The Gold Hunters, James Oliver Curwood [popular books of all time TXT] 📗

great country between here and the Barren Lands, where the musk-ox lives, there is not one Indian in a hundred who would steal another Indian's trap, or the game in it. It is one of the understood laws of the North that every hunter shall have his 'trap line,' or 'run,' and it is not courtesy for another trapper to encroach upon it; but if he should, and he should lay a trap close beside another's, it would not be wrong, for the law of the Great Spirit is greater than the law of man. Why, last winter even the outlaw Woongas made no effort to steal our traps, though they thirsted for our lives!"

"Mukoki," said Rod, rising, "I want to shake hands with you before I go to bed. I'm learning—fast. I wish I were half Indian!"

The next morning the journey up the Ombabika was resumed, and a little more of anxiety was now mingled with the enthusiasm of the adventurers. For no one of them could relieve himself of the possible significance of the gold bullet, the fear that their treasure had been discovered by another. Wabi regained his confidence first.

"I don't believe it!" he exclaimed at last. Without questioning, the others knew to what he referred. "I don't believe that our gold has been found. It is in the heart of the wildest country on the continent, and surely if such a rich find had been made we would have heard something about it at Wabinosh House or Kenegami, which are the nearest points of supply."

"Or, if it was found, the discoverer is dead," added Rod.

"Yes."

In the stern, Mukoki nodded and grunted his conviction.

"Dead," he repeated.

The Ombabika had now become narrow and violent. Against its swift current the canoe made but little headway, and at noon Mukoki announced that the river journey was at an end. For a few moments Rod did not recognize where they had landed. Then he gave a sudden cry of glad surprise.

"Why, this is where we had supper that night after our terrible adventure on the river last winter," he exclaimed.

From far off there came faintly to his ears a low, rumbling thunder.

"Listen! That's the river rushing through the break in the mountain where we walked the edge of the precipice!"

Wabi shrugged his shoulders at the memory of that fearful night and its desperate race to escape from the Woonga country.

"We've got to do the same thing again, only this time it will be in daylight."

"Long portage," said Mukoki. "Six mile. Carry everything."

"Until we reach the little creek in the plains beyond the mountain, where you shot the caribou?" asked Rod.

"Yes," replied Wabigoon. "That little creek will now be a pretty husky stream, and by hard work we can paddle up it until we come within about eight miles of our old camp at the head of the chasm, where we found the skeletons and the map."

"And from that point we shall have to carry our canoe and supplies to the creek in the chasm," finished Rod. "And then—hurrah for the gold!"

"Mak' old camp on mountain by night," said Mukoki.

Wabi broke into a happy laugh and thumped Rod on the back.

"Remember the big lynx you shot, Rod, and thought it was a Woonga, and had us all frightened out of our wits?" he cried.

Rod colored at the memory of his funny adventure, which was thrilling enough at the time, and began assisting Mukoki in unloading the canoe. Two hours were taken for dinner and rest, and then the young hunters shouldered their canoe while Mukoki hurried on ahead of them, weighted with a half of their supplies. Every step now brought the thunder of the torrent rushing through the mountain more clearly to their ears, and they had not progressed more than a mile when they were compelled to shout to make each other hear. On their right the wall of the mountain closed in rapidly, and as they stumbled with their burden over a mass of huge boulders the two boys saw just ahead of them the narrow trail at the edge of the precipice.

At its beginning they rested their canoe. On one side of them, a dozen yards away, the face of the mountain rose sheer above them for a thousand feet; on the other, scarce that distance from where they stood, was the roaring chasm. And ahead of them the mountain wall and the edge of the precipice came nearer and nearer, until there was no more than a six-foot ledge to walk upon. Rod's face turned strangely white as he realized, for the first time, the terrible chances they had taken on that black, eventful night of a few months ago; and for a time Wabi stood silent, his face as hard-set as a rock. Up out of the chasm there came a deafening thunder of raging waters, like the hollow explosions of great guns echoing and reëchoing in subterranean caverns.

"Let's take a look!" shouted Wabi close up to his companion's ear.

He went to the edge of the precipice, and Rod forced himself to follow, though there was in him a powerful inclination to hug close to the mountain wall. For half a minute he stood fascinated, terror-stricken, and yet in those thirty seconds he saw that which would remain with him for a lifetime. Five hundred feet below him the over-running floods of spring were caught between the ragged edges of the two chasm walls, beating themselves in their fury to the whiteness of milk froth, until it seemed as though the earth itself must tremble under their mad rush. Now and then through the twisting foam there shot the black crests of great rocks, as though huge monsters of some kind were at play, whipping the torrent into greater fury, and bellowing forth thunderous voices when they rose triumphant for an instant above the sweep of the flood.

All this Rod saw in less than a breath, and he drew back, shivering in every fiber of his body. But Wabigoon did not move. For several minutes the Indian youth stood looking down upon the wonderful force at play below him, his body as motionless as though hewn out of stone, the wild blood in his veins leaping in response to the tumult and thunder of the magnificent spectacle deep down in the chasm. When he turned to Rod his lips made no sound, but his eyes glowed with that half-slumbering fire which came only when the red blood of the princess mother gained ascendency, and the wild in him called out greeting to the savage in nature. It is not music, or fine talk, or artificial wonders that waken a thrill deep down in the Indian soul, it is the great mountain, the vast plain, the roaring cataract! And so it was with Wabigoon.

They went on, now, with the canoe upon their shoulders, and hugging close to the mountain wall. Slowly, avoiding every stone and stick that might cause one of them to stumble, they passed along the perilously narrow ledge, and did not rest again until they had come in safety to the broader trail leading up the mountain. An hour later Mukoki met them on his return for the remainder of their supplies. Shortly after this they reached the small plateau where they had camped during the previous winter, and lowered their canoe close to the old balsam shelter.

Everything was as they had left it. Neither snow nor storm had destroyed their lodging of boughs. There were the charred remains of their fire, the bones of the huge lynx which Roderick had thought was an attacking Woonga, and had killed; and beside the shelter was a stake driven into the ground, the stake to which they had fastened their faithful comrade of many an adventure, the tame wolf.

To this stake went Wabigoon, speaking no word. He sat down close beside it, with his arm resting upon it, and when he looked up at Rod there was an expression in his face which spoke more than words.

"Poor old Wolf!"

Rod turned and walked to the edge of the plateau, something hot and uncomfortable filling his eyes. Below him, as far as he could see, there stretched the vast, mysterious wilderness that reached to Hudson Bay. And somewhere out there in that limitless space was Wolf.

As he looked, the hot film clouding his vision, he thought of the old tragedy in Mukoki's life, and of how Wolf had helped him to avenge himself. In his imagination he went back to that terrible day many, many years ago, when Mukoki, happy in the strength of his youth, found his young wife and child dead upon the trail, killed by wolves; he thought of the story that Wabi had told him of the madness that came to the young warrior, of how year after year he followed the trail of wolves, wreaking his vengeance on their breed. And last he thought of Wolf—how Mukoki and Wabigoon had found the whelp in one of their traps; how they tamed him, grew to love him, and taught him to decoy other wolves to their riffes. Wolf had been their comrade of a few months before; fearless, faithful, until at last, escaping from the final murderous assault of the Woongas, he had fled into the forests, while his human friends fought their way back to civilization.

Where was Wolf now?

Unconsciously Rod questioned himself aloud, and from close behind him
Wabi answered.

"With the hunt-pack, Rod. He's forgotten us; gone back to the wild."

"Gone back to the wild, yes," said Rod; "but forgotten us, no!"

Wabi made no reply.

CHAPTER X THE MYSTERIOUS SHOT

For many minutes the two stood silently gazing into the North. At their feet spread the broad plain where Mukoki had killed the caribou while they watched him from the plateau; beyond that were the dense stretches of forest, broken here and there by other plains and meadows, and a dozen lakes glistened in the red tints of the setting sun. When Rod first looked upon that country a few months before it was a world of ice and snow, a cold, dazzling panorama of white that reached from where he stood to the Pole. Now it was wakening under the first magic touch of spring. Far away the two young gold hunters caught a glimmer of the stream which they were to follow up to the chasm. Last winter it had been a tiny creek; now it was swollen to the size of a river.

Suddenly, as they looked, two dark objects came slowly out into an opening a mile away. At that distance they appeared hardly larger than dogs, and Rod, whose mind was still filled with thoughts of Wolf, exclaimed "Wolves!"

In the same breath he caught himself, and added:

"Moose!"

"A cow and her calf," said Wabi.

"How do you know?" asked Rod.

"There; watch them now!" cried Wabi, catching his companion by the arm. "The mother is ahead, and even from here I can see that she is pacing. A moose never trots or gallops, like a deer, but paces, using both feet on a side at the same time. Notice how the calf jumps about. An old moose would never do that."

"But both animals look to be about the same size," replied Rod, still doubtful.

"It's a two-year-old calf; almost as big as its mother. In fact, it's not really a calf, because it is too old; but so long as young moose stick to their mothers we call them calves up here. I've known them to remain together for three years."

"They're coming this way!" whispered the white youth.

The moose had turned, heading for the base of the mountain upon which they stood. Wabi drew his companion behind a big rock, from which both could look down without being seen.

"Be quiet!" he warned. "They're coming to feed on the sprouting poplar along the mountain side. Just been over to the creek to get a drink. We may have some fun!"

He wet a finger in his mouth and held it above his head, the forest pathfinder's infallible method of telling how the wind blows. No matter how slight the movement of the air may be, one side of the finger dries first, in an instant, and is warm, while the side that remains damp is cold, and in the lee, that side toward which the wind is blowing.

"The wind is wrong, dead wrong," said Wabi. "It's blowing straight toward them. Unless we are so high that our scent goes above them they won't come much nearer."