His mother and uncle believed otherwise. They maintained that Sherwood, innocent or guilty, would go farther than to O’Dell’s Point for a place in which to hide from the police. Otherwise, why run at all? they argued. He had started well ahead of the chase, judging by what they had heard, with plenty of time to get clear out of the province. Jim believed that the food and books had been taken by an Indian. He knew several Indians in the neighborhood who could read and more who were sometimes hungry because they were too lazy to work; and they were all on friendly terms with the dogs. A sick Indian would ask for food, but a well one wouldn’t for fear that a little job of work might be offered him. Haying was the last time in the year to expect one of those fellows to come around asking for anything. As for the books, an Indian who was queer enough to want to read would be queer enough to take the books on the quiet and return them on the sly. That’s how James McAllister figured it out.
The last load of hay was hauled in and Ben told his mother of the contemplated trip up to French River. She replied that she was afraid to be left alone with little Marion Sherwood in a house which neither doors nor dogs seemed able to guard. Ben had not thought of this, for he felt no suggestion of violence, of any sort of menace, in the mild depredations of the mysterious visitor.
“I’m sorry that I’m not as brave as I used to be,” said Mrs. O’Dell. “I want you to have your trip. Perhaps your Uncle Ian will sleep here while you two are away. He is sometimes very reasonable and unselfish, you know, and this may be one of the times.”
Ben crossed lots to the old McAllister homestead two miles above the point, where Ian McAllister, a fifty-year-old bachelor, lived in manly discomfort and an atmosphere of argument, hard work and scorched victuals with his old friend and hired man, Archie Douglas. Both Ian and Archie were known as “characters” on the river. Both were bachelors. In their earlier years, before Ian had acquired the farm of his fathers, they had been brisk fellows, champion choppers in the woods, reckless log cuffers and jam busters on the drives, noted performers of intricate steps at barn dances and plowing frolics and foolish spenders of their wages—white-water boys of the first quality, in short.
But time and the farm had changed them for better and for worse. They never left the farm now except to go to Woodstock on business and to pay the O’Dells two brief visits every month. They worked in rain and shine. They read a few heavy theological volumes and argued over them. They played chess and the bagpipes in a spirit of grim rivalry. They did the cooking week and week about and week and week about they likewise condemned the cooking.
The McAllister hay of this year had been a heavier crop than usual and the price of beef promised to be high next Easter, so Ben O’Dell found his Uncle Ian in an obliging humor. Ian promised to sleep at the O’Dell house every night while his nephew and brother were away from home.
“It be Archie’s week for the cookin’,” he said, “so I reckon a decent breakfast an’ human supper every day for a while won’t do me no harm. But what’s the matter with yer ma? What’s come over her? It ain’t like Flora to be scairt. What’s she scairt of?”
In justice to his mother Ben had to tell Ian something of the recent strange happenings at the Point. He told of little Marion Sherwood’s arrival, of her father’s flight from French River and the suspicions of the deputy sheriff and of the elaborate destruction of the red pirogue, but he did not mention the thefts. He feared that Ian McAllister’s attitude toward a thief, even a hungry and harmless thief, would not be as charitable as his own or his mother’s or his Uncle Jim’s.
“Mother’s more afraid for the little girl than for herself,” he said. “Coming to us like that, all alone in the pirogue, mother wouldn’t have anything happen to her for the world. She doesn’t want her to be frightened, even. Whatever Richard Sherwood may have done, the poor little girl is innocent.”
“Well, I ain’t surprised to hear that Sherwood’s shot that feller Balenger,” said Ian. “Sherwood’s been headin’ for destruction a long time now, what with one foolishness an’ another—an’ Balenger needed shootin’. But Sherwood hadn’t ought to of done it, for all that! That’s what comes of bein’ wild an’ keepin’ it up.”