“When dat feller come ’round? Four-five day afore Louis Balenger come back, maybe.”
“_Before_ he came back? Did you tell him about it?”
“Tell Balenger? Nope. Don’t tell Balenger not’ing. Don’t like dat feller Balenger, me.”
“And the stranger went away? He didn’t wait for Balenger?”
“Dat right. Don’t see ’im, anyhow. Don’t see no canoe, don’t smell no smoke.”
“Perhaps he hid and waited for him. Perhaps he did the shooting!”
“P’r’aps. Dat what I tell Sherwood—but he don’t listen. He don’t care. He don’t git it, Sherwood. Too scairt. Too crazy. Tell Lunt ’bout how maybe dat stranger shoot Balenger, too. Dat when he call me a liar.”
Noel showed his visitors the exact spot in which the big pirogue had lain when Balenger had been found dead in it and explained its position and that of Balenger’s body.
Ben took a stroll by himself, leaving his uncle and the old Maliseet smoking and yarning. He walked up and down the river along the narrow strip of shore under the bank, a few hundred yards each way, trying to picture the shooting of Louis Balenger. Then he walked up and down along the top of the bank, sometimes at the edge of the tangle of trees and brush and sometimes in it, still trying to make a picture in his mind. He busied himself in this way until supper time.
Ben took to his blankets early that night and was up with the first silver lift of dawn. He left the cabin without waking the others, hurried down to the edge of the river, got out of his shirt and trousers and moccasins almost as quickly as it can be said and plunged into the cool, dark water. He swam down with the current a short way, out in midstream, then turned and breasted the smooth, strong river. There was gold in the east now but the shadows were deep under the wooded banks. Fish rose, breaking the surface of the water into flowing circles that widened and vanished. Birds chirped in the trees. Crows cawed from high roosts. Rose tinged the silver and gold in the east and the river gleamed. Ben swam slowly, with long strokes, thrilled with the wonder of the magic of water and wood and the new day.
Ben landed on the other side of the river in a level wash of sunshine and flapped his arms and hopped about on a flat rock. In a minute his blood raced warm again and his skin glowed. He was about to plunge in again for the swim down and across to Noel’s front when his attention was attracted to the bank behind and above him by a swishing and rustling in the brush.