CHAPTER XXVI THE MYSTERIOUS DELIVERER
Accustomed as they were to the presence of men, the reindeer, not at allfrightened by the shots, held their position in the impregnable circle.The cowardly wolves began to slink away at the first shot. It seemed notime at all until the only sound to be heard was the rattle of antlers asthe deer broke ranks and began to scatter again for feeding.
Some moments before the girls could make their way out of the center ofthe herd the firing ceased.
"Who could it have been?" Patsy asked.
"Don't know," said Marian. "Whoever it was, we must find them and thankthem."
This task she found to be more difficult than she had supposed. There haddoubtless been tracks left by the strange deliverer, but these hadalready been trampled by the deer. Search as they might, they could findno trace of the person who had fired the shots. Mute testimony of hisskill as a marksman, two dead wolves lay on the snow close to the spotwhere the defensive circle had been formed.
"What did you make of that?" Marian asked at last in great bewilderment."Terogloona, where could they have gone?"
"_Canok-ti-ma-na_" (I don't know), Terogloona shook his head soberly.
One of Marian's sleds had been left at the edge of the forest. Uponreturning to this, they experienced another great surprise. Lying acrossthe sled was a rifle, and in a pile beside it were five boxes ofcartridges.
"A rifle!" exclaimed Marian, seizing it and drawing it from his leathersheath. "A beauty! And a new one!"
The two girls sat down on the sled and stared at one another inspeechless silence.
Terogloona and Attatak soon joined them.
"It was the Indian, the one we saved from starving!" exclaimed Patsy atlast, "I just know it was."
Terogloona shook his head. "Old rifle, mebby all right," he mumbled; "newrifle, mebby Indian not give."
The girls, not at all convinced that this conclusion was a correct one,still clung to the belief that their protector had been the Indian.
Since it was impossible to cross the river, it was decided that theyshould make camp at the edge of the forest; that Terogloona, with therifle, was to keep watch over the herd the first part of the night; andMarian, who was a good shot, the latter half.
It was while Marian was packing away the dishes after supper that thepiece of old ivory with the ancient engraving on it, the newest piecewhich they had found in the mountain cave, fell out of her sleeping bag.Without knowing it, she had saved this, the least of their treasures.
"Look!" she said to Terogloona, who sat cross-legged before the fire, "wefound this in a mountain cave. What does it say? Surely you can read it."
For a long time Terogloona studied the crude picture in silence. When atlast he spoke, it was to inform her that the ivory had once belonged tohis great-uncle; that it told of a very successful hunt in which twentycaribou had been driven into a trap and killed with bows and arrows; thatshortly after that they had come upon a white man with a long beard,starving in a cabin beside a stream. They had given the man caribou meat.He had grown strong, then had gone away. As pay for their kindness he hadoffered them heavy yellow pebbles and dust from a moosehide sack. Thisthey had not taken because they did not know what it was good for. Theyhad asked two cups and a knife instead.
As he explained this, the Eskimo showed each picture that told the partof the story narrated.
"It seems very real," said Marian. "How long ago could it have been?"
"Mebby twenty years," said Terogloona.
"The white man was a prospector."
"And the yellow pebbles and dust must have been gold!" exclaimed Patsy."Oh, Marian! If we could find that place we'd be rich. Terogloona, couldyou find the place?"
Again the Eskimo studied the ancient picture-writing.
"_Eh-eh_," he said at last. "Mebby could."
"Oh, Marian! We'll go back," said Patsy, doing a wild dance on hersleeping bag. "We'll go back for gold!"
"For the present," said Marian, quietly, "we have work enough. We mustget our herd to Fort Jarvis. Looks as if that will be a difficult enoughtask."
"But tell me," she turned suddenly to Terogloona, "there were more thanfifty reindeer with old Omnap-puk, were there not?"
"Yes."
"Where did they come from?"
"My master's herd."
"They are the deer we have been missing all winter, the ones we thoughthad been killed?"
"Yes."
"Why, then--" she leaped suddenly to her feet in her excitement, "thenthose people can not have killed our deer at all!"
"No. Not kill."
"Then why did they follow us? Are they following us now? What was it theykilled that night, if not our deer? Oh! it's too perplexing for words."
Terogloona looked at her and smiled a droll smile. "Many strange thingson hill and tundra. Some time mebby know; mebby not. Terogloona must gowatch; you sleep. To-morrow mebby very hard." Taking up the rifle, heleft the tent.
Before creeping into her sleeping bag, Marian stepped out of the tent tocool her heated brow in the crisp night air. Above her the stars gleamedlike tiny camp-fires; beyond her the dark forest loomed. From thedistance she caught the bump and grind of ice crowding the banks of theriver.
Morning came, and with it the problem of crossing the river. They hadbeen traveling by compass. As far as Marian could tell, to go either upor down the river would be to go out of their direct path. Terogloonaadvised going north. Some signs unintelligible to the girls, but clearenough to him, appeared to promise a crossing two or three miles above.
For once the canny instincts of the Eskimo failed. He was no longer inhis own land of barren hills, tundra and sea; perhaps this caused him toerr. One thing was certain, as they traveled northward the hills thatlined the stream grew more rugged and rocky, and the river moreturbulent.
"We won't find a crossing for miles," Marian said, with a tone ofconviction.
Even Terogloona paused to ponder and scratch his head.
It was just at the moment when despair appeared about to take possessionof them that Patsy, chancing to glance away at the hills that loomedabove the opposite banks, suddenly cried:
"Look! A man!"
All looked in the direction she had pointed. The man was standingperfectly still, but his right hand was pointing. Like a woodensignboard, it pointed downstream. Three times the arm dropped. Threetimes it was raised to point again.
"He is an Indian," said Terogloona, stoically. "It is his country. Heknows. We must go back. The crossing lies in that direction."
As the man on the hill saw them turn their herd about and start back, hebegan to travel slowly downstream. All that day, and even into the night,he went before them, showing the way.
"Like the pillar of fire," said Marian, with a little choke in her voice.
There was no doubt in her mind that this benefactor was the Indian theyhad befriended when he was starving. To her lips there came a line shehad long known, "I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat."
Not wishing to camp again at the edge of the forest, they traveledwithout rest or food for eight hours. At last, when they were so hungryand weary that they felt they must drop in their tracks and fall asleep,they came suddenly to a place where the troubled rush of waters ceased;where the river spread out into a broad, quiet, icebound lake.
"Thank God!" Marian murmured reverently as she dropped exhausted upon hersled.
After resting and eating a cold lunch of hardtack, frozen boiled beans,and reindeer steak, they headed the herd across the lake. Having passedthrough the narrow forest that skirted the lake, they came upon a seriesof low-lying, barren hills. Here, in a little gully lined with willowswhose clinging dead leaves rustled incessantly in the breeze, the girlsmade camp.
Before going to sleep, Marian walked out into the night to view her herd.The sky was clear. The golden moon made the night light as day. The herdwas resting peacefully. She wondered vaguely if oth
er human beings mightbe near. Their mysterious guide had left them at the shore of the lake.At no time had he come close enough to be identified. She was wonderingabout him, and as her gaze swept the horizon she saw the red and yellowgleam of a camp-fire.
Her feeling toward that camp-fire had changed. There had been a time whenit filled her with fear. Now, as she gazed steadily at it, it seemed astar of hope, a protecting fire that was perhaps to go with them alltheir long journey through.
"The Indian's camp, I suppose. And yet," she asked herself, "is it? Itmight be the tent of the purple flame, and if it is, do they mean us goodor ill?"
Sleep that night was long and refreshing. They awoke next morning withrenewed courage. Before them lay great sweeping stretches of tundra. Fordays, without a single new adventure, they pushed on toward Fort Jarvis.Sometimes, beside a camp-fire of willows, Marian sat wondering how theywere coming on with their race. Were Scarberry and his herd nearer theFort than they? There was no way to tell. Traveling the trackless Arcticwilderness is like sailing the boundless sea. As a thousand ships mightpass you by night or day, so a thousand herds, taking other courses,might pass this one on its way to Fort Jarvis and no owner know of theothers passing.
Sometimes, too, she thought of those mysterious camp followers--thepeople of the purple flame. She no longer feared them; was curious aboutthem, that was all. No longer did she catch the gleam of their light bynight. Had they turned aside, gone back, or had they merely extinguishedtheir unusual light?
The Indians, she thought, must have been left behind. They would nottravel far from their hunting ground. They had been served, and hadserved in turn. Now they might safely be forgotten.
Then there came a time that called for all the courage and endurancetheir natures could command. One night they found themselves camped amongthe foothills of a range of mountains. The mountains, a row ofalternating triangles of deep purple and light yellow, lay away to theeast and at their peaks the snow, tossed high in air by the incessantgales that blew there, made each peak seem a smoking volcano.
"To-morrow," said Terogloona, throwing out his hand in a sweepinggesture, "we must cross."
"Is there no other way?" asked Patsy.
"Must do!" said Terogloona as he turned to the task of putting all inreadiness.
Two o'clock in the afternoon of the following day found them engaged in aterrific battle with the blizzard that ever raged up the mountain passwhich they must cross.
"'Try not the pass, The old man said, The storm is lowering overhead,'"
Patsy chanted bravely as, with snow encrusted head and with cheeks thatmust be rubbed incessantly to prevent them from freezing, she struggledforward.
A moment later, as a fiercer shock seemed about to lift her from her feetand hurl her down the mountain side, Marian heard her fairly shriek intothe teeth of the gale:
"Excelsior! Excelsior!"
Many hard battles had Marian fought out on the tundra, but nothing hadever equalled this. The snow, seeming never to stop, shot past them, orin a wild whirling eddy dashed into their faces. The wind tore at them.Now it came in rude gusts, and now poured down some narrow pass with allthe force of the waterfall. Only by bending low and leaping into it couldthey make progress.
The herd plunged stumblingly forward in a broad line. The dogs,incessantly at their heels, urged them forward. Terogloona, and even thebrave Attatak, did all in their power to keep the herd moving.
"If they stop; oh, if they do!" panted Marian. "If they refuse to go onwe are lost! If only we reach the summit I am sure we will be safe. Itmust be calm on the other side."
Now Gold, the master collie, completely exhausted and blinded by thesnow, came slinking back to his mistress. Marian rubbed the snow from theeyes of the faithful dog and, patting his side, bade him go back into thefight. Tears came to her eyes as the dog bravely returned to his task.
The time came at last when all three dogs seemed done in; when the deerall but stopped; when it seemed impossible that they might be kept movinganother five minutes. Then it was that the indomitable Marian sank downupon her sled in the depths of despair.
"Look! Look!" cried Patsy, who had turned about to rub the frost from hercheeks. "Wolves! A whole pack of them!"
Marian wheeled about for one look; then, digging into her pack, drewforth her rifle.
"We'll die fighting!" she murmured as she took steady aim at the foremostmember of the pack that came tearing up the trail.
She was about to press the trigger when Patsy gave her arm a sudden pull.
"Wait!" she cried. "Wait! Those are not wolves. They're dogs; great big,wonderful dogs!"