Part 2 (1/2)

”Had George Gladwyne any immediate relatives?”

”One sister, as like him as it's possible for a woman to be. He wasn't greatly given to society; I don't think he'd ever have married. His death was a crus.h.i.+ng blow to the girl--they were wonderfully attached to each other--but I've never seen a finer display of courage than hers when Clarence cabled the news.”

He broke off, as if he felt that he had been talking with too much freedom, and just then the report of a rifle came ringing across the water.

”That's a duck's head shot off. Jake doesn't miss,” he said.

Lisle nodded. He could take a hint; and he had no doubt that Nasmyth was right regarding the shot, though it is not easy to decapitate a swimming duck with a rifle. He began to talk about the portage; and soon after Jake returned with a single duck they went to sleep.

It was clear and bright the next morning and they spent the day carrying their loads a few miles up the hollow which pierced the height of the divide. Part of it was a mora.s.s, fissured with little creeks running down from the hills whose tops rose at no great elevation above the opening.

This was bad to traverse, but it was worse when they came to a muskeg where dwarf forest had once covered what was now a swamp. Most of the trees had fallen as the soil, from some change in the lake's level, had grown too wet. They had partly rotted in the slough, and willows had afterward grown up among them.

Now and then the men laid down their loads and hewed a few of the still standing trunks, letting them fall to serve as rude bridges where the mora.s.s was almost impa.s.sable, but the real struggle began when they went back for the canoe. At first they managed to carry her on their shoulders, wading in the bog, but afterward she must be dragged through or over innumerable tangles of small fallen trunks and networks of rotten branches that had to be laboriously smashed. It was heroic labor--sometimes they spent an hour making sixty yards--and Lisle's face grew anxious as well as determined. Game had been very scarce; the deer would not last them long; and disastrous results might follow a continuance of their present slow progress. When, utterly worn out, they made camp on slightly firmer ground toward four o'clock in the afternoon, Lisle strode off heavily toward the bordering hills, while Jake pushed on to prospect ahead. Nasmyth, who was quite unable to accompany either, prepared the supper and awaited their reports with some anxiety.

Lisle came back first and shook his head when Nasmyth asked if he had found a better route on higher ground.

”Not a slope we could haul along,” he reported. ”That way's impracticable.”

It was nearly dark when Jake came in.

”It's not too bad ahead,” he informed them.

They were not greatly rea.s.sured, because Jake's idea of what was really bad was alarming. Nasmyth glanced at his companion with a smile.

”Is it any better than this?” he asked.

”A little,” answered Jake. ”An old trail runs in.”

”Gladwyne's trail?” exclaimed Nasmyth. ”The one we're looking for?”

”Why, yes,” drawled Jake, as if it were scarcely worth mentioning. ”I guess it is.”

Nasmyth turned to Lisle.

”I was lucky when I lighted on you as a companion for this trip. You have been right in your predictions all along, and now you're only out in striking the trail a day before you expected.”

”I know the bush,” returned Lisle. ”It's been pretty easy so far--but, for several reasons, I wish the next week or two were over.”

Nasmyth looked troubled. One could have imagined that misgivings which did not concern his personal safety were creeping into his mind.

”So do I,” he confessed, and turning toward the fire he busied himself with Jake's supper.

There was no change in the work the next morning, but in the afternoon it became evident that another party had made that portage ahead of them.

The soil was a little drier and where the small trees grew more thickly they could see that a pa.s.sage had been laboriously cleared. In the swampy hollows, which still occurred, trunks had here and there been flung into the ooze. This saved them some trouble and they made better progress, but both Lisle and Nasmyth became silent and grave as the signs of their predecessors' march grew plainer. By nightfall they had reached the second camping-place, which told an eloquent story of struggle with fatigue and exhaustion. Lisle, stopping in the gathering dusk, glanced around the old camp site.

”A good place to pitch the tent, but I think I'd rather move on a little,” he said.