The Pirate of Jasper Peak/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
OSCAR DANSK
HUGH walked very slowly as he made his way up the path, for he was worn out, weary enough to drop by the wayside and sleep there for half a day. He was stiff from kneeling all night in the canoe, his shoulders were lame from the weight of his pack and from the long miles of paddling, his brain whirled from want of sleep. On he trudged, past the groups of overhanging maples, scarlet and gold after the autumn frosts, past a huge mass of red jasper rock with a spring bubbling out at the foot of it, up the hill at last and to the open space where the cottage stood.
It was a little square building of logs, chinked with plaster, with two small sheds behind it and a chimney of rough field stones. Small and rude as the cottage seemed, it had the same air of neatness and homely comfort that Hugh had noticed about the little Swedish houses in Rudolm. A plume of smoke was rising from the chimney and, at the open window, a white curtain was blowing in the morning wind. Before he reached the door, it opened and Oscar Dansk came out upon the wide stone step. The moment their eyes met Hugh knew they were to become fast friends.
There seemed no more natural thing in the world than to sit down upon the doorstep—Hugh’s tired legs could not have carried him farther—and tell Oscar immediately all about why he had come. The other seemed to understand at once just what had happened, just why Hugh had come to find him and just what he himself was expected to do. He shook his head gravely when he heard how long the Edmonds boys had been gone.
“Five days when you first heard,” he said; “that makes seven now and another night. It is bad, but not hopeless. If they are alive we will find them.”
“Your sister thinks they are alive,” repeated Hugh, for he had already spoken of Linda’s theory about the dog.
“Yes,” replied Oscar, “I know that Nicholas, if anything had happened to his masters, I am certain he would have come back. I think Linda is right.”
Hugh, half blind with weariness as he was, had already begun to notice how like his sister Oscar was. All things that were attractive in her were present in Oscar, with much more besides. There was fire in his blue eyes where hers held only kindliness, there was no heaviness, nor any sadness in his expression, but spirit and courage and love of high adventure. He was taller and straighter than Linda, also, with more clear-cut features. As he sat on the doorstone, with the sun shining on his bright fair hair, and his strong hands clasped upon his knee, he looked as though he were indeed, as Jethro had said, “a person who could see further than others.”
"It is not right,” he said at last, “for me to let you sit here talking, when the first thing you should do is to have breakfast and then sleep the clock around.”
He got up and led the way into the cottage, with Hugh following eagerly, curious to see what sort of an abode it was. There were two tiny rooms inside with so wide a doorway between that they were practically one. Linda Ingmarsson’s fingers must surely have sewed those curtains at the windows, the braided rugs on the floor and the blue and white quilts on the two narrow bunks. She must also have given her brother the pot of red geraniums that stood on the sill of the sunniest window. But she had never seen the little log cottage, so she could not have been responsible for the spotless cleanliness of everything.
Never before had Hugh sat down to such an odd breakfast, nor, even at the Indian camp, had he ever eaten with such ravenous appetite. There was half a partridge stewed in brown gravy, wild rice, flapjacks instead of bread, blueberries and, strange to say, thick, rich cream.
“The blueberries? Yes, it is pretty late for them, but you still can find a few in the hollows,” said Oscar, misunderstanding Hugh’s surprise. “Oh, you mean the cream? Why, that is nothing; I have a cow.”
“But how did she get here?” Hugh persisted. “By water, or through the woods?”
He thought of the journey that he himself had made and decided that, for a four-footed creature, both routes were equally impossible.
“She must have been born hereabouts,” Oscar answered. “I found her running wild in the woods when she was still a calf. I brought her home and built her a stable and fed her for a month or two and then”—here he indulged in the silent chuckle that Hugh was to learn was his only form of laughter—“and then Half-Breed Jake sent over to say that she was his.”
“Was she?” Hugh wished to know. He felt a great interest in what had occurred between Oscar and the pirate.
“In a way she might have been called so. You see, old Mat Henderson had a little farm up on the spur of Jasper Peak, where Jake lives now. I don’t know how Henderson got his live stock in; I believe he chartered a little steamer to bring them up the lake and through Harbin’s Channel. That was before the pirates came; boats do not come through there now. Henderson was a queer old soul; he had lots of money, people said, and just came away up here so that he could live alone. The next thing we knew Half-Breed Jake and some Indians were living on the place, claiming that Henderson had sold it to them and that very soon after the sale—he had died. There wasn’t anything to be proved, so we had to let it go. But we’ll know some day.”
He had spoken quietly until the last words, when his tone turned suddenly to bitter earnestness and he dropped his big sunburned hand upon the table with such force that the tin plates danced in their places. His clear face clouded with anger and he sat silent, staring out through the little window. Hugh was almost frightened at the sudden sternness of his face.
“But the cow?” he hinted gently.
Oscar hesitated, then the grimness of his face relaxed and he smiled.
“They cared for Henderson’s stock after a fashion,” he said, “for they knew it might be a starvation winter for them otherwise. The calf they evidently did not want to feed and turned it out into the woods. When they feared that I would get some good out of it they came over to fetch it. But they went home empty-handed.”
Hugh had a quick recollection of Half-Breed Jake standing in the postoffice with the brown bear’s skin in his hand and of the shrinking claimant. Ole Peterson, slipping away into a corner. There were not many people, he thought, who could successfully dispute a question of ownership with the Pirate of Jasper Peak.
He had finished his breakfast and began to feel, once more, an overwhelming sleepiness. In spite of the brightness of the morning sun making squares upon the floor, in spite of the pressing nature of his errand and the mystery of the green forest outside, his eyes were dropping shut. One question, however, loomed so large in his mind that it must be spoken.
“I wish you would tell me, Oscar,” he said, the name coming as readily to his tongue as though the friendship were years old, “I wish I knew why you choose to live here all alone.”
The man’s face flushed a little under his sunburn and his blue eyes, once again, took on that stern look.
“It is too long a story, Hugh,” was all he answered. “Before I tell you about it you must have your sleep.”
The hands of the big Swedish clock in the corner of Oscar’s kitchen must have come very near to making a complete round before Hugh awoke. He had been dreaming so vividly that for a moment he was bewildered and sat up rubbing his eyes and wondering where he was. He remembered in a moment, however, and scrambled quickly out of bed. The cottage was quite silent save for the ticking of the clock and the crackling of the fire on the hearth. Hugh went to the little window at the foot of his bunk and looked out. When he had come up the trail that morning he had noticed little save that the hillside was steep and the forest dense, but now that he could see across the little plateau upon which the cottage stood and down into the next valley, he looked and looked again.
The country through which he had come on his journey from Rudolm had seemed to him all alike, one narrow ravine after another with close tangled woods, precipitous slopes and rocky summits in endless succession. But here he was looking out into a broad green basin where the hills drew back from the lake in a gigantic semicircle, leaving the half-wooded slope to drop gently to wide green meadows and a winding stream. Over to the north the hills closed in a little, but still left a broad valley through which flowed away toward Canada the river that was the lake’s outlet. Groups of trees extended downward from the woods and stood knee deep in the wild grass of the sloping meadows. A cheerful tinkle sounded below the cottage, heralding the fact that Oscar was driving up his cow from the luxuriant pasture land, to be stabled for the night.
“It is a nice place,” thought Hugh. “I do not wonder Oscar likes to live here, but—well, winters must be pretty long and lonely.”
Oscar came in presently and they had supper before the blazing fire, a meal as odd and delicious as breakfast had been. After supper there was much work to be done in which Hugh lent a hand, wood to be cut and carried in, water to be fetched from the spring half way down the hill, the cow, Hulda, to be fed and milked. The long twilight was nearly at an end and Hugh already feeling sleepy again before they finished at last. Oscar, it seemed, had spent most of the day in searching the nearest hillsides for traces of John Edmonds and his brother, but had to report blank failure so far.
“But if they are alive they are in this region,” he said. “They would not have gone far north, for the woods and swamps in that direction are almost impassable. Nor, if Edmonds wanted to hide for any reason, would he go toward the east end of Red Lake where there are more settlements and the Indian reservations.”
He brought out a rude map made evidently by himself, showing in rough drawing the western end of the lake and the watercourses.
“We will divide it off into squares,” he said, “and search one square of country every day. Then, if we don’t find where they are, we will at least know where they are not. We will begin with this one to-morrow.”
“Wouldn’t it be quicker just to follow up the main streams and the most likely valleys first?” asked Hugh.
Oscar was slowly rolling up the map and putting it in its place.
“It would be quicker—and we might miss them on the way,” he said. “If we are to do the thing thoroughly, we had better not hurry too much.”
Hugh was to learn that this was Oscar’s method of doing all things. He did not agree just then that it was the best, but, on looking back afterward, he wondered at his own stupidity.
“Will we meet Half-Breed Jake, do you think?” was all he asked, however.
“No,” returned Oscar, “that fellow and his Indian friends are nearly always away at this time of year. You say you saw them in the woods, but they must have gone back again, for there has not been a sign of life about their cabin. His place is over opposite us on the spur of Jasper Peak; you can see it plainly enough by daylight. Every season about this time they go down-State to sell their furs and have a final spree before they come back for the winter. He is an ugly neighbor, Half-Breed Jake is, when he has just had his fling. He does not ever like to stay away very long, for he likes to watch the place and drive out any one that might try to settle hereabouts.”
“But he hasn’t driven you out,” said Hugh. “Has he tried?”
“Oh, yes, he has tried,” replied Oscar cheerfully, “but he hasn’t succeeded yet.”
They set out very early the next morning, having arisen before sun-up to get their work done and to cook the dinner they were to carry with them. Oscar took down his spare rifle from where it hung upon the wall and gave it to Hugh.
“You may have a chance at a partridge or even a deer,” he said. “You had better take it along.”
They walked down past the spring into the thickly wooded ravine with its little stream that separated them from Jasper Rock. At one point they could look up and see even more plainly than from the hill above, the Pirate’s cabin. It was a tumbledown log building with a few rude outhouses and ragged fences. A black hen rose suddenly from a tuft of weeds at their feet and ran squawking up the hill toward her unlovely home.
“I hardly know how his stock keeps alive while he is gone,” observed Oscar, “but the creatures are all half wild, anyway, and used to ranging the woods and foraging for themselves.”
After they had tramped some distance, Oscar decreed that they were to separate.
“See,” he said, showing Hugh the map, “here are these two little streams flowing on each side of this hill, and joining where we are now. You follow this one, going up and down the slope on one side of the ravine to find traces of where the boys might have passed by or camped. When you reach the swampy land where the stream rises, turn back and come down the other side. Then when you get to where the two streams meet, follow up the other branch in the same way. It will take you nearly all day to do that and to come back here, where it is easy enough to find the way home.”
Hugh agreed to follow these instructions carefully and went off, a good deal elated at being trusted to search alone. He found the ravine narrow and the going very rough. He clambered laboriously up and down, up and down, finding nothing but some very old deer tracks and the footprints of some little wood animals that he could not identify. Before long he grew hot and rather tired and sat down by the stream to rest. He began to wonder if there were not some easier way of performing the task and presently decided that there was. The valley was so small that he felt he could easily examine both slopes at once; then, when he reached the marsh, he could cut across the intervening hill and follow the other fork down to the point of junction. His journey from Rudolm had made him feel quite like an experienced woodsman already, so that he felt very confident that he had thought of a better plan than Oscar's. He pushed on resolutely and reached the headwaters of the creek about noon. There he ate his lunch, rested a little and then turned gayly to clamber up the hill.
It was a longer and a steeper climb than he had bargained for. More than once he thought he was at the top and even beginning to descend on the other side, only to discover that there was another ascent to be made. He went upward for what seemed to him an endless time, and began to be very weary. At last he reached the summit, but found that the trees were so tall and thick that he could see no distance even from there, and a slight, a very slight doubt began to arise in his mind as to whether he had done the wisest thing in following a plan of his own.
He saw a great mass of rock rising among the trees not a quarter of a mile away and decided that he had better climb to the top of it and get his bearings before going any further. It was a hard scramble through the thickets and up the side of the giant red bowlder, but Hugh accomplished it in ever increasing haste. He wished to assure himself as quickly as possible that all his calculations were correct. He was panting with hurry and excitement when he came out upon the top of the rock and turned his face toward where Jasper Peak should be.
Somehow it is rather a terrible thing to look for so reliable a landmark as a mountain or a lake and not to find it.
“They must be there, they must be there,” he kept repeating half aloud; but, no, there was nothing to be seen but hills and hills, endless miles of green in every direction and all utterly unfamiliar. For a full minute Hugh stood gaping, before there came over him the sickening knowledge that he was lost.
He had thought the forest beautiful on his night journey with Shokatan, it had seemed to him mysterious, wonderful, teeming with adventure. But now it seemed only dark, threatening and cruel, as though it existed merely to shelter dangers and hidden enemies, as though the rolling hills and valleys swept up to his feet to drown him in a sea of green.
“I mustn’t get excited,” he kept telling himself, “I must keep my head.”
But even as he so thought, he knew that his brain was reeling and that his bewilderment was increasing every moment.
“I will go back just the way I came,” was his first plan, but it proved impossible to follow. He found traces here and there of where he had passed before, yet the way was so twisted and uncertain that, after an hour of struggling through the underbrush he finally came out on the same ridge again and faced the same mass of red rock. He climbed the steep bowlder once more to make sure that he had not been mistaken and, on seeing again that vast pitiless expanse of forest, all calmness suddenly left him. He slid down the rock in a wild scramble, landed on all-fours among the brambles, picked himself up and started down the opposite side of the hill at a run.
He was quite unconscious of the fact that he had dropped Oscar’s rifle and had left it behind him. He never had any idea of where he went or in what direction. He ran until he could drag his leaden feet no longer, then he lay panting upon the ground until he could get up and run again. Finally he became so exhausted that he could only walk and had to stop to rest every few minutes, but still he pressed obstinately on, determined to get somewhere, anywhere.
Once he found himself, not knowing how he got there, floundering at the edge of a wide marsh and noticed footmarks in the soft ground beside him as though some great creature of the woods had passed there not very long before. The prints were very large and clear in the wet earth, but he scarcely noticed them so far gone was he in weariness and despair. Slowly he dragged himself on, past a dense poplar thicket, over a dried-up watercourse, up a hill, through the close undergrowth at the top—and stood still with a cry that was almost a sob. Below him spread a wide valley, green and open and full of sunshine, at its foot, in exactly the opposite quarter from where it should be, lay the shining blue of the lake. Oscar’s little house, still in quite the wrong direction, stood on the ridge at his right, the door open, the curtains flying, the red roof basking in the sun. A pleasant home-like tinkle came up from the grassy slope below him where the contented Hulda was grazing peacefully.
“Gee!” said Hugh and sat down abruptly on the grass. “Gee, but I’m glad to see this place again!”
It looked indeed, to his weary desperate eyes, like a true bit of Paradise. He thought quickly of the name at which he had laughed a little when he saw it written in Oscar’s hand upon the map. It was, after all, not so much amiss to call the valley “The Promised Land.”