Northern Diamonds Part 26

He recognized the spot. He recognized the trail that he himself had helped to cut. He had found the Smoke River!

CHAPTER XVI

Fred never quite knew how he got back to camp after he had found the river. He found his companions still sound asleep, but it did not take him long to rouse them and to tell them the news.

"I couldn't see any tracks on the sh.o.r.e. I don't think any one has pa.s.sed," Fred said.

In less than a minute the boys, wild with joy, were hurrying through the woods again. It was almost dark when they reached the river; peering close to the ground they examined the trail carefully, to make sure that the trappers had not already pa.s.sed.

The heavy rain had washed the sh.o.r.es, and no fresh tracks showed in the mud. The men had not been over the portage that day, and they could hardly have pa.s.sed the rapids without making a carry. They had evidently camped for the night at some point below, and would not come up the river until morning.

After piling up some hemlock boughs for a bed, the boys lay down, and dropped into a heavy sleep. Now that the strain was over, Fred slept, too. In fact, for the last quarter of an hour he had hardly been able to stay on his feet.

In the gray dawn Horace awakened them. They were stiff from their thirty-mile race of the day before, and their feet were swollen. Hot food--especially hot tea--was what they longed for; but they were afraid to make a fire, and they had to content themselves with a little raw venison for their breakfast.

Horace thought that they could make their ambush where they were as well as anywhere else. The portage was about thirty yards long, and the narrow trail pa.s.sed over a ridge and ran through dense hemlock thickets. If the trappers came up the trail in single file, carrying heavy loads, they could not use their rifles against a sudden attack.

The boys armed themselves each with a hardwood bludgeon; then they ensconced themselves in the thickets where they could see the reaches of the river below--and waited.

An hour pa.s.sed. It was almost sunrise, and there was no sign of the trappers on the river. The boys grew nervous with dread and anxiety.

The tree-tops began to glitter with sunlight. It was almost six o'clock.

"Could they have gone some other way?" asked Fred uneasily, staring upstream.

At that very moment Macgregor grasped his arm and pointed down the river. Two small objects had appeared round a bend, half a mile below.

They were certainly canoes, making slow headway against the stiff current, but they were too far away for the boys to make them out plainly. Minute by minute they grew nearer.

"The front one's a Peterboro!" said Mac. "There's one man in it, and two in the other. I think I can see the fox cage."

Without doubt it was the trappers. The young prospectors slipped back through the thickets, almost to the upper end of the trail, and concealed themselves in the hemlocks.

"Above all things, try to get hold of their guns!" said Horace.

For a long while they waited in terrible suspense. They could not see the landing, nor at first could they hear anything, for the tumbling water of the rapids roared in their ears. After what seemed almost an hour, stumbling footsteps sounded near by on the trail, and the bow of the Peterboro hove in sight. A man was carrying it on his head; he steadied it with one hand, and in the other grasped a gun--Horace's repeating rifle.

When he was almost within arm's reach, Mac sprang and tackled him low like a football player. The trapper dropped the gun with a startled yell, and went over headlong into the hemlocks--canoe and all.

Horace leaped out to seize the gun that the man had dropped. Before he could touch it, the second trapper rushed up the trail with his rifle clubbed. Fred struck out at him with his bludgeon. The blow missed the fellow's head, and fell on his arm. Down clattered the rifle, discharging as it fell. The trapper made a frantic leap aside, and disappeared into the bushes.

As Fred s.n.a.t.c.hed up the rifle, he caught a glimpse of the third trapper, the wiry half-breed, hastening up the path.

"Halt! Hands up!" shouted Horace, raising the repeater.

The man stopped, fired a wild shot, turned and bolted back toward the landing. Fred and his brother rushed after him; they reached the landing just in time to see him leap into the birch canoe, which still held the fox cage, shove off, and digging his paddle furiously into the water, shoot down the stream.

"After him! The canoe! Quick!" shouted Horace.

They dashed back. The man that Fred had struck was nowhere to be seen.

Macgregor had pinned his antagonist to the ground, and seemed to have him well subdued.

"Never mind him, Mac!" Fred cried. "Pick up that canoe in a hurry!

One of the scoundrels has got away with the foxes!"

All three of them seized the canoe and rushed it down to the landing.

There they found the sh.o.r.e strewn with articles of camp outfit where the men had unloaded the canoes.

"Load it in, boys!" cried Horace. "Take what we need. We're not coming back."

They pitched an armful or two of supplies into the canoe. Fred's shotgun was there, and several other articles that the boys recognized as their own. The rest was a fair exchange for the outfit that they had abandoned in their tent.

They shoved the canoe off. The half-breed had gained a long lead by this time. He was nearly a quarter of a mile ahead, paddling frantically; he did not even stop to fire at the boys. But there were three paddles in pursuit, and the boys began to gain on him noticeably.

More than two miles flashed by, and then the roar of rapids sounded ahead.

"Got him!" panted Mac. "He'll have to land now."

Round another bend shot the birch canoe, with the Peterboro three hundred yards behind, and now the broken water came in sight. It was a long, rock-staked chute, and the boys thought it would be suicidal to try to run it. But the half-breed kept straight on in mid-channel.

"He's going to try to run through!" Horace cried. "He'll drown himself and the foxes!"

The boys yelled at him; but the next instant the man's canoe had shot into the broken water. For a moment they lost sight of him in a cloud of spray; then they saw him half-way down the rapids, going like a bullet. With incredible skill, he was keeping his craft upright.

The boys drove their canoe toward the landing, and still watched the man. When he was almost through the rapids, they saw his canoe shoot bow upward into the air, hang a moment, and then go over.

Shouting with excitement, they dragged the canoe ash.o.r.e, picked it up, and went over the portage at a run. Far down the stream they saw the birch canoe floating on its side, near the fox cage. They had just launched the Peterboro at the tail of the rapids, when they saw something black bobbing in the swirling water.

It was the head of the half-breed. He was swimming feebly, and when they hauled him into the canoe, was almost unconscious. He had a great bleeding gash just above his ear, where he had struck a rock; but he was not seriously injured. The boys paid little attention to him, but hastened to rescue their treasure. When they came up with the birch canoe, they found that the fox cage had been lashed to it with a strip of deerskin, and, to their great relief, that the foxes were there, all four of them, alive and afloat.

They got the cage ash.o.r.e as quickly as possible. The foxes were dripping with water, but looked as lively as ever. To all appearances, the ducking had not hurt them.

The canoe itself had not come off so well. It had a great rent in the bottom, and Horace stamped another hole through the bow. Then the boys examined their new outfit. From their own former store they had a kettle, a frying-pan, a box of rifle-cartridges, and a sack of tea.

They had taken from the trappers' supplies half a sack of flour, a lump of salt pork, two blankets, and two rifles.

The half-breed had recovered his wits by this time; sitting on the bank, he glared savagely at them.

"You'll find your partners waiting for you up the river," Horace said to him. "We've got what we need, and you'll find the rest of your kit on the sh.o.r.e where you unpacked it. As for your rifles--"

He picked them up and tossed them into six feet of water. "By the time you've fished them out and mended your canoe I guess you won't want to follow us. If you do, you won't catch us napping again, and we'll shoot you on sight. _Savez_?"

The half-breed muttered some sullen response. The boys loaded the fox cage into the Peterboro, got in themselves, and shot down the river again in a fresh start for home. They left the trapper sitting on the rock, glaring after them.

Now that the strain was over and the fight won, the boys felt utterly exhausted. They kept on at as fast a pace as they could, however, and reached the Missanabie River a little after noon. There they stopped to cook dinner.

Once more they had hot, black _voyageurs'_ tea, and fried flapjacks, and salt pork. It seemed the most delicious meal they had ever eaten; but when they had finished, they felt too weary to start up the Missanabie, and reckless of consequences, they lay down and slept for almost two hours.

Then they continued their journey with double energy, and made good progress for the rest of the day.