Chapter XXIV: And “peters” Drops in

“How do you account for that?” I asked.

“I don’t account for it at all,” Tom answered.

“In other words they just vanished into thin air!” Brent remarked, lightly.

“That must be it,” said Tom, and shook his head wonderingly. “I know positively they didn’t come back.”

“That’s stupid of us, Brent!” I exclaimed, and suddenly remembering. “He must be the man in the gully. They went around the other way, you see. That explains it!”

“Sure,” said Tom, “but I wonder where the lynx went?”

“We saw his tracks on both sides of the cleft,” Brent said.

“Well it’s too stormy to go up there again to-day,” Tom said. “Furthermore, the poor fellow can’t come to any further harm where he is now.”

“Do any of the boys know of our morning excursion?” I asked Tom. No, he hadn’t told them. Neither had they any idea but that Tom had returned safely the previous night from Harkness.

“Would you suggest our telling the boys about what you saw in the gully?” Tom asked Brent.

“No, I wouldn’t,” he said. “As long as they don’t know where we were this morning, I don’t think it would be wise to say anything now. This mystery has to be cleared up first. We don’t know positively whether the body in the gully is that of the hermit or not. It’s bad enough to have to tell when we are sure without circulating any false reports now.”

“But the hermit _didn’t_ come back,” Tom repeated, persistently. “And it’s perfectly logical for me to suppose he went back the same way you fellows came this morning. You thought when you saw the body, I had tried to cross before daylight and missed my step. Couldn’t he have done the same thing?”

“I’ll tell you better to-morrow, Tommy,” Brent said in drawling tones. “Meanwhile you better think up a good excuse to give the boys for our absence from camp in the morning. You could say (if you can’t think of anything else) that our fountain pen adventurer here wants to get some material and we have to go help him carry it back.”

“That’s not so bad either,” I said, refusing to take Brent seriously.

At this juncture, our friend Heinie came in and asked Tom if he could use his flivver to go to Harkness. He wanted to buy a few personal necessities and as long as the rain prevented any work that day, he might as well go and “do some-tings yet,” as he said to Tom.

We gave Tom a significant look remembering that we had hidden the Ford down the road quite a little way. However, Brent rose to the occasion and offered to go down and get the flivver started. “It stalled on Sladey in the middle of the woods,” he explained to Heinie. “I’ll find it and bring it back.” Heinie was satisfied to sit down with us and wait.

“Maybe dere iss noddings you vant in Harkness, yes?” he inquired of Tom and me solicitously.

“Nothing I know of,” Tom answered, for both. “Except that you can take that bunch of mail to the post office and get it off.”

We kept a small mail bag hanging near the door so as to make it convenient to carry to and from Harkness. We devised the bag as a means of keeping it intact and incidentally were preparing for the future when Leatherstocking Training Camp would mean quite something to the postal authorities in Harkness.

“I guess they’re all stamped,” Tom said, handing it to Heinie as he was leaving, “but if there’s been any overlooked, keep track of what you spend.”

An hour or so later, a hearty knock sounded at the door. We all answered in response and a tall, husky looking woodsman stepped in. He introduced himself as “Peters” a state game warden. Tom asked him to sit down.

“Jes’ thought I’d make a little visit fer an hour or so,” he said, genially; then, lighting a foul smelling pipe, he spread his bulky frame in the willow easy chair.

“Going to stay for the night?” Tom asked kindly.

“Lord, no!” he exclaimed. “Hev ter keep on the move this time o’ the year. Been nigh onto a year since I wuz here in these parts. Camp was locked up then--tighter than a game garden’s heart.”

“Well, well,” Tom said, “must have been lonely.”

“Nah, not at all,” he said, seemingly glad of the chance to talk to us. “Plenty excitement a’ right though. ’Nother feller ’n I wuz bunking together here fer two nights. Nary a human soul disturbed us but we hed ’nough frum other directions.”

“How’s that?” I asked, impulsively thinking he might divulge something extraordinary.

“Why,” he went on, “the first night a little imp of a lynx cub kept us awake all through ’till dawn, running around the Lodge and a-makin’ all sorts of divlish noises. We didn’t bother him, but the second night he got ter hollerin’ agin and when I went fer him he made a leap. But I fixed him!”

“Did you kill him?” Tom asked.

“Nah, he wuz too quick fer thet--ter kill him right off. But I shot his front paw near off ’n enough ter make him bleed ter death. He run up the mountain a-howlin’ like fury.

“The next day my buddy ’n I trailed his bloody tracks up the slope a little ways thinking he cudn’t hev gone far bleedin’ like thet. We thought too, we’d get his pelt. But nary a dead lynx did we find nor a live one neither.”