An addition to Tim’s Place, other than babies and pigs, came one fall in an old Indian who, by ample presents of game, soon won Tim’s good-will and help in the erection of a log wigwam; but this relic of a vanishing race–reckoned by Tim as partially insane–remained there only winters, and when spring returned, disappeared into the wilderness.
There were also two other occasional visitors both meriting description. First, a beetle-browed, keen-eyed, red-haired man garbed as a hunter, whose speech disclosed something of the Scotch dialect, and who, presenting Tim with a deer and two bottles of whiskey as a peace-offering on his first arrival, soon obtained a welcome. He told a plausible tale of having been pursued for years by enemies seeking his life; how he had been robbed and driven away from the settlements; and how two of these enemies had even followed him into the woods. He had been shot at by them, had killed one in self-defence, a price had been set upon his capture, dead or alive, and, all in all, he was a sorely abused man.
How much of this lurid and fantastic tale Tim believed, is not pertinent to this narrative. The stranger, calling himself McGuire, was evidently a good fellow, since he brought good whiskey, and Tim made him welcome.
The facts as to McGuire, however, were somewhat at variance with his assertions. He had originally been a dive-keeper in a focal city for the lumbering interests of this wilderness, had entertained swarms of log-drivers just paid off and anxious to spend money, and when the law interfered, he retreated to a smaller town.
In the interval, strange to say, his moral nature–or rather immoral–suffered a brief relapse, during which he persuaded an excellent if confiding young woman to share his name and infamy.
His second business venture came to grief, however, and his wife deserted him and met with a fatal accident a few years after. In the meantime he had kept busy, exercising his peculiar talents and tastes in an individual manner, and evading officers, and his ways of money-getting were peculiar and diverse.
The Chinese Exclusion Act had just become operative, and the admission of Celestials into the land of the free, and of good wages, became a valuable matter. McGuire conceived the brilliant, if grewsome, idea of passing “Chinks” over the border line concealed in coffins. It worked admirably, and with accomplices on both sides to obtain certificates and permits, and take charge of the “corpses,” a few dozen almond-eyed immigrants at two hundred dollars each obtained admission.
In time, this budding industry met an official quietus, and McGuire, with several warrants out against him, took to the woods. He still continued business, however, in various ways. He smuggled liquor over the border by canoe loads, hiding it at convenient points, to exchange for log-drivers’ wages. He killed game out of season, and dynamited trout and salmon on spawning beds for the same purpose; and, handy with cards, did not disdain their use in lumbering camps.
In all and through all his various ways of money-getting, one purpose had governed him–that of money-saving. Trusting no one, as he had reason to feel no one trusted him, he continually emulated the squirrels and hid his savings in the woods. A trapper and hunter by instinct, as well as thief, dive-keeper, smuggler, poacher, and gambler, he had in his wanderings discovered a cave in a slate ledge upon the shores of a small lake far into the wilderness. It was while trapping here that he found this by the aid of a fox which, while dragging a trap, became caught and held in a crevasse while attempting to enter it.
The fox thus secured, McGuire made further investigation, and by removing a loose slab of slate, he was enabled to enter a roomy cavern, or rather two small ones partially separated by slate walls. A little light entered the larger one, through a seam crossing it lengthwise. They were free from moisture at this time–early autumn–and so secluded was the spot that McGuire decided at once to use this place as a hiding-spot for his money. The entrance could be kept concealed, its location served his purpose, and, fox-like himself, he decided to occupy what he would never have found without the aid of a fox, believing no one else would find it. It could also be used as a domicile for himself as well. A fireplace of slate could be built in it, an escape for smoke might be formed through the crack, if enlarged, and so this cave’s possibilities increased.