Any person of real judgment, so Hugh realized even at the time, would have thrown away the pack and rifle and run to safety unimpeded. He did think of it, but somehow he could not. So he stumbled on, the men behind him gaining, the river and the fallen tree seeming a long distance away. He reached the sheltering underbrush, turned sharply upstream and was hidden for a moment from his pursuers as they came dashing down the hill. He had just leaped upon the tree-trunk when they came out upon the bank.

“Look out, Hugh,” came a shout from the other shore, where stood Dick, who had shamelessly deserted his brother. “Look out! They are going to shoot.”

Hugh did not stop to look, but ducked quickly and heard a bullet whistle over his head. The next second, “ping,” another buried itself in the pack that hung from his shoulder. The impact almost destroyed his balance; he staggered and dropped to his knees and crawled the last few yards to safety.

“Are you hurt?” cried Dick. “Are you safe? Lie down behind that log until they have stopped shooting.”

In absolute defiance of his own advice he, as well as Nicholas, was standing among the trees, the one shouting, the other barking in wild excitement. But Hugh would not come, for his very danger on the now tottering bridge had given him an idea for the furthering of their own safety. He was standing knee deep in the running water with his shoulder against the tree-trunk, pushing against it with all his might.

“Go back; stay with your brother,” he called to Dick. “What would he do if you were to be shot?”

A bullet carried away his woolen cap and another cut the bark beside his hand, but he did not give up. He pushed until the big tree swayed, moved a little, then suddenly rolled all the way over. Just as the first Indian’s foot was upon it, the great log fell splashing into the water, was whirled over and over by the current and rushed away down stream. Dripping and delighted, Hugh ran up the trail to join Dick, the angry bullets still whistling behind him. He looked back to see one of the Indians wade into the water, stand waist deep, reeling under the force of the flood, then struggle back to the shore. All three of the pirates strode away through the bushes, talking earnestly together.

For some time after the boys returned to the cabin they were busied caring for John Edmonds. While they were working, they exchanged their various experiences, so that Dick learned how Hugh came to be in the cabin on Jasper Peak, and Hugh, of the Edmonds’ adventures in the forest.

This illness of John’s, it seemed, had been coming on gradually. Dick had noticed that he was restless, erratic and worried over his work, at which he often had to toil late into the night. The hunting trip, Dick had thought, would help to put him on his feet again, and he had, indeed, seemed better the first day, but after that grew rapidly worse.

“It was the last thing we could do together,” Dick explained, “for I was going to enlist when I got back; I had only been waiting until they could find some one to fill my place at the mine. We started off in great spirits; the Indian, Kaniska, was our guide, a man we had had before, who always seemed reliable enough. He was a friend of John’s, in a way, and that queer squaw of his, Laughing Mary, had always professed to be devoted to us, especially to my brother. I can’t imagine how Kaniska could have done such a thing to us.”

“And what did he do?” inquired Hugh eagerly.

“He took us in a direction we had never been before,” said Dick, “through a perfect network of streams and little lakes and swamps, and made us push on as fast as we could, saying that we were getting to a place where there was famous shooting. We did not camp until very late that first night and I was so tired that I slept like the dead. When I woke up in the morning, he was gone.”

“He left you alone?” exclaimed Hugh in horror.

“Not only that, but he took all our stores with him, and our axes and our compass. To leave men in the woods, stripped of everything they need, is very little short of murder. I had been sleeping with my rifle beside me, so he didn’t dare take that. It was the only thing that saved us.”

“And you have lived only on what you could shoot?” questioned Hugh. “Why, you must be half famished!”

“I am,” assented Dick, cheerfully, “rather more than half, to tell the truth, but we must attend to Johnny first.”

When at last there was time to stir up the fire and prepare a meal, Hugh realized on seeing Dick eat how near he had been to real starvation.

“Berries and things are pretty scarce so late in the year as this,” Dick continued his tale as they sat at the table. “I managed to catch a few fish now and then, and I shot any kind of bird that I could hit. We ate some queer things, but you get so that you don’t care much. Nicholas could catch rabbits and he always brought them to me, although, poor fellow, he could have eaten a hundred of them himself.”

He related how, after a few hours of bewildered searching for the vanished Indian, he had decided that the stream upon which they were encamped, being larger than the others and flowing north, must be the outlet of Red Lake and was therefore the best guide to follow. If he could find the lake, he could find Rudolm, he thought, but what a long and hopeless way it seemed! Now and then, in trying to cut off some of the windings of the stream, they had strayed away from it altogether and had only found it again after the loss of much time and effort.

“And all the time Johnny kept getting sicker and sicker,” he said, “so that I got more frightened about him than about anything else. At night he would be out of his head, sometimes, and in the daytime he would just trudge along at my heels and never say a word. Only once, when I said that if we ever found the lake we might come out somewhere near Oscar Dansk’s house, he got furiously angry and made me promise that I would never ask him for help. I don’t know yet what idea he had in his poor confused head, but I had to promise, to quiet him.”

He told further of their growing weakness, of the shorter and shorter distances they could travel in a day, of a final afternoon when, having gone to shoot a partridge, he had come back and found his brother had disappeared.

“Perhaps I hadn’t realized until that minute how desperately ill he was. He had wandered off; I could see the storm coming and I looked and looked and called and called, but I couldn’t find him. I felt pretty hopeless, I can tell you.”

It was Nicholas who had discovered John Edmonds at last, lying insensible under a big tree near the foot of Jasper Peak. They had sat by him a long time, the boy and the dog, helpless and exhausted both of them. Dick had caught a glimpse of the cabin on the side of the mountain and had decided, when the storm broke, that they must get there at any cost.

“I carried Johnny on my back,” he said, “don’t ask me how, but some way or other we made it. I was so anxious to get him in out of the storm that it didn’t matter much where we went. I don’t think I had sense enough to mind a great deal even when I realized it was Jake’s cabin. We found something to eat, although we didn’t take more than we could possibly help. John seemed to revive a little, but still I was desperately anxious, and felt that I must do something, no matter what. I think I believed Two Rivers and Rudolm were much nearer than they are and I had not counted on the streams all being in flood. I could see the light from your cabin, but—well, I had promised. Now, I can understand that the promise was a foolish business, but your judgment isn’t quite so good when you are worn out and half starved, as when you are rested and fed. You don’t see things quite so clear.”

“But weren’t you afraid of Jake’s coming back?” Hugh asked.

Dick, it appeared, did not have such horror of the Pirate of Jasper Peak as had Hugh. He did not even yet seem to suspect that the half-breed had been concerned in their being lost in the forest nor had he heard the full tale of what Jake had done to Oscar Dansk. One anxiety had overcome the other and he had left his brother, ordering Nicholas back when he would have come too, and finally shutting him in so that John Edmonds should not feel himself quite alone.

“But almost as soon as I was gone he broke out and went across the valley to you,” Dick concluded. “Nicholas had more sense than I had, didn’t you, old fellow?”

The big dog, lying on his side before the hearth, opened one eye and beat gently on the floor with his plumy tail at mention of his name. Then he heaved a great sigh, stretched himself luxuriously to the fire and fell asleep again, completely satisfied that those he loved were safe at last.

Dick, also, being assured that at least his brother was no worse, went away to sleep off some of the exhaustion of his journey through the forest, and Hugh was left to sit alone, still watching for Oscar’s return and wondering more and more anxiously why he did not come. The little cabin was peaceful and absolutely quiet except for the ticking of the clock and the deep breathing of the dog at his feet, but far from peaceful were Hugh’s racing thoughts. Where had his comrade been during that furious storm? What had happened to keep him so long? Oh, if he only had not parted from Oscar in such churlish ill-nature how much easier it would be to bear this anxious waiting!

He looked at Oscar’s recovered rifle hanging on the wall and thought with satisfaction of how glad he would be to see it. He felt a good deal of pride in having been able to get it back, but, as he sat thinking, he began to feel his pleasure give way to a certain lingering doubt. Had he really been wise in returning to the Pirate’s house, was the value of the rifle greater than the value of the help he could give the two exhausted Edmonds, help that they would have lost had his venture ended in his being shot? It was an unwelcome thought, yet he was forced to conclude that this was another of those errors in judgment of which his father had accused him, a rash failing to count the cost at the critical moment.

“Oh, dear,” he sighed, quite out loud, “when will I ever get sense enough to qualify for a soldier?”

Nicholas, hearing his voice, raised his head to look at him inquiringly. He seemed to hear something else also, for he got up, went to the door and stood listening intently. Then he turned to Hugh and whined to be let out. Hugh listened, but heard nothing save the rushing of the stream and the sighing of the wind in the trees.

“There isn’t anything,” he said to Nicholas, but the big dog still insisted, so at last he opened the door.

He stood before the cottage, looking in every direction, north,............