“He thought it was a local thief, I guess,” answered Jim.
“Maybe Sherwood don’t run far,” said Noel. “But he lay mighty low. You hunt ’im wid dem red huntin’ dogs, hey?”
“No, I didn’t take the dogs in with me. They’re bird dogs. They don’t follow deer tracks nor man tracks. The only scent they heed is partridge and snipe and woodcock.”
Noel shook his head.
“No dog ain’t dat much of a fool,” he said.
CHAPTER VIII
THE RED DOGS AT WORK
Jim McAllister and old Noel Sabattis set out for the woods back of the point within an hour of Noel’s arrival. They took uncooked food and a kettle and a frying pan in a bag, a cold lunch and a flask of brandy in their pockets, four blankets, two waterproof ground sheets, an ax and Noel’s old duck gun. They took Red Chief and Red Lily, the oldest and next older of the three red dogs. They moved inland along a thin screen of alders and choke-cherries and goldenrod until they reached a point of dense second-growth spruce and fir—this to avoid attracting the attention of Sol Bear, Gabe Sacobie and Molly Sacobie. The red dogs moved obediently “to heel” until the cover of the wood was gained.
The point of woods soon widened and merged into the unpeopled forest which lay unbroken behind the river farms for scores of miles to the right and left and spread northward for scores of unbroken miles. An eighty-rod by ten-mile strip of this forest belonged to the O’Dell property. This strip of wilderness had supplied generations of O’Dells with timber and fuel and fencing without showing a scar—nothing but a few stumps here and there about the forward fringe of it and a mossy logging road meandering in green and amber shadows. Generations of O’Dells and McAllisters had shot and hunted here without leaving a mark. Maliseets had taken toll of it in bark for their canoes, maple wood for their paddles and ash wood for the frames of their snowshoes for hundreds of years; and yet to any but the expert eye it was a wilderness that had never been discovered by man.
Jim and Noel and the dogs quartered the ground as they moved gradually northward, a man and a dog to the right, a man and a dog to left, out for five hundred yards each way and in and out again, expanding and contracting tirelessly through brush and hollow. The men kept direction by the sunlight on the high treetops and touch with each other by an occasional shrill whistle. Red Chief, the oldest dog, worked with Noel, and Red Lily with Jim.
The fact that Jim did not carry a gun puzzled Red Lily, and the fact that Noel Sabattis carried a gun and did not use it puzzled Red Chief even more. Red Lily caught the scent of partridge on leaf and moss, stood to the scent until McAllister called her off or ran forward impatiently and flushed the birds. She did these things half a dozen times and the man always failed to produce a gun or show any interest in the birds. Then she decided that he wasn’t looking for birds, so she hunted hares; but he recalled her from that pursuit in discouraging tones. She smelled around for something else after that. And it was the same with Red Chief. That great dog, the present head of that distinguished old family of red sportsmen gave Noel Sabattis five chances at partridge and two at cock without getting so much as an acknowledgment out of the ancient Maliseet. The fellow didn’t shoot. He didn’t even make a motion with the duck gun. And yet he looked to Red Chief like a man who was after something and knew exactly what it was; so Red Chief ignored the familiar scents and tried to smell out the thing Noel was looking for.