The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Oxbow Wizard, by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

The Oxbow Wizard

The Oxbow Wizard

BY

THEODORE GOODRIDGE ROBERTS

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK

GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC.

1924

COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE TORBELL COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES

AT

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

THE OXBOW WIZARD

CHAPTER I
THE STRANGER’S BOOK

Young Dan Evans lived in the back country on the Oxbow with his parents and his brothers and sisters. For as long as he could remember, his Uncle Bill Tangler, his mother’s brother, had been an irregular member of the household.

Young Dan obtained a meagre and intermittent schooling between his ninth and sixteenth years, at the Bend, three miles below his father’s farm. His terms were frequently broken by the weather, the conditions of the road and matters of domestic economy. Sometimes Uncle Bill helped him with his books. There seemed to be nothing that Uncle Bill did not know something about.

In October of Young Dan’s last year of school, Uncle Bill brought a sportsman from New York or London or Chicago or Montreal—from one of those outside places, anyhow—to Dan’l Evans’s house. Uncle Bill and the sportsman were on their way in to the former’s camp far up beyond the Prongs. They arrived, by canoe, just before dusk and were off again half an hour after sun-up.

Young Dan was sent by his mother to the spare bedroom, to make up the bed that had been occupied by the sportsman. In five minutes he was due to start for school. He had no more than crossed the threshold when he exclaimed, “He was smokin’ in bed!” On the chair near the dented pillow, about the base of the little lamp, lay two cigar butts and several deposits of ashes. Young Dan was distressed, for by what little he had seen of the stranger he had considered him to be a very superior person; and yet here was proof positive that he was possessed of a habit that was looked upon, in that household, as both low and reckless. He recollected a few of the words which his mother had addressed to Uncle Bill on the occasion of her finding that versatile bachelor smoking in bed. “It’s lazy an’ it’s dangerous an’ it ain’t respectable,” she had said—among other things.

Young Dan approached the bed.

“And him from a city full of street cars and schools,” he murmured. “He’d ought to know better.”

Then something caught his eye and distracted his attention from the tell-tale butts and ashes. It was a book with a green cover. It lay open and face down on the bright rag-carpet, just beneath the edge of the bed. He stared at it for a moment, then snatched it up and thrust it inside his coat. At one glance he had seen that it was a story book. Good! On the Oxbow story books were almost as rare as ropes of pearls; Young Dan was as unacquainted with fiction as a city alley-cat is with yellow cream. In this case discovery of the discarded book seemed to imply ownership and he appropriated the volume with the intention of exploring its pages undisturbed by his younger brothers and sisters who would be sure to demand a share in the volume once their eyes fell upon its bright cover.

Young Dan hurried through the task that had been set for him and started for the schoolhouse at the Bend, accompanied by Molly, aged eleven, and Amos, aged nine. His canvas-wrapped school books and the lunch for three were in his bag; and the book with the green cover was still inside his coat. Here, against his very ribs, lay an unknown treasure—a treasure of valuable information concerning far lands or the stars themselves, perhaps, or perhaps a treasure of magical entertainment. How was he to make an opportunity for investigating it unobserved?

Suddenly he thought of a plan. He suggested a race.

“You two go on to Frenchman’s Spring, and I’ll stop right here,” he said. “When you git to the spring, give a holler and keep right on a-goin’ as fast as you like and I’ll try to catch you up this side the school.”

“You can’t do it, and you know you can’t,” said Molly. “Even Amos will git there ahead of you.”

“That’s as may be,” replied Young Dan, with dignity.

So the others left him and hastened forward; and he immediately sat down beside the road and fished out the book. He opened it at the title-page with fingers a-tremble with eagerness. He began to read, running a finger from word to word, from line to line. Here were people of types and callings unknown to him, moving in the streets of a city unguessed by him, talking in a way foreign to the Oxbow of things unheard of even by Uncle Bill; and yet he read in a fever of intensity, with moving lips and wrinkled brows. A faint shout of childish voices, touched with a note of derision, came back, but it failed to reach the ears of Young Dan, whose whole attention was fixed on the magic under his eye. He had intended to keep his agreement, but he had completely forgotten Molly and Amos; he turned page after page slowly and so at last came to the end of the first tale.

“Gee, but that feller was smart!” he whispered.

He glanced up, observed the sun and jumped to his feet. He was late for school that morning and accepted the reprimand of Miss Carten, the teacher, and the jeers of Molly and Amos without turning a hair. At the conclusion of the afternoon session he managed to get away by himself and read another story.

With the green-covered book safe in his bosom and the secret of it in his heart, a change came over Young Dan. Molly and Amos were the first to notice it, but they could make nothing of it.

One evening, within a week of the passing of the sportsman, he appeared at the supper-table when the other members of the family were already in their chairs. After eating pancakes for a minute or two in silence, he said, “You set the table to-night, hey, Lucy?”

Lucy, aged six, replied in the affirmative, with evident pride.

“And Molly fried the pancakes, because Ma was busy writin’ a letter to Gran’ma,” continued Young Dan.

“An’ what of it?” asked his father.

“Did you spy on us through the window?” asked his mother.

“No, I was over in the tool-house,” replied the boy; “and when I got nigh enough to look in at the window you was all set down to table.”

“Land’s sakes! How d’you know Lucy set the table?”

“Because everything’s so close to the edge. She ain’t tall enough to push ’em on very far.”

“But how’d you know Molly fried the pancakes?”

“Because most every one was cracked across, or messed about, when it was bein’ turned. You don’t do that, Ma, with the turner—but Molly always tries to turn ’em with a knife.”

“Sakes alive! That’s the livin’ truth! But how’d you come to figger out about me writin’ to Gran’ma?”

“There’s ink on your finger, Ma; and Gran’ma is the only person you ever write to.”

“Land’s sakes! That’s reel smart.”

“Seein’s how you’ve growed so all-fired smart so suddent, maybe you’ll tell me who went up the old loggin’ road t’other night and robbed me of nigh onto a cord of dry stove-wood?” said Dan’l Evans.

“Maybe I will, Pa. What’ll you give me if I tell you?”

“Give you? Nothin’! You don’t know, anyhow.”

“Don’t I know who’s got a horse that’s lame on the nigh fore-foot and a wagon with a hind wheel that wobbles? I see the tracks yesterday and studied ’em.”

“You figger it was Tim Swan stole the wood. Well, you’re wrong. I suspicioned him myself, the minute I see the wood was gone, because Tim’s a born thief an’ lives handy. But it warn’t Tim took the wood. I mooched round his place for over an hour an’ couldn’t find a stick of it. Maybe it was the tracks of a rabbit you studied so hard.”

“Maybe it was, Pa. Anyhow, I follered them rabbit-tracks along to Tim’s gate and past it and clear on to Widow Craig’s yard; and there’s the wood in her wood-shed; and she paid the rabbit three dollars for it.”

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Mrs. Evans.

A few days after the frying of the family pancakes by Molly and within two weeks after the passing of the sportsman in the care of Uncle Bill Tangler, seven of the scholars who attended the little school at the Bend came down with the mumps and on Thursday Miss Carten announced that the school would close for a week at least—and perhaps longer. The Evanses had escaped the epidemic, having been victims of the malady two years before. Molly and Amos went racing home, making the echoes repeat their whoops of joy. Young Dan walked more soberly behind them, for there were many things on his mind and he meant to use his time—while the mumps kept the schoolhouse closed—to test several theories that, ever since he had read the book with the green cover, had been simmering away in the back of his head.

But Young Dan got no leisure in which to test his theories—at least he was not able to try them in the exact manner he had planned—for a stirring and mysterious event that roused excitement in the whole Oxbow region occurred less than twenty-four hours after the vacation began. Miss Carten disappeared. She dropped from sight as completely and as mysteriously as if a silent airplane had swooped down at night out of a dark sky and had carried her aloft like a great-horned owl stealing a birdling. On Friday someone asked for Miss Carten at the Troller farm where she boarded.

“She went to a party over to Cameron’s las’ night an’ took her suitcase with her; I thought as how she’d stop the night with Lizzy Cameron,” said Mrs. Troller.

At the Cameron place, two miles away—as it developed later—Miss Carten had not been seen. No member of the family, in fact, had heard from her in the last twenty-four hours.

There was excitement on the Oxbow which extended down to the main river. Search-parties went into the woods, equipped with shotguns and lanterns and stimulants and dinner-horns. Ponds and likely pools were dragged. Justices of the peace, rural constables and game-wardens awoke to official activity from the Bend on the Oxbow all the way down to Harlow on the main stream. The days and nights passed—six of each—without bringing any degree of reward or encouragement to the searchers. Nothing was seen or heard of Miss Stella Carten, dead or alive, and no suspicious characters were discovered in the vicinity of the Bend. The lost lady had not been remarked on the road or on the river, nor had she called at any isolated farmhouse. She had not been seen at the village of Bean’s Mill, at the Oxbow’s mouth. She had not bought a railway ticket at Harlow. She had vanished, suitcase in hand.

Seven days after the disappearance of Miss Carten, at eight o’clock in the morning, Young Dan Evans encountered his Uncle Bill on the portage round Old Squaw Falls, seven miles upstream from the Evans clearings. Young Dan carried nothing but an axe and a small pack. He had left his leaky old basket of a bark canoe in the bushes below the falls, for it was too heavy for him to shoulder. Uncle Bill, coming from the other end of the portage, was bonneted by his long, green canvas canoe. The meeting was unexpected to both, but only Uncle Bill expressed astonishment.

“You, Young Dan!” he exclaimed, lowering his canoe to the trail. “What brings you ’way up here?”

“Left my canoe below the carry,” replied the boy. “Just moochin’ round lookin’ for something.”

“Sit down,” said Uncle Bill.

They sat down, and the man lit his pipe and pushed his big felt hat far back from his forehead.

“Looking for anything in particular?” he asked.

“Yep. Miss Carten disappeared a week back and I’m sorter lookin’ round for her.”

“You don’t say! Disappeared! And you think she’s maybe up here somewheres?”

“That’s how I’m figgerin’ it out, Uncle Bill. She ain’t downstream, anyhow. Some folks think she’s lost in the woods or been killed—but I don’t; I reckon she’s run away on business of her own; and as she ain’t gone downstream I guess she’s come up.”

“You don’t say! What makes you think so?”

“Well, she intended to go somewheres, because she took her suitcase packed full, and her money. She wouldn’t do that if she was just meanin’ to stop a night with Lizzy Cameron. And they ain’t found hide nor hair of her down river—but I’ve found her tracks, and more’n her tracks, up this way. Yep, I found the tracks two days back, about two miles below this, close to the edge of the stream. I knowed ’em by the sharp heels. I hunted both sides of the stream for a mile and dug into every pool, but didn’t find any more signs. But I found somethin’ else yesterday; and now I’m goin’ clear up the Prongs.”

“What did you find yesterday?”

Young Dan untied his blanket and disclosed to his uncle’s view a small frying-pan, a loaf of bread, a chunk of bacon, a book with a green cover and a cardboard box. He placed the box in the other’s hands. It was empty but had once contained chocolates.

“That’s what I found yesterday, just below the falls here,” he said. “Miss Carten was a b’ar on chocolates. She et ’em in school.”

Uncle Bill examined the box and returned it. He scratched his clean-shaven chin and regarded his nephew with a contemplative and calculating eye.

“Young Dan, you’re smart,” he said. “And you’re bold as brass. I am smart, too, though that is not the general opinion in these parts. The trouble with me is that I am shy. You are all for showing how smart you are, but I’ve always been for hiding my light under a peck-measure. You are doing something now that I couldn’t do. My natural shyness would make it impossible for me to follow a young lady who has run away of her own free will. That is how you have reasoned it out yourself—of her own free will! Yes, I am talking queer—not the way I talk at home. The truth is, Young Dan, I’m not the rube your Pa and Ma think I am; but I’ve always been too shy to let them know about it. I know more than which side to butter my pancakes on and how to pole a canoe.”

“I guess maybe you do,” admitted Young Dan.

“Your reasons for thinking Miss Carten was up here seem good to me!—good, but not conclusive,” continued Uncle Bill. “If she is the only person in this country who ever wears high-heeled shoes and eats chocolates out of a box, then you are dead right. Hullo! What’s the book?”

He reached over, picked up the book with the green cover and opened it.

“This explains your activities,” he continued, smiling. “Come on down with me and I’ll go back with you this afternoon—all the way back to my camp. And be your Doc Watson, going and coming.”

“Have you read that book, Uncle Bill?”

“Yes, years ago—and several more about the same smart feller. You come along down with me while I get some grub and mail a few letters, and I’ll buy you all the other books first chance I get. And I’ll bring you in again.”

Young Dan shook his head.

“I’m this far, and I’ll keep right on a-goin’ till I’m ready to quit.”

Uncle Bill looked at his nephew and saw determination in his face. “Well, then,” he said, “I’ll help you around with your canoe, anyway. You can pole right up to the camp—if that’s where you are bound for. I’d go back with you but for a couple of important letters I have to post.”

Together they carried Young Dan’s old canoe round the falls. Uncle Bill’s lean, dark face wore an unusually thoughtful expression as he watched his nephew embark.

“I’ll tell your Ma that I met you and that you will stay in the camp over night,” he said.

“But maybe I won’t, Uncle Bill,” said Young Dan. “I didn’t calculate on stoppin’ upstream over night unless I found somethin’ to keep me—an important clue or somethin’. They’re expectin’ me home.”

“I’ve just been thinking that I might not be able to get back till after dark. You promise me that if you go to my camp you’ll stop there until I come back, or there’ll be trouble. And the trouble will start now. You never saw me in a temper, Young Dan—and you don’t want to. Promise me that, or I’ll tie you up and take you downstream with me as helpless as a dunnage-bag. I mean it!”

Young Dan looked at his uncle and saw that he meant it.

“I promise cross my heart and honest Injun!—but you got to fix it with Ma, Uncle Bill,” he said, in a thin voice.

“Don’t worry about your ma,” replied the man, smiling. “And I’ll get you those books. If I find some mail that I have to answer I may not get back as soon as I planned. You stay right there at the camp, and don’t forget that I am one of the shyest men in the world. Off you go, Young Dan—and good luck to you!”

CHAPTER II
THE NICK O’ TIME

The boy poled slowly up the bright and lively water. Sometimes where the stream was very shallow he got out and waded for fifty yards or more, pulling the canoe along with him; occasionally he stopped to examine the shore for signs, but all the while his thoughts were busy with his uncle. He had seen fire in the eye of that merry, kindly man—and he hoped never to see it again. Why had he made him promise to stop at the camp over night? A vague but frightful suspicion possessed him. Uncle Bill had hinted at a mystery concerning his character and pursuits. What had he meant? He had said that he was something other, something smarter, than people believed him to be around these parts, and that he hid his light under a peck-measure because he was shy. Now what had he meant by all that? And why had he seemed so queer about his camp? Was he a criminal of some sort—and was the secret of his dark career hidden in the camp?

Young Dan remembered that he had never known his uncle to be without a roll of paper money in his pocket; but what he did to earn money beyond guiding a sportsman now and then, was more than the boy knew. Was it possible that this mild and entertaining uncle, who had two ways of talking and who often vanished from the Oxbow country for months at a time, was a robber? And might it not be that he sometimes committed robbery with violence? He always carried a pistol in the woods. A struggle might lead to a murder now and then! Miss Carten had been up here with her money!

Young Dan worked his way slowly up the swift and shallow stream and at noon he stopped to fry some bacon, but spent most of the interval thinking. For two hours he sat there in the warm sunshine with his back against a tree and his eyes gazing off into space. His heart was heavy and numb with sinister suspicions of Uncle Bill. He had always admired and liked that amiable and versatile relative; but he would go on and learn the worst. When he finally went back to his canoe he realized that he would have to hurry to reach the camp above the Prongs by sundown.

There were no clearings or human habitations on the Oxbow above Old Squaw Falls. The voice of the stream was lonely; the cries of birds in the woods were like the very voice of desolation; and the long, yellow day was as lonely as a deserted house. The sun was close to the wooded hills when Young Dan reached the Prongs. He continued his journey up the Right Prong. It was already evening in that narrow, tree-crowded valley. The water was so shallow there, and the bed of the stream was so broken with mossy boulders, that he ran the canoe ashore and waded forward.

The sun was far below Young Dan’s narrowed field of vision, and the deep track of the stream was full of brown twilight when he reached the foot of the path that led back through the woods to Uncle Bill’s camp. The plaintive cry of a whippoorwill rang from an umber gloom of cedars; an owl hooted dismally in the tall spruces beyond; a fox barked on the darkening hillside. Night-hawks swooped on twanging wings high overhead against a sky of dulling green, and bats wove their flickering black threads of flight in the deepening dusk of the valley. Behind and through and over all lurked the spirit of the wilderness, watchful, waiting, still—a spirit of mystery and menace.

Young Dan’s heart was shaken by a vague dread. He felt fear as he had never felt it before, at any hour of the day or night, when alone in the woods. He started along the thread of path that was worn among the roots of the underbrush. He gripped his axe close to the blade and questioned the gulfs of shadow to his right and left with straining eyes. So he advanced for fifteen or twenty yards; and then, suddenly, he remembered the character in which he had undertaken his journey. He knelt, struck a match, cupped the flame in his hands and held it close to the trodden earth.

There was a track, fresh and deep, that he had not expected to find—the track of big soles thickly studded with blunted calks. Uncle Bill had been in moccasins that day; he never wore calked boots in the woods; and these tracks pointed only one way—forward.

After a moment of reflection, Young Dan continued to advance. He was puzzled. When he reached the edge of the little clearing he saw that the camp was occupied. Yellow lamp-light streamed from its one small window. He hesitated, staring forward and around, then dropped on his hands and knees and crawled from the shelter of the woods. His right hand still gripped the axe close up to the heavy blade. So he moved among mossy hummocks and blackened stumps toward the lighted window, pausing often to listen and peer about him. As he drew near he noticed that the door was shut; and as he drew still nearer he heard the murmur of a voice from within. He crawled close to the log wall of the cabin, directly beneath the open window, and crouched there motionless.

One voice was talking within—a thick, unpleasant voice that he did not know. And this is what it was saying:

“So he’ll be home to-night, will he? He’ll be home to-morrow, that’s when he’ll be home. An’ here I be, an’ you’re goin’ to hand over all the money you’ve got tucked away in this shack. Fust of all ye was sassy an’ now ye’re sulky. Have a drink! This here is good stuff an’ powerful hard to git these days. Here, pour yerself a drink an’ swaller it down—or I’ll open yer mouth an’ make ye take it.”

“If my husband were here he’d open that door and kick you out!” replied another voice—a voice known to Young Dan. “If you belonged to these parts and knew him you’d go now before he comes back and kills you, you drunken brute!”

“D’ye reckon to scare me?” sneered the other. “Then ye gotter think of somethin’ bigger an’ better than this here Mister William Tangler ye’re yappin’ about. I reckon I’ll stop right here till he comes home, and then ye’ll know who’s the best man of the two of us. But ye ain’t took yer drink yet! Take it, d’ye hear! It’ll loosen yer tongue.”

The dazed boy beneath the open window heard a clink of glass, a scream and sounds of scuffling. He raised himself and looked into the cabin. A lamp stood among dishes on the table in the middle of the little room. Beyond the table, against the wall, a man struggled with a woman. The man had his back to the window. He was big and a stranger. The woman was Miss Carten.

Young Dan’s quick eyes spotted a wooden rolling-pin on a corner of the table. He laid his axe on the ground and went through the window as quick and as noiseless as thought. Two swift and silent steps brought him to the corner of the table. He grasped a handle of the rolling-pin, advanced two more paces, judged the distance, swung his arm and struck. One strike meant out in that game.

Young Dan bound the unknown and unconscious bushwhacker with thongs from a pair of snowshoes on the wall and placed a folded blanket under his sore head and let him lie where he had fallen. Then he sat and watched his new aunt make coffee and warm up a panful of beans for him. She told him of her secret courtship by Uncle Bill, and of their flight and marriage by a parson friend whom Bill had sworn to secrecy—all because William Tangler was the most bashful man in the world. She told of how Bill, who was thought to be so idle and aimless by the people on the Oxbow, was in reality an expert in the science of forestry and in the employ of the Government as such. Bill had gone out that morning to mail an official report and also to mail his young bride’s resignation as teacher in the little school at the Bend. In a few days they would go out to civilization together.

Every now and then Miss Carten thanked Young Dan for saving her from the drunken bushwhacker and she said so many complimentary things that her visitor’s face turned the color of ripe choke-cherries. She said among other things that she believed he was almost as clever and brave as his uncle.

“If I were Uncle Bill I wouldn’t of been so shy,” said Young Dan, who felt greatly relieved by the outcome of his activities and very proud of himself.

When the coffee and beans were ready, and the big ruffian on the floor was beginning to grunt and sigh, Young Dan remarked, “I guess Mister Holmes couldn’t of done that job much slicker himself.” Suddenly he cocked his head to listen. “I can hear Uncle Bill coming up the trail,” he said. “He offered to be my Doctor Watson, but I didn’t need him.”

CHAPTER III
A THIEF WITH CLAWS

Young Dan Evans was done with school; and he had almost decided to hire out with Josh Tod, as a “swamper” in the lumberwoods, when a letter from Uncle Bill Tangler caused him to change his plans for the winter. The letter, which came from Mr. Tangler’s office in a distant city, ran as follows:

Dear Young Dan:

Now that the frost is on the punkin (as a leading poet has remarked) and the swamps back of your pasture are frozen so hard that no woodcock can stick his bill into the mud any more this year (a fact overlooked by said leading poet) and folk on the Oxbow are frying fresh pork with their buckwheat pancakes and making sausages and fattening turkeys, my thoughts are with you frequently and enviously. It is a great country, Young Dan, and a grand season of the year for him who has wild blood in his veins and unimpaired organs of digestion. I should like fine to be away up beyond the Prongs this very morning, putting an edge to an appetite, instead of sitting here at this expensive desk trying to look like the only real know-it-all in the Government’s service; but now that I have a wife who needs two new hats and an evening frock, and a furnace that eats up coal, I must sit in tight and steady to this lady-like job. But what about you, Young Dan? You have exhausted the educational resources of the Bend; you haven’t a wife or a furnace; so why don’t you go up beyond the Prongs? You may use the camp as if you owned it. As for grub, you’ll find enough there of everything except bacon and condensed milk to last till spring—enough for two. So you had better go into partnership with someone—with old Andy Mace, for choice. He is an honest man and was a mighty hunter and fur-taker in his day. You will find half a dozen traps in your own garret and a lot more in the loft of the camp, all in good shape. You are welcome to them, and to my rifle as well, and my snowshoes if they are better than your own. Help yourself. That is a great country for fox and mink and lynx. You should have a prosperous winter—so go to it, with your Uncle Bill’s blessing.

P. S. Here is a little check. Take it to Amos Bissing at the Bend and you’ll find him willing to swap a few dollars for it, I guess. Your Aunt Stella sends her love to you and will mail you another book about Mr. S. Holmes as soon as she gets it ready for the post.

Young Dan was delighted with the letter. He showed it to his parents. Dan’l Evans didn’t think very highly of it as a specimen of epistolary art, though he had no objections to make to the advice and suggestions which it contained.

“Bill’s reckoned a smart man, an’ educated at that, but if this here ain’t the foolishest writ letter ever I read, then I’ll eat it,” he said. “I guess them Forestry people have kinder over-rated him. That’s the Gover’ment for ye, and always has been. Let a man have a slick way with him, an’ slithers of easy talk, an’ the Gover’ment gives him a job of work with nothin’ to do. This here’s a plumb foolish letter, anyhow. Take this here about his indigestion now, an’ this talk about the woodcock! What d’ye reckon he means? I ain’t had much education, but——”

“Ye’re right there, Dan’l Evans,” interrupted Young Dan’s mother, who had held a very high opinion of her brother’s abilities ever since he had become a successful citizen of the great outside world. “Much education! No, indeed. Bill’s clever, an’ always was—an’ I, for one, always knew it. I always knew he should be clever, anyhow, seein’ he was a Tangler; an’ if I ever acted crusty with him it was his own fault for hidin’ his light from me in a bushel-bag, so to speak. He didn’t write that letter to you anyhow, Dan’l Evans, so what you think about it don’t matter a mite to my brother Bill nor anybody.”

This discussion concerning the letter from a purely literary standpoint did not disturb Young Dan in the least, for neither of his parents offered any objection to his acceptance of Uncle Bill Tangler’s offers and advice. He set out first thing in the morning to put the proposition before old Andy Mace, who lived three miles below the Bend, in a log house in a small clearing. It was a morning of sun and frost. The road, recently deep with mud, was hard as iron; the sky was bluer than at midsummer; a flock of geese went over, high up, winging tirelessly southward; and there was a skim of black ice along the lips of the Oxbow. It was a grand morning to be a-wing or a-foot and Young Dan pictured Uncle Bill Tangler seated at his desk in the distant city with a twinge of pity. Though there was no wind, red and yellow leaves of maple and birch snapped their stems loose in some mysterious way and circled down to the frosty moss, and the sounds of their falling came out of the woods on both sides of the road like a soft whisper.

Young Dan found Andy Mace splitting stove-wood beside the back-door of his primitive habitation. Andy had lived a great many years—eighty or perhaps as many as eighty-five—and most of them rough. His joints were not as supple as they had been thirty years ago, but he was still an able man and a first-class hand at all forms of sylvan activity. Experience had taught him the easiest way of doing everything well, and his inherent and acquired wisdom saw to it that he made the most of that knowledge. This fact was demonstrated even in his present employment. The round sticks of dry maple and birch fell apart under the lightest strokes of his axe in a manner that suggested magic to Young Dan.

“You do that slick, Mr. Mace,” said the young man.

“Well, I’d ought to, at my time o’ life,” replied Andy, straightening his back slowly. “I’ve been splittin’ wood nigh onto a hundred years, off and on, so it’s no more’n to be expected that I’d be a purty slick hand at the job by now.”

“I got a letter here from Uncle Bill Tangler, and if you’ll read it I won’t have to tell you what’s in it,” said Young Dan.

“That sounds reasonable,” replied the old man, taking the letter and seating himself on the chopping-block.

He fished a pair of spectacles from a hip-pocket and donned them with great care. He chuckled now and again as he read the letter.

“Smart boy. Bill Tangler,” he said at last. “Knows timber and folks, he does; and I larned him purty nigh all he knows about timber. We’ve cruised the woods together months on end, him and me.”

“Will you be my partner, Mr. Mace, and go up to Uncle Bill’s camp with me to trap fur all winter?”

“I sure will, Young Dan. I ain’t got hoof nor claw o’ livestock, and this old house is used to bein’ empty, so I cal’late we’d best start upstream bright and early to-morrow mornin’. I’ll call at yer place about seven o’clock, if that’ll suit ye.”

“It suits me fine.”

“So we’re pardners, you and me. What I got in here will just about offset the camp.” Andy pressed a finger-tip to his forehead. “We’ll figger out the cost o’ grub come spring, and I’ll pay ye my half in good green money. Folks hereabouts name me for a rich miser behind my back, as ye’ve heared with yer own ears like enough, Young Dan; and that’s because I’m a bach, and live in a log house, and let my whiskers grow. Well, boy, they’re dead wrong about me bein’ a miser. I’d smoke ten-cent seegars if they tasted as good to me as a pipe, and it ain’t the cost o’ city life that keeps me from movin’ to Harlow or Centreville or to Noo York. No, sir-ee! I live here like I do because it is the place and the way that suits my tastes; and I’d still do it if it cost me twenty dollars every week. You ask Bill Tangler. We took a ja’nt once to the Sportsman’s Show in Noo York, him and me together. Ask yer Uncle Bill about me bein’ a miser.”

“Folks round here didn’t have Uncle Bill sized up just right, either,” returned Young Dan. “I guess the most of them don’t see much more than what hits them plumb in the eye.”

The old man chuckled delightedly at that.

“Come inside and have a go at my ginger cookies,” he invited. “I’ve been makin’ ginger cookies nigh onto a hundred years, off and on, and now I just naturally turn out the best ye ever tasted.”

By the time Young Dan started on his homeward journey, which wasn’t until after dinner, he was full of admiration for his partner—not to mention pumpkin pie, Washington pie and ginger cookies.

Old Andy Mace came to the Evans’ place on foot next morning, at the stroke of the hour, with a pack of formidable proportions on his shoulders and a rifle in his hand. He found Young Dan ready for him, with the thin ice broken from the edge of the stream and Bill Tangler’s canoe launched and loaded. Young Dan took the post of honor and effort aft and plied the long pole. They reached Squaw Falls by half-past ten, made the portage, lunched and reembarked by noon. Old Andy Mace took the pole then, for three hours. The water, high and swift, humped itself over submerged mossy boulders. Andy pushed the loaded canoe up steadily and at a good pace, with no more show of effort than an ordinary person would make in cutting tobacco for a pipe. The sun went down before they reached the Prongs. It was night, with stars in the sky and an aching cold over everything, when they unlocked the door of Uncle Bill Tangler’s camp.

While Andy lit two fires, one on the open hearth and the other in the little cook-stove, and shook out blankets to air, Young Dan carried the outfit up from the landing. Then, by lantern-light and firelight, they examined the provisions which Bill Tangler had left behind.

“Jumpin’ Josh-ee-phat, look-a here!” exclaimed Andy Mace. “Here’s a box been bust open—box o’ prunes—and the prunes took. There’s some dried apples gone, too, and some flour, I reckon. Take a look at the windy, Young Dan.”

The window was shuttered on the outside when the camp was not occupied. The shutter was of plank, hinged to the window-frame at the top and, when secured, fastened at the bottom by a hasp and a padlock. But now the shutter was not fastened. The long staple had been wrenched from the tough plank and now hung uselessly from the log window-sill, together with the hasp and padlock.

“A b’ar,” said Andy. “Trust a b’ar to sniff out prunes.”

“A bear wouldn’t take flour,” said Young Dan.

“Ye can’t never tell what a b’ar will do, for b’ars are natural born jokers,” replied Andy. “I’ve knowed the critters for nigh onto a hundred years, and that’s my opinion of them.”

“It wasn’t done yesterday, nor even the day before,” said the youth. “The prunes he’s left in the box are pretty dry. And he has had a go at the molasses, too. He’s left the stopper out, see; and look at the track of dried molasses down the front of the jug. It’s a wonder he didn’t upset it. And he’s ripped the bean-bag open, darn his hide! But how come it he didn’t upset the jug? Maybe it wasn’t a bear at all, Mr. Mace. A man could have done it, I guess.”

“It be a reg’lar b’ar trick,” replied Andy. “He didn’t upset the jug o’ molasses, that’s true—and I’m glad he didn’t—but all that shows is some b’ars is smarter or more careful nor others. He h’isted the jug in his two paws and took a swig, that’s what he done. Look at the beans he’s chawed and spit out on the floor. D’ye reckon a man would do that?”

“Some men are smarter and more careful than others,” replied Young Dan.

They closed the inner glazed sash of the window and nailed a strong bar of wood across it. Then they cooked and ate their supper and retired to their bunks, for they were bone-tired. The affair of the thieving bear would keep very well until morning.

They awoke bright and early. Young Dan hopped from his bunk in a lively and limber manner, feeling nothing of yesterday’s exertions; but Andy Mace grunted a few times as he sat up in his blankets and a few more times as he lowered his feet to the floor.

“I ain’t as soupel as I was eighty years ago,” he said.

When Young Dan opened the door the cold fairly caught him by the nose. He made a quick trip across the little clearing and down the steep path to the landing-place, with two pails in his hands. He found the shallow Right Prong shelled in black ice from shore to shore save for a few little air-holes. He had to break the ice with a stone before he could fill his pails. Then he took a quick and splashy bath right there. Wow! Wow! But after it he felt as if he could eat his weight in bacon and pancakes and fight his weight in wild-cats.

They went out and examined the ground beneath the window after breakfast. Frosts and rains had done much to wipe out the tracks of the thief, but they found a few unmistakable claw-marks here and there. Mr. Mace put his white beard to the ground in the intensity of his scrutiny; but the best he could do was trace the marks for a distance of seven or eight paces from the window.

“I cal’late he’s denned himself up somewheres long before this, and lays sleepin’ snug as ye please on a bellyful o’ Bill Tangler’s superior prunes,” he said. “He’s a big feller, jedgin’ by the claws. I’d like fine to happen onto his den.”

“Same here,” replied Young Dan. “I’d sure like to have a look at him. A bear as smart as that one ought to be in a circus or teachin’ school.”

They cruised the woods from sunrise to sunset for the next three days, choosing the likeliest country for their lines of traps. They spent four more days in setting the traps exactly to Andy’s taste in four lines of about equal length radiating from the camp. By that time everything that wasn’t kept indoors or underground, or that wasn’t clothed in wool, fur, or feathers, was frozen stiff. The Right Prong was roofed strongly over, except in one spot where the swift water kept itself an open breathing-place in some mysterious way. The ice was strong to the very edge of that hole; and, to save himself the trouble of keeping another hole chopped clear, Young Dan always walked out to it for his morning and evening pails of water. There the little river flashed always bright and naked and untouched, sliding over mossy rocks as green as in summer.

There were other and lesser streams and half a dozen small ponds within the circle of Andy’s and Young Dan’s operations, and these were all frozen hard.

Andy arranged the routine of the everyday tasks. They breakfasted before sunrise, by lantern-light. Then Young Dan set out on one of the crooked six-mile strings of traps, outfitted with rifle, axe, and frozen bait, and a pocketful of sandwiches in case of need. Andy cleared away the breakfast things and fell to the ever-urgent task of rustling wood; and between bouts of chopping and splitting he prepared the dinner and sometimes even pulled off such extra stunts as a panful of ginger cookies or a pie. Young Dan was usually home, with or without a pelt or two, by half-past twelve or one o’clock. After dinner, Andy armed himself and lit out on another six-mile string, and Young Dan washed the dinner dishes and rustled wood. Andy was usually back, with luck, in time to cook supper. In the evening they gave the skins whatever attention was necessary and the old partner talked and the young one gave ear. In this way, each of the four lines of traps was visited every other day.

Snow descended upon that wilderness on the twentieth of November and continued to descend for two whole days and nights. It came to stay. Owing to the storm, the partners lost touch with their traps for two days. The third day was still and clear. The forest was fairly smothered, aloft and below. Young Dan set out at the first streak of daylight, sinking deep on his wide snowshoes at every step. He traveled slowly and experienced a good deal of difficulty in locating some of the traps. It was noon when he got to the end of the line, empty-handed. He rested there and ate half of his sandwiches of bread and cold bacon. He had tramped himself a nest in the snow, and made a little fire of dry twigs for the appearance of comfort; and now, having eaten, he continued to sit on his snowshoes and feed the fire. He was about to leave this retreat and set out on the back-trail when a muffled disturbance of the snow-heaped brush on his right attracted his attention. He glanced up in time to see a human figure issue from the tangle, its head held low and its shoulders hunched against the showers of dislodged snow.

Young Dan was astonished at the sight, but he did nothing to show it. The intruder shook himself free of snow, halted and stood straight. He was on snowshoes and carried a rifle in a blanket stocking. Young Dan noticed that his rough jacket and trousers were old and patched and that they appeared to be several sizes too large for him.

“Have you anything to eat?” asked the stranger, in a voice that puzzled the trapper. “If you have, please give me a bite.”

Young Dan produced the remaining sandwiches from his pocket and handed them over without a word. The stranger crouched by the little fire and bit off a very small corner of frozen bread and frosty bacon.

“I was watchin’ you quite a spell,” he said. “When I seen you was only a young feller I wasn’t scart.”

“Only a young feller!” exclaimed Young Dan. “Is that so? Well, what of it? You don’t look like much of a man yerself.”

“Which I ain’t, nor don’t pretend to be,” replied the stranger, swallowing hard on the chilly fare. “I wisht you had yer teakittle along. No, I ain’t much of a man. I’m a married woman, with a husband sick a-bed not five mile from here, an’ my name is Mrs. May Conley—an’ me an’ Jim Conley an’ the younguns are jist about starved, if you want to know. Whereabouts is yer camp from here?”

“About six mile from this, dead south. I got a partner there, old Andy Mace; and we’ve got quite a store of grub, of one kind and another—condensed milk, too.”

“We ain’t got a cent to buy grub with. Jim was away till a few weeks back, an’ then he come home to us without a dollar of his summer wages an’ went sick.”

“That’ll be all right about the money; but what ails yer husband?”

Mrs. Conley’s answer to that was a cheerless smile and a shake of the head.

“I suppose you shoot fresh meat, anyhow,” continued Young Dan, feeling embarrassed. “You got a rifle, I see.”

“If you mean deer an’ the like by fresh meat, then I tell you I don’t shoot it—but I’ve shot at it a few times,” replied the woman. “It’s a sight too knowing an’ lively for me to hit.”

“Tell you what I’ll do, m’am,” said Young Dan. “You come to this very spot at ten o’clock to-morrow and you’ll find me here with some grub. Will tea and canned milk and sugar and fifteen pounds of white flour be any use to you?”

“Will spring water quench thirst?” returned the woman, her sad face brightening. “But can’t I have it sooner?—some of that there milk, anyhow? Young man, my two babies was cryin’ with hungry pains when I started out; an’ the biggest of ’em isn’t as long as this here snowshoe.”

“If I had it here I’d give it you right now—but all our grub’s back at our camp, six mile away. Will you go along with me and carry away what you’re in most need of, m’am?”

“Will a duck swim?”

Young Dan meant well, but he did not realize that the mother of two children who cry with hunger is almost sure to be weak for want of food—he did not realize it until he heard a soft thud behind him and turned to find his companion flat on her face in the snow. He raised her to a sitting position and pulled her back until she rested against a small spruce. He built a big fire in the trail and cut many fir boughs to serve her as a couch and covering. He removed her snowshoes.

“Guess I’m all in—till I have a cup of tea,” she said.

“I’ll fetch a kettle,” replied Young Dan. “You stop right there till I get back.”

He made the remaining three miles to the camp on Right Prong in record time. He told what he knew of Mrs. Conley’s story briefly to Andy, while they made up a small pack of provisions in a blanket. He attached a small frying-pan and a kettle to the pack.

“Best go all the way home with her, if ye ain’t clean tuckered out,” said the old man. “I cal’late it wouldn’t be a bad idee to have a look at this here Jim Conley, for he don’t sound to me like a desirable neighbor nor a valued citizen. You kin size him up while yer restin’, and take yer time on the home-trip. It shapes for a fine night.”

“I’ll do that,” said Young Dan.

CHAPTER IV
THE MAN IN THE BUNK

The sun was on the edge of the western hills when he got back to Mrs. Conley. She expressed relief at seeing him and wonder at seeing him so soon. He built up the fire, melted snow and made tea. He also fried a little bacon and bread. Between them they emptied tea-kettle and frying-pan; and the woman was greatly revived by the food and drink.

The woman led the way northward and westward to her home. The distance struck Young Dan as being nearer seven miles than five. The small window of the cabin glowed a dim yellow. Mrs. Conley pushed open the door and entered without waiting to remove her snowshoes. Young Dan kicked off his snowshoes and had a foot on the threshold when he heard an unpleasant voice shout from somewhere within, demanding to know where the woman had been and why she had stayed away so long and why she hadn’t brought some food home with her. A few oaths gave color to the questions.

Young Dan crossed the threshold, kicked the door shut with a heel and lowered his pack to the floor. In one comprehensive glance he saw the woman stooped to two clinging children, a man lying in a bunk, a failing fire on a rough hearth, a smoky lantern on a table and a worn bear-skin on the floor. He had never seen a less cheering interior.

The man in the bunk sat up and stared at Young Dan. His shoulders looked very broad in the dim light.

“Who’s thar?” he exclaimed. “Who’s that?”

“Ye needn’t be scart,” said the woman, with a tang of scorn in her voice. “It’s a feller from the camp over on Right Prong. He’s fetched in some grub for us, in the kindness of his heart.”

The man immediately lay back without another word.

Young Dan felt indignant, so much so that his indignation amounted to anger—anger that felt like a lump of something uncomfortably hard and hot in his chest. He wanted to say something sharp to the big fellow in the bunk—but he didn’t know what to say. So, without a word, he untied his blanket, filled an arm with the packages of food and carried all to the table.

“No water and no wood,” said Mrs. Conley, looking at the bunk.

Young Dan went outside and found a small pile of wood beside the door, under a roof of snow. He carried an armful into the shack; and as he laid the sticks beside the hearth he noticed how irregularly and unskilfully the severed ends were cut. Even a sick man accustomed to the use of an axe would not have hacked the wood so clumsily. He knew it was not the work of the man in the bunk. He then took up an empty pail and enquired the whereabouts of the water-hole. Mrs. Conley told him that there was a spring just back of the shack and a path leading to it which he couldn’t miss. She was right; and in a minute he was back with the water. As he set the pail down on a bench near the door he looked at the man in the bunk, the hot spot of anger and indignation still glowing in his chest. The man’s eyes met his for a moment—but he saw more than the fellow’s eyes. He crossed the narrow floor to the bunk.

“What’s the matter with you, anyhow?” he asked.

“Matter with me, d’ye say?” returned the fellow in the blankets. “I’m sick, that’s what’s the matter. Can’t ye see?”

Young Dan stooped swiftly and drew a high-shouldered, square-faced black bottle from beneath the edge of the bunk. There was a sound of clinking glass as he brought it forth as if it were in contact with receptacles of a like nature and material. He held it aloft.

“Yes, I can see all right,” he cried. “And I guess I’ve got hold of a few doses of your medicine.”

“Well, what of it?” demanded the other, his voice at once savage and anxious.

Young Dan returned the bottle to its place; and in so doing he caught sight of some other articles of interest beneath the bunk. More bottles were there, both full and empty—but there were other things of even greater interest to the youth. He stood up, however, without word or sign of comment.

Mrs. Conley, who was busily engaged in feeding the children with condensed milk diluted with hot water, paid keen attention to Young Dan’s words and actions, but said nothing.

Young Dan moved away from the bunk and bestowed a brief but enquiring glance upon the worn bear-skin on the floor. That article had struck him as looking queer, somehow or other, when he had first set eyes on it; and now he knew it to be queer. It had grown on a big animal and had evidently been a fine pelt in its day. The big, wide head was there—not the skull, but the complete skin of head, to the tip of the nose. Yes, the head was all there—but all four paws were missing!

Young Dan turned again to the man in the bunk. “Say the word, and I’ll get a doctor in to see you,” he said. “Or we’ll haul you out on a sled, if you ain’t too sick to be shifted about a bit.”

“I don’t want no cussed doctor p’isonin’ me,” cried the invalid. “Mind yer own business, will ye, an’ leave me be to look after mine? I’m able for it, without yer help.”

“All right,” retorted Young Dan, his voice shaking with anger and scorn. “Well, then, look after yer own business if you’re so able. Get out of bed and get to work. I know all I need to about you. I know enough about you to run you out of these woods and into jail; and that’s the identical thing I intend to do if you don’t get busy. So cut out the gin and the bunk and cut into the wood-pile. D’ye get me?”

The man did not answer. The woman continued to feed the children in silence. Young Dan glared at the bunk a little longer, then fetched his snowshoes and put them on, and took up his rifle, axe and blanket.

“I’m off,” he said. “But I’ll be back in a few days, to see how you’re working, Jim Conley. I’ve got your measure, and don’t you forget it! Goodnight to you, m’am.”

He had not gone far from the miserable cabin before the woman came running after him. He halted.

“What is it ye know about him?” she asked, anxiously.

“I can guess more’n I know, but I reckon what I know is plenty,” he replied. “He broke into my Uncle Bill Tangler’s camp a few months back an’ stole some grub, with the paws an’ claws of a big bear on his hands an’ feet. Guess he reckoned he was smart.”

“How d’ye know that?”

“I’d figgered out it wasn’t a bear long ago; and to-night I spied the skinned paws under the bunk. It was easy.”

“Jim wasn’t in the woods when that happened,” she whispered. “It was me broke into the camp an’ stole the grub. It was me who cut the paws off that old skin an’ used ’em to fool ye with. Jim was away out to the settlements that day.”

“You, ma’am!”

“That’s Gospel-true. The babies and me hadn’t a bite to eat but some rusty pork. We needed the food bad. It was the first time I ever stole anything.”

“Then why didn’t you upset the molasses jug, like a bear would do? A bear would of upset it an’ then licked the molasses off the floor. If you’d done it that way, m’am—upset the jug, I mean—I wouldn’t of suspicioned the thief wasn’t a bear; and so I wouldn’t of examined the shutter and spotted how the staple had been pried off with the blade of an axe; and so I wouldn’t of taken any stock in the old paws under the bunk.”

“I took enough molasses to fill the bottle I had along with me. I hadn’t the heart to upset the jug an’ waste what I didn’t want. But I kinder thought that’s what a bear would do.”

“Well, that’s all right, anyhow,” said Young Dan. “I don’t blame you a mite for rustlin’ grub for your babies; but if you don’t make that big bluffer get to work, I’ll land him in jail or bust tryin’—and you can bet I won’t bust, m’am!”

CHAPTER V
THE STIFF KNEE

“Well, I found that bear,” said Young Dan Evans to Andy when he arrived at the camp; and then he gave a full account of his experiences with the Conley family.

“You done dead right!” exclaimed Andy Mace, at the conclusion of the story. “You got brains and use ’em, I do believe; and that’s more’n can be said about most folks nowadays. What size was this here Jim Conley?”

“Big. Over six foot high, I guess, and hefty—and no more sick-abed nor you or me.”

“What would ye’ve done if he’d clum outer the bunk an’ lammed ye one?”

“I’d of lammed him two or three back—maybe four.”

“I reckon ye would. I was jist sich another at yer age, Young Dan—always up an’ doin’, always ready to fight my own weight in minks or men, and yet always a thinker an’ a bit of scholard, too.”

“But I don’t go round looking for fights, Mr. Mace. I’m peaceable enough by nature.”

“Yes, in course. It’s the same with me. There never was a more peaceable citizen on the Oxbow nor Andy Mace—but nobody had to tromp on the tails o’ my snowshoes more’n twice to fetch me round with fists in both hands.”

A week passed before the partners on Right Prong heard or saw anything more of the Conleys. It was a busy week with them, for trails had to be beaten out anew in the deep snow and a fresh supply of bait had to be obtained for the traps; and, as if these tasks were not enough, Andy shot a fat buck deer which had to be skinned and quartered and placed out of harm’s way, and Young Dan cracked the frame of one of his snowshoes. The partners were full of energy and determination, however. They survived that strenuous week breathless but triumphant. They obtained the required bait from the depths of a nameless pond which lay four miles to the eastward of the camp. This was a big job in itself, for the ice was nearly two feet thick on the pond, not to mention the three feet of snow which topped the ice. They shovelled snow; then they chopped and shovelled ice; and at last old Andy bored with a four-inch bit until the clear water welled up into the icy trough from the brown depths. He bored two holes; and then they baited their hooks with fat of pork and each lowered a line into the unknown. They fished steadily for three hours and by the end of that time were too nearly frozen to go on with it. The captured trout froze stiff after a jump or two on the snow.

“Reckon it’s a reel chilly day,” remarked Andy, looking from the low sun, which glinted as grey and cheerless as a flake of ice, to the frozen fish. “Reckon we’d best quit and git home before we’re as stiff an’ twisted as these here trout.”

He was right. If there had been a thermometer in the Right Prong country it would have marked twenty-five degrees below zero just then. Young Dan was agreeable; but he would have stood there and continued the motions of fishing, slowly and more slowly until the numbness caught his heart, if the old man had not suggested a move. When two good men go into the woods together, and one of them is well past four score years of age and the other has not yet completed his first score, the spur of competition is bound to prod now and then. In this matter of endurance against the cold the partners had silently and almost unconsciously competed. No rivalry of youth and age had inspired them, but rather the rivalry of two widely separated generations of youth; for old Andy Mace considered himself as good a man as he had ever been and so a trifle better than Young Dan, maybe, because of his birth and training in a period of the world’s existence that had marked its very highest point of development. He said nothing of all this to Young Dan, of course—even if he thought it.

They gathered up their gear and scooped the frozen fish into a couple of sacks. Not a word did they exchange until they were both on the warm side of their own door; and even then they didn’t exchange many. An hour later, however, when the “riz” biscuits, broiled venison steak, and the coffee-pot were on the table, they talked “good and plenty.”

Woodsmen are not generally supposed to be talkative folk. If there is any truth in this general supposition, then Young Dan and old Andy Mace must be the two exceptions that prove it—if suppositions, like rules, can be proved by exceptions. However that may be, these two woodsmen spent every evening in conversation, crawling into their bunks at last only because they couldn’t hear in their sleep. And their talk was not all of the woods and the day’s work. Far from it. They had much more to say concerning what they thought than what they knew; and so almost every subject under the sun was dealt with. Even when Young Dan read aloud, Andy capped every paragraph with a comment or an explanation, or an objection of equal or greater length. Their library contained only three small volumes of fiction, all from one entertaining pen—but under their system of reading, three promised to be plenty, for one winter at least. In spite of his interruptions, Andy Mace was a hungry listener, and so his interest in the adventures and mental processes of Mr. Sherlock Holmes soon became almost as keen as his partner’s. No one could be more sharply intrigued by an artful combination of significant words than that old trapper.

On the night of the day of the cold fishing, after the last fragment of steak had been devoured, Young Dan opened one of the treasured books and began to read aloud; and, at the same moment, Andy began to cut tobacco for his pipe. Andy gave ear intently until the tobacco was shredded, rolled, stuffed into the pipe and satisfactorily lighted. He blew three large, slow clouds and settled back in his chair.

“I wisht we had that gent here on Right Prong with us,” he said. “He’d stand it all right, too, I reckon, in a good coonskin coat. What d’ye cal’late he’d of made o’ that thief in claws?”

Young Dan closed the book on a finger.

“I guess he would of known it wasn’t a bear right off,” he said. “I did. I suspicioned it wasn’t, anyhow. I guess he would of known for sure, right off; and maybe he wouldn’t of figgered it out the way I did, neither—not by the molasses jug alone, perhaps.”

“How else could he figger it out? What else was there to figger on?”

“Plenty for him. I can think of some other things myself, now. There were the claw-marks. I guess those alone would of been enough for Mr. Holmes.”

“What about ’em? They were marks of a b’ar’s claws.”

“Yes—but he’s scientifical, Mr. Holmes is. He would of had a spyin’ glass handy in his pocket to look at the marks with, and right off he’d of seen by the spread from claw to claw that they had been made by a mighty big bear. He would study over that a few minutes, somethin’ like this: A bear with paws as big as what these must of been must be an uncommon big bear; and heavy—four or five hundred pounds in weight, maybe, in the fall of the year; and so he would just naturally make deeper tracks than these here; and a bear as big as what he must be to own these paws and claws would be too darned big to get through that little window without spreadin’ the side of the camp or bustin’ himself or somethin’. So he would up and say, quick but quiet, ‘This thief is a lamb in a wolf’s clothes’—or somethin’ like that. He would know it wasn’t a bear, anyway. That’s how Mr. Holmes would of figgered it out, I guess.”

Andy withdrew his pipe from his mouth and slowly straightened himself in his chair.

“Sufferin’ cats!” he exclaimed. “It don’t sound altogether human comin’ like that from a young feller who ain’t been to school nowhere but down to the Bend. Where’d ye get the trick of it from, Young Dan? Not from yer Pa nor yer Ma, I’ll swear an Alfy Davy!”

“That was easy, workin’ it out after I knew, the way I did,” replied Young Dan, modestly. “If I had worked it out that way before I knew—well, that would of been pretty slick work. That would of been scientifical.”

“If Gover’ment hears about it you’ll be one o’ these here boss policemen some day,” said Andy.

“I guess not,” retorted Young Dan, with a slight curl of the lips that was foreign to his character.

He already shared Sherlock Holmes’ opinion of the mental equipment of that stalwart and imperturbable force.

He reopened the book and took up the story at the point of his partner’s interruption. He read a paragraph, his voice skidding now and then on a word of formidable proportions. He read a page, warming to his work and tearing the big words to pieces without so much as a hitch in his stride. Two pages—and still not a peep out of Andy Mace. He ceased reading and looked up inquiringly, and beheld his aged partner slouched in the chair and sunk deep in slumber, his shoulders hunched high, his chin tucked in and his grey beard rising and falling peacefully on his breast.

Young Dan was up as early as usual next morning. He lit the lantern and then the fire in the stove; and it was not until then that he heard any signs of life from his partner’s bunk.

“Sufferin’ cant-dogs!” exclaimed Andy. “Warm up the b’ar’s grease for me, pardner. This here right leg o’ mine’s stiffer’n King Pharaoh’s neck. Must of give it a twist yesterday.”

Young Dan complied with this request, cooked the breakfast and tucked into it. He set out on the northward line at the first break of dawn, with a sack over his shoulder containing a supply of the new bait and a haunch of venison, leaving Andy Mace still rubbing that high-smelling cure-all into his right knee and telling how it had been tender ever since he had hurt it fifty years ago in an argument with a man from Quebec.

It was a fine morning, and a clear finger of light in the east promised a fine day. The air was still and not so perishing cold as it had been the day before. Young Dan traveled fast. He found a mink in the first trap and stowed it away in the sack without waiting to skin it. He rebaited the trap with a frozen trout. The second and third traps were exactly as he had last seen them; the fourth contained a red fox, which he added to the collection in the sack; and the remaining traps were undisturbed. He continued northward along the trail that led to the Conley cabin.

Young Dan did not find Jim Conley at home, but Mrs. Conley and the babies were there. He produced the haunch of deer-meat, for which the woman thanked him heartily.

“I’m glad to see that Jim’s able to be up and out,” he said. “He must be feeling better.”

“I reckon he’s some better,” she replied. “He lit out for the settlements two days back, anyhow.”

“To fetch in some grub?”

“Maybe he’ll fetch in some grub.”

Young Dan’s eyes turned significantly to the floor at the edge of the bunk beneath which he had discovered the store of “square-faces” during his last visit. The woman observed the glance and sighed. Young Dan felt embarrassed.

“I’m glad he has something to buy grub with,” he said.

“He’s got a few skins,” said the woman. “He went out an’ set some traps first thing after the tongue-lashin’ ye give him.”

“He must be lucky, to have enough to carry out to the settlements after a couple of days’ trapping,” said the youth, astonished.

Mrs. Conley smiled bitterly.

“Jim don’t wait to git a lot before he commences sellin’,” she said. “It’s the way he’s built.”

“And he’s left you to attend to the traps?”

“Nope, he told me to let ’em be while he was gone. I don’t know nothin’ about traps, anyhow. I was born and riz in the settlements.”

“He might lose some good skins that way—have them et up on him; but it’s his own business, I guess. Well, I must be getting home. If you need anything, m’am, you know where to find my partner and me.”

Young Dan sat down and ate his lunch as soon as he got out of sight of the cabin. He felt depressed; and the cold steak and frosty biscuits didn’t cheer him.

“That’s a poor outfit,” he said. “I guess that Jim Conley’s no darned good. I wonder where he got that gin—and if he’ll get any more? He won’t buy much with the price of a few fox skins, that’s sure. He’s big, and maybe he’s powerful—but I kind of feel that I’ll light right into him next time I see him.”

He made the homeward journey of twelve miles without a stop. It was close to three o’clock in the afternoon when he reached camp; and there, to his astonishment, he found Andy Mace seated by the stove with his right leg cocked up in a chair.

Andy looked ashamed of himself.

“I never knowed it to act so contrary before,” he said. “It’s still stiffer’n a ramrod, an’ I’ve rubbed nigh all my b’ar’s grease into it; an’ all the fault o’ that gum-heeled feller from Quebec I fit with over on the Tobique in the winter o’ eighteen-seventy. It’s nigh enough to rile a man’s temper, Young Dan.”

Young Dan was distressed.

“If it hurts you bad, just say the word and I’ll go clean out to Harlow and fetch in a doctor,” he offered.

“No!” exclaimed Andy. “It ain’t my knee hurts me, but it’s layin’ down on the job to-day, and maybe to-morrow, and leavin’ all the work to you. That’s what riles me.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” the youth reassured him. “I am able and willing, and you’ll be right as rain in a few days. Now I’ll do a mile or two of the south line and be back in time to fry pancakes for supper.”

He was as good as his word; and, later, his pancakes proved to be as good as any his partner had ever mixed and fried. He told of his visit to the Conley cabin, and the old man agreed with him that it would be a real pleasure to hand Jim Conley just what he deserved. After supper, Young Dan read a complete story, in irregular fragments, and his partner talked a bookful.

CHAPTER VI
FISH FOR BAIT

Andy’s knee was worse next morning, but he did not say so. He admitted that it didn’t seem to be any more supple, spoke hopefully of another day’s rest and a little more bear’s grease as being all that it required, and again referred to the fight of fifty years ago in terms of regret and acrimony. The truth was that the old fellow had rheumatism; and he knew what it was; and he had felt it before, once or twice a year, in the very same place. Furthermore, the gritty old sportsman was too vain to admit the truth. Of course he had fought with a man from Quebec fifty years ago, in a lumber-camp on Tobique River, and twisted a knee in the heat of the encounter—but if you had put him on oath and asked him to lay a finger on the knee he had wrenched on that distant occasion, he couldn’t have done it.

“I hope you walloped that man from Quebec,” said Young Dan.

“I sure did,” replied Andy, brightening. “He was counted a smart fighter even for them days—but I was the snag he busted himself on.”

“I betcher! Well, I’ll be back in time to cook dinner, so you just keep quiet while I’m gone.”

“No, you take yer grub along and I’ll have supper ready when you git back. I ain’t a cripple yet.”

Young Dan put some food in his pockets and went about his day’s work, armed as usual with axe and rifle. He set out on the line of traps that ran crookedly almost due west, for this was the one that had been longest neglected. Andy Mace had been along it last, just before the forty-eight-hour storm, and now the tracks of his snowshoes were buried deep. Young Dan kept to his course without difficulty, however, though the line was not blazed. He worked easily by signs that would have meant nothing to a city man. His guides were certain trees and bushes and humps and hollows; and the wilderness was full to crowding of such things. So much for the line of general direction—but some of the traps lay several score of yards to the right and left of that line. A modest blaze had been cut in the bark of tree or sapling at several of these points of deflection.

Young Dan drew two blanks and then a fine big lynx. He skinned the lynx before going on. The fourth trap was empty, but the bait which had been placed on and around it so artfully had been snatched away even more artfully. He rebaited with frozen trout. The fifth trap was snapped tight on the forepaws of a skunk. The skunk itself was gone but Young Dan soon discovered odds and ends of hair and bone scattered in the snow in the immediate vicinity. Something with an amazing appetite had beaten the trapper to that trap, for certain. Young Dan set these things to rights and passed on, wondering at the driving power of hunger.

Two more blanks, a red fox and a skunk followed. The last trap on the line was empty and evidently undisturbed. The bait was covered with snow. Young Dan felt for it with a small stick and twitched a bit of it to the surface. He replaced it with a frozen trout, left it lying on the snow as an extra lure and turned away. He even took a step away; and then he turned back sharply and with the stick drew closer the piece of bait which he had twitched out of the snow. He took it up in his mittened hands and examined it closely. His eyes rounded and his lips parted with astonishment. Then his face took on an expression of blank bewilderment. He gazed all around at the crowding underbrush and soaring spires of the forest, then straight up at the clear sky, then down again at the lump of frozen bait in his hand.

“That’s queer,” he said. “Andy was here last, and that was before we went fishing—yes, and before the last snow. We were baiting with porcupine that day. I wonder where he got this from.”

He tossed the thing back into the snow and, still wondering, went his way. His way now was not by the back trail, but sharp to the right, and then more to the right, until his course lay southeast. He traveled by the sun. The way was rough and tangled, and the “going” was heavy. He struggled over blow-downs and through cedar-twined fastnesses of swamp. After a couple of miles of it he sat down to rest and eat his lunch. After that he came to a patch of open barren, desolate and flat under the colorless sun. He held to his course straight across the level, a distance of about two miles, and made good time. Beyond the barren he entered a forest of big timber and crossed a wide ridge of maples and yellow birches; and far beyond the ridge he came at last to the locality of the southernmost trap of the southern line.

Young Dan had traveled close upon fifteen miles since breakfast, and here he was still six miles at least from camp as the crow flies—and what would have been a laughing matter to a crow was a tough job for him. He almost found it in his heart to hope that all the traps between him and his supper were empty. No such luck! In that first trap, the farthest from home, he found a big bobcat—a cheap pelt on a big body.

It was past eight o’clock when Young Dan pushed open the door, staggered into the camp and let his load thump to the floor. He dropped his axe, too, stood his rifle against the wall, threw aside his fur cap and mittens, and sank into a chair with a grunt of relief.

“That was a day’s work, and I’m darn glad it’s through with!” he exclaimed, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes.

Andy Mace didn’t say a word.

Young Dan sat up and looked all around. He saw the glow of the fire in the rusty stove, red embers on the hearth, and the lighted lantern at the little window, hooked to a nail in the frame. The room was poorly illuminated. Most of it, including Andy Mace’s bunk, was in deep shadow.

“He’s taking a nap,” reflected Young Dan. “I guess his knee hurts him more’n he lets on, and maybe it kept him awake last night.”

He hunched forward and untied the frozen thongs of his snowshoes very quietly, fearful of disturbing the sleeper. Stealthily he put a few sticks of wood in the stove and a log on the red embers in the chimney. Next, he pussy-footed over to the window and unhooked the lantern and set it down on the table near the stove. He felt bone-tired and sleepy, but his spirit was untouched by fatigue. Recalling Andy’s statement concerning supper, he decided to cook something good—something elaborate, like buckwheat pancakes or bacon—and boil a big pot of coffee, without waking the sluggard. He would even go so far as to tuck into the grub before arousing the sleeper by clattering a spoon against the coffee-pot. It would be a good joke on the old boy.

Owing to the changed position of the lantern, Andy Mace’s bunk was now free from shadow. Young Dan glanced at it and instantly forgot the contemplated joke. The bunk was empty!

Young Dan felt a sharp sense of unreality, as daunting as it was new to him—but in a moment the chill of that gave way before a surge of anxiety. He searched through the camp in a minute, all his weariness forgotten. Andy Mace was nowhere indoors; his snowshoes were gone, too; but his rifle leaned in its usual corner, in its old canvas case. Young Dan began to dress for the open with both hands and both feet. His coat, cap, mittens and snowshoes all seemed to fall into position and attach themselves at once. He took up the lantern and his rifle and went out, pulling the door shut behind him.

Young Dan found his partner’s tracks in fifteen seconds. They did not lead along any one of the four lines of traps. They told him, as plain as print, that the old man’s right leg was still as stiff as a ramrod. Why Andy had gone into the woods at such an hour, lame or limber, was more than he could even begin to imagine. He reckoned the time of Andy’s departure from the camp by the condition of the fire in the stove at the time of his return. He put it at something between an hour and a half and two hours.

He followed the trail in feverish haste for a hundred yards or so, then halted and shouted his partner’s name at the top of his voice. A faint shout came back to him. He yelled again and continued his advance, holding the lantern high and struggling in the snow-choked underbrush like a swimmer in heavy surf. He reflected that Andy had certainly taken a bee-line for wherever he was bound, regardless of natural obstacles. In his care to keep the lantern from contact with the snow he stumbled heavily several times and at last fell flat. The thick, hot glass of the lantern cracked like a pistol-shot and fell apart as it plunged into the snow, and the flame sizzled to extinction.

Young Dan arose to his knees slowly and in silence, with his rifle in one hand and the ring of the chimneyless lantern in the other. In silence he struggled to his feet and reset his right snowshoe. What’s the use of talking when you know that the words required by your emotions don’t exist? Still in silence, he cleared his eyes and neck of snow. Then, to his great relief, he saw a yellow glow of fire-light far away beyond the tangled screens of the forest. He went straight for the light with as much noise and almost as much speed as a bull moose in a hurry. He bored ahead, shielding his face with the cased rifle and battered lantern, and letting his feet look after themselves. He frequently snarled his snowshoes in the brush and took a header, but he was never down for more than five seconds at a time.