Catherine told him what she knew of those momentous years and events, which wasn’t very much. During the war she had seen an occasional newspaper and magazine, and recently Tom had told her a good deal of what he had seen. At the conclusion of the talk her grandfather was deeply moved and torn with regret that he had not trimmed his whiskers and shouldered his rifle and gone to war; and of two things he was sure—that the Emperor of Germany had started a terrible thing in a cowardly and dishonorable way and that Tom Akerley had jumped into it and stopped it.
“An’ Ned Tone, the heaviest hitter on Injun River, reckoned as how he could do what that thar Kaiser couldn’t!” he sneered.
When Gaspard went to the camping-place of Tone and the detective next day, he found the shelter deserted and a trail heading toward Boiling Pot. Two days later he found a new trail of snowshoes and a toboggan running northward to the west of his clearings. He returned to the house and informed Catherine of this: and together they followed it to Pappoose Lake, where they found Ned Tone and the detective encamped, with a tent and a fine supply of grub. They went back to the house without having disclosed themselves to the sleuths. Gaspard set out before sunrise the next day and found that the man-hunters had again broken camp and moved on. He followed their tracks five or six miles beyond the lake before turning back. He was late when he reached the house, and his ancient muscles were very stiff and sore. But there was great stuff in Gaspard Javet; so, after a day’s rest and a brief but violent course of bear’s grease, Minard’s liniment and elbow grease, he set out again on the trail of the trailers, this time carrying food and blankets and an ax as well as his rifle. The snow was thoroughly wind-packed by this time. None had fallen since that first heavy and prolonged outpouring. He took a straight line to the point at which he had turned back two days before; and from there he followed a difficult trail. The erasing wind had been busy. There was no faintest sign of that trail except where it pierced the heaviest growths of spruce and fir; and even in such sheltered spots it was drifted to nothing but occasional white dimples. He lost it entirely before sundown; but he knew that it passed far beyond, and well to the westward of Racquet Pond. He struck out for home next morning and accomplished the journey without accident.
Two weeks passed without sight or sound of Ned Tone and the detective or any news of the fugitives; and then one gray noon, when snow was spilling down with blinding profusion, a knock sounded on Gaspard’s door and Catherine opened to a fur-muffled and snow-draped Ned Tone.
“Stop whar ye be!” cried Gaspard from his seat at the dinner-table. “If ye cross that threshold I’ll do fer ye. I run ye outer this house once, an’ that was for keeps.”
Catherine stood aside, leaving the door open.
“Ye’re a hard old man,” said Tone, without moving. “What have I ever done to ye that ye treat me like this—worse nor a dog? If it wasn’t that we uster be friends, Gaspard Javet, I’d have the Law on ye for interferin’ with the course o’ justice.”
“Go ahead,” replied the old man, drily. “It’ll make a grand story to tell the magistrates down on the main river.”
Tone shuffled his feet uneasily.
“What I come here now for is to tell ye an’ Cathie as how I’ve quit huntin’ that feller who was here,” he said. “I’ve told the police, that detective ye seen with me, that I was mistook about that feller.”