Lost in the Air Part 4

"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?"

"I am coming to that," smiled his host. "Early that spring," he continued, pa.s.sing his hand across his forehead, as if to brush away the memory of that terrible winter, "the Indians came. They came from the Dismal Lake region. Driven south by forest fires, they were starving. I had a little caribou meat and shared it with them; that made them my everlasting friends."

"And you got the wheat from them?" interposed Barney.

"Hardly. I doubt if they had ever seen a grain of wheat.

"Well, we lived together that summer. But I am getting ahead of my story.

Shortly before they arrived, I noticed some strange-looking caribou in the clearing. I had no ammunition, so could not shoot them. Anyway, they were skin-poor and would be of little use to me. But they seemed strangely tame, coming close to my cabin at night. They were company, and I was careful not to frighten them away. One night, in the moonlight, I caught a glistening flash from the ear of the oldest doe. Then, too, I noticed that one of them had unnaturally short antlers. A closer look told me that these antlers had been cut off.

"Then came the wonderful discovery: these were not caribou, but reindeer escaped from some herd in Alaska.

"Right then I decided to capture and use them. I would put them in pound until their rightful owners came for them, which would be never." He smiled.

"Well, I tried making a la.s.so of caribou skin. For a long time I could not come near enough to reach them with the la.s.so. But one night, while they rested, I crept up to them and my la.s.so caught one by the antlers.

Then there was a battle, and all the while I was thinking that now I should have milk, b.u.t.ter and cheese, meat and clothing. And then there was a snap; the skin-rope broke and away went the reindeer--and my hopes.

"I then hit on the plan of building a corral and driving them into it.

This was a pretty big job for one man, but with trees lining both sides of a narrow run, where the deer went to drink, I managed to weave willow branches into the spruce trees and make a stout barrier. Well--one morning, I found myself with six reindeer in pound--a bull, three does, a yearling and an old sled-deer. Not long after, the herd was increased by four fawns.

"By good luck, just at this time, the Indians came. They were all for killing the reindeer, but I stopped that. We fed, as I said before, on my caribou meat, and then came the wild-fowl and the streams opened up for fis.h.i.+ng.

"It was fortunate that the Indians came. They helped me to build corrals, big enough to give the reindeer plenty of pasturage and pretty soon they were fat and sleek."

"Pardon me," interrupted the Major, "but were some of the reindeer white?"

"Two of them were milk-white. And now I have many of them running free in the forest."

Barney grinned, and Bruce poked him in the ribs. "My ghost," he whispered.

"The wheat," said the host, "was no great mystery, after all. The bank cas.h.i.+er had put into the money-sack two samples of wheat and one of beans which he wanted to have tried in this north country. I have tried them; with what luck, you can see. I don't need to fence my reindeer now, for in winter when the moss is buried deep under the snow I turn them in on stacks of wheat hay. Finally when the Indians went back North the following winter they left me a wife, as you see." He smiled toward his dusky mate, who was industriously scouring a copper griddle.

There was silence for some time. Then the Major spoke:

"The thing that interests me is how you manage to keep up your standards of neatness and cleanliness."

"It is not so hard," said Timmie. "I came of a good old Scotch family.

When I was a boy my mother taught me that 'cleanliness is next to G.o.dliness,' and I made up my mind that--well, that I would at least be clean. That was all there was left for me to be, you know."

"I think you may call yourself both," said the Major stoutly. "You have paid well for your mistake by twelve years of exile, and as for the money, we'll take that back with us."

Timmie smiled. "I'll be happy for the first time in twelve years when it's gone," he said.

"I say, Major," exclaimed Bruce, "I've been thinking of those white reindeer. Don't you suppose that solves the problem of Peary's white reindeer?"

There was a peculiar twinkle in the Major's eye, as he asked: "How do you make that out?"

"Well, there had been reindeer in Alaska for twenty-five years when Peary discovered his on the eastern coast of our continent. There are many white ones among the domestic herds, and they are constantly wandering away, or being driven away, by packs of wolves. If they wandered this far, might they not easily have gone on to the other side of the continent?"