CHAPTER XXVII.
THE TROOPER’S STORY.
“However, I put the best face I could on the matter and even tried totalk cheerfully to Nevins. But he would have none of my conversationand zig-zagged along on his snow shoes with his queer, swinging gait inthe same silent way. It began to grow dusk, and I saw that we shouldnever make the lake that night. I halted Nevins and told him so.
“He gave an odd kind of laugh.
“‘Not make it? Man alive. I’m going to make it’ he grated out in anodd, rasping sort of a voice.
“‘Don’t talk like a fool,’ said I. ‘Come, here’s a place under thisledge that’ll make a good camp, and bright and early we’ll hit thetrail again.’
“He whipped round on me with blazing eyes. If ever a demon shone outof a man’s optics it blazed out of his.
“‘I’m going on, I tell you,’ he snarled, ‘and what’s more, you’re goingwith me.’
“I’ve been in some pretty tight places, but take my word for it, rightthen I began to think that I hadn’t begun to know what a tight cornerwas. I could see by the way that poor crazy Nevins gripped his riflethat he meant to have company on his night ‘mush,’ even if he had toshoot him to get it. I felt as if somebody had dropped a chunk of icedown my back.
“‘All right, Nevins,’ I said, ‘I’ll go along. Don’t get excited.’
“‘I’m not excited,’ he said. And then he added, ‘It’s only that they’llget us if we don’t keep on going.’
“‘Who’s them?’ I inquired.
“‘Those things that have been following us,’ he whispered.
“Then he came quite close to me and caught my arm.
“‘They live back there up in the snow, and they’re trying to get me andtake me back with them, but they won’t.’ He broke into a wild laughthat made my scalp tighten till I could almost feel my hat lift on myhair.
“‘Don’t talk nonsense, Nevins,’ I snapped. ‘We’re far ahead of them.They’ll never catch us now.’
“He looked sharply at me.
“‘You’re more of a fool than I thought you,’ he said contemptuously.‘They’ve been following us all day. They’re close behind us now!’
“I confess that his manner was such that I jumped nervously and lookedbehind me as he spoke. Of course there was nothing there but the trail,and I told him so, but a contemptuous laugh was all that I got.
“Well, in the course of my career as a trooper I’ve handled somepretty bad characters and been into some tight places and faced somesituations where things looked mighty bad, but I never felt sucha feeling of real scare as I had at that moment. Having made thisoutburst, Nevins started off again. After a while, when it began toget dark, I determined to make a last try to check his crazy plan. Istopped dead.
“‘Here’s where I stop, Nevins,’ I said. ‘I’m dead beat.’
“He faced round like a wild man, and before I could lift a hand he hadhis rifle raised, and with the yell of a maniac he fired blindly in mydirection. I felt the bullet fan my ear.
“‘What on earth are you trying to do, Nevins?’ I asked in as firm avoice as I could assume, but I’m afraid it was as wobbly as a dish ofjelly. ‘Are you crazy?’
“‘Crazy!’ he echoed with a wild laugh. ‘It’s you that are crazy. Comeon, follow me. I’ll save you from those creatures that are after us.’
“There was nothing to do but to obey. Up I got and started on againafter Nevins, who went staggering along, edging from side to side ofthe trail like a dizzy man. I found myself wondering how it was allgoing to end. I’m pretty tough and hard to tire, but I felt almost allin, and Nevins, not nearly so strong as I was, must have been goingsolely on the unnatural strength lent him by his insanity.
“By and by it got dark, but Nevins kept on. He kept shouting backat me, and I’d answer him from time to time. I couldn’t let him goon alone, although I was almost dead. After a while his shouts grewless frequent and finally they died out altogether. I guessed whathad probably happened. I thought that by and by if I kept on I wouldstumble over his body lying in the snow.
“For a long time I walked slowly, every minute expecting to come uponhim, but he was nowhere on the trail. I don’t like to recall that nightnor the next day when I went on staggering down the trail till I beganto get crazy, too, and hear odd things and voices.
“If it hadn’t been that a party from the station out hunting found me Idon’t like to think of what might have happened. I soon came round andtold all I could about Nevins. A search party started out at once, butreturned the next day empty-handed. They had found and then lost tracksof many snow shoes in the woods near the trail. We always suspectedthat Nevins had wandered off the trail when I missed him, been founddead by Blood Indians, robbed and buried in a drift.... And that, boys,is one incident in the life of a trooper of the Mounted.”
“It’s a ghastly story,” shuddered Ralph, while the others looked graveand sober.
“Chum around with a bunch of troopers some time and you’ll hearstranger yarns than that,” said Trooper Carthew. “And,” he addedthoughtfully, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, “the worst of it is,they are all true. There’s no need to do any fancy color work on ’em.”
Not long after, the trooper rose with the remark that he must “mushalong.” The party intended moving on, too, so they rode with him tilltheir trails parted. The last they saw of Trooper Carthew was his broadback as his horse surmounted a brow of the trail and disappeared. Heturned in his saddle and waved, and then was gone.
It was a new experience to the boys and it was long before they forgothis story, but such men are met with frequently in the wild places.Real heroes, worthy of world recognition, die fighting a good fight,without hope of reward or praise beyond that bestowed by their mates.