The Silent Places Part 21

From time to time he sniffed of it deeply, saturating his memory with the quality of its effluvia. Always it grew fresher. And then at last the warm animal scent rose alive to his nostrils, and he lifted his head and bayed.

The long, weird sound struck against the silence with the impact of a blow. Nothing more undesirable could have happened. Again Mack bayed, and the echoing bell tones of his voice took on a strange similarity to a tocsin of warning. Rustling and crackling across the men's fancies the influences of the North moved invisible, alert, suddenly roused.

d.i.c.k whirled with an exclamation, throwing down and back the lever of his Winchester, his face suffused, his eye angry.

"d.a.m.nation!" exclaimed Bolton, antic.i.p.ating his intention, and springing forward in time to strike up the muzzle of the rifle, though not soon enough to prevent the shot.

Against the snow, plastered on a distant tree, the bullet hit, scattering the fine powder; then ricochetted, shrieking with increasing joy as it mounted the upper air. After it, as though released by its pa.s.sage from the spell of the great frost, trooped the voices and echoes of the wilderness. In the still air such a racket would carry miles.

Sam looked from the man to the dog.

"Well, between the two of you!" said he.

d.i.c.k sprang forward, las.h.i.+ng the team with his whip.

"After him!" he shouted.

They ran in a swirl of light snow. In a very few moments they came to a bundle of pelts, a little pile of traps, the unnecessary impediments discarded by the man they pursued. So near had they been to a capture.

Sam, out of breath, peremptorily called a halt.

"Hold on!" he commanded. "Take it easy. We can't catch him like this.

He's travelling light, and he's one man, and he has a fresh team. He'll pull away from us too easy, and leave us with worn-out dogs." The old man sat and deliberately filled his pipe.

d.i.c.k fumed up and down, chafing at the delay, convinced that something should be done immediately, but at a loss to tell what it should be.

"What'll we do, then?" he asked, after a little.

"He leaves a trail, don't he?" inquired Sam. "We must follow it."

"But what good--how can we ever catch up?"

"We've got to throw away our traps and extra duffle. We've got to travel as fast as we can without wearing ourselves out. He may try to go too fast, and so we may wear him down. It's our only show, anyway. If we lose him now, we'll never find him again. That trail is all we have to go by."

"How if it snows hard? It's getting toward spring storms."

"If it snows hard--well--" The old man fell silent, puffing away at his pipe. "One thing I want you to understand," he continued, looking up with a sudden sternness, "don't you ever take it on yourself to shoot that gun again. We're to take that man alive. The noise of the shot to-day was a serious thing; it gave Jingoss warning, and perhaps spoiled our chance to surprise him. But he might have heard us anyway. Let that go. But if you'd have killed that hound as you started out to do, you'd have done more harm than your fool head could straighten out in a lifetime. That hound--why--he's the best thing we've got. I'd--I'd almost rather lose our rifles than him--" he trailed off again into rumination.

d.i.c.k, sobered as he always was when his companion took this tone, inquired why, but received no answer. After a moment Sam began to sort the contents of the sledge, casting aside all but the necessities.

"What's the plan?" d.i.c.k ventured.

"To follow."

"How long do you think it will be before we catch him?"

"G.o.d knows."

The dogs leaned into their harness, almost falling forward at the unexpected lightness of the load. Again the little company moved at measured gait. For ten minutes nothing was said. Then d.i.c.k:

"Sam," he said, "I think we have just about as much chance as a s...o...b..ll in h.e.l.l."

"So do I," agreed the old woodsman, soberly.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

They took up the trail methodically, as though no hurry existed. At the usual time of the evening they camped. d.i.c.k was for pus.h.i.+ng on an extra hour or so, announcing himself not in the least tired, and the dogs fresh, but Sam would have none of it.

"It's going to be a long, hard pull," he said. "We're not going to catch up with him to-day, or to-morrow, or next day. It ain't a question of whether you're tired or the dogs are fresh to-night; it's a question of how you're going to be a month from now."

"We won't be able to follow him a month," objected d.i.c.k.

"Why?"

"It'll snow, and then we'll lose th' trail. The spring snows can't be far off now. They'll cover it a foot deep."

"Mebbe," agreed Sam, inconclusively.

"Besides," pursued d.i.c.k, "he'll be with his own people in less than a month, and then there won't be any trail to follow."

Whereupon Sam looked a little troubled, for this, in his mind, was the chief menace to their success. If Jingoss turned south to the Lake Superior country, he could lose himself among the Ojibways of that region; and, if all remained true to him, the white men would never again be able to get trace of him. _If all remained true to him:_--on the chance of that Sam was staking his faith. The Honourable the Hudson's Bay Company has been established a great many years; it has always treated its Indians justly; it enjoys a tremendous prestige for infallibility. The bonds of race are strong, but the probabilities were good that in the tribes with whom Jingoss would be forced to seek sanctuary would be some members, whose loyalty to the Company would out-balance the rather shadowy obligation to a man they had never seen before. Jingoss might be betrayed. The chances of it were fairly good.

Sam Bolton knew that the Indian must be perfectly aware of this, and doubted if he would take the risk. A single man with three dogs ought to run away from three pursuers with only four. Therefore, the old woodsman thought himself justified in relying at least on the meagre opportunity a stern chase would afford.

He did not know where the Indian would be likely to lead him. The checker-board of the wilderness lay open. As he had before reflected, it would be only too easy for Jingoss to keep between himself and his pursuers the width of the game. The Northwest was wide; the plains great; the Rocky Mountains lofty and full of hiding-places,--it seemed likely he would turn west. Or the deep forests of the other coast offered unlimited opportunities of concealment,--the east might well be his choice. It did not matter particularly. Into either it would not be difficult to follow; and Sam hoped in either to gain a sight of his prize before the snow melted.

The Indian, however, after the preliminary twists and turns of indecision, turned due north. For nearly a week Sam thought this must be a ruse, or a cast by which to gain some route known to Jingoss. But the forests began to dwindle; the muskegs to open. The Land of Little Sticks could not be far distant, and beyond them was the Barren Grounds. The old woodsman knew the defaulter for a reckless and determined man.

Gradually the belief, and at last the conviction, forced itself on him that here he gamed with no cautious player. The Indian was laying on the table the stakes of life or death. He, too, had realised that the test must be one of endurance, and in the superbness of his confidence he had determined not to play with preliminary half measures, but to apply at once the supreme test to himself and his antagonists. He was heading directly out into the winter desert, where existed no game but the single big caribou herd whose pastures were so wide that to meet them would be like encountering a single school of dolphins in all the seven seas.

As soon as Sam discovered this, he called d.i.c.k's attention to it.

"We're in for it," said he, "he's going to take us out on the Barren Grounds and lose us."

"If he can," supplemented d.i.c.k.

"Yes, if he can," agreed Sam. After a moment he went on, pursuing his train of thought aloud, as was his habit.

"He's thinking he has more grub than we have; that's about what it amounts to. He thinks he can tire us out. The chances are we'll find no more game. We've got to go on what we have. He's probably got a sledge-load;--and so have we;--but he has only one to feed, and three dogs, and we have three and four dogs."

"That's all right; he's our Injun," replied d.i.c.k, voicing the instinct of race superiority which, after all, does often seem to accomplish the impossible. "It's too bad we have the girl with us," he added, after a moment.

"Yes, it is," agreed Sam. Yet it was most significant that now it occurred to neither of them that she might be abandoned.

The daily supply of provisions was immediately cut to a minimum, and almost at once they felt the effects. The north demands hard work and the greatest resisting power of the vitality; the vitality calls on the body for fuel; and the body in turn insists on food. It is astonis.h.i.+ng to see what quant.i.ties of nourishment can be absorbed without apparent effect. And when the food is denied, but the vitality is still called upon, it is equally astonis.h.i.+ng to see how quickly it takes its revenge.

Our travellers became lean in two days, dizzy in a week, tired to the last fibre, on the edge of exhaustion. They took care, however, not to step over that edge.