Northern Diamonds Part 23

CHAPTER XIV

Here where deer were plentiful and hunters scarce, Mac's jack light should prove effective. Sportsmen and the law have quite properly united in condemning killing deer by jack light; but the boys felt that their need of food justified their course.

After adjusting the torch, Mac cut a birch sapling about eight feet long, and trimmed off the twigs. Bending it into a semicircle, he fitted the curve into the bottom of the canoe, close to the bow; then he hung the blanket by its corners upon the projecting tips of the sapling, and thus screened the bow from the rest of the canoe.

As it had already become dark, and the sh.o.r.es were now black with the indistinct shadows of the spruces, Fred and Horace set the canoe gently into the water. When it was afloat, Mac lighted the pine splinters, which crackled and flared up like a torch.

"You'd make a better game poacher than I, Horace," he said. "You take the rifle, and I'll paddle."

Horace accordingly placed himself just behind the blanket screen, with the weapon on his knees. Mac sat in the stern, and Fred, who did not want to be left behind, seated himself amidships.

"Keep a sharp lookout, both of you," Mac said. "Watch for the light on their eyes, like two b.a.l.l.s of fire."

The canoe, keeping about thirty yards from sh.o.r.e, glided silently down the long lake. The "fat" pine flamed smoky and red, and it cast long, wavering reflections on the water. Once an animal, probably a muskrat, startled them by diving noisily. A duck, sleeping on the water, rose with a frantic splutter and flurry of wings. Then, fifty yards farther, there was a sudden splash near the sh.o.r.e, then a crashing in the bushes, and a dying thump-thump in the distance.

Horace swung his rifle round, but he was too late. The deer had not stopped to stare at the light for an instant. A jack light ought to have a reflector, but the boys had no means of contriving one.

Unspeakably disappointed, they moved slowly on again. They started no more game, and at last reached the lower end of the lake. Here Mac stopped to renew the torch, which had almost burned out.

Then they turned up the other side of the lake, on the home stretch.

No living thing except themselves seemed to be on the water that night.

The sh.o.r.e shoaled far out. Once the keel sc.r.a.ped over a bottom of soft mud. Lilies grew along the sh.o.r.e, and sometimes extended out so far that the canoe brushed the half-grown pads.

Suddenly Fred felt the canoe swerve slightly, and head toward the land.

Horace raised the rifle. Fred had seen nothing, but after straining his eyes ahead, he made out two faint spots of light in the darkness, at about the height of a man's head. Could it be a deer? The b.a.l.l.s of light remained perfectly motionless.

Without a splash the canoe glided closer. Fred thought that he could make out the outline of the animal's head, and clenched his hands in anxiety. Why did not Horace shoot?

Suddenly a blinding flash blazed out from the rifle, and the report crashed across the water. There was a splash, followed immediately by a noise of violent thrashing in the water near the land.

Fred and Mac shouted together. With great paddle strokes, Mac drove the canoe forward, and at last Horace leaped out. The others followed him. The deer was down, struggling in the water. It was dead before they reached it. Horace's bullet had broken its neck.

"Hurrah!" Fred cried. "This makes us safe. This'll last us all the way home."

It was a fine young buck--so heavy that they had hard work to lift it into the canoe. Far up the lake they could see their camp-fire, and they paddled toward it with the haste of half-starved men.

Without stopping to cut up the animal, they skinned one haunch and cut off slices, which they set to broil over the coals. A delicious odor rose; the boys did not even wait until the meat had cooked thoroughly.

They had no salt, but the venison, unseasoned as it was, seemed delicious.

The food gave them all more cheerfulness and energy. The prospect of a hard ten days' journey did not look so bad now. At any rate, they would not starve.

"I wonder if the foxes would eat it. They ought to have something,"

said Fred, and he dropped some sc.r.a.ps of the raw venison into the cage.

As he stooped to peer more closely at the animals, he made a startling discovery. During their absence on the hunt, the mother fox had been gnawing vigorously at the willow cage, particularly at the rawhide lashings that bound the framework together. She had loosened one corner, and if she had been left alone for another hour, she might have escaped with her cubs. It gave the boys a bad fright. Mac refastened the lashings with strips of deer-hide, and strengthened the cage with more willow withes. But the boys realized that in the future one of them would have to stand guard over the cage at night.

The foxes refused to touch the raw meat.

"I didn't expect them to eat for the first day or two," said Horace.

"Don't worry. They'll eat in time, when they get really hungry."

"Let's get this buck cut up," said Mac. "It'll soon be moonrise, and we must be moving."

In order to get more light for their work, they piled pitch pine on the fire; then they hung the deer on a tree, and began the disagreeable task of skinning and dressing the animal. When they had finished, they had a good deerskin and nearly two hundred pounds of fresh meat.

They would gladly have slept now, but the sky was brightening in the east with the rising moon, and there was no time for rest. No doubt the trappers were on their trail, somewhere behind them. Hastily the boys loaded the foxes and the venison into the canoe, and as soon as the moon showed above the trees paddled down the lake. They soon found that the moonlight was not bright enough to enable them to run rapids safely, and they consequently had to make frequent carries. Between the rapids they shot swiftly down the current, but the river was so broken that they made no great progress that night.

Northern summer nights are short, and soon after two o'clock the sky began to lighten. By three o'clock the boys could see well, and they went on faster, shooting all except the worst stretches of rough water.

Shortly after six o'clock they came out from the Smoke River into the Missanabie.

"Stop for breakfast?" asked Mac.

"Not here," said Horace. "We must be careful not to mark our trail, especially at this point. They won't know for sure whether we turned up the Missanabie or down, and they may make a mistake and lose a lot of time. A canoe doesn't leave any track, and we mustn't land until we have to."

Now the hard work of "bucking the river" began again. The Missanabie had lowered somewhat since the boys had come down it, but it still ran so strong that they could not make much progress by paddling. Their canoe poles were far back on the Smoke River, and they did not dare to land in order to cut others, for in doing so they would mark their trail.

Straining hard at every stroke, they dug their paddles into the water; but they made slow work of it. The least carelessness on their part would cause them to lose in one minute as much as they had gained in ten.

A stretch of slacker water gave them some respite; but then came a long, tumbling, rock-strewn rapid.

"We'll have to portage here," said Mac.

"It'll be a long carry," Horace said. "We'd lose a good deal of time over it. I think we can track her up."

Mac and Horace carried the cage of foxes along the sh.o.r.e to the head of the broken water, and Fred carried up the guns. Returning to the foot of the rapid, they prepared to haul the canoe against the stream.

Luckily the tracking-line had always been kept in the canoe. Horace tied it to the ring in the bow, took the end of the rope and, bracing himself firmly, waded into the water; Macgregor and Fred, on either side, held the craft steady.

The bed of the river was very irregular. Sometimes the water was no more than knee-deep; sometimes it reached their hips. The water was icy cold, and the rush and roar of the current were bewildering. Once Mac lost his footing, but he clung to the canoe and recovered himself.

Then, when halfway up the rapid, Horace stepped on an unsteady stone and plunged down, face forward, into the roaring water.

As the towline slackened, the canoe swung round with a jerk against Macgregor, and upset him. Fred tried to hold it upright, but the unstable craft went over like a shot.

Out went the venison and everything else that was in her. Fred made a desperate clutch at the stern of the canoe, caught it and held on. As the canoe shot down the rapid, he trailed out like a streamer behind it. He heard a faint, smothered yell:--

"The venison! Save the meat!"

Almost before he knew it, Fred, half choked, still clinging to the canoe, drifted into the tail of the rapid. He found bottom there, for the water was not deep, and managed to right the canoe. By that time Macgregor had got to his feet, and was coming down the sh.o.r.e to help Fred. They were both dripping and chilled; but they got into the canoe, and poling with two sticks, set out to rescue what they could.

They must, above everything else, recover the venison, but they could see no sign of it. Some distance down the stream they found both paddles afloat, and they worked the canoe up and down below the rapid.

On a jutting rock they found the deerskin. Finally they came upon one of the hindquarters floating sluggishly almost under water. They rescued it joyfully; but although they searched for a long time, they found no more of the meat.

They had left the axe in the canoe, and it was now somewhere at the bottom of the river. They could better have spared one of the guns, but they were thankful that their loss had been no greater.

"If we had left the foxes in the canoe," said Fred, "they'd have been drowned, sure!"

Horace had waded ash.o.r.e, and now had a brisk fire going. Fred and Macgregor joined him, and the three boys stood shivering by the blaze, with their wet clothes steaming.

"We're well out of it," said Horace, with chattering teeth. "The worst is the loss of the axe. It won't be easy to make fires from now on."