CHAPTER XIX

Of the Tribe of Broadcrook

Mr. Smythe stood with, his back to the fireplace, his long arms behind his back, with sharp elbows almost touching, and claw-like hands clasped together. The evenings were getting chill. Already the first snows had come. The trees were bare and creaked in the wind, and the skies were lead-colored and cold. In the early dusk the two-dozen gray shacks of Bridgetown looked grayer and lonelier than ever. Mr. Smythe glanced at the long clock near the door and then out of the smoky window, his pointed nose fairly sniffing the wind and his big ears fairly pointed forward in a listening attitude. The long figure of a man, half reclining on a pile of furs at the end of the counter, stirred, and the substance of a quid of black tobacco hissed into the hickory coals, passing perilously close to the clasped hands of Bridgetown’s general merchant. Mr. Smythe smiled with his thin lips and looked murder with his little weak eyes. Then he coughed.

“If you wish to make Bushwhackers’ Place to-night,” he said, addressing his tardy visitor, “you’d better be starting out on your way.”

No response from the man on the furs, except another hiss in the coals.

“Looks as though we’d have a big snowstorm,” suggested Smythe.

“Snow or rain, light’in’ or pitch dark, who’s carin’?” retorted the other.

“It’s not a nice sort of trip you have before you, that’s all.”

“It’s me as has to take it, I guess, and I’m not goin’ to move an inch till you give me an extra pound of powder and enough lead for a hundred bullets. You hear me?”

“I have paid you all your furs are worth; you know I have.”

“Aye, and made me pay ten times too much for what I got here durin’ the summer. Come now, Smythe, wrap up the powder and give me the package of lead-leaf, and I’ll be makin’ tracks.”

Broadcrook arose and slouched forward. He was dressed in a heavy shirt of red wool and homespun trousers of gray. One ponderous hand held a long rifle and a coat of wolf-skin was slung across a muscular arm. Smythe eyed him speculatively.

“Broadcrook,” he said suavely, “you shall have it. I wouldn’t do it for anybody else.”

Broadcrook scratched his short-cropped head perplexedly. Acuteness was not one of his characteristics. He laid Smythe’s eagerness to oblige him to fear, and Broadcrook was not so many generations removed from the Cave Dwellers that he could not understand how this might well be. By nature he was a bully, one of a large family of bullies, whose forefathers had been bullies. Accordingly he stretched his person about four inches higher and expectorated on a pair of beaded moccasins hanging from the counter.

“Make it two pound o’ powder an’ two sheafs o’ lead,” he demanded.

Smythe, who had taken the powder-can from the shelf, put it back in its place. Then he leaned over the counter and gazed at the Bushwhacker through the twilight gloom.

“I guess I’ve changed my mind. I won’t give you an ounce of either,” he said. “And I’m going to charge you up with those moccasins. You’ve spoiled them. You can’t bluff me, Broadcrook—you, nor any of your six-foot brothers, nor your old sinner of a father. You’re all a bad lot. Now, you get out of my store.”

Broadcrook’s six-foot-two went down to five-foot-ten at a jump, and his jaw dropped as though he had been struck.

“I didn’t mean to sp’ile nothin’,” he grumbled. “I’m willin’ to take what you agreed to give.”

Smythe deliberately lit a couple of candles, one of which he took over and placed in the window. Then he came from around the counter and stood in his former attitude, his nose pointing forward and his ears cocked for an expected sound. After a while he turned toward the trapper.

“Broadcrook,” he said, “I’ve been pretty decent with you and your family, and all the thanks I ever got for it was in being dumped out of my skiff last fall by one of your murderous tribe. It wasn’t his fault that I wasn’t drowned.”

Broadcrook seated himself on a keg.

“That war Hank,” he nodded. “Me an’ Hank hasn’t spoke for nigh eight year.”

“Humph, you don’t say! Well, Hank, as you call him, wants to keep out of my way. I’ve got a good Christian spirit, Broadcrook, but a nasty disposition at times. The next time Hank tries to mix in with me it’s going to be right here.”

“Thar’s not much size to you to be callin’ my draw the way you’ve been doin’,” murmured Broadcrook. “I reckoned as you’d a gun—one o’ them pistol kind—in your fist when you was tellin’ it to me a time ago. I reckon I was right, too.”

“Dear friend,” smirked Smythe, “this is a wild country, and it behooves us all to protect our fragile and oft too-erring bodies from coming into violent contact with some more solid substance; but I held no gun, no pistol in my hand when I told you about yourself and relatives just now. The fact is, I fear firearms; I hate guns. I never fired off a gun in my life. Nevertheless, I will not say that I was wholly unprepared, should you have shown a tendency to repudiate my statements. I’ll show you what I mean. Sambo!” he called softly, “open the door, please.”

The door of the inner room opened, and there stood Sam, the darkey, with a cocked rifle in his hands.

“My faithful servitor and aide-de-camp, Mr. Broadcrook,” bowed Smythe.

“Did you have me covered a while ago?” asked Broadcrook sheepishly, addressing the negro.

“This here,” nodded Sambo, tapping the brass sight of the gun, “was sure right on a line wif dat bone button on your shirt.”

“I guess I’ll be goin’,” said Broadcrook hurriedly.

“Wait a minute,” advised Smythe. “Now, Broadcrook, I’m willing to play very decent by you providing you will answer me a few questions and answer them truthfully. All sin is contamination in my eyes; but lying,” Mr. Smythe raised his long hands piously, “—I do detest a liar.”

“Do you mean as you’ll gimme th’ powder an’ th’ lead, providin’ I answer you them questions?” asked Broadcrook eagerly.

“Yes, I will do that,” replied Smythe. “What I am anxious to secure is some information of the people among whom you live. Number of families in that lawless section, and all about the bunch. One or two I know already. I know your family some—that Hank fellow and the one you call Abe. Any more? What’s your first name—Joseph, ain’t it?”

“Not much, it ain’t. It’s Amos. Then I’ve got three more brothers. Tom, meanest skunk in the woods, Tom is. Hank he’s not much better’n Tom. And Alex, who claims as he’ll do fer me some day.”

“Nice loving sort of family, eh, Sambo?” sneered Smythe. “How about the old man, the father?”

“Dad’s all right in some ways, but I ain’t got no sort o’ use for him either,” answered Broadcrook. “Fact is, none of us has much use for the others. We ain’t built that way. Hank shot my eye out with a bow an’ arrer when we was kids and playin’ bear hunt, and we treed Alex and cut the tree down and broke both his legs once. Jest in fun, o’ course; but he’s had it in for us ever since, jest for that.”

“And what did you do to Tom? Surely he has not escaped unscathed, has he?”

“Wall, hardly. Tom he got drowned once by bein’ pushed off a log inter the creek. If that fool of a Declute hadn’t o’ happened along Tom would o’ stayed drowned, too.”

“Know a man by the name of McTavish down there, I suppose?”

“Sure, I know him, and I know that boy o’ his, too. I hate him, and he keeps out of my way, ’cause he’s scared of me.”

“Liar,” breathed Smythe.

He stood gazing into the fire for some time. At last he turned and fixed his eyes on Broadcrook’s face.

“Never heard tell of an Indian down in that place by the name of Noah Sturgeon, did you?” he asked.

“Sure, I know him,” answered the other.

“Know him?” Mr. Smythe’s words were like a pistol shot. “_Knew_ him, you mean,” he cried, leaning forward.

“I say I _knows_ him, and I guess I understand what I’m talkin’ about.”

“But the Noah Sturgeon I mean can’t be alive now. He was an old man twenty years ago. Must be a son of his you know, Amos.”

“Son nothin’. I tells you, mister, it’s old Noah hisself as I knows. O’ course he’s old—must be nigh a hundred. But he’s spry yet. Often comes over to Big McTavish’s, he does. Lives on the P’int ’cross the bay.”

Smythe drew forward a stool and sat down with his chin in his hands. He was disturbed in his meditations by Broadcrook’s standing up.

“Guess I’d better be trampin’,” said that gentleman.

“Wait a moment,” said Smythe, “I’m going to give you two pounds of good powder and a couple of sheafs of lead. If you will come back here, say, next Saturday, I’ll give you more—much more. But you must do something for me, will you?”

“Name it, and I’ll do it,” promised the delighted trapper.

Smythe glanced fearfully toward the door, and, tiptoeing across to it, shut Sambo in the other room, then bending he whispered something in Broadcrook’s ear. Whatever it was it seemed to astound and not altogether displease the burly fellow. His red face screwed itself up in a horrible grimace and he guffawed loudly.

“Course, if y’ gimme the three hundred, I’ll send old Noah somewheres,” he wheezed.

“Broadcrook,” said Smythe sternly, “don’t mistake my meaning. I know there is danger of accident to the aged and frail, and that life’s ruddy current flows but sluggishly in the veins of old men; but, my dear Broadcrook, no violence—no violence, remember. However, when I am sure, without a doubt, that Noah has departed—ahem!—to some remote country for good, why, the money is yours. You see he won’t let the other Indians sell me their furs, but makes them carry them to St. Thomas.”

Broadcrook chuckled and poked Mr. Smythe in the short ribs so forcefully and playfully that the storekeeper’s light eyes filled with tears and his breath came and went in gasps.

“Oh, but you’re a cracker,” cried the Bushwhacker, “a reg’lar right-down smart ’un. No wonder widder Ross o’ Totherside thinks you the best man as ever lived.”

Mr. Smythe raised his eyebrows, not sure whether to receive this remark as a compliment or otherwise. Being a keen businessman, however, he allowed it to go on the credit side of his conceit account, and proved that he appreciated the other’s cunning of conception by reaching a black bottle across the counter.

Amos laid his rifle down, and with a leer proceeded to take a long pull at the bottle, after which he corked it and put it in his pocket.

Mr. Smythe watched him speculatively. He was quite willing that Broadcrook should have the bottle, under the circumstances.

“I hates all them Bushwhackers, I do,” grated Broadcrook. “I be one of ’em myself, but I hates ’em jest the same. I hates Big McTavish, ’cause he threatened to break my back one time for mistakin’ some of his traps for mine. I hates Declute ’cause he gets the biggest bucks every season. And I hates Paisley ’cause he hangs around that Boy McTavish so much. They be allars together, and they’re a hard pair to handle, I can tell you, specially Paisley.”

“Do you know Colonel Hallibut?” asked Smythe. He was looking out of the dingy window again, and his ears were cocked.

“Yes, I know him, an’ I’m goin’ to get even with him, too. He let his dogs tree me on the P’int last fall. They kept me there all night. Some day I’ll show him that Amos Broadcrook kin remember.”

Smythe turned quickly.

“His schooner is going to be in the bay very soon,” he said softly, “and if that schooner should happen to burn,” he suggested, speaking as though to himself, “it would make Hallibut sure of one thing—that the Bushwhackers had fired the boat to get even with him for spoiling their trapping on Lee Creek.”

Amos was tipsy, but not so tipsy that he could not catch a hidden meaning in the words. He turned on Smythe.

“Now,” he snarled, “if you want the boat burned and you want me to do it, how much’ll you pay for _that_ job? Quick, answer up.”

Mr. Smythe raised his thin hands.

“My dear Broadcrook,” he smiled, “you talk like a crazy man. Colonel Hallibut is a friend of mine; a fast friend. I advised him not to send his schooner into Lee Creek. He laughed at me and offered to wager me three hundred dollars that no harm could possibly come to his boat. In a moment of indiscretion I took his wager.”

Mr. Smythe rubbed his hands softly together and raised his eyes ceilingward.

“I know I did wrong,” he went on; “I know a Christian man should not bet. But I wished Colonel Hallibut to know that I was greatly concerned in the welfare of him and his.”

He sighed, and glanced at Amos.

“I would not touch money won in a wager; no, sir. And to prove it to you, Amos, my friend, I will pay you over the money, providing my prophecy be fulfilled,—which, let us hope, it may not,” he added devoutly.

Broadcrook lurched, and fixed his good eye on Smythe’s pensive face, then, after another drink from the bottle, he picked up his rifle and made for the door. With his hand on the latch he turned.

“You’ll be expectin’ news, then?”

“Exactly,” smiled the storekeeper.

“And you’ll be on the lookout for smoke?”

“I’ll not be surprised to see smoke,” returned Smythe.

Broadcrook passed outside, and when his uncertain steps had died in the night Smythe leaned against a pile of furs and laughed voicelessly.

A little later his pricked-up ears caught the sound he was expecting. He tongued his lips and rubbed his hands delightedly. The door opened and Watson pounded in. A light cloak of snow covered him from head to foot.

“Who was that man I just met?” were his first words.

“That, my dear Watson, is the very man we’ve been looking for,” smiled Smythe.

“For heaven’s sake, drop that hypocritical manner of yours and be yourself,” growled Watson, throwing off his wraps and sinking into a chair. “You sicken me, Smythe; absolutely sicken me.”

Watson readjusted the bandage across his eye and stirred in his seat with a groan. Smythe came forward with a bottle and a glass.

“Take that stuff away,” cried Watson. “Look here, Smythe, we’re up against a piece of work that requires cool heads. No more whiskey for me. If I hadn’t been half drunk the other day, you can gamble we wouldn’t have made a mess of things and got half killed by that big Bushwhacker the way we did. And to think,” he groaned, “that all the while you were sitting by the fire with widow Ross eating nuts, roasting your shins, and talking religion. You’ve a good deal to answer for. Between the din of Hallibut’s mill and the widow’s psalm-singing, the noise down there is awful. Well, I’ve found out this much from the people on Totherside. Jake, the engineer, tells me that the Bushwhackers are getting bitter towards Hallibut. The fools think he wants to drive them off their property. He tells me, also, that the Colonel intends sending his schooner around in the Eau for his lumber. I guess we’re left all way round.”

Smythe set the bottle on the counter and nodded.

“Yes,” he said dryly.

“Yes,” mimicked the other with an oath. “Is that all you have to say about it, then? What am I to tell Hallibut, supposing he demands his money back?”

“My dear Watson,” smirked Smythe, “don’t worry about it. I have—hem! something to say.”

“Well, what is it? Does it amount to anything? Don’t shake your harpy head off. What is it?”

“Not much, my dear Watson; not much. Simply this: Hallibut’s schooner might burn, old Injun Noah might go away to the States, and while the Bushwhackers and Hallibut engage in a fight, somebody else might get possession of the timber. Don’t you see that they will be so frightened of his taking their deeds from them by force that they will be glad to place those papers in our hands for safe-keeping?”

“I hope so, Smythe, I hope so,” said the other man; “but something tells me we’ll get what’s coming to us yet.”

“Dear Watson, you are weary and fanciful,” smiled Smythe. “Religion would make your conscience more easy. It must be a terrible thing to have a conscience such as yours, my friend.”

Smythe meant that, every word of it.

Watson looked at him, then reached for the bottle.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he laughed. “I don’t want to drink, but I have to in order to forget—not my sins, but the sight of your hypocritical face.”

“Remember there is business to talk over after supper,” warned Smythe, “and there is our report to Colonel Hallibut to frame up, which I, as the surviving party, must reluctantly present in person.”

He reached over with a claw and gripped the bottle.

“After we have arranged a certain campaign of action,” he smirked, “you may get as drunk as you please. Until then, my dear Watson, you must stay on the anxious seat.”

And leaving the agent huddled before the fireplace he passed into the other room to awaken the sleeping Sambo.