Troop One of the Labrador by Dillon Wallace

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"Aye, and I'm goin' to see whatever!"

While Eli had a snack to eat and a cup of tea with Thomas and Margaret
he told Thomas of Indian Jake's call upon his father, of the shooting
and of the robbery which followed.

"Injun Jake turns back after leavin' and shoots Pop and takes the
silver," he concluded, "and I'm goin' to get the silver whatever, even
if I has to shoot Injun Jake to get un!"

"Is you sure, now, 'twere Injun Jake does un?" asked Thomas, unwilling
to believe his friend and partner capable of such treachery. By
disposition Thomas was naturally cautious of passing judgment or of
accusing anyone of misdeed without conclusive proof.

"There's no doubtin' that!" insisted Eli. "There was nobody else to do
un. 'Twere Injun Jake."

A shift of wind to the southward assisted Eli on his way. Early that
evening he reached the Hudson's Bay Company's post, twenty miles west
of The Jug. Here he stopped for supper and learned from Zeke Hodge,
the Post servant, that Indian Jake had passed up Grand Lake in his
canoe two days before. Zeke expressed doubt as to Eli's finding the
half-breed at the Nascaupee River. He stated it as his opinion that if
Indian Jake were guilty of the crime, as he had no doubt, he was
planning an escape and had in all probability immediately plunged into
the interior, in which case he was already hopelessly beyond pursuit
and had fled the Bay country for good and all. Like Eli, Zeke
convicted the half-breed at once.

The Eskimo Bay Post of the Hudson's Bay Company is the last inhabited
dwelling as the traveller enters the wilderness; he might go on and on
for a thousand miles to Hudson Bay and in the whole vast expanse of
distance no other human habitation will he find. His camps will be
pitched in the depths of forests or on desolate, naked barrens; and
always, in forests or on barrens, he will hear the rush and roar of
mighty rivers or the lapping waves of wide, far-reaching lakes. The
timber wolf will startle him from sleep in the dead of night with its
long, weird howl, rising and falling in dismal cadence, or the silence
will be broken perchance by the wild, uncanny laugh of the loon
falling upon the darkness as a token of ill omen, but in all the vast
land he will hear no human voice and he will find no human
companionship.

Indian Jake had told Thomas that he would camp above the mouth of the
Nascaupee River, a dozen miles beyond the point where the river enters
Grand Lake. It was a journey of sixty miles or more from the Post.

Eli set out at once. Five miles up a short wide river brought him to
Grand Lake, which here reached away before him to meet the horizon in
the west, and at the foot of the lake he camped to await day, for the
lake and the country before him were unfamiliar.

Early in the afternoon of the third day after leaving the Post, Eli's
boat turned into the wide mouth of the Nascaupee River, and keeping a
sharp look-out, he rowed silently up the river. It was an hour before
sundown when his eye caught the white of canvas among the trees a
little way from the river.

With much caution Eli drew his boat among the willows that lined the
bank and made it fast. Slinging his cartridge bag over his shoulder,
and with his rifle resting in the hollow of his arm, ready for instant
action, he crept forward toward Indian Jake's camp. Taking advantage
of the cover of brush, he moved with extreme caution until he had the
tent and surroundings under observation.

There was no movement about the camp and the fire was dead. It was
plain Indian Jake had not returned for the evening. Eli crouched and
waited, as a cat crouches and waits patiently for its prey.

Presently there was the sound of a breaking twig and a moment later
Indian Jake, with his rifle on his arm, appeared out of the forest.

Eli, his rifle levelled at Indian Jake, rose to his feet with the
command:

"You stand where you is; drop your gun!"

"Why, how do, Eli? What's up?" Indian Jake greeted. "What's bringin'
you to the Nascaupee?"

"You!" Eli's face was hard with hate. "'Tis you brings me here, you
thief! I wants the silver you takes when you shoots father, and 'tis
well for you Doctor Joe comes and saves he from dyin' or I'd been
droppin' a bullet in your heart with nary a warnin'!"

"What you meanin' by that?"

"Be you givin' up the silver?"

"No!"

[Illustration: "YOU STAND WHERE YOU IS AND DROP YOUR GUN"]

"I say again, give me that silver fox you stole from father!"

Indian Jake's small hawk eyes were narrowing. He made no answer, but
slipped his right hand forward toward the trigger of his rifle, though
the barrel of the rifle still rested in the hollow of his left arm.

"Drop un!" Eli commanded, observing the movement. "Drop that gun on
the ground!"

Indian Jake stood like a statue, eyeing Eli, but he made no movement.

"I said drop un!" Eli's voice was cold and hard as steel. He was in
deadly earnest. "If you tries to raise un or don't drop un before I
count ten I'll put a bullet in your heart!"

Indian Jake might have been of chiselled stone. He did not move a
muscle or wink an eye-lash but his small eyes were centred on every
motion Eli made. He still held his rifle, the barrel resting in the
hollow of his left arm, his right hand clutching the stock behind the
hammer, his finger an inch from the trigger.

For an instant there was a death-like silence. Then Eli began to
count:

"One--two--three--four--"

The words fell like strokes of a hammer upon an anvil. Eli intended
to shoot. He was a man of his word. He made no threat that he was not
prepared to execute, and Indian Jake knew that Eli would shoot on the
count of ten.

"Five--six--seven--eight--"

Still Indian Jake made no move save that the little hawk eyes had
narrowed to slits. He did not drop his gun. From all the indications,
he did not hear Eli's count.

"Nine--ten!"

True to his threat, Eli's rifle rang out with the last word of his
count.

CHAPTER X

THE END OF ELI'S HUNT

Indian Jake, quick as a cat, had thrown himself upon the ground with
Eli's last count. Like the loon that dives at the flash of the
hunter's gun, he was a fraction of a second quicker than Eli. Now,
lying prone, his rifle at his shoulder, he had Eli covered, and the
chamber of Eli's rifle was empty.

"Drop that gun!" he commanded.

Eli, believing in the first instant that Indian Jake had fallen as the
result of the shot, was taken wholly by surprise. He stood dazed and
dumb with the smoking rifle in his hand. He did not at once realize
that the half-breed had him covered. His brain did not work as rapidly
as Indian Jake's. His immediate sensation as he heard Indian Jake's
voice was one of thankfulness that, after all, there was no stain of
murder on his soul. Even yet he had no doubt Indian Jake was wounded.
He had taken deadly aim, and he could not understand how any escape
could have been possible.

"Drop that gun!" Indian Jake repeated. "I won't count. I'll shoot."

Eli's brain at last grasped the situation. Indian Jake was grinning
broadly, and it seemed to Eli the most malicious grin he had ever
beheld. He did not question Indian Jake's determination to shoot. It
was too evident that the half-breed, grinning like a demon, was in a
desperate mood. Eli dropped his rifle as though it were red hot and
burned his hands.

"Step out here!" Indian Jake, rising to his feet, indicated an open
space near the tent.

Eli did as he was told.

"Shake the ca'tridges out of your bag on the ground!"

Eli turned his cartridge bag over, and the cartridges which it
contained rattled to the ground.

"Turn your pockets out!"

A turning of the pockets disclosed no further ammunition.

Indian Jake took Eli's rifle from the ground, emptied the magazine,
and placed the rifle in the tent.

"Where's your boat?" he asked.

"Just down here."

"You go ahead. Show me."

Eli guided Indian Jake to the boat, and while he remained on the bank
under threat of the rifle, the half-breed went through his belongings
in the boat in a further search for ammunition. Satisfied that there
was none, he replaced the things as he had found them, and was
grinning amiably when he rejoined Eli upon the bank.

"Come 'long up to camp," he invited, quite as though Eli were a most
welcome guest.

"Give me that silver fox!" Eli's anger had mastered his surprise.

"I won't give un to you, but don't be mad, Eli," Indian Jake grinned
in vast enjoyment.

"You stole un!" Eli burst out. "And you were thinkin' to do murder!"

"Did I now?"

"You did!"

Indian Jake did not deign to deny or confess. Eli, at his command,
returned to camp. Indian Jake handed him the tea-kettle.

"Fill un at the river," he directed.

While Eli obeyed silently and sullenly, Indian Jake lighted a fire,
and when Eli returned put the kettle on. Then he brought forth his
frying-pan, filled it with sliced venison, and as he placed it over
the fire, remarked:

"Knocked a buck down this mornin'."

Eli said nothing. The odour of frying venison was pleasant. Eli was
hungry, and when the venison was fried and tea made, he swallowed his
pride and silently accepted Indian Jake's invitation to eat.

When they had finished, Indian Jake cut a large joint of venison, and
presented it to Eli with his empty rifle, remarking as he did so:

"The deer's meat's a surprise. I like to surprise folks. Taste good
goin' home. I'll keep the ca'tridges. You might hurt somebody if you
had un. You'll get quite a piece down before you camp to-night."

"Were you takin' that silver?" asked Eli, changing his accusation to a
question.

"Maybe I were and maybe I weren't," Indian Jake grinned. "'Twouldn't
do me any good to tell you if I had un, and if I told you I didn't
have un you wouldn't believe me. Maybe I've got un. You better be
goin'. I'd ask you to stay, Eli, and I'd like to have you, but you
don't like me and you'd better go on."

"I don't want the deer's meat," said Eli in sullen resentment.

"You ain't got any ca'tridges, and you can't shoot any fresh meat,"
insisted Indian Jake, adding with a grin: "She'll go good. Take un
along, I got plenty. It's just a little surprise present for you bein'
so kind as not to shoot me."

Eli, doubtless deciding that he had better take what he could get,
though a bit of venison was small compensation for a silver fox,
accepted the meat. Indian Jake accompanied him to the boat, and as he
dropped down the river he could see Indian Jake still on the bank
watching him until he turned a bend.

Without cartridges for his rifle, Eli felt himself as helpless as a
wolf without teeth or a cat without claws. He was subdued and humbled.
He had had Indian Jake completely in his power, and through delay in
taking prompt advantage of his position, had permitted the half-breed
to capture and disarm him.

The thought increased his anger toward Indian Jake. He had no doubt
the man had the silver fox in his possession. If there had been any
doubt in the first instance that Indian Jake was guilty, and Eli had
never admitted that there was doubt, he was now entirely satisfied of
the half-breed's guilt. Indian Jake, indeed, had quite boldly stated
that he "might" have it, and Eli accepted this as an admission that he
_did_ have it.

"There'll be no use getting more ca'tridges and goin' back," Eli
mused. "He's had a warnin' and he'll not bide in that camp another
day. He'll flee the country."

Then Eli's thoughts turned to his old father and mother.

"The silver's gone, and it leaves Pop and Mother in a bad way," he
mused. "They've been fondlin' that skin half the winter. Pop's had un
out a hundred times to see how fine and black 'twere, and shook un out
to see how thick and deep the fur is. And they been countin' and
countin' on the things they'd be gettin' and needs, and can't get now
she's gone. And they been countin' on the money they'd have to lay by
for their feeble days when they needs un. They'll never get over
mournin' the loss of un. 'Twere worth a fortune, and Pop'll never
cotch another. He were hopin' and hopin' every year as long as I
remembers to cotch a silver, and none ever comes to his traps till
this un comes. And now she's gone!"

Perhaps had the silver fox skin been Eli's own, and perhaps had his
father and mother not built so many hopes and laid so many plans upon
the little fortune it was to have brought them, Eli would never have
ventured to the verge of murder to recover it. Even now, with all his
regrets, he thanked God from the bottom of his heart that he had not
killed Indian Jake and stained his hands with blood.

"'Twere the mercy of God sent the bullet abroad," said he reverently.
"Indian Jake's a thief and he deserves to be killed, but if I'd killed
he I'd never rested an easy hour again while I lives. But I might o'
clipped his trigger hand, whatever," he thought with regret. "I can
clip off the head of a pa'tridge every time, and I might have clipped
his hand, and got the skin and took he back for Doctor Joe to fix up."

Three days later Eli pulled his boat wearily into The Jug. The boys
had returned, and with Thomas they met him on the jetty.

"Did you find Injun Jake?" Thomas asked anxiously.

"Aye," said Eli, "he were there."

Eli volunteered no further details for a moment. Then he added:

"I didn't kill he, thank the Lord, but he's got the silver. He said he
had un, and he took my ca'tridges away from me."

"Said he had un? Now, that's strange--wonderful strange. Come in, Eli,
supper's ready," Thomas invited, manifestly relieved that Eli had not
succeeded in accomplishing his rash purpose. "You'll bide the night
with us, and while you eats tell us about un, and the lads'll tell
what were happenin' to they."

Margaret was setting the table. She greeted Eli cordially, and
arranged a plate for him while he washed at the basin behind the
stove.

"Come," invited Thomas, "set in. We've got a wonderful treat."

"What be that, now?" asked Eli as Margaret placed a dish of steaming,
mealy boiled potatoes upon the table.

"Potaters," Thomas announced grandly. "Doctor Joe brings un on the
mail boat from where he's been, and onions too. Margaret, peel some
onions and set un on for Eli. They's fine just as they is without
cookin'."

The onions came, and when thanks had been offered Eli tasted his
first potato.

"They is fine, now! Wonderful fine eatin'," he declared.

"Try an onion, now. They's fine, too," Thomas urged.

Eli took an onion.

"She has a strange smell," he observed before biting into it.

Eli took a liberal mouthful of the onion. He began to chew it. A
strained look spread over his face. Tears filled his eyes. But Eli was
brave, and he never flinched.

"'Tis fine, I like un wonderful fine," Eli volunteered presently,
adding, "if she didn't burn so bad."

"Take just a bit at a time," advised Thomas, laughing heartily, "and
eat un with bread or potaters and you won't notice the burn of un."

Presently Eli told of his experiences with Indian Jake, and Andy told
of the tracks he had seen under the window, and all of the boys told
of what had happened on the island, the theft of the boat, the tracks
of the nailed boots and the discovery of the boat at Fort Pelican.

Then Eli made an announcement that again laid the burden of suspicion
more strongly than ever upon Indian Jake.

"I were workin' at the lumber camps a week this summer helpin' they
out," said Eli. "Whilst I were there Indian Jake comes and trades a
pair of skin boots with one of the lumber men for a pair of their
boots, the kind with nails in un. He the same as says he has the fur,
and 'twere he took un."

"Injun Jake wears skin boots when he come to our camp on Flat P'int,"
said David.

"Aye, 'tis likely," admitted Eli. "He'd be wearin' skin boots in the
canoe, whatever. The nailed boots would be hard on the canoe. He uses
the nailed boots trampin' about, but he'd change un when he travels in
his canoe."

The whole question was canvassed pro and con, and due consideration
given to the length of time that Indian Jake must have consumed in
passing from Horn's Bight to Flat Point. This was alone sufficient in
the mind of Thomas and the boys to lift all suspicion from Indian
Jake, but Eli still held stubbornly to the opposite view.

Two days later, and on the eve of Thomas's departure for the trails,
Doctor Joe returned. Lem had so far recovered that a further stay at
Horn's Bight was unnecessary.

Thomas and Doctor Joe quietly discussed the shooting incident. Lem, it
appeared, had later decided that he may have been shot much earlier in
the afternoon than sundown. What had occurred had fallen into the hazy
uncertainty of a dream.

"What kind of a rifle does Indian Jake use?" asked Doctor Joe.

"A thirty-eight fifty-five," said Thomas.

Doctor Joe drew from his pocket the bullet extracted from Lem's wound.
Thomas examined it critically.

"There's no doubtin' 'tis a thirty-eight fifty-five," he admitted.
"'Tis true Injun Jake gets a pair of nailed boots like the lumber folk
wears. But Injun Jake'll tell me whether 'twere he shot Lem. Injun
Jake'll be fair about un with me whatever. 'Tis hard for me to believe
he did un. If he did, he'll be gone from the Nascaupee when I gets
there. If he didn't, I'll find he waitin'!"

"Let us hope he'll be there, and let us hope he's innocent," said
Doctor Joe.

Some day and in some way every sin is punished and every criminal is
discovered. It is an immutable law of God that he who does wrong must
atone for the wrong. We do not always know how the punishment is
brought about, but the guilty one knows. And so with the shooting and
robbery of Lem Horn. Many months were to pass before the mystery was
to be solved, and then the revelation was to come in a startling
manner in the course of an adventure amid the deep snows of winter.

Thomas sailed away the following morning. They watched his boat pass
down through The Jug and out into the Bay, and then the silence of the
wilderness closed upon him, and no word came as to whether or no
Indian Jake met him at the Nascaupee River camp.

CHAPTER XI

THE LETTER IN THE CAIRN

In Labrador September is the pleasantest month of the year. It is a
period of calm when fogs and mists and cold dreary rains, so frequent
during July and the early half of August, are past, and Nature holds
her breath before launching upon the world the bitter blasts and
blizzards and awful cold of a sub-arctic winter. There are days and
days together when the azure of the sky remains unmarred by clouds,
and the sun shines uninterruptedly. The air, brilliantly transparent,
carries a twang of frost. Evening is bathed in an effulgence of
colour. The sky flames in startling reds and yellows blending into
opals and turquoise, with the shadowy hills lying in a purple haze in
the west.

Then comes night and the aurora. Wavering fingers of light steal up
from the northern horizon. Higher and higher they climb until they
have reached and crossed the zenith. From the north they spread to the
east and to the west until the whole sky is aflame with shimmering
fire of marvellous changing colours varying from darkest purple to
dazzling white.

The dark green of the spruce and balsam forests is splotched with
golden yellow where the magic touch of the frost king has laid his
fingers and worked a miracle upon groves of tamaracks. The leaves of
the aspen and white birch have fallen, and the flowers have faded.

Spruce grouse chickens, full grown now, rise in coveys with much noise
of wing, and perch in trees looking down unafraid upon any who intrude
upon their forest home. Ptarmigans, still in their coat of mottled
brown and white, gather in flocks upon the naked hills to feed, where
upland cranberries cover the ground in red masses; or on the edge of
marshes where bake apple berries have changed from brilliant red to
delicate salmon pink and offer a sweet and wholesome feast.

The honk and quack of wild geese and ducks, southward bound in great
flocks, disturbs the silence of every inlet and cove and bight, where
the wild fowl pause for a time to rest and feed upon the grasses.

After Thomas's departure Doctor Joe and the boys tidied and snugged
things up for the winter, and many a fine hunt they had, mornings and
evenings, in the edge of a near-by marsh through which a brook coursed
to join the sea. Hunting geese and ducks was indeed a duty, for they
must needs depend upon the hunt for no small share of their living. It
was a duty they enjoyed, however. Skill and a steady hand and a quick
eye are necessary to success, and they never failed to return with a
full bag.

The weather was now cold enough to keep the birds sweet and fresh, and
before September closed a full two score of fine fat geese were
hanging in the enclosed lean-to shed with a promise of many good
dinners in the future.

Between the hunting and the work about home there was no time to be
dawdled vainly away. When there was nothing more pressing the
wood-pile always stood suggestively near the door inviting attention,
and it was necessary to saw and split a vast deal of wood to keep the
big box stove supplied, for it had a great maw and would develop a
marvellous appetite when the weather grew cold.

No extended travelling was possible for Doctor Joe on his errands of
mercy until the sea should freeze and dogs and sledge could be called
into service. But during the fine September weather he and the boys
made two short trips up the Bay, where there was ailing in some of the
families.

In the course of these excursions they took occasion to visit
Let-in-Cove, which lay just outside Grampus River, where the new
lumber camps were situated, and also Snug Cove and Tuggle Bight, a
little farther on. At Let-in-Cove Peter and Lige Sparks, at Snug Cove
Obadiah Button and Micah Dunk, and at Tuggle Bight Seth Muggs were
enlisted in the scout troop, and a handbook left at each place. These,
indeed, with the three Anguses, were the only boys of scout age within
a radius of fifty miles of The Jug.

There was great excitement among the lads, and Doctor Joe proudly
declared that there would be no finer or more efficient troop of
scouts in all the world than his little troop of eight when they had
become familiar with their duties.

A new field and a broader vision of life was to open to these Labrador
lads, whose life was of necessity circumscribed. They had never been
given the opportunity to play as boys play in more favoured lands.
They had never known the joys of football or cricket or the hundred
other fine, health-giving games that are a part of the life of every
English or Canadian boy. They had never seen a circus or a moving
picture and they had never been in a schoolroom in their lives.

This opportunity to play and study as other boys play and study in
other lands was the thing, perhaps, they longed for above all else.
Doctor Joe had inspired them with ambition. They hungered to learn and
here was the Handbook with many things in it to study, and through
Doctor Joe and the book they were to learn the joy of play.

The new recruits to the troop, however, as well as the Angus boys, had
been close students of their native wilderness. Their eyes were sharp
and their ears were quick. They knew every tree and flower and plant
that grew about them. They knew the birds and their calls and songs.
They knew every animal, its cry and its habits of life. They knew the
fish of the sea and lake and stream. All this was a part of their
training for their future profession of hunters and fishermen.

As hunters they had not learned to look upon the wild things of the
woods as friends and associates. To them the animals were only beasts
whose valuable pelts could be traded at the Post for necessaries of
life or whose flesh was good to eat. Success in life depended upon
man's ability to outwit and slay birds or animals, and the lads held
for them none of the human sympathy that would have added so much to
their own enjoyment.

Now they were to have a new view of life. Doctor Joe was to open to
them a wider, happier vista. It was not in the least to breed in them
discontent with their circumscribed life, but rather to open to their
consciousness the opportunities that lay within their reach, and to
make their life richer and broader and vastly more worth while.

Doctor Joe explained to the five recruits the Tenderfoot Scout
requirements, much as he had explained them to David and Andy and
Jamie. Wilderness dwellers who must take in and fix in the mind at a
glance every unusual tree or stump or stone if they would find their
trail, have a peculiar and remarkable gift of memory born of long
practice and the fact that they must perforce depend upon their
ability to retain the things they see and hear. The lads, therefore,
required no repetition, and learned their lessons with ease.

Though they had never attended school they could all read, stumbling,
to be sure, over the big words, but nevertheless grasping the meaning.
Doctor Joe, during his years in the Bay, had taught not only the Angus
boys but many of the other young people to read. Doctor Joe now marked
the pages that they were to study, and before he and the Angus boys
turned back across the Bay to The Jug it was agreed that the new troop
should hold a week's camp to study and practise together. Hollow Cove,
some five miles from The Jug, was to be the camping ground, and the
first week in October was decided upon as the time.

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