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Title: A Mating in the Wilds

Author: Ottwell Binns

Release Date: April 13, 2007 [EBook #21055]

Language: English

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A MATING IN THE WILDS


_BORZOI WESTERN STORIES_

THE CROSS PULL
  _By Hal G. Evarts_

THE LONG DIM TRAIL
  _By Forrestine Hooker_

A MATING IN THE WILDS
  _By Ottwell Binns_




A MATING IN THE WILDS



BY

OTTWELL BINNS



NEW YORK    ALFRED A. KNOPF    1920


COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




CONTENTS


    I  THE MAN FROM THE RIVER,                       7

   II  AN ATTACK AT MIDNIGHT,                       18

  III  A LOST GIRL,                                 31

   IV  A PIECE OF WRECKAGE,                         43

    V  A BRAVE RESCUE,                              56

   VI  A MYSTERIOUS SHOT,                           68

  VII  STRANDED,                                    80

 VIII  A MEETING IN THE FOREST,                     95

   IX  UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE,                   105

    X  A CANOE COMES AND GOES,                     118

   XI  A FOREST FIRE,                              132

  XII  THE RAFT,                                   146

 XIII  A LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS,                  158

  XIV  MYSTERIOUS VISITORS,                        172

   XV  A FACE AT THE TENT-DOOR,                    185

  XVI  AN ARROW OUT OF THE NIGHT,                  199

 XVII  THE ATTACK,                                 212

XVIII  A DEAD GIRL,                                225

  XIX  A HOT TRAIL,                                238

   XX  A PRISONER,                                 251

  XXI  CHIGMOK'S STORY,                            264

 XXII  AINLEY'S STORY,                             278

XXIII  A SURPRISE FOR AINLEY,                      292

 XXIV  THE TRAIL TO PARADISE,                      305




CHAPTER I

THE MAN FROM THE RIVER


The man in the canoe was lean and hardy, and wielded the paddle against
the slow-moving current of the wide river with a dexterity that
proclaimed long practice. His bronzed face was that of a quite young
man, but his brown hair was interspersed with grey; and his blue eyes
had a gravity incompatible with youth, as if already he had experience
of the seriousness of life, and had eaten of its bitter fruits. He was
in a gala dress of tanned deerskin, fringed and worked by native hands,
the which had quite probably cost him more than the most elegant suit
by a Bond Street tailor, and the effect was as picturesque as the heart
of a young male could desire. To be in keeping with such gay attire he
should have worn a smiling face, and sung some joyous chanson of the
old voyageurs, but he neither sang nor smiled; paddling steadily on
towards his destination.

This was a northern post of the Hudson Bay Company, built in the form
of a hollow square with a wide frontage open to the river. The trading
store, the warehouse, and the factor's residence with its trim garden,
occupied the other three sides of the square, and along the river front
was a small floating wharf. A tall flag-pole rose above the buildings,
and the flag itself fluttered gaily in the summer breeze, taking the
eye at once with its brave colouring.

The young man in the canoe noticed it whilst he was half a mile away,
and for a moment, ceasing his paddling, he looked at it doubtfully, his
brow puckering over his grave eyes. The canoe began to drift backward
in the current, but he made no effort to check it, instead, he sat
there staring at the distant flag, with a musing look upon his face, as
if he were debating some question with himself. At last he spoke aloud,
after the habit of men who dwell much alone.

"The steamer can't have come yet. It probably means nothing except that
the factor is expecting its arrival. Anyway I must have the grub, and I
can get away in the morning."

He dipped his paddle again. The canoe ceased to drift and began to
forge ahead towards the post. Before he drew level with it, he started
to steer across the current, but instead of making for the wharf,
beached his canoe on the rather marshy bank to the north of the
buildings; then having lifted it out of the water, he stood to his full
height and stretched himself, for he had been travelling in the canoe
eleven days and was conscious of body stiffness owing to the cramped
position he had so long maintained.

Standing on the bank he surveyed the river carefully. Except for a
drifting log there was nothing moving on its wide expanse. He listened
intently. The soft wind was blowing down river, but it did not bring
with it the throb of a steamer's screw which he half expected to hear.
He nodded to himself.

"Time enough!"

Then he became aware of sounds for which he had not listened--the
voices of men somewhere in the post's enclosure, and, nearer at hand,
that of some one singing in some soft Indian dialect. He turned
swiftly, and coming along a half-defined path between the willows,
caught sight of the singer--a native girl of amazing beauty.

She wore a tunic of beaded caribou-skin, which fitting closely revealed
rather than concealed the lines of her lithe young figure. Her face was
light-bronze in colour, every feature clearly cut as a cameo, the
forehead smooth and high, the nose delicately aquiline, the lips a
perfect cupid's bow, the eyebrows high and arched. The eyes themselves
were soft and dark and had the wildness of the wilderness-born, whilst
the hair, black and luminous as the raven's wing, crisped in curls
instead of hanging in the straight plaits of the ordinary native woman.
She moved forward slowly with graceful stride of one whose feet had
never known the cramping of civilized foot-gear, tall and straight and
as royal-looking as Eve must have been when she left the hand of God.

To the man, as he stood there, she seemed like an incarnate spirit of
the wilds, like the soft breath of the Northland spring, like----

Similes failed him of the suddenest, for in that instant the girl grew
aware of him and checked her stride and song at the same moment. For a
fraction of time they stood there looking at each other, the man of the
white dominant race, the girl of a vanishing people, whose origin is
shrouded in the grey mists of time. There was wonder on the man's face,
for never had he seen such beauty in a native, and on the girl's face
there was a startled look such as the forest doe shows when the wind
brings the breath of a presence that it does not see. Then the delicate
nostrils quivered, the soft dark eyes kindled with sudden flame, and
the rich blood surged in the bronze face from chin to brow. Almost
unconsciously the man took a step forward. But at that the girl,
turning suddenly, fled between the willows like the creature of the
wild she was, and the man checked himself and stood watching until she
was lost to view.

There was a thoughtful look in his blue eyes which suddenly gave way as
he smiled.

"A tinted Venus!" he murmured to himself. "I wonder where she belongs."

Looking round, away across the willows, planted on the meadow above the
marshy banks, he caught sight of the tops of a couple of moose-hide
tepees, and nodded to himself.

"Come with the family to barter the winter's fur-catch."

For a moment he stood there with his eyes fixed on the skin-tents.
There was a reflective look upon his face, and at the end of the moment
he made a movement towards the path along which the girl had fled. Then
he stopped, laughed harshly at himself, and with the old look back on
his face, turned again to his canoe, unloaded it, and began to pitch
camp.

At the end of half an hour, having lit a pipe, he strolled towards the
trading-post. Entering the Square of the enclosure he looked
nonchalantly about him. Two men, half-breeds, were sitting on a
roughly-made bench outside the store, smoking and talking. Inside the
store a tall Indian was bartering with a white man, whom he easily
guessed to be the factor, and as he looked round from the open door of
the factor's house, emerged a white woman whom he divined was the
factor's wife. She was followed by a rather dapper young man of medium
height, and who, most incongruously in that wild Northland, sported a
single eyeglass. The man fell into step by the woman's side, and
together they began to walk across the Square in the direction of the
store.

The man from the river watched them idly, waiting where he was, puffing
slowly at his pipe, until they drew almost level with him. Then he
stiffened suddenly, and an alert look came in his eyes.

At the same moment the other man, apparently becoming aware of his
presence for the first time, stared at him calmly, almost insolently.
Then he started. The monocle dropped from his eye, and his face went
suddenly white. He half-paused in his stride, then averting his gaze
from the other man hurried forward a little. The factor's wife, who had
observed the incident, looked at him inquiringly.

"Do you know that man, Mr. Ainley?"

The dapper young man laughed a short, discordant laugh.

"He certainly bears a resemblance to a man whom I knew some years ago."

"He seemed to recognize you, Mr. Ainley. I saw that much in his eyes."

"Then probably he is the man whom I used to know, but I did not expect
to meet him up here."

"No?" She waited as if for further information which was not
immediately forthcoming, then she continued: "There are many men up
here whom one does not expect to meet, men who belong 'to the legion of
the lost ones, the cohort of the damned,' who have buried their old
selves for ever. I wonder if that man is one of them?"

Gerald Ainley's face had regained its natural colour. Again he laughed
as he replied: "If he is the man I knew he is certainly of the lost
legion, for he has been in prison."

"In prison?" echoed the woman quickly. "He does not look like a
gaol-bird. What was the crime?"

"Forgery! The judge was merciful and gave him three years' penal
servitude."

"What is his name?"

"Stane--Hubert Stane!" replied the man shortly. As he spoke he glanced
back over his shoulder towards the man whom they were discussing, then
hastily averted his eyes.

The man from the river had turned round and was looking at him with
concentrated gaze. His face was working as if he had lost control of
his facial muscles, and his hands were tightly clenched. It was clear
that the meeting with Ainley had been something of a shock to him, and
from his attitude it appeared that he resented the other man's
aloofness.

"The hound!" he whispered to himself, "the contemptible hound!"

Then as Ainley and the factor's wife disappeared in the store, he
laughed harshly and relit his pipe. As he did so, his fingers shook so
that the match bobbed against the pipe-bowl, and it was very manifest
that he was undergoing a great strain. He stood there staring at the
store. Once he began to move towards it irresolutely, then changed his
mind and came to a standstill again.

"No!" he whispered below his breath. "I'll wait till the cad comes
out--I'll force him to acknowledge me."

But scarcely had he reached the decision, when on the quiet air came
the clear notes of a bugle sounding the alert and turning his thoughts
in a new direction. The notes came from the river, and were so alien to
that northern land that he swung round to discover their origin. At the
same moment the two half-breeds leapt from the bench and began to run
towards the wharf. John Rodwell, the factor and his wife, emerged from
the store and hurried in the same direction, followed by the Indian who
had been bartering. Two other men appeared at the warehouse door, and
as the strains of the bugle sounded again, also began to run towards
the wharf, whilst from the factor's house came a boy and girl, followed
by a white woman and a couple of Indian servants, all of whom followed
in the wake of the others.

The man in the Square did not move. Having turned towards the river as
the bugle-call floated clear and silvery, and being unable to see
upstream because of the fort buildings, he remained where he was,
keeping one eye on the store. The man who had passed him in the Square
had not emerged. Stane stood there for two or three minutes watching
first the river and then the door. At the end of that time, with a
resolute look on his face, he began to stride towards the store. He was
half-way there when the sound of a thin cheer reached him from the
wharf. He turned and looked round. His change of position had given him
an enlarged view of the river, and distant perhaps a quarter of a mile
or so away he saw a brigade of boats. He stood and stared at them
wonderingly for a moment, then resumed his way towards the store.

As he entered he looked round, and, standing near the parchment window
he caught sight of the man for whom he was looking. Ainley was rather
white of face, but his eyeglass was in its place, and outwardly he was
collected and cool. Hubert Stane regarded him silently for a moment,
then he laughed mirthlessly.

"Well, Ainley," he said abruptly, "this is a strange meeting place."

"Ah!" said the other quickly. "It is you, Stane, after all!"

"Surely you knew that just now?" was the reply in a cutting voice.

"No, you wrong me there! I was not sure. You must remember that I was
not expecting to see you up here. You had dropped out, and I had never
heard a word of you since--since----"

"Since I went to Dartmoor," Stane laughed again his cold, mirthless
laugh. "There is no need to mince matters, Ainley. All the world knows
I went there, and you need not go to any trouble to spare my feelings.
When a man has been through hell nothing else matters, you know."

Gerald Ainley did not reply. He stood there with an embarrassed look on
his face, obviously ill at ease, and the other continued: "You do not
seem pleased to see me--an old friend--you cut me just now. Why?"

"Well--er--really, Stane you--you ought to--er--be able to guess!"

"Perhaps I can," answered Stane ruthlessly. "Things are different now.
I am a discharged convict, down and out, and old friendship counts for
nothing. Is that it?"

"Well," replied Ainley, half-apologetically, "you can scarcely expect
that it sould be otherwise. I suppose that, really, that is why you
left England. It would have been impossible for you to resume your old
life among the men you knew----"

"You are the first of them that I have encountered--with one
exception."

"Indeed," asked the other politely, "who was the exception?"

"It was Kingsley. You remember him? He came to see me just before I
left Dartmoor. He believed in my innocence, and he wanted me to stay in
England and clear my name. He also told me something that set me
thinking, and latterly I have been rather wanting to meet you, because
there is a question I want answering."

The sound of the bugle playing a gay fanfare broke in on the silence
that followed his words, and this was followed by a rather scattered
cheer. Ainley started.

"Really, Stane, you must excuse me just now; I must go down to the
wharf--it is my duty to do so. At--er--a more fitting opportunity I
shall be glad for the sake of old times, to answer any question that
you may wish to ask me. But I really must go now. That is one of the
governors of the company arriving. He will be expecting to see me!"

He took a step towards the door, but the other blocked the way.

"I'm not going to be fobbed off with a mere excuse, Ainley. I want to
talk with you; and if I can't have it now, I must know when I can."

"Where are you staying?" asked the other shakily.

"My camp is just outside the post here."

"Then I will come to you tonight, Stane. I shall be late--midnight as
like as not."

"I shall wait for you," answered Stane, and stepped aside.

Ainley made a hurried exit, and the man whom he had left, moving to the
door, watched him running towards the wharf, where a large Peterboro'
canoe had just swung alongside. There were several others making for
the wharf, and as Stane watched, one by one they drew up, and
discharged their complement of passengers. From his vantage place on
the rising ground the watcher saw a rather short man moving up from the
wharf accompanied by the obsequious factor, and behind him two other
men and four ladies, with the factor's wife and Gerald Ainley. The
sound of feminine laughter drifted up the Square, and as it reached him
Stane stepped out from the store and hurried away in the opposite
direction.




CHAPTER II

AN ATTACK AT MIDNIGHT


It was near midnight, but far from dark. In the northern heavens a rosy
glow proclaimed the midnight sun. Somewhere in the willows a robin was
chirping, and from the wide bosom of the river, like the thin howl of a
wolf, came the mocking cry of a loon still pursuing its finny prey. And
in his little canvas tent, sitting just inside, so as to catch the
smoke of the fire that afforded protection from the mosquitoes, Hubert
Stane still watched and waited for the coming of his promised visitor.
He was smoking, and from the look upon his face it was clear that he
was absorbed in thoughts that were far from pleasant. His pipe went
out, and still he sat there, thinking, thinking. Half an hour passed
and the robin making the discovery that it was really bed-time, ceased
its chirping; the loon no longer mocked the wolf, but still the man sat
behind his smoke-smudge, tireless, unsleeping, waiting. Another
half-hour crept by with leaden feet, then a new sound broke the
stillness of the wild, the tinkling of a piano, sadly out of tune,
followed by a chorus of voices lifted up in the homeland song.

    "Should auld acquaintance be forgot
    And never brought to min'?
    Should auld acquaintance be forgot
    And days o' lang syne?"

As the simple melody progressed, a look of bitterness came on Stane's
face, for the song brought to him memories of other times and scenes
which he had done his best to forget. He started to his feet and
stepping outside the tent began to walk restlessly to and fro. The
music ended and he stood still to listen. Now no sound except the
ripple of the river broke the quiet, and after a moment he nodded to
himself. "Now, he will come."

The thin pungent song of a mosquito impinged upon the stillness,
something settled on his neck and there followed a swift sting like the
puncture of a hypodermic needle. Instantly he slapped the place with
his hand, and retreated behind his smoke-smudge. There he threw himself
once more on the pack that served him for seat and waited, as it seemed
interminably.

His fire died down, the smoke ceased to hide the view, and through the
adjacent willows came the sudden sough of moving air. A robin broke
into song, and once more the wail of the loon sounded from the wide
river. Away to the north the sky flushed with crimson glory, then the
sun shot up red and golden. A new day had broken; and Stane had watched
through the brief night of the Northland summer for a man who had not
appeared and he was now assured, would not come.

He laughed bitterly, and rising kicked the fire together, threw on
fresh fuel, and after one look towards the still sleeping Post,
returned to the tent, wrapped himself in a blanket, and shortly after
fell asleep.

Three hours later he was awakened by a clatter of voices and the
clamour of barking dogs, passing from sleep to full wakeness like a
healthy child. Kicking the blanket from him he slipped on his moccasins
and stepped outside where the source of the clamour at once manifested
itself. A party of Indians had just beached their canoes, and were
exchanging greetings with another party, evidently that whose tepees
stood on the meadow outside the fort, for among the women he saw the
Indian girl who had fled through the willows after encountering him. He
watched the scene with indifferent eyes for a moment or two, then
securing a canvas bucket went down to the river for water, and made his
toilet. That done, he cooked his breakfast, ate it, tided up his camp,
and lighting a pipe strolled into the enclosure of the Post. Several
Indians were standing outside the store, and inside the factor and his
clerk were already busy with others; bartering for the peltries brought
from the frozen north to serve the whims of fashion in warmer lands. In
the Square itself stood the plump gentleman who had landed the day
before, talking to a cringing half-breed, whilst a couple of ladies
with him watched the aborigines outside the store with curious eyes.
Stane glanced further afield. Two men were busy outside the warehouse,
a second half-breed sprawled on the bench by the store, but the man for
whom he had waited through the night was not in sight.

With a grimace of disappointment he moved towards the store. As he did
so a little burst of mellow laughter sounded, and turning swiftly he
saw the man whom he was looking for round the corner of the warehouse
accompanied by a girl, who laughed heartily at some remark of her
companion. Stane halted in his tracks and looked at the pair who were
perhaps a dozen yards or so away. The monocled Ainley could not but be
aware of his presence, yet except that he kept his gaze resolutely
averted, he gave no sign of being so. But the girl looked at him
frankly, and as she did so, Hubert Stane looked back, and caught his
breath, as he had reason to.

She was fair as an English rose, moulded in spacious lines like a
daughter of the gods, with an aureole of glorious chestnut hair, shot
with warm tints of gold and massed in simplicity about a queenly head.
Her mouth was full, her chin was softly strong, her neck round and firm
as that of a Grecian statue, and her eyes were bluey-grey as the mist
of the northern woods. Fair she was, and strong--a true type of those
women who, bred by the English meadows, have adventured with their men
and made their homes in the waste places of the earth.

Her grey eyes met Stane's quite frankly, without falling, then turned
nonchalantly to her companion, and Stane, watching, saw her speak, and
as Ainley flashed a swift glance in his direction, and then replied
with a shrug of his shoulders, he easily divined that the girl had
asked a question about himself. They passed him at half a dozen yards
distance, Ainley with his face set like a flint, the girl with a
scrutinizing sidelong glance that set the blood rioting in Stane's
heart. He stood and watched them until they reached the wharf, saw them
step into a canoe, and then, both of them paddling, they thrust out to
the broad bosom of the river.

Not till then did he avert his gaze, and turn again to the store. The
great man of the company was still talking to the half-breed, and the
other half-breed had risen from his seat and was staring into the
store. He looked round as Stane approached him.

"By gar," he said enthusiastically, "dat one very fine squaw-girl
dere."

Stane looked forward through the open doorway, and standing near the
long counter, watching a tall Indian bartering with the factor, saw the
beautiful Indian girl from the neighbouring camp. He nodded an
affirmative, and seeing an opportunity to obtain information turned and
spoke to the man.

"Yes, but that girl there with Mr. Ainley----"

"Oui, m'sieu. But she no squaw-girl. She grand person who make' ze tour
with ze governor."

"Oh, the governor makes the tour, does he?"

"Oui, oui! In the old style, with a brigade of boats, and a bugler. A
summer trip, vous comprenez--a picnic to all ze posts in ze province.
Thus it is to be a great man!"

"And Mr. Ainley, what is he doing at Fort Malsun?"

"Ah, M'sieu Ainley! He also is ze great man. He is to be among the
governors--one day. He also visits ze posts, and will no doubt travel
with ze governor, whose protege he is."

"Is that so?"

"Dat is so! He is ze favourite, vous comprenez?"

"I did not know it."

"Non? But so it ees! And Louis and me, we go with heem in ze canoe to
serve heem. Though by gar, I like to make stop here, an' talk to dat
squaw-girl."

Stane made no vocal reply to this. He nodded carelessly and passed into
the store. Factor Rodwell looked round as he entered, and surveyed him
with a measuring eye, as if taking stock of a new acquaintance, then
gave him a curt nod and resumed his barter with the Indian. His
assistant being also busy for the moment, Stane turned towards the
Indian girl whose liquid eyes were regarding him shyly, and addressed
her in her native dialect.

"Little sister, why did you run from me yesterday?"

The girl was covered with confusion at the directness of his question,
and to help her over her embarrassment the young man laughed.

"You did not mistake me for Moorseen (the black bear) or the bald-face
grizzly, did you?"

At the question the girl laughed shyly, and shook her head without
speaking.

"I am but a man, and not the grizzled one. Wherefore should you run
from me, little sister?"

"I had never seen such a man before."

The directness of the answer, given in a shy voice, astonished him. It
was his turn to be embarrassed and he strove to turn the edge of the
compliment.

"Never seen a white man before!" he cried in mock amazement.

"I did not say that I had never seen a white man before. I have seen
many. The priest up at Fort of God, the doctor priest at the Last Hope,
the factor there, and M'sieu Ainley who came to our camp yesternight.
And there is also this fat man they call the governor--a great chief,
it is said; though he does not look as such a great one should look.
Yes, I have seen many white men, but none like thee before."

Hubert Stane was routed once more by the girl's directness, but strove
to recover himself by a return of compliments.

"Well," he laughed, "for that matter there are none so many like
thyself in the world. I wonder what thy name is?"

The girl flushed with pleasure at the compliment, and answered his
question without reserve.

"I am Miskodeed."

"The Beauty of the Spring! Then thou art well-named, little sister!"

The girl flushed with pleasure. The flame that had leapt in her dark
eyes at their first meeting burned once more, and where, but for an
interruption, the conversation would have drifted can only be
conjectured. But at that precise moment the tall Indian called to her.

"Miskodeed."

The girl moved swiftly to him and with a gesture that was almost royal
the Indian pointed to a pile of trade goods heaped upon the long
counter. The girl gathered as much as was possible in her arms, and
staggered with her load from the store, and as Factor Rodwell nodded to
him, Hubert Stane moved up the counter, and began to give his order.
The factor wrote it down without comment, glancing at his customer from
time to time with shrewd appraising eyes, and when Stane had paid for
the goods which were to be ready before noon, he asked a question.

"New to the district, aren't you?"

"I wintered here," replied Stane briefly.

"Then you did no trapping," said the factor with a laugh, "or you'd
have brought your pelts in. I guess you must be prospecting?"

"I have done a little," agreed Stane, a touch of reserve in his manner.

"A lonely job!" commented the factor.

"Yes," was Stane's reply, then he nodded and turned towards the door.

The factor watched him go with frowning eyes, then turned to his
assistant.

"Not a very sociable sort, hey, Donald?"

The assistant grinned, and shook his head. "Tongue-tied, I guess."

"I wonder where he has his location."

"Somewhere North!" answered Donald. "He came upstream, I saw him."

The factor said no more to him, but passed out of the store towards the
warehouse. As he did so he caught sight of Stane standing in the Square
watching a canoe far out on the river. The factor's eyes were good and
he recognized the occupants of the craft quite easily, and as he saw
Stane's interest in them, the frown gathered about his eyes once more,
and he muttered to himself:

"I wonder what Mr. Ainley's little game means?"

Then as he was unable to find any answer to his question he turned
again to his own affairs.

As for Hubert Stane he stood in the Square for quite a long time
watching for the return of the canoe, determined to have speech with
Ainley. Then, as it still lingered, he turned and made his way to his
own camp.

It was quite late in the afternoon when the opportunity he sought was
given to him. Impelled by the merest curiosity he had strolled over to
the Indian tepees and had there encountered Miskodeed teaching a
puppy-dog tricks. He had stopped to speak to her, and was still engaged
in a rather one-sided conversation, when the sound of English voices
caused him to turn round.

The governor's party, accompanied by the factor, was moving towards the
tepees. His first impulse was to go away, then seeing Ainley among the
little knot of people, he decided to remain, and to serve his own end,
kept Miskodeed in conversation, as when left to herself she would have
fled to the moose-hide tent.

The party drew nearer. Stane was conscious of its attention, and the
blood in Miskodeed's face came and went in a manner that was almost
painful. Any one looking at them, and noting the apparent absorption of
the man and the certain embarrassment of the girl, must have utterly
miscomprehended the situation, and that was what happened, for a moment
later, the sound of a laughing feminine voice reached him.

"Behold an idyll of the land!"

He looked up with an angry light in his blue eyes. The party was just
passing, and nearly every pair of eyes was regarding him curiously. And
one pair, the grey eyes of the girl who had been with Ainley, met his
in level glance, and in them he saw a flicker of contempt. That glance
sent the blood to his face, and increased the anger which had surged
within him at the laughing remark he had overheard. Ainley was among
these people, and come what might he would have speech with him before
them all. He stepped forward determinedly; but Ainley, who had been
watching him closely, anticipated his move by falling out of the group.

"Don't be a fool, Stane! You'll do yourself no good by kicking up a
dust here. I couldn't come last night, but tonight at the same time I
will not fail."

He turned and moved on again before Stane could reply, and as he joined
the English girl, the latter inquired in a surprised voice, "You know
that gentleman, Mr. Ainley?"

Stane caught the question, but the answer he did not hear, though he
could guess its purport and found no pleasure at the thought of what it
would be. Consumed with wrath and shame he went his way to his own
camp, and seeking relief from intolerable thoughts busied himself with
preparations for a start on the morrow, then schooled himself to wait
as best he could, through the long hours before Ainley's appointed
time.

Again the midnight sun found him sitting behind his smoke-smudge,
waiting, listening. All the songs and cries of the wild faded into
silence and still Ainley had not come. Then he caught the sound of
light feet running, and looking up he saw Miskodeed hurrying towards
him between the willows. Wondering what had brought her forth at this
hour he started to his feet and in that instant he saw a swift look of
apprehension and agony leap to her face.

"Beware, my brother----"

He heard no more. A man rose like a shadow by his side, with lifted
hand holding an ax-shaft. Before he could move or cry out the shaft
descended on his uncovered head and he dropped like a man suddenly
stricken dead. When he came to himself the rosy Northland night had
given place to rosier dawn, and he found that he was lying, bound hand
and foot, at the bottom of a Peterboro' canoe. There were three Indians
in the canoe, one of whom he recognized for Miskodeed's father, and
after lying for a few minutes wondering what was the meaning of the
situation in which he found himself he addressed himself to the Indian:

"What is the meaning of this?"

The Indian stared at him like a graven image, but vouchsafed no reply.
Stane lay there wondering if it had anything to do with Miskodeed, and
finally, recalling the girl's dramatic appearance at the very moment
when he had been stricken down, decided that it had.

"What are you going to do with me?" he inquired after an interval.

"Nothing," replied the Indian. "At the end of five days thou wilt be
set free, and the canoe follows behind."

"But why----"

"It is an order," said the Indian gravely, and beyond that Stane could
learn nothing, though he tried repeatedly in the five days that
followed.

At the end of the fifth day they pitched camp as usual, at the evening
meal, and lay down to sleep, Stane tied hand and foot with buckskin
thongs. In the morning, when he awoke, he was alone and his limbs were
free. Scarce believing the facts he sat up and looked around him.
Unquestionably his captors had gone, taking the Peterboro' with them,
but leaving his own canoe hauled up on the bank. Still overcome with
astonishment he rose to his feet and inspected the contents of the
canoe. All the stores that he had purchased at the Post were there
intact, with his rifle, his little tent and camp utensils, so far as he
could tell, not a single article was missing. What on earth was the
meaning of it all?

"Miskodeed!"

As he spoke the name the possibility that his acquaintance with the
girl had been misunderstood by her relations shot into his mind. But in
that case why had they dealt with him after this fashion? Then again he
seemed to hear the Indian speaking. "It is an order!"

"Whose order?"

As his mind asked the question, he visioned Gerald Ainley, and was
suddenly conscious of a great anger. Was it possible that he----? He
broke off the question in his mind without finishing it; but lifted his
clenched hand and shook it before the silent wilderness. His attitude
was full of dumb menace, and left in no doubt his belief as to who was
the author of the event that had befallen him.




CHAPTER III

A LOST GIRL


Mr. Gerald Ainley standing in the meadow outside the Post, looked
towards the river bank with smiling eyes. Where Hubert Stane's little
tent had been the willows now showed an unbroken line, and he found
that fact a source of satisfaction. Then between the willows he caught
sight of a moving figure, and after one glance at it, began to hurry
forward. A moment later the figure emerged from the willows and stood
on the edge of the meadow, revealing its identity as that of the
English girl with whom he had walked on the previous day. Without
observing him the girl turned round and began to walk towards the
Indian encampment and Ainley immediately altered his course, walking
quickly so as to intercept her. He joined her about a score of paces
from the tents and smilingly doffed his cap.

"Good morning, Miss Yardely. You are astir early."

Helen Yardely laughed lightly. "It is impossible to do anything else in
this country, where it is daylight all the time, and birds are crying
half the night. Besides we are to make a start after breakfast."

"Yes, I know; I'm going with you."

"You are going with us, Mr. Ainley!" There was a little note of
surprise in the girl's tones. "My uncle has not mentioned it!"

"No! It was only finally decided last night; though from the beginning
of the excursion it has been contemplated. Sir James is making notes of
his journey which I am to supplement. I believe he has an idea of
bringing out a book describing the journey!"

"Which you are to write, I suppose?" laughed the girl.

"Well," countered the man also laughing, "I am to act as amanuensis.
And after all you know I am in the service of the Company, whose
fortunes Sir James directs."

"He may direct them," answered the girl lightly, "but it is other men
who carry them--the men of the wilds who bring the furs to the posts,
and the traders who live in isolation from year's end to year's end.
You must not take my uncle quite so seriously as he takes himself, Mr.
Ainley."

Gerald Ainley smiled. "You forget, Miss Yardely, he can make or break a
man who is in the Company's service."

"Perhaps!" laughed the girl. "Though if I were a man I should not so
easily be made or broken by another. I should make myself and see that
none broke me." She paused as if waiting for an answer, then as her
companion continued silent, abruptly changed the topic. "By the by, I
see that your acquaintance of other days has removed himself!"

"Yes," answered Ainley, "I noticed that."

"He must have gone in the night."

"Yes," was the reply. "I suppose he folded his tent like the Arabs and
as silently stole away."

"I daresay the meeting with an old acquaintance was distasteful to
him."

"That is possible," answered Ainley. "When a man has deliberately
buried himself in this wild land he will hardly wish to be
resurrected."

"And yet he did not appear to avoid you yesterday?" said the girl
thoughtfully.

"A momentary impulse, I suppose," replied her companion easily. "I
daresay he thought I might fraternise and forget the past."

"And you couldn't?"

"Well, scarcely. One does not fraternise with gaol-birds even for old
time's sake."

They had now arrived at the tepees and as they halted, the flap of one
was thrown aside, and Miskodeed emerged. She did not see them, as the
moment she stepped into the open air her eyes turned towards the
willows where Stane's camp had been. A look of sadness clouded the wild
beauty of her face, and there was a poignant light in her eyes.

"Ah!" whispered Helen Yardely. "She knows that he has gone."

"Perhaps it is just as well for her that he has," answered Ainley
carelessly. "These marriages of the country are not always happy--for
the woman."

Miskodeed caught the sound of his voice, and, turning suddenly, became
aware of their presence. In an instant a swift change came over her
face. Its sadness vanished instantly, and as her eyes flashing fiercely
fixed themselves upon Ainley, a look of scorn came on her face
intensifying its bizarre beauty. She took a step forward as if she
would speak to the white man, then apparently changed her mind, and
swinging abruptly on her heel, re-entered the tent. Helen Yardely
glanced swiftly at her companion, and surprised a look of something
very like consternation in his eyes.

"That was very queer!" she said quickly.

"What was very queer?" asked Ainley.

"That girl's action. Did you see how she looked at you? She was going
to speak to you and changed her mind."

Ainley laughed a trifle uneasily. "Possibly she blames me for the
disappearance of her lover!"

"But why should she do that? She can hardly know of your previous
acquaintance with him."

"You forget--she saw him speak to me yesterday!"

"Ah yes," was the girl's reply. "I had forgotten that." The notes of a
bugle, clear and silvery in the still air, floated across the meadow at
that moment, and Gerald Ainley laughed.

"The breakfast bell! We must hurry, Miss Yardely. It will scarcely do
to keep your uncle waiting."

They turned and hurried back to the Post, nothing more being said in
reference to Miskodeed and Hubert Stane. And an hour later, in the
bustle of the departure, the whole matter was brushed aside by Helen
Yardely, though now and again through the day, it recurred to her mind
as a rather unpleasant episode; and she found herself wondering how so
fine a man as Stane could stoop to the folly of which many men in the
North were guilty.

At the end of that day her uncle ordered the camp to be pitched on a
little meadow backed by a sombre forest of spruce. And after the
evening meal, in company with Gerald Ainley, she walked towards the
timber where an owl was hooting dismally. The air was perfectly still,
the sky above crystal clear, and the Northern horizon filled with a
golden glow. As they reached the shadow of the spruce, and seated
themselves on a fallen trunk, a fox barked somewhere in the recess of
the wood, and from afar came the long-drawn melancholy howl of a wolf.
Helen Yardely looked down the long reach of the river and her eyes
fixed themselves on a tall bluff crowned with spruce, distant perhaps a
mile and a half away.

"I like the Wild," she said suddenly, breaking the silence that had
been between them.

"It is all right," laughed Ainley, "when you can journey through it
comfortably as we are doing."

"It must have its attractions even when comfort is not possible," said
the girl musingly, "for the men who live here live as nature meant man
to live."

"On straight moose-meat--sometimes," laughed Ainley. "With bacon and
beans and flour brought in from the outside for luxuries."

"I was not thinking of the food," answered the girl quickly. "I was
thinking of the toil, the hardship--the Homeric labours of those who
face the hazards of the North."

"Yes," agreed the man, "the labours are certainly Homeric, and there
are men who like the life well enough, who have made fortunes here and
have gone back to their kind in Montreal, New York, London, only to
find that civilization has lost its attraction for them."

"I can understand that," was the quick reply. "There is something in
the silence and wildness of vast spaces which gets into the blood. Only
yesterday I was thinking how small and tame the lawns at home would
look after this." She swept a hand in a half-circle, and then gave a
little laugh. "I believe I could enjoy living up here."

Ainley laughed with her. "A year of this," he said, lightly, "and you
would begin to hunger for parties and theatres and dances and
books--and you would look to the Southland as to Eden."

"Do you really think so?" she asked seriously.

"I am sure of it," he answered with conviction.

"But I am not so sure," she answered slowly. "Deep down there must be
something aboriginal in me, for I find myself thrilling to all sorts of
wild things. Last night I was talking with Mrs. Rodwell. Her husband
used to be the trader up at Kootlach, and she was telling me of a white
man who lived up there as a chief. He was a man of education, a
graduate of Oxford and he preferred that life to the life of
civilization. It seems he died, and was buried as a chief, wrapped in
furs, a hunting spear by his side, all the tribe chanting a wild
funeral chant! Do you know, as she described it, the dark woods, the
barbaric burying, the wild chant, I was able to vision it all--and my
sympathies were with the man, who, in spite of Oxford, had chosen to
live his own life in his own way."

Ainley laughed. "You see it in the glamour of romance," he said. "The
reality I imagine was pretty beastly."

"Well!" replied the girl quickly. "What would life be without romance?"

"A dull thing," answered Ainley, promptly, with a sudden flash of the
eyes. "I am with you there, Miss Yardely, but romance does not lie in
mere barbarism, for most men it is incarnated in a woman."

"Possibly! I suppose the mating instinct is the one elemental thing
left in the modern world."

"It is the one dominant thing," answered Ainley, with such emphasis of
conviction that the girl looked at him in quick surprise.

"Why, Mr. Ainley, one would think that you--that you----" she
hesitated, stumbled in her speech, and did not finish the sentence. Her
companion had risen suddenly to his feet. The monocle had fallen from
its place, and he was looking down at her with eyes that had a strange
glitter.

"Yes," he cried, answering her unfinished utterance. "Yes! I do know.
That is what you would say, is it not? I have known since the day Sir
James sent me to the station at Ottawa to meet you. The knowledge was
born in me as I saw you stepping from the car. The one woman--my heart
whispered it in that moment, and has shouted it ever since. Helen, I
did not mean to speak yet, but--well, you see how it is with me! Tell
me it is not altogether hopeless! You know what my position is; you
know that in two years----"

Helen Yardely rose swiftly to her feet. Her beautiful face had paled a
little. She stopped the flood of words with her lifted hand.

"Please, Mr. Ainley! There is no need to enter on such details."

"Then----"

"You have taken me by surprise," said the girl slowly. "I had no idea
that you--that you--I have never thought of it."

"But you can think now, Helen," he said urgently. "I mean every word
that I have said. I love you. You must see that--now. Let us join our
lives together, and together find the romance for which you crave."

The blood was back in the girl's cheeks now, running in rosy tides, and
there was a light in her grey eyes that made Ainley's pulse leap with
hope, since he mistook it for something else. His passion was real
enough, as the girl felt, and she was simple and elemental enough to be
thrilled by it; but she was sufficiently wise not to mistake the
response in herself for the greater thing. The grey eyes looked
steadily into his for a moment, then a thoughtful look crept into them,
and Ainley knew that for the moment he had lost.

"No," she said slowly, "no, I am not sure that would be wise. I do not
feel as I ought to feel in taking such a decision as that. And
besides----"

"Yes?" he said, urgently, as she paused. "Yes?"

"Well," she flushed a little, and her tongue stumbled among the words,
"you are not quite the man--that I--that I have thought
of--for--for----." She broke off again, laughed a little at herself and
then blurted confusedly: "You see all my life, from being a very little
girl, I have worshipped heroes."

"And I am not a hero," said Ainley with a harsh laugh. "No! I am just
the ordinary man doing the ordinary things, and my one claim to notice
is that I love you! But suppose the occasion came? Suppose I----." He
broke off and stood looking at her for a moment. Then he asked, "Would
that make no difference?"

"It might," replied the girl, the shrinking from the infliction of too
severe a blow.

"Then I live for that occasion!" cried Ainley. "And who knows? In this
wild land it may come any hour!"

As a matter of fact the occasion offered itself six days later--a
Sunday, when Sir James Yardely had insisted on a day's rest. The
various members of the party were employing their leisure according to
their inclinations, and Ainley had gone after birds for the pot, whilst
Helen Yardely, taking a small canoe, had paddled down stream to explore
a creek where, according to one of the Indians, a colony of beavers had
established itself.

When Ainley returned with a couple of brace of wood partridges it was
to find that the girl was still absent from the camp. The day wore on
towards evening and still the girl had not returned, and her uncle
became anxious, as did others of the party.

"Some one had better go to look for her, Ainley," said Sir James. "I
gather that a mile or two down the river the current quickens, and that
there are a number of islands where an inexpert canoeist may come to
grief. I should never forgive myself if anything has happened to my
niece."

"I will go myself, Sir James, and I will not return without her."

"Oh, I don't suppose anything very serious has happened," replied Sir
James, with an uneasy laugh, "but it is just as well to take
precautions."

"Yes, Sir James! I will go at once and take one of the Indians with
me--one who knows the river. And it may be as well to send upstream
also, as Miss Yardely may have changed her mind and taken that
direction."

"Possibly so!" answered Sir James, turning away to give the necessary
orders.

Gerald Ainley called one of the Indians to him, and ordered him to put
three days' supply of food into the canoe, blankets and a small folding
tent, and was just preparing to depart when Sir James drew near, and
stared with evident surprise at the load in the canoe.

"Why, Gerald," he said, "you seem to have made preparations for a long
search."

"That is only wise, Sir James. This river runs for sixty miles before
it falls into the main river, and sixty miles will take a good deal of
searching. If the search is a short one, and the food not needed, the
burden of it will matter little; on the other hand----"

"In God's name go, boy--and bring Helen back!"

"I will do my best, Sir James."

The canoe pushed off, leaping forward under the combined propulsion of
the paddles and the current, and sweeping round a tall bluff was soon
out of sight of the camp.

The Indian in the bow of the canoe, after a little time, set the course
slantingly across the current, making for the other side, and Ainley
asked a sharp question. The Indian replied over his shoulder.

"The white Klootchman go to see the beaver! Beaver there!"

He jerked his head towards a creek now opening out on the further
shore, and a look of impatience came on Ainley's face. He said nothing
however, though to any one observing him closely it must have been
abundantly clear that he had no expectation of finding the missing girl
at the place which the Indian indicated. As a matter of fact they did
not. Turning into the creek they presently caught sounds that were new
to Ainley, and he asked a question.

"It is the beavers. They smite the water with their tails!"

Two minutes later they came in sight of the dam and in the same moment
the Indian turned the canoe towards a soft bar of sand. A few seconds
later, having landed, he pointed to the sand. A canoe had been beached
there, and plain as the footprints which startled Crusoe, were the
marks of moccasined feet going from and returning to the sand bar.

"White Klootchman been here!" said the Indian. "She go away. No good
going to the beaver."

He turned to the canoe again, and Gerald Ainley turned with him,
without a word in reply. There was no sign of disappointment on his
face, nor when they struck the main current again did he even glance at
the shore on either side. But seven miles further down, when the
current visibly quickened, and a series of small spruce-clad islands
began to come in view, standing out of the water for all the world like
ships in battle line, a look of interest came on his face, and he began
to look alertly in front of him and from side to side, all his
demeanour betraying expectation.




CHAPTER IV

A PIECE OF WRECKAGE


The canoe drew near the first of the islands and the Indian directed it
inshore and in a quiet bay as the canoe floated quietly out of the
current, they lifted up their voices and shouted again and again.
Except for the swirl of the waters everything was perfectly still, and
any one on the island must have heard the shouting; but there came no
response.

"No good!" said the Indian, and turned the bow of the canoe to the
river once more.

Island after island they inspected and hailed; meanwhile keeping a
sharp look out on either side of the river, but in vain. They were
hoarse with shouting when the last of the islands was reached, and on
Ainley's face a look of anxiety manifested itself. Landing at the tail
of the island the Indian hunted around until he found a dry branch, and
this he threw into the water and stood to watch its course as it went
down river. The drift of it seemed to be towards a bar on the eastern
bank, and towards that, distant perhaps a couple of miles, the course
of their canoe was directed. When they reached it, again the Indian
landed, and began to inspect the flotsam on the edge of the bank
closely. Ainley watched him with apprehension. Presently the Indian
stooped, and after two or three attempts fished something from the
water. He looked at it keenly for a moment, then he gave a shout, and
began to walk along the bar towards the canoe.

As he came nearer, the white man saw that the object he carried was the
spoon end of a paddle. When close at hand the Indian held it out for
his inspection.

"Him broke," he said in English. "And the break quite fresh."

There was no question as to that. Notwithstanding that the paddle had
been in the water, the clean wood of the fracture showed quite plainly,
and whilst Ainley was looking at it the Indian stretched a finger and
pointed to a semi-circular groove which ran across the broken end.

"Him shot!" he announced quite calmly.

"Are you sure?" asked Ainley, betraying no particular surprise.

The Indian nodded his head gravely, and fitted his little finger in the
groove.

"Bullet-mark!"

Ainley did not dispute the contention, nor apparently was he greatly
troubled by the Indian's contention. He looked round a little
anxiously.

"But where is the canoe?" he asked. "And Miss Yardely?"

The Indian waved a hand down river. "Canoe miss this bar, and go in the
current like hell to the meeting of the waters. Better we keep straight
on and watch out."

As they started down river again, Ainley's face took on a settled look
of anxiety. It was now close on midnight, but very light, and on either
bank everything could be clearly seen. They kept a sharp look out, but
found no further trace of the missing canoe, and the early dawn found
them in a quickening current, racing for the point where the tributary
river joined the main stream.

Presently it came in sight, and between walls of spruce and a foaming
crest of water they swept into the broader river, which rolled its
turbid way towards its outfall in one of the great Northern lakes. The
canoe pranced like a frightened horse at the meeting of the waters, and
when they were safely through it, Ainley looked back and questioned his
companion.

"Would Miss Yardely's canoe come through that?"

"Like a dry stick," answered the Indian, letting the canoe drift for a
moment in order to swing into the main current of the broader stream.

Ainley looked ahead. Downstream the river narrowed and the low broad
banks about them gradually rose, until they were like high ramparts on
either hand. The Indian pointed towards the tree-crowned cliffs.

"No good there," he said. "We land here, and make grub; walk down and
see what water like."

It seemed to Ainley the only sensible thing to do, and he did not
demur. Accordingly, the Indian, seeing a favourable beach, turned the
canoe inshore, and whilst his companion was preparing breakfast, the
white man walked downstream towards the ramparts of rocks through which
the river ran. When he reached them he looked down at the water. It ran
smooth and glassy and swift, whirling against the rocky sides a good
foot higher than between the earthen banks upstream. He followed the
gorge, forgetting that he was tired, forgetting the preparing
breakfast, a look of extreme anxiety upon his face. Three-quarters of
an hour's walking brought him to the end of the gorge, and for a mile
or two the country opened out once more, the river running wide between
low-lying banks to disappear in the lee of a range of hills above which
hung a veil of mist. He stood regarding the scene for a few minutes and
then, the anxiety on his face more pronounced than ever, made his way
back to the place where the Indian awaited him. The Indian had already
eaten, and whilst he himself breakfasted he told him what he had seen.
The native listened carefully, and in the end replied in his own
language.

"Good! We go through the cliffs, in place of making the portage. It is
the swifter way, and if the white Klootchman come this way, she has
gone through these gates of the waters. We follow, but not very far,
for again we come to the hills, and to a place where the earth is rent,
and the waters fall down a wall that is higher than the highest spruce.
If the Klootchman's canoe go there--it is the end."

Falls! So that was the meaning of that mist among the hills. There the
river plunged into a chasm, and if Helen Yardely's canoe had been swept
on in the current it was indeed the end. Ainley's anxiety mounted to
positive fear. He pushed from him the fried deer-meat and bacon which
the other had prepared for him, and rose suddenly to his feet.

"Let us be going!" he said sharply, and walked restlessly to and fro
whilst his companion broke camp. A few minutes later they were afloat
again, and after a little time there was no need to paddle. The current
caught them and flung them towards the limestone gateway at express
speed. In an amazingly short time they had passed through the gorge,
and were watching the banks open out on either side of them.

There was no sign of life anywhere, no indication that any one had
passed that way since time began. As they sped onward a peculiar throb
and rumble began to make itself heard. It increased as they neared the
range of hills towards which they were making, and as the banks began
to grow rocky, and the water ahead broken by boulders, the Indian
looked for a good place to land.

He found it on the lee side of a bluff where an eddy had scooped a
little bay in the steep bank, and turning the canoe inside it, they
stepped ashore. Making the canoe secure they climbed to the top of the
bank and began to push their way down stream. The rapids, as Ainley
noted, grew worse. Everywhere the rocks stood up like teeth tearing the
water to tatters, and the rumble ahead grew more pronounced. Standing
still for a moment, they felt the earth trembling beneath their feet,
and the white man's face paled with apprehension. A tangle of spruce
hid the view of the river as it skirted a big rock, and as the river
evidently made a swerve at this point, they struck a bee-line through
the timber. The rumble, of which they had long been conscious, of the
suddenest seemed to become a roar, and, as they came to an open place
where they could see the water again, they understood the reason.

The river but a few feet below them, bordered by shelving terraces of
rock, suddenly disappeared. Rolling glassily for perhaps fifty yards,
with scarce a ripple on its surface, the water seemed to gather itself
together, and leap into a gorge, the bottom of which was ninety feet
below. Ainley stood looking at the long cascade for a full minute, a
wild light in his eyes, then he looked long and steadily at the gorge
through which the river ran after its great leap. His face was white
and grim, and his mouth was quivering painfully.

Then without a word he turned and began to hurry along the line of the
gorge. The Indian strode after him.

"Where go to?" he asked.

"The end of the gorge," was the brief reply.

The Indian nodded, and then looked back. "If canoe can go over there it
smash to small bits."

"Oh, I know it, don't I?" cried Ainley savagely. "Hold your tongue,
can't you?"

An hour's wild walking brought them to the end of the gorge, and
looking down the rather steep face of the hill, to the widening river,
the white man carefully surveyed the banks. After a time he found what
he was looking for--a pile of debris heaped against a bluff, whose hard
rock resisted the action of the water. It was about a quarter of a mile
away and on the same bank of the river as himself. Still in silence he
began to drop down the face of the hill, and sometimes climbing over
moss-grown rocks, sometimes wading waist-high in the river itself, he
made his way to the heap of debris. It was the drift-pile made by the
river, which at this point cast out from its bosom logs and trees and
all manner of debris brought over the falls and down the gorge, a great
heap piled in inextricable confusion as high as a tall fir tree, and as
broad as a church.

Feverishly, Gerald Ainley began to wade round its wide base; and the
Indian also joined in the search, poking among the drift-logs and
occasionally tumbling one aside. Then the Indian gave a sharp grunt,
and out of the pile dragged a piece of wreckage that was obviously part
of the side and bow of a canoe. He shouted to Ainley, who hurried
scramblingly over a heap of the obstructing logs, and who, after one
look at that which the Indian had retrieved, stood there shaking like
wind-stricken corn; his face white and ghastly, his eyes full of agony.
The Indian put a brown finger on a symbol painted on the bows, with the
letters H. B. C. beneath. Both of them recognized the piece of wreckage
as belonging to the canoe in which Helen Yardely had left the camp, and
the Indian, with a glance at the gorge which had vomited the wreckage,
gave emphatic utterance to his belief.

"All gone."

Gerald Ainley made no reply. He had no doubt that what the Indian said
was true, and the truth was terrible enough. Turning away he began anew
to search the drift-pile, looking now for the body of a dead girl,
though with but little hope of finding it. For an hour he searched in
vain, then began to scramble down river, searching the bank. A mile
below the first drift-pile he came upon a second, caught by a sand-bar,
that, thrusting itself out in the water, snared the smaller debris.
This also he searched diligently, with no result; and after wandering a
little further down the river without finding anything, returned to
where the Indian awaited him.

"We will go back," he said, and these were the only words he spoke
until they reached their canoe again.

The Indian cooked a meal, of which Ainley partook with but little care
for what he was eating, his eyes fixed on the ochre-coloured water as
it swept by, his face the index of unfathomable thoughts. After the
meal they began to track their canoe upstream, until they reached water
where it would be possible to paddle, one of them towing with a line,
and the other working hard with the paddle to keep the canoe's nose
from the bank. A little way before they reached the limestone ramparts
through which they had swept at such speed a few hours before, the
Indian, who was at the towline, stopped and indicated that they must
make a portage over the gorge, since the configuration of the cliffs
made it impossible to tow the canoe through. In this task, a very hard
one, necessitating two journeys, one with the canoe and one with the
stores, they were occupied the remainder of the day, and when they
pitched camp again and had eaten the evening meal, the Indian promptly
fell asleep.

But there was no sleep for Gerald Ainley. He sat there staring at the
water rushing by, reflecting the crimson flare of the Northern night.
And it was not crimson that he saw it, but ochre-coloured as he had
seen it earlier in the day, hurrying towards the rapids below, and to
that ninety-foot leap into the gorge. And all the time, in vision, he
saw a canoe swept on the brown flood, a canoe in which crouched a
chestnut-haired girl, her grey eyes wide with fear; her hands
helplessly clasped, as she stared ahead, whilst the canoe danced and
leaped in the quickening waters hurrying towards the ramparts below,
which for aught she knew might well be the gates of death.

Sometimes the vision changed, and he saw the canoe in the rapids below
the ramparts, and waited in agony for it to strike one of the ugly
teeth of rock. Again and again it seemed that it must, but always the
current swept it clear, and it moved on at an increasing pace, swept in
that quick mill-race immediately above the falls. On the very edge he
saw it pause for a brief fraction of time and then the water flung it
and the white-faced girl into the depths beneath, and he saw them
falling, falling through the clouds of spray, the girl's dying cry
ringing through the thunder of the waters. He cried out in sudden
agony.

"My God! No!"

Then at the sound of his own cry, the vision left him for a time, and
he saw the river as it was, rosy in the light of the midnight sun. A
sound behind him caused him to turn round. The Indian, awakened by his
cry of anguish, had sat up and was staring at him in an odd way.

"It is all right, Joe," he said, and with a grunt the Indian lay down
to sleep again.

Ainley could not remain where he was to become again the prey of
terrible imaginations. Rising to his feet, he stumbled out of the camp,
and began to walk restlessly along the bank of the river. He was
body-tired, but his mind was active with an activity that was almost
feverish. Try as he would he could not shut out the visions which
haunted him, and as fast as he dismissed one, a new one was conjured
up. Now, as already shown, it was the canoe with the girl dancing to
destruction, now that final leap; then again it was that broken piece
of flotsam by the drift-pile at the end of the gorge; and later, in
some still reach far down the river, a dead girl, white-faced, but
peaceful, like drowned Ophelia.

He walked far without knowing it, driven by the secret agonies within,
and all the time conscious that he could not escape from them. Then
that befell which put a term to these agonizing imaginings. As he
walked he came suddenly on the ashes of a camp fire. For a moment he
stared at it uncomprehendingly. Then his interest quickened, as the
state of the ashes showed some one had camped at this place quite
recently. He began to look about him carefully, walking down the
shelving bank to the edge of the river. At that point there was a
stratum of soft clay, which took and preserved the impression of
everything of weight which rested upon it; and instantly he perceived a
number of footmarks about a spot where a canoe had been beached twice.

Stooping he examined the footmarks minutely. There was quite a jumble
of them, mostly made by a long and broad moccasined foot, which was
certainly that of a man; but in the jumble he found the print of
smaller feet, which must have been made by a youth or girl. A quick
hope kindled in his heart as he began to trace these prints among the
others. He had little of the craft of the wilds, but one thing quickly
arrested his attention--the smaller footprints all pointed one way and
that was down the bank towards the water. Now why should that be? Had
the person who had made those footprints not been in the canoe when the
owner had landed to pitch camp? And if such were the case, and the
maker of them was indeed a woman, what was she doing here, alone in the
wilderness?

Had Helen Yardely been saved by some fortunate chance, and wandering
along the river bank, stumbled on the camp of some prospector or
trapper making his way to the wild North? His mind clutched at this new
hope, eagerly. Hurriedly he climbed the sticky bank and began
feverishly to search for any sign that could help him. Then suddenly
the hope became a certainty, for in the rough grass he saw something
gleam, and stooping to recover it, found that it was a small enamelled
Swastiki brooch similar to one which he had seen three days before at
Miss Yardely's throat.

As he saw this he gave a shout of joy, and a moment later was hurrying
back along the bank to his own encampment. As he went, almost at a run,
his mind was busy with the discovery he had made. There were other
brooches in the world like this, thousands of them no doubt, but there
were few if any at all in this wild Northland, and not for a single
moment did he question that this was the one that Miss Yardely had
worn. And if he were right, then the girl was safe, and no doubt was
already on her way back to her uncle's camp in the care of whatever man
had found her.

Excitedly he broke on the slumbers of his Indian companion, and after
showing him the brooch, bade him accompany him to the place where he
had found it, and there pointed to the footmarks on the river bank.

"Can you read the meaning of those signs?"

The Indian studied them as a white man would a cryptogram, and
presently he stood up, and spoke with the slow gravity of his race.

"The Klootchman she came from the river. The man he carry her from the
water in his arms."

"How do you know that, Joe?"

The Indian pointed to certain footprints which were much more deeply
marked than the others.

"The man he carry heavy weight when he make these, and the Klootchman
she weigh, how much? One hundred and ten pounds, sure. He not carry
that weight back to the canoe, because the Klootchman she walk." He
pointed again, this time to the smaller footprints, and to Ainley,
reading the signs through the Indian's eyes, the explanation amounted
to a demonstration.

"Yes, yes, I understand," he cried, "but in that case where is she?"

The Indian looked up and down the river, then waved a hand upstream.
"The man he take her back to camp."

"Then why did we not meet them as we came down?"

A puzzled expression came on the Indian's face. For a moment he stood
considering the problem, then he shook his head gravely.

"I not know."

"We must get back to the camp at once, Joe. We must find out if Miss
Yardely has returned. We know now that she is alive, and at all costs
we must find her. We will start at once for there is no time to lose."

He turned on his heel and led the way back to the canoe, and half an
hour later they were paddling upstream towards the junction of the
rivers, the Indian grave and imperturbable; Ainley with a puzzled,
anxious look upon his handsome face.




CHAPTER V

A BRAVE RESCUE


When Hubert Stane took stock of his position, after his captors had
left him, he found himself in a country which was strange to him, and
spent the best part of a day in ascertaining his whereabouts. The flow
of the wide river where the camp had been pitched told him nothing, and
it was only after he had climbed a high hill a mile and a half away
from the river that he began to have any indication of his whereabouts.
Then with the country lying before him in a bird's-eye view he was able
to learn his position. There was more than one river in view, and a
chain of small lakes lay between one of them and the river where he had
been left by his captors. From the last of those lakes a long portage,
such as had been made on the last day but one of the journey, would
bring them to a river which a few miles away joined the river on the
bank of which he had been left to shift for himself. Studying the
disposition of the country carefully, he reached the conclusion that by
a roundabout journey he had been brought to the river on the upper
reaches of which he had his permanent camp; and as the conviction grew
upon him, he made his way back to the canoe, and began to work his way
upstream.

As he paddled, the problem of his deportation exercised his mind; and
nowhere could he find any explanation of it, unless it had to do with
Miskodeed. But that explanation failed as he recalled the words of her
father: "It is an order." Who had given the order? He thought in turn
of the factor, of Sir James Yardely, of Gerald Ainley. The first two
were instantly dismissed, but the thought of Ainley remained fermenting
in his mind. It was an odd coincidence that he should have been
attacked whilst awaiting Ainley's coming, and in view of his one-time
friend's obvious reluctance to an interview and of his own urgent
reasons for desiring it; the suspicion that Ainley was the man who had
issued the order for his forcible deportation grew until it became
almost a conviction.

"I will find out about this--and the other thing," he said aloud. "I
can't go back now, but sooner or later my chance will come. The cur!"

That evening he camped at the foot of a fall, which he had heard of,
but never before seen, and spent the whole of the next day in portaging
his belongings to navigable water, and on the following evening well
beyond the rocky ramparts, where the river ran so swiftly, made his
camp, happily conscious that now the river presented no barrier for two
hundred miles.

As he sat smoking outside his little tent, an absent, thoughtful look
upon his face, his eyes fixed dreamily on the river, his mind reverted
once more to the problem of recent happenings, and as he considered it,
there came to him the picture of Miskodeed as he had seen her running
towards him between the willows just before the blow which had knocked
him unconscious. She had cried to him to put him on his guard, and the
apprehension in her face as he remembered it told him that she knew of
the ill that was to befall him. His mind dwelt on her for a moment as
he visioned her face with its bronze beauty, her dark, wild eyes
flashing with apprehension for him, and as he did so his own eyes
softened a little. He recalled the directness of her speech in their
first conversation and smiled at the naivete of her estimate of
himself. Then the smile died, leaving the absent, thoughtful look more
pronounced, and in the same moment the vision of Miskodeed was
obliterated by the vision of Helen Yardely--the woman of his own race,
fair and softly-strong, and as different as well as could be from the
daughter of the wilds.

Again, as he recalled the steady scrutinizing glance of her grey eyes,
he felt the blood rioting in his heart, and for a moment his eyes were
alight with dreams. Then he laughed in sudden bitterness.

"What a confounded fool I am!" he said. "A discharged convict----"

The utterance was suddenly checked; and an interested look came on his
face. There was something coming down the river. He rose quickly to his
feet in order to get a better view of the object which had suddenly
floated into his line of vision. It was a canoe. It appeared to be
empty, and thinking it was a derelict drifting from some camp up river,
he threw himself down again, for even if he salved it, it could be of
no possible use to him. Lying there he watched it as it drifted nearer
in the current, wondering idly whence it had come. Nearer it came,
swung this way and that by various eddies, and drifting towards the
further side of the river where about forty yards above his camp a mass
of rock broke the smooth surface of the water. He wondered whether the
current would swing it clear; and now watched it with interest since he
had once heard a river-man declare that anything that surrendered
itself completely to a current would clear obstructions. He had not
believed the theory at the time, and now before his eyes it was
disproved; for the derelict swung straight towards the rocks, then
twisted half-way round as it was caught by some swirl, and struck a
sharp piece of rock broadside on.

Then happened a totally unexpected thing. As the canoe struck, a girl
who had been lying at the bottom, raised herself suddenly, and stared
at the water overside, one hand clutching the gunwale. A second later
the canoe drifted against another rock and suddenly tilted, throwing
the girl into the broken water.

By this time, taken by surprise though he was, Stane was on his feet,
and running down the bank. He did not stop to launch his canoe but just
as he was flung himself into the water, and started to swim across the
river, drifting a little with the current, striving to reach a point
where he could intercept the girl as she drifted down. It was no light
task he had set himself, for the current was strong, and carried him
further than he intended to go, but he was in front of the piece of
human flotsam which the river was claiming for its prey, and as it came
nearer he stretched a hand and grasped at it. He caught a handful of
chestnut hair that floated like long weed in the river's tide, and the
next moment turned the girl over on her back. She was unconscious, but
as he glimpsed at her face, his heart leaped, for it was the face of
that fair English girl of whom but a few minutes before he had been
dreaming. For a second he was overcome with amazement, then stark fear
leapt in his heart as he looked at the closed eyes and the white,
unconscious face.

That fear shook him from his momentary inactivity. He looked for
something else to hold by, and finding nothing, twisted the long strand
of hair he had gripped into a rope, and held it with his teeth. Then he
glanced round. The current had carried him further than he had
realized, and now quickened for its rush between the rocky ramparts, so
that there was some danger of their being caught and swept through. As
he realized that, he began to exert all his strength, striking across
the current for the nearest bank, which was the one furthest from his
camp.

The struggle was severe, and the girl's body drifting against him
impeded his movements terribly. It seemed impossible that he could make
the bank, and the ramparts frowned ominously ahead. He was already
wondering what the chances were of making the passage through in
safety, and was half-inclined to surrender to the current and take the
risks ahead, when his eye caught that which spurred him to fresh
efforts.

A hundred yards downstream a huge tree, by some collapse of the bank,
had been flung from the position where it had grown for perhaps a
hundred years, and now lay with its crown and three-quarters of its
trunk in the river. Its roots, heavily laden with earth, still clung to
the bank and fought with the river for its prey. If he could reach that
Stane realized that he might yet avoid the perilous passage between the
bastions of rock. He redoubled his efforts against the quickening
current, and by supreme exertions pulled himself into a position where
the current must carry him and the girl against the tree.

In a moment, as it seemed, they had reached it, and now holding the
girl's hair firmly in one hand, with the other he clutched at one of
the branches. He caught it, and the next moment was unexpectedly ducked
overhead in the icy water. He came up gasping, and then understood. The
tree was what in the voyageur's nomenclature is known as a "sweeper."
Still held by its roots it bobbed up and down with the current, and the
extra strain of his weight and the girl's had sunk it deeper in the
water. It still moved up and down, and he had not finished spluttering
when a new danger asserted itself. The suck of the current under the
tree was tremendous. It seemed to Stane as if a thousand malevolent
hands were conspiring to drag him under; and all the time he was afraid
lest the unconscious girl should be entangled among the submerged
branches.

Lying on his back holding the bough that he had caught, at the same
time steadying himself with a foot against another branch, he swiftly
considered the situation.

It was impossible that he could pull himself on to the trunk from the
upper side. Even had he been unhampered by the unconscious girl that
would have been difficult, the suck of the current under the tree being
so great. He would have to get to the other side somehow. To do that
there were new risks to be taken. He would have to let loose the branch
which he held, drift through the other interlacing branches, and get a
hold on the further side of the trunk.

It was risky, and beyond was the water swirling for its race between
the bastions. But he could do nothing where he was and, setting his
teeth, he let go his hold. In a second, as it seemed, the tree leaped
like a horse and the water swept him and the girl under the trunk.
Scarcely were they under when his free arm shot out and flung itself
round a fresh bough which floated level with the water. Immediately the
bough bobbed under, but he was prepared for that, and after a brief
rest, he set the girl's hair between his teeth once more, and with both
hands free began to work from bough to bough. One that he clutched gave
an ominous crack. It began to sag in a dangerous way, and at the fork
where it joined a larger branch a white slit appeared and began to grow
wider. He watched it growing, his eyes quite steady, his mind alert for
the emergency that it seemed must arrive, but the branch held for the
space of time that he needed it; and it was with heartfelt relief that
he grasped a larger bough, and the next moment touched bottom with his
feet.

At that he shifted his hold on the girl, towing her by a portion of her
dress, and two minutes later, lifted her beyond the water-line on the
high shelving bank. Then, as he looked in her white face and marked the
ashen lips, a panic of fear fell on him. Dropping to his knees he took
her wrist in his hand and felt for her pulse. At first he thought that
she was dead, then very faint and slow he caught the beat of it. The
next moment he had her in his arms and was scrambling up the bank.

At the top he had the good fortune to stumble on a trail that was
evidently used by Indians or other dwellers in the wilderness, probably
by men portaging the length of bad water down the river. It was a rough
enough path, yet it made his task immeasurably easier. But even with
its unexpected aid, the journey was a difficult one, and he staggered
with exhaustion when he laid the girl down upon the rough grass at a
point not quite opposite his own camp.

Gasping he stood looking at her until he had recovered his breath, the
girl unconscious of his gaze; then when he felt equal to the task, he
plunged again into the river and swam to his own camp. A few minutes
later he returned in his canoe, carrying with him a field water-bottle
filled with medical brandy.

The girl lay as he had left her, and his first action was to pour a few
drops of brandy between her parted lips, and that done he waited,
chafing her hands. A minute later the long-lashed eyelids fluttered and
opened, and the grey eyes looked wildly round without seeing him, then
closed again and a long sigh came from her as she lapsed into
unconsciousness anew. At that he wasted no more time. Lifting her, he
carried her down to the canoe, and paddling across the river, bore her
up to his own camp, and laid her down where the heat of the fire would
reach her, then he administered further brandy and once more waited.

Again the eyelids fluttered and opened, and the girl looked round with
wild, uncomprehending gaze, then her eyes grew steady, and a moment
later fixed themselves upon Stane. He waited, saw wonder light them,
then, in a voice that shook, the girl asked: "How did--I--come here?"

"That you know best yourself," answered the young man, cheerfully. "I
fished you out of the river, that is all I know." The girl made as if
to reply; but Stane prevented her.

"No, don't try to talk for a little while. Wait! Take a little more of
this brandy."

He held it towards her in a tin cup, and with his hand supporting her
head, the girl slowly sipped it. By the time she had finished, a little
blood was running in her cheeks and her lips were losing their ashen
colour. She moved and made as though to sit up.

"Better wait a little longer," he said, quietly.

"No," she said, "I feel better."

She lifted herself into a sitting posture, and he thoughtfully rolled a
small sack of beans to support her back, then she looked at him with a
quick questioning gaze.

"I have seen you before, have I not? You are the man who was at Fort
Malsun, aren't you--the man whom Mr. Ainley used to know?"

"Yes," he answered with sudden bitterness, "I am the man whom Ainley
used to know. My name is Hubert Stane, and I am a discharged convict,
as I daresay he told you."

The sudden access of colour in Helen Yardely's face, and the look in
her eyes, told him that he had guessed correctly, but the girl did not
answer the implied question. Instead she looked at the river and
shuddered.

"You--fished me out," she said, her eyes on the rocks across the river.
"Was it there the canoe overturned?"

"Yes," he answered, "you struck the rocks."

"I must have been dozing," she replied. "I remember waking and seeing
water pouring into the canoe, and the next moment I was in the river.
You saw me, I suppose?"

Stane nodded. "I was sitting here and saw the canoe coming down the
river. I thought it was empty until it struck the rocks and you
suddenly sat up."

"And then you came after me?"

"Yes," he answered lightly.

Her grey eyes looked at him carefully, noted his dripping clothes and
dank hair, and then with sudden comprehension asked: "How did you get
me? Did you do it with your canoe or----"

"The canoe wouldn't have been any use," he interrupted brusquely. "It
would have upset if I had tried to get you out of the water into it."

"Then you swam for me?" persisted the girl.

"Had to," he answered carelessly. "Couldn't let you drown before my
eyes--even if I am a convict!"

Helen Yardely flushed a little. "I do not think you need mention that
again. I am very grateful to a brave man."

"Oh, as to that----" he began; but she interrupted him.

"Tell me where you got me? I remember nothing about it."

He looked down the river.

"As near as I can tell you, it was by that clump of firs there; though
I was not able to land for quite a long distance beyond. You were
unconscious, and I carried you along the opposite bank, then swam
across for my canoe and ferried you over. There you have the whole
story." He broke off sharply, then before she could offer comment he
spoke again: "I think it would be as well if you could have a change of
clothes. It is not cold, but to let those you have dry on you might
bring on all sorts of ills. There are some things of mine in the tent.
I will put them handy, and you can slip them on whilst I take a stroll.
You can then dry your own outfit."

He did not wait for any reply, but walked to the little fly-tent, and
three or four minutes later emerged, puffing a pipe. He waved towards
the tent, and turning away began to walk rapidly up river. Helen
Yardely sat where she was for a moment looking after him. There was a
very thoughtful expression on her face.

"The whole story!" she murmured as she rose to her feet. "I wonder?
That man may have been a convict; but he is no braggart."

She walked to the tent, and with amused eyes looked at the articles of
attire obviously arranged for her inspection. A grey flannel shirt, a
leather belt, a pair of Bedford cord breeches, a pair of moccasins,
miles too large for her, and a mackinaw jacket a little the worse for
wear.

She broke into sudden laughter as she considered them, and after a
moment went to the tent-door and shyly looked up the river. The figure
of her rescuer was still receding at a rapid rate. She nodded to
herself, and then dropping the flap of the tent, faced the problem of
the unaccustomed garments.




CHAPTER VI

A MYSTERIOUS SHOT


Twenty minutes later, as Hubert Stane returned along the river bank, he
saw the girl emerge from the tent, and begin to arrange her own sodden
attire where the heat of the fire would dry it. The girl completed her
task just as he arrived at the camp, and stood upright, the rich blood
running in her face. Then a flash of laughter came in her grey eyes.

"Well?" she asked, challenging his gaze.

"You make a very proper man," he answered, laughing.

"And I am as hungry as two!" she retorted. "I have eaten nothing for
many hours. I wonder if----"

"What a fool I am," he broke in brusquely. "I never thought of that. I
will do what I can at once."

Without further delay he began to prepare a meal, heating an already
roasted partridge on a spit, and making coffee, which, with biscuit he
set before her.

"It is not exactly a Savoy supper, but----"

"It will be better," she broke in gaily, "for I was never so hungry in
my life."

"Then eat! There are one or two little things I want to attend to, if
you will excuse me."

"Certainly," she replied laughingly. "It will be less embarrassing if
there is no witness of my gluttony."

Stane once more left the camp, taking with him a hatchet, and presently
returned dragging with him branches of young spruce with which he
formed a bed a little way from the tent, and within the radius of the
heat from the fire. On this he threw a blanket, and his preparation for
the night completed, turned to the girl once more.

"I never enjoyed a meal so much in my life," she declared, as she
lifted the tin plate from her lap. "And this coffee is delicious. Won't
you have some, Mr. Stane?"

"Thank you, Miss a--Miss----"

"Yardely is my name," she said quickly, "Helen Yardely." He took the
coffee as she handed it to him in an enamelled mug, then he said: "How
did you come to be adrift, Miss Yardely?"

As he asked the question a thoughtful look came on the girl's beautiful
face.

"I was making a little trip by myself," she said slowly, "to see a
beaver dam in a creek a little below our encampment, and some one shot
at me!"

"Shot at you!" Stane stared at her in amazement as he gave the
exclamation.

"Yes, twice! The second shot broke my paddle, and as I had no spare
one, and as I cannot swim, I could do nothing but drift with the
current."

"But who can have done such a thing?" cried the young man.

"I have not the slightest idea, unless it was some wandering Indian,
but I am quite sure it was not an accident. I saw the first shot strike
the water close to the canoe. It came from some woods on the left bank,
and I cried out to warn the shooter whom I could not see. It was about
four minutes after when the second shot was fired, and the bullet hit
the shaft of the paddle, so that it broke on my next stroke, and I was
left at the mercy of the river."

"And no more shots were fired?"

"None!"

Stane sat there with a very thoughtful look upon his face; and after a
moment Miss Yardely spoke again.

"What do you think, Mr. Stane?"

He shook his head. "I do not know what to think, Miss Yardely," he said
slowly, "but it looks as if the thing had been done deliberately."

"You mean that some one tried to kill me?"

"No, not that," was the reply. "You would offer too fair a mark for any
one accustomed to handling a rifle to miss. I mean that there was a
deliberate attempt to set you adrift in the canoe. The first shot, you
say, struck the water near you, the second smashed your paddle, and
after that there was no more firing. Why? The only answer is that the
shooter had accomplished his object."

"It certainly has that appearance," answered the girl. "But why should
any one do a thing like that?"

"That is quite beyond me. It was so brutal a thing to do!"

"Some roaming Indian possibly," suggested Miss Yardely thoughtfully.

"But as you asked just now, why? Indians are not so rich in cartridges
that they can afford to waste them on a mere whim."

"No, perhaps not," said the girl. "But I can think of no one else." She
was silent for a moment, then she added, "Whoever did the vile thing
frightened me badly. It is not nice to sit helpless in a canoe drifting
out into such a wilderness as this." She waved her hand round the
landscape as she spoke, and gave a little shudder. "You see I never
knew what was coming next. I passed some islands and hoped that I might
strike one of them, but the current swept me clear, and for hours I sat
staring, watching the banks go by, and wondering how long it would be
before I was missed; and then, I suppose I must have fallen asleep,
because I remember nothing more until just before I was thrown into the
water."

"It was a very fortunate thing you struck those rocks," said Stane
meditatively.

"Fortunate, Mr. Stane? Why?"

"Because in all probability I should not have seen you if you had not;
and a few miles below here, there are some bad rapids, and below them
the river makes a leap downwards of nearly a hundred feet."

"A fall?" cried the girl, her face blanching a little, as she flashed a
glance downstream. "Oh, that would have been terrible! It was fortunate
that you were here."

"Very," he agreed earnestly, "and I am beginning to think that it was
providential; though all day I have been cursing my luck that I should
have been in this neighbourhood at all. I have no business here."

"Then why----" she began, and stopped as if a little afraid that her
question was too frankly curious.

It was so that Stane understood the interrupted utterance. He laughed a
little, and then answered:

"You need not mind asking, Miss Yardely; because the truth is that my
presence in this neighbourhood is due to a mystery that is almost as
insoluble as the one that brought you drifting downstream. On the night
after you arrived at Fort Malsun, I was waiting at my tent door
for--er--a man whom I expected a visit from, when I was knocked on the
head by an Indian, and when I came to, I found I was a prisoner, under
sentence of deportation. We travelled some days, rather a roundabout
journey, as I have since guessed, and one morning I awoke to find my
captors had disappeared, leaving me with my canoe and stores and arms
absolutely untouched."

"That was a strange adventure, Mr. Stane."

"So I think," answered Stane with conviction.

"What do you think was the reason for your deportation?"

"I do not know," answered Stane thoughtfully. "My chief captor said it
was an order, but that may have been a lie; and such wildly possible
reasons that I can think of are so inherently improbable that it is
difficult to entertain any of them. And yet----"

He broke off, and an absent look came in his eyes. The girl waited,
hoping that he would continue, and whilst she did so for one moment
visioned Miskodeed in all her wild barbaric beauty and her mind,
recalling Ainley's words upon the matter of the girl's relation to the
man before her, wondered if there lay the reason. Stane still remained
silent, showing no disposition to complete his thought; and it was the
girl who broke the silence.

"You say you were waiting for a man when you were seized, Mr. Stane;
tell me, was the man Gerald Ainley?"

The young man was a little startled by her question, as his manner
showed; but he answered frankly: "Yes! But how did you guess that?"

Helen Yardely smiled. "Oh, that was quite easy. You were the topic of
conversation at the dinner-table on the very night that you
disappeared; and I gathered that to the factor you were something of a
mystery, whilst no one except Mr. Ainley knew anything whatever about
you. As you and he were old acquaintances, what more natural than that
you should be waiting for him? I suppose he did not come?"

"If he did, I never saw him--and I waited for him two nights!"

"Two!" cried Helen. "Then he could not have wanted to come."

"I rather fancy he did not," replied Stane with a bitter laugh.

"You wished to see him very much?" asked the girl quickly. "It was
important that you should?"

"I wished to question him upon a matter that was important to me."

"Ah!" said the girl in a tone that was full of significance. Stane
looked at her sharply, and then asked a question:

"What are you thinking, Miss Yardely?"

"Oh, I was just thinking that I had guessed one of your wildly possible
reasons, Mr. Stane; and to tell the truth, if Mr. Ainley was really
anxious to avoid answering your questions, it does not seem to me so
inherently improbable as you appear to think."

"What convinces you of that, Miss Yardely?"

"Well," she replied quickly, "you say the Indian told you that it was
an order. I ask myself--whose order? There were very few people at Fort
Malsun to give orders. I think of them in turn. The factor? You were a
stranger to him! My uncle? He never heard of you except in gossip over
the dinner-table the night you were deported. Gerald Ainley? He knew
you! He had made appointments with you that he twice failed to
keep--which, quite evidently, he had no intention of keeping. He
had--may I guess?--some strong reason for avoiding you; and he is a man
of some authority in the Company and moving to still greater. He would
not know the Indians who actually carried you away; but Factor Rodwell
would, and factors are only human, and sooner or later Gerald Ainley
will be able to considerably influence Mr. Rodwell's future.
Therefore--well, Q.E.D.! Do you not agree with me?"

"I find your argument convincing," answered Stane, grimly. Then he
lapsed into thoughtful silence, whilst the girl watched him, wondering
what was in his mind. Presently she knew, for most unexpectedly the
young man gave vent to a short laugh.

"What a fool the man is!" he declared. "He must know that we shall meet
again some time!... But, Miss Yardely, I am keeping you from your rest!
We must start betimes in the morning if I am to take you back to your
uncle."

"If you take me back----?"

"There is no question of that," he answered promptly. "I could not
dream of leaving you here."

"I was about to say you would very likely meet Gerald Ainley. He has
joined my uncle's party."

"So much the better," cried Stane. "I shall certainly go."

There was a flash in his blue eyes, a grim look in his face, and
instinctively Helen Yardely knew that the matter which lay between this
man and Gerald Ainley was something much more serious than forced
deportation. What it was she could not guess, and though after she had
retired to the tent she lay awake thinking of the matter, when she fell
asleep she was as far off as ever from anything that offered a solution
of the question which troubled her. And outside, staring into the fire,
his strong face the index of dark thoughts, Hubert Stane sat through
the short night of the Northland summer, never once feeling the need of
sleep, reviewing from a different angle the same question as that which
had perplexed the mind of the girl in the tent.

At the first hint of dawn, Stane rose from his seat, gathered up the
girl's now dry raiment, and put it in a heap at the tent door, then
procuring a canvas bucket of water he set that beside the clothes and
busied himself with preparing breakfast. After a little time Helen
emerged from the tent. Her eyes were bright, her beautiful face was
radiant with health, and it was clear that she was no worse for her
experience of the day before.

"Good morning, Mr. Stane," she said in gay salutation, "you are the
early bird. I hope you slept well."

"May I reciprocate the hope, Miss Yardely?"

"Never better, thank you. I think hunger and adventure must be
healthful. I slept like the Seven Sleepers rolled into one; I feel as
fresh as the morning, and as hungry as--well, you will see," she ended
with a laugh.

"Then fall to," he said, joining in the laughter. "The sooner the
breakfast is over the sooner we shall start."

"I warn you I am in no hurry," she retorted gaily. "I quite like this.
It is the real thing; whilst my uncle's camps are just civilization
imposing itself on the wilderness."

"But your uncle! You must think of him, Miss Yardely. You have now been
away an afternoon and a night. He will be very anxious."

"Yes!" she said, "that's the pity of it. If it were not for that----"
She broke off suddenly, gave a little laugh, and for no apparent reason
her face flushed rosily. "But you must restore me to the bosom of my
family soon!"

"More's the pity!" said Stane to himself under his breath; his
heart-beats quickening as he looked at her radiant face and laughing
eyes; whilst openly he said: "I will do my best. You will be able to
help me to paddle against the current, and no doubt in a little time we
shall meet a search-party coming to look for you."

"Then my little jaunt will be over! But you must not surrender me until
you have seen my uncle, Mr. Stane."

Stane laughed. "I will hold you against the world until then, Miss
Yardely."

"And perhaps you will see Gerald Ainley, as you wish," she said,
glancing at him to watch the effect of her words.

The laughter died swiftly from his face, and a stern light came into
his eyes. "Yes," he said grimly, "perhaps I shall. Indeed that is my
hope."

Helen Yardely did not pursue the matter further. Again she glimpsed
depths that she did not understand, and as she ate her breakfast, she
glanced from time to time at her companion, wondering what was between
him and Ainley, and wondering in vain.

Breakfast finished, they struck camp, launched the canoe and began to
paddle upstream. The current was strong, and their progress slow, but
after some three hours they arrived at the junction of the two rivers.
Then Stane asked a question.

"Which way did you come, Miss Yardely? Down the main stream or the
other one?"

The girl looked towards the meeting of the waters doubtfully. "I do not
know," she said. "I certainly do not remember coming through that rough
water."

"Your uncle's party had of course travelled some way since I left Fort
Malsun?"

"Oh yes; we had made long journeys each day and we were well on our way
to--wait a moment. I shall remember the name--to--to old Fort Winagog."

"Winagog?" said Stane.

"Yes! That is the name. I remember my uncle mentioning it yesterday."

"Then you came down the main stream for a certainty, for the old fort
stands on a lake that finds an outlet into this river, though it is
rather a long way from here. We will keep straight on. No doubt we
shall strike either your uncle's camp or some search party presently."

As it happened the conclusion he reached was based on a miscalculation.
The only waterway to old Fort Winagog that he knew was from the main
river and up the stream that formed the outlet for the lake. But there
was another that was reached by a short portage through the woods from
the subsidiary stream from which he turned aside, a waterway which fed
the lake, and which cut off at least a hundred and twenty miles.
Knowing nothing of this shorter route he naturally concluded that Helen
Yardely's canoe had come down the main stream, and took the wrong
course in the perfect assurance that it was the right one.

So hugging the left bank they passed the junction of the rivers, and a
little further on crossed to the other side to seek shelter from a
rising wind, under the high bank. And less than an hour later the
canoe, carrying Gerald Ainley and his Indian, swept out of the
tributary stream into the broader current, and they drove downstream,
unconscious that every stroke of the paddle was taking them further
from the girl whom they sought.




CHAPTER VII

STRANDED


It was high noon when Hubert Stane directed the nose of the canoe
towards a landing-place in the lee of a sand-bar, on the upperside of
which was a pile of dry driftwood suitable for firing.

"We will take an hour's rest, Miss Yardely; and possibly whilst we are
waiting your friends may show up."

He lit a fire, prepared a wilderness meal of bacon and beans (the
latter already half-cooked) and biscuit and coffee, and as they
consumed it, he watched the river, a long stretch of which was visible.

"I thought we should have encountered your friends before now, Miss
Yardely," he remarked thoughtfully.

The girl smiled. "Are you anxious to get rid of me?" she asked.
"Believe me, I am enjoying myself amazingly, and if it were not for the
anxiety my uncle and the others will be feeling, I should not trouble
at all. This----" she waved a hand towards the canoe and the river--"is
so different from my uncle's specially conducted tour."

"Oh, I am not at all anxious to be rid of you," laughed Stane, "but I
cannot help wondering whether we have not taken the wrong turn. You
see, if we have, every yard takes us further from your uncle's camp."

"But this is the way to Fort Winagog?" asked the girl.

"It is the only way I know."

"Then we must be going right, for I distinctly heard my uncle say we
were within a day's journey of the place."

"The thing that worries me is that we have met no one looking for you."

"No doubt they will thoroughly search the neighbourhood of the camp and
the beaver-dam before going further afield. Also, you must remember
that it might be dinner-time last night before I was missed."

"Yes," he agreed, "that is very likely. On which bank of the river was
the camp?"

"This bank--the left coming down."

"Then we will hug the shore this afternoon, and no doubt we shall find
it before supper-time."

But in that anticipation he was mistaken. The long day drew to its
close and the camp they sought had not appeared; nor had any
search-party materialized. As they pitched camp for the night, the
doubt which all day had been in Stane's mind became a certainty.

"I am afraid we have made a mistake, Miss Yardely. You must have come
down the other river. It is impossible that we can have missed the
camp; and we must have seen any boat coming down this empty water."

"But we are going towards Fort Winagog?"

"Yes. On the other hand you must remember that a paddle-driven canoe
travels much faster than a merely drifting one; and that we ourselves,
assuming that we are on the right way, all day have been shortening the
distance that a search-party would have to travel. We ought to have met
some time ago. I think we shall have to turn back in the morning."

"Must we?" asked the girl. "Can't we go on to Fort Winagog? I can wait
there till my uncle appears, and I shall not be taking you further out
of your way. I am afraid I am putting you to a good deal of trouble,
and wasting your time."

"Time is not of much account to me," laughed Stane shortly. "And what
you suggest is impossible."

"Why?" demanded Helen.

"Because old Fort Winagog is a fort no longer. It is a mere ruin like
old Fort Selkirk. There may be an Indian or two in the neighbourhood.
There is certainly no one else."

"Then we shall have to go back?" said the girl.

"It seems to be the only way," was the reply. "If we are wrong, as I am
convinced we are, every yard we go takes us further from your people."

"I am sorry to give you all this trouble," said the girl contritely.

"Please--please!" he answered in quick protest. "Believe me it is a
pleasure to serve you, and with me a few days do not matter. I shall
have enough of my own company before long."

"You live alone?" asked Helen.

"I have an old Indian for companion."

"And what do you do, if you will permit me to be so curious?"

"Oh," he laughed. "I hunt, I pursue the elusive nugget, and I
experiment with vegetables. And this winter I am going to start a
trapping line."

"But you are rich!" she cried. "You have no need to live in exile."

"Yes," he answered with sudden bitterness. "I am rich. I suppose Ainley
told you that. But exile is the only thing for me. You see a sojourn in
Dartmoor spoils one for county society."

"Oh," she cried protestingly, "I cannot believe that you--that you----"

"Thank you," he said as the girl broke off in confusion. "I cannot
believe it myself. But twelve good men and true believed it; an expert
in handwriting was most convincing, and if you had heard the judge----"

"But you did not do it, Mr. Stane, I am sure of that."

"No," he answered, "I did not do the thing for which I suffered. But to
prove my innocence is another matter."

"You have not given up the endeavour, I hope."

"No! I have a man at work in England, and I myself make small
endeavours. Only the other day I thought that I----" Apparently he
remembered something, for he broke off sharply. "But why discuss the
affair? It is only one of the world's small injustices which shows that
the law, usually right, may go wrong occasionally."

But Helen Yardely was not so easily to be turned aside. Whilst he had
been speaking a thought had occurred to her, and now took the form of a
question.

"I suppose that the other night when you were waiting for Mr. Ainley,
it was on this particular matter that you wished to see him?"

"What makes you think that?" Stane asked quickly.

Helen Yardely smiled. "It is not difficult to guess. You told me last
night that you wished to question him on a matter that was important to
you. And this matter--Well! it needs no argument."

"It might be something else, Miss Yardely," was the evasive reply.

"Yes, it might be," answered the girl, "but I do not think it is."

Stane made no reply, but sat looking in the fire, and the girl watching
him, drew her own conclusion from his silence, a conclusion that was
far from favourable to Gerald Ainley. She wondered what were the
questions Stane had wished to ask her uncle's secretary; and which, as
she was convinced, he had been at such pains to avoid. Was it possible
that her rescuer believed that his one-time friend had it in his power
to prove his innocence of the crime for which he had suffered? All the
indications seemed to point that way; and as she looked at the grave,
thoughtful face, and the greying hair of the man who had saved her from
death, she resolved that on the morrow, when she reached her uncle's
camp, she would herself question Gerald Ainley upon the matter.

But, as events befell, the opportunity that the morrow was to bring was
not given. For that night, whilst she slept in the little tent, and
Stane, wrapped in a blanket, slumbered on a bed of spruce-boughs,
perhaps half-a-dozen yards away, a man crept cautiously between the
trees in the rear of the encampment, and stood looking at it with
covetous eyes. He was a half-breed of evil countenance, and he carried
an old trade gun, which he held ready for action whilst he surveyed the
silent camp. His dark eyes fell on Stane sleeping in the open, and then
looked towards the tent with a question in them. Evidently he was
wondering how many travellers there were; and found the thought a
deterrent one; for though once he lifted his gun and pointed it to the
sleeping man, he lowered it again, his eyes turning to the tent anew.

After a period of indecision, the intruder left the shadow of the
trees, and crept quietly down to the camp, his gun still at the ready,
and with his eyes fixed on the unconscious Stane. Moving very
cautiously he reached the place where the canoe was beached, and looked
down into it. A gleam of satisfaction came into his dark eyes as he saw
a small sack of beans reposing in the stern, then again a covetous look
came into them as their gaze shifted to the stores about the camp. But
these were very near the sleeping man, and as the latter stirred in his
sleep, the half-breed relinquished any thought of acquiring them.
Stealthily he conveyed the canoe down to the water's edge, launched it,
and then with a grin on his evil face as he gave a last look at the man
in the blanket, he paddled away.

A full three-quarters of an hour later Stane awoke, and kicking aside
the blankets, replenished the fire, and then went a little way upstream
to bathe. At the end of half an hour he returned. His first glance was
towards the tent, the fly of which was still closed, then he looked
round the camp and a puzzled look came on his face. There was something
a little unfamiliar, something not present which----

"Great Scott! The canoe!"

As the words shot from him he hurried forward. Quite distinctly he
remembered carrying it up the bank the night before, and now----.
Inside half a minute he found himself looking at the place where it had
lain. The impression of it was quite clear on the dewy grass, and there
were other impressions also--impressions of moccasined-feet going down
to the edge of the water. For a moment he stared unbelievingly; then as
a thought occurred to him he glanced at the tent again. Had the girl in
his absence taken the canoe and----

The thought died as soon as it was born, and he began to follow the
tracks on the damp grass, backward. They skirted the camp in a small
semi-circle, and led to the forest behind, where on the dry pine
needles they were not quite so easy to follow. But follow them he did,
and in a couple of minutes reached a place where it was evident some
one had stood for a considerable time. This spot was in the shadow of a
great spruce, and standing behind the trunk he looked towards the camp.
The fire and the white tent were plain to be seen. Then he understood
what had happened. Some one had seen the encampment and had waited in
the place where he now stood, probably to reconnoitre, and then had
made off with the canoe. A thought leaped into his mind at that moment,
and brought with it a surge of fear.

"The stores. If----"

At a run he covered the space between him and the camp, and as he
looked round and saw that most of the stores reposed where he had
placed them the previous night, relief surged in his heart.

"Thank heaven!"

"Mr. Stane, what is the matter? You look as if something had startled
you."

He swung round instantly. Helen Yardely was standing at the tent door
with a smile on her face.

"The matter is serious enough," he explained quickly. "Some one has
stolen the canoe in the night."

"Stolen the canoe!" echoed the girl.

"Yes! You can see his tracks in the grass, going up to the place where
he stood and watched us. He must have come down whilst we slept."

"But who can have done such a thing?"

Stane shook his head. "I cannot think. A wandering Indian most
likely.... Hard put to it, I expect. He has taken a sack of beans with
him."

"Then we are stranded?" asked the girl quickly.

"In a way--yes," he agreed. "But we are not in a desperate case. We
have food, I have my rifle, and it will be possible to make a raft and
float down the river until we meet your uncle's people."

The girl looked at the river doubtfully. "What sort of control shall we
have over a raft?"

"Well," he said, "I should make a steering oar."

"And if the current took control, Mr. Stane? Please believe me when I
say I am not afraid--but I cannot help thinking of those falls you
mentioned."

Stane looked thoughtful. For the moment he had forgotten the falls, and
as he remembered the quickening of the current at the meeting of the
rivers he recognized there was reason in the girl's question.

"There are risks, of course," he said. "The alternative to the river is
to tramp through the wood."

"Then I vote for the alternative," replied Helen with a little laugh.
"I've had my full of drifting like a fly caught in an eddy."

Stane looked down the river and from the river to the woods which lined
its banks.

"It will be difficult," he said. "This is virgin forest."

"Pooh," retorted the girl lightly. "You can't make me afraid, Mr.
Stane. Ever since I left Edmonton with my uncle's party I've wanted to
rough it--to know what the wilderness really is. Now's my chance--if
you don't deprive me of it."

In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Stane laughed.

"Oh, I won't deprive you of it, Miss Yardely. We'll start after
breakfast; but I warn you, you don't know what you are in for."

"Job's comforter!" she mocked him laughingly. "I'm going to fill the
kettle. A cup of tea will cheer you up and make you take a rosier view
of things."

She said no more, but taking the kettle, walked down to the river,
humming to herself a gay little chanson.

    "Qui va la! There's someone in the orchard,
      There's a robber in the apple-trees,
    Qui va la! He is creeping through the doorway.
      Ah, allez-vous-en! va-t'-en!"

He watched her go, with a soft light gleaming in his hard blue eyes,
then he turned and began to busy himself with preparations for
breakfast. When the meal was finished, he went through the stores and
his personal possessions.

"We can't take them all," he explained. "I know my limit, and sixty
pounds is as much as I can carry along if I am to travel steadily,
without too many rests. We shall have to cache a goodish bit."

"You are forgetting me, aren't you?" asked the girl, quietly. "I'm
fairly strong, you know."

"But----"

"I think I must insist," she interrupted with a smile. "You are doing
all this for me; and quite apart from that, I shall be glad to know
what the trail is like under real conditions."

Stane argued further, but in vain, and in the end the girl had her way,
and took the trail with a pack of perhaps five and twenty pounds,
partly made up of the clothes she had changed into after her rescue.
Stane knew the woods; he guessed what havoc the trail would make of
skirts and for that reason he included the clothing in her pack,
foreseeing that there would be further need of them.

As they started the girl began to hum:

    "Some talk of Alexander
    And some of Hercules."

Stane laughed over his shoulder.

"I'm afraid a quick step will be out of keeping soon, Miss Yardely."

"Why?" she asked interrupting her song.

"Well--packing on trail is necessarily a slow business; and there's
rough country between these two rivers."

"You are trying to scare me because I'm a tenderfoot," she retorted
with a laugh that was like music in Stane's ears; "but I won't be
scared."

She resumed her song with a gay air of bravado; passing from one chanty
to another in a voice fluty as a blackbird. Stane smiled to himself. He
liked her spirit, and he knew that that would carry her through the
difficulties that lay before them, even when the flesh was inclined to
failure. But presently the springs of song dried up, and when the
silence had lasted a little time he looked round. The girl's face was
flushed, and the sweat was dropping in her eyes.

"Nothing the matter, I hope, Miss Yardely?"

"No, thank you," she answered with a little attempt to laugh; "but one
can't sing, you know, with mosquitoes and other winged beasts popping
into one's mouth."

"They are rather a nuisance," he agreed and plodded on.

Packing one's worldly possessions through the pathless wilderness is a
slow, grinding misery. The lightest pack soon becomes a burden. At the
beginning of a march it may seem a mere nothing, in an hour it is an
oppression; in three a millstone is a feather compared with it; and
before night the inexperienced packer feels that, like Atlas, he bears
the world upon his shoulders. It was therefore little wonder that Helen
Yardely ceased to sing after they had marched but a very little way;
and indeed the trail, apart from the apparently growing weight of the
pack, was not favourable to song. There was no sort of path whatever
after they had left the river bank; nothing but the primeval forest,
with an undergrowth that was so dense that the branches of one bush
were often interwoven with its neighbours. Through this they had to
force their way, head down, hands and clothes suffering badly in the
process. Then would come a patch of Jack-pine, where trees seven to ten
feet high grew in such profusion that it was well-nigh impossible to
find a passage between them; and on the heels of this would follow a
stretch of muskeg, quaking underfoot, and full of boggy traps for the
unwary. In the larger timber also, the deadfalls presented an immense
difficulty. Trees, with their span of life exhausted, year after year,
had dropped where they stood, and dragging others down in their fall,
cumbered the ground in all directions, sometimes presenting tangled
barriers which it was necessary to climb over, a method not
unaccompanied by danger, since in the criss-cross of the branches and
trunks a fall would almost inevitably have meant a broken limb.

The ground they travelled over was uneven, intersected here and there
by gullies, which were only to be skirted by great expense of time and
energy, and the crossing of which was sometimes dangerous, but had
perforce to be accomplished, and by noon, when they reached the bank of
a small stream, the girl was exhausted and her face wore a strained
look. Stane saw it, and halting, took off his pack.

"Time for grub," he said.

Then unstrapping his pack he stretched a blanket on the sloping ground.
The girl watched him with interest.

"Why----" she began, only to be promptly interrupted.

"For you," he explained briefly. "Lie down and relax your limbs. Pull
this other blanket over you, then you won't chill."

"But I want to help," she protested. "I don't like to feel that you are
working and I----"

"You will help best by obeying orders," he said smilingly. "We shall
have to push on after an hour, and if you don't rest you will be too
done up to keep the trail till evening."

"Then I must obey," she said.

He turned to look for wood with which to make a fire, and when he
returned she was lying on the blanket with another drawn over her, and
her eyes smiled at him as he appeared. The next minute they were
closed, and two minutes later she was fast asleep. Stane, as he
realized the fact, smiled a little to himself.

"Of spirit compact," he murmured to himself, and went forward with
preparations for a meal.

It was two hours later when the girl awoke, and the meal was ready--a
quite substantial one.

"Have I slept long?" inquired Helen, moving towards the fire.

"Two hours. But don't worry about that. We have lost no time really,
for I have done a little exploring. There's a stretch of high ground in
front of us, a kind of height of land between the river we have left
and the one we are making for. Once we are well across that we shall
find the going easier. We'll tackle it this afternoon. I've found
something, like a path, an old trapping-line I should think by the way
the trees have been blazed."

When the meal was finished they put out the fire and started anew, and,
by evening, had passed the crest of the high land between the rivers,
and were moving down the wooded slopes on the further side looking for
a camping place. The timber thickened, and they suddenly encountered a
tremendous barrier of deadfall ten or eleven feet high, with the fallen
trunks criss-crossing in all directions. From the further side of it
came the ripple of running water proclaiming a stream and the water
they were seeking.

"It is exasperating," said Stane, with a little laugh. "But we must
climb the beastly thing. If we try to go round it, we shall probably
only encounter others. I'll go first and have a look at the other
side."

He began to climb the obstruction and when he reached the top looked
down at the tangle of trunks below.

"It's pretty bad," he shouted to the watching girl. "You had better
wait until I find a way down."

He began to crawl gingerly along the monarch tree at the crown of the
pile. Its branches were twisted in all directions and dangerous snags
were frequent. Suddenly his foot slipped. He made a wild attempt to
regain his balance but the heavy pack prevented him, and a second later
with a shout he plunged into the tangled pile below, vanishing from the
girl's sight on the further side. With a swift cry of alarm, Helen, who
had been seated on a fallen trunk, leaped to her feet. She called out
to him, her voice shaking with fear:

"Mr. Stane! Mr. Stane!"

There came no answering hail from the other side of the deadfall, and
with dismay manifesting itself in her beautiful face, the girl faced
the barrier and began to climb with reckless, desperate haste.




CHAPTER VIII

A MEETING IN THE FOREST


Gerald Ainley's canoe had almost reached the junction of the rivers, on
the return journey, and he and his companion were battling hard against
the acceleration of the current, when the Indian gave a grunt and
looked round.

"What is it, Joe?" asked Ainley quickly.

"Man with canoe," answered the Indian laconically. "He make a portage."

"Where?"

"Up river," replied the Indian with a jerk of his head. Ainley craned
his neck a little and, as he did so, just caught sight of a man moving
across an open place between the trees a quarter of a mile away, the
canoe over his head and shoulder like a huge cowl.

"We must speak to him, Joe! Perhaps he has news," said Ainley quickly,
and a second later shouted at the top of his voice. "Hal--lo--o--o!"

That the man heard the hail was sure for both of them saw him halt and
turn to look downstream, but the next moment he turned, and, continuing
his journey, was instantly lost in the thick of the trees.

"That was queer," said Ainley. "He heard me, but whoever he is he
doesn't want to speak to us."

"We catch him," replied the Indian. "Make land below the meeting of the
waters, and portage through woods to other river. Meet him there."

As he spoke the native began to make a course across the river, and
Ainley asked for information.

"I don't understand, Joe. If we land below the junction how can we meet
a man who lands above?"

"Both go the same way," grunted the Indian. "Walk to meet the man. We
make short portage, and wait for him across the water. He come and we
meet him."

Ainley still was in a fog, but when they had landed and had started to
follow a well-defined path through the forest, he understood. The
direction they were following would bring them to the bank of the
tributary river, perhaps a mile and a half from the meeting of the
waters; and the path which the stranger was following would bring him
out on the opposite side of the river. If Joe were right the lower
portage was the shorter, and, notwithstanding that the other man had
the start, they could reach the river first and would be able to force
a meeting on him however much he wished to avoid them.

After half an hour's steady trudging through the woods, they came in
sight of the water once more, and set their burdens down behind a
screen of bushes.

"We first," said the Indian after a cautious survey of the empty river.
"Wait! He come."

Seated behind the screening bushes they waited, watching the other side
of the river. Half an hour passed and the man for whom they watched did
not appear. Then the Indian spoke.

"The man know," he said. "He wait till we go."

"But why should he be afraid?" asked Ainley sharply.

"I not know! But he wait."

"Then if the mountain won't come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the
mountain."

"What that?" asked the Indian.

"We will cross the river," said Ainley. "We will go look for him."

"Good!" said the Indian.

Five minutes later they were afloat once more, and in a few minutes had
landed on the further side.

"You stop here with the canoe, Joe," said Ainley picking up his rifle.
"I'll go and hunt up the fellow. If you hear me call, come along at
once."

The Indian nodded and proceeded to fill a pipe, whilst the white man,
following the track made by many feet portaging from one river to the
other, moved into the woods. He made no attempt at concealment, nor did
he move with caution, for he was assured that in the dense wood a man
burdened with a canoe could not turn aside from the path without
disaster overtaking him. If he kept straight on he was bound to meet
the man whom he sought.

That conviction proved to be well-grounded. He had been walking less
than ten minutes when he caught sight of the canoe lying directly in
his way, with the man who had been carrying it, seated on the ground
with his back against a tree, smoking. As the man caught sight of him
he started to his feet and stretched his hand towards a gun reposing
against a trunk. Holding his own rifle ready for action, Ainley shouted
reassuring words to the man, and then moved quickly forward. The man, a
half-breed, the same man who had stolen Stane's canoe, gave one keen
glance at him and then dropping his hand from the gun, awaited his
coming.

"Why did you run away when I shouted a while back?" asked Ainley
sharply.

"I not run," answered the half-breed, insolently. "I carry the canoe,
an' I tink I not wait. Dat is all."

Ainley looked at the man thoughtfully. There was something furtive
about the fellow, and he was sure that the reason given was not the
real one.

"Then why are you waiting here?" he asked with a directness that in no
way nonplussed the other.

"I take what you call a breather," answered the man stolidly. "What
matter to you?"

Ainley looked at him. He was sure the man was lying, but it was no
affair of his, and after a moment he turned to his main purpose.

"I wanted to ask you something," he said. "A white girl has been lost
on the river--she is a niece of a great man in the Company, and I am
looking for her. Have you seen her?"

"What she like?" asked the half-breed with a sudden quickening of
interest.

Ainley described Helen Yardely to the best of his ability, watching the
other's evil face whilst he did so, and before he had ended guessed
that the man knew something of the girl he was seeking.

"You have seen her?" he cried abruptly.

"Oui!" replied the half-breed. "I haf seen her, one, two, tree days
ago. She is in canoe on zee river," he pointed towards the water as he
spoke, and waved his hand towards the south. "She is ver' beautiful;
an' I watch her for zee pleasure, vous comprenez? And anoder man he
watched also. I see him, an' I see him shoot with zee gun--once, twice
he shoot."

"You saw him shoot?" Ainley's face had gone suddenly white, and there
was a tremor in his voice as he asked his q