not realizing that his share
of usefulness was over, contrived to make himself continually in the
way. He seemed at least ten sizes too big for the tiny cabin and to have
the idea that the best thing he could do was to keep as near to Edmonds
as possible. Hugh pushed him out of the way a score of times, stumbled
over him in the half dark and felt, every time he stood still for a
moment, that cold nose pushed into his hand as though the big dog were
begging him to do his best. At last the worried creature subsided, and
lay down at the sufferer’s feet, with his chin on his paws and his dark
eyes still following Hugh wherever he went. The boy tried everything he
knew and, finally, kneeling beside his patient on the floor, was
rewarded by seeing the uneasy stupor pass into something like natural
slumber. He waited a long time to assure himself that Edmonds’ breathing
was easier and quieter and that he really slept. Then he got up stiffly,
mended the fire once more and began to explore the resources of the
little cabin.

In a store-shed behind the one room he found an open window, through
which Nicholas had evidently made his way when he had set out on his own
expedition. He also discovered a can of oil, with which he filled the
lantern so that it could be lit again. The yellow light, falling upon
the table, showed him something that he had not seen before, a note
scrawled hastily in pencil on brown paper.

“John,” it ran, “I have gone for help, but not to Oscar Dansk, because I
promised you I would not. I have gone to the Indian village at Two
Rivers and will try to send some one into Rudolm for a doctor. I will be
back before a great many hours. Dick.”

With the letter still in his hand, Hugh sat down beside the fire to try
to think the matter out. It was evident that the two Edmonds had taken
shelter from the storm in the Pirate’s cabin and that John had become so
ill that his younger brother, in alarm, had gone for aid. Their plight
must have been desperate indeed for Dick to leave his brother alone in
such a place. But why should he have gone so far when just across the
ravine help was to be had? Why did he speak of a promise? It was very
hard to understand!

Nicholas arose from where he had been lying and came to stand beside
him, arching his curly neck as Hugh stroked it, and trying to burrow his
head under the boy’s arm.

“You could tell me all about it if you could talk,” said Hugh in a
whisper. “Oh, dear, it is such a puzzle, I wish you could.”

He began to remember now that Jethro had dropped some hint of a
misunderstanding between John Edmonds and Oscar Dansk. He had hardly
noticed it when it had been mentioned, but now he commenced to recall
the fact more clearly.

“In the end even John Edmonds lost faith in Oscar’s plan about the road,
and that nearly broke his heart,” Jethro had said.

Plainly, the quarrel had been a serious one, if Edmonds was so
determined not to receive aid from Oscar’s hands. And how had Oscar
taken it? Even at that moment he was out there in the storm, risking his
life, risking the plan for which he cared even more than life—he was
doing this for the friend with whom he had quarreled.

“Oh, Nicholas,” exclaimed Hugh as he squeezed the big dog’s ears, “oh,
Nicholas, that Oscar Dansk is a real man!”

One thing still so puzzled him that his baffled thoughts came back to it
again and again. Was it the two Edmonds who had occupied the Pirate’s
shack yesterday, that quiet Sunday when he and Oscar had sat talking so
long before the cottage door? Was it the smoke from their fire that he
had seen rising from the chimney?

After long reflection, during which his thoughts began to wander
sleepily here and there and had to be brought back again with a jerk, he
began to be certain that it could not have been the two Edmonds
brothers. He himself had seen three men walk across the clearing and
from the letter he could make sure that Dick and his brother had been
alone. Besides, the distance was not so great that he could not have
made out so big a creature as Nicholas, had the dog been with them.
Evidently the pirates had come and gone before the storm—but why?
Evidently the Edmonds, after the wind and rain had come on in such
fierceness, had taken refuge there—but how did they dare? And,
evidently, he was growing very sleepy now, but the force of this new
thought served to rouse him completely again, evidently the pirates
would be returning—and when?

The night wore to a slow end, and day broke at last. With the first gray
light there came a change in his patient, the fever was succeeded by
chills and shivering and for an hour Hugh was doing his utmost with hot
blankets and warming drinks. Gradually the trembling stopped and John
Edmonds, opening his eyes, gave Hugh a look of bewildered amazement and
stared about him as though the cabin and the boy were both totally
unfamiliar. It was not until his eyes fell upon Nicholas that he seemed
satisfied and dropped off to sleep again. It was broad daylight now and
time for Hugh to realize that he was exceedingly hungry. He fell to
examining his own stores, Edmonds’ and Half-Breed Jake’s, to see what
the combined larder afforded. There was not much in his pack, for he had
not thought he would be very long away from the cottage; there was
nothing in Edmonds’, but quite a supply of flour and bacon in Jake’s
store room.

“I don’t care to use anything that belongs to that gang unless I have
to,” he thought. “It was probably all stolen in the first place.”

As he was putting one of the bags back into place, he knocked down a gun
that had been standing in the corner and that now fell at his feet with
a loud clatter. He picked it up and recognized with delight that it was
Oscar’s rifle, the same one that he himself had dropped in the woods the
day that he was lost. This would be a prize indeed to take back with him
when the time should come to go. But how had the pirates come by it? Had
somebody been following that day in the forest, was the same somebody
even now following Oscar wherever he had gone?

He made his breakfast and fed Nicholas from his own supplies.
Fortunately he knew enough not to try to give food to John Edmonds, who
was sleeping uneasily again, as though the fever was once more beginning
to rise. Hugh, sitting beside him, began to do some very intense
calculating as to who would be the most likely to come back first, Dick
Edmonds or Half-Breed Jake. It was impossible to tell, he could only
wait. He sat, staring down at his patient for a long time. The only
proper thing to do was to try to get him across the ravine to Oscar’s
cottage, but could a boy of sixteen possibly hope to convey a heavy,
helpless man that far? To all of his questionings this was the only one
to which there was a definite answer. And the answer was no.

The morning passed, one slow hour after another. It was still raining
heavily, with water pouring from the edge of the cabin roof and
streaming down the windows, and with the flooded creek still thundering
in the ravine below. Every minute that passed brought nearer the
possible return of Half-Breed Jake, since, so Hugh began to think, he
must certainly be the one to come first. More than once he thought he
heard steps outside and felt of his revolver to be ready for whatever
might come, but each time it proved to be a false alarm. Finally he sat
down at the table, facing the door, and laid his revolver before him, to
wait as best he could. He had risen very early the morning that Oscar
had gone away alone—was it a day or a week ago? At least he knew that he
had slept very little since and that he must, at all costs, keep awake
now. Yet slowly his head began to nod, to droop further toward the
table; finally it rested on his arms and he was asleep.

It was the deepest of slumbers into which he had fallen, yet he came out
of it with a suddenness that left him dazed. Nicholas was leaping at the
door, barking loudly to herald some one’s coming, sniffing along the
threshold, then barking and leaping again. Hugh jumped up, so stiff that
he could not move quickly. He took up his revolver and tried to reach
the door, but was only half way across the room when it swung open, and
Dick Edmonds came in.

He was drenched and dripping, and he, too, held a revolver in his hand.
The two boys stared at each other for a long moment, then burst into
roars of laughter. The long strain, the sudden desperate tension, the
relief of each one at seeing a friend when he expected to confront an
enemy, was quite too much for both. Even while they laid down their
threatening weapons and shook hands they were still laughing. It was
Dick who sobered first and went over to stoop down by his brother.

“He must have been getting steadily worse from the time I got him here,”
he said. “Poor old Johnny, if he had been as badly off as this I would
never have left him. But this was as far as I could get him alone and I
was so desperate that I went off for help. I had been hoping against
hope that Jake and his gang were away for some time, but when I saw by
the muddy footprints on the doorstep that some one had gone in since I
went away, I can tell you I was anxious.”

“Did you bring some one back with you?” asked Hugh.

“I never got to Two Rivers at all,” replied Dick. “The first stream I
came to was so far over its banks that I walked for hours trying to find
a place to cross and couldn’t. At last I realized that, even if I got
help, it would risk leaving John alone too long, so I turned back. A lot
of good I did by going!”

“The thing now,” said Hugh, “is to get your brother away as quickly as
we can. The pirates will be coming back any minute.”

“I doubt if even the pair of us could ever get him to Two Rivers,” Dick
returned doubtfully.

“We’ll take him across to Oscar Dansk’s house, there beyond the ravine,”
Hugh said.

Dick hesitated, stammered and flushed.

“I promised—” he began.

“Whatever you promised,” Hugh interrupted him, “you will not be asking
for help from Oscar Dansk. He is not there.”

“Where is he?”

“Out in the woods—looking for you.”

Dick shook his head slowly.

“That beats me,” he said. “I always thought poor Johnny was wrong about
Oscar. I never really understood about that quarrel myself. And lately
John was too sick to know quite what he did think, and he made me
promise over and over, when he knew that we might be somewhere near
where Oscar lived, that I would not go to him for help. They are both so
obstinately proud. But I can see for myself that the only thing now is
to do as you say. I should like to know how you ever got here, Hugh, and
about a hundred other things, but we won’t spend time on explanations
just yet. I suppose we can make a stretcher of blankets and carry him
between us somehow.”

Their preparations were quickly made. John Edmonds, still unconscious,
was lifted to the rude litter they had constructed, and was carried out
of the cabin. They had covered him well against the wind and rain, but
the journey would be a perilous one for him, none the less. Slowly, and
with frequent pauses, they got him across the clearing and down the hill
to the stream, then along its bank to where the fallen tree still held
its place. With the decreasing of the furious rain the flood had dropped
a little, so that to-day the whole of the rude bridge was out of water.
How they got across, Hugh did not ever quite know. The tree swayed and
shook more than it had done before, for the water had undermined the
banks and made the frail support even more uncertain. They worked their
way across, holding their burden high between them, and breathed a
monstrous sigh of relief when at last they were on firm ground again.
Nicholas would not trust their way of crossing, but swam over, with much
difficulty, and was waiting for them on the other shore.

They were a tired and breathless pair when they had finally carried
Edmonds up the steep trail and into Oscar’s cottage. Most eagerly, as
they approached the house, did Hugh look for some sign of his friend’s
return. But the door and the windows were closed, the chimney smokeless,
there was no one there. Only Hulda greeted them with an impatient call
and loud stampings on the floor of her shed, to signify her indignation
at having been forgotten so long. Hugh did not stop for any vain
wonderings.

“Can you get your brother to bed alone,” he asked Dick, “while I go
back?”

“Go back!” exclaimed Dick. “What for?”

“For the things we had to leave behind,” Hugh answered, “and for Oscar’s
rifle. I dropped it in the woods and Jake had picked it up. I would risk
anything to get it back for him.”

“You should not go,” Dick insisted; “the pirates may come back any
second now.”

But the door had already closed behind Hugh and he was speeding down the
trail with Nicholas at his heels. They crossed the stream, even the dog
being willing to use the bridge this time after his last experience with
the wild current. Hugh reached the cabin and secured the rifle and the
two packs that still lay upon the table.

“What luck I have had,” he thought exultantly. “Now I suppose I ought to
put out the fire; it would not be fair to risk burning up their cabin,
no matter who they are.”

He had stepped back to the hearth when a low growl from Nicholas
startled him to sudden attention. The big dog was standing with ears and
head up and the hair on his back beginning to bristle. Tiptoeing to the
window, Hugh peered cautiously out. There, on the side of the clearing
away from the stream, he saw three men coming out of the edge of the
wood. Even at that distance he could recognize the tall figure and
swarthy face of Half-Breed Jake as he came up the hill a little ahead of
the other two. The door was on the opposite side of the cabin, so that
Hugh could slip out undiscovered, but it was a long, long open slope
that lay between him and the sheltering woods.

Down the hill he plunged, cutting off corners of the trail, leaping over
the rocks and scrambling through the low-growing bushes. Nicholas seemed
to cover the distance in two bounds with a speed that Hugh greatly
envied. He was burdened with the two heavy packs and the rifle slung
across his shoulders, but, by some instinctive obstinacy, he would not
drop them for the pirates to capture.

For a minute he thought he could escape unseen, but his progress was
slower than he thought and he had delayed in the cabin an instant too
long. A shout behind him told that he was discovered. He looked
desperately upward as a clattering of feet sounded on the stony trail
and saw three men cross the top of the hill and come running down the
path.




                               CHAPTER IX

                          PERIL AT THE BRIDGE


Any person of real judgment, so Hugh realized even at the time, would
have thrown away the pack and rifle and run to safety unimpeded. He did
think of it, but somehow he could not. So he stumbled on, the men behind
him gaining, the river and the fallen tree seeming a long distance away.
He reached the sheltering underbrush, turned sharply upstream and was
hidden for a moment from his pursuers as they came dashing down the
hill. He had just leaped upon the tree-trunk when they came out upon the
bank.

“Look out, Hugh,” came a shout from the other shore, where stood Dick,
who had shamelessly deserted his brother. “Look out! They are going to
shoot.”

Hugh did not stop to look, but ducked quickly and heard a bullet whistle
over his head. The next second, “ping,” another buried itself in the
pack that hung from his shoulder. The impact almost destroyed his
balance; he staggered and dropped to his knees and crawled the last few
yards to safety.

“Are you hurt?” cried Dick. “Are you safe? Lie down behind that log
until they have stopped shooting.”

In absolute defiance of his own advice he, as well as Nicholas, was
standing among the trees, the one shouting, the other barking in wild
excitement. But Hugh would not come, for his very danger on the now
tottering bridge had given him an idea for the furthering of their own
safety. He was standing knee deep in the running water with his shoulder
against the tree-trunk, pushing against it with all his might.

“Go back; stay with your brother,” he called to Dick. “What would he do
if you were to be shot?”

A bullet carried away his woolen cap and another cut the bark beside his
hand, but he did not give up. He pushed until the big tree swayed, moved
a little, then suddenly rolled all the way over. Just as the first
Indian’s foot was upon it, the great log fell splashing into the water,
was whirled over and over by the current and rushed away down stream.
Dripping and delighted, Hugh ran up the trail to join Dick, the angry
bullets still whistling behind him. He looked back to see one of the
Indians wade into the water, stand waist deep, reeling under the force
of the flood, then struggle back to the shore. All three of the pirates
strode away through the bushes, talking earnestly together.

For some time after the boys returned to the cabin they were busied
caring for John Edmonds. While they were working, they exchanged their
various experiences, so that Dick learned how Hugh came to be in the
cabin on Jasper Peak, and Hugh, of the Edmonds’ adventures in the
forest.

This illness of John’s, it seemed, had been coming on gradually. Dick
had noticed that he was restless, erratic and worried over his work, at
which he often had to toil late into the night. The hunting trip, Dick
had thought, would help to put him on his feet again, and he had,
indeed, seemed better the first day, but after that grew rapidly worse.

“It was the last thing we could do together,” Dick explained, “for I was
going to enlist when I got back; I had only been waiting until they
could find some one to fill my place at the mine. We started off in
great spirits; the Indian, Kaniska, was our guide, a man we had had
before, who always seemed reliable enough. He was a friend of John’s, in
a way, and that queer squaw of his, Laughing Mary, had always professed
to be devoted to us, especially to my brother. I can’t imagine how
Kaniska could have done such a thing to us.”

“And what did he do?” inquired Hugh eagerly.

“He took us in a direction we had never been before,” said Dick,
“through a perfect network of streams and little lakes and swamps, and
made us push on as fast as we could, saying that we were getting to a
place where there was famous shooting. We did not camp until very late
that first night and I was so tired that I slept like the dead. When I
woke up in the morning, he was gone.”

“He left you alone?” exclaimed Hugh in horror.

“Not only that, but he took all our stores with him, and our axes and
our compass. To leave men in the woods, stripped of everything they
need, is very little short of murder. I had been sleeping with my rifle
beside me, so he didn’t dare take that. It was the only thing that saved
us.”

“And you have lived only on what you could shoot?” questioned Hugh.
“Why, you must be half famished!”

“I am,” assented Dick, cheerfully, “rather more than half, to tell the
truth, but we must attend to Johnny first.”

When at last there was time to stir up the fire and prepare a meal, Hugh
realized on seeing Dick eat how near he had been to real starvation.

“Berries and things are pretty scarce so late in the year as this,” Dick
continued his tale as they sat at the table. “I managed to catch a few
fish now and then, and I shot any kind of bird that I could hit. We ate
some queer things, but you get so that you don’t care much. Nicholas
could catch rabbits and he always brought them to me, although, poor
fellow, he could have eaten a hundred of them himself.”

He related how, after a few hours of bewildered searching for the
vanished Indian, he had decided that the stream upon which they were
encamped, being larger than the others and flowing north, must be the
outlet of Red Lake and was therefore the best guide to follow. If he
could find the lake, he could find Rudolm, he thought, but what a long
and hopeless way it seemed! Now and then, in trying to cut off some of
the windings of the stream, they had strayed away from it altogether and
had only found it again after the loss of much time and effort.

“And all the time Johnny kept getting sicker and sicker,” he said, “so
that I got more frightened about him than about anything else. At night
he would be out of his head, sometimes, and in the daytime he would just
trudge along at my heels and never say a word. Only once, when I said
that if we ever found the lake we might come out somewhere near Oscar
Dansk’s house, he got furiously angry and made me promise that I would
never ask him for help. I don’t know yet what idea he had in his poor
confused head, but I had to promise, to quiet him.”

He told further of their growing weakness, of the shorter and shorter
distances they could travel in a day, of a final afternoon when, having
gone to shoot a partridge, he had come back and found his brother had
disappeared.

“Perhaps I hadn’t realized until that minute how desperately ill he was.
He had wandered off; I could see the storm coming and I looked and
looked and called and called, but I couldn’t find him. I felt pretty
hopeless, I can tell you.”

It was Nicholas who had discovered John Edmonds at last, lying
insensible under a big tree near the foot of Jasper Peak. They had sat
by him a long time, the boy and the dog, helpless and exhausted both of
them. Dick had caught a glimpse of the cabin on the side of the mountain
and had decided, when the storm broke, that they must get there at any
cost.

“I carried Johnny on my back,” he said, “don’t ask me how, but some way
or other we made it. I was so anxious to get him in out of the storm
that it didn’t matter much where we went. I don’t think I had sense
enough to mind a great deal even when I realized it was Jake’s cabin. We
found something to eat, although we didn’t take more than we could
possibly help. John seemed to revive a little, but still I was
desperately anxious, and felt that I must do something, no matter what.
I think I believed Two Rivers and Rudolm were much nearer than they are
and I had not counted on the streams all being in flood. I could see the
light from your cabin, but—well, I had promised. Now, I can understand
that the promise was a foolish business, but your judgment isn’t quite
so good when you are worn out and half starved, as when you are rested
and fed. You don’t see things quite so clear.”

“But weren’t you afraid of Jake’s coming back?” Hugh asked.

Dick, it appeared, did not have such horror of the Pirate of Jasper Peak
as had Hugh. He did not even yet seem to suspect that the half-breed had
been concerned in their being lost in the forest nor had he heard the
full tale of what Jake had done to Oscar Dansk. One anxiety had overcome
the other and he had left his brother, ordering Nicholas back when he
would have come too, and finally shutting him in so that John Edmonds
should not feel himself quite alone.

“But almost as soon as I was gone he broke out and went across the
valley to you,” Dick concluded. “Nicholas had more sense than I had,
didn’t you, old fellow?”

The big dog, lying on his side before the hearth, opened one eye and
beat gently on the floor with his plumy tail at mention of his name.
Then he heaved a great sigh, stretched himself luxuriously to the fire
and fell asleep again, completely satisfied that those he loved were
safe at last.

Dick, also, being assured that at least his brother was no worse, went
away to sleep off some of the exhaustion of his journey through the
forest, and Hugh was left to sit alone, still watching for Oscar’s
return and wondering more and more anxiously why he did not come. The
little cabin was peaceful and absolutely quiet except for the ticking of
the clock and the deep breathing of the dog at his feet, but far from
peaceful were Hugh’s racing thoughts. Where had his comrade been during
that furious storm? What had happened to keep him so long? Oh, if he
only had not parted from Oscar in such churlish ill-nature how much
easier it would be to bear this anxious waiting!

He looked at Oscar’s recovered rifle hanging on the wall and thought
with satisfaction of how glad he would be to see it. He felt a good deal
of pride in having been able to get it back, but, as he sat thinking, he
began to feel his pleasure give way to a certain lingering doubt. Had he
really been wise in returning to the Pirate’s house, was the value of
the rifle greater than the value of the help he could give the two
exhausted Edmonds, help that they would have lost had his venture ended
in his being shot? It was an unwelcome thought, yet he was forced to
conclude that this was another of those errors in judgment of which his
father had accused him, a rash failing to count the cost at the critical
moment.

“Oh, dear,” he sighed, quite out loud, “when will I ever get sense
enough to qualify for a soldier?”

Nicholas, hearing his voice, raised his head to look at him inquiringly.
He seemed to hear something else also, for he got up, went to the door
and stood listening intently. Then he turned to Hugh and whined to be
let out. Hugh listened, but heard nothing save the rushing of the stream
and the sighing of the wind in the trees.

“There isn’t anything,” he said to Nicholas, but the big dog still
insisted, so at last he opened the door.

He stood before the cottage, looking in every direction, north, south,
east; the sun was in his eyes so that he shaded them with his hand to
look across the open meadows to the west. Was that something moving, was
it a distant, plodding, weary figure slowly making its way up the slope?
He could not be mistaken. It was Oscar!

With a shout of joy Hugh ran to meet him, but stopped short in surprise
and dismay when he came close. Oscar’s forehead was cut and had been
bleeding; his cheek was discolored with a great bruise; he carried
neither pack nor gun, and he limped as he came toiling painfully up the
hill.

“I had a fall,” he explained briefly, in answer to Hugh’s anxious
questions.

Long after, Hugh learned the real details of the mishap, how Oscar had
taken shelter from the storm under a mass of overhanging rock, how the
fury of wind and water had loosened it above him and how he had been
swept down in the midst of an avalanche of plunging bowlders, sliding
earth and uprooted trees, to lie stunned for he knew not how many hours,
but—

“I had a fall,” was all he said, then added quickly, “What is that?
Nicholas, _Nicholas_!”

He sat down abruptly on a fallen tree as though sudden relief had
weakened his knees; he put his arms around the great dog’s neck.
Nicholas, in turn, overwhelmed him with endearments, licked his face,
nuzzled his hand, nearly pushed him from the log in his clumsy efforts
to show his joy. There seemed no need to tell Oscar that the two
brothers had been found, for he seemed to guess the whole of the good
news from the mere presence of the big wolfhound. Hugh, as he stood
looking at the greetings of the two, had a sudden understanding, from
Oscar’s overwhelming relief and delight, what was the real depth of the
friendship he bore John Edmonds.

When he and Hugh reached the cottage, Oscar went straight to John’s bed
and sat down beside it. The sufferer had lain in heavy stupor for hours,
only arousing once, much earlier in the day, to stare at the boys with
no recognition and then to drop into unconsciousness again. But now,
almost as soon as Oscar’s firm hand closed about his wrist to feel his
pulse, he opened his eyes, looked at the other with slowly dawning
comprehension and said:

“I was wrong about that road, Oscar, and you were right.”

“It wass no matter,” his friend answered hastily, his voice sounding
Swedish again in the extremity of his feeling. “Opening up these wheat
lands might not have been advisable then, when it was just a question of
dollars and cents. Now it is different, it is a matter of daily bread
and lives and victory.”

But Johnny Edmonds did not hear. Having given voice to the thought that
had so long been uppermost in his mind, he drifted contentedly away into
sleep again, real sleep this time, with no further mutterings and
restless movements of his head upon the pillow. Oscar got up quickly and
went to stand at the window, looking out with that queer far-off look
that his face sometimes wore. Turning at last he met Dick’s anxious eyes
and smiled slowly and happily.

“It was just a year ago we quarreled,” he said. “I thought he should
have stood by me when I wanted to build the road; he thought, like the
rest, that I was a mad dreamer—perhaps I was. This war has overturned
all things; what was a far vision once may be what the world most needs
to-day. But your brother is a better friend than I, Dick Edmonds. I
could not have been the first to say that I was wrong. And now all is
well again.”

The next day and the next, John Edmonds’ fever ebbed and flowed, leaving
them sometimes full of hope that recovery was beginning, sometimes in
terror that such recovery might never be. In the end, however, the
crisis passed, leaving him pale and shaky, but clear-headed and himself
again at last. It was on the first day that he was able to be propped up
in bed that Oscar, sitting by him, began to discuss, with unreserved
bluntness, what was being said in Rudolm about John’s books and the
state in which the bank’s affairs had been left. For a moment Edmonds
looked astonished, dismayed and angry, then he laughed.

Three of his clerks had gone to war, he explained, and he was so
short-handed that he used to work fourteen, sixteen, eighteen hours at a
time, trying to keep things going, reeling with exhaustion, his brain at
last so weary and confused with illness that he scarcely knew what he
was doing.

“Now my head is cleared up again,” he said, “I begin to realize what
queer things I must have done to those books. The expert who is trying
to make them out must be having a glorious time of it. I wonder how far
he has got and what he thinks he has found.”

Then Oscar broached the plan that he had evidently been turning over and
over in his mind. Edmonds must get back to Rudolm as soon as possible,
he said, for affairs must be cleared up and the anxiety of bank
directors and stockholders must be brought to an end. The moment he
could be moved Oscar himself would take him home; they would go by
water, the whole length of Red Lake, a two or three days’ journey by
canoe. He stated the plan and its urgency very briefly, even more
briefly told the need of the boys’ staying behind.

Both immediately raised their voices in clamorous objection. Dick must
get back, he was going to enlist; Hugh wished to go with him, in fact
the two boys had been laying their heads together and making plans of
their own. But in all of their arguments they found Oscar’s calculations
had been before them.

Did Dick know the bars and channels and bays between here and Rudolm? He
did not. Could he, or could he and Hugh together, be sure of handling a
heavily laden canoe successfully in the face of chance winds on the open
stretches of the lake? They were not able to say they could. Could John
be taken overland, paddled up rivers, carried around portages, risk a
meeting in the forest with Half-Breed Jake or some of his followers? No.
Or could Oscar go with Dick and John and leave Hugh behind to hold the
cabin alone? Most certainly not.

So the plan stood as Oscar first proposed it, and, on John’s continuing
to improve steadily, preparations were made for a start three days
later. The night before they were to go, Oscar went with Hugh all over
his small domain, indoors and out, showing him just how this was to be
cared for and how that was to be done. They were coming up the path from
Hulda’s stable, picking their way over the rough stones in the
moonlight, the big dog following them, while Oscar gave his final
directions. The wide valley of the Promised Land lay at their feet in
sharp outline of black and white, while above them the sky was powdered
thick with stars and, across the ravine, rose the dark heights of Jasper
Peak with one gleaming light shining from its rugged shoulder.

“And you must look out for Jake,” Oscar ended. “Every hour, every
minute, you must watch for him. In three weeks the date for my proving
up will have passed, the claim will be really mine—if I can hold it
until then.”

“But surely there is nothing that he can do now,” Hugh protested.

“He and his comrades will perhaps do the worst they have ever done,
between now and that day,” returned Oscar quietly. “They will not come
openly to shoot or rob or burn, they will lie in wait and play some
trick on you, for the crooked way is always their way. What they will do
I cannot guess, I can only tell you to watch and never cease watching
and in the end I know we will win.”

“Still,” insisted Hugh, “I do not see how they can ruin your plan so
near its end as this.”

“Suppose,” said Oscar, “he should drive you out, burn down the buildings
and destroy the fields and, before I can file my final papers, prove to
the Land Office that none of the required improvements are really here.
We could take the matter into court and establish in time that it was he
who laid things waste, but that would take months, the season would pass
and the lands would not be open in time for a harvest next year. And a
year in terms of wheat and bread counts now for more than ten ordinary
years.”

“And you think that when the place is yours and you are settled here,
then the people of Rudolm will follow?”

“I know they will. Their fear of Half-Breed Jake is partly habit, partly
a sort of superstition; it is not real cowardice. When they see that one
man has been able to hold out against him alone they will not hesitate
longer.”

“They should be very grateful to you,” observed Hugh, his voice grave
with the thought of what weight of responsibility was to be laid upon
him. He shivered a little. The autumn air was very cold.

“I do not want gratitude,” returned Oscar quickly. “What would I have to
say to them if they tried to thank me? No, when I see these hillsides
covered with the grain for which the whole world is crying; when I can
sit here on my doorstep and see many red roofs warm in the sunshine, or
the moonlight making sharp black shadows of the pointed gables or yellow
lights shining from the windows there, and there, and there; when I can
think that all within are warm and safe and happy, why, I can ask for
nothing more on earth, except—except, perhaps, that little black Hendrik
might be back again.”

Nicholas, who had been sitting on the grass beside them while they stood
and talked, came now to rub against Oscar and push his great head under
his hand.

“You are a good fellow, Nicholas,” said Oscar, patting his curly
shoulder, “but you are not my Hendrik. It is strange how a man and a
little black dog can learn to love each other when each is all the other
has.”

There was much hurrying to and fro before dawn next morning when the
journey was actually to begin. There was carrying of loaded packs down
to the canoe, there was running back for things forgotten, there were
many instructions given by every one to every one else. The day promised
to be a clear one, although now the sky was dark and the water gray.
John Edmonds was made comfortable in the bottom of the boat; the packs
were put on board; there was no time for elaborate farewells, even when
it came to pushing out from shore.

“Shove her easy,” directed Dick, and—

“A little more,” said Oscar. “There, now we are afloat. Good-by,
good-by.”

His paddle dipped, the canoe shot forward, a sharp ripple rose beneath
her bow. The two boys stood watching as she moved steadily away. The
water was turning from gray to silver and shining in the morning light,
while a gold and scarlet glow behind Jasper Peak showed where the sun
was soon to rise. Hugh and Dick still stood as the boat dwindled to a
black speck on the glittering lake, turned into Harbin’s Channel and
disappeared. Even then they waited, shading their eyes, hoping for one
more sight of it. Finally Hugh heaved a long sigh and the two turned to
look at each other. The valley of the Promised Land was their very own,
to hold or to lose.




                               CHAPTER X

                       FIRST BLOOD TO THE PIRATE


On returning to the cottage, the first thing that Hugh did was to mark
off the date on the calendar just as he had seen Oscar do every morning.

“We mustn’t lose count of the days,” he said to Dick.

“Oh, there won’t be so many of them as all that,” Dick answered.

Hugh said nothing. Oscar had talked to him more fully than to his
comrade about the task of righting John Edmonds’ affairs.

“It may not be so simple to put them in order as he hopes it will,” he
had said, “so the time may be three weeks or a month or perhaps more. I
will not hide from you the chance that, if there is very bad weather
soon, I may not get back to you for some time. The snow can lie very
deep in these valleys.”

“Snow,” Hugh had exclaimed, “why, it is only October!”

“Remember it will be November in a week,” Oscar replied, “and that this
is a climate very different from yours. Here the winter begins early and
lasts long and we have to be ready for it. There are supplies enough to
last until spring, I have made sure of that, and plenty of wood, so that
there is no danger of your needing anything. I will come back to you as
soon as I can, but at this season all plans go by the weather.”

So Hugh had written a long letter to his father for Oscar to send,
explaining why mail must be uncertain and just what he was doing.

“I ought to learn a great deal from this experience,” he ended, “enough
to make even you feel that I am fit for service in France. I am bound
that I will make it before I am twenty-one.”

It did not look much like winter to-day, even though the woods were so
bare and the hillsides so brown. The boys had arranged that they would
hunt and fish as much as possible for the purpose of saving Oscar’s
stores for future use, and that they would go out alone on alternate
days, so that the cottage might never be left unguarded. Neither one was
ever to go so far away that a certain signal of rifle shots could not
call him back. It was agreed that Hugh was to go shooting the first day,
so, very blithely, he had made ready, shouldered his rifle and started
forth.

He stopped a moment before the door to look down at the lake, which was
very still this morning and very blue. He knew now why Oscar had elected
to start before the dawn, for two canoes were skimming over the quiet
surface, pirate vessels, although not of the accepted type. Often before
Hugh had seen them patrolling these waters that Half-Breed Jake called
his own, swift craft, dark and sinister, ready to shoot any man or sink
any boat that ventured through Harbin’s Channel. Harbin, he had learned,
was an explorer who, fifty years ago, had coasted up and down Red Lake,
mapping the islands and the bays and inlets. His boat had been wrecked
in this channel: one could see its bleaching bones still wedged among
the rocks, and he himself had perished at the hands of hostile Indians.
Although the Indians had now nearly vanished and civilization had, since
then, been creeping steadily nearer, the upper reaches of Red Lake were
still as wild, unexplored and perilous as in his day. But—thus Hugh
registered a vow within himself—they would soon be so no longer.

A long day’s tramp brought him fair sport, several partridges, two
quail, but no sight of larger game. Hugh was a good shot and did not
often fail to bring down his quarry.

“I wish I could get a deer,” he thought, but knew that for that he must
go out at night.

The air was so still and the woods so silent that it seemed he must be
the only person within a hundred miles. There was a sleepy swaying of
the branches above his head and a quiet rustle of the leaves under his
feet, otherwise there was scarcely a sound. Surely in this peaceful
region there could be no such thing as quarreling and bloodshed. It was
hard to believe that, only a few miles away, the dingy cabin clung to
the slope of Jasper Peak and within it Half-Breed Jake and his Indian
comrades were planning any sort of violence that would lead to the ruin
of Oscar’s cherished scheme.

“It must be a mistake,” Hugh reflected almost aloud. “I believe I
dreamed it. I don’t think this adventure is real.”

He had crossed a little brook, in the late afternoon, and was climbing
the long slope beyond it when he realized that he was thirsty and that
the route he was about to follow lay along the ridge, high above any
water for many miles.

“I am not much of a woodsman,” he told himself. “I should have
remembered to drink when I could. It would be better to go back.”

Quickly he ran down the hill, making a good deal of noise as he crashed
through the underbrush. He stooped long to drink at the edge of the pool
and then stood up to continue his journey. He glanced across at his own
trail coming down to the water’s edge on the other shore, stared at it a
moment, then ran splashing through the stream to look again. Close
beside his own footprints and fresher even than they, were the marks of
moccasined feet, as plain as those footprints of the big dog, Nicholas,
that he had seen once, as plain and much more ominous. Some person had
been following him through the wood, tracking him so closely and eagerly
that he had not taken the pains to cover his own trail.

Hugh stood still and looked and listened with every nerve tense, but
there was nothing to be seen, nothing to be heard. The forest was as
silent as a forest in a dream. He crossed the brook again, and climbed
the hill hastily. More than once he turned his head quickly and looked
back over his shoulder, but there was never a stirring leaf nor a
snapping twig to prove that he was being followed. He made his way
homeward in the straightest line possible, thinking deeply all the way.

Time passed, the weather grew colder and the daylight shorter, but still
the pirates made no move. Only the blue haze of their smoke going up
from Jasper Peak showed that they were still there, watching and ever
watching. Game began to be scarce in the restricted limit the boys
allowed themselves for hunting, so that they fell to dipping deeper and
deeper into Oscar’s stores. Everything was kept in the small shed
backing up against the cottage with its door opening into the main room.
This place was carefully inspected every day, according to instructions.

“For,” Oscar had said, “if the fieldmice get in and chew up your bacon
or a leak comes in the roof and spoils your flour and meal, where are
you? In case of bad weather your lives might depend on these supplies
being safe.”

The vigilance of Nicholas sniffed out any overbold mouse that ventured
within, while the boys’ watchfulness prevented any mischance from wind
and rain, so that for a time all went well. They began, indeed, to feel
such a sense of security that it did not seem possible anything could go
amiss and it appeared that, when Oscar returned, the report given him
would be quite barren of adventure. Hugh, however, thinking of those
footprints by the stream, still remembered that what danger did lurk
about them was bound to be unsuspected and unseen.

It had been, one day, Hugh’s turn to replenish the empty larder so that
he had spent the whole afternoon fishing about a mile from the cottage.
Dusk was just beginning, yet he lingered for “just one more bite,” since
luck had not been good and he wished to carry home enough fish for one
meal at least. He waited long for a nibble, shifting impatiently from
foot to foot.

“It must be getting too cold for fishing,” he commented to himself.
“Why, it feels like winter all of a sudden; it has changed a great deal
since morning.”

He had just pulled in a flopping trout and had dropped it into the
basket when a sudden sound startled him so that he dropped his rod. It
was the sharp crack of a rifle, followed immediately by a second and a
third, the prearranged signal of alarm. The pirates had struck at last!

A mile is a long way to run when the course is over a heavily wooded
ridge and through a valley of poplar thickets. Hugh covered it in
extraordinarily short time, although it seemed to him unnumbered hours.
He was just coming, panting, up the last slope, when he met Dick,
equally breathless, running toward him.

“It’s Hulda,” gasped his friend. “The Indians are trying to drive her
off; they have headed her away off yonder, over the hill.”

He pointed, for even as he spoke, they caught sight of Hulda crossing a
clearing, running with the awkward gait common to excited cows and
lowing her amazement and dismay at the indignity put upon her.

“You strike across the ridge and I will run down into the valley,”
directed Dick. “I think I can head her off. They sha’n’t steal Hulda!”

With a shout, the two boys plunged to the rescue. Hugh was quick enough
to reach her, halfway down the slope, but totally unable to check her
course. The mild Hulda, now thoroughly alarmed, came down the hill with
a blind rush, blundered against him and rolled him head over heels. He
picked himself up, unhurt, and ran after her in determined pursuit.
Indeed the pirates were not to be allowed the triumph of stealing Hulda!

On the more open ground below Dick succeeded in slowing her a little and
Nicholas, flying through the thickets, like a streak of white lightning,
to leap and bark beneath her very nose, managed to turn her back up the
hill. Here the boys were able to gain on her terrified speed once more,
and, on Hugh’s closing in and turning her again, she ran close by Dick,
who triumphantly seized her by the halter and brought her to a
standstill.

“I’ve got her,” he shouted to Hugh, raising his arm high in signal of
victory. “She’s—ouch!”

For a sharp report sounded from a thicket and a bullet, speeding just
over Dick’s head, nipped his uplifted hand. Hugh, on coming up, found
him applying his thumb to his mouth, as undisturbed as though he had
scratched it with a pin. Poor Hulda still plunged and dragged at her
halter, her sides heaving and her gentle eyes wide with fright.

“I was just coming up from the spring,” Dick recounted as between them
they led the cow homeward, “when I heard Nicholas bark, so I ran around
the corner of the cabin and there she was, just going over the hill a
quarter of a mile away. At first I thought I could stop her alone, but
when I saw the two Indians driving her, I ran back and signaled for you.
Here, let’s lead her along the valley. I am out of breath chasing her up
hills.”

“Aren’t you hurt?” inquired Hugh anxiously as they trudged along.

Hulda still made the going difficult, jerking and snorting with
excitement. Her calm disposition, once completely roused, seemed almost
impossible to soothe.

“Pshaw, no, the bullet hardly touched me,” Dick replied. “What surprises
me is that they let us get her with only one shot fired. I don’t quite
understand.”

“I wonder—” began Hugh, then paused, for a thought had struck him.

It struck him so deeply that he dropped Hulda’s rope and turned to run
up the hill. There was a growing misgiving in his heart that turned
swiftly to real terror as he sped along: it seemed as though he would
never reach the summit. Yet even while he was struggling up the slopes
he began to see a red glow behind the trees that seemed to grow brighter
and brighter. In spite of a contrary wind there was a queer suffocating
smell in the air.

“Dick, Dick,” he called, “leave Hulda; come quickly.”

The loss of forty cows could be nothing beside the disaster before him,
as he reached the hilltop. Scarlet flames licked across the roof of
Oscar’s cabin, with dense clouds of smoke rolling out toward the lake
and with a single tall figure moving swiftly across the clearing, black
against the brilliant blaze.

Dick always maintained that Jake shot twice at Hugh as he raced across
the clearing, but if he did so, Hugh was quite unconscious of the fact.

“We can’t put it out—we can’t put it out—there is so little water!” he
caught himself gasping aloud as he ran.

Fortunately Dick, when he came from the spring, had set down his full
pail by the doorstep when he went to rescue Hulda. Dashing inside, Hugh
dragged the blankets from the bunks, plunged them into the water and
then swung himself up over the eaves to the burning roof. Blindly and
furiously he beat at the flames, choking in the dense smoke, feeling
sparks and coals burn through his coat, yet caring for nothing but that
he must quench the fire. Dick handed him up pail after pail of water
from below; how he ever went and came from the spring so quickly was
impossible to understand.

It was Hugh who had the presence of mind to realize that the water must
be husbanded and thrown upon the fire in well-aimed dipperfuls rather
than poured pell-mell across the roof. It was Dick who shouted up to him
that he must try to drive the flames back from the cabin proper, since
saving the blazing shed behind it was already beyond hope. How they
toiled, now getting a little the better of the fire, now driven back by
a fresh outburst of flame, too excited either to hope or to despair,
feeling only one instinct—to fight. Hours passed, they were drenched,
blackened, their clothes singed, their hands and faces burned, they were
exhausted; breathless, but at last victorious.

Slowly the flames died down to smoldering ashes, the smoke cleared away,
the last glowing coal was stamped upon, the last spark went out. Hugh
slid to the ground, finding his knees suddenly a little shaky, and stood
looking happily into Dick’s blackened face.

“We did it,” he said; “Oscar’s got his cabin still.”

“Yes,” the other assented a trifle quaveringly; “I thought once or twice
it was really gone.”

“And now,” went on Hugh, “where’s Hulda?”

Fires, it seemed, did not excite Hulda in the least, for she was
discovered grazing peacefully at the edge of the clearing, her former
agitation entirely vanished. Nicholas had followed the boys at first,
but, after getting a few sparks in his furry coat, had decided to
retreat and was sitting solemnly beside her, mounting guard. The cow’s
stable, set at a little distance, was untouched by the flames, so Hulda
was driven in, her manner showing plainly that she was glad to get home
again after the disturbing events of the last few hours. The boys lit a
lantern and tended her together, as though she might escape again were
one of them to minister to her alone. They made no comment on the fire,
both seeming to avoid the subject as long as possible.

“It’s cold,” commented Dick, once, shivering in his dripping garments,
to which Hugh replied:

“Yes, and getting colder every minute.”

That was all of their conversation.

They finished at last and, coming out of the shed, closed the door very
carefully behind them. Not until they were halfway up the path to the
cottage did either of them speak. Yet the extent of their tragedy must
be faced.

“There’s quite a hole in the roof,” observed Dick, “but we can mend that
easily enough.”

“And we can block up the store room door,” said Hugh. “We’ll nail the
whole thing over with boards to keep the cold out.”

They were quiet again—but at last Dick burst out:

“Hugh, do you realize that our supplies are burned, the shed and
everything in it? That we haven’t one thing left to eat?”

“I know it,” replied Hugh soberly. “I—I’ve been thinking about just that
thing for the last hour.”

“They must have meant to do it all along,” observed Dick. “They drove
off Hulda just for a blind. Oh, that Jake, that skulking blackguard!”

“Oscar said they would choose the mean, crooked way,” Hugh agreed. “He
told me they would try some trick or other. I wish we could have guessed
beforehand.”

“But Oscar will be back soon,” insisted Dick eagerly. “He must be back
soon. Gee, it’s cold!”

“Yes,” returned Hugh, “he may be back any day now.”

Yet he spoke absent-mindedly, as though his thoughts were upon other
things. It was because he was swinging the lantern as he went along and
his attention had been suddenly caught by something unexpected. In the
circle of yellow light he saw a whirling flurry of tiny flakes of snow.




                               CHAPTER XI

                             THE WHITE FLAG


Hugh had thought, when he saw those first snowflakes, that he understood
a little of what was before them. He had later to learn that winter as
he knew it and winter as it could be in northern Minnesota were two very
different matters. To lose all their possessions at just the season when
cold weather was closing in was a mishap desperate indeed, yet the boys,
after a moment of being stunned by the gravity of the situation, faced
it gayly.

That same night Hugh insisted on going out to look for the fishing
basket that he had thrown aside when he ran to the rescue of Hulda. With
Nicholas to help him, he managed to find it, so, that evening at least,
they did not have to go supperless to bed. Early next morning they arose
to search the ruins of the storehouse for anything that might have
escaped destruction. Part of a side of bacon was found wedged under a
fallen beam and a very small quantity of flour, happening to be in a tin
container, had not been consumed. That was the whole extent of their
salvage.

The snow had only been falling fitfully during the night, but about the
middle of the morning the storm settled down, like a blinding white
curtain that shut off all the rest of the world. Once or twice the
rising wind tore the dense veil apart, showing them the stormy lake, the
bowing woods and Jasper Peak for a fleeting moment, before all was
blotted out again. The boys had managed to mend the hole burned in the
roof and to shut off the door that had once led into the storehouse, and
now were warming themselves at the fire after their severe labors
outside. Dick went to the window and took a long survey of the snow.

“If I know anything of Minnesota weather,” he remarked, “this is the
sort of storm that will last for days, three or four, at least, and then
it will clear and get cold, colder than anything you ever dreamed
of—thirty—forty—fifty below zero, maybe. If we should start now, we
might be able to get to Rudolm, but if we wait until the snow is deep we
could not even attempt it. What do you say, Hugh, shall we go or stay?”

“I don’t know,” answered Hugh from beside the fire; “do you want to go?”

“I do not,” returned Dick promptly, “but we have got to decide which is
the wiser thing to do.”

Hugh looked up at the calendar on the wall.

“Oscar has been gone two weeks and three days,” he said, “so his time
for proving up on the claim will be over in five days. Jake arranged his
plan well. He meant to burn the cabin and just give himself time to get
down to the Land Office to make trouble over Oscar’s statement that the
land is improved and so tie the whole thing up. He knows we have lost
our stores; he is watching from over there to see if we go. He will
still have time to put the thing through if we do.”

“Then let’s stay,” decided Dick with determination. “We have food enough
for two days and we’ll whistle for luck for the other three. Fortunately
we have plenty of wood.”

“And let’s make a big smoke in the chimney,” said Hugh, “so that when
the storm lifts for a second Jake can see that we are still here and are
going to stay.”

It was a welcome idea and quickly carried out. Certainly if Half-Breed
Jake had any curiosity as to whether the cottage was still inhabited, he
had no need to cross the valley to find out, on that day at least. Dick
and Hugh built up such a roaring blaze that there was danger of their
setting fire to the cabin again; then they sat down before it, toasting
their shins and reflecting on the probable disappointment of the Pirate
of Jasper Peak.

The hours passed very slowly, for the two had little to do and had
chosen to have no midday meal, but to eat of their scanty stock only
night and morning. The storm increased; the snowfall was no longer
steady, but came in whirling gusts, piling high before the cabin door.
About the middle of the afternoon, Dick took his rifle and sallied forth
with Nicholas in desperate hope of bringing home some game. He was gone
two hours, returning at last empty-handed.

“And very lucky I was to get home at all,” he said as he came in,
stamping the snow off his big boots. “I vow I have been walking in a
circle for five miles: it was only Nicholas who ever got me here again.”

All night the wind screamed in the chimney and fairly rocked the walls
of their little dwelling. The snow seemed twice as deep when they fought
their way out to the stable to attend to the wants of Hulda. Her placid
air was somewhat reassuring, although Hugh observed wisely:

“She really doesn’t know just how things are.”

The pail of milk that they carried back between them was even more
comforting, for it was plain that with Hulda’s help they could not quite
starve.

“We can get pretty hungry, though,” observed Hugh grimly as he saw
Nicholas disposing of his share in three laps and then looking up to beg
mutely for more.

There could be no thought now of going out to shoot. The snow was
drifted over the window sills and banked against the door and still
filled the air in white clouds driven by the roaring wind. The spring,
their one water supply, was as inaccessible as though it had been ten
miles away, so they melted snow in a pot over the fire and found it a
most unsatisfactory process, since, as Dick said, “A bucketful of snow
makes about a thimbleful of water.”

Their supply of food was quite gone by the fourth day, in spite of all
their care, so there was nothing left but the milk night and morning.

“That won’t keep one very long,” Hugh remarked.

He had been obliged to gulp down his share in the stable, being much too
hungry to wait until he got back to the house. Dick immediately followed
his example and, when he had finished, stood eying the storm through the
narrow slit of a window.

“It can’t last a great deal longer, it simply can’t,” he asserted.

Hugh, shaking down hay for Hulda, envied her the pleasure with which she
ate it and answered gloomily:

“Perhaps it can’t, but I am beginning to think that it will.”

This day also wore by somehow and at last night came.

“There certainly will be a change by morning,” Hugh assured himself as
he fell asleep.

When he awoke, however, and got up at once to press his face against the
snow-blurred window he saw just the same blinding, swirling storm. It
looked like some sort of dream that would go on and on and never end.
Dick, awaking, sat up quickly, but, on looking at Hugh’s face, forebore
to ask any questions.

“You had better lie down again,” he advised, dropping his head once more
upon the pillow. “It is wiser to spend as much time sleeping as you
possibly can.”

Stumbling out through the drifts to Hulda, Hugh began suddenly to
realize such weakness that he wondered whether he could make the journey
again without dropping in the snow. Through the day he noticed that Dick
no longer prowled from door to window, looking at the storm. He sat,
instead, immovable in the big chair by the fire, only stirring now and
then to add fresh logs to the blaze. The strain of his journey through
the wood, his anxiety about his brother, with these present hardships,
had tended to break him sooner than Hugh. He tried to speak some words
of broken apology when Hugh went about the work of the cabin alone, but
the truth was plain enough, that he could scarcely move. Nicholas lay
listlessly in a corner, following Hugh always with great hungry eyes.
Night seemed to come with unbelievable slowness, even though the winter
days had grown so short.

They crawled into bed at last, too weak and dispirited, almost, to bid
each other good-night. Hugh tossed and turned upon his bunk; he was too
hungry to sleep. Suddenly sitting bolt upright, he addressed Dick, who
was awake also, even though he lay so still.

“Dick,” he said sharply, “are you sorry we stayed?”

“No,” came the answer promptly. “No, by George, I’m not sorry, no matter
what happens.”

“Nor I,” said Hugh, and lay down again, quieted somehow, so that soon he
went to sleep.

He awoke, hours later, with a vague knowledge that something was wrong.
After rubbing the drowsiness from his eyes and thinking a little, he
decided that, even under his mountain of blankets, he was very cold. He
got up hastily, huddled on all of his clothes, even to his mackinaw
coat, and went into the other room to crouch before the hearth. The fire
was not yet dead, but such warmth as it could give made little
impression upon the terrible benumbing chill that filled the cottage.
Nicholas, shivering and whining, came to his side and the two crept
close together, each getting a little comfort from the other. Dick was
still asleep; they could hear his breathing in the utter quiet, and the
clock tick-ticking above them on the wall. In the flickering light Hugh
could see the hands moving slowly until they pointed to twelve.

It was midnight, the last hour of Oscar’s last day. The cabin was safe,
the claim was his, the first step of his great plan was made certain at
last.

“We’ve beaten Jake,” cried Hugh, in a quick whisper and threw his arms
about Nicholas in a great hug of delight. Then he got up stiffly and
went to the window to survey the weather. He pushed aside the curtain,
rubbed a clear space in the thick frost on the pane and looked out. He
gasped and looked once more, with a cry of amazement, as though some
strange vision had been presented to his eyes. Yet all he saw was calm,
quiet night, a world of glittering snowfields and a clear sky all alight
with stars.

“Dick, Dick,” he shouted, and his comrade jumped up hastily.

“What is it?” he asked. “Oh, brr-rr, but it is cold.”

He came to Hugh’s side, looked out also and gave the same gasp of joy.

“I didn’t know,” he cried, his voice almost breaking, “I didn’t know
that stars could shine so bright, Hugh!”

What happened next would have shocked Linda Ingmarsson, careful
housekeeper that she was, and might even have given some pain to Oscar’s
tidy Swedish soul. For both boys, fully dressed, got into one bunk
together, with Nicholas between them, “just for company,” as Hugh said.
The big dog accomplished wonders in the matter of doubling up his long
legs, so that the combined supply of blankets sufficed to cover them
all. Gradually, as they began to be a little warmer, both the boys
relaxed a little from their long anxiety during the storm. The claim was
safe, there was a chance that they could go into the woods in the
morning and shoot a partridge or two, if they could manage to drag
themselves that far. And now the storm was over, certainly Oscar would
come soon. Hugh did not think upon these matters long, however, for he
was growing very drowsy.

“Listen,” said Dick at last, rousing himself very sleepily; “what is
that sound at the door? Look, Nicholas hears it too.”

The dog had raised his head and was sniffing anxiously, but without
moving, as though he, too, were too weary to stir. Hugh listened and
heard a sound outside like a soft shuffling in the snow.

“I don’t care what it is,” he announced. “There is nothing on earth that
can make me get up now that I am warm and sleepy at last. Here,
Nicholas, spare me a bit more blanket. I am going to sleep for a hundred
years and dream of a million ham sandwiches.”

He dropped off almost while he was still speaking and Dick, apparently
no more energetic than he, closed his eyes also. Nicholas lay with
cocked ears listening until the soft sounds gradually ceased, then he,
too, dropped into the unheeding slumber that held them all until
daylight.

When Hugh awoke his first thought was that it was a pleasant dream he
had had of the storm’s being over and the stars visible. Yet when he sat
up and saw bright sunlight pouring through the windows of the little
cabin he knew that it must be true and sprang from his bunk with a
hurrah of delight. The air was of a more bitter cold than anything he
had ever imagined, the breath rose from his nostrils in two columns like
steam and was frozen in white crystals all along the edge of the blanket
where Dick still lay. Nicholas jumped down after him, shook himself by
way of making a morning toilet and ran to sniff and snuffle under the
door. There returned to Hugh a vague recollection of the sounds he had
heard in the night, so that he undid the fastenings hurriedly and threw
the door open. The dazzling sparkle of the snow almost blinded him for a
moment, while the rush of intense cold made him draw his breath in quick
gasps. Yet nothing could blind his eyes to what lay upon the doorstep—a
big sack of flour, a bag of dried beans and the frozen carcass of a
deer.

The sight of food when one is nearly starved has sometimes a strange and
disquieting effect. Hugh was ashamed of the savage eagerness with which
he fell upon the treasures and dragged them within. He kept thinking
that they must vanish from his sight even as he held them and wished
earnestly that Dick were not asleep that he might ask him whether he saw
them too. It seemed too bad to wake him if the gifts did not turn out to
be real. Yet the food remained very solid and genuine in his hands, even
while he was preparing it for cooking and cutting off a venison steak.
It afforded presently a perfume more delicious than all the sweets of
Araby, when at last the meat began to broil. Nicholas lay with his nose
almost in the fire, his eyes never moving from the feast as Hugh turned
it over and over before the blaze.

“You are going to have the first one,” said Hugh. “You deserve it if
ever a dog did. You are the only one of the three of us that has not
grumbled.”

The second steak was nearly ready, flapjacks were browning in the pan
and the beans had been buried in the coals to bake for another meal,
when Dick awoke. Hugh laughed delightedly at the sight of him, sitting
bolt upright among the blankets, his mouth and eyes both round with
unbelieving astonishment.

“What is it, Hugh?” he asked, sniffing delightedly. “I could live on
that smell for a week. Did the witches or the angels bring it?”

“I don’t know,” laughed Hugh delightedly, “but however it came, it’s
real. Get up quickly or I will eat it all without you.”

They speculated long over every possible source for the mysterious gift,
but could come to no conclusion. On examining the space before the
cottage they saw that some one had come on snowshoes up the hill and had
removed them to walk in the narrow trampled path that the boys had made,
deep in the drifts, up to their door. They could see where the snowshoes
had been stuck upright against a bank while the owner came up to the
doorstone: the footsteps were short, shuffling ones made by moccasined
feet.

“But no Indian man that ever I saw walks with such a short stride as
that,” Dick insisted, staring thoughtfully at the marks in the snow,
“and think what a load he must have carried!”

Hugh had a sudden rapid memory of two figures he had seen that first day
he walked through the streets of Rudolm, a swift, silent Indian striding
ahead and behind him his wife bearing just such a load as this on her
bent shoulders and by the deerskin strap across her forehead. Yet he did
not speak of the thought in his mind, it was far too fantastic and
impossible.

They dined like lords that day, but spent most of the time still hugging
the fire, for the cold was as fierce as had been the storm that went
before it. The sun shone brilliantly, turning everything to diamond and
silver and making their little world, as they looked out upon it, a
strange and unfamiliar place. Jasper Peak opposite was sheathed in white
from base to summit, with high-banked drifts and curving blue-shadowed
hollows. The lake’s surface was blue again, an odd clear greenish blue,
for it was ice. During the tumult of the storm it could not freeze over,
but now was a glistening expanse, with white broken rifts here and
there, where the floating masses of ice had been caught and frozen in.
The long shore showed sharp lines of dark and white in its crowded pine
trees with their burden of snow.

An hour after noon they had gone out to clear a path to the stable, a
heavy task in snow that had drifted six and seven feet high wherever
shelter offered. Nicholas, running about them, floundered shoulder deep
in even the open places and more than once succeeded in burying himself
entirely.

“Hugh,” said Dick at last—he had been leaning on his shovel and staring
across the ravine—“I wish you would look over there at the pirates’
cabin and tell me what you see.”

Hugh turned to look as he was bid, yet for a moment saw only the
half-buried shack and the group of pointed, snow-covered pines behind
it.

“I don’t see anything,” he answered. “What do you think is there?”

“Come over by me so that the chimney is in line with those trees. Don’t
you see now, something fluttering on a pole?”

Hugh came close and looked again, long and carefully.

“Why, they have a flag flying,” he exclaimed at last, “and, Dick, it’s a
white one!”

“That’s it,” cried Dick excitedly. “I thought I saw it this morning, but
with the sun in our eyes I couldn’t make it out. It is plain enough now;
it looks as though they wanted help.”

“They deserve to get it, don’t they?” commented Hugh bitterly, digging
his shovel very deep into the snow.

They finished clearing the path in silence, then walked slowly back to
the cottage. They sat before the fire for a little, each deep in the
same thought.

“He shot Oscar’s dog,” Hugh suddenly broke out. “He made it so that
Oscar couldn’t go to war, he—he—Dick, does a man who can do such things
deserve any help?”

“He has done worse things than any you know about,” returned Dick, “and
I know now that he had a hand in that Indian Kaniska’s leaving us to
starve in the woods; he has done every sort of thing, but—but—”

As if with one movement, they both looked up at Oscar’s snowshoes
hanging on the wall.

“There is only one pair,” observed Hugh. “We can’t both go.”

“Then,” said Dick, and neither had occasion to tell the other that a
final conclusion had been reached, “then we will have to draw straws.
And it is very generous of me to give you even a chance, because I know
I am better on snowshoes than you.”

“I have tried them in the Adirondacks,” Hugh replied. “I am not so
clumsy with them as you seem to think. Well, straws it is. The longest
one goes.”

They arranged the straws with great show of fairness and secrecy and
drew.

“Oh, Hugh, you have all the luck!” exclaimed Dick in bitter
disappointment as he gazed at his abbreviated straw and at Hugh’s
irrepressible grin of satisfaction.

“It is really better,” was Hugh’s answer, in which he tried to keep the
excited delight from his tone. “We have not either of us come through
this last week feeling any too husky, but it has been harder on you
because it was your second try at starving. If we weren’t both of us so
well fed now, I think we would quarrel.”

“It isn’t fair,” cried Dick jealously. “After all, you ought to stay
here. Some one must milk Hulda and I don’t know how.”

“Nonsense,” returned Hugh rudely. “For myself, I never want to see milk
again. Where is that extra revolver? Lend me your mittens, they are
drier than mine.”

He strapped on the snowshoes, ordered Nicholas back in spite of the
delighted preparations the dog was making to join the expedition, bade
Dick a sympathizing good-by and turned his face stoutly toward Jasper
Peak. The dry, stinging cold was so intense as almost to take his breath
away, but he was growing a little more used to it at last. The big
snowshoes seemed awkward at first; he soon fell into the proper swing,
however, and made good speed down the hill to the edge of the stream.
The brook itself had disappeared completely under snow which was so soft
that here he sank and floundered in spite of the snowshoes. It was
difficult going up the steep incline on the other side, but in his
eagerness and curiosity he managed to climb quickly.

There was no sign of life about Jake’s cabin, only the white flag—it
looked like a torn shirt—was still fluttering from its rough pole beside
the chimney. There were footprints about the door, those same heavy,
shuffling steps that he had seen before their own cabin. He knocked
loudly and stood waiting, thinking of the last time he had stood upon
that doorstep. There was a pause and such silence that he could hear his
heart hammering excitedly against his ribs. Then a sound of slow,
dragging feet came from within, there was a fumbling at the lock, the
door opened and a broad awkward figure appeared on the threshold.
Somehow, in spite of his surprise, he felt that he had half expected to
see that swarthy face and wide, strange, mirthless smile. It was
Laughing Mary.




                              CHAPTER XII

                      A HIGHWAY THROUGH THE HILLS


The woman made only an inarticulate sound of welcome and motioned Hugh
to come in. Like all Indians she preferred to converse through grunts
and signs rather than by means of such English as she had at her
command. When Hugh had entered she made no further comment, merely
pointed silently at a bunk in the corner.

There, half propped up amid a mass of torn and dirty blankets, lay
Half-Breed Jake. He did not move or speak when Hugh came near, but his
little pale eyes turned quickly and his heavy black brows knitted in a
scowl. The boy stood looking from one to another, puzzled, not yet
knowing the meaning of that signal flying above the roof. At last the
Indian woman, seeing his bewilderment, condescended to explain.

“I think—dying,” she remarked briefly in her thick English.

Jake’s pale eyes flickered at the words, but still he did not speak.
Hugh went closer to look at him and saw that his hands and feet were
clumsily wound with rags and that the dirty bandage had slipped down
from one wrist, showing the angry discoloration of flesh that had been
frozen. He asked Laughing Mary many questions, but received no answers
but shakings of the head.

Finally he unbuckled his revolver, took off his cap and mackinaw and
turned his attention to doing what he could for the helpless man. He had
a feeling of intense repulsion when first he touched him, but none the
less he bathed the swollen hands and feet and rebandaged them. He had a
certain knack in such matters, inherited from his father and increased
by such training as he had got in helping him. He set the filthy mass of
rags in order to make some semblance of a bed; he built up the fire and
showed the woman how to make civilized broth from the abundant deer’s
meat in the storeroom.

As she stood stirring the pot he made another attempt to question her,
trying again and again to get some explanation of how affairs had come
to such a pass. But Laughing Mary merely jerked her head toward the bunk
and said:

“Old—live hard—die.”

Thus she summed up what was, to her, the most ordinary thing in life.

It was the second time that he had tended a sick person in that house,
so that Hugh already knew the full resources of the Jasper Peak cabin.
In John Edmonds’ behalf he had worked feverishly, feeling nervous,
excited, starting at every sound from his patient, wondering and puzzled
as to what to do next. Now he felt himself entirely calm, at no loss
what to do even though the state of this man was far more desperate than
the other’s. He realized how much even a small amount of experience can
do and how immeasurably older he had grown even in the month that had
passed since he had been in this same place.

He came and went steadily until at last he had done all he could, then
he sat down by the fire to wait, and to watch for results. Laughing Mary
sat on her heels on the floor opposite him, nodding with drowsiness
while both of them were watched unwaveringly, as the long hours passed,
by the pale eyes of that helpless figure in the bunk, the broken, ruined
Pirate of Jasper Peak.

And Laughing Mary, since no one pressed her for her story, or disturbed
her dim, wandering mind by questions, finally began to speak. She
startled Hugh first by rising suddenly, fetching something from the
corner and flinging it upon his knee.

“Should be yours—make all the trouble,” she said brokenly.

Hugh, in wonder, held it up to the firelight. It was the brown bear’s
skin!

He had learned by now that it was better to say nothing and so sat
silent, without question or comment for a long time. He was rewarded by
her telling him the whole truth at last in abrupt, queerly-spoken
sentences, uttered at long intervals, often after an hour had gone by
without a word. Little by little he was able to piece together all the
facts that had puzzled him so long and to learn the truth about that
adventure in which he had so unexpectedly become involved.

As he listened he knew at last that the vital figure in the whole affair
was Laughing Mary. Nothing had happened as it should and every plan had
gone awry, merely through the strange irresponsibility of an Indian
woman’s mind. He and the Edmonds boys who did not know her well, and
Oscar and Linda and Half-Breed Jake who did, had all been equally
deceived. They had been drawn together by a strange web of circumstance
of which she was the center. They had all of them had their own
ambitions and hopes and misgivings and fears, and the rock they had all
split upon was Laughing Mary.

Jake, it seemed, had long ago formed the plan of setting the two
brothers adrift in the forest and of casting suspicion on John Edmonds’
memory. He had applied to the Indian Kaniska to help him, but the man
had refused on account of his friendship for John. So the matter had
apparently ended until one night, passing through Two Rivers, Jake had
shown the Indians his furs and Laughing Mary had seen the brown bear’s
skin.

Indians have still so much of the child in them that, when they see
something they greatly desire, they will barter away their last property
on earth to gain possession of it. With just such longing did the woman
covet the bear skin. Jake’s price was her husband’s help in his scheme
against the Edmonds and that was the bargain they finally made.
Certainly she had not realized fully what Jake had in mind, or known,
when she lent herself to do his bidding, what she had really done.

Only when the days passed and the Edmonds boys did not come back, when
she discovered, moreover, that Jake was withholding the bear skin and
had no intention of really giving it to her, did she begin to see in the
depths of her fumbling, clouded mind, what it was she had brought about.
She had gained possession of the coveted skin by threatening to tell the
whole truth to Hugh, as the Edmonds’ friend, and she had learned, from
the consternation of both Jake and her husband, just how ugly a deed
they had accomplished between them.

She had learned more of the gravity of the matter when Hugh went through
Two Rivers to seek help from Oscar Dansk; she had sat brooding by the
fire day after day, more and more repentant yet never knowing what to
do. She had finally come through the forest to learn for herself how
matters stood and had arrived the night of the fire, just before the
storm. She had been imprisoned in the cabin with Jake during those five
days of fierce snowfall and she made Hugh understand, even in her
halting English, that it was much the same as being within the same four
walls with a madman. Her husband had returned to Two Rivers, so that she
was alone with Jake and must listen hour after hour to the tumult of
words that she scarcely understood. All his hopes of holding the valley,
of keeping Oscar from establishing his claim, of proving that no one
could successfully defy him, all this must stand or fall by whether the
boys could hold the cottage and Oscar Dansk could register his claim.

At first he had been certain that they would go the moment their stores
were destroyed. When he had learned from the smoke in their chimney and
the steady light in their windows that they were to stay, his fury knew
no bounds. Even during the storm, in which no ordinary man could walk
abroad and live, he went forth every night to go close to the cottage on
the hill and see if its defenders were not weakening. It had been the
last stab to Laughing Mary’s dumbly repentant heart to hear that the
boys were starving in the cabin opposite and it had been she who, the
moment the snowfall cleared, had robbed Jake’s larder and toiled across
the valley to bring them food.

Jake had already been behaving strangely that night, his rage,
excitement and the long life of hardships and excesses had probably
brought him near to the breaking point. He had tried to follow Laughing
Mary, had floundered into a drift and had lain there in the fearful cold
until she found him and dragged him home. His desperate fury at what she
had done made her fear to come near him, and his terrible, helpless
suffering from his frozen hands and feet made her feel that she must
call for aid.

“When white man give up—wave white flag,” she said and pointed upward
toward where she had raised the signal on the roof. That was the end of
her story.

To all of it Jake had listened, with never a change of expression, never
moving his eyes from Hugh, powerless to interrupt or to deny. Only when
the Indian woman once mentioned Linda Ingmarsson’s name there was a
change, a momentary wincing and a quivering of those steady eyes.
Perhaps Hugh’s sensibilities had been sharpened by his recent
experiences, for certainly he guessed quickly and as surely as though
some one had told him that Jake must have loved Linda long ago, but that
his bullying ways had failed before her courageous scorn of him.

“Old—live hard—die,” said Laughing Mary again when she came to the end.
Such was her only comment on the fall of that once-feared master of
Jasper Peak.

Hugh sat musing, stroking the bear skin on his knee and wondering what
he might say to the woman, who looked up at him with such unhappy eyes.

“It might have been,” he said at last, “that if you and Kaniska had
refused to do what Jake wanted, he would have found some one who would,
some one who did not care so much and who would never have helped us in
the end, as you have done. So perhaps the brown bear’s skin has saved us
all.”

She seemed to go over his words laboriously, as though their meaning
came very slowly. Then, when she had caught what he meant, she gave a
quick little cry and turned away. The stoical Indians never weep; if
Hugh had not known that well, he would have sworn that there was a glint
of tears in her eyes.

So intently had he been listening, pondering and putting together the
story from her fragments of information, that he had paid no heed to the
passage of time. He saw now, as he got up from his seat, that the flame
in the smoky lantern was burning very dim, that faint moonlight was
coming in at the little windows and that the night was far advanced. He
went over to stand by the helpless man.

“Is there nothing you want, is there nothing I can do for you?” he
asked.

He felt a strange wave of pity for this broken being who had lived his
life so hopelessly wrong and who was so near the end. Nothing he could
do? What could be done, thought Hugh, so late as this? Plainly the man
was of the same opinion, for his eyes looked only dull and weary hatred
and, although his lips moved a little, he did not speak.

“Do you want to rest?” Hugh asked Laughing Mary, but she shook her head.
“Then watch for me a little, for I am dead for sleep.”

It was bright morning when he opened his eyes and started up in dismay
at having slept so long. Laughing Mary, sitting beside Jake’s bunk,
looked up at him and gave him a smile, a smile of relief and gratitude
this time, not the queer empty one that had given her the name. There
seemed to be little change in Jake, his pulse was a trifle weaker,
perhaps, and his eyes stayed shut for longer and longer at a time. Hugh
went into the storeroom to see what food would be best for him; he
looked carefully through every box and canister to make certain what was
there. So occupied was he that he did not hear the swishing of snowshoes
over the frozen slopes outside nor even heed a quiet knock at the door.
It was not until some one came into the room and laid a hand upon his
arm that he turned quickly to see Oscar Dansk.

That their greeting was a joyful one need hardly be said, but the first
words of Hugh’s eager welcome were broken off by his shout of delight
when he saw what Oscar was pulling from his pocket, a great handful of
letters addressed in his father’s handwriting.

“Miss Christina, at the postoffice, has been much worried about the way
your mail was piling up,” said Oscar. “She said I was to give these to
you before I said a word, for she was sure I would forget them if we
once got to talking.”

Hugh snatched the letters, sat down upon a box and then and there read
them all through to the end. They told of the voyage, of Dr. Arnold’s
arrival at the base hospital, of his work and his associates and the
war. One of the letters, the last, made Hugh exclaim aloud in delighted
happiness. It said:

“Since I have been here and have seen how things stand and have thought
the matter well over, I have begun to think that there might, after all,
be a place for you in this hospital work. I know that I will be sent
home in the spring, for a month, on some business for the Medical
Department, and it is possible—remember, I make no promises—it is
possible that I may consider taking you back with me.”

Hugh looked up from his letter to tell the good news to his friend, but
did not speak, so struck was he by the odd expression on Oscar’s face.
His eyes shone in a way that the boy had never seen before, while there
was about him the air of suppressing some excited secret.

“What is it?” Hugh cried.

“I will show you,” returned the other.

He opened the door into the main room and went in, Hugh following,
filled with curiosity and wonder. As they crossed the cabin, he caught
Oscar’s sleeve and began to tell him of Half-Breed Jake.

“We will speak of that later,” was the answer. “Put on your coat, come
quickly.”

They went outside into the clear, glittering cold: how good it seemed
after the close, dark little shack! Oscar led Hugh across the clearing,
in the opposite direction from his own house, along the ridge that ran
down to the lake. The sun was very bright, the air absolutely still. He
stopped where the ground was so open that they could see out across the
forest.

“Look,” he said, and pointed.

Crowning the top of the next hill stood a giant pine that towered high
above its fellows. As Hugh watched, its branches commenced to tremble,
although never a breath of wind was stirring. The whole tree began to
rock and sway, to bow forward as though shaken by a furious gale; then
with a roar that sounded through the whole valley, it fell crashing and
disappeared.

“Oscar,” cried Hugh, “what does it mean?”

There was a little silence, then Oscar spoke in a voice husky with
excitement.

“It means the road,” he said; “they are clearing the way to build it at
last.”

They watched another tree fall and another, as they stood there in the
breathless cold, while Oscar told his story. His return with John
Edmonds and his news that Jake had been unable to prevent the
establishing of a claim, had stirred the people to belief in his plan at
last. First a few and then more and more had agreed to help him, until
now nearly all the men of Rudolm were at work in the forest, clearing
the way, and hauling out the logs over the frozen ground, preparatory to
building the road in the spring.

“Now that they know the land is mine, safe in spite of Jake, there are a
hundred more who are ready to dare the same thing. Ingmarsson and my
sister Linda will come first, others will follow; they will be here soon
enough to break the ground and plant it in wheat this spring. The road
will be slower; it has many hills and valleys to cross, but by summer
when the harvest is ripe, it will be ready to carry the grain away. Some
day we will be able to fill one of those great ships whose sailing once
so nearly broke my heart.”

“And that man there?” questioned Hugh, motioning upward toward the cabin
that lowered at them from above on Jasper Peak.

“We can carry him out to Rudolm, now that the way is cleared,” Oscar
answered. “I think he may live a little time longer, but his power to do
harm is gone forever. Yet when he tried to burn the cottage he came, but
for you, very near to beating us at last.”

They walked down the hill to the edge of the lake so that Hugh might
catch a glimpse, around an intervening spur, of the line of cleared
ground that wound across the valleys. They sat down upon a snowy log and
talked long and earnestly of what had passed and of what was to come.
Suddenly Hugh looked down and recognized the big tree trunk upon which
they sat.

“Look,” he said, “it is the very tree that made a bridge for us to cross
the creek when it was in flood. Here are even the marks where the
bullets cut the bark.”

It had been washed ashore and lay now, one end frozen in the ice, one
high and dry upon the bank. Here it would lie for years to come,
peaceful and undisturbed, the sun hot upon it, fishes darting about its
outer end, the turtles climbing up to bask in the noonday summer heat.
So it would lie, unmindful of the part it had played in the events of
that stirring night, lie until the valley of the Promised Land was
settled, until Oscar’s road, white and travel-worn, lay slanting across
the hills to bear the gifts of the new country to the old. It would fall
slowly into decay and the sharp hoof of the last of the wild deer or
giant moose, coming down to drink, would stamp it into powder in the
end. For the close of the struggle had come and peace had settled over
the domain of the Pirate of Jasper Peak.

“You will stay to help us?” Oscar was saying. “You will see the fields
planted and watch the harvest come in.”

“I will help you this winter,” Hugh answered, “and perhaps stay in the
spring to see the planting. But,” and he patted the letter in his
pocket, “by the time the harvest comes I will be in France.”

He wished a moment after that he had not spoken, for Oscar’s face
clouded, yet quickly cleared again.

“Yet there will always be things to do at home,” he said, “for us who
are not so lucky as you who go to France.”

                                THE END
                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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                          _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

                        The Island of Appledore

                             By ADAIR ALDON

                                                    _Illustrated, $1.25_

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