Stranded in Arcady

by Francis Lynde

  V

  A SECRET FOR ONE

  PRIME awoke unrefreshed at the moment when the morning sun was beginningto gild the tops of the highest trees, to find his campmate up andbusying herself housewifely over the breakfast fire.

  "You looked so utterly tired and worn out I thought I'd let you sleep aslong as you could," she offered. "Are you feeling any better thismorning?"

  "I'm not sick," he protested, wincing a little in spite of himself indeference to the stiffened thews and sinews.

  "You mustn't be," she argued cheerfully. "To-day is the day when we mustgo back a few thousand years and become Stone-Age people."

  "Meaning that the provisions will be gone?"

  "Yes."

  "There are rabbits," he asserted. "I saw two of them yesterday. Doesthe domestic-science course include the cooking of rabbits _auvoyageur_?"

  "It is going to include the cooking of anything we can find to cook.Does the literary course include the catching of rabbits with one's barehands?"

  "It includes an imagination which is better than the possession of manytraps and weapons," he jested. "I feel it in my bones that we are notgoing to starve."

  "Let us be thankful to your bones," she returned gayly, and at thisPrime felt the grisly night and its horrors withdrawing a little way.

  There was more of the cheerful badinage to enliven the scanty breakfast,but there was pathos in the air when Prime felt for his cigarette-papersand mechanically opened his empty tobacco-pouch.

  "You poor man!" she cooed, pitying him. "What will you do now?"

  Prime had a thought which was only partly regretful. He might havesearched in the pockets of the dead men for more tobacco, but it had notoccurred to him at the time. He dismissed the thought and came back tothe playing of his part in the secret for one.

  "The lack of tobacco is a small consideration, when there is so muchelse at stake," he maintained. "If the Grider guess is the right one, itis evident that something has turned up to tangle it. Unscrupulous as heis in the matter of idiotic jokes, I know him well enough to be surethat he wouldn't leave us here to famish. He is only an amateur aviator,and it is quite within the possibilities that he has wrecked himselfsomewhere. It seems to me that we ought to take this river for a guideand push on for ourselves. Doesn't it appear that way to you?"

  "If we only had a boat of some kind," she sighed. "But even then wecouldn't push very far without something to eat."

  It was time to usher in the glad surprise, and Prime began to gather upthe breakfast leavings. "We'll go over and have a look at the river,anyway," he suggested, and a few minutes later he had led the way acrossthe point of land, and had heard the young woman's cry of delight andrelief when she discovered the stranded canoe.

  "You knew about this all the time," was her reproachful accusation. "Youwere over here last night. That is why you had the prophetic bones alittle while ago. Why didn't you tell me before?"

  He grinned. "At the moment you seemed cheerful enough without theaddition of the good news. Do you know what is in that canoe?"

  "No."

  "Things to eat," he avouched solemnly; "lots of them! More than we couldeat in a month."

  "But they are not ours," she objected.

  "No matter; we are going to eat them just the same."

  "You mean that we can hire the owners to take us out of this wilderness?Have you any money?"

  "Plenty of it," he boasted, chinking the buckskin bag in his pocket, thefinding of which he had, up to this moment, entirely forgotten.

  "But where are the owners? I don't see any camp."

  "That is one reason why I didn't tell you last night. I found the canoe,but I didn't find anything that looked--er--like a camp."

  "Then we shall have to sit down patiently and wait until they come back.They wouldn't go very far away and leave a loaded canoe alone like this,would they?"

  Prime gave a furtive side glance at the shadowy pool in the eddy. Trulythe canoe-owners had not gone very far, but it was quite far enough. Ifhe could have framed any reasonable excuse for it, he would have urgedthe immediate borrowing of the canoe, and an equally immediate departurefrom the spot of grisly associations. Indeed, he did go so far as tosuggest it, and was brought up standing, as he more than half expectedto be, against Miss Millington's conscience.

  "Why, certainly we couldn't do anything like that!" she protested. "Itwould be highway robbery! We must wait until they return. Surely theywon't be gone very long."

  There was no help for it except in telling her the shocking truth, andPrime was not equal to that. So he reconciled himself as best he couldto the enforced delay, hoping that the tender conscience would notdemand too much time.

  Almost at once the owner of the conscience suggested that they make around through the adjoining forest in an attempt to discover the camp ofthe missing men. Prime acceded cheerfully enough, though he wasimpatient to examine the canoe-load, in which he was hoping there mightprove to be a supply of tobacco. For the better part of the forenoonthey quartered the forest around and about between the river and thelake in widening circles, missing nothing but the glade of horrors,which Prime took good care to avoid. At noon they came back to thecanoe-landing and made a frugal meal on the remains of their own storeof food.

  "We are too punctiliously foolish," Prime declared when the second mealwithout its tobacco aftermath had been endured. "You say we are obligedto wait, and in that case we shall have to borrow, sooner or later. Idon't see any reason why we shouldn't begin it now. We can explaineverything, you know; and, besides, I have money with which to pay forwhat we take."

  "But your money isn't Canadian money," was the ready objection voiced bythe tender conscience.

  Prime's laugh did not ring quite true. "That is where you are mistaken,"he retorted. "It is good English gold, in sovereigns."

  If the young woman were surprised to learn that a man who had expectedto motor out of Canada in a day or two at the most had supplied himselfwith a stock of English sovereigns, she did not question the fact. Butfor fear she might, Prime went on hastily:

  "I always like to be prepared for all kinds of emergencies when I leavehome, and this time I wasn't sure just where I was going to bring up,you know--after Grider had changed his mind as to our starting-point."

  The evasion served its purpose, and the young woman assented to animmediate examination of the canoe-load. Prime helped her down the steepbank, and they began to rummage, spreading their findings out on thelittle beach. As Prime had intimated, there was a liberal stock ofprovisions--jerked deer-meat, smoke-cured bacon, flour, meal, salt,baking-powder, tea, and sugar, but no coffee, a few tins of vegetables,a small sack of potatoes, and, last but not least, a canvas-covered massof something which they decided was pemmican.

  Rummaging further, the precious tobacco came to light--two huge twistsof it hidden in the centre of one of the two remaining blanket-rolls.Prime stopped right where he was, crumbled a bit of the dried leaf inhis hands, and made a cigarette, his companion looking on with a littlelip-curl which might have been of derision or merely of amusement.

  "Is it good?" she asked, when he had inhaled the first deep breath.

  "It's vile!" he returned. "At the same time, it is so much better thannothing that I could do a Highland fling for pure joy. Take my advice,Miss Millington, and never become a slave to the tobacco habit."

  "'Miss Millington,'" she repeated, half musingly. "Doesn't that strikeyou as being a trifle absurd at this distance from a drawing-room?"

  "Is it good?" she asked, when he had inhaled the firstdeep breath.]

  "It surely does," he admitted frankly; "and so, for that matter, does'Mr. Prime.'"

  She looked up at him with a charming little grimace.

  "I'll concede the 'Lucetta' if you will concede the 'Donald.'"

  "It's a go," he laughed. "It is the last of the conventions, and we'lltell it good-by without a whimper." With the goodly
array of foodstuffspread out upon the sand, and with his back carefully turned upon thepool of dread, he felt that he could afford to be light-hearted.

  There was only a little more of the rummaging to be done. Acanvas-covered roll unlashed from its place beneath a canoe-stay provedto be a square of duck large enough to make a small sleeping-tent.Inside of this roll there was an ample stock of cartridges for the tworepeating rifles lying cased in their canvas covers in the bottom of theboat, and an Indian-tanned deerskin used as a wrapping for theammunition. With the guns there was a serviceable woodsman's axe. Inthe bow, where Prime had dropped the two savage-looking hunting-knives,there were a few utensils: a teapot, a camper's skillet large enough tobe worth while, tin cup and plates, an empty whiskey-bottle, and abasin--the latter presumably for the dough-mixing.

  After they had their findings lying on the sand the tender consciencecame in play again, and nothing would do but everything must be put backjust as they had found it, Prime drawing the line, however, at a portionof the tobacco and enough of the food to serve for supper and breakfast.During the remainder of the afternoon they left the canoe-loadundisturbed, but when evening came Prime borrowed the basin, the cups,plates, and the larger skillet. Farther along he borrowed the canvasroll and the axe and set up the tiny sleeping-tent, placing it so thatLucetta, if she were so minded, could see the fire.

  Just before she retired the young woman made a generous protest.

  "You mustn't do all the borrowing for me," she insisted. "Go right downthere and get one of those blanket-rolls for yourself. I shan't sleep awink if you don't."

  The next morning there were more speculations, on the young woman'spart, as to the whereabouts of the canoe-owners, with much wonderment attheir protracted absence and the singular abandonment of their entireoutfit, even to the weapons. Whereat Prime invented all sorts oftheories to account for this curious state of affairs, all of them muchmore ingenious than plausible.

  For himself, the mystery was scarcely less unexplainable. Why two men,evidently outfitted for a long journey, should stop by the way, buildfive fires that were plainly not camp-fires, and then fall to and fighteach other to death over a bag of English sovereigns, were puzzles thathe did not attempt to solve in his own behalf. It was enough that thefacts had befallen, and that the net result for a pair of helplesscastaways was a well-stocked canoe which Lucetta's acid-proof honestywas still preventing them from appropriating.

  After a breakfast served with the garnishings afforded by theHeaven-sent supplies, Prime uncased the two rifles and looked themover. They were United States products of an early edition, but wereapparently serviceable and in good order. In the canvas case of one ofthe guns there was a packet of fish-lines and hooks. At Lucetta'ssuggestion a few shots were fired as a signal for the lost canoe-owners.Nothing coming of this, they tried a little target practice, selectingthe largest tree in sight for a mark, and both missing it withmonotonous regularity. Later in the day Prime brought the talk around bydegrees to the expediencies. How much of the present good weather mustthey waste in waiting for the hypothetical return of the absentees?Perhaps some accident had happened; perhaps the absentees would neverturn up. Who could tell?

  Domestic Science, with gymnasium-teaching on the side, fought thesuggestion to which all this pointed. They had no manner of right totake the canoe and its belongings without the consent of the owners.What was the hurry? By waiting they would be sure to obtain the helpthey were needing, and another day or two must certainly end thesuspense.

  Prime went as far as he could without telling the shocking truth. Withthe dead men's pool so near at hand he was shudderingly anxious to begone, but the young woman's logic was unanswerable and the delay wasextended. A single small advance marked this second day. Along towardevening Prime unloaded the canoe, and together they made a few heroicattempts to acquire the art of paddling. It was apparently a lost art sofar as they were concerned. The big birch-bark, lightened of its load,did everything but what it was expected to do, yawing and careeningunder the unskilful handling in a most disconcerting manner.

  "If I could only rig up some way to row the thing!" Prime exclaimed,when they had contrived to drift and seesaw half a mile or more down thealmost currentless first reach of the stream.

  "You couldn't," asserted the more practical young woman. "The sides areas thin as paper, and they wouldn't hold rowlocks if you could makethem. Besides, who ever heard of rowing a birch-bark canoe?"

  "Somebody will hear of it, if I ever live to work this vacation trip ofours into a story--No, no; paddle the other way! We want to turn aroundand go back!"

  They got the hang of it a little better after a while, the young womancatching the knack first; and after much labor they won back to theircamping-place on the small peninsula. Over the evening fire Primeunwrapped the deerskin they had found in the canvas-roll.

  "We shall have to have moccasins of some sort," he announced. "Thatflimsy boat isn't going to stand for shoes with heels on them. Doesdomestic science include a semester in shoemaking? I can assure you inadvance that literature doesn't."

  Lucetta took the leather and sat for a time regarding it thoughtfully."No needle, no thread, no pattern," she mused. "And if we cut it andspoil it there won't be enough left for two pairs."

  "If you have an idea, try it; I'll stand the expense of the leather,"chuckled Prime, with large liberality.

  But now the young woman was hesitating on another score.

  "This leather belongs to the owners of the canoe; I don't know that wehave any right to cut it," she objected.

  Prime was tempted to say things objurgatory of these phantom owners whowould not down, but he didn't. Every fresh reference to the two dead mengave him an impulse to glance over his shoulder at the silent pool inthe eddy, and the longer the thing went on the less able he was tocontrol the prompting.

  "You forget that we are able to pay for all damages," was what he reallydid say, and at that the young woman removed a shoe, placed a neatlystockinged foot on the skin and marked around it with a bit of charcoaltaken from the fire, leaving a generous margin. Borrowing Prime'spocket-knife she cut to the line, made tiny buttonholes all around thepiece, and threaded them with a drawing-string made of the soft leather.

  "You've got it!" exclaimed the unskilled one in open-eyed admiration,after the one-piece slipper was fashioned and tried on. "You are awonder! I shouldn't have thought of that in a month of Sundays. It'scapital!"

  There was enough material in the single skin to make the two pairs, withsomething left over, and Prime put his on at once with a sigh of reliefborn of the grateful chance to get rid of the civilized shoes. Past thatthere was more talk about the ever-thickening mysteries, and againLucetta refused to accept the Grider explanation, while Prime clung toit simply because he could not invent any other. Yet it was borne inupon him that the mystery was edging away from the Grider hypothesis inspite of all he could do. There was nothing to connect the two canoemen,fighting over the purse of gold, with Grider, or with the abduction of aschool-teacher and a writer of stories; yet there were pointings here,too, if one might read them. Why were the five fires lighted in theglade unless it were for a signal of some sort? Prime wished from thebottom of his heart that he could set the keen mentality of hiscompanion at work on this latest phase of the mystery, but with the deadmen lying stiff and still at the bottom of their pool less than astone's throw away, his courage failed him and his lips were sealed.