Chapter 4

"The man wouldn't shoot Fox-Foot, wouldn't _kill_ him, would he, Larry?" came Jack's anxious voice.

"Shoot him! Shoot Foxy!" Then Matt Larson laughed gleefully into his blankets. "Why, Jack, no man living could ever get a bead on Foxy in this wilderness. No man could ever find him or see him, though he were lying right at the man's own feet. I think too much of Foxy to expose him to danger. But the best of it is, you can't put your eye, or your ear, or your fingers on that boy. You can't even _smell_ him. He's the color of the underbrush, silent as midnight, quick as lightning. You can't detect the difference between the smell of his clothes and of his skin and burning brushwood, or deer-hide. He can sidle up to the most timid wild thing. Oh! don't you worry, son! Go to sleep; our Fox-Foot is his own man, nobody else's."

"All right, Larry, but I'm here, if anyone wants me," yawned Jack.

And Matt Larson knew in his heart of hearts that Jack Cornwall spoke truly--that he was there to stand by his uncle and Fox-Foot should he be called upon to do so.

Dawn was breaking as they awoke--simultaneously to a slight crackling sound outside. Larry's head burrowed out of the tent.

"Foxy cooking breakfast," was his cool remark. Then, "Jingo! He's got a fish--a regular crackerjack! It's as long as my arm! Ha! there's a breakfast for you!" But Jack was already up and out.

"Fine luck I have! Big fish!" smiled Fox-Foot, as fresh and alert as if he had had a night in blankets instead of hours of watchfulness. Already half of the freshwater beauty was sizzling in the frying-pan, the Indian lifting and turning it with a long pointed stick. Matt Larson got busy coffee-making. "We'll pit these two odors one against the other," he remarked; "though I am bound to admit that the only time a frying fish does really smell good and appetizing is when it has been dead about twenty minutes, and is cooking over a camp-fire." Then quickly, in a low, tense voice: "Where is he, Foxy? Where did you leave him?"

The Indian went on turning the fish, indicating with his head the direction across the river.

"He's over there, asleep."

"He may wake at any moment; we must get away at once," hurried Larry.

"No," said Fox-Foot, with indifference, "he won't wake. There is a flower grows here, small seeds; I creep up close, put it in his teapot. He not see me. He boil tea, he drink it; he wake--maybe sundown to-night."

Larry and Jack looked at each other. Then with one accord they burst into laughter.

"Flower seeds! Where did you learn of these seeds, boy?" asked Larry.

"My mother teach me when I'm small. She said only use when pain is great, or," he hesitated, then, with a sly, half humorous look, "or when your enemy is great."

"Beats all, doesn't it, Jack?" said Larry. "Foxy, you're a wonder! Did you do anything else to him?"

"No, just to his canoe," replied the boy. "I wore a hole through the bottom with rocks; he'll think he did it himself. Takes time mend that canoe; we be far up river by then--far beyond the forks; he not know which headwater we take."

Matt Larson laid his hand on the straight, jet-black hair. "Bless you, my boy!" he said comically, but his undertone held intense relief, which did not escape Jack's ears.

The fish and coffee were ready now, and all three waded into that breakfast with fine relish.

Then came the arduous portage around Red Rock Falls, a difficult task which occupied more than an hour. Then away upstream once more, this time Jack paddling bow, with young Fox-Foot, lying on a blanket amidships, wrapped in a well-earned sleep. But once during the entire morning the Indian stirred; he did not seem to awake as other boys do, but more like a rabbit. His eyes opened without drowsiness; he shot to his knees, sweeping the river bank with a glance like the boring of a gimlet. Larry, looking at him, knew that nothing---nothing, bird, beast or man--could escape that penetrating scrutiny. Then, without comment, the boy curled down among his blankets again and slept.

They did not stop for "grub" at midday--just opened a can of pork and beans, finished up the cold fried fish, and drank from the clear blue waters of the river. Then on once more upstream, which now began to broaden into placid lakelets, thereby lessening the current and giving them a chance to make more rapid headway. At four o'clock they reached the forks of the stream--one flowed towards them from the north, the other from the west.

"Which way?" asked Larson, rousing the Chippewa. The boy got up immediately and took the stern paddle, steering the western course. They had paddled something over two miles up that arm when Fox-Foot beached the canoe, built a fire, spilled out the remainder of the pork and beans, threw the tin can on the bank, then marshalled his crew aboard again, and deliberately steered over the course they had already come.

"We lose two miles good work," he explained. "We build decoy fire, we leave tin can, he come; he think we go that way, but we go north." Back to the forks and up the northern branch they pulled, both Larry and Jack not only willing to have done four miles of seemingly unnecessary paddling, but loud in their praise and appreciation of the Indian's shrewd tactics. At supper time Fox-Foot would allow no fire to be built, no landing to be made, no trace of their passing to be left. They ate canned meat and marmalade, drank again of the stream and pushed on, until just at dusk they reached the edge of a long, still lake, with shores of granite and dense fir forest. "Larry and Jack, you sleep in canoe to-night; no camp. Lake ten miles long; no current; I paddle--me," said the Indian, and nothing that Larry could urge would alter the boy's edict.

"Jack, you must wonder what all these precautions are for, yet you never ask," said Larry.

"Because I know," returned the boy. "We are trying to escape the man in the mackinaw. He is following you. He is your enemy."

"Yes, boy, and to-night you shall know why," replied Larry. "You have taken so much for granted, you have never asked a single question; now you shall know what Foxy and I are after."

"You said you were after furs," Jack smiled.

"Yes, but not furs _alone_, my son," said the man. Then leaning meaningly towards the boy he half whispered, "I am after the king's coin--_gold_! My boy, nuggets and nuggets of _gold_, that I prospected for myself up in these wilds two years ago, found _pockets_ of it in the rocks, cached it, away, as I thought, from all human eyes, awaiting the time I could safely bring it to 'the front.' I knew of but one being in all the North that I could trust with my secret. That being is Fox-Foot. One night I confided it to him, showing him the map I had made of the lakes and streams of the north country, and the spot where the gold was cached. We were, as I thought, alone in Fox-Foot's log house. That is, alone in speaking English, for his people don't understand a single word that is not Chippewa. We were poring over the map I had made, when something made me look behind me. Against the small hole in the logs that served as a window was a man's head and shoulders--a white man--and he wore a grey mackinaw. Foxy and I were on our feet at once, but the man crashed through the woods and was gone. But he had heard my story, had seen I had a map, and--well, he wants my gold! That is all."

III

"And the grey hair above your eyes, Larry?" asked Jack, in an awed voice.

"_That_ came the time I mentioned when I gave you your revolver, and you remarked you would hate to be in a position where you might _wish_ you had one. I told you I had been there myself. It was last August, on a lonely trail far east of here. I had lain down during the intense heat of the day to sleep, only to wake to see his peering eyes, to feel that my feet were tied together, my hands caught in his vise-like clutch, bound together. Then I was dragged to a tree and lashed to it by yards of leather strapping, and all the time looking into the barrel of his revolver. He searched every stitch of clothing I had on, but he did not find the map. I was not armed, was perfectly helpless, and he left me lashed to that tree, naked all but my trousers and socks. I was there forty hours. The black flies came in swarms, the mosquitoes in thousands, and the second night timber wolves barked in the distance. Towards morning they came nearer, nearer. The agony from the insects made me desperate, but it was the yapping of those wolves that drove me crazy. I chewed through the leather straps binding my shoulder, chewed the shoulder with it, boy, and broke loose, with the blood running from every fly-bite, my eyes blinded with their poison, my throat cracked with thirst. I staggered to the river to drink, drink, drink, to lie in its cool waters, then to drink again, again, again."

Jack's face blanched, his hands turned stiff with cold, at the horror of the tale.

"When I could really see with my eyes," continued Larry, "I discovered, while looking into the still river, that this powder had puffed itself above my ears."

"And the map?" questioned Jack.

"Oh, the map? Well, he didn't get _that_," answered Larry, in something of his natural voice. "You see, I had once an accident, breaking through the ice on the lake. The map got wet and was almost destroyed, so I copied it out on cotton with marking ink, and sewed it inside the lining of my coat, and it did not crackle, as the paper map would have done had he passed his hands over it. Why, he never suspected it was there."

Jack drew a great breath of relief. "I wouldn't care if he did get it, Larry, so long as he left you alive."

"Oh, he's too cowardly to kill a man outright; don't be afraid of that. But he's after the King's Coin, all right," was the reply.

"And he don't get King's Coin, not while I live--me," said the low voice of Fox-Foot, as, with squared shoulders and set teeth, he gripped his paddle firmly and started up the long stretch of Ten-mile Lake.

* * * * * * * *

All that night Larry and Jack slept in the canoe, while the Chippewa boy paddled noiselessly, mile after mile. Above them the loons laughed, and herons called, and in the dense forest ashore foxes barked and owls hooted. A beautiful bow of light arched itself in the north, its long, silvery fingers stretching and darting up to the sky's zenith. But the Indian paddled on. Those wild sounds and scenes were his birthright, and he knew no fear of them.

At daylight he beached the canoe so motionlessly the sleepers never stirred, and he wakened them only when he had the coffee made and a huge pan of delicious bacon fried above the coals. Both of the paleface friends then arose, yawned, stretched, stripped and plunged into the lake, to swim about for a few moments, and then to jump into their shirts and sweaters, and fall upon the coffee and bacon with fine relish.

"I believe," said Jack, devouring his third helping, "that my eyes are better. They don't ache or smart in the least to-day."

"Eye bad?" asked Fox-Foot.

Jack explained.

"I cure, me, if you like. Root good for bad eye grows here, north," said the Chippewa.

"Better let him try," urged Larry. "He knows all these things. His flower seeds have evidently put the kibosh on the man in the mackinaw."

"I get root, you try. No harm," said the Indian. "You scairt put in your eye, then just smell it, and tie round your head."

"I'll try it, by all means," asserted Jack.

So, at noon, while Larry and Jack cooked the dinner, Fox-Foot penetrated the woods, returning with some crooked little brown roots, which he bound about Jack's forehead and made him inhale. They exuded a peculiar sweetish odor, that seemed to wash the eyeball like water, and when the afternoon was half spent, Jack remarked that his eyelids had ceased to smart.

"One week, maybe, be all right," answered the Indian. And his words proved correct. Daily he gathered fresh roots, treating Jack's eyes as skilfully as the oldest medicine man of his tribe could have done, until the poor red rims faded white, and the bloodshot eyeballs grew clear and bluish. Jack was beside himself with gratitude and delight, his one regret being that there was no possible way of mailing a letter to his parents telling them the good news. This week was one of work, sometimes toil. Often they encountered rapids over which they must portage. Once it was a whole mile through brush and rock and deep, soft mosses, but still they struggled on, until one evening, as they pitched camp and lighted their fire, Fox-Foot said coolly:

"You know this place, Larry?"

"No," was the answer, "never saw it before."

"The reason you say that," said the Indian, "is 'cause you come and go over that bluff behind us. Lake Nameless just twenty yards 'cross that bluff."

"_What_!" yelled Larry.

"I bring you in other side. Bluff separate this river and Lake Nameless. There is your cache," laughed Fox-Foot, throwing a pebble and striking a point of red rock ten yards away.

Larry and Jack fairly stumbled over their own feet to get there. Every mark that Matt Larson had left to identify the hiding-place of his treasure still remained undisturbed. The round white pebble placed near the shelving rock, the three-cornered flint, the fine, tiny grey bits of stone set like a bird's eggs in a nest of lichen, the two standing pines with a third fallen, storm-wrecked, at their roots--every landmark was there, intact.

Larry almost flew for the pick, and began to hack away at loose rocks, swinging the pick above shoulder as a woodsman swings an axe. Two feet below the surface, the pick caught in a web of cloth. In another minute Larry lifted out an old woollen jersey undershirt, that had been fastened up bag-wise. He snatched his knife, ripped open the sleeves, and the setting sun shot over a huge heap of yellow richness, quarts and quarts of heavy golden nuggets--_the King's Coin_. Larry sat down limply, wiping the oozing drops from his forehead. The two boys stood gazing at the treasure as if fascinated. Then Jack moistened his lips with his tongue, drew the back of his hand across his blinking eyes, moistened his lips again, but no words seemed to come to him. It was Fox-Foot who spoke first. Touching one splendid nugget almost contemptuously with the toe of his moccasin, he sneered "It is the curse of the paleface, this gold. 'Most every white man he sell the soul within his body for gold, gold, but not so Larry. _I_ know him. He prize this thing because it is the reward of pluck, of work, of great patience, of what white men call 'grit.'"

"Thank you, Foxy," said Larry, rising and extending his fine hand, which grasped the Indian's with a warm, true grip. "You mean that--mean it with all your loyal young redskin heart. Yes, boys, I hope it is for the love of pluck, the pride of 'grit,' that I value this thing. I hope it is not greed, not avarice, not--"

"_Never_!" interrupted Jack's ringing voice. "Never any greed of gold in you, Larry. You best and bulliest of men alive, but I _am_ glad the gold is yours. You deserve every ounce of it," and Jack was clinging to his handsome young uncle's other hand with a heartiness that rang as true as the nuggets lying at his feet. Presently he stooped to lift one. Its rugged yellow bulk reflected the dying sun. It was a goodly thing to look at, rare, precious, beautiful. Then he dropped it among its fellows, his fingers curled into his palms. Unconsciously his hands moulded themselves into fists, and each fist rested with a peculiar bulldog movement above each sturdy hip. His eyes met Larry's.

"We'll have a tough fight for it," he said, meaningly, "but that gold is going to get past the man in the mackinaw."

"It certainly will, if you're going to act as you look now," laughed Larry. "Why, boy, you look as if you would stop at nothing to outwit our unpleasant follower."

"I shall stop at very little," said Jack doggedly. "Your gold will get to the front, Larry, if I have full fling in the matter."

"Fling away, son," was the reply. "Only always remember: don't _use_ your revolver unless he is killing you."

"Or killing you or Fox-Foot," supplemented the boy.

"Same thing," said Larry. "We are all one in this matter, but I don't want you to be sorry in after years that you pulled a gun too quickly, that is all."

"No gun," joined Fox-Foot, slyly. "You leave the man to me. I fix him."

"I guess that's right," answered Larry. "Foxy's the boy to trip up Mr. Mackinaw in his nice little race for what does not belong to him. Now, boys, for supper, but we'll tuck away these pretty little playthings first."

The nuggets were divided into two stout canvas sacks, which were never to leave the lynx eyes of these three adventurers. They were to eat off those sacks, sleep on them, sit on them, think of them, dream of them, work for them, swim for them, fight for them. That was the vow that these three sturdy souls and manly hearts made one to another, before they sat down to bacon and beans, in the vast wilderness of the North, that glorious summer night.

"Downy pillow, this!" growled Larry, as he folded his sweater over a gold sack to get at least a semblance of softness for his ear to burrow into.

"Never mind, Larry, you can swap it for a good slice of 'down' when we get to the front," said Jack from the depths of his blankets. "It strikes me that it will be the cause of your sleeping on 'down' for the rest of your life."

"I shall never sleep or rest for long, son, nor do I want a downy life, but there is a difference between rose leaves and these bulky nuggets prodding a fellow in the neck."

"You sleep on blankets, I sleep on the wampum," said Fox-Foot, extracting with his slim brown fingers the "pillow" from beneath Larry's tired head.

"All right, Foxy," murmured the man, sleepily. "The gold only goes to itself when it goes to you. You're gold right through and through. Good-night."

"Good-night," came Jack's voice.

"How," answered the Chippewa, after the quaint custom of his tribe.

IV

And all night long they slept the hours peacefully away, the strong, athletic, well-knit, muscular white boy, the slender, agile, adroit Indian side by side, their firm young cheeks pillowed on thousands and thousands of dollars' worth of yellow gold.

With the first hint of dawn, Fox-Foot was astir. Before he left the tent, however, he cautiously placed his sack under Larry's blanket, and within the turn of that gentleman's elbow. Once more good luck attended his efforts with rod and line, and he got a dozen trout in almost as many minutes. Larry's nose usually awakened him when it sniffed early cooking, so now he rolled over to pummel Jack, then up to sing and whistle through his morning toilet like a schoolboy. Breakfast over, they struck camp, Fox-Foot taking command in packing the canoe, giving most rigid instructions as to saving the sacks should there be an upset. Larry took one long, last look at the wild surroundings. The dense pine forest, the forbidding rocks, the silver upper reaches of the river where his fought-for treasure had lain hidden for two years from all human eyes, unknown to any living man save himself. Then the canoe swung into midstream for the return voyage, its narrow little bow facing the south at last.

For many days the taut little craft danced merrily, homeward bound. For many nights the three voyageurs camped, slept, and dreamed, with only the laughing loons, the calling herons, the plaintive owls, and distant fox bark to sweep across their slumbers. But as the days went on, the Indian boy grew more wary; his glance seemed keener, his ears forever on the alert; he appeared like a lithe, silent watchdog, holding itself ready to spring, and snap, and bury its fine white teeth in the throat of an enemy to its household. His paddle dipped noiselessly, his head turned rapidly, his eye narrowed dangerously. Larry and Jack saw it all, but they said nothing, only relieved the Chippewa of all the work they possibly could, so that, should necessity demand that Fox-Foot must lose rest and food, he would be well fortified for every tax placed upon him. Jack took to cooking the meals, as a wild duck takes to the water, insisting that Fox-Foot rest after paddling, and the Indian accepting it all without comment, and sleeping at a moment's notice--seemingly storing it up against future needs. But the evening came when the laughing river gurgled into Lake Nameless, and that night they camped below its frowning shores on a narrow strip of beach, where the driftwood of many years and many storms had stranded, seemingly forever. All three had rolled into blankets, with sleep hovering above and about them, when, noiselessly as the dawn, Fox-Foot slipped from his bed like an eel, dipped under the tent, and was gone.

"Larry," whispered Jack, fearfully.

"Yes, boy?" came the reply.

"Did you see that?"

"Yes, boy."

"But--Larry, oh, it's horrible! I hate myself for saying it--but, oh, Larry, he's taken a sack with him. I saw it."

"Yes, boy."

"Listen! Oh, Larry, s-s-h--"

Matt Larson turned on his back, every nerve strung to snapping pitch. Two whispering voices assailed his ears. The horror of them seemed to grip his heart and stop its very beating. Fox-Foot was speaking.

"You's not a good man. I hate you. You's bad all over, but I _have_ to trust you. You got me cornered. Here's the gold, same's I promised. You take half. I take half. _You hide it_. Bime-by when I get _them_ out of this, I come back, _then_ we divide. But you sure _hide it now, hide it. Good. GOOD_."

Then came the reply in English, good English. There was only one voice in all the world that had that hissing, snaky sound, and Larry knew it to his cost. It was the voice of the man in the mackinaw, and it was hissing:

"Bet your life I'll hide it, Fox-Foot, and you're a good, decent Indian boy. You shall have half, _sure_, but get both of those _dogs_ out of here. Get 'em away, right off."

"I scairt," replied the Indian, "I clean scairt. When he finds out, maybe he kill me. I got no knife, no gun--nothing. I scairt."

"Here, take my revolver," replied the man. "And I tell you, Fox-Foot, if they kick up, you put a bullet clean through them, _both_ of them."

"Sure. Give me it," said the Indian in a soft, oily voice. Then, "Now, now, I feel safer with _that_ inside my shirt."

Matt Larson's face was white as a sheet. He did not care a dollar for his lost gold, but for this Indian boy to fail him--oh, it was heartbreaking! He buried his face in his hands. "Oh, Foxy!" he almost sobbed. "Foxy, my little Chippewa friend, I have tried _so_ hard to treat you square--and--Foxy, you've failed me! You've failed me." And big, burly Jack Cornwall's tear-wet face was lying against Larry's hand, and poor, big, burly Jack Cornwall's voice was catching in his throat as he said:

"Oh, Fox-Foot! Fox-Foot! I'd rather have died than heard this--this from _you_!"

Then came a hurried good-bye between the two creatures outside, and Fox-Foot slipped back into the tent, slipped back noiselessly, snakily as an eel in its own slime.

For a full hour Larry and Jack lay there in the dark, hand gripping hand. One sack of gold had gone, stolen by their trusted friend, who lay near them, a loaded revolver inside his shirt, and a threat on his lips--a threat to kill them both.

At the end of the hour the Indian arose, struck a match, lighted a bit of candle, and taking the revolver from his shirt, examined it closely. Through narrowed lids Larry could see by even that faint light that it was fully loaded.

With a sweet, almost motherly movement, Matt Larson curled his arm around the boy at his side. They at least would face death together. But the Indian was crawling slowly, silently up towards them, closer, closer. At last the slim, brown fingers touched Larry's shoulder, and the soft Chippewa voice whispered: