"Hardly brought blood!" declared the wounded scout, with a tinge of delight in his voice, for it was worth while to know that you had been touched by a bullet, and even have the evidence to show for it, without any painful consequences to follow.
"Lucky feller!" said Jimmy, somewhat jealous of the honor this was going to bestow upon the other, when the story of the raid was told later on.
"But we mustn"t stay here," Ned told them. "Keep your eyes all around, and if you are sure you glimpse anybody following after us, give him your compliments; only remember that you"re scouts, and make it as easy as you can for the poor wretch."
"He won"t know it if I hit him!" Jimmy went on to say; nor did anybody stop to ask him to explain more fully what he meant.
The fact that they were leaving the mine for good did not seem to cause any of the party the least distress of mind. They had come and looked it over, and Ned had learned all he wanted, in order to make a comprehensive report. The sooner they left the vicinity, the better all of them would be pleased.
To reach their canoes again, they would have to cover considerable ground; and that caused Jimmy to wince, for he was not reckoned as good a walker as most of his mates.
Secretly, he was hoping that some other plan might appeal to Ned, such as hiding their trail, and resting up in some snug retreat over night, when they would be in good shape to complete the journey in the morning.
It was now a question as to just how they were to conduct their retreat so as to avoid the risk of being pelted with bullets by the three miners, reinforced by any others who may have been in the tent village.
Ned was only too glad to leave this pretty much in the hands of Francois, whose practical experience was worth much more than any theory that could be studied out of scout books.
The French Canadian voyageur quickly understood what was expected of him, after he had received the signal. Although the boys had been in his company for weeks now, they had never seen him so alert and active. He seemed to be watching every angle of the compa.s.s at the same moment, and twice raised his gun and fired backward, as though he had discovered some lurking foe.
That this was far from imagination they saw when the second shot came; for hardly had it echoed through the hills than a form was seen to rush into view, and a man in rough clothes flashed across an open s.p.a.ce, holding to his left arm, as though he might have received the guide"s lead in that shoulder.
"You pinked him, Francois, sure you did that time!" cried Jimmy excitedly; "don"t I just wish I had your quick eyes, though? I didn"t see a single thing moving up there; but you did, Francois. Old Eagle Eye I"m going to call you after this. Oh! why don"t one of "em step out, and let me take a snapshot at him?"
It seemed as though the others were not that obliging, for while several shots were fired, without doing the explorers any damage, Jimmy could see nothing of the men who used their guns. He, finally, being unable to stand it any longer, sent a couple of shots at the spot where he saw smoke rising, after another fusilade had come.
"Guess I"m on the blink when it comes to sharpshooting," bemoaned Jimmy; "why, at this rate, I"ll never get the stock of my trusty rifle covered with notches, to show the number of ferocious pirates I"ve bowled over.
It"s a measly shame, that"s all."
At any rate, they seemed to be making a successful "getaway," as Jack called it; because they were gradually leaving these hidden marksmen further and further behind. The next shot showed that the handler of the gun was quite some distance away. He must have taken more pains to aim, however, than up to now had been the case, for immediately the "ping" of the bullet was plainly heard as it winged its flight only a short distance above their heads, flattening out against the face of the rock beyond.
This thing of being under fire was no new experience with these scouts.
They had on several occasions heard lead sing past their ears; but, all the same, none of them enjoyed the sensation very much. It was apt to cause a shiver or a feeling as of being put in connection with a galvanic battery.
"Seems like we"ve left that crowd in the lurch," Teddy remarked, a few minutes later, as they began to reach more regular ground, where the going promised to be considerably easier.
"Yes," added Jack, "and the most we have to fear after this is meeting up with the other lot that waited for us on the lower river. They may have grown tired of laying around, or else got wind of our change of plans, so that right now they are crossing to the mine!"
"Look!" said the Cree guide, pointing backward; and immediately the scouts saw three columns of very black smoke ascending straight toward the sky.
CHAPTER XII.
THE TALKING SMOKE.
"Well, I declare if they don"t use the same sort of signals the scouts do down our way!" exclaimed Jimmy, looking rather disgusted, as though he had caught some one stealing his thunder.
Ned had to laugh at the blank expression of his a.s.sistant"s face.
"Why, Jimmy," he said, "you forget that the scout movement is only half a dozen years old. It began after the Boer war, when General Baden-Powell saw what a great thing it would be for the whole British Nation, if every boy learned a thousand things about all creation, useful things at that. And, Jimmy, don"t forget that smoke was used to signal with for hundreds of years before ever the white man landed on the sh.o.r.es of America."
"Say, that"s right, Ned, they always made fires with their flints, didn"t they? And these men up here, hunters, trappers, or whatever they may be, inherited the Injun way of sending messages. Sure, I knew it all along. The only trouble with me is I go and forget things. But what d"ye think they are doin" sending out that old smoke signal?"
"They"ve got friends within seeing distance, because smoke can be sighted many miles away, especially when it rises as straight as it"s doing now," Jack ventured to interpose.
"The crowd over on the Harricanaw River, you mean?" demanded Jimmy.
"Yes."
"Then they"ll be apt to know we gave "em the slip, won"t they?" the freckled faced scout continued.
"I suppose they will, because you notice that every now and then the smoke seems to stop," Ned answered. "As a scout in good standing, Jimmy, you ought to know how that"s done."
"Two fellers swing a blanket over the smoking wood and smother it for a bit, to send up another big puff. Yes, that"s what they call talking.
Letters are formed by the puffs of smoke, just as we do the same with the wigwag flags, or the piece of looking-gla.s.s in the sun, when we heliograph."
"And right now, somewhere or other, one or more of those men must be reading out the message, letter by letter," said the patrol leader seriously, while they continued to walk on.
"It won"t take long to tell how we happened to show up at the mine, and took a nice little saunter through the same, seeing how fine it was being cured--I mean salted," Teddy interrupted, thinking that Jimmy had done more than his full share of the cross questioning, and ought to give place to some one else.
"I shouldn"t think it would," agreed Ned.
"I wonder now if the men over on the river will guess what happened, and how we must have left our boats secreted somewhere above?" ventured Frank.
"That is something we have no means of telling," Ned informed him; "but since it might happen, we"ll have to keep a sharp lookout on the way across country. We might fall into ambush, and either be shot down or else made prisoners."
"I don"t know which would be worse," grumbled Jimmy.
"Whew! what if they should happen on our, canoes, after all the trouble we took to hide the same?" suggested Jack, looking as solemn as an owl.
"The walking is fairly decent all the way from Hudson Bay to Montreal, barring a dozen rivers to cross, a score of bogs miles and miles around, some pretty hefty mountain chains to pa.s.s over, and some more troubles too silly to mention," was the way Jimmy made light of the possible calamity.
Ned himself knew that it would be a terrible mishap should anything like this come to pa.s.s. He had thought it all over more than once, and even mapped out several plans for their guidance in case of such an event.
Walking back was next to an utter impossibility. They might manage with the aid of Francios and the Cree Indian to manufacture some sort of canoes, providing the proper kind of bark was to be procured this far north, which he doubted very much. Besides this, there was a slender chance that they might signal to some whaling vessel on the great bay and procure a berth for each of them aboard, so as to be landed at Halifax or Montreal, anywhere so that they could use the telegraph, and keep Mr. Bosworth and his company from investing a dollar in the wonderful copper mine, until the scouts reached home again.
So Ned, having looked further ahead than any of his chums, was not so much impressed by the gravity of the threatening evil, in case they did lose their highly valued canoes. He would begrudge the loss of his blanket and some other articles more than anything else, as they had memories connected with them of dead and gone events, in which he and some of the other boys of the trip had figured.
As they pushed on every little while they could catch glimpses of the talking smoke signals in the rear. Doubtless the fire that was supplying the smoke for this method of communicating with the distant posse had been built on the side of the hill in which the mine lay. That would account for their being able to see it for such length of time.
"Must be giving a whole history of the _awful_ disaster," Jimmy muttered, after he had turned for the sixth time to see the smoke still waving in fantastic wreaths against the sky.
"Slow-pokes, that"s what," ventured Teddy. "Why, when I was a mere tenderfoot I could send messages better than that."
"Don"t find fault," advised Jack. "The longer it takes the signal man to send on his news, the better chance we"ll have of slipping away before any trap can be laid or sprung, don"t you see?"
"And as we"re first-cla.s.s scouts," said Jimmy, boastfully, "why, we"re able to beat such dubs, with one hand tied behind our backs."