Connie Morgan with the Mounted/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
THE HART RIVER CACHE
The iron-clawed winter had come roaring out of the North and descended upon the hill country in a series of furious blizzards that enveloped the rock-ribbed land and the frozen surface of lakes and rivers in a man-deep thickness of snow. B Division slept in its mukluks, and generally speaking, its mukluks were far from headquarters. For the malevolent ferocity of the storms had caught many of the dwellers of the hills and the barrens unprepared, and tons of relief grub went out with the dog trains of the Mounted.
Corporal Rickey and Special Constable Connie Morgan were crowding Connie's team of ten big malamutes to reach Hart River cabin where the police cache would supply the grub for the one hundred and twenty mile return trip to Dawson.
"The MacPherson patrol ort to be along any day now, said Rickey, as the two camped for lunch in the shelter of a thicket of scrub. "But they'll be enough grub fer them an* us, too. They's fifty pound of flour, an* seventy-five pound of bacon, and forty or fifty pound of beans, besides five hundred-odd pound of fish fer the dogs."
"We'll pull in there this afternoon," opined Connie as he split off some shavings, while Rickey attacked a near-by spruce with his axe. Dropping to his knees the boy thrust a match into his pile of shavings, but even as the tiny flame began to lick at the light, dry wood, he straightened swiftly and glanced toward the spot where a moment before the sound of Rickey's axe had rung upon the slender trunk of a dead spruce a dozen yards away.
The sound of the axe strokes had suddenly ceased and in his ears sounded a half-stifled grunt of surprise and pain. With his back toward the boy, Rickey leaned heavily upon the fallen tree-trunk, while his right hand wrenched to loosen something from the snow at his feet. With a jerk the man straightened, and Connie saw that his face showed yellowish white against the glistening background of snow. With a cry the boy leaped to his feet, as his eyes encountered the object Rickey held in his hand. It was the light camp axe, red to half the depth of its blade with a filming of blood, that had already frozen upon its polished surface. Rickey took one step forward, and the boy was at his side.
"Struck a knot," explained the Corporal between clenched teeth, "an' glanced. Serves me right, I guess. I hadn't ort to had my foot there. I know'd better but—Jimminy—she hurts! Le's get over to the fire an' have a look at her."
Connie helped Corporal Rickey to a blanket spread beside the tiny blaze and hurriedly collected dead branches, while the injured man removed his mukluk and legging and a double thickness of blood-soaked woollen socks. As the flames bit into the dry wood, the boy made a dive for the First-Aid kit. The gash was a nasty one, bone-deep just below the ankle joint; and though they twisted a tourniquet until Rickey growled with pain, it was an hour before the flow of blood was staunched and the wound properly bandaged.
"This is a fine layout," grumbled the officer. "Ten years in the service lackin' two months, an' here I up an' sink an axe in my hoof like the rawest chechako that ever mushed over the Chilkoot."
"Any one would think you did it on purpose," laughed Connie.
"Couldn't of done no better job if I had," grumbled Rickey, and trailed off into a long tirade of self-accusation.
"Get it out of your system," urged the boy, "and then get some of this grub into it, and we'll hit the trail. We might be a lot worse off . We'll make the cabin tonight and you can rest up for a couple of days. The MacPherson patrol may be along before that, but even if it don't come, the old ten-team will jerk us back to Dawson, without your setting a foot on snow."
"Oh, 'tain't that," groaned Rickey, "an' 'tain't the hurtin', though that's bad enough—it bites clean up to the hip. But it's pullin' the fool stunt, an' what the boys'll say when we git back."
"That's all right," soothed Connie. "Most of 'em have pulled stunts like that themselves. Didn't McKeever shoot himself through the arm with his own gun? And didn't Peters let his canoe get away and have to walk thirty miles through swamps and over rock ridges in fly time? And didn't"
"Yeh, that's the trouble. An* what did I say to *em when they done it? I've kidded 'em an' ragged 'em an' made 'em so sore that take it first an' last, I've like to had to fight the whole kit and caboodle of 'em. An' now—" he grunted dismally. "My time's up, come Febrooary, an' I've almost got a notion to lay up here on Hart River 'til then an' not 'list no more."
Connie laughed. "You ain't got nerve enough to do that, Rickey. You've got nerve enough to go back and face 'em, but you ain't got nerve enough to guit!" Whereat Rickey grinned and with his foot wrapped in an enormous thickness of blankets he allowed Connie to ease him onto the sled, where he suffered in grim silence with his back against the bed-rolls, until the outfit drew up be- fore the door of Hart River cabin.
Although it was Connie's first visit to the place, he sensed from the moment he halted the dogs that something was wrong. For the snow was well trampled about the cabin and its door stood slightly ajar. Hastily removing his rackets, he pushed inside, where one swift glance assured him that his worst fears were realized. The Hart River cache had been robbed!
Within the four walls of the cabin there remained not a single ounce of flour, or beans, or tea, or bacon. But not alone because the cache had been rifled was Connie seized with the blind fury that left him white and shaking, nor was it because the five hundred-odd pounds of dry fish, which had been laid by for dog feed, was scattered promiscuously about the floor and bunk, but because of the abject wantonness, the abysmal meanness of soul that had caused the marauders to smash the little sheet-iron stove into a useless pile of junk. The voice of Rickey calling from the sled aroused the boy from his transport of rage. With a bound he reached the door.
"Someone has busted the cache!" he cried hoarsely, "and scattered the fish, and smashed the stove!" Suddenly he leaped for the sled. "Get off there and give me that carbine! They didn't have any dogs or sled. They're packing the stuff afoot. I'll put this old ten-team on their trail and I'll— You bet they'll wish they never saw Hart River cabin!"
"Hold on there, kid," soothed Rickey, as he stared up into the face of the youngest recruit in the Yukon. "Le's don't go off half-cocked. Jest help me inside now an' we'll size up the layout. Mebbe things ain't as bad as they look."
"Not as bad as they look!" cried Connie, his eyes blazing. "With the grub all gone, and the stove smashed, and us with only grub enough for a day or two, and the MacPherson patrol due any time and depending on this cache to take 'em on to Dawson, and you with your foot half cut off!"
Rickey grinned: "Well, that's the first time I ever heard you growl, an' believe me, when you growl you roar, don't you, kid? Come here now an' git in under my arm and h'ist me up off en this sled. You say they didn't take the fish. Well, there's grub, ain't it? They ain't no law ag'in a man eatin' fish jest because it's billed fer the dogs, is they?"
Connie helped Rickey into the cabin and piloted him through the litter of dry fish that covered the floor to a seat on the edge of the bunk. "That stove is sure bunged up consid'able," admitted the Corporal, "but it can be straightened out to hold a fire. It may smoke some, but that ain't going to hurt us none. 'Tain't no fancy cookin' utensil no more, but it'll boil water. And them dried fish ain't so bad. Jest dig in now and red up the place a bit, an' then we'll make medicine."
While Connie collected the fish from the floor, unharnessed and fed his dogs, and carried fire-wood from the pile from behind the cabin, Rickey with the aid of his axe, succeeded in restoring the stove to some semblance of its original appearance. Luckily the pipe had escaped notice of the marauders, and the boy soon had a fire going and a kettle of fish boiling. As he busied himself about the camp, his brain worked rapidly, and later, while the two devoured their boiled fish, he broached his plan.
We'll stay here in the cabin tonight, he began "and I'll get a good rest and rest up the dogs, and in the morning I'll hit out after those fellows. They haven't got more than two or three days' start. And when once that old leader of mine ties onto a trail, he never quits. You'll have to stay here 'til I get back with the grub and the outfit that's got it. Then we'll leave enough in the cache for the MacPherson patrol and hike on into Dawson with our prisoners."
"How many of 'em is they?" asked Rickey dubiously.
"Four," answered the boy promptly. "They came in from the north-west and hit straight east toward the Mackenzie. They can't travel fast with the packs they've got."
"Hit east, did they?" mused Rickey, "an' come from the north-west? Must be part of a whalin' outfit that's got wrecked somewhere. An' believe me, they're headin' into a bleak country when they hit east from Hart River. Why, they ain't nothin' over there! Not a blame thing between here an' the Mackenzie except old man Wurtz's cabin, about fifty miles east of here. Wurtz, he was a kind of a prospector an' trapper. Died a couple of years back. But he sure did build some cabin. It's little, but it's a reg'lar fort—loopholes an' all. He didn't trust the Injuns none. Like as not that's where them fellows is right now. An' if they be, how in thunder do you expect to git 'em out of there? The cabin's in a kind of a bowl or basin at the head of a red rock draw, an' they can see you comin' half a mile."
Rickey shook his head. "You couldn't do it, kid. The odds ain't right. The only way to git 'em out of there would be to surround 'em an' starve 'em out. An' we ain't in no shape to do that. Them fellows ain't goin' to be no easy job to handle. Any one that'd bust a cache, 'specially a police cache, ain't goin' to stop at nothin'. If my foot was so's I could go with you, we'd tackle it in a minute."
"Look here, Rickey," interrupted Connie, "you've got to let me try anyway. Who got you out of that pickle with the Yellow Knives? And who brought in Notorious Bishop? And who did a lot of things I could mention, if I wanted to brag? I'm no chechako! You needn't think I'm going to run out there and make any fool play with odds of four to one against me. But it won't hurt to have a look, anyway. And besides, if they haven't got any more sense than to bust a police cache, it ain't going to be hard to outguess 'em."
Rickey grinned. "If it comes down to a guessin' match you can outguess 'em, son," he admitted, eying the boy proudly. "But after you git 'em outguessed—what you going to do then? Outguessin' 'em's one thing, an' bringin' 'em in is another."
Connie was quick to see that his superior's decision was wavering. "That'll be my job," he answered. "I brought in Notorious Bishop, didn't I?"
"Yeh," admitted Rickey. "But they was only one of him, an' anyway he just come along."
Connie laughed. "Maybe these fellows will come along, too. Anyway Notorious was smart, and these fellows are fools or they wouldn't have busted the cache."
"Looks like a fool trick fer one kid to go after a hull gang."
"Four fools are four times as foolish as one fool," retorted the boy. "Anyway, you've got to let me try!"
Rickey's further objections were promptly met, and the boy obtained reluctant consent to be allowed to slip over and "have a look at 'em." After that the two redressed Rickey's wound and rolled into their blankets.
The stars were beginning to pale in the night sky when Connie's ten great malamutes shot out upon the trail of the four marauders. The boy was travelling light. A half-pound of tea, five pounds of pemmican, and a hundred pounds of dry fish, together with his bed-roll and carbine, made up his entire load. And on the tail of the sled the boy bent low to the sweep of the wind as the runner slipped smoothly over the wind-packed, hardened snow. On and on he flew, dipping now into a deep ravine and again topping a ridge or circling a low snow mountain. At noon he boiled a pot of tea at the place where the fugitives had evidently spent their first night in camp. A good twenty miles," muttered the boy. "To-night ought to put me within ten miles of Wurtz's cabin."
That night he camped in a patch of scrawny scrub, where the four had made their second night's encampment. And after feeding his dogs, he ate sparingly of the pemmican, drank a little tea, and boiled half of a fish. After supper he removed his carbine from its case, assured himself that it was in proper working order, and carefully went over his service revolver. Then, spreading his bed close beside the fire he rolled in.
He breakfasted before dawn and was surprised to see that only six dogs crowded to the fire in eagerness for their morning fish. In vain the boy called and whistled, and with a sudden fear in his heart, hurried to the edge of the scrub. A slight movement attracted his attention, and, peering through the bushes, Connie saw one of the missing malamutes rise slowly, stagger stiffly for a step or two, and then fall in the snow. White froth foamed from its lips, and even as the boy looked the dog writhed in a sudden convulsion. Then with stiffened limbs, it shuddered, and lay dead in the snow at his feet. In the open another tawny shape lay rigid and frozen, and beyond a little hummock the other two huddled together—dead, their back-curled lips sealed with frozen foam.
"Poisoned!"
The single word fairly hissed from the boy's lips, and turning, he dashed toward camp where, after satisfying himself that the remaining six dogs showed no traces of illness, he began feverishly to pack the sled.
"They're the best dogs in the Yukon," he choked, striving vainly to swallow the great lump that rose in his throat. "You just wait! You just wait!" he sobbed, shaking his fist toward the east, where the grey dawn was beginning to lighten the far horizon. He did not return the carbine case to its straps, but harnessing his dogs, threw himself upon his sled with the carbine lying conveniently beneath his legs.
For two hours the tireless leader held to the trail that bore to the eastward, while Connie with set jaw and narrowed eyes scanned the bleak barrens for sight of the patch of scrub timber that Rickey had told him fringed the broad depression, in the centre of which old man Wurtz had built his cabin. The dogs topped a long, low ridge, and before him, a half-mile away, the boy saw the timber—a scraggling patch of scrub, the first he had encountered since his camp of the night before. With a tightening of the lips, he urged the dogs forward and a few minutes later came to a halt in the shelter of the stunted growth.
The trail of the four continued on through, and, carbine in hand, Connie crept forward to the opposite edge. Throwing himself flat, he scanned the bowl-like depression before him. Almost in the exact centre of the mile-wide sweep of snow stood the cabin. And the boy's heart gave a bound as he noted that smoke curled from its chimney.
Old man Wurtz had planned well against surprise, for, as he studied the lay of the land, Connie saw that by no possible chance could any one approach the cabin by daylight unknown to its occupants. A long time he lay turning over in his mind scheme after scheme. The poisoning of his dogs had moved the boy as nothing had ever moved him, and he determined that he would never return to Hart River with his friends' deaths unavenged.
His attention suddenly became riveted upon the cabin. The door opened and a man, closely followed by three others, stepped out upon the snow. Connie saw that they all carried rifles and his mittened hands tightened unconsciously upon his carbine. For what seemed an interminable period the four talked, gesticulated, and pointed, and then having apparently reached an agreement, each started in a different direction. The boy noted with a sudden thrill that they carried no packs. They had left the supplies in the cabin! Evidently then, this was a hunting expedition, or possibly they meant to lay out a trap line. The boy's brain worked rapidly as the distance widened between the four men. One was approaching directly toward him, and, wriggling back from the edge of the timber, but still keeping the man in sight, he took his position close beside the trail, screened from it by a thick growth of scrub. The dogs were upon the outer edge of the patch some two hundred yards in the rear and the boy hoped fervently that they would not get wind of the stranger until he entered the thicket. Every little way the man paused to toss something into the snow.
"Fur poisoner!" muttered Connie between clenched teeth. "Gee whiz! You fellows'll have a lot to answer for! Guess they're whalers, all right," he added as he studied the man who was garbed from head to foot in sealskin. "Anyway, they've come down from the Eskimo country. And before I get through with 'em I'll bet they'll wish they'd stayed there!"
The man was nearing the scrub. Drawing back the hammer of his carbine, Connie levelled it between the branches of his bush. Not ten yards away at the edge of the scrub the man paused and the boy followed his glance as it swept the wide basin. The other three figures showed like little black bugs at widely separated points almost upon the rim of the basin. Dropping the butt of his rifle into the snow, the man reached into a pouch, produced a small ball of suet which he rolled for a moment between his mittens, and tossed onto the crust. Then gripping his rifle by the barrel, he turned and abruptly entered the scrub. Connie crouched until the man was within six feet of him:
"Hands up!" The words snapped short, and half-turning the man stared in round-eyed surprise at the figure, which appeared suddenly above the top of a bush almost at his side. "Drop that gun! Quick!"
The man's gaze focused upon the muzzle of Connie's carbine and his rifle dropped into the snow. "Now reach!" Up went the man's hands. "Walk straight ahead!" The man obeyed and came a few yards farther on to a small open space. "Lie down!" commanded the boy shortly. The man dropped to his hands and knees. "Flat! Flat on your belly! And keep on reaching!"
When the man was stretched helplessly before him, Connie approached and slipping his hand beneath the sealskin parka, withdrew a heavy cutlass, which he transferred to his own belt. After making sure that he carried no other weapon the boy backed off a few steps. "You can sit up now, " he said. The man obeyed clumsily, like a trained bear. He was a low-browed, repulsive creature, his face covered by an unkempt growth of hair, above which two eyes gleamed hatefully.
"Who be ye?" he growled. "An' w'at d'ye mean orderin' a cove around that way? It'd pay ye to be more civil-like meetin' up with me. I'm hard! An' the three that's with me's hard. We're hard men, I tell ye, an' it don't go good with them that riles us. Who be ye, I says?"
"Who? Me?" answered the boy. "I'm Special Constable Morgan of the Mounted." At the name the man started and eyed Connie searchingly. Opening his mouth he emitted a loud guffaw.
"The Mounted!" he scoffed. "Him 'thout no ha'r on 'is chin in the Mounted! Come on now, a joke's a joke, an' I will say ye got me foul. But 'nough's 'nough. I tell ye we're hard men—me an' my mates." As the man talked Connie backed, always keeping him covered, to the point where he had dropped his rifle in the snow. It was of modern bolt construction and in a jiffy the boy had unshipped the bolt and hurled it far into the scrub.
"Hey, quit that!" yelled the man starting to scramble to his feet.
"Sit down!"
Once more the man's eyes sought the muzzle of the carbine and he sat down. "Toss me that pack of poison balls!" commanded Connie. The man did not move. The next instant there was a loud report, and with a frightened cry he keeled backward into the snow. Hastily he shook off a mitten and his fingers explored the ragged gash that Connie's bullet had ripped in the side of his parka-hood. Then, without a word, he unslung the bag and tossed it to the feet of the boy.
"Get up!" commanded Connie shortly.
The man scrambled hastily to his feet. A look of fear had replaced the hateful gleam in his eyes, and Connie pointed to the rifle. "Pick that up an' smash it against a tree." The man reached for the harmless gun and banged it against the trunk of a near-by sapling. "Smash it, I said!" And with one terrified glance at the muzzle of the carbine the man sent it crashing against the tree-trunk with a force that sent the walnut stock spinning into the brush. Whereupon Connie turned upon his heel and walked towards his waiting dogs. The man followed him to the edge of the scrub.
"Hey," he called, "w'at you goin' to do?"
Connie ignored him and swung the leader into the trail.
"Hey," he persisted, "mebbe ye be the Mounted after all. Le's git t'gether. Ye can't handle us all. They's four of us an' I'm tellin' ye we're hard! Wat you goin' to do w'en ye git us 'rested."
Connie grinned into his face. "You ain't arrested," he answered. "You can go wherever you please. I'm going down to the cabin." The boy worked his dogs through the scrub and heading them for the open, threw himself on the sled.
"But, hey!" called the man. "How ye goin' to—" Without so much as turning his head, Connie cracked the whip above the ears of his dogs, and the six great malamutes tore over the surface of the snow that sloped gently away from the rim of the huge bowl.