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Boys' Life's, February 1924, with "A Son of the North Woods"
The Boy Scouts' Craig Kennedy, Harper & Brothers, 1925,
with "A Son of the North Woods"
"KEN'S at that Boy Scout camp, Camp Cohonk, farther down the shore of this lake," observed Kennedy. "We'll hunt him up in the morning."
Our fire was snapping and cracking merrily as the guide turned the lake trout in the frying pan. It had been getting late when we pitched camp on the shore of the lake after we made the "carry" over from Loon River to the little stream that brought us down where we could employ the failing light long enough to catch our supper in Goose Lake.
Led by our French-Canadian guide, Boisvert, we had skirted the shore of Goose Lake until we came to a camp site near a spring.
I had inquired about the mosquitoes the moment I saw him lighting a fire. Boisvert smiled and nodded out into the lake. There I saw a huge pile of stones surmounted by some charred branches.
"You cut the balsam for bed—then you take him out there, too, and other branches, anything—build fire—big smoke—drive away mosquitoes!"
"How did you get all those rocks out there?" I asked as I returned after the fourth or fifth canoe trip with branches to erect the pyre on this miniature artificial island. "Must have, been some job in a canoe."
Boisvert grinned again and shook his head. "Non! In the winter, the lake, she freeze. I carry stones out, on ice. In the spring, voilą! she melt. Ą bas! I have the little island! Hein?"
Under his direction, as he was getting supper with Craig, I had lighted the pile. A light southwest breeze was wafting in the pleasant odor of the burning evergreens. Indeed, there were no mosquitoes.
Besides, the illumination from the burning brush on the little island was beautiful, bringing out the outlines in the blackness of shadows along the shore for some distance, lighting up the lake.
"Camp Smudge, that's what I christen this place," remarked Craig as we enjoyed our immunity from insects.
"These old khaki suits are mighty comfortable, too," I observed, raising my arms and stretching my legs out on the bed of balsam under me. "I feel like a kid. Smell that fish!"
"Get the smell of the woods; it's a tonic." Kennedy was almost biting off the air in chunks.
I caught an amused gleam in the dark bright eyes of our guide. He was used to seeing fellows such as Craig and myself act like a couple of colts with the responsibilities of life off our shoulders. I was getting hungrier by the minute. I never saw fish a nicer brown, or smelled coffee with a better aroma, as the steam curled up from it.
"Onkee—onkee—onkee—onkee!"
I was startled. Craig was listening carefully. Boisvert looked puzzled, too, at this call of the goose at that season and by a palpably human voice. Craig raised his hands to his mouth, cupped them.
"Quack—quack—quack—quack!"
"Onkee—onkee—onkee—onkee!"
"Are you daft?" I exclaimed.
Craig merely smiled tolerantly. "I told you we were near Camp Cohonk. I wrote Ken we would be somewhere along the lake about to-night. I guess he must have smelled that fish! He's coming."
"Ken?" I exclaimed. "How do you know?"
"Our call which we invented, out at Shinnecock, on Long Island, last fall,—the goose call repeated four times, answered by the duck call, repealed back four times—Ken's idea."
"Hi! Uncle Craig! Hello, Mr. Jameson! Just in time for the eats!"
Ken trudged out of the shadows of the underbrush of the trail around the lake and stood within the circle of the fire.
"Do they know where you are?" asked Craig, severely, thinking of the discipline of Camp Cohonk.
Ken looked shrewdly at us. "You bet! I asked permission of the scout master, showed him your postal as soon as I saw that smudge burning out there on the lake. He gave me permission to hike down here."
"We were going to look you up the first thing in the morning."
"That's all right. But I had something on my mind and I just had to get to you to tell you."
"What is it?"
"Oh, something last night, and the night before. You see, Uncle Craig, it was strange. We were hiking up the trail to Mount Calm, Rudie Lobo, Bee Thomas, and myself, with one of the scout masters—McClenahan. We were all dead tired with our camp duffle when we came to the other lake, over Cobble Hill.
"Well, that first night when we were all supposed to be asleep so that we could make an early start in the morning to get up Mount Calm and back again in a day, somehow I couldn't sleep. I heard a noise, noises. Any sound in the woods at night seems to me so much more important than the same sound in the daytime, anyhow. It seemed along the old logging trail that runs down the valley between Cobble and the foothills of Mount Calm. Tramp, tramp, tramp, as of feet.
"It startled me. There weren't supposed to be any men in that region except guides. I thought of our camp supplies and kept awake, watching. Then I began to think of all the ghost stories I had ever heard. Maybe it was the feet of the lumberjacks who had died and come back years after they cut over the sides of Cobble! That was worse! Then I thought I was dreaming. But, no; it kept up. At last it died away and I went to sleep.
"The others slept like rocks, never heard a sound. At least they didn't talk about it next morning, even. So I kept quiet."
"Did you ever find out what it was?"
"Just wait. It was the strangest thing. Of course the next night after we made the top and got back, we camped on the same site. Well, about midnight or one o'clock I was awake again. I heard the same tramp, tramp, tramp. I told myself that they were surely real feet, not spirits of loggers come back, making these sounds down the old logging road. I looked around again in our camp and saw that everything was safe. I tell you I began to feel spooky, though. But I overcame that. I said to myself, 'No, there's nothing to be afraid of in the dark.' Yet I was afraid of almost every shadow.
"Wall, then I began to scold myself for being a coward. So, just to prove to myself that I wasn't, I determined to investigate. Carefully I made for the direction from which those sounds seemed to come. It was as I thought, the old logging road. Every minute they were getting closer and more distinct. And, once, I must have disturbed some little annual that I couldn't see in the dark. Glad it wasn't a wild cat or anything like that! You see, I was crouching, with my ear to the ground, to see if I could catch it any better, Indian fashion. Well—ugh I—I could have shouted out. That furry little thing brushed my face and darted away in the dark! I didn't get anything....
"Finally I heard voices, low and indistinct. I crept still nearer the logging road. Then I made out the voice of one man I had heard before. It was old Mike, Michel, a half-breed guide for whom no one around here seems to have any use. He had been down at Camp Cohonk, looking for work, but we were warned against him. A bad character, they said, though no one seemed to know anything especial about him. Just a general suspicion.
"Now I was near enough to see. I kept back of a tree in case anyone should swing a light toward me. There, before me, was a long line of men passing, in deep silence, about a dozen of them, single file. I kept quiet.
"Things didn't seem right, Uncle Craig. There was something sinister about it. The faces of the men were evil, the kind you used to see in the picture serials. And their baggage was light. Some didn't have anything at all. Worse than that, they were all armed, as if they were ready for a fight. They passed down to the south. Then I beat it back to our camp. I knew you were about due here and I haven't told a soul, except you. But I thought you might want to find out about it. You ought to."
"Ken," I laughed, "what's the matter with you? You manage to find us a job on every vacation we take."
"Well, if you will go where I am, you must be prepared for what happens!" he laughed.
"But it's reached a point," said Craig, with mock solemnity, "that I feel it is necessary to follow you up. You have such an uncanny faculty for falling into crimes!"
"Almost as great as your Uncle Craig's for solving them," I put in. "Are you sure, Ken, you weren't seeing things at night?"
"I might have thought I was dreaming, Mr. Jameson," persisted Ken earnestly. "But I recognized another of them, too, at the head—Jean Baptiste, the old guide who lives in a cabin over on the other side of Cobble from our camp. Mike was about in the middle of the line. In the rear was another they call Jacques.... Some with packs, others with nothing," repeated Ken, reminiscently, "but all armed. It made me think of the old days, with the Iroquois or whatever the Indians were up here. I must look that up."
"It makes me think of the old days and the 'underground,'" observed Craig.
"What was that?"
"You remember about John Brown?"
"Yes."
"Not many miles south of us is his grave on his old farm at North Elba, near Lake Placid. He used to hide runaway slaves on their way to freedom in Canada. They called it the underground railroad. Only this is the reverse. Those men seem to be coming from Canada, not going to it."
"Oh, there's another thing, Uncle Craig. There's a boy, Bub, whom the guide, Jean Baptiste, has. I don't know his name. Baptiste, I suppose, or something. Everybody calls him Bub. Bub often hangs about Camp Cohonk. He makes fun of us, in a way, says we are all tenderfeet yet, and Heaven knows I'm a first-class Scout. But he says we may know a lot of book stuff about camping, but they don't do that new-fangled stuff here in those woods. Oh, he makes you mad! He is a dub!"
"Lives with this old guide?"
"Yes; and hangs about the camp."
"Well, you hang about Bub a little bit. Maybe you'll learn something. Now, Ken, it's getting late. You had your fish. We're all tired, well fed. You'd better be going back to Cohonk, or you'll be AWOL!"
"All right. So long. I'll let you know about Bub."
And he plunged back along the trail. Five minutes later I heard over the lake from the point, "Onkee—onkee—onkee—ONKEE!"
"You get under a blanket!" shouted back Craig through the echoes. "Quack—quack—quack—QUACK!"
"Rum-running afoot?" I suggested, as the obvious possibility to explain Ken's queer experience.
"But Ken says their packs were light," replied Craig, preparing to turn in. "Some didn't seem to have anything at all."
OUR activities the next day had been planned for lake, woods,
and the trout streams. However, we started with a visit to Ken at
his camp with the other boys. I noticed afterwards that Craig
succeeded in changing our guide's plans a bit.
It seemed that the logging road led over a divide to the Little Clear River which flowed north. We fished the Little Clear with some success where it was a comparatively small stream, and learned from our guide that a few miles beyond it met the Cohanock, that beyond that were the rapids then Cohanock Chasm, almost a miniature canon. It was still in those days a rather wild country up in that part of the north woods of New York, not far from the Canadian border, and this was all along a now little-used trail, to a sparsely settled part of the province of Quebec.
Our tramping, the air out-of-doors in this wonderful altitude, made me tired, sleepy at night. As I lolled in the firelight I saw that Craig was restless.
"You're not wanting to get back to the laboratory, I hope, so soon?"
"No, I'm thinking about Ken. Ken can't be quiet. I'd better get over to Camp Cohonk and look, I think. Otherwise I'll get no sleep."
"What's this—a hunch?"
"Maybe. We'll see."
THROUGH the quiet of the night we followed the trail to Camp Cohonk. After we started I liked it. I began to feel the spirit of the night.
We came at last a few yards from the row of tents and shacks. Everyone was sleeping.
"If there's anything out of the way, we'd better go about it quietly," cautioned Craig. "I don't want to get Ken in bad."
"You think he's out, don't you?" I smiled.
Craig did not answer. It was moonlight now and beautiful. Keeping me in the shadows, Kennedy skirted the clearing and came around back of Ken's tent as he had showed it to us when we visited him that morning. "Stay here in this shadow. I'll look."
Noiselessly Craig crossed. He raised the canvas flap and peered in at an empty bunk—Ken's bunk. Craig had been right. The lure had been too much. Ken had gone out of bounds. He slipped back quietly and told me.
"I'm worried about the boy, Walter," he said. "We must, hunt him up. It's pretty late already."
Kennedy chose to follow the trail toward the cabin of Jean Baptiste on the side of Cobble. Ken had told us about the boy Bub, and showed us the trail that morning.
Craig could not conceal his anxiety from me as we hurried along carefully, fearful of losing the trail, yet unwilling to miss anything that might lie along it. Suddenly Craig stopped short. We must have gone about three miles. Ahead of us through the trees we could make out a shadowy bulk, several shadowy bulks. We crept closer. They were some dilapidated shacks of an old logging camp.
It wasn't easy to creep up, either. If any one in them was aroused we might be filled with lead. We made good targets. But finally with care and caution we were within a few feet of them, behind some brush.
"What's that?"
I heard a distinct sound, a sort of gurgling, it seemed. Was it some one in distress—or one of those tough woodsmen snoring? Then there was a noise as of a body turning over and over on dry leaves and twigs. It was no one sleeping.
"I'm going to find out," whispered Craig.
He stepped out into the moonlight softly toward an old window in the back of the shack, then beckoned me.
I could see through the window a door open on the front. Lying in the moonpath as the light filtered through the unhinged door was the form of a boy. I couldn't see his face. But one thing I did know. He was bound and gagged and struggling.
Craig waited for no more. He drew his gat and made for the door. I followed with my own automatic ready, too.
"Shine your flash about, Walter," whispered Craig. "See if there's anyone else here."
I did, gingerly. But there was no one. The light rested on the face of Ken, looking up at us with glad eyes.
"First time I ever saw you quiet, Ken!" laughed Craig, nervously unfastening the gag. "When will you learn that danger comes from breaking rules? You are out of bounds." He pulled Ken to his feet, prepared to go on with the lecture.
Ken raised his hands. "No, no, Uncle Craig. I know you're right. But let's beat it. They might be along again—might kill us. Let's get back. I'll tell you. You can scold me. I deserve it."
There was no resisting Ken's contrition. I for one was perfectly willing to take Ken's suggestion, too. I had no idea of being shot down from the shadows in an unsavory ruined camp for something I knew nothing about.
"What were you up to?" resumed Craig as we hit the trail back.
"I wanted to find out more about that tramping at night, what it was all about. I came along, thought this was a good place to watch. But I guess some one saw me in the moonlight. I was crouching, listening in a place I thought was good, when something hit me from behind. I fell. I didn't know anything for a minute. When I came to I was in the dark in that shack, bound and gagged."
"Well, what good did it do? What did you learn?"
"N-not much." admitted Ken reluctantly. "But I heard something mighty strange."
"What?"
"Two men were talking outside. I couldn't tell who they were. One sounded like that Jean Baptiste."
"Are you sure?"
"No-no. Not exactly."
"Well, what did they say?"
"One of them growled: 'What'd I tell ya? That's because o' that boy Bub. Why is he kept here when we're on this job? He draws the boys from that there camp. Suppos'n they get on? Then what?' The other fellow said: 'I'll shut him up. I can do it. You see. He won't get us into no trouble.'"
"But," I put in, "I can't see that that throws any light on the mystery of this Bub."
"But what do you suppose they are doing, Uncle Craig?"
Kennedy said nothing. I had been thinking of some things we had come up into the border woods prepared to see.
"Rum-running, Mr. Kennedy?" I asked, with half a laugh.
"Man-running, Mr. Jameson!" returned Craig in the tone of a comedian. "They're running men over the border, breaking the immigration law. That must be it. They're runners of men!"
For several hundred yards Craig launched into a lecture deploring the growing decay of respect for law both on the border and elsewhere.
At last we came to the camp lying still and white in the moonlight on the shore of the lake which was misting.
"We'll get them yet!" resolved Ken.
"You better get back to that bunk!" retorted Craig. "This once I'll not peach on you, Ken. It ought to be a lesson. Be careful!"
THE next day Craig managed to find something for Boisvert to
do that took us this time near the hut of Jean Baptiste. It was a
squalid cabin of logs.
"I think I'll explore it," I called, starting forward, a little distance from the others.
I had not gone fifty feet along a well-worn trail when I heard a shot. A bullet clipped the leaves just over my head. It seemed to come from nowhere, at least not from the cabin. I saw Craig and the guide slip behind trees. I did the same. And it was some time before I dared slip from tree to tree to rejoin them. I don't know why. I might have been exposed to the concealed sharpshooter all the time.
"What was that for, do you suppose?" I asked, breathlessly.
"For? A good hint! Besides, that's his castle. Have you a search warrant, Walter? Just what is your standing in this case?"
I do not know whether Craig was laughing at me or not. "But he trussed up Ken last night."
"Do you know that? Ken didn't."
"But he hasn't any right to shoot—"
"Well, go ahead on in!"
"I—I think we'll wait," I reconsidered. "Maybe it would be better if we knew exactly what we're after. At any rate, some one's vigilant, on guard."
WE went about our business and were not molested as long as we
tramped and fished. Late in the afternoon we worked around to the
lake again and came upon Ken at the camp. He saw us and ran
forward to meet us.
"Uncle Craig, there's something mighty strange about that boy Bub. I got a picture of him with my kodak. Here it is, developed and printed."
Kennedy studied the face of a freckled, tattered kid, with a squint and a ready smile. Ken was bursting to talk.
"I was on a hike this morning and I ran across him again on the trail. 'Where yer goin'?' he called. 'Just following this trail to the top of Cobble,' I said. 'Come along?' He came along. You can't help but like him when he smiles. He's a pretty decent sort of chap, after all. We hiked along and he showed me lots of things I didn't know before.
"Finally we came to a spring, sat down on the rocks to rest. Do you know what, he said? 'Gee! I wisht I c'u'd talk like you, Ken! I go ter say somethin'—but I says it different. And then there's other things. Say, if I was only like you, I'd run away. But I ain't.' I asked him why he'd run away. Bub shut up like a clam. He can be close-mouthed—afraid, too."
"How's that?" asked Kennedy.
"Why, down in the glen a state trooper went by leading a horse. I wanted to talk to him. But Bub wanted to run. Then when I asked him why, he said he was afraid he'd get licked. He didn't mean by the trooper, either. I told him I knew all the oops around where we live in the city. That struck him as funny. But I thought it was funny for a kid not wanting to know them and be in with them.
"There are things about Bub that are naturally like these people up here. But he doesn't look like them. He swears sometimes. But he is better than they are. Now, for instance. Once he asked me, 'Do you see things when you're asleep?' I told him I did. Then he started to tell me his dreams, in his way, of course."
Kennedy turned quickly to Ken. He did not say anything, but I knew his own keen interest in the new dream theories and how often he had used in his cases the new science called psychoanalysis, the study of something in us called our subconscious self which is revealed by our dreams.
"He said he often had a hazy dream of a pretty lady and another woman—not like any he had ever seen up here in the mountains. They were always so nice to him. And he said he dreams of a room with sunshine and lots of things to play with, pretty things. But that, was all. Do you know, I don't believe that guide is his father? Please hold back a little, Uncle Craig, if you've started anything. We'll get them all yet, these man-runners. But first let's get the straight of this hoy Bub."
Craig thought a long time, eying Ken with a certain respect. "Are they dreams?" Craig repeated. "I don't believe so, really, Ken; that is, in the ordinary sense." He stopped a moment. "No, I believe they are really just faint recollections of what he saw when he was two or three years old, before he was carried off up here." Kennedy was looking closely at the snapshot Ken had taken. He put it carefully in his wallet and turned to me. "I'm going down to Utica to-night, Walter, where I can look up something."
THE next afternoon as he got off the crazy, rattletrap train
that swayed along the narrow-gauge road, I saw that he was not
alone. With him was a rather distinguished-looking old man.
"Walter," Craig introduced, "I want you to meet Mr. Larkin of the Larkin Electrical Works, in Utica."
We walked over to the little, hotel first. "You see," explained Craig, "as Ken was talking and we were looking at that snapshot, I suddenly recollected that it was about ten or eleven years ago that that little Jimmie Larkin case filled the papers. Don't you recall? He was the son of Lawrence Larkin, who had been the heir to Elisha Larkin, the owner of the big Larkin electrical plant, the Larkin Electric, the new storage-battery car? You remember Larry Larkin had been killed in an automobile accident? Well, that made little Jimmie Larkin the heir to the Larkin plant and estate. Up there they used to call him the millionaire baby. You must remember."
The old man's eyes gleamed keenly under bushy brows. "He has the Larkin forehead and the Larkin nose, in that picture."
"Oh yes," I recalled. "He was kidnapped on the street and held for a reward. Then when Mr. Larkin said he would pay it, the crooks were afraid to come and get it. Wasn't that it?"
"Yes. It was a case where the police were too good, too much on the job, too vigilant. Mr. Larkin moved heaven and earth to get Jimmie. But Jimmie Larkin was never returned. It was set down as another of the unsolved mysteries. The shock and the grieving killed Jimmie's mother."
"You see," put in Larkin, "the alarm was so general and feeling ran so high that the gang that stole Jimmie were afraid to collect. If they tried and got caught, they might be lynched. They were afraid to send Jimmie back, too, afraid to abandon him."
"So," added Craig, "when Ken was telling about those dreams and the boy being taught to be afraid of the state troopers, I asked myself, Were they dreams altogether? I came to the conclusion that they were really faint recollections of what he had seen when he was about three years old, that the women were his mother and his nurse! You see, this was my dope. They had just fled deeper into these north woods. It was one of those few cases where the kidnappers didn't kill the boy."
"But, the boy must have led a horrible life," nodded old Mr. Larkin. "Mr. Jameson, my grandson disappeared so many years ago, I had just about given up. For years I haven't had a clue worth following. Now Mr. Kennedy says I mustn't be too sure. The disappointment would be too keen. I'm growing old alone." He turned his head to hide his feelings. "Think of having a boy of fourteen to educate and tram up in the business!... Everything I have loved has been taken away. Just give him back to me!"
KENNEDY at least had a complete story, so far. The boy's
father was dead. His mother had been killed by the shock.
With much emotion Larkin displayed an old, time-worn paper. Scrawled on it was a demand on Larkin for ten thousand dollars. I studied it. The writer was quite uneducated.
Put $10,000 in the vase on the grave of Lawrence Larkin and you will fine the boy in the railroad station. Give you untill Saterday night.
As I looked it over I noticed three mistakes of spelling in it, "fine" for find, "untill" with two l's, and "Saterday."
Craig got in touch by telephone with the federal agents and the state troopers. Elisha Larkin's name was magic up here. Craig insisted on secrecy. It was determined to close in on them from all sides the next day.
Late as it was, Larkin insisted on pushing on to the camp. He wanted to talk to Ken. At Cohonk, Ken was perfectly ready to talk.
"While you were gone, Uncle Craig, I walked down the trail and I met Bub again. But who should come along, as if looking for Bub, but old Jean Baptiste himself. He had a thick cane and was just bringing it down on my head when Bub pushed me and it fell on him. He yelled for me to beat it to camp, as he jumped. It must have knocked Bub out because I didn't hear him when I ran. Baptiste chased me nearly a mile, but I can run."
LARKIN could scarcely wait until morning. But early the next
day we got under way—Kennedy, Larkin, Boisvert and I, with
Ken, and a few of the older boys and two scout masters.
As we came to the ramshackle shack, warned by my experience the other day, we made a careful approach, surrounding it first. As we closed on it, there was not a sound. Then I saw that the door was open. Inside everything was in disorder. It was deserted!
It was a bitter blow to the old grandfather. He had expected so much. And at once this new clue ended in disappointment. But there was some consolation. The boy had been there only recently. He must be still alive.
Kennedy rejoined us in a few minutes. "Mr. Larkin," he said, "over the Cohanock trail, which they've taken, is no small undertaking for any of us. It's seldom traveled now. It means hard work, maybe actual hardship and some danger. That's the reason these people took it. There were three of them, apparently, besides the boy."
The old man's black eyes snapped under the bushy gray brows. Every feature expressed determination. "Kennedy, I have waited years for a clue to find that boy. Do you think it is any harder for me to hunt for him to save him from that half-breed than it was for his mother who died waiting to hear something about him? I've worked hard all my life. I'm an old man. But I've always taken care of myself. Go on. I say. Let's hurry. Leave word where we're going. But hurry!"
Kennedy selected Boisvert, who knew the trail, Larkin, and myself. The others he decided to send back.
"Oh, but, Uncle Craig, mayn't I go?" asked Ken, earnestly. "I can shoot, go down the rapids, do anything for a kid who'll take a blow on the head like that to save me. Bub's a brick, Mr. Larkin."
"Take him along, Kennedy," urged the old man. "We may need the lad. Who knows? It's only fair. He gave the tip!" Larkin patted Ken's shoulder affectionately.
WE started off single file, Boisvert leading. He soon deviated
on a short cut he knew. It grew more and more difficult as we
went up, up, up, to get over the divide by the shortest route. As
far as I could make out we were on a treacherous trail that
zigzagged along over deep precipices. Again and again we seemed
skirting only a couple of feet from death, always going forward
and up.
We came at last to where our short cut brought us on the trail the others had taken.
"Keep alert!" shouted Craig.
The trail became clearer now. Suddenly as it bent, there, sticking in a tree, was an old jack-knife.
"It's Bub's!" shouted Ken. "I gave him a Scout knife the other day. He left this to let me know. He must have stuck it here, with the other blade pointing a direction, when no one was looking!"
Ken thoughtfully gave it to Larkin. Larkin had been almost exhausted, but that old knife seemed to give him new life.
We went forward for some hours now, Boisvert pointing out to us now and then footprints, foliage disturbed, twigs broken, any little evidence of the recent passage of several people along the trail.
"Three of them," he kept repeating—"three and the boy."
"We must be getting up to them," encouraged Craig, trying to make out how recent the marks might be.
"I'm glad of that," called back Larkin. "I've a whole factory of electric automobiles—and not one of them would do me a bit of good on this trail." He stopped, mopped his brow with his handkerchief, then plodded on doggedly. Ken dropped back. I thought it was a splendid sight to see the boy so thoughtful of the old man, and I know by their confidences how Larkin appreciated it.
Now we had come to the down trail. We could make out where some one had slid for several feet. It was along a sheet of rock, a thousand sheer feet of it which gave the name of Grayface to it.
Another hour's work and we were rewarded by seeing the Little Clear River and then its junction with the larger Cohanock, flowing gently enough now, with no hint as to its wild turbulence in the rapids a few miles ahead.
At the junction the guide stopped. "You stay here," nodded Boisvert in his best English. "I get canoe which I have up in woods."
Ken was happy as we paused. Craig had passed him an automatic, saying: "You may need it, boy. They're vicious men we're trailing. Don't use it unless you have to. Be careful of that ratchet, too."
"Leave them to me." Larkin tapped his own gat.
"No, leave them to the law if you can," corrected Craig. "I expect the state troopers to be along, overtake us, any time now."
"I can't help it, Kennedy," Mr. Larkin apologized. "I wouldn't want to kill anybody. But when I think of that boy and his mother, I see red. Oh, if we only had him!"
BOISVERT'S canoe was a good one, but a little crowded, with
four of us and Ken in it. Paddling downstream we could hear a
rumbling, roaring sound. I looked about at Boisvert.
"The rapids," was all he said.
Then I noticed the current getting stronger. "Sure you can do it?" I asked, apprehensively.
He nodded. "We leave quick, alongside. The falls come next. No man makes that. But I know where pick up trail!"
I had no chance to object. We were swirling through the rapids, the guide deftly guiding through the churning waters. It lasted only a few minutes and he shot us into a sort of eddy in the current toward shore.
It had been some experience. Even Ken was silent. Larkin was a study. He had not enjoyed it. But he was determined to slick through anything to find Bub.
Just then we heard some one on the trail down the edge of the falls, two state troopers who had been working all day to overtake us.
Following the troopers, we picked up the trail, and they climbed at one place to a height, alongside it. A few minutes and they were back.
"About two miles, there's a thin line of smoke that mushrooms out. They're stopping!"
On we went. It was now twilight. As we approached the spot where the troopers had seen the line of smoke ascending, we spread out. Ken kept with Craig, and the six of us now surrounded the camp.
Closing in, we could see Michel, Jacques, and Jean Baptiste about the fire. Hobbled now was Bub, huddled in a heap and forlorn. Baptiste was in the act of helping himself to something out of a pan when a shot from Kennedy sent the pan spinning out of his hands.
"Throw your guns on the ground!" shouted the troopers at Craig's signal.
We closed in now, six to three.
"Ken, unbind Bub!" ordered Craig, keeping the nearest man covered, still.
"That was a mean one, Bub; I saw it," cried Ken. "A mucker trick, eating with you tied up!"
The troopers produced two pairs of bracelets. It was not long before Michel and Jacques were like Siamese twins. They put one pair on Jean Baptiste as an exclusive honor.
"It's about three miles to the headquarters of the federal agents," nodded one of the troopers. "Then we'll turn you all over. Well, that means the break-up of the illegal traffic in men over the border, anyway, Baptiste. We've been suspecting some one of it some time. These kids 'll hang it on you, all right!"
"I'll hang him!" Larkin was inclined to be a fire-eater when he was angered. "It's not man-running I want him for. It's kidnapping!"
Jean Baptiste was surly. "I did not carry anyone off. That's not your boy. I was not in that gang!"
Kennedy said nothing. He removed three pages from his loose-leaf notebook, made the three prisoners sit down again in the firelight, then among us we mustered three pencils which he distributed with the blank pages to Michel, Jean Baptiste, and Jacques.
"Write!" he said sharply, fingering his automatic.
I saw he was holding in his other hand the time-worn paper Elisha Larkin had showed me the night before. He read slowly the old message of threat:
"Put $10,000 in the vase on the grave of Lawrence Larkin and you will find the boy in the railroad station. Give you until Saturday night."
They wrote under the nose of the blue steel of the automatic, wrote with difficulty, with moving of lips and sticking out of tongues at the unfamiliar job. Craig took the three papers, held them under the firelight.
"Humph!" he said.
I bent over. On one I saw three words at least misspelled—"fine," "untill," "Saterday."
"None of you will ever receive degrees," Craig remarked, "whatever else you receive! You have all made mistakes. But the same three mistakes in the original threat message you wrote appear in this one written now.... You have not improved in eleven years, in morals any more than in spelling, Jean Baptiste!"
OLD Mr. Larkin could hardly restrain himself. It seemed too
good to be true as he watched the two boys together. But Craig
had warned him not to start anything too suddenly with Bub. It
would be better to lead up to it, to make sure.
"Come over here, Bub," nodded Craig, kindly. "I have some pictures to show you."
The boy came over, still alert. Was this a trooper game, or something?
"I hear you have some wonderful dreams. Ken told me about them. Do you think you'll have any to-night?"
"I hope so. Those dreams were the only happy times I had until Ken came up to camp."
"Did you ever see that woman?" Craig held a picture out where the firelight played on it.
The boy leaned over. An incredulous look came over his face. He whispered, "The face in my dreams!" Eyes alight, he put his hand out to touch it. "The only face I ever see of a woman who is a lady—my dream face!" He clutched the picture.
"And this one, Bub?"
"It is the other woman!"
"That was your nurse, boy, when you were little more than a baby, before you were stolen by this man."
"Who is the other, this one, the one who smiles so?" There was a wistfulness in Bub's tone.
"Your mother, Bub!" It was old Mr. Larkin who answered, unable to keep silent longer. "Grace Larkin. My little boy married her and you—you are my little boy now!"
Bub regarded the kindly face of the old man a moment. Then a fleeting look of the old fear and distrust came. "You sure? Have I got folks, like Ken talks about? No fake?"
Tears gathered in the eyes of the old man. He put his arm about the boy. "But, the lady with the beautiful smile has gone. She couldn't live without you. But your old grandfather is alive, alive to love you, to remember her and his own little boy!" His head was close to Bub's and the emotion of the old man seemed to stir us all except the three hardened ones on the other side of the fire.
"G-grandfather," repeated Bub, as if to get used to an unfamiliar word. It did not seem difficult. He looked up trustingly into the kindly eyes under the bushy gray brows. It all seemed so different from the harsh looks, the blows to which he had grown accustomed. He looked the tall, spare, distinguished figure all over with a boy's frank, appraising curiosity. Evidently it satisfied him. He took the old man's hand.
"Jimmie!" was all that Larkin could say.
Bub turned to Ken. There was already an air of conscious pride in his manner. "Ain't my grandfather some man, Ken?" We laughed and Grandfather Larkin drew the boy closer. "Gee! What a summer! I never had nothin'. Now I got a grandfather and a pal like Ken!"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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