The Secret Cache: An Adventure and Mystery Story for Boys
XVII THE SEALED PACKET
Hastily Hugh thrust the unopened packet into the breast of his deerskintunic, and looked up apprehensively at the border of green about the rimof the pit. The man who had shouted could not be far away. There might beothers even nearer. If anyone should push through that protecting fringeof growth, he would be looking directly down on the two lads. The baleswould be in plain view.
Hugh thought quickly. "We must conceal the furs again, Blaise," hewhispered, "until we can find some way to get them to the boat."
Blaise nodded. "We will take them away at night."
Rapidly and with many an apprehensive glance upward, the two replaced thebales on the platform of poles, covered the heap with the cedar boughsand built up the stones around and over the whole. They were in too greathaste to do as careful a piece of work as Jean Beaupre had done. Theirrock pile would scarcely have stood close scrutiny without betrayingsomething suspicious. From above, however, its appearance was innocentenough, and no chance comer would be likely to descend into the hole.
Squeezing through the narrow slit, the brothers examined the cleft thatran down in a steep incline of rock fragments to the water. The simplestplan would be to bring the boat in there. With strangers likely to appearat any moment, it would be best to wait until nightfall. The two decidedto return to the cove where they had camped, and wait for darkness.
Back through the fissure and over the low ground behind the shore ridge,they made their way cautiously, silently. They went slowly, taking painsto efface any noticeable tracks or signs of their passage, and watchingand listening alertly for any sight or sound of human beings. A rustlingin the bushes caused both to stand motionless until they caught sight ofthe cause, a little, bright-eyed squirrel or a gray-brown snowshoe rabbitwith long ears and big hind feet. Both boys would have liked that freshmeat for the dinner pot, but they had no wish to attract attention by ashot.
When they reached the top of the cliff, they found that the fog hadentirely disappeared, driven away by a light breeze. As they went downthe steep, open slope to the little beach, they knew themselves to beexposed to the view of anyone who might happen to be looking out from thewoods bordering the cove. Anxiously they scanned woods, rocks and lake,but saw no sign of any human being. Not a living creature but a fish duckpeacefully riding the water was to be seen. The boat and supplies wereundisturbed.
The boys stayed quietly in the cove during the remaining hours ofdaylight. The beach was partially hidden from the water by the end of theshore ridge, and screened on the land side by the dense growth of treesand bushes bordering the pebbles. Beyond the beach was a vertical rockcliff sheer to the water from its forested summit. Then came anothershort stretch of pebbles bounded by a low rock wall and protected by thejutting mass of rock, only scantily wooded, that formed the dividing linebetween the twin coves. To anyone standing over there or among the treesat the edge of the high central cliff, the boys and their boat would havebeen in plain sight. The shot Blaise had heard in the early dawn had comefrom somewhere above that cliff, but it was not likely that the man whohad fired that shot was still there. Doubtless he had been hunting. Atany rate the lads had no better place to wait for darkness to come. Theywere at least far enough from the pit so their discovery by wanderingIndians or white hunters need not lead to the finding of the furs. As theday wore on, the brothers cast many an anxious glance around the shoresof the cove. They were startled whenever a squirrel chattered, awoodpecker tapped loudly on a branch, or two tree trunks rubbed againstone another, swayed by a stronger gust of wind.
As their food was ill adapted to being eaten raw, they permittedthemselves a small cooking fire, taking care to use only thoroughly drywood and to keep a clear flame with as little smoke as possible. Afterthe kettle had been swung over the fire, Hugh drew from his breast thepacket and examined the outside carefully. The wrapping was of oiledfish-skin tied securely.
"Shall we open it, Blaise?" he asked again.
The younger boy cast a quick glance about him, at the rock slope they haddescended, the dense bushes beyond the pebbles, the forest rim along thesummit of the high central cliff, the rough, wave-eaten rock mass acrossthe cove. Then his eyes returned to his companion's face and he noddedsilently.
Curious though he was, Hugh was deliberate in opening the mysteriouspacket. He untied the cord and removed the outer cover carefully not totear it. Within the oiled skin wrapper was still another of the finest,whitest, softest doeskin, tied with the same sort of bark cord. The cordhad been passed through holes in a square of paper-thin birch bark. Onthe bark label was written in the same faint, muddy brown ink Blaise hadused:
"To be delivered to M. Rene Dubois, At Montreal. Of great importance."
Hugh turned over the packet. It was sealed, like the outer wrapper, withdrops of pitch upon which Jean Beaupre's seal had been pressed. Forseveral minutes the boy sat considering what he ought to do. Then helooked up at his half-brother's equally grave face.
"I don't like to open this," Hugh said. "It is addressed to M. ReneDubois of Montreal and it is sealed. I think father intended me to takeit to Monsieur Dubois with the seals unbroken. Doubtless he will open itin my presence and tell me what it contains."
Blaise nodded understandingly. He had lived long enough in civilizationto realize the seriousness of breaking the seals of a packet addressed tosomeone else. "That Monsieur Dubois, do you know him?" he inquired.
"No, I didn't know my father had any friends in Montreal. He never livedthere, you know. His old home was in Quebec, where I was born. I don'tremember that I ever heard of Monsieur Rene Dubois, but my relatives inMontreal may know him. Probably I can find him. If I can't, then I thinkit would be right to open this packet, but not until I have tried. ShallI take charge of this, Blaise?"
"You are the elder and our father said you must take the packet toMontreal."
To the impatient Hugh the wait until the sun descended beyond the woodsof the low point across the water seemed long indeed. He found it hard torealize that only two nights before he and Blaise had reached the pointand had tied up there. They had surely been lucky to find the cache offurs so soon.
Not until the shadows of the shore lay deep upon the water did the ladspush off the bateau. They paddled silently out of the little cove andclose under the abrupt, riven rocks, taking care not to let a bladesplash as it dipped and was withdrawn. The water was rippled by thelightest of breezes, and the moon was bright. The deep cleft where JeanBeaupre's wrecked boat lay was in black darkness, though. Hugh could noteven make out the stern. His mind was busy with thoughts of the father hehad known so slightly, with speculations about his coming to the island,about the way he had left it. Through what treachery had he received hisdeath blow?
Another rift in the rock was passed before the boys reached a wider,shallower cleft they felt sure was the one leading to the cache.Cautiously they turned into the dark mouth of the fissure and groundedthe boat on the pebbles, water-worn and rounded here where the wavesreached them. Overhead the moonlight filtered down among the thick spraysof the stunted cedars that grew along the rim and even down into thecrack. But the darkness at the bottom was so deep the brothers couldproceed only by feeling their way with both hands and feet. In thismanner they went up over pebbles and angular rock fragments to the narrowslit in the wall, and squeezed through in pitch blackness to the circularhollow.
There was moonlight in the pit, but the cache, close under the rock wall,was in the shadow. So difficult did the boys find it to remove the stonesin the darkness, that they decided to risk lighting a torch. During theafternoon Blaise had made a couple of torches of spruce and balsam. Helighted one now and stuck it in a cranny of the rock just above the heapof stones. By the feeble, flickering and smoky light, the cache wasuncovered. Pushing and hauling the bales through the narrow crack wasdifficult and troublesome. The larger ones would not go through, and hadto be unwrap
ped and reduced to smaller parcels. Even by the dim light ofthe torch, the boys could see that the furs were of excellent quality.Before loading, the bateau had to be pushed out a little way, Blaisestanding in the water to hold it while Hugh piled in the bales. Then bothclimbed in and paddled quietly out of the crack.
There was not breeze enough for sailing. Hugh and Blaise were anxious toget away from the spot where they had found the furs and had heard theshout, but paddling the heavily laden bateau was slow work. Without abreeze to fill the sail, they were loth to start across the open lake, sothey kept on along shore to the northeast. When they had put a mile ormore between themselves and the place where they had found the furs, theywould camp and wait for sunrise and a breeze.
Slowly and laboriously they paddled on, close to the high shore. Thecalm, moonlit water stretched away on their left. The dark,forest-crowned rocks, huge, worn and seamed pillars, towered forbiddinglyon the other side. At last the wider view of the water ahead and thebarrenness of the tumbled rocks to the right indicated that they werereaching the end of the shore along which they had been travelling.
"We'll land now," said Hugh, "as soon as we can find a place."
The abrupt, truncated pillars of rock were not so high here, but werebordered at the water's edge with broken blocks and great boulders,affording little chance of a landing place. By paddling close in,however, slowly and cautiously to avoid disaster, the boys discovered aniche between two blocks of rock, with water deep enough to permitrunning the boat in. There they climbed out on the rock and secured thebateau by a couple of turns of the rope around a smaller block. In roughweather such a landing would have been impossible, but on this stillnight there was no danger of the bateau bumping upon the rocks. Fartheralong Blaise found a spot where the solid rock shelved down gradually.Rolling themselves in their blankets, the brothers stretched out on thehard bed.
The plaintive crying of gulls waked Hugh just as the sun was coming upfrom the water, a great red ball in the morning mist. "I don't like thisplace," he said as he sat up. "We can be seen plainly from the lake."
"Yes," Blaise agreed, "but we can see far across the lake. If a boatcomes, we shall see it while it is yet a long way off. I think we neednot fear anything from that direction. No, the only way an enemy can drawnear unseen is from the land, from the woods farther back there."
"The water is absolutely still," Hugh went on. "There isn't a capful ofwind to fill our sail, and we can't paddle this loaded boat clear acrossto the mainland. We must find a better place than this, though, to waitfor a breeze. I am going to look around a bit."
The lads soon found that they were near the end of a point, a worn,wave-eaten, rock point, bare except for a few scraggly bushes, clumps ofdwarfed white cedar and such mosses and lichens as could cling to thesurface. Farther back were woods, mostly evergreen. The two felt thatthey must find a spot where they could wait for a wind without beingvisible from the woods. Yet they wanted to remain where they could watchthe weather and get away at the first opportunity. At the very tip of thepoint, the slate-gray rocks were abrupt, slightly overhanging indeed, butin one spot there lay exposed at the base a few feet of low, shelving,wave-smoothed shore, which must be under water in rough weather. On thiscalm day the lower rock shore was dry. There, in the shelter of theoverhanging masses, the boys would be entirely concealed from the landside. A little farther along on the end of the point, rose an abrupt,rounded tower of rock. Between the rock tower and the place they hadselected for themselves was a narrow inlet where the bateau would befairly well hidden. They shoved the boat out from between the boulders,where it had lain safe while they slept, and paddled around to the littleinlet. On the wave-smoothed, low rock shore, they kindled a tiny fire ofdry sticks gathered at the edge of the woods, and hung the kettle from apole slanted over the flames from a cranny in the steep rock at the rear.
The wind did not come up as the sun rose higher, as the lads had hoped itwould. The delay was trying, especially to the impetuous Hugh. They hadfound the cache, secured the furs and the packet, and had got safely awaywith them, only to be stuck here on the end of this point for hours ofidle waiting. Yet even Hugh did not want to start across the lake underthe present conditions. Paddling the bateau had been laborious enoughwhen it was empty, but now, laden almost to the water-line, the boat wasfar worse to handle. Propelling it was not merely hard work, but progresswould be so slow that the journey across to the mainland would be a longone, with always the chance that the wind, when it did come, might blowfrom the wrong quarter. The bateau would not sail against the wind. Toattempt to paddle it against wind and waves would invite disaster.Sailing the clumsy craft, heavy laden as it was, across the open waterwith a fair wind would be quite perilous enough. There was nothing to dobut wait, and this seemed as good a place in which to wait as any theywere likely to find.