Johnny Longbow

  CHAPTER XIV A MYSTERIOUS VISIT IN THE NIGHT

  Next morning they opened their eyes to a new world. The fog was gone, thesun shone bright. Up from the south had come a gentle wind that broughtwith it the breath of spring.

  Far away before them, like the jagged teeth of a worn out saw, was arange of mountains. The tops of these mountains still appeared to smokewith the snow swept over the summits.

  "I wonder what it's like up there," the girl said to Johnny.

  "In time you are sure to know," he said. "Our trail leads over thatrange. May God grant us a low pass."

  "You may well say that." Gordon Duncan's eyes seemed to see things fardistant and remote. "But as you say, the trail leads over thosemountains. There is no other way."

  The week that followed will linger long in the memory of Johnny Longbowand his smiling companion of the trail, for it was spring, and who couldforget such an occasion?

  In the Arctic winter lingers long. Spring is thrice welcome. This year,creeping up behind a veil of fog, it appeared to burst upon them like arevelation.

  The snow grew soft beneath their feet. Little rivers began coursing awayto the north. The surfaces of lakes, long locked with ice, glistened withwater that buried the solid depths of ice that still lingered.

  Little snow-buntings, silent for long, began their cheerful chee-chee,and far above in the bluest of skies an early covey of wild ducks wingedtheir silent way.

  The first touch of spring brought out small game in abundance. Snowshoerabbits, leaving their hiding places, hopped about in a leisurelyfashion. Ptarmigan were so numerous that the wandering bowmen grew expertin the art of beheading them with a well shot broadhead arrow. And whatcould be sweeter than a ptarmigan roasted over a glowing bed of coals?

  Once, creeping through tall dead grass of a year's standing, they cameupon a flock of gray ducks that had come all the way from the southland.

  As he smiled over the breast of a fine duck that evening Johnny's facesuddenly sobered. He had bitten upon something that had nearly cost him atooth.

  "A shot," he said as he produced a mashed bit of lead. "Someone shot athim way down there where there is no ice and snow, and he brought this, amessage from another land."

  For a moment as he sat dreaming, eyes half closed, he thought of himselfas a young native of the land, the old man the last patriarch of histribe and the girl the last link of a vanishing race.

  "Huh!" he smiled as he wakened from his revery. "Strange world! In amonth we will be with white men, living as they live." But would they?

  With all the hunting and their keen enjoyment of the spring, they did notneglect the trail. Each day brought them nearer to the range of snowblown mountains. Each hour hastened the time when they must try the pass.

  Sometimes at night by the campfire they spoke of it in awed whispers. Atother times, under bright midday skies, they laughingly talked of thelong slide they would take when they reached the other side. How littlethey knew of that which lay before them.

  Gordon Duncan thought only of Timmie and his green gold. Faye Duncanlived most for the care and protection of the kindly old man she lovedmore than her own life. Johnny dreamed strange dreams of gold, fortune,and a dark haired handsome Scotch girl. At times he wondered why they hadfeared to meet a fellow human being. That wonder was fading. Growing everstronger was his desire to solve the mystery of Timmie and his greengold.

  "Just over the mountains, and we'll know," he told himself many times.

  So at last they reached the foothills of those vast and silent mountains,and their troubles began.

  As they passed the lower levels game vanished. Only once in two days didthey see a rabbit. Then it escaped into the brush.

  At the end of three days, after skirting many a spring-born freshet andcreeping about a score of cliffs, they arrived at the base of a mountain,the lowest of all the range, but startling in its whiteness andimmensity. There, sore footed and weary, they built another campfire andsat down to a meal of steaming coffee and frozen berries.

  The girl looked at Johnny. There was a question in her eyes. "Dare we trythe mountain?"

  "It is three days' travel back to the land of game," he replied. "Can itbe worse ahead? Will he turn back?"

  He looked at the grizzled old Scot, who as ever sat dozing by the fire.

  "He will not."

  "Will he live to--to see the other side of the mountain?"

  "We can only hope."

  For a long time after that they sat there in silence. What were thegirl's thoughts? Johnny would gladly have known. As for himself, he wasthinking of the possibility of sudden tragedy for the old Scot and oftheir battle to win their way back to the haunts of civilized man.

  "What a burial place for such a man!" he thought to himself. "A wholeunmolested mountain for a tomb!

  "But," he thought a moment later, "as she has said, we must hope. Itwould break her heart."

  Next day they started early. There was hope in each heart that they mightmake the pass before sunset and camp for the night on the other side.

  One thing was in their favor; they soon passed from the zone of springinto the high level where winter still reigned. No longer was the snowsoft under their tread, no longer were they obliged to skirt the banks ofstreams for a safe passage. There were no streams. All was ice and snowand barren rocks.

  "Look at it," Johnny said after an hour of desperate struggle up an allbut perpendicular wall. "Not a shrub, not a scrub birch or fir. Barren asthe hills of doom. No living creature could be here. Tonight we gosupperless and without a fire."

  Faye Duncan shuddered. It was mid-afternoon, and the smoking mountainpeak still loomed far above them.

  "No wood, no food, no shelter!" Gladly would she have turned back. Butone look at the grim look of determination on the old Scot's face sealedher lips.

  "He crossed these mountains in his prime," she told herself. "He willcross them again or die."

  "Look!" Johnny pointed excitedly toward a sloping waste of barren rocks.

  "What is it?"

  "Something moving over there."

  "I can't see--"

  Turning her about and pointing over his shoulder, he said, "See! Justbeyond that great boulder, something white."

  "It is!" she exclaimed. "A mountain goat! Oh, Johnny, can we?"

  "We can, or my name is not Johnny Longbow."

  Vision of a feast of wild goat's steak done to a turn floated before hiseyes. In his excitement he quite forgot that they had no wood.

  Carefully they prepared their attack. He would climb the narrow ledge tothe right and come out above the goat. She would work round to the leftand station herself among the rocks prepared to cut off his retreat up anarrow run.

  For a half hour after that Johnny climbed from rock to rock until, with adeep intake of breath, he bent his bow, nocked his arrow, then of asudden stood up.

  His heart went wild as he saw the goat not fifty yards away. As he stoodthere hope, despair and high resolve fought for first place in his soul.The result was a bad shot. Or was it? He could not tell. All he knew wasthat the nimble beast leaped high in air, then went racing away.

  A second arrow followed the first. On such slopes, among such rocks,there could be no hope of recovering an arrow.

  Sitting limply down upon a rock, the boy watched the great bobbing hornsdisappear from sight.

  "Missed!" he muttered, then turning, began making his way back.

  Sitting in a sheltered spot at the back of a great rock that overlookedthe narrow gorge, Faye Duncan, as she waited and watched, thought of manythings, of her grandfather and Johnny Longbow, of Timmie and hismysterious green gold, of her home and her own cozy room there. Her heartwarmed at this last thought, but chilled again as she looked up at thesmoking crest which they must cross.

  "Will we make it? Can we do it? Well--"

  Of a sudden she sprang to her feet. There had come to her alert ears asound. It seemed clo
se at hand.

  "The goat!" Seizing her bow, she nocked a broadhead and waited.

  "Yes, there. There." Her hand trembled. The great horned creature wasmaking straight for her.

  Not a hundred yards away, he was coming straight on.

  "Has he seen me? Would a wild goat charge his enemy?" She did not know.Her heart stood still.

  "Must be sure of my shot," she told herself.

  Bracing herself, she waited. Now he was eighty yards away, now sixty, nowforty, and now--now--

  A second more, and her broadhead arrow would have flown. But of a suddenthe wild creature's forelegs crumpled beneath him and he fell with agreat rattling of horns, to go rolling over and over down a twenty-footembankment.

  Fleet as the wind, the girl leaped clear of her retreat and away downthat slope. "He may merely have stumbled, may be up and away." Little sheknew of wild goats, whose feet are surer than any other thing in life.The goat was dead. Johnny's first arrow had pierced him through andthrough.

  One look at the fallen creature was enough. His eyes were glazed indeath.

  Climbing to the top of a boulder, she cupped her hands to give forth along, shrill call.

  "Who-hoo!"

  Three times this was repeated. Then came the answer echoing back.

  "He has heard. He will come." She smiled.

  That evening they ate goat's meat prepared by cutting it into narrowstrips and allowing it to freeze. That night they slept huddled togetherfor warmth beneath a rude snow hut which Johnny, under the old man'sdirections, was able to build against a wall of rock.

  "One thing is sure," Johnny said as he prepared for rest. "There is noneed for maintaining a watch to-night."

  He was destined to have another thought regarding this next morning.Beside the pile of goat's meat they had left carelessly on a rock, he sawa single footprint. The goatskin and a portion of the meat was gone.

  "Did us no harm," he told Faye as he pointed in astonishment at thefootprint. "We still have more meat than we can carry. And the skin wasworth nothing to us."

  "But that creature!" she said with a shudder. "Look! The footprint istwice the length of a man's."

  "And there are no toe marks," he added.

  "Tell you what!" There was an air of mystery in his tone. "Remember thatcreature that defied the wolves that night?"

  She nodded.

  "It's the same; the great banshee!"

  Here indeed was a mystery. But graver matters called for their attention.In spite of all they could do they had come near perishing with cold.They must be off the mountain before the end of the day, or tragedy wassure to overtake them.