The Wilderness Trail Part 16

"We haven't anything to start on, dearest"--Donald grinned amiably--"except our knowledge and our nerve. We have got to carve existence out of this." He included the surrounding desolation with a sweep of his arm. "If this were only a desert island now, how easy everything would be!"

"You've forgotten one thing we have," remarked Jean with twinkling eyes.

"What's that?

"Each other, stupid!" ... But ere long she regretted the words.

CHAPTER XIV

A FRIGID IDYL

Arrived back at the little shanty, they set about their housekeeping at once. The situation might have been delicate in other periods and climes, but here no false sentimentality clouded the grisly facts. Face to face with them stood hunger and cold, two relentless enemies. Hunger, in a land where the temperature burns up the tissues as a freight-engine on a grade eats coal, makes no truces; it sets its fangs when October comes, and tries its malignant best to keep them set until May or June.

Cold is something that persons of a temperate clime never experience.

When the temperature reaches ten below zero the papers are full of it, and there is general consternation. But, here, in lat.i.tude fifty-four north, the mercury goes down to fifty or sixty below, and life becomes something that is at best only mere existence, and at worst, annihilation.

And these were the two foes that a hardy man and a delicately natured woman set themselves to defeat.

"I--I can't very well sleep outside the shanty," said Donald as indifferently as possible. "I have no tent or sleeping-bag. I should freeze to death."

The girl colored slightly, and asked:

"Is there no way to make a part.i.tion?" The man pondered a minute, and then shook his head.

"Of course," he explained, "a wood part.i.tion is out of the question, because any real tree would break ax steel into brittle bits.

However, there are the robes and blankets you traveled in. If we find we can spare one of those, we'll fix a part.i.tion--otherwise not. We can't risk freezing our faces or our bodies at night."

He spoke with a tone of genial friendliness, but there was a note of undisputable authority in his voice that silenced whatever objection the girl might have offered. Already, she began to feel that this man knew. He would cherish her to his last breath, but what he said she must obey, both for his sake and her own. There was no equivocation possible; he had taken command; he would give orders, which he expected her to obey promptly; he would do everything for the best. He _knew_, and she did not. Therefore, she would trust herself to him. So, she surrendered her will to his, and felt little thrills of admiration as he walked about deep in thought, planning their temporary life in this wretched hovel, which, somehow, had stolen a little of the sunshine from the snow, and become a dear and sacred dwelling-place.

Leaving her to set the place in order as much as possible, Donald returned to the river and the upturned sledge. The latter, grounding in a shallow, had stopped the down-stream drift and now, with its dead dogs, was freezing solid in the ice. With his knife, he chopped away around the edges, and found the pack thongs still around the sledge. Hazardous poking with a hooked branch brought the pack to light from beneath the sleigh, but it was a flat and sickly reminder of what it had once been. The flour was gone, but the tea, which had been in a canister, was unspoiled. A chunk of fat meat might prove of some value after treatment. A few battered tin dishes and utensils Donald greeted as priceless finds, and a rusted woodsman's ax sent him into a war-dance of joy. Last of all, a single steel trap came to light. He examined it closely, and discovered why it had been taken on the trip by Charley Seguis and his companions.

It was broken, and no doubt one of the trappers had expected to mend it some night by the camp-fire. Just now, Donald could not tell whether it was beyond his skill or not.

Laden with his finds, he returned to the shanty, where Jean had succeeded in coaxing a fire to burn in the old stone chimney at one end. Near by lay the remainder of the fish he had caught in the morning.

"Those will do for to-night," he said, "but, after supper, I must catch some more, and look about the banks of that little river. I thought I noticed several things there this morning."

"Oh, don't go away and leave me alone," pleaded the girl, forgetting that for two nights and days she had braved the wilderness single-handed.

"We'll go together then, princess," he replied, smiling. It was now late in the afternoon, and almost dark, so they set about dinner, which consisted of fish and tea. During the meal, Donald regarded Jean for a little in quizzical silence.

"I'm glad Mr. Gates, the missionary, is with your father," he said, at last.

"I'm not, particularly; he's only in the way, and wants to preach all the time, when there's fighting to be done. Why are you glad?"

"Just for the convenience of the thing, that's all. When we join the men from Fort Severn, he can marry us at once."

"Well, well, young man!" replied the girl, severely. "I can't say that we have to rush into matrimony the moment we perceive a ca.s.sock.

Personally, next June at the fort, when the _brigades_ have come down, and there are flowers, and so forth, I shall be more ready to talk the matter over with you." She looked at him with eyebrows lifted in mock condescension while she stirred the fish with a tin spoon.

Donald, in the first bliss of happiness realized, leaned over to kiss her, but this time the eyes that met his were serious. He took the upraised hand in his banteringly, but listened to what she said, nevertheless.

"Donald, of course we have to be a little foolish sometimes, but I must ask you to agree with me that we only be good friends after--oh, say three o'clock in the afternoon. From then on, no foolishness, it will spare us a lot."

Donald looked at the girl, keenly surprised. The same thought had been in his mind, but he had not dared express it for fear of having to entangle himself in impossible explanations. But, now, her woman's intuition felt the thing he knew, that love, fierce, burning, desirous, comes in the northland as well as in the tropics. With a few words, they made their rule and he dropped her hand.

"But, to return to the preacher," he resumed presently, as they had more fish, "I think it will be better for all hands, if we marry at once. This little honeyless honeymoon won't stand the strain of months, dearest, for in that time it will have been discussed from Labrador to the Columbia, and from the Coppermine to Lake Superior, and I don't want you on the tongues of men at all. I am glad you love me, for now our marriage has to be."

"But, Donald, think of father! This is the last thing in the world he will allow," Jean protested. "Why, if he thought I had such a step in mind he'd have apoplexy, I'm sure. Really, you don't know how strongly he feels about it, and about you."

"In reference to this Charley Seguis, whom I failed to bring in?"

"No, it isn't that. He disposed of that by putting you in the guard-house."

"It can't be my escape then, for he hasn't heard of that."

"No," said the girl, sitting back, her eyes troubled; "it isn't any of these things, but something else more dreadful or hurtful to you. I have tried so hard to learn what it is, but he won't tell me! Old Maria knows, and hinted at it--"

"Old Maria!" cried Donald, in disgust. "What can that old hag know about me? Little girl, my life has been clean, and yet these accursed rumors fly around me like a flock of hawks over a grouse-nest.

Even your father, a just man in his way, will not give me a chance to prove or disprove. In heaven's name, Jean, if you know anything more tell me, and I'll run the thing to earth, if it takes all my life."

The girl lifted her calm eyes to his troubled ones, and he knew that he would hear the frank truth.

"Poor boy!" she said. "I don't know anything definite. Old Maria hinted at a stain on your life, and father, when I demanded the facts from him, said that he wouldn't tell me if he could, for it wasn't proper for me to hear them. That's all I know. But, Donald, never for a moment have I doubted you, or lost faith that you could upset this whole tissue of rumor as soon as you laid hold of it."

"Good little princess!" he said gratefully, and pressed her hand for a moment. "My conscience is clear, and, if I have your faith and love, I can fight anything. G.o.d help these breeders of slander, if I get hold of them, that's all," he added, grimly.

A little while later, armed with ax and knife, and accompanied by Jean, who carried the home-made fish-line, Donald led the way through the woods to the river that had brought him such precious freight on the tide of tragedy. That morning while angling, his eyes had seen many things. Fifty feet from where he sat, he had observed an iced pool in which a back-set from the swift stream probably moved sluggishly. He had noticed little tracks of five-toed, webbed feet on the thin drift of powdery snow that led to the bank above this pool. Last of all, he had seen a smooth incline worn by these webbed feet down to the brink of the pool.

"Otter!" he had said to himself; and he had resolved to come back later.

Now, with crisp instructions as to silence, he advanced noiselessly, trying every bit of crust before he set his weight upon it, avoiding tufts of underbrush, and repressing his breathing. Jean, a true daughter of the North, sensed these precautions almost by instinct, and followed his example. He did not seek the fishing-hole of the morning, but rather a clump of trees on the bank back of the incline, thanking fortune that the light wind was in his face, so that the man-smell could not be carried down to the pool. With infinite care, the two approached the shelter of the trees, and, presently, when the wind rustled among the boughs, parted them and looked through.

There, on the bank, was the whole colony of otters, engaged in an exhilarating pastime. Head-first, tail-first, sidewise, singly and in groups, the little animals were coasting down the toboggan-like path they had worn from the top of the bank to the water's edge.

No sooner did they roll to the bottom than they raced to the top and started all over again, slithering, careening, tumbling. To the girl, it was a strangely ludicrous sight, but to Donald it was familiar enough. The otters were indulging in the favorite amus.e.m.e.nt of their kind--sliding down a snow-bank.

The two observers turned away soon, and, with exaggerated care, made their way back to the little shanty, where Donald at once set about mending the broken trap. In two hours' time, he had succeeded in fixing it temporarily. Then, after wrapping Jean in her blankets and furs on the spruce-coveted bunk, he rolled up in his own coverings before the fire for the night.

The next morning, Donald caught a fish for breakfast, and then returned to the otter-slide with his trap and the piece of meat he had rescued from the pack. Baiting the trap with part of a fish, he buried it in the snow at a point where the otter must come down the slide to the pool. Then, he rubbed the meat in the tracks where he had stepped, and brushed snow across them, obliterating every trace of his presence. After that, he returned to the shanty, for there was still much to be done.

On his way to the fish pool that morning, he had seen a number of sharply impressed, three-toed cl.u.s.ters of footprints, and recognized the tracks of the hare. Now, he searched the by-ways of the low ground in the vicinity, and finally discovered a line of undergrowth like a hedge, through which a pa.s.sage had been forced. The hard-packed runway told him that here the long-ears pa.s.sed through on their foraging expeditions. He cut a number of small sticks and planted them across this opening, leaving barely enough room for a small animal to pa.s.s. Then, he took from his pocket the string of moose-gut that had made part of the fish-line, and fashioned it into a running noose. This he hung across the opening, and tied the other end to a bent twig, which would spring up immediately a pull dislodged it from its caught position. Here, too, he carefully effaced any man-trace, and afterward went on to the second hedge, where he set a snare made of his moccasin strings. At noon, he returned to his snares, and found two strangled rabbits hanging in mid air, frozen to the consistency of granite. Releasing them, he reset the snares, and returned jubilantly to the cabin with his catch. . . . And they had rabbit stew that day.

This was only the beginning. It was food, and no more. As the days pa.s.sed, Donald spent many hours in the forest, chopping saplings and underbrush for the fire, going farther and farther from the cabin in his search for the proper materials. Long since, he had chopped the broken and battered sledge out of the ice, and hauled it home. But it was damaged beyond repair, the smooth boards that made its riding surface having been broken and splintered hopelessly.

But there was still use for it. With remarkable ingenuity, he fashioned a small sleigh, some four or five feet long. Then, from the harness of the dead dogs, he made trappings for Mistisi, who, apparently anxious to help in all he saw going on around him, took to them kindly. After this, it was easy work to gather wood, however far distant. The dog made regular round trips from the cabin to the spot where the man was at work, and shortly a great pile of wood formed a wind-break for the shanty.

Jean Fitzpatrick now attended to the fishing alone, and what they did not use for food was packed away out of Mistisi's eager reach in the preserving cold. The rabbit-snares with two settings yielded three or four of the animals every day, and these, skinned and cleaned, added to the store of reserve food.