Then, satisfied, he laced up the tentflap, turned to the shore, and went to where the wide lake-cruising canoe was laid up under the bushes. In ten minutes the light craft was standing out under the breeze, rounding the point and holding south for Beaver Island and St. James.
The dawn was breaking when he drew down toward the long and narrow harbor. Instead of holding for it, however, he went to the right of the unwinking red eye of the lighthouse, came to shore on the point amid the thick trees and half-ruined dwellings there, and drew up the canoe from sight. Hardrock Callahan was learning caution. He set out afoot, and presently came to the road that wound along the bay and was the artery of the straggling row of houses circling the bay-shore for a mile or more and forming the town of St. James.
The sun was rising upon a glorious day when he had passed down the length of the bay to the head, and reached the hotel and the restaurant adjoining. The hotel was not yet alive for the day, but the island itself was astir, and the restaurant was open. Hardrock went in and breakfasted leisurely by the help of Rose McCafferty, who was waitress, cook and proprietor. Finding himself taken for an early tourist from the hotel out for the morning’s fishing, he let it go at that.
“Hear any more about the boys who were shot up?” he inquired casually, in the course of the meal. The response stupefied him.
“Glory be, and what more is there to hear, except the name o’ the scoundrel that done it? Poor Marty Biddy Basset—a grand boy he was, and only yesterday morning he was settin’ here before me! And Owen John will maybe get well, but the fever’s on him and it’s no talkin’ he’ll do this long while. The doctor at the hotel is wid him this blessed minute.”
“Eh?” Hardrock stared at her. “One of them’s dead, you say? I didn’t know that—”
“Wasn’t they picked up by the Danes and brought in last night, and poor Marty wid a bullet through him, and two through Owen, and the both of ’em all peppered wid birdshot as well, and the boat ruined wid bullets? There she lays down to the Booth dock this minute—”
Hardrock laid a coin on the counter and went out.
He stood staring down at the line of fish-sheds and wharves across the road, feeling numb and unable to believe what he had heard. Dead! Yet he had certainly used no bullets; he had neither rifle nor pistol. Mechanically he crossed the road and walked through the soft, deep sand to the fish-company’s wharf. Red-haired Joe Boyle had just opened up the shed and was getting in some box-parts to knock together; he flung Hardrock a casual nod as the latter approached, and went on about his business.
The boat was not far to seek. She lay on the north side of the dock, and Hardrock stood gazing down at her. That she was the same which had run him down, he saw at a glance; not many of these boats were open craft; nearly all having a boxlike shelter for engines and lifters and men.