CHAPTER V

"LITTLE EYES HAS A FORKED TONGUE"

In the stillness that followed this answer to her question Nell made a wild calculation in her head. To-day! The boy must mean to-morrow. She said so, eagerly.

"Little Eyes has a forked tongue," repeated the Lizard, with emphasis. "He says one thing, but his heart is false. He spoke to my father, the Pickerel, and he said, 'Take money for these pelts, and have all ready at the day dawn. Give me food also, for I go on the home trail in the morning.' Then Shines-in-the-Night said to me, 'Run with the feet of Ah-tek to the white man's lodge and carry this word from me to the tall white sister, for the heart of Little Eyes is not good towards her.'"

"How does she know?" questioned Nell.

The Lizard made a gesture with his expressive brown hands.

"It is clear to Shines-in-the-Night, as the face of the Forest, or the tune of the River," he said.

"Well," said the girl, with a sort of desperate firmness, "what must be, must be then. We will go as soon as the day breaks. I will wake my brother, we will eat and go."

"That is well," agreed the Lizard evidently satisfied, "the snow will hide the trail, and the great black ninnymoosh (dog) will be your friend." He looked at Robin with grave approval. There was evidently a sympathy between them, though the hound was not familiar.

Nell went over to a locker in which were kept all sorts of small articles and loose oddments, and extracted therefrom a strong clasp knife. It was a good knife, but, more important still, it was a showy knife. It possessed three blades of different sizes, a corkscrew, and a spike, useful for making holes or as a lever, for it was strong. She gave it to the boy, being very careful indeed not to suggest that she was offering payment.

"Will my brother the Lizard take this from my hand, in token that my heart is very good towards him? My brother will some day be a great chief and these little knives shall help him to skin Mak-wa (the bear), after the gun has sent him into the Afterland."

The boy's eyes shone as he took this unexpected treasure. It was a prize of immense value to him, and one that would make him the envy of every other boy for years. Nell was turning over in her mind what on earth she could send to Shines-in-the-Night--for she owed the girl a great deal--her action had been so clever and so swift, founded as it was almost entirely on instinct. She did not possess the things worn by other girls of her age; where no shops are people do not accumulate small matters of dress.

Swiftly she went to her room and opened a box. Turning over her few things she came upon a Christmas card shaped like a little book with a scented sachet inside. Just a very small cushion of satin with a bunch of mignonette painted on it, and a sweet smell of the same flower. On the outside of the cover was a picture of a pretty cottage and holly trees glittering with snow. It was a Christmas card sent to Nell by relations in a far-away land. She was fond of it, but she understood well what it would mean to the Chippewa girl, so she took it to the boy and presented it in a ceremonious manner, a special gift from herself to Shines-in-the-Night.

The Lizard was greatly impressed. Of course, he tried to conceal his wonder and admiration, because a brave must never be surprised. He hid it in his leather shirt, then he went, with startling swiftness and perfectly noiseless, and the girl found herself alone again faced by the necessity of instant flight.

It was three o'clock in the morning, and she wanted to be off in the grey of daybreak.

There was no time to make a careful disposition of the "greenbacks," or dollar bills. She took a broad strip of a pelt, cured soft as silk, tacked the two packets to it with strong stitches of her needle and thread, and fastened it round her waist under her leather shirt. It was the only way she could think of doing it quickly. Later she might invent some new plan. But it all depended on events.

Then she woke David, who grunted rather discontentedly, and then sat up in his blankets.

"What's the good of getting up in the middle of the night," he said; "we've done all the things, and we aren't going till to-morrow."

"We are going to-day, in about half an hour," Nell told him; "something has happened."

"I _say_--what, what's happened?" David scrubbed his face with both hands to wake himself, he was still rather unbelieving.

"I'll tell you while we are having breakfast," said Nell. "It's very queer and it isn't nice! Things have been happening all night, and now it's just about daybreak."

"_I say!_" exclaimed the boy again, "then you haven't been to sleep! What a shame!"

"Don't think I could have gone to sleep anyhow. I had such a horribly wideawake mind. Never mind, we'll sleep to-night--let's hope." She laughed and went away.

Less than an hour later the little cavalcade took the trail.

Nell left the house in order because she could not find it possible to leave dirt and confusion. She locked the door outside and put the big key in her pocket. Then she nailed a square of paper on the doorpost, using a stone to drive in the nail. On the paper was printed:

GONE ON. E.L. (for Ellen Lindsay).

"Will he believe that?" asked David, speaking in a whisper, for the grey, thick chill of the morning's dawn rather oppressed him, though the flight did not. He thought the whole thing a mighty spree.

"Not till he's broken open the door," said Nell dryly. "That is the time I'm counting on, you see? He'll break in and hunt every corner of the house for Dad's money. When he can't find it he'll think I've gone on to Dad, at their shack. I'm counting on _that_, too."

"Jolly lot of counting, and not much really certainty," commented David, making a face. "How's he going to account for breaking the door open and turning the place upside down--I mean when Dad comes back?"

"Oh--he'll say the Chippewas must have done it. It's pretty simple, because Indians do break into shacks sometimes. That'll do for a story if nothing comes of his plan--I mean if he doesn't get hold of the money, anyhow. But you must remember he's laying out to lift that money off us somehow, and if he gets it they'll just vamoose"--by which she meant--"make themselves scarce"--"they won't stop to make explanations."

"Well," said David as he strapped on his snowshoes, "they won't get it."

"No," agreed Nell, "they won't. But they'll make a good try, because when people begin on a nasty job they get kind of involved and _have_ to go on."

"Best thing is not to begin," said her brother in rather a sententious voice.

Nell showed her pretty teeth in a silent laugh.

"Come on," she whispered, as she fastened the harness on her odd steeds. "Off we go, Da, and God bless us all--Dad as well."

The fall of the ground was steepish, but the track was fairly beaten out, because winter and summer it was a path to the stream below. The distance was hardly more than half a mile, and in summer Nell went up and down often for water. In winter they went up and down almost as often for fish, as they had got an ice-hole trap in the stream, which was deepish, though not very wide so early in its course, its source being way up in the mountains at the back of the log house.

Nell's plan was quite definite. She meant to get on the "River" and follow its course to the lake--about thirty miles, perhaps more--cross the lake, get on to the ever-widening river and go on at top speed till their river joined up with the Moose, when they might hope to hit on human habitations.

It was a reasonable plan, but there was one very serious danger--the possibility that "the bottom might fall out of the trail," as the language of the northlands puts it. In other words, that the ice might break and go down-stream--one moving mass, hundreds of miles in length, cracking, heaving, and piling up on itself. That happened every spring. The farther up north you were the later it took place, of course. A few days of sunshine, a milder feel in the wind, and the springs in the hills would begin to trickle into the streams, the streams into the rivers, and up would rise the bursting ice on the swollen water.

Now that was what Nell was dreading most of all. A thaw would make the snow clog, too; there was extra effort when the trail was heavy. As they darted down the hill she sniffed the air like a dog; the snowflakes drifting against her face were rather large and wettish, not like the biting ice powder that drove along in the winter.

A thaw was coming, but she would do this journey before it made the river road impassable.

Down and down they went, Nell hanging back her whole weight to prevent the sled slipping on to Robin's heels. David kept to the outside for the time, giving a hand to steady the load at the worst places. There was nothing top heavy or slack about the packing of the sled. They had been trained to do it to perfection--canvas cover lashed down at the sides as neatly as the mainsail cover of a well-kept yacht.

In ten minutes they had reached the stream and stood firm upon the snow-covered ice. The real journey was beginning.

They stood still to take breath after the scramble of that quick descent. Nell looked back at the track. It was covered already with snow. She felt a thrill of thankfulness that her hope was fulfilled. The marks of the sled runners were not quite gone in places--though they would be soon--but the trail of the dog's feet, and the digs made by the heel of the snowshoes when the weight was thrown back so hard, were already gone. The hard packing of the snow had helped them, and now came fresh snow and blotted out the trail.

On either side of them the banks rose fairly steep, and woods covered the banks. All the world was still and grey, and under the spruce firs the snow carpet lay smooth and untrodden-- dead white with the black boles rising from it.

Their road lay straight ahead by the frozen stream, and the one thing that mattered was haste.

David now took his place as leader. Robin trotted behind him in the traces, muzzle to the ground as he always ran, and Nell pushed at the back. Both she and David wore the round-toed snowshoes that most of the Indians use--not the very long shape like a boat, worn by the plainsmen, and the men who go on the long trail over the vast snow expanses in the far north.

These shoes are made of the green wood of the tamarack, steamed to make it pliable--then the loop can be bowed into the shape of the snowshoe racket. This is bound in place by strips of caribou skin rawhide soaked in warm water, which also binds the ends together. When this is done the shoe is hung up to dry slowly, afterwards holes are made with the red-hot cleaning rod of a rifle which is used for boring, then webbing of caribou rawhide shrinks when it is wet and thus tightens up the shoe when other things would stretch.

Both Nell and David were used to this form of travelling and had long ceased to get the cramps and aches that come to people at the beginning.

Silent as the falling snow down the river path between the deathly stillness of the woods they flew along.

The journey had begun in earnest.