“Guess I can fit you out,” said the doctor; “but I advise you not to fly up to the front door of Militia Headquarters and send your card in to the Inspector General. Even those who don’t know why you hit Nasher think that you did a good thing—but for all that, there’s the old mill waiting to grind you. Keep away from it, major. Don’t force it to do its duty.”
“You are right,” returned Tom. “If I can get the old bus patched up I’ll fly her over here somewhere for you to discover and pass on. And I’ll continue to lie low, officially lost—unless some fool starts another war.”
“But do you mean to continue to hide in the woods until your case is forgotten?” asked Mrs. Smith.
“There are worse places than the woods,” replied Tom.
“So Mick Otter tells me,” remarked the doctor.
Tom and Mick did not go to bed that night; and long before sunrise they pulled out of Timbertown with a small but hefty load on the toboggan. They reached camp early in the afternoon; and before the next sunrise they commenced their slow and cautious return to Mick’s trapping-grounds. Again the wilderness was all around them, trackless and smokeless save for the smoke and tracks of their own making. Days passed without disclosing to them any sight or sign of Ned Tone and the detective. One morning Mick killed a fat young buck deer. In time they reached the cave, the snuggest and least conspicuous of Mick’s posts, and found it undisturbed. Here they set out a short line of traps; and then the Maliseet went on alone to Racquet Pond.
Mick found the little camp on Racquet Pond just as he had left it, save for snow that had drifted in at the doorway and fallen in through the square hole in the roof. If the pursuers had found it they had left no sign behind them; but in a corner lay a square of white paper marked with a black cross. Mick snorted at sight of the paper, then pocketed it and laid in its place a red woolen tassel from the top of one of his stockings.
CHAPTER X
MICK OTTER, MATCH-MAKER
Mick Otter scouted cautiously around Racquet Pond and took up the two traps which had been left behind in the haste of the flight across the height-of-land. One of them, set near an air-hole in a brook, had evidently made a catch of a mink—but a fox, or a lynx, or perhaps another mink, had visited the trap ahead of the trapper.
Mick returned to the cave and showed the marked paper to Tom; so the two extended their line of traps and settled down to pass the time until the middle of January as comfortably and profitably as possible. They kept their eyes skinned, as the poet has it. Tom made a practice of climbing the look-out tree four times a day when the weather was clear. They refrained from firing the rifle; and they were careful to burn only the driest and least smoky wood on their subterranean hearth, except at night. Snow fell frequently and thickly. They were fortunate with their traps, taking a number of red foxes and one patch, a few mink, an otter and half a dozen lynx—all fine pelts; and with some very small traps from one of Mick’s caches they even managed to catch a few ermine.