Stranded in Arcady Part 21

"If you are an officer of the law we have no notion of resisting you,"

he said placably. "What is the charge against us?"

"Ye'll be knowin' that weel enough, I'm thinkin'. Whaur's Indian Jules and the Cambon man? Maybe ye can tell me that! Aiblins ye'd better not, though. I'll gie ye fair warnin' that whatever ye say'll be used against ye."

There seemed to be nothing for it but an unconditional surrender. Prime looked the posse over appraisively as the men composing it moved forward into the circle of firelight. The under-sheriff was what his speech declared him to be--a Scotchman; stubby, square-built, clean-shaven, with a graying fringe of hair over his ears, a hard-lined mouth, shrewd eyes under penthouse brows, and a portentous official frown. His posse men were apparently either "river hogs" or saw-mill hands--rough-looking young fellows giving the impression that they would obey orders with small regard for consequences. Prime saw nothing hopeful in the Scotchman's face, but it occurred to him that a too easy yielding might be construed as an admission of guilt.

"I take it that a false arrest and imprisonment is actionable in Canada, as well as in the United States," he threw out coolly, helping Lucetta to her feet. "We'll be glad to have you take us with you--but not as prisoners." And thereupon he briefed for the square-built one the story of the kidnapping and its results.

"And ye're expectin' me to believe any such fule's rubbish as that?"

snapped the Scotchman wrathfully when the tale was told.

"You can believe it or not, as you choose; it is the plain truth. We'll go along with you cheerfully, and be grateful enough to you or to anybody who will show us the way out of this wilderness. But, as to the crime you are charging us with, there isn't a particle of evidence, and you know it."

"There's evidence to hang the baith of ye! Ye've admitted that the half-breeds are baith deid; and John Baptist will sweer that ye had their canoe and Cambon's gun. For the matter o' that, ye're not denyin'

it, yerself."

"We are merely wasting time," put in Prime quietly. "You evidently have no wish to be convinced; and if you are willing to take the chance of making a false arrest you may have your own way. Let me say first, though, that this lady is just recovering from a severe attack of fever, and you will be held strictly accountable if you make her endure any unreasonable hardships."

"'Tis not for you to make terms," was the irascible rejoinder, and then to his men: "Tie their hands, and we'll be goin'."

"One moment," Prime interposed; and stooping swiftly he caught up the rifle. "You may do anything you please to me, but the first man who lays a hand on the lady is going to get himself killed."

The under-sheriff screwed out a bleak smile at the nave simplicity of the threat. "And if we say 'Yes,' and truss you up first," he suggested, "what'll ye be doin' then?"

"I shall take your word for it as from one gentleman to another," was Prime's quick concession, and with that he dropped the gun and held out his hands.

They bound him securely with buckskin thongs, and at a word from the Scotchman the camp dunnage was gathered up, the fire trodden out, and a shift was made to the river-bank. A three-quarter moon, riding high, showed the two captives a large birchbark drawn out upon the sands. The embarkation was quickly accomplished, the under-sheriff planting himself amidships with his two prisoners, and the four posse-men taking the paddles as if they had been bred to it.

After an hour or more of swift downstream gliding the current quickened and a sound like the wind sweeping through the tree-tops warned the voyagers that they were approaching a rapid. At this the canoe was sent ash.o.r.e and the Scotchman changed places with his bow-man, letting the change stand even after the slight hazard of quick water was pa.s.sed.

Prime soon saw that his new guard was nodding, and bent to whisper to his fellow captive:

"This is mighty hard for you--after yesterday and last night," he protested. "Can't you shift a little and lean against me?"

"I am doing quite well," was the low-toned answer. And then: "What is going to come of all this, Donald?"

"We shall get out of the woods for one thing. And for another we are going to hope that a real court will not be so obstinately suspicious as this Scotchman. But, whatever lies ahead, we must just stand by and face it out--together. They can't punish us for a crime that we didn't commit."

There was silence for another half-hour, and then Lucetta whispered again.

"Which pocket is your penknife in?" she asked.

"The right-hand pocket of my waistcoat. What are you going to do?"

"I am going to cut the thongs. It is barbarously cruel for them to leave you tied this way!"

"No," he forbade. "That would only make matters worse. The buckskin is not hurting me much. Lean your head against my shoulder and see if you can't get a little sleep."

At the morning breakfast halt Prime tried to extract a bit of geographical information from the Scotchman. It was given grudgingly.

During the night they had pa.s.sed from their own river to the larger Riviere du Lievres and they were still twenty-four hours or more from their destination--a place with a long French name that Prime did not catch and which the Scotchman would not repeat. For the first time in their wanderings the two castaways ate a meal that they had not prepared for themselves; and Prime, observing anxiously, was glad to note that Lucetta's wilderness appet.i.te seemed to be returning.

Throughout the day, during which the crew took turns paddling and sleeping, the big birch-bark held to its down-stream course. But now the scenery was changing with each fresh looping of the crooked river, the River of the Hares. Recent timber-cuttings appeared; the river broadened into lake-like reaches; here and there upon the banks there were lumber camps; in the afternoon a small town was pa.s.sed, and later the site of another that had been destroyed by a landslide.

With an eye single to his purpose, the Scotchman made no noon stop, and the supper fire was built on the right-hand bank of the broadened stream at a spot where there were no signs of human habitation. As at the breakfast, Prime's bonds were taken off to permit him to feed himself, and when the voyage was resumed they were not put on again.

"The wumman tells me ye can't swim, and I'm takin' her word for it," was the gruff explanation. "If ye go overboard in the night, I'll juist lat ye droon."

With his hands free, Prime asked if he might smoke. The permission was given, and, since they had confiscated Prime's store of tobacco with the remainder of the dunnage, the Scotchman opened his heart and his tobacco-pouch in the prisoner's behalf, filling his own pipe at the same time. When the dottles were glowing, the under-sheriff thawed another degree or so.

"D'ye mean to tell me that ye're goin' to hold to that rideeculous story of yours in the coort?" he questioned. "It may do for auld Sandy Macdougal, the under-sheriff; but ye'll no be expectin' a jury to listen till it."

Prime laughed soberly. "I wish, for your sake and our own, Mr.

Macdougal, that we had a more believable story to tell. But facts are hard matters to evade. Things have happened to us precisely as I have tried to tell you. We were drugged in Quebec and abducted--carried off in an air-machine, as well as we can reason it out--and that is all there is to it. We don't know any more than you do what we were kidnapped for--or by whom."

"Weel, ye're a main lang ways from Quebec the noo--some twa hunnerd miles or mair. And ye're not dressed for the timmer."

"Hardly," said Prime.

Macdougal jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward Lucetta. "Is the wumman yer wife?"

"No; we are distant cousins, though we had never met before the morning when we found ourselves on the sh.o.r.e of the big lake."

"Ye mean that ye were strangers to each ither?"

"Just that. Up to that moment neither had known of the existence of the other."

The Scotchman stared hard at Prime from beneath his s.h.a.ggy brows.

"Young man, ye'll juist be tellin' me what's yer business, when ye're not trollopin' round in the timmer with a young wumman that's yer cousin, and that ye never saw or heard of before."

"I am a fiction-writer," Prime admitted, not without some little anxiety as to the effect the statement might have upon the hard-headed under-sheriff.

"Ou, ay! That's it, is it? A story-writer? And, besides that, ye're the biggest fule leevin' to tell it to me. Ye'll no be expectin' me to believe anything ye're sayin', after that! A novel-writer--losh!"

"One of the greatest Scotchmen the world ever saw was a novel-writer,"

Prime ventured to suggest.

"And it's varra little to his credit, let me tell ye that, young man!

'Tis mair becomin' to Sir Walter that he was sheriff depute o'

Selkirkshire and clerk o' session for abune twenty-five year on end.

That's a canty story for ye!"

Prime saw that he was making no headway with the Macdougal, and after the pipes were out he tried to compose himself to sleep. Some time later on, Macdougal changed places with one of the paddlers, and, seizing her opportunity, Lucetta crept back to take her place beside Prime. They talked in whispers for a while, each trying to cheer the other. The morning of new and more threatening involvements was only a short night distant, and in the light of the month of hardship and mystery they could only fear the worst and hope for the best.

"You must try to get what sleep you can," Prime urged at the last, arranging the nearest blanket-roll for her back-support. "We shall be up against it again in the morning, and we both ought to have clear heads and a good, cold nerve. Snuggle down and shut your eyes. I am going to do the same after I've smoked another pipe."

He kept his word, dropping off shortly after the big canoe had entered a long straight reach with twinkling lights on either sh.o.r.e to prove that the moving world was once more coming within shouting distance. How long he slept he did not know, but when he awoke the canoe was stopped in midstream, and was lying stem to stern beside a larger craft, in the hold of which throbbing machinery seemed to be running idle.

Vaguely he gathered the impression that the canoe had been held up by the motorcraft; then he realized that a fierce altercation was going on between a big man who was leaning over the side to grip the gunwale of the birch bark and Under-sheriff Macdougal.