CHAPTER XV
MANITOUS AND SHADES OF THE DEPARTED
"After I had left you, I journeyed three days to the northward, till I came to the mouth of the Forbidden River. There I found the cache which you spoke to me about; but I did not break into it at that time, as I was still well provided with food and ammunition. Because you had told me that the Forbidden River was unexplored and never visited, being haunted by Manitous and shades of the dead, I turned into it and travelled up it—I thought that I should find safety there.
"On the second day, just as evening was falling, I saw the flare of a camp-fire, about two miles ahead. You'll remember that my nerves were badly shaken when I came to you at Murder Point; and they hadn't been much improved by those five days of flight through the winter loneliness. When I saw that light blaze up in the distance, I began to be afraid—and it wasn't the fear of men that I was thinking about. I waited until it was utterly night and then, leaving my dogs behind, stole stealthily forward to prospect. As I drew nearer, I saw that a hut of boughs had been erected, and that a man was sitting, with his rifle on his knees, before the fire. He was very old and tall. But I had no opportunity to get a closer view of him, for, at that moment, he must have heard me; he put his head on one side to listen, and rose to his feet. Without the waste of any time, he fired in my direction. Luckily I had thrown myself flat along the snow, for the bullet whizzed over my head. He advanced towards me a little way, and then, thinking that he had been mistaken, went back to his fire, grumbling to himself, and sat down. The cold ate into my bones, yet I dared not stir until I was certain that he had gone to sleep. Presently he arose, looked suspiciously around, piled more wood on his fire, and went into his hut.
"I hurried back to where I had left my dogs, harnessed them in and, leaving the river-bank, travelled into the bush for a distance of about two miles; there I tied them up, and then returned to the river by myself, coming out at a point somewhat nearer to the old man's hut. I lay down behind a clump of trees and waited. Before day had come, I could hear that he was astir; but he seemed to be almighty busy for a Keewatin trapper, who was only changing camp. About midday he had made his preparations, and, stamping out his fire, set out down-stream, in the direction of the Last Chance River. I knew that in half-an-hour he must come across my trail, and have his suspicions of the previous night confirmed. Sure enough, after he had passed my place of hiding and had got below me about three hundred yards, he struck my tracks. He pulled up sharply, and wheeled round, as if he could feel that my eyes were watching him; he threw up his head like an old bull caribou scenting danger.
"I had left two trails leading from that point, the one towards his hut and back again, the other into the bush to where my dogs were tethered. If he was determined to follow up the latter and to trace me to my hiding, I was ready for him, and would have the advantage of knowing his whereabouts, whilst he was ignorant of mine. He must have been going through some such argument himself, for presently he whipped up his dogs and, with one last glance across his shoulder, continued on his journey. When he had vanished, and I had made certain that he did not intend to return, I went forward to inspect his abandoned camp.
"Inside the hut I found that the floor was of earth and below the snow-level, making evident the fact that it had been erected before the winter had commenced. When I examined the walls, which were constructed of boughs and mud, I came to the conclusion that they had been standing for many years, but had been renewed from time to time. All this made it clear to me that you had been mistaken in saying that the Forbidden River had never been travelled. The next thing to discover was what had brought the old man up there. The earth of the floor was not packed together, but looked loose and rough, as though it had been newly dug. This gave me my first clue to the secret. When I walked above it, it did not sound solid, so I commenced to scrape away the earth. Six inches down I came to branches of trees spread crosswise, as though to form a roof to a cellar. Pulling these aside, after another hour of labour, I looked down into a pit which had been hollowed out. It was getting dark now, so I lit a fire.
"I climbed into the pit, by some rudely fashioned stairs which had been shaped in the side of the wall, and soon found myself on level footing. Groping about down there, I could feel that the sides were tunnelled, and had been roughly timbered with the stems of trees. Going above ground, I fetched a torch and then saw all that I had commenced to suspect—and a good deal more.