“I’m goin’ out to scout ’round a bit,” said Gaspard. “If ye git hungry or thirsty while I’m gone give a holler an’ Cathie’ll hear ye. I put arnica on yer ribs an’ tied ’em up with bandages.”
The old man went out and straight to the most recent camping place of the sleuths. There he found the tent still standing, snugly banked with snow: but Ned Tone was not there, nor were his snowshoes or rifle. The provisions were scattered about, the tea-kettle lay upset in the ashes of the fire, and an air of violence and haste possessed the entire camp. A few bright spatters of blood marked the trampled snow; and Gaspard correctly inferred that one of Ned Tone’s blows had landed on the detective’s nose. Large, fresh, hasty snowshoe tracks led away from the camp southward into the forest.
“He was sartinly humpin’ himself,” remarked the old man, setting his own feet in the tracks. “I reckon he’s quit an’ lit out for home, like the stranger said—but I’ll make sure.”
He followed the trail of Ned Tone steadily for more than an hour; and every yard of it pointed straight for Boiling Pot.
Gaspard and Catherine nursed and fed the detective as well as if he had been a beloved friend, and so had him up in a chair beside the stove in two days; on his feet in three; and well able to undertake the journey out to the settlements within the week. And he was as eager to go as they were to have him gone—eager to go forth on the trail of Ned Tone and to follow that trail until the treacherous, violent, cowardly bushwhacker was brought to his knees before the might and majesty of the Law. As for the case of Tom Anderson, he no longer felt the least interest in it. It was his firm belief that even Tone had never really suspected Anderson of being Major Akerley, but had invented the case from motives of personal spite and greed. He did not find Ned Tone in Boiling Pot, however; nor did he find him at Millbrow; nor yet in any town on the big river. In short, he never caught up with the ex-heaviest hitter on Injun River; and, for all I know, and for all the detective knows, Ned Tone may still be on the run.
Tom Akerley and Mick Otter returned to the clearings on the evening of January the Seventeenth, in time for supper; and Catherine was ready for them with roast chickens, mince pies and the best coffee they had tasted since their departure from that wide and hospitable room. All four were in high spirits—but it was Gaspard who made most noise in the expression thereof. He told all that he knew of the adventures of Ned Tone and the detective in the most amusing manner; and when he wasn’t talking he chuckled.
“You feel darn good, what?” remarked Mick Otter, eyeing him keenly but kindly. “Maybe you catch that devil an’ shoot him flyin’, hey?”
“Ye’re wrong thar,” replied Gaspard. “I found ’im, but he wasn’t flyin’. Caught ’im on the ground—but I ain’t shot him yet. But I got his wings.”
Tom looked at Catherine and was relieved to see her smiling at her grandfather.