Blaise shrugged. “There is the lake, and a body weighted with stones stays down.”
“Then why was his blood-stained shirt not sunk with him?”
“That I know not,” and the puzzled look returned to the lad’s face.
“Might it not be that father was wearing Black Thunder’s shirt and that the stains are from his wound?”
“He wore his own when he came to the lodge, and the stains are in the wrong place. They are on the breast. No, he never wore this shirt. The blood must be Black Thunder’s.”
The sun was going down when the two boys finally gave up the search for the wrecked boat or some further trace of Jean Beaupré and his companion. Neither lad had any wish to camp in the vicinity. Blaise especially showed strong aversion to the spot.
“There are evil stories of this river,” he explained to his brother. “If our father camped here, it was because he was very weary indeed. He was a brave man though, far braver than most men, white or red.”
“Why should he have hesitated to camp here?” Hugh inquired curiously. “It’s true we have seen pleasanter spots along this shore, yet this is not such a bad one.”
“There are evil stories of the place,” Blaise repeated in a low voice. “The lake from which this river flows is the abode of a devil.” The boy made the sign of the cross on his breast and went on in his musical singsong. “On the shores of that lake have been found the devil’s tracks, great footprints, like those of a man, but many times larger and very far apart. So the lake is called the ‘Lake of Devil Tracks’ and the river bears the same name. It is said that when that devil wishes to come down to the shore of the great lake to fish for trout, it is this way he comes, striding along the bed of the river, even at spring flood.”
Hugh Beaupré, half Scotch, half French, and living in a time when the superstitious beliefs of an earlier day persisted far more actively than they do now, was not without his share of such superstitions. But this story of a devil living on a lake and walking along a river, struck him as absurd and he said so with perfect frankness.