The boy poled slowly up the bright and lively water. Sometimes where the stream was very shallow he got out and waded for fifty yards or more, pulling the canoe along with him; occasionally he stopped to examine the shore for signs, but all the while his thoughts were busy with his uncle. He had seen fire in the eye of that merry, kindly man—and he hoped never to see it again. Why had he made him promise to stop at the camp over night? A vague but frightful suspicion possessed him. Uncle Bill had hinted at a mystery concerning his character and pursuits. What had he meant? He had said that he was something other, something smarter, than people believed him to be around these parts, and that he hid his light under a peck-measure because he was shy. Now what had he meant by all that? And why had he seemed so queer about his camp? Was he a criminal of some sort—and was the secret of his dark career hidden in the camp?

Young Dan remembered that he had never known his uncle to be without a roll of paper money in his pocket; but what he did to earn money beyond guiding a sportsman now and then, was more than the boy knew. Was it possible that this mild and entertaining uncle, who had two ways of talking and who often vanished from the Oxbow country for months at a time, was a robber? And might it not be that he sometimes committed robbery with violence? He always carried a pistol in the woods. A struggle might lead to a murder now and then! Miss Carten had been up here with her money!

Young Dan worked his way slowly up the swift and shallow stream and at noon he stopped to fry some bacon, but spent most of the interval thinking. For two hours he sat there in the warm sunshine with his back against a tree and his eyes gazing off into space. His heart was heavy and numb with sinister suspicions of Uncle Bill. He had always admired and liked that amiable and versatile relative; but he would go on and learn the worst. When he finally went back to his canoe he realized that he would have to hurry to reach the camp above the Prongs by sundown.

There were no clearings or human habitations on the Oxbow above Old Squaw Falls. The voice of the stream was lonely; the cries of birds in the woods were like the very voice of desolation; and the long, yellow day was as lonely as a deserted house. The sun was close to the wooded hills when Young Dan reached the Prongs. He continued his journey up the Right Prong. It was already evening in that narrow, tree-crowded valley. The water was so shallow there, and the bed of the stream was so broken with mossy boulders, that he ran the canoe ashore and waded forward.

The sun was far below Young Dan’s narrowed field of vision, and the deep track of the stream was full of brown twilight when he reached the foot of the path that led back through the woods to Uncle Bill’s camp. The plaintive cry of a whippoorwill rang from an umber gloom of cedars; an owl hooted dismally in the tall spruces beyond; a fox barked on the darkening hillside. Night-hawks swooped on twanging wings high overhead against a sky of dulling green, and bats wove their flickering black threads of flight in the deepening dusk of the valley. Behind and through and over all lurked the spirit of the wilderness, watchful, waiting, still—a spirit of mystery and menace.

Young Dan’s heart was shaken by a vague dread. He felt fear as he had never felt it before, at any hour of the day or night, when alone in the woods. He started along the thread of path that was worn among the roots of the underbrush. He gripped his axe close to the blade and questioned the gulfs of shadow to his right and left with straining eyes. So he advanced for fifteen or twenty yards; and then, suddenly, he remembered the character in which he had undertaken his journey. He knelt, struck a match, cupped the flame in his hands and held it close to the trodden earth.

There was a track, fresh and deep, that he had not expected to find—the track of big soles thickly studded with blunted calks. Uncle Bill had been in moccasins that day; he never wore calked boots in the woods; and these tracks pointed only one way—forward.

After a moment of reflection, Young Dan continued to advance. He was puzzled. When he reached the edge of the little clearing he saw that the camp was occupied. Yellow lamp-light streamed from its one small window. He hesitated, staring forward and around, then dropped on his hands and knees and crawled from the shelter of the woods. His right hand still gripped the axe close up to the heavy blade. So he moved among mossy hummocks and blackened stumps toward the lighted window, pausing often to listen and peer about him. As he drew near he noticed that the door was shut; and as he drew still nearer he heard the murmur of a voice from within. He crawled close to the log wall of the cabin, directly beneath the open window, and crouched there motionless.

One voice was talking within—a thick, unpleasant voice that he did not know. And this is what it was saying:

So he’ll be home to-night, will he? He’ll be home to-morrow, that’s when he’ll be home. An’ here I be, an’ you’re goin’ to hand over all the money you’ve got tucked away in this shack. Fust of all ye was sassy an’ now ye’re sulky. Have a drink! This here is good stuff an’ powerful hard to git these days. Here, pour yerself a drink an’ swaller it down—or I’ll open yer mouth an’ make ye take it.

If my husband were here he’d open that door and kick you out! replied another voice—a voice known to Young Dan. If you belonged to these parts and knew him you’d go now before he comes back and kills you, you drunken brute!

D’ye reckon to scare me? sneered the other. Then ye gotter think of somethin’ bigger an’ better than this here Mister William Tangler ye’re yappin’ about. I reckon I’ll stop right here till he comes home, and then ye’ll know who’s the best man of the two of us. But ye ain’t took yer drink yet! Take it, d’ye hear! It’ll loosen yer tongue.

The dazed boy beneath the open window heard a clink of glass, a scream and sounds of scuffling. He raised himself and looked into the cabin. A lamp stood among dishes on the table in the middle of the little room. Beyond the table, against the wall, a man struggled with a woman. The man had his back to the window. He was big and a stranger. The woman was Miss Carten.

Young Dan’s quick eyes spotted a wooden rolling-pin on a corner of the table. He laid his axe on the ground and went through the window as quick and as noiseless as thought. Two swift and silent steps brought him to the corner of the table. He grasped a handle of the rolling-pin, advanced two more paces, judged the distance, swung his arm and struck. One strike meant out in that game.

Young Dan bound the unknown and unconscious bushwhacker with thongs from a pair of snowshoes on the wall and placed a folded blanket under his sore head and let him lie where he had fallen. Then he sat and watched his new aunt make coffee and warm up a panful of beans for him. She told him of her secret courtship by Uncle Bill, and of their flight and marriage by a parson friend whom Bill had sworn to secrecy—all because William Tangler was the most bashful man in the world. She told of how Bill, who was thought to be so idle and aimless by the people on the Oxbow, was in reality an expert in the science of forestry and in the employ of the Government as such. Bill had gone out that morning to mail an official report and also to mail his young bride’s resignation as teacher in the little school at the Bend. In a few days they would go out to civilization together.

Every now and then Miss Carten thanked Young Dan for saving her from the drunken bushwhacker and she said so many complimentary things that her visitor’s face turned the color of ripe choke-cherries. She said among other things that she believed he was almost as clever and brave as his uncle.

If I were Uncle Bill I wouldn’t of been so shy, said Young Dan, who felt greatly relieved by the outcome of his activities and very proud of himself.

When the coffee and beans were ready, and the big ruffian on the floor was beginning to grunt and sigh, Young Dan remarked, I guess Mister Holmes couldn’t of done that job much slicker himself. Suddenly he cocked his head to listen. I can hear Uncle Bill coming up the trail, he said. He offered to be my Doctor Watson, but I didn’t need him.