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ARE WORKAROUNDS ETHICAL?
Are Workarounds
Ethical?

Managing Moral Problems

in Health Care Systems

NA N C Y B E R L I N G E R

1
 1
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© Oxford University Press 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without
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outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Berlinger, Nancy, author.
Are workarounds ethical? : managing moral problems in health care
systems / Nancy Berlinger.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–026929–6 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–19–026930–2
(ebook (updf)) — ISBN 978–0–19–026931–9 (ebook (epub)) —
ISBN 978–0–19–026932–6 (online content)
I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Ethics, Clinical. 2. Delivery of Health Care—ethics. WB 60]
R724
174.2—dc23
2015018150
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
 To David Anderson Weigel and
the memory of Eric Anderson Weigel
 CONTENTS

Preface ix

1. Should You Wash Your Hands? 1

2. Are Workarounds Ethical? 27
3. Turfing, Bending, and Gaming 74
4. Dirty Hands and the Semiclear Conscience 106
5. Problems of Humanity 134
6. Ethics without Heroics: Foreseeing Moral
Problems in Complex Systems 162

Notes 177
Index 205
 PREFACE

In her memoir The Owl of Minerva, British moral philosopher

Mary Midgley describes how she writes books:

My habit has always been, if possible, to develop what I write

out of a previously successful talk, using the suggestions that
have begun to develop in discussion with an actual audience,
rather than writing an article to be printed in a journal and
then reading it out at a meeting. And in preparing the talk
in the first place I would first look for a subject that I myself
thought was really important, and then, in working on it,
I would try to make the reasons for its importance clear at
once to the people hearing about it for the first time. This
means sticking as close as possible to everyday language, not
in the interests of dumbing-down but so as to show how the
topic arises out of its context.
Once I have prepared the talk, I then use it, if I can, for
a number of different audiences. I start to write it down only
when I am fairly satisfied that the point of it is getting over to
those who hear it, and I have digested their comments. If, at
that stage, there still seems to be plenty more to be said on the
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x | PR E FAC E

subject, I may start to expand it till—often by joining itself to

several other related talks—it eventually turns into a book.1

Midgley’s philosophical work and her writing habits have

influenced this book. It took shape out of some unexplored
ideas about safety and harm that arose when I was writing
a book about ethics in the aftermath of harmful medical
mistakes.2 As I gave talks about that book, while working
on other topics in health care ethics, I began to try out this
new set of ideas, clarifying my thinking through discussions
with audience members, and joining those talks, the fruits
of those discussions, and my continuing research together
into a new book.
Chapter 1 sets out the ethics of avoidance, the habits of
thought and behavior in clinical settings that include efforts
to manage problems arising in normal work by avoiding
engagement with someone, such as a patient or population,
or some thing, often a rule intended to guide normal work.
I am grateful to the faculty and postdoctoral fellows of the
Center for Bioethics and Health Policy at the University of
Pennsylvania for the opportunity to present and discuss this
chapter.
Chapter 2, on the ethics of workarounds, was developed
based on talks for faculty and students at Yale University
School of Nursing and staff at Yale-New Haven Hospital,
and through lectures at Rhode Island Hospital, the Florida
Bioethics Network, and the University of North Carolina
Hospitals. An opportunity to present this material at a
learning laboratory organized by the Center for Complexity
and Systems Thinking at Lund University in Sweden was
crucial in helping me to understand how workarounds arise
in normal work in complex systems such as health care.
 PR E FAC E | xi

Subsequent invited talks at meetings of the New Zealand

Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, the Australasian
Association of Bioethics and Health Law, and the American
Association of Critical-Care Nurses provided further
opportunities to develop this material and to discuss it with
audiences from different health care systems.
Chapter 3, on turfing, bending the rules, and gaming
the system, was developed based on talks at Montefiore
Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine
(Bronx, New York), the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the
Clinical Ethics Network of North Carolina, and panel
presentations at the Jewish Theological Seminary and several
annual meetings of the American Society for Bioethics and
Medical Humanities. This chapter draws on research I have
conducted as codirector, with Michael K. Gusmano, of
The Hastings Center’s Undocumented Patients Project. An
earlier version of some material in this chapter appeared in
an article I coauthored with Rajeev Raghavan, a member of
our project’s advisory group.3
Chapter 4, on moral distress and conscience problems,
was developed based on talks for faculty, staff, and student
audiences at the University of Virginia, the University of
Connecticut Health Center, the United States Military
Academy, the Yale Interdisciplinary Bioethics Center, and
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and through a
paper presented to the Bonhoeffer: Theology and Social
Analysis Group of the American Academy of Religion.
Working on other people’s research projects, notably an
Open Society Foundation project on the challenges public
health workers face in avoiding complicity in complex
human rights situations, expanded my knowledge and
clarified my ideas.
xii | PR E FAC E

Chapter 5, on problems in end-of-life care, was developed

based on a paper first presented at the Columbia University
Seminar on Death. From 2007 to 2012, I directed a Hastings
Center project on treatment decision-making and care near the
end of life, which produced a coauthored book.4 I am forever
grateful to my coauthors, Bruce Jennings and Susan M. Wolf,
for their dedication, scholarship, and insights throughout our
research and drafting process. Trying out material for that
book in grand rounds and other talks in clinical settings and
responding to audience members’ questions and concerns
helped me to better understand how workplace conditions
contribute to ethical uncertainty about patient care near the
end of life. Discussions with Alan Mittleman of the Jewish
Theological Seminary, Tony Hope and Michael Dunn of the
Ethox Centre at the University of Oxford, Celia Kitzinger of the
University of York, Jenny Kitzinger of the University of Cardiff,
Jane Seymour of the University of Nottingham, and Ramón
Lavandero of the American Association of Critical-Care
Nurses helped me to refine these ideas. Opportunities to
speak at Yale University Medical School and to give the Daniel
W. Foster, MD, Lecture in Medical Ethics at the University
of Texas–Southwestern offered important opportunities to
present this chapter and look at ethical challenges in end-of-
life care through the lens of safety and harm.
Chapter 6, which offers practical recommendations
concerning the problems discussed throughout the book,
owes much to the thoughtful and constructive comments
of Ron Paterson of the University of Auckland and an
anonymous peer reviewer, and to the continuing influence
of Tia Powell of the Montefiore Einstein Center for Bioethics
on my thinking about how ethics guidance can be integrated
into clinical work and health care systems. James Sabin
 PR E FAC E | xiii

has been another important influence on my thinking

concerning the consequences of health policy problems for
health care professionals and organizations.
The collegial generosity of Charles Bosk over many years,
through conversations and through his sharing of published
and unpublished writings on problems of safety and harm
as social problems, has enriched this book, particularly
­chapters 2, 4, 5, and 6. The theory presented in c­ hapter 1 and
its application in c­ hapters 2 and 4 owe much to a lucky series
of conversations in Belfast, Northern Ireland, with Alan
Cribb of King’s College London; his insights and published
work were crucial in helping me to shape the final draft.
A grant from the Gaylin Fund at The Hastings Center
made the writing of this book possible. I am profoundly
grateful to the Center’s President, Mildred Z. Solomon,
for her support of this aspect of our scholarship, and to
The Hastings Center’s cofounders, Daniel Callahan and
Willard Gaylin, for creating the remarkable place where I
am fortunate to work. Conversations with my colleagues,
in particular, Michael Gusmano, Greg Kaebnick, and
Erik Parens, sharpened my thinking in countless ways, as
did conversations in Sweden and Australia with Sydney
Dekker, Rob Robson, Eleanor Milligan, and Sarah Winch,
on complexity in health care work; in New Zealand with
Ron Paterson and Charlotte Paul, on the ethics of safety
and harm in health care work; and in Scotland with Donald
Mackenzie and Aidan O’Neill, on the concept of conscience
inside and outside of health care. Aimee Milliken and
Annalise Berlinger have been thoughtful and generous
discussion partners about how young professionals perceive
and respond to everyday ethical challenges in health care.
Conversations with Andrew Berlinger and Lori McFarland
xiv | PR E FAC E

further expanded my understanding of how people define

and manage problems of safety and harm in different types
of work.
Nancy Dubler, a pioneer in clinical and organizational
ethics at Montefiore Medical Center, and the late Donna
Diers, Dean Emerita of the Yale School of Nursing, showed
me that understanding the nature of health care work,
and how workers shape and are shaped by this demanding
environment as well as by their professional obligations, is
integral to doing health care ethics so that it rings true and is
useful. I am ever grateful to these two great mentors.
ARE WORKAROUNDS ETHICAL?
 1

Should You Wash Your Hands?

THERE IS MORE THAN ONE “clean hands” problem in health

care work. The familiar, concrete problem of safety and
harm concerns the recognition that patients can be harmed
when physicians, nurses, and other health care workers fail
to wash their own hands, and that workers often fail to take
this action on their own despite knowledge of the risks to
patients. The solutions to this problem are practical, envi-
ronmental, and social: more soap, more sinks, more dispens-
ers stocked with antibacterial gel, more opportunities to do
the right thing and to see others doing the same. This is not
really an ethical problem, a problem of conflicting values,
as the distinction between right action and wrong action is
so clear. The potential for harm to patients is real, and the
remedy is straightforward, at least in places where soap and
clean water are available. The ubiquitous posters in hospi-
tals and other health care settings serve as moral remind-
ers: here is the right thing to do; you know it’s the right thing
to do; you can do the right thing; you are doing wrong, in
your work, by your patients, if you fail to do this thing.
This is not a simple problem, although its moral
dimensions are clear. Labeling this problem or its solution
as “simple” can obscure the reality that handwashing, in a
clinical setting, is never an isolated activity but is part of
a sequence of routine activities that serves several goals.
2 | A R E WOR K A ROU N DS ET H IC A L?

Washing one’s hands, taking other infection control

measures (gloves, gowns, respirators) as appropriate,
identifying oneself, confirming the name of one’s patient,
acknowledging the presence of loved ones, checking the
patient’s vital signs, dispensing medications, conveying new
information, answering questions, updating the chart, and
getting orders written or updated are some of the activities
that protect people from harm, demonstrate respect for
others, and, done routinely, for every patient, during every
encounter, support the quality of care overall. Getting all of
this done, every time one enters a room, is not a simple task,
even if the stakes, for safety or harm, are clear.

T H E E T H I C S O F AV O I D A N C E
I N H E A LT H C A R E W O R K

The other clean hands problem is an ethical problem, and it

is the subject of this book. This problem, which I refer to as
“avoidance,” occurs when there is ethical uncertainty about
how normal work should proceed in a complex system, one
in which workers must continuously adapt to changing
conditions under pressures that include the need to keep
themselves or others safe from harm. Faced with this type
of uncertainty, workers sometimes try to wash their hands
symbolically, striving to keep their “hands,” or conscience,
clean by avoiding literal or psychological contact with a
situation perceived as dirty. A dirty situation may be one
that is seen as legally risky, morally dodgy, or emotionally
unclean, or as a muck of competing rules and demands that
a worker should avoid getting stuck in. (These situations
may also be dirty in the sense of being literally messy or
 S H O U L D Y O U WA S H Y O U R H A N D S ? | 3

unpleasant, but health care work differs from other types of

work in that the realities of illness and injury, the physicality
of caregiving, are part of the job. To those who are immersed
in it every day, this aspect of health care work is not easy,
but it is familiar.) In Purity and Danger, her anthropological
study of “dirt and contagion,” Mary Douglas, following
William James, describes dirt as perceived “disorder.”1 What
is perceived as dirty is perceived as disordering, unsettling,
dangerous to normal life. Faced with disorder at work, some
workers try to avoid the dirty situation by staying clear of it,
or by avoiding it psychologically, changing their perceptions
so that this once unsettling situation now looks acceptable,
orderly, clean enough. Other workers, or the same workers
on a different day, in a different situation, try to live with,
or to justify, some degree of moral dirt. Some feel helpless
to avoid unclean hands and, perceiving themselves as
powerless and paralyzed, may also avoid taking action to
change the situation.
These situations are structurally complex, often psycho­
logically distressing, and extremely common in health
care work, arising in patient care and in administrative
decision-making about its organization and delivery. The
names of the avoidance behaviors that workers devise—
workarounds, working the system, cutting corners, getting
creative—hint at the challenges of managing moral problems
that occur in the course of normal work and that threaten to
disrupt the progress of work. It takes extra work to manage
these problems. Some problems overlap with familiar
ethical challenges, involving uncertainty about how good
care should be provided to a patient, with the potential for
resolution through ethics consultation, conflict resolution,
or some other institutional mechanism. But often, workers
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4 | A R E WOR K A ROU N DS ET H IC A L?

perceive their avoidance problems as intractable because

they are produced by the conditions of complexity itself,
as workers continuously adapt their behavior in an effort
to respond to the situation at hand in a system that is
continuously changing at different levels, seen and unseen.
It is hard to write good rules for a system that will not stay
put. Trying to do good in such a system, or to make it better,
is like the Red Queen’s race in Through the Looking-Glass, in
which the pace is always “Faster! Faster!” and “it takes all the
running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want
to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as
that!”2
Health care workers recognize the conditions of
complexity in the built-in tension between official and
unofficial ways of getting work done, between adhering to
standards and responding to conditions on the ground.
They are often unsure whether their everyday avoidance
problems, including the moral uncertainty and stress
they experience in managing these problems, are “ethics”
problems. The patient care problems produced by the
complexity of health care systems sit at the intersection of
professional, clinical, and organizational ethics, and often
public health and health policy as well. Within a health
care organization, this category of problems overlaps with
operations, service utilization, and other domains that some
clinicians associate with internal pressures from the “bean
counters” and the “C-suite.” (Because the ethical challenges
of health care institutions such as hospitals, nursing homes,
and community health centers are usually described in
scholarly literature and professional work in terms of
“organizational” ethics, this book uses “institutional” and
“organizational” interchangeably except when referring
 S H O U L D Y O U WA S H Y O U R H A N D S ? | 5

to relations among separate institutions that may not

collaborate as an organization, or in other cases where it is
necessary to focus on a discrete institution.)

THE “ROUTINE MORAL BURDEN”

O F H E A LT H C A R E W O R K I N
COMPLEX SYSTEMS

Workers in health care settings experience the problems this

book explores as moral, practical, and workplace problems.
To help them manage these problems in a realistic way,
health care ethics must keep the person, the work, and the
system simultaneously in view. Writing on “routine moral
stress in professional roles,” British moral philosopher
Alan Cribb makes a compelling case that, in health care
work, ethical challenges are “basic and pervasive,” and that
“routine moral burden” can and should be distinguished
from moral distress and from conscientious objection,
both of which are discussed in c­ hapter 4.3 In Cribb’s view,
factors that contribute to routine moral stress in health
care work include the worker’s own sense of self as a moral
agent in relation to three sources of moral authority: official
codes and standards; habits and unofficial rules for getting
work done; and “the assumption that something broadly
ethically acceptable or even positively good is going
on” because this work concerns the care of the sick, the
treatment of disease, the restoration of health, all of which
are recognizable as ways to do good (122). The worker
may experience stress when any two of these sources are
perceived as in conflict and may devise ways to manage this
stress. For example, workarounds, the subject of ­chapter 2,
6 | A R E WOR K A ROU N DS ET H IC A L?

often arise when official rules conflict with efficient work,

and the habit of devising workarounds to get the job done
can take root early in one’s career. Not every job presents
these kinds of stakes routinely, but health care work does,
and Cribb argues that health care workers may therefore
have “an ethical duty to accommodate some level of moral
stress” (124). If we accept this argument—and it is hard to
imagine that the care of the sick in complex systems can be
made free of moral stress—organizations in which people
do health care work have an ethical duty to recognize and
support workers grappling with the built-in stresses of
their role, including moral stress about what one ought to
do for patients given constraints of time and resources.
This is different from looking at professional ethics in
health care in terms of one profession, such as medicine or
nursing, and that profession’s obligations to patients, research
subjects, families, or even populations. Taking health care
work as our subject opens health care ethics to nonhospital
settings in which formal ethics services, including
clinician education, are often weak or nonexistent, putting
more pressure on workers themselves to manage ethical
challenges. Focusing on health care work and the people who
do it opens health care ethics to nurses, physician assistants,
other clinical professionals, aides, and administrators who,
compared with physicians, are less likely to be offered regular
opportunities to reflect on the ethical challenges they face.
In this book, the term “health care worker” is used where
“professional” could suggest, incorrectly, that the concerns
being discussed are limited to physicians and nurses, or to
clinical professionals. (“Worker” is not an ideal term for
this purpose but is clearer than “staff,” a term that tends
to exclude senior clinicians and administrators.) Because
 S H O U L D Y O U WA S H Y O U R H A N D S ? | 7

health care work involves aides and administrators as well

as nurses and doctors, it is helpful to keep the full range of
people who do health care work in mind when thinking
about how work gets done and how ethical challenges cross
professional boundaries. For some of these people, health
care work is a vocation, a calling to serve those who suffer
or to pursue scientific knowledge with the goal of healing.
For others, or for some people on some days, the aims of this
work are noble and its realities are demoralizing. For recent
immigrants or workers with few skills, low-paid, low-status
caregiving work, physically demanding and at times literally
dirty, may be the only work available.4
In the context of contemporary health care systems
in the United States and other wealthy nations, the basic
avoidance problem can be stated as follows: When an
individual entrusted with a professional (or related civic)
responsibility concerning the health and welfare of others
confronts a difficult situation associated with fulfilling that
responsibility, is it ever appropriate to wash one’s hands of
the situation, whether by avoiding the responsibility or by
avoiding compliance with relevant law, policy, standards, or
other rules? What are the ethics of avoidance, including the
conditions that support or hinder ethical action in different
situations in which avoidance is an option? What do we need
to understand about health care work so we can answer
these questions in ways that are realistic and helpful, and
that keep the rights, safety, and other interests of patients
clearly in view?
Alan Cribb rightly describes the daily tension to achieve
balance between the extremes of “ethical laziness” (getting
the job done by avoiding the claims of others) and ethical
“arrogance” (cynically assuming that rules are useless
8 | A R E WOR K A ROU N DS ET H IC A L?

and can be ignored in favor of one’s own creativity) as a

“formidable challenge” for physicians, nurses, and other
front-line health care workers (124–25). He is interested in
“the routine and constant tensions and dilemmas” that go
with “role occupation” in health care work, with the day-to-
day experience of learning to become, and functioning as,
a physician or a nurse under intense, relentless pressure
from the system in which this type of work is done (124).
Building on Cribb’s analysis, in which becoming and being
a health care professional always involves being acted upon
by the health care system, we should keep two things in
mind in thinking about how this professional, or a worker
with less status in this system, manages the kinds of moral
problems explored in this book. First, some “routine and
constant tensions and dilemmas” arise from the health care
worker’s intimate contact with problems of humanity, such
as the reality of our mortality, which are less evident in other
types of demanding and potentially rewarding work. Health
care work is different from other kinds of work because of
its stakes and the emotions it elicits. Second, some tensions
and dilemmas arise from the demanding conditions of
a contemporary developed health care system, with its
competing mandates, evident flaws, and ever-present
politics. Given these working conditions, we should ask,
what is the moral obligation of the system itself concerning
system-produced situations that trigger avoidance problems
for workers and teams?
I began to think about these questions and their
importance to clinical professionals and others who work in
health care while writing and giving talks about the ethics
of the aftermath of medical harm, in which medical error
resulted in the injury or death of a patient and in medical,
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 They paddled for two hours before they marked any sign of
present human habitation. They saw a film of smoke then, frail blue
against the dark green of the forest. Ben swung into the left bank,
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down, and edged the canoe against a narrow strip of muddy shore.
Here was a path, deep-worn and narrow, leading up through the
tangled brush; and in the shallow water lay a few rusty tins.
They ascended the path up and over the bank and through a
screen of underbrush and water birches into a little clearing. At the
back of the clearing stood a small log cabin with an open door and a
chimney of sticks and clay. From this chimney ascended the smoke
that had attracted them. When they were halfway across the
clearing a short figure appeared in the black doorway.
“Injun,” said Uncle Jim over his shoulder.
The man of the clearing came a short way from his threshold and
sat down on a convenient chopping block. He had a pipe in his
mouth and in his right fist a fork with a piece of pork rind impaled on
its prongs. Odors of frying buckwheat cakes and Black Jack tobacco
drifted forward and met the visitors. The visitors halted within a few
yards of the old Maliseet.
“Good morning, Noel Sabattis,” said McAllister.
“Good day,” returned Noel, regarding the two with expressionless
and unwinking eyes.
 “SAT DOWN ON A CONVENIENT CHOPPING BLOCK.”

“I’m afraid your pancakes are burning,” said Ben.

 The Maliseet ignored this.
“You police?” he asked.
“Not on yer life!” replied Uncle Jim. “I’m Jim McAllister and this is
Ben O’Dell and we’re both from O’Dell’s Point down on the main
river.”
“Come in,” said Noel, getting quickly to his feet and slipping
nimbly through the doorway ahead of them.
He was stooping over the griddle on the rusty little stove when
the others entered the cabin. He invited them to share his meal, but
they explained that they had already breakfasted. So he broke his
fast alone with amazing swiftness while they sat on the edge of his
bunk and watched him. A dozen or more pancakes generously
doused with molasses and three mugs of boiled tea presented no
difficulties to old Noel Sabattis. When the last pancake was gone and
the mug was empty for the third time, he relit his rank pipe and
returned his attention to the visitors. He regarded them searchingly,
first McAllister and then young Ben, for a minute or two in silence.
“Li’l girl git to yer place a’right?” he asked.
“Yes, she made it, and she’s safe and well,” answered Jim.
“Police git Sherwood yet? You see Sherwood, hey?”
“Not that I’ve heard of. And we haven’t set eyes on him. But Dave
Brown and Mel Lunt gave us a couple of calls. They said they’d been
up here and seen you.”
“Dat right,” returned Noel. “You t’ink Sherwood shoot dat
Balenger feller maybe?”
“I don’t!” exclaimed Ben.
“I hope he didn’t,” said Jim. “We’re his friends.”
“Friends? Dat good,” returned the Maliseet slowly. “Didn’t know he
had none nowadays ’cept old Noel Sabattis.”
 CHAPTER V
VISITORS TO FRENCH RIVER

Old Noel Sabattis talked more like a Frenchman than the kind of
Indian you read about. He wasn’t reticent. Perhaps he had a thin
strain of French blood in him, from away back, long ago forgotten.
He called himself pure Maliseet. His vocabulary was limited but he
made it cover the ground. Sometimes he grunted in the approved
Indian manner but he could say as much with a grunt as most men
can with six words. His heart was in it; and with grunts and blinks of
the eye and his limited vocabulary he told Ben O’Dell and Jim
McAllister all that he knew about poor Sherwood.
Noel was a lonely man. He had been a widower for close upon
thirty years. His children had grown up and gone to the settlements
a lifetime ago. But he had refused to go to any settlement. He had
left his old trapping and hunting grounds on the Tobigue and come
on to French River about ten years ago. He found Sherwood and
Julie and their baby on the river in the big log house that had been
Louis Balenger’s. They were the only regular settlers on the stream
but there was a big camp belonging to a fishing club five miles
farther up.
Julie Sherwood was a fine little woman though she was Balenger’s
daughter, and prettier than you had any right to expect to see
anywhere. Sherwood was quite a man when she was close to him;
but even then Noel thought that he wasn’t all he might have been.
He had a weak eye—honest enough, but weak; and whenever his
wife was out of his sight he was like a scared buck, ready to jump at
a shadow. But he was kind and generous and Noel liked him. Julie
was generous and friendly, too. They offered Noel as much room as
he needed in their house and a place at their table; but Noel was an
independent fellow and said that he’d have a roof of his own. He set
to work at chopping out a clearing within a few hundred yards of
Sherwood’s clearing, and Sherwood helped him.
It wasn’t long before Noel Sabattis knew a great deal about Dick
Sherwood and, naturally, about the Balengers. Both the man and the
woman talked to him as if they trusted him; but she was the more
confiding of the two. It was she who told of Sherwood’s treatment at
the hands of her father and her older sister. She was bitter against
both her father and her sister, but she made the bitterest
accusations when her husband was not within earshot, for they
would have humiliated him. And he was already too humble and she
was giving all her thought and love to awakening his old self-respect
in his heart.
She told Noel that her father had impoverished Sherwood years
ago, when she was a child of ten or eleven, by cheating at cards,
and then had tricked him into his debt and his power by further
cheating—and all under the guise of friendship and good-fellowship.
Her mother had told her so in a deathbed confession. Then her
father had tried to make a rogue of Sherwood. He had succeeded
temporarily, but with such difficulty and by means of such cruel
efforts that he had made a coward of him. Yes, a coward—and that
was worse than all the rest, it had seemed to Julie. She told the
Maliseet that he, Richard Sherwood, who had been a soldier, had no
courage now except what he got from her.
Noel used to advise them to leave French River. He put it strong,
in spite of the fact that he would have been desolate if they had
gone. Julie said they were planning to go to the settlements as soon
as the baby was big enough to travel and Sherwood agreed with her.
Noel suggested that Louis Balenger might come back and pump two
more bullets into Sherwood. At that the big, broken Englishman
paled under his tan but the woman didn’t flinch. She said that her
father would never return but that she was not afraid of him anyway.
Noel and the Sherwoods lived peacefully in their adjoining
clearings year after year. Noel and Sherwood trapped fur together;
but Sherwood never went very far afield. His mind and nerves went
“jumpy” whenever he got more than a few miles away from his wife
and child. As the years passed he seemed normal enough when with
them, more nearly a sound man each year; but once out of sight of
them his eyes showed fear.
Noel often tried to argue him out of his fear. When a young man
and a soldier he had not been afraid of hurts or life or death, so why
be a coward now, Noel argued. His old enemy Balenger was gone,
so what was he afraid of? He had broken game laws and stolen furs
from other men’s traps and even acted as Balenger’s tool once in the
matter of a “rigged” game of poker down in Woodstock—but he was
living as honestly now as any man and had the best wife and
daughter in the province. So why continue to be ashamed and
afraid? He was his own master now. He had education and strong
muscles. Why didn’t he go away to the settlements with Julie and
the child and forget all about French River? He owed it to himself
and those two, Noel argued; and if he’d only forget Louis Balenger
he’d be as good a man as he’d ever been.
Strange to say, Julie did not back Noel Sabattis as strongly as she
should have in his efforts to get her husband to leave the scene of
his disgrace. She, brave as a tiger in her attitude toward every
known peril and ready to give her life for either her husband or
child, was afraid of the unknown. She was afraid of the world of
cities and men beyond the wilderness. Her parents had brought her
to French River when she was scarcely more than a baby but she
had fragmentary memories of streets of high houses and wet
pavements shining under yellow lamps and her mother in tears and
a stealthy flight. Even her father, clever and daring and wicked, had
been forced to flee in fear from a city! How then would Dick
Sherwood fare among men? Her fear of cities haunted her like a
half-remembered nightmare.
Julie said that they would leave French River in a year or two—
and always it was put off another year or two.
Julie died very suddenly of a deadly cold. She was ill for only two
days. It shook old Noel Sabattis even now to think of it. Sherwood
was like a man without a mind for weeks. He moved about,
sometimes he ate food that was placed before him, but he seemed
to be without life. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t believe his wife
was gone. Realization of his loss came to him suddenly; and Noel
had to strike him, club him, to save him from self-destruction.
Sherwood’s courage was all gone after that. Without Julie he
knew that he was good for nothing and afraid of everything.
Because he was worthless and a coward Julie had died. A doctor
could have saved her and if he had lived in the settlements she
could have had a doctor.
A year passed and Noel tried to arouse Sherwood. There was still
the little girl to think of. Why didn’t Sherwood get out with the girl
and work among men and make a home for her? What right had he
to keep her in the woods on French River? But Sherwood was
hopeless. He knew himself for a failure. He had failed in the woods
in the best years of his life, and he knew that he would fail in the
settlements. He had thought it over a thousand times. Failure
outside, among strangers, would make the future terrible for the
child. What could he do in towns or cities now, he who clung to an
old Indian and a little girl for courage to live from day to day?
Strangers? He would not dare look a stranger in the face!
But Marion might sicken suddenly as her mother had and die for
the need of a doctor! Then he would be guilty of her death, as he
was already guilty of Julie’s death—because he was weak as water
and a coward! Noel was right. He would take the girl away. He would
take her downriver. He would forget the few poor shreds of pride left
to him and ask the O’Dells to help her and him. He would go soon,
sometime during the summer, before winter at the latest.
Then Louis Balenger came back to French River, all alone, and
gave Sherwood the glad hand and Noel a cigar and little Marion a
gold ring from his finger. He and Sherwood talked for hours that
night after Noel had returned to his own cabin. Sherwood told Noel
about it in the morning, early, while Balenger still slept. Balenger
had offered Sherwood a job in a big city, a job in his own business, a
partnership—and comfort and education and security for the little
girl. But Sherwood knew that Balenger was lying—that there would
be no security with him—that the business was trickery of some sort
and that a weak and cowardly tool was required in it. And Noel, who
had looked keenly into Balenger’s eyes at the moment of their
meeting, knew that Sherwood was right.
Sherwood took his daughter fishing up Kettle Brook and told Noel
not to let Balenger know where he was. He was pitifully shaken.
Noel kept away from the other clearing all morning. He went away
back with his ax, hunting for bark with which to patch his canoe. He
was in no hurry to see more of Balenger; but he went to face him at
noon. There was no sign of the visitor in or around the house. He
went to the top of the bank and saw the red pirogue grounded on
the narrow lip of mud, half hidden from him by the over-hanging
brush. But he saw that there was something in the pirogue. He went
down the narrow path and looked closer—and there lay Louis
Balenger in the pirogue, dead! He had a bullet hole in him. He had
been shot through the heart.
Sherwood and the little girl came home before sundown with a
fine string of trout. Noel met them at their own door, cleaned the
trout, then led the father away while the daughter set to work to fry
the fish for supper. He told Sherwood what had happened and
Sherwood was dumbfounded. He could see that Sherwood had not
done the shooting. For that matter, the distracted fellow had not
taken his rifle up the brook with him.
Noel showed the body—where he had hidden it in the bushes. He
took Sherwood to the pirogue and showed him faint stains in it. He
had tried to wash away the stains but with only partial success.
Sherwood spoke then in a whisper, trembling all over. He said that
he didn’t do it but that he had planned to tell Balenger to get out
that night and shoot him if he refused to go. Then he grabbed Noel
by the arm and accused him of killing Balenger. His eyes were wild,
but old Noel kept cool. Old Noel said that he knew nothing of the
shooting, that neither of them had done the thing and that the
woods were wide open. Sherwood didn’t care who had pulled the
trigger. It was all up with him, whoever the murderer was! His only
chance was to run and run quick. Every one knew what was
between him and Louis Balenger and he would be hanged for a
murderer if he was caught. And what would become of Marion then?
Noel had a difficult time with Sherwood, who was mad with terror
for a few minutes, but he calmed him at last sufficiently to take him
back to the house. Sherwood ate his supper in a quivering silence.
When the little girl kissed him he burst into tears. As soon as Marion
was asleep Noel and Sherwood dug a grave and buried Balenger.
Sherwood worked like a tiger. His mood had changed. He was
defiant. The law would never catch him to misjudge him! Fate and
the world were all against him now but he would fool them! Nothing
would hurt his little daughter while he was alive—and he intended to
live!
He would take Marion to the O’Dells and make his way into the
States and get work where no one knew he was a failure or had ever
been a coward. For he was not a coward now, by Heaven! He feared
nothing but the hangman. Fate had hit him just once too often,
kicked him when he was down and tried to crush his little girl. But
he would outwit fate!
They returned to the cabin. Sherwood’s eyes gleamed in the
lamplight and his face was flushed. He wrote a note, telling Noel it
was for Mrs. O’Dell, the widow of his old friend. He packed a bag,
his gun and a bed roll, muttering to himself all the while. Then he
went outside and looked up at the summer stars and laughed. Noel
was frightened. Sherwood walked about the clearing for a few
minutes, stumbling over stones and bumping against stumps and
muttering like a crazy man. He quieted down and Noel got him into
the house and onto his bed. He was limp as a rag by that time. Noel
brewed tea for him, which he drank. He fell asleep; but he didn’t get
much rest, for he twitched and muttered and jumped in his sleep all
night. Noel spent the night on the floor beside Sherwood’s bed, wide
awake.
Sherwood looked much as usual next morning, except for his
eyes. There was something more than fear in his eyes, something
Noel couldn’t find a name for. And he wouldn’t talk, beyond telling
the little girl that they were going away and what she was to do with
the letter which he gave her. She kissed him and asked no questions
but her eyes filled with tears. Noel tried to turn him, to change his
mind about running away, pointing out that if he left French River
now the law would be sure that he was guilty of his enemy’s death.
It was useless, even dangerous, to argue, for he turned on the
old Maliseet for an instant with a look in his eyes that shook even
that tough heart. Noel was wise enough to understand that
misfortune had at last goaded Sherwood beyond endurance, that it
was useless to reason, now that all control was gone with one who
had never listened to reasoning even under the most favorable
circumstances.
Sherwood put his dunnage into the pirogue. The faint stains were
well forward and he covered them with ferns and stowed the
dunnage over all. He placed the little girl amidships, tenderly. She
was an expert canoeman but he placed her as carefully as if she
were still a babe in arms. Then he paddled downstream in the big
pirogue without so much as a backward glance at his friend, old
Noel Sabattis.
Noel gave the pirogue a start to the first bend in the stream, then
launched his old bark canoe and gave cautious chase. He was afraid
of that poor, broken, weak, cowardly, crazy Dick Sherwood. Crazy,
that was right! That’s why he suddenly felt afraid of him.
Noel had to paddle hard to catch sight of the pirogue before it
turned into the main river. He kept close inshore, glimpsing the
pirogue every now and again without showing himself in return. He
saw Sherwood and the child disembark at the head of the rapids and
make a line fast to the stern of the big dugout and drop it slowly
down through the white and black water. That eased his anxiety
considerably, for he saw that Sherwood was sane in his care of little
Marion, at least. Had he been mad in every respect he would have
run the rapids or made a try at it.
Noel carried his canoe around to the pool below; when he next
caught sight of the big pirogue he was astonished to see that the
little girl was in the stern, paddling steadily and easily and that
Sherwood had vanished. Perhaps Sherwood had taken to the woods
in a spasm of terror or perhaps he was still in the pirogue, lying low.
Noel continued to follow cautiously. He saw nothing more of
Sherwood. He saw Marion rest and drift. He saw her eat. Once she
ran the bow of the pirogue against the beach and remained there for
more than an hour, seated motionless, save for slow turning of her
head, as if she listened and watched for something or some one. At
last she continued her journey and Noel followed again. He felt quite
sure that Sherwood had taken to the woods. Mad!
When within five or six miles of O’Dell’s Point Noel turned and
headed upstream for home. He knew that there was no dangerous
water between Marion and the Point and that she would reach safe
landing soon after sundown. He got back to French River next day.
That was his story. It was the story he had told to the deputy
sheriff and Mel Lunt, though he had not given those worthies so
detailed a version of it.
“Are you the only settler on the river?” asked Ben.
“Only one left,” replied Noel.
“But don’t strangers come here sometimes, sportsmen and that
sort of thing?”
“Yes—but the sports who fish dis river don’t come dis summer.
But I see one stranger. I tell Sherwood ’bout dat feller, but he don’t
care. He too crazy. I tell Lunt ’bout ’im too an’ Lunt call me a liar.”
“What about the stranger?” asked McAllister. “Suspicious-looking
character was he, or what?”
“Dat right. He come onto dis clearin’ one day, sudden, an’ look
t’rough dat door at me an’ say ‘Hullo, frien’, you know good feller
’round here somewheres name of Louis Balenger, hey, what?’ ‘Nope,
don’t never see Balenger,’ I tell dat man. ‘Balenger go off dis river
ten-twelve year ago an’ don’t come back. You his brodder, maybe,
hey?’ ‘Brodder be tam!’ dat stranger say. ‘Do bizness wid him one
time. Got somet’ing for him, but it don’t matter. Good day.’ Den he
walk off quick, dat stranger, an’ I don’t foller him, no. He smile
kinder nasty at me, wid two-t’ree gold tooth, so I t’ink maybe Noel
Sabattis may’s well go right on wid cookin’ his little dinner. Don’t see
dat stranger no more.”
 “When was that?” asked Ben.
“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.
 CHAPTER VI
HOT SCENT AND WET TRAIL

Ben turned and looked upward. He saw dew-wet branches

shaking, as if some one or something of considerable bulk was
moving in the thick underbrush at the top of the bank. A red deer
most likely, perhaps a moose, possibly a bear, he reflected. He felt
thrilled. Moose and deer were not uncommon things in his
experience but they always gave his heart a fine tingle. The thought
of a bear was yet more thrilling.
The shaking of the brush continued. The movement was
progressive. Whatever the animal was, it was descending the heavily
screened bank directly toward the young man. Ben realized that if it
was anything as tall as a full grown moose it would be showing a
head, or ears at least, by this time. The disturbance of stems,
branches and foliage descended to within five yards of him. Then
the round black head of a big bear emerged from the green covert.
Ben knew that bears were not dangerous except under unusual
conditions and that they were never more willing to attend to their
own peaceful affairs and avoid unpleasant encounters than in the
late summer of a good year for berries; and yet he felt
embarrassingly defenseless as he regarded the round mask and
pointed muzzle. One may derive a slight feeling of preparedness in
emergency from even so little as the knowledge of being strongly
shod for flight or kicking or the knowledge of being toughly garbed
in flannel and homespun against minor scratches. But Ben wore
neither flannel, leather nor homespun to support his morale. He
decided that deep water would be the only place for him if the bear
should take a fancy to the flat rock upon which he stood.
The bear was evidently puzzled and somewhat discouraged by
Ben’s appearance. It stared at him for half a minute or more and
Ben returned the stare. Then it withdrew its head from view and
again the alders and birches and wide-boughed young spruces
shook and tossed to its passage through them. But now the
disturbance receded. It moved up the steep pitch of the bank and
was lost to Ben’s sight in the dusk of the forest.
“There’s the power of the human eye for you!” exclaimed Ben.
But he was wrong. The human eye had nothing to do with it. The
impulse necessary for the bear’s retreat was derived from bruin’s
own optic nerves rather than from the masterful glare of Ben’s orbs.
In short, that particular bear had never before encountered an
undressed human being, had been puzzled for a minute to know just
what species of the animal world he belonged to and had then quite
naturally jumped to the shocking conclusion that some one had
skinned the poor man without killing him. So the bear had turned
and retired.
Instead of plunging immediately into the brown water and
swimming back to Noel’s front and breakfast, Ben stepped ashore.
He was interested in the bear. He was curious to know just how far
he had chased it with his masterful glance. Had the big berry eater
only retreated to the top of the bank or had he kept right on? If he
hadn’t kept right on another glance would set him going again, that
was a sure thing.
Ben moved cautiously, not on account of the bear but in
consideration of his own skin. Wild raspberries flourished among the
tough and rasping bushes and saplings and perhaps poison ivy
lurked among the groundlings. So Ben moved cautiously and slowly
up the bank, parting the brush before him with his hands and
looking twice before every step. But despite his care he received a
few scratches. When halfway up the steep slope he paused, stood
straight and glanced around him over and through the tops of the
tangle. He saw the bow of his uncle’s canoe outthrust from its
slanting bed in the bushes on Noel’s front. He saw the spot, the
edge of moist dark soil, where the big pirogue and its grim freight
had been discovered by Noel Sabattis.
Ben continued his cautious ascent of the bank, still with curiosity
concerning the bear in the front of his mind but with the mystery of
Louis Balenger’s death looming largely behind it. He gained the level
ground at the top of the bank, still with his gaze on his feet. He was
about to stand upright again and survey his surroundings when a
glitter in the moss a few inches from his forward foot caught his eye.
Ben stooped lower and picked up a sliver of white metal. It was a
part of a clip for keeping a fountain pen in a pocket and he instantly
recognized it as such. He stooped again and examined the moss;
and, a second later, he found the pen itself. He was on his knees by
this time, searching the moss with eager eyes and all his fingers.
And here was something more—a little pocket comb in a sheath of
soft leather.
Ben forgot all about the bear and was seized by an inspiration. He
turned around and lay down flat on the moss, braving prickles and
scratches. He placed his chest on the very spot where he had found
the broken clasp, the pen and the comb, then raised himself on his
elbows and looked to his front, his right and his left. He was now in
the prone position of firing, the steadiest position for straight
shooting.
Ben turned his face in the direction of the tree-screened clearings
downstream on the other shore. He looked through a rift between
stems and trunks and foliage, clear through and away on a slant
across the narrow river to the spot of moist shore against which the
big pirogue had lain with the dead body of Balenger aboard. His
view was unobstructed.
“Not much under three hundred yards,” he said. “Pretty shooting!”
Then he discarded his imaginary rifle, marked his position by
uprooting a wad of moss, gripped the broken clasp, the pen and the
comb securely in his left hand and got to his feet. His blood was
racing and his brain was flashing. The bear was forgotten as if it had
never been.
He descended the bank with considerably less caution than he
had exerted in the ascent, but with more speed, and he paid for his
haste with his skin. But the price didn’t bother him. He didn’t notice
it. He regained the flat rock, glanced down and across over the sunlit
surface of the brown water, then dived. He swam swiftly, though he
kept his left hand clasped tight. When he landed and opened his
hand he found the water had scarcely touched the leather case of
the little comb. He donned his clothes in about six motions and
leaped up the path.
Ben found McAllister and the old Maliseet busy at the little rusty
stove, frying bacon and pancakes as if for a prize.
“Hullo, you were up early,” said Uncle Jim. “Did you catch the first
worm?”
“I guess I did something like that,” answered Ben breathlessly.
“Look at these.”
He stepped over to the table and laid the sliver of silver, the pen
and the comb in a row beside one of the tin plates. He turned to old
Noel Sabattis.
“Did you ever see these before?” he asked.
“Yep, sure I see ’em afore,” replied Noel. “Where you git ’em dis
mornin’, hey? Where you been at, Ben? What else you got?”
“A fountain pen,” said McAllister. “And a slick little comb in a
leather case. Where’ve you been shopping so early, Ben?”
Ben paid no attention to his uncle. His eyes were on Noel’s
wrinkled face.
“Do they belong to you?” he asked.
“Nope. What you t’ink I want wid a comb, hey?”
“Were they Sherwood’s?”
“Nope. Never see t’ings like dat on Sherwood. See ’em on dat
stranger I tell you about.”
“I thought so!” cried Ben. “I thought so! We’ve got him on toast!
And Sherwood’s clear!”
He took up the comb.
“Look at this,” he said, pointing at gilt lettering stamped into the
soft leather of the case. “Read it, Uncle Jim. ‘Bonnard Frères,
Quebec, P. Q.’ How’s that for a morning’s work on an empty
stomach?”
Uncle Jim was bewildered.
 “The stranger came from Quebec,” he said. “Sure, I get that. Noel
saw these things on him, and now you’ve found them somewheres.
It proves he was here; but Noel told us that yesterday. I can’t see
how it proves he shot any one—Balenger nor any one else. If you’d
found his rifle, now that would be something. But a fountain pen?”
“You meet him dis mornin’, hey, an’ rob ’im, hey?” queried Noel.
“Nothing like it!” exclaimed Ben. “I found these things in the moss
at the top of the bank on the other side of the river. That’s the very
spot where he lay when he fired at Balenger. He broke the snap—the
clasp there—when he was wriggling about for a clear shot through
the brush, I guess, and the pen and the comb fell out of his pocket.
He was in such a hurry to get away after he’d fired, when he saw
he’d hit, that he didn’t notice the pen and comb. They were pressed
into the moss. I know that’s what happened; and we know he came
from Quebec; and Noel knows what he looks like. That’s enough, I
guess—enough to save Sherwood, anyhow.”
“Yer figuring quite a ways ahead, Ben,” said Uncle Jim.
“He shoot Balenger a’right, sure ’nough,” said Noel. “But how you
show dem police he do it wid one little pen an’ one little comb?”
“It’s simple. You’ll understand about the shooting when you see
the place. It’s simple as a picture in a book. And for the rest of it, he
must have been a friend of Balenger’s before he became his enemy.
Perhaps he and Balenger were partners of some sort. Then he was a
bad character, like Balenger—and dangerous. He was dangerous,
right enough—and a dead shot. So the police would know something
about him, wouldn’t they—the Quebec police? That stands to
reason. Didn’t he look like a bad character, Noel?”
“Yep, mighty bad. Nasty grin on him an’ bad eye, too. Dat feller
scare me worse nor Balenger scare me. When he look at me, den I
can’t look at his eye an’ I look lower down an’ see dat comb an’ dat
pen a-stickin’ outer de pocket on his breast.”
“There you are,” said Ben to McAllister. “Very likely the Quebec
police have his photograph and thumb prints; and I guess they have
more brains than Mel Lunt. I’ll write down Noel’s description of him
and all the other particulars I know, and go to Quebec and fix it.”
 Ben was in high spirits, gobbled his breakfast and then had to
wait impatiently for the others to finish and light their pipes. The tin
dishes were left unwashed, the frying pan and griddle unscoured
and the three embarked in old Noel’s leaky bark and went up and
across the river to the flat rock. On the way Ben told of his
experience with the bear, saying that but for the peculiar behavior of
bruin he would not have gone ashore and climbed the bank and
found the clew that was to clear Sherwood’s name in the eyes of the
law.
“Just chance,” he said. “But for that bear, I might have hunted a
week and never happened on those things.”
Uncle Jim and Noel were deeply impressed by the story of the
bear.
“That was more than chance,” said McAllister, voicing a whisper of
his old Highland blood. “I’ve heard of happenings like that from old
Gran’pa McAllister when I was a boy. Nature won’t hide murder, he
used to say. I guess yer right, Ben, after all. I reckon it’ll work out
the way you figure it—but it sure did look kinder mixed up to me
when you first told it.”
They climbed the bank above the flat rock, found the spot and
there each lay down in his turn, set his elbows in the correct position
and looked through and over the sights of an imaginary rifle at the
spot three hundred yards away where the bad heart of Louis
Balenger had suddenly ceased to function.
“Dat’s right,” said Noel Sabattis.
“Guess we’ve got him, Ben,” said Uncle Jim.
The visitors set out on their homeward journey within an hour of
Ben’s demonstration of how the shot had been fired by the owner of
the fountain pen and pocket comb. But before packing their
dunnage they marked the murderer’s position with a peg in the
ground and blazes on several young spruces and they measured the
distance in paddle lengths from that point to the point where the
bullet had done its work. Then they went, in spite of old Noel’s
protests and Uncle Jim’s willingness to remain until next morning.
But Ben was in a fever of impatience. Now was not the time to
humor Noel’s love of talk or his uncle’s instinctive objections to
unseemly haste. Now was the time to follow the clew, to jump onto
the trail and keep going, to hammer out the iron while it was hot.
This was no time for talk. They had talked enough, reckoned
enough, told enough and heard enough. Now was the time for
action, for speed. Ben was right, and he had his way as far as
McAllister and Noel Sabattis were concerned.
Ben took the stern of the fine canvas canoe and humped all his
weight onto the paddle. Not only that, but he requested a little more
weight from Uncle Jim in the bow; and the canoe boiled down
French River like a destroyer.
It was about five o’clock in the afternoon when they approached
the thrashing, flashing head of the big rapids on the main river.
Uncle Jim waved his paddle toward the landing place above the first
untidy rank of jumping, jostling white and black water. The imposing
shout and hum of the rapids came threateningly to their ears.
“We’ll run her,” cried Ben.
“D’ye know the channel?” shouted McAllister, glancing back over
his shoulder.
“I asked Noel. It’s close along this shore. He’s often run it.”
“But it ain’t easy at low water. We’d best land and carry around.”
“You can’t miss it, Noel says. And we’re in a hurry. Sit tight and
keep your eye skinned, Uncle Jim. Here we go!”
They went. McAllister was an old riverman and had been down
these rapids many times in past years, but never before when the
river was low. In high water it was a simple matter for any good
canoeman to shoot Big Rapids, but in dry seasons it was only
attempted by the most skilled or most daring and not always
successfully. Uncle Jim was seasoned, but he got a lot of thrills in a
short time at five o’clock by the sun of this particular afternoon.
As usual, it seemed to him that the jouncing, curling, black
“ripples” with their fronts shot with green and amber and their tops
crested with white lather, rushed up to the canoe. That is the way
with strong black and white water. The canoe seemed to be
stationary, trembling slightly from bow to stern as if gathering
herself to spring at the last moment to meet the shock, but
otherwise as motionless as if held by ropes. Up came the raging
waters, up and past the jumping, squirming canoe. Big black rocks
bared themselves suddenly from white veils of froth and green veils
of smooth water, shouldered at the canoe, roared at her, then
vanished to the rear.
Uncle Jim felt a strong impulse, an impulse of curiosity, to look
back at young Ben O’Dell. But he did not obey it. He kept his half-
shut eyes to the front and now made a dig with his paddle to the
right and now a slash to the left. Spray flew. The canoe jounced,
shivered and jumped and yet seemed to hang unprogressing amid
the furious upward and backward stream of water and rock and
rocky shore. Thin films of water slipped in over the gleaming gunnels
and heavy lumps of water jumped aboard and flopped aboard, now
from the right and now from the left. Uncle Jim received a tubful of
it smash in the chest.
Uncle Jim enjoyed it, but he did not approve of it. It was too
darned reckless; and he still believed that the very least that would
happen to them before they reached smooth water would be the
destruction of the canoe. But he wondered at Ben. He had taught
Ben to handle a canoe in rough water and smooth, but never in such
rough and tricky water as this. And here was the young fellow
twisting and shooting and steadying her down in a manner which
McAllister had never seen surpassed in his whole life on the river. His
anxiety for Ben was almost topped by his pride in Ben.
And it looked as if they’d make it, by thunder! Here was the last
ripple roaring up at them, baring its black teeth between white lips.
And here was the slobbering black channel, shaking with bubbles
and fringed with froth, and here was the canoe fair in it. The
shouldering rocks sloshed past. Through!
Uncle Jim heard a sharp crack clear above the tumult of the
rapids. He knew what had happened without looking. Ben’s paddle
had snapped. He shot his own paddle backward over his shoulder.
But he was too late, though he could not possibly have been quicker.
The canoe swerved like a maddened horse and struck the last ledge
of Big Rapids with a bump and a rip. Then she spun around and
rolled over and off.
Uncle Jim and Ben swam ashore from the pool below the rapids,
Ben with his uncle’s paddle gripped firmly in one hand.
“We were through,” said Ben. “If my paddle had lasted another
ten seconds we’d have made it.”
McAllister grasped his hand.
“Sure thing we were through!” he cried. “Ben, I’m proud of you! I
couldn’t of done it, not for my life! Never saw a prettier bit of work
in a nastier bit of water in all my born days!”
Ben beamed and blushed.
“It was great, wasn’t it?” he returned. “But I’m sorry about the
canoe, Uncle Jim. She is badly ripped, I’m afraid. There she is, still
afloat. I’ll go out and fetch her in.”
“But what about those things—the pen and comb?” asked Uncle
Jim with sudden anxiety. “Were they with the dunnage?”
“They’re safe in my pocket here, sewn in and pinned in,” replied
Ben. “I thought something like this might possibly happen and I
wasn’t taking any chances.”
McAllister smiled gravely and tenderly.
“I guess you were taking more chances than you knew about,
lad,” he said. “But it was a fine shoot, so why worry?”
Ben took off his wet coat, jumped into the pool, swam out to the
wounded canoe and brought it ashore. Together they emptied her
and lifted her out of the water. Her strong, smooth canvas was torn
through and ripped back for a distance of two feet and five of her
tough, flat ribs were cracked and telescoped.
“We had a barrel of fun, Ben, but I reckon we didn’t save much
time,” said Uncle Jim.
They hid the canoe where she would be safe until they could
return for her, and continued their journey on foot. They walked
along the edge of the river, on pebbles and smooth ledges of rock,
until long after sunset. Then they climbed the high bank and hunted
about for a road of some sort that might lead them to a house and
food. They were on the wrong side of the river to find the highroad;
and after half an hour of searching they decided that they were on
the wrong side of the river for finding anything. McAllister had
matches in a watertight box, so they built a big fire, made beds of
ferns and dry moss and fell asleep hungry but hopeful.
 CHAPTER VII
A TRAP FOR THE HUNGRY

Ben O’Dell and Jim McAllister reached home soon after dinner
time next day, canoeless, baggageless and empty but very well
pleased with themselves. They found Mrs. O’Dell and little Marion
Sherwood drying the last spoon.
Mrs. O’Dell gave the returned voyagers just one look before
replacing the chicken stew on the stove to reheat and the baked
pudding in the oven. Then she looked again and welcomed them
affectionately.
“I hope you had a good time,” she said. “We didn’t expect you
home so soon. Why didn’t you bring your blankets and things up
with you?”
“We didn’t fetch them home with us,” said Uncle Jim. “Left them a
long ways upriver, Flora. There wasn’t much to fetch back—a few old
blankets and a teakettle and a mite of grub. But we had a good
time. For a little while there I was having more fun than I’ve had in
twenty years, thanks to Ben.”
“I ran Big Rapids, mother,” said Ben, with a mixed expression of
face and voice. “I was paddling stern, you know, and we were in a
hurry, and I let her go. The water was at its lowest and worst, but
we got through—all but.”
“Sure we got through!” exclaimed McAllister. “It was the prettiest
bit of work I ever saw! We were clean through, and we’d of been
home earlier, blankets an’ all, if Ben’s paddle hadn’t bust.”
“Jim McAllister! You let Ben shoot Big Rapids at low water?—that
boy? What were you thinking of, Jim?”
“Let nothing, Flora! He was aft, because he’s a bigger man than I
am and a better one—though a mite reckless, I must say. I warned
him, but not extra strong. And he did it! If there’s another man on
the river could do it any better, show him to me!”
“You are old enough to have more sense, Jim. And if you did it,
where’s your dunnage? Why did you leave it all upriver?”
“Did you run a canoe through those rapids, Ben?” asked the little
Sherwood girl. “Right down those rapids between here and French
River—those rapids all full of rocks and black waves and whirlpools?”
“Yes—just about,” answered Ben.
“You are very strong and courageous,” she said.
Ben’s blush deepened and spread.
“Oh, it wasn’t much. Nothing like as bad as it looks. And we didn’t
quite make it, anyhow. My paddle broke off clean just above the
blade just before we struck smooth water—and so we struck
something else instead!”
“You are very courageous. Dad wouldn’t do it, even in our big
pirogue. We let it through on a rope.”
“And he did right,” said Uncle Jim. “Yer dad showed his sense that
time. I ain’t blaming Ben, you understand, for I don’t. It was
different with Ben. He didn’t have any little girl in the canoe with
him, but only a tough old uncle who was seasoned to falling into
white water and black before Ben here was ever born. I enjoyed it.
Ben was right, sure—but Dick Sherwood was righter, Marion. He
came down those rapids with you just the way any other real good
father would of done it.”
The little girl said nothing to that, but she went over and stood
close to Uncle Jim and held his hand. Flora O’Dell grasped her son’s
big right hand in both of hers. Her blue eyes filmed with tears.
“Ben, you upset in Big Rapids?” she whispered faintly.
“We were clear through, mother, and upset into the pool,” he said.
“I want you to be brave,” she continued, her voice very low in his
ear. “But I want you to remember, dear, that you are the only O’Dell
on this river now—on this earth—and that life would be very terrible
for me without—an O’Dell.”
 Ben was deeply touched. Pity and pride both pierced his young
heart. Now he fully realized for the first time the wonder and beauty
of his mother, of the thing that brightened and softened in her brave
eyes, her love, her loneliness, her love for him. And now she called
him an O’Dell; and he knew that she thought of all O’Dells as men
possessed of the qualities of his heroic father. His heart glowed with
pride.
“I’ll remember, dear—but we were really in a hurry, mother,” he
answered.
For fully ten minutes he felt twenty years older than his age.
After Ben and Uncle Jim had eaten and the little girl had gone out
to the orchard with a book Ben told his mother all they had learned
from old Noel Sabattis and of the clew he had discovered to the
identity of Balenger’s murderer. He showed her the pen and comb.
She felt remorse for having doubted poor Sherwood’s innocence.
“Then he must be crazy—and that is almost as unfortunate,” she
said. “It is almost as bad for both of them.”
“I don’t believe he’s really insane,” said Ben. “He acted like it part
of the time, by Noel’s account, but not all the time. He was sane
enough when he dropped the pirogue down the rapids on a rope
instead of trying to run them. His nerves are bad and I guess he’s
sick. What Noel said sounded to me as if he was sick with fever—
and he’s afraid—afraid of all sorts of things. But I guess he’d soon be
all right if he knew he was safe from the law and was decently
treated. He hasn’t got Balenger to worry about now. Was any more
food taken while we were away, mother?”
“You still think it is Richard Sherwood who takes the food?” she
asked nervously.
“I think so more than ever now, since Noel told us about him. He
hadn’t the nerve to go far away from his daughter.”
“I wouldn’t wonder if Ben’s right,” said McAllister.
“I hope he isn’t!” exclaimed Mrs. O’Dell in a distressed voice. “A
cruel thing happened last night and it was my fault. I—I told Ian
about the thefts when he asked me why I was afraid to sleep
without a man in the house. I didn’t want him to think me just a—an
unreasoning coward. And he set a trap in the bread box last night, a
steel fox trap. I didn’t know anything about it. I would have taken it
away if I had known.”
“A trap!” cried Ben, his face flushing and then swiftly paling and
his eyes darkling. “A trap in this house! To hurt some one in need of
bread! If he wasn’t your brother I’d—I’d——”
“Same here!” muttered Uncle Jim.
“I didn’t know until this morning,” continued Mrs. O’Dell, glancing
from her son to her brother with horrified eyes. “I found it outside,
with an ax lying beside it. He had pried it open with the ax. There
was blood on it. I—I went over to see Ian then—he’d gone home
early—and I saw him and told him what—how I felt. I think he
understood—but that won’t help the—the person who was hurt.”
She was on the verge of tears but Ben comforted her.
Ben and Jim McAllister spent the remainder of the afternoon in
searching the woods for the poor fellow who had put his hand into
the trap. Ben was sure that the person whom they sought was
Sherwood and Uncle Jim agreed with him; but whoever the
unfortunate thief might be, Ben felt that he was entitled to apologies
and surgical aid and an explanation. These things were due to the
sufferer and also to the good name of O’Dell. In setting a trap to
catch a hungry thief in the O’Dell house Ian McAllister had flouted a
great tradition of kindness and smudged the honor of an honorable
family.
The woods were wide, the ground was dry and showed no tracks,
the underbrush was thick. Their search was in vain. They shouted
words of encouragement a score of times, at the top of their voices,
but received no reply.
The three talked late that night after the little girl had gone to
bed. Ben was determined to follow up the clew which he had
obtained on French River immediately and personally, to save the
poor fellow who had once been his father’s friend from the
blundering of the law and from destruction by his own fears. And not
entirely for the sake of the old friendship, perhaps. There was their
guest to consider, the brave child upstairs. His mother and uncle saw
the justice of his reasoning, but without enthusiasm. His mother felt
uneasy for him, afraid to have him to go to a big city on such a
mission. He had been away from home for months at a time during
the past six or seven years, but that had been very different. He had
been at school in a quiet town on the river, among people she knew.
And she feared that his efforts in Sherwood’s behalf would interrupt
his education. She said very little of all this, however, for she knew
that in this matter her son’s vision was clearer and braver and less
selfish than her own. Uncle Jim felt no anxiety concerning Ben, for
his faith in that youth had grown mightily of late, but he wanted to
know what was to become of the harvest.
It was decided that a good Indian or two should be hired to help
McAllister with the harvesting of the oats, barley and buckwheat,
and that Ben should go to Woodstock next day and discuss Richard
Sherwood’s unhappy situation with Judge Smith and return to
O’Dell’s Point for a night at least before going farther. Mrs. O’Dell and
Uncle Jim would do everything they could to find Sherwood and
reassure him. All three were convinced by now that Sherwood and
the unfortunate thief were one, in spite of the fact that the red dogs
had behaved as if the thief were an old and trusted friend.
Ben set out for Woodstock after an early breakfast. The long drive
was uneventful. The road was in excellent condition for a road of its
kind, the mare was the best of her kind on the upper river, the sun
shone and the miles rolled steadily and peacefully back under the
rubber tires of the light buggy.
Ben stabled the mare at the Aberdeen House stables, saw her
rubbed dry and watered and fed, then sat down to his own dinner.
He was well along with his meal when Deputy Sheriff Brown walked
into the hotel dining room, turned around twice as a dog does
before it lies down, then advanced upon Ben’s table. Ben felt slightly
embarrassed. He saw that Mr. Brown’s face still showed something
of the effects of their last meeting. The deputy sheriff held out his
hand and Ben arose and took it.
“I’ll eat here too, if you don’t mind,” said Mr. Brown.
 Ben was relieved to see that, despite the faint discoloration
around the other’s eyes, the expression of the eyes was friendly.
“You gave me a good one, Ben,” said the arm of the law, speaking
between spoonfuls of soup. “I’ve been thinkin’ it over ever since and
the more I think on it the clearer I see why you did it. I was danged
mad for a spell, but I ain’t mad now. Yer a smart lad, Ben, if you’ll
excuse me for sayin’ so; and jist pig-headed enough to be steady
and dependable, if you don’t mind me expressin’ it that way.”
“It is very kind of you to think so,” replied Ben.
“Oh, I’m like that. No meanness in Dave Brown. If he’s wrong he’s
willin’ to admit it once he’s been shown it—that’s me! I guess you
were right that time in yer barn, Ben. I know darn well that you
acted as if right was on yer side, anyhow.”
Ben looked him steadily but politely in the eye for several
seconds, then leaned forward halfway across the narrow table.
“I came down to-day to tell something important to Judge Smith
and perhaps to ask his advice about it, but I think I’ll tell it to you
instead,” he said in guarded tones.
The deputy sheriff’s eyes brightened and he too leaned forward.
“Something about French River?” he whispered.
“You’ve guessed it, Mr. Brown. Uncle Jim and I went up there and
saw old Noel Sabattis and heard all he had to tell. Among other
things, we heard about that stranger Noel saw once a few days
before Louis Balenger showed up again.”
“There was nothin’ to that, Ben. The old man said he didn’t see
hair nor track of him after that one minute. It wasn’t even a good
lie. It was jist the commencement of one—an’ then Noel got wise to
the fact that he couldn’t git it across even if he took the trouble to
invent it.”
Ben smiled and sat back. The waitress was at his elbow. He
ordered peach pie with cream and coffee. Mr. Brown ordered apple
pie with cheese on the side and tea, and the waitress retired. Again
Ben leaned forward.
“That wasn’t a lie, and that stranger shot Balenger,” he said.
“Shoot. I’m listenin’.”
 “He shot him from the top of the bank on the other side of the
river, upstream, exactly two hundred and eighty-six yards away.”
“Was yours apple or mince?” asked the waitress, suddenly
reappearing with both arms full of pieces of pie and brimming cups.
The deputy sheriff turned the face of the law on her.
“Leave it an’ beat it an’ don’t come back to-day!” he cried.
“He came from the city of Quebec,” continued Ben, “and I
wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the police there know something
about him.”
Mr. Brown looked at once suspicious and impressed.
“It wouldn’t surprise you much to learn anything, Ben,” he said.
“Have you got him tied under yer chair? Introduce me, will you?”
Ben laughed good-naturedly, produced the pen, the comb and the
broken clip and told all that he knew about them, including old
Noel’s searching description of the stranger’s appearance.
“Ben, I hand it to you,” said the deputy sheriff. “I give you best—
for the second time. Yer smart and yer steady—and yer lucky!
What’s yer next move?”
“What would you suggest, Mr. Brown?”
“Me suggest? That’s polite of you, Ben, but I’d sooner listen to
you. I got a high opinion of the way you work yer brains—and yer
luck, if you don’t object to me mentionin’ yer luck.”
“I was thinking that you might make a special constable of me or
if I’m too young for that you might engage me as a private
detective, and we’ll go to Quebec and find out what the chief of
police there knows about an acquaintance of Louis Balenger’s with
three gold teeth and a scar just below his right ear.”
“Exactly what I was goin’ to suggest!” exclaimed Mr. Brown.
“Shake on it! I’ll fix it—an’ the sooner the quicker. What about the
day after to-morrow? If you get here as early as you did to-day we
can take the two-o’clock train.”
Ben spent hours of the next day searching in the upland woods
and the island thickets for Richard Sherwood. The incident of the
trap had increased his pity for and his sense of responsibility toward