CHAPTER VII

FLIGHT THROUGH THE WOODS

A very alert and still somewhat frightened young man in the person of Dick Kent hurried across the small creek he had commenced following a few hours before, and struck off through the heavy forest of spruce and poplar, which lay between him and Fort Good Faith.

In spite of the fact that travelling was now more difficult, Dick made remarkably good time. The thought uppermost in his mind was to put as many miles between him and the treacherous Baptiste as possible, to go on with undiminished speed until darkness came to prevent further progress.

Pursuit would be almost certain, Dick reasoned. The two brothers, smarting under their recent thwarted attempt to take Dick prisoner, would be anxious to even the score.

“They’ll be wild,” Dick grinned to himself, “and angry enough to boil me in oil if ever I fall in their hands again.”

He chuckled as he visualized the picture of Baptiste and Phillip, quarreling amongst themselves over the miscarriage of their plans. By the time they had fought out the verbal battle and had got down to the real business of recapturing their slippery guest, Dick hoped he would have several miles to his credit, and would be able to retain the lead.

He had been unwise in accepting the hospitality offered by Baptiste, yet in so doing he had made several important discoveries. One was that the cabin, occupied by the two brothers, afforded a meeting place for the band of criminals, then infesting the country, and a second, that either Henderson himself or other members of the band could be found in the place to which Baptiste had directed him.

Dick pondered over this information as he hurried on. He recalled what Corporal Richardson had told him regarding the operations of a large criminal organization there in the North, and he was quite sure the mounted police would welcome any news of their movements or places of abode. He remembered also what Richardson had said about the connection between the fur thieves and Henderson’s outlaws. The corporal believed that they were one and the same—all under the leadership of Henderson. If this supposition were correct, then the La Lond cabin was just as apt to be a meeting place or rendezvous for the men who had stolen the map of the lost mine, as for the fur thieves themselves.

Sooner or later, reasoned Dick, the scar-faced Indian would show up at one or the other of the two places of which he, Dick, had knowledge. Probably right now the possessor of the map was somewhere in that very neighborhood. Having escaped Malemute Slade, what would be more natural than that he should immediately proceed to Henderson’s camp to report his good fortune.

Dick paused abruptly at the thought, his pulses pounding with excitement. In a high state of tension he strode forward, brushed the snow from a small, broken stump, and sat down to think it all out.

“I’ve a good notion to throw caution to the winds,” he confided to himself, gulping a handful of snow, “and go right back at once. They won’t be expecting me. Anyway, it’ll be dark by the time I return to the La Lond cabin. It will be comparatively safe then. I’ll reconnoitre a bit, find out if Baptiste and Phillip are still there, and, if they’re not, I’ll slip over to Henderson’s. I’ve just got a hunch that the scar-faced Indian has returned.”

Dick had never been placed in a similar position, and found it very difficult to decide. Reason told him that it would be the height of folly to embark upon any such enterprise. But in Dick’s veins was the hot, adventurous blood of youth. Here was a chance in a thousand to win back the ground which had been lost. He would find the scar-faced Indian and endeavor to recover the map.

He had risen to his feet for the express purpose of proceeding to carry out his foolhardy plan, when quite unexpectedly there rang in his ears a former statement of Corporal Richardson:

“You’d make a mighty poor soldier, Dick.... A soldier’s first duty is obedience.”

Was this obedience? He had been warned to keep away from all human habitation, to be careful not to expose himself needlessly—to shun men! And now—— A slow flush of shame mounted to his forehead. Hang it all, what an imbecile he was. So far he had obeyed none of the commands of his superior. He had—or very nearly had—violated them all. At every turn, instead of doing the right thing, he had done the wrong thing. He was not worthy of Corporal Richardson’s or any other man’s trust. Even Sandy, younger than he, nor half as strong physically, would never have been guilty of such willful disobedience.

It was a more sober and earnest young man who faced resolutely about and continued the trek eastward towards Fort Good Faith. The silence of the great forest lay about him. Shadows had lengthened, the sun had slipped down out of sight, the cooler breath of evening stung color in his cheeks and tickled his nostrils with tiny particles of frost.

“I’ll go on for an hour before stopping to make camp for the night,” he decided.

He felt more tired now as he resumed his lonely and monotonous journey. Crossing a narrow valley, thickly studded with clumps of red willow and saskatoon, he commenced scrambling up a sharp incline, until finally he reached a wide plateau. Here, except for an occasional stunted jack-pine, there were no trees. Huge boulders and queer looking rocks, most of them covered thickly with snow, gave a weird appearance to the place.

The wind had full sweep across the plateau. It was bitterly cold here, so cold indeed that even the heavy fur jacket and parka, worn by the mounted police, failed to keep out the insidious penetrating frost. Dick beat his arms against his shivering body and stumbled on across that desolate plain, anxiously scanning the darkening prospect ahead. He hoped that he would come soon to the more friendly forest, where, when a stop became necessary, he could gather wood and kindle a fire. But out there ahead he could see nothing except a long and weary stretch of country covered with snow and bristling with rocks, a land indescribably lonely and terrible just then in the rapidly gathering darkness.

Fully an hour passed before he had traversed the plateau and had come again to the welcome woodland. Breathing a sigh of relief, he started down the slope, faintly outlined in the gloom ahead. It was so steep here that Dick had difficulty in keeping his balance. He slid, stumbled, now and again reaching out for a young sapling to aid him in his somewhat precipitous descent. He had almost reached the bottom when he felt himself being thrown violently forward, falling in a crumpled heap at the foot of a large spruce. A stab of pain in his right ankle, and Dick momentarily lost consciousness.

He realized presently what had happened. The thong of the snowshoe on his right foot had become caught in a snag of brush and had tripped him. His fall had been heavy, but Dick did not become aware of the full extent of his injury until he attempted to rise.

It was useless. His right ankle throbbed with a sickening pain. A bad fracture or torn ligaments—he was not sure which—made it absolutely impossible for him to put any weight at all upon that foot.

A sudden, horrible fear overcame him. In the first moment of weakness, a terror-stricken sob broke from his lips. Here he was absolutely helpless, without wood, water or fire, without shelter of any kind, in weather so bitterly cold that in a few hours time, lying there inactive, he would be frozen as stiff as a block of ice.

Not entirely to Dick’s discredit, he cried like a child, one arm flung out, the other pillowed under him. He lay there, his body shaking with ill-suppressed grief. Face blanched with terror, he sat up finally staring about him with tragic eyes. Everywhere around was deep and utter silence. To all appearances, there was no life anywhere in that dead waste of snow, in that land of bitter, penetrating cold.

And then, suddenly, far away, he heard the familiar wolf-cry. Long and mournful it was, and Dick shivered, remembering a former occasion when he, Sandy and Corporal Richardson and Toma had very nearly given their lives to a hungry pack in the vicinity of the Big Smoky. If there was anything on earth which Dick feared, hated and despised, it was a wolf. Whenever he heard the eerie cry of this species of human hunters in the North, his hair fairly bristled from panic and indignation. In his present predicament, it was the very thing required to put strength and determination in his heart. Groaning in the effort, he rose dizzily to his knees and commenced to scoop away the snow with his hands.

By dint of hard work, he had soon cleared a fairly wide space around him. The exercise had warmed his body and kept his mind from dwelling too much on the seriousness of his plight. From a bush nearby, he gathered an armful of twigs, and from a dead, fallen tree, just beyond the big spruce, sufficient dry bark and moss to start his fire. In an hour’s time, considerably cheered and comforted, he was brewing tea over a roaring blaze.

“Things are not as bad as I thought,” Dick was forced to admit to himself a few minutes later as he gulped down a cup of hot tea and ate sparingly from his supply of emergency rations. “As long as I can crawl around on my hands and knees, I can manage somehow to gather enough wood to keep myself from freezing. By eating very little and drinking plenty of snow water, I can stay here for a week if necessary. After that——”

What would happen after that, Dick did not dare even to conjecture. The thought was too appalling. But surely his ankle would become strong again before a week had elapsed.

“It’s only a bad sprain,” he endeavored to reassure himself. “Perhaps even by tomorrow I’ll be able to hobble around.”

He settled back with a smile on his face and stretched out full length before the blaze. Worn out, mentally and physically, he soon drowsed lightly, only to be awakened by the wolf-cry again, a bloodcurdling howl, which pierced the deep silence in the forest space around him.

“Great Caesar!” sputtered Dick, sitting bolt upright and staring out balefully in the intense darkness. “Troubles never come singly. If I had my hands on the neck of that brute, I’d choke him into silence and insensibility.”

For a brief space he stared, then abruptly his eyes opened wide in astonishment. Out of the velvety blackness, beyond the circle of light made by his campfire, there emerged two fur-coated figures carrying rifles. Slowly, confidently, they came on—in their approach exercising not even the slightest caution.

Dick turned his head indifferently and gazed quietly into the fire. What did he care for the brothers La Lond now? As well die at their hands as to stay here to be eaten by wolves. He did not even look up as the treacherous pair stepped forward within the narrow space he had cleared with his own hands.

“Dick!” shouted a familiar voice.

In wonderment, almost in a stupor, Dick looked up into the smiling, joyful faces of Sandy and Toma.