CHAPTER XXII

A SKIRMISH IN THE NIGHT

Dick waited what seemed to him several hours, though it could not have been more than thirty minutes, before he saw a sign of Toma. Then, in almost the exact position the guard had held, he saw a figure rise up which he was almost certain was Toma, though the firelight revealed that the young guide now wore the clothes and head-dress of the sentinel.

“Good for you, Toma,” Dick whispered. “Now if you can only get in among them without them recognizing that you’re not really a member of their band.”

Toma did not enter the camp from that side, however. Once more he disappeared.

A patch of brush to the left caught Dick’s roving eyes, and this he watched, believing Toma would take this means of getting into the camp without attracting attention, since the bushes led up to a point very near one of the tepees.

Dick was right. A few minutes later the bush tops waved a little at the passage of a creeping body. Presently in the shadow of the tepee nearest the bushes, Toma rose and walked slowly toward one of the campfires, where he joined a group. Dick feared Toma might see the scar faced Indian, and that the guide’s desire for revenge might cause him to destroy all his chances for the rescue of Sandy. But as time passed and all went well, Dick felt that Toma must be making good progress in the dangerous mission he had set out on.

A little later Dick saw a figure, which he took to be Toma, break away from a group of natives and saunter toward one of the tepees. Evidently the guide now was either looking for Sandy, or had learned the captive’s exact position from the conversation of the warriors.

Toma stooped into the opening of the tepee and disappeared. Holding his breath, Dick watched. Toma was gone some time, then in the flickering light he appeared again. Would Sandy follow? Dick’s heart beat painfully.

Then he could not suppress a low cry of exultation as Sandy’s bare head came out next and the two slipped into the deep shadows of another tepee. For minutes they did not move, then they suddenly dashed for the patch of brush that had covered Toma’s entrance into the camp. Dick’s finger tightened on the trigger.

There was a commotion among one of the groups about the campfires. A shout sounded, then a rifle shot. The Indians began to run; they had seen Toma and Sandy!

Dick took quick aim and fired. The crack of his rifle in the silent forest startled the camp. Dick shot again, hurrying to another position as Toma had advised. He could see that Toma and Sandy had reached cover, and that the guide was firing on his pursuers.

The whole camp was in a turmoil now; Indians and whites hurrying hither and thither, shooting at the flashes of Dick’s rifle. He could not hear what they were shouting to each other, but he divined they thought he was quite a number of men, so fast was he firing and from so many positions.

“I’ll hurry along toward Toma and Sandy,” Dick muttered to himself, “they’ll know where I am by the sound of my rifle.”

Twenty yards further on Toma and Sandy reached him.

“Thank God you’re safe at last!” Dick embraced Sandy, while Toma kept up rifle fire on the Indians and whites, who were now charging after them.

With a parting salvo at their pursuers, the three made off into the night toward Fort Dunwoody. All night they hurried on, hungry and tired, yet determined to elude Govereau if they dropped in their tracks.

“Him Govereau with Indians,” Toma revealed to Dick. “No see um Many-Scar Jackson. I hear um talk much. Bear Henderson, him make north country big nation all his own. Give Indians back their land. Humph! Bear Henderson crazy—him thief, outlaw. That Govereau bad fella too; keep um police from come up from south.”

It did not take Sandy long to tell Dick and Toma how he had been captured by two scouts of Govereau’s band, who had lain in hiding, looking for a chance to attack. It had been their approach and the appearance of a herd of caribou going south that had frightened away the wolves. Dick had been right in suspecting that Sandy had walked in his sleep. It was almost funny to hear him tell how he had awakened, struggling in the hands of his captors, dreaming they were wolves devouring him.

At dawn the travelers reached the shores of a large lake, whose snow covered ice stretched for leagues and leagues ahead.

“Him Badge Lake,” Toma told them. “We cross um ice, make journey shorter.”

They stopped long enough to steep coffee and make some flapjacks. Dick and Toma had taken very few provisions with them when they left Gaston Leroi, and they now could see that they would have barely enough for another meal.

Still hungry, they set off across the frozen lake with many a backward glance to see if they were followed. But if they were, they saw no sign of Govereau’s band. The silent forest, fading from view as they forged out farther and farther over the ice, disclosed no running figures on their trail.

“We cross um lake when sun set,” Toma said. “Maybe see moose when other side. We eat then.”

It was a long jaunt across the lake. At noon they could see the other shore, dim and hazy to the south. With hunger gnawing at their vitals they trudged the last miles across the ice, hearing now and again, a low rumbling roar as the lake ice cracked open for hundreds and hundreds of yards. Once they were held up by one of these cracks, wider than the rest, which they could not leap over. They had to follow this until it grew narrower. Sandy slipped when they finally jumped the crack, and fell into the niche. At the bottom the fissure came together, and was partly filled with slivers of ice. Dick and Toma pulled Sandy out on the end of a rifle.

Darkness was just falling when they reached the other shore of the lake. It was with groans of thankfulness that they built a fire and dropped down to rest for the night.

“I’m all in,” Sandy sank upon his back by the fire.

“I couldn’t have gone much further,” Dick admitted.

Even Toma seemed tired. They did not bother to get supper, but rolled into their sleeping bags, and fell into heavy slumber, not even keeping watch.

Dawn found them awake. They finished their provisions for breakfast, and again took to the trail on the last lap to Fort Dunwoody. They had no time to hunt, but kept watch among the trees for a ptarmigan or partridge, or bigger game if they ran across it. But they had bad luck and the entire day passed with no more than two ptarmigan to show for their pains.

The birds made a slender meal for the three hungry young men. Toma chopped out some roots that proved succulent when stewed, and they managed to fill their stomachs with this, though within an hour afterwards they were as hungry as ever.

Twenty miles from Fort Dunwoody, at noon of the third day since the rescue of Sandy, they came abruptly upon a friendly Indian village at the edge of a tiny lake.

“Now we’ll eat!” cried the haggard Sandy.

And eat they did, in preparation for the last lap of their eventful journey, for they felt it would be a hard day on the trail.