The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Pirate of Jasper Peak, by Cornelia Meigs This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: The Pirate of Jasper Peak Author: Cornelia Meigs Release Date: September 17, 2018 [eBook #57918] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PIRATE OF JASPER PEAK*** E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/pirateofjasperpe00meig THE PIRATE OF JASPER PEAK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO Close to the hearth a big chair had been drawn and in this some one was sitting. THE PIRATE OF JASPER PEAK BY ADAIR ALDON Author of “The Island of Appledore,” etc. WITH FRONTISPIECE New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1918 All rights reserved Copyright, 1918 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published, September, 1918 CONTENTS I. A Stranger in a Strange Land II. The Brown Bear’s Skin III. Laughing Mary IV. The Heart of the Forest V. Oscar Dansk VI. The Promised Land VII. Whither Away? VIII. A Night’s Lodging IX. Peril at the Bridge X. First Blood to the Pirate XI. The White Flag XII. A Highway through the Hills THE PIRATE OF JASPER PEAK CHAPTER I A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND The long Pullman train, an hour late and greatly begrudging the time for a special stop, came sliding into the tiny station of Rudolm and deposited a solitary passenger upon the platform. The porter set Hugh Arnold’s suitcase on the ground and accepted his proffered coin, all in one expert gesture, and said genially: “We’re way behind time on this run, but we come through on the down trip at six in the morning, sharp. You-all will be going back with us to-morrow, I reckon.” “No,” replied Hugh, as he came down from the car step and gathered up his belongings. “No, I’m going to stay.” “Stay?” repeated the porter. “Oh—a week, I suppose. No one really stays at Rudolm except them that are born there and can’t get away.” Hugh shook his head. “I am going to stay all winter,” he said. “The whole winter! Say, do you know what winter is up here?” the man exclaimed. “For the love of—” A violent jolt of the train was the engineer’s reminder that friendly converse was not in order when there was time to be made up. “All right, sah, good-by. I hope you like staying, only remember—we go through every day at six in the morning less’n we’re late. Good-by.” The train swept away, leaving Hugh to look after it for a moment before he turned to take his first survey of Rudolm and the wide sheet of blue water upon whose shore it stood. Red Lake, when he and his father had first looked it up on the map, seemed a queer, crooked place, full of harbors and headlands and hidden coves, the wider stretches extending here and there to fifteen, twenty, twenty-five miles of open water, again narrowing to mere winding channels choked with islands. Hugh would have liked to say afterward that he knew even from the map that this was a region promising adventures, that down the lake’s winding tributaries he was going to be carried to strange discoveries, but, as a matter of fact, he had no such foreknowledge. Indeed, it was his father who observed that the lake looked like a proper haunt for pirates and Hugh who reminded him that pirates were not ever to be found so far north. All the books he had seen, pictured them as burying treasure on warm, sunny, sandy beaches, or flying in pursuit of their prey on the wings of the South Sea winds. Pirates in the wooded regions to the north of the Mississippi Valley, pirates where the snow lay so deep and the lake was frozen for nearly half the year, where only through a short summer could the waters be plied by “a low, raking, black hulk” such as all pirates sail—it was not to be thought of! Even now, when Hugh stood on the station platform and caught his first glimpse of the real Red Lake, saw the wide blue waters flecked with sunny whitecaps, the hundred pine-covered islands and the long miles of wooded shore, even then he had no thought of how different he was to find this place from any other he had ever seen. Both lake and town seemed to him to promise little. For Rudolm, set in its narrow valley between the Minnesota hills, looked as though it had been dropped from some child’s box of toys, so small and square were the houses and so hit-or-miss was the order in which they stood along the one wide, crooked street. There were no trees growing beside the rough wooden sidewalks, the street was dusty and the sun, even although it was October, seemed to him to shine with a pitiless glare. He walked slowly along the platform, wondering why Dick Edmonds had not come to meet him, thinking that Rudolm seemed the dullest and most uninteresting town in America and trying to stifle the rising wish that he had never come. A soft pad, pad on the boards behind him made him turn his head as a man walked swiftly past. Hugh saw that his shapeless black hat had a speckled feather stuck into the band and that he wore, instead of shoes, soft rounded moccasins edged with a gay embroidery of beads. Plainly the man was an Indian. At the thought the boy’s heart beat a little faster. He had not known there would be Indians! His own being in Rudolm was simple enough, although somewhat unexpected. Hugh’s father was a doctor, enrolled in the Medical Reserve since the beginning of the war but not until this month ordered away to France. The problem of where Hugh should live during his absence was a difficult one since Hugh had no mother and there were no immediate relatives to whom he could go. He had finished school but had been judged rather too young for college, and, so his father maintained in spite of frantic pleading, much too young to enlist. “I’m sixteen,” was the boy’s insistent argument, but— “Wait until you have been sixteen more than two days,” was his father’s answer. “I could go with the medical unit, I know enough from helping you to be some use as a hospital orderly,” Hugh begged, “I would do anything just to go to France.” “They need men in France, not boys just on the edge of being men,” Dr. Arnold replied, “when you have had one or two years’ worth of experience and judgment, then you will be some help to them over there. But not now.” “The war will be over by then,” wailed Hugh. “Don’t fear,” his father observed grimly, “there is going to be enough of it for all of us to have our share.” So there the discussion ended and the question of what Hugh was to do came up for settlement. There was a distant cousin of his father’s in New York—but this suggestion was never allowed to get very far. Hugh had never met the cousin and did not relish the idea of going to live with him, “sight unseen” as he put it, on such short notice. It was his own plan to go to Rudolm where lived the two Edmonds brothers, John, cashier of the bank there and a great friend of his father’s, and Dick, a boy four years older than himself, whom he had met but once yet knew that he liked immensely. Several times John Edmonds had written to Dr. Arnold— “If Hugh ever wants to spend any time ‘on his own’ we could find him a job here in Rudolm, I know. It is a queer little place, just a mining and lumbering town full of Swedes, but he might like the hunting and the country and find it interesting for a while.” It was the idea of spending the time “on his own” that made Hugh feel that thus the period of his father’s absence might chance to seem a little shorter and the soreness of missing him might grow a little less. John Edmonds had answered their letters most cordially and had said that all could be arranged and Hugh need only telegraph the day of his arrival. The final preparations had been hastened by the coming of Dr. Arnold’s sailing orders; the two had bidden each other good-by and good luck with resolute cheerfulness and Hugh had set forth on his long journey northward. He had never seen the Great Lakes nor the busy inland shipping ports with their giant freighters lying at the docks, nor the rising hills of the Iron Range through which his way must lead, but he noticed them very little. His thoughts were very far away and fixed on other things. Even now, as he walked slowly up Rudolm’s one street he was not dwelling so much on his forlorn wonder why he did not see his friends, but was thinking of a great transport that must, almost at that hour, be nosing her way out of “an Atlantic port,” of the swift destroyers gathering to convoy her, of the salt sea breezes blowing across her deck, blowing sharp from the east, from over the sea—from France. For he was certain, from all that he could gather, that his father was sailing to-day and was launching upon his new venture at almost the same time that Hugh was entering upon his own. Somewhat disconsolately the boy trudged on up the hot empty highway, seeing ahead of him the big, ramshackle building that must be the hotel and beyond that, at the end of the road, the shining blue of the lake. He was vaguely conscious that, at every cottage window, white-headed children of all sizes and ages bobbed up to stare at him and ducked shyly out of sight again when they caught his eye. Between two houses he looked down to a sunny field where a woman with a three-cornered yellow kerchief on her head was helping some men at work. She did not look like an American woman at all, Hugh thought as he stopped to watch her, but walked on abashed when even she paused to look at him, leaning on her rake and shading her eyes with her hand. He rather liked her looks, somehow, even at that distance, she seemed so strong, in spite of her slenderness and she handled her rake with such vigorous sunburned arms. He raised his eyes to the circle of hills that hemmed in the little town rising steeply from beyond the last row of houses and the irregular patchwork of little fields. They were oddly shaped hills, rolling range beyond range, higher and higher until, far in the distance there loomed the jagged mass of one big enough to be called a mountain. The nearer slopes were covered with heavy woods of pine and birch, the dense trees broken here and there by great masses of rock, black, gray or, more often, strange clear shades of red. “Red Lake derives its name,” so the atlas had stated in its matter-of-fact fashion, “from the peculiar color of the jasper rock that appears in such quantity along its shores.” Hugh had never seen anything quite like that clear vermilion shade that glowed dully against the black-green of the pines. Across the slope of the nearest hill, showing clear like a clean-cut scar, there stretched a steep white road that wound sharply up to the summit and disappeared. He began to feel vaguely that although the town attracted him little, the road might lead to something of greater promise. There were some men lounging before the door of the hotel when he reached it, miners or lumberjacks wearing high boots and mackinaw coats. They were talking in low tones and eyeing Hugh with open curiosity. Just as he came to the steps, two figures shuffled silently past him, one, the Indian he had seen at the station, the other, a broad-shouldered, broad-waisted woman stooping under the heavy burden she carried on her back. The man, erect and unimpeded, strode quickly forward, but she stopped a moment to readjust the deerskin strap which passed over her forehead and supported the heavy weight of her pack. She turned her swarthy face toward Hugh and greeted him with a broad, friendly smile, then bowed her head once more and trudged on after her master. The boy, not used to the ways of Indian husbands and their wives, stood staring after the two in shocked astonishment. “That’s Kaniska, the best guide around here, and his squaw,” he heard one of the men say to another. “She’s the only Indian hereabouts the only one I ever heard of, really, that smiles at every one she meets. They are all of them queer ducks; no matter how well you know them you never can tell what they are thinking about. I believe she is the very queerest of them all. The Swedes here call her Laughing Mary.” The two dark figures slipped out of sight around a corner and Hugh went up the steps into the hotel. The big, untidy room was apparently empty except for a bluebottle fly buzzing against the window. A faint snore, however, made Hugh aware that he was not alone and drew his attention to the office clerk, sitting behind the high desk, his head back, his heels up, sound asleep. The men outside had ceased talking, the entire village was so quiet that Hugh could actually hear a katydid singing its last summer song loudly and manfully down in the field. “I never saw such a town before,” he thought bitterly, “the whole place is either dead or asleep!” He rapped sharply on the desk to arouse the clerk and was delighted to see him awake with a guilty jump. “Can you tell me where I can find—” he began, but a voice at his elbow interrupted him. Turning, he saw that the woman he had noticed in the field had left her work to come hurrying after him, and now stood, a little breathless, at his side. She had very kindly blue eyes, he observed, and a rather heavy Swedish face that lit up wonderfully when she smiled. “You are Hugh Arnold, is it not so?” she said. “John Edmonds has told me that you would be here.” “Oh, yes,” cried Hugh with relief, “I was just asking for him. Can you tell me where he is?” The clerk, a sandy-haired, freckled youth, leaned over the desk and spoke eagerly. “Why, haven’t you heard—?” he said, but the woman cut him short. “I will tell the boy of that,” she announced with decision, then added to Hugh, “The two Edmonds are not here now, and it is best that you should come to stay at my house until they come again. This hotel is no fit place for you.” To this last frank statement the clerk agreed with surprising warmth. “We have some queer customers here at times,” he admitted, “and I won’t deny there’s a sight of them is ugly ones. There’s that fellow from Jasper Peak blew in last evening and kept me up all night. When he and his friends are here there’s always something doing.” “Do not begin to talk of them, Jethro Brown,” the woman said a little impatiently, “or you will keep us here all day, and this boy is wanting his dinner, I make no doubt.” The clerk laughed a little, although without much merriment. “I guess you are right, Linda,” he replied, “and talk of that gang is only words wasted. You’d better go along home with Mrs. Ingmarsson, sonny, you couldn’t be in better hands.” Much nettled at being called “sonny” by this person so little older than himself, Hugh merely nodded stiffly, took up his suitcase and followed Linda Ingmarsson to the door. Jethro, however, stopped them before they could get outside. “How about your baggage,” he inquired, “got a trunk or anything at the station?” Hugh was not certain whether his trunk had arrived with him or not, so the clerk volunteered to telephone and find out. While he was doing so, Hugh stood waiting in the doorway, looking idly down the street and at the hills beyond. He noticed again the line of white highway that fascinated him curiously as it slanted upward through the dense woods. He turned to his companion who stood so silent beside him and ventured a question. “What is that road, please?” he asked; “where does it go?” Linda Ingmarsson looked up quickly toward the hill, while her face took on a new expression, wistful, sad, but somehow proud as well. “That is my young brother Oscar’s road,” she said; “now it goes nowhere but some day—some day it will go far.” Hugh could not make very much out of this answer, but did not have time to ponder it long. Jethro announced that all was well with the baggage, so Hugh and Linda went out together. It was a relief to him to think that he was with a person who knew at least who he was and why he had come. “You are very good,” he began shyly as they came out on the steps; “you should not—” but the rest of his sentence was never spoken. The hot sleepy silence was broken suddenly by a shrill steam whistle, followed by another and another. A strident siren joined them; then came a deep blast from some steamer on the lake; then a loud clanging of bells added their voices to the tumult. For full five minutes the deafening noise continued until Hugh’s ears beat with it and his head rang. The street had become alive with people, women with aprons over their heads, men in overalls, scores of children, as though each of the little houses had sent forth a dozen inhabitants. Down at a far corner Hugh saw the two Indians come into view again, the man with his head up, listening, like a deer, the woman with a pleading hand laid upon his arm. He brushed her aside roughly, and disappeared beyond the turn, she following meekly after. No one noticed them except himself, Hugh felt certain, since every face was turned northward to the wooded rocky hill that overhung the town. Puffs of white steam rose here and there among the trees, showing the mine buildings or the lumber mills from which the whistling came. This was no ordinary blowing of signals to mark the noon hour: the excitement, the anxious faces, the hideous insistence of the noise all told him that. Just at the instant that he felt he could not endure the tumult longer, silence fell. “What is it, what is it?” he gasped his inquiry, and one of the men standing by the steps, the one who had spoken of Laughing Mary, began to explain. “You see—about four days ago—” The words were cut off by a new outbreak of the clamor. It rose higher this time and lasted longer, it rolled back from the hills and seemed to echo from the ground itself. Twice it fell and twice broke out once more, a long fifteen minutes of unendurable bedlam. The man, undismayed, called his explanations into Hugh’s ear, sometimes drowned out by the uproar, sometimes left shouting alone in a moment of throbbing silence. What Hugh caught came in broken fragments. “Two fellows—hunting—gone four days now—lost some way—these hills—blowing all the whistles at once—hoped— might hear—” The screaming and clanging finally died away, leaving one long-drawn siren to drop alone, while Hugh’s informant also lowered his voice to ordinary speech. “We do that hereabouts when people get lost. Every whistle in three counties is blowing right now, so if they don’t hear one and follow it, they may another. Sometimes it brings them back, more often it doesn’t. It’s an ugly thing to get lost in these hills.” “How long did you say they had been gone?” asked Hugh. “Three—four—no, by George, it’s five days. There’s their pile of mail that’s been collecting on the window ledge, and those first letters are five days old.” The man glanced at a pile of envelopes that lay just inside the window. The upper one was yellow and caught Hugh’s involuntary attention as he stood by the door. The people were dispersing and the excitement evidently was over. The telegraph envelope was one of those transparent-faced ones, showing the name and address inside. Half unconsciously Hugh read, “John Edmonds, Rudolm, Minnesota.” He turned with a gasp and looked closer. A little of the typewritten line was visible below, “Thanks for letter, will arrive—” It was his own message that had never been received. His two friends, his only two friends within a thousand miles, were the men who had vanished into the forest. CHAPTER II THE BROWN BEAR’S SKIN It was not until some hours after his dismaying discovery that Hugh was able to get any particulars of what had really happened to John and Dick Edmonds. A dozen people at once tried to tell him of the affair, putting in much comment on what they themselves thought and what they had said to friends at the time, with most confusing results. Although he was so bewildered, he began at least to understand one thing, that Rudolm was not at all the town he had believed it to be. He had considered it lonely, empty of friends, dull and lifeless, and behold, it was quite otherwise! In fifteen minutes—probably the exact length of time required by little Nels Larson to travel the whole length of the street and tell every one of the newcomer who was a friend of the lost Edmonds—words of kindliness and sympathy began to pour in upon him. Long before the small, unofficial towncrier had come to the last house, the first sunburned face had appeared in Linda Ingmarsson’s doorway, and the first heavy Swedish voice had asked for “that boy that vas Edmonds friendt.” The shyness and reserve that usually stood firm between these people and any stranger, melted away at the sight of some one who was in trouble. It was, at last, by the very greatness of their proffered kindness that Hugh began to realize how serious his trouble was. It was only the last visitor who gave him the actual facts of the affair, Nels Larson, Senior, a little elderly Swede with a wrinkled skin and puckered eyes that were mere pin-pricks of blue. He chanced to be left alone with Hugh and proved so shy and slow of speech that he was able to answer direct questions and make the truth clear without complicating it with opinions of his own. He said that the two Edmonds boys had gone hunting, and expected, so far as any one knew, to be gone but a day, that they had possibly meant to meet an Indian guide in the woods but had left Rudolm alone save for their dog. That one day of their absence had passed, and two, without causing any anxiety, that search had been made on the third day and the fourth and fifth, but without result. “But does no one know which way they went?” asked Hugh desperately. “Couldn’t they have got to some other town? Couldn’t they just have taken a wrong road? Aren’t people often lost that long and still able to get back?” The other slowly shook his head. “There’s no town between here and Canada,” he said; “no, indeed, nor for a hundred miles north of the border either. And there are no houses in the direction the Edmonds boys went, nor camps—and roads, bless you, these woods don’t have roads. Just trees—and trees—and trees—and Heaven help the man who loses his bearings amongst them!” “Are people still looking for them?” cried Hugh; “surely they haven’t given up hope yet!” “There is no hope,” Nels answered with a sigh; “we would look for a year if it would be of any use; but why go on searching when we know they cannot be found?” He got to his feet to go, leaving Hugh still sitting, stunned, trying to think what this cruel news must mean to him. At the door Nels paused and, even without the encouragement of a question, actually volunteered a remark of his own. “There is something I must tell you also,” he said, “for others may say it to you and perhaps not with kindness. It is that John Edmonds left his accounts in bad shape at the bank, that his books are confused and there is talk of money missing. So there are some people, and presently there will be more and more, who say that even if he is not dead in the woods he will never come back.” “That is not true,” cried Hugh, springing from his seat, “that cannot possibly be true.” “No,” returned Nels, “I do not think it can be. There are many rascals in this neighborhood, but John Edmonds is not one of them.” He put on his battered old hat that was so big it came far down over his ears, took up his thick umbrella, opened the door and went out. Hugh sat by the table, his chin in his hand, thinking deeply long after Nels had gone. It was hard to know what to believe, what to think and above all what to do. He could hear Linda Ingmarsson talking to her children in the next room and presently one small boy came in and seated himself, without saying a word, on a chair by the door. He seemed to think that politeness demanded his sitting with the guest, although to talk to him was far beyond his power. Linda’s husband stood at the door a moment, but went away again. He was a big, quiet man, seeming much like an overgrown edition of his small son. Hugh, beginning to look about him, concluded that this room was quite the cleanest place that he had ever seen. The boards of the floor were worn smooth with much scrubbing, the copper kettles on the shelves winked in the firelight. In one corner stood a quaintly carved cupboard, painted a most brilliant blue, that must surely have come from Sweden, or have been made by the patient labor of Ingmarsson’s great rough hands. In the center of the table was another bit of carving, a really beautiful wooden bowl with a raised wreath of water lilies fashioned about its edge. It was full of moss and gay red bunches of partridge berries. The Ingmarsson child saw Hugh’s eyes resting upon it and, with a mighty effort, managed to speak. “My Uncle Oscar, he made it,” the youngster said in his little Swedish voice; “he brought it to us with the berries in it the last time he came from the mountain.” It was his only attempt at conversation and, although bravely undertaken, lapsed immediately into frightened silence. Linda, entering just then, finally broke the quiet of Hugh’s reflections. “Supper will soon be ready,” she said. “Carl, take the visitor upstairs and show him where to put his things.” The small guide went obediently before Hugh, climbed the narrow stairs and opened the door of the guest’s room, a tiny place with sloping ceiling and square dormer windows, everything shining with the same cleanliness so evident below. Carl opened the cupboard doors, pulled out the drawers of the press and finally, evidently thinking that hospitality demanded his speaking again, pointed to a picture on the wall. “That is the two Edmonds,” he said; “did you know them?” Hugh, looking closely at the faded little photograph, managed to recognize Dick Edmonds, but had no knowledge of the older brother whom he had never seen. Beside Dick, with his nose in his master’s hand, stood a big, white dog. “That is Nicholas,” announced Karl; “he came from Russia. We Swedes do not like Russians, but we all loved Nicholas. John Edmonds said he used to belong to a prince in Russia, so he was different from our dogs. He used to laugh and call him the Grand Duke. With men and other dogs Nicholas was very proud but he always would play with us. So we liked him. And how he could run!” “He is a beauty,” Hugh agreed heartily; “I should like to see him.” He turned toward the window where the hinged sash stood open and through which he could look out at the sunset and at the distant mountain black against a flaming sky. He could see most of the little town also where the children were running home and men were coming from their work and gay voices could be heard calling greetings from one doorway to another. The tiny houses had a comfortable, cozy look, now that he knew what warm-hearted people lived within. Carl came to his side, seeming to feel more at ease, and began to point out one place after another. “That is Nels Larson’s house,” he said, “and that is the landing where the boats come in from the lake and that,” pointing to the mountain, “is Jasper Peak. My Uncle Oscar lives way out beyond there.” “He lives on the mountain?” said Hugh; “that must be very far away.” “No, not on the mountain,” corrected Carl, “beyond it. On the mountain there lives a—a—another man.” “What sort of a man?” inquired Hugh, caught by the little boy’s change of tone. “Oh, a strange man. He is half Indian; people call him a pirate; his name is Jake.” “Has he no other name?” asked Hugh; “is every one so afraid of him as you are?” “His whole name is Half-Breed Jake, and, yes, every one is afraid of him except just my mother and her brother Oscar and maybe Dick Edmonds and the dog Nicholas. Every one else.” “Does he live out there on the mountain all alone?” Hugh inquired. “Yes, he will not let any one live near him. He will not let any one shoot in his woods or fish in his streams or paddle a canoe on his end of the lake.” “And are they all his?” In spite of being so absorbed in other things Hugh was growing interested. “Not really his, he just says they are,” Carl explained vaguely. “No one dares go near his place now after—after some things that have happened. The Indians will do anything he says, they and even some of the Swedes say that the bullets from his gun can shoot farther than any other man’s, and that his ill will can find you out no matter where you hide. Yes, we call him the Pirate of Jasper Peak.” “But you say your Uncle Oscar lives out there too?” “Oh, yes,” assented Carl, “but you know with my Uncle Oscar it is all different.” Linda called from below, causing her small son to rush clattering down the stairs and leave Hugh alone. He stood long by the window watching the sunset fade and pondering deeply. “So there can be pirates this far north after all,” he was thinking, “and father was right.” With the thought came a sudden pang of homesickness, a longing for his father, for the comfortable, ordinary life at home, for everything that was usual and familiar. What would become of him here, he wondered, what could be the end of this venture “on his own”? What a strange place it was to which his journey had led him, what strange people he had met or heard of that day, the clumsy, friendly Swedes, kind-hearted Linda Ingmarsson, that mysterious Jake out on the mountain, that brother Oscar whose road it was that climbed the hill. He ran through the list over and over and found that his mind, with odd insistence, kept coming back to the road that “now went nowhere but some day would go far.” The announcement that supper was ready interrupted his reflections, after which he received a pressing invitation from Carl to go with him to get the mail. Rudolm knew no such luxury as a postman, it went every night to fetch its letters at the general store where John Benson sold meat and calico and mackinaw coats. The little postmistress who sorted the mail behind her own official counter was an expert at her task, for no one besides herself could make head or tail of some of the Swedish and Finnish scrawls that came from the Old Country or the French-Canadian flourishes on the addresses of the picture postcards. No one else could have remembered that Baptiste Redier liked to have his papers accumulate for six months while he was away at the lumber camp, or that Gus Sorenson must not be trusted with the Malmsteads’ mail if he had been drinking, or that it was a kind act to pretend to look through the pigeonholes when an Indian asked for mail, even though it was well known that none of these Chippewas ever got a letter. “Stamp-stamp,” would go the marking machine behind the window, “stamp”—a long pause and then another brisk “stamp-stamp.” No matter in what a hurry were the patrons of the Rudolm postoffice, they must wait, every man, woman and child of them, until Miss Christina had read all the postals. The little place was already crowded when Hugh arrived, mostly with men and children, for the women did not often come for the mail, it was their hour for washing dishes. Hugh sat down on a bench in the corner to listen to the talk going on about him in all degrees of broken English. It concerned mostly the lost Edmonds boys, but occasionally drifted back to the universal subject, the war, for this was the time when the American army was gathering in France, when Russia was crumbling, when the first pinch of winter was beginning to be felt abroad and the cry was going up over all the world to America for bread. By and by the general talk died away and all began to listen to some one who was airing a grievance very loudly on the other side of the room. He was a big man with a rough corduroy coat and a rougher voice which he raised very loud in the height of his indignation. “I tell you there wasn’t a better bale of furs in the whole Green River country. I got some myself, trapping, and bought some from the Indians, and there wasn’t one pelt but was a beauty, but the brown bear skin was the best of all. Five hundred dollars I would ’a’ got for them, just that little bale, not a cent less—and when I come to myself again every hide and hair of them was gone!” “And you can’t tell who took them?” questioned one of his audience. “I can’t tell but I could guess right enough. I didn’t see nobody, only a billion or two stars when I was hit over the head in the dark, and that was all. There’s only one man around here who will do that kind of dirty work and he hails from Jasper Peak. That’s the kind of fur trading he likes to do, let some other man go through the snow and the cold, spending his good money, risking his life, tramping along his line of traps or from one Indian camp to another, wheedling the red rascals into selling their furs, and just as a fellow’s nearly home again, dreaming about the profit there’s going to be this time, here comes some one sneaking behind in the dark and the whole thing’s gone!” “You was lucky he did not shoot you, Ole Peterson,” commented another friend. “He does not care much who he shoots, that Jake he doesn’t.” “I would just like to meet up with him somewhere,” Peterson returned quickly. “A man can’t do nothing when they sneak up on him in the dark, but if I ever have the chance, why, I’ll just show him once. I wouldn’t have sold those furs for less than seven hundred dollars, I swear. And that bear skin, I tell you, was a prize.” “Wass it so beeg?” asked an old Swede, sitting in the corner near Hugh. “No, sir, it wasn’t big, but it was rare. Just a bear cub it was, but a cub that had turned out blond by some freak and surprised his old black mother some, I’ll be bound. Not the brown, even, that grizzly bears are, but a light, gold, yellow brown. The Indian who had it vowed he wouldn’t sell it, not for any price, but at last I got it away from him. And I’d like just to meet the fellow that stole it from me. Shooting would be too good, I’d—” Miss Christina opened her window at this point and put an end to the fearful threats of Ole Peterson. Hugh received his mail almost the first of all, a short and very hasty note from his father, which did not say openly that they were about to embark but contained more than one veiled hint to that effect. He read it through three times, trying to make the most of the censored information it contained. Then, his attention caught by the complete silence that had fallen around him, he looked up to see what had happened. Nothing, apparently, had really occurred except that a newcomer had entered abruptly and banged the door behind him. Yet as he strode over to the middle of the room every person in the crowded place drew back, the big Swedes elbowing the quick Canadians, the children standing on tip-toes to peer under the arms or around the shoulders of their protecting elders. The space that had been filled a moment before by a chattering, friendly group, became all in an instant silent and empty with the big man standing quite alone. He was very big, as Hugh noticed at first glance, taller than any other man there, and strong and heavy in proportion. One of his broad shoulders sagged a little under the strap of a heavy pack which he presently unbuckled and dropped upon the floor. His hair was very long and black under his slouch hat and his skin was so dark that Hugh felt sure he must be an Indian. “Any mail for me?” he called across to the postmistress without troubling himself to turn around. Miss Christina had disappeared somewhere into the protecting depths of the postoffice department. Her voice rose, trembling, from behind the partition. “I think so,” she said, “but it’s been here some time. I will have to look it out.” “No hurry,” returned the man with an insolent laugh at the quavering of her voice; “don’t disturb yourself so much. I can wait.” He threw himself down upon one of the benches and pushed back his hat. Hugh felt something like a shudder when he first saw his eyes; they were blue, a pale unlovely blue that looked terrifyingly strange, set in his dark face. “Hello, friends,” the stranger continued genially. “I thought I would look in and get my mail before I was off down-State to sell my furs. I’ve got a fine lot this year, the best that’s come out of Canada for a long while.” There was no answer, unless one could call little Eva Stromberg’s frightened squeak a reply, or the uneasy shifting of old Nels Larson’s big feet. “Would you like to see what I’ve got?” the man went on, seemingly quite untroubled by the lack of friendliness. “You won’t see anything so fine again for quite a month of Sundays, nor anything that’s worth so much money, you poor penny- pinchers. Come here, sis,” he added to one of the smaller children; “you would like to see my furs, now, wouldn’t you?” The little girl, afraid to disobey, advanced with something of the air of a charmed bird, and came trembling to his side. He opened the big pack and spread out its contents on the floor. “That’s otter,” he said to her; “don’t be frightened, just feel of it. Isn’t it silky and soft?” She passed her hand obediently over the silvery brown surface and then, bursting into terrified sobs, ran to take refuge behind her father. The stranger, undisturbed, went on spreading out his wares. “This wolf skin now should bring me something big,” he said. “Of course wolf isn’t much compared to otter but I’ve never seen finer fur. Step up, folks, and look, it’s a dead wolf that isn’t going to bite you.” It was Hugh alone who felt sufficient curiosity to come nearer. A wolf skin, an otter skin! He had never seen one before. He came closer and closer as the man unrolled more and more of the soft, furry pelts. “Now this—” He stopped, for even he must take notice of the gasp that went through the crowd, a gasp of surprise and indignant protest. Only Hugh, eager and excited, took no notice of the strange tension in the air, so astonished was he at the sight of what lay in the man’s hands. “Why,” he blurted out, “it’s Ole Peterson’s brown bear skin!” A quiver seemed to run through the whole of the crowd, while the silence became so complete that Miss Christina’s clock upon the wall went tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, three times before any one seemed to move or before the storm of the stranger’s fury broke forth. “Whose did you say?” he snarled, rising suddenly and standing over Hugh, a threatening, towering figure. “Whose did you say it was?” Hugh thought afterwards that never, as long as he lived, would he forget how terrible were those shifty, pale-blue eyes in that lowering face. He could never say it was real courage, but only rash, hot anger that made him answer defiantly, “I said it was Ole Peterson’s. He told us it was the only one in the country and that it was stolen from him.” The man gave a queer, harsh laugh. “Ole, come here,” he ordered. There came out from the corner a very different Peterson from the reckless, angry person who had voiced his wrongs a few moments before. This poor creature was fairly sallow with terror, and was apparently trying to make his large figure as small and inconspicuous as possible. He swallowed convulsively two or three times before he was able to speak. “What is it, Jake?” he questioned meekly. The man called Jake flung the skin toward him. “Is that yours?” he asked in a tone that said plainly, “Claim it if you dare.” Ole passed his hand lovingly over the lustrous brown gold of the thick fur. He held it up so that all could see the shape of the chubby little bear cub whose coat it once had been, and the dark hairy paws that still dangled from it. He smoothed the dark shadings of the fur and looked at them with longing. “Is it yours?” Jake insisted, turning from Hugh to advance a threatening step toward Ole. “No,” said Peterson at last in a frightened husky voice. “No, it ain’t mine, Jake.” “Then what the—?” The stranger made one stride toward Hugh and caught his shoulder in a grasp that made the bones grind together. The boy looked about him desperately, surely some one of all these men would come forward to his aid. He saw pity in the eyes of many of them, and one or two making a movement toward him and then drawing back. It needed only that to prove to him at last that this was the much-feared Pirate of Jasper Peak. Yet before either could move further, before Jake could finish his question, help came from an unexpected quarter. The door beside them opened and closed quickly, and Linda Ingmarsson came in. The wind had blown her yellow hair from under her kerchief, her cheeks were glowing and her eyes bright. She made a single step to Hugh’s side and laid her strong, firm fingers on Jake’s crushing hand. He withdrew it as quickly as though something had stung him. “So you are at your old bullying ways,” she said scornfully; “you found long ago that there was one woman not afraid of you, now you find a boy. It is like you to believe that he would fear you as the rest do, but this time you are wrong. And you know that there is nothing that can make you so angry as to find some one you cannot terrify.” He muttered something but did not speak aloud. “Come,” she said to Hugh, and, “Come, Carl,” she added as she held out her hand to her small son and moved toward the door. But Jake barred the way. “He tried to tell me that bear skin wasn’t mine,” he blustered. “He said it was Ole Peterson’s, but Peterson vows it isn’t his. What do you make of that? Has he any right to call me a thief?” Linda answered quite undisturbed. “He is a shrewder boy than are we Swedes,” she said, “and has been quick to see the truth. Yet he is not the only one to know you for a thief.” The man’s blazing eyes narrowed into slits and his grating, harsh voice was full of suppressed fury. “There are not many who have dared to call me that, Linda Ingmarsson,” he said, “and whoever does it, whether man, woman or boy, will live to be bitterly sorry. John Edmonds did, and where is he? Out there in the woods, I hear, lost, dead beyond a doubt, he and his brother, the worthless two of them. I heard the whistles blowing as I came down the valley, and I thought to myself, ‘You can blow them until they split, but you will never call him back.’” He lowered his voice, yet still spoke so that all could hear—“He didn’t want to be called back.” “John Edmonds and his brother will come back,” insisted Linda steadily, “for they have friends who believe in them and will help them still. Whatever John has left in confusion he will make plain and straight when he returns.” “What friends has he?” cried Jake scornfully. “Before another day has passed every one in Rudolm Valley will know just why they went, both of them, and then where will their friends be?” “There is still my brother Oscar,” returned Linda. “And do you think your brother Oscar can save them? He does not even know what has happened, and if he did, what help could he give?” Jake laughed harshly. “He is having all that he can do to save himself, these days, has Oscar Dansk.” Hugh could feel Linda’s hand tighten on his arm as though, in spite of herself, she winced under the last words. He stepped