“Ah, ha! I fancy that this is a clew to Mr. Ghost!” exclaimed Tom.
He was bending over a sort of megaphone of birch bark, which had been
rolled up into a cone-shaped formation. He held it aloft triumphantly.
“So this is what your spook made those noises with, Jack, old fellow,
and scared you half to death.”
“He did no such thing,” protested Jack, getting very red in the face. “I
did think, though, that there must be something of this kind behind it.”
The two boys had left the hut almost as soon as it was daylight to
prosecute their search for some trace of the cause of the alarm they had
experienced during the night. Tom already had a theory in his head as to
what it was that had made the sounds, and, deducing from the fact that
the thief alone would desire to try to scare them, the first things he
looked for were traces of some prowler in the vicinity of the hut.
He had discovered footprints among some trees on the edge of the
clearing, the prints of a big, soft moccasin-shod man. Then came the
finding of the peculiar woods-made megaphone with which, beyond doubt,
the man who had tried to scare the boys off his trail had uttered the
alarming sounds.
Of this they could be reasonably certain, but it was beyond their power
to make out how the man had come to turn back and put his plan to
frighten them off his tracks into execution. Tom was inclined to think
that he must have turned back soon after he left the hut and discovered
who were the occupants. Then he had secreted himself not far off till
nightfall and improvised his “ghost party.”
“At any rate, he gave us a fine scare,” declared Tom, as they walked
back to breakfast before taking the trail again, “for I’ll admit that I
felt just as creepy as you looked.”
“And that was some creepy,” admitted Jack.
And so the matter was, for the time, dismissed from their minds, and
over their breakfast they fell to discussing further plans when they
should start on again.
The meal had been finished, the dishes hastily wiped and put neatly
away, and a penciled note left by Tom on the table thanking the unknown
owner of the hut for his hospitality, when both boys were startled at
the sound of a dog whip being cracked viciously somewhere in the
vicinity. Then came a voice:
“Allez! Allez vitement! Ha! Pierre! Ha! Victoire!”
Both boys ran to the door. Coming toward them at a good pace was a sled
drawn by four Mameluke dogs. Seated upon it was a strange figure. It was
that of a venerable-looking man with a long white beard, out of which
his sun-browned face looked oddly, as if peering from a bush. He wore a
bright-red “parkee,” deerskin moccasins and a heavy fur cap. In his
mouth was a short clay pipe, at which he was puffing ferociously.
“Father Christmas!” cried Jack. “Santa Claus in real life!”
In fact, the old man on the sled did bear a marked resemblance to that
popular Yuletide saint.
As he saw the boys, he uttered an exclamation of astonishment. He
cracked his whip again, and the Mamelukes, yapping and snarling, drew
the creaking sled up to the door. The old man checked the dogs with a
word, and then turned to the boys.
“Ah! mes garçons,” he cried; “where you come from, eh? You look plantee
young to be out on the trail alone.”
While the old man busied himself in unpacking the goods he had brought
back from the trading post some fifty miles away, Tom told him of how
they had passed the night in the hut. Then the old man told them that he
was the owner of the hut, by name Joe Picquet, an old voyageur of the
wilderness.
When Tom told the old fellow of the raiding of his fur treasury, Joe
Picquet burst into an excitable fury. He shook his fists and swore to
punish the man who had done it with all manner of torments, if he could
catch him. A hasty investigation of the barrel showed, however, that the
thief had only deemed two skins worth taking. One of these was a silver
fox pelt, for which old Joe had counted on getting a thousand dollars,
and perhaps more.
“Ah, he is a mauvais chien!” he burst out, when Tom told him how they,
too, had suffered at the hands of the marauder. “Joe Picquet make it
ver’ hot for him if he get hands on him. Sacre! One silver fox pelt
worth all dese put togeder!”
“Possibly you may have passed him on the trail?” said Tom.
“No, I pass only one man. Li’l old man all same lak me,” said Joe
positively.
“Did he have a sled with four dogs?”
“Oui, certainment. But he was harmless-looking fellow. He no would rob
like the man that was here. Non, it would be impossible to teenk of
eet.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” rejoined Tom dubiously. “Oh, by the way, was
he smoking cigarettes?”
Old Joe knit his bushy eyebrows in deep thought.
“Oui, he was smoke. Certainment. Li’l yellow cigarettes he was smoke!
Bah!”
“Then it was the same man for certain,” said Tom positively. “Look
here.”
He indicated the stumps of yellow cigarettes scattered all about.
“Ah! You are right, mon garçon. Boosh! What a bad mans he must be! So
you are follow him, eh? You teenk you catch him?”
“We certainly hope to, or at any rate to get close enough to him to put
the authorities on the trail,” said Tom.
“But you are only two li’l boys.”
“Not so very little,” rejoined Tom, while he could not restrain a smile,
for Joe Picquet himself was shorter than either of the Dacre boys.
The little old man kept his eyes on his dogs in a speculative mood for a
few seconds. The boys did not disturb him. At last he broke out with an
exclamation.
“Boosh! How you lak it I go long wid you hunt dees bad man?”
“Why, it would be the very thing! But are your dogs fit for a long
journey?”
Old Joe laughed scornfully.
“Mon garçon, attendez. Dey are the finest team of malukes in whole Yukon
country. Old Joe is poor, but he wouldn’t tak one, two, t’ree hundred
dollar for one of dem. I feed dem, den we start back again. The man I
passed go slowly. Maybe he teenk he scare you away. Ha! ha! He badly
fooled. Boosh! I go feed dem now.”
He made a peculiar sound with his lips, and instantly the dogs began
jumping about in great excitement.
“Attendez, mes gallons,” said the old man, holding up a forefinger
impressively; “do not touch dem now. Dey are good dogs, but all malukes
plenty mean. You got beat, beat them all time or dey teenk dey boss and
bite you plentee hard, I bet you.”
The boys had heard before of the savage, intractable natures of mameluke
dogs and how they can be kept submissive to their owners only by harsh
treatment. A mameluke is practically a wild beast broken to harness.
They are swift and sure over the frozen lands, but there their
association with man ends. They do not wish to be petted, and are likely
to retaliate with their teeth on anyone who attempts friendly relations
with them.
Muttering angrily to himself, old Joe pottered off to a barrel in the
rear of his hut where he kept a plentiful provision of fish for the
dogs. Presently he reappeared, and began throwing it among them,
cracking his big black-snake whip in a regular fusillade as the dogs
fought and snarled furiously over their food.
“Ah, Pierre! mauvais chien! Allez! Hey, Victoire! Wha’ for you bite ole
Pete, hey! Boosh! Take your time!”
But the old man’s cries as he darted here and there among them had no
effect on the dogs, who finished their meal with frenzied snappings and
one or two fights which had to be broken up by main force.
“Now, I go get few teengs an’ we start,” said old Joe, when the animals
had lain down in the snow to digest their not over-plentiful meal.
“Boosh! We geev that feller warm reception when we find him, I bet you.”
When old Joe reappeared from the hut, he carried with him a long,
wicked-looking old squirrel gun. Its barrel was almost six feet long and
it was of a dark, well-worn brown color.
“What are you going to do with that?” asked Tom, as the old man tenderly
fumbled with the lock.
“Maybe have use heem. Boosh! No can tell,” he replied oracularly.
“Jiminy!” whispered Jack to Tom, as with their new ally they set out
once more along the trail, “old Santa Claus can look positively
ferocious when he wants to, can’t he?”
“Yes, but I’ve got a notion that he carries that funny old shooting iron
more for effect than anything else. Still, I’m glad we have him along;
he may prove a valuable ally,” surmised Tom.
“Well, with Santa Claus on our side we ought to have better luck along
the trouble trail,” agreed Jack.
[Illustration: The dogs sprang forward, and Tom and Jack sped after them
on rapidly moving snow-shoes.]
Crack! crack! went the dog whip.
“Boosh!” cried the old man, with whom the exclamation appeared to serve
all purposes.
The dogs sprang forward, and Tom and Jack, relieved of their burdens
which now lay on the sled, sped after them on rapidly moving snowshoes.
Their chase of the unknown thief now began to look like business.