The Red Pirogue/Chapter 3

Five days after the burning of the red pirogue, another queer thing happened at O'Dell's Point. It happened between three and five o'clock of the afternoon.

Jim McAllister had driven off downstream early that morning with two horses and a heavy wagon to buy provisions at the town of Woodstock. The round trip was an all day job. Ben O'Dell shouldered an ax after dinner and, accompanied by the youngest of the three O'Dell dogs, went back to mend a brush fence and see if the highest hay field was ripe for the scythe. Mrs. O'Dell and little Marion Sherwood washed and dried the dinner dishes and Mrs. O'Dell took a great ham from the oven and set it to cool in the pantry. At three o'clock she and the little girl took an armful of books to the old orchard between the house and the river. Red Lily went with them; Red Chief, the oldest of the O'Dell setters, remained asleep in the kitchen.

Mrs. O'Dell and the little girl from French River returned to the house at five o'clock, having finished “Treasure Island.” Red Chief arose from his slumbers and welcomed them with sweeps of his plumed tail. Mrs. O'Dell went to the pantry to see how the ham looked—and the ham wasn't there!

Some one had been in the pantry, had come and gone by way of the kitchen, and yet Red Chief had not barked. Mrs. O'Dell was not only puzzled but alarmed. A thief had visited the house of the O'Dells, a thing that had not happened for generations; and, worse still, a dog of the famous old red strain had failed in his duty. And yet Red Chief had many times proved himself as good a dog as any of his ancestors had been. Red Chief, the wise and true and fearless, had permitted a thief to enter and leave the house without so much as giving tongue. It was a puzzling and disturbing thought to the woman who held the honor of her dead husband's family so high that even the honor of the O'Dell red dogs was dear to her.

She said nothing about the stolen ham to her little guest but she took the old setter by his silken ears and gazed searchingly into his unwavering eyes. But there was neither guile nor shame in those eyes. Devotion, courage, vision and entire self-satisfaction were there. The old dog's conscience was clear.

Mrs. O'Dell went through the pantry. Two loaves of bread had gone with the ham. She searched here and there through the rest of the house but could not see that anything else had been taken. Nothing of value was gone, that was certain, and she felt less insecure though as deeply puzzled. She decided not to mention the vanished food and the old dog's strange passivity to her son or her brother.

A week passed over O'Dell's Point without an unusual incident. Ben and Uncle Jim commenced haying in the early upland fields; and then O'Dell's Point received its first official visit from the law. Ben brought the horses in at noon, watered them and followed them into the cool and shadowy stable; and there he found Mel Lunt and a stranger smoking cigars. Ben was startled, for he knew Mel Lunt to be the local constable; and the consciousness of being startled drove away his natural shyness, and added to his indignation at the glowing cigars. His eyes brightened and his cheeks reddened.

“Young man, what do you know about Richard Sherwood?” asked the stranger, stepping forward and knocking the ash from his cigar.

“We don't smoke in here, if you don't mind,” said the overgrown youth. “It isn't safe.”

“This here's Mr. Brown from Woodstock, Ben,” said Lunt hastily. “He's depity sheriff of the county.”

“Mel's said it. Don't you worry about the cigars, young man, but tell me what you know, an' all you know, about Richard Sherwood.”

Ben's face grew redder and his throat dry.

“I must ask you—again—not to smoke—in this stable,” he replied, in cracked and jerky tones.

“Yer stalling, young feller!” exclaimed the stranger. “Tell me what I'm asking you an' tell it straight. Yer trying to hide something.”

Jim McAllister stepped into the stable at that moment.

“Sure he's trying to hide something, Dave Brown,” said McAllister. “He's trying to hide what he thinks of you for a deputy sheriff—that you're as ignorant as you are fresh. He's remembering his manners and trying to hide your want of them. He's half O'Dell an' half McAllister; so if you two want to talk in this stable about Richard Sherwood or anything else, I guess you'd better go out first and douse those cigars in a puddle or something.”

“I'm here in the name of the law, Jim McAllister,” said Mr. Brown, uncertainly.

“Same here, only more so,” returned Uncle Jim pleasantly.

“He's in the right of it, Mr. Brown,” said Mel Lunt.

The officials left the stable, ground their cigars to extinction with the heels of their boots and came back.

“Yer darned particular,” remarked the deputy sheriff.

“Nothing out of the way,” returned McAllister.

“Well, we're looking for Richard Sherwood from French River,” said the other. “He cleared out a couple of weeks ago an' took his little girl with him. She's gone too, anyhow. I heard he used to be a friend of the folks living here, so I come to ask if you'd seen him in the last two weeks. I didn't come to set yer darned stable afire.”

“No, we haven't seen Sherwood,” replied McAllister. “What's the trouble? Has he taken to poaching again?”

“It's worse than poaching, this time. I was up on French River ten days ago, taking a look over the salmon pools and one thing an' another, to see if the game wardens were onto their job, an' darn it all if I didn't trip over a bran'-new grave in a little clearing. There's an old Injun who calls himself Noel Sabattis lives there, an' he told me he'd buried a dead man there a few days ago. I asked questions and he answered them; and then he helped me dig—and there was a man who'd been shot through the heart!”

“You don't say!” exclaimed McAllister. “Who was he?”

“Louis Balenger.”

“Balenger? What would bring him back, I wonder? What else did you find out?”

“Nothing. We're looking for Richard Sherwood.”

“What has he ever done that would lead you to suspect him of a thing like that? I used to know him and he was no more the kind to kill a man than I am. Did the old Injun say Sherwood did it?”

“No, not him. He wouldn't say a word against Sherwood. But he don't matter much, one way or the other, old Noel Sabattis! He ain't all there, I guess. He says he found Balenger in Sherwood's pirogue, dead, when Sherwood and the little girl were off trout fishing. When Sherwood come back he helped Noel dig the grave; and next day he lit out and took the girl with him—so that Injun says.”

“Why don't you blame it on the Injun?”

“He didn't run away.”

“That's so. Well, we haven't seen Richard Sherwood around here.”

“Nor anything belonging to him, I suppose?”

Jim McAllister scratched his chin.

“We have seen his daughter,” said Ben O'Dell, with dignity. “She is our guest. She's in the house now, with my mother. She's only a little girl—only eleven years old—and I hope you don't intend to question her about Balenger's death.”

“That's what I heard. She's stopping here, you say, but you ain't seen her father. That's queer. How'd she come?”

Ben told of his discovery of the pirogue and the girl against the stakes Of the salmon net, but he did not mention the letter which the little voyager had brought to his mother. That letter, whatever it contained, seemed to him entirely too private and purely social a matter to be handed over to the inspection of a deputy sheriff.

“Did she come down all the way from French River alone, a little girl of eleven?” asked Brown. “Is that what ye're trying to stuff into me?”

“You can't talk to Ben like that,” interrupted McAllister. “He's a quiet lad but he's an O'Dell—and if you'd been born and bred on this river you'd know what I mean. Ask Lunt.”

“That's right,” said Lunt. “The O'Dells hev always been like that. If they tell anything, it's true—but I ain't sayin' as they always tell all that they know. Now Ben here says the girl was alone when he found her, but he ain't said that he knows she come all the way from French River alone by herself. How about that, Ben?”

“She told me that her father came part way with her,” said Ben.

“How far?” asked the deputy sheriff.

“She didn't tell me.”

“Well, maybe she'll tell me.”

“No she won't—because you won't ask her that or anything like it,” said young O'Dell.

“What d'ye mean, I won't ask her?”

“There you go again!” interrupted Jim McAllister. “Didn't I tell you that Ben here's an O'Dell?”

“Well, what about it? I'm the deputy sheriff of this county and O'Dells are nothing to me when I'm in the performance of my duty.”

“Let me try to explain,” said Ben, crimson with embarrassment and the agitation of his fighting blood. “I respect the laws, Mr. Brown, and I observe them. I was taught to respect them. But I was also taught to respect other laws—kinds that you have nothing to do with—officially. Laws of hospitality—that sort of thing. My father was a good citizen—and a good soldier—and I try to do what I think he would do under the same circumstances. So if you attempt to question that—that little girl—my mother's guest—about her father—whom you're hunting for a murderer—I'll consider it my—unpleasant duty to knock the stuffing out of you!”

The deputy sheriff stared in amazement.

“Say, that would take some knocking!” he retorted. “How old are you, young feller?”

“I'm going on eighteen,” replied Ben quietly.

“And you think you can best me in a fight?”

“Yes, I think I can. I'm bigger than you and longer in the reach—and I'm pretty good.”

“But yer sappy. And yer all joints. I'm no giant but I'm weathered. The milk's out of my bones.”

“My joints are all right, Mr. Brown. You won't find anything wrong with them if you start in questioning that little Sherwood girl about her father.”

“I wasn't born on this river,” said the deputy sheriff, “and I'm a peaceful citizen with a wife an' children in Woodstock, but I consider myself as good a sportsman as any O'Dell who ever waved a sword or a pitchfork. There's more man in me than deputy sheriff. I'll fight you, Ben, for I like yer crazy ideas; and if you trim me I'll go away without asking the girl a single question about her father. But if I trim you I'll question her.”

Ben looked at his uncle and the lids of McAllister's left eye fluttered swiftly.

“That wouldn't be fair,” said Ben, turning again to Brown. “And I can't make it fair, for I'm determined that you shall not worry my mother's guest, whatever happens. If you did manage to beat me, there'd still be Uncle Jim. So you wouldn't get a square deal.”

Brown looked at McAllister.

“Does he mean that you would object to me asking the girl a few civil questions?” he inquired.

“Sure I'd object,” said McAllister.

“But you ain't one of these O'Dells!”

“I'm a McAllister—the same kind even if not exactly the same quality.”

Mr. Brown looked puzzled.

“I'm a little above the average myself,” he said thoughtfully. “Tell me why you two've got to bellyaching so about me wanting to ask that little girl a few questions, will you? Maybe I'm stupid.”

“Suppose some fool of a sheriff found a dead man and thought you'd killed him and found out where you'd run to from one of your own kids,” said McAllister. “The kid loves you, wouldn't hurt you for a fortune, but in her innocence she tells what the sheriff wants to know and he catches you. And we'll suppose you did it and they prove it on you. Nice game to play on your little daughter, wouldn't it be?”

The deputy sheriff turned to Mel Lunt.

“How does it strike you, Mel?” he asked.

“It's a highfalutin' notion, all right for O'Dells an' sich, but no good for ordinary folks like us,” replied the constable.

“Is that so!” exclaimed Mr. Brown. “You guess again, blast yer cheek! If you can't see why a little girl hadn't ought to be set to catch her own father an' maybe send him to jail or worse, I can. Yes, I can see it, by thunder! Any gentleman could, once it was explained to him. So you don't have to worry about that, Ben.”

At that moment a gong sounded.

“That's for dinner,” said Ben, “and I know my mother will be delighted if you'll dine with us. Uncle Jim, will you take them to the house while I feed the horses?”

McAllister said a few words in his sister's ear which at once enlightened and reassured her. There were fresh salmon and green peas for dinner, and custard pies. The meal was eaten in the dining room. Badly painted and sadly cracked pictures of O'Dells, male and female, wonderfully uniformed and gowned, looked out from the low walls.

The deputy sheriff rose to the portraits and the old table silver. His manners were almost too good to be true and his conversation was elegant in tone and matter. He amused Ben O'Dell and McAllister and quite dazzled little Marion Sherwood; but it was impossible to know, by looking at her, whether Mrs. O'Dell was dazzled or amused. Her attitude toward her unexpected guests left nothing to be desired. A bishop and a dean could not have expected more; two old Maliseets at her table would not have received less.

Only Mel Lunt of the whole company did not play the game. He opened his mouth only to eat. He raised his eyes from his plate only to glance swiftly from one painted and sword-girt gentleman on the wall to another and then at the brow and nose of young Ben O'Dell which were the brow and nose of the portraits; and all his thought was that a deputy sheriff was pretty small potatoes after all and that a rural constable was simply nothing and none to a hill.

A little later Mel Lunt's mare was hitched to the buggy and Mel had the reins in his hands when Mr. Brown paused suddenly with one foot on the step.

“Guess I might's well take a look at the pirogue,” he said, with his face turned over his shoulder toward Ben and McAllister.

“She's gone,” replied Ben. “She was taken off our beach one night nearly two weeks ago.”

The deputy sheriff lowered his foot and turned around.

“Taken?” he asked. “Who took her?”

Ben said that he didn't know and explained that he believed she had been taken, because she would have run aground on the head of the island if she'd simply drifted off.

“That sounds reasonable,” returned Brown. “Heard anything of her being picked up below here?”

“Not a word,” said Ben.

The deputy sheriff climbed to the seat beside the constable then and the pair drove away.

Ben and Jim McAllister returned to the haying and worked in the high fields until after sundown. Little Marion Sherwood went to bed immediately after supper. Uncle Jim went next, yawning, and was soon followed by Ben. The moment Ben sank his head on his pillow he discovered that he wasn't nearly so sleepy as he had thought. For a few minutes he lay and pictured the fight between himself and the deputy sheriff which had not taken place. He was sorry it had not materialized, though he felt no bitterness toward Mr. Brown. He rather liked Mr. Brown now, in fact. But what a fine fight it would have been. The thought suggested to him the great fight in “Rodney Stone,” which he tried to remember, only to find that the details had become obscure in his mind. He left his bed and went downstairs with the intention of fetching the book from the library. He was surprised to find his mother busily engaged in locking and double bolting the front door.

“What's the idea, mother?” he asked. “Why lock that old door now for the first time since it was hung on its hinges?”

She told him of the disappearance of the ham and bread.

“But wasn't one of the dogs in the house?” he asked.

“Yes, Red Chief was in the kitchen; and he didn't make a sound,” she answered. “He must have mistaken the thief for a friend, for you know how he is about strangers. It has made me nervous, Ben.”

“And nothing was taken except the ham and bread?”

“I haven't missed anything else.”

“It can't be much of an enemy, whoever it is, to let us off as easy as that. It sounds more like a hungry friend to me.”

“You are thinking of Richard Sherwood, Ben.”

“Yes, mother. He might be hanging 'round and not want even us to suspect it. It's an old trick I guess, from what I've read—not going as far away as the police expect you to.”

“But Red Chief doesn't know Richard Sherwood. It was Red Chief's grandfather, I think, that Mr. Sherwood used to take out when he went shooting. I believe he trained several of the red dogs to the gun. He had a wonderful way with animals.”

“Do you think that any of our neighbors are hungry enough to steal from us, mother? It never happened before. They always came and asked for anything they wanted.”

“I am sure it was not a neighbor. I can't understand it. I am afraid, Ben.”

Ben felt no anxiety concerning their safety or that of their property but he was puzzled. He could not think of any explanation of Red Chief's behavior. He did not draw his mother's attention to the fact that any one wishing to enter the old house could still do so by any one of the many windows on the ground floor, none of which had a fastening.

They entered the library together and Mrs. O'Dell held the lamp while Ben searched along his own shelves for “Rodney Stone.” He found the book but he missed several others.

“Has the little girl any books upstairs?” he asked.

“No, she puts every one back in its place before supper, always.”

“I wonder if Uncle Jim has 'Charles O'Malley' and 'Vanity Fair' up in his room.”

“I'm sure that he hasn't—but shall we go and see?”

They went. Uncle Jim was sound asleep. The missing books were not in his room. They searched every inhabited corner of the house but failed to find either “Charles O'Malley” or “Vanity Fair.”

“They were in their places yesterday,” said Ben.

“They must have been taken last night,” said his mother.

“And it was Red Lily who was in the house last night; the old dog and the pup were loose outside.”

“Yes.”

“Well, let's go to bed, mother. Who's afraid of a burglar who steals books?”