Guilty Baggs had gone—nobody knew where. And the mystery of that man with the knife, in the woods? It was minutely discussed at the station, where Joe Cardridge had suddenly disappeared, leaving only a message for the keeper saying he would be back soon and prove that Walter Plympton was “a good deal wuss than he ought to be.” Joe coolly wished also to have his place kept for him.
“I guess not,” remarked the keeper. “A man going off that way without a notice, will have to wait a long time before he has a notice that he is wanted again. I will fill his place at once. Tucker Jones is home from his winter fishin’, and I will get him.”
Tucker Jones, a big–boned, rugged young fisherman, was quickly established in the vacant berth.
“Walter,” said Tom Walker, “putting all things together, I think it was Joe Cardridge that scared Don Pedro in the woods. He was a–hangin’ round the store somebody said. Probably he knew what was goin’ on, and followed his master, that Baggs. They were seen together by a man five miles from here. It is good that he has gone.”
Nobody lamented his departure, not even his family. His wife and children could manage without him, and far more agreeably. At the station, the only element of dissension in the crew was now taken away. All noticed the harmony that marked the station life.
“It only takes one stone in a fellow’s shoe,” remarked Tom Walker, “to upset everything, and Joe Cardridge has been the stone in the shoe.”
Walter now fully enjoyed his life. True, there were rough, wild beats before him, but the warm, cheerful shelter followed them. Then there was the constant sense of danger from that vast, uneasy sea, to give flavor to a life that might otherwise become insipid.
“I am sorry,” he thought, “that my time at the station is almost up. It’s up in a few days, and I wonder when the district superintendent will be here to investigate my trouble. I don’t care for it. Let them hunt. I am right.”
Yes, let slanders and envy hunt through our lives, and if we are right, who cares?
Keeper Barney had said, “Joe’s goin’ off leaves Walter without an accuser, and I can’t easily believe he is wrong, but there is that bottle! What about that?”
Yes, the flask, what about that? Joe had gone, but the flask remained on a shelf, and Walter still was confronted by this dumb, black accuser.