CHAPTER X

SANDY PLAYS A LONE HAND

“Wake up! Wake up!”

A light was shining in Dick’s face and he was being shaken roughly by the shoulders. Something had fallen near the bed—a dull clatter of some sort. Then a voice raised slightly, then more voices, and, presently, as Dick half-sat, half-reclined on his spruce couch, endeavoring to rub the sleep from his eyes and collect his befuddled senses, he perceived what seemed to be at first a miracle.

The tepee was full of people. It seemed incredible, but true it was. The narrow confines of the room, in which he had spent the previous thirty-six hours, most of them alone, now fairly bustled with life. To his great amazement, he saw Sandy, Toma, Corporal Richardson, Factor MacClaren and two half-breeds, employed as servants at Fort Good Faith. They were all standing or sitting about, everyone, apparently, talking at once.

Dick made another quick dab at his eyes to make sure that his vision had not suddenly played him false. Was he suffering from some sort of a delusion? Was he seeing and hearing things? What did it all mean?

“That boy could sleep through an earthquake,” Sandy’s uncle declared, detaching himself from the little group and walking over beside Dick. “My boy,” he inquired, placing a solicitous hand on Dick’s head, “how are you feeling? Sandy tells me that you have been quite seriously hurt.”

For the third time, Dick rubbed at his eyes.

“What has happened?” he cried in a hollow, unnatural voice.

A general laugh followed this plaintive inquiry.

“It means,” Corporal Richardson enlightened him, “that everything is all right, Dick. We’ve come to take you back to the post.”

“But how——” began Dick.

“Sandy brought the news to us last night.”

Dick turned reproachful eyes in the direction of his chum.

“I like your nerve,” he said coldly, “and that’s no joke either. You said you’d come back before dark, and all the time you were scheming and planning to sneak back to the post. I suppose it didn’t matter to you how much Toma and I worried.”

“No such thing,” Sandy retorted hotly. “I wouldn’t have gone back to the post at all if I hadn’t come across Malemute Slade. I thought he was dying.”

“Malemute Slade!” Dick stared incredulously.

“I think,” Factor MacClaren broke in, “that you’d better let me straighten out this tangle.”

“No, Uncle Walter,” Sandy protested, “I can do that better myself.” He walked over and sat down on the bed beside Dick.

“When I left here,” he commenced, “you know what my intention was: to follow the tracks of the man who had been hurt and, if possible, to find him. Well, I had no difficulty in getting back to the place where Toma and I had been. The trail wasn’t very hard to follow. There were blood-stains in the snow, and here and there, I could tell where the man had sat down to rest.

“I had been out on the trail—well, it couldn’t have been much more than an hour—when the tracks led me to an old dilapidated-looking cabin. Right away, I had a feeling that the man would be there, and I had a horrible suspicion that I would find him dead.

“I knocked at the door,” Sandy continued breathlessly, “but there was no answer. So I went in. I couldn’t see anything at first, it was so dark inside. There was only one small window. But pretty soon my eyes became accustomed to the light. There was a bunk, stove and two wooden benches in the room. A man was lying in the bunk with some blankets pulled around him.

“The wounded man had started a fire, but it had gone out and it was quite cold in the room. At first, I just stood there looking around, almost too frightened to move. When I walked over to the bunk, I was trembling all over. I had scarcely strength enough to pull down the blankets, which were tucked around the man’s head.”

Sandy paused and looked around him. His face was gray and drawn. Evidently, the memory was not a very pleasant one.

“The man,” he resumed in a low voice, “was Malemute Slade.”

Dick jumped.

“Sandy!” he cried in a stricken voice. “Don’t tell me he’s dead!”

“Of course not,” smiled the speaker. “We wouldn’t all be so blamed cheerful if he was. But when I found him, he was delirious, and I don’t mind telling you that I was nearly frightened stiff.

“I was so excited, that I don’t know exactly what I did. I remember starting the fire and trying to bathe his wound in some warm snow-water. He was wounded in his right arm, which was badly swollen and almost black from infection.”

“Did Malemute Slade recognize you?” Dick asked.

“No, he was too sick for that. But he kept asking for water, sometimes sitting up and staring wildly about him. I gave him all the water he would drink, and late in the afternoon his fever subsided and he fell in a deep sleep.

“You can bet,” Sandy went on, “that I had been doing a lot of thinking. I couldn’t let him stay there like that. I was afraid he was going to die. I decided that the best thing I could do was to go back to the fort for help before it was too late.

“Shortly before dark, I banked my fire and started out. I knew I couldn’t be very far from the Run River trail, probably not more than two miles west of it. I found the trail, after a good deal of trouble, and reached Fort Good Faith soon after midnight.”

“Where is Malemute Slade now?” Dick wanted to know.

“He ought to be at the post by this time,” Corporal Richardson replied. “As soon as Sandy appeared and told us the news, I called for a little party of volunteers and we started out. The cabin, where Malemute Slade lay wounded, is between here and the Run River trail, so, of course, we stopped there first, bundled him up and sent him back in a hurry. Then we came on here for you, Dick. There is a dog team and sleigh waiting for you outside.”

“I wonder how Slade happened to get wounded?” came Dick’s next question.

“I don’t know,” the corporal replied. “We won’t be able to find that out until Slade is sufficiently recovered to tell us. However, I know this: It’s a bullet wound, and the weapon his assailant used was fired at close range. The hole in his arm is a large one. I’m afraid the bone is shattered.”

“Will he get well again?” Dick asked.

“Yes; I think so. With proper care and attention, he’ll be around again in a few weeks, although I doubt very much whether he’ll be able to use his right arm for a long, long time.”

“I’d like to get my hands on the man who shot him,” Sandy stated belligerently.

Everybody laughed at this assertion except Toma, who had good cause to remember a certain experience only a few months before, when he had been somewhat roughly treated by the young Scotchman.

“Well, there’s no use of wasting any more time here,” said Factor MacClaren. “I suggest that we roll our friend, Dick, up in a nice little bundle and proceed on our way. Averse to a sleigh-ride, Dick?”

“Not at all.”

“You may change your mind before we reach the Run River trail,” the factor warned him. “It’s pretty rough in places.”

“My foot’s better, and I won’t mind it at all,” said Dick cheerfully.

The sun had just slipped up over the horizon when the small cavalcade, with Corporal Richardson in the lead, set out. In a short while, a brilliant flood of sunshine lay over the land. Out of the west came a warm chinook, stirring the spruce and pine branches over their heads.

“Spring is coming,” rejoiced Sandy, sniffing the air and prancing about Dick’s sleigh like a young colt. “Won’t it be glorious, Dick, when the grass and flowers start to grow?”

“And the rivers and streams commence running again,” Dick added. “We’ll go fishing then, won’t we, Sandy?”

“You bet!”

Sandy appeared to be so happy, indeed, that it occurred to Dick presently, watching him gamboling about, that there must be some other explanation for his friend’s high spirits than the mere fact that Spring was approaching.

“What’s up, Sandy?” he inquired a moment later as the young man came cavorting back to the sleigh. “Anyone would think that you’d just been elected King of Scotland.”

“Nothing like that, Dick, on my word. I’m just feeling fine.”

“Sandy, you’re lying to me.”

“Not I.”

“You might as well tell me,” persisted Dick, “because I’ll be sure to find out anyway. I can tell by the way you act and by the expression on your face that something out of the ordinary has happened. Out with it!”

Sandy hesitated, then moved closer to his friend.

“It’s not exactly a secret, but we thought we wouldn’t tell you until we got back to the post. However, now that you’ve become so suspicious, I don’t see any harm in it. Are you prepared for a shock?”

“Certainly. Go right ahead.”

Sandy looked about him to make sure that they were not overheard, then leaned forward, as he walked beside the sleigh, and fairly hissed the words in Dick’s ear:

“We’ve got back the map of the lost mine!”

“No!” shouted Dick.

“It’s a fact. Corporal Richardson found it this morning on the body of Malemute Slade.”

For a brief second, Dick stared incredulously, wonderingly at his friend, then removed his parka and threw it high in the air.