The Secret Cache: An Adventure and Mystery Story for Boys

  XXXII THE FIRE AT THE END OF THE TRAIL

  When Hugh woke, the dizziness and sense of swaying up and down were gone.He sat up, feeling strangely weak and hollow, and looked about him. Thebateau was drawn up on the beach, but Blaise was nowhere in sight. Fromthe shadows Hugh could tell that the sun was on its downward journey. Hehad slept several hours. He was just gathering up his courage to get up,when he heard a stone rattling down the rock hill behind him. Turning hishead, he saw Blaise descending. The boy was carrying several fish strungon a withe. Hugh eyed those fish with hungry eyes. He could almost eatthem raw, he thought. He got to his feet and looked around for fuel. Notuntil he had a fire kindled, and,--too impatient to let it burn down tocoals or to wait for water to heat,--was holding a piece of fish on acrotched stick before the blaze, did he ask his younger brother where hehad been.

  "I slept for a while," Blaise admitted, "but not for long. My hunger wastoo great. I took my gun and my line and climbed to the top of the point.I went along the steep cliff, but I found no game and no tracks. Then Icame to that rocky bay. The shores are steep there and the water clear. Iclimbed out upon a rock and caught these fish. They are not big, but theyare better than no food."

  "They certainly are," Hugh agreed whole-heartedly.

  The elder brother's pride in his own strength and endurance was humbled.He had slept, exhausted, for hours, while the half-breed boy, nearlythree years younger than himself, had walked two or three miles in searchof food.

  When no eatable morsel of the fish remained, the brothers' thoughtsturned to their next move.

  "We are far nearer the Grand Portage than the Kaministikwia," Hugh saidthoughtfully. "We had better follow my first plan and go down the shoreinstead of up. We can surely find others at the Portage willing to gowith us against Ohrante."

  "It is all we can do," Blaise assented, "unless we wait here for the windto change. It is almost from the north now. We must go against it if wego up the Bay of Thunder. The other way, the shore will shelter us. Butwe cannot start yet. We must wait a little for the waves to go down."

  "And in the meantime we will seek more food," Hugh added. "Why not tryfishing among those little islands?"

  The channels among the islets proved good fishing ground. By sunset thelads had plenty of trout to insure against any danger of starvation foranother day at least. The waves had gone down enough to permit travel inthe shelter of the shore. Sailing was out of the question, and paddlingthe laden bateau would be slow work, but Hugh was too impatient to delaylonger, and Blaise more than willing to go on.

  After half an hour of slow progress, the younger brother made asuggestion. "We are not far from the Riviere aux Tourtres now." He usedthe French name for the Pigeon River, a name which seems to mean "riverof turtles." The word _tourtres_ doubtless referred to turtle doves orpigeons. "To paddle this bateau," Blaise went on, "is very slow, and toreach Wauswaugoning by water we must go far out into the waves aroundthat long point below the river mouth. But along the south bank of theriver is an Ojibwa trail. At a bend the trail leaves the river and goeson across the point to Wauswaugoning. We shall save time if we go thatway, by land."

  "What about the boat and the furs?"

  "We will leave them behind. There is a little cove near the river mouthwhere the bateau will be safe. The furs we can hide among the rocks. Weshall not be gone many days if all goes well. No white man I think andfew Ojibwas go that way. An Ojibwa will not disturb a cache," Blaiseadded confidently.

  "Yet I don't like the idea of leaving the furs," Hugh protested.

  "They will be safer there than at the Grand Portage, where the men of theOld Company might find them."

  "Why not turn them over to the X Y clerk at the Portage?" Hughquestioned.

  "No, no. If our father had wanted them taken there he would have said so.Again and again he said to take them to the New Company at theKaministikwia. He had a debt there, a small one, and he did not like theman in charge at the Grand Portage. There was some trouble between them,I know not what."

  Blaise was usually willing to yield to his elder brother's judgment, butthis time he proved obstinate. Jean Beaupre's commands must be carriedout to the letter. His younger son would not consent to the slightestmodification.

  Darkness had come when the two reached the mouth of the Pigeon River, butthe moon was bright and Blaise had no difficulty steering into the littlecove. Alders growing down to the water concealed the boat when it waspulled up among them. Blaise assured Hugh that, even in daylight, itcould not be seen from the narrow entrance to the cove. The mast wastaken down and the sail spread over the bottom of a hollow in the rocks.On the canvas the bales of furs were piled, and a blanket was thrown overthe heap. The boys cut several poles, laid them across the hole, the endsresting on the rock rim, and covered them with sheets of birch bark,stripped from an old, half-dead tree. The crude roof, weighted down withstones, would serve to keep out small animals as well as to shed rain.All this work was done rapidly by the light of the moon.

  The cache completed, Blaise led Hugh to the opening of the trail at theriver mouth. The trail, the boy said, had been used by the Ojibwas formany years. A narrow, rough, but distinct path had been trodden by themany moccasined feet that had travelled over it. The moonlight filteredthrough the trees, and Blaise, who had been that way before, followed thetrack readily. With them the brothers carried the remaining blanket, thegun, ammunition, kettle and the rest of their fish. As Blaise had said,the trail ran along the south bank until a bend was reached, then,leaving the river, went on in the same westerly direction across thepoint of land between the mouth of the Pigeon River and WauswaugoningBay. The whole distance was not more than three miles, and the boys madegood time.

  Hugh thought they must be nearing the end of the path, when Blaisestopped suddenly with a low exclamation. The elder brother looked overthe younger's shoulder. Among the trees ahead glowed the yellow light ofa small fire.

  "Wait here a moment," Blaise whispered. And he slipped forward among thetrees.

  In a few minutes he was back again. "There are three men," he said,"sleeping by a fire, a white man and two Ojibwas. One of the Ojibwas Iknow and he knew our father. We need not fear, but because of the whiteman, we will say nothing of the furs."

  The two went forward almost noiselessly, but, in spite of their quietapproach, when they came out of the woods by the fire, one of the Indianswoke and sat up.

  "Bo-jou," remarked Blaise.

  The second Indian was awake now. "Bo-jou, bo-jou," both replied, gazingat the newcomers.

  The white man rolled over, but before he could speak, Hugh sprang towardshim with a cry of pleasure. "Baptiste, it is good to see you! How comeyou here?"

  "Eh la, Hugh Beaupre, and I might ask that of you yourself," returned theastonished Frenchman. "I inquired for you at the Grand Portage, but themen at the fort knew nothing of you. When I said you were with yourbrother Attekonse, one man remembered seeing him with a white man. Thatwas all I could learn. I was sore afraid some evil had befallen you. Youare long in returning to the Sault."

  "Yes," Hugh replied with some hesitation. "I have stayed longer than Iintended. Is the _Otter_ at the Grand Portage, Baptiste?"

  "No, she has returned to the New Fort. I came on her to the GrandPortage. We brought supplies for the post and for the northmen goinginland to winter. There was a man at the Portage, a Canadian like myself,who wanted sorely to go to the Kaministikwia. He has wife and childthere, and the mate of the sloop brought him word that the child was verysick. So as I have neither wife nor child and am in no haste, I let himhave my place. Now I am returning by canoe, with Manihik and Keneu here."

  At the mention of their names, the two Indians nodded gravely towardsHugh and repeated their "Bo-jou, bo-jou."

  "We camp here until the wind goes down," Baptiste concluded.

  During the Frenchman's explanation, Hugh had been doing some rapidthinking and had come to a decision. He
knew Baptiste for a simple,honest, true-hearted fellow. In one of his Indian companions Blaise hadalready expressed confidence.

  "Baptiste," Hugh asked abruptly, "have you ever heard of Ohrante, theIroquois hunter?"

  There was a fierce grunt from one of the Indians. The black eyes of bothwere fixed on Hugh.

  "Truly I have," Baptiste replied promptly. "As great a villain as everwent unhanged."

  "Would you like to help get him hanged?"

  Keneu sprang to his feet. It was evident he had understood something ofwhat Hugh had said. "I go," he cried fiercely in bad French. "Where isthe Iroquois wolf?"

  "There is an island down the shore," Hugh went on, "the Island ofTorture, Ohrante calls it, where he and his band take their prisoners andtorture them to death. Sometime soon he is to hold a sort of councilthere."

  "How know you that?" Baptiste interrupted.

  "I shall have to tell you the whole story." Hugh turned to hishalf-brother. "Blaise, shall we tell them all? Baptiste I can trust, Iknow."

  "As you think best, my brother."

  Sitting on a log by the fire at the edge of the woods, while themoonlight flooded the bay beyond, Hugh related his strange tale to theamazed and excited Canadian and the intent, fierce-eyed Keneu, the "WarEagle." The other Indian also watched and listened, but it was evidentfrom his face that he understood little or nothing of what was said. Hughmade few concealments. Frankly he told the story of the search for thehidden furs, the encounters with Ohrante and his band, the capture andescape, and what Blaise had learned from overhearing the conversationsbetween Monga and the Indian with the red head band. Hugh did notmention, however, the packet he carried under his shirt, nor did he saydefinitely where he and Blaise had left the bateau and the furs. Thosedetails were not essential to the story, and might as well be omitted.

  "We know now it was through Ohrante father was killed," the boyconcluded, "and we, Blaise and I, intend that the Iroquois shall pay thepenalty for his crime. He has other evil deeds to pay for as well, andthat isn't all. As long as he is at liberty, he is a menace to white manand peaceable Indian alike. He calls himself Chief of Minong, and he hasan ambition to be a sort of savage king. He is swollen with vanity andbelief in his own greatness, and he seems to be a natural leader of men,with a sort of uncanny influence over those he draws about him. Onemoment you think him ridiculous, but the next you are not sure he is nota great man. If he succeeds in gathering a really strong band he can doserious harm."

  Keneu gave a grunt of assent, and Baptiste nodded emphatically. "He mustbe taken," the latter said.

  "Taken or destroyed, like the wolf he is," Hugh replied grimly. "We havea plan, Blaise and I."

  For nearly an hour longer, the five sat by the fire discussing, inEnglish, French and Ojibwa, Hugh's plan. Then, a decision reached, eachrolled himself in his blanket for a few hours' sleep.