FEAR OF THE LAW
The road between Harlow and Bean’s Mill was all that hoof and heart
could wish, and the long-gaited three-year-old was sound in wind and
limb and as fresh as the frosty morning. It was still early in the day
when the deputy-sheriff drew rein in front of Luke Watt’s store. He
jumped out and hitched the strawberry mare to a well-chewed post and
threw a blanket and a goat-skin robe over her. Then he cleared the frost
from his eye-lashes, pulled his fur mittens off and threw them into the
pung and rubbed his bare hands briskly together as if to limber up the
fingers. Then he sank his hands deep into the roomy side-pockets of his
fur coat.
“You keep your collar turned up an’ your cap pulled down and sit right
there till you get the high sign,” he said to Young Dan.
Young Dan nodded his muffled head. He sat stuffily in the pung, very
bulky and shapeless in an old coonskin coat of the deputy-sheriff’s,
looking as much like “The World’s Fattest Lady” as anything else in the
world—much more like that than like a lanky young trapper of fur.
As Archie Wallace pushed open the door of the store he closed his eyes
tight, the quicker to readjust them to the gloom within from the
brightness without. As he closed the door behind him with his left
elbow—for still his right hand was in his pocket—he opened his eyes and
looked at everything in one wide-eyed glance. He saw, in that first
comprehensive look, everything in the store—the counter, the fancy
groceries on the dirty shelves, the barrels and crates, the baskets of
eggs, the chewing-gum and depressing cigars in the little show-case, the
boots and suspenders and amazing neckties hanging aloft, and Mrs. Watt
and three customers—everything which he had expected to see except Luke
Watt. He made his way to the counter and Mrs. Watt and wished her a
rather grim good-morning. His professional manner was always uppermost
when he was actually engaged in the final stages of a piece of
professional work. He felt that he owed this alike to the Law and to the
probable offenders against the Law.
“I want to speak to your husband, Luke Watt,” he continued.
Mrs. Watt, who was as like Mr. Watt in appearance and character as a
woman could be, changed color swiftly and at the same time met the man’s
grim gaze with a hard and brazen glint in her eyes.
“You sure ain’t forgot my husband’s name, Archie Wallace,” she said.
“What are you puttin’ on yer depity-sheriff airs for this mornin’? You
sound like you was huntin’ for trouble.”
“You’ve said it,” returned Mr. Wallace, drily. “Where is Luke?”
“At home in bed, sick with a cold; an’ that’s where he has been since
yesterday afternoon,” she answered. “You can go over to the house an’
make a call on him in bed, if yer business is that pressin’”; and then,
with a swift change from effrontery to curiosity in eyes and voice, she
leaned across the counter and whispered, “What’s the trouble?”
“Exactly what you suspect, Mrs. Watt—an’ maybe quite a lot more,” he
replied, whispering in his turn from the force of example rather than by
intention. “Now I’ll just step over to the house an’ have a talk with
him.”
“Wait,” she whispered, closing her fingers on the sleeve of his coat.
“Tell me, have you got his number? Have you caught him? Tell me!”
Wallace withdrew his sleeve from her grasp and turned and left the store
without another word. His face was drawn for a second with an expression
of sickening distaste, for he had seen, quick and sure as lightning,
exactly what the woman had in her mind. He knew that she salted away the
money which her husband corkscrewed out of the rural population; and he
had just now seen her as a rat that contemplates the advisability of
leaving a sinking ship. But she was a cautious sort of rat and wanted to
make dead sure that the ship was going down before she swarmed down the
anchor-chain and swam ashore. This nautical figure of thought came pat
to Mr. Wallace, for he had sailed four deep-sea voyages out of St. John
in his eighteenth and nineteenth years.
“Mrs. Watt says he’s sick abed with a cold,” he informed Young Dan. “It
may be so, for what would be the sense of her tellin’ that lie? That’s
the house. If you’ll stable the mare across there at Murphy’s, I’ll go
to Watt’s—and you follow me as soon as you’ve stood the mare in the
stall. Open the front door an’ walk right in and up the stairs.”
The deputy-sheriff found Luke Watt in bed. The store-keeper was very red
of face and watery of eye, and there were dark bruises on his brow.
“Your wife said I’d find you here, sick abed,” said Wallace.
“Well, she told ye the truth,” replied Watt. “What d’ye want, Archie?”
“You, Luke Watt. This is an official visit I’m makin’ you.”
“Me? Official? Who’s the joke on? Tell me when to laugh, will you?”
“Yes, you; and when the time to laugh comes I’ll do it. You’re done.”
“And you’re crazy! I’m done, am I? Who d’ye reckon did me?”
Wallace heard the front door open and close and then a light, slow step
on the stairs. He opened the bed-room door and looked out.
“Luke Watt wants to know who did him,” he said. “Come along in and show
him, an’ then maybe he’ll believe me.”
He returned to the side of the bed; and, a moment later, Young Dan
entered the room in his bulky muffling of furs and shut the door behind
him. Luke Watt’s face twitched. The trapper slipped out of his borrowed
coat and removed his cap and mittens and looked at the man in the bed.
Watt made a bluff at returning that look—but it was a weak bluff. His
face twitched again, and he closed his eyes and sneezed. Young Dan
noticed the bruised forehead and was glad of it.
“I’d of marked you worse than that if it hadn’t been for the snow and
the mitten on my hand,” he said. “But I guess you got enough!”
“He must of got some snow down his neck an’ caught cold from it,” said
the deputy-sheriff. “But if you’d killed ’im, Dan Evans, you wouldn’t of
done more’n I would have done in your place. I wouldn’t of blamed you.”
“What are you two talkin’ about, anyhow?” demanded Watt, in a voice
husky with cold and emotion. “And who’s this here young jay?”
“Cut it out!” retorted Wallace. “I know the whole story, right back to
the fox you bought off of Jim Conley, and I’ve seen the piece of paper
you used to figger out the price of it on—the price, mostly in gin. And
I’ve got the gun in my pocket you used on Dan Evans here when you tried
to stop him from gettin’ into Harlow. You ain’t as cute as I thought you
were, but you’re a long sight more dangerous. I never reckoned on you
tryin’ murder.”
“It’s a lie!” cried the other. “Git out, or I’ll have the law on you!”
“Not so fast,” continued Wallace, calmly. “I had a talk with your
friend, Tom Marl, about one o’clock this mornin’, after I’d heard Dan
Evans’s story. Tom was scared. He thought the two shots you fired had
hit the mark. He’s quite a talker, Tom Marl is—when fear loosens his
tongue.”
All the color went from Luke Watt’s face and again he closed his eyes.
“Attempted robbery under arms, and assault with intent to kill—it would
make an exciting case,” continued Wallace, slowly and clearly. “It would
give the smart lawyers a fine chance to show their smartness, some
tryin’ to hang you and others tryin’ to save your neck—but the smartest
lawyers in the province couldn’t save you from five years in pen. The
liquor case won’t be near so exciting. We’ve got you so cold there the
lawyers wouldn’t find anything to argue about.”
Watt continued to lie with his eyes tight shut, breathing heavily.
“I guess I’d have to make a charge against him for the assault and all,
and for firing two shots at my ribs, wouldn’t I?” said Young Dan, in an
unsteady voice. He felt unsteady. The sight of the big man’s fear and
despair shook him strangely.
The storekeeper opened his eyes.
“Ain’t you made the charge agin me?” he cried. “Then don’t do it! Gimme
a chance! I was scart crazy. All I meant to do was to stop you an’ talk
you round. The gun kinder went off by accident. I swear it!”
The deputy-sheriff sighed and lit a cigar.
“How much did you get for that skin that you bought from Jim Conley?”
asked Young Dan.
“That skin?—why, I ain’t sold it yet,” answered Watt, thinking hard and
speaking slowly and uncertainly.
“In that case, I’ll take a look at it and value it,” said Wallace.
“You needn’t trouble yerself,” said the other, sullenly. “I got five
hundred dollars for it.”
“Then you still owe the original owner of the skin four hundred an’ some
odd dollars,” said the trapper.
“Business is business,” protested the man in bed. “I bought the skin an’
I sold it; an’ now I wisht it had been burnt to a cinder before I ever
seen it!”
“Give me four hundred dollars for Jim Conley’s wife and kids and I won’t
make that charge against you,” said Young Dan.
The deputy-sheriff, who had been gazing reflectively out of the window,
turned at that with an air of decision and regarded the trapper with
level eyes.
“I’m goin’ to be downright and honest with both of you,” he said. “It’s
nothing to me if you get four hundred dollars out of Watt for Conley’s
wife and kids, or if you don’t. It’s no concern of mine. I don’t care
what dicker you make with him, or if he keeps his end of the bargain or
goes back on it—but I tell you both that whatever happens, he is pinched
for selling gin. He is pinched good and hard for selling gin, and he’ll
go to jail for it, without the option of a fine, as sure as my name is
Wallace; and I’ll put a constable into this house to guard him until
he’s fit to go to jail and await his trial.”
“But I won’t make the other charge, if you’ll give me four hundred for
Jim Conley’s wife and babies,” said the trapper to Watt.
“I’ll do that,” replied Watt. “Go over to the store an’ fetch my wife,
will you? She takes care of the money.”
Young Dan went to the store and found a young woman with a red head in
charge. She informed him that Mrs. Watt had gone to the mill on business
and wouldn’t be back for half an hour, perhaps. He returned to Luke
Watt’s bedroom with this information.
“She ain’t got no business over to the mill,” said Watt. “Maybe she’s in
the house somewheres. Take a look round the house for her, will you, an’
tell her I want to see her quick.”
So Young Dan left the bed-room again and searched the house high and
low. The only living thing he found in it was a cat in the kitchen; but
he saw melted snow here and there on the kitchen floor. He looked
closely at the damp marks and knew them for the tracks of feet shod in
arctics. He saw that the tracks began at the outer door of the kitchen,
crossed to the big dresser and returned to the door. He opened the door,
which was not locked, and looked into the cold shed. He saw a few small
films of pressed snow on the dusty floor of the shed, between the
shed-door and the kitchen-door. He went back to the big dresser and
gazed curiously and eagerly for a few seconds at its dish-laden shelves
and the closed doors of its cupboards, then returned to the room
upstairs and said that the house was empty.
“But there’s been a woman in the kitchen,” he added. “In and out again,
with snow on her feet. She wore arctic overboots, whoever she is.”
“That’s her!” exclaimed Luke Watt weakly.
He got out of bed and put on trousers and coat over his nightshirt and
thrust his feet into slippers. He shivered and sat down on the edge of
the bed. His eyes of no particular color were miserable with dread.
“Take a look in the stable,” he whispered. “See if my trottin’ mare’s
there.”
The trapper went out to the stable, by way of the kitchen and the shed.
The stall was empty. The harness had gone from its pegs. There were
fresh tracks of hoofs and runners in the snow in front of the stable
door.
“She must of tied the bells,” he said. “She seems to know what she’s
about, whatever it is. And I wonder what it is?”
He went back to Watt and the deputy-sheriff with the news that the
trotting mare was gone from the stable, harness and pung and all.
Luke Watt turned a tragic, despairing and murderous gaze on Mr. Wallace.
“You fool!” he cried, hysterically. “Why couldn’t you keep yer silly
mouth shut! You told her how ye’d come to pinch me, an’ how I hadn’t a
chance to git clear—an’ so she’s up an’ lit out with all the money!
That’s what she’s done! Lit out with every dollar!”
With that explosion the storekeeper sank back across the bed and covered
his face with his hands. The deputy-sheriff and the trapper exchanged
embarrassed glances.
“He’s lying,” whispered Wallace. “He’s tryin’ to fool you, Dan. There
ain’t a woman in the world would do a trick like that on her husband;
and Mrs. Watt couldn’t even if she wanted to.”
He leaned over Luke Watt and shook him roughly by a shoulder.
“Where’d you bank your money?” he asked.
“I didn’t bank it nowhere,” mumbled Watt, still with his face in his
hands. “She didn’t bank it, neither. She salted it away.”
“Where’d she salt it away?”
“I dunno.”
“You’re lying, Luke Watt—or you’re the biggest an’ softest boob I ever
heard tell of.”
“I’ll bet she kept it somewhere in the dresser in the kitchen,” said
Young Dan. “That’s where the tracks led to—to the dresser and out
again.”
The storekeeper jumped to his feet and ran heavily from the room, crying
“Let’s go look.” The others followed him close.
Young Dan took charge of the investigation of the dresser. All the
dishes were removed from the shelves and every inch of woodwork was
searched for a hidden drawer or sliding panel—but all in vain. Luke Watt
sat down beside the stove and shivered and wept. Then Young Dan and Mr.
Wallace emptied the four pot-closets in the bottom of the dresser of
dozens of pots, pans, sauce-pans and frying-pans, and Young Dan crawled
into each in turn and rapped here and there and everywhere with
enquiring knuckles. In the fourth closet he found his reward. Without
withdrawing his head he passed back and out a section of the bottom of
the closet. Mr. Wallace took the piece of dry pine board in his hand and
showed it to Luke Watt. Luke stared at it and ceased his weeping. Then a
section of board from the floor of the kitchen appeared from beneath the
trapper’s elbow. He withdrew his head and shoulders from the closet a
few seconds later and squatted back on his heels.
“Empty,” he said.
Yes, the hiding-place beneath the floor was empty. The deputy-sheriff
found it empty. Even Luke Watt’s hungry fingers failed to find anything
in it.
“An’ if there was a dollar in it there was twenty thousand,” whispered
Watt, in a stunned voice.
“There don’t live another woman in the world would play a trick like
that on her man,” said Mr. Wallace. “No matter how bad he was, she
wouldn’t play him down like that. It beats anything I ever heard of.”
“Reckon yer right,” replied the storekeeper, listlessly. “Eliza ain’t no
ordinary woman. You hadn’t ought to told her yer business with me.”
He sounded like a man talking in his sleep.
“I guess you’re in trouble enough, Luke Watt,” said Young Dan. “Well, as
far as I’m concerned, you’re no worse off than if you hadn’t tried to
stop me with a gun. That’s forgotten.”
The dazed storekeeper went back to bed; and Archie Wallace supplied a
cook and a muscular constable to feed him and hold him until he was in
fit health to be removed to the county jail.
On their way through to Dan’l Evans’s farm behind the long-gaited
strawberry mare, the deputy-sheriff and Young Dan bought as much food as
two good men could pack a day’s journey from Amos Bissing at the Bend.
Mr. Bissing was deeply impressed by Young Dan’s company and appearance.
He asked a great many questions and received a good many answers—but not
a single answer to his questions as to the deputy-sheriff’s reasons for
touring the country in Young Dan’s company. He could see easily enough
by the manners of the two that their relations were entirely friendly.
When the strawberry mare passed the kitchen windows of the Evans farm,
and Young Dan was recognized by every member of the family and Mr.
Wallace was recognized by the father, amazement and apprehension flamed
in every heart.
“He’s a policeman, I tell ye!” exclaimed Dan’l for the third time in
quick succession, flattered by the panicky effect of his words. “He’s
the sheriff from Harlow. Young Dan’s been too smart for his own good at
last, I cal’late. Them fool books an’ his Tangler brains has tripped him
by the heels at last. Wonder what he done?”
Then the kitchen door opened and Young Dan entered with the tall man
close behind him. He threw aside his cap and embraced his mother; and at
the first clear glimpse of his face she knew that her Daniel senior had
been mistaken again.
They remained at the farm for supper, and the night and breakfast. Dan’l
Evans was greatly relieved, of course, to know that his son was not an
offender against any law—but he was not happy. Everything was too right
for his complete enjoyment. There was too much talk on the
deputy-sheriff’s part to suit him, of the virtues of Bill Tangler and
the great thing Young Dan had done; and Young Dan, was too well pleased
with himself and the deputy-sheriff; and Mrs. Evans made altogether too
much of both the visitors and had more to say about the intellectual
qualities of her own family than could be expected to please a husband
of Dan’l’s disposition. When he knocked and belittled and sneered, he
was either ignored entirely or bluntly contradicted. When he advanced
the theory that Young Dan had been guilty of an error in judgment in
jumping so quick at Luke Watt, and cited the two bullet-holes in the
youth’s coat as proof of the mistake, the deputy-sheriff thought that he
was joking and laughed heartily.
“You’re a dry humorist, Mr. Evans,” he exclaimed. “The driest I ever
met. That’s good—that about the holes in Dan’s coat. You sure do give a
new and uncommon slant to a thing.”
This puzzled Dan’l, giving him food for silent thought to last him for
the remainder of the evening.
Young Dan and Mr. Wallace set out for the Right Prong country after an
early breakfast, on their snow-shoes, with forty-pound packs on their
shoulders, leaving the strawberry mare in Dan’l Evans’s charge. It was a
windless clear day, and the snow was well settled. Young Dan led the way
at his best pace—but he did not have to stop once to let Archie Wallace
catch up to him. The fact was, he had to put on an extra spurt every now
and then to keep the tails of his snowshoes from being stepped on.
That’s the kind of man Archie Wallace was.
They found both old men at the camp in fine spirits and Andy Mace’s
rheumatism greatly improved. Andy cooked a masterpiece of a supper; and
after supper Archie Wallace told the story of Young Dan’s adventures
with Luke Watt in his best style. At the conclusion of the narrative,
Pete Sabatis turned the glance of his single eye from the face of Young
Dan to that of Andy Mace and slowly nodded his head twice.
“Guess you size ’im up right, Andy,” he said.
Young Dan blushed with pleasure, yet pretended not to have seen or heard
this passage of intelligence. To be accepted as an able man by Pete
Sabatis and to measure up to the heroic standards of earlier
generations, these were triumphs which might well expand the heart and
redden the cheek of even an older man than Young Dan.
After breakfast the deputy-sheriff and Young Dan went north to Jim
Conley’s cabin, heavy-laden with their contributions toward the support
of that worthless fellow’s wife and children. Just before coming into
view of the cabin, Mr. Wallace halted and the trapper took to the brush
beside the trail. Wallace stood motionless for five minutes, then
advanced. Within a second of sighting the little hut of logs he glimpsed
the swift flash of a face at the little window. He went forward without
haste and knocked on the door. It was opened to him by the woman.
“Good mornin’, m’am,” he said, standing his rifle against the edge of
the door and lowering his pack to the threshold. “Here’s some grub for
you, with the compliments of Dan Evans.”
The woman stared at him, motionless and silent.
“Is Jim round anywheres handy?” he asked. “I’d like to speak to him.”
“It was him sent ye here—that young fool, Dan Evans!” she exclaimed.
“Why don’t he mind his own business? Can’t ye let Jim be? He’s workin’
fine now that the gin’s all gone. Can’t ye leave him be?”
“What’s he workin’ at, m’am?”
“Trappin’, that’s what.”
“But whose traps?”
Her face paled. Quick as a flash she reached out an arm, snatched his
cased rifle from where it stood and stepped back into the room. Mr.
Wallace smiled, raised the pack of provisions from the threshold,
carried it into the cabin and closed the door behind him. He crossed the
room in four strides and opened another door; and there stood Conley,
facing it, with both hands held high in air and a rifle in one hand.
Behind him stood Young Dan.
“Come along in,” said the deputy-sheriff.
Conley obeyed; and young Dan came close at his heels and shut the door.
Wallace took the rifle from Conley and his own from the woman. Then he
turned to Young Dan and said, “You’ve got something to say to these
folks, I believe. Fire away.”
“It’s this,” said Young Dan, looking coldly from the man to the woman.
“I’m just about sick of supplying you with grub. A wolf would feel more
gratitude than either of you. So this is the last time; and if ever I
call again with the deputy-sheriff, there’ll be trouble for you. We’ve
arrested Luke Watt for selling gin, and he is going to jail for it. Oh,
yes, I know all about that fox skin! Stick to yer own trap-lines from
now on, Jim Conley, and trade yer furs for food instead of hard liquor,
and I’ll leave you alone. But make one more break at me or my traps, and
I’ll land you where you can talk it over with Luke Watt. Here’s more
grub—the last I bother to tote in to you—and that’s all I’ve got to say.
Come along, Mr. Wallace. Let’s get out into the fresh air quick.”
They turned away and left the man and woman and bewildered children
standing silent and motionless.
“I didn’t suspect it was in you to be so sharp with them,” remarked
Archie Wallace. “What riled you?”
“Conley tried to slip a knife into me after he’d put up his hands,”
replied Young Dan.
“Well, I reckon they’ll be good from now on, so far as you’re
concerned,” said Wallace. “You scared ’em. You pretty nigh scared me.”
They were half-way back to Bill Tangler’s camp when the deputy-sheriff
halted and lit a cigar.
“You’re a wizard, Dan Evans,” he said. “A trapper needs to be smart, but
not as far-sighted an’ clear-thinkin’ as you. The Government will be
glad to pay you for anything you do—so will you lend me a hand now an’
then, when I’m up against something too big for me to swing alone?”
“Sure,” said Young Dan.
“That’s a bargain!” exclaimed Mr. Wallace; and they shook hands there in
the white trail.