XV
JEAN BA'TISTE
On a morning which Prime, consulting his notched stick, named as the twenty-fourth of July, they gave the canoe patches another daubing of pitch for good luck, relaunched their argosy, loaded the dunnage, and began to learn the art of paddling anew—the relearning being made strictly necessary by the new green-wood paddles.
From a boisterous mill-race in its upper reaches, their river had now subsided into a broad stream with a current so leisurely that they had to paddle continuously to make any headway. With this handicap their progress was slow, and it was not until the afternoon of the second day that they began to see signs to hint that they were approaching the settlements.
The signs were neither numerous nor indicative of any recent habitancy: a few old clearings with their stumps weathered and rotting; here and there a spot luxuriantly green to mark an area where slashings had been burned; in one place a decaying runway to show where the logs had been skidded into the river; all these proved that they were not pioneers; but withal they saw no human being to dispute possession with them.
In the evening of this second day they camped on the right-hand bank a short distance below one of the old clearings, kindling their night fire a few yards from the river in a small grove of second-growth pines. The place was not entirely to their liking; the river-bank was high, and they could not draw the canoe out without partially unloading it. While Lucetta was busying herself with the supper, Prime, as a precautionary measure, made a porter of himself to the extent of carrying a good part of the dunnage up to the fire, and after thus lightening the canoe he hauled it out of water as far as the steep bank would permit.
While they were eating supper an unexpected guest turned up. Lucetta was the first to hear the dip of a paddle in the stream, and a moment later they both heard the grating of a boat bottom on the sand. Prime sprang up, rifle in hand, and went to meet the newcomer, prepared to do battle if needful. When he returned he was followed by a small man, dark, bearded, and with bead-like black eyes roving and shifty. He was dressed more like an Indian than a white man; there were fringes on his moccasins and also on the belted coat, which was much the worse for wear and hard usage.
"Moi, Jean Ba'tiste; I mek you de good evenin', m'sieu' et madame," he said, introducing himself brusquely, and as he spoke the roving eyes were taking in every detail of the bivouac camp. Then, with no more ado, he squatted beside the fire and became their supper guest, saying simply: "You eat?—good; moi, I eat, too."
Since there seemed to be no question of ceremony, Prime made the guest welcome, heaping his tin plate and pouring tea for him in the spare cup. The small man ate as if he were half starved, and was saving of speech during the process, though the roving eyes seemed to be doing double duty. The meal devoured, he produced a black clay pipe with a broken stem and uttered a single word, "Tabac'?" and when the want was supplied he crumbled himself a pipeful from the twist which Prime handed him.
Prime filled his own home-made pipe, and at its lighting the guest began a curt inquisition.
"W'ere you come from?"
Prime explained without going into any of the kidnapping details.
"You campin' out for fon, mebbe, yes?" was the next query.
"A little that way," said Prime.
"You shoot wiz ze gon? W'ere all dat game w'at you get?"
"It isn't the game season," Prime parried. "We haven't tried to shoot anything."
"But you 'ave ze gon. Lemme see 'um," holding out a hand for the rifle.
Prime passed over the gun nearest at hand and drew the other one up within reach. The inquisitive supper guest looked the weapon over carefully and seemed to be trying to read something in the scratches on the stock.
"Vraiment! she's one good gon," he commented, passing it back. "W'ere you get 'um?"
"Vraiment! she's one good gon," he commented.... "W'ere you get 'um?"
Prime did not answer the question. He thought it was high time to ask a few of his own.
"What river is this?" he wanted to know.
"You make canoe on him and you not know dat? She is Mishamen; comes bimeby to Rivière du Lièvres."
"How far?"
"One, two, t'ree day; mebbe more."
"You mean that we will reach a town in two or three days?"
"Mebbe so, if you don' get los'."
Prime exchanged a quick glance with his fellow castaway. Lucetta signalled "Yes," and he acted accordingly.
"What will you charge to show us the way to the nearest town?" he asked.
The small man did not seem especially eager for money. He was examining the gun again. "Moi, I can't go—too bizzee. W'ere you got dis gon?"
"It came with our outfit," said Prime shortly. "We got it when we got the canoe."
"And w'ere you got dat canoe?"
The inquisition was growing rather embarrassing, but Prime answered as best he could.
"We got the outfit up at the big lake where we started from. We have come all the way down the river."
With this the restless-eyed querist appeared to be satisfied. At all events he did not press the questioning any further, and was content to take another pipe-filling from Prime's tobacco twist and to tell a little more about himself. He was "one ver' great trapper," in his own phrase, and was also a "timber looker" for a lumber company. Lucetta had withdrawn to the privacy of her tent, and Prime could not divest himself of the idea that the small man whose tongue had been so suddenly loosened was merely sparring for time, time in which to accomplish some end of his own. In due course the battery was unmasked.
"You say you begin voyageur on ze big lake. W'ere you leave Jules Beaujeau an' Pierre Cambon, eh, w'at?"
"I don't know them," said Prime, telling the simple truth.
"Dis Pierre Cambon's gon," said the little man, suddenly tapping the weapon he had been inspecting. "She 'ave hees name on ze stock. An' ze birch-bark down yonder; she's belong' to Jules Beaujeau. You buy 'um?"
Prime scarcely knew what to say; whether to tell the truth, which would not be believed, or to make up a lie, which might be believed. As a compromise he chose a middle course, which is always the most dangerous.
"I don't know these two you speak of, by name; but the two men who owned the canoe and the guns are both dead."
The supper guest sprang up as if a bomb had been exploded under him and quickly put a safe distance between himself and the camp-fire.
"You—you kill 'um?" he demanded.
"No; come back here and sit down. They had a fight and killed each other."
The man returned hesitantly and squatted beside the fire to press another live coal into the bowl of his pipe. Prime switched the talk abruptly.
"You'd better change your mind about the offer I made you and pilot us to the nearest town. We will pay you well for it."
"You got money?" was the short question.
"Plenty of it."
At this the "ver' great trapper" assumed to take the proposal under consideration, smoking other pipes, chaffering and bargaining and prolonging his stay deep into the night. When he finally took his leave, saying that he must go on to his camp, which was a few miles up one of the smaller tributaries of the main stream, it was with a half promise to come back in the morning for the piloting.
Prime took counsel of prudence and did not settle himself for the night immediately after the sharp-eyed one had gone. Laying his pipe aside, he crept cautiously out to the river-bank and assured himself that his late visitor was doing what he had said he would do, namely, heading off up the river with clean, quick strokes of the paddle, which soon sent his light craft out of sight. Prime climbed down the bank, satisfied himself that the patched canoe and its partial lading had not been disturbed, and then went back to the fire to roll himself in his blankets. The incident, with its inquisitorial pryings, had been rather disturbing, in a way, but it was apparently an incident closed.
Turning in so late after a laborious day on the river, Prime overslept the next morning, and when he awoke he found Lucetta already up and frying the bacon.
"Your man didn't stay all night?" she questioned, after Prime had scolded her for not making him get up and do his part.
"No; he sat here until between ten and eleven o'clock and gave me two or three bad minutes. He recognized our canoe and one of the guns, told me the names of the dead men, and wanted to know what had become of them."
"You didn't tell him?" she gasped.
"In the cold light of the morning after, I am afraid I told him too much or too little. I told him the men who owned the canoe and its outfit were dead; that they'd had a fight and killed each other. Candidly, I don't think he believed it. It scared him until I thought he was going to have a fit. I had to jolly him up a bit before he would come back to the fire and talk some more."
"What does he believe?" she inquired anxiously.
"He wouldn't tell me, and I couldn't decide by merely looking at him. I hope I've hired him to pilot us to the nearest town. When he went away he intimated that he might be back this morning."
"Shall we wait for him?"
"No; if he isn't here by the time we are ready to start, we'll go on and take our chance of 'gettin' los',' as he put it. I think that was a bluff, anyway."
They breakfasted leisurely, and Prime even took time to smoke a pipe before beginning to break camp. But his first trip to the river-bank with a load of the dunnage brought him back on a run.
"Our canoe's gone!" he announced breathlessly. "That little wretch came back and stole it while we were asleep!"
Lucetta sat down and propped her chin in her hands.
"This is the beginning of the end, Donald," she said quite calmly and with a touch of resignation in her voice. "Do you know why he took the canoe?"
"Because he's an infernal thief!" Prime raged hotly.
"No," she contradicted. "It is because he thinks we have murdered the two owners of the canoe, and he wanted to make sure that we wouldn't run away while he went after help to arrest us."