Last of all came in Long Jackson, with Jim. Blackstock slipped the leash, and the dog lay down in a corner, as far from the prisoner as he could get.
In a few minutes the whole party were sitting about the tiny stove, drinking boiled tea and munching crackers and molasses—the prisoner joining in the feast as well as his manacled hands would permit. At length, with his mouth full of cracker, the Deputy remarked:
"That was clever of ye, Dan—durn' clever. I didn't know it was in ye."
"Not half so clever as you seein' through it the way you did, Tug," responded the prisoner handsomely.
"But darned ef I see through it now," protested Big Andy in a plaintive voice. "It's just about as clear as mud to me. Where's your wings, Dan? An' where in tarnation is that b'ar?"
The prisoner laughed triumphantly. Long Jackson and the others looked relieved, the Oromocto man having propounded the question which they had been ashamed to ask.
"It's jest this way," explained Blackstock. "When we'd puzzled Jim yonder—an' he was puzzled at us bein' such fools—ye'll recollect he sat down on his tail by that boot-print, an' tried to work out what we wanted of him. I was tellin' him to seek Black Dan, an' yet I was callin' him back off that there bear-track. He could smell Black Dan in the bear-track, but we couldn't. So we was doin' the best we could to mix him up.
"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."