Rayton: A Backwoods Mystery

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

Then he returned to the sitting-room fire and thought about Nell Harley.

"Goodine, Marsh, and Nash—they're all in love with her," he muttered. "So it looks as if some one was up to some sort of dirty game with that marked card, after all; but who the devil can it be? It's utter nonsense to suspect poor Dick Goodine—or Jim; but it will do no harm to keep my first idea about Nash in my mind. If he did it, though, I don't believe it was in the way of a joke, after all."

Now to go back to the morning, and David Marsh. At break of day the guide had started the horses and wagon back along the muddy twelve-mile road to the settlement, in charge of a young nephew. They had been gone an hour when Dick Goodine appeared. At that appearance it had immediately jumped into his mind that the trapper was spying on him; but he had kept the thought to himself. He had been greatly relieved, however, to get away from the trapper's company and unsolicited assistance. There was plenty of water in the brook, so he paddled swiftly down the brown current for a mile or two. Then, feeling that he had got clear of Goodine, he let the heavily loaded canoe run with the current and filled his pipe.

"The more I see of that Goodine," he reflected, "the more I mistrust him. And the cheek of him, poor and shiftless, to think about Nell. I bet it was him put the marks on that card, somehow or other. The dirty French blood in him would teach him how to do them kinder tricks. Why, he ain't much better than a half-breed—and yet he talks about bein' above cookin' for sports, and lookin' after them in camp. He's too lazy to do honest work, that's what's the matter. So long's he can raise enough money to go on a spree now and then, he's happy. I don't trust him. I don't like them black eyes of his. I bet he's been spying on me ever since I got to the camp last night. Let him spy! He'd be scared to try anything on with me; and if he thinks a girl like Nell would have anything to do with a darn jumpin' Frenchman like him, he better go soak his head."

So as the stream carried him farther and farther away from the spot where he had left the trapper, his indignation against that young man increased and his uneasiness subsided.

"I wish I'd up and asked him what the devil he wanted," he muttered, "I'd ought to let him see, straight, what I think of him. But maybe he was just lookin' for trouble—for a chance to get out his knife at me. He wouldn't mind killin' a man, I guess—by the looks of him. No, he wouldn't go so far as that, yet a while. That would cook his goose, for sure."

Three miles below the camp, the Teakettle emptied into a larger stream that was known as Dan's River. It was on the headwaters of this river that Marsh had his second and more important sporting camp in a region full of game. On reaching Dan's River, Marsh swung the bow of his canoe upstream, keeping within a yard or two of the right bank. He laid his paddle aside, took up a long pole of spruce, and got to his feet, perfectly balanced. For the first quarter of a mile it was lazy work, and then he came to a piece of swift and broken water called Little Rapids. This was a stiff piece of poling, though not stiff enough under any circumstances to drive an experienced canoe man to portaging around it. David Marsh had mastered it, both ways, at all depths of water, more than a dozen times. The channel was in midstream. The canoe shot across the current and then headed up into that long rush and clatter of waters. The young man set his feet more firmly and put his body into his work.

The slim, deep-loaded craft crawled upward, foot by foot, the clashing waters snarling along her gunwales and curling white at her gleaming bow. Now David threw every ounce of his strength, from heel to neck, into the steady thrust. The long pole bent under the weight, curved valiantly—and broke clean with a report like a rifle shot. David was flung outward, struggling to regain his balance; and, at the same moment, the canoe swung side-on to the roaring water and then rolled over.

David Marsh fought the whirling, buffeting waters with frantic energy. He was struggling for his life. That was his only thought. He struck out to steady himself, to keep clear of the boiling eddies where the black rocks seemed to lift and sink, and to keep his head above the smother. The beating, roaring, and slopping of the rapids almost deafened him, and filled him with a shuddering dread of those raging, clamorous surfaces, and silent, spinning depths. Now he saw the clear, blue sky with a hawk adrift in the sunshine—and now he glimpsed one shore or the other, with dark green of spruce, and a spot or two of frost-bitten red—and now black sinews and twisting ribbons crossed his vision, and torn spray beat against his sight with white hands. The deathly chill of the water bit into blood and bone.

It seemed to him that he was smothered, spun and hammered in this hell of choking tumult for hours. At last the roar and clatter began to soften in his ears—to soften and sweeten to a low song. Wonderful lights swam across his eyes—red, clearest green and the blue of the rainbow. A swift, grinding agony in his right arm aroused him. He was among the rocks at the tail of the rapids. For a minute he fought desperately; and then he dragged himself out of the shouting river and lay still.