“Boosh! So you would try keel me, eh, mon brave?” puffed old Joe,
wresting the weapon from the hand of the little gray man and hurling it
across the room. “Vous etes one fine fellow, n’est-ce pas?”
Leaving him for an instant, old Joe fairly slid across the tent and did
something which, but for his excitement, he would have accomplished in
the first place. He “broke” the pistol and extracted the six cartridges.
The little man under the tattered blanket watched with glittering eyes.
Then Joe Picquet turned to him once more.
“Where ees zee black fox skeen, you beeg rascal?”
The old trapper felt like pouncing upon the other and shaking the truth
out of him, especially following his discovery of the little man’s
weapon. But the fellow appeared to be genuinely sick and he throttled
down his anger.
The man remained silent. Old Joe thought he resembled a little
glittering-eyed weasel as he lay there watching the old trapper with
furtive eyes, that though they appeared averted followed old Joe’s every
move. But he did not speak in rejoinder to Joe’s direct command. He
merely grinned in a sickly fashion, showing a double row of yellow,
uneven teeth. Seen thus, he looked more like some little wicked animal
than ever. The sympathy that Joe had felt for him began to evaporate.
“See here, you, you no play ’possum weez old Joe Picquet,” he said
roughly, putting on an appearance of ferocity. “He no stand for
monkey-doodle business. Non, mon ami.”
The man lay in silence for a space. Then he moved and spoke.
“Look in that sack yonder,” he said, indicating a bulging gunny-bag in a
corner near the sled.
Old Joe lost no time in ripping open the deerskin fastenings of the bag
and dragging out its contents. These he dumped in a heap on the floor.
There were marten skins, ermine skins and weasel skins galore, but none
of his skins nor so much as a hair of a black fox pelt.
Joe turned angrily on the other.
“I geev you one chance,” he said; “you fool me no more. You tell me
where dat skeen ees or les garçons go to Red Fox for zee autarkies.”
The sick man grinned again, showing his yellow molars, that looked like
stumps protruding from the sands at low tide.
“I tole yer, yer wouldn’t find it, Frenchy,” said he, “an’ I reckon you
won’t. I ain’t got it, an’ that’s the truth.”
Joe’s jaw closed with a click. His teeth clenched and his old eyes
flashed.
“Ver’ well den, mon ami. I search your blankets.”
It might have been fancy, but Joe thought that he saw the man on the
ground turn a shade paler. Old Joe approached the bed. In the dim light
his face looked as ferocious as the countenance of a wolf. Perhaps
something warned Peabody Dolittle that it was no use to evade the
question of his guilt any longer.
“It’s under the lower blanket,” he said weakly.
Old Joe thrust his hand under and then, for the second time, he looked
up just in the nick of opportunity. As he stooped low, the sick man had
raised himself on his bed, and now had a knife poised above the old
French-Canadian’s back.
With a shout of rage, the trapper struck the upraised arm and sent the
blade halfway across the tent. It fell ringingly to the ground. At the
same instant, the boys, who had heard Joe’s shout, came running into the
tent, their arms full of wood.
“Aloons, mes enfants!” cried the angry old man. “Do not give good wood
to such as dis man. Twice he try to keel me. Once weez pistol, once weez
knife. Let heem freeze in zee snows if he weel. We weel help heem no
more.”
He thrust a hand under the man’s blankets where the latter had
indicated. Then, with a shout of triumph, he drew out a beautiful skin.
A black fox pelt, shimmering, glossy, beautiful!
The boys gave a cry. It was theirs beyond a doubt, the skin of the fine
black fox that they had last seen barking and howling for his liberty,
and whom the two partners in the fox-raising enterprise had set such
store by. They were still looking at the skin, petrified, when old Joe
uttered another cry of triumph.
This time, from beneath the blankets he drew out the skins the thief had
filched from his own cabin. His rage knew no bounds. He appeared angrier
now that he had found the skins than he was before. He shook his fist at
the sick man and upbraided him unmercifully.
“You are one skunk! One homme mechant!” he roared. “You first rob and
den try to keel. Above all, you lie. Boosh! I have for you no use.”
“Well, you’ve got yer skins now, ain’t ye?” asked the man on the ground,
in a feeble voice. “What more d’ye want?”
“A good deal more,” struck in Tom. “How did you come to know of the
foxes on the Porcupine River?”
“I overhearn two fellers at the tradin’ post talkin’ about ’em,”
whimpered the crest-fallen Pod.
“You did, eh?” exclaimed Jack. “What sort of looking fellows?”
The man lying stretched out there with an abject, fawning look on his
face turned a beseeching glance on them. But they knew of the cowardly
crime he had tried to perpetrate and hardened themselves toward him. In
his high-pitched, plaintive voice, Pod gave a description of the two men
he had declared were responsible for his knowledge of the fox kennels on
the Porcupine.
When he concluded his description Tom and Jack exchanged astonished
glances.
“Uncle Dacre!” cried Jack.
“Mr. Chillingworth!” cried Tom. “I’ll bet they were talking business and
this fellow here crept up and listened.”
Although they were both very angry, somehow the thought that they had
succeeded in the hard task they had set out to accomplish, made them
less disturbed than they might have been.
“What did you do it for?” asked Tom.
“I can’t tell yer now,” was the rejoinder. “It was fer many reasons.
Some day perhaps you’ll know. Now I can’t say nothin’.”
“At least, tell us if it was you that tried to frighten us by howling
through a birch-bark megaphone?” asked Tom.
The little man grinned.
“Yes, I did it, all right,” he said, with the same soft, foolish smile.
“I calcerlated to shake you off’n my trail. But I didn’t do it. It was
jes’ a plum foolish joke, that’s all, and——”
“Stand right where you are!”
The order came from a voice behind the boys and old Joe, who had been
bending over the stricken little gray fellow.
They all wheeled like a flash. In the doorway stood three figures—tall,
rough-looking men dressed in the ordinary garb of the trail. All three
were armed and each had assigned himself to “take care of” one of our
adventurers.
The “sick” man broke into a shrill laugh.
“He! he! he! Thought you’d fooled Wolf Ericsen, didn’t you? Well, by the
eternal, you’ve got another guess coming, I reckon. Dick! Sarsen! Flem!
keep ’em covered while I get up.”