THE RED PIROGUE
A TALE OF ADVENTURE IN THE CANADIAN WILDS
STORIES BY
Captain Theodore Goodridge Roberts
Comrades of the Trails
The Red Feathers
Flying Plover
The Fighting Starkleys
Tom Akerley
The Red Pirogue
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (Inc.)
53 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.
[Illustration: “UP CAME THE RAGING WATERS, UP AND PAST THE JUMPING,
SQUIRMING CANOE.”]
The RED PIROGUE
A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian Wilds
RELATED BY
Captain Theodore Goodridge Roberts
Author of “The Fighting Starkleys,” “Comrades of the Trails,”
“Red Feathers,” “Tom Akerley,” etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY
Frank T. Merrill
BOSTON
L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
MDCCCCXXIV
Copyright, 1922,
By Street & Smith Corporation
Copyright, 1924,
By L. C. Page & Company
(INCORPORATED)
All rights reserved
Made in U.S.A.
First Impression, January, 1924
PRINTED BY C. H. SIMONDS COMPANY
BOSTON, MASS., U. S. A.
CONTENTS
I. A Queer Fish
II. The Drifting Fire
III. The Strange Behavior of Dogs and Men
IV. Obstructing the Law
V. Visitors to French River
VI. Hot Scent and Wet Trail
VII. A Trap for the Hungry
VIII. The Red Dogs at Work
IX. The Sick Man
X. In the Nick of Time
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“Up came the raging waters, up and past the jumping,
squirming canoe.”
“The old man drew alongside and peered at Ben”
“Sat down on a convenient chopping block”
“‘To shoot gentlemen with?’ asked the little girl
in an awe-struck whisper”
“‘Stand there and stand steady’”
THE RED PIROGUE
CHAPTER I
A QUEER FISH
Young Ben O’Dell emerged from the woodshed into the dew and the
dawning day with a paddle in his hand, crossed a strip of orchard,
passed through a thicket of alders and choke cherries and between
two great willows and descended a steep bank to a beach of sand and
pebbles. Thin mist still crawled in wisps on the sliding surface of
the river. Eastward, downstream, sky and hills and water were awash
and afire with the pink and gold and burnished silver of the new
day.
Ben was as agreeably conscious of the scents of the place and hour
as of the beloved sights and sounds. He sniffed the faint fragrance
of running water, the sweeter breath of clover blooms, the sharper
scent of pennyroyal. He could even detect and distinguish the mild,
dank odors of dew-wet willow bark, of stranded cedar blocks and of
the lush-green stems of black rice and duck grass.
He crossed the beach to the gray sixteen-foot pirogue which was used
for knocking about between the point and the island and for tending
the salmon net. It wasn’t much of a craft—just a stick of pine
shaped by ax and draw knife and hollowed by ax and fire—but it saved
Uncle Jim McAllister’s canvas canoe much wear and tear. It was heavy
and “crank,” but it was tough.
Ben launched the pirogue with a long, grinding shove, stepped aboard
and went sliding out across the current toward the stakes and floats
of the net. The upper rim of the sun was above the horizon by now
and the shine and golden glory of it dazzled his eyes.
It was now that Ben first noticed the other pirogue. He thought it
was a log, but only for a moment. Shading his eyes with his hand he
made out the man-cut lines and the paint-red glow. It was a pirogue
sure enough and the largest one Ben had ever seen. It was fully
twenty-five feet long, deep and bulky in proportion and painted red
from end to end. It lay motionless on the upper side of the net,
caught lengthwise against the stout stakes.
Ben, still standing, dipped his long paddle a dozen times and in a
minute he was near enough to the strange pirogue to look into it.
The thing which he saw there caused him to step crookedly and
violently backward; and before he realized what he had done the
crank little dugout had rolled with a snap and he was under water.
He came to the surface beside his own craft which had righted but
was full of water and no more than just afloat. He swam it into
shallow water, pushed it aground, threw his paddle ashore and then
turned again to the river and the big red pirogue lying motionless
against the net stakes.
“Nothing to be scared of,” he said. “Don’t know why I jumped like
that. Fool trick!”
He kicked off his loose brogans one by one, dipped for them and
threw them ashore.
The sun was up now and the light was brighter. The last shred of
mist was gone from the river.
[Illustration: “FOR A FEW SECONDS THE TWO GAZED IN SILENCE.”]
“It startled me, that was all,” he said. “It would startle any
man—Uncle Jim himself, even.”
He waded until the swift water was halfway between his belt and his
shoulders, then plunged forward and swam out and up toward the red
pirogue. He hadn’t far to go, but now the current was against him.
He made it in a few minutes, however. He gripped a gunnel of the big
dugout with both hands and hoisted himself high and looked inboard.
At the same moment the occupant of the strange craft sat up and
stared at him with round eyes. For a few seconds the two gazed in
silence.
“Who are you?” asked the occupant of the red pirogue.
“I’m Ben O’Dell,” replied the youth in the water, smiling
encouragingly and brushing aside a bang of wet hair. “I live on the
point when I’m not away downriver at school. I was surprised when I
first saw you—so surprised that I upset and had to swim.”
“Is that O’Dell’s Point?” asked the other.
“Yes. You can’t see the house for those big willows on the bank.”
“Are you Mrs. O’Dell’s boy?”
“Yes, I’m her son. I’m not so small as I look with just my head out
of water. I guess I’d better climb in, if you don’t mind, and paddle
you ashore.”
“You may climb in, if you want to—but I can paddle myself all
right.”
“Is she steady? Can I put all my weight on one side, or must I get
in over the end?”
“She’s steady as a scow.”
Ben pulled himself up and scrambled in. A paddle lay aft. He took it
up and stroked for the shore.
“It was a funny place to find you,” he ventured.
“Why funny?” she asked gravely.
“Well—queer. A little girl all alone in a big pirogue and caught
against the net stakes.”
“I’m eleven years old. I caught the pirogue there on purpose because
I thought I was getting near to O’Dell’s Point and I was afraid to
land in the dark.”
“Do you know my mother?”
“No-o—not herself—but I have a letter of intr’duction to her.”
They stepped ashore and crossed the beach side by side. Ben felt
bewildered, despite his eighteen years of life and six feet of
loosely jointed height. This small girl astonished and puzzled him
with her gravity that verged on the tragic, her assured and superior
manners, her shabby attire and her cool talk of “a letter of
intr’duction.” He possessed a keen sense of humor but he did not
smile. Even the letter of introduction struck him as being pathetic
rather than funny. He was touched by pity and curiosity and
profoundly bewildered.
They climbed the steep, short bank.
“You are big,” she remarked gravely as they passed between the old
apple trees. “Bigger than lots of grown men. I thought you were just
a little boy when I couldn’t see anything but your head. You must be
quite old.”
“I’m eighteen; and I’m going to college this fall—if mother makes
me. But I’d sooner stop home and work with Uncle Jim,” he replied.
At that moment they cleared the orchard and came upon the ell and
woodshed of the wide gray house and Mr. James McAllister in the door
of the shed. McAllister backed and vanished in the snap of a finger.
“He is shy with strangers, but he’s a brave man and a good one,”
said Ben.
Mrs. O’Dell appeared in the doorway just then.
“Mother, here’s a little girl who came from somewhere or other in a
big red pirogue,” said Ben. “I found her out at the net. She has a
letter for you.”
Mrs. O’Dell was a tall woman of forty, slender and strong, with the
blue eyes and warm brown hair of the McAllisters. She wore a cotton
dress of one of the changing shades of blue of her eyes, trim and
fresh. The dress was open at the throat and the sleeves were rolled
up to the elbows. She stepped forward without a moment’s hesitation
and laid a strong hand lightly on one of the little girl’s thin
shoulders. She smiled and the blue of her eyes darkened and
softened.
“A letter for me, dear?” she queried.
“Yes Mrs. O’Dell—from dad,” replied the stranger.
“You are Richard Sherwood’s little girl?”
“Yes, I’m Marion.”
“And you came alone? Not all the way from French River?”
“Most of the way—alone. I—dad——”
Ben became suddenly aware of the fact that the queer little girl was
crying. She was still looking steadily up into his mother’s face but
tears were brimming her eyes and sparkling on her cheeks and her
lips were trembling. He turned away in pained confusion. For several
minutes he stared fixedly at the foliage and green apples of the
orchard; when he ventured to turn again he found himself alone.
Ben passed through the woodshed into the kitchen. There he found his
uncle frying pancakes in a fever of distracted effort, spilling
batter, scorching cakes and perspiring.
“Where are they?” he asked.
Uncle Jim motioned toward an inner door with the long knife with
which he was working so hard and accomplishing so little. Ben took
the knife away from him, cleared the griddle of smoking ruins and
scraped it clean.
“You didn’t grease it,” he said. “I’ll handle the pork and do the
turning and you handle the batter.”
This arrangement worked satisfactorily.
“Where’d you find her, Ben?” whispered McAllister.
“In a big pirogue drifted against the stakes of our net,” replied
the youth. “She was asleep when I first glimpsed her and I thought
it was somebody dead. It gave me a start, I can tell you.”
“It sure would. Well, I reckon she’s as queer a fish as was ever
taken in a salmon net on this river.”
“It was a queer place to find her, all right. Who’s Richard
Sherwood, Uncle Jim? Do you know him? How did mother come to guess
who she was?”
“I used to know him. All of us did for a few years, a long time ago.
He was quality, the same as your pa—but he wasn’t steady like your
pa.”
“Quality? You mean he was a gentleman?”
“That’s what he’d ought to been, anyhow—but I reckon the woods up
French River, and one thing and another, were too much for his
gentility. Ssh! Here they come!”
Mrs. O’Dell and little Marion Sherwood entered the kitchen hand in
hand. The eyes of both wore a suggestion of recent tears and hasty
bathing with cold water, but both were smiling, though the little
girl’s smile was tremulous and uncertain.
“Jim, this is Dick Sherwood’s daughter,” said the woman. “You and
Dick were great friends in the old days, weren’t you?”
“We sure was,” returned McAllister awkwardly but cordially. “He was
as smart a man in the water as ever I saw. Could dive and swim like
an otter. And a master hand with a gun! He could shoot birds
a-flying easier’n I could hit ’em on the ground. John was a good
shot, too, but he wasn’t a match for your pa, little girl. I hope he
keeps in good health.”
“Yes, thank you,” whispered Marion.
“Marion’s pa has left French River for a little while on business,
and Marion will make her home with us until he returns,” said Mrs.
O’Dell.
There was bacon for breakfast as well as buckwheat pancakes, and
there were hot biscuits and strawberry preserves and cream to top
off with. The elders did most of the talking. Marion sat beside Jim
McAllister, on his left. Jim, having taken his cue from his sister,
racked his memory for nice things to say of Richard Sherwood. He
sang Sherwood’s prowess in field and stream. At last, spooning his
preserves with his right hand, he let his left hand rest on his knee
beneath the edge of the table.
“And brave!” he said. “You couldn’t scare him! I never knew any man
so brave as Dick Sherwood except only John O’Dell.”
Then a queer change of expression came over his face. Young Ben, who
was watching his uncle from the other side of the table, noticed it
instantly. The blue eyes widened; the drooping mustache twitched;
the lower jaw sagged and a vivid flush ascended throat and chin and
cheek beneath the tough tan of wind and sun. Ben wondered.
Breakfast over, the man and youth went outside, for there were
potatoes to be hilled and turnips to be thinned.
“What was the matter with you, Uncle Jim?” inquired Ben.
“Me? When?” asked McAllister.
“Just a little while ago. Just after you said how brave Mr. Sherwood
was—from that on. You looked sort of dazed and moonstruck.”
“Moonstruck, hey? Well, I’ll tell you, Ben, seeing as it’s you. That
little girl took a-holt of my hand when I said that about her pa.
And she kept right on a-holding of it.”
“Girls must be queer. I knew something was wrong, you looked so
foolish. But if her father was such a fine man as you tried to make
out at breakfast, what’s the matter with him? You told me that the
woods had been too much for his gentility, Uncle Jim.”
“Sure it was—the woods or something; but he was smart and brave all
the same when I knew him. I wasn’t lying; but I’ll admit I was
telling all the good of him I could think up, so’s to hearten the
poor little girl. It worked, too.”
“Do you know why he left French River? And why did he leave her to
come all that way alone?”
“I’ll ask Flora, first chance I get. I’m just as curious as yerself,
Ben.”
They were halfway to the potatoes with their earthy hoes on their
shoulders when Ben halted suddenly and faced his uncle with an
abashed grin.
“I forgot to tend the net,” he said. “It may be full of salmon for
all I know—and all the salmon full of eels by this time.”
McAllister’s long, lean frame jerked with laughter.
“That suits me fine, Ben,” he exclaimed as soon as he could speak.
“We’ll go tend it now. I’d sooner be on the river this fine morning
than hilling potatoes, anyhow; and maybe we’ll find another grilse
from French River.”
Uncle Jim was impressed by the red pirogue. He had seen bigger ones
but not many of them. In the days of his unsettled and adventurous
youth, when he was a “white-water boy,” chopping in the woods every
winter and “stream-driving” logs every spring, he had once helped to
shape and dig out a thirty-five-foot pirogue. But that had been
close onto fifty miles farther upriver and back in the days of big
pine timber.
“She’s a sockdolager, all right,” he said. “Didn’t know there was
any such pines left on French River. What’s underneath the blankets,
aft there?”
Ben stepped into the grounded craft, went aft and lifted the
blankets, disclosing a lumpy sack tied at the neck with twine, a
battered leather gun case and a bundle wrapped in a rubber ground
sheet and securely tied about with rope.
“It’s her dunnage!” exclaimed Uncle Jim. “Off you walked and left it
laying! You’re a fine feller to catch a young lady in a net, you
ain’t! Where was your wits, Ben?”
“I was upset, that’s a sure thing,” admitted the youth. “And I’m
still a good deal puzzled about these Sherwoods,” he added.
In the net they found four salmon, three still sound and one already
fallen a prey to devouring eels. Several eels had entered the
largest fish by way of the gills and mouth and what had been salmon
was now more eel. The silver skin was undamaged and the eels were
still inside.
With Marion Sherwood’s baggage, the salmon and the skinful of eels,
Ben and his uncle had to make two trips from the river to the house.
The eels were thrown to the hogs as they were, alive and in their
attractive container. The undamaged fish were cleaned, salted and
hung in the smokehouse. During that operation and the journey to the
potato field and between brisk bouts of hoe work, James McAllister
told his nephew most of what he knew of the Sherwoods of French
River.
Mr. Richard Sherwood first appeared at O’Dell’s Point twenty-six
years ago when James McAllister was only twenty years of age. He was
direct from England, by way of the big town sixty miles downriver.
He arrived with three loaded canoes and six Maliseet canoemen from
the reservation near Kingstown and jumped knee-deep into the water
before the canoes could make the shore and set up a shout that
started the echoes on the far side of the river.
“Jack O’Dell. Guncotton Jack! Tally-ho! Steady the Buffs!”
The Maliseets wondered; the mowers on island and mainland ceased
their labors to give ear; and John O’Dell, in the orchard, hooked
his scythe into the crotch of an apple tree and started for the
beach at top speed with Jim McAllister close at his heels. O’Dell
went down the bank in two jumps. The stranger saw him and splashed
ashore. They met halfway between the willows and the water and shook
hands two-handed. They were certainly glad to see each other.
That was how Richard Sherwood came to O’Dell’s Point. He was a
fine-looking young man, red and brown, with a swagger in his
shoulders and a laugh in his dark eyes. But all the world was young
then. Even Captain John O’Dell was only twenty-six.
Sherwood had been a lieutenant in O’Dell’s company of the second
battalion of the Buffs. The two young men had served together in a
hill war in India; and Sherwood had been present when O’Dell,
refusing to accept another volunteer after three had been shot down,
had advanced with a cigarette between his lips and lighted the fuse
of the charge of guncotton which the first volunteer had placed
under the gate of the fort. He had lighted the fuse with the coal of
his cigarette, while the entire garrison shot down at him and his
men shot up at the garrison and then had turned and walked downhill
to the nearest cover with blood flowing down his neck, the top gone
from his helmet, the guard of his sheathed sword smashed on his hip
and a slug of lead in the calf of his right leg—still smoking the
cigarette.
John O’Dell had resigned his commission soon after the death of his
father and returned home to Canada and his widowed mother and the
wide gray house at O’Dell’s Point. That had been just two years
before Richard Sherwood’s arrival on the river.
Sherwood lived with the O’Dells until December. He was a live wire.
He worked on the farm, swam in the river, shot duck and partridge
and snipe, hunted moose and made a number of trips upstream in
search of land to buy and settle on. He wanted thousands of acres.
He had big but somewhat confused ideas of what he wanted. He liked
the life. It was brisk and wild. He confided to young Jim McAllister
that he wouldn’t object to its being even brisker and wilder than he
found it in the vicinity of O’Dell’s Point. The O’Dells, he said,
were just a trifle too conscious of their duty toward, and
superiority to, the lesser people of the river.
Jim McAllister admired Sherwood vastly in those days and was with
him on the river and in the woods as often as possible. The
McAllisters lived in the next house above the point. The family
consisted then of Ian and Jim and Agnes and Flora and their parents
and a grandfather.
They were not like the O’Dells exactly, those McAllisters, but they
were just as good in their own way. Their habitation was less than
the O’Dell house by four bedrooms, a gun room, a library and a
drawing-room with two fireplaces; and their farm was of one hundred
and sixty acres against the square mile of mainland and forty-acre
island of the O’Dells. And yet the two families were loyal friends
of long standing. The first McAllister to settle on the river one
hundred and ten years ago had been a sergeant in the regiment of
which the first O’Dell had been the commanding officer.
Jim McAllister took Mr. Richard Sherwood upriver in December,
twenty-six years ago, to introduce him to some of the mysteries of
trapping fur. Sherwood was restless and traveled fast. After a time
they struck French River at a point about ten miles from its mouth
and within a few hundred yards of the log house of Louis Balenger.
Balenger had Iroquois blood in his veins and was from the big
northern province of Quebec. He had come to French River with his
family five or six years before, traveling light and fast. When Jim
McAllister saw where he was he urged Sherwood to keep right on, for
Balenger had the reputation of being a dangerous man.
But Louis sighted them and hailed them, ran to meet them and had
them within the log walls of his house as quick as winking. And
there was rum on the table and the fire on the hearth burned
cheerily and Mrs. Balenger said that dinner would be ready in half
an hour. The dinner was plentiful and well cooked, the eyes of the
Balenger girls were big and black and bright and the conversation of
Louis was pure entertainment though somewhat mixed in language.
That was the beginning of Richard Sherwood’s fall from grace in the
eyes of the O’Dells and McAllisters and most other people of unmixed
white blood on the big river. Jim McAllister returned to O’Dell’s
Point alone; and even he had turned his back reluctantly on the
exciting hospitality of the big log house. Even as it was, he had
remained under that fateful roof long enough to lose the price of a
good young horse to his merry host at poker. He made all haste down
the white path of French River for ten miles and then down the wider
white way of the big river for twenty miles and reported to his
friend John O’Dell before showing himself to his own family.
Captain O’Dell gave Jim two hours in which to rest, eat and rub the
snowshoe cramps out of his legs with hot bear’s grease; and then the
two of them headed for French River, backtracking on Jim’s trail
which had scarcely had time to cool. They reached Balenger’s house
next day, before noon. Mrs. Balenger opened the door to them and
welcomed them in. Jim McAllister followed John O’Dell reluctantly
into the big living room. There sat Sherwood and Balenger at a table
beside the wide hearth with cards in their hands, just as Jim had
last seen them two days before.
Louis Balenger laid down his cards, sprang to his feet and advanced
to meet the visitors. He expressed the honor which he felt at this
neighborly attention on the part of the distinguished Captain
O’Dell. But Richard Sherwood did not move. John O’Dell was very
polite and cold as ice and dry as sand. He bowed gravely to Madame
Balenger and her daughters, refused a glass of punch from the hand
of Louis on the plea that he was already overheated and requested
Dick Sherwood to settle for the play and come along. Sherwood
refused to budge. He was angry and sulky.
O’Dell’s Point saw nothing more of Richard Sherwood for nine long
months. He appeared one August evening in a bark canoe, spent the
night with the O’Dells and headed upriver again early next morning,
swearing more like a river-bred “white-water boy” than an English
gentleman. The captain told Jim McAllister something of what had
passed between himself and Sherwood. Sherwood, it seems, had lost
all his little property—the price of a good farm, at least—to Louis
Balenger, and he had wanted a few hundred dollars to set about
winning it all back with.
John had refused to lend him money for poker but had offered him
land and stock and a home and help if he would cut his acquaintance
with Louis Balenger and the entire Balenger tribe. Sherwood refused
to consider any such offer, said that Delphine Balenger was worth
more than all the other inhabitants of the country rolled together
and that he would not lose sight of her even if he had to work his
fingers to the bone in the service of Louis, and went away in a
raging temper.
Once a year, for eight years, John O’Dell tried to get Sherwood away
from the Balengers and French River but always in vain. Sherwood
worked for Louis and according to Louis’ own methods; and as he was
always the goat he was frequently on the run from the wardens of the
game laws.
Down at O’Dell’s Point life went on evenly and honestly and yet with
a fine dash of romance. Captain John O’Dell wooed and wed Flora
McAllister and Jim McAllister was jilted by a girl at Hood’s Ferry
and several elderly people died peacefully. Up on French River,
Delphine Balenger ran away with a lumberman from the States after
Dick Sherwood had spent ten years in slavery and disgrace for love
of her; and Sherwood set out on the lumberman’s track with murder in
his heart. He lost his way and was found and brought home by
Delphine’s younger sister. Then Sherwood quarreled with Louis
Balenger and Louis shot him twice, left the Englishman for dead and
vanished from French River forever. Julie Balenger nursed poor
Sherwood back to life and strength and, soon after, married him.
This is what Uncle Jim told young Ben O’Dell of the Sherwoods of
French River.