The Huntress Part 25

"Oh, you're going to do great things. He belongs to me."

Shand sneered. "Take it out on him with your tongue."

Joe replied with a torrent of abuse.

Big Jack laughed a harsh note.

"You fools!" he said. "Both of you. What do you think you're going to do so big? She's given us an answer sooner than we expected, that's all. If she prefers a cook to a man, that's her affair. All we got to do is shut up. I'm going back to the shack."

They would not confess the reasonableness of Jack's words. "Go where you like," muttered Shand. "I'll stick by myself."

Jack strode back along the path. Joe followed him, merely because he was one of those natures who will choose an enemy's company sooner than face the prospect of being left with his own.

They left Shand to his own devices. Husky greeted them with eager questions. Joe cursed him, and Jack clenched his teeth upon the stem of his pipe in grim silence.

They revived the fire and sat in front of it. Each man was jealous of his own rage and pain and refused to share it. Joe and Husky bickered in a futile way. Big Jack, in spite of his philosophic protestations, kept the tail of an eye on the whitening window-pane. In the end he rose abruptly. Joe followed suit as a matter of course.

Jack turned on him, snarling. "Have I got to be followed by you like a dog everywhere I go?"

"What's the matter with you?" retorted Joe. "Do you own the whole out of doors?"

Jack halted outside the door. "You take one way; I'll go the other,"

he said grimly.

Jack returned to the creek, and crossing on the stepping-stones walked out on the point beyond and sat down on a boulder. From here he could see a long way down the lake sh.o.r.e.

At this season in the lat.i.tude of Caribou night is brief. The sun sinks but a little way below the horizon, and a faint glow hovers over his head all night, travelling around the northern horizon to the east, where it heralds his reappearance.

It was light in the east now and the lake was stepping into view. Big Jack searched its misty expanse with his keen little eyes.

By and by as the light strengthened, looking down-sh.o.r.e he saw a tiny, dark object steal beyond the next point and become silhouetted against the grey. There could be no doubt of what it was. The l.u.s.t of pursuit flamed up in the man's heart. He forgot his prudent advice to his mates.

"Making for the foot of the lake," he thought. "And the wind's against them. It's rising. I could easy ride around the sh.o.r.e and cut them off."

He got up and made his way with energetic action back to the stable.

He had no sooner picked up a saddle than Joe came in. They looked each other over without speaking. Joe made for another saddle.

"You're free to go where you want," said Jack grimly. "I've only got to say I choose to ride alone."

"I don't care how you ride," retorted Joe. "Keep out of my business, that's all."

They saddled their horses in silence.

Joe said at last with a sneer: "Thought you told us to sit down and shut up."

Jack's face flamed suddenly.

"I promised him a beating if he interfered and, by G.o.d, I mean to give it to him before her eyes. That's what she's got to take if she picks a cook!"

He fixed Joe with blazing eyes. "And if any man comes between me and my promise, I'll take him first! As for the girl, she can go her way.

I wouldn't take her for a gift!"

Joe laughed unpleasantly.

As Jack started to lead his horse out of the stable, he saw what he had not before noticed--several guns leaning in a corner of the stable. His eyes lighted up.

"Where did they come from?" he demanded, choosing his own.

"Shand found them under the sods of the stable roof," said Joe.

"Where is Shand?"

"He has already taken a horse and gone."

Sam was awakened by being violently rolled over on the sand. He felt human hands upon him, but he could not see his enemy. He struggled with a will, but his limbs were confined by the blanket. A heavy body knelt upon his back, and fetters were pulled around him, binding his arms and his legs inside the blanket.

It was then that he shouted l.u.s.tily. It was cut short by a cotton gag in his mouth. He was ignominiously rolled down the sand to the water's edge. What with the darkness and the confusion of his faculties still, he could not see who had attacked him.

Inert as a log, he was lifted up, dragged away, and finally dropped in a boat. His captor stood away from him, panting. Sam rolled over on his back and saw--Bela.

For a moment he was paralyzed by astonishment--a woman to dare so!

Without looking at him she quickly took her place in the stern and pushed off. Suffocating rage quickly succeeded his first blankness.

Unable to move or to utter a sound, his heart nearly broke with it.

The black traitress! After all her professions of friendliness! After making her eyes so soft and her voice so sweet! She was worse than his ugliest suspicions had painted! He did not stop to guess why he had been attacked. She was his enemy. That was enough.

Sounds reached them from the direction of the shack, and Bela, lowering her head, paddled swiftly and silently for the point. Her face showed only a dim oval in the failing light. But there was grim resolution in its lines.

Only once did she open her lips. Sam was frantically twisting in his bonds, though owing to his position on the keel of the dugout he did not much threaten her stability.

Bela whispered: "If you turn us over you drown quick."

Angry as he was, the suggestion of being plunged into the lake bound hand and foot reached him with no little force. Thereafter he lay still, glaring at her.

They had no more than rounded the point when they heard the men come running down to the creek. Bela continued to hug the sh.o.r.e. They were soon swallowed in the murk. The moon went down.

By and by the first rays of light began to spread up the sky from the eastern horizon, and the earth seemed to wake very softly and look in that direction.

With the light came a breath from the east, cool as a hand on the brow of fever. Twittering of sleepy chickadees were heard among the pines, and out in the lake a loon laughed.

Day came with a swoop up the lake. The zephyr became a breeze, the breeze half a gale. The leaden sheet of water was torn into white tatters, and the waves began to crash on the ice-rimmed sh.o.r.e, sending sheets of spray into the trees, and making it impossible for Bela to land had she wished to.

This was a hard stroke of luck against her. She would have been out of sight of the point by the time it was fully light, had it not been for the head wind.

The dugout leaped and rolled like an insane thing. Having a well-turned hull, she kept on top, and only spray came over the bow.