TAKING TO THE TRAIL
Ned Tone flinched and reddened at the insult.
“That ain’t no way to talk to me!” he cried. “You wouldn’t dare say
it if ye was a man.”
“Yes, I would. You showed yourself in your true colors when you
misdirected this stranger. That was the lowest, meanest trick ever
played in these woods by white man or Indian.”
“’S that so. Maybe _he’s_ the liar. Who is he, anyhow, an’ what’s he
hidin’ ’round here for? Where’d he come from? He’s a slick talker;
an’ I reckon that’s all ye know about him, Catherine MacKim.”
“We’ll just step back into the woods, you and I, out of the lady’s
sight and hearing, if she’ll excuse us for a few minutes,” said Tom,
in a quiet voice.
“Not me,” replied the big woodsman. “I got nothin’ to say to ye in
private. If ye’re lookin’ fer a fight ye’re lookin’ up the wrong
tree, I wouldn’t dirty my hands on ye.”
“Again, you mean.”
“So ye’ve bin braggin’ about that, have ye?”
“Well, it was something to brag about, don’t you think so?—to beat
up the heaviest hitter on Indian River? Gaspard Javet wouldn’t
believe it possible until he saw you—and you told him you’d had a
scrap with a bear.”
“It ain’t true,” snarled Tone. “It’s all lies. My word’s as good as
yourn—an’ better. I won’t fight, anyhow.”
“In that case, please go away from here immediately!” exclaimed
Catherine.
Her voice shook and her face was pale with anger and scorn.
“D’ye mean that?” cried Tone. “Order me off like a dog, without bite
or sup, because I won’t fight with this here tramp? An’ me a
neighbor from B’ilin’ Pot! Treat me worse’n ye’d treat a drunk
Injun! That ain’t the way we do things in this country, Catherine
MacKim. We don’t turn agin our neighbors jist to please slick-spoken
hoboes a-sneakin’ ’round tryin’ to shake the game-wardens. Like
enough there’s more nor game-wardens after this smart Alec—the
police theirselves, like as not.”
“I wonder why you stand there talking when no one wants to listen to
you,” said the girl.
Tone received those quiet words as if he had been struck in the
face. He had been amazed and angered before—but the amazement and
anger which he now felt were beyond anything of the sort he had ever
known or even imagined. His eyes darkened with the dangerous shadows
of outraged vanity and goaded fury. So he stared at her for a few
seconds; and then, quick as a flash, he turned and flung himself
upon Tom Akerley.
Tom, who had not seen the change in the other’s eyes, was not ready
for the onslaught. Over he went, flat on his back in the long grass,
with the big bushwhacker on top of him; and so he lay—for a fraction
of a second.
Ned Tone’s fingers were on Tom’s windpipe, and one of his knees was
on the chest and the other in the pit of the stomach of the
prostrate one, when Tom suddenly turned over on his face and humped
himself like a camel. Tone felt a grip as of iron on both wrists, a
cracking strain on the muscles of his arms and shoulders, and then a
sense of general upheaval. His feet described an arc in the air and
he struck the ground full-length with jarring force.
Tone got up slowly and saw Tom standing beside Catherine.
“You don’t know any more about wrestling than you do about boxing,”
said Tom, pleasantly. “But even if you were trained you wouldn’t be
much good, for all your weight and muscle—because you haven’t any
spirit, any grit.”
Tone turned without a word and started slowly for the road that cut
through the belt of forest and connected the new clearing with the
older fields. The others followed him, Tom smiling and the girl
still pale with indignation and scorn. Tone did not look around. As
he passed close to the house, on his way to the road that led afar
through the wilderness to Boiling Pot, Tom overtook him and
suggested that he should rest awhile and have something to eat.
Tone’s reply to the offer of hospitality would scorch the paper if
written down. So Tom let him go. Tone turned at the edge of the
woods and shook his fist.
Tom turned to Catherine, who had come up and halted beside him, and
said, “He is so futile that I feel sorry for him.”
“He would be dangerous if he knew—but it is quite evident that he
doesn’t know,” she said. “But he’ll do you some injury if he
possibly can. I think he hates you. I am afraid I would not have let
him off so easily if I had been in your place to-day, after that
treacherous attack.”
“He doesn’t seem to like me, that’s a fact,” returned Tom, with a
quiet smile. “I suppose it is natural that he should feel that way
about me, for several reasons; and I am not sorry.”
Catherine glanced at him quickly, and the color was back in her
cheeks.
“You are wonderfully good-natured,” she said, “and you seem to have
a marvelous control of your temper. I can’t understand your striking
that colonel.”
“My nerves are better than they were then,” he replied. “But even
now—well, when it comes to a fellow like that saying that your dead
friend was a coward!—but he was fat and out of condition, and I
shouldn’t have hit him on the chin.”
“I am not finding fault with you for that,” she said. “Far from it.”
She entered the house, and Tom returned to his mowing in the new
clearing. As he took up his scythe he muttered, “I wonder what’s
going to happen to me here—and when?”
Gaspard and Mick Otter were late for dinner, but they found
Catherine and Tom waiting at the table for them. After hearing all
about Ned Tone’s visit, Gaspard used threatening language. Mick
Otter plied his knife with a preoccupied air.
“You don’t like him, hey?” he queried, looking at Gaspard.
“No, or never did, durn his hide!” exclaimed the other.
“Guess he feels sore,” said the Maliseet, looking reflectively at
Catherine. “You like ’im one time maybe, hey Cathie?”
“Never!” cried the girl. “I never liked him!”
Mick wagged his head and glanced at Tom.
“You best watch out or maybe he shoot you from b’ind a tree one
day,” he said.
The hay was all cut and gathered in; the oats and buckwheat were
harvested; the potatoes were dug and stored; and still old Mick
Otter stuck to the clearings and the hard work, and in all that time
nothing more was seen or heard of Ned Tone from Boiling Pot. Gaspard
Javet continued to keep his rifle handy, but whether in readiness
for a snap at the fiendish visitor or at the heaviest hitter on
Indian River the others were not sure.
Mid-September came, with nights of white frost, mornings of gold and
silver magic, and noons of sunshine faintly fragrant with scents of
balsamy purple cones and frost-nipped berries and withering ferns.
Red and yellow leaves fell circling in windless coverts; and cock
partridges, with trailing wings and out-fanned tails, mounted on
prostrate trunks of old gray pines, filled the afternoons with their
hollow drumming. Then a change came over Mick Otter. His interest in
agricultural pursuits suddenly expired. Fat pigs, well-fed cattle,
full barns and his comfortable bed suddenly lost all meaning for
him. He sniffed the air; and his eyes were always lifting from his
work to the hazy edges of the forest. Even the virtues of
Catherine’s cooking suddenly seemed a small and unimportant matter
to him.
One evening at supper he said, “Set little line o’ traps ’round
Pappoose Lake maybe. Plenty musquash, some fox, some mink, maybe.
You don’t trap that country long time now, hey?”
“Ain’t trapped it these five years,” replied Gaspard. “I’d help ye
set the line but I be afeared o’ rheumatics—an’ I gotter watch out
’round these here clearin’s.”
“You come, hey?” queried Mick, turning to Tom. “Git plenty fur,
plenty money, plenty sport.”
“Where is it?” asked Tom, without enthusiasm.
“Five-six mile,” replied Mick. “You come back when you like to see
Gaspar’, what?”
Tom reflected that money might be useful in the future, although he
had lived through these last three months without a cent. He could
see no likelihood of ever being able to touch the few hundreds of
dollars to his credit in the bank, in the distant world from which
he had fled. Yes, he might need money some day; and furs of almost
every variety brought a high price now, he had heard. So why not
join Mick Otter in this venture? If their activities took them no
farther afield than Pappoose Lake he would be able to visit the
clearing twice or thrice a week—and oftener, with luck. He glanced
covertly at Catherine.
Catherine had been watching him; and the moment their eyes met, she
nodded slightly and smiled.
“That a’ right!” exclaimed Mick Otter, whose sharp eyes and active
wits had missed nothing.
“Yes, I’ll go with you,” said Tom, with an embarrassed grin. “But I
warn you that I don’t know anything about trapping fur.”
“That a’ right,” returned the Maliseet. “Mick Otter got the brain
for the both of us, you got the arm an’ the leg for the hard work.
Take plenty fur, you bet.”
They set out for Pappoose Lake, six miles to the northward, two days
later. They carried blankets, axes, Mick Otter’s rifle, a small bag
of flour, tea, bacon, a kettle, a frying-pan and half a dozen traps.
It took them three hours to get to the lake, for the way was rough
and not straight and their loads were heavy. There Tom rested for
half an hour; and Mick cruised around for a likely site for their
camp. Then Tom returned to the clearings, dined with Gaspard and
Catherine, loaded up with more provisions, four more traps and a
tarpaulin, and headed northward again for Pappoose Lake.
Catherine followed him from the house, and called to him just as he
was climbing the brush-fence at the northern edge of the new
clearing. He turned very willingly and lowered his pack to the
ground.
“I have just thought of something,” she said. “Ned Tone is still
dangerous, and we should be ready for him if he comes back. The
danger of his seeing something, or hearing something, to cause him
to suspect your identity, isn’t passed, you know.”
“I know it,” said Tom. “I realize that I am still in danger of
discovery. That is the only thing that worries me now.”
“And if you are found, it will be through Ned Tone,” she said. “You
must be careful. Whenever you come back, take a look at the house
before you show yourself. If there is danger I’ll show something
white in my window.”
“And at night?”
“A candle on my window-sill. But that is not all. If the danger
seems acute, if there is a chance of people searching the woods for
you, I’ll come and warn you.”
“But do you know the way?”
“Yes, I have been to Pappoose Lake.”
Tom thanked her somewhat awkwardly for her thoughtfulness, hoisted
his lumpy pack to his shoulders again and scrambled slowly across
the brush-fence. He turned on the other side.
“Perhaps I’ll be able to tell you—to show you, some day—to prove to
you—what I think of your kindness—and you,” he said.
Then he turned and vanished in the underbrush; and the girl turned
and went back to the house, thoughtful but happy.
Mick Otter and Tom made two camps, one on the western end of
Pappoose Lake and the other seven miles away to the northwest, on
Racquet Pond. The first was nothing more than a lean-to, walled with
woven brush and roofed with the tarpaulin. The second was built of
poles chinked with moss—four walls broken by a doorway and a tiny
window-hole. In the middle of the mossy floor lay a circular hearth
of stones; and directly above the hearth, in the sloping roof of
poles and sods, gaped a square hole.
Mick Otter was proud of the Racquet Pond camp—but Tom didn’t think
very highly of it. Having completed the camps to the old Maliseet’s
entire satisfaction, they set the lines of traps—five traps in the
vicinity of Pappoose Lake and five around Racquet Pond. For three
weeks they made the lean-to their headquarters; and in that time Tom
made half a dozen visits to Gaspard Javet’s farm; finding that
everything was right there and that nothing more had been seen or
heard of Ned Tone.
The last week of October was one of miserable weather. A heavy frost
had frozen the swamps and driven the woodcock south; and this was
followed by days of chilly rain—rain so exceedingly chilly that it
sometimes fell in the form of hail. It was in this time of
discomfort that Mick Otter suggested the removal of headquarters to
Racquet Pond. He said, very truthfully, that the farther camp was
warmer and drier than the lean-to and that the farther line of traps
had already beaten the Pappoose line by three mink and a fox.
“Do pretty good with ten traps on Racquet,” he said.
“Take the traps, if you want to,” replied Tom, “but I stay right
here until something happens.”
So Mick moved alone, taking his blankets, the kettle and frying-pan,
some of the grub and two traps along with him. Bad as the weather
was, Tom immediately set out for the clearings, to borrow another
pan and another kettle. He spent a very pleasant evening with
Catherine and her grandfather.
Tom was to recall that happy and comfortable evening often before
spring. Catherine was as frankly friendly as ever—but the old man’s
attitude toward him was not quite as usual. It was as friendly as
ever, but different. Tom caught the old man gazing at him several
times with an expression of new interest, curiosity and wonder in
his searching eyes.
“You aren’t saying much to-night,” remarked Tom, after his host had
sat silent for nearly an hour and two games of chess had been
played.
“An’ thinkin’ all the more, lad,” replied Gaspard, pleasantly.
“But what about, Grandad?” asked Catherine.
“One thing an’ another, one thing an’ another—but mostly about human
vanity an’ ignorance an’ the hand o’ Providence,” answered Gaspard.
The young people let it go at that. They smiled at each other across
the corner of the table and set up the chessmen again. The subjects
of human vanity and ignorance did not touch their imaginations, and
they were well content with the workings of the hand of Providence.
Tom left the house after breakfast, with a light pack on his
shoulder. His heart was light, too, though the sky was gray and a
cold and gusty wind blew smothers of icy rain across the clearings.
Upon reaching camp he immediately built up the fire, which lay full
length across the front of the lean-to, dried himself thoroughly and
smoked a pipe. The heat and cheery light beat into the shelter,
thrown forward by mighty back-logs. Hail-stones rattled in the
trees, hopped on the frozen moss and hissed in the hot caverns of
the fire. A big, smoke-blue moose bird or “whiskey jack” fluttered
about the camp, harsh of voice, confiding, and possessed of
curiosity in that extreme degree that is said to have killed a cat.
Tom felt happy in the present moment and situation. He even felt
that his happiness might well be established here for a lifetime, if
only the great world, from which he had parted so violently and
suddenly, would continue to leave him in peace. He was glad that he
had not followed Mick Otter and the lure of peltries seven miles
farther afield. He felt that the distance of six miles was quite far
enough for any sane person to be separated from Gaspard Javet’s
clearings.
He dined at mid-day on tea and bacon and Catherine’s bread and
Catherine’s home-made strawberry jam. He fed the attentive moose
bird with rinds of bacon and bits of bread soaked succulently in hot
fat. The rain and hail ceased early in the afternoon. He left the
shelter and worked his ax for an hour, felling and trimming selected
trees for fuel. The moose bird kept him company, flitting about him
and attending upon every stroke of the ax as if expecting it to
produce bacon rinds, instead of chips. Then he inspected the three
traps that Mick had left with him. They were empty—but their
condition did not chill his sense of contentment in the least.
Soon after supper he heaped the long fire high with green logs and
rolled himself in his blankets. The night was frosty, but the gusty
wind had gone down with the sun; and the fire-lit shelter seemed an
exceedingly comfortable and secure retreat to him. To fully
appreciate comfort, one must be within arm’s-length of discomfort or
but recently emerged from it. Thousands of persons in steam-heated
places with electric bells and janitors do not know what they are
enjoying—or what they are missing.
Tom was fully conscious of his comfort. He lay for some time with
his eyes half open, gazing up at the flicker of firelight on the
poles and tarpaulin overhead; thinking drowsily of Catherine MacKim,
and of Gaspard with his good heart and extraordinary beliefs; and of
Mick Otter. He liked Gaspard better than any other elderly person of
his acquaintance, despite the old woodman’s embarrassing ambition to
deal with the supposed devilish powers of the air with a rifle. And
he liked Mick Otter, too. In short, he liked every one he had met in
Gaspard’s clearings except Ned Tone. It was really wonderful how
full his heart was of affection and how entirely he seemed to have
finished with worldly ambition. He would make an early start on the
morrow for Racquet Pond, to see how that amusing old Indian was
getting along; and he would visit the clearings again on the day
after that, for a game of chess. A fine game, chess—an old and
romantic game—an ancient pastime of kings and queens. He fell asleep
and dreamed of kings and queens in romantic costumes playing chess
with ivory pieces—and all the queens looked like Catherine MacKim.
Tom was awakened by the clutch of a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t
believe it at first. He tried to sink back, to submerge again, to
that delicious depth of sleep from which the hand had partially
raised him. But the grip of fingers tightened on his shoulders and
he became conscious of an insistent voice in his ear. He opened his
eyes and saw dimly that some one crouched over him. There was no
more than a ghost of light to see by—a pale filter of faint
starshine; and there was no glow from the fire across the open front
of the lean-to, for it had fallen to a bank of ash-filmed embers
against the charred back-log.
“What’s the matter, Mick?” he asked, sleepily.
The dim figure drew back and stood upright.
“It isn’t Mick,” said Catherine, in an excited and distressed
whisper. “Ned Tone and another man are at the house—a policeman of
some sort—a detective. They came this afternoon—looking for you,
Tom. I got away as soon as they were asleep, to warn you.”
Tom was sitting up before she got this far with her statement, you
may be sure. He threw aside his blankets, stepped out from the
shelter of the tarpaulin and kicked a little pile of dry spruce
branches onto the coals. Tongues of flame licked up through the
brush, crackling sharply; and in the flickering light he turned to
the girl and took her mittened hands in his bare hands.
“You came alone!” he exclaimed. “Six miles through these woods in
the dark, alone! Cathie, you’re a wonder.”
“That’s nothing,” she said. “I knew the way and I’m not afraid of
the dark. The thing was to get here quickly. You must pack up
immediately and move over to Racquet Pond; and Mick Otter will know
where to go from there. You are lucky to have Mick for a friend.”
“I am lucky in my friends, sure enough,” he replied.
He persuaded her to enter the shelter and rest. He placed more wood
on the fire.
“How did it happen?” he asked. “What did Tone and the other fellow
say? Have they the right dope?—or is Tone just trying to start
something on his own?”
“They know you are Major Akerley—at least, Ned Tone feels sure that
you are. He saw an old newspaper in Millbrow, with your story and
photograph in it—a copy of the same paper that Mick Otter saw, I
suppose. Then he got hold of this detective and brought him in. They
reached the clearings about supper-time. They haven’t told Grandad
what they want you for, so of course he thinks the stranger is a
game warden from the St. John River. Ned Tone showed me the paper
and sneered about my new friend who is wanted by the police—but I
laughed at him. His idea is that you came down somewhere in the
woods and that I didn’t know who you were until he told me—that you
had lied to me and fooled me.”
Tom put on his boots and outer coat. He looked at his watch and saw
that it was one o’clock in the morning.
“We had better start,” he said. “You won’t get much sleep, as it
is.”
“We?” she queried. “You have to pack and go to Racquet Pond and warn
Mick.”
“I’ll see you safely home first.”
“But there is no time for that, Tom! You are in danger. You must get
away with Mick Otter as soon as possible.”
“I need ammunition for Mick’s rifle, and my leather coat. You must
let me go with you—or I’d worry all the time until I saw you again.
We really do need cartridges, Cathie—and I don’t think a couple of
hours will make any difference. They won’t make a bee-line for
Pappoose Lake in the morning.”
So he saw her home; and on the way they decided on the following
plan of campaign. Tom was to keep far away from Gaspard’s clearings,
in such hidden recesses of the wilderness as seemed best to Mick
Otter, for six full weeks. If he and Mick were still at liberty and
unmolested at the end of that time, Mick was to pay a cautious visit
to the camp on Racquet Pond. There he would find either a blank
sheet of writing paper or a sheet of paper marked with a black
cross; and the blank paper would mean that they might safely return
to the clearings, to the best of Catherine’s belief; and the black
cross would mean that the danger was still imminent. Should Mick
find the cross, he and Tom would take to the trackless wilds again
without loss of time and refrain from visiting Racquet Pond in
search of further information until after the middle of January.