My eyes fell on the automatic pistol in his hand.
“You’re —— whistlin’!” cried Slade suddenly as he thrust the weapon into my hands. I put it inside my shirt. “That don’t square us. Best I can do, though. Now, Mr. Pitt—” he gripped my hand—“God bless yoh!”
XXIII
I hurried back down the river-trail until I reached the ridge. Here I quitted the way I had come and climbed away over the hills toward the sea. My plan was to step aboard the Wanderer while Brack was absent, and without being seen by any of his men. Hence, I gave the cove where I had struck down Barry a wide berth. In fact, I did not follow the windings of the fiord at all but struck straight across the rough country toward where I judged the sea to be.
I got lost twice. Once I found myself turning toward the fiord and once I had circled back toward the lake. It was well into the afternoon when I found the rough seacoast and following it southward came to the mouth of the fiord and, from a hilltop looked down upon the Wanderer at anchor.
I saw now why my first impression of the morning had been that the yacht was surrounded by mountains. This was nearly so. The hills, one of which I was lying on, walled the fiord in on both sides, while across its mouth, shutting it in from the sea and leaving only a narrow channel on either side, lay a narrow, crescent-shaped island consisting of a fir-covered hill of equal height to those of the mainland.
The Hidden Country! It was the inevitable name for the region.
Small wonder that Kalmut Fiord was not on the maps. It lay behind its crescent-shaped island securely hidden from all the world. Outside, the dun, gray North Pacific heaved and murmured, a part of the busy world. Somewhere on its restless water ships were sailing, men were active in the doings of our day and age. But in the hidden country behind the island there was no such suggestion.
The fiord lay hill-ringed and calm, a part of the world, and yet not of it. Its green Spring foliage, delicate, masking gray hills and black cliffs, its quiet blue water, its virgin beaches, its very air, all were heavy with the primitive’s eternal calm.
As I looked about I saw that the heights immediately about the fiord were in reality but foot-hills of a great valley. And the valley was ringed in by a mountain range. West, north, east—everywhere save toward the open sea southward—a curving wall of towering mountains shut it in. There was snow on most of the peaks, and others were wrapped in wisps of clouds. One great narrow gash, seeming to cleave the range down to sea level, was visible in the west. Save for this, the Kalmut Valley seemed a spot walled in by frowning stone.