CHAPTER V
"LITTLE EYES HAS A FORKED TONGUE"
In the stillness that followed this answer to her question Nell made awild calculation in her head. To-day! The boy must mean to-morrow.She said so, eagerly.
"Little Eyes has a forked tongue," repeated the Lizard, with emphasis."He says one thing, but his heart is false. He spoke to my father, thePickerel, and he said, 'Take money for these pelts, and have all readyat the day dawn. Give me food also, for I go on the home trail in themorning.' Then Shines-in-the-Night said to me, 'Run with the feet ofAh-tek to the white man's lodge and carry this word from me to the tallwhite sister, for the heart of Little Eyes is not good towards her.'"
"How does she know?" questioned Nell.
The Lizard made a gesture with his expressive brown hands.
"It is clear to Shines-in-the-Night, as the face of the Forest, or thetune of the River," he said.
"Well," said the girl, with a sort of desperate firmness, "what must be,must be then. We will go as soon as the day breaks. I will wake mybrother, we will eat and go."
"That is well," agreed the Lizard evidently satisfied, "the snow willhide the trail, and the great black ninnymoosh (dog) will be yourfriend." He looked at Robin with grave approval. There was evidently asympathy between them, though the hound was not familiar.
Nell went over to a locker in which were kept all sorts of smallarticles and loose oddments, and extracted therefrom a strong claspknife. It was a good knife, but, more important still, it was a showyknife. It possessed three blades of different sizes, a corkscrew, and aspike, useful for making holes or as a lever, for it was strong. Shegave it to the boy, being very careful indeed not to suggest that shewas offering payment.
"Will my brother the Lizard take this from my hand, in token that myheart is very good towards him? My brother will some day be a greatchief and these little knives shall help him to skin Mak-wa (the bear),after the gun has sent him into the Afterland."
The boy's eyes shone as he took this unexpected treasure. It was aprize of immense value to him, and one that would make him the envy ofevery other boy for years. Nell was turning over in her mind what onearth she could send to Shines-in-the-Night--for she owed the girl agreat deal--her action had been so clever and so swift, founded as itwas almost entirely on instinct. She did not possess the things worn byother girls of her age; where no shops are people do not accumulatesmall matters of dress.
Swiftly she went to her room and opened a box. Turning over her fewthings she came upon a Christmas card shaped like a little book with ascented sachet inside. Just a very small cushion of satin with a bunchof mignonette painted on it, and a sweet smell of the same flower. Onthe outside of the cover was a picture of a pretty cottage and hollytrees glittering with snow. It was a Christmas card sent to Nell byrelations in a far-away land. She was fond of it, but she understoodwell what it would mean to the Chippewa girl, so she took it to the boyand presented it in a ceremonious manner, a special gift from herself toShines-in-the-Night.
The Lizard was greatly impressed. Of course, he tried to conceal hiswonder and admiration, because a brave must never be surprised. He hidit in his leather shirt, then he went, with startling swiftness andperfectly noiseless, and the girl found herself alone again faced by thenecessity of instant flight.
It was three o'clock in the morning, and she wanted to be off in thegrey of daybreak.
There was no time to make a careful disposition of the "greenbacks," ordollar bills. She took a broad strip of a pelt, cured soft as silk,tacked the two packets to it with strong stitches of her needle andthread, and fastened it round her waist under her leather shirt. It wasthe only way she could think of doing it quickly. Later she mightinvent some new plan. But it all depended on events.
Then she woke David, who grunted rather discontentedly, and then sat upin his blankets.
"What's the good of getting up in the middle of the night," he said;"we've done all the things, and we aren't going till to-morrow."
"We are going to-day, in about half an hour," Nell told him; "somethinghas happened."
"I _say_--what, what's happened?" David scrubbed his face with bothhands to wake himself, he was still rather unbelieving.
"I'll tell you while we are having breakfast," said Nell. "It's veryqueer and it isn't nice! Things have been happening all night, and nowit's just about daybreak."
"_I say!_" exclaimed the boy again, "then you haven't been to sleep!What a shame!"
"Don't think I could have gone to sleep anyhow. I had such a horriblywideawake mind. Never mind, we'll sleep to-night--let's hope." Shelaughed and went away.
Less than an hour later the little cavalcade took the trail.
Nell left the house in order because she could not find it possible toleave dirt and confusion. She locked the door outside and put the bigkey in her pocket. Then she nailed a square of paper on the doorpost,using a stone to drive in the nail. On the paper was printed:
GONE ON. E.L. (for Ellen Lindsay).
"Will he believe that?" asked David, speaking in a whisper, for thegrey, thick chill of the morning's dawn rather oppressed him, though theflight did not. He thought the whole thing a mighty spree.
"Not till he's broken open the door," said Nell dryly. "That is thetime I'm counting on, you see? He'll break in and hunt every corner ofthe house for Dad's money. When he can't find it he'll think I've goneon to Dad, at their shack. I'm counting on _that_, too."
"Jolly lot of counting, and not much really certainty," commented David,making a face. "How's he going to account for breaking the door open andturning the place upside down--I mean when Dad comes back?"
"Oh--he'll say the Chippewas must have done it. It's pretty simple,because Indians do break into shacks sometimes. That'll do for a storyif nothing comes of his plan--I mean if he doesn't get hold of themoney, anyhow. But you must remember he's laying out to lift that moneyoff us somehow, and if he gets it they'll just vamoose"--by which shemeant--"make themselves scarce"--"they won't stop to make explanations."
"Well," said David as he strapped on his snowshoes, "they won't get it."
"No," agreed Nell, "they won't. But they'll make a good try, becausewhen people begin on a nasty job they get kind of involved and _have_ togo on."
"Best thing is not to begin," said her brother in rather a sententiousvoice.
Nell showed her pretty teeth in a silent laugh.
"Come on," she whispered, as she fastened the harness on her odd steeds."Off we go, Da, and God bless us all--Dad as well."
The fall of the ground was steepish, but the track was fairly beatenout, because winter and summer it was a path to the stream below. Thedistance was hardly more than half a mile, and in summer Nell went upand down often for water. In winter they went up and down almost asoften for fish, as they had got an ice-hole trap in the stream, whichwas deepish, though not very wide so early in its course, its sourcebeing way up in the mountains at the back of the log house.
Nell's plan was quite definite. She meant to get on the "River" andfollow its course to the lake--about thirty miles, perhaps more--crossthe lake, get on to the ever-widening river and go on at top speed tilltheir river joined up with the Moose, when they might hope to hit onhuman habitations.
It was a reasonable plan, but there was one very serious danger--thepossibility that "the bottom might fall out of the trail," as thelanguage of the northlands puts it. In other words, that the ice mightbreak and go down-stream--one moving mass, hundreds of miles in length,cracking, heaving, and piling up on itself. That happened every spring.The farther up north you were the later it took place, of course. A fewdays of sunshine, a milder feel in the wind, and the springs in thehills would begin to trickle into the streams, the streams into therivers, and up would rise the bursting ice on the swollen water.
Now that was what Nell was dreading most of all. A thaw would make thesnow cl
og, too; there was extra effort when the trail was heavy. As theydarted down the hill she sniffed the air like a dog; the snowflakesdrifting against her face were rather large and wettish, not like thebiting ice powder that drove along in the winter.
A thaw was coming, but she would do this journey before it made theriver road impassable.
Down and down they went, Nell hanging back her whole weight to preventthe sled slipping on to Robin's heels. David kept to the outside forthe time, giving a hand to steady the load at the worst places. Therewas nothing top heavy or slack about the packing of the sled. They hadbeen trained to do it to perfection--canvas cover lashed down at thesides as neatly as the mainsail cover of a well-kept yacht.
In ten minutes they had reached the stream and stood firm upon thesnow-covered ice. The real journey was beginning.
They stood still to take breath after the scramble of that quickdescent. Nell looked back at the track. It was covered already withsnow. She felt a thrill of thankfulness that her hope was fulfilled.The marks of the sled runners were not quite gone in places--though theywould be soon--but the trail of the dog's feet, and the digs made by theheel of the snowshoes when the weight was thrown back so hard, werealready gone. The hard packing of the snow had helped them, and nowcame fresh snow and blotted out the trail.
On either side of them the banks rose fairly steep, and woods coveredthe banks. All the world was still and grey, and under the spruce firsthe snow carpet lay smooth and untrodden-- dead white with the blackboles rising from it.
Their road lay straight ahead by the frozen stream, and the one thingthat mattered was haste.
David now took his place as leader. Robin trotted behind him in thetraces, muzzle to the ground as he always ran, and Nell pushed at theback. Both she and David wore the round-toed snowshoes that most of theIndians use--not the very long shape like a boat, worn by the plainsmen,and the men who go on the long trail over the vast snow expanses in thefar north.
These shoes are made of the green wood of the tamarack, steamed to makeit pliable--then the loop can be bowed into the shape of the snowshoeracket. This is bound in place by strips of caribou skin rawhide soakedin warm water, which also binds the ends together. When this is donethe shoe is hung up to dry slowly, afterwards holes are made with thered-hot cleaning rod of a rifle which is used for boring, then webbingof caribou rawhide shrinks when it is wet and thus tightens up the shoewhen other things would stretch.
Both Nell and David were used to this form of travelling and had longceased to get the cramps and aches that come to people at the beginning.
Silent as the falling snow down the river path between the deathlystillness of the woods they flew along.
The journey had begun in earnest.
Two on the Trail: A Story of Canada Snows Page 5
