Northern Diamonds

by Frank Lillie Pollock

  Produced by Al Haines

  [Frontispiece: LOWERED THE CAN CAUTIOUSLY BY A STRING]

  NORTHERN DIAMONDS

  BY

  FRANK LILLIE POLLOCK

  _With Illustrations_

  BOSTON AND NEW YORK

  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

  The Riverside Press Cambridge

  1917

  COPYRIGHT, 1914 AND 1915, BY PERRY MASON COMPANY

  COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY FRANK LILLIE POLLOCK

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  _Published September 1917_

  NOTE

  This book has appeared in the _Youth's Companion_ in the form of aserial and sequel, and my thanks are due to the proprietors of thatperiodical for permission to reprint.

  FRANK LILLIE POLLOCK

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  LOWERED THE CAN CAUTIOUSLY BY A STRING . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

  THE OTHER BOYS HAD BEEN BUSY

  "THAT IS OUR CABIN. LET US COME IN, I SAY"

  DRAGGED HIM UP, PROTESTING, AND RUBBED SNOW ON HIS EARS

  FLUNG THE SACK INTO THE MAN'S LAP

  _From drawings by Harry C. Edwards_

  NORTHERN DIAMONDS

  CHAPTER I

  It was nearly eleven o'clock at night when some one knocked at the doorof Fred Osborne's room. He was not in the least expecting any callerat that hour, and had paid no attention when he had heard the doorbellof the boarding-house ring downstairs, and the sound of feet ascendingthe steps. He hastened to open the door, however, and in the dimhallway he recognized the dark, handsome face of Maurice Stark, andbehind it the tall, raw-boned form of Peter Macgregor.

  Both of them uttered an exclamation of satisfaction at seeing him.They were both in fur caps and overcoats, for it was a sharp CanadianDecember night, and at the first glance Fred observed that their faceswore an expression of excitement.

  "Come in, boys!" he said. "I wasn't going to bed. Here, take yourcoats off. What's up? You look as if something was the matter."

  "Is Horace in town?" demanded Peter.

  Fred shook his head. Horace was his elder brother, a mining engineermostly employed in the North Country.

  "He's still somewhere in the North Woods. I haven't heard from himsince October, but I'm expecting him to turn up almost any day now.Why, what's the matter?"

  "The matter? Something pretty big," returned Maurice.

  Maurice Stark was Fred's most intimate friend in Toronto University,from which he had himself graduated the summer before. He knewMacgregor less well, for the big Scotch-Canadian was in the medicalschool. His home place was somewhere far up in the North Woods, but hehad a great intercollegiate reputation as a long-distance runner. Itwas, in fact, chiefly in a sporting way that Fred had come to know him,for Fred held an amateur skating championship, and was even thentraining for the ice tournament to be held in Toronto in a few weeks.

  "It's something big!" Maurice repeated. "I wish Horace were here,but--could you get a holiday from your office for a week or ten days?"

  "I've got it already," said Fred. "I reserved my holidays last summer,and things aren't busy in a real estate office at this time of year. Iguess I could get two weeks if I wanted it. I'm spending most of mytime now training for the five and ten miles."

  "Could you skate a hundred and fifty miles in two days?" demandedMacgregor.

  "I might if I had to--if it was a case of life and death."

  "That's just what it is--a case of life and death, and possibly afortune into the bargain!" cried Maurice. "You see--but Mac has thewhole story."

  The Scottish medical student went to the window, raised the blind andpeered out at the wintry sky.

  "No sign of snow yet," he said in a tone of satisfaction.

  "What's that got to do with it?" demanded Fred, who was burning withcuriosity by this time. "What's going on, anyway? Hurry up."

  "Spoil the skating," said Macgregor briefly. "Well," he went on aftera moment, "this is how I had the story.

  "I live away up north of North Bay, you know, at a little place calledMuirhead. I went home for a little visit last week, and the second dayI was there they brought in a sick Indian from Hickson, a littlefarther north--sick with smallpox. The Hickson authorities wouldn'thave him at any price, and they had just passed him on to us. Thepeople at Muirhead didn't want him either. It wasn't such a very badcase of smallpox, but the poor wretch had suffered a good deal ofexposure, and he was pretty shaky. Everybody was in a panic about him;they wanted to ship him straight down to North Bay; but finally I gothim fixed up in a sort of isolation camp and looked after him myself."

  "Good for you, Mac!" Fred ejaculated.

  "Oh, it was good hospital training, and I'd been recently vaccinated,so I didn't run any danger. It paid me, though, for when I'd pulledhim around a bit he told me the story, and a queer tale it was."

  Macgregor paused and went to look out of the window again with anxiety.Fred was listening breathlessly.

  "It seems that last September this Indian, along with a couple ofhalf-breeds, went up into the woods for the winter trapping, and builta cabin on one of the branches of the Abitibi River, away up northeastof Lake Timagami. I know about where it was. I suppose you've neverbeen up in that country, Osborne?"

  "Never quite as far as that. Last summer I was nearly up to Timagamiwith Horace."

  Fred had made a good many canoeing trips into the Northern wildernesswith his brother, and Horace himself, as mining engineer, surveyor, andfree-lance prospector, had spent most of the last five years in thatregion. At irregular and generally unexpected times he would turn upin Toronto with a bale of furs, a sack of mineralogical specimens, anda book of geological notes, which would presently appear in the"University Science Quarterly," or even in more important publications.He was an Associate of the Canadian Geographical Society, and alwaysexpected to hit on a vein of mineral that would make his whole familymillionaires.

  "Well, I've been up and down the Abitibi in a canoe," Macgregor wenton, "and I think I know almost the exact spot where they must havebuilt the cabin. Anyhow, I'm certain I could find it, for the Indiandescribed it as accurately as he could.

  "It seems that the three men trapped there till the end of October, andthen a white man came into their camp. He was all alone, andcomplained of feeling sick. They were kind enough to him; he stayedwith them, but in a few days they found out what the matter was. Hehad smallpox.

  "Now, you know how the Indians and half-breeds dread smallpox. Theyfear it like death itself, but these fellows seem to have behavedpretty well at first. They did what they could for the sick man, butpretty soon one of the trappers came down with the disease. It took aviolent form, and he was dead in a few days.

  "That was too much for the nerve of the Indian, and he slipped away andstarted for the settlements south. But he had waited too long. He hadthe germs in him. He sickened in the woods, but had strength enough tokeep going till he came to the first clearings. Somebody rushed him into Hickson, and so he was passed on to my hands."

  "And what became of the white man and the other trapper?" demanded Fred.

  "Ah, that's what nobody knows. The Indian said that the remaininghalf-breed was falling sick when he left. The white man may be dead bythis time, or perhaps still living but deserted, or he may be well onthe road to recovery. But I left out the sensational feature of thewhole thing. My Indian said that the white man had a buckskin sack onhim full of little stones that shone like fire. He seemed to set greatstore by them, and threatened to blow the head off anybody who touchedthe bag."

  "Shining stones? Perhaps they were diamonds!" ejaculated Fred.

  "It looks almost as if he might have found the diamond fields, for afact," said Peter, with sp
arkling eyes.

  Canada was full of rumors of diamond discoveries just then. EveryCanadian must remember the intense excitement created by the reportthat diamonds had been found in the mining regions of northern Ontario.Several stones had actually been brought down to Toronto and Montreal,where tests showed them to be real diamonds, though they were mostlysmall, flawed, and valueless. One, however, was said to have broughtnine hundred dollars, and the news set many parties outfitting toprospect for the blue-clay beds. But they met with no success. Inevery case the stones had either been picked up in river drift orobtained from Indians who could give no definite account of where theyhad been found.

  Could it be that this strange white man had actually stumbled on thediamond fields--only to fall sick and perhaps to die with the secret ofhis discoveries untold? Fred gazed from Peter to Maurice, almostspeechless.

  "Naturally, my first idea was to get up a rescue party to bring out thesick prospector," Maurice went on. "But the woods are in the worstkind of shape for traveling. The streams are all frozen hard, butthere has been remarkably little snow yet--not near enough forsnowshoes or sledges. It would be impossible to tramp that distanceand pack the supplies. Besides, when I came to think it over it struckme that the thing was too valuable to share with a lot of guides andbackwoodsmen. If we find that fellow alive, and he has reallydiscovered anything, it would be strange if he wouldn't give us achance to stake out a few claims that might be worth thousands--maybemillions. And it struck me that there was a quicker way to get to himthan by snowshoes or dogs. The streams are frozen, the ice is clear,and the skating was fine at Muirhead."

  "An expedition on skates?" cried Fred.

  "Why not? There's a clear canoe way, barring a few portages, and thatmeans a clear ice road till it snows. But it might do that at anymoment."

  "A hundred and fifty miles in two days?" said Fred. "Sure, we can doit. I'll set the pace, if you fellows can keep up."

  "Anyhow, I came straight down to the city and saw Maurice about it. Hesaid you'd be the best third man we could get. But I had hoped wecould get Horace, so as to have his expert opinion on what that man mayhave found."

  "The last time I heard from Horace he was at Red Lake," said Fred, "butI wouldn't have any idea where to find him now. He always comes backto Toronto for the winter, and he can't be much later than this."

  "Well, we can't wait for him," said Maurice regretfully. "I'm sorry,but maybe next spring will do as well, when we go to prospect ourdiamond claims."

  "Yes, but we've got to get them first," said Peter, "and there's aman's life to be saved--and it might snow to-night and block the wholeexpedition."

  "Then we'd get dogs and snowshoes," Maurice remarked, "but it would befar slower traveling than on skates."

  "We must rush things. Could we get away to-morrow?" Fred cried.

  "We must--by the evening train. Maurice and I have been making out alist of the things we need to buy. Have you a gun? Well, we have tworifles anyway, and that'll be more than enough, for we want to go aslight as possible. You'll need a sleeping-bag, of course, and yourroughest, warmest woolen clothes, and a couple of heavy sweaters.We'll carry snowshoes and moccasins with us, in case of a snowfall.I'll bring a medicine case and disinfectants."

  "Will we have to pack all that outfit on our shoulders?" Fred asked.

  "No, of course not. I have a six-foot toboggan, which I'll have fittedwith detachable steel runners to-morrow, good for either ice or snow.We'll haul it by a rope. But here's the main thing--the grub list."

  Fred glanced over the scribbled rows of the carefully considereditems,--bacon, condensed milk, powdered eggs, beans, dehydratedvegetables, meal, tea, bread,--and he was astonished.

  "Surely we won't need all this for a week or ten days?"

  "That's a man-killing country in the winter," responded the Scotchmangrimly. "I know it. You have to go well prepared, and you never candepend on getting game after snow falls. Besides, we'll have no timefor hunting. Yes, we'll need every ounce of that, and it'll all haveto be bought to-morrow. And now I suppose we'd better improve the lastchance of sleeping in a bed that we'll have for some time."

  He went to the window and again observed the sky, which remained clearand starry, snapping with frost.

  "No sign of snow, certainly. We can count on you, then, Osborne? Ofcourse it's understood that we share expenses equally--they won't beheavy--and share anything that we may get out of it."

  "Count on me? I should rather think so!" cried Fred fervently. "Why,I'd never have forgiven you if you hadn't let me in on this. But we'llhave to do a lot of quick shopping to-morrow, won't we? Where do wemeet?"

  "At my rooms, as soon after breakfast as possible," replied Mac. "Andbreakfast early, and make all the preparations you can before that."

  At this they went away, leaving Fred alone, but far too full ofexcitement to sleep. He sorted out his warmest clothing, carefullyexamined and oiled his hockey skates and boots, wrote a necessaryletter or two, and did such other things as occurred to him. It waslong past one o'clock when he did go to bed, and even then he could notsleep. His mind was full of the dangerous expedition that he hadplunged into within the last hours. His imagination saw vividly thepicture of the long ice road through the wilderness, a hundred andfifty miles to the lonely trappers' shack, where a white man lay sickwith a bag of diamonds on his breast--or perhaps by this time lay deadwith the secret of immense riches lost with him. And the ice roadmight close to-morrow. Fred tossed and turned in bed, and more thanonce got up to look out the window for signs of a snowstorm.

  But he went to sleep at last, and slept soundly till awakened by therattle of his alarm-clock, set for half-past six. He had an earlybreakfast and packed his clothes. At nine o'clock he telephoned thereal estate office where he was employed, and had no difficulty ingetting his holidays extended another week. Business was dull justthen.

  At half-past nine he met Maurice and Peter, who were waiting for himwith impatience. Macgregor had already left his toboggan at asporting-goods store to be equipped with runners for use on ice. Butthere remained an immense amount of shopping to do, and all the thingshad to be purchased at half a dozen different places. Together theywent the rounds of the shops with a list from which they checked offarticle after article,--ammunition, sleeping-bags, moccasins, food,camp outfit,--and they ordered them all sent to Macgregor's rooms byspecial delivery.

  At four o'clock in the afternoon the boys went back, and found the roomlittered with innumerable parcels of every shape and size. Only thetoboggan had not arrived, though it had been promised for the middle ofthe afternoon.

  "Gracious! It looks like a lot!" exclaimed Maurice, gazing about atthe packages.

  "It won't look like so much when they're stowed away," replied Peter."Let's get them unwrapped, and, Fred, you'd better go down and hurry upthat toboggan. Stand over them till it's done, for we must have itbefore six o'clock."

  Fred hurried downtown again. The toboggan was not finished, but thework was under way. By dint of furious entreaties and representationsof the emergency Fred induced them to hurry it up. It was not a longjob, and by a quarter after five Fred was back at Mac's room,accompanied by a messenger with the remodeled toboggan.

  The toboggan was of the usual pattern and shape, but the cushions hadbeen removed, and a thirty-foot moose-hide thong attached for hauling.It was fitted with four short steel runners, only four inches high,which could be removed in a few minutes by unscrewing the nuts, so thatit could be used as a sledge on ice or as a toboggan on deep snow.

  During Fred's absence the other boys had been busy. All the kit wasout of the wrappers, and the room was a wilderness of brown paper.Everything had been packed into four canvas dunnage sacks, and nowthese were firmly strapped on the toboggan. The rifles and thesnowshoes were similarly attached, so that the whole outfit was in onesecure package. They hauled this down to the railway stationthemselves to make sure that there would be no
delay, and dispatched itby express to Waverley, where they intended to leave the train. It wasthen a few minutes after six.

  THE OTHER BOYS HAD BEEN BUSY]

  "Well, we're as good as off now," remarked Maurice, with a long breath."Our train goes at eight. We've got two hours, and now I guess I'll gohome and have supper with my folks and say good-bye. We'll all meet atthe depot."

  Neither Fred nor Macgregor had any relatives in the city and nonecessary farewells to make. They had supper together at a downtownrestaurant, and afterwards met Maurice at the Union Depot, where theytook the north-bound express.

  Next morning they awoke from uneasy slumbers to find the train rushingthrough a desolate landscape of snowy spruces. Through the frosteddouble glass of the windows the morning looked clear and cold, but theywere relieved to see that there was only a little snow on the ground,and glimpses of rivers and lakes showed clear, shining ice. Evidentlythe road was still open.

  It was half-past ten that forenoon when they reached Waverley, and theyfound that it was indeed cold. The thermometer stood at five abovezero; the snow was dry as powder underfoot, and the little backwoodsvillage looked frozen up. But it was sunny, and the biting air wasfull of the freshness of the woods, and the spirits of all the boysrose jubilantly.

  The laden toboggan had come up on the same train with them, and theysaw it taken out of the express car. Leaving it at the station, theywent to the village hotel, where they ate an early dinner, and changedfrom their civilized clothes to the caps, sweaters, and Hudson Bay"duffel" trousers that they had brought in their suit-cases.

  They had been the only passengers to leave the train, and their arrivalproduced quite a stir in Waverley. It was not the season for campingparties, nor for hunting, and no one went into the woods for pleasurein the winter. The toboggan with its steel runners drew a curiousgroup at the station.

  "Goin' in after moose?" inquired an old woodsman while they were atdinner.

  "No," replied Peter.

  "Goin' up to the pulpwood camps, mebbe?"

  "No."

  "What might ye be goin' into the woods fer?" he persisted, after somemoments.

  "We might be going in after gold," answered Maurice gravely.

  He did not mean it to be taken seriously, but he forgot that gold ismined in several parts of northern Ontario. Before many hours the wordspread that a big winter gold strike had been made up north, and aparty from the city was already going to the spot, so that for severalweeks the village was in a state of excitement.

  The boys suspected nothing of this, but the public curiosity began tobe annoying.

  "Can't we start at once?" Fred suggested.

  "Yes; there's no use in stopping here another hour," Peter agreed. "Weought to catch the fine weather while it lasts, and we can make a goodmany miles in the rest of this day."

  So they left their baggage at the hotel, with instructions to have itkept till their return, secured their toboggan at the depot, and wentdown to the river. The stream was a belt of clear, bluish ice, freefrom snow except for a little drift here and there.

  Half a dozen curious idlers had followed them. Paying no attention,the boys took off their moccasins and put on the hockey boots withskates attached. They slid out upon the ice and dragged the tobogganafter them.

  The spectators raised a cheer, which the three boys answered with ayell as they struck out. The ice was good; the toboggan ran smoothlyafter them, so that they scarcely noticed its weight. In a moment thesnowy roofs of the little village had passed out of sight around a bendof the river, and black spruce and hemlock woods were on either side.The great adventure had begun.