Chapter XXIX: The Blazed Road

As Dexter had expected, the boy's departing foot tracks were clearly defined in the wet earth, and after breakfast he packed up and started to follow. Alison seemed rather disquieted by his cool assurance, but she was ready to leave when he gave the word, and for the present, at least, she made no effort to delay him or to interfere with his plans.

The trail ran off in a generally northwest direction, leading through a scraggly patch of jack pines, across a grassy meadow, and thence through a winding defile that crawled upward at a sharp slant and came out at length on a barren slope of rock. The snow had almost disappeared during the last week, the few remaining white areas being found only in deep-wooded hollows and on the shady north hillsides. Where there was topsoil of loam, however, a forest-trained eye found little difficulty in tracing the imprints of feet that had gone ahead. But when he reached the granite outcrop, Dexter was brought suddenly to a halt.

The fugitive's boot soles were studded with hobnails, and there should have been a few faint scratches left here and there to indicate his direction of travel; but after a minute inspection of the ground about him, the corporal shook his head, and turned with a baffled frown to meet Alison's questioning gaze.

"I hardly gave Archie credit for being so smart," he remarked acidly. "I'll bet it was you who thought this out for him, and advised him to take off his boots if he struck rocks."

She faced him with her head slightly tilted, and there was mockery in the fleeting smile she gave him. But she kept discreetly silent, and neither admitted nor denied his accusation.

The corporal scrutinized her thoughtfully, with one eyebrow elevated; and then, lightly shrugging his shoulders, he moved onward to seek for the lost trail.

The bare surface of rock reached upward to the snow crests, and extended in a northerly direction around the curve of the steep mountainside. Archie might have climbed still higher, or circled across the pitch of the slope, or gradually worked his way downward to the forested valley below. Whichever course he had taken he must eventually pass beyond the rocks, and even if he kept on traveling in his stocking feet, he was certain to leave some trace of himself when he finally touched soft earth again. Dexter had only to swing around the circumference of the rock slope, and somewhere in moist soil or snow patch he was confident of picking up the broken line of foot tracks.

It meant a loss of time and effort to cast around an interrupted trail, but there was nothing else to be done, and the corporal gave no hint of annoyance as he pushed ahead.

A survey of the country told him that the easiest course of travel would be found along the valley bottoms. The fugitive would be anxious to make the fastest possible progress, and also he would instinctively dread the thought of exposing himself conspicuously on the barren mountain slopes. As soon as he imagined he had left a sufficient gap in his trail, he probably had quit the rock slope and struck downward into the concealing forest. This at least was the most probable supposition, so Dexter bent his steps down the hillside, and presently found himself in a deep, moist hollow, threading his way through dense timber.

He was striding along silently, his restless glance searching the ground before him, when all at once he stopped under a giant white fir that towered in solitary majesty above the tops of the neighboring spruce and pine. On the dark, seamy trunk of the ancient tree there showed a faint, weathered mark, like a wrinkle in the bark. Any other than a trained woodsman would have passed by unobserving. Alison apparently did not know why her companion had halted, even when she saw him bend forward to look at the old tree.

"What is it?" she asked as she read the eager curiosity in Dexter's face.

"Ancient trail blaze," he said. "All this is unmapped wilderness, yet somebody found the way through here before us--many years ago."

"Who? When?"

"I don't know. Some old-time explorer, perhaps. The tree probably has added many inches to its girth since that mark was entrusted to its keeping."

The girl moved forward to inspect the tiny line that was no more than a slight puckering of the bark. "You mean--that's a blaze--left there by somebody?"

Dexter nodded. "A fresh ax cut first glazes itself over with a film of pitch," he said. "Then the bark begins to draw itself together, and finally covers the wound. The annual rings of growth add their covering year by year, until the original scar is buried deep in the wood. In the end nothing is left to show what had happened, save a tiny wrinkle in the bark. But the mark itself is never lost, even if the tree should live for hundreds of years. Let's see."

He unbelted his keen bladed ax, and yielding the tool with his left hand, he began to chop into the sapwood, first above and then below the time-healed scar. In a few moments he was able to split out a long, thick slab; and with tense interest he leaned forward to see what might lie underneath.

"Look!" he exclaimed.

On the surface of white wood exposed, faint characters were discernible. He made out the carved tracery of a letter "W," and there were other lines that he could not quite decipher. For a moment he peered at the section of scribed wood, and then quietly nodded his head.

"I never heard of surveyors going through this part of the wilderness," he observed musingly, "yet this looks like a surveyor's line tree." He counted the growth rings, and looked with thoughtful eyes into the shadowy stillness beyond. "More than half a century ago some man passed through here and cut his blaze and left direction marks behind him," he said in a hushed voice. "The man probably is dead, and I don't suppose he ever knew that he had rendered a service to a later generation of the Canadian mounted."

"What do you mean?" asked the girl wonderingly.

"Let's look farther, and find out," Dexter temporized.

He moved forward again, walking slowly, and keeping sharp lookout about him: and two hundred yards farther on he halted with a smothered laugh to indicate a tall, thick-trunked spruce that stood amid a clump of smaller trees. "The blaze," he said, and pointed to an indented line in the rough bark.

Again he chopped out a block of wood, and presently reached an inner ring that bore dimly scratched characters similar to those found under the bark of the fir.

"Another 'W,'" Alison said with pursed lips, as she bent closer to look. "There's something else--I can't quite make out. What does it mean?"

"Some private mark, no doubt. It probably has no especial meaning now--after fifty years. But the important fact--these are line trees--undoubtedly."

"Yes?" she asked with a puzzled frown.

The corporal strode forward without answering, and presently showed his companion a third tree, the bark of which showed the seamed mark of an ancient blaze. His smile widened with satisfaction, and this time he did not halt. "The open road," he remarked: "I wish I could thank the old timer who stuck up the street signs."

"Where will they take us?" Alison asked with a dubious glance.

"To the lost pass, I hope. Nobody would have bothered to blaze a permanent trail, unless he knew where he was going. And the only place worth going from here would be the pass."

He walked a distance farther, and then suddenly checked himself and pointed to the ground. In the dark mold by a tiny rivulet of snow water, he showed her the clearly defined imprint of a nail-studded foot. "Your brother!" he remarked. "He came down from the rock slope, as I thought he might, and has put his boots back on. And now he's ahead of us, traveling our direction."

The girl looked askance at the tell-tale track. "It--you can't be sure it is his," was all she could think to say.

Dexter laughed. "I ought to know his boot marks after all the miles I've tramped with him. It's Archie."

He led the way forward again, walking as fast as he could through the dense timber. The rediscovered footprints soon turned away from the line of blazed trees, and he gathered that the fugitive had crossed the ancient trail by accident and was guiding his course by other landmarks. Dexter considered possibilities, and decided to place his trust in the old-time ax scars. He was confident that sooner or later he would be led to the mountain pass, and as he felt equally certain that Archie was making towards the same destination, it struck him as being foolish to stray from the clearly marked path to chase a faint foot-trail that might at any time leave him groping in the air.

All that day he and Alison labored onward through the silent wilderness, breaking their way through matted thickets, passing up long, dark glens that twisted aimlessly among the lower mountains, ascending steep hill slopes, climbing along the brink of cliffs where a misstep would have landed them into yawning gulfs below, crossing the scarp of saw-backed ridges, and finally attaining the edge of timberline under a thawing snow-field, whence they gazed afar through an open gap between the surrounding snow caps.

Dusk was approaching, but there was still light enough left to make out the dim, gray line of the northern horizon, distantly framed by the shadow of flanking mountain peaks. Dexter looked off from the heights, feeling the stir of the free north breeze, and nodded soberly to himself.

"The outlet!" he said at length. "The road is open from here, and the new country's beyond."

He moved forward again, across the slope of the look-out mountain, and presently struck descending ground, which he knew went down into the forested valley on the other side of the range. And before he had gone any distance he again discovered fresh marks in the earth to tell of hobnailed boots that had passed that way before him. Quietly he called Alison's attention. "Archie!" he said. "He used his own method, and evidently came around from a different direction; but he's also found the pass. He can't be so many hours ahead of us."

The girl cast an apprehensive glance into the twilight shadows, but her lips were closed, and when the corporal went on she followed mutely at his heels. He increased his stride, intending to travel as far as possible before darkness halted him, failing to remember that his companion's frailer strength might not be able to keep the pace he set. But he was aware presently that she was breathing quickly, stumbling along behind him. He turned questioningly.

"Tired?" he asked.

"We've been on our feet since early dawn," she reminded him.

Dexter regarded her in momentary suspicion. She would do anything to delay him, of course. On the other hand, there were drooping, pathetic lines about her mouth and eyes to tell him that she actually was on the verge of physical exhaustion. After reflection he decided that he might as well call a halt. It would soon be too dark to follow a trail, and besides, he felt rather done up himself. Morning would be soon enough to continue his journey.

In their path stood a great, dead spruce, rearing its barkless white column stark and ghostly in the gathering twilight. The corporal built his evening fire in the shelter of the giant tree, and after he and his companion had eaten supper, the blankets were spread on either side of the mighty trunk; and Dexter, for his part, sank instantly to sleep.

He was even more wearied than he had imagined, and he lay in quiet slumber, his ears deaf to the familiar forest sounds: the stirring of the north breeze in the pines, the far-flung screech of a snowy owl, the scurry of tiny feet in the brush, the babble of rivulets trickling down the mountainsides. A wolf howled somewhere in the distance, but there was nothing in the long-drawn note to alarm his senses, and he slept on as serenely as though he were bunking in the guarded barracks at Crooked Forks. The hours of darkness slipped by without his knowledge; but at length, some time before approaching dawn, he turned under his blanket with a startled movement, and opened his eyes, instantly wakeful, to stare about him.

There was no disturbing sound, and as he gazed up blankly at the starlit sky, he could not help wondering why the alarm clock of his mind had aroused him at this particular instant. Far down on the south-western horizon he made out the bright star Spica in the constellation of Virgo. By the position of the star he knew it was nearly seven in the morning.

For some unaccountable reason, a feeling of uneasiness took possession of him, and he turned on his side to glance across the hollow where the fire had been burning. And then he sat bolt upright, to stare in the darkness. Alison was gone.

Dexter scrambled to his feet, and crossed over to pick up the girl's discarded blanket. The woolen covering had been cast aside in a heap, and was wet with the morning dew. He inferred that she had left some while before. It had not occurred to him that she might break her pledged word, and he had not thought it necessary to keep an eye on her. But now he could not escape the fact that his confidence had been misplaced. She had stolen away in the night, just as her brother had done.

The corporal stood motionless, peering grimly into the all-shrouding darkness. The breeze had died, and the night-prowling creatures no longer stirred abroad in the forest. Utter silence had shut down upon the earth. Dexter looked towards the north, knowing it must be that direction that the girl had fled. By this time, no doubt she was hurrying through the lower pass, miles away.

He was on the point of gathering up his pack, intending to strike down the slope in pursuit, when all at once he stopped breathing and threw up his head with a jerk to listen. A whisper of sound reached him through the hush of darkness, and his startled ears identified the faint tones of a human voice.

It was a queer, disembodied voice, a tiny fluttering in the air, like ventriloquial speech, coming seemingly from infinite distances, without any point of direction. Small and unreal as it sounded, actual words came floating to him.

"Help!" said the ghostly cry. "David! Help!"