Francis Lynde

“ Twice, and yet once again, the young woman and her helpless burden were swept around the circle, each time drawing a little nearer to the recurving eddy under the fall. Lucetta knew well enough that a second ingulfing under the cataract meant death for both, and at the beginning of the fourth circling she made the supreme effort, winning the desperate battle and struggling out upon the low shingly bank of the pool, to fall exhausted when she had dragged her unconscious canoe-mate out of the water. ”

“ Prime made his way to the camp-fire at the lake edge, a prey to many disturbing emotions. Having lived a life practically void of adventure, the sudden collision with bloody tragedy shocked him prodigiously. Out of the welter of emotions he dug a single fixed and unalterable decision. Come what might, his companion must be kept from all knowledge of the duel and its ghastly outcome.
"Dear me! You look as if you had seen a ghost," was the way the battle of concealment was opened when he came within the circle of firelight. ”

“ Life has never seemed so free and completely desirable before, and yet, when we have been running some of the most terrifying rapids, I have felt that I could give it up without a murmur if I shouldn't prove big enough to keep it in spite of the hazards. At such times I have felt that I could go out with only one big regret—the thought that I wasn't going to live long enough to find out why I had to be drowned in the heart of a Canadian forest. ”

“ The corners of the pretty mouth were twitching. "And you probably guessed my part of it when you saw me try to make that dreadful pan-bread. I can cook; really I can, Mr. Prime; but when one has been used to having everything imaginable to do it with——"
Prime thought he might venture to laugh once more. "Your revenge is in your own hands; all you have to do is to continue to make the bread. It'll get me in time. My digestion isn't particularly good, you know."
"Do you really think we shall be rescued soon?"
"For the sake of my own sanity, I'm obliged to think it." ”

“ Lucetta faced about, and, if a look could have crippled, the motor-cruiser would have lost its steersman.
"Cousin Donald has tried to tell me about you, but the reality is worse than he or anybody could put into words!" she broke out in indignant scorn. "Of all the inhuman, dastardly things that have ever been done in the name of a practical joke, yours is certainly the climax, Mr. Grider!" ”

“ And as for the young woman—there were times when the realization that in a few hours of a single mysterious night she had passed from the world of the commonplace into a world hitherto unpictured even in her wildest imaginings, was graspable, but these moments were rare. Adaptable, even under the fetterings of the conventions, Lucetta [Pg 84] Millington was finding herself fairly gifted now that the fetterings were removed. From childhood she had longed for an opportunity to explore the undiscovered regions of her own individuality, and now the opportunity had come. ”

“ The northern rivers all flow into Hudson Bay."
Lucetta's gaze became abstracted. "Besides that, we are still groping in the blind alleys of the mysteries," she put in. "Have you given up the Mr. Grider idea?"
"I can't give it up wholly and save my sanity," Prime averred. "Think a minute; if we throw that away, what have we to fall back upon? Nothing, absolutely nothing! Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the sane mind. Don't mistake me; I haven't the slightest idea that Grider let us in for any such experience as this, meaning to. ”

“ He got up and hobbled back and forth on the little beach to work the canoe-cramp out of his knees. "It looks to me as if we are up against it good and hard; the canoe is here, and the dunnage is up yonder. Which do we do: carry the canoe to the dunnage, or the dunnage to the canoe? It's a heavenly choice either way around. What do you say?"
Lucetta voted at once for the canoe-carrying, if it were at all possible. So much, she said, they owed to the owners, who had every right to expect to find their property where they had left it. ”

“ Though Prime was still scarcely more than half conscious of his condition and cripplings, the protective instinct was clamoring to be heard, dinning in his ears to make him realize that his companion was a woman, and that her miraculous courage had for some cause reached its ultimate limit. ”

“ When he returned he went around to her side of the fire to say:
"I'm mighty glad we have found out that we are cousins, Lucetta; twice glad, for your sake. It makes things a bit easier for you, doesn't it?"
She did not look up.
"Why should it?" she asked quietly.
"Oh, I don't know; we have both been throwing tin cans and brickbats at the conventions; but I haven't any idea that we have killed them off permanently. And they die harder in a woman than in a man. ”

“ Why two men, evidently outfitted for a long journey, should stop by the way, build five fires that were plainly not camp-fires, and then fall to and fight each other to death over a bag of English sovereigns, were puzzles that he did not attempt to solve in his own behalf. It was enough that the facts had befallen, and that the net result for a pair of helpless castaways was a well-stocked canoe which Lucetta's acid-proof honesty was still preventing them from appropriating. ”

“ Prime announced, as he began to pack the camp outfit. "You sit right still and rest, and I'll get things ready for the tote."
"Then you have determined to ride roughshod over the rights of the people who own the things?" the young woman asked.
Prime turned his back deliberately upon the pool of dread.
"Necessity knows no law, and we can't stay here forever waiting for something to turn up. Somebody has given us a strong-hand deal, for what reason God only knows, and we've got to fight out of it the best way we can. ”

“ Almost at once the owner of the conscience suggested that they make a round through the adjoining forest in an attempt to discover the camp of the missing men. Prime acceded cheerfully enough, though he was impatient to examine the canoe-load, in which he was hoping there might prove to be a supply of tobacco. For the better part of the forenoon they quartered the forest around and about between the river and the lake in widening circles, missing nothing but the glade of horrors, which Prime took good care to avoid. ”

“ Lucetta pieced together a pitiful little story of this starving time. Some one—once Prime called the some one Grider, and later gave him another name—had tempted the struggler with an offer of a comfortable income, the single condition precedent being an abandonment of the literary fight. Prime's mutterings made the outcome plain for the listener on the opposite side of the camp-fire: "No, I couldn't sell soap; it's honest enough, no doubt—and decent enough—everybody ought to use soap. ”

“ Lucetta, you are simply great when it comes to making something out of nothing. What are we going to do with this flour-and-meal pudding?"
"We are going to dry it carefully and then grind it up again on a flat stone and go on as before," was the cheerful reply. "That is my part of it, and yours will be a good bit harder; you will have to make some new paddles and contrive some way to patch that big hole in the canoe." ”

“ Lucetta had slept all night, and she declared she was feeling much better; that the fever seemed to be entirely gone. This brought the question of nourishment to the fore again, and Prime attacked it bravely, opening their last tin of peas and making a broth of the liquor thickened with a little of the reground flour. Lucetta ate it to oblige him, though it was as flat and tasteless as any unsalted mixture must be.
"Are you always as good as this to every strange woman you meet, Cousin Donald?" ”

“ The buckskin Indians have the best of us in this, as in many other things."
"The realities?" she queried.
"The simplicities," he qualified. "Life as we have lived it, and as we shall probably live it again if we ever get out of this, is much too complex. We are learning how few the real necessities are, and it is good for the soul. I wouldn't take a fortune for what I've been learning in these weeks, Lucetta."
"I have been learning, too," she admitted.
"Other things besides the use of a paddle and a camp-fire?" ”

“ I didn't believe there was a human woman on earth who could go through what you have and still keep sweet. Setting aside the hardships, I fancy most other women would have gone stark, staring mad puzzling over the mystery."
[Pg 93] "Ah, yes; the mystery. Shall we ever be able to explain it?"
"Not if we decide to throw Grider overboard, I'm afraid."
"Doesn't the Mr. Grider solution seem less and less possible to you as time goes on?" she asked. "It does to me. The motive—a mere practical joke—isn't strong enough. Whoever abducted us was trying for something larger than a laugh at our expense." ”

“ She described the plunge of the unmanageable canoe over the fall and its immediate consequences, minifying her own part in the rescue.
"You needn't try to wiggle out of it," he said soberly at the end of the brief recounting. "You saved my life. If you hadn't pulled me out, I'd be down there in that pool right now, going round and round like that bally log of wood. What do you charge for saving a man's life, Lucetta?"
"A promise from the man to be more careful in future. But we mustn't slide back into the artificial things, Donald. ”

“ Prime found that he could have plenty of it for the gathering, and when they had a sufficient quantity they melted it in one of the empty vegetable tins and used it as a glue with which to make the patch adhere. The result was not entirely satisfactory. The melted gum hardened quickly, but it became so brittle that a touch would loosen it.
"This is where we set up a laboratory for original research," Lucetta said, laughing. "I wonder if some more cooking would do it any good."
"'The ruling passion strong in death,'" Prime quoted with good-natured sarcasm. "You are a born cook. Let's try it." ”

“ For one thing, the bacon and the pan-bread, though they were ameliorated somewhat by the tinned things, were growing a trifle monotonous; for another, the limitless expanse of lake and sky and forest gave forth no sign of the hoped-for rescue.
After breakfast they made a careful calculation to determine how long their provisions would last. This, too, was unhopeful. With reasonable economy they might eat through another day. Beyond that lay a chance of famine.
"Surely Grider will come back for us to-day," Prime asserted when Domestic Science had done its best in apportioning the supplies. ”

“ I can't, Donald; I simply can't drink all of that!"
"Drink as much as you can. It's good for little sick people," he urged, trying to twist the wryness of his own aftermath into a smile. "If the horrible taste counts for anything, it ought to make you well in five minutes."
Lucetta did her duty bravely, and when the worst was over Prime tucked her up in the blankets, adding his own for good measure. Then he made up a roasting fire, having some vague notion brought over from his boyhood that fever patients ought to sweat. ”

“ In the tipping glide over the brink they were both thrown out of the canoe and spilled into the whirlpool at the foot of the cataract. Lucetta kept her head sufficiently to remember that Prime could not swim, and when she came up from the plunge she saw him, and saw that he was not struggling.
"Hold her!" he shouted. "We've got to make the shore, if it smashes us!" ”

“ Do you know what is in that canoe?"
"No."
"Things to eat," he avouched solemnly; "lots of them! More than we could eat in a month."
"But they are not ours," she objected.
"No matter; we are going to eat them just the same."
"You mean that we can hire the owners to take us out of this wilderness? Have you any money?"
"Plenty of it," he boasted, chinking the buckskin bag in his pocket, the finding of which he had, up to this moment, entirely forgotten.
"But where are the owners? I don't see any camp." ”

“ Do you realize that the story we have to tell is one that no sane magistrate or jury could ever believe, [Pg 181] Lucetta? These two men, Beaujeau and Cambon, must have started from some known somewhere, alive and well. They disappear, and after a while we turn up in possession of their belongings and try to account for ourselves by telling a fantastic fairy-tale. It's simply hopeless! ”

“ At this, as was most natural, Miss Millington's ice melted in a sudden and uncontrollable blaze of indignation.
"Are you trying to tell me that this atrocious friend of yours has taken me, a total [Pg 18] stranger, to complete his cast of characters in this wretched burlesque?" she flashed out.
"I don't wish to believe it," he protested. "It doesn't seem possible for any human being to do such a thing. But I know Grider so well——"
"It is the smallest possible credit to you, Mr. Prime," she snapped. "You ought to be ashamed to have such a man for a friend!" ”

“ Lucetta suggested. And then: "How have we managed to live so long without learning some of these perfectly simple things, Cousin Donald?"
"Too much education and too little instinct," he scoffed. "To-morrow morning I'll climb trees and become a gum-gatherer. It seems inexpressibly humbling to think [Pg 147] that a small hole in a piece of birch bark is all that prevents us from going on our way rejoicing. Never mind, there is another day coming, and if there isn't, success or failure won't make any considerable difference to either of us." ”