Mystery At Devil's Paw Part 10

Stunned, Frank struggled to his feet. The Indians gave him a moment's respite, then again hurled him aloft!

Joe and Ted watched, wide-eyed and helpless. For a second, Frank seemed to be dancing on air. Then, thras.h.i.+ng violently, he came down again, this time landing on one side.

114 Badly shaken, Frank managed to stand up. His last chance! Although his heart was hammering, Frank gritted his teeth, determined not to fail. Once more the Indians catapulted him into the air.

Joe could scarcely bear to watch. Ted clutched his arm in breathless suspense.

Arrowing straight upward, Frank closed his eyes, keeping his arms close to his sides.

As he reached his highest point in mid-air, he opened his eyes again. The circle of Indians stood far below, gaping up at him, the walrus hide seeming not much bigger than a handkerchief.

Suddenly Frank felt himself begin to fall, slowly at first, then at elevator speed. He stretched out" his arms and trod the air gently with his feet, like a man on a unicycle. It worked! He landed squarely on both feet, still upright!

The crowd roared its approval! Frank was lifted off the walrus hide, hoisted onto the shoulders of two Indians, and paraded about the village clearing amid whoops and yells.

"You skook.u.m skook.u.m fella!" the Haida chief beamed at Frank when he was finally allowed to fella!" the Haida chief beamed at Frank when he was finally allowed to stand on his own feet again. "Now you and two friends all come to wedding feast!"

"Thanks," Frank replied, a trifle weakly. Joe and Ted, then Fleetfoot, wrung his hand in congratulation.

"Terrific!" Joe told his brother.

115 "I just kept thinking of those flaming arrows." Frank grinned. "That's what did it."

"It's a wonder you could think at all after those first two jolts!" Ted exclaimed.

The villagers now gathered about a great central campfire. Two medicine men performed a religious dance, then the chief joined the hands of the Indian groom and his Eskimo bride. The wedding feast followed.

Squaws brought around huge carved wooden platters heaped with food. The first course consisted of slabs of pink salmon.

"Good night! It's raw!" Joe whispered.

The boys took some, however, in order not to offend their hosts, and managed to eat a few bites. The bear steaks and stewed rabbit which followed were more to their liking.

These were accompanied by nuts, berries, vegetables, and fruits, including one with a citrus flavor, which tasted like a cross between lemon and grapefruit. Ted identified it as the fruit of the wild rose.

"Boy, now we're getting fancy!" Joe chuckled as he sampled the fruit's delicate flavor.

"Hmm! Not bad, though!"

There was also a sort of coa.r.s.e baked bread. "Wonder what it's made out of?" Frank muttered, after trying a few bites.

Fleetfoot explained, "Women make flour by grinding up bulbs of rice lily." He pointed to some brownish-purple flowers which several of 116 the squaws wore in their hair. "Those are flowers from same plant."

When the feast was over, the Hardys at last found an opportunity to tell Fleetfoot about their trip upriver. Frank asked if the Indian youth would accompany them as guide.

"I glad to come with you!" he explained. "But I take my own canoe. It is much better than white man's."

"Fine! Let's go!" said Joe.

But Fleetfoot looked shocked. "No, no!" he told the boys. "Cannot go now. Wedding party is just beginning!"

"Just beginning?" Frank echoed uneasily.

"Still much dancing, singing to come," Fleet-foot explained. "You wait. We go tomorrow morning."

The Hardys and Ted looked questioningly at one another, trying to conceal their feelings of impatience at the further delay. However, there was nothing to do but yield. Settling back, they prepared to watch the proceedings.

Soon tom-toms beat. The medicine men started a slow, stately dance, shaking wooden rattles. As the tempo increased, the other Indians joined in and the squaws chanted steadily.

The three visitors found themselves absorbed in the ceremony, despite the delay in their journey.

"Whew!" Joe exclaimed in wonderment. "How long can they keep on dancing?"

117 Fleetfoot smiled broadly. "Oh-Indians love dance. Never get tired."

Gradually, as shadows gathered in the forest, the white boys became drowsy. One by one, Joe, Ted, and Frank all dropped off to sleep.

When they awoke, it was daylight. Fleetfoot was shaking them. "Come! We start now!"

he said.

Returning to the river, the Hardys and Ted uncovered the gear which they had cached.

The supplies were loaded aboard, and the canoes launched in the water.

Fleetfoot disappeared long enough to get his own birchbark canoe, which was beached farther downstream. In a few minutes he came into sight, paddling with smooth, graceful strokes.

As he drew alongside, Frank said, "There's something we meant to ask you, Fleetfoot.

The other night a carved wooden paddle was washed up on our island at the mouth of the river." When Frank described the shape of it, a strange expression of fear and awe pa.s.sed over Fleetfoot's facel

CHAPTER XIV.

A Suspicious Campsite "fleetfoot looks as if he's seen a ghost," Frank thought.

The Indian boy quickly regained his composure and asked slowly, "Did paddle have cuts in handle?"

"Yes," Joe spoke up. "Two small rounded gouges."

Fleetfoot fairly trembled. His eyes grew wide. "That paddle made before white man came! Even before my grandfather's grandfather was born!"

"You mean back in the days of the ancient Athapascan Indians?" Ted asked.

"Yes! Yes! Paddle left on beach by spirit of old Indian!"

"I doubt it," said Frank thoughtfully.

"So do I," Joe chimed in. "There were live men paddling around the island that night.

Probably 118.

119 the same bunch we're looking for. Most likely one of them had seen that symbol somewhere and copied it for good luck."

Frank agreed with this theory. "They probably saw a paddle like that when they robbed the Indian grave houses," he remarked to Joe in an undertone. "Stop to think of it, thac may be where the paddle came from!"

Ted was eager to push on, so they started up-river. This time, Joe rode the trailing canoe which carried the cans of fuel.

As they penetrated deeper into the interior, the country became increasingly wilder. At times they saw deer push out of the tangled underbrush to drink at the water's edge. Once they surprised a brown bear fis.h.i.+ng in rocky shallows, but the beast, startled, hastily withdrew into the forest.

After pausing briefly for lunch, they continued their journey upstream. Frank and Joe, whose arm muscles had ached at the end of the first day's canoeing, gradually found themselves swinging their paddles with the same smooth, easy rhythm as Ted Sewell and Fleetfoot.

Presently Ted pointed ahead to their left. "There's Devil's Paw!" he called out.

The weird outcropping of rock loomed against the mountainous sky line like four fingers and a thumb sticking up in the air.

Fleetfoot paddled close to the other canoes. "This is bad place," he confided. "Old men of my 120 tribe say devil carved it from rock. Indians not go there."

"In that case," Joe mused, "it would make a perfect hide-out for the gang. Indians would stay away from it, and the average white man would have no reason for going there."

Frank nodded. "You're right. We'd better investigate."

At first Fleetfoot objected, but as soon as he realized that the boys were not frightened by the old Indian tales, he lost his fear. Moreover, the prospect of stalking criminals filled him with keen antic.i.p.ation. His Indian blood rose to the challenge.

"If bad men there, Fleetfoot find "urn!" he vowed.

Running their canoes ash.o.r.e, the searchers cached their crafts and provisions for a second time.

"Take your rifles," Ted advised tersely. Each of them shoved a clip of cartridges into the magazine of his firearm and stuffed more into pockets before setting off on the rugged trek toward Devil's Paw.

Their present point on the Kooniak, Ted said, was three thousand feet above sea level.

All about them, pine and spruce trees were still plentiful, but the riverbanks had become increasingly rocky and precipitous. As a result, hiking was difficult.

121 Carrying their rifles in one hand and clutching at trees and shrubs with the other, the four made their way up the steep slope. From time to time one of them missed his footing, sending a shower of rocks and gravel clattering toward the river.

"We'll never take the gang by surprise at this rate!" Joe grumbled, pausing to wipe the sweat from his eyes.

After half an hour of hard climbing, they reached a point where Devil's Paw and the entire surrounding terrain stood out in clear view. But there was no sign of a campfire, nor any other trace of human beings.

"Maybe we've been wasting our time," Ted laid, discouraged.

"We can't be sure," Frank replied, "without making a closer search." Now, however, the approaches were so steep that it was impossible to climb farther.

Tired and disheartened, the boys retraced their route to the canoes.

"If the gang really is using Devil's Paw for a hide-out," Ted remarked, "they must have some easier way of getting to it."

"Right," Joe nodded, removing a pebble from his shoe. "There must be a secret trail somewhere."

Fleetfoot spoke up eagerly. "You wait here. Me go look for trail."

"Hey! Wait!" Frank called out.

122 The boy did not seem to hear. He darted nimbly up the mountainside, and was soon lost to view among the scrub evergreens and underbrush.

Frank, Joe, and Ted waited, sprawled comfortably on spongy pine needles among the rocks. All were glad of a chance to rest. As time pa.s.sed, however, they gradually became uneasy. More than an hour had gone by since Fleetfoot's departure. Minute after minute ticked away, with still no sign of the Indian boy.

"Wonder what's keeping him?" Frank glanced at his watch for what seemed like the hundredth time.

"Let's hope he didn't stumble into the gang," Joe remarked. He greatly admired the high-spirited Indian, and by now was thoroughly alarmed for his safety.

"We should have given him one of the rifles," Ted added gloomily.

The words were hardly spoken before the underbrush parted and Fleetfoot stepped into view, a wide grin on his coppery face.

"Me find trail," he reported proudly. "Ground show many footprints. Look like men go back and forth many times!"

"How about their camp?" Joe asked eagerly. "Did you find where the trail led?"

"Me find camp. But no one there-strangers all gone away. We get in canoes, go on up river," he urged. "Then we look here again on way back."

123 Frank and Joe rejected this suggestion. Being good detectives, they were determined to follow through on their plan, leaving no stone unturned in their search for clues.

"You've done fine, Fleetfoot," Frank told him. "But we'd like a look at that campsite ourselves. Will you take us to it?"

Fleetfoot agreed willingly, and after gathering up their rifles, the three white youths followed him. Fleetfoot led them upriver for a short distance, following a twisting route among the trees and rocks. Then he turned left, up a narrow draw.

"Now you see trail." Fleetfoot pointed to a well-beaten path. It sloped gently up the mountainside by easy stages.

"Nice work, Fleetfoot!" Joe congratulated him. Bending close to the ground, he added, "Frank, here are more of those star-and-circle heelmarks!"

Pressing forward up the trail, they found the campsite. It lay at the base of one finger of Devil's Paw. Here again were many of the odd heelprints, as well as the blackened ashes of a recent camp-fire. A number of empty, discarded food cans had also been tossed carelessly aside.

"Pretty sure n.o.body would ever find this spot, weren't they?" Joe commented.

"Are you sure none of the gang is lurking around?" Ted asked Fleetfoot.

"No one here," he replied confidently. "Me scout for strangers before I come up trail."

124 "The question now," Frank put forth, "is whether they're coming back? And if so, how soon?"

"Let's take a look around while we're up here," Joe suggested. "We might spot a smoking camp-fire."