A BIT OF MYSTERY.
Under Merriwell’s urging, Hans Dunnerwust set out to conduct the
party to the spot where he had found the head of the moose.
He went shrinkingly enough, and, as they drew near the place, he
retreated in sudden alarm, squawking:
“Look oudt! I vos seen someding dot dree py!”
Glancing toward the tree indicated, the others saw the bushes
moving, but could make out nothing else.
“Id vos a man,” Hans declared. “A man mit a gun. Shimminy Gristmas,
if I shoult shood me, vot voult he do?”
“He’ll not shoot you,” assured Merriwell.
Bart Hodge started to run forward.
“I’ll bet it’s the fellow who killed the moose.”
Parker and all the others, prisoners and officers combined,
followed Hodge at a lively gait; but when the tree was gained, no
living thing was to be seen.
“He couldn’t have got away,” said the game warden, looking into the
boughs as if he expected to see a man hanging from one, as Hans had
seen the moose head. “That is, if it was a man. You are sure you
saw something?”
This last was fired sharply at Hans.
“So hellup me cracious, a man mit a gun seen me dot dree py!” Hans
solemnly asserted. “He vos vly away, I subbose, like a canary
pird. Dot vos like a sbirit doo much do suid me, alretty yet.
Oxcoose me! I vos vanted dot camp py!”
“Here’s something,” announced one of the deputies, prodding with
his gun some object that hung from a limb.
It was found to be a piece of moose meat, hung up, as the head had
been. A little search revealed other pieces of moose flesh, all of
which the Dutch boy had overlooked. But nowhere could anyone find
a trace of the man Hans claimed to have seen.
“Just some animal or other, nosing after the meat,” said Parker,
with an air of conviction. “When he saw us, he scampered away, and
that was what shook the bushes.”
The sun had now set, and the light was not good under, the trees,
but the officers and the members of Merriwell’s party proceeded to
look for some traces of the man, animal, or whatever it was that
shook the bushes, and also to examine the ground where the moose
had been skinned and cut up.
Merriwell had tried to keep his temper well in check, but he was
growing more and more humiliated and angry. Some of the words
dropped now and then by the deputies were peculiarly exasperating,
but Merry knew how unwise and impolitic it would be to give these
men any excuse for charging that he and his friends had “resisted
officers in the performance of their duties.”
What hurt Merry more than anything else, though, was the conviction
that was slowly being forced on him that John Caribou was not the
honest man he had thought. The guide had been gone many hours, now,
after leaving under circumstances that were strangely suspicious.
Why did Caribou not return?
Merriwell recalled the exciting combat between the dogs and the
deer on the lake, when he had saved the guide’s life. Had the guide
forgotten that service so readily, after declaring that he could
never forget it? It would seem so.
“But I shall not give up yet,” Merriwell concluded. “Things are
looking black against John Caribou, but there may be a reasonable
explanation for it all. It hurts me to lose confidence in a man in
that way, and I shall not do it till I have to. He may have injured
himself some way, or shot himself, for all we know.”
The game warden glanced at his watch.
“It’s getting dark in here pretty fast,” he observed. “I don’t see
that we’re to gain much by all of us staying here longer. I shall
stay, with Sam Best, to watch for that man. Dutchy may have been
right, though I hardly think he was; but anyway, whoever hung up
this moose meat, if it wasn’t our friends here, will come for it,
and very likely to-night. I want to trap him.”
“Shall we leave the meat?” one of the deputies asked.
“Yes, just as it is. Get us something up to eat and send it over
right away.”
Some of the deputies were still scurrying round through the
undergrowth.
Merriwell chanced at that moment to glance toward Dunnerwust, and
was bewildered by the look that he saw come into the Dutch boy’s
face.
Hans had seated himself on a log not far from the tree, to rest and
recuperate while the examination of the ground was being made. As
for searching for the man, Hans would not have done that, lest he
should find him.
A peculiar look of horror had crept into Dunnerwust’s face, which
grew rapidly more pronounced.
What was its cause?
Hans had felt something reach out from the log on which he was
sitting and press against one of his legs. He thought it the head
of a snake and that if he moved it would strike him.
Whatever it was pushed gently against his leg for a moment, then
pushed a little harder, after which the pressure was withdrawn. The
movement was really such as might have been made by some animal in
the log trying to shift to an easier position.
Hans would have leaped up and shrieked out, but that he was made
too weak by that queer touch. Then the pressure returned.
It was unbearable. He could not stand it, even to save himself from
snake bite. His heart gave a great bound, and, as it drove the
chilled blood through his veins, his strength came back.
“Wow! Hellup! Fire! Murter!” he screeched, jumping up as if he had
been touched by a hot coal. “I vos kilt alretty!”
As he did so, he felt a human hand come out of the log and clutch
one of his legs. This was more than flesh and blood could endure.
Instead of running he fell flat to the ground, where he rolled and
kicked and shrieked in a way to raise the dead.
Excited cries came from the game warden and his deputies and from
the members of Merriwell’s party. All rushed toward Hans.
Then the log seemed to become alive. It rose into the air, and a
man appeared. The log had been only a shell concealing this man.
More surprising than all, the man was John Caribou, the guide!
Parker, rushing toward the guide, whom he did not recognize,
however, in the semi-gloom, was struck by a piece of the shell
which the guide hurled at him and staggered back, dropping the gun
he seemed on the point of lifting.
John Caribou darted into the bushes and was swallowed from sight
almost instantly.
A shot was fired by some one, and there was a hasty, pursuit, which
amounted to nothing.
Merriwell was standing in a half dazed and wholly uncertain state
of mind as the unsuccessful pursuers came back. What did it mean?
What was Caribou doing there? Why had he run?
He could not answer his own questions.
Then he was made aware by the whirlwind of excited talk that no one
else knew the man was Caribou. He had been nearer the log than any
other person except Hans, and so had a good view of the man’s face
and form, which the others had not.
“Caribou!” he inwardly gasped. “Shall I speak out or hold my tongue
for further developments. I can tell it later if I think it wise;
but if I tell it now, I can’t withdraw the statement should there
become need. I’ll keep still.”
Hans Dunnerwust was rolling over and over on the ground like some
speared animal.
“I vos nefer so tead as I peen dis dime,” he was gasping. “I vos
pite mineselluf py a snake, and ead my leg mit a vilt cad, und
shood mineselluf py a mans, und boison me drough und drough. Vill
some vun kilt me do keeb me vrom dying dot snake-pite py?”
Hans was in a terrible state.
“Get up,” Merriwell commanded, “and stop that blubbering. The
fellow is gone. You aren’t hurt in the least. Get up, I tell you.
You are acting like a baby.”
“I vish I vos a papy,” Hans groaned. “A liddle pit uf a papy dot
couldn’t valk indo der voods.”
“Must have been the poacher,” said Hodge, looking longingly toward
the point where the man had disappeared. “I wish we could have put
hands on him.”
“Perhaps our good friends will not judge us so harshly, now,”
suggested Diamond, in the hearing of Parker and one of the deputies.
“Dutchy saw a man all right,” said a deputy.
“No use watching the tree now,” said Parker, regretfully. “He must
have heard what we said, and he’ll never come back for that meat.”
“And it was John Caribou!” thought Frank Merriwell.