The Huntress Part 35

hands?"

"You said he had your gun," said Big Jack.

"He give it back," said Bela. "He is bad man; but no steal. My big gun, my little gun--see?" She exhibited them.

Jack knew that Sam owned no gun; still he was suspicious. "If you had your gun why didn't you plug him when he left you?" he demanded.

Bela paused for an instant. This was a poser, because in her heart she knew, supposing her story to be true, that she would have shot Sam.

She had to think quickly. "I not want no blood," she murmured. "I 'fraid Pere Lacombe."

It was well done. Big Jack nodded. "You leave your guns, too," he stipulated.

"Sure!" she said, willingly putting them in the dugout. "Leave one man to watch the boats and the guns. Two men and a woman enough to catch a cook, I guess."

They laughed.

Bela was playing for high stakes, and her faculties were sharpened to a sword-edge. Every look suggested the wronged woman thirsting for justice. She ostentatiously searched in her baggage, and drawing out a piece of moose-hide, cut it into thongs for bonds. Cleverer men than Big Jack and his pals might have been taken in.

"Boys, she's right!" cried Jack. "We don't want no blood on our hands to start off with, if we can see him punished proper. Shand, you stay here. Lead off, girl!"

Shand shrugged with a sour look, and came down the bank. It was always tacitly understood between him and Jack that young Joe was not to be trusted alone, so he submitted.

The other three started. Bela, making believe to be baffled for a moment, finally led the way up-stream. She went first at the rolling gait the Indians affect. The men were hard put to it to keep up with her over the uneven ground, for the gra.s.sy plain, which looked like a billiard-table, was full of b.u.mps.

She kept her eyes on the ground. It was a simple matter for her to follow Sam's tracks in the gra.s.s, but the men, though they could see the faint depressions when she pointed them out, could never have found them unaided.

The tracks led them parallel to the general direction of the river, cutting across from point to point of the willows on the outside of each bend. On the horizon ahead was the pine-clad ridge that bounded the lower end of the lake. Jack-Knife Mountain rose over it. The sea of gra.s.s was dazzling in the sunlight.

Half an hour's swift walking gave them no glimpse ahead of their quarry.

"Waste too much time talking," said Bela.

"Well, you did the most of it," retorted Joe.

It was evident from the direction of the tracks that Sam was taking care to keep under cover of each point of the willows until he gained the next one. Each point afforded his pursuers a new survey ahead. Not until they had walked another half-hour at that gruelling pace were they in time to see a black spot just about to disappear ahead.

"Down!" cried Bela, and they dropped full length in the gra.s.s until it had gone.

Bela, springing up, led the way at a run across the intervening gra.s.s.

She had to hold herself back for the men. Joe was too heavy to be a runner, and Jack was beginning to feel the handicap of his years.

Nearing the willows, she held up her hand for caution. They ran lightly in the gra.s.s. Neither man could see or hear anything; nevertheless Bela indicated by signs that the one they sought was just around the bushes. At the last moment she held back and let them go first.

Sam, having decided that the danger of immediate pursuit was over, was sitting on the ground eating his lunch when, without warning, Jack and Joe fell on him, bowling him over on his back. He struggled desperately, but was helpless under their combined weight. Joe, with a snarl, lifted his clenched hand over Sam's face. Big Jack held it.

"Not while he's down," he muttered.

Bela, following close, drew Sam's hands together and bound his wrists with her strips of hide.

Sam, seeing her, cried out: "You've sold me out again! I might have known it!"

Bela, fearing his words might start Jack thinking things over, cried out hysterically: "I got you now! You think you run away, eh? You done wit' me! You laugh w'en I cry. I fix you for that! I put you where you can't hurt no more girls!"

To Jack and Joe it seemed natural under the circ.u.mstances. Sam glared at her in angry amazement, and opened his mouth to reply. But thinking better of it, he set his jaw and kept quiet.

He submitted to superior force, and they immediately started back on the long walk to the boats. There was little said _en route_. Only Joe, unable to contain his rancour, occasionally burst out in brutal reviling. Sam smiled at him. More than once Big Jack was called on to restrain Joe's fist.

"A bargain is a bargain," he reminded him.

Bela, bringing up the rear, glared at the back of Joe's head with pure savage hatred. When any of them chanced to look at her, her face was wholly stolid.

Black Shand's face lightened as they brought Sam over the bank.

"So it was on the level," he remarked.

It was now some time past noon, and the word was given to eat before embarking. Sam, with his bound hands in his lap, sat on a great sod which had fallen from the bank above, and watched the others curiously and warily.

He had cooled down. So many things had happened to him during the past two days that his capacity for anger and astonishment was pretty well used up. He now felt more like a spectator than the leading man in the drama.

Finally, Bela, with a highly indifferent air, came to him with a plate of food which she put on his knees. Evidently he was expected to feed himself as best he could with his hands tied. Bela, avoiding his eyes, whispered swiftly:

"I your friend, Sam. Jus' foolin' them. Wait and see."

Sam laughed scornfully. The other men looked over, and Bela had to go back.

Sam had no compunction against eating their food. Scorning them all, he fully intended to get the better of them yet. Meanwhile he was wondering what had taken place between them. He could not interpret the relations between Bela and the three men. They were apparently neither friendly nor inimical.

Afterward a discussion arose as to their disposition between the two boats. The rowboat was not big enough to carry them all.

"Lay him in the dugout," Bela said indifferently. "I paddle him."

"No you don't," said Joe quickly. "He goes with the men."

"All right," said Bela, shrugging. "You come wit' me."

This arrangement pleased Joe very well, and by it Bela succeeded in parting him from Sam.

The two boats proceeded together down the smoothly flowing, willow-bordered stream. Shand and Jack took turns at sculling the larger craft, and Bela loafed on her paddle that they might keep up with her.

The view was as confined and unvarying as the banks of a ca.n.a.l, except that ca.n.a.ls commonly are straight, while this watercourse twisted like Archimedes's screw. The only breaks in the endless panorama of cut-banks, mud-flats, willows, and gra.s.s were the occasional little inlets, gay with aquatic flowers.

Bela was most at home kneeling in the stern of her dugout. Joe, sitting opposite, watched her graceful action with a kindling eye.

"Drop behind a bit," he whispered. "I want to talk to you. Are you listening?"

She seemed not to have heard. Nevertheless the other boat drew away a little.

"Look here," Joe began with what he intended to be an ingratiating air, "this is a bad business for you. I'm not saying I blame you. Just the same your price has gone down, see? Do you get me?"