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Updated: June 21, 2025
The two sat down to supper and for an hour after they had finished they smoked and talked on the business of the camp. It was ten o'clock when Thorne and Jackpine left the cabin. No sooner had they gone than Howland closed and barred the door, lighted another cigar, and began pacing rapidly up and down the room. Already there were developments. Gregson had lied to him about his finger.
Why had he not made Croisset a prisoner, instead of allowing himself to be caged up like a weakling? He swore aloud as there dawned on him more and more a realization of the opportunity he had lost. At the point of a gun he could have forced Croisset to overtake the other sledge. He could have surprised Jackpine, as they had surprised him on the trail. And then?
"Gregson told me to be sure and have the camp guarded at night, Jackpine. What do you think about it?" The Indian turned with a queer chuckles his lathery face wrinkled in a grin. "Gregson heem ver' much 'fraid," he replied. "No bad man here all down there and in camp. We kep' watch evr' night. Heem 'fraid I guess so, mebby." "Afraid of what?"
If they reached the trail of Meleese and Jackpine before the crossing of the second sledge he would lay in wait for his old enemies; if they had preceded them he would pursue and surprise them in camp. In either case he would possess an overwhelming advantage.
He lighted a small lamp and opened the door leading into the other room. It was, as he had surmised, the sleeping chamber. The bed, a single chair and a mirror and stand were its sole furnishing. Returning to the larger room, he threw off his coat and hat and seated himself comfortably before the fire. Ten minutes later the door opened again and Jackpine entered.
Its banks, in the open season, which lasted from May to October, were low and muddy; the country through which it flowed, known as the barren lands, was for the most part flat and densely wooded with a stunted growth of black spruce, jackpine, tamarack, poplar, willow, and birch.
What would MacDonald say when Jackpine came in with the report that he had slipped to his death in the waterfall? Probably his first move would be to send the most powerful team on the Wekusko in pursuit of Gregson and Thorne. The departing engineers would be compelled to return, and then
They were a hundred and fifty ahead when both canoes were once more in the water on the other side of the portage, and O'Grady sent back a hoarse shout of triumph. Jan hunched himself a little lower. He spoke to Jackpine and the race began. Swifter and swifter the canoes cut through the water.
When Peter came back, just in the last sunset glow of the evening, he found his master alone in the bit of jackpine opening, and Nada was swiftly crossing the larger meadow that lay between them and the break in Cragg's Ridge, beyond which was Jed Hawkins' cabin. It was not the same Jolly Roger whom he had left half an hour before. It was not the man of the hiding-place in the rock-pile.
"Got to have a little sleep no matter if things are going off like a Fourth of July celebration," he grumbled, and rolled between the sheets. In spite of his old habit of rising with the breaking of dawn it was Jackpine who awakened him a few hours later. The camp was hardly astir when he followed the Indian down among the log cabins to Thorne's quarters. The senior engineer was already dressed.
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