Brill Ethel Claire
The Secret Cache: An Adventure and Mystery Story for Boys

XII
THE HUNGRY PORCUPINE

Hugh was alone in a canoe struggling to make headway against the waves. Bearing down upon him, with the roaring of the storm wind, was an enormous black craft with a gigantic form towering in the bow and menacing him with a huge knife. The boy was trying to turn his canoe, but in spite of all his efforts, it kept heading straight for the terrifying figure.

From somewhere far away a voice shouted, “Hugh, Hugh.” The shouts grew louder. Hugh woke suddenly to find his half-brother shaking him by the shoulder. Storm voices filled the air, wind roared through the trees, surf thundered on the rocks. A big wave, curling up the beach, wet his moccasins as he struggled to his feet.

Wide awake in an instant, Hugh seized his blanket and fled up over the smooth, rounded pebbles out of reach of the waves. In a moment he realized that Blaise was not with him. He looked back – and then he remembered. The supplies, the canoe, where were they? He and his brother had unloaded the canoe as usual the night before, had propped it up on the paddles, and had crawled under it. But, overcome with weariness, they had left the packets of food and ammunition lying where they had been tossed, on the lower beach. Now, in the dull light of dawn, Hugh could see the waves rolling in and breaking far above where the packages had been dropped. The canoe had disappeared. It took him but a moment to grasp all this. He ran back down the beach to join Blaise, who was plunging in to his knees in the attempt to rescue what he could.

“The canoe?” Hugh shouted.

“Safe,” Blaise replied briefly, and made a dash after a retreating wave, seizing a skin bag of corn just as it was floating away.

At the same instant Hugh caught sight of a packet of powder, and darted after it, a bitter cold wave breaking over him just as he bent to snatch the packet.

The two worked with frantic haste, heedless of the waves that soaked them above the knees and sometimes broke clear over their heads as they stooped to seize bag or package. They saved what they could, but the dried meat, one sack of corn, Hugh’s bundle of extra clothing, the roll of birch bark and the pine gum for repairing the canoe, had all gone out into the lake. The maple sugar was partly dissolved. Some of the powder, though the wrapping was supposed to be water-proof, was soaked, and Hugh’s gun, which he had carelessly left with the other things, was so wet it would have to be dried and oiled before it could be used. Blaise had carried his gun to bed with him, and it was safe and dry.

Even the half-breed boy, who usually woke at the slightest sound, had been so tired and had slept so heavily that the rising of the wind and the pounding of the waves had not disturbed him. It was not until a strong gust lifted the canoe from over his head, and a falling paddle struck him sharply, that he woke. He had sprung up, seized the overturned canoe and carried it to the shelter of a large rock. Then he had returned, flung his gun and the paddles farther up the beach, and had aroused the still sleeping Hugh.

When everything they had rescued had been carried beyond the reach of the waves and placed in the lee of a rock out of the wind, the two boys skirted the beach in the hope that the meat, corn or clothes might have been cast up in some other spot. The beach, at the head of a small and shallow cove, was not long. When Hugh had gone as far over pebbles and boulders as he could, he scrambled up the rock point that bounded the cove on the north and followed it to the end, without seeing anything of the lost articles. As he reached the bare rock tip, the sun was just coming up among red and angry clouds across the water, flushing with crimson and orange the wildly heaving waves. The wind was a little east of north. No rain had fallen where the boys were camped, but Hugh felt sure from the clouds that a storm must have passed not many miles away. The little cove being open and unprotected to the northeast, the full force of the wind entered it and piled the waves upon the beach.

When Hugh returned to the camping place, he found that Blaise, who had gone in the other direction, had had no better luck. The strong under pull of the retreating waves had carried the lost articles out to deep water.

Going on with the journey in such a blow was out of the question. The boys made themselves as comfortable as possible behind a heap of boulders out of the wind.

“I wish we knew in which direction Ohrante is bound,” Hugh said, as he scraped the last morsel of his scanty portion of corn porridge from his bark dish, with the crude wooden spoon he had carved for himself.

“He went up the shore as we came down,” Blaise replied. “He is probably going down now. Somewhere he has met his enemies and has taken one prisoner at least.”

“I wish we might have travelled farther before camping,” Hugh returned.

Blaise shrugged in his French fashion. “He cannot go on in this weather, and we cannot either. Passing him last night was a great risk. I knew that all their eyes would be blinded by the fire glare, so they could not see into the shadows, else I should not have dared. All went well, yet we must still be cautious and make but small fires and little smoke.”

“No column of smoke can ascend high enough in this gale to be seen,” Hugh argued.

“But the smell will travel far, and the wind blows from us to them. Caution is never wasted, my brother.”

Forced to discontinue the journey for most of the day, the lads spent the time seeking food. They were far enough from Ohrante’s camp to have little fear that any of his party would hear their shots, yet they chose to hunt to the north rather than to the south. With some of the dry powder and the shot that had been saved, Blaise started out first, while Hugh spread the wet powder to dry on a flat rock exposed to the sun but sheltered from the wind. Then he cleaned and dried his gun and greased it with pork fat before leaving camp.

Hugh wandered the woods in search of game for several hours. He did not go far back from shore. Traversing the thick woods, where there was much undergrowth, was difficult and he did not greatly trust his own woodcraft. He had no wish to humiliate himself in his half-brother’s eyes by losing his way. Moreover, as long as he kept where the wind reached him, he was not much annoyed by the mosquitoes, at their worst in June. Whenever he reached a spot where the wind did not penetrate, the irritating insects came about him in clouds, settling on his hands, face, wrists and neck and even getting inside his rather low necked, deerskin shirt.

Whether he did not go far enough into the woods or for some other reason, his luck was not good. He shot a squirrel and a long-eared, northern hare or snowshoe rabbit and missed another, but did not catch a glimpse of deer, moose, or bear. Neither squirrel nor rabbit meat was at its best in June, but it was at least better than no meat at all. Carrying his meager bag, he returned late in the afternoon. He found Blaise squatting over a small cooking fire. The iron kettle gave out a most appetizing odor. The younger boy had secured three plump ruffed grouse. In the Lake Superior wilderness of that day no laws prohibited the shooting of game birds out of season. The stew which appealed so strongly to Hugh’s nostrils was made up of grouse and squirrel meat, with a very little salt pork to give it savor.

The wind had fallen and since noon the waves had been going down. By sunset, though the lake was by no means smooth, travel had become possible for skilled canoeists. Had Hugh and Blaise not been in such a hurry to put distance between themselves and Ohrante, they would have waited until morning. They were so anxious to go on that they launched the canoe while the afterglow was still reflected in pink and lavender on the eastern sky. A few miles would bring them to the Devil Track River, but, not choosing to camp in that evil spot, Blaise insisted on landing about a mile below the stream mouth.

Leaving their camp early next morning, the two started overland to the Devil Track. All day long they sought for some trace of the hidden cache. Not until after sunset did they cease their efforts. Weary and disheartened they returned to their camping place, Hugh in the lead. They had left the canoe turned bottom up over their supplies and well concealed by a thicket of red-stemmed osier dogwoods. The elder brother’s sharp exclamation when he reached the spot made the younger one hasten to his side.

“Look!” cried Hugh, pointing to the birch craft.

Blaise did not need to be told to look. The ragged, gaping hole in the bark was too conspicuous. “A porcupine,” he exclaimed.

“It was the devil in the form of a porcupine, I think,” Hugh muttered. “What possessed the beast?”

“He smelled the pork and gnawed his way through to it. The porcupine loves all things salt. We will see.”

Blaise was right. When the canoe was lifted, the boys discovered that the small chunk of salt pork was gone, taken out through the hole the beast had gnawed. Nothing else was missing.

“Either he didn’t like the other things or the pork was all he could carry away at one trip,” said Hugh. “If we had stayed away a little longer, he might have made off with the corn and the sugar as well.”

“The loss of the pork is bad,” Blaise commented gravely. “The hole in the canoe is bad also, and we must delay to mend it.”

The loss of the pork was indeed serious. The rabbit and the squirrel Hugh had shot the day before had been eaten, and nothing else remained but a few handfuls of corn and a little sugar. So once more, after setting some snares, the lads went to sleep supperless. They slept with the corn and sugar between them for protection.

Blaise might have suspected that the fiend of the river had put a spell on his snares, for in the morning he found them all empty. The dry, stony ground showed no tracks. If any long-legged hare had come that way, he had been wary enough to avoid the nooses.

After the scantiest of breakfasts the boys set about repairing the canoe. Luckily the ball of wattap, the fine, tough roots of the spruce prepared for use as thread, had not been lost when the waves covered the beach at their former camp. From a near-by birch Blaise cut a strong, smooth piece of bark without knotholes. With his knife he trimmed the ragged edges of the hole. Having softened and straightened his wattap by soaking it, he sewed the patch on neatly, using a large steel needle he had bought at the trading post at the Kaministikwia.

In the meantime Hugh sought a pine grove up the river, where he obtained some chunks of resin. The resin he softened with heat to a sticky gum and applied it to the seams and stitches. Blaise went over them again with a live coal held in a split stick, and spread the softened resin skillfully with thumb and knife blade. Then the canoe was left bottom side up for the gum to dry and harden.

In spite of the fact that the boys, on their way down the shore, had searched the land to the east of the Devil Track with considerable thoroughness, they were determined to go over it again. By means of a fallen tree and the boulders that rose above the foaming rapids, they crossed the river where it narrowed between rock walls. Late in the afternoon, Blaise, scrambling up a steep and stony slope well back from the stream, heard two shots in quick succession and then a third at a longer interval, the signal agreed upon to indicate that one or the other had come across something significant. The sounds came from the direction of the lake, and Blaise hastened down to the shore.

XIII
THE PAINTED THWART

Blaise found Hugh stooping over a heap of shattered, water-stained boards, crude planks, axe hewn from the tree.

“Can this be the boat, do you think?” Hugh asked.

Blaise shook his head doubtfully. “It was not here on the beach when we came this way before.”

“Yet it may be part of the wreck washed from some outer rock and cast here by that last hard blow,” reasoned the older boy.

“That is possible. If we could find more of it, the part that bears the sign – ”

“What sign? You told me of no sign. I have often wondered how, if we found a wrecked boat, we should know whether it was the right one.”

“Surely I told you of the sign. The board that bears the hole for the mast is painted with vermilion, and on it in black is our father’s sign, the figure that means his Ojibwa name, ‘man with the bright eyes, the eyes that make sparks.’ Twice the sign is there, once on each side of the mast.”

Hugh was staring at his younger brother. Black figures on a vermilion ground! Where had he seen such a thing, seen it recently, since he left the Sault? Then he remembered. “Show me, Blaise,” he cried, “what that figure looks like, that means father’s Indian name.”

Blaise picked up a smooth gray flake and with a bit of softer, dark red stone scratched the figure.

“That is it,” Hugh exclaimed. “I have seen that wrecked boat, a bateau with the thwart painted red and that very same figure drawn in black.”

“You have seen it?” The younger brother looked at the elder wonderingly. “In your dreams?”

“No, I was wide awake, but it was a long way from here and before ever I saw you, Blaise.” Rapidly Hugh related how he and Baptiste had examined the old bateau in the cleft of the rocks of the Isle Royale.

Blaise listened in silence, only his eyes betraying his interest. “Truly we know not where to search,” he said when Hugh had finished. “The bateau drifted far. How can we find where it went upon the rocks?”

“I don’t believe it drifted far. If it was so badly damaged father had to abandon it, could it have floated far? Surely it would have gone to the bottom. When that boat was carried across to Isle Royale, I believe father and Black Thunder were still in it with all their furs. The storm drove them out into the lake, they lost their bearings, just as we in the Otter did. They were borne away and dashed by the waves into that crack in the rocks. Near there somewhere we shall find the cache, if we find it at all.”

Hugh spoke confidently, very sure of his own reasoning, but the younger lad was not so easily convinced.

“How,” Blaise questioned, “did he come away from that island Minong if he was wrecked there? He could not come by land and the bateau is still there.”

“He made himself a dugout or birch canoe to cross in when the weather cleared.”

“But then why came he not to Wauswaugoning by canoe?”

“Because,” persisted Hugh, “when he reached the mainland he fell in with some enemy here at the Devil Track River. We know his wound was not received in the wreck. You yourself say it was a knife wound. Black Thunder wasn’t killed in the wreck either. They escaped unharmed but the bateau was beyond repair. So they built a canoe and crossed to this shore. Here they were set upon and Black Thunder was killed and father sorely wounded.”

Again the sceptical Blaise shook his head. “Why were they away down here so far below the Grand Portage? And why, if they had a canoe, brought they not the furs and the packet with them?”

Hugh was aware of the weak links in his theory, yet he clung to it. “Maybe they did bring them,” he said, “but couldn’t carry them overland, so they hid them.”

“No, no. Our father told me that the furs were not far from the wreck. He said that three or four times. I cannot be mistaken.”

“Perhaps their canoe wasn’t big enough to hold all of the pelts,” Hugh speculated. “What they did bring may have fallen into Ohrante’s hands. So father spoke only of the rest, hidden in a secret place near the wreck. To me that seems reasonable enough. But,” he admitted honestly, “I don’t quite understand how they came to be so far down the shore here, and, if the packet is valuable, why didn’t father bring that with him if he brought anything? And why didn’t he tell you that the storm drove him on Isle Royale?”

“You forget,” Blaise said slowly, “that our father’s body was very weak and his spirit just about to leave it. I asked him where to find the bateau. He told me of the way it was marked, but he could say no more. I think he could not hear my questions.”

Both lads were silent for several minutes, then Hugh said decisively, “Well, Blaise, there are just two things we can do, unless we give up the quest entirely. We can go back down the shore, searching the land for some sign of the cache, or we can cross to Isle Royale, find the cleft in the rocks where the bateau lies, and seek there for the furs and the packet. I am for the latter plan. To search the whole shore from here to the Fond du Lac for a hidden cache to which we have no clue seems to me a hopeless task.”

“But to cross that long stretch of open water in a small canoe,” Blaise returned doubtfully.

“We must choose good weather of course, and paddle our swiftest to reach the island before a change comes. Perhaps we can rig some kind of sail and make better time than with our paddles.”

It was plain that Hugh had made up his mind to return to Isle Royale. Hitherto he had been content to let Blaise take the lead, but now he was asserting his elder brother’s right to leadership. Better than his white brother, Blaise understood the hazards of such an undertaking, but the half-breed lad was proud. He was not going to admit himself less courageous than his elder brother. If Hugh dared take the risk, he, Little Caribou, as his mother’s people called him, dared take it also.

The brothers must provision themselves for the trip. Even if they reached the island safely and in good time, they could not guess how long their search might take, or how many days or weeks they might be delayed before they could return. Fresh supplies might have reached the Grand Portage by now and corn at least could be bought. From the Indians always to be found near the posts, other food supplies and new moccasins might be obtained.

Considering food supplies reminded the lads of their hunger. They decided to devote the remaining hours of daylight to fishing for their supper. They would start for the Grand Portage in the morning. Blaise paddled slowly along a submerged reef some distance out from shore, while Hugh fished.

In a very few minutes he felt a pull at his line. Hand over hand he hauled it in, Blaise helping by managing the canoe so that the line did not slacken even for an instant. Nearer and nearer Hugh drew his prize, until he could see the gleaming silver of the big fish flashing through the clear water. Then came the critical moment. He had no landing net, and reaching over the side with net or gaff would have been a risk at best. Without shifting his weight enough to destroy the balance, while Blaise endeavored to hold the canoe steady with his paddle, Hugh must land his fish squarely in the bottom. With a sudden swing, the long, silvery, dark-flecked body, tail wildly flapping, was raised from the water and flung into the canoe. Almost before it touched the bottom, Hugh had seized his knife and dealt a swift blow. A few ineffectual flaps and the big fish lay still.

“Fifteen pounds at least,” Hugh exulted. “I have seen larger trout, but most of them were taken in nets.”

“They grow very big sometimes, two, three times as big, but it is not good to catch such a big one with a line. Unless you have great luck, it overturns your canoe.”

The sight of the big trout sharpened the boys’ hunger pangs and took away all zest from further fishing. They paddled full speed for shore and supper.

Favored by good weather they made a quick trip to the Grand Portage. In the bay a small ship lay at anchor, and they knew supplies must have arrived.

“That is not the Otter,” Hugh remarked as they paddled by.

“No, it is not one of the Old Company’s ships. I think it belongs to the New Company.”

“I’m glad it isn’t the Otter,” Hugh replied. “I shouldn’t know how to answer Baptiste’s questions.”

The ship proved, as Blaise had guessed, to belong to the New Company. She sailed the day after the boys arrived, but had left ample supplies. They had no difficulty in buying the needed stores, though Hugh’s money was exhausted by the purchases. He left explanations to Blaise, confident that his younger brother could not be persuaded to divulge the destination or purpose of their trip.

Again bad weather held the lads at the Grand Portage and Wauswaugoning. The last day of their stay, when they were returning from the New Company’s post, they came upon the camp of the trappers whose bateau had loomed like a ship through the morning mist when the boys were leaving the Bay of the Beaver. Hugh recognized at once the tall fellow in the scarlet cap who had replied to his shout of greeting. The trappers had disposed of their furs at the Old Company’s post and were about to leave. They were going to portage their supplies to Fort Charlotte above the falls of the Pigeon River and go up the river in a canoe. Hugh inquired what they intended to do with their small bateau which was drawn up on the shore.

“You want it?” the leader questioned in his big voice.

“Will you sell it?” the boy asked eagerly.

The man nodded. “What you give?”

Hugh flushed with chagrin, remembering that all his money was gone. Blaise came to the rescue by offering to trade some ammunition for the boat. The man shook his head. Blaise added to his offer a small quantity of food supplies, but still the fellow refused. “Too little,” he grumbled, then added something in his curious mixture of Scotch-English and Ojibwa. He was a Scotch half-breed and Hugh found his dialect difficult to understand.

Blaise shrugged, walked over to the boat and examined it. He turned towards the man and spoke in rapid Ojibwa. The fellow answered in the same tongue, pointing to the lad’s gun.

“What does he say?” asked Hugh.

“I told him his bateau needs mending,” Blaise answered in French, “but he will not trade for anything but my gun, which is better than his. I will not give him the gun. Our father gave it to me.”

Hugh understood his half-brother’s feeling, but he was eager to secure the boat. “He may have my gun,” he whispered. He knew that the tall fellow understood some French. “Tell him if he will include the sail – he had one, you know – I’ll give him my gun and some ammunition. Mine doesn’t shoot as accurately as yours, but it looks newer.”

Blaise made the offer in Ojibwa, Hugh repeated it in English, and after an unsuccessful attempt to get more, the man agreed. He put into the boat the mast and canvas, which he had been using as a shelter, and Hugh handed over the gun and ammunition.

The rest of the day was spent in making a few necessary repairs to the bateau, and the following morning, before a light southwest breeze, the lads set sail. Blaise knew nothing of this sort of water travel, but Hugh had handled a sailboat before, though never one quite so clumsy as this crude, heavy bateau. The boat was pointed at both ends, flat bottomed and built of thick, hand-hewn boards. It carried a small, square sail on a stubby mast. With axe and knife Hugh had made a crude rudder and had lashed it to the stern in the place of the paddle the trappers had been content to steer with. Blaise quickly learned to handle the rudder, leaving Hugh free to manage the sail. It was a satisfaction to the older boy to find something in which he excelled his younger brother and could take the lead. It restored his self-respect as the elder. Blaise, on the other hand, obeyed orders instantly and proved himself as reliable a subordinate as he had been leader. The breeze holding steady, the bateau made fairly good speed. They might possibly have made better time in a canoe, but the new mode of travel was a pleasant change from the constant labor of plying the blades.

Had the lads but known it, their wisest course would have been to cross directly from the Grand Portage to the southwestern end of Isle Royale and then skirt the island to its northeast tip. But they had no map to tell them this. Indeed in those days the position of Isle Royale was but imperfectly understood. It had been visited by scarcely any white men and was avoided by the Indians. During the boys’ detention at the Grand Portage, rain and fog had rendered the island, some eighteen or twenty miles away, invisible. The day they set sail the sky was blue overhead, but there was still haze enough on the water to obscure the distance. It was not strange that they believed Isle Royale farther off than it really was. From its northeastern end the Otter had sailed to the Kaministikwia, and Hugh took for granted that the shortest way to reach the island must be from some point on Thunder Bay. He was aware of the deep curve made by the shore to form the great bay, and realized that to follow clear around that curve would be a loss of time. Instead of turning north to follow the shore, he held on to the northeast, along the inner side of a long line of narrow, rocky islands and reefs, rising from the water like the summits of a mountain chain and forming a breakwater for the protection of the bay.

It was from one of those islands, now called McKellar Island, south about two miles from the towering heights of the Isle du Paté and at least fifteen miles by water from the southern mouth of the Kaministikwia, that the adventurers finally set out for Isle Royale. Before they dared attempt the perilous sail across the long stretch of the open lake, they remained in camp a day to let the southwest wind, which had risen to half a gale, blow itself out. Wind they needed for their venture, but not too much wind.