XXIV NANGOTOOK’S DISAPPEARANCE

Had the caribou not been badly wounded, pursuit would have been hopeless, but it was bleeding freely, as its trail showed. Nevertheless it led the boys a long chase, down the hillside, along thickly wooded, low ground, through a gap between ridges and to the edge of a brook. There, exhausted by loss of blood, it sank down among the thick underbrush. But when it caught sound or scent of the hunters, the beast struggled to its feet again, and attempted to cross the stream. Jean, pushing through the bushes, caught sight of it, and let fly another arrow. He hit his mark, and the caribou fell before it could reach the other side.

After the lads had recovered their breath, they pulled the dead animal out of the shallow water. To take such a load up the ridge would be hard work, and Ronald suggested that they try following the brook.

“It empties into the cove of course,” he said. “When we reach there, one of us can go back along shore for the canoe.”

The banks of the brook were thickly covered with trees and bushes. With their heavy load tied to a pole and carried between them, the boys made slow progress. More than once they wished they had turned back the other way. At last they came to a place where the brook rippled down a slope into a marsh, and joined a larger stream that wound sluggishly, in many turns and twists, through the tall, ripe grass and sedges. On the farther side of the larger stream was a dense belt of leafless shrubs that appeared to stand almost in the water, and beyond them thick cedar woods.

“Now where are we?” exclaimed Ronald disgustedly. “It seems I guessed wrong about this little brook. I never thought of its emptying into another stream.”

“I’m not sure you were so very wrong,” Jean replied. “We could see when we paddled up the cove that it was low and swampy at its head. This may well be the very swamp. If we follow it we can soon discover.”

Accordingly, turning to the north, they made their way along the higher ground. The marsh was roughly triangular in shape and, as they went on towards its base, they soon found that Jean was right. Beyond a belt of rushes and other aquatic plants, the waters of the cove came in view. When the boys reached the shore, Jean offered to go for the canoe while Ronald kept watch over the game. Ronald did not like inaction, but he knew his friend was the better woodsman, and could make his way through the forest and over rough ground almost as rapidly and tirelessly as Nangotook himself. So the Scotch lad set himself to wait as patiently as he could.

The cove was longer, and the distance from the head to the place where the hunters had first landed was considerably farther, than Jean had thought. He had supposed that he might have half a mile to go, but it was really two or three times that far. He found the canoe safe, and saw no sign of the Indian’s having returned from the hunt.

To let Nangotook know who had taken the canoe and when, the boy left an Indian sign. He drove a straight stick in the ground in an open place and scratched a line in the earth along the shadow the stick cast. When Nangotook returned, he would be able to tell, from the difference in the position of the shadow at that time and the mark on the ground, how far the sun had traveled in the meantime. On a piece of birch bark Jean scratched with the point of his knife a large J and beneath it two arrows pointing opposite ways. This bit of bark he pegged to the ground beside the stick, with one arrow pointing up the cove, the other down, signs of the way he had gone and that he would return.

When the two lads reached the rendezvous again with their game, they rather expected to find Nangotook waiting for them. He was not there, so they decided to go on to camp. Ronald helped Jean to dress and cut up the caribou. Then, leaving his companion to begin the drying process, he went back for the Ojibwa.

The hunter had not arrived, and there was nothing to do but wait. Ronald occupied the time in fishing, paddling about where he would be in plain sight from shore and could be easily hailed. The afternoon drew to a close, and still Nangotook did not return.

“He must have followed his game a long way,” thought Ronald, “or else he missed the caribou entirely and is looking for other tracks. We’ll have the laugh on him if he fails to get anything.”

The sun had set behind threatening clouds, and, as darkness deepened, Ronald became a little uneasy. Could anything have happened to Nangotook, he wondered, but he put the idea out of his head. The Indian was abundantly able to take care of himself. He had merely gone far in pursuit of game. It was slow work coming back in the darkness, especially if he were heavily loaded.

Ronald went ashore, kindled a cooking fire and broiled a fish for his supper. He was sorry he had not brought some of the fresh meat with him, but he had not expected to stay so long. After he had finished his meal, he sat down on a fallen tree beside his little fire and waited as patiently as he could.

Time dragged slowly. Ronald was meditatively chewing a wintergreen leaf and thinking back over the search for the golden sands, when he was startled by an owl that hooted from a tree above his head, the long-drawn, blood-chilling, hunting cry of the great horned owl. The big bird swooped down suddenly and flew out over the water with noiseless wings. A little later he heard its call again from far away. There was a scratching on the bark of a tall tree near by, and for a moment a red squirrel broke out in peevish chattering. Ronald half rose from his seat, thinking the little animal’s excitement might mean Nangotook’s approach. But no one appeared and all was silent again, except for the faint lapping of the water and the monotonous rustling of the spruce needles in the light breeze.

The night was growing very chilly, and the boy replenished his fire, regretting that he had not gathered more fuel while he could see to get it. Clouds covered the sky and the darkness was thick. He fell into a doze, from which he woke suddenly, as a small, slim, black form glided by his feet and disappeared in the water. The mink had made no sound, but its mere presence had somehow served to arouse his suspicious senses. The fire was almost out. As the boy stooped to put on the last of his wood, he heard in the distance the snarling, cat-like screech of a lynx. He made an instinctive movement of disgust. He loathed lynxes more than any other animal, the treacherous, cruel cats. Most beasts had something noble about them, however fierce they might be, he thought, but in the lynx he could see no good whatever. He remembered the time the cat had fallen through the roof of the shelter, and the scrimmage he and Jean had had with the beast. That was the night Etienne had heard Le Forgeron and had found his footprints and those of his companion. Then a disturbing thought flashed into the boy’s mind, and he sat upright on his log, wide awake.

Could it be that Le Forgeron was preventing Etienne’s return? Had it been the smoke from the Blacksmith’s fire he had seen, and had Le Forgeron by some trick waylaid the Indian and killed him or badly injured him? Ronald had no doubt of the fight Nangotook would put up if attacked. But if he had been taken by surprise and attacked two to one——A dash of rain interrupted the lad’s thoughts. He had no idea how far advanced the night was, for the stars were all obscured. He sprang up, groped his way to the canoe, turned it over, propped up one side with the paddles, and crept under it. By the time he had settled himself, the rain was coming down hard.

Ronald slept no more that night. His mind was too full of anxiety, his apprehensions and imagination too wide awake. He tried to convince himself that Nangotook had gone too far in pursuit of game to get back before dark, so had camped and waited for daylight. The lad could convince his reason of all this but not his imagination. It kept picturing to him how the Ojibwa might have been ambushed or waylaid by his enemies, and left dead in his tracks. He began to worry about Jean alone in the camp. If the evil Frenchman had made way with Nangotook, would not the next move be to steal upon the camp at night and get Jean also? At that point in his imaginings, common sense reasserted itself. What possible reason could the Frenchman have for destroying them all? If he knew why they had come back to the lake, and was following them, he would surely not want to put them out of the way until they had led him to the golden sands. “But,” whispered his imagination, “he might work to separate you and get rid of you two boys. He did try to get rid of you when he knocked you over the cliff. He might think he could force or bribe Nangotook to lead him to the island.” In such manner the lad’s thoughts and feelings argued with one another through the rest of the night, which seemed to him well-nigh endless.

Dawn came at last, and Ronald crawled out of his shelter. The rain had ceased, but the morning was cold and raw, and he was stiff and shivering. He had made up his mind to return to camp first and see if Jean was safe. Then they would cache their meat supply, come back, and follow Nangotook’s trail, to find out what had become of him.

Ronald paddled back to the camping ground at his best speed. When he entered the little bay he was relieved to see Jean.

Jean turned at Ronald’s shout. Seeing the latter returning alone, he stared in amazement, and then ran down to the water calling out questions. When he had heard Ronald’s story, his anxiety was even greater than his comrade’s, for Nangotook had always been a devoted friend to him, and Jean was very fond of the Indian. Hurriedly the two took the meat from the fire, wrapped it in bark, and hung it in a tree for safe keeping. Then, waiting only long enough to eat a little of the broiled meat, they launched the canoe and made speed back to the place where Ronald had passed the night. Before taking to the trail, however, they carried the canoe some distance from the landing place, hid it in a thicket, and did their best to erase all signs that might lead to its discovery. If Le Forgeron Tordu were anywhere about, the lads had no intention of letting him steal the canoe while they were searching for Nangotook.