Ronald slept no more that night. His mind was too full of anxiety, his apprehensions and imagination too wide awake. He tried to convince himself that Nangotook had gone too far in pursuit of game to get back before dark, so had camped and waited for daylight. The lad could convince his reason of all this but not his imagination. It kept picturing to him how the Ojibwa might have been ambushed or waylaid by his enemies, and left dead in his tracks. He began to worry about Jean alone in the camp. If the evil Frenchman had made way with Nangotook, would not the next move be to steal upon the camp at night and get Jean also? At that point in his imaginings, common sense reasserted itself. What possible reason could the Frenchman have for destroying them all? If he knew why they had come back to the lake, and was following them, he would surely not want to put them out of the way until they had led him to the golden sands. “But,” whispered his imagination, “he might work to separate you and get rid of you two boys. He did try to get rid of you when he knocked you over the cliff. He might think he could force or bribe Nangotook to lead him to the island.” In such manner the lad’s thoughts and feelings argued with one another through the rest of the night, which seemed to him well-nigh endless.
Dawn came at last, and Ronald crawled out of his shelter. The rain had ceased, but the morning was cold and raw, and he was stiff and shivering. He had made up his mind to return to camp first and see if Jean was safe. Then they would cache their meat supply, come back, and follow Nangotook’s trail, to find out what had become of him.
Ronald paddled back to the camping ground at his best speed. When he entered the little bay he was relieved to see Jean.
Jean turned at Ronald’s shout. Seeing the latter returning alone, he stared in amazement, and then ran down to the water calling out questions. When he had heard Ronald’s story, his anxiety was even greater than his comrade’s, for Nangotook had always been a devoted friend to him, and Jean was very fond of the Indian. Hurriedly the two took the meat from the fire, wrapped it in bark, and hung it in a tree for safe keeping. Then, waiting only long enough to eat a little of the broiled meat, they launched the canoe and made speed back to the place where Ronald had passed the night. Before taking to the trail, however, they carried the canoe some distance from the landing place, hid it in a thicket, and did their best to erase all signs that might lead to its discovery. If Le Forgeron Tordu were anywhere about, the lads had no intention of letting him steal the canoe while they were searching for Nangotook.
[XXV]
THE RED SPOT AMONG THE GREEN
Jean and Ronald went first to the spot on the ridge where the three hunters had separated. From there they attempted to trace the caribou trail Nangotook had set out to follow. It was a well traveled track, which had evidently been much used by the animals, and was not difficult to follow for a mile or more. Then the boys lost it in a bog, where the rain of the night before had soaked the spongy moss and had caused it to expand and blot out all tracks. There were plenty of evidences that caribou had visited the place more than once. Here and there plants and bushes had been nibbled and cropped, and small trees had been stripped of bark and branches far above where hares could reach. Evidently the caribou had wandered about all over the bog to feed, but had made no well defined trail through it.
When the lads tried to determine which way the animals had gone, and Nangotook after them, they encountered a difficult problem. In the woods that encircled the wetter and more open part of the bog, there were half a dozen breaks where caribou might have gone through and where the Indian might have followed their tracks. Jean and Ronald examined all of the openings, and tried to decide which one Nangotook had probably used. The ground was still spongy, and the rain had obliterated all footprints. The trees and bushes around one of the openings showed signs of recent nibbling, however, and the boys decided to try that one. But they had not gone far when they lost all trace of the trail, if trail it really was. There were no more nibbled trees, and no indications that any animal had ever been through the thick tangle of standing and fallen cedar and black spruce.
The two retraced their steps to the bog, and tried another of the openings, to meet with a similar disappointment. The third attempt was more successful. The track was faint indeed, so faint that Ronald could never have followed it if he had been alone, but Jean was a better woodsman, with a surer instinct for a trail. He led the way, through swamp woods, and up rising ground, partly wooded, partly open, until they reached a spot where they could look out over the lake to the north. There, along the ridge, the reindeer lichen had been cropped close in many places, proving beyond a doubt that caribou had been there, whether they had come the way the boys had just traveled or not. From the ridge top the descent to the lake was steep, with broken cliffs and a rough, inhospitable, stony beach at the base. After Jean had climbed a jack pine to get a better view of the surroundings, the two followed along the ridge to the southwest, noting the cropped moss and nibbled bushes as they went.
Reaching a gully, which bore signs that the animals might have gone that way, the boys scrambled through it and down over the rocks to the narrow, stony beach. A rocky, wooded island, perhaps a quarter of a mile out and almost parallel with the shore, served as a slight windbreak and had probably aided in the formation of the beach, which was about a mile in length. Beyond it on either hand the cliffs rose straight from the water.