II
Hammond lit a cigarette to cover up any concern he might have felt. “That’s certainly interesting to me, Sandy,” he acknowledged, “and it’s deucedly good of you—”
“Nothin’ of the kind!” interposed the other. “And that ain’t all. Acey Smith’s got another Indian trailin’ you.”
“Trailing me? The deuce you say!”
“I said it.”
“But what makes you think Acey Smith’s got anything to do with it?”
Macdougal shrugged. “Who else?” he asked. More whiskey than was discreet had loosened up his tongue. “Who else do you think? Who else but Acey Smith keeps every straw-boss in the camp jumpy all the time just so they won’t get too busy comparin’ notes and find out what’s what? That man’s a devil, and there ain’t two ways about that.
“I got next to this stunt through an accident,” the cook went on. “Was over hidin’ in some green stuff on the side of the Second Hill the other morning figurin’ on snipin’ a couple of partridge when I sees you go by on the tote road. Then I see a long, skinny-lookin’ Indian slippin’ through the brush close to my hide after you. A couple of minutes more and along comes old Leather Face, the Medicine Man, as pompous as you please, but it ain’t long before I discovers that his nibs is a-watchin’ both of you, though he makes a big face of bein’ unconcerned and about his own business. Now, what do you think of that layout, son?”
Hammond was thoughtful. If he were to admit the truth his breath was literally taken away by the revelation. “Smith must attach a lot of importance to me to hire two of them to watch me,” was what he said.
“I ain’t so sure both of them is hired to watch you,” observed his friend. “Medicine men are too stuck on themselves to do shadowin’ jobs. They go after bigger stuff. Smith uses them to put the fear of the Lord into the Indian workers when he needs them. That’s one of the reasons why he lets old fakirs like Bush loaf around the camp and do what they please. No Indian gives any back talk about what the Medicine Man says or does, because they think he can make a Windigo any time he feels like it to bring them bad luck.”
“Well, then, Sandy,” urged Hammond, “what’s your theory? I’ll admit it’s got me beaten.”
“I got it figured out as one of two things,” replied the cook. “Either you’re hired by outside parties to get something on Smith or the North Star he’s afraid you’ll find out, and he’s havin’ you shadowed—or else, well, don’t take offence if I say it plain that this looks to me more like it: you’ve been sent out here by some of the higher-ups for him to take care of you and he has that Indian guy watchin’ to see that nothin’ happens to you.”
“Good heavens,” Hammond expostulated, “I’m not a child or a green-horn in the woods that I can’t look after myself. Smith knows that. No, no, Sandy, you’re away out on your theories this time.”
“Am I now?” ruffled the cook. “Let me tell you Smith knows too that you ain’t any smarter than some of the other fellows who paid for their smartness by cashin’ in to some kind of a lurkin’ death out there in the sticks that comes down on a man without any warnin’ and lets him into Kingdom Come without even a yelp bein’ heard from him.”
Hammond was convinced the liquor in Sandy was doing the talking now. But he tactfully asked: “Ever know of anything like that happening to any one, or is it just some of that camp gossip about spooks over on the mountain?”
“Camp gossip and spooks me eye!” derided the other. “Ain’t there been men disappeared around here just as if they was swallowed up bones and all by something roamin’ round the hills? Yes, I know what you’re goin’ to say next about accidents happenin’, and all that sort of thing. ‘Course there’s muck-holes in the muskegs that they might have walked into or been pushed into and never be seen again. But nobody here thinks that’s just what happened. No, sir, you couldn’t tell them that. There ain’t an Indian will go up in them hills west of here after sundown for life nor money, and whites that are wise won’t do it neither.
“Listen. This much I know from what I saw myself. Last summer there was a pale-faced city gink come out here on a loafin’ holiday. He came pretty much like you did and nobody knew anything about him unless it was the super., who keeps what he knows to himself. This lad put in his time makin’ pictures on pieces of card-board on a frame of sticks he took around with him. The Big Boss warned him and everybody else warned him if he left the camps not to wander off the tote roads, and to keep away from the hill they call the Cup of Nannabijou. But it didn’t do any good.
“One morning they finds his hat floatin’ in the lake back of the beaver dam on Solomon Creek. That’s the creek that runs down the hill into the river and has the rapids in it. They never found anything else, not a hair or a bit of the hide of him. D’you get that?”
“Likely slipped and fell into the rapids,” suggested Hammond.
“That’s what one of them coroner’s juries would say,” agreed the cook, “but you couldn’t make any old timers out here believe it. Besides, his picture-drawing outfit was found a couple of hundred yards away from the creek all set up the way he’d been workin’ on it when he got his. The Indians always said there was one of their ancient devils lived up in The Cup on the hill, and the rest of us is prepared to believe there’s something uncanny there it ain’t good business to monkey with.”
Macdougal fished out his watch. “Cripes,” he exclaimed, “it’s eleven and I should’ve been back at the cook-house half an hour ago.”
He put his bottle back under the boards after a final rejuvenator. At the door of the cabin he paused unsteadily as though gripped by an after-thought. “Anyway, Hammond, I’d pack a gun if I was you,” he advised. “If you ain’t got a gat. of your own, there’s an army six-gun and some shells to fit it in that pack of mine on the wall, and you’re welcome to the loan of it.”
Before Hammond could thank him he was gone and soon there resounded from the cook-house a mixture of expletives and highly ornamented opinions in general on “worthless, soldierin’ bull cooks” which proved that Sandy, plus dispensary whiskey, was trying to make up for lost time over the pots and pans.