CHAPTER IX
PERIL AT THE BRIDGE
ANY person of real judgment, so Hugh realized even at the time, would have thrown away the pack and rifle and run to safety unimpeded. He did think of it, but somehow he could not. So he stumbled on, the men behind him gaining, the river and the fallen tree seeming a long distance away. He reached the sheltering underbrush, turned sharply upstream and was hidden for a moment from his pursuers as they came dashing down the hill. He had just leaped upon the tree-trunk when they came out upon the bank.
“Look out, Hugh,” came a shout from the other shore, where stood Dick, who had shamelessly deserted his brother. “Look out! They are going to shoot.”
Hugh did not stop to look, but ducked quickly and heard a bullet whistle over his head. The next second, “ping,” another buried itself in the pack that hung from his shoulder. The impact almost destroyed his balance; he staggered and dropped to his knees and crawled the last few yards to safety.
“Are you hurt?” cried Dick. “Are you safe? Lie down behind that log until they have stopped shooting.”
In absolute defiance of his own advice he, as well as Nicholas, was standing among the trees, the one shouting, the other barking in wild excitement. But Hugh would not come, for his very danger on the now tottering bridge had given him an idea for the furthering of their own safety. He was standing knee deep in the running water with his shoulder against the tree-trunk, pushing against it with all his might.
“Go back; stay with your brother,” he called to Dick. “What would he do if you were to be shot?”
A bullet carried away his woolen cap and another cut the bark beside his hand, but he did not give up. He pushed until the big tree swayed, moved a little, then suddenly rolled all the way over. Just as the first Indian’s foot was upon it, the great log fell splashing into the water, was whirled over and over by the current and rushed away down stream. Dripping and delighted, Hugh ran up the trail to join Dick, the angry bullets still whistling behind him. He looked back to see one of the Indians wade into the water, stand waist deep, reeling under the force of the flood, then struggle back to the shore. All three of the pirates strode away through the bushes, talking earnestly together.
For some time after the boys returned to the cabin they were busied caring for John Edmonds. While they were working, they exchanged their various experiences, so that Dick learned how Hugh came to be in the cabin on Jasper Peak, and Hugh, of the Edmonds’ adventures in the forest.
This illness of John’s, it seemed, had been coming on gradually. Dick had noticed that he was restless, erratic and worried over his work, at which he often had to toil late into the night. The hunting trip, Dick had thought, would help to put him on his feet again, and he had, indeed, seemed better the first day, but after that grew rapidly worse.
“It was the last thing we could do together,” Dick explained, “for I was going to enlist when I got back; I had only been waiting until they could find some one to fill my place at the mine. We started off in great spirits; the Indian, Kaniska, was our guide, a man we had had before, who always seemed reliable enough. He was a friend of John’s, in a way, and that queer squaw of his. Laughing Mary, had always professed to be devoted to us, especially to my brother. I can’t imagine how Kaniska could have done such a thing to us.”
“And what did he do?” inquired Hugh eagerly.
“He took us in a direction we had never been before,” said Dick, “through a perfect network of streams and little lakes and swamps, and made us push on as fast as we could, saying that we were getting to a place where there was famous shooting. We did not camp until very late that first night and I was so tired that I slept like the dead. When I woke up in the morning, he was gone.”
“He left you alone?” exclaimed Hugh in horror.
“Not only that, but he took all our stores with him, and our axes and our compass. To leave men in the woods, stripped of everything they need, is very little short of murder. I had been sleeping with my rifle beside me, so he didn’t dare take that. It was the only thing that saved us.”
“And you have lived only on what you could shoot?” questioned Hugh. “Why, you must be half famished!”
“I am,” assented Dick, cheerfully, “rather more than half, to tell the truth, but we must attend to Johnny first.”
When at last there was time to stir up the fire and prepare a meal, Hugh realized on seeing Dick eat how near he had been to real starvation.
“Berries and things are pretty scarce so late in the year as this,” Dick continued his tale as they sat at the table. “I managed to catch a few fish now and then, and I shot any kind of bird that I could hit. We ate some queer things, but you get so that you don’t care much. Nicholas could catch rabbits and he always brought them to me, although, poor fellow, he could have eaten a hundred of them himself.”
He related how, after a few hours of bewildered searching for the vanished Indian, he had decided that the stream upon which they were encamped, being larger than the others and flowing north, must be the outlet of Red Lake and was therefore the best guide to follow. If he could find the lake, he could find Rudolm, he thought, but what a long and hopeless way it seemed! Now and then, in trying to cut off some of the windings of the stream, they had strayed away from it altogether and had only found it again after the loss of much time and effort.
“And all the time Johnny kept getting sicker and sicker,” he said, “so that I got more frightened about him than about anything else. At night he would be out of his head, sometimes, and in the daytime he would just trudge along at my heels and never say a word. Only once, when I said that if we ever found the lake we might come out somewhere near Oscar Dansk’s house, he got furiously angry and made me promise that I would never ask him for help. I don’t know yet what idea he had in his poor confused head, but I had to promise, to quiet him.”
He told further of their growing weakness, of the shorter and shorter distances they could travel in a day, of a final afternoon when, having gone to shoot a partridge, he had come back and found his brother had disappeared.
"Perhaps I hadn’t realized until that minute how desperately ill he was. He had wandered off; I could see the storm coming and I looked and looked and called and called, but I couldn’t find him. I felt pretty hopeless, I can tell you.”
It was Nicholas who had discovered John Edmonds at last, lying insensible under a big tree near the foot of Jasper Peak. They had sat by him a long time, the boy and the dog, helpless and exhausted both of them. Dick had caught a glimpse of the cabin on the side of the mountain and had decided, when the storm broke, that they must get there at any cost.
“I carried Johnny on my back,” he said, “don’t ask me how, but some way or other we made it. I was so anxious to get him in out of the storm that it didn’t matter much where we went. I don’t think I had sense enough to mind a great deal even when I realized it was Jake’s cabin. We found something to eat, although we didn’t take more than we could possibly help. John seemed to revive a little, but still I was desperately anxious, and felt that I must do something, no matter what. I think I believed Two Rivers and Rudolm were much nearer than they are and I had not counted on the streams all being in flood. I could see the light from your cabin, but—well, I had promised. Now, I can understand that the promise was a foolish business, but your judgment isn’t quite so good when you are worn out and half starved, as when you are rested and fed. You don’t see things quite so clear.”
“But weren’t you afraid of Jake’s coming back?” Hugh asked.
Dick, it appeared, did not have such horror of the Pirate of Jasper Peak as had Hugh. He did not even yet seem to suspect that the half-breed had been concerned in their being lost in the forest nor had he heard the full tale of what Jake had done to Oscar Dansk. One anxiety had overcome the other and he had left his brother, ordering Nicholas back when he would have come too, and finally shutting him in so that John Edmonds should not feel himself quite alone.
“But almost as soon as I was gone he broke out and went across the valley to you,” Dick concluded. “Nicholas had more sense than I had, didn’t you, old fellow?”
The big dog, lying on his side before the hearth, opened one eye and beat gently on the floor with his plumy tail at mention of his name. Then he heaved a great sigh, stretched himself luxuriously to the fire and fell asleep again, completely satisfied that those he loved were safe at last.
Dick, also, being assured that at least his brother was no worse, went away to sleep off some of the exhaustion of his journey through the forest, and Hugh was left to sit alone, still watching for Oscar’s return and wondering more and more anxiously why he did not come. The little cabin was peaceful and absolutely quiet except for the ticking of the clock and the deep breathing of the dog at his feet, but far from peaceful were Hugh’s racing thoughts. Where had his comrade been during that furious storm? What had happened to keep him so long? Oh, if he only had not parted from Oscar in such churlish ill-nature how much easier it would be to bear this anxious waiting!
He looked at Oscar’s recovered rifle hanging on the wall and thought with satisfaction of how glad he would be to see it. He felt a good deal of pride in having been able to get it back, but, as he sat thinking, he began to feel his pleasure give way to a certain lingering doubt. Had he really been wise in returning to the Pirate’s house, was the value of the rifle greater than the value of the help he could give the two exhausted Edmonds, help that they would have lost had his venture ended in his being shot? It was an unwelcome thought, yet he was forced to conclude that this was another of those errors in judgment of which his father had accused him, a rash failing to count the cost at the critical moment.
“Oh, dear,” he sighed, quite out loud, “when will I ever get sense enough to qualify for a soldier?”
Nicholas, hearing his voice, raised his head to look at him inquiringly. He seemed to hear something else also, for he got up, went to the door and stood listening intently. Then he turned to Hugh and whined to be let out. Hugh listened, but heard nothing save the rushing of the stream and the sighing of the wind in the trees.
“There isn’t anything,” he said to Nicholas, but the big dog still insisted, so at last he opened the door.
He stood before the cottage, looking in every direction, north, south, east; the sun was in his eyes so that he shaded them with his hand to look across the open meadows to the west. Was that something moving, was it a distant, plodding, weary figure slowly making its way up the slope? He could not be mistaken. It was Oscar!
With a shout of joy Hugh ran to meet him, but stopped short in surprise and dismay when he came close. Oscar’s forehead was cut and had been bleeding; his cheek was discolored with a great bruise; he carried neither pack nor gun, and he limped as he came toiling painfully up the hill.
“I had a fall,” he explained briefly, in answer to Hugh’s anxious questions.
Long after, Hugh learned the real details of the mishap, how Oscar had taken shelter from the storm under a mass of overhanging rock, how the fury of wind and water had loosened it above him and how he had been swept down in the midst of an avalanche of plunging bowlders, sliding earth and uprooted trees, to lie stunned for he knew not how many hours, but—
“I had a fall,” was all he said, then added quickly, “What is that? Nicholas, Nicholas!”
He sat down abruptly on a fallen tree as though sudden relief had weakened his knees; he put his arms around the great dog’s neck. Nicholas, in turn, overwhelmed him with endearments, licked his face, nuzzled his hand, nearly pushed him from the log in his clumsy efforts to show his joy. There seemed no need to tell Oscar that the two brothers had been found, for he seemed to guess the whole of the good news from the mere presence of the big wolfhound. Hugh, as he stood looking at the greetings of the two, had a sudden understanding, from Oscar’s overwhelming relief and delight, what was the real depth of the friendship he bore John Edmonds.
When he and Hugh reached the cottage, Oscar went straight to John’s bed and sat down beside it. The sufferer had lain in heavy stupor for hours, only arousing once, much earlier in the day, to stare at the boys with no recognition and then to drop into unconsciousness again. But now, almost as soon as Oscar’s firm hand closed about his wrist to feel his pulse, he opened his eyes, looked at the other with slowly dawning comprehension and said:
“I was wrong about that road, Oscar, and you were right.”
“It wass no matter,” his friend answered hastily, his voice sounding Swedish again in the extremity of his feeling. “Opening up these wheat lands might not have been advisable then, when it was just a question of dollars and cents. Now it is different, it is a matter of daily bread and lives and victory.”
But Johnny Edmonds did not hear. Having given voice to the thought that had so long been uppermost in his mind, he drifted contentedly away into sleep again, real sleep this time, with no further mutterings and restless movements of his head upon the pillow. Oscar got up quickly and went to stand at the window, looking out with that queer far-off look that his face sometimes wore. Turning at last he met Dick’s anxious eyes and smiled slowly and happily.
“It was just a year ago we quarreled,” he said. “I thought he should have stood by me when I wanted to build the road; he thought, like the rest, that I was a mad dreamer—perhaps I was. This war has overturned all things; what was a far vision once may be what the world most needs to-day. But your brother is a better friend than I, Dick Edmonds. I could not have been the first to say that I was wrong. And now all is well again.”
The next day and the next, John Edmonds’ fever ebbed and flowed, leaving them sometimes full of hope that recovery was beginning, sometimes in terror that such recovery might never be. In the end, however, the crisis passed, leaving him pale and shaky, but clear-headed and himself again at last. It was on the first day that he was able to be propped up in bed that Oscar, sitting by him, began to discuss, with unreserved bluntness, what was being said in Rudolm about John’s books and the state in which the bank’s affairs had been left. For a moment Edmonds looked astonished, dismayed and angry, then he laughed.
Three of his clerks had gone to war, he explained, and he was so short-handed that he used to work fourteen, sixteen, eighteen hours at a time, trying to keep things going, reeling with exhaustion, his brain at last so weary and confused with illness that he scarcely knew what he was doing.
“Now my head is cleared up again,” he said, “I begin to realize what queer things I must have done to those books. The expert who is trying to make them out must be having a glorious time of it. I wonder how far he has got and what he thinks he has found.”
Then Oscar broached the plan that he had evidently been turning over and over in his mind. Edmonds must get back to Rudolm as soon as possible, he said, for affairs must be cleared up and the anxiety of bank directors and stock-holders must be brought to an end. The moment he could be moved Oscar himself would take him home; they would go by water, the whole length of Red Lake, a two or three days’ journey by canoe. He stated the plan and its urgency very briefly, even more briefly told the need of the boys’ staying behind.
Both immediately raised their voices in clamorous objection. Dick must get back, he was going to enlist; Hugh wished to go with him, in fact the two boys had been laying their heads together and making plans of their own. But in all of their arguments they found Oscar’s calculations had been before them.
Did Dick know the bars and channels and bays between here and Rudolm? He did not. Could he, or could he and Hugh together, be sure of handling a heavily laden canoe successfully in the face of chance winds on the open stretches of the lake? They were not able to say they could. Could John be taken overland, paddled up rivers, carried around portages, risk a meeting in the forest with Half-Breed Jake or some of his followers? No. Or could Oscar go with Dick and John and leave Hugh behind to hold the cabin alone? Most certaintly not.
So the plan stood as Oscar first proposed it, and, on John’s continuing to improve steadily, preparations were made for a start three days later. The night before they were to go, Oscar went with Hugh all over his small domain, indoors and out, showing him just how this was to be cared for and how that was to be done. They were coming up the path from Hulda’s stable, picking their way over the rough stones in the moonlight, the big dog following them, while Oscar gave his final directions. The wide valley of the Promised Land lay at their feet in sharp outline of black and white, while above them the sky was powdered thick with stars and, across the ravine, rose the dark heights of Jasper Peak with one gleaming light shining from its rugged shoulder.
“And you must look out for Jake,” Oscar ended. “Every hour, every minute, you must watch for him. In three weeks the date for my proving up will have passed, the claim will be really mine—if I can hold it until then.”
"But surely there is nothing that he can do now,” Hugh protested.
“He and his comrades will perhaps do the worst they have ever done, between now and that day,” returned Oscar quietly. “They will not come openly to shoot or rob or burn, they will lie in wait and play some trick on you, for the crooked way is always their way. What they will do I cannot guess, I can only tell you to watch and never cease watching and in the end I know we will win.”
“Still,” insisted Hugh, “I do not see how they can ruin your plan so near its end as this.”
“Suppose,” said Oscar, “he should drive you out, burn down the buildings and destroy the fields and, before I can file my final papers, prove to the Land Office that none of the required improvements are really here. We could take the matter into court and establish in time that it was he who laid things waste, but that would take months, the season would pass and the lands would not be open in time for a harvest next year. And a year in terms of wheat and bread counts now for more than ten ordinary years.”
“And you think that when the place is yours and you are settled here, then the people of Rudolm will follow?”
“I know they will. Their fear of Half-Breed Jake is partly habit, partly a sort of superstition; it is not real cowardice. When they see that one man has been able to hold out against him alone they will not hesitate longer.”
“They should be very grateful to you,” observed Hugh, his voice grave with the thought of what weight of responsibility was to be laid upon him. He shivered a little. The autumn air was very cold.
“I do not want gratitude,” returned Oscar quickly. “What would I have to say to them if they tried to thank me? No, when I see these hillsides covered with the grain for which the whole world is crying; when I can sit here on my doorstep and see many red roofs warm in the sunshine, or the moonlight making sharp black shadows of the pointed gables or yellow lights shining from the windows there, and there, and there; when I can think that all within are warm and safe and happy, why, I can ask for nothing more on earth, except—except, perhaps, that little black Hendrik might be back again.“
Nicholas, who had been sitting on the grass beside them while they stood and talked, came now to rub against Oscar and push his great head under his hand.
“You are a good fellow, Nicholas,” said Oscar, patting his curly shoulder, “but you are not my Hendrik. It is strange how a man and a little black dog can learn to love each other when each is all the other has.”
There was much hurrying to and fro before dawn next morning when the journey was actually to begin. There was carrying of loaded packs down to the canoe, there was running back for things forgotten, there were many instructions given by every one to every one else. The day promised to be a clear one, although now the sky was dark and the water gray. John Edmonds was made comfortable in the bottom of the boat; the packs were put on board; there was no time for elaborate farewells, even when it came to pushing out from shore.
“Shove her easy,” directed Dick, and—
“A little more,” said Oscar. “There, now we are afloat. Good-by, good-by.”
His paddle dipped, the canoe shot forward, a sharp ripple rose beneath her bow. The two boys stood watching as she moved steadily away. The water was turning from gray to silver and shining in the morning light, while a gold and scarlet glow behind Jasper Peak showed where the sun was soon to rise. Hugh and Dick still stood as the boat dwindled to a black speck on the glittering lake, turned into Harbin’s Channel and disappeared. Even then they waited, shading their eyes, hoping for one more sight of it. Finally Hugh heaved a long sigh and the two turned to look at each other. The valley of the Promised Land was their very own, to hold or to lose.