“Yes, Arthur,” chimed in his wife. “I would have had them arrested and given a good long sentence. They might have killed you or crippled you.”
“There’s just one reason. One of them was Dave Pingree, son of old Daddy Pingree who lives in the village near here. You know the son is a worthless scoundrel, but old Daddy has had so much trouble that I didn’t want to bring any more on him by having his son arrested, bad as he is, and as richly as he deserves to be jailed. The other one was a stranger to these parts, half breed Canadian by the name of LeBlanc, who picked up Pingree somewhere in the woods, and who has been his constant companion for the past few weeks, at least since the cutting operations of the Boone tract were started,” concluded Howells.
The three boys were so startled at the sound of the name LeBlanc that they jumped to their feet simultaneously and asked Howells to repeat the name.
“LeBlanc is the name. But why does that surprise you so?” queried Mr. Howells in surprise.
“What is his first name,” demanded Garry without answering the question.
“On the payroll he is listed as Baptiste.”
“We did not get a very good look at him in the dusk,” said Garry. “Would you mind describing him for us, please. This is a peculiar situation, and we will tell you about it after you have described the man,” answered Garry rather agitatedly.
“Why he is a swarthy chap about twenty-seven or eight, just about the same age as Pingree. He has black hair and mustache, and a jagged scar on one side of his neck, probably a knife wound from some lumber camp fight,” answered Howells.
Garry sank back with a sigh of relief.
“At any rate he is not the man we think he is. The scar and the age settle that, although the rest of the description fits him well enough to make him a brother to Jean LeBlanc, the one man we do want to run across in this neck of the woods,” replied Garry.