Chapter XXXIV

_In Which Archie and Billy Resolve Upon a Deed of Their Own Doing,
and are Challenged by Ha-Ha Shallow of Rattle Water_

Neither boy slept very much. In Samuel Jolly's spare bed (it was called a spare bed)--where they had tumbled in together--they did more talking than sleeping. And that could not be helped. It was a situation that appealed to the imagination of two chivalrous boys--a woman all alone on Poor Luck Barrens with a madman. When morning came they were up with the first peep of the light; and they were in a nervous condition of such a sort that neither would hesitate over a reckless chance if it should confront them in an attempt to help the writer of the letter of the cleft stick.

"Who is she?" Archie demanded of Samuel Jolly.

"Jinny Tulk, sir--Trapper George's daughter."

"How does she come to be at Poor Luck Barrens?"

"Trapper George has a trappin' tilt there, sir. They're both from this harbour. They goes trappin' on Poor Luck Barrens in the winter. Jinny keeps house for her pop."

"All alone?"

"Ay, sir; there's nobody livin' near."

Archie turned to Billy.

"Look here, Billy," said he, anxiously, "we've _got_ to go. I can't bear it here--with that poor girl all alone----"

"Doctor Luke----"

"We can't wait for Doctor Luke."

"That's jus' what I was goin' t' say," said Billy. "We'll leave word for Doctor Luke that we've gone. He can follow. An' when we gets there, we can keep Trapper George quiet until Doctor Luke comes."

"When shall we start?"

"Now!"

* * * * *

Outbound from Bread-and-Butter, fortified with instructions, Billy Topsail and Archie Armstrong made along the shore of Skeleton Arm, by the long trail, and were halted before noon at Rattle Water. The ice had gone out of Rattle Water. At the ford the stream was deep, swift, bitter cold--manifestly impassable; and above, beyond Serpent Bend, the water of Ha-ha Shallow, which was the alternative crossing, was in a turmoil, swelling and foaming over the boulders in its wide, shallow bed.

Except where the current eddied, black, flecked with froth, Ha-ha Shallow was not deep. A man might cross--submerged somewhat above the knees, no more; but in the clinging grip and tug of the current his footing would be delicately precarious, and the issue of a misstep, a stumble, a lost balance, would be a desperate chance, with the wager heavily on grim Death.

It was perilous water--the noisy, sucking white rush of it, frothing over the boulders, and running, icy cold, in choppy, crested waves, where the channel was a bed of stones and gravel. Yet the path to the tilt at Poor Luck Barrens lay across and beyond Ha-ha Shallow of Rattle Water.

Billy Topsail and Archie Armstrong surveyed the rapids in a dubious silence.

"Hum!" Archie coughed.

Billy Topsail chuckled.

"You've no fancy for the passage?" he inquired.

"I have not. Have you?"

"I don't hanker for it, Archie. No, sir--not me!"

"Can it be done?"

"No, b'y."

"No; it can't be done," Archie declared. "You're right."

They stared at the tumultuous stream.

"Come along," said Archie, with decision, his teeth set; "we'll try that ice below again."

Below Ha-ha Shallow, where the stream dropped into a deep, long pool, lying between low cliffs, fringed with the spruce of that stunted wilderness, Rattle Water was bridged with ice. There had been flood water in the early spring break-up--a rush of broken ice, a jam in Black Pool, held by the rocks of its narrow exit; and the ice had been caught and sealed by the frosts of a swift spell of bitter weather.

The subsidence of Rattle Water, when the ice below Black Pool ran off with the current into the open reaches of Skeleton Arm, had left the jam suspended. It was a bridge from shore to shore, lifted a little from the water; but in the sunshine and thaw and warm rain of the subsequent interval it had gone rotten. Its heavy collapse was imminent.

And of this Billy Topsail and Archie had made sure on the way up-stream from the impassable ford to the impassable white water of Ha-ha Shallow. The ice-bridge could not be crossed. It awaited the last straw--a rain, a squall of wind, another day of sunshine and melting weather. Billy had ventured, on pussy-feet, and had withdrawn, threatened by a crack, his hair on end.

A second trial of the bridge had precisely the same result. Archie cast a stone. It plumped through.

"Soft 's cheese," said Billy.

Another stone was cast.

"Hear that, Billy?"

"Clean through, Archie."

"Yes; clean through. It's all rotten. We can't cross. Give me a hand. I'll try it."

With a hand from Billy Topsail, Archie let himself slip over the edge of the cliff to an anxious footing on the ice.

He waited--expectant.

"Cautious, Archie!" Billy warned.

Nothing happened.

"Cautious!" Billy repeated. "You'll drop through, b'y!"

Archie took one step--and dropped, crashing, with a section of the bridge, which momentarily floated his weight. Billy caught his hand, as the ice disintegrated under his feet, and dragged him ashore.

"It can't be done," said Archie.

"No, b'y; it can't."

"We'll try Ha-ha Shallow again. We've _got_ to get across."

A moment, however, Archie paused. A startling possibility possessed his imagination. It was nothing remote, nothing vague; it was real, concrete, imminent. Standing on the brink of the rock at the point where the ice-bridge began, he contemplated the chances of Rattle Water. With a crossing of Ha-ha Shallow immediately in prospect, there was something for affrighted reflection in the current below. And the suggestion was vivid and ugly.

There the water was flowing black, spread with creamy puffs of foam; and it ran swift and deep, in strong, straight lines, as it approached the Black Pool ice and vanished beneath. There was a space between the ice and the fallen current--not much: two feet, perhaps; but it occurred to Archie, with sudden, shocking force, that two feet were too much. And the deep, oily, adherent flow of the current, and the space between the ice and the water, and the cavernous shadow beneath the ice, and the gurgle and lapping of the pool, made the flesh of his back uneasy.

"A nasty fix," he observed.

"What's that, Archie?"

"If a man lost his feet in the current."

"He'd come down like a chip."

"He would. And he'd slip under the ice. Watch these puffs of foam. What would happen to a man under there, Billy?"

"He'd drown in the pool. He couldn't get out."

"Right, Billy," Archie agreed, shortly. "He'd drown in the pool. He couldn't get out. The current would hold him in there. Come along."

"Shall we try it, Archie?"

"We'll look it over."

"An' if we think----"

"Then we'll do it!"

Billy laughed.

"Archie," said he, "I--I--I _likes_ you!"

"Shucks!" said Archie.

Archie walked the length of Ha-ha Shallow, from the swift water above Black Pool to Loon Lake, and returned, still searching the rapid for a good crossing, to a point near the Black Pool ice, where a choppy ripple promised a shallow, gravelled bottom. The stream was wide, shelving slowly from the shore--it was prattling water; but there was a fearsomely brief leeway of distance between the stretch of choppy ripple and the deep rush of the current as it swept into the shadows under the Black Pool ice.

Directly below the ripple, Rattle Water narrowed and deepened; nearing Black Pool, the banks were steep, and above the rising gorge, which the banks formed, and running the length of it, the current swelled over a scattering of slimy boulders and swirled around them. It was a perilous place to be caught. In the gravel-bottomed ripple, the water was too swift, too deep, for an overbalanced boy to regain his feet; and in the foaming, hurrying, deeper water below, the rough drift to Black Pool was inevitable: for the boulders were water-worn and round, and the surface was as slippery as grease with slime.

Having stared long enough at the alluring stretch of choppy ripple, Archie Armstrong came to a conclusion.