CHAPTER XXVI INTO THE ICE JAMB
"Ah!" sighed Gordon Duncan, as once more they caught sight of Timmie'sraft. "We shall be up with him soon. Once we are close, when he sees myface he will know it is I, his friend Gordon Duncan. We will bring himand his treasure to the outside world. His last days shall be happy onesafter all."
"But look!" exclaimed the girl, gripping his arm.
One look, and he started to his feet. The white-haired man before themappeared to leap and dance upon the water. Appearances were deceiving.The raft leaped and danced over rapids. And mingled with the rapids werebroken fragments and great heaps of ice. Here the water boiled andfoamed, there it rushed like mad.
"We shall all be drowned!" said the girl, gripping the old man's arm.
"Trust God," the man murmured. "I only fear for Timmie."
Then, of a sudden, things happened. They had been coming nearer andnearer to the clumsy raft when, as they turned a sharp bend in the river,they saw that the aged recluse faced disaster. Stretching all the wayacross the river was ice piled forty feet high. Jambing, screeching,rolling and tumbling, it threatened all life that came near. And therewas the white haired recluse headed straight for it.
"He has only a pole. He can't guide the thing. He's lost!" groaned GordonDuncan.
He did not know the skill of the man. Poking at a cake of ice here,fanning the water with his pole there, jabbing, poling, fighting hisbest, the raftsman drove his clumsy craft toward the western bank. Itseemed that he would make the bank before the gurgling waters drew himinto that maelstrom. Faye held her breath and hoped.
Now he was thirty feet from the bank, now twenty, now--now he rose to hisfeet as if for a try at a leap. His four dogs howled dismally. He lookedat them in dismay. That look was his undoing. An eddy caught his raft andcarried it toward midstream. The next instant a redoubled pull of currentshot him forward.
Only one hope remained. By the left shore, crowding thirty feet out overthe water, was a glacier-like snowbank. Solidly joined to the shore as itwas, this bank did not heave and roll as did the free ice. Only beneathit the black waters raced. Between the hard packed snow and the river'ssurface was a broad dark line. This was an air space where the snow hadbeen worn away by higher water.
"He can't go under," Gordon Duncan breathed. "He'd be killed. He mustjump for the solid snow. It's his only hope."
The Indians in the skin canoe were battling the current to bring theircanoe ashore. As for Gordon Duncan and Faye, they had eyes only for thedrama that was being enacted there before them.
"Bravo!" murmured Gordon Duncan as a great dog, leaping far and wide,made the snow bar in safety. One, two, three, four, the dogs were away.
And now, now! Faye breathed in little gasps. The recluse, standing erect,motionless, prepared to leap. Now he bent low, now he sprang straight upand away.
"He--he's safe!" breathed Gordon Duncan.
But now. What happened? Did the current give the raft a sudden turn? Didthe old man's strength suddenly fail? His leap fell short. He struck thesnow, tottered there for a second; then, as the raft with its load ofprecious green gold shot into the darkness beneath the overhangingsnowbar, he tottered and fell full into the raging flood.
"He's gone!" exclaimed Gordon Duncan. "Lost! Lost forever!"
The next instant their boat, guided by the trusty natives, bumped on ashelving bank and they were quickly drawn up to safety.
In the meantime, as if to veil the catastrophe, a fog drifting down overall, hid all, ice, snow and rushing river, from their view. Ten minuteslater a resounding roar told them that something terrific was happeningon the river.
"The ice jamb is broken," Gordon Duncan said quietly. "The current is nowfree. It came too late. We have lost!"
* * * * * * * *
Urged on by the impatient hunchback, Johnny fought his way forwardthrough tangled willows, over rock piles and down treacherous slopes ofmelting snow until of a sudden, with an involuntary shout of joy, he cameplump against a large dugout turned upside down upon the ground.
To launch this craft, clumsy as it was, required but a moment's time.Such was the magnificent strength of the hunchback.
And now they had entered the race. With a paddle twice the size andstrength of the white man's canoe paddle, the hunchback drove the dugoutforward in the rushing waters at a terrific pace.
It was Johnny who first heard the roar of the bursting ice jamb. Theywere nearly two miles away, but it filled his breast with a wild terror.That his friends rode the torrent before him he knew. What had happenedto them? What was about to befall him?
The current was swift. It bore them on rapidly. When the fog dropped downupon them he realized that safety lay in seeking out shelter in somequiet eddy close to the bank.
That this thought was in the hunchback's mind soon became evident. Hebegan hugging the shore.
So intent were they upon reaching a place of safety that they failed tonote a picture framed in fog that for ten seconds flashed into view, thenwas lost forever.
Without knowing why they did so, both Faye Duncan and her grandfatherstood upon the bank as they passed. It was Faye's keen eyes that caughtsight of the racing dugout.
"Look!" she cried, quite beside herself. "Johnny, Johnny Longbow and thegreat banshee!" She was quite beside herself with excitement.
"Calm yourself," said Gordon Duncan. "You must be dreaming. A bad dream.I see nothing."
"I did see them!" she insisted vehemently. "They passed, they passed inthe fog!"
"Then," said Gordon Duncan, "we shall doubtless see them later."
"But will we? They are riding the flood. The ice jamb is gone. But theremay be others. And, he is with that terrible creature."
"Humanity," said Gordon Duncan quietly, "is everywhere very much alike.He is in God's hands. Beyond doubt the All Seeing One has provided him afriend in this vast wilderness."
"And to think," said the girl more calmly, a great joy expressed in hertones, "he is alive! He is not dead. Johnny Longbow is not dead!"
She did such a wild dance in the snow that Gordon Duncan could well havebelieved they were home again and all their troubles over.
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime Johnny and his strange pilot had passed on into the fog.They traveled a good three miles before they came to the haven of refugethey sought, a quiet eddy by the bank of the stream.
With a sigh of relief Johnny unbent his cramped limbs and went ashore.
To his surprise he found the earth soggy with seeping water.
"Been a flood," he thought.
This was true. The breaking of the ice jamb had momentarily clogged thestream. Water had risen rapidly. The bayou had been flooded. Sudden as ithad come, so sudden it receded. Not, however, until something hadhappened. What this was, Johnny was soon to know.
As he climbed the slope in search of a dry spot, to his vastastonishment, stranded high and dry, he came upon a crude raft laden withstrange packages bound up in skins. And clinging to the raft, as if itwere still in motion, was a white haired old man.
Johnny wondered at the packages and the man, but he did not wonder long.
"This," he told himself, "is Timmie, the recluse. And the packages on theraft!" His heart beat wildly.
"But first this old man's needs must be attended to."
After disengaging his hands from the raft, Johnny helped the hunchbackcarry the old man up the hill to a dry spot. There they soon had himstripped of his sodden garments and wrapped in their own deerskins beforea roaring fire.
There, for the first time, he opened his eyes and murmured somethingabout "Green gold."
It was four hours later that the boy was wakened from a short doze by thefire by the ring of a rifle shot close at hand.
"Someone near," he told himself. "Wonder who?"
"Hello! Hello there!" he shouted.
"Hello yourself,
" came back from the hills above.
Three minutes later the boy stood staring in astonishment at four personswho had just emerged from the brush, two Indians, a white man and a girl.There were tears of real joy in his eyes, for the man and girl were hislong lost friends Gordon Duncan and Faye.
Their story was quickly told. No longer daring to trust themselves to thetreacherous waters, the party had pushed forward on foot in the hope, ashad been their good fortune, though in a manner quite unexpected, offinding some trace of the aged recluse and his craft.
As they followed an animal trail a young caribou had appeared beforethem. One of the Indians had shot it. This shot had told Johnny of theirpresence.
So now, here they were all together again. And Timmie was with them. Whata joyous reunion it was! Even Timmie, who recognized his pal of otherdays, seemed happy.