CHAPTER XI
The boys were thunderstruck at the stranger's assertion. They knew of several forest reserves in northern Ontario where timber and game are closely protected, but they had never heard of one in this district.
"I guess you're wrong," said Horace. "There isn't any Government reserve north of Timagami."
"Made last fall," the stranger retorted. "I ought to know. I'm one of the rangers. We've got a camp up the river, and we've been here all winter to keep out hunters and lumbermen."
Horace looked at him closely, but said nothing.
"Prospecting's allowed, isn't it?" Fred blurted out.
"Prospect all ye want to, but ye can't stake no claims."
"Where's the limit of this reserve?" asked Mac.
"Ten miles down the river from here. Ye'll have to be down below there by to-morrow night. Or, if ye want to stay, ye'll have to give up your guns. No guns allowed here."
"I suppose you've got papers to show your authority?" Mac inquired.
"'Course I have. They 're back at camp. Oh, ye'll get all ye want. Why," pointing to the fresh hide, "ye killed that there deer out of season. Ye've got the law agin ye for that."
"It was for our own food. You can kill deer for necessary supplies."
"Not on this ground. Now ye can do as ye like—give up your guns till ye 're ready to leave, or get out right away. I've warned ye."
The "ranger" got up and glanced round threateningly.
"If you can show us that you're really a Government ranger, we'll go," Horace said. "But I know the Commissioner of Crown Lands; I saw him before we started, and I didn't hear of any new reserve being made. I don't believe in you or your reserve, and we'll stay where we are till you show us the proof of your authority."
"I'll show you this!" exclaimed the man fiercely, slapping the barrel of his rifle.
"You can't bluff us. We've got guns, too, if it comes to that!" cried Fred.
"I've give ye fair warning," repeated the man. "Ye'll find it mighty hard to buck agin the Gover'ment, and ye'll be sorry if ye try it. Ye'll see me again."
Turning, he stepped into the shadows and was gone. The boys looked at one another.
"What do you make of it?" Peter asked. "Is he a ranger—or a prospector?"
"They don't hire that kind of man for Government rangers," replied Horace. "And I'm certain there's no forest reserve here. Why, there's no timber worth preserving. He's a hunter or a prospector, and from his looks he's evidently been in the woods all winter, as he said. Perhaps he belongs to a party of prospectors who found a good thing last fall, and got snowed in before they could get out."
"Hunters wouldn't be so anxious to drive us away," said Fred. "They must be prospectors. Suppose they've found the diamond fields!"
They had all thought of that. There was a gloomy silence.
"One thing's certain," said Horace, "we must trail those fellows down, and see what sort of men they are and where they 're camped. We'll scout up the river to-morrow."
They all felt nervous and uneasy that evening. They stayed up late, and when they went to bed they loaded their guns and laid them close at hand.
But the night passed without any disturbance, and after breakfast they set out at once to trail the ranger. They followed the river for about four miles, to a point where the stream broke through the hills in a succession of cascades and rapids; but although they searched all the landscape with the field-glass from the top of the hills, they saw no sign of man. Beyond the ridges, however, the river turned sharply into a wooded valley. They struggled through the undergrowth, found another curve in the river, rounded it—and then stepped hastily back into cover.
About two hundred yards upstream stood a log hut on the shore, at the foot of a steep bluff. A wreath of smoke rose from its chimney, but no one was in sight. Talking in low tones, the boys watched it for some time. Then they made a détour through the woods, and crept round to the top of the bluff. Peering cautiously over the edge, they saw the cabin below them, not fifty yards away.
It looked like a trappers' winter camp. It was built of spruce logs, chinked with mud and moss. A deep layer of scattered chips beside the remains of a log pile showed that the place had been used all winter.
Presently a man came out of the door, stretched himself lazily, and carried a block of wood into the cabin. It was not the man they had seen, but a slender, dark fellow, dressed in buckskin, who looked like a half-breed. In a moment he came out again, and this time the ranger came with him. There was a third man in the cabin, for they could hear some one speaking from inside the shack.
For some moments the men stood talking; their voices were quite audible, but the boys could not make out what they were saying. The two men examined a pile of steel traps beside the door and a number of pelts that were drying on frames in the open air.
"These aren't rangers. They're just ordinary trappers," Mac whispered to Horace.
"They've certainly been trapping. But why do they want to run us out of the country?"
In a few minutes both men went into the cabin, came out with rifles, and started down the river-bank.
"They may be going down to our camp," Horace said, "and we must be there to meet them. We'd better hurry back."
The boys started at as fast a pace as the rough ground would allow. Owing to dense thickets, swamps, and piled boulders, they could not make much speed. In about twenty minutes Fred heard a sound of falling water in front, and supposed that they were approaching the river. He was mistaken. Within a few yards they came upon a tiny lake fed by a creek at one end and closed at the other by a pile of logs and brush. Curious heaps of mud and sticks showed here and there above the water. Horace uttered an exclamation.
"A beaver pond!" he cried. "That explains it all."
In a moment the same thought flashed over Fred and Macgregor. The killing of beaver is entirely prohibited in Ontario; but in spite of that, a good deal of illicit trapping goes on in the remote districts, and the poachers usually carry their pelts across the line into the Province of Quebec, where they can sell the fur. Naturally, the trappers had resented the appearance of the three boys in the vicinity of the beaver pond; the men had no wish to have their illegal trapping discovered. It was the first beaver pond the boys had ever met with, and in spite of their hurry they stopped to look at it. They came upon two or three traps skillfully set under water, and one of them contained a beaver, sleek and drowned, held under the surface. Apparently the men intended to clean out the pond, for the season was already late for fur.
After a few minutes the boys hurried on. They met no one on the way, and they found everything undisturbed in camp; they kept a sharp lookout all day, but no one came near them.
On the whole, they felt considerably relieved by the result of their scouting. The lawbreakers had no right to order them off the ground. For their own part, the boys felt under no obligation to interfere with the beaver trappers.
"If we meet any of them again, we'll let them know plainly that we know how things stand," said Mac. "We'll let them alone if they let us alone, and I don't think there'll be any more trouble."
It rained hard that evening—a warm, steady downpour that lasted almost until morning. The tent leaked, and the boys passed a wretched night. But day came pleasant and warm, with a moist, springlike air; the leaves had unfolded in the night. The warmth brought out the flies in increased numbers. They smeared their skins with a fresh application of "fly dope," and with little thought for the fur poachers, started out again to prospect. All that day and the next they worked hard; they saw nothing of the trappers, and found nothing even remotely resembling blue clay.
The condition of their footwear had begun to worry them. The rough usage was beginning to tell heavily on their boots, which were already ripping, and which had begun to wear through the soles; they would hardly hold together for another fortnight. But the boys bound them up and patched them with strips of the deerskin, and kept hard at work.
In the course of the next two days they thoroughly examined all the country within five miles of their present camp. On the evening of the second day they finished the last of the oatmeal, and Horace examined the remaining supply of Graham flour with anxiety.
"Just about enough to get home on, boys," he said, looking dubiously at his companions.
"But we're not going home!" cried Mac.
"The flour and beans'll be gone in another week, and we're a long way from civilization. Can we live on meat alone, Mac?"
"Pretty sure to come down with dysentery if we do—for any length of time," admitted the medical student reluctantly.
There was silence round the fire.
"We didn't start this expedition right," said Horace, at last. "I should have planned it better. We ought to have come with two or three canoes and with twice as much grub, and we should have brought several pairs of boots apiece."
He thrust out his foot; his bare skin showed through the ripped leather.
"Make moccasins," Mac suggested.
"They wouldn't stand the rough traveling for any time."
"What do you think we ought to do, Horace?" asked Fred.
"Well, I hate to retreat as much as any one," said Horace, after a pause. "But I know—better than either of you—the risk of losing our lives if we try to run it too fine on provisions. At the same time I do think that we oughtn't to give up till we've reached the head of this river. It's probably not more than ten or fifteen miles up."
After some discussion they decided that Macgregor and Fred should make the journey to the head of the river, carrying provisions for three days; that would give them one day in which to prospect at the source. Meanwhile, Horace was to strike across country to the northwest, to the headwaters of the Whitefish River, about fifteen miles away.
The next morning, therefore, they carefully cached the canoe, the tent, and the heavy part of the outfit, and started. They were all to be back on the third evening at the latest, whether they found anything or not.
Fred and Mac made a wide détour to avoid the hut of the trappers. They had a hard day's tramp over the rough country, but reached their destination rather sooner than they expected. The river, shrunk to a rapid creek, ended in a tiny lake between two hills.
The general surface of the country was the same as that which had already grown so monotonously familiar, except that there was rather more outcrop of bedrock. Nowhere could they see anything that seemed to suggest the presence of blue clay, and although they spent the whole of the next twenty-four hours in making wide circles round the lake, they found nothing.
The following morning they started back, depressed and miserable. If Horace's trip should also prove fruitless, the chances of their finding the diamonds would be slim indeed. The Smoke River made a wide turn to the west and north, and they concluded that a straight line by compass across the wilderness would save them several miles of travel, and would also give them a chance to see some fresh ground. They left the river, therefore, and struck a bee-line to the southeast. The new ground proved as unprofitable as the old, and somewhat rougher. The journey had been hard on shoe leather; Fred was limping badly.
Late in the afternoon the boys stopped to rest on the top of a bare, rocky ridge, where the black flies were not so bad as in the valleys. They guessed that they were about four or five miles from camp. The sun shone level and warm from the west, and the boys sat in silence, tired and discouraged.
"I'm afraid we're not going to make a million this trip, Mac," said Fred, at last.
"No," Peter replied soberly. "Unless Horace has struck something."
"It's too big a country to look over inch by inch. If there really are any diamond-beds—"
"Oh, there must be some. Horace found scattered stones last summer, you know. But of course the beds may be far underground. In South Africa they often have to sink deep shafts to strike them."
Fred did not answer at once. He had taken out the field-glass that he carried, and was turning it aimlessly this way and that, when Mac spoke suddenly:—
"What's that moving in the ravine—see! About a hundred yards up, below the big cedar on the rock."
"Ground hog, likely," said Fred, turning the glass toward the rocky gorge, through which ran a little stream that lay at the base of the ridge. "I don't see anything. Oh—yes, now I've got 'em. One—two—three—four little animals. Why, they're playing together like kittens! They look like young foxes, only they're far too dark-colored."
Mac suddenly snatched the glass. But Fred, now that he knew where to look, could see the moving black specks with his unaided eye. Just behind them was a dark opening that might be the mouth of a den.
"They are foxes!" said Mac. "It's a family of fox cubs. You're right. And—and—why, man, they're black—every one of them!"
He lowered the glass, almost dropping it in his excitement, and stared at his companion.
"Fred, it's a den of black foxes!"