Chapter IV: Part 4

In his new character of cousin-in-authority, Prime sent Lucetta early to bed to catch up on her arrears of sleep. After she had disappeared behind the curtains of the small shelter-tent, he sat for a long time before the fire smoking the rank tobacco and letting his thoughts rove at will through the mazes of the strange adventure which had befallen him and this distant cousin, of whose very existence he had been ignorant.

More and more the mazes perplexed him, and the coincidences, if they were coincidences, began to verge upon the fantastic or the miraculous. Was it by accident or design that they had both chanced to be in Quebec at the same time? If the plot were of Grider's concocting, did the barbarian know of the cousinship beforehand? Prime was charitable enough to hope that he did. It made the brutal joke--if it were a joke--a little less criminal to suppose that Grider knew of the relationship.

Still, it was all vastly incredible on any joking hypothesis. Taking the most lenient view of it--that Grider had pre-arranged the assault upon their liberty and had hired the two half-breeds to pick them up and convoy them out of the wilderness--it was unbelievable that the barbarous one, with all of his known disregard for the common humanities where his Homeric sense of humor was involved, would have turned them over to the tender mercies of two semi-savages whose character had been sufficiently demonstrated by the manner of their death.

"It simply _can't_ have been Watson Grider," Prime mused over his sixth cigarette--he was rolling them now in the label paper of the vegetable tins, frugally soaked off and saved. "If it had been his joke, he wouldn't have left it up in the air; he would have followed along to get the good of it. But if it isn't Grider, who is it, and what is it all about?"

The riddle always worked around thus to the same tormenting question, with no hint of an answer; and, as many times before, Prime was obliged to leave it hanging, like Mohammed's coffin, between heaven and earth. But when he renewed the fire and rolled himself in his blankets for the night, he was still casting about for some means of bringing it to earth.

Figuring it out afterward, he was certain that he could not have been asleep for more than an hour or two before he was awakened, with the echo of a noise like volley-firing of some sort still ringing in his ears. His first impulse was to spring up, but the second, which was the one he obeyed, was more in keeping with the new character development. Deftly freeing himself from the blanket wrappings, he reached over to make sure that one of the guns could be caught up quickly, and lay quiet.

For some little time nothing happened, and the night silence of the forest was undisturbed. Just as he was beginning to think that it had been the mosquitoes, and not a noise, which had awakened him, and was about to get up and renew the smudge which he had made to windward before turning in, he heard cautious footsteps as of some one approaching from the direction of the river.

The measured tread assured him that the footfalls were human, and his hold tightened mechanically upon the grip of the gun-stock. By this time he was thinking quite clearly, and he told himself that the militant precaution was doubtless unnecessary; that there was little chance that the approaching intruder--any intruder who would be attracted by the light of the camp-fire--would be unfriendly. Yet it was the part of prudence to be prepared.

After a moment or two he was able to note that the approaching footsteps were growing more cautious. At this he rolled over by imperceptible inchings to face toward the river, drawing the gun with him. It was useless to try to penetrate the black shadows of the background. The fire had died down to a mass of glowing embers, its bedtime replenishing of dried wood blazing up fitfully only now and then to illumine a slightly wider circle. Prime saw nothing, and, for a time after the footfalls ceased, heard nothing. But the next manifestation was startling enough. At a moment when he was beginning to wonder if his imagination had been playing tricks on him, he heard a curious ripping sound coming, this time, from behind the inverted canoe.

Silently he rose to his knees with the rifle held low. For shelter, in case of a shower, the provisions had been placed under the inverted birch-bark, and he decided instantly that the intruder was trying to steal them. Not wishing to alarm Lucetta, he got upon his feet and walked toward the canoe, meaning to put the man behind it between himself and the firelight.

The manoeuvre was never completed. Before he had taken half a dozen steps a blinding flashlight was turned upon him from behind the canoe, and it stopped him as suddenly as if the dazzling radiance had been a volley from a machine-gun. But the stopping shock was only momentary. Dashing forward around the end of the canoe, he had a glimpse of a big-bodied man in a golf cap and sweater crashing his way through the undergrowth toward the river, and promptly gave chase.

"Grider!--Watson!" he called, but there was no reply. The intruder, as he ran, had the benefit of his flashlight; Prime could see the momentary gleams as the runner took a diagonal course which would bring him out a hundred yards down-stream from a point directly opposite the camp-fire.

Prime collided with a tree, stumbled and fell, and sprang up to call again. The retreating footfalls were no longer audible, but now there was another cacophony of noise--the sputtering exhausts of a motor-boat--and Prime reached the river-bank in time to see the dark shape of the power-driven craft losing itself in the starlight in its swift rush down the river.

In the first flush of his rage at what figured as a second heartless desertion, Prime was strongly tempted to open fire on the retreating motor-boat and its occupant. This was purely a cave-man prompting, and before it could translate itself into action the opportunity was gone. When the motor-boat had disappeared, losing itself to sight and sound, the breathless pursuer went back to his blankets, swearing gloomily at the spiteful chance which had opened the door of misfortune by making him a college classmate of one Watson Grider.

XIV

OF THE NAME OF BANDISH

THE next morning Prime waited until after breakfast before telling Lucetta about the visit of the intruder, the postponement basing itself upon a very natural disinclination to re-align himself, even constructively, with such a brutal humorist as Watson Grider. Indeed, when he told the story, he omitted to mention the barbarian's name; would never have mentioned it if Lucetta had not pushed him into a corner.

"You say you saw the man; was it a stranger, or some one you knew?" she questioned.

"I couldn't be sure," Prime evaded. "The fire wasn't burning very brightly, and he had just blinded me with his flashlight."

The gray eyes were regarding him calmly.

"It is to be hoped, Cousin Donald, that you will never have to fib yourself out of a real difficulty. You prevaricate so clumsily, you know."

"I wasn't lying," he protested; "really, you know, I couldn't be sure."

"But you thought you recognized him."

"Yes, I did," he admitted doggedly. "I didn't mean to tell you, but I fancy it doesn't make any great difference now. It was Grider, of course."

"You are sure?"

"I have just said that I wasn't sure. I didn't see his face. But I saw a golf cap and a sweater, and Grider wears both upon any and all occasions; he has even been accused of sleeping in them."

"But why should he come here like that and then run away again?"

"He wanted to find out how his execrable joke was getting along, of course! I had a mind to fire at him after he got into the boat, and I wish now that I had. You didn't hear any of the noise?"

"Not a sound." They had taken the cooking utensils down to the river edge to wash them, and Lucetta scoured for a silent half minute on the skillet before she picked the one comforting grain of assurance out of the midnight adventure. "We ought to be obliged to this outrageous friend of yours for one thing, anyway," she commented. "He has told us that there are no more rapids to be shot. If he could come up the river in a motor-boat, we can go down it safely in a canoe."

"That is so," said Prime; "I hadn't thought of that. I wonder if our patch is sticking all right. Suppose we go and see."

They went to look, and what they saw struck them both dumb. The clamped patch was still in place, but a glance at the upturned canoe bottom showed them what the midnight marauder had done and explained for Prime the cause of the ripping noise he had heard. For a distance fully one-third of its length the thin sheathing of the canoe had been cut as if with the slashing blow of a sharp knife.

Prime was the first to find speech, and what he said would have kindled a fire under wet wood. Then he remembered and made gritting amends. "I beg your pardon; I couldn't help it, Lucetta. I'm not taken that way very often, but I should have blown up like a rotten boiler if I couldn't have relieved the pressure. Did you ever hear of such an infernally idiotic scoundrel in all your life? I wish to gracious I'd had the courage of my convictions and turned loose on him with the gun! He deserves to be shot!"

Lucetta was examining the damaged canoe bottom more closely. "But why?" she protested. "Why should he follow us up so vindictively, Donald? Surely it has passed all the limits of any kind of a joke by this time."

"Of a joke?--yes; I should say so! I hate to think it of him, Lucetta--I do for a fact. If I hadn't seen him I wouldn't believe it was Watson; but seeing is believing."

"Not always," was the reflective dissent. And then: "This is the work of a spiteful enemy, Donald; not that of any friend, however harebrained. It is the work of some one who has a particular object in keeping us from getting back to civilization."

"We have been over all that ground until it is worn out," Prime broke in impatiently. "It is Grider; it can't be anybody else; and I wish I had potted him while I had the chance. But that is a back number now. The mischief is done and we must repair it if we can. Get your glue-pot ready and I'll go and hunt for some more of the sticky stuff."

Lucetta was laughing silently.

"We are so humanly inconsistent--both of us!" she commented. "Yesterday we were almost willing to be sorry because our woods idyll couldn't last forever; and now we are ready to draw and quarter Mr. Grider--or whoever did this--because it makes the idyll last a few days longer."

It took them the better part of the day to patch the knife-gash, and, though the other patch seemed to be holding satisfactorily, they were doubtful of the results in the more serious hurt. It was impossible to devise any clamp for the greater rent, but they did their best, overlaying the fresh patches with clean sheets of the bark and weighting the whole down with flat stones carried laboriously from the river brink.

That night Prime slept with one eye open and with both guns where he could lay his hands upon them quickly. Somewhile past midnight he got up and built a small fire beyond the canoe as another measure of safety, locking the stable carefully after the horse had been stolen. When he went back to his blankets he found Lucetta up and sitting under the turned-up flap of the shelter-tent.

"Did you hear anything?" she inquired.

He shook his head. "No; I thought I'd light up a little more so that we couldn't be stalked again as we were last night."

"You are losing too much sleep. Let me have one of the guns and I'll keep watch for a while."

"What could you do with a gun?" he demanded gloomily.

"I can at least make a noise and waken you if needful."

There was no sleep for either of them for a long time; but after a while Prime lost himself, and when he awoke it was daylight and Lucetta was cooking breakfast.

On this day they were fairly out of an occupation. With the stone weightings removed, the canoe patches seemed to be sticking bravely, but they still required to be daubed with another coating of the pitch, which must dry thoroughly before they could venture upon a relaunching. The small job done, they took turns sleeping through the forenoon, and after the midday meal Prime went fishing, taking care, however, not to go beyond calling distance from the glade.

When night came they carried the precious canoe to the exact centre of the clear space and built a circle of small fires all around it, at the imminent risk of burning it up or at least of melting the pitch from its seams. The afternoon had been cloudy and there were indications of a storm. Prime made the fastenings of the shelter-tent secure and stowed the provisions under the overturned birch-bark, leaving a space where he could crawl under himself if the storm should break. For a long time after supper they sat together beside the cooking-fire. The mosquitoes were worse than usual, and Prime had provided some rotting wood for a smudge, in the reek of which they wept in sympathetic companionship.

"Speaking of smoked meat," Prime grumbled, after they had exhausted all other topics, "that jerked stuff under the canoe hasn't any the best of us." Then, with a teasing switch to their rapidly disintegrating clothes: "How would you like to walk into your classroom in the girls' school just as you are?"

"Just about as well as you'd like to walk down Fifth Avenue under the same conditions," was the choking reply. "My! but that smoke is dreadful!"

"It is like the saw-off between any two evils: when you are enduring the one you think you'd rather endure the other. Let us hope and pray that this is the last night for us in this particular sheol, at least. I've heard and read a good bit about the insect pests of the northern woods, and I have always taken it with a grain of salt. That is another mistake I shall never make again."

"They were not bad on the St. Lawrence nor in Quebec," observed the other martyr.

The mention of Quebec started a new subject or, rather, revived an old one, and they fell to talking of their short experience in the historic city. One thing leading to another, Prime went more specifically into his evening excursion with the athletic young fellow who had seemed so anxious to increase the dividends of the motion-picture houses and the cafes.

"He was a handsome fellow, and he didn't begin to have the face of a villain," he commented. "A good talker too. He had travelled--been everywhere. One of the pictures we saw was a 'Western,' and that brought on more talk. I remember he told me a lot about his own experience in the British Columbia mines. It was great stuff. He had been manager and general factotum for some rich old money-bags--if he wasn't lying to me and making it all up out of whole cloth."

"He didn't do anything to make you suspect that he might have designs upon you?"

"Not a thing in the world. He was as frank and open-hearted as a boy. There wasn't anything peculiar about him except his habit of looking at his watch every few minutes. I asked him once if I was keeping him from an appointment, and he laughed and said he wished that I were; wished that he were well enough acquainted in the city to be able to make appointments."

"Did he tell you his name?" queried the weeping listener.

"He did, and ever since we woke up and found ourselves back yonder on the lake shore I have been trying to recall it. It is gone completely. 'Bender' is the nearest I can come to it, and that isn't it."

"Would you know it if you should hear it?"

"I am sure I should. It was a queer name, and I remember thinking at the time that I would jot it down and use it for the name of a character in a story--simply because it was so delightfully odd."

"Tell me," she broke in quickly; "was this young man of yours fair, with blue eyes, and hair that reminded you a little of a hayfield?"

"That is the man!"

"How would 'Bandish' do for the name?" she asked.

"You've got it! That's what it was. How in the name of all that is wonderful did you know?"

"I was merely putting one and one together to make two," was the quiet rejoinder. "The young woman I was with that same night was Mrs. Bandish. She was the one whose careless sleeve-pin scratched my arm and put me to sleep."

"Then you knew them both?" Prime demanded.

"Only slightly. They claimed to be teachers from some little town in Indiana. I don't know where they joined our party, but I think it was before we took the St. Lawrence River boat. Anyway, it was somewhere in Canada. They were easy to get acquainted with. At first I didn't like the young woman any too well; there was something about her that gave me the idea that she was--well, that she was somehow too sophisticated. But that wore off. She was quick-witted and jolly, and both she and her husband were the life of the party coming down the big river."

"Do you suppose Grider bribed them to join the party and thus get you in tow?" Prime asked.

"No, I don't suppose anything of the kind. You are forgetting that Mr. Grider didn't even know of my existence at that time--if he does now," she added, after a moment's hesitation.

"Grider knew, and he knew that we were cousins," Prime insisted. "That is a guess, but you will see that it will turn out to be the right one. But even that doesn't explain why he should come up here in the woods and cut a hole in our canoe, confound him!"

"It doesn't explain a good many things which are much more mysterious than they were before," said Lucetta; and shortly after that she smoked her tent blue with a bit of smudge wood and disappeared for the night, leaving Prime to pull reflectively at a clumsy pipe which he had contrived to whittle out of a bit of birch wood during the day of waiting, to smoke and to hope that the threatening rain-storm would materialize and drown a few millions of the tormenting mosquitoes.

XV

JEAN BA'TISTE

ON a morning which Prime, consulting his notched stick, named as the twenty-fourth of July, they gave the canoe patches another daubing of pitch for good luck, relaunched their argosy, loaded the dunnage, and began to learn the art of paddling anew--the relearning being made strictly necessary by the new green-wood paddles.

From a boisterous mill-race in its upper reaches, their river had now subsided into a broad stream with a current so leisurely that they had to paddle continuously to make any headway. With this handicap their progress was slow, and it was not until the afternoon of the second day that they began to see signs to hint that they were approaching the settlements.

The signs were neither numerous nor indicative of any recent habitancy: a few old clearings with their stumps weathered and rotting; here and there a spot luxuriantly green to mark an area where slashings had been burned; in one place a decaying runway to show where the logs had been skidded into the river; all these proved that they were not pioneers; but withal they saw no human being to dispute possession with them.

In the evening of this second day they camped on the right-hand bank a short distance below one of the old clearings, kindling their night fire a few yards from the river in a small grove of second-growth pines. The place was not entirely to their liking; the river-bank was high, and they could not draw the canoe out without partially unloading it. While Lucetta was busying herself with the supper, Prime, as a precautionary measure, made a porter of himself to the extent of carrying a good part of the dunnage up to the fire, and after thus lightening the canoe he hauled it out of water as far as the steep bank would permit.

While they were eating supper an unexpected guest turned up. Lucetta was the first to hear the dip of a paddle in the stream, and a moment later they both heard the grating of a boat bottom on the sand. Prime sprang up, rifle in hand, and went to meet the newcomer, prepared to do battle if needful. When he returned he was followed by a small man, dark, bearded, and with bead-like black eyes roving and shifty. He was dressed more like an Indian than a white man; there were fringes on his moccasins and also on the belted coat, which was much the worse for wear and hard usage.

"_Moi_, Jean Ba'tiste; I mek you de good evenin', _m'sieu' et madame_," he said, introducing himself brusquely, and as he spoke the roving eyes were taking in every detail of the bivouac camp. Then, with no more ado, he squatted beside the fire and became their supper guest, saying simply: "You eat?--good; _moi_, I eat, too."

Since there seemed to be no question of ceremony, Prime made the guest welcome, heaping his tin plate and pouring tea for him in the spare cup. The small man ate as if he were half starved, and was saving of speech during the process, though the roving eyes seemed to be doing double duty. The meal devoured, he produced a black clay pipe with a broken stem and uttered a single word, "Tabac'?" and when the want was supplied he crumbled himself a pipeful from the twist which Prime handed him.

Prime filled his own home-made pipe, and at its lighting the guest began a curt inquisition.

"W'ere you come from?"

Prime explained without going into any of the kidnapping details.

"You campin' out for fon, mebbe, yes?" was the next query.

"A little that way," said Prime.

"You shoot wiz ze gon? W'ere all dat game w'at you get?"

"It isn't the game season," Prime parried. "We haven't tried to shoot anything."

"But you 'ave ze gon. Lemme see 'um," holding out a hand for the rifle.

Prime passed over the gun nearest at hand and drew the other one up within reach. The inquisitive supper guest looked the weapon over carefully and seemed to be trying to read something in the scratches on the stock.

"_Vraiment!_ she's one good gon," he commented, passing it back. "W'ere you get 'um?"

Prime did not answer the question. He thought it was high time to ask a few of his own.

"What river is this?" he wanted to know.

"You make canoe on him and you not know dat? She is Mishamen; comes bimeby to Riviere du Lievres."

"How far?"

"One, two, t'ree day; mebbe more."

"You mean that we will reach a town in two or three days?"

"Mebbe so, if you don' get los'."

Prime exchanged a quick glance with his fellow castaway. Lucetta signalled "Yes," and he acted accordingly.

"What will you charge to show us the way to the nearest town?" he asked.

The small man did not seem especially eager for money. He was examining the gun again. "_Moi_, I can't go--too bizzee. W'ere you got dis gon?"

"It came with our outfit," said Prime shortly. "We got it when we got the canoe."

"And w'ere you got dat canoe?"

The inquisition was growing rather embarrassing, but Prime answered as best he could.

"We got the outfit up at the big lake where we started from. We have come all the way down the river."

With this the restless-eyed querist appeared to be satisfied. At all events he did not press the questioning any further, and was content to take another pipe-filling from Prime's tobacco twist and to tell a little more about himself. He was "one ver' great trapper," in his own phrase, and was also a "timber looker" for a lumber company. Lucetta had withdrawn to the privacy of her tent, and Prime could not divest himself of the idea that the small man whose tongue had been so suddenly loosened was merely sparring for time, time in which to accomplish some end of his own. In due course the battery was unmasked.

"You say you begin _voyageur_ on ze big lake. W'ere you leave Jules Beaujeau an' Pierre Cambon, eh, w'at?"

"I don't know them," said Prime, telling the simple truth.

"Dis Pierre Cambon's gon," said the little man, suddenly tapping the weapon he had been inspecting. "She 'ave hees name on ze stock. An' ze birch-bark down yonder; she's belong' to Jules Beaujeau. You buy 'um?"

Prime scarcely knew what to say; whether to tell the truth, which would not be believed, or to make up a lie, which might be believed. As a compromise he chose a middle course, which is always the most dangerous.

"I don't know these two you speak of, by name; but the two men who owned the canoe and the guns are both dead."

The supper guest sprang up as if a bomb had been exploded under him and quickly put a safe distance between himself and the camp-fire.

"You--you kill 'um?" he demanded.

"No; come back here and sit down. They had a fight and killed each other."

The man returned hesitantly and squatted beside the fire to press another live coal into the bowl of his pipe. Prime switched the talk abruptly.

"You'd better change your mind about the offer I made you and pilot us to the nearest town. We will pay you well for it."

"You got money?" was the short question.

"Plenty of it."

At this the "ver' great trapper" assumed to take the proposal under consideration, smoking other pipes, chaffering and bargaining and prolonging his stay deep into the night. When he finally took his leave, saying that he must go on to his camp, which was a few miles up one of the smaller tributaries of the main stream, it was with a half promise to come back in the morning for the piloting.

Prime took counsel of prudence and did not settle himself for the night immediately after the sharp-eyed one had gone. Laying his pipe aside, he crept cautiously out to the river-bank and assured himself that his late visitor was doing what he had said he would do, namely, heading off up the river with clean, quick strokes of the paddle, which soon sent his light craft out of sight. Prime climbed down the bank, satisfied himself that the patched canoe and its partial lading had not been disturbed, and then went back to the fire to roll himself in his blankets. The incident, with its inquisitorial pryings, had been rather disturbing, in a way, but it was apparently an incident closed.

Turning in so late after a laborious day on the river, Prime overslept the next morning, and when he awoke he found Lucetta already up and frying the bacon.

"Your man didn't stay all night?" she questioned, after Prime had scolded her for not making him get up and do his part.

"No; he sat here until between ten and eleven o'clock and gave me two or three bad minutes. He recognized our canoe and one of the guns, told me the names of the dead men, and wanted to know what had become of them."

"You didn't tell him?" she gasped.

"In the cold light of the morning after, I am afraid I told him too much or too little. I told him the men who owned the canoe and its outfit were dead; that they'd had a fight and killed each other. Candidly, I don't think he believed it. It scared him until I thought he was going to have a fit. I had to jolly him up a bit before he would come back to the fire and talk some more."

"What does he believe?" she inquired anxiously.

"He wouldn't tell me, and I couldn't decide by merely looking at him. I hope I've hired him to pilot us to the nearest town. When he went away he intimated that he might be back this morning."

"Shall we wait for him?"

"No; if he isn't here by the time we are ready to start, we'll go on and take our chance of 'gettin' los',' as he put it. I think that was a bluff, anyway."

They breakfasted leisurely, and Prime even took time to smoke a pipe before beginning to break camp. But his first trip to the river-bank with a load of the dunnage brought him back on a run.

"Our canoe's gone!" he announced breathlessly. "That little wretch came back and stole it while we were asleep!"

Lucetta sat down and propped her chin in her hands.

"This is the beginning of the end, Donald," she said quite calmly and with a touch of resignation in her voice. "Do you know why he took the canoe?"

"Because he's an infernal thief!" Prime raged hotly.

"No," she contradicted. "It is because he thinks we have murdered the two owners of the canoe, and he wanted to make sure that we wouldn't run away while he went after help to arrest us."

XVI

_MARCHONS!_

PRIME leaned against a tree and took a full minute for a grasping of the new situation.

"I more than half believe you are right," he admitted at length. Then, with a crabbed laugh: "If there is any bigger dunce on earth than I am I should like to meet him--just as a matter of curiosity. I'll never brag on my imagination after this. I could see plainly enough that the fellow was fairly eaten up with suspicion, and it would have been so easy to have invented a plausible lie to satisfy him."

"Don't be sorry for that," the young woman put in quickly. "If they arrest us we shall have to tell the truth."

Prime was frowning thoughtfully. "That is where the shoe pinches. Do you realize that the story we have to tell is one that no sane magistrate or jury could ever believe, Lucetta? These two men, Beaujeau and Cambon, must have started from some known somewhere, alive and well. They disappear, and after a while we turn up in possession of their belongings and try to account for ourselves by telling a fantastic fairy-tale. It's simply hopeless!"

"You are killing the only suggestion I had in mind," was the dispirited rejoinder. "I was going to say that we might wait here until they came for us, but that won't do at all. We must hurry and disappear before they come back and find us!"

"I think it will be best," Prime decided promptly. "If we had a reasonable story to tell it would be different. But we haven't, and the chances are that we should get into all sorts of trouble trying to explain for other people a thing that we can't explain for ourselves. It is up to us to hit the trail. Are you fit for it?"

"Why shouldn't I be?" she asked, but there was no longer the old-time buoyancy in her tone.

"I have had a notion the last day or two that you were not feeling quite up to the mark," Prime explained soberly. "It is something about your eyes; they look heavy, as if you hadn't had sleep enough."

"I can do my part of anything that we have to do," she returned, rising; and together they made a judicious division of the dunnage, deciding what they could take and what they must leave behind.

The uncertainties made the decision hard to arrive at. If the tramp should last no more than three or four days they could carry the necessary food without much difficulty. But they could scarcely afford to give up the blankets and the shelter-tent, and Prime insisted that they must take at least one of the guns and the axe. These extras, with the provisions and the cooking-utensils, made one light load and one rather heavy one, and under this considerable handicap the day's march was begun.

The slow progress was difficult from the very outset. Since the river was their only guide, they did not dare to leave it to seek an easier path. By noon Prime saw that his companion was keeping up by sheer force of will, and he tried to get her to consent to a halt for the afternoon. But she would not give up.

"No," she insisted. "We must go on. I am tired; I'll admit it; but I should be something worse than tired if we should have to stop and be overtaken."

From the beginning of the day's march they seemed to have left behind all of the former hopeful signs, and were once more making their way through a primeval forest, untouched, so far as they could see, by the woodsman's axe. Their night camp was made among the solemn spruces by the side of a little brook winding its way to the nearby river. Prime made a couch of the spruce-tips, the folded tent cloth, and the blankets, and persuaded Lucetta to lie down while he prepared the supper.

When the meal was ready the substitute cook was the only one who could eat. Lucetta said she didn't care for anything but a cup of tea, and when Prime took it to her he saw that the slate-gray eyes were unnaturally bright and her face was flushed. Whereat a great fear seized upon him.

"You are sick!" he exclaimed, grappling helplessly with the unnerving fear. "Why didn't you tell me before? I thought--I hoped you were just tired out with the long tramp."

"I shall be better in the morning," she answered bravely. "It has been coming on for a day or two, I think. Why did we camp here in this close place, where it is so hot?"

Prime gripped his fleeting courage and held it hard. It was not hot under the spruces; on the contrary, the evening was almost chilly. Bestirring himself quickly to do what little he was able to do, he moved the sick one gently and set up the tent to shelter her, dipped the remaining bit of the soft deerskin into the brook and made a cold compress for the aching head, and then sat down with a birch-bark fan to keep the mosquitoes away.

As the night wore on he realized more and more his utter helplessness. He had had no experience with sickness or with the care of the sick, and if the remedies had been at hand he would not have known how to use them. Time and again, after Lucetta had fallen into a troubled sleep, he made his way to the riverbank to stare anxiously in the darkness up and down the stream in the faint hope that help might appear. But for all his longings the silent river gave back neither sight nor sound.

In the morning Lucetta's fever had abated, but it had left her weak and exhausted; much too weak to continue the march, though she was willing and anxious to make the trial. Prime vetoed that at once and tried his best to concoct something out of their diminished store of provisions that would prove appetizing to the invalid. She ate a little of the broth prepared from the smoked deer meat merely to please him, and drank thirstily of the tea; but still Prime was not encouraged.

During the afternoon Lucetta's temperature rose again, and, harassed and anxious as he was, Prime was thankful that the fever did not make her delirious. That, he told himself, would be the final straw. So far from wandering, she was able to talk to him; to talk and to thank him gratefully for his earnest but skilless attempts to make her more comfortable.

"It is simply maddening to think that there isn't anything really helpful that I can do," he protested, at one of these pathetic little outbreaks of gratitude. "What do they do for people who have fevers?"

"Quinine," she said, with a twitching of the lips which was meant to be a smile. "Why don't you give me a good big dose of quinine, Donald?"

"Yes, why don't I?" he lamented. "Why do I have to sit here like a bump on a log and do nothing!"

"You mustn't worry," she interposed gently. "You are not responsible for me and my aches and pains. You must try to remember that only a little more than three weeks ago we were total strangers to each other."

"Three weeks ago and now are two vastly different things, Lucetta. You have proved yourself to be the bravest, pluckiest little comrade that a man ever had! And I--I, whose life you have saved, can do nothing for you in your time of need. It's heartbreaking!"

The night, which came on all too slowly for the man who could do nothing, was even less hopeful than the previous one had been. Though he had no means of measuring it, Prime was sure that the fever rose higher. For himself he caught only cat-naps now and then during the long hours, and between two of these he went to the river-bank and built a signal-fire on the remote chance of summoning help in that way.

Between two and three o'clock in the morning the fever began to subside again, and the poor patient awoke. She was perfectly reasonable but greatly depressed, not so much over her own condition as on Prime's account. Again she sought to make him take the purely extraneous view, and when that failed she talked quite calmly about the possibilities.

"I have had so little sickness that I hardly know whether this is really serious or not," she said. "But if I shouldn't--if anything should happen to me, I hope you won't--you won't have to bury me in the river."

"For Heaven's sake, don't talk that way!" he burst out. "You're not going to die! You _mustn't_ die!"

"I am sure I don't want to," she returned. "Especially just now, when I was beginning to learn how to live. May I have a drink of water?"

He went to the brook and got it for her, raging inwardly at the thought that he could not even offer her a drink out of a vessel that wouldn't taste tinny. When her thirst was quenched she went on half musingly.

"I am glad there isn't any one to be so very sorry, Donald. I know it must be fine to have a family and to be surrounded by all kinds of love and affection; but those things carry terrible penalties. Did you ever think of that?"

"I hadn't," he confessed. "I've been a sort of lonesome one, myself."

"The penalties work both ways," she went on. "It breaks your heart to have to leave the loved ones, and it breaks theirs to have you go. I suppose the girls in the school will be sorry; they all seem to like me pretty well, even if I am a 'cross old maid,' as one of them once called me to my face."

"I can't imagine you cross; and as to your being old, why you're nothing but a kid, Lucetta--just a poor little sick kiddy. And, goodness knows, you've had enough to knock you out and to make you think all sorts of grubby thoughts. You mustn't; you are going to get well again, and we'll march along together the same as ever. Or perhaps the sheriff will find us, after all. I've kindled a big fire down on the river-bank so that he won't have any excuse for overlooking us. Day before yesterday I would have tramped twenty miles to dodge him, but to-night I'd welcome him with open arms."

"We were foolish to try to run away," she said. "And that was my fault, too. The--the next time you are kidnapped, you must be careful not to let yourself be tied to a petticoat, Cousin Donald. They are always in the way."

"If I hadn't been tied to a petticoat that could swim, I shouldn't be here to-night fanning the mosquitoes away from you," he retorted, with a laugh that was meant to be cheering. And then he reverted to his one overwhelming and blankly insoluble problem: "If I only knew what to do for you!"

"When I was a little girl we lived in the country, and my mother doctored the entire neighborhood with roots and herbs. It is a pity I haven't inherited a little of her skill, isn't it?"

"There are lashings of pitiful things in this world, Lucetta, and we are getting acquainted with a few of them right now. But I mustn't let you talk too much. Try to go to sleep, if you can, and get a little rest before the fever comes on again."

She closed her eyes obediently, and after a time he knew by her regular breathing that she was asleep. For a patient hour he kept the birch-bark fan in motion and with the first streakings of dawn got up stiffly to make his way to the river-bank, dragging with him a half-rotted log to turn the pillar-of-fire signal into a pillar of smoke.

XVII

ROOTS AND HERBS

THE dawning of the second day in the camp under the great spruces found Prime still struggling desperately with the problem of what to do. Lucetta's condition seemed to be rather worse than better. There was the usual morning abatement of the fever, but she was evidently growing weaker. Prime's too vivid imagination pictured an impending catastrophe, and the canoe thief, no less than Watson Grider, came in for wordless and despairing maledictions. If the canoe had not been stolen they might by now be within reach of help.

It was when matters were at this most distressing pass that the writing-man's invention, pricked alive by what Lucetta had said concerning her mother's skill with simples, opened a temerarious door of hope. Making his charge as comfortable as he could, and leaving a cup of water where she could reach it, he told her he was going for a walk.

Taking the brook for a pathfinder, he traced its course until it led him into a region of opener spaces where there was a better chance for ground growth. In the first weed patch he came to he began to pluck and taste. Unhappily, his knowledge of botany was perilously near a minus quantity; there were few of the weeds that he knew even by name. At the imminent risk of poisoning himself, he went on, chewing a leaf here and there, not knowing in the least what he was looking for, but having an inchoate idea that a febrifuge ought to be something bitter.

The tasting process gave him a variety of new experiences. The leaves of one weed burned his mouth like fire, and he had to stop and plunge his face into the brook to extinguish the conflagration. Those of another made him deathly sick. Finally he came to a tall plant with bluish-white flowers which looked familiar, in a way, though he could not recall its name. A chewed leaf convinced him at once that he need seek no farther. There was the bitterness of hopeless sorrow in its horrible acridity; it clung to him tenaciously while he was gathering an armful of the plant, and went with him on his return to the camp--this, in spite of the fact that he stopped frequently to wash his mouth with brook water.

"What have you there?" was Lucetta's query when he came in with his burden.

"I don't know, but I am hoping you can tell me," he said, giving her a spray of the weed to look at. "Have you ever seen it before?"

"Hundreds of times," she returned. "It is a common weed in Ohio. But I haven't the slightest idea what it is."

Prime groaned. "More of the town-bred education," he deprecated. "But never mind; they can't call us nature-fakirs, whatever other foolish name we may be earning for ourselves."

"What are you going to do with it?" she asked.

"Wait and you'll see."

With the bread-mixing tin for a stew-pan Prime made a rich decoction of the leaves. When the mess began to simmer and steam the poor patient raised herself on one elbow to look at it.

"You are not going to make me drink all that, are you, Donald?" she protested weakly.

"Oh, no; not all of it. Wait until it's properly cooked and I'll show you what I am going to do with it."

The cooking took some time, but the culinary effort offered a mild diversion and was at least a change from the deadly routine of doing nothing. The steam rising from the stewing leaves gave off a peculiarly afflicting odor, and Lucetta sniffed it apprehensively.

"It smells very horrible," she ventured. "Is it going to taste as bad as it smells?"

"That, my dear girl, is on the knees of the gods," he returned oracularly.

"How did you find it?" she wanted to know.

"By the simple process of cut and try. And I can assure you that, however bad it may smell or taste, it hasn't anything on some of the leaves I've been chewing this morning."

When the dose was sufficiently cooked Prime fished the leaves out of the liquor with a forked twig, and carried the stew-pan to the brook to take the scalding edge off of the ill-smelling decoction.

"Are you ready to be poisoned?" he asked when he came back.

"You're--you're sure it _isn't_ poison, aren't you?" she quavered.

"No, but I am going to be," and with that he shut his eyes, held his breath, and took a long drink from the stew-pan of fate, disregarding easily, in the frightful bitterness of the draft, Lucetta's little cry of dismay.

"Merely trying it on the dog," he gasped when he put the pan down and turned away so that she should not see the face contortions--grimaces forthshowing the resentment of an outraged palate. Then he went to sit on his blanket-roll to await results. "If--if it doesn't kill me, then you can try it; but--but we'll wait a few minutes and see what it's going to do to me."

When the results proved to be merely embittering and not immediately deadly, he became a nurse again.

"I have left it as hot as you can drink it," he said, offering the basin. "It seems as if it ought to do more good that way. Take a good long swig, if you can stand it."

Lucetta put her lips to the mixture and made a face of disgust.

"Ou-e-e-e!--_boneset!_" she shuddered. "I'd know it if I should meet it in another world--it takes me right back to my childhood and mother's roots and herbs! I can't, Donald; I simply _can't_ drink all of that!"

"Drink as much as you can. It's good for little sick people," he urged, trying to twist the wryness of his own aftermath into a smile. "If the horrible taste counts for anything, it ought to make you well in five minutes."

Lucetta did her duty bravely, and when the worst was over Prime tucked her up in the blankets, adding his own for good measure. Then he made up a roasting fire, having some vague notion brought over from his boyhood that fever patients ought to sweat. Past this, he made a sad cake of pan-bread for his own midday meal, and when it was eaten he found that Lucetta had fallen asleep, and was further encouraged when he saw that fine little beads of perspiration had broken out on her forehead.

It was late in the afternoon before she awoke and called him.

"Are you feeling any better?" he asked.

"Much better; only I'm so warm I feel as if I should melt and run away. Can't you take at least one of the blankets off?"

"Not yet. You like to cook things, and I am giving you some of your own medicine. This is Domestic Science as applied to the human organization. Just imagine you are a missionary on one of the South Sea Islands, and that you are going to be served up presently _a la_ Fiji. Shall I try to fix you up something to eat?"

"Not yet. But I feel as if I could drink the brook dry."

"No cold water," he decided authoritatively. "The doctor forbids it. But you may have another drink of hot boneset tea."

"Oh, please, not again!" she pleaded; and at that he made her a cup of the other kind of tea, which she drank gratefully.

"Taste good?" he inquired.

"It tastes like the boneset--everything is going to taste like boneset for the next six weeks."

"Don't I know?" he chuckled. "Hasn't it already spoiled my dinner for me? I could taste it in everything." Then he told her about his experiment in pan-bread, adding: "I have saved a piece of it so that if you wish to commit suicide after you get well, the means will be at hand."

"Do you think I am going to get well, Donald?"

"Sure you are! You'll have to do it in self-defense. Just think of the oceans of bitterness you'll have to swallow if you don't. What is puzzling me now is to know what I am going to feed you. Do you suppose you could tell me how to make some pap or gruel, or something of that sort?"

She smiled at this, as he hoped she would, and said there was no need of crossing that bridge until they should come to it. Shortly after this she fell asleep again, and by nightfall Prime was overjoyed to find that her breathing was more natural, and that the fever was not rising. With the coming of the darkness a fine breeze blew up from the river, and he was overjoyed again when it proved strong enough to drive the tormenting mosquitoes back into the forest.

That night he was able to make up some of the lost sleep of the two preceding nights, and when daybreak came another burden was lifted. Lucetta had slept all night, and she declared she was feeling much better; that the fever seemed to be entirely gone. This brought the question of nourishment to the fore again, and Prime attacked it bravely, opening their last tin of peas and making a broth of the liquor thickened with a little of the reground flour. Lucetta ate it to oblige him, though it was as flat and tasteless as any unsalted mixture must be.

"Are you always as good as this to every strange woman you meet, Cousin Donald?" she said, meaning to make the query some expression of her own gratitude.

"Always," he returned promptly. "I can't help it, you know; I'm built that way. But you are no strange woman, Lucetta. If I can't do more for you, I couldn't very well do less. We are partners, and thus far we have shared things as they have come along--the good and the bad. What is troubling me most now is the same thing that was troubling me last night: I don't know what I am going to feed you. You need a meat broth of some kind."

"Not any more of the smoked venison, please!" she begged.

"No, it ought to be fresh meat of some sort. By and by, if the fever doesn't come back, I'll take the gun and see if I can't get a rabbit. I saw three yesterday morning while I was out chewing leaves. You won't be afraid to be left alone for a little while, will you?"

"After what we have been through, I think I shall never be afraid of anything again," she averred soberly. "And to think that I was once afraid of a mouse!"

"That is nothing," he laughed; "you probably will be afraid of a mouse again when you get back to an environment in which the mouse is properly an object of terror. I shan't think any the less of you if that does happen."

She smiled up at him.

"Men always talk so eloquently about the womanly woman: just what do they mean by that, Donald? Is it the mouse-coward?"

"It differs pretty widely with the man, I fancy," he returned. "I know my own ideal."