CHAPTER XI
The boys were thunderstruck at the stranger's assertion. They knew ofseveral forest reserves in northern Ontario where timber and game areclosely protected, but they had never heard of one in this district.
"I guess you're wrong," said Horace. "There isn't any Governmentreserve north of Timagami."
"Made last fall," the stranger retorted. "I ought to know. I'm one ofthe rangers. We've got a camp up the river, and we've been here allwinter to keep out hunters and lumbermen."
Horace looked at him closely, but said nothing.
"Prospecting's allowed, isn't it?" Fred blurted out.
"Prospect all ye want to, but ye can't stake no claims."
"Where's the limit of this reserve?" asked Mac.
"Ten miles down the river from here. Ye'll have to be down below thereby to-morrow night. Or, if ye want to stay, ye'll have to give up yourguns. No guns allowed here."
"I suppose you've got papers to show your authority?" Mac inquired.
"'Course I have. They 're back at camp. Oh, ye'll get all ye want.Why," pointing to the fresh hide, "ye killed that there deer out ofseason. Ye've got the law agin ye for that."
"It was for our own food. You can kill deer for necessary supplies."
"Not on this ground. Now ye can do as ye like--give up your guns tillye 're ready to leave, or get out right away. I've warned ye."
The "ranger" got up and glanced round threateningly.
"If you can show us that you're really a Government ranger, we'll go,"Horace said. "But I know the Commissioner of Crown Lands; I saw himbefore we started, and I didn't hear of any new reserve being made. Idon't believe in you or your reserve, and we'll stay where we are tillyou show us the proof of your authority."
"I'll show you _this_!" exclaimed the man fiercely, slapping the barrelof his rifle.
"You can't bluff us. We've got guns, too, if it comes to that!" criedFred.
"I've give ye fair warning," repeated the man. "Ye'll find it mightyhard to buck agin the Gover'ment, and ye'll be sorry if ye try it.Ye'll see me again."
Turning, he stepped into the shadows and was gone. The boys looked atone another.
"What do you make of it?" Peter asked. "Is he a ranger--or aprospector?"
"They don't hire that kind of man for Government rangers," repliedHorace. "And I'm certain there's no forest reserve here. Why, there'sno timber worth preserving. He's a hunter or a prospector, and fromhis looks he's evidently been in the woods all winter, as he said.Perhaps he belongs to a party of prospectors who found a good thinglast fall, and got snowed in before they could get out."
"Hunters wouldn't be so anxious to drive us away," said Fred. "Theymust be prospectors. Suppose they've found the diamond fields!"
They had all thought of that. There was a gloomy silence.
"One thing's certain," said Horace, "we must trail those fellows down,and see what sort of men they are and where they 're camped. We'llscout up the river to-morrow."
They all felt nervous and uneasy that evening. They stayed up late,and when they went to bed they loaded their guns and laid them close athand.
But the night passed without any disturbance, and after breakfast theyset out at once to trail the ranger. They followed the river for aboutfour miles, to a point where the stream broke through the hills in asuccession of cascades and rapids; but although they searched all thelandscape with the field-glass from the top of the hills, they saw nosign of man. Beyond the ridges, however, the river turned sharply intoa wooded valley. They struggled through the undergrowth, found anothercurve in the river, rounded it--and then stepped hastily back intocover.
About two hundred yards upstream stood a log hut on the shore, at thefoot of a steep bluff. A wreath of smoke rose from its chimney, but noone was in sight. Talking in low tones, the boys watched it for sometime. Then they made a detour through the woods, and crept round tothe top of the bluff. Peering cautiously over the edge, they saw thecabin below them, not fifty yards away.
It looked like a trappers' winter camp. It was built of spruce logs,chinked with mud and moss. A deep layer of scattered chips beside theremains of a log pile showed that the place had been used all winter.
Presently a man came out of the door, stretched himself lazily, andcarried a block of wood into the cabin. It was not the man they hadseen, but a slender, dark fellow, dressed in buckskin, who looked likea half-breed. In a moment he came out again, and this time the rangercame with him. There was a third man in the cabin, for they could hearsome one speaking from inside the shack.
For some moments the men stood talking; their voices were quiteaudible, but the boys could not make out what they were saying. Thetwo men examined a pile of steel traps beside the door and a number ofpelts that were drying on frames in the open air.
"These aren't rangers. They're just ordinary trappers," Mac whisperedto Horace.
"They've certainly been trapping. But why do they want to run us outof the country?"
In a few minutes both men went into the cabin, came out with rifles,and started down the river-bank.
"They may be going down to our camp," Horace said, "and we must bethere to meet them. We'd better hurry back."
The boys started at as fast a pace as the rough ground would allow.Owing to dense thickets, swamps, and piled boulders, they could notmake much speed. In about twenty minutes Fred heard a sound of fallingwater in front, and supposed that they were approaching the river. Hewas mistaken. Within a few yards they came upon a tiny lake fed by acreek at one end and closed at the other by a pile of logs and brush.Curious heaps of mud and sticks showed here and there above the water.Horace uttered an exclamation.
"A beaver pond!" he cried. "That explains it all."
In a moment the same thought flashed over Fred and Macgregor. Thekilling of beaver is entirely prohibited in Ontario; but in spite ofthat, a good deal of illicit trapping goes on in the remote districts,and the poachers usually carry their pelts across the line into theProvince of Quebec, where they can sell the fur. Naturally, thetrappers had resented the appearance of the three boys in the vicinityof the beaver pond; the men had no wish to have their illegal trappingdiscovered. It was the first beaver pond the boys had ever met with,and in spite of their hurry they stopped to look at it. They came upontwo or three traps skillfully set under water, and one of themcontained a beaver, sleek and drowned, held under the surface.Apparently the men intended to clean out the pond, for the season wasalready late for fur.
After a few minutes the boys hurried on. They met no one on the way,and they found everything undisturbed in camp; they kept a sharplookout all day, but no one came near them.
On the whole, they felt considerably relieved by the result of theirscouting. The lawbreakers had no right to order them off the ground.For their own part, the boys felt under no obligation to interfere withthe beaver trappers.
"If we meet any of them again, we'll let them know plainly that we knowhow things stand," said Mac. "We'll let them alone if they let usalone, and I don't think there'll be any more trouble."
It rained hard that evening--a warm, steady downpour that lasted almostuntil morning. The tent leaked, and the boys passed a wretched night.But day came pleasant and warm, with a moist, springlike air; theleaves had unfolded in the night. The warmth brought out the flies inincreased numbers. They smeared their skins with a fresh applicationof "fly dope," and with little thought for the fur poachers, startedout again to prospect. All that day and the next they worked hard;they saw nothing of the trappers, and found nothing even remotelyresembling blue clay.
The condition of their footwear had begun to worry them. The roughusage was beginning to tell heavily on their boots, which were alreadyripping, and which had begun to wear through the soles; they wouldhardly hold together for another fortnight. But the boys bound them upand patched them with strips of the deerskin, and kept hard at work.
In the course of the next two
days they thoroughly examined all thecountry within five miles of their present camp. On the evening of thesecond day they finished the last of the oatmeal, and Horace examinedthe remaining supply of Graham flour with anxiety.
"Just about enough to get home on, boys," he said, looking dubiously athis companions.
"But we're not going home!" cried Mac.
"The flour and beans'll be gone in another week, and we're a long wayfrom civilization. Can we live on meat alone, Mac?"
"Pretty sure to come down with dysentery if we do--for any length oftime," admitted the medical student reluctantly.
There was silence round the fire.
"We didn't start this expedition right," said Horace, at last. "Ishould have planned it better. We ought to have come with two or threecanoes and with twice as much grub, and we should have brought severalpairs of boots apiece."
He thrust out his foot; his bare skin showed through the ripped leather.
"Make moccasins," Mac suggested.
"They wouldn't stand the rough traveling for any time."
"What do you think we ought to do, Horace?" asked Fred.
"Well, I hate to retreat as much as any one," said Horace, after apause. "But I know--better than either of you--the risk of losing ourlives if we try to run it too fine on provisions. At the same time Ido think that we oughtn't to give up till we've reached the head ofthis river. It's probably not more than ten or fifteen miles up."
After some discussion they decided that Macgregor and Fred should makethe journey to the head of the river, carrying provisions for threedays; that would give them one day in which to prospect at the source.Meanwhile, Horace was to strike across country to the northwest, to theheadwaters of the Whitefish River, about fifteen miles away.
The next morning, therefore, they carefully cached the canoe, the tent,and the heavy part of the outfit, and started. They were all to beback on the third evening at the latest, whether they found anything ornot.
Fred and Mac made a wide detour to avoid the hut of the trappers. Theyhad a hard day's tramp over the rough country, but reached theirdestination rather sooner than they expected. The river, shrunk to arapid creek, ended in a tiny lake between two hills.
The general surface of the country was the same as that which hadalready grown so monotonously familiar, except that there was rathermore outcrop of bedrock. Nowhere could they see anything that seemedto suggest the presence of blue clay, and although they spent the wholeof the next twenty-four hours in making wide circles round the lake,they found nothing.
The following morning they started back, depressed and miserable. IfHorace's trip should also prove fruitless, the chances of their findingthe diamonds would be slim indeed. The Smoke River made a wide turn tothe west and north, and they concluded that a straight line by compassacross the wilderness would save them several miles of travel, andwould also give them a chance to see some fresh ground. They left theriver, therefore, and struck a bee-line to the southeast. The newground proved as unprofitable as the old, and somewhat rougher. Thejourney had been hard on shoe leather; Fred was limping badly.
Late in the afternoon the boys stopped to rest on the top of a bare,rocky ridge, where the black flies were not so bad as in the valleys.They guessed that they were about four or five miles from camp. Thesun shone level and warm from the west, and the boys sat in silence,tired and discouraged.
"I'm afraid we're not going to make a million this trip, Mac," saidFred, at last.
"No," Peter replied soberly. "Unless Horace has struck something."
"It's too big a country to look over inch by inch. If there really areany diamond-beds--"
"Oh, there must be some. Horace found scattered stones last summer,you know. But of course the beds may be far underground. In SouthAfrica they often have to sink deep shafts to strike them."
Fred did not answer at once. He had taken out the field-glass that hecarried, and was turning it aimlessly this way and that, when Mac spokesuddenly:--
"What's that moving in the ravine--see! About a hundred yards up,below the big cedar on the rock."
"Ground hog, likely," said Fred, turning the glass toward the rockygorge, through which ran a little stream that lay at the base of theridge. "I don't see anything. Oh--yes, now I've got 'em.One--two--three--four little animals. Why, they're playing togetherlike kittens! They look like young foxes, only they're far toodark-colored."
Mac suddenly snatched the glass. But Fred, now that he knew where tolook, could see the moving black specks with his unaided eye. Justbehind them was a dark opening that might be the mouth of a den.
"They are foxes!" said Mac. "It's a family of fox cubs. You're right.And--and--why, man, they're black--every one of them!"
He lowered the glass, almost dropping it in his excitement, and staredat his companion.
"Fred, it's a den of black foxes!"