THE ONE-EYED INJUN
The partners aroused Jim Conley, who grumbled savagely at being
disturbed.
“We’re going, anyhow,” said Young Dan, upon seeing that the fellow had
not suffered seriously by Andy Mace’s method of persuasion.
“Stop here all night, if you want to—and freeze to death! You’re old
enough an’ ugly enough to look after yerself.”
Conley sat up at that and violently demanded immediate information
concerning his whereabouts.
“You’re in the woods,” replied Young Dan. “In the woods, where you’d be
froze stiff in the snow by now, but for Andy Mace.”
Conley got slowly to his feet.
“That’s right—lost in the woods,” he said, in a flat voice. “I call it
to mind now. Kinder lost my way, I reckon.”
He put on his snowshoes with fumbling hands, breathing heavily and
muttering to himself the while.
“I’ll tote this along for you,” said Young Dan, laying a hand on the
lumpy sack.
The other snatched it from him and shouldered it.
“Guess I kin carry that myself!” he exclaimed.
Young Dan went in front, sensing the way in the dark. Andy went next,
making heavy weather of it with his stiff leg. Jim Conley brought up the
rear, plunging and grumbling and frequently falling. They reached the
camp at last. Young Dan left the door open behind him and went straight
to the hearth and stove and fed both with fuel. Andy Mace, exhausted by
his stiff-legged efforts and the pain of them, sank to the floor and lay
flat as soon as he had crossed the threshold. Then Jim Conley floundered
hurriedly and unsteadily from the cold outer gloom into the warm inner
darkness, sack on shoulder. He tripped over Andy’s prostrate form and
pitched forward to his hands and knees, and the lumpy sack hurtled from
his shoulder and struck the floor with a smashing crash.
Young Dan threw a roll of birch bark on the open fire, and in a few
seconds the camp was luridly illuminated; and then he saw his partner
and Conley on the floor, Andy sitting bolt-upright and the latter facing
him on all-fours, glaring in rage and astonishment at each other; and
beyond them he saw the lumpy sack squashed to half its former bulk and
leaking puddles of gin. The sight was too much for his sense of humor,
tired and hungry though he was. He laughed until tears melted the ice on
his eyelashes and his knees sagged beneath him. He sat down weakly on a
convenient chair and continued to laugh helplessly until sudden and
violent action on the floor recalled him to a more serious aspect of the
affair. Conley had grabbed Andy Mace by the beard with his left hand and
by the windpipe with his right, at the same time flinging his whole
weight forward; and the old woodsman had smashed in two life-sized
wallops on the sides of Conley’s head, one with his right fist and one
with his left, even as he sank beneath the younger man’s hands.
Young Dan jumped to the struggle. His snowshoes were still on his feet.
He gripped Conley with both hands by the neck of his several coats and
shirts, wrenched him clear of Andy and thumped him violently on the
floor, face-downward.
“Quit it!” cried Conley. “Lemme be, cantcher!”
Young Dan left him without a word and shut the door. He removed his
snowshoes then, and his cap and outer coat, lit the wick of the lantern
and placed a new chimney in the battered frame.
“Reckon I’ll stop right here till I git my supper,” said Andy Mace from
the floor.
Jim Conley turned over on his back, but did not attempt to rise.
Young Dan collected rifles and axes from the floor and stood them in a
corner, set a big frying-pan on the stove and filled the kettle from a
pail by the door—all in a grim silence. After slicing venison into the
pan, along with some fat bacon, he removed his partner’s snowshoes and
brushed him off with a broom.
“Is everything busted in that there sack?” inquired Conley, anxiously,
raising himself slowly on an elbow.
Young Dan untied the sack and shook its contents out onto the floor.
There were fragments of four square-faced black bottles. The other
articles, the bacon and tea and tobacco, were saturated with gin. Young
Dan pushed the mess together with his foot, in scornful silence.
“That’s sure a grand outfit o’ grub to take home to a woman an’ two
childern,” remarked Andy Mace.
Jim Conley swore long and loud and strong.
“Shut up!” snapped Young Dan.
“Someun will pay for that!” cried Conley. “Good an’ plenty.”
Young Dan stepped forward and stooped down and stared into the eyes of
his unwelcome guest.
“I warn you, Jim Conley, to mend your ways an’ mind your manners, or
you’ll find yourself crowded for elbow-room in this neck o’ woods,” he
said, slowly and clearly. “And I warn you that it won’t be me who’ll
have to clear out when the crowding commences. Think it over; and the
less you say about your spilt gin and who’s to pay for it—and who has
already paid for it—the better for you.”
“What’s that ye say?” returned the other, trying unsuccessfully to keep
his eyes steady and his voice big and careless.
“It was a warning.”
“About who paid for the gin—that’s what I’m askin’ ye. What d’ye mean by
that? That’s what I want to know, young feller.”
“You know what I mean by that; so keep your mouth shut, or I’ll forget
about your family and light right into you.”
Conley laughed uneasily and dropped the subject.
“If yer askin’ me to stop to supper, I’ll take off my snowshoes an’
mitts,” he said.
“We’ll feed you, now that we’ve saved you from freezing to death in the
snow,” replied Young Dan, ungraciously, returning to the stove.
Two pots of tea were drunk and two pans of venison steak were devoured.
Then the partners crawled into their bunks and their guest went to sleep
on the floor.
Jim Conley departed after breakfast next morning, with his reduced,
high-flavored sack on his shoulder and a reflective and uneasy
expression in his close-set eyes. The partners were glad to be rid of
him. They discussed him at considerable length. “You scared him,” said
Andy—“but I’m thinkin’ ye maybe said a mite too much about who paid for
the licker. He don’t look overly smart, but I reckon there’s somethin’
inside his skull, even if it’s only porridge; an’ yer warnin’ was strong
enough to start porridge a-bubblin’. We ain’t got anythin’ on him the
law kin touch him for, far’s I kin see. It wasn’t him robbed the camp,
an’ we can’t swear he was at our traps. You hadn’t ought to give yer
suspicions away like that, Young Dan.”
“Maybe yer right,” said Young Dan. “I sure did talk kind of out-an’-out.
But what of it? I want to warn him, because he’s got to feed his wife
and kids. If he suspicions that we suspicion him of robbing our traps,
then he’ll quit. If I was tryin’ to jail him I wouldn’t of talked to him
like that. But I was warnin’ him and throwin’ a scare into him to steady
him.”
“Ye don’t want to warn a feller like him till after ye catch ’im. He
don’t look smart—but ye can’t never tell by looks. He knows as how we
suspicion ’im now, and so he’ll do us all the harm he’s able to. I see
it in his eye. You had ought to had the goods on ’im before ye warned
’im, Young Dan. Why, we don’t even know where he’s been to—where he
traded the skins he took out! An’ we don’t know that he ain’t got a big
bunch o’ traps set of his own.”
Young Dan smiled.
“He traded his skins at Bean’s Mill, down at the mouth of Oxbow,” he
said. “I guess he didn’t show up at the Bend at all, though Amos
Bissing’s store is just as good as Luke Watt’s. He got his tea and
tobacco and everything he had in his sack from Luke Watt down to Bean’s
Mill; and I guess Luke’s got his skins; and I guess we’ve got his hide,
if we want it.”
“Young Dan, yer a smart lad—the smartest I ever see—an’ I won’t say nay
to nary a one o’ yer propositions—but it do seem to me ye’re doin’ a
powerful lot o’ guessin’ right now.”
“Honest to goodness, Andy, I’m not guessing. Do you know Luke Watt? Have
you ever bought goods from him?”
“Sure, I know Luke Watt o’ Bean’s Mill. Yes, I’ve traded with him, too.
What of it?”
“Then you know his hand-writing. Uncle Bill Tangier took me down to
Bean’s Mill one day two summers ago, and he bought a lot of stuff for me
and the youngsters at Watt’s store, and Mr. Watt figgered up the bill on
one of the parcels. He has a stiff right wrist, as you know—broke it in
the woods when he was a lad and it wasn’t set right. He used his whole
arm when he put down the figgers, working from the shoulder like a man
sawing a board. I don’t believe there’s another man in the world who
writes or makes figgers just like Luke Watt. And here is the paper Jim
Conley’s tobacco was wrapped up in. I changed it this morning for
another piece of brown paper, before Conley was awake. Here’s the
complete bill all figgered out in Luke Watt’s own original big
up-an’-down figgers.”
Young Dan unfolded a large, smudged piece of brown paper and passed it
to his partner. Andy Mace held it in his two corded hands and stared at
it in amazed silence.
“Look at that nine-fifty multiplied by seven,” said the youth. “Conley
bought seven bottles. He paid sixty-six dollars and fifty cents for gin;
and he was well into number five when you found him lost in the woods.
And Watt soaked him six dollars for fifty bum cigars. He must of had
some good skins. But of course that bill is no proof that Conley traded
his skins with Luke Watt. I guess he did, though; for he wasn’t gone
long enough to travel all the way down to Harlow and back. He did all
his buying from Luke Watt, anyhow.”
The old woodsman refolded the paper carefully and returned it to his
partner. Then he filled his pipe and lit it with deliberate motions.
“Young Dan, I was feelin’ kinder fretful a while back when I talked to
ye that-a-way,” he said at last. “My knee was hurtin’ me cruel. Yer
guess is as good to me as another man’s oath. What d’ye reckon to do,
pardner?”
“I reckon to go out and fetch a doctor in to fix your knee for you,
first thing,” replied Young Dan, as he stowed the paper away safely in a
breast-pocket.
Andy Mace shook his head.
“This here j’int plays out on me like this every now an’ agin,” he
returned “and I got medicine for it at home, made for me by Doc Johnston
down to Harlow—inside medicine. The trouble’s a touch o’ rheumatics in
my blood, so the Doc said, an’ maybe the fight I had with the Quebecer
fifty year ago ain’t got as much to do with it as I let on—an’ then
agin, maybe it has. Anyhow, Doc Johnston’s medicine loosens up the j’int
every time, an’ I got two bottles in my pantry this minute as good as
new. If I had them here I’d be right as wheat in a day or two.”
“Why didn’t you tell me so before?” asked Young Dan.
“Well, I reckoned it would sound kinder babyish; an’ I was hopin’ all
along until yesterday that it would quit hurtin’ an’ loosen up any
minute. I was bankin’ on the b’ar’s grease. But last night didn’t help
it none.”
Young Dan went out with his axe to chop wood and at the same time to
consider the imposing problem which confronted him. Andy Mace must have
his medicine as soon as possible—and that meant a two-day trip; and Mrs.
Conley and the two little Conleys must be fed, since the bread-winner
had brought nothing in for them except a pound of bacon—and that meant a
day; and Jim Conley’s little game must be investigated at both ends—and
that might well mean a week or more. What about his traps scattered
along four six-mile lines? His business was bound to suffer—but that was
not the thought that worried him most in connection with the traps. He
fretted at the thought of waste on one hand, and on the other of again
supplying Jim Conley with the means of acquiring more gin. These things
were bound to happen, he believed, so long as the traps remained set and
baited, and unattended by Andy Mace or himself. Animals bearing valuable
pelts would be caught only to suffer the unprofitable fate of being
devoured, pelts and all, by other fur-bearers, or to be skinned by Jim
Conley. The traps must be sprung; and that meant a hard two-day job. But
to leave Andy Mace without his medicine for four days instead of two was
out of the question!
“It’s more’n one man can do!” exclaimed Young Dan, sinking his axe deep
into the prostrate maple upon which he stood. “A man can do two or three
things at once, maybe, but not all in different places, I guess. I can’t
anyhow; and that’s all there is to it! Now the question is, what’s to be
done first? Guess I’ll leave it to chance and toss for it.”
He produced a quarter from a pocket, flipped it into the air off a
thumb-nail, caught it in his right hand and slapped his left over it.
“Heads I get Andy’s medicine first, tails I don’t,” he said.
The coin lay tails up in his palm.
“That’s too darned bad!” he exclaimed. “Poor Andy!”
“You talkin’ ’bout Andy Mace hey?” asked a voice from the brush on his
right.
Young Dan turned and beheld a stranger standing within five yards of him
and regarding him intently with one eye. It was this matter of the one
eye that made the first and sharpest impression on the youth. The
stranger’s left eye was covered by a patch of black cloth. In addition
to these interesting facts, Young Dan saw that he was an Indian and past
middle-age, that he wore snowshoes and carried a pack and a rifle in a
blanket case, and that no smoke issued from his lips or from the bowl of
the short pipe which protruded from a corner of his mouth.
“Sure I’m talking about Andy Mace,” replied Young Dan, recovering
swiftly from his astonishment.
“Good,” returned the stranger. “Andy Mace the feller I wanter see pretty
quick. Maybe he got plenty tobac, what?”
Young Dan shouldered his axe and descended from the trunk of the
prostrate maple. He slipped his feet into the thongs of his snowshoes
and put on his coat and mittens.
“I guess he has enough,” he said, pleasantly. “Come along with me and
find out. He’s my partner.”
They found Mr. Mace seated by the stove, with his stiff leg in a chair.
“How do, Andy,” said the stranger. “Long time you no see me.” Mr. Mace
sat up straight and stared from beneath shaggy eyebrows. Then he smiled
and relaxed.
“Yer dead right it’s a long time, Pete Sabatis!” he exclaimed. “Yer
right there, old hoss. Glad to see ye agin at last, anyhow. Set down an’
make yerself to home. What’s brought ye away acrost into these woods,
anyhow? Be they crowdin’ ye over on the Tobique country, Pete?”
The visitor cleared himself from his outside things, including his
snowshoes, discarded his pack and rifle, then sat down close to the
stove and took the cold pipe from his mouth. He held the pipe up and
fixed the keen glance of his uncovered eye on Andy.
“He don’t burn no tobac this four-five day,” he said.
Mr. Mace laughed and turned to Young Dan.
“What d’ye think o’ that, pardner?” he asked. “Here’s Pete Sabatis, that
I ain’t set eyes on this twenty year, come all the way acrost from the
Tobique country to bum a fill o’ baccy!”
“You got it a’right,” said the Maliseet, without so much as a flicker of
a smile. “That feller say you got plenty. You make joke jes’ like you
ust to, hey?”
“I reckon ye’re the reel joker, Pete,” answered Andy, handing over a
plug of tobacco. “You got the reel face for it, anyhow—the same old
wooden face an’ the same identical old eye. Well, yer jokes is harmless;
and if ye come all these hunderds o’ miles for somethin’ more’n a smoke
I reckon ye’ll spit it out sooner or later. I be right-down glad to see
ye agin, anyhow.”
“Same here,” said Young Dan. “If you’re a friend of Andy’s I hope you’ll
stop a while with us.”
“A good idee!” exclaimed Andy. “Sure he’s a friend o’ mine, and one I’d
trust with my last pound o’ bacon! Where’re ye headin’ for, Pete?
Anywheres in particular?”
“Dinner,” said Pete Sabatis, lighting his pipe.
“The same old bag o’ tricks,” said Andy to his partner. “I reckon he
cal’lates to stop right here with us a spell. That’s yer idee, ain’t it,
Pete?”
“Yep,” replied the Maliseet.
Young Dan was glad, for in this one-eyed Indian he saw the solution of
the problem that had been causing him such a weight of mental distress
all day. He said nothing of what was in his mind, however, but put wood
in the stove, washed his hands and commenced preparations for dinner.
Andy Mace talked and Pete Sabatis watched Young Dan with his lively
bright eye. Every now and then, Pete uttered a grunt of satisfaction at
what he saw.
It was a good dinner, a bang-up dinner, by Right Prong and Tobique
standards. It consisted of baked pork-and-beans in a brown crock, very
juicy and sweet, and a flock of hot biscuits, and a jar of Mrs. Evans’s
strawberry preserve, and tea strong enough to be employed in the
heaviest sort of manual labor.
Pete Sabatis was not a large man; and so Young Dan decided that he must
have been hollow from his chin clear down to his knees before dinner.
After clattering the iron spoon all around the inside of the bean-crock
and lifting the last preserved strawberry to his mouth on the blade of
his knife, Mr. Sabatis drained the teapot and sat back in his rustic
chair. He produced his pipe and looked at Andy Mace.
“Tobac,” he said.
“You pocketed a whole plug o’ mine before dinner,” returned Andy. “An’
ye’ve got a knife to cut it with an’ a pipe to smoke it in. Here’s a
match. Hope yer breath to puff with ain’t all gone.”
The Maliseet drew forth the cake of tobacco thus delicately referred to
by his old friend, filled his pipe and lit it.
“I’d like to tell him how we’re fixed, and perhaps he’d lend us a hand,”
said Young Dan to his partner.
“Sure he’d lend us a hand,” replied Andy. “Tell him our story. Pete
Sabatis kin be trusted with anything in the world, I reckon, secrets or
goods—exceptin’ baccy.”
So Young Dan told of their experiences with, and suspicions of, Jim
Conley, and of the problem which confronted him.
“That a’right,” said Pete. “What do you do first, hey?”
“That depends on you,” replied the youth. “Do you know the way to Andy’s
house?”
“Know him a’right when you tell me.”
“I’ll draw a map for you, if you’ll get Andy’s medicine.”
“To-morrow.”
“That’s fine. I’m mighty glad you turned up. I’ll go out now and spring
a few traps, and to-morrow I’ll take some grub back to the Conleys and
see what’s up. When you get home from Andy’s place with the medicine I
will light right out for Bean’s Mill.”
During the afternoon Young Dan visited four traps on the eastward line.
He found a mink in one and nothing in the others, and left all alike
sprung and harmless. He did not travel as briskly as usual, for he did
not feel very spry. The exertions of the day before had slowed and
stiffened even his elastic sinews a little. His spirits were high,
however, thanks to the mental relief due to the arrival of Pete Sabatis.
Pete solved the problem which had frozen his immediate actions. With
Pete’s help, everything seemed possible now: Andy would have his
medicine, the Conley woman and children would be looked after, Jim
Conley’s suspicious activities would be investigated and one line of
traps, at least, would be kept in operation. Apart from all this, the
Maliseet promised to be an entertaining companion. Young Dan had felt a
liking for him at the first sound of his voice and a keen interest in
him at the first glimpse of his patched eye. His arrival had been as
dramatic as it was opportune; his greeting of and reception by old Andy
Mace had been decidedly picturesque; his Puckish humor was as unusual as
his appearance. In short, he made a strong romantic appeal to the young
trapper.
“He’s queer, like some of the folks in those stories,” reflected Young
Dan. “Queer as the queerest of them, but real, too—more real than any of
them. And he’s all right. Andy says so.”
Young Dan exploded two cartridges that afternoon. The bullet of each
knocked the head off a partridge. Upon his return to camp he skinned the
birds in half the time it would have taken him to pluck them, and fried
them for supper with a little pork. After supper he made a map of the
route to Andy Mace’s house and explained it at length to Pete Sabatis.
All three retired early to their blankets.
Pete Sabatis was the first to leave the camp next morning. He carried
food and tobacco in his pockets, a note from Young Dan for Amos Bissing,
the map of the route, the key to Andy’s door, and his rifle and
blankets. He moved off swiftly, with the reddening dawn on his
right-front, leaving an azure trail of smoke on the still air.
“It’s lucky for us that he turned up when he did,” remarked Young Dan to
his partner, as he made up a modest parcel for the Conleys of tea and
flour and two tins of condensed milk. “Did he come looking for you, or
was it just chance?”
“He’ll tell us what he come for when he’s good an’ ready, an’ not a
minute sooner, Young Dan,” answered Andy. “Maybe he come all the way
acrost from Tobique to see me, but I reckon that ain’t likely. How would
he know if I was alive or dead any more’n I knowed if he was alive or
dead? It was chance landed him right here at this camp, anyhow, for all
he ever knowed about my whereabouts was that I hailed from the Oxbow—an’
that was twenty year ago. But we won’t fret ourselves about why he’s
here or why he come. He is here, an’ he’s a danged good Injun, an’
that’s enough for us.”
Young Dan took the northern track, which led crookedly to the Conley
cabin. He inspected the traps to the right and the left as he advanced,
bagged a fox and left all sprung and harmless behind him. He reached the
Conley cabin before noon and found Mrs. Conley chopping wood beside the
door. She said that Jim was off somewhere attending to his traps.
“I don’t want to see him,” said Young Dan. “I came to bring these few
things for you and the children, from my partner and me, because we know
that he didn’t bring much grub back from the settlements with him.”
He entered the cabin without removing his snowshoes and placed the
parcel of provisions on the table. The woman followed him, undid the
parcel and thanked him. She seemed nervous.
“How d’ye know Jim didn’t fetch in any grub?” she asked.
“We saw what he had,” replied the trapper. “Didn’t he tell you about
stopping a night at our camp? About losing himself in the woods an’ Andy
Mace finding him?”
“No, he didn’t. But he’s sure got it in for you and yer old pardner!
He’s been cussin’ the two o’ ye steady ever since he come home. He says
how he had lashin’s o’ bacon an’ flour an’ was robbed of everything but
some bacon an’ tea.”
“I suppose you believed him, m’am.”
“Not so’s ye’d notice—but that’s neither here nor there. What you best
do now is clear out o’ this before he comes home.”
“Do you think I’m afraid of him?”
“I guess not—but I wisht ye’d beat it.”
Young Dan immediately complied with her wish. As soon as he was out of
sight of the cabin he left the narrow trail of his own snowshoe tracks
and broke into the woods and started on a big curve which, if followed
long enough, would encircle the Conley habitation. Young Dan did not go
so far as that, however. He found what he was looking for before he had
made a semicircle of the curve—a line of new snowshoe tracks. He did not
join this trail or cross it, but backed a few paces from it, changed
direction and moved parallel with it, keeping an eye on it through the
intervening screen of brush and branches. This course took him
southward, mile upon mile, and after a couple of hours of it he found
himself on his own and Andy Mace’s trapping-ground. He continued to
parallel Jim Conley’s tracks, moving without sound and parting the
forest growth before him with the minimum of disturbance; and at last he
came to a place which he recognized as being on his own eastern line of
traps. There he halted and squatted to rest, as still as a waiting lynx
in the snow.
Large white flakes began to circle down from the low sky. The sun, which
had risen red, was now no more than a small blotch of radiance as
colorless as clear ice. The snow descended more thickly and swiftly,
blinding the weak sun and seeming to draw the sky down to the tops of
the tall spruces—and down even lower than that, until the soaring trees
were blanketed and hidden by it for half their height. Then Young Dan
moved again, this time on a straight course for the camp, and at his
best pace. This flurry of snow was altogether too thick and fast to take
liberties with. He wondered what Pete Sabatis would make of it with his
one eye. He was sorry that it had descended so violently as to interfere
with his investigations before he had actually caught Jim Conley at his
trapping. He felt reasonably certain, however, of the identity of the
traps which engaged Mr. Conley’s attentions. That was enough to work
ahead on. He decided not to spring the traps on the eastern line, but to
leave them as they were for the thief’s immediate profit and final
undoing.
Young Dan reached home safely. The snow ceased falling shortly before
sundown, but with the setting of the sun a wind arose which set the
feathery flakes drifting and flying.
Andy Mace was in as talkative a mood as ever that night, despite the
fact that he was very evidently suffering a great deal of pain. He
admitted the pain, confessing that more joints than his right knee hurt
him now.
“But that there medicine o’ Doc Johnston’s ’ll melt the misery out o’ me
all right,” he said. “I’ll be takin’ a dose of it this time to-morrow
night; and ye’ll see me to work agin within a couple o’ days, Young Dan,
spry as a cat an’ loose as ashes.”
“Don’t you worry about the work, Andy,” returned Young Dan. “Give the
medicine a fair chance when you get it. I hope Pete will be back by
to-morrow night—but he couldn’t of traveled much this afternoon, in that
storm and in country strange to him.”
“That’s where ye’re wrong,” replied Andy. “I never knowed a likelier man
nor that same Pete Sabatis to go to wherever he wanted to git to. He
could do that trip backwards, an’ with both eyes patched instead of only
one. That flurry o’ snow wouldn’t stop him a minute, in strange country
or old.”
“What happened to his eye, anyhow?” asked Young Dan.
Andy rubbed his thin knees with his thin hands for several seconds in
silence, gazing thoughtfully into the red draft of the stove. Then he
looked at his partner and combed his long whiskers with long fingers.
“Maybe he wouldn’t care for me to tell ye that, lad,” he said. “I reckon
he wouldn’t yet awhile, till he knows ye better. But I kin tell ye this
much, pardner—I was with him when he lost it, twenty-four year ago—and
he is as good a man with one eye as ever he was with two. He lost it in
a kinder private affair, ye understand: and there ain’t a prouder man
walkin’ the woods either side the height-o’-land nor him—exceptin’ in
the matter o’ baccy.”
[Illustration]