Part 7 (1/2)
”Naw, I ain't hurt but can't you pick out no smoother trail? I'm all jiggled up!” In his relief at finding the man unharmed, Connie laughingly promised a smoother trail, and as he and the Indian pried him from between the rocks with a young tree, the boy noted that the frozen moose hide had scarcely been dented by its contact with the trees and rocks.
In the cabin the stove was crammed with wood and the man laid upon the floor close beside it, but it was nearly daylight the following morning before the hide had thawed sufficiently for the combined efforts of Connie and the Indian to unroll it. All night the two tended the fire and listened to the petty bickering and quarrelling of the two helpless partners, the man in the bunk taunting the other with being a fool for wrapping up in a green moose hide, and being in turn called a fool for chopping his own foot. It was disgusting in the extreme to Connie but at last the humour of the situation got the better of his disgust, and he roared with laughter, all of which served to bring down the combined reviling of both men upon his head.
When at last the man was extricated from his prison and found to be little the worse for his adventure, he uttered no word of thanks to his rescuers. Indeed, his first words were in the nature of an indirect accusation of theft.
”Whur's my marten?” he asked, eying them with suspicion.
”What marten? We didn't see any marten,” answered the boy.
”Well, I hed one. Tuk it out of a trap just before I seen the moose.
It's funny you didn't see it.” Connie answered nothing, and as the man devoured a huge breakfast without asking his rescuers to join him, he continued to mutter and growl about his lost marten. Daylight was breaking and Connie, bottling his wrath behind tight-pressed lips, rose abruptly, and prepared to depart.
”Whur you goin'?” asked the man, his cheeks distended with food. ”You lay around here soakin' up heat all night; looks like you could anyways cut a little wood an' help worsh these dishes! An', say, don't you want to buy some moose meat? I'll sell you all you want fer two-bits a pound, an' cut it yerself.”
For a moment Connie saw red. His fists clenched and he swallowed hard but once more his sense of humour a.s.serted itself, and looking the man squarely in the eye he burst into a roar of laughter, while 'Merican Joe, who possessed neither Connie's self-restraint nor his sense of humour, launched into an unflattering tirade of jumbled Indian, English, and jargon, that, could a single word of it have been understood, would have goaded even the craven _chechakos_ to warfare.
Two hours later, as they sat in their cozy tent, pitched five miles down the river, and devoured their breakfast, Connie grinned at his companion.
”Big difference in men--even in _chechakos_, ain't there, Joe?”
”Humph,” grunted the Indian.
”No one else within two hundred miles of here--his partner crippled so he never could have found him if he tried, and he never would have tried--a few more hours and he would have been dead--we come along and find him--and he not only don't offer us a meal, but accuses us of stealing his marten--and offers to _sell_ us moose meat--at two-bits a pound! I wish some of the men I know could have the handling of those birds for about a month!”
”Humph! If mos' w'ite men I know got to han'le um dey ain' goin' live no mont'--you bet!”
”Anyway,” laughed the boy, ”we've sure learned the difference between _nerve_ and _bra.s.s_!”
CHAPTER V
THE PLAGUE FLAG IN THE SKY
It was nearly noon of the day following the departure of Connie Morgan and 'Merican Joe from the camp of the two _chechakos_.
The mountains had been left behind, and even the foothills had flattened to low, rolling ridges which protruded irregularly into snow-covered marshes among which the bed of the frozen river looped interminably. No breath of air stirred the scrub willows along the bank, upon whose naked branches a few dried and shrivelled leaves still clung.
'Merican Joe was travelling ahead breaking trail for his dogs and the boy saw him raise a mittened hand and brush at his cheek. A few minutes later the Indian thrashed his arms several times across his chest as though to restore circulation of the blood against extreme cold. But it was not cold. A moment later the boy brushed at his own cheek which stung disagreeably as though nipped by the frost. He glanced at the tiny thermometer that he kept lashed to the front of his toboggan. It registered zero, a temperature that should have rendered trailing even without the heavy parkas uncomfortably warm. Connie glanced backward toward the distant mountains that should have stood out clean-cut and distinct in the clear atmosphere, but they had disappeared from view although the sun shone dazzlingly bright from a cloudless sky. A dog whimpered uneasily, and Connie cracked his whip above the animal's head and noted that instead of the sharp snap that should have accompanied the motion, the sound reached his ears in a dull pop--noted, too, that the dogs paid no slightest heed to the sound, but plodded on methodically--slowly, as though they were tired. Connie was conscious of a growing la.s.situde--a strange heaviness that hardly amounted to weariness but which necessitated a distinct effort of brain to complete each muscle move.
Suddenly 'Merican Joe halted and, removing his mitten, drew his bare hand across his eyes. Connie noticed that the air seemed heavy and dead, and that he could hear his own breathing and the breathing of the dogs which had crouched with their bellies in the snow whimpering uneasily.
Wild-eyed, the Indian pointed aloft and Connie glanced upward. There was no hint of blue in the cloudless sky. The whole dome of the heavens glared with a garish, bra.s.sy sheen from which the sun blazed out with an unwholesome, metallic light that gleamed in glints of gold from millions of floating frost spicules. Even as the two stood gazing upward new suns formed in the burnished sky--false suns that blazed and danced and leaped together and re-formed.
With a cry of abject terror 'Merican Joe buried his face in his arms and stood trembling and moaning, ”_Hyas skook.u.m kultus tamahnawus--mesahchee tamahnawus!_” (a very strong bad spirit--we are bewitched). The words puled haltingly from lips stiff with fright. The next moment the boy was beside him, thumping him on the back and choking him roughly:
”_Tamahnawus_ nothing!” he cried. ”Buck up! Don't be a fool! I've seen it before. Three years ago--in the Lillimuit, it was. It's the white death. Waseche and I hid in an ice cave. Tonight will come the strong cold.”
The boy's voice sounded strangely toneless and flat, and when he finished speaking he coughed. 'Merican Joe's hands had dropped to his side and he stood dumbly watching as Connie loosened the heavy woollen m.u.f.fler from his waist and wound it about the lower half of his face.
”Cover your mouth and don't talk,” the boy commanded. ”Breathe through your m.u.f.fler. We can still travel, but it will be hard. We will be very tired but we must find shelter--a cave--a cabin--a patch of timber--or tonight we will freeze--Look! Look!” he cried suddenly, pointing to the northward, ”a mirage!”
Both stared awe-struck as the picture formed rapidly before their eyes and hung inverted in the bra.s.sy sky just above the horizon foreshortened by the sweep of a low, snow-buried ridge. Both had seen mirages before--mirages that, like a faulty gla.s.s, distorted shapes and outlines, and mirages that brought real and recognizable places into view like the one they were staring at in spell-bound fascination. So perfect in detail, and so close it hung in the heavy, dead air that it seemed as though they could reach out and touch it--a perfect inverted picture of what appeared to be a two or three mile sweep of valley, one side spa.r.s.ely wooded, and the other sloping gently upward into the same low-rolling ridge that formed their own northern horizon. Each stunted tree showed distinctly, and in the edge of the timber stood a cabin, with the smoke rising sluggishly from the chimney. They could see the pile of split firewood at its corner and even the waterhole chopped in the ice of the creek, with its path leading to the door. But it was not the waterhole, or the firewood, or the cabin itself that held them fascinated. It was the little square of scarlet cloth that hung limp and motionless and dejected from a stick thrust beneath the eave of the tiny cabin. It was a horrible thing to look upon for those two who knew its significance--that flag glowing like a splotch of blood there in the brazen sky with the false suns dancing above it.