A MIDNIGHT VISITOR
It was getting dark when the boys retired to their room, in which two
beds were standing at opposite corners. Harry chose the one nearest the
door, and they left the window open. The room was, as usual in such
places, very scantily furnished, but it appeared very comfortable after
their camps in the dripping bush, and Frank found it a luxury to get his
clothes off and lie down upon a comparatively soft mattress.
A draught blew in at intervals through the window, and the door, which
would not shut, swung to and fro. It was raining as hard as ever, for
Frank could hear a muffled roar upon the shingled roof, and the pines
outside were wailing dolefully. He soon went to sleep, however, but was
awakened later by the sound of voices and a soft patter of feet below.
The rain seemed to have stopped at last, though he could hear a heavy
splashing from the branches of the firs close by, and he fancied that
the Chinamen must be starting. There was, however, no sign of morning
when he glanced toward the window, which showed only as a faintly
lighter square in the surrounding obscurity. In fact, it seemed
unusually dark, which struck him as curious, since there was a moon, but
the hotel stood in a valley shrouded by giant trees and he supposed that
the sky was thick with cloud.
He heard the voices grow fainter and the footsteps gradually recede
until they were lost in the moaning of the pines, and he felt that he
did not envy the Chinamen their journey. He wondered why they had not
waited until sunrise before starting, and then remembered that a rancher
he had met had told him that a trail led out of the settlement for some
distance. He supposed it would be light before the Chinamen should reach
the end of it and plunge into the forest. About a quarter of an hour had
slipped away when, lying half asleep, he thought that he heard some one
in the room. He could see nothing but the window, and could hear little
else than the sound of the wind among the trees, but raising himself
very cautiously on one elbow he distinctly heard a faint sound that
suggested a stealthy movement. This seemed very curious, for he felt
almost certain that if his companion had had any idea of trying to find
out something about the Chinamen he would have told him, besides which,
the Chinamen had gone.
While he lay still listening with tingling nerves there was a soft
scraping and presently a very pale blue flame broke out, showing a
shadowy figure in a loose robe bending over Harry's bed with a light in
its hand. Frank did not pause to consider what the stranger's intentions
might be, but reached for his boot, which was a heavy one, and flung it
with all his might at the shadowy object's head. It struck the boarded
wall with a startling crash, the light suddenly went out, and he sprang
from his bed in the darkness with a cry of "Harry!"
"Well," said his companion drowsily, "what's the matter?"
"Where's the Chinaman?" shouted Frank, darting toward the door.
He ran out into a passage with Harry blundering half awake behind him,
and noticed that there was an open window near the door which had been
shut when he had last seen it. On reaching it he espied what seemed to
be the roof of a low outbuilding not far below, but there was very
little else to be seen except the loom of the dusky pines which were
beginning to stand out against the sky. Then he heard a rush of
pattering feet and a yelp on the stairway close by, and a furry body
flung itself against his knee. He recognized the dog, who almost
immediately darted into the room. It came out again, sprang to the
window ledge, and bounded to the roof beneath. He heard a soft thud on
the shingles and a bark that sounded farther off, and then for a moment
or two there was silence again.
It was broken by the sound of a door flung open, and Mr. Barclay came
along the passage very lightly dressed, with a lamp in his hand. Telling
them to follow, he walked into the boys' room, and placed the lamp on a
bureau before he sat down on the nearest bed.
"Now," he asked, "what's the cause of this commotion?"
"I don't know," said Harry. "Perhaps Frank can tell you. He seems to
have been throwing his boots about."
Frank, a little nettled, narrated what he had seen. Mr. Barclay smiled.
"You say the man was standing by Harry's bed," he observed. "Did you
notice if he had a big knife in his hand?"
"He'd nothing but a match," Frank answered shortly.
"Now that's curious," said Mr. Barclay. "Do you suppose he meant to set
the bed on fire, or have you any idea what he was doing?"
Frank heard a slight sound and looking around saw Mr. Oliver standing in
the doorway, while just then a shout came down the passage, apparently
from the hotelkeeper.
"What's the trouble? Is there anything wrong?"
"We're trying to find out," Mr. Barclay replied. "It doesn't seem to be
serious, anyway."
"Then I'll put a few clothes on before I come along," said the voice,
and a door banged.
"He seemed to be looking down at Harry's face," said Frank, who saw
that Mr. Barclay was waiting an answer.
Mr. Barclay now turned and favored Harry with a critical gaze.
"I can't understand what the fellow wanted to do that for." Then he
smiled back at Frank. "These are decadent days. He wouldn't have got
away with his scalp on if he'd come creeping into the room of the James
boys."
Harry flushed. "I suppose you mean to hint that Frank imagined it all,
sir? Well, he told you the man struck a match, and though sulphur
matches don't give much light they make a considerable smell. Do you
notice any particular odor in this room?" Then he stooped suddenly and
picked up a half-burned match. "What do you make of this? I haven't
struck one."
Mr. Barclay examined the match with an abstracted expression, and while
he did so the dog pattered into the room wagging his tail in a
deprecatory manner, as if to excuse himself for not overtaking the
intruder. He jumped distractedly around the boys for a moment and then
crouched down upon the floor with a short length of broken cord trailing
from his collar. Mr. Oliver pointed to it with an amused smile.
"It seems to me the dog must have imagined something of the same kind as
Frank did," he observed.
By this time the hotelkeeper arrived and gazed on with astonishment
while Mr. Barclay briefly explained the cause of the commotion.
"I've never heard anything like this since I've been in the place," he
declared. "The Chinamen are out on the trail now. Better see if you have
lost anything."
The couple of dollars that Frank had brought with him proved to be still
in his pocket, and Harry fished out the dollar which belonged to him.
His cheap watch was safe beneath his pillow, and Frank declared that he
had left his silver one at the ranch. This appeared to make the matter
more inexplicable to the hotelkeeper.
"If the fellow had gone off with something, I could have understood it,"
he said in a puzzled way.
"It's most likely that Frank saw him almost immediately after he came
in," said Mr. Oliver. "As he pitched his boot at him, the man was
probably startled and got out without wasting any time in looking round.
Then the dog broke loose and went after him."
The hotelkeeper agreed with this and shortly afterward Mr. Oliver,
telling the boys not to trouble themselves any further about the matter,
followed him out with Mr. Barclay. They turned into the latter's room,
where Mr. Oliver sat down.
"I imagine that Frank's notion is correct," he said. "As Harry told you,
he and Frank once paid a visit to the Chinese camp near our ranch where
he saw the man with the high shoulder and followed him to a shack from
which he disappeared. If the Chinaman who crept into the room chanced to
have been about the camp when the boys were there, it's quite possible
that he did wish to see Harry's face."
"That," Mr. Barclay admitted, "is my own opinion, though it seemed wiser
not to impress it on the boys. I don't suppose you want them to get to
making any investigations on their own account?"
"No," rejoined Mr. Oliver. "On the other hand, they've taken a certain
part in the matter already. In fact, it might have been better if I'd
left them behind. The trouble is that if the Chinaman recognized Harry
it would probably give him some idea as to why we made this visit."
Mr. Barclay nodded his head. "Yes," he said. "It's a pity, but, after
all, I'm rather glad I made this trip. It's going to prove worth while."
Nothing further was said on the subject and silence settled down again
on the hotel. There was bright sunshine when the party started with the
stage next morning, and after spending the night at a little colliery
town they took the train south. Getting off at a small station they
found the sloop safe in the cove where they had left her. Mr. Barclay,
however, went on with the peltries to Victoria, which was not far away,
and there managed to dispose of them, after which he hired a horse and
rode back to the inlet. They set sail as soon as he arrived, and after
two days of light winds duly reached the cove near the ranch.
A few months slipped by peacefully. The smugglers showed no sign of
further activity, and Mr. Oliver got his oat crop in undisturbed. One
way or another he kept the boys busy from morning until night, but at
last when the maple leaves were beginning to turn he told them to take
their rifles and go hunting, and they set off one morning after
breakfast.
It was a still, clear morning, and now that the fall was drawing on
there was a change in the bush. Here and there a maple leaf caught a ray
of sunshine and burned like a crimson lamp, the fern was growing yellow,
and the undergrowth was splashed and spattered with flecks of varying
color. Even the light in the openings seemed different. It was at once
softer and clearer than the glare of summer, and the shadows seemed
thinner and bluer than they had been. But there was no difference in the
great black firs. They lifted their fretted spires high against the sky,
as they had done for centuries, and they would remain the same until the
white man's ax should sweep the wilderness away.
The boys were floundering waist-deep in withered fern and tangled
undergrowth when they heard a rustling and scurrying somewhere near
their feet, and Harry, breaking off a rotten branch from a fallen fir,
hurled it into a neighboring thicket.
"A fool hen!" he shouted. "Jump round this bush, and try to put it up."
Frank fell into the thicket in his haste, but he still heard the
scurrying in front of him when he scrambled to his feet. He kicked a
clump of fern, and there was no doubt that something rushed away from
underneath it, after which he plunged through the brake with Harry some
yards away on one side of him, but there was nothing visible. They
hunted the unseen creature for what he supposed was about ten minutes
with no better result. Then a plainly colored bird about the size of a
pigeon rose from almost under his feet and flew to a fir branch some
twenty yards away, where it perched and looked down at its pursuers
unconcernedly.
"It doesn't seem scared now," said Frank in astonishment.
"It isn't," Harry answered with a laugh. "The thing feels quite safe
once it's on a branch. I guess that's why it's called the fool hen,
though its proper name is the willow grouse. Walk up and try a shot at
it--only you must cut its head off."
Frank crept up nearer with a caution which was wholly unnecessary, for
the bird did not seem to mind him in the least when he stopped close
beneath it and pitched his rifle to his shoulder, but as he gazed at it
over the half-moon of the rearsight it seemed to him that its neck was
exceedingly small. He could not keep the forebead fixed on it, and
bringing the rifle down he rested before he tried it again. Then he felt
the butt thump his shoulder and the barrel jerk, and a little wisp of
smoke drifted across his eyes and hung about the bushes. When it
cleared, the grouse, to his astonishment, was sitting on the branch as
calmly as ever.
"It likes it," said Harry. "Try again--only at its neck."
Trying again, Frank succeeded in inducing the bird to move to a
neighboring branch, after which he braced himself with desperate
determination for the third attempt. This time the jar upon his shoulder
was followed by a soft thud, and he understood why he had been warned
to shoot only at its neck when he picked up his victim. The big .44
bullet had horribly shattered it.
"Could _you_ have shot its head off?" he asked after he had thrown it
down in disgust.
"Why, yes," said Harry. "Anyway, I can generally manage it if the thing
sits still. Most of the bush ranchers could do it every time."
He made this good presently when they found another bird, for it dropped
at his first shot without its head. Half an hour later they saw a blue
grouse perched rather high up in a cedar.
"This fellow won't sit to be fired at," Harry explained. "Better try it
kneeling where you are, if you can get the foresight up enough."
Frank knelt with his right foot tucked under him and his left elbow on
his knee. It steadied the rifle considerably, but he had to cramp
himself a little to raise the muzzle. Holding his breath he squeezed the
trigger when a part of the bird filled up the curve of the rearsight,
but he was mildly astonished when Harry walked toward him with the
grouse in his hand.
"I guess this one could be cooked," he said dubiously. "We'll take it
along."
Frank surveyed his victim with a thrill of pride. It was larger than the
willow grouse. In fact, it seemed to him a remarkably big and handsome
bird in spite of the hole in it, and he thrust it into the flour bag on
his back with unalloyed satisfaction.
"Is this the thing that makes the drumming in the spring?" he asked.
Harry said that it was, and they scrambled through the bush for a couple
of hours without seeing anything further, until they approached a swampy
hollow with a steep hillside over which the undergrowth hung unusually
thick.
"There ought to be a black bear yonder; they like the wild cabbage,"
said Harry. "We'll try to crawl in. It's a pity there isn't a little
wind ahead of us."
They spent half an hour over the operation, and Frank realized that
trailing had its drawbacks when he found that it entailed burrowing
among thorny thickets and crawling across quaggy places on his hands and
knees. In spite of his caution sticks would snap and it seemed to his
strung-up imagination that he was making a prodigious noise. At last,
however, there was another sound some distance in front of him which
suddenly became louder.
"A bear, sure," cried Harry excitedly. "Going off up hill. Shoot if you
can see it."
Frank gazed intently ahead, but could see absolutely nothing, though he
could hear a smashing and crashing which presently died away again on
the slope. Then Harry brought down his rifle and turned away.
"You can generally hear a black bear," he said. "He goes straight and
rips right through the things a deer would jump. He's a kind of harmless
beast, anyway."
"Could we find a deer?" Frank asked, his hopes still high.
"We'll try when we've had dinner," replied his companion. "I haven't
seen any lately, though that doesn't count for much, because it would be
possible not to notice one if the woods were full of them. Still, they
seem to have a way of clearing right out of the country every now and
then for no particular reason. The bear and the timber wolves do the
same thing."
They ate their dinner sitting among the roots of a big cedar, while a
gorgeous green and red woodpecker climbed about a neighboring trunk.
Then Harry stood up and shouldered his rifle.
"After this we'll leave the birds alone," he announced. "You don't want
to make a noise when you're trailing deer."