“Now don’t you worry about that,” said McAllister, smiling. “Brown hasn’t much sense but he’s got a lot of vanity—and a little ordinary horse sense too, of course. He and Mel Lunt are busy this very minute making up as likely sounding a story as they can manage between them all about how he fell down on his face.”
Nothing more was seen or heard of the deputy sheriff at O’Dell’s Point. He evidently carried his investigations farther afield. No further inquiries were made concerning the fate of the big, red pirogue. Nothing more was heard of Louis Balenger or Richard Sherwood.
But more bread vanished from the pantry and again the red dogs failed to give the alarm. And the stolen books reappeared in their exact places on the library shelves.
The little girl was kept in ignorance of the suspicions against her absent father and also of the thefts of food and the mysterious borrowing of the books. The others discussed the situation frequently, but always after she had gone to bed. Ben was of the opinion that Richard Sherwood was in hiding somewhere within a few miles of the house and that it was he who had helped himself from the pantry and library. He held to this opinion in spite of the behavior of the dogs.
His mother and uncle believed otherwise. They maintained that Sherwood, innocent or guilty, would go farther than to O’Dell’s Point for a place in which to hide from the police. Otherwise, why run at all? they argued. He had started well ahead of the chase, judging by what they had heard, with plenty of time to get clear out of the province. Jim believed that the food and books had been taken by an Indian. He knew several Indians in the neighborhood who could read and more who were sometimes hungry because they were too lazy to work; and they were all on friendly terms with the dogs. A sick Indian would ask for food, but a well one wouldn’t for fear that a little job of work might be offered him. Haying was the last time in the year to expect one of those fellows to come around asking for anything. As for the books, an Indian who was queer enough to want to read would be queer enough to take the books on the quiet and return them on the sly. That’s how James McAllister figured it out.