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THE PIRATE OF JASPER PEAK

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS

ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA

MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

Close to the hearth a big chair had been drawn and in this some one was sitting.

THE PIRATE OF JASPER PEAK

BY

ADAIR ALDON

Author of “The Island of Appledore,” etc.

WITH FRONTISPIECE

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1918

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1918

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped.

Published, September, 1918

CONTENTS

THE PIRATE OF JASPER PEAK

CHAPTER I

A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND

The long Pullman train, an hour late and greatly begrudging the time for a special stop, came sliding into the tiny station of Rudolm and deposited a solitary passenger upon the platform. The porter set Hugh Arnold’s suitcase on the ground and accepted his proffered coin, all in one expert gesture, and said genially:

“We’re way behind time on this run, but we come through on the down trip at six in the morning, sharp. You-all will be going back with us to-morrow, I reckon.”

“No,” replied Hugh, as he came down from the car step and gathered up his belongings. “No, I’m going to stay.”

“Stay?” repeated the porter. “Oh—a week, I suppose. No one really stays at Rudolm except them that are born there and can’t get away.”

Hugh shook his head.

“I am going to stay all winter,” he said.

“The whole winter! Say, do you know what winter is up here?” the man exclaimed. “For the love of—”

A violent jolt of the train was the engineer’s reminder that friendly converse was not in order when there was time to be made up.

“All right, sah, good-by. I hope you like staying, only remember—we go through every day at six in the morning less’n we’re late. Good-by.”

The train swept away, leaving Hugh to look after it for a moment before he turned to take his first survey of Rudolm and the wide sheet of blue water upon whose shore it stood.

Red Lake, when he and his father had first looked it up on the map, seemed a queer, crooked place, full of harbors and headlands and hidden coves, the wider stretches extending here and there to fifteen, twenty, twenty-five miles of open water, again narrowing to mere winding channels choked with islands. Hugh would have liked to say afterward that he knew even from the map that this was a region promising adventures, that down the lake’s winding tributaries he was going to be carried to strange discoveries, but, as a matter of fact, he had no such foreknowledge.

Indeed, it was his father who observed that the lake looked like a proper haunt for pirates and Hugh who reminded him that pirates were not ever to be found so far north. All the books he had seen, pictured them as burying treasure on warm, sunny, sandy beaches, or flying in pursuit of their prey on the wings of the South Sea winds. Pirates in the wooded regions to the north of the Mississippi Valley, pirates where the snow lay so deep and the lake was frozen for nearly half the year, where only through a short summer could the waters be plied by “a low, raking, black hulk” such as all pirates sail—it was not to be thought of! Even now, when Hugh stood on the station platform and caught his first glimpse of the real Red Lake, saw the wide blue waters flecked with sunny whitecaps, the hundred pine-covered islands and the long miles of wooded shore, even then he had no thought of how different he was to find this place from any other he had ever seen. Both lake and town seemed to him to promise little.

For Rudolm, set in its narrow valley between the Minnesota hills, looked as though it had been dropped from some child’s box of toys, so small and square were the houses and so hit-or-miss was the order in which they stood along the one wide, crooked street. There were no trees growing beside the rough wooden sidewalks, the street was dusty and the sun, even although it was October, seemed to him to shine with a pitiless glare. He walked slowly along the platform, wondering why Dick Edmonds had not come to meet him, thinking that Rudolm seemed the dullest and most uninteresting town in America and trying to stifle the rising wish that he had never come.

A soft pad, pad on the boards behind him made him turn his head as a man walked swiftly past. Hugh saw that his shapeless black hat had a speckled feather stuck into the band and that he wore, instead of shoes, soft rounded moccasins edged with a gay embroidery of beads. Plainly the man was an Indian. At the thought the boy’s heart beat a little faster. He had not known there would be Indians!

His own being in Rudolm was simple enough, although somewhat unexpected. Hugh’s father was a doctor, enrolled in the Medical Reserve since the beginning of the war but not until this month ordered away to France. The problem of where Hugh should live during his absence was a difficult one since Hugh had no mother and there were no immediate relatives to whom he could go. He had finished school but had been judged rather too young for college, and, so his father maintained in spite of frantic pleading, much too young to enlist.

“I’m sixteen,” was the boy’s insistent argument, but—

“Wait until you have been sixteen more than two days,” was his father’s answer.

“I could go with the medical unit, I know enough from helping you to be some use as a hospital orderly,” Hugh begged, “I would do anything just to go to France.”

“They need men in France, not boys just on the edge of being men,” Dr. Arnold replied, “when you have had one or two years’ worth of experience and judgment, then you will be some help to them over there. But not now.”

“The war will be over by then,” wailed Hugh.

“Don’t fear,” his father observed grimly, “there is going to be enough of it for all of us to have our share.”

So there the discussion ended and the question of what Hugh was to do came up for settlement. There was a distant cousin of his father’s in New York—but this suggestion was never allowed to get very far. Hugh had never met the cousin and did not relish the idea of going to live with him, “sight unseen” as he put it, on such short notice. It was his own plan to go to Rudolm where lived the two Edmonds brothers, John, cashier of the bank there and a great friend of his father’s, and Dick, a boy four years older than himself, whom he had met but once yet knew that he liked immensely. Several times John Edmonds had written to Dr. Arnold—

“If Hugh ever wants to spend any time ‘on his own’ we could find him a job here in Rudolm, I know. It is a queer little place, just a mining and lumbering town full of Swedes, but he might like the hunting and the country and find it interesting for a while.”

It was the idea of spending the time “on his own” that made Hugh feel that thus the period of his father’s absence might chance to seem a little shorter and the soreness of missing him might grow a little less. John Edmonds had answered their letters most cordially and had said that all could be arranged and Hugh need only telegraph the day of his arrival. The final preparations had been hastened by the coming of Dr. Arnold’s sailing orders; the two had bidden each other good-by and good luck with resolute cheerfulness and Hugh had set forth on his long journey northward. He had never seen the Great Lakes nor the busy inland shipping ports with their giant freighters lying at the docks, nor the rising hills of the Iron Range through which his way must lead, but he noticed them very little. His thoughts were very far away and fixed on other things. Even now, as he walked slowly up Rudolm’s one street he was not dwelling so much on his forlorn wonder why he did not see his friends, but was thinking of a great transport that must, almost at that hour, be nosing her way out of “an Atlantic port,” of the swift destroyers gathering to convoy her, of the salt sea breezes blowing across her deck, blowing sharp from the east, from over the sea—from France. For he was certain, from all that he could gather, that his father was sailing to-day and was launching upon his new venture at almost the same time that Hugh was entering upon his own.

Somewhat disconsolately the boy trudged on up the hot empty highway, seeing ahead of him the big, ramshackle building that must be the hotel and beyond that, at the end of the road, the shining blue of the lake. He was vaguely conscious that, at every cottage window, white-headed children of all sizes and ages bobbed up to stare at him and ducked shyly out of sight again when they caught his eye. Between two houses he looked down to a sunny field where a woman with a three-cornered yellow kerchief on her head was helping some men at work. She did not look like an American woman at all, Hugh thought as he stopped to watch her, but walked on abashed when even she paused to look at him, leaning on her rake and shading her eyes with her hand. He rather liked her looks, somehow, even at that distance, she seemed so strong, in spite of her slenderness and she handled her rake with such vigorous sunburned arms.

He raised his eyes to the circle of hills that hemmed in the little town rising steeply from beyond the last row of houses and the irregular patchwork of little fields. They were oddly shaped hills, rolling range beyond range, higher and higher until, far in the distance there loomed the jagged mass of one big enough to be called a mountain. The nearer slopes were covered with heavy woods of pine and birch, the dense trees broken here and there by great masses of rock, black, gray or, more often, strange clear shades of red.

“Red Lake derives its name,” so the atlas had stated in its matter-of-fact fashion, “from the peculiar color of the jasper rock that appears in such quantity along its shores.”

Hugh had never seen anything quite like that clear vermilion shade that glowed dully against the black-green of the pines. Across the slope of the nearest hill, showing clear like a clean-cut scar, there stretched a steep white road that wound sharply up to the summit and disappeared. He began to feel vaguely that although the town attracted him little, the road might lead to something of greater promise.

There were some men lounging before the door of the hotel when he reached it, miners or lumberjacks wearing high boots and mackinaw coats. They were talking in low tones and eyeing Hugh with open curiosity. Just as he came to the steps, two figures shuffled silently past him, one, the Indian he had seen at the station, the other, a broad-shouldered, broad-waisted woman stooping under the heavy burden she carried on her back. The man, erect and unimpeded, strode quickly forward, but she stopped a moment to readjust the deerskin strap which passed over her forehead and supported the heavy weight of her pack. She turned her swarthy face toward Hugh and greeted him with a broad, friendly smile, then bowed her head once more and trudged on after her master. The boy, not used to the ways of Indian husbands and their wives, stood staring after the two in shocked astonishment.

“That’s Kaniska, the best guide around here, and his squaw,” he heard one of the men say to another. “She’s the only Indian hereabouts the only one I ever heard of, really, that smiles at every one she meets. They are all of them queer ducks; no matter how well you know them you never can tell what they are thinking about. I believe she is the very queerest of them all. The Swedes here call her Laughing Mary.”

The two dark figures slipped out of sight around a corner and Hugh went up the steps into the hotel. The big, untidy room was apparently empty except for a bluebottle fly buzzing against the window. A faint snore, however, made Hugh aware that he was not alone and drew his attention to the office clerk, sitting behind the high desk, his head back, his heels up, sound asleep. The men outside had ceased talking, the entire village was so quiet that Hugh could actually hear a katydid singing its last summer song loudly and manfully down in the field.

“I never saw such a town before,” he thought bitterly, “the whole place is either dead or asleep!”

He rapped sharply on the desk to arouse the clerk and was delighted to see him awake with a guilty jump.

“Can you tell me where I can find—” he began, but a voice at his elbow interrupted him.

Turning, he saw that the woman he had noticed in the field had left her work to come hurrying after him, and now stood, a little breathless, at his side. She had very kindly blue eyes, he observed, and a rather heavy Swedish face that lit up wonderfully when she smiled.

“You are Hugh Arnold, is it not so?” she said. “John Edmonds has told me that you would be here.”

“Oh, yes,” cried Hugh with relief, “I was just asking for him. Can you tell me where he is?”

The clerk, a sandy-haired, freckled youth, leaned over the desk and spoke eagerly.

“Why, haven’t you heard—?” he said, but the woman cut him short.

“I will tell the boy of that,” she announced with decision, then added to Hugh, “The two Edmonds are not here now, and it is best that you should come to stay at my house until they come again. This hotel is no fit place for you.”

To this last frank statement the clerk agreed with surprising warmth.

“We have some queer customers here at times,” he admitted, “and I won’t deny there’s a sight of them is ugly ones. There’s that fellow from Jasper Peak blew in last evening and kept me up all night. When he and his friends are here there’s always something doing.”

“Do not begin to talk of them, Jethro Brown,” the woman said a little impatiently, “or you will keep us here all day, and this boy is wanting his dinner, I make no doubt.”

The clerk laughed a little, although without much merriment.

“I guess you are right, Linda,” he replied, “and talk of that gang is only words wasted. You’d better go along home with Mrs. Ingmarsson, sonny, you couldn’t be in better hands.”

Much nettled at being called “sonny” by this person so little older than himself, Hugh merely nodded stiffly, took up his suitcase and followed Linda Ingmarsson to the door. Jethro, however, stopped them before they could get outside.

“How about your baggage,” he inquired, “got a trunk or anything at the station?”

Hugh was not certain whether his trunk had arrived with him or not, so the clerk volunteered to telephone and find out. While he was doing so, Hugh stood waiting in the doorway, looking idly down the street and at the hills beyond. He noticed again the line of white highway that fascinated him curiously as it slanted upward through the dense woods. He turned to his companion who stood so silent beside him and ventured a question.

“What is that road, please?” he asked; “where does it go?”

Linda Ingmarsson looked up quickly toward the hill, while her face took on a new expression, wistful, sad, but somehow proud as well.

“That is my young brother Oscar’s road,” she said; “now it goes nowhere but some day—some day it will go far.”

Hugh could not make very much out of this answer, but did not have time to ponder it long. Jethro announced that all was well with the baggage, so Hugh and Linda went out together. It was a relief to him to think that he was with a person who knew at least who he was and why he had come.

“You are very good,” he began shyly as they came out on the steps; “you should not—” but the rest of his sentence was never spoken.

The hot sleepy silence was broken suddenly by a shrill steam whistle, followed by another and another. A strident siren joined them; then came a deep blast from some steamer on the lake; then a loud clanging of bells added their voices to the tumult. For full five minutes the deafening noise continued until Hugh’s ears beat with it and his head rang. The street had become alive with people, women with aprons over their heads, men in overalls, scores of children, as though each of the little houses had sent forth a dozen inhabitants. Down at a far corner Hugh saw the two Indians come into view again, the man with his head up, listening, like a deer, the woman with a pleading hand laid upon his arm. He brushed her aside roughly, and disappeared beyond the turn, she following meekly after. No one noticed them except himself, Hugh felt certain, since every face was turned northward to the wooded rocky hill that overhung the town. Puffs of white steam rose here and there among the trees, showing the mine buildings or the lumber mills from which the whistling came.

This was no ordinary blowing of signals to mark the noon hour: the excitement, the anxious faces, the hideous insistence of the noise all told him that. Just at the instant that he felt he could not endure the tumult longer, silence fell.

“What is it, what is it?” he gasped his inquiry, and one of the men standing by the steps, the one who had spoken of Laughing Mary, began to explain.

“You see—about four days ago—” The words were cut off by a new outbreak of the clamor. It rose higher this time and lasted longer, it rolled back from the hills and seemed to echo from the ground itself. Twice it fell and twice broke out once more, a long fifteen minutes of unendurable bedlam. The man, undismayed, called his explanations into Hugh’s ear, sometimes drowned out by the uproar, sometimes left shouting alone in a moment of throbbing silence. What Hugh caught came in broken fragments.

“Two fellows—hunting—gone four days now—lost some way—these hills—blowing all the whistles at once—hoped—might hear—”

The screaming and clanging finally died away, leaving one long-drawn siren to drop alone, while Hugh’s informant also lowered his voice to ordinary speech.

“We do that hereabouts when people get lost. Every whistle in three counties is blowing right now, so if they don’t hear one and follow it, they may another. Sometimes it brings them back, more often it doesn’t. It’s an ugly thing to get lost in these hills.”

“How long did you say they had been gone?” asked Hugh.

“Three—four—no, by George, it’s five days. There’s their pile of mail that’s been collecting on the window ledge, and those first letters are five days old.”

The man glanced at a pile of envelopes that lay just inside the window. The upper one was yellow and caught Hugh’s involuntary attention as he stood by the door. The people were dispersing and the excitement evidently was over.

The telegraph envelope was one of those transparent-faced ones, showing the name and address inside. Half unconsciously Hugh read, “John Edmonds, Rudolm, Minnesota.” He turned with a gasp and looked closer. A little of the typewritten line was visible below, “Thanks for letter, will arrive—”

It was his own message that had never been received. His two friends, his only two friends within a thousand miles, were the men who had vanished into the forest.

CHAPTER II

THE BROWN BEAR’S SKIN

It was not until some hours after his dismaying discovery that Hugh was able to get any particulars of what had really happened to John and Dick Edmonds. A dozen people at once tried to tell him of the affair, putting in much comment on what they themselves thought and what they had said to friends at the time, with most confusing results. Although he was so bewildered, he began at least to understand one thing, that Rudolm was not at all the town he had believed it to be. He had considered it lonely, empty of friends, dull and lifeless, and behold, it was quite otherwise! In fifteen minutes—probably the exact length of time required by little Nels Larson to travel the whole length of the street and tell every one of the newcomer who was a friend of the lost Edmonds—words of kindliness and sympathy began to pour in upon him. Long before the small, unofficial towncrier had come to the last house, the first sunburned face had appeared in Linda Ingmarsson’s doorway, and the first heavy Swedish voice had asked for “that boy that vas Edmonds friendt.” The shyness and reserve that usually stood firm between these people and any stranger, melted away at the sight of some one who was in trouble. It was, at last, by the very greatness of their proffered kindness that Hugh began to realize how serious his trouble was.

It was only the last visitor who gave him the actual facts of the affair, Nels Larson, Senior, a little elderly Swede with a wrinkled skin and puckered eyes that were mere pin-pricks of blue. He chanced to be left alone with Hugh and proved so shy and slow of speech that he was able to answer direct questions and make the truth clear without complicating it with opinions of his own. He said that the two Edmonds boys had gone hunting, and expected, so far as any one knew, to be gone but a day, that they had possibly meant to meet an Indian guide in the woods but had left Rudolm alone save for their dog. That one day of their absence had passed, and two, without causing any anxiety, that search had been made on the third day and the fourth and fifth, but without result.

“But does no one know which way they went?” asked Hugh desperately. “Couldn’t they have got to some other town? Couldn’t they just have taken a wrong road? Aren’t people often lost that long and still able to get back?”

The other slowly shook his head.

“There’s no town between here and Canada,” he said; “no, indeed, nor for a hundred miles north of the border either. And there are no houses in the direction the Edmonds boys went, nor camps—and roads, bless you, these woods don’t have roads. Just trees—and trees—and trees—and Heaven help the man who loses his bearings amongst them!”

“Are people still looking for them?” cried Hugh; “surely they haven’t given up hope yet!”

“There is no hope,” Nels answered with a sigh; “we would look for a year if it would be of any use; but why go on searching when we know they cannot be found?”

He got to his feet to go, leaving Hugh still sitting, stunned, trying to think what this cruel news must mean to him. At the door Nels paused and, even without the encouragement of a question, actually volunteered a remark of his own.

“There is something I must tell you also,” he said, “for others may say it to you and perhaps not with kindness. It is that John Edmonds left his accounts in bad shape at the bank, that his books are confused and there is talk of money missing. So there are some people, and presently there will be more and more, who say that even if he is not dead in the woods he will never come back.”

“That is not true,” cried Hugh, springing from his seat, “that cannot possibly be true.”

“No,” returned Nels, “I do not think it can be. There are many rascals in this neighborhood, but John Edmonds is not one of them.”

He put on his battered old hat that was so big it came far down over his ears, took up his thick umbrella, opened the door and went out. Hugh sat by the table, his chin in his hand, thinking deeply long after Nels had gone. It was hard to know what to believe, what to think and above all what to do.

He could hear Linda Ingmarsson talking to her children in the next room and presently one small boy came in and seated himself, without saying a word, on a chair by the door. He seemed to think that politeness demanded his sitting with the guest, although to talk to him was far beyond his power. Linda’s husband stood at the door a moment, but went away again. He was a big, quiet man, seeming much like an overgrown edition of his small son. Hugh, beginning to look about him, concluded that this room was quite the cleanest place that he had ever seen. The boards of the floor were worn smooth with much scrubbing, the copper kettles on the shelves winked in the firelight. In one corner stood a quaintly carved cupboard, painted a most brilliant blue, that must surely have come from Sweden, or have been made by the patient labor of Ingmarsson’s great rough hands. In the center of the table was another bit of carving, a really beautiful wooden bowl with a raised wreath of water lilies fashioned about its edge. It was full of moss and gay red bunches of partridge berries. The Ingmarsson child saw Hugh’s eyes resting upon it and, with a mighty effort, managed to speak.

“My Uncle Oscar, he made it,” the youngster said in his little Swedish voice; “he brought it to us with the berries in it the last time he came from the mountain.”

It was his only attempt at conversation and, although bravely undertaken, lapsed immediately into frightened silence.

Linda, entering just then, finally broke the quiet of Hugh’s reflections.

“Supper will soon be ready,” she said. “Carl, take the visitor upstairs and show him where to put his things.”

The small guide went obediently before Hugh, climbed the narrow stairs and opened the door of the guest’s room, a tiny place with sloping ceiling and square dormer windows, everything shining with the same cleanliness so evident below. Carl opened the cupboard doors, pulled out the drawers of the press and finally, evidently thinking that hospitality demanded his speaking again, pointed to a picture on the wall.

“That is the two Edmonds,” he said; “did you know them?”

Hugh, looking closely at the faded little photograph, managed to recognize Dick Edmonds, but had no knowledge of the older brother whom he had never seen. Beside Dick, with his nose in his master’s hand, stood a big, white dog.

“That is Nicholas,” announced Karl; “he came from Russia. We Swedes do not like Russians, but we all loved Nicholas. John Edmonds said he used to belong to a prince in Russia, so he was different from our dogs. He used to laugh and call him the Grand Duke. With men and other dogs Nicholas was very proud but he always would play with us. So we liked him. And how he could run!”

“He is a beauty,” Hugh agreed heartily; “I should like to see him.”

He turned toward the window where the hinged sash stood open and through which he could look out at the sunset and at the distant mountain black against a flaming sky. He could see most of the little town also where the children were running home and men were coming from their work and gay voices could be heard calling greetings from one doorway to another. The tiny houses had a comfortable, cozy look, now that he knew what warm-hearted people lived within. Carl came to his side, seeming to feel more at ease, and began to point out one place after another.

“That is Nels Larson’s house,” he said, “and that is the landing where the boats come in from the lake and that,” pointing to the mountain, “is Jasper Peak. My Uncle Oscar lives way out beyond there.”

“He lives on the mountain?” said Hugh; “that must be very far away.”

“No, not on the mountain,” corrected Carl, “beyond it. On the mountain there lives a—a—another man.”

“What sort of a man?” inquired Hugh, caught by the little boy’s change of tone.

“Oh, a strange man. He is half Indian; people call him a pirate; his name is Jake.”

“Has he no other name?” asked Hugh; “is every one so afraid of him as you are?”

“His whole name is Half-Breed Jake, and, yes, every one is afraid of him except just my mother and her brother Oscar and maybe Dick Edmonds and the dog Nicholas. Every one else.”

“Does he live out there on the mountain all alone?” Hugh inquired.

“Yes, he will not let any one live near him. He will not let any one shoot in his woods or fish in his streams or paddle a canoe on his end of the lake.”

“And are they all his?” In spite of being so absorbed in other things Hugh was growing interested.

“Not really his, he just says they are,” Carl explained vaguely. “No one dares go near his place now after—after some things that have happened. The Indians will do anything he says, they and even some of the Swedes say that the bullets from his gun can shoot farther than any other man’s, and that his ill will can find you out no matter where you hide. Yes, we call him the Pirate of Jasper Peak.”

“But you say your Uncle Oscar lives out there too?”

“Oh, yes,” assented Carl, “but you know with my Uncle Oscar it is all different.”

Linda called from below, causing her small son to rush clattering down the stairs and leave Hugh alone. He stood long by the window watching the sunset fade and pondering deeply.

“So there can be pirates this far north after all,” he was thinking, “and father was right.”

With the thought came a sudden pang of homesickness, a longing for his father, for the comfortable, ordinary life at home, for everything that was usual and familiar. What would become of him here, he wondered, what could be the end of this venture “on his own”? What a strange place it was to which his journey had led him, what strange people he had met or heard of that day, the clumsy, friendly Swedes, kind-hearted Linda Ingmarsson, that mysterious Jake out on the mountain, that brother Oscar whose road it was that climbed the hill. He ran through the list over and over and found that his mind, with odd insistence, kept coming back to the road that “now went nowhere but some day would go far.”

The announcement that supper was ready interrupted his reflections, after which he received a pressing invitation from Carl to go with him to get the mail. Rudolm knew no such luxury as a postman, it went every night to fetch its letters at the general store where John Benson sold meat and calico and mackinaw coats. The little postmistress who sorted the mail behind her own official counter was an expert at her task, for no one besides herself could make head or tail of some of the Swedish and Finnish scrawls that came from the Old Country or the French-Canadian flourishes on the addresses of the picture postcards. No one else could have remembered that Baptiste Redier liked to have his papers accumulate for six months while he was away at the lumber camp, or that Gus Sorenson must not be trusted with the Malmsteads’ mail if he had been drinking, or that it was a kind act to pretend to look through the pigeonholes when an Indian asked for mail, even though it was well known that none of these Chippewas ever got a letter. “Stamp-stamp,” would go the marking machine behind the window, “stamp”—a long pause and then another brisk “stamp-stamp.” No matter in what a hurry were the patrons of the Rudolm postoffice, they must wait, every man, woman and child of them, until Miss Christina had read all the postals.

The little place was already crowded when Hugh arrived, mostly with men and children, for the women did not often come for the mail, it was their hour for washing dishes. Hugh sat down on a bench in the corner to listen to the talk going on about him in all degrees of broken English. It concerned mostly the lost Edmonds boys, but occasionally drifted back to the universal subject, the war, for this was the time when the American army was gathering in France, when Russia was crumbling, when the first pinch of winter was beginning to be felt abroad and the cry was going up over all the world to America for bread. By and by the general talk died away and all began to listen to some one who was airing a grievance very loudly on the other side of the room. He was a big man with a rough corduroy coat and a rougher voice which he raised very loud in the height of his indignation.

“I tell you there wasn’t a better bale of furs in the whole Green River country. I got some myself, trapping, and bought some from the Indians, and there wasn’t one pelt but was a beauty, but the brown bear skin was the best of all. Five hundred dollars I would ’a’ got for them, just that little bale, not a cent less—and when I come to myself again every hide and hair of them was gone!”

“And you can’t tell who took them?” questioned one of his audience.

“I can’t tell but I could guess right enough. I didn’t see nobody, only a billion or two stars when I was hit over the head in the dark, and that was all. There’s only one man around here who will do that kind of dirty work and he hails from Jasper Peak. That’s the kind of fur trading he likes to do, let some other man go through the snow and the cold, spending his good money, risking his life, tramping along his line of traps or from one Indian camp to another, wheedling the red rascals into selling their furs, and just as a fellow’s nearly home again, dreaming about the profit there’s going to be this time, here comes some one sneaking behind in the dark and the whole thing’s gone!”

“You was lucky he did not shoot you, Ole Peterson,” commented another friend. “He does not care much who he shoots, that Jake he doesn’t.”

“I would just like to meet up with him somewhere,” Peterson returned quickly. “A man can’t do nothing when they sneak up on him in the dark, but if I ever have the chance, why, I’ll just show him once. I wouldn’t have sold those furs for less than seven hundred dollars, I swear. And that bear skin, I tell you, was a prize.”

“Wass it so beeg?” asked an old Swede, sitting in the corner near Hugh.

“No, sir, it wasn’t big, but it was rare. Just a bear cub it was, but a cub that had turned out blond by some freak and surprised his old black mother some, I’ll be bound. Not the brown, even, that grizzly bears are, but a light, gold, yellow brown. The Indian who had it vowed he wouldn’t sell it, not for any price, but at last I got it away from him. And I’d like just to meet the fellow that stole it from me. Shooting would be too good, I’d—”

Miss Christina opened her window at this point and put an end to the fearful threats of Ole Peterson. Hugh received his mail almost the first of all, a short and very hasty note from his father, which did not say openly that they were about to embark but contained more than one veiled hint to that effect. He read it through three times, trying to make the most of the censored information it contained. Then, his attention caught by the complete silence that had fallen around him, he looked up to see what had happened.

Nothing, apparently, had really occurred except that a newcomer had entered abruptly and banged the door behind him. Yet as he strode over to the middle of the room every person in the crowded place drew back, the big Swedes elbowing the quick Canadians, the children standing on tip-toes to peer under the arms or around the shoulders of their protecting elders. The space that had been filled a moment before by a chattering, friendly group, became all in an instant silent and empty with the big man standing quite alone.

He was very big, as Hugh noticed at first glance, taller than any other man there, and strong and heavy in proportion. One of his broad shoulders sagged a little under the strap of a heavy pack which he presently unbuckled and dropped upon the floor. His hair was very long and black under his slouch hat and his skin was so dark that Hugh felt sure he must be an Indian.

“Any mail for me?” he called across to the postmistress without troubling himself to turn around.

Miss Christina had disappeared somewhere into the protecting depths of the postoffice department. Her voice rose, trembling, from behind the partition.

“I think so,” she said, “but it’s been here some time. I will have to look it out.”

“No hurry,” returned the man with an insolent laugh at the quavering of her voice; “don’t disturb yourself so much. I can wait.”

He threw himself down upon one of the benches and pushed back his hat. Hugh felt something like a shudder when he first saw his eyes; they were blue, a pale unlovely blue that looked terrifyingly strange, set in his dark face.

“Hello, friends,” the stranger continued genially. “I thought I would look in and get my mail before I was off down-State to sell my furs. I’ve got a fine lot this year, the best that’s come out of Canada for a long while.”

There was no answer, unless one could call little Eva Stromberg’s frightened squeak a reply, or the uneasy shifting of old Nels Larson’s big feet.

“Would you like to see what I’ve got?” the man went on, seemingly quite untroubled by the lack of friendliness. “You won’t see anything so fine again for quite a month of Sundays, nor anything that’s worth so much money, you poor penny-pinchers. Come here, sis,” he added to one of the smaller children; “you would like to see my furs, now, wouldn’t you?”

The little girl, afraid to disobey, advanced with something of the air of a charmed bird, and came trembling to his side. He opened the big pack and spread out its contents on the floor.

“That’s otter,” he said to her; “don’t be frightened, just feel of it. Isn’t it silky and soft?”

She passed her hand obediently over the silvery brown surface and then, bursting into terrified sobs, ran to take refuge behind her father. The stranger, undisturbed, went on spreading out his wares.

“This wolf skin now should bring me something big,” he said. “Of course wolf isn’t much compared to otter but I’ve never seen finer fur. Step up, folks, and look, it’s a dead wolf that isn’t going to bite you.”

It was Hugh alone who felt sufficient curiosity to come nearer. A wolf skin, an otter skin! He had never seen one before. He came closer and closer as the man unrolled more and more of the soft, furry pelts.

“Now this—”

He stopped, for even he must take notice of the gasp that went through the crowd, a gasp of surprise and indignant protest. Only Hugh, eager and excited, took no notice of the strange tension in the air, so astonished was he at the sight of what lay in the man’s hands.

“Why,” he blurted out, “it’s Ole Peterson’s brown bear skin!”

A quiver seemed to run through the whole of the crowd, while the silence became so complete that Miss Christina’s clock upon the wall went tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, three times before any one seemed to move or before the storm of the stranger’s fury broke forth.

“Whose did you say?” he snarled, rising suddenly and standing over Hugh, a threatening, towering figure. “Whose did you say it was?”

Hugh thought afterwards that never, as long as he lived, would he forget how terrible were those shifty, pale-blue eyes in that lowering face. He could never say it was real courage, but only rash, hot anger that made him answer defiantly,

“I said it was Ole Peterson’s. He told us it was the only one in the country and that it was stolen from him.”

The man gave a queer, harsh laugh.

“Ole, come here,” he ordered.

There came out from the corner a very different Peterson from the reckless, angry person who had voiced his wrongs a few moments before. This poor creature was fairly sallow with terror, and was apparently trying to make his large figure as small and inconspicuous as possible. He swallowed convulsively two or three times before he was able to speak.

“What is it, Jake?” he questioned meekly.

The man called Jake flung the skin toward him.

“Is that yours?” he asked in a tone that said plainly, “Claim it if you dare.”

Ole passed his hand lovingly over the lustrous brown gold of the thick fur. He held it up so that all could see the shape of the chubby little bear cub whose coat it once had been, and the dark hairy paws that still dangled from it. He smoothed the dark shadings of the fur and looked at them with longing.

“Is it yours?” Jake insisted, turning from Hugh to advance a threatening step toward Ole.

“No,” said Peterson at last in a frightened husky voice. “No, it ain’t mine, Jake.”

“Then what the—?” The stranger made one stride toward Hugh and caught his shoulder in a grasp that made the bones grind together. The boy looked about him desperately, surely some one of all these men would come forward to his aid. He saw pity in the eyes of many of them, and one or two making a movement toward him and then drawing back. It needed only that to prove to him at last that this was the much-feared Pirate of Jasper Peak.

Yet before either could move further, before Jake could finish his question, help came from an unexpected quarter. The door beside them opened and closed quickly, and Linda Ingmarsson came in. The wind had blown her yellow hair from under her kerchief, her cheeks were glowing and her eyes bright. She made a single step to Hugh’s side and laid her strong, firm fingers on Jake’s crushing hand. He withdrew it as quickly as though something had stung him.

“So you are at your old bullying ways,” she said scornfully; “you found long ago that there was one woman not afraid of you, now you find a boy. It is like you to believe that he would fear you as the rest do, but this time you are wrong. And you know that there is nothing that can make you so angry as to find some one you cannot terrify.”

He muttered something but did not speak aloud.

“Come,” she said to Hugh, and, “Come, Carl,” she added as she held out her hand to her small son and moved toward the door. But Jake barred the way.

“He tried to tell me that bear skin wasn’t mine,” he blustered. “He said it was Ole Peterson’s, but Peterson vows it isn’t his. What do you make of that? Has he any right to call me a thief?”

Linda answered quite undisturbed.

“He is a shrewder boy than are we Swedes,” she said, “and has been quick to see the truth. Yet he is not the only one to know you for a thief.”

The man’s blazing eyes narrowed into slits and his grating, harsh voice was full of suppressed fury.

“There are not many who have dared to call me that, Linda Ingmarsson,” he said, “and whoever does it, whether man, woman or boy, will live to be bitterly sorry. John Edmonds did, and where is he? Out there in the woods, I hear, lost, dead beyond a doubt, he and his brother, the worthless two of them. I heard the whistles blowing as I came down the valley, and I thought to myself, ‘You can blow them until they split, but you will never call him back.’” He lowered his voice, yet still spoke so that all could hear—“He didn’t want to be called back.”

“John Edmonds and his brother will come back,” insisted Linda steadily, “for they have friends who believe in them and will help them still. Whatever John has left in confusion he will make plain and straight when he returns.”

“What friends has he?” cried Jake scornfully. “Before another day has passed every one in Rudolm Valley will know just why they went, both of them, and then where will their friends be?”

“There is still my brother Oscar,” returned Linda.

“And do you think your brother Oscar can save them? He does not even know what has happened, and if he did, what help could he give?” Jake laughed harshly. “He is having all that he can do to save himself, these days, has Oscar Dansk.”

Hugh could feel Linda’s hand tighten on his arm as though, in spite of herself, she winced under the last words. He stepped in front of her to face their common enemy, but she spoke before he could.

“The Edmonds are not friendless,” she declared. “No matter what all the world may say there will still be some of us who know they are honest and who will find and save them in the end.”

She moved to the door, and Jake, seeing that he could no longer block her way, suddenly stepped back and flung it open with a great flourish.

“I wish you luck,” he said; “it will be a long task, finding and saving two men who either have fled the country or are already dead.”

Linda turned back to speak her last word as she and Hugh and Carl went out together into the dark.

“I know they have not fled the country,” she said, “and I am certain they are not dead. Had anything happened to them, their dog would have been here to tell us. So I know they are alive since Nicholas has not come back.”

CHAPTER III

LAUGHING MARY

Hugh sat in his little room for a long time that night, reviewing his adventures of this scant half day in Rudolm. He found it very difficult to decide what to do, in the light of this unexpected turn of his affairs, the disappearance of the two Edmonds. Of one thing he was hotly certain, that John Edmonds had not vanished of his own will. The very fact of Hugh’s being there, urged to come by both the brothers, showed that their absence was entirely unplanned. He was less certain, however, of the chances of their ever coming safe home again. Linda Ingmarsson was sure they would, but she was only one woman holding her opinion against a score of men. He wished that he could make some effort of his own to find his friends, wished it more and more as he went slowly over the situation and realized how desperate it was. What could he do, a boy, alone, knowing nothing of woodcraft and the cruel mysteries of the forest? Nothing, reason told him plainly, absolutely nothing.

Quite evidently he must go back to that cousin in New York who was to help him if things went wrong. That things had gone wrong, from the moment of his getting off the train, onward through his terrifying interview with Half-Breed Jake, was not to be denied. This seemed to be one of the few certain facts in the whirling confusion of his affairs. He recollected now how the friendly porter had felt misgivings as to the length of his stay in Rudolm and had reminded him that the train that would carry him back to the world he knew, would go through at six o’clock in the morning. After long pondering, he decided to take it.

Just as he was about to go to bed he heard a sound at the window, a handful of pebbles striking against the glass. He got up to look out and saw some one standing on the doorstep below.

“It is I, Jethro Brown,” called a cautious voice. “Can you come down? I want to talk to you.”

Hugh took up his candle and stole on tiptoe down the stairs. All of the Ingmarssons were sound asleep. He contrived to shoot back the bolts and open the front door without a sound. The clerk from the hotel, looking more lank and awkward than ever in the candle light, stood waiting outside.

“I saw your window was bright and I had some things to tell you,” he said. “I am sorry to bring you down.”

Hugh blew out the candle and they sat down together on the doorstep.

“It is all right,” he said; “you wouldn’t have found me to-morrow. I am going away early in the morning.”

“Going?” echoed the other in a tone of the greatest disappointment and dismay. Then he heaved a deep sigh.

“Well,” he remarked, “I suppose it is the only thing you can do, but somehow I had kind of hoped you were going to stay.”

“Why?” Hugh stared in astonishment, for what difference could it make to any one whether he remained in Rudolm or went away?

Jethro sat staring at the ground between his feet and shuffled them uneasily several times.

“That Half-Breed Jake has been at the hotel all evening,” he said at last. “He has been talking a long time about the Edmonds boys and how they have disappeared because they had to. It is true that John’s books at the bank were pretty badly mixed and they have had an expert up to go over them, but nothing has been proved yet, one way or the other. It seemed to me, at last, that Jake talked rather too much. He always hated the Edmonds boys, they were too square and honest and they had blocked him more than once in some of his devilment. If there is a mean or a cruel or a crooked way of doing a thing, he will do it. That’s Jake.”

“But why is every one so afraid of him?” inquired Hugh. “He is only one man against all of you.”

“It is just part of living here to be afraid of him, I suppose, and to try to keep out of trouble with him,” Jethro answered slowly. “The Indians fear him so much that they will do anything he says; he understands them as very few men do and he uses his knowledge to get what he wants. A man who can control these Chippewas has a lot of power. There is a white deer that ranges these woods once in a long time and is supposed to bring bad luck. The Indians have a saying that whoever sees the white deer or opposes Half-Breed Jake is sure to die inside a year.”

“But the Swedes have better sense than that!” exclaimed Hugh.

“The Swedes are very superstitious too, and once they are convinced of a thing it is hard to make them change. And it does seem that whoever stands in Jake’s way is cursed with bad fortune until he gives it up. There are only a few that ever dared stand out against him, such as the Edmonds boys, and where are they?”

Hugh sat quiet, watching the moon come up over the eastern rim of the valley. He found Jethro as talkative as the Swedes were silent, but he felt no very great interest in these accounts of Half-Breed Jake, a man whom he instinctively hated and would, he hoped, never see again. Only wonder as to why Jethro wished him to stay in Rudolm and what all these details had to do with himself, held his lagging attention.

“Do you see that road,” Jethro went on heatedly, “that road yonder that leads over the hill? That would have meant a lot to the people here, but it came to nothing. It was to be built through the woods as far as Jasper Peak and would have opened up the country at the upper end of the lake. Jake stopped it. He calls all that country his, and is bound to keep the fishing and the hunting and trapping for himself. He killed the plan with open threats and secret lies: at first the men went at it with a rush, but in the end somehow the whole thing fell through. It was the first time he ever scored a real victory off Oscar Dansk.”

Hugh turned, his interest caught at last.

“That is one person I want to know about,” he said. “Who is this Oscar Dansk?”

“He is Linda Ingmarsson’s younger brother,” Jethro answered. “You know that much and it is hard to tell you a great deal more. Oscar isn’t like the rest of us. I don’t quite know what to say about him; he is always dreaming about something big, some way. His father must have been quite a great person back in Sweden; he was poor to the end of his life, just as every one in Rudolm is poor, but you can see that Oscar and Linda are not quite the same kind of people as the rest.”

“He doesn’t live here in Rudolm?” Hugh said.

“Not now, he lives out beyond Jasper Peak. He is proving up on some kind of a claim, homesteading, right in the country that Half-Breed Jake calls his. He was here in April when war was declared and went down pell-mell to Duluth to enlist, wanted to go into the Navy, I think, these Swedes all do. But they wouldn’t take him, or for the army either, I don’t know why. He came back in a few days, looking grim and set and not saying a word to any one. He went right off into the woods again and we’ve scarcely seen him since. It was a cruel disappointment, I think, as bad as when he couldn’t build his road.”

“But why did he care so much about the road?”

Hugh’s curiosity about that mysterious highway had grown greater and greater, yet even now it was not to be satisfied.

“He had something big in his mind,” Jethro said vaguely, “so big I never quite understood it. He was a fellow who could always see farther than the rest of us, I think. John Edmonds used to say he did, although even he lost faith in the plan about the road at last, and that nearly broke Oscar’s heart. Some people even said they had quarreled, but I don’t believe it. Oscar wasn’t the sort to bear a grudge.”

Jethro thrust his hands deep into his pockets and turned at last to face Hugh squarely.

“That is what I am getting at,” he said. “Oscar Dansk can find John and Dick Edmonds if any man on earth can do it. But some one would have to go out through the woods to tell him, otherwise it might be weeks before he hears what has happened. And the only person to go is you.”

“I?” cried Hugh in amazement, “I? Why, that’s impossible.”

“All right,” said the other briefly, “I was afraid maybe you would take it that way. Of course, after all, you oughtn’t to try it. Well, good-night.”

He shambled off into the dark, leaving Hugh still staring in astonishment. He wished that he had not said quite so decisively that the plan was impossible, so that at least he might have heard more of it. How strange it was that, after leading up to the subject so long, Jethro should have dropped it so quickly. Probably he himself knew that it was impossible as well as did Hugh.

Very slowly he went up to bed, still wondering. It was in vain that he tried to compose his mind to sleep: he could not, for thinking of what Jethro had said. For an hour he tossed and turned and puzzled and pondered. At last he got up and went to the window, thinking that he might feel sleepy if he sat there for a while.

The moon was very bright now, so that all the little square houses showed plainly, as did the white expanse of the empty street. Nothing stirred in all of the sleeping town; the very quiet and peace did indeed make him feel drowsy almost at once. He yawned a great yawn and was just about to turn from the window when a moving shadow caught his eye. Some one was coming down the deserted street, some one who walked noiselessly but swiftly and with great determination. It was a woman, he could see, an Indian squaw, with broad, bent shoulders and heavy dark hair. Even at that distance and in the deceiving moonlight he felt certain that it was the woman he had seen before, Laughing Mary.

She turned in at the gate and came hurrying up the path, but she did not reach the door. Two men followed her, one lithe and stooping, the other tall and moving with great strides—there was no doubt in Hugh’s mind that it was Half-Breed Jake. He seized the woman by the shoulder and whirled her about just as, very plainly, she was on the point of mounting the doorstep and knocking at the door. There followed an altercation, whispered, yet so full of fierceness and passionate gesture that Hugh, at his window, could feel the fury of their quarrel even there. It was almost like watching a dance of shadows, so noiseless did they manage to be, although now and then he caught a low-voiced sentence, couched in guttural Chippewa, and once, to his surprise, he heard his own name, spoken very distinctly by Laughing Mary.

She was not smiling now but speaking volubly, gesticulating, urging and insisting something, to which Jake slowly and determinedly shook his head. She kept pointing to the bale of furs still under his arm and seemed to be voicing her desire with such violence in the face of his continued refusal that finally, in angry impatience, he raised his arm as though to strike her. She winced and cowered, but still persisted, advancing her dark wrinkled face almost into his to utter her last word. Whatever she said seemed to have effect, for Jake’s arm dropped to his side and, muttering angrily, he stooped down to open his pack and give her what she demanded. What the coveted article was, Hugh could not see, for the Indian husband, Kaniska, was standing in the way.

Then all three went out quickly through the gate, as silent and as swift as ghosts. For the first time, Hugh noticed that Jake, who walked behind, moved with a slight unevenness in his giant stride.

It had grown so late that Hugh in spite of his curiosity and excitement was sleepy at last. He lay down again, going over and over once more the puzzles of the day. What ought he to do? What had these strange people to do with him? Why did Jethro say that he was the only one to go on that impossible errand, why did the fellow not go himself? If there were really a chance of his helping the Edmonds boys, Hugh would have risked anything gladly, but this plan was such absolute madness! No, thought Hugh, he had made up his mind, he would not change it again, he would go to-morrow.

He arose at five, packed his belongings and, on hearing Linda stirring in the kitchen, went down to explain to her. She heard him through in silence and without protest.

“I suppose you must know best,” was her only comment.

When he made an attempt to thank her for all her kindness, she refused to listen.

“The Edmonds boys are my friends,” she said, “and for them I would do much. This was nothing.”

She came to the door to bid him good-by and stood watching him as he went down the path to the gate. The morning mist lay heavy in the little valley and stretched upward in wreaths over the hills. The air was cold, so that he turned up his coat-collar and walked very briskly. Once he looked back and saw that Linda Ingmarsson had come out to the gate and stood leaning over it almost as though she were about to call him back. She made no sign, however, so he turned once more and walked on toward the station. He found that he was early, that the little building was still locked and that he must sit down on the narrow bench at the edge of the platform and wait. The mist lifted, little by little, until he began to see the miles of blue water, the hills and the vast unbroken forest sweeping down to the water’s edge. How would it be, he thought with a shudder, to be lost in that unending maze of green?

Presently he heard footsteps coming up the stairs and around the corner of the building. He glanced up quickly and saw that it was Jethro Brown again, wearing a dingy straw hat on the back of his head and carrying a suitcase. He loitered at the other end of the platform and would not have come near, but Hugh arose from his seat and went straight to him.

“You must tell me,” he said, “why you thought I was the only one to carry that news to Oscar Dansk. I have thought of nothing else all night.”

Jethro flushed.

“I shouldn’t ever have spoken of it at all,” he stammered, “I don’t know what possessed me. I just got to thinking and felt that something ought to be done, that some one ought to go. But I should not have come to you, of course you couldn’t do it.”

“If I did go,” Hugh persisted, “how would I ever find the way?”

He did not really know himself why he asked the question.

The other turned and pointed.

“You would follow that road to the top of the hill and where it ends you would find a trail that runs across the range of forest beyond. It leads to a little Chippewa village on Two Rivers; there’s an Indian boy there, Shokatan, who could guide you the rest of the way. He got to be quite a friend of mine when he came in to the Indian school near here and he knows English, though he probably won’t be willing to speak it now. I could give you a letter and I know he would help you.”

It was plain that Jethro had thought it all out.

Hugh still stood pondering.

“Why don’t any of the Swedes go?” he asked, “aren’t they willing?”

“They are willing enough,” Jethro returned, “but they have given up. They say there is no hope. Once they have made up their minds there is no changing them.”

“And why,” questioned Hugh bluntly, “don’t you go yourself?”

“Oh,” Jethro answered simply, “I forgot to tell you that. Of course I would go only I am leaving to-day. I’ve enlisted. I’ve got my orders. I’m going to Fort Snelling.”

“Oh,” cried Hugh, “how did you manage? My father wouldn’t let me. How old are you?”

“I am a little under age but I made them take me,” replied Jethro. “There wasn’t much trouble about getting consent, I haven’t any one that my going would make any difference to.”

Hugh’s whole view of the affair underwent a sudden and tremendous change. If Jethro was going to the war, why, that made everything different! He must think and think quickly, for, far off among the hills, he heard the whistle of the approaching train.

“Well,” Jethro said, breaking into his reverie, “I will be taking the forward coach when the train comes in, so I may not see you again. Good-by.”

He reached out his huge, red hand and Hugh shook it, still half dazed.

“Did you write that letter to the Indian?” he said, and, as the other nodded, “Give it to me. I haven’t decided yet but I—I might need it.”

Jethro pulled a paper from his pocket and handed it to him.

“No, no,” he cried, immediately after, “it is not the right thing at all for you to go. Do not think about it again. Here’s the train. Good-by.”

“Good-by,” said Hugh, still in doubt, “good-by and good luck.”

Jethro strode away down the platform just as the big locomotive came thundering in. Hugh was turning slowly toward the Pullman coaches at the further end when he heard quick short footsteps behind him and little Carl Ingmarsson very red and breathless came panting up.

“I wanted to say good-by,” he said; “we never knew you were going until Mother told us.” He laid his square, firm little hand in Hugh’s.

“It was good of you to come,” returned Hugh. “What did your mother say about my going?”

“She didn’t say much,” Carl replied, “I think she had been crying.”

“Crying?” echoed Hugh; “why?” This seemed the most amazing thing of all the surprises that had come to him.

“I think she didn’t want you to go,” the little boy answered, “I don’t understand it. She doesn’t often cry.”

So there was more than one person who wanted him to help and was confident of his success. And even Half-Breed Jake and Laughing Mary seemed to feel that he was in some way involved in the matter. Should he go or stay? Time was passing.

The grinning porter looked at him doubtfully, then picked up his stool and climbed up the steps of the last car. The long train, with its shining brass rails, hooded vestibules and sleepy passengers peering from the windows, looked as though it had come from another world than this wild, wooded country where such strange things could come to pass. The brakeman glanced inquiringly over his shoulder and shouted,

“All aboard!”

The bell began to jangle, the wheels creaked and groaned, the heavy cars slowly gathered headway—there was still time to run and catch the last step, but Hugh did not move. The line of cars, with a final echoing whistle, slid away into the morning mist and disappeared behind the shoulder of a hill, leaving him behind, committed at last to his adventure.

CHAPTER IV

THE HEART OF THE FOREST

Linda Ingmarsson was standing at the door when Hugh and Carl came up the path. She did not seem to be at all surprised to see him.

“I met Jethro Brown at the station,” he explained briefly. “He told me, oh, quite a lot of things. I decided not to take the train, to go into the woods instead.”

Linda shook her head gravely.

“I think I know what he told you,” she said. “It is a mad plan. You ought not to go.”

“But I’m going,” returned Hugh, and she smiled.

“Yes, I believe you are going,” she answered, “and perhaps I would not stop you if I could.”

The children came clattering in and Ingmarsson appeared by the door, so there was no more discussion just then. Later, however, when the various members of the family had set off to work or to school, Linda came up to Hugh’s room bringing an armful of things for him, a pack such as hunters carry, heavy boots, thick wool socks, a mackinaw coat.

“You will need all these,” she said. “It may be that you will be gone some time.”

She advised him as to which of his own possessions were the most necessary to take with him and showed him how to pack them in the smallest possible space.

“Leave all of your other things here,” she directed, “and most of your money, too; you will have little need of it where you are going and—you might meet Half-Breed Jake in the forest.”

“Does he do that kind of stealing too?” Hugh asked.

“He does every kind,” was her brief reply.

Hugh accomplished the rest of his preparations in silence except for one question.

“Is your brother Oscar old?” he inquired.