It had been nearly six o’clock before Stonor left Myengeen’s village, and the sun went down while he was still far from the head of the lake. He surveyed the flat shores somewhat anxiously. Nowhere, as far as he could see, was there any promising landing-place. In the end he decided to sail on through the night. As darkness gathered he took his bearings from the stars. With the going-down of the sun the wind moderated, but it still held fair and strong enough to give him good steerage-way. After an hour or two the shores began to close around him. He could not find the outlet of the river in the dark, so he drove into the reeds, and, taking down his sail, supped on cold bread and lake-water and lay down in his canoe.
In the morning he found the river without difficulty. It was a sluggish stream here, winding interminably between low cut banks, edged with dangling grass-roots on the one side and mud-flats on the other. From the canoe he could see nothing above the banks. Landing to take a survey, Stonor beheld a vast treeless bottom, covered with rank grass, and stretching to low piny ridges several miles back on either hand. No tell-tale thread of smoke on the still air betrayed the camp of the man he was seeking.
He resumed his way. Of his whole journey this part was the most difficult trial to his patience. There was just current enough to mock at his efforts with the paddle. He seemed scarcely to crawl. It was maddening after his brisk progress up the lake. Moreover, each bend was so much like the last that he had no sense of getting on, and the invariable banks hemmed in his sight. He felt like a man condemned to a treadmill.
He had been about two hours on the river when he saw a little object floating towards him on the current that instantly caught his eye because it had the look of something fashioned. He paddled to it with a beating heart. It proved to be a tiny raft contrived out of several lengths of stout stick, tied together with strips of rag. On the little platform, out of reach of the water, was tied with another strip a roll of the white outer bark of the birch. Stonor untied it and spread it out on his knee with a trembling hand. It was a letter printed in crooked characters with a point charred in the fire.
A warm stream forced its way into the trooper’s frozen breast, and the terrible strained look in his eyes relaxed. For a moment he covered his eyes with his arm, though there was none to see. His most dreadful and unacknowledged fear was for the moment relieved. Gratitude filled him.
“Good old Mary!” he thought. “She went to all that trouble just on the chance of easing my mind. By God! if we come through this all right I’ll do something for her!”
“Him scar of crazee,” puzzled him for a while, until it occurred to him that Mary wished to convey that Imbrie let Clare alone because he believed that her loss of memory was akin to insanity. This was where the red strain in him told. All Indians have a superstitious awe of the insane. The sign at the end of the letter was for mountains, of course. The word, no doubt, was beyond Mary’s spelling. What care and circumspection must have gone to the writing and the launching of the note! It must all have been done while Imbrie slept.
Stonor applied himself to his paddle again with a better heart. After two hours more he came to their camping-place of the night before. It was a spot designed by Nature for a camp, with a little beach of clean sand below, and a grove of willow and birch above. Stonor landed to see what tell-tale signs they had left behind them.