"A dead tree! n.o.body put it there; it grew!"

With an effort he pulled himself together.

"Come! We'll try farther on!"

CHAPTER XVIII

THE EMPTY FLOUR-BAG

When it was getting dark Andrew and Carnally gave up the useless search. A red glow, flickering among the spruce trunks, guided them down the pa.s.s, and they saw Graham's figure, black against the firelight, as they approached the camp. He was standing up, looking out for them, but they came on in silence and after a quick glance at their faces he turned away and busied himself getting supper. He knew they had failed and words were superfluous.

They ate the small bannock he took from the frying-pan, and Andrew glanced about the camp when he had lighted his pipe. Graham had been at work while they were away, laying down spruce branches and raising a wall to keep off the wind. It was warm beside the fire, and the place looked comfortable.

"There wouldn't be much to complain of if we had enough to eat," said Andrew. "It's surprising how soon one gets grateful for such a shelter as this, and I believe I've slept as soundly in the snow as I ever did in bed."

"I tried to fix things neatly, though I wouldn't have been sorry if I'd wasted my labor," Graham replied and glanced at Carnally. "It struck me we might be here a day or two."

Carnally's smile was rather grim.

"It's very likely. S'pose I ought to play up to Allinson, but he's put it a notch too high. I've been doing some hard thinking while I was on the hill. We're certainly up against a tough proposition."

"You're still convinced the grub is here?"

"That is a sure thing--all we have to do is to find it; but it's going to be a big job. I expect both of you want me to talk?"

Their willingness to hear his views was obvious.

"The trouble is," he explained, "you can get down from the neck a number of different ways--there are the spurs one could break a trail along and there are the ravines. We may try them all before we strike the right one; but we'll have a better chance if we work up instead of down."

"Why?" Andrew asked.

"Because the packers would start from the low ground, and the benches look different from below."

"Do you think Mappin told them to pick any particular place?"

"I've been figuring on that. He's learned something about the ground, and my idea is that the provisions are dumped in a hollow that looks like a good road up to the gap; that is, as you would see it from the creek. What we don't know is where his boys would strike the ice. It might be anywhere within three or four miles."

Andrew knit his brows.

"It's a puzzling question and we have only a day or two to find the answer. The worst of it is that we're worn out and famishing; I feel that my wits would be quicker if I could come at it fresh from a square meal."

"No, sir! A man's brain is keenest when he's working on short rations."

"I believe that's true," Graham said.

"Our rations," contended Andrew, "couldn't be much shorter; but I couldn't think of anything intelligently as I stumbled along through the snow to-day. And yet----"

He broke off, remembering that once or twice of late he had become capable of a strange clarity of thought, accompanied by an unusual emotional stirring. It had pa.s.sed, but it had left its mark on him.

After all, it was in the stern North that he had first seen things in their true proportions; it was there that the duty he had vaguely realized had grown into definite shape, and Leonard's treachery to Allinson's had been clearly perceived. Moreover, he had somehow gained a new and unexpected sense of power. Then as the fire blazed up he glanced with sudden interest at the faces of his comrades. They were worn and haggard, and Graham's was stamped with lines of pain; but there was something in them he could best describe as fine. Hunger and toil, instead of subduing the men, had given them new strength and an elusive dignity. Andrew remembered having seen that puzzling look in the lean, brown faces of tired and thirsty soldiers as a brigade went by through the rolling dust of the African veldt. It had been flung back, shattered, from a rock fortress, and was pressing on, undaunted, to a fresh attack. Andrew's heart had throbbed faster at the sight, and he now felt something of the same thrill again; but these things were not to be spoken of.

"Well," said Carnally, "I might feel content if I thought Mappin was as hungry as we are; but there's not much fear of that. The blasted hog has sense enough to keep out of the bush; going about the country getting his hands on other men's money pays him better. He's no use for eating supper behind a bank of snow; the Place Viger and the Windsor in Montreal are more his style."

This was far from heroic, but Andrew laughed; the minor weaknesses of human nature seldom jarred on him.

"I think," he suggested lightly, "you might, for a change, call him the swine. It's a term we sometimes use and it sounds grosser than the other. The hogs I've seen running in the Ontario bush were thin and not repulsive."

"I'll admit it's foolish; but when I think of that man studying the menu, I get mad! Can't you see him picking out the dollar dishes, on the European plan? Canvasbacks and such, if they're in season."

"They wouldn't give him much canvasback for a dollar," Graham objected.

"That doesn't count. The point is--where does he get the dollar?"

"I'm afraid he has got a few of them out of us," said Andrew. "He has got more out of the Rain Bluff shareholders; though I'm glad to think that supply will be stopped. Anyhow, our first business is to find the cache."

"That's so," a.s.sented Carnally, as he threw some branches on the fire.

"We'll try again at sun-up. Though it makes you feel easier now and then, talking doesn't do much good."

A few minutes later they were all asleep, and when day broke Andrew and Carnally descended a steep, snow-covered bank below the neck.

Their search proved unsuccessful, and they were very silent after they returned to camp in the evening. The next morning Graham gave them a very small bannock for breakfast, and then threw an empty flour-bag into the snow.

"Boys," he said gravely, "you have got to find the cache to-day."

Spurred on by the imminence of starvation, they started off again, beating their way against a driving snowstorm, stumbling often and rising each time with greater difficulty; always, however, keeping eager watch for the pole that should mark the spot of the cache.

After three days of fruitless search, they could not bear to talk when they met in camp in the evening. They knew that starvation was upon them; their last strength was fast running out. They were not the men, however, to give up easily; and once more they set off grimly at sunrise.

It was snowing hard when Andrew, knowing that he could drag himself no farther, crawled into the shelter of a rock on the desolate hillside and sat down shivering. There was an intolerable pain in his left side, he was faint with hunger, and his muscles ached cruelly. His fur coat was ragged, his moccasins were cut by the snow-shoe fastenings and falling to pieces; his face was pinched and hollow. It was some hours since he had seen Carnally. He was physically unable to continue the search, but he shrank from going back to camp, where there was nothing to eat, and facing his famishing comrade. Indeed, as he grew lethargic with cold, it scarcely seemed worth while to make the effort of getting on his feet again. He sat still, listlessly looking down across the white slopes; Carnally would probably pa.s.s near the spot, though there was now no expectation of his finding the cache. During the last few days they had sometimes met while they searched and exchanged a brief "Nothing yet," or a dejected shake of the head. It would be the same again, though Andrew felt that his comrade might have succeeded if they could have held out.

He could not see far through the snow, which swept along the hillside before a savage wind. Blurred clumps of spruce marked the edge of the lower ground, but the river was hidden and the straggling junipers on the spurs were formless and indistinct. At last, however, Andrew noticed something moving near the end of a long ridge and, as it must be a man, he concluded it was Carnally returning. Then he imagined that the hazy figure stopped and waved an arm, as if signaling to somebody below; that was curious, for his comrade would be alone.

Andrew decided that he had been mistaken, and bent down to brush the gathering snow from his torn moccasins; but he started when he looked up. There were now two men on the slope below, and while he gazed at them a third emerged from among the rocks.

CHAPTER XIX

A WOMAN'S WAY

They had not been forgotten while they journeyed through the wilds.

Frobisher thought of them now and then, and his daughter more often; indeed, her mind dwelt a good deal on Andrew after he left and she found herself looking forward eagerly to his return. She spent some weeks in an American city with her father, but its gaieties had less attraction for her than usual, and she was glad when they went back for a time to the Lake of Shadows. On the day after her arrival she drove across the ice to the Landing and inquired at a store where news circulated whether anything had been heard of the Allinson expedition.

The proprietor had nothing to tell her, but while she spoke to him a man crossed the floor, and she saw with annoyance that it was Mappin.

She left while he made his purchases, but he joined her when she was putting some parcels into the sleigh, and did not seem daunted by the coldness of her manner.