Blake was keen on strategem. With him, man-hunting was like a game of
chess; and after he had questioned the Indian for a quarter of an hour he
saw his opportunity. Pastamoo, the Cree, was made a part of his Majesty's
service on the spot, with the promise of torture and speedy execution if
he proved himself a traitor.
Blake turned over to him his dogs and sledge, his provisions, and his
tent, and commanded him to camp in the heart of a cedar swamp a few miles
back, with the information that he would return for his outfit at some
time in the indefinite future. He might be gone a day or a week. When he
had seen Pastamoo off, he continued his journey toward the cabin, in the
hope that Jan Thoreau's wife was either an Indian or a fool. He was too
old a hand at his game to be taken in by the story that had been told to
the Cree.
Jan had not gone to the French missioner's. A murderer's trail would not
be given away like that. Of course the wife knew. And Corporal Blake
desired no better string to a criminal than the faith of a wife. Wives
were easy if handled right, and they had put the finishing touch to more
than one of his great successes.
At the edge of the lake he fell back on his old trick--hunger,
exhaustion, a sprained leg. It was not more than a quarter of a mile
across the snow-covered ice of the lake to the thin spiral of smoke that
he saw rising above the thick balsams on the island.
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