Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1953

by The Raiders of Beaver Lake (v1. 1)

  You want us to go out with you tomorrow night?” asked Randy, but the freckled deputy shook his head.

  No, son, you stay away from the showdown. It will be a dangerous little situation. There may be some fighting, maybe even some shooting.”

  “I’m not afraid of Emory Bickram,” spoke up Jebs.

  Neither am I, said Randy at once.

  O’Brien grinned, and so did Mr. Meadows.

  "All the more reason why we want the two of you to keep out of it tomorrow night,” said the game warden. "The poachers will probably be armed, and Mr. O’Brien and I could never come back and face Major Hunter here if either one of you got hurt, even the least bit. So you promise us you won’t go out there tomorrow night?”

  “I promise,” said Jebs, and Randy nodded slow agreement. “Then that means you won't ask again to go with us, and you won’t follow us after we’ve gone,” said Mr. O'Brien.

  "No, sir,” said Jebs, "we won't.”

  "Good enough. Now, as I said, the two of you are deputized. For the purpose of this one case, you’re special deputy sheriffs, under my legal appointment as senior peace officer on the scene. That means that you won’t talk to anybody else until we’ve caught our poachers, and the case is closed.” We agree to that,” Randy said. "Is that all, Mr. O'Brien?”

  “Yep, that’s all, you special deputies. You can go now.” Again Randy and Jebs departed, and again made for the stable. Once there, they faced each other.

  "So now we’re officers of the law," said Randy. ' Do you realize what that means, Jebs? We’re legally able to make our own arrests, make them tonight, if we can."

  "Tonight?" echoed Jebs blankly. "That deputy said we weren’t to go out there tonight, and we promised."

  "No," and Randy shook his head emphatically, "he said nothing of the kind. He told us that he wanted us to show him the lay of the land around Beaver Lake tomorrow, and that we weren’t to go out there tomorrow night with him and Mr. Meadows, or to follow them out there when they were gone. He said absolutely nothing about going out before they went."

  "But your grandfather —’’

  "He said nothing about it, except to show that he hated to agree about letting beavers be trapped and killed."

  As he studied Randy, Jebs rumpled his blond hair. "You sound polly-foxy," he said. "Like a lawyer dodging around the points of law."

  "Mr. O’Brien didn’t say not to go out tonight," said Randy. "And we’re going.”

  "Without telling my dad or the Major?"

  "The deputy specifically ordered us to keep quiet on the subject, until the case was closed," reminded Randy.

  Jebs cocked his head on one side and gazed at Randy with narrowed eyes. Then he tilted his head the other way and studied Randy again. He opened his mouth three times before words finally came out.

  "I swear, you’re the most lawyer-talking scudder I ever had any dealings with," he vowed at last. "You’ve talked me into it, Randy. But if we get into a jam, I hope you can talk us out again. I’ll leave all the talking to you.

  "You leave all the talking to me if that happens, and I’ll do it. But talking isn’t going to be our job tonight. We’re going to save our brother beavers. Beaver Patrol, you know, that’s us. The only beavers we don’t like are the eager variety, such as the Bickrams.”

  "You mean, trap them?”

  "While they’re doing their own trapping,” replied Randy, and reached to where a coil of rope, thin but strong, hung on the wall. He tugged at a length of it, to test it for toughness and suppleness.

  "Wait,” pleaded Jebs again. "Randy, I want to save whatever beavers I can, too, but that deputy sheriff man is pure down set on the Bickrams being caught with a beaver in their trap. He’s afraid they’ll alibi their way out of it otherwise.”

  "And they might, if they were taken together, and could tell their alibi together,” agreed Randy. "But what if only one of them is taken, and questioned alone? Then the second one picked up separately and questioned by himself, too? Their alibis won’t match then.”

  Randy hung the coil of rope on his shoulder and left the stable, heading for the trail to the lake.

  "Wait up!” called Jebs, hurrying to follow. "Didn’t I say I was with you?”

  "Quiet,” bade Randy sternly. "We aren’t supposed to talk to anybody about the case, especially not where they can overhear us on the porch and call us back to say nothing doing. Let’s not let them know what we’re up to.”

  "Not even I know what we’re up to,” complained Jebs.

  Without further conversation, the boys walked to the lake. Randy inspected one trap position after another, with an air of sober contemplation, and finally paused near the one at the canal the beavers had dug.

  "Here’s our spot,” he said, pointing. "Look, Jebs, there’s only one spot where you can set yourself to pull the trap out of the water. It’s fairly clear of brush and other stuff that might tangle a rope, but there’s enough of a growth of grass to hide a snare loop. And then,” he continued, turning and gazing at the trees up the bank, "I see some good springy saplings, that can make twitch-ups. Help me bend one of them down, Jebs.”

  A thicket of tall, tough young trees stood there, and Randy studied them one after another. Making a selection, he climbed it nimbly. The sapling swayed, but did not bend beneath his weight. "Help me, Jebs,” he called again.

  Holding on with both knees and one elbow, he fastened the end of his coil of rope to the top of the sapling with two half hitches, then dropped it so it unwound as it fell.

  "Grab hold of that,” he directed, "and let’s shove this thing down to ground level.”

  With Jebs pulling strongly on the rope from below and Randy applying his weight from above, the sapling bent until its top brushed the earth. Hanging on, the boys lashed it to a projecting curve of strong root, and cut away the rest of the rope. Straightening up, Jebs almost glared at him.

  "Now then, master mind, I’ve been playing stupid long enough. What are you going to do out here? Give us a tell.” "You ought to be able to guess by now.” Randy had picked up the rope and was forming a running noose with it. "Did you ever see a rabbit snare, made with a shoelace and a bent-down twig? This is the same thing, only to catch human beings instead of bunnies. Watch now.”

  He spread out the noose, widely and carefully, in the grass by the waterline, at the point where anyone trying to handle the trap must stand. Caught among the stems, the loop remained suspended an inch or so above the ground. Then Randy carried the loose end of the rope to the imprisoned top of the sapling and knotted it firmly.

  "I get it now!” cried Jebs suddenly. “He steps in that with his feet, and then it yanks him right up into the sky. But how does he spring the trap?”

  "I don’t know how to fix it so he’ll spring it. We’ll lie quietly here, and keep a knife ready. Brother Bickram steps into the loop, we cut the sapling loose from its moorings and let it waft him away —”

  “What about the other Brother Bickram all this time?” asked Jebs. “Aren’t you forgetting him?”

  “No. When one of them is swinging helpless by the hocks, the two of us run him, the untrapped one, out of here. We’ll be two against one. Maybe we could fire a gun in the air to help him get started fast.”

  “I haven’t got a gun,” said Jebs, “and if I try to borrow dad’s, he’ll ask questions. I do have a string of firecrackers somebody sent me up from Florida.”

  “Bring them along,” Randy directed. “If we set those off it will sound like a whole battalion of guns from ambush. Whichever Bickram is left in running order will run, all right. In any case, we’ll be two to one against him, as I said. And when he’s gone, we’ll come back and be two to one against the man we caught. We’ll handle the prisoner between us.”

  “It begins to shape up,” said Jebs. “When do we do this?” “Let’s figure that,” replied Randy. “They won’t come until moonrise, and that will be around nine-thirty or ten o’clock. I looked in the paper. We want t
o be here first, within knife-reach of our sapling twitch-up.”

  “Go to bed early tonight,” Jebs suggested. “So will I. And we can sneak out by the window or the door, without telling anybody, rendezvous behind the stable at Laurels, and make tracks for here.”

  They shook hands on it, and turned their faces homeward.

  TRAPPED BEAVER —TRAPPED BICKRAM

  Conscience insisted on bothering Randy from time to time as he made ready for an extra early bedtime, but he reflected that what he and Jebs had agreed to do was given plenty of precedent in the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He turned out his light and lay on his cot, fully dressed except for his moccasins. Silently he listened until he heard the clock in the front room strike nine. Then rising softly, he wadded up a spare blanket, a pillow and one or two articles of clothing and made them into a rough dummy of his own size on the cot. He pulled a sheet over it, and nodded in satisfaction at the lifelike appearance it achieved. Into his pockets he slipped a flashlight and a small waterproof box of matches, and took his moccasins in one hand. Then he slid as noiselessly as he could out of the bedroom window and into the rear yard.

  Crouching below the sill in the shadows, he put on his moccasins. He tiptoed past the stable. A dark figure stirred, and Jebs’s voice challenged him. "Randy?”

  "Naturally. What if it had been somebody else?”

  "Shoo, then I’d be halfway back home by now. Come on, let’s go. Here, I brought some weapons.”

  He held two sticks, and passed one to his friend. It was a stout cudgel, three feet long, more than an inch through the butt, and tough and springy.

  "How much good would this stick be against a gun?” asked Randy.

  "I've heard it said that a stick’s better than a gun almost anywhere after dark, if the man with the stick has surprise on his side,” replied Jebs. "Come on, we’re past due on the shores of Beaver Lake.”

  "Let’s not get separated,” said Randy.

  "No. If we do that, we’ll each mark his trail so the other can pick it up.”

  They headed along the path toward Beaver Lake with an almost easy assurance; their frequent journeys made them familiar with it, even in the dim light. Randy, tramping along, made a grim and successful effort to conquer and banish his night nervousness, but he felt considerable relief when they reached the dam without any adventure.

  "Head for that place where we set our snare,” directed Jebs softly, and led the way. But before they had gone many paces, Jebs' came to an abrupt halt and held up his hand. "Listen!” he muttered.

  Randy listened. He heard a liquid floundering and splashing up ahead of them.

  "Be ready for anything,” whispered Jebs.

  He started quickly forward along the shore, stick ready and poised. Randy kept at Jebs’s very shoulder, wondering and mystified. The splashing sounds rose louder and louder as the boys approached. Then again Jebs stopped and pointed.

  "Look! Randy, it’s — I wish we had a light to make sure.”

  "Here’s a light.” Randy whipped it out of his pocket, pressed the switch, and sent a beam probing across the surface of the water toward where the splashing sounded.

  Under the glow, the water showed agitated and churned into pale foamy patches, just at the point where the canal joined the main lake. And in and out of view bobbed and thrashed something black and frantic and alive.

  "Beaver!” yelled Jebs, forgetting all reason for quiet and caution. "They must have set two traps at that point!”

  "Yes, and we found only one of them to spring!” snapped back Randy. "Hurry up, Jebs!”

  They ran, side by side, to the very brink of the shore beyond which the beaver thrashed and strove for freedom. In the light of Randy’s flash he looked a big, powerful animal, with gleaming eyes and bared front teeth like two yellow rake tines set close together. Jebs leaned forward, peering.

  "Shoo, no wonder we couldn’t find that second trap. It’s fastened to a peg or root or something right down under water. We’ll have to go right into the lake to get him loose from it.”

  Jebs splashed in without pausing even to tug off his shoes. At once the beaver ceased its hysterical and futile efforts to tug its foot loose from the trap, and drew backward, swimming, blunt head lifted, eyes fixed on Jebs. Its attitude was one of caution and defense, but not of abject fear. It would fight for its life if need be.

  Jebs waded toward it, but then retreated clumsily as the beaver hurled itself furiously after him, in a charging, scrambling onslaught that was brought to a halt by the chain of the trap pulling tight.

  "He thinks you’re after him,” called Randy.

  "Can’t blame him for that,” replied Jebs. "Get in here with me, Randy. Bring along a stick or something, get him to pay attention to you, while—”

  He did not finish, perhaps because he was not sure of what plan to follow. Randy sprang into the water after him, heading towards the beaver. It charged him at once, as it had charged Jebs. He held out the cudgel to ward it off, playing his light in its face with the other hand. As it came within arm’s length of him, he felt the stout stick almost knocked from his grip as the beaver’s strong forepaws struck and clawed it. The animal was wrestling the stick, hoisting its sturdy wet body halfway out of the water.

  But Jebs, unnoticed for the moment, had dropped flat and had slid under the surface. As Randy clung to his stick in a sort of clumsy tug of war with the beaver, he saw the animal go under, too, and for seconds he stood alone, up to his lower ribs in the water.

  Then more powerful splashings. The beaver reappeared, bounding like a trout, and churned away toward the center of the lake like a miniature steam packet trying to set a new record. It bobbed under once more, and was gone. Randy stared mutely after it, then turned his eyes back to the point where it had fought the prisoning trap. Jebs’ head rose into view, in a rather beaverlike fashion. Randy turned the beam of his flashlight on his soaked, triumphant friend.

  "Give me a hand to shore,’’ panted Jebs. "This mud’s trying to pull my legs right loose from me.”

  Randy put out a hand to help Jebs, and the two made their way to shore. There Jebs thrust a forearm into the glow of the flashlight. His sleeve was torn, exposing the skin. Scratches were visible, with blood oozing from them.

  "That beaver’s claws were like the teeth of a rake,” said Jebs. "When I swam down, I got hold of the chain close to where it moored onto the trap, and pulled him under. He tried to grab hold of me and open me up, but I got a foot down on each spring of the trap and kept hold of the chain and shoved. The springs went down, the jaws of the trap sort of sagged open, and Mr. Beaver was loose.”

  Randy turned off his flashlight. He laid it down and, stooping, wrung water from his soggy trouser legs.

  "He certainly didn’t tarry by the way to tell us thank you," he observed.

  "Shoo, he didn’t feel thankful. He thought we were after him. Right now he’s probably telling his friends all about how he was strong and brave enough to lick two human enemies and smart enough to spring the trap loose after it had him.’’

  Randy stared across the lake, its waters silent again. "He was a gallant fighter, at that, Jebs."

  "Shoo, wasn’t he?” chuckled Jebs. "Well, anyway, that’s one skin the Bickram boys won’t be collecting."

  "Go on, laugh about it," a harsh voice bade them. "Maybe it’s the last laugh anybody will ever hear out of you."

  Jebs and Randy started, and whirled to stare into the night. Three figures were closing in upon them, from three points in the lakeside brush.

  "All right, don’t make any bluff at running," said the high, ugly voice of Ferd Bickram. "We’ve got guns, and we’ll use ’em."

  What had Jebs said about sticks being better than guns in the night? But that was when the stick-holders had the advantage of surprise, and, anyway, Jebs and Randy had dropped their sticks while rescuing the beaver. Randy found his voice, stuck and jammed in his throat along with his heart. "You," he stammered,
"you Bickrams, you’re under arrest."

  There was a triple chorus of laughter in which Randy and Jebs had no impulse to join, for it was neither hearty nor kindly. One voice was Ferd’s, another Emory’s. The third was the laugh of an older man that neither boy remembered hearing before.

  "Under arrest, he says,” spluttered Emory. "We kind of got the mule in the other stall on you, you two sneaking spies.”

  Jebs turned to face Emory, thrusting his head forward to glare through the night. "Nobody’s a sneak but you Bickrams,” said Jebs fiercely. "How about you and me finishing that fight we started at the square dance?”

  He took a couple of steps toward Emory, his wet shoes making a sinister sloshy noise on the ground. Emory moved back involuntarily, and gestured toward his brother Ferd. "Say, give me that pistol.”

  "You don’t get any pistols. You’re too ready to let ’em off,” said the older man who was unknown to Randy and Jebs. "Go on, Emory, fight him.”

  Emory recovered from his momentary timidity, and jumped back to face Jebs. There was a sudden rat-a-tat of blows exchanged, and Randy heard Emory grunt as if in angry pain. Ferd snarled encouragement to his brother. But Jebs was taking care of his end. Probably he was a little more angry than Emory and, though the smaller of the two, he was in the best condition. He scored again, with both fists, and Emory backtracked again, as if he did not relish the treatment.

  For an instant, as Emory retreated, the full attention of both Ferd and the older man was concentrated on the battle. Randy saw his chance and took it.

  He rushed toward the spot where he and Jebs had tied the sapling down. Darting his hand into his pocket, he snatched out his knife and fumbled it open.

  A glance at the fighters showed him that Jebs, by chance or by design, had hustled Emory straight to the spot where the noose of rope was spread. Emory’s feet must be inside the loop at this second. Stooping, Randy slashed.