On every trip they carried a piece of smoked fish, a small ax, steel, flint, and tinder; and hooks and fish-lines. They also never went without Bruce’s small compass. [[127]]About the use of the compass Ganawa had laughingly cautioned them on one point, saying: “My sons, I have seen several white men get lost with their compass. The compass is wise and can always tell you where the north star is and where the sun is at noon, but it cannot tell you where your tepee is; so you must always remember in what direction and about how far you went from your tepee.”
In this manner they examined every creek, lake, and pond that might have tempted trappers and traders to camp. They found several places where at some time Indians had camped, but in all their search they discovered just one spot which Ganawa pronounced to have been a white man’s camp. It was close to the river at the mouth of a cold-spring stream.
“The men who camped here cut big wood and built a big fire,” explained Ganawa. “Indians do not cut big wood and do not build a big fire. The dry balsam boughs of their bed show us that there [[128]]were two men, and they made camp about twelve moons ago after the balsam-trees had begun to make a new growth. They camped here more than one night, because they cut and burnt a good deal of wood.”
Bruce and Ray tried hard to read more from the signs of the camp. In what direction were the men travelling? With what object did they come to this wild part of the continent? The lads even looked with great care for some written message, but they found absolutely nothing to give them more information than Ganawa had read from the signs of the camp.
“I wish something would happen,” Ray said one evening as he and Bruce were returning tired and hungry from one of their fruitless exploring trips. “It isn’t much fun to be eaten up by the black flies in the brush,” and a few days later something did happen. [[129]]
CHAPTER XVI
A DOUBLE SURPRISE
The thing happened on a fine quiet summer afternoon. Ganawa and Ray were enjoying the fine weather near the tepee. Bruce had taken the canoe and the dog across the river and was sitting on a knoll from which he had a fine view of a short stretch of the river. He was thinking over the plan that Ganawa had proposed for the future. “We must either travel up the river,” Ganawa had said, “or we must start off for another part of the country, perhaps to some big lake.”
The whole plan seemed sort of bootless and headless to Bruce and he felt decidedly blue about the whole outlook. “We might as well,” he thought, “hunt for a certain pebble somewhere on the shore of Lake Superior, as expect to find Jack Dutton or [[130]]anybody else in this endless wilderness of a million lakes and streams and rivers and rocky hills. If anybody lived in this God-forsaken country, the black flies and mosquitoes wouldn’t be so hungry. I think Jack and I were a couple of big …” and then the train of his thought was suddenly broken by something he saw coming around the bend in the river. Bruce stood up to make sure he was not mistaken. No, there it was. An Indian in a small birch-bark canoe was paddling hard up-stream, and the fellow had a gun leaning in the bow of the canoe. He was close to the other shore, and would see Ganawa’s camp before Ganawa or Ray were likely to see him. Bruce knew that Ganawa expected no friendly visitor, in fact, he thought he recognized the Indian. Bruce was too far from camp to call to Ganawa. For a moment he did not know what to do, and then he did a desperate thing. He fired his gun and let out as wild a yell as he could utter.