The Shagganappi. E. Pauline Johnson

head the direction across the river.

      "He's over there, asleep."

      "He may wake at any moment; we must get away at once," hurried Larry.

      "No," said Fox-Foot, with indifference, "he won't wake. There is a flower grows here, small seeds; I creep up close, put it in his teapot. He not see me. He boil tea, he drink it; he wake—maybe sundown to-night."

      Larry and Jack looked at each other. Then with one accord they burst into laughter.

      "Flower seeds! Where did you learn of these seeds, boy?" asked Larry.

      "My mother teach me when I'm small. She said only use when pain is great, or," he hesitated, then, with a sly, half humorous look, "or when your enemy is great."

      "Beats all, doesn't it, Jack?" said Larry. "Foxy, you're a wonder!

       Did you do anything else to him?"

      "No, just to his canoe," replied the boy. "I wore a hole through the bottom with rocks; he'll think he did it himself. Takes time mend that canoe; we be far up river by then—far beyond the forks; he not know which headwater we take."

      Matt Larson laid his hand on the straight, jet-black hair. "Bless you, my boy!" he said comically, but his undertone held intense relief, which did not escape Jack's ears.

      The fish and coffee were ready now, and all three waded into that breakfast with fine relish.

      Then came the arduous portage around Red Rock Falls, a difficult task which occupied more than an hour. Then away upstream once more, this time Jack paddling bow, with young Fox-Foot, lying on a blanket amidships, wrapped in a well-earned sleep. But once during the entire morning the Indian stirred; he did not seem to awake as other boys do, but more like a rabbit. His eyes opened without drowsiness; he shot to his knees, sweeping the river bank with a glance like the boring of a gimlet. Larry, looking at him, knew that nothing—nothing, bird, beast or man—could escape that penetrating scrutiny. Then, without comment, the boy curled down among his blankets again and slept.

      They did not stop for "grub" at midday—just opened a can of pork and beans, finished up the cold fried fish, and drank from the clear blue waters of the river. Then on once more upstream, which now began to broaden into placid lakelets, thereby lessening the current and giving them a chance to make more rapid headway. At four o'clock they reached the forks of the stream—one flowed towards them from the north, the other from the west.

      "Which way?" asked Larson, rousing the Chippewa. The boy got up immediately and took the stern paddle, steering the western course. They had paddled something over two miles up that arm when Fox-Foot beached the canoe, built a fire, spilled out the remainder of the pork and beans, threw the tin can on the bank, then marshalled his crew aboard again, and deliberately steered over the course they had already come.

      "We lose two miles good work," he explained. "We build decoy fire, we leave tin can, he come; he think we go that way, but we go north." Back to the forks and up the northern branch they pulled, both Larry and Jack not only willing to have done four miles of seemingly unnecessary paddling, but loud in their praise and appreciation of the Indian's shrewd tactics. At supper time Fox-Foot would allow no fire to be built, no landing to be made, no trace of their passing to be left. They ate canned meat and marmalade, drank again of the stream and pushed on, until just at dusk they reached the edge of a long, still lake, with shores of granite and dense fir forest. "Larry and Jack, you sleep in canoe to-night; no camp. Lake ten miles long; no current; I paddle—me," said the Indian, and nothing that Larry could urge would alter the boy's edict.

      "Jack, you must wonder what all these precautions are for, yet you never ask," said Larry.

      "Because I know," returned the boy. "We are trying to escape the man in the mackinaw. He is following you. He is your enemy."

      "Yes, boy, and to-night you shall know why," replied Larry. "You have taken so much for granted, you have never asked a single question; now you shall know what Foxy and I are after."

      "You said you were after furs," Jack smiled.

      "Yes, but not furs alone, my son," said the man. Then leaning meaningly towards the boy he half whispered, "I am after the king's coin—gold! My boy, nuggets and nuggets of gold, that I prospected for myself up in these wilds two years ago, found pockets of it in the rocks, cached it, away, as I thought, from all human eyes, awaiting the time I could safely bring it to 'the front.' I knew of but one being in all the North that I could trust with my secret. That being is Fox-Foot. One night I confided it to him, showing him the map I had made of the lakes and streams of the north country, and the spot where the gold was cached. We were, as I thought, alone in Fox-Foot's log house. That is, alone in speaking English, for his people don't understand a single word that is not Chippewa. We were poring over the map I had made, when something made me look behind me. Against the small hole in the logs that served as a window was a man's head and shoulders—a white man—and he wore a grey mackinaw. Foxy and I were on our feet at once, but the man crashed through the woods and was gone. But he had heard my story, had seen I had a map, and—well, he wants my gold! That is all."

      III

      "And the grey hair above your eyes, Larry?" asked Jack, in an awed voice.

      "That came the time I mentioned when I gave you your revolver, and you remarked you would hate to be in a position where you might wish you had one. I told you I had been there myself. It was last August, on a lonely trail far east of here. I had lain down during the intense heat of the day to sleep, only to wake to see his peering eyes, to feel that my feet were tied together, my hands caught in his vise-like clutch, bound together. Then I was dragged to a tree and lashed to it by yards of leather strapping, and all the time looking into the barrel of his revolver. He searched every stitch of clothing I had on, but he did not find the map. I was not armed, was perfectly helpless, and he left me lashed to that tree, naked all but my trousers and socks. I was there forty hours. The black flies came in swarms, the mosquitoes in thousands, and the second night timber wolves barked in the distance. Towards morning they came nearer, nearer. The agony from the insects made me desperate, but it was the yapping of those wolves that drove me crazy. I chewed through the leather straps binding my shoulder, chewed the shoulder with it, boy, and broke loose, with the blood running from every fly-bite, my eyes blinded with their poison, my throat cracked with thirst. I staggered to the river to drink, drink, drink, to lie in its cool waters, then to drink again, again, again."

      Jack's face blanched, his hands turned stiff with cold, at the horror of the tale.

      "When I could really see with my eyes," continued Larry, "I discovered, while looking into the still river, that this powder had puffed itself above my ears."

      "And the map?" questioned Jack.

      "Oh, the map? Well, he didn't get that," answered Larry, in something of his natural voice. "You see, I had once an accident, breaking through the ice on the lake. The map got wet and was almost destroyed, so I copied it out on cotton with marking ink, and sewed it inside the lining of my coat, and it did not crackle, as the paper map would have done had he passed his hands over it. Why, he never suspected it was there."

      Jack drew a great breath of relief. "I wouldn't care if he did get it,

       Larry, so long as he left you alive."

      "Oh, he's too cowardly to kill a man outright; don't be afraid of that.

       But he's after the King's Coin, all right," was the reply.

      "And he don't get King's Coin, not while I live—me," said the low voice of Fox-Foot, as, with squared shoulders and set teeth, he gripped his paddle firmly and started up the long stretch of Ten-mile Lake.

      * * * * * * * *

      All that night Larry and Jack slept in the canoe, while the Chippewa boy paddled noiselessly, mile after mile. Above them the loons laughed, and herons called, and in the dense forest ashore foxes barked and owls hooted. A beautiful bow of light arched itself in the north, its long, silvery fingers