  Johnny Thompson caught his breath as his feet shot from beneath him and he plunged into a rushing torrent of icy water. Thoughts flashed across his mind, mental pictures of homes and firesides. Echoes of laughter sounded in his ears. Yet in this wilderness there was no laughter save the boisterous roar of an Arctic stream. There were no homes save those of the muskrat, the beaver and the white owl. The nearest cabin was fifty miles or more back. An all but impassable forest of scrub spruce, fir and pine lay between. There was time for but a flash back before Johnny found himself fighting for his life against the torrent that was dragging him over rocks and sunken logs, splashing, ducking, pulling at him and threatening every moment to make an end of him. But Johnny Thompson was not one to be beaten at once by this rushing torrent of northern Canada. Swimming strongly, warding off overhanging branches here, dodging great protruding boulders there, he still watched for a gently shelving bank that might offer him so much as a moment’s rest. Since no such haven offered itself at once, he shot the rapids like a salmon. A long, slender oiled canvas sack hung at his back. Twice this threatened to prove his undoing. It caught upon a tough willow branch and dragged him beneath the surface. Hardly had he freed himself than this same sack that apparently contained some stiff and stubborn affair of wood or steel caught in a rocky crevice to throw him high and wide. This involuntary pole vault left him with breath quite crushed out, but still struggling. Suddenly, straight ahead, he caught sight of that which must prove his salvation or his undoing. Undermined by the torrent a green spruce tree lay squarely across his path. Ten seconds to wonder. Would he be caught in the branches and drowned, or would he mount those same branches to freedom? Sixty seconds of terrific battle and the splendid muscles of the boy won against relentless nature. Panting, triumphant, he sat astride the branches. He was saved. There remained but to climb back to land. He was cold and wet. A roaring fire would remedy that. His blanket roll lay where he had tossed it on this side of the stream before he attempted to ford the treacherous tumult of water. The way back to his blankets would be rough going. He’d manage that. But suddenly the smile on his face faded. His eyes had fallen upon the long sack that had hung at his back. “Gone,” he muttered, “torn open by the same branch. And they’re gone, all gone but one.” After adjusting the torn fastenings as best he could, he worked his way over the swaying tree trunk to solid earth. Then with sober face, he began making his way back over the rocks to the spot where his blanket roll lay. The situation was a serious one. An hour later he sat before a roaring campfire of fir and balsam boughs. Dressed in a change of clothing and wrapped in a blanket, with his costume of an hour before sending clouds of steam toward the sky, he might have seemed the picture of contentment. He was far from contented. Presently he removed a small coffee pot from the fire and poured a cup of dark brown liquid. The aroma of coffee seemed good. He smiled. Then, without sugar or cream, he gulped it down black and hot. Nor did he eat after that. There was nothing to eat. Had you chanced to look into his pack you would have found there neither firearms nor ammunition. The nearest cabin that he knew of in all that vast northern wilderness was fifty miles back over an ill-defined trail. That cabin was deserted. He had slept there four nights back. So Johnny sat by the fire meditating, thinking on matters of greater or less importance. And as he meditated, at a point somewhat more than a mile downstream, as the crow flies, a figure appeared among the rocks that kept the rushing stream in tumult. A girl in her late teens, she moved out from among dark pines into a patch of light. The touches of sunset, lighting up her dark brown hair and adding a touch of gold to her ruddy freckled cheeks, transformed her for the moment into a goddess of the forest. Sensing the change, she stood motionless as a statue for a full moment. Then, into that glory of the sunset she smiled, and the smile made her seem more alive than any wild thing that had ever ventured to the brink of that tumultuous stream. In her hand she held a rustic bucket. Its handle, a thong of caribou sinew, its bottom a circle of wood cut from some fallen spruce tree, its sides white birchbark, this bucket seemed a part of the wilderness. As she stooped to fill the rustic bucket, her eyes caught sight of some unusual object bobbing up and down in the water. One moment, a flash of red and gold, she saw it. The next it was lost in a rush of foam. In a twinkling the bucket was dropped among the rocks and she went racing downstream in hot pursuit. A hundred yards, leaping from boulder to boulder, she plunged onward until, red-cheeked, panting, she came upon an eddy, a still dark pool, twenty feet across, and at its very center, moving serenely about, was the coveted prize. With the aid of the slow current and a long dry pole, she succeeded at last in coaxing the thing ashore. As she grasped it, a trio of bright feathers bound to a slender shaft came to view. She caught her breath again. And as she pricked her hand on the broad head sharp as a razor at the other end of the shaft, her face lost some of its heightened color. Turning, she raced back to the spot where the crude bucket still rested. There, without pausing to complete her errand, she dashed up the slope to a spot where a tumbled-down cabin rested among the trees. A man, very tall, very straight and quite old, a bearded patriarch, rose at her approach. “Grandfather!” she exclaimed, almost in a whisper. “We must leave this cabin at once.” The old man threw her a questioning look. For answer she held up the arrow she had found floating feather up in the stream. Taking it from her, he examined it closely in the waning light. “White man,” he pronounced at last, as if reading from a book. “Somewhat new at the game, but possessed of a considerable knowledge of the art. A very good arrow. “We must go up,” he said after a moment of silence. “We will go up at once.” They entered the cabin together. Some twenty minutes later, with well arranged packs on their backs, they emerged from the shadowy interior to go marching briskly down toward the banks of the rushing stream. There they began leaping from rock to rock. In this manner they traveled a considerable distance without leaving a single tell-tale footprint behind. So they moved on into the twilight, a powerful old man and a short, sturdy girl, marched on into a wilderness that is acquainted only with the voice of the wolf, the caribou and the white owl. Once as they paused for a moment’s rest beside a great flat rock, the girl removed some object from her pack and held it up to the uncertain light. “It’s strange,” the old man rumbled. “An arrow, a well-shaped, well-constructed arrow with a death-dealing steel point! Had it been a shot gun shell, that would not have seemed strange. But an arrow!” “But Grandfather, we——” The girl stroked a strong longbow that hung at her side. “Yes, I know.” The old man’s smile was good to see. “But we are of a bygone race, at least I am. This is 1928. Except for such as we are, the bow and arrow are of the past. But see!” He started up. “It is getting dark.” A few yards farther down the strange pair left the stream’s bank to go clambering up a rocky run. Even here they avoided snow. And so, marching sturdily forward, they faded into the gathering darkness and deep shadows of pines. You have perhaps guessed that the arrow found bobbing its way downstream came from Johnny Thompson’s quiver. In fact at the very moment when the old man and the girl left the cabin, he was engaged in the task of oiling two stout bows and waxing their strings. Having done this, he looked sorrowfully at the single broadhead arrow that remained in his quiver, took one more long gulp of hot black coffee, then set to wondering what lay before him. To be facing a wilderness alone with bows and arrows as one’s sole means of securing food might seem bad enough. To have but one arrow; what could be worse? A missed shot, a shattering rattle against the rocks, and this arrow might be gone forever. And then? Blunt arrows, sent crashing into the side of resting rabbit or sleeping ptarmigan would be as deadly as spear point when fired from Johnny’s sixty-pound bow. There was wood all about for shafts. But what of feathers and weights for the tips? One might come upon a sleeping owl. Here would be feathers. “And yet,” he told himself, “I have not seen a living thing for three days. The country is deserted. But no, not quite. There was the caribou track.” Ah, yes, that very afternoon he had come upon the trail of a caribou. It had been this very caribou that led him to disaster. The beast had crossed the river. In attempting to follow he had come near losing his life, and had lost all but one of his arrows. “Ah, well,” he sighed, “to-morrow my luck will turn. A single arrow is enough for a caribou and I am now on his side of the stream. I will take up the trail in the morning.” With that, after replenishing his fire, he rolled up in his blankets and prepared for a night’s repose. Was it the coffee? Was it hunger? Or was it the silence of the night in that strange land that robbed him of coveted slumber? For long his eyes remained closed. Yet sleep did not come. At last, yielding to the inevitable, he opened his eyes wide to stare upward through sighing pine branches to the infinite heavens above, where a myriad stars twinkled and beamed as they appeared to leap across tossing clusters of pine needles. Like a story told by a poet, a picture thrown on the screen, his life of the past few months moved before him. Arriving from dreamy tropical seas and deep tangled swamps of Central America, he had in late Autumn arrived at the mid-western city which was inseparably linked with his childhood. There, as he felt the crisp tang of autumn mornings and caught the gleams of frost on the corn, he felt again the lure of the North. Months of hot tropical sun lay behind him. He had come to loathe the soft warmth that saps men’s energies, thins their blood and weakens their wills. He yearned now for the long white trail, the screaming of sled runners, the song of dogs that is an Arctic night. But at this moment a fresh fancy seized him. Burton Bronson, an old-time friend, had by chance shown him a hunting bow with which he had performed marvelous feats. The wolf, the wild cat, mountain lion and bear had felt the bite of his broadhead arrows. Johnny had been skeptical. Bronson had demonstrated his power. Johnny had come to believe. He was at once fascinated by this new form of sport. The longbow, the arrow, and wide open spaces took him in hand. Long weeks they led him over sand dunes, across broad prairies, through silent forests. When weather became too bleak for out-of-doors sport, he had retreated to the cover of the North Shore Archery. There he had so perfected his form that no small game was safe from his straight speeding arrow. Then it was that his longing for the North returned. On top of this came the resolve to stake his fortune for the immediate future on his recently acquired skill. He would go into the North with no other weapon than the bow and arrow. With these alone, as the savages had done before him, he would make his way northward through Canada until, fortune attending him, he should reach the headwaters of the mighty Yukon in time to witness that greatest of nature’s panoramas, the Spring breakup on the river. So here he was. Over many a long mile Fate had been kind to him. Indians and white men alike had treated him well. They had laughed good-naturedly at his weapons, but had admired the strength and skill he exhibited in using them. The Indians of the first trading post had dubbed him “Johnny Longbow.” Johnny Longbow he was after that. He was not ashamed of the nickname, nor the things for which it stood. Beside him now, there in the midst of the great white wilderness, lay his two bows. One was of yew wood, backed with calfskin thin as parchment; the other an affair of his own making. Carved from the hardest and toughest of wood, osage orange, this bow was the pride of his life. He loved and trusted it as a friend. It had never failed him. “If only I had arrows for you!” he whispered now. “But we will have that caribou to-morrow.” With that he closed his eyes and fell asleep. Johnny Longbow’s breakfast next morning consisted of two cups of black coffee and a handful of sour berries he found clinging to their stems just as a premature winter had found them. Placing his pack in the crotch of a tree and marking the spot well, he slung his handmade osage bow across his back, thrust his lone arrow sword-like through his belt, then marched forth into the crisp glory of Arctic morning, to seek out the lost trail of that lone caribou. It was late afternoon when, with heart pounding painfully against his ribs, he stood neck deep among scrub spruce trees. The scene before him was one to inspire an artist’s brush or lend fire to a poet’s pen. A young buck caribou, a superb creature of shining brown and glistening black, stood before him in a narrow circle of green. Walled in on every side by dark young fir trees, the wild creature’s miniature pasture seemed to have been planned by some famous director for the setting of a scene in a wildwood drama. The caribou was feeding toward him. “Another minute, just one more,” he told himself. His watch ticked loudly. It seemed certain that the wild creature must hear. The snap of a twig off to the right came near spoiling it all. The caribou lifted its head. Johnny’s unnerved hand all but lost its grip on his bow. The day’s trail had been long and tiresome. Over rocky slopes, down icy streams, across treacherous snows, the caribou had led the way until the boy, weak from lack of food, was near to the point where one gives up in despair. Twice, as if to tempt him, a snowshoe rabbit leaped from his path, only to pause among the rocks and stare at him. Twice he had strung his bow, twice nocked his single arrow for a shot. Twice he had told himself that a miss among those rocks meant a shattered shaft, that at most the rabbit offered but a meal or two of indifferent food. Twice he had slipped the arrow in his belt, had unstrung his bow to take up the task of dogged tracking. “It’s to be the caribou or nothing!” he had told himself. “A month’s provision, or famine.” And now, here, just before him, feeding peacefully, was the caribou. For the moment he was well over at the far side of his narrow pasture. A few moments more, and he would be close enough for a sure shot, and then! The boy caught his breath as he thought what the speeding of that single arrow meant to him. Closing his eyes, he saw himself, a load of meat across his shoulders, beating his way back to the last outpost of civilization where were feathers, wood and steel for the making of many arrows. Then again the picture went dark. He saw the shadow of his present self, struggling over long lost trails, eagerly sucking bitter bark or grubbing into frozen earth for some crude substance with which to allay his hunger. “I must win!” he told himself stoutly. “I must not miss!” And still, as the moments passed, as the caribou moved nearer and nearer, the zero hour came closer to hand, he found his faith wavering. “One arrow,” he thought over and over, “only one.” But “Now! Now!” he breathed at last. “Can’t wait any longer.” As the antlered monarch of the far north raised his head to stand there silent, listening, still as a statue, Johnny’s bow twanged, his arrow sped. With a bound high and free the wild creature leaped away. One, two, three bounds, and he had cleared the spot of light green. Another, another and yet another, he went thrashing breast deep in the young firs. “Missed!” Johnny groaned. “Missed! And he carries into the forest my only arrow!” But what was this? Just as his head fell in dejection he saw the caribou make one more leap, high and wide, then come to a sudden stand. Still breast deep in darkest green, he appeared to view the scene before another wild dash. “Oh, for one more arrow!” the boy groaned. “There is no other, so what’s the use?” In the forlorn hope that his lone arrow might by chance have glanced and fallen on the green, he moved toward the narrow circle of wild pasture. Then suddenly he stood still. There had come to his sensitive ear a sound of movement in the brush. “Not the caribou either,” he told himself as his heart skipped a beat. “Some wild beast of prey, a bear or a wolf.” But no, a greater surprise awaited him. Before him, much closer to the caribou than to him, a khaki clad back appeared. A boyish head, an old cap, a pair of stout arms held high, a bow, a quiver of arrows. A second’s suspense, and an arrow flew straight and fair at the statuesque caribou. “’Twon’t do,” Johnny told himself, rubbing his eyes. “This is Nineteen Twenty-eight. Strange enough for me to be here. But a girl with only a bow and arrow in these wilds? It can’t be!” And yet it was. As he looked again the girl was still there. So too was the caribou. “Two arrows, and still he stands there motionless. That creature, this place is bewitched. I’ll break the spell.” He was about to lift his voice in a loud “hello” when the girl, turning half about, fitted a second arrow to her bow and let fly. “Straight to the mark, as I live!” Johnny spoke his thought out loud. “And still he stands.” The girl wheeled about to stare at him in blank surprise. Then, as surprise and fear left her, she exclaimed: “The beast is surely charmed! I’ve shot him, and yet he does not stir!” Suddenly the shining black antlers sank low. The whole head of the caribou disappeared in the brush. Still his body remained erect. “Mystery here!” Johnny sprang forward. The girl, as if in fear of losing the prize, started forward. “It’s all right,” said Johnny. “He’s yours. I missed him fair enough.” “You—you missed?” The girl’s tone showed surprise. Johnny did not hear. “Mystery solved!” he shouted back a moment later. “When he made that last leap he landed so squarely on the tops of a half dozen young fir trees that they did what his legs no longer could. They supported him. “But say!” he called. “It’s queer. Come here, please.” As the girl advanced he had time for a brief study of her fine, strong, khaki clad figure. “Eighteen or twenty. English or Scotch. An outdoor girl,” was his mental comment. “Question is,” he smiled as the girl came close, “Who’s caribou is it? Three arrows, all quite near the heart. Two are yours, one mine.” “You—yours?” The puzzled look of a moment before returned to the girl’s face. “Yes. I shot first. You did not see me. But there’s my arrow. “But really,” his tone changed as the girl seemed suddenly crestfallen, “there’s no need of mine and thine in the forest. I am glad as I can be to know that there’s a fellow creature near. That was my last arrow.” “And you are alone?” “Quite alone.” “You look hungry,” she said suddenly. “I am, a little. Haven’t really eaten for—well, for some time. Luck went against me. Couldn’t even get a fish.” “We’ll take the caribou to camp,” she said. “It’s only a half mile, all down grade. Grandfather—” She broke off quite suddenly as one does who has found himself in danger of saying too much. “You—you have a camp of your own—” she hesitated, “perhaps—” Again she paused. As Johnny watched, he read in her face signs of conflicting emotions. Native hospitality, a longing for companionship, youth calling to youth, were battling with fear. This much he understood. But why the fear? She had spoken of a grandfather. Surely then there could be no objection to his joining them in a feast off the venison they had secured. “Perhaps,” she began again. “Here,” extending her quiver filled with arrows, “take these. We have others.” “I’ll dress the deer and we’ll divide it,” said Johnny, exasperated by what seemed to him cool effrontery. He did not so much as look at the proffered arrows. Hanging her quiver on a spruce bough, the girl assisted him in lifting the caribou to a strong bough and stringing him up. It was then that Johnny came to know of her superb strength. “Like a man,” he told himself. She sat watching in silence as he performed his task. When, however, he had dressed the deer, severed its head from its body and was studying the problem of a fair division without an axe or butcher’s cleaver, she spoke again. “Lift the fore parts to my shoulder,” she said quietly. “I think we can carry it to camp.” That she had arrived at some decision as he worked Johnny guessed. What decision, and why? This he did not know. The girl led the way. The going was rough. More than once she slipped and all but fell. Yet each time her recovery was that of the perfect woodsman, like the spring of a creature made of steel. Once she fell forward, and the caribou dropped to earth. Before Johnny could come to her aid she was up with a low laugh and lifted the burden to her shoulder once more. “She’s wonderful!” he told himself. “I hope——” He was not quite sure what it was he hoped. He had been a long time in the wilderness, had been facing starvation, too. He had not realized until this moment how bleak and lonely it had been. “But now—” His thoughts were broken short off by the girl’s actions. She had come to a sudden stop. “Drop—drop it down here.” Her words came uncertainly. Johnny obeyed. The next instant she had disappeared into the brush that surrounded them on every side, nor had he seen which way she had taken. “Gone,” he told himself. Dismay overtook him. She might not return. There was something altogether strange about the whole affair. But half a caribou in a wilderness! Yes, she would return. So he sat down to wait, and as he waited, there came to him, wafted along by a gentle breeze, faint odors of campfire smoke and bacon frying. |
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