The Secret Cache: An Adventure and Mystery Story for Boys

  XXVII WHAT BLAISE OVERHEARD

  Far from the Indian camp and well hidden, the brothers could riskconversation. Instinctively they kept their voices low. Hugh was curiousto learn how Blaise had crossed from the pond in the small island to thelong point, and Blaise equally eager to hear how Hugh had fallen intoOhrante's hands. Seated on moss patches in the rock opening, theysatisfied each other's curiosity on those points. Then Blaise went on totell how he had tracked his elder brother. When he had smelled smoke hehad known he must be near a camp.

  "I heard the rippling of water," the boy said in his soft singsong. "ThenI caught the sound of men's voices. I left the trail and crept towardsthe water. I peeped through the alders and saw the lake and the beach.Canoes lay on the pebbles, but no man was in sight. I wished to find outif you were in the camp. So I went back into the woods and crawledtowards the voices. I crept from tree to tree and bush to bush, and foundmyself behind a wigwam. I lay flat and tried to peep around it, but aclump of willows was in the way, and I could see nothing. I crawled likea snake for the willows. I looked through them and saw you, my brother,bound to the birch. My heart gave a leap when I saw you unharmed and knewthere was yet time to steal you away. I saw Ohrante too. He sat by thefire and ate. He turned his head, and I feared his sharp eyes might findme through the willows, so I crept away. I went back into the woods andhid not far from the trail. The Iroquois I had seen on the trailreturned. Crawling nearer the camp again, I heard him talk to Ohrante,but I could not understand, for he spoke the Iroquois language. I saw noway to get you away before nightfall, and I feared they might carry youoff somewhere in a canoe where I could not follow.

  "Back to the beach I went and hid myself in the alders near the bigcanoes. I saw Ohrante and six others go away. By their moccasins I knewthat two were Iroquois, the others Ojibwas and Crees. A small canoe wasleft on the beach. When Ohrante had been gone a while, I heard voices,and two more men came along the shore from the camp. One carried a net ofcedar cord. He had an ugly face and a red band around his head. Theother, a short, strong man, I knew at once. He is Monga, an Ojibwa, oneof the two who helped Ohrante to escape. The two sat down on the sandjust below where I was hidden, and I crawled nearer to listen to whatthey said as they mended their net. They spoke Ojibwa. Red Band has notbeen with Ohrante long. He asked what the chief would do with the whitecaptive. Monga,--his name means the _loon_,--answered that Ohrante wouldtake the white man to the mainland, to the Isle of Torture, but theycould not start to-day because the wind was too strong and the lake toorough. Red Band was not pleased. He said he wished the chief would letthe white men alone until his people were stronger. Monga said thatOhrante hated all white men. When the trader Beaupre escaped hisvengeance----"

  "What?" interrupted Hugh. "He said 'the trader Beaupre'?"

  "Yes. When the trader Beaupre escaped Ohrante's vengeance, the chiefswore to kill every white man who fell into his hands."

  "But what did he mean by father's escaping Ohrante's vengeance?"

  "It was as we thought," Blaise replied, his voice low and tense. "It wasOhrante who brought our father to his death. Red Band said it was truethat Beaupre escaped, but in his escape he received his death wound."

  "That explains what we found at the Devil Track River."

  "Yes. From what they said it seems that our father and Black Thunder bothfell into Ohrante's hands. In some way they escaped, but they wereovertaken at the River of Devil Tracks. They fought and our father gotaway again, but sorely wounded. That is the way I put together the thingsI heard the two men say."

  "How comes it then that the bateau and furs are here on Isle Royale? DidOhrante bring them here?"

  "I think Ohrante knows nothing of the furs. When we first saw him here Ithought he had come to Minong to seek the furs, but no, this is not thefirst time he has been here. His braves call him 'Chief of Minong.' Ithink he fled here, he and Monga and the other man who helped him, whenhe escaped from our father and the Ojibwas. I know not when the rest ofthe band joined him, but I believe Ohrante and those two were livingsomewhere on this island when white men and red sought them and could notfind them. This I know, here on Minong Ohrante captured our father andBlack Thunder. Monga said it was strange that two white men had beenfound here, where no man was believed to come. Both Jean Beaupre and thenew white captive pretended to be only traders, he said, and told talesof how they were driven here by storm and wrecked on the rocks. The chiefbelieved Beaupre's story, but now that this other white man came with thesame tale, Ohrante began to doubt. He thought perhaps they came to spy onhim."

  "I feared Ohrante did not believe me," Hugh confessed, "but it madelittle difference what story I told. He says he hates all white men andintends to destroy them and drive them out of this country. He thinks heis destined to be some sort of king over this part of the world. Didthose two say more of father?"

  "No, their net was finished and they went out in the little canoe. Atonce I sought you, my brother, but I dared not cut your bonds. The twowere only a little way out in the bay. Later I listened to them talkagain. I could not get the meaning of all they said, but I think Ohranteintends to hold a council on that island where he tortures his prisoners.I am sure that others are to meet him there to join his band."

  "And he was reserving me to be put to death by torture as a sort ofentertainment for his new adherents, I suppose," Hugh muttered grimly."That is not the part in the performance I should choose to play. PerhapsI can find some other part more to my liking." A daring suggestion hadcome into his mind as Blaise told of the council on the "Island ofTorture." "Did you learn when the meeting was to be?" Hugh askedabruptly.

  "It is to be soon, I think. They wait only for safe weather to make thecrossing."

  Hugh was silent in frowning thought. When he spoke, it was not of thecouncil. "It is plain to see what happened," he said musingly. "The stormbore father and his comrade here to this island. Their boat was driveninto that crack in the rocks and wrecked. Ohrante came upon them, tookthem captive and carried them to the mainland. Father must have had somewarning, though, for he hid the pelts and the packet. I wonder, Blaise,if, when he was first wrecked, he put the furs up on that rock shelf tokeep them dry and safe. Then, afterwards, when he learned Ohrante wasnear, he moved the bales to a more secret spot farther from the wreck."

  Blaise nodded. "It may be," was all he said.

  "We were right all the time," Hugh added, "in believing that Ohrante hadsomething to do with father's death."

  "I felt in my heart that Ohrante was the guilty one," the younger ladreplied simply.

  "Yet of course it may not have been Ohrante himself who gave father hisdeath blow," Hugh mused.

  Blaise waved away his brother's reasoning with a gesture. "It matters notwhether Ohrante himself or one of his men struck the blow. It is not theknife that we punish when a murder is committed, but the man who wieldsthe knife. Ohrante is that man. It was he who captured our father, whowould have put him to the torture, who caused his death."

  "And Ohrante shall pay for it," Hugh broke in passionately. "He shall paysoon if we can but reach the mainland in time. The sky is lighter,Blaise," he added, looking up above the surrounding tree tops. "We mustbe moving."