Читать книгу The Long Portage - Harold Bindloss - Страница 10

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Two days passed uneventfully, though Nasmyth was conscious of a growing uneasiness during them; and then one evening they landed to search another beach. They had less difficulty here, for small cedars and birches crept down to the waterside and Jake found an ax-blaze on one. After that, it was easy to locate the cache, and there were signs that it had been either very roughly made, or afterward opened and reclosed in careless haste. Lisle had no hesitation in deciding upon the latter, and Jake was emphatic in his brief assurance on the point.

On removing the covering stones, they found very little beneath them, but every object was taken out and Lisle, measuring quantities and guessing weights, carefully enumerated each in his notebook. Neither he nor Nasmyth said anything of import then; both felt that the subject was too grave to be lightly discussed; and walking back silently along the shingle, they pitched the tent and prepared supper. After the meal, Jake, prompted by an innate tact, sauntered away down the beach, and the other two, lounging beside the fire, took out their pipes. A full moon hung above the lonely gorge, which was filled with the roar of the river, and the shadows of the cedars lay black upon the stones.

Some minutes passed before a word was spoken; and then Nasmyth looked up.

“Well?” he said briefly.

Lisle moved a little, so that he could see his companion’s face.

“In the first place,” he explained, “Clarence Gladwyne came down this bank. One could locate the cache by the blazed tree, even with snow upon the ground—and it has been opened. Apart from the signs of this, no party of three men would have thought it worth while to make a cache of the few things we found.”

“Mightn’t it have been opened by some Indian?”

“It’s most unlikely, because he would have cleaned it out. A white prospector would certainly have taken the tobacco.”

Nasmyth knit his brows. He was deeply troubled, because there were respects in which the matter would hardly bear discussion, though he recognized that it must now be thrashed out.

“Well,” he admitted reluctantly, “what we have discovered has its significance; but it isn’t conclusive.”

His companion took out from a pocket the palm and wrist portion of a fur glove. It was badly rotted, and the rest had either fallen away or been gnawed by some animal, but a button with a stamp on it remained.

“Jake found that and gave it to me,” he said. “There’s enough left to show that it had finger-stalls, and there are none on the mittens we use in cold weather. The thing’s English, and with a little rubbing I expect you’ll find the maker’s name on that button. When the party went up it was warm weather, but we know there was sharp frost when Gladwyne came back. A buttoned glove doesn’t drop off one’s hand, and even if it had done so Gladwyne would have noticed and picked it up. It seems to me he took it off to open one of the provision bags and couldn’t find it afterward because he’d trodden it into the snow.”

Nasmyth could doubt no longer, and his face grew red.

“The hound!” he broke out. “He had a hand frost-bitten—one finger is different from the others yet.”

Lisle said nothing; he could understand and sympathize with what was going on in his companion’s mind and the latter was filled with bitterness and humiliation. A man of his own kind and station in life, one with whom he fished and shot, had broken faith with his starving comrade and with incredible cowardice had left him to perish. Even this was not the worst; though Nasmyth had always taken the personal courage of his friends for granted. He was not a clever man and he had his faults, but he shaped his life in accordance with a few simple but inflexible rules. It was difficult for him to understand how one could yield to a fit of craven fear; but there was a fact which made Gladwyne’s transgression still blacker.

“This thing hits hard,” he said at length. “The man should have gone back, if he had known it meant certain death.”

Lisle filled his pipe and smoked in silence for several minutes during which the eery cry of a loon rang about the camp. It roused Nasmyth to an outbreak of anger.

“I hate that unearthly noise!” he exclaimed vehemently. “The thing seems to be gloating; it’s indecent! When I think of that call it will bring back the long portage and this ghostly river! I wish I’d never made the journey, or that I could blot the whole thing out!”

“It can’t be done,” Lisle replied. “It’s too late. You have learned the truth of what has been done here—but the results will work themselves out. Neither you nor I can stop them; they have to be faced.”

“The pity of it is that the innocent must suffer; they’ve borne enough already.”

“There’s a point I don’t quite understand,” declared Lisle. “Whatever the Hudson Bay agent thought, he’d have kept it to himself if he’d been allowed—I’ve met him. It was Gladwyne who laid the whole blame on Vernon; he forced the agent to bear him out. Why should he have taken so much trouble? His own tale would have cleared him.”

Nasmyth looked irresolute; and then he answered reluctantly:

“There’s a fact I haven’t told you yet—Clarence came into the family property on George’s death; a fine old place, a fairly large estate. The sister doesn’t count, though she got her brother’s personal property—the land goes down in the male line.”

Lisle dropped his pipe.

“Now I understand! Gladwyne profits, my dead partner bore the shame. But do you believe the man meant to let his cousin die?”

“No,” Nasmyth answered sharply, “that’s unthinkable! But I blame him almost as much as if he had done so. Besides his duty to George, he had a duty to himself and to the family—the honorable men and women who had kept the name clean before him. Knowing he would inherit on George’s death, there was only one way open—he should have gone back, at any cost. Instead, to clear himself of the faintest trace of ugly suspicion, he lays the blame upon an innocent man.”

Lisle did not reply to this. He felt that had the grim choice been imposed upon his companion, the man would have taken the course he had indicated.

“You said that George Gladwyne was a naturalist,” he remarked. “Was he a methodical man?”

“Eminently so,” replied Nasmyth, wondering where the question led. He had already been astonished at Lisle’s close reasoning and the correctness of his deductions.

“Then he would have made notes on his journey and no doubt have kept some kind of diary. Did the rescue party recover it?”

“They did. It was given to George’s sister.”

“Damaged by snow or water, badly tattered?”

“It was,” assented Nasmyth. “I’ve had the book in my hands. I suppose it’s natural that you should guess its condition, but I don’t see what it points to.”

Lisle smiled grimly.

“One wouldn’t be astonished to find some leaves missing from a tattered book.”

“You’re right again.” Nasmyth started. “Several had gone.”

“I think I can tell which part of the journey they related to. A methodical man would make a note of the stores cached, and the lists would be conclusive evidence if anybody afterward opened the caches and enumerated their contents, as we have done. If everything put into the one on the bank Vernon followed remained there, it would prove that he couldn’t have found it. On the other hand, if the one on Gladwyne’s side of the river—”

“Of course!” Nasmyth broke in. “You needn’t labor the point; it’s plain enough.” He stopped for a few moments before he went on again. “I’m convinced; but without that list of Gladwyne’s you still haven’t proof enough to place your account of the affair beyond dispute. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to England—it’s my father’s country, and I meant to visit it some day. Whether I shall find out anything more there or not I don’t know.”

“Then you must stay with me. That’s a point I insist upon. But I must make my situation clear—though I’ve been drawn into this matter against my will, you have my promise, and if ever the time for action comes, I’ll stand by you. But I’ll take no part in trapping Clarence Gladwyne into any admission, nor will I countenance any charge against him unless some chance supplies you with indisputable evidence.”

“Thanks,” said Lisle; “I’m agreeable. You stand neutral until I call on you.”

“There are two more questions, and then we’ll let the subject drop. Why didn’t you make this search earlier? Why didn’t Gladwyne rearrange the caches afterward? He went back, you know.”

“They’re easily answered. It was some time before I heard of Vernon’s death and met the Hudson Bay man in Victoria—I’d been away in the North. Gladwyne had the rescue party with him when he went back; he couldn’t replace the provisions in the cache on this side without their knowing it, and I don’t suppose he could have crossed the river to the other cache. Now we’ll talk of something else.”

They started again the next morning, and instead of leaving the river for the Hudson Bay post, which stood farther back into the wilderness, they held on down-stream, though they afterward regretted this when their provisions once more grew scanty. There was now sharp frost at nights; fangs of ice stretched out behind the boulders and crackling sheets of it gathered in the slacker eddies along the bank. What mattered more was that the portages were frequent, and carrying the canoe over rock coated with frozen spray became dangerous as well as difficult, and Nasmyth working on short rations began to feel the strain. It was only since he had entered that inhospitable region that he had ever been compelled to go without his dinner; and now breakfast and supper were sternly curtailed. When they were stopped for two days by a blinding snowstorm he grew anxious, and his uneasiness had increased when some time afterward they made their evening meal of a single flapjack each. He could readily have eaten a dozen of the thin, flat cakes. The duck they had shot every now and then since crossing the divide had gone; they had not seen a trout since the cold set in; and there did not appear to be any salmon in the river.

After breakfast the next morning, Lisle concluded that it would be wise to risk a day looking for a deer, so he invited Nasmyth to take his rifle and the two set out. It cost them some trouble to climb the low bluff above the river through a horrible tangle of fallen trunks. The trees were getting larger and the branches of those the wind had brought down lay spread about them or were resting on the standing growth in networks which Nasmyth would have thought it impossible to traverse had he been alone. Lisle scrambled through, however, and he had no choice except to follow. Where the timber was thinner, the slope was covered with sharp-edged stones which further damaged his already dilapidated boots; and when at last they came out upon a comparatively bare, rocky tableland, a bitter wind met them in the teeth. It drove a little fine snow before it, but Lisle plodded steadily on, explaining that any deer which might be in the neighborhood would have gone down into the sheltered valleys. He had no doubt they would find one of the valleys, for they were generally numerous.

It was an hour before they reached one, and Nasmyth was conscious of an unpleasant pain in his side and a headache which he supposed resulted from want of food. For all that, he scrambled after his companion down an almost impossible descent, where trees of increasing size grew up among outcropping rock and banks of stones. When he reached the bottom he found himself in a deep rift filled with densely-matted underbrush, through which a swift stream flowed. Its banks promised a slightly easier road, though now and then they had to wade through the water, which was icy cold. Noon came and they had seen no sign of life, except two or three willow-grouse which they failed to dislodge from cover; but Lisle held on, his course running roughly in a line with the river.

It was toward three o’clock, and a little snow was sifting down between the somber branches overhead, when Lisle, stopping, raised a warning hand and pointed to an opening in the trees. The light was dim among the rows of trunks, and for a few seconds Nasmyth gazed down the long colonnade, seeing nothing. Then Lisle pointed again, impatiently, and he made out something between a gray trunk and a thicket. Sportsman as he was, he had not the bush-man’s eye, and he would never have supposed that formless object to be a deer. It moved, however; a prong of horn appeared; and waiting for nothing further he pitched up his rifle.

It was a long shot, standing; he guessed the range in a deceptive light; but he found himself strangely steady as he squeezed the trigger. He was desperately hungry and weak from want of food; the deer must not escape. Yet he was in no rash haste; for two or three seconds the tiny foresight trembled slightly upon the mark, while the pressure on the trigger increased. Then there was a flash; he heard no report but the smoke blew into his eyes. Almost simultaneously, a train of red sparks leaped out from somewhere close at his side and there was a sharp snapping in the bush ahead.

“You got your shot in!” cried Lisle. “I think I missed him on the jump. Come on; we must pick up the trail!”

It was easy to find; the deer had been too badly hit to bound across each obstacle as cleanly as usual, and broken twigs and scattering withered leaves showed which way it had gone. Besides, there were red splashes here and there. It was, however, a difficult matter to follow the trail. Fallen trees and dense thickets barred the way, and they had to cross the creek every now and then. Nasmyth rapidly got breathless and before long he was badly distressed, but he held on behind his companion. Once or twice he was held fast for a moment or two, and breaking free, found he had badly ripped his garments on the ragged branches. Still, it was unthinkable that they should let the deer escape.

As he struggled forward, he remembered that the days were rapidly shortening, and he shrank from the prospect of retracing his way to camp in the dark. It occurred to him that it was a compliment and a mark of very fine courtesy that Lisle had left the first shot to him. In return for this, he must endeavor to be present to assist when he was wanted.

The deer was still invisible, but it was not very far ahead, for at times the snapping of a stick or a rustle of disturbed underbrush came sharply out of the woods. The light was getting dimmer and the snow was falling more thickly.

At last the hunted creature left the valley and after a desperate scramble the men reached the summit of the ridge above. Here the tableland between them and the river was covered with straggling bush, and though the undergrowth was thin they could see nothing but the long rows of shadowy trunks. Lisle, however, picked up the trail, and they followed it as rapidly as possible until, when Nasmyth was lagging some distance behind, there was a shout in front of him and his companion’s rifle flashed. Making a last effort, he broke into a run and presently came to the brink of a steep descent covered with thick brush and scattered trees, with a wide reach of palely gleaming water at the foot of it. It was the kind of place one would have preferred to climb down cautiously, but there was a sharp snapping and crackling below and Nasmyth knew that a hard-pressed deer will frequently take to the water. If it crossed the river, it would escape; and that could not be contemplated.

Holding his rifle up, he plunged madly down the descent, smashing through matted bushes, stumbling over slippery stones. Once or twice he collided with a slender tree and struck his leg against some ridge of rock; but he held on, gasping, and the water rapidly grew nearer. He had almost reached it when a dim shape broke out from a thicket at the bottom of the slope. There were still some cartridges in his rifle cylinder, but he was slipping and sliding down an almost precipitous declivity at such a rate that it was impossible to stop and shoot. Indeed, in another moment he fell violently into a brake and had some difficulty in smashing through it, but when he struggled free he saw shingle and boulders in front of him and Lisle bounding across them a few yards behind the deer. He reached the stones, wondering why Lisle did not fire; and then he saw man and deer plunge into the water together.

A few seconds later he was waist-deep in the swift icy current, savagely endeavoring to drag the animal toward the bank, while Lisle stood near him, breathing hard, with a red hunting-knife in his hand.

“Steady!” gasped Lisle. “You can’t do it that way! Help me throw the beast on his side. Now heave!”

They got the deer out, and Nasmyth sat down limply. All the power seemed to have gone out of him; he did not want to move, though he was filled with exultation, for they now had food. It was a minute or two before he noticed that Lisle had left him; and then he saw him coming back with his rifle.

“I dropped the thing,” Lisle explained. “Couldn’t snap a fresh shell in; guess I bent the slide. I took the knife to finish it.”

“In another moment or two you’d have been too late.”

Lisle laughed.

“I don’t know. It wouldn’t have been decided until we’d reached the other side.”

“You would have swum across?” Nasmyth asked in astonishment.

“Sure,” said Lisle simply. “Anyway, I’d have tried.”

Nasmyth glanced at the river. It was broad, icy cold, and running fast, and he could hardly imagine a worn-out and half-fed man safely swimming it. Lisle, however, called upon him to assist in an unpleasant operation which, when Nasmyth had killed a deer at home, had been judiciously left to the keepers or gillies. After that, he was directed to light a fire on a neighboring point, from which it could be seen some way up the river, and by and by Jake arrived in the canoe. Then they made camp, and after a feast on flesh so tough that only hungry men could have eaten more than a few morsels of it they went to sleep.