Project Gutenberg's The Ledge on Bald Face, by Charles G. D. Roberts
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Title: The Ledge on Bald Face
Author: Charles G. D. Roberts
Release Date: March 7, 2011 [EBook #35513]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LEDGE ON BALD FACE ***
Produced by Al Haines
[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: "The great dog shook his victim as a terrier shakes a
rat." (Page 253.)]
THE LEDGE ON
BALD FACE
By
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
_ILLUSTRATED_
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
LONDON AND MELBOURNE
1918
_Copyright in the United States of America_
_by Charles G. D. Roberts_
Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London
POPULAR NATURE STORIES
BY
CHAS. G. D. ROBERTS
PUBLISHED BY
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
THE HOUSE IN THE WATER
KINGS IN EXILE
THE SECRET TRAILS
THE LEDGE ON BALD FACE
CONTENTS
I THE LEDGE ON BALD FACE
II THE EAGLE
III COCK-CROW
IV THE MORNING OF THE SILVER FROST
V JIM, THE BACKWOODS POLICE DOG
PART I HOW WOOLLY BILLY CAME TO BRINE'S RIP
" II THE BOOK AGENT AND THE BUCKSKIN BELT
" III THE HOLE IN THE TREE
" IV THE TRAIL OF THE BEAR
" V THE FIRE AT BRINE'S RIP MILLS
" VI THE MAN WITH THE DANCING BEAR
ILLUSTRATIONS
"The great dog shook his victim like a terrier shakes a rat" . . .
_Frontispiece_
"He was thrown off his balance and shouldered clean over the brink"
"Then he spread his wings wide and let go"
"He flung his arms about Jim's shaggy neck and buried his face in the
wet fur"
"'You keep right back, boys,' commanded the Deputy in a voice of steel"
"The door was flung open, and Black Dan with his hands held up, stalked
forth into the moonlight"
"He drew a long knife ... and slipped behind the canoe"
"In the meantime, Jim, travelling at a speed that the fugitive could
not hope to rival, had come to the right spot"
I
THE LEDGE ON BALD FACE
The Ledge on Bald Face
That one stark naked side of the mountain which gave it its name of Old
Bald Face fronted full south. Scorched by sun and scourged by storm
throughout the centuries, it was bleached to an ashen pallor that
gleamed startlingly across the leagues of sombre, green-purple
wilderness outspread below. From the base of the tremendous bald steep
stretched off the interminable leagues of cedar swamp, only to be
traversed in dry weather or in frost. All the region behind the
mountain face was an impenetrable jumble of gorges, pinnacles, and
chasms, with black woods clinging in crevice and ravine and struggling
up desperately towards the light.
In the time of spring and autumn floods, when the cedar swamps were
impenetrable to all save mink, otter, and musk-rat, the only way from
the western plateau to the group of lakes that formed the source of the
Ottanoonsis, on the east, was by a high, nerve-testing trail across the
wind-swept brow of Old Bald Face. The trail followed a curious ledge,
sometimes wide enough to have accommodated an ox-wagon, at other times
so narrow and so perilous that even the sure-eyed caribou went warily
in traversing it.
The only inhabitants of Bald Face were the eagles, three pairs of them,
who had their nests, widely separated from each other in haughty
isolation, on jutting shoulders and pinnacles accessible to no one
without wings. Though the ledge-path at its highest point was far
above the nests, and commanded a clear view of one of them, the eagles
had learned to know that those who traversed the pass were not
troubling themselves about eagles' nests. They had also observed
another thing--of interest to them only because their keen eyes and
suspicious brains were wont to note and consider everything that came
within their purview--and that was that the scanty traffic by the pass
had its more or less regular times and seasons. In seasons of drought
or hard frost it vanished altogether. In seasons of flood it increased
the longer the floods lasted. And whenever there was any passing at
all, the movement was from east to west in the morning, from west to
east in the afternoon. This fact may have been due to some sort of
dimly recognized convention among the wild kindreds, arrived at in some
subtle way to avoid unnecessary--and necessarily
deadly--misunderstanding and struggle. For the creatures of the wild
seldom fight for fighting's sake. They fight for food, or, in the
mating season, they fight in order that the best and strongest may
carry off the prizes. But mere purposeless risk and slaughter they
instinctively strive to avoid. The airy ledge across Bald Face was not
a place where the boldest of the wild kindred--the bear or the
bull-moose, to say nothing of lesser champions--would wilfully invite
the doubtful combat. If, therefore, it had been somehow arrived at
that there should be no disastrous meetings, no face-to-face struggles
for the right of way, at a spot where dreadful death was inevitable for
one or both of the combatants, that would have been in no way
inconsistent with the accepted laws and customs of the wilderness. On
the other hand, it is possible that this alternate easterly and
westerly drift of the wild creatures--a scanty affair enough at best of
times--across the front of Bald Face was determined in the first place,
on clear days, by their desire not to have the sun in their eyes in
making the difficult passage, and afterwards hardened into custom. It
was certainly better to have the sun behind one in treading the
knife-edge pass above the eagles. Joe Peddler found it troublesome
enough, that strong, searching glare from the unclouded sun of early
morning full in his eyes, as he worked over toward the Ottanoonsis
lakes. He had never attempted the crossing of Old Bald Face before,
and he had always regarded with some scorn the stories told by Indians
of the perils of that passage. But already, though he had accomplished
but a small portion of his journey and was still far from the worst of
the pass, he had been forced to the conclusion that report had not
exaggerated the difficulties of his venture. However, he was steady of
head and sure of foot, and the higher he went in that exquisitely
clear, crisp air, the more pleased he felt with himself. His great
lungs drank deep of the tonic wind which surged against him
rhythmically, and seemed to him to come unbroken from the outermost
edges of the world. His eyes widened and filled themselves, even as
his lungs, with the ample panorama that unfolded before them. He
imagined--for the woodsman, dwelling so much alone, is apt to indulge
some strange imaginings--that he could feel his very spirit enlarging,
as if to take full measure of these splendid breadths of sunlit,
wind-washed space.
Presently, with a pleasant thrill, he observed that just ahead of him
the ledge went round an abrupt shoulder of the rockface at a point
where there was a practically sheer drop of many hundreds of feet into
what appeared a feather-soft carpet of treetops. He looked shrewdly to
the security of his footing as he approached, and also to the
roughnesses of the rock above the ledge, in case a sudden violent gust
should chance to assail him just at the turn. He felt that at such a
spot it would be so easy--indeed, quite natural--to be whisked off by
the sportive wind, whirled out into space, and dropped into that green
carpet so far below. In his flexible oil-tanned "larrigans" of thick
cow-hide, Peddler moved noiselessly as a wild-cat, even over the bare
stone of the ledge. He was like a grey shadow drifting slowly across
the bleached face of the precipice. As he drew near the bend of the
trail, of which not more than eight or ten paces were now visible to
him, he felt every nerve grow tense with exhilarating expectation.
Yet, even so, what happened was the utterly unexpected.
Around the bend before him, stepping daintily on her fine hooves, came
a young doe. She completely blocked the trail just on that dizzy edge.
Peddler stopped short, tried to squeeze himself to the rock like a
limpet, and clutched with fingers of iron at a tiny projection.
The doe, for one second, seemed petrified with amazement. It was
contrary to all tradition that she should be confronted on that trail.
Then, her amazement instantly dissolving into sheer madness of panic,
she wheeled about violently to flee. But there was no room for even
her lithe body to make the turn. The inexorable rock-face bounced her
off, and with an agonized bleat, legs sprawling and great eyes starting
from their sockets, she went sailing down into the abyss.
With a heart thumping in sympathy, Peddler leaned outward and followed
that dreadful flight, till she reached that treacherously soft-looking
carpet of treetops and was engulfed by it. A muffled crash came up to
Peddler's ears.
"Poor leetle beggar!" he muttered. "I wish't I hadn't scared her so.
But I'd a sight rather it was her than me!"
Peddler's exhilaration was now considerably damped. He crept
cautiously to the dizzy turn of the ledge and peered around. The
thought upon which his brain dwelt with unpleasant insistence was that
if it had been a surly old bull-moose or a bear which had confronted
him so unexpectedly, instead of that nervous little doe, he might now
be lying beneath that deceitful green carpet in a state of dilapidation
which he did not care to contemplate.
Beyond the turn the trail was clear to his view for perhaps a couple of
hundred yards. It climbed steeply through a deep re-entrant, a mighty
perpendicular corrugation of the rock-face, and then disappeared again
around another jutting bastion. He hurried on rather feverishly, not
liking that second interruption to his view, and regretting, for the
first time, that he had no weapon with him but his long hunting-knife.
He had left his rifle behind him as a useless burden to his climbing.
No game was now in season, no skins in condition to be worth the
shooting, and he had food enough for the journey in his light pack. He
had not contemplated the possibility of any beast, even bear or
bull-moose, daring to face him, because he knew that, except in
mating-time, the boldest of them would give a man wide berth. But, as
he now reflected, here on this narrow ledge even a buck or a lynx would
become dangerous, finding itself suddenly at bay.
The steepness of the rise in the trail at this point almost drove
Peddler to helping himself with his hands. As he neared the next turn,
he was surprised to note, far out to his right, a soaring eagle,
perhaps a hundred feet below him. He was surprised, too, by the fact
that the eagle was paying no attention to him whatever, in spite of his
invasion of the great bird's aerial domain. Instinctively he inferred
that the eagle's nest must be in some quite inaccessible spot at safe
distance from the ledge. He paused to observe from above, and thus
fairly near at hand, the slow flapping of those wide wings, as they
employed the wind to serve the majesty of their flight. While he was
studying this, another deduction from the bird's indifference to his
presence flashed upon his mind. There must be a fairly abundant
traffic of the wild creatures across this pass, or the eagle would not
be so indifferent to his presence. At this thought he lost his
interest in problems of flight, and hurried forward again, anxious to
see what might be beyond the next turn of the trail.
His curiosity was gratified all too abruptly for his satisfaction. He
reached the turn, craned his head around it, and came face to face with
an immense black bear.
The bear was not a dozen feet away. At sight of Peddler's gaunt dark
face and sharp blue eyes appearing thus abruptly and without visible
support around the rock, he shrank back upon his haunches with a
startled "Woof!"
As for Peddler, he was equally startled, but he had too much discretion
and self-control to show it. Never moving a muscle, and keeping his
body out of sight so that his face seemed to be suspended in mid-air,
he held the great beast's eyes with a calm, unwinking gaze.
The bear was plainly disconcerted. After a few seconds he glanced back
over his shoulder, and seemed to contemplate a strategic movement to
the rear. As the ledge at this point was sufficiently wide for him to
turn with due care, Peddler expected now to see him do so. But what
Peddler did not know was that dim but cogent "law of the ledge," which
forbade all those who travelled by it to turn and retrace their steps,
or to pass in the wrong direction at the wrong time. He did not know
what the bear knew--namely, that if that perturbed beast should turn,
he was sure to be met and opposed by other wayfarers, and thus to find
himself caught between two fires.
Watching steadily, Peddler was unpleasantly surprised to see the
perturbation in the bear's eyes slowly change into a savage
resentment--resentment at being baulked in his inalienable right to an
unopposed passage over the ledge. To the bear's mind that grim,
confronting face was a violation of the law which he himself obeyed
loyally and without question. To be sure, it was the face of man, and
therefore to be dreaded. It was also mysterious, and therefore still
more to be dreaded. But the sense of bitter injustice, with the
realization that he was at bay and taken at a disadvantage, filled him
with a frightened rage which swamped all other emotion. Then he came
on.
His advance was slow and cautious by reason of the difficulty of the
path and his dread lest that staring, motionless face should pounce
upon him just at the perilous turn and hurl him over the brink. But
Peddler knew that his bluff was called, and that his only chance was to
avoid the encounter. He might have fled by the way he had come,
knowing that he would have every advantage in speed on that narrow
trail. But before venturing up to the turn he had noted a number of
little projections and crevices in the perpendicular wall above him.
Clutching at them with fingers of steel and unerring toes, he swarmed
upwards as nimbly as a climbing cat. He was a dozen feet up before the
bear came crawling and peering around the turn.
Elated at having so well extricated himself from so dubious a
situation, Peddler gazed down upon his opponent and laughed mockingly.
The sound of that confident laughter from straight above his head
seemed to daunt the bear and thoroughly damp his rage. He crouched
low, and scurried past growling. As he hurried along the trail at a
rash pace, he kept casting anxious glances over his shoulder, as if he
feared the man were going to chase him. Peddler lowered himself from
his friendly perch and continued his journey, cursing himself more than
ever for having been such a fool as not to bring his rifle.
In the course of the next half-hour he gained the highest point of the
ledge, which here was so broken and precarious that he had little
attention to spare for the unparalleled sweep and splendour of the
view. He was conscious, however, all the time, of the whirling eagles,
now far below him, and his veins thrilled with intense exhilaration.
His apprehensions had all vanished under the stimulus of that tonic
atmosphere. He was on the constant watch, however, scanning not only
the trail ahead--which was now never visible for more than a hundred
yards or so at a time--and also the face of the rock above him, to see
if it could be scaled in an emergency.
He had no expectation of an emergency, because he knew nothing of the
law of the ledge. Having already met a doe and a bear, he naturally
inferred that he would not be likely to meet any other of the elusive
kindreds of the wild, even in a whole week of forest faring. The shy
and wary beasts are not given to thrusting themselves upon man's
dangerous notice, and it was hard enough to find them, with all his
woodcraft, even when he was out to look for them. He was, therefore,
so surprised that he could hardly believe his eyes when, on rounding
another corrugation of the rock-face, he saw another bear coming to
meet him.
"Gee!" muttered Peddler to himself. "Who's been lettin' loose the
menagerie? Or hev I got the nightmare, mebbe?"
The bear was about fifty yards distant--a smaller one than its
predecessor, and much younger also, as was obvious to Peddler's
initiated eye by the trim glossiness of its coat. It halted the
instant it caught sight of Peddler. But Peddler, for his part, kept
right on, without showing the least sign of hesitation or surprise.
This bear, surely, would give way before him. The beast hesitated,
however. It was manifestly afraid of the man. It backed a few paces,
whimpering in a worried fashion, then stopped, staring up the rock-wall
above it, as if seeking escape in that impossible direction.
"If ye're so skeered o' me as ye look," demanded Peddler, in a crisp
voice, "why don't ye turn an' vamoose, 'stead o' backin' an' fillin'
that way? Ye can't git up that there rock, 'less ye're a fly!"
The ledge at that point was a comparatively wide and easy path, and the
bear at length, as if decided by the easy confidence of Peddler's
tones, turned and retreated. But it went off with such reluctance,
whimpering anxiously the while, that Peddler was forced to the
conclusion there must be something coming up the trail which it was
dreading to meet. At this idea Peddler was delighted, and hurried on
as closely as possible at the retreating animal's heels. The bear, he
reflected, would serve him as an excellent advance guard, protecting
him perfectly from surprise, and perhaps, if necessary, clearing the
way for him. He chuckled to himself as he realized the situation, and
the bear, catching the incomprehensible sound, glanced nervously over
its shoulder and hastened its retreat as well as the difficulties of
the path would allow.
The trail was now descending rapidly, though irregularly, towards the
eastern plateau. The descent was broken by here and there a stretch of
comparatively level going, here and there a sharp though brief rise,
and at one point the ledge was cut across by a crevice some four feet
in width. As a jump, of course, it was nothing to Peddler; but in
spite of himself he took it with some trepidation, for the chasm looked
infinitely deep, and the footing on the other side narrow and
precarious. The bear, however, had seemed to take it quite carelessly,
almost in its stride, and Peddler, not to be outdone, assumed a similar
indifference.
It was not long, however, before the enigma of the bear's reluctance to
retrace its steps was solved. The bear, with Peddler some forty or
fifty paces behind, was approaching one of those short steep rises
which broke the general descent. From the other side of the rise came
a series of heavy breathings and windy grunts.
"Moose, by gum!" exclaimed Peddler. "Now, I'd like to know if all the
critters hev took it into their heads to cross Old Bald Face to-day!"
The bear heard the gruntings also, and halted unhappily, glancing back
at Peddler.
"Git on with it!" ordered Peddler sharply. And the bear, dreading man
more than moose, got on.
The next moment a long, dark, ominous head, with massive, overhanging
lip and small angry eyes, appeared over the rise. Behind this
formidable head laboured up the mighty humped shoulders and then the
whole towering form of a moose-bull. Close behind him followed two
young cows and a yearling calf.
"Huh! I guess there's goin' to be some row!" muttered Peddler, and
cast his eyes up the rock-face, to look for a point of refuge in case
his champion should get the worst of it.
At sight of the bear the two cows and the yearling halted, and stood
staring, with big ears thrust forward anxiously, at the foe that barred
their path. But the arrogant old bull kept straight on, though slowly,
and with the wariness of the practised duellist. At this season of the
year his forehead wore no antlers, indeed, but in his great knife-edged
fore-hooves he possessed terrible weapons which he could wield with
deadly dexterity. Marking the confidence of his advance, Peddler grew
solicitous for his own champion, and stood motionless, dreading to
distract the bear's attention.
But the bear, though frankly afraid to face man, whom he did not
understand, had no such misgivings in regard to moose. He knew how to
fight moose, and he had made more than one good meal, in his day, on
moose calf. He was game for the encounter. Reassured to see that the
man was not coming any nearer, and possibly even sensing instinctively
that the man was on his side in this matter, he crouched close against
the rock and waited, with one huge paw upraised, like a boxer on guard,
for the advancing bull to attack.
He had not long to wait.
The bull drew near very slowly, and with his head held high as if
intending to ignore his opponent. Peddler, watching intently, felt
some surprise at this attitude, even though he knew that the deadliest
weapon of a moose was its fore-hooves. He was wondering, indeed, if
the majestic beast expected to press past the bear without a battle,
and if the bear, on his part, would consent to this highly reasonable
arrangement. Then like a flash, without the slightest warning, the
bull whipped up one great hoof to the height of his shoulder and struck
at his crouching adversary.
The blow was lightning swift, and with such power behind it that, had
it reached its mark, it would have settled the whole matter then and
there. But the bear's parry was equally swift. His mighty forearm
fended the stroke so that it hissed down harmlessly past his head and
clattered on the stone floor of the trail. At the same instant, before
the bull could recover himself for another such pile-driving blow, the
bear, who had been gathered up like a coiled spring, elongated his body
with all the force of his gigantic hindquarters, thrusting himself
irresistibly between his adversary and the face of the rock, and
heaving outwards.
These were tactics for which the great bull had no precedent in all his
previous battles. He was thrown off his balance and shouldered clean
over the brink. By a terrific effort he turned, captured a footing
upon the edge with his fore-hooves, and struggled frantically to drag
himself up again upon the ledge. But the bear's paw struck him a
crashing buffet straight between the wildly staring eyes. He fell
backwards, turning clean over, and went bouncing, in tremendous
sprawling curves, down into the abyss.
[Illustration: "He was thrown off his balance and shouldered clean over
the brink."]
Upon the defeat of their leader the two cows and the calf turned
instantly--which the ledge at their point was wide enough to
permit--and fled back down the trail at a pace which seemed to threaten
their own destruction. The bear followed more prudently, with no
apparent thought of trying to overtake them. And Pedler kept on behind
him, taking care, however, after this exhibition of his champion's
prowess, not to press him too closely.
The fleeing herd soon disappeared from view. It seemed to have
effectually cleared the trail before it, for the curious procession of
the bear and Peddler encountered no further obstacles.
After about an hour the lower slopes of the mountain were reached. The
ledge widened and presently broke up, with trails leading off here and
there among the foothills. At the first of these that appeared to
offer concealment the bear turned aside and vanished into a dense grove
of spruce with a haste which seemed to Peddler highly amusing in a
beast of such capacity and courage. He was well content, however, to
be so easily quit of his dangerous advance guard.
"A durn good thing for me," he mused, "that that there b'ar never got
up the nerve to call my bluff, or I might 'a' been layin' now where
that onlucky old bull-moose is layin', with a lot o' flies crawlin'
over me!"
And as he trudged along the now easy and ordinary trail, he registered
two discreet resolutions--first, that never again would he cross Old
Bald Face without his gun and his axe; and, second, that never again
would he cross Old Bald Face at all, unless he jolly well had to.
II
THE EAGLE
The Eagle
He sat upon the very topmost perch under the open-work dome of his
spacious and lofty cage. This perch was one of three or four lopped
limbs jutting from a dead tree-trunk erected in the centre of the
cage--a perch far other than that great branch of thunder-blasted pine,
out-thrust from the seaward-facing cliff, whereon he had been wont to
sit in his own land across the ocean.
He sat with his snowy, gleaming, flat-crowned head drawn back between
the dark shoulders of his slightly uplifted wings. His black and
yellow eyes, unwinking, bright and hard like glass, stared out from
under his overhanging brows with a kind of darting and defiant inquiry
quite unlike their customary expression of tameless despair. That dull
world outside the bars of his cage, that hated, gaping, inquisitive
world which he had ever tried to ignore by staring at the sun or gazing
into the deeps of sky overhead, how it had changed since yesterday!
The curious crowds, the gabbling voices were gone. Even the high
buildings of red brick or whitish-grey stone, beyond the iron palings
of the park, were going, toppling down with a slow, dizzy lurch, or
leaping suddenly into the air with a roar and a huge belch of brown and
orange smoke and scarlet flame. Here and there he saw men running
wildly. Here and there he saw other men lying quite still--sprawling,
inert shapes an the close-cropped grass, or the white asphalted walks,
or the tossed pavement of the street. He knew that these inert,
sprawling shapes were men, and that the men were dead; and the sight
filled his exile heart with triumph. Men were his enemies, his
gaolers, his opponents, and now at last--he knew not how--he was
tasting vengeance. The once smooth green turf around his cage was
becoming pitted with strange yellow-brown holes. These holes, he had
noticed, always appeared after a burst of terrific noise, and livid
flame, and coloured smoke, followed by a shower of clods and pebbles,
and hard fragments which sometimes flew right through his cage with a
vicious hum. There was a deadly force in these humming fragments. He
knew it, for his partner in captivity, a golden eagle of the Alps, had
been hit by one of them, and now lay dead on the littered floor below
him, a mere heap of bloody feathers. Certain of the iron bars of the
cage, too, had been struck and cut through, as neatly as his own hooked
beak would sever the paw of a rabbit.
The air was full of tremendous crashing, buffeting sounds and sudden
fierce gusts, which forced him to tighten the iron grip of his talons
upon the perch. In the centre of the little park pond, some fifty feet
from his cage, clustered a panic-stricken knot of eight or ten fancy
ducks and two pairs of red-billed coot, all that remained of the flock
of water-birds which had formerly screamed and gabbled over the pool.
This little cluster was in a state of perpetual ferment, those on the
outside struggling to get into the centre, those on the inside striving
to keep their places. From time to time one or two on the outer ring
would dive under and force their way up in the middle of the press,
where they imagined themselves more secure. But presently they would
find themselves on the outside again, whereupon, in frantic haste, they
would repeat the manoeuvre. The piercing glance of the eagle took in
and dismissed this futile panic with immeasurable scorn. With like
scorn, too, he noted the three gaunt cranes which had been wont to
stalk so arrogantly among the lesser fowl and drive them from their
meals. These once domineering birds were now standing huddled, their
drooped heads close together, beneath a dense laurel thicket just
behind the cage, their long legs quaking at every explosion.
Amid all this destroying tumult and flying death the eagle had no fear.
He was merely excited by it. If a fragment of shell sang past his
head, he never flinched, his level stare never even filmed or wavered.
The roar and crash, indeed, and the monstrous buffetings of tormented
air, seemed to assuage the long ache of his home-sickness. They
reminded him of the hurricane racing past his ancient pine, of the
giant waves shattering themselves with thunderous jar upon the cliff
below. From time to time, as if his nerves were straining with
irresistible exultation, he would lift himself to his full height, half
spread his wings, stretch forward his gleaming white neck, and give
utterance to a short, strident, yelping cry. Then he would settle back
upon his perch again, and resume his fierce contemplation of the ruin
that was falling on the city.
Suddenly an eleven-inch shell dropped straight in the centre of the
pool and exploded on the concrete bottom which underlay the mud. Half
the pool went up in the colossal eruption of blown flame and steam and
smoke. Even here on his perch the eagle found himself spattered and
drenched. When the shrunken surface of the pool had closed again over
the awful vortex, and the smoke had drifted off to join itself to the
dark cloud which hung over the city, the little flock of ducks and coot
was nowhere to be seen. It simply was not. But a bleeding fragment of
flesh, with some purple-and-chestnut feathers clinging to it, lay upon
the bottom of the cage. This morsel caught the eagle's eye. He had
been forgotten for the past two days--the old one-legged keeper of the
cages having vanished--and he was ravenous with hunger. He hopped down
briskly to the floor, grabbed the morsel, and gulped it. Then he
looked around hopefully for more. There were no more such opportune
tit-bits within the cage, but just outside he saw the half of a big
carp, which had been torn in twain by a caprice of the explosion and
tossed up here upon the grass. This was just such a morsel as he was
craving. He thrust one great talon out between the bars and clutched
at the prize. But it was beyond his reach. Disappointed, he tried the
other claw, balancing himself on one leg with widespread wings.
Stretch and struggle as he would, it was all in vain. The fish lay too
far off. Then he tried reaching through the bars with his head. He
elongated his neck till he almost thought he was a heron, and till his
great beak was snapping hungrily within an inch or two of the prize.
But not a hair's-breadth closer could he get. At last, in a cold fury,
he gave it up, and drew back, and shook himself to rearrange the much
dishevelled feathers of his neck.
Just at this moment, while he was still on the floor of the cage, a
high-velocity shell came by. With its flat trajectory it passed just
overhead, swept the dome of the cage clean out of existence, and
whizzed onwards to explode, with a curious grunting crash, some
hundreds of yards beyond. The eagle looked up and gazed for some
seconds before realizing that his prison was no longer a prison. The
path was clear above him to the free spaces of the air. But he was in
no unseemly haste. His eye measured accurately the width of the exit,
and saw that it was awkwardly narrow for his great spread of wing. He
could not essay it directly from the ground, his quarters being too
straitened for free flight. Hopping upwards from limb to limb of the
roosting-tree, he regained the topmost perch, and found that, though
split by a stray splinter of the cage, it was still able to bear his
weight. From this point he sprang straight upwards, with one beat of
his wings. But the wing-tips struck violently against each side of the
opening, and he was thrown back with such force that only by a furious
flopping and struggle could he regain his footing on the perch.
After this unexpected rebuff he sat quiet for perhaps half a minute,
staring fixedly at the exit. He was not going to fail again through
misjudgment. The straight top of the roosting-tree extended for about
three feet above his perch, but this extension being of no use to him,
he had never paid any heed to it hitherto. Now, however, he marked it
with new interest. It was close below the hole in the roof. He
flopped up to it, balanced himself for a second, and once more sprang
for the opening, but this time with a short, convulsive beat of wings
only half spread. The leap carried him almost through, but not far
enough for him to get another stroke of his wings. Clutching out
wildly with stretched talons, he succeeded in catching the end of a
broken bar. Desperately he clung to it, resisting the natural impulse
to help himself by flapping his wings. Reaching out with his beak, he
gripped another bar, and so steadied himself till he could gain a
foothold with both talons. Then slowly, like a dog getting over a
wall, he dragged himself forth, and stood at last free on the outer
side of the bars which had been so long his prison.
But the first thing he thought of was not freedom. It was fish. For
perhaps a dozen seconds he gazed about him majestically, and scanned
with calm the toppling and crashing world. Then spreading his splendid
wings to their fullest extent, with no longer any fear of them striking
against iron bars, he dropped down to the grass beside the cage and
clutched the body of the slain carp. He was no more than just in time,
for a second later a pair of mink, released from their captivity in
perhaps the same way as he had been, came gliding furtively around the
base of the cage, intent upon the same booty. He turned his head over
his shoulder and gave them one look, then fell to tearing and gulping
his meal as unconcernedly as if the two savage little beasts had been
field mice. The mink stopped short, flashed white fangs at him in a
soundless snarl of hate, and whipped about to forage in some more
auspicious direction.
When the eagle had finished his meal--which took him, indeed, scarcely
more time than takes to tell of it--he wiped his great beak
meticulously on the turf. While he was doing so, a shell burst so near
him that he was half smothered in dry earth. Indignantly he shook
himself, hopped a pace or two aside, ruffled up his feathers, and
proceeded to make his toilet as scrupulously as if no shells or sudden
death were within a thousand miles of him.
The toilet completed to his satisfaction, he took a little flapping run
and rose into the air. He flew straight for the highest point within
his view, which chanced to be the slender, soaring spire of a church
somewhere about the centre of the city. As he mounted on a long slant,
he came into the level where most of the shells were travelling, for
their objective was not the little park with its "Zoo," but a line of
fortifications some distance beyond. Above, below, around him streamed
the terrible projectiles, whinnying or whistling, shrieking or roaring,
each according to its calibre and its type. It seemed a miracle that
he should come through that zone unscathed; but his vision was so
powerful and all-embracing, his judgment of speed and distance so
instantaneous and unerring, that he was able to avoid, without apparent
effort, all but the smallest and least visible shells, and these
latter, by the favour of Fate, did not come his way. He was more
annoyed, indeed, by certain volleys of debris which occasionally
spouted up at him with a disagreeable noise, and by the evil-smelling
smoke clouds, which came volleying about him without any reason that he
could discern. He flapped up to a higher level to escape these
annoyances, and so found himself above the track of the shells. Then
he made for the church spire, and perched himself upon the tip of the
great weather-vane. It was exactly what he wanted--a lofty observation
post from which to view the country round about before deciding in
which direction he would journey.
From this high post he noticed that, while he was well above one zone
of shells, there was still another zone of them screaming far overhead.
These projectiles of the upper strata of air were travelling in the
opposite direction. He marked that they came from a crowded line of
smoke-bursts and blinding flashes just beyond the boundary of the city.
He decided that, upon resuming his journey, he would fly at the present
level, and so avoid traversing again either of the zones of death.
Much to his disappointment, he found that his present observation post
did not give him as wide a view as he had hoped for. The city of his
captivity, he now saw, was set upon the loop of a silver stream in the
centre of a saucer-like valley. In every direction his view was
limited by low, encircling hills. Along one sector of this
circuit--that from which the shells of the lower stratum seemed to him
to be issuing--the hill-rim and the slopes below it were fringed with
vomiting smoke-clouds and biting spurts of fire. This did not,
however, influence in the least his choice of the direction in which to
journey. Instinct, little by little, as he sat there on the slowly
veering vane, was deciding that point for him. His gaze was fixing
itself more and more towards the north, or, rather, the north-west; for
something seemed to whisper in his heart that there was where he would
find the wild solitudes which he longed for. The rugged and
mist-wreathed peaks of Scotland or North Wales, though he knew them
not, were calling to him in his new-found freedom.
The call, however, was not yet strong enough to be determining, so,
having well fed and being beyond measure content with his liberty, he
lingered on his skyey perch and watched the crash of the opposing
bombardments. The quarter of the town immediately beneath him had so
far suffered little from the shells, and the church showed no signs of
damage except for one gaping hole in the roof. But along the line of
the fortifications there seemed to be but one gigantic boiling of smoke
and flames, with continual spouting fountains of debris. This
inexplicable turmoil held his interest for a few moments. Then, while
he was wondering what it all meant, an eleven-inch shell struck the
church spire squarely about thirty feet below him.
The explosion almost stunned him. The tip of the spire--with the
weather-cock, and the eagle still clinging to it--went rocketing
straight up into the air amid a stifling cloud of black smoke, while
the rest of the structure, down to a dozen feet below the point of
impact, was blown to the four winds. Half stunned though he was, the
amazed bird kept his wits about him, and clutched firmly to his flying
perch till it reached the end of its flight and turned to fall. Then
he spread his wings wide and let go. The erratic mass of wood and
metal dropped away, and left him floating, half-blinded, in the heart
of the smoke-cloud. A couple of violent wing-beats, however, carried
him clear of the cloud; and at once he shaped his course upwards, as
steeply as he could mount, smitten with a sudden desire for the calm
and the solitude which were associated in his memory with the uppermost
deeps of air.
[Illustration: "Then he spread his wings wide and let go."]
The fire from the city batteries had just now slackened for a little,
and the great bird's progress carried him through the higher shell zone
without mishap. In a minute or two he was far above those strange
flocks which flew so straight and swift, and made such incomprehensible
noises in their flight. Presently, too, he was above the smoke, the
very last wisps of it having thinned off into the clear, dry air. He
now began to find that he had come once more into his own peculiar
realm, the realm of the upper sky, so high that, as he thought, no
other living creature could approach him. He arrested his ascent, and
began to circle slowly on still wings, surveying the earth.
But now he received, for the first time, a shock. Hitherto the most
astounding happenings had failed to startle him, but now a pang of
something very like fear shot through his stout heart. A little to
southward of the city he saw a vast pale-yellow elongated form rising
swiftly, without any visible effort, straight into the sky. Had he
ever seen a sausage, he would have thought that this yellow monster was
shaped like one. Certain fine cords descended from it, reaching all
the way to the earth, and below its middle hung a basket, with a man in
it. It rose to a height some hundreds of feet beyond the level on
which the eagle had been feeling himself supreme. Then it came to
rest, and hung there, swaying slowly in the mild wind.
His apprehension speedily giving way to injured pride, the eagle flew
upwards, in short, steep spirals, as fast as his wings could drive him.
Not till he could once more look down upon the fat back of the
glistening yellow monster did he regain his mood of unruffled calm.
But he regained it only to have it stripped from him, a minute later,
with tenfold lack of ceremony. For far above him--so high that even
his undaunted wings would never venture thither--he heard a fierce and
terrible humming sound. He saw something like a colossal bird--or
rather, it was more suggestive of a dragonfly than a bird--speeding
towards him with never a single beat of its vast, pale wings. Its
speed was appalling. The eagle was afraid, but not with any foolish
panic. He knew that even as a sparrow would be to him, so would he be
to this unheard-of sovereign of the skies. Therefore it was possible
the sovereign of the skies would ignore him and seek a more worthy
opponent. Yes, it was heading towards the giant sausage. And the
sausage, plainly, had no stomach for the encounter. It seemed to
shrink suddenly; and with sickening lurches it began to descend, as if
strong hands were tugging upon the cords which anchored it to earth.
The eagle winged off modestly to one side, but not far enough to miss
anything of the stupendous encounter which he felt was coming. Here,
at last, were events of a strangeness and a terror to move even his
cool spirit out of its indifference.
Now the giant insect was near enough for the eagle to mark that it had
eyes on the under-sides of its wings--immense, round, coloured eyes of
red and white and blue. Its shattering hum shook the eagle's nerves,
steady and seasoned though they were. Slanting slightly downwards, it
darted straight toward the sausage, which was now wallowing fatly in
its convulsive efforts to descend. At the same time the eagle caught
sight of another of the giant birds, or insects, somewhat different in
shape and colour from the first, darting up from the opposite
direction. Was it, too, he wondered, coming to attack the terrified
sausage, or to defend it?
Before he could find an answer to this exciting question, the first
monster had arrived directly above the sausage and was circling over it
at some height, glaring down upon it with those great staring eyes of
its wings. Something struck the sausage fairly in the back.
Instantly, with a tremendous windy roar, the sausage vanished in a
sheet of flame. The monster far above it rocked and plunged in the
uprush of tormented air, the waves of which reached even to where the
eagle hung poised, and forced him to flap violently in order to keep
his balance against them.
A few moments later the second monster arrived. The eagle saw at once
that the two were enemies. The first dived headlong at the second,
spitting fire, with a loud and dreadful rap-rap-rapping noise, from its
strange blunt muzzle. The two circled around each other, and over and
under each other, at a speed which made even the eagle dizzy with
amazement; and he saw that it was something more deadly than fire which
spurted from their blunt snouts; for every now and then small things,
which travelled too fast for him to see, twanged past him with a
vicious note which he knew for the voice of death. He edged discreetly
farther away. Evidently this battle of the giants was dangerous to
spectators. His curiosity was beginning to get sated. He was on the
point of leaving the danger area altogether, when the dreadful duel
came suddenly to an end. He saw the second monster plunge drunkenly,
in wild, ungoverned lurches, and then drop head first, down, down,
down, straight as a stone, till it crashed into the earth and instantly
burst into flame. He saw the great still eyes of the victor staring
down inscrutably upon the wreck of its foe. Then he saw it whirl
sharply--tilting its rigid wings at so steep an angle that it almost
seemed about to overturn--and dart away again in the direction from
which it had come. He saw the reason for this swift departure. A
flock of six more monsters, of the breed of the one just slain, came
sweeping up from the south to take vengeance for their comrade's defeat.
The eagle had no mind to await them. He had had enough of wonders, and
the call in his heart had suddenly grown clear and intelligible.
Mounting still upward till he felt the air growing thin beneath his
wing-beats, he headed northwards as fast as he could fly. He had no
more interest now in the amazing panorama which unrolled beneath him,
in the thundering and screaming flights of shell which sped past in the
lower strata of the air. He was intent only upon gaining the wild
solitudes of which he dreamed. He marked others of the monsters which
he so dreaded, journeying sometimes alone, sometimes in flocks, but
always with the same implacable directness of flight, always with that
angry and menacing hum which, of all the sounds he had ever heard,
alone had power to shake his bold heart. He noticed that sometimes the
sky all about these monsters would be filled with sudden bursts of
fleecy cloud, looking soft as wool; and once he saw one of these
apparently harmless clouds burst full on the nose of one of the
monsters, which instantly flew apart and went hurtling down to earth in
revolving fragments. But he was no longer curious. He gave them all
as wide a berth as possible, and sped on, without delaying to note
their triumphs or their defeats.
At last the earth grew green again below him. The monsters, the smoke,
the shells, the flames, the thunders, were gradually left behind, and
far ahead at last he saw the sea, flashing gold and sapphire beneath
the summer sun. Soon--for he flew swiftly--it was almost beneath him.
His heart exulted at the sight. Then across that stretch of gleaming
tide he saw a dim line of cliffs--white cliffs, such cliffs as he
desired.
But at this point, when he was so near his goal, that Fate which had
always loved to juggle with him decided to show him a new one of her
tricks. Two more monsters appeared, diving steeply from the blue above
him. One was pursuing the other. Quite near him the pursuer overtook
its quarry, and the two spat fire at each other with that strident
rap-rap-rapping sound which he so disliked. He swerved as wide as
possible from the path of their terrible combat, and paid no heed to
its outcome. But, as he fled, something struck him near the tip of his
left wing.
The shock went through him like a needle of ice or fire, and he
dropped, leaving a little cloud of feathers in the air above to settle
slowly after him. He turned once completely over as he fell. But
presently; with terrific effort, he succeeded in regaining a partial
balance. He could no longer fully support himself, still less continue
his direct flight; but he managed to keep on an even keel and to delay
his fall. He knew that to drop into the sea below him was certain
death. But he had marked that the sea was dotted with peculiar-looking
ships--long, narrow, dark ships--which travelled furiously, vomiting
black smoke and carrying a white mass of foam in their teeth,
Supporting himself, with the last ounce of his strength, till one of
these rushing ships was just about to pass below him, he let himself
drop, and landed sprawling on the deck.
Half stunned though he was, he recovered himself almost instantly,
clawed up to his feet, steadied himself with one outstretched wing
against the pitching of the deck, and defied, with hard, undaunted eye
and threatening beak, a tall figure in blue, white-capped and
gold-braided, which stood smiling down upon him.
* * * * *
"By Jove," exclaimed Sub-Lieutenant James Smith, "here's luck: Uncle
Sam's own chicken, which he's sent us as a mascot till his ships can
get over and take a hand in the game with us: Delighted to see you, old
bird: You've come to the right spot, you have, and we'll do the best we
can to make you comfortable."
III
COCK-CROW
Cock-Crow
He was a splendid bird, a thoroughbred "Black-breasted Red" game-cock,
his gorgeous plumage hard as mail, silken with perfect condition, and
glowing like a flame against the darkness of the spruce forest. His
snaky head--the comb and wattles had been trimmed close, after the mode
laid down for his aristocratic kind--was sharp and keen, like a living
spearpoint. His eyes were fierce and piercing, ready ever to meet the
gaze of bird, or beast, or man himself with the unwinking challenge of
their full, arrogant stare. Perched upon a stump a few yards from the
railway line, he turned that bold stare now, with an air of unperturbed
superciliousness, upon the wreck of the big freight-car from which he
had just escaped. He had escaped by a miracle, but little effect had
that upon his bold and confident spirit. The ramshackle, overladen
freight train, labouring up the too-steep gradient, had broken in two,
thanks to a defective coupler, near the top of the incline a mile and a
half away. The rear cars--heavy box-cars--had, of course, run back,
gathering a terrific momentum as they went. The rear brakeman, his
brakes failing to hold, had discreetly jumped before the speed became
too great. At the foot of the incline a sharp curve had proved too
much for the runaways to negotiate. With a screech of tortured metal
they had jumped the track and gone crashing down the high embankment.
One car, landing on a granite boulder, had split apart like a cleft
melon. The light crate in which our game-cock, a pedigree bird, was
being carried to a fancier in the nearest town, some three score miles
away, had survived by its very lightness. But its door had been
snapped open. The cock walked out deliberately, uttered a long, low
_krr-rr-ee_ of ironic comment upon the disturbance, hopped delicately
over the tangle of boxes and crates and agricultural implements, and
flew to the top of the nearest stump. There he shook himself, his
plumage being disarrayed, though his spirit was not. He flapped his
wings. Then, eyeing the wreckage keenly, he gave a shrill, triumphant
crow, which rang through the early morning stillness of the forest like
a challenge. He felt that the smashed car, so lately his prison, was a
foe which he had vanquished by his own unaided prowess. His pride was
not altogether unnatural.
The place where he stood, preening the red glory of his plumage, was in
the very heart of the wilderness. The only human habitation within a
dozen miles in either direction was a section-man's shanty, guarding a
siding and a rusty water tank. The woods--mostly spruce in that
region, with patches of birch and poplar--had been gone over by the
lumbermen some five years before, and still showed the ravages of the
insatiable axe. Their narrow "tote-roads," now deeply mossed and
partly overgrown by small scrub, traversed the lonely spaces in every
direction. One of these roads led straight back into the wilderness
from the railway--almost from the stump whereon the red cock had his
perch.
The cock had no particular liking for the neighbourhood of the
accident, and when his fierce, inquiring eye fell upon this road, he
decided to investigate, hoping it might lead him to some flock of his
own kind, over whom he would, as a matter of course, promptly establish
his domination. That there would be other cocks there, already in
charge, only added to his zest for the adventure. He was raising his
wings to hop down from his perch, when a wide-winged shadow passed over
him, and he checked himself, glancing upwards sharply.
A foraging hawk had just flown overhead. The hawk had never before
seen a bird like the bright figure standing on the stump, and he paused
in his flight, hanging for a moment on motionless wing to scrutinize
the strange apparition. But he was hungry, and he considered himself
more than a match for anything in feathers except the eagle, the
goshawk, and the great horned owl. His hesitation was but for a
second, and, with a sudden mighty thrust of his wide wings, he swooped
down upon this novel victim.
The big hawk was accustomed to seeing every quarry he stooped at cower
paralysed with terror or scurry for shelter in wild panic. But, to his
surprise, this infatuated bird on the stump stood awaiting him, with
wings half lifted, neck feathers raised in defiant ruff, and one eye
cocked upwards warily. He was so surprised, in fact, that at a
distance of some dozen or fifteen feet he wavered and paused in his
downward rush. But it was surprise only, fear having small place in
his wild, marauding heart. In the next second he swooped again and
struck downwards at his quarry with savage, steel-hard talons.
He struck but empty air. At exactly the right fraction of the instant
the cock had leapt upwards on his powerful wings, lightly as a
thistle-seed, but swift as if shot from a catapult. He passed straight
over his terrible assailant's back. In passing he struck downwards
with his spurs, which were nearly three inches long, straight, and
tapered almost to a needle-point. One of these deadly weapons found
its mark, as luck would have it, fair in the joint of the hawk's
shoulder, putting the wing clean out of action.
The marauder turned completely over and fell in a wild flutter to the
ground, the cock, at the same time, alighting gracefully six or eight
feet away and wheeling like a flash to meet a second attack. The hawk,
recovering with splendid nerve from the amazing shock of his overthrow,
braced himself upright on his tail by the aid of the one sound
wing--the other wing trailing helplessly--and faced his strange
adversary with open beak and one clutching talon uplifted.
The cock, fighting after the manner of his kind, rushed in to within a
couple of feet of his foe and there paused, balanced for the next
stroke or parry, legs slightly apart, wings lightly raised, neck
feathers ruffed straight out, beak lowered and presented like a rapier
point. Seeing that his opponent made no demonstration, but simply
waited, watching him with eyes as hard and bright and dauntless as his
own, he tried to provoke him to a second attack. With scornful
insolence he dropped his guard and pecked at a twig or a grass blade,
jerking the unconsidered morsel aside and presenting his point again
with lightning swiftness.
The insult, however, was lost upon the hawk, who had no knowledge of
the cock's duelling code. He simply waited, motionless as the stump
beside him.
The cock, perceiving that taunt and insolence were wasted, now began to
circle warily toward the left, as if to take his opponent in the flank.
The hawk at once shifted front to face him. But this was the side of
his disabled wing. The sprawling member would not move, would not get
out of the way. In the effort to manage it, he partly lost his
precarious balance. The cock saw his advantage instantly. He dashed
in like a feathered and flaming thunderbolt, leaping upwards and
striking downwards with his destroying heels. The hawk was hurled over
backwards, with one spur through his throat, the other through his
lungs. As he fell he dragged his conqueror down with him, and one
convulsive but blindly-clutching talon ripped away a strip of flesh and
feathers from the victor's thigh. There was a moment's flapping, a few
delicate red feathers floated off upon the morning air, then the hawk
lay quite still, and the red cock, stepping haughtily off the body of
his foe, crowed long and shrill, three times, as if challenging any
other champions of the wilderness to come and dare a like fate.
For a few minutes he stood waiting and listening for an answer to his
challenge. As no answer came, he turned, without deigning to glance at
his slain foe, and stalked off, stepping daintily, up the old wood-road
and into the depths of the forest. To the raw, red gash in his thigh
he paid no heed whatever.
Having no inkling of the fact that the wilderness, silent and deserted
though it seemed, was full of hostile eyes and unknown perils, he took
no care at all for the secrecy of his going. Indeed, had he striven
for concealment, his brilliant colouring, so out of key with the forest
gloom, would have made it almost impossible. Nevertheless, his
keenness of sight and hearing, his practised and unsleeping vigilance
as protector of his flock, stood him in good stead, and made up for his
lack of wilderness lore. It was with an intense interest and
curiosity, rather than with any apprehension, that his bold eyes
questioned everything on either side of his path through the dark
spruce woods. Sometimes he would stop to peck the bright vermilion
bunches of the pigeon-berry, which here and there starred the hillocks
beside the road. But no matter how interesting he found the novel and
delicious fare, his vigilance never relaxed. It was, indeed, almost
automatic. The idea lurking in his subconscious processes was probably
that he might at any moment be seen by some doughty rival of his own
kind, and challenged to the great game of mortal combat. But whatever
the object of his watchfulness, it served him as well against the
unknown as it could have done against expected foes.
Presently he came to a spot where an old, half-rotted stump had been
torn apart by a bear hunting for wood-ants. The raw earth about the
up-torn roots tempted the wanderer to scratch for grubs. Finding a fat
white morsel, much too dainty to be devoured alone, he stood over it
and began to call _kt-kt-kt, kt-kt-kt, kt-kt-kt,_ in his most alluring
tones, hoping that some coy young hen would come stealing out of the
underbrush in response to his gallant invitation. There was no such
response; but as he peered about hopefully, he caught sight of a
sinister, reddish-yellow shape creeping towards him behind the shelter
of a withe-wood bush. He gulped down the fat grub, and stood warily
eyeing the approach of this new foe.
It looked to him like a sharp-nosed, bushy-tailed yellow dog--a very
savage and active one. He was not afraid, but he knew himself no match
for a thoroughly ferocious dog of that size. This one, it was clear,
had evil designs upon him. He half crouched, with wings loosed and
every muscle tense for the spring.
The next instant the fox pounced at him, darting through the green
edges of the withe-wood bush with most disconcerting suddenness. The
cock sprang into the air, but only just in time, for the fox, leaping
up nimbly at him with snapping jaws, captured a mouthful of glossy fail
feathers. The cock alighted on a branch overhead, some seven or eight
feet from the ground, whipped around, stretched his neck downwards, and
eyed his assailant with a glassy stare. "_Kr-rr-rr-eee?_" he murmured
softly, as if in sarcastic interrogation. The fox, exasperated at his
failure, and hating, above all beasts, to be made a fool of, glanced
around to see if there were any spectators. Then, with an air of
elaborate indifference, he pawed a feather from the corner of his mouth
and trotted away as if he had just remembered something.
He had not gone above thirty yards or so, when the cock flew down again
to the exact spot where he had been scratching. He pretended to pick
up another grub, all the time keeping an eye on the retiring foe. He
crowed with studied insolence; but the fox, although that long and
shrill defiance must have seemed a startling novelty, gave no sign of
having heard it. The cock crowed again, with the same lack of result.
He kept on crowing until the fox was out of sight. Then he returned
coolly to his scratching. When he had satisfied his appetite for fat
white grubs, he flew up again to his safe perch and fell to preening
his feathers. Five minutes later the fox reappeared, creeping up with
infinite stealth from quite another direction. The cock, however,
detected his approach at once, and proclaimed the fact with another
mocking crow. Disgusted and abashed, the fox turned in his tracks and
crept away to stalk some less sophisticated quarry.
The wanderer, for all his fearlessness, was wise. He suspected that
the vicious yellow dog with the bushy tail might return yet again to
the charge. For a time, therefore, he sat on his perch, digesting his
meal and studying with keen, inquisitive eyes his strange surroundings.
After ten minutes or so of stillness and emptiness, the forest began to
come alive. He saw a pair of black-and-white woodpeckers running up
and down the trunk of a half-dead tree, and listened with tense
interest to their loud rat-tat-tattings. He watched the shy wood-mice
come out from their snug holes under the tree-roots, and play about
with timorous gaiety and light rustlings among the dead leaves. He
scrutinized with appraising care a big brown rabbit which came bounding
in a leisurely fashion down the tote-road and sat up on its
hindquarters near the stump, staring about with its mild, bulging eyes,
and waving its long ears this way and that, to question every minutest
wilderness sound; and he decided that the rabbit, for all its bulk and
apparent vigour of limb, would not be a dangerous opponent. In fact,
he thought of hopping down from his perch and putting the big innocent
to flight, just to compensate himself for having had to flee from the
fox.
But while he was meditating this venture, the rabbit went suddenly
leaping off at a tremendous pace, evidently in great alarm. A few
seconds later a slim little light-brownish creature, with short legs,
long, sinuous body, short, triangular head, and cruel eyes that glowed
like fire, came into view, following hard upon the rabbit's trail. It
was nothing like half the rabbit's size, but the interested watcher on
the branch overhead understood at once the rabbit's terror. He had
never seen a weasel before, but he knew that the sinuous little beast
with the eyes of death would be as dangerous almost as the fox. He
noted that here was another enemy to look out for--to be avoided, if
possible, to be fought with the utmost wariness if fighting should be
forced upon him.
Not long after the weasel had vanished, the cock grew tired of waiting,
and restless to renew the quest for the flock on which his dreams were
set. He started by flying from tree to tree, still keeping along the
course of the tote-road. But after he had covered perhaps a half-mile
in this laborious fashion, he gave it up and hopped down again into the
road. Here he went now with new caution, but with the same old
arrogance of eye and bearing. He went quickly, however, for the gloom
of the spruce wood had grown oppressive to him, and he wanted open
fields and the unrestricted sun.
He had not gone far when he caught sight of a curious-looking animal
advancing slowly down the path to meet him. It was nearly as big as
the rabbit, but low on the legs; and instead of leaping along, it
crawled with a certain heavy deliberation. Its colour was a dingy,
greyish black-and-white, and its short black head was crowned with what
looked like a heavy iron-grey pompadour brushed well back. The cock
stood still, eyeing its approach suspiciously. It did not look capable
of any very swift demonstration, but he was on his guard.
When it had come within three or four yards of him, he said
"_Kr-rr-rr-eee!_" sharply, just to see what it would do, at the same
time lowering his snaky head and ruffing out his neck feathers in
challenge. The stranger seemed then to notice him for the first time,
and instantly, to the cock's vast surprise, it enlarged itself to fully
twice its previous size. Its fur, which was now seen to be quills
rather than fur, stood up straight on end all over its head and body,
and the quills were two or three inches in length. At this amazing
spectacle the cock involuntarily backed away several paces. The
stranger came straight on, however, without hastening his deliberate
steps one jot. The cock waited, maintaining his attitude of challenge,
till not more than three or four feet separated him from the
incomprehensible apparition. Then he sprang lightly over it and turned
in a flash, expecting the stranger to turn also and again confront him.
The stranger, however, did nothing of the kind, but simply continued
stolidly on his way, not even troubling to look round. Such stolidity
was more than the cock could understand, having never encountered a
porcupine before. He stared after it for some moments. Then he crowed
scornfully, turned about, and resumed his lonely quest.
A little farther on, to his great delight, he came out into a small
clearing with a log cabin in the centre of it. A house! It was
associated in his mind with an admiring, devoted flock of hens, and
rivals to be ignominiously routed, and harmless necessary humans whose
business it was to supply unlimited food. He rushed forward eagerly,
careless as to whether he should encounter love or war.
Alas, the cabin was deserted! Even to his inexperienced eye it was
long deserted. The door hung on one hinge, half open; the one small
window had no glass in it. Untrodden weeds grew among the rotting
chips up to and across the threshold. The roof--a rough affair of
poles and bark--sagged in the middle, just ready to fall in at the
smallest provocation. A red squirrel, his tail carried jauntily over
his back, sat on the topmost peak of it and shrilled high derision at
the wanderer as he approached.
The cock was acquainted with squirrels, and thought less than nothing
of them. Ignoring the loud chatter, he tip-toed around the cabin,
dejected but still inquisitive. Returning at length to the doorway, he
peered in, craning his neck and uttering a low _kr-rr_. Finally, with
head held high, he stalked in. The place was empty, save for a long
bench with a broken leg and a joint of rust-eaten stove-pipe. Along
two of the walls ran a double tier of bunks, in which the lumbermen had
formerly slept. The cock stalked all around the place, prying in every
corner and murmuring softly to himself. At last he flew up to the
highest bunk, perched upon the edge of it, flapped his wings, and
crowed repeatedly, as if announcing to the wilderness at large that he
had taken possession. This ceremony accomplished, he flew down again,
stalked out into the sunlight, and fell to scratching among the chips
with an air of assured possession. And all the while the red squirrel
kept on hurling shrill, unheeded abuse at him, resenting him as an
intruder in the wilds.
Whenever the cock found a particularly choice grub or worm or beetle,
he would hold it aloft in his beak, then lay it down and call loudly
_kt-kt-kt-kt-kt-kt_, as if hoping thus to lure some flock of hens to
the fair domain which he had seized. He had now dropped his quest, and
was trusting that his subjects would come to him. That afternoon his
valiant calls caught the ear of a weasel--possibly the very one which
he had seen in the morning trailing the panic-stricken rabbit. The
weasel came rushing upon him at once, too ferocious in its blood-lust
for any such emotions as surprise or curiosity, and expecting an easy
conquest. The cock saw it coming, and knew well the danger. But he
was now on his own ground, responsible for the protection of an
imaginary flock. He faced the peril unwavering. Fortunately for him,
the weasel had no idea whatever of a fighting-cock's method of warfare.
When the cock evaded the deadly rush by leaping straight at it and over
it, instead of dodging aside or turning tail, the weasel was nonplussed
for just a fraction of a second, and stood snarling. In that instant
of hesitation the cock's keen spur struck it fairly behind the ear, and
drove clean into the brain. The murderous little beast stiffened out,
rolled gently over upon its side, and lay there with the soundless
snarl fixed upon its half-opened jaws. Surprised at such an easy
victory, the cock spurred the carcase again, just to make sure of it.
Then he kicked it to one side, crowed, of course, and stared around
wistfully for some appreciation of his triumph. He could not know with
what changed eyes the squirrel--who feared weasels more than anything
else on earth--was now regarding him.
The killing of so redoubtable an adversary as the weasel must have
become known, in some mysterious fashion, for thenceforward no more of
the small marauders of the forest ventured to challenge the new
lordship of the clearing. For a week the cock ruled his solitude
unquestioned, very lonely, but sleeplessly alert, and ever hoping that
followers of his own kind would come to him from somewhere. In time,
doubtless, his loneliness would have driven him forth again upon his
quest; but Fate had other things in store for him.
Late one afternoon a grizzled woodsman in grey homespun, and carrying a
bundle swung from the axe over his shoulder, came striding up to the
cabin. The cock, pleased to see a human being once more, stalked forth
from the cabin door to meet him. The woodsman was surprised at the
sight of what he called a "reel barn-yard rooster" away off here in the
wilds, but he was too tired and hungry to consider the question
carefully. His first thought was that there would be a pleasant
addition to his supper of bacon and biscuits. He dropped his axe and
bundle, and made a swift grab at the unsuspecting bird. The latter
dodged cleverly, ruffed his neck feathers with an angry _kr-rr-rr_,
hopped up, and spurred the offending hand severely.
The woodsman straightened himself up, taken by surprise, and sheepishly
shook the blood from his hand.
"Well, I'll be durned!" he muttered, eyeing the intrepid cock with
admiration. "You're some rooster, you are! I guess you're all right.
Guess I deserved that, for thinkin' of wringin' the neck o' sech a
handsome an' gritty bird as you, an' me with plenty o' good bacon in me
pack. Guess we'll call it square, eh?"
He felt in his pocket for some scraps of biscuits, and tossed them to
the cock, who picked them up greedily and then strutted around him,
plainly begging for more. The biscuit was a delightful change after an
unvarying diet of grubs and grass. Thereafter he followed his visitor
about like his shadow, not with servility, of course, but with a
certain condescending arrogance which the woodsman found hugely amusing.
Just outside the cabin door the woodsman lit a fire to cook his evening
rasher and brew his tin of tea. The cock supped with him, striding
with dignity to pick up the scraps which were thrown to him, and then
resuming his place at the other side of the fire. By the time the man
was done, dusk had fallen; and the cock, chuckling contentedly in his
throat, tip-toed into the cabin, flew up to the top bunk, and settled
himself on his perch for the night. He had always been taught to
expect benefits from men, and he felt that this big stranger who had
fed him so generously would find him a flock to preside over on the
morrow.
After a long smoke beside his dying fire, till the moon came up above
the ghostly solitude, the woodsman turned in to sleep in one of the
lower bunks, opposite to where the cock was roosting. He had heaped an
armful of bracken and spruce branches into the bunk before spreading
his blanket. And he slept very soundly.
Even the most experienced of woodsmen may make a slip at times. This
one, this time, had forgotten to make quite sure that his fire was out.
There was no wind when he went to bed, but soon afterwards a wind
arose, blowing steadily toward the cabin. It blew the darkened embers
to a glow, and little, harmless-looking flames began eating their way
over the top layer of tinder-dry chips to the equally dry wall of the
cabin.
* * * * *
The cock was awakened by a bright light in his eyes. A fiery glow,
beyond the reddest of sunrises, was flooding the cabin. Long tongues
of flame were licking about the doorway. He crowed valiantly, to greet
this splendid, blazing dawn. He crowed again and yet again, because he
was anxious and disturbed. As a sunrise, this one did not act at all
according to precedent.
The piercing notes aroused the man, who was sleeping heavily. In one
instant he was out of his bunk and grabbing up his blanket and his
pack. In the next he had plunged out through the flaming doorway, and
thrown down his armful at a safe distance, cursing acidly at such a
disturbance to the most comfortable rest he had enjoyed for a week.
From within the doomed cabin came once more the crow of the cock,
shrilling dauntlessly above the crackle and venomous hiss of the flames.
"Gee whizz!" muttered the woodsman, or, rather, that may be taken as
the polite equivalent of his untrammelled backwoods expletive. "That
there red rooster's game. Ye can't leave a pardner like that to roast!"
With one arm shielding his face, he dashed in again, grabbed the cock
by the legs, and darted forth once more into the sweet, chill air, none
the worse except for frizzled eyelashes and an unceremonious trimming
of hair and beard. The cock, highly insulted, was flapping and pecking
savagely, but the man soon reduced him to impotence, if not submission,
holding him under one elbow while he tied his armed heels together, and
then swaddling him securely in his coat.
"There," said he, "I guess we'll travel together from this out,
pardner. Ye've sure saved my life; an' to think I had the notion, for
a minnit, o' makin' a meal offen ye! I'll give ye a good home,
anyways, an' I guess ye'll lick the socks offen every other rooster in
the whole blame Settlement!"
IV
THE MORNING OF THE SILVER FROST
The Morning of the Silver Frost
All night the big buck rabbit--he was really a hare, but the
backwoodsmen called him a rabbit--had been squatting on his form under
the dense branches of a young fir tree. The branches grew so low that
their tips touched the snow all round him, giving him almost perfect
shelter from the drift of the storm. The storm was one of icy rain,
which everywhere froze instantly as it fell. All night it had been
busy encasing the whole wilderness--every tree and bush and stump, and
the snow in every open meadow or patch of forest glade--in an armour of
ice, thick and hard and glassy clear. And the rabbit, crouching
motionless, save for an occasional forward thrust of his long,
sensitive ears, had slept in unwonted security, knowing that none of
his night-prowling foes would venture forth from their lairs on such a
night.
At dawn the rain stopped. The cold deepened to a still intensity. The
clouds lifted along the eastern horizon, and a thin, icy flood of
saffron and palest rose washed down across the glittering desolation.
The wilderness was ablaze on the instant with elusive tongues and
points of coloured light--jewelled flames, not of fire, but of frost.
The world had become a palace of crystal and opal, a dream-palace that
would vanish at a touch, a breath. And indeed, had a wind arisen then
to breathe upon it roughly, the immeasurable crystal would have
shattered as swiftly as a dream, the too-rigid twigs and branches would
have snapped and clattered down in ruin.
The rabbit came out from under his little ice-clad fir tree, and, for
all his caution, the brittle twigs broke about him as he emerged, and
tinkled round him sharply. The thin, light sound was so loud upon the
stillness that he gave a startled leap into the air, landing many feet
away from his refuge. He slipped and sprawled, recovered his foothold,
and stood quivering, his great, prominent eyes trying to look in every
direction at once, his ears questioning anxiously to and fro, his
nostrils twitching for any hint of danger.
There was no sight, sound, or scent, however, to justify his alarm, and
in a few seconds, growing bolder, he remembered that he was hungry.
Close by he noticed the tips of a little birch sapling sticking up
above the snow. These birch-tips, in winter, were his favourite food.
He hopped toward them, going circumspectly over the slippery surface,
and sat up on his hindquarters to nibble at them. To his intense
surprise and disappointment, each twig and aromatic bud was sealed
away, inaccessible, though clearly visible, under a quarter inch of
ice. Twig after twig he investigated with his inquiring, sensitive
cleft nostrils, which met everywhere the same chill reception. Round
and round the tantalizing branch he hopped, unable to make out the
situation. At last, thoroughly disgusted, he turned his back on the
treacherous birch bush and made for another, some fifty yards down the
glade.
As he reached it he stopped short, suddenly rigid, his head half turned
over his shoulder, every muscle gathered like a spring wound up to
extreme tension. His bulging eyes had caught a movement somewhere
behind him, beyond the clump of twigs which he had just left. Only for
a second did he remain thus rigid. Then the spring was loosed. With a
frantic bound he went over and through the top of the bush. The
shattered and scattered crystals rang sharply on the shining
snow-crust. And he sped away in panic terror among the silent trees.
From behind the glassy twigs emerged another form, snow-white like the
fleeting rabbit, and sped in pursuit--not so swiftly, indeed, as the
rabbit, but with an air of implacable purpose that made the quarry seem
already doomed. The pursuer was much smaller than his intended victim,
very low on the legs, long-bodied, slender, and sinuous, and he moved
as if all compacted of whipcord muscle. The grace of his long,
deliberate bounds was indescribable. His head was triangular in shape,
the ears small and close-set, the black-tipped muzzle sharply pointed,
with the thin, black lips upcurled to show the white fangs; and the
eyes glowed red with blood-lust. Small as it was, there was something
terrible about the tiny beast, and its pursuit seemed as inevitable as
Fate. At each bound its steel-hard claws scratched sharply on the
crystal casing of the snow, and here and there an icicle from a snapped
twig went ringing silverly across the gleaming surface.
For perhaps fifty yards the weasel followed straight upon the rabbit's
track. Then he swerved to the right. He had lost sight of his quarry.
But he knew its habits in flight. He knew it would run in a circle,
and he took a chord of that circle, so as to head the fugitive off. He
knew he might have to repeat this manoeuvre several times, but he had
no doubts as to the result. In a second or two he also had disappeared
among the azure shadows and pink-and-saffron gleams of the ice-clad
forest.
For several minutes the glade was empty, still as death, with the
bitter but delicate glories of the winter dawn flooding ever more
radiantly across it. On a sudden the rabbit appeared again, this time
at the opposite side of the glade. He was running irresolutely now,
with little aimless leaps to this side and to that, and his leaps were
short and lifeless, as if his nerve-power were getting paralysed.
About the middle of the glade he seemed to give up altogether, as if
conquered by sheer panic. He stopped, hesitated, wheeled round, and
crouched flat upon the naked snow, trembling violently, and staring,
with eyes that started from his head, at the point in the woods which
he had just emerged from.
A second later the grim pursuer appeared. He saw his victim awaiting
him, but he did not hurry his pace by a hair's-breadth. With the same
terrible deliberation he approached. Only his jaws opened, his long
fangs glistened bare; a blood-red globule of light glowed redder at the
back of his eyes.
One more of those inexorable bounds, and he would have been at his
victim's throat. The rabbit screamed.
At that instant, with a hissing sound, a dark shadow dropped out of the
air. It struck the rabbit. He was enveloped in a dreadful flapping of
wings. Iron talons, that clutched and bit like the jaws of a trap,
seized him by the back. He felt himself partly lifted from the snow.
He screamed again. But now he struggled convulsively, no longer
submissive to his doom, the hypnotic spell cast upon him by the weasel
being broken by the shock of the great hawk's unexpected attack.
But the weasel was not of the stuff or temper to let his prey be
snatched thus from his jaws. Cruel and wanton assassin though he was,
ever rejoicing to kill for the lust of killing long after his hunger
was satisfied, he had the courage of a wounded buffalo. A mere darting
silver of white, he sprang straight into the blinding confusion of
those great wings.
He secured a hold just under one wing, where the armour of feathers was
thinnest, and began to gnaw inwards with his keen fangs. With a
startled cry, the hawk freed her talons from the rabbit's back and
clutched frantically at her assailant. The rabbit, writhing out from
under the struggle, went leaping off into cover, bleeding copiously,
but carrying no fatal hurt. He had recovered his wits, and had no idle
curiosity as to how the battle between his enemies would turn out.
The hawk, for all her great strength and the crushing superiority of
her weapons, had a serious disadvantage of position. The weasel,
maintaining his deadly grip and working inwards like a bull-dog, had
hunched up his lithe little body so that she could not reach it with
her talons. She tore furiously at his back with her rending beak, but
the amazingly tough, rubbery muscles resisted even that weapon to a
certain degree. At last, securing a grip with her beak upon her
adversary's thigh, she managed to pull the curled-up body out almost
straight, and so secured a grip upon it with one set of talons.
That grip was crushing, irresistible, but it was too far back to be
immediately fatal. The weasel's lithe body lengthened out under the
agonizing stress of it, but it could not pull his jaws from their grip.
They continued inexorably their task of gnawing inwards, ever inwards,
seeking a vital spot.
The struggle went on in silence, as far as the voices of both
combatants were concerned. But the beating of the hawk's wings
resounded on the glassy-hard surface of the snow. As the struggle
shifted ground, those flapping wings came suddenly in contact with a
bush, whose iced twigs were brittle as glass and glittering like the
prisms of a great crystal candelabrum. There was a shrill crash and a
thin, ringing clatter as the twigs shattered off and spun flying across
the crust.
The sound carried far through the still iridescent spaces of the
wilderness. It reached the ears of a foraging fox, who was tiptoeing
with dainty care over the slippery crust. He turned hopefully to
investigate, trusting to get a needed breakfast out of some
fellow-marauder's difficulties. At the edge of the glade he paused,
peering through a bush of crystal fire to size up the situation before
committing himself to the venture.
Desperately preoccupied though she was, the hawk's all-seeing eyes
detected the red outlines of the fox through the bush. With a frantic
beating of her wings she lifted herself from the snow. The fox darted
upon her with a lightning rush and a shattering of icicles. He was
just too late. The great bird was already in the air, carrying her
deadly burden with her. The fox leapt straight upwards, hoping to pull
her down, but his clashing jaws just failed to reach her talons.
Labouring heavily in her flight, she made off, striving to gain a
tree-top, where she might perch and once more give her attention to the
gnawing torment which clung beneath her wing.
The fox, being wise, and seeing that the hawk was in extremest straits,
ran on beneath her as she flew, gazing upwards expectantly.
The weasel, meanwhile, with that deadly concentration of purpose which
characterizes his tribe, paid no heed to the fact that he was
journeying through the air. And he knew nothing of what was going on
below. His flaming eyes were buried in his foe's feathers, his jaws
were steadily working inwards toward her vitals.
Just at the edge of the glade, immediately over the top of a branchy
young paper-birch which shot a million coloured points of light in the
sunrise, the end came. The fangs of the weasel met in the hawk's
wildly throbbing heart. With a choking burst of scarlet blood it
stopped.
Stone dead, the great marauder of the air crashed down through the slim
birch-top, with a great scattering of gleams and crystals. With
wide-sprawled wings she thudded down upon the snow-crust, almost under
the fox's complacent jaws. The weasel's venomous head, covered with
blood, emerged triumphant from the mass of feathers.
As the victor writhed free, the fox, pouncing upon him with a careless
air, seized him by the neck, snapped it neatly, and tossed the long,
limp body, aside upon the snow. He had no use for the rank, stringy
meat of the weasel when better fare was at hand. Then he drew the hawk
close to the trunk of the young birch, and lay down to make a leisurely
breakfast.
V
JIM, THE BACKWOODS POLICE DOG
How Woolly Billy Came to Brine's Rip
I
Jim's mother was a big cross-bred bitch, half Newfoundland and half
bloodhound, belonging to Black Saunders, one of the hands at the
Brine's Rip Mills. As the mills were always busy, Saunders was always
busy, and it was no place for a dog to be around, among the screeching
saws, the thumping, wet logs, and the spurting sawdust. So the big
bitch, with fiery energy thrilling her veins and sinews and the
restraint of a master's hand seldom exercised upon her, practically ran
wild.
Hunting on her own account in the deep wilderness which surrounded
Brine's Rip Settlement, she became a deadly menace to every wild thing
less formidable than a bear or a bull moose, till at last, in the early
prime of her adventurous career, she was shot by an angry game warden
for her depredations among the deer and the young caribou.
Jim's father was a splendid and pedigreed specimen of the old English
sheep-dog. From a litter of puppies of this uncommon parentage, Tug
Blackstock, the Deputy Sheriff of Nipsiwaska County, chose out the one
that seemed to him the likeliest, paid Black Saunders a sovereign for
him, and named him Jim. To Tug Blackstock, for some unfathomed reason,
the name of "Jim" stood for self-contained efficiency.
It was efficiency, in chief, that Tug Blackstock, as Deputy Sheriff,
was after. He had been reading, in a stray magazine with torn cover
and much-thumbed pages, an account of the wonderful doings of the
trained police-dogs of Paris. The story had fired his imagination and
excited his envy.
There was a lawless element in some of the outlying corners of
Nipsiwaska County, with a larger element of yet more audacious
lawlessness beyond the county line from which to recruit. Throughout
the wide and mostly wilderness expanse of Nipsiwaska County the
responsibility for law and order rested almost solely upon the
shoulders of Tug Blackstock. His chief, the Sheriff, a prosperous
shopkeeper who owed his appointment to his political pull, knew little
and thought less of the duties of his office.
As soon as Jim was old enough to have an interest beyond his breakfast
and the worrying of his rag ball, Tug Blackstock set about his
training. It was a matter that could not be hurried. Tug had much
work to do and Jim, as behoved a growing puppy, had a deal of play to
get through in the course of each twenty-four hours. Then so hard was
the learning, so easy, alas! the forgetting. Tug Blackstock was kind
to all creatures but timber thieves and other evil-doers of like
kidney. He was patient, with the long patience of the forest. But he
had a will like the granite of old Bald Face.
Jim was quick of wit, willing to learn, intent to please his master.
But it was hard for him to concentrate. It was hard to keep his mind
off cats, and squirrels, the worrying of old boots, and other doggish
frivolities. Hence, at times, some painful misunderstandings between
teacher and pupil. In the main, however, the education of Jim
progressed to a marvel.
They were a pair, indeed, to strike the most stolid imagination, let
alone the sensitive, brooding, watchful imagination of the backwoods.
Tug Blackstock was a tall, spare figure of a man, narrow of hip, deep
of chest, with something of a stoop to his mighty shoulders, and his
head thrust forward as if in ceaseless scrutiny of the unseen. His
hair, worn somewhat short and pushed straight back, was faintly
grizzled. His face, tanned and lean, was markedly wide at the eyes,
with a big, well-modelled nose, a long, obstinate jaw, and a wide mouth
whimsically uptwisted at one corner.
Except on the trail--and even then he usually carried a razor in his
pack--he was always clean-shaven, just because he didn't like the curl
of his beard. His jacket, shirt, and trousers were of browny-grey
homespun, of much the same hue as his soft slouch hat, all as
inconspicuous as possible. But at his throat, loosely knotted under
his wide-rolling shirt collar, he wore usually an ample silk
handkerchief of vivid green spattered with big yellow spots, like
dandelions in a young June meadow.
As for Jim, at first glance he might almost have been taken for a slim,
young black bear rather than a dog. The shaggy coat bequeathed to him
by his sheep-dog sire gave to his legs and to his hindquarters an
appearance of massiveness that was almost clumsy. But under this dense
black fleece his lines were fine and clean-drawn as a bull-terrier's.
The hair about his eyes grew so long and thick that, if left to itself,
it would have seriously interfered with his vision. This his master
could not think of permitting, so the riotous hair was trimmed down
severely, till Jim's large, sagacious eyes gazed out unimpeded from
ferocious, brush-like rims of stubby fur about half an inch in length.
II
For some ten miles above the long, white, furrowed race of Brine's Rip,
where Blue Forks Brook flows in, the main stream of the Ottanoonsis is
a succession of mad rapids and toothed ledges and treacherous,
channel-splitting shoals. These ten miles are a trial of nerve and
water-craft for the best canoists on the river. In the spring, when
the river was in freshet and the freed logs were racing, battering, and
jamming, the whole reach was such a death-trap for the stream-drivers
that it had come to be known as Dead Man's Run.
Now, in high summer, when the stream was shrunken in its channel and
the sunshine lay golden over the roaring, creamy chutes and the dancing
shallows, the place looked less perilous. But it was full of snares
and hidden teeth. It was no place for the canoist, however expert with
pole and paddle, unless he knew how to read the water unerringly for
many yards ahead. It is this reading of the water, this instantaneous
solving of the hieroglyphics of foam and surge and swirl and glassy
lunge, that makes the skilled runner of the rapids.
A light birch-bark canoe, with a man in the stern and a small child in
the bow, was approaching the head of the rapids, which were hidden from
the paddler's view by a high, densely-wooded bend of the shore. The
canoe leapt forward swiftly on the smooth, quiet current, under the
strong drive of the paddle.
The paddler was a tall, big-limbed man, with fair hair fringing out
under his tweed cap, and a face burnt red rather than tanned by the
weather. He was dressed roughly but well, and not as a woodsman, and
he had a subtle air of being foreign to the backwoods. He knew how to
handle his paddle, however, the prow of his craft keeping true though
his strokes were slow and powerful.
The child who sat facing him on a cushion in the bow was a little boy
of four or five years, in a short scarlet jacket and blue knickers.
His fat, bare legs were covered with fly-bites and scratches, his baby
face of the tenderest cream and pink, his round, interested eyes as
blue as periwinkle blossoms. But the most conspicuous thing about him
was his hair. He was bareheaded--his little cap lying in the bottom of
the canoe among the luggage--and the hair, as white as tow, stood out
like a fleece all over his head, enmeshing the sunlight in its silken
tangle.
When the canoe shot round the bend, the roar of the rapids smote
suddenly upon the voyagers' ears. The child turned his bright head
inquiringly, but from his low place could see nothing to explain the
noise. His father, however, sitting up on the hinder bar of the canoe,
could see a menacing white line of tossing crests, aflash in the
sunlight, stretching from shore to shore. Backing water vigorously to
check his headway, he stood up to get a better view and choose his way
through the surge.
The stranger was master of his paddle, but he had had no adequate
experience in running rapids. Such light and unobstructed rips as he
had gone through had merely sufficed to make him regard lightly the
menace confronting him. He had heard of the perils of Dead Man's Run,
but that, of course, meant in time of freshet, when even the mildest
streams are liable to go mad and run amuck. This was the season of
dead low water, and it was hard for him to imagine there could be
anything really to fear from this lively but shrunken stream. He was
strong, clear-eyed, steady of nerve, and he anticipated no great
trouble in getting through.
As the light craft dipped into the turmoil; jumping as if buffeted from
below, and the wave-tops slapped in on either side of the bow, the
little lad gave a cry of fear.
"Sit tight, boy. Don't be afraid," said the father, peering ahead with
intent, narrowed eyes and surging fiercely on his blade to avoid a
boiling rock just below the first chute. As he swept past in safety he
laughed in triumph, for the passage had been close and exciting, and
the conquest of a mad rapid is one of the thrilling things in life, and
worth going far for. His laugh reassured the child, who laughed also,
but cowered low in the canoe and stared over the gunwale with wide eyes
of awe.
But already the canoe was darting down toward a line of black rocks
smothered in foam. The man paddled desperately to gain the other
shore, where there seemed to be a clear passage. Slanting sharply
across the great current, surging with short terrific strokes upon his
sturdy maple blade, his teeth set and his breath coming in grunts, he
was swept on downward, sideways toward the rocks, with appalling speed.
But he made the passage, swept the bow around, and raced through,
shaving the rock so narrowly that his heart paused and the sweat jumped
out suddenly cold on his forehead.
Immediately afterwards the current swept him to mid-stream. Just here
the channel was straight and clear of rocks, and though the rips were
heavy the man had a few minutes' respite, with little to do but hold
his course.
With a stab at the heart he realized now into what peril he had brought
his baby. Eagerly he looked for a chance to land, but on neither side
could he make shore with any chance of escaping shipwreck. A woodsman,
expert with the canoe-pole, might have managed it, but the stranger had
neither pole nor skill to handle one. He was in the grip of the wild
current and could only race on, trusting to master each new emergency
as it should hurl itself upon him.
Presently the little one took alarm again at his father's stern-set
mouth and preoccupied eyes. The man had just time to shout once more,
"Don't be afraid, son. Dad'll take care of you," when the canoe was
once more in a yelling chaos of chutes and ledges. And now there was
no respite. Unable to read the signs of the water, he was full upon
each new peril before he recognized it, and only his great muscular
strength and instant decision saved them.
Again and again they barely, by a hair's-breadth, slipped through the
jaws of death, and it seemed to the man that the gnashing ledges raved
and yelled behind him at each miracle of escape. Then hissing
wave-crests cut themselves off and leapt over the racing gunwale, till
he feared the canoe would be swamped. Once they scraped so savagely
that he thought the bottom was surely ripped from the canoe. But still
he won onward, mile after roaring mile, his will fighting doggedly to
keep his eyesight from growing hopelessly confused with the hellish,
sliding dazzle and riot of waters.
But at last the fiend of the flood, having played with its prey long
enough, laid bare its claws and struck. The bow of the canoe, in
swerving from one foam-curtained rock, grounded heavily upon another.
In an instant the little craft was swung broadside on, and hung there.
The waves piled upon her in a yelling pack. She was smothered down,
and rolled over helplessly.
As they shot out into the torrent the man, with a terrible cry, sprang
toward the bow, striving to reach his son. He succeeded in catching
the little one, with one hand, by the back of the scarlet jacket. The
next moment he went under and the jacket came off over the child's
head. A whimsical cross-current dragged the little boy twenty feet off
to one side, and shot him into a shallow side channel.
When the man came to the surface again his eyes were shut, his face
stark white, his legs and arms flung about aimlessly as weeds; but fast
in his unconscious grip he held the little red jacket. The canoe, its
side stove in, and full of water, was hurrying off down the rapid amid
a fleet of paddles, cushions, blankets, boxes, and bundles. The body
of the man, heavy and inert and sprawling, followed more slowly. The
waves rolled it over and trampled it down, shouldered it up again, and
snatched it away viciously whenever it showed an inclination to hang
itself up on some projecting ledge. It was long since they had had
such a victim on whom to glut their rancour.
The child, meanwhile, after being rolled through the laughing shallows
of the side channel and playfully buffeted into a half-drowned
unconsciousness, was stranded on a sand spit some eight or ten yards
from the right-hand shore. There he lay, half in the water, half out
of it, the silken white floss of his hair all plastered down to his
head, the rippled current tugging at his scratched and bitten legs.
The unclouded sun shone down warmly upon his face, slowly bringing back
the rose to his baby lips, and a small, paper-blue butterfly hovered
over his head for a few seconds, as if puzzled to make out what kind of
being he was.
The sand spit which had given the helpless little one refuge was close
to the shore, but separated from it by a deep and turbulent current. A
few minutes after the blue butterfly had flickered away across the
foam, a large black bear came noiselessly forth from the fir woods and
down to the water's edge. He gazed searchingly up and down the river
to see if there were any other human creatures in sight, then stretched
his savage black muzzle out over the water toward the sand spit, eyeing
and sniffing at the little unconscious figure there in the sun. He
could not make out whether it was dead or only asleep. In either case
he wanted it. He stepped into the foaming edge of the sluice, and
stood there whimpering with disappointed appetite, daunted by the snaky
vehemence of the current.
Presently, as the warmth of the flooding sun crept into his veins, the
child stirred, and opened his blue eyes. He sat up, noticed he was
sitting in the water, crawled to a dry spot, and snuggled down into the
hot sand. For the moment he was too dazed to realize where he was.
Then, as the life pulsed back into his veins, he remembered how his
father's hand had caught him by the jacket just as he went plunging
into the awful waves. Now, the jacket was gone. His father was gone,
too.
"Daddy! Daddee-ee!" he wailed. And at the sound of that wailing cry,
so unmistakably the cry of a youngling for its parent, the bear drew
back discreetly behind a bush, and glanced uneasily up and down the
stream to see if the parent would come in answer to the appeal. He had
a wholesome respect for the grown-up man creature of either sex, and
was ready to retire on the approach of one.
But no one came. The child began to sob softly, in a lonesome,
frightened, suppressed way. In a minute or two, however, he stopped
this, and rose to his feet, and began repeating over and over the
shrill wail of "Daddy, Daddee-ee, Daddee-ee!" At the same time he
peered about him in every direction, almost hopefully, as if he thought
his father must be hiding somewhere near, to jump out presently for a
game of bo-peep with him.
His baby eyes were keen. They did not find his father, but they found
the bear, its great black head staring at him from behind a bush.
His cries stopped on the instant, in the middle of a syllable, frozen
in his throat with terror. He cowered down again upon the sand, and
stared, speechless, at the awful apparition. The bear, realizing that
the little one's cries had brought no succour, came out from its hiding
confidently, and down to the shore, and straight out into the water
till the current began to drag too savagely at its legs. Here it
stopped, grumbling and baffled.
The little one, unable any longer to endure the dreadful sight, backed
to the extreme edge of the sand, covered his face with his hands, and
fell to whimpering piteously, an unceasing, hopeless, monotonous little
cry, as vague and inarticulate as the wind.
The bear, convinced at length that the sluice just here was too strong
for to cross, drew back to the shore reluctantly, It moved slowly
up-stream some forty or fifty yards, looking for a feasible crossing.
Disappointed in this direction, it then explored the water's edge for a
little distance down stream, but with a like result. But it would not
give up. Up and down, up and down, it continued to patrol the shore
with hungry obstinacy. And the piteous whimpering of the little figure
that cowered, with hidden face upon the sand spit, gradually died away.
That white fleece of silken locks, dried in the sun and blown by the
warm breeze, stood out once more in its radiance on the lonely little
slumbering head.
III
Tug Blackstock sat on a log, smoking and musing, on the shore of that
wide, eddying pool, full of slow swirls and spent foam clusters, in
which the tumbling riot of Brine's Rip came to a rest. From the mills
behind him screeched the untiring saws. Outstretched at his feet lay
Jim, indolently snapping at flies. The men of the village were busy in
the mills, the women in their cottages, the children in their schools;
and the stretch of rough shore gave Tug Blackstock the solitude which
he loved.
Down through the last race of the rapids came a canoe paddle, and began
revolving slowly in the eddies. Blackstock pointed it out to Jim, and
sent him in after it. The dog swam for it gaily, grabbed it by the top
so that it could trail at his side, and brought it to his master's
feet. It was a good paddle, of clean bird's-eye maple and Melicite
pattern, and Tug Blackstock wondered who could have been so careless as
to lose it. Carelessness is a vice regarded with small leniency in the
backwoods.
A few minutes later down the rapids came wallowing a water-logged
birch-canoe. The other things which had started out with it, the
cushions and blankets and bundles, had got themselves tangled in the
rocks and left behind.
At sight of the wrecked canoe, Tug Blackstock rose to his feet. He
began to suspect another of the tragedies of Dead Man's Run. But what
river-man would come to grief in the Run at this stage of the water?
Blackstock turned to an old dug-out which lay hauled up on the shore,
ran it down into the water and paddled out to salvage the wrecked
canoe. He towed it to shore, emptied it, and scrutinized it. He
thought he knew every canoe on the river, but this one was a stranger
to him. It had evidently been brought across the Portage from the east
coast. Then he found, burnt into the inside of the gunwale near the
bow, the letters J.C.M.W.
"The Englishman," he muttered. "He's let the canoe git away from him
at the head of the Run, likely, when he's gone ashore. He'd never have
tried to shoot the Run alone, an' him with no experience of rapids."
But he was uneasy. He decided that he would get his own canoe and pole
up through the rapids, just to satisfy himself.
Tug Blackstock's canoe, a strong and swift "Fredericton" of polished
canvas, built on the lines of a racing birch, was kept under cover in
his wood shed at the end of the village street. He shouldered it,
carrying it over his head with the mid bar across his shoulders, and
bore it down to the water's edge. Then he went back and fetched his
two canoe poles and his paddles.
Waving Jim into the bow, he was just about to push off when his
narrowed eyes caught sight of something else rolling and threshing
helplessly down the rapid. Only too well he saw what it was. His face
pale with concern, he thrust the canoe violently up into the tail of
the rapid, just in time to catch the blindly sprawling shape before it
could sink to the depths of the pool. Tenderly he lifted it out upon
the shore. It was battered almost out of recognition, but he knew it.
"Poor devil! Poor devil!" he muttered sorrowfully. "He was a man all
right, but he didn't understand rapids for shucks!"
Then he noticed that in the dead man's right hand was clutched a tiny
child's jacket. He understood--he saw the whole scene, and he swore
compassionately under his breath, as he unloosed the rigid fingers.
Alive or dead, the little one must be found at once.
He called Jim sharply, and showed him the soaked red jacket. Jim
sniffed at it, but the wearer's scent was long ago soaked out of it.
He looked it over, and pawed it, wagging his tail doubtfully. He could
see it was a small child's jacket, but what was he expected to do with
it?
After a few moments, Tug Blackstock patted the jacket vigorously, and
then waved his arm up-stream.
"Go, find him, Jim!" he ordered. Jim, hanging upon each word and
gesture, comprehended instantly. He was to find the owner of the
little jacket--a child--somewhere up the river. With a series of eager
yelps--which meant that he would do all that living dog could do--he
started up the shore, on the full run.
By this time the mill whistles had blown, the screaming of the saws had
stopped, the men, powdered with yellow sawdust, were streaming out from
the wide doors. They flocked down to the water.
In hurried words Blackstock explained the situation. Then he stepped
once more into his canoe, snatched his long, steel-shod pole, and
thrust his prow up into the wild current, leaving the dead man to the
care of the coroner and the village authorities. Before he had battled
his way more than a few hundred yards upwards through the raging
smother, two more canoes, with expert polers standing poised in them
like statues, had pushed out to follow him in his search.
The rest of the crowd picked up the body and bore it away reverently to
the court-room, with sympathetic women weeping beside it.
Racing along the open edge of the river where it was possible, tearing
fiercely through thicket and underbrush where rapids or rocks made the
river's edge impassable, the great black dog panted onwards with the
sweat dripping from jaws and tongue. Whenever he was forced away from
the river, he would return to it at every fifty yards or so, and scan
each rock, shoal or sand spit with keen, sagacious eyes. He had been
told to search the river--that was the plain interpretation of the wet
jacket and of Tug Blackstock's gesture--so he wasted no time upon the
woods and the undergrowth.
At last he caught sight of the little fluffy-headed figure huddled upon
the sand spit far across the river. He stopped, stared intently, and
then burst into loud, ecstatic barkings as an announcement that his
search had been successful. But the noise did not carry across the
tumult of the ledge, and the little one slept on, exhausted by his
terror and his grief.
It was not only the sleeping child that Jim saw. He saw the bear, and
his barking broke into shrill yelps of alarm and appeal. He could not
see that the sluice between the sand spit and the bank was an effective
barrier, and he was frantic with anxiety lest the bear should attack
the little one before he could come to the rescue.
His experienced eye told him in a moment that the river was impassable
for him at this point. He dashed on up-stream for another couple of
hundred yards, and then, where a breadth of comparatively slack water
beneath a long ledge extended more than half-way across, he plunged in,
undaunted by the clamour and the jumping, boiling foam.
Swimming mightily, he gained a point directly above the sand spit.
Then, fighting every inch of the way to get across the terrific draft
of the main current, he was swept downward at a tremendous speed. But
he had carried out his plan. He gained the shallow side channel,
splashed down it, and darted up the sand spit with a menacing growl at
the bear across the sluice.
At the sound of that harsh growl close to his ears the little one woke
up and raised his head. Seeing Jim, big and black and dripping, he
thought it was the bear. With a piercing scream he once more hid his
face in his hands, rigid with horror. Puzzled at this reception, Jim
fell to licking his hands and his ears extravagantly, and whining and
thrusting a coaxing wet nose under his arms.
At last the little fellow began to realize that these were not the
actions of a foe. Timidly he lowered his hands from his face, and
looked around. Why, there was the bear, on the other side of the
water, tremendous and terrible, but just where he had been this ever so
long. This creature that was making such a fuss over him was plainly a
dog--a kind, good dog, who was fond of little boys.
With a sigh of inexpressible relief his terror slipped from him. He
flung his arms about Jim's shaggy neck and buried his face in the wet
fur. And Jim, his heart swelling with pride, stood up and barked
furiously across at the bear.
[Illustration: "He flung his arms about Jim's shaggy neck and buried
his face in the wet fur."]
Tug Blackstock, standing in the stern of his canoe, plied his pole with
renewed effort. Reaching the spit he strode forward, snatched the
child up in his arms, and passed his great hand tenderly through that
wonderful shock of whitey-gold silken curls. His eyes were moist, but
his voice was hearty and gay, as if this meeting were the most ordinary
thing in the world.
"Hullo, Woolly Billy!" he cried. "What are you doin' here?"
"Daddy left me here," answered the child, his lip beginning to quiver.
"Where's he gone to?"
"Oh," replied Tug Blackstock hurriedly, "yer dad was called away rather
sudden, an' he sent me an' Jim, here, to look after you till he gits
back. An' we'll do it, too, Woolly Billy; don't you fret."
"My name's George Harold Manners Watson," explained the child politely.
"But we'll just call you Woolly Billy for short," said Tug Blackstock.
II. The Book Agent and the Buckskin Belt
I
A big-framed, jaunty man with black side-whiskers, a long black frock
coat, and a square, flat case of shiny black leather strapped upon his
back, stepped into the Corner Store at Brine's Rip Mills.
He said: "Hullo, boys! Hot day!" in a big voice that was intentionally
hearty, ran his bulging eyes appraisingly over every one present, then
took off his wide-brimmed felt hat and mopped his glistening forehead
with a big red and white handkerchief. Receiving a more or less
hospitable chorus of grunts and "hullos" in response, he seated himself
on a keg of nails, removed the leather case from his back, and asked
for ginger beer, which he drank noisily from the bottle.
"Name of Byles," said he at length, introducing himself with a sweeping
nod. "Hot tramp in from Cribb's Ridge. Thirsty, you bet. Never drink
nothing stronger'n ginger pop or soft cider. Have a round o' pop on
me, boys. A1 pop this o' yours, mister. A dozen more bottles, please,
for these gentlemen."
He looked around the circle with an air at once assured and persuasive.
And the taciturn woodsmen, not wholly at ease under such sudden
cordiality from a stranger, but too polite to rebuff him, muttered
"Thank ye, kindly," or "Here's how," as they threw back their heads and
poured the weak stuff down their gaunt and hairy throats.
It was a slack time at Brine's Rip, the mills having shut down that
morning because the river was so low that there were no more logs
running. The shrieking saws being silent for a little, there was
nothing for the mill hands to do but loaf and smoke. The hot air was
heavily scented with the smell of fresh sawdust mixed with the strong
honey-perfume of the flowering buckwheat fields beyond the village.
The buzzing of flies in the windows of the store was like a fine
arabesque of sound against the ceaseless, muffled thunder of the rapids.
The dozen men gathered here at Zeb Smith's store--which was, in effect,
the village club--found it hard to rouse themselves to a conversational
effort in any way worthy the advances of the confident stranger. They
all smoked a little harder than usual, and looked on with courteous but
noncommittal interest while he proceeded to unstrap his shiny black
leather case.
In his stiff and sombre garb, so unsuited to the backwoods trails, the
stranger had much the look of one of those itinerant preachers who
sometimes busy themselves with the cure of souls in the remoter
backwoods settlements. But his eye and his address were rather those
of a shrewd and pushing commercial traveller.
Tug Blackstock, the Deputy Sheriff of Nipsiwaska County, felt a vague
antagonism toward him, chiefly on the ground that his speech and
bearing did not seem to consort with his habiliments. He rather liked
a man to look what he was or be what he looked, and he did not like
black side whiskers and long hair. This antagonism, however, he felt
to be unreasonable. The man had evidently had a long and tiring tramp,
and was entitled to a somewhat friendlier reception than he was getting.
Swinging his long legs against the counter, on which he sat between a
pile of printed calicoes and a box of bright pink fancy soap, Tug
Blackstock reached behind him and possessed himself of a box of long,
black cigars. Having selected one critically for himself, he proffered
the box to the stranger.
"Have a weed?" said he cordially. "They ain't half bad."
But the stranger waved the box aside with an air at once grand and
gracious.
"I never touch the weed, thank you kindly just the same," said he.
"But I've nothing agin it. It goes agin my system, that's all. If
it's all the same to you, I'll take a bite o' cheese an' a cracker
'stead o' the cigar."
"Sartain," agreed Blackstock, jumping down to fetch the edibles from
behind the counter. Like most of the regular customers, he knew the
store and its contents almost as well as Zeb Smith himself.
During the last few minutes an immense, rough-haired black dog had been
sniffing the stranger over with suspicious minuteness. The stranger at
first paid no attention whatever, though it was an ordeal that many
might have shrunk from. At last, seeming to notice the animal for the
first time, he recognized his presence by indifferently laying his hand
upon his neck. Instead of instantly drawing off with a resentful
growl, after his manner with strangers, the dog acknowledged the casual
caress by a slight wag of the tail, and then, after a few moments,
turned away amicably and lay down.
"If Jim finds him all right," thought Blackstock to himself, "ther'
can't be much wrong with him, though I can't say I take to him myself."
And he weighed off a much bigger piece of cheese than he had at first
intended to offer, marking down his indebtedness on a slate which
served the proprietor as a sort of day-book. The stranger fell to
devouring it with an eagerness which showed that his lunch must have
been of the lightest.
"Ye was sayin' as how ye'd jest come up from Cribb's Ridge?" put in a
long-legged, heavy-shouldered man who was sprawling on a cracker box
behind the door. He had short sandy hair, rapidly thinning, eyes of a
cold grey, set rather close together, and a face that suggested a cross
between a fox and a fish-hawk. He was somewhat conspicuous among his
fellows by the trimness of his dress, his shirt being of dark blue
flannel with a rolled-up collar and a scarlet knotted kerchief, while
the rest of the mill hands wore collarless shirts of grey homespun,
with no thought of neckerchiefs.
His trousers were of brown corduroy, and were held up by a broad belt
of white dressed buckskin, elaborately decorated with Navajo designs in
black and red. He stuck to this adornment tenaciously as a sort of
inoffensive proclamation of the fact that he was not an ordinary
backwoods mill hand, but a wanderer, one who had travelled far, and
tried his wits at many ventures in the wilder West.
"Right you are," assented the stranger, brushing some white cracker
crumbs out of his black whiskers.
"I was jest a-wonderin'," went on Hawker, giving a hitch to the
elaborate belt and leaning forward a little to spit out through the
doorway, "if ye've seed anything o' Jake Sanderson on the road."
The stranger, having his mouth full of cheese, did not answer for a
moment.
"The boys are lookin' for him rather anxious," explained Blackstock
with a grin. "He brings the leetle fat roll that pays their wages here
at the mill, an' he's due some time to day."
"I seen him at Cribb's Ridge this morning," answered the stranger at
last. "Said he'd hurt his foot, or strained his knee, or something,
an' would have to come on a bit slow. He'll be along some time
to-night, I guess. Didn't seem to me to have much wrong with him. No,
ye can't have none o' that cheese. Go 'way an' lay down," he added
suddenly to the great black dog, who had returned to his side and laid
his head on the stranger's knee.
With a disappointed air the dog obeyed.
"'Tain't often Jim's so civil to a stranger," muttered Blackstock to
himself.
A little boy in a scarlet jacket, with round eyes of china blue, and an
immense mop of curly, fluffy, silky hair so palely flaxen as to be
almost white, came hopping and skipping into the store. He was greeted
with friendly grins, while several voices drawled, "Hullo, Woolly
Billy!" He beamed cheerfully upon the whole company, with a special
gleam of intimate confidence for Tug Blackstock and the big black dog.
Then he stepped up to the stranger's knee, and stood staring with
respectful admiration at those flowing jet-black side-whiskers.
The stranger in return looked with a cold curiosity at the child's
singular hair. Neither children nor dogs had any particular appeal for
him, but that hair was certainly queer.
"Most an albino, ain't he?" he suggested.
"No, he ain't," replied Tug Blackstock curtly. The dog, detecting a
note of resentment in his master's voice, got up and stood beside the
child, and gazed about the circle with an air of anxious interrogation.
Had any one been disagreeable to Woolly Billy? And if so, who?
But the little one was not in the least rebuffed by the stranger's
unresponsiveness.
"What's that?" he inquired, patting admiringly the stranger's shiny
leather case.
The stranger grew cordial to him at once.
"Ah, now ye're talkin'," said he enthusiastically, undoing the flap of
the case. "It's a book, sonny. The greatest book, the most
_interestin'_ book, the most useful book--and next to the Bible the
most high-toned, uplifting book that was ever written. Ye can't read
yet, sonny, but this book has the loveliest pictures ye ever seen, and
the greatest lot of 'em for the money."
He drew reverently forth from the case a large, fat volume, bound
sumptuously in embossed sky-blue imitation leather, lavishly gilt, and
opened it upon his knees with a spacious gesture.
"There," he continued proudly. "It's called 'Mother, Home, and
Heaven!' Ain't that a title for ye? Don't it show ye right off the
kind of book it is? With this book by ye, ye don't need any other book
in the house at all, except maybe the almanack an' the Bible--an' this
book has lots o' the best bits out of the Bible in it, scattered
through among the receipts an' things to keep it all wholesome an'
upliftin'.
"It'll tell ye such useful things as how to get a cork out of a bottle
without breakin' the bottle, when he haven't got a corkscrew, or what
to do when the baby's got croup, and there ain't a doctor this side of
Tourdulac. An' it'll tell ye how to live, so as when things happen
that no medicines an' no doctors and no receipts--not even such great
receipts as these here ones" (and he slapped his hand on the counter)
"can help ye through--such as when a tree falls on to ye, or you trip
and stumble on to the saws, or git drawn down under half-a-mile o'
raft--then ye'll be ready to go right up aloft, an' no questions asked
ye at the Great White Gate.
"An' it has po'try in it, too, reel heart po'try, such as'll take ye
back to the time when ye was all white an' innocent o' sin at yer
mother's knee, an' make ye wish ye was like that now. In fact, boys,
this book I'm goin' to show ye, with your kind permission, is handier
than a pocket in a shirt, an' at the same time the blessed fragrance of
it is like a rose o' Sharon in the household. It's in three styles o'
bindin', all _reel_ handsome, but----"
"I want to look at another picture now," protested Woolly Billy. "I'm
tired of this one of the angels sayin' their prayers."
His amazing shock of silver-gold curls was bent intently over the book
in the stranger's lap. The woodsmen, on the other hand, kept on
smoking with a far-off look, as if they heard not a word of the fluent
harangue. They had a deep distrust and dread of this black-whiskered
stranger, now that he stood revealed as the
Man-Wanting-to-Sell-Something. The majority of them would not even
glance in the direction of the gaudy book, lest by doing so they should
find themselves involved in some expensive and complicated obligation.
The stranger responded to Woolly Billy's appeal by shutting the book
firmly. "There's lots more pictures purtier than that one, sonny,"
said he. "But ye must ask yer dad to buy it fer ye. He won't regret
it." And he passed the volume on to Hawker, who, having no dread of
book-agents, began to turn over the leaves with a superior smile.
"Dad's gone away ever so far," answered Woolly Billy sadly. "It's an
awfully pretty book." And he looked at Tug Blackstock appealingly.
"Look here, mister," drawled Blackstock, "I don't take much stock
myself in those kind of books, an' moreover (not meanin' no offence to
you), any man that's sellin' 'em has got to larn to do a sight o'
lyin'. But as Woolly Billy here wants it so bad I'll take a copy, if
'tain't too dear. All the same, it's only fair to warn ye that ye'll
not do much business in Brine's Rip, for there was a book agent here
last year as got about ha'f the folks in the village to sign a crooked
contract, and we was all stung bad. I'd advise ye to move on, an' not
really tackle Brine's Rip fer another year or so. Now, what's the
price?"
The stranger's face had fallen during this speech, but it brightened at
the concluding question.
"Six dollars, four dollars, an' two dollars an' a half, accordin' to
style of bindin'," he answered, bringing out a handful of leaflets and
order forms and passing them round briskly. "An' ye don't need to pay
more'n fifty cents down, an' sign this order, an' ye pay the balance in
a month's time, when the books are delivered. I'll give ye my receipt
for the fifty cents, an' ye jest fill in this order accordin' to the
bindin' ye choose. Let me advise ye, as a friend, to take the six
dollar one. It's the best value."
"Thanks jest the same," said Blackstock drily, pulling out his wallet,
"but I guess Woolly Billy'd jest as soon have the two-fifty one. An'
I'll pay ye the cash right now. No signin' orders fer me. Here's my
name an' address."
"Right ye are," agreed the stranger cordially, pocketing the money and
signing the receipt. "Cash payments for me every time, if I could have
my way. Now, if some o' you other gentlemen will follow Mr.
Blackstock's fine example, ye'll never regret it--an' neither will I."
"Come on, Woolly Billy. Come on, Jim," said Blackstock, stepping out
into the street with the child and the dog at his heels. "We'll be
gittin' along home, an' leave this gentleman to argy with the boys."
II
Jake Sanderson, with the pay for the mill-hands, did not arrive that
night, nor yet the following morning. Along toward noon, however,
there arrived a breathless stripling, white-faced and wild-eyed, with
news of him. The boy was young Stephens, son of Andy Stephens, the
game-warden. He and his father, coming up from Cribb's Ridge, had
found the body of Sanderson lying half in a pool beside the road,
covered with blood. Near at hand lay the bag, empty, slashed open with
a bloody knife. Stephens had sent his boy on into the Settlement for
help, while he himself had remained by the body, guarding it lest some
possible clue should be interfered with.
Swift as a grass fire, the shocking news spread through the village.
An excited crowd gathered in front of the store, every one talking at
once, trying to question young Stephens. The Sheriff was away, down at
Fredericton for a holiday from his arduous duties. But nobody lamented
his absence. It was his deputy they all turned to in such an emergency.
"Where's Tug Blackstock?" demanded half a dozen awed voices. And, as
if in answer, the tall, lean figure of the Deputy Sheriff of Nipsiwaska
County came striding in haste up the sawdusty road, with the big, black
dog crowding eagerly upon his heels.
The clamour of the crowd was hushed as Blackstock put a few questions,
terse and pertinent, to the excited boy. The people of Nipsiwaska
County in general had the profoundest confidence in their Deputy
Sheriff. They believed that his shrewd brain and keen eye could find a
clue to the most baffling of mysteries. Just now, however, his face
was like a mask of marble, and his eyes, sunk back into his head, were
like points of steel. The murdered man had been one of his best
friends, a comrade and helper in many a hard enterprise.
"Come," said he to the lad, "we'll go an' see." And he started off
down the road at that long loose stride of his, which was swifter than
a trot and much less tiring.
"Hold on a minute, Tug," drawled a rasping nasal voice.
"What is it, Hawker?" demanded Blackstock, turning impatiently on his
heel.
"Ye hain't asked no thin' yet about the Book Agent, Mister Byles, him
as sold ye 'Mother, Home, an' Heaven.' Mebbe he could give us some
information. He said as how he'd had some talk with poor old Jake."
Blackstock's lips curled slightly. He had not read the voluble
stranger as a likely highwayman in any circumstances, still less as one
to try issues with a man like Jake Sanderson. But the crowd, eager to
give tongue on any kind of a scent, and instinctively hostile to a book
agent, seized greedily upon the suggestion.
"Where is he?" "Send for him." "Did anybody see him this mornin'?"
"Rout him out!" "Fetch him along!" The babel of voices started afresh.
"He's cleared out," cried a woman's shrill voice. It was the voice of
Mrs. Stukeley, who kept the boarding-house. Every one else was silent
to hear what she had to say.
"He quit my place jest about daylight this morning," continued the
woman virulently. She had not liked the stranger's black whiskers, nor
his ministerial garb, nor his efforts to get a subscription out of her,
and she was therefore ready to believe him guilty without further
proof. "He seemed in a powerful hurry to git away, sayin' as how the
Archangel Gabriel himself couldn't do business in this town."
Seeing the effect her words produced, and that even the usually
imperturbable and disdainful Deputy Sheriff was impressed by them, she
could not refrain from embroidering her statement a little.
"Now ez I come to think of it," she went on, "I did notice as how he
seemed kind of excited an' nervous like, so's he could hardly stop to
finish his breakfus'. But he took time to make me knock half-a-dollar
off his bill."
"Mac," said Blackstock sharply, turning to Red Angus MacDonald, the
village constable, "you take two of the boys an' go after the Book
Agent. Find him, an' fetch him back. But no funny business with him,
mind you. We hain't got a spark of evidence agin him. We jest want
him as a witness, mind."
The crowd's excitement was somewhat damped by this pronouncement, and
Hawker's exasperating voice was heard to drawl:
"No _evidence_, hey? Ef that ain't _evidence_, him skinnin' out that
way afore sun-up, I'd like to know what is!"
But to this and similar comments Tug Blackstock paid no heed whatever.
He hurried on down the road toward the scene of the tragedy, his lean
jaws working grimly upon a huge chew of tobacco, the big, black dog not
now at his heels but trotting a little way ahead and casting from one
side of the road to the other, nose to earth. The crowd came on
behind, but Blackstock waved them back.
"I don't want none o' ye to come within fifty paces of me, afore I tell
ye to," he announced with decision. "Keep well back, all of ye, or
ye'll mess up the tracks."
But this proved a decree too hard to be enforced for any length of time.
When he arrived at the place where the game-warden kept watch beside
the murdered man, Blackstock stood for a few moments in silence,
looking down upon the body of his friend with stony face and brooding
eyes. In spite of his grief, his practised observation took in the
whole scene to the minutest detail, and photographed it upon his memory
for reference.
The body lay with face and shoulder and one leg and arm in a deep,
stagnant pool by the roadside. The head was covered with black,
clotted blood from a knife-wound in the neck. Close by, in the middle
of the road, lay a stout leather satchel, gaping open, and quite empty.
Two small memorandum books, one shut and the other with white leaves
fluttering, lay near the bag. Though the roadway at this point was dry
and hard, it bore some signs of a struggle, and toward the edge of the
water there were several little, dark, caked lumps of puddled dust.
Blackstock first examined the road minutely, all about the body, but
the examination, even to such a practised eye as his, yielded little
result. The ground was too hard and dusty to receive any legible
trail, and, moreover, it had been carelessly over-trodden by the
game-warden and his son. But whether he found anything of interest or
not, Blackstock's grim, impassive face gave no sign.
At length he went over to the body, and lifted it gently. The coat and
shirt were soaked with blood, and showed marks of a fierce struggle.
Blackstock opened the shirt, and found the fatal wound, a knife-thrust
which had been driven upwards between the ribs. He laid the body down
again, and at the same time picked up a piece of paper, crumpled and
blood-stained, which had lain beneath it. He spread it open, and for a
moment his brows contracted as if in surprise and doubt. It was one of
the order forms for "Mother, Home and Heaven."
He folded it up and put it carefully between the leaves of the
note-book which he always carried in his pocket.
Stephens, who was close beside him, had caught a glimpse of the paper,
and recognized it.
"Say!" he exclaimed, under his breath. "I never thought o' _him_!"
But Blackstock only shook his head slowly, and called the big black
dog, which had been waiting all this time in an attitude of keen
expectancy, with mouth open and tail gently wagging.
"Take a good look at him, Jim," said Blackstock.
The dog sniffed the body all over, and then looked up at his master as
if for further directions.
"An' now take a sniff at this." And he pointed to the rifled bag.
"What do you make of it?" he inquired when the dog had smelt it all
over minutely.
Jim stood motionless, with ears and tail drooping, the picture of
irresolution and bewilderment.
Blackstock took out again the paper which he had just put away, and
offered it to the clog, who nosed it carefully, then looked at the dead
body beside the pool, and growled softly.
"Seek him, Jim," said Blackstock.
At once the dog ran up again to the body, and back to the open book.
Then he fell to circling about the bag, nose to earth, seeking to pick
up the elusive trail.
At this point the crowd from the village, unable longer to restrain
their eagerness, surged forward, led by Hawker, and closed in,
effectually obliterating all trails. Jim growled angrily, showing his
long white teeth, and drew back beside the body as if to guard it.
Blackstock stood watching his action with a brooding scrutiny.
"What's that bit o' paper ye found under him, Tug?" demanded Hawker
vehemently.
"None o' yer business, Sam," replied the deputy, putting the
blood-stained paper back into his pocket.
"I seen what it was," shouted Hawker to the rest of the crowd. "It was
one o' them there dokyments that the book agent had, up to the store.
I always _said_ as how 'twas him."
"We'll ketch him!" "We'll string him up!" yelled the crowd, starting
back along the road at a run.
"Don't be sech fools!" shouted Blackstock. "Hold on! Come back I tell
ye!"
But he might as well have shouted to a flock of wild geese on their
clamorous voyage through the sky. Fired by Sam Hawker's exhortations,
they were ready to lynch the black-whiskered stranger on sight.
Blackstock cursed them in a cold fury.
"I'll hev to go after them, Andy," said he, "or there'll be trouble
when they find that there book agent."
"Better give 'em their head, Tug," protested the warden. "Guess he
done it all right. He'll git no more'n's good for him."
"_Maybe_ he did it, an' then agin, maybe he didn't," retorted the
Deputy, "an' anyways, they're jest plumb looney now. You stay here,
an' I'll follow them up. Send Bob back to the Ridge to fetch the
coroner."
He turned and started on the run in pursuit of the shouting crowd,
whistling at the same time for the dog to follow him. But to his
surprise Jim did not obey instantly. He was very busy digging under a
big whitish stone at the other side of the pool. Blackstock halted.
"Jim," he commanded angrily, "git out o' that! What d'ye mean by
foolin' about after woodchucks a time like this? Come here!"
Jim lifted his head, his muzzle and paws loaded with fresh earth, and
gazed at his master for a moment. Then, with evident reluctance, he
obeyed. But he kept looking back over his shoulder at the big white
stone, as if he hated to leave it.
"There's a lot o' ordinary pup left in that there dawg yet," explained
Blackstock apologetically to the game-warden.
"There ain't a dawg ever lived that wouldn't want to dig out a
woodchuck," answered Stephens.
III
The black-whiskered stranger had been overtaken by his pursuers about
ten miles beyond Brine's Rip, sleeping away the heat of the day under a
spreading birch tree a few paces off the road. He was sleeping
soundly--too soundly indeed, as thought the experienced constable, for
a man with murder on his soul.
But when he was roughly aroused and seized, he seemed so terrified that
his captors were all the more convinced of his guilt. He made no
resistance as he was being hurried along the road, only clinging firmly
to his black leather case, and glancing with wild eyes from side to
side as if nerving himself to a desperate dash for liberty.
When he had gathered, however, a notion of what he was wanted for, to
the astonishment of his captors, his terror seemed to subside--a fact
which the constable noted narrowly. He steadied his voice enough to
ask several questions about the murder--questions to which reply was
curtly refused. Then he walked on in a stolid silence, the ruddy
colour gradually returning to his face.
A couple of miles before reaching Brine's Rip, the second search party
came in sight, the Deputy Sheriff at the head of it and the shaggy
black form of Jim close at his heels. With a savage curse Hawker
sprang forward, and about half the party with him, as if to snatch the
prisoner from his captors and take instant vengeance upon him.
But Blackstock was too quick for them. The swiftest sprinter in the
county, he got to the other party ahead of the mob and whipped around
to face them, with one hand on the big revolver at his hip and Jim
showing his teeth beside him. The constable and his party, hugely
astonished, but confident that Blackstock's side was the right one to
be on, closed protectingly around the prisoner, whose eyes now almost
bulged from his head.
"You keep right back, boys," commanded the Deputy in a voice of steel.
"The law will look after this here prisoner, if he's the guilty one."
[Illustration: "'You keep right back, boys,' commanded the Deputy in a
voice of steel."]
"Fur as we kin see, there ain't no 'if' about it," shouted Hawker,
almost frothing at the mouth. "That's the man as done it, an' we're
agoin' to string 'im up fer it right now, for fear he might git off
some way atween the jedges an' the lawyers. You keep out of it now,
Tug."
About half the crowd surged forward with Hawker in front. Up came
Blackstock's gun.
"Ye know me, boys," said he. "Keep back."
They kept back. They all fell back, indeed, some paces, except Hawker,
who held his ground, half crouching, his lips distorted in a snarl of
rage.
"Aw now, quit it, Sam," urged one of his followers. "'Tain't worth it.
An' Tug's right, anyways. The law's good enough, with Tug to the back
of it." And putting forth a long arm he dragged Hawker back into the
crowd.
"Put away yer gun, Tug," expostulated another. "Seein's ye feel that
way about it, we won't interfere."
Blackstock stuck the revolver back into his belt with a grin.
"Glad ye've come back to yer senses, boys," said he, perceiving that
the crisis was over. "But keep an eye on Hawker for a bit yet. Seems
to 'ave gone clean off his head."
"Don't fret, Tug. We'll look after him," agreed several of his
comrades from the mill, laying firmly persuasive hands upon the excited
man, who cursed them for cowards till they began to chaff him roughly.
"What's makin' you so sore, Sam?" demanded one. "Did the book agent
try to make up to Sis Hopkins?"
"No, it's Tug that Sis is making eyes at now," suggested another.
"That's what's puttin' Sam so off his nut."
"Leave the lady's name out of it, boys," interrupted Blackstock, in a
tone that carried conviction.
"Quit that jaw now, Sam," interposed another, changing the subject,
"an' tell us what ye've done with that fancy belt o' yourn 'at ye're so
proud of. We hain't never seen ye without it afore."
"That's so," chimed in the constable. "That accounts for his
foolishness. Sam ain't himself without that fancy belt."
Hawker stopped his cursing and pulled himself together with an effort,
as if only now realizing that his followers had gone over completely to
the side of the law and Tug Blackstock.
"Busted the buckle," he explained quickly. "Mend it when I git time."
"Now, boys," said Blackstock presently, "we'll git right back along to
where poor Jake's still layin', and there we'll ask this here stranger
what he knows about it. It's there, if anywheres, where we're most
likely to git some light on the subject. I've sent over to the Ridge
fer the coroner, an' poor Jake can't be moved till he comes."
The book agent, his confidence apparently restored by the attitude of
Blackstock, now let loose a torrent of eloquence to explain how glad he
would be to tell all he knew, and how sorry he was that he knew
nothing, having merely had a brief conversation with poor Mr. Sanderson
on the morning of the previous day.
"Ye'll hev lots o' time to tell us all that when we're askin' ye,"
answered Blackstock. "Now, take my advice an' keep yer mouth shet."
As Blackstock was speaking, Jim slipped in alongside the prisoner and
rubbed against him with a friendly wag of the tail as if to say:
"Sorry to see you in such a hole, old chap."
Some of the men laughed, and one who was more or less a friend of
Hawker's, remarked sarcastically:
"Jim don't seem quite so discriminatin' as usual, Tug."
"Oh, I don't know," replied the Deputy drily, noting the dog's attitude
with evident interest. "Time will show. Ye must remember a man ain't
_necessarily_ a murderer jest because he wears black side-lights an'
tries to sell ye a book that ain't no good."
"No good!" burst out the prisoner, reddening with indignation. "You
show me another book that's half as good, at double the price, an' I'll
give you----"
"Shet up, you!" ordered the Deputy, with a curious look. "This ain't
no picnic ye're on, remember."
Then some one, as if for the first time, thought of the money for which
Sanderson had been murdered.
"Why don't ye search him, Tug?" he demanded. "Let's hev a look in that
there black knapsack."
"Ye bloomin' fool," shouted Hawker, again growing excited, "ye don't
s'pose he'd be carryin' it on him, do ye? He'd hev it buried
somewheres in the woods, where he could git it later."
"Right ye are, Sam," agreed the Deputy. "The man as done the deed
ain't likely to carry the evidence around on him. But all the same,
we'll search the prisoner bime-by."
By the time the strange procession had got back to the scene of the
tragedy it had been swelled by half the population of the village. At
Blackstock's request, Zeb Smith, the proprietor of the store, who was
also a magistrate, swore in a score of special constables to keep back
the crowd while awaiting the arrival of the coroner. Under the
magistrate's orders--which satisfied Blackstock's demand for strict
formality of procedure--the prisoner was searched, and could not
refrain from showing a childish triumph when nothing was found upon him.
Passing from abject terror to a ridiculous over-confidence, he with
difficulty restrained himself from seizing the opportunity to harangue
the crowd on the merits of "Mother, Home, and Heaven." His face was
wreathed in fatuous smiles as he saw the precious book snatched from
its case and passed around mockingly from hand to hand. He certainly
did not look like a murderer, and several of the crowd, including
Stephens, the game-warden, began to wonder if they had not been barking
up the wrong tree.
"I've got the idee," remarked Stephens, "it'd take a baker's dozen o'
that chap to do in Jake Sanderson that way. The skate as killed Jake
was some man, anyways."
"I'd like to know," sneered Hawker, "how ye're going to account for
that piece o' paper, the book-agent's paper, 'at Tug Blackstock found
there under the body."
"Aw, shucks!" answered the game-warden, "that's easy. He's been
a-sowin' 'em round the country so's anybody could git hold of 'em,
same's you er me, Sam!"
This harmless, if ill-timed pleasantry appeared to Hawker, in his
excitement, a wanton insult. His lean face went black as thunder, and
his lips worked with some savage retort that would not out. But at
that instant came a strange diversion. The dog Jim, who under
Blackstock's direction had been sniffing long and minutely at the
clothes of the murdered man, at the rifled leather bag, and at the
ground all about, came suddenly up to Hawker and stood staring at him
with a deep, menacing growl, while the thick hair rose stiffly along
his back.
For a moment there was dead silence save for that strange accusing
growl. Hawker's face went white to the lips. Then, in a blaze, of
fury he yelled!
"Git out o' that! I'll teach ye to come showin' yer teeth at me!" And
he launched a savage kick at the animal.
"JIM!! Come here!" rapped out the command of Tug Blackstock, sharp as
a rifle shot. And Jim, who had eluded the kick, trotted back, still
growling, to his master.
"Whatever ye been doin' to Jim, Sam?" demanded one of the mill hands.
"I ain't never seen him act like that afore."
"He's _always_ had a grudge agin me," panted Hawker, "coz I had to give
him a lickin' once."
"Now ye're lyin', Sam Hawker," said Blackstock quietly. "Ye know right
well as how you an' Jim were good friends only yesterday at the store,
where I saw ye feedin' him. An' I don't think likely ye've ever given
Jim a lickin'. It don't sound probable."
"Seems to me there's a lot of us has gone a bit off their nut over this
thing, an' not much wonder, neither," commented the game-warden.
"Looks like Sam Hawker has gone plumb crazy. An' now there's Jim, the
sensiblest dog in the world, with lots more brains than most men-kind,
foolin' away his time like a year-old pup a-tryin' dig out a darn old
woodchuck hole."
Such, in fact, seemed to be Jim's object. He was digging furiously
with both forepaws beneath the big white stone on the opposite side of
the pool.
"He's bit me. I'll kill him," screamed Hawker, his face distorted and
foam at the corners of his lips. He plucked his hunting-knife from its
sheath, and leapt forward wildly, with the evident intention of darting
around the pool and knifing the dog.
But Blackstock, who had been watching him intently, was too quick for
him.
"No, ye don't, Sam!" he snapped, catching him by the wrist with such a
wrench that the bright blade fell to the ground. With a scream, Hawker
struck at his face, but Blackstock parried the blow, tripped him
neatly, and fell on him.
"Hold him fast, boys," he ordered. "Seems like he's gone mad. Don't
let him hurt himself."
In five seconds the raving man was trussed up helpless as a chicken,
his hands tied behind his back, his legs lashed together at the knees,
so that he could neither run nor kick. Then he was lifted to his feet,
and held thus, inexorably but with commiseration.
"Sorry to be rough with ye, Sam," said one of the constables, "but
ye've gone crazy as a bed-bug."
"Never knowed Sam was such a friend o' Jake's!" muttered another, with
deepest pity.
But Blackstock stood close beside the body of the murdered man, and
watched with a face of granite the efforts of Jim to dig under the big
white stone. His absorption in such an apparently frivolous matter
attracted the notice of the crowd. A hush fell upon them all, broken
only by the hoarse, half-smothered ravings of Sam Hawker.
"'Tain't no woodchuck Jim's diggin' for, you see!" muttered one of the
constables to the puzzled Stephens.
"Tug don't seem to think so, neither," agreed Stephens.
"Angus," said Blackstock in a low, strained voice to the constable who
had just spoken, "would ye mind stepping round an' givin' Jim a lift
with that there stone!"
The constable hastened to obey. As he approached, Jim looked up, his
face covered thickly with earth, wagged his tail in greeting, then fell
to work again with redoubled energy.
The constable set both hands under the stone, and with a huge heave
turned it over. With a yelp of delight Jim plunged his head into the
hole, grabbed something in his mouth, and tore around the pool with it.
The something was long and whitish, and trailed as he ran. He laid it
at Blackstock's feet.
Blackstock held it up so that all might see it. It was a painted
Indian belt, and it was stained and smeared with blood. The constable
picked out of the hole a package of bills.
For some moments no one spoke, and even the ravings of Hawker were
stilled.
Then Tug Blackstock spoke, while every one, as if with one consent,
turned his eyes away from the face of Sam Hawker, unwilling to see a
comrade's shame and horror.
"This is a matter now for jedge and jury, boys," said he in a voice
that was grave and stern. "But I think you'll all agree that we hain't
no call to detain this gentleman, who's been put to so much
inconvenience all on account of our little mistake."
"Don't mention it, don't mention it," protested the book agent, as his
guards, with profuse apologies, released him. "That's a mighty
intelligent dawg o' yours, Mr. Blackstock."
"He's sure done _you_ a good turn this day, mister," replied the Deputy
grimly.
III. The Hole in the Tree
I
It was Woolly Billy who discovered the pile--notes and silver, with a
few stray gold pieces--so snugly hidden under the fishhawk's nest.
The fish-hawk's nest was in the crotch of the old, half-dead rock-maple
on the shore of the desolate little lake which lay basking in the
flat-lands about a mile back, behind Brine's Rip Mills.
As the fish-hawk is one of the most estimable of all the wilderness
folk, both brave and inoffensive, troubling no one except the fat and
lazy fish that swarmed in the lake below, and as he is protected by a
superstition of the backwoodsmen, who say it brings ill-luck to disturb
the domestic arrangements of a fish-hawk, the big nest, conspicuous for
miles about, was never disturbed by even the most amiable curiosity.
But Woolly Billy, not fully acclimatized to the backwoods tradition and
superstition, and uninformed as to the firmness and decision with which
the fish-hawks are apt to resent any intrusion, had long hankered to
explore the mysteries of that great nest. One morning he made up his
mind to try it.
Tug Blackstock, Deputy-Sheriff of Nipsiwaska County, was away for a day
or two, and old Mrs. Amos, his housekeeper, was too deaf and rheumatic
to "fuss herself" greatly about the "goings-on" of so fantastic a child
as Woolly Billy, so long as she knew he had Jim to look after him.
This serves to explain how a small boy like Woolly Billy, his
seven-years-and-nine-months resting lightly on his amazingly fluffy
shock of pale flaxen curls, could be trotting off down the lonely
backwoods trail with no companion or guardian but a big, black dog.
Woolly Billy was familiar with the mossy old trail to the lake, and did
not linger upon it. Reaching the shore, he wasted no time throwing
sticks in for Jim to retrieve, but, in spite of the dog's eager
invitations to this pastime, made his way along the dry edge between
undergrowth and water till he came to the bluff. Pushing laboriously
through the hot, aromatic-scented tangle of bushes, he climbed to the
foot of the old maple, which looked dwarfed by the burden of the huge
nest carried in its crotch.
Woolly Billy was an expert tree-climber, but this great trunk presented
new problems. Twice he went round it, finding no likely spot to begin.
Then, certain roughnesses tempted him, and he succeeded in drawing
himself up several feet. Serene in the consciousness of his good
intentions, he struggled on. He gained perhaps another foot. Then he
stuck. He pulled hard upon a ragged edge of bark, trying to work his
way further around the trunk. A patch of bark came away suddenly in
his grip and he fell backwards with a startled cry.
He fell plump on Jim, rolled off into the bushes, picked himself up,
shook the hair out of his eyes and stood staring up at a round hole in
the trunk where the patch of bark had been.
A hole in a tree is always interesting. It suggests such
possibilities. Forgetting his scratches, Woolly Billy made haste to
climb up again, in spite of Jim's protests. He peered eagerly into the
hole. But he could see nothing. And he was cautious--for one could
never tell what lived in a hole like that--or what the occupant, if
there happened to be any, might have to say to an intruder. He would
not venture his hand into the unknown. He slipped down, got a bit of
stick, and thrust that into the hole. There was no result, but he
learnt that the hole was shallow. He stirred the stick about. There
came a slight jingling sound in return.
Woolly Billy withdrew the stick and thought for a moment. He reasoned
that a thing that jingled was not at all likely to bite. He dropped
the stick and cautiously inserted his hand to the full length of his
little arm. His fingers grasped something which felt more or less
familiar, and he drew forth a bank-note and several silver coins.
Woolly Billy's eyes grew very round and large as he stared at his
handful. He was sure that money did not grow in hollow trees. Tug
Blackstock kept his money in an old black wallet. Woolly Billy liked
money because it bought peppermints, and molasses candy, and gingerpop.
But this money was plainly not his. He reluctantly put it back into
the hole.
Thoughtfully he climbed down. He knew that money was such a desirable
thing that it led some people--bad people whom Tug Blackstock hated--to
steal what did not belong to them. He picked up the patch of bark and
laboriously fitted it back into its place over the hole, lest some of
these bad people should find the money and appropriate it.
"Not a word, now, not one single word," he admonished Jim, "till Tug
comes home. We'll tell him all about it."
II
It was five o'clock in the sleepy summer afternoon, and the flies
buzzed drowsily among the miscellaneous articles that graced the
windows of the Corner Store. The mills had shut down early, because
the supply of logs was running low in the boom, and no more could be
expected until there should be a rise of water. Some half-dozen of the
mill hands were sitting about the store on nail-kegs and soap-boxes,
while Zeb Smith, the proprietor, swung his long legs lazily from the
edge of the littered counter.
Woolly Billy came in with a piece of silver in his little fist to buy a
packet of tea for Mrs. Amos. Jim, not liking the smoke, stayed outside
on the plank sidewalk, and snapped at flies. The child, who was
regarded as the mascot of Brine's Rip Mills, was greeted with a fire of
solemn chaff, which he received with an impartial urbanity.
"Oh, quit coddin' the kiddie, an' don't try to be so smart," growled
Long Jackson, the Magadavy river-man, lifting his gaunt length from a
pile of axe-handles, and thrusting his fist deep into his trousers'
pocket. "Here, Zeb, give me a box of peppermints for Woolly Billy. He
hain't been in to see us this long while."
He pulled out a handful of coins and dollar bills, and proceeded to
select a silver bit from the collection. The sight was too much for
Woolly Billy, bursting with his secret.
"I know where there's lots more money like that," he blurted out
proudly, "in a hole in a tree."
During the past twelve months or more there had been thefts of money,
usually of petty sums, in Brine's Rip Mills and the neighbourhood, and
all Tug Blackstock's detective skill had failed to gain the faintest
clue to the perpetrator. Suspicions there had been, but all had
vanished into thin air at the touch of investigation. Woolly Billy's
amazing statement, therefore, was like a little bombshell in the shop.
Every one of his audience stiffened up with intense interest.
One swarthy, keen-featured, slim-waisted, half-Indian-looking fellow,
with the shapely hands and feet that mark so many of the Indian
mixed-bloods, was sitting on a bale of homespun behind Long Jackson,
and smoking solemnly with half-closed lids. His eyes opened wide for a
fraction of a second, and darted one searching glance at the child's
face. Then he dropped his lids slowly once more till the eyes were all
but closed. The others all stared eagerly at Woolly Billy.
Pleased with the interest he had excited, Woolly Billy glanced about
him, and shook back his mop of pale curls self-consciously.
"Lots more!" he repeated. "Big handfuls."
Then he remembered his discretion, his resolve to tell no one but Tug
Blackstock about his discovery. Seeking to change the subject, he
beamed upon Long Jackson.
"Thank you, Long," he said politely. "I _love_ peppermints. An' Jim
loves them, too."
"_Where_ did you say that hole in the tree was?" asked Long Jackson,
reaching for the box that held the peppermints, and ostentatiously
filling a generous paper-bag.
Woolly Billy looked apologetic and deprecating.
"Please, Long, if you don't mind very much, I can't tell anybody but
Tug Blackstock _that_."
Jackson laid the bag of peppermints a little to one side, as if to
convey that their transfer was contingent upon Woolly Billy's behaviour.
The child looked wistfully at the coveted sweets; then his red lips
compressed themselves with decision and resentment.
"I won't tell anybody but Tug Blackstock, _of course_," said he. "An'
I don't want any peppermints, thank you, Long."
He picked up his package of tea and turned to leave the shop, angry at
himself for having spoken of the secret and angry at Jackson for trying
to get ahead of Tug Blackstock. Jackson, looking annoyed at the
rebuff, extended his leg and closed the door. Woolly Billy's blue eyes
blazed. One of the other men strove to propitiate him.
"Oh, come on, Woolly Billy," he urged coaxingly, "don't git riled at
Long. You an' him's pals, ye know. We're all pals o' yourn, an' of
Tug's. An' there ain't no harm _at all_, at all, in yer showin' us
this 'ere traysure what you've lit on to. Besides, you know there's
likely some o' that there traysure belongs to us 'uns here. Come on
now, an' take us to yer hole in the tree."
"Ye ain't agoin' to git out o' this here store, Woolly Billy, I tell ye
that, till ye promise to take us to it right off," said Long Jackson
sharply.
Woolly Billy was not alarmed in the least by this threat. But he was
so furious that for a moment he could not speak. He could do nothing
but stand glaring up at Long Jackson with such fiery defiance that the
good-natured mill-hand almost relented. But it chanced that he was one
of the sufferers, and he was in a hurry to get his money back. At this
point the swarthy woodsman on the bale of homespun opened his narrow
eyes once again, took the pipe from his mouth, and spoke up.
"Quit plaguin' the kid, Long," he drawled. "The cash'll be all there
when Tug Blackstock gits back, an' it'll save a lot of trouble an'
misunderstandin', havin' him to see to dividin' it up fair an' square.
Let Woolly Billy out."
Long Jackson shook his head obstinately, and opened his mouth to reply,
but at this moment Woolly Billy found his voice.
"Let me out! Let me out! _Let me out!_" he screamed shrilly, stamping
his feet and clenching his little fists.
Instantly a heavy body was hurled upon the outside of the door,
striving to break it in.
Zeb Smith swung his long legs down from the counter hurriedly.
"The kid's right, an' Black Dan's right. Open the door, Long, an' do
it quick. I don't want that there dawg comin' through the winder. An'
he'll be doin' it, too, in half a jiff."
"Git along, then, Woolly, if ye insist on it. But no more peppermints,
mind," growled Jackson, throwing open the door and stepping back
discreetly. As he did so, Jim came in with a rush, just saving himself
from knocking Woolly Billy over. One swift glance assured him that the
child was all right, but very angry about something.
"It's all right, Jim. Come with me," said Woolly Billy, tugging at the
animal's collar. And the pair stalked away haughtily side by side.
III
Tug Blackstock arrived the next morning about eleven. Before he had
time to sit down for a cup of that strenuous black tea which the
woodsmen consume at all hours, he had heard from Woolly Billy's eager
lips the story of the hole in the tree beneath the fish-hawk's nest.
He heard also of the episode at Zeb Smith's store, but Woolly Billy by
this time had quite forgiven Long Jackson, so the incident was told in
such a way that Blackstock had no reason to take offence.
"Long tried _hard_," said the child, "to get me to tell where that hole
was, but I _wouldn't_. And Black Dan was awful nice, an' made him stop
botherin' me, an' said I was quite right not to tell _anybody_ till you
came home, coz you'd know just what to do."
"H'm!" said the Deputy-Sheriff thoughtfully, "Long's had a lot of money
stole from him, so, of course, he wanted to git his eyes on to that
hole quick. But 'tain't like Black Dan to be that thoughtful. Maybe
he _hasn't_ had none taken."
While he was speaking, a bunch of the mill-hands arrived at the door,
word of Blackstock's return having gone through the village.
"We want to go an' help ye find that traysure, Tug," said Long Jackson,
glancing somewhat sheepishly at Woolly Billy. A friendly grin from the
child reassured him, and he went on with more confidence:
"We tried to git the kiddie to tell us where 'twas, but wild steers
wouldn't drag it out o' him till you got back."
"That's right, Long," agreed Blackstock, "but it don't need to be no
expedition. We don't want the whole village traipsin' after us. You
an' three or four more o' the boys that's lost money come along, with
Woolly Billy an' me, an' the rest o' you meet us at the store in about
a couple o' hours' time. Tell any other folks you see that I don't
want 'em follerin' after us, because it may mix up things--an' anyways,
I don't want it, see!"
After a few moments' hesitation and consultation the majority of the
mill-hands turned away, leaving Long Jackson and big Andy Stevens, the
blue-eyed giant from the Oromocto (who had been one of the chief
victims), and MacDonald, and Black Saunders, and Black Dan (whose name
had been Dan Black till the whim of the woodsmen turned it about).
Blackstock eyed them appraisingly.
"I didn't know as _you'd_ bin one o' the victims too, Dan," he remarked.
"Didn't ye, Tug?" returned Black with a short laugh. "Well, I didn't
say nawthin about it, coz I was after doin' a leetle detective work on
me own, an' mebbe I'd 'ave got in ahead o' ye if Woolly Billy here
hadn't 'a' been so smart. But I tell ye, Tug, if that there traysure's
the lot we're thinkin' it is, there'd ought ter be a five-dollar bill
in it what I've marked."
"H'm!" grunted the Deputy, hastily gulping down the last of his tea,
and rising to his feet. "But Woolly Billy an' me and Jim's a
combination pretty hard to git ahead of, I'm thinkin'."
As the party neared the bluff whereon the tree of the fish-hawk's nest
stood ragged against the sky, the air grew rank with the pungent odour
of skunk. Now skunks were too common in the region of Brine's Rip
Mills for that smell, as a rule, to excite any more comment than an
occasional disgusted execration when it became too concentrated. But
to-day it drew more than passing attention. MacDonald sniffed intently.
"It's deuced queer," said he, "but I've noticed that there's always
been a smell of skunk round when anybody's lost anything. Did it ever
strike you that way, Tug?"
"Yes, some!" assented the Deputy curtly.
"It's a skunk, all right, that's been takin' our money," said big Andy,
"ef he _don't_ carry his tail over his back."
Every one of the party was sniffing the tainted air as if the familiar
stench were some rare perfume--all but Jim. He had had an encounter
with a skunk, once in his impulsive puppy days, and the memory was too
painful to be dwelt upon.
As they climbed the slope, one of the fish-hawks came swooping down
from somewhere high in the blue, and began circling on slow wings about
the nest.
"That cross old bird doesn't like visitors," remarked Woolly Billy.
"You wouldn't, neether, Woolly Billy, if you was a fish-hawk," said
Jackson.
Arrived at the tree, Woolly Billy pointed eagerly to a slightly broken
piece of bark a little above the height of the Deputy's head.
"_There's_ the hole!" he cried, clapping his hands in his excitement as
if relieved to find it had not vanished.
"Keep off a bit now, boys," cautioned Blackstock. Drawing his long
hunting-knife, he carefully loosened the bark without letting his hand
come in contact with it, and on the point of the blade laid it aside
against the foot of the trunk.
"Don't any of you tech it," he admonished.
Then he slipped his hand into the hole, and felt about.
A look of chagrin came over his face, and he withdrew his hand--empty.
"Nothin' there!" said he.
"It was there yesterday morning," protested Woolly Billy, his blue eyes
filling with tears.
"Yes, yes, of course," agreed Blackstock, glancing slowly around the
circle of disappointed faces.
"Somebody from the store's been blabbin'," exclaimed Black Dan, in a
loud and angry voice.
"An' why not?" protested Big Andy, with a guilty air. "We never said
nawthin' about keepin' it a secret."
In spite of their disappointment, the millhands laughed. Big Andy was
not one to keep a secret in any case, and his weakness for a certain
pretty widow who kept the postoffice was common comment. Big Andy
responded by blushing to the roots of his blonde hair.
"Jim!" commanded the Deputy. And the big black dog bounded up to him,
his eyes bright with expectation. The Deputy picked him up, and held
him aloft with his muzzle to the edges of the hole.
"Smell that," he ordered, and Jim sniffed intently. Then he set him
down, and directed him to the piece of bark. That, too, Jim's nose
investigated minutely, his feathered tail slowly wagging.
"Seek him," ordered Blackstock.
Jim whined, looked puzzled, and sniffed again at the bark. The
information which his subtle nose picked up there was extremely
confusing. First, there was the smell of skunk--but that smell of
skunk was everywhere, dulling the keenness of his discrimination.
Then, there was a faint, faint reminiscence of Woolly Billy. But there
was Woolly Billy, at Tug Blackstock's side. Certainly, there could be
no reason for him to seek Woolly Billy. Then there was an elusive,
tangled scent, which for some moments defied him. At last, however, he
got a clue to it. With a pleased bark--his way of saying "Eureka!"--he
whipped about, trotted over to big Andy Stevens, sat down in front of
him, and gazed up at him, with tongue hanging and an air of friendly
inquiry, as much as to say: "Here I am, Andy. But I don't know what
Tug Blackstock wants me to seek you for, seein' as you're right here
alongside him."
Big Andy dropped his hand on the dog's head familiarly; then noticing
the sudden tense silence of the party, his eyes grew very big and round.
"What're you all starin' at me fer, boys?" he demanded, with a sort of
uneasy wonder.
"Ax Jim," responded Black Dan, harshly.
"I reckon old Jim's makin' a mistake fer once, Tug," drawled Long
Jackson, who was Andy's special pal.
The Deputy rubbed his lean chin reflectively. There could be no one
more above suspicion in his eyes than this transparently honest young
giant from the Oromocto. But Jim's curious action had scattered to the
winds, at least for a moment, a sort of hypothesis which he had been
building up in his mind. At the same time, he felt dimly that a new
clue was being held out to him, if he could only grasp it. He wanted
time to think.
"We kin all make mistakes," he announced sententiously. "Come here,
Jim. Seek 'im, boy, seek 'im." And he waved his hand at large.
Jim bounced off with a joyous yelp, and began quartering the ground,
hither and thither, all about the tree. Big Andy, at a complete loss
for words, stood staring from one to another with eyes of indignant and
incredulous reproach.
Suddenly a yelp of triumph was heard in the bushes, a little way down
towards the lake, and Jim came racing back with a dark magenta article
in his mouth. At the foot of the tree he stopped, and looked at
Blackstock interrogatively. Receiving no sign whatever from his
master, whose face had lit up for an instant, but was now as impassive
as a hitching-post, he stared at Black Dan for a few seconds, and then
let his eyes wander back to Andy's face. In the midst of his obvious
hesitation the Oromocto man stepped forward.
"Durned ef that ain't one o' my old mittens," he exclaimed eagerly,
"what Sis knit fer me. I've been lookin' fer 'em everywheres. Bring
it here, Jim."
As the dog trotted up with it obediently, the Deputy intervened and
stopped him. "You shall have it bime-by, Andy," said he, "ef it's
yourn. But jest now I don't want nobody to tech it except Jim. Ef you
acknowledge it's yourn----"
"_Of course_ it's mine," interrupted Andy resentfully. "An' I want to
find the other one."
"So do I," said Blackstock. "Drop it, Jim. Go find the other mitt."
As Jim went ranging once more through the bushes, the whole party moved
around to the other side of the tree to get out of the downpour of the
noon sun. As they passed the magenta mitten Black Dan picked it up and
examined it ostentatiously.
"How do ye know it's yourn, Andy?" he demanded. "There's lots of
magenta mitts in the world, I reckon."
Tug Blackstock turned upon him.
"I said I didn't want no one to tech that mitt," he snapped.
"Oh, beg pardon, Tug," said Dan, dropping the mitt. "I forgot. 'Spose
it might kind o' confuse Jim's scent, gittin' another smell besides
Andy's on to it."
"It might," replied the Deputy coolly, "an' then agin, it mightn't."
For a little while every one was quiet, listening to Jim as he crashed
about through the bushes, and confidently but unreasonably expecting
him to reappear with the other mitten. Or, at least, that was what Big
Andy and Woolly Billy expected. The Deputy, at least, did not. At
last he spoke.
"I agree with Mac here, boys," said he, "that there may be somethin'
more'n skunk in this skunk smell. We'll jest look into it a bit. You
all keep back a ways--an' you, Long, jest keep an eye on Woolly Billy
ef ye don't mind, while I go on with Jim."
He whistled to the dog, and directed his attention to a spot at the
foot of the tree exactly beneath the hole. Jim sniffed hard at the
spot, then looked up at his master with tail drooping despondently.
"Yes, I know it's skunk, plain skunk," agreed the Deputy. "But I want
him. Seek him, Jim--_seek him_, boy."
Thus reassured, Jim's tail went up again. He started off through the
bushes, down towards the lake, with his master close behind him. The
rest of the party followed thirty paces or so behind.
The trail led straight down to the lake's edge. Here Jim stopped short.
"_That_ skunk's a kind o' water-baby," remarked Long Jackson.
"Oh, do you think so?" queried Woolly Billy, much interested.
"Of course," answered Jackson. "Don't you see he's took to the water?
Now, yer common, no-account skunk hates wettin' his fur like pizen."
The Deputy examined the hard, white sand at the water's edge. It
showed faint traces of moccasined feet. He pursed his lips. It was an
old game, but a good one, this breaking a trail by going into the
water. He had no way of deciding whether his quarry had turned up the
lake shore or down towards the outlet. He guessed at the latter as the
more likely alternative.
Jim trotted slowly ahead, sniffing every foot of ground along the
water's edge. As they approached the outlet the shore became muddy,
and Jackson swung Woolly Billy up on to his shoulder. Once in the
outlet, the foreshore narrowed to a tiny strip of bare rock between the
water and an almost perpendicular bank covered with shrubs and vines.
All at once the smell of skunk, which had been almost left behind,
returned upon the air with fresh pungency. Blackstock stopped short
and scanned the bank with narrowed eyes.
A second or two later, Jim yelped his signal, and his tail went up. He
sniffed eagerly across the ribbon of rock, and then leapt at the face
of the bank.
The Deputy called him off and hurried to the spot. The rest of the
party, much excited, closed up to within four or five paces, when a
wave of the Deputy's hand checked them.
"Phew!" ejaculated Black Dan, holding his nose. "There's a skunk hole
in that there bank. Ye'll be gittin' somethin' in the eye, Tug, ef ye
don't keep off."
Blackstock, who was busy pulling apart the curtain of vines, paid no
attention, but Long Jackson answered sarcastically:
"Ye call yerself a woodsman, Dan," said he, "an' ye don't know that the
hole where a skunk lives _don't_ smell any. Yer _reel_ skunk's quite a
gentleman and keeps his home always clean an' tidy. Tug Blackstock
ain't a-goin' to git nawthin' in the eye."
"Well, I reckon we'd better smoke," said Black Dan amiably, pulling out
his pipe and filling it. And the others followed his example.
Blackstock thrust his hand into a shallow hole in the bank quite hidden
by the foliage. He drew out a pair of moccasins, water-soaked, and
hurriedly set them down on the rock. For all their soaking, they
reeked of skunk. He picked up one on the point of a stick and examined
it minutely. In spite of all the soaking, the sole, to his initiated
eye, still bore traces of that viscous, oily liquid which no water will
wash off--the strangling exudation of the skunk's defensive gland. It
was just what he had expected. The moccasin was neat and slim and of
medium size--not more than seven at most. He held it up, that all
might see it clearly.
"Does this belong to you, Andy Stevens?" he asked.
There was a jeer from the group, and Big Andy held up an enormous foot,
which might, by courtesy, have been numbered a thirteen. It was a
point upon which the Oromocto man was usually sensitive, but to-day he
was proud of it.
"Ye'll hev to play Cinderella, Tug, an' find out what leetle foot it
fits on to," suggested MacDonald.
The Deputy fished again in the hole. He drew forth a magenta mitten,
dropped it promptly, then held it up on the point of his stick at arm's
length. It had been with the moccasins. Big Andy stepped forward to
claim it, then checked himself.
"It's a mite too strong fer me now," he protested. "I'll hev to git
Sis to knit me another pair, I guess."
Blackstock dropped the offensive thing beside the moccasins at his
feet, and reached once more into the hole.
"He ain't takin' no risks this time, boys," said Blackstock. "He's
took the swag with him."
There was a growl of disappointment. Long Jackson could not refrain
from a reproachful glance at Woolly Billy, but refrained from saying
the obvious.
"What are ye goin' to do about it, Tug?" demanded Black Dan. "Hev ye
got any kind of a _reel_ clue, d'ye think, now?"
"Wait an' see," was Blackstock's noncommittal reply. He picked up the
moccasins and mitten again on the point of his stick, scanned the bank
sharply to make sure his quarry had not gone that way, and led the
procession once more down along the rocky shore of the stream. "Seek
him," he said again to Jim, and the dog, as before, trotted on ahead,
sniffing along by the water's edge to intercept the trail of whoever
had stepped ashore.
The party emerged at length upon the bank of the main stream, and
turned upwards towards Brine's Rip. After they had gone about half a
mile they rounded a bend and came in sight of a violent rapid which cut
close inshore. At this point it would be obviously impossible for any
one walking in the shallow water to avoid coming out upon dry ground.
Tug Blackstock quickened his pace, and waved Jim forward.
A sharp oath broke from Black Dan's lips.
"I've been an' gone an' left my 'baccy-pooch behind, by the skunk's
hole," he announced. And grumbling under his breath he turned back
down the shore.
Blackstock ran on, as if suddenly in a great hurry. Just where the
shallow water ended, at the foot of the rapid, Jim gave his signal with
voice and tail. He raced up the bank to a clump of bushes and began
thrashing about in them.
"What d'ye suppose he's found there?" asked Big Andy.
"Scent, and lots of it. No mistake this time," announced MacDonald.
"Hain't ye caught on to Jim's signs yet?"
"Jim," said the Deputy, sharply but not loud, "_fetch him!_"
Jim, with nose in air instead of to the ground, set off at a gallop
down the shore in the direction of the outlet.
The Deputy turned about.
"Dan," he shouted peremptorily. "Come back here. I want ye!"
Instead of obeying, Black Dan dashed up the bank, running like a deer,
and vanished into the bushes.
"_I knew it_! That's the skunk, boys. Go home, you Billy!" cried
Blackstock, and started after the fugitive. The rest followed close on
his heels. But Jackson cried:
"Ye'd better call off Jim quick. Dan's got a gun on him."
The Deputy gave a shrill whistle, and Jim, who was just vanishing into
the bush, stopped short. At the same instant a shot rang out from the
bushes, and the dog dropped in his tracks with a howl of anguish.
Blackstock's lean jaws set themselves like iron. He whipped out his
own heavy "Colt's," and the party tore on, till they met Jim dragging
himself towards them with a wounded hind-leg trailing pitifully.
The Deputy gave one look at the big black dog, heaved a breath of
relief, and stopped.
"'Tain't no manner o' use chasin' him now, boys," he decreed, "because,
as we all know, Dan kin run right away from the best runner amongst us.
But now I know him--an' I've suspicioned him this two month, only I
couldn't git no clue--_I'll git him_, never you fear. Jest now, ye'd
better help me carry Jim home, so's we kin git him doctored up in good
shape. I reckon Nipsiwaska County can't afford to lose Mr.
Assistant-Deputy Sheriff. That there skunk-oil on Dan's moccasins
fooled _both_ Jim an' me, good an' plenty, didn't it?"
"But whatever did he want o' my mitts?" demanded Big Andy.
"Now ye _air_ a sap-head, Andy Stevens," growled MacDonald, "ef ye
can't see _that_!"
IV. The Trail of the Bear
I
The Deputy-Sheriff of Nipsiwaska County had spent half an hour at the
telephone. In the backwoods the telephone wires go everywhere. In
that half-hour every settlement, every river-crossing, every
lumber-camp, and most of the wide-scattered pioneer cabins had been
warned of the flight of the thief, Dan Black, nicknamed Black Dan, and
how, in the effort to secure his escape, he had shot and wounded the
Deputy-Sheriff's big black dog whose cleverness on the trail he had
such cause to dread. As Tug Blackstock, the Deputy-Sheriff, came out
of the booth he asked after Jim.
"Oh, Black Dan's bullet broke no bones that time," replied the village
doctor, who had tended the dog's wound as carefully as if his patient
had been the Deputy himself. "It's a biggish hole, but Jim'll be all
right in a few days, never fear."
Blackstock looked relieved.
"Ye don't seem to be worryin' much about Black Dan's gittin' away,
Tug," grumbled Long Jackson, who was not unnaturally sore over the loss
of his money.
"No, I ain't worryin' much," agreed the Deputy, with a confident grin,
"now I know Jim ain't goin' to lose a leg. As for Black Dan's gittin'
away, well, I've got me own notions about that. I've 'phoned all over
the three counties, and given warnin' to every place he kin stop for a
bite or a bed. He can't cross the river to get over the Border, for
I've sent word to hev every bridge an' ferry watched. Black Dan's
cunnin' enough to know I'd do jest that, first thing, so he won't waste
his time tryin' the river. He'll strike right back into the big
timber, countin' on the start he's got of us, now he's put Jim out of
the game. But I guess I kin trail him myself--now I know what I'm
trailin'--pretty nigh as well as Jim could. I've took note of his
tracks, and there ain't another pair o' boots in Brine's Rip Mills like
them he's wearin'."
"And when air ye goin' to start?" demanded Long Jackson, still inclined
to be resentful.
"Right now," replied Blackstock cheerfully, "soon as ye kin git guns
and stuff some crackers an' cheese into yer pockets. I'll want you to
come along, MacDonald, an' you, Long, an' Saunders, an' Big Andy, as my
posse. Meet me in fifteen minutes at the store an' I'll hev Zeb Smith
swear ye in for the job. If Black Dan wants to do any shootin', it's
jest as well to hev every thin' regular."
There were not a few others among the mill-hands and the villagers who
had lost by Black Dan's cunning pilferings, and who would gladly have
joined in the hunt. In the backwoods not even a murderer--unless his
victim has been a woman or a child--is hunted down with so much zest as
a thief. But the Deputy did not like too much volunteer assistance,
and was apt to suppress it with scant ceremony. So his choice of a
posse was accepted without protest or comment, and the chosen four
slipped off to get their guns.
As Tug Blackstock had foreseen, the trail of the fugitive was easily
picked up. Confident in his powers as a runaway, Black Dan's sole
object, at first, had been to gain as much lead as possible over the
expected pursuit, and he had run straight ahead, leaving a trail which
any one of Blackstock's posse--with the exception, perhaps, of Big
Andy--could have followed with almost the speed and precision of the
Deputy himself.
There had been no attempt at concealment. About five miles back,
however, in the heavy woods beyond the head of the Lake, it appeared
that the fugitive had dropped into a walk and begun to go more
circumspectly. The trail now grew so obscure that the other woodsmen
would have had difficulty in deciphering it at all, and they were
amazed at the ease and confidence with which Blackstock followed it up,
hardly diminishing his stride.
"Tug is sure some trailer," commented Jackson, his good humour now
quite restored by the progress they were making.
"_Jim_ couldn't 'a' done no better himself," declared Big Andy, the
Oromocto man.
And just then Blackstock came abruptly to a halt, and held up his hand
for his followers to stop.
"Steady, boys. Stop right where ye are, an' don't step out o' yer
tracks," he commanded.
The four stood rigid, and began searching the ground all about them
with keen, initiated eyes.
"Oh, I've got him, so fur, all right," continued Blackstock, pointing
to a particularly clear and heavy impression of a boot-sole close
behind his own feet. "But here it stops. It don't appear to go any
further."
He knelt down to examine the footprint.
"P'raps he's doubled back on his tracks, to throw us off," suggested
Saunders, who was himself an expert on the trails of all the wild
creatures.
"No," replied Blackstock, "I've watched out for that sharp."
"P'raps he's give a big jump to one side or t'other, to break his
trail," said MacDonald.
"No," said Blackstock with decision, "nor that neither, Mac. This here
print is even. Ef he'd jumped to one side or the other, it would be
dug in on that side, and ef he'd jumped forrard, it would be hard down
at the toe. It fair beats me!"
Stepping carefully, foot by foot, he examined the ground minutely over
a half circle of a dozen yards to his front. He sent out his
followers--all but Big Andy, who, being no trailer, was bidden to stand
fast--to either side and to the rear, crawling like ferrets and
interrogating every grass tuft, in vain. The trail had simply stopped
with that one footprint. It was as if Black Dan had dissolved into a
miasma, and floated off.
At last Blackstock called the party in, and around the solitary
footprint they all sat down and smoked. One after another they made
suggestions, but each suggestion had its futility revealed and sealed
by a stony stare from Blackstock, and was no more befriended by its
author.
At last Blackstock rose to his feet, and gave a hitch to his belt.
"I don't mind tellin' ye, boys," said he, "it beats me fair. But _one_
thing's plain enough, Black Dan ain't _here_, an' he ain't likely to
come here lookin' for us. Spread out now, an' we'll work on ahead, an'
see ef we can't pick up somethin'. You, Big Andy, you keep right along
behind me. There's an explanation to _everything_--an' we'll find this
out afore along, or my name's Dinnis."
Over the next three or four hundred yards, however, nothing of
significance was discovered by any of the party. Then, breaking
through a dense screen of branches, Blackstock came upon the face of a
rocky knoll, so steep, at that point, that hands and feet together
would be needed to climb it. Casting his eyes upwards, he saw what
looked like the entrance to a little cave.
A whistle brought the rest of the party to his side. A cave always
holds possibilities, if nothing else. Blackstock spread his men out
again, at intervals of three or four paces, and all went cautiously up
the steep, converging on the entrance. Blackstock, in the centre,
shielding himself behind a knob of rock, peered in.
The place was empty. It was hardly a cave, indeed, being little more
than a shallow recess beneath an overhanging ledge. But it was well
sheltered by a great branch which stretched upwards across the opening.
Blackstock sniffed critically.
"A bear's den," he announced, stepping in and scrutinizing the floor.
The floor was naked rock, scantily littered with dead leaves and twigs.
These, Blackstock concluded, had been recently disturbed, but he could
find no clue to what had disturbed them. From the further side,
however--to Blackstock's right--a palpable trail, worn clear of moss
and herbage, led off by a narrow ledge across the face of the knoll.
Half a dozen paces further on the rock ended in a stretch of stiff
soil. Here the trail declared itself. It was unmistakably that of a
bear, and unmistakably, also, a fresh trail.
Waving the rest to stop where they were, Blackstock followed the clear
trail down from the knoll, and for a couple of hundred yards along the
level, going very slowly, and searching it hawk-eyed for some sign
other than that of bear. At length he returned, looking slightly
crestfallen.
"Nawthin' at all but bear," he announced in an injured voice. "But
that bear seems to have been in a bit of a hurry, as if he was gittin'
out o' somebody's way--Black Dan's way, it's dollars to doughnuts. But
where was Black Dan, that's what I want to know?"
"Ef _you_ don't know, Tug," said MacDonald, "who _kin_ know?"
"Jim!" said the Deputy, rubbing his lean chin and biting off a big
"chaw" of "black-jack."
"Jim's sure some dawg," agreed MacDonald. "That was the only fool
thing I ever know'd ye to do, Tug--sendin' Jim after Black Dan that
way."
Blackstock swore, softly and intensely, though he was a man not given
to that form of self-expression.
"Boys," said he, "I used to fancy myself quite a lot. But now I begin
to think Nipsiwaska County'd better be gittin' a noo Deputy. I ain't
no manner o' good."
The men looked at him in frank astonishment. He had never before been
seen in this mood of self-depreciation.
"Aw, shucks," exclaimed Long Jackson presently, "there ain't a man from
here to the St. Lawrence as kin _tech_ ye, an' ye know it, Tug. Quit
yer jollyin' now. I believe ye've got somethin' up yer sleeve, only ye
won't say so."
At this expression of unbounded confidence Blackstock braced up visibly.
"Well, boys, there's one thing I _kin_ do," said he. "I'm goin' back
to git Jim, ef I hev to fetch him in a wheelbarrow. We'll find out
what he thinks o' the situation. I'll take Saunders an' Big Andy with
me. You, Long, an' Mac, you stop on here an' lay low an' see what
turns up. But don't go mussin' up the trails."
II
Jim proved to be so far recovered that he was able to hobble about a
little on three legs, the fourth being skilfully bandaged so that he
could not put his foot to the ground. It was obvious, however, that he
could not make a journey through the woods and be any use whatever at
the end of it. Blackstock, therefore, knocked together a handy litter
for his benefit. And with very ill grace Jim submitted to being borne
upon it.
Some twenty paces from that solitary boot-print which marked the end of
Black Dan's trail, Jim was set free from his litter and his attention
directed to a bruised tuft of moss.
"Seek him," said Blackstock.
The dog gave one sniff, and then with a growl of anger the hair lifted
along his back, and he limped forward hurriedly.
"He's got it in for Black Dan _now_," remarked MacDonald. And the
whole party followed with hopeful expectation, so great was their faith
in Jim's sagacity.
The dog, in his haste, overshot the end of the trail. He stopped
abruptly, whined, sniffed about, and came back to the deep boot-print.
All about it he circled, whimpering with impatience, but never going
more than a dozen feet away from it. Then he returned, sniffed long
and earnestly, and stood over it with drooping tail, evidently quite
nonplussed.
"He don't appear to make no more of it than you did, Tug," said Long
Jackson, much disappointed.
"Oh, give him time, Long," retorted Blackstock. Then----
"Seek him! Seek him, good boy," he repeated, waving Jim to the front.
Running with amazing briskness on his three sound legs, the dog began
to quarter the undergrowth in ever-widening half-circles, while the men
stood waiting and watching. At last, at a distance of several hundred
yards, he gave a yelp and a growl, and sprang forward.
"Got it!" exclaimed Big Andy.
"Guess it's only the trail o' that there b'ar he's struck," suggested
Jackson pessimistically.
"Jim, stop!" ordered Blackstock. And the dog stood rigid in his tracks
while Blackstock hastened forward to see what he had found.
"Sure enough. It's only the bear," cried Blackstock, investigating the
great footprint over which Jim was standing. "Come along back here,
Jim, an' don't go foolin' away yer time over a bear, jest _now_."
The dog sniffed at the trail, gave another hostile growl, and
reluctantly followed his master back. Blackstock made him smell the
boot-print again. Then he said with emphasis, "_Black Dan_, Jim, it's
_Black Dan_ we're wantin'. Seek him, boy. _Fetch him_."
Jim started off on the same manoeuvres as before, and at the same point
as before he again gave a growl and a yelp and bounded forward.
"_Jim_," shouted the Deputy angrily, "come back here."
The dog came limping back, looking puzzled.
"What do you mean by that foolin'?" went on his master severely.
"What's bears to you? Smell that!" and he pointed again to the
boot-print. "It's _Black Dan_ you're after."
Jim hung upon his words, but looked hopelessly at sea as to his
meaning. He turned and gazed wistfully in the direction of the bear's
trail. He seemed on the point of starting out for it again, but the
tone of Blackstock's rebuke withheld him. Finally, he sat down upon
his dejected tail and stared upwards into a great tree, one of whose
lower branches stretched directly over his head.
Blackstock followed his gaze. The tree was an ancient rock maple, its
branches large but comparatively few in number. Blackstock could see
clear to its top. It was obvious that the tree could afford no
hiding-place to anything larger than a wild-cat. Nevertheless, as
Blackstock studied it, a gleam of sudden insight passed over his face.
"Jim 'pears to think Black Dan's gone to Heaven," remarked Saunders
drily.
"Ye can't always tell _what_ Jim's thinkin'," retorted Blackstock.
"But I'll bet it's a clever idea he's got in his black head, whatever
it is."
He scanned the tree anew and the other trees nearest whose branches
interlaced with it. Then, with a sharp "Come on, Jim," he started
towards the knoll, eyeing the branches overhead as he went. The rest
of the party followed at a discreet distance.
Crippled as he was, Jim could not climb the steep face of the knoll,
but his master helped him up. The instant he entered the cave he
growled savagely, and once more the stiff hair rose along his back.
Blackstock watched in silence for a moment. He had never before
noticed, on Jim's part, any special hostility toward bears, whom he was
quite accustomed to trailing. He glanced up at the big branch that
overhung the entrance, and conviction settled on his face. Then he
whispered, sharply, "Seek him, Jim." And Jim set off at once, as fast
as he could limp, along the trail of the bear.
"Come on, boys," called Blackstock to his posse. "Ef we can't find
Black Dan we may as well hev a little bear-hunt to fill in the time.
Jim appears to hev a partic'lar grudge agin that bear."
The men closed up eagerly, expecting to find that Blackstock, with
Jim's help, had at last discovered some real signs of Black Dan. When
they saw that there was still nothing more than that old bear's trail,
which they had already examined, Long Jackson began to grumble.
"We kin hunt bear any day," he growled.
"I guess Tug ain't no keener after bear this day than you be,"
commented MacDonald. "He's got _somethin'_ up his sleeve, you see!"
"Mebbe it's a tame b'ar, a _trained_ b'ar, an' Black Dan's a-ridin' him
horseback," suggested Big Andy.
Blackstock, who was close at Jim's heels, a few paces ahead of the
rest, turned with one of his rare, ruminative laughs.
"That's quite an idea of yours, Andy," he remarked, stooping to examine
one of those great clawed footprints in a patch of soft soil.
"But even _trained_ b'ar hain't got wings," commented MacDonald again.
"An' there's a good three hundred yards atween the spot where Black
Dan's trail peters out an' the nearest b'ar track. I guess yer
interestin' hipotheesis don't quite fill the bill--eh, Andy?"
"Anyways," protested the big Oromocto man, "ye'll all notice one thing
queer about this here b'ar track. It goes _straight_. Mostly a b'ar
will go wanderin' off this way an' that, to nose at an old root, er
grub up a bed o' toadstools. But _this_ b'ar keeps right on, as ef he
had important business somewhere straight ahead. That's just the way
he'd go ef some one _was_ a-ridin' him horseback."
Andy had advanced his proposition as a joke, but now he was inclined to
take it seriously and to defend it with warmth.
"Well," said Long Jackson, "we'll all chip in, when we git our money
back, an' buy ye a bear, Andy, an' ye shall ride it up every day from
the mills to the post office. It'll save ye quite a few minutes in
gittin' to the post office. It don't matter about yer gittin' away."
The big Oromocto lad blushed, but laughed good-naturedly. He was so
much in love with the little widow who kept the post office that
nothing pleased him more than to be teased about her.
For the Deputy's trained eyes, as for Jim's trained nose, that
bear-track was an easy one to follow. Nevertheless, progress was slow,
for Blackstock would halt from time to time to interrogate some
claw-print with special minuteness, and from time to time Jim would
stop to lie down and lick gingerly at his bandage, tormented by the
aching of his wound.
Late in the afternoon, when the level shadows were black upon the trail
and the trailing had come to depend entirely on Jim's nose, Blackstock
called a halt on the banks of a small brook and all sat down to eat
their bread and cheese. Then they sprawled about, smoking, for the
Deputy, apparently regarding the chase as a long one, was now in no
great hurry. Jim lay on the wet sand, close to the brook's edge, while
Blackstock, scooping up the water in double handfuls, let it fall in an
icy stream on the dog's bandaged leg.
"Hev ye got any reel idee to come an' go on, Tug?" demanded Long
Jackson at last, blowing a long, slow jet of smoke from his lips, and
watching it spiral upwards across a bar of light just over his head.
"I hev," said Blackstock.
"An' air ye sure it's a good one--good enough to drag us 'way out here
on?" persisted Jackson.
"I'm bankin' on it," answered Blackstock.
"An' so's Jim, I'm thinkin'," suggested MacDonald, tentatively.
"Jim's idee an' mine ain't the same, exackly," vouchsafed Blackstock,
after a pause, "but I guess they'll come to the same thing in the end.
They're fittin' in with each other fine, so fur!"
"What'll ye bet that ye're not mistaken, the both o' yez?" demanded
Jackson.
"Yer wages fur the whole summer!" answered Blackstock promptly.
Long looked satisfied. He knocked the ashes out of his pipe and
proceeded to refill it.
"Oh, ef ye're so sure as that, Tug," he drawled, "I guess I ain't
takin' any this time."
For a couple of hours after sunset the party continued to follow the
trail, depending now entirely upon Jim's leadership. The dog, revived
by his rest and his master's cold-water treatment, limped forward at a
good pace, growling from time to time as a fresh pang in his wound
reminded him anew of his enemy.
"How Jim 'pears to hate that bear!" remarked Big Andy once.
"He does _that_!" agreed Blackstock. "An' he's goin' to git his own
back, too, I'm thinkin', afore long."
Presently the moon rose round and yellow through the tree-tops, and the
going became less laborious. Jim seemed untiring now. He pressed on
so eagerly that Blackstock concluded the object of his vindictive
pursuit, whatever it was, must be now not far ahead.
Another hour, and the party came out suddenly upon the bank of a small
pond. Jim, his nose to earth, started to lead the way around it,
towards the left. But Blackstock stopped him, and halted his party in
the dense shadows.
The opposite shore was in the full glare of the moonlight. There,
close to the water's edge, stood a little log hut, every detail of it
standing out as clearly as in daylight. It was obviously old, but the
roof had been repaired with new bark and poles and the door was shut,
instead of sagging half open on broken hinges after the fashion of the
doors of deserted cabins.
Blackstock slipped a leash from his pocket and clipped it onto Jim's
collar.
"I'm thinkin', boys, we'll git some information yonder about that bear,
ef we go the right way about inquirin'. Now, Saunders, you go round
the pond to the right and steal up alongshore, through the bushes, to
within forty paces of the hut. You, Mac, an' Big Andy, you two go
round same way, but git well back into the timber, and come up _behind_
the hut to within about the same distance. There'll be a winder on
that side, likely.
"When ye're in position give the call o' the big horned owl, not too
loud. An' when I answer with the same call twice, then close in. But
keep a good-sized tree atween you an' the winder, for ye never know
what a bear kin do when he's trained. I'll bet Big Andy's seen bears
that could shoulder a gun like a man! So look out for yourselves.
Long an' Jim an' me, we'll follow the trail o' the bear right round
this end o' the pond--an' ef I'm not mistaken it'll lead us right up to
the door o' that there hut. Some bears hev a taste in regard to where
they sleep."
As noiselessly as shadows the party melted away in opposite directions.
The pond lay smooth as glass under the flooding moonlight, reflecting a
pale star or two where the moon-path grudgingly gave it space.
After some fifteen minutes a lazy, muffled hooting floated across the
pond. Five minutes later the same call, the very voice of the
wilderness at midnight, came from the deep of the woods behind the hut.
Blackstock, with Jackson close behind him and Jim pulling eagerly on
the leash, was now within twenty yards of the hut door, but hidden
behind a thick young fir tree. He breathed the call of the horned
owl--a mellow, musical call, which nevertheless brings terror to all
the small creatures of the wilderness--and then, after a pause,
repeated it softly.
He waited for a couple of minutes motionless. His keen ears caught the
snapping of a twig close behind the hut.
"Big Andy's big feet that time," he muttered to himself. "That boy'll
never be much good on the trail."
Then, leaving Jim to the care of Jackson, he slipped forward to another
and bigger tree not more than a dozen paces from the cabin. Standing
close in the shadow of the trunk, and drawing his revolver, he called
sharply as a gun-shot--"Dan Black."
Instantly there was a thud within the hut as of some one leaping from a
bunk.
"Dan Black," repeated the Deputy, "the game's up. I've got ye
surrounded. Will ye come out quietly an' give yerself up, or do ye
want trouble?"
"Waal, no, I guess I don't want no more trouble," drawled a cool voice
from within the hut. "I guess I've got enough o' my own already. I'll
come out, Tug."
The door was flung open, and Black Dan, with his hands held up, stalked
forth into the moonlight.
[Illustration: "The door was flung open, and Black Dan, with his hands
held up, stalked forth into the moonlight."]
With a roar Jim sprang out from behind the fir tree, dragging Long
Jackson with him by the sudden violence of his rush.
"Down, Jim, _down_!" ordered Blackstock. "Lay down an' shut up." And
Jim, grumbling in his throat, allowed Jackson to pull him back by the
collar.
Blackstock advanced and clicked the handcuffs on to Black Dan's wrists.
Then he took the revolver and knife from the prisoner's belt, and
motioned him back into the hut.
"Bein' pretty late now," said Blackstock, "I guess we'll accept yer
hospitality for the rest o' the night."
"Right ye are, Tug," assented Dan. "Ye'll find tea an' merlasses, an'
a bite o' bacon in the cupboard yonder."
As the rest of the party came in Black Dan nodded to them cordially, a
greeting which they returned with more or less sheepish grins.
"Excuse me ef I don't shake hands with ye, boys," said he, "but Tug
here says the state o' me health makes it bad for me to use me arms."
And he held up the handcuffs.
"No apologies needed," said MacDonald.
Last of all came in Long Jackson, with Jim. Blackstock slipped the
leash, and the dog lay down in a corner, as far from the prisoner as he
could get.
In a few minutes the whole party were sitting about the tiny stove,
drinking boiled tea and munching crackers and molasses--the prisoner
joining in the feast as well as his manacled hands would permit. At
length, with his mouth full of cracker, the Deputy remarked:
"That was clever of ye, Dan--durn' clever. I didn't know it was in ye."
"Not half so clever as you seein' through it the way you did, Tug,"
responded the prisoner handsomely.
"But darned ef _I_ see through it _now_," protested Big Andy in a
plaintive voice. "It's just about as clear as mud to _me_. Where's
your wings, Dan? An' where in tarnation is that b'ar?"
The prisoner laughed triumphantly. Long Jackson and the others looked
relieved, the Oromocto man having propounded the question which they
had been ashamed to ask.
"It's jest this way," explained Blackstock. "When we'd puzzled Jim
yonder--an' he was puzzled at us bein' such fools--ye'll recollect he
sat down on his tail by that boot-print, an' tried to work out what we
wanted of him. I was tellin' him to seek Black Dan, an' yet I was
callin' him back off that there bear-track. _He_ could smell Black Dan
in the bear-track, but we couldn't. So we was doin' the best we could
to mix him up.
"Well, he looked up into the big maple overhead. Then I saw where
Black Dan had gone to. He'd jumped (that's why the boot-print was so
heavy), an' caught that there branch, an' swung himself up into the
tree. Then he worked his way along from tree to tree till he come to
the cave. I saw by the way Jim took on in the cave that Black Dan had
been _there_ all right. For Jim hain't got no special grudge agin
bear. Says I to myself, ef Jim smells Black Dan in that bear trail,
then Black Dan must _be_ in it, that's all!
"Then it comes over me that I'd once seen a big bear-skin in Dan's room
at the Mills, an' as the picture of it come up agin in my mind, I
noticed how the fore-paws and legs of it were missin'. With that I
looked agin at the trail, as we went along Jim an' me. An' sure
enough, in all them tracks there wasn't one print of a hind-paw. _They
were all fore-paws_. Smart, very smart o' Dan, says I to myself.
Let's see them ingenious socks o' yours, Dan."
"They're in the top bunk yonder," said Black Dan, with a weary air.
"An' my belt and pouch, containin' the other stuff, that's all in the
bunk, too. I may's well save ye the trouble o' lookin' for it, as ye'd
find it anyways. I was _sure_ ye'd never succeed in trackin' me down,
so I didn't bother to hide it. An' I see now ye _wouldn't_ 'a' got me,
Tug, ef it hadn't 'a' been fer Jim. That's where I made the mistake o'
my life, not stoppin' to make sure I'd done Jim up."
"No, Dan," said Blackstock, "ye're wrong there. Ef you'd done Jim up
I'd have caught ye jest the same, in the long run, fer I'd never have
quit the trail till I _did_ git ye. An' when I got ye--well, I'd hev
forgot myself, mebbe, an' only remembered that ye'd killed my best
friend. Ef ye'd had as many lives as a cat, Dan, they wouldn't hev
been enough to pay fer that dawg."
V. The Fire at Brine's Rip Mills
I
When pretty Mary Farrell came to Brine's Rip and set up a modest
dressmaker's shop quite close to the Mills (she said she loved the
sound of the saws), all the unattached males of the village, to say
nothing of too many of the attached ones, fell instant victims to her
charms. They were her slaves from the first lifting of her long lashes
in their direction.
Tug Blackstock, the Deputy-Sheriff, to be sure, did not capitulate
quite so promptly as the rest. Mary had to flash her dark blue eyes
upon him at least twice, dropping them again with shy admiration. Then
he was at her feet--which was a pleasant place to be, seeing that those
same small feet were shod with a neatness which was a perpetual
reproach to the untidy sawdust strewn roadways of Brine's Rip.
Even Big Andy, the boyish young giant from the Oromocto, wavered for a
few hours in his allegiance to the postmistress. But Mary was much too
tactful to draw upon her pretty shoulders the hostility of such a power
as the postmistress, and Big Andy's enthusiasm was cold-douched in its
first glow.
As for the womenfolk of Brine's Rip, it was not to be expected that
they would agree any too cordially with the men on the subject of Mary
Farrell.
But one instance of Mary's tact made even the most irreconcilable of
her own sex sheath their claws in dealing with her. She had come from
Harner's Bend. The Mills at Harner's Bend were anathema to Brine's Rip
Mills. A keen trade rivalry had grown, fed by a series of petty but
exasperating incidents, into a hostility that blazed out on the least
occasion. And pretty Mary had come from Harner's Bend. Brine's Rip
did not find it out till Mary's spell had been cast and secured, of
course. But the fact was a bitter one to swallow. No one else but
Mary Farrell could have made Brine's Rip swallow it.
One day Big Andy, greatly daring, and secure in his renovated
allegiance to the postmistress, ventured to chaff Mary about it. She
turned upon him, half amused and half indignant.
"Well," she demanded, "isn't Harner's Bend a good place to come away
from? Do you think I'd ought to have stopped there? Do I look like
the kind of girl that _wouldn't_ come away from Harner's Bend? And me
a dress-maker? I just couldn't _live_, let alone make a living, among
such a dowdy lot of women-folk as they've got over there. It isn't
dresses _they_ want, but oat-sacks, and you wouldn't know the
difference, either, when they'd got them on."
The implication was obvious; and the women of Brine's Rip began to
allow for possible virtues in Miss Farrell. The post-mistress declared
there was no harm in her, and even admitted that she might almost be
called good-looking "if she hadn't such an _awful_ big mouth."
I have said that all the male folk of Brine's Rip had capitulated
immediately to the summons of Mary Farrell's eyes. But there were two
notable exceptions--Woolly Billy and Jim. Both Woolly Billy's flaxen
mop of curls and the great curly black head of Jim, the dog, had turned
away coldly from Mary's first advances. Woolly Billy preferred men to
women anyhow. And Jim was jealous of Tug Blackstock's devotion to the
petticoated stranger.
But Mary Farrell knew how to manage children and dogs as well as men.
She ignored both Jim and Woolly Billy. She did it quite pointedly, yet
with a gracious politeness that left no room for resentment. Neither
the child nor the dog was accustomed to being ignored. Before long
Mary's amiable indifference began to make them feel as if they were
being left out in the cold. They began to think they were losing
something because she did not notice them. Reluctantly at first, but
by-and-by with eagerness, they courted her attention. At last they
gained it. It was undeniably pleasant. From that moment the child and
the dog were at Mary's well-shod and self-reliant little feet.
II
As summer wore on into autumn the dry weather turned to a veritable
drought, and all the streams ran lower and lower. Word came early that
the mills at Harner's Bend, over in the next valley, had been compelled
to shut down for lack of logs. But Brine's Rip exulted unkindly. The
Ottanoonsis, fed by a group of cold spring lakes, maintained a steady
flow; there were plenty of logs, and the mills had every prospect of
working full time all through the autumn. Presently they began to
gather in big orders which would have gone otherwise to Harner's Bend.
Brine's Rip not only exulted, but took into itself merit. It felt that
it must, on general principles, have deserved well of Providence, for
Providence so obviously to take sides with it.
As August drew to a dusty, choking end, Mary Farrell began to collect
her accounts. Her tact and sympathy made this easy for her, and women
paid up civilly enough who had never been known to do such a thing
before, unless at the point of a summons. Mary said she was going to
the States, perhaps as far as New York itself, to renew her stock and
study up the latest fashions.
Every one was much interested. Woolly Billy's eyes brimmed over at the
prospect of her absence, but he was consoled by the promise of her
speedy return with an air-gun and also a toy steam-engine that would
really go. As for Jim, his feathery black tail drooped in premonition
of a loss, but he could not gather exactly what was afoot. He was
further troubled by an unusual depression on the part of Tug
Blackstock. The Deputy-Sheriff seemed to have lost his zest in
tracking down evil-doers.
It was nearing ten o'clock on a hot and starless night. Tug
Blackstock, too restless to sleep, wandered down to the silent mill
with Jim at his heels. As he approached, Jim suddenly went bounding on
ahead with a yelp of greeting. He fawned upon a small, shadowy figure
which was seated on a pile of deals close to the water's edge. Tug
Blackstock hurried up.
"You here, Mary, all alone, at this time o' night!" he exclaimed.
"I come here often," answered Mary, making room for him to sit beside
her.
"I wish I'd known it sooner," muttered the Deputy.
"I like to listen to the rapids, and catch glimpses of the water
slipping away blindly in the dark," said Mary. "It helps one not to
think," she added with a faint catch in her voice.
"Why should _you_ not want to think, Mary?" protested Blackstock.
"How dreadfully dry everything is," replied Mary irrelevantly, as if
heading Blackstock off. "What if there should be a fire at the mill?
Wouldn't the whole village go, like a box of matches? People might get
caught asleep in their beds. Oughtn't there to be more than one night
watchman in such dry weather as this? I've so often heard of mills
catching fire--though I don't see why they should, any more than
houses."
"Mills most generally git _set_ afire," answered the Deputy grimly.
"Think what it would mean to Harner's Bend if these mills should git
burnt down now! It would mean thousands and thousands to them. But
you're dead right, Mary, about the danger to the village. Only it
depends on the wind. This time o' year, an' as long as it keeps dry,
what wind there is blows mostly away from the houses, so sparks and
brands would just be carried out over the river. But if the wind
should shift to the south'ard or thereabouts, yes, there'd be more
watchmen needed. I s'pose you're thinkin' about your shop while ye're
away?"
"I was thinking about Woolly Billy," said Mary gravely. "What do I
care about the old shop? It's insured, anyway."
"I'll look out for Woolly Billy," answered Blackstock. "And I'll look
out for the shop, whether _you_ care about it or not. It's yours, and
your name's on the door, and anything of yours, anything you've
touched, an' wherever you've put your little foot, that's something for
me to care about. I ain't no hand at making pretty speeches, Mary, or
paying compliments, but I tell you these here old sawdust roads are
just wonderful to me now, because your little feet have walked on 'em.
Ef only I could think that you could care--that I had anything, was
anything, Mary, worth offering you----"
He had taken her hand, and she had yielded it to him. He had put his
great arm around her shoulders and drawn her to him,--and for a moment,
with a little shiver, she had leant against him, almost cowered against
him, with the air of a frightened child craving protection. But as he
spoke on, in his quiet, strong voice, she suddenly tore herself away,
sprang off to the other end of the pile of deals, and began to sob
violently.
He followed her at once. But she thrust out both hands.
"Go away. _Please_ don't come near me," she appealed, somewhat wildly.
"You don't understand--_anything_."
Tug Blackstock looked puzzled. He seated himself at a distance of
several inches, and clasped his hands resolutely in his lap.
"Of course, I won't tech you, Mary," said he, "if you don't want me to.
I don't want to do _anything_ you don't want me to--_never_, Mary. But
I sure don't understand what you're crying for. _Please_ don't. I'm
so sorry I teched you, dear. But if you knew how I love you, how I
would give my life for you, I think you'd forgive me, Mary."
Mary gave a bitter little laugh, and choked her sobs.
"It isn't that, oh no, it isn't _that_!" she said. "I--I _liked_ it.
There!" she panted. Then she sprang to her feet and faced him. And in
the gloom he could see her eyes flaming with some intense excitement,
from a face ghost-white.
"But--I won't let you make me love you, Tug Blackstock. I won't!--I
won't! I won't let you change all my plans, all my ambitions. I won't
give up all I've worked for and schemed for and sold my very soul for,
just because at last I've met a real man. Oh, I'd soon spoil your
life, no matter how much you love me. You'd soon find how cruel, and
hard, and selfish I am. An' I'd ruin my own life, too. Do you think I
could settle down to spend my life in the backwoods? Do you think I
have no dreams beyond the spruce woods of Nipsiwaska County? Do you
think you could imprison _me_ in Brine's Rip? I'd either kill your
brave, clean soul, Tug Blackstock, or I'd kill myself!"
Utterly bewildered at this incomprehensible outburst, Blackstock could
only stammer lamely:
"But--I thought--ye kind o' liked Brine's Rip."
"_Like_ it!" The uttermost of scorn was in her voice. "I hate, hate,
hate it! I just live to get out into the great world, where I feel
that I belong. But I must have money first. And I'm going to study,
and I'm going to make myself somebody. I wasn't born for this." And
she waved her hand with a sweep that took in all the backwoods world.
"I'm getting out of it. It would drive me mad. Oh, I sometimes think
it has already driven me half mad."
Her tense voice trailed off wearily, and she sat down again--this time
further away.
Blackstock sat quite still for a time. At last he said gently:
"I do understand ye now, Mary."
"You _don't_," interrupted Mary.
"I felt, all along, I was somehow not good enough for you."
"You're a million miles _too_ good for me," she interrupted again,
energetically.
"But," he went on without heeding the protest, "I hoped, somehow, that
I might be able to make you happy. An' that's what I want, more'n
anything else in the world. All I have is at your feet, Mary, an' I
could make' it more in time. But I'm not a big enough man for you.
I'm all yours--an' always will be--but I can't make myself no more than
I am."
"Yes, you could, Tug Blackstock," she cried. "Real men are scarce, in
the great world and everywhere. You could make yourself a master
anywhere--if only you would tear yourself loose from here."
He sprang up, and his arms went out as if to seize her. But, with an
effort, he checked himself, and dropped them stiffly to his side.
"I'm too old to change my spots, Mary," said he. "I'm stamped for good
an' all. I am some good here. I'd be no good there. An' I won't
never resk bein' a drag on yer plans."
"You could--you could!" urged Mary almost desperately.
But he turned away, with his lips set hard, not daring to look at her.
"Ef ever ye git tired of it all out there, an' yer own kind calls ye
back--as it will, bein' in yer blood--I'll be waitin' for ye, Mary,
whatever happens."
He strode off quickly up the shore. The girl stared after, him till he
was quite out of sight, then buried her face in the fur of Jim, who had
willingly obeyed a sign from his master and remained at her side.
"Oh, my dear, if only you could have dared," she murmured. At last she
jumped up, with an air of resolve, and wandered off, apparently
aimlessly, into the recesses of the mill, with one hand resting firmly
on Jim's collar.
III
Two days later Mary Farrell left Brine's Rip. She hugged and kissed
Woolly Billy very hard before she left, and cried a little with him,
pretending to laugh, and she took her three big trunks with her, in the
long-bodied express waggon which carried the mails, although she said
she would not be gone more than a month at the outside.
Tug Blackstock eyed those three trunks with a sinking heart. His only
comfort was that he had in his pocket the key of Mary's little shop,
which she had sent to him by Woolly Billy. When the express waggon had
rattled and bumped away out of sight there was a general feeling in
Brine's Rip that the whole place had gone flat, like stale beer, and
the saws did not seem to make as cheerful a shrieking as before, and
Black Saunders, expert runner of logs as he was, fell in because he
forgot to look where he was going, and knocked his head heavily in
falling, and was almost drowned before they could fish him out.
"There's goin' to be some bad luck comin' to Brine's Rip afore long,"
remarked Long Jackson in a voice of deepest pessimism.
"It's come, Long," said the Deputy.
That same day the wind changed, and blew steadily from the mills right
across the village. But it brought no change in the weather, except a
few light showers that did no more than lay the surface dust. About a
week later it shifted back again, and blew steadily away from the
village and straight across the river. And once more a single
night-watchman was regarded as sufficient safeguard against fire.
A little before daybreak on the second night following this change of
wind, the watchman was startled by a shrill scream and a heavy splash
from the upper end of the great pool where the logs were gathered
before being fed up in the saws. It sounded like a woman's voice. As
fast as he could stumble over the intervening deals and rubbish he made
his way to the spot, waving his lantern and calling anxiously. There
was no sign of any one in the water. As he searched he became
conscious of a ruddy light at one corner of the mill.
He turned and dashed back, yelling "Fire! Fire!" at the top of his
lungs. A similar ruddy light was spreading upward in two other corners
of the mill. Frantically he turned on the nearest chemical
extinguisher, yelling madly all the while. But he was already too
late. The flames were licking up the dry wood with furious appetite.
In almost as little time as it takes to tell of it the whole great
structure was ablaze, with all Brine's Rip, in every varying stage of
_déshabille_, out gaping at it. The little hand-fire-engine worked
heroically, squirting a futile stream upon the flames for a while, and
then turning its attention to the nearest houses in order to keep them
drenched.
"Thank God the wind's in the right direction," muttered Zeb Smith, the
storekeeper and magistrate. And the pious ejaculation was echoed
fervently through the crowd.
In the meantime Tug Blackstock, seeing that there was nothing to do in
the way of fighting the fire--the mill being already devoured--was
interviewing the distracted watchman.
"Sure," he agreed, "it was a trick to git you away long enough for the
fires to git a start. Somebody yelled, an' chucked in a big stick,
that's all. An', o' course, you run to help. You couldn't naturally
do nothin' else."
The watchman heaved a huge sigh of relief. If Blackstock exonerated
him from the charge of negligence, other people would. And his heart
had been very heavy at being so fatally fooled.
"It's Harner's Bend all right, that's what it is!" he muttered.
"Ef only we could prove it," said Blackstock, searching the damp ground
about the edges of the pool, which was lighted now as by day.
Presently he saw Jim sniffing excitedly at some tracks. He hurried
over to examine them. Jim looked up at him and wagged his tail, as
much as to say, "So you've found them, too! Interesting, ain't they!"
"What d'ye make o' that?" demanded Blackstock of the watchman.
"_Boy's_ tracks, sure," said the latter at once.
The footprints were small and neat. They were of a double-soled
larrigan, with a low heel of a single welt.
"None of _our_ boys," said Blackstock, "wear a larrigan like that,
especially this time o' year. One could run light in that larrigan,
an' the sole's thick enough to save the foot. An' it's good for a
canoe, too."
He rubbed his chin, thinking hard.
"Yesterday," said the watchman, "I mind seein' a young half-breed, he
looked like a slip of a lad, very dark complected, crossin' the road
half-a-mile up yonder. He was out o' sight in a second, like a
shadder, but I mind noticin' he had on larrigans--an' a brown slouch
hat down over his eyes, an' a dark red handkerchief roun' his neck. He
was a stranger in these parts."
"That would account for the voice, like a woman's," said Blackstock,
following the tracks till they plunged through a tangle of tall bush.
"An' here's the handkerchief," he added triumphantly, grabbing up a
dark red thing that fluttered from a branch. "Harner's Bend knows
somethin' about that boy, I'm thinkin'. Now, Bill, you go along back,
an' don't say nothin' about this, _mind_! Me an' Jim, we'll look into
it. Tell old Mrs. Amos and Woolly Billy not to fret. We'll be back
soon."
He slipped the leash into Jim's collar, gave him the red handkerchief
to smell, and said, "Seek him, Jim." And Jim set off eagerly, tugging
at the leash, because the trail was so fresh and plain to him, and he
hated to be held back.
The trail led around behind the village, and back to the river bank
about a mile below. There it followed straight down the shore. It was
evident to Blackstock that his quarry would have a canoe in hiding some
distance further down. There was no time to be lost. It was now
almost full daybreak, and he could follow the trail by himself. After
all, it was only a boy he had to deal with. He could trust Jim to
delay him, to hold him at bay. He loosed the leash, and Jim bounded
forward at top speed. He himself followed at a leisurely loping stride.
As he trotted on, thinking of many things, he took out the red
handkerchief and examined it again. He smelt it curiously. His nose
was keen, like a wild animal's. As he sniffed, a pang went through
him, clutching at his heart. He sniffed again. His long stride
shortened. He dropped into a walk. He thought over, word by word, his
conversation with Mary that night beside the mill. His face went grey.
After a brief struggle he shouted to Jim, trying to call him back. But
the eager dog was already far beyond hearing. Then Blackstock broke
into a desperate run, shouting from time to time. He thought of Jim's
ferocity when on the trail.
Meanwhile, the figure of a slim boy, very light of foot, was speeding
far down the river bank, clutching a brown slouch hat in one hand as he
ran. He had an astonishing crop of hair, wound in tight coils about
his head. He was panting heavily, and seemed nearly spent. At last he
halted, drew a deep sigh of relief, pressed his hands to his heart, and
plunged into a clump of bushes. In the depth of the bushes lay a small
birch-bark canoe, carefully concealed. He tugged at it, but for the
moment he was too weary to lift it. He flung himself down beside it to
take breath.
In the silence, his ears caught the sound of light feet padding down
the shore. He jumped up, and peered through the bushes. A big black
dog was galloping on his trail. He drew a long knife, and his mouth
set itself so hard that the lips went white. The dog reached the edge
of the bushes. The youth slipped behind the canoe.
[Illustration: "He drew a long knife ... and slipped behind the canoe."]
"Jim," said he softly. The dog whined, wagged his tail, and plunged in
through the bushes. The youth's stern lips relaxed. He slipped the
knife back into its sheath, and fondled the dog, which was fawning upon
him eagerly.
"You'd never go back on me, would you, Jim, no matter what I'd done?"
said he, in a gentle voice. Then, with an expert twist of his lithe
young body, he shouldered the canoe and bore it down to the water's
edge. One of his swarthy hands had suddenly grown much whiter, where
Jim had been licking it.
Before stepping into the canoe, this peculiar youth took a scrap of
paper from his shirt pocket, and an envelope. He scribbled something,
sealed it up, addressed the envelope, marked it "private," and gave it
to Jim, who took it in his mouth.
"Give that to Tug Blackstock," ordered the youth clearly. Then he
kissed the top of Jim's black head, pushed off, and paddled away
swiftly down river. Jim, proud of his commission, set off up the shore
at a gallop to meet his master.
Half-a-mile back he met him. Blackstock snatched the letter from Jim's
mouth, praising Heaven that the dog had for once failed in his duty.
He tore open the letter. It said!
Yes, I did it. I had to do it. But _you_ could have saved me, if
you'd _dared_--for I do love you, Tug Blackstock.--MARY.
A month later, a parcel came from New York for Woolly Billy, containing
an air-gun, and a toy steam-engine that would really go. But it
contained no address. And Brine's Rip said that Tug Blackstock had
been bested for once, because he never succeeded in finding out who
burnt down the mills.
VI. The Man with the Dancing Bear
I
One day there arrived at Brine's Rip Mills, driving in a smart trap
which looked peculiarly unsuited to the rough backwoods roads, an
imposing gentleman who wore a dark green Homburg hat, heavy, tan,
gauntletted gloves, immaculate linen, shining boots, and a well-fitting
morning suit of dark pepper-and-salt, protected from the contaminations
of travel by a long, fawn-coloured dust-coat. He also wore a monocle
so securely screwed into his left eye that it looked as if it had been
born there.
His red and black wheels labouring noiselessly through the sawdust of
the village road, he drove up to the front door of the barn-like wooden
structure, which staggered under the name, in huge letters, of the
CONTINENTAL HOTEL. There was no one in sight to hold the horse, so he
sat in the trap and waited, with severe impatience, for some one to
come out to him.
In a few moments the landlord strolled forth in his shirt-sleeves,
chewing tobacco, and inquired casually what he could do for his visitor.
"I'm looking for Mr. Blackstock--Mr. J. T. Blackstock," said the
stranger with lofty politeness. "Will you be so good as to direct me
to him?"
The landlord spat thoughtfully into the sawdust, to show that he was
not unduly impressed by the stranger's appearance.
"You'll find him down to the furder end of the cross street yonder," he
answered pointing with his thumb. "Last house towards the river.
Lives with old Mrs. Amos--him an' Woolly Billy."
The stranger found it without difficulty, and halted his trap in front
of the door. Before he could alight, a tall, rather gaunt woodsman,
with kind but piercing eyes and brows knitted in an habitual
concentration, appeared in the doorway and gave him courteous greeting.
"Mr. Blackstock, I presume? The Deputy Sheriff, I should say,"
returned the stranger with extreme affability, descending from the trap.
"The same," assented Blackstock, stepping forward to hitch the horse to
a fence post. A big black dog came from the house and, ignoring the
resplendent stranger, went up to Blackstock's side to superintend the
hitching. A slender little boy, with big china-blue eyes and a shock
of pale, flaxen curls, followed the dog from the house and stopped to
stare at the visitor.
The latter swept the child with a glance of scrutiny, swift and intent,
then turned to his host.
"I am extraordinarily glad to meet you, Mr. Blackstock," he said,
holding out his hand. "If, as I surmise, the name of this little boy
here is Master George Harold Manners Watson, then I owe you a debt of
gratitude which nothing can repay. I hear that you not only saved his
life, but have been as a father to him, ever since the death of his own
unhappy father."
Blackstock's heart contracted. He accepted the stranger's hand
cordially enough, but was in no hurry to reply. At last he said slowly:
"Yes, Stranger, you've got Woolly Billy's reel name all O.K. But why
should you thank me? Whatever I've done, it's been for Woolly Billy's
own sake--ain't it, Billy?"
For answer, Woolly Billy snuggled up against his side and clutched his
great brown hand adoringly, while still keeping dubious eyes upon the
stranger.
The latter took off his gloves, laughing amiably.
"Well, you see, Mr. Blackstock, I'm only his uncle, and his only uncle
at that. So I have a right to thank you, and I see by the way the
child clings to you how good you've been to him. My name is J.
Heathington Johnson, of Heathington Hall, Cramley, Blankshire. I'm his
mother's brother. And I fear I shall have to tear him away from you in
a great hurry, too."
"Come inside, Mr. Johnson," said Blackstock, "an' sit down. We must
talk this over a bit. It is kind o' sudden, you see."
"I don't want to seem unsympathetic," said the visitor kindly, "and I
know my little nephew is going to resent my carrying him off." (At
these words Woolly Billy began to realize what was in the air, and
clung to Blackstock with a storm of frightened tears.) "But you will
understand that I have to catch the next boat from New York--and I have
a thirty-mile drive before me now to the nearest railway station. You
know what the roads are! So I'm sure you won't think me unreasonable
if I ask you to get my nephew ready as soon as possible."
Blackstock devoted a few precious moments to quieting the child's sobs
before replying. He remembered having found out in some way, from some
papers in the drowned Englishman's pockets or somewhere, that the name
of Woolly Billy's mother, before her marriage, was not Johnson, but
O'Neill. Of course that discrepancy, he realized, might be easily
explained, but his quick suspicions, sharpened by his devotion to the
child, were aroused.
"We are not a rich family, by any means, Mr. Blackstock," continued the
stranger, after a pause. "But we have enough to be able to reward
handsomely those who have befriended us. All _possible_ expense that
my nephew may have been to you, I want to reimburse you for at once.
And I wish also to make you a present as an expression of my
gratitude--not, I assure you, as a payment," he added, noticing that
Blackstock's face had hardened ominously. He took out a thick
bill-book, well stuffed with banknotes.
"Put away your money, Mr. Johnson," said Blackstock coldly. "I ain't
taking any, thank you, for what I may have done for Woolly Billy. But
what I want to know is, what authority have you to demand the child?"
"I'm his uncle, his mother's brother," answered the stranger sharply,
drawing himself up.
"That may be, an' then again, it mayn't," said Blackstock. "Do you
think I'm goin' to hand over the child to a perfect stranger, just
because he comes and says he's the child's uncle? What proofs have
you?"
The visitor glared angrily, but restrained himself and handed
Blackstock his card.
Blackstock read it carefully.
"What does that prove?" he demanded sarcastically. "It might not be
your card! An' even if you are 'Mr. Johnson' all right, that's not
proving that Mr. Johnson is the little feller's uncle! I want legal
proof, that would hold in a court of law."
"You insolent blockhead!" exclaimed the visitor. "How dare you
interfere between my nephew and me? If you don't hand him over at
once, I will make you smart for it. Come, child, get your cap and
coat, and come with me immediately. I have no more time to waste with
this foolery, my man." And he stepped forward as if to lay hands on
Woolly Billy.
Blackstock interposed an inexorable shoulder. The big dog growled, and
stiffened up the hair on his neck ominously.
"Look here," said Blackstock crisply, "you're goin' to git yourself
into trouble before you go much further, my lad. You jest mind your
manners. When you bring me them proofs, I'll talk to you, see!"
He took Woolly Billy's hand, and turned towards the door.
The stranger's righteous indignation, strangely enough, seemed to have
been allayed by this speech. He followed eagerly.
"_Don't_ be unreasonable, Mr. Blackstock," he coaxed. "I'll send you
the documents, from my solicitors, at once. I'm sure you don't want to
stand in the dear child's light this way, and prevent him getting back
to his own people, and the life that is his right, a day longer than is
necessary. Do listen to reason, now." And he patted his wad of
bank-notes suggestively.
But at this stage, Woolly Billy and the big dog having already entered
the cottage, Blackstock followed, and calmly shut the door. "You'll
smart for this, you ignorant clod-hopper!" shouted Mr. Heathington
Johnson. He clutched the door-knob. But for all his rage, prudence
came to his rescue. He did not turn the knob. After a moment's
hesitation he ground his heel upon the doorstep, stalked back to his
gig, and drove off furiously. The three at the window watched his
going.
"We won't see _him_ back here again," remarked the Deputy. "_He_
wasn't no uncle o' yours, Woolly Billy."
That same evening he wrote to a reliable firm of lawyers at Exville,
telling them all he knew about Woolly Billy and Woolly Billy's father,
and also all he suspected, and instructed them to look into the matter
fully.
II
Several weeks went by, and the imposing stranger, as Blackstock had
anticipated, failed to return with his proofs. Then came a letter from
the lawyers at Exville, saying that they had something important to
communicate, and Blackstock hurried off to see them, planning to be
away for about a week.
On the day following his departure, to the delight of all the children
and of most of the rest of the population as well, there arrived at
Brine's Rip Mills a man with a dancing bear. He was a black-eyed,
swarthy, merry fellow, with a most infectious laugh, and besides his
trained bear he possessed a pedlar's pack containing all sorts of
up-to-date odds and ends, not by any means to be found in the very
utilitarian miscellany of Zeb Smith's corner store.
He talked a rather musical but very broken lingo that passed for
English, flashing a mouthful of splendid white teeth as he did so. He
appeared to be an Italian, and the men of Brine's Rip christened him a
"Dago" at once. There was no resisting his childlike bonhomie, or the
amiable antics of his great brown bear, which grinned through its
muzzle as if dancing to its master's merry piccolo were its one delight
in life. And the two did a roaring business from the moment they came
strolling into Brine's Rip.
"Tony" was what the laughing vagabond called himself, and his bear
answered to the name of Beppo. Business being so good, Tony could
afford to be generous, and he was continually pressing peppermint
lozenges upon the rabble of children who formed a triumphal procession
for him wherever he moved. When Tony's eyes first fell on Woolly
Billy, standing just outside the crowd, with one arm over the neck of
the big black dog, he was delighted.
"Com-a here, Bambino, com-a quick!" he cried, holding out some
peppermints. Woolly Billy liked him at once, and adored the bear, but
was too shy, or reserved, to push his way through the other children.
So Tony came to him, leading the bear. Woolly Billy stood his ground,
with a welcoming smile. The big black dog growled doubtfully, and then
lost his doubts in curious admiration of the bear, which plainly
fascinated him.
Woolly Billy accepted the peppermints politely, and put one into his
mouth without delay. Then, with an apologetic air, the Italian laid
one finger softly on Woolly Billy's curls, and drew back at once, as if
fearing he had taken a liberty.
"Jim likes the bear, sir, _doesn't_ he?" suggested Woolly Billy, to
make conversation.
"Everybody he like-a ze bear. Him vaira good bear," asserted the
bear's master, and laughed again, giving the bear a peppermint. "An'
you one vaira good bambino. Ze bear, he like-a you vaira much. See,
he shak-a you ze hand--good frens now."
Encouraged by the warmth of his welcome, the Italian had from the first
made a practice of dropping in at certain houses of the village just at
meal times--when he was received always with true backwoods
hospitality. On Woolly Billy's invitation he had come to the house of
Mrs. Amos. The old lady, too rheumatic to get about much out of doors,
was delighted with such a unique and amusing guest. To all he
said--which, indeed, she never more than half understood--she kept
ejaculating. "Well, I never!" and "Did ye ever hear the likes o' that?"
And the bear, chained to the gate-post and devouring her
pancakes-and-molasses, thrilled her with a sense of "furrin parts." In
fact, there was no other house at Brine's Rip where Tony and his bear
were made more warmly welcome than at Mrs. Amos'. The only member of
the household who lacked cordiality was Jim, whose coolness towards
Tony, however, was fully counter-balanced by his interest in the bear.
Towards Tony his attitude was one of armed neutrality.
On the fourth evening after the arrival of Tony and Beppo, Jim
discovered a most tempting lump of meat in the corner of Mrs. Amos'
garden. Having something of an appetite at the moment, he was just
about to bolt the morsel. But no sooner had he set his teeth into it
than he conceived a prejudice against it. He dropped it, and sniffed
at it intently. The smell was quite all right. He turned it over with
his paw and sniffed at the under side. No, there was nothing the
matter with it. Nevertheless, his appetite had quite vanished. Well,
it would do for another time. He dug a hole and buried the morsel, and
then went back to the house to see what Woolly Billy and Mrs. Amos were
doing.
A little later, just as Mrs. Amos was lighting the lamps in the
kitchen, the rattling of a chain was heard outside, followed by the
whimpering of Beppo, who objected to being tied up to the gate-post
when he wanted to come in and beg for pancakes. Woolly Billy ran to
the door and peered forth into the dusk. After a few moments Tony
entered, all his teeth agleam in his expansive smile.
He had a little bag of bon-bons for Woolly Billy--something much more
fascinating than peppermints--which he doled out to the child one by
one, as a rare treat. And for himself he wanted a cup of tea, which
hospitable Mrs. Amos was only too eager to brew for him. Jim, seeing
that Woolly Billy was too interested to need _his_ company, got up and
went out to inspect the bear.
Tony was in gay spirits that evening. In his broken English, and
helping out his meaning with eloquent gestures, he told of adventures
which made Woolly Billy's eyes as round as saucers and reduced Mrs.
Amos to admiring speechlessness. He made Mrs. Amos drink tea with him,
pouring it out for her himself while she hobbled about to find him
something to eat. And once in a while, at tantalizing intervals, he
allowed Woolly Billy one more bon-bon.
There was a chill in the night air, so Tony, who was always politeness
itself, asked leave to close the door. Mrs. Amos hastened also to
close the window. Or, rather, she tried to hasten, but made rather a
poor attempt, and sat down heavily in the big arm-chair beside it.
"My legs is that heavy," she explained, laughing apologetically. So
Tony closed the window himself, and at the same time drew the curtains.
Then he went on talking.
But apparently his conversation was less interesting than it had been.
There came a snore from Mrs. Amos' big chair. Tony glanced aside at
Woolly Billy, as if expecting the child to laugh. But Woolly Billy
took no notice of the sound. He was fast asleep, his fluffy fair head
fallen forward upon the red table-cloth.
Tony looked at the clock on the mantel-piece. It was not as late as he
could have wished, but he had observed that Brine's Rip went to bed
early. He turned the lamp low, softly raised the window, and looked
out, listening. There were no lights in the village, and all was
silence save for the soft roar of the Rip. He extinguished the lamp,
and waited a few moments till his eyes got quite accustomed to the
gloom.
At length he picked up the slight form of Woolly Billy (who was now in
a drugged stupor from which he would not awake for hours), and slung
him over his left shoulder. In his right hand he grasped his short
bear-whip, with its loaded butt. He stepped noiselessly to the door,
listened a few moments, and then opened it inch by inch with his left
hand, standing behind it, and grasping the whip so as to be ready to
strike with the butt. He was wondering where the big black dog was.
The door was about half open, when a black shape, appearing suddenly,
launched itself at the opening. The loaded butt came crashing
down--and Jim dropped sprawling across the threshold.
From the back of the bear Tony now unfastened a small pack, and
strapped it over his right shoulder. Then he unchained the great beast
noiselessly, and led it off to the waterside, to a spot where a heavy
log canoe was drawn up upon the beach. He hauled the canoe down,
making much disarrangement in the gravel, launched it, thrust it far
out into the water, and noted it being carried away by the current. He
had no wish to journey by that route himself, knowing that as soon as
the crime was discovered, which might chance at any moment, the
telephone would give the alarm all down the river.
Next he undid the bear's chain, and took off its muzzle, and threw them
both into the water, knowing that when freed from these badges of
servitude the animal would wander further and more freely. At first
the good-natured creature was unwilling to leave him. Its master, from
policy, had always treated it kindly, and fed it well, and it was in no
hurry to profit by its freedom.
However, the man ordered it off towards the woods, enforcing the
command by a vigorous push and a stroke of the whip. Shaking itself
till it realized its freedom, it slouched away a few paces down stream,
then turned into the woods. The man listened to its careless, crashing
progress.
"They'll find it easy following _that_ trail," he muttered with
satisfaction.
Assured that he had thus thrown out two false trails to distract
pursuers, the man now stepped into the water, and walked up stream for
several hundred yards, till he reached the spot which served as a ferry
landing. Here, in the multiplicity of footprints, he knew his own
would be indistinguishable to even the keenest of backwood eyes. He
came ashore, slipped through the slumbering village, and plunged into
the woods with the assurance of one to whom their mysteries were an
open book.
He was shaping his course--by the stars at present, but by compass when
it should become necessary--for an inlet on the coast, where there
would be a sturdy fishing-smack awaiting him and his rich prize. All
was working smoothly--as most plans were apt to work under his swift,
resourceful hands--and his hard lips relaxed in triumphant
self-satisfaction. One of the most accomplished and relentless of the
desperadoes of the Great North-West, he had peculiarly enjoyed his pose
as the childlike Tony.
For hour after hour he pushed on, till even his untiring sinews began
to protest. About the edge of dawn Woolly Billy awoke, but, still
stupid with the heavy drugging he had received, he did not seem to
realize what had happened. He cried a little, asking for Jim, and for
Tug Blackstock, and for Mrs. Amos, but was pacified by the most trivial
excuses. The man gave him some sweet biscuits, but he refused to eat
them, leaving them on the moss beside him. He hardly protested even
when the man cut off his bright hair, and proceeded to darken what was
left with some queer-smelling dye.
When the man undressed him and proceeded to stain his face and his
whole body, he apparently thought he was being got ready for bed, and
to certain terrible threats as to what would happen if he tried to get
away, or to tell any one anything, he paid no attention whatever. He
went to sleep again in the middle of it all.
Satisfied with his job, the man lay down beside him, knowing himself
secure from pursuit, and went to sleep himself.
Meanwhile, after lying motionless for several hours, where he had
dropped across the threshold, Jim at last began to stir. That crashing
blow, after all, had not fallen quite true. Jim was not dead, by any
means. He staggered to his feet, swayed a few moments, and then, for
all the pain in his head, he was practically himself again. He went
into the cottage, tried in vain to awaken Mrs. Amos in her chair,
hunted for Woolly Billy in his bed, and at last, realizing something of
what had happened, rushed forth in a panic of rage and fear and grief,
and remorse for a trust betrayed.
It was a matter of a few minutes to trail the party down to the
waterside. Then he darted off after the bear. The latter, grubbing
delightedly in a rotten stump, greeted him with a friendly "Woof." A
glance and a sniff satisfied Jim that Woolly Billy was not there, and
his instinct assured him that the bear was void of offence in the whole
matter. He knew the enemy. He darted back to the waterside, ran on up
stream to the ferry-landing, picked up the trail of Tony's feet,
followed it unerringly through the confusion of other footprints, and
darted silently into the woods in pursuit.
At daybreak an early riser, seeing the door of Mrs. Amos' cottage
standing open, looked in and saw the old lady still asleep in her
chair. She was awakened with difficulty, and could give but a vague
account of what had happened. The whole village turned out. Under the
leadership of Long Jackson, the big mill-hand who constituted himself
Woolly Billy's special guardian in Blackstock's absence, the "Dago" and
bear were traced down to the waterside.
Of course, it was clear to almost every one that the "Dago"--who was
now due for lynching when caught--had carried Woolly Billy off down
river in the vanished canoe. Instantly the telephones were brought
into service, and half-a-dozen expert canoeists, in the swiftest canoes
to be had, started off in pursuit. But the more astute of the
woodsmen--including Long Jackson himself--held that this river clue was
a false one, a ruse to put them off the track. This group went after
the bear.
In an hour or two they found him. And very glad to see them he
appeared to be. He was getting hungry, and a bit lonely. So without
waiting for an invitation, with touching confidence he attached himself
to the party, and accompanied it back to the village. There Big Andy,
who had always had a weakness for bears, took him home and fed him, and
shut him up in the back yard.
In the meantime Jim, travelling at a speed that the fugitive could not
hope to rival, had come soon after daybreak to the spot where the man
and Woolly Billy lay asleep.
[Illustration: "In the meantime, Jim, travelling at a speed that the
fugitive could not hope to rival, had come to the right spot."]
He arrived as soundlessly as a shadow. At sight of his enemy--for he
knew well who had carried off the child, and who had dealt that almost
fatal blow--his long white fangs bared in a silent snarl of hate. But
he had learnt, well learnt, that this man was a dangerous antagonist.
He crouched, stiffened as if to stone, and surveyed the situation.
His sensitive nose prevented him from being quite deceived by the
transformation in Woolly Billy's appearance. He was puzzled by it, but
he had no doubt as to the child's identity. Having satisfied himself
that the little fellow was asleep, and therefore presumably safe for
the moment, he turned his attention to his enemy.
The man was sleeping almost on his back, one arm thrown above his head,
his chin up, his brown, sinewy throat exposed. That bare throat
riveted Jim's vengeful gaze. He knew well that the man, though asleep
and at an utter disadvantage, was the most dangerous adversary he could
possibly tackle.
Step by step, so lightly, so smoothly, that not a twig crackled under
his feet, he crept up, his muzzle outstretched, his fangs gleaming the
hair rising along his back. When he was within a couple of paces of
his goal, the sleeper stirred slightly, as if about to wake up, or
growing conscious of danger. Instantly Jim sprang, and sank his fangs
deep, deep, into his enemy's throat.
With a shriek the sleeper awoke, flinging wide his arms and legs
convulsively. But the shriek was strangled at its birth, as Jim's
implacable teeth crunched closer. The great dog shook his victim as a
terrier shakes a rat. There was a choked gurgle, and the threshing
arms and legs lay still.
Jim continued his savage shaking till satisfied his foe was quite dead.
Then he let go, and turned his attention to Woolly Billy.
The child was sitting up, staring at him with round eyes of question
and bewilderment.
"Where am I, Jim?" he demanded. Then he gazed at the transformation in
himself--his clothes and his stained hands. He saw his old clothes
tossed aside, his curls lying near them in a bright, fluffy heap. He
felt his cropped head. And then his brain began to clear. He had a
dim memory of the man cutting his hair and changing his clothes.
Upon his first glimpse of the man, lying there dead and covered with
blood, he felt a sharp pang of sorrow. He had liked Tony. But the
pang passed, as he began to understand. If _Jim_ had killed Tony, Tony
must have been bad. It was evident that Tony had carried him off, and
that Jim had come to save him. Jim was licking his face now,
rapturously, and evidently coaxing him to get up and come away.
He flung his arms around Jim's neck. Then he saw the biscuits. He
divided them evenly between himself and Jim, and ate his portion with
good appetite. Jim would not touch his share, so Woolly Billy tucked
them into his pocket. Then he got up and followed where Jim was trying
to lead him, keeping his face averted from the terrible, bleeding thing
sprawled there upon the moss. And Jim led him safely home.
When Tug Blackstock, two days later, returned from his visit to
Exville, he brought news which explained why a certain gang of
criminals had planned to get possession of Woolly Billy. The child had
fallen heir to an immense property in England, and an ancient title,
and he was to have been held for ransom. From that moment Blackstock
never let him out of his sight, until, with a heavy heart, he handed
him over to his own people.
Thereafter, as he sat brooding on a log beside the noisy river, with
Jim stretched at his feet, Tug Blackstock felt that Brine's Rip, for
the lack of a childish voice and a head of flaxen curls, had lost all
savour for him. And his thoughts turned more and more towards the
arguments of a grey-eyed girl, who had urged him to seek a wider sphere
for his energies than the confines of Nipsiwaska County could afford.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Ledge on Bald Face, by Charles G. D. Roberts
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