VIII
THE BLOOD-STAINED TUNIC

But a few days of May remained when Hugh and Blaise left Wauswaugoning. Their progress was necessarily slow, not only on account of delays due to wind and weather, but because they were obliged to skirt the shore closely, entering each bay and cove, rounding every point, and keeping keen watch for any sign of the wrecked boat. They had no clue to the spot where it lay. It might have been thrown up on the open shore, or driven into some rock-infested bay or stream mouth. At each stream they made a close examination, ascending a short distance, by canoe where that was possible, or up over the rocky banks on foot. They had searched the mouths of more than a dozen streams and creeks when they came to one, where Blaise, in entering, cautioned Hugh to steer far to one side. Almost across the river mouth extended a long bar of sand and gravel, covered by an inch or two of water, for the river was still high from the spring flood. Bars or rock reefs were, Hugh was learning, common characteristics of the streams emptying into Superior. To enter them without accident required care and caution.

The bar was passed, but further progress up-stream proved impossible. The current was strong, and just ahead were foaming rapids where the water descended among rocks and over boulders. Steering into a bit of quiet backwater behind the bar, the boys found a landing place and carried the canoe ashore. Then they scrambled up the bank a short distance, searching the stream mouth for signs of the wreck. Caught in a blossoming serviceberry bush growing on a rock at the very edge of the river, Blaise found an old moccasin. He examined the ragged, dirty, skin shoe in silence for a moment. Then, hazel eyes gleaming, he held the thing out to Hugh.

“It is my mother’s work,” he said in tense tones. Hugh snatched the worn moccasin. “Do you mean this was my father’s?”

Blaise nodded. “It is my mother’s work,” he repeated. “I would know it anywhere, the pattern of quills, the shaping, even the skin. It is from the elk hide our father brought from the region of the great river.” He made a gesture towards the southwest, and Hugh knew he referred to the Mississippi. “See, it is just like ours,” Blaise concluded, holding up one foot.

Hugh glanced from the almost new moccasin to the ragged one, and drew a long breath. “Then it may be about here somewhere father was wrecked.”

“We must make search,” was the brief reply.

Thoroughly they searched, first the banks of the stream, then the lake beach, parallel ridges of flat flakes of rock pushed up by the waves. They even examined the ground beyond the beach, a rough slope composed of the same sort of dark rock flakes, partly decomposed into crumbly soil. The two pushed through the bushes and small trees that sparsely clothed the stony ground, but nowhere did they find any sign of wrecked boat or hidden cache. Yet they did find something, something that hinted of violence and crime.

Well up from the shore and not far from the stream bank, Hugh came upon an open space, where a ring of blackened stones and ashes showed that a cooking fire had burned. He took one look, turned and plunged into the bushes to find Blaise. But he stopped suddenly. His foot had come in contact with something that was not a rock, a stump or a stick. Stooping, he pulled from under a scraggly wild raspberry, where it had been dropped or thrust, a bundle. Unrolling it, he found it to be a ragged deerskin tunic, damp, dirty and bearing dark stains. The boy stood transfixed staring at the thing in his hands. After a moment he raised his head and shouted for Blaise.

Blaise answered from near by, but to Hugh it seemed a long time before the younger boy came through the bushes. In silence the elder handed the other the stained shirt. Blaise took it, examined it quickly and uttered an Indian grunt.

“Blood?” asked Hugh pointing to the stains.

Blaise grunted assent.

“Father’s blood?” Hugh’s voice broke.

Blaise looked up quickly. “No, no. Black Thunder’s.”

“How do you know?”

“By this.” The lad pointed to a crude figure, partly painted, partly embroidered in black wool, on the breast of the tunic. “This is Black Thunder’s mark, the thunder bird. Without doubt this shirt was his.”

“But how did it come here? There’s no sign of the wrecked boat.”

Blaise shook his head in puzzlement. “I do not understand,” he said slowly.

The half-breed lad was keen witted in many ways, but the white boy’s mind worked more quickly on such a problem. “It may be,” Hugh speculated, “that they were wrecked farther along the shore. Coming on by land, they camped here and some accident happened to Black Thunder, or perhaps he had been bleeding from a hurt received in the wreck, and he changed his shirt and threw away the bloody one.”

“Where was it?” asked Blaise.

“Under this raspberry bush, rolled up.”

“And why think you they camped here?”

“I’ll show you.”

Hugh led the way to the little clearing. Carefully and absorbedly Blaise examined the spot.

“Someone has camped here,” he concluded, “but only a short time, not more than one night. He made no lodge, for there are no poles. He cut no boughs for beds, and he left scarce any litter. It may be he cooked but one meal and went on. If he lay here for the night, the marks of his body no longer remain. If anyone was slain here,” he added after a moment, “the rains washed out the stains. It was a long time ago that he was here, I think.”

“If Black Thunder was killed here,” Hugh questioned, “what was done with his body?”

Blaise shrugged. “There is the lake, and a body weighted with stones stays down.”

“Then why was his blood-stained shirt not sunk with him?”

“That I know not,” and the puzzled look returned to the lad’s face.

“Might it not be that father was wearing Black Thunder’s shirt and that the stains are from his wound?”

“He wore his own when he came to the lodge, and the stains are in the wrong place. They are on the breast. No, he never wore this shirt. The blood must be Black Thunder’s.”

The sun was going down when the two boys finally gave up the search for the wrecked boat or some further trace of Jean Beaupré and his companion. Neither lad had any wish to camp in the vicinity. Blaise especially showed strong aversion to the spot.

“There are evil stories of this river,” he explained to his brother. “If our father camped here, it was because he was very weary indeed. He was a brave man though, far braver than most men, white or red.”

“Why should he have hesitated to camp here?” Hugh inquired curiously. “It’s true we have seen pleasanter spots along this shore, yet this is not such a bad one.”

“There are evil stories of the place,” Blaise repeated in a low voice. “The lake from which this river flows is the abode of a devil.” The boy made the sign of the cross on his breast and went on in his musical singsong. “On the shores of that lake have been found the devil’s tracks, great footprints, like those of a man, but many times larger and very far apart. So the lake is called the ‘Lake of Devil Tracks’ and the river bears the same name. It is said that when that devil wishes to come down to the shore of the great lake to fish for trout, it is this way he comes, striding along the bed of the river, even at spring flood.”

Hugh Beaupré, half Scotch, half French, and living in a time when the superstitious beliefs of an earlier day persisted far more actively than they do now, was not without his share of such superstitions. But this story of a devil living on a lake and walking along a river, struck him as absurd and he said so with perfect frankness.

“Surely you don’t believe such a tale, Blaise, and neither did my father.”

“I know not if the tale is true,” the younger boy answered somewhat sullenly. “Men say they have seen the footprints and everyone knows there are devils, both red and white. Why should not one live on that lake then? How know we it was not that devil who killed Black Thunder and left the bloody tunic under the raspberry bush as a warning to others not to camp on his hunting ground? I am no coward, as I will speedily show you if you want proof, but I will not camp here. If you stay, you stay alone.”

“I don’t want to stay,” Hugh replied quickly. “Devil or not, I don’t like the place. We’ll go on till we find a better camping ground.”

In the light of the afterglow, which was tinting sky and water with pale gold, soft rose and lavender, and tender blue, they launched their canoe again and paddled on. The peace and beauty around him made the sinister thing he had found under the raspberry bush, and the evil deed that thing suggested, seem unreal to Hugh, almost as unreal as the devil who lived at the lake and walked down the river to his fishing. Nevertheless he turned his eyes from the soft colors of sky and water to scan the shore the canoe was skirting. Not a trace of the wrecked bateau appeared, though both boys watched closely.

Several miles beyond the Devil Track River, they made camp on a sloping rock shore wooded with spruce and balsam, where nothing worse than a plague of greedy mosquitoes disturbed their rest. Hugh thought of suggesting that the horde of voracious insects might have been sent by the evil spirit of Devil Track Lake to torment the trespassers. Fearing however that a humorous treatment of his story might offend the halfbreed lad’s sensitive pride, he kept the fancy to himself.

Going on with their journey the next morning, the two came to the spot known to the French fur traders and to the English who followed them as the Grand Marais, the great marsh or meadow. There a long sand and gravel point connects with a low, marshy shore, a higher, rocky stretch, once a reef or island, running at right angles to the gravel spit. The T-shaped projection forms a good harbor for small boats. Closely scanning every foot of beach and rock shore, Hugh and Blaise paddled around the T. On the inner side of the spit, they caught sight of what appeared to be part of a boat half buried in the sand and gravel. They landed to investigate. The thing was indeed the shattered remnants of a wreck, old and weathered and deep in sand and pebbles. It was not Jean Beaupré’s boat, but a birch canoe.

Leaving the T, the lads skirted the low, curving shore. When they rounded the little point beyond, they discovered that the waves, which had been increasing for some hours, had reached a height dangerous to a small boat. The time was past noon, and Blaise thought that the sea would not be likely to go down before sunset. So he gave the word to turn back and seek a camping ground. In the angle of the T just where the sand spit joined the rocky reef, they found shelter.

Realizing that they must conserve their scanty food supply, the two, instead of eating at once, went fishing in the sheltered water. Hugh, in the stern of the canoe, held the hand line, while Blaise paddled. Luck was with them and when they went ashore an hour later they had four fine trout, the smallest about three and the largest at least eight pounds. In one thing at least, cooking fish, Hugh excelled his younger brother. He set about broiling part of his catch as soon as he had cleaned them. Without touching their other supplies, the lads made a hearty meal of trout.

The wind did not fall till after sunset. Knowing it would be some hours before the lake would be calm enough for canoe travel, the boys prepared to stay where they were till morning. The night was unusually mild for the time of year, so they stretched themselves under their canoe and let the fire burn itself out.