  “It is going to storm.” The old Scot dropped his paddle to the bottom of the dugout long enough to turn up the collar of his jacket, then he took up the mechanical swing of his brawny arms that had done so much in the days that had just passed to speed the three adventurers on into the Northland. “Going to be a bad one!” Johnny threw a fleeting glance at the girl before him. Like her grandfather, she performed wonders. She had kept up the steady, monotonous swing of paddle until Johnny thought she must be working in her sleep. The muscles of her arms had grown hard as a man’s. They had found the Corporal’s cottonwood dugout a good one. For three days it had carried them straight on into the great unknown. “After all, she’s only a girl,” he told himself, thinking once more of the girl. “This storm will be a bad one. Wish we’d come to shelter. The map shows a cabin or something down here somewhere. Be easy enough to pass it in the storm. Map don’t show which bank. Wish—” Just then the advance guard of the storm struck. A rattling drive of cutting snow, a sudden gust that set their canoe on side, and it was gone. “But there will be other blasts and worse ones,” he told himself. In this he was right. A half hour had not passed before they were shooting along through a veritable wall of driving white. One of those sudden and terrible storms that haunt the Arctic had come driving down from the North. “Have to go ashore and try to get up something of a camp,” said the old Scot, as with the greatest difficulty he unbent his benumbed fingers. “Can’t stand this. Cold and damp will get us. Wind off that ice water is terrible.” Once more Johnny looked at the girl. Gripping her paddle, she still swung her arms in rhythmic motion. “Half froze,” he thought, with a tightening of the throat. “She’s doing and enduring all for the good of people she has not seen.” Just then there was a stir in the prow of the canoe. Tico, the dog given to Faye by the Corporal, had crept from his snug corner to lift his nose to the air, point toward the farther shore, and let out an unhappy wail. “Something over there.” The girl spoke now for the first time in a half hour. “Maybe game. That’s something. Our food supply is very low. Better go over.” Neither the old Scot nor Johnny questioned her judgment. Turning the canoe half about, they struck for that distant shore. It was a perilous journey. The moment they left the sheltering bank, waves began crashing over the gunwale. The boat was half filled when the girl, dropping her paddle, began to bale. The men toiled unremittingly at the oars. “Wind’s with us. Be there soon,” Johnny said cheeringly. “Wa-roo!” answered the dog. Standing high in the prow, he appeared to direct their course. They were still half a boat length from shore when with a mighty leap the dog, clearing the boat, landed on the ice that edged the water and at once shot away into the forest. “Tico! Tico!” the girl cried. “Come back! Come back!” Wind and water drowned her cries. The dog did not return. “All we can do is to follow him,” said Johnny as he made the boat fast to a bough that hung far out over ice and water, then tested the ice with an axe. “Here, let me have those,” he said as Gordon Duncan was about to throw his bundle of bows and arrows ashore. “Guess you better carry them,” said Gordon Duncan. “Can’t be too careful of your artillery in such a land.” After a dangerous slide or two they were on land. Following the dog’s steps in the snow, Johnny led the way into the tangled brush. To his great joy he found indications of a rough trail. “May have been made by moose or caribou, for all that,” he told himself. “What was that?” the girl exclaimed suddenly, stopping short. From behind them had come a cracking sound. Dropping the bundle of arrows he carried, Johnny sprang back over the trail. “It’s gone!” There was a touch of despair in his voice as he called to his companions. “The boat’s gone! The branch tore away.” Never in his life had he felt more miserable. No food, no blankets, no shelter in a strange land, hundreds of miles from known human habitation, with a blizzard tearing at them. “And it’s all my fault,” he said. “It was I who tied the boat. I should have tested the moorings.” “No,” said Gordon Duncan. There was force and dignity in his tone. “It is not entirely your fault. We were there to offer counsel. And this is not the end. It is but the beginning. We have bows and arrows. There is game here as elsewhere. There is always a way to prepare a shelter and make a fire.” “But first we must find Tico,” said the girl, who had just come up to them. “I can’t imagine what madness has seized him.” “Dogs,” said Gordon Duncan, “are sometimes wiser than humans. There may be something in his actions that is worth investigating. Let us be going.” In this he was more right than he knew. They had not gone a hundred yards when the trail widened. Another hundred yards, and a dark bulk loomed through the whirling snow. “A cabin or a boulder,” said Johnny a little breathlessly. “Either will prove a boon,” said the old Scot. “A shelter in the time of storm.” “A cabin! A cabin!” the girl cried joyously as the dog came bounding back to meet her. And such a cabin as it proved to be! Built of massive logs, with a door that required the strength of two to swing it wide, what a haven! It was equipped with rude bunks, a hand hewn table and chairs and a massive stone fireplace. “This,” said Gordon Duncan, a note of deep, silent joy creeping into his voice, “is the very place we were to leave the canoe and strike away across the tundra. Truly we have been guided by a great good God.” “God, and Tico,” whispered the girl as she sank down upon a chair. There was no suggestion of irreverence in her tone. “Aye, and the dog,” said the old Scot. “I doubt not that many times the great Creator finds a dog’s course more easy to direct than that of a human.” A hasty survey of the cabin revealed many delightful surprises. Built, no doubt, by some trader and trapper of bygone days, it had been fashioned to shut out the rigor of winter and the tearing rush of wild northern gales. It had been equipped with massive iron cooking utensiles which were still serviceable. It had, beyond doubt, been used by the Mounted Police as a temporary station, for, hidden away among the rafters were blankets, a coffee pot, a small quantity of flour and baking powder, a can of coffee, a sack of beans and a square of bacon. “Man! Did I not tell you?” exclaimed the joyous Scot. “’Twas God’s hand that led us. ’Tis a royal feast we’ll have. “No better fritters were ever made than those moulded by the hands of the bonny lassie here. Bacon, fritters, coffee beside a fire that laughs up a generous chimney. Who could ask for more?” Johnny joined with the old Scot in his rejoicing. He had not, however, forgotten that their boat was irretrievably lost and that it was many, many weary miles back, even to the cabin where they had enjoyed their last real night’s sleep. Being young and strong, possessed of a healthy body and a vigorous mind, he did not trouble about the future for long, but springing out into the storm, began dragging in dry brush and logs. “Ah, now the storm may laugh and the wind crack her cheeks!” exclaimed the Scot as he attacked the branches with an axe he had found in the corner. Bacon, fritters and coffee might seem a meager feast. But to those who had lived for days on caribou steak, rabbits, partridge and squirrel, it was indeed a rich repast. Even Tico enjoyed it beyond his power to express. When at last the feast was over and the heavy pots and pans hung in their places Johnny piled three great spruce logs in the center of the fireplace, thrust dry branches and wind wrecked splintered fragments in the niches between, then with his friends sat down to watch with dreamy eyes the leaping, laughing, roaring flames. The old Scot was soon nodding in his chair. Lower and lower his head sank upon his breast until only the tangled gray of hair and beard were visible. Softly, on tiptoe, the girl went to bend over his chair. As she tiptoed back to her place beside the boy, she whispered: “Sleeping.” Johnny nodded. For a long time, save for the roar of the wind outside answered by the crackle of the fire within, there was silence. But who can say what communion may be had between hearts loyal and true in moments of silence? When the girl spoke her tone was deep and low. “I am afraid for him. His heart,” she said, glancing toward the sleeping patriarch, “Some day—” She did not finish, but once more sat starring at the fire. “This,” she said at last, “is to be his one great adventure. He has the heart of youth, of a knight, a Crusader. We have always lived quietly on our farm, except for these trips into the forest. Always since he was a boy, he has told me, he has longed for an opportunity to render a great service. He believes this is his great opportunity, his crowded hour, this and his final search for old Timmie and his green gold. What a triumph it will be if he accomplishes all!” Again she stared at the fire. Johnny nodded. He understood. “We will do all we can to help him realize his highest hope,” he said huskily. A moment later, as the wind shook the cabin, the girl’s mood changed. She found herself longing for the home of many simple comforts she had left to follow her grandfather on this strange and uncertain quest. “You have never seen our home,” she said dreamily. “It’s not a palace, but it’s home. Just a cottage with vines climbing up the front and with fine old fashioned roses, yellow, pink and red, on either side. There’s a cozy little parlor with a reed organ in one corner. Grandfather loves to sing to it on a Sunday afternoon, those old, old fashioned tunes that are so quaint and so—so sort of wonderful. You should hear him boom them out. “My room,” she went on as if speaking to herself, “looks out upon a field of red clover at the side, and at the back is a clump of forest. The squirrels are so tame that they come to perch on my window sill and beg for sweets and nuts.” As she ceased speaking Johnny looked at her and realized as never before that she was, despite her rugged face and splendid untiring muscles, only a girl very far from the nest that she called home. “But,” she exclaimed suddenly as if waking from a dream, “we must not turn back! We must go on! Go on for him!” She nodded toward the sleeping grandfather. “And for the little brown people who, but for us, may starve.” Three days the storm raged on. Restful days these were, but not idle ones. Some of their arrows had gone downstream with their ill-fated cottonwood boat. Fortunately they found within the cabin two steel sled runners and a home-made feather duster. The dusters were made of wild goose feathers. No better for arrows can be found. With the aid of fire and such tools as were at hand, they succeeded in cutting the sled runners into bits and fashioning them into arrow heads. Dry fir furnished them shafts for the arrows. Long hours, working side by side over the table, the boy and girl, directed by the old man, worked at the task of making arrows. Cutting, scraping, shaping, pounding, forging, binding, with grimy hands but gleaming eyes they worked on and on until when the storm broke and the sun came out they found themselves better armed than ever before. “So we may say the storm was a blessing in disguise,” said Gordon Duncan. “To-morrow we must be on our way,” he said as he gazed upon the fading tints of their first red sunset in the wilderness. “We must hurry. The caribou may come and pass to their northern feeding grounds before us. Then indeed our little brown friends will starve.” “And we with them,” Johnny wanted to add, but did not. That night, by the light of the fire, Johnny spent a full hour studying three maps he had spread out on the table. More than once a sudden exclamation escaped his lips. At last he rose and began pacing the floor. The old Scot was asleep in his chair. Faye Duncan had watched Johnny with keen interest. Now as she caught the light of a quizzical smile playing across his face, she said, “What is it?” “Why look!” he replied, leading her to the table. “See, here are three maps, the one done on white leather by your grandfather so many years ago, the roughly drawn one by the Corporal to guide us on this trip, and an old general map of the country which I found here in the cabin. “It’s strange,” he said, straightening up, “but when you trace the two routes out, the one your grandfather proposed to follow in his search for that more or less mythical partner of his—” “Don’t say that!” Her finger touched his lips. “It’s all very real to him.” “Well, anyway, we are now across the river, and if we follow the route the Corporal has marked out for us we will be going almost directly toward the spot your grandfather has marked for Timmie’s cabin. “So,” he said, reading the surprise and joy in her eye, “the longest way round is the shortest way home, after all! See!” He pointed to a spot on the map. “See. There is the camp of the Eskimo. And here, just a short way across the tundra, then over these low mountains, is Timmie’s cabin and the—the green gold.” “So in choosing to be of service to the natives, Grandfather was really serving himself,” the girl said as they returned to their places before the fire. “How often life is like that.” “Green gold.” She repeated the words thoughtfully after a time. “Do you suppose there is any such thing?” “Yes, of course there is,” said Johnny. “They use it for making jewelry, rings, watch-cases and the like. But where it comes from I haven’t the least notion.” “Is—is it very valuable?” “Why yes, it must be.” “And if there was a lot of it, a mine or something, and Grandfather has a share, we would be—might be—” “Quite rich.” “Oh!” Her eyes shone. “You know,” she said after some time, “we are quite poor and we—Grandfather might need money badly to—to defend—” Johnny waited long for the rest of that sentence. It never came. “Well,” he said at last, “to-morrow it’s the long, long trail once more.” |
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