Part 12

Sir Bryson violently shook his head. Jack saw that the fate of Garrod had little weight with him. "We are quite defenceless!" he cried. "And with the women to look after! It is my duty to start back!"

Jack's lip curled.

Sir Bryson's voice scaled up shrilly. "How will we ever get back?" he cried.

"That's easy," said Jack. "Twelve miles walk over the portage to Fort Geikie, then by raft down the river. We'll make it in two days."

"Can we start this morning?"

Jack flushed. "No!" he cried. "Abandon our outfit! That would be disgraceful. It would be the joke of the country. I won't be a party to it! We'll cache the stuff to-day, and you can start to-morrow."

"Very well," said Sir Bryson nervously. "In the meantime we must keep a sharp lookout!"

Before Jack left him he made another appeal to be allowed to go after Garrod. He might as well have saved his breath. Sir Bryson and those with him, except perhaps Mrs. Worsley, were in the grip of panic. It was futile to try to reassure those whose notions of Indians had been gathered from the Wild West fiction of a preceding generation.

Jack came out of the tent sore all the way through. Taking them down to the Fort would cost him five precious days. True, he could get horses there, and perhaps assistance if he needed it, but the waste of five days was maddening.

Jack thought for a moment of defying Sir Bryson, and going anyway. But he put it from him. Any white man who abandoned a party that he had bound himself to guide, no matter what the circumstances might be, would be disgraced forever in the North. It is a situation which simply does not admit of argument. This sense of guide-responsibility is strong among white men, because the natives are without it. They are prone to shuffle off disagreeable burdens on the slightest provocation.

Jack set to work with a sullen will. He took out his soreness in hard work and in making the Indian lads work. Hard and long-continued exertion was a disagreeable novelty to them; before many hours had passed they were sullen too.

An axe party was immediately dispatched into the bush, and by noon enough stout poplar logs were cut and trimmed and drawn into camp to make a small shack. By supper-time the walls were raised, and the roof of poles laid and covered with thick sods. The remaining hours of daylight were occupied in storing everything they possessed inside. It was ten o'clock before they knocked off work. Meanwhile Sir Bryson, to Jack's scornful amusement, had insisted on posting Vassall and Ferrie as outposts against a surprise.

Next morning the governor was plunged into a fresh panic by the loss of the four Indian lads. No one saw them go. They melted out of camp, one by one, and were seen no more. Jack was not greatly surprised; he had seen premonitory symptoms the day before. It was additional evidence to him that the other Indians were still in the neighbourhood, and he was more than ever chagrined to be obliged to retreat without even an attempt to recover Garrod.

Jack kept out of Sir Bryson's way. In spite of themselves, however, the white men leaned on Jack more and more. Their imaginary redskin peril strengthened the race feeling, and Jack's energy and resourcefulness were indispensable to them. They came to him sheepishly for aid, but they came.

"What do you make of this desertion?" Vassall asked anxiously.

"Nothing serious," said Jack. "I don't think Jean Paul has a hand in it, because it's his game to get us out as quickly as he can. They probably vamoosed of their own accord. When we lost the horses, they saw the end of their good times. They've been fed too high. It makes 'em beany, like horses."

"But what'll we do without them?" Vassall asked.

Jack guessed that the question came from Sir Bryson.

"Tell the old gentleman to keep his shirt on," he said. "They're no great loss. It means that we'll all have to carry a little more across the portage, that's all."

After breakfast the tents were taken down and stored with the last of the camp impedimenta in the cache. When everything had been put inside, the door was fastened with a hasp and staple removed from one of the boxes, and Jack pocketed the key. The loads were then apportioned and packed, a long job when six of the eight were totally inexperienced. Sir Bryson was still looking over his shoulder apprehensively. At eleven o'clock they finally set out.

It was a quaintly assorted little procession that wound in single file along the firmly beaten brown trail through the willow scrub and among the white-stemmed poplars. There was a lieutenant-governor carrying a pack, and striving ineffectually to maintain his dignity under it; and there was his daughter likewise with a blanket strapped on her shoulders, and an olive-wood jewel-case in her hand, with a gold clasp. Jack smiled a little grimly at the idea of a jewel-case being toted through the bush.

Everybody carried a pack conformable to his strength. Since the two women and Sir Bryson could take so little, the others were fairly well laden. Jean Paul at the head, and Jack bringing up the rear, toted the lion's share. Besides blankets, the outfit consisted of food sufficient for five days, cooking and eating utensils, guns, ammunition, and axes. Jack had a coil of light rope to aid in building his raft.

Jack put Vassall next behind Jean Paul, with a word in his ear to watch the half-breed. Jack felt, somehow, that no serious harm was likely to befall Garrod so long as he had Jean Paul safely under his eye. After Vassall the others strung along the trail, with Humpy Jull, the oddest figure of all, marching in front of Jack, looking like an animated tinware shop with his pots and pans hanging all over him.

They started in good enough spirits, for the sun was shining, and the packs felt of no weight at all. But on the little hills their legs inexplicably caved in; their breath failed them, and the burdens suddenly increased enormously in weight. It was a long time since hard labour had caused Sir Bryson to perspire, and the novel sensation afforded him both discomfort and indignation. Two miles an hour was the best they could do, counting in frequent pauses for rest. The twelve miles stretched out into an all-day affair.

Once, toward the end of the afternoon, they came to the bank of a small stream, and throwing off their burdens, cast themselves down in the grass beside it, all alike and equal in their weariness. Sir Bryson was no longer a knight and a governor, but only the smallest man of the party, rather pathetic in his fatigue. They were too tired to talk; only Jack moved about restlessly. The slowness of the pace had tired him more than the seventy-five pounds he carried.

As Jack passed near Kate and Linda the latter said petulantly: "I'm tired, Jack. I want to talk to you."

Jack's heart sank, but nothing of it showed in his face. The little thing's look of appeal always reproached him. To a man of his type there is something shameful and wrong in not being able to give a woman more than she looks for. "Lord! it's not her fault," he would tell himself; and "As long as I'm going through with it, I must make a good job of it!" So he plumped down beside her.

"Go as far as you like," he said with a kind of hang-dog facetiousness. "Everybody can see, and Mrs. Worsley is standing guard."

"But I'm tired," she repeated. "I want to put my head on your shoulder." She looked at the spot she had chosen.

Jack became restive. "Easy there," he said uncomfortably. "You're forgetting the compact!"

Linda's eyes slowly filled with tears. "Hang the compact," she said. "I'm tired."

"I'll carry your blanket the rest of the way," Jack said gruffly.

"I won't let you," she said. "You've got a perfectly enormous load already."

"Pshaw! that featherweight won't make any difference," he said, and tied it to his pack.

"My feet hurt me," wailed Linda.

Jack frowned at the elegant little affairs Linda called her "sensible" shoes. "No wonder," he said. "Trying to hit the trail on stilts. Put out your foot."

His axe lay near. Firmly grasping her ankle, with a single stroke he guillotined the greater part of the elevating heel. Linda and Kate both screamed a little at the suddenness of the action, and Linda looked down horrified, as if she expected to see the blood gush forth. Jack laughed, and performed a like operation on the other foot. For the next hundred yards she swore she could not walk at all, but the benefit of the amputation gradually became apparent.

Never was such a long twelve miles. Finally, when most of them had given up hope of ever making an end to this journey, they debouched on the grassy esplanade surrounding the shacks of Fort Geikie. Humpy Jull set about getting dinner, while Jack and Jean Paul cut poplar saplings and constructed a leafy shelter for Linda and Kate. The business of camp had to be carried on; no one seeing these people travelling, and eating together, and sleeping around the same fire, could have guessed how their hearts were divided.

They were ready for sleep immediately after eating. Linda and Kate disappeared, and the men rolled up in their blankets, Sir Bryson grumbling. He felt that another little shelter should have been made for him. He found it very trying to be obliged to snore in public among his servants.

Sir Bryson insisted that a watch be maintained throughout the night, and Jack, who would have laughed at any other time, fell in with the idea, because he had a notion that Jean Paul might try to slip away. Jack arranged therefore that the half-breed keep the first watch, and, at no little pain and difficulty, he remained awake himself to watch Jean Paul. At eleven Jean Paul wakened Humpy Jull; at one, Vassall took Humpy's place.

Jack had left instructions that he was to be roused at three. It was already broad day at this hour. Upon Vassall's touch he staggered to his feet under the burden of sleep and walked blindly up and down until he had shaken it off. He went to the edge of the bank to take a prospect, Vassall at his elbow. A better understanding was coming about between these two. Vassall made no pretence that he had forgiven Jack for burglarizing Linda's affections, as he thought, but granting that, he, Vassall, was doing all he could do to bear his share of their common burden.

A lovely panorama of river, islands, and hills lay before them in the cool, pure, morning light.

"I'm going to cross to the island," Jack said, pointing. "In the drift-pile on the bar there, there's dry wood enough for a dozen rafts."

"How will you get over there?" asked Vassall.

"Swim," said Jack.

"I'll go along, too."

Jack stared at the slender, pale young city man. "You!" he said with a not very flattering intonation.

"Hang it, I'm not going to let you do everything," Vassall said, frowning. "I can swim. It's one of the few things I can do that is useful up here."

"It's not so much of a swim," said Jack. "The current carries us. I'll tow the axe on a stick or two. But the water's like ice."

"I can stand if it you can," Vassall said doggedly.

Jack looked at him with a gleam of approval. "Come on and feed then," he said off-hand.

They wakened Baldwin Ferrie to stand the last watch, and sat down to the cold victuals Humpy had left for them. In front of them the other men still slept, an odd sight, the three of them rolled up like corpses in a row in the morning light: lieutenant-governor, half-breed, and cook, as much alike as three trussed chickens.

While Jack ate, he issued his instructions to Ferrie: "Wake Humpy at five, and tell him to get a move on with breakfast. As soon as Vassall and I knock the raft together, we'll cross back to this side, but the current will carry us down about a third of a mile. When the rest of you have finished eating, pack up and come down to the shore. You'll have to walk along the stones to the first big point on this side. Bald Point, they call it, because of the trees being burned off. Lose no time, because we must be started by eight, if we mean to make Fort Cheever by dark."

Jack and Vassall, clad only in shirt, trousers, and moccasins, scrambled down the steep bank to the water's edge. Vassall looked at the swirling green flood with a shiver.

"Tie your moccasins around your neck," Jack said. "Leave your other things on. They'll soon dry as we work around. Head straight out into midstream, and you'll find the current will ground you on the point of the bar below."

The water gripped them with icy fingers that squeezed all the breath out of their lungs. Vassall set his teeth hard, and struck out after Jack. They were both livid and numb when they finally landed, and Jack forced Vassall to run up and down the bar with him, until the blood began to stir in their veins again. Then they attacked the tangled pile of drift logs.

Eight bleached trunks as heavy as they could pry loose and roll down to the water's edge provided the displacement of the raft. Jack chopped them to an equal length, and laced them together with his rope. On these they laid several cross-pieces, and on the cross-pieces, in turn, a floor of light poles, the whole stoutly lashed together. The outfit was completed by two roughly hewn sweeps and a pair of clumsy trestles in which to swing them. They were greatly handicapped by the lack of an auger and of hammer and nails, and the result of their labour was more able than shipshape. Four strenuous hours went to the making of it.

"She'll hold," said Jack at last, "if we don't hit anything."

They pushed off, and each wielding a sweep, pulled her back toward the shore they had started from. They both watched her narrowly, not a little proud of their handiwork. At least she floated high and dry, and answered, though sluggishly, to the sweeps. Their common feeling made Jack and Vassall quite friendly for the moment.

The little group was already waiting for them on the stones, with the slender baggage. Apprehension is quicker than the physical senses. Before he could see what was the matter, Jack sensed that something had happened, and a sharp anxiety attacked him. As he and Vassall drew near the shore he scanned the waiting group closely; he counted them, and then it became clear! There were only five waiting instead of six!

"Where's Jean Paul?" he cried out.

The people on the shore looked at each other uncomfortably. There was no answer until the raft grounded on the stones. Then Sir Bryson drew himself up and puffed out his cheeks.

"He asked my permission to remain to search for poor Garrod," he said in his most hoity-toity manner. "And I thought best to accede to his request."

Jack's jaw dropped. For an instant he could not believe his ears. Then he slowly turned white and hard. So this was what he got for spending his strength in their service! This was what he had to deal with: folly and self-sufficiency that passed belief! He was angrier than he had ever been in his life before. He was much too angry to speak. He stepped ashore, and walked away from them, struggling with himself.

Sir Bryson strutted and puffed and blew for the benefit of all observers. His secret dismay was none the less apparent. None looked at him. They were gazing fearfully at Jack's ominous back.

He came back with a set, white face. "Sir Bryson," he said in a voice vibrating with quiet, harsh scorn, "I say nothing about myself. Apart from that I've shown you clearly, and these people are witnesses to it, that this half-breed means Garrod no good. So be it. If he does for him now, it will be on your head."

In spite of his bluster, Sir Bryson began to look like a frightened small boy.

Linda was weeping with anger and fright. "I told him," she said, "but he wouldn't listen to me."

Kate, fearful of another outburst, laid a restraining hand on her.

"Here's your raft," Jack went on harshly. "All you have to do is to sit on it and keep it in the middle of the river and you'll be at Fort Cheever before dark. After letting the breed go, the least you can do is to let me stay and watch him."

They all cried out against this, even Kate and Vassall, whom Jack thought he could count on a little. They all spoke at once in confused tones of remonstrance and alarm. "What would we do without you? We don't know the river. We can't handle a raft," and so on.

Above all the others Sir Bryson's voice was heard trembling with alarm and anger: "Would you desert us here?"

The word brought the blood surging back into Jack's face. "Desert nothing," he said. "I asked your permission. I do not desert. Get aboard everybody, and hand on the bundles!"

They scrambled at his tone, a good deal like sheep. Jack launched the raft with a great heave of his back, running out into the water, thigh deep. Clambering on board, he picked up a sweep, and brought her around in the current. Sir Bryson and the others stole disconcerted sides glances at his hard and bitter face. There is something very intimidating in the spectacle of a righteous anger pent in a strong breast. The spectator is inclined to duck his head, and wonder where the bolt will fall.

XIV

BEAR'S FLESH AND BERRIES

Jack propelled the raft into the middle of the current, and, taking the sweep aboard, sat down on the end of it with his back to the others, and nursed his anger. They sat or lay on the poles in various uneasy positions. Sir Bryson, who, until the the day before, had probably not been obliged to sit in man's originally intended sitting position for upward of thirty years, felt the indignity keenly.

Every one's nerves were more or less stretched out of tune. Linda, watching Jack's uncompromising back with apprehensive eyes, was exasperated past bearing by her father's fretful complaints.

"What do you want?" she burst out. "A padded chair? Don't be ridiculous, father!"

Sir Bryson swelled and snorted. "That is no way to speak to your father, Belinda. Because you see me robbed of my outward and visible dignity is no reason for your forgetting the respect you owe me. I am surprised at you."

Linda's muttered reply was forcible and inelegant. None of the others paid any attention. Sir Bryson, feeling perhaps that a magisterial air accorded ill with his tousled hair and his cross-legged position, made a bid for sympathy instead.

"My feet are going to sleep," he said plaintively.

Jack, overhearing, was reminded again of the resemblance between father and daughter. "You don't have to sit still," he said, speaking over his shoulder. "You can move about as long as you don't all get on the same side at the same time."

Sir Bryson, who would not have been robbed of his grievance for any consideration, continued to sit and suffer dramatically.

Vassall's head was heavy. Stretching himself out, and watching Linda wistfully, he finally fell asleep. Humpy Jull, up at the bow--if a raft may be said to have a bow--constructed a fishing line out of a bent pin and a moccasin lace, and baiting it with a morsel of bacon, fished for hours with the trusting confidence of a child. Discouraged at last, he fell asleep beside Vassall.

Thus the morning passed. Left to its own devices, the raft swung around and back in the eddying current, and a superb panorama was ceaselessly and slowly unrolled for any who cared to see. The river moved down through its vast trough in the prairie, and an ever-changing vista of high hills, or seeming hills, hemmed them in. On the southerly side the hills were timbered for the most part. On the northerly side, where the sun beat all day, the steep slopes were bare, and the rich grass made vivid velvety effects darkened in the hollows and touched with gold on the knolls. The whole made a green symphony, comprising every note in the scale of green from the sombre spruce boughs up through the milky emerald of the river water to the high verdancy of the sunny grass and the delicate poplar foliage.

Of them all only Kate Worsley watched it as if the sight was enough to repay one for the discomfort of sitting on poles. Her quiet eyes were lifted to the hills with the look of one storing away something to remember.

Now and then a momentary excitement was created by the sight of a bear grubbing about the roots of the poplar saplings, homely, comical beasts with their clumsy ways and their expression of pretended cuteness. Something still wild in the breasts of domesticated creatures like ourselves never fails to answer to the sight of a real wild thing at home in his own place. Since they had no time to go ashore in case of a hit, no shots were fired.

Once in the middle of the day they landed long enough for Jack to build a hearth of flat stones on Humpy's end of the raft, and cover it with clay. Then, gathering a little store of wood, they pushed off again, and Humpy built his fire, and boiled his kettle while they floated down.

After lunch Jack's anger was no longer sufficient to keep his neck stiff. He had been up since three that morning, and in spite of himself he began to nod. Vassall volunteered to keep watch while he slept.

"There's nothing to do as long as she keeps the middle of the stream," Jack said. "If she drifts to one side or the other wake me."

He stretched himself out, and in spite of the cobbly nature of his bed, immediately fell asleep. Linda watched him with the tears threatening to spring. He had not spoken to her since they started, and indeed had scarcely seemed to be aware of her. She glanced at the others with rebellious brows. If it were not for them, she thought, the tawny head might be pillowed in her lap.

Another hour dragged out its slow length. Kate Worsley out of pity for Sir Bryson's increasing peevishness proposed a game of bridge. It was hailed with alacrity. A sweater was spread for a cloth; Sir Bryson, Kate, Baldwin Ferrie, and Vassall squatted around it, and the cards were dealt.

"Fancy!" exclaimed Vassall, looking around. "Rather different from a game in the library at Government House, eh?"

"And different looking players," suggested Kate with a smile.

"I feel it very keenly, Mrs. Worsley," said Sir Bryson tearfully. "I have always attached great importance to the little details of one's personal appearance. Perhaps it is a weakness. But that is the way I am."

"We're all in the same boat--I mean raft," said Mrs. Worsley cheerfully. "Look at me!"

"I will make it no trumps," said Baldwin Ferrie.

Linda, seeing the others fully occupied, moved nearer to Jack, and lay down where, making believe to be asleep herself, she could watch his face, calm and glowing in sleep, the lashes lying on his cheeks, the thin nostrils, the firm, red line of his lips. If he had only slept with his mouth open, or had snored, it might have broken the spell that held her, and a deal of trouble been saved. Unfortunately he slept beautifully; and if that was not enough, once he smiled vaguely like a sleeping baby, and changed his position a little with a sigh of content. The sight of her strong man in his helplessness affected the girl powerfully; when he moved, her heart set up a great beating, and the alarmed blood tingled to her finger-tips.

During this time but an indifferent watch was kept. Humpy Jull had fallen asleep again. There seemed little need to watch on such a voyage. True, they had passed little reefs and stretches of broken water where the swift current met obstructions inshore, but there had been no disturbance that extended out into midstream. The raft was carried down squarely in the middle of the channel.