Back in Gaspard’s clearings the days had not passed so pleasantly nor so uneventfully. You may remember Catherine’s parting with Tom in the dark, outside the big log house, and the effect of her parting action on Tom. In that case I need only say that she had been almost as keenly and deeply affected as Tom by her action. Her astonishment had been almost as great as his—but not quite, of course. She had slipped into the house again and safely up to her room without disturbing any one of the three sleepers, and had lain wide awake for hours. At five o’clock she had heard sounds in the house—the voices of Ned Tone and the detective, then the voice of her grandfather; then the rattling and banging of the lids and door of the stove. But she had continued to lie still, denying her hospitable instincts. She had heard the front door open and shut half an hour later; and then she had left her bed, gone to her open window and thrust her hand out between the woolen curtains. She had smiled happily at the touch of the big snow-flakes on her hand. Then she had dressed and gone downstairs and found her grandfather seated alone at the lamp-lit table, feeding scraps of scorched bacon to Blackie.

“I didn’t cook fer ’em nor eat with ’em,” he had said.

Gaspard had worked about the barns all that morning. Ned Tone and the detective had returned to the house at noon. They had immediately asked questions: Had the man who called himself Tom Anderson gone away alone? Did he know these woods? When had they seen him last? Was he alone then? Had he provisions and a rifle?

Catherine had smiled at these questions and Gaspard had scowled at them. Neither had made the least pretence of answering them. Then Ned Tone had blustered and spoken in a large, loose manner of the might of the law; and old Gaspard Javet had confronted him with bristling eye-brows, flashing eyes and quivering whiskers and threatened to throw him out of the house. Then the stranger, the detective, had said, “Don’t lose your temper and do anything rash, old man. I represent the Law here.”

“Prove it!” Gaspard had retorted.

The other had opened his inner coat and displayed a metal badge. Gaspard had sneered at that, and had said, “I warn the two of ye right here an’ now to git out o’ my house an’ off my land. I reckon ye don’t know who I am, stranger. If I fight my own battles agin the likes of Ned Tone an’ yerself, it ain’t because I hev to; an’ if I was to do a mite o’ shootin’ meself it wouldn’t be because I had to. This here Law ye talk about wasn’t made jist so’s ignorant, no-count lumps like yerself an’ Ned Tone can clutter up an honest man’s kitchen. Clear out, or there’ll be some shootin’ now—an’ maybe some law later.”

The man-hunters had gone reluctantly out into the storm and built themselves a camp half a mile away. They had brought in with them blankets, and enough provisions to last them ten days, from Boiling Pot.

“Do you think that was wise, Grandad?” Catherine had asked.

“It was right, anyhow,” the old woodsman had replied. “We ain’t hidin’ Tom. He went off with Mick Otter to trap fur, didn’t he; an’ if they don’t know Mick’s along with him that’s thar own look-out. If any harm ever comes to Tom, it won’t be my fault—nor yers either, I reckon.”

For two days after the expulsion of Ned Tone and the detective from the kitchen, Catherine and Gaspard saw nothing of those unwelcome invaders; and during that time the old man talked a great deal in a very truculent manner of what he would do if they crossed his threshold again; and how he would have handled Ned Tone in his prime; and what would happen to them if they did catch Tom and Mick Otter; and what in thunder the world was coming to, anyhow. It was loose and careless talk for so stiff and elderly a person—but it warmed Catherine’s heart to hear.

On the third day Gaspard left the house immediately after breakfast, rifle in hand as usual, and did not return until close upon one o’clock. He stood the rifle in a corner and sat down to his dinner without a word. He ate in silence, looking at the girl frequently with an expression of accusing inquiry in his deep-set eyes.

“What is the matter?” she cried, at last. “Why do you look at me like that, Grandad?”

The old man was evidently embarrassed by the questions. He pushed back his chair from the table and hooked his pipe from his pocket before attempting an answer; and even then his answer was a counter-question.

“I wanter know if ye figger as how I be crazy?” he asked.

“Crazy?” said the girl, in her turn embarrassed.

“Yes, crazy,” he replied. “Not ravin’, but queer.”

He tapped his forehead with a long finger, in an explanatory manner, looking at her keenly but kindly.

“Queer about that thar devil,” he continued. “Kinder cracked about the devil. That’s how ye figgered it out, I reckon.”

“Yes,” replied Catherine. “You acted very queerly about that, Grandad, raving around with your rifle.”

Gaspard nodded his head and sighed. Catherine left her seat and went over and stood beside him, with a hand on his shoulder. She shook him gently until he looked up at her.

“Do you remember that Tom once tried to tell you that man can fly, and what you said and how you looked?” she asked.

“I remember,” he said. “I was queer.”

“It was Tom himself who flew down from the sky that night,” she said, speaking quickly. “You would have shot him if you had found him before I did. But as soon as he knew you, he wanted to tell you—but I wouldn’t let him, I honestly thought you would kill him even then, Grandad.”

“Not after I knowed ’im, Cathie. I was queer—but knowin’ that lad, an’ workin’ longside ’im an’ talkin’ to ’im made me feel happier an’ put the thoughts o’ that devil outer my head. An’ now the police are huntin’ that lad—not the game-wardens, but the police!”

“You knew, before I told you, Grandad. You found out about Tom to-day. Where have you been?”

“I’ve bin studyin’ on it fer quite a spell now; an’ when I was forkin’ over some hay in the north barn this mornin’ I come on a queer contraption that kinder put me wise. So I went over to Ned Tone’s camp; an’ the both of ’em was still settin’ thar eatin’ breakfast. So I sez, ‘All ye lads ’ill ever catch in these woods is a cold’; an’ after a little chat about the law I sez, ‘Ye seem almighty wrought up about a salmon. That’ll be an all-fired costly fish by the time ye catch Tom Anderson, I reckon.’ Then they up an’ told me how Tom’s name is Akerley an’ how he’s wanted by the police an’ the military for worse things nor spearin’ a salmon.”

“I’ll tell you all about that, Grandad,” said the girl; and she told him.

“And it was all my fault that he told you that story about losing his canoe below Boiling Pot and about spearing salmon—because I told him that you would shoot him for a devil if he didn’t make up a story—and so you would have,” she concluded.

“Ye’re right,” said Gaspard, deeply moved. “I was ignorant—but I’ve larned a lot since Tom come to these clearin’s. How was I to know that men can fly in the air, like birds—onless Old Nick himself had his finger in it? But it seems they can; an’ if Tom done it then I ain’t got nothin’ to say agin it—but it do seem like temptin’ Providence. An’ soldierin’ in the air! That do seem to me a mite presumptuous—a flyin’ ’round an’ fightin’ in the sky, like the angels o’ the Lord!”

Catherine went up to her room, and returned in a minute with Tom’s service jacket. She explained the rank badges and the decoration and medal ribbons to the old man. He recognized the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor; and he had frequently heard from his son-in-law the story of how Major MacKim had won that white and gold cross in the Crimea. Then Catherine told him about the Military Cross, and what the war medals signified—the ’14-15 Star, the General Service and the Victory.

“Tom fought on the ground before he fought in the air,” she said—“before he knew how to fly, even. He was a lieutenant in a cavalry regiment that went over without its horses with the First Canadian Division and fought in the trenches as infantry—a regiment of Seely’s brigade. When our cavalry was sent out of the line to get its horses—that was after Currie had taken command of the division—Tom joined the Flying Corps, because he thought that the mounted troops wouldn’t get much fighting. That was in the winter of Nineteen-Fifteen; and since then he flew and fought all the time, except when he was in hospital, until the end of the war.”

“An’ now this here detective, an’ this here bully from B’ilin’ Pot, figger on catchin’ him an’ havin’ the law on him—fer hittin’ a fat feller who named his dead friend, who died fightin’ in France, a coward!” exclaimed Gaspard, in tones of rage and disgust. “Whar’s the sense or the jedgment or the decency in that, I’d like to know? An’ him still jumpy when he done it from flyin’ round an’ round ’way up in the sky a-shootin’ at them Germans an’ them a-shootin’ at him! Law? Show me law that ain’t got reason nor decency nor jedgment in it an’ I’m dead agin it! What does Ned Tone know about shootin’?—’cept shootin’ off his mouth an’ pluggin’ bullets into moose an’ sich that can’t shoot back? I don’t know Seeley nor Currie, nor never heared of ’em before, but I know that lad Tom; an’ ye kin tell me all ye want to about that war, Cathie. I’d be glad to larn about it, for I reckon I be kinder ignorant an’ behind the times.”

Catherine told him what she knew of those momentous years and events, which wasn’t very much. During the war she had seen an occasional newspaper and magazine, and recently Tom had told her a good deal of what he had seen. At the conclusion of the talk her grandfather was deeply moved and torn with regret that he had not trimmed his whiskers and shouldered his rifle and gone to war; and of two things he was sure—that the Emperor of Germany had started a terrible thing in a cowardly and dishonorable way and that Tom Akerley had jumped into it and stopped it.

“An’ Ned Tone, the heaviest hitter on Injun River, reckoned as how he could do what that thar Kaiser couldn’t!” he sneered.

When Gaspard went to the camping-place of Tone and the detective next day, he found the shelter deserted and a trail heading toward Boiling Pot. Two days later he found a new trail of snowshoes and a toboggan running northward to the west of his clearings. He returned to the house and informed Catherine of this: and together they followed it to Pappoose Lake, where they found Ned Tone and the detective encamped, with a tent and a fine supply of grub. They went back to the house without having disclosed themselves to the sleuths. Gaspard set out before sunrise the next day and found that the man-hunters had again broken camp and moved on. He followed their tracks five or six miles beyond the lake before turning back. He was late when he reached the house, and his ancient muscles were very stiff and sore. But there was great stuff in Gaspard Javet; so, after a day’s rest and a brief but violent course of bear’s grease, Minard’s liniment and elbow grease, he set out again on the trail of the trailers, this time carrying food and blankets and an ax as well as his rifle. The snow was thoroughly wind-packed by this time. None had fallen since that first heavy and prolonged outpouring. He took a straight line to the point at which he had turned back two days before; and from there he followed a difficult trail. The erasing wind had been busy. There was no faintest sign of that trail except where it pierced the heaviest growths of spruce and fir; and even in such sheltered spots it was drifted to nothing but occasional white dimples. He lost it entirely before sundown; but he knew that it passed far beyond, and well to the westward of Racquet Pond. He struck out for home next morning and accomplished the journey without accident.

Two weeks passed without sight or sound of Ned Tone and the detective or any news of the fugitives; and then one gray noon, when snow was spilling down with blinding profusion, a knock sounded on Gaspard’s door and Catherine opened to a fur-muffled and snow-draped Ned Tone.

“Stop whar ye be!” cried Gaspard from his seat at the dinner-table. “If ye cross that threshold I’ll do fer ye. I run ye outer this house once, an’ that was for keeps.”

Catherine stood aside, leaving the door open.

“Ye’re a hard old man,” said Tone, without moving. “What have I ever done to ye that ye treat me like this—worse nor a dog? If it wasn’t that we uster be friends, Gaspard Javet, I’d have the Law on ye for interferin’ with the course o’ justice.”

“Go ahead,” replied the old man, drily. “It’ll make a grand story to tell the magistrates down on the main river.”

Tone shuffled his feet uneasily.

“What I come here now for is to tell ye an’ Cathie as how I’ve quit huntin’ that feller who was here,” he said. “I’ve told the police, that detective ye seen with me, that I was mistook about that feller.”

“Ye must be reel popular with him,” remarked Gaspard.

“All I want is decent treatment from old friends,” continued the big young woodsman. “That tramp’s nothin’ to me, whatever he done to git the police after him—but he ain’t fit company for a girl like Cathie. I’ve scart him away, an’ I’m ready an’ willin’ to let it rest at that.”

“Whar’s yer friend?” asked Gaspard.

“He’s went on out. I told him I’d made a mistake. He was sore at me, an’ I had to pay him for his time—but let bygones be bygones, sez I.”

“Ned Tone,” said the old man, slowly and clearly, “ye’re lyin’ quicker’n a horse can trot right thar whar ye stand. I’d know it even if I didn’t know yerself, fer it’s in yer eyes. Ye’re lookin’ fer money from the Gover’ment, an ye’re lookin’ fer vengeance agin a young man whose got more vartue in his little toe nor ye’ll ever have in yer hull carcass. Ye fit him fair once, an’ he trimmed ye; then ye tried yer durndest to send him astray in the woods, without a rifle an’ without grub; an’ then ye fit him dirty an’ got trimmed agin; an’ now yer huntin’ him with the help o’ the police. An’ ye know as how he be a better man nor yerself—a man who sarved his country whilst ye hid under the bed; an ye know that the thing he done that the law’s huntin’ him for, wouldn’t have been nothin’ if it wasn’t that he’d sarved his country as a soldier an’ still wore the uniform. An’ still yer so all-fired scart o’ Tom Akerley that ye’d jump a foot into the air if ye knowed he was standin’ behind ye this very minute.”

Ned Tone jumped and turned in a flash. But there was nothing behind him except the twirling curtains of snow.

“Confound ye!” he cried.

“That’s all I got to say to ye, Ned Tone,” said Gaspard. “Shut the door, Cathie.”

Cathie shut the door; and Ned Tone went slowly away and rejoined the detective at the edge of the woods.

“I told them we was gettin’ out,” said Ned.

“Has Akerley been back?” asked the other.

“Guess not. They didn’t say.”

“Well, I got something better to do than spend the winter cruisin’ these woods for a man you say is Major Akerley. A gent like that one would head for a big town, as I’ve told you before. If you don’t show me him or his machine inside the nex’ two weeks I’ll get out in earnest.”

“Keep yer shirt on! It was yer idee chasin’ him, wasn’t it? All we got to do is hang ’round here, out o’ sight o’ the old man and the girl, until he comes snoopin’ back.”

“Then he’d better come snoopin’ pretty darned quick or he won’t have the honor of bein’ arrested by me.”

They moved to a secluded and sheltered spot five miles to the eastward of the clearings and there went into camp. The snow filled in the tracks of their snowshoes and toboggan.

In the meantime, Mick Otter and Tom Akerley held on their way undisturbed, traveling in fair weather and remaining in camp in foul. Day after day they moved through a wilderness that showed neither smoke nor track of human occupation, nor any sign of man’s use save occasional primitive shelters, and small caches of provisions and mixed possessions, for which Mick Otter was responsible. This was Mick’s own stamping-ground, his country, the field of his more serious activities and (apart from what food he ate at Gaspard’s place) the source of his livelihood. Sometimes a whim drew him to the east or the west or the south, but this was the area of wilderness that knew him every year and had paid toll to him in good pelts for many years. He was familiar with every rise and dip and pond and brook of it; and when on the move he looked forward from each knoll and hill-top, as he gained it, with the clear picture already in his mind’s eye of what he was about to see; as a scholar foretastes familiar pleasures when turning the leaves of a beloved book.

Of late years, however, Mick’s trapping operations in this wilderness region of his own had been of a sketchy and indolent nature—had been just sufficient, in fact, to let other Maliseet trappers know that he was still in occupation.

He told this to Tom Akerley.

“But why?” asked Tom. “Aren’t furs worth more now then they ever were?”

“You bet,” replied Mick. “Worth four-six time more nor ever before. Sell red fox two dollar long time ago—fifty year ago, maybe. But I got plenty money now an’ plenty pelt too. You want some money, hey?”

“I’ll very likely want some, and want it badly, one of these days—if those fellows don’t catch me,” replied Tom.

“Never catch you on this country long’s Mick Otter don’t die; an’ when you want money, a’ right.”

“You are very good, Mick.”

“Sure. Good Injun, me.”

They were now far over the height-of-land; far out of the Indian River country; far down a water-shed that supplied other and greater streams. Even Mick’s trapping country was left far behind—but still he knew the ground like a book.

One day, immediately after breakfast, Mick said, “Go down to Timbertown to-day an’ buy some molas’ an’ pork an’ baccy. Come back to-morrow. You stop here. Maybe they hear about you.”

“Will you trust me for the price of a razor?” asked Tom.

“Sure. But you don’t shave off them fine whisker till that policeman quit huntin’ you. What else you want, hey?”

“What about a book for Cathie? But I don’t suppose they sell books in Timbertown.”

“Good bookstore in that town, you bet. Buy plenty everything there. That one darn good town. You smoke cigar, maybe.”

“Not a cigar, Mick—but I often wonder if cigarettes still taste as good as they used to.”

“You like fat cigarette or little thin feller, hey? Doc Smith smoke the fat feller an’ Doc Willard don’t smoke nothin’ but eat whole lot.”

“Books, cigarettes and two doctors!—it sounds like a city! But still I haven’t any money.”

“That a’ right. You smoke him fat or thin, hey?”

“What about a little package of fat ones, Santa Claus? And I’ll write down the name of a few books.”

Mick went away with his rifle on his shoulder and a few slices of bread and cold pork in his pockets. He arrived home an hour before sundown of the following day with a pack on his tough old back as big as the hump on a camel.

“Buy all I kin tote,” he said, as Tom helped him ease the load to the snow. “Take two-three a’mighty strong feller to tote what I got plenty ’nough money for to buy, you bet.”

They examined the pack after supper, by the light of candles which it had contained. Here were cakes of tobacco, a small jug of molasses, bacon, salt pork, a copy of Staunton’s “Chess,” a copy of Stevenson’s “Black Arrow,” and a well-thumbed romance by Maurice Hewlett named “Forest Lovers.” Also, here were cigarettes, a razor, a shaving-brush, sticks and cakes of soap, rifle ammunition and a green and red necktie of striking design.

“Give him Gaspar’ for Chrismus,” said Mick Otter, holding the tie aloft. “He shine right through Gaspar’s whiskers, what?”

“You are right—but tell me about this book. Is there a second-hand book-shop in Timbertown? I didn’t put it on the list, either—but it is a good story. Where’d you get it?—this old copy of ‘Forest Lovers’?”

“That book? Doc Smith send him for you an’ Cathie.”

“What does he know about Cathie and me? Have you been talking all over Timbertown about me?”

“Nope. Nobody there know you fly into the woods—but Doc Smith, he know you fine—so I tell him.”

“He knows me! And you told him where I am hiding! Have you gone mad, Mick? What’s your game?”

“Doc Smith one darn good feller. You trust him like yer own trigger-finger, you bet. Good friend to me, Doc Smith—an’ good friend to you, too. He know you at the war, doctor you one time, some place don’t know his name, when you have one busted rib.”

“Smith? Not the M. O. with the red head; a jolly chap who sang ‘The Fiddler’s Wedding’, who hung out just east of Mont St. Eloi in the spring of ’Seventeen?”

“Sure. He say St. Eloi. He read all about you, but nobody ’round Timbertown hear ’bout how you hide in these woods. He read how that feller you hit go live on farm when all the soldier write to the paper how he ain’t no good an’ you one a’mighty fine fighter; an’ Gover’ment take your money outer bank an’ say how you still owe him seven thousand dollar for flyin’ machine.”

“Is that so,” remarked Tom, reflectively. “Seven thousand—and took my money?”

He lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly, in a silence so vibrant with deep and keen thought that Mick Otter respected it.

“They’ve got my money,” he said, at last, “and they’ll have the old bus, too, some day—but they’ll never catch me to hold a court on me. They’ll never get my decorations!”

“What you mean, bus?” asked the Maliseet.

“The machine. The ’plane. Do you know where I can get oil and petrol? Are there any gasoline engines in Timbertown?”

“Sure. Doc Smith got one, you bet, for to pump water. He got bath-tub, too; an’ one little Ford what can jump fence like breachy steer.”

“Then he is the man I must see.”

Tom and Mick left the camp together next day, with an empty toboggan at their heels. They timed their progress so as not to reach the town before sunset. They went straight to Doctor Smith’s house and were fortunate enough to find him at home and about to sit down to his evening meal with Mrs. Smith, a lady of whose existence Mick Otter had not informed Tom.

Smith recognized Tom instantly, in spite of the beard, and welcomed him cordially.

“Dickon, this is Major Akerley, of whom I told you last night,” he said to his wife; and at the look of consternation on Tom’s face he laughed reassuringly.

“She is safe, major,” he continued. “She’d never peach on a good soldier. I first met her under bomb-fire; and she wears the Royal Red Cross when she’s dressed up.”

Tom talked freely during dinner; and after dinner he made known to the Smiths his intention of assembling the aËroplane and returning it to the Government in the spring. He said that he should require petrol and oil and certain tools.

“Guess I can fit you out,” said the doctor; “but I advise you not to fly up to the front door of Militia Headquarters and send your card in to the Inspector General. Even those who don’t know why you hit Nasher think that you did a good thing—but for all that, there’s the old mill waiting to grind you. Keep away from it, major. Don’t force it to do its duty.”

“You are right,” returned Tom. “If I can get the old bus patched up I’ll fly her over here somewhere for you to discover and pass on. And I’ll continue to lie low, officially lost—unless some fool starts another war.”

“But do you mean to continue to hide in the woods until your case is forgotten?” asked Mrs. Smith.

“There are worse places than the woods,” replied Tom.

“So Mick Otter tells me,” remarked the doctor.

Tom and Mick did not go to bed that night; and long before sunrise they pulled out of Timbertown with a small but hefty load on the toboggan. They reached camp early in the afternoon; and before the next sunrise they commenced their slow and cautious return to Mick’s trapping-grounds. Again the wilderness was all around them, trackless and smokeless save for the smoke and tracks of their own making. Days passed without disclosing to them any sight or sign of Ned Tone and the detective. One morning Mick killed a fat young buck deer. In time they reached the cave, the snuggest and least conspicuous of Mick’s posts, and found it undisturbed. Here they set out a short line of traps; and then the Maliseet went on alone to Racquet Pond.

Mick found the little camp on Racquet Pond just as he had left it, save for snow that had drifted in at the doorway and fallen in through the square hole in the roof. If the pursuers had found it they had left no sign behind them; but in a corner lay a square of white paper marked with a black cross. Mick snorted at sight of the paper, then pocketed it and laid in its place a red woolen tassel from the top of one of his stockings.