The next morning Radway transferred Molly and Jenny, with little Fabian Laveque and two of the younger men, to Pike Lake.There, earlier in the season, a number of pines had been felled out on the ice, cut in logs, and left in expectation of ice thick enough to bear the travoy "dray." Owing to the fact that the shores of Pike Lake were extremely precipitous, it had been impossible to travoy the logs up over the hill.
Radway had sounded carefully the thickness of the ice with an ax.
Although the weather had of late been sufficiently cold for the time of year, the snow, as often happens, had fallen before the temperature.Under the warm white blanket, the actual freezing had been slight.However, there seemed to be at least eight inches of clear ice, which would suffice.
Some of the logs in question were found to be half imbedded in the ice.It became necessary first of all to free them.Young Henrys cut a strong bar six or eight feet long, while Pat McGuire chopped a hole alongside the log.Then one end of the bar was thrust into the hole, the logging chain fastened to the other; and, behold, a monster lever, whose fulcrum was the ice and whose power was applied by Molly, hitched to the end of the chain.In this simple manner a task was accomplished in five minutes which would have taken a dozen men an hour.When the log had been cat-a-cornered from its bed, the chain was fastened around one end by means of the ever-useful steel swamp-hook, and it was yanked across the dray.Then the travoy took its careful way across the ice to where a dip in the shore gave access to a skidway.
Four logs had thus been safely hauled.The fifth was on its journey across the lake.Suddenly without warning, and with scarcely a sound, both horses sank through the ice, which bubbled up around them and over their backs in irregular rotted pieces.Little Fabian Laveque shouted, and jumped down from his log.Pat McGuire and young Henrys came running.
The horses had broken through an air-hole, about which the ice was strong.Fabian had already seized Molly by the bit, and was holding her head easily above water.
"Kitch Jenny by dat he't!" he cried to Pat.
Thus the two men, without exertion, sustained the noses of the team above the surface.The position demanded absolutely no haste, for it could have been maintained for a good half hour.Molly and Jenny, their soft eyes full of the intelligence of the situation, rested easily in full confidence.But Pat and Henrys, new to this sort of emergency, were badly frightened and excited.To them the affair had come to a deadlock.
"Oh, Lord!" cried Pat, clinging desperately to Jenny's headpiece.
"What will we'z be doin'? We can't niver haul them two horses on the ice.""Tak' de log-chain," said Fabian to Henrys, "an' tie him around de nec' of Jenny."Henrys, after much difficulty and nervous fumbling, managed to loosen the swamp-hook; and after much more difficulty and nervous fumbling succeeded in making it fast about the gray mare's neck.
Fabian intended with this to choke the animal to that peculiar state when she would float like a balloon on the water, and two men could with ease draw her over the edge of the ice.Then the unexpected happened.
The instant Henrys had passed the end of the chain through the knot, Pat, possessed by some Hibernian notion that now all was fast, let go of the bit.Jenny's head at once went under, and the end of the logging chain glided over the ice and fell plump in the hole.
Immediately all was confusion.Jenny kicked and struggled, churning the water, throwing it about, kicking out in every direction.Once a horse's head dips strongly, the game is over.No animal drowns more quickly.The two young boys scrambled away, and French oaths could not induce them to approach.Molly, still upheld by Fabian, looked at him piteously with her strange intelligent eyes, holding herself motionless and rigid with complete confidence in this master who had never failed her before.Fabian dug his heels into the ice, but could not hang on.The drowning horse was more than a dead weight.
Presently it became a question of letting go or being dragged into the lake on top of the animals.With a sob the little Frenchman relinquished his hold.The water seemed slowly to rise and over-film the troubled look of pleading in Molly's eyes.
"Assassins!" hissed Laveque at the two unfortunate youths.That was all.
When the surface of the waters had again mirrored the clouds, they hauled the carcasses out on the ice and stripped the harness.Then they rolled the log from the dray, piled the tools on it, and took their way to camp.In the blue of the winter's sky was a single speck.
The speck grew.Soon it swooped.With a hoarse croak it lit on the snow at a wary distance, and began to strut back and forth.
Presently, its suspicions at rest, the raven advanced, and with eager beak began its dreadful meal.By this time another, which had seen the first one's swoop, was in view through the ether; then another; then another.In an hour the brotherhood of ravens, thus telegraphically notified, was at feast.
Chapter VIII
Fabian Laveque elaborated the details of the catastrophe with volubility.
"Hee's not fonny dat she bre'ks t'rough," he said."I 'ave see dem bre'k t'rough two, t'ree tam in de day, but nevaire dat she get drown! W'en dose dam-fool can't t'ink wit' hees haid--sacre Dieu! eet is so easy, to chok' dat cheval--she make me cry wit'
de eye!"
"I suppose it was a good deal my fault," commented Radway, doubtfully shaking his head, after Laveque had left the office."I ought to have been surer about the ice.""Eight inches is a little light, with so much snow atop," remarked the scaler carelessly.
