The Ice Queen Part 20

"I reckon so. None of these winter birds are shy--lucky for us! and I think the shelter of these trees and the warmth of our smoke will fetch 'em, especially if we scatter some crumbs out on the roof."

"But we have none to scatter," Katy protested.

All three then went to work picking the birds, whose bodies looked surprisingly small after their puffy coats had been taken off. "See what a warm undershirt of down this one wears at the roots of his feathers!" Tug pointed out, holding up a red-poll.

"Wish I were a bird," said Jimmy; "I'd get out o' this in no time."

"Perhaps if you were, this would be the very place you would most want to come to and stay in," Katy remarked, "just as these poor little things did. The 'if' makes a lot of difference, Master Jim."

By this time it began to grow dusk, and though the snow was falling as fast as ever, the air had grown much warmer, as though the storm would end in rain. Aleck had not come yet, and the three, in their snug house, looking out upon the deep drifts and the clouded air, and listening to the melancholy sound of the wind in the trees, became more and more anxious for his appearance.

When it had grown quite dark, and the broth Katy had made was ready, together with cakes of corn-meal, and tea, or, rather, hot water flavored with tea and sugar--the best meal they had seen for many a day--Tug said that if the Captain did not come before they got through eating he would go and look for him. So they tried to keep up each other's spirits; but when the meal was done, and still no brother appeared, all their merriment faded.

"Jim and Rex ought both to go with you, Tug; and you must take along the lantern, and these extra corn cakes I have baked, and some bacon--"

"The bacon's raw," Jim protested.

"Well, stupid, you could fry it over some coals on the end of a stick, couldn't you?" exclaimed Tug, impatiently. He was getting very tired of Jim's constant objections.

"And you must take this little bit of brandy, because you know, he might--might be--"

"Now, Katy, dear Katy," said Tug, his own eyes moist, as he threw his arm around the shoulders of the girl, who had broken down at last, and was crying bitterly. "Don't cry, Katy. If _you_ give in, what are we goin' to do? You are the life of the party, and there ain't nothin'

we wouldn't any of us--and specially me--do for you. Really now, Katy--Here, you young cub, what are _you_ bellerin' about? If I catch you crying round here again, discouragin' your sister in this style, I'll thrash you well!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "DON'T CRY, KATY!"]

Tug was thoroughly excited and distressed by this last and heaviest trouble, and most anxious of all to make the rest believe he wasn't anxious. As usual, when excited, he dropped into the slang he had been striving to forget. But this added force to his speeches, for when it occurred everybody understood that he was very much in earnest.

"I knew a young fellow," Tug himself used to say, when laughed at for this peculiarity, "whose father was a Dutchman, but who could never be persuaded to learn that language. 'Why not?' we used to ask him.

'Well, fellows,' he would say, 'my daddy talks English till he catches me up to some mischief; then he begins to talk Dutch, and goes for his whip; so I've got a terrible distaste for Dutch.' It's with me as it was with that man. When I am mad, or mean business, I'm pretty likely to talk in the 'Dutch' I learned when I was a boy."

The two boys and the dog--for Rex had nursed his foot until it was of use to him again, protected by bandages--bundled themselves up, took the lantern, the hatchet, and luncheon, and started out. Katy said she should not be a bit afraid, and would keep up a good fire. As they disappeared, letting in a flurry of snow before they could shut the door, she dropped into a seat (if truth must be told) to finish her crying. Let her do it, poor girl!--few of her a.s.sociates, or yours, my pretty maiden, ever had better cause. We will flounder along with Tug and Jim, who are bowing their faces to the storm, and toiling up the dark and treacherous hillside.

When the top of the ridge had been gained they paused to get breath and to shout Aleck's name. No reply came, and they pushed on down to the isthmus, where the snow, which was becoming more and more sleety, swept about their faces with double force. In a few moments, however, they reached the shelter of the woods, which covered pretty much the whole of that part of the island; and then came the question whether it would be better to work along the beach or plunge into the woods.

There seemed very small chance of success, in the midst of this darkness and storm, either way, but they felt sure that some accident had happened to the Captain, and they were eager to help him. After talking it over, they decided upon the right-hand or southern sh.o.r.e of the island, because that was to leeward, and better sheltered, and marched on as rapidly as they could. They had no strength to talk, but hand-in-hand pushed ahead, stopping now and then to shout, but never getting an answer.

"There's one good thing about this storm," Tug remarked, after a while, as they halted to rest in a sort of cleft in the rock. "Those confounded dogs will be likely to stay indoors and not bother us."

"I wonder where they keep themselves at night?"

"If our island is like the rest, this limestone rock is full of caves.

There's no telling, for instance, how deep this here opening we're sitting in goes back; and in some of the Puddin' Bay [Put-in-Bay]

islands big caves have been explored that people go away into to see the stalact.i.tes. There are plenty of rocky holes, therefore, where they could find good shelter and beds of leaves that the wind had blown in. But we must get out of this, Youngster."

Chapter XXVII.

ANOTHER ENCOUNTER WITH THE WILD DOGS.

They trudged slowly on again until they thought they must be close to the farther end of the island, when they found progress interrupted by a low headland of rocks partly covered by the brush of a fallen tree-top. In trying to get past it they became entangled in the branches, and Tug said he "'lowed they'd have to light the lantern."

With great care, therefore--for matches were precious--this was done, and its rays at once showed them that they were not the first persons who had been there that night. Branches were freshly broken, and the snow was trampled. They set up a combined shout (and bark) as soon as this was perceived, but nothing came back except the dull echo of their voices and the rustle of the sleet and snow among the leafless and dripping branches.

"Well," said Tug, when he realized this, "our cue is to follow the tracks anyhow."

Crushing through the branches, they saw that the tracks, which had approached from the other side of the rocks and brush, led them to the trunk of the tree, and that then Aleck (if, indeed, it were he who had made them) had walked along the trunk towards its roots. Of course they followed, Tug going ahead with the lantern; but when they arrived at the great base of upturned roots they could not see where Aleck had leaped off, or that he had leaped off at all. On one side the snow lay smooth and untouched; on the other, close under and around the ma.s.s of dead roots, was a little thicket of low bushes and a shoulder of black rock. Beyond these the snow had not been disturbed.

This was very mysterious, and chilled their hearts with a nameless fear. They came close together on the high log, and talked almost in whispers. Jim held Tug's arm with both hands, and trembled so that his teeth chattered, and the tears rolled down his cheeks; while Tug himself, old and brave and strong as he was, was so scared (as he often said afterwards) that every creak and moan of the laboring, ice-coated trees seemed a frightful voice, and all the flitting lights and shadows cast by their lantern among the dark trunks and swaying hemlock branches took on shapes that it chilled his blood to look at.

Even Rex seemed to catch the panic, and cowered at their feet with bristling hair.

There had been only a moment of this helpless, causeless terror--and no doubt they would quickly have thrown it off--when they were roused by a real danger, which they knew in an instant. All ghosts and goblins, forms and voices, vanished at once, for they heard the wolfish howl of the dreaded dogs.

"Only mastiffs or hounds," you may exclaim, "such as we pa.s.s on the street every day, and babies play with, rolling over and on them unharmed!"

Very true; but these dogs had become savage again by their wild life; and no traveller in his sledge on the steppes of Siberia, or postman belated in the Black Forest at New Year, was ever in more danger from wolves than were these two lads from the dogs, if the animals chose to attack them. Perhaps they had not yet been quite long enough in the wilderness to have overcome their once well-learned fear of men, and so would hesitate to attack, in open fight, the beings that heretofore had been their masters; but this was all the hope the boys could have.

"The dogs!" cried Jim, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

"Yes," said Tug, through his teeth. "Here! give me the lantern, quick: we must have a fire."

The tangle of dead roots was quite dry, and kindled easily when the lantern-candle was held against it, so that it was scarcely a minute before a bright blaze was crackling.

That moment had been enough, however, for the near approach of the dogs, as they knew by the increasing loudness of their cries, to which Rex bravely responded; and it was not long before they heard them crashing through the underbrush, and saw their eyes--fiery pairs of dots which reflected the firelight in flashes of green or red--though the forms of the savage animals were hidden in the gloom.

Tug had hastily lopped off a young sapling and trimmed it into a long, rough club, which he now held in the fire, in hope that the green wood would get hardened, or perhaps even ablaze. Jimmy clutched the hatchet tightly in his right hand, and his open jackknife in his left, while Rex bristled and barked. All the goblin fright had vanished, and the boys no longer trembled because sleet and wind made uncanny noises, or the firelight seemed to summon eldritch forms from the aisles of darkness between the hemlocks.

There seemed to be three of the fierce brutes, and they stopped as they came in sight of the fire and the group ready to receive them; but after a short pause the largest dog, with a tremendous bark, rushed forward, the others following savagely at his heels. Rex was crouching and ready, so that before either of the boys could seize his collar he had sprung to meet his foes, and had gone down under their combined weight.

It was one of the strangest dog-fights known to history, and had the strangest end. In his broad collar, his long hair, and his greater health the Newfoundland had the advantage; but he was one and his foes were three, and they had no chivalrous ideas of fairness or mercy in a fight, but were savages, bent not only upon the death of their victim, but upon tearing him in pieces and devouring him afterwards.

No sooner did Tug see Rex leap, and perceive the charge upon him, than he shouted "Give it to 'em!" and sprang into the snow, punching the nearest brute, bayonet fashion, with the hot tip of his sapling spear, while Jim got in at least one good blow with his hatchet. It sank almost to the haft in the neck of one of the youngest dogs, and he dropped dead with scarcely a shudder.

Meeting this unexpected resistance, so determined, fiery (Tug's sapling bore a little streamer of flame, like the banner on the head of a Cossack's lance), and so fatal to one of their number, the two remaining dogs were abashed, and let go of Rex, intending to fight with their human a.s.sailants. But they had no time to make the change.

Seeing that he must follow up his advantage, Tug charged again, and fairly put the startled brutes to flight by the combined force of his yells and his blazing bayonet, backed by Jim and his terrible hatchet.

When the boys saw that the dogs had really run away, they turned to look after their own brave ally, but he was nowhere to be seen, though the blazing stump lit up the whole scene of the battle.

"Why, where's Rex?" they asked one another, and called and whistled.

Could he have fled into the forest? Impossible. Hark! was not that a faint whine?--and another?

"Do you think he can be dying, and has hid himself in the brush?"

asked Jim. "They say wounded animals do do that."

"Looks like it," Tug admitted. "Here, _Rex_!"