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Updated: May 31, 2025
Then there was a little rattle, and as Seaforth floundered to his feet a weird snarling cry broke out. Alton was out of the tent in a moment, but Seaforth afterwards recalled the fact that they were all moving when he heard the sound, and Tom of Okanagan apparently groping for his axe and throwing things about.
There was a smashing and snapping. The huge trunk rolled a little, rent, and swept away, and Seaforth reeling shorewards sat down with bleeding hands in the ashes, laughing foolishly, until Okanagan stooped and smote his shoulder. "Get up," he said. "It's time we were going."
His striking directly at the spot, after many miles of travel, without any landmarks, reminded me of the experience of Ross, the Hudson Bay trader, when he travelled from Fort Okanagan on foot, two hundred miles to the coast, taking with him an Indian, who told him they would go by the Red Fox road; that is, the road by which Red Fox the chief and his men used to go.
Okanagan may have heard her, though the words were almost indistinguishable. "You lie right where you are for another ten minutes, and keep warm, miss," he said; "then I'll show you something." Alice Deringham shivered all through. "It is a little difficult," she said. Okanagan spoke to his horses, and after what appeared an interminable time looked down again.
"We'll hope for the best, though that man's kind of slippery." In the meanwhile Tom of Okanagan was riding at a gallop down the trail, with the thin mist whirling by him and the stars above him growing dim, and there were several leagues between him and the settlement when daylight crept slowly into the valley.
As he approached it he stopped, and watched the dim moving object that caught his eyes with some bewilderment. Tom of Okanagan was kneeling beside a thicket with a stick in his hand, and apparently holding it carefully in line with a fir.
It beat upon the canvas and fell hissing in the fire, which snapped and crackled the more fiercely, while acrid vapour crept into the tent, and now and then one of the men's eyes would close a moment. Seaforth had indeed roused himself several times with a jerk when Okanagan pointed to the roll of blankets and layer of springy twigs, and he saw that at last Alton was sleeping restfully.
Here and there a strip of shingle now divided rock from river, and when presently Okanagan called out, Seaforth felt by the change of motion that he was backing his paddle. Looking forward he saw the cause of it, for there were boulders in the channel, and a great fir lay jammed across them. They were almost upon it when the bows reached the shingle.
If Hallam's emissaries had gone up before them any further delay might cost Alton the mine. Nothing was said for another minute, and then Okanagan pointed to a dim smear of vapour below them that was a little bluer than the mist. "Smoke. Charley's held up by the river," he said.
"Oh, yes, but, slinging names at him's not much use," he said. "Well, I feel it in me that we're going to see more of that man by and by, and that's just why I'm working up the whole thing from the beginning. Now I'll show you some more of it." They floundered through one or two thickets until Okanagan stopped again, and pointed to the red smear upon the fern and withered pine-needles.
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