Part 3

"You poor man!" she cooed, pitying him. "What will you do now?"

Prime had a thought which was only partly regretful. He might have searched in the pockets of the dead men for more tobacco, but it had not occurred to him at the time. He dismissed the thought and came back to the playing of his part in the secret for one.

"The lack of tobacco is a small consideration, when there is so much else at stake," he maintained. "If the Grider guess is the right one, it is evident that something has turned up to tangle it. Unscrupulous as he is in the matter of idiotic jokes, I know him well enough to be sure that he wouldn't leave us here to famish. He is only an amateur aviator, and it is quite within the possibilities that he has wrecked himself somewhere. It seems to me that we ought to take this river for a guide and push on for ourselves. Doesn't it appear that way to you?"

"If we only had a boat of some kind," she sighed. "But even then we couldn't push very far without something to eat."

It was time to usher in the glad surprise, and Prime began to gather up the breakfast leavings. "We'll go over and have a look at the river, anyway," he suggested, and a few minutes later he had led the way across the point of land, and had heard the young woman's cry of delight and relief when she discovered the stranded canoe.

"You knew about this all the time," was her reproachful accusation. "You were over here last night. That is why you had the prophetic bones a little while ago. Why didn't you tell me before?"

He grinned. "At the moment you seemed cheerful enough without the addition of the good news. Do you know what is in that canoe?"

"No."

"Things to eat," he avouched solemnly; "lots of them! More than we could eat in a month."

"But they are not ours," she objected.

"No matter; we are going to eat them just the same."

"You mean that we can hire the owners to take us out of this wilderness? Have you any money?"

"Plenty of it," he boasted, chinking the buckskin bag in his pocket, the finding of which he had, up to this moment, entirely forgotten.

"But where are the owners? I don't see any camp."

"That is one reason why I didn't tell you last night. I found the canoe, but I didn't find anything that looked--er--like a camp."

"Then we shall have to sit down patiently and wait until they come back. They wouldn't go very far away and leave a loaded canoe alone like this, would they?"

Prime gave a furtive side glance at the shadowy pool in the eddy. Truly the canoe-owners had not gone very far, but it was quite far enough. If he could have framed any reasonable excuse for it, he would have urged the immediate borrowing of the canoe, and an equally immediate departure from the spot of grisly associations. Indeed, he did go so far as to suggest it, and was brought up standing, as he more than half expected to be, against Miss Millington's conscience.

"Why, certainly we couldn't do anything like that!" she protested. "It would be highway robbery! We must wait until they return. Surely they won't be gone very long."

There was no help for it except in telling her the shocking truth, and Prime was not equal to that. So he reconciled himself as best he could to the enforced delay, hoping that the tender conscience would not demand too much time.

Almost at once the owner of the conscience suggested that they make a round through the adjoining forest in an attempt to discover the camp of the missing men. Prime acceded cheerfully enough, though he was impatient to examine the canoe-load, in which he was hoping there might prove to be a supply of tobacco. For the better part of the forenoon they quartered the forest around and about between the river and the lake in widening circles, missing nothing but the glade of horrors, which Prime took good care to avoid. At noon they came back to the canoe-landing and made a frugal meal on the remains of their own store of food.

"We are too punctiliously foolish," Prime declared when the second meal without its tobacco aftermath had been endured. "You say we are obliged to wait, and in that case we shall have to borrow, sooner or later. I don't see any reason why we shouldn't begin it now. We can explain everything, you know; and, besides, I have money with which to pay for what we take."

"But your money isn't Canadian money," was the ready objection voiced by the tender conscience.

Prime's laugh did not ring quite true. "That is where you are mistaken," he retorted. "It is good English gold, in sovereigns."

If the young woman were surprised to learn that a man who had expected to motor out of Canada in a day or two at the most had supplied himself with a stock of English sovereigns, she did not question the fact. But for fear she might, Prime went on hastily:

"I always like to be prepared for all kinds of emergencies when I leave home, and this time I wasn't sure just where I was going to bring up, you know--after Grider had changed his mind as to our starting-point."

The evasion served its purpose, and the young woman assented to an immediate examination of the canoe-load. Prime helped her down the steep bank, and they began to rummage, spreading their findings out on the little beach. As Prime had intimated, there was a liberal stock of provisions--jerked deer-meat, smoke-cured bacon, flour, meal, salt, baking-powder, tea, and sugar, but no coffee, a few tins of vegetables, a small sack of potatoes, and, last but not least, a canvas-covered mass of something which they decided was pemmican.

Rummaging further, the precious tobacco came to light--two huge twists of it hidden in the centre of one of the two remaining blanket-rolls. Prime stopped right where he was, crumbled a bit of the dried leaf in his hands, and made a cigarette, his companion looking on with a little lip-curl which might have been of derision or merely of amusement.

"Is it good?" she asked, when he had inhaled the first deep breath.

"It's vile!" he returned. "At the same time, it is so much better than nothing that I could do a Highland fling for pure joy. Take my advice, Miss Millington, and never become a slave to the tobacco habit."

"'Miss Millington,'" she repeated, half musingly. "Doesn't that strike you as being a trifle absurd at this distance from a drawing-room?"

"It surely does," he admitted frankly; "and so, for that matter, does 'Mr. Prime.'"

She looked up at him with a charming little grimace.

"I'll concede the 'Lucetta' if you will concede the 'Donald.'"

"It's a go," he laughed. "It is the last of the conventions, and we'll tell it good-by without a whimper." With the goodly array of foodstuff spread out upon the sand, and with his back carefully turned upon the pool of dread, he felt that he could afford to be light-hearted.

There was only a little more of the rummaging to be done. A canvas-covered roll unlashed from its place beneath a canoe-stay proved to be a square of duck large enough to make a small sleeping-tent. Inside of this roll there was an ample stock of cartridges for the two repeating rifles lying cased in their canvas covers in the bottom of the boat, and an Indian-tanned deerskin used as a wrapping for the ammunition. With the guns there was a serviceable woodsman's axe. In the bow, where Prime had dropped the two savage-looking hunting-knives, there were a few utensils: a teapot, a camper's skillet large enough to be worth while, tin cup and plates, an empty whiskey-bottle, and a basin--the latter presumably for the dough-mixing.

After they had their findings lying on the sand the tender conscience came in play again, and nothing would do but everything must be put back just as they had found it, Prime drawing the line, however, at a portion of the tobacco and enough of the food to serve for supper and breakfast. During the remainder of the afternoon they left the canoe-load undisturbed, but when evening came Prime borrowed the basin, the cups, plates, and the larger skillet. Farther along he borrowed the canvas roll and the axe and set up the tiny sleeping-tent, placing it so that Lucetta, if she were so minded, could see the fire.

Just before she retired the young woman made a generous protest.

"You mustn't do all the borrowing for me," she insisted. "Go right down there and get one of those blanket-rolls for yourself. I shan't sleep a wink if you don't."

The next morning there were more speculations, on the young woman's part, as to the whereabouts of the canoe-owners, with much wonderment at their protracted absence and the singular abandonment of their entire outfit, even to the weapons. Whereat Prime invented all sorts of theories to account for this curious state of affairs, all of them much more ingenious than plausible.

For himself, the mystery was scarcely less unexplainable. Why two men, evidently outfitted for a long journey, should stop by the way, build five fires that were plainly not camp-fires, and then fall to and fight each other to death over a bag of English sovereigns, were puzzles that he did not attempt to solve in his own behalf. It was enough that the facts had befallen, and that the net result for a pair of helpless castaways was a well-stocked canoe which Lucetta's acid-proof honesty was still preventing them from appropriating.

After a breakfast served with the garnishings afforded by the Heaven-sent supplies, Prime uncased the two rifles and looked them over. They were United States products of an early edition, but were apparently serviceable and in good order. In the canvas case of one of the guns there was a packet of fish-lines and hooks. At Lucetta's suggestion a few shots were fired as a signal for the lost canoe-owners. Nothing coming of this, they tried a little target practice, selecting the largest tree in sight for a mark, and both missing it with monotonous regularity. Later in the day Prime brought the talk around by degrees to the expediencies. How much of the present good weather must they waste in waiting for the hypothetical return of the absentees? Perhaps some accident had happened; perhaps the absentees would never turn up. Who could tell?

Domestic Science, with gymnasium-teaching on the side, fought the suggestion to which all this pointed. They had no manner of right to take the canoe and its belongings without the consent of the owners. What was the hurry? By waiting they would be sure to obtain the help they were needing, and another day or two must certainly end the suspense.

Prime went as far as he could without telling the shocking truth. With the dead men's pool so near at hand he was shudderingly anxious to be gone, but the young woman's logic was unanswerable and the delay was extended. A single small advance marked this second day. Along toward evening Prime unloaded the canoe, and together they made a few heroic attempts to acquire the art of paddling. It was apparently a lost art so far as they were concerned. The big birch-bark, lightened of its load, did everything but what it was expected to do, yawing and careening under the unskilful handling in a most disconcerting manner.

"If I could only rig up some way to row the thing!" Prime exclaimed, when they had contrived to drift and seesaw half a mile or more down the almost currentless first reach of the stream.

"You couldn't," asserted the more practical young woman. "The sides are as thin as paper, and they wouldn't hold rowlocks if you could make them. Besides, who ever heard of rowing a birch-bark canoe?"

"Somebody will hear of it, if I ever live to work this vacation trip of ours into a story--No, no; paddle the other way! We want to turn around and go back!"

They got the hang of it a little better after a while, the young woman catching the knack first; and after much labor they won back to their camping-place on the small peninsula. Over the evening fire Prime unwrapped the deerskin they had found in the canvas-roll.

"We shall have to have moccasins of some sort," he announced. "That flimsy boat isn't going to stand for shoes with heels on them. Does domestic science include a semester in shoemaking? I can assure you in advance that literature doesn't."

Lucetta took the leather and sat for a time regarding it thoughtfully. "No needle, no thread, no pattern," she mused. "And if we cut it and spoil it there won't be enough left for two pairs."

"If you have an idea, try it; I'll stand the expense of the leather," chuckled Prime, with large liberality.

But now the young woman was hesitating on another score.

"This leather belongs to the owners of the canoe; I don't know that we have any right to cut it," she objected.

Prime was tempted to say things objurgatory of these phantom owners who would not down, but he didn't. Every fresh reference to the two dead men gave him an impulse to glance over his shoulder at the silent pool in the eddy, and the longer the thing went on the less able he was to control the prompting.

"You forget that we are able to pay for all damages," was what he really did say, and at that the young woman removed a shoe, placed a neatly stockinged foot on the skin and marked around it with a bit of charcoal taken from the fire, leaving a generous margin. Borrowing Prime's pocket-knife she cut to the line, made tiny buttonholes all around the piece, and threaded them with a drawing-string made of the soft leather.

"You've got it!" exclaimed the unskilled one in open-eyed admiration, after the one-piece slipper was fashioned and tried on. "You are a wonder! I shouldn't have thought of that in a month of Sundays. It's capital!"

There was enough material in the single skin to make the two pairs, with something left over, and Prime put his on at once with a sigh of relief born of the grateful chance to get rid of the civilized shoes. Past that there was more talk about the ever-thickening mysteries, and again Lucetta refused to accept the Grider explanation, while Prime clung to it simply because he could not invent any other. Yet it was borne in upon him that the mystery was edging away from the Grider hypothesis in spite of all he could do. There was nothing to connect the two canoemen, fighting over the purse of gold, with Grider, or with the abduction of a school-teacher and a writer of stories; yet there were pointings here, too, if one might read them. Why were the five fires lighted in the glade unless it were for a signal of some sort? Prime wished from the bottom of his heart that he could set the keen mentality of his companion at work on this latest phase of the mystery, but with the dead men lying stiff and still at the bottom of their pool less than a stone's throw away, his courage failed him and his lips were sealed.

VI

CANOEDLINGS

ON the fifth morning--their third at the peninsula camp--Prime registered a solemn vow to make this the last day of the entirely unnecessary delay. More and more he was tormented by the fear that the dead men might escape from their weightings and rise to become a menace to Lucetta's sanity or his own; and, though he had been given the best possible proof that his companion was above reproach in the matter of calm courage and freedom from hysteria, he meant to take no chances--for her or for himself.

At his suggestion they began the day by making another essay at the paddling, embarking in the emptied canoe shortly after breakfast. Gaining a little facility after an hour or so, they headed the birch-bark downstream past the point which they had reached the previous afternoon, and soon found themselves in a quickening current. Prime, kneeling in the bow, gave the word, and Lucetta obeyed it.

"We'll try the quick water," he flung back to her. "We'll have to have the experience, and we had better get it with the empty canoe, rather than with the load."

This seemed logical, but it led to results. In a short time the shores grew rocky and there was no safe place to land. Moreover, the little river was now running so swiftly that they were afraid to try to turn around. Rapid after rapid was passed in vain struggles to stop the triumphal progress, and if the canoe's lading had been aboard, Prime would have been entirely happy, since every rapid they shot was taking them farther away from the scene of the tragedy. But the lading was not aboard.

"We've got to do something to head off this runaway!" the bowman shouted back over his shoulder in one of the quieter raceways. "We're leaving our commissary behind."

"Anything you say," chimed in the steers-woman from the stern of the dancing runaway. "My knees are getting awfully tired, but I can stand it as long as you can."

"That is the trouble," Prime called back.

"We're staying with it too long. The next pool we come to, you paddle like mad, all on one side, and I'll do the same. We've simply _got_ to turn around!"

The manoeuvre worked like a charm. A succession of the eddy-pools came rushing up from down-stream, and in the third of them they contrived to get the birch-bark reversed and pointed up-stream. Then it suddenly occurred to the young woman that they had had their trouble for nothing; that the same end might have been gained if they had merely turned themselves around and faced the other way. Her shriek of laughter made Prime stop paddling for the moment.

"I need a guardian--we both need guardians!" he snorted, when she told him what she was laughing at, and then they dug their paddles in a frantic effort to stem the swift current.

It was no go--less than no go. In spite of all they could do the birch-bark refused to be driven up-stream. What was worse, it began to drift backward, slowly at first, but presently at a pace which made them quickly turn to face the other way lest they be smashed in a rapid. A mile or more fled to the rear before they could take breath, and two more rapids were passed, up which Prime knew they could never force the canoe with any skill they possessed or were likely to acquire.

Taking advantage of the next lull in the unmanageable flight, he shouted again.

"We'll have to go ashore! We are getting so far away now that we shall never get back. You're steering: try it in the next quiet place we come to, and I'll do all I can to help."

The "next quiet place" proved to be a full half-mile farther along, and they had a dozen hairbreadth escapes in more of the quick stretches before they reached it. Prime lived years in moments in the swifter rushes. Knowing his own helplessness in the water, he was in deadly fear of a capsize, not from any unmanly dread of death but because he had a vivid and unnerving picture of Lucetta's predicament if she should escape and be left alone and helpless in the heart of the forest wilderness. He drew his first good breath after the runaway canoe had been safely beached on the shore of an eddy and they had tottered carefully out of it to drag it still higher upon the shelving bank.

"My heavens!" he panted, throwing himself down to gasp at leisure. "I wouldn't go through that again for a farm in Paradise! Weren't you scared stiff?"

"I certainly was," was the frank admission. The young woman had taken her characteristic attitude, sitting down with her chin propped in her hands.

"But, just the same, you didn't forget to paddle!" Prime exulted. "You are a comrade, right, Lucetta! It's a thousand pities you aren't a man!"

"Isn't it?" she murmured, without turning her head.

"Do you know--I was simply paralyzed at the thought of what would happen if we should upset--not so much at the thought of what would be certain to happen to me, but on your account."

"The protective instinct," she remarked; "it is like a good many other things which we have outgrown--or are outgrowing--quite useless, but stubbornly persistent."

"You mean that you don't need it?"

"I haven't needed it yet, have I?"

"No," he admitted soberly. "So far, you have had the nerve, and more than your share of the physique."

"I have had better training, perhaps," she offered, as if willing to make it easier for him. "A little farther along you will begin to develop, while I shall stand still."

But Prime would not let it rest at that.

"I have always maintained that most women have a finer nerve, and finer courage, than most men; I am speaking now of the civilized average. You are proving my theory, and I owe you something. But to get back to things present; doesn't it occur to you that we have gotten ourselves into a rather awkward mess?"

"It does, indeed. We must be miles from anything to eat, and if you know of any way to take this canoe up-stream I wish you would tell me; I don't."

"It will be by main strength and awkwardness, as the Irishman played the cornet, if we do it at all," Prime decided.

"And if, in the meantime, the owners come back and find it gone----"

Prime got up stiffly. "I have a feeling that they haven't come back yet, and it is growing fast into a feeling that they are not going to come back at all. Shall we try a towing stunt?"

They tried it, though they had no towline and were reduced to the necessity of dragging the canoe along in the shallows, each with a hand on the gunwale. This did not answer very well, and after fighting for a half-hour in the first of the rapids and getting thoroughly wet and bedraggled they had to give it up and reverse the process, letting the birch-bark drift down to the safe dockage again.

While they were resting from their labors, and the hampered half of the towing squad was wringing the water from her skirts, Prime looked at his watch.

"Heavens and earth!" he exclaimed. "It is noon already! I thought I was beginning to feel that way inside. Why didn't we have sense enough to take a bite along with us when we left camp this morning?"

"Oh, if you are going into the whys, why didn't we have sense enough to know that we couldn't handle the canoe? How far have we come?"

Prime shook his head. "You couldn't prove it by me. A part of the time it seemed to me that we were bettering a mile a minute." He got up and hobbled back and forth on the little beach to work the canoe-cramp out of his knees. "It looks to me as if we are up against it good and hard; the canoe is here, and the dunnage is up yonder. Which do we do: carry the canoe to the dunnage, or the dunnage to the canoe? It's a heavenly choice either way around. What do you say?"

Lucetta voted at once for the canoe-carrying, if it were at all possible. So much, she said, they owed to the owners, who had every right to expect to find their property where they had left it. Again Prime was tempted to say hard things about the ghosts which so stubbornly refused to be laid, and again he denied himself.

"The canoe it is," he responded grimly, but by the time they had dragged the light but unwieldy craft out of the water and part way up the bank they were convinced that the other alternative was the only one. A short portage they might have made, or possibly a long one, if they had known enough to turn the birch-bark bottom-side up and carry it on their heads _voyageur_-fashion. But they still had this to learn.

"It's a frost," was Prime's decision after they had tugged and stumbled a little way with the clumsy burden knocking at their legs. "The mountain won't go to Mohammed--that much is perfectly plain. Are you game for a long portage with the camp outfit? It seems to be the only thing there is left for us to do."