CHAPTER XIV.

_GRUESOME DISCOVERIES._

It will be remembered that Kasba was left fleeing in panic terror to her father’s hut; while the boy David, who had been wholly instrumental in effecting her escape, lay on the snow, beaten senseless by an infuriated ruffian’s cowardly blows.

Now Kasba was not composed of the stuff that heroines are made of, and when she found herself free, her natural impulse was to place as great a distance between herself and the scene of danger as she conveniently might. This she contrived to do with the best possible speed, but once safe in her father’s hut and the door secured, her thoughts returned with a shock to David.

Where was he? Like a flash the remembrance of the dark object she had left battling with the enraged man occurred to her. It was, it must have been, David. He had sacrificed himself to Broom’s fury that she might escape. Once thoroughly convinced of this, all fears for herself vanished, terror for the boy’s safety crowded everything else from her mind. Emboldened by her love for him, she hastily unfastened the door and, stepping fearlessly forth, flew back over the narrow track. Realizing that every moment was precious, she returned with incredible speed to the spot she had quitted in such haste. Heavens! What was that? The man she loathed and dreaded was gone, but on the snow lay David.

Regardless that the brutal ruffian might still be lurking in the close neighborhood, the girl, uttering a low cry, rushed to the senseless boy.

With tender solicitude she bent over him and raised his head upon her arm. His face was swollen, bruised, and stained with blood. His eyes were closed.

“Oh, David, David!” she sobbed piteously, “you have suffered for my sake.”

But her first agony of feelings over, she was relieved to find that the boy was breathing regularly. Still the knowledge that he had received this cruel treatment in order to save her from insult brought a fresh flood of tears to her eyes.

Tenderly she bent over him, while from her heart a low, piteous appeal went up to heaven.

At length the boy’s eyes unclosed, he gazed around in a dazed, bewildered fashion, then:

“What has happened? Where am I?” he asked wearily, and then: “Ah! I remember, the Ball-eye (white man),” he added with a quick start of apprehension.

“But he has gone now, dear,” said Kasba. “He is a bad, wicked man and will be abundantly punished when Bekothrie returns. Come, dear, you must not stay here any longer. You will freeze. Let me help you up.”

David staggered to his feet. Broom’s dastardly blows had been directed at his upturned face, so although giddy and faint he was still able to walk. The pair had not gone far before they heard a voice hailing them from the rear. Turning, they discovered Sahanderry striding toward them in vague alarm. When told of Broom’s offences he was impatient to find and chastise him, but controlled his impetuosity till he had seen Kasba and the boy in safety.

Walking slowly with the assistance of Sahanderry and Kasba, for he would not hear of being carried, David was brought to the hut. Then, leaving Kasba to attend to the wounded boy, Sahanderry rushed in blind, impetuous haste to the Fort, his whole frame trembling with passion—and with what result we already know.

With infinite tenderness the girl washed and dressed David’s bruised face. Then she assisted the boy to her own bed. He at first strongly objected to this, but Kasba was obdurate, and with a sigh of content he at last laid his aching head on the pillow.

Leaving him to fall asleep, the girl sank upon a seat in utter dejection. She remained seated a long time, fearing to move lest she wake the boy, who had quickly fallen asleep; then an explosion shook the little house to its foundations. Kasba started to her feet and stood petrified with fear. With a heart beating rapidly she waited and listened, but could detect no further sound.

A scared cry from the bed brought her to her senses. She flew to David, whom the noise had rudely awakened, and throwing her arms protectingly around him she turned her scared face to the door.

The situation was nerve-trying. Except for their own audible breathing the darkness of the hut was as silent as the tomb. Clasped in each other’s arms the two waited tremulously, expectantly, with fearful apprehensions, but of what they could not know, for only silence followed, silence becoming painful as it lengthened into minutes.

Choking down the hysterical sobs which threatened to overcome her, Kasba gently released herself from the boy’s embrace. A pale gleam of light relieved the gloom from pitchy blackness. Moving cautiously about, she found the lamp and lit it. The light gave her additional courage. She went to the window and looked out. All was quiet. The view was bleak and cold, the dim light outside revealed the desolate waste but indistinctly; objects took phantom forms, appearing weird and out of all proportion. With a shudder of undefined dread, the girl turned away from the casement and went back to the boy.

David received her with a keenly expectant look. Kasba shook her head with a wan smile in answer to his mute inquiry.

“There’s nothing, that I can see, dear,” she declared with relief, sinking on the bed beside him.

“Was it an earthquake or an explosion?” he asked, in an awed whisper.

“An explosion, dear, and at the Fort, I’m afraid.”

“More of that devil’s work, I suppose,” said the boy after some considerable thought. Then quickly, “I wonder if Bekothrie was at home.”

The girl sprang to her feet. The knowledge that her father and Roy were expected back that evening had entirely slipped from her mind. She stood rigidly erect, thinking desperately. What should she do? Perhaps the trader or her father had been injured by the explosion, perhaps both. She must go to the Fort to discover by their living presence that they were safe. Snatching her coat from where it hung, she drew it on without further delay or thought.

The boy watched her breathlessly, wide-eyed.

“I’m going to the Fort, dear,” she said gently but firmly. “Like a good, brave boy you will stay here. I shall not be long away.”

David caught his breath sharply, but smiled back manfully with a palpable effort to hide his fears.

Without pausing for further speech the girl stepped into the night, into the solitude and darkness, and with anxious heart passed swiftly along. Suddenly there broke forth upon the intense silence a loud, long-drawn howl. Kasba’s blood ran cold. Again that dismal howl. From its great resemblance to a dog’s she knew it for the voice of a wolf, and one suffering from hunger—its presence so near the Fort told her that—yet no thought of turning back beset her.

Awed and breathless she paused on the overhanging rocks at the back of the Fort, straining her eyes to distinguish between the conglomeration of buildings beneath her, which loomed up indistinctly; but there was just sufficient light from the stars to enable her to see that one of them was missing, that Roy’s dwelling had tumbled down. The space it had occupied was lumbered with a disorderly pile of logs. “Good heavens!” came from the girl’s lips—she was speaking distractedly.

So intent was she on trying to divine what had really happened that she shrieked aloud when something approached and touched her. It was Minnihak, Roy’s Eskimo guide. Perceiving who it was, Kasba clutched him excitedly by the arm and eagerly questioned him as to her father and Roy’s whereabouts. Failing to make him understand in Chipewyan she essayed in English, but only to meet with the like unsatisfactory result; the bewildered native shook his head, for he was conversant with neither language. The girl’s feelings on first perceiving the Eskimo were of surprised relief, but her fears were instantly goaded to the utmost the moment she found she was unable to make herself understood. The suspense was appalling. Conjecturing evils of the very worst type, the girl was moved by an irresistible impulse to approach and search the ruins. Neglecting all precautions, regardless of all peril to herself, she flew down the uneven track, with an instinct that was truly marvellous avoiding the boulders and holes. A few moments and she was beside the mass of logs.

An awful accident must have happened to bring about the ruinous condition of the trader’s dwelling.

“What should she do?” she again asked herself. “What could she do? Where was her father, where Roy?”

She waited and listened. All was still. The situation for a young, timid girl was extremely nerve-trying. A short time previously Kasba’s natural disinclination to scenes of violence would probably have caused her to rush frantically away and precipitate herself in her father’s hut to indulge in a fit of hysterical weeping, but now the uncertainty of her father’s and Roy’s fate chained her to the spot.

“Where were they? Perhaps beneath those logs!” The thought was horrible. When contemplating that huge pile all hope faded from her mind. The mere possibility of their being in the house when the explosion took place caused her heart to stand still, her blood to run cold. For it seemed an impossibility that they could have escaped being crushed to death beneath the falling logs, even if they had in some miraculous manner escaped injury by the explosion. Perhaps they now lay pinned to the earth, mangled and bleeding; and struggling with the convulsive sobs the mere thought called forth, she bent over the débris. Frantically she strove to push aside the heavy timbers that she might discover what lay beneath them, fearing at any moment that her eyes would meet some ghastly remains of one of the two men she loved. Yet with unflagging energy she worked on. In her frantic haste she was dimly conscious that the Eskimo had followed her, was lifting and throwing aside the ponderous logs with surprising energy; evidently he had caught her idea. But despite the native’s prodigious efforts and her own desperate exertions the work proceeded at a snail’s pace. Kasba quickly realized that her own puny strength availed her nothing, and a despairing moan at her own impotency escaped her. Her head was whirling round and round and she felt faint and giddy.

At that precise moment, as if heaven had pitied her helplessness and answered her prayer, a slight, muffled groan smote her ears.

Kasba uttered a cry of joy, for she recognized it as the sound of a human voice, knew that someone was alive beneath the ruins. Gathering strength from hopes renewed, the girl tore more frantically at the logs, straining every muscle to draw them aside.

Suddenly the voice was heard again. It was speaking.

Instantly Kasba paused in her panic haste to listen.

“_Kli-et-ee?_” (Who is there?), it said.

“It is I, Kasba!” cried the greatly excited girl. “Who speaks?”

“Sahanderry!” returned the voice.

With a cry of disappointment Kasba fell back. In her anxiety she had quite forgotten Sahanderry. She had imagined it to be her father who spoke, and her heart had leaped within her for joy. But now that she discovered it was not her father but another, the revulsion of feeling was too much for the already distracted girl. But the thought came to her that a life was in deadly peril, that Sahanderry was entombed in that rude black pile and that immediate aid was necessary. Chiding herself for the delay and for her selfish regrets, she worked desperately to accomplish a rescue. The painfully disappointing incident, however, had sobered her. She now worked just as desperately, but with more system than before. By the aid of the Eskimo she quickly had a number of logs placed on one side. She then discovered that the house had not fallen completely, as she had at first believed, but that the walls farthest from the seat of the explosion, and a part of the roof attached, had not come wholly to the ground but were propped up by the other parts of the fallen building, forming a sheltering cavity, though threatening to fall with a crash at any minute. Beneath this dangerous but friendly shelter the groaning Sahanderry was discovered lying prone upon the ground. A timber pressed him to the earth and kept him from rising.

Groping in the dark, Kasba and Minnihak ultimately freed and carried Sahanderry from the ruins, but with heroic self-denial the girl refrained from questioning him till a large fire had been made by setting a light to some of the wreckage. The night was intensely cold and Sahanderry was chilled to the bone.

He crouched over the fire, his eyes wild and bewildered in expression, for he was not yet fully convinced of his miraculous escape. His burnt and torn clothing, his scorched hair and eyebrows, testified to how narrow that escape really had been.

After waiting some minutes—interminable minutes they seemed to the girl—she could restrain herself no longer, but with a voice which quivered with suppressed but almost overpowering anxiety.

“_Se tah_ (my father), _Bekothrie_ (master)?” she queried desperately.

The injured man staggered to his feet with a hoarse cry of horrified remembrance. All thought of Broom’s deadly shot and its consequences had completely slipped from his confused brain. Released from a position of extreme peril, saved from what he had considered an absolutely certain death, his mind had become blank to all else but his own unaccountable deliverance. The girl’s questions brought back all the terrors of those horrible scenes. He wiped the sweat of remembrance from his brow with trembling hands. He shook like a leaf in a storm. Completely overcome, he lost all power of speech and stood rocking himself to and fro.

In the horror of conviction that either Roy or her father, perhaps both, had perished miserably, had been blown to pieces or scorched out of all semblance of a human creature, Kasba started impetuously forward. Clutching the distraught Sahanderry’s hands she forcibly drew them from his face. “Where are they?” she demanded sharply.

Pointing with a shaking hand at the ruins, “Bekothrie is there,” he cried hoarsely, then fell upon his face writhing and groaning.

Ignoring Sahanderry’s emotion the girl rushed back to the ruins. Quick and agile as a cat, she sprang from log to log, then suddenly disappeared altogether. Minnihak, who had remained motionless beside the fire, watching the foregoing proceedings with great bewilderment, followed less hastily. Arriving at the spot where the girl had disappeared he paused to look about him. A sharp cry, proceeding from the same pile of logs that had protected Sahanderry, caught his ear.

Squeezing himself between huge beams which hung dangerously suspended in his path, Minnihak dimly discerned Kasba bending over a dark figure. Picking his way carefully, he approached her, and by the uncertain light discovered her supporting the head and shoulders of a man upon her knees. But there was nothing in dress or figure by which to identify him. His clothes were burned to rags, his face was black, and all his hair had been scorched away.

Yet though Minnihak failed to recognize him, Kasba had; and all in a flutter of tenderness words of love poured forth thick and fast, but Roy lay all unconscious, deaf to everything.