CHAPTER XIX—OLD JOE’S THREAT.
The following morning, when they rose, the sky was cloudless. The night before the stars had shone like diamond pin points in the sky. The Northern Lights had whirled in a mad dance of shimmering radiance.
Beyond the camp stretched the white smoothness of the frozen river leading from the sad little lake. The heaped masses of piled mountains showed to the north and west, savage boundaries, bristling with defiance toward the intruders into a frozen world.
The morning was very cold and very still. It was that brooding stillness that hangs over the land of the frost-bitten suns and seems to convey a sense of something alert with enmity to mankind, hovering like a sinister cloud over the frozen snow fields. But of all this, although keen enough to such impressions at other times, the boys noticed little as they bustled about preparing for the day’s work.
It was reasonably certain now that before very long they must catch up with the thief. The dogs were fed with deer meat purchased in exchange for tobacco from the friendly Indians of the day before. The boiling hot tea and the fried cakes and deer meat put new heart into the adventurers. As for the dogs, they frisked and capered in the snow with unaccustomed playfulness after their full meal, till old Joe summoned them to the harness. Then they resumed the hang-dog air of the mameluke, which is an odd sort of blend, suggesting obstinacy and defiance and cringing servility.
Tom noticed that old Joe carefully oiled the lock of his old squirrel rifle before they started. On the benevolent face of the old man there was a new expression. It partook almost of ferocity, and Tom began to fear that in the event of their coming up with the thief they might have some difficulty in restraining the old man from violence.
As he oiled his rifle and caressed the aged weapon lovingly the boys noticed that the old trapper was humming to himself.
“You seem happy,” said Tom, as the old man knocked the ashes out of his pipe and tightened the thongs of his snowshoes, straightening up again with a grunt.
“Eh bien! I am happy. To-day I teenk the owl catch the weasel, mon enfant. Boosh! Let us be going.”
The whip cracked, the dogs yapped, the harness creaked as it tightened under the stout pull of the meat-stuffed mamelukes, and the little cavalcade dashed forward. Once more they were remorselessly upon the trail of the thief; but to-day there was a difference in their bearing. By some intuition which he would have been at a loss to explain, Tom felt that the morning’s start was the beginning of the end. Before night, if fortune favored them, they would come face to face with the man to whose track they had clung for so long.
Old Joe capered about like a boy. He sang snatches of wild French-Canadian boat songs, he snapped his fingers, and once he cut from the trail-side a thick branch, which he trimmed down like a walking-stick and then swung like a cudgel. The boys guessed that in imagination he was bestowing a sound beating upon the thief.
But Tom had resolved that there must be no work of that sort when they came up with the man, if they ever did. It was plain to see that old Joe was prepared to carry out to the letter the law of “an eye for an eye,” the only law that woodsmen North of Fifty-three know or care much about. He did not blame old Joe for his desire to bestow at least a good beating on the thief, considering the old trapper’s surroundings for many years; but he did determine firmly that there was to be nothing of the sort that old Joe too evidently contemplated.
At noon that day they overhauled the ashes of the thief’s cooking fire. They were still warm. Old Joe’s saint-like face grew grimmer than ever. His white whiskers fairly bristled.
“We are not far behind heem now, mes amis,” he chuckled. “Boosh! Before long we shall see what we will see.”
Tom was wise enough to make no comments then. Time enough for that when they came up with the man. For the present he allowed old Joe to indulge himself in all sorts of sanguinary threats. Their midday meal was despatched with what haste may be imagined. Then the dogs were urged forward at a still brisker pace than they had followed during the morning. The snowshoes flew creakingly over the hard snow.
The boys found their minds busy with conjectures as they forged forward. What manner of man was this they were overhauling? Was he some ruffian of the wilds who would put up a stiff fight that might necessitate the use of firearms in self-defense, or would he yield to the superior force opposed to him and give up peacefully his ill-gained spoils?
As the day waned and the west began to crimson, Tom decided to speak his mind out to old Joe.
“See here, Joe, what do you mean to do when we catch up with this fellow?”
“Eh? Dat man? Why, make him geev up the skeens, of course.”
“But if he won’t? If he opposes us?”
“In dat case——”
Joe said no more but patted the stock of his old squirrel rifle with a gesture that spoke volumes.
“No, we can’t have any of that sort of thing,” said Tom decisively. “If he won’t give up the skins without making trouble, we shall have to make him prisoner somehow and one of us stand guard over him while the others get some of the authorities.”
Old Joe shrugged his shoulders and looked at Tom with inexpressible astonishment. He couldn’t make out this at all. In his rough creed offenders against the code of the woods must be summarily dealt with. Rifle or rope, it was all one to him, but the idea of calling in outside forces to aid him had never entered the rough old woodsman’s head.
“Zee police?” he inquired. “You want call zee police, or zee sheriff? Pourquoi? You leave heem to me. Old Joe Picquet feex heem—bien.”
He raised his old rifle to his shoulder and squinted down the sights as if to make sure that everything was in perfect order.