Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/200

 would hunt and fish as much as possible for the purpose of saving Oscar’s stores for future use,  and that they would go out alone on alternate  days, so that the cottage might never be left unguarded. Neither one was ever to go so far away that a certain signal of rifle shots could  not call him back. It was agreed that Hugh was to go shooting the first day, so, very blithely, he  had made ready, shouldered his rifle and started  forth.

He stopped a moment before the door to look down at the lake, which was very still this morning and very blue. He knew now why Oscar had elected to start before the dawn, for two  canoes were skimming over the quiet surface,  pirate vessels, although not of the accepted type. Often before Hugh had seen them patrolling these waters that Half-Breed Jake called his own, swift craft, dark and sinister, ready to shoot any man  or sink any boat that ventured through Harbin’s  Channel. Harbin, he had learned, was an explorer who, fifty years ago, had coasted up and down Red Lake, mapping the islands and the bays