Part 4 (1/2)

”Well, you've come!” he said in a lifeless tone. ”I could have killed you, one or two of you, but I won't. I may be a thief, but not a murderer. Besides, there are probably more of you back there in the trees.”

”On the contrary,” smiled the Major, ”we are only three. We are not armed. So you see you might easily kill us all. But why you should want to, and why you expected us, when the last thing we thought to do was to land in your wheat-field last night, is more than I can guess.”

”Landed?” The man's face showed his bewilderment.

”I know,” exclaimed Bruce impulsively, ”I'll explain. You're Timmie--Timmie--” he hesitated. ”Well, anyway, that's your first name. I know all about you--”

Again the man's trembling hand half-reached for the rifle.

”Then--then you have--come for me,” he choked.

Bruce, realizing his mistake, hastened to correct it.

”You're mistaken,” he said quickly. ”We haven't come for you in the way you mean. You won't need to go a step with us unless that is your wish. Timmie, we're here to help you; to tell you that you were forgiven long ago.”

”Is--is that true?” The man faltered. ”The logging company?”

”The partners are dead. Their only heir, La Vaune, forgives you.”

”And the Province, the Red Riders?”

”The Province forgot the case years ago.”

”Thank--thank G.o.d!” The man choked, then turned to hide his face. He faced them again in a moment and spoke steadily. ”I've got the money here in the cabin, every cent of it. G.o.d knows I didn't mean to do it. But the temptation was too great. And--and once I had done it, I was afraid to go back. I would have died in prison. How did you come? Are you going back?

Will you take the money to the little girl, La Vaune?”

”We're going farther,” smiled Bruce, happy in the realization of what all this meant to the maid in the camp. ”We're going on. We flew here and will fly back--or try to.” ”And we'll be more than glad to return the money,” he wished to add, but remembering that he would not have that to decide, he ended, ”La Vaune is no little girl now, but quite a young lady. She needs the money, too. And--and,” he laughed sheepishly, ”she's rather a good friend of mine.”

Timmie drew his hand across his eyes, as if to brush away the vision of long years. Then, with a smile, he said briskly:

”Of course, you'll have breakfast? We're having hot-cakes.”

”What did I tell you?” chuckled the Major, slapping Barney on the back.

Eager as the visitors were to hear the strange story of this man of the wilderness, they were willing that breakfast should come first.

As they stepped upon the porch, the keen eye of the Major fell on some white and spotted skins hanging over a beam. A close observer might have noticed a slight nod of his head, as if he said, ”I thought so.” But the boys were following the scent of browning griddle-cakes and saw neither the skins nor the Major's nod.

But Barney, missing a familiar pungent odor that should go with such a breakfast in a wilderness, hurried back to the plane to return with a coffee pot and a sack of coffee.

Within the cabin they found everything scrupulously clean. Strange cooking utensils of copper and stone caught their eye, while the translucent window-panes puzzled them. But all this was forgotten when they sat down to a polished table of white wood, and attacked a towering stack of cakes which vied with cups of coffee in sending a column of steam toward the rafters.

With memories stirred by draughts of long untasted coffee, it was not difficult for Timmie to tell his Story.

”When I left the settlement,” he began, as he turned his mooseskin, hammock-like chair toward the open fireplace, and invited his guests to do likewise, ”I struck straight into the wilderness. I had a little food, a small rifle and fis.h.i.+ng-tackle. To me a summer in the woods with such equipment was no problem at all. I meant to go northwest for, perhaps, two hundred miles, camp there for the summer, then work my way back by going southwest. I would then be far from my crime and would be safe.

That is what I meant to do. But once in the silent woods, I began to think of the wrong I had done. I would have given worlds to be back. But it was too late. I had to keep going. Fording rivers, creeping through underbrush, climbing ridges, crossing swampy beaver-meadows, fighting the awful swarms of mosquitoes, I got through the summer, living on fish, game and berries. You see, I had become terribly afraid of the Red Riders--the mounted police. I had heard that sooner or later they always got a man. I was determined they would not get me.

”At last, snow-fall warned me to prepare for winter. I was in this valley that day, and I've been here ever since. If I had ever got any pleasure from that stolen money, which I haven't, I would have paid for that pleasure a hundred times that first winter. Fortune favored me in one thing: the caribou came by in great droves, and, before my ammunition was exhausted, I had secured plenty of meat. But at that, I came near dying before I learned that one who lives upon a strictly meat diet must measure carefully the proportions of lean and fat. Someway, I learned.

And somehow, starving, freezing, half-mad of lonesomeness, I got through the winter, but I am glad you did not see me when the first wild geese came north. If ever there was a wild man, dressed in skins and dancing in the sun, it was I.”

”But the wheat?” asked Barney. ”How did that happen?”