It was three hours after dark when the dead man, Smoke, and his captors
arrived at Two Cabins. By the starlight, Smoke could make out a dozen
or more recently built cabins snuggling about a larger and older cabin
on a flat by the river bank. Thrust inside this older cabin, he found
it tenanted by a young giant of a man, his wife, and an old blind man.
The woman, whom her husband called 'Lucy,' was herself a strapping
creature of the frontier type. The old man, as Smoke learned
afterwards, had been a trapper on the Stewart for years, and had gone
finally blind the winter before. The camp of Two Cabins, he was also to
learn, had been made the previous fall by a dozen men who arrived in
half as many poling-boats loaded with provisions. Here they had found
the blind trapper, on the site of Two Cabins, and about his cabin they
had built their own. Later arrivals, mushing up the ice with
dog-teams, had tripled the population. There was plenty of meat in
camp, and good low-pay dirt had been discovered and was being worked.
In five minutes, all the men of Two cabins were jammed into the room.
Smoke, shoved off into a corner, ignored and scowled at, his hands and
feet tied with thongs of moosehide, looked on. Thirty-eight men he
counted, a wild and husky crew, all frontiersmen of the States or
voyageurs from Upper Canada. His captors told the tale over and over,
each the centre of an excited and wrathful group. There were mutterings
of "Lynch him now--why wait?" And, once, a big Irishman was restrained
only by force from rushing upon the helpless prisoner and giving him a
beating.
It was while counting the men that Smoke caught sight of a familiar
face. It was Breck, the man whose boat Smoke had run through the
rapids. He wondered why the other did not come and speak to him, but
himself gave no sign of recognition. Later, when with shielded face
Breck passed him a significant wink, Smoke understood.
Blackbeard, whom Smoke heard called Eli Harding, ended the discussion
as to whether or not the prisoner should be immediately lynched.
"Hold on," Harding roared. "Keep your shirts on. That man belongs to
me. I caught him an' I brought him here. D'ye think I brought him all
the way here to be lynched? Not on your life. I could a-done that
myself when I found him. I brought him here for a fair an' impartial
trial, an' by God, a fair an' impartial trial he's goin' to get. He's
tied up safe an' sound. Chuck him in a bunk till morning, an' we'll
hold the trial right here."