CHAPTER III

OUTWARD BOUND

AT last dawned the day when the Argonauts sailed away toward the sunset, like the crew that Jason captained when the world was young. Instead of the Argo, Cornwall's Argonauts voyaged in the super-parlor-Pullman-observationprivate car Esmeralda, which belonged to Mr. Donegan, and which, through him, had been attached to the great Transcontinental Express. By reason, too, of Mr. Donegan, that celebrated train for the first time in its history would stop at Cornwall. Theretofore it had never even hesitated when it passed through.

Everybody came to see them off. Strangely enough, too, every one from Chief Selectman Jimmy Wadsworth down to Jed Bunker, who tramped the town making baskets, knew that they were going pearling and when and where and how. Myron Prindle had inside information that they were bound for "the Spanish Main." He was not sure just where said Main might be, but presumed that it was somewhere in Spain. Anyway, he knew that it was full of pearls and pirates and that Mr. Donegan had chartered a schooner which Jud Adams was to captain. The fact that Jud did n't know a schooner from a gondola made no difference. Myron knew. Uncle Riley Rexford was just as positive that they were going after fresh-water pearls along the banks of the Yukon, He also had inside information. Hattie Platt, the village dressmaker, was absolutely certain that they were bound for the South Seas. She had been told so by some one who knew all about it. She wished she could tell who it was, but she had promised she would not. Jessalie Jones, who wrote poetry, and had

it printed under the initials "J. J.” in the “Litchfield County Gazette," had it on good authority that the whole trip had something to do with a romance of Jud Adams' youth. She refused to give her authority. In one thing all the stories agreed. That was-Pearls! Miss Jane Bronson, who had taught drawing and English literature at the Cornwall High School from a time beyond which the memory of man runneth not, brought in Volume 15 of the Encyclopædia BritannicaP-Q of the vintage of 1860. She whispered that it contained a masterly monograph on pearls which she hoped the boys would find time to read on their trip. Guinea Potter's mother brought a bottle of boneset tea which she had brewed herself and which could be used either inside or outside and was warranted to cure everything. It was a favorite Cornwall remedy and always very effective, probably because it had such an appalling taste that any one who swallowed a dose of it would forget everything else. Old Hen Root who lived over in the Hollow, and who had come to Cornwall from Saugatuck on Long Island Sound, brought a clam-hoe down to the station, which he insisted upon presenting to Will.

"It may come in handy," he remarked confidentially, "in case you want to get a mess of oysters."

The Cornwall Horse Guards were there, ready for the worst, and would have been very impressive if Silas Ford's horse had not balked right on the railroad tracks. As it was nearly train-time, the rest of the guard tried to haul him off by main force. The Cornwall band chose that particular moment to break loose. They tooted and banged and shrilled and squealed, until it sounded as if a boiler factory had blown up. At the very first

explosion, Silas Ford's horse, which had been bracing his feet and holding back with at least ten horse-power, whisked his tail, cleared the tracks, and was off down the road like a cyclone. As most of the other horses of the guards were hitched to him, the whole squadren disappeared around the corner in a cloud of dust and a confusion of "Whoas!" At that moment a distant whistle was heard, and with a rushing roar, the rumble of mighty wheels and the hissing of sorely tried air-brakes, the majestic Transcontinental Express whirled around the curve and came to a full stop. Then it was that Fred's mother, who was a widow, broke down. As she kissed her boy good-by she was suddenly convinced that neither pearls nor prospects were worth the unknown risks of this far journey.

"Don't go, honey. Stay home with me," she whispered. "I may never see you again."

It was a critical moment. Fred winked very hard and wondered whether, after all, the trip was worth while. It was Barbara Deering who made a diversion. Barbara had a bewitching smile and a voice that always made Fred think of the gurgling of a certain trout-brook as it sang its way down one of the Cornwall hills. Moreover, one could never be certain as to what Barbara was going to do next. To-day she stood in a group of girls with her hands behind her as the good-bys were being said, and, at this critical moment, stepped forward with a great bunch of those rare rose-red orchids, the moccasin-flower, which she must have gathered before breakfast. She handed these to Fred and whispered so low that only he could hear, "Good-by; I 'm very proud of you!" After that any backing out was impossible. Will's father shook hands with him with that indifference which fathers and sons show in public. Joe Couteau's uncle was there with a package of the whitest, sweetest maple sugar in the world, which only the old charcoalburner knew how to make in his little sugarbush in the early spring.

"You big fool to go," he murmured affectionately, pressing the package into Joe's hands. “Hurry up and come back.”

Then Mr. Sanford and old Mike and Buck Masters, the village constable who had helped rescue Will and Joe from the burning cabin, and Uncle Riley Rexford, and Nathan Hart, the letter-carrier, with a mail-bag in his hand, and Virgil Jones, the postmaster, and half a score of others pressed forward to shake the boys hands and wish them luck. Only old Jud Adams stood apart from the rest of the crowd

"Ain't there no one who 's goin' to give me flowers or sugar nor nothin'?" he complained.

"Sure there be!" shouted old Jim Donegan,

who had arrived late, as usual, pushing his way through the crowd, red-hot with haste and ex'citement. "Even if none of these good-lookin' girls will give you anything, I will. You 're all the time complainin' that you can't find any smokin' tobacco in Cornwall that 's got any taste to it. I've sent down South and here 's a package of black perique that will just about take the top of your old gray head off," and Big Jim shook the old trapper's hand affectionately and slapped the boys on their backs.

"Good-by, fellows," he shouted as if he were hailing a ship at sea. "Good luck! I wish I were goin' with you instead of this good-for-nothin' old cripple of a Jud Adams."

"What do you mean by such talk, Jim Donegan?" yelled Jud, clutching his perique in one hand and much incensed at this public reference to his age. "Thank ye for the tobacco, but when you come to talk about me bein' old, I want you to understand-" but just then the whistle shrilled impatiently, the majestic conductor, who had been regarding Cornwall tolerantly, swept back the crowd, the porter pushed the boys, clam-hoe, encyclopædia, boneset-tea, and all into the car, and with another bang from the band the Argonauts of Cornwall were off. With a shriek of the whistle which echoed through the hills, the train whirled away toward the enchantments, the adventures, and the waiting lands which, since Time began, have always beckoned to Argonauts from beyond the sunset.

Then came long and varied days of sight-seeing from the observation platform. At first, Jud insisted that they ought to have shaken hands with the waiter when they went into the diningcar, and declared that the conductor ought to have a military salute as a tribute to his "blueand-brass uniform." The library, the baths, the brass bedsteads, the great leather-lined lounging chairs, and all the other equipment of a plutocratic private car were a source of neverending delight and amusement to the old trapper. Most of all, however, the whole crowd enjoyed the observation platform at the rear of the car. There, tipped back in comfortable chairs, with their feet up on the brass rail, as cities, prairies and mountains whirled by, they would talk by the hour, and old Jud would spin them yarns about the buffalo herds, the Indians and the antelope which he saw on his first trip across the continent in the seventies.

But even more interesting to the boys were the stories told by Joe Couteau.

"Joe," said Will, one day, after one of Jud's yarns, "you 've never told me how you managed to come across the continent. Where did you live first, and how did you get East by yourself?"

For a long minute Joe made no answer, but sat and watched the steel rails spin a shining track behind them across the golden wheat-fields of Dakota.

"I lived," he said at last, "on the Island of Akotan. That mean 'Island of the Free People' in my talk," he explained. "My father was a French trapper, who joined our tribe and married my mother. I told you 'bout his being killed by bear," he went on, turning to Will, who nodded as he remembered the talks around the camp-fire that he and Joe used to have when they were winning the cabin for the Cornwall Scouts. "After that," went on Joe, "my mother take me one day across to the mainland where there was a Hudson Bay trading-station and mission-school. She tell me if anything happen to her, I was to leave the tribe and go to this school. When I learned enough, I was to travel and travel and travel east until I found my father's brother. She gave me writing, which my father had left, which showed how to find him." Then Joe came to a stop and looked long into the distance. "My mother's uncle, he shuman of the Free People," he went on after a moment.

"Is that the same as the chief?" inquired Fred. "No," said Joe, "shuman is higher than chief. There may be two or more chiefs but only one shuman. Chiefs look after every-day things, but shuman he say when there be war or peace, he medicine-man for tribe, and have charge of all big things. After my mother's uncle find pearl he go on long, long journey south to place where the Free People had come from a hundred of years before. He want to see the Great Ones, and learn how to keep his people free and brave and good. While he gone, my mother die, like I tell you," said Joe, turning to Will, who nodded without speaking. The Indian boy's eyes flashed and his hands clinched hard for a moment. "When I come back," he went on after a long pause, "and found she had died and my uncle gone and other chiefs trying to take his place, who would n't dared have spoken to him standing up, I tell tribe what I thought. No one answer me back. Then I take canoe and provisions and gun, and leave 'em all, and paddle and paddle and walk and walk until I come to trading-station where mission-school was. There I stay and learn to read and write and be like white boys." "Did they send you across to your father's uncle?" questioned Jud, with much interest.

"No," said Joe after a long pause, "they not have the money to do that."

"Well, who did send you?" persisted Jud. "Cheesay," responded the boy, finally.

"You mean the Canada lynx," broke in Will. "Yes," responded the old man. "I call 'em lucivees, and the French trappers call 'em loupcervier, but their name in Chippewa is 'Cheesay.'"

"Tell us how the lynx sent you," begged Fred, who had been sitting an interested listener to the whole conversation. Joe hesitated a moment.

"Well, it was this way," he said. "I want to be like white boys. My mother's people cowards and dogs to let her starve. My uncle gone. I remember she tell me to go back to my father's people. At the trading-station they tell me it take much money-two, three hundred dollarsto travel down to Sitka and take boat and railroad out East. They not have any money. I not have any money. So I start out to earn my fare by trapping. At first I not have very good luck. I trap and catch very little."

trap and hunt and hunt, but

"It's a wonder you caught anythin'," interjected Jud. "Trappin' 's no game for kids. It takes a grown man with good brains and a lot of experience to be a real trapper," and Jud puffed out his chest consciously.

Joe looked at the little old man quizzically. "Yes," he said at last, "it takes fine, big, handsome, smart man to be good trapper-like old man Jud, but I did the best I could. I caught a few muskrat and once in a while a mink, but they hardly brought enough to pay for my traps and my grub and my ammunition. Then one day there came a heavy snow. It snow and snow until ground covered three feet deep. I start out one morning with my gun to follow up trap-route. Pretty soon out from the woods I come to foxtrail."

"How do you tell a fox-trail?" asked Fred.

"Tracks like those of dog," explained Joe, "except they run in straight line and don't spraddle out like dog and are finer and clearer cut and never show any drag-mark on the snow, for fox lift his paw high while dog sometimes drag it. This trail," went on Joe, "showed that the fox had sunk deep, every jump. He seemed to be running hard, and once in a while I could see mark of his brush on snow, showing that he was tired; for while he is fresh, a fox never lets his brush touch the snow. I wonder at first why fox go so fast when snow so deep. At last I see the reason. Near the fox-trail runs a line of big, padded cat-tracks, about twice the size of ordinary cat. Only they don't show four toes like cat-track does. I knew then that it was trail of Cheesay."

"What made them padded?" inquired Will. "A lynx wears snow-shows in the winter," in

"Each toe is covered with a big ball of fluffy

hair which spreads out nearly flat, so that a lynx can bound over the snow, hardly sinking in at all." "That's what this one was doing," went on Joe. "At every jump he would go five or six feet and only sink in a few inches, while the fox went floundering through the snow up to his shoulders. The tracks zigzagged in and out through the trees, as if the old fox was trying to dodge, and once in a while he 'd make a stand against some tree, but always the lynx would drive him out into the open again. At last they led to little lake all frozen over and covered level with snow, and there out in the middle I saw two animals fighting. I hurried up close on my snowshoes, and just as I got there, Cheesay gave big jump in air and clipped Old Man Fox right over head with his claws and buried him in the snow. Before he could get out, old lynx landed on top of him and bite him through the neck and kill him. By that time I was right close to them, and I yell loud to drive lynx off before he rip up fox's fur. Cheesay very much surprised, give a jump away, and spit and yowled and crouched and pretended that he was going to spring at me. My gun was loaded, and nobody ever afraid of Old Man Cheesay, anyhow. I look down at fox, and what you suppose I saw?"

"What?" chorused the rest of the party. "Silver fox!" exclaimed Joe, impressively. "Black, black as night, and soft and thick and heavy. The longest hairs were tipped with white, so that the fur looked as if it were all frosted with silver, while the big jet-black brush had a silver tip."

"Oh, boy!" broke in Jud. "Think of that luck! I trapped nigh on to twenty years before I got a silver fox, and then he was n't a very good

one.

"Well," went on Joe, "they told me at the post that this one was the best silver fox that had ever been turned in there. They gave me three hundred dollars for it."

"Which was about a third of what it was worth," commented Jud.

"It was enough to take me to Cornwall, anyway," finished Joe.

Fred sternly. "I take out my knife and skin fox right there in snow, while Cheesay wait and watch me. Then I give him carcass. He say, 'Thank you,' and I leave him and never kill another lynx-and never will."

"That's the reason," exclaimed Will, "that you never helped me the time that old lynx jumped over me and scratched me up when we were out winning the cabin for the Cornwall scouts! I never understood why you did n't clip him one when I missed him, but now I see the reason."

Joe nodded silently.

"How did the old lucivee say 'thank you?'"' inquired Fred, inquisitively.

Joe opened his mouth wide and gave a long, low "Meow," followed in quick succession by half a dozen others, each one rising in pitch and volume, and the whole ending with three terrific screeches which brought the porter, the waiter, and even the majestic conductor himself running from the car ahead. It was the yowl song of the mating lynx, and it came so suddenly that Fred and Will almost tipped over backward in their chairs. Only old Jud was unmoved. He regarded the imperturbable Joe admiringly.

"You sure have got that lucivee love-song down fine," he said. "I'd have sworn that there was an old bobcat in this car if I had n't seen you do that."

"If that's the way Old Man Bobcat talks when he's grateful," said Fred, "I 'd hate to hear him when he 's mad."

After the train officials had become convinced that no murder was being done and had retired, Will was moved to a reminiscence himself anent silver foxes.

"There was a boy named Bill Peebles," he began, "who once lived in Cornwall, over on Dibble Hill. He went to the high school a couple of terms or so and then his folks moved away. Peebles was quite a hunter, and one day in November he climbed Pond Hill, thinking that he might get a shot at a deer up in the old sheep-pasture at the top. As he was coming out of the edge of the woods, all of a sudden he saw a

Joe looked at him reprovingly. "That just like white man," he said at last; "always selfish and ungrateful. When animal make present to Indian, Indian remember it and play square with animal. That why Indian so much better hunter and trapper than white man and get so much more game. Cheesay he give me black fox; he send me across continent; he bring me back to my father's people. You think for that I kill Cheesay? No!" and Joe regarded the abashed

blowing from the fox, and so it had n't heard him or scented him at all. Peebles crouched down in the bushes and cocked his rifle and drew a careful bead on the fox about fifty yards away. He was just going to press the trigger," went on Will, dramatically, "when out of a corner of his eye he saw something move over on the edge of the woods, and out into the pasture stepped a fine buck, just about the same distance away as the fox. Old Sport Peebles was up in the air. First he sighted at the fox and then he sighted at the

buck. He could shoot one, but he sure could n't get the other. At last, he figured out that the buck was bigger, and so he aimed carefully and dropped it in its tracks with a bullet just back of the fore shoulder. At the first crack of the rifle, the fox was gone. Bill Peebles got home with the buck, but when his folks found that he had let a thousand-dollar silver fox escape, they came near taking his gun away from him."

"I should think they would!" snorted Jud. "Any Cornwall boy over seven ought to know that a black fox is the most valuable fur in the world, bar one."

"What's the one?" asked Fred. "Kalan," said Jud.

"What's a kalan?" "Bo-bear."

"Come again," said Fred.

"Well, sea-otter then," said Jud, "since you 're so ignorant. I suppose a good one now would bring pretty near ten thousand dollars, while a silver fox might get as high as five thousand."

"Me for the sea-otter!" exclaimed Will. "I did n't know that there was such an expensive animal on earth. Well, anyway, coming back to Bill Peebles, he moved, soon after that happened, and I don't know what became of him, but I never saw a boy so sorry over anything. If he lives to be a hundred, he 'll never stop regretting that black fox."

As the train sped across the plains and into the country beyond! Jud became much excited. Towns and cities, he remembered as tradingstations, cattle-depots, and mining-camps. Then one evening the train rumbled into Spokane, and Jud was full of reminiscences.

"Do you see that stone-shed?" he inquired pointing to a tumble-down building not far from the station. "Well, boys, the last time I was here that was a smoke-house. There was n't any railroad and there was n't any city. Where these tracks run was a stage route. There were twenty-five or thirty houses and dance-halls and a hotel called San Francisco House. It was about fifty yards away from that smoke-house."

The old man paused dramatically.

"Go on, Jud," urged Will, "let 's have the story of the smoke-house."

"Yes, Jud," chimed in Fred, "I'll believe it if it kills me."

The old man regarded him sternly.

"You'll get into trouble some of these days, young fellow," he said austerely, "with your fresh insinuendoes," and he eyed him severely. Fred bowed his head meekly.

"Go on, boss," he murmured contritely. With a few indignant puffs, old Jud resumed his interrupted story.

"In the stage along with us," he went on, "was an Englishman. He wore a long plaid ulster that would have made Joseph's coat look faded, an' a round, shiny piece of glass seemed to have grown into one of his eyes. We tried to draw the critter out just for the fun o' hearin' him talk, for he kind o' bleated an' used funny soundin' words. At last he shut up like a clam, an' we most forgot him. It was gettin' toward dark when we stopped to change horses at the San Francisco House. Spokane was an awful rough place in those days," and Jud stopped to charge his pipe afresh with some of Big Jim's perique. "All of a sudden," he resumed after a series of quick puffs, like a freight-engine starting, "we saw that Britisher walkin' off by himself with his hands in his pockets, as unconcerned as if he were in London. Just as he got opposite that smokehouse, a big chap jumps out from behind it, shoves a gun into his face, an' wants his money quick. The Englishman looked so funny an' helpless with his mouth open an' that eye-glass an' ulster, that even the hold-up man could n't keep from grinnin'. Before we could get to them, there was a shot fired, an' who do you suppose went down?"

"The tourist, of course," said Will.

"That's what we thought," responded Jud; "but when we got there, it was the hold-up man who was lyin' on his face an' the Englishman standin', with his hands still in his pockets, starin' down at him out of that glass eye of his. Come to find out, he carried a short Derringer revolver; an' instead of puttin' up his hands, he 'd shot right through his coat. It was kind of expensive, but mighty effective. He got the robber right through the shoulder," finished Jud. "An' he was the most surprised hold-up man you ever saw. When we turned him over to the sheriff, he said it had served him right for trustin' to appearances."

It was not until toward the end of the trip that a hot-box gave Fred a chance to distinguish himself. The train had been whirling at full speed across a wide plateau, when it came to a sudden stop with much crashing and clanking and wheezing of air-brakes. The Argonauts hurried out, to find that it would take over an hour to repair damages. Glad of a chance to stretch their legs, they started to explore a dry, sandy plain studded with bunches of coarse grass. As they passed one of the grass-clumps, there sounded in front of them a deep, fierce hiss. Close by Jud's foot, the bloated, swollen body of a fearsome snake upreared itself. It was almost white in color, blotched and spotted with bands and streaks of velvety brown, and each scale had a little ridge running down its center. The