Part 21

"Right now," replied Blackstock cheerfully, "soon as ye kin git guns and stuff some crackers an' cheese into yer pockets. I'll want you to come along, MacDonald, an' you, Long, an' Saunders, an' Big Andy, as my posse. Meet me in fifteen minutes at the store an' I'll hev Zeb Smith swear ye in for the job. If Black Dan wants to do any shootin', it's jest as well to hev every thin' regular."

There were not a few others among the mill-hands and the villagers who had lost by Black Dan's cunning pilferings, and who would gladly have joined in the hunt. In the backwoods not even a murderer--unless his victim has been a woman or a child--is hunted down with so much zest as a thief. But the Deputy did not like too much volunteer assistance, and was apt to suppress it with scant ceremony. So his choice of a posse was accepted without protest or comment, and the chosen four slipped off to get their guns.

As Tug Blackstock had foreseen, the trail of the fugitive was easily picked up. Confident in his powers as a runaway, Black Dan's sole object, at first, had been to gain as much lead as possible over the expected pursuit, and he had run straight ahead, leaving a trail which any one of Blackstock's posse--with the exception, perhaps, of Big Andy--could have followed with almost the speed and precision of the Deputy himself.

There had been no attempt at concealment. About five miles back, however, in the heavy woods beyond the head of the Lake, it appeared that the fugitive had dropped into a walk and begun to go more circumspectly. The trail now grew so obscure that the other woodsmen would have had difficulty in deciphering it at all, and they were amazed at the ease and confidence with which Blackstock followed it up, hardly diminishing his stride.

"Tug is sure some trailer," commented Jackson, his good humour now quite restored by the progress they were making.

"Jim couldn't 'a' done no better himself," declared Big Andy, the Oromocto man.

And just then Blackstock came abruptly to a halt, and held up his hand for his followers to stop.

"Steady, boys. Stop right where ye are, an' don't step out o' yer tracks," he commanded.

The four stood rigid, and began searching the ground all about them with keen, initiated eyes.

"Oh, I've got him, so fur, all right," continued Blackstock, pointing to a particularly clear and heavy impression of a boot-sole close behind his own feet. "But here it stops. It don't appear to go any further."

He knelt down to examine the footprint.

"P'raps he's doubled back on his tracks, to throw us off," suggested Saunders, who was himself an expert on the trails of all the wild creatures.

"No," replied Blackstock, "I've watched out for that sharp."

"P'raps he's give a big jump to one side or t'other, to break his trail," said MacDonald.

"No," said Blackstock with decision, "nor that neither, Mac. This here print is even. Ef he'd jumped to one side or the other, it would be dug in on that side, and ef he'd jumped forrard, it would be hard down at the toe. It fair beats me!"

Stepping carefully, foot by foot, he examined the ground minutely over a half circle of a dozen yards to his front. He sent out his followers--all but Big Andy, who, being no trailer, was bidden to stand fast--to either side and to the rear, crawling like ferrets and interrogating every grass tuft, in vain. The trail had simply stopped with that one footprint. It was as if Black Dan had dissolved into a miasma, and floated off.

At last Blackstock called the party in, and around the solitary footprint they all sat down and smoked. One after another they made suggestions, but each suggestion had its futility revealed and sealed by a stony stare from Blackstock, and was no more befriended by its author.

At last Blackstock rose to his feet, and gave a hitch to his belt.

"I don't mind tellin' ye, boys," said he, "it beats me fair. But one thing's plain enough, Black Dan ain't here, an' he ain't likely to come here lookin' for us. Spread out now, an' we'll work on ahead, an' see ef we can't pick up somethin'. You, Big Andy, you keep right along behind me. There's an explanation to everything--an' we'll find this out afore along, or my name's Dinnis."

Over the next three or four hundred yards, however, nothing of significance was discovered by any of the party. Then, breaking through a dense screen of branches, Blackstock came upon the face of a rocky knoll, so steep, at that point, that hands and feet together would be needed to climb it. Casting his eyes upwards, he saw what looked like the entrance to a little cave.

A whistle brought the rest of the party to his side. A cave always holds possibilities, if nothing else. Blackstock spread his men out again, at intervals of three or four paces, and all went cautiously up the steep, converging on the entrance. Blackstock, in the centre, shielding himself behind a knob of rock, peered in.

The place was empty. It was hardly a cave, indeed, being little more than a shallow recess beneath an overhanging ledge. But it was well sheltered by a great branch which stretched upwards across the opening. Blackstock sniffed critically.

"A bear's den," he announced, stepping in and scrutinizing the floor.

The floor was naked rock, scantily littered with dead leaves and twigs. These, Blackstock concluded, had been recently disturbed, but he could find no clue to what had disturbed them. From the further side, however--to Blackstock's right--a palpable trail, worn clear of moss and herbage, led off by a narrow ledge across the face of the knoll. Half a dozen paces further on the rock ended in a stretch of stiff soil. Here the trail declared itself. It was unmistakably that of a bear, and unmistakably, also, a fresh trail.

Waving the rest to stop where they were, Blackstock followed the clear trail down from the knoll, and for a couple of hundred yards along the level, going very slowly, and searching it hawk-eyed for some sign other than that of bear. At length he returned, looking slightly crestfallen.

"Nawthin' at all but bear," he announced in an injured voice. "But that bear seems to have been in a bit of a hurry, as if he was gittin' out o' somebody's way--Black Dan's way, it's dollars to doughnuts. But where was Black Dan, that's what I want to know?"

"Ef you don't know, Tug," said MacDonald, "who kin know?"

"Jim!" said the Deputy, rubbing his lean chin and biting off a big "chaw" of "black-jack."