in the past.
Half a day’s journey down the creek brought him to the valley of a
larger stream which he decided was the McQuestion. Here he shot a
moose, and once again each wolf-dog carried a full fifty-pound pack
of meat. As he turned down the McQuestion, he came upon a sled-
trail. The late snows had drifted over, but underneath, it was
well-packed by travel. His conclusion was that two camps had been
established on the McQuestion, and that this was the connecting
trail. Evidently, Two Cabins had been found and it was the lower
camp, so he headed down the stream.
It was forty below zero when he camped that night, and he fell
asleep wondering who were the men who had rediscovered the Two
Cabins, and if he would fetch it next day. At the first hint of
dawn he was under way, easily following the half-obliterated trail
and packing the recent snow with his webbed shoes so that the dogs
should not wallow.
And then it came, the unexpected, leaping out upon him on a bend of
the river. It seemed to him that he heard and felt simultaneously.
The crack of the rifle came from the right, and the bullet, tearing
through and across the shoulders of his drill parka and woollen
coat, pivoted him half around with the shock of its impact. He
staggered on his twisted snow-shoes to recover balance, and heard a
second crack of the rifle. This time it was a clean miss. He did
not wait for more, but plunged across the snow for the sheltering
trees of the bank a hundred feet away. Again and again the rifle
cracked, and he was unpleasantly aware of a trickle of warm moisture
down his back.
He climbed the bank, the dogs floundering behind, and dodged in
among the trees and brush. Slipping out of his snow-shoes, he
wallowed forward at full length and peered cautiously out. Nothing
was to be seen. Whoever had shot at him was lying quiet among the
trees of the opposite bank.
“If something doesn’t happen pretty soon,” he muttered at the end of
half an hour, “I’ll have to sneak away and build a fire or freeze my
feet. Yellow Face, what’d you do, lying in the frost with
circulation getting slack and a man trying to plug you?”
He crawled back a few yards, packed down the snow, danced a jig that
sent the blood back into his feet, and managed to endure another
half hour. Then, from down the river, he heard the unmistakable
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73
jingle of dog-bells. Peering out, he saw a sled round the bend.
Only one man was with it, straining at the gee-pole and urging the
dogs along. The effect on Smoke was one of shock, for it was the
first human he had seen since he parted from Shorty three weeks
before. His next thought was of the potential murderer concealed on
the opposite bank.
Without exposing himself, Smoke whistled warningly. The man did not
hear, and came on rapidly. Again, and more sharply, Smoke whistled.
The man whoa’d his dogs, stopped, and had turned and faced Smoke
when the rifle cracked. The instant afterwards, Smoke fired into
the wood in the direction of the sound. The man on the river had
been struck by the first shot. The shock of the high velocity
bullet staggered him. He stumbled awkwardly to the sled, half-
falling, and pulled a rifle out from under the lashings. As he
strove to raise it to his shoulder, he crumpled at the waist and
sank down slowly to a sitting posture on the sled. Then, abruptly,
as the gun went off aimlessly, he pitched backward and across a
corner of the sled-load, so that Smoke could see only his legs and
stomach.
From below came more jingling bells. The man did not move. Around
the bend swung three sleds, accompanied by half a dozen men. Smoke
cried warningly, but they had seen the condition of the first sled,
and they dashed on to it. No shots came from the other bank, and
Smoke, calling his dogs to follow, emerged into the open. There
were exclamations from the men, and two of them, flinging off the
mittens of their right hands, levelled their rifles at him.
“Come on, you red-handed murderer, you,” one of them, a black-
bearded man, commanded, “an’ jest pitch that gun of yourn in the
snow.”
Smoke hesitated, then dropped his rifle and came up to them.
“Go through him, Louis, an’ take his weapons,” the black-bearded man
ordered.
Louis, a French-Canadian voyageur, Smoke decided, as were four of
the others, obeyed. His search revealed only Smoke’s hunting knife,
which was appropriated.
“Now, what have you got to say for yourself, Stranger, before I
shoot you dead?” the black-bearded man demanded.
“That you’re making a mistake if you think I killed that man,” Smoke
answered.
A cry came from one of the voyageurs. He had quested along the
trail and found Smoke’s tracks where he had left it to take refuge
on the bank. The man explained the nature of his find.
“What’d you kill Joe Kinade for?” he of the black beard asked.
“I tell you I didn’t–” Smoke began.
“Aw, what’s the good of talkin’. We got you red-handed. Right up
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74
there’s where you left the trail when you heard him comin’. You
laid among the trees an’ bushwhacked him. A short shot. You
couldn’t a-missed. Pierre, go an’ get that gun he dropped.”
“You might let me tell what happened,” Smoke objected.
“You shut up,” the man snarled at him. “I reckon your gun’ll tell
the story.”
All the men examined Smoke’s rifle, ejecting and counting the
cartridges, and examining the barrel at muzzle and breech.
“One shot,” Blackbeard concluded.
Pierre, with nostrils that quivered and distended like a deer’s,
sniffed at the breech.
“Him one fresh shot,” he said.
“The bullet entered his back,” Smoke said. “He was facing me when
he was shot. You see, it came from the other bank.”
Blackbeard considered this proposition for a scant second, and shook
his head.
“Nope. It won’t do. Turn him around to face the other bank–that’s
how you whopped him in the back. Some of you boys run up an’ down
the trail and see if you can see any tracks making for the other
bank.”
Their report was, that on that side the snow was unbroken. Not even
a snow-shoe rabbit had crossed it. Blackbeard, bending over the
dead man, straightened up, with a woolly, furry wad in his hand.
Shredding this, he found imbedded in the centre the bullet which had
perforated the body. Its nose was spread to the size of a half-
dollar, its butt-end, steel-jacketed, was undamaged. He compared it
with a cartridge from Smoke’s belt.
“That’s plain enough evidence, Stranger, to satisfy a blind man.
It’s soft-nosed an’ steel-jacketed; yourn is soft-nosed and steel-
jacketed. It’s thirty-thirty; yourn is thirty-thirty. It’s
manufactured by the J. and T. Arms Company; yourn is manufactured by
the J. and T. Arms Company. Now you come along an’ we’ll go over to
the bank an’ see jest how you done it.”
“I was bushwhacked myself,” Smoke said. “Look at the hole in my
parka.”
While Blackbeard examined it, one of the voyageurs threw open the
breech of the dead man’s gun. It was patent to all that it had been
fired once. The empty cartridge was still in the chamber.
“A damn shame poor Joe didn’t get you,” Blackbeard said bitterly.
“But he did pretty well with a hole like that in him. Come on,
you.”
“Search the other bank first,” Smoke urged.
SMOKE BELLEW
75
“You shut up an’ come on, an’ let the facts do the talkin’.”
They left the trail at the same spot he had, and followed it on up
the bank and in among the trees.
“Him dance that place keep him feet warm,” Louis pointed out. “That
place him crawl on belly. That place him put one elbow w’en him
shoot–”
“And by God there’s the empty cartridge he had done it with!” was
Blackbeard’s discovery. “Boys, there’s only one thing to do–”
“You might ask me how I came to fire that shot,” Smoke interrupted.
“An’ I might knock your teeth into your gullet if you butt in again.
You can answer them questions later on. Now, boys, we’re decent an’
law-abidin’, an’ we got to handle this right an’ regular. How far
do you reckon we’ve come, Pierre?”
“Twenty mile I t’ink for sure.”
“All right. We’ll cache the outfit an’ run him an’ poor Joe back to
Two Cabins. I reckon we’ve seen an’ can testify to what’ll stretch
his neck.”
IV.
It was three hours after dark when the dead man, Smoke, and his
captors arrived at Two Cabins. By the starlight, Smoke could make
out a dozen or more recently built cabins snuggling about a larger