The Golden Pears/Chapter 10

soon as old Clinchell and his posse were out of sight, Andrest put two big lunches into his game-bags and got out his repeating rifle. Thus equipped, he paddled up the St. Francis until he arrived at a ford from which a road—the East and West Trace—struck through the woods toward the Clinchell plantation, several miles to the west. The ford was in the Dark Bend of the river, which turned and flowed east from the edge of the cotton-plantation till it intersected with the road across the bottom-lands. At the sand-bar where the crossing was made, the river turned south.

As Andrest arrived at the ford and drew his skiff up to make it fast to a snag root, three white men, one of them Si Hed Jesnie, rode out of the woods on horseback. They all hailed him.

"Old Clinchell's tearing!" Jesnie said. "His daughter's missing!"

"He said so at my boat. I'm out looking for her," Andrest replied.

"He came by your boat? Sho! Did he talk mean?" one of the men asked.

"He talked worried. He wanted to know where I'd been," Andrest admitted. "I told him. Course, he had the right to know. Sue Belle's been friendly with me—just friendly."

The three members of the little posse glanced at one another, nodding with approval.

"You watched the river-banks coming up?" Jesnie asked. "She might have lost herself. Wild geese 'd get lost in these swamps!"

"I saw mule-tracks along, but not hers," replied Andrest. "She's on her mule?"

"Her mule was at the plantation—no saddle or bridle," Jesnie said. "That was early yesterday morning. They're all plumb scairt up!" "They might be!" Andrest exclaimed. "A white girl lost in these old swamps! The mule come back without saddle or bridle! It's a natural leather bridle, and there's silver stars onto it. There's mean men in this Dark Bend!"

"We 'lowed to circle down the bank of the river along here," Jesnie explained.

"I don't know." Andrest shook his head. "I heard you whooping long before I got here—before you got here, too. She'd 'a' heard for two miles—she's got good ears."

Again the men glanced covertly at one another.

"There's no tracks of that mule in the East and West Trace?" Andrest asked.

"Not that we could tell."

"Suppose I row on up along this west bank and watch?" Andrest suggested. "She could hardly get out the plantation without crossing the river, if she crossed thisaway. I'd know that mule's tracks. She rode around on him a sight. There's a jag out'n his right fore hoof—just a nick."

"There's old tracks all around," Jesnie declared. "Some a week old—ever since the last rain; but not any fresh ones."

Andrest untied his boat and pulled up the river. He kept close to the west bank—which was the south bank at this point, as the stream flowed toward the east. He rowed with a long, hard pull, with his eyes ever on the bank. He knew that section of the river, because he had to row his fish up there to River Bridge.

No mule had climbed the bank anywhere along there for days, and none of the old tracks were those of Sue Belle's mule till he arrived at the plantation. There, at the bayou, was a single track climbing the steep bank, with the mark of hoofs sliding back in the clay.

The tracks were not forty hours old, and Andrest recognized them instantly. They were the tracks of Sue Belle's saddle-mule!

He swung across to the other bank. A short distance up-stream he found the place where the mule had come out of the woods and across the white sand-bar. Hauling the boat out, and throwing over the anchor as a precaution against a rising river, Andrest started on the animal's back track.

He had followed deer by their hoof-prints, and the twelve-hundred-pound mule, loping along, cut deep into the soft, damp earth. The track led northeast through the depths of the woods, and Andrest marveled at the straight line. That mule had come a long way, and was in a hurry, and was bound for home. It had not stopped anywhere to nibble a switch-cane or shrub-leaves.

After noon Andrest stopped to eat a lunch and then sallied on again, wondering at the mule's course through the untouched woods.

"Looks like he might have been stole and then he pulled away," Andrest said to himself. "Somebody may have stole that girl!"

Just before dark the mule-track led out into a blazed trace which Andrest had never seen before. This road followed a cane-ridge out of the southeast and headed northwest. The mule had come down the trail from the northwest, but left it with unerring instinct to catch the shortest route back to the plantation. Andrest slept beside the trace, leaning against a tree.

In this trail he could not follow the tracks step by step. Other mules, horses, and at least five or six wagons had followed the trace, and the saddle-mule had shacked along in the middle of the rough road, where its prints were blocked out.

The trail led to the main railroad, which crossed the swamps on an embankment twenty feet high. Here there were a sawmill, a boarding-house, and several board shacks scattered out in the stump-field, some of them built on stumps with outlying posts for braces, high enough above the bottoms to be clear of the lesser overflows.

Andrest had not seen the mule's track for some distance, but he hoped that he might hear a good word at the sawmill village—which was called Gumtree, as he knew by the sign on the little yellow station.

It was mid-afternoon when the trailer reached Gumtree. He went to the station-agent, and asked if he had seen such a mule and such a girl as he described.

"No, suh!" replied the agent, shaking his head.

Nor had any one else seen the animal or the girl. Andrest was nonplused.

"Is it old Clinchell's girl you're looking for?" the station-agent asked. "You 'lowed she might have come thisaway?"

"I followed her mule-track clear to that trace," Andrest explained, pointing down the road he had followed in.

"You did? 'Cross those Dark Bend swamps?"

"It's not bad—the bayous are all dry," said Andrest, "But how could that mule get over thisaway?"

"There's the Railroad Trace." The station-agent pointed west, along the south side of the railroad. "It's followed right smart by strollers who come from beyond the Mississippi."

"Sho!" Andrest exclaimed. "I've been a wondering! That mule didn't go back the way he went!"

It was late evening, but Andrest started west along the Railroad Trace. When night fell, he stopped at a cabin beside the road. An old man lived in the cabin, and he had a skiff turned upside down on the roof of his home.

"You see, if the overflow comes suddint," the man explained, "I got my boat so's I can row around. I shore hate to jes' set when the water's all over the bottoms. Some ain't forehanded thataway. They don't have a boat when the water comes, and all they got to do is set. Now when I have my skiff, I can row around and, like's not, kill a turkey or a hog, or sunthin' to eat. They don't have to rescue me!"

"You haven't seen a young woman riding through here on a man mule, have you—I mean in the last three or four days?"

"No, suh! There was a quality gentleman stopped in here to breakfast three mornings ago, suh, but no lady drove past; not without it was at night. The gentleman had a lady's saddle besides his own, but there was no lady."

"Who was he?"

"He didn't say, suh—no, suh. You don't neveh get to ask gentlemen who they be when they rides through these swamps. Men have been killed for less'n that, suh—yes, suh. I don't expect you're used to living in these swamps. You see, people who lives around yeah suttingly learns to mind their own business."

"I was wondering if I knew him," Andrest explained. "I know right smart of people down in the Dark Bend swamps—"

"Sho! You from the Dark Bend?" The man straightened up, staring. "Lawzee! Down thataway they's some mighty mean men—yes, suh! The gentleman that was here said he come through there, and that the woods was just alive with swamp-angels, scouting around. He was a real nice gentleman, and he gave me four bits for breakfast. He rode a fine man mule, too—a regular old black one, big's a elephant, with a white spot on its head, just like a horse, and a white hoof—"

"A white spot on its head and a white hoof?" Andrest repeated.

"Yes, suh—warn't that remarkable for a mule? And he had a white tip to his tail. Now some gentlemen would have had those white hairs pulled out'n that mule's tail, but not this gentleman. There they was, white as could be—white as cotton—and they'd neveh been pulled out. Course, I didn't say nothing to the gentleman. I said it was a nice mule, but I didn't describe it none to him. You know, here in these bottoms, you don't want to let on you're noticing. Lots of times people don't want to be noticed. I suppose, down in those Dark Bend swamps, if they seen you looking at a mole on the face, or a finger shot off the hand, or anything of distinction like that, they'd be real provoked, and mebby shoot you up so's you couldn't be a witness, or like that. I hear say it's awful in them swamps. Pussonally, I ain't neveh been there, and I've an ijee I never will get down there. They's a power of killings there, ain't they?"

"Well, some," admitted Andrest; "but not so many as you'd think."

"It's been more'n six months since we had a killing," the loquacious old man declared. "I tell you, it makes a difference having civilization around. Take it when I was a young man; there was meanness around then, lots and lots of it. They killed when there warn't no real use of it, you might say. It was get mad, shoot, scout, and reward 'em those days. Take it when the Bullfrogs and the Red Flannels, as they called 'em, got to shooting. The Bullfrogs was always taking rafts out'n the sunk lands, and the Red Flannels was gentlemen that claimed to own the dead timber that was being rafted, and they'd shoot most inconsequential, so to say. But the laws have come now—yes, suh! They don't shoot without they's got some excuse. But back in those Dark Bend swamps, I bet they's mean! The gentleman that was here said so. Why, he said they'd steal a girl or a mule, or shoot somebody—just like that!"

He snapped his fingers.

Andrest listened with some surprise to what the old man said of the Dark Bend swamps. Rough as many of his neighbors were, he had no idea that the people of his own district were regarded so much askance by the settlers living along the railroads. Still greater, however, was his amazement that the old man should describe Clinchell's saddle-mule so accurately, and that the visitor at breakfast had carried a lady's saddle.

He said nothing about the meaning of the discovery he had made, and he was glad to bed down in a bunk for the night. There he puzzled his brain trying to figure out just what old Clinchell had done, and where Sue Belle was hidden away.

Before dawn he left the shack, returned to the railroad station at Gumtree, and took the train for River Bridge. Thence he tramped down to where he had left his skiff and went about hauling his nets, which had been neglected for more than two days. However, the fish were in fair condition, and he carried his catch to River Bridge.

Nothing had been heard of Sue Belle, but the search still continued. The old planter had been unable to find any one to go his bail, and was locked up in the Deerport jail, waiting for the president of the Musko Gum Company, of Mendova, to sign a new bail bond; or, at least, so report said.

Having cared for his fish, Andrest pulled back to his shanty-boat, and there, that evening, he sat for hours, puzzling his head about the things which had worried every one in the Dark Bend swamps. While he thought, he spread his cans of pretty little shell tricks on the table and shaped them into grotesques and flowers and birds. They made gay effigies on the black cloth.

Having been awake so late, he overslept in the morning. He was awakened by a hail from the bank, and he welcomed Sheriff Ferris and Deputy Sheriff Resner. They tied their horses to trees and walked aboard the shanty-boat.

Without parley, Ferris said:

"We had to come and get you, Andrest. Nobody knows anything about this lost girl business, without it's you. If you can give us any help in the matter, I wish you'd do it. Make a clean breast of it, won't you? There's trouble all around. The bank at Deerport is pressed hard. Old Clinchell's squeezing it. He says they favored you, and you're a mean scoundrel. I'm just telling you. Now what do you know?"

"I'll tell you what I know," Andrest replied. "I don't know what to make of it myself. I saw Si Hed Jesnie at the ford of the East and West Trace. Then I rowed to the Clinchell plantation, and there were a mule's tracks up the bank. I knew those tracks, for they had a notch out of the right fore hoof. They belonged to Sue Belle's saddle-mule. I took the back track. I went through the woods all that day, and at night I struck the Gumtree Trace. I'd never seen it before, and I didn't know it, but the mule came down the ridge. Well, I lost the mule-track—so much travel—but I kept on to Gumtree. No one there had seen that mule, but about three miles west, or maybe four, there was an old fellow in a shack with a skiff on top of it—"

"I've seen that skiff—upside down?" Resner asked.

"That's the one. Well, he said an old man came there, a quality gentleman, and stopped there for breakfast three days before. That was the morning the mule showed up at the plantation. That old man rode a mule with a white spot on the head and a white hoof, and the end of his tail had white hair in it that hadn't been pulled out."

"What's that? Why, that's old Clinchell's mule, if I know mules!" Ferris cried out.

"Yes, sir; and the old man told me the gentleman had a woman's saddle—"

"Wha-at?"

"That's what he said. I went back to Gumtree, took the train to River Bridge, followed the river down to my skiff, hauled my nets, and I've been thinking about it ever since."

"He's swore out a warrant charging you with stealing his girl," Ferris said. "I suppose I got to read it to you, so the arrest 'll be legal."

Ferris read the warrant. Andrest listened with paling face.

"I never was arrested before," he commented. "Course I'll go! What evidence has he got about me and her?"

"Not much, after what you just said," Ferris replied; "but he had a yellow man down to see him yesterday. After talking to him a while, Clinchell swore out that information to have you arrested. Course we got to search this boat and around."

"Yes, sir." Andrest nodded. "You can look anywhere at anything I got. If you want me to, I'll help."

"All right! We'll start at one end."

"Yes, sir. That's the stern. Under there I keep it filled with dry wood for kindling. It's a good place under the deck."

He threw open the trap under the after deck, and the officers looked into the space and pulled out some of the wood. Then they looked through the kitchen, and its boxes and cupboards. Andrest moved one of the boxes, and showed them a trap hidden in the floor. Under this there were some canned goods. On the other side was another trap, where he kept a lot of hickory and pecan nuts.

Thus they searched the boat, every foot of it. Two traps under the deerskin rugs in the sitting-room revealed other little treasures. Andrest pulled out a cunningly fitted wainscoting door, and disclosed a take-down shotgun and several hundred shells. "I have a big empty space 'under the bow, same's under the stern deck," Andrest said. "You pull that wainscoting out there and you can look under. I keep the bow light, though."

Suiting the action to his words, he pulled out the wainscoting, and Sheriff Ferris looked in. He could see nothing in the dark space.

"There's a door in under on both sides?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," Andrest answered.

Crossing the cabin, he pulled over the wainscoting. Out of the opening there fell a stirrup. It was attached to a saddle. When Andrest grasped this with a cry of amazement, he turned it up before the two men.

"Why, lawzee!" he cried. "That's Sue Belle's, if I know saddles!"

The two officers watched him with keen eyes as he turned the saddle to look at it, almost forgetful of their presence.

"How did that get there?" Ferris demanded.

"How did it get there?" Andrest repeated; and then he cried out: "Sho! That saddle on my boat—how did it come here? Why—why—yes, sir! How did it?"

"Did you think you could fool us, telling about that old man and the white-tailed, white-hoofed mule?" Ferris said sharply.

"No, sir." Andrest shook his head, turning the bridle over in his hands. "I just told you the way it was. You can find out seeing that old man. He's suspicious, that old feller! You'd better talk slow and around. Then he'll tell you, the same as he told me. It's a pretty saddle, gentlemen, ain't it?"

"Yes, sir—but where's Sue Belle?"

"If I knew, gentlemen," Andrest answered gravely, "a five-horse team of mules couldn't hold me from lighting out thataway—no, sir!"

The two officers looked at each other. They did not know what to think. They thought they could see through old Clinchell's scheme to ruin the Deerport National Bank, and they knew that he had President Lesgar in a tight fix, because Lesgar had said so. Now they wondered what kind of a mess they had found.

"Well, I think we'd better go," Sheriff Ferris suggested. "I hate to do it, Andrest, but it's law. What can we do about the boat?"

"Jesnie will take care of it," Andrest said. "I'm going to take some reading and tricks with me."

The shanty-boater gathered up two game-bags full of things, including the shell tricks and his pamphlets about finance.

"All right, gentlemen!" he said. "I'm ready!"