“Well, he looked up into the big maple overhead. Then I saw where Black Dan had gone to. He’d jumped (that’s why the boot-print was so heavy), an’ caught that there branch, an’ swung himself up into the tree. Then he worked his way along from tree to tree till he come to the cave. I saw by the way Jim took on in the cave that Black Dan had been there all right. For Jim hain’t got no special grudge agin bear. Says I to myself, ef Jim smells Black Dan in that bear trail, then Black Dan must be in it, that’s all!
“Then it comes over me that I’d once seen a big bear-skin in Dan’s room at the Mills, an’ as the picture of it come up agin in my mind, I noticed how the fore-paws and legs of it were missin’. With that I looked agin at the trail, as we went along, Jim an’ me. An’ sure enough, in all them tracks there wasn’t one print of a hind-paw. They were all fore-paws. Smart, very smart o’ Dan, says I to myself. Let’s see them ingenious socks o’ yours, Dan.”
“They’re in the top bunk yonder,” said Black Dan, with a weary air. “An’ my belt and pouch, containin’ the other stuff, that’s all in the bunk, too. I may’s well save ye the trouble o’ lookin’ for it, as ye’d find it anyways. I was sure ye’d never succeed in trackin’ me down, so I didn’t bother to hide it. An’ I see now ye wouldn’t ’a’ got me, Tug, ef it hadn’t ’a’ been fer Jim. That’s where I made the mistake o’ my life, not stoppin’ to make sure I’d done Jim up.”
“No, Dan,” said Blackstock, “ye’re wrong there. Ef you’d done Jim up I’d have caught ye jest the same, in the long run, fer I’d never have quit the trail till I did git ye. An’ when I got ye—well, I’d hev forgot myself, mebbe, an’ only remembered that ye’d killed my best friend. Ef ye’d had as many lives as a cat, Dan, they wouldn’t hev been enough to pay fer that dawg.”
V. THE FIRE AT BRINE’S RIP MILLS
I
When pretty Mary Farrell came to Brine’s Rip and set up a modest dressmaker’s shop quite close to the Mills (she said she loved the sound of the saws), all the unattached males of the village, to say nothing of too many of the attached ones, fell instant victims to her charms. They were her slaves from the first lifting of her long lashes in their direction.
Tug Blackstock, the Deputy Sheriff, to be sure, did not capitulate quite so promptly as the rest. Mary had to flash her dark blue eyes upon him at least twice, dropping them again with shy admiration. Then he was at her feet—which was a pleasant place to be, seeing that those same small feet were shod with a neatness which was a perpetual reproach to the untidy sawdust strewn roadways of Brine’s Rip.
Even Big Andy, the boyish young giant from the Oromocto, wavered for a few hours in his allegiance to the postmistress. But Mary was much too tactful to draw upon her pretty shoulders the hostility of such a power as the postmistress, and Big Andy’s enthusiasm was cold-douched in its first glow.
As for the womenfolk of Brine’s Rip, it was not to be expected that they would agree any too cordially with the men on the subject of Mary Farrell.