The Ledge on Bald Face Part 6

"Most an albino, ain't he?" he suggested.

"No, he ain't," replied Tug Blackstock curtly. The dog, detecting a note of resentment in his master's voice, got up and stood beside the child, and gazed about the circle with an air of anxious interrogation.

Had any one been disagreeable to Woolly Billy? And if so, who?

But the little one was not in the least rebuffed by the stranger's unresponsiveness.

"What's that?" he inquired, patting admiringly the stranger's s.h.i.+ny leather case.

The stranger grew cordial to him at once.

"Ah, now ye're talkin'," said he enthusiastically, undoing the flap of the case. "It's a book, sonny. The greatest book, the most _interestin'_ book, the most useful book--and next to the Bible the most high-toned, uplifting book that was ever written. Ye can't read yet, sonny, but this book has the loveliest pictures ye ever seen, and the greatest lot of 'em for the money."

He drew reverently forth from the case a large, fat volume, bound sumptuously in embossed sky-blue imitation leather, lavishly gilt, and opened it upon his knees with a s.p.a.cious gesture.

"There," he continued proudly. "It's called 'Mother, Home, and Heaven!' Ain't that a t.i.tle for ye? Don't it show ye right off the kind of book it is? With this book by ye, ye don't need any other book in the house at all, except maybe the almanack an' the Bible--an' this book has lots o' the best bits out of the Bible in it, scattered through among the receipts an' things to keep it all wholesome an'

upliftin'.

"It'll tell ye such useful things as how to get a cork out of a bottle without breakin' the bottle, when he haven't got a corkscrew, or what to do when the baby's got croup, and there ain't a doctor this side of Tourdulac. An' it'll tell ye how to live, so as when things happen that no medicines an' no doctors and no receipts--not even such great receipts as these here ones" (and he slapped his hand on the counter) "can help ye through--such as when a tree falls on to ye, or you trip and stumble on to the saws, or git drawn down under half-a-mile o'

raft--then ye'll be ready to go right up aloft, an' no questions asked ye at the Great White Gate.

"An' it has po'try in it, too, reel heart po'try, such as'll take ye back to the time when ye was all white an' innocent o' sin at yer mother's knee, an' make ye wish ye was like that now. In fact, boys, this book I'm goin' to show ye, with your kind permission, is handier than a pocket in a s.h.i.+rt, an' at the same time the blessed fragrance of it is like a rose o' Sharon in the household. It's in three styles o'

bindin', all _reel_ handsome, but----"

"I want to look at another picture now," protested Woolly Billy. "I'm tired of this one of the angels sayin' their prayers."

His amazing shock of silver-gold curls was bent intently over the book in the stranger's lap. The woodsmen, on the other hand, kept on smoking with a far-off look, as if they heard not a word of the fluent harangue. They had a deep distrust and dread of this black-whiskered stranger, now that he stood revealed as the Man-Wanting-to-Sell-Something. The majority of them would not even glance in the direction of the gaudy book, lest by doing so they should find themselves involved in some expensive and complicated obligation.

The stranger responded to Woolly Billy's appeal by shutting the book firmly. "There's lots more pictures purtier than that one, sonny,"

said he. "But ye must ask yer dad to buy it fer ye. He won't regret it." And he pa.s.sed the volume on to Hawker, who, having no dread of book-agents, began to turn over the leaves with a superior smile.

"Dad's gone away ever so far," answered Woolly Billy sadly. "It's an awfully pretty book." And he looked at Tug Blackstock appealingly.

"Look here, mister," drawled Blackstock, "I don't take much stock myself in those kind of books, an' moreover (not meanin' no offence to you), any man that's sellin' 'em has got to larn to do a sight o'

lyin'. But as Woolly Billy here wants it so bad I'll take a copy, if 'tain't too dear. All the same, it's only fair to warn ye that ye'll not do much business in Brine's Rip, for there was a book agent here last year as got about ha'f the folks in the village to sign a crooked contract, and we was all stung bad. I'd advise ye to move on, an' not really tackle Brine's Rip fer another year or so. Now, what's the price?"

The stranger's face had fallen during this speech, but it brightened at the concluding question.

"Six dollars, four dollars, an' two dollars an' a half, accordin' to style of bindin'," he answered, bringing out a handful of leaflets and order forms and pa.s.sing them round briskly. "An' ye don't need to pay more'n fifty cents down, an' sign this order, an' ye pay the balance in a month's time, when the books are delivered. I'll give ye my receipt for the fifty cents, an' ye jest fill in this order accordin' to the bindin' ye choose. Let me advise ye, as a friend, to take the six dollar one. It's the best value."

"Thanks jest the same," said Blackstock drily, pulling out his wallet, "but I guess Woolly Billy'd jest as soon have the two-fifty one. An'

I'll pay ye the cash right now. No signin' orders fer me. Here's my name an' address."

"Right ye are," agreed the stranger cordially, pocketing the money and signing the receipt. "Cash payments for me every time, if I could have my way. Now, if some o' you other gentlemen will follow Mr.

Blackstock's fine example, ye'll never regret it--an' neither will I."

"Come on, Woolly Billy. Come on, Jim," said Blackstock, stepping out into the street with the child and the dog at his heels. "We'll be gittin' along home, an' leave this gentleman to argy with the boys."

II

Jake Sanderson, with the pay for the mill-hands, did not arrive that night, nor yet the following morning. Along toward noon, however, there arrived a breathless stripling, white-faced and wild-eyed, with news of him. The boy was young Stephens, son of Andy Stephens, the game-warden. He and his father, coming up from Cribb's Ridge, had found the body of Sanderson lying half in a pool beside the road, covered with blood. Near at hand lay the bag, empty, slashed open with a b.l.o.o.d.y knife. Stephens had sent his boy on into the Settlement for help, while he himself had remained by the body, guarding it lest some possible clue should be interfered with.

Swift as a gra.s.s fire, the shocking news spread through the village.

An excited crowd gathered in front of the store, every one talking at once, trying to question young Stephens. The Sheriff was away, down at Fredericton for a holiday from his arduous duties. But n.o.body lamented his absence. It was his deputy they all turned to in such an emergency.

"Where's Tug Blackstock?" demanded half a dozen awed voices. And, as if in answer, the tall, lean figure of the Deputy Sheriff of Nipsiwaska County came striding in haste up the sawdusty road, with the big, black dog crowding eagerly upon his heels.

The clamour of the crowd was hushed as Blackstock put a few questions, terse and pertinent, to the excited boy. The people of Nipsiwaska County in general had the profoundest confidence in their Deputy Sheriff. They believed that his shrewd brain and keen eye could find a clue to the most baffling of mysteries. Just now, however, his face was like a mask of marble, and his eyes, sunk back into his head, were like points of steel. The murdered man had been one of his best friends, a comrade and helper in many a hard enterprise.

"Come," said he to the lad, "we'll go an' see." And he started off down the road at that long loose stride of his, which was swifter than a trot and much less tiring.

"Hold on a minute, Tug," drawled a rasping nasal voice.

"What is it, Hawker?" demanded Blackstock, turning impatiently on his heel.

"Ye hain't asked no thin' yet about the Book Agent, Mister Byles, him as sold ye 'Mother, Home, an' Heaven.' Mebbe he could give us some information. He said as how he'd had some talk with poor old Jake."

Blackstock's lips curled slightly. He had not read the voluble stranger as a likely highwayman in any circ.u.mstances, still less as one to try issues with a man like Jake Sanderson. But the crowd, eager to give tongue on any kind of a scent, and instinctively hostile to a book agent, seized greedily upon the suggestion.

"Where is he?" "Send for him." "Did anybody see him this mornin'?"

"Rout him out!" "Fetch him along!" The babel of voices started afresh.

"He's cleared out," cried a woman's shrill voice. It was the voice of Mrs. Stukeley, who kept the boarding-house. Every one else was silent to hear what she had to say.

"He quit my place jest about daylight this morning," continued the woman virulently. She had not liked the stranger's black whiskers, nor his ministerial garb, nor his efforts to get a subscription out of her, and she was therefore ready to believe him guilty without further proof. "He seemed in a powerful hurry to git away, sayin' as how the Archangel Gabriel himself couldn't do business in this town."

Seeing the effect her words produced, and that even the usually imperturbable and disdainful Deputy Sheriff was impressed by them, she could not refrain from embroidering her statement a little.

"Now ez I come to think of it," she went on, "I did notice as how he seemed kind of excited an' nervous like, so's he could hardly stop to finish his breakfus'. But he took time to make me knock half-a-dollar off his bill."

"Mac," said Blackstock sharply, turning to Red Angus MacDonald, the village constable, "you take two of the boys an' go after the Book Agent. Find him, an' fetch him back. But no funny business with him, mind you. We hain't got a spark of evidence agin him. We jest want him as a witness, mind."

The crowd's excitement was somewhat damped by this p.r.o.nouncement, and Hawker's exasperating voice was heard to drawl:

"No _evidence_, hey? Ef that ain't _evidence_, him skinnin' out that way afore sun-up, I'd like to know what is!"

But to this and similar comments Tug Blackstock paid no heed whatever.

He hurried on down the road toward the scene of the tragedy, his lean jaws working grimly upon a huge chew of tobacco, the big, black dog not now at his heels but trotting a little way ahead and casting from one side of the road to the other, nose to earth. The crowd came on behind, but Blackstock waved them back.

"I don't want none o' ye to come within fifty paces of me, afore I tell ye to," he announced with decision. "Keep well back, all of ye, or ye'll mess up the tracks."

But this proved a decree too hard to be enforced for any length of time.

When he arrived at the place where the game-warden kept watch beside the murdered man, Blackstock stood for a few moments in silence, looking down upon the body of his friend with stony face and brooding eyes. In spite of his grief, his practised observation took in the whole scene to the minutest detail, and photographed it upon his memory for reference.

The body lay with face and shoulder and one leg and arm in a deep, stagnant pool by the roadside. The head was covered with black, clotted blood from a knife-wound in the neck. Close by, in the middle of the road, lay a stout leather satchel, gaping open, and quite empty.

Two small memorandum books, one shut and the other with white leaves fluttering, lay near the bag. Though the roadway at this point was dry and hard, it bore some signs of a struggle, and toward the edge of the water there were several little, dark, caked lumps of puddled dust.