Smoke Bellew

All the men examined Smoke’s rifle, ejecting and counting the cartridges, and examining the barrel at muzzle and breech.

“One shot,” Blackbeard concluded.

Pierre, with nostrils that quivered and distended like a deer’s, sniffed at the breech.

“Him one fresh shot,” he said.

“The bullet entered his back,” Smoke said. “He was facing me when he was shot. You see, it came from the other bank.”

Blackbeard considered this proposition for a scant second, and shook his head. “Nope. It won’t do. Turn him around to face the other bank – that’s how you whopped him in the back. Some of you boys run up an’ down the trail, and see if you can see any tracks making for the other bank.”

Their report was that on that side the snow was unbroken. Not even a snow-shoe rabbit had crossed it. Blackbeard, bending over the dead man, straightened up, with a woolly, furry wad in his hand. Shredding this, he found imbedded in the center the bullet which had perforated the body. Its nose was spread to the size of a half dollar, its butt-end, steel-jacketed, was undamaged. He compared it with a cartridge from Smoke’s belt.

“That’s plain enough evidence, stranger, to satisfy a blind man. It’s soft-nosed an’ steel-jacketed; yourn is soft-nosed and steel-jacketed. It’s thirty-thirty; yourn is thirty-thirty. It’s manufactured by the J. and T. Arms Company; yourn is manufactured by the J. and T. Arms Company. Now you come along, an’ we’ll go over to the bank an’ see jest how you done it.”

“I was bushwhacked myself,” Smoke said. “Look at the hole in my parka.”

While Blackbeard examined it, one of the voyageurs threw open the breech of the dead man’s gun. It was patent to all that it had been fired once. The empty cartridge was still in the chamber.

“A damn shame poor Joe didn’t get you,” Blackbeard said bitterly. “But he did pretty well with a hole like that in him. Come on, you.”

“Search the other bank first,” Smoke urged.

“You shut up an’ come on, an’ let the facts do the talkin’.”

They left the trail at the same spot he had, and followed it on up the bank and then in among the trees.

“Him dance that place keep him feet warm,” Louis pointed out. “That place him crawl on belly. That place him put one elbow w’en him shoot.”

“And by God there’s the empty cartridge he done it with!” was Blackbeard’s discovery. “Boys, there’s only one thing to do – ”

“You might ask me how I came to fire that shot,” Smoke interrupted.

“An’ I might knock your teeth into your gullet if you butt in again. You can answer them questions later on. Now, boys, we’re decent an’ law-abidin’, an’ we got to handle this right an’ regular. How far do you reckon we’ve come, Pierre?”

“Twenty mile, I t’ink for sure.”

“All right. We’ll cache the outfit an’ run him an’ poor Joe back to Two Cabins. I reckon we’ve seen an’ can testify to what’ll stretch his neck.”

It was three hours after dark when the dead man, Smoke, and his captors arrived at Two Cabins. By the starlight, Smoke could make out a dozen or more recently built cabins snuggling about a larger and older cabin on a flat by the river bank. Thrust inside this older cabin, he found it tenanted by a young giant of a man, his wife, and an old blind man. The woman, whom her husband called “Lucy,” was herself a strapping creature of the frontier type. The old man, as Smoke learned afterwards, had been a trapper on the Stewart for years, and had gone finally blind the winter before. The camp of Two Cabins, he was also to learn, had been made the previous fall by a dozen men who arrived in half as many poling-boats loaded with provisions. Here they had found the blind trapper, on the site of Two Cabins, and about his cabin they had built their own. Later arrivals, mushing up the ice with dog teams, had tripled the population. There was plenty of meat in camp, and good low-pay dirt had been discovered and was being worked.

In five minutes, all the men of Two Cabins were jammed into the room. Smoke, shoved off into a corner, ignored and scowled at, his hands and feet tied with thongs of moose-hide, looked on. Thirty-eight men he counted, a wild and husky crew, all frontiersmen of the States or voyageurs from Upper Canada. His captors told the tale over and over, each the center of an excited and wrathful group. There were mutterings of: “Lynch him now! Why wait?” And, once, a big Irishman was restrained only by force from rushing upon the helpless prisoner and giving him a beating.

It was while counting the men that Smoke caught sight of a familiar face. It was Breck, the man whose boat Smoke had run through the rapids. He wondered why the other did not come and speak to him, but himself gave no sign of recognition. Later, when with shielded face Breck passed him a significant wink, Smoke understood.

Blackbeard, whom Smoke heard called Eli Harding, ended the discussion as to whether or not the prisoner should be immediately lynched.

“Hold on,” Harding roared. “Keep your shirts on. That man belongs to me. I caught him an’ I brought him here. D’ye think I brought him all the way here to be lynched? Not on your life. I could ‘a’ done that myself when I found him. I brought him here for a fair an’ impartial trial, an’ by God, a fair an’ impartial trial he’s goin’ to get. He’s tied up safe an’ sound. Chuck him in a bunk till morning, an’ we’ll hold the trial right here.”

Smoke woke up. A draught that possessed all the rigidity of an icicle was boring into the front of his shoulders as he lay on his side facing the wall. When he had been tied into the bunk there had been no such draught, and now the outside air, driving into the heated atmosphere of the cabin with the pressure of fifty below zero, was sufficient advertizement that some one from without had pulled away the moss-chinking between the logs. He squirmed as far as his bonds would permit, then craned his neck forward until his lips just managed to reach the crack.

“Who is it?” he whispered.

“Breck,” came the almost inaudible answer. “Be careful you don’t make a noise. I’m going to pass a knife in to you.”

“No good,” Smoke said. “I couldn’t use it. My hands are tied behind me and made fast to the leg of the bunk. Besides, you couldn’t get a knife through that crack. But something must be done. Those fellows are of a temper to hang me, and, of course, you know I didn’t kill that man.”

“It wasn’t necessary to mention it, Smoke. And if you did you had your reasons. Which isn’t the point at all. I want to get you out of this. It’s a tough bunch of men here. You’ve seen them. They’re shut off from the world, and they make and enforce their own law – by miner’s meeting, you know. They handled two men already – both grub-thieves. One they hiked from camp without an ounce of grub and no matches. He made about forty miles and lasted a couple of days before he froze stiff. Two weeks ago they hiked the second man. They gave him his choice: no grub, or ten lashes for each day’s ration. He stood for forty lashes before he fainted. And now they’ve got you, and every last one is convinced you killed Kinade.”

“The man who killed Kinade shot at me, too. His bullet broke the skin on my shoulder. Get them to delay the trial till some one goes up and searches the bank where the murderer hid.”

“No use. They take the evidence of Harding and the five Frenchmen with him. Besides, they haven’t had a hanging yet, and they’re keen for it. You see, things have been pretty monotonous. They haven’t located anything big, and they got tired of hunting for Surprise Lake. They did some stampeding the first part of the winter, but they’ve got over that now. Scurvy is beginning to show up amongst them, too, and they’re just ripe for excitement.”

“And it looks like I’ll furnish it,” was Smoke’s comment. “Say, Breck, how did you ever fall in with such a God-forsaken bunch?”

“After I got the claims at Squaw Creek opened up and some men to working, I came up here by way of the Stewart, hunting for Two Cabins. They’d beaten me to it, so I’ve been higher up the Stewart. Just got back yesterday out of grub.”

“Find anything?”

“Nothing much. But I think I’ve got a hydraulic proposition that’ll work big when the country’s opened up. It’s that, or a gold-dredger.”

“Hold on,” Smoke interrupted. “Wait a minute. Let me think.”

He was very much aware of the snores of the sleepers as he pursued the idea that had flashed into his mind.

“Say, Breck, have they opened up the meat-packs my dogs carried?” he asked.

“A couple. I was watching. They put them in Harding’s cache.”

“Did they find anything?”

“Meat.”

“Good. You’ve got to get into the brown-canvas pack that’s patched with moose-hide. You’ll find a few pounds of lumpy gold. You’ve never seen gold like it in the country, nor has anybody else. Here’s what you’ve got to do. Listen.”

A quarter of an hour later, fully instructed and complaining that his toes were freezing, Breck went away. Smoke, his own nose and one cheek frosted by proximity to the chink, rubbed them against the blankets for half an hour before the blaze and bite of the returning blood assured him of the safety of his flesh.

“My mind’s made up right now. There ain’t no doubt but what he killed Kinade. We heard the whole thing last night. What’s the good of goin’ over it again? I vote guilty.”

In such fashion, Smoke’s trial began. The speaker, a loose-jointed, hard-rock man from Colorado, manifested irritation and disgust when Harding set his suggestion aside, demanded the proceedings should be regular, and nominated one Shunk Wilson for judge and chairman of the meeting. The population of Two Cabins constituted the jury, though, after some discussion, the woman, Lucy, was denied the right to vote on Smoke’s guilt or innocence.

While this was going on, Smoke, jammed into a corner on a bunk, overheard a whispered conversation between Breck and a miner.

“You haven’t fifty pounds of flour you’ll sell?” Breck queried.

“You ain’t got the dust to pay the price I’m askin’,” was the reply.

“I’ll give you two hundred.”