The Popular Magazine/Volume 58/Number 4/The Implacable Friend/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV.
JOAN SINKS THE RED CANOE
One of the instructions which Bruce gave Ak Tuk the native carried out too literally. He was to “give the little package to young girl Joan early to-morrow morning.” Ak Tuk glued his eye to the cabin clock for a little over an hour till the hands read “one-thirty.” He felt that that was early!
He walked down the creek to the judge's cabin with the packet concealed in his spacious parka, and knocked softly on the window of Joan's room. The girl was on her bed, but she had not slept. She had only stared at the poles of the roof, every one of them most carefully peeled—for her, as she well knew—by Bruce Waring. She went to the window, drew aside the skirt she had pinned over it for a curtain, and beheld Ak Tuk, who thrust the packet under the sash when Joan raised it. She lit a candle, opened the package, glanced wonderingly at the deeds, and read Bruce Waring's note:
- Dear Joan: If you will let me call you Joan just once more, for old time's sake. Ticely and I have hit the overland trail, but we expect to be back. But if anything prevents, please record the location notices you stamped a while ago and record these deeds and tell the men. The ground may be worth something. Anyhow, the whole outfit we have is theirs. I've not eaten or used anything bought with their money. You will think we changed our minds pretty suddenly, and you will think even less of me. There are things I can't explain—and never can. But if I live, I'm coming back some time to Midas or wherever you and your father are.
- Good-by for now, little pal. Your friend,
- P. S. -Please burn this and say nothing. I know you'd do both, anyhow.
Joan crumpled it first and ground it under her heel—a futile procedure, for her foot was bare. Then, viciously, she tore it into bits and fed each separate piece to the candle flame. Her heart, heavy before, was broken now. Up to the end—in spite, even, of the damning evidence of the nudge and the drawn eyebrows—she had tried to believe that Bruce himself was the victim of his own loyalty to the masterful, persuasive Ticely. But to sneak out of the camp with him—Bruce who, himself, was not directly threatened, who had an excellent chance of reprieve! He was more cowardly than Ticely, whose very life she knew was in danger. And after his scornful repudiation of flight!
Tears of anger and despair filled her eyes, tears not so much of pity for him, so weak when he had seemed so buoyantly strong, but for herself, dreading as she did the sight of him ignominiously dragged back. Yes, dragged back! For how could they hope to elude capture on that overland trail? It might be a long chase, but they would be brought back—trust that lean, determined, cunning Collins for that. And she couldn't—she couldn't stand it! There was a way, perhaps, of helping them. The river!
She dressed hurriedly and stole out of the cabin to the creek. Hidden from the flat by the high banks of the channel, she made her way over the flanking gravel bars, dry now for a week, to the place where the boats were moored. She knew Ticely's fleet canoe. It was the only red one. A few days before, Bruce had taken her in it down the creek on a duck hunt. She shoved it into the water, drew it along to a deep hole, and piled rocks in it till it sank. From the brush of the opposite hillside, the Evaporated Kid, an early bird, starting out on a long hunt, saw her through a notch in the bank. He wondered why Joan Manners was loading a canoe with stones at two o'clock in the morning.
Four hours later, five men surrounded Ticely and Waring's cabin, while two more tapped on the door with the muzzles of their pistols. Then they pushed the door open—and found the cabin empty.
“Some of Manners' work, I guess,” said Collins venomously. “Now you see why he was so keen for us not to act hastily!”
They went back to the flat, where ten more men joined them outside the commissioner's building. Manners in his sleeping clothes let them in, and was curtly told the news.
“Gone?” he echoed, rubbing his eyes.
“Yes, 'gawn!'” echoed Redbank in sneering mimicry.
“And damn well you know it!” yelled Othmer in his high-pitched voice.
Manners was always irascible in the morning. He ran in his bare feet back to his bunk and returned to the door with a revolver, his face pale with rage.
“Say that again, you,” he gritted, “and I'll blow your ugly little head off.”
Joan heard it all. She was sitting on her bed, dressed. Seizing her pistol, she flung open the connecting door and crossed the office to her father's side.
“They're gone, you say?” she cried, looking Slim Jim Collins squarely in the eye.
“Yes,” he replied.
Manners, his choler vanishing with Joan's sudden appearance and strangely excited demeanor, put his hand on the arm that held her little revolver. She drew her arm away and turned stiffly toward her father.
“You're too easy, dad! What did you let them go for, you men?” she scolded. “Didn't you have sense enough to know that they knew what you were going to do? They've robbed us, dad, and—and all you think of is your old law!” She walked out among them—to Tholmes.
“Where did they go? Which way did they go?”
“We don't know yet, Miss Manners. Their cabin is empty, that's all.”
Joan knew that she must act quickly—else some one would suggest the horses.
“The river!” she cried. “That light, slender canoe of Ticely's—the red canoe! They'd figure it was the fastest craft we've got up here”
“But there's only two of them to paddle it,” put in Colwell. “Gimme an oar in a poling boat—gimme an oar!” He bared his giant arms.
Collins was cold. Joan's angry manner did not deceive him a moment. He thought her suggestion a futile shift of desperation for her lover—anything to gain time for him. But, perforce, he followed them all to the landing where, sure enough—the red canoe was gone!
“Look up and down,” directed Rosslyn. “She's doped it right, I guess.” And when the canoe was nowhere to be seen Collins himself was forced to admit that it was to be a downriver chase.
“Let's go with them, dad—the curs!” cried Joan imploringly to her father.
“We certainly will not,” refused Manners, “I'll have no hand in lawbreaking.”
With a man hunt before them, the Midas men were maniacs. Hurrying hither and thither after oars, paddles, supplies, guns, and hip boots, Manners and his daughter were forgotten, and the two returned to their big cabin.
“What's all this, Joan?” asked her father. She seemed no longer his little daughter, and unconsciously a note of respect tempered the severity of his tone.
“What is what?” she asked innocently.
“Putting aside the—eh, disrespect of your late remarks to me, why are you so keen to start them down the river after Waring—or Ticely and Waring, if you prefer?”
“Because I hate and despise a coward!” replied Joan vehemently.
Then she decided to trust him—she had never before deceived her father.
“And, besides” She flushed scarlet—“they didn't go down the river!”