Carl held his gun ready, for he half-expected Larue to attack him. But the squatter did not reach for his weapon; he only assailed Carl with such abuse in mixed French and English that the boy almost lost his temper. He half raised his gun, and then, as good sense came back to him, lowered it quickly.
“We don’t want any trouble with you,” he said, trying to speak coolly. “If we do have any, it’ll be your own fault. But you keep away from our place. Now I’ve warned you.”
He stepped back into the cedars and walked away, his ears alert for any suspicious sound behind him. But as he cooled down he felt that he had acted most injudiciously; and he felt, in fact, so annoyed with himself that he determined not to mention the matter when he got home.
It took him some time, however, to calm his irritation to this extent, and meanwhile he walked rapidly and rather aimlessly through the woods toward the northwest. He was thinking of anything but his directions, when he came upon the remains of an old road, probably a disused timber-road that might lead to Morton. Following this for a couple of hundred yards, he came in sight of a little lake that he had never seen before.
It was about two miles wide and contained one small, rocky islet. Fire and storm seemed to have swept the shores, for they were covered for more than a hundred yards from the water with tangled dead wood, ricks of underbrush, sprouting second growths, and raspberry canes everywhere. In fact there seemed to be square miles of wild raspberry around the lake. It was covered with bloom, but not a bee did he see. There was no necessity for their bees to travel so far as this to find all the raspberry bloom they wanted.
“What a magnificent spot for an apiary!” Carl reflected, as he gazed about him.
In addition to the raspberries, Carl noticed on a little rise of ground near him, a whole grove of large basswood trees. It was too early for their bloom, but he was going over to inspect them when something seemed to strike him heavily on the head.
The boy dropped in his tracks, and probably for several minutes he lay unconscious. He came to himself feeling dazed and sick, with a dim idea that some one had clubbed him. His mind turned to Larue, as he got weakly to his feet, but no one was anywhere in sight. His hat lay on the ground. He recovered it, and was startled to see two small holes through the crown. At the same time he became aware that blood was running down his forehead.
It flashed upon him that he had been shot and shot through the head! He turned sick and faint at the idea and wondered how he came to be still alive. He hardly dared to put his hand to his head, fearing to find a gaping cavity, but he could not feel exactly what he could call a wound, though there was a very sore spot on the top of his skull. He raked away a good deal of loose hair, and blood was trickling down freely.
He was somewhat reassured at finding the wound was not going to be immediately fatal. Looking at the holes in his hat, he saw that they must have been made by a small-caliber, high-powered, rifle bullet, and this exonerated Larue, for it was a shotgun that the squatter had been carrying. Carl had heard no report; very likely the shot had been fired by some sportsman at a mile distance, perhaps on the other side of the lake. Missing its proper mark, the bullet had driven on till Carl had had the misfortune to come in its way.