“It was the last thing we could do together,” Dick explained, “for I was going to enlist when I got back; I had only been waiting until they could find some one to fill my place at the mine. We started off in great spirits; the Indian, Kaniska, was our guide, a man we had had before, who always seemed reliable enough. He was a friend of John’s, in a way, and that queer squaw of his, Laughing Mary, had always professed to be devoted to us, especially to my brother. I can’t imagine how Kaniska could have done such a thing to us.”
“And what did he do?” inquired Hugh eagerly.
“He took us in a direction we had never been before,” said Dick, “through a perfect network of streams and little lakes and swamps, and made us push on as fast as we could, saying that we were getting to a place where there was famous shooting. We did not camp until very late that first night and I was so tired that I slept like the dead. When I woke up in the morning, he was gone.”
“He left you alone?” exclaimed Hugh in horror.
“Not only that, but he took all our stores with him, and our axes and our compass. To leave men in the woods, stripped of everything they need, is very little short of murder. I had been sleeping with my rifle beside me, so he didn’t dare take that. It was the only thing that saved us.”
“And you have lived only on what you could shoot?” questioned Hugh. “Why, you must be half famished!”
“I am,” assented Dick, cheerfully, “rather more than half, to tell the truth, but we must attend to Johnny first.”
When at last there was time to stir up the fire and prepare a meal, Hugh realized on seeing Dick eat how near he had been to real starvation.
“Berries and things are pretty scarce so late in the year as this,” Dick continued his tale as they sat at the table. “I managed to catch a few fish now and then, and I shot any kind of bird that I could hit. We ate some queer things, but you get so that you don’t care much. Nicholas could catch rabbits and he always brought them to me, although, poor fellow, he could have eaten a hundred of them himself.”
He related how, after a few hours of bewildered searching for the vanished Indian, he had decided that the stream upon which they were encamped, being larger than the others and flowing north, must be the outlet of Red Lake and was therefore the best guide to follow. If he could find the lake, he could find Rudolm, he thought, but what a long and hopeless way it seemed! Now and then, in trying to cut off some of the windings of the stream, they had strayed away from it altogether and had only found it again after the loss of much time and effort.