Tish was much impressed; but Hutchins, in whose judgment she began to
have the greatest confidence, opposed the idea.
"I wouldn't think of it," she said briefly.
"Why? It's a frank, straightforward letter."
"He likes himself too much. And you should always be suspicious of
anything that's offered too cheap."
So the Updike application was refused. I have often wondered since what
would have been the result had we accepted it!
The worms were doing well, though Tish found that Hannah neglected them,
and was compelled to feed them herself. On the day before we started, we
packed them carefully in ice and moss, and fed them. That was the day
the European war was declared.
"Canada is at war," Tish telephoned. "The papers say the whole country
is full of spies, blowing up bridges and railroads."
"We can still go to the seashore," I said. "The bead things will do for
the missionary box to Africa."
"Seashore nothing!" Tish retorted. "We're going, of course,--just as we
planned. We'll keep our eyes open; that's all. I'm not for one side or
the other, but a spy's a spy."
Later that evening she called again to say there were rumors that the
Canadian forests were bristling with German wireless outfits.
"I've a notion to write J. Updike, Lizzie, and find out whether he knows
anything about wireless telegraphy," she said, "only there's so little
time. Perhaps I can find a book that gives the code."
[This is only pertinent as showing Tish's state of mind. As a matter of
fact, she did not write to Updike at all.]
Well, we started at last, and I must say they let us over the border
with a glance; but they asked us whether we had any firearms. Tish's
trunk contained a shotgun and a revolver; but she had packed over the
top her most intimate personal belongings, and they were not disturbed.
"Have you any weapons?" asked the inspector.
"Do we look like persons carrying weapons?" Tish demanded haughtily. And
of course we did not. Still, there was an untruth of the spirit and none
of us felt any too comfortable. Indeed, what followed may have been a
punishment on us for deceit and conspiracy.
Aggie had taken her cat along--because it was so fond of fish, she said.
And, between Tish buying ice for the worms and Aggie getting milk for
the cat, the journey was not monotonous; but on returning from one of
her excursions to the baggage-car, Tish put a heavy hand on my shoulder.
"That boy's on the train, Lizzie!" she said. "He had the impudence to
ask me whether I still drive with the license plates under a cushion.
English roses--importations!" said Tish, and sniffed. "You don't suppose
he went into that tent shop and asked about us?"
"He might," I retorted; "but, on the other hand, there's no reason why
our going to Canada should keep the rest of the United States at home!"
However, the thing did seem queer, somehow. Why had he told us things
that were not so? Why had he been so anxious to know who we were? Why,
had he asked us to take the Sunday-school picnic to a place that did not
belong to him?
"He may be going away to forget some trouble. You remember what he said
about happier days," said Tish.
"That was Updike's reason too," I relied. "Poignant grief!"
For just a moment our eyes met. The same suspicion had occurred to us
both. Well, we agreed to say nothing to Aggie or Hutchins, for fear of
upsetting them, and the next hour or so was peaceful.
Hutchins read and Aggie slept. Tish and I strung beads for the Indians,
and watched the door into the next car. And, sure enough, about the
middle of the afternoon he appeared and stared in at us. He watched us
for quite a time, smoking a cigarette as he did so. Then he came in and
bent down over Tish.
"You didn't take the children out for the picnic, did you?" he said.
"I did not!" Tish snapped.
"I'm sorry. Never saw the place look so well!"
"Look here," Tish said, putting down her beads; "what were you doing
there that night anyhow? You don't belong to the family."
He looked surprised and then grieved.
"You've discovered that, have you?" he said. "I did, you know--word of
honor! They've turned me off; but I love the old place still, and on
summer nights I wander about it, recalling happier days."
Hutchins closed her book with a snap, and he sighed.
"I perceive that we are overheard," he said. "Some time I hope to tell
you the whole story. It's extremely sad. I'll not spoil the beginning of
your holiday with it."
All the time he had been talking he held a piece of paper in his hand.
When he left us Tish went back thoughtfully to her beads.
"It just shows, Lizzie," she said, "how wrong we are to trust to
appearances. That poor boy--"
I had stooped into the aisle and was picking up the piece of paper which
he had accidentally dropped as he passed Hutchins. I opened it and read
aloud to Tish and Aggie, who had wakened:--
"'Afraid you'll not get away with it! The red-haired man in the car
behind is a plain-clothes man.'"
Tish has a large fund of general knowledge, gained through Charlie
Sands; so what Aggie and I failed to understand she interpreted at once.
"A plain-clothes man," she explained, "is a detective dressed as a
gentleman. It's as plain as pikestaff! The boy's received this warning
and dropped it. He has done something he shouldn't and is escaping to
Canada!"
I do not believe, however, that we should have thought of his being a
political spy but for the conductor of the train. He proved to be a very
nice person, with eight children and a toupee; and he said that Canada
was honeycombed with spies in the pay of the German Government.
"They're sending wireless messages all the time, probably from remote
places," he said. "And, of course, their play now is to blow up the
transcontinental railroads. Of course the railroads have an army of
detectives on the watch."
"Good Heavens!" Aggie said, and turned pale.
Well, our pleasure in the journey was ruined. Every time the whistle
blew on the engine we quailed, and Tish wrote her will then and there on
the back of an envelope. It was while she was writing that the truth
came to her.
"That boy!" she said. "Don't you see it all? That note was a warning to
him. He's a spy and the red-haired man is after him."
None of us slept that night though Tish did a very courageous thing
about eleven o'clock, when she was ready for bed. I went with her. We
had put our dressing-gowns over our nightrobes, and we went back to the
car containing the spy.
He had not retired, but was sitting alone, staring ahead moodily. The
red-haired man was getting ready for bed, just opposite. Tish spoke
loudly, so the detective should hear.
"I have come back," Tish said, "to say that we know everything. A word
to the wise, Mister Happier Days! Don't try any of your tricks!"
He sat, with his mouth quite open, and stared at us: but the red-haired
man pretended to hear nothing and took off his other shoe.
None of us slept at all except Hutchins. Though we had told her nothing,
she seemed inherently to distrust the spy. When, on arriving at the town
where we were to take the boat, he offered to help her off with Aggie's
cat basket, which she was carrying, she snubbed him.
"I can do it myself," she said coldly; "and if you know when you're well
off you'll go back to where you came from. Something might happen to you
here in the wilderness."
"I wish it would," he replied in quite a tragic manner.
[As Tish said then, a man is probably often forced by circumstances into
hateful situations. No spy can really want to be a spy with every brick
wall suggesting, as it must, a firing-squad.]
Well, to make a long story short, we took the little steamer that goes
up the river three times a week to take groceries and mail to the
logging-camps, and the spy and the red-haired detective went along. The
spy seemed to have quite a lot of luggage, but the detective had only a
suitcase.
Tish, watching the detective, said his expression grew more and more
anxious as we proceeded up the river. Cottages gave place to
logging-camps and these to rocky islands, with no sign of life; still,
the spy stayed on the steamer, and so, of course, did the detective.
Tish went down and examined the luggage. She reported that the spy was
traveling under the name of McDonald and that the detective's suitcase
was unmarked. Mr. McDonald had some boxes and a green canoe. The
detective had nothing at all. There were no other passengers.
We let Aggie's cat out on the boat and he caught a mouse almost
immediately, and laid it in the most touching manner at the detective's
feet; but he was in a very bad humor and flung it over the rail. Shortly
after that he asked Tish whether she intended to go to the Arctic
Circle.
"I don't know that that's any concern of yours," Tish said. "You're not
after me, you know."
He looked startled and muttered something into his mustache.
"It's perfectly clear what's wrong with him," Tish said. "He's got to
stick to Mr. McDonald, and he hasn't got a tent in that suitcase, or
even a blanket. I don't suppose he knows where his next meal's coming
from."
She was probably right, for I saw the crew of the boat packing a box or
two of crackers and an old comfort into a box; and Aggie overheard the
detective say to the captain that if he would sell him some fishhooks he
would not starve anyhow.
Tish found an island that suited her about three o'clock that afternoon,
and we disembarked. Mr. McDonald insisted on helping the crew with our
stuff, which they piled on a large flat rock; but the detective stood on
the upper deck and scowled down at us. Tish suggested that he was a
woman-hater.
"They know so many lawbreaking women," she said, "it's quite natural."
Having landed us, the boat went across to another island and deposited
Mr. McDonald and the green canoe. Tish, who had talked about a lodge in
some vast wilderness, complained at that; but when the detective got off
on a little tongue of the mainland, in sight of both islands, she said
the place was getting crowded and she had a notion to go farther.
The first thing she did was to sit on a box and open a map. The Canadian
Pacific was only a few miles away through the woods!
Hutchins proved herself a treasure. She could work all round the three
of us; she opened boxes and a can of beans for supper with the same
hatchet, and had tea made and the beans heated while Tish was selecting
a site for the tent.
But--and I remembered this later--she watched the river at intervals,
with her cheeks like roses from the exertion. She was really a pretty
girl--only, when no one was looking, her mouth that day had a way of
setting itself firmly, and she frowned at the water.
We, Hutchins and I, set up the stove against a large rock, and when the
teakettle started to boil it gave the river front a homey look. Sitting
on my folding-chair beside the stove, with a cup of tea in my hand and
a plate of beans on a doily on a packing-box beside me, I was entirely
comfortable. Through the glasses I could see the red-haired man on
the other shore sitting on a rock, with his head in his hands; but Mr.
McDonald had clearly located on the other side of his island and was
not in sight.
Aggie and Tish were putting up the tent, and Hutchins was feeding the
tea grounds to the worms, which had traveled comfortably, when I saw a
canoe coming up the river. I called to Tish about it.
"An Indian!" she said calmly. "Get the beads, Aggie; and put my shotgun
on that rock, where he can see it." She stood and watched him.
"Primitive man, every inch of him!" she went on. "Notice his uncovered
head. Notice the freedom, almost the savagery, of the way he uses that
paddle. I wish he would sing. You remember, in Hiawatha, how they sing
as they paddle along?"
She got the beads and went to the water's edge; but the Indian stooped
just then and, picking up a Panama hat, put it on his head.
"I have called," he said, "to see whether I can interest you in a set of
books I am selling. I shall detain you only a moment. Sixty-three steel
engravings by well-known artists; best hand-made paper; and the work
itself is of high educational value."
Tish suddenly put the beads behind her back and said we did not expect
to have any time to read. We had come into the wilderness to rest our
minds.
"You are wrong, I fear," said the Indian. "Personally I find that I can
read better in the wilds than anywhere else. Great thoughts in great
surroundings! I take Nietzsche with me when I go fishing."
Tish had the wretched beads behind her all the time; and, to make
conversation, more than anything else, she asked about venison. He
shrugged his shoulders. J. Fenimore Cooper had not prepared us for an
Indian who shrugged his shoulders.
"We Indians are allowed to kill deer," he said; "but I fear you are
prohibited. I am not even permitted to sell it."
"I should think," said Tish sharply, "that, since we are miles from a
game warden, you could safely sell us a steak or two."
He gazed at her disapprovingly. "I should not care to break the law,
madam," he said.
Then he picked up his paddle and took himself and his scruples and his
hand-made paper and his sixty-three steel engravings down the river.
"Primitive man!" I said to Tish, from my chair. "Notice the freedom,
almost the savagery, with which he swings that paddle."
We had brought a volume of Cooper along, not so much to read as to
remind us how to address the Indians. Tish said nothing, but she got the
book and flung it far out into the river.
There were a number of small annoyances the first day or two. Hutchins
was having trouble with the motor launch, which the steamer had towed up
the day we came, and which she called the "Mebbe." And another civilized
Indian, with a gold watch and a cigarette case, had rented us a leaky
canoe for a dollar a day.
[We patched the leak with chewing gum, which Aggie always carried for
indigestion; and it did fairly well, so long as the gum lasted.]
Then, on the second night, there was a little wind, and the tent
collapsed on us, the ridgepole taking Aggie across the chest. It was
that same night, I think, when Aggie's cat found a porcupine in the
woods, and came in looking like a pincushion.
What with chopping firewood for the stove, and carrying water, and
bailing out the canoe, and with the motor boat giving one gasp and then
dying for every hundred times somebody turned over the engine, we had no
time to fish for two days.
The police agent fished all day from a rock, for, of course, he had
no boat; but he seemed to catch nothing. At times we saw him digging
frantically, as though for worms. What he dug with I do not know; but,
of course, he got no worms. Tish said if he had been more civil she
would have taken something to him and a can of worms; but he had been
rude, especially to Aggie's cat, and probably the boat would bring him
things.
What with getting settled and everything, we had not much time to think
about the spy. It was on the third day, I believe, that he brought his
green canoe to the open water in front of us and anchored there, just
beyond earshot.
He put out a line and opened a book; and from that time on he was a part
of the landscape every day from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. At noon he would eat
some sort of a lunch, reading as he ate.
He apparently never looked toward us, but he was always there. It was
the most extraordinary thing. At first we thought he had found a
remarkable fishing-place; but he seemed to catch very few fish. It was
Tish, I think, who found the best explanation.
"He's providing himself with an alibi," she stated. "How can he be a spy
when we see him all day long? Don't you see how clever it is?"
It was the more annoying because we had arranged a small cove for
soap-and-water bathing, hanging up a rod for bath-towels and suspending
a soap-dish and a sponge-holder from an overhanging branch. The cove was
well shielded by brush and rocks from the island, but naturally was open
to the river.
It was directly opposite this cove that Mr. McDonald took up his
position.
This compelled us to bathe in the early morning, while the water was
still cold, and resulted in causing Aggie a most uncomfortable half-hour
on the fourth morning of our stay.
She was the last one in the pool, and Tish absent-mindedly took her
bathrobe and slippers back to the camp when she went. Tish went out
in the canoe shortly after. She was learning to use one, with a life
preserver on--Tish, of course, not the canoe. And Mr. McDonald arriving
soon after, Aggie was compelled to sit in the water for two hours and
twenty minutes. When Hutchins found her she was quite blue.
This was the only disagreement we had all summer: Aggie's refusing to
speak to Tish that entire day. She said Mr. McDonald had seen her head
and thought it was some sort of swimming animal, and had shot at her.
Mr. McDonald said afterward he knew her all the time, and was uncertain
whether she was taking a cure for something or was trying to commit
suicide. He said he spent a wretched morning. At five o'clock that
evening we began to hear a curious tapping noise from the spy's island.
It would last for a time, stop, and go on.
Hutchins said it was woodpeckers; but Tish looked at me significantly.
"Wireless!" she said. "What did I tell you?"
That decided her next move, for that evening she put some tea and canned
corn and a rubber blanket into the canoe; and in fear and trembling I
went with her.
"It's going to rain, Lizzie," she said, "and after all, that detective
may be surly; but he's doing his duty by his country. It's just as
heroic to follow a spy up here, and starve to death watching him, as it
is to storm a trench--and less showy. And I've something to tell him."
The canoe tilted just then, and only by heroic effort, were we able to
calm it.
"Then why not go comfortably in the motor boat?"
Tish stopped, her paddle in the air. "Because I can't make that dratted
engine go," she said, "and because I believe Hutchins would drown us all
before she'd take any help to him. It's my belief that she's known him
somewhere. I've seen her sit on a rock and look across at him with
murder in her eyes."
A little wind had come up, and the wretched canoe was leaking, the
chewing gum having come out. Tish was paddling; so I was compelled to
sit over the aperture, thus preventing water from coming in. Despite my
best efforts, however, about three inches seeped in and washed about me.
It was quite uncomfortable.
The red-haired man was asleep when we landed. He had hung the comfort
over a branch, like a tent, and built a fire at the end of it. He had
his overcoat on, buttoned to the chin, and his head was on his
suit-case. He sat up and looked at us, blinking.
"We've brought you some tea and some canned corn," Tish said; "and a
rubber blanket. It's going to rain."
He slid out of the tent, feet first, and got up; but when he tried to
speak he sneezed. He had a terrible cold.
"I might as well say at once," Tish went on, "that we know why you are
here--"
"The deuce you do!" he said hoarsely.
"We do not particularly care about you, especially since the way you
acted to a friendly and innocent cat--one can always judge a man by the
way he treats dumb animals; but we sympathize with your errand. We'll
even help if we can."
"Then the--the person in question has confided in you?"
"Not at all," said Tish loftily. "I hope we can put two and two
together. Have you got a revolver?"
He looked startled at that. "I have one," he said; "but I guess I'll not
need it. The first night or two a skunk hung round; two, in fact--mother
and child--but I think they're gone."
"Would you like some fish?"
"My God, no!"
This is a truthful narrative. That is exactly what he said.
"I'll tell you what I do need, ladies," he went on: "If you've got
a spare suit of underwear over there, I could use it. It'd stretch,
probably. And I'd like a pen and some ink. I must have lost my fountain
pen out of my pocket stooping over the bank to wash my face."
"Do you know the wireless code?" Tish asked suddenly.
"Wireless?"
"I have every reason to believe," she said impressively, "that one of
the great trees on that island conceals a wireless outfit."
"I see!" He edged back a little from us both.
"I should think," Tish said, eyeing him, "that a knowledge of the
wireless code would be essential to you in your occupation."
"We--we get a smattering of all sorts of things," he said; but he was
uneasy--you could see that with half an eye.
He accompanied us down to the canoe; but once, when Tish turned
suddenly, he ducked back as though he had been struck and changed color.
He thanked us for the tea and corn, and said he wished we had a spare
razor--but, of course, he supposed not. Then:--
"I suppose the--the person in question will stay as long as you do?" he
asked, rather nervously.
"It looks like it," said Tish grimly. "I've no intention of being driven
away, if that's what you mean. We'll stay as long as the fishing's
good."
He groaned under his breath. "The whole d--d river is full of fish," he
said. "They crawled up the bank last night and ate all the crackers I'd
saved for to-day. Oh, I'll pay somebody out for this, all right! Good
gracious, ladies, your boat's full of water!"
"It has a hole in it," Tish replied and upturned it to empty it.
When he saw the hole his eyes stuck out. "You can't go out in that leaky
canoe! It's suicidal!"
"Not at all," Tish assured him. "My friend here will sit on the leak.
Get in quick, Lizzie. It's filling."
The last we saw of the detective that night he was standing on the bank,
staring after us. Afterward, when a good many things were cleared up, he
said he decided that he'd been asleep and dreamed the whole thing--the
wireless, and my sitting on the hole in the canoe, and the wind tossing
it about, and everything--only, of course, there was the tea and the
canned corn!
We did our first fishing the next day. Hutchins had got the motor boat
going, and I put over the spoon I had made from the feather duster.
After going a mile or so slowly I felt a tug, and on drawing my line in
I found I had captured a large fish. I wrapped the line about a part of
the engine and Tish put the barrel hoop with the netting underneath it.
The fish was really quite large--about four feet, I think--and it broke
through the netting. I wished to hit it with the oar, but Hutchins said
that might break the fin and free it. Unluckily we had not brought
Tish's gun, or we might have shot it.
At last we turned the boat round and went home, the fish swimming
alongside, with its mouth open. And there Aggie, who is occasionally
almost inspired, landed the fish by the simple expedient of getting out
of the boat, taking the line up a bank and wrapping it round a tree. By
all pulling together we landed the fish successfully. It was forty-nine
inches by Tish's tape measure.
Tish did not sleep well that night. She dreamed that the fish had a red
mustache and was a spy in disguise. When she woke she declared there was
somebody prowling round the tent.
She got her shotgun and we all sat up in bed for an hour or so.
Nothing happened, however, except that Aggie cried out that there was a
small animal just inside the door of the tent. We could see it, too,
though faintly. Tish turned the shotgun on it and it disappeared; but
the next morning she found she had shot one of her shoes to pieces.