Northern Diamonds Part 1

Northern Diamonds.

by Frank Lillie Pollock.

CHAPTER I

It was nearly eleven o'clock at night when some one knocked at the door of Fred Osborne's room. He was not in the least expecting any caller at that hour, and had paid no attention when he had heard the doorbell of the boarding-house ring downstairs, and the sound of feet ascending the steps. He hastened to open the door, however, and in the dim hallway he recognized the dark, handsome face of Maurice Stark, and behind it the tall, raw-boned form of Peter Macgregor.

Both of them uttered an exclamation of satisfaction at seeing him.

They were both in fur caps and overcoats, for it was a sharp Canadian December night, and at the first glance Fred observed that their faces wore an expression of excitement.

"Come in, boys!" he said. "I wasn't going to bed. Here, take your coats off. What's up? You look as if something was the matter."

"Is Horace in town?" demanded Peter.

Fred shook his head. Horace was his elder brother, a mining engineer mostly employed in the North Country.

"He's still somewhere in the North Woods. I haven't heard from him since October, but I'm expecting him to turn up almost any day now.

Why, what's the matter?"

"The matter? Something pretty big," returned Maurice.

Maurice Stark was Fred's most intimate friend in Toronto University, from which he had himself graduated the summer before. He knew Macgregor less well, for the big Scotch-Canadian was in the medical school. His home place was somewhere far up in the North Woods, but he had a great intercollegiate reputation as a long-distance runner. It was, in fact, chiefly in a sporting way that Fred had come to know him, for Fred held an amateur skating championship, and was even then training for the ice tournament to be held in Toronto in a few weeks.

"It's something big!" Maurice repeated. "I wish Horace were here, but--could you get a holiday from your office for a week or ten days?"

"I've got it already," said Fred. "I reserved my holidays last summer, and things aren't busy in a real estate office at this time of year. I guess I could get two weeks if I wanted it. I'm spending most of my time now training for the five and ten miles."

"Could you skate a hundred and fifty miles in two days?" demanded Macgregor.

"I might if I had to--if it was a case of life and death."

"That's just what it is--a case of life and death, and possibly a fortune into the bargain!" cried Maurice. "You see--but Mac has the whole story."

The Scottish medical student went to the window, raised the blind and peered out at the wintry sky.

"No sign of snow yet," he said in a tone of satisfaction.

"What's that got to do with it?" demanded Fred, who was burning with curiosity by this time. "What's going on, anyway? Hurry up."

"Spoil the skating," said Macgregor briefly. "Well," he went on after a moment, "this is how I had the story.

"I live away up north of North Bay, you know, at a little place called Muirhead. I went home for a little visit last week, and the second day I was there they brought in a sick Indian from Hickson, a little farther north--sick with smallpox. The Hickson authorities wouldn't have him at any price, and they had just pa.s.sed him on to us. The people at Muirhead didn't want him either. It wasn't such a very bad case of smallpox, but the poor wretch had suffered a good deal of exposure, and he was pretty shaky. Everybody was in a panic about him; they wanted to ship him straight down to North Bay; but finally I got him fixed up in a sort of isolation camp and looked after him myself."

"Good for you, Mac!" Fred e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"Oh, it was good hospital training, and I'd been recently vaccinated, so I didn't run any danger. It paid me, though, for when I'd pulled him around a bit he told me the story, and a queer tale it was."

Macgregor paused and went to look out of the window again with anxiety.

Fred was listening breathlessly.

"It seems that last September this Indian, along with a couple of half-breeds, went up into the woods for the winter trapping, and built a cabin on one of the branches of the Abitibi River, away up northeast of Lake Timagami. I know about where it was. I suppose you've never been up in that country, Osborne?"

"Never quite as far as that. Last summer I was nearly up to Timagami with Horace."

Fred had made a good many canoeing trips into the Northern wilderness with his brother, and Horace himself, as mining engineer, surveyor, and free-lance prospector, had spent most of the last five years in that region. At irregular and generally unexpected times he would turn up in Toronto with a bale of furs, a sack of mineralogical specimens, and a book of geological notes, which would presently appear in the "University Science Quarterly," or even in more important publications.

He was an a.s.sociate of the Canadian Geographical Society, and always expected to hit on a vein of mineral that would make his whole family millionaires.

"Well, I've been up and down the Abitibi in a canoe," Macgregor went on, "and I think I know almost the exact spot where they must have built the cabin. Anyhow, I'm certain I could find it, for the Indian described it as accurately as he could.

"It seems that the three men trapped there till the end of October, and then a white man came into their camp. He was all alone, and complained of feeling sick. They were kind enough to him; he stayed with them, but in a few days they found out what the matter was. He had smallpox.

"Now, you know how the Indians and half-breeds dread smallpox. They fear it like death itself, but these fellows seem to have behaved pretty well at first. They did what they could for the sick man, but pretty soon one of the trappers came down with the disease. It took a violent form, and he was dead in a few days.

"That was too much for the nerve of the Indian, and he slipped away and started for the settlements south. But he had waited too long. He had the germs in him. He sickened in the woods, but had strength enough to keep going till he came to the first clearings. Somebody rushed him in to Hickson, and so he was pa.s.sed on to my hands."

"And what became of the white man and the other trapper?" demanded Fred.

"Ah, that's what n.o.body knows. The Indian said that the remaining half-breed was falling sick when he left. The white man may be dead by this time, or perhaps still living but deserted, or he may be well on the road to recovery. But I left out the sensational feature of the whole thing. My Indian said that the white man had a buckskin sack on him full of little stones that shone like fire. He seemed to set great store by them, and threatened to blow the head off anybody who touched the bag."

"Shining stones? Perhaps they were diamonds!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Fred.

"It looks almost as if he might have found the diamond fields, for a fact," said Peter, with sparkling eyes.

Canada was full of rumors of diamond discoveries just then. Every Canadian must remember the intense excitement created by the report that diamonds had been found in the mining regions of northern Ontario.

Several stones had actually been brought down to Toronto and Montreal, where tests showed them to be real diamonds, though they were mostly small, flawed, and valueless. One, however, was said to have brought nine hundred dollars, and the news set many parties outfitting to prospect for the blue-clay beds. But they met with no success. In every case the stones had either been picked up in river drift or obtained from Indians who could give no definite account of where they had been found.

Could it be that this strange white man had actually stumbled on the diamond fields--only to fall sick and perhaps to die with the secret of his discoveries untold? Fred gazed from Peter to Maurice, almost speechless.

"Naturally, my first idea was to get up a rescue party to bring out the sick prospector," Maurice went on. "But the woods are in the worst kind of shape for traveling. The streams are all frozen hard, but there has been remarkably little snow yet--not near enough for snowshoes or sledges. It would be impossible to tramp that distance and pack the supplies. Besides, when I came to think it over it struck me that the thing was too valuable to share with a lot of guides and backwoodsmen. If we find that fellow alive, and he has really discovered anything, it would be strange if he wouldn't give us a chance to stake out a few claims that might be worth thousands--maybe millions. And it struck me that there was a quicker way to get to him than by snowshoes or dogs. The streams are frozen, the ice is clear, and the skating was fine at Muirhead."

"An expedition on skates?" cried Fred.

"Why not? There's a clear canoe way, barring a few portages, and that means a clear ice road till it snows. But it might do that at any moment."

"A hundred and fifty miles in two days?" said Fred. "Sure, we can do it. I'll set the pace, if you fellows can keep up."

"Anyhow, I came straight down to the city and saw Maurice about it. He said you'd be the best third man we could get. But I had hoped we could get Horace, so as to have his expert opinion on what that man may have found."

"The last time I heard from Horace he was at Red Lake," said Fred, "but I wouldn't have any idea where to find him now. He always comes back to Toronto for the winter, and he can't be much later than this."

"Well, we can't wait for him," said Maurice regretfully. "I'm sorry, but maybe next spring will do as well, when we go to prospect our diamond claims."

"Yes, but we've got to get them first," said Peter, "and there's a man's life to be saved--and it might snow to-night and block the whole expedition."

"Then we'd get dogs and snowshoes," Maurice remarked, "but it would be far slower traveling than on skates."

"We must rush things. Could we get away to-morrow?" Fred cried.