CHAPTER XII

At the Drivers’ Camp

Two days later a message came which necessitated a trip up the Dead River branch, traversing the ground over which Trafford had gone ten days before. Already, however, the camps he had visited were deserted, the drivers having followed the body of logs moving towards the river itself. At the Forks, Trafford was joined by the assistant who had warned him that morning in Millbank. They had a long conference, in which there appeared no small amount of differing opinion. The assistant had tracked from a camp on Moosehead, to a cabin beyond the Madison Beeches above Millbank, two Canadians, who had left the lake suddenly on May 12. He was certain he had located one of the men, a great powerful fellow, in one of the Dead River driving gangs.

“And the other?”

“I can get no trace of him. They separated at Millbank--perhaps forever.”

“And this fellow’s name--here on Dead River?”

“Pierre Duchesney.”

“And the other?”

“Victor Vignon.”

“It can scarcely have any bearing,” Trafford asserted after some thought. “Nothing definite in the way of plans could have been formed so promptly. The murder was only twenty-four hours old then.”

“But they went to Millbank; spent four days in the old Indian hut back of Madison Beeches, and were not seen in Millbank during the entire time. Then, no one knows how, the one appears at Parlin Pond, and works from there over to Dead River. He’s a big, strapping fellow; the other one was medium height and size--much the slighter made of the two.”

“But I tell you,” Trafford affirmed; “if they were called to Millbank, the call must have come before the murder was known--they came for something else than to assault the man supposed to have those papers.”

“And were at hand conveniently to assault the man who was supposedly in possession of the papers, when it was found that they had involuntarily changed hands.”

This view struck Trafford and he gave it some little thought, while the other waited as if for his final judgment.

“As long as we’re here, we may as well have a look at your man,” said Trafford.

The next day found them guests of the drive at the camp above the first rapids of Dead River, where use was being had of the last of the spring flow to get the tail of the winter’s cut into the main channel. Already the advance guard of the summer army was making its appearance, adventurous souls who love to see the year at its birth, and the presence of strangers excited no especial comment. They made it so apparent that they sought an invitation for the night that it became unavoidable, and so with the falling of dusk and the leap of the great flames of the camp fire among the trees, they came on to the time for the experiment agreed upon.

Trafford had watched Pierre Duchesney at his work, a great, strong-limbed giant whose blow, intentional or not, could well work the crushing of lesser bones, and admitted that their purpose was well-nigh foolhardy. To take such a man, surrounded as he was by friends, was scarcely to be thought of, and in fact would not have been thought of, but for a chance remark that he was not going below the first rapids. When the jam was started here, he was to strike across to the head waters of the Androscoggin, which Trafford’s companion, intent in his belief that this was the man they wanted, interpreted as a purpose to bury himself in the wilds of the Canadian wilderness about Megantic.

Trafford, himself, while yet in doubt as to the identity of the man, admitted that even if they lost him, it would be much gained if they could prove him, and so consented to the plan his assistant outlined, determined to take his chances in the matter of an actual capture.

The men were stretched about the blazing logs, smoking, sleeping, chatting. Trafford among them watched the leap of the flames and the gradual reddening of the great logs into coals. The other stranger had left the circle some time before. Involuntarily Trafford kept his eye on Pierre’s huge form, where it was stretched in the full blaze and warmth of the logs, his eyes closed in a pleasant after-feeding doze. Suddenly out of the dark came a sharp Canadian voice, calling:

“_Sacré, c’est moi, Pierre!_”

Every one glanced up enquiringly, but the effect on Pierre Duchesney was startling in the extreme. His eyes stared wide from a face of ashy grey; he leaped to his feet, shaking as one with the ague. Trafford had sprung to his side at the instant of his leap from his recumbent position, and in time to catch from his blanched lips the convicting words:

“_Mon dieu; Victor!_”

Trafford’s hand was on his pistol, which he drew, with the sharp demand:

“Quick, seize the man; he’s wanted for the murder of Victor Vignon!”

At the word “murder,” the men drew back from the circle of light. They lived free and easy lives in the woods, and had little of the fear of the law before them in their fastnesses, but with murder and the murderer they had no share. All the other laws of God and man, they might violate, but to that one, “Thou shalt do no murder,” they bowed, the very defencelessness of their lives making murder doubly terrible to them. So, strong men as they were, they gazed wild-eyed on the scene, and some of the bravest trembled.

On Pierre, the word acted like magic. No less pale he was than before, but it was a paleness in which the sense of self-preservation was awake, looking from his eyes, as it looks from those of hunted wild creatures brought suddenly to bay. He attempted no plea; he made no denial; but his form grew compact with the compactness of one about to spring. Trafford, wondering what course the others would take, brought his pistol to a steady aim, and said clearly and sharply:

“Surrender, or I’ll shoot! Throw up your arms!”

He felt, rather than saw, that on the edge of the light stood his assistant also covering the man with his revolver. The man moved as if to obey the order to throw up his arms, and then, with a quickness of which none guessed him capable, struck Trafford’s arm a blow that caused it to drop numbly by his side, sending the pistol’s discharge into the earth. With the same movement the man crouched half to earth, and thus escaped the other’s shot. Without rising, he darted, crouching, for the shelter of trees beyond the fire, but not so quickly as to save his right arm from the second shot by the assistant. Trafford, meantime, had changed his revolver into his left hand and was firing at the fleeing shadow that the man became before disappearing. With his second shot, he heard his assistant at his side.

“You know now, but we’ve lost him.”

“Into the woods; into the woods,” Trafford cried, seizing a blazing pine knot. “Quick, we’ll get him yet.”

Not a man stirred save Trafford, and he made only a step or two. Glancing back, he saw the drivers huddled in an excited and gesticulating group that looked startlingly like mischief. Ahead was the heavy blackness of dense trees. Then he realised that the man had escaped.

Meantime the men were aroused from the stupor of their first surprise and were in a dangerous mood, the active qualities of which were quieted by the gleam of Trafford’s badge, which he felt was the best introduction to the explanation to which they were clearly entitled. They listened patiently, but simply tolerantly, and their coolness was in marked contrast to their friendliness of a brief quarter of an hour earlier. There was no denial to Trafford and his companion of the hospitality of the camp, but they were made to feel that they were unwelcome guests, and they waited anxiously and impatiently for the first touch of morning to be on their way, as well from a desire to leave their surly companions, as from impatience to be where they could make use of their newly acquired information.

They were not more than a mile from camp, after a hasty breakfast eaten amid strange silence, when, from the woods lying between the track they were following and the river, a lad of about sixteen years, whom they had seen in camp the night before, overhauled them. He had evidently run most of the way, and was anxious to get back before his absence attracted attention, but he was also intent on information. The conversation with him was carried on partly in the lad’s imperfect English, and partly in the French of Canada with Trafford’s companion, and by him translated to Trafford:

“Victor Vignon: my cousin. You say, murdered--dead?”

Trafford nodded.

“_Non._ He go big lake. Go by Aten’s stage.”

“Who told you so?” demanded Trafford.

“Pierre--Pierre Duchesney. When he come, he say: Victor, he go big lake: he go by Aten’s stage.”

“Well, he killed him. Drowned him in the river at Millbank, where the big Falls are.”

“What for he kill him?” demanded the boy.

“Who sent for your cousin at the big lake when he and Pierre went away?” Trafford demanded, and then, it being evident that the lad had not sufficient command of English to master this question, his companion repeated it in French.

The lad’s face brightened as he heard his native tongue, and from that time he carried his part of the conversation mostly in that tongue.

“The boss.”

On questioning, it developed that the “boss” had said the “big man” had sent for Pierre and Victor; had said that they were to go to the Forks of the River and meet a gang, but when they got there the gang was gone and they had word to go somewhere else, and it was when Pierre came back and Victor had gone to the big lake, that the lad was told this by Pierre. The lad did not know where it was that Victor had gone, but he was to see him again when the drive was over and they were ready to go back to Canada before the feast of St. John.

Oh, yes; the “big man” was somebody who lived down where the water went over the big Falls, and owned all the trees, and sent the boss money to pay them. He didn’t know his name, but he was a great big man--as big as the Seigneur at Rigaud-Vandreuil, the biggest man the lad had ever seen.

“A bigger man than the boss?”

Oh, yes; for he sent the boss money to pay them and owned the trees, while the boss wasn’t as big a man as Louis Blanchet, the notary, whom he, the lad, had often seen and talked with, and once had thrown mud at when he was drunk.

No, he didn’t know the big man’s name; he had said that before, but anybody could tell them; anybody who knew, for he owned the trees; and the “boss” could tell them; his name was Kennett, Georges Kennett; not the boss here, for his name was Jean Busque, he was Canadian; but the other boss, the one who told Pierre and Victor to go to the Forks of the River.

But he must go back, because the boss, the one here, would be angry and make him lose some of his money. He had heard them say something about Victor being killed, and he wanted to ask them and tell them it couldn’t be Victor, because he had gone to the big lake, as Pierre had said. What would Victor’s wife do if he was dead? The good God--_le bon Dieu_--and the good Saint Anne--_la bonne sainte Anne_--wouldn’t let him be dead, when there was Victor’s wife and three little ones and another coming in the summer, as Victor had told him. They must know that Victor couldn’t be dead, and if they saw him, they were to tell him that he--Étienne Vignon--had said this and would meet him at the big Falls to go back to la Beauce before the feast of Saint John, as Victor had promised Étienne’s mother when he took him away to go on the drive. And with these words, the lad dashed into the woods for his mile run back to camp.

Trafford caught himself perilously near a sigh, as the lad disappeared among the trees.

“It’s as plain as the nose on your face--that part of it,” he said. “Hunter sent for these men; had them go to the forks to join a pretended gang, and word was left there for ’em to go on to the hut back of the Madison Beeches.”

“Hunter?” his companion asked.

“Certainly. Isn’t he the man who owns the trees to such a simple lad as that? He don’t know the name--but we do, Charles Hunter of Millbank.”

“Then he’s concerned in the murder?”

“If you knew the things that aren’t to be seen as well as you do the things that you see, you’d beat us all,” Trafford answered. “If he was in the murder, he’d know where those papers are and wouldn’t have needed these men. His very desperation to get them shows he isn’t the murderer.”

“Then Charles Hunter’s the man who’s afraid of those papers,” the other repeated, as if half dazed by the revelation.

“One of ’em,” said Trafford. “I’ve known that much a long time.”

“But if the men who are afraid of the papers aren’t the men who murdered him haven’t you knocked out the motive for the murder? That’s the thing that’s bothered all the time, and now that we’ve got hold of one, it’s a pity to lose it again.”

“Beware of clues,” half laughed Trafford. “That’s the lesson you haven’t learned yet. I’ve said Hunter was one of the men who’s afraid of the papers. I haven’t said there weren’t others. Then it doesn’t follow that the only people who wanted to get the papers were those who were afraid of ’em. Given the papers, there’s a dozen things that might make ’em the motive of the murder besides being afraid of them.”

After a silence that lasted some time, the other turned to Trafford and demanded:

“Did you know Hunter was in this thing when you set me to hunting Canucks round Millbank?”

“Certainly,” answered Trafford. “I’ve known it since a half-hour after the attack was made on me at the bridge. Why?”

“Thunder! Hunter was one of the men of whom I thought it safe to make open enquiries about Canucks I was looking for.”

“It’s never safe,” Trafford said, “to make enquiries of any one, unless you are willing that everybody should know, or anxious that one man should. In this case, ’twas just as well Hunter should know that we were on the track. He’s a man who makes his false slips when he’s the most anxious to escape.”