I FIND LITTLE ENOUGH ON THE CORDUROY ROAD, AND LESS AT SKUNK'S MISERY
I told Billy Jones as much as I thought fit of the evening's
work,--which included no mention of wolf dope, or shooting on the
corduroy road.
If he listened incredulously to my tale of a wolf pack one look at Bob
and Danny told him it was true. They had had all they wanted, and we
spent an hour working over them. The wagon was a wreck; why the spliced
pole had hung together to the Halfway I don't know, but it had; and I
let the smell on it go as a skunk. I lifted the gold into the locked
cupboard where Billy kept his stores. It had to be put in another wagon
for Caraquet, anyhow; and besides, I was not going on to Caraquet in the
morning. The gold was safe with Billy, and there were other places that
needed visiting first. There was no hope of getting at the ugly business
that had brewed up at La Chance through Paulette Brown, or Collins
either; since one would never tell how much or how little she knew, and
the other would lie, if he ever reappeared. But the wolf bait end I
could get at, and I meant to. Which was the reason I sat on one of the
horses I had sent over to the Halfway--after my one experience when it
held none--when my dream girl and Mrs. Jones came out of Billy's shack
in the cold of a November dawn.
"I'm riding some of the way back with you," I observed casually.
Paulette stopped short. She was lovelier than I had ever seen her, with
her gold-bronze hair shining over the sable collar of Dudley's coat. I
fancied her eyes shone, too, for one second, at seeing me. But there I
was wrong.
"I thought you'd started for Caraquet," she exclaimed hastily. "You
needn't come with us. There won't be any wolves in the daytime, and--you
know there's no need for you to come!"
There was not. Even if her voice had not so significantly conveyed the
fact that there was no bottle in her wagon this time, Mrs. Billy
Jones--to put a hard fact politely--was about the most capable lady I
had ever met. She was big-boned, hard-faced and profane; and usually
left Billy to look after the house while she attended to a line of
traps, or hunted bears for their skins. No wolves would worry the
intrepid and thoroughly armed Mrs. Jones. But all the same I was riding
some of the way back to La Chance.
There was not a thing to be seen on the corduroy road through the swamp,
or on the hill we had come down at the dead run; and I had not expected
there would be. But on the top of the hill I bade good-by to my dream
girl,--who was not mine, and was going back to Dudley. It was all I
could manage to do it, too. I did not know I was biting my lip until it
hurt; then I stopped watching her out of sight and turned back on the
business that had brought me.
You could ride a horse down the hill into the swamp if you knew how; and
I did. I tied him to a tree and went over each side of the corduroy road
on my feet. It was silent as death there in the cold gray morning, with
the frost-fog clinging in the somber hemlocks, and the swamp frozen so
solid that my moccasins never left a mark. No one else's feet had left a
mark there, either, and I would have given up the idea that a man had
been cached by the road the night before, if it had not been for two
things.
One was a dead wolf, with a gash in his throat in which the knife had
been left till he was cold; you could tell by the blood clots round the
wound: the other I did not find at once. But wolves do not stab
themselves, and I remembered that the lone wolf cry ahead of us on that
road had been a dying cry, not a hunting one. If Collins had killed the
beast he had waited there long enough to let an hour pass before he took
his knife out of its throat: so he had been there when we raced
by,--which was all I wanted to know, except where he had gone since. As
for the other thing I found, it was behind the hemlocks when I quartered
the sides of the road in the silence and the frost-fog: and it was
nothing but a patch of shell ice. But the flimsy, crackling stuff was
crushed into two cup-like marks, as plainly telltale as if I had seen a
man fall on his knees in them. And by them, frozen there, were a dozen
drops of blood.
I knew angrily that if it were Collins's blood he had not missed it
particularly, for he had moved away without leaving a sign of a trail.
Where to I had no means of knowing, till five minutes later I found
another spatter of blood on my corduroy road,--and as I looked at it my
own blood boiled. There was not only no one but that young devil Collins
who could have lain in wait for me; but he had had the nerve to walk
away on my own road! Where to, beat me; but considering what I knew of
his easy deviltry it was probably back to La Chance and a girl who was
daring to fight him.
If I were worried for that girl I could not go back to her. I had to get
my gold to Caraquet. Besides, I had a feeling it might be useful to do a
little still hunting round Skunk's Misery. If Collins had had that
bottle of devil's brew at La Chance he had got it from Skunk's Misery:
probably out of the very hut where I had once nursed a filthy boy. And I
had a feeling that the first thing I needed to do was to prove it.
As I rode back to Billy Jones's I would have given a deal for any kind
of a motor car that would have reduced the twenty-seven miles to
Caraquet into nothing, instead of an all-day job,--which it proved to
be.
Not that I met a soul on the road. I didn't. But it took my wagon four
hours to reach Caraquet over the frozen ruts of that same road; and
another hour to hand over Dudley's gold to Randall, a man of my own who
was to carry it on the mail coach to the distant railway.
I had no worry about the gold, once Randall had charge of it: no one was
likely to trouble him or the coach on the open post road, even if they
had guessed what he convoyed. I was turning away, whistling at being rid
of the stuff, when he called me back to hand over a bundle of letters
for La Chance. There were three for Marcia, and one--in old Thompson's
back-number copperplate--for Dudley. There were no letters for Paulette
Brown or myself, but perhaps neither of us had expected any. I know I
hadn't. I gave the Wilbraham family's correspondence the careless glance
you always bestow on other people's letters and shoved it into my inside
pocket. After which I left my horses and wagon safe in Randall's stable
and started to walk back to Skunk's Misery and the Halfway stables.
It seemed a fool thing to do, and I had no particular use for walking
all that way; but there was no other means of accomplishing the twenty
miles through the bush from Caraquet to Skunk's Misery. Aside from the
fact that I had no desire to advertise my arrival, there was no wagon
road to Skunk's Misery. Its inhabitants did not possess wagons,--or
horses to put in them.
It was black dark when I reached the place, and for a moment I stood and
considered it. I had never really visualized it before, any more than
you do any place that you take for granted as outside your scheme of
existence. I was not so sure that it was, now. Anyhow, I stood in the
gap of a desolate hill and looked into the hollow before me that--added
to the dirt no skunk could stand--had earned the place its name. It was
all stones: gravel stones, little stones, stones as big as cabs and as
big as houses; and, hunched up among them like lean-tos, hidden away
among the rocks and the pine trees growing up from among the rocks
wherever they could find root-hold, were the houses of the Skunk's
Misery people. There was no pretense of a street or a village: there
were just houses,--if they deserved even that name. How many there were
I could not tell. I had never had the curiosity to explore the place.
But if it sounds as though a narrow, stone-choked valley were no citadel
for a man or men to have hidden themselves, or for any one to conduct an
industry like making a secret scent to attract wolves, the person who
said so would be mistaken. There was never in the world a better place
for secret dwelling and villainy and all the rest than Skunk's Misery.
In the first place, you could not see the houses among the rocks. The
valley was just like a porcupine warren. No rock stood out alone: they
were all jumbled up together, big and little, with pine trees growing on
the tops of them and in between them, up from the earth that was twelve,
twenty, or sometimes forty feet below. The whole hollow was a maze of
narrow, winding tracks, between rocks and under them, sometimes a foot
wide and sometimes six, that Skunk's Misery used for roads. What its
citizens lived on, I had never been able to guess. Caraquet said it was
on wolf bounties,--which was another thing that had set me thinking
about the bottle I had spilt on my clothes. If Collins or Dunn had got a
similar bottle there I meant to find out about it: and I had the more
heart for doing it since Paulette Brown knew nothing of Skunk's Misery.
You can tell when a girl has never heard of a place, and I knew she had
never heard of that one. I settled down the revolver I had filled up at
Billy Jones's, and trod softly down the nearest of the winding alleys,
over the worn pine needles, in the dark.
There were just twenty houses, when I had counted all I could find.
There might have been twenty more, under rocks and behind rocks I could
not make my way around; but I was no porcupine, and in the dark I could
not stumble on them. There was not a sign of a stranger in the place, or
a soul about. And judging from the darkness and the quiet, all the
fat-faced, indifferent women were in bed and asleep, and the shiftless
rats of men were still away. There were no dogs to bark at me: I had
learned that in my previous sojourn there. Dogs required food, and
Skunk's Misery had none to spare. I went back through the one winding
alley that was familiar to me, found the hut where I had nursed the boy,
and walked in.
There was not any Collins there, anyhow. The boy and his mother were in
bed, or what went for being in bed. But at the sound of my voice the
woman fairly flung herself at me, saying that her son was recovered
again, and it was I who had saved him for her. She piled wood on the
fire that was built up against the face of the rock that formed two
sides of her house, and jabbered gratitude as I had never thought any
Skunk's Misery woman could jabber. And she did not look like one,
either; she was handsome, in a haggard, vicious way, and she was not
old. I did not think myself that her son looked particularly recovered.
He lay like a log on his spruce-bough bed, awake and conscious but
wholly speechless, though his mother seemed satisfied. But I had not
come to talk about any sick boys. I asked casually where I could find
the stranger who had been in Skunk's Misery lately. But the woman only
stared at me, as if the idea would not filter into her head. Presently
she said dully that there had been no stranger there; I was the only one
she had ever seen.
It was likely enough; a Skunk's Misery messenger had more probably taken
the wolf dope to Collins. I asked casually if she had any more of the
stuff I had spilt on my clothes, and where she had got it,--and once
more I ran bang up against a stone wall. The woman explained
matter-of-factly that she had not got it from any one. She had found it
standing in the sun beside one of the rocks, and stolen it, supposing it
was gin. When she found it was not she took it for some sort of
liniment; and put it where I had knocked it over on myself. She had
never seen nor heard of any more of it. But of course it might have
belonged to any one in the place, only I could understand she could not
ask about it: which I did, knowing how precious a whole bottle of
anything was in those surroundings. As to where she had found it, she
could not be sure. She thought it was by the new house the Frenchwoman's
son had built that autumn and never lived in!
I pricked up my ears. The Frenchwoman's son was one of the men arrested
in Quebec province for using wolf dope: a handsome, elusive devil who
sometimes haunted the lumber woods at the lower end of Lac Tremblant,
trapping or robbing traps as seemed good to him, and paying back
interruptions with such interest that no one was keen to interfere with
him. If the Frenchwoman's son were in with Collins in trying to hold up
the La Chance gold, and was at Skunk's Misery now, I saw
daylight,--anyhow about the wolf dope.
But the woman by the fire knocked that idea out of me, half-made. The
Frenchwoman's son had not been there for two months past and had only
come there at all to build a house. It was empty now, but no one had
dared to go into it. She could show it to me, but she was sure he had
had nothing to do with that liniment, if I wanted any more. After which
she relapsed into indifference, or I thought so, till I showed her what
little money I had in my pocket. She rose then, abruptly, and led the
way out of her hut to the deserted house the Frenchwoman's son had built
for caprice and never lived in.
It was deserted enough, in all conscience. The door was open, and the
November wind free to play through the place as it liked. I stood on the
threshold, thinking. I had found out nothing about any wolf-bait,
excepting the one bottle the Frenchwoman's son might or might not have
left there; certainly nothing about Collins ever having got hold of any;
and if I had meant to spend the rest of the night in Skunk's Misery I
saw no particular sense in doing it. I had a solid conviction that the
boy's mother would not mention I had ever been there, for fear she might
have to share what little I had given her--which, as it fell out, was
true--and turned to go.
But when the woman had left me to creep home in the dark, while I made
my own way out of the village, I altered my mind about going. I cut
down enough pine boughs to make a bed under me, shut the door of the
deserted house--that I knew enough of the Frenchwoman's son to know
would have no visitors--had a drink from my flask, and slept the sleep
of the hunting dog till it should be daylight.
And, like the hunting dog, I went on with my business in my dreams; till
my legs jerked and woke me, to see a waning moon peering in from the
west, through the hole that served the hut for a chimney, and I rose to
go back to Billy Jones. For I dreamed there was a gang of men in a
cellar under the very hut I slept in, with a business-like row of
wolf-bait bottles at their feet, where they sat squabbling over a poker
game. But as I said, it was the waning morning moon that woke me, and
the hut was silent as the grave. I picked up the pine-bough bed I had
slept on and carried it into the bush with me far enough to throw it
down where it would tell no tales--I did not know why I did it, but I
was to be glad--tightened up my belt, and took a short cut through the
thick bush to Billy Jones's stables, with nothing to show for my day's
and night's work but a dead wolf, a stained bit of shell ice, and a few
drops of blood on the logs of my corduroy road. I was starving, and it
was noonday, when I came out of the bush and tramped into the Halfway,
much as I had done that first time I came from Skunk's Misery and went
home to La Chance. Only to-day Billy Jones was not sitting by his stove
reading his ancient newspaper. He was standing in the kitchen with two
teamsters from La Chance, looking down at a dead man.
As I opened the door and stood staring, the teamsters jumped as if they
had been shot. But Billy only turned a stolid white face on me.
"My God, Mr. Stretton," he said, stolidly too, "what do you make of
this?"
All I could see from where I stood was a rigid hand, that had said death
to me the second I opened the door. I gave a sort of spring forward.
What I thought was that here was the man who had left the blood in the
swamp when Paulette's bullet hit him, and that I had got Collins. I had
nearly burst out that he had what he deserved. But instead I stopped,
paralyzed, where my spring had left me.
"My God," I said in my turn, "I don't know!"
For the man who lay in front of me, stone dead in water-soaked clothes
that were frozen to his stark body, was Thompson, our old
superintendent, who only six weeks ago had left the La Chance mine;
whose letter to Dudley, with its careful, back-number copperplate
address, lay in my pocket now.
"It's Thompson!" was the only thing I could say.