I set off through the fields for Black Jean’s. Before I had run half
the distance, I heard shooting, and it was father’s rifle--I knew the
sound of her only too well.
When I got to my spying-place it was all quiet at Black Jean’s. I could
not see a thing stirring about the cabin.
Then I thought of mother and started home. Father had gone over to the
Cove that morning, with a load of wheat for the Yankee’s mill, and
wasn’t to get back until late. So mother and I waited.
It was nearly one o’clock in the morning when we heard father’s wagon,
and I rushed outside.
“Hello, son,” he exclaimed. “You’re up late. And here’s mother, too.”
Father listened to what we told him, without saying a word.
“Well,” he said, when we had finished. “I don’t really see anything to
worry about. Black Jean can take care of himself. Look there!”
He was pointing over here to this limekiln.
“Jean’s had her loaded for a week,” said father, “waiting for better
weather.”
Later, in the house, my father said: “It is none of our business,
anyway.”
And in a little he added, as if worried some: “But I am going over
there after my rifle.”
* * * * *
The following Sunday--three days later--father and I went to Black
Jean’s to get the rifle.
The door of the cabin opened, and the little woman came out. She was
carrying the rifle. Somehow, she looked thin and old and her hands were
like claws. But her eyes were bright and as sharp as the teeth of a
weazel trap.
“I suppose,” she said, as cool as a cucumber and as sweet as honey,
“you have come after the rifle.”
“That is what,” said my father, sternly.
She handed it over.
“Please apologize to your wife for me,” she said, “for the sudden way I
took it. I was in a hurry. I saw a deer down by the marsh.”
“Did you get the deer?” I piped in.
“No,” she said. “I missed it.”
Father and I started away. But he stopped and called: “Where is Black
Jean this morning?”
“Black Jean!” she laughed. “Oh, he’s got another sweetheart. He has
gone away with her.”
“Good-day,” said father.
“Good-day,” said she.
And that was the end of that.
Neither Black Jean nor the big blowsy woman was ever seen again, nor
hide nor hair of them. But there was lots of talk. You see, there
hadn’t been any deer in these parts for many years; and besides it just
was not possible for so well known a character as Black Jean to vanish
so completely, without leaving a single trace.
Well, finally someone laid information in the county seat and over
comes a smart young chap. He questioned father and mother and made me
tell him all I knew, and took it all down in writing; then he gets a
constable and goes over and they arrest the little black-eyed woman.
There was no trouble about it. They say she just smiled and asked what
she was being arrested for--and they told her for the murder of Black
Jean. She didn’t say anything to that; only asked that someone feed the
big one-eyed bear during the time she was locked up.
Then the people started coming. They came on horseback, they came
afoot, they came in canoes, they came in lumber wagons--no matter how
far away they lived--and brought their own food along. I calculate near
every soul in the district turned out and made it a sort of general
holiday and lay-off, for certain it is that no one cared anything about
Black Jean himself.
Every inch of the land hereabouts was searched; they poked along the
entire length of that earthquake crack, and in the clearings, and in
the bush, looking for fresh-turned earth. But they could not find a
thing--not a thing!
Now you gentlemen know that you can’t convict a person for murder
unless you have got positive proof that murder’s been done--the dead
body itself. Which was the case here, and that smart youth from the
county seat had to let the little woman go free. So she came back to
the cabin, living there as quiet as you please and minding her own
precise business.
* * * * *
Here is a pocket-piece I have had for some time. You can see for
yourself that it is copper.
It is the thing my father made for Black Jean to wear over his bad
eye. I found that piece of copper two years after the little woman
died--near twelve years after Black Jean disappeared. And I found it
in the ashes and stone at the bottom of the limekiln standing there,
half-tumbled down.
A lot of people hereabouts say it doesn’t follow that Black Jean’s body
was burned in the kiln--cremated, I guess you city chaps would call
it. They can’t figure out how the mischief a little ninety-pound woman
could have lugged those two bodies after she shot them with my father’s
rifle, the distance from the cabin to the kiln--a good half mile and
more.
They point out that the body of Black Jean must have weighed over two
hundred pounds, not to mention that the other woman was big and fat.
But they make me weary.
It is as simple as the nose on your face: _The big one-eyed bear did
the job for her!_
_THE GRAVE_