Northern Diamonds Part 5

There was so grim an air of desolation about the hut that the boys stopped short with a sense of dread.

"Can this really be it?" Maurice muttered.

The hut and its surroundings were exactly as the Indian had described them. They ventured forward hesitatingly, reconnoitered, and approached the door. It stood ajar two or three inches; a heavy drift of snow lay against it. Clearly no living man was in the cabin.

"We've come too late, boys," said Macgregor. "However, let's have a look."

Using one of his snowshoes as a shovel, he began to clear the doorway.

Fred helped him. They sc.r.a.ped away the snow, and forced the door open.

For fear of infection, they contented themselves with peeping in from the entrance; a glance showed them that no man was in that dim interior, dead or alive.

The cabin was a mere hut, built of small logs, c.h.i.n.ked with moss and mud, and was less than five feet high at the eaves. The floor was of clay; the roof appeared to be of bark and moss thatch, supported on poles. A small window of some skin or membrane let in a faint light, and the rough fireplace was full of snow that had blown down the chimney.

No one was there, but some one had left in haste. The whole interior was in the wildest confusion, littered with all sorts of articles of forest housekeeping flung about pell-mell--cooking-utensils, sc.r.a.ps of clothing, blankets, furs, traps; they could not make out all the articles that enc.u.mbered the floor.

"The fellow must have simply got well and gone away with the other half-breed," said Macgregor, after they had surveyed the place in silence. "Well, that ends our hope of being millionaires next year.

We've come on a fool's errand."

"Nothing for it now but to go home again, is there?" said Fred, in disgust.

"We've come one hundred and fifty miles to see this camp, and we ought to look through it," said Maurice.

"We must disinfect the place before we can go in. And there's no chance of our finding any diamonds here," Fred remarked.

"I want to have a look through, anyway. Let's get out the fumigating machine."

It was a formaldehyde outfit, consisting simply of a can of the disinfectant with a bracket attached underneath to hold a small spirit lamp. By the heat of the flame, formalin gas, one of the deadliest germ-killers known, was given off.

Macgregor opened the can, lighted the pale spirit flame, and set the apparatus on a rude shelf that happened to be just inside the hut.

They forced the door shut again, and sealed it by throwing water against it, for the water promptly froze. It was not necessary to close the chimney, for the germicidal gas is heavier than air, and fills a room exactly as water fills a tank.

As it would take the disinfectant ten or twelve hours to do its work, they hastened to construct a camp, for it was growing dark. It was a rather melancholy evening. The nearness of the cabin, with its sinister a.s.sociations, affected them disagreeably; and, moreover, they were all tired with the day's tramp, and chagrined and mortified at having come, as Peter said, "on a fool's errand." After all their glittering hopes, there was nothing now for them except a week's snowshoe tramp back to Waverley, with barely enough provisions to see them through.

Still they were curious about the cabin, and before breakfast the next morning they burst open the ice-sealed door. A suffocating odor issued forth, so powerful that they staggered back.

"Good gracious!" gasped Fred, after a spasm of coughing. "It must certainly be safe after that!"

They found it impossible to go in until the gas had cleared away, and so, leaving the door wide open, they returned to breakfast. Afterward they idled about, trying to kill time; it was afternoon before they could venture inside the cabin for more than a moment.

It was disagreeable even then, for the whole interior was filled with the heavy, suffocating odor. They coughed, and their eyes watered, but they managed to endure it.

As they had seen, the contents of the place were all topsy-turvy. The furniture consisted solely of a rough table of split planks, and a couple of rough seats. A heap of rusty, brown _sapin_ in a corner, covered with a torn blanket, represented a bed--possibly the one in which the trapper had died.

In one corner stood a double-barreled shotgun, still loaded. Three pairs of snowshoes were thrust under the rafters; several worn moccasins lay on the floor, along with nearly a dozen steel traps, a bundle of furs, some of which were valuable, a camp kettle, an axe, strips of hide, dry bones, a blanket, fishing-tackle--an unspeakable litter of things, some worthless, some to men in a wilderness precious as gold.

The last occupants had plainly left in such a desperate hurry that they had abandoned most of their possessions. Why had they done it? The boys could not guess.

The heavy formalin fumes rose and choked them as they poked over the rubbish. But they found nothing to show the fate of the prospector and the surviving half-breed, or even to tell them whether this was really the cabin they were seeking.

"Throw this rubbish into the fireplace," said Macgregor. "Burning is the best thing for it, and the fire will ventilate the place. There's no danger of germs on the metal things."

"These furs are worth something," said Fred, who had been looking them over. "There are a dozen or so of mink and marten--enough to pay the expenses of the trip."

They laid the furs aside, and cramming the rest of the litter into the snowy fireplace, with the dead balsam boughs, set it afire. In the red blaze the hut a.s.sumed an unexpectedly homelike aspect.

"Not such a bad place for the winter, after all," Maurice remarked, casting his eye about. "I shouldn't mind spending a month trapping here myself. What if we did, fellows, eh? Here are plenty of traps, and we might clear three or four hundred dollars, with a little luck."

"Here's something new," interrupted Peter, who had been grubbing about in a corner.

He came forward with a woodsman's "turkey" in his hands--a heavy canvas knapsack, much stained and battered, and rather heavy.

"Something in this," he continued, trying the rusty buckles. "Why, what's the matter, Fred?"

For Fred had uttered a sudden cry, and they saw his face turn deathly white. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the sack, tore it open, and shook it out.

A number of pieces of rock fell to the floor, a couple of geologist's hammers, a pair of socks, and a couple of small, oilcloth-covered notebooks.

On these Fred pounced, and opened them. They were full of penciled notes.

"They're his!" the boy exclaimed wildly. "They're Horace's notebooks!

I knew his turkey. Horace was here. Don't you see? _He_ was the sick man!"

For a minute his companions, hardly comprehending, looked on in amazement. Then Macgregor took one of the books from his hand. On the inside of the cover was plainly written, "Horace Osborne, Toronto."

"It's true!" he muttered. "It must really have been Horace." Then, collecting his wits, he added, "But he must be all right, since he's gone away."

"No!" Fred cried. "He'd never have gone away leaving his notes and specimens. It was his whole summer's work. He'd have thrown away anything else. He must be dead."

"He was vaccinated. He's sure not to have died of smallpox," Peter urged.

Fred had collapsed on the mud floor, holding the "turkey," and fairly crying.

"He had the diamonds on him. That half-breed may have murdered him, and then fled in a hurry. Things look like it," said Maurice aside to Peter.

"Yes, but then Horace's body would be here," the Scotchman returned.

"I don't understand it."

"They can't have both died, either, or they'd both be here. So they must both have gone. But no trapper would have left these valuable pelts, any more than Horace would have left his notes."

"There's something mysterious here," said Fred, getting up resolutely, and wiping the tears from his eyes. "Horace has been here.

Something's happened to him, and we've got to find out what it is."

"And we'll find out--if it takes all winter!" Macgregor a.s.sured him.

They searched the hut afresh, but found no clues. They now regretted having burned the heap of rubbish, which perhaps had contained something to throw light on the problem.

During the rest of that afternoon they searched and searched again throughout the cabin, and prowled about its neighborhood. They dug into the snowdrifts, poked into the brushwood, scouted into the forest in the faint hope of finding something that would cast light on Horace's fate. All they found was the trapper's birch canoe, laid up ash.o.r.e, and buried in snow.