CHAPTER XI.
FORESTALLED.
Dunleath shook Mr. Fothergill awake, and at first he quite refused to believe the news. But when he saw that the canoes were gone, and Louis' blankets also, and in fact everything that we had not brought up to the camp, conviction was forced on him and he swore like the British army in Flanders over a century ago.
But that did not help matters at all. The cold fact was that Louis had set us afoot in a wilderness with very little food and a most inadequate outfit. We had arms and ammunition, because we invariably brought these up from the canoe at night, and so we could scarcely starve, but it was a blue lookout nevertheless. And then there was the mystery of Louis' disappearance. Why had he gone, and why had he taken both canoes?
"The infernal scoundrel!" Mr. Fothergill stormed. "I wouldn't have believed it. The last thing he said was that he would go back with us. I can't understand it—unless he has gone crazy."
"If he went crazy he was mighty quiet about it," said Jim Dunleath. "I don't understand it myself, but I think we may eliminate that theory."
"He sure was quiet," said Toft. "I sleep mighty light—a man does when he gits to be my age, knockin' around the way I have—and I woke once thinkin' I heard something but I didn't hear no more, and of course she wasn't my camp and a man might have got stirrin' around and it wouldn't have been none of my business. So I went to sleep again. Then, when I got up just before day, I didn't see the Frenchman, nor no blankets where he had bedded down. And then I looked around and found the canoes was gone. So I woke up Dinny and he hit off downstream. I guess he'll do some travelin', too. I told him if he come up with the Frenchman to holler at him once."
"Once?" said Mr. Fothergill inquiringly.
"You think he shouldn't, maybe," said Toft. "Well, o' course it's a matter of opinion, and you got a right to yours. Anyhow, Dinny promised he would."
"Why shouldn't he?" asked Mr. Fothergill. "I don't understand."
"Oh," Toft explained, "I thought you was kickin' at it. Lots of fellers would beef the Frenchman without givin' him a chance to come ashore. That's what I meant. But Dinny'll holler at him once, and then if the pea soup don't come in he'll get him right there."
It was odd to hear the little man with the gentle voice and the childlike eyes talk in this matter-of-fact way.
"Stealin' a canoe in this man's country," he went on, "ain't no diff'rent from stealin' a horse on the plains. It sets a man afoot. And this is no country to be set afoot in."
"He can't take both canoes far," Jim Dunleath pointed out.
"No, he'll cache one or bust it. Or if he just let it loose there's fast water below here that'd save him the trouble. I sure hope Dinny comes up with him."
But Pack did not return, and after breakfast Toft and I started downstream.
"You see," he said, "there's just a chance that all the Frenchman wants is a start for wherever he's went to. He might cache the canoe somewheres along the bank or tie it up or just let it float on the chance of it lodging. He'd figger we'd have sense enough to hunt pretty close for it before we'd try to get out overland. Now Dinny he was out for the Frenchman, and so he wouldn't look for nothing but him. He'll go fast. We can go slower and look closer."
So we prowled along the bank, looking into eddies and jams of driftwood and beneath sweepers for some sign of a canoe. And thus, nearly five miles downstream, we came on our big canoe held by the current against a fallen tree close under the bank. It was impossible to say whether it had drifted in there by itself or not.
"So he's taken our canoe," Toft commented. "I thought he would. Well, we may's well git in and keep on down to pick up Dinny. He'll keep hikin', and the farther he goes without seein' the Frenchman the madder he'll git and the farther he'll go."
Luckily Louis had left a couple of paddles, but it was not till the afternoon that we found Dinny Pack, sitting on the bank, smoking. He was wet to the waist, his face was scratched, and his clothes torn. It was evident that he had found the going rough.
"You didn't get him, did you?" was his first question. "Nor me," he said, as Toft shook his head. "I ain't seen hair nor hide of him. I run into a swamp back there that stopped me. I guess he's made his get-away with our canoe."
"Looks like it," Toft agreed. "I was hopin' you'd come up on him."
"I did all I could," Pack responded. "Them last few miles was pretty rough, and I had to keep where I could see the river."
It was late in the afternoon when we reached camp, and nothing more could be done that day. But we had a canoe which would hold all five of us, and it was now possible to go back to Ahtikamag. We could get along quite well without Louis.
But the more I considered his action the less I could understand it. He had entered emphatic objection to going back to the lakes. But that seemed due principally to his loyalty to Ballou and to resentment of doubts of the latter's knowledge of the country. And he wanted to get home to the Carcajou. But would that drive him to the point of stealing a canoe to accomplish it? I milled these things over in my mind, without any result. The more I thought the more puzzled I became.
However, with renewed hopes of finding the fur cache, we all brightened up a little. If we found the cache we would intercept Ballou and the others on their way back from their prospecting.
"It will be a horse on old Tom if we do find anything," said Mr. Fothergill. "It's one on him, anyway, about the lake. I'll rub that into him when I see him. If we find the furs, we'll need all the canoes. I wish I knew just where he has gone."
"Kill your meat before you skin it," Pack advised.
"I'm an optimist," said Mr. Fothergill.
"I guided a geologist once," said Dinny gravely, so that I was not sure whether he was joking or not, "but an optimist is a new one on me."
"An optimist," Mr. Fothergill explained, "is a man who looks on the bright side and hopes for the best."
"I know that kind," said Dinny. "They hope the game's square, and they don't watch the dealer. The system is wrong. In most things you want to rigger the chances is agin' you. Then you organize yourself to beat 'em."
"Right!" said Dunleath.
"There's no sense in taking a gloomy view of anything," Mr. Fothergill stated. "‘Trust in God and keep your powder dry.' But keep hoping. That's my motto."
"All right to keep a-hoping if you keep a-humping," Pack agreed. "Plain hope never got a man anywhere he wanted to go. What I say is that jails is full of these here optimists that hoped they wouldn't be caught and was careless. What's the other end of the bettin'? What's a feller that don't look on the shiny side?"
"He's a pessimist."
"Then that's me," said Dinny. "I copper my bets. I play 'em to lose, and when I make a winnin' it's a joyful surprise. I figger there's a hoodoo on me. At the top of a bad bit of water I say to myself: 'Dinny, here's where you get dumped, and chances is you drown. You know you ain't lived right, so you better be plumb careful.' So I get through all right. I ain't never been sick in my life, but I figger my luck won't last. I rap on wood and I cross my fingers and I bless myself when I sneeze and I always buy the best ammynition there is. I organize myself on a losin' basis and I get along. Now about this here cache, I figger we ain't got a chance in the world to find her. And so I'll bet we do!"
We all laughed at this contradictory philosophy.
"There's not so much difference between us, after all," said Mr. Fothergill. "But if we find the furs, Ballou will want to crawl into a hole. And wait till I tell him about that rascally Frenchman. He'll be as indignant as we are. When we get back to the Carcajou I'll have the dog arrested."
Old Ike Toft had said nothing. Now he removed his pipe and asked:
"What makes you think he's gone back to the Carcajou?"
Mr. Fothergill stared at him.
"Of course he has. He didn't want to go back to the lakes. That was what started the row."
"Why didn't he want to go back?"
"Principally, I think, because what you said reflected on Ballou's knowledge of the country."
"You don't know just where this Ballou has gone?"
"No."
"My tumtum is," said Toft, "that the Frenchman's gone to find him."
"Why do you think that?" Dunleath asked quickly.
"I dunno's I can tell you. I just think it. I know he made a strong play about goin' home; but then he made a stronger one about not wantin' to go back to the lakes. That might have been because he didn't want you to go back there."
"But why on earth shouldn't he want us to?" asked Mr. Fothergill. "The only reason I can think of is that it might prove Ballou's mistake."
"May be something in that. Anyway, I think he's gone to join them tillikums, wherever they are. Maybe they've heard of some good placer ground somewheres, and the Frenchman was sore at not bein' in it, and bein' sent back with you. Did he kick at comin' with you when your outfit split up?"
"He seemed sulky about something," Dunleath replied thoughtfully.
"Then I'll bet that's it."
"Why, Ballou himself was coming with us up to the last moment," said Mr. Fothergill. "He took no stock in this prospecting—told me so himself. He went principally because he knew the country better than the others, and they wanted him."
"If he don't know it better than he knew them lakes," said Dinny Pack, "they ain't got much of a guide."
But Mr. Fothergill, while admitting that Tom Ballou might have made a mistake for once, would hear nothing in disparagement of his general knowledge. He got quite warm about it, and Dinny, seeing this, winked solemnly at me and said no more.
Now our big canoe, as I think I have said, was a four-fathom bark, and with five paddles to drive it it cut the water like a launch. We soon made the lake of islands, and Toft turned in behind three of the latter which lay close to the western shore. At first sight, the shore line seemed to be unbroken; but presently we opened a bay which seemed to run far inland. At the end of the bay was a channel, marshy on either hand, with a slow current.
"Just opposite them islands," said Toft, "was where Nitche had his cache that was lifted. If you're right, he took 'em up this channel and cached 'em on Ahtikamag while we was hellin' along the other lakes, through Shingoos, and into the river again. He sure must have worked to do it."
The channel continued for about three miles, as nearly as I could judge. It expanded, and we came upon a small lake. Passing through this, a beautiful sheet of water opened before us.
'This is Ahtikamag," said Toft, "the lower end of it. It's a good twenty miles between it and Shingoos, where you were, and there's a sort of ridge of hills between, so you couldn't see it. Not many people come to this. I ain't been here myself for nigh twenty years."
"You seem to remember it pretty well," said Jim.
"I remember most places where I've been. And then we combed this country pretty close, lookin' for Nitche's cache. I come back afterward and looked."
Lake Ahtikamag was as large, if not larger, than Shingoos, and, as in the cape of the latter, there were a few islands of varying sizes.
We had camped overnight at the first small lake, and we entered Ahtikamag on a hazy morning. There was not a breath of air. Shadows lay in the water, and the shore lines were reflected softly. Except for the calling of a loon and the dip of our paddles, the silence was utter. The low hills were clad in faint blue and purple lights, less than color, impalpable, mysterious, resembling the thin blue-gray of smoke.
"Looks like a weather breeder to me," said Toft. "Just as like as not to blow. This lake can raise a dirty sea when she likes."
As we came near our destination, a faint murmur became audible.
"That's the crick," said Toft. "She runs fast out of a cañon. That's her a-growlin'. We can paddle up it for a ways. Then it shallows and gets too fast."
The creek entered the lake in the shelter of a narrow, wooded point. The entrance was deep, and the current strong, swirling along by cut banks. Digging hard, we worked our way upstream. We rounded a sharp turn, and Pack, in the bow, exclaimed sharply. I looked up. There, on a shingly little strip of beach beneath a steep bank, half a dozen canoes were turned bottom up.
"By George!" cried Mr. Fothergill. "Somebody's before us."
And old Toft grunted.
"I called her pretty near right," said he. "That there littlest canoe belongs to me and Dinny. It's the one the Frenchman got away with."
"And," I said, "those others—all but one—are our canoes, too. I'd know them anywhere."