It is now time to return to Tom, Jack and their companion, old Joe
Picquet. It will be recalled that we left them in a most precarious and
startling situation.
From a man apparently sick unto death, the gray, pitiable figure on the
cot had been suddenly changed to a vicious, spiteful enemy, as
vindictive and apparently as dangerous as a rattlesnake. The very
swiftness of the change had taken them so utterly by surprise that, as
the rifles of his three followers were trained upon them, our trio of
friends were deprived of speech.
Old Joe was the first to recover his faculties. With his eyes blazing
furiously from his weather-beaten face, he emitted a roar of rage.
The vials of his wrath were directed against the small gray man—Peabody
Dolittle, as he had called himself.
“Boosh! You beeg ras-cal!” he cried. “You beeg liar as well as teef, eh?
What you wan’ us do now—eh?”
“Nothing but to give up those skins you took from me and then vamoose,”
came the quiet rejoinder from the little gray man, who had lost his
Yankee dialect and drawl and who was now on his feet fully dressed
except for a coat.
“And if we won’t?” exclaimed Tom, retaining a firm grip on the black fox
skin.
He was resolved to keep it at all hazards.
“Why, then,” rejoined the other, with a vindictive snarl, “we shall have
to adopt harsh measures. You may consider yourselves my prisoners.”
“Non! Not by a whole lot!”
The angry, half choked cry was from old Joe Picquet. Beside himself with
fury at the thought of the cunning fraud the man had worked upon them,
he flung himself forward as if he meant to tear him to pieces.
Tom’s arm jerked him back.
“Don’t do anything like that, Joe,” he counseled; and then to the gray
man, “I suppose your sickness was just a dodge to keep us here till your
companions could arrive.”
“Just what it was, my young friend,” amiably agreed the rascal. “As a
guesser of motives you are very good—very good, indeed.”
One of the new arrivals stepped forward and whispered something to his
leader, who nodded. Then he spoke:
“Of course, I shall have to ask you to give up your weapons,” he said.
Old Joe Picquet fumed and fussed, but there was nothing for it but to
obey. In the presence of such a force, and with the disadvantage under
which they labored, there was nothing else to be done. With the best
grace they could, they gave up their weapons, which the little gray man,
with a smile of satisfaction, took into his possession.
“Pity you didn’t heed the ghostly warning I gave you,” said he to the
boys, with a grin, “you’d be in a better position than you are now. But
after all, it will teach you never again to interfere with the Wolf.”
They had nothing to reply to this speech; but at the rascal’s next words
their anger broke out afresh.
“Are you going to give up those skins, or do we have to take them from
you?”
As he spoke he did a significant thing. He lightly tapped with his
finger tips the rifle stock of the man next to him. It was a quiet hint,
yet a sufficient one.
“We are in your power right now; but perhaps before long the tables will
be turned,” said Tom. “Take the skin that you stole, and——”
“Say no more, my young friend. You are wise beyond your years. Flem,”
this to a squat-figured, evil-looking fellow with a shack of sandy hair,
who was one of the trio whose arrival had caused our friends so much
trouble, “Flem, hand me that black fox skin. I went to some trouble to
secure it. I propose to keep it.”
“As long as you can, you ought to add,” muttered Jack, under his breath.
As for Picquet, he, like Tom, remained silent. There was really nothing
to be said. Without a word he booted the skins he had recovered from the
fur robber’s loot across the floor. One of the Wolf’s men picked them
up.
By this time it was almost dark within the tent. But from the red-hot
stove there emanated quite a glow which showed up the evil countenances
of the boys’ captors in striking relief. Except for their leader, the
Wolf, whose soft tones and retiring manners would have made anyone pick
him out for anything but what he was, they were a repulsive looking
crew.
It was clear enough to Tom now that they were in the power of men who
made a regular business of fur robbing, and a thoroughly prosperous one,
too. He felt an intense disgust for them. Knowing as he did the
hardships of a trapper’s life, the long tramps through the freezing
snows, the isolation and the loneliness of the existence, he thought,
with angry contempt, of the meanness of men who would rob the rightful
owners of such hard-earned trophies.
“Feel pretty sore at me, don’t you?” asked the Wolf, who had been eying
the boy narrowly.
“Not so sore as disgusted,” shot out Tom. “I’ve seen some mean wretches
in my time, but a man who will deliberately——”
“Be careful there, young fellow. Don’t get too fresh,” warned one of the
Wolf’s men.
“I consider that you have got off pretty easily,” rejoined the Wolf,
seemingly unruffled. His tones were as calm and retiring as ever. “I
might have sent your dog team scurrying off into the wilderness without
you, and then left you to get back as best you could without provisions
or blankets. Instead of that, I’m going to do you a kindness. I shall
set you free with your sled.”
“And our rifles?” asked old Joe.
“I’m afraid I must keep them. You are altogether too capable to be
trusted with such weapons.”
“I know who I’d like to make a target of,” muttered Jack.
“So I shall have to retain your rifles. They are fine weapons and I am
glad to have them. And now, gentlemen, under those terms we shall bid
you good night.”
“We’ll see you again some time—Boosh!—an’ when we do—nom d’un nom
d’un chien!” exclaimed Joe, shaking his fist toward the heavens.
“I hardly think it likely that you will ever see me again,” was the
little gray man’s rejoinder. “We have made enough to leave the Yukon for
good and all——”
“For the good of all, I guess you mean,” muttered the sharp-tongued Jack
under his breath.
Luckily for him, perhaps, the other did not hear him, or appeared not
to. Half an hour later, inwardly raging, but without the means to act on
their impulses, the two boys and the old man were out on the snow crust
harnessing up the dog-team.
Over them stood the Wolf’s henchmen. As they “hit the trail” in the same
direction as that whence they had come, they heard a harsh laugh and a
shouted good night.
Both sounds came from the Wolf’s tent, the Wolf who had tricked and
trapped them as a climax to their long pursuit.