Читать книгу The Shagganappi - E. Pauline Johnson - Страница 5

Matt Larson sprang to his feet, spitting out a strange foreign word that boded no good to the intruder. His hand leaped to his revolver instantly. Then he swung around to look at Fox-Foot, but the boy had disappeared for a moment. The two stood silent, then Jack's quick eye caught sight of the Chippewa many yards distant crawling on his belly like a snake, in and out among the blueberry bushes upstream. "Foxy's gone for all night; we'll never see him until daylight. He'll watch that canoe like a lynx. He's worth his weight in gold," murmured Matt Larson. Then he added, addressing Jack, "I thought I brought you out here because your eyes were gone smash! Why, boy, you have an eye like a vulture, to make out that canoe and that coat in this twilight."

Jack fairly beamed with pride at this praise. "Larry," he said, "I believe I saw that canoe as much with my brain as with my eyes; besides, my eyes don't hurt unless I strain them."

"Your eyes are bully; we'll take care of them, and of you, too, Jack. You are—yes, invaluable. Well, somebody has got to sleep to-night to be fit to work up-stream to-morrow, so, Jack, you and I shall be the somebodies, for Foxy will never close an eye to-night. We're safe as a church with that boy a-watch. You must paddle all to-morrow, son, while Foxy sleeps amidships."

"I guess I'm good for it. Feel that forearm," answered Jack.

Larry ran his fingers down the tense muscles, then up to the manly shoulder-blades. "Why, boy, you are built like an ox!" he exclaimed.

"Just father's expression!" smiled Jack.

"Well, to bed and sleep now! If you hear any creeping noise in the night it will be Foxy. He'll never let another living soul near us while we sleep," said Larry, as he prepared for his blanket bed.

"What are you thinking of, boy?" he added, curiously.

"I am wondering if by any chance I could possibly be right," replied Jack. "Tell me, Larry, did that man out there, the man in the mackinaw, have anything to do with causing those grey hairs above your ears—did he?"

"You certainly have the intuition of an animal," was the reply. "Jack, I love you, old pal; you're white and sharp and clean right through! Yes, he 'powder-puffed' my hair. I'll tell you about it some day. Not to-night. You must sleep to-night, and remember, 'all's well' as long as Foxy's at the helm."

"The man wouldn't shoot Fox-Foot, wouldn't kill him, would he, Larry?" came Jack's anxious voice.

"Shoot him! Shoot Foxy!" Then Matt Larson laughed gleefully into his blankets. "Why, Jack, no man living could ever get a bead on Foxy in this wilderness. No man could ever find him or see him, though he were lying right at the man's own feet. I think too much of Foxy to expose him to danger. But the best of it is, you can't put your eye, or your ear, or your fingers on that boy. You can't even smell him. He's the color of the underbrush, silent as midnight, quick as lightning. You can't detect the difference between the smell of his clothes and of his skin and burning brushwood, or deer-hide. He can sidle up to the most timid wild thing. Oh! don't you worry, son! Go to sleep; our Fox-Foot is his own man, nobody else's."

"All right, Larry, but I'm here, if anyone wants me," yawned Jack.

And Matt Larson knew in his heart of hearts that Jack Cornwall spoke truly—that he was there to stand by his uncle and Fox-Foot should he be called upon to do so.

Dawn was breaking as they awoke—simultaneously to a slight crackling sound outside. Larry's head burrowed out of the tent.

"Foxy cooking breakfast," was his cool remark. Then, "Jingo! He's got a fish—a regular crackerjack! It's as long as my arm! Ha! there's a breakfast for you!" But Jack was already up and out.

"Fine luck I have! Big fish!" smiled Fox-Foot, as fresh and alert as if he had had a night in blankets instead of hours of watchfulness. Already half of the freshwater beauty was sizzling in the frying-pan, the Indian lifting and turning it with a long pointed stick. Matt Larson got busy coffee-making. "We'll pit these two odors one against the other," he remarked; "though I am bound to admit that the only time a frying fish does really smell good and appetizing is when it has been dead about twenty minutes, and is cooking over a camp-fire." Then quickly, in a low, tense voice: "Where is he, Foxy? Where did you leave him?"

The Indian went on turning the fish, indicating with his head the direction across the river.

"He's over there, asleep."

"He may wake at any moment; we must get away at once," hurried Larry.

"No," said Fox-Foot, with indifference, "he won't wake. There is a flower grows here, small seeds; I creep up close, put it in his teapot. He not see me. He boil tea, he drink it; he wake—maybe sundown to-night."

Larry and Jack looked at each other. Then with one accord they burst into laughter.

"Flower seeds! Where did you learn of these seeds, boy?" asked Larry.

"My mother teach me when I'm small. She said only use when pain is great, or," he hesitated, then, with a sly, half humorous look, "or when your enemy is great."

"Beats all, doesn't it, Jack?" said Larry. "Foxy, you're a wonder!

Did you do anything else to him?"

"No, just to his canoe," replied the boy. "I wore a hole through the bottom with rocks; he'll think he did it himself. Takes time mend that canoe; we be far up river by then—far beyond the forks; he not know which headwater we take."

Matt Larson laid his hand on the straight, jet-black hair. "Bless you, my boy!" he said comically, but his undertone held intense relief, which did not escape Jack's ears.

The fish and coffee were ready now, and all three waded into that breakfast with fine relish.

Then came the arduous portage around Red Rock Falls, a difficult task which occupied more than an hour. Then away upstream once more, this time Jack paddling bow, with young Fox-Foot, lying on a blanket amidships, wrapped in a well-earned sleep. But once during the entire morning the Indian stirred; he did not seem to awake as other boys do, but more like a rabbit. His eyes opened without drowsiness; he shot to his knees, sweeping the river bank with a glance like the boring of a gimlet. Larry, looking at him, knew that nothing—nothing, bird, beast or man—could escape that penetrating scrutiny. Then, without comment, the boy curled down among his blankets again and slept.

They did not stop for "grub" at midday—just opened a can of pork and beans, finished up the cold fried fish, and drank from the clear blue waters of the river. Then on once more upstream, which now began to broaden into placid lakelets, thereby lessening the current and giving them a chance to make more rapid headway. At four o'clock they reached the forks of the stream—one flowed towards them from the north, the other from the west.

"Which way?" asked Larson, rousing the Chippewa. The boy got up immediately and took the stern paddle, steering the western course. They had paddled something over two miles up that arm when Fox-Foot beached the canoe, built a fire, spilled out the remainder of the pork and beans, threw the tin can on the bank, then marshalled his crew aboard again, and deliberately steered over the course they had already come.

"We lose two miles good work," he explained. "We build decoy fire, we leave tin can, he come; he think we go that way, but we go north." Back to the forks and up the northern branch they pulled, both Larry and Jack not only willing to have done four miles of seemingly unnecessary paddling, but loud in their praise and appreciation of the Indian's shrewd tactics. At supper time Fox-Foot would allow no fire to be built, no landing to be made, no trace of their passing to be left. They ate canned meat and marmalade, drank again of the stream and pushed on, until just at dusk they reached the edge of a long, still lake, with shores of granite and dense fir forest. "Larry and Jack, you sleep in canoe to-night; no camp. Lake ten miles long; no current; I paddle—me," said the Indian, and nothing that Larry could urge would alter the boy's edict.

"Jack, you must wonder what all these precautions are for, yet you never ask," said Larry.

"Because I know," returned the boy. "We are trying to escape the man in the mackinaw. He is following you. He is your enemy."

"Yes, boy, and to-night you shall know why," replied Larry. "You have taken so much for granted, you have never asked a single question; now you shall know what Foxy and I are after."

"You said you were after furs," Jack smiled.

"Yes, but not furs alone, my son," said the man. Then leaning meaningly towards the boy he half whispered, "I am after the king's coin—gold! My boy, nuggets and nuggets of gold, that I prospected for myself up in these wilds two years ago, found pockets of it in the rocks, cached it, away, as I thought, from all human eyes, awaiting the time I could safely bring it to 'the front.' I knew of but one being in all the North that I could trust with my secret. That being is Fox-Foot. One night I confided it to him, showing him the map I had made of the lakes and streams of the north country, and the spot where the gold was cached. We were, as I thought, alone in Fox-Foot's log house. That is, alone in speaking English, for his people don't understand a single word that is not Chippewa. We were poring over the map I had made, when something made me look behind me. Against the small hole in the logs that served as a window was a man's head and shoulders—a white man—and he wore a grey mackinaw. Foxy and I were on our feet at once, but the man crashed through the woods and was gone. But he had heard my story, had seen I had a map, and—well, he wants my gold! That is all."