Blackstock's lean jaws set themselves like iron. He whipped out his own heavy "Colt's," and the party tore on, till they met Jim dragging himself towards them with a wounded hind-leg trailing pitifully.
The Deputy gave one look at the big black dog, heaved a breath of relief, and stopped.
"'Tain't no manner o' use chasin' him now, boys," he decreed, "because, as we all know, Dan kin run right away from the best runner amongst us. But now I know him—an' I've suspicioned him this two month, only I couldn't git no clue—I'll git him, never you fear. Jest now, ye'd better help me carry Jim home, so's we kin git him doctored up in good shape. I reckon Nipsiwaska County can't afford to lose Mr. Assistant-Deputy Sheriff. That there skunk-oil on Dan's moccasins fooled both Jim an' me, good an' plenty, didn't it?"
"But whatever did he want o' my mitts?" demanded Big Andy.
"Now ye air a sap-head, Andy Stevens," growled MacDonald, "ef ye can't see that!"
IV. The Trail of the Bear
I
The Deputy-Sheriff of Nipsiwaska County had spent half an hour at the telephone. In the backwoods the telephone wires go everywhere. In that half-hour every settlement, every river-crossing, every lumber-camp, and most of the wide-scattered pioneer cabins had been warned of the flight of the thief, Dan Black, nicknamed Black Dan, and how, in the effort to secure his escape, he had shot and wounded the Deputy-Sheriff's big black dog whose cleverness on the trail he had such cause to dread. As Tug Blackstock, the Deputy-Sheriff, came out of the booth he asked after Jim.
"Oh, Black Dan's bullet broke no bones that time," replied the village doctor, who had tended the dog's wound as carefully as if his patient had been the Deputy himself. "It's a biggish hole, but Jim'll be all right in a few days, never fear."