Lisle disregarded this, but he was a little less grave when he resumed:
"There"s another point to bear in mind. Two of Gladwyne"s party left him; and of those two which would be the more likely to succ.u.mb to extreme exertion, exposure, and insufficient food?"
"Against the answer you expect, there"s the fact that Vernon made the longer journey," Nasmyth objected.
"It doesn"t count for much. Was Clarence Gladwyne accustomed to roughing it and going without his dinner? Would you expect him to survive where you would perish, even if you had a little more to bear?"
"No," confessed Nasmyth; "he"s rather a self-indulgent person."
"Then, for example, could you march through a rough, snow-covered country on as little food as I could?"
"No, again," answered Nasmyth. "You would probably hold out two or three days longer than I could."
"Vernon was a stronger and tougher man than I am," Lisle went on. "Now, without finding definite proof, which I hardly expected, there is, I think, strong presumptive evidence that Vernon"s story is correct."
"Yes," agreed Nasmyth, and added gravely: "Will you ever find the proof?"
"I think there"s a way--it may be difficult; but I"m going right through with this."
"What"s your next move?"
"I"ve willingly laid my partner"s story open to the only tests we can impose. Now I"m going to do the same with Clarence Gladwyne"s."
Nothing more was said, and turning away from the cache, they went back to the canoe.
CHAPTER IV
A PAINFUL DECISION
Two days pa.s.sed uneventfully, though Nasmyth was conscious of a growing uneasiness during them; and then one evening they landed to search another beach. They had less difficulty here, for small cedars and birches crept down to the waterside and Jake found an ax-blaze on one.
After that, it was easy to locate the cache, and there were signs that it had been either very roughly made, or afterward opened and reclosed in careless haste. Lisle had no hesitation in deciding upon the latter, and Jake was emphatic in his brief a.s.surance on the point.
On removing the covering stones, they found very little beneath them, but every object was taken out and Lisle, measuring quant.i.ties and guessing weights, carefully enumerated each in his notebook. Neither he nor Nasmyth said anything of import then; both felt that the subject was too grave to be lightly discussed; and walking back silently along the shingle, they pitched the tent and prepared supper. After the meal, Jake, prompted by an innate tact, sauntered away down the beach, and the other two, lounging beside the fire, took out their pipes. A full moon hung above the lonely gorge, which was filled with the roar of the river, and the shadows of the cedars lay black upon the stones.
Some minutes pa.s.sed before a word was spoken; and then Nasmyth looked up.
"Well?" he said briefly.
Lisle moved a little, so that he could see his companion"s face.
"In the first place," he explained, "Clarence Gladwyne came down this bank. One could locate the cache by the blazed tree, even with snow upon the ground--and it has been opened. Apart from the signs of this, no party of three men would have thought it worth while to make a cache of the few things we found."
"Mightn"t it have been opened by some Indian?"
"It"s most unlikely, because he would have cleaned it out. A white prospector would certainly have taken the tobacco."
Nasmyth knit his brows. He was deeply troubled, because there were respects in which the matter would hardly bear discussion, though he recognized that it must now be thrashed out.
"Well," he admitted reluctantly, "what we have discovered has its significance; but it isn"t conclusive."
His companion took out from a pocket the palm and wrist portion of a fur glove. It was badly rotted, and the rest had either fallen away or been gnawed by some animal, but a b.u.t.ton with a stamp on it remained.
"Jake found that and gave it to me," he said. "There"s enough left to show that it had finger-stalls, and there are none on the mittens we use in cold weather. The thing"s English, and with a little rubbing I expect you"ll find the maker"s name on that b.u.t.ton. When the party went up it was warm weather, but we know there was sharp frost when Gladwyne came back. A b.u.t.toned glove doesn"t drop off one"s hand, and even if it had done so Gladwyne would have noticed and picked it up. It seems to me he took it off to open one of the provision bags and couldn"t find it afterward because he"d trodden it into the snow."
Nasmyth could doubt no longer, and his face grew red.
"The hound!" he broke out. "He had a hand frost-bitten--one finger is different from the others yet."
Lisle said nothing; he could understand and sympathize with what was going on in his companion"s mind and the latter was filled with bitterness and humiliation. A man of his own kind and station in life, one with whom he fished and shot, had broken faith with his starving comrade and with incredible cowardice had left him to perish. Even this was not the worst; though Nasmyth had always taken the personal courage of his friends for granted. He was not a clever man and he had his faults, but he shaped his life in accordance with a few simple but inflexible rules. It was difficult for him to understand how one could yield to a fit of craven fear; but there was a fact which made Gladwyne"s transgression still blacker.
"This thing hits hard," he said at length. "The man should have gone back, if he had known it meant certain death."
Lisle filled his pipe and smoked in silence for several minutes during which the eery cry of a loon rang about the camp. It roused Nasmyth to an outbreak of anger.
"I hate that unearthly noise!" he exclaimed vehemently. "The thing seems to be gloating; it"s indecent! When I think of that call it will bring back the long portage and this ghostly river! I wish I"d never made the journey, or that I could blot the whole thing out!"
"It can"t be done," Lisle replied. "It"s too late. You have learned the truth of what has been done here--but the results will work themselves out. Neither you nor I can stop them; they have to be faced."
"The pity of it is that the innocent must suffer; they"ve borne enough already."
"There"s a point I don"t quite understand," declared Lisle. "Whatever the Hudson Bay agent thought, he"d have kept it to himself if he"d been allowed--I"ve met him. It was Gladwyne who laid the whole blame on Vernon; he forced the agent to bear him out. Why should he have taken so much trouble? His own tale would have cleared him."
Nasmyth looked irresolute; and then he answered reluctantly:
"There"s a fact I haven"t told you yet--Clarence came into the family property on George"s death; a fine old place, a fairly large estate. The sister doesn"t count, though she got her brother"s personal property--the land goes down in the male line."
Lisle dropped his pipe.
"Now I understand! Gladwyne profits, my dead partner bore the shame. But do you believe the man meant to let his cousin die?"
"No," Nasmyth answered sharply, "that"s unthinkable! But I blame him almost as much as if he had done so. Besides his duty to George, he had a duty to himself and to the family--the honorable men and women who had kept the name clean before him. Knowing he would inherit on George"s death, there was only one way open--he should have gone back, at any cost. Instead, to clear himself of the faintest trace of ugly suspicion, he lays the blame upon an innocent man."
Lisle did not reply to this. He felt that had the grim choice been imposed upon his companion, the man would have taken the course he had indicated.
"You said that George Gladwyne was a naturalist," he remarked. "Was he a methodical man?"
"Eminently so," replied Nasmyth, wondering where the question led. He had already been astonished at Lisle"s close reasoning and the correctness of his deductions.
"Then he would have made notes on his journey and no doubt have kept some kind of diary. Did the rescue party recover it?"
"They did. It was given to George"s sister."
"Damaged by snow or water, badly tattered?"
"It was," a.s.sented Nasmyth. "I"ve had the book in my hands. I suppose it"s natural that you should guess its condition, but I don"t see what it points to."