The Oxbow Wizard

CHAPTER I
THE STRANGER’S BOOK

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

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

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

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

Young Dan approached the bed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“An’ what of it?” asked his father.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Land’s sakes! That’s reel smart.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sit down,” said Uncle Bill.

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

“Looking for anything in particular?” he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

“What did you find yesterday?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Have you read that book, Uncle Bill?”

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

Young Dan shook his head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER II
THE NICK O’ TIME

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER III
A THIEF WITH CLAWS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It suits me fine.”

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

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

The old man chuckled delightedly at that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Will a duck swim?”

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ll do that,” said Young Dan.

CHAPTER IV
THE MAN IN THE BUNK

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

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

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

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

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

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

The man immediately lay back without another word.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How d’ye know that?”

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

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

“You, ma’am!”

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER V
THE STIFF KNEE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Young Dan closed the book on a finger.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“To fetch in some grub?”

“Maybe he’ll fetch in some grub.”

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

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

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

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

Mrs. Conley smiled bitterly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andy looked ashamed of himself.

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

Young Dan was distressed.

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VI
FISH FOR BAIT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andy Mace didn’t say a word.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The youth’s bewilderment increased.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Was he that near froze?”

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

“Why? What’s in the bag?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Jim Conley’s luck, that’s what.”

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

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

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

“It’s baited with fish to-day.”

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

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

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

CHAPTER VII
THE ONE-EYED INJUN

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

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

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

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

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

Conley got slowly to his feet.

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

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

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

The other snatched it from him and shouldered it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim Conley swore long and loud and strong.

“Shut up!” snapped Young Dan.

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

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

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

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

“It was a warning.”

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

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

Conley laughed uneasily and dropped the subject.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Young Dan smiled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andy Mace shook his head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The coin lay tails up in his palm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Mace laughed and turned to Young Dan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yep,” replied the Maliseet.

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

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

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

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

“Tobac,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Know him a’right when you tell me.”

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

“To-morrow.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I suppose you believed him, m’am.”

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

“Do you think I’m afraid of him?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VIII
THE ADVENTURE OF SABATIS

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

“Howdy,” he said.

Young Dan stared at him in amazement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“‘Snowshoes,’ sez Pete.

“‘Sure, but how far?’ I sez.

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

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

Andy Mace paused to relight his pipe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Maybe,” said Pete. “I dunno.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“All in cash, Mr. Watt?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IX
THE FIGHT IN THE SNOW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How’re you feeling now?” he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The hotel-keeper and his chaired patrons exchanged glances.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Young Dan answered the questions briefly but clearly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER X
FEAR OF THE LAW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The storekeeper opened his eyes.

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

The deputy-sheriff sighed and lit a cigar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where’d she salt it away?”

“I dunno.”

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

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

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

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

“Empty,” he said.

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

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

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

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

He sounded like a man talking in his sleep.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The woman stared at him, motionless and silent.

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

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

“What’s he workin’ at, m’am?”

“Trappin’, that’s what.”

“But whose traps?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sure,” said Young Dan.

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