The Red Pirogue: A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian Wilds

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

“There’s the power of the human eye for you!” exclaimed Ben.

But he was wrong. The human eye had nothing to do with it. The impulse necessary for the bear’s retreat was derived from bruin’s own optic nerves rather than from the masterful glare of Ben’s orbs. In short, that particular bear had never before encountered an undressed human being, had been puzzled for a minute to know just what species of the animal world he belonged to and had then quite naturally jumped to the shocking conclusion that some one had skinned the poor man without killing him. So the bear had turned and retired.

Instead of plunging immediately into the brown water and swimming back to Noel’s front and breakfast, Ben stepped ashore. He was interested in the bear. He was curious to know just how far he had chased it with his masterful glance. Had the big berry eater only retreated to the top of the bank or had he kept right on? If he hadn’t kept right on another glance would set him going again, that was a sure thing.

Ben moved cautiously, not on account of the bear but in consideration of his own skin. Wild raspberries flourished among the tough and rasping bushes and saplings and perhaps poison ivy lurked among the groundlings. So Ben moved cautiously and slowly up the bank, parting the brush before him with his hands and looking twice before every step. But despite his care he received a few scratches. When halfway up the steep slope he paused, stood straight and glanced around him over and through the tops of the tangle. He saw the bow of his uncle’s canoe outthrust from its slanting bed in the bushes on Noel’s front. He saw the spot, the edge of moist dark soil, where the big pirogue and its grim freight had been discovered by Noel Sabattis.

Ben continued his cautious ascent of the bank, still with curiosity concerning the bear in the front of his mind but with the mystery of Louis Balenger’s death looming largely behind it. He gained the level ground at the top of the bank, still with his gaze on his feet. He was about to stand upright again and survey his surroundings when a glitter in the moss a few inches from his forward foot caught his eye.

Ben stooped lower and picked up a sliver of white metal. It was a part of a clip for keeping a fountain pen in a pocket and he instantly recognized it as such. He stooped again and examined the moss; and, a second later, he found the pen itself. He was on his knees by this time, searching the moss with eager eyes and all his fingers. And here was something more—a little pocket comb in a sheath of soft leather.

Ben forgot all about the bear and was seized by an inspiration. He turned around and lay down flat on the moss, braving prickles and scratches. He placed his chest on the very spot where he had found the broken clasp, the pen and the comb, then raised himself on his elbows and looked to his front, his right and his left. He was now in the prone position of firing, the steadiest position for straight shooting.

Ben turned his face in the direction of the tree-screened clearings downstream on the other shore. He looked through a rift between stems and trunks and foliage, clear through and away on a slant across the narrow river to the spot of moist shore against which the big pirogue had lain with the dead body of Balenger aboard. His view was unobstructed.

“Not much under three hundred yards,” he said. “Pretty shooting!”

Then he discarded his imaginary rifle, marked his position by uprooting a wad of moss, gripped the broken clasp, the pen and the comb securely in his left hand and got to his feet. His blood was racing and his brain was flashing. The bear was forgotten as if it had never been.