The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Lure of Piper's Glen, by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER II

YOUNG TODHUNTER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER III

PIPER'S GLEN

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

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

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

CHAPTER IV

THE ROAD TO PIPER'S GLEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER V

THE COCK OF THE ROAD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VI

GAMES—ABOVEBOARD AND OTHERWISE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VII

NEW BUSINESS CONNECTIONS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VIII

THE QUEER OLD WOMAN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IX

AN AWKWARD SITUATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER X

THE WIDOW'S MITE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XI

THE WESTWARD TRAIL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XII

UNFORGIVABLE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIII

THE WIND ON THE BARREN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIV

THE MAN-HUNTER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XV

TRICKY PLAYS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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