the paddles, and had crawled under it. But, overcome with weariness, they
had left the packets of food and ammunition lying where they had been
tossed, on the lower beach. Now, in the dull light of dawn, Hugh could
see the waves rolling in and breaking far above where the packages had
been dropped. The canoe had disappeared. It took him but a moment to
grasp all this. He ran back down the beach to join Blaise, who was
plunging in to his knees in the attempt to rescue what he could.

“The canoe?” Hugh shouted.

“Safe,” Blaise replied briefly, and made a dash after a retreating wave,
seizing a skin bag of corn just as it was floating away.

At the same instant Hugh caught sight of a packet of powder, and darted
after it, a bitter cold wave breaking over him just as he bent to snatch
the packet.

The two worked with frantic haste, heedless of the waves that soaked them
above the knees and sometimes broke clear over their heads as they
stooped to seize bag or package. They saved what they could, but the
dried meat, one sack of corn, Hugh’s bundle of extra clothing, the roll
of birch bark and the pine gum for repairing the canoe, had all gone out
into the lake. The maple sugar was partly dissolved. Some of the powder,
though the wrapping was supposed to be water-proof, was soaked, and
Hugh’s gun, which he had carelessly left with the other things, was so
wet it would have to be dried and oiled before it could be used. Blaise
had carried his gun to bed with him, and it was safe and dry.

Even the half-breed boy, who usually woke at the slightest sound, had
been so tired and had slept so heavily that the rising of the wind and
the pounding of the waves had not disturbed him. It was not until a
strong gust lifted the canoe from over his head, and a falling paddle
struck him sharply, that he woke. He had sprung up, seized the overturned
canoe and carried it to the shelter of a large rock. Then he had
returned, flung his gun and the paddles farther up the beach, and had
aroused the still sleeping Hugh.

When everything they had rescued had been carried beyond the reach of the
waves and placed in the lee of a rock out of the wind, the two boys
skirted the beach in the hope that the meat, corn or clothes might have
been cast up in some other spot. The beach, at the head of a small and
shallow cove, was not long. When Hugh had gone as far over pebbles and
boulders as he could, he scrambled up the rock point that bounded the
cove on the north and followed it to the end, without seeing anything of
the lost articles. As he reached the bare rock tip, the sun was just
coming up among red and angry clouds across the water, flushing with
crimson and orange the wildly heaving waves. The wind was a little east
of north. No rain had fallen where the boys were camped, but Hugh felt
sure from the clouds that a storm must have passed not many miles away.
The little cove being open and unprotected to the northeast, the full
force of the wind entered it and piled the waves upon the beach.

When Hugh returned to the camping place, he found that Blaise, who had
gone in the other direction, had had no better luck. The strong under
pull of the retreating waves had carried the lost articles out to deep
water.

Going on with the journey in such a blow was out of the question. The
boys made themselves as comfortable as possible behind a heap of boulders
out of the wind.

“I wish we knew in which direction Ohrante is bound,” Hugh said, as he
scraped the last morsel of his scanty portion of corn porridge from his
bark dish, with the crude wooden spoon he had carved for himself.

“He went up the shore as we came down,” Blaise replied. “He is probably
going down now. Somewhere he has met his enemies and has taken one
prisoner at least.”

“I wish we might have travelled farther before camping,” Hugh returned.

Blaise shrugged in his French fashion. “He cannot go on in this weather,
and we cannot either. Passing him last night was a great risk. I knew
that all their eyes would be blinded by the fire glare, so they could not
see into the shadows, else I should not have dared. All went well, yet we
must still be cautious and make but small fires and little smoke.”

“No column of smoke can ascend high enough in this gale to be seen,” Hugh
argued.

“But the smell will travel far, and the wind blows from us to them.
Caution is never wasted, my brother.”

Forced to discontinue the journey for most of the day, the lads spent the
time seeking food. They were far enough from Ohrante’s camp to have
little fear that any of his party would hear their shots, yet they chose
to hunt to the north rather than to the south. With some of the dry
powder and the shot that had been saved, Blaise started out first, while
Hugh spread the wet powder to dry on a flat rock exposed to the sun but
sheltered from the wind. Then he cleaned and dried his gun and greased it
with pork fat before leaving camp.

Hugh wandered the woods in search of game for several hours. He did not
go far back from shore. Traversing the thick woods, where there was much
undergrowth, was difficult and he did not greatly trust his own
woodcraft. He had no wish to humiliate himself in his half-brother’s eyes
by losing his way. Moreover, as long as he kept where the wind reached
him, he was not much annoyed by the mosquitoes, at their worst in June.
Whenever he reached a spot where the wind did not penetrate, the
irritating insects came about him in clouds, settling on his hands, face,
wrists and neck and even getting inside his rather low necked, deerskin
shirt.

Whether he did not go far enough into the woods or for some other reason,
his luck was not good. He shot a squirrel and a long-eared, northern hare
or snowshoe rabbit and missed another, but did not catch a glimpse of
deer, moose, or bear. Neither squirrel nor rabbit meat was at its best in
June, but it was at least better than no meat at all. Carrying his meager
bag, he returned late in the afternoon. He found Blaise squatting over a
small cooking fire. The iron kettle gave out a most appetizing odor. The
younger boy had secured three plump ruffed grouse. In the Lake Superior
wilderness of that day no laws prohibited the shooting of game birds out
of season. The stew which appealed so strongly to Hugh’s nostrils was
made up of grouse and squirrel meat, with a very little salt pork to give
it savor.

The wind had fallen and since noon the waves had been going down. By
sunset, though the lake was by no means smooth, travel had become
possible for skilled canoeists. Had Hugh and Blaise not been in such a
hurry to put distance between themselves and Ohrante, they would have
waited until morning. They were so anxious to go on that they launched
the canoe while the afterglow was still reflected in pink and lavender on
the eastern sky. A few miles would bring them to the Devil Track River,
but, not choosing to camp in that evil spot, Blaise insisted on landing
about a mile below the stream mouth.

Leaving their camp early next morning, the two started overland to the
Devil Track. All day long they sought for some trace of the hidden cache.
Not until after sunset did they cease their efforts. Weary and
disheartened they returned to their camping place, Hugh in the lead. They
had left the canoe turned bottom up over their supplies and well
concealed by a thicket of red-stemmed osier dogwoods. The elder brother’s
sharp exclamation when he reached the spot made the younger one hasten to
his side.

“Look!” cried Hugh, pointing to the birch craft.

Blaise did not need to be told to look. The ragged, gaping hole in the
bark was too conspicuous. “A porcupine,” he exclaimed.

“It was the devil in the form of a porcupine, I think,” Hugh muttered.
“What possessed the beast?”

“He smelled the pork and gnawed his way through to it. The porcupine
loves all things salt. We will see.”

Blaise was right. When the canoe was lifted, the boys discovered that the
small chunk of salt pork was gone, taken out through the hole the beast
had gnawed. Nothing else was missing.

“Either he didn’t like the other things or the pork was all he could
carry away at one trip,” said Hugh. “If we had stayed away a little
longer, he might have made off with the corn and the sugar as well.”

“The loss of the pork is bad,” Blaise commented gravely. “The hole in the
canoe is bad also, and we must delay to mend it.”

The loss of the pork was indeed serious. The rabbit and the squirrel Hugh
had shot the day before had been eaten, and nothing else remained but a
few handfuls of corn and a little sugar. So once more, after setting some
snares, the lads went to sleep supperless. They slept with the corn and
sugar between them for protection.

Blaise might have suspected that the fiend of the river had put a spell
on his snares, for in the morning he found them all empty. The dry, stony
ground showed no tracks. If any long-legged hare had come that way, he
had been wary enough to avoid the nooses.

After the scantiest of breakfasts the boys set about repairing the canoe.
Luckily the ball of wattap, the fine, tough roots of the spruce prepared
for use as thread, had not been lost when the waves covered the beach at
their former camp. From a near-by birch Blaise cut a strong, smooth piece
of bark without knotholes. With his knife he trimmed the ragged edges of
the hole. Having softened and straightened his wattap by soaking it, he
sewed the patch on neatly, using a large steel needle he had bought at
the trading post at the Kaministikwia.

In the meantime Hugh sought a pine grove up the river, where he obtained
some chunks of resin. The resin he softened with heat to a sticky gum and
applied it to the seams and stitches. Blaise went over them again with a
live coal held in a split stick, and spread the softened resin skillfully
with thumb and knife blade. Then the canoe was left bottom side up for
the gum to dry and harden.

In spite of the fact that the boys, on their way down the shore, had
searched the land to the east of the Devil Track with considerable
thoroughness, they were determined to go over it again. By means of a
fallen tree and the boulders that rose above the foaming rapids, they
crossed the river where it narrowed between rock walls. Late in the
afternoon, Blaise, scrambling up a steep and stony slope well back from
the stream, heard two shots in quick succession and then a third at a
longer interval, the signal agreed upon to indicate that one or the other
had come across something significant. The sounds came from the direction
of the lake, and Blaise hastened down to the shore.

                                  XIII
                           THE PAINTED THWART

Blaise found Hugh stooping over a heap of shattered, water-stained
boards, crude planks, axe hewn from the tree.

“Can this be the boat, do you think?” Hugh asked.

Blaise shook his head doubtfully. “It was not here on the beach when we
came this way before.”

“Yet it may be part of the wreck washed from some outer rock and cast
here by that last hard blow,” reasoned the older boy.

“That is possible. If we could find more of it, the part that bears the
sign——”

“What sign? You told me of no sign. I have often wondered how, if we
found a wrecked boat, we should know whether it was the right one.”

“Surely I told you of the sign. The board that bears the hole for the
mast is painted with vermilion, and on it in black is our father’s sign,
the figure that means his Ojibwa name, ‘man with the bright eyes, the
eyes that make sparks.’ Twice the sign is there, once on each side of the
mast.”

Hugh was staring at his younger brother. Black figures on a vermilion
ground! Where had he seen such a thing, seen it recently, since he left
the Sault? Then he remembered. “Show me, Blaise,” he cried, “what that
figure looks like, that means father’s Indian name.”

Blaise picked up a smooth gray flake and with a bit of softer, dark red
stone scratched the figure.

“That is it,” Hugh exclaimed. “I have seen that wrecked boat, a bateau
with the thwart painted red and that very same figure drawn in black.”

“You have seen it?” The younger brother looked at the elder wonderingly.
“In your dreams?”

“No, I was wide awake, but it was a long way from here and before ever I
saw you, Blaise.” Rapidly Hugh related how he and Baptiste had examined
the old bateau in the cleft of the rocks of the Isle Royale.

Blaise listened in silence, only his eyes betraying his interest. “Truly
we know not where to search,” he said when Hugh had finished. “The bateau
drifted far. How can we find where it went upon the rocks?”

“I don’t believe it drifted far. If it was so badly damaged father had to
abandon it, could it have floated far? Surely it would have gone to the
bottom. When that boat was carried across to Isle Royale, I believe
father and Black Thunder were still in it with all their furs. The storm
drove them out into the lake, they lost their bearings, just as we in the
_Otter_ did. They were borne away and dashed by the waves into that crack
in the rocks. Near there somewhere we shall find the cache, if we find it
at all.”

Hugh spoke confidently, very sure of his own reasoning, but the younger
lad was not so easily convinced.

“How,” Blaise questioned, “did he come away from that island Minong if he
was wrecked there? He could not come by land and the bateau is still
there.”

“He made himself a dugout or birch canoe to cross in when the weather
cleared.”

“But then why came he not to Wauswaugoning by canoe?”

“Because,” persisted Hugh, “when he reached the mainland he fell in with
some enemy here at the Devil Track River. We know his wound was not
received in the wreck. You yourself say it was a knife wound. Black
Thunder wasn’t killed in the wreck either. They escaped unharmed but the
bateau was beyond repair. So they built a canoe and crossed to this
shore. Here they were set upon and Black Thunder was killed and father
sorely wounded.”

Again the sceptical Blaise shook his head. “Why were they away down here
so far below the Grand Portage? And why, if they had a canoe, brought
they not the furs and the packet with them?”

Hugh was aware of the weak links in his theory, yet he clung to it.
“Maybe they did bring them,” he said, “but couldn’t carry them overland,
so they hid them.”

“No, no. Our father told me that the furs were not far from the wreck. He
said that three or four times. I cannot be mistaken.”

“Perhaps their canoe wasn’t big enough to hold all of the pelts,” Hugh
speculated. “What they did bring may have fallen into Ohrante’s hands. So
father spoke only of the rest, hidden in a secret place near the wreck.
To me that seems reasonable enough. But,” he admitted honestly, “I don’t
quite understand how they came to be so far down the shore here, and, if
the packet is valuable, why didn’t father bring that with him if he
brought anything? And why didn’t he tell you that the storm drove him on
Isle Royale?”

“You forget,” Blaise said slowly, “that our father’s body was very weak
and his spirit just about to leave it. I asked him where to find the
bateau. He told me of the way it was marked, but he could say no more. I
think he could not hear my questions.”

Both lads were silent for several minutes, then Hugh said decisively,
“Well, Blaise, there are just two things we can do, unless we give up the
quest entirely. We can go back down the shore, searching the land for
some sign of the cache, or we can cross to Isle Royale, find the cleft in
the rocks where the bateau lies, and seek there for the furs and the
packet. I am for the latter plan. To search the whole shore from here to
the Fond du Lac for a hidden cache to which we have no clue seems to me a
hopeless task.”

“But to cross that long stretch of open water in a small canoe,” Blaise
returned doubtfully.

“We must choose good weather of course, and paddle our swiftest to reach
the island before a change comes. Perhaps we can rig some kind of sail
and make better time than with our paddles.”

It was plain that Hugh had made up his mind to return to Isle Royale.
Hitherto he had been content to let Blaise take the lead, but now he was
asserting his elder brother’s right to leadership. Better than his white
brother, Blaise understood the hazards of such an undertaking, but the
half-breed lad was proud. He was not going to admit himself less
courageous than his elder brother. If Hugh dared take the risk, he,
Little Caribou, as his mother’s people called him, dared take it also.

The brothers must provision themselves for the trip. Even if they reached
the island safely and in good time, they could not guess how long their
search might take, or how many days or weeks they might be delayed before
they could return. Fresh supplies might have reached the Grand Portage by
now and corn at least could be bought. From the Indians always to be
found near the posts, other food supplies and new moccasins might be
obtained.

Considering food supplies reminded the lads of their hunger. They decided
to devote the remaining hours of daylight to fishing for their supper.
They would start for the Grand Portage in the morning. Blaise paddled
slowly along a submerged reef some distance out from shore, while Hugh
fished.

In a very few minutes he felt a pull at his line. Hand over hand he
hauled it in, Blaise helping by managing the canoe so that the line did
not slacken even for an instant. Nearer and nearer Hugh drew his prize,
until he could see the gleaming silver of the big fish flashing through
the clear water. Then came the critical moment. He had no landing net,
and reaching over the side with net or gaff would have been a risk at
best. Without shifting his weight enough to destroy the balance, while
Blaise endeavored to hold the canoe steady with his paddle, Hugh must
land his fish squarely in the bottom. With a sudden swing, the long,
silvery, dark-flecked body, tail wildly flapping, was raised from the
water and flung into the canoe. Almost before it touched the bottom, Hugh
had seized his knife and dealt a swift blow. A few ineffectual flaps and
the big fish lay still.

“Fifteen pounds at least,” Hugh exulted. “I have seen larger trout, but
most of them were taken in nets.”

“They grow very big sometimes, two, three times as big, but it is not
good to catch such a big one with a line. Unless you have great luck, it
overturns your canoe.”

The sight of the big trout sharpened the boys’ hunger pangs and took away
all zest from further fishing. They paddled full speed for shore and
supper.

Favored by good weather they made a quick trip to the Grand Portage. In
the bay a small ship lay at anchor, and they knew supplies must have
arrived.

“That is not the _Otter_,” Hugh remarked as they paddled by.

“No, it is not one of the Old Company’s ships. I think it belongs to the
New Company.”

“I’m glad it isn’t the _Otter_,” Hugh replied. “I shouldn’t know how to
answer Baptiste’s questions.”

The ship proved, as Blaise had guessed, to belong to the New Company. She
sailed the day after the boys arrived, but had left ample supplies. They
had no difficulty in buying the needed stores, though Hugh’s money was
exhausted by the purchases. He left explanations to Blaise, confident
that his younger brother could not be persuaded to divulge the
destination or purpose of their trip.

Again bad weather held the lads at the Grand Portage and Wauswaugoning.
The last day of their stay, when they were returning from the New
Company’s post, they came upon the camp of the trappers whose bateau had
loomed like a ship through the morning mist when the boys were leaving
the Bay of the Beaver. Hugh recognized at once the tall fellow in the
scarlet cap who had replied to his shout of greeting. The trappers had
disposed of their furs at the Old Company’s post and were about to leave.
They were going to portage their supplies to Fort Charlotte above the
falls of the Pigeon River and go up the river in a canoe. Hugh inquired
what they intended to do with their small bateau which was drawn up on
the shore.

“You want it?” the leader questioned in his big voice.

“Will you sell it?” the boy asked eagerly.

The man nodded. “What you give?”

Hugh flushed with chagrin, remembering that all his money was gone.
Blaise came to the rescue by offering to trade some ammunition for the
boat. The man shook his head. Blaise added to his offer a small quantity
of food supplies, but still the fellow refused. “Too little,” he
grumbled, then added something in his curious mixture of Scotch-English
and Ojibwa. He was a Scotch half-breed and Hugh found his dialect
difficult to understand.

Blaise shrugged, walked over to the boat and examined it. He turned
towards the man and spoke in rapid Ojibwa. The fellow answered in the
same tongue, pointing to the lad’s gun.

“What does he say?” asked Hugh.

“I told him his bateau needs mending,” Blaise answered in French, “but he
will not trade for anything but my gun, which is better than his. I will
not give him the gun. Our father gave it to me.”

Hugh understood his half-brother’s feeling, but he was eager to secure
the boat. “He may have my gun,” he whispered. He knew that the tall
fellow understood some French. “Tell him if he will include the sail—he
had one, you know—I’ll give him my gun and some ammunition. Mine doesn’t
shoot as accurately as yours, but it looks newer.”

Blaise made the offer in Ojibwa, Hugh repeated it in English, and after
an unsuccessful attempt to get more, the man agreed. He put into the boat
the mast and canvas, which he had been using as a shelter, and Hugh
handed over the gun and ammunition.

The rest of the day was spent in making a few necessary repairs to the
bateau, and the following morning, before a light southwest breeze, the
lads set sail. Blaise knew nothing of this sort of water travel, but Hugh
had handled a sailboat before, though never one quite so clumsy as this
crude, heavy bateau. The boat was pointed at both ends, flat bottomed and
built of thick, hand-hewn boards. It carried a small, square sail on a
stubby mast. With axe and knife Hugh had made a crude rudder and had
lashed it to the stern in the place of the paddle the trappers had been
content to steer with. Blaise quickly learned to handle the rudder,
leaving Hugh free to manage the sail. It was a satisfaction to the older
boy to find something in which he excelled his younger brother and could
take the lead. It restored his self-respect as the elder. Blaise, on the
other hand, obeyed orders instantly and proved himself as reliable a
subordinate as he had been leader. The breeze holding steady, the bateau
made fairly good speed. They might possibly have made better time in a
canoe, but the new mode of travel was a pleasant change from the constant
labor of plying the blades.

Had the lads but known it, their wisest course would have been to cross
directly from the Grand Portage to the southwestern end of Isle Royale
and then skirt the island to its northeast tip. But they had no map to
tell them this. Indeed in those days the position of Isle Royale was but
imperfectly understood. It had been visited by scarcely any white men and
was avoided by the Indians. During the boys’ detention at the Grand
Portage, rain and fog had rendered the island, some eighteen or twenty
miles away, invisible. The day they set sail the sky was blue overhead,
but there was still haze enough on the water to obscure the distance. It
was not strange that they believed Isle Royale farther off than it really
was. From its northeastern end the _Otter_ had sailed to the
Kaministikwia, and Hugh took for granted that the shortest way to reach
the island must be from some point on Thunder Bay. He was aware of the
deep curve made by the shore to form the great bay, and realized that to
follow clear around that curve would be a loss of time. Instead of
turning north to follow the shore, he held on to the northeast, along the
inner side of a long line of narrow, rocky islands and reefs, rising from
the water like the summits of a mountain chain and forming a breakwater
for the protection of the bay.

It was from one of those islands, now called McKellar Island, south about
two miles from the towering heights of the Isle du Paté and at least
fifteen miles by water from the southern mouth of the Kaministikwia, that
the adventurers finally set out for Isle Royale. Before they dared
attempt the perilous sail across the long stretch of the open lake, they
remained in camp a day to let the southwest wind, which had risen to half
a gale, blow itself out. Wind they needed for their venture, but not too
much wind.

                                  XIV
                      SAILING TOWARDS THE SUNRISE

“Truly the spirit of the winds favors us.” Blaise forgot for the moment
his Christian training and spoke in the manner of his Indian forefathers.
He had waked at dawn and, finding the lake merely rippled by a steady
west breeze, had aroused Hugh.

So anxious were the two to take advantage of the perfect weather that
they did not wait for breakfast, but hastily flung their blankets and
cooking utensils into the boat. With the two strong paddles included in
the purchase, they ran the bateau out of the little cove where it had
lain sheltered. Then, hoisting the sail, they steered towards the dawn.

Hugh Beaupré never forgot that sail into the sunrise. Ahead of him the
sky, all rose and gold and faint green blending into soft blue, met the
water without the faintest, thinnest line of land between. Before and
around the boat, the lake shimmered with the reflected tints that
glorified even the patched and dirty sail. Was he bound for the other
side of the world, for some glorious, unearthly realm beyond that
gleaming water? A sense of mingled dread and exultation swept over the
boy, his face flushed, his gray eyes sparkled, his pulse quickened. He
knew the feeling of the explorer setting out for new lands, realms of he
knows not what perils and delights.

The moment of thrill passed, and Hugh turned to glance at Blaise. The
younger boy, his hand on the tiller rope, sat like a statue, his dark
face tense, his shining hazel eyes betraying a kindred feeling to that
which had held Hugh in its thrall. Never before in all their days of
journeying together had the white lad and the half-breed felt such
perfect comradeship. Speech was unnecessary between them.

As the sun rose higher and the day advanced, Blaise was not so sure that
fortune was favoring the venture. The wind sank until the water was
broken by the merest ripple only. There was scarcely enough pressure
against the sail to keep the boat moving.

“At this rate we shall be a week in reaching the island,” said Hugh,
anxiously eying the canvas. “We can go faster with the paddles. Lash the
rudder and we’ll try the blades.”

For the first time since they had changed from canoe to sailboat Blaise
voiced an objection. “To paddle this heavy bateau is hard work,” he said.
“We cannot keep at it all day and all night, as we could in a bark canoe.
As long as the wind blows at all and we move onward, even slowly, we had
best save our strength. Soon we shall need it. Before the sun is
overhead, there will be no wind at all, and then we must paddle.”

Hugh nodded agreement, but, less patient than his half-brother, he found
it trying to sit idle waiting for the gentle breeze to die. Blaise had
prophesied truly. Before noon the sail was hanging loose and idle, the
water, blue under a cloudless sky, was without a wrinkle. It is not often
really hot on the open waters of Lake Superior, but that day the sun
glared down upon the little boat, and the distance shimmered with heat
haze. The bateau had no oars or oarlocks, only two stout paddles, and
paddling the heavy, clumsy boat was slow, hot work.

Pausing for a moment’s rest after an hour’s steady plying of his blade,
Hugh uttered an exclamation. “Look, Blaise,” he cried. “We haven’t so far
to go. There is the Isle Royale ahead, and not far away either.”

He pointed with his blade to the hazy blue masses across the still water.
High the land towered, with points and bays and detached islands.
Encouraged by the sight, the two bent to their paddles.

In a few minutes Hugh cried out again. “How strange the island looks,
Blaise! I don’t remember any flat-topped place like that. See, it looks
as if it had been sliced off with a knife.”

The distant shore had taken on a strange appearance. High towering land
it seemed to be, but curiously level and flattened at the top, like no
land Hugh had seen around Lake Superior.

“There is something wrong,” the boy went on, puzzled. “We must be off our
course. That is not Isle Royale, at least not the part I saw. Where are
we, Blaise? Are we going in the wrong direction? Can that be part of the
mainland?”

“It is not the mainland over that way,” Blaise made prompt reply. “It
must be some part of Minong.” He used the Indian name for the island.

“But I saw nothing the——” Hugh began, then broke off to cry out, “Look,
look, the island is changing before our eyes! It towers up there to the
right, and over there, where it was high a moment ago, it shrinks and
fades away!”

“It is some enchanted land,” the younger boy murmured, gazing in wonder
at the dim blue shapes that loomed in one place, shrank in another,
changed size and form before his awestruck eyes. “It is a land of
spirits.” He ceased his paddling to cross himself.

For a moment Hugh too was inclined to believe that he and his brother
were the victims of witchcraft. But, though not free from superstition,
he had less of it than the half-breed. Moreover he remembered the looming
of the very boat he was now in, when he had first seen it in the mists of
dawn, and also the rock that had looked like an island, when he was on
his way from Michilimackinac. The captain of the ship had told him of
some of the queer visions called mirages he had seen when sailing the
lakes. Turning towards Blaise, Hugh attempted to explain the strange
sight ahead.

“It is the mirage. I have heard of it. The Captain of the _Athabasca_
told me that the mirage is caused by the light shining through mist or
layers of cloud or air that reflect in some way we do not understand,
making images of land appear where there is no land or changing the
appearance of the real land. Sometimes, he said, images of islands are
seen upside down in the sky, above the real water-line. It is all very
strange and no one quite understands why it comes or how, but there is no
enchantment about it, Blaise.”

The younger boy nodded, his eyes still on the changing, hazy shapes
ahead. Without reply, he resumed his paddling. How much he understood of
his elder brother’s explanation, Hugh could not tell. At any rate Blaise
was too proud to show further fear of something Hugh did not seem to be
afraid of.

In silence the two plied their paddles under the hot sun, but the heavy
wooden boat did not respond like a bark canoe to their efforts. Progress
was very slow. White clouds were gathering in the south, moving slowly up
and across the sky, though the water remained quiet. The clouds veiled
the sun. The distant land shrank to a mere blue line, its natural shape
and size, and seemed to come no nearer for all their efforts. Both boys
were growing anxious. After the heat and stillness of the day, the
clouds, slow moving though they were, threatened storm. The two dug their
blades into the water, straining muscles of arms and shoulders to put all
their strength into the stroke.

A crinkle, a ripple was spreading over the green-blue water. A breeze was
coming up from the southwest. Hugh laid down his blade to raise the sail.
In the west the rays of the setting sun were breaking through the clouds
and dyeing them crimson, flame and orange. He was glad to see the sun
again, for it brought him assurance that he was keeping the course, not
swinging too far to north or south.

The breeze, very light at first, strengthened after sunset and became
more westerly, the most favorable direction. The clumsy boat and square
sail could not be made to beat against the wind, but Hugh’s course was a
little north of east. He could sail directly with the wind and yet be
assured of not going far out of his way. The farthest tip of land ahead,
now freed from the false distortions of mirage, he took to be the end of
the long, high shore, where, in the fissure, he and Baptiste had found
the old bateau. That land was still very far away, other islands or
points of the main island lying nearer.

As darkness gathered, the breeze swept away the clouds, and stars and
moon shone out. Sailing over the gently heaving water, where the
moonlight made a shimmering path, was a pleasant change from paddling the
heavy boat in the heat of the day. The boys’ evening meal consisted of a
few handfuls of hulled corn and some maple sugar, with the clear, cold
lake water for drink. Both Blaise at the tiller and Hugh handling the
sheet found it difficult to keep awake. The day had been a long one, but
they must remain alert to hold their course and avoid disaster.

They were approaching land now. In the moonlight, to avoid islands and
projecting rocks was not difficult. Sunken reefs were harder to discern.
Only the breaking of waves upon the rocks that rose near to the surface
betrayed the danger. So the steersman shunned points and the ends of
islands from which hidden reefs might run out. Hugh would have been glad
to camp on the first land reached, but he knew he ought to take advantage
of the favorable wind and get as near as possible to the spot where the
wreck lay. Shaking off his drowsiness, he gave his whole attention to
navigation.

Several islands and a number of points, that might belong either to the
great island or to smaller bordering ones, were passed before reaching a
low shore, well wooded, which Hugh felt sure he recognized. He remembered
that the _Otter_ had been obliged to go far out around the tip to avoid a
long reef. He warned Blaise to steer well out, but the latter did not go
quite far enough and the boat grazed a rock. No damage was done, however.
The bateau was now headed for a strip of much higher land, showing dark
between sky and water. Hugh thought that must be the towering,
tree-crowned, rock shore he recalled. To land there tonight was out of
the question. The moon had gone down, and to run, in the darkness, up the
bay to the spot where the _Otter_ had taken shelter might also prove
difficult. Hugh decided they had better tie up somewhere on the point
they had just rounded. He lowered the sail and both boys took up their
paddles. For some distance they skirted the steep, slanting rock shore
where the trees grew down as far as they could cling.

One mountain ash had lost its footing and fallen into the lake. To the
fallen tree Hugh tied the boat, in still water and under the shadow of
the shore. Then he and Blaise rolled themselves in their blankets and lay
down in the bottom. Heedless of the dew-wet planking they were asleep
immediately. The water rippled gently against the rough sides of the
boat, an owl in a spruce sent forth its eerie hoots, from across the
water a loon answered with a wild, mocking cry, but the tired lads slept
on undisturbed.

                                   XV
                          THE RIFT IN THE ROCK

The brothers were in the habit of waking early, but it had been nearly
dawn when they lay down, and, in the shadow of the trees, they slept
until the sun was well started on his day’s journey. When they did wake,
Hugh’s first glance was towards the land across the water.

There was no mistaking that high towering shore, steep rocks at the base,
richly forest clad above. It was the same shore he had seen weeks before,
the first time dimly through fog and snow, again clear cut and distinct,
when he and Baptiste had rowed Captain Bennett out of the bay, and yet a
third time from the deck of the _Otter_ as she sailed away towards
Thunder Cape.

“We have come aright, Blaise,” said Hugh with satisfaction. “That is the
place we seek, and it can’t be more than a mile away. Do you see that
spot where the trees come to the water, that tiny break in the rocks? It
is a little cove with a bit of beach, and in that stretch of rocks to the
left is the crack where the old boat lies. I’m sure of the spot, because
from the _Otter_, when we were leaving, I noticed the bare rock pillars
of that highest ridge away up there, like the wall of a fort among the
trees. It doesn’t show quite so plainly now the birches are in leaf, but
I’m sure it is the same. There are two little coves almost directly below
that pillared rock wall, and the cliff is a little farther to the left.
Oh, but I am hungry,” he added. “We must have a good breakfast before we
start across.”

Over the short stretch of water that separated the low point from the
high shore, the bateau sailed before the brisk wind. The stretch of gray,
pillared rock, like the wall of a fortress, high up among the greenery,
served as a guide. As the boat drew nearer, the twin coves, shallow
depressions in the shore line separated by a projecting mass of rock,
came clear to view.

“Steer for the cliff just beyond the left hand cove,” Hugh ordered.
“We’ll run in close and then turn.”

Blaise obediently steered straight for the mass of rock with the vertical
fissures, as if his purpose were to dash the boat against the cliff. As
they drew close, Hugh gave a shout.

The crack had come into view, a black rift running at an angle into the
cliff. As the boat swung about to avoid going on the rocks, the younger
boy’s quick eye caught a glimpse, in that dark fissure, of the end of a
bateau. To give him that glimpse, Hugh had taken a chance of wrecking
their own boat. Now he was obliged to act quickly, lowering the sail and
seizing a paddle.

In the trough of the waves, they skirted, close in, the steep, rugged
rocks. Almost hidden by a short point was the bit of beach at the end of
the first of the twin coves. With a dexterous twist of the paddles, the
boys turned their boat and ran up on the beach. Landing with so much
force would have ground the bottom out of a birch canoe, but the heavy
planks of the bateau would stand far worse battering.

The appearance of the cove had changed greatly since that day when Hugh
and Baptiste had rowed past. Then the bushes, birches and mountain ash
trees that ringed the pebbles had been bare limbed. Now, with June more
than two-thirds gone, they were all in full leaf. Big clusters of buds
among the graceful foliage of the mountain ashes were almost ready to
open into handsome flowers. The high-bush cranberries bore white blossoms
here and there, and the ninebark bushes were covered with masses of
pinkish buds. Though Hugh’s mind was on the wreck, his eyes took note of
the almost incredible difference a few weeks had made. His nose sniffed
with appreciation the spicy smell of the fresh, growing tips of the
balsams, mingled with the heliotrope-like odor of the tiny twin-flowers
blooming in the woods. He did not let enjoyment of these things delay
him, however.

“Now,” he cried, when he and Blaise had pulled up the boat, “we must get
into that crack. We can’t reach it from the water in this wind. Perhaps
we can climb down from the top.”

Up a steep rock slope, dotted with fresh green moss, shiny leaved
bearberry, spreading masses of juniper and a few evergreen trees growing
in the depressions, he hastened with Blaise close behind. Along the top
of the cliff they made their way until they reached the rift. Though the
sides of the crack were almost vertical, trees and bushes grew wherever
they could anchor a root. Through branches and foliage, the boys could
get no view of the old boat at the bottom.

“We must climb down,” said Hugh.

“It will be difficult,” Blaise replied doubtfully. “To do it we must
cling to the roots and branches. Those trees have little soil to grow in.
Our weight may pull them over.”

“We must get down some way,” Hugh insisted. “We shall have to take our
chances.”

“The wind and waves will calm. We have but to wait and enter from the
water.”

Hugh had not the Indian patience. “The wind is not going down, it is
coming up,” he protested. “It may blow for a week. I didn’t come here to
wait for calm weather. I’m going down some way.”

He wriggled between the lower branches of a spruce growing on the very
verge of the crack and let himself down a vertical wall, feeling with his
toes for a support. Carefully he rested his weight on the slanting stem
of a stunted cedar growing in a niche. It held him. Clinging with fingers
and moccasined feet to every projection of rock and each branch, stem or
root that promised to hold him, he worked his way down. He heeded his
younger brother’s warning in so far as to test every support before
trusting himself to it. But in spite of his care, a bit of projecting
rock crumbled under his feet. His weight was thrown upon a root he had
laid hold of. The root seemed to be firmly anchored, but it pulled loose,
and Hugh went sliding down right into the old boat. The ice, which had
filled the wreck when he first saw it, had melted. The bateau was more
than half full of water, into which he plumped, splashing it all over
him. He was not hurt, however, only wet and shaken up a bit.

Blaise had already begun to follow his elder brother into the cleft, when
he heard Hugh crash down. Halfway over the edge, the younger boy paused
for a moment. Then Hugh’s shout came up to him. “All right, but be
careful,” the elder brother cautioned.

Light and very agile, the younger lad had better luck, landing nimbly on
his feet on the cross plank of the old boat. It was the vermilion painted
thwart that had held the mast. Eagerly both lads bent over it to make
out, in the dim light, the black figures on the red ground.

“It is our father’s sign,” Blaise said quietly, “our father’s sign, just
as I have seen it many times. This was his bateau, but whether it was
wrecked here or elsewhere we cannot tell.”

“I believe it was wrecked here,” Hugh asserted. “See how the end is
splintered. This boat was driven upon these very rocks where it now lies,
the prow smashed and rents ripped in the bottom and one side. But it is
empty. We must seek some sign to guide us to the furs. We need more
light.”

“I will make a torch. Wait but a moment.”

Blaise straightened up, hooked his fingers over the edge of a narrow,
rock shelf, swung himself up, and ascended the rest of the way as nimbly
as a squirrel. In a few minutes he came scrambling down again, holding in
one hand a roughly made torch, resinous twigs bound together with a bit
of bearberry vine. With sparks from his flint and steel, he lighted the
balsam torch. It did not give a very bright light, but it enabled the
boys to examine the old bateau closely. The only mark they could find
that might have been intended as a guide was a groove across the fore
thwart. At one end of the groove short lines had been cut diagonally to
form an arrow point.

“The cache, if it is on the island, must be sought that way,” said
Blaise.

“The arrow surely points up the crack. We’ll follow it.”

The smashed bow of the boat was firmly lodged among the fragments of rock
upon which it had been driven. Over those fragments, up a steep slope,
the boys picked their way for a few yards, until the walls drew together,
the fissure narrowing to a mere slit. By throwing the light of the torch
into the slit and reaching in arm’s length, Hugh satisfied himself that
there were no furs there. Nevertheless the arrow pointed in that
direction. He looked about him. The left hand wall was almost
perpendicular, solid rock apparently, with only an occasional vertical
crack or shallow niche where some hardy bit of greenery clung. But from
the right wall several blocks had fallen out. On one of those blocks Hugh
was standing. He held the torch up at arm’s length.

“There’s a hole up there. Such a place would make a good cache.”

“Let me up on your shoulders,” Blaise proposed, “and I will look in.”

Sitting on Hugh’s shoulders, Blaise threw the light of the torch into the
hole. Then he reached in his arm. “There are no furs here,” he said.

Hugh had been almost certain he had found the cache. He was keenly
disappointed. “Are you sure?” he cried.

“Yes. It is a small place, just a hole in the rock. Let me down.”

“There are no furs there,” Blaise repeated, when he had jumped down from
Hugh’s shoulders. “But something I found.” He held out a short piece of
rawhide cord.

Hugh stared at the cord, then at his half-brother. “You were not the
first to visit that hole then. What is the meaning of this?” He took the
bit of rawhide in his fingers.

“I think it means that the furs have been there, but have been taken
away,” was the younger lad’s slow reply. “It is a piece from the thong
that bound a bale of furs. That is what I think.”

“Someone has found the cache and taken away the pelts.”

“I fear it,” agreed Blaise. Though he spoke quietly, his disappointment
was as strong as Hugh’s.

“That someone is probably one of the Old Company’s men. Then the furs are
lost to us indeed. Yet we do not know. How did anyone learn of the cache?
It may have been Black Thunder of course, but then what was the meaning
of the blood-stained shirt? No, we don’t know, Blaise. Our furs may be
gone for good, but we can’t be sure. Father may have put them in there
out of reach of the storm and later moved them to some other place, or
they may never have been in that hole at all. Some animal may have
carried that bit of rawhide there.”

Blaise shook his head. “What animal could go up there?”

“A squirrel perhaps, or a bird, a gull. Anyway we can’t give up the
search yet, just because we have found a bit of rawhide in a hole in the
rocks. That would be folly. Perhaps the arrow points up the rift to some
spot above. We can’t climb up here. We must go back.”

The two returned to the wreck and climbed up the way they had come down.
Hugh again in the lead, they followed along the top of the rift to its
head. There they sought earnestly for some sign that might lead them to
the cache, but found none. When at sunset they gave up the search for
that day, their fear that the furs had been stolen from the hole in the
rock had grown near to a certainty. Well-nigh discouraged, they went back
to the beach in the shallow cove where they had left their boat.

“Why is it, Blaise,” Hugh asked, as they sat by the fire waiting for the
kettle to boil, “that no Indians dwell on this big island? It is a
beautiful place and there must be game and furs for the hunting.”

Blaise gave his characteristic French shrug. “I know not if there is much
game, and Minong is far from the mainland. I have heard that there is
great store of copper in the rocks. The Ojibwas say that the island was
made by the giant Kepoochikan. Once upon a time the fish quarrelled with
Kepoochikan and tried to drown him by making a great flood. But he built
a big floating island and made it rich with copper and there he took his
family and all the kinds of birds and beasts there are. When the water,
which had spread over the whole earth, stopped rising, he told a gull to
dive down to the bottom and bring up some mud. The gull could not dive so
far, but drowned before he reached the bottom. Then Kepoochikan sent a
beaver. The beaver came up almost drowned, but with a ball of mud
clutched tight in his hands. Kepoochikan took the mud and made a new
earth, but he kept the island Minong for his home. After many years there
was another giant, the great Nanibozho, who was chief of all the Indians
on the new land Kepoochikan had made. Nanibozho is a good manito and
Kepoochikan a bad one. They went to war, and Nanibozho threw a great
boulder from the mainland across at Kepoochikan and conquered him. The
boulder is here on Minong yet they say. Since then Nanibozho has guarded
the copper of Minong, though some say his real dwelling place is on
Thunder Cape. Off the shore and in the channels of Minong he has set
sharp rocks to destroy the canoes that approach the island, and he has
many spirits to help him guard the treasure.”

“That is only a tale, of course,” said Hugh somewhat disdainfully. “We of
the ship _Otter_ camped here several days and we saw or heard no spirits.
We found nothing to fear.”

“You sought no copper,” was the retort. “It is said that sometimes
Kepoochikan and Nanibozho fight together on the rocks and hurl great
boulders about. Strange tales there are too of the thick forest, of the
little lakes and bays. There is one place called the Bay of Manitos,
where, so I have heard, dwell giant Windigos and great serpents and huge
birds and spirits that mock the lonely traveller with shouts and threats
and laughter.”

“Surely you do not believe such tales, Blaise,” Hugh protested, “or fear
such spirits.”

“I know that neither Kepoochikan nor Nanibozho made the world,” the
younger boy replied seriously. “My father and the priests taught me that
the good God made the world. But whether the tales of giants and spirits
are true, I know not. That I do not fear them I have proved by coming
here with you.”

To that remark Hugh had no answer. To believe or be inclined to believe
such tales and yet to come to the enchanted island, to come with only one
companion, surely proved his half-brother’s courage. Indeed the older boy
had no thought of questioning the younger’s bravery. He had come to know
Blaise too well.

                                  XVI
                               THE CACHE

The night being clear, the boys did not trouble to prepare a shelter.
They merely cut some balsam branches and spread them smoothly on the
beach. Strange to say, the more superstitious half-breed lad fell asleep
immediately, while the white boy, who had scorned the notion of giants
and manitos, found sleep long in coming. That night seemed to him the
loneliest he had ever spent. Camp, on the trip down and up the main
shore, had, to be sure, usually been made far from the camps of other
men. But there _were_ men, both red and white, on that shore. When the
lake was not too rough, there was always the chance that the sound of
human voices and the dip of paddles might be heard at any time during the
night, as a canoe passed in the starlight.

Here, however, the whole length and breadth of the great island,—which
the two lads believed even larger than it really is, some fifty miles in
length and twelve or fourteen broad at its widest part,—there lived, so
far as they knew, not one human being. Never before had Hugh felt so
utterly lonely, such a small, insignificant human creature in an unknown
and unfeeling wilderness of woods, waters and rocks. The island was far
more beautiful and hospitable now than it had appeared when he visited it
before, but then, almost uncannily lonely and remote though the place had
seemed, he had had the companionship of Baptiste and Captain Bennett and
the rest of the ship’s crew.

Yet what was there to fear? It was not likely that Isle Royale contained
any especially fierce beasts. There were wolves and lynxes, but they were
skulking, cowardly creatures, and, in the summer at least, must find
plentiful prey of rabbits and other small animals. Moose too there were
and perhaps bears, but both were harmless unless attacked and cornered.
It was not the thought of any animal enemy that caused Hugh’s uneasiness,
as he lay listening to the night sounds. His feeling was rather of
apprehension, of dread of some unknown evil that threatened his comrade
and himself. He tried to shake off the unreasonable dread, but everything
about him seemed to serve to intensify the feeling, the low, continuous
murmur of the waves on the rocks, the swishing rustle of the wind in the
trees, the long-drawn, eerie cries of two loons answering one another
somewhere up the bay, the lonely “hoot-ti-toot” of an owl. Once from the
wooded ridges above him, there came with startling clearness the shrill
screech of a lynx. But all these sounds were natural ones, heard many
times during his adventurous journey. Why, tonight, did they seem to hold
some new and fearful menace?

Disgusted with himself, he resolved to conquer the unreasonable dread.
Will power alone could not triumph over his unrest, but physical
weariness won at last and he fell asleep. A brief shower, from the edge
of a passing storm-cloud, aroused him once, but the rain did not last
long enough to wet his blanket, and he was off to sleep again in a few
minutes.

Hugh woke with a start. Dawn had come, but the little cove was shrouded
in white mist. Beside him on the balsam bed, Blaise was sitting upright,
his body rigid, his bronze face tense. He was listening intently. Hugh
freed his arms from his blanket and raised himself on his elbow. Blaise
turned his head.

“You heard it?” he whispered.

“Something waked me. What was it?”

“A gun shot.”

“Impossible!”

“I heard it clearly. I had just waked.”

“Near by?”

“Not very far away. Up there somewhere.”

Blaise pointed to the now invisible woods above the sheer cliff that
formed the central shore of the cove between the beaches. “It is hard to
be quite sure of the direction in this fog, and there was only one shot.”

For some minutes the two lads sat still, listening, but the sound was not
repeated. It seemed incredible that any human being should be so near on
the big island where neither white men nor Indians were ever known to
come intentionally. Hugh was inclined to think Blaise mistaken. The
younger boy had certainly heard some sharp sound, but Hugh could scarcely
believe it was the report of a gun.

However, the mere suspicion that any other man might be near by was
enough to make the boys proceed with the greatest caution. Veiled by the
fog,—which had been caused by the warm shower falling on the lake during
the night,—they could be seen only by someone very near at hand, but
there were other ways in which they might be betrayed. The sound of their
voices or movements, the smell of the smoke from their cooking fire might
reveal their presence. The secret nature of their quest made them anxious
that their visit to the island should not become known. So they lighted
no fire, breakfasting on the cold remains of last night’s corn porridge
sprinkled with maple sugar. They talked little and in whispers, and took
care to make the least possible noise.

Having decided to give at least one more day to the search for the furs,
the lads climbed the steep slope and made their way to the head of the
fissure. Up there the fog was much less thick than down in the cove. The
crack in the rock had narrowed to a mere slit almost choked with tree
roots upon which fallen leaves and litter had lodged. Near the edge, in a
depression where there was a little soil, stood a clump of birch sprouts
growing up about the stump of an old broken tree. In their search for
some blaze or mark that might guide them, the two thought they had
examined every tree in the vicinity.

That morning, as he was about to pass the clump of birches, Hugh happened
to notice what a rapid growth the sprouts had made that season. The sight
of the new growth suggested something to him. He began to pull apart and
bend back the little trees to get a better view of the old stump. There,
concealed by the young growth, was the mark he sought. A piece of the
ragged, gray, lichen-scarred bark had been sliced away, and on the bare,
crumbly wood had been cut a transverse groove with an arrow point.

Hugh promptly summoned Blaise. The cut in the old stump seemed to prove
that the furs might not, after all, have been stolen from the hole in the
rocks. The arrow pointed directly along the overgrown crack, which the
lads traced for fifty or sixty feet farther, when it came abruptly to an
end. They had come to a hollow or gully. The crack showed distinctly in
the steep rock wall, but the bottom of the hollow and the opposite
gradual slope were deep with soil and thick with growth. The rift, which
widened at the outer end into a cleft, ran, it was apparent, clear
through the rock ridge that formed the shore cliff. The searchers had now
reached the lower ground behind that ridge. Which way should they turn
next?

That question was answered promptly. The abrupt face of the rock wall was
well overgrown with green moss and green-gray lichens. In one place the
short, thick growth had been scratched away to expose a strip of the gray
stone about an inch wide and six or seven inches long. The clean-cut
appearance of the scratch seemed to prove that it had been made with a
knife or some other sharp instrument. So slowly do moss and lichens
spread on a rock surface that such a mark would remain clear and distinct
for one season at least, probably for several years. There was no arrow
point here, but the scratch was to the left of the crack. The boys turned
unhesitatingly in that direction.

The growth in this low place was dense. They had to push their way among
old, ragged birches and close standing balsams draped with gray beards of
lichen which were sapping the trees’ life-blood. Everywhere, on the steep
rock wall, on each tree trunk, they sought for another sign. For several
hundred yards they found nothing, until they came to a cross gully
running back towards the lake. In the very entrance stood a small, broken
birch. The slender stem was not completely severed, the top of the tree
resting on the ground.

“There is our sign,” said Blaise as soon as he caught sight of the birch.

“It is only a broken tree,” Hugh protested. “I see nothing to show that
it is a sign.”

“But I see something,” Blaise answered promptly. “First, there is the
position, right here where we need guidance. The tree has been broken so
that it points down that ravine. The break is not old, not weathered
enough to have happened before last winter. Yet it happened before the
leaves came out. They were still in the bud. It was in late winter or
early spring that tree was broken.”

“Just about the time father must have been on the island,” Hugh
commented.

Blaise went on with his explanation. “What broke the tree? The wind?
Sound birches are not easily broken by wind. They sway, they bend,
sometimes they are tipped over at the roots. But the stem itself is not
broken unless it is rotten or the storm violent. Here are no signs of
strong wind. There are no other broken trees near this one.”

“That is true,” murmured Hugh looking about him.

“Now we will look at the break,” Blaise continued confidently. “See, the
trunk is sound, but it has been cut with an axe, cut deep and bent down.
And here, look here!” His usually calm voice was thrilling with
excitement. He was pointing to some small cuts in the white bark just
below the break.

“J. B., father’s initials!” cried Hugh.

Blaise laid his finger on his lips to remind his companion that caution
must still be observed. They had heard no further sound and had seen no
sign of a human being, but the half-breed lad had not forgotten the sharp
report that had so startled him in the dawn. It was best to move silently
and speak with lowered voice.

Blaise led the way down the narrow cross gully, so narrow that where a
tree grew,—and trees seemed to grow everywhere on this wild island where
they could push down a root,—there was scarcely room to get by. After a
few hundred yards of such going, the ravine began to widen. The walls
became higher and so sheer that nothing could cling to them but moss,
lichens and sturdy crevice plants. Under foot there was no longer any
soil, only pebbles and broken rock fragments. Ahead, beyond the deep
shadow of the cleft, lay sunlit water. This was evidently another of the
fissures that ran down through the outer rock ridge to the water,
fissures that were characteristic of that stretch of shore.

“We are coming back to the lake through another crack much like the one
where the old boat lies,” said Hugh. “We must be off the trail somewhere.
There is no place here to hide furs.”

Blaise, who was still ahead, did not answer. He was closely scanning the
rock wall on either side. A moment later, he paused and gave a little
grunt of interest or satisfaction.

“What is it?” Hugh asked.

Blaise took another step forward, and pointed to the right hand wall. A
narrow fissure extended from top to bottom. So narrow was the crack that
Hugh rather doubted whether he could squeeze into it.

“I will go first, I am smaller,” Blaise suggested. “If I cannot go
through, we shall know that no man has been in there.”

Slender and lithe, Blaise found that he could wriggle his way through
without much difficulty. The heavier, broader-shouldered Hugh found the
task less easy. He had to go sidewise and for a moment he thought he
should stick fast, but he managed to squeeze past the narrowest spot, to
find himself in an almost round hollow. This hole or pit in the outer
ridge was perhaps twenty feet in diameter with abrupt rock walls and a
floor of boulders and pebbles, among which grew a few hardy shrubs. It
was open to the sky and ringed at the top with shrubby growth. Hugh
glanced about him with a keen sense of disappointment. Surely the furs
were not in this place.

Blaise, on the other side of a scraggly ninebark bush, seemed to be
examining a pile of boulders and rock fragments. The older boy rounded
the bush, and disappointment gave way to excitement. By what agency had
those stones been heaped in that particular spot? They had not fallen
from the wall beyond. The pit had no opening through which waves could
wash. Had that heap been put together by the hand of man? Was it indeed a
cache?

Without a word spoken, the two lads set about demolishing the stone pile.
One after another they lifted each stone and threw it aside. As he rolled
away one of the larger boulders, Hugh could not restrain a little cry. A
bit of withered cedar had come to light. With eager energy he flung away
the remaining stones. There lay revealed a heap of something covered with
cedar branches, the flat sprays, withered but still aromatic, woven
together closely to form a tight and waterproof covering. Over and around
them, the stones had been heaped to conceal every sprig.

With flying fingers, the boys pulled the sprays apart. There were the
bales of furs each in a skin wrapper. The brothers had found the hidden
cache and their inheritance. Both lads were surprised at the number of
the bales. If the pelts were of good quality, no mean sum would be
realized by their sale. They would well repay in gold for all the long
search. Yet, to do the boys justice, neither was thinking just then of
the worth of the pelts. Their feeling was rather of satisfaction that
they were really carrying out their father’s last command. The long and
difficult search was over, and they had not failed in it.

They lifted the packages from a platform of poles resting on stones. The
whole cache had been cleverly constructed. No animal could tear apart the
bales, and, even in the severest storm, no water could reach them. Over
them the branches had formed a roof strong enough to keep the top stones
from pressing too heavily upon the furs.

“But where is the packet?” cried Hugh. “It must be inside one of the
bales, but which one I wonder.”

“I think it is this one,” Blaise replied.

The package he was examining seemed to be just like the others, except
that into the rawhide thong that bound it had been twisted a bit of
scarlet wool ravelled from a cap or sash. Blaise would have untied the
thong, but the impatient Hugh cut it, and stripped off the wrapping. The
bale contained otter skins of fine quality. Between two of the pelts was
a small, flat packet. It was tied with a bit of cedar cord and sealed
with a blotch of pitch into which had been pressed the seal of the ring
Hugh now wore.

“Shall we open this here and now, Blaise?” Hugh asked.

“That is for you to say, my brother. You are the elder.”

“Then I think we had best open it at once.”

Hugh broke the seal and was about to untie the cord, when from somewhere
above the rim of the pit, there rang out a loud, long-drawn call,
“Oh-eye-ee, oh-eye-ee-e.” It was not the cry of an animal. It was a human
voice.

                                  XVII
                           THE SEALED PACKET

Hastily Hugh thrust the unopened packet into the breast of his deerskin
tunic, and looked up apprehensively at the border of green about the rim
of the pit. The man who had shouted could not be far away. There might be
others even nearer. If anyone should push through that protecting fringe
of growth, he would be looking directly down on the two lads. The bales
would be in plain view.

Hugh thought quickly. “We must conceal the furs again, Blaise,” he
whispered, “until we can find some way to get them to the boat.”

Blaise nodded. “We will take them away at night.”

Rapidly and with many an apprehensive glance upward, the two replaced the
bales on the platform of poles, covered the heap with the cedar boughs
and built up the stones around and over the whole. They were in too great
haste to do as careful a piece of work as Jean Beaupré had done. Their
rock pile would scarcely have stood close scrutiny without betraying
something suspicious. From above, however, its appearance was innocent
enough, and no chance comer would be likely to descend into the hole.

Squeezing through the narrow slit, the brothers examined the cleft that
ran down in a steep incline of rock fragments to the water. The simplest
plan would be to bring the boat in there. With strangers likely to appear
at any moment, it would be best to wait until nightfall. The two decided
to return to the cove where they had camped, and wait for darkness.

Back through the fissure and over the low ground behind the shore ridge,
they made their way cautiously, silently. They went slowly, taking pains
to efface any noticeable tracks or signs of their passage, and watching
and listening alertly for any sight or sound of human beings. A rustling
in the bushes caused both to stand motionless until they caught sight of
the cause, a little, bright-eyed squirrel or a gray-brown snowshoe rabbit
with long ears and big hind feet. Both boys would have liked that fresh
meat for the dinner pot, but they had no wish to attract attention by a
shot.

When they reached the top of the cliff, they found that the fog had
entirely disappeared, driven away by a light breeze. As they went down
the steep, open slope to the little beach, they knew themselves to be
exposed to the view of anyone who might happen to be looking out from the
woods bordering the cove. Anxiously they scanned woods, rocks and lake,
but saw no sign of any human being. Not a living creature but a fish duck
peacefully riding the water was to be seen. The boat and supplies were
undisturbed.

The boys stayed quietly in the cove during the remaining hours of
daylight. The beach was partially hidden from the water by the end of the
shore ridge, and screened on the land side by the dense growth of trees
and bushes bordering the pebbles. Beyond the beach was a vertical rock
cliff sheer to the water from its forested summit. Then came another
short stretch of pebbles bounded by a low rock wall and protected by the
jutting mass of rock, only scantily wooded, that formed the dividing line
between the twin coves. To anyone standing over there or among the trees
at the edge of the high central cliff, the boys and their boat would have
been in plain sight. The shot Blaise had heard in the early dawn had come
from somewhere above that cliff, but it was not likely that the man who
had fired that shot was still there. Doubtless he had been hunting. At
any rate the lads had no better place to wait for darkness to come. They
were at least far enough from the pit so their discovery by wandering
Indians or white hunters need not lead to the finding of the furs. As the
day wore on, the brothers cast many an anxious glance around the shores
of the cove. They were startled whenever a squirrel chattered, a
woodpecker tapped loudly on a branch, or two tree trunks rubbed against
one another, swayed by a stronger gust of wind.

As their food was ill adapted to being eaten raw, they permitted
themselves a small cooking fire, taking care to use only thoroughly dry
wood and to keep a clear flame with as little smoke as possible. After
the kettle had been swung over the fire, Hugh drew from his breast the
packet and examined the outside carefully. The wrapping was of oiled
fish-skin tied securely.

“Shall we open it, Blaise?” he asked again.

The younger boy cast a quick glance about him, at the rock slope they had
descended, the dense bushes beyond the pebbles, the forest rim along the
summit of the high central cliff, the rough, wave-eaten rock mass across
the cove. Then his eyes returned to his companion’s face and he nodded
silently.

Curious though he was, Hugh was deliberate in opening the mysterious
packet. He untied the cord and removed the outer cover carefully not to
tear it. Within the oiled skin wrapper was still another of the finest,
whitest, softest doeskin, tied with the same sort of bark cord. The cord
had been passed through holes in a square of paper-thin birch bark. On
the bark label was written in the same faint, muddy brown ink Blaise had
used:

  “To be delivered to M. René Dubois,
                               At Montreal.
  Of great importance.”

Hugh turned over the packet. It was sealed, like the outer wrapper, with
drops of pitch upon which Jean Beaupré’s seal had been pressed. For
several minutes the boy sat considering what he ought to do. Then he
looked up at his half-brother’s equally grave face.

“I don’t like to open this,” Hugh said. “It is addressed to M. René
Dubois of Montreal and it is sealed. I think father intended me to take
it to Monsieur Dubois with the seals unbroken. Doubtless he will open it
in my presence and tell me what it contains.”

Blaise nodded understandingly. He had lived long enough in civilization
to realize the seriousness of breaking the seals of a packet addressed to
someone else. “That Monsieur Dubois, do you know him?” he inquired.

“No, I didn’t know my father had any friends in Montreal. He never lived
there, you know. His old home was in Quebec, where I was born. I don’t
remember that I ever heard of Monsieur René Dubois, but my relatives in
Montreal may know him. Probably I can find him. If I can’t, then I think
it would be right to open this packet, but not until I have tried. Shall
I take charge of this, Blaise?”

“You are the elder and our father said you must take the packet to
Montreal.”

To the impatient Hugh the wait until the sun descended beyond the woods
of the low point across the water seemed long indeed. He found it hard to
realize that only two nights before he and Blaise had reached the point
and had tied up there. They had surely been lucky to find the cache of
furs so soon.

Not until the shadows of the shore lay deep upon the water did the lads
push off the bateau. They paddled silently out of the little cove and
close under the abrupt, riven rocks, taking care not to let a blade
splash as it dipped and was withdrawn. The water was rippled by the
lightest of breezes, and the moon was bright. The deep cleft where Jean
Beaupré’s wrecked boat lay was in black darkness, though. Hugh could not
even make out the stern. His mind was busy with thoughts of the father he
had known so slightly, with speculations about his coming to the island,
about the way he had left it. Through what treachery had he received his
death blow?

Another rift in the rock was passed before the boys reached a wider,
shallower cleft they felt sure was the one leading to the cache.
Cautiously they turned into the dark mouth of the fissure and grounded
the boat on the pebbles, water-worn and rounded here where the waves
reached them. Overhead the moonlight filtered down among the thick sprays
of the stunted cedars that grew along the rim and even down into the
crack. But the darkness at the bottom was so deep the brothers could
proceed only by feeling their way with both hands and feet. In this
manner they went up over pebbles and angular rock fragments to the narrow
slit in the wall, and squeezed through in pitch blackness to the circular
hollow.

There was moonlight in the pit, but the cache, close under the rock wall,
was in the shadow. So difficult did the boys find it to remove the stones
in the darkness, that they decided to risk lighting a torch. During the
afternoon Blaise had made a couple of torches of spruce and balsam. He
lighted one now and stuck it in a cranny of the rock just above the heap
of stones. By the feeble, flickering and smoky light, the cache was
uncovered. Pushing and hauling the bales through the narrow crack was
difficult and troublesome. The larger ones would not go through, and had
to be unwrapped and reduced to smaller parcels. Even by the dim light of
the torch, the boys could see that the furs were of excellent quality.
Before loading, the bateau had to be pushed out a little way, Blaise
standing in the water to hold it while Hugh piled in the bales. Then both
climbed in and paddled quietly out of the crack.

There was not breeze enough for sailing. Hugh and Blaise were anxious to
get away from the spot where they had found the furs and had heard the
shout, but paddling the heavily laden bateau was slow work. Without a
breeze to fill the sail, they were loth to start across the open lake, so
they kept on along shore to the northeast. When they had put a mile or
more between themselves and the place where they had found the furs, they
would camp and wait for sunrise and a breeze.

Slowly and laboriously they paddled on, close to the high shore. The
calm, moonlit water stretched away on their left. The dark,
forest-crowned rocks, huge, worn and seamed pillars, towered forbiddingly
on the other side. At last the wider view of the water ahead and the
barrenness of the tumbled rocks to the right indicated that they were
reaching the end of the shore along which they had been travelling.

“We’ll land now,” said Hugh, “as soon as we can find a place.”

The abrupt, truncated pillars of rock were not so high here, but were
bordered at the water’s edge with broken blocks and great boulders,
affording little chance of a landing place. By paddling close in,
however, slowly and cautiously to avoid disaster, the boys discovered a
niche between two blocks of rock, with water deep enough to permit
running the boat in. There they climbed out on the rock and secured the
bateau by a couple of turns of the rope around a smaller block. In rough
weather such a landing would have been impossible, but on this still
night there was no danger of the bateau bumping upon the rocks. Farther
along Blaise found a spot where the solid rock shelved down gradually.
Rolling themselves in their blankets, the brothers stretched out on the
hard bed.

The plaintive crying of gulls waked Hugh just as the sun was coming up
from the water, a great red ball in the morning mist. “I don’t like this
place,” he said as he sat up. “We can be seen plainly from the lake.”

“Yes,” Blaise agreed, “but we can see far across the lake. If a boat
comes, we shall see it while it is yet a long way off. I think we need
not fear anything from that direction. No, the only way an enemy can draw
near unseen is from the land, from the woods farther back there.”

“The water is absolutely still,” Hugh went on. “There isn’t a capful of
wind to fill our sail, and we can’t paddle this loaded boat clear across
to the mainland. We must find a better place than this, though, to wait
for a breeze. I am going to look around a bit.”

The lads soon found that they were near the end of a point, a worn,
wave-eaten, rock point, bare except for a few scraggly bushes, clumps of
dwarfed white cedar and such mosses and lichens as could cling to the
surface. Farther back were woods, mostly evergreen. The two felt that
they must find a spot where they could wait for a wind without being
visible from the woods. Yet they wanted to remain where they could watch
the weather and get away at the first opportunity. At the very tip of the
point, the slate-gray rocks were abrupt, slightly overhanging indeed, but
in one spot there lay exposed at the base a few feet of low, shelving,
wave-smoothed shore, which must be under water in rough weather. On this
calm day the lower rock shore was dry. There, in the shelter of the
overhanging masses, the boys would be entirely concealed from the land
side. A little farther along on the end of the point, rose an abrupt,
rounded tower of rock. Between the rock tower and the place they had
selected for themselves was a narrow inlet where the bateau would be
fairly well hidden. They shoved the boat out from between the boulders,
where it had lain safe while they slept, and paddled around to the little
inlet. On the wave-smoothed, low rock shore, they kindled a tiny fire of
dry sticks gathered at the edge of the woods, and hung the kettle from a
pole slanted over the flames from a cranny in the steep rock at the rear.

The wind did not come up as the sun rose higher, as the lads had hoped it
would. The delay was trying, especially to the impetuous Hugh. They had
found the cache, secured the furs and the packet, and had got safely away
with them, only to be stuck here on the end of this point for hours of
idle waiting. Yet even Hugh did not want to start across the lake under
the present conditions. Paddling the bateau had been laborious enough
when it was empty, but now, laden almost to the water-line, the boat was
far worse to handle. Propelling it was not merely hard work, but progress
would be so slow that the journey across to the mainland would be a long
one, with always the chance that the wind, when it did come, might blow
from the wrong quarter. The bateau would not sail against the wind. To
attempt to paddle it against wind and waves would invite disaster.
Sailing the clumsy craft, heavy laden as it was, across the open water
with a fair wind would be quite perilous enough. There was nothing to do
but wait, and this seemed as good a place in which to wait as any they
were likely to find.

                                 XVIII
                           THE FLEEING CANOE

As the morning advanced, the sun grew hot, beating down on the water and
radiating heat from the rocks. Scarcely a ripple wrinkled the blue
surface of the lake, and the distance was hazy and shimmering. An island
with steep, straight sides, four or five miles northeast of the point,
was plainly visible, but Thunder Cape to the west was so dim it could
barely be discerned. The day was much like the one on which the lads had
come across from the mainland.

Hugh grew more and more restless. Several times he climbed the only
climbable place on the overhanging rock and peeped between the branches
of a dwarfed cedar bush. He could see across to the edge of the woods,
but he discovered nothing to either interest or alarm him. By the time
the sun had passed the zenith, he could stand inaction no longer. He was
not merely restless. He had become vaguely uneasy. The boat was hidden
from his view by the rocks between. In such a lonely place he would have
had no fear for the furs, had it not been for the shot and the call he
and Blaise had heard.

“Someone might slip out of the woods and down to the boat without our
catching a glimpse of him,” Hugh remarked at last. “I’m going over there
to see if everything is all right.”

To reach the boat, he was obliged to climb to his peeping place and pull
himself up the rest of the way, or else go around and across the top of
the steep rocks. He chose the latter route. The boat and furs he found
unharmed. The only trespasser was a gull that had alighted on one of the
bales and was trying with its strong, sharp beak to pick a hole in the
wrapping. He frightened the bird away, then stopped to drink from his
cupped palm.

A low cry from Blaise startled him. He glanced up just in time to see his
brother, who had followed him to the top of the rocks, drop flat.
Curiosity getting the better of caution, Hugh sprang up the slope. One
glance towards the west, and he followed the younger lad’s example and
dropped on his face.

“A canoe! They must have seen us.”

Cautiously Hugh raised his head for another look. The canoe was some
distance away. When he had first glimpsed it, it had been headed towards
the point. Now, to his surprise, it was going in the opposite direction,
going swiftly, paddles flashing in the sun.

“They have turned about, Blaise. Is it possible they didn’t see us?”

“Truly they saw us. My back was that way. I turned my head and there they
were. My whole body was in clear view. Then you came, and they must have
seen you also. They are running away from us.”

“It would seem so indeed, but what do they fear? There are four men in
that canoe, and we are but two.”

“They know not how many we are. They may have enemies on Minong, though I
never heard that any man lived here.”

“Something has certainly frightened them away. They are making good speed
to the west, towards the mainland.”

The boys remained stretched out upon the rock, only their heads raised as
they watched the departing canoe.

“They turn to the southwest now,” Blaise commented after a time. “They go
not to the mainland, but are bound for some other part of Minong.”

“They were bound for this point when we first saw them,” was Hugh’s
reply. “We don’t know what made them change their minds, but we have
cause to be grateful to it whatever——What was that?”

He sprang to his feet and turned quickly.

“Lie down,” commanded Blaise. “They will see you.”

Hugh, unheeding, plunged down to the bateau. It was undisturbed. Not a
living creature was in sight. Yet something rattling down and falling
with a splash into the water had startled him. He looked about for an
explanation. A fresh scar at the top of the slope showed where a piece of
rock had chipped off. Undoubtedly that was what he had heard. His own
foot, as he lay outstretched, had dislodged the loose, crumbling flake.

Reminded of caution, Hugh crawled back up the slope instead of going
upright. The canoe was still in sight going southwest. Both boys remained
lying flat until it had disappeared beyond the low point. Then they
returned to the low shore beneath the overhanging rock. For the present
at least there seemed to be nothing to be feared from that canoe, but
would it return, and where was the man who had fired the shot and later
sent that call ringing through the woods? Did he belong with the canoe
party? Had he gone away with them, or was he, with companions perhaps,
somewhere on the wooded ridges? The boys did not know whether to remain
where they were or go somewhere else.

The weather finally brought them to a decision. All day they had hoped
for a breeze, but when it came it brought with it threatening gray and
white clouds. Rough, dark green patches on the water, that had been so
calm all day, denoted the passing of squalls. Thunder began to rumble
threateningly, and the gray, streaked sky to the north and west indicated
that rain was falling there. The island to the northeast shrank to about
half its former height and changed its shape. It grew dimmer and grayer,
as the horizon line crept gradually nearer.

“Fog,” remarked Blaise briefly.

“It is coming in,” Hugh agreed, “and this is not a good place to be
caught in a thick fog. Shall we go back into the woods?”

“I think we had best take the bateau and go along the other side of this
point. We cannot start for the mainland to-night, and we shall need a
sheltered place for our camp.”

The fog did not seem to be coming in very rapidly, but by the time the
bateau had been shoved off, the island across the water had disappeared.
The breeze came in gusts only and was not available for sailing. So the
lads were obliged to take up their paddles again.

Beyond the tower-like rock there was a short stretch of shelving shore,
followed by abrupt, dark rocks of roughly pillared formation. Then came a
gradual slope, rough, seamed and uneven of surface. It looked indeed as
if composed of pillars, the tops of which had been sliced off with a
downward sweep of the giant Kepoochikan’s knife. The shore ahead was of a
yellowish gray color, as if bleached by the sun, slanting to the water,
with trees growing as far down as they could find anchorage and
sustenance. These sloping rocks were in marked contrast to those of the
opposite side of the point, along which the boys had come the night
before, where the cliffs and ridges rose so abruptly from the lake.

After a few minutes of paddling, the brothers found themselves passing
along a channel thickly wooded to the water-line. The land on the right
was a part of the same long point, but on the left were islands with
short stretches of water between, across which still other islands beyond
could be seen. The fog, though not so dense in this protected channel as
on the open lake, was thickening, and the boys kept a lookout for a
camping place.

When an opening on the left revealed what appeared to be a sheltered bay,
they turned in. Between two points lay two tiny islets, one so small it
could hold but five or six little trees. Paddling between the nearer
point and islet, the boys found themselves in another much narrower
channel, open to the northeast, but apparently closed in the other
direction. Going on between the thickly forested shores,—a dense mass of
spruce, balsam, white cedar, birch and mountain ash,—they saw that what
they had taken for the end of the bay was in reality an almost round
islet so thickly wooded that the shaggy-barked trunks of its big white
cedars leaned far out over the water. The explorers rounded the islet to
find that the shores beyond did not quite come together, leaving a very
narrow opening. Paddling slowly and taking care to avoid the rocks that
rose nearly to the surface and left a channel barely wide enough for the
bateau to pass through, they entered a little landlocked bay, as secluded
and peaceful as an inland pond.

“We couldn’t find a better place,” said Hugh, looking around the wooded
shores with satisfaction, “to wait for the weather to clear. We are well
hidden from any canoe that might chance to come along that outer
channel.”

The little pond was shallow. The boat had to be paddled cautiously to
avoid grounding. Below the thick fringe of trees and alders, the prow was
run up on the pebbles.

“We might as well leave the furs in the boat,” Hugh remarked.

“No.” Blaise shook his head emphatically. “We cannot be sure no one will
come in here. The furs we can hide. We ourselves can take to the woods,
but this heavy bateau we cannot hide.”

“I’m not afraid anyone will find us here.”

“We thought there was no one on Minong at all. Yet we have heard a shot
and a call and have seen a canoe.”

“You’re right. We can’t be too cautious.”

While Hugh unloaded the bales, Blaise went in search of a hiding place.
Returning in a few minutes, he was surprised to find the boat, the prow
of which had just touched the beach, now high and dry on the pebbles for
half its length. Hugh had not pulled the boat up. The water had receded.

“There is a big old birch tree there in the woods and it is hollow,”
Blaise reported. “It has been struck by lightning and is broken. We can
hide the furs there.”

“Won’t squirrels or wood-mice get at them?”

“We will put bark beneath and over them, and we shall not leave them
there long.”

“I hope not surely.”

Blaise lifted a bale and started into the woods. Hugh, with another bale,
was about to follow, when Blaise halted him.

“Walk not too close to me. Go farther over there. If we go the same way,
we shall make a beaten trail that no one could overlook. We must keep
apart and go and come different ways.”

Hugh grasped the wisdom of this plan at once. He kept considerably to the
left of Blaise until he neared the old birch, and on his return followed
still another route. He was surprised to find that the water had come up
again. The pebbles that had been exposed so short a time before were now
under water once more. The bow of the bateau was afloat and he had to
pull it farther up.

“There is a sort of tide in here,” he remarked as Blaise came out of the
woods. “It isn’t a real tide, for it comes and goes too frequently. Do
you know what causes it?”

“No, though I have seen the water come and go that way in some of the
bays of the mainland.”

“It isn’t a true tide, of course,” Hugh repeated, “but a sort of
current.”

Going lightly in their soft moccasins, the two made the trips necessary
to transport the furs. They left scarcely any traces of their passage
that might not have been made by some wild animal. Hugh climbed the big,
hollow tree which still stood firm enough to bear his weight. Down into
the great hole in the trunk he lowered a sheet of birch bark that Blaise
had stripped from a fallen tree some distance away. Then Hugh dropped
down the bales, and put another piece of bark on top. The furs were well
hidden. From the ground no one could see anything unusual about the old
tree.

Returning to the shore, the two pushed off the boat and paddled to
another spot several hundred yards away. There Hugh felled a small poplar
and cut the slender trunk into rollers which he used to pull the heavy
bateau well up on shore where it would be almost hidden by the alders.

Night was approaching and the wooded shores of the little lake were still
veiled in fog. The water was calm and the damp air spicy with the scent
of balsam and sweet with the odor of the dainty pink twin-flowers. On the
whole of the big island the boys could scarcely have found a more
peaceful spot. The woods were so thick there seemed to be no open spaces
convenient for camping, so the brothers kindled their supper fire on the
pebbles above the water-line, and lay down to sleep in the boat.

                                  XIX
                           THE BAY OF MANITOS

The night passed quietly, unbroken by any sound of beast, bird or man,
until the crying of the gulls woke the sleepers in the fog-gray dawn.
Chilled and stiff, they threw off their damp blankets and climbed out of
the bateau. By dint of much patience and a quantity of finely shredded
birch bark, a slow fire of damp wood was kindled, the flame growing
brighter as the wood dried out.

After he had swallowed his last spoonful of corn, Hugh remarked, “If we
are held here to-day, we must try for food of some kind. We haven’t
hunted or fished since we left the mainland, and our supplies are going
fast.”

Blaise nodded. “We need fire no shots to fish.”

Fishing in the little pond did not appear promising. When the boys
attempted to paddle through the passageway, they ran aground, and were
forced to wait for the water to rise and float the boat. The same
fluctuation they had noticed the day before was still going on. Luck did
not prove good in the narrow channel, and they went on into the wider one
between the long point and the row of islands. The fog was almost gone,
though the sky was still gray. Would the weather permit a start for the
mainland?

Turning to the northeast, they went the way they had come the preceding
afternoon. As they approached the end of the last island, they realized
that this was no time to attempt a crossing. Wind there was now, too much
wind. It came from the northwest, and the lake, a deep green under the
gray sky, was heaving with big waves, their tips touched with foam. The
bateau would not sail against that wind. To try to paddle the
heavily-laden boat across those waves would be the worst sort of folly.

Turning again, they went slowly back through the protected channel, Hugh
wielding the blade while Blaise fished. Luck was still against them.
Either there were no fish in the channel or they were not hungry. On
beyond the entrance to the hiding place, the two paddled. Passing the
abrupt end of an island, they came to a wider expanse of water. They were
still sheltered by the high, wooded ridges to their right, where dark
evergreens and bright-leaved birches rose in tiers. In the other
direction, they could see, between scattered islands, the open lake to
the horizon line. Misty blue hills in the distance ahead, beyond islands
and forested shores, indicated another bay, longer and wider than the one
the _Otter_ had entered.

Blaise, who was paddling now, raised his blade and looked questioningly
at Hugh. The latter answered the unspoken query. “I am for going on. We
have seen no signs of human beings since that canoe, and we need fish.”

Blaise nodded and dipped his paddle again. As they drew near a reef
running out from the end of a small island, Hugh felt his line tighten.
Fishing from the bateau was much less precarious than from a canoe.
Without endangering the balance of the boat, Hugh hauled in his line
quickly, swung in his fish, a lake trout of eight or ten pounds, and
rapped it smartly on the head with his paddle handle. He then gave the
line to Blaise and took another turn at the paddle. In less than ten
minutes, Blaise had a pink-fleshed trout somewhat smaller than Hugh’s.

Then luck deserted them again. Not another fish responded to the lure of
the hook, though they paddled back and forth beside the reef several
times. They went on along the little island and up the bay for another
mile or more without a nibble. It was a wonderful place, that lonely bay,
fascinating in its wild beauty. Down steep, densely wooded ridges, the
deep green spires of the spruces and balsams, interspersed with paler,
round-topped birches, descended in close ranks. Between the ridges, the
clear, transparent water was edged with gray-green cedars, white-flowered
mountain ashes, alders and other bushes, and dotted with wooded islands.
Far beyond the head of the bay blue hills rose against the sky. The
fishing, however, was disappointing, and paddling the bateau was tiresome
work, so the lads turned back.

As they passed close to an island, the younger boy’s quick eye caught a
movement in a dogwood near the water. A long-legged hare went leaping
across an opening.

“If we cannot get fish enough, we will eat rabbit,” said the boy, turning
the boat into a shallow curve in the shore of the little island. “I will
set some snares. If we are delayed another day, we will come in the
morning to take our catch.”

Tying the boat to an overhanging cedar tree, the brothers went ashore. On
the summit of the island, in the narrowest places along a sort of runway
evidently frequented by hares, Blaise set several snares of cedar bark
cord. While the younger brother was placing his last snare, Hugh returned
to the boat. He startled a gull perched upon the prow, and the bird rose
with a harsh cry of protest at being disturbed. Immediately the cry was
repeated twice, a little more faintly each time. Hugh looked about for
the birds that had answered. No other gulls were in sight. Then he
realized that what he had heard was a double echo, unusually loud and
clear. Forgetting caution he let out a loud, “Oh—O.” It came back
promptly, “Oh—o, o—o.”

“Be quiet!” The words were hissed in a low voice, as Blaise leaped out
from among the trees. “Canoes are coming. We must hide.”

He darted back into the woods, Hugh following. Swiftly they made their
way to the summit of the island. The growth was thin along the irregular
rock lane. Blaise dropped down and crawled, Hugh after him. Lying flat in
a patch of creeping bearberry, the younger lad raised his head a little.
Hugh wriggled to his side, and, peeping through a serviceberry bush,
looked out across the water.

The warning had been justified. Two canoes, several men in each, were
coming up the bay. The nearest canoe was not too far away for Hugh to
make out in the center a man who towered, tall and broad, above the
others. The boy remembered the gigantic Indian outlined against the sky,
as his canoe passed in the early dawn. He saw him again, standing
motionless, with folded arms, in the red light of the fire.

Blaise, close beside him, whispered in his ear, “Ohrante himself. What
shall we do?”

If the canoes came down the side of the island where the bateau was,
discovery was inevitable. For a moment, Hugh’s mind refused to work. A
gull circled out over the water, screaming shrilly. Like a ray of light a
plan flashed into the boy’s head.

“Stay here,” he whispered. “Keep still. Remember the ‘Bay of Spirits.’”

Swiftly Hugh wriggled back and darted down through the woods to the spot
where the bateau lay. He crouched behind an alder bush, drew a long
breath, and sent a loud, shrill cry across the water. Immediately it was
repeated once, twice, ringing back across the channel from the islands
and steep shore beyond. Before the final echo had died away, he sent his
voice forth again, this time in a hoarse bellow. Then, in rapid
succession, he hooted like an owl, barked like a dog, howled like a wolf,
whistled piercingly with two fingers in his mouth, imitated the mocking
laughter of the loon, growled and roared and hissed and screamed in every
manner he could devise and with all the power of his strong young lungs.
The roughened and cracked tones of his voice, not yet through turning
from boy’s to man’s, made his yells and howls and groans the more weird
and demoniac. And each sound was repeated once and again, producing a
veritable pandemonium of unearthly noises which seemed to come from every
side.

Pausing to take breath, Hugh was himself startled by another voice, not
an echo of his own, which rang out from somewhere above him, loud and
shrill. It spoke words he did not understand, and no echo came back. A
second time the voice cried out, still in the same strange language, but
now Hugh recognized the names Ohrante and Minong and then, to his
amazement, that of his own father Jean Beaupré. For an instant the lad
almost believed that this was indeed a “Bay of Spirits.” Who but a spirit
could be calling the name of Jean Beaupré in this remote place? Who but
Blaise, Beaupré’s other son? It was Blaise of course, crying out in
Ojibwa from up there at the top of the island. He had uttered some threat
against Ohrante.

Suddenly recalling his own part in the game, Hugh sent out another
hollow, threatening owl call, “Hoot-ti-toot, toot, hoot-toot!” The
ghostly voices repeated it, once, twice. Then he wailed and roared and
tried to scream like a lynx. He was in the midst of the maniacal loon
laugh, when Blaise slipped through the trees to his side.

“They run away, my brother.” The quick, flashing smile that marked him as
Jean Beaupré’s son crossed the boy’s face. “They have turned their canoes
and paddle full speed. The manitos you called up have frightened them
away. For a moment, before I understood what you were about, those spirit
cries frightened me also.”

“And you frightened me,” Hugh confessed frankly, “when you shouted from
up there.”

A grim expression replaced the lad’s smile. “The farther canoe had
turned, but the first still came on, with Ohrante urging his braves. Then
I too played spirit! But let us go back and see if they still run away.”

Hugh sent out another hoarse-voiced roar or two and Blaise added a war
whoop and a very good imitation of the angry cat scream of a lynx. Then
both slipped hurriedly through the trees to the top of the island and
sought the spot where they had first watched the approaching canoes. The
canoes were still visible, but farther away and moving rapidly down the
bay.

“They think this a bay of demons,” Hugh chuckled. “The echoes served us
well. But what was it you said to them, Blaise?”

“I said, ‘Beware! Come no farther or you die, every man!’ They heard and
held their paddles motionless. Then I said, ‘Beware of the manitos of
Minong, O Ohrante, murderer of our white son, Jean Beaupré.’”

“Blaise, I believe it _was_ Ohrante who killed father.”

“I know not. The thought came into my head that if he was the man he
might be frightened if he heard that the manitos knew of the deed. And he
was frightened.”

“Did he order the canoe turned?”

“I heard no order. He sat quite still. He made no move to stay his men
when they turned the canoe about. Ohrante is a bold man, yet he was
frightened. That I know.”

“Was it one of those canoes we saw yesterday, do you think?”

“It may be, but Ohrante was not in it. He is so big, far away though they
were, we should have seen him.”

“We couldn’t have helped seeing him. I wonder if they came around the end
of the long point. How could they in such a sea?”

“It may be that the waves have gone down out there. See how still the
water is in here now.”

“Then we can start for the mainland. We must go back. The canoes are out
of sight.”

“No, no, that would be folly. If they go straight out of this bay all
will be well, but we know not where they go or how far or where they may
lie in wait. No, no, Hugh, we have frightened them away from this spot,
but we dare not leave it ourselves until darkness comes.”

                                   XX
                         HUGH CLIMBS THE RIDGE

The small island was scarcely a half mile in circumference, and it did
not take Hugh and Blaise long to explore it. Its only inhabitants
appeared to be squirrels, hares and a few birds. Breakfast had been
light, and by mid-afternoon the boys were very hungry. The lighting of a
fire involved some risk, but they could not eat raw fish. On a bit of
open rock at the extreme upper or southwest end of the island, they made
a tiny blaze, taking care to keep the flame clear and almost smokeless,
and broiled the fish over the coals. The meal put both in better spirits
and helped them to await with more patience the coming of night.

The evening proved disappointing. The sun set behind black clouds that
came up from the west. The water was calm, the air still and oppressive,
and above the ridges lightning flashed. The prospect of making a start
across the open lake was not good. Yet in one way the threatening weather
served the lads well. The night was intensely dark. The lightning was too
far away to illuminate land or water, and this black darkness furnished
good cover. When they pushed off from the little island, they could see
scarcely a boat’s length ahead.

Close to the shores of the islands and the long point, they paddled,
avoiding wide spaces, which were, even on this dark night, considerably
lighter than the land-shadowed water. As he sat in the stern trying to
dip and raise his paddle as noiselessly as his half-brother in the bow,
Hugh felt that the very bay had somehow changed its character. That
morning the place had seemed peaceful and beautiful, but to-night it had
turned sinister and threatening. The low hanging, starless sky, the dark,
wooded islands, the towering ridge, its topmost line of tree spires a
black, jagged line against the pale flashes of lightning, the still,
lifeless water, the intense silence broken only by the far-away rumble of
thunder and the occasional high-pitched, squeaking cry of some night
bird, all seemed instinct with menace. The boy felt that at any moment a
swift canoe, with the gigantic figure of Ohrante towering in the bow,
might dart out of some black shadow. Frankly Hugh was frightened, and he
knew it. But the knowledge only made him set his teeth hard, gaze keenly
and intently into the darkness about him and ply his paddle with the
utmost care. What his half-brother’s feelings were he could not guess. He
only knew that Blaise was paddling steadily and silently.

In the thick darkness, the older boy was not quite sure of the way back
to the hidden pond, but Blaise showed no doubt or hesitation. He found
the channel between the point and the chain of islands, and warned Hugh
just when to turn through the gap into the inner channel. When it came to
feeling the way past the round islet and through the narrow passage, Hugh
ceased paddling and trusted entirely to Blaise. The latter strained his
eyes in the effort to see into the darkness, but so black was it on every
hand that even he had to depend more on feeling with his paddle blade
than on his sense of sight. It was partly luck that he succeeded in
taking the boat through without worse accident than grating a rock. He
did not attempt to cross the little pond, but ran the bateau up on the
pebbles just beyond the entrance.

Hugh drew a long sigh of relief. They were back safe in the hidden pond
near the cache of furs. The sense of menace that had oppressed him was
suddenly lifted, and he felt an overpowering physical and mental
weariness. Blaise must have had some similar feeling, for he had not a
word to say as they climbed out of the bateau and pulled it farther up.
In silence he lay down beside Hugh in the bottom of the boat. In spite of
the rumbling of the thunder, and the flashing of the lightning, the two
boys fell asleep immediately.

The storm passed around and no rain fell, but the sleepers were awakened
towards dawn by a sharp change in the weather. The air had turned cold,
wind rustled the trees, broken clouds were scudding across the sky
uncovering clear patches. The morning dawned bright. The little pond was
still, but it was impossible to tell what the weather might be outside.
The only way to find out was to go see. Their adventure of the day before
had made the boys more than ever anxious to get away from Isle Royale at
the first possible moment. Yet the thought that Ohrante might be lurking
somewhere near made them cautious. They hesitated to leave their hiding
place until they were sure they could strike out across the lake. To load
the furs and start out, only to be obliged to turn back, seemed a double
risk.

“If the lake is rough it is likely that Ohrante and his band have not
gone far,” Blaise remarked. “They may be in this very bay.”

“That does not follow,” Hugh replied quickly and with better reasoning.
“There was a long interval between the time when we saw them and the
coming of the storm-clouds. Because the lake was rough in the morning is
no sign it was rough all day. They must have come in here from somewhere,
and we know that the wind changed. The water in the bay was as still as
glass last night. Ohrante was surely well frightened and I have little
doubt they made good speed away from the Bay of Spirits.” Hugh was silent
for a few moments. Then he asked abruptly, “What would happen if we
should encounter Ohrante? He can’t know what brought us here, and we have
done him no harm. Why should he harm us when he has nothing against us?”

“He has this against us, that we are the sons of Jean Beaupré.”

“He doesn’t know we are.”

“He knows me. He has seen me more than once and knows me for the son of
my father. Ohrante forgets not those he has seen.”

“I didn’t know he knew you. He can’t know me. Probably he doesn’t even
know that father had another son. I’ll go alone in the bateau, Blaise,
down the channel, and see how the lake looks.”

“No, no,” Blaise objected. “You must not take such a risk. If you go out
there, I will go too.”

“That would spoil the whole plan. If Ohrante catches sight of you, it
will be all up with both of us. He doesn’t know me. If he glimpses me, he
may even be afraid to show himself. He may think me one of a party of
white men, and he is a fugitive from justice.”

Blaise shook his head doubtfully.

“Well, at any rate,” Hugh protested, “I shall have a better chance if you
aren’t with me. I don’t believe I shall see anything of Ohrante or his
men, but I run less risk alone. I will be cautious. I’ll not expose
myself more than I can help. Instead of going out along the point by
water, I’ll paddle across the channel and then take to the woods. I can
climb to the top of the ridge, under cover all the way, and look out
across the lake. It can’t be very far up there. I shall be back in an
hour. You must stay here and guard the furs.”

The expression of the younger lad’s face betrayed that he did not like
this new plan much better than the first one, but he voiced no further
objection.

Hugh pushed off the bateau, waved his hand to the sober-faced Blaise, and
paddled through the narrow waterway and out of sight. After his brother
had gone, Blaise picked his way along the shore of the pond and into the
woods to the cache. He found no signs of disturbance around the old
birch, and, climbing up, he looked down into the hollow. The rotten wood
and dead leaves he and Hugh had strewn over the bark cover seemed
undisturbed. Satisfied that the furs were safe, Blaise climbed down
again. He was reminded though that Hugh still had the packet. He wished
he had asked his elder brother to leave it behind.

The half-breed boy waited with the patience inherited from his Indian
mother. But when the sun reached its highest point he began to wonder.
Surely it could not take Hugh so long to cross to the point, climb to the
top and return. From experience of untracked woods and rough ridges,
Blaise knew the trip was probably a harder one than Hugh had imagined,
but the latter was not inexperienced in rough going. Unless he had
encountered extraordinary difficulties, had been obliged to go far
around, or had become lost, he should have been back long before. The
possibility that Hugh had become lost, Blaise dismissed from his mind at
once. With the ridge ahead and the water behind him, only the very
stupidest of men could have lost himself in daylight. That he had come to
some crack or chasm he could not cross or some cliff he could not scale,
and had been compelled to go far out of his way, was possible. Blaise had
come to know Hugh’s stubborn nature. If he had started to go to the top
of the ridge, there he would go, if it was in the power of possibility.

There seemed to be nothing Blaise could do but wait. Even if he had
thought it wise to follow his elder brother, he had no boat. Sunset came
and still no Hugh. The lad felt he could delay action no longer.

The pond was in the interior of a small island. Blaise made up his mind
to cross to the shore bordering on the channel that separated the island
from the long point. Through the woods he took as direct a route as he
could. The growth was thick, but there was still plenty of light. In a
very few minutes he saw the gleam of water among the trees ahead. He
slipped through cautiously, not to expose himself until he had taken
observations. His body concealed by a thick alder bush, he looked across
the strip of water, studying the opposite shore line.

The shore was in shadow now and the trees grew to the water. Letting his
eyes travel along foot by foot, he caught sight of the thing he sought, a
bit of weather-stained wood, not the trunk or branch of a dead tree,
projecting a little way from the shadow of a cedar. That was the end of
the bateau. Hugh had crossed the channel, had left his boat and gone into
the woods.

Slipping between the bushes, Blaise glanced along his own side of the
channel, then made his way quickly to the spot where a birch tree had
toppled from its insecure hold into the water. With his sharp hatchet,
the boy quickly severed the roots that were mooring the fallen tree to
the shore. Then, with some difficulty, he succeeded in shoving the birch
farther out into the channel and climbing on the trunk. His weight, as he
sat astride the tree trunk between the branches, pulled it down a little,
but the upper part of his body was well above water. The channel was
deep, with some current, which caught the tree and floated it away from
shore. Like most woods Indians and white voyageurs, Blaise was not
skilled in swimming, but the water was calm and, as long as he clung to
his strange craft, he was in no danger of drowning. Leaning forward, he
cut off a branch to use as a paddle and with it was able to make slow
headway across. He could not guide himself very well, and the current
bore him down. He succeeded with his branch paddle in keeping the tree
from turning around, however. It went ashore, the boughs catching in a
bush that grew on the water’s edge, some distance below the spot where
the bateau was drawn up in the shelter of the leaning cedar.

                                  XXI
                          THE GRINNING INDIAN

When Hugh passed out of the narrow channel into the wider one, he ran his
eyes searchingly along the opposite shore, alert for any signs of human
beings. Then he looked to the right and left, up and down the channel and
the shores of the small islands. He saw nothing to cause him
apprehension. Putting more strength into his paddle strokes, he crossed
as quickly as he could, and ran the bateau in beside a leaning cedar tree
with branches that swept the water. The bow touched the shore, and Hugh
climbed out and made the boat fast. He felt sure it would be concealed
from down channel by the thick foliage of the cedar. From up channel the
bateau was not so well hidden, but this place seemed to be the only spot
that offered any concealment whatever, so he was forced to be content. He
would not be gone long anyway, and he was well satisfied that Ohrante and
his band would not return soon to the Bay of Manitos.

This was by no means the first time Hugh had been through untracked woods
and over rough ground, yet he found the trip to the ridge top longer and
more difficult than he had expected. The growth, principally of
evergreens, was dense and often troublesome to push through. The bedrock,
a few feet from shore, was covered deeply with soft leaf mould and
decayed wood and litter, forming a treacherous footing. Sometimes he
found it firm beneath his feet, again he would sink half-way to his
knees. Wherever a tree had fallen, lightening the dense shade, tangles of
ground yew had sprung up. The rise on this side of the point was gradual
compared with the abrupt cliffs of the northwest side, but the slope
proved to be, not an unbroken grade, but an irregular succession of low
ridges with shallow gullies between. By the general upward trend,
occasional glimpses of the water behind him, and the angle at which the
sunlight came through the trees, Hugh kept his main direction, going in
as straight a line as he could. Under ordinary circumstances he would
have used his hatchet to blaze his way, so that he might be sure of
returning by the same route, but he hesitated to leave so plain a trail.
It was not likely that Ohrante would come across the track, but Hugh was
taking no chances. If the giant Iroquois should come down the channel and
find the bateau, a blazed trail into the woods would make pursuit
altogether too easy. Though he was in too great a hurry to take any
particular care to avoid leaving footprints, Hugh did not mark his trail
intentionally and even refrained from cutting his way through the thick
places. The whole distance from the shore to the summit of the highest
ridge probably did not exceed a mile, and did not actually take as long
as it seemed in the climbing.

He hoped that he might come out in a bare spot where he could see across
the water, but he was disappointed. The ridge was almost flat topped and
trees cut off his view in every direction. Going on across the summit,
however, he pushed his way among the growth, to find himself standing on
the very rim of an almost vertical descent. He looked directly down upon
the tops of the sturdy trees and shrubs that clung to the rock by
thrusting their roots far into holes and crannies. Beyond stretched the
lake, rich blue under a clear sky. A little to his left, a projecting
block of rock a few feet below offered a chance for a better view. He let
himself down on the rock and took an observation. The lake was not too
rough to venture out upon, when the need of crossing was so great. He
noted with satisfaction that the breeze was only moderate. The direction,
a little east of north, was not unfavorable for reaching the mainland,
though steering a straight course for the Kaministikwia would be
impossible.

Hugh turned to climb back the way he had come down. He gave a gasp,
almost lost his footing, and seized a sturdy juniper root to keep himself
from falling. Directly above him, on the verge of the ridge, stood a
strange man, from his features, dark skin and long black hair evidently
an Indian,—but not Ohrante. It flashed through Hugh’s mind that on level
ground he might be a match for this fellow. They were not on level ground
though. The Indian had the advantage of position. Moreover Hugh’s only
arms were the hatchet and knife in his belt. The Indian carried a musket
ready in his hand. That he realized to the full his advantage was proved
by the malicious grin on his bronze face. There was no friendliness in
that grin, only malevolence and vindictiveness.

Hugh knew himself to be in a bad position. Probably the Indian was one of
Ohrante’s followers, and they were a wild crew, outlaws and renegades,
their hand against every man and every man’s hand against them. The
picture of the prisoner being tortured in the firelight crossed the boy’s
mind in a vivid flash, and a shudder crept up his back. Then the grin on
the Indian’s face sent a wave of anger over Hugh that steadied him. He
must be cool at all costs and not show fear.

Moving a step, to a more secure footing, he looked the fellow straight in
the eyes. “Bo jou,” Hugh said, using the corruption of the French “Bon
jour” common among traders and Indians.

“Bo jou, white man,” the other replied in French.

Both were silent for a moment. Hugh did not know what to say next and the
Indian seemed content to say nothing. Suddenly Hugh made up his mind,
resolving on a bold course.

“What is this place?” he asked. “Is it island or mainland?”

“Ne compr’ney,” was the only answer.

Hugh took the phrase to be an attempt to say that the other did not
understand. He repeated his questions in French, then tried English, but
the Indian merely stared at him, the sardonic grin still distorting his
lips, and replied in the same manner. Either he really did not
understand, the two French phrases being all the white man’s speech he
knew, or he did not wish to talk. Yet Hugh made another attempt at
conversation.

“I was driven here in the storm last night,” he volunteered, “and my
canoe wrecked and my companion drowned. We were on our way down shore
from the New Fort with our winter supplies, but they are all lost. What
is this place? I never saw it before and I do not like it. This morning I
heard strange sounds, unlike any I ever heard made by man or animal. The
devil was at large I think,” and he crossed himself in the French manner.

During the speech Hugh had kept his eyes closely fixed on the Indian’s
face. He thought when he mentioned the strange sounds that he detected a
quiver of interest, but it was gone in an instant. The fellow merely
repeated his singsong “Ne compr’ney.” There was no use saying more.
Determined not to show that he expected or feared any violence, Hugh
started to climb up the projecting rock. Somewhat to the boy’s surprise,
the Indian made no move to stop him. However, he kept his gun ready for
instant use.

After gaining the top Hugh was in a quandary how to proceed. He did not
believe the man’s intentions were friendly. Would it be wise to strike
first? At the thought, his hand, almost unconsciously, sought his knife.
Before he could grasp the handle, the Indian made a swift movement, and
the end of the musket barrel rested against Hugh’s chest. The flint-lock
musket was primed and cocked, ready to fire. Resistance was useless. Hugh
stood motionless, looked the fellow in the eye and feigned anger.

“What do you mean?” he cried, trying to make his meaning plain by his
voice and manner even though his captor could not understand the words.
“What do you mean by threatening me, a white man, with your musket?”

The gun was moved back a trifle, but the bronze face continued to grin
maliciously. To show that he was not afraid, Hugh took a step forward,
and opened his mouth to speak again, but the words were not uttered. As
his weight shifted to his forward foot, he was seized from behind, and
thrown sidewise, his head crashing against the trunk of a tree.

                                  XXII
                      BLAISE FOLLOWS HUGH’S TRAIL

Blaise had no difficulty finding the place where Hugh had gone into the
woods. The white boy thought he had been careful about leaving a trail,
but to the half-breed lad the indications were plain enough. Most of the
tracks were such as might have been made by any large animal, but Blaise
knew Hugh had landed at this spot intending to go directly to the ridge
top. The younger boy was confident that trampled undergrowth, prints in
the leaf mould, freshly broken branches, were all signs of his brother’s
passage.

At first he followed the trail easily, but the long northern twilight was
waning. As the darkness gathered in the woods, tracking grew increasingly
difficult. Blaise had no wish to attract attention by lighting a torch.
As he penetrated the thick growth, he was not only unable to find Hugh’s
trail, but was obliged sometimes to feel his own way and was in grave
doubt whether he was going aright. Coming out into a more open spot,
where several trees had fallen, he examined, as well as he could in the
dim light, the moss-covered trunks for some sign that Hugh had climbed
over them. A fresh break where the decayed wood had crumbled away under
foot, a patch of bruised moss, the delicate fruiting stalks broken and
crushed, were enough to convince him that he was still on the right
track.

Alternately losing the trail and finding it again, he came to the summit
of the ridge. Crossing the top, he found himself on the rim of the cliff,
but not in the same spot where his brother had come out. He had missed
Hugh’s trail on the last upward slope, and was now a hundred feet or more
to the left of the projecting block of rock. For a few minutes Blaise
stood looking about him. He glanced out over the water, noting that the
sky was partly cloud covered. He could make out the low point, and he
realized that the rock shore with the fissures must lie almost directly
below him. The twin coves, where he and Hugh had camped, could not be far
to the left. Blaise was not concerned just now with either place, he was
merely obeying the Indian instinct to note his whereabouts and to take
his bearings.

The lad was at a loss how to proceed. That Hugh had reached the rim of
the ridge somewhere along here seemed more than probable. Where had he
gone then? Blaise could scarcely believe that his elder brother had
attempted to climb down that abrupt descent. If he had gone down there
and through the woods and over the rocks to the water, he could have got
no better view of the open lake,—and Hugh had been in haste. No, he had
certainly not gone down there of his own accord. If he had started back
the way he had come, what had happened to him? Blaise shook his head in
perplexity. Of only one thing was he sure. Some disaster had overtaken
Hugh. Had he made a misstep and plunged down the cliff, or had Ohrante
something to do with his disappearance?

The first thing to do, Blaise decided, was to search along the ridge top
for some further sign of Hugh or of what had befallen him. He turned to
the right and made his way along as close to the edge as he could,
stooping down every few paces to seek for some clue. The night was
lighter now, for the moon had come out from behind the clouds. When he
reached the spot just above the projecting rocks, Blaise stopped still.
There was no need to search for signs here, they were quite plain. The
moon shone down on the little open space where Hugh and the strange
Indian had confronted one another. It was clear to the half-breed boy
that there had been a struggle. The gray caribou moss was crushed and
trampled and torn up by the roots. A branch of a little jackpine on the
edge of the opening showed a fresh break and hanging from that branch was
a torn scrap of deerskin. But that was not all. Lying on the moss, in
plain sight in the moonlight, was a small, dark object, a bit of steel
such as was commonly used with a piece of flint for fire making. Blaise
picked up the steel. It was the one Hugh carried, beyond doubt.

What did those marks of struggle mean? They were too far back to indicate
that Hugh had lost his footing and slipped over the edge, seizing the
tree to keep himself from falling. No, that was quite impossible, for the
jackpine grew at least ten feet from the rim of the cliff. Had Hugh
fought with some animal? Blaise knew of no animal likely, at that season
of the year, to make an unprovoked attack upon a man. He felt sure that
Hugh had too much sense to strike first with knife or hatchet at a bear
or moose. Moreover if an animal had slain him it would scarcely have
carried him away. Every indication pointed to an encounter, not with a
beast, but with a man. Hugh must have come across Ohrante or some of his
followers. Had they killed him or taken him prisoner? If they had killed
him they would not have troubled to take away his body. They would have
taken his scalp and gone on their way,—unless of course they had thrown
him over the cliff. Blaise looked down the abrupt descent, now bathed in
moonlight. Should he seek down there for Hugh or in some other direction?
He decided to look around a little more before attempting to climb down.

Almost immediately he found further traces. Beyond the jackpine more
crushed moss and broken bushes and trampled undergrowth showed plainly
that someone, more than one man probably, had gone that way not many
hours before, had gone boldly and confidently, careless of leaving a
trail. Blaise dropped on his knees to make a closer examination. The
moonlight helped him, and he soon came to the conclusion, from the shape
of a footprint impressed clearly in a bit of loose earth, that one man at
least had gone in that direction, whether he had come that way or not.
The print was too large for Hugh’s foot, but, a little farther on, Blaise
found another smaller track that he thought might be Hugh’s. It pointed
the same way as the larger print.

The beginning of the trail was now plain, but could he follow it in the
darkness of the woods? He must try anyway. He would go as far as he
could, taking care not to lose the tracks.

Blaise did not succeed in following far. No longer was he aided by any
knowledge of the general direction those he was pursuing would be likely
to take. Under the trees the moonlight was of little assistance. He soon
lost the tracks and was compelled to go back to the starting point. He
tried again and lost the trail a second time. A white boy, in his anxiety
and impatience, would probably have persisted in the hopeless attempt,
and would have lost the trail and himself. But Blaise was part Indian.
Anxious though he was over Hugh’s fate, he knew when to wait as well as
when to go forward. By daylight he could doubtless find the trail easily,
and could cover in a few minutes ground that in darkness might take him
hours, if he could find his way over it at all. He seated himself on a
cushion of dry caribou moss near the rim of the ridge to wait,
sleeplessly and watchfully.

Dawn came at last. When the light was strong enough to make it possible
to find his way through the woods, Blaise again took up the trail. The
tracks he had started to follow and had lost in the first bit of dense
growth, led him, not through, but around the thick place, into a sort of
open rock lane bordered with trees and running along the ridge top. To
his great surprise, when he reached the end of the open stretch, he came
upon a clearly defined trail. It was not merely a track made by one or
two men coming and going once. It gave evidence of having been travelled