“I’ve just been thinking that I might not be able to get back till after dark. You promise me that if you go to my camp you’ll stop there until I come back, or there’ll be trouble. And the trouble will start now. You never saw me in a temper, Young Dan—and you don’t want to. Promise me that, or I’ll tie you up and take you downstream with me as helpless as a dunnage-bag. I mean it!”
Young Dan looked at his uncle and saw that he meant it.
“I promise cross my heart and honest Injun!—but you got to fix it with Ma, Uncle Bill,” he said, in a thin voice.
“Don’t worry about your ma,” replied the man, smiling. “And I’ll get you those books. If I find some mail that I have to answer I may not get back as soon as I planned. You stay right there at the camp, and don’t forget that I am one of the shyest men in the world. Off you go, Young Dan—and good luck to you!”
CHAPTER II
THE NICK O’ TIME
The boy poled slowly up the bright and lively water. Sometimes where the stream was very shallow he got out and waded for fifty yards or more, pulling the canoe along with him; occasionally he stopped to examine the shore for signs, but all the while his thoughts were busy with his uncle. He had seen fire in the eye of that merry, kindly man—and he hoped never to see it again. Why had he made him promise to stop at the camp over night? A vague but frightful suspicion possessed him. Uncle Bill had hinted at a mystery concerning his character and pursuits. What had he meant? He had said that he was something other, something smarter, than people believed him to be around these parts, and that he hid his light under a peck-measure because he was shy. Now what had he meant by all that? And why had he seemed so queer about his camp? Was he a criminal of some sort—and was the secret of his dark career hidden in the camp?
Young Dan remembered that he had never known his uncle to be without a roll of paper money in his pocket; but what he did to earn money beyond guiding a sportsman now and then, was more than the boy knew. Was it possible that this mild and entertaining uncle, who had two ways of talking and who often vanished from the Oxbow country for months at a time, was a robber? And might it not be that he sometimes committed robbery with violence? He always carried a pistol in the woods. A struggle might lead to a murder now and then! Miss Carten had been up here with her money!
Young Dan worked his way slowly up the swift and shallow stream and at noon he stopped to fry some bacon, but spent most of the interval thinking. For two hours he sat there in the warm sunshine with his back against a tree and his eyes gazing off into space. His heart was heavy and numb with sinister suspicions of Uncle Bill. He had always admired and liked that amiable and versatile relative; but he would go on and learn the worst. When he finally went back to his canoe he realized that he would have to hurry to reach the camp above the Prongs by sundown.
There were no clearings or human habitations on the Oxbow above Old Squaw Falls. The voice of the stream was lonely; the cries of birds in the woods were like the very voice of desolation; and the long, yellow day was as lonely as a deserted house. The sun was close to the wooded hills when Young Dan reached the Prongs. He continued his journey up the Right Prong. It was already evening in that narrow, tree-crowded valley. The water was so shallow there, and the bed of the stream was so broken with mossy boulders, that he ran the canoe ashore and waded forward.