Fur Pirates/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
DEAD MEN'S BONES.
From the first there was no doubt that I should be allowed to go with Mr. Dunleath. But he was not strong, and Uncle Fred thought he should wait for a week at least. In that time I worked hard, so that I might go with a clear conscience. And meanwhile Uncle Fred and Peggy saw far more of our guest than I did. Indeed he and Peggy became great friends, and spent hours together reading and talking by the river, though for my part I could not see what he found to talk about to a girl so often and so long, and I told Peggy so.
"It's funny, isn't it?" she admitted humbly, but with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. "But then he isn't well, Bob, and you must make allowance for that."
"I s'pose that's it," I conceded, and I wondered what she found to laugh at.
Mr. Dunleath's convalescence was most confoundedly slow, I thought. I imagine Peggy had as much to do with retarding it as anything or anybody. For the first time I was forced to the realization that an otherwise sane man may prefer mooning about with a girl to the attractions of the woods and the river. At any rate, a fortnight elapsed before we made our start.
But one morning I routed him out of his blankets in the gray dawn, had his bed rolled and roped while he dressed, and loaded the canoe so that she trimmed to my liking; that is, well down in the stern and up in the bow, which is best under most circumstances. And I remember still the importance I felt when I picked up the steering paddle and shoved off, waving it jauntily at Peggy and Uncle Fred on the bank; and yet with a certain preoccupied dignity, for was I not now a man and a guide?
I have no intention of describing the next three weeks in detail because they contain little of interest. We went down the Carcajou by easy stages and into the Little Windy, with its chain of lakes—where I managed to lose myself completely for several days, though my companion did not know it—and from there into the Antler. Of course much of this was strange country to me, but on the whole I got along very well by aid of a good memory and a sharp eye, for at different times I had had very accurate descriptions of it.
At first our stages were short, for my companion tired easily and was in no hurry. But after the first week his strength came back very fast—not having Peggy to warn him against the perils of overexertion, I suppose—and he delighted to test it. He was ignorant of many things which I supposed everybody knew, but he was quick to observe, and asked questions continually. Being a boy, I am afraid I was not above showing off a little. But if I could teach him things about a canoe and animals and fish and birds, and show him a lot of camping wrinkles, there were other things which he could teach me.
I had always considered myself a good swimmer until I saw him in the water, and then I knew myself for a mere flapper, and immediately set about acquiring the strokes he employed so smoothly. Then, too, I discovered that he was "scienced," as we called it, meaning that he could box and wrestle. I was eager to be taught, and I think he enjoyed teaching me; but of course, as we had no gloves, we were a little handicapped in the boxing lessons, though we made rough pillows out of a flour sack and moss. But when it came to wrestling, though I was a strong, active youngster, he handled me as if I had been a baby, and I knew that when he had his full strength he would be a formidable opponent for any man, even my old hero, Dinny Pack. And, thinking of that one day, I told him of how Dinny had trimmed Nootka Charlie to a peak down by our landing.
"Good for Dinny!" he approved. "I'd like to shake hands with him."
"I wonder if you could lick him?" I speculated.
"Do you?" he said, with a grin. "Well, my son, you'll never know because you couldn't hire me to try."
We portaged over from the Antler into the Cuisse Lakes, and one day on the Upper Cuisse we landed to boil the tea pail and eat a lunch of cold venison and bannock. As we rested afterward my eye caught the glint of some white objects on the sand dunes a hundred yards or so away, and I walked over to examine them. They were bones, sticking out of the sand, but they were not scattered; they were in regular order, as if the animal to which they belonged lay below with its bony framework entire.
"What do you suppose it was?" I asked Jim Dunleath.
"By George," he said, "those are human ribs! It's a skeleton."
"Let's dig him up!" I suggested.
"I see plainly," he said, with a grin, "that you are destined for the medical profession. You have all the earmarks of a freshman med. All right, my resurrectionist friend, go to it."
And so I fetched a broken shovel that we carried to shift coals on the bake kettle, and dug away. In a few minutes I had the gruesome thing bare. It had disarticulated long ago, and fell to pieces when the supporting sands were removed. The skull was whole, and the teeth still in their sockets. Evidently it was the skeleton of a big, able-bodied man. For some moments we stood in silence, looking down on all that was left of one who had dropped out from the long trail to tread a longer one.
"‘Alas! Poor Yorick! I knew him well,’" said Jim Dunleath.
"You did?" I cried in astonishment. "How can you tell just from the bones? Yorick? Was he a Swede?"
"A Dane, I think. No, this isn't Yorick. I was just repeating a line from a play."
Which was just like Jim Dunleath. Most men would have told me it was one of the best-known quotations, and made me feel ashamed of my ignorance, for at that time I had read no Shakespeare; but not Dunleath.
"Oh, a play," I said. "Well, I wonder who this fellow was."
"Some Indian, I suppose," he returned. "Poor devil! No way of Hello! What's this?"
He stooped and picked from the bottom of the excavation a small metal box, blackened and discolored. In shape it looked like a little curling stone, and it was about four inches across and perhaps two inches deep.
"Why," I said, "that's an old tobacco box. The old-timers used 'em. Most of 'em were silver, and they were just about water-tight. You don't see so many of 'em now."
"You talk like an old-timer yourself." He scratched the box with his knife point. The scratch was bright. "This is silver," he decided, "otherwise it would have rusted to nothing, I should think. Must have lain there a long time."
He tried to open it, but the lid, which fitted very closely, refused to move. After repeated trials he discovered that instead of lifting it swung.
"I wonder what brand he smoked?" he said as it came back.
But there was no tobacco. The interior was filled with a paper, folded so that it fitted neatly. This he pried out carefully. Beneath it was an odd-looking scrap of dried, parchmentlike skin, about the size of a silver dollar, to which wisps of straight, black hair still clung.
"What in thunder is this?" he exclaimed.
"Perhaps the paper will tell," I suggested.
"Right, my son. I see I was mistaken. You will some day be a great detective." He unfolded the paper carefully. "Writing, sure enough!" he exclaimed. "Must have been a white man. Pencil writing, and pretty bad. Let's see if we can read it!"
He smoothed it out flat on the sand, and we lay down on our stomachs to decipher it. The paper had apparently been old and crumpled before being written on. In addition, the writing was clumsy, faint, and shaky. In parts it was quite illegible, but this is what we finally made out:
Dear Brother: I am writing this on the divide north of Shagenaw, because I am too sick to travel any more, and I guess this is my finish, for the pain in my side and bowels hits me worse every time. . . .
Here several lines were quite undecipherable, and throughout there were parts which were entirely illegible.
. . . to stand us off, and six men were killed. . . . Black Donald myself, not knowing who he was, and lucky for him, for if I had got him alive he would have died slow . . . went back on the bargain and wanted equal shares all round, and I had to pretend to agree, because they were, too many to stand off alone. But it turned out . . . away fast enough, and we found there was a big bunch after us, and headed us into . . . traveling faster than we could the way we . . . cache everything, and scatter, and meet again when it was safe; and they agreed, because it was that, or get caught.
I took Joe Barbe with me, and left the rest, and we doubled back and watched the bunch go by. And then we raised the cache and made a new one. That is what I want to tell you about, because you know old Joe isn't all there at times since that time on the Slave, and, in case he forgets, here is how you will find it:
The cache is on the Burntwood Lakes, on the one the Indians call Ahtikamag, on a creek on the west side of it, near the upper end. It is in a rock cave. We blocked up the mouth with rocks, and loosened down a little slide to make a good job, and there was a bigger slide than we thought, so it is blocked good and plenty. You will have to dig your way in, and be careful not to shake down more. The cave is dry and cold, so everything will be O. K.
I was afraid to blaze a tree, or set up anything, because they will comb the country fine; but for landmarks there is a big hawks' nest right opposite the cache, on the far side of the creek, and downhill from the tree is a red rock with a flat top; and on that I marked a line. Lay your rifle along the line, and she will sight for the mouth of the cache.
Now, these dogs went back on their bargain, and I have fooled them plenty. Don't tell them you know, or give them a share. Let them hunt for the cache till they give up. Then get about four big canoes, and men you can trust, and go after it yourself. . . . saw better nor anything like them in my life, and no one else. You would hardly believe . . . worth a hun . . . to see you again, but I guess I am out of luck. So good-by. Your loving brother,
Angus McNab.
P. S.—I am putting in a lock of Black Donald's hair, because you hated him about like I did. I told him I would get him before I died, and I am glad I did. Use this box, and think of me once in a while. Use old Joe right, because he stayed with me.
When we had finished reading this remarkable message from the past—and it was not at all easy to read—Jim Dunleath looked at me with lifted brows.
"Well, my son," said he, "what have we struck? Who on earth is—or was—Angus McNab?"
"I never heard of him."
"He must have been a mighty hardbitten sport," he said, and lifted the scrap of skin and black hair gingerly. "By thunder! Bob, this belonged to some gentleman called 'Black Donald,' and Angus McNab scalped him!"
I nodded, my eyes bulging at the grisly memento of bygone feud and hate.
"But what is the letter about, anyway?" he went on. "It's disjointed— written by a sick man—and he rambles. Now let's see: McNab and some tough bunch of which he seems to have been the leader fought for something valuable and won out. They quarreled over the spoils. About then they had to make a get-away from some party that outnumbered them. So they cached whatever it was, and McNab lifted it and cached it again. It was bulky, or heavy, because they couldn't travel with it, and, anyway, that part about the canoes settles it. Then, having fooled his companions, McNab took sick. As he describes it, I'll bet it was appendicitis—and he wrote this note to his brother and gave it to Joe Barbe. If Barbe is this skeleton—or the skeleton Barbe—his brother never saw it. And that is likely from the way we found the letter in the box. So the chances are that whatever they cached is there still."
"But what was it?" I asked. "Gold?"
"Not likely. He tells his brother to bring about four canoes. He couldn't have four canoe loads of gold. He says it is worth 'a hun' That must mean a hundred. A hundred what?"
"A hundred dollars!" I suggested foolishly.
"Pshaw! Nobody would bother caching a hundred dollars. A hundred wouldn't weigh anything. He must mean a hundred thousand at the least."
"Gosh!" I breathed. "That's a whole bunch of money."
"Think so, Bob?" he said dryly. "Well, it is—when you haven't got it. Not so much when you have. I know a fellow who got rid of that much in a couple of years."
"He must have been a darn fool," I said candidly.
"So he was. And, as the Wise Man of the East remarked: 'A fool and his father's money are soon parted.' Well, where are these Burntwood Lakes the letter speaks of?"
"It's up North. Up the Brulé River, I think. I don't know just where. I guess Tom Ballou would know."
"Well," he said, "when we get back we'll ask him about it. And now let's cover up the bones of old Joe Barbe, and put up a cairn or a cross or something just as a mark of respect from humans to an ex-human. And then let's get out of here. I don't think I want to camp on this lake to-night."