CHAPTER XIII
Fred and Mac, who were carrying the guns, fired wildly at the man at the trap; they took no aim, for their only purpose was to startle him and to keep him from killing the fox. When the shots rang out, the man straightened up, saw the boys rushing down the hill toward him, and dropped his club. Stepping back, he picked up his rifle, and as they dashed up, held it ready to shoot.
Fred gave a whoop when he saw that the animal in the trap was really a black fox; moreover, it was the mother fox. Her black coat was glossy and spotless.
Horace turned to the man. "Let that fox alone!" he cried. "That's our fox!"
"Yours? It's my fox!" retorted the man angrily. "Why, that's my trap!"
"I don't believe it; we found it in the woods. Anyway, you can have the trap if you like, but the fox is certainly ours. We've been after her for some time."
"Me and my pardners have been after this fox all winter," declared the trapper. "Now that we've got her we 're going to keep her—you can bet on that."
He made a movement toward the fox.
"None of that!" cried Mac, sharply, and snapped a fresh cartridge into the rifle chamber.
"You would, would you?" cried the trapper, and instantly covered Peter with his gun. Fred had reloaded the shotgun, and he covered the man in his turn.
So for a moment they all stood at a deadlock.
"Put down your guns!" said Horace. "A fox pelt isn't worth killing a man for, and this pelt's no good, anyway. It's too late in the season. We're going to take this fox away with us alive. Stick to your beavers, for you can't steal this animal from us—and you can bet on that!" he added, with great emphasis.
"You might shoot one of us, but you'd have a hole in you the next minute," said Mac. "You'd better drop it, now, and get out!"
The trapper glared at them with a face as savage as a wildcat's. For a second Fred really expected him to shoot. Then, with a muttered curse, the man lowered his gun.
"You pups won't bark so loud when I come back!" he snarled. Then he turned, and started away at a rapid pace.
"Bluffed!" Fred exclaimed, trembling now that the strain was over.
"He's gone for the rest of his gang!" Mac cried. "Quick, we've got to get out of here!"
"Yes, and far away, too," said Horace, "now that we've caught the mother fox. We should never have got the male, anyway. Let's get this beauty into her box."
The black fox was indeed a beauty, but there was no time to admire her. Snarling viciously, she laid back her ears and showed her white teeth. Her hind leg was in the trap, but did not appear to have been injured by the padded jaws.
Horace cut two strong forked sticks, with which the boys pinned her down by the neck and hips. Fred opened the jaws of the trap; Mac picked the fox up firmly by the back of her neck, and in spite of her frantic struggles, thrust her into the cage.
Horace and Mac then seized the box, one at either end, and started toward the river; Fred carried the guns and kept a sharp lookout in front. The cage of foxes was not heavy, but it was so clumsy that the boys had hard work carrying it over the rough ground. After stumbling for a few rods, they cut a long pole and slipped it through the handles in the ends of the cage. After that they made somewhat better progress, although even then they could not travel at a very rapid pace.
"If those fellows have a canoe," panted Mac, "they'll be down the river before we can get to camp!"
"You may be sure they'll do their best," said Horace. "These foxes are probably worth ten times their winter catch. We'll have to break camp instantly and make for home as fast as we can."
They went plunging along through the thickets, and up and down the rocky hills; it was well that the cage was strong.
After more than an hour of this arduous tramping they heard the rush of the river. "We'd best scout a little way ahead before we go any farther," Horace declared.
They set down the cage, crept forward to the river and reconnoitered the bank. Their canoe was where they had left it, concealed behind a cedar thicket, and no other canoe was in sight up or down the river. Horace swept the shore with the field-glass.
"Nothing in sight," he reported. "We may have time to pack our outfit and get off, after all. Possibly those fellows haven't a canoe."
They quickly launched the canoe, and put the cage of black foxes amidships; Fred sat behind it in order to hold it steady. Horace took the stern paddle, and Peter the bow.
The river ran swift and rather shallow, but there were no dangerous rapids between them and camp. They swept down the current, and in a few minutes the tent came in sight. Horace took up the glass again, but he could see no sign of the trappers. They paddled on, intending to land at their usual place, but when they were scarcely twenty yards from the tent, Fred uttered a suppressed cry.
"Look! A canoe—lower down!" He spoke barely loud enough for his brother to hear him. He had caught a glimpse of the bow of a birch canoe, which was thrust back almost out of sight behind a willow clump below the campground.
"Run straight past!" Horace commanded, instantly. "Dig in your paddle, Mac!"
The canoe shot forward, and at doubled speed swept by the tent. As they passed it a man rose from behind a thicket and yelled hoarsely:—
"Stop, there! Halt!"
Bang! went a rifle somewhere behind them, and then the rapid crack! crack! crack! of more than one repeater. A bullet clipped through the sides of the canoe, fortunately well above the water-line. Another glanced from a rock, and hummed past them.
As the boys whirled by the ambushed birch canoe, Fred snatched up the shotgun, and sent two loads of buckshot tearing through its sides.
"That'll cripple them for a while!" he cried.
Bang! A better-aimed bullet dashed the steering paddle from Horace's hands. The canoe swerved, and heeled in the current. Horace snatched the extra paddle that lay in the stern, and brought the craft round just in time to prevent it from upsetting. As the paddle that had been hit floated past, Fred picked it up; it had a round hole through the handle.
The canoe was a hundred yards from the tent now, and was going so fast that it offered no easy target to the men behind, who, however, still continued to shoot. Another bullet nicked the stern. Glancing over his shoulder, Fred saw the three trappers running down the shore, and firing as they ran. But in another moment the canoe swept round a bend in the river, and was screened from the trappers by the wooded shore.
"Keep it up! Make all the speed you can!" cried Horace.
Down the fast current they shot like an arrow. As they went round another curve, they heard the roar of rushing water ahead; a short but turbulent rapid confronted them. There the river, foaming and surging, dashed down over the black rocks; the shore was rough and covered with dense thickets. The boys remembered the hard work they had had making a portage here on the way up; but there was no time to make a portage now.
"Down we go! Look sharp for her bow, Mac!" Horace sang out.
The rush of the rapid seemed to snatch up the canoe like a leaf. Fred caught his breath; the pit of his stomach seemed to sink. There was a deafening roar all around him, a chaos of white water, flying spray, and sharp rocks that sprang up and flashed behind. Then, before he had recovered his breath, they shot out into the smooth river below.
Six inches of water was slopping in the bottom of the canoe, but they ran on without stopping to bale it out. For over half a mile the smooth, swift current lasted; then came another rapid. It was longer and more dangerous than the other, and the boys carried the canoe and the foxes round it. They would not risk spilling the precious cage, and for the present they thought that they had outrun their pursuers.
For another mile or two they descended the river, until they came to another carry. They made the portage, and stopped at the bottom to discuss their situation and make their plans. They had escaped the trappers, indeed, and they had the foxes; but except the canoe, a blanket, the guns, and the light axe that Mac had at his belt, they had nothing else. "I guess this settles our prospecting, boys," said Horace. "What are we to do now? Shall we go on, or—"
"Or what?" Fred asked, as his brother stopped.
"I hardly know. But here we are, without supplies, and at least a hundred and fifty miles from any place where we can get them. We all know what a hard road it is, and going back it'll be up-stream all the way, after we leave this river."
"Do we have to go back the way we came?"
"Well, instead of turning up the Missanabie River when we come to it, we might go straight down it to Moose Factory, the Hudson Bay Company's post at the mouth; but if we did that, these foxes would never live till we got back to Toronto. It would be too long and hard a trip for them."
"That settles it. We don't go that way," said Mac. "Surely we can get home in ten or twelve days the way we came, and we ought to be able to kill enough to live on during that time."
"How many cartridges have we?" asked Horace dubiously.
Macgregor had nineteen cartridges in his belt, and there were six more in the magazine of the rifle. Fred had only ten shells in his pockets, and the shotgun was empty. They had left the fishing tackle at camp, but luckily they had plenty of matches.
"If we can get a deer within the next day or so, or even a few ducks or partridges, we may make it," said Horace. "But I've noticed that game is always scarce when you need it most. Now if we turned back and tried to recover our outfit, we should certainly have to fight the trappers, and probably we'd be worsted, for they outmatch us in weapons. One of us might be killed, and we'd be almost certain to lose the foxes."
"Trade these foxes for some flour and bacon? I'd starve first!" said Fred.
"So would I!" cried Macgregor. "But we won't starve. We didn't starve last winter, when we hadn't a match or a grain of powder, and when the mercury was below zero most of the time, too."
"Well, we'll go on, if you say so," said Horace. "It's a mighty dangerous trip, but I don't see what else we can do."
"Forward it is, then!" cried Fred.
"And hang the risk!" exclaimed Mac, springing up to push the canoe into the water.
"Do you think those men will really follow us, Horace?" asked Fred.
"Sure to," replied his brother. "It'll take them a few hours to patch up their canoe, but they 're probably better canoemen than we are, and we'll have to work mighty hard to keep ahead of them."
Fred was more optimistic. "They'll have to work mighty hard to keep up with us," he said, as they launched the canoe.
Going down the river was very different from coming up it. The current ran so swiftly that the boys could not add much to their speed by paddling; all they had to do was to steer the craft. The water was so high that they could run most of the rapids, and stretches that they had formerly toiled up with tumpline or tracking-line they now covered with the speed of a bullet.
Toward noon Fred became intolerably hungry; but neither of the others spoke of eating, and he did not mention his hunger. Mac, in the bow, put the shotgun where he could easily reach it, and scanned the shores for game as closely as he could; but no game showed itself. They traveled all day without seeing anything except now and then a few ducks, which always took wing while still far out of range.
At last they came to "Buck Rapids," where they had shot the deer. The river there was one succession of rapids, most of which were too dangerous to run through. It was the place where, on the way up, they had made only four miles in a whole day; and they did not cover more than ten miles this afternoon.
When they came to the long, narrow lake on the lower reaches of the river, the sun was setting. They were all pretty much exhausted with the toil and excitement of the day.
"I vote we stop here," said Mac. "There'll be a moon toward midnight, and we can go on then. We ought to get some sleep."
"I'm too hungry to sleep," said Fred.
"Well, so am I," Mac admitted. "But we can rest, anyway."
So they drew up the canoe and lighted a fire, partly from force of habit and partly to drive away the mosquitoes. They carefully lifted the fox cage ashore.
"We've nothing for them to eat," Horace said anxiously, "but they ought to have water, at any rate."
The difficulty was that they had nothing to put water into. Mac made a sort of cup from an old envelope, and filled it with water, but the animals shrank away and would not touch it. Feeling sure, however, that they must be thirsty, the boys carried the cage to the river, and set one end of it into the shallow water. For a few minutes the mother fox was shy, but presently she drank eagerly; then the cubs dipped their sharp noses into the water.
The boys spread their only blanket on a few hemlock boughs and lay down. Although they were so thoroughly tired, none of them could sleep. Fred's stomach was gnawed by hunger; he was still much excited, and in the rush of the river he fancied every minute or two that he heard the trappers approaching.
They lay there for some time, talking at intervals, and at last Mac got up restlessly. He threw fresh wood on the fire, in order to make a bright blaze; then from an old pine log close by he began to cut a number of resinous splinters. When he had collected a large handful of them, he went down to the canoe, and tried to fix them in the ring in the bow of the craft.
"What in the world are you doing?" asked Fred, who had got up to see what Peter was about.
Peter hammered the bundle of splinters home. "If we don't get meat in twelve hours we won't be able to travel fast—can't keep up steam," he said. "There's only one way to shoot game at night, and that's—"
"Jack light," said Horace, who recognized the device. "It's a regular pot-hunter's trick, but pot-hunters we are, and no mistake about that. I only hope it works."