Part 17 (2/2)
”That's an Indian town,” went on Colonel Howell, ”and it's about as far south as you ever find the Chipewyans. It isn't much over a hundred miles from here and Chandler says there ain't a man left in the village. Pretty soon, he thinks, there'll be no women and children left. Maybe he's making a pretty black picture but he says all the men have gone over toward the lake hunting. They've been gone over two weeks and the camp was starving when they left.”
The colonel, with a peculiar look on his face, led the way back to the breakfast table.
”These Indians are nothing to me,” he went on at last, ”and all Indians are starving pretty much all the time, but they die just the same. But somehow, with plenty of pork and flour here and this great invention here right at hand from which n.o.body's benefitting, it seems to me we must be pretty hard-hearted to sit in comfort, stuffing ourselves, while little babies are dying for sc.r.a.ps that we're throwing in the river. I----”
”Colonel,” exclaimed Roy at once, ”you've said enough. Get up what you can spare and we'll have bannocks baking in that settlement before noon.”
”I don't want to get you into another blizzard,” began the colonel, yet his satisfaction was apparent.
”Don't you worry about that,” broke in Norman. ”I think we feel a good deal the same way about this. Besides, aren't we working for you?”
”Nothing like that!” expostulated the oil prospector. ”This isn't an order.”
”I'll help get the stuff ready,” began Paul, ”for I know that's all I can do. Is this Chandler trapping near there?” he went on, as he gulped down the last of his tea.
”Says he's been helping them,” explained Colonel Howell, ”but he couldn't have done much, judging by his appearance.”
”Is he going back there?” asked Roy curiously.
”He didn't say,” answered Colonel Howell slowly. ”But he's got his money now and I imagine he won't go much farther than Fort McMurray. I don't care for him and I don't like him around the camp. He's too busy talking when the men ought to be at work.”
It was an ideal winter's day, the atmosphere clear and the temperature just below zero. There was no cause for delay and while Norman made a tracing and a scale of the route, Paul and Roy drew the _Gitchie Manitou_ into the open. Colonel Howell and the half-breed cook had been busy in the storehouse, arranging packets of flour and cutting up sides of fat pork. Small packages of tea were also prepared, together with sugar, salt and half a case of evaporated fruit. The only bread on hand was the remainder of Philip's last baking of bannock.
”See how things are,” suggested Colonel Howell, when these articles were pa.s.sed up to Roy, ”and if they're as bad as Chandler says, we'll have to send Philip out for a moose. These things'll carry 'em along for a few days at least.”
The look on the young Count's face was such that Norman was disturbed.
”Paul, old man,” he said, ”I know you'd like to go with us and we'd like to have you. But we've got more than the weight of a third man in all this food. I hope you don't feel disappointed.”
”Well, I do, in a way,” answered Paul, with a feeble attempt at a smile, ”but it isn't just from curiosity. I envy you fellows. You're always helping and I never find anything to do.”
”You can help me to-day,” laughed Colonel Howell. ”I'm going to cap that gas well or bust it open in a new place. I'll give you a job that may make both of us sit up and take notice.”
”Come on,” exclaimed Paul, seeming instantly to forget the mission of the machine. ”I've been wanting a finger in that pie from the start.”
”Good luck to you,” called out Norman, as he sprang aboard the monoplane, and the colonel caught Paul laughingly by the arm and held him while Norman threw the big propeller into sizzling revolution.
The powerful car slid forward for the first time on its wooden snowshoes.
As it caught the impulse of the great propeller, it sprang into the air and then dropped to the snow again with the wiggling motion of an inexperienced skater. Then, suddenly responding again to the propeller, it darted diagonally toward a menacing tree stump; but Norman was too quick for it. Before harm could result, the planes lifted and the airs.h.i.+p, again in its native element, hurled itself skyward steadily and true.
It was an exhilarating flight. For the first time the boys got a bird's-eye view of Fort McMurray and were surprised to find that the main settlement drifted down to the river in a long-drawn-out group of cabins.
Few people were in sight, however, and all the world spread out beneath them as if frozen into silence. The big river continued its course between the same high hills and, as the last cabin disappeared, the boys headed the _Gitchie Manitou_ directly for the top of the hills, where the plains began that led onward and onward until the spa.r.s.e forests finally disappeared in the broken land of the Barren Grounds. And on these, not much farther to the North, they knew that caribou and moose roamed in herds of thousands, and that the musk ox, the king of the Northland big game, made his Arctic home.
CHAPTER XIV
IN THE CABIN OF THE PARALYZED INDIAN
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