At the Drivers’ Camp
Two days later a message came which necessitated a trip up the Dead
River branch, traversing the ground over which Trafford had gone ten
days before. Already, however, the camps he had visited were deserted,
the drivers having followed the body of logs moving towards the river
itself. At the Forks, Trafford was joined by the assistant who had
warned him that morning in Millbank. They had a long conference,
in which there appeared no small amount of differing opinion. The
assistant had tracked from a camp on Moosehead, to a cabin beyond the
Madison Beeches above Millbank, two Canadians, who had left the lake
suddenly on May 12. He was certain he had located one of the men, a
great powerful fellow, in one of the Dead River driving gangs.
“And the other?”
“I can get no trace of him. They separated at Millbank--perhaps
forever.”
“And this fellow’s name--here on Dead River?”
“Pierre Duchesney.”
“And the other?”
“Victor Vignon.”
“It can scarcely have any bearing,” Trafford asserted after some
thought. “Nothing definite in the way of plans could have been formed
so promptly. The murder was only twenty-four hours old then.”
“But they went to Millbank; spent four days in the old Indian hut back
of Madison Beeches, and were not seen in Millbank during the entire
time. Then, no one knows how, the one appears at Parlin Pond, and works
from there over to Dead River. He’s a big, strapping fellow; the other
one was medium height and size--much the slighter made of the two.”
“But I tell you,” Trafford affirmed; “if they were called to Millbank,
the call must have come before the murder was known--they came for
something else than to assault the man supposed to have those papers.”
“And were at hand conveniently to assault the man who was supposedly
in possession of the papers, when it was found that they had
involuntarily changed hands.”
This view struck Trafford and he gave it some little thought, while the
other waited as if for his final judgment.
“As long as we’re here, we may as well have a look at your man,” said
Trafford.
The next day found them guests of the drive at the camp above the
first rapids of Dead River, where use was being had of the last of
the spring flow to get the tail of the winter’s cut into the main
channel. Already the advance guard of the summer army was making its
appearance, adventurous souls who love to see the year at its birth,
and the presence of strangers excited no especial comment. They made it
so apparent that they sought an invitation for the night that it became
unavoidable, and so with the falling of dusk and the leap of the great
flames of the camp fire among the trees, they came on to the time for
the experiment agreed upon.
Trafford had watched Pierre Duchesney at his work, a great,
strong-limbed giant whose blow, intentional or not, could well work
the crushing of lesser bones, and admitted that their purpose was
well-nigh foolhardy. To take such a man, surrounded as he was by
friends, was scarcely to be thought of, and in fact would not have been
thought of, but for a chance remark that he was not going below the
first rapids. When the jam was started here, he was to strike across
to the head waters of the Androscoggin, which Trafford’s companion,
intent in his belief that this was the man they wanted, interpreted as
a purpose to bury himself in the wilds of the Canadian wilderness about
Megantic.
Trafford, himself, while yet in doubt as to the identity of the man,
admitted that even if they lost him, it would be much gained if they
could prove him, and so consented to the plan his assistant outlined,
determined to take his chances in the matter of an actual capture.
The men were stretched about the blazing logs, smoking, sleeping,
chatting. Trafford among them watched the leap of the flames and the
gradual reddening of the great logs into coals. The other stranger had
left the circle some time before. Involuntarily Trafford kept his eye
on Pierre’s huge form, where it was stretched in the full blaze and
warmth of the logs, his eyes closed in a pleasant after-feeding doze.
Suddenly out of the dark came a sharp Canadian voice, calling:
“_Sacré, c’est moi, Pierre!_”
Every one glanced up enquiringly, but the effect on Pierre Duchesney
was startling in the extreme. His eyes stared wide from a face of ashy
grey; he leaped to his feet, shaking as one with the ague. Trafford
had sprung to his side at the instant of his leap from his recumbent
position, and in time to catch from his blanched lips the convicting
words:
“_Mon dieu; Victor!_”
Trafford’s hand was on his pistol, which he drew, with the sharp demand:
“Quick, seize the man; he’s wanted for the murder of Victor Vignon!”
At the word “murder,” the men drew back from the circle of light. They
lived free and easy lives in the woods, and had little of the fear
of the law before them in their fastnesses, but with murder and the
murderer they had no share. All the other laws of God and man, they
might violate, but to that one, “Thou shalt do no murder,” they bowed,
the very defencelessness of their lives making murder doubly terrible
to them. So, strong men as they were, they gazed wild-eyed on the
scene, and some of the bravest trembled.
On Pierre, the word acted like magic. No less pale he was than before,
but it was a paleness in which the sense of self-preservation was
awake, looking from his eyes, as it looks from those of hunted wild
creatures brought suddenly to bay. He attempted no plea; he made no
denial; but his form grew compact with the compactness of one about to
spring. Trafford, wondering what course the others would take, brought
his pistol to a steady aim, and said clearly and sharply:
“Surrender, or I’ll shoot! Throw up your arms!”
He felt, rather than saw, that on the edge of the light stood his
assistant also covering the man with his revolver. The man moved as
if to obey the order to throw up his arms, and then, with a quickness
of which none guessed him capable, struck Trafford’s arm a blow that
caused it to drop numbly by his side, sending the pistol’s discharge
into the earth. With the same movement the man crouched half to
earth, and thus escaped the other’s shot. Without rising, he darted,
crouching, for the shelter of trees beyond the fire, but not so quickly
as to save his right arm from the second shot by the assistant.
Trafford, meantime, had changed his revolver into his left hand and was
firing at the fleeing shadow that the man became before disappearing.
With his second shot, he heard his assistant at his side.
“You know now, but we’ve lost him.”
“Into the woods; into the woods,” Trafford cried, seizing a blazing
pine knot. “Quick, we’ll get him yet.”
Not a man stirred save Trafford, and he made only a step or two.
Glancing back, he saw the drivers huddled in an excited and
gesticulating group that looked startlingly like mischief. Ahead was
the heavy blackness of dense trees. Then he realised that the man had
escaped.
Meantime the men were aroused from the stupor of their first surprise
and were in a dangerous mood, the active qualities of which were
quieted by the gleam of Trafford’s badge, which he felt was the best
introduction to the explanation to which they were clearly entitled.
They listened patiently, but simply tolerantly, and their coolness
was in marked contrast to their friendliness of a brief quarter of an
hour earlier. There was no denial to Trafford and his companion of the
hospitality of the camp, but they were made to feel that they were
unwelcome guests, and they waited anxiously and impatiently for the
first touch of morning to be on their way, as well from a desire to
leave their surly companions, as from impatience to be where they could
make use of their newly acquired information.
They were not more than a mile from camp, after a hasty breakfast
eaten amid strange silence, when, from the woods lying between the
track they were following and the river, a lad of about sixteen years,
whom they had seen in camp the night before, overhauled them. He had
evidently run most of the way, and was anxious to get back before his
absence attracted attention, but he was also intent on information. The
conversation with him was carried on partly in the lad’s imperfect
English, and partly in the French of Canada with Trafford’s companion,
and by him translated to Trafford:
“Victor Vignon: my cousin. You say, murdered--dead?”
Trafford nodded.
“_Non._ He go big lake. Go by Aten’s stage.”
“Who told you so?” demanded Trafford.
“Pierre--Pierre Duchesney. When he come, he say: Victor, he go big
lake: he go by Aten’s stage.”
“Well, he killed him. Drowned him in the river at Millbank, where the
big Falls are.”
“What for he kill him?” demanded the boy.
“Who sent for your cousin at the big lake when he and Pierre went
away?” Trafford demanded, and then, it being evident that the lad
had not sufficient command of English to master this question, his
companion repeated it in French.
The lad’s face brightened as he heard his native tongue, and from that
time he carried his part of the conversation mostly in that tongue.
“The boss.”
On questioning, it developed that the “boss” had said the “big man”
had sent for Pierre and Victor; had said that they were to go to the
Forks of the River and meet a gang, but when they got there the gang
was gone and they had word to go somewhere else, and it was when Pierre
came back and Victor had gone to the big lake, that the lad was told
this by Pierre. The lad did not know where it was that Victor had gone,
but he was to see him again when the drive was over and they were ready
to go back to Canada before the feast of St. John.
Oh, yes; the “big man” was somebody who lived down where the water went
over the big Falls, and owned all the trees, and sent the boss money to
pay them. He didn’t know his name, but he was a great big man--as big
as the Seigneur at Rigaud-Vandreuil, the biggest man the lad had ever
seen.
“A bigger man than the boss?”
Oh, yes; for he sent the boss money to pay them and owned the trees,
while the boss wasn’t as big a man as Louis Blanchet, the notary, whom
he, the lad, had often seen and talked with, and once had thrown mud at
when he was drunk.
No, he didn’t know the big man’s name; he had said that before, but
anybody could tell them; anybody who knew, for he owned the trees; and
the “boss” could tell them; his name was Kennett, Georges Kennett; not
the boss here, for his name was Jean Busque, he was Canadian; but the
other boss, the one who told Pierre and Victor to go to the Forks of
the River.
But he must go back, because the boss, the one here, would be angry
and make him lose some of his money. He had heard them say something
about Victor being killed, and he wanted to ask them and tell them it
couldn’t be Victor, because he had gone to the big lake, as Pierre had
said. What would Victor’s wife do if he was dead? The good God--_le bon
Dieu_--and the good Saint Anne--_la bonne sainte Anne_--wouldn’t let
him be dead, when there was Victor’s wife and three little ones and
another coming in the summer, as Victor had told him. They must know
that Victor couldn’t be dead, and if they saw him, they were to tell
him that he--Étienne Vignon--had said this and would meet him at the
big Falls to go back to la Beauce before the feast of Saint John, as
Victor had promised Étienne’s mother when he took him away to go on
the drive. And with these words, the lad dashed into the woods for his
mile run back to camp.
Trafford caught himself perilously near a sigh, as the lad disappeared
among the trees.
“It’s as plain as the nose on your face--that part of it,” he said.
“Hunter sent for these men; had them go to the forks to join a
pretended gang, and word was left there for ’em to go on to the hut
back of the Madison Beeches.”
“Hunter?” his companion asked.
“Certainly. Isn’t he the man who owns the trees to such a simple lad as
that? He don’t know the name--but we do, Charles Hunter of Millbank.”
“Then he’s concerned in the murder?”
“If you knew the things that aren’t to be seen as well as you do the
things that you see, you’d beat us all,” Trafford answered. “If he
was in the murder, he’d know where those papers are and wouldn’t have
needed these men. His very desperation to get them shows he isn’t the
murderer.”
“Then Charles Hunter’s the man who’s afraid of those papers,” the
other repeated, as if half dazed by the revelation.
“One of ’em,” said Trafford. “I’ve known that much a long time.”
“But if the men who are afraid of the papers aren’t the men who
murdered him haven’t you knocked out the motive for the murder? That’s
the thing that’s bothered all the time, and now that we’ve got hold of
one, it’s a pity to lose it again.”
“Beware of clues,” half laughed Trafford. “That’s the lesson you
haven’t learned yet. I’ve said Hunter was one of the men who’s afraid
of the papers. I haven’t said there weren’t others. Then it doesn’t
follow that the only people who wanted to get the papers were those who
were afraid of ’em. Given the papers, there’s a dozen things that might
make ’em the motive of the murder besides being afraid of them.”
After a silence that lasted some time, the other turned to Trafford and
demanded:
“Did you know Hunter was in this thing when you set me to hunting
Canucks round Millbank?”
“Certainly,” answered Trafford. “I’ve known it since a half-hour after
the attack was made on me at the bridge. Why?”
“Thunder! Hunter was one of the men of whom I thought it safe to make
open enquiries about Canucks I was looking for.”
“It’s never safe,” Trafford said, “to make enquiries of any one, unless
you are willing that everybody should know, or anxious that one man
should. In this case, ’twas just as well Hunter should know that we
were on the track. He’s a man who makes his false slips when he’s the
most anxious to escape.”