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THE PIRATE OF JASPER PEAK
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: Close to the hearth a big chair had been drawn and in
this some one was sitting.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PIRATE OF JASPER PEAK
by
ADAIR ALDON
Author of “The Island of Appledore,” etc.
With Frontispiece
New York
The Macmillan Company
1918
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1918
By the Macmillan Company
Set up and electrotyped.
Published, September, 1918
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
I. A Stranger in a Strange Land
II. The Brown Bear’s Skin
III. Laughing Mary
IV. The Heart of the Forest
V. Oscar Dansk
VI. The Promised Land
VII. Whither Away?
VIII. A Night’s Lodging
IX. Peril at the Bridge
X. First Blood to the Pirate
XI. The White Flag
XII. A Highway through the Hills
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PIRATE OF JASPER PEAK
CHAPTER I
A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND
The long Pullman train, an hour late and greatly begrudging the time for
a special stop, came sliding into the tiny station of Rudolm and
deposited a solitary passenger upon the platform. The porter set Hugh
Arnold’s suitcase on the ground and accepted his proffered coin, all in
one expert gesture, and said genially:
“We’re way behind time on this run, but we come through on the down trip
at six in the morning, sharp. You-all will be going back with us
to-morrow, I reckon.”
“No,” replied Hugh, as he came down from the car step and gathered up
his belongings. “No, I’m going to stay.”
“Stay?” repeated the porter. “Oh—a week, I suppose. No one really stays
at Rudolm except them that are born there and can’t get away.”
Hugh shook his head.
“I am going to stay all winter,” he said.
“The whole winter! Say, do you know what winter _is_ up here?” the man
exclaimed. “For the love of—”
A violent jolt of the train was the engineer’s reminder that friendly
converse was not in order when there was time to be made up.
“All right, sah, good-by. I hope you like staying, only remember—we go
through every day at six in the morning less’n we’re late. _Good_-by.”
The train swept away, leaving Hugh to look after it for a moment before
he turned to take his first survey of Rudolm and the wide sheet of blue
water upon whose shore it stood.
Red Lake, when he and his father had first looked it up on the map,
seemed a queer, crooked place, full of harbors and headlands and hidden
coves, the wider stretches extending here and there to fifteen, twenty,
twenty-five miles of open water, again narrowing to mere winding
channels choked with islands. Hugh would have liked to say afterward
that he knew even from the map that this was a region promising
adventures, that down the lake’s winding tributaries he was going to be
carried to strange discoveries, but, as a matter of fact, he had no such
foreknowledge.
Indeed, it was his father who observed that the lake looked like a
proper haunt for pirates and Hugh who reminded him that pirates were not
ever to be found so far north. All the books he had seen, pictured them
as burying treasure on warm, sunny, sandy beaches, or flying in pursuit
of their prey on the wings of the South Sea winds. Pirates in the wooded
regions to the north of the Mississippi Valley, pirates where the snow
lay so deep and the lake was frozen for nearly half the year, where only
through a short summer could the waters be plied by “a low, raking,
black hulk” such as all pirates sail—it was not to be thought of! Even
now, when Hugh stood on the station platform and caught his first
glimpse of the real Red Lake, saw the wide blue waters flecked with
sunny whitecaps, the hundred pine-covered islands and the long miles of
wooded shore, even then he had no thought of how different he was to
find this place from any other he had ever seen. Both lake and town
seemed to him to promise little.
For Rudolm, set in its narrow valley between the Minnesota hills, looked
as though it had been dropped from some child’s box of toys, so small
and square were the houses and so hit-or-miss was the order in which
they stood along the one wide, crooked street. There were no trees
growing beside the rough wooden sidewalks, the street was dusty and the
sun, even although it was October, seemed to him to shine with a
pitiless glare. He walked slowly along the platform, wondering why Dick
Edmonds had not come to meet him, thinking that Rudolm seemed the
dullest and most uninteresting town in America and trying to stifle the
rising wish that he had never come.
A soft pad, pad on the boards behind him made him turn his head as a man
walked swiftly past. Hugh saw that his shapeless black hat had a
speckled feather stuck into the band and that he wore, instead of shoes,
soft rounded moccasins edged with a gay embroidery of beads. Plainly the
man was an Indian. At the thought the boy’s heart beat a little faster.
He had not known there would be Indians!
His own being in Rudolm was simple enough, although somewhat unexpected.
Hugh’s father was a doctor, enrolled in the Medical Reserve since the
beginning of the war but not until this month ordered away to France.
The problem of where Hugh should live during his absence was a difficult
one since Hugh had no mother and there were no immediate relatives to
whom he could go. He had finished school but had been judged rather too
young for college, and, so his father maintained in spite of frantic
pleading, much too young to enlist.
“I’m sixteen,” was the boy’s insistent argument, but—
“Wait until you have been sixteen more than two days,” was his father’s
answer.
“I could go with the medical unit, I know enough from helping you to be
some use as a hospital orderly,” Hugh begged, “I would do anything just
to go to France.”
“They need men in France, not boys just on the edge of being men,” Dr.
Arnold replied, “when you have had one or two years’ worth of experience
and judgment, then you will be some help to them over there. But not
now.”
“The war will be over by then,” wailed Hugh.
“Don’t fear,” his father observed grimly, “there is going to be enough
of it for all of us to have our share.”
So there the discussion ended and the question of what Hugh was to do
came up for settlement. There was a distant cousin of his father’s in
New York—but this suggestion was never allowed to get very far. Hugh had
never met the cousin and did not relish the idea of going to live with
him, “sight unseen” as he put it, on such short notice. It was his own
plan to go to Rudolm where lived the two Edmonds brothers, John, cashier
of the bank there and a great friend of his father’s, and Dick, a boy
four years older than himself, whom he had met but once yet knew that he
liked immensely. Several times John Edmonds had written to Dr. Arnold—
“If Hugh ever wants to spend any time ‘on his own’ we could find him a
job here in Rudolm, I know. It is a queer little place, just a mining
and lumbering town full of Swedes, but he might like the hunting and the
country and find it interesting for a while.”
It was the idea of spending the time “on his own” that made Hugh feel
that thus the period of his father’s absence might chance to seem a
little shorter and the soreness of missing him might grow a little less.
John Edmonds had answered their letters most cordially and had said that
all could be arranged and Hugh need only telegraph the day of his
arrival. The final preparations had been hastened by the coming of Dr.
Arnold’s sailing orders; the two had bidden each other good-by and good
luck with resolute cheerfulness and Hugh had set forth on his long
journey northward. He had never seen the Great Lakes nor the busy inland
shipping ports with their giant freighters lying at the docks, nor the
rising hills of the Iron Range through which his way must lead, but he
noticed them very little. His thoughts were very far away and fixed on
other things. Even now, as he walked slowly up Rudolm’s one street he
was not dwelling so much on his forlorn wonder why he did not see his
friends, but was thinking of a great transport that must, almost at that
hour, be nosing her way out of “an Atlantic port,” of the swift
destroyers gathering to convoy her, of the salt sea breezes blowing
across her deck, blowing sharp from the east, from over the sea—from
France. For he was certain, from all that he could gather, that his
father was sailing to-day and was launching upon his new venture at
almost the same time that Hugh was entering upon his own.
Somewhat disconsolately the boy trudged on up the hot empty highway,
seeing ahead of him the big, ramshackle building that must be the hotel
and beyond that, at the end of the road, the shining blue of the lake.
He was vaguely conscious that, at every cottage window, white-headed
children of all sizes and ages bobbed up to stare at him and ducked
shyly out of sight again when they caught his eye. Between two houses he
looked down to a sunny field where a woman with a three-cornered yellow
kerchief on her head was helping some men at work. She did not look like
an American woman at all, Hugh thought as he stopped to watch her, but
walked on abashed when even she paused to look at him, leaning on her
rake and shading her eyes with her hand. He rather liked her looks,
somehow, even at that distance, she seemed so strong, in spite of her
slenderness and she handled her rake with such vigorous sunburned arms.
He raised his eyes to the circle of hills that hemmed in the little town
rising steeply from beyond the last row of houses and the irregular
patchwork of little fields. They were oddly shaped hills, rolling range
beyond range, higher and higher until, far in the distance there loomed
the jagged mass of one big enough to be called a mountain. The nearer
slopes were covered with heavy woods of pine and birch, the dense trees
broken here and there by great masses of rock, black, gray or, more
often, strange clear shades of red.
“Red Lake derives its name,” so the atlas had stated in its
matter-of-fact fashion, “from the peculiar color of the jasper rock that
appears in such quantity along its shores.”
Hugh had never seen anything quite like that clear vermilion shade that
glowed dully against the black-green of the pines. Across the slope of
the nearest hill, showing clear like a clean-cut scar, there stretched a
steep white road that wound sharply up to the summit and disappeared. He
began to feel vaguely that although the town attracted him little, the
road might lead to something of greater promise.
There were some men lounging before the door of the hotel when he
reached it, miners or lumberjacks wearing high boots and mackinaw coats.
They were talking in low tones and eyeing Hugh with open curiosity. Just
as he came to the steps, two figures shuffled silently past him, one,
the Indian he had seen at the station, the other, a broad-shouldered,
broad-waisted woman stooping under the heavy burden she carried on her
back. The man, erect and unimpeded, strode quickly forward, but she
stopped a moment to readjust the deerskin strap which passed over her
forehead and supported the heavy weight of her pack. She turned her
swarthy face toward Hugh and greeted him with a broad, friendly smile,
then bowed her head once more and trudged on after her master. The boy,
not used to the ways of Indian husbands and their wives, stood staring
after the two in shocked astonishment.
“That’s Kaniska, the best guide around here, and his squaw,” he heard
one of the men say to another. “She’s the only Indian hereabouts the
only one I ever heard of, really, that smiles at every one she meets.
They are all of them queer ducks; no matter how well you know them you
never can tell what they are thinking about. I believe she is the very
queerest of them all. The Swedes here call her Laughing Mary.”
The two dark figures slipped out of sight around a corner and Hugh went
up the steps into the hotel. The big, untidy room was apparently empty
except for a bluebottle fly buzzing against the window. A faint snore,
however, made Hugh aware that he was not alone and drew his attention to
the office clerk, sitting behind the high desk, his head back, his heels
up, sound asleep. The men outside had ceased talking, the entire village
was so quiet that Hugh could actually hear a katydid singing its last
summer song loudly and manfully down in the field.
“I never saw such a town before,” he thought bitterly, “the whole place
is either dead or asleep!”
He rapped sharply on the desk to arouse the clerk and was delighted to
see him awake with a guilty jump.
“Can you tell me where I can find—” he began, but a voice at his elbow
interrupted him.
Turning, he saw that the woman he had noticed in the field had left her
work to come hurrying after him, and now stood, a little breathless, at
his side. She had very kindly blue eyes, he observed, and a rather heavy
Swedish face that lit up wonderfully when she smiled.
“You are Hugh Arnold, is it not so?” she said. “John Edmonds has told me
that you would be here.”
“Oh, yes,” cried Hugh with relief, “I was just asking for him. Can you
tell me where he is?”
The clerk, a sandy-haired, freckled youth, leaned over the desk and
spoke eagerly.
“Why, haven’t you heard—?” he said, but the woman cut him short.
“I will tell the boy of that,” she announced with decision, then added
to Hugh, “The two Edmonds are not here now, and it is best that you
should come to stay at my house until they come again. This hotel is no
fit place for you.”
To this last frank statement the clerk agreed with surprising warmth.
“We have some queer customers here at times,” he admitted, “and I won’t
deny there’s a sight of them is ugly ones. There’s that fellow from
Jasper Peak blew in last evening and kept me up all night. When he and
his friends are here there’s always something doing.”
“Do not begin to talk of them, Jethro Brown,” the woman said a little
impatiently, “or you will keep us here all day, and this boy is wanting
his dinner, I make no doubt.”
The clerk laughed a little, although without much merriment.
“I guess you are right, Linda,” he replied, “and talk of that gang is
only words wasted. You’d better go along home with Mrs. Ingmarsson,
sonny, you couldn’t be in better hands.”
Much nettled at being called “sonny” by this person so little older than
himself, Hugh merely nodded stiffly, took up his suitcase and followed
Linda Ingmarsson to the door. Jethro, however, stopped them before they
could get outside.
“How about your baggage,” he inquired, “got a trunk or anything at the
station?”
Hugh was not certain whether his trunk had arrived with him or not, so
the clerk volunteered to telephone and find out. While he was doing so,
Hugh stood waiting in the doorway, looking idly down the street and at
the hills beyond. He noticed again the line of white highway that
fascinated him curiously as it slanted upward through the dense woods.
He turned to his companion who stood so silent beside him and ventured a
question.
“What is that road, please?” he asked; “where does it go?”
Linda Ingmarsson looked up quickly toward the hill, while her face took
on a new expression, wistful, sad, but somehow proud as well.
“That is my young brother Oscar’s road,” she said; “now it goes nowhere
but some day—some day it will go far.”
Hugh could not make very much out of this answer, but did not have time
to ponder it long. Jethro announced that all was well with the baggage,
so Hugh and Linda went out together. It was a relief to him to think
that he was with a person who knew at least who he was and why he had
come.
“You are very good,” he began shyly as they came out on the steps; “you
should not—” but the rest of his sentence was never spoken.
The hot sleepy silence was broken suddenly by a shrill steam whistle,
followed by another and another. A strident siren joined them; then came
a deep blast from some steamer on the lake; then a loud clanging of
bells added their voices to the tumult. For full five minutes the
deafening noise continued until Hugh’s ears beat with it and his head
rang. The street had become alive with people, women with aprons over
their heads, men in overalls, scores of children, as though each of the
little houses had sent forth a dozen inhabitants. Down at a far corner
Hugh saw the two Indians come into view again, the man with his head up,
listening, like a deer, the woman with a pleading hand laid upon his
arm. He brushed her aside roughly, and disappeared beyond the turn, she
following meekly after. No one noticed them except himself, Hugh felt
certain, since every face was turned northward to the wooded rocky hill
that overhung the town. Puffs of white steam rose here and there among
the trees, showing the mine buildings or the lumber mills from which the
whistling came.
This was no ordinary blowing of signals to mark the noon hour: the
excitement, the anxious faces, the hideous insistence of the noise all
told him that. Just at the instant that he felt he could not endure the
tumult longer, silence fell.
“What is it, what is it?” he gasped his inquiry, and one of the men
standing by the steps, the one who had spoken of Laughing Mary, began to
explain.
“You see—about four days ago—” The words were cut off by a new outbreak
of the clamor. It rose higher this time and lasted longer, it rolled
back from the hills and seemed to echo from the ground itself. Twice it
fell and twice broke out once more, a long fifteen minutes of
unendurable bedlam. The man, undismayed, called his explanations into
Hugh’s ear, sometimes drowned out by the uproar, sometimes left shouting
alone in a moment of throbbing silence. What Hugh caught came in broken
fragments.
“Two fellows—hunting—gone four days now—lost some way—these
hills—blowing all the whistles at once—hoped—might hear—”
The screaming and clanging finally died away, leaving one long-drawn
siren to drop alone, while Hugh’s informant also lowered his voice to
ordinary speech.
“We do that hereabouts when people get lost. Every whistle in three
counties is blowing right now, so if they don’t hear one and follow it,
they may another. Sometimes it brings them back, more often it doesn’t.
It’s an ugly thing to get lost in these hills.”
“How long did you say they had been gone?” asked Hugh.
“Three—four—no, by George, it’s five days. There’s their pile of mail
that’s been collecting on the window ledge, and those first letters are
five days old.”
The man glanced at a pile of envelopes that lay just inside the window.
The upper one was yellow and caught Hugh’s involuntary attention as he
stood by the door. The people were dispersing and the excitement
evidently was over.
The telegraph envelope was one of those transparent-faced ones, showing
the name and address inside. Half unconsciously Hugh read, “John
Edmonds, Rudolm, Minnesota.” He turned with a gasp and looked closer. A
little of the typewritten line was visible below, “Thanks for letter,
will arrive—”
It was his own message that had never been received. His two friends,
his only two friends within a thousand miles, were the men who had
vanished into the forest.