Without warning, John Caribou crushed in the door and threw himself on his half-brother. Both went to the floor together. Penobscot Tom, filled with fear and fury, fought like an aroused demon. He tried to get out his knife, but Caribou caught his knife hand and held it.
“Curse you!” Penobscot Tom snarled, trying to set his sharp teeth in Caribou’s throat, “I’ll kill you for this. You sneak, you wolf, you——”
The words ended in a choking gurgle.
Caribou’s hand closed on Penobscot Tom’s windpipe in a deadly grip, and forced him into semi-consciousness and speedy subjection. When he came round, he found his hands and feet tied, and Caribou in possession of his weapons.
Though John Caribou delivered Penobscot Tom into the hands of the game warden for punishment on the charge of killing the moose, a deed which Tom brazenly confessed when he saw he was in the toils, thus bringing the immediate release of Frank Merriwell and his friends, Caribou refused to accept any reward other than a mere recognition of the fact that he was a reliable guide and an honest man.
“A better guide, a straighter fellow, a whiter man, regardless of the color of his skin, doesn’t live,” declared Frank Merriwell, warmly taking Caribou’s hand at parting. “I shall never forget you, John Caribou, never.”
“We be friends, great strong friends, always,” said Caribou, with kindling eyes. “Some day we meet ag’in, mebbe, an’ have heap better time. Good-by!”
This was the only further conversation that Frank Merriwell had with the Indian for the present at any rate. He and his companions had decided that they had seen all that there was to see at Moosehead Lake and they determined to push on to Bangor. On their way to Bangor they stopped off at Brownsville. As they came up over the Maine Central Railroad they agreed to return as far as Milo Junction over the Canadian Pacific.
Barely had they left Greenville when Hans Dunnerwust was taken ill from over-eating, and, by the time Brownsville was reached, the Dutch lad was in such a serious condition that Frank decided to stop off and see that he was properly attended by a physician.