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Title: The Oxbow Wizard


Author: Theodore Goodridge Roberts



Release Date: April 24, 2020  [eBook #61911]

Language: English

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[Illustration]


THE OXBOW WIZARD

by

THEODORE GOODRIDGE ROBERTS






Garden City        New York
Garden City Publishing Co., Inc.
1924

Copyright, 1924, by
Doubleday, Page & Company

All Rights Reserved

Copyright, 1920, by the Torbell Company

Printed in the United States
at
The Country Life Press, Garden City, N. Y.




                                CONTENTS

                        I. The Stranger’s Book
                       II. The Nick o’ Time
                      III. A Thief With Claws
                       IV. The Man in the Bunk
                        V. The Stiff Knee
                       VI. Fish for Bait
                      VII. The One-eyed Injun
                     VIII. The Adventure of Sabatis
                       IX. The Fight in the Snow
                        X. Fear of the Law




                            THE OXBOW WIZARD




                               CHAPTER I

                          THE STRANGER’S BOOK


Young Dan Evans lived in the back country on the Oxbow with his parents
and his brothers and sisters. For as long as he could remember, his
Uncle Bill Tangler, his mother’s brother, had been an irregular member
of the household.

Young Dan obtained a meagre and intermittent schooling between his ninth
and sixteenth years, at the Bend, three miles below his father’s farm.
His terms were frequently broken by the weather, the conditions of the
road and matters of domestic economy. Sometimes Uncle Bill helped him
with his books. There seemed to be nothing that Uncle Bill did not know
something about.

In October of Young Dan’s last year of school, Uncle Bill brought a
sportsman from New York or London or Chicago or Montreal—from one of
those outside places, anyhow—to Dan’l Evans’s house. Uncle Bill and the
sportsman were on their way in to the former’s camp far up beyond the
Prongs. They arrived, by canoe, just before dusk and were off again half
an hour after sun-up.

Young Dan was sent by his mother to the spare bedroom, to make up the
bed that had been occupied by the sportsman. In five minutes he was due
to start for school. He had no more than crossed the threshold when he
exclaimed, “He was smokin’ in bed!” On the chair near the dented pillow,
about the base of the little lamp, lay two cigar butts and several
deposits of ashes. Young Dan was distressed, for by what little he had
seen of the stranger he had considered him to be a very superior person;
and yet here was proof positive that he was possessed of a habit that
was looked upon, in that household, as both low and reckless. He
recollected a few of the words which his mother had addressed to Uncle
Bill on the occasion of her finding that versatile bachelor smoking in
bed. “It’s lazy an’ it’s dangerous an’ it ain’t respectable,” she had
said—among other things.

Young Dan approached the bed.

“And him from a city full of street cars and schools,” he murmured.
“He’d ought to know better.”

Then something caught his eye and distracted his attention from the
tell-tale butts and ashes. It was a book with a green cover. It lay open
and face down on the bright rag-carpet, just beneath the edge of the
bed. He stared at it for a moment, then snatched it up and thrust it
inside his coat. At one glance he had seen that it was a story book.
Good! On the Oxbow story books were almost as rare as ropes of pearls;
Young Dan was as unacquainted with fiction as a city alley-cat is with
yellow cream. In this case discovery of the discarded book seemed to
imply ownership and he appropriated the volume with the intention of
exploring its pages undisturbed by his younger brothers and sisters who
would be sure to demand a share in the volume once their eyes fell upon
its bright cover.

Young Dan hurried through the task that had been set for him and started
for the schoolhouse at the Bend, accompanied by Molly, aged eleven, and
Amos, aged nine. His canvas-wrapped school books and the lunch for three
were in his bag; and the book with the green cover was still inside his
coat. Here, against his very ribs, lay an unknown treasure—a treasure of
valuable information concerning far lands or the stars themselves,
perhaps, or perhaps a treasure of magical entertainment. How was he to
make an opportunity for investigating it unobserved?

Suddenly he thought of a plan. He suggested a race.

“You two go on to Frenchman’s Spring, and I’ll stop right here,” he
said. “When you git to the spring, give a holler and keep right on
a-goin’ as fast as you like and I’ll try to catch you up this side the
school.”

“You can’t do it, and you know you can’t,” said Molly. “Even Amos will
git there ahead of you.”

“That’s as may be,” replied Young Dan, with dignity.

So the others left him and hastened forward; and he immediately sat down
beside the road and fished out the book. He opened it at the title-page
with fingers a-tremble with eagerness. He began to read, running a
finger from word to word, from line to line. Here were people of types
and callings unknown to him, moving in the streets of a city unguessed
by him, talking in a way foreign to the Oxbow of things unheard of even
by Uncle Bill; and yet he read in a fever of intensity, with moving lips
and wrinkled brows. A faint shout of childish voices, touched with a
note of derision, came back, but it failed to reach the ears of Young
Dan, whose whole attention was fixed on the magic under his eye. He had
intended to keep his agreement, but he had completely forgotten Molly
and Amos; he turned page after page slowly and so at last came to the
end of the first tale.

“Gee, but that feller was smart!” he whispered.

He glanced up, observed the sun and jumped to his feet. He was late for
school that morning and accepted the reprimand of Miss Carten, the
teacher, and the jeers of Molly and Amos without turning a hair. At the
conclusion of the afternoon session he managed to get away by himself
and read another story.

With the green-covered book safe in his bosom and the secret of it in
his heart, a change came over Young Dan. Molly and Amos were the first
to notice it, but they could make nothing of it.

One evening, within a week of the passing of the sportsman, he appeared
at the supper-table when the other members of the family were already in
their chairs. After eating pancakes for a minute or two in silence, he
said, “You set the table to-night, hey, Lucy?”

Lucy, aged six, replied in the affirmative, with evident pride.

“And Molly fried the pancakes, because Ma was busy writin’ a letter to
Gran’ma,” continued Young Dan.

“An’ what of it?” asked his father.

“Did you spy on us through the window?” asked his mother.

“No, I was over in the tool-house,” replied the boy; “and when I got
nigh enough to look in at the window you was all set down to table.”

“Land’s sakes! How d’you know Lucy set the table?”

“Because everything’s so close to the edge. She ain’t tall enough to
push ’em on very far.”

“But how’d you know Molly fried the pancakes?”

“Because most every one was cracked across, or messed about, when it was
bein’ turned. You don’t do that, Ma, with the turner—but Molly always
tries to turn ’em with a knife.”

“Sakes alive! That’s the livin’ truth! But how’d you come to figger out
about me writin’ to Gran’ma?”

“There’s ink on your finger, Ma; and Gran’ma is the only person you ever
write to.”

“Land’s sakes! That’s reel smart.”

“Seein’s how you’ve growed so all-fired smart so suddent, maybe you’ll
tell me who went up the old loggin’ road t’other night and robbed me of
nigh onto a cord of dry stove-wood?” said Dan’l Evans.

“Maybe I will, Pa. What’ll you give me if I tell you?”

“Give you? Nothin’! You don’t know, anyhow.”

“Don’t I know who’s got a horse that’s lame on the nigh fore-foot and a
wagon with a hind wheel that wobbles? I see the tracks yesterday and
studied ’em.”

“You figger it was Tim Swan stole the wood. Well, you’re wrong. I
suspicioned him myself, the minute I see the wood was gone, because
Tim’s a born thief an’ lives handy. But it warn’t Tim took the wood. I
mooched round his place for over an hour an’ couldn’t find a stick of
it. Maybe it was the tracks of a rabbit you studied so hard.”

“Maybe it was, Pa. Anyhow, I follered them rabbit-tracks along to Tim’s
gate and past it and clear on to Widow Craig’s yard; and there’s the
wood in her wood-shed; and she paid the rabbit three dollars for it.”

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Mrs. Evans.

A few days after the frying of the family pancakes by Molly and within
two weeks after the passing of the sportsman in the care of Uncle Bill
Tangler, seven of the scholars who attended the little school at the
Bend came down with the mumps and on Thursday Miss Carten announced that
the school would close for a week at least—and perhaps longer. The
Evanses had escaped the epidemic, having been victims of the malady two
years before. Molly and Amos went racing home, making the echoes repeat
their whoops of joy. Young Dan walked more soberly behind them, for
there were many things on his mind and he meant to use his time—while
the mumps kept the schoolhouse closed—to test several theories that,
ever since he had read the book with the green cover, had been simmering
away in the back of his head.

But Young Dan got no leisure in which to test his theories—at least he
was not able to try them in the exact manner he had planned—for a
stirring and mysterious event that roused excitement in the whole Oxbow
region occurred less than twenty-four hours after the vacation began.
Miss Carten disappeared. She dropped from sight as completely and as
mysteriously as if a silent airplane had swooped down at night out of a
dark sky and had carried her aloft like a great-horned owl stealing a
birdling. On Friday someone asked for Miss Carten at the Troller farm
where she boarded.

“She went to a party over to Cameron’s las’ night an’ took her suitcase
with her; I thought as how she’d stop the night with Lizzy Cameron,”
said Mrs. Troller.

At the Cameron place, two miles away—as it developed later—Miss Carten
had not been seen. No member of the family, in fact, had heard from her
in the last twenty-four hours.

There was excitement on the Oxbow which extended down to the main river.
Search-parties went into the woods, equipped with shotguns and lanterns
and stimulants and dinner-horns. Ponds and likely pools were dragged.
Justices of the peace, rural constables and game-wardens awoke to
official activity from the Bend on the Oxbow all the way down to Harlow
on the main stream. The days and nights passed—six of each—without
bringing any degree of reward or encouragement to the searchers. Nothing
was seen or heard of Miss Stella Carten, dead or alive, and no
suspicious characters were discovered in the vicinity of the Bend. The
lost lady had not been remarked on the road or on the river, nor had she
called at any isolated farmhouse. She had not been seen at the village
of Bean’s Mill, at the Oxbow’s mouth. She had not bought a railway
ticket at Harlow. She had vanished, suitcase in hand.

Seven days after the disappearance of Miss Carten, at eight o’clock in
the morning, Young Dan Evans encountered his Uncle Bill on the portage
round Old Squaw Falls, seven miles upstream from the Evans clearings.
Young Dan carried nothing but an axe and a small pack. He had left his
leaky old basket of a bark canoe in the bushes below the falls, for it
was too heavy for him to shoulder. Uncle Bill, coming from the other end
of the portage, was bonneted by his long, green canvas canoe. The
meeting was unexpected to both, but only Uncle Bill expressed
astonishment.

“You, Young Dan!” he exclaimed, lowering his canoe to the trail. “What
brings you ’way up here?”

“Left my canoe below the carry,” replied the boy. “Just moochin’ round
lookin’ for something.”

“Sit down,” said Uncle Bill.

They sat down, and the man lit his pipe and pushed his big felt hat far
back from his forehead.

“Looking for anything in particular?” he asked.

“Yep. Miss Carten disappeared a week back and I’m sorter lookin’ round
for her.”

“You don’t say! Disappeared! And you think she’s maybe up here
somewheres?”

“That’s how I’m figgerin’ it out, Uncle Bill. She ain’t downstream,
anyhow. Some folks think she’s lost in the woods or been killed—but I
don’t; I reckon she’s run away on business of her own; and as she ain’t
gone downstream I guess she’s come up.”

“You don’t say! What makes you think so?”

“Well, she intended to go somewheres, because she took her suitcase
packed full, and her money. She wouldn’t do that if she was just meanin’
to stop a night with Lizzy Cameron. And they ain’t found hide nor hair
of her down river—but I’ve found her tracks, and more’n her tracks, up
this way. Yep, I found the tracks two days back, about two miles below
this, close to the edge of the stream. I knowed ’em by the sharp heels.
I hunted both sides of the stream for a mile and dug into every pool,
but didn’t find any more signs. But I found somethin’ else yesterday;
and now I’m goin’ clear up the Prongs.”

“What did you find yesterday?”

Young Dan untied his blanket and disclosed to his uncle’s view a small
frying-pan, a loaf of bread, a chunk of bacon, a book with a green cover
and a cardboard box. He placed the box in the other’s hands. It was
empty but had once contained chocolates.

“That’s what I found yesterday, just below the falls here,” he said.
“Miss Carten was a b’ar on chocolates. She et ’em in school.”

Uncle Bill examined the box and returned it. He scratched his
clean-shaven chin and regarded his nephew with a contemplative and
calculating eye.

“Young Dan, you’re smart,” he said. “And you’re bold as brass. I am
smart, too, though that is not the general opinion in these parts. The
trouble with me is that I am shy. You are all for showing how smart you
are, but I’ve always been for hiding my light under a peck-measure. You
are doing something now that I couldn’t do. My natural shyness would
make it impossible for me to follow a young lady who has run away of her
own free will. That is how you have reasoned it out yourself—of her own
free will! Yes, I am talking queer—not the way I talk at home. The truth
is, Young Dan, I’m not the rube your Pa and Ma think I am; but I’ve
always been too shy to let them know about it. I know more than which
side to butter my pancakes on and how to pole a canoe.”

“I guess maybe you do,” admitted Young Dan.

“Your reasons for thinking Miss Carten was up here seem good to
me!—good, but not conclusive,” continued Uncle Bill. “If she is the only
person in this country who ever wears high-heeled shoes and eats
chocolates out of a box, then you are dead right. Hullo! What’s the
book?”

He reached over, picked up the book with the green cover and opened it.

“This explains your activities,” he continued, smiling. “Come on down
with me and I’ll go back with you this afternoon—all the way back to my
camp. And be your Doc Watson, going and coming.”

“Have you read that book, Uncle Bill?”

“Yes, years ago—and several more about the same smart feller. You come
along down with me while I get some grub and mail a few letters, and
I’ll buy you all the other books first chance I get. And I’ll bring you
in again.”

Young Dan shook his head.

“I’m this far, and I’ll keep right on a-goin’ till I’m ready to quit.”

Uncle Bill looked at his nephew and saw determination in his face.
“Well, then,” he said, “I’ll help you around with your canoe, anyway.
You can pole right up to the camp—if that’s where you are bound for. I’d
go back with you but for a couple of important letters I have to post.”

Together they carried Young Dan’s old canoe round the falls. Uncle
Bill’s lean, dark face wore an unusually thoughtful expression as he
watched his nephew embark.

“I’ll tell your Ma that I met you and that you will stay in the camp
over night,” he said.

“But maybe I won’t, Uncle Bill,” said Young Dan. “I didn’t calculate on
stoppin’ upstream over night unless I found somethin’ to keep me—an
important clue or somethin’. They’re expectin’ me home.”

“I’ve just been thinking that I might not be able to get back till after
dark. You promise me that if you go to my camp you’ll stop there until I
come back, or there’ll be trouble. And the trouble will start now. You
never saw me in a temper, Young Dan—and you don’t want to. Promise me
that, or I’ll tie you up and take you downstream with me as helpless as
a dunnage-bag. I mean it!”

Young Dan looked at his uncle and saw that he meant it.

“I promise cross my heart and honest Injun!—but you got to fix it with
Ma, Uncle Bill,” he said, in a thin voice.

“Don’t worry about your ma,” replied the man, smiling. “And I’ll get you
those books. If I find some mail that I have to answer I may not get
back as soon as I planned. You stay right there at the camp, and don’t
forget that I am one of the shyest men in the world. Off you go, Young
Dan—and good luck to you!”

[Illustration]




                               CHAPTER II

                            THE NICK O’ TIME


The boy poled slowly up the bright and lively water. Sometimes where the
stream was very shallow he got out and waded for fifty yards or more,
pulling the canoe along with him; occasionally he stopped to examine the
shore for signs, but all the while his thoughts were busy with his
uncle. He had seen fire in the eye of that merry, kindly man—and he
hoped never to see it again. Why had he made him promise to stop at the
camp over night? A vague but frightful suspicion possessed him. Uncle
Bill had hinted at a mystery concerning his character and pursuits. What
had he meant? He had said that he was something other, something
smarter, than people believed him to be around these parts, and that he
hid his light under a peck-measure because he was shy. Now what had he
meant by all that? And why had he seemed so queer about his camp? Was he
a criminal of some sort—and was the secret of his dark career hidden in
the camp?

Young Dan remembered that he had never known his uncle to be without a
roll of paper money in his pocket; but what he did to earn money beyond
guiding a sportsman now and then, was more than the boy knew. Was it
possible that this mild and entertaining uncle, who had two ways of
talking and who often vanished from the Oxbow country for months at a
time, was a robber? And might it not be that he sometimes committed
robbery with violence? He always carried a pistol in the woods. A
struggle might lead to a murder now and then! Miss Carten had been up
here with her money!

Young Dan worked his way slowly up the swift and shallow stream and at
noon he stopped to fry some bacon, but spent most of the interval
thinking. For two hours he sat there in the warm sunshine with his back
against a tree and his eyes gazing off into space. His heart was heavy
and numb with sinister suspicions of Uncle Bill. He had always admired
and liked that amiable and versatile relative; but he would go on and
learn the worst. When he finally went back to his canoe he realized that
he would have to hurry to reach the camp above the Prongs by sundown.

There were no clearings or human habitations on the Oxbow above Old
Squaw Falls. The voice of the stream was lonely; the cries of birds in
the woods were like the very voice of desolation; and the long, yellow
day was as lonely as a deserted house. The sun was close to the wooded
hills when Young Dan reached the Prongs. He continued his journey up the
Right Prong. It was already evening in that narrow, tree-crowded valley.
The water was so shallow there, and the bed of the stream was so broken
with mossy boulders, that he ran the canoe ashore and waded forward.

The sun was far below Young Dan’s narrowed field of vision, and the deep
track of the stream was full of brown twilight when he reached the foot
of the path that led back through the woods to Uncle Bill’s camp. The
plaintive cry of a whippoorwill rang from an umber gloom of cedars; an
owl hooted dismally in the tall spruces beyond; a fox barked on the
darkening hillside. Night-hawks swooped on twanging wings high overhead
against a sky of dulling green, and bats wove their flickering black
threads of flight in the deepening dusk of the valley. Behind and
through and over all lurked the spirit of the wilderness, watchful,
waiting, still—a spirit of mystery and menace.

Young Dan’s heart was shaken by a vague dread. He felt fear as he had
never felt it before, at any hour of the day or night, when alone in the
woods. He started along the thread of path that was worn among the roots
of the underbrush. He gripped his axe close to the blade and questioned
the gulfs of shadow to his right and left with straining eyes. So he
advanced for fifteen or twenty yards; and then, suddenly, he remembered
the character in which he had undertaken his journey. He knelt, struck a
match, cupped the flame in his hands and held it close to the trodden
earth.

There was a track, fresh and deep, that he had not expected to find—the
track of big soles thickly studded with blunted calks. Uncle Bill had
been in moccasins that day; he never wore calked boots in the woods; and
these tracks pointed only one way—forward.

After a moment of reflection, Young Dan continued to advance. He was
puzzled. When he reached the edge of the little clearing he saw that the
camp was occupied. Yellow lamp-light streamed from its one small window.
He hesitated, staring forward and around, then dropped on his hands and
knees and crawled from the shelter of the woods. His right hand still
gripped the axe close up to the heavy blade. So he moved among mossy
hummocks and blackened stumps toward the lighted window, pausing often
to listen and peer about him. As he drew near he noticed that the door
was shut; and as he drew still nearer he heard the murmur of a voice
from within. He crawled close to the log wall of the cabin, directly
beneath the open window, and crouched there motionless.

One voice was talking within—a thick, unpleasant voice that he did not
know. And this is what it was saying:

“So he’ll be home to-night, will he? He’ll be home _to-morrow_, that’s
when he’ll be home. An’ here I be, an’ you’re goin’ to hand over all the
money you’ve got tucked away in this shack. Fust of all ye was sassy an’
now ye’re sulky. Have a drink! This here is good stuff an’ powerful hard
to git these days. Here, pour yerself a drink an’ swaller it down—or
I’ll open yer mouth an’ make ye take it.”

“If my husband were here he’d open that door and kick you out!” replied
another voice—a voice known to Young Dan. “If you belonged to these
parts and knew him you’d go now before he comes back and kills you, you
drunken brute!”

“D’ye reckon to scare me?” sneered the other. “Then ye gotter think of
somethin’ bigger an’ better than this here Mister William Tangler ye’re
yappin’ about. I reckon I’ll stop right here till he comes home, and
then ye’ll know who’s the best man of the two of us. But ye ain’t took
yer drink yet! Take it, d’ye hear! It’ll loosen yer tongue.”

The dazed boy beneath the open window heard a clink of glass, a scream
and sounds of scuffling. He raised himself and looked into the cabin. A
lamp stood among dishes on the table in the middle of the little room.
Beyond the table, against the wall, a man struggled with a woman. The
man had his back to the window. He was big and a stranger. The woman was
Miss Carten.

Young Dan’s quick eyes spotted a wooden rolling-pin on a corner of the
table. He laid his axe on the ground and went through the window as
quick and as noiseless as thought. Two swift and silent steps brought
him to the corner of the table. He grasped a handle of the rolling-pin,
advanced two more paces, judged the distance, swung his arm and struck.
One strike meant out in that game.

Young Dan bound the unknown and unconscious bushwhacker with thongs from
a pair of snowshoes on the wall and placed a folded blanket under his
sore head and let him lie where he had fallen. Then he sat and watched
his new aunt make coffee and warm up a panful of beans for him. She told
him of her secret courtship by Uncle Bill, and of their flight and
marriage by a parson friend whom Bill had sworn to secrecy—all because
William Tangler was the most bashful man in the world. She told of how
Bill, who was thought to be so idle and aimless by the people on the
Oxbow, was in reality an expert in the science of forestry and in the
employ of the Government as such. Bill had gone out that morning to mail
an official report and also to mail his young bride’s resignation as
teacher in the little school at the Bend. In a few days they would go
out to civilization together.

Every now and then Miss Carten thanked Young Dan for saving her from the
drunken bushwhacker and she said so many complimentary things that her
visitor’s face turned the color of ripe choke-cherries. She said among
other things that she believed he was almost as clever and brave as his
uncle.

“If I were Uncle Bill I wouldn’t of been so shy,” said Young Dan, who
felt greatly relieved by the outcome of his activities and very proud of
himself.

When the coffee and beans were ready, and the big ruffian on the floor
was beginning to grunt and sigh, Young Dan remarked, “I guess Mister
Holmes couldn’t of done that job much slicker himself.” Suddenly he
cocked his head to listen. “I can hear Uncle Bill coming up the trail,”
he said. “He offered to be my Doctor Watson, but I didn’t need him.”

[Illustration]




                              CHAPTER III

                           A THIEF WITH CLAWS


Young Dan Evans was done with school; and he had almost decided to hire
out with Josh Tod, as a “swamper” in the lumberwoods, when a letter from
Uncle Bill Tangler caused him to change his plans for the winter. The
letter, which came from Mr. Tangler’s office in a distant city, ran as
follows:

    Dear Young Dan:

    Now that the frost is on the punkin (as a leading poet has
    remarked) and the swamps back of your pasture are frozen so
    hard that no woodcock can stick his bill into the mud any
    more this year (a fact overlooked by said leading poet) and
    folk on the Oxbow are frying fresh pork with their buckwheat
    pancakes and making sausages and fattening turkeys, my
    thoughts are with you frequently and enviously. It is a
    great country, Young Dan, and a grand season of the year for
    him who has wild blood in his veins and unimpaired organs of
    digestion. I should like fine to be away up beyond the
    Prongs this very morning, putting an edge to an appetite,
    instead of sitting here at this expensive desk trying to
    look like the only real know-it-all in the Government’s
    service; but now that I have a wife who needs two new hats
    and an evening frock, and a furnace that eats up coal, I
    must sit in tight and steady to this lady-like job. But what
    about you, Young Dan? You have exhausted the educational
    resources of the Bend; you haven’t a wife or a furnace; so
    why don’t you go up beyond the Prongs? You may use the camp
    as if you owned it. As for grub, you’ll find enough there of
    everything except bacon and condensed milk to last till
    spring—enough for two. So you had better go into partnership
    with someone—with old Andy Mace, for choice. He is an honest
    man and was a mighty hunter and fur-taker in his day. You
    will find half a dozen traps in your own garret and a lot
    more in the loft of the camp, all in good shape. You are
    welcome to them, and to my rifle as well, and my snowshoes
    if they are better than your own. Help yourself. That is a
    great country for fox and mink and lynx. You should have a
    prosperous winter—so go to it, with your Uncle Bill’s
    blessing.

    P. S. Here is a little check. Take it to Amos Bissing at the
    Bend and you’ll find him willing to swap a few dollars for
    it, I guess. Your Aunt Stella sends her love to you and will
    mail you another book about Mr. S. Holmes as soon as she
    gets it ready for the post.

Young Dan was delighted with the letter. He showed it to his parents.
Dan’l Evans didn’t think very highly of it as a specimen of epistolary
art, though he had no objections to make to the advice and suggestions
which it contained.

“Bill’s reckoned a smart man, an’ educated at that, but if this here
ain’t the foolishest writ letter ever I read, then I’ll eat it,” he
said. “I guess them Forestry people have kinder over-rated him. That’s
the Gover’ment for ye, and always has been. Let a man have a slick way
with him, an’ slithers of easy talk, an’ the Gover’ment gives him a job
of work with nothin’ to do. This here’s a plumb foolish letter, anyhow.
Take this here about his indigestion now, an’ this talk about the
woodcock! What d’ye reckon he means? I ain’t had much education, but——”

“Ye’re right there, Dan’l Evans,” interrupted Young Dan’s mother, who
had held a very high opinion of her brother’s abilities ever since he
had become a successful citizen of the great outside world. “Much
education! No, indeed. Bill’s clever, an’ always was—an’ I, for one,
always knew it. I always knew he should be clever, anyhow, seein’ he was
a Tangler; an’ if I ever acted crusty with him it was his own fault for
hidin’ his light from me in a bushel-bag, so to speak. He didn’t write
that letter to you anyhow, Dan’l Evans, so what you think about it don’t
matter a mite to my brother Bill nor anybody.”

This discussion concerning the letter from a purely literary standpoint
did not disturb Young Dan in the least, for neither of his parents
offered any objection to his acceptance of Uncle Bill Tangler’s offers
and advice. He set out first thing in the morning to put the proposition
before old Andy Mace, who lived three miles below the Bend, in a log
house in a small clearing. It was a morning of sun and frost. The road,
recently deep with mud, was hard as iron; the sky was bluer than at
midsummer; a flock of geese went over, high up, winging tirelessly
southward; and there was a skim of black ice along the lips of the
Oxbow. It was a grand morning to be a-wing or a-foot and Young Dan
pictured Uncle Bill Tangler seated at his desk in the distant city with
a twinge of pity. Though there was no wind, red and yellow leaves of
maple and birch snapped their stems loose in some mysterious way and
circled down to the frosty moss, and the sounds of their falling came
out of the woods on both sides of the road like a soft whisper.

Young Dan found Andy Mace splitting stove-wood beside the back-door of
his primitive habitation. Andy had lived a great many years—eighty or
perhaps as many as eighty-five—and most of them rough. His joints were
not as supple as they had been thirty years ago, but he was still an
able man and a first-class hand at all forms of sylvan activity.
Experience had taught him the easiest way of doing everything well, and
his inherent and acquired wisdom saw to it that he made the most of that
knowledge. This fact was demonstrated even in his present employment.
The round sticks of dry maple and birch fell apart under the lightest
strokes of his axe in a manner that suggested magic to Young Dan.

“You do that slick, Mr. Mace,” said the young man.

“Well, I’d ought to, at my time o’ life,” replied Andy, straightening
his back slowly. “I’ve been splittin’ wood nigh onto a hundred years,
off and on, so it’s no more’n to be expected that I’d be a purty slick
hand at the job by now.”

“I got a letter here from Uncle Bill Tangler, and if you’ll read it I
won’t have to tell you what’s in it,” said Young Dan.

“That sounds reasonable,” replied the old man, taking the letter and
seating himself on the chopping-block.

He fished a pair of spectacles from a hip-pocket and donned them with
great care. He chuckled now and again as he read the letter.

“Smart boy. Bill Tangler,” he said at last. “Knows timber and folks, he
does; and I larned him purty nigh all he knows about timber. We’ve
cruised the woods together months on end, him and me.”

“Will you be my partner, Mr. Mace, and go up to Uncle Bill’s camp with
me to trap fur all winter?”

“I sure will, Young Dan. I ain’t got hoof nor claw o’ livestock, and
this old house is used to bein’ empty, so I cal’late we’d best start
upstream bright and early to-morrow mornin’. I’ll call at yer place
about seven o’clock, if that’ll suit ye.”

“It suits me fine.”

“So we’re pardners, you and me. What I got in here will just about
offset the camp.” Andy pressed a finger-tip to his forehead. “We’ll
figger out the cost o’ grub come spring, and I’ll pay ye my half in good
green money. Folks hereabouts name me for a rich miser behind my back,
as ye’ve heared with yer own ears like enough, Young Dan; and that’s
because I’m a bach, and live in a log house, and let my whiskers grow.
Well, boy, they’re dead wrong about me bein’ a miser. I’d smoke ten-cent
seegars if they tasted as good to me as a pipe, and it ain’t the cost o’
city life that keeps me from movin’ to Harlow or Centreville or to Noo
York. No, sir-ee! I live here like I do because it is the place and the
way that suits my tastes; and I’d still do it if it cost me twenty
dollars every week. You ask Bill Tangler. We took a ja’nt once to the
Sportsman’s Show in Noo York, him and me together. Ask yer Uncle Bill
about me bein’ a miser.”

“Folks round here didn’t have Uncle Bill sized up just right, either,”
returned Young Dan. “I guess the most of them don’t see much more than
what hits them plumb in the eye.”

The old man chuckled delightedly at that.

“Come inside and have a go at my ginger cookies,” he invited. “I’ve been
makin’ ginger cookies nigh onto a hundred years, off and on, and now I
just naturally turn out the best ye ever tasted.”

By the time Young Dan started on his homeward journey, which wasn’t
until after dinner, he was full of admiration for his partner—not to
mention pumpkin pie, Washington pie and ginger cookies.

Old Andy Mace came to the Evans’ place on foot next morning, at the
stroke of the hour, with a pack of formidable proportions on his
shoulders and a rifle in his hand. He found Young Dan ready for him,
with the thin ice broken from the edge of the stream and Bill Tangler’s
canoe launched and loaded. Young Dan took the post of honor and effort
aft and plied the long pole. They reached Squaw Falls by half-past ten,
made the portage, lunched and reembarked by noon. Old Andy Mace took the
pole then, for three hours. The water, high and swift, humped itself
over submerged mossy boulders. Andy pushed the loaded canoe up steadily
and at a good pace, with no more show of effort than an ordinary person
would make in cutting tobacco for a pipe. The sun went down before they
reached the Prongs. It was night, with stars in the sky and an aching
cold over everything, when they unlocked the door of Uncle Bill
Tangler’s camp.

While Andy lit two fires, one on the open hearth and the other in the
little cook-stove, and shook out blankets to air, Young Dan carried the
outfit up from the landing. Then, by lantern-light and firelight, they
examined the provisions which Bill Tangler had left behind.

“Jumpin’ Josh-ee-phat, look-a here!” exclaimed Andy Mace. “Here’s a box
been bust open—box o’ prunes—and the prunes took. There’s some dried
apples gone, too, and some flour, I reckon. Take a look at the windy,
Young Dan.”

The window was shuttered on the outside when the camp was not occupied.
The shutter was of plank, hinged to the window-frame at the top and,
when secured, fastened at the bottom by a hasp and a padlock. But now
the shutter was not fastened. The long staple had been wrenched from the
tough plank and now hung uselessly from the log window-sill, together
with the hasp and padlock.

“A b’ar,” said Andy. “Trust a b’ar to sniff out prunes.”

“A bear wouldn’t take flour,” said Young Dan.

“Ye can’t never tell what a b’ar will do, for b’ars are natural born
jokers,” replied Andy. “I’ve knowed the critters for nigh onto a hundred
years, and that’s my opinion of them.”

“It wasn’t done yesterday, nor even the day before,” said the youth.
“The prunes he’s left in the box are pretty dry. And he has had a go at
the molasses, too. He’s left the stopper out, see; and look at the track
of dried molasses down the front of the jug. It’s a wonder he didn’t
upset it. And he’s ripped the bean-bag open, darn his hide! But how come
it he didn’t upset the jug? Maybe it wasn’t a bear at all, Mr. Mace. A
man could have done it, I guess.”

“It be a reg’lar b’ar trick,” replied Andy. “He didn’t upset the jug o’
molasses, that’s true—and I’m glad he didn’t—but all that shows is some
b’ars is smarter or more careful nor others. He h’isted the jug in his
two paws and took a swig, that’s what he done. Look at the beans he’s
chawed and spit out on the floor. D’ye reckon a man would do that?”

“Some men are smarter and more careful than others,” replied Young Dan.

They closed the inner glazed sash of the window and nailed a strong bar
of wood across it. Then they cooked and ate their supper and retired to
their bunks, for they were bone-tired. The affair of the thieving bear
would keep very well until morning.

They awoke bright and early. Young Dan hopped from his bunk in a lively
and limber manner, feeling nothing of yesterday’s exertions; but Andy
Mace grunted a few times as he sat up in his blankets and a few more
times as he lowered his feet to the floor.

“I ain’t as soupel as I was eighty years ago,” he said.

When Young Dan opened the door the cold fairly caught him by the nose.
He made a quick trip across the little clearing and down the steep path
to the landing-place, with two pails in his hands. He found the shallow
Right Prong shelled in black ice from shore to shore save for a few
little air-holes. He had to break the ice with a stone before he could
fill his pails. Then he took a quick and splashy bath right there. Wow!
Wow! But after it he felt as if he could eat his weight in bacon and
pancakes and fight his weight in wild-cats.

They went out and examined the ground beneath the window after
breakfast. Frosts and rains had done much to wipe out the tracks of the
thief, but they found a few unmistakable claw-marks here and there. Mr.
Mace put his white beard to the ground in the intensity of his scrutiny;
but the best he could do was trace the marks for a distance of seven or
eight paces from the window.

“I cal’late he’s denned himself up somewheres long before this, and lays
sleepin’ snug as ye please on a bellyful o’ Bill Tangler’s superior
prunes,” he said. “He’s a big feller, jedgin’ by the claws. I’d like
fine to happen onto his den.”

“Same here,” replied Young Dan. “I’d sure like to have a look at him. A
bear as smart as that one ought to be in a circus or teachin’ school.”

They cruised the woods from sunrise to sunset for the next three days,
choosing the likeliest country for their lines of traps. They spent four
more days in setting the traps exactly to Andy’s taste in four lines of
about equal length radiating from the camp. By that time everything that
wasn’t kept indoors or underground, or that wasn’t clothed in wool, fur,
or feathers, was frozen stiff. The Right Prong was roofed strongly over,
except in one spot where the swift water kept itself an open
breathing-place in some mysterious way. The ice was strong to the very
edge of that hole; and, to save himself the trouble of keeping another
hole chopped clear, Young Dan always walked out to it for his morning
and evening pails of water. There the little river flashed always bright
and naked and untouched, sliding over mossy rocks as green as in summer.

There were other and lesser streams and half a dozen small ponds within
the circle of Andy’s and Young Dan’s operations, and these were all
frozen hard.

Andy arranged the routine of the everyday tasks. They breakfasted before
sunrise, by lantern-light. Then Young Dan set out on one of the crooked
six-mile strings of traps, outfitted with rifle, axe, and frozen bait,
and a pocketful of sandwiches in case of need. Andy cleared away the
breakfast things and fell to the ever-urgent task of rustling wood; and
between bouts of chopping and splitting he prepared the dinner and
sometimes even pulled off such extra stunts as a panful of ginger
cookies or a pie. Young Dan was usually home, with or without a pelt or
two, by half-past twelve or one o’clock. After dinner, Andy armed
himself and lit out on another six-mile string, and Young Dan washed the
dinner dishes and rustled wood. Andy was usually back, with luck, in
time to cook supper. In the evening they gave the skins whatever
attention was necessary and the old partner talked and the young one
gave ear. In this way, each of the four lines of traps was visited every
other day.

Snow descended upon that wilderness on the twentieth of November and
continued to descend for two whole days and nights. It came to stay.
Owing to the storm, the partners lost touch with their traps for two
days. The third day was still and clear. The forest was fairly
smothered, aloft and below. Young Dan set out at the first streak of
daylight, sinking deep on his wide snowshoes at every step. He traveled
slowly and experienced a good deal of difficulty in locating some of the
traps. It was noon when he got to the end of the line, empty-handed. He
rested there and ate half of his sandwiches of bread and cold bacon. He
had tramped himself a nest in the snow, and made a little fire of dry
twigs for the appearance of comfort; and now, having eaten, he continued
to sit on his snowshoes and feed the fire. He was about to leave this
retreat and set out on the back-trail when a muffled disturbance of the
snow-heaped brush on his right attracted his attention. He glanced up in
time to see a human figure issue from the tangle, its head held low and
its shoulders hunched against the showers of dislodged snow.

Young Dan was astonished at the sight, but he did nothing to show it.
The intruder shook himself free of snow, halted and stood straight. He
was on snowshoes and carried a rifle in a blanket stocking. Young Dan
noticed that his rough jacket and trousers were old and patched and that
they appeared to be several sizes too large for him.

“Have you anything to eat?” asked the stranger, in a voice that puzzled
the trapper. “If you have, please give me a bite.”

Young Dan produced the remaining sandwiches from his pocket and handed
them over without a word. The stranger crouched by the little fire and
bit off a very small corner of frozen bread and frosty bacon.

“I was watchin’ you quite a spell,” he said. “When I seen you was only a
young feller I wasn’t scart.”

“Only a young feller!” exclaimed Young Dan. “Is that so? Well, what of
it? You don’t look like much of a man yerself.”

“Which I ain’t, nor don’t pretend to be,” replied the stranger,
swallowing hard on the chilly fare. “I wisht you had yer teakittle
along. No, I ain’t much of a man. I’m a married woman, with a husband
sick a-bed not five mile from here, an’ my name is Mrs. May Conley—an’
me an’ Jim Conley an’ the younguns are jist about starved, if you want
to know. Whereabouts is yer camp from here?”

“About six mile from this, dead south. I got a partner there, old Andy
Mace; and we’ve got quite a store of grub, of one kind and
another—condensed milk, too.”

“We ain’t got a cent to buy grub with. Jim was away till a few weeks
back, an’ then he come home to us without a dollar of his summer wages
an’ went sick.”

“That’ll be all right about the money; but what ails yer husband?”

Mrs. Conley’s answer to that was a cheerless smile and a shake of the
head.

“I suppose you shoot fresh meat, anyhow,” continued Young Dan, feeling
embarrassed. “You got a rifle, I see.”

“If you mean deer an’ the like by fresh meat, then I tell you I don’t
shoot it—but I’ve shot at it a few times,” replied the woman. “It’s a
sight too knowing an’ lively for me to hit.”

“Tell you what I’ll do, m’am,” said Young Dan. “You come to this very
spot at ten o’clock to-morrow and you’ll find me here with some grub.
Will tea and canned milk and sugar and fifteen pounds of white flour be
any use to you?”

“Will spring water quench thirst?” returned the woman, her sad face
brightening. “But can’t I have it sooner?—some of that there milk,
anyhow? Young man, my two babies was cryin’ with hungry pains when I
started out; an’ the biggest of ’em isn’t as long as this here
snowshoe.”

“If I had it here I’d give it you right now—but all our grub’s back at
our camp, six mile away. Will you go along with me and carry away what
you’re in most need of, m’am?”

“Will a duck swim?”

Young Dan meant well, but he did not realize that the mother of two
children who cry with hunger is almost sure to be weak for want of
food—he did not realize it until he heard a soft thud behind him and
turned to find his companion flat on her face in the snow. He raised her
to a sitting position and pulled her back until she rested against a
small spruce. He built a big fire in the trail and cut many fir boughs
to serve her as a couch and covering. He removed her snowshoes.

“Guess I’m all in—till I have a cup of tea,” she said.

“I’ll fetch a kettle,” replied Young Dan. “You stop right there till I
get back.”

He made the remaining three miles to the camp on Right Prong in record
time. He told what he knew of Mrs. Conley’s story briefly to Andy, while
they made up a small pack of provisions in a blanket. He attached a
small frying-pan and a kettle to the pack.

“Best go all the way home with her, if ye ain’t clean tuckered out,”
said the old man. “I cal’late it wouldn’t be a bad idee to have a look
at this here Jim Conley, for he don’t sound to me like a desirable
neighbor nor a valued citizen. You kin size him up while yer restin’,
and take yer time on the home-trip. It shapes for a fine night.”

“I’ll do that,” said Young Dan.

[Illustration]




                               CHAPTER IV

                          THE MAN IN THE BUNK


The sun was on the edge of the western hills when he got back to Mrs.
Conley. She expressed relief at seeing him and wonder at seeing him so
soon. He built up the fire, melted snow and made tea. He also fried a
little bacon and bread. Between them they emptied tea-kettle and
frying-pan; and the woman was greatly revived by the food and drink.

The woman led the way northward and westward to her home. The distance
struck Young Dan as being nearer seven miles than five. The small window
of the cabin glowed a dim yellow. Mrs. Conley pushed open the door and
entered without waiting to remove her snowshoes. Young Dan kicked off
his snowshoes and had a foot on the threshold when he heard an
unpleasant voice shout from somewhere within, demanding to know where
the woman had been and why she had stayed away so long and why she
hadn’t brought some food home with her. A few oaths gave color to the
questions.

Young Dan crossed the threshold, kicked the door shut with a heel and
lowered his pack to the floor. In one comprehensive glance he saw the
woman stooped to two clinging children, a man lying in a bunk, a failing
fire on a rough hearth, a smoky lantern on a table and a worn bear-skin
on the floor. He had never seen a less cheering interior.

The man in the bunk sat up and stared at Young Dan. His shoulders looked
very broad in the dim light.

“Who’s thar?” he exclaimed. “Who’s that?”

“Ye needn’t be scart,” said the woman, with a tang of scorn in her
voice. “It’s a feller from the camp over on Right Prong. He’s fetched in
some grub for us, in the kindness of his heart.”

The man immediately lay back without another word.

Young Dan felt indignant, so much so that his indignation amounted to
anger—anger that felt like a lump of something uncomfortably hard and
hot in his chest. He wanted to say something sharp to the big fellow in
the bunk—but he didn’t know what to say. So, without a word, he untied
his blanket, filled an arm with the packages of food and carried all to
the table.

“No water and no wood,” said Mrs. Conley, looking at the bunk.

Young Dan went outside and found a small pile of wood beside the door,
under a roof of snow. He carried an armful into the shack; and as he
laid the sticks beside the hearth he noticed how irregularly and
unskilfully the severed ends were cut. Even a sick man accustomed to the
use of an axe would not have hacked the wood so clumsily. He knew it was
not the work of the man in the bunk. He then took up an empty pail and
enquired the whereabouts of the water-hole. Mrs. Conley told him that
there was a spring just back of the shack and a path leading to it which
he couldn’t miss. She was right; and in a minute he was back with the
water. As he set the pail down on a bench near the door he looked at the
man in the bunk, the hot spot of anger and indignation still glowing in
his chest. The man’s eyes met his for a moment—but he saw more than the
fellow’s eyes. He crossed the narrow floor to the bunk.

“What’s the matter with you, anyhow?” he asked.

“Matter with me, d’ye say?” returned the fellow in the blankets. “I’m
sick, that’s what’s the matter. Can’t ye see?”

Young Dan stooped swiftly and drew a high-shouldered, square-faced black
bottle from beneath the edge of the bunk. There was a sound of clinking
glass as he brought it forth as if it were in contact with receptacles
of a like nature and material. He held it aloft.

“Yes, I can see all right,” he cried. “And I guess I’ve got hold of a
few doses of your medicine.”

“Well, what of it?” demanded the other, his voice at once savage and
anxious.

Young Dan returned the bottle to its place; and in so doing he caught
sight of some other articles of interest beneath the bunk. More bottles
were there, both full and empty—but there were other things of even
greater interest to the youth. He stood up, however, without word or
sign of comment.

Mrs. Conley, who was busily engaged in feeding the children with
condensed milk diluted with hot water, paid keen attention to Young
Dan’s words and actions, but said nothing.

Young Dan moved away from the bunk and bestowed a brief but enquiring
glance upon the worn bear-skin on the floor. That article had struck him
as looking queer, somehow or other, when he had first set eyes on it;
and now he knew it to be queer. It had grown on a big animal and had
evidently been a fine pelt in its day. The big, wide head was there—not
the skull, but the complete skin of head, to the tip of the nose. Yes,
the head was all there—but all four paws were missing!

Young Dan turned again to the man in the bunk. “Say the word, and I’ll
get a doctor in to see you,” he said. “Or we’ll haul you out on a sled,
if you ain’t too sick to be shifted about a bit.”

“I don’t want no cussed doctor p’isonin’ me,” cried the invalid. “Mind
yer own business, will ye, an’ leave me be to look after mine? I’m able
for it, without yer help.”

“All right,” retorted Young Dan, his voice shaking with anger and scorn.
“Well, then, look after yer own business if you’re so able. Get out of
bed and get to work. I know all I need to about you. I know enough about
you to run you out of these woods and into jail; and that’s the
identical thing I intend to do if you don’t get busy. So cut out the gin
and the bunk and cut into the wood-pile. D’ye get me?”

The man did not answer. The woman continued to feed the children in
silence. Young Dan glared at the bunk a little longer, then fetched his
snowshoes and put them on, and took up his rifle, axe and blanket.

“I’m off,” he said. “But I’ll be back in a few days, to see how you’re
working, Jim Conley. I’ve got your measure, and don’t you forget it!
Goodnight to you, m’am.”

He had not gone far from the miserable cabin before the woman came
running after him. He halted.

“What is it ye know about him?” she asked, anxiously.

“I can guess more’n I know, but I reckon what I know is plenty,” he
replied. “He broke into my Uncle Bill Tangler’s camp a few months back
an’ stole some grub, with the paws an’ claws of a big bear on his hands
an’ feet. Guess he reckoned he was smart.”

“How d’ye know that?”

“I’d figgered out it wasn’t a bear long ago; and to-night I spied the
skinned paws under the bunk. It was easy.”

“Jim wasn’t in the woods when that happened,” she whispered. “It was me
broke into the camp an’ stole the grub. It was me who cut the paws off
that old skin an’ used ’em to fool ye with. Jim was away out to the
settlements that day.”

“You, ma’am!”

“That’s Gospel-true. The babies and me hadn’t a bite to eat but some
rusty pork. We needed the food bad. It was the first time I ever stole
anything.”

“Then why didn’t you upset the molasses jug, like a bear would do? A
bear would of upset it an’ then licked the molasses off the floor. If
you’d done it that way, m’am—upset the jug, I mean—I wouldn’t of
suspicioned the thief wasn’t a bear; and so I wouldn’t of examined the
shutter and spotted how the staple had been pried off with the blade of
an axe; and so I wouldn’t of taken any stock in the old paws under the
bunk.”

“I took enough molasses to fill the bottle I had along with me. I hadn’t
the heart to upset the jug an’ waste what I didn’t want. But I kinder
thought that’s what a bear would do.”

“Well, that’s all right, anyhow,” said Young Dan. “I don’t blame you a
mite for rustlin’ grub for your babies; but if you don’t make that big
bluffer get to work, I’ll land him in jail or bust tryin’—and you can
bet I won’t bust, m’am!”

[Illustration]




                               CHAPTER V

                             THE STIFF KNEE


“Well, I found that bear,” said Young Dan Evans to Andy when he arrived
at the camp; and then he gave a full account of his experiences with the
Conley family.

“You done dead right!” exclaimed Andy Mace, at the conclusion of the
story. “You got brains and use ’em, I do believe; and that’s more’n can
be said about most folks nowadays. What size was this here Jim Conley?”

“Big. Over six foot high, I guess, and hefty—and no more sick-abed nor
you or me.”

“What would ye’ve done if he’d clum outer the bunk an’ lammed ye one?”

“I’d of lammed him two or three back—maybe four.”

“I reckon ye would. I was jist sich another at yer age, Young Dan—always
up an’ doin’, always ready to fight my own weight in minks or men, and
yet always a thinker an’ a bit of scholard, too.”

“But I don’t go round looking for fights, Mr. Mace. I’m peaceable enough
by nature.”

“Yes, in course. It’s the same with me. There never was a more peaceable
citizen on the Oxbow nor Andy Mace—but nobody had to tromp on the tails
o’ my snowshoes more’n twice to fetch me round with fists in both
hands.”

A week passed before the partners on Right Prong heard or saw anything
more of the Conleys. It was a busy week with them, for trails had to be
beaten out anew in the deep snow and a fresh supply of bait had to be
obtained for the traps; and, as if these tasks were not enough, Andy
shot a fat buck deer which had to be skinned and quartered and placed
out of harm’s way, and Young Dan cracked the frame of one of his
snowshoes. The partners were full of energy and determination, however.
They survived that strenuous week breathless but triumphant. They
obtained the required bait from the depths of a nameless pond which lay
four miles to the eastward of the camp. This was a big job in itself,
for the ice was nearly two feet thick on the pond, not to mention the
three feet of snow which topped the ice. They shovelled snow; then they
chopped and shovelled ice; and at last old Andy bored with a four-inch
bit until the clear water welled up into the icy trough from the brown
depths. He bored two holes; and then they baited their hooks with fat of
pork and each lowered a line into the unknown. They fished steadily for
three hours and by the end of that time were too nearly frozen to go on
with it. The captured trout froze stiff after a jump or two on the snow.

“Reckon it’s a reel chilly day,” remarked Andy, looking from the low
sun, which glinted as grey and cheerless as a flake of ice, to the
frozen fish. “Reckon we’d best quit and git home before we’re as stiff
an’ twisted as these here trout.”

He was right. If there had been a thermometer in the Right Prong country
it would have marked twenty-five degrees below zero just then. Young Dan
was agreeable; but he would have stood there and continued the motions
of fishing, slowly and more slowly until the numbness caught his heart,
if the old man had not suggested a move. When two good men go into the
woods together, and one of them is well past four score years of age and
the other has not yet completed his first score, the spur of competition
is bound to prod now and then. In this matter of endurance against the
cold the partners had silently and almost unconsciously competed. No
rivalry of youth and age had inspired them, but rather the rivalry of
two widely separated generations of youth; for old Andy Mace considered
himself as good a man as he had ever been and so a trifle better than
Young Dan, maybe, because of his birth and training in a period of the
world’s existence that had marked its very highest point of development.
He said nothing of all this to Young Dan, of course—even if he thought
it.

They gathered up their gear and scooped the frozen fish into a couple of
sacks. Not a word did they exchange until they were both on the warm
side of their own door; and even then they didn’t exchange many. An hour
later, however, when the “riz” biscuits, broiled venison steak, and the
coffee-pot were on the table, they talked “good and plenty.”

Woodsmen are not generally supposed to be talkative folk. If there is
any truth in this general supposition, then Young Dan and old Andy Mace
must be the two exceptions that prove it—if suppositions, like rules,
can be proved by exceptions. However that may be, these two woodsmen
spent every evening in conversation, crawling into their bunks at last
only because they couldn’t hear in their sleep. And their talk was not
all of the woods and the day’s work. Far from it. They had much more to
say concerning what they thought than what they knew; and so almost
every subject under the sun was dealt with. Even when Young Dan read
aloud, Andy capped every paragraph with a comment or an explanation, or
an objection of equal or greater length. Their library contained only
three small volumes of fiction, all from one entertaining pen—but under
their system of reading, three promised to be plenty, for one winter at
least. In spite of his interruptions, Andy Mace was a hungry listener,
and so his interest in the adventures and mental processes of Mr.
Sherlock Holmes soon became almost as keen as his partner’s. No one
could be more sharply intrigued by an artful combination of significant
words than that old trapper.

On the night of the day of the cold fishing, after the last fragment of
steak had been devoured, Young Dan opened one of the treasured books and
began to read aloud; and, at the same moment, Andy began to cut tobacco
for his pipe. Andy gave ear intently until the tobacco was shredded,
rolled, stuffed into the pipe and satisfactorily lighted. He blew three
large, slow clouds and settled back in his chair.

“I wisht we had that gent here on Right Prong with us,” he said. “He’d
stand it all right, too, I reckon, in a good coonskin coat. What d’ye
cal’late he’d of made o’ that thief in claws?”

Young Dan closed the book on a finger.

“I guess he would of known it wasn’t a bear right off,” he said. “I did.
I suspicioned it wasn’t, anyhow. I guess he would of known for sure,
right off; and maybe he wouldn’t of figgered it out the way I did,
neither—not by the molasses jug alone, perhaps.”

“How else could he figger it out? What else was there to figger on?”

“Plenty for him. I can think of some other things myself, now. There
were the claw-marks. I guess those alone would of been enough for Mr.
Holmes.”

“What about ’em? They were marks of a b’ar’s claws.”

“Yes—but he’s scientifical, Mr. Holmes is. He would of had a spyin’
glass handy in his pocket to look at the marks with, and right off he’d
of seen by the spread from claw to claw that they had been made by a
mighty big bear. He would study over that a few minutes, somethin’ like
this: A bear with paws as big as what these must of been must be an
uncommon big bear; and heavy—four or five hundred pounds in weight,
maybe, in the fall of the year; and so he would just naturally make
deeper tracks than these here; and a bear as big as what he must be to
own these paws and claws would be too darned big to get through that
little window without spreadin’ the side of the camp or bustin’ himself
or somethin’. So he would up and say, quick but quiet, ‘This thief is a
lamb in a wolf’s clothes’—or somethin’ like that. He would know it
wasn’t a bear, anyway. That’s how Mr. Holmes would of figgered it out, I
guess.”

Andy withdrew his pipe from his mouth and slowly straightened himself in
his chair.

“Sufferin’ cats!” he exclaimed. “It don’t sound altogether human comin’
like that from a young feller who ain’t been to school nowhere but down
to the Bend. Where’d ye get the trick of it from, Young Dan? Not from
yer Pa nor yer Ma, I’ll swear an Alfy Davy!”

“That was easy, workin’ it out after I knew, the way I did,” replied
Young Dan, modestly. “If I had worked it out that way before I
knew—well, that would of been pretty slick work. That would of been
scientifical.”

“If Gover’ment hears about it you’ll be one o’ these here boss policemen
some day,” said Andy.

“I guess not,” retorted Young Dan, with a slight curl of the lips that
was foreign to his character.

He already shared Sherlock Holmes’ opinion of the mental equipment of
that stalwart and imperturbable force.

He reopened the book and took up the story at the point of his partner’s
interruption. He read a paragraph, his voice skidding now and then on a
word of formidable proportions. He read a page, warming to his work and
tearing the big words to pieces without so much as a hitch in his
stride. Two pages—and still not a peep out of Andy Mace. He ceased
reading and looked up inquiringly, and beheld his aged partner slouched
in the chair and sunk deep in slumber, his shoulders hunched high, his
chin tucked in and his grey beard rising and falling peacefully on his
breast.

Young Dan was up as early as usual next morning. He lit the lantern and
then the fire in the stove; and it was not until then that he heard any
signs of life from his partner’s bunk.

“Sufferin’ cant-dogs!” exclaimed Andy. “Warm up the b’ar’s grease for
me, pardner. This here right leg o’ mine’s stiffer’n King Pharaoh’s
neck. Must of give it a twist yesterday.”

Young Dan complied with this request, cooked the breakfast and tucked
into it. He set out on the northward line at the first break of dawn,
with a sack over his shoulder containing a supply of the new bait and a
haunch of venison, leaving Andy Mace still rubbing that high-smelling
cure-all into his right knee and telling how it had been tender ever
since he had hurt it fifty years ago in an argument with a man from
Quebec.

It was a fine morning, and a clear finger of light in the east promised
a fine day. The air was still and not so perishing cold as it had been
the day before. Young Dan traveled fast. He found a mink in the first
trap and stowed it away in the sack without waiting to skin it. He
rebaited the trap with a frozen trout. The second and third traps were
exactly as he had last seen them; the fourth contained a red fox, which
he added to the collection in the sack; and the remaining traps were
undisturbed. He continued northward along the trail that led to the
Conley cabin.

Young Dan did not find Jim Conley at home, but Mrs. Conley and the
babies were there. He produced the haunch of deer-meat, for which the
woman thanked him heartily.

“I’m glad to see that Jim’s able to be up and out,” he said. “He must be
feeling better.”

“I reckon he’s some better,” she replied. “He lit out for the
settlements two days back, anyhow.”

“To fetch in some grub?”

“Maybe he’ll fetch in some grub.”

Young Dan’s eyes turned significantly to the floor at the edge of the
bunk beneath which he had discovered the store of “square-faces” during
his last visit. The woman observed the glance and sighed. Young Dan felt
embarrassed.

“I’m glad he has something to buy grub with,” he said.

“He’s got a few skins,” said the woman. “He went out an’ set some traps
first thing after the tongue-lashin’ ye give him.”

“He must be lucky, to have enough to carry out to the settlements after
a couple of days’ trapping,” said the youth, astonished.

Mrs. Conley smiled bitterly.

“Jim don’t wait to git a lot before he commences sellin’,” she said.
“It’s the way he’s built.”

“And he’s left you to attend to the traps?”

“Nope, he told me to let ’em be while he was gone. I don’t know nothin’
about traps, anyhow. I was born and riz in the settlements.”

“He might lose some good skins that way—have them et up on him; but it’s
his own business, I guess. Well, I must be getting home. If you need
anything, m’am, you know where to find my partner and me.”

Young Dan sat down and ate his lunch as soon as he got out of sight of
the cabin. He felt depressed; and the cold steak and frosty biscuits
didn’t cheer him.

“That’s a poor outfit,” he said. “I guess that Jim Conley’s no darned
good. I wonder where he got that gin—and if he’ll get any more? He won’t
buy much with the price of a few fox skins, that’s sure. He’s big, and
maybe he’s powerful—but I kind of feel that I’ll light right into him
next time I see him.”

He made the homeward journey of twelve miles without a stop. It was
close to three o’clock in the afternoon when he reached camp; and there,
to his astonishment, he found Andy Mace seated by the stove with his
right leg cocked up in a chair.

Andy looked ashamed of himself.

“I never knowed it to act so contrary before,” he said. “It’s still
stiffer’n a ramrod, an’ I’ve rubbed nigh all my b’ar’s grease into it;
an’ all the fault o’ that gum-heeled feller from Quebec I fit with over
on the Tobique in the winter o’ eighteen-seventy. It’s nigh enough to
rile a man’s temper, Young Dan.”

Young Dan was distressed.

“If it hurts you bad, just say the word and I’ll go clean out to Harlow
and fetch in a doctor,” he offered.

“No!” exclaimed Andy. “It ain’t my knee hurts me, but it’s layin’ down
on the job to-day, and maybe to-morrow, and leavin’ all the work to you.
That’s what riles me.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” the youth reassured him. “I am able and
willing, and you’ll be right as rain in a few days. Now I’ll do a mile
or two of the south line and be back in time to fry pancakes for
supper.”

He was as good as his word; and, later, his pancakes proved to be as
good as any his partner had ever mixed and fried. He told of his visit
to the Conley cabin, and the old man agreed with him that it would be a
real pleasure to hand Jim Conley just what he deserved. After supper,
Young Dan read a complete story, in irregular fragments, and his partner
talked a bookful.

[Illustration]




                               CHAPTER VI

                             FISH FOR BAIT


Andy’s knee was worse next morning, but he did not say so. He admitted
that it didn’t seem to be any more supple, spoke hopefully of another
day’s rest and a little more bear’s grease as being all that it
required, and again referred to the fight of fifty years ago in terms of
regret and acrimony. The truth was that the old fellow had rheumatism;
and he knew what it was; and he had felt it before, once or twice a
year, in the very same place. Furthermore, the gritty old sportsman was
too vain to admit the truth. Of course he had fought with a man from
Quebec fifty years ago, in a lumber-camp on Tobique River, and twisted a
knee in the heat of the encounter—but if you had put him on oath and
asked him to lay a finger on the knee he had wrenched on that distant
occasion, he couldn’t have done it.

“I hope you walloped that man from Quebec,” said Young Dan.

“I sure did,” replied Andy, brightening. “He was counted a smart fighter
even for them days—but I was the snag he busted himself on.”

“I betcher! Well, I’ll be back in time to cook dinner, so you just keep
quiet while I’m gone.”

“No, you take yer grub along and I’ll have supper ready when you git
back. I ain’t a cripple yet.”

Young Dan put some food in his pockets and went about his day’s work,
armed as usual with axe and rifle. He set out on the line of traps that
ran crookedly almost due west, for this was the one that had been
longest neglected. Andy Mace had been along it last, just before the
forty-eight-hour storm, and now the tracks of his snowshoes were buried
deep. Young Dan kept to his course without difficulty, however, though
the line was not blazed. He worked easily by signs that would have meant
nothing to a city man. His guides were certain trees and bushes and
humps and hollows; and the wilderness was full to crowding of such
things. So much for the line of general direction—but some of the traps
lay several score of yards to the right and left of that line. A modest
blaze had been cut in the bark of tree or sapling at several of these
points of deflection.

Young Dan drew two blanks and then a fine big lynx. He skinned the lynx
before going on. The fourth trap was empty, but the bait which had been
placed on and around it so artfully had been snatched away even more
artfully. He rebaited with frozen trout. The fifth trap was snapped
tight on the forepaws of a skunk. The skunk itself was gone but Young
Dan soon discovered odds and ends of hair and bone scattered in the snow
in the immediate vicinity. Something with an amazing appetite had beaten
the trapper to that trap, for certain. Young Dan set these things to
rights and passed on, wondering at the driving power of hunger.

Two more blanks, a red fox and a skunk followed. The last trap on the
line was empty and evidently undisturbed. The bait was covered with
snow. Young Dan felt for it with a small stick and twitched a bit of it
to the surface. He replaced it with a frozen trout, left it lying on the
snow as an extra lure and turned away. He even took a step away; and
then he turned back sharply and with the stick drew closer the piece of
bait which he had twitched out of the snow. He took it up in his
mittened hands and examined it closely. His eyes rounded and his lips
parted with astonishment. Then his face took on an expression of blank
bewilderment. He gazed all around at the crowding underbrush and soaring
spires of the forest, then straight up at the clear sky, then down again
at the lump of frozen bait in his hand.

“That’s queer,” he said. “Andy was here last, and that was before we
went fishing—yes, and before the last snow. We were baiting with
porcupine that day. I wonder where he got this from.”

He tossed the thing back into the snow and, still wondering, went his
way. His way now was not by the back trail, but sharp to the right, and
then more to the right, until his course lay southeast. He traveled by
the sun. The way was rough and tangled, and the “going” was heavy. He
struggled over blow-downs and through cedar-twined fastnesses of swamp.
After a couple of miles of it he sat down to rest and eat his lunch.
After that he came to a patch of open barren, desolate and flat under
the colorless sun. He held to his course straight across the level, a
distance of about two miles, and made good time. Beyond the barren he
entered a forest of big timber and crossed a wide ridge of maples and
yellow birches; and far beyond the ridge he came at last to the locality
of the southernmost trap of the southern line.

Young Dan had traveled close upon fifteen miles since breakfast, and
here he was still six miles at least from camp as the crow flies—and
what would have been a laughing matter to a crow was a tough job for
him. He almost found it in his heart to hope that all the traps between
him and his supper were empty. No such luck! In that first trap, the
farthest from home, he found a big bobcat—a cheap pelt on a big body.

It was past eight o’clock when Young Dan pushed open the door, staggered
into the camp and let his load thump to the floor. He dropped his axe,
too, stood his rifle against the wall, threw aside his fur cap and
mittens, and sank into a chair with a grunt of relief.

“That _was_ a day’s work, and I’m darn glad it’s through with!” he
exclaimed, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes.

Andy Mace didn’t say a word.

Young Dan sat up and looked all around. He saw the glow of the fire in
the rusty stove, red embers on the hearth, and the lighted lantern at
the little window, hooked to a nail in the frame. The room was poorly
illuminated. Most of it, including Andy Mace’s bunk, was in deep shadow.

“He’s taking a nap,” reflected Young Dan. “I guess his knee hurts him
more’n he lets on, and maybe it kept him awake last night.”

He hunched forward and untied the frozen thongs of his snowshoes very
quietly, fearful of disturbing the sleeper. Stealthily he put a few
sticks of wood in the stove and a log on the red embers in the chimney.
Next, he pussy-footed over to the window and unhooked the lantern and
set it down on the table near the stove. He felt bone-tired and sleepy,
but his spirit was untouched by fatigue. Recalling Andy’s statement
concerning supper, he decided to cook something good—something
elaborate, like buckwheat pancakes or bacon—and boil a big pot of
coffee, without waking the sluggard. He would even go so far as to tuck
into the grub before arousing the sleeper by clattering a spoon against
the coffee-pot. It would be a good joke on the old boy.

Owing to the changed position of the lantern, Andy Mace’s bunk was now
free from shadow. Young Dan glanced at it and instantly forgot the
contemplated joke. The bunk was empty!

Young Dan felt a sharp sense of unreality, as daunting as it was new to
him—but in a moment the chill of that gave way before a surge of
anxiety. He searched through the camp in a minute, all his weariness
forgotten. Andy Mace was nowhere indoors; his snowshoes were gone, too;
but his rifle leaned in its usual corner, in its old canvas case. Young
Dan began to dress for the open with both hands and both feet. His coat,
cap, mittens and snowshoes all seemed to fall into position and attach
themselves at once. He took up the lantern and his rifle and went out,
pulling the door shut behind him.

Young Dan found his partner’s tracks in fifteen seconds. They did not
lead along any one of the four lines of traps. They told him, as plain
as print, that the old man’s right leg was still as stiff as a ramrod.
Why Andy had gone into the woods at such an hour, lame or limber, was
more than he could even begin to imagine. He reckoned the time of Andy’s
departure from the camp by the condition of the fire in the stove at the
time of his return. He put it at something between an hour and a half
and two hours.

He followed the trail in feverish haste for a hundred yards or so, then
halted and shouted his partner’s name at the top of his voice. A faint
shout came back to him. He yelled again and continued his advance,
holding the lantern high and struggling in the snow-choked underbrush
like a swimmer in heavy surf. He reflected that Andy had certainly taken
a bee-line for wherever he was bound, regardless of natural obstacles.
In his care to keep the lantern from contact with the snow he stumbled
heavily several times and at last fell flat. The thick, hot glass of the
lantern cracked like a pistol-shot and fell apart as it plunged into the
snow, and the flame sizzled to extinction.

Young Dan arose to his knees slowly and in silence, with his rifle in
one hand and the ring of the chimneyless lantern in the other. In
silence he struggled to his feet and reset his right snowshoe. What’s
the use of talking when you know that the words required by your
emotions don’t exist? Still in silence, he cleared his eyes and neck of
snow. Then, to his great relief, he saw a yellow glow of fire-light far
away beyond the tangled screens of the forest. He went straight for the
light with as much noise and almost as much speed as a bull moose in a
hurry. He bored ahead, shielding his face with the cased rifle and
battered lantern, and letting his feet look after themselves. He
frequently snarled his snowshoes in the brush and took a header, but he
was never down for more than five seconds at a time.

Young Dan found the distance between the fire and the place of his first
tumble to be considerably less than he had feared. The fire burned in
the center of a tiny dell; and beside it, on a mat of spruce boughs, sat
Andy Mace.

“What’s the matter with you?” cried Young Dan. “What are you doing
here—and why didn’t you stay home like you said you would?”

“I’m glad you come,” said the old man. “I cal’lated that’s what ye’d do.
Well, I don’t blame ye a mite for feelin’ riled, Young Dan. But what
else could I do?”

“What do you mean? You could have stopped home!”

“I clean forgot to tell ye. Look what’s layin’ t’other side the fire,
Young Dan. So what else could I do but turn out an’ hunt about, when I
heard him shootin’ off his rifle like a battle. And I thought all along
it was yerself, until I found him.”

Young Dan stumbled around the fire and saw what the smoke had veiled
from him—a big man lying prone on a blanket, flat on his back, with a
lumpy sack partially sunk in the snow near his head. His snowshoes, axe
and uncased rifle stood upright in a row several paces distant from the
fire.

“What else was I to do?” asked Andy Mace. “And when I come up on him an’
seen it wasn’t you I couldn’t leave him to perish, could I now?”

“It’s Jim Conley,” said Young Dan. “What’s the matter with him?”

“Jim Conley, hey? That’s what I suspicioned. Well, pardner, he’s got
more troubles nor one the matter with him; an’ what laid him there on
his back the way ye see him now was a clout over the head I handed him
with the butt o’ his own rifle.”

The youth’s bewilderment increased.

“Did you kill him?” he asked, in awe-stricken tones.

“I reckon not,” replied Andy, casually. “He’s alive—in his own way.”

Young Dan chopped more brush for the fire and heaped it on, then removed
his snowshoes and reclined beside his partner.

Andy Mace filled and lit his pipe and told his story. He had sat quiet
all day and rubbed the last of the bear’s grease into his stiff knee. He
had fallen asleep along about mid-afternoon and slept soundly for hours.
Waking suddenly, for no particular reason that he knew of, he had found
the camp in darkness except for the glow of the fallen fire on the
hearth. He had built up the fires in a hurry and lighted the lantern;
and he had just opened the door for a look at the weather, before
concentrating his mind on the preparation of supper, when he heard a
rifle shot. That shot had been followed quickly by three more. He had
hung the lantern in the window then and scrambled into his outdoor
things and hobbled off at the best pace he could manage, feeling quite
sure that the shots were calls from Young Dan for help. Another had
sounded before the door was shut behind him, and yet another before he
had gone fifty yards into the woods. He had bored straight ahead, slap
through everything except the actual trunks of the big trees, taking the
rough with the smooth and the hard with the soft—and just how many times
he had plunged into the snow with his face and swept it up with his
whiskers he’d hate to try to remember. His ears had been plugged with
snow most of the time, anyhow, and his stiff knee had received some
violent shocks, but he had kept going, and after a while he had heard
someone yelling. He had gone ahead more circumspectly after that,
knowing that the voice did not belong to his partner; and before long he
had found Jim Conley trying to light a fire and making a poor job of it.

“Why couldn’t he light it?” asked Young Dan.

“Well, every time he’d get it lit he’d fall down slam on top o’ the
little flame an’ smother it out.”

“Was he that near froze?”

“That’s what I suspicioned, so I drug him off an’ sot him down an’ lit
the bit o’ brush an’ bark for him. I cut some dead stuff, an’ some
chunks o’ green wood, an’ built up a good fire; then I looked round an’
seen him settin’ back as comfortable as you please sucking away at a
square-face. That riled me, Young Dan. That would rile a more peaceable
man nor me—to see him draggin’ at that there bottle, an’ it more’n
three-quarters empty already—an’ considerin’ how I’d nigh busted my leg
off to find him, thinkin’ it was yerself shootin’ an’ hollerin’. Yes, I
reckon even a deacon would of felt kinder sore. So I went up to him an’
grabbed the bottle an’ hove it away an’ bust it agin a tree; an’ up he
come, spry’s a cat, an’ lammed me one on the shoulder that laid me flat;
but up I come on one leg, quicker’n a wink, an’ finished him. I looked
into his pack—an’ then I wisht I’d hit him harder.”

“Why? What’s in the bag?”

“Considerable baccy, and a pound o’ tea, an’ maybe as much as a whole
pound o’ bacon, and a box o’ seegars, and a bran’ new razor an’ strop,
an’ some ca’tridges, and a red weskit, an’ four more square-faces o’
gin. That’s what’s in his pack!”

Young Dan continued to recline on an elbow and stare at the fire between
half-closed lids in silence for several minutes.

“I was just thinking he must of had great luck with his few traps,
considering he didn’t set them out till after that night I saw him,” he
said, at last.

“Why was ye thinkin’ that?” asked Andy.

“Well, he’d have to pay a lot for the gin, wouldn’t he, for the man who
sold it to him was risking being sent to jail, wasn’t he? He had as many
as six bottles when he started for home, or he wouldn’t have four now;
and I betcher it cost him as much as eight or ten dollars a bottle. He
must of had great luck with his traps—in the two days they were set.”

“I reckon he must of, Young Dan. What’s on yer mind, anyhow?”

“Jim Conley’s luck, that’s what.”

“He must of caught somethin’ special, that’s a fact.”

“What did you bait with last time you tended the west line?”

“The west line? Lemme think. That was the day before the big snow. I
baited with porcupine.”

“It’s baited with fish to-day.”

“Sure it be. What o’ that, Young Dan?”

“I mean it was already baited with fish when I got to it. I mean that
someone had rebaited it—and reset it, too, I guess—since your last
visit.”

“You don’t say! Someone at our traps! Let’s make a try at gittin’ home,
pardner. I be that danged hungry an’ oncomfortable my brains won’t
think.”

[Illustration]




                              CHAPTER VII

                           THE ONE-EYED INJUN


The partners aroused Jim Conley, who grumbled savagely at being
disturbed.

“We’re going, anyhow,” said Young Dan, upon seeing that the fellow had
not suffered seriously by Andy Mace’s method of persuasion.

“Stop here all night, if you want to—and freeze to death! You’re old
enough an’ ugly enough to look after yerself.”

Conley sat up at that and violently demanded immediate information
concerning his whereabouts.

“You’re in the woods,” replied Young Dan. “In the woods, where you’d be
froze stiff in the snow by now, but for Andy Mace.”

Conley got slowly to his feet.

“That’s right—lost in the woods,” he said, in a flat voice. “I call it
to mind now. Kinder lost my way, I reckon.”

He put on his snowshoes with fumbling hands, breathing heavily and
muttering to himself the while.

“I’ll tote this along for you,” said Young Dan, laying a hand on the
lumpy sack.

The other snatched it from him and shouldered it.

“Guess I kin carry that myself!” he exclaimed.

Young Dan went in front, sensing the way in the dark. Andy went next,
making heavy weather of it with his stiff leg. Jim Conley brought up the
rear, plunging and grumbling and frequently falling. They reached the
camp at last. Young Dan left the door open behind him and went straight
to the hearth and stove and fed both with fuel. Andy Mace, exhausted by
his stiff-legged efforts and the pain of them, sank to the floor and lay
flat as soon as he had crossed the threshold. Then Jim Conley floundered
hurriedly and unsteadily from the cold outer gloom into the warm inner
darkness, sack on shoulder. He tripped over Andy’s prostrate form and
pitched forward to his hands and knees, and the lumpy sack hurtled from
his shoulder and struck the floor with a smashing crash.

Young Dan threw a roll of birch bark on the open fire, and in a few
seconds the camp was luridly illuminated; and then he saw his partner
and Conley on the floor, Andy sitting bolt-upright and the latter facing
him on all-fours, glaring in rage and astonishment at each other; and
beyond them he saw the lumpy sack squashed to half its former bulk and
leaking puddles of gin. The sight was too much for his sense of humor,
tired and hungry though he was. He laughed until tears melted the ice on
his eyelashes and his knees sagged beneath him. He sat down weakly on a
convenient chair and continued to laugh helplessly until sudden and
violent action on the floor recalled him to a more serious aspect of the
affair. Conley had grabbed Andy Mace by the beard with his left hand and
by the windpipe with his right, at the same time flinging his whole
weight forward; and the old woodsman had smashed in two life-sized
wallops on the sides of Conley’s head, one with his right fist and one
with his left, even as he sank beneath the younger man’s hands.

Young Dan jumped to the struggle. His snowshoes were still on his feet.
He gripped Conley with both hands by the neck of his several coats and
shirts, wrenched him clear of Andy and thumped him violently on the
floor, face-downward.

“Quit it!” cried Conley. “Lemme be, cantcher!”

Young Dan left him without a word and shut the door. He removed his
snowshoes then, and his cap and outer coat, lit the wick of the lantern
and placed a new chimney in the battered frame.

“Reckon I’ll stop right here till I git my supper,” said Andy Mace from
the floor.

Jim Conley turned over on his back, but did not attempt to rise.

Young Dan collected rifles and axes from the floor and stood them in a
corner, set a big frying-pan on the stove and filled the kettle from a
pail by the door—all in a grim silence. After slicing venison into the
pan, along with some fat bacon, he removed his partner’s snowshoes and
brushed him off with a broom.

“Is everything busted in that there sack?” inquired Conley, anxiously,
raising himself slowly on an elbow.

Young Dan untied the sack and shook its contents out onto the floor.
There were fragments of four square-faced black bottles. The other
articles, the bacon and tea and tobacco, were saturated with gin. Young
Dan pushed the mess together with his foot, in scornful silence.

“That’s sure a grand outfit o’ grub to take home to a woman an’ two
childern,” remarked Andy Mace.

Jim Conley swore long and loud and strong.

“Shut up!” snapped Young Dan.

“Someun will pay for that!” cried Conley. “Good an’ plenty.”

Young Dan stepped forward and stooped down and stared into the eyes of
his unwelcome guest.

“I warn you, Jim Conley, to mend your ways an’ mind your manners, or
you’ll find yourself crowded for elbow-room in this neck o’ woods,” he
said, slowly and clearly. “And I warn you that it won’t be me who’ll
have to clear out when the crowding commences. Think it over; and the
less you say about your spilt gin and who’s to pay for it—and who has
already paid for it—the better for you.”

“What’s that ye say?” returned the other, trying unsuccessfully to keep
his eyes steady and his voice big and careless.

“It was a warning.”

“About who paid for the gin—that’s what I’m askin’ ye. What d’ye mean by
that? That’s what I want to know, young feller.”

“You know what I mean by that; so keep your mouth shut, or I’ll forget
about your family and light right into you.”

Conley laughed uneasily and dropped the subject.

“If yer askin’ me to stop to supper, I’ll take off my snowshoes an’
mitts,” he said.

“We’ll feed you, now that we’ve saved you from freezing to death in the
snow,” replied Young Dan, ungraciously, returning to the stove.

Two pots of tea were drunk and two pans of venison steak were devoured.
Then the partners crawled into their bunks and their guest went to sleep
on the floor.

Jim Conley departed after breakfast next morning, with his reduced,
high-flavored sack on his shoulder and a reflective and uneasy
expression in his close-set eyes. The partners were glad to be rid of
him. They discussed him at considerable length. “You scared him,” said
Andy—“but I’m thinkin’ ye maybe said a mite too much about who paid for
the licker. He don’t look overly smart, but I reckon there’s somethin’
inside his skull, even if it’s only porridge; an’ yer warnin’ was strong
enough to start porridge a-bubblin’. We ain’t got anythin’ on him the
law kin touch him for, far’s I kin see. It wasn’t him robbed the camp,
an’ we can’t swear he was at our traps. You hadn’t ought to give yer
suspicions away like that, Young Dan.”

“Maybe yer right,” said Young Dan. “I sure did talk kind of out-an’-out.
But what of it? I want to warn him, because he’s got to feed his wife
and kids. If he suspicions that we suspicion him of robbing our traps,
then he’ll quit. If I was tryin’ to jail him I wouldn’t of talked to him
like that. But I was warnin’ him and throwin’ a scare into him to steady
him.”

“Ye don’t want to warn a feller like him till after ye catch ’im. He
don’t look smart—but ye can’t never tell by looks. He knows as how we
suspicion ’im now, and so he’ll do us all the harm he’s able to. I see
it in his eye. You had ought to had the goods on ’im before ye warned
’im, Young Dan. Why, we don’t even know where he’s been to—where he
traded the skins he took out! An’ we don’t know that he ain’t got a big
bunch o’ traps set of his own.”

Young Dan smiled.

“He traded his skins at Bean’s Mill, down at the mouth of Oxbow,” he
said. “I guess he didn’t show up at the Bend at all, though Amos
Bissing’s store is just as good as Luke Watt’s. He got his tea and
tobacco and everything he had in his sack from Luke Watt down to Bean’s
Mill; and I guess Luke’s got his skins; and I guess we’ve got his hide,
if we want it.”

“Young Dan, yer a smart lad—the smartest I ever see—an’ I won’t say nay
to nary a one o’ yer propositions—but it do seem to me ye’re doin’ a
powerful lot o’ guessin’ right now.”

“Honest to goodness, Andy, I’m not guessing. Do you know Luke Watt? Have
you ever bought goods from him?”

“Sure, I know Luke Watt o’ Bean’s Mill. Yes, I’ve traded with him, too.
What of it?”

“Then you know his hand-writing. Uncle Bill Tangier took me down to
Bean’s Mill one day two summers ago, and he bought a lot of stuff for me
and the youngsters at Watt’s store, and Mr. Watt figgered up the bill on
one of the parcels. He has a stiff right wrist, as you know—broke it in
the woods when he was a lad and it wasn’t set right. He used his whole
arm when he put down the figgers, working from the shoulder like a man
sawing a board. I don’t believe there’s another man in the world who
writes or makes figgers just like Luke Watt. And here is the paper Jim
Conley’s tobacco was wrapped up in. I changed it this morning for
another piece of brown paper, before Conley was awake. Here’s the
complete bill all figgered out in Luke Watt’s own original big
up-an’-down figgers.”

Young Dan unfolded a large, smudged piece of brown paper and passed it
to his partner. Andy Mace held it in his two corded hands and stared at
it in amazed silence.

“Look at that nine-fifty multiplied by seven,” said the youth. “Conley
bought seven bottles. He paid sixty-six dollars and fifty cents for gin;
and he was well into number five when you found him lost in the woods.
And Watt soaked him six dollars for fifty bum cigars. He must of had
some good skins. But of course that bill is no proof that Conley traded
his skins with Luke Watt. I guess he did, though; for he wasn’t gone
long enough to travel all the way down to Harlow and back. He did all
his buying from Luke Watt, anyhow.”

The old woodsman refolded the paper carefully and returned it to his
partner. Then he filled his pipe and lit it with deliberate motions.

“Young Dan, I was feelin’ kinder fretful a while back when I talked to
ye that-a-way,” he said at last. “My knee was hurtin’ me cruel. Yer
guess is as good to me as another man’s oath. What d’ye reckon to do,
pardner?”

“I reckon to go out and fetch a doctor in to fix your knee for you,
first thing,” replied Young Dan, as he stowed the paper away safely in a
breast-pocket.

Andy Mace shook his head.

“This here j’int plays out on me like this every now an’ agin,” he
returned “and I got medicine for it at home, made for me by Doc Johnston
down to Harlow—inside medicine. The trouble’s a touch o’ rheumatics in
my blood, so the Doc said, an’ maybe the fight I had with the Quebecer
fifty year ago ain’t got as much to do with it as I let on—an’ then
agin, maybe it has. Anyhow, Doc Johnston’s medicine loosens up the j’int
every time, an’ I got two bottles in my pantry this minute as good as
new. If I had them here I’d be right as wheat in a day or two.”

“Why didn’t you tell me so before?” asked Young Dan.

“Well, I reckoned it would sound kinder babyish; an’ I was hopin’ all
along until yesterday that it would quit hurtin’ an’ loosen up any
minute. I was bankin’ on the b’ar’s grease. But last night didn’t help
it none.”

Young Dan went out with his axe to chop wood and at the same time to
consider the imposing problem which confronted him. Andy Mace must have
his medicine as soon as possible—and that meant a two-day trip; and Mrs.
Conley and the two little Conleys must be fed, since the bread-winner
had brought nothing in for them except a pound of bacon—and that meant a
day; and Jim Conley’s little game must be investigated at both ends—and
that might well mean a week or more. What about his traps scattered
along four six-mile lines? His business was bound to suffer—but that was
not the thought that worried him most in connection with the traps. He
fretted at the thought of waste on one hand, and on the other of again
supplying Jim Conley with the means of acquiring more gin. These things
were bound to happen, he believed, so long as the traps remained set and
baited, and unattended by Andy Mace or himself. Animals bearing valuable
pelts would be caught only to suffer the unprofitable fate of being
devoured, pelts and all, by other fur-bearers, or to be skinned by Jim
Conley. The traps must be sprung; and that meant a hard two-day job. But
to leave Andy Mace without his medicine for four days instead of two was
out of the question!

“It’s more’n one man can do!” exclaimed Young Dan, sinking his axe deep
into the prostrate maple upon which he stood. “A man can do two or three
things at once, maybe, but not all in different places, I guess. I can’t
anyhow; and that’s all there is to it! Now the question is, what’s to be
done first? Guess I’ll leave it to chance and toss for it.”

He produced a quarter from a pocket, flipped it into the air off a
thumb-nail, caught it in his right hand and slapped his left over it.

“Heads I get Andy’s medicine first, tails I don’t,” he said.

The coin lay tails up in his palm.

“That’s too darned bad!” he exclaimed. “Poor Andy!”

“You talkin’ ’bout Andy Mace hey?” asked a voice from the brush on his
right.

Young Dan turned and beheld a stranger standing within five yards of him
and regarding him intently with one eye. It was this matter of the one
eye that made the first and sharpest impression on the youth. The
stranger’s left eye was covered by a patch of black cloth. In addition
to these interesting facts, Young Dan saw that he was an Indian and past
middle-age, that he wore snowshoes and carried a pack and a rifle in a
blanket case, and that no smoke issued from his lips or from the bowl of
the short pipe which protruded from a corner of his mouth.

“Sure I’m talking about Andy Mace,” replied Young Dan, recovering
swiftly from his astonishment.

“Good,” returned the stranger. “Andy Mace the feller I wanter see pretty
quick. Maybe he got plenty tobac, what?”

Young Dan shouldered his axe and descended from the trunk of the
prostrate maple. He slipped his feet into the thongs of his snowshoes
and put on his coat and mittens.

“I guess he has enough,” he said, pleasantly. “Come along with me and
find out. He’s my partner.”

They found Mr. Mace seated by the stove, with his stiff leg in a chair.

“How do, Andy,” said the stranger. “Long time you no see me.” Mr. Mace
sat up straight and stared from beneath shaggy eyebrows. Then he smiled
and relaxed.

“Yer dead right it’s a long time, Pete Sabatis!” he exclaimed. “Yer
right there, old hoss. Glad to see ye agin at last, anyhow. Set down an’
make yerself to home. What’s brought ye away acrost into these woods,
anyhow? Be they crowdin’ ye over on the Tobique country, Pete?”

The visitor cleared himself from his outside things, including his
snowshoes, discarded his pack and rifle, then sat down close to the
stove and took the cold pipe from his mouth. He held the pipe up and
fixed the keen glance of his uncovered eye on Andy.

“He don’t burn no tobac this four-five day,” he said.

Mr. Mace laughed and turned to Young Dan.

“What d’ye think o’ that, pardner?” he asked. “Here’s Pete Sabatis, that
I ain’t set eyes on this twenty year, come all the way acrost from the
Tobique country to bum a fill o’ baccy!”

“You got it a’right,” said the Maliseet, without so much as a flicker of
a smile. “That feller say you got plenty. You make joke jes’ like you
ust to, hey?”

“I reckon ye’re the reel joker, Pete,” answered Andy, handing over a
plug of tobacco. “You got the reel face for it, anyhow—the same old
wooden face an’ the same identical old eye. Well, yer jokes is harmless;
and if ye come all these hunderds o’ miles for somethin’ more’n a smoke
I reckon ye’ll spit it out sooner or later. I be right-down glad to see
ye agin, anyhow.”

“Same here,” said Young Dan. “If you’re a friend of Andy’s I hope you’ll
stop a while with us.”

“A good idee!” exclaimed Andy. “Sure he’s a friend o’ mine, and one I’d
trust with my last pound o’ bacon! Where’re ye headin’ for, Pete?
Anywheres in particular?”

“Dinner,” said Pete Sabatis, lighting his pipe.

“The same old bag o’ tricks,” said Andy to his partner. “I reckon he
cal’lates to stop right here with us a spell. That’s yer idee, ain’t it,
Pete?”

“Yep,” replied the Maliseet.

Young Dan was glad, for in this one-eyed Indian he saw the solution of
the problem that had been causing him such a weight of mental distress
all day. He said nothing of what was in his mind, however, but put wood
in the stove, washed his hands and commenced preparations for dinner.

Andy Mace talked and Pete Sabatis watched Young Dan with his lively
bright eye. Every now and then, Pete uttered a grunt of satisfaction at
what he saw.

It was a good dinner, a bang-up dinner, by Right Prong and Tobique
standards. It consisted of baked pork-and-beans in a brown crock, very
juicy and sweet, and a flock of hot biscuits, and a jar of Mrs. Evans’s
strawberry preserve, and tea strong enough to be employed in the
heaviest sort of manual labor.

Pete Sabatis was not a large man; and so Young Dan decided that he must
have been hollow from his chin clear down to his knees before dinner.
After clattering the iron spoon all around the inside of the bean-crock
and lifting the last preserved strawberry to his mouth on the blade of
his knife, Mr. Sabatis drained the teapot and sat back in his rustic
chair. He produced his pipe and looked at Andy Mace.

“Tobac,” he said.

“You pocketed a whole plug o’ mine before dinner,” returned Andy. “An’
ye’ve got a knife to cut it with an’ a pipe to smoke it in. Here’s a
match. Hope yer breath to puff with ain’t all gone.”

The Maliseet drew forth the cake of tobacco thus delicately referred to
by his old friend, filled his pipe and lit it.

“I’d like to tell him how we’re fixed, and perhaps he’d lend us a hand,”
said Young Dan to his partner.

“Sure he’d lend us a hand,” replied Andy. “Tell him our story. Pete
Sabatis kin be trusted with anything in the world, I reckon, secrets or
goods—exceptin’ baccy.”

So Young Dan told of their experiences with, and suspicions of, Jim
Conley, and of the problem which confronted him.

“That a’right,” said Pete. “What do you do first, hey?”

“That depends on you,” replied the youth. “Do you know the way to Andy’s
house?”

“Know him a’right when you tell me.”

“I’ll draw a map for you, if you’ll get Andy’s medicine.”

“To-morrow.”

“That’s fine. I’m mighty glad you turned up. I’ll go out now and spring
a few traps, and to-morrow I’ll take some grub back to the Conleys and
see what’s up. When you get home from Andy’s place with the medicine I
will light right out for Bean’s Mill.”

During the afternoon Young Dan visited four traps on the eastward line.
He found a mink in one and nothing in the others, and left all alike
sprung and harmless. He did not travel as briskly as usual, for he did
not feel very spry. The exertions of the day before had slowed and
stiffened even his elastic sinews a little. His spirits were high,
however, thanks to the mental relief due to the arrival of Pete Sabatis.
Pete solved the problem which had frozen his immediate actions. With
Pete’s help, everything seemed possible now: Andy would have his
medicine, the Conley woman and children would be looked after, Jim
Conley’s suspicious activities would be investigated and one line of
traps, at least, would be kept in operation. Apart from all this, the
Maliseet promised to be an entertaining companion. Young Dan had felt a
liking for him at the first sound of his voice and a keen interest in
him at the first glimpse of his patched eye. His arrival had been as
dramatic as it was opportune; his greeting of and reception by old Andy
Mace had been decidedly picturesque; his Puckish humor was as unusual as
his appearance. In short, he made a strong romantic appeal to the young
trapper.

“He’s queer, like some of the folks in those stories,” reflected Young
Dan. “Queer as the queerest of them, but real, too—more real than any of
them. And he’s all right. Andy says so.”

Young Dan exploded two cartridges that afternoon. The bullet of each
knocked the head off a partridge. Upon his return to camp he skinned the
birds in half the time it would have taken him to pluck them, and fried
them for supper with a little pork. After supper he made a map of the
route to Andy Mace’s house and explained it at length to Pete Sabatis.
All three retired early to their blankets.

Pete Sabatis was the first to leave the camp next morning. He carried
food and tobacco in his pockets, a note from Young Dan for Amos Bissing,
the map of the route, the key to Andy’s door, and his rifle and
blankets. He moved off swiftly, with the reddening dawn on his
right-front, leaving an azure trail of smoke on the still air.

“It’s lucky for us that he turned up when he did,” remarked Young Dan to
his partner, as he made up a modest parcel for the Conleys of tea and
flour and two tins of condensed milk. “Did he come looking for you, or
was it just chance?”

“He’ll tell us what he come for when he’s good an’ ready, an’ not a
minute sooner, Young Dan,” answered Andy. “Maybe he come all the way
acrost from Tobique to see me, but I reckon that ain’t likely. How would
he know if I was alive or dead any more’n I knowed if he was alive or
dead? It was chance landed him right here at this camp, anyhow, for all
he ever knowed about my whereabouts was that I hailed from the Oxbow—an’
that was twenty year ago. But we won’t fret ourselves about why he’s
here or why he come. He is here, an’ he’s a danged good Injun, an’
that’s enough for us.”

Young Dan took the northern track, which led crookedly to the Conley
cabin. He inspected the traps to the right and the left as he advanced,
bagged a fox and left all sprung and harmless behind him. He reached the
Conley cabin before noon and found Mrs. Conley chopping wood beside the
door. She said that Jim was off somewhere attending to his traps.

“I don’t want to see him,” said Young Dan. “I came to bring these few
things for you and the children, from my partner and me, because we know
that he didn’t bring much grub back from the settlements with him.”

He entered the cabin without removing his snowshoes and placed the
parcel of provisions on the table. The woman followed him, undid the
parcel and thanked him. She seemed nervous.

“How d’ye know Jim didn’t fetch in any grub?” she asked.

“We saw what he had,” replied the trapper. “Didn’t he tell you about
stopping a night at our camp? About losing himself in the woods an’ Andy
Mace finding him?”

“No, he didn’t. But he’s sure got it in for you and yer old pardner!
He’s been cussin’ the two o’ ye steady ever since he come home. He says
how he had lashin’s o’ bacon an’ flour an’ was robbed of everything but
some bacon an’ tea.”

“I suppose you believed him, m’am.”

“Not so’s ye’d notice—but that’s neither here nor there. What you best
do now is clear out o’ this before he comes home.”

“Do you think I’m afraid of him?”

“I guess not—but I wisht ye’d beat it.”

Young Dan immediately complied with her wish. As soon as he was out of
sight of the cabin he left the narrow trail of his own snowshoe tracks
and broke into the woods and started on a big curve which, if followed
long enough, would encircle the Conley habitation. Young Dan did not go
so far as that, however. He found what he was looking for before he had
made a semicircle of the curve—a line of new snowshoe tracks. He did not
join this trail or cross it, but backed a few paces from it, changed
direction and moved parallel with it, keeping an eye on it through the
intervening screen of brush and branches. This course took him
southward, mile upon mile, and after a couple of hours of it he found
himself on his own and Andy Mace’s trapping-ground. He continued to
parallel Jim Conley’s tracks, moving without sound and parting the
forest growth before him with the minimum of disturbance; and at last he
came to a place which he recognized as being on his own eastern line of
traps. There he halted and squatted to rest, as still as a waiting lynx
in the snow.

Large white flakes began to circle down from the low sky. The sun, which
had risen red, was now no more than a small blotch of radiance as
colorless as clear ice. The snow descended more thickly and swiftly,
blinding the weak sun and seeming to draw the sky down to the tops of
the tall spruces—and down even lower than that, until the soaring trees
were blanketed and hidden by it for half their height. Then Young Dan
moved again, this time on a straight course for the camp, and at his
best pace. This flurry of snow was altogether too thick and fast to take
liberties with. He wondered what Pete Sabatis would make of it with his
one eye. He was sorry that it had descended so violently as to interfere
with his investigations before he had actually caught Jim Conley at his
trapping. He felt reasonably certain, however, of the identity of the
traps which engaged Mr. Conley’s attentions. That was enough to work
ahead on. He decided not to spring the traps on the eastern line, but to
leave them as they were for the thief’s immediate profit and final
undoing.

Young Dan reached home safely. The snow ceased falling shortly before
sundown, but with the setting of the sun a wind arose which set the
feathery flakes drifting and flying.

Andy Mace was in as talkative a mood as ever that night, despite the
fact that he was very evidently suffering a great deal of pain. He
admitted the pain, confessing that more joints than his right knee hurt
him now.

“But that there medicine o’ Doc Johnston’s ’ll melt the misery out o’ me
all right,” he said. “I’ll be takin’ a dose of it this time to-morrow
night; and ye’ll see me to work agin within a couple o’ days, Young Dan,
spry as a cat an’ loose as ashes.”

“Don’t you worry about the work, Andy,” returned Young Dan. “Give the
medicine a fair chance when you get it. I hope Pete will be back by
to-morrow night—but he couldn’t of traveled much this afternoon, in that
storm and in country strange to him.”

“That’s where ye’re wrong,” replied Andy. “I never knowed a likelier man
nor that same Pete Sabatis to go to wherever he wanted to git to. He
could do that trip backwards, an’ with both eyes patched instead of only
one. That flurry o’ snow wouldn’t stop him a minute, in strange country
or old.”

“What happened to his eye, anyhow?” asked Young Dan.

Andy rubbed his thin knees with his thin hands for several seconds in
silence, gazing thoughtfully into the red draft of the stove. Then he
looked at his partner and combed his long whiskers with long fingers.

“Maybe he wouldn’t care for me to tell ye that, lad,” he said. “I reckon
he wouldn’t yet awhile, till he knows ye better. But I kin tell ye this
much, pardner—I was with him when he lost it, twenty-four year ago—and
he is as good a man with one eye as ever he was with two. He lost it in
a kinder private affair, ye understand: and there ain’t a prouder man
walkin’ the woods either side the height-o’-land nor him—exceptin’ in
the matter o’ baccy.”

[Illustration]




                              CHAPTER VIII

                        THE ADVENTURE OF SABATIS


The wind was abroad all the next day, sweeping the snow from the broad
branches and high spires of the forest and shoveling it into drifts
along the windward edges of all open spaces. Young Dan worked at the
wood-pile and the pelts all day, and Mr. Mace smoked his pipe and rubbed
his painful joints and wondered if old age were creeping upon him. Young
Dan was chopping a stick of dry birch near the door, and the small sun
was on the edge of the western horizon, when Pete Sabatis appeared. Pete
was powdered white with snow from the webbed racquets on his feet to the
crown of his fur cap.

“Howdy,” he said.

Young Dan stared at him in amazement.

“I knew you’d have to give it up,” he said, “and I’m mighty glad you’ve
found your way back. That’s more’n I could do, with the snow drifting
like it has all day.”

The old Maliseet smiled and snorted and entered the camp. Young Dan
followed a few minutes later depressed by the thought of Andy Mace’s
disappointment and yet relieved to know that the old Indian was safe. By
the fire-shine and the mild light of a candle on the table, he beheld
his partner dosing himself with a large spoon from a large bottle and
Pete Sabatis laying out tea and bacon and tobacco on the floor.

“So you got there!” exclaimed Young Dan. “You got to Andy’s place in
that storm—and home again!”

Both old men turned to him. Pete’s one eye grew rounder and brighter for
a second; and Mr. Mace gulped down his medicine, pulled a wry face and
then chuckled.

“Pete Sabatis never yet started out for anywheres he didn’t git to,”
said Andy. “Snow nor rain nor wind nor darkness can’t stop him. He
travels as straight with one eye as ever he did with two.”

“I didn’t know the man was living, or had ever lived, who could hold a
straight course through new country on such a day as yesterday,” said
Young Dan. “And now I know I was mistaken,” he added.

Pete Sabatis had nothing to say about his journey. The trip had been
unadventurous. He had not encountered any difficulties worth mentioning.
Andy’s key had fitted Andy’s door and he had found the bottles of
medicine on the very shelf in the pantry which Andy had described to
him. And he had found the store at the Bend exactly where he had
expected to find it and the storekeeper had not hesitated a moment in
the matter of filling the order.

Young Dan cooked the best supper he knew how to with the materials at
hand; and after supper, when the old men’s pipes were drawing to their
entire satisfaction, Andy said, “Pete, I’d like fine to tell Young Dan
Evans here about how ye happened to lose yer eye.”

The Maliseet fixed his remaining eye on the youth with a glance so
searching that the other remembered something he had read in a book
about a thing called an X-Ray.

“It ain’t like as if Young Dan was nothin’ more’n my pardner,” continued
Andy. “He’s like a brother to me; and his heart’s as right as his brains
is smart.”

“That’s a’right,” said Pete Sabatis. “Go ahead an’ tell ’im.”

“This here’s a kinder personal story,” began Andy, settling back in his
chair. “Twenty-four years ago this very winter, I was in the woods on
Pyle’s Brook, over in the Tobique country, choppin’ for Howard Frazer. I
was restless in them days; and I’ll bet there ain’t a block of woods ten
mile square in all the Province I ain’t had a foot into, lumberin’ or
huntin’ or trappin’ fur. Well, I knowed that country pretty nigh as well
as I know the Oxbow—so I thought. I diskivered later as how I’d thought
wrong. Pete Sabatis here was choppin’ for Frazer’s gang, too. That was a
kinder onusual thing, even in them days—a full-blooded Injun working
hard an’ honest with a crew of lumbermen. But Pete allus was one who
could do a white man’s job as well as an Injun’s—an’ both a mite
better’n any other Injun or white man could do it. I’d say the same even
if he wasn’t right here a-listenin’ to me.

“Well, I didn’t have no better friend in that outfit nor this here Pete
Sabatis, and it was the same with him—what ye might call visey versus, I
reckon. But, mind ye, I didn’t know the first darned thing about Pete’s
private life. He was a jolly feller, though never much of a talker an’
nothin’ at all of a laugher. But all of a suddent, along about January,
he begun to study hard on somethin’ deep inside himself. He’d stop still
as if he was frozen all of a suddent in the middle of choppin’ into the
butt of a big tree, with his axe sunk to the eye in the yellow wood, an’
stare kinder across-eyed into himself, with a look on his face like he
didn’t care much for what he seen. Of course I knowed he wasn’t sick,
but I asked him if he was; an’ when he said as how he wasn’t, then I
cal’lated his trouble was somethin’ I’d best not ask him any more
questions about.

“So it went on for three days, maybe; an’ then one Saturday night, after
supper, he asks me if I’ll make a trip with him next day.

“‘A trip?’ sez I. ‘What sort o’ trip?’

“‘Snowshoes,’ sez Pete.

“‘Sure, but how far?’ I sez.

“‘Quite a spell,’ he answers back. ‘A long ways an’ rough goin’, an’
trouble at the end of it.’

“Well, there’s plenty men who’d set back hard in their britchen when
they’d hear a note like that—but not me, twenty-four year ago, nor
to-day. We started eastward into the tall timber before sun-up that
Sunday mornin’, with grub enough for two days maybe, and blankets, and
our axes. Pete carried a muzzle-loader gun you could shoot bullets out
of pretty straight up to seventy yards. It was a clear, cold day,
without so much as a fan of wind abroad. It was Sunday, as I’ve told ye;
an’ it felt like Sunday—kinder waitin’ an’ uncommon. Pete went slam
through everything on a straight line all his own as fast as he could
flop his racquets along, but it didn’t bother me none to keep up to him.
He didn’t say a word. We halted and et about noon—but even then he
wouldn’t talk.”

Andy Mace paused to relight his pipe.

“Talk,” said Pete Sabatis. “Too much talk. You lemme tell how that
happen, so we don’t set up all night. Pretty soon we come to one little
clearin’ in the woods, with one log shanty on him. We go to door an’
open him an’ step inside. There we find the folk I look for a’right.
Andy Mace look at them like he don’t know nothin’ at all—an’ so he
don’t. I push him back on the door till it shut an’ give him the gun.
Then I take one step acrost at that half-breed man, an’ the woman grab
somethin’ from the wall back of him and BANG—an’ Pete Sabatis don’t know
nothin’ else for quite a spell.”

“I cal’late I’m tellin’ this story!” interrupted Andy. “Young Dan ain’t
got a notion what yer talkin’ about. He’s smart, but he’s only human.
Why, he don’t even know yet who them folks was an’ what you had come to
see them about.”

“An’ you didn’t, neither,” retorted Pete. “So after long while I open
one eye an’ feel mighty sick. They got me in the bunk then, with head
all tie up an’ brandy inside me, an’ Andy Mace an’ them two lookin’ down
like they think I don’t never open one eye any more, maybe. Then that
woman, who is my daughter, say, ‘I shoot out your eye. What for you come
here, anyhow?’ Then I say, ‘You shoot my eye clear out, hey?’ Andy say
then, ‘You got only one eye now, Pete, an’ that’s gospel.’ Then that
woman, my papoose one time, say, ‘You come to kill Pierre, so I shoot
quick.’ I feel mighty sick, you bet, for that pain in my head an’ the
think how I got only one eye left, but I pretty near laugh.”

“That’s right!” exclaimed Andy Mace. “He come about as nigh to laughin’
real hearty then as ever I see him, durn his old leather face. Ye see,
pardner, that squaw, Pete’s daughter, had made a mistake. Her husband,
that there halfbreed, Pierre, had stole fur on Pete years before, till
Pete had chased him out o’ the country. But they’d come sneakin’ back
that winter, an’ Pete had heard about it an’ studied on it. He didn’t
like that feller, Pierre; but he figgered out as how he’d go look the
two of ’em over an’ kinder give them his blessin’ an’ some money if he
seen that Pierre was doin’ right by his wife, who was Pete’s own
daughter. An’ his daughter up an’ shot an eye out o’ him before he could
say ‘howdy’. An’ what d’ye reckon Pete Sabatis done then, Young Dan? He
sez, ‘Pretty good breed, that Pierre, if she like him so darn much
still—an’ he give them some money an’ said how he was glad to see them
back in the Tobique country even if he had only one eye to see them
with.’ _And next day he snowshoed back to Howard Frazer’s camp._ That’s
how he lost his eye, twenty-four years ago this winter; an’ now there’s
five of us who know about it instead of only four. An’ he quit choppin’
for only two days after gittin’ back to camp. That’s the sort o’ man
Pete Sabatis is!”

“Talk, talk, talk! That’s the kind of feller Andy Mace is,” said the
Maliseet, winking his only eye at Young Dan very deliberately.

Young Dan was greatly impressed by the story of Pete’s just temper and
amazing physical stamina. He said so. Then, at Andy’s request, he read a
story of the wizard of Harley Street. Andy interrupted the narrative
frequently, but the Maliseet listened in keen silence.

“It couldn’t be done, nohow,” said Andy, at the conclusion of the tale.
“The devil himself couldn’t of worked it out like that.”

“Maybe,” said Pete. “I dunno.”

Young Dan left the camp bright and early next morning with his uncle’s
rifle, axe and blankets, a pack of fine furs and grub enough to last him
to Bean’s Mill. He pushed along steadily all day and slept in a hole in
the snow that night. He crossed the river well above his father’s farm
and gave it and the village at the Bend a wide offing. He reached the
outskirts of the settlement of Bean’s Mill about noon and dined well
beside his own fire in a thicket of young spruces before appearing to
the settlers. Then he went straight to Luke Watt’s store.

Mr. Watt did a big business in a small store. That’s the kind of
business man he was, but in character he was a very different sort of
person. He was small in character and large in body and manner. As a
storekeeper his activities were larger than his premises, but as a man,
his chest and legs and arms and skull—yes, and his “lower chest”—were
much too large for him. He had a stiff right wrist, calculating and
watchful eyes of no particular color, large hands queerly shaped and a
large manner of good-fellowship and an unattractive mustache.

Young Dan found Luke Watt behind his counter, in a corner close to one
of the dirty windows, barricaded into his position by boxes and barrels
and crates and bags. Young Dan worked his way inward to the counter. He
saw, as he advanced, that the other did not know him.

“Good morning, Mr. Watt,” he said. “I’m Dan Evans from up past the
Bend—Young Dan Evans. I got a few skins here I want to sell.”

“Of course ye’re Dan Evans!” exclaimed Luke Watt. “Didn’t I know it the
minute I see you! Lay it there! How’s tricks up river?”

“Pretty good, I guess,” replied the youth. “It’s been a great winter for
trapping so far, anyhow.”

He undid his pack on the head of a barrel at his elbow and placed a
couple of pelts on the counter. A swift glance at Watt’s face told him
that the storekeeper was finding it difficult to hide his enthusiasm.

“Um—fisher,” said Mr. Watt. “Mighty common skins, ain’t they?”

“They are as good fisher as were ever trapped on the Oxbow,” said Young
Dan.

“Sure they’re good of their kind—but they’re fisher; and fisher are
all-fired common this year. And skins ain’t much in my line, anyhow. I
buy a few—but I’m that good natured an’ easy I always lose money on the
deal. What d’ye figger these two skins is worth? Three times their real
value, I’ll bet a dollar!”

“Maybe so,” replied Young Dan slowly and in a puzzled voice. “Yes, just
about that, I guess. I don’t know as much about selling ’em as I do
about catching ’em.”

A flicker of a smile, cold and swift, showed beyond the drooping ends of
Luke Watt’s mustache, and for an instant a light of amusement and
satisfaction glimmered in his eyes.

“I know you pay a whole lot for black fox,” continued Young Dan.

“Black fox!” exclaimed the other. “You got half a dozen black foxes
right here with you—I don’t think. Say, Dan, what you been drinkin’?”

“I don’t drink, Mr. Watt—but I trap in a good country for black fox—and
I know that you gave Jim Conley a mighty good price for his.”

The storekeeper’s eyes became very hard and keen with eagerness and
caution. He squared his elbows on the counter and leaned across toward
the youth. So, for several seconds, he stared in silence; and the other
returned the stare with an innocent and unwavering gaze.

“What d’ye know about Jim Conley?” he asked, in a low voice.

“Never saw him before this winter, but we’re trapping the same line of
country now,” returned Young Dan. “We’re working ’way up past the
Prongs.”

“D’ye mean you an’ Jim Conley are pardners?”

“We use the same traps. Guess you might call it a partnership.”

“It wasn’t a first-class skin, that wasn’t, as you know yerself, Dan. It
was more patch than black. But if you have another like it I’ll pay the
same price, even if I lose money on it—seein’ it’s you.”

“All in cash, Mr. Watt?”

“Not at the same price. I always figger on making part payment in trade.
But what’s the matter with that? Wasn’t Conley satisfied last time?”

“I reckon he was—but gin ain’t good for him. He got lost getting home.”

“Not so loud,” whispered Luke Watt. “Call it trade. Didn’t Conley warn
you to mind yer tongue? You talk like a fool; and if you ain’t more
careful you’ll land yer pardner in jail. But that’s all right, seein’
it’s yerself. I’ll buy yer skins—all you have there—an’ give you top
price. But you got to take part payment in trade. Any kind o’ trade.
Tea, tobacco, flour—anything you want or yer pardner wants. My prices
are right.”

“That’s fair, Mr. Watt. Will you pay me forty dollars for these two
fishers? They are the best fishers I’ve seen this winter, color and
size.”

The storekeeper stood upright and laughed heartily. He straightened his
back to it and squared his shoulders to it until Young Dan thought the
buttons would fly off the straining front of the big waistcoat.

“Forty dollars!” exclaimed the big man at last, like one who sees the
point of a good joke and immediately repeats it to show that he has seen
it. “Forty dollars! That’s pretty good, Dan! Darned good!”

“Pretty fair,” returned Young Dan, quietly. “They’re worth more.”

“Are you serious, young fellow? D’ye mean forty real dollars for them
two skins? You look kinder as if you meant it. You must be crazy!”

Young Dan sighed and removed the pelts from the counter to the rest of
the pack. Slowly he tied up the pack, watching the storekeeper all the
while with the tail of his right eye. He shouldered the pack and took up
the axe and stockinged rifle.

“Not so fast, Dan!” cried Mr. Watt. “That ain’t any way to do business.
Say, are you crazy? Let’s see them skins again, and maybe I’ll go as
high as thirty-five. And gimme a look at the rest o’ the lot.”

“I been reading in the papers what furs are worth this year,” replied
the youth. “You can’t fool me. I ain’t Jim Conley. So long.”

Anger and something of apprehension flamed in Luke Watt’s unpleasant
eyes and big face. With a muttered oath he started for the door in the
counter—but before he reached it, Young Dan had closed the door of the
store at his heels. And by the time the big man had reached that door,
after squeezing his way through the clutter of barrels and crates, Young
Dan was half-way down the village street.

Young Dan kept on going along the well-beaten river road, with his
snowshoes on his back instead of his feet, for half an hour. He paused
now and again to glance over his shoulder, for he believed that Luke
Watt would soon be on his tracks with a horse and pung. And in that he
was right. Looking back from the top of one rise he saw a fast-trotting
horse come over another rise half a mile behind. Then he turned to the
right, into a logging road, and ran at top speed for a couple of hundred
yards. The logging road was crooked, and rough underfoot. After the
sprint, Young Dan strapped his snowshoes on and hopped into the woods.
He glanced up at the sun, then went forward on a straight course at a
fine pace. He felt very well satisfied with his morning’s work. He had
confirmed his suspicions of Mr. Luke Watt, at least.

“I have the goods on both of them,” he said. “I worked it out just
right. Now I guess they’ll both have to behave themselves or clear right
out of this country. I’ve got enough on Conley to scare him into being
good and looking after his wife and kids, that’s certain.”

He halted for long enough to eat two sandwiches of cold bread and colder
bacon, standing. Then, steering by the sun, he continued to break
straight through the woods toward the little town of Harlow.

Luke Watt, in his little red pung behind his leggy trotter, drove
straight on down the well-beaten river road, intent on reaching the
upper edge of Harlow ahead of Young Dan. If the trapper held to the road
and was overtaken on the way, all the better for the storekeeper, of
course—but the great thing was a meeting this side of Harlow. It was not
the fear of losing trade that inspired Mr. Watt to this determination
and this unusual speed. He would regret a loss of trade, sure enough;
but what he actually feared was the Law. He suspected Young Dan Evans.
He suspected him of being less simple and ignorant than he seemed to be
on the surface. He suspected himself of having been dangerously
indiscreet in so quickly accepting that long-legged youth as nothing but
a source of profit.

“He worked me for a rube, I do believe,” he reflected. “I must get him
before he gets me; an’ then, if I can’t scare him off I’ll have to buy
him off. I reckon he’ll scare easy enough, if he’s mixed up with Jim
Conley.”

But would that young fellow scare easily? There had been a look in his
eyes that said “no” to the scare idea.

There was no shorter course between the Bend and Harlow than the river
road. There was no bee-line through the woods that would cut so much as
a yard off it. Mr. Watt knew this. He drove straight into the town and
stabled his horse. Then he walked back beyond the up-river end of the
town, accompanied by a middle-aged, middle-sized, seedy looking man with
whom he seemed to be very well acquainted. So narrow is that small town
that two men could easily keep an eye on all the ways of entrance to it
at either end. Mr. Watt and his friend took up positions of advantage
several hundred yards apart and waited.

The sun was low when Young Dan came out of the woods and headed
slantwise across a wide field beside the highway.

[Illustration]




                               CHAPTER IX

                         THE FIGHT IN THE SNOW


Young Dan Evans slanted across the white field, heading for the highroad
which led smoothly into the little town of Harlow. His journey was
within a half-mile of its completion. He had worked hard ever since
leaving Bean’s Mill, through thick timber and untracked snow; and now he
was tired and hungry but in fine spirits. He had thought much of Andy
Mace and Pete Sabatis during the journey—of their admiration for one
another’s qualities of physical and spiritual fiber—and believed that
they would soon take him as seriously as they now considered each other.
Of course Andy was his firm friend and already thought highly of his
“smartness” along certain lines—but he feared that he had not yet made a
very deep impression on the one-eyed Indian. He suspected that Pete
Sabatis considered him a trifle too big for his cap and boots. He had
seen something of the kind in the old man’s one eye that very morning.

“I guess he thinks I’m just a cub playing at something and trying to
fool folks into thinking I’m a smart man,” he reflected. “But when I
have that big Luke Watt jumping to my say-so, and that thieving drunkard
Jim Conley come to heel like a trained partridge-dog, and Mrs. Conley
and the kids fed and looked after properly, I guess he will have to
admit that I know what I’m doing.”

Thus engaged with his thoughts, he drew near to an extensive grove of
swamp-birches and alders which grew along the snow-drifted fence like a
screen between the field and the highroad. He carried his blankets and
pack of furs on his back, his axe on his right shoulder and his cased
rifle hung by its sling on his left shoulder.

He was close to the edge of the tangle of birches and alders, and about
midway of its length, when a bulky figure in a coonskin coat arose from
the snow and stepped out in front of him.

Young Dan Evans did so many things all at once then that it is difficult
to disentangle and describe his actions. Mind and body worked quick as
thought—quicker, perhaps, for he was scarcely conscious of thinking. As
he recognized Luke Watt in the very instant of seeing him he let
everything he carried slip and fall from him into the snow in one
shrugging motion—pack and rifle and axe—and jumped forward straight and
hard. Even as he jumped, he saw Luke Watt draw something from a
side-pocket of the fur coat—but he did not flinch from the mark. He
struck Watt with his whole body all at once. His knees dug into the big
man’s middle and his left arm went around the fur-clad thick neck; and
as they fell he heard the revolver explode twice and felt the jolt of
the gloved hand that held it against his ribs; and he drew up his left
knee and stamped a wide snowshoe on Watt’s right arm, and struck the big
face with his right fist. Thus they sank into the drift, with Luke Watt
underneath and flat on his back. Young Dan trod the hand that held the
revolver deep into the snow; and he struck the vanishing face again and
again, though the snow muffled the blows of his mittened fist; and, all
the while, his right knee crushed and pounded.

Luke Watt struggled—but what was the use! He was breathless, helpless,
bound and half smothered by the snow. All this violence had occurred so
swiftly that he could not fully realize exactly what had happened. He
had confronted the young trapper with his gun ready and the game in his
hand; and now, a few seconds later, his mouth was choked with snow, his
eyes were blinded, his arms and weapon were powerless and he was being
beaten to death!

Young Dan shook the mitten from his left hand and thrust his bare hand
deep into the snow. In a moment he stood up and stepped backward a pace
or two, with Luke Watt’s revolver in his grasp. He looked about him and
saw a stooped figure on the road walking hastily townward. He turned
again to his enemy, who was sitting up by this time and struggling
painfully for breath. He flung the revolver far away and recovered his
axe, pack and rifle.

“How’re you feeling now?” he asked.

Mr. Watt gulped a mouthful of air but made no attempt to answer. He did
not even open his eyes. He paid no attention to the other’s departure.

Young Dan found the hotel without difficulty and entered the office
fully equipped.

“Will you kindly tell me the way to the nearest sheriff?” he asked of
the man at the desk.

“The nearest sheriff?” repeated the hotel-keeper. “Do I get you, young
feller? Ye’re askin’ the way to the nearest sheriff?”

There were four other men in that dreary little office of varnished
brown woodwork, mangey mooseheads and crockery cuspidors. These all
stared curiously at the young trapper and shifted their positions in
their chairs. The hotel-keeper leaned far over his little counter.

“D’ye want to give yerself up?” he added, with a rude attempt at wit.

“I have asked you a simple and civil question,” said Young Dan in his
quietest voice. “If you don’t understand simple questions here and don’t
answer civil ones, then I’ll ask somewhere else. What about it?”

The hotel-keeper and his chaired patrons exchanged glances.

“Sure, sure,” said the former, hurriedly. “We ain’t got a sheriff in
this town, but we got a fust-class depity-sheriff by the name of Archie
Wallace. Maybe ye’ve heared of him; an’ maybe he kin do yer business for
yer as well as the full-blowed high sheriff of the county. What was it
you said you wanted to see him about?”

“I didn’t say,” replied Young Dan, with a disarming smile. “Thank you
very much for the information; and now if you’ll tell me where I can
find Mr. Wallace I’ll step along and stop troubling you.”

The hotel-keeper reached for his coat, which hung on a hook behind him.

“No trouble at all,” he said. “Glad to oblige. I’ll step along an’ show
you his very door. I always aim to help strangers all I know how.”

“Ye hadn’t ought to leave yer seegar-stand in the rush hour, Dave,” said
one of the patrons, getting quickly out of his chair. “I’ll take the
young man to Archie Wallace. It’s fair on my way home.”

The hotel-keeper paid no attention to this offer but donned coat and cap
and issued from behind the counter and dusty cigar-stand.

“Follow me, stranger,” he invited, leading the way out. “Me and the
depity-sheriff are old friends. I’ll make you known to him.”

So Young Dan followed the hotel-keeper, and three of the four patrons
followed close upon the heels of Young Dan. The deputy-sheriff’s house
was not more than fifty yards from the hotel; and the young trapper
smiled politely and said nothing all the way to it. The hotel-keeper
rang the bell and took up a position on the top step in front of Young
Dan.

The door was opened by a tall, lean man who looked like a woodsman and
wore a Cardigan jacket and grey homespun trousers tucked into
high-legged larrigans of oil-tanned leather.

“Here’s a young feller lookin’ for you on important business, Archie,”
said the hotel-keeper. “It is so all-fired important that I brought him
right along to you myself, so there wouldn’t be no possible mistake.”

The deputy-sheriff looked at Young Dan Evans with calm inquiry.

“It is private business,” explained Young Dan, smiling; “and these
gentlemen don’t know any more about it or me than I do about them. I
never so much as set eyes on any one of them in my life until five
minutes ago. What I have to say is for your private hearing, if you are
really an officer of the law.”

“Step in,” said the tall man to Young Dan; and to the others he said
drily, “Thanks, boys, for escortin’ the young stranger to the right
place.” Then he closed the door in the hotel-keeper’s face. He led the
way into a small room opening off the narrow hall—an untidy, stale
cigar-scented room poorly illumined by an oil lamp with a green paper
shade.

“Dump your outfit in the corner and sit down,” he invited.

Young Dan obeyed and removed his cap and mitts and outer coat. The
deputy-sheriff sat down in his own arm-chair beside the untidy table and
removed the shade from the lamp so that the light reached his visitor’s
face. For several seconds he gazed keenly but pleasantly at Young Dan.

“I’ve seen you before, somewheres or other,” he said. “Seems to me I
have known you pretty well, sometime or other. Who are you an’ where
from?”

Young Dan answered the questions briefly but clearly.

“You remind me of someone I know well,” said Mr. Wallace. “But it isn’t
yerself, for I never saw nor heard of you before. A full-grown man—and a
smart one. You speak like him—whoever he is.”

“Bill Tangler, maybe? You’d know him, I guess. He’s my uncle.”

“Bill Tangler it is! Your uncle, hey? Well, son, you’ve got a smart
uncle. More than that, he’s able; an’ better still, he’s white. If Bill
Tangler’s your uncle we don’t need any more introduction—so fire away.”

Young Dan told briefly of his partnership with old Andy Mace, and
produced from an inner pocket the letter from his uncle containing the
suggestion of the venture and the partnership and the offer of camp and
outfit. Archie Wallace chuckled over the letter. Then the trapper told
of his encounters with Jim Conley, of the rebaited trap, and of the
night Conley went off his course in the woods with a cargo of gin inside
and out. He produced and exhibited the piece of paper upon which Mr.
Luke Watt had figured out Jim Conley’s bill. The deputy-sheriff studied
that exhibit very intently and slapped his hand on his thigh.

“You’re a winner, Dan Evans!” he exclaimed. “Have a cigar.”

Young Dan shook his head to the cigar and told his adventures of the
day, up to the very minute of telling. He raised his short coat of
wool-lined blanketing from the floor and held it up to the other’s view.

“And here I am; and here’s where Luke Watt burnt two holes in my jacket
with his revolver,” he concluded.

Archie Wallace examined the holes in the coat without a word. Then he
lit a fresh cigar from the butt of an old one, returned the green shade
to the lamp and sat well back in his chair. He gazed at the lamp-shade
in meditative silence. His manner impressed Young Dan. Suddenly he
turned his glance upon his visitor and asked abruptly, “Can you cook?”

The nature of the question was so unexpected that Young Dan was far too
astonished to reply. He blushed and stared, wondering if he was being
made fun of.

“Can you cook?” repeated the deputy-sheriff.

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll oblige me by goin’ to the kitchen and gettin’ supper for
the two of us,” said the official. “Here are matches, and you’ll find a
lamp on the table. The kettle’s b’ilin’, the coffee-pot an’ fryin’ pan
are on the back of the stove, and there’s ham and eggs all ready set out
on the dresser. I’m a bum cook myself. There’s an old hound somewheres
in the house who is the only person besides myself who can stomach my
cookery. He won’t bite you if you treat him friendly. While you’re
gettin’ supper I’ll sit right here an’ study over what you told me. It
needs some study.”

So Young Dan started for the kitchen. In the narrow hall he met the old
hound, which seemed delighted with him and followed eagerly into the
kitchen. It was an extraordinary kitchen. All the dishes were jumbled up
on the table, and not one of them was clean. But the fire of dry
hardwood was burning clear in the stove and both pot and kettle were
full and boiling. He went briskly to work; and in half an hour all the
dishes were washed, the table was laid and supper was ready.

The deputy-sheriff swallowed his first cup of coffee in silence. Then he
said, “Jim Conley’s a trap-thief all right, all right—but you can’t
prove it on him. He’s a liar I reckon, and I know darned well you ain’t
a liar—but his word about that trap and whatever he took from it is as
good as yours to the Law. So I can’t round him up—but I can scare all
the blood and gin in his nose back to his rotten heart.”

“I guess that’ll be all he will need,” replied Young Dan.

Mr. Wallace nodded and devoured ham and eggs for five minutes or so with
undivided attention.

“As for Luke Watt—well, that feller is nigh as strong as he is
slippery,” he said, pouring more coffee. “He’s so danged crooked that he
had ought to’ve been thrown away with all the corkscrews when the
country went dry. Or he’d ought to of moved over into Quebec. He is
strong, too—but I reckon we got the goods on him all right, all right.
Do you think you could find that revolver of his you threw away?—or do
you reckon he’s maybe picked it up himself?”

“I guess I could find it; and I don’t think he has picked it up because
his eyes were shut and full of snow when I threw it away,” replied Young
Dan. “I was mad, you know, what with his shooting at me and everything;
and it was only the deep snow and my mitts that saved him from getting a
sight worse than he got.”

“Do you want to arrest him for assault with intent to kill, an’ for
sellin’ gin; or do you want to run him out of the country on a pair of
cold feet?” asked the deputy-sheriff. “Take your choice, Dan.”

“Neither,” said the youth. “Neither, if we can scare him enough to
handle him the way I want to. If we can scare him into keeping the law
and doing something for Jim Conley’s wife and kids, I’ll be satisfied.”

“But we got him cold,” said the other. “You’ve done a smart piece of
work, Dan Evans. You’ve caught Luke just how I’ve been tryin’ to catch
him this six months back. But what’s your idee? What’s this about
wantin’ that fat lubber to do something for Conley’s wife an’ kids?”

“They need help. Jim Conley’s no good. The way I figger it is, Luke Watt
cheated Conley on the price of that skin. Whatever the skin was, patch
or black, we know Conley didn’t get even as much as a third of the right
price. And if we can’t prove that the skin belonged to Andy Mace and me,
then it was Conley’s rightful property, in the law. So if we can shoot a
real scare into Luke Watt—a regular death-cold fright—then we can make
him hand over the rest of the price of that skin, in groceries and boots
and clothing, to Jim Conley’s family. I’ll pick out the goods—enough to
last them till well on in the spring; and Watt’ll have to pay to have
them packed in to Conley’s camp. That’s my idea.”

The deputy-sheriff drank more coffee, scratched his chin and relit the
half-smoked cigar.

“You’re a philanthropist, Dan Evans,” he said. “You’re like your uncle
Bill Tangler in that.”

Young Dan let that pass with a noncommittal smile, for the word was one
which he had somehow overlooked in his explorations into literature. But
he felt that it was nothing to be ashamed of if the same could be said
of his uncle Bill Tangler.

“And maybe you’re right,” continued Mr. Wallace. “You know the situation
and I don’t, so it’s for you to say. As for the scare—if we find that
revolver we can scare Watt into totin’ a year’s supply of grub all the
way in to the Right Prong of Oxbow on his own fat back. And I reckon
he’ll keep the law after we’ve had a chat with him, for he ain’t a fool.
He’d sooner keep it along with his freedom than behind stone walls and
iron bars, you can betcher hat on that. But there are other sides to the
question to be considered. There’s no sense in jumpin’ before we look
all round for the dryest place to land. So far you’ve considered nothin’
but Jim Conley’s family’s need of grub and clothes. Well, that’s all
right in its way, and as far as it goes—but it will sure encourage Jim
Conley to sit at home all day and eat his head off. If he can’t drink
he’ll eat. A feller like him has just got to be doin’ something with his
mouth all the time; and I reckon he ain’t got brains enough to do much
talkin’. If feedin’ his wife and children will make a good citizen out
of him, then you’re dead right. But what about Luke Watt? We can scare
him into keeping the law as far as bootleggin’ gin is concerned, but we
can’t stop him cheatin’ in his trade every chance he gets. We couldn’t
make a good citizen of him in a hundred years. And that ain’t all. Not
by a long shot! Suppose I nab him in my official capacity, with his
number right in my pocket? What’ll folks say about Deputy-Sheriff Archie
Wallace then, d’ye think? They’ll say that Deputy-Sheriff Archie Wallace
is an all-fired smart, able, slick and deserving officer! Yes, Dan
Evans, it will sure mean feathers a foot high in my hat. And what will
be said about the young trapper from ’way back in the woods who did the
brain-work and took the risk? They’ll say you’re the best detective
outside the covers of a book they ever heard tell of. You’ll be a big
man with your name in the newspapers—and I’ll be the next high sheriff
of this county. That’s _my_ idea.”

“And it is a good idea,” replied Young Dan, reflectively. “It sounds
mighty good to me, of course. I’d like fine to see my name in the papers
as a detective, but I wasn’t figgering on anything like that. I want to
see that woman and her children decently fed. I don’t like her much,
mind you—but she’s sure a courageous mother, and I pity her, and so
would you if you knew Jim Conley. If we could scare him into earning a
living for his family, then I’d certainly like your idea better’n mine.”

“But you ain’t reckonin’ on makin’ Luke Watt support Conley’s wife and
kids all the rest of their lives, surely?” returned Mr. Wallace. “That
would be goin’ a mite too far with it. He’d sooner go to jail than do
that, I wouldn’t wonder. No, that won’t do! You got to make Conley get
to work. Philanthropy’s a fine thing, but justice is a fine thing, too.”

“You’re right, Mr. Wallace—and you are the deputy-sheriff. I guess
whatever you say goes. All I want to do is scare Jim Conley off of our
trap-lines, and help his family, and smash that hound, Luke Watt.”

“Then we’d best sleep on it, an’ have a look for that revolver first
thing in the morning,” said the other. “Maybe we’ll hit on a way of
reconciling your hunger for philanthropy with my thirst for fame and
promotion.”

“They sound as if they’d ought to pull all right in double-harness,”
remarked the youth, with that smile which reminded the deputy-sheriff of
Bill Tangler.

The deputy-sheriff wakened his guest at the first peep of day; and after
breakfast they set out in a red pung behind a long-gaited
three-year-old. Young Dan left his skins locked securely away in one of
Mr. Wallace’s closets, with the understanding that Wallace would ship
them to an honest fur-dealer immediately upon his return from the
present expedition. This arrangement would be sure to prove advantageous
to Young Dan and his partner, for Archie Wallace, as deputy-sheriff of
the county, would obtain a higher price for the furs than a private
trapper could possibly make any buyer consider reasonable. They stopped
near the scene of the trapper’s swift and violent encounter with the
storekeeper from Bean’s Mill, slipped on their snowshoes and entered the
slanting field. Mr. Wallace regarded the deep marks of the struggle with
chuckles of satisfaction. Then Young Dan led him about thirty yards away
to a very small cut in the snow and dug up Luke Watt’s revolver. He
handed the weapon to Wallace, who wiped it off, tied it up carefully in
his handkerchief and stowed it away in his pocket.

[Illustration]




                               CHAPTER X

                            FEAR OF THE LAW


The road between Harlow and Bean’s Mill was all that hoof and heart
could wish, and the long-gaited three-year-old was sound in wind and
limb and as fresh as the frosty morning. It was still early in the day
when the deputy-sheriff drew rein in front of Luke Watt’s store. He
jumped out and hitched the strawberry mare to a well-chewed post and
threw a blanket and a goat-skin robe over her. Then he cleared the frost
from his eye-lashes, pulled his fur mittens off and threw them into the
pung and rubbed his bare hands briskly together as if to limber up the
fingers. Then he sank his hands deep into the roomy side-pockets of his
fur coat.

“You keep your collar turned up an’ your cap pulled down and sit right
there till you get the high sign,” he said to Young Dan.

Young Dan nodded his muffled head. He sat stuffily in the pung, very
bulky and shapeless in an old coonskin coat of the deputy-sheriff’s,
looking as much like “The World’s Fattest Lady” as anything else in the
world—much more like that than like a lanky young trapper of fur.

As Archie Wallace pushed open the door of the store he closed his eyes
tight, the quicker to readjust them to the gloom within from the
brightness without. As he closed the door behind him with his left
elbow—for still his right hand was in his pocket—he opened his eyes and
looked at everything in one wide-eyed glance. He saw, in that first
comprehensive look, everything in the store—the counter, the fancy
groceries on the dirty shelves, the barrels and crates, the baskets of
eggs, the chewing-gum and depressing cigars in the little show-case, the
boots and suspenders and amazing neckties hanging aloft, and Mrs. Watt
and three customers—everything which he had expected to see except Luke
Watt. He made his way to the counter and Mrs. Watt and wished her a
rather grim good-morning. His professional manner was always uppermost
when he was actually engaged in the final stages of a piece of
professional work. He felt that he owed this alike to the Law and to the
probable offenders against the Law.

“I want to speak to your husband, Luke Watt,” he continued.

Mrs. Watt, who was as like Mr. Watt in appearance and character as a
woman could be, changed color swiftly and at the same time met the man’s
grim gaze with a hard and brazen glint in her eyes.

“You sure ain’t forgot my husband’s name, Archie Wallace,” she said.
“What are you puttin’ on yer depity-sheriff airs for this mornin’? You
sound like you was huntin’ for trouble.”

“You’ve said it,” returned Mr. Wallace, drily. “Where is Luke?”

“At home in bed, sick with a cold; an’ that’s where he has been since
yesterday afternoon,” she answered. “You can go over to the house an’
make a call on him in bed, if yer business is that pressin’”; and then,
with a swift change from effrontery to curiosity in eyes and voice, she
leaned across the counter and whispered, “What’s the trouble?”

“Exactly what you suspect, Mrs. Watt—an’ maybe quite a lot more,” he
replied, whispering in his turn from the force of example rather than by
intention. “Now I’ll just step over to the house an’ have a talk with
him.”

“Wait,” she whispered, closing her fingers on the sleeve of his coat.
“Tell me, have you got his number? Have you caught him? Tell me!”

Wallace withdrew his sleeve from her grasp and turned and left the store
without another word. His face was drawn for a second with an expression
of sickening distaste, for he had seen, quick and sure as lightning,
exactly what the woman had in her mind. He knew that she salted away the
money which her husband corkscrewed out of the rural population; and he
had just now seen her as a rat that contemplates the advisability of
leaving a sinking ship. But she was a cautious sort of rat and wanted to
make dead sure that the ship was going down before she swarmed down the
anchor-chain and swam ashore. This nautical figure of thought came pat
to Mr. Wallace, for he had sailed four deep-sea voyages out of St. John
in his eighteenth and nineteenth years.

“Mrs. Watt says he’s sick abed with a cold,” he informed Young Dan. “It
may be so, for what would be the sense of her tellin’ that lie? That’s
the house. If you’ll stable the mare across there at Murphy’s, I’ll go
to Watt’s—and you follow me as soon as you’ve stood the mare in the
stall. Open the front door an’ walk right in and up the stairs.”

The deputy-sheriff found Luke Watt in bed. The store-keeper was very red
of face and watery of eye, and there were dark bruises on his brow.

“Your wife said I’d find you here, sick abed,” said Wallace.

“Well, she told ye the truth,” replied Watt. “What d’ye want, Archie?”

“You, Luke Watt. This is an official visit I’m makin’ you.”

“Me? Official? Who’s the joke on? Tell me when to laugh, will you?”

“Yes, you; and when the time to laugh comes I’ll do it. You’re done.”

“And you’re crazy! I’m done, am I? Who d’ye reckon did me?”

Wallace heard the front door open and close and then a light, slow step
on the stairs. He opened the bed-room door and looked out.

“Luke Watt wants to know who did him,” he said. “Come along in and show
him, an’ then maybe he’ll believe me.”

He returned to the side of the bed; and, a moment later, Young Dan
entered the room in his bulky muffling of furs and shut the door behind
him. Luke Watt’s face twitched. The trapper slipped out of his borrowed
coat and removed his cap and mittens and looked at the man in the bed.
Watt made a bluff at returning that look—but it was a weak bluff. His
face twitched again, and he closed his eyes and sneezed. Young Dan
noticed the bruised forehead and was glad of it.

“I’d of marked you worse than that if it hadn’t been for the snow and
the mitten on my hand,” he said. “But I guess you got enough!”

“He must of got some snow down his neck an’ caught cold from it,” said
the deputy-sheriff. “But if you’d killed ’im, Dan Evans, you wouldn’t of
done more’n I would have done in your place. I wouldn’t of blamed you.”

“What are you two talkin’ about, anyhow?” demanded Watt, in a voice
husky with cold and emotion. “And who’s this here young jay?”

“Cut it out!” retorted Wallace. “I know the whole story, right back to
the fox you bought off of Jim Conley, and I’ve seen the piece of paper
you used to figger out the price of it on—the price, mostly in gin. And
I’ve got the gun in my pocket you used on Dan Evans here when you tried
to stop him from gettin’ into Harlow. You ain’t as cute as I thought you
were, but you’re a long sight more dangerous. I never reckoned on you
tryin’ murder.”

“It’s a lie!” cried the other. “Git out, or I’ll have the law on you!”

“Not so fast,” continued Wallace, calmly. “I had a talk with your
friend, Tom Marl, about one o’clock this mornin’, after I’d heard Dan
Evans’s story. Tom was scared. He thought the two shots you fired had
hit the mark. He’s quite a talker, Tom Marl is—when fear loosens his
tongue.”

All the color went from Luke Watt’s face and again he closed his eyes.

“Attempted robbery under arms, and assault with intent to kill—it would
make an exciting case,” continued Wallace, slowly and clearly. “It would
give the smart lawyers a fine chance to show their smartness, some
tryin’ to hang you and others tryin’ to save your neck—but the smartest
lawyers in the province couldn’t save you from five years in pen. The
liquor case won’t be near so exciting. We’ve got you so cold there the
lawyers wouldn’t find anything to argue about.”

Watt continued to lie with his eyes tight shut, breathing heavily.

“I guess I’d have to make a charge against him for the assault and all,
and for firing two shots at my ribs, wouldn’t I?” said Young Dan, in an
unsteady voice. He felt unsteady. The sight of the big man’s fear and
despair shook him strangely.

The storekeeper opened his eyes.

“Ain’t you made the charge agin me?” he cried. “Then don’t do it! Gimme
a chance! I was scart crazy. All I meant to do was to stop you an’ talk
you round. The gun kinder went off by accident. I swear it!”

The deputy-sheriff sighed and lit a cigar.

“How much did you get for that skin that you bought from Jim Conley?”
asked Young Dan.

“That skin?—why, I ain’t sold it yet,” answered Watt, thinking hard and
speaking slowly and uncertainly.

“In that case, I’ll take a look at it and value it,” said Wallace.

“You needn’t trouble yerself,” said the other, sullenly. “I got five
hundred dollars for it.”

“Then you still owe the original owner of the skin four hundred an’ some
odd dollars,” said the trapper.

“Business is business,” protested the man in bed. “I bought the skin an’
I sold it; an’ now I wisht it had been burnt to a cinder before I ever
seen it!”

“Give me four hundred dollars for Jim Conley’s wife and kids and I won’t
make that charge against you,” said Young Dan.

The deputy-sheriff, who had been gazing reflectively out of the window,
turned at that with an air of decision and regarded the trapper with
level eyes.

“I’m goin’ to be downright and honest with both of you,” he said. “It’s
nothing to me if you get four hundred dollars out of Watt for Conley’s
wife and kids, or if you don’t. It’s no concern of mine. I don’t care
what dicker you make with him, or if he keeps his end of the bargain or
goes back on it—but I tell you both that whatever happens, he is pinched
for selling gin. He is pinched good and hard for selling gin, and he’ll
go to jail for it, without the option of a fine, as sure as my name is
Wallace; and I’ll put a constable into this house to guard him until
he’s fit to go to jail and await his trial.”

“But I won’t make the other charge, if you’ll give me four hundred for
Jim Conley’s wife and babies,” said the trapper to Watt.

“I’ll do that,” replied Watt. “Go over to the store an’ fetch my wife,
will you? She takes care of the money.”

Young Dan went to the store and found a young woman with a red head in
charge. She informed him that Mrs. Watt had gone to the mill on business
and wouldn’t be back for half an hour, perhaps. He returned to Luke
Watt’s bedroom with this information.

“She ain’t got no business over to the mill,” said Watt. “Maybe she’s in
the house somewheres. Take a look round the house for her, will you, an’
tell her I want to see her quick.”

So Young Dan left the bed-room again and searched the house high and
low. The only living thing he found in it was a cat in the kitchen; but
he saw melted snow here and there on the kitchen floor. He looked
closely at the damp marks and knew them for the tracks of feet shod in
arctics. He saw that the tracks began at the outer door of the kitchen,
crossed to the big dresser and returned to the door. He opened the door,
which was not locked, and looked into the cold shed. He saw a few small
films of pressed snow on the dusty floor of the shed, between the
shed-door and the kitchen-door. He went back to the big dresser and
gazed curiously and eagerly for a few seconds at its dish-laden shelves
and the closed doors of its cupboards, then returned to the room
upstairs and said that the house was empty.

“But there’s been a woman in the kitchen,” he added. “In and out again,
with snow on her feet. She wore arctic overboots, whoever she is.”

“That’s her!” exclaimed Luke Watt weakly.

He got out of bed and put on trousers and coat over his nightshirt and
thrust his feet into slippers. He shivered and sat down on the edge of
the bed. His eyes of no particular color were miserable with dread.

“Take a look in the stable,” he whispered. “See if my trottin’ mare’s
there.”

The trapper went out to the stable, by way of the kitchen and the shed.
The stall was empty. The harness had gone from its pegs. There were
fresh tracks of hoofs and runners in the snow in front of the stable
door.

“She must of tied the bells,” he said. “She seems to know what she’s
about, whatever it is. And I wonder what it is?”

He went back to Watt and the deputy-sheriff with the news that the
trotting mare was gone from the stable, harness and pung and all.

Luke Watt turned a tragic, despairing and murderous gaze on Mr. Wallace.
“You fool!” he cried, hysterically. “Why couldn’t you keep yer silly
mouth shut! You told her how ye’d come to pinch me, an’ how I hadn’t a
chance to git clear—an’ so she’s up an’ lit out with all the money!
That’s what she’s done! Lit out with every dollar!”

With that explosion the storekeeper sank back across the bed and covered
his face with his hands. The deputy-sheriff and the trapper exchanged
embarrassed glances.

“He’s lying,” whispered Wallace. “He’s tryin’ to fool you, Dan. There
ain’t a woman in the world would do a trick like that on her husband;
and Mrs. Watt couldn’t even if she wanted to.”

He leaned over Luke Watt and shook him roughly by a shoulder.

“Where’d you bank your money?” he asked.

“I didn’t bank it nowhere,” mumbled Watt, still with his face in his
hands. “She didn’t bank it, neither. She salted it away.”

“Where’d she salt it away?”

“I dunno.”

“You’re lying, Luke Watt—or you’re the biggest an’ softest boob I ever
heard tell of.”

“I’ll bet she kept it somewhere in the dresser in the kitchen,” said
Young Dan. “That’s where the tracks led to—to the dresser and out
again.”

The storekeeper jumped to his feet and ran heavily from the room, crying
“Let’s go look.” The others followed him close.

Young Dan took charge of the investigation of the dresser. All the
dishes were removed from the shelves and every inch of woodwork was
searched for a hidden drawer or sliding panel—but all in vain. Luke Watt
sat down beside the stove and shivered and wept. Then Young Dan and Mr.
Wallace emptied the four pot-closets in the bottom of the dresser of
dozens of pots, pans, sauce-pans and frying-pans, and Young Dan crawled
into each in turn and rapped here and there and everywhere with
enquiring knuckles. In the fourth closet he found his reward. Without
withdrawing his head he passed back and out a section of the bottom of
the closet. Mr. Wallace took the piece of dry pine board in his hand and
showed it to Luke Watt. Luke stared at it and ceased his weeping. Then a
section of board from the floor of the kitchen appeared from beneath the
trapper’s elbow. He withdrew his head and shoulders from the closet a
few seconds later and squatted back on his heels.

“Empty,” he said.

Yes, the hiding-place beneath the floor was empty. The deputy-sheriff
found it empty. Even Luke Watt’s hungry fingers failed to find anything
in it.

“An’ if there was a dollar in it there was twenty thousand,” whispered
Watt, in a stunned voice.

“There don’t live another woman in the world would play a trick like
that on her man,” said Mr. Wallace. “No matter how bad he was, she
wouldn’t play him down like that. It beats anything I ever heard of.”

“Reckon yer right,” replied the storekeeper, listlessly. “Eliza ain’t no
ordinary woman. You hadn’t ought to told her yer business with me.”

He sounded like a man talking in his sleep.

“I guess you’re in trouble enough, Luke Watt,” said Young Dan. “Well, as
far as I’m concerned, you’re no worse off than if you hadn’t tried to
stop me with a gun. That’s forgotten.”

The dazed storekeeper went back to bed; and Archie Wallace supplied a
cook and a muscular constable to feed him and hold him until he was in
fit health to be removed to the county jail.

On their way through to Dan’l Evans’s farm behind the long-gaited
strawberry mare, the deputy-sheriff and Young Dan bought as much food as
two good men could pack a day’s journey from Amos Bissing at the Bend.
Mr. Bissing was deeply impressed by Young Dan’s company and appearance.
He asked a great many questions and received a good many answers—but not
a single answer to his questions as to the deputy-sheriff’s reasons for
touring the country in Young Dan’s company. He could see easily enough
by the manners of the two that their relations were entirely friendly.

When the strawberry mare passed the kitchen windows of the Evans farm,
and Young Dan was recognized by every member of the family and Mr.
Wallace was recognized by the father, amazement and apprehension flamed
in every heart.

“He’s a policeman, I tell ye!” exclaimed Dan’l for the third time in
quick succession, flattered by the panicky effect of his words. “He’s
the sheriff from Harlow. Young Dan’s been too smart for his own good at
last, I cal’late. Them fool books an’ his Tangler brains has tripped him
by the heels at last. Wonder what he done?”

Then the kitchen door opened and Young Dan entered with the tall man
close behind him. He threw aside his cap and embraced his mother; and at
the first clear glimpse of his face she knew that her Daniel senior had
been mistaken again.

They remained at the farm for supper, and the night and breakfast. Dan’l
Evans was greatly relieved, of course, to know that his son was not an
offender against any law—but he was not happy. Everything was too right
for his complete enjoyment. There was too much talk on the
deputy-sheriff’s part to suit him, of the virtues of Bill Tangler and
the great thing Young Dan had done; and Young Dan, was too well pleased
with himself and the deputy-sheriff; and Mrs. Evans made altogether too
much of both the visitors and had more to say about the intellectual
qualities of her own family than could be expected to please a husband
of Dan’l’s disposition. When he knocked and belittled and sneered, he
was either ignored entirely or bluntly contradicted. When he advanced
the theory that Young Dan had been guilty of an error in judgment in
jumping so quick at Luke Watt, and cited the two bullet-holes in the
youth’s coat as proof of the mistake, the deputy-sheriff thought that he
was joking and laughed heartily.

“You’re a dry humorist, Mr. Evans,” he exclaimed. “The driest I ever
met. That’s good—that about the holes in Dan’s coat. You sure do give a
new and uncommon slant to a thing.”

This puzzled Dan’l, giving him food for silent thought to last him for
the remainder of the evening.

Young Dan and Mr. Wallace set out for the Right Prong country after an
early breakfast, on their snow-shoes, with forty-pound packs on their
shoulders, leaving the strawberry mare in Dan’l Evans’s charge. It was a
windless clear day, and the snow was well settled. Young Dan led the way
at his best pace—but he did not have to stop once to let Archie Wallace
catch up to him. The fact was, he had to put on an extra spurt every now
and then to keep the tails of his snowshoes from being stepped on.
That’s the kind of man Archie Wallace was.

They found both old men at the camp in fine spirits and Andy Mace’s
rheumatism greatly improved. Andy cooked a masterpiece of a supper; and
after supper Archie Wallace told the story of Young Dan’s adventures
with Luke Watt in his best style. At the conclusion of the narrative,
Pete Sabatis turned the glance of his single eye from the face of Young
Dan to that of Andy Mace and slowly nodded his head twice.

“Guess you size ’im up right, Andy,” he said.

Young Dan blushed with pleasure, yet pretended not to have seen or heard
this passage of intelligence. To be accepted as an able man by Pete
Sabatis and to measure up to the heroic standards of earlier
generations, these were triumphs which might well expand the heart and
redden the cheek of even an older man than Young Dan.

After breakfast the deputy-sheriff and Young Dan went north to Jim
Conley’s cabin, heavy-laden with their contributions toward the support
of that worthless fellow’s wife and children. Just before coming into
view of the cabin, Mr. Wallace halted and the trapper took to the brush
beside the trail. Wallace stood motionless for five minutes, then
advanced. Within a second of sighting the little hut of logs he glimpsed
the swift flash of a face at the little window. He went forward without
haste and knocked on the door. It was opened to him by the woman.

“Good mornin’, m’am,” he said, standing his rifle against the edge of
the door and lowering his pack to the threshold. “Here’s some grub for
you, with the compliments of Dan Evans.”

The woman stared at him, motionless and silent.

“Is Jim round anywheres handy?” he asked. “I’d like to speak to him.”

“It was him sent ye here—that young fool, Dan Evans!” she exclaimed.
“Why don’t he mind his own business? Can’t ye let Jim be? He’s workin’
fine now that the gin’s all gone. Can’t ye leave him be?”

“What’s he workin’ at, m’am?”

“Trappin’, that’s what.”

“But whose traps?”

Her face paled. Quick as a flash she reached out an arm, snatched his
cased rifle from where it stood and stepped back into the room. Mr.
Wallace smiled, raised the pack of provisions from the threshold,
carried it into the cabin and closed the door behind him. He crossed the
room in four strides and opened another door; and there stood Conley,
facing it, with both hands held high in air and a rifle in one hand.
Behind him stood Young Dan.

“Come along in,” said the deputy-sheriff.

Conley obeyed; and young Dan came close at his heels and shut the door.
Wallace took the rifle from Conley and his own from the woman. Then he
turned to Young Dan and said, “You’ve got something to say to these
folks, I believe. Fire away.”

“It’s this,” said Young Dan, looking coldly from the man to the woman.
“I’m just about sick of supplying you with grub. A wolf would feel more
gratitude than either of you. So this is the last time; and if ever I
call again with the deputy-sheriff, there’ll be trouble for you. We’ve
arrested Luke Watt for selling gin, and he is going to jail for it. Oh,
yes, I know all about that fox skin! Stick to yer own trap-lines from
now on, Jim Conley, and trade yer furs for food instead of hard liquor,
and I’ll leave you alone. But make one more break at me or my traps, and
I’ll land you where you can talk it over with Luke Watt. Here’s more
grub—the last I bother to tote in to you—and that’s all I’ve got to say.
Come along, Mr. Wallace. Let’s get out into the fresh air quick.”

They turned away and left the man and woman and bewildered children
standing silent and motionless.

“I didn’t suspect it was in you to be so sharp with them,” remarked
Archie Wallace. “What riled you?”

“Conley tried to slip a knife into me after he’d put up his hands,”
replied Young Dan.

“Well, I reckon they’ll be good from now on, so far as you’re
concerned,” said Wallace. “You scared ’em. You pretty nigh scared me.”

They were half-way back to Bill Tangler’s camp when the deputy-sheriff
halted and lit a cigar.

“You’re a wizard, Dan Evans,” he said. “A trapper needs to be smart, but
not as far-sighted an’ clear-thinkin’ as you. The Government will be
glad to pay you for anything you do—so will you lend me a hand now an’
then, when I’m up against something too big for me to swing alone?”

“Sure,” said Young Dan.

“That’s a bargain!” exclaimed Mr. Wallace; and they shook hands there in
the white trail.



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