  Next morning they opened their eyes to a new world. The fog was gone, the sun shone bright. Up from the south had come a gentle wind that brought with it the breath of spring. Far away before them, like the jagged teeth of a worn out saw, was a range of mountains. The tops of these mountains still appeared to smoke with the snow swept over the summits. “I wonder what it’s like up there,” the girl said to Johnny. “In time you are sure to know,” he said. “Our trail leads over that range. May God grant us a low pass.” “You may well say that.” Gordon Duncan’s eyes seemed to see things far distant and remote. “But as you say, the trail leads over those mountains. There is no other way.” The week that followed will linger long in the memory of Johnny Longbow and his smiling companion of the trail, for it was spring, and who could forget such an occasion? In the Arctic winter lingers long. Spring is thrice welcome. This year, creeping up behind a veil of fog, it appeared to burst upon them like a revelation. The snow grew soft beneath their feet. Little rivers began coursing away to the north. The surfaces of lakes, long locked with ice, glistened with water that buried the solid depths of ice that still lingered. Little snow-buntings, silent for long, began their cheerful chee-chee, and far above in the bluest of skies an early covey of wild ducks winged their silent way. The first touch of spring brought out small game in abundance. Snowshoe rabbits, leaving their hiding places, hopped about in a leisurely fashion. Ptarmigan were so numerous that the wandering bowmen grew expert in the art of beheading them with a well shot broadhead arrow. And what could be sweeter than a ptarmigan roasted over a glowing bed of coals? Once, creeping through tall dead grass of a year’s standing, they came upon a flock of gray ducks that had come all the way from the southland. As he smiled over the breast of a fine duck that evening Johnny’s face suddenly sobered. He had bitten upon something that had nearly cost him a tooth. “A shot,” he said as he produced a mashed bit of lead. “Someone shot at him way down there where there is no ice and snow, and he brought this, a message from another land.” For a moment as he sat dreaming, eyes half closed, he thought of himself as a young native of the land, the old man the last patriarch of his tribe and the girl the last link of a vanishing race. “Huh!” he smiled as he wakened from his revery. “Strange world! In a month we will be with white men, living as they live.” But would they? With all the hunting and their keen enjoyment of the spring, they did not neglect the trail. Each day brought them nearer to the range of snow blown mountains. Each hour hastened the time when they must try the pass. Sometimes at night by the campfire they spoke of it in awed whispers. At other times, under bright midday skies, they laughingly talked of the long slide they would take when they reached the other side. How little they knew of that which lay before them. Gordon Duncan thought only of Timmie and his green gold. Faye Duncan lived most for the care and protection of the kindly old man she loved more than her own life. Johnny dreamed strange dreams of gold, fortune, and a dark haired handsome Scotch girl. At times he wondered why they had feared to meet a fellow human being. That wonder was fading. Growing ever stronger was his desire to solve the mystery of Timmie and his green gold. “Just over the mountains, and we’ll know,” he told himself many times. So at last they reached the foothills of those vast and silent mountains, and their troubles began. As they passed the lower levels game vanished. Only once in two days did they see a rabbit. Then it escaped into the brush. At the end of three days, after skirting many a spring-born freshet and creeping about a score of cliffs, they arrived at the base of a mountain, the lowest of all the range, but startling in its whiteness and immensity. There, sore footed and weary, they built another campfire and sat down to a meal of steaming coffee and frozen berries. The girl looked at Johnny. There was a question in her eyes. “Dare we try the mountain?” “It is three days’ travel back to the land of game,” he replied. “Can it be worse ahead? Will he turn back?” He looked at the grizzled old Scot, who as ever sat dozing by the fire. “He will not.” “Will he live to—to see the other side of the mountain?” “We can only hope.” For a long time after that they sat there in silence. What were the girl’s thoughts? Johnny would gladly have known. As for himself, he was thinking of the possibility of sudden tragedy for the old Scot and of their battle to win their way back to the haunts of civilized man. “What a burial place for such a man!” he thought to himself. “A whole unmolested mountain for a tomb! “But,” he thought a moment later, “as she has said, we must hope. It would break her heart.” Next day they started early. There was hope in each heart that they might make the pass before sunset and camp for the night on the other side. One thing was in their favor; they soon passed from the zone of spring into the high level where winter still reigned. No longer was the snow soft under their tread, no longer were they obliged to skirt the banks of streams for a safe passage. There were no streams. All was ice and snow and barren rocks. “Look at it,” Johnny said after an hour of desperate struggle up an all but perpendicular wall. “Not a shrub, not a scrub birch or fir. Barren as the hills of doom. No living creature could be here. Tonight we go supperless and without a fire.” Faye Duncan shuddered. It was mid-afternoon, and the smoking mountain peak still loomed far above them. “No wood, no food, no shelter!” Gladly would she have turned back. But one look at the grim look of determination on the old Scot’s face sealed her lips. “He crossed these mountains in his prime,” she told herself. “He will cross them again or die.” “Look!” Johnny pointed excitedly toward a sloping waste of barren rocks. “What is it?” “Something moving over there.” “I can’t see—” Turning her about and pointing over his shoulder, he said, “See! Just beyond that great boulder, something white.” “It is!” she exclaimed. “A mountain goat! Oh, Johnny, can we?” “We can, or my name is not Johnny Longbow.” Vision of a feast of wild goat’s steak done to a turn floated before his eyes. In his excitement he quite forgot that they had no wood. Carefully they prepared their attack. He would climb the narrow ledge to the right and come out above the goat. She would work round to the left and station herself among the rocks prepared to cut off his retreat up a narrow run. For a half hour after that Johnny climbed from rock to rock until, with a deep intake of breath, he bent his bow, nocked his arrow, then of a sudden stood up. His heart went wild as he saw the goat not fifty yards away. As he stood there hope, despair and high resolve fought for first place in his soul. The result was a bad shot. Or was it? He could not tell. All he knew was that the nimble beast leaped high in air, then went racing away. A second arrow followed the first. On such slopes, among such rocks, there could be no hope of recovering an arrow. Sitting limply down upon a rock, the boy watched the great bobbing horns disappear from sight. “Missed!” he muttered, then turning, began making his way back. Sitting in a sheltered spot at the back of a great rock that overlooked the narrow gorge, Faye Duncan, as she waited and watched, thought of many things, of her grandfather and Johnny Longbow, of Timmie and his mysterious green gold, of her home and her own cozy room there. Her heart warmed at this last thought, but chilled again as she looked up at the smoking crest which they must cross. “Will we make it? Can we do it? Well—” Of a sudden she sprang to her feet. There had come to her alert ears a sound. It seemed close at hand. “The goat!” Seizing her bow, she nocked a broadhead and waited. “Yes, there. There.” Her hand trembled. The great horned creature was making straight for her. Not a hundred yards away, he was coming straight on. “Has he seen me? Would a wild goat charge his enemy?” She did not know. Her heart stood still. “Must be sure of my shot,” she told herself. Bracing herself, she waited. Now he was eighty yards away, now sixty, now forty, and now—now— A second more, and her broadhead arrow would have flown. But of a sudden the wild creature’s forelegs crumpled beneath him and he fell with a great rattling of horns, to go rolling over and over down a twenty-foot embankment. Fleet as the wind, the girl leaped clear of her retreat and away down that slope. “He may merely have stumbled, may be up and away.” Little she knew of wild goats, whose feet are surer than any other thing in life. The goat was dead. Johnny’s first arrow had pierced him through and through. One look at the fallen creature was enough. His eyes were glazed in death. Climbing to the top of a boulder, she cupped her hands to give forth a long, shrill call. “Who-hoo!” Three times this was repeated. Then came the answer echoing back. “He has heard. He will come.” She smiled. That evening they ate goat’s meat prepared by cutting it into narrow strips and allowing it to freeze. That night they slept huddled together for warmth beneath a rude snow hut which Johnny, under the old man’s directions, was able to build against a wall of rock. “One thing is sure,” Johnny said as he prepared for rest. “There is no need for maintaining a watch to-night.” He was destined to have another thought regarding this next morning. Beside the pile of goat’s meat they had left carelessly on a rock, he saw a single footprint. The goatskin and a portion of the meat was gone. “Did us no harm,” he told Faye as he pointed in astonishment at the footprint. “We still have more meat than we can carry. And the skin was worth nothing to us.” “But that creature!” she said with a shudder. “Look! The footprint is twice the length of a man’s.” “And there are no toe marks,” he added. “Tell you what!” There was an air of mystery in his tone. “Remember that creature that defied the wolves that night?” She nodded. “It’s the same; the great banshee!” Here indeed was a mystery. But graver matters called for their attention. In spite of all they could do they had come near perishing with cold. They must be off the mountain before the end of the day, or tragedy was sure to overtake them. |
|
