Chapter X: The Looming Sailboat

Though favored by the weather most of the time for several days in succession, the brothers went ahead but slowly. The discovery of the worn moccasin and the stained tunic had raised their hopes of finding the wrecked bateau soon. At any moment they might come upon it. Accordingly they were even more vigilant than before, anxiously scanning every foot of open shore, bay, cove, stream mouth and island.

One evening before sunset, they reached a beautiful bay with small islands and wooded shores, where they caught sight of a group of bark lodges. Blaise proposed that they land and bargain for provisions. There proved to be about a dozen Indians in the encampment, men, squaws and children. Luckily two deer and a yearling moose had been killed the day before, and Blaise, after some discussion in Ojibwa, succeeded in obtaining a piece of fresh venison and another of moose meat. The Indians refused Hugh’s offer of payment in money, preferring to exchange the meat for ammunition for their old, flint-lock muskets. They were from the deep woods of the interior, unused to frequenting trading posts, and with no idea of money, but they understood the value of powder and shot.

To one of the men Blaise spoke of having seen the outlaw Ohrante. The Ojibwa replied that he had heard Ohrante had come from his hiding place seeking vengeance on those who had captured him. He had never seen the giant Iroquois, the man said, but he had heard that it was through his great powers as a medicine man that he had escaped from his captors. Without divulging that he was the son of the man who had led the expedition against Ohrante, Blaise asked the Indian if he knew when and where the outlaw had first been seen since his exile.

“I was told he was here at this Bay of the Beaver late in the Moon of the Snow Crust,” the Ojibwa replied, and the boy’s hazel eyes gleamed.

Not until they had made camp did Blaise tell Hugh of the information he had received.

“In the Moon of the Snow Crust!” the latter cried. “That is February or March, isn’t it? And it was late in March that father died!”

The younger boy nodded. “Ohrante killed him, that I believe. Some day, some day——” Blaise left the sentence unfinished, but his elder brother had no doubt of the meaning. Hugh’s heart, like the younger lad’s, was hot against his father’s murderer, but he remembered the powerful figure of the Iroquois standing out dark against the dawn. How and when would the day come?

After thoroughly exploring the Bay of the Beaver that night, the boys were off shortly after dawn the next morning. Just as the sun was coming up, reddening the white mist that lay upon the gently rippling water, they paddled out of the bay. As they rounded the southern point, Blaise uttered a startled exclamation.

Hugh, in the stern, looked up from his paddle. “A ship!” he cried.

Coming directly towards them, the light breeze scarce filling her sail, was a ship. So high she loomed through the morning mist Hugh thought she must be at least as large as the _Otter_, though she seemed to have but one square sail. What was a ship doing here, so far south of the Kaministikwia and even of the Grand Portage? Did she belong to some of the Yankee traders who were now invading the Superior region? Hugh knew he had been in United States waters ever since passing the mouth of the Pigeon River.

And then, as the canoe and the ship approached one another, a curious thing happened. The ship shrank. She was no longer as large as the _Otter_. She was much smaller. She was not a ship at all, only a wooden boat with a sail. There was something about the light and the atmospheric conditions, the rising sun shining through the morning mist, that had deceived the eye and caused the approaching craft to appear far taller than it really was.

The sailboat was coming slowly in the light wind. As the boys paddled past, they saw it was a small, flat-sided, wooden boat pointed at both ends. It was well loaded and carried three men. Hugh shouted a greeting and an inquiry. A tall fellow in blanket coat and scarlet cap, who was steering, replied in a big, roaring voice and bad French, that they were from the Fond du Lac bound for the Kaministikwia.

Blaise had been even more amazed than Hugh at the deceptive appearance of the sailboat. When they landed later to inspect a stream mouth, the half-breed said seriously that some spirit of the lake must have been playing tricks with them. He wondered if one of the men aboard that bateau was using magic.

“I doubt that,” Hugh answered promptly. “I think the queer light, the sunrise through the mist, deceived our eyes and made the boat look taller. Once on the way from Michilimackinac to the Sault, we saw something like that. A small, bare rock ahead of us stretched up like a high island. The Captain said he had seen the same thing before in that very same spot. He called it ‘looming,’ but he did not think there was anything magical about it.”

Blaise made no reply, but Hugh doubted if the lad had been convinced.

Several times during the rest of the trip down shore, the boys met canoes loaded with trappers and traders or with families of Indians journeying to the Grand Portage or to the New Fort. The two avoided conversation with the strangers, as they did not care to answer questions about themselves or their destination.

The journey was becoming wearisome indeed. The minuteness of the search and the delays from bad weather prolonged the time. Moreover the store of food was scant. The lads fished and hunted whenever possible without too greatly delaying progress, but their luck was poor. Seldom were they able to satisfy their hearty appetites. They lay down hungry under the stars and took up their paddles at chilly dawn with no breakfast but a bit of maple sugar. Hugh grew lean and brown and hard muscled. Except for the redder hue of his tan, the light color of his hair and his gray eyes, he might almost have been whole brother to Blaise. The older boy had become expert with the paddle and could hold his own for any length of time and at any pace the half-breed set. As a camper he was nearly the Indian lad’s equal and he prided himself on being a better cook. It would take several years of experience and wilderness living, however, before he could hope to compete with his younger brother in woodcraft, weather wisdom or the handling of a canoe in rough water.

As mile after mile of carefully searched shore line passed, without sign of the wrecked bateau or trace of Jean Beaupré’s having come that way, the boys grew more and more puzzled and anxious. Nevertheless they persisted in their quest until they came at last to the Fond du Lac.

Fond du Lac means literally the “bottom of the lake,” but the name was used by the early French explorers to designate the end or head of Lake Superior, where the River St. Louis discharges and where the city of Duluth now stands. To-day the name is no longer applied to the head of the lake itself, but is restricted to the railway junction and town of Fond du Lac several miles up the river. There was no town of Fond du Lac or of Duluth in the days of this story. Wild, untamed, uninhabited, rose the steep rock hills and terraces where part of the city now stands.

As they skirted the shore, the boys could see ahead of them a narrow line stretching across the water to the southeast. That line was the long, low point now known as Minnesota Point, a sand-bar that almost closes the river mouth and served then, as it does now, to form a sheltered harbor. Drawing nearer, they discovered that the long, sand point was by no means bare, much of it being covered more or less thickly with bushes, evergreens, aspens and willows. The two lads were weary, discouraged and very hungry. Since their scanty breakfast of wild rice boiled with a little fat, they had eaten nothing but a lump of sugar each, the last remnant of their provisions. Nevertheless they paddled patiently along the bar to the place where the river cut diagonally through it to reach the lake. Entering the narrow channel, they passed through to absolutely still water.

The sun was setting. Unless they went several miles farther to a trading post or caught some fish, they must go to sleep hungry. They decided to try the fishing. Luck with the lines had been poor throughout most of the trip, but that night fortune favored the lads a little. In the shallower water within the bar, they caught, in less than half an hour, two small, pink-fleshed lake trout, which Hugh estimated at somewhat less than three pounds each.

On the inner side of the point, the brothers ran their canoe upon the sand beach. Then they kindled a fire and cooked their long delayed supper. When the meal was over, nothing remained of the fish but heads, fins, skin and bones.

Usually both fell asleep as soon as they were rolled in their blankets. That night, on the low sand-bar, the mosquitoes came in clouds to the attack, but it was not the annoying insects that kept the boys awake. They wanted to talk over their situation.

“It seems,” Hugh said despondently, “that we have failed. That wrecked boat must have been battered to pieces and washed out into the lake. Our only chance of discovering the cache was to find the boat, and that chance seems to be gone.”

“There is still one other chance, my brother,” Blaise replied quietly. “Have you forgotten what we found at the River of Devil Tracks? We must go back there and make search again.”

“You are right,” was Hugh’s quick rejoinder. “We didn’t find any sign of the boat, yet it may once have been there or near by.”

Blaise nodded. “The bateau was perhaps driven on the bar at the river mouth and afterwards washed out into the lake. We must make speed back there. But, Hugh, if it was Ohrante who killed our father, he may also have found the furs.”

“And carried them away.” Hugh slapped savagely at a mosquito. “I have thought of that. I believe in my heart that Ohrante killed father. Yet the murderer may not have taken the furs. Father told you he was wrecked in a storm, and, unable to carry the furs with him, he hid them. That much you say he made clear. When and where he was attacked we do not know, but I believe it must have been after he cached the furs. When he told of the wreck and the hiding of the pelts, he said nothing of his wound?”

“Nothing then or afterwards of the wound or how he got it. He bade me seek you out and find the furs and the packet. When I asked him how he came by the hurt, he was beyond replying.”

Both boys were silent a moment listening to the howling of a lonely wolf far off in the high hills to the north.

Then Hugh said emphatically, “We must go back and search every inch of ground about that river. We will not give up while a chance remains of finding the cache,” he added with stubborn determination.