The Silent Places Part 17

"We'd be right back where we started. I think it would pay us to go down to Brunswick House and get a new outfit. It's only about a week up the Missinaibie." Then, led by inevitable a.s.sociation of ideas, "Wonder if those Crees had a good time? And I wonder if they've knocked our friend Ah-tek, the Chippewa, on the head yet? He was a bad customer."

"You better hope they have," replied Sam. "He's got it in for you."

d.i.c.k shrugged his shoulders and laughed easily.

"That's all right," insisted the older man; "just the same, an Injun never forgets and never fails to get even. You may think he's forgotten, but he's layin' for you just the same," and then, because they happened to be resting in the lea of a bank and the sun was at its highest for the day, Sam went on to detail one example after another from his wide observation of the tenacity with which an Indian pursues an obligation, whether of grat.i.tude or enmity. "They'll travel a thousand miles to get even," he concluded. "They'll drop the most important business they got, if they think they have a good chance to make a killing. He'll run up against you some day, my son, and then you'll have it out."

"All right," agreed d.i.c.k, "I'll take care of him. Perhaps I'd better get organised; he may be laying for me around the next bend."

"I don't know what made us talk about it," said Sam, "but funnier things have happened to me." d.i.c.k, with mock solicitude, loosened his knife.

But Sam had suddenly become grave. "I believe in those things," he said, a little fearfully. "They save a man sometimes, and sometimes they help him to get what he wants. It's a Chippewa we're after; it's a Chippewa we've been talkin' about. They's something in it."

"I don't know what you're driving at," said d.i.c.k.

"I don't know," confessed Sam, "but I have a kind of a hunch we won't have to go back to the Nip.i.s.sing." He looked gropingly about, without seeing, in the manner of an old man.

"I hope your hunch is a good one," replied d.i.c.k. "Well, mush on!"

The little cavalcade had made barely a dozen steps in advance when Sam, who was leading, came to a dead halt.

"Well, what do you make of that?" he asked.

Across the way lay the trunk of a fallen tree. It had been entirely covered with snow, whose line ran clear and unbroken its entire length except at one point, where it dipped to a shallow notch.

"Well, what do you make of that?" Sam inquired again.

"What?" asked d.i.c.k.

Sam pointed to the shallow depression in the snow covering the prostrate tree-trunk.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

d.i.c.k looked at his companion a little bewildered.

"Why, you must know as well as I do," he said, "somebody stepped on top of that log with snow-shoes, and it's snowed since."

"Yes, but who?" insisted Sam.

"The trapper in this district, of course."

"Sure; and let me tell you this,--that trapper is the man we're after.

That's his trail."

"How do you know?"

"I'm sure. I've got a hunch."

d.i.c.k looked sceptical, then impressed. After all, you never could tell what a man might not learn out in the Silent Places, and the old woodsman had grown gray among woods secrets.

"We'll follow the trail and find his camp," pursued Sam.

"You ain't going to ambush him?" inquired d.i.c.k.

"What's the use? He's the last man we have to tend to in this district, anyway. Even if it shouldn't be Jingoss, we don't care if he sees us.

We'll tell him we're travelling from York to Winnipeg. It must be pretty near on the direct line from here."

"All right," said d.i.c.k.

They set themselves to following the trail. As the only persistences of it through the last storm were to be found where the snow-shoes had left deep notches on the fallen timber, this was not an easy matter. After a time the affair was simplified by the dogs. d.i.c.k had been breaking trail, but paused a moment to tie his shoe. The team floundered ahead.

After a moment it discovered the half-packed snow of the old trail a foot below the newer surface, and, finding it easier travel, held to it.

Between the partial success at this, and an occasional indication on the tops of fallen trees, the woodsmen managed to keep the direction of the fore-runner's travel.

Suddenly d.i.c.k stopped short in his tracks.

"Look there!" he exclaimed.

Before them was a place where a man had camped for the night.

"He's travelling!" cried Sam.

This exploded the theory that the trail had been made by the Indian to whom the trapping rights of the district belonged. At once the two men began to spy here and there eagerly, trying to reconstruct from the meagre vestiges of occupation who the camper had been and what he had been doing.

The condition of the fire corroborated what the condition of the trail had indicated. Probably the man had pa.s.sed about three days ago. The nature of the fire proclaimed him an Indian, for it was small and round, where a white man's is long and hot. He had no dogs; therefore his journey was short, for, necessarily, he was carrying what he needed on his back. Neither on the route nor here in camp were any indications that he had carried or was examining traps; so the conclusion was that this trip was not merely one of the long circles a trapper sometimes makes about the limits of his domain. What, then, was the errand of a single man, travelling light and fast in the dead of winter?

"It's the man we're after," said Sam, with conviction. "He's either taken the alarm, or he's visiting."

"Look," called the girl from beneath the wide branches of a spruce.

They went. Beneath a lower limb, whose fan had protected it from the falling snow, was the single clear print of a snow-shoe.

"Hah!" cried Sam, in delight, and fell on his knees to examine it. At the first glance he uttered another exclamation of pleasure, for, though the shoe had been of the Ojibway pattern, in certain modifications it suggested a more northerly origin. The toes had been craftily upturned, the tails shortened, the webbing more closely woven.

"It's Ojibway," induced Sam, over his shoulder, "but the man who made it has lived among the Crees. That fits Jingoss. d.i.c.k, it's the man we're after!"

It was by now almost noon. They boiled tea at the old camp site, and tightened their belts for a stern chase.

That afternoon the head wind opposed them, exasperating, tireless in its resistance, never lulling for a single instant. At the moment it seemed more than could be borne. Near one o'clock it did them a great despite, for at that hour the trail came to a broad and wide lake. There the snow had fallen, and the wind had drifted it so that the surface of the ice was white and smooth as paper. The faint trail led accurately to the bank--and was obliterated.

Nothing remained but to circle the sh.o.r.es to right and to left until the place of egress was discovered. This meant long work and careful work, for the lake was of considerable size. It meant that the afternoon would go, and perhaps the day following, while the man whose footsteps they were following would be drawing steadily away.

It was agreed that May-may-gwan should remain with the sledge, that d.i.c.k should circle to the right, and Sam to the left, and that all three should watch each other carefully for a signal of discovery.

But now Sam happened to glance at Mack, the wrinkle-nosed hound. The sledge had been pulled a short distance out on the ice. Mack, alternately whining and sniffing, was trying to induce his comrades to turn slanting to the left.