“We saw what he had,” replied the trapper. “Didn’t he tell you about stopping a night at our camp? About losing himself in the woods an’ Andy Mace finding him?”
“No, he didn’t. But he’s sure got it in for you and yer old pardner! He’s been cussin’ the two o’ ye steady ever since he come home. He says how he had lashin’s o’ bacon an’ flour an’ was robbed of everything but some bacon an’ tea.”
“I suppose you believed him, m’am.”
“Not so’s ye’d notice—but that’s neither here nor there. What you best do now is clear out o’ this before he comes home.”
“Do you think I’m afraid of him?”
“I guess not—but I wisht ye’d beat it.”
Young Dan immediately complied with her wish. As soon as he was out of sight of the cabin he left the narrow trail of his own snowshoe tracks and broke into the woods and started on a big curve which, if followed long enough, would encircle the Conley habitation. Young Dan did not go so far as that, however. He found what he was looking for before he had made a semicircle of the curve—a line of new snowshoe tracks. He did not join this trail or cross it, but backed a few paces from it, changed direction and moved parallel with it, keeping an eye on it through the intervening screen of brush and branches. This course took him southward, mile upon mile, and after a couple of hours of it he found himself on his own and Andy Mace’s trapping-ground. He continued to parallel Jim Conley’s tracks, moving without sound and parting the forest growth before him with the minimum of disturbance; and at last he came to a place which he recognized as being on his own eastern line of traps. There he halted and squatted to rest, as still as a waiting lynx in the snow.
Large white flakes began to circle down from the low sky. The sun, which had risen red, was now no more than a small blotch of radiance as colorless as clear ice. The snow descended more thickly and swiftly, blinding the weak sun and seeming to draw the sky down to the tops of the tall spruces—and down even lower than that, until the soaring trees were blanketed and hidden by it for half their height. Then Young Dan moved again, this time on a straight course for the camp, and at his best pace. This flurry of snow was altogether too thick and fast to take liberties with. He wondered what Pete Sabatis would make of it with his one eye. He was sorry that it had descended so violently as to interfere with his investigations before he had actually caught Jim Conley at his trapping. He felt reasonably certain, however, of the identity of the traps which engaged Mr. Conley’s attentions. That was enough to work ahead on. He decided not to spring the traps on the eastern line, but to leave them as they were for the thief’s immediate profit and final undoing.
Young Dan reached home safely. The snow ceased falling shortly before sundown, but with the setting of the sun a wind arose which set the feathery flakes drifting and flying.
Andy Mace was in as talkative a mood as ever that night, despite the fact that he was very evidently suffering a great deal of pain. He admitted the pain, confessing that more joints than his right knee hurt him now.