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The La Chance Mine Mystery By: Susan Morrow Jones (1864?-1926) |
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BY S. CARLETON WITH FRONTISPIECE BY GEORGE W. GAGE BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1920 Copyright, 1920 ,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. All rights reserved Published March, 1920 [Illustration: "I STOOD UP AND DROVE FOR ALL I WAS WORTH, AND THE GIRL
BESIDE ME SHOT, AND HIT!" FRONTISPIECE. See page 76. ]
THE LA CHANCE MINE MYSTERY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE I. I COME HOME: AND THE WOLVES HOWL 1 II. MY DREAM: AND DUDLEY'S GIRL 16 III. DUDLEY'S MINE: AND DUDLEY'S GOLD 30 IV. THE MAN IN THE DARK 46 V. THE CARAQUET ROAD: AND THE WOLVES HOWL ONCE MORE 56 VI. MOSTLY WOLVES: AND A GIRL 71 VII. I FIND LITTLE ENOUGH ON THE CORDUROY ROAD,
AND LESS AT SKUNK'S MISERY 86 VIII. THOMPSON! 100 IX. TATIANA PAULINA VALENKA! 116 X. I INTERFERE FOR THE LAST TIME 134 XI. MACARTNEY HEARS A NOISE: AND I FIND FOUR DEAD MEN 148 XII. THOMPSON'S CARDS: AND SKUNK'S MISERY 164 XIII. A DEAD MAN'S MESSENGER 182 XIV. WOLVES AND DUDLEY 199 XV. THE PLACE OF DEPARTED SPIRITS 218 XVI. IN COLLINS'S CARE 231 XVII. HIGH EXPLOSIVE 247 XVIII. LAC TREMBLANT 265 XIX. SKUNK'S MISERY 283 XX. THE END 293
THE LA CHANCE MINE MYSTERY
CHAPTER I I COME HOME: AND THE WOLVES HOWL I am sick of the bitter wood smoke,
And sick of the wind and rain:
I will leave the bush behind me,
And look for my love again.
Little as I guessed it, this story really began at Skunk's Misery. But
Skunk's Misery was the last thing in my head, though I had just come
from the place. Hungry, dog tired, cross with the crossness of a man in authority whose
orders have been forgotten or disregarded, I drove Billy Jones's old
canoe across Lac Tremblant on my way home to Dudley Wilbraham's gold
mine at La Chance, after an absence of months. It was halfway to dark,
and the bitter November wind blew dead in my teeth. Slaps of spray from
flying wave crests blinded me with gouts of lake water, that was oddly
warm till the cutting wind froze it to a coating of solid ice on my
bare hands and stinging face, that I had to keep dabbing on my paddling
shoulder to get my eyes clear in order that I might stare in front of my
leaky, borrowed canoe. To a stranger there might have seemed to be nothing particular to stare
at, out on a lake where the world was all wind and lumpy seas and
growing November twilight; but any one who had lived at La Chance knew
better. By the map Lac Tremblant should have been our nearest gold route
to civilization, but it was a lake that was no lake, as far as transport
was concerned, and we never used it. The five mile crossing I was making
was just a fair sample of the forty miles of length Lac Tremblant
stretched mockingly past the La Chance mine toward the main road from
Caraquet our nearest settlement to railhead: and that was forty miles
of queer water, sown with rocks that were sometimes visible as
tombstones in a cemetery and sometimes hidden like rattlesnakes in a
blanket. For the depth of Lac Tremblant, or its fairway, were two things
no man might ever count on. It would fall in a night to shallows a child
could wade through, among bristling needles of rocks no one had ever
guessed at; and rise in a morning to the tops of the spruce scrub on its
banks, a sweet spread of water with not a rock to be seen. What hidden
spring fed it was a mystery. But in the bitterest winter it was never
cold enough to freeze, further than to form surging masses of frazil ice
that would neither let a canoe push through them, nor yet support the
weight of a man... Continue reading book >>
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Literature |
Mystery |
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