WAS IT A SPY?
The other fellows were coming crawling out from the larger tent when Ned and Jack reached the open air. All of them were carrying guns, as though laboring under an impression that the camp must be assailed by a rival force.
They found the two guides standing there, and peering out toward a certain quarter. Both were too old hands at this sort of thing to show the least sign of excitement, but Jimmy made up for any lack on their part.
"For the love of Mike where's the invader now? Did he trample all over you, Francois, and is that the brand of his cloven hoof on your hunting shirt now? Was it the same old bull moose, or a new kind of muskeg giant, as big as a church? Show him to me, and see how quick I'll bowl the critter over!"
"Keep still, will you, Jimmy, and let Ned do the talking," advised Jack.
"What did you fire at, Francois?" asked Ned, turning to the guide, for somehow he seemed to naturally guess that it was the French Canadian who had done the shooting, possibly because his voice had been heard raised in a challenge.
"Man, at all I know, sare," replied the other, still looking out into the semi-gloom wistfully.
"I heard you call out loud enough, just as you said you would do," Ned continued; "and instead of answering, did he turn and run away?"
"Zat is just what happen," replied the guide. "He act mooch like ze spy, and so I give heem ze shot."
"Do you think you hit him, Francois?" demanded Frank.
The other rolled up his shoulders, and made the usual "face" as he answered:
"I do not know for sure, sare. Ze light it was mos' uncertain like. I aim down low as I pull ze trigger. Zen he disappear, and I am unable to say if so be he drop down just to sneak avay, or because he wounded."
"Well, we can soon find out," impulsive Jimmy exclaimed; "me to grab up a fine torch, and lead the way. Some of the rest of you form a bodyguard around me, and be ready to give 'em a volley if they so much as peep."
It was just what Ned had been about to propose, so as Jimmy thought of the plan first he was allowed to have his way.
The fagot which Jimmy picked out of the fire was burning briskly by now, at one end, and could be made to serve very well as a torch, if only one knew how to handle it. Jimmy had taken lessons in this art, and first of all he swung the brand swiftly around his head several times, so as to make it burn more briskly.
"There, that will do, Jimmy," Jack told him; "and now lead us out, you ferocious little monster. Hold the torch so it won't blind us, remember. And if they open fire you be sure to duck, so we won't be shooting you in the back."
"Oh! I'll side-step all right, if only you give me the tip," Jimmy went on to say.
He was already starting out with Francois to show him the way to the spot where the latter had his last glimpse of the supposed spy. All of the scouts were fairly quivering with eagerness; and at the same time a cold feeling began to creep over them at the thought of what they might discover the next minute.
Francois had shot low, and only meant to wound, but then his bullet might have glanced upward, and inflicted a fatal injury.
A dozen and more paces they went. Everyone was excited, and looking this way and that, for who could say what the adventure might not mean? If there was one prowler around there might be a dozen or a score. They remembered what Ned had said concerning the possibility of the reckless plotters composing the mining syndicate gathering together a lawless crowd, and meaning to chase the explorers out of that section of country, should they threaten to discover that a fraud was in the act of being perpetrated.
"Was it about here, Francois, that you saw him vanish?" asked Ned, who had been keeping an eye on the guide, and judged from his actions that they must have arrived close to the suspected spot.
"I am think so, ver' mooch," admitted Francois, eagerly, and then after taking a backward look toward the campfire, he added: "Yes, it ees so, sare. I gif you ze word of a man zat ought to know, zat he was here when I fire ze shot."
"Well, it looks as though you didn't knock him over, Francois," observed Frank, "because there was nobody lying amidst the brush."
Without replying, the French Canadian and the Indian guide fell on their knees, and seemed to be closely examining the ground upon which none of the party had as yet set afoot.
"Tamasjo has found something," observed Teddy quickly, as he saw the Indian lower his head closer to the ground, and evidently examine some object with eagerness.
Ned was down beside him almost instantly.
"It's a plain footprint, all right," he announced as soon as he had been able to take a quick observation.
"That proves Francois did see a skulker then, and wasn't dreaming," Jack was heard to say, as though he may have been entertaining some doubt on the subject up to that moment.
"He scared him off, even if his lead was thrown away," Jimmy ventured, with a slight touch of scorn in his manner, as though he fancied he could have given a better account of himself, had the chance come his way.
"Hold on, don't be in such a rushing big hurry to say he wasted his lead," Ned warned him.
"What's that, Ned; did he hit the sneak after all?" Jack demanded.
"Well, spots of fresh blood don't grow on the bushes up here, even if we do seem to run across lots of queer things," Ned went on to say, as he pointed to where they could all see that it was so.
This fact added to the excitement. If the unknown whom they looked on as some species of spy, had been wounded, it looked like a serious piece of business for the little party of explorers. He must have friends not far away, and after the gantlet of defiance had been thrown down by this shot, these men might lose all restraint and show that they were disposed to act in an ugly way.
It meant that the former sense of security and indifference was a thing of the past. From this time on the scouts must keep constantly on the alert to guard against a sudden surprise. They must learn to watch for danger in every quarter, and not allow themselves to sleep on post.
All this change was caused by the discovery of that one small spot of shed blood. Even the usually talkative Jimmy seemed to have become dumb for the time being, as though realizing the gravity of the situation.
"Do we try to track the fellow, Ned?" asked Teddy.
"I don't think that would be a wise thing to attempt," came the reply. "In the first place we couldn't make any headway without a light; and that would expose the lot of us to his fire, if he found himself being overtaken, and was still smarting under the pain of his wound. Then again, we don't know who he may be, or what friends he may have close by. No, the best thing for us to do is to go back to our camp, and try to get a little more sleep. We'll put out the fire, and one of the guides will sit up for two hours with me. Then we'll wake another couple, and in that way pass the rest of the night."
"Sounds like business at the old stand," remarked Jimmy, "Many's the time the lot of us have done that same thing. And, Ned, I'm in hopes you'll be after lettin' me sit up with you. Never a bit of sleep is there in me eyes at this minute. I'm staring like any old hoot owl in a Virginia swamp. Don't tell me to beat it if you love me the least bit. My lamps won't go shut, that's flat, and I might as well sit up with you as lie down, and just stare and stare."
"Oh! suit yourself, Jimmy," Ned told the urgent one; "though of course I'll be only too glad to have your company, if, only you'll remember to keep still. When we have to serve as guards to the camp it's a still tongue that counts for the most."
"I'll promise to be as dumb as an oyster, Ned," pleaded the other; and so it was settled that he could help to stand the first watch.
The balance of the expedition once more settled down. Jack crawled alone into the smaller tent, while Frank and Teddy occupied the other. Francois and the Indian consulted with Ned, and then the fire was wholly extinguished. Tamasjo went over to sleep in one of the canoes, for if there should be any attack on the camp it was believed that it would begin in this quarter, as the frail craft might be reckoned their weakest and most vulnerable point.
Ned Nestor had often sat out a watch, and in the midst of a wilderness, too; but somehow the conditions seemed vastly different now from anything he had ever known before. In most other cases he could listen to the various well-known voices of the night—from katydids and crickets, to frogs in the marsh, night birds seeking their prey, or it might be the small animals of the forest barking or giving tongue.
Away up here in the vast Northern solitudes a dreadful silence seemed to hang upon all Nature. Insects there were none, of a species to cause a humming sound, and save for croaking of frogs some distance away the stillness remained unbroken for a long time.
The wolf pack broke loose again, doubtless hot on the track of a fleeing caribou, perhaps the unfortunate one that had been wounded by Jimmy on the preceding day when Frank knocked over the fine animal from which their late supper had come. Ned listened to the chorus, and allowed his thoughts to roam to other and more distant scenes, where he had had exciting experiences with the hungry animals himself, calculated to cause a shudder just to remember.
The time passed slowly. Several louder bursts of wolfish tongues told when the hunting pack chanced to draw nearer the camp, but only to grow fainter again in the distance, as the chase led the animals over barrens where the caribou herd fed, and across wild cranberry bogs, such as the boys could remember seeing up in Northern New York State when camping in the Adirondacks.
When Ned reckoned that his time was up he woke Jimmy, who had long ago gone to sleep as sweetly as you please, with his head leaning against the butt of a tree. Ned told him he might just as well crawl under the tent and get the benefit of a warm blanket; and after giving that advice called Frank and Jack out.
Teddy never so much as moved when Jimmy crept in to warm up under his woolen cover, for Teddy was a very good sleeper on any and all occasions, it seemed. Since there was no especial need of more sentries than the two, with the Indian and Francois to back them, Ned did not have the heart to arouse Teddy, even though he knew very well the other would reproach him for neglecting to do so.
There was no further alarm on that night, for which doubtless all of the boys were thankful, though Jimmy later on loudly bewailed the fact that he had been given no chance to make use of his faithful gun. Jimmy was not at all bloodthirsty, though any one hearing him talk, and not knowing his humorous nature, might be inclined to think so. But after a most venomous harangue he would very likely wink his eye drolly at the fellow scout he was addressing, and softly remark:
"But it isn't in my heart, and you know that!"
Jack declared that once during his watch he fancied he caught some sound out on the bosom of the dark river that might have been a big fish leaping, but which he was inclined to believe was made by a carelessly used paddle.
Of course there was no way of verifying this suspicion, because water unfortunately leaves no trail. Frank advanced the idea that it might have been the same spy who had been prowling around their camp.
"Suppose he had a canoe handy," he went on to suggest. "I can't imagine any living soul being away up in this country without some kind of a boat so as to get around. Now which way would he be likely to go, do you think, Ned?"
"If what Jack heard, and you didn't, was the sound of a working paddle," Ned told him, "I should say that the party went up the river. If moving with the current, you understand, there would be no need to swing his paddle at all, but simply let his boat float along till past our camp."
Francois, who had been listening to all this talk while cooking breakfast, nodded his head approvingly.
"Zat it so, sare," he ventured to observe. "Eef you ask me I haf to say ze same t'ing. Mebbe it was canoe, mebbe it was some seal zat come all ze way up zis rifer from zat big ocean zey call Hudson Bay, and which zey tell me ees six hundred mile from one shore to ze other."
"A real genuine seal, does he mean, Ned?" exclaimed Jimmy; "now I would like to set eyes on one of the glossy little chaps like those I've fed in the museum down at the Battery in little old New York."
"Made enough noise to have been a hippopotamus, if only such warm-blooded Nile amphibious animals lived in these Arctic rivers," Jack declared; "but after all it doesn't matter, only if the spy went up the stream we're better be off, because that would show his crowd would be found there, and not below."
"And I suppose that after this, while we sail on through cataracts, and along the smoother stretches we've got to keep our eyes peeled for signs of an ambuscade," Teddy observed. "Well, luckily we've got some pretty sharp-eyed fellows along with us; and then there are the experienced guides. Who cares for expenses? As long as I can poke into unknown sections where few white men have ever set foot, and Frank can write stunning letters to his paper about the strange things we run across, it doesn't matter a cookey. We'll get to our destination, and we're bound to find out all we came to see, because the scouts always do succeed."
It was in this same confident spirit that the little party embarked shortly afterwards. Not one of them felt faint-hearted as the unknown future loomed up before them. Nevertheless, could they have known just then of the astonishing experiences through which they were shortly fated to pass, possibly their pulses must have quickened under the strain.
The sun was well above the far-eastern horizon when they entered the three canoes, having carefully loaded the same with an eye to rough rapids ahead, and pushing out, trolling a Canadian boat song Francois had taught them, started on the day's voyage.