Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1953

by The Raiders of Beaver Lake (v1. 1)

  "Hold your horses, Randy.” Jebs set the trap down on the ground, pushed down with a spring on either foot, and drew the branch loose from the relaxing jaws. "Let’s not be too hasty."

  "That wouldn’t be hasty. We saw them setting their traps. We can tell the sheriff and game warden we recognized the Bickrams."

  "Shoo, and the Bickrams can deny it. You can bet every cow there is in Texas that they’ve already got an alibi."

  "I recognized Emory’s voice, and you saw Ferd," reminded Randy.

  "In the night, just for a moment. Hard to swear to, with somebody else swearing the contrary." Jebs became rationally argumentative. "And even if we proved they were here, can we prove these traps are theirs?"

  "You know the traps are theirs, and so do I!"

  "That’s our judgment. Not good enough in a court," insisted Jebs. "Remember, the Bickrams would be innocent until proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Isn’t that the way the law reads? And if they had an alibi, and we couldn’t crack it, and couldn’t swear positively these traps were theirs and set by them, where would you and I be?”

  "All right, where?"

  "I’ll tell you. We’d look just like a couple of soreheaded young kids who were making the charge because of that trouble we had with Emory at the dance."

  "That’s just about what they would claim against us," admitted Randy.

  "Lawyer Brown, who handled some legal matters for my dad, said once that you must always figure every possible thing there is to be said on your opponent’s side," said Jebs. "I heard him, and I never forgot it. No, Randy, this isn’t evidence enough. We’ve got to get them in our hands, as well as their traps."

  "How can we manage that?" Randy objected. "Let’s think of a few points to be said on our side, now."

  Jebs tilted his head, and Randy saw him grin in the moonlight. "Shoo, if I knew how we’d manage it I’d tell you. We’ll have to study out a plan. And while we’re studying it out, we’ll just spring the rest of this line of traps and leave them right where they are, for those Bidcrams to come back and find sprung and empty."

  They headed for the dam where, after a brief search, they found the stake that had been driven to hold the chain of a second trap. This they drew up, sprang, and dropped back into the water. On they went to the far side, located the other two traps they had heard being moored in place with driven stakes, one next to a thicket of sassafras such as the beavers loved, the other at the mouth of the beaver canal. These, too, they sprang and left in the water.

  "Now what?" asked Randy as they left the last trap.

  "Now we sleep," said Jebs.

  "You really suggest that we can close our eyes tonight?" Randy almost squealed, but as he did so he realized that he was tired, and that Jebs’s cool suggestion was a good one.

  "Shoo, why not? We’ve been working and accomplishing, haven’t we? We’ve done the kind of good turn that the whole Scout setup ought to decorate us for. Merit Badge in trap-springing, huh? I figure we’ve earned a good night’s sleep. And let’s go get it."

  Back at the place where their bedding was spread, both boys found themselves content to stretch out. They talked quietly for a while about various possible ways to catch the beaver-poaching Bickrams redhanded. And it was Randy, the nervous one, who was the first of the two to close his eyes and sink into dreams that, by contrast with the adventures of the evening, were peaceful ones.

  A TRAP FOR TRAPPERS

  Randy was amazed to find the vegetation at the shore of Beaver Lake so strongly and thickly grown. It was not really grass, as he had earlier thought, but reeds of almost the size and strength of tropical bamboo, matted and laced together. As he laboriously thrust and jammed his way through the tangled growth, the green tips of the reeds swayed and clung together above his head, shutting out sunlight and air. With every hard-fought step forward, he found himself moving deeper and deeper into a stuffy gloom. Why had he come here by himself? He found it hard to remember why. But he did not think of drawing back.

  At last, with almost his final ounce of strength, he was able to peer out between two of the biggest stalks. There was Beaver Lake, a quiet sheet of brown water. Then he watched, the surface of the lake stopped being quiet and calm. A ripple appeared in it, a wet, blunt, furred head thrust itself into view and moved slowly toward him.

  A beaver, in the daytime! He saw its wise, bright eyes, its flattened-down ears, the churning little waves made by the powerful thrusts of its legs. Closer it came, slowly and steadily, as though it did not see him. Randy felt his heart throbbing exultantly. To know an experience like this in the daytime, during the hours when beavers were always out of sight in their lodges or under water!

  The beaver was paddling straight to shore, was scrambling up in front of him. Randy had never for a moment expected to see such a big one. This specimen might well be some survivor of that giant breed of beavers that, according to Major Hunter’s book, had once dammed their pools and built their lodges in prehistoric Ohio. It made its crouching way up on land very close to Randy, then lifted its head, and sat up like a squirrel.

  Abruptly it flung out its forelegs, like two arms, and flung off its wet fur. Randy saw instantly that it was Emory Bickram, who had swum to shore clad in a masterly disguise. Amazed and horrified, Randy tried to shrink back and escape the way he had come, but the thickly matted stems and leaves held him fast. With an exultant snarl, Emory shot out his two big pawlike hands and grabbed Randy.

  "Come on, Randy,” said the poacher. "Come out of there.”

  With the boldness of desperation, Randy seized Emory’s thick wrists and summoned his strength to thrust his enemy back. Then he struck with all his angry force at the heavy, scowling face. Emory flung up crossed arms to block the blow. "Hey!” yelled Emory. "Cut that out!”

  "I’ll show you,” muttered Randy, and struck again.

  "Randy! Randy!” The voice of Emory was changing, becoming more familiar. "Stop trying to hit me. What’s the main idea?”

  Still trying to grapple and strike, Randy was aware that the lakeside scene of misty water and matted jungle was fading away like some reflected image on a screen. He still clung, struggling, to Emory, but it was not Emory after all. It was Jebs, who was warding off Randy’s attempted blows, and the hampering tangle of stems was turning into a scrambled mass of bedding.

  "What’s the idea?” protested Jebs again. "First you lie there sleeping as soundly as a black bear in winter, while I do all the morning chores. Then, when I try to wake you up to eat breakfast—”

  Randy was himself again, rubbing the sleepiness from his eyes. "Gee, what a dream!” he cried. "I’m sorry, Jebs, I thought you were—”

  "Whatever you thought I was, I’m glad I’m not,” interrupted Jebs in turn. "You were trying to punch my head out from between my ears. You said, l’ll show you, and, shoo! You just about did show me. Show me all the stars in the zodiac. What was your dream?”

  Randy was on his feet. "I’m not supposed to tell any bad dream before breakfast, or it’ll come true, they used to say when I was a kid. Or is it the other way around? Wait until I wash my face, anyway.”

  He headed for the stream below Beaver Lake, washed himself awake and alert in the cold trickle, then came back. Jebs had built a new fire, and had set one of the mess kits on it again as frying pan. He forked strips of bacon from the bubbling fat in the bottom of the kit and set them to drain on fresh broad leaves arranged beside the fire. He now broke the eggs, one after another, into the fat and stirred them with his fork.

  "Scrambled eggs for breakfast,” he announced. "You cooked for us last night, I cook for us this morning. Fair enough?”

  "Fair enough.” Randy watched while Jebs dished half of the eggs into the second mess kit, shared out the fried bacon, and passed a portion to him. Randy buttered slices of bread for them both, and dissolved the coffee solution in the canteen cups. "Well, since we don’t know whether I should tell my nightmares before or after breakfast, I’ll tell i
t during.”

  He did so, between mouthfuls of bacon and eggs, and Jebs listened with as much interested attention as though Randy were relating an actual adventure.

  “I don’t quite understand this dream psychology stuff,” finished Randy. "Early in the night I dreamed, but only calm, pleasant things. Then, just before I woke up, that sort of business.”

  "I shouldn’t have grabbed hold of you to shake you,” said Jebs. "Another way of looking at it is, you need time to be scared by what happens to you. For instance, last night when I was sneaking up on that pair of fur thieves, I wasn’t a bit afraid, just interested and anxious to get them dead to rights. It wasn’t until later, after they were gone and we'd come back here, that I stopped to think how close we were to being pretty badly hurt, maybe having our meters really shut off. Now that it’s daylight again, what’s our next move?”

  They finished breakfast, washed their kits and tableware, and began to pack their camping equipment.

  "The first thing we do,” said Randy, "is to tell my grandfather.”

  "I reckon you’re right there, though I’ve had the sneaking hope we could catch those Bickrams ourselves,” confessed Jebs. "We agreed earlier to try to work it out without help, but we can’t mess around and maybe muff it when it concerns the Major’s property and anti-trespassing rules.”

  "And when it concerns the beavers,” added Randy.

  "No, they’re our pals, and we’ve got to look after them,” Jebs agreed. "Let’s shove back for Laurels and put the facts in your granddaddy’s hands.”

  They completed their packs, and by common consent obliterated all signs of their camp, burying the ashes of the fire and the scraps of their cooking, and scattering the ends of longleaf pine boughs that had made up their mattress for the night. Then they sought the homeward trail, and within half an hour were on Major Hunter’s screened porch, telling their story to the proprietor of Laurels.

  Early in the recital he stopped them. "We’ll get this in writing,” he decreed. "Randy, step inside and bring a fountain pen and a pad of paper from my desk. Now,” he went on when the writing materials were brought to him, "begin again. Tell it simply and watch out about dressing anything to make it sound better than it was. When one of you thinks the other may be mistaken, say so, and arrive at the facts between you as well as you can.”

  Thus cautioned, the two boys described the adventures of the previous night, each checking and supplementing the other as they had been directed. Major Hunter stopped them at several points to ask questions, especially about the sound and recognition of the voices of both Ferd and Emory Bickram, the glimpse of the revolver in the hand of one of the Bickrams, and the pounding noises that had suggested the driving of stakes to fasten the chains of the beaver traps.

  "The two of you have done mighty well for boys, mighty well even for men,” he complimented them when they had finished. "Jebs, your judgment was especially good about leaving the traps where they were, after springing them. As you convinced Randy, the evidence at present probably isn’t quite good enough. Even if we could show that the Bickram brothers owned the string of traps, they could, and probably would, argue the traps had been stolen or borrowed from them, and set by someone else. People like that know and use every loophole and delaying trick the law allows. And you also did well not to show your own presence or try to chase them. If one of them had a revolver, that means that they would have fired at anybody who tried to close in on them. Rifles and shotguns are for shooting animals, revolvers are for shooting men.” This last statement the Major delivered with a frightening sternness. "Now, stay away from Beaver Lake until I tell you you can go back. I’ll take over this situation."

  "Are you going to telephone the sheriff?" asked Randy, and the Major shook his gray head.

  "Not from this house, since people of the neighborhood seem to listen in from time to time. I'll drive into town to make my calls, and then probably to Southern Pines and to Carthage. Let me depend on you two boys to say nothing about this to anybody — not even to your father, Jebs, or to Uncle Henry."

  "We promise you that, sir," said Jebs.

  The Major drove away in the light truck. He returned within an hour. With him was a brown-faced, middle-aged man who wore a military campaign hat, such as is issued to cavalrymen. Immediately behind the truck, a light sedan drew up in the yard. From it emerged a lanky, freckled man in a seersucker jacket and trousers, who conferred with the Major, then went into the screened porch with him and the brown-faced stranger. A further conference, and the Major called out for Jebs and Randy.

  "Boys, this is Mr. Meadows, the game warden," Major Hunter introduced the man in the campaign hat. "And this," he added, turning and gesturing toward the lanky one, "is Deputy Sheriff O’Brien. I want you to tell them the same story you told me, about your camping experiences last night."

  Randy and Jebs did so, each contributing part of the report. Both game warden and deputy sheriff made copious notes, and Major Hunter referred frequently to his own. When the boys had finished, the Major said, "That is substantially the way they told it to me, gentlemen."

  "Mmmm,” Deputy Sheriff O’Brien half-purred, in the manner of a cat, thinking hard. "Right now, if we should gather in these two trifling no-’count poachers, we could try ’em for trespass and attempted violation of the game laws.’’

  "That’s right,” agreed Mr. Meadows, shoving back his campaign hat. "As game warden, I’ll be right glad to cooperate and see they get what they deserve from the law.”

  "But there’s other things strike me,” went on the deputy sheriff. "The ways these kids tell it, Major, the Bickram boys — and I’d say we can be morally certain that they’re the ones, whatever a smart shyster lawyer might say about incomplete evidence — are a mite worse than plain poachers. That business about toting a pistol with them. As the Major points out, it shows they’re plumb ready to shoot, and maybe hurt, anybody who tries to take ’em.” The officers freckled face grew stern. "Fellows like that had better be handled carefully, and put away where they won’t do anything tragic for quite a smart spell. Now, can you be sure it was Emory Bickram you saw the first evening you were down by that beaver pond of yours?”

  "I can show you something that will tell us one way or the other,” said Randy.

  He went to his room and returned with the cast of the footprint. The deputy sheriff took it in his hands, studying it narrowly, while Randy described the way in which it had been made and how it seemed to match the cross-nailed sole of Emory Bickram’s shoe.

  "I declare, folks, this boy’s going to be sheriff himself in a few years from now,” said the deputy. "Making this cast, and connecting it up for evidence, is pure down good police work. It makes me feel all the more certain we’d better catch these Bickrams, be ready to prove their guilt on them, and all the guilt we can.”

  "You mean—” began Major Hunter.

  "I mean, if we could take them in for more than just attempt— catch them dead to rights with furs they’d taken, and show that they had illegally trapped those valuable furs on posted land, in violation of the game laws — then we could lay serious charges, and prove them, and put an end to their poaching."

  "You mean," asked Jebs unsteadily, "you want to let the Bickrams really catch a beaver?"

  "I don’t like that angle of it myself," said Major Hunter. "I’ve grown fond of those beavers. They’re living on my place, and I feel responsible. I wish we could handle it some other way."

  "So do I," added Mr. Meadows. "Beavers are good citizens."

  "What you say may be true, sir, but it’s harder to show attempt than to show actual commission of a crime," argued the deputy. "We can have a clear-cut case if we catch them hauling a beaver out of the trap in front of our eyes."

  "You insist on it, then?" asked the Major, still hesitating.

  "No, I won’t insist, but I sure recommend it."

  "Well," and the Major made a gesture of reluctant agreement, "we’ll do things as you re
commend."

  Randy and Jebs stayed to hear no more. They went out into the yard and moved beyond earshot of the group on the porch.

  "You heard that, Randy?" asked Jebs. "They want to sacrifice a beaver, maybe several beavers, to convict these night trappers we’ve jumped up."

  "We won’t let that happen," said Randy with sudden determination. "We’ll get the Bickrams dead to rights and without losing a single beaver out of Beaver Lake."

  "How?" asked Jebs eagerly.

  BEAVER PATROL TO THE RESCUE

  Randy made no immediate reply, but tramped purposefully away toward the stable. Jebs trotted after him.

  "How?” asked Jebs again. "How are we going to deliver those Bickrams to the law without losing a beaver?”

  "We’ll go scoop them in tonight,” announced Randy.

  "Now wait. As I figure the scheme that deputy was explaining, nobody goes to watch for any Bickrams tonight. They’re supposed to come and find their traps sprung, blame it on the beavers, and set the traps again, more carefully. Then, as I figure it, tomorrow night Deputy O’Brien and Warden Meadows will be in ambush. A beaver or so will be caught. When the Bickrams come back—”

  A voice from the porch hailed them. They went back obediently. The Major, Mr. Meadows and Deputy Sheriff O’Brien still sat together.

  "I want to deputize you two boys, temporarily,” the deputy greeted them.

  "Yes, sir?” said Jebs eagerly. "How do you mean, deputize us?”

  "You two seem to know the ground all around that lake where these poachers are operating,” Deputy O’Brien continued. "Tonight we expect them to come back and set their traps again. Tomorrow evening I’ll be here, with Mr. Meadows. I want the two of you here also, to guide us out there. We’ll spot the traps, but we won't disturb them. And at sundown, before our two bad boys come sneaking around to see what’s in the traps for them to skin, Mr. Meadows and I will go into hiding at some point we pick out. Then we can catch them, at the exact moment that's best for catching. Understand?”