Johnny Longbow

  CHAPTER XVIII SAVED BY A LINE

  Exactly a quarter of an hour, measured by Gordon Duncan's large andancient timepiece, elapsed before the natives on the island announced bya wild burst of shouting that they were ready for Gordon Duncan and Fayeto haul away on the line of homespun yarn.

  Faye found her heart beating wildly as she seized the slender line thatspanned the rushing water. Well enough she knew that should this linefail them, a half score of lives must be lost.

  "And life," she told herself as her lips moved in silent prayer, "life issuch a precious heritage."

  Slowly, steadily, they began to haul away. Moment by moment the tug onthat slender line grew stronger.

  Now as the current rising in mad fury redoubled its efforts to defeatthem, it seemed that surely the slender line must snap.

  "It--it's like landing a great trout," the girl told herself.

  And now, just as it seemed the line must break, the rush subsided.Hauling away with a will they at last gave forth an exultant shout.Gordon Duncan's hand gripped the end of the stout rawhide rope that nowspanned the flood.

  "We have won, child! We have won!" he panted.

  But had they? There was much work yet to be done. A stout line nowconnected them with the imperiled ones. How would these work out theirsalvation?

  Gordon Duncan dragged the line to a stout tree and fastened it securelythere. This done, his work for the time was over.

  It will not seem strange that his eyes wandered once more to thatmysterious cabin that had, beyond doubt, at one time been his home.Hardly had he done this than he leaped to his feet with a wildexclamation on his lips:

  "He's leaving! He--he--he's running away!"

  This seemed true. Certainly a tall, fur clad man, driving four hugewolfhounds hitched to a long sled, left the cabin and was now racingalong a narrow plateau at top speed. And ever as he ran, he appeared tourge his dogs to greater effort.

  "He's leaving!" Gordon Duncan said more quietly. "He's running away, andhe has the treasure on his sled. You don't think--" He turned troubled,questioning eyes on his granddaughter. "You don't believe Timmie'd runaway with the green gold?"

  "No," said the girl without knowing why, "No, I don't think he would. Heprobably does not know you are Gordon Duncan."

  "Unless it is the years. Man's mind is queer," said Gordon Duncan. "Godknew best when he said, 'It is not well for man to dwell alone.'"

  "But see!" the girl exclaimed suddenly. She pointed across the flood.

  A strange procession was taking off from the distant shore. Three dogteams drawing three loaded sleds, lashed one before the other, wentfearlessly into the flood. Clinging to the sleds were ten or more humanbeings, men, women and children.

  "Bravo!" exclaimed Gordon Duncan. "They will win yet. They can't swim. Nomatter. Their dogs can. They will cling to the sleds. The rawhide linewill save them from the terrible flood and land them safely on thisshore."

  "But come on!" the girl shouted. "We must be downstream to help them."

  She sped downstream, closely followed by her sturdy grandfather whoseeyes ever and anon looked longingly away to the spot where the team ofgreat gray dogs was fast disappearing.

  As for Faye, her thoughts were all for the little brown people who hadput so boldly out into the racing white waters with only a slender cordto save them from certain destruction.

  As the teams and sleds with their clinging human freight were caught bythe flood, they swung squarely about, facing upstream. It was then thatthe little brown huskies proved themselves true heroes. Beaten back,carried off their feet, buffeted at, half drowned by the racing torrent,these dogs kept their small feet going at a feverish rate.

  Had it not been for these many pairs of little brown feet, each doing itsbit, there can be no doubt but that the rawhide rope must have snapped.As it was, it held and like a great pendulum, dogs, sleds, men and cordswung slowly, surely across the racing peril.

  Faye's heart stood still as, pausing at the point where they must arrive,if indeed they were to arrive at all, she caught the slow sweep that wasbearing them on.

  Would they make it? Could they? Would the little brown beasts give up indespair? Would the rope part?

  Now they were a quarter way across, and now a half. Here at the veryheart of the torrent, they appeared to hang suspended.

  "They do not move," she breathed.

  And yet, yes, yes, they must be moving. A tree on the opposite bank,hidden ten seconds before, was visible now.

  Of a sudden fresh peril appeared. Beneath the water was winter ice thathad not yet thawed. Loosing its grip, a broad cake of this rose suddenlyto the surface. Twenty yards above the drifting band it appeared about toram them, to snap their support, to overturn their sleds and send them tothe bottom.

  But again, as if an invisible hand had reached down to shove themforward, the pendulum swung faster. The ice, missing them, racedharmlessly on.

  A moment later Faye was lifting a laughing brown child from his mother'sarms, and a joyous group of nomad people were clambering up the shelvingbank to safety.

  Faye's joy knew no bounds. They had been instrumental, with God's help,in saving a half score of lives. While Gordon Duncan shared quietly inher joy, his heart was in the hills. His eyes followed the trail overwhich the four great dogs and their white bearded master had vanished.

  Sensing all this, Faye resolved at once to enlist their new-found friendsin a fresh endeavor to come up with her Grandfather's former companion,and so to solve that which for her had become a great mystery.

  "But first," she told herself, with a fresh pang of pain throbbing at herheartstrings, "we must try to find some trace of Johnny Longbow."

  The little brown people they had saved proved to be Indians from the landof Little Sticks. In their search for food they had been forced fartherand farther north until they came to the upper reaches of the mightyYukon. Having killed three caribou, they had found their needs suppliedfor the moment. This was enough. They had pitched their tents on thelittle island. As they rested before the long journey back to theiraccustomed hunting grounds, they had been caught unawares by the flood.

  Always a wandering people, ever grateful for kindness, they were readyfor any undertaking or adventure. There was still a supply of cariboumeat on their sleds. What next should be done?

  To the one member of their company who could understand English, Fayeexplained the curious circumstances that had brought them so far north.She told also of the misadventure that apparently had befallen theirtraveling companion.

  No sooner was a simple meal of stewed meat and tea over than the entirecompany spread out fan-shape in a search for the lost boy.

  Four o'clock found them returning to camp one by one with reports offailure. Only one clue was brought to light. The three men of the Indianparty returned bearing on their shoulders great pieces of bear meat. Thisbear, they explained, had been slain with a bow and arrow. They producedthe arrow as proof. And they explained further with many a strangeexclamation that the man who shot the arrow was the most powerful giantthat ever lived. No Eskimo, no Indian, no white man they had ever knownpulled a bow with such a force and power. They felt quite sure he must besome strange spirit being, not human at all.

  "It is Johnny's arrow," said Faye at once. "But he was possessed of nosuch strength. Who could have shot the arrow?"

  She suggested the aged recluse, but Gordon Duncan shook his head.

  "He was a rather frail man. Now he is old. It is impossible."

  Here, then, was fresh mystery.

  "We can do no more for Johnny Longbow," said Gordon Duncan. "He is inanother's hands. To-morrow we will follow the trail of my ancient friend.Since this is true it is well that I tell you something of that whichbefell me on this very mountain many years ago."

  Dropping upon one of the Indians' deerskins, Faye awaited eagerly thestrange story which she believed was at last to be unfolded.

 
Gordon Duncan was slow in beginning. The girl's heart was sore. It islittle wonder that her mind should return to thoughts of her brave youngcompanion and his tragic disappearance.

  "Grandfather," she said suddenly, "God is cruel."

  Knowing full well that she was seeing in her mind's eye the tumbled heapsof snow, earth and rock piled up by the avalanche, Gordon Duncan spokequietly.

  "You are thinking of God as if he were all nature.

  "God is not nature, and nature is not God. I think there can be no doubtbut that God often works through nature to do His will. Perhaps no manliving knows precisely God's relation to nature. Of one thing we may restassured, whatever God does through nature is sure to be just and kind."

  A hush settled over the mountain and something whispered to the girl thatall would be well. So, once more in perfect calm, she settled back toawait Gordon Duncan's story.

  In the meantime, in a far away cabin, still weak from his terribleexperience, Johnny Longbow lay upon a bed of skins and watched a creatureof prodigious strength and surpassing ugliness boil a pot of broth over afire in a crude hearth set up in one corner of the cabin.

  "Where am I?" he asked himself. "What has happened to me? Where are myfriends? What is to become of me?"

  To none of these questions did he find a satisfactory answer, so oncemore he gave himself over to thoughts of his strange host.

  "This," he told himself, "is the being we have called the great banshee."A thrill coursed up his spine at the thought. Had other evidence beenlacking, the size and shape of the man's feet would be proof enough.

  "They'd fit those tracks we have been seeing to perfection," he toldhimself.

  Truth was, the creature's feet were so deformed and long as to suggestthat a second foreleg which bent forward had taken the place of a foot.

  Long and anxiously Johnny studied this strange being. That he was humanthere could be no question. Was he Eskimo, Indian or white man? There wassomething of all these in him. His skin was the brownish copper of anIndian. He dressed like an Eskimo. Yet he was a giant of a man in spiteof his deformity.

  "Were he able to stand erect as other men do, he would measure six feetsix," Johnny said to himself. "Who ever heard of an Eskimo that size?"

  Once more he took to studying the man, his face, his actions.

  "He seems bright enough and that stuff he's boiling smells good," hemused. "Hope he gives me some. Wonder how he lives? Hunting, I suppose.But what weapons?"

  As if reading his thoughts, the hunchback stepped to a dark corner andbrought forth two bows.

  One Johnny recognized at once as his own.

  "That's fine," he told himself. "When I am strong enough to leave thisplace I won't starve at once. Shows some intelligence, his saving my bowfor me." His joy in this matter was destined to be short lived.

  But now his eyes fell on the other bow.

  "A back breaker," he told himself. "Never saw such a bow. Must take apull of eighty-five, perhaps a hundred pounds to shoot it. Man, Oh, man!"His knowledge of the hunchback's powers was growing. Nor was it lessenedwhen this strange man nocked an arrow fully thirty-six inches in lengthand, with the greatest ease, drew his bow to send the arrow crashing intothe opposite wall.

  The next move sent consternation into the boy's heart. Seizing Johnny'sfifty pound yew bow, the hunchback picked up a second arrow of the samelength and nocked it for a shot.

  Now Johnny used twenty-eight inch arrows. To bend his bow for athirty-six inch arrow was to court disaster. His mouth opened in a cry ofalarm. But too late. The iron arm of his curious host drew back. For thefraction of a second the bow stood the strain, then, just as the arrowsped, there came a rending crash, and the bow broke.

  Standing there, dazed, with the two fragments of the bow still in hishand, the giant hunchback, as if expecting an explanation to thisstartling affair, stared stupidly about him.

  Of a sudden, dropping the shattered bow, he seized his own bow and,pointing at it, began jabbering in a tongue which Johnny understood notat all.

  What he did understand was that the hunchback considered his own bow avery superior affair, and Johnny's little more than a toy.

  "Well, that puts a long question mark after the probability of my gettingout of this land," Johnny told himself.

  "In the meantime," he thought a moment later, "how about a little stew?"

  He made some motions as of eating. The hunchback understood. Soon, likefriends of long standing, they were eating out of a single huge woodenbowl.

  There was little enough ceremony about this meal. With their fingers theytook dripping morsels from the stew and ate them so. Ptarmigan and rabbitmeat with some dried roots and seeds of native growth had gone into thestew. Yet Johnny thought he had not tasted a better one. When only thethick broth was left, they took turns at tipping up the bowl and drinkingfrom its rim.

  "It's a curious world," Johnny told himself, "a very strange andstartling world. I wonder what is to become of me now?"

  As he looked about the rude shelter he saw no signs of a food store. "Mybow is broken," he told himself. "Without this queer creature's aid Ishall starve."

  At that he forgot his troubles in watching the hunchback. He was beatinghis breast and repeating over and over, "Omnakok! Omnakok! Omnakok!"

  "Perhaps he's trying to tell me his name," the boy thought. At this hepointed at the hunchback and said:

  "Omnakok."

  The face of this queer being expanded in a crooked grimace which Johnnytook to be a smile. Then, turning about, he took down a heavy slab ofwood. Having grasped a sharp instrument similar to a carpenter'sdrawshave, he began making the shavings fly.

  "What now?" thought Johnny, as he dropped back to his place among theskins in the corner.