A VARIETY OF HAPPENINGS
They were near the shortest day of the year and the sun rose very late
indeed; so nobody at Red Deer Lodge got up early, unless it was the
kitchen man who had to light the fires and bring in much wood. He
tramped paths through the new-fallen snow to the outbuildings before
sunrise. By the time Neale O'Neil, his head filled with the puzzling
thoughts of the night before, reached the rear premises, the yard of
the Lodge was marked and re-marked with footsteps.
He sought Hedden, however, having seen that the snow in front of the
Lodge showed no footprint. The fox lay just where it had been shot.
"Does any of our party sleep in the garret, Hedden?" Neale asked the
butler.
"No, young man. We all have rooms at the back of the house."
The boy told the man about the shooting of the fox. "Of course, one of
the men was not out with a small rifle, and plugged old Reynard when
he was howling at the moon, was he?"
"No," replied the butler. "Neither John nor Lawrence knows how to use
a gun, I'm sure. Perhaps it was that tall man, Ike M'Graw."
"Well, seems to me he ought to have come and got the pelt," said
Neale, ruminatingly. "It's worth something all right, when furs are so
high. Say, Hedden, how do you get upstairs into the garret?"
Hedden told him, presuming that it was merely a boy's curiosity that
caused him to ask. But Neale had a deeper reason than that for wishing
to find the way upstairs.
He could not understand from what angle the fox had been shot while he
and Agnes were looking out of the window, if the hunter had been in
the wood. There had been no flash or sign of smoke from the edge of
the forest, and Neale's vision swept the line of black shadow for
hundreds of yards at the moment of the report.
"Smokeless powder is all right," muttered the boy. "But they can't
overcome the flash of the exploding shell in the dark. No, sir! That
marksman was not in the wood. And the report sounded right over our
heads!"
He said nothing more to Hedden, but found the upper stairs at the rear
of the house. At the top was a heavy door, but it was not locked. He
thrust it open rather gingerly, and looked into the great, raftered
loft.
The sun was above the treetops now and shone redly into the front
windows. There was light enough for him to see that as far as human
occupants went, the garret of the Lodge was empty.
There was not much up here, anyway. Several boxes, some lumber, and a
heap of rubbish in one corner.
Neale O'Neil stepped into the place and walked to the front of the
building. The windows were square and swung inward on hinges. He knew
that this row of front windows was directly over that at which he and
Agnes stood looking out upon the moon-lit lawn at bedtime.
The windows were all fastened with buttons. As far as he could see
none gave evidence--at least on the inside--of having been recently
opened. Neale shivered in the chill, dead air of the loft.
If the marksman that had shot the fox was up here, from which window
did he shoot? Neale could not find any mark along the window sill or
on the floor.
Suddenly the boy began opening the windows, one after the other. Some
of them stuck, but he persisted until each one swung open. Outside the
snow that had fallen the evening before lay in a fluffy layer on the
window sill.
At the third window he halted. In this layer of light snow was a mark.
Neale uttered a satisfied exclamation.
It was the matrix of a round tube--the barrel of the gun that had
fired the shot which had finished Reynard, the fox!
"Can't be anything else," thought the boy. "He knelt right here and
rested his gun across the sill. Yes! it points downward--pressed
heavier at the outer end than near the window. Yes!"
The boy got down and squinted along the mark in the snow. His keen eye
easily brought the huddled, sandy object on the snow down below into
range.
"Now, what do you know about that?" Neale O'Neil asked aloud. "Who was
up here with a gun last night and popped over that fox? I wonder if I
ought to tell Mr. Howbridge."
Had he done so the lawyer would quickly have pieced together what
Hedden had told him about the live embers in the grate and Neale's
discovery. Whether he would have arrived at a correct conclusion in
the matter, was another thing.
However that might be, Neale O'Neil was sure that somebody had access
to the garret and had shot the fox therefrom. After the rear premises
of the Lodge had been tracked up so before daylight, half a dozen
people might have left the house by the rear door without their
footprints being seen. If the marksman had no business in the Lodge he
could easily have got away.
Puzzling over these thoughts, Neale descended to find most of the
party before the fire in the living-room, waiting for breakfast. Agnes
was eagerly telling of the fox she had seen shot at bedtime.
Neale added no details to her story, save that the fox still lay on
the snow outside.
"Whoever hit him didn't care for the pelt," said the boy. "Now that it
is frozen, it will be hard to skin. A fox hide is worth something. I'm
going to thaw out the body and try to save the skin--for Aggie, of
course."
"Oh, my!" cried the beauty, "won't it be fine to have a collar or a
muff made out of a fox that I saw shot with my own eyes?"
"Odd about that," said Mr. Howbridge thoughtfully. "I wonder who could
have been so near the Lodge last evening. And then, to have left the
fox there!"
The breakfast call interrupted him. Neale said nothing further about
it. After the meal, however, the young people all got into their warm
wraps and overshoes and went out of doors.
Tom Jonah was turned loose, and he almost at once dashed around the
house to the spot where the body of the fox lay. The children gathered
around the fuzzy animal in great excitement.
"Oh, it looks like Mrs. Allen's spitz dog--only this is reddish and
Sambo, the spitz, is white," Tess said. "The poor--little--thing!"
"This is no 'expectorates' dog," chuckled Neale, grabbing the creature
by the tail. "'Expectorates' is a much better word than 'spits,' Tess.
Now, I am going to take this fellow and hang him up in the back
kitchen where he will thaw out. No, Tom Jonah! you are not going to
worry him."
"What lovely long fur!" murmured Agnes. "Do you suppose you can really
cure the skin for me, Neale?" she demanded.
"What's the matter with the skin?" demanded Sammy, in wonder. "Is it
sick?"
"Good gracious!" exclaimed Agnes. "These children have to be explained
to every minute. I hope that fox skin has no disease, Sammy."
Luke and Ruth and Cecile had gone for a tramp through the wood. The
little folks set to work building a snow man which was to be of
wondrous proportions when completed. Naturally Neale and Agnes kept
together.
Agnes had been wandering along the edge of the wood in front of the
house while Neale carried the fox indoors. Tom Jonah came back with
Neale and began snuffing about the spot where the fox had laid.
"See here, Neale O'Neil," cried Agnes, "I can't find anybody's
footprints over here. Where do you suppose that man shot the fox
from?"
"Humph!" grunted Neale noncommittally.
"But here's just the cunningest hoofprints! See them!" cried Agnes.
The boy joined her. Two rows of marks made by split-hoofed animals ran
along the edge of the wood.
"Crackey!" ejaculated the boy. "Those are deer."
"You don't mean it?"
"Must be. Red deer, I bet. And right close to the Lodge! How tame
these creatures are."
"Well, deer won't hurt us," said Agnes, decidedly. "Let's see where
they went to."
Neale was nothing loath. One direction was as good as another. He
wanted much to talk to somebody about the discovery he had made in the
loft of the Lodge; but he did not wish to frighten Agnes, so he did
not broach the subject.
The two rows of hoof marks went on, side by side, along the edge of
the clearing. They followed them to the very end of the opening which
had been cleared about Red Deer Lodge--the northern end.
Here began a narrow path into the woods. The spoor of the two animals
led into this path, and the boy and girl tramped along after them.
"I guess nothing frightened them," said Neale, "for they appear to be
trotting right along at an easy gait. They must have passed this way
in the night. And that's kind of funny, too."
"What is funny?" asked Agnes.
"Why, deer--especially two, alone--ought to have been hiding in some
clump of brush during the night. They don't go wandering around much
unless they are hungry. And there is plenty of brush fodder for them
to eat along the edge of the swamps, that is sure."
"Are you sure they are deer?" asked Agnes. "They couldn't be anything
else, could they?"
"I reckon not," laughed Neale. "I say! who lives here?"
They caught a glimpse of an opening in the forest ahead. Then a cabin
appeared, from the chimney of which a curl of blue smoke rose into the
air. There were several smaller buildings in the clearing, too.
"Guess we have struck that old timber cruiser's place," Neale said,
answering his own question.
"Oh! Mr. Ike M'Graw!" cried Agnes. "Now we can ask him if he shot the
fox last night."
"But where did these deer go?" exclaimed Neale, stopping on the edge
of the little clearing and staring all around.
For here the tracks they had followed seemed to cross and criss-cross
all about the clearing. That wild deer should frolic so about an
occupied house was indeed puzzling. He saw, too, that there were human
footprints over-running the marks of the split hoofs.
Suddenly from around the corner of the cabin appeared the long,
slablike figure of the woodsman. He saw them almost immediately.
"Hullo, there!" he cried. "Ain't you out early? I wouldn't have been
up near so early myself, if it hadn't been for those confounded shoats
of mine."
"What happened to the pigs?" asked Neale, smiling.
"They broke out o' their pen. Always doin' that!" returned M'Graw.
"Run off through the woods somewhere, and then come back and made sech
a racket around my shanty that I can't sleep. Confound 'em!"
Neale suddenly saw a great light. He seized Agnes' hand and squeezed
it in warning. With his other hand he pointed to the marks in the
snow.
"Are those the pigs' footprints?"
"Yes. I just got 'em shut up again," said the woodsman. "Come in,
won't you? I guess my coffee's biled sufficient, and I'm about to fry
me a mess of bacon and johnnycake."
"What do you know about that?" murmured Neale to the giggling Agnes.
"We followed those pig tracks for deer tracks. Aren't we great
hunters--I don't think!"