The Wilderness Trail Part 17

The otter-trap worked successfully, but required repairing after each catch, so that it was scarcely worth the trouble of setting, since rabbits and fish continued plentiful. One night, however, after a series of sharp sniffs at the door while the rabbit was broiling, and the discovery of padded prints in the snow next day, Donald worked more carefully over the contrivance, and set it to catch larger game--for bob-cats were about.

The evenings, too, were busy, for the rabbit skins must be cured.

Donald hewed out a wedge-shaped slab of cedar. This he spliced.

Then into a pelt, with the fur side turned in, he shoved this slab, forcing into the splicing a smaller wedge of wood. Hammering this, the larger block widened, and thus stretched the skin. When the proper tautness was obtained, he fixed the pelt to another board with pegs of wood, and hung it to dry.

Now, there were a number of these skins, and Jean wished to satisfy her longing for privacy. A tiny rabbit-bone, whittled to a point, and rabbit sinews, white and tough and secured with great difficulty, supplied the means. So, for several days, she sewed the skins together, and at last hung before her bed of boughs a heavy curtain.

Two weeks pa.s.sed, and the man and girl had successfully set the vicious world at naught. Their supplies were piling up fast, and they bade fair to be comfortable all winter.

Before the fire one night, when there was no work to do, Donald pulled comfortably at his pipe, and observed the girl on the opposite side of the rude fireplace, busy with her rabbit-bone needle. Where she had seemed sweet, gracious, and gentle before, now, after their enforced intimate comradeship, his love for her was something the wonder of which he had never dreamed possible. If only a priest might come by on some evangelizing journey to the Eskimo! He would marry her then and there, and live thus until spring, or her father, came. Since their perfect relationship it seemed utterly impossible for him to exist without her.

Suddenly, with a shake, Donald jerked himself back from these dreams, and looked at her again, very sadly. The announcement he was about to make appeared all the harder.

"Jean," he said at last, "in about two days, we start back for Fort Severn."

The girl raised her head, and showed a face of pouting disappointment.

"Why?" she queried. "Here, we are comfortable and safe; we are in bad shape to travel without a sledge, and the dangers are many, especially since you have no gun. Let's stay here until somebody finds us. It's been a wonderfully happy time for me. You're the dearest, bravest, most chivalrous man alive, Donald."

The lover flushed with pleasure, but his brows drew down nevertheless, and his jaw set, for the temptation was strong upon him.

"I've been very happy, too, princess," he rejoined; "but we mustn't stay any longer. Before the world, neither of us would have a valid excuse. We have provisions enough now for a week in the woods, and public opinion would demand the reason for our delay. It's hard, but we've got to go."

And, with a little sigh, the girl meekly accepted the ultimatum.

CHAPTER XV

PREY OF THE PACK

All the next day, the two prepared for their departure. Donald strengthened the little sledge, and made their goods into a solid pack, convenient for him to carry when Jean should become tired and need to ride. She dismantled the shack of the pathetic little gew-gaws that had been a part of her happy housekeeping, and kissed them all before she gave them into his hands for packing.

Neither was insensible of the fact that this departure meant more than the mere ending of their frigid idyl. Both realized that McTavish was deliberately going back to imprisonment and disgrace, although no mention was made of the subject. Jean had some vague notion that, ten miles from the fort, he might leave her, and retire into the woods without having been seen. The idea had also occurred to Donald, but he had put it aside unhesitatingly as the act of a coward. It little mattered to him what was his fate, as long as he knew that Jean was safe, and was near him.

That evening, the one before their departure, they held mournful obsequies over the happy two weeks that could never be repeated in their lives. They had just sat down to a dinner of rabbit (of which they were getting heartily tired by this time), when the sound of bells came to them, and they rushed to the door. With shout and crack of whip, a dog-train roared up from the south, and came to a steaming halt in the glow of their hearth.

After the first excitement Jean, suddenly realizing her position, had shrunk back into the farthest corner of the cabin, her face scarlet and her heart beating. Donald, to spare her as much as possible, met the man outside, and immediately there were glad cries of recognition.

"Well, McTavish, how the deuce do I see you here? You ought to be up at the fort. But, say, old man, I'm glad you broke out. That thirty-day term smelled to heaven when the old man gave it. Good for you!"

"And you, Braithwaite?" cried Donald, delightedly; for the man was an old friend--a store-keeper at the fort. "What are you doing up this way, and who are the boys with you?"

Donald was greatly surprised that the two men on the sledges did not rise.

"We've been having trouble at Sturgeon Lake--pretty rough stuff, too," was the explanation; "and these boys got shot up a little.

Probably, you know 'em--Planchette and Napoleon Sky, the Indian."

"Yes, yes! You don't say! So, the Sturgeon Lake trouble has come to that point, has it? I was afraid of it. I knew those fellows were desperate. They gave me a taste to show they meant business."

"They sure did, Mac. But, say, that isn't the worst. The Old Nick himself is shot up, and hitting the high spots with fever. We're afraid to move him, and--"

"Wh--what's that?" asked a trembling feminine voice from the doorway.

"Who did you say had fever?"

During an instant of pregnant silence, the universe stood still for all those there present. The crisis was come more quickly than Donald had expected.

"Well, by heavens, Mac," blurted out Braithwaite, "I didn't know you did this sort of--er, were away on a vaca--"

"Answer her question," commanded Donald, bluntly; "and then I'll explain."

"Oh, yes, who's got the fever? It's the governor, the boss, the factor--er--Mr. Fitzpatrick. It's not what you call dangerous yet, but the chances are good, ma'am. Yes," he added, with evident relish, "the chances are good."

The cry that broke from the girl's lips halted any further essays at humor of this sort.

"Shut up, can't you, Braithwaite?" snarled Donald. "Can't you see it's Miss Fitzpatrick, and that she wants to know about her father?

"Not the lost one, Mac?"

"Yes, the lost one; I found her, or, rather, we met here quite by accident, with nothing on earth but the clothes we stood in, and a knife and an ax. We've been kicking along the best we could ever since in this cabin. That's all there is to it. Now what about the factor?

"Well, it was this way, Mac. There was a lively little argument goin' on out front, where some of our boys were tryin' to capture some of their'n. You see, the factor thought, if we captured those fellers, and brought 'em back to the fort prisoners, it would end the free tradin'. As I say, there had been quite a little argument out front, and the factor, he didn't like the way things were goin'--got a little r'iled, as he sometimes does, you remember.

We-ell, darned if he didn't start out to tell 'em how to do it, when somebody plugs him with a rifle bullet in the collar-bone, and that's the end of his fightin' for a while. Of course, he's big and heavy and gettin' old, so the fever that set in came to be the most important part of the wound, but they think he'll pull through."

"Of course, Dr. Craven from the fort is there?" queried Jean, from the door.

"Yes, ma'am, he went along with the expedition, and it's good he did."

"How is the situation down there now?" Donald questioned.

"Well, for our side, it ain't no more'n so-so," was the somber admission; "an' mebbe that's stretchin' it."

After a little more general conversation, Braithwaite, with his sick, made camp a short distance from the cabin, stoutly refusing Jean's proffered hospitality, and the two castaways once more returned inside, and took their places by the fire.

"Well, princess, that changes matters doesn't it?

"Yes, Donald. At least it changes directions."

"What do you mean?

"That I must go to Sturgeon Lake and father, to-morrow. Of course, you have already decided to head that way."

"Yes, but I feel that you ought to go on to the fort with Braithwaite's party, and not down into the danger zone, where anything may happen to you."

"I know it, dear boy," Jean answered, firmly. "But I can't leave father as sick as that to the tender care of a lot of fighting trappers. Can't you see my position? He's all alone there, and I'd like to know what kind of a daughter I'd be to turn my back and travel the other way!"

Donald ceased to resist, for he realized she was taking the only course open to a girl of courage and spirit.