Part 13 (1/2)
Slowly the tobacco-box was handed back, and the Indian was eying the boots. Bill laughed.
”No. You'll need those. Just hand over the moccasins, and you are welcome to the boots and the booze.”
The Indian hastily untied the thongs, and the white man thrust his bandaged feet into the soft comfort of the mooseskin moccasins. A few minutes later he took the trail, following the windings of Moncrossen's new tote-road into the North.
The air was filled with a light, feathery snow, and, in spite of the ache of his stiffened muscles, he laughed.
”The first bottle of whisky _I_ ever entered on the right side of the ledger,” he said aloud--and again he laughed.
He was in the big timber now. The tall, straight pines of the Appleton holdings stretched away for a hundred miles, and formed a high wall on either side of the tote-road, which bent to the contour of ridge and swamp and crossed small creeks on rough log bridges or corduroy causeways.
Gradually the stiffness left him, and his aching muscles limbered to their work. His moccasins sank noiselessly into the soft snow as mile after mile he traversed the broad ribbon of white.
At noon he camped, and over a tiny fire thawed out his bread and warmed his salmon, which he washed down with copious drafts of snow-water.
Then he filled his pipe and blew great lungfuls of fragrant smoke into the air as he rested with his back against a giant pine and watched the fall of the snow.
During the last hour the character of the storm had changed. Cold, dry pellets, hissing earthward had replaced the aimless dance of the feathery flakes, and he could make out but dimly the opposite wall of the rod-wide tote-road.
He returned the remains of his luncheon to his pack, eying with disgust the heel of the loaf of hard bread and the soggy, red ma.s.s of sock-eye that remained in the can.
”The first man that mentions canned salmon to me,” he growled, ”is going to get _hurt_!”
The snow was ankle-deep when he again took the trail and lowered his head to the sting of the wind-driven particles. On and on he plodded, lifting his feet higher as the snow deepened. As yet, in his ignorance of woodcraft, no thought of danger entered his mind. ”It is harder work, that is all,” he thought; but, had he known it, his was a situation that no woodsman wise in the ways of the winter trails would have cared to face.
During the morning he had covered but fifteen of the forty miles which lay between the old shack and Moncrossen's camp. Each minute added to the difficulties of the journey, which, in the words of Daddy Dunnigan was ”a fine two walks for a good man,” and, with the added hards.h.i.+p of a heavy snowfall, would have been a man's-sized job for the best of them equipped, as they would have been, with good grub and snowshoes.
Bill was forced to rest frequently. Not only were his softened muscles feeling the strain--it was getting his wind, this steady bucking the snow--but each time he again faced the storm and plowed doggedly northward.
Darkness found him struggling knee-deep in the cold whiteness, and, as he paused to rest in the shelter of a pile of tops left by the axe-men, the foremost of the gray shadows that for the last two hours had dogged his footsteps, phantom-like, resolved itself into a very tangible pair of wicked eyes which smoldered in greenish points of hate above a very sharp, fang-studded muzzle, from which a long, red tongue licked suggestively at back-curled lips.
CHAPTER XIV
AT BAY
Bill Carmody was no coward; but neither was he a fool, and for the first time the seriousness of his position dawned upon him. Other shapes appeared and ranged themselves beside their leader, and as the man looked upon their gaunt, sinewy leanness, the slavering jaws, and blazing eyes, he shuddered. Here, indeed, was a very real danger.
He decided to camp. Fire, he remembered to have read, would hold the brutes at bay. Wood there was in plenty, and, quickly clearing a s.p.a.ce in the snow, he soon had the satisfaction of seeing tiny tongues of flame crackle in a pile of dry branches.
He unslung his light axe and attacked the limbs of a dead pine that lay at the edge of the road.
After an hour's work his cleared s.p.a.ce was flanked on either side by piles of dry firewood, and at his back the great pile of tops afforded shelter from the wind which swept down the roadway, driving before it stinging volleys of snow.
He spread his blanket and drew from his pack the unappetizing food. He warmed the remaining half-can of salmon and whittled at his nubbin of bread.
”Dinner is served, sir,” he announced to himself, ”dead fish with formaldehyde dressing, petrified dough, and _aqua nivis_.” The storm continued, and as he smoked the gravity of his plight forced itself upon him.
The laggards had caught up, and at the edge of the arc of firelight a wide semicircle of insanely glaring eyeb.a.l.l.s and gleaming fangs told where the wolf-pack waited.