[Illustration: Cover art]



[Frontispiece: (Homer Steeves, Flora, Jim (on sled), with dogs)]



  THE LURE OF PIPER'S GLEN

  BY

  THEODORE GOODRIDGE ROBERTS



  _A Pocket Copyright_



  GARDEN CITY        NEW YORK
  GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC.
  1925




  COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
  AT
  THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.




CONTENTS


I. The Cock of the River

II. Young Todhunter

III. Piper's Glen

IV. The Road to Piper's Glen

V. The Cock of the Road

VI. Games--Aboveboard and Otherwise

VII. New Business Connections

VIII. The Queer Old Woman

IX. An Awkward Situation

X. The Widow's Mite

XI. The Westward Trail

XII. Unforgivable

XIII. The Wind on the Barren

XIV. The Man-Hunter

XV. Tricky Plays




The Lure of Piper's Glen



CHAPTER I

THE COCK OF THE RIVER

When the bottoms drop out of the logging-roads, the crews leave the
camps about the headwaters of Racket River and return to their
scattered homes, leaving the winter's cut on the "brows."  A few
weeks later, when all the melted snow of the hills is rushing along
the watercourses, lifting and bursting the rotted ice, and the piles
of brown logs on the steep banks go rolling and thundering down into
roaring waters, the more active and daring of the workers return to
duty with the harassed timber.  Now they wear well-greased boots
instead of oily shoepacks and larrigans--boots with high tops
strapped securely around the leg, and strong heels and thick soles.
In the sole and heel of each boot are fixed fifty caulks or short
steel spikes--a hundred teeth for every "stream-driver" to bite a
foothold with into running logs.

The task of keeping the "drive" moving down the swirling and tortuous
channel of the upper reaches of Racket River calls for skill and
agility and strength and hardihood, and frequently for a high degree
of stark physical courage.  The water is as cold as the sodden ice
which still drifts upon it, crushed and churned by the grinding logs.
It sloshes high along the wooded banks, tearing tangles of alders out
by the roots and undermining old cedars until they totter and fall
and swirl away on the flood.  To plunge hip-deep into that torrent to
clear some log caught broadside to the rush by snag or tree or rock,
calls for hardihood of spirit and an iron constitution.  Where one
log catches and is permitted to remain stationary, others catch, pile
up, plunge and rear and dive, filling the channel to its rocky bed
and blocking it from bank to bank with criss-crossed timber.  The mad
river, crowned with more logs and ice, strikes and recoils and backs
up behind the jamb: spray flies over it; clear water spouts from it;
the twisted timbers heave and groan and splinter.  To go out on to
such a barrier as this, and find and free the key-logs with a peavy,
calls for all the qualities of a seasoned riverman and the courage of
a veteran soldier into the bargain.

On Racket River, Mark Ducat, of Piper's Glen, was the most daring and
successful negotiator of troublesome logs jambed or jambing or
running free.  He was cock of the upper river, as his father, Peter,
had been before him, and his grandfather, Hercules Ducat, had been
before Peter.  For five years, on five successive drives, he had
shown his superiority to his fellow wielders of peavy and pikepole as
a "cuffer" of running logs and a breaker of jambs.  And not only
that.  He was as nimble with his feet and hands, and as fearless in
diversion as in toil.  There were stronger men than Mark on the
river, but there was no man possessed of Mark's combination of
strength and speed and nerve.  The stronger fellows were too heavy to
be speedy.  He stood five feet and eleven inches in his spiked boots
and weighed one hundred and seventy-eight pounds.

New men joined the drive each spring for the brief and well-paid job,
and likely lads arrived at their full growth and an appreciation of
their own powers; and so it happened that Mark Ducat's title never
went a year unchallenged.  But still he was Cock of the River.

After the first rush of the drive one spring, the boss left Mark and
a gang of nine "white-water boys" to keep the logs clear at
Frenchman's Elbow, the worst point for jambs in ten miles of bad
water.  Mark was foreman and Joe Bender was cook.  All the others
were Racket River men, with the exception of a big stranger with a
black beard who said that he was from Quebec.

Charlie Lavois was the stranger's name.  Underdone beef was his
favorite diet and overproof whisky was his favorite drink.  He had
chopped throughout the previous winter in a big camp on the Gateneau
and, to avoid making himself conspicuous, to keep his daily cut down
to normal, he had swung his ax only with one hand; and because six
men had once attacked him with knives and sticks of stove-wood after
a game of forty-fives in which his skill had emptied all their
pockets, and he had killed two of them and disabled the others in
self defence, he had thought it advisable to leave his native
Province for a little while--all this by his own telling.

"Ye may be that good in Quebec, Charlie Lavois, but any six yearlin'
babies on the Racket River country in this here old Province of New
Brunswick could knock the stuffin' out o' ye with nothin' in their
hands but their rattles an' little rubber suckin'-nipples," said Joe
Bender, the cook.

This sally of rustic wit was well received by the lads of Racket
River, but Mr. Lavois took exception to it.

"Maybe ye could do it yerself," retorted Lavois.

"Maybe I could, but it ain't my job," returned Bender.  "My job's
keepin' the blankets dry an' the beans an' biscuits hot for champeens
like yerself.  I ain't Cock o' the River."

"Cock of the river?" queried Lavois, spitting into the fire.  "Where
I come from, this here dribble o' dirty water'd be named a brook an'
the cock o' it would be called a cockerel."

"That's me," said Mark Ducat.  "Fetch a lantern an' a deck of cards,
Joe.  Kick up the fire, Jerry Brown.  We'll spread a blanket an'
commence with a little game of forty-fives, Mister; an' ye'll find
this cockerel right with ye all the way from flippin' a card to
manslaughter."

They played for three hours, at the end of which period of stress the
man from Quebec threw the cards into the fire and sent a volley of
blasting oaths after them.  He was a poor loser.

By morning the logs were running thin, for the weight of the drive
had passed, and so it was an easy matter to keep the crooked channel
clear at Frenchman's Elbow.

Charlie Lavois leapt onto a big stick of spruce, with a pikepole held
horizontally across his chest, and turned it slowly over and over
under his spiked feet as it wallowed heavily along with the brown
current.  Mark Ducat took a short run and a flying jump and landed on
the other end of the same log, facing Lavois.  He also carried a
pikepole horizontally in his two hands.  The log sank lower; and now
it turned with increasing speed to the tread of four spiked feet
biting into its tough bark; and still it continued on its way through
sloshing ripple and spinning eddy.  The rest of the gang followed
down both shores, shouting in derision and encouragement.  Even Joe
Bender deserted his post to see the Cock of the River and the
champion from Quebec twirl a log together.

"Grand day," said Mark, grinning.

"Not so bad," agreed Charlie Lavois.

"Two's one too many for this log," said Mark.  "I'm gettin' my feet
wet."

"Yer dead right.  But ye'll be wet clear over yer ears in ten
seconds," retorted the other.

Then Mark began to jump with both feet, slowing the spinning of the
big log jerk by jerk and finally reversing the spin.  Again he trod
the log, but now from left to right; and Lavois was forced to conform
his movements to the reversed motion.  The men ashore yelled their
approval.  Their man had "jerked the spin" away from the big
Quebecker.  Then Lavois commenced jumping in a furious effort to
check and reverse against Mark.  Mark trod against him with what
appeared to be all his strength and skill for thirty seconds or more;
and then, without so much as the flicker of an eye to signal his
intention, he jumped swiftly around and reversed the stamp and thrust
of his flying feet.  The tortured log spun with sudden incredible
speed--a speed entirely unexpected by Charles Lavois.  Charlie's
feet, stamping mightily against stubborn resistance, and suddenly
relieved of their resistance, went around with the log; and Charlie
followed his feet.  The log reared high, but Ducat skipped along its
lifting back and brought it to a level keel.  A yell of joy went up
from the husky fellows ashore.  The man who had gained his title by
sousing them in the river had maintained it by sousing the man from
Quebec.

Lavois swam ashore and hastened upstream to the fire without a word.
There he pulled off his boots and coat, took a swig from a flask on
his hip and sat so close to the bank of red embers that steam arose
from him.  Mark Ducat rode the big log ashore, using the pike-pole
for a paddle.  He, too, made his way to Joe Bender's fire,
accompanied by such members of the gang as were on that side of the
river.  He, too, removed his coat and boots and sat close to the glow.

"Is there anything ye can do, Lavois, 'cept shoot off yer mouth about
what ye done on the Gateneau?" asked Mark.

"Did ye hear me speak o' playin' monkey-tricks on logs?" returned
Lavois.  "No, ye didn't.  Ye heard me tell how I knocked the
everlastin' lights out o' six full-growed men, an' Quebec men, at
that--real white-water boys."

"Do tell?  What d'ye fight with when ye get real riled?"

"Everything God give me an' most anything I kin lay me hands on."

"That suits me fine."

Both reached for their spiked boots.

"Boots is barred," said Joe Bender, who held a long-handled iron
stew-pan in his hairy right fist.  "Ye fight in yer socks, boys.
Axes, grindstones, peavy, rocks an' clubs an' knives is all barred
along with boots; an' the first one to reach for any sich article
gits soaked good an' plenty with this here stew-pan.  I ain't
Champeen Buster o' the Gateneau nor Cock o' Racket River, but I be a
ring-tailed roarin' Hell-an'-all with a stew-pan."

"That suits me, Joe," said Mark Ducat.

"I guess I kin do the job with me hands an' feet," said Lavois.

Both men stood up.  They faced each other, six feet apart.  Lavois
was older than Ducat by eight or ten years and heavier by close upon
twenty pounds.  But as Ducat was only twenty-six, both were young
men.  Ducat had a merry eye; he smiled, and his little black mustache
went up at the tips.  Lavois had sullen eyes and a wolfish grin.

Lavois jumped and kicked, quick as winking.  Mark got his chin out of
the way of destruction, but lost the skin of his right ear.  Lavois
gripped with both arms.  They writhed and staggered.  Mark had the
worst of that hold, but he knew what he was about.  He knew all the
old tricks of this dangerous game and possessed a lively imagination
for new ones.  He clung close and tight and let Lavois do the heavy
work.  Twice he was crushed to his knees, and twice he came up again,
each time as if for the last time.  And then, with a quick wrench and
a mighty effort, he backed Lavois into the fire.

Lavois wore four pairs of heavy socks, and unfortunately all were of
wool.  No pair was of asbestos.  He yelled and loosed his hold and
tried to jump aside, only to receive a bang on the nose.  He snatched
up his blistered feet and landed on his back across the red crown of
the fire.  Mark jumped the fire, pulled Lavois out, dragged him to
the river by his black beard and chucked him in.  He sizzled and
steamed as he struck the water.

Lavois finished out the drive with his feet in bandages.  He didn't
do another stroke of work; and whenever the gang moved, following the
tail of the drive down the crooked river, he went comfortably in the
boat along with the cook and the tin ovens and the gang's dunnage.
He was well treated and well fed; and when Ducat's gang overhauled
the boss at the mouth of the river, Mark gave Lavois his full time
and no one questioned it.  Lavois grinned.

"I wish ye'd hove me into the fire afore ye did," he said.




CHAPTER II

YOUNG TODHUNTER

Some hundred miles south of Piper's Glen, and across an international
boundary into the bargain, young James Todhunter had just heard the
news that college was out of the question; that his father's health
had broken down, and that it was most decidedly up to him to do
something in the way of earning a living.

"I can give you a small stake, Jim," his father said, "but it won't
be very much.  It is going to take a lot to take mother and me West
and I'll be out of things a long while, I am afraid.  How about it?"

James Todhunter came of a family of sportsmen--his father and his
favorite uncle had been big game hunters in their day--and he
received the news as a sportsman would; and, to his credit, with
never a thought of all that his prep. school prowess at athletics had
been going to mean to him at college.

"Fine," he said.  "I'll manage," with all the conviction in the world
and a total lack of ideas.

It was not till that night that the big idea came.  He'd always
wanted to go North to the logging country--North to the region where
his uncle had so often hunted and fished and felt the lure of the big
timber.  Why not go North and get a job?  His parents would be away,
he'd have a little money, and all the thoughtfully chosen kit he had
inherited from his uncle the year before.  The poor man had died
possessed of little else but guns of the best makes, equipment of
every known manufacture and sort for life in the wilds of every
continent.  It had been his passion, and he had spared no expense in
making his outfit perfect from a sportsman's point of view.  Much of
the assortment had never been used, but there it was, perfect in
every detail.

"I'd better take everything he had of his northern camping stuff,"
said young Todhunter to himself.  "You never know your luck."

His own luck seemed pretty fair, for the first man he interviewed--an
old friend of both his father and his uncle--knew the timber country
well; had camped and surveyed all over it, and was acquainted with
numerous guides, trappers, prospectors, and lumbermen.  He, in turn,
had a friend who thought young Todhunter might do worse than go to
Millbrook.

Millbrook was in the heart of the wilderness, thought of which
appealed most to young Jim Todhunter, and there also seemed to be a
business opportunity there.  A Mr. Hammond carried on a business in
timber and supplies at this pioneer outpost, where, according to his
uncle's friend, there were moose, caribou, deer, and bear right at
the door.  No doubt Hammond would welcome as assistant a young
American with a little capital, which might eventually be invested in
the business, although, of course, salary would be meager to start
with.

A rapid interchange of letters took place, and it ended in Hammond's
writing to say he'd find a place for a young chap with some capital
of his own--Jim's modest hundreds would go quite a way in the timber
country.  James's uncle's friend didn't know much of Hammond himself,
but "splendid fellows, all of them, in those virgin lands: big
hearted, big souled," he assured young Todhunter genially, and betook
himself to his own affairs.

Thus it was that one September day young James Todhunter found
himself being lurched along in the single passenger car of a single
track railway, eventually to reach Covered Bridge, the end of iron of
that particular system of transportation.

His baggage consisted of the pick of his late uncle's assortment and
certainly impressed the station-master at Covered Bridge.  Here was a
picnic-basket, as large as a cabin-trunk and as full of ingenious
complications as a lady's dressing-bag.  Here was a collapsible bath
and an Arctic sleeping-bag.  Rifle and gun each reposed in a large
case of hard, yellow leather.  Here were boots for every phase of
life in the North as imagined and experienced by his uncle, a
trunkful of them.  Here were fishing-rods in canvas cases--a rod for
each of every size and variety of finny gamester, from the tarpoon to
the sardine.  The other necessities of life--clothing, sheath-knives,
cases of razors, field-glasses, a photographic outfit, revolvers, a
spirit-lamp, and so on--were contained in three large trunks and two
smaller cases, also of leather.

The station-master, who was also the telegraph operator, was a busy
young man.  He had very little time to devote to Jim even after the
engine had been reversed on a turntable and had gone away, pushing
cars of sawn lumber and cord-wood before it.  He walked around the
pyramid of Jim's baggage on the open platform seven times, only to
retire each time, without a word, to the little red shack that was
evidently his office.

Jim sat on one of his boxes and waited for Mr. Hammond.  He smoked
cigarettes and surveyed the scene.  The September sun shone bright
upon the wooded hills, the rapid brown river, the narrow fields and
the gray bridge.  The foliage of maples and birches among the dark
green and purple of the forests was showing patches and dashes of red
and yellow.  There was a pleasant tang in the air suggestive of
wood-smoke and sun-steeped balsam and running water and frost-nipped
ferns.

The station-master came out of his shack for the eighth time.  Again
he walked around the formidable pile of baggage.  Then he paused and
looked Jim in the eye.

"Waitin' for someone?" he asked.

"Yes, for Mr. Hammond of Millbrook," answered Jim.

"Amos Hammond?"

"Yes."

"My name's Harvey White."

"Mine is James Todhunter."

"Ye're an American?"

"You bet."

"Had yer dinner?"

Jim hadn't, and he said so: and White invited him into the red shack,
where there was a stove with a fire in it.  The kettle was singing.
White made tea, set the table, brought a crock of baked beans from
the oven and an apple pie from the pantry and pushed a chair against
the back of Jim's legs.

"We can keep a look-out for Hammond through the window," he said.

Jim was hungry and the food vanished swiftly.

"Goin' into the woods from Millbrook?" asked White.

"Yes, I expect to, of course," replied Jim.

"Who's yer guide?  The Ducats up to Piper's Glen are slick men in the
woods, but it ain't always that any of 'em will take a sport into
their country."

Young Todhunter started to explain, then stopped.

"Well, ye're after moose, I guess, ain't you?" added White.

"I hope to go after moose, of course, and whatever other game you
have here--but my chief reason for coming is to work for Mr.
Hammond," answered Jim.

The section of pie which White was raising to his mouth fell from the
blade of his knife.  He stared for a moment, then lowered his glance
and his knife and resumed his interrupted consumption of pie.

"Why not?" asked Jim, who had two perfectly good eyes in his head.

"D'ye know him?" returned the other.

"I've never met him."

"Are you in business with him?"

"Not exactly.  Not yet, I mean to say: I'm to learn the business and
then I might invest something in it."

"Good wages?"

"Oh, nothing to speak of.  I'm new to business and the country, I
can't expect much to start.  I shall work with Mr. Hammond and get a
practical knowledge of the business and the conditions under which it
is carried on."

"Hell!"

"Say, what's wrong with Hammond?"

"You'll soon find out more'n I know, I guess.  Work's worth wages in
this country.  You don't look so darned green, neither.  Do you play
cards?";

"Cards?  Yes, I know a few games.  But about Hammond?  What sort of
person is he?"

"What sort would he be, to bring a lad like you up here to work for
him for almost nothing?  But it ain't no affair of mine!  D'ye know
black-jack?"

"Well, I've heard of it."

"All right."

White piled the dishes on a corner of the table and dealt from a pack
of cards very much the worse for wear.  Jim produced his cigarette
case, opened it and extended it.

Both young men were intent on the game when it was disturbed by the
opening of the door.  The air was blue with smoke, and Harvey White
was the first to look up from his hand.  Then Jim turned and saw the
intruder standing silent on the threshold.  Jim glanced back at his
host and was puzzled by the mixed expressions of chagrin and
amusement and defiance on the other's face.

"I'm lookin' for James Todhunter," said the stranger.

"That's my name," said Jim, standing up.  "Have you been sent for me
by Mr. Hammond of Millbrook?"

"Sent for ye?  I'm Amos Hammond," returned the man at the door.

"Oh!  I beg your pardon!" exclaimed Jim, and Harvey White sniggered.

"We'll move right along," said Hammond abruptly.  "We're late now."

A little core of heat began to glow in Jim's heart.

"Very well, but if we're late it's your fault," he said.

The tanned skin above Hammond's dark beared grayed for an instant,
then reddened, and the close eyes narrowed, and the lips twisted.  If
ever a man looked like swearing and didn't, it was Amos Hammond at
that moment.  He turned in silence and stepped out into the sunshine.

Young Todhunter shook hands cordially with White, thanked him for the
dinner and the entertainment, and followed the man from Millbrook to
where a heavy wagon and a team of big grays stood beside the platform.

"Which is your belongin's?" asked Hammond harshly, pausing beside the
imposing mound of baggage.

"All this stuff is mine," replied Jim casually.

"All yours?" cried Hammond, with a change of voice and eyes.  "If
they're filled with anything more valuable nor bricks, then they must
be worth a power of money.  You are blessed with a considerable share
of this world's goods, James Todhunter--but a humble and a contrite
heart is worth more than gold."

Jim felt embarrassed.

"I'm not rich, as you must know already, Mr. Hammond," he replied.
"These trunks and things contain nothing but my personal
belongings--clothing and that sort of things."

"Well, that's somethin'," returned Hammond.  "When I was yer age,
James, a quart measure would of held all of my personal clothin' I
didn't happen to be wearin' at the time.  You'd of done better to of
kep' yer money till you got here an' let me lay it out for you in
trade--but property is property."

The high wagon was soon loaded.  The load was secured with heavy
ropes.  Hammond and Jim took their places side by side on the board
which served as a seat, and the big grays settled into their padded
collars, straightened out the steel traces with a jangle and pulled
away from the platform.  Jim looked back over his shoulder and saw
the station-master watching through the window of the red shack.

The road dipped to the covered bridge.  The bridge was a long tunnel
of soft gloom and golden, dusty twilight.  The hoofs boomed on the
plank flooring; the roof showed a few pinpoints of sunshine and long
shafts of light slanted through cracks between the weather-warped
boards of the walls.  Amos Hammond looked as agreeable as his
peculiar cast of countenance permitted.  The road went up steeply a
distance of fifty yards or so, reached a level and swung along it to
the right, and ran northward between the brown river and the wooded
hillside.

"I spoke short when I first met you, James," said Hammond, giving
young Todhunter a swift glance and a crooked smile.  "I was right
glad to see you an' welcome you to Racket River--but I ain't no
dissembler.  A plain, downright man, rough, but honest: that's me an'
that's how ye'll always find me, my friend.  My anger flared when I
seen yer company an' yer occupation, James, but I ain't one to
condemn a young feller on sight.  Many a good man has been tempted.
Aye, an' many a godly man has played about the brink of the Pit of
Everlastin' Damnation in the days of his unregenerate youth."

This was language new to young Todhunter.  His first thought was that
it was a joke in a style of humor peculiar to Racket River, but a
glance at his companion's profile convinced him of the fact that it
was not an intentional joke, at least.  Then what was it?

"Ah--I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I don't follow you," he said.

"What would yer pa say if he knew?" asked Hammond.

"My father?  What about?"

"You were playin' cards with Harvey White: gamblin' with the devil,
riskin' everlastin' life for a few minutes of ungodly amusement."

"Oh, hold on.  White seems a good sort.  And as for gambling, there
wasn't even a nickel in sight."

"James, how were you riz?"

"Ah--I beg your pardon?"

"Rizzed?  Brought up?"

"Why, just like most fellows, I guess."

"Were you raised in the fear of the Lord?"

"I guess so.  Yes, of course."

"An' yet you risk yer immortal soul for a game of cards!"

Jim stared.

"Sorry, but I don't know what you're talking about," he said.  "I was
brought up in what I suppose you call the fear of the Lord, but what
have cards to do with it?  I was taught not to lie, not to let down
another fellow, not to cheat, never to fight a smaller man than
myself, or hit a man when he's down.  I was also brought up to
respect my elders--but I really must ask you to mind your own
business, Mr. Hammond."

"Hah!" exclaimed Hammond, twitching with astonishment.  "What's that
you said?"

"You heard me, I think," returned Jim calmly.

Hammond looked at him with an expression in his dark, close-set eyes
that was at once angry and calculating.

"It ain't neither civil nor wise to talk to me like that," he said.

"If you expect civility from me you must practice it," replied Jim,
deliberately meeting and returning the stare.

Hammond's eyes were small, black, and set close together.  One
contained a suggestion of a squint.  Jim's eyes were of normal size
and varying hues and shades and set wide.  They were gray now.  Their
look was peculiarly direct.  Hammond's were the first to waver and
slip aside.

The narrow road dipped and rose.  The woods sloped down to it on the
left, and on the right the wooded bank dipped steeply to the river.
The big grays trotted wherever the road was level.

For twenty minutes after the battle of eyes, Amos Hammond drove in
silence, looking straight ahead, and James Todhunter sat in silence
beside him and studied the landscape with interest and appreciation.
At last Hammond began to hum a lugubrious tune.  From that he passed
to a livelier one.  He ceased humming suddenly and took to whistling.
He dropped that as suddenly and sighed profoundly.

"After all's said an' done, a man is only young once," he said.

Jim brightened and smiled.

"What about second childhood?" he returned.

Hammond laughed and smote his knee.  His laugh was broken, abrupt,
like the yapping of a dog.  But it was quite evident to Jim that he
was trying to be agreeable.

Wild pastures were passed, and miles of forests, and occasional
cultivated and inhabited clearings.  Hammond had little to say, but
he continued to be as agreeable as his mood and nature permitted.
The last mile of the fifteen winding between Covered Bridge and
Millbrook was taken by the big grays at a thumping trot.




CHAPTER III

PIPER'S GLEN

There were queer people in Piper's Glen on Racket River--queer by the
confused and materialistic standards of more populous communities, at
least.  The first settlers in the glen had been Ducats--a Frenchman
and his Maliseet wife and three half-breed children.  At that time
there wasn't another clearing within forty miles of the place in any
direction.  Later, McKims and McElroys came to the glen, and other
settlers to other sections of the river; a mill was built twenty
miles lower down, and roads were made.  Generations passed.  Children
grew up and married in the glen, or went away with the river into the
great world, and died eventually in either case.  Ducats married
McKims and McElroys and folk from neighboring settlements.  Once upon
a time there were seven dwellings in Piper's Glen--but that was at
the height of its prosperity.  It was situated too far from the river
to attract people from outside or hold all of its own folk, and too
much of its acreage stood too nearly on end for easy or profitable
farming.  Agriculture was neither arduously nor scientifically
followed there.  Potatoes and buckwheat were grown sufficient for
home consumption, and in winter the men went into the woods, some to
chop timber in the camps of big and little "operators," and others to
trap fur and kill wild meat.

Young Melchior Hammond from Millbrook visited the Ducats whenever he
came to the glen, and that was as often as he could slip away from
his father and his father's business.  The senior Hammond was not
only a storekeeper but a money-lender, and his methods were devious.
Melchior became popular with the Ducats, despite his parentage.  He
was a simple youth, taking his character from the spindle side; and
yet he was not without spirit, although not a "white-water boy."  He
disapproved of his father's dealings with the needy and easy; and
when far enough away from home, particularly when in Piper's Glen, he
was wont to state his disapproval frankly.  He never came to the glen
without a pocketful of cigars for old Hercules Ducat and old Archie
McKim, and a box of candy for Flora Ducat; and he never refused to
sit into a game of cards with Peter and Uncle Sam and Mark Ducat,
though it was known to all that Amos Hammond looked upon a pack of
cards as fifty-two admission tickets to hell.  To be caught by his
father in the act of ruffling a deck would cost Melchior his home and
his inheritance, and yet the young man never refused to sit in at
forty-fives or black-jack or poker under the Ducat roof, though he
was seldom a winner.  But he did not give all his time in Piper's
Glen to the playing of cards.  He devoted part of it to conversation
with Flora.

It was easy to see that Melchior Hammond, like several others of the
young men of the district, thought Flora Ducat much to be admired.
Also, her brother Mark was man to be cultivated.  Title of Cock of
the River was a revered one in that part of the country.




CHAPTER IV

THE ROAD TO PIPER'S GLEN

Millbrook joins Racket River from the west, and the village of
Millbrook lies about the junction of the two streams.  The mill from
which the brook derives its name was built by an early settler,
generations ago, and is now no more than a broken wall of masonry on
a bank, and a few slimy, silted timbers beneath the brown water
showing where the dam has been.  It had been a gristmill, but now no
wheat is grown in that country and the settlers buy their flour in
barrels from Amos Hammond and haul their buckwheat to Covered Bridge
to be ground.

The Hammond household, considered as a whole, proved to be unlike
anything Jim Todhunter had ever known or imagined.  Mrs. Hammond,
colorless and thin, with apprehensive, faded blue eyes, a furtive
manner and the voice of a peacock; Melchior Hammond, loutish,
high-colored, with eyes as dark as his father's but less closely set
against his nose; Alice, who seemed at first to possess no
distinguishing feature or characteristic save a wavering blush and a
trick of drooping the eyelids; Jane, remarkable for two pigtails,
freckles, and a sly smile; and Sam, a small boy with the most
objectionable and forward manners imaginable.  Of such materials was
the domestic circle composed into which Amos Hammond introduced young
Jim Todhunter, who had once dreamed of Yale, who had inherited an
enthusiasm for adventure and the out-of-doors, but who had been
brought up in an environment as different from all this as it was
possible to be.  And the setting of the Hammond household was as
strange and astonishing to Jim Todhunter as were the people
themselves.

Hammond took Jim over to the store.

"Mel, you show James 'round," he said to his son.  "I got to write a
few letters.  Show 'im the stock an' learn 'im somethin' about the
way we do business in this part of the world.  I'll look out for
customers."

Melchior led Jim to the back of the dusky store, out of earshot and
eyeshot of his father.

"How'd ye get along with the old man?" he whispered.

"Not very well, I'm afraid," replied Jim frankly.  "He seemed rather
peeved with me several times."

Melchior's somewhat sullen face brightened.

"Maybe ye ain't scart enough of the Lord to suit 'im?" he suggested
eagerly.

"I don't know about that, but he was all worked up about my playing
black-jack with White at Covered Bridge.  He was quite rude about it,
and I'm afraid I told him where to get off at."

"Told the old man----!" exclaimed Melchior.  "Played cards with
Harvey White?  Say, you'll do!  You ain't the kind I expected.  I
been lookin' for some sort of a feeble-minded guy.  Thought you must
be to be fool enough to come way up here for the fun of helpin' run a
store.  How happened it, anyhow?  You must have been took in by
someone, you and the man that wrote about you."

"My uncle's friend did what he considered most useful in helping me
come to a country that interested me," said Jim coldly.  "He is a big
business man.  Stick to a subject you understand."

"I didn't mean to say anything to fuss ye up," returned Melchior
hastily.  "I was only sayin'--but I guess him an' you didn't know how
things are done in this country, or he wouldn't of suggested you
invest any money in any business of my old man's, or he wouldn't of
sent you to Millbrook to learn it.  But you won't learn it, not the
way I size ye up."

"What's wrong with the business?" asked Jim anxiously.

"You keep yer eye skinned an' I reckon ye'll know soon enough; an' I
reckon that's as much as I got any right to say," answered Melchior.
"But I'll tell ye this much more, Jim.  I wish ye'd keep a holt on
yer money till you take a good look 'round.  There are plenty better
buys in this country than a chance to sweat yer everlastin' life out
for Amos Hammond."

Jim was surprised and distressed by Melchior's talk.  It startled him
to hear a son talk so of a father; and yet he believed the son to be
wise in his generation.  He held no brief for the father.  The high,
bitterly high, moral tone of the trader's conversation had not fooled
the youth from the South for a minute.

That night and the next day and the next night passed without any
incident of startling significance in the Hammond household.  On the
morning of the second day after young Todhunter's arrival, there was
a flare-up at breakfast between Hammond and his son.

"I'm goin' out Kingswood way to-day, an' you come along with me,
Mel," said Hammond.

"I gotter tend store," returned Melchior, sullenly.

"No, you ain't.  James can tend store by himself to-day, an' Alice
will lend him a hand if business is rushin', which ain't likely."

"There's a man comin' to see me about tradin' rifles to-day."

"Even if that's so, ye won't make a trade when I ain't around to see
you ain't cheated."

"I reckon I can do my own tradin'.  I'd sooner get cheated on a
gun-trade with a man than be seen with you 'round Kingswood."

"Mel!" cried Mrs. Hammond, white to the lips.  "Mel!  Have a care
what you say, for my sake!"

"Shut yer face!" screamed Hammond at the woman, with a black, jumping
glare out of his eyes that looked like murder.  She bowed her head.
He turned to Melchior, trembling with rage.  "Do you come along with
me, or d'ye go yer own way from this time forrad?" he asked in a
terrible whisper.

Melchior was silent, a picture of shamed and sullen defeat.  He sat
hunched in his chair, his head hanging, his face red as fire.

Hammond and his son drove off in a light wagon immediately after
breakfast, to be gone all day.  Jim Todhunter went to the store.  The
bright morning dragged slowly toward noon, but no customers came to
buy, sell, or trade.  Jim went to the front door and looked out
rebelliously at the village, the river, and the hills.  The village
could be seen at a glance, for it was nothing more than a cluster of
a dozen buildings from which ill-tilled farms receded up the valley
and back among the hills.  Beyond, on every side, the forests dipped
and climbed, and drove wedges of dusky firs and glowing maples down
between the clearings.

After the mid-day dinner, which was eaten in nervous silence, even
young Sam seemed subdued.  Jim took his shotgun from its case and
filled a pocket with shells.  Thus equipped, he returned to the
store.  For an hour he idled there, growing more deeply disgusted
with himself and Amos Hammond and the store every minute.  This
lolling among barrels and bags was not what he had built his hopes
upon, and Hammond was not what he had expected.  At the end of the
hour he locked up, took the keys over to the house and hung them on
their nail just within the front door and walked away.  He walked up
the road, across the short bridge that spanned Millbrook, with the
gun in the crook of his right arm.  He walked fast, cleared the
village in a minute, and was soon beyond the farthest of the inlying
farms.

The brown river brawled with rocks and obstructing ledges on his
right, and the wooded hills shouldered down on his left.  The road
was never level for more than a hundred yards at a stretch.  On the
rises it was overhung by big birches and maples and pines; spruces
crowded it, and in the lowest hollows ancient cedars and hemlocks
made a dusky tunnel for it.

Young Todhunter had gone about two miles when a covey of
ruffed-grouse puffed up suddenly from the edge of the road and
whirred off into the woods.  Jim caught no more than a glimpse of
short wings and hurtling bodies, but that was enough.  His blood
raced and his spirits lifted.  Hammond's queer eyes and beastly
temper, the crude commercial odors of the store, Mrs. Hammond's
frightened eyes, the plush-covered chairs and the misinformation of
his uncle's friend were all forgotten in the flash of the wild wings.
Jim slipped two shells into the gun and went forward alertly.

An hour later, Jim came to a fork in the road and paused to consider
his way.  The straight road continued beside the river, the branch
went off to the left at an angle of about seventy degrees.  Both
looked promising.  The valley of the river was deeper and narrower
now, the hills higher and more irregular, the forests less broken.
The slosh and roar of white water came up from the river.  The branch
road led up a shadowed glen between abrupt hills; and down this glen
a small brook sang over mossy rocks, slipped under a short bridge of
logs and vanished among dense brush in its dive to the river.  Both
roads looked wild and inviting, but that branching to the left looked
the wilder and the less used of the two.

Jim turned to the left and went up the glen.  The pockets of his
shooting-jacket bulged with the brace of birds he had killed.  He had
scored three misses, but he was pleased with himself, the birds, and
the gun.  Never had he seen harder flying birds than these big grouse
that were locally known as partridges, and never had he shot under
more difficult, more sporting, conditions.  The odds were with the
bird every time.  A puff and whirr of wings, a glimpse of flight and
he was lost in the screening foliage.  It was the sort of shooting
that appealed to Jim, who preferred the sport to the kill.  His
enthusiasm carried him on and on, and he lost all track of time.  His
nerves got a jolt once when several deer jumped the road close in
front of him, in the gloom, and he realized it was very late.
Indeed, so far had he traveled, and so gone was his sense of
direction, that it was past eleven when he reached the Hammond house.
All the doors were locked, front, side, and back, He was again
conscious of that sudden core of heat in his chest.  He was about to
swing a leg and drive a toe of a substantial boot against the front
door when a thought of Mrs. Hammond's frightened eyes caused him to
change his mind.

There was a nip of frost in the air, but no wind.  Jim passed the
remainder of the night very comfortably half a mile above the
village, at the edge of the river, beside a good fire of driftwood.
He slept soundly until dawn, then swam for a few minutes in the
swift, tingling river and returned to the house.  The doors were
unlocked.  He entered the front hall, left his gun and birds there,
brushed down his hair with his hands and walked into the dining-room,
where the family sat at breakfast.  All the Hammonds were present.
All heads were raised and some were turned.  All eyes were fixed upon
the young man who had been out all night.

"Good morning, Mrs. Hammond.  Good morning all," said Jim.

"Where you been?" asked Amos Hammond, darkly.

"Out, as you know.  Walked too far," answered Jim.  "I found all the
doors locked when I got back, so I slept down by the river."

"I lock the doors at ten o'clock sharp.  This here's a respectable
house, a God-fearin' home!  Went away right after dinner an' come
home later than that.  Who give you leave to quit the store?"

"No one gave me leave to quit the store.  I didn't ask any one's
permission.  I went away soon after dinner, as you say, and returned
soon after eleven.  I went shooting.  What have you to say about it?"

"Well, that ain't the worst, maybe.  It was all wrong, but I reckon
it wasn't the worst.  Where'd ye go to?  That's what I wanter know."

"Is that all?  Now listen to me, Hammond!  I don't like you, your
looks, your talk, or your manners!  You're a four-flusher, and I
suspect you of being a crook.  You have a bad eye, and I rather
suspect that your reputation is rotten.  You and your old shop and
queer business can go to the devil, for all I care!  I am quitting
right now."

"Damn you!" cried Hammond in a cracked voice, coming swiftly out of
his chair with the bread-knife in his hand and murder in his eyes.

"That's no language for a man of your exalted moral qualities,"
returned Jim.  "And remember the ladies!  Put that knife down, or
something unpleasant will happen to you."

Hammond slumped down on to the chair and dropped the knife, and some
of the madness faded out of his black eyes.

"I'll have the law on ye for this!" he cried.

"What law?" asked the other, pleasantly.

"Get out!"

"I'll breakfast first," said Jim, seating himself at the table.

Hammond glared for a minute, speechless at last, then bolted from the
room.  Jim ate with a good appetite.

"Jim, you got the nerve!" exclaimed Melchior.  "If I had half yer
nerve I'd been out of this a year ago.  But he'll do you, fer all yer
nerve."

Jim smiled noncommittally and buttered a hot biscuit.

"Please don't go away," whispered Mrs. Hammond.  "He-he seems to be
scared of you.  I feel kinder safer--an' the children, too--with you
in the house, Mr. Todhunter."

Jim glanced at her and then across the table at Alice.  The girl
raised her drooping lids slowly and gave him a slow, wide-eyed,
glowing, point-blank look.

"That's right," she said.

"But he has told me to go," returned Jim.  "And I'll be delighted to."

"He didn't mean it," said Melchior.  "He'll be beggin' you to stop
forever as soon as he gets a holt on his temper.  Let you go--a rich
young feller like you!--before he's skinned you.  Not much!"

"But I'm not rich.  I'm poor."

"You poor!  With that gun an' that rifle an' all those pairs of boots
an' five fancy fishin'-rods!  Tell another, Jim!"

"Please stop a spell longer," begged Mrs. Hammond.  "You got a way
with him I ain't seen in any one else, man or woman.  It's like he
was scared of you, or of yer folks in the States, or something.  It's
a great comfort to me, whatever's the reason of it."

So Jim promised to remain longer, if possible--but entirely on his
own terms.

Jim and Melchior left the house and went over to the store.  Amos was
already there, talking to a customer.  The young men retired to the
back of the premises.

"Look at 'im now," whispered Melchior.  "Would ye think he'd been mad
enough to bite a chunk outer his own ear only fifteen minutes ago?
Not on yer life!  He's a wonder!  Wait till Sunday and you hear 'im
at meetin'.  Say, it would make me laugh if I wasn't his own son.
Wish I could handle 'im like you do.  I noticed you didn't tell 'im
where ye'd been last night, after all."

"No, I didn't, though he's welcome to the information," replied Jim.
"I was shooting along a road up-river that turns off to the left--"

"Piper's Glen," interrupted Melchior.  "Was you up to Peter Ducat's?"

"I wasn't anywhere.  I had a time finding my way back.  I met Mr.
Merton on the road and went to his house.  I dined there--that's all.
But I like the looks of Piper's Glen."

"Sure you do--but you look out for Mark Ducat!"

"Who's he?  And why should I look out for him?"

"Who's Mark Ducat?  He's one of them Ducats of Piper's Glen who don't
fear nothin' livin' or dead.  He's old Peter Ducat's son an' the
smartest man with his hands an' feet on Racket River; an' he's the
lad who don't let no young feller he can't lick roam around his part
of the country."

"I'd like to meet him," said Jim.

"You better not," returned Melchior earnestly.




CHAPTER V

THE COCK OF THE ROAD

It was even as Melchior had said: Amos Hammond sought and found an
opportunity before noon to speak alone with Jim Todhunter, and begged
the young man to forget his outbreak of temper and remain under his
roof.

"Why do you want me to stay?" asked Jim.  "I have decided not to have
anything to do with your business, and I won't stand for any of your
impudence or tyranny."

"It would look bad, bad for both of us, if we was to break so soon;
and yer friends in the States would be real disappointed," replied
Hammond.

"I'll give it another try," returned Jim, "but I warn you to keep a
grip on that nasty temper of yours.  You may commit murder some day,
if you're not careful--or get yourself killed."

He did not explain that his only reason for remaining was Mrs.
Hammond's hysterical request.  Hammond might know it or not, without
being told it: Jim didn't care, one way or the other.

Amos Hammond was a model husband, father, and host at dinner that
day--in everything but appearance.  His appearance was against him.
He did not look in the least like the thing he was evidently trying
to act and sound like.  His grace before meat was lengthy and
intimate; and even while he intoned it through his nose, with bowed
head and tight-shut eyes, Melchior leaned sideways and whispered in
Jim's ear, "An' yesterday he foreclosed on a poor widow woman over to
Kingswood Settlement!"

Jim slipped away from Melchior soon after dinner and set off up the
river road with his gun under his arm.  Though his glance was on the
road ahead his thoughts were elsewhere, and several birds got up and
away without drawing his fire.  He made one shot before reaching the
fork of the roads, dropping the big grouse dead as a stone as it
whirred from cover to cover.  Again he took the road to the left,
which led up Piper's Glen.  At times he walked fast, as if in a hurry
to arrive somewhere, and at times he dawdled as if he had no
objective and all the time in the calendar to fritter away.  He was
walking briskly, with a purposeful air, when he was suddenly and
unexpectedly accosted by a man who sat on a mossy boulder in the deep
shade beside the road.

"Where ye a-goin' to so fast?" asked the stranger, in a drawling
voice.

Jim halted with a jerk, for this voice was the first intimation he
had received of the other's presence.

"Beg pardon?" he returned.

The stranger arose from the boulder and stepped to the middle of the
road.  He moved with a slouching swagger, and the small black
mustache midway his swarthy face was lifted slightly at the tips by a
cryptic smile.  Jim judged him to be five or six years older than
himself, of his own height or within an inch of it, and a few pounds
less than himself in bone and muscle.  Jim made his observations and
formed his judgments in a single glance of the eye.

"I asked where ye a-goin' to so fast?" repeated the stranger.

"Along this road," replied Jim.

"That's as may be," returned the woodsman.

"I suppose you are Mark Ducat," said Jim, pleasantly.

"That's me.  Ye've heered o' me, hey?  Well, I reckon that's all
that's needed.  Todhunter's yer name, an' ye're from Hammond's.  But
I don't hold that agin ye, for maybe ye ain't seen through Amos
Hammond yet."

"I've seen enough of him to believe almost anything bad of him."

"That's the way to talk!  Maybe ye was figgerin' on makin' us a
visit.  There's quite a raft o' Ducats within a mile o' where we
stand, an' they'd all be proud to know ye.  Come along."

"Delighted!  You're very kind," returned Jim.

They walked onward side by side.

"Slick lookin' gun ye got there," remarked Ducat.

Jim handed it over for the woodsman's closer inspection.  It was
greatly admired and politely returned.

"Think ye can fight?" asked Mark Ducat.

"Might," returned Jim.

"Look-a-here, Todhunter--I don't know yer baptism name--I like ye!
An' I'm goin' to talk right out to yer face, for yer own good an' my
satisfaction.  I can't say fairer nor that, I guess."

"My front name's Jim.  Fire away!"

"Well, now, Jim, I'm Cock o' the River."

"All right," said Jim.  "But I can still walk in the woods."

At that moment a girl appeared around a bend in the road ahead,
within twenty yards of them.  At sight of them she ran forward.  They
turned to her, and Jim lifted his cap.  She was a tall girl of about
eighteen, perhaps.  In the first glance, Jim noticed her eyes more
particularly than anything else about her, for they were green--green
of several tints and shades, full of light and of strange depths,
like clear, green water running over dark, vivid moss.

"You tell 'im, Flora," said Ducat.  "He's kinder pig-headed an' don't
get the idee.  He's for goin' around here any time he feels like it."

"Mark's a dangerous man to cross," said the girl to Jim.  "He's never
been licked in a fight yet, and for two years he's fought every man
who's come to these parts."

"Sorry, but that's no reason for my staying away," returned Jim.

"Then look out for yerself!" cried Mark.

Jim stepped backward two paces and in the same movement tossed his
gun and coat to the moss beside the track.  Mark sprang at him and
missed him by an inch.  Mark then swung for the jaw, but his fist was
deflected by a forearm that felt like wood.  Then he hooked for the
stomach, but landed on a thigh as hard as rock and received a nasty
jab behind the ear.

"Watch his feet!" cried the girl.

But Jim was already watching, for he knew something of fights in
lumber camps.  Yet Mark did not kick just then.  Instead, he lowered
his head and charged like a bull, only to go plunging blindly past
his objective with a cut cheek.  He came back quick as a mink and
tried to clinch, but Jim broke his hold and hurled him across the
narrow road.  And again he came back, his swarthy face livid with
rage and smeared with blood, his dark eyes glinting.  He feinted with
both hands, then suddenly snapped up his right leg until knee and
chin almost met and shot his foot forward.  It was quickly done, but
not quickly enough to achieve the desired result.  Jim had made a
violent but calculated effort to escape, a half-turn and a backward
jerk, and the heel of the boot caught him on the left shoulder with
reduced force instead of full-force on the chest.  It landed on a pad
of muscle that would have protected the bone beneath from the kick of
a mule.  But he staggered slightly and swore softly.  The other
plunged almost to the knees in recovering his balance.

"Dirty work!" said Jim.  "I don't like it!  I've seen quite enough of
your damned silly gymnastics for one day!"

He pranced forward as he spoke.  Mark flailed at him and fanned the
wind.  He knocked lightly on Mark's nose with his left, then closed
for a few seconds and drummed on lean ribs, then jumped clear,
side-stepped a rush and planted behind Mark's ear that which was
known as the "Todhunter Snifter" at a certain school, famous for its
athletes, where more than the usual curriculum is taught.  Mark
continued on his way along the mossy road for a dozen paces, slumping
lower and lower with every pace as if the weight of the snifter was
more than his knees and shoulders could support, and at last pitched
forward on to the moss with the air of a weary man succumbing to the
pressure of a crushing load at the end of a long portage.

"Soul alive!" exclaimed Flora.  "Was that your fist?"

Jim nodded and smiled, but he kept his eye on Mark.

"And I was afraid he would bash you all up," said Flora.

Mark scrambled to his feet, turned, stood unsteadily for a few
seconds, staring at Jim with a dazed look in his eyes, then advanced,
with swinging fists and wavering gait.

"You've had enough," said Jim.

"T'hell ye say!" cried Mark, thickly.  "Enough be damned!  Look out
for yerself!  I'm a-comin'!"

"Easy, Mister!  Please hit him easy this time!" exclaimed Flora.

Again Jim nodded and smiled, but his eye was on the groggy but
unvanquished Cock of the River.

"Wha's that?" cried Mark.  "Easy, d'ye say?  Hit yer durndest an' be
damned to you!  I ain't bested yet!"

With that he charged.  Jim side-stepped.  Again Mark charged and
again Jim avoided him lightly.  Mark leaped again, and this time Jim
stood his ground, and Mark ran his poor face violently against a
fending left fist that felt like a bagful of stones.  Ducat staggered
dizzily backward.  His face streamed with blood.

"You are beaten," said Jim.

For reply, Mark lowered his head and butted like a ram.  Jim swung
low to the jaw as he stepped aside.

Jim picked Mark Ducat up from the mossy track and carried him to the
brook, and there he and Flora Ducat bathed the cuts and bruises.

"I tried not to mess him up any more than I could help," he said to
the girl.  "There was no need, after landing that one behind his ear.
I didn't touch his eyes, you see."

As if in response to that statement, Mark opened his eyes.

"Jim, that's the first lickin' I ever got since my old man quit
larrupin' me," he said.  "If I hadn't seen you do it, I wouldn't
believe it; an' if I hadn't seen _how_ ye done it I'd say ye done it
with an ax."

"It was just a matter of knowing how," replied Jim modestly.  "I
boxed seven years on end at school.  Fact is, I pulled down the
Middleweight Interschool Cup last year.  It's about the only thing I
do well."

"Say, I wish I'd 'tended the same school ye did!"

"If you had, we'd still be hammering away at each other, battling
through twenty rounds to a draw!"

"Sure, Jim, yer word's good enough fer me on that subject; an' now I
reckon ye're free to visit these parts as often as ye choose to, for
all of me."

"Of course.  On general principles I always protest against any
unreasonable and unwarranted attempt to restrict my movements."

"You sure protested!  Well, let's be gettin' home.  Gimme a hand up,
Jim, for I'm still feelin' like as if a brow of logs had went over
the back of my neck."

Mark Ducat moved slowly, with Jim supporting him on one side and the
green-eyed girl on the other.  His knees wobbled and his feet wavered.

"Licked by a greenhorn Yankee dood!" he exclaimed, grinning
painfully.  "Say, Flora, what'll the folks think of it?  What'll pa
say?"

"He'll say it was coming to you," answered Flora.  "He'll say, 'I
told you so.'"

"Sure he will, an' that _he_ was never licked in his life; an' Uncle
Sam'll tell how he was never bested at fightin' nor wrastlin' but by
a Ducat or a McKim; an' Gran'pa Ducat'll tell about the time he hove
Black Dave Davidson clean over the smoke house, an' Gran'pa McKim'll
say as how Jim here must be a Highlander.  They'll all have plenty to
say, anyhow."

"And I'll say this, Mark--you're a sportsman!" said Jim.




CHAPTER VI

GAMES--ABOVEBOARD AND OTHERWISE

The homestead of the Ducats consisted partly of the original
structure of great pine logs and partly of a more modern erection of
sawn frame and shingles, the two joined securely end to end.  The
kitchen was in the old part, and it was to the kitchen that Flora led
her vanquished brother and his conqueror.  Here they found the mother
and the two grandfathers, to whom Mark described the battle without
exaggeration or reservation.  The girl with green eyes corroborated
his statements, and Jim Todhunter maintained a modest silence.

"Did ye stand idle an' see yer brother bested by a stranger?" cried
Mrs. Ducat.

"Sure I did," answered Flora.

"An' rightly, too," said old Archie McKim.

"I ain't kickin'," said Mark, good-humoredly.  "I asked for it."

"But you kicked then, an' he didn't," retorted Flora.

"It's the way we fight in the woods," said Mark to Jim.

"What's that?" asked old McKim, with a cupped hand behind his good
ear.

"Footin' it in a fight," replied Mark.  "Throwin' the foot."

"A French trick," said Mr. McKim.

"An' what of it?" cried old Hercules Ducat.  "What's agin it, Archie
McKim?  Ain't a man's foot as much his own as his hand?  French, d'ye
say!  Wasn't Black Dave Davi'son a Scot?  An' didn't he use his feet?
Wasn't he the wickedest fighter on the river?  An' he done it all
with his feet an' his teeth.  But one fine day he drummed his heels
on my chest, an' I up an' hove 'im clear acrost the roof o' Widdy
Mary McElroy's smoke house--an' he never fit agin."

"Black Dave Davi'son!" cried old Archie, his snow-white whiskers
vibrating with scorn and excitement.  "_Him_ a Scot!  He was five
quarters Madawaska French an' four thirds Tobique Injun.  Reckon I'd
oughter know!  Didn't he chaw my ear once when him an' me was
courtin' the same girl over to Kingswood Settlement?"

"An' but for the Ducats with their Injun blood an' good buckwheat
pancakes an' roasted moose meat, all this here Scottish gentility
would have starved to death an' froze to death a hundred years ago
an' more."

Jim looked at Flora in amused embarrassment, and old Hercules saw it.
He sat back in his chair and chuckled derisively.

"She be easier on the eye to goggle at nor her gran'pas," he said,
ignoring old Archie.  "She gits her looks from the Ducats, as ye kin
see.  But ye'll find more divil nor gentility in her afore ye've
knowed her much longer."

"Grandpa Ducat always talks like that after he's lost at cards,"
explained the girl, seeing Jim's embarrassment.  "I guess Grandpa
McKim's been trimming him this afternoon."

"Yer dead right!" said old Archie.  "I took eighty-six cents offen
'im since dinner."

Mark lay down until supper was ready.  Upon his return to the kitchen
he said that he felt as spry as ever.  He didn't look exactly right,
however.  His nose was swollen, his lower lip was puffed and cut and
one cheek was skinned and bruised.  Peter and Sam Ducat arrived home
from burning brush in the back pasture within a minute of Mark's
reappearance.  Mark made the introductions.

"This here's Jim Todhunter, the Yankee dood who's livin' with the
Hammonds," he said.

The three shook hands heartily.  Then Peter Ducat stared at his son,
stepped closer and stared again.

"What the jumpin' tarnation hev you been hammerin' with yer face?" he
asked.

"Jim's fists," answered Mark.  "I hammered them real hard, but I
didn't do 'em much hurt, I guess."

Then he repeated the story of the fight, without dissembling.  His
father and his uncle listened with keen attention, glancing
frequently from the speaker to the silent guest, their tanned faces
and dark eyes expressive of changing emotions.

"I told ye so!" exclaimed Peter.  "I warned ye.  Now when I was Cock
o' the River, afore the rheumatiz put a crimp into me, I allers sized
a stranger up--meanin' a man from outside--afore I give 'im the dare
to fight.  Cuffin' logs an' the like o' that's different, for there's
ony one best way at that game an' that's the way we do right here on
Racket River--but there's a dozen ways o' fightin'.  Yes, a dozen
ways an' maybe more, an' a man wants to be danged careful how he
jumps into a scrap with a stranger."

"Where'd ye larn _yer_ way?" asked Sam of Jim.

"At school," replied Jim modestly.

"Hah!  Hark ye to that, now!" cried old Archie McKim.  "Ain't I
allers been tellin' ye the vartues o' eddication?  But ye didn't heed
me.  Oh, no!  Reckoned I didn't know!  Wouldn't go to school, laughed
at book-larnin'.  Serves ye damn well right!"

"Hell!  An' it was the girl we sent downriver to school!" exclaimed
Peter Ducat, looking at his wife.

Supper was a success.  The food was plentiful and good.  Conversation
was general and lively.  Mark ate and talked as well as any one and
showed no chagrin over his defeat.  The grandfathers argued, told
stories of their youth and prime and constantly contradicted each
other.  The mother was kept busy with urging everyone to eat and
drink and with bringing more food from stove and pantry to the table.
The father and uncle talked of the river and the woods and their
adventures.

Supper was over by seven o'clock, and no sooner was the table cleared
than a knock sounded on the door and Melchior Hammond entered the
kitchen.  He was cordially received by all the Ducats.

"So here you are!" he said to Jim.  "I'm supposed to be half-way to
Bird's Corner this very minute on business.  But as I ain't due back
to Millbrook till to-morrow night or nex' day everything'll be
hunkydory.  Keep that in yer mind will ye, Jim, Bird's Corner.  If
the old man knew I ever come here he'd sure think I played cards, an'
then little Mel would be cast out."

"I'll remember," said Jim.  "I'm not telling on you."

"But ain't ye both on the same log, far's that goes?" queried Uncle
Sam Ducat.

"Who, Jim here?" returned Melchior.  "Not on yer sweet life!  Jim
don't give a hooray what the old man thinks of him or says to
him--nor what any one else says or thinks, I guess.  Why, he told pa
where he got off at the first minute they met an' has been doin' it
ever since.  But what's wrong with yer lip, Mark?  An' yer nose?
They're all puffed up."

"Zat so, Mel?" returned Mark.  "Puffed up, hey?  Somethin' wrong with
them, hey?  They suit me all right.  I wouldn't swap 'em for no other
lip nor nose on this river.  Take another look, Mel, an' then if
ye're still in the same mind about 'em--if ye don't like their
looks--tell me about it an' step outside an' see if ye kin fix 'em
for me."

"Oh, if that's how ye're feelin', they look fine," answered Mel.  "If
they suit you, they suit me.  I got one hour an' then I'll have to
move along, for I left the mare down at the Fork.  What about a
little game?"

"I'm agreeable," said Sam.  "Five cent ante, as usual, hey?"

"When I was a young man a-sparkin' round an' a-courtin' the girls, I
didn't uster waste my time with the men an' the cards," said old
Archie McKim.

"Yer dead right, Archie," retorted old Hercules Ducat.  "Ye was too
danged scart o' losin' a dollar!  Courtin' was cheaper!"

"Maybe it was in them days," laughed Melchior, pulling a chair up to
the table and seating himself as if he intended business.

"What about you, Jim?" asked Mark.

"Delighted," said Jim.

"D'ye know poker?"

"It's my middle name."

The grandfathers, Mrs. Ducat, and the girl did not join in the game.
Jim played with discretion and luck.  Mel lost for an hour and a
quarter, then remembered his mare hitched in the woods at the fork of
the roads four miles away, wished everyone good night and departed.
Flora saw him to the door and stood in whispered conversation on the
threshold for half a minute.

"Does he come here often?" asked Jim of Mark, in a low aside, as
Uncle Sam dealt the cards with mighty heaves of the shoulders as if
each bit of pasteboard weighed fifty pounds.

"Every chance he gets," replied Mark.  "Whenever he kin give Amos the
slip.  Dang if I know if it's Flora or the cards fetches 'im!  Reckon
it's Flora.  But she don't worry.  They all look the same to her, I
guess."

It was eight-thirty by the Ducats' kitchen clock when Melchior
Hammond departed to return to his tethered mare four miles off and
continue on his interrupted way toward Bird's Corner.  It was ten by
the same clock when Jim Todhunter left the Ducat kitchen, after
cordial handshakes all around and a promise to return on the morrow
or the day after, and set out briskly for Millbrook.  He walked at
his best pace, in a pleasant humor with himself and the world.  He
approved of Piper's Glen.  Flora Ducat was a charming girl.  He had
enjoyed his evening and his fight with Mark Ducat.  He liked Mark and
all the Ducats.  He reached the Hammond residence on the stroke of
twelve, midnight, and found the front door unlocked.  Amos Hammond
was as mild of manner as a lamb next morning at breakfast.  Jim made
no pretense of working in the store that day or of inquiring into any
branch of Hammond's business.  Amos Hammond kept out of Jim's way as
much as possible.

A week passed, during which period of time Jim made several trips up
to Piper's Glen.  On the eighth day after his first meeting with the
Ducats, he visited them for the fourth time and remained in that
hospitable kitchen until eleven o'clock at night.  It was past one
when he reached Millbrook.  The front door was locked, the back door
was locked, and he tossed gravel up against Hammond's window until
lamplight shone forth.  Up went the lower sash with a bang and rattle
and the man of the house looked out and down.

"The doors are locked," said Jim.

"Spawn of the devil!" cried Amos.  "Cumberer of the earth!  Eater of
the bread of idleness and corruption!  I warn ye to go away from
here!  Ye've held me up to derision in the sight of my wife and
children, but the Lord is on my side an' I charge ye never to darken
my door again!"

"Very impressive, but it won't do," replied Jim.  "I'm a part of your
establishment.  I must really insist upon darkening your door again."

At that, Mr. Hammond's language fell from the classical to the
colloquial.

"Beat it!" he screamed.  "Get to hell out o' this afore I lose my
temper an' pull the triggers."

"Triggers?" queried Jim coolly.

"Aye, triggers!  Two of 'em--an' both standin' at full-cock."

"What number shot, if you don't object to my asking?"

"Number two, dang ye!  An' my fingers is twitchin'!"

"All right!  Pass out my baggage and I'll go."

"Baggage?  Ye got no baggage here!"

"Boxes, bags, trunks, and so on."

"Ye got nothin' in this house!  Clear out or I'll be the death o' ye!"

"So you've turned my stuff out, have you?  Well, that'll save time.
Where did you put it?"

"There's nothin' of yers on my premises, inside nor out, an' never
was; but if ye don't beat it before I count ten there'll be a dead
corpse in the yard.  Git!"

Jim got.  He went around to the front door, stood his gun against the
side of the house and kicked the door in with one terrific smash of
the right heel against the lock.  He entered the dark hall and was
feeling his way toward the stairs with extended arms when his right
hand touched something alive.  Quick as thought, hard as iron, he
grabbed and gripped with both hands.

"It's me, Jim!  Leggo, for God's sake--an' run!" whispered the voice
of Melchior.  "I come down to warn ye.  He's murderin' mad.  Threw a
knife at me an' missed by an inch--an' he'll shoot you.  Here he
comes!"

A light appeared at the top of the stairs.  Jim turned and started
for the open door on the jump, tripped over the threshold, and fell
out on to the veranda and flung himself to one side at the very
instant of touching the floor.  And then a gun roared within and a
shower of number two shot ripped into the flooring where he had been
lying a moment before.  Was that both barrels or only one?  He didn't
know.  He scrambled to his feet, snatched his own gun from where it
leaned and ran.  As he jumped the fence, the gun banged again, but
the charge went wide and high.

"He's off his nut and the gun's a breech-loader," he reflected; and
he continued his flight.

A third bang proved the soundness of his reasoning and the wisdom of
his course.




CHAPTER VII

NEW BUSINESS CONNECTIONS

The village was aroused from its slumber by the reports of Amos
Hammond's gun, but by the time the villagers were out of their
houses, Jim Todhunter was far out of sight, and even the flying beat
of his heavy boots on the hard road was out of earshot.

Jim had forseen the disturbance and curiosity of the neighbors and
felt in no mood to calm the disturbance or satisfy the curiosity.  In
fact, he had nothing to say.  He was a fighter, but not a
gun-fighter.  He was sane, and he believed Hammond to be mad.  He had
run from a gun, though he had a gun in his own hands and ammunition
in his pockets.  He could have returned Hammond's fire, shooting to
frighten rather than to hit, and closed with the fellow eventually
and hammered him into submission.  He had considered this course and
dismissed it early in his flight.  The truth is, he was glad to be
rid of the responsibility to the Hammond family which he had assumed
in promising Mrs. Hammond to stick to the household as long as
possible.  That promise no longer held.  Even the most good-natured
and altruistic person in the world would not be expected by even the
least altruistic to continue to cling to a household against the
efforts of the head-of-the-house to dislodge him with smokeless
powder and swan-shot.

Jim felt that he was well rid of the Hammonds and of all
responsibility toward them.  Other plans for the future had been
developing brightly in his mind of late.  Now he was free to follow
these plans.  He would remove his baggage from the Hammond premises
on the morrow and have done with that blunder forever.

It was a frosty night.  Jim went up-river, for in that direction were
his friends and the matter of his plans for the immediate future.  He
had slowed to a walk as soon as the bridge over Millbrook was
crossed, and from there onward to the fork of the roads he took his
time.  There he paused, considering two courses of action.  Would he
make camp until daybreak, or would he press on and disturb the
slumbering Ducats?  The air tingled with frost, he had overheated
himself in his flight, and he was without overcoat or blanket.  He
decided to go on up the glen.

The Ducat dogs hurled themselves upon him from the woodshed, only to
retire at a word.  He found the kitchen door on the latch, entered
noiselessly and closed the door.  There was still a glow in the big
old cookstove which stood bodily in the older fireplace.  He laid his
gun aside, removed his boots, sank into old Archie Me Kim's armchair
and fell asleep.

Flora Ducat always lit the kitchen fire (now that she was considered
grown-up) and then banged on the stove-pipe with an iron spoon.  At
that signal, men arose and descended and went out to the feeding, and
the milking--Mark and his father and uncle when they were at home,
the grandfathers at other times.  On this particular morning, Flora
descended to the kitchen in a red blanket dressing gown, with her
dark hair about her ears and a lamp in her right hand, and beheld a
man lolling sound asleep in a chair beside the stove.  She was
startled, but she neither screamed nor dropped the lamp.  She
recognized the sleeper almost instantly.  It just happened that she
had been thinking of this young man while she donned the red dressing
gown and descended the backstairs and crossed the kitchen; so the
discovery was no more than a realization of the mental vision by the
physical vision, and therefore not an overwhelming shock.

Jim opened his eyes to the shine of the lamp, blinked owlishly at the
flame, then glanced higher.  The girl, meeting his look squarely, saw
bewilderment give way to astonishment and astonishment to admiration.

"Why are you here, Jim?" she asked.

"Ah!  So I'm awake!" he exclaimed, sitting up straight.  "Of course!
I remember now.  Didn't want to disturb you," he added.

"When did you come back?" she asked.

"It must have been between three and four.  Amos Hammond got after me
with a gun.  Fired three shots."

He pulled on his boots and stood up without lacing them.

"Did he--hit you?" she asked, her voice gone to a whisper.

He smiled and shook his head.

"And now?" she queried.

"I'm going in with Mark," he answered.  "I've stood for all I'm going
to from that hypocritical, mad, crooked psalm-singer."

"I'm glad he didn't hit you, but I'm glad he fired at you," she
returned.

They lit the fire together and Jim filled the kettle.  Flora banged
the pipe with the iron spoon and went upstairs.  Mark came down and
found Jim lacing his boots.

"Hammond locked me out, and when I kicked his front door in he opened
on me with a shotgun," explained Jim.

Mark laughed and shook hands.

"I knew he'd bust out at ye pretty soon," he said.  "It was just that
or lose his reputation for righteousness; an' I reckon he figgered it
out how his reputation was worth a few more dollars to 'im, in the
long run."

After breakfast Jim and Mark drove in to Millbrook with a pair of
horses and a heavy wagon.  They drew rein in front of the Hammond
house.

"Look there, will ye!" exclaimed Mark, who had heard all the details
of the encounter between Jim and the storekeeper.

Jim looked and saw a patch of new flooring on the veranda, directly
in front of the door.

"Quick work," he replied.

"He's quick as a mink an' sly as a fox an' heartless as a weasel, is
that skunk Amos Hammond," returned Mark.

The store stood on the other side of the road, directly opposite the
dwelling.  Several teams stood hitched before it.  Mark and Jim
descended from the wagon, crossed the road and entered the store.
Three or four customers were there, and Amos Hammond stood behind a
counter and talked confidentially across it to a tall countryman with
a face full of uncontrolled whiskers.  Amos glanced at the newcomers
from a corner of his near eye, but went on with his conversation.
Jim went straight up to the bewhiskered man's elbow and addressed
Hammond.

"I've come for my baggage," he said.

The tall fellow looked sideways at him, but Amos didn't give him a
glance or pause in his talk.

"I've come for my baggage," repeated Jim.  "For my rifle, my trunks
full of clothes, my boots, my fishing-rods, my books, and my
dispatch-box containing private papers and one hundred and twelve
dollars in Canadian currency.  I'll let the wages you owe me go."

"Young feller, that's sure sayin' a mouthful," remarked the hairy
stranger, eyeing Jim with interest.  "What's all this about yer boots
an' yer baggage, anyhow?"

"He's a liar!" exclaimed Hammond, suddenly losing his pose.  "Ain't I
just told ye all about it, Mr. Hart?  About his one trunk, an' his
ungodly nighthawkin' up to Piper's Glen an' his bustin' into my house
at two o'clock this mornin', drunk as a soldier, an' how I had to
chase 'im away with a gun loaded with salt?  If ye don't believe me,
come along over an' look at his baggage yerself."

"Sure, let's go," agreed the whiskery one.  "It's the cleanest job
ye've put me to yet, Hammond, this lookin' at a trunk.  Cleaner an'
more to my taste nor foreclosin' mortgages an' evictin' widows."

He turned and saw Mark Ducat and extended a hairy hand.

"How do, Mark," he said.

"How do, Sheriff," returned Mark, shaking his hand.

"Speakin' of widows," continued Hart, sagging an elbow to the counter
and crossing his long legs, "have ye seen old Widow Wilson of
Kingswood Settlement since the deacon here sicked the law on to her
an' run her off her little old farm?"

"No, I ain't seed her, but I heered tell the Duffys took her in,"
returned Mark.

"They did that, sure enough," said the other, "but they can't keep
her in.  She's went that clean off her head since losin' her home
that ye can't do nothin' with her.  Can't keep her housed, anyhow,
though she's reasonable enough about eatin' an' sleepin' whenever she
stops in anywheres.  Hoofs the roads all day an' sometimes all
night--an' winter a-comin' on.  Well, let's go along an' look at this
here baggage."

"What brought ye up-river so early in the day, Sheriff?" asked Mark.
"Looks to me kinder like ye'd been sent fer."

"Not aigzactly, Mark, but I heered a kinder rumor as how
righteousness had bust out so hot in Deacon Hammond here that he'd up
an' murdered a young man for settin' in to a hand at cribbage.  So I
come in my official capacity to take a look at the corpse, but I
reckon there's nothin' to see but some baggage, after all."

Amos Hammond led the four men across the road and through his front
door and pointed to a leather trunk in the front hall, all in a black
silence.

"Yer trunk, young man?" asked Mr. Hart of Jim.

"It is one of them," replied Jim, producing a folded paper from a
pocket and handing it to the hairy official.  "Here is a list."

The sheriff read the list aloud, slowly.

"Hell!" he exclaimed, in a voice of wondering admiration.

"I'll have no cussin' in this house!" cried Hammond.

"Where'd ye leave it all?" inquired Hart, eyeing Jim.

"Every article of it in this house, except my shotgun and what I'm
wearing," replied Jim.  "Two or three boxes are in the outer kitchen
and all the rest of the stuff is in my bedroom."

Amos Hammond led the way to the outer kitchen.  No boxes were there.
He led the way to Jim's bedroom.  It, too, was empty.

"Search the house, if ye want to," sneered Hammond.

"I've had enough of this tomfoolery," said Jim.  "I've given you a
chance to hand over my things, and you haven't done it.  You have
overreached yourself this time.  But for your wife and family, I
would have filled you with partridge-shot last night.  I had a gun in
my hands, too.  And but for these same unfortunate persons, I would
send you to jail now.  I brought my stuff to Covered Bridge as
freight, and here are my vouchers, and the freight agent at Covered
Bridge has another set of them, and he is a witness that the things
were loaded on to your wagon, and every member of your family is a
witness that they were unloaded in this house, and were still here
when I was last in the house.  Very crude!  Last night's fit was too
much for you.  I'm afraid that you are off your head permanently.
I'll overlook last night's attempted murder and to-day's attempted
robbery--but, sane or mad, the next time you try anything on me will
be the last time!"

Hammond screamed and snatched the vouchers from Jim's hand.  Jim let
them go and struck.  Hammond fell unconscious.  While Mark and Jim
worked over the householder with cold water, Mr. Hart calmly examined
the crumpled vouchers.

"I reckon ye're right, Mr. Todhunter," he said.  "It sure does look
like he was off his nut for keeps, tryin' to put over a fool play
like this right under the nose of the law, so to speak."

Hammond recovered consciousness in a few minutes and, under pressure
from Hart, led the way to a loft above the wagon-shed, rolled aside a
wall of empty barrels and disclosed Jim's baggage to view.  Then, to
the amazement of the three, he turned to Jim with bowed head.

"James, it wasn't yer worldly gear I wanted," he said in a trembling
voice.  "I run the risk of hanging an' I run the risk of jail, an' I
told a lie, all in a vain effort to save yer soul from the hellish
lure of Piper's Glen.  But the devil's been too strong for me!  I
forgive ye the blow, James, for it was not yerself who struck me but
Old Adam.  Take yer empty vanities an' depart in peace."

"Empty?" queried Mark Ducat, lifting inquiringly on the end of a
trunk.  "No, I guess they're full enough, but ye may's well get out
yer keys an' take a look, Jim."

Mr. Hart stared at Hammond with horrified eyes.

"Amos, ye'll go too far one of these days," he said earnestly.  "The
Almighty is long-sufferin', so I've heered tell, but it ain't in
reason to insult Him like ye've just done an' expect to get away with
it every time.  Have ye no fear, to make a mock of Him by sinnin' in
His very name?  Look out that a bolt from heaven don't strike ye dead
some day!"  He turned to Jim.  "Any charge agin' this man, Mr.
Todhunter?" he asked.

"None, sir," replied Jim.  "I'll leave it to the bolt from heaven."

Half an hour later, Jim and Mark drove off toward Piper's Glen with
the baggage intact.  They discussed their plans for the winter.  They
would go north and west beyond the rise of Piper's Brook to the
headwaters on Kettle Creek and there trap furs.  It was a promising
country.  An old half-breed, dead now these five years, had once
taken a black fox somewhere up around Kettle Pond.  Perhaps he had
taken more than one of those priceless pelts, but he had shown only
one on the river.  If he had killed others and kept quiet about them
he had practiced commendable business discretion, for Amos Hammond
had bought that one from him--after priming him with gin--for fifteen
dollars.  Mark knew that country fairly well, having hunted moose
there several times and cruised timber on the fringe of it once; and
he had worked a winter in a lumber camp at the mouth of Kettle Creek
and spent his Sundays spying out the land to the north and west of
the camp.

The partners decided to look over the ground immediately, before
snow, and perhaps bag a supply of fresh meat while they were about
it.  They toted their dunnage straight across to the river by way of
a rough and narrow trail, for even as the homing bee flies, the
distance between the Ducat place and the nearest point on Racket
River is three miles.  There Mark uncovered a bark canoe from a
brush-screened cleft between big rocks.  A thorough examination
disclosed leaks in three seams, and these were treated with a melted
mixture of resin and lard.  The canoe was launched, the dunnage
stowed amidship and Jim placed in a cramped position in the bow with
a paddle in his hands.  Mark stood aft and plied a long pole of
spruce, the working end of which was bound with a wide ring of iron.
Jim knew nothing about paddling a canoe, but he worked away at it and
heeded Mark's comments and corrections.

Two hours of easy work against swift water brought them to the mouth
of Kettle Creek.  In the creek the water was deeper and less swift
for a few miles, so Mark slid the pole inboard and manned a paddle.
He returned to the pole before noon, and at noon they went ashore and
boiled the kettle.  At three o'clock they had to go ashore again,
unload, and carry canoe and dunnage around Rusty Trap Falls.  At
sundown they made camp for the night at a spot which Mark calculated
to be within a few miles of half way between the mouth of the creek
and Kettle Pond, the heart of the land of promise.

"But it's heavy goin' from here on," he said.

He was right.  They were ashore almost as much as they were afloat
next day.  They scrambled over rocky portages.  They jumped from
boulder to boulder in mid-stream, with burdens on their backs and
heads.

"I believe we've carried that canoe more than she has carried us,"
said Jim, toward the close of the strenuous day.

"Guess ye're right," returned Mark.  "Water's lower'n I looked for.
We'll wait for snow to fetch in the rest of the stuff--straight
acrost from the head of the glen to this valley."

They reached the head of navigable water late in the afternoon of the
third day of their journey.  Here Kettle Creek, creeping out of
Kettle Pond, twisted feebly among scores of great boulders; and the
voyagers were forced to make a half-mile carry into the little lake.

The country was full of game.

"We'll take it easy," said Mark.  "More'n half my livin' is in the
woods, so I look on all the beasts that are worth eatin' or skinnin'
as property.  So we'll act here like this Kettle Pond country was our
own farm, Jim.  I don't hold with slaughterin' for the fun of
shootin' this early in the season, an' then have a bunch of good meat
rot on me come a spell of warm weather."

They cruised the country on all sides for likely lines for traps.
They built a solid little hut of logs and poles, all complete with a
hearth and chimney.  They chinked the cracks in the walls with moss,
the cracks in the chimney with clay, and made the roof tight with
sheets of birch bark.  Between bouts of construction work and
exploration, Mark instructed Jim in the art of handling a canoe in
still water.  The nights fell suddenly from snappy to shivery.

Mark made a horn of birch bark one night and, by producing a variety
of grunts and gurgles and groans from it, lured a big bull moose into
the open beside the lake.  Jim shot the deluded creature by the light
of the Hunter's Moon.

They decided, next day, that one of them should take out the canoe
and the moose-meat before the water-route was closed by ice; and that
the other should remain on the ground and build a second hut six
miles to the northward and then go south and east to the glen on
foot; after which they would return together on the snow to Kettle
Pond with traps and a toboggan and the balance of the winter's
supplies.  As Jim didn't know the way out across country he
volunteered to take out the canoe and moose-meat.




CHAPTER VIII

THE QUEER OLD WOMAN

Todhunter made the home trip safely, but not a day too soon.  His
work on the portages was doubled.  Singlehanded, he had to go and
come twice every time with the moose-meat and make a third round with
the canoe.  Strong as he was, he found the canoe a staggerer, for he
had not yet acquired the trick of balancing it.  He spent two days
and several hours of a third in negotiating the reaches of rocks and
white waters.  But, once clear of the obstructed areas, he traveled
with both speed and ease, running with the lively current and dipping
the paddle occasionally with a twist or sweep.  Rusty Trap Falls
forced him ashore again to a short bout of carrying, but from that
onward the way was swift and open.  Following Mark's instructions, he
descended Racket River to a point within twenty yards of the fork of
the roads, there cached the canoe among the bushes and the meat in a
tree and completed his homeward journey on foot.

It was night and bitterly cold, with a skin of ice along the edges of
the river and over every pool of still water, and the white stars
fairly snapping.  Jim reached the Ducat house at nine o'clock, found
the family at home, and Melchior Hammond and another young man
present.  At sight of Jim, Flora jumped to her feet and upset the
album, laughed and sat down again; Peter and Sam went out to hitch up
and go after the canoe and moose-meat; and Mrs. Ducat stopped her
rocking and darning and said, "Flora, you get a good hot supper for
Jim with cream to his preserves."

Melchior shook hands with Jim, inquired politely after Mark's health
and whereabouts and then remarked that he guessed he might as well go
along with the men as far as the fork of the roads.

"And you might as well take Homer along with you," said Flora.  "It's
late for him to be out and he's got a long way to go."

But Mr. Steeves didn't go.  Melchior didn't urge him.  He recovered
the album from the floor without a word and glared at it in a
lowering silence.  Flora laughed, took Jim by the hand, and led him
into the kitchen.  Melchior followed them, donned his overcoat and
hat and gloves, wished everybody a cheery good night and departed.
Jim, standing awkwardly with his left hand still clasped by the
girl's right hand, felt that there had been a peculiar significance
in the smile which Melchior had bestowed upon him at the moment of
closing the kitchen door.  He looked at the girl, whose extraordinary
eyes were already upon him.

"I believe you are trying to make Mel jealous," he said, smiling
uneasily.

"Leggo the young man's hand an' git 'im his supper," said old Archie
McKim.

Flora laughed and released Jim's hand.  Jim blushed and seated
himself at the table.

Flora fried bacon and potatoes and boiled coffee for Jim's belated
supper.  She spread the table with a white cloth for him and set out
cream and strawberry jam and Washington pie.  She placed the hot
dishes before him, poured his coffee and then sat down opposite him
with her elbows on the table and her vivid face and remarkable eyes
shaded a little between her hands.  Jim ate with a good appetite.

In answer to a few questions, Jim told the girl about the Kettle Pond
country and the trips in and out and the shooting of the moose.

Homer Steeves appeared suddenly at Flora's elbow and scowled across
the table at Jim.

"I thought you had started for home long ago," said the girl.

"I ain't gone yet," he replied sullenly.

"Well, that's your name, and you'd better live up to it--Homer."

"I know my name, an' I know other folks' names--but what I want to
know is if I ain't got as much right 'round here as Mel Hammond."

"Why, of course you have: he hasn't any."

"Ain't he courtin' you, Flora?"

"Nobody's courting me."

"He comes here often enough, anyhow!  What does he come for?"

Jim looked up, frowning slightly.

"Steeves, Flora is Mark Ducat's sister, and Mark is my friend and
partner," he said.  "You wouldn't bawl your ill-mannered questions at
her if Mark were here, so don't do it now."

"Maybe I would an' maybe I wouldn't, but you ain't Mark Ducat,"
retorted the other.  "Mark could eat three like you an' I could eat
two!  If you don't believe me, come along outside!"

"But Mark couldn't," said Flora.

Jim smiled at her and shook his head very slightly.  Then he stood up
and said quietly, "If I do, Steeves, I'll have to carry you in again
and put you to bed, and that will be an inconvenience to both of us
and to Mrs. Ducat."

"Talk don't scare me," sneered Homer.

"He can have Mark's bed," said Flora reflectively.

Mr. Steeves eyed her questioningly, uncertainly.

"And there's still some of the same arnica we used on the last man
who picked a fight with you, Jim," she added.

"Who was he?" asked Homer.

"A better man than you," replied the girl.

The two young men eyed one another searchingly for several seconds.
Then Steeves turned away, took up his coat and cap from the big
settle beside the chimney, and went out, Jim sat down and took up his
spoon.  Flora refilled his cup.

"Perhaps I should not have interfered," said Jim, glancing across the
table.  "Perhaps I had no right to, after all?"

"You said you had a right to, as Mark's friend and partner," she
answered.

The Racket River country froze hard and deep that night and all the
next day and yet harder and deeper on the following night.  The river
froze clear across, except in places of broken white water; and a
third night of intense freezing sealed even the rapids, leaving only
a steaming airhole here and there.  Caught naked, without their white
blankets of snow, the clearings and rocky shores and hardwood swales
looked dead, as if the swift frost had struck home to their summer
hearts.  Then came the merciful snow, after a red dawn.  The snow
continued to fall throughout a day and a night.

Uncle Sam Ducat had engaged himself and a team of horses and a
complete outfit of rigging for twitching and hauling to Henry Lunn
for the winter.  Mr. Lunn was operating on Ripping Brook, ten miles
to the south and fifteen miles to the east of Piper's Glen; so Sam
made an early start, muffled in a coon-skin coat, to a frosty jangle
of bells, with dry snow puffing up from his horses' legs and the
frozen vapor of their nostrils and the smoke of his pipe ascending in
the nippy sunshine.

Half an hour after Uncle Sam's departure, Jim Todhunter hitched the
strawberry colt Dexter to the red pung and set out for Millbrook to
purchase steel traps and provisions.  He followed Sam Ducat's track,
but the going was heavy.  He had no more than reached the fork and
straightened out on the river road than he was forced to draw rein.
Someone, a human being of some sort, stood fair in the center of the
snowy track, motionless.

"Anything wrong?" asked Jim, standing up and looking over the tall
colt at the obstruction.

He saw then that it was an old woman wearing a brown hood and bulky
with much sombre-hued clothing.  Her hands were in red mittens; in
one she held a little basket and a long staff and in the other
something lengthy wrapped in a shawl.  She looked at Jim with bright
eyes out of a shriveled face.  She did not answer his question.

"May I have the pleasure of driving you to the village?" he asked.

"No, I thank 'e," she replied.  "Ye got beautiful manners, but I
ain't a-goin' that way."

She continued to stand motionless in the middle of the road, however,
knee-deep in the dry snow between the hoof-tracks of Sam Ducat's team.

"Isn't there anything I can do for you?" he asked.

"Be ye carryin' a gun?--an' maybe some cartridges, Mister?"

"Yes.  I thought I might get a shot at something."

The old woman advanced past the colt and stood beside the pung.  She
placed her basket on the seat of the pung, leaned her staff against
it and removed the shawl from the longish parcel, thereby disclosing
a single-barrel shotgun.

"I shot away all my ca'tridges yesterday," she said.  "It ain't often
I hit a rabbit, but I be thankful enough when I do."

Jim looked at the gun more closely and saw that it was a
breechloading number twelve.  He dipped into a pocket and brought up
three cartridges and gave them to the old woman.  She accepted them
eagerly.

"Now are you sure you are quite safe here on the road?" he asked.

"Aye, Mister, safe enough, thank 'e," she answered, slipping one
shell into her gun and the others into a pocket.  She wrapped the
shawl around the gun, took up the basket and staff and stepped back a
pace.  Jim shook the reins and the colt got into motion.

"Good hunting, Granny," called Jim over his shoulder.

"Thank 'e kindly, sir, an' God bless ye!" called the old woman after
him.

Jim reached the village without further interruption and found
Melchior Hammond alone in the store.  He asked after the family and
was told that all were well as could be expected under the
circumstances.

"What circumstances?" he asked.

"I wish ye'd jailed the old man when ye had 'im cold!" exclaimed
Melchior.  "He ain't fit to live with--no, nor half-way fit!  Ever
since you caught 'im cold, right in front of Deputy-Sheriff Hart,
tryin' to rob ye, he's been havin' prayers every mornin' an' noon an'
talkin' murder every night."

"Where is he now?"

"Up-river somewheres.  He went yesterday to put a crimp into some
poor folks up that way who borrowed money from him at four hundred
per cent. interest.  He's havin' the time of his life, I bet!"

"Four hundred per cent.!"

"Sure--but it don't show on paper.  That's how he did business with
old Widow Wilson.  Bein' his son is bitter diet, Jim!  If I was worth
a can of sardines, I'd of cleared out long ago!"

Jim made his purchases, refused an invitation to dinner, and set out
on the homeward journey.  He passed several teams bound for the
village; and within a hundred yards of the fork of the roads he came
face to face with Amos Hammond.  He pulled out to the left to let the
store-keeper go by, but, instead of taking advantage of the space,
Amos drew rein.  So Jim brought the strawberry colt to a standstill.
Amos was in a sleigh, despite the fact that he must have left home on
wheels yesterday, when there wasn't any snow; and Jim wondered at
that.  The explanation was simple.  Hammond had traded the
unseasonable wagon for the sleigh and robes and new harness with an
unwilling countryman whose note was in his possession.

"D'ye ever see Melchior up this way?" asked Hammond.

"Pull out," said Jim.  "I want my share of the road.  I'm in a hurry."

"I asked ye a question."

"Which I have no intention of answering.  Pull out!"

"Young man, answer my question.  Have ye ever seen my son in that
house of iniquity where you now make your ungodly home?"

"House of iniquity?  What do you mean by that?"

"The Ducat house, that sink of cardplayin' an' blasphemy."

Jim was out of the red pung like a flash and at the head of Hammond's
mare in a second.  He pulled the mare to one side, not ungently, then
jumped along to the side of the sleigh, struck Hammond such a
terrific chop across the right wrist with his mittened fist that the
reins were released, and yanked him out and down.

"You mad, dirty, lying cur!" he cried.

He shook Amos Hammond until hairs flew from his dog-skin coat.  He
slapped his face.  He cuffed his ears.  He rolled him in the snow.
He bumped him and thumped him, then grabbed him up in both arms and
flung him back in the sleigh.

"Get along home, you unspeakable cur, and thank God that I don't lose
my temper!" he cried.

He jumped into the pung and put Dexter along the Glen road at a
thumping trot.  He was no more than around the first curve and over
the first rise than he heard the report of a gun behind him.  He
looked back without drawing rein, but saw nothing.  He drove on,
wondering if Hammond had fired a wild shot after him, or if the queer
old woman was still hunting rabbits in the vicinity of the fork.

Jim did not tell the Ducats of his encounter with Amos Hammond on his
way home, but he spoke of his meeting with the old woman on his way
to the village.  Mrs. Ducat said that the queer old person with the
basket and the staff must have been Widow Wilson from Kingswood
Settlement, and the others agreed with her.  Peter Ducat, who had
been suffering increasing twinges of rheumatism all morning and half
the night before, held forth at length and bitterly on the subjects
of Widow Wilson's sad case and Amos Hammond's hypocrisy and cruelty.

After dinner, Jim decided to master the art of snowshoeing
immediately, so as to be ready for the long cross-country journey to
the Kettle Pond country before Mark's arrival.  There were plenty of
snowshoes in the house.  Flora selected a pair for him and showed him
how to arrange and tie the thongs.  He fastened them to his
moccasined feet there and, after a few preliminary shuffles and
stumbles around the kitchen, to the peril and amusement of the
grandfathers and the disgust of the suffering Peter, he flopped and
staggered out into the snow.  Flora could not accompany him, for it
was baking day.  He got clear of the farmstead in the course of half
an hour, with the dogs leaping around him with yelps of encouragement
and derision.  After that he began to see how to avoid stepping on
himself; and within the hour he was footing the white aisles of the
forest, and surmounting white barriers where brush fences lay buried
with astonishing ease and security.  He kept at it until the sun was
low.




CHAPTER IX

AN AWKWARD SITUATION

Upon his return to the house, Jim found Flora alone in the old
kitchen preparing supper.  Peter Ducat had retired to bed with his
rheumatism, Mrs. Ducat was upstairs rubbing his tortured joints with
liniment, and the grandfathers were out at the barn.  Flora turned
from the stove on the instant of Jim's entrance and advanced swiftly
to meet him.  Her face was pale and her eyes were even brighter than
usual.

"You must go right away!" she whispered.  "No, rest a few
minutes--and then travel fast.  I have grub all packed, and your
rifle and ammunition ready, and blankets, and a compass.  Sit down
and rest!"

"But what's the rush?" he asked staring at her.  "I promised to wait
here for Mark.  I can't carry the whole outfit--traps and all."

"You must go west, not north," she replied.  "They'll look for you at
Kettle Pond.  I've planned it all out.  Don't stand there like a
booby!  Sit down and rest while you can."

"What's it all about?  You don't seem yourself, Flora."

"Don't be a fool!  Homer Steeves has been here.  He saw Amos Hammond.
Met him on the road and drove him home."

"My dear girl, what are you talking about?"

Flora's eyes filled with tears.

"You can't fool me!" she cried.

"I don't want to fool you.  Why should I fool you?"

"Will you go away then, and hide in the woods?"

"I'll go away, if you want me to particularly, but I won't hide.
That's flat!  Why should I hide?  From Amos Hammond, do you mean?"

"Yes--and well you know it!  He was still alive when Homer got him to
the village, but he may be dead by now!  Murder is what the law will
call it, however much he deserved to be killed.  You didn't tell
about meeting him this morning--and now I know why."

"Dead!  Murder!  Are you crazy?  I didn't hurt him.  I rolled him
about in the snow a bit and slapped his lying face and then threw him
back into his sleigh.  He drove off all right.  I didn't even land
him one good crack.  I didn't tell you about it because it wasn't
worth telling."

"But he is shot!  Homer was on the road--quite a piece behind you.
He saw Hammond coming, and then he heard a gun.  Hammond was all
blood when he got to him, and he took him home.  So what's the good
of bluffing, Jim?  You must go, quick!"

"I heard a shot, too!  I thought he'd taken a wild one at me for
knocking him about, so I kept right on."

"Please don't, Jim.  Please shut up and get out of here before the
sheriff comes looking for you."

"I'll do nothing of the kind.  I didn't shoot the old rube, so why
should I run away and hide?  I'm not ashamed of what I did do to him,
and the sheriff is welcome to the whole story.  Flora, do you think I
would shoot a man?  I didn't return his fire even that night he was
blazing away at me."

"But--who shot him, if you didn't?"

"I don't know."

"The law will fasten it onto you, so you must hide!  You threatened
him one day before Sheriff Hart.  How can you prove your innocence?"

"I don't have to.  The law has to prove my guilt.  I won't run away,
that's flat!  Anyone who thinks that I fired on a man sitting unarmed
in a sleigh is a fool!"

He stood his snowshoes behind the door and pulled off his heavy outer
coat.  The girl turned back to the stove.  The grandfathers came in
with the milk pails.  Flora did not speak a dozen words during
supper.  Mrs. Ducat returned to her husband immediately after supper,
the old men fell to arguing and smoking beside the stove, and Jim and
Flora washed the dishes.  Flora washed and Jim dried.  The girl was
nervous and the young man was decidedly cool.  He wasn't worrying
about the possible effect upon himself of the assault upon Amos
Hammond, but he was hurt and disappointed and offended at the thought
that this girl, his friend, could for a moment believe him capable of
firing on an unarmed man.

"Will you go to-night?" she asked, clattering the dishes in the pan.
"I have it all planned for you and everything ready."

"No, I won't!"

"Then I have to go myself," she whispered, with bowed head and
averted face.

"You, Flora?  What are you thinking of?  Why should you go?"

"To get away!  To escape!"

"What are you talking about?"

She turned her head and looked at him with a flushed face and eyes
flashing green through tears.

"Flora, what do you mean?" he continued.  "Why did you say that?"

"I--I must get away--before morning--from the police!"

"You?  Stop crying or I'll shake you!  What have the police to do
with you?"

"I--I did it.  I shot Amos Hammond."

"You!  You are mad, Flora!  You knew nothing about it until this
afternoon.  You knew nothing until Steeves told you."

"I pretended not to know, naturally.  I wasn't in when you got home
before dinner, was I?  I came in fifteen or twenty minutes after you.
You noticed that, Jim.  I shot him.  I was in the woods, and I saw
him suddenly on the road--and I shot him!"

"Good Lord!  Why?"

"I thought of poor old Widow Wilson, and of the time he tried to kill
you, and of things he has said about us."

"Good heavens!"

"So you see, I must get away--before morning."

Jim dried three cups in silence.

"I'll go," he said, his voice low but steady.  "Tell me what you have
planned after the old boys have turned in: and I'll get away before
dawn."

"But you said you didn't do it!"

"Well?"

"Why--why have you changed your mind about going?"

"To give the sheriff a run for his money.  All you will have to do is
keep quiet.  You would be safe enough from suspicion without my
going, I think, but you'll be doubly safe if I take to the woods."

"Do you believe that of me?"

"What?"

"That I shot Amos Hammond?"

"Haven't you just now told me that you shot him?  I don't know what
you are trying to get at!  Did you shoot him, or didn't you?"

"You should know."

"I believe what you tell me, mad as it sounds."

"Of course I did it.  Haven't I told you so?  I wonder what you must
think of me--for doing such a thing."

"I think you acted on a mad impulse.  But that's not what's sticking
in my crop.  I can understand that, but why did you try to get me to
run away and confirm Homer Steeves' suspicion before you told me the
truth?"

She gazed at him with many and conflicting expressions in her
remarkable eyes--amazement, protest, appeal, anxiety, scorn, doubt,
and a gleam of something unutterably tender and kind.  Then she
suddenly turned from him, sobbing.

"Now ye done it, Jim!" exclaimed Grandfather Ducat from the stove.
"Ye're comin' along, lad!  Ye're the only young man I see yet could
make Flora cry."

Jim lit a cigarette and joined the old men.  Flora dried her eyes,
put the dishes away on the dresser shelves and went upstairs.  Jim
and the grandfathers played three-handed cribbage until ten o'clock,
and the girl did not reappear once during that time.  The old men
retired at last, leaving Jim to bank the fire and wind the clock.
Jim had no intention of going to bed that night.  He was determined
to see Flora and speak to her again before his flight.  He owed this
to her as well as to himself.  He must know what she had meant by the
look he had seen in her eyes, and he had to give her a chance to
thank him for the very serious sacrifice he was about to make for her
sake.  Also, his heart was set on telling her once more that he
thought none the less of her for the mad thing she had done.

He sat by the fire, extinguished the lamp, and smoked a cigarette.
He considered the disastrous situation from many angles, but not for
a moment did he consider the advisability of standing his ground and
stating his innocence and leaving the solving of Flora's problem to
herself and the law.  He didn't give that course a moment's thought,
for Flora was a girl, and all the Ducats were his friends.

He smoked two cigarettes, waiting and listening in the dark, angry
and depressed and helpless.  At last he fell asleep, despite his
determination to remain awake and interview the girl.

He sat up with a jerk and opened his eyes.  A gray hint of light was
at the eastern windows.  The fire was burning and a kettle was
steaming on the stove.  Flora had been here and had put on the kettle
for him.  His heart lightened.  He lit the lamp at his elbow and
looked around the kitchen.  He was alone.  But perhaps she would be
down again?  Of course she would be down again!  But a glance at the
table took the edge off that hope.  There lay a sheet of white paper
marked with penciled lines, the points of the compass and a dozen
words of instruction.  A small pocket-compass held it down.  About
these were clustered dishes, the teapot, cream, bread and butter,
sliced cold ham, and a jar of strawberry preserves.  On the end of
the big table lay his rifle and a large pack made up of a bag of
provisions and a roll of heavy blankets.

"Here's you hat: what's your hurry?" said Jim, bitterly.

He pocketed the paper and compass after a brief examination, poured
boiling water on the tea, pulled on stockings and moccasins and
turned to the food with a grim but workman-like air.  Then, full-fed,
he fastened on his snowshoes, donned blanket coat and fur cap,
hoisted the pack to his shoulders and made it fast, lit a cigarette,
and went out from the warm old kitchen.  He circled the cluster of
buildings and struck due west, according to instructions.  The dogs
leaped about him, and it went sore against his nature to have to turn
them homeward by flourishing his cased rifle at them.  For a long
time they refused to believe that he really meant it, that it wasn't
a new game, but at last they turned and retired.  And Jim Todhunter
was alone; he had never felt so absolutely alone before.

Flora Ducat was in the kitchen again within fifteen minutes of Jim's
departure.  She cleared the table, pausing frequently to listen as if
she expected to hear something at the door.  When all signs of Jim's
breakfast were removed and the table was reset, she banged the
stovepipe with the iron spoon.  Then she went to the door and opened
it.  The dogs came bounding in.  She closed the door behind her and
stood motionless in the biting cold for half a minute, listening and
gazing westward over the lightening wastes of snow and forest.  There
were shadows in her eyes, and her lips trembled pitifully.

Breakfast that morning was an unhappy experience for Flora.

"Ain't Jim been called yet?" asked her mother.  "Maybe he's all
tuckered out with his snowshoein' yesterday an' would like to eat in
bed.  Well, he can if he wants to."

"He has gone out," said the girl.  "He had something to eat before he
went, I guess."

"An' took his snowshoes an' rifle along!" exclaimed the observant
Grandfather Ducat.  "What's eatin' 'im?  He ain't fool enough to
strike out for Kittle Pond all by himself, I hope.  He's left the new
traps behind, anyhow.  Jist out a-cavortin' round on his snowshoes
for the good o' his health, like as not.  Ye can't ever tell what
these outsiders will do next."

The morning passed, but James Todhunter did not return.
Investigations on the part of old Hercules Ducat disclosed the fact
that bacon, flour, tea, bread, sugar, blankets, and Peter's compass
were missing.  From this he deduced the theory that Jim had gone
forth with every intention of making a long journey; and if a long
journey, what journey but northward to Kettle Pond and his partner?
He explained it all at dinner.

"Reckon that's easy enough," he concluded triumphantly.

"A fool could see it," remarked Grandfather McKim.

Three o'clock came and brought Sheriff Hart in a yellow pung behind a
long-gaited gray.  The sheriff threw the buffalos over the gray and
entered the kitchen before the grandfathers had a chance to get
outside to welcome him and to insist on stabling the horse; for Bruce
Hart, being a fair man and a kindly one who never exceeded his duties
and frequently gave ear to the spirit rather than the letter of the
law, was personally popular and usually accepted with resignation in
his official capacity.  After the workmanlike dispatch of his
entrance and a swift professional glance around the kitchen, his
attitude relaxed.  He shook hands with Mrs. Ducat, with the old man,
and with Flora, and asked after the healths and whereabouts of Sam
and Peter and Mark and the young man from the States--all with the
politest and most sociable air.  Mrs. Ducat told him of Peter's
rheumatism and Sam's departure for the woods and Mark's venture away
up in the Kettle Pond country.

"There'd ought to be fur a-plenty up that way," said the sheriff,
laying aside his coon-skin coat and accepting a rocking chair.
"Young Todhunter's Mark's partner, so I hear.  He bought some traps
from Mel Hammond.  Is he round anywheres handy now?"

"We ain't seen him all day," said Grandfather McKim.  "He's took all
of a sudden to larnin' how to snowshoe, an' I reckon he be out
rollickin' round somewheres on his webs this very minute."

At that moment, the door opened and old Widow Wilson from Kingswood
Settlement entered the kitchen with her staff and her basket and her
single-barreled shotgun wrapped up in a shawl.  She was cordially
welcomed by everyone, the sheriff included.  Flora relieved her of
her burdens, Mrs. Ducat brushed the snow from her feet, Sheriff Hart
closed the door behind her, and Hercules Ducat gave her his own
chair.  She accepted these attentions graciously, turned back her
hood, loosed her cloak and fixed her bright glance knowingly on the
sheriff's hairy face.




CHAPTER X

THE WIDOW'S MITE

"I see ye from the windy," said the old woman, "an' I sez, quick as
winkin', there goes the sheriff a-lookin' for whoever shot Amos
Hammond, sez I.  So I lights out an' takes a short cut an' tops the
fences like a breechy steer, an' here I be."

"How's that?" exclaimed old Hercules.  "Someone shoot Amos Hammond?"

"Aye, he got a pepperin' with partridge shot," returned Widow Wilson
brightly.  "But I wisht it had been buckshot," she added, yet more
brightly.

"Ye're right, Mrs. Wilson," said the sheriff.  "An' I may's well be
open an' above-board about it in this company, now's ye've mentioned
it.  Amos Hammond ain't hurt serious, but he's most scart to death,
an' he charges James Todhunter with the shootin'."

"What's that?" cried old Hercules.  "Amos Hammond's a liar an' a
fool!  Jim shoot a man?  Only a liar would say it an' only a fool
would believe it!  I know that lad.  We all know 'im in this house.
Ye're barkin' up the wrong tree, Sheriff.  Ain't I right, Flora?"

But Flora didn't answer.  She sat with bowed head and averted face.
Her hands were clasped in her lap, and the knuckles were white as
ivory.

"Reckon yer right this time," said old Archie McKim.  "Right in part,
anyhow.  Jim's quality.  If he was desperate enough to shoot a man
he'd use a bullet an' have a proper duel.  He ain't the kind to pump
no partridge shot into any man."

"Aye, that's right," said Widow Wilson, with her clear, smiling
glance still upon the long arm of the law.  "That young gentleman
didn't shoot Amos Hammond.  It was me shot 'im.  An' who's got a
better right to shoot that flinty-hearted weasel, I'd like to know?
Ye didn't reckon the poor old widdy woman had the spunk to up an'
fire off a gun, did ye now?  I borrowed the ca'tridges from the young
gentleman--I know a gentleman when I see 'im, an' always did--an'
told 'im how I was huntin' rabbits.  So he driv off to the village
an' I waited round in the woods an' kep' an eye on the road, for I
knew Amos Hammond was up-river at his dirty work.  I waited till he
come drivin' down the road, an' then I see the young gentleman
a-drivin' home.  Hammond, he pulls up fair in the middle of the track
an' starts right in sassin' the lad an' miscallin' this house.  Out
hops Mr. Todhunter an' jerks Amos Hammond down from his seat an'
slaps his face an' drags 'im round an' scrudges his face in the snow
an' then heaves 'im up into the sleigh again.  Then he jumps into his
pung an' drives off up the glen.  'That's good,' sez I to meself,
'but it ain't enough.  There be more a-comin' to 'im, even afore he's
smit by the wrath o' God.  He's been cheatin' an' lyin' an'
slanderin' an' persecutin' all these years,' sez I to meself--an' so
I ups an' shoots a shoot into his dirty carcass."

"_You_ did it?" cried Flora, turning a bloodless face and stricken
eyes upon the old woman.

"Sure I done it; an' I wisht it was buckshot," replied the brisk old
dame.

The girl got out of her chair clumsily, crossed the kitchen with
bowed head and vanished up the back stairs.  The others gazed after
her, some anxiously, all inquiringly.

"She needn't feel that bad for me," said Mrs. Wilson.  "It's real
sweet of her, bless her heart, but I ain't worryin'."

"Ain't ye tryin' to play a joke on us, ma'am?" asked the sheriff.

"The joke was on Amos Hammond, if it was a joke," replied the widow
cheerily.

"Maybe ye've imagined it all in yer own mind, ma'am."

"In my own mind?  It would have been buckshot, an' he'd be dead now,
if that was the way of it!"

"Ye ain't yerself to-day, ma'am.  Yer troubles have got onto yer
brain.  Yer thoughts have got the better of yer judgment, so to
speak."

"What d'ye mean by that, Bruce Hart?  Be ye tryin' to make me out a
loony?  Well, ye best quit right now!  My troubles have nigh broke my
heart, but my mind's as good as ever it was an' I know what I'm
about.  Take me along to Amos Hammond, an' ye'll soon see whether I
be cracked or sane.  I'll tell 'im how it was me who shot 'im, an'
why; an' if he puts the law onto me, then I'll tell the jedge why I
done it.  But he won't put the law onto me, never fear!  Where'd he
be then, him an' his psalm-singin', if I was to git up in front of a
jedge an' jury an' tell all I know about 'im?  All ye got to do's
take me to 'im an' see if he dare make a charge agin me.  Do ye
dooty, Sheriff!"

Old Hercules began to chuckle and slap his knee.

"She be right," he exclaimed.  "Dead right.  She knows what she's
about; an' she knowed what she was about when she pulled the trigger.
She got Amos Hammond by the short hair, whatever way ye take it!
Fetch her back here as soon's she's had her little say to Amos.
There be a plate an' a chair an' a bed for her under this roof as
long as she wants to use 'em."

Twenty minutes later, the sheriff and the cheerful widow drove
amiably off together.  Ten minutes after that, Flora left the house,
stealthily by way of the seldom-used front door.  She carried a pack
and a shotgun and snowshoes, and was clothed for both warmth and
action.  She made a cautious detour of the farmstead before pausing
to slip her feet into the toe-straps of the snowshoes and tie the
leather thongs.  The two dogs came leaping and yelping about her;
and, after a moment's hesitation, she decided to let them accompany
her.  Then she and the enthusiastic dogs struck westward in Jim
Todhunter's tracks.  A light drift of snow had obliterated the tracks
in open places, but in the lee of thickets and in the woods they were
deep and plain.

Flora carried food, blankets, and a belt ax in her pack.  She
traveled at a good pace for half an hour, after which the weight of
the pack began to tell on her, but she held anxiously on her way.
The sun went down behind the black forests of the west, and a rind of
new moon and many white stars did their best to replace it; and the
girl hoisted the pack higher and continued to advance.  Soon after
the setting of the sun, a wind started up and set the dry snow
running in open places and awoke many weird voices among the harsh
spires of the spruces and in the crowns of tall pines.  Flora was
glad that she had allowed the dogs to come along with her.  The dogs
ceased their hunting of rabbits to right and left after the sun went
down and kept to the trail of Jim's snowshoes.  The trail was all in
the forest now, under shaking branches, in a whispering gloom pierced
here and there by a rift of pale shine.

Flora was not accustomed to carrying a pack and she had to drop it at
last.  She made a shelter in the heart of a thicket of young firs,
built a good fire, cut small boughs for her bed, fed the dogs, ate
her own cold supper and rolled herself in three double blankets.  But
several hours passed before sleep came to her.  It was her first
night in the woods and, warm as she was, she shivered continually,
and a creeping chill played on the nape of her neck at every rush and
whisper and sly footfall of wind and wood and frosty snow.  But her
conscience disturbed her even more than her fears.  At last she fell
asleep, with a big dog curled on either side.

It was close upon supper time when Mrs. Ducat went to Flora's room
and discovered her absence.  A note on the dressing table said:

"I have gone to look for Jim.  Don't worry."

The grandfathers toddled forth and took a look around by
lantern-light but the tracks of the snowshoes were already drifted
full.  They agreed that both Jim and the girl had gone north and
that, as they had plenty of grub, there was nothing to worry about.




CHAPTER XI

THE WESTWARD TRAIL

The reduced Ducats were half-way through supper when Sheriff Hart and
Widow Wilson got back from Millbrook.  The sheriff and the widow had
interviewed Amos Hammond separately and together, and Amos (from whom
the pellets of lead had been picked by a doctor) had withdrawn his
charge against Jim Todhunter and refused to make one against the
indomitable widow.  The sheriff drove away after supper.  He hadn't
been gone more than twenty minutes before Homer Steeves arrived.
Homer twiddled his thumbs for half an hour, then asked point-blank
why Flora was not in evidence.

"She's out, an' I can't rightly say exactly when she'll be home,"
said Mrs. Ducat uneasily.

"Don't know when she'll be home?" cried the youth.  "Maybe ye don't
know where she is--at this time of night!"

"Now don't ye be sassy, Homer," said old Hercules.  "That there
sarcastic tone of voice ain't for use twixt young folk an' their
elders."

"Where is she, then?  Out to a spree somewheres with the dood?"

"That ain't much better, Homer.  Sounds to me like yer four hosses
an' fifteen head o' cattle was talkin' more'n yer manners.  Us Ducats
an' McKims be easy-goin', hospitable folks, but I licked both yer
gran'pas, an' I licked yer pa, an' for a chew o' baccy I'd up onto my
two hind legs an' lam ye a wallop!"

"I don't mean to be sassy, Mr. Ducat, an' all I want's a civil answer
to a civil question."

"An' I give it to ye, Homer.  Jim Todhunter went out early this
mornin' on a pair of snowshoes an' he ain't come back yet, an' Flora
went out a spell before supper to look for 'im an' she ain't got back
yet.  There be yer civil answer.  She be out, an' we can't rightly
say aigzactly when she'll be home agin--jist like her ma told ye."

"He run, did he?  I reckoned that's what he'd do!  But what did Flora
go huntin' 'im for?  Couldn't she leave it to the police?"

"What's the police gotter do with it?" asked Hercules.

"It's all up with yer dood, folks," replied Homer derisively.  And
then, with a swift change of tone, "Will you rig me out with
snowshoes an' a rifle?" he continued.  "I'll stable the mare an' take
a look around.  Todhunter don't know the woods an' maybe some
accident has happened to him, an' Flora ain't ust to travelin' the
woods at night.  I guess it won't do no hurt to take a look round."

"Reckon ye're right, Homer, as usual," said Hercules.  "Stable the
mare, an' welcome.  I'll rig ye out with webs an' a rifle."

Archie McKim parted his whiskers with the very evident intention of
saying something important, but a furtive hack on the shin by
Hercules, accompanied by a terrific scowl, caused him to change his
mind.  Then Hercules got to his feet, whispered a few words in Widow
Wilson's ear, and took a lantern from a nail in the wall and lit it.
Homer Steeves took the lantern and went out to stable his mare.  The
moment the door was shut, old Ducat hobbled to the dresser and from a
lower drawer produced a few brass shells.  He laid these on the
table, in the lamplight, and, looking around at old Archie, his
daughter-in-law, and the widow, he winked three times.

"There be no fool like a young fool," he said.

The shells and protruding bullets were large and of simple
construction, for his rifle was a Snider.  He removed the bullets,
working swiftly with deft fingers, a pointed knife-blade and pincers,
then extracted the explosive charges and returned the bullets to the
shells.  The job was completed and all evidences of it were cleared
away by the time Homer reentered the kitchen.

"Here be my own trusty rifle, an' here be my own snowshoes," said
Hercules to Hornet, "An' Jane'll put up a pa'cel o' cooked grub for
ye.  But here be only four cartridges."

"Four'll be plenty," returned the young man.

Knowing nothing of old Mrs. Wilson's confession, Homer believed Jim
Todhunter to be a fugitive from the law.  Flora's action puzzled him,
but he put it out of his mind, for she had frequently puzzled him
before by word and deed and look.  But the smart of jealousy
remained.  Now was his chance to get that formidable rival out of the
way without a downright declaration of the degrading and unpopular
passion.  He would go out to hunt for Flora, which was only right and
proper and a thing any young man of spirit would do, and, with luck,
he would find the man who was wanted for shooting Amos Hammond.  With
a little more luck, he would bring that young man out of the woods
with him and hand him over to the sheriff.  He might meet with
resistance.  He might have to use old Hercules Ducat's rifle.  In
that case he might need a sled.

Homer left the kitchen with a rifle, a day's provisions, a lantern,
and blankets.  By the light of the lantern he hunted out the light,
strong sled which was used for hauling turnips and carrots from the
root-house to the stables.  Thus completely equipped, he made
straight for the nearest edge of timber, which lay to the southwest
of the farmstead.  He realized that it would be useless to look for
tracks in the open--as useless as to accept old Ducat's suggestion
that the fugitive and the girl had gone north toward Mark's trapping
ground.  He was a shrewd fellow, this Homer.  He turned northward
upon reaching the shelter of the spruces, with the lighted lantern
swinging low and his gaze on the ground.  No wild-goose chase for
him!  He would find the tracks and start right, even if he was forced
to make a complete circuit of the clearings to do so.  But he was in
luck.  He found the tracks before he had gone two hundred
yards--tracks of two pairs of snowshoes and of one or two dogs,
leading due west.

Flora awoke early and suddenly as the first faint gray of dawn sifted
through the windless and frozen forest.  She sat bolt upright at the
instant of waking and stared about her in bewildered dismay for
several seconds before she remembered the events of the night and
realized her position.  Her conscience smote her immediately and
dismay gave way to shame and anxiety.  She scrambled away from her
snowy blankets, and the dogs leaped to their feet.  She built the
fire up from its ash-filmed, red heart, boiled snow water and brewed
tea, breakfasted, and fed the dogs.  She was away on Jim's trail
again within a half-hour of opening her eyes.

She traveled through heavy woods, over uneven country, throughout the
long, windless morning.  The trail led up and down, up and down, but
steadily westward.  The colorless sunshine struck down to her through
the somber browns and dull greens of the crowding forest.  The dogs
ran ahead and on the flanks, coursing rabbits and now and again
putting a grouse up in a whirl of snow.  She traveled fast, but was
forced to rest often to ease her shoulders of the weight of the
unaccustomed pack.  She always did this by leaning back against a
convenient tree.  At noon she made a fire, fried bacon, and toasted
bread and rested for an hour.

She had not gone more than five hundred yards after the noon rest
when she came to the edge of a wide, white expanse of open country
and the end of the visible trail.  The wind of yesterday had filled
and obliterated the imprints of Jim's webs with drifting snow.  A
sudden sense of desolation possessed the girl.  She left the woods
and advanced upon the barren with a strange reluctance of spirit.
Clumps of dead trees and stunted brush showed here and there between
her and the distant line of black hills, and to her right and left
the white emptiness extended to the colorless horizon.  She was
without a compass, but she walked as straight a course as possible
under the circumstances, by selecting and advancing upon one landmark
after another.  The sun, red as fire, was on the crest of the tumbled
black horizon in front of her by the time she reached the western
edge of the barren ground.

Flora moved to the right, in the shelter of the trees, seeking the
lost trail.  She went half a mile in that direction without success,
then retraced her steps to the point at which she had entered the
timber.  The sun and its red glow were gone by now, the stars shone
but faintly, the barren was a vague pallor and the forest was utter
gloom.  The girl realized the uselessness of continuing the search
for Jim's tracks in the dark, and so dropped her pack and gun and
felt about in the underbrush for dry wood for a fire.  She found some
dead stuff, hacked it down with the short ax, and dragged it out.
Soon a flame was crackling in the rusty red needles.  She fed it with
dry boughs, and it leaped high and clear.  She glanced around in the
widening circle of wavering light, saw the dogs, the brown boles and
drooping branches of the trees, the trampled white about the fire
and, at the very edge of the firelight, a thing that might be a
shadow and yet might be something else.  She ran to it and stooped
above it.  It was a deep imprint of a snowshoe, a link of the lost
trail.  And here was another, and beyond yet another.

Flora reshouldered her pack, took up the gun and followed the tracks
into the darkness, leaving the fire to flare and glow and expire of
neglect.  The dogs dashed after her.  She moved slowly, stooping low
after every step or two.  The tracks led through tangles of brush.
The dogs passed her and ran ahead.  She struggled forward, fouling
her snowshoes frequently and falling into the harsh brush and
feathery snow.  At last she heard the dogs barking and yelping far
ahead.




CHAPTER XII

UNFORGIVABLE

By the note of the dogs' outcry, Flora knew that they had found a
friend; and who could it be but Jim Todhunter?  She continued to push
and scramble forward.  She kept a sharp and hopeful lookout ahead for
the gleam of a fire, but in vain.  At last she came to within a dozen
yards of the dogs, who were still uttering occasional yaps and
whines.  But there was no fire.  There was nothing but darkness.

"Is anyone there?" she asked.

"I'm here," replied a faint voice.

"Is it you, Jim?"

"Yes.  Why have you run away, Flora?  Wasn't one enough?"

"Where is your fire?  What are you doing?"

"My fire seems to have gone out.  I'm not doing anything."

"But--what is the matter with you?"

"Nothing much.  Cut my leg--like a fool."

The girl dropped pack and gun and rustled dry wood for the second
time within the hour.  She worked in silence, fumbling in the dark;
and Jim, too, was silent.  The dogs whined anxiously.  She found a
white birch, from which she tore strips of bark, and she hacked away
dozens of the dead lower branches of big spruces and firs.  Soon
strong flames were leaping, and by their light she saw Jim lying,
rolled in blankets, on the snow.  Only his head was uncovered.  His
eyes were wide open, regarding her fixedly.

"Didn't it work?  Are they after you?" he asked.

For answer, she freed her feet from the snowshoes and knelt beside
him.

"You are badly hurt!" she cried fearfully.  "Let me see it!  You have
lost a lot of blood!  How did you do it?  Where is it?"

"My left leg," he answered.  "Did it with the ax, like an idiot.  Had
fool's luck enough to miss the bone, by the feel of it.  Doesn't hurt
much, but bled a good deal.  But what brought you along, Flora?
Didn't our little game work?  Or did you suddenly remember that you
didn't thank me before I left?"

She did not answer his questions or meet his glance, but piled more
fuel on the fire and set to unrolling the blankets gently and swiftly
from about his legs.  The heavy stockings on his left leg were wet
and sticky with blood.  Her exploring fingers were stained with it.

"You didn't tie it up!" she exclaimed.

"I tried to," he replied.  "Tried to cut a strip of blanket for a
bandage.  Went groggy all of a sudden.  Keeled over; just had time
and sense enough to roll up snug in my blankets, so's not to get
frost in the wound.  Next thing I knew, the dogs were licking my
face.  Must have been unconscious for hours."

She produced bandages as if by magic, but with the help of a sharp
knife.  She cut away patches of the blood-soaked stockings and bound
the deep wound.  While she worked, he continued to repeat the
question, but for all he learned she might as well have been deaf and
dumb.  Having completed the bandaging and covered the leg again, she
gathered tips of cedar and fir and made a mattress and rolled him
gently onto it.  Then she melted snow in a smoky kettle, boiled the
water, made tea, and fried bacon.  She toasted bread and buttered it
hot, sat down close beside him and poured tea into the only available
mug.  He put out a hand suddenly and gripped her nearest wrist with
fingers like iron.

"Do you hear me?" he cried.  "I have asked you a dozen times!  Why
have you come after me?"

"To find you," she answered faintly, with averted face.

"But what's the idea?  What use my running away from the police if
you run too?"

"Jim, do you really think I shot Amos Hammond?"

"You told me that you shot him!"

"Yes, I told you so--but I didn't!"

"What _are_ you driving at?  If you didn't shoot him, then why did
you ask me to run away like a coward?  What good did it do you--my
making a coward and a fool of myself--if you were innocent?"

"Can't you see?"

"No, I can't."

"I--I thought you had done it.  What else could I think?  And I
wanted you to get away."

"But after I told you I didn't do it?  It was not until then that you
said you shot him!"

"I am ashamed of myself--miserably ashamed!"

"So it was just a silly trick, Flora?  Nothing but an idiotic joke,
to see what I would do for you."

"But it wasn't--a joke--or a trick," she sobbed.  "I--I didn't
believe you.  I wanted you--to escape--but I wanted you to--trust me.
And I thought you--would confess to me--if I said I did it."

"And when I didn't?  You thought I was lying to you?  You still
thought so?"

"I am bitterly ashamed!"

"You believed me to be a fool, a liar, and a coward!  You believed
that I shot an unarmed man from cover and intended to bluff the
sheriff, but that I was willing to run, eager to run, as soon as you
said you were guilty.  You believed that I was willing to pretend
that you had shot him!  Good Lord!  It's too deep for me!  Nice
opinion you had of me!  And still have, I suppose."

"I was crazy with anxiety--for you.  I didn't think!  I didn't
reason!  And when old Mrs. Wilson said that she had shot Hammond I--I
hated myself!  I despised myself--and I still do!"

"Mrs. Wilson?  The queer old dame I gave cartridges to.  I might have
thought of that!  So the police are still after me, I suppose?"

"No.  She told the sheriff that she did it, and it is all right."

He drank tea, but refused to eat.  Then he closed his eyes and
pretended to sleep.  Flora gathered a supply of wood for the night,
made herself a bed of boughs and took to her blankets with a heavy
heart.  She had wronged Jim past forgiveness, so it seemed.  She had
judged him as she might have judged other young men of her
acquaintance--Homer Steeves and Melchior Hammond, for instance, and
all through her mad anxiety for his safety.  Now, remembering
everything she had seen and heard of him, she realized how foolish
and unjust she had been even in her first mad mistake of believing
that he had fired upon an unarmed man.




CHAPTER XIII

THE WIND ON THE BARREN

Jim Todhunter only pretended to sleep, but he lay very still for
hours.  His mind and heart were prey to bitter and humiliating
thoughts and emotions.  The girl had believed him guilty of shooting
from cover at an unarmed man!  It was a thing which her brother Mark
would not have suspected him of for a moment.  And she had continued
to believe it of him after he had denied it.  So far, she had
considered him a coward, a would-be murderer, and a liar.  But that
had not been enough.  She had then lied to him; and when he had
believed her and taken to the winter wilderness to draw suspicion
away from her and upon himself, she had considered him not only a
blackguard but a fool.  And he had thought her his friend!  He had
thought that she knew him!  It was too damn much!  But for his
wounded leg, she would never see him again.  As it was, he would
avoid her as much as possible.  He would return to the glen, remain
there until the cut was healed, and then go north to the trapping
country.  In the meantime he would make the homeward trip without any
help from her.

Before midnight, he sat up and cautiously prepared for his journey by
the low, red glow of the fallen fire.  First of all, he ate the few
slices of fried bacon and toasted bread which had been left over from
supper.  These were frozen and he thawed them at the embers.  He
helped the heavy food down with a few mouthfuls of bitter cold tea.
After examining the bandages of his injured leg and finding that the
blood had ceased to flow, he cut one of his blankets in two, wrapped
a half securely around the leg from hip to ankle and bound it with
the thongs from his snowshoes.  He rolled his blankets lengthwise,
looped the roll across his shoulder like a bandolier and tied the
ends.  He slung his rifle, stuffed his pockets with food, pulled his
mittens high about his wrists and his fur cap low about his ears and
then crawled away from the low fire and the sleeping girl and dogs.
He went on his hands and his right knee, dragging his bulkily swathed
leg stiffly and heavily.  His arms sank to the elbows, sometimes to
the shoulders.  The dry snow puffed up in his face at every movement
of his arms, almost choking him.  He followed his old tracks back to
the edge of the barren, there found Flora's trail and took to the
open.  The air was still and cold.

Jim back-tracked along Flora's trail as fast as he could without
straining his dragging leg or overheating himself.  In spite of his
bitterness and indignation, he kept his mind cool and clear on the
job in hand.  He paused now and then to clear eyes and nose of snow.
He lay too low, and was too warmly clad and busily engaged to feel
the cold.  He kept to the track without a fault.  Once, before dawn,
he rested for twenty minutes and smoked a couple of cigarettes.  By
sunrise he within fifty yards of the edge of the forest.  He
staggered upright on a straight leg and looked around him; and at the
same moment he heard a gust of wind strike and moan among the black
spires of the forest in front, felt its icy breath on his face and
saw the dry snow around him rise and run in a blinding cloud.  That
puff of wind and blown snow passed and fell in a second, and he saw a
clump of stunted spruces a few rods away on his right.  Then a bright
idea came to him and he sank to hands and knee again and crawled off
on a new course.  He was determined to regain the glen without any
help from the girl who had believed him to be a coward and a liar; he
knew that his only chance of accomplishing this lay in eluding
pursuit, for she could travel three yards to his one, and in this
sudden draught of wind from the rising sun--the promise of a windy
day--he saw his way to tricking her.  In the open, with a wind
blowing, even his trench-like spoor would soon be drifted full and
utterly obliterated, but not so in the shelter of the thick timber.
So he crawled for the little clump of bushy spruces.  He would let
her go blindly by, and then follow and complete his journey in his
own time.  He would show her that, even when crippled, he needed no
assistance from one who thought of him as she did.  He crawled to the
center of the stiff tangle and dug deep in the snow to the very roots
of the spruces.  Here was a snug retreat, a veritable den, walled
with snow and brush and dead fern and roofed with several layers of
wide boughs.  He unrolled his blankets; and then a sudden dizziness
assailed him.  He fought against it for a few seconds, extended his
wounded leg and drew the blankets about him, sagged lower, and lay
still and unconscious.

Flora Ducat awoke at dawn, built up the fire with dry twigs, greeted
the bounding dogs and then discovered Jim's absence.  Gone!  Gone
with rifle, blankets, and wounded leg!  Her eyes tingled with tears,
her heart faltered, and her cheeks went gray at the implication.  He
would risk bleeding to death, or freezing in the snow, rather than
remain in her company or accept her assistance.  As she stared at the
deep trail he had made, the tears suddenly formed and dimmed her
sight.

"He has crawled off like a wounded animal," she whispered.

She tossed the crusts of a frozen loaf to the dogs, made up her pack,
bound on her webs, and set off on Jim's laborious trail.  As she
reached the edge of the barren she saw the first swoop of the wind
lift and drive a great cloud of snow along the desolate expanse.  She
hesitated for a moment, then advanced from the shelter of the woods.
The level rays of the sun flamed across the white waste and dazzled
her eyes.  The tears froze on her cheeks and lashes, and she wiped
them away with the back of a red mitten.  The dogs ran ahead in Jim's
deep trail.  The wind swooped again, nearer this time, spun gleaming
clouds in the sunshine and enveloped the girl in an icy blast and
veils of stinging snow.  She bowed her head and closed her eyes until
the suffocating drift had passed.

The wind increased in violence.  The sun continued to shine in a
clear sky, but it and the landscape were frequently completely veiled
from the girl by the flying drift.  Sometimes the wind and the hunted
snow swirled past her on the right or left, and sometimes it swirled
over her, closing her eyes and snatching away her breath.  She held
bravely to her course.  The dogs returned to her, leaping and yelping
anxiously.  Long mounds of white formed before her heavy snowshoes,
puffed up and vanished and formed again.  But she staggered ahead,
stooped almost double.  She wondered anxiously if Jim had reached
shelter.  Suddenly, after a deluge of wind and snow more violent and
prolonged than usual, she saw that the deep tracks had vanished,
wiped out in some places and completely filled in others.  She halted
unsteadily for a moment and selected landmarks to travel by before
the drift sprang up again, then staggered forward.

Consciousness soon returned to Jim Todhunter in the den in the heart
of the thicket of spruces.  He found that snow had sifted in upon
him, through the tangled and overlapping boughs, to a depth of
several inches.  He stood up, taking all his weight on the uninjured
leg, and shook the blankets.  He felt much better--almost himself
again.  He looked abroad, over the edge of the pit and through the
heavy screen of branches, and saw the drifting clouds lift and spin
and fall.  He thought, against his will, of Flora Ducat.  He wondered
if she had yet waked and discovered his absence.  He hoped not.  He
hoped that no evil chance had aroused her in time for her to have
left the shelter of the western forest before sunrise and the
outbreak of wind.  To change the trend of his thoughts, he untied and
unwound the blanket from his left leg, examined the bandages, and
found them all in order and free of blood, and replaced the blanket.
He smoked a cigarette very comfortably, listening to the wind and
driving drift go past and over and watching the sift of snow as fine
as spray through the black brush above him.

The wind increased in force and Jim became restless.  Thoughts of
Flora Ducat grew insistent.  At last he got to his feet again and set
to gathering dry twigs and branches that were within his reach but
which did not impair his shelter.  This done, he crawled out of the
hole and worked farther afield, using a heavy knife.  The thicket was
ten or a dozen paces in diameter, close-growing and thick with dead
wood.  He returned to his den, heaped the fuel conveniently around
the mouth of it, settled down again and made a tiny fire on the
frozen ground beside him.  He was warm enough without the fire, but
the lively flame cheered him.  He fed it with dry twigs and fern, and
soon with little sticks as thick as his thumb; and so it grew from
the size of his fist to the size of his head; and still it grew, and
he was forced to enlarge the pit.  He ate a little bread and cold
pork and smoked another cigarette.  A thin spray of snow continued to
sift through the roof of brush and fall hissing into the fire.  He
grew drowsy and nodded.  He was aroused by the yelping of a dog, then
by a snowslide, an increased hissing of the fire, and the dog itself
leaping upon him.  He quieted the dog, rolled his blankets and placed
them at a safe distance from the fire, snugged himself for the trail,
slung his rifle, threw dry brush and green on the fire, and crawled
out of the den.  The dog leaped over him and plunged ahead.  He
crawled from the edge of the thicket into a world of smothering,
flying white.

Jim followed the dog.  He resembled a swimmer using the overhead
racing stroke in a sea of foam and froth.  The drift and wind were
almost continuous by this time, but in every lull he cleared his eyes
and looked behind and saw the smoke of his fire.  The dog returned to
him often, encouraging him with yelps and jumps.  In places the drift
was so deep that he was forced to stand and hop on his right leg,
plunge, stagger up, and hop again.  The second dog appeared for a
moment, leaped upon him, slashed his face with a wet tongue, and
vanished into the flying snow.

Flora Ducat had ceased to struggle by the time Jim found her.  Only
her red hood and a red stocking showed above the drift.  He knelt to
windward of her and shook her with both hands.  Then he cleared the
big webs from her feet and hoisted her to her knees.  She opened her
eyes and looked at him with a bewildered expression.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Frozen?" he asked.

"Only tired--tired to death," she said.

The blinding drift sprang up and drove over them.  He shielded her
from it.  He removed her pack from her shoulders and swung it to his
own back and added her snowshoes to the load.

"And I have cramps," she moaned.  "Snowshoers' cramps--in both
legs--terribly."

"Then you must crawl," he said.  "Follow me."




CHAPTER XIV

THE MAN-HUNTER

All went well, though slowly and with vast labor, for a few hundred
yards; and then the girl stalled.  Jim turned back, lifted her to her
knees again and shook her again.

"Are you frozen anywhere?" he asked,

"I'm not cold," she replied faintly.  "I'm tired out.  Please leave
me alone."

He rubbed her face with handfuls of snow.  She protested angrily and
burst into tears.

"Leave me be!" she sobbed.  "Let me rest!"

"You can't rest here!" he cried, and shook her roughly.  "I've a
shelter somewhere.  It isn't far.  You can rest there."

She exerted herself again, but after a few yards subsided on her face
and refused to budge.  He struggled and argued with her in vain for
several minutes, then realized that he was wasting his own strength
for nothing.  He unslung the snowshoes and pack and fastened the
snowshoes to the collar of one of the dogs and the pack to the back
of the other.  Then he burrowed under the girl, raised himself to his
hands and one knee beneath her and continued his journey.

It was slow work.  The dogs ceased to frisk.  Jim was frequently
forced to shake the girl from his back and extricate one or the other
of the dogs from either its load or the drift.  The dogs understood
and did their best--but the snowshoes on the pack were ever-lastingly
slipping around and dragging beneath them.  Only Flora did not seem
to understand or to make any effort to do so.  She rolled off Jim's
back when he wanted her to stay on, and several times roused herself
sufficiently to clutch at his neck when he wanted to roll her off.
And yet so unreasonable a thing is the human heart, the more trouble
she gave him the more kindly did he feel toward her.  All his
bitterness had gone at the first glimpse of her lying helpless; and
now that she made no effort to help herself, and exerted herself only
to impede his progress, he felt only tenderness and admiration for
her.  The fact that she had not believed his word was forgotten; that
she had thought him a shooter from ambush seemed a small thing; that
she had thought him a coward--even that appeared a small matter now.
She had come out alone to find him; that was the great thing!  And
she had admitted her shame for having thought meanly of him, and that
was another great thing!  So he struggled onward.

The wind began to fail.  It blew less violently, lifted the snow no
more than five or six feet and dropped it almost immediately.  It
struck less frequently, baffled, and finally died away.

Jim reached the thicket from which a thin plume of smoke arose
straight into the still air.  He freed the floundering dogs of their
burdens, dragged the girl through the tangle and deposited her in the
den and sank on his face beside her.  He lay motionless for fully ten
minutes, then turned over and sat up.  Flora, too, was sitting up,
with her back against the wall of brush and snow.  Her eyes were open
and their green gaze was fixed anxiously and wonderingly upon him.

"How did you--get me here?" she whispered.

"You crawled part of the way," he answered.  "Then I lugged you on my
back.  Are you feeling better?"

"I feel dizzy--and sick.  I thought I was dead.  But I remember
crawling.  You saved my life."

"I'll make some tea.  Your pack's just outside."

"You saved my life--and I thought you hated me."

"It was my fault.  I shouldn't have crawled away last night."

He staggered up, crawled out and brought in the pack.  He made tea
and buttered toast, the girl and the dogs watching him in silence.

"I didn't eat any breakfast," she said as he handed her the only mug,
full of tea.

"I was a fool to crawl away last night," he said.

"You might have started your leg bleeding again," said the girl.

"It would have served me right," he answered.

"Can you forgive me for--for thinking you lied to me?"

"I forgave you long ago--when I saw you on your face in the snow.  I
wanted to kick myself then for having raised such a row about a
little thing like that."

He took the empty mug from her and filled it for himself.

"I am glad you saved my life, even if you do feel--that way about
me," she said.

"What way?" he asked.

"As if I--wasn't capable of--really understanding you."

He moved over closer beside her.

"I--only want you to think well of me," he said.  "It was my pride
that was talking last night, but seeing you helpless out there in the
drift took the silly pride out of me."

"I think--very well of you.  I think, I know, that you are brave and
honest.  But what do you think of me, Jim?"

"I think you are as brave as--as you are--dashed beautiful!"

"Beautiful!  I have green eyes!"

"They are beautiful.  Flora, do you know I--I don't want to make you
angry but--I kissed you once, out there in the snow.  And if you can
forgive me--I was quite desperate, don't you know--I'd like to do it
again."

"Hands up!" cried a voice; and they looked up and beheld the head and
shoulders and rifle of Homer Steeves at the edge of the pit.  Jim
didn't remove his arm from Flora's waist.

"Hands up, I said!" cried Homer.  "An' move away from that girl!
Pack yer dunnage an' come along out of that!"

Jim stood up.

"What's the matter with yer leg?" asked Homer.

"Cut it.  What's the matter with you?" asked Jim.

"Cut it, did ye.  Well, ye got to come along all the same.  I
figgered on tyin' you an' haulin' you anyhow--an' Flora can help me."

"Very kind of you, but why are you pointing that rifle at me?"

"To shoot you if you resist, that's why."

"He will come quietly, Homer.  Don't shoot!" cried the girl.

A sudden, reckless rage took possession of Jim.  He stooped swiftly,
snatched the largest brand from the fire and flung it in Homer's
face.  Homer swore and twitched his finger.  The hammer of the Snider
fell, the cap in the base of the cartridge detonated with a sharp
crack--and that was all!  And before the volunteer man-hunter could
eject the worthless charge and insert another--another equally
worthless, had he only known it--Jim was at him.  Homer clubbed his
rifle and swung it, but Jim ducked, grabbed with his right hand and
yanked Homer into the pit, rifle and snowshoes and all.  Despite the
fact that he kept his left foot clear of the ground all the time, Jim
had the intruder disarmed and bound helplessly at wrist and ankle in
thirty seconds.

Jim crawled out of the den and thicket to look for the sled which
Steeves had mentioned.  Flora followed him.

"He tried to kill you," she whispered.

"He doesn't like me, evidently," replied Jim.  "Lucky for me the
cartridge didn't explode!"

"What will we do next?" she asked.

"Start for home first thing to-morrow morning, if you feel fit to
travel."

"But you can't crawl all the way."

"Homer will have to drag me on the sled.  That's what he brought it
for."

"But he intended to haul you home as a prisoner.  Now it will be a
different matter entirely when he knows that the sheriff doesn't want
you.  He will refuse to haul you, for he is very stubborn; and then
what can we do?  You wouldn't shoot him."

"No, I wouldn't shoot him.  I couldn't do more than threaten him."

"And if he saw that you were anxious to get back to the glen, then he
would know that you are innocent and he would refuse to haul you a
foot.  We'll have to fool him."

"How?"

"Let him go on thinking you are guilty.  And I'll tie you up early
to-morrow morning and set him free, but I'll throw his cartridges
away and keep your rifle handy.  He will haul you right up to the
kitchen door, Jim; and then it will be time to tell him the truth."

"Flora, you are a wonder!  And you are not angry with me, are you?"

"Angry?  Why should I be angry now that we are good friends again?"

"Then I'll chance it again!" he exclaimed, and he did.

They returned to their prisoner and the fire.  They did not talk to
each other or Homer.  Jim ejected the unexploded cartridge from the
Snider and pocketed it.  He took the other cartridges from Homer's
pocket and was about to throw them away when a bright scratch on the
brass of one of them caught his eye.  He examined it carefully, then
extracted the bullet with the point of his knife.  He did the same to
the other shells.

"Where did you get your ammunition?" he asked.

"What's wrong with it?" asked the prisoner, who had watched the
operations keenly and curiously.

"No explosive charges," replied Jim.

"The devil you say!" cried Homer.  "No powder!  That's old Hercules
Ducat, the tricky old skunk.  He loaned me the rifle an' ca'tridges.
But he'll wish he hadn't been so smart when I put the law onto him."

"You should be very grateful to him," returned Jim.  "You would be a
murderer now if they had been all right."

The rest of the evening was passed in silence.  Supper was eaten in
silence.

Jim was awakened by Flora before dawn.

"Now I must tie you up," she whispered, with her lips very close to
his ear.

She bound his wrists comfortably.  She bound his ankles.  Then she
kissed him swiftly and slipped away.  He smiled and fell asleep
again.  His dreams were scattered again half an hour later by the
sharp punching of a moccasined toe against his ribs.  He opened his
eyes and beheld Homer Steeves standing over him.

"Wake up an' feed yer face, Mr. Dood!" cried Homer; and then, as Jim
pretended to try to free his wrists, he laughed with loud derision.

Jim scowled and maintained a sullen silence throughout breakfast, but
he ate heartily.

"Go to it," jeered Homer.  "It's a durn sight better'n the grub ye'll
get in jail."

Flora hung her head as if in shame, but whenever the man-hunter's
back was turned she winked at the captive and blew him a kiss.

Jim made no protest when Homer told him to sit on the sled.  The day
was bright, without wind, but the going was heavy.  Homer pulled
mightily, while Flora beat a trail in front.  They rested often; and
Homer turned frequently and damned the passenger.  By the time they
had gone four miles, Homer's wind and temper were both demoralized.
He dropped the rope, slipped his feet from his webs and went back and
kicked Jim off the sled.  Jim lay helpless and half smothered in the
deep snow.

"Crawl, durn ye!" cried Homer.

The girl came back on the jump, raised Jim to a sitting position, and
flashed green fire at Homer.

"How can he crawl when he's tied hand and foot?" she asked.

"I dassent risk lettin' him loose, but we'd sure get along quicker if
he could crawl a piece now an' agin," replied Homer.

"Untie me, and I give you my word I won't hurt you and I'll crawl
part of the way," promised Jim.

Homer agreed to this and the girl loosed the thongs.  Jim crawled
behind the sled for a distance of several hundred yards, then grabbed
the sled and pulled himself onto it.  After traveling at his ease for
half a mile, he rolled off and crawled again.

Jim was tied again before camp was made that night, and the night
passed uneventfully.  Homer, who had been the first to sleep, was the
first to wake.  He was in a bad humor, despite the fact that his
rival was in his power and would soon be in the grasp of the law.  He
built up the fire.  Then he went over to his captive and kicked him
in the ribs as hard as he could without hurting his soft-shod toes.

Again they traveled glenward, with Flora and the dogs leading, Homer
hauling the sled and Jim sometimes on and sometimes off the sled.
The hauls were long and the crawls were short, but they went forward
at a fair pace.




CHAPTER XV

TRICKY PLAYS

Lamplight was shining from the kitchen windows when Homer Steeves
pulled the sled up to the kitchen door.  Homer was weary.  He
staggered and sat down on the chopping-block beside the door.  Flora
went to the sled and unfastened Jim's bonds and helped him to his
feet.  She turned to Homer, while Jim supported part of his weight
with an arm across her shoulders.

"Thank you, Homer," she said.  "You have been a great help.  I don't
know what we should have done without you and the sled."

"It was Flora's idea," explained Jim.  "She said that if you knew old
Mrs. Wilson had shot Hammond and that the sheriff wasn't after me,
you wouldn't haul me home--and I imagine she was right.  So we didn't
enlighten you, and here we are.  Thanks very much, Steeves."

Homer got to his feet slowly and advanced wonderingly.

"What the devil d'ye mean?" he asked in a choking voice.

"Don't come any nearer, or I'll land you one that'll put you to sleep
for a week," cautioned Jim.

At that moment the door opened and Mrs. Ducat looked out.  The dogs
bounded past her into the kitchen and Flora ran into her embrace.
Jim followed the mother and daughter into the kitchen, hopping on one
foot; and Homer cleared his snowshoes from his feet and followed Jim.
He did not wait for an invitation.  He could not bring himself to
believe that he should ever require an invitation to make himself at
home in that kitchen.  Looking about him, he saw the old men and old
Mrs. Wilson seated by the stove.  He confronted the widow.

"I hear it was you shot Amos Hammond," he said, and laughed
derisively.

"Sure it was me," returned the old lady tartly.  "Who had a better
right to shoot 'im, I'd like to know?  What's the joke, young man?"

"You shot 'im?" muttered Homer.

"Ain't I jes' told ye so?  Where's yer manners?"

"Does Sheriff Hart know?"

"That he does, an' Hammond, too!  The hull world knows it, I reckon."

Homer turned and left the kitchen.  He went to the stable and
harnessed his mare in the dark.

Mark Ducat entered the kitchen within a few minutes of Homer's
departure.  He had returned from Kettle Pond only that morning, and
was full of enthusiasm for his and Jim's venture.

Jim stopped in the middle of recounting his adventures and gripped
Mark's hand in both of his and expressed intense pleasure at the
sight of his partner by word and look.

"But I won't be able to make the trip north for a week or two because
of this game leg," he explained cheerfully.  "I've been having a wild
old time the last few days.  But I've learned a lot about women, at
any rate."

"What's that got to do with our trap line?"

"Nothing, of course, but they're as brave as we are, Mark--but even
the best of them is inclined to--well, given to dissembling."

"Has someone been makin' a fool of you, Jim?"

"Not at all."

"Maybe not--but the woods is the place for us, Jim."

"He's got a cut in his leg that'll keep him right here for a week or
so," said Flora, smiling.

Old Hercules Ducat chuckled.

"When I was a young feller," he began--but at that moment the
conversation became general and no one but Widow Wilson heard what he
had to say.