HOT SCENT AND WET TRAIL
Ben turned and looked upward. He saw dew-wet branches shaking, as if
some one or something of considerable bulk was moving in the thick
underbrush at the top of the bank. A red deer most likely, perhaps a
moose, possibly a bear, he reflected. He felt thrilled. Moose and
deer were not uncommon things in his experience but they always gave
his heart a fine tingle. The thought of a bear was yet more
thrilling.
The shaking of the brush continued. The movement was progressive.
Whatever the animal was, it was descending the heavily screened bank
directly toward the young man. Ben realized that if it was anything
as tall as a full grown moose it would be showing a head, or ears at
least, by this time. The disturbance of stems, branches and foliage
descended to within five yards of him. Then the round black head of
a big bear emerged from the green covert.
Ben knew that bears were not dangerous except under unusual
conditions and that they were never more willing to attend to their
own peaceful affairs and avoid unpleasant encounters than in the
late summer of a good year for berries; and yet he felt
embarrassingly defenseless as he regarded the round mask and pointed
muzzle. One may derive a slight feeling of preparedness in emergency
from even so little as the knowledge of being strongly shod for
flight or kicking or the knowledge of being toughly garbed in
flannel and homespun against minor scratches. But Ben wore neither
flannel, leather nor homespun to support his morale. He decided that
deep water would be the only place for him if the bear should take a
fancy to the flat rock upon which he stood.
The bear was evidently puzzled and somewhat discouraged by Ben’s
appearance. It stared at him for half a minute or more and Ben
returned the stare. Then it withdrew its head from view and again
the alders and birches and wide-boughed young spruces shook and
tossed to its passage through them. But now the disturbance receded.
It moved up the steep pitch of the bank and was lost to Ben’s sight
in the dusk of the forest.
“There’s the power of the human eye for you!” exclaimed Ben.
But he was wrong. The human eye had nothing to do with it. The
impulse necessary for the bear’s retreat was derived from bruin’s
own optic nerves rather than from the masterful glare of Ben’s orbs.
In short, that particular bear had never before encountered an
undressed human being, had been puzzled for a minute to know just
what species of the animal world he belonged to and had then quite
naturally jumped to the shocking conclusion that some one had
skinned the poor man without killing him. So the bear had turned and
retired.
Instead of plunging immediately into the brown water and swimming
back to Noel’s front and breakfast, Ben stepped ashore. He was
interested in the bear. He was curious to know just how far he had
chased it with his masterful glance. Had the big berry eater only
retreated to the top of the bank or had he kept right on? If he
hadn’t kept right on another glance would set him going again, that
was a sure thing.
Ben moved cautiously, not on account of the bear but in
consideration of his own skin. Wild raspberries flourished among the
tough and rasping bushes and saplings and perhaps poison ivy lurked
among the groundlings. So Ben moved cautiously and slowly up the
bank, parting the brush before him with his hands and looking twice
before every step. But despite his care he received a few scratches.
When halfway up the steep slope he paused, stood straight and
glanced around him over and through the tops of the tangle. He saw
the bow of his uncle’s canoe outthrust from its slanting bed in the
bushes on Noel’s front. He saw the spot, the edge of moist dark
soil, where the big pirogue and its grim freight had been discovered
by Noel Sabattis.
Ben continued his cautious ascent of the bank, still with curiosity
concerning the bear in the front of his mind but with the mystery of
Louis Balenger’s death looming largely behind it. He gained the
level ground at the top of the bank, still with his gaze on his
feet. He was about to stand upright again and survey his
surroundings when a glitter in the moss a few inches from his
forward foot caught his eye.
Ben stooped lower and picked up a sliver of white metal. It was a
part of a clip for keeping a fountain pen in a pocket and he
instantly recognized it as such. He stooped again and examined the
moss; and, a second later, he found the pen itself. He was on his
knees by this time, searching the moss with eager eyes and all his
fingers. And here was something more—a little pocket comb in a
sheath of soft leather.
Ben forgot all about the bear and was seized by an inspiration. He
turned around and lay down flat on the moss, braving prickles and
scratches. He placed his chest on the very spot where he had found
the broken clasp, the pen and the comb, then raised himself on his
elbows and looked to his front, his right and his left. He was now
in the prone position of firing, the steadiest position for straight
shooting.
Ben turned his face in the direction of the tree-screened clearings
downstream on the other shore. He looked through a rift between
stems and trunks and foliage, clear through and away on a slant
across the narrow river to the spot of moist shore against which the
big pirogue had lain with the dead body of Balenger aboard. His view
was unobstructed.
“Not much under three hundred yards,” he said. “Pretty shooting!”
Then he discarded his imaginary rifle, marked his position by
uprooting a wad of moss, gripped the broken clasp, the pen and the
comb securely in his left hand and got to his feet. His blood was
racing and his brain was flashing. The bear was forgotten as if it
had never been.
He descended the bank with considerably less caution than he had
exerted in the ascent, but with more speed, and he paid for his
haste with his skin. But the price didn’t bother him. He didn’t
notice it. He regained the flat rock, glanced down and across over
the sunlit surface of the brown water, then dived. He swam swiftly,
though he kept his left hand clasped tight. When he landed and
opened his hand he found the water had scarcely touched the leather
case of the little comb. He donned his clothes in about six motions
and leaped up the path.
Ben found McAllister and the old Maliseet busy at the little rusty
stove, frying bacon and pancakes as if for a prize.
“Hullo, you were up early,” said Uncle Jim. “Did you catch the first
worm?”
“I guess I did something like that,” answered Ben breathlessly.
“Look at these.”
He stepped over to the table and laid the sliver of silver, the pen
and the comb in a row beside one of the tin plates. He turned to old
Noel Sabattis.
“Did you ever see these before?” he asked.
“Yep, sure I see ’em afore,” replied Noel. “Where you git ’em dis
mornin’, hey? Where you been at, Ben? What else you got?”
“A fountain pen,” said McAllister. “And a slick little comb in a
leather case. Where’ve you been shopping so early, Ben?”
Ben paid no attention to his uncle. His eyes were on Noel’s wrinkled
face.
“Do they belong to you?” he asked.
“Nope. What you t’ink I want wid a comb, hey?”
“Were they Sherwood’s?”
“Nope. Never see t’ings like dat on Sherwood. See ’em on dat
stranger I tell you about.”
“I thought so!” cried Ben. “I thought so! We’ve got him on toast!
And Sherwood’s clear!”
He took up the comb.
“Look at this,” he said, pointing at gilt lettering stamped into the
soft leather of the case. “Read it, Uncle Jim. ‘_Bonnard Frères,
Quebec, P. Q._’ How’s that for a morning’s work on an empty
stomach?”
Uncle Jim was bewildered.
“The stranger came from Quebec,” he said. “Sure, I get that. Noel
saw these things on him, and now you’ve found them somewheres. It
proves he was here; but Noel told us that yesterday. I can’t see how
it proves he shot any one—Balenger nor any one else. If you’d found
his rifle, now that would be something. But a fountain pen?”
“You meet him dis mornin’, hey, an’ rob ’im, hey?” queried Noel.
“Nothing like it!” exclaimed Ben. “I found these things in the moss
at the top of the bank on the other side of the river. That’s the
very spot where he lay when he fired at Balenger. He broke the
snap—the clasp there—when he was wriggling about for a clear shot
through the brush, I guess, and the pen and the comb fell out of his
pocket. He was in such a hurry to get away after he’d fired, when he
saw he’d hit, that he didn’t notice the pen and comb. They were
pressed into the moss. I know that’s what happened; and we know he
came from Quebec; and Noel knows what he looks like. That’s enough,
I guess—enough to save Sherwood, anyhow.”
“Yer figuring quite a ways ahead, Ben,” said Uncle Jim.
“He shoot Balenger a’right, sure ’nough,” said Noel. “But how you
show dem police he do it wid one little pen an’ one little comb?”
“It’s simple. You’ll understand about the shooting when you see the
place. It’s simple as a picture in a book. And for the rest of it,
he must have been a friend of Balenger’s before he became his enemy.
Perhaps he and Balenger were partners of some sort. Then he was a
bad character, like Balenger—and dangerous. He was dangerous, right
enough—and a dead shot. So the police would know something about
him, wouldn’t they—the Quebec police? That stands to reason. Didn’t
he look like a bad character, Noel?”
“Yep, mighty bad. Nasty grin on him an’ bad eye, too. Dat feller
scare me worse nor Balenger scare me. When he look at me, den I
can’t look at his eye an’ I look lower down an’ see dat comb an’ dat
pen a-stickin’ outer de pocket on his breast.”
“There you are,” said Ben to McAllister. “Very likely the Quebec
police have his photograph and thumb prints; and I guess they have
more brains than Mel Lunt. I’ll write down Noel’s description of him
and all the other particulars I know, and go to Quebec and fix it.”
Ben was in high spirits, gobbled his breakfast and then had to wait
impatiently for the others to finish and light their pipes. The tin
dishes were left unwashed, the frying pan and griddle unscoured and
the three embarked in old Noel’s leaky bark and went up and across
the river to the flat rock. On the way Ben told of his experience
with the bear, saying that but for the peculiar behavior of bruin he
would not have gone ashore and climbed the bank and found the clew
that was to clear Sherwood’s name in the eyes of the law.
“Just chance,” he said. “But for that bear, I might have hunted a
week and never happened on those things.”
Uncle Jim and Noel were deeply impressed by the story of the bear.
“That was more than chance,” said McAllister, voicing a whisper of
his old Highland blood. “I’ve heard of happenings like that from old
Gran’pa McAllister when I was a boy. Nature won’t hide murder, he
used to say. I guess yer right, Ben, after all. I reckon it’ll work
out the way you figure it—but it sure did look kinder mixed up to me
when you first told it.”
They climbed the bank above the flat rock, found the spot and there
each lay down in his turn, set his elbows in the correct position
and looked through and over the sights of an imaginary rifle at the
spot three hundred yards away where the bad heart of Louis Balenger
had suddenly ceased to function.
“Dat’s right,” said Noel Sabattis.
“Guess we’ve got him, Ben,” said Uncle Jim.
The visitors set out on their homeward journey within an hour of
Ben’s demonstration of how the shot had been fired by the owner of
the fountain pen and pocket comb. But before packing their dunnage
they marked the murderer’s position with a peg in the ground and
blazes on several young spruces and they measured the distance in
paddle lengths from that point to the point where the bullet had
done its work. Then they went, in spite of old Noel’s protests and
Uncle Jim’s willingness to remain until next morning. But Ben was in
a fever of impatience. Now was not the time to humor Noel’s love of
talk or his uncle’s instinctive objections to unseemly haste. Now
was the time to follow the clew, to jump onto the trail and keep
going, to hammer out the iron while it was hot. This was no time for
talk. They had talked enough, reckoned enough, told enough and heard
enough. Now was the time for action, for speed. Ben was right, and
he had his way as far as McAllister and Noel Sabattis were
concerned.
Ben took the stern of the fine canvas canoe and humped all his
weight onto the paddle. Not only that, but he requested a little
more weight from Uncle Jim in the bow; and the canoe boiled down
French River like a destroyer.
It was about five o’clock in the afternoon when they approached the
thrashing, flashing head of the big rapids on the main river. Uncle
Jim waved his paddle toward the landing place above the first untidy
rank of jumping, jostling white and black water. The imposing shout
and hum of the rapids came threateningly to their ears.
“We’ll run her,” cried Ben.
“D’ye know the channel?” shouted McAllister, glancing back over his
shoulder.
“I asked Noel. It’s close along this shore. He’s often run it.”
“But it ain’t easy at low water. We’d best land and carry around.”
“You can’t miss it, Noel says. And we’re in a hurry. Sit tight and
keep your eye skinned, Uncle Jim. Here we go!”
They went. McAllister was an old riverman and had been down these
rapids many times in past years, but never before when the river was
low. In high water it was a simple matter for any good canoeman to
shoot Big Rapids, but in dry seasons it was only attempted by the
most skilled or most daring and not always successfully. Uncle Jim
was seasoned, but he got a lot of thrills in a short time at five
o’clock by the sun of this particular afternoon.
As usual, it seemed to him that the jouncing, curling, black
“ripples” with their fronts shot with green and amber and their tops
crested with white lather, rushed up to the canoe. That is the way
with strong black and white water. The canoe seemed to be
stationary, trembling slightly from bow to stern as if gathering
herself to spring at the last moment to meet the shock, but
otherwise as motionless as if held by ropes. Up came the raging
waters, up and past the jumping, squirming canoe. Big black rocks
bared themselves suddenly from white veils of froth and green veils
of smooth water, shouldered at the canoe, roared at her, then
vanished to the rear.
Uncle Jim felt a strong impulse, an impulse of curiosity, to look
back at young Ben O’Dell. But he did not obey it. He kept his
half-shut eyes to the front and now made a dig with his paddle to
the right and now a slash to the left. Spray flew. The canoe
jounced, shivered and jumped and yet seemed to hang unprogressing
amid the furious upward and backward stream of water and rock and
rocky shore. Thin films of water slipped in over the gleaming
gunnels and heavy lumps of water jumped aboard and flopped aboard,
now from the right and now from the left. Uncle Jim received a
tubful of it smash in the chest.
Uncle Jim enjoyed it, but he did not approve of it. It was too
darned reckless; and he still believed that the very least that
would happen to them before they reached smooth water would be the
destruction of the canoe. But he wondered at Ben. He had taught Ben
to handle a canoe in rough water and smooth, but never in such rough
and tricky water as this. And here was the young fellow twisting and
shooting and steadying her down in a manner which McAllister had
never seen surpassed in his whole life on the river. His anxiety for
Ben was almost topped by his pride in Ben.
And it looked as if they’d make it, by thunder! Here was the last
ripple roaring up at them, baring its black teeth between white
lips. And here was the slobbering black channel, shaking with
bubbles and fringed with froth, and here was the canoe fair in it.
The shouldering rocks sloshed past. Through!
Uncle Jim heard a sharp _crack_ clear above the tumult of the
rapids. He knew what had happened without looking. Ben’s paddle had
snapped. He shot his own paddle backward over his shoulder. But he
was too late, though he could not possibly have been quicker. The
canoe swerved like a maddened horse and struck the last ledge of Big
Rapids with a bump and a rip. Then she spun around and rolled over
and off.
Uncle Jim and Ben swam ashore from the pool below the rapids, Ben
with his uncle’s paddle gripped firmly in one hand.
“We were through,” said Ben. “If my paddle had lasted another ten
seconds we’d have made it.”
McAllister grasped his hand.
“Sure thing we were through!” he cried. “Ben, I’m proud of you! I
couldn’t of done it, not for my life! Never saw a prettier bit of
work in a nastier bit of water in all my born days!”
Ben beamed and blushed.
“It was great, wasn’t it?” he returned. “But I’m sorry about the
canoe, Uncle Jim. She is badly ripped, I’m afraid. There she is,
still afloat. I’ll go out and fetch her in.”
“But what about those things—the pen and comb?” asked Uncle Jim with
sudden anxiety. “Were they with the dunnage?”
“They’re safe in my pocket here, sewn in and pinned in,” replied
Ben. “I thought something like this might possibly happen and I
wasn’t taking any chances.”
McAllister smiled gravely and tenderly.
“I guess you were taking more chances than you knew about, lad,” he
said. “But it was a fine shoot, so why worry?”
Ben took off his wet coat, jumped into the pool, swam out to the
wounded canoe and brought it ashore. Together they emptied her and
lifted her out of the water. Her strong, smooth canvas was torn
through and ripped back for a distance of two feet and five of her
tough, flat ribs were cracked and telescoped.
“We had a barrel of fun, Ben, but I reckon we didn’t save much
time,” said Uncle Jim.
They hid the canoe where she would be safe until they could return
for her, and continued their journey on foot. They walked along the
edge of the river, on pebbles and smooth ledges of rock, until long
after sunset. Then they climbed the high bank and hunted about for a
road of some sort that might lead them to a house and food. They
were on the wrong side of the river to find the highroad; and after
half an hour of searching they decided that they were on the wrong
side of the river for finding anything. McAllister had matches in a
watertight box, so they built a big fire, made beds of ferns and dry
moss and fell asleep hungry but hopeful.