Stranded in Arcady

"Of course not – if you have her picture," was the quiet reply; and a little while after that she told him she was sleepy again, and that he might take the gun and go after a rabbit if that was what he wished to do.

She did go to sleep, but Prime did not go hunting until after the midday meal; and thus it happened that when Lucetta awoke, along in the afternoon, she found herself alone. For an hour or two she was content to lie quietly, waiting for Prime to return, but when the afternoon drew to a close and he still failed to put in an appearance she got up, rather totteringly, and replenished the camp-fire.

Another hour passed and she began to grow anxious. The spruce grove was plunged in shadows, but the sun had not yet set for the upper regions of the air. By the time it was fully dark she knew that Prime was lost, and in this new terror she was able to forget, in some measure at least, the effects of her late illness. Bestirring herself once more, she put more wood on the fire, hoping that it might blaze high enough to serve as a signal for the wanderer.

It was all she could do, and having done it she sat down to wait, her anxiety growing sharper as the evening wore on and there was neither sight nor sound to foreshadow the lost one's return.

XVIII

HEIGHTS AND DEPTHS

If she had not known it before, Lucetta was to learn now that sickness of any sort is but a poor preparation for a battle of anxiety and endurance. On the one other occasion when she had been thrown upon her own resources Prime had been at least visibly present, and his helplessness had given her strength to fight off the terrors. But now she was alone and the terrors pressed thickly.

What if something had happened to the rabbit-hunter? She knew his utter lack of gun dexterity, and her terrified imagination conjured up harrowing pictures of the missing one lying wounded and helpless in some distant forest solitude, a victim of his unselfish effort to provide not for his own needs but for hers. The thought was a keen torture, but she could not banish it, and as the hours lengthened it threatened to drive her mad. There was nothing she could do save to keep the fire burning brightly, and this she did, breaking the monotony of the unnerving suspense from time to time by collecting dry wood to heap upon the blaze.

It was nearly midnight before the agony came to a sudden end. She was lying on the blanket pallet, with her face hidden in the crook of an elbow when she looked up and saw Prime standing beside her. It was not in human nature to undergo the revulsion from the depths of despair calmly.

"Donald!" she shrieked faintly, and forgetting her weakness, she sprang up and flung herself into his arms, sobbing in an ecstasy of relief.

He took it in good brotherly fashion, and if the fraternal attitude was not strictly sincere, it was made to appear so.

"There, there, little woman," he comforted, "you mustn't turn loose that way – you'll make yourself sick again. It's all over now, and I got your rabbit. See, here it is" – drawing it from his pocket and dangling it before her as if it were a new toy and she a child to be hastily diverted.

The diversion was not needed; she was freeing herself from the clasp of the remaining reassuring arm, and her cheeks were aflame.

"I didn't know I could be so silly! Please don't hold it against me, Donald," she begged. "If you only knew what I have been through since it grew dark! You'll forgive me and – and not remember it after we – after we – "

His weariness fell from him like a castoff garment. "Not if you don't want me to, Lucetta. But it was rather – er – pleasant, you know – to find that some one really cared enough about what had become of me to – to sort of forget herself for a moment."

The firelight was strong, and if he saw the adoring look that flashed into the gray eyes he was magnanimous enough, or modest enough, to pass it over to the sudden transition from despair to relief.

"It must have been something fierce for you," he went on; "but I did the best I could after I had been idiotic enough to get lost. Of course, since I had the gun with me, it was hours before I got sight of a rabbit; and even then I had to shoot at half a dozen of them before I could manage to hit one. By that time it was getting on toward sunset, and I had lost the brook which I had taken for a guide."

"I knew you would," she broke in. "But that wasn't the worst of it. I kept imagining that you had shot yourself accidentally, and every time I closed my eyes I could see you lying wounded and helpless!"

"You poor little worrier!" he pitied; "I knew you would be scared stiff if I didn't get back by dark, and in my hurry I bore too far to the left; a great deal too far, as it turned out, for when I reached the river I recognized the place. It was just this side of the grove where we were camping when the canoe was stolen."

"Horrors!" she gasped faintly. "And you have walked all that distance?"

"No," he grinned; "I ran a good part of it. When I came in a few minutes ago I was dead from the waist down; but I am all right now. You sit down and drink broth while I skin this rabbit. It's a juicy one – as fat as butter."

Fifteen minutes later the rabbit was stewing in the larger skillet, and Prime found time to ask Lucetta how she was feeling.

"Just plain hungry," she returned. "The fever hasn't come back any more, and if I ever have a medicine-chest of my own there will be boneset in it; great, big, smelly packages of it. Aren't you going to let me make a bit of bread to eat with that delicious gravy broth?"

"If it won't tire you too much," he consented, and at that he sat back and watched her while she mixed the bread, a housewifely little figure kneeling before the fire and patting the dough into a cake with hands that not all the rough work of the adventure weeks had made misshapen.

Somewhat beyond this they made their post-midnight meal, and were once more light-hearted and care-free. In the aftermath of it, when Prime had lighted his homemade pipe, they were even buoyant enough to plan for the future.

"We'll go on again to-morrow, shan't we?" the young woman assumed. "We can't be so very far from the towns now, with the river grown so large."

"I fancy we are nearer than we thought we were," Prime replied. "Over to the west, where I went this afternoon, there is another and still larger river. On its banks the timber has all been cut off and there is nothing but second and third growth. It is a safe bet that the two rivers come together a little below here, and if we are not stopped by our inability to cross the bigger river – "

"We are not going to be stopped," she prophesied hopefully. "I have a feeling that our troubles, or the worst of them, are all over."

Prime smiled. "The joyous reaction is still with you, but that is all right and just as it should be. We'll keep on going until we come to a town or a railroad, and then – "

She was sufficiently light-hearted to laugh with him when he glanced down at his torn and travel-worn clothes.

"And then we shall be arrested for tramps," she finished for him. "There is one consolation – neither of us will look any worse than the other."

"When we find a town we shall find clothes," he asserted. "Luckily we have English money to buy with."

"Would you – would you spend that money?" she asked, half fearfully.

"Why not? I'd hock the dead men themselves if we had them and there wasn't any other way to raise the wind. But I have some good, old-fashioned American money, too."

"I shall have to borrow of you when we get to where we can buy things," she said, with a sudden access of shyness that was new to him. "I had a purse with a little money in it that night at Quebec, but it disappeared."

"What is mine is yours, Lucetta; surely you don't have to be told that, at this stage of the game."

"Thank you," she said softly. "That goes with everything else you have done for me." Then, after a pause: "Will you tell the other girl about this – about this adventure of ours, Donald?"

"Don't you think I ought to tell her? Isn't it her right to know?"

She took time to consider.

"I'm not sure; women are singular about some things; they don't always understand. Perhaps they don't care to understand – too much. Then there is always the difficulty of explaining things just as they were. I could tell better if I knew the girl. Is she young?"

"Why, y-yes – some years younger than I am. But she is all kinds of sensible."

"Is she in New York?"

"No," he answered soberly. "She is not in New York."

She took it as a hint that she was not to ask any more questions about the girl and changed the subject abruptly.

"Shall you go and look for Mr. Grider after we find a railroad?"

"Not immediately. I shall first see you safe at home in your girls'-school town in Ohio," he assured her firmly.

"Oh, that won't be necessary," she protested. "I have travelled alone many times. And I have my return ticket; or I shall have it when I get back to Quebec."

"Nevertheless, I am going home with you," Prime insisted stubbornly. "It is up to me to see you out of this, and I shall make a job of it while I am about it. When it is done I shall come back to Canada to find out who shanghaied us and what for. And when I find the people who did it they are going to pay for it."

"Even if they include Mr. Grider?"

"Yes, by Jove! Even if the man higher up happens to be Watson Grider. I don't mind the kidnapping so much for myself, but the man doesn't live, Lucetta, who can make you go through what you have gone through in the past month and get away with it."

"I don't ask you to fight for me, Donald," she interposed. "And, besides, it hasn't been all bad – or has it?"

"We have agreed every little while, between jolts, that it hasn't. I'll go further now, and say that it is the finest, truest, happiest thing that has ever happened to me – hardships and all."

"You mean because it has given you new working material?"

"No; I wasn't thinking so much of that, though the new material, and more especially the new angle, are worth something, of course. But there are bigger consequences than these – for me – Lucetta." Then he broke off and plunged headlong into something else. "How much of an income should a man have before he can ask a girl to marry him? Does the Domestic Science course include any such practical data as that?"

"Is that all you are waiting for?" she inquired, ignoring his question. "Have you asked the girl?"

"No; I haven't asked her yet. And the money is the main thing that I shall be waiting for from this time on."

"I should say it would depend entirely upon the girl – upon what she had been used to."

"I think – she hasn't – been used to having things made so very soft for her," he answered rather uncertainly. "But she has at least one ambition that is going to ask for a good chunk of money at first, until she – until she gets ready to – to settle down."

"And that is – ?"

The suggestive query was never answered.

As Prime laid his pipe aside and was about to speak, the dark backgrounding of shadows beyond the circle of firelight filled suddenly with a rush of men. Prime saw the glint of the firelight upon a pair of brown gun-barrels, and when he mechanically reached for his own weapon a harsh voice with a broad Scottish burr in it broke raggedly into the stillness.

"None o' that, now! Ye'll be puttin' yer hands up ower yer heids – the baith o' ye – or it'll be the waur f'r ye! I'd have ye know I'm an under-sheriff o' this deestrict, and ye'll be reseestin' the officers o' the law at yer eril!"

XIX

IN DURANCE VILE

Prime stood up, spreading his empty hands in reasonable token of submission.

"If you are an officer of the law we have no notion of resisting you," he said placably. "What is the charge against us?"

"Ye'll be knowin' that weel enough, I'm thinkin'. Whaur's Indian Jules and the Cambon man? Maybe ye can tell me that! Aiblins ye'd better not, though. I'll gie ye fair warnin' that whatever ye say'll be used against ye."

There seemed to be nothing for it but an unconditional surrender. Prime looked the posse over appraisively as the men composing it moved forward into the circle of firelight. The under-sheriff was what his speech declared him to be – a Scotchman; stubby, square-built, clean-shaven, with a graying fringe of hair over his ears, a hard-lined mouth, shrewd eyes under penthouse brows, and a portentous official frown. His posse men were apparently either "river hogs" or saw-mill hands – rough-looking young fellows giving the impression that they would obey orders with small regard for consequences. Prime saw nothing hopeful in the Scotchman's face, but it occurred to him that a too easy yielding might be construed as an admission of guilt.

"I take it that a false arrest and imprisonment is actionable in Canada, as well as in the United States," he threw out coolly, helping Lucetta to her feet. "We'll be glad to have you take us with you – but not as prisoners." And thereupon he briefed for the square-built one the story of the kidnapping and its results.

"And ye're expectin' me to believe any such fule's rubbish as that?" snapped the Scotchman wrathfully when the tale was told.

"You can believe it or not, as you choose; it is the plain truth. We'll go along with you cheerfully, and be grateful enough to you or to anybody who will show us the way out of this wilderness. But, as to the crime you are charging us with, there isn't a particle of evidence, and you know it."

"There's evidence to hang the baith of ye! Ye've admitted that the half-breeds are baith deid; and John Baptist will sweer that ye had their canoe and Cambon's gun. For the matter o' that, ye're not denyin' it, yerself."

"We are merely wasting time," put in Prime quietly. "You evidently have no wish to be convinced; and if you are willing to take the chance of making a false arrest you may have your own way. Let me say first, though, that this lady is just recovering from a severe attack of fever, and you will be held strictly accountable if you make her endure any unreasonable hardships."

"'Tis not for you to make terms," was the irascible rejoinder, and then to his men: "Tie their hands, and we'll be goin'."

"One moment," Prime interposed; and stooping swiftly he caught up the rifle. "You may do anything you please to me, but the first man who lays a hand on the lady is going to get himself killed."

The under-sheriff screwed out a bleak smile at the naïve simplicity of the threat. "And if we say 'Yes,' and truss you up first," he suggested, "what'll ye be doin' then?"

"I shall take your word for it as from one gentleman to another," was Prime's quick concession, and with that he dropped the gun and held out his hands.

They bound him securely with buckskin thongs, and at a word from the Scotchman the camp dunnage was gathered up, the fire trodden out, and a shift was made to the river-bank. A three-quarter moon, riding high, showed the two captives a large birchbark drawn out upon the sands. The embarkation was quickly accomplished, the under-sheriff planting himself amidships with his two prisoners, and the four posse-men taking the paddles as if they had been bred to it.

After an hour or more of swift downstream gliding the current quickened and a sound like the wind sweeping through the tree-tops warned the voyagers that they were approaching a rapid. At this the canoe was sent ashore and the Scotchman changed places with his bow-man, letting the change stand even after the slight hazard of quick water was passed. Prime soon saw that his new guard was nodding, and bent to whisper to his fellow captive:

"This is mighty hard for you – after yesterday and last night," he protested. "Can't you shift a little and lean against me?"

"I am doing quite well," was the low-toned answer. And then: "What is going to come of all this, Donald?"

"We shall get out of the woods for one thing. And for another we are going to hope that a real court will not be so obstinately suspicious as this Scotchman. But, whatever lies ahead, we must just stand by and face it out – together. They can't punish us for a crime that we didn't commit."

There was silence for another half-hour, and then Lucetta whispered again.

"Which pocket is your penknife in?" she asked.

"The right-hand pocket of my waistcoat. What are you going to do?"

"I am going to cut the thongs. It is barbarously cruel for them to leave you tied this way!"

"No," he forbade. "That would only make matters worse. The buckskin is not hurting me much. Lean your head against my shoulder and see if you can't get a little sleep."

At the morning breakfast halt Prime tried to extract a bit of geographical information from the Scotchman. It was given grudgingly. During the night they had passed from their own river to the larger Rivière du Lièvres and they were still twenty-four hours or more from their destination – a place with a long French name that Prime did not catch and which the Scotchman would not repeat. For the first time in their wanderings the two castaways ate a meal that they had not prepared for themselves; and Prime, observing anxiously, was glad to note that Lucetta's wilderness appetite seemed to be returning.

Throughout the day, during which the crew took turns paddling and sleeping, the big birch-bark held to its down-stream course. But now the scenery was changing with each fresh looping of the crooked river, the River of the Hares. Recent timber-cuttings appeared; the river broadened into lake-like reaches; here and there upon the banks there were lumber camps; in the afternoon a small town was passed, and later the site of another that had been destroyed by a landslide.

With an eye single to his purpose, the Scotchman made no noon stop, and the supper fire was built on the right-hand bank of the broadened stream at a spot where there were no signs of human habitation. As at the breakfast, Prime's bonds were taken off to permit him to feed himself, and when the voyage was resumed they were not put on again.

"The wumman tells me ye can't swim, and I'm takin' her word for it," was the gruff explanation. "If ye go overboard in the night, I'll juist lat ye droon."

With his hands free, Prime asked if he might smoke. The permission was given, and, since they had confiscated Prime's store of tobacco with the remainder of the dunnage, the Scotchman opened his heart and his tobacco-pouch in the prisoner's behalf, filling his own pipe at the same time. When the dottles were glowing, the under-sheriff thawed another degree or so.

"D'ye mean to tell me that ye're goin' to hold to that rideeculous story of yours in the coort?" he questioned. "It may do for auld Sandy Macdougal, the under-sheriff; but ye'll no be expectin' a jury to listen till it."

Prime laughed soberly. "I wish, for your sake and our own, Mr. Macdougal, that we had a more believable story to tell. But facts are hard matters to evade. Things have happened to us precisely as I have tried to tell you. We were drugged in Quebec and abducted – carried off in an air-machine, as well as we can reason it out – and that is all there is to it. We don't know any more than you do what we were kidnapped for – or by whom."

"Weel, ye're a main lang ways from Quebec the noo – some twa hunnerd miles or mair. And ye're not dressed for the timmer."

"Hardly," said Prime.

Macdougal jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward Lucetta. "Is the wumman yer wife?"

"No; we are distant cousins, though we had never met before the morning when we found ourselves on the shore of the big lake."

"Ye mean that ye were strangers to each ither?"

"Just that. Up to that moment neither had known of the existence of the other."

The Scotchman stared hard at Prime from beneath his shaggy brows.

"Young man, ye'll juist be tellin' me what's yer business, when ye're not trollopin' round in the timmer with a young wumman that's yer cousin, and that ye never saw or heard of before."

"I am a fiction-writer," Prime admitted, not without some little anxiety as to the effect the statement might have upon the hard-headed under-sheriff.

"Ou, ay! That's it, is it? A story-writer? And, besides that, ye're the biggest fule leevin' to tell it to me. Ye'll no be expectin' me to believe anything ye're sayin', after that! A novel-writer – losh!"

"One of the greatest Scotchmen the world ever saw was a novel-writer," Prime ventured to suggest.

"And it's varra little to his credit, let me tell ye that, young man! 'Tis mair becomin' to Sir Walter that he was sheriff depute o' Selkirkshire and clerk o' session for abune twenty-five year on end. That's a canty story for ye!"

Prime saw that he was making no headway with the Macdougal, and after the pipes were out he tried to compose himself to sleep. Some time later on, Macdougal changed places with one of the paddlers, and, seizing her opportunity, Lucetta crept back to take her place beside Prime. They talked in whispers for a while, each trying to cheer the other. The morning of new and more threatening involvements was only a short night distant, and in the light of the month of hardship and mystery they could only fear the worst and hope for the best.

"You must try to get what sleep you can," Prime urged at the last, arranging the nearest blanket-roll for her back-support. "We shall be up against it again in the morning, and we both ought to have clear heads and a good, cold nerve. Snuggle down and shut your eyes. I am going to do the same after I've smoked another pipe."

He kept his word, dropping off shortly after the big canoe had entered a long straight reach with twinkling lights on either shore to prove that the moving world was once more coming within shouting distance. How long he slept he did not know, but when he awoke the canoe was stopped in midstream, and was lying stem to stern beside a larger craft, in the hold of which throbbing machinery seemed to be running idle.

Vaguely he gathered the impression that the canoe had been held up by the motorcraft; then he realized that a fierce altercation was going on between a big man who was leaning over the side to grip the gunwale of the birch bark and Under-sheriff Macdougal.

"I'll fight it out with you in any court you like, you stubborn blockhead!" Prime heard the big man bellow at Macdougal, and then the canoe was passed swiftly aft, somebody reached over the side and lifted him bodily into the cockpit of the motorboat, and a moment later he found Lucetta beside him, staring wildly and clinging to him as if he were her only hope.

"Wha-what are they doing to us now?" she quavered, and as she spoke the grumbling machinery in the depths below roared a louder note, and the big motor-craft cut a careening half-circle in midstream, leaving the birch-bark to dance and wabble in the converging area of the furrowing bow wave. By this time Prime had shaken himself fully awake. The two deck-hands who had pulled him and Lucetta aboard had disappeared, and the big man who had been bullying Macdougal was at the wheel. There was a single electric bulb in the centre of the cockpit awning, and by its light Prime had his first good look at the big steersman.

"Grider!" he exploded, taking a step toward the man at the wheel; and at that Miss Lucetta Millington drew herself up icily and turned her back.

XX

WATSON GRIDER

Prime had often made his fictional heroes "see red" in exceptionally vigorous crises, and he was now able to verify the colorful figure of speech in his own proper person. Like a submerging wave the recollection of all that the heartless joke might have meant to a pair of helpless victims – of all that it had actually entailed in hardships and peril and sickness – rushed over him as he faced the handsome young giant at the wheel of the motor-cruiser.

"So it was you, after all!" he gritted. Then: "There are some few things that won't keep, Grider. Put this boat ashore where we can have a little more room. The account between us is too long to wait for daylight!"

The barbarian's answer to this was a shout of derisive laughter, and he made a show of putting the small steering-wheel between himself and his belligerent passenger.

"Give me time, Don – just a little time to take it all in!" he gurgled. "Oh, my sainted grandmother! what a perfectly ripping fling you must have had, to make you turn loose all holds like this! And the lady – won't you – won't you introduce me?"