Fur Pirates/Chapter 17

" as well pull in here and camp," said Ballou, resting on his paddle. "I guess we'll have to portage them rapids. If it was high water and the canoes was light, and a dump didn't matter much, I'd run 'em. The way it is I guess it would be risky."

"It'd be taking a chance," Toft agreed. "There's one or two bad dips, and the way the water is now like as not we'd hit."

Below us sounded the sullen grumble of fast water. The river there ran between steep rocks, so that there was no foothold for lining down. On our way in we had been forced to portage half a mile or more over a poor trail. Ballou had hoped to run the rapid coming back, but the water had lowered dangerously.

Deferring to this experienced advice, we went ashore and made camp. Though it was earlier than usual, none of us felt like tackling the packing job on the heel of a day's hard paddling; nor did most of us look forward to the carry on the morrow with much pleasure, though of course it was all in the day's work. My experience has been that nine white men out of ten absolutely hate packing. Indians, of course, are different. But then nobody but themselves knows what they really think about it.

But Louis seemed to rather enjoy the prospect.

"You t'ink mebbe de ol' pea soup he ain't so good lak he used to be," he said, with a grin. "Ba gosh, I show you! I bet any man five dollaire I pack five hundred on dat portage if I get heem on my back."

"I'll bet any man I don't," said Dinny. "’Bout two hundred' is my limit, and I'd rather pack one."

"I bet ten dollaire!" Louis declared encouragingly.

"Bet with yourself and win," Dinny told him. "I seen a man pack eight hundred once. Me, I hate packin'. It's a Siwash's job. I wisht we was at the foot of that portage."

Louis grinned widely.

"You mak' lot of fuss 'bout not'ing," said he. "You ain't want to holler before somet'ing hurt you. Mebbe you ain't have to pack so moch lak you"

"Shut up, Louis!" rasped Ballou sharply.

"Well, I'll jus' tol' him not for worry," said the big Frenchman. "If I'm young man lak heem"

"That'll be all," Ballou ordered. "You're too blame fond of pickin' at people. It's made trouble for you before now."

Louis said no more, but he kept his grin, and chuckled to himself as if he had some private joke.

This was the first jarring note that had been struck in the five days that had elapsed since we left the lakes. Louis had been consistently cheerful and obliging, quite his old self. The way he handled his cooking job was enough to make him popular. He could rustle a meal quicker than any camp cook I ever saw, no small consideration when you land tired and wolfish at night. He was an artist with a fire. At his will it seemed to burn brightly or produce beds of coals; while for others it would merely smoke and blacken. Ballou was the same as ever; capable, quiet, considerate, doing more than his share of the work. He and Mr. Fothergill were on the best of terms again, and the latter was planning a shoot in the late fall, on which Ballou and Louis should accompany him.

Now when we had eaten there was still an hour's light, and it occurred to me that I might occupy that time more profitably than by loafing in camp. Not that I wanted to do any packing, but we were low on meat, and I thought I might get a deer. Accordingly I picked up my rifle, and sauntered away as casually as I could, for I never liked company when hunting.

Once clear of the camp, I struck back and to the north, away from the portage. But when I had gone half a mile, to my disgust, the light wind which had been in my face switched to the south. There was no use hunting down wind, and so I turned around and angled off southward. This course finally brought me past the camp and opposite the fast water of the long rapid, at which no deer could drink because of the steepness of the banks. Therefore I put my best foot foremost to get below the portage while the light lasted.

I turned toward the river, and slipped along noiselessly, and at last I came upon what looked like a well-used runway, winding in and out, but trending in the direction of water. I followed it until I came close to the river below the rapid and the portage, where the banks were flat and the water swirled in pools, and there I established myself in a jumble of rocks at the edge of a spruce thicket.

As the light began to fail, away up the game trail something moved, a shadow among shadows. Gradually it seemed to detach itself, and I made out the shape of a young buck. But he seemed suspicious. Instead of coming forward boldly to drink, he halted, took a few steps, and halted again, this time half hidden from view. With that, and with the poor light, accurate work was impossible, and so I waited for a better chance. But he remained indistinct against a shadowy background. Possibly he had winded me, or perhaps my footsteps beside his accustomed trail had given some warning to his sensitive nostrils.

Suddenly I caught the white of his lifted flag, and then the bounding thump of his sharp hoofs. Whatever he had found to verify his suspicions, he was gone. Disgusted, I rose from my shelter, my hope of fresh meat vanishing. And then I ducked back into cover again, for from downstream I saw the figure of a man coming toward me. Just why I cached myself so promptly I do not know. I suppose I merely obeyed some primal, furtive instinct common to boys, savages, and wild animals. But as the man came nearer I recognized him. It was Hayes!

I drew a long breath of amazement and lay very still. What on earth was Hayes, whom we had supposed a hundred miles or so to the north, doing there? All my suspicions, which had been laid, sprang to life. I determined to follow him and see what he was up to.

But, opposite me, he halted, and, after scanning the foot of the portage for a moment, came over and sat down on a rock not twenty feet from my place of concealment. I heard him grunt and curse as some twinge caught his old body, and in a moment the smoke of his tobacco drifted across my nostrils. Very cautiously I raised myself and took a peep at him through the concealment of bushes. He sat smoking, facing upstream in an attitude of attention, as if expecting something or somebody. But whom?

For five minutes nothing happened. Then he whistled, and from the distance it was returned. A second figure came out of the dusk, a man, tall and bearded—Ballou! As I recognized him I sank low and almost held my breath.

"I begun to think you was hung up somewhere," said Hayes. "I looked for you last night."

"Too much pilgrim," Ballou returned. "Heavy loads and late starts. Dunleath won't leave the furs in the canoes nights. It's a case of load every mornin'. There ain't a chance to get 'em the way I thought."

Hayes swore. "So that she comes to a show-down at last, does she?"

"That's about the size of it," Ballou agreed.

"And that's what I told you from the start," said Hayes. "I told you these foxy plays was no good. They never won for me yet. My tumtum was to take 'em right to Ahtikamag, and as soon as we found the cache hold 'em up and leave 'em with about one gun and some grub. They'd have got out all right. There wouldn't have been no trouble—just two pilgrims and the kid. Instid of that you go fixin' it foxy, and what happens? Why, they meet up with two old-timers, that's both bad med'cine if I know anything—specially that Toft, I ain't sure I ain't seen him some place—and we have the bad luck to run into old Siwash George, and he's wise in a minute when he sees us pirootin' round that country, and he rings himself in and his partner, too. That's two more to split with. Then they kapswaller them canoes, and you make a fool dicker to git 'em back, and you say leave it to you, and we'll git the furs without no rough stuff, and without hurtin' nobody. You make me tired, Tom. The way to work a holdup is with a gun. That's clean and simple, and you git what you start out to git."

"That's all right," Ballou returned. "I thought we could get them furs without no one but ourselves knowin' it. That was worth try in' for, wasn't it? The country ain't like it used to be, when, if you killed a man, all you had to watch out for was his friends. If we could have got away with it we could have lived the way we been livin' and nobody the wiser. I've had a price on my scalp before now, and so have you, and it ain't pleasant. Well, I've done my best to get the furs without trouble, and it don't seem to work. I guess we'll just have to take 'em."

"Sure!" Hayes returned grimly. "When?"

"To-night," Ballou replied. "The farther we go the shorter start we get, and to market them furs the way we want to we'll need all our time."

"Now you're whistlin'!" Hayes grunted. "How will we do it?"

"Jump 'em in their blankets," Ballou answered. "Toft's the only one that don't sleep like a winterin' bear. He's about as wide awake as a weasel, but I'll look after him. Louis will handle the redhead—he's achin' to do it. Dunleath's the only other one that's any use, and McGregor can fix him. Make it for about one o'clock in the mornin'. I'll be listenin' for you."

"Good enough," Hayes agreed. "I'd ruther do it with a gun, like I'm used to, but mebbe this is better. Only no durn nonsense about this, Tom. Them furs are ours. We've earned 'em. When I think of the days when we was with old Nitche McNab—me and you and Louis—and how we mushed and starved and froze, and then was et alive by flies and hunted like wolves for the bounty on our scalps, you bet no man's goin' to stand between me and them skins. I'm playin' this with no limit. I don't want to hurt nobody, no more than you do, but by"

His speech trailed off into crackling blasphemy. I listened with a very queer feeling in my stomach. Now, for the first time, a number of things were made plain. Hayes and Ballou and Louis had been Nitche McNab's men, members of that band of raiders who had harried the great company before I was born. It was due to Ballou's prudence merely, and not to his scruples, that we had not been robbed of the furs long ago. Now he had discarded both scruples and prudence. We were to be overpowered in our sleep, set afoot in the wilderness. All my plans for my future and for Peggy's future were to be knocked in the head.

I crouched among the rocks, quivering with impotent rage. I felt a wild, savage desire to shoot them both as they sat. I rose to peer out at them, and, as I did so, my arm dislodged a loose stone, which fell and, striking another, set up a most infernal clatter. I heard a deep oath from Ballou.

"Something in them rocks!" snarled Ballou. "If it's somebody"

But I waited to hear no more, for I knew about what would happen if I were caught. Bent double, I dodged around a big, upstanding bowlder, and made a leap across an open space for another at the edge of the spruce. But in the opening I was seen and recognized.

"It's that kid!" snarled Hayes. "He was listenin'!"

"Don't shoot!" Ballou cried. "They'll hear"

"Let em!" roared Hayes. "What'll they hear if he gits away?"

Bang! The bullet hummed past my ear, and five others followed it as fast as he could work the gun. But, old hand as he was, he missed me completely. For I was going through the semidarkness in the brush like a scared cat, dodging and twisting like a rabbit,-and he had to shoot principally by guess and the noise I made.

I came out on the far side of the spruce, and went across a hundred yards of open in the quickest time I ever made. I think I broke all records for the next cover. Just as I reached it, Ballou brought his rifle into action. I recognized the higher power of the weapon by the wicked zizz of the projectile even before I heard the ringing, clean-cut smack of its report. With a little more light he would never have missed me, but I suppose he allowed too much foresight in the twilight, and shot high.

Now I have never been one to turn the other cheek to the smiter. As a means of terminating hostilities I consider a fast, hard counter far more effective, as well as preferable. Even when I was running and dodging I was full of anger at being shot at as if I had been a hunted beast. And, so the minute I got into the second cover, I jumped behind a tree, raised my rifle, and cut loose at Ballou.

But what with excitement and exertion I could not steady my hands. The muzzle twitched uncontrollably. And when, after the second ineffectual shot, I jammed the gun against the tree for steadiness, my enemies had taken cover. I pumped three shots on general principles, and Ballou fired at the flash of the third, the bullet striking the tree in front of me with a swift "pluck" However, I had checked them, and I left them to figure it out, while I made tracks for camp.

I burst into it, badly winded from my haste.

"What's up, Bob?" cried Jim Dunleath. "What was all that shooting?"

"Ballou and Hayes tried to get me!" I gasped. "The whole crowd is on the river below here. Hayes and Ballou and Louis Oh, look out for Louis! Stop him!"

For at my words Louis Beef began to step backward softly. As I uttered his name he turned and bounded for the brush as lightly as a lynx, in spite of his years and bulk. Before any one could make a move to intercept him he was gone.