"After him!" bellowed Mike at the top of his voice, as he plunged through the bushes. As for Hank, no sound left his lips. The little man trailed his rifle and went off after Hurley with his head down and his ears pricked, and eager to catch every sound. Need the reader feel surprised that Joe followed suit. Recovering from the utter astonishment into which the sudden manoeuvre had thrown him, he gripped his own weapon and darted after his comrades. He could hear them directly to the front, and dashed headlong after them. Then his already-wounded head came into somewhat violent contact with a branch, and Joe sat down rapidly. But he pulled himself together after a while, and, with his brain dizzy and buzzing, thrust his way onward through the dense growth of trees and underwood. How long he continued the effort he never knew. Suffice it to say that he made a desperate endeavour to keep up with and gain upon his fellows. Then, of a sudden, he discovered that there was not one single sound to direct him. A minute before he had imagined he heard the crash of men dashing through the forest; now there was a deathly silence all about him. He stood still, panting, endeavouring to silence his own breathing and to still the thud of his throbbing heart. No, not a sound but what was made by himself. He shouted—not an answer; not a shout in return. He called loudly on Hank and Mike to tell him of their direction. Then, as the minutes passed and silence still surrounded him, he pushed valiantly on amongst the trees, hoping every half-minute that there would be a signal. Whether he went directly forward or retraced his steps, or faced the east, the west, the south, or the north, Joe was entirely ignorant. He was lost, in fact. The knowledge after a while drove him frantic, so that he plunged aimlessly to and fro; then, fortunately for him, perhaps, a second collision with a tree knocked him senseless. For the moment his troubles were forgotten, though his plight was still the same; and the plight of a man lost in the backwoods of Canada is often enough desperate. Indeed, many a poor fellow has gone, never to be found again, swallowed by the trees which, as the years roll on, are felled to form the log huts of the settlers crowding into the Dominion.
CHAPTER X
A Hand-to-hand Encounter
While Joe lies senseless in the depths of the forest, lost entirely to his friends, and in as desperate a condition as he well could be, it will be as well to follow the footsteps of Mike and Hank as they dashed away in pursuit of Hurley. Both were well accustomed to the muskegs and the timbered lands of Canada, and, if only the truth were known, had before now been engaged in a similar expedition. But following a murderer during the daytime through such a place, and at a sedate pace, was entirely different from the same attempt at night, and all the while at such speed that precautions could not be taken.
"Ef that ain't the third time I've barged into a tree trunk and near had all the breath knocked out of my body," growled Mike, when he had progressed a mile, and was still well behind Hank. "Seems to me that we should ha' done better to sit down and wait till morning, or lit pine knots and then followed. Hank may do it; I shan't. This forest fairly beats me."
But Mike was a man possessed of wonderful perseverance and tenacity, and, in spite of the numerous occasions on which he blundered into trees, he held to the chase till he also, like Joe, lost his comrade. He stood listening for a sound to tell him where Hank was striding between the trees, then, hearing nothing after quite a long wait, the wary and experienced Mike sat down in the most comfortable attitude he could assume, dragged his ever-faithful pipe from his pocket, and, having filled and lit the weed, puffed away philosophically.
"Hurley ain't got nothing to fear from me, that's certain," he told himself, not without some amount of disappointment and bitterness. "But Hank is the boy to keep him running. The little chap is that hard, he could keep at it all night and right into to-morrow, and he'll stick to his man unless something clean throws him off the scent. For me, reckon I'm trapped here. I'll have a smoke and then a sleep. Early in the morning I'll consider things, and then push on or make back to the hut, as seems best."
Meanwhile Hank slid through the forest as only a practised hunter could have done. It was on this night expedition that he proved his worth, as also the value of an early training. For while Mike dashed so often against a tree, and we know that Joe had done so to his own injury, Hank seemed intuitively to know when a low-hung branch stretched across the path he was following. More than that, somehow he contrived to keep directly on the trail which Hurley was making.
"I'm getting closer," he told himself, when a whole hour had passed. "Any time now Hurley'll turn, and then, ef he don't climb down and cry out that he's beaten, I'll have to put lead into his carcass. That's him 'way ahead, making as much noise as a bull would ef he was gallopin' through the forest."