CHAPTER XIV
Here where deer were plentiful and hunters scarce, Mac's jack lightshould prove effective. Sportsmen and the law have quite properlyunited in condemning killing deer by jack light; but the boys felt thattheir need of food justified their course.
After adjusting the torch, Mac cut a birch sapling about eight feetlong, and trimmed off the twigs. Bending it into a semicircle, hefitted the curve into the bottom of the canoe, close to the bow; thenhe hung the blanket by its corners upon the projecting tips of thesapling, and thus screened the bow from the rest of the canoe.
As it had already become dark, and the shores were now black with theindistinct shadows of the spruces, Fred and Horace set the canoe gentlyinto the water. When it was afloat, Mac lighted the pine splinters,which crackled and flared up like a torch.
"You'd make a better game poacher than I, Horace," he said. "You takethe rifle, and I'll paddle."
Horace accordingly placed himself just behind the blanket screen, withthe weapon on his knees. Mac sat in the stern, and Fred, who did notwant to be left behind, seated himself amidships.
"Keep a sharp lookout, both of you," Mac said. "Watch for the light ontheir eyes, like two balls of fire."
The canoe, keeping about thirty yards from shore, glided silently downthe long lake. The "fat" pine flamed smoky and red, and it cast long,wavering reflections on the water. Once an animal, probably a muskrat,startled them by diving noisily. A duck, sleeping on the water, rosewith a frantic splutter and flurry of wings. Then, fifty yardsfarther, there was a sudden splash near the shore, then a crashing inthe bushes, and a dying thump-thump in the distance.
Horace swung his rifle round, but he was too late. The deer had notstopped to stare at the light for an instant. A jack light ought tohave a reflector, but the boys had no means of contriving one.
Unspeakably disappointed, they moved slowly on again. They started nomore game, and at last reached the lower end of the lake. Here Macstopped to renew the torch, which had almost burned out.
Then they turned up the other side of the lake, on the home stretch.No living thing except themselves seemed to be on the water that night.The shore shoaled far out. Once the keel scraped over a bottom of softmud. Lilies grew along the shore, and sometimes extended out so farthat the canoe brushed the half-grown pads.
Suddenly Fred felt the canoe swerve slightly, and head toward the land.Horace raised the rifle. Fred had seen nothing, but after straininghis eyes ahead, he made out two faint spots of light in the darkness,at about the height of a man's head. Could it be a deer? The balls oflight remained perfectly motionless.
Without a splash the canoe glided closer. Fred thought that he couldmake out the outline of the animal's head, and clenched his hands inanxiety. Why did not Horace shoot?
Suddenly a blinding flash blazed out from the rifle, and the reportcrashed across the water. There was a splash, followed immediately bya noise of violent thrashing in the water near the land.
Fred and Mac shouted together. With great paddle strokes, Mac drovethe canoe forward, and at last Horace leaped out. The others followedhim. The deer was down, struggling in the water. It was dead beforethey reached it. Horace's bullet had broken its neck.
"Hurrah!" Fred cried. "This makes us safe. This'll last us all theway home."
It was a fine young buck--so heavy that they had hard work to lift itinto the canoe. Far up the lake they could see their camp-fire, andthey paddled toward it with the haste of half-starved men.
Without stopping to cut up the animal, they skinned one haunch and cutoff slices, which they set to broil over the coals. A delicious odorrose; the boys did not even wait until the meat had cooked thoroughly.They had no salt, but the venison, unseasoned as it was, seemeddelicious.
The food gave them all more cheerfulness and energy. The prospect of ahard ten days' journey did not look so bad now. At any rate, theywould not starve.
"I wonder if the foxes would eat it. They ought to have something,"said Fred, and he dropped some scraps of the raw venison into the cage.
As he stooped to peer more closely at the animals, he made a startlingdiscovery. During their absence on the hunt, the mother fox had beengnawing vigorously at the willow cage, particularly at the rawhidelashings that bound the framework together. She had loosened onecorner, and if she had been left alone for another hour, she might haveescaped with her cubs. It gave the boys a bad fright. Mac refastenedthe lashings with strips of deer-hide, and strengthened the cage withmore willow withes. But the boys realized that in the future one ofthem would have to stand guard over the cage at night.
The foxes refused to touch the raw meat.
"I didn't expect them to eat for the first day or two," said Horace."Don't worry. They'll eat in time, when they get really hungry."
"Let's get this buck cut up," said Mac. "It'll soon be moonrise, andwe must be moving."
In order to get more light for their work, they piled pitch pine on thefire; then they hung the deer on a tree, and began the disagreeabletask of skinning and dressing the animal. When they had finished, theyhad a good deerskin and nearly two hundred pounds of fresh meat.
They would gladly have slept now, but the sky was brightening in theeast with the rising moon, and there was no time for rest. No doubtthe trappers were on their trail, somewhere behind them. Hastily theboys loaded the foxes and the venison into the canoe, and as soon asthe moon showed above the trees paddled down the lake. They soon foundthat the moonlight was not bright enough to enable them to run rapidssafely, and they consequently had to make frequent carries. Betweenthe rapids they shot swiftly down the current, but the river was sobroken that they made no great progress that night.
Northern summer nights are short, and soon after two o'clock the skybegan to lighten. By three o'clock the boys could see well, and theywent on faster, shooting all except the worst stretches of rough water.Shortly after six o'clock they came out from the Smoke River into theMissanabie.
"Stop for breakfast?" asked Mac.
"Not here," said Horace. "We must be careful not to mark our trail,especially at this point. They won't know for sure whether we turnedup the Missanabie or down, and they may make a mistake and lose a lotof time. A canoe doesn't leave any track, and we mustn't land until wehave to."
Now the hard work of "bucking the river" began again. The Missanabiehad lowered somewhat since the boys had come down it, but it still ranso strong that they could not make much progress by paddling. Theircanoe poles were far back on the Smoke River, and they did not dare toland in order to cut others, for in doing so they would mark theirtrail.
Straining hard at every stroke, they dug their paddles into the water;but they made slow work of it. The least carelessness on their partwould cause them to lose in one minute as much as they had gained inten.
A stretch of slacker water gave them some respite; but then came along, tumbling, rock-strewn rapid.
"We'll have to portage here," said Mac.
"It'll be a long carry," Horace said. "We'd lose a good deal of timeover it. I think we can track her up."
Mac and Horace carried the cage of foxes along the shore to the head ofthe broken water, and Fred carried up the guns. Returning to the footof the rapid, they prepared to haul the canoe against the stream.Luckily the tracking-line had always been kept in the canoe. Horacetied it to the ring in the bow, took the end of the rope and, bracinghimself firmly, waded into the water; Macgregor and Fred, on eitherside, held the craft steady.
The bed of the river was very irregular. Sometimes the water was nomore than knee-deep; sometimes it reached their hips. The water wasicy cold, and the rush and roar of the current were bewildering. OnceMac lost his footing, but he clung to the canoe and recovered himself.Then, when halfway up the rapid, Horace stepped on an unsteady stoneand plunged down, face forward, into the roaring water.
As the towline slackened, the canoe swung round with a jerk againstMacgregor, and
upset him. Fred tried to hold it upright, but theunstable craft went over like a shot.
Out went the venison and everything else that was in her. Fred made adesperate clutch at the stern of the canoe, caught it and held on. Asthe canoe shot down the rapid, he trailed out like a streamer behindit. He heard a faint, smothered yell:--
"The venison! Save the meat!"
Almost before he knew it, Fred, half choked, still clinging to thecanoe, drifted into the tail of the rapid. He found bottom there, forthe water was not deep, and managed to right the canoe. By that timeMacgregor had got to his feet, and was coming down the shore to helpFred. They were both dripping and chilled; but they got into thecanoe, and poling with two sticks, set out to rescue what they could.
They must, above everything else, recover the venison, but they couldsee no sign of it. Some distance down the stream they found bothpaddles afloat, and they worked the canoe up and down below the rapid.On a jutting rock they found the deerskin. Finally they came upon oneof the hindquarters floating sluggishly almost under water. Theyrescued it joyfully; but although they searched for a long time, theyfound no more of the meat.
They had left the axe in the canoe, and it was now somewhere at thebottom of the river. They could better have spared one of the guns,but they were thankful that their loss had been no greater.
"If we had left the foxes in the canoe," said Fred, "they'd have beendrowned, sure!"
Horace had waded ashore, and now had a brisk fire going. Fred andMacgregor joined him, and the three boys stood shivering by the blaze,with their wet clothes steaming.
"We're well out of it," said Horace, with chattering teeth. "The worstis the loss of the axe. It won't be easy to make fires from now on."
Once more the problem of supplies loomed dark before the boys. Theyhad nothing now except the haunch of venison, which weighed perhapstwenty-five pounds; unless they could pick up more game, that wouldhave to last them until they reached civilization. However, they werefairly confident that they could find game soon, and meanwhile theycould put themselves on rations.
"We've marked our trail all right now," said Mac. "These tracks andthis fire will give it away. We may as well portage, after all."
Their clothing was far from dry, but they were afraid to delay longer.None of them felt like trying to wade up the rapid again, and so theycarried the canoe round it. At the head of the portage they cutseveral strong poles to use in places where they could not paddle.
They soon found that without the poles they could hardly have made anyprogress at all; and even with them they moved very slowly. About noonthey landed, broiled and ate a small piece of venison, and after abrief rest set out on their journey again.
By five o'clock they were all dead tired, wet, and chilled, and Mac andFred were ready to stop. Horace, however, urged them to push on. Hefelt that perhaps the beaver trappers were not many miles behind.After another day or two, he said, they could take things more easily,but now they ought to hurry on at top speed.
Just before they were ready to land in order to make camp, three duckssplashed from the water just in front of the canoe. Fred managed todrop one of them with each barrel of the shot gun. Thus the boys gottheir supper without having to draw on their supply of venison; but theroasted ducks proved almost as tough as rawhide and, without salt,extremely unpalatable. But they were all so hungry that they devouredthe birds almost completely; they put the heads into the willow cage,but the foxes would not touch them.
For three hours more they pushed on up the river, tired, silent, butdetermined. At last it began to grow dark. The boys had reached thelimit of their endurance, for they had had no sleep the night before.They landed and built a fire. It was hard work to get enough woodwithout the axe, but fortunately the night was not cold.
Exhausted as the boys were, they knew that one of them would have tostand watch to see that the foxes did not gnaw their way out of thecage, and that the trappers did not attack the camp. They drew lotsfor it; Macgregor selected the short straw and Fred the long one, andthey arranged that Mac should take the watch for two hours, thenHorace, and lastly Fred.
The mosquitoes were bad, and there were no blankets, but Fred seemed togo to sleep the moment he lay down on the earth. He did not hearHorace and Mac change guard at midnight, and it seemed to him that hehad scarcely done more than close his eyes when some one shook him bythe arm.
"Wake up! It's your turn to watch!" Horace was saying.
Half dead with sleep, Fred staggered to his feet. Moonlight lay on theforest and river.
"Take the rifle," said Horace. "There's not been a sign of anythingstirring, but keep a sharp eye on the foxes."
Horace lay down beside Mac and seemed to fall asleep at once. Fredwould have given black foxes and diamonds together to do likewise, buthe walked up and down until he felt less drowsy. The foxes were nottrying to get out, and he saw that they had gnawed the duck heads downto the bills.
He sat down against a tree, close to the cage, with the loaded repeateracross his knees. For some time the mosquitoes, as well as theresponsibility of his position, kept him awake.
Every sound in the forest startled him; through the dash of the riverhe imagined that he heard the sound of paddles. But by degrees he grewindifferent to the mosquitoes, and his strained attention flagged.Drowsiness crept upon him again; he was very tired. He found himselfnodding, and roused himself with a shock of horror. He thought that hewould go down to the river and dip his head into the water. He dozedwhile he was thinking of it--dozed and awoke, and dozed again.
Then after what seemed a moment's interval he was awakened by a harshvoice shouting:--
"Hands up! Wake up, and surrender!"