  That the hunchback was a great sleeper Johnny was soon enough to know. After their long journey he slept far into the day. Even after he awoke he appeared to be in a dull stupor, produced, Johnny supposed, by eating great quantities of bear meat. Grateful as he was for the rest, the boy found himself growing restless. Longing to know more about his strange surroundings and especially eager to discover whether or not he was in a region visited at times by white men, he slipped out of the cabin, then went slipping and sliding down the steep hill. He discovered little enough. In the scrub forest he found no mark of the white man’s axe. Had he chanced to go down the other slope he would have seen plenty, as you well know. For two days, the while preparing his raft, the aged recluse had camped at the far end of that slope. After a two-hour ramble, Johnny returned to the cabin. In one pocket was a double handful of last year’s blueberries. In one hand he carried two grouse which had fallen before his bow. “These,” he told himself, “will make a more appetizing meal than greasy bear meat.” The hunchback sat just as he had left him, doubled up in the corner, asleep or at least dozing. “He hibernates like a bear,” the boy told himself in disgust. “I could leave him,” he thought later as he plucked the feathers from his two birds. “Strike right away into the wilderness, be gone so far and so fast that he’d never find me.” There was a thought for you. But did he want to leave? Crude and repulsive as the creature was, he had beyond doubt saved his life. Then, too, he knew the ways of the country, was used to procuring food in it. With no companion one might easily meet up with starvation on the trail. “Anyway,” he concluded, “if he keeps this up, at least I will get out and see more of the country. May find a way out. To-morrow I will go toward the river.” Had he but known it, at that very moment Gordon Duncan was lighting his campfire at the foot of the hill. He did not know it. Since the scrub forest was dense here, no gleam of firelight, no whiff of smoke announced to him the presence of his friends. So once more, in the midst of rich furs he fell asleep. Before his strange host was up and about the boy crept from the cabin to go tramping away through the silent forest. The rise on which the cabin stood was more a ridge than it was a hill. It ran for miles along the river. The slope on the river side was steep and rocky. In places there were sheer precipices of forty or fifty feet. To avoid a dangerous fall, he continued along the crest of the ridge. Having caught a gleam of water far below, he realized that he was following down the stream. At last, wearying of continual attempts to find a way down, hoping to discover a pass, he climbed a steep rocky pinnacle that gave him an unobstructed view of the river. There he saw that which brought an exclamation to his lips and set his heart beating wildly. A boat had just pushed off from the bank and was swinging out into mid-channel. Lacking efficient paddles, the men at prow and stern were managing the craft with poles. A curious sort of boat it was, crudely built and hard to navigate; yet these Indians managed it well. “Indians,” Johnny thought. “But the two in the center of the boat. One’s a girl. The other’s too tall. He—” Of a sudden, like a revelation it came to him. The man was Gordon Duncan, the girl Faye. With a sudden headlong rush, he was off the rocky tower and away down the hill. Little matter now that the way was steep and rocky. This was a race, a hurdle race for a precious prize. “If only they stall the boat. If only they turn back,” he panted as, gripping the bough of a spruce tree, he fairly hurled himself to the next tree. Down, down, down. Now a rocky ledge, now a glistening bank of snow, now a clump of trees, over, under, through he went until at last, ragged, torn, bleeding, he reached level land and in time the river’s brink. “Too late,” he groaned as his eyes swept the river. Not a moving thing was to be seen on its surface. “It—it—why, it’s as if I dreamed that I saw them,” he said aloud. As if to convince himself that he had not been dreaming, he followed along the bank to the spot where the crude bearskin boat had pushed off. There he found unmistakable signs; footprints told who had been there but an hour before. “Left behind!” He buried his face in his hands. At that instant a sound from behind him caused him to start. Turning quickly about, he found himself staring into the beady eyes of the hunchback. |
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