THE KEY
The interior of Ike M'Graw's cabin was a place of interest to Neale
and Agnes. There was not much room, but it was neat and clean. There
were two bunks, one over the other at one end of the room. At the
other end was the big, open fireplace.
There were andirons, a chimney crane for a pot, a dutch oven, and a
sheet-iron shelf that could be pushed over the coals, on which the old
man baked his johnnycake, or pan-bread.
The coffee pot was already bubbling on this shelf and gave off a
strong odor of Rio. The bacon was sliced, ready for the frying pan.
Ike wanted to cut more and give his two young visitors a second
breakfast; but they would not hear to that.
"We'll take a cup of coffee with you," Agnes said brightly. "But I
know I could not possibly eat another thing. Could you, Neale?"
"Not yet," agreed the boy. "And anyway," he added, with a smile, "if
we are going to have a big storm as they say we are, Mr. M'Graw will
need to conserve his food."
"Don't you fret, son," said M'Graw; "I've got enough pork and bacon,
flour, meal and coffee, to last me clean into spring. I never stint my
stomach. Likewise, as long as I can pull the trigger of Old Betsey
there, I shan't go hungry in these here woods. No, sir!"
Neale stepped to the rack in the corner where stood the brown-barreled
rifle the woodsman called "Old Betsey," as well as a single and a
double-barreled shotgun.
"Which of these did you use last night, Mr. M'Graw, when you shot that
fox?" Agnes asked.
"Heh? What fox?"
"Maybe it wasn't you," said the Corner House girl. "But somebody shot
a fox right up there in front of the Lodge."
"When was this?" demanded the old man, looking at her curiously.
Neale told him the time. The woodsman shook his head slowly.
"I was buried in my blankets by that time," he declared. "Are you sure
the fox was shot, young feller?"
"I've got it hung up to get the frost out so I can skin it," said
Neale quietly.
"Shot, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
"What sort of a ball killed it?"
"A small bullet. It was no large rifle bullet," said Neale
confidently. "I should think it was no more than a twenty-two
caliber."
"Pshaw! that's only a play-toy," returned the old man. "Who'd have a
gun like that up here in the woods? Guess you're mistook, young
feller."
"When you come up to the house you take a look at the fox," said
Neale.
"I'll do that. Where'd the feller stand when he shot the fox?"
"Why," put in Agnes, as Neale hesitated, "we couldn't find his
footprints at all."
"Humph!" muttered the old fellow.
He poured out the coffee. The cups were deep, thick, and had no
handles. He poured his own into the deep saucer, blew it noisily, and
sipped it in great, scalding gulps. Agnes tried not to give this
operation any attention.
Neale meanwhile was examining several fine skins hung upon the log
walls. There was a wolf skin among them, and a big, black bear robe
was flung over the lower bunk for warmth.
"I got him," said the woodsman, "five year ago. He was in a berry
patch over against the mountain, yonder. And he was as fat as butter."
"And the wolf?" asked Agnes, with considerable interest.
"I trapped him. Last winter. He was a tremendous big feller," said
M'Graw, heaping a tin plate with johnnycake and pouring bacon grease
over it. "There's a small pack living up in the hills, and I'm likely
to get more this winter. These heavy snows will no doubt be driving
'em down."
"Oh! Wolves!" gasped the girl.
"They won't bother you none," said M'Graw. "Don't go off by yourself,
and if any of your party takes a long tramp, carry a gun. Like enough
you'll get a shot at something; but not wolves. They're too sly."
The conversation of the old backwoodsman was both illuminating and
amusing. And his hunting trophies were vastly interesting, at least to
Neale.
There was a big photograph on the wall of Ike and another man standing
on either side of a fallen moose. The great, spoon-shaped horns of the
creature were at least six feet across.
"You'll see that head up over the main mantelpiece up to the Lodge,"
said M'Graw. "That's Mr. Birdsall. He an' me shot that moose over the
line in Canady. But we brought the head home."
Over his own fireplace was a handsome head--that of a stag of the red
deer.
"Got him," Ike vouchsafed between bites, "down in the east swamp, ten
year ago come Christmas. Ain't been a bigger shot in this part of the
country, I reckon, 'ceptin' the ghost deer Tom Lawrence shot three
winters ago over towards Ebettsville."
"Ghost deer!" exclaimed Neale and Agnes together.
"What does that mean?" added the boy.
"Surely you don't believe there are spirits of deer returned to earth,
do you, Mr. M'Graw?" asked Agnes, smiling.
M'Graw grinned. "Ain't no tellin'. Mebbe there is. I'm mighty careful
what I say about ghosts," he rejoined. "But this here ghost deer,
now--"
He had finished breakfast and was filling his pipe. "Lemme tell you
about it," he said. "I will say, though, 'twasn't no spirit, for I eat
some of the venison from that ghost deer.
"But for two seasons the critter had had the whole of Ebettsville by
the ears. The hunters couldn't get a shot, and some folks said 'twas a
sure-enough ghost.
"But if 'twas a ghost, it was the fust one that ever left footprints
in the snow. That's sure," chuckled M'Graw. "I went over there with
Old Betsey once; but never got a shot at it. Jest the same I seen the
footprints, and I knowed what it was."
"What was it?"
"Looked like a ghost flying past in the twilight. It was an
albino--white deer. I told 'em so. And fin'ly Tom Lawrence, as I said,
shot it. Why they hadn't got it before, I guess, was because them that
shot at it shivered so for fear 'twas a ghost they couldn't hit the
broad side of a barn!" and M'Graw broke into a loud laugh.
"I did not know that deer were ever white," Agnes said.
"One o' the wonders of nature," Ike assured her. "And not frequent
seen. But that critter was one--and a big one. Weighed upwards of two
hundred pound. Tom give me a haunch, and when it was seasoned some,
'twasn't much tougher than shoe-leather. _Me_, I kill me a doe when I
want tender meat. My teeth is gettin' kind of wore down," chuckled the
old man.
"Was it really all white?" asked Neale.
"Well, that buck's horns an' hoofs was considerable lighter in color
than ordinary. With them exceptions, and a few hairs on the forehead
and a tuft on the hind leg, that critter was perfectly white. Queer.
Jest an albino, as I said," M'Graw concluded between puffs.
Beside the chimney on a big nail driven into a log, hung a string of
rusty keys, with one big shiny brass one by itself. Agnes said:
"I guess you have to lock everything up when you leave home, don't
you, Mr. M'Graw?"
"Me? Never lock a thing. We don't have no tramps. And if I leave home
I always leave a fire laid and everything so that a visitor can come
right in and go to housekeeping. It's a purty mean man that'll lock up
his cabin in the woods. No, ma'am. I never lock nothin'."
"But those keys?" the Corner House girl suggested curiously.
"Oh! Them? Just spare keys I picked up. All but this," and he reached
for the brass key briskly. "This is the key to the Lodge padlock, I'm
goin' to take it up to that Mr. Howbridge of yours and tell him
something about it. I'll walk back with you."
He slipped into his leather jacket and buckled up his leggings. Then
banking the fire on the hearth, he said he was ready to go. He put the
big brass key in his pocket, but as he had intimated, he left the
cabin door unlocked.
Once outside, they saw that the sun was clouded over again. "That
storm is surely a-coming," Ike observed. "I shouldn't wonder, when it
does get here, if it turns out to be a humdinger. 'Long threaten, long
last,' they say."
When they arrived at the Lodge the old man took a look at the fox
Neale had hung up. He examined the small hole under the ear where the
bullet had gone into the animal's head.
"Nice shot," he muttered. "Dropped him without a struggle, I reckon.
And you sure are right, boy," he added to Neale. "It was a twenty-two.
Nothin' bigger. Humph! mighty funny, that.
"Well, you let it hang here and I'll skin it for you before I go back
home. Fust off I want to see your Mr. Howbridge."
As M'Graw went through the hall to find the lawyer, Neale and Agnes
were called by Luke from one of the sheds. His voice and beckoning
hand hurried them to the spot.
"What do you know about this?" cried Luke. "Here are two perfectly
good sleds--a big one and a smaller. And one of those drivers that
have just started back for Coxford, told me where there was a dandy
slide."
"Crackey, that's fine!" agreed the eager Neale.
Agnes, too, was delighted. The other girls were eager to try the
coasting.
"But we must get away without the children. It is too far for them to
go," Ruth said. "At least, we must try it out before we let them join
us."
"They are all right at the front with their snow man. I just saw
them," Agnes said. "Come on!" Agnes was always ready for sport.
They started away from the house, the two boys dragging the bobsled.
There were about four inches of fluffy, dry snow on top, and under
that the drifts were almost ice-hard.
"Ought to make the finest kind of sledding," Luke declared.
Meanwhile Ike M'Graw had found Mr. Howbridge reading a book in a
corner of one of the comfortable settees in the big living-room. He
dropped the book and stood up to greet the woodsman with a smile.
"How are you, this morning, M'Graw?" asked the lawyer. "How about the
key?"
"Here 'tis," said the guide. "Found it just where it should be. Looked
as though it had never been touched since I was gone. But, of course,
as I tell you, anybody might have been in my cabin. I don't lock
nothin' up."
"If the key was used, it was by somebody who knew it was the key and
where to find it," Mr. Howbridge said reflectively.
"You struck it there," agreed Ike. "And there's only two keys to that
big padlock. Unless there's been one made since Mr. Birdsall died," he
added.
"If anybody borrowed the key and got in here, they got out again and
locked the front door and returned the key."
"So 'twould seem. You say there wasn't no marks in the snow when your
folks fust came?"
"No."
"It snowed the day after I went away from here to Ebettsville. They
must have come here and gone before that snow then. That snow covered
their tracks. How's that?"
"Not so good," the lawyer promptly told him. "You forget the live
embers in the grate. Those embers would not have stayed alive for five
days."
"Ain't that a fac'?" muttered the old man.
They pondered in silence for a moment.
Hedden suddenly entered the room. He seemed flurried, and his employer
knew that something of moment had occurred.
"What is the matter, Hedden?" the latter asked.
"I have to report, sir, that somebody has been at the goods in the
pantry--the canned food and other provisions that we brought up."
"What do you mean?" asked Mr. Howbridge curiously.
"The chef, sir, says that quite a good deal of food has been stolen.
He put the stuff away. There is a lot of it gone, sir--and that since
last night at dinner time."
"Humph! Isn't that strange?" murmured the lawyer.
M'Graw grunted and started for the front door.
"Where are you going, M'Graw?" asked Mr. Howbridge.
"I'm going to find out who shot that fox," was the woodsman's
enigmatical answer.