252 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Feb. 16, 1907. 
pint of it. Along about noon the squaw came 
over, and she staid with him. If Mrs. Mclnnis 
didn’t talk to the Deacon, there never was a man 
got a combing. 
“Along in the evening, when the Deacon was 
doing the chores, he saw four men with guns 
coming toward the house. 1 hey saw him work¬ 
ing round the barn, and they came straight to 
him. There was the sheriff, two constables, and 
old man Viddler. 
“ ‘Where does that damned Indian, Matteou, 
:amp,’ says the Sheriff. 
“ ‘He camps about a mile from here when 
he’s at home, but he and his squaw are camped 
in my house just now,’ says the Deacon. ‘If 
you men will move them out of the house and 
fifteen or twenty miles off my land, I 11 give you 
as good a supper as ever you ate and keep you 
all night, and be glad to do so.’ 
“‘What time did he come here?’ says the 
sheriff. 
“ ‘Between seven and a quarter past, just as 
it was getting gray daylight. He brought me 
back a tin kettle he borrowed from me yester¬ 
day, and a round of moose meat for a Christ¬ 
mas present. I was fool enough to give him a 
vial of rum, and he’s been drunk in the house 
ever since, and the old woman’s been giving me 
the devil. Go right inside and see him if you 
don’t believe me.’ 
“The sheriff asked him what time he’d seen 
Matteou the day before, and Mclnnis told him 
the whole story. ‘Well,’ says the sheriff, ‘all I 
know is that last night Ranald McCallum lost 
his house and barn, and four other houses 
caught from them. There’s about ten thousand 
dollars’ worth of damage done, and I have^ a 
bench warrant to take Matteou, dead or alive.’ 
“ ‘You’ll not have much trouble in doing that,’ 
says the Deacon, but you’ll have your hands full 
to prove that he set the fire. He was here be¬ 
fore breakfast yesterday, and he came here at 
half past six this morning. My wife and I can 
both swear to that. I hate him worse than 
poison, but right’s right, and I don’t believe in 
putting a man in jail for what he never did, 
even if he is a worthless Indian—and besides, 
just look at the expense it will be to the county.’ 
The sheriff said he had no choice about the mat¬ 
ter; he had to execute the warrant, and he went 
in and did so. Then, being a magistrate him¬ 
self, he first swore the Deacon, and then his 
wife, taking their evidence apart from one an¬ 
other. Then he sent out and got Hiram 
Hawkins, who met Matteou on his way to the 
Deacon’s that morning, carrying the moose 
meat and the kettle. 
“ ‘I guess this settles the matter.’ says he. 
when he’d finished. ‘Myra Mackintosh and her 
mother must have been mistaken about the man 
they saw stripping birch bark off their cordwood 
pile. Sixty miles is rather more than any man 
would care to go in one day, and Matteou must 
have done every foot of that to burn the build¬ 
ings and get back here at the time you all swear 
he did.’ 
“The whole party stayed the night with Mc¬ 
lnnis, and in the morning they took their 
prisoner back with them. The magistrates 
looked on the matter the way the sheriff did. 
Matteou got clear, without going to court. 
“The frost came early, but the snow came late 
that year. It was a week after New Years be¬ 
fore they had snow enough to spoil the skating. 
One morning father came in from doing the 
chores, and he says to my mother, ‘I guess it’s 
going to s'Yte" ur and snow some at last. The 
meat hawks are all round the house, and the 
apple trees are full of chicadeedees. I guess I’ll 
go over and get old man Viddler to come in on 
a still-hunt. The chances are we have enough 
snow before to-morrow morning.’ Viddler said 
he’d come, and he and father started early in the 
’day. Mrs. Viddler drove them about ten miles 
up the road on an express wagon. They took 
in on a tote-road and made for’ the camp on the 
foot of Hunting Lake. They got there just in 
time. It came on to rain, and it rained live imps 
and witches all that night. In the morning the 
lake had an inch or so of wafer all over the ice. 
The ice was a foot thick, but any one who has 
tried it knows that you can’t walk on wet glib 
ice, with moccasins on, when there’s any wind 
against you. They had lots of grub, and they 
lay in camp until noon, then Viddler went out 
to chop a little wood and father went with him. 
They weren’t twenty yards from the camp when 
father saw something moving on the upper half 
of the lake, above the narrows. He pointed 
it out to Viddler and got his glasses, and they 
saw what they believed to be a sailboat coming 
down the lake. Says father, ‘If that boat’s 
sailing on an inch of water, or going through a 
foot of clear ice, at that rate she’s coming, the 
devil himself is steering her, and I’ll put for 
home.’ 
“Viddler laughed, and told him it was some 
one in an ice boat. He said he’d often run one 
himself, and he meant to run this one a trip or 
two after the man in her brought her to the camp 
landing. The sail dropped, and the boat went 
out of sight just before she came to the nar¬ 
rows. A few minutes later they saw a man carry¬ 
ing her over the crossing—for the narrows never 
freeze real safe; and then she hoisted sail again 
and came down the lake. When she was about 
three-quarters of the way down, the sail dropped 
again, and the boat swung round, and came to 
the landing on the opposite side. The man got 
out, picked her up, and took her into the woods, 
where the trail to Fraser’s camp runs in. Just 
before he stooped to pick the boat up, a little 
glint of sunshine broke through the clouds and 
fell on the opposite side of the lake. Viddler 
snapped his glasses together; ‘Blame my cats if 
that isn’t Matteou!’ says he. 
“Now, that lake’s nearer seven than six miles 
long, and father always said it didn’t take the 
Indian twenty minutes to make the run. It’s 
one of several long lakes, with small portages 
between them; and the whole chain run down 
from Trafalgar Lake. ‘That explains matters,’ 
says Viddler, ‘that Indian ran down the chain 
of lakes on his ice boat, set the fire, and skated 
back. There was a nor-west wind that day, and 
it was calm at night, so he could do it easily. I 
was a fool for not thinking of that before, but 
I didn’t know that he could handle an ice boat 
the way he can.’ 
“It came on to snow that evening, and in the 
morning it blew pretty hard; before night they 
had a nice farrow cow down, and dressed. It 
was after dark when they got back to camp; and 
the first thing they saw was Matteou sitting by 
the fire, cooking a porcupine. He told them a 
long story about his doings and said he came in 
the very opposite way from the way they saw 
him come. They both suspected some deviltry, 
but it wasn’t until they got out with their meat 
that they found that five stacks of meadow hay 
over on Joe’s Meadow had been burnt. The 
ground was frozen like a rock, and the little 
snow had covered all the tracks skates or the 
runners or steering-gear of an ice boat would 
leave on the ice. Three of the burnt stacks be¬ 
longed to Ranald McCulium; and that, and the 
loss of the hay he had in his barn, put him on 
his uppers for the winter. 
“This seemed to satisfy Matteou, for the next 
thing we heard, he packed up and went to New 
Glasgow; and before he’d been there a week, he 
got drunk and insulted a white woman. He had 
no money to pay his fine, so he laid his three 
months, out in jail. He got out the latter end 
of March, the town having kept his squaw and 
children all the time he was behind the bars; 
and he made his brags that he had lived well 
all the winter, and kept his family, without do¬ 
ing a hand’s turn. Every one was sorry for 
Ranald McCulium. 
“During the winter they hewed him a frame, 
and some of them hauled out logs, and very 
early in the spring they held a frolic and raised 
a nice little barn for him. They framed and 
boarded and shingled it in one day. Mrs. 
Viddler gave him a Jersey heifer and Old Man 
Viddler gave him a little mare. When the ice 
had gone out of the river and the spring freshet 
was on in good shape, they had a dance down 
at Donald McEwan’s. It was a quiet kind of 
affair, there was no rum, and only a few people 
were asked. Viddlers got a bidding—he played 
the violin, and she played the guitar, and I tell 
you they could play! Ranald’s wife was sick, 
so he stayed home. Just before bedtime he 
went out to the barn to fix up for the night, and 
while he was straightening the blanket on his 
little mare, he heard something come ‘whack!’ 
on the side of the building, and the mare gave 
a squeal and kicked the lantern over. He ran 
to the house and lit the candle again, and when 
he got back, the mare was standing in a puddle 
of blood. There was a bullet hole through the 
side of the barn. The bullet had just cut the 
mare’s back, gone through the partition, and 
fetched up in a post in the cow’s stall. If the 
heifer had been on her feet instead of lying down 
chewing her cud, it would have ‘paunched’ her 
for sure. The mare wasn’t hurt very much; she 
was all right to drive a day or two afterward. 
“Bright and early next morning, Ranald cut 
the bullet out of the post and went up to 
Viddler’s place. He showed Viddler the bullet, 
and asked him if he knew where it came from. 
‘Why, it’s one of my bullets, and I’d say it came 
out of a moose I’d fired at endways on. It’s 
all broken to pieces.’ 
“It came within an inch or two of going 
through my head last night. It wounded the 
little mare you gave me and fetched up in the 
other side of the barn. Here are the chips I 
cut out with it, and if you don’t believe me, 
come back and match them with the post I cut 
them out of. Now, I haven’t told a living soul 
about this, not even my wife. How did that 
bullet come to be sent through my barn. Did 
you lend your rifle to any one?’ 
“ ‘I never lent her to any one. A week ago 
I cleaned her well, loaded her and hung her up 
where you see her now. I left her uncapped 
for fear of accident, and this morning my wife 
was hunting my pockets for caps while I was 
doing the chores. There was a big hawk round 
after the chickens. He settled on that tree over 
there, and she’s shot five or six off it already.’ 
As he spoke, Viddler reached up and took the 
gun. He ran the ramrod down the barrel, but 
it fetched up against something not four inches 
from the muzzle. ‘It’s mighty queer,’ says he; 
‘I put in a light load and a round bullet, just 
on purpose for hawks. I tapped the bullet down 
with the mallet, to make sure it kissed the 
powder all right. I guess I’ll screw the breech 
off, and see what the matter is.’ He put the 
barrel in a vise and unscrewed the breech. 
There was two ounces of powder in the gun, 
and the muzzle was plugged solid full of bullets. 
Viddler turned white under his tan. ‘My God! 
what would have happened to my wife if she’d 
found a cap and fired that load?’ says he. Then 
they went to work and warmed the barrel, 
pouring oil down it, and they knocked five long 
conical bullets out. That load would have 
burst a small cannon. ‘We went to the dance 
last night,’ says Viddler, ‘and we left the door 
unlocked and the lamp burning. We put some 
supper on the table, left some potatoes ready 
washed, and two loaves of bread and some 
molasses and butter handy, in case the boys 
should come along to fix the boom at Mad 
Falls. We took old Pickwick along with us, be¬ 
cause he won’t allow any strangers round the 
house when we’re away; and McEwan’s girls 
stuffed him with cake and candy, and to-day he’s 
lying sick in his basket. When we came back, 
the door was shut, and no one had come in for 
supper.’ 
“Ranald looked at the floor for a while then 
he up and says, ‘Viddler, you and your wife have 
been good to me. When that damned scamp burnt 
my place, and the sheriff wanted men to go after 
him, not a man would come until you said you 
were in the game. Then constables plucked up 
courage and went, too. You people helped me 
more than any one else, and because you threw 
Matteou in a fair wrestle, and weren’t afraid to 
help serve a warrant on him, and because I 
wouldn’t take a fish warden’s oath and let him 
spear all the salmon he liked, he’s got it in for 
us. I’ve lost the savings of fifteen years; and 
if God and the saints hadn’t stood between your 
wife and harm, you’d have been a widower this 
day. Now, there’s just us two knows about this 
matter. There’s no need for us to tell any 
one else. If he comes back here, I’m going to 
get you put in as one of my deputies, and we’ll 
see if one Indian is going to run the show down 
here.’ Edmund F. L. Jenner. 
[to be concluded.] 
