CHAPTER XIV

RIFLE SHOTS!

In spite of insufficient supper, a horrible trial when you are extremely hungry, it is doubtful if ever two people slept sounder than these travellers. The dry bunks and blankets, with the warm fur bags, made beds for a king. The hot tea and hot heavy bread, made with flour and water, were warming, and satisfying, too, with the bit of bacon. They were too tired to worry about the bear, which came back and prowled round the shack when the warm smell of food came out of the pipe that served as a chimney. Bears love bacon, which is why the great traps laid for them--drop traps--are nearly always baited with lumps of bacon or pork.

How soon he went away they did not know, for they were asleep, and they slept for ten hours almost without moving, and woke up to daylight filtering in through the parchment pane, and a cold stove.

They got up with reluctance, in spite of hunger. David would have preferred to stay where he was all day, and argued about it in a disgraceful manner, Nell said. She opened the door and there, close by, was the wide river, the white road leading to safety and civilisation.

Then the sun came up, hot and bright, and the snow sparkled in millions of dripping jewels.

"Come out and dig for breakfast," said Nell, "or will you do the stove while I dig?"

"Look out for the bear," answered David sleepily, "probably he's waiting round the corner."

But he wasn't. All was clear, and presently the two travellers were busy as bees digging for the cache by Nell's recollection of its position. Fortunately the ground was much softer, because of the thaw and the sun, while the cache itself was only just below the surface and covered chiefly by stones and rubbish. This was the usual way. Men did not have time or inclination to make deep pits, they just concealed the package from man and beast till they should come by again and need the goods.

The parcel was carefully tied up in dressed hide, so that the leather was soft. Tea, sugar, baking powder, and flour, beans and bacon. The latter was rather rusty, certainly, but what is that when you are hungry! Probably it had been well frozen and was hardly thawed yet. Nell took it all indoors and smoothed the place over. They had been obliged to dig with the axe. They had nothing else, but it was not good for the blade!

Her plan was to eat well and carry on the rest, after putting back the little store in the cupboard. They would surely want it for the journey still ahead. She would divide the weight into two parcels wrapped in the skin.

Nell's mind was fairly at ease. If she had realised it, the reason of that was chiefly the warmth, the long, restful sleep, and the sunshine. Things look so different in different circumstances and nervous dread often comes with weariness and cold. She believed the danger was over and the journey on from now would be easy. It was not so very far, she reasoned, and the best of all was that every mile now might bring them to possible habitations, to farms even. They were coming down into the haunts of men at last. That meant safety.

Of course, all this work--digging up and smoothing down--then the stove lighting and wood collecting, then the comfortable breakfast on a table, with the water boiling hard by on the warm stove, all took time. Time, too, was taken up in dividing the food into proper shares for carrying away and leaving. It was at this stage that David suddenly made the proposition which undermined the plan for the day already settled.

He was leaning against the doorway, looking out at the sun on the river, playing with Robin, just as though they were at home up in the hills, left so far behind.

"I say, Nell, why do you want to go to-day?"

Nell stopped in her work of putting back the cache in the cupboard.

"But, Da, we ought to!"

"Why _ought_? We are perfectly safe now. It will only make a few hours' difference."

"We can't be sure of that. How about Stenson? We don't know where he is. He won't give up."

"He will. Sure as fate he'll catch the Redskins and the sled. He'll believe he has followed a false trail all through and he'll give up. Now just think, Nell, why on earth should he come on this way. He was bound to find them, and there you are! Why _should_ he keep on coming this way with no trail to follow?"

It was true. Quite true and reasonable. It was most unlikely that Stenson should go on searching for a different trail over miles and miles of country when he had found the end of the trail made--as he thought--by the young Lindsays. Where would he look? It was fair and reasonable to conclude that he would be baffled by the young Indians and go back to Abbitibbi. The plan propounded and carried out by Shines-in-the-Night was a very sound one. She would go her way, across to the other river which ran down to the Moose about parallel with this one, only some fifty miles of woods between the two streams. Stenson might follow her, to see what she would do, but he had no means of picking up the trail of the Lindsays.

All these thoughts, for and against, rose and sank in the girl's mind. There was really no reason why they should not take a very necessary rest for this one day and start at dawn on the following morning, but instinctively she felt it was dangerous. David said, "But why? But why, Nell?" twice. She had no very definite reason to answer with. Only a feeling.

Of course she wanted to stop; who would not after such a strain? The shack was luxury. They really did need the rest, and in a way there was a good deal to do getting themselves clean, tidy, and ship-shape for the journey to come.

In the end David won. Nell laughed, gave in, and began to make baking-powder bread with the new materials, stirring it in the billy-can with a stick. You can use billy-cans for so many things when you have to!

"On one condition," she said, "that we go to bed as soon as the sun goes down and get off really early, about four o'clock, so we can start before daybreak."

David promised joyfully. Whatever he felt in the morning would be another pair of shoes! He went off down to the river and came back to say the thaw was jolly well getting a move on things! The ice was shifting up the banks. In some places there was water as well as melted snow on its surface.

"Look out for bridge ice, Nell, to-morrow," he said, as he sat down to the table. "I do believe it's going out in a few days. Rather early this year, isn't it?"

Nell said it was warmer down here than up in the hills. There was a much greater force of water underneath, too, here than up at the source of the stream, naturally. And, after all, it was April!

"Once it begins, it always goes so quickly," she said. "If it will last for us, just two whole days more--we ought to get somewhere safe, Da, in that time."

"We shall," said David with conviction, and his sister put away from her the queer nervous feeling that would not let her mind rest entirely.

A great part of that afternoon they lay still in their bunks, talking at intervals, while Robin dozed by the fire. As it happened, this was a very good thing for all three! The odd jobs were done. All was ready, the wood to fill the stove with in the morning, and the packets.

About sundown they had a meal, and after that the grey dusk began to creep over everything. Soft, still shadow.

"Now bed," said Nell; "we've got no candles and we must be up about four."

The words were hardly finished when a gun-shot rang out sharp on the silence.

Nell started as though she had been hit, because her mind was still strained.

"It may be anybody," said David. Robin growled. Nell opened the door and listened.

From the wood at the back a voice said, loud and harsh:

"You would, would you? You'd be ugly, eh?"

It was Stenson's voice, and undoubtedly he had met with the bear!

"Come on, Da. Smart. We must get off. Thank God for the evening, and thank God for the bear!"

Nell laughed suddenly, a low, jerky laugh.

"Who'd have thought it?" said David. That was all. He was feeling the least bit guilty, because Nell had really wanted to go on. However, there it was--and thank God for the bear!

It took a very few minutes to clear out. The bundles were done up in double-quick time, and the rest was ready.

"Now then," said Nell, "and, Da, hold Robin; whatever happens he mustn't go."

David, strapping on snowshoes, agreed quickly, then he said:

"It's bad luck his finding the place warm and the stove still alight. It's a complete give-away."

"He won't find anything, unless he blows the door out. I've locked it and I've got the key," answered Nell grimly. "There's another shot! He's still busy. What a mercy it is getting really dark!"

Cautiously keeping the shack between themselves and the wood they sped down to the brink, out through the rotten ice and slush, and away on to the river. Then off, with all the speed they could muster, away and away, eastward again down that smooth snow-covered road, and the last thing they heard was another shot.

"I hope the old bear kills him," said David vindictively.

"Oh, he won't. Stenson's got his gun. But, Da, what a true mercy; if he hadn't come by the bear track he'd have actually walked into the shack and caught us going to bed."

"I'd have shot him if he had, as soon as wink," said David; "he wants peppering."

Nell laughed again. She had thought of that last resort herself!

Next time she spoke she said how splendid the rest had been. This was because she knew David was feeling a little guilty about it. Also it was very, very true. Both of them moved in quite a new way. The effort of that last day was gone; they were as fresh as when they started, and so was Robin.

Darker it grew and darker, till they went on with no light but the snow and a few stars, not the great shining stars of the farthest north, but stars that helped a little.

Nell was more anxious about the road underfoot than the skies overhead. There was always the danger of a flaw in the ice below, and she knew there might be holes--places where water had come up over the ice, places where streams from the bank running in made weakness. Nell had often heard stories of inexperienced folk going up north too late in the season, who had died a quick death because "the bottom fell out of the trail," that was the expression used when the ice road gave way under you and you went down and under the awful drifting sections of ice. And yet what were they to do? The river was better going than the rough shores which might be any kind of travelling, up hill, down dale, woods, streams cutting into the big one, every sort of delay and check.

It was best, she decided, to keep on, going fast, as long as they heard no cracking, serious cracking. If that began, they must land and get past any weak place by the bank.

"After all, we are not very heavy," she said, and comforted herself with that.

"_He_ is," suggested David. "I wonder what he is doing now! I wonder if he'll break the lock of that shack, or if he'll hit our trail and follow up directly. Of course, he may have killed the bear. If he has he might stop to strip the pelt at once and come down to the shack afterwards."

So did David talk cheerfully, because he was refreshed by that good rest. Nell was glad to hear it. She also was refreshed and unafraid of the night, but the long, long road ahead seemed to rise before her eyes as they drove on and on into the darkness.