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   :PG.Id: 35031
   :PG.Title: The Land of Frozen Suns
   :PG.Released: 2011-01-21
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Roger Frank
   :PG.Producer: the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
   :DC.Creator: Bertrand W. Sinclair
   :DC.Title: The Land of Frozen Suns
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1909

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The Land of Frozen Suns
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      Title: The Land of Frozen Suns
      
      Author: Bertrand W. Sinclair
      
      Release Date: January 21, 2011 [EBook #35031]
      
      Language: English
      
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    | :title:`THE LAND OF FROZEN SUNS`
    |    
    | A Novel
    | 
    | BY
    | 
    | BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR
    | 
    | Author of “Raw Gold,” Etc.
    | 
    | 
    | 
    | 
    | Copyright 1909, BY
    | STREET & SMITH.
    | 
    | Copyright, 1910, BY
    | G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY.
    | 
    | The Land of Frozen Suns.
    | 
    | Made in U. S. A.

.. CONTENTS:: Contents
   :backlinks: entry
   :depth: 1

CHAPTER I—THE GENESIS OF TROUBLE
================================

Who was it, I wonder, made that sagacious
remark about the road to hell being paved
with good intentions? He might have
added an amendment to the effect that there’s always
a plentiful supply of material for that much
travelled highway. We all contribute, more or less.
I know I have done so. And so did my people before
me. My father’s intentions were good, but
he didn’t live long enough to carry them out. If
he hadn’t fallen a victim to an inborn streak of
recklessness, a habit of taking chances,—well, I
can’t say just how things would have panned out.
I’m not fatalist enough to believe that we crawl or
run or soar through our allotted span of years according
to some prearranged scheme which we are
powerless to modify. Oh, no! It’s highly probable,
however, that if my father and mother had
lived I should have gone into some commercial pursuit
or taken up one of the professions. Either
way, I should likely have pegged along in an uneventful
sort of way to the end of the chapter—lots
of men do. Not that I would have taken with
enthusiasm to chasing the nimble dollar for the
pure love of catching it, but because I was slated
for something of the sort, and as the twig is bent
so is the tree inclined; a man can’t sit down and
twiddle his thumbs and refuse to perform any useful
act, because there is no glory in it. The heroic
age has gone a-glimmering down the corridors of
time.

As it happened, my feet were set in other paths
by force of circumstances. Only for that the sage-brush
country, the very place where I was born
might have remained a terra incognita. I should
always have felt, though, that I’d missed something,
for I was ushered into this vale of tears at the
Summer ranch on the Red River of the South.
Sumner *here* hadn’t developed into a cow monarch
those days, but he was on the way. My earliest
impressions were all of log and ’dobe buildings,
*of long-horned cattle*, of wild, shaggy-maned
horses, and of wilder men who rode the one and
drove the other in masterly fashion. For landscape
there was rolling prairie, and more rolling
prairie beyond; and here and there the eternal
brown of it was broken by gray sage-grown flats
and stretches of greasewood—as if Nature had
made a feeble effort to break the monotony. I
knew only this until I was big enough to tease for
a pony. I cannot remember seeing a town when
I was small. The world to me was a place of
great plains, very still, and hot, and dry, a huddle
of cabins, and corrals, and a little way to the
south Red River slinking over its quicksands—except
in time of storm; then it raged.

So that when my father bundled mother and myself
off to a place called St. Louis, where great
squadrons of houses stood in geometrical arrangement
over a vast area, I had already begun to look
upon things with the eyes of cattleland. I recollect
that when we were settled in a roomy, old-fashioned
house I cried because my mother would
not let me go out to the corral and play.

“There are no corrals in a city, dear,” she explained—and
I cried the harder. I could conceive
of no joy in a place where I could not go out to the
corrals and have some brown-faced cowpuncher
hoist me up on a gentle horse and let me hold the
reins while the pony moved sedately about.

Left to himself, I think my father would have
made a cowman of me, but mother had known the
range when it was a place to try the nerves of
strong men, and she hated it. I didn’t know till
I was nearly grown that she had made dad promise
when I was born that if the cattle made money
for us, I should never know the plains. She came
of an old Southern family, and her life had been
a sheltered one till she met and married Jack Sumner.
And she would have had me walk in pleasant
places, as the men of her family had done—doctors,
lawyers, planters, and such. The life was too
hard, too much of an elemental struggle, she said—and
I was to be saved some of the knocks that
my dad had taken in the struggling years. Poor
mother mine—her son was the son of his father,
I’m afraid. But Sumner *pere* made good on his
promise when the Sumner herds fattened his bank
account sufficiently; and I gyrated through school,
with college and a yet-to-be-determined career
looming on the horizon.

So my childish memories of the great open, that
lies naked to the sun-glare and the chilling breath
of the *northers* year on year, grew fainter and more
like something of which I had dreamed. Dad
would come home occasionally, stay a day or two,
perhaps a week, sometimes even a month; but my
mother never went west of the Mississippi—nor did I.
I often plagued them to let me go to the ranch
during vacation, but they evidently considered it
best to keep me away from the round-ups and horse-breaking
and such, till I was old enough to see
that there was another side to the life besides the
sunshiny, carefree one that makes an irresistible
appeal to a youngster.

And then, just a week after my twentieth birthday,
my dad, slow-voiced, easy-going old Jack
Sumner rode his horse into the smiling Red and
drowned under the eyes of twenty men.

I was sitting on our front steps grouching about
the heat when the messenger brushed by me with
the telegram in his hand. Mother signed for it,
and he ran down the steps whistling, and went about
his business. There was no sound within. I had no
hint of trouble, till a maid screamed. Then, I
rushed in. Mother was drooping over the arm of
a Morris chair, and the bit of yellow paper lay on
the rug where it had fluttered from her hand. I
carried her to a couch, and called a doctor. But
he could do nothing. Her heart was weak, he said,
and might have stopped any time; the shock had
merely hastened her end.

I’m going to pass lightly over the week that followed.
I was just a kid, remember, and I took it
pretty hard. It was my first speaking acquaintance
with death. A few of my mother’s people came,
and when it was over with I went to Virginia with
an uncle, a kindly, absent-minded, middle-aged
bachelor. But I couldn’t settle down. For a week
or ten days I fidgeted about the sleepy Southern
village, and then I bade my uncle an abrupt good-bye
and started for St. Louis. Little as I knew of
business and legal matters I was aware that now
the Sumner herds and ranches were mine, and I
had a hankering to know where I stood. Except
that there was a ranch and cattle in Texas I knew
nothing of my father’s business. It didn’t even
occur to me, at first, that I was a minor and consequently
devoid of power to transact any business
of importance. I knew that certain property was
rightfully mine, and that was all.

Once in St. Louis, however, I began to get the
proper focus on my material interests. It occurred
to me that Sumner *pere* had done more or less business
with a certain bank, a private concern engineered
by two ultra-conservative citizens named
Bolton and Kerr. I hunted them up, thinking that
they would likely be able to tell me just what I
needed to know. And it happened that by luck I
came in the nick of time. A clerk took in my card,
and returned immediately for me. I found the
senior member, wrapping the bit of pasteboard
around his forefinger when I was ushered in. We
shook hands, and he motioned to a chair. I asked
for information, and I got it, straight from the
shoulder. Bolton was very economical in the use
of words.

“Yes, I knew your father well. There is a sum
of money to his account in the bank. He died intestate,”
he told me bluntly. “In view of a communication
I have just received, you will have little
to do with any property until you are of age.
The estate is now in the hands of an administrator—appointed
by a Texas court. The court will
probably order that you be allowed a certain monthly
sum until your majority.”

“I see,” said I thoughtfully; I hadn’t considered
that phase of it, although in a hazy way I knew
something of the regular procedure. “Will our
place here be managed by this administrator?”

“Very likely,” Bolton returned. “He has served
us with a court order for the estate funds now in
our hands. But you are legally entitled to the use
and occupancy of the family residence until such
time as the estate is appraised and the inventory
returned. After that the administrator has discretionary
power; he can make any disposition of
the property, meanwhile making provision for your
support.”

“It seems to me,” I hazarded, “that some relative
should have been appointed.”

“Exactly,” Bolton nodded. “They made no
move, though. And this Texas person acted at
once: I dare say it’s all right. However, you’re
a minor. Better have some responsible person appointed
your guardian. Then if there’s any mismanagement,
you can take court action to have it
remedied. Frankly, I don’t like the look of this
haste to administer. May be all right; may be all
wrong.”

“See here,” I burst out impulsively, for I had
taken a sudden liking to this short-spoken individual
who talked to me with one foot on a desk
and a half-smoked cigar tucked in the corner of his
mouth, “what’s the matter with you becoming my
guardian? None of my people seem to have
thought of it. I’m sure we’d get along all right.
It would be a mere matter of form, anyway.”

He smiled. My naive way of saddling myself
upon him, along with a lot of possible responsibilities
was doubtless amusing to a hard-headed financier
like Bolton. I saw nothing out of the way
in such an arrangement at the time. It struck me
as a splendid idea, in fact. But he made allowance
for my juvenile point of view. Shifting his
cigar to the other corner of his mouth he surveyed
me critically for a few seconds, crinkling his black
brows thoughtfully.

“I’ll do it,” he finally assented. “The position
ought to be a sinecure. Run in to-morrow morning
at ten-thirty, and we’ll step around to the courthouse
and have the thing legally executed. You’re
staying at the old place, I suppose?”

“I’m going to,” I replied. “I haven’t been at
the house; I came straight here from the train.”

“Well, run along, son,” he said good-naturedly.
“I’d take you home to my family, only I don’t happen
to possess one. I live at the club—the Arion—mostly.”

“Oh, by the way,” he called to me as I neared
the door. “How are you off for funds?”

“To tell the truth,” I owned, rather shamefacedly,
“I’m getting in pretty low water. I think
I’ve some change at home, but I’m not sure. Dad
never gave me a regular allowance; he’d just send
me a check now and then, and let it go at that. I’m
afraid I’m a pretty good spender.”

“You’ll have to reform, young man,” he warned,
mock-seriously. “Here”—he dug a fifty dollar
bill out of his pocket-book—“that’ll keep you going
for a while. I’ll keep you in pocket money till
this administrator allows you a monthly sum for
maintenance. Don’t forget the time, now. Ten-thirty,
sharp. Ta ta.” And he hustled me out of
the office in the midst of my thanks. I was thankful,
too, for I’d put it mildly when I told him that
I was getting near the rocks. I was on them. I’d
paid my last cent for a meal on the train that
morning. And while I did feel tolerably sure of
finding some loose silver in the pockets of my clothing
at home, I knew it would not amount to more
than four or five dollars. Oh, I was an improvident
youth, all right. The necessity for being careful
with money never struck me as being a matter
of importance; I’d never had to do stunts in economy,
that was the trouble.

From the bank I went straight home. We hadn’t
kept a very pretentious establishment, even though
Sumner *pere* had gone on increasing his pile all
through the years since we’d moved to the city. A
cook and a house-maid, a colored coachman and a
gardener—the four of them had been with us for
years, and old Adam was waiting by the steps for
me when I came up the walk, his shiny black face
beaming welcome. I had to go to the stable and
look over the horses, and tell Adam that everything
was fine, before the old duffer would rest.

In the house everything was as I’d left it. All
that evening I moped around the big, low-ceiled living-room.
There was little comfort in the place;
it was too lonely. The hours dragged by on leaden
feet. I couldn’t get over expecting to see mother
come trailing quietly down the wide stairway, or
dad walk in the front door packing a battered old
grip and greeting me with his slow smile. I know
it was silly, but the feeling drove me out of the
house and down town, where there was a crush of
humans, and the glitter of street lights and the
noise of traffic. There I met a chum or two, and
subsequent proceedings tore a jagged hole in Bolton’s
fifty dollar bill before I landed home in the
little hours. Even then I couldn’t sleep in that
still, old house.

The long night came to an end, as nights have
a habit of doing, and breakfast time brought with
it the postman. The mail was mostly papers and
other uninteresting junk, but one missive, postmarked
Amarillo, Texas, and addressed to myself
I opened eagerly. It was from the administrator,
as I had surmised.

Most of the communication was taken up with
an explanation of how he came to jump into the
breach so quickly. He had been, it seemed, a close
friend of my father’s. He knew that Jack Sumner
had a son who was not yet of age, and who, even
if he were, knew little or nothing about stock.
Things needed looking after, he said; my father’s
sudden death had left the business without a responsible
head, and the ranch foreman and the
range boss were bucking each other. Things were
going to the devil generally, so he felt called upon
to step into the breach, seeing that none of the
Sumner family showed up to protect their interests.
I wouldn’t be under any obligation to him,
he frankly explained, for as administrator he would
be paid for what he was doing. He also stated that
if I felt that my affairs would be more capably
managed in the hands of someone whom I knew
better he would cheerfully turn over control of the
estate without any tiresome litigation. And he
concluded his letter with an urgent invitation to
come down to headquarters and see the wheels go
round for myself. He signed himself in a big
heavy hand, Jake Howey, and the signature gave
me an impression of a bluff, hard-riding cowman—picturesque
and thoroughly Western. If I had
been born a girl I expect my disposition would
have been termed romantic. Anyway, Mr. Jake
Howey’s letter made a hit with me.

When I went to keep my appointment with Bolton
later in the forenoon I took the letter with me.
He glanced over it, and tucked it back in the envelope.

“I don’t much believe in long distance judgment
of men,” he declared, “but I’d be willing to take a
chance on this Texas person. I should say you can
expect a square deal from him—if this missive
represents his true personality.”

“That’s the way it struck me, too,” I confessed.
“I think I’d like to go down there for a while.”

“Yes? What about school?” he put in.

“Well, I suppose it’s necessary for me to go
through college,” I admitted. “Dad intended me
to. I was to begin this coming school year—September,
isn’t it? But that’s nearly three months
away. I would like to see that Red River ranch.
I was born there, you know.”

“You’ll have to cut your eye-teeth in the business
sometime,” he mused. “You’ll be less likely
to get into mischief there than you will in town.
Yes, I daresay you might as well take the trip.
But no funking school this fall, mind. I’ve known
youngsters to go to the cattle country and stick
there. Your father did.”

“I won’t,” I promised, “even if I want to stay,
I’ll be ready to dig in when September comes.”

“You’d better.” He laughed at my earnestness.
“Or I’ll be down there after you. When do you
propose to start?”

“As soon as I can.” Having paved the way to
go, I wanted, boy-fashion, to be on the way at once.

“Any idea how to get there?” he queried; as
if he had his doubts about the development of my
bump of location.

But I had him there.

“Oh, yes. Dad used to take the train through
Little Rock to Fort Worth, and on up into the
Panhandle from there. Sometimes he took a
steamer from here to Memphis. I think I’d like
the river trip best.”

“All right,” he decided. “You shall go, my boy,
just as soon as you can get ready. Now we’ll see
about this guardianship matter.”

We saw about it in such wise that two days later
I was the happy possessor of a ticket to Amarillo
and a well-lined pocket-book. I had dinner with
Bolton, and bade him good-bye quite cheerfully, for
I felt a good deal as Columbus must have done
when he turned the prow of his caravel away from
Spanish shores. After leaving Bolton I went home
after a grip I’d forgotten. The river boat on which
I’d taken passage was due to leave at midnight.

And that midnight departure was what started
one Bob Sumner up the Trouble Trail. It isn’t
known by that name; it doesn’t show on any map
that ever I saw; but the man who doesn’t have to
travel it some time in his career—well, he’s in luck.
Or perhaps one should reason by the reverse
process. I daresay it all depends on the point of view.

CHAPTER II—BY WAY OF THE “NEW MOON”
============================================

Lights by the thousand speckled the night-enshrouded
water-front when I reached the slip
where my boat lay. On the huge roofed-in wharf
freight-handlers swarmed like bees. The rumble
of hand trucks and the tramp of feet rose to the
great beams overhead and echoed back in a steady
drone. Lamps fluttered on vibrating walls. Men
moved in haste, throwing long shadows ahead and
behind them. Boxes, bales, barrels, sacked stuff
vanished swiftly down three separate inclines to the
lower deck of the *Memphis Girl*, and from the
depths of this freight-swallowing monster came the
raucous gabble, freely garnished with profanity,
of the toiling stevedores.

Out from under that vast sounding board of a
roof the noise at once diminished in volume, and
I passed through the heart of the dust and babel
and gained the cabin deck of the *Memphis*. A
steward looked over my ticket and guided me to
the berth I had reserved. It was then half past
nine; still two hours and a half to the time of departure.
I took a look around the upper deck.
Quite a number of passengers were already aboard.
Some were gone to bed; others were grouped in
the aft saloon. One or two poker games had
started, and little groups were looking on. But of
them all I knew not a soul. Youth hungers for
companionship, and I was no exception to my kind.
It may be a truism to say that nowhere can one be
so completely alone as in a crowd; but the singularity
of it never came home to me until that night.
But we are always learning the old things and
esteeming them new. I roamed about the *Memphis*,
wishing I had stayed up town till the last
minute. It had been my plan to go down and turn
in; the ceremony of casting off was not one that
interested me greatly. But now the whim was
gone; a spirit of unrest, an impatience to be off,
drove sleep from my mind. If you have ever
known the dreary monotony of waiting for train
or steamer to start when your whole being craves
the restfulness of motion you will not wonder that
I made one more round of the deck and saloons and
then left the *Memphis* to roam aimlessly past the
serried wharves that faced the stream.

I don’t recollect just how far I wandered. If the
place had been strange to me I should likely have
been more circumspect in my prowling. As it
was, my only concern was to be at the S.S. Company’s
wharf by midnight, and midnight was yet
afar. So I poked along, stopping now and then to
hang over a railing and peer across the dark sweep
of the Mississippi toward the Illinois shore. Between,
the lights of divers craft twinkled like fireflies,
and tootings of major and minor keys with
varying volume of sound went wailing through the
night.

A big passenger packet, hailing from up-river,
swept into view. Ablaze from her bow to the
churning stern wheel she bore down like a floating
villa strung with yellow gems. A band blared
“Dixie” from somewhere amidships. I was young
enough to have some degree of enthusiasm for
such spectacles, and I turned onto a long half-lighted
wharf and walked to its outermost tip to
get a better view of the puffing river monster with
its thousand gleaming eyes.

Until she came abreast and passed, I stood there
watching. In a careless way I became aware of
two men strolling out on the wharf; in fact, I had
passed them near the entrance gate. I remember
that the swell from the big packet was beginning
to slap against the wharf wall when one of them
edged over and asked me the time.

Like a simpleton I hauled out my watch to tell
him. It did not occur to me that there might be
any purpose behind the question. The river-front
in St. Louis was not a place where one could safely
exhibit signs of affluence in the way of cash or
jewelry—and I knew it. I hadn’t grown up in a
city without knowing some of its ways. No doubt
it looked like an easy game, out there on the end of
a deserted wharf.

My watch was a plain hunting-case affair, with
a fob. Without an inkling of what was to come I
turned toward the dim light as I sprung the case
open. In that instant the fellow struck the watch
out of my grasp with one hand, and smashed me
full on the jaw with the other—a vicious, pugilistic
punch. I went down. Curiously, I didn’t lose consciousness;
and the blow gave little pain. But it
paralyzed my motor nerves for a few seconds, gave
me a queer, helpless feeling in my legs and arms,
such as one has in a nightmare. It passed though,
and the pair of them were just going through my
pockets with a celerity that bespoke much practice
when I recovered sufficiently to jab my fist into a
face that was bent close to mine—at the same time
driving both heels against the shins of the other
fellow with what force I could muster.

This instinctive outbreak rather surprised them,
I think. Anyway, they gave ground. Only for a
moment, however. I made one valiant effort to
gain my feet, and they were on me like twin wolves.
Kicking, striking, struggling like primal beasts we
three lurched this way and that on the brink of the
wharf. A hundred yards away people were hurrying
by, and if I’d had sense enough to realize that
a shout was my best weapon I could easily have
routed the thugs. But I was too frightened to
think.

And in a very short time sheer weight of numbers
decided the issue. One of them got a strangle
hold about my neck. The other clasped me fervently
around the waist. Thus they dragged me
down. For one brief instant I rested on the hard
planking, my head in a whirl, their weight like a
mountain on my heaving chest. Then, with a quick
shove they thrust me over the edge of the wharf.

Undertaken voluntarily, a twenty-foot dive is
no great matter, but it is a horse of quite another
color to be chucked into space and fall that distance
like a bag of meal. I struck the water feet first,
as it happened, and came to the top spluttering,
half-strangled, but otherwise none the worse. Right
quickly I found that I’d merely exchanged one antagonist
for another. The current set strongly out
from the wharf, and it cost me many a stroke to
get back to it, and then I saw that I was no better
off. Contrary to the usual thing the piles offered
no avenue of escape, for they were planked up, a
smooth wooden wall that I could not possibly climb.
I felt my way toward shore, but the out-sweeping
current was too strong. So I hooked my fingers
in a tiny crack and proceeded to shed what clothing
still burdened me. Of my coat only a fragmentary
portion remained. It had been ripped up the back
in the fracas above, and the side containing my
ticket and most of my money had been torn clear off
me. There was little left save the sleeves. My
shoes and shirt and trousers I cast upon the waters
with little thought of their return; and then, clad
in a suit of thin underclothes I struck out for the
next pier below, thanking my stars that I was a
fair swimmer.

But I could not make it. The channel of the
Mississippi threw the full head of a powerful current
against the St. Louis side at that particular
point; it struck the wharf-lined bank and swerved
out again with the strength of an ocean tide, and
I was in the out-going curve of it. The next
wharf was not for me nor yet its fellow beyond.
Steadily I was carried into mid-stream. Shouting
for help across the black space that lay between
me and the wharves soon exhausted what wind and
strength I did not use up in a footless attempt to
swim against the current. I stopped yelling then;
it seemed to be sink or swim, and I began to conserve
my energies a bit. Slipping along in plain
view of myriad lights, hearing the fiendish screaming
of steamer whistles, seeing the moving bulk of
them dimly in the night, I felt in no immediate
danger—not half as much alarm disturbed the soul
of me as when the fingers of those night-hawks were
clawing at my throat. I knew I could keep afloat
an indefinite length of time, and some craft or
other, I reasoned, would pick me up if I failed to
make shore.

By and by I rapped my hand smartly against some
hard object as I cleft the water, and gripping it I
found myself the richer by a four-foot stick of
cordwood on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. This
served to bear me up without any exertion on my
part, and gave me that much better chance to buck
the current. I was now well out from the wharves,
and straining my eyes for passing boats.

Far down the river the piercing shriek of a
siren split a momentary silence that had fallen on
the stream. A drumming noise was borne up to me
on a fitful night breeze. From behind the black
loom of a jutting wharf a steamer appeared, and
came throbbing upstream. Now she was almost
on me, the heart-like pulse of her engines and the
thresh of her great sternwheel deadening all the
other sounds which that vast river surface caught
up and bandied back and forth.

Remorselessly the current bore me into her path.
At first I had strained every nerve to get in her
way, but as the black hull with funnels belching
smoke and deck-lights riding high drew near I remembered
that if I missed a hold on her side I stood
a fair chance of being sucked into the flailing paddles.
When that filtered into my cranium I backed
water in hot haste; but I had gone too far, and her
speed was too great. In another minute I was
pawing at the slippery bulge of her water-line, and
striving to lift my voice above the chug of the engines
as she slid by.

The wash from her swung me away and drew
me back again, and just as the nearing thresh of
her broad-paddled wheel struck a chill of fear into
my quaking heart my hands fouled in a trailing
line and I laid hold of it more tightly than ever
drowning man clutched the proverbial straw.

It was a small line, and the strain of towing me
was great, but it held. In the tiers of cabins above
my head lights flicked out one by one. Again and
again I called, bellowing upward with the regularity
of a fog signal. No answer; no inquiring
face peered over the rail. The docks slid by. God
only knows how long I dangled at the end of that
bit of twisted fiber. The glow-worm lamps of St.
Louis twinkled distantly on the left, rapidly falling
astern. The thin line wrapped about my wrist
numbed it to the elbow; I changed hands from time
to time, in peril of being cast adrift. Fervently I
wished for my bit of driftwood. The on-rushing
demon to which I clung offered less hope of succor.

In a little while longer I should have cast loose
from sheer inability to hold on. The strain on my
arms was exhausting, and the least shift soused me
under water, such was the speed. How I should
have fared then, I do not know. But in the nick
of time an answering hail came from above and
when I had established the fact that a human being
was clinging alongside, a cluster of heads and a
lantern or two appeared at the rail and a rope ladder
came wriggling down.

Cramped and sore and weary as I was I climbed
thankfully aboard. A knot of passengers surrounded
an officer whom I took to be the mate. A
deckhand or two stood by, eyeing me curiously as
I heaved myself on deck. The mate held up his
lantern and took a good look at me.

“You look some the worse for wear, bucko,” he
volunteered indifferently. “How long you been
hangin’ onto us?”

I began to explain, but I daresay my appearance
hardly lent an air of truth to my words; he cut me
short with an incredulous shrug of his shoulders.

“Tell that t’ the captain or the purser,” he interrupted
sharply. “Bilk, you steer him t’ the pilot
house. I’ll be there in a minute.”

He turned on his heel, and Bilk motioned me to
follow. As we passed forward I wondered on
what sort of craft I had landed, whither bound, and
how good my chance was of getting back to St.
Louis and making a fresh start. The first of these
queries I voiced to Bilk.

“She’s the *New Moon*,” he growled. “Through
freight t’ Bismark, Cow Island, and Fort Benton.
Stop? Naw, she don’t stop fer nothin’ only wood.”

CHAPTER III—WHICH SHOWS THAT THE WORM DOES NOT ALWAYS TURN
==========================================================

The door of the pilot-house swung open and the
captain himself stepped out as Bilk reached for the
knob. The eyes of this river autocrat fell inquiringly
on me. I daresay I was not a prepossessing
figure in the dull glimmer of a deck lamp.

“What the devil’s this?” he demanded.

“Feller picked up alongside us, hangin’ on by an
unstowed line, sir.” Bilk explained.

“Huh!” the captain grunted.

“See here, sir,” I began. “I’m much obliged for
being picked up. And I’ll be much more obliged if
you’ll put me in the way of getting into some clothes
and landing as soon as possible. I was to have
taken the *Memphis Girl* down-river to-night. Mr.
Bolton, of the Bolton and Kerr bank will make it
all right with you.”

The captain guffawed coarsely in my face. “God
bless me, that’s all right. Hey, Tupper,”—to the
mate, who came up while I was speaking—“here’s
a lad with a black eye, a skinned nose, and no clothes
on, who wants us to put about—and his banker will
make it all right. Ha—ha—ha!” And he laughed
till my cheeks burned.

“I don’t ask anything of you only to get ashore,
first stopping-place,” I spluttered, trembling with
anger; his patent disbelief of my statement was hard
to swallow. “I’m not to blame for getting robbed
and tumbled into the river, and I don’t want my
people to think I’ve been drowned.”

“There’s the shore,” he jerked his thumb backward
significantly. “Swim for it, if the deck o’ the
*Moon* don’t suit you.”

That silenced me for the time. I knew I could
never make shore, weary as I was. The inhospitable
atmosphere was better than the unquiet bosom of
the Mississippi. I had no stomach for further natatory
stunts that night. And I knew that it depended
on the good-will of this grouchy individual as to
when and where I should set foot on land. He
squinted calculatingly at me for a second or two,
then addressed the mate.

“Take ’im below, Tupper,” he said. “Dig ’im up
some jeans an’ a pair o’ shoes, an’ let ’im roost
somewhere forrad. We can use ’im, I reckon.”

“Look here,” I remonstrated anxiously; he was
overlooking my voice in the matter in a way that
didn’t suit me at all. “I want to know when I’m
going to get a chance to go back to St. Louis? You
don’t seem to understand the fix I’m in.”

“Got passage-money about you?” he asked coolly.

“Why, of course not,” I replied. “A fellow
doesn’t usually carry money in his underclothes.”

“He don’t, hey?” He stepped nearer to me and
suddenly thrust a hairy fist under my nose. “Who
the hell are you, t’ howl about gettin’ ashore? You
look t’ me like a man that’s broke jail or somethin’
o’ the kind. As tough a lookin’ citizen as you are
ought t’ be damn thankful for a chance t’ climb
aboard. You’ll earn your keep while you’re on the
*Moon*—an’ no questions asked. See? Take him
along, Tupper. Kick his ribs in, if he makes a roar.
Get forrad, there.”

That was all the satisfaction I got out of Captain
Speer; and truth to tell I followed the mate with
proper meekness. I knew enough of the river-boat
way to avoid open clashing with sternwheel folk.
Deep-water men paint lurid pictures of hell-ships,
but I have my doubts, from what I’ve seen and
heard, of any wind-jammer that ever sailed the
seven seas being worse that some of the flat-bottomed
craft that bucked the Missouri and Mississippi
in the year of our Lord eighteen eighty-one.

The mate, a sullen, red-whiskered brute, hustled
me down ’tween decks, rummaged in a locker and
brought forth a frayed suit of cotton overalls, and
a pair of brogans two sizes too large for my feet—and
they are not small by any means.

“Get into them, if you feel the need o’ clothes,”
he growled. “You camp on that pile o’ sacks an’
stay there till you’re wanted.”

Much as I resented his overbearing speech and
manner I didn’t think it good policy to row with
him just then. My face ached from the punching
it had already received; physical weariness, bruises,
the strangeness and palpable belligerence that confronted
me on the *Moon*, all served to cow me, that
had never been a fighting-man, nor thrown among
the breed. My knowledge of the genus river-rat
was sufficient to tell me that the mate would rather
enjoy carrying out the captain’s order in regard to
my ribs. I wanted none of his game at that time
and place. So I donned the overalls and kept my
mouth closed.

He wasted no more time on me, and when he was
gone I settled myself philosophically on the sack-pile,
wondering how long it would be till the Moon
would make a landing. The wisest plan seemed to
consist of dodging trouble while aboard, and stepping
ashore at the first tie-up. Otherwise, I
judged myself slated to enact the role of roustabout
at the pleasure of the rude gentleman in command.

The night was warm; my wet underclothing not
uncomfortable. Curled in an easy posture on the
folded sacks I fell asleep, undisturbed by the monotonous
beat of the *Moon’s* mechanical heart. The
blast of her whistle, long-drawn, a demoniac, ear-splitting
cross between a scream and a bellow, wakened
me; and while I sat up, rubbing my sleepy
eyes and wondering how long I’d slept, the boorish
mate yelled from a gangway.

“Here you. Come along—an’ be quick about it.”

When I sensed the fact that he was directing
his remarks at me, my first impulse was to lay hold
of something and heave it at his bewhiskered face.
But upon second thought I refrained, and ascended
resentfully to the upper deck, grinding my teeth
at the broad back of him as I went. A half dozen
other men, roustabouts I judged from their general
unkemptness, were gathered amidships by
the rail. Off in the east day was just breaking;
from which I gathered that I had slept seven hours
or more. The speed of the *Moon* slackened perceptibly.
Out of the grayness ahead a slip loomed
ghostly in the dawn, tier on tier of cordwood
stacked on the rude wharf; upreared on rows of
piling, it seems to my juvenile fancy like a monster
centipede creeping out to us over the smooth
water.

Somewhere in the depths of the *Moon* a bell
tinkled. Immediately the great paddle reversed,
churning the river surface into dirty foam, and we
began to sidle against the pier-end. Fore and aft,
lines were run out and made fast by a dim figure
that flitted from behind the woodricks. The mate
growled an order, and a gangplank joined the
*Moon’s* deck to the wharf. Down this we filed,
his Sorrel Whiskers glanced over one shoulder at
me.

At once my grimy companions, Bilk among the
number, fell upon the pile of wood. For a moment
I stood undecided—then made to walk boldly
past the mate. Back of the wharf I saw the land,
a sloping rise dotted with farmhouses, take form
in the growing light; and I was for St. Louis
whether or no. But Tupper forestalled me. I did
not get past him. He seemed to be paying little
attention, yet when I came abreast of him, heart
somewhat a-flutter he lurched and struck out—with
marvellous quickness for a stodgy-built man.
There was no escaping the swing of his fist. I
was knocked down before I knew it, for the second
time in twelve hours. Satisfaction gleamed in
his small, blue eyes. He stepped back, and when
I got to my feet, something dazed and almost desperate,
he was facing me with a goodly billet in
one hand.

“Dig in there, blast yuh!” he roared. “Grab a
stick an’ down below with it, or I’ll fix yuh good
an’ plenty, yuh——”

The fierceness of him, the futility of pitting myself
against a club, much less his ponderous fists,
quelled me once more. I hoisted a length of cordwood
upon my shoulder and passed aboard. Another
trip I made, and some of the murderous rage
that seethed inside me must have shown upon my
countenance; for Bilk lagged, and, edging near as
we trod the gangway together, muttered a word of
advice.

“Fergit it, kid,” he warned. “Don’t go agin’
him. He’s a killer—he’s got more’n one man’s
scalp a’ready. An’ it’s the calaboose for you if
yuh do lay him out. See?”

Bilk was right. I was aware that while falling
short of mutiny on the high seas, a good smash at
Mr. Tupper would land me in jail right speedily—providing
the captain and the other mate left
enough of me to lock up—and seeing that St. Louis
and my friends were already far astern, I might
find myself in a worse pickle than aboard the *Moon*.
This, coupled with a keen sense of shame for blows
received and not yet returned, was galling. But
cowardly or not, just as you choose, I could not
cope with sluggers of that heavy calibre, and I
knew it. So, temporarily, I subsided, and sullenly
became a satellite of the *New Moon*.

The empty space behind the boilers, and a good
share of the lower deck space was duly filled with
wood; the *Moon* got under way again, and then I
had a breathing spell, which I spent turning over
in my mind certain plans that suggested a way out
of the difficulty. Going to Montana, when my destination
was Texas, was not to my liking, and the
manner of my going I liked least of all. While I
pondered Bilk drew near.

“First trip on a sternwheeler, huh?” he asked,
in a not unfriendly tone.

“Yes—like this,” I answered, and he grinned understandingly.

“I should have jumped and made a swim for it,”
I mourned. That had not occurred to me while we
were tied up at the wood-wharf; in fact, my thinking
was none too coherent about that time—Tupper’s
fist had jarred me from head to heel.

“He’d likely ’a’ plugged yuh quick’s yuh hit the
water,” Bilk observed indifferently. “He’s noway
backward about usin’ a pistol, if he takes a notion.”

“Do you mean to say they’d dare shoot a man
for quitting the steamer?” I uttered incredulously.

“Sure.” Bilk’s positive answer was distressingly
matter of fact.

With exceeding bitterness I aired my opinion
of such a state of affairs. Bilk merely shrugged
his shoulders.

“They’re short-handed, that’s why they froze t’ you,”
he explained. “She’ll lose time every wood-loadin’
if there ain’t men enough to pack it aboard.
Then the freight’s slow, the passengers kick, an’ the
owners pry up hell with the captain. Lord, was
yuh never rung in like this before? It’s nothin’
t’ bein’ shanghaied onto a wind-jammer that’s due
round the Horn—months of it yuh get then, an’
it’s tough farin’, too. You ain’t got no call t’roar
on this. We’ll be in Benton in ten days or so.
What’s that amount to?”

“It amounts to quite a lot with me,” I responded.
“I’m not going to Benton if I can help it. I’ll fool
that red-whiskered bully yet.”

“Don’t let him catch yuh at it, kid,” Bilk observed.
“He’ll give yuh worse’n ten days’ steam-boatin’
if yuh mix with him.”

But I did go to Benton, in spite of my intention
to the contrary. The *Moon*, as Bilk had told
me, was a through freight, a fast boat, passengers
and cargo billed direct to the head of navigation,
and carrying mail for but one or two places
between. Towns along the Missouri were few and
far apart those days, once north of Sioux City,
and for none did the *Moon* slow up. Wood-slips
were her only landing; since food for the hungry
monster that droned in the bowels of the ship was
a prime necessity. For the next three days Tupper,
and Bailey, the second mate, gave me no chance
to quit my involuntary servitude. Their fists I
avoided by submission. When we had progressed
that far up-river I ceased to look for opportunity
to take French leave, reasoning that I would have
more trouble retracing my steps through that thinly
settled land than if I stuck to the *Moon* and made
the round trip; besides this, my anger at the dirty
treatment had settled to cold malevolence. I
wanted to stay with the *Moon*, to be forced to stay
with her—for I had promised to make the captain
and the mate dance to sad music once we tied to
a St. Louis dock and I could get the ear of my
guardian. That prospect was my only joy for
many dolorous days.

Meantime I unwillingly carried wood, slushed
decks, and performed such other tasks as were
gruffly allotted me; always under a protest which
I dared not voice. I suppose one would eventually
become accustomed to being cursed every time one
turned around, but it never failed to set me plotting
reprisals; I can easily understand the psychology
of a mutineer, I think. Once or twice I had it
in mind to make some sort of appeal to one of
the passengers—a prosperous-looking individual
who, Bilk informed me, was a St. Louis fur merchant,
and whom I thought might possibly know
my father. But the sleek one transfixed me with
such a palpably contemptuous air when I was in
the act of approaching him that I hadn’t the heart
to face a rebuff. A sternwheel deckhand is not
an attractive person, as a rule, and I suppose I
looked the part, aggravated considerably by my
discolored optic and bruised face. My failure to
get speech with one of the elect, and being scowled
at as if I were a mangy dog into the bargain, didn’t
tend to make me feel kindly toward the well-fed,
well-clothed mortals who lounged on the after deck
smoking Havana cigars. Of the hide man I took
particular note, hoping to meet him some time in
the future, when I’d settled with Tupper, Speer *et
al*, and tell him what a damned snob he was. There
was a woman or two aboard, but they stuck to their
cabins and concerned me not—until a day when I
was fool enough to show a trace of the soreness
that always bubbled within.

I do not know why I tackled the captain. I did
not want wages, for Bilk had made it clear to me
that if I signed the steamer’s roll I thereby precluded
the possibility of hauling the *Moon’s* commander
over the coals for refusing to set me ashore
and keeping me in practical peonage, and I would
not have missed making it warm for that coarse
ruffian for half the cattle my dad had left me. I
dare say it was a flickering up of the smoldering
fires of hostility. Neither Tupper nor Speer ever
came close to me that I did not have to fight down
an impulse to club them with whatever was nearest
my hand. And this day I unthinkingly baited Captain
Speer, much as I feared the weight of his
ready fists. I was coiling a rope just aft of the
wheel-house, when the captain paced along the
deck, and turned a cold eye upon me. I dropped
the rope.

“Say,” I asked bluntly, and perhaps more belligerently
than was wise, “do I get paid wages for
the work I’m doing?”

“Hey? Get paid?” he growled. Then he lifted
up his voice and swore: “By God, you pay for
the grub you eat and the clothes you got on an’
we’ll talk about wages. You—you double-dyed,
gilt-edged, son-of-a-feather-duster!”

This is not a literal transcription of Captain
Speer’s expletives, but it will have to serve. His
rendering was of the sort frowned upon in polite
literature, being altogether unprintable. Never
did the captain sacrifice force to elegancy of expression.
I have heard it said, and the statement
is indubitably true, that he could swear louder and
faster and longer than any two men between Benton
and New Orleans. With the full tide of his
reviling upon me, he lurched forward, his big-knuckled
fingers reaching for my throat. I turned
to dart around the wheel-house; Tupper, grinning
maliciously, showed up from that quarter. And
when I swung about to go the other way I tripped
and Speer nailed me before I could dodge again.
Like a cat pawing a helpless mouse, he slammed
me against a deck-house wall, and I should doubtless
have had my head well worked over but for a
timely interruption.

Aft from the wheel-house a promenade deck
ran over the cabin roofs, whereon the passengers
lounged when they cared to sun themselves. The
captain, the mate, and myself were on the narrow
deck below. From just over our heads came the
voice of feminine disapproval; at which Captain
Speer let go my throat, and Tupper paused with
his foot drawn back to kick me.

“You’re a pretty pair of brutes, indeed you are!”

The girl, a small serious-faced thing, her brown
hair standing out in wind-blown wisps from under
a peaked cap, leaned over the rail and flung down
the words hotly, stamping one small foot to lend
emphasis to her observation.

“You may be typical ship’s officers,” she went on
scornfully, “but you are certainly not *men*.”

The two of them stood abashed, like pickpockets
taken in the act, and a man by the girl’s side put
in a word.

“Miss Montell,” he drawled. “You shouldn’t
interfere with the pastimes of our worthy skipper
and mate. Let the good work go on.”

“Shame on you, Mr. Barreau!” she flashed,
drawing away from him.

The man paid no heed to her quick retort, but
himself leaned a bit forward and spoke directly
to the captain.

“Go to it, Captain Speer,” he said indifferently—that
is, his manner of speech was well simulated
indifference; but I, staring up at him, saw the
storm-clouds gathering in his dark eyes. “Go
ahead. Beat the boy’s face to a jelly. Kick in
a few ribs for good measure. Make a thorough
job of it. You see, I know something of the river-boat
way. But when you are done with *that*,
Messrs. Speer and Tupper, you shall have some
little entertainment at my expense, I promise you.”

There was a menace in the inflection.

“By the Lord, sir, I’m master on this vessel,”
Captain Speer at length found his tongue. “If you
don’t like this, come down and take a hand.”

“Now speaks the doughty mariner,” Barreau
laughed mockingly. “I shall take a hand without
troubling to come down, believe me. Colonel Colt
shall arbitrate for us. If *that* is to your liking I
am at your service, Captain Speer.”

“Another cowardly blow,” cried the girl, her
dainty face flushing, “and my father shall see that
you captain no more boats for the Benton and St.
Louis Company—you barbarian. I promise you
that for penalty, whatever Mr. Barreau sees fit to
do.”

Whether the threat against his position carried
weight, or if he simply had no hankering for an
encountering with the cool individual on the upper
deck, I do not know; but, at any rate, Captain
Speer saw fit to sheath his claws at this juncture.

“Git t’ hell out o’ here, you,” he grunted, under
his breath. And I made haste to “git.”

Looking back, I saw Tupper and Speer striding
aft. Above, the girl stood by the rail, tucking in
the flying locks with graceful movements of her
hands. Barreau was staring after the retreating
pair, smiling sardonically over a cigarette.

Later, I learned from Bilk that Miss Montell was
the fur-merchant’s daughter, and straightway I
forgave the portly one any grievance I held against
him. But from none of the crew could I learn
aught of Barreau. Nor did I see him again, except
at ship-length. Like the girl, he kept close to his
cabin and the passengers’ saloon—terra incognita
to such lowly ones as I. I was grateful, even at a
distance, for between them they had saved me a
thumping—a thumping which I had reason to believe
was merely postponed.

The *Moon* was now well into Dakota. Steadily
she forged up the turbid river, thrumming past
Pierre, and, farther on, Standing Rock reservation.
At Bismark we made a brief stop. Then we
turned The Great Bend and plunged into the Bad
Lands. Through this gashed and distorted country
the *Moon* plowed along an ever-narrowing channel.
From her deck I had my first glimpse of the buffalo,
already doomed to extinction. Wild cattle
and deer scuttled back up the fearful slopes at our
approach, or vanished into the yawning canyons.
Unaccustomed to that altitude, I marveled at the
clarity of the atmosphere, the wonderful stillness
of the land. The high banks that shut us in
slanted away like paint-daubed walls, what of the
vari-colored strata. The ridges back of them were
twisted and notched by ancient geologic contortions,
washed by countless rains and bleached by
unnumbered centuries of sun—a strange jumble of
earth and rocks and stunted trees; a place to breed
superstitious fears, and warp the soul of a man
with loneliness.

In time the *Moon* left this monstrosity of landscape
behind, emerging upon a more wholesome
land. Grassy bottoms spread on either side the
river, and the upper levels ran back in a vast unbroken
sweep, the true prairie. And presently we
swept around a bend into view of a cluster of houses
lining the north shore, and the *Moon’s* whistle outdid
all previous efforts in the way of ungodly
sound. Twenty minutes later she was rubbing
softly against a low wharf, her passengers were
disembarked, and the back-breaking task of unloading
cargo began.

CHAPTER IV—A FORTHRIGHT FIGHTING-MAN
====================================

In due time the foodstuffs and other goods were
unloaded, and the *Moon* began to take on her return
cargo of buffalo hides and sundry bundles of
furs, the harvest of the past winter’s hunting and
the spring trade. Had it been left to our loud-mouthed
captain there would have been no cessation
of labor until the last pelt was stowed; he
would have worked us twenty-four hours to the
day. But Benton was not St. Louis, and the men
who loaded ship were of a different calibre from
the stevedores at the River City. A certain number
of hours would they work, and no longer,
though the *Moon* rotted at her slip. So we of the
regular crew had a breathing spell as sundown approached.
And the first spare time at my command
I used to write a letter to Bolton, detailing
my misadventures. This I posted, so that in case
anything kept me from returning on the *Moon*, he
would at least know whither I had gone and how I
had fared.

It took two days to unload. The evening of the
third day Bilk and I stole away from the boat
and went uptown. There was not much of it, to be
sure, but what little there was lacked nothing in
the way of life and color. One could see any sort
of costume, from sober broadcloth and fine linen
to the rainbow garb of a blanket Indian. Even the
long-haired frontiersman sacred to fiction was represented
by a specimen or two. Altogether it was
a motley, high-spirited crowd that we mixed with
that night. Of the quieter residential portion of
Benton I saw nothing, that time. My way, guided
thereto by Bilk, was down the main street, where
lights shone and glasses clinked merrily; into
divers places where ancient pianos tinkled dance
music. Drink and dance and gamble, that was the
night life of the town. Wherever we went, wherever
any man went, up and down the length of that
one garish street, he could get a run for his money,
if he had money to spend. In every saloon and
dance hall the knights of farobank and draw poker
held tourney on the field of green cloth. It was
all very new and strange and fascinating to me.

Bilk stood treat in one of the saloons, and after
we had emptied our glasses we stepped across the
room to where a knot of men were watching an
unkempt individual buck a roulette wheel with
twenty-dollar gold pieces in lieu of chips. He had
a dirty felt hat on the table before him, the crown
of it half full of gold and silver, and he was scattering
the double eagles two and three on a number.
It was heavy play, I thought, but the dealer
spun the little white ball and called the number
and color in a bored sort of manner. The buffalo-runner
lost half a dozen bets, and then all at
once he caught the double O with three twenty-dollar
coins resting on it. I gasped. Twenty-one
hundred dollars in fifteen seconds! When the
dealer passed over the stacks of gold, the unkempt
one opened his mouth for the first time.

“How much’ll yuh turn for?” he asked.

The dealer jerked his thumb upward. “We’ll
take the roof off,” he answered carelessly, “if yuh
want to play ’em that high.”

The buffalo-runner grinned and deliberately set
about placing handfuls of coin here and there on
the board. And while I stood there wholly engrossed,
eagerly watching the ivory ball in its circular
race, some one grabbed me by the shoulders
and hurled me unceremoniously out the door. Once
outside and free of that powerful grip, I turned
and beheld Tupper the red-whiskered, very drunk
and very angry, flourishing a pistol and shouting
vile epithets at me.

“Git back t’ the *Moon*, yuh —— son
of a sea-cook! I’ll jerk an arm off yuh an’ beat
yuh t’ death with the bloody end of it, if yuh show
up here again. Scoot!”

Naturally, I “scooted,” Mr. Tupper meanwhile
emphasizing his threats by sending a bullet or two
skyward. I wondered, at the time, why no peace
officer appeared to put a quietus on this manifestation
of exuberance, but later in the game I learned
that in frontier towns the popping of a pistol was
regarded as one of the accessories of a properly
joyful mood, men handled their guns to make a
noise, a la the small boy with a bunch of holiday
firecrackers. One could burn powder with impunity,
so long as he had due care for innocent
bystanders.

Of Bilk I saw no more, for a while. Thinking
that since Tupper’s hostility had been directed at
me, Bilk might have concluded to keep out of it,
and see Benton by himself, I went on to the boat
and curled up on a bale of buffalo hides, to sit a
while in the moonlight and the pleasant night air
before bedding down in the vile hole where we of
the roustabout fraternity were permitted to rest o’
nights. An hour or so I sat there, and about the
time I began to think of turning in, a figure came
slouching up the wharf and aboard. The glare of
a deck light showed me that it was Bilk. I called
to him, and when he came a little nearer I saw
further that he, too, had met with rough usage;
for his face was bruised and his lips cut and
swollen.

“Aw, that dam’ mate!” he said, in answer to my
questioning. “He gits on a razoo like this every
once in a while. Yuh was lucky he just throwed
yuh out. The son of a gun nailed me after that
an’ like t’ beat m’ head off. He’s tearin’ drunk
an’ plumb on the fight. Chances is he’ll come down
here before mornin’ an’ want t’ lick the captain, the
cook, an’ the whole blame crew.”

“Somebody ought to take an axe to him,” I suggested
bitterly.

“Yuh betche. That’s what he needs,” Bilk
agreed. “I’ve heard tell about him gettin’ on these
fightin’ drunks, but this here’s the first time he ever
got t’ me. Yuh wait. I’ll git him some uh these
times for this.” And Bilk went below, muttering
dark threats.

I followed shortly, and rolled in. There was no
disturbance during the night, and when we stood
by for the loading after breakfast Tupper was on
hand, a trifle surlier than usual, more or less red
about the eyes, but otherwise showing no signs of
his carouse. All that day we labored. Again at
eventide part of the crew sallied uptown. Before
ten o’clock all of them were back, one or two badly
damaged about the face, and one and all filled with
tales of the mate’s pugnacious mood.

“He sez, by the great horn spoon, he’ll bust the
head of ary hide-slingin’ wharf-rat that sticks his
nose up the main street. He wants the whole
town t’ himself, the blamed hog!” one indignantly
declared; and from what I’d seen of Tupper I could
very well believe that he would have it to himself
so far as the crew of the *Moon* was concerned.

The next morning found Mr. Tupper still on
deck. Evidently a steady diet of strong whisky
and rough-and-tumble fighting agreed with his peculiar
constitution. That night we were all but
done; two hours’ work in the morning would put
the *Moon* in shape for the down-river journey.
And when evening fell I took a notion to walk up
and down the streets of Benton once more. It
may have been that the prospect of getting to St.
Louis in the near future made me desire to flaunt
my independence in the face of the mate. Anyway,
without stopping to make a critical analysis of
motives, I slipped away from the *Moon* when dark
closed in. The engineer came aboard a minute
before I left, and I heard him call to his assistant
that Tupper was a sheet and a half in the wind,
and still wearing his fighting-clothes. But I took
no thought of turning back.

Right up the main street I marched, venturing
into one saloon after another without mishap. I
felt quite elated, like a small boy playing “hookey”
from school. And when, in the course of my
prowling about, I ran into a half dozen hilarious
cowpunchers I clean forgot Mr. Tupper and the
unkind things he had promised to do to me.

The camp of these cattlemen, I gathered from
their talk, was on the divide that loomed to the
north of Benton, and after the manner of their
kind they were “taking in the town” for the first
time in many weeks. Wherefore, they were thirsty
and noisy, and insistent that everybody should
drink and be joyful. To one of them, a youngster
near my own age, slim, sinewy, picturesque in
his hair-faced chaps and high-heeled boots, I talked
a little, but it was a hit-and-miss conversation, by
reason of the general uproar, and the rapidity with
which drinks came. I was all for information,
and in his free-and-easy way he shed beams of
light upon my black ignorance of range affairs.
But alas! a discordant element burst rudely in
upon our talk-*fiesta*. Tupper stalked in from the
street, and chance decreed that his roving, belligerent
eye should single me out of the crowd. I
was leaning against a disreputable billiard table,
at the time, and straight for me he came, not saying
a word, but squinting up his little, pig eyes in
a manner that boded ill.

I didn’t move. Though my heart flopped like a
new-landed trout, I couldn’t quite bring myself to
slink away. Beaten and bluffed and cowed as I had
been for the past two weeks, I hadn’t quite lost
the power to resent, and though I shrank from the
weight of Tupper’s ungodly fists I shrank more
from absolute flight. Something of the atmosphere
of the ranges had crept into me that evening.
I did not know what I was about to do, except
that I was not going to run away from any
red-whiskered brute from St. Louis or any other
section of the globe.

He came up close to me, stopped, and regarded
me a moment, as if amazed to see me standing there
and making no move to go. And then with a
quick hunch of his shoulders he swung a dirty fist
for my jaw. But that time I fooled Mr. Tupper
by sidestepping; I was watching him, and he was
a bit oversure. Again he struck out, first with
one hand and then the other. This time one of
the blows landed, glancingly. His red, ugly countenance
lurching toward me, his whisky-sodden
breath in my face was more than I could stand;
and when that vicious swing grazed my chin as I
backed away, I ducked under his arm and smashed
him on his reviling mouth.

It almost paid me for all the abuse I’d taken off
him, that one good blow. The backward roll of
his head, the quick spurt of blood where my
knuckles split his lip, sent a quiver of joy over me.
Had he been of the bigness of a house and equipped
with two pair of fists I would gladly have fought
him after that one punch. It showed me that I
could hurt him. It gave me a hungry craving for
more. I wanted to beat his ugly little eyes, his
squat, round-nostriled nose, and his whisky-guzzling
mouth into indistinguishable pulp.

But it was new business to me, and so instead
of keeping at him hammer and tongs till he was
down and out, I waited for him to rush me again.
Wherein I made a sad mistake. If I had battered
him down then and there—if—if! At any rate, he
did come with a rush, and he came fortified with
a wide knowledge of fist tactics to protect him from
another such blow as I had dealt him. He fought
me halfway across the room, and had me bleeding
like a stuck pig before I connected with him
again. But eventually one of my wild swings
slipped through his guard, and jolted his head
backward; the little bloodshot eyes of him blinked
with the jar of it. And again I made a mistake.
Instead of standing off and hammering him with
clean straight punches, I rushed to close quarters.
Half crazed with pain and anger I stepped in,
swinging short right and left blows for his wabbling
head, and so came within the sweep of his
great arms.

He clinched, and in his grip I was next thing to
helpless. One thing only could I do, and that was
to butt him in the face with my head—which kindly
office I performed to the best of my ability, until he
jammed me hard against the billiard table and bent
me backward till I felt my bones crack. And
then with his thumb he deliberately set about
gouging out one of my eyes.

I can feel it yet, the fierce pain and the horrible
fear that overtook me when he jabbed at my eye-ball.
I don’t know how I broke his hold. I only
recollect that, half-blinded, hot searing pangs shooting
along my optic nerve, I found myself free of
him. And as I backed away from his outstretched
paws my hand, sweeping along the billiard table,
met and closed upon a hard, round object. With
all the strength that was in me I flung it straight
at his head. He went to the floor with a neat,
circular depression in his forehead, just over the
left eye.

There was a hush in the saloon. One of the
cattlemen stooped over him.

“*Sangre de Cristo!*” he laughed. “A billiard
ball sure beats a six-shooter for quick action. I’ll
bet he was dead when he hit the floor.”

CHAPTER V—THE RELATIVE MERITS OF THE FRYING-PAN AND THE FIRE
============================================================

They crowded close, a little ring of curious faces,
about me and the dead man on the floor, and as a
babel of talk uprose a tall, lean man pushed his way
into the circle, Captain Speer of the *Moon* at his
heels.

“I guess I’ll have to take you in just for luck,”
the stranger said to me. “I’m town marshal. This
killin’ business has got t’ stop.”

He took me by the arm, and as he did so the
cowpuncher who had looked down at Tupper
stepped in between us, breaking the marshal’s hold.

“Not this time, Bax,” he said softly. “Play
fair or keep out uh the game. Yuh stay mighty
close in your hole when a gun-fighter hits the town,
and I’ll be damned if you build up your reputation
by arrestin’ a kid. This red-muzzler came in huntin’
trouble, and he found it. It was on the square,
and yuh ain’t goin’ to put nobody in your stinkin’
calaboose—not to-night. You and me don’t hitch
on *that* proposition.”

For a second or two it seemed as if there might
be another clash. Behind the two a space cleared
at the first words, and I noticed more than one
cowpuncher hitch his gun-belt forward. For myself,
I was too dazed to realize the exact turn of
affairs, and I cared less. Tupper, at least, would
trouble me no more, and for that I was truly glad.
But there was no mix-up, nor even a harsh word.
The marshal weakened. If he had intended to
take me he changed his mind after a brief glance
at the faces of the men who were watching him
with silent intentness.

“If that’s the way yuh feel about it, all right,”
he said—with an indifference that his flushed face
belied. He turned on his heel and walked out,
Captain Speer following.

“Yuh bet it’s all right,” the cowpuncher flung
after him derisively.

Then to me: “Throw a jolt uh Bourbon into
yuh, kid, and you’ll feel better. Yuh made a
good fight. But let me tell yuh somethin’. Go
heeled. And when one uh these rough-necked
fist-fighters jumps yuh, ventilate him. Show your
claws a time or two, and these would-be bad actors’ll
leave yuh strictly alone. Say, Mr. Bar-slave
let’s have one *pronto*.”

Three or four of them picked up the carcass of
the *Moon’s* mate and lugged it unceremoniously out
to a rear room, and then the crowd lined up at the
bar, the play at the wheel went on, the men at the
faro-table who had turned on their stools to watch
the fight again began to place their bets. Life ran
too full and strong there to be long disturbed by
the passing of any man.

My self-appointed champion—who, I now discovered,
was just drunk enough to welcome disturbance
in any form whatsoever—and the young
fellow with whom I had been speaking before the
row, wiped the blood off my face and doctored the
eye that Tupper had come near gouging from its
socket. And while they were thus ministering to
me another stockhand clanked in from the street.

“Say, Matt, yuh sure stirred up somethin’,” he
announced. “This the kid that got action on the
St. Louis jasper? Well, there’s goin’ to be a
healthy ruction round here over that, let me tell
yuh. Bax is red-eyed over yuh runnin’ a whizzer
on him, and he’s collectin’ a posse to take both of
yuh in. Don’t yuh reckon we better drift for
camp, Matt?”

Matt smiled and beckoned to some of the others.
“Not by a long shot!” he drawled. “Whenever
old Ed Bax runs me out uh town, it’ll be in
the good-by wagon. I’m goin’ to see that this kid
gets a square deal. If Bax or anybody else wants
me let ’em come and get me. Will the rest uh you
fellows stand pat?”

In varying stages of hilarity they crowded about
him and profanely assured him that they would turn
Benton inside out and shake the pockets if he but
said the word. In the midst of their chatter the
man who had brought news of the marshal’s action
drew closer and lowered his voice.

“Look here, Matt,” he argued, “you’re runnin’
the outfit and you’re a friend of mine and all that
sort of thing, and yuh know that all of us’ll back
any sort of play yuh make. But it looks to me
like we can do better’n to pull off a big fight. I
ain’t plumb chicken-hearted, but Bax is goin’ to
come down on us with a bunch uh tin-horn gamblers
to help him out, and if this kid’s in sight he’s
goin’ to try and take him. Yuh sabe? He’s got
to make some kind of a bluff at it, or every pilgrim
that comes along’ll run over him. So it’s a
cinch that there’ll be more or less gun-play, and the
Circle’ll be shy a man or two when it’s over.”

“They ain’t got the nerve, Dick,” Matt declared
confidently.

“It don’t take much nerve to start anything like
that,” Dick replied. “Somebody’ll reach for his
gun, and it’ll be off. Now, Bax ain’t goin’ to
jump *you*—he’s afraid to. If the kid’s with yuh
he’s got to. I move we stake this kid to a hoss,
and let him drift. That lets *him* out. And if Bax
wants to have it out with yuh on general principles,
why, we’ll see it through.”

“Dick’s right,” one of them put in. “The kid’s
got to hit the trail, anyhow, and he might as well
do it right away quick. That’s the main thing,
ain’t it. We started in to help him out, and if we
can do it peaceful, we’ll live longer. Bax won’t
tackle us unless he just has to.”

“Yuh got me on the run,” Matt frowned. “I’d
just as soon dehorn this Bax party to-night as any
other time. But I see where the kid better move
out, all right. You pilot him, Wall, and catch up
one uh them extra hosses, and stake him to that
saddle Musky left—I’ll fix it with old Musk when
he comes back. He can ride my hoss to camp.”

It was all arranged offhand in less time than I
have taken to tell of it, and I was hustled out to
where a row of cow-ponies patiently awaited the
pleasure of their hard-riding masters. For aught
these sons of the plains knew I was a purely worthless
bit of human driftwood. But I don’t think
they gave a thought to the matter. There was
only one thing to be done, in their estimation, and
they proceeded to do it without consulting me or
doing very much talking about it themselves. So
very shortly I found myself straddle of the Circle
foreman’s horse and jogging out of Benton. Beside
me, young Wall rode silently until we reached
the top of the long hill that slopes to the town.
Then he shook his horse into a lope, and broke into
cheerful whistling.

I, however, was far short of the whistling mood.
The thing I should have done I was afraid to do.
Ordinarily, my instinct would have been to face the
music. I was unrepentant for the part I had
played in the extinction of Tupper. Nor would
I, if I had calmly weighed the chances for and
against, have felt any fear of consequences before
the law. But my experience with the law, in those
days, was a void. That which we do not understand
we usually fear, and that night I was stricken
with a swift fear of the law. I had killed, and
there was a penalty. My spirit revolted at the
thought of a jail. Likewise, the quick action of
those Circle cowpunchers made a deep impression
on me. If incarceration was so to be avoided that
they were willing to back their deeds with gunpowder,
I wanted no phase of incarceration in
my experience. Better the open, an unknown
country, and whatever might befall therein, than
to lie in Benton “calaboose”—which, to my disturbed
mind, was a synonym for a place of vague
horrors.

I thought of standing my ground, of taking
chances on Bax the marshal and the Benton jail,
until the *Moon* could reach St. Louis and apprise
Bolton of my need—and then I shuddered at the
thought that the thing might be settled beyond interference
before he could make the long river
journey. I had heard and read more or less of
hasty trials in the West; I had killed a man in what
seemed to me a barbarous fashion; I did not know
what the authorities, self-constituted or otherwise,
might do to me—and I hadn’t the nerve to stay and
find out. If they should hang me, thought I, I
shall be a long time dead. Flight, under these circumstances,
made the strongest appeal to my excited
imagination.

Such was the chaotic state of my ideas when
Wall pulled up his horse, and I saw the white glimmer
of tents close at hand.

“Night-hawk’s got the bunch over here, I
think,” said he. “Seems like I hear the bells.
Anyhow, you stay here and I’ll get yuh a *caballo*
that can drift.”

He trotted off, leaving me standing by the clear-cut
outline of a wagon. Away off in the semi-dark—for
the moon was now risen—I heard a
sudden scurry of hoofs, an accentuated jangling
of two or three small bells. Presently Wall came
loping back leading a blaze-faced sorrel horse.

From under the forward end of the wagon he
dragged a saddle, a bridle and a saddle-blanket.

“There,” he said, “there’s a good rig, barrin’
spurs—which yuh won’t need much. And a good
hoss to put it on. Go to it.”

The stock saddle, with its high horn and deep
seat, was not so different from what I’d been used
to—except as to weight. The double-cinch apparatus
bothered me a little, but when Wall explained
the uses of the latigo and the manner of its tying,
I got my horse saddled properly—the small imps of
uneasy haste spurring me on. Then I swung up
to try the stirrups, and found that I had a restive
brute under me. He plunged once or twice, but I
kept his head in the air, and finally straightened
him out. Wall nodded approval.

“I wasn’t dead sure yuh could ride him,” he
owned. “But I see you’ve got him in your sack,
and you’ll find him there when it comes to gettin’
over the ground.”

“I’m all ready now, I think,” said I.

“Wait a minute,” Wall laughed. “Don’t rush
off. Bax wouldn’t come into the Circle camp after
yuh to-night for two farms in Iowa. Chances are
he’s busy right now figuring a way to get a dead
safe whack at Matt Dunn. Come on over to the
cook-tent and get some grub to tie on your saddle.
You’ll need it.”

By the light of a candle he ransacked the grub
boxes on the tail end of the cook-wagon. A loaf
of bread, some fresh-made biscuits, and a big piece
of boiled beef, together with a trifle of pepper and
salt this light-hearted, capable youngster wrapped
in a bit of burlap and tied behind the cantle of my
saddle. And while he munched a piece of beef
himself, he gave me explicit directions as to my
course.

“Once yuh get over into the MacLeod country,”
he concluded, “you’ll be all right. Nobody’ll care
a cuss who yuh are nor where yuh come from, so
long as yuh behave yourself. This red hoss hasn’t
got the Circle brand, though he belongs to the outfit,
so they won’t ask no fool questions about him.
Yuh ought to pick up a job with some uh them
Canadian layouts pretty easy.”

“Oh, wait a minute,” he exclaimed, when I was
again about to mount, and he ran over to an outspread
canvas-covered bed. He fumbled among
the tumbled quilts a moment and came back to me
carrying a broad cartridge-belt, on which a bone-handled
Colt swung in its leathern scabbard.

“I pretty near forgot this,” he chuckled. “Yuh
ain’t heeled, and Lord knows yuh need to be at
this stage uh the game. Say, how are yuh off for
coin?”

“Man alive!” I cried—and I meant it, “you’ve
done more for me now than I can repay in a thousand
years. I don’t need money.”

“Oh, yes, yuh do,” he returned, unruffled. “A
dollar or two’ll come mighty handy when yuh hit
MacLeod, or wherever yuh land. I ain’t goin’ to
make yuh rich. Here, and good luck to yuh.”

He pressed a ten-dollar gold piece upon me.
Then we shook hands as brothers at parting, and I
rode out of the Circle camp on a high-stepping
horse, with the Big Dipper and the North Star to
guide me to the Canada line.

CHAPTER VI—SLOWFOOT GEORGE
==========================

I retain some vivid impressions of that night
ride. A mile or two from the Circle tents I crossed
the Teton River, then just receding from the June
rise, and near swimming deep. After that I came
out upon a great spread of bench-land, dotted with
silent prairie-dog towns. Here and there a lone
butte rose pinnacle-like out of the flatness. In all
my short life I had never known what it was to
be beyond sound of a human voice, to be utterly
alone. That night was my first taste of it, and to
my unaccustomed ears the patter of my horse’s
hoofs seemed to be echoing up from a sounding-board,
and the jingle of the bit chains rang like a
bell, so profound was the quiet. I know of nothing
that compares with the plains for pure loneliness,
unless it be the deserted streets of a city at
four in the morning—or the hushed, ghostly woods
of the North, which I was yet to know. Each hollow
into which I dipped reeked of mysterious possibilities.
Every moon-bathed rise of land gave
me a vague feeling that something sinister, some
incomprehensible evil, lay in wait upon the farther
side. Whatever of superstition lay dormant in my
make-up was all agog that night; my environment
was having its will of me. I know now that my
nerves were all a-jangle. But what would you?
The dark brings its subtle, threatening atmosphere
to bear on braver men than I. For aught I knew
there might be a price on my head. Certainly I
was a fugitive, and flight breeds groundless, unreasoning
fears.

Bearing a little west of the North Star, I kept
the red horse at a steady jog, and when the night
was far spent and my bones aching from the ride
I came to another river—the Marias—which Wall
had told me I must cross. Following his directions,
a half-hour’s journey upstream brought me
upon a trail; a few wagon-tracks that I near overlooked.
This led to a ford, or what may once have
been a ford. It no longer merited the term, for I
got well soaked in the deep, swift stream. Red
carried me through, however, and when I gained
the farther bank of the Marias Valley a faint reddish
glow was creeping up in the east. In a little
while it was broad day.

Then I halted for the first time. My mettlesome
steed I picketed carefully, ate a little of the
biscuits and boiled beef, and lay down to sleep in
a grassy hollow, too tired to care whether Bax was
hard on my trail or not. The sunlight had given
me a fresh access of courage, I think—that and
the heady air of those crisp morning hours. My
difficulties began to take on some of the aspects of
an adventure. Once in the Territories, with none
to hound me, I could apprise Bolton and he would
forward money to get me home. That was all I
needed. And if I could not manage to eke out a
living in the meantime I was not the son of my
father. I fell asleep with a wistful eye on three
blue spires that broke the smooth sweep of the skyline
to the northward—the Sweet Grass Hills,
touching on the Canadian boundary, if I remembered
rightly what Wall had said.

The hot noon sun beating on my unprotected
face roused me at last. It was near midday. I
had no liking for further moonlight travel, so I
saddled up and rode on, thinking to get somewhere
near the Hills by dusk, and camp there for the
night. I was now over my first fear of being
followed; but, oh, my hearers, I was stiff and sore!
A forty or fifty mile jaunt is not much to a seasoned
rider—but I lacked seasoning; however, I
was due to get it.

A little before sundown I rode into the long
shadow of West Butte, in rare good humor with
myself despite the ache in my legs, for by grace
of my good red horse I had covered a wonderful
stretch that afternoon, and my nag was yet stepping
out lightly. On either hand loomed the rugged
pyramids of the Sweet Grass—which in truth are
not hills at all, but three boulder-strewn, pine-clad
mountains rising abruptly out of a rolling plain.
The breaks of Milk River, in its over-the-border
curve, showed plainly in the distance. I was nearing
the City of Refuge.

There in that shadow-darkened notch between
the lofty pinnacles I came to a new fork in the
Trouble Trail. I did not know it then, but later
I could not gainsay the fact. And the mile-post
that directed my uncertain steps was merely a strain
of the devil in the blaze-faced sorrel I bestrode.
Had he been of a less turbulent spirit I doubt much
if I should ever have fallen in with Slowfoot
George.

It happened very simply. Ambling along with
eyes for little but the wild land that surrounded,
with reins held carelessly in lax fingers, I was an
easy victim. As before remarked, I can put forward
no better explanation than a streak of “cussedness”
in my red mount. Suffice it to relate, that
all at once I found my steed performing a series
of diabolic evolutions, and in some mysterious manner
he and I parted company in a final burst of
rapid-fire contortions. I have since heard and read
much of the Western horse and his unique method
of unseating a rider, but never yet have I seen
justice done the subject. Nor shall I descant long
on such an unpleasant theme. Let me simply
record the fact that I came to earth ungracefully,
with a jarring shock, much as an importunate suitor
might be presumed to descend the front steps of his
inamorata’s home, when assisted therefrom by
the paternal toe. And when I sat up, a freshly-bruised
and crestfallen youth, it was to behold Red
clattering over a little hillock, head up, stirrups
swinging wide. He seemed in hot haste. Like a
fool I had knotted the reins together for easier
holding; with them looped upon his neck he felt as
much at liberty as though stripped clean of riding-gear.

It looked like a dubious prospect. Upon second
thought I decided that it could easily have been
worse. A broken leg, say, would have been a
choice complication. My bones, however, remained
intact. So I sought about in the grass for the
pistol that had been jolted from its place during
the upheaval, and when I found it betook myself
upon the way my erratic nag had gone.

It was no difficult matter for me to arrive at the
conclusion that I was in a fair way to go into the
Northwest afoot—should I be lucky enough to arrive
at all. Red seemed to have gone into hiding.
At least, he remained unseen, though I ascended
divers little eminences and stared my hardest, realizing
something of the hopelessness of my quest
even while I stared. That Sweet Grass country
is monstrously deceptive to the unsophisticated.
Overlooking it from a little height one thinks he
sees immense areas of gently undulating plain; and
he sees truly. But when he comes to traverse this
smooth sea of land that ripples away to a far skyline,
it is a horse of another color, I assure you.
He has not taken thought of what tricks the clear
air and the great spaces have played with his perspective.
The difference between looking over fifty
miles of grassland and crossing the same is the difference
between viewing a stretch of salt water
from a convenient point ashore and being out in a
two-oared skiff bucking the sway-backed rollers
that heave up from the sea.

So with the plains: that portion of which I
speak. Distance smoothed its native ruggedness,
glossed over its facial wrinkles, so to say. The
illusion became at once apparent when one moved
toward any given point. The negligible creases developed
into deep coulees, the gentle undulations
proved long sharp-pitched divides. Creeks, flood-worn
serpentine water-courses, surprised one in unexpected
places.

I had not noticed these things particularly while
I rode. Now, as I tramped across country, persuading
myself that over each succeeding hill I
should find my light-footed sorrel horse meekly
awaiting me, it seemed that I was always either
climbing up or sliding down. I found myself deep
in an abstract problem as I plodded—trying to
strike a balance between the illusory level effect and
stern topographical realities. Presently I gave that
up, and came back to concrete facts. Whereupon,
being very tired and stiff from a longer ride than
I had ever taken before, and correspondingly ill-tempered,
I damned the red horse for bucking me
off and myself for permitting any beast of the field
to serve me so, and then sat down upon the peak
of a low hill to reflect where and how I should
come by my supper.

A smart breeze frolicked up from that quarter
where the disappearing sun cast a bloodshot haze
over a few tumbled clouds. This, I daresay, muffled
sounds behind me to some extent. At any rate,
I was startled out of my cogitations by a voice
close by—a drawly utterance which evoked a sudden
vision of a girl with wind-raveled hair, and a
lean, dark-faced man leaning over a deck railing
on the *Moon*.

“Magnificent outlook, isn’t it?”

Notwithstanding the surprise of finding him at
my elbow in such unexpected fashion, I faced about
with tolerable calmness. That intuitive flash had
been no false harbinger, for it was Barreau sure
enough. The angular visage of him was not to be
confounded with that of any casual stranger, even
though his habiliments were no longer broadcloth
and its concomitants of linen and polished shoes.
Instead, a gray Stetson topped his head, and he
was gloved and booted like a cowboy. Lest it be
thought that his plight was twin to my own, I will
say that he looked down upon me from the back
of a horse as black as midnight, a long-geared
brute with a curved neck and a rolling eye. Best
of all, at the end of a lariat Barreau held my own
red horse.

“That,” said I, “depends on how you look at it.
I’ll admit that the outlook is fine—since you have
brought me back my runaway horse.”

“I meant *that*,” he nodded to the glowing horizon.
“But I daresay a man gets little pleasure out
of a red sky when he is set afoot in a horseless
land. It will pay you, my friend, to keep your
horse between your legs hereafter.”

“He threw me,” I confessed. “Where did you
catch him? And how did you find me?”

“I thought he had slipped his pack, by the tied-up
reins,” said Barreau. “As for catching him
and finding you, that was an easy matter. He ran
fairly into me, and I had only to look about for a
man walking.”

“Well,” I returned, taking my sorrel by the rope,
“I’m properly grateful for your help. And I have
another matter to thank you for, if I am not badly
mistaken.”

He made a slight gesture of deprecation. “Never
mind that,” said he. His attitude was no encouragement
to profuse thanks, if I had contemplated
such.

I turned then to inspect my saddle, and found
fresh cause for perplexity. By some means my
supply of bread and beef had been shaken from
its fastening. The bit of sack hung slack in the
strings, but the food was gone. He looked down
inquiringly, at my exclamation.

“More of my luck,” said I, and explained.

“Might I ask,” said he, after a moment of
thoughtful scrutiny, “where you are bound for?”

“It’s no secret,” I replied. “I’m for the MacLeod
country; over the line.”

“Then you may as well ride with me this evening,”
he invited. “It is only a few miles to the
Sanders ranch; you will be that much farther on
your way. I can vouch for their hospitality.”

I hesitated, for obvious reasons. He smiled, as
if he read my mind. And all in a breath I yielded
to some subtle confidence-compelling quality of the
man, and blurted out my story; the killing of Tupper,
that is, and how the Circle men had aided me.

“I guessed at something of the sort,” he remarked.
“You are new at the game, and you bear
the ear-marks of a man on the dodge. We are a
rowdy lot out here sometimes, and we can’t always
settle our disputes by word of mouth; so that I
think you will find most of us inclined to look
lightly on what seems to you a serious affair indeed.
Tupper had it in store for him; Speer too,
for all of that, and many another brute on those
river craft. You haven’t much to worry about.
Very likely Benton has forgotten the thing by now—unless
Bax and Matt Dunn’s men locked horns
over it. Of course there is the chance that the
Benton and St. Louis Company may hound you
for killing one of their officers. But there’s no
fear of their coming to Sanders’ after you—not to-night;
and to-morrow, and all the other to-morrows,
you can take things as they come. That’s
the best philosophy for the plains.”

He swung a half-mile to the east, and picked
up a pack-horse he had left when he took after
my mount. Thereafter we loped north in the falling
dusk, Barreau riding mute after his long
speech, and I, perforce, following his example. At
length we drew up at the ranch, a vague huddle
of low buildings set in the bend of a creek. Barreau
appeared to be quite familiar with the place.
Even in the gloom he went straight to the bars of
a small, round corral. In this we tied our horses,
throwing them hay from a new-made stack close
by. Then he led the way to a lighted cabin.

Barreau pushed open the door and walked in
without ceremony. Two men were in the room;
one lying upon a bunk, the other sitting with his
spurred heels on the corner of a table. Each of
them looked up at my companion, and both in one
breath declared:

“I’ll be damned if it ain’t Slowfoot!”

After that there was more or less desultory talk,
mostly impersonal—no questions pertinent to myself
troubled the tongues of either man. One
built a fire and cooked us a hot supper. The other
made down a bed in one corner of the cabin, and
upon this, at the close of the meal Barreau and I
lay down to rest.

A jolt in the ribs and the flash of a light in my
eyes brought me to a sitting posture later in the
night. Sleep-heavy, what of the strenuous events
that had gone before, it took me a full half-minute
to get my bearings. And then I saw that three
men in scarlet jackets held the two Sanders under
their guns, while Barreau stood backed against the
cabin wall with his hands held above his head. Even
so it seemed to me that he was regarding the
whole proceeding with a distinct curl to his lip.

“Come alive now, old chap, and don’t cut up
rusty—it won’t do a bit o’ good,” one of these
oddly dressed strangers was admonishing; and it
dawned upon me that I, too, was included in the
threatening sweep of their firearms. “Get into your
clothes, old chap.”

It is astonishing—afterward—how much and
how quickly one can reflect in a few fleeting seconds.
A multitude of ideas swarmed in my brain.
Plans to resist, to escape, half formed and were as
instantaneously discarded. Among the jumble it
occurred to me that I could scarcely be wanted for
that Benton affair—my capture could scarcely be
the cause of such a display. No, thought I, there
must be more to it than that. Otherwise, Barreau
and the two Sanders would not have been
meddled with. Of course, I did not come to this
conclusion of deliberate thought; it was more of
an impression, perhaps I should say intuition, and
yet I seemed to have viewed the odd circumstance
from every angle in the brief time it took me to
lay hold of my clothes. The queer sardonic expression
lingered about Barreau’s lips all the while
I dressed.

Presently I was clothed. Then the red-coated
men mustered the four of us outside, by the light
of a lantern. And two of them stood by the doorway
and snapped a pair of handcuffs about the
wrists of each of us as we passed out.

“Now,” said one of them, “you Sanders chaps
know what horses you’d care to ride, and what
stock Slowfoot George has here. So one of you
can come to the stable wi’ me and saddle up.”

He took the youngest man, and went trailing
him up in the uncertain light till both of them were
utterly gone. After something of a wait they appeared,
leading Barreau’s horse and mine and two
others. In the interim I had had time to count
noses. There was a man apiece for the four of us,
and one off behind the cabin holding the raiders’
saddlestock. We stood there like so many pieces
of uncouth statuary, no one seeming to have any
inclination for talk, until the saddled horses came
up. Then both the Sanders found their tongues in
behalf of me.

“Look a-here, sergeant,” said the one, “yuh ain’t
got any business over here, and yuh know it. Even
if yuh did, this kid don’t belong in the crowd.
You’re after us and yuh got us, but you’ve no call
to meddle with him.”

“That’s right,” his brother put in. “I don’t
know him from Adam. He just drifted in and
camped overnight at the ranch.”

“I say y’know, that’s a bit strong,” the sergeant
returned. “‘Birds of a feather,’ y’know. I shan’t
take any chances. You’re too hard a lot, Sanders;
you and your friend Slowfoot George.”

Thus he left no room for argument; and in a
few minutes the four of us were in the saddle and
on the move, a Mounted Policeman jogging at the
elbow of each man.

At the end of half an hour’s progress, as we
crossed a fairly level stretch of plain, we came to
a little cairn of rocks; and when we had passed it
the sergeant pulled up his horse and faced about.
The moon was up, and the earth and the cairn and
even our features stood out clear in the silvery
glow.

“John Sanders, Walter Sanders, George Brown
alias Slowfoot George, and one John Doe, in the
Queen’s name I arrest you,” he addressed us perfunctorily.

A trooper snickered, and Barreau laughed out
loud.

“Routine—routine and red tape, even in this
rotten deal,” I heard Slowfoot murmur, when his
laugh hushed. And on the other side of me Walt
Sanders raised in his stirrups and cried hotly:

“You dirty dogs! Some day I’ll make yuh
damned sorry yuh didn’t keep your own side of the
line to-night.”

Of this the sergeant took no notice. He shook
his horse into a trot, and prisoners and guard elbow
to elbow, we moved on.

CHAPTER VII—THE SEAT OF THE SCORNFUL
====================================

“Destiny lurks in obscure places and emerges
therefrom to seize upon us unawares.”

Barreau launched this epigrammatic sentence in
the profound quiet of a cell in the MacLeod guardhouse.
For that is the pass we came to: a six by
eight housing of stout planks for the pair of us,
food of indifferent quality in none too generous
rations, and the keen eye of an armed guard in the
background. For two days we had brooded in this
cage, like any common felons.

Of the intervening time there is nothing worthy
of chronicling. During the time it took Sergeant
Hubbel and his troopers to bring us in we rode,
ate, slept, and rode again, and little else befell. If
Barreau and the two Sanders worried over the outcome,
if they indulged any thought of escape, or
laid plans to that end, they kept these things to
themselves. I perforce, did likewise. Altogether,
we were a company of few words. And one evening,
when dusk was closing in, the journey ended,
and we lay down to sleep with barred doors and
windows between us and other men.

Little as we spoke I gathered stray odds and ends
of the affair, and pieced them as best I could. Most
of it came from the troopers. After all, the thing
was simple enough. At that time the sale of liquor
was strictly prohibited in the Canadian Territories,
and naturally whisky was at a premium. Thus
the Sanders ranch, lying just across the American
line, furnished an ideal base of operations for men
inclined to gather in the shekels of the thirsty.
Proof of the traffic in contraband whisky lay ready
for use, at least so the Policemen had it—but they
could never catch the wily Sanders brothers on the
right side of the boundary. So with a fine disregard
for all but the object to be gained, they violated
an international technicality. The result justified
the raid; that is, from the Mounted Police point
of view. My arrest followed logically, from the
company I was in. Barreau’s connection, however,
was a little beyond me. “Slowfoot George,” as
they called him, came in for cautious handling. Not
once were his wrists free of the steel bands till the
guardhouse door closed upon him. From this, and
certain pointed remarks that I failed to catch in
their entirety, I conceived the idea that he was
wanted for worse than whisky-running. But like
the other two, Barreau neither denied nor affirmed.
Once the sergeant tried to draw him out and the
curl of his lip and a caustic word or two cut short
the Policeman’s effort.

Our “apartment” was singularly free from furniture.
A wide plank ranged on either side, and a
few not overclean quilts served for a bed. There
was no room for more in that vile box. I had managed
to get paper and a pen from the guard, and
was curled up on my plank setting forth in a letter
to Bolton all the unbelievable things that had occurred,
when Barreau uttered his observation anent
the workings of Destiny. Something in the way he
spoke caused me to look up, and I saw that he was
looking fixedly out into the guard-room through
the grated opening in our cell door. There was
none too much light, but with what there was I
made out a paleness of face and a compression of
his lips that were strangely at odds with his general
bearing.

“What now?” I asked, wondering at the sudden
change in him.

“Something I had hoped to be spared,” he said
under his breath; more to himself than to me.
Then he turned his eyes from the little window,
drew up his knees till his fingers locked before
them, and so sat hunched against the wall. Wholly
absorbed in my letter-writing I had heard nothing
out of the common. Now I distinguished voices,
the deep tones of a man and following that the
clear treble of a woman. During a brief interval
of quiet she laughed, and after that I heard footsteps
coming toward the row, out of which our cell
faced.

Presently the shadow of them darkened the little
window in our door. The red coat of the guard
passed. Barreau shifted uneasily. I, too, leaned
forward listening to the light footfall drawing
near, for I had a vivid recollection of that voice—or
one that was its twin. It did not seem strange
that she should be there; Benton is not so far from
MacLeod in that land of great distances. And
my recollection was not at fault. An instant later
her small, elfish face bent to the opening and she
peered in on us—as one who views caged beasts
of the jungle.

But there was none of the human fear of wild
things in her attitude.

“So,” she said coolly, tucking a lock of hair
under the same ridiculous little cap she had worn
on the *Moon*, “this is how the Northwest would
have you, is it, Mr. Bar—Mr. Brown. Alas! ‘To
what base uses we do return.’ I cannot say you
have my sympathy.”

“If that is the least cruel thing you can say,”
Barreau flung back at her, putting his feet on the
floor and resting his hands on the edge of his seat,
“I thank you. But my trail is my own, and I have
never yet asked you to follow in my stumbling
footsteps.”

She colored at that, and from where I sat I could
see the Police guard lift his eyebrows inquiringly.
But she had other shafts at hand.

“I grant you that,” she replied quickly. “But
it is a shock, when one conceives a man to be something
of a *gentleman*; to have some remnant of the
code honorable—then, pah! to find his name a by-word
on the frontier. A murderer! Even descended
to common theft and dealings in contraband
whisky. You have a savory record in these
parts, I find. How nicely this chamber fits you,
Mr.—ah—what is the euphonious title? Slowfoot
George. Ah, yes. Why the Slowfoot? By the
tale of your successful elusion of the law I should
imagine you exceeding fleet of foot.”

It seemed to me unwomanly and uncalled for,
that bitter, scornful speech; even granting the truth
of it, which had not been established in my mind.
But it had a tonic effect on Barreau. The hurt
look faded from his face. His lips parted in the
odd, half-scornful, half-amused smile that was
always lurking about his mouth. He did not at
once reply. When he did it was only a crisp sentence
or two.

“Let us be done with this,” he said. “There is
neither pleasure nor profit in exchanging insults.”

“Indeed,” she thrust back, “there can be no exchange
of insults between us. Could aught *you*
say insult any honest man or woman? But so be
it. I came merely to convince my eyes that my ears
heard truly. It may tickle your depraved vanity
to know that MacLeod is buzzing with your exploits
and capture.”

“That concerns me little,” Barreau returned indifferently.

“Ditto,” she averred, “except that I am right
glad to find you stripped of your sheep’s clothing,
little as I expected such a revelation concerning
one who passed for a gentleman. And to think
that I might never have found you out, if my father
had permitted me to return from Benton.”

“Permitted?” Barreau laid inquiring inflection
on the word.

“What is it to——” she cut in sharply.

“Your father,” he interrupted deliberately, “is
a despicable scoundrel; a liar and a cheat of the
first water.”

“Oh—oh!” she gasped. “This—from *you*.”

“I said, ‘let us be done with this,’ a moment
ago,” he reminded her.

She drew back as if he had struck at her, flushing,
her under lip quivering—more from anger than
any other emotion, I think. Almost at once she
leaned forward again, glaring straight at Barreau.

“It would be of a piece with your past deeds,”
she cried, “if you should break this flimsy jail
and butcher my father and myself while we slept.
Oh, one could expect anything from such as you!”
And then she was gone, the guard striding heavy-footed
after her. A puzzled expression crept over
Barreau’s face, blotting out the ironic smile.

“It was a dirty trick of me to speak so,” he muttered,
after a little. “But my God, a man can’t
always play the Stoic under the lash. However—I
daresay——” He went off into a profound
study, resting his chin in the palms of his hands.
I kept my peace, making aimless marks with my
pen. It was an odd turn of affairs.

“Bob, what did I say about Destiny awhile ago?”
he raised his head and addressed me suddenly. “I
will take it back. I am going to take Destiny by
the nape of the neck. Being grilled on the seat
of the scornful is little to my liking. It was a bit
of ill-luck that you fell in with me. I seem to be
in a bad boat.”

“Ill-luck for which of us?” I asked. It was the
first time he had sounded the personal note—aside
from the evening we were landed in MacLeod, when
he comforted me with the assurance that at the
worst I would spend no more than a few days in
the guardhouse.

“For you, of course,” he replied seriously. “My
sins are upon my own head. But it was unfortunate
that I should have led you to Sanders’ place
the very night picked for a raid. They can have
nothing against you, though; and they’ll let you
out fast enough when it comes to a hearing. Nor,
for that matter, are they likely to hang me, notwithstanding
the ugly things folk say. However,
I have work to do which I cannot do lying here.
Hence I perceive that I must get out of here. And
I may need your help.”

“How are you going to manage that?” I inquired,
gazing with some astonishment at this man
who spoke so coolly and confidently of getting out
of prison. “These walls seem pretty solid, and
you can hardly dig through them with a lone pen-nib.
That’s the only implement I see at hand. And
I expect the guard will be after that before I get
my letter done.”

“I don’t know how the thing will be done,” he
declared, “but I am surely going to get out of
here pretty *pronto*, as the cowmen have it.”

He settled back and took to staring at the ceiling.
I, presently, became immersed in my letter to
Bolton. When it was done I thrust a hand through
the bars of my cell and wig-wagged the Policeman—they
were good-natured souls for the most part,
tolerant of their prisoners, and it broke the grinding
monotony to exchange a few words with one
under almost any pretext. Barreau was chary of
speech, and the Sanders brothers were penned beyond
my sight. Sheer monotonous silence, I imagine,
would drive even peace-loving men to revolt
and commit desperate deeds when they are cooped
within four walls with nothing but their thoughts
for company.

When he came I observed that the guard had
been changed since Miss Montell’s visit. The new
man was a lean, sour-faced trooper. To my surprise
he took my letter and then stood peeping in
past me to where Barreau lay on his bunk. After
a few seconds he walked away, smiling queerly. In
a minute or so he was back again, taking another
squint. This time Barreau turned over facing the
door, and when the trooper continued his promenade
past our cell he got up and stood before the
barred window, completely shutting off my outlook.
I could not see, but I could hear. And by the
sound of his booted feet the guard passed and repassed
several times.

After a little he tired of this, it seemed, for I
heard him stalking away to the front of the guardhouse,
and immediately thereafter the creak of a
chair as he sat down. Then Barreau sat down on
his bunk again.

“Try this, kid,” he said, and tossed a package
of tobacco and cigarette papers to me. I fell upon
the forbidden luxury like a starving man upon food.
He rolled himself one out of material in his hand,
and in the midst of my puffing changed to my side
of the cell—it was but a scant three feet to move—and
sat down between me and the door.

“Fate smiles at last,” he whispered. “Blackie
passed me in a little tobacco. And—see, here in my
hand.”

I glanced down at what he was snuggling down
out of sight between us, a heavy-bladed knife, a
tiny saw, not more than six inches in length, and
a piece of notepaper marked with what my reason
told me must be a ground plan of the very place
we were in.

“The tools of my deliverance,” said Barreau in
an undertone. “I am for the blue sky and the sun
and the clean, wide prairies once more.”

CHAPTER VIII—BY WAYS THAT WERE DARK
===================================

Looking back I marvel at the ridiculous ease with
which the thing was accomplished. Still more do
I marvel at my own part in it. Brought up as I
had been, shielded from the ill winds of existence,
taught the perfunctory, conventional standards of
behavior that suffice for those whose lives are lived
according to a little-varying plan, I should have
shrunk from further infraction of the law. Indeed
it is no more than could have been expected
had I refused absolutely to lend myself to Barreau’s
desperate plan. Conscious that I had done
no wrong I might have been moved to veto an enterprise
that imperiled me, to protest against his
drawing me further into his own troublous coil.
But I did nothing of the sort. It did not occur to
me. My point of view was no longer that of the
son of a St. Louis gentleman. And the transition
was so complete, so radical, and withal, so much the
growth of the past three weeks, that I was unaware
of the change.

I know of no clearer illustration of the power of
environment. Indubitably I should have looked
askance at a man who tacitly admitted himself more
or less of a criminal, making no defense, no denial.
The traditions of my class should have kept me
aloof, conscious of my own clean hands. This, I
repeat, was what might have been expected of me:
Put to me as an abstract proposition, I would have
been very positive of where I should stand.

But without being conscious of any deviation
from my previous concepts of right and wrong, I
found myself all agog to help Slowfoot George
escape. For myself, there was no question of flight.
That, we agreed upon, at the outset. I could gain
nothing by putting myself at odds with Canadian
law, for the law itself would free me in its meteing
out of justice. But with him it was different; he
admitted the fact. And even so I found myself
making nothing of the admission. He conformed
to none of my vague ideas of the criminal type. In
aiding him to be free I seemed to be freeing myself
by proxy, as it were; and how badly I desired
to be quit of the strange tangle that enmeshed me,
none but myself can quite appreciate.

After all, so far as my help was concerned it
consisted largely of what Barreau dryly termed,
“moral support.” I acquiesced in the necessity. I
stood on the lookout for interruptions. He did
the work.

While he cut with his knife a hole in the floor,
so that the point of the little saw could enter, I
stood by the window listening for the footsteps
that would herald a guard’s approach. He worked
rapidly, yet in no apparent haste. He had that
faculty of straining every nerve at what he was
about, without seeming to do so; there was no
waste energy, no fluster. And the cutting and
sawing speedily bore fruit. So noiselessly and
deftly did he work that in less than half an hour
he had sawn a hole in the floor large enough to
admit his body; and the dank smell of earth long
hidden from sunlight struck me when I bent down
to look. Then with a caution that I should watch
closely and tap on the floor with my heel if any
of the guard came poking around the cells, he wriggled
through the opening and disappeared.

I leaned against the wall, breathing a bit faster.
The hole was cut in a corner, to the right of the
cell door. From the outside it could scarcely be
noticed. But I had wit enough to know that if a
trooper glanced in and missed Barreau the hole
would be discovered fast enough. Which would
involve me in the attempt; and I was aware that
jail-breakers fare ill if they are caught. But no
one moved in the guardhouse, save now and then a
prisoner shuffling about in his cell. Occasionally
I could hear the low murmur of their voices—it
was a small place and filled to its capacity—else
Barreau and I would not have been penned together.

After an interminable period he came quietly
out from under the floor, and carefully fitted in
their places the planks he had cut. One had to
look closely to see a mark, after he had brushed into
the cracks some dust from the floor. Barreau’s
eyes twinkled when he sat down on his bunk and
rolled himself a cigarette.

“Everything just as it should be,” he told me.
“Nothing to do but root away a little dirt from
the bottom log of the outside wall. I could walk
out, a free man, in five minutes. There will be
a fine fuss and feathers to-night. They have never
had a jail delivery here, you know. Lord, it’s easy
though, when one has the tools.”

“There’ll be a hot chase,” I suggested. “Will
you stand much chance.”

“That depends on how much of a start I get,”
he said grimly. “I think I can fool them. If not—well——”

He relapsed into silence. Someone clanked into
the guard-room, and Barreau snuffed out his cigarette
with one swift movement. In a second or
two the trooper went out again. We could see
him by flattening our faces against the bars, and
when he was gone Blackie sat alone, his feet cocked
up on a chair.

“That reminds me,” Barreau spoke so that his
words were audible to me alone. “Blackie’s a
good fellow, and I must keep his skirts clear. He
will be on guard till about eight this evening.
Eight—nine—ten o’clock. At ten it should be
as dark as it will get. I’ll drift then. Some other
fellow will be on guard when you give the alarm.”

It was then mid-afternoon. At half-past five
two prisoners were set to arranging a long table
by the palings that separated the cells from the
guard-room proper. With a trooper at their heels
they lugged from the Police kitchen two great pots,
one of weak soup, the other containing a liquid
that passed for tea. A platter of sliced bread and
another of meat scraps completed the meal. Then
the rest of us were turned out to eat; sixteen men
who had fallen afoul of the law munching and
drinking, with furtive glances at each other.

And while we ate a trooper made the round of
the cells, giving each tumbled heap of quilts a
tentative shake, peering into the half-dark corners.
That also was part of the routine, perfunctory, as
a general thing, but occasionally developing into
keen-eyed search. It was the rule to confiscate
tobacco or any small articles a prisoner might manage
to smuggle in, if he failed of its concealment.

But the faint traces of Barreau’s floor-cutting
escaped his eye, and the tobacco was in our pockets.
The knife and saw Barreau had slipped within
his boot-leg. Personal search was the one thing
we had to fear. And it passed us by. The guards—four
of them during the meal hour—contented
themselves with routine inspection, and when the
table was swept clean of food we were herded
back to our cells. For once I was glad to be locked
up; knowing that though dark would bring a
trooper past our cell every half hour, to peer in on
us through the barred opening, there was little
chance of his unlocking the door.

We lay on our bunks, silent, smoking a cigarette
when the guard was safe in front. The smell of
tobacco smoke could not betray our possession of
it, for the guardhouse reeked with the troopers’
pipes. We had only to conceal the actual material.

Thus eight o’clock came, and brought with it a
change of guard. Blackie no longer sat in front
with his feet cocked up on a chair, or taking turns
with his fellows at peering through cell doors.
Nine passed—by the guardhouse clock—and ten
dragged by at last. On the stroke of the hour a
guard tramped past our cell, on to the others, and
back to his seat in front. When he was settled
Barreau slid lightly from his bunk. The short
pieces of flooring he pried from the hole in the
floor. Then he reached a hand to me and shook
mine in a grip that almost bruised.

“Good-bye, Bob,” he whispered. “I’ll meet you
in St. Louis next year, unless my star sets. And I
will have a pretty story for your ears, then. Give
me an hour, if you can. So-long.”

His feet were in the opening as he spoke, and a
second later the black square of it was yawning
emptily. I put the planks over the hole, and got
me back to my bunk. I was glad to see him go,
and yet, knowing that he would come back no
more save in irons, I missed him. I felt utterly
alone and forsaken, lying there simulating sleep—with
every nerve in my body on tip-toe.

It was a rule of the guardhouse that a prisoner
must lie with his feet to the door, so that his head
could be seen by the passing guard. Just opposite
our door a lamp was bracketed on the wall. What
light it gave shone through the bars directly on
our faces while we slept. Rules or no rules, a
man would shade his face with his arm or a corner
of the quilt, when the lamp-glare struck in his
eyes. And Barreau, perhaps with that very emergency
in mind, had slept with his hat pulled over
his face. None of the guards had voiced objection.
They could see him easily enough. Now, this very
practice made it possible for him to fool them with
a trick that is as old as prison-breaking itself.
Skillfully he had arranged the covers to give the
outline of a body, and his hat he left tilted over
the place where his head had rested. The simplicity
of the thing, I dare say, is what made it a success.
At least it fulfilled its purpose that night.

Here a prisoner snored, and there another turned
on his bunk with faint scrapings against the wall.
Out in front the Policemen conversed in lowered
tones. I could hear every sound in the building, it
seemed; the movements of sleeping men, the scurrying
of a rat, the crackle of a match when one of
the guards lit his pipe. But I did not hear that
for which my ears were strained, and I was thankful.

Twice a trooper made the round, seeing nothing
amiss—although I imagined the thump of my heart
echoed into the corridor when he looked in on me
and let his glance travel over the place where
Slowfoot George should have been—but was not.

It was nearing the time for his return, and I sat
up, nerving myself to give the alarm. For to clear
me of complicity and the penalty thereof, Barreau
had instructed me to apprise them after an hour. I
was to tell them that he was armed, and so compelled
me to keep silent while he worked. And I
was to say that he had but gone. There would
be nothing but his foot-prints, and by those they
could not reckon the time of his flight.

As I sat there waiting for the guard and steeling
myself to lie boldly, shamelessly, for Barreau’s
sake and my own, my gaze rested speculatively on
the pieces of flooring I had laid over the hole. I
intended to kick them aside as I rushed to the window
and gabbled my tale to the guard. But I did
not rush to the window nor did I gabble to the
guard, for I saw the pieces of plank slide softly
apart and a hand came through the opening thus
made—a hand that waved imperative warning for
me to lie down. The guard passed as I drew the
cover over me. He barely glanced in. Before the
squeak of his chair out in front told of his settling
down, I was up on elbow, staring.

Again the planks slid apart, this time clear of
the hole. In the same moment something took
shape in the black square, something that rose
quickly till I could see that it was the head and
shoulders of a man. I sat mute, startled, filled
with wonder and some dismay. The dull light
touching his features showed me Barreau, dirt-stained,
sweatdrops on his forehead, beckoning to
me. I leaned to catch his whisper.

“I came back for you, kid,” he breathed. “You’re
slated for trouble. The cabin of the *Moon’s* purser
was robbed the night you left, and it’s laid to you.
There’s a deputy from Benton here after you.
You’ll get a hard deal. Better chance it with me.”

“Robbery,” I muttered. “Good God, what
next?”

“Extradition—and a hard fight to clear yourself.
Weeks, maybe months, in the calaboose. Come on
with me. You’ll get home sooner, I’ll promise
you that.”

“I’ve a mind to go you,” I declared bitterly. “I
seem doomed to be an Ishmael.”

“Hurry, then,” he admonished, “or we’ll be
nabbed in the act. Slip in here quietly and crawl
after me. Just as you are. Bring your shoes in
your hand.”

Thus, willy-nilly, I found myself in the black,
dank space between the floor and the ground. The
blackness and musty smell endured no more than
a few seconds. The passage to the outer wall was
shorter than I had thought. Presently I followed
Barreau through a tight hole, and stood erect in
the gloom of a cloudy night—a night well fitted for
desperate deeds.

“Give me your hand,” said Barreau, when I had
put on my brogans.

The dark might have been made to order for
our purpose. I could barely see Barreau at my
elbow. His hand was a needed aid. Together we
moved softly away from the guardhouse, and,
once clear of it, ran like hunted things. Looking
back over my shoulder once, I saw the guardhouse
lights, pale yellow squares set in solid ebony. The
rest of the post lay unlighted, hidden away in the
dark.

I do not know whither Barreau led me, but at
length, almost winded from the long run, he
brought up against some sort of deserted building.
A vague blur resolved into two horses, when we
laid hands upon it. Barreau jerked loose the fastening
ropes. And as my fingers closed on the reins
of one, a carbine popped away in our rear, then another,
and a third. Hard on that came the shrilling
of a bugle.

“Up with you,” Barreau commanded. “They’ve
found our hole. Stick close to me. If they do
run us down, we must take our medicine; we cannot
fight the men in red with such odds against us.
But I think they’ll look long and sorrowfully ere
they come upon us, a night like this,” he finished
with a short laugh.

Side by side, two dim figures in the murk, we
loped away. Barreau kept a steady unhurried gait.
We passed a building or two, dipped into a hollow,
splashed through what may have been a river
or a pond, for all I could tell, and presently came
out upon level plain. Behind us MacLeod’s few
lights twinkled like the scattered embers of a campfire.
Soon these also dwindled to nothing, and the
shadowless gloom of the prairies surrounded us.
Keenly as I listened, I caught no sound of following
hoofs. And Barreau seemed to think himself
tolerably safe, for he began to talk in his natural
tone as we galloped into the night.

“If the Police overhaul us now,” he asserted confidently,
“it will be only because of a lucky guess
at the direction we have taken. They are more
than likely to think we have gone south. And if
they don’t beat us to the Red Flats we can snap our
fingers at them for many a moon. Are you itching
with curiosity, Bob?”

“Not altogether itching,” I replied truthfully
enough. “I’m too glad to be out of that iron-barred
box, to be worrying much over the why of
things. Just so the program doesn’t call for another
spell in some guardhouse, I’ll be satisfied.
I’m putting a good deal of faith in what you said
about eventually getting to St. Louis.”

“Cultivating the philosophical attitude already,
eh?” he returned. “You’re progressing. To be
perfectly frank, there is little chance of our seeing
either the inside or outside of a guardhouse again.
The redcoats fight shy of the country we are bound
for.”

“Where is that?” I asked quickly.

“I knew you were wondering,” he laughed.
“Unconsciously you are bristling with question
marks. Natural enough, too. But all in good
time, Bob. To-night we have food and clothing,
another horse or two and arms to get. If previous
calculations haven’t been upset, these things will be
forthcoming and we shall go on our way—if not
rejoicing, at least well-provided against the wilderness.
And then if you still choose to paddle in my
canoe, I’ll go into details.”

“That’s fair enough,” I answered. “There’s just
one thing—that *Moon* robbery business. How
came you to know a deputy sheriff was after me?”

“Simply enough,” he returned. “When I got
out I had to sneak around and find a man from
whom I could get a horse—I have a friend or two
there, luckily. And he told me. The Circle men
gave you away when they were told you had stolen
money from the boat. The deputy had just ridden
in. He was a mouthy brute, and noised his business
about.”

“It beats the devil,” I declared. “Ever since
those two thugs tackled me on the St. Louis water
front I seem to have been going from bad to worse;
stepping from one hot stone to another still hotter.”

“I’ve done it myself,” he said laconically. “But
they will have to catch their hare before they can
cook it; and it takes more than accusation to make
a man a thief.”

With this he relapsed into silence. There was a
sort of finality in his way of speaking that headed
me off from asking more questions. I busied myself
digesting what he had told me. Occasionally,
as we rode, he drawled a remark; a few words
about the country we traversed, or our mounts, or
a bull-train he hoped to overtake. Between whiles
I speculated on what mysterious link connected him
with the girl who had come to the guardhouse in
MacLeod. The rancor of her speech had fixed itself
irrevocably on my memory. What lay behind their
bitter stabbing at each other I could not say. Nor
was it anything that should have concerned me. I
had my own besetments. I knew not whither I
was going, nor why—except to escape trial for
a crime I had not committed. There were many
points upon which I desired light, things that puzzled
me. All in all, as I put aside the disturbing
influences of flight I did, as Barreau had said, fairly
bristle with interrogations.

Once in the night we halted on a small creek for
the best part of an hour, letting our horses graze.
Only then did I become aware that Barreau rode
without a saddle.

“No man ever quitted a Mounted Police guardhouse
without help from the outside,” he replied,
when I spoke of this. “And the man who took a
chance on letting me have two horses had only one
saddle to spare. I can ride easier on a blanket
than you. It is only for another hour or two at
most. See—we are just come to the trail.”

I could distinguish no trail at first. He followed
it easily, and after a time I began to get glimpses
of deep-worn ruts. Barreau struck a faster pace.
Two hours of silent riding brought us into the bed
of a fair-sized creek, and when he had turned a
bend or two of its course, a light blinked ahead.
In another minute we brought up against a group
of wagons. Barreau rode straight to the tent,
through the canvas walls of which glowed the light.
There he dismounted and tied his horse, whispering
to me to follow suit. Then I followed him into
the tent.

A man lay stretched on a camp-cot at one end,
the blankets drawn over his head. Him Barreau
shook rudely out of his slumber, and when he sat
up with a growl of protest I found myself face to
face with Montell, the portly fur merchant who had
come up-river on the *Moon*.

CHAPTER IX—MR. MONTELL
======================

“Oho, it’s you George,” Montell purred—that
sounds exaggerated, but I cannot otherwise describe
his manner of speaking. He made an odd
figure sitting up in bed, with his fat, purple face
surmounting a flannel shirt, and a red, knitted cap
on his head.

“So you made it, eh? Who’s this with you,
George?”

“None of your damned business!” Barreau
snapped. He stood back a little from the bed, looking
down at Montell. By the glint in his eyes he
was angry. “You needn’t concern yourself about
any man who travels with me.”

“Tut, tut, George,” the other pacified, “that’s
all right; that’s all right. You’re mighty touchy
to-night. I did the best I could for you, I’m sure.”

“The best you could! You did that—though
not in the way you would have me believe.” Barreau’s
voice stung like a whip-lash. “You double-faced
Mammon-worshipper, if it would mend matters
I would gladly jerk you out of your bunk and
stamp your swinish features into the earth. Do
you think you can pull the wool over my eyes?
For two pins I’d break with you right now.”

Montell did not at once reply. He sat a few seconds,
softly rubbing the palm of one pudgy hand
over the back of its fellow.

“Now, what’s the use of that sort of talk,
George?” he finally said, quite unperturbed. “We
can’t afford to quarrel. We got too——”

“I can,” Barreau interrupted.

“No, no, George, you’re mistaken there. We got
to stick together,” he declared. “Hang it! you had
bad luck. But you shouldn’t blame me for them
misfortunes.”

“I don’t—altogether,” Barreau cut in again.
“But you took advantage of my mischance, to help
along a little scheme that you’ve been nursing some
time. I had a glimpse of your hand in MacLeod.
You have done the mischief. Why should I trouble
myself further in your affairs, unless it be to call
you to account for the dirty trick you have played?”

“Oho, I see now,” Montell nodded understandingly.
“I didn’t catch what you were driving at.
But you’re wrong, dead wrong, George. Why, I
tried every way to send Jessie back from Benton.
Yes, sir, tried every way. You’ve no idea how wilful
that girl is.” He spread his fat hands deprecatingly.
“She’d come to MacLeod, spite of hell
’n’ high water. *I* couldn’t stop her. And with
every Tom, Dick ’n’ Harry talkin’ about you, and
them dodgers stuck up every place, and you really
in the guardhouse—why, you see how it was. No
way to keep it dark. But it’s not as bad as you
think. Of course she’s kinda excited—but, pshaw!
When you see her again she won’t think of it.
You’re dead wrong, George, when you blame me.
Yes, sir. Wouldn’t I have kept it quiet if I could?
You know it, George. I got somethin’ at stake,
too.”

“You have that,” Barreau returned grimly, “and
you had better keep that fact in mind. But don’t
ask me to believe such rot as your not being able
to prevent her from making such a radical change
of plan. However, the milk is spilt; the crying
part will come later. I’ll keep to my part of the
bargain. Does everything stand as originally laid
out?”

Montell nodded. “There’s no call to change,”
he said, and again the purring, satisfied note crept
into his voice.

“I want another good horse, a saddle, a pack
layout, and grub for a month,” Barreau enumerated.
“Rout Steve up—you know where he sleeps—and
have him get those things. We need guns,
too. Where is my box?”

“It’s on the tail end of the first wagon outside.
Steve’s sleepin’ just beyond. Couldn’t you just as
well wake him, George?”

“No, I’ve other things to do,” Barreau refused
bluntly. “Bestir your fat carcass, and set him to
work. The night air won’t hurt you. We have no
time to waste. For all I know a troop of Police
may be on us before we can get started again.”

Montell grunted some unintelligible protest, but
nevertheless, heaved his flesh-burdened body up
from the cot. He gathered about him a much-worn
dressing gown, and, thrusting his feet into
a pair of slippers, left the tent.

“Now, let us see about clothes,” Barreau said
to me, and I followed him to the wagon-end.

He climbed up on the hind wheel. After a second
or two of fumbling he upended a flat steamer
trunk. I held it while he leaped to the ground,
and between us we carried it into the tent.

“The Police have my key—much good may it
do them,” he remarked, and pried open the lid
with a hatchet that lay near by. He threw a few
articles carelessly aside.

“Peel off those roustabout garments,” he said to
me. “Here is something better. Lucky we’re
about of a size.”

He gave me a blue flannel shirt to begin with,
and when I had discarded the soiled rags I wore
and put on the clean one, he held out to me a coat
and trousers of some dark cloth, a pair of riding
boots similar to those on his own feet, and clean
socks. Other clothing he hauled from the trunk
and laid in a pile by itself. Lastly he brought forth
a new felt hat.

“Does this fit you?” He stood up and set it on
my head. “Fine. No, I’ll get a hat from Steve
before we start,” he silenced my protest. We had
both ridden bareheaded.

Montell returned while I was getting into the
welcome change of apparel.

“Steve’s gettin’ you what you need, George,” he
informed. “There’s a new tarpaulin by the bed
you can use for your pack. Steve’ll get you blankets.
Go softly. I’m none too sure of all these
bull-whackers I got.”

Barreau went on spreading his clothes in a flat
heap as if he had not heard. Presently he closed
the trunk. Getting to his feet he glanced about.

“Oh, yes,” he said curtly, as if he had but recollected
something. “I want some of that port
you’ve been guzzling. Dig it up.”

“Certainly, George, certainly,” Montell’s face
broadened in an ingratiating smile, though Barreau’s
tone was as contemptuously insulting as it
could well be. He reached under the box upon
which the candle stood and brought out a bottle.
Barreau took it, held it up to the light, then laid
it by his clothing without a word; Montell watching
him with a speculative air, meanwhile.

“That’s fine stuff, George,” he said tentatively.
“Fine stuff. I ain’t got but a little.”

“Damn you, don’t talk to me!” Barreau whirled
on him. “I’m sick of the whole business, and I
want none of your smooth palaver, nor whining
about what I do.”

The older man’s florid face took on a deeper tint.
One of his fat hands suddenly drew into a fist.
Barreau had penetrated his hide, in some way that
I could not quite understand. And I imagine there
would have been some sort of explosion on the
spot, but for the timely diversion of a man’s head
parting the door-flaps.

“Them hosses is ready,” he briefly announced.
And Barreau turned his back on Mr. Montell forthwith.
I did likewise.

For all I did I might as well have stayed in the
tent. Barreau and Steve went silently about saddling
one horse and lashing a pack-tree on another.
In the dull light from the tent I could barely make
shift to see, but they seemed to know every strap
and tying-place, and the thing was quickly done.
Last of all, they folded Barreau’s clothing and two
or three pairs of heavy blankets in the tarpaulin,
and bound the roll on top of the food-supply. Then
Barreau stepped once more within the tent.

What he said to Montell did not reach my ears.
At any rate, it was brief. Watching his shadow on
the canvas wall I saw him turn to come out, saw
him stop and bend over something near the flaps.
He straightened up with a sharp exclamation, and
this time I heard distinctly what he said.

“By the Lord, you have been fool enough to let
her come farther even! Oh, you miserable——”
His words ran into a blur of sound.

Montell raised in his cot again. I could see the
bulk of him outlined against the farther side.

“Now, see here, George,” he burst out irritably.
“This is goin’ too far. Between you and Jessie I’ve
had a heap of trouble this trip. And my patience
has got limits. Yes, sir. It’s got limits! I’m
doin’ the best I can, and you got to do the same.
You go to backin’ old man Montell into a corner,
and the fur’ll fly. You act like you was a schoolboy,
and I’d took your cap away.”

I don’t think that Barreau made any reply to
this. If he did the words were softly spoken, and
he was not the man to speak softly, considering
the mood he was in just then. He was out of the
tent almost before Montell had finished.

“Steve,” he said, in a matter-of-fact way as he
laid hold of his stirrup (I was already mounted),
“let me have your hat. I lost mine in the shuffle.”

Without comment Steve took the hat from his
head and handed it up to him.
“So-long,” he grunted laconically.

“So-long, Steve,” said Barreau.

The candle in Montell’s tent blinked out with
the words. Barreau caught up the lead-rope of
our pack-pony, and then, as silently as we had
come, we rode away.

CHAPTER X—“THERE’S MONEY IN IT”
===============================

A brisk wind sprang up ere we were well clear
of the Montell camp. In half an hour it was blowing
a gale. Overhead the clouds ripped apart in
the lash of the wind, and a belated moon peered
tentatively through the torn places. It lighted the
way, so that we could see sudden dips in the prairie,
buffalo-wallows and such abrupt depressions,
before we reached them. With the lifting of the
solid black that had walled us in Barreau set a
faster pace.

“It will soon be day,” he broke a long silence,
“and though I am loth to overtax our mounts, we
must reach the Blood Flats. If we are being followed,
they will scarcely think to look for us there.
And I know of no other place in this bald country
where our picketed horses would not stand out like
the nose on a man’s face. How it blows!”

It did. So that speech was next to impossible,
even had we been inclined to talk. The wind struck
us quartering and muffled a shout to inconsequent
syllables. But beyond those few words Barreau
kept mute, leaning forward in his stirrups at a
steady lope. We must have covered near twenty
miles before the eastern skyline gave a hint of
dawn. With that Barreau pulled his horse down
to a walk.

“Well,” he said lightly, “we made it easily
enough. Now for a bit of a climb. It will be
awkward if a bunch of unfriendly Stonies have
taken possession of the one spot that will serve us.
But that’s hardly thinkable. Are you tired, Bob?”

I was, and freely owned it. He swung sharply
aside while I was speaking, and in a few minutes
an odd-shaped butte loomed ahead. It upreared
out of the flat country like a huge wart. The bald
slope of it lay weather-worn, rain-scarred, naked of
vegetation, but on its crest tangled patches of
cherry brush and sally-willows made a ragged silhouette
against the sky. The east blazed like the
forefront of a prairie fire when we reached the top.
Then it became plain to me why Barreau had sought
the place. The scrub growth stood dense as a
giant’s beard, but here and there enfolding little
meadows of bunchgrass, and winding in and out
through these Barreau finally drew up by a rush-fringed
pool that proved to be a spring.

“Water, wood, and grass,” said he as his heels
struck the earth, “and all securely screened from
passers-by. Now we can eat and rest in peace.
Let us get a fire built and boil a pot of coffee before
it gets so light that the smoke will betray us.”

The horses we picketed in one of the little
glades. Shut in by the brush, they could graze
unseen. Then we cooked and ate breakfast, hurrying
to blot out the fire, for dawn came winging
swiftly across the plains.

“Come over and take a look from the brow of
the hill,” Barreau proposed, when we were done.

Wearily I followed him. I could have stretched
myself in the soft grass and slept with a will;
every bone and muscle in my body protested against
further movement, and I was sluggish with a full
stomach. But Barreau showed no sign of fatigue,
and a measure of pride in my powers of endurance
kept me from open complaint.

It was worth a pang or two, after all. He led
the way to the southern tip of the plateau; no
great distance—from edge to edge the tableland
was no more than three hundred yards across. But
it overlooked the Blood Flats from a great height,
four hundred feet or more, I judged. Barreau sat
down beside a choke-cherry clump, and rolled himself
a cigarette. Ten paces beyond, the butte fell
away sheer to the waste levels below.

“There is nothing that I have ever seen just like
this,” he murmured. “And it is never twice alike.
Watch that rise take fire from the sun. And the
mountains over yonder; square-shouldered giants,
tricked out in royal purple.”

The sun slid clear of the skyline, and a long shaft
of light brushed over the unreckoned miles of grassland
till it fell caressingly on our butte. Hollows
and tiny threads of creeks nursed deep, black
shadows that shrank and vanished as the sun-rays
sought them out. Away beyond, to the west, the
snow-tipped Rockies stood boldly out in their robe
of misty blue. And as the yellow glare bathed the
sea of land that ringed the lone pinnacle I saw why
the Flats were so named.

Impassive, desolate, vast in its sweep, the plain
took on a weird look at the sun’s kiss. Barren of
tree or shrub so far as the eye could reach, naked
even of shriveled blades of grass, when the last,
least shadow was gone it spread before us like a
painted floor; red to its outermost edges, a sullen
dried-blood red. A strange colored soil, as if it
were a huge bed of dull-glowing coals.

“Blood Flats! There is no incongruity in the
name,” Barreau vouchsafed. “This is almost beautiful.
Yet I have seen the sun strike it of a morning—and
felt a foolish, oppressive dread. Just
after a rain, I remember, once. Then it lay like
a lake of blood. The light played on pools here
and there, pools that glowed like great rubies.
Fancy it! Ninety miles square of that blood-stained
earth. A monster shambles, it has often seemed to
me. It breeds strange thoughts when one faces it
alone. Or take it on a day of lowering clouds.
Then it almost voices a threat of evil. It is so
void of life, so malevolent in its stillness. The psychology
of environment is a curious thing. How
is it that mere inanimate earth, a great magnitude
of space, a certain color scheme, can affect a man
so? Sometimes I wonder if we inherit past experiences
from our primitive ancestors along with the
color of our eyes or the cast of our features. Our
surroundings work upon our emotions as the temperature
affects a thermometer, and we cannot tell
why. Even the hard-headed bull-whackers hate
this stretch of country.”

He made himself another cigarette, and sat quiet
for a time, staring off across the red waste.

“We may as well go back to camp,” he said,
rising abruptly. “There is no sign of men,
mounted, afoot, or otherwise, that I can see.”

Back by our saddles and pack layout, Barreau
divided the blankets and showed me how to fold
mine to make the most of them. Thankfully I
bedded myself in a shaded place, but he, before
following my example, unslung from his saddle the
rifle he had procured of Montell. He looked it
over, snapped the lever forward and back, slid
another cartridge or two into the magazine. This
done, he laid it by his blankets.

“I grudge the Police my two good nags, and my
Winchester,” he remarked, as he drew off his boots.
“What extra weapons Montell had were stowed in
a wagon, and I had no time to hunt for them. So
we will have to make shift with one rifle—for a
while, at least. For that matter, unless we run foul
of some young bucks prowling for a scalp, one
gun will serve as well as two. If you elect to take
a different trail, the best I can give you will be an
ancient derringer and a scant number of cartridges.
But I am inclined to think we will not part company,
yet a while.”

He sat upon his blankets, regarding me with a
measuring air; and I, from my comfortable position,
answered drowsily:

“I have a full stomach, a clear conscience, and
a tired body; and I am going to sleep right now,
if I never travel another trail.”

He laughed softly. Whether he said anything
further, I do not know. I was too near worn out
to care. My last, faint impression was of him sitting
cross-legged on his blankets, emitting sporadic
puffs of smoke, and looking at me with his black
brows drawn together. And the next thing I remember
was a tang of wood-smoke in my nostrils.
I sat up and stared about, puzzled at first, for I had
slept like a dead man. Twilight wrapped the butte.
Barreau was bent over a small fire, cooking supper.

“Oh,” he said, looking around, “you’ve come
alive, at last. I was about to wake you. The
chuck’s ready.”

I washed in the trickle of water that ran away
from the spring, and felt like a new man. As to
eating, I was little short of ravenous. Never had
food made such an appeal to my senses. When the
meal was over Barreau settled back against his
saddle.

“There will be a moon somewhere near midnight,”
he declared. “We’ll move then. After
to-night we can travel without cover of the dark.
Meantime, lend me your ears, Robertus. Let us
see where we stand.”

“Fire away,” I replied. “I am pretty much in
the dark—in more ways than one.”

“Exactly,” he responded. “And I imagine you
have little taste for walking blindfolded. So we
will spread our hands on the board. First, let us
look a few facts cold-bloodedly in the eye. Here
are two of us practically outlawed. I—well, it
should be obvious to you that I am a very much-wanted
man in these parts. My capture—especially
now—would be the biggest feather any Policeman
could stick in his cap. There are others who would
cheerfully shoot me in the back for what it would
bring them. Hence, the sooner I get out of this
part of the country, the better I will be suited.
You have killed a man for a starter. That——”

“But I had to,” I broke in. “It was forced on
me. You know it was. There’s a limit to what a
man can stand.”

“I know all that,” he replied quietly. “I’m not
sitting in judgment on you, Bob. I’m merely setting
forth what has happened, and how we are affected
thereby. Tupper got no more than he deserved,
and he did not get it soon enough—from
my point of view. But, as I said, you killed a man,
and the killing has taken on a different color in the
minds of others, since you are also accused of
theft.”

“Do you believe that infernal lie?” I interrupted
again. It galled me to hear him enumerate those
ugly details in that calm, deliberate manner.

“It makes little difference what *I* believe,” he answered
patiently. “If it is any comfort to you, I
can hardly conceive of you plundering the *Moon’s*
cabin. But voicing our individual beliefs is beside
the point. Certain things are laid to us. Certain
penalties are sure as the rising and setting of the
sun, if either of us is caught and convicted. And”—he
pinched his eyebrows together until little
creases ran up and down his forehead, but his voice
was cold, matter of fact—“if we were clean-handed
as a babe unborn, we have forever damned ourselves
before Canadian courts, by breaking jail.
You see where we are? Forgetting these other
things that we may or may not have done, of this
one crime we are guilty. We can’t dodge it, if we
are taken. It is a felony in itself.”

“If I were a free agent,” he went on, after a
momentary pause, “I would have made no attempt
to escape; or having escaped, I would quit this
damned country by the shortest route. But I can’t.
I have got into a game that I must play to a finish.
Further, I have given my word to do certain work,
and in the doing of it I am bucking elements that I
cannot always cope with alone. I need help. I want
some one whom I can trust absolutely if he gives
his word; a man I can depend upon to stick by me
in a pinch. That,” he turned his gaze squarely on
me, “is principally why I took long chances to get
you out of the guardhouse, last night. It seemed
to me I could help myself best by helping you. I
will be frank. My motive was not purely altruistic.
Men’s motives seldom are.”

“You flatter me,” I commented bitterly. “Considering
that I have shown myself more or less
weak-kneed every time I’ve got in a tight place,
your remark about some one who would stick by
you in a pinch savors of irony. I hardly see how
you could put absolute faith in me, when I have so
little faith in myself. Besides, I do not know what
your program calls for. I don’t seem to have the
faculty of holding my own in a rough game; nor
the right sort of nerve—if I have any. My instinct
seems to be to give ground until I’m cornered.
I’d rather be at peace with the world. I don’t like
war of the personal sort.”

“Nor does any man, any normal man,” he responded
soberly. “But there are times, as you have
seen, when we cannot escape it. So far as your
capacity for holding your own is concerned, let
me be judge of that. I know men more or less
well—by bitter experience. Under certain conditions
I could probably guess what you would do,
better than yourself. You may be sure I wouldn’t
ask you to accept certain risks and hardships with
me if I thought a yellow streak tinged your make-up.
So we will not argue along that line.

“What I need your help in is a legitimate enterprise;
clean enough of itself—though I have acquired
a dirty reputation in the way of it. I’ll give
you a few details, and you can judge for yourself.
Four years ago chance sent me north to a Hudson’s
Bay post on the Saskatchewan. From there
I drifted farther—to the Great Slave Lake country,
almost. I’ve known more or less of the fur trade
all my life. My father was in it. And so I was
quick to see how the Hudson’s Bay Company holds
the North trade in the hollow of its hand. It was
a revelation to me, Bob. Fortunes gravitate to
their posts by the simplest process in the world.
They barter a worthless muzzle-loading gun and a
handful of powder and ball for a hundredfold its
worth in pelts. From one year’s end to another,
yes, from generation to generation, the tribes have
been kept in debt to the Company. They make a
scanty living from the Company, and the Company
builds colossal fortunes out of them. You and I
would call it robbery. To the Company it is merely
‘trade.’

“Ever since the granting of its charter, close on
two centuries ago, the Company has lorded it over
the North, barring out the free trader, guarding
jealously against competition. Only the Northwest
Fur Company ever held its own with the Hudson’s
Bay, and the two combined when the Northwest
established itself. The others, lone traders,
partnerships, the Company fought and intimidated
till they withdrew. Technically, it is a free country,
has been since ’69, but north of the Saskatchewan
the Company still holds forth in the ancient
manner, making its own law, recognizing no higher
authority than itself. It is a big country, the
North, and the Canadian government has its hands
full in the east and south. A white man takes his
own risks north of latitude 54.

“All this I knew very well. But like many another
purse-broken man, I wanted a fling at the
trade. I saw that a man could get in touch with
the tribes, give them fair exchange for their furs—give
them treble the Hudson’s Bay rate of barter—and
still make a fortune. I needed the fortune,
Bob; I am still on the trail of it. But I had too
little capital to play a lone hand. So I hied me to
St. Louis and broached the scheme to Montell. I
have known him all my life. He also is an old
hand in the trade. He had the capital I lacked.”

Barreau stopped for a minute, digging at the
earth with his heel. The fire had dwindled to a
few coals. I could not see his face. But his voice
had changed, a note of resentment had crept into
it, when he began again.

“Montell jumped at the plan. Later I learned
things that led me to believe he was near the end
of his rope, financially, at the time. So my scheme
was in the nature of a Godsend to him. I had a
little money, and every dollar I could raise I put in.
It was to be an equal partnership: my knowledge
of the country and the conditions to offset his extra
capital.

“The first year we made expenses, and a little
over. But we were getting known among the Indian
hunters, convincing them that we would treat
them better than the Hudson’s Bay. Secure in their
established grip on the tribes, the Company passed
us up. The second year we made money. Then
the Company woke up and fought us tooth and
nail. Not openly; that is not their way. They
fought us, nevertheless. There were reprisals.
The brunt of it fell on me. They seemed to guess
that with my teeth drawn their fight was won. So
they carried the war systematically into the open
country. Our jail-breaking last night took its inception
in that struggle for and against a monopoly.

“This year, if things do not go awry, we stand
to clear more than a hundred thousand dollars.
And it will be the last. No individual trader can
break lances with the Company on its own ground.
They are lords of the North beyond gainsaying.
At the best we can but take a slice and leave the
loaf to them. Next spring sees the last of our trading.
This fall there will be fierce work to do,
tramping here and there, issuing guns and powder
and foodstuffs, bargaining with the hunters for the
winter’s take of pelts. A hundred lodges have
promised to trade with us this season, and an Indian
rarely breaks his word, once given in good
faith. We will get others, in spite of the Company
runners. But we must be on the alert; we
cannot sit in our posts and wait for these things to
come about of themselves. And that brings me to
the point.

“If I had only the Hudson’s Bay Company to
contend with, I would have little fear for the outcome.
With them it is largely a question of strategy.
If there is any violence it will come from
some zealot in their service, and we can hold our
own against such. But Montell is an eel. He
looms more threatening than the Company. In
these three years I have had no accounting with
him. I have done the dirty work, while he holed up
at the post, or looked after the St. Louis end. I
have more than once come near tripping him up in
petty tricks. Secretly he hates me, for at bottom
he is an arrogant old freebooter. And for all his
grovelling last night, he is a dangerous man. By
one means and another I know that he has made
up his mind to put me in the lurch once this winter’s
trade is turned. Without me, he can do little
in the way of getting furs. Otherwise, I would be
cooling my heels in MacLeod guardhouse yet. You
may have guessed that he was the spirit which
moved Blackie to pass in the knife and saw.

“But once full arrangements are made, and the
pelts begin to come in with spring, why, then—I
don’t know what he will do, how he will engineer
his plan to eliminate my interest in the profits. He
has some card up his sleeve. Half of everything
is mine, but I have nothing to show it. There is
nothing between us but his word! and that, I have
learned at last, is a thing he can twist to suit the
occasion. He has begun shaping things to suit
himself on this trip. He cut a bit of the ground
from under my feet back there in MacLeod. I’ll
pay him for that, though; and he knows it. The
finishing touch will come this winter, or in the
spring. He hates me, just as he hates any man
whom he cannot lead by the nose, and he will move
like the old fox he is. There’s money in it—for
him. And money and power are Simon Montell’s
twin gods.

“Between these cross-fires, I will have my hands
more than full. I can only be in one place at a
time. There is not a man with the bull-train, or
among the few that remain in the North, but is
under Montell’s thumb. Most of them could not
understand if I told them. The thing is too subtle
for their simple, direct minds. For that reason,
I sought for some one I could trust to keep a clear
eye open, and his ears cocked; for whatever Montell
does he will do by stealth. That evening we fell
in together at the foot of the Sweet Grass I was
headed for the Sanders ranch, thinking to get
Walt to come North with me. He would have enjoyed
this sort of thing. You know how we fared
that night. And you can see why, when the Police
raid put him beyond my helping, I turned to
you. I had you in mind all the while we lay in the
guardhouse, but I hesitated to drag you into it,
until I learned of the robbery charged to you. Then
I went back for you, judging that of the two evils
you would choose the one I offered.

“That is the way of it, Bob. If you help me
play the game this winter, you accomplish two
things with tolerable certitude. You will be safe
from the Police and those Benton idiots; and you
will get to St. Louis in the spring. Montell himself
will see to that, when he learns who you are. He
knew your father slightly, and he has all of a guttersnipe’s
snobbish adulation of wealth and family.
So you are doubly safe. On the other hand, if
you are minded to work out your own salvation I
will share with you what I have, set you in the
right direction, and wish you good luck. Don’t be
hasty about deciding. Think the thing over.”

But I had already made up my mind. How much
the lure of a strange land and stirring things to be
done bore upon my decision I cannot say. How
much, at the moment, George Barreau’s personality
dominated me I cannot quite compute. Individual
psychology has never been a study of mine, but I
know that there is no course of reasoning, no mental
action, no emotion, that has not its psychic factors.
Whatever these were in my case, I lost sight
of them. I think that what influenced me most was
his way of putting it man to man, so to speak. Unconsciously
that restored to me, in a measure, the
self-respect I had nearly lost in those brutal days
on the *Moon*, and the skulking and imprisonment
which followed. Here was a man before whom I
had seen other strong men cringe asking me in a
straightforward way for help. I had no wish to
refuse; I felt a thrill at the opportunity. For the
time I forgot that Montell’s daughter had called
him a thief and a murderer, and he had not denied.
I took him at his face value, as he took me, and
we shook hands on the bargain, and cemented it
further with the bottle of port so unwillingly relinquished
by Montell.

“I’m with you,” said I, “till the last dog is hung.
But if I weaken in a pinch, don’t say you weren’t
forewarned.”

He laughed.

“Don’t underestimate yourself. A man doesn’t
need to be overloaded with nerve to play a man’s
part in this world. In fact, the fellow who hunts
trouble for the sake of showing off his nerve, is
generally some damned fool with a yellow streak in
him that he’s deadly afraid some one may uncover.
After all,” he reflected, “there may be nothing more
to cope with than the dreary monotony of snowbound
days, and nights when the frost bites to
the bone. Your part will merely be to keep tab
on Mr. Simon Montell when I am not about. He’s
afraid of me. If he can’t attain his purpose by
underhand methods, he may consider the risk of
open hostility too great. But that we cannot foresee.
Our problem, now, is to reach the Sicannie
River as soon as we can. There we need never
fear meeting a scarlet jacket. It stands us in hand
to be shy of those gentlemen, for some time to
come.”

“Amen to that,” I responded sincerely.

We lay back in the shadows, smoking, speaking
a few words now and then, till the moon came peeping
up from below the horizon, shedding its pale
light on the strange, red sweep of the Blood Flats.
Then we saddled and packed and bore away from
the lone butte, holding a course slightly west of
the North Star.

CHAPTER XI—A TRICK OF THE “TRADE.”
==================================

A certain consecutive number of days—weeks, to
be more exact—ensued, of which there is little to
relate, save that we travelled steadily northward,
seeing no human except from afar. Once or twice
we came in sight of Hudson’s Bay posts, but these
Barreau was careful to avoid. It was not the season
when Indians were abroad in the forests, he
told me when I wondered that in all that vast land
not a single lodge appeared. They were gathered
in summer villages by the trading posts.
Hence we crossed few fresh trails, and bespoke
no man, white or red, in the four weeks of our
journey.

Before the end of it I was hardened to the saddle;
and to many other things. Twice we swam
great rivers, the North Saskatchewan, and farther
on the Peace—to say nothing of lesser streams that
were both deep and swift. Our food supply dwindled
to flour and tea. But with game on every
hand we suffered no hardship in that respect. The
getting of meat Barreau left to me. Strangely
enough, after one or two virulent attacks of “buck
fever,” when the rifle barrel wabbled in a most unseemly
manner and the bullet therefrom flew disgracefully
wide of the mark, I got into the way of
bringing down whatever I shot at. Between my
eye and the rifle sights and the shoulder of a deer
some mysterious, rapid process of alignment seemed
invariably to take place.

“Why not?” Barreau contended, when I remarked
upon this sudden attaining to marksmanship.
“There are the sights. Your eyes are clear
and your arm steady as a rock. That’s all there is
to good shooting; that and a little experience in
judging distance. Some men handle guns all their
lives, and never make a decent shot other than by
accident. Whenever you run across such an individual
you can be sure there is some defect in his
vision, or he lacks muscular control over his
weapon.”

That trip taught me many things besides holding
a rifle true; how to build a campfire in wet
weather and dry; little labor-saving tricks of the
axe; the name and nature of this timber and that;
the cooking of plain food; a subtle sense of direction—fundamental
trail-wisdom that I was wholly
ignorant of, but which a man must know if he
would cope with the wilderness of wood and plain.
I profited as much by noting how he did these
things, as by direct instruction. Nor does a man
forget easily the lessons he is taught in the school
of necessity.

With Peace River behind us we edged nearer to
the base of the mountains, passing through a
stretch of country alive with caribou and deer.
Bear—monsters, by the track they left—frightened
our picketed horses of a night. The moist earth
bordering every pond and spring was marked with
hoof and claw. The shyer fur-bearing animals,
Barreau told me, surrounded us unseen. Barring a
thickly wooded plateau south of the Peace we
passed through no forest oppressively dense. Our
way led over ridges and swales, timbered, to be
sure, but opening out here and there into pleasant
grassy parks. Once or twice forbidding areas of
dead and down trees turned us aside. Again, a vast
swamp enforced a detour. But I cannot recall any
feature of marked unpleasantness—except the one
thing that no man who crosses the North Saskatchewan
can escape—the flies.

Mosquitoes of all sizes, equipped with the keenest
tools for their nefarious business, green-headed
bulldog flies that plagued our horses beyond endurance,
black gnats, flying ants, and other winged
pests assailed us day and night in hungry swarms.
Some day that particular portion of the Northwest
will be a rich field for entomologists and manufacturers
of mosquito netting.

We held our own with the buzzing hosts, however,
and when our flour sack had nearly reached a
stage of ultimate limpness, and our tea was reduced
to a tiny package in one corner of the shrunken
pack, we rode out of a long belt of quivering poplars
and drew up on the brow of a sharp pitch that
fell away to the Sicannie River.

“What in the name of the devil has been to the
fore here?” Barreau exclaimed. He slid over in
his saddle, staring at the scene below.

Down on the flat, just back from the river bank,
I made out a clutter of small log buildings enclosed
within a stockade. In the center of the enclosure
a half-dozen men busied themselves about
the gaunt walls of a larger building. Logs and
poles strewed the ground about its four sides. The
ring of axe-blades on timber came floating up to
us. I saw nothing amiss.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing that matters greatly,” Barreau replied.
“Only that ruin you see was a fine upstanding storehouse
when I left here in the early spring. It
seems to be undergoing a process of regeneration,
for which I cannot account. Likewise, I see no
trace of a stable which stood at the west end of
the stockade. There are no men missing, by my
count, so I dare say no great thing has happened.
Anyway, this is the end of our trail for a while.
We may as well get down there. I am a bit curious
to know the meaning of this.”

Presently we were dismounting within the stockade.
And as we greeted the men who stopped their
work to hail us, it was plain what form of disaster
had overtaken the Montell establishment. The
standing walls of sixteen-inch logs were smoke-blackened
and scorched by fire. The inside was
gutted to the floor-joists; the roof gone. A pile
of charred poles and timbers laid to one side testified
mutely to cause and effect.

“Well, Ben,” Barreau addressed one man who
came forward. “How did it happen?”

“She burned, that’s all. ’N’ the stable, too,”
Ben made laconic answer. He drew a plug of tobacco
from his hip pocket, looked it over with a
speculative eye, bit off a piece, and returned it to
the pocket. As he masticated the piece contemplatively,
Barreau watched him with a whimsical smile.
“Yes, sir,” he went on, “she took fire in the night,
with the boys sleepin’ in the doghouse, an’ me in
the front part uh the store. It started to rain pretty
tol’able hard, or I reckon there wouldn’t be nothin’
left but a pile uh ashes.”

“In the night, eh?” Barreau repeated thoughtfully.
The three of us walked around the building
and peered in through a charred doorway.

“Quite so,” Barreau continued. “Save anything?
There wasn’t much to save, I know.”

“Most all the stuff,” Ben replied. “Injun name
uh Tall Trees drifted in day after yuh all left. He
traded out most everythin’ we could spare. An’
the pelts was easy to get out. Some grub was
burned. Not much, though. We got plenty left.”

“A very nasty thing, fire,” Barreau commented.
“How do you think it started, Ben?”

“I ain’t thinkin’,” said Ben. “I *know*.”

“The deuce you do!” Neither Barreau’s tone
nor face bespoke more than the mildest surprise.
“Had a big fire going, I suppose, and a live coal
flew out. Eh?”

“Nary coal,” Ben declared. “Some feller
climbed the stockade, cut open one uh them deer-skin
winders, touched a match to a bucket uh oil
an’ gunpowder, boosted it through the window—an’
there yuh are. That there’s no dream, let me
tell yuh.”

“And then went on his way rejoicing,” Barreau
suggested.

“I reckon he did, all right,” Ben owned, looking
rather downcast at the thought. “I never got to
see nothin’ but his tracks. If I’d seen *him* he
wouldn’t ’a’ done much rejoicin’.”

“I dare say,” Barreau laughed. “Meantime the
joke is on the party of the first part, it seems to me.
Logs are plenty. You have ample time to put on a
roof and lay some sort of floor. It would be a different
matter if we should be burned out after our
goods arrive; but this is a cheap lesson. I see you
have put up a good stock of hay. That’s fortunate,
for they are bringing more stock than we
figured on. Altogether, Ben, you haven’t done so
badly. Now, hustle us some decent grub—it’s near
noon, and this boy and I have been living on
straight meat for some time.”

Thus, we were once more fairly at our ease; the
bugaboo of arrest and subsequent lying in jail
seemed a remote contingency. The confidence born
of successful escape stilled any misgivings I might
have had as to the future.

We lay at the post doing naught but eat and
sleep and watch the long storehouse creep higher
log by log, till the skeleton of a roof took form
above the blackened walls. At night the eight of
us would sprawl around a fire in the open, talking
of everything under the sun, sometimes playing
with a soiled and tattered pack of cards that these
exiles cherished as their dearest possession. If we
were in hostile territory no hint of apprehension
cropped out in our intercourse; except as one or
another referred casually to incidents past—now a
fragmentary sentence which hinted of sharp action,
or a joking allusion to the “H. B. C.” It was all
in the day’s work with them. But I noticed that
each night one man stood guard, pacing from corner
to corner of the stockade, a rifle slung in the
crook of his arm.

Two weeks of this slipped by. Then one morning
Barreau sat up on his bed and looked over to
where I humped on my blankets, rubbing the sleep
from my eyes.

“Bob,” he announced, “it is high time we bestirred
ourselves once more.” After which he got
quickly into his clothes, and went rummaging in a
box by his bed—we had a little cabin to ourselves.
His search bore fruit in the shape of moccasins,
a bundle of them.

“Here,” he tossed a pair to me. “You’ll find
these better than riding boots. This time we go
afoot.”

Later, when breakfast was eaten, he made up a
shoulder-pack for himself, and showed me how to
prepare its fellow. Only actual necessaries found
place therein. Extra moccasins, a few pounds of
flour, a little packet of tea, pepper and salt, a tin
plate and cup; these were laid upon a pair of heavy
blankets, and tightly rolled in a square of thin
canvas. A broad band of soft buckskin ran from
the upper corners of the pack over one’s forehead.
A loop slipped over each shoulder, leaving the
hands free. I was astonished at the ease with
which I could walk under this forty-pound burden.
From among the post stores Barreau had long since
armed me with a rifle that was twin to his own.
Between us we carried a hundred cartridges. A
butcher knife and a small hatchet apiece fitted us
for all emergencies. Thus equipped we set out,
bearing away up the Sicannie toward the grim
range of peaks that cut the skyline into ragged
notches.

Ten miles upstream Barreau located the cluster
of lodges he sought as our first objective point—the
summer camp of Two Wolves and his band.
There for two nights and a day we lingered, sitting
in comical gravity for hours at a time in the
lodge of the chief. The upshot of this lengthy
council was that Two Wolves’ son girded a pack
on his broad shoulders and joined us when we left
the camp.

Thereafter I lost count of the days. Possibly,
if the need arose, I could detail the camps we made,
the streams we crossed, the huge circle we swung
upon, the crossing and doubling back upon our
own trail; but there is no need. Suffice it to say
that we did these things. It was no pleasure jaunt
that we three went upon. Crow Feathers was a
man of iron in the matter of covering ground.

He knew the haunt of every tribe and offshoot
of a tribe, every petty chief’s following, and every
family group in the North, it seemed to me. If
he did not lead us to them all, he at least tried.
The smoky smell of an Indian lodge became as familiar
to my nostrils as the odor of food. And in
every camp, over the peace pipe, Barreau talked
“trade,” with Crow Feathers to vouch for him.
Barreau spoke the tongue like a native, but there
were lodges wherein neither Cree nor French *patois*
was spoken or understood, and, when we encountered
such, the wisdom of Crow Feathers smoothed
the way. He used the sign language in all its bewildering
variety. I, myself, picked up words and
phrases here and there, comprehended a few of the
simpler signs, but Crow Feathers lingers with me
as a past master in wordless communication with
his race. Barreau, even, used to wonder at the
astonishing amount of information Crow Feathers
could impart with a few languid motions of his
hands. He made a right able interpreter.

Insensibly the days shortened. I recollect with
what surprise I wakened one morning to find hoar
frost thick on my blanket, and a scum of ice fringing
the little creek beside which we slept. Hard
on that I observed the turning of the leaves, the
red and yellow tints of autumn. And about this
time Crow Feathers left us; took up his pack one
day at noon, shook hands solemnly with each of us,
and a moment later was lost in the still, far-spreading
woods. Three days after that Barreau and I,
in the midst of a thinly timbered belt of land, came
suddenly upon a clear-cut trail. Even my limited
experience told me that it was made by man-guided
animals.

“The chumps,” Barreau drawled. “They are
ten miles out of their way. I didn’t expect to hit
their trail till to-morrow. Well, they should be at
the post now. We may as well follow them in.”

“How is it,” I voiced a thing that puzzled me,
“that there are no wagon tracks? Are you sure
this is Montell’s outfit?”

“No other,” he answered. “For many reasons.
By the mule tracks, for one. You, of course, could
not see them in the dark, but there was a mule herd
with the bull-train. Loaded wagons are too hard
to handle in this woods country. We have always
used pack-mules this side of the Peace.”

“Oh,” said I, and, my mystery solved, I forbore
further inquiry. We tramped along the trail in
silence. Then, all at once, he flung out an abrupt
question. Curiously enough, the thing he spoke of
had just drifted into my mind.

“Remember those two Hudson’s Bay men, Bob?”

I remembered them very well; two taciturn, buckskin-garbed
men, who came to an Indian camp
while we were there talking trade. They greeted
us civilly enough, slept in the next lodge overnight,
and left us a clear field in the morning. But before
they took to the trail they drew Barreau aside
and the three of them sat upon a fallen tree and
conversed thus for an hour.

“Why, yes,” I replied. “What of them?”

“I didn’t tell you, did I, that they were Company
agents with a proposal to buy out *my* interest in
the house of Montell,” he said. “Now, that amused
me at the time. But the confounded thing has
stuck in my mind, and lately I’ve been thinking—in
fact, I’ve wondered if——”

He broke off as abruptly as he had begun. I
was walking abreast of him, and I could see that he
was engrossed with some problem; the mental
groping in his tone was duplicated in the expression
on his face.

“What?” I blurted.

“Oh, just an idea that popped into my mind,” he
parried carelessly. “I’ll tell you by and by.”

“To be perfectly honest,” I challenged, on the impulse
of the moment, “I don’t think you trust me
very much, after all.”

“You’re mistaken there,” he said slowly. “You
are the one man in all this country whom I would
trust. But I am not going to burden you with
mere theories of possible trouble. Wait till I am
sure.”

With this I was forced to content myself. In a
mild way I resented his secretiveness, even while I
recognized his right to tell me as much or as
little as he chose. Thus a certain diffidence crept
into my attitude, perhaps. If it was obvious, it
made no difference to Barreau. In the two days it
took us to reach the post, I do not think he spoke a
dozen sentences. He followed the trail of the packtrain,
wholly absorbed in thought. Only when the
stockade-enclosed group of buildings huddled below
us, casting long shadows across the flat, did his
self-absorption cease. We had halted for a moment
on the bank above the river, not far from
where I had first seen the Sicannie. The sun rested
on the jagged mountain range to the west, and the
river caught its slanting beams till it lay below us
like cloth of gold, a glittering yellow gash in the
somber woods. Barreau’s hand fell lightly on my
shoulder.

“Lord! I’ve been a cheerful companion of late,”
he said, as if it had but occurred to him. And
some intangible quality of comradeship in the
words, or perhaps his way of saying them, put me
at ease once more.

We stood a little longer, and the sun dipped behind
the mountains, robbing the Sicannie of its
yellow gleam, casting a sudden grayness over the
North. Then we hitched our lean packs anew, and
went down the hill.

CHAPTER XII—THE FIRST MOVE
==========================

Montell himself, burdened with a troubled air,
met us at the gate of the stockade.

“Well, you’re back, eh?” he greeted Barreau.
“I been wishin’ you’d show up. At the same time
I’d just as soon you’d stay away. Now, don’t get
huffy, George. You ain’t got any idee what I’ve
had to contend with. Jessie’s here.”

Barreau looked at him with unchanging expression.

“Well,” he observed presently, “what of it?”

“What of it?” Montell echoed. “Jehosophat!
Ain’t you got no imagination, George? That MacLeod
deal has turned her against you somethin’ terrible.
She heard all that stuff about you, an’
wouldn’t rest till she made sure ’twas really you.
She’d raise old Ned if——”

“She found out that her highly respectable parent was
associated in business with a notorious character
like Slowfoot George,” Barreau cut in sneeringly.
“You’re rather transparent, Montell. You
don’t need to beat about the bush with me. I know
what you are driving at. I’ve lost caste with her,
which suits you exactly. You are her affectionate
father, an honorable, clean-handed man. Hence
you will not touch pitch lest she deem you defiled.
Very good. But you had better take a hint from
me and bestir yourself to get her south of the Peace
before winter breaks. This is no place for a
woman.”

“Sure, sure,” Montell seemed no whit taken
aback, “that’s what I been aimin’ to do. I don’t
know what the mischief got into her to come up
here, anyhow. She was supposed to turn back the
next day after we left MacLeod—I told you that
the night you come to our camp, but you was too
blame busy abusin’ me to listen, I guess. Then she
stood me off another day or two. By that time I
couldn’t leave the outfit, and she wouldn’t go back
unless I did. Darn it, Jessie’s gettin’ to be too
many for me. She’s stubborn as a mule an’ got
a temper like—like—well, when she gets on the
fight I got to stand from under, that’s all. There’ll
be war if she finds out you’re the big chief here.
Say, George, can’t you play like you just happened
in?”

“No,” Barreau refused flatly. “I will not lie
to her if both our necks depended on it. For that
matter, the explanation is simple. Why not tell her
the truth yourself?”

Montell looked at him curiously. Of a sudden
the set of his heavy, florid face seemed to become a
trifle defiant, aggressive.

“There’s no use standin’ here arguin’,” he said
shortly. “Come on to the store. Let’s get an understandin’
of this thing.”

He led the way. Within, as well as without, the
rebuilt storehouse was transformed. A great clutter
of goods in bales and sacks and small boxes
filled it nearly to overflowing. Shelves lined the
walls. On each side a rude counter ran the length
of the building. Here and there a semblance of
orderly arrangement was beginning to show. A
fire crackled on the open hearth at one end. An
upended box, littered with bills of merchandise and
a ledger or two, stood against the wall. By this
rude desk Montell sat him down on a stool. He
turned a look of inquiry on me, but Barreau forestalled
his question.

“This is Bob Sumner,” he made known perfunctorily.
“The son of that Texas cattleman who
owned the Toreante place on Rose Hill. I believe
you knew him slightly. Sumner will winter with
us. You need not stutter over talking before him.”

“I don’t stutter over talkin’ before anybody, far
as I’m concerned. It’s *your* funeral,” Montell retorted.
Then he turned to me.

“So you’re John Sumner’s boy, eh?” He sized
me up with new interest. I dare say he was wondering
how I came to be in Barreau’s company on
the very night of his breaking jail. “Yes, sir, I
did know your father. Did business with him a
time or two. Mighty fine man. Seems to me I
heard he died last spring. Left quite a large estate,
didn’t he?”

“Yes,” I answered briefly to both questions. It
was not a subject I cared to discuss just then.

“Too bad, too bad,” he commiserated—but
whether the sympathy he forced into his tone was
for the death of my father, or for me, I did not
know—nor care very much. It sounded like one
of those convenient platitudes that become a habit
with people. He focused his attention on Barreau,
however, immediately after this.

“Now, George,” he said, “suppose we have a
word in private, eh?”

“This suits me; I’m getting hardened to publicity,”
Barreau drawled. “You want an understanding,
you said. I’m agreeable. I remarked
that it might be well to try telling the truth if explanations
are demanded.”

An exasperated expression crossed Montell’s
face.

“Now, see here, be reasonable,” he grunted.
“That there guardhouse business settled you. If
you’d kept shy of that, there’d be a chance. But
there ain’t. You could swear to things on a stack
of Bibles—and she wouldn’t believe a word. You
know as well as I do that she’s got all them old-fashioned
idees about a gentleman’s honor that her
mother’s folks has. You know you *did* kill them
two fellers on High River, an’ run off them Hudson’s
Bay work-bulls. You didn’t have to do *that*.
You can’t explain *them* things to *her*; nor bein’ in
jail. That there’s a black mark she can’t overlook.
You wasn’t smooth enough, George.”

“You are astonishingly frank, I must say.” Barreau
leaned forward, smiling sardonically, a sneering,
unpleasant smile. “Why? Would you mind explaining
why you would refuse to vouch for the
truth of my story if I tell her absolute facts? What
have you up your sleeve?”

“Nothin’,” Montell growled. “Only I ain’t goin’
to have you force my hand. I ain’t goin’ to get into
no fuss with my own daughter. Besides, as I said,
some of them things can’t be explained to her—she
couldn’t understand. Once she found out what
a hell of a time’s been goin’ on in this fur business,
and that this winter’s liable to breed more trouble,
why she’d be sure to take a notion to stick here by
me. An’ I won’t expose *her* to whatever might
come up, for nobody’s reputation.”

“Wise old owl!” Barreau sneered. “What need
for this sudden access of caution? Do you think I
can’t——”

He broke off short at the slam of a door on the
farther side of the storehouse. A feminine voice
called, “Oh, papa!”

Montell sprang to his feet, muttering an expletive
to himself, but he did not at once reply. In the
stillness the sound of light footfalls threading the
maze of piled goods echoed softly among the heavy
beams above. It was dusk outside by then, and
within that scantily windowed place it was quite
dark, beyond a red circle cast from the open fireplace.
And as the girl stepped into the edge of its
glow Montell struck a match and touched it to a
three-pronged candlestick on the box by his seat.
She stifled an exclamation at sight of us. Then,
with a scornful twist to her dainty mouth, she
bowed in mock courtesy.

“Gentlemen,” she murmured, an ironic emphasis
on the term, “your presence is unexpected. I cannot
say I esteem it an honor.”

Then she turned to her father.

“Papa,” she observed interrogatively, “I have
always known you were a hospitable soul, but I
never dreamed a house of yours would ever prove
shelter for an outlawed cutthroat. Upon my word,
if I were a man I should be tempted to collect the
bounty on this human wolf. There is a bounty.
See?”

She fumbled in a pocket of the short, fur-edged
jacket she wore, and presently drew forth a folded
paper.

“Yes, surely there is a bounty,” she went on maliciously,
holding the paper broadside to the sputtering
candles. “Not a great one, to be sure, but
more than he is worth. Five hundred dollars for
the body, dead or alive, of George Brown, alias
Slowfoot George. Height, weight, color of eyes,
certain marks and scars—to a dot. Also an appalling
list of crimes. Have you no shred or atom of
a decent impulse left”—she addressed Barreau directly,
her tone level, stingingly contemptuous—“that
you persist in thrusting yourself upon people
after they have seen the sheep’s clothing stripped
from your degenerate shoulders?”

Barreau met her gaze squarely and answered her
in her own tone.

“I am here,” he said, “because I choose to be
here. Montell *pere* can tell you why.”

“Now, now Jessie,” Montell cut in pacifically.
“This ain’t St. Louis. If George is in trouble, I
don’t know as any one has a better right to help
him than me. You don’t want to be always ridin’
that high hoss of yours. This country ain’t peopled
with little tin gods, as I’ve told you many a
time. You’d better go back to the house. I’ll be
there pretty quick.”

“Indeed, I imagine I could hardly be in worse
company,” she declared. “So I will quit it, forthwith.
It was not of my seeking. Better keep an
eye on your goods, papa.”

With that she was gone, leaving the three of us
staring at each other, Montell a bit apprehensive, it
seemed to me. Barreau was first to find his voice.

“I would advise you to get your trail outfit in
readiness to-night,” he told Montell bluntly, “and
start south in the morning. Otherwise I will give
no guarantee of peace and good will in this camp.
I can’t stand much of that sort of thing.”

Montell seemed to consider this. If he felt any
uneasiness over the implied threat he maintained
an undisturbed front. Hunched on the stool like a
great toad, one fat hand on each knee, his puffy
eyelids blinking with automatic regularity, he regarded
Barreau in thoughtful silence.

“I guess that’s the proper card,” he uttered at
last. “I can make it back, all right, if it does come
bad weather. I got to get her home, that’s sure.
You can kinda keep out of sight till we get started,
can’t you, George?”

“That’s as it happens,” Barreau returned indifferently.
“Meantime, have you grub-staked any of
these hunters? Are the Indians beginning to come
in?”

Montell nodded. “Quite a few. Two or three
camps up the river, the boys say. Some of ’em
wouldn’t make no deal till you showed up. Don’t
you let none of ’em have too big a debt, George.”

Barreau shrugged his shoulders at this last caution.
He sat staring into the fire, his lean, dark
face touched with its red glow. Then abruptly he
got up and opened the door.

“It’s dark, Bob,” he said to me. “Let us go to
the cabin.” And without another word to Montell
he left the store, I following.

It was just dark enough so that we could distinguish
the outline of the post buildings, and the
black, surrounding wall of the stockade. The
burned stable had been rebuilt during our absence.
Within it horses sneezed and coughed over their
fodder. On the flat beyond the post I could hear
the night-herder whistle as he rode around the
grazing mules. From this window and that, lights
shone mistily through the scraped-and-dried deer-skin
that served for glass. And at the far end of
the stockade a group of men chattered noisily about
a roaring fire. Yet the lights and sounds, the
buildings of men and the men themselves seemed
inconsequential, insignificant, proportioned to their
surroundings like the cheeping of a small frog at
the bottom of a deep well. The close-wrapping
wilderness, with its atmosphere of inexorable solitude,
enfolded us with silence infinitely more disturbing
than any clamor. It may have been my
mood, that night, but it seemed a drear and lonely
land; the bigness of the North, its power, the implacable,
elemental forces, had never taken definite
form before. Now, all at once, I saw them, and I
did not like the sight.

We did not make our way straight to the cabin.
Barreau had no mind to go hungry. He stopped
at the mess-house and bade the cook send our supper
to us, when it was ready. Then we went to the
cabin, flung our lean packs in a corner, built a
fire, and sat by it smoking till a voluble Frenchman
brought the warm food.

Again Barreau had fallen into wordless brooding.
For the hour or more that passed after we
had eaten he lay on his bed staring at the pole-and-dirt
roof. He was still stretched thus, an unlighted
cigarette between his lips, when I took off
my clothes and laid me down to sleep. And when
at daybreak I wakened and sat up sleepily, Barreau’s
bedding was neatly smoothed out on the
bunk. His smoking material, which had lain on
the table, was gone; likewise his rifle, cartridge-belt,
and the pack-rigging he had cast aside the
evening before. It seemed that Mr. Barreau must
have gone a-journeying.

I opened the door and looked about me. Here
and there men busied themselves at sundry occupations.
The sun had but cleared the tree-tops, and
on flat and hillsides deep black shadows still nestled.
My roving eyes finally settled on one of these blots
of shade, and presently I saw four figures, mounted,
two of them leading extra horses, ascending the
south bank. Looking more closely I observed that
one was a woman. Mr. Montell, I decided, was
taking time by the forelock. I stood with hands
jammed in my trousers pockets, wishing that I,
too, were homeward bound, wondering if Bolton
had got either of my letters, and if he had made
any attempt to trace me—and a lot of other footless
speculation.

CHAPTER XIII—A FORETASTE OF STRONG MEASURES
===========================================

Thus thrown upon my own resources, I betook
myself to the roomy cabin where the cook reigned
supreme. Thence, with breakfast disposed of, to
the store. I found there a small, bewhiskered man
bowed over a ledger, and a dozen husky packers
stowing goods on the shelves. The clerical person
gazed at me over a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles
in a colorless, uninterested sort of way. I took him
to be the bookkeeping machine of the concern, and
such proved to be the case. And when I asked for
“George,” prudently refraining from mention of
surnames he told me primly that “Mr. Barreau”
had gone up the river, leaving word that I was to
make myself at home in the meantime. Having
delivered himself of this message, he resumed his
task. So I continued my round of the post until
I located old Ben Wise. What between chatting
with Ben, and sundry games of seven-up with one
or two of the others whom I knew, and long spells
of sitting alone in the cabin smoking over the fire,
I managed to murder time for three days. At the
end of which period Barreau returned.

He did not come alone, but at the head of a
veritable flotilla of birch-bark canoes, laden with a
picturesque mixture of Indians, squaws, round-faced
pappooses, sharp-nosed dogs, and the household
goods pertaining to these. By the appearance
of things I inferred that he had been out to jog up
the natives who had signified willingness to trade
with the house of Montell. They beached the canoes,
and pitched their lodges along the river bank,
a little way from the stockade. In the two hours
of daylight following the arrival of the vanguard
other little parties came slipping quietly around
the curve of the Sicannie, pitched their camps, and
set about cooking food. The flat was speckled with
twinkling dots of fire when dark vanquished the
long twilight.

Barreau was tired, and had little to tell. I had
come by a new deck of cards through favor of the
colorless Mr. Cullen, and we played a silent game
or two of euchre that night before turning in. By
dawn we had breakfasted and were at the store,
and the copper-skinned men of the lodges began to
come in and cast their eyes upon such things as
they desired.

All forenoon I watched this silent outfitting of
the hunters, saw this one and that stand wrapped
to the ears in his gaudy blanket, seeming not to
see or to be conscious of aught that transpired.
Then of a sudden he would point abruptly to a certain
article, a trap or two, maybe, a caddy of tea,
a flask of powder, and emit a guttural sound that
Barreau interpreted to Cullen, who would solemnly
make an entry in his notebook. When the red
brother had reached his trading limit, his squaw
took the burden of his purchases on her back, and
he strode forth wrapped in a dignity even more
striking than his blanket, she following meekly at
his heels.

“How do you manage to keep track of them
all?” I asked Barreau, as we sat at dinner. “Suppose
these Indians that you outfit now don’t show
up again? Can you trust them so absolutely? For
my part I can hardly tell one from another.”

“You’d find out that they have distinct individual
characteristics,” Barreau replied, “if you were
with them long. I know most of these fellows well
enough to pick them out of a crowd. In fact, a
good many of them won’t trade except with me—which
is one strong hold I have over my slippery
partner. And so far as trusting them, an Indian’s
word is good as gold. For every dollar’s worth
of stuff we let them have this fall they’ll bring ten
dollars’ worth of pelts next spring—unless it is an
extraordinary winter. Anyway, we don’t stand to
lose a great deal on what we trust them for. Where
we will make money will be in the spring trade.
They’ll have plenty of furs left after their debt is
paid, and they’ll want guns and more powder, flour
and tea for the summer, tobacco, and clothes and
gew-gaws for the women and pappooses. If the
winter is normal we’re going to have a big trade;
bigger even than I thought. I wouldn’t mind,” he
concluded, with a short laugh, “if Montell had to
go clear to Benton, and got snowed in there. That
would eliminate one dangerous factor. But that’s
too much to hope for.”

“It’s a long trip,” I reflected. “He can’t get to
the Missouri in time to send his daughter down on
the last boat, even. The river will freeze any day
now. Benton would be a dreary place for her to
stay alone, I should think. He may stay there
with her.”

“Not likely,” Barreau contended. “As it happens,
she knows one or two rather nice families
who are wintering at Benton, and she’ll be apt to
stay with them. He has been altogether too keen
to have his finger in this winter’s pie—when it
wasn’t needed there. No, the old fox has something
up his sleeve—something that he’s been leading
up to ever since we left Benton. He’ll be back,
if he has to come on his hands and knees.”

Barreau was right. Montell did come back, and
the date of his return was only something more
than forty-eight hours from the time of that conversation.
We were stretched upon our respective
bunks, I listening to Barreau’s talk of long-dead
traders who had undertaken to buck the
Hudson’s Bay Company, when some one tapped on
the door; and at Barreau’s laconic “come in,” who
but Montell himself should enter! He shut the
door carefully behind him, and waddled to a seat.
Barreau raised on one elbow.

“You!” he said sharply. “Back here already?
What has happened now?”

Montell took off his hat and threw it petulantly
on the floor. The expression on his face was sour
as curdled milk.

“We couldn’t make it, that’s all,” he growled.
“I guess the H. B. C.’s gettin’ busy all at once.
Anyhow, we got headed off.”

“How?” Barreau demanded.

Montell flung out his hands expressively.

“Easiest way in the world,” he sputtered wrathfully.
“Some feller with a good eye just trailed
us up, and killed off our stock—shot ’em one by
one. Finally we was afoot. So we turned back.
Couldn’t walk clear to MacLeod. Damn ’em, anyway!”

“No one hurt?” Barreau asked quietly.

“Barrin’ blistered feet—no,” Montell snapped.

His gaze involuntarily travelled to his own broad,
shapeless feet, and a smile flickered across Barreau’s
countenance. There was a momentary lull.

“What are you going to do now?” Barreau inquired
next.

“I’m goin’ to take eight men, by God! and a
string of mules, and hit it in the mornin’,” Montell
exploded. “I ain’t goin’ to have that girl
winter here, if I know it. And I ain’t goin’ to be
headed off from nothin’ by the Hudson Bay or any
other damned outfit. I’ll show them bushwhackin’
parties a trick or two. They’ll find old Montell
ain’t so slow. I just come over here to let you
know I was back, George, so’s you wouldn’t be
gettin’ into the foreground to-morrow mornin’
when we’re fixin’ to start. You might just as well
be accommodatin’.”

“Oh, to be sure. As a favor from one gentleman to another,”
Barreau observed sarcastically.
“Anything to oblige. But if I were you I should
not try it again—not till you can take the outfit
lock, stock, and barrel. You may find it only a
waste of mules, if not worse. Evidently the Company
is minded to pen the lot of us here, and teach
us a lesson.”

“Just so the girl’s out of it,” Montell muttered
defiantly, “they got my permission to go ahead
with their teachin’. We’ve held our own for quite
a spell. But I got to get her clear. So I’m goin’
to tackle it again.”

“Very well,” Barreau said indifferently. “But
you had better take a few pair of snowshoes. You
may need them.”

“Maybe so,” Montell returned. “But I bet I get
a scalp or two if they go to settin’ us afoot *this* trip.”
And he gathered up his hat and left the
cabin.

Barreau lay back on his bed a long time without
remark. Then he said aloud, apropos of nothing
in particular:

“I shouldn’t be surprised if that was the way
of it.”

I looked over at him, and catching my interrogative
gaze, he went on.

“I’ve simply been doing a bit of inductive reasoning.
Taking things as they are in this country
what more natural than that the Hudson’s Bay
Company should have become alarmed lest we
grow to a formidable competitor, and have simply
made up their minds that we must be ousted,
by hook or by crook. They have a way of keeping
posted, you know. I shouldn’t be surprised if one
or two of the men on our payroll were Company
spotters. Here is Montell and his daughter, and
myself. They might reason that by driving him
back and intimidating him, forcing him to winter
here, and then harassing us in every conceivable
way till spring, they may make us glad to quit.
For instance, they could try to kill off our stock and
poison our dogs. And if there was a chance to
burn us out, why that would be the finishing touch.
I shouldn’t be surprised if that is their scheme.
And then along in the winter they might even go
so far as to have the Mounted Police pull one chestnut
out of the fire for them, by revealing my
whereabouts.”

“How does it come,” I asked, in some surprise,
“that they haven’t done that before, if they know
that George Barreau, the fur-trader, is Slowfoot
George of the MacLeod country?”

“For the very good reason that they want no
Mounted Policemen in this neck of the woods,”
he said decidedly. “They don’t want to establish
a precedent. They have lorded it in the North for
generations, and so long as they continue to do so
the Canadian government will permit it. Once the
Police begin to come here, the Company authority
is at an end. Also their monopoly—for a Mounted
Police post up here would mean open country, and
a swarm of free traders. Of course, what I said,
is mere theory, but I might be on the right track.
If I am, we may look for merry times here this
winter, and you and I may have to take to the deep
snows before spring.”

“Suppose—while we’re theorizing,” I ventured,
“that Montell had an idea he could get along without
you—if he wants to settle your chances of
sharing in the profits, as you think—why mightn’t
he give the Police a quiet hint, if he gets through?”

“I can very well imagine him doing that,” Barreau
responded thoughtfully. “But he can’t make
it go without me; at least, not just yet. And I do
not think he will get through, for all his determination.”

I kept Barreau’s prophecy in mind. Days of
busy outfitting slipped by; I kept no track of the
hunters who indebted themselves to the post, but
they came and went by scores. The days merged
into a week. At the end of it a black ruck of
clouds came scudding out of the west. Thick and
lowering they gathered over head, and one day at
noon, while Barreau and I stood in the doorway
of the store, watching a great multitude of damp
snowflakes come eddying down through the still
air, Montell, his daughter, and the eight men, came
plodding afoot to the gate of the stockade.

CHAPTER XIV—INTEREST ON A DEBT
==============================

They filed past the store, a weary looking squad,
Montell’s fat jowl drawn into sullen lines, the men
not wholly free of a certain furtive bearing. Observing
them I could very well enter into their
feelings. My brief experience between Benton and
MacLeod had taught me something of the fear
that stalks at the elbow of a hunted man. The girl
looked up at Barreau and me, and for the first time
there was no curl to her lip, no scornful gleam in
her eyes. Only a momentary flash of interest.
Then the listless, impersonal expression came back
to her face. She walked at her father’s elbow like
one utterly worn out. The men branched off to
the bunkhouse. Montell and his daughter went
straight to their cabin.

“I think he is beginning to have a profound respect
for the Company,” Barreau told me that night
as we sat over our fire. “They have set him thinking.
It seems that none of his men could get so
much as a glimpse of a moccasin track. Still, their
saddle horses and pack-mules were systematically
shot down, until they were afoot again. After
that they were not molested. He knows that his
whole party could as easily have been put out of
the way. That seems to have put the fear of God
into the lot of them. They can’t understand the
object. I don’t, myself, altogether. But I could
hazard a close guess, I think.”

All that night and the next day the big snowflakes
came gyrating down. The temperature remained
the same, just short of freezing, and a
dead calm lay over the land. Then it faired gradually.
With the clearing sky the feathery snowfall
melted and disappeared. Upon its passing the
night frosts took on a keener edge. Little vagrant
gusts of wind went frolicking through the open
spaces in the woods, fluttering the dry, fallen leaves
into tiny heaps and scattering them again. Sometimes
of a night these same whisperings of the
North rattled the bare limbs of the cottonwoods
and birch till the miles of forest seemed to voice a
protesting murmur. Steadily the cold grew, and
the sun rode lower on its diurnal passage. Save
the pine and spruce and scattered cedars the great
woods shivered in their nakedness, lacking the
white robe which the North dons at such season.
And presently that came also, with the deep-throated
whoop of a north-east gale to herald its
coming. In one night the Sicannie froze from bank
to bank; at daybreak the wind drove curling streamers
of loose snow across its glassy surface, to pile
in frosty windows at the foot of the south slope.

During this period we of the post settled into a
routine of minor tasks. There were fires to keep
against the cold. From dawn to dusk, somewhere
within the stockade or on the timbered hill above,
the clink of an axeblade on frosty wood rang like
a bell. That, and water for cooking, and caring
for the stock now housed in the long stable, kept
time from hanging heavy on the hands of the men.
Barreau and I gravitated between our cabin and
the store.

Montell sulked for a week after that last failure
to reach the south. Then he emerged from his shell
of silence, and became ponderously genial, talkative—a
metamorphosis which Barreau regarded
with frank contempt. He spoke to Montell no
oftener than was necessary, and when he did speak
his tongue was barbed. Openly and unequivocally
he despised and distrusted his flesh-burdened partner,
and he made no effort to hide the fact. For
the most part Montell took his sneering unmoved, or
grinned pacifically, but there were times when his
red face went purple and his puffy eyelids would
droop till the pupils glinted through mere slits, like
a cat about to pounce. Then it would be Barreau’s
turn to smile, in his slow ironic way.

Of the girl, who kept close to the cabin she and
her father shared, no word ever passed between
the two. Nor did she meet Barreau or myself
face to face for a matter of three weeks. Our
sight of each was from a distance, and from that
distance, with a blanket coat to her heels and a fur
cap pulled over her ears, it was hard to distinguish
her from one of the few half-breed women who
had followed their men into the North. In what
way Montell accounted for our presence, I did not
know, nor how he explained Barreau’s assured position
about the post. It may be that she did not
notice this incongruity on the part of a supposed
fugitive; it may be that Montell was a plausible
liar. At any rate, upon the few occasions when
we three came near enough to recognize each other,
she appeared calmly indifferent. Barreau and I ate
in the big cookhouse with the rest of the men.
Montell and his daughter had their meals served
in the cabin. So we—at least I will speak for myself,
for Barreau maintained a stony front and absolute
silence on the subject—were saved the embarrassment
of meeting three times daily.

Montell himself became very friendly toward
me. Bit by bit he drew from me the story of my
wanderings, and shook his head over it, assuring
me that Missouri river sternwheel men were a hard
lot. Once he became reminiscent and spoke of his
dead wife and her people with a poorly concealed
pride in the alliance. His palpable satisfaction
amused me. It seemed odd that a man of his
rugged type, a hard-headed business buccaneer,
should have that fatuous overestimation of wealth
and so-called “blood.” But he had it to the n’th
degree. I dare say it was his one weak spot. She
was a Charbonne, of the old New Orleans Charbonnes,
originally a Hugenot family, but for the
last generation or two of St. Louis, he told me; and
in the telling he shed his natural carelessness of
speech, and spoke in the stilted, exactly-phrased
English in which he might have addressed the aristocratic
parent of his bride. I knew more or less
of the St. Louis Charbonnes myself, and I wondered
that I had never heard of Montell or his
daughter. Barreau smiled when I spoke of this
later.

“That’s Montell all over,” he drawled. “Marrying
a Charbonne stands out as one of the big
things he has accomplished. He can’t help boasting
of it now and then. I imagine that if he were
dying in a snowbank that thought would cheer
him in his last hour. He regards it as a distinct
achievement. He was a big, perfectly-formed,
good-looking brute when he met her, and from all
I know it was a case of two strong natures brushing
aside all obstacles. I’ve heard that the Charbonnes
were furious over what they considered the
rankest sort of mesalliance—but they were married,
and so far as I know she never discovered his very
obvious clay feet. She died in child-birth—the
second child. The family has kept up a desultory
intercourse with him for the girl’s sake. They
recognize her as their own blood, and tolerate him
on that account.”

A day or two after this Barreau rigged up a dog-team
and left the post, bound for a point down the
river, where they had established two Frenchmen
with some trading goods, on the chance of getting
into touch with some few lodges that hunted
in that territory. He took one man, and I tramped
a few miles with them, for the sake of the snowshoe
practice of which I was sadly in need. It
looked easy to go stalking over the drifts on those
webbed ovals, but it was trying work for a novice
I discovered at my first attempt. There was a certain
free, swinging stride, which I had yet to master.
So it happened that I did not return to the
post until that chill hour between sundown and
dark.

I was aware that the fire in our cabin was long
dead, and the room corresponding in temperature
to an ice-box, but I was in no mood for the ultra-friendly
conversation Montell had been favoring
me with of late. For which reason I eschewed the
blaze that I knew was crackling on the store hearth
and made straight for my own quarters.

The day’s work was at an end. Besides myself
not a soul moved within the frosty area of the
stockade. The doors of every building were shut
tight against the sharp-toothed cold. This I noted
almost mechanically. I was beginning to develop
the woodsman’s faculty of observing detail, without
conscious purpose. With my mind busy about the
prospect of getting a fire started in the shortest
possible space of time my gaze for a moment rested
on the Montell cabin, as I stopped at my own door.
At that instant Jessie Montell stepped outside, a
shawl thrown over her head, carrying in one hand
some object covered with a white cloth.

The dogs must have been lying at the end of
the cabin. The slam of the door had barely sounded
when she was confronted by one wolf-like brute.
He faced her boldly, his nose pointed inquisitively
toward the thing she carried. She made a threatening
gesture and spoke sharply to him, whereat the
husky retreated a foot or two—and was instantly
reinforced by half a dozen of his fellows. The
girl lifted her hand a little higher and berated them,
her clear voice reproaching them for their lack of
manners. And then of a sudden one cock-eared
brute sprang at the thing she carried. He missed,
and one of the others had a try. She gave ground,
holding above her head what I now saw was a
plate; and immediately the snarling pack was snapping
at her skirts and she was cut off from the
door. I could hear the click of their white fangs
as I ran. She backed against the wall, scolding
them in a voice that betrayed some alarm.

I reached her on the double-quick, when I saw
that the dogs meant mischief. The short-tempered
devils turned on me in a body with the first blow
I struck. One after the other I knocked galley-west
and crooked with the barrel of my rifle, and shortly
emerged victorious from the melee, but with my
leggings ripped in divers places and the left sleeve
of my *parka* slit as if with a knife. From this last
the blood streamed forth merrily, flowing down
over my mitten and dripping redly on the trampled
snow. Prior to that my experience of vicious dogs
had been with those which grabbed and held on.
The slashing wolfish snap of the husky was new to
me. I stood looking at my gashed arm in some
astonishment.

“Why, they’ve bitten you,” the girl exclaimed,
with a sharp intake of her breath. “Let me see?”

She spread apart the opening in my buckskin
sleeve and frowned at sight of the torn flesh, meanwhile
balancing on her other hand the plate of meat
that had caused the onslaught. Most women, I
found time to reflect, would have dropped it at the
first intention, but she had clung to it as a miser
clings to his gold.

“Come in and let me tie that up,” she commanded
peremptorily, and flung open the door,
giving me little chance to debate whether I would
or no. And I followed her in, as much through
a sudden desire to see a little more of this very
capable and impulsive young lady, as to have the
sharp sting of the wound allayed.

She brought water in a basin, a sponge, and a
piece of clean linen which she speedily reduced to
strips; and after helping me remove the *parka*
proceeded to dress the gash in my forearm with
deft tenderness. During this ministering to my
need we were both silent. When it was done she
tilted her head on one side and surveyed her handiwork,
for all the world like a small bird perched
on a limb and looking down. This fanciful notion
struck me as rather absurd, and the more I thought
of it the more absurd it seemed, till I found myself
smiling broadly. Likening Jessie Montell to a
saucy bird was, in a way, a very far-fetched comparison.
She was distinctly unbirdlike—apart
from that trick of tipping her head sidewise and
gazing speculatively at whatsoever interested her.

“I’m really and truly sorry I got you into such
a scrape,” she apologized sweetly. “I suppose I
should have thrown the meat to those ferocious
things. But dear me, I’d toiled so over it, getting
it thawed and fixed for papa’s supper, that I hated
to see it literally go to the dogs. You mustn’t let
the cold get into that cut. You’ll have a nasty sore
if you do.”

“Oh, I’ll see that the cold doesn’t have a chance
at it,” I assured her. “And you don’t need to feel
guilty on my account. I’d rather it was my arm
than yours. I’m only too glad to pay a little interest
on my debt.”

She looked puzzled for a second.

“Oh,” she said then, “you mean that time on
the *Moon*. There’s no debt to me. Those ruffians
would have paid little heed to me. Mr. Barreau——”

She colored and broke off abruptly, with an impatient
gesture.

“Papa has been telling me about you,” she
changed the subject. “Another St. Louis unfortunate”—smilingly—“aren’t
you. As the Scotch
say, I feel ‘verra weel acquentit.’ Your mother and
my aunt Lois were more or less intimate. So that
I know you by proxy, in a way.”

I don’t recollect just what reply I made. If
she were trying to put me at my ease she made
a woeful mess of it the very next minute, for she
demanded to know, with embarrassing directness:

“Why in the world didn’t you stand your ground
at Benton? Whatever possessed you to cross the
line?”

“Well, you see—I—it was——” and there I
halted lamely. I couldn’t discuss the ethics of my
flight with this self-sufficient young woman. My
grounds for self-justification in that particular instance,
were rather untenable. I couldn’t explain
the psychology of the thing to her, when I couldn’t
quite grasp it myself. I couldn’t honestly admit
that I had refused to stay and face the consequences
of Tupper’s sudden end at my hands because I was
overwhelmed with fear. I didn’t believe that myself.
Even if I had believed it, I would have been
ashamed to admit frankly to that gray-eyed girl
that I had run away because I was afraid. It had
been a peculiar situation for me, one that I could
hardly attempt to make clear to her. With Barreau
it had been different. He seemed to understand,
to divine how and why I did such and such
a thing at such a time and place, with but a meager
explanation from me. Certain effects invariably
led him intuitively to first causes.

Moreover, with her I seemed to be put upon the
defensive. I found myself reflecting on what she
would do in such a case, and instantly deciding
that Miss Jessie Montell would defy the devil and
all his works if she thought herself in the right. In
addition thereto I felt that she was unconsciously
appraising me and classing me as a weakling; and
that, added to my own half-formed conviction that
in time of trial I was likely to prove so, made me
a most uncomfortable individual for a few moments.
Montell’s entrance saved me from a rather
unwelcome situation. There is no knowing how
deep a tangle I should have got myself into—she
was so uncompromisingly direct. Montell, however,
opened the door at the crucial period, and
she turned to him with a recital of the huskies’ outbreak,
lighting a cluster of candles as she talked.

“If you don’t shut up those ferocious brutes, or
feed them a little oftener,” she concluded, “they’ll
devour somebody one of these days, and there
won’t be so much as a moccasin left to tell the tale.”
At which extravagant forecast we all three
laughed, and I felt myself equal to the occasion
once more.

The upshot of this dog episode was that I stayed
to supper with them, and went to my own cabin
rather late in the evening.

CHAPTER XV—STRANGERS TWAIN
==========================

My arm was somewhat swollen, and it throbbed
like an ulcerated tooth, when I got up the following
morning, but I made shift to build a fire. When
the icy chill was banished from the room, I dressed,
and was getting what comfort I could out of a
smoke when Montell knocked at my door, bringing
a cold gust of air when he entered.

“Oho,” said he, “stirrin’ round, eh? This ain’t
much like home, is it? How’s the arm?”

I told him briefly, having little inclination to
enlarge on that theme—the pain was sufficient without
the aggravation of discussing it.

“Uh-huh,” he grunted. “Now you just come
along to the shack and have Jess fix it up again.
She’s pretty near as good as a doctor. And seein’
she’s partly responsible, it’s no more’n fair.
There ain’t no use you makin’ a hermit of yourself.”

I attempted to dodge this invitation, which seemed
to savor of command. Montell’s semi-jocoseness
rather jarred on me. For one thing his heartiness
didn’t quite ring true. Possibly I misjudged him.
He could have had no particular motive for posing
on my account. But I got the impression that his
solicitude was of the lip rather than of the heart.
While I had passed a very pleasant evening with
them, I did not contemplate making myself at home
in the Montell cabin, by any means. I had a vague
feeling that it involved disloyalty to Barreau.
Montell, however, was quite insistent, and as I had
no forthright reason for being churlish I ended by
going with him.

He made a great fuss at helping me off with my
coat, and while he hovered over me in his ponderous
way Miss Montell came out of the other room.
She nodded to me and smiled a greeting, whereupon
he, busying himself with hanging my coat and
hat upon a peg, plunged into a jesting account of
my reluctance to leave my own fireside, relating
with much detail what he said and what I said,
and how I owed it to my arm to have it well cared
for, and so on—till I wearied of his gabble. I
don’t think she listened half the time. She moved
about the room, getting a basin and warm water
and other first, or perhaps I should say second,
aids to the injured. And she washed and bandaged
afresh the laceration, with an impersonal absorption
in the task that I half resented.

When she had finished, breakfast, hot from the
cookhouse, was brought by one of the “breed”
women, and Miss Montell seated herself at the
table and airily waved her father and myself to
places on her right and left.

That was how I came to break bread with them
a second time, and it was not the last by any means.
In the ensuing five or six days I wore a distinct
path between my cabin and theirs. Montell made
it a point to descend upon me at some hour of the
day, and, after all, I was not so loth. I am constrained
to admit that Jessie Montell was the one
bright spot in those dreary, monotonous days.
With Barreau gone, I was a lonely mortal indeed.
Those evenings at Montell’s passed away many a
leaden-footed hour. After that first time Jessie
never challenged me in that imperious, judicial
manner, anent my Benton escapade. We spoke of
it, to be sure, but in terms dispassionate, uncritical.
When Montell was about, he and I played cribbage.
When she and I were alone, we talked. We discovered
a similar taste in books, a mutual acquaintance
or two in St. Louis. And we gravely discussed
the prospects of getting home in the spring.
Naturally, she was a rabid partisan, hating the
Hudson’s Bay Company with outspoken frankness.
Moreover, she spoke confidently of her father’s
power to beat them at their own game, notwithstanding
the strong hand shown by the Company so
shortly before. Of Barreau’s part in the war for
pelts, she seemed profoundly ignorant. His name
never passed her lips.

Once the swelling left my arm the torn place
healed rapidly. So that by the end of a week I
felt no inconvenience, and it was beyond need of
any treatment save a simple bandage to protect
it from the rubbing of my sleeve. Then I bethought
me of my neglected snowshoeing, and sallied
forth on the track of that free, effortless stride
which had so far eluded me. At the gate of the
stockade I turned back, on the impulse of the moment,
and went to the Montell cabin to ask Jessie if
she were a snowshoe expert or wished to become
one.

“Thank Heaven for a chance to see the outside
of this stockade wall once more,” she cried, in mock
fervor. “Will I go snowshoeing? Yea, and
verily. I detest being mewed up, and I don’t like
to wander off alone. This big desolate country is
so forbidding. Yes, I’ve snowshoed a little—one
winter in the Wisconsin woods.”

She had more of a mastery over the webbed
boots of the North than I, it shortly transpired.
We went up the river a mile or two, crossed it,
and climbed to the top of a bald point that immediately
appealed to us as an ideal coasting-place.
We were in something of a light-hearted mood,
anyway, and like a pair of children on a holiday
amused ourselves by sliding down and climbing
back to slide down again. Thus we passed two or
three hours, at imminent risk of frozen cheeks and
noses, for it was bitterly cold, so cold that the snow
crunched beneath our feet like powdered rosin.
And when we wearied of that we went trailing
home over glistening flats that lay between us and
the post. Down on the bare bottomlands of the
Sicannie a tenuous frost-haze hung in the air.
Back from the valley edges the great woods stood
in frozen ranks, branches heavy-freighted with the
latest fall of snow. To the west towered the mountain
range, robed in ermine now instead of summer
purple; huge, ragged crests, flashing in the heatless
sun.

“What insignificant creatures we are, after all,”
the girl stopped suddenly and looked back at the
white peaks, and to the north and south where
the somber woodland stood like twin walls. “For
a true sense of his own importance in the universe
one has only to face—this.” She nodded toward
the surrounding forest, and the Rockies crouching
against the far skyline. “It is so big—and so silent.
It gives me a feeling of being pitted against
a gigantic, remorseless power—a something indefinable,
and yet terrible in its strength. Power—when
I can understand it—fascinates me. But
this makes me shrink. Sometimes I actually feel
afraid. They say that men compelled to stay up
here alone often go mad. I hardly wonder. I
don’t think I like the North.”

“So you feel that way,” I rejoined. “So do
I, at times.”

She assented soberly.

“Perhaps we are blessed or cursed, whichever it
may be, with too much imagination; and give it
overfree rein.”

“No,” I returned, blundering on in an attempt
to voice that which I had often felt, but could never
express. “There is an atmosphere, a something
about these immense spaces that sits hard on the
nerves. We don’t have to imagine these things;
they’re here. It seems to me that any wilderness
untamed must have that same effect; it overawes
one. And man hasn’t tamed this yet. The North
is master—and we feel it.”

We plodded a few yards farther.

“The North is master—and we feel it,” she
repeated presently. “I resent that. I shouldn’t
care,” she murmured thoughtfully, “to be wholly
at the mercy of the North. It reminds me of the
sea, cold and gray and pitiless.” And she fell into
a silent reflective mood as we trudged along to the
post.

Just at the gate of the stockade we met two men—two
tall men burdened with shoulder-packs. I
knew the face of every man in the pay of Montell,
but these were not of his following. Yet somewhere,
sometime, I had seen them; my memory insisted
upon this. But where or when, I could not
instantly recall.

They passed within a few feet of me, their *parka*
hoods drawn close about their cheeks. I had only
their profiles to spur my recollection. But that sufficed.
I stood watching them bear away to the
north, and as mechanically I shuffled the cards of
memory a picture flashed out clear as the ace of
spades in a diamond suit. The two men were
those who had come to the camp of Three Wolves
early in the fall, the same who had sat upon the
log with Barreau that morning and made overtures
for peaceful capitulation. Once I had placed them,
my interest flagged. I turned and entered the
stockade. Jessie had kept on to the store. Montell
was standing on the stoop, as I reached the
building, his hands thrust deep in the pockets of
his fur coat. By the fixity of his gaze as I turned
the corner I guessed that he was watching the two
men. A backward glance showed them just vanishing
into the belt of spruce that ran to the brow
of the hill.

“Well,” I greeted, “you’ve had callers to break
the monotony, I see.”

“That’s what,” he replied. “Queer fish, too.
Wouldn’t stay no time at all. Claimed to be free
traders like ourselves, and wanted to know if we
minded ’em tryin’ to pick up a few pelts around
here in the spring. Got a stock of goods, they said,
somewhere between here and the Peace.”

I pricked up my ears at that. Someone had
fibbed properly. And when it was on the tip of my
tongue to say that they were Hudson’s Bay men,
I refrained. That information would keep, I reflected.
The more I thought of it the less I cared
to make any assertions. The men had done no
harm apparently. If they had lied to Montell he
was probably shrewd enough to know why. If
Montell were lying to me, he likely had good reasons.
I dropped the matter forthwith. It was for
Barreau to speculate upon, when he returned.

So I went into the store and warmed myself,
and, after Jessie went home, spent the rest of the
afternoon playing pinochle with Ben Wise. But
the sight of those men in buckskin had jarred me
out of the peaceful routine of thought that the
quiet weeks had bred. I was once more brought
up against the game of cross-purposes that Barreau
and Montell were playing, and the Hudson’s Bay
Company again loomed as a factor. I wondered if
anything had befallen Barreau. He had told me
he would be back in four days—the time had doubled.
Ben brought me up standing in the midst of
these reflections. He threw down his cards in disgust.

“I quit yuh,” he growled. “By gosh, I want to
play cards when I play, an’ do my dreamin’ in bed.”
So we put up the deck, and I went to my cabin and
built a fire.

The cheery warmth of the cabin, after the exertion
of snowshoeing, and sitting there in a state
of mental passivity, soon begot drowsiness. I piled
wood on the fire, and stretched myself on the bunk.
And the next minute, it seemed, I was being shaken
out of my sleep—but I opened my eyes to candle
light, and Barreau standing over me, smiling.

“Come out of the trance, old snoozer,” he laughed
cheerfully. “I’ve just got in. Suppose we go and
eat before the cook shuts up shop.”

“Amen to that,” I replied.

I put fresh wood on the fire, which had sunk to a
few dull embers, while Barreau busied himself with
the wash-basin and comb. Stripped of the *parka*
that had cast confusing shadows on his features I
saw that he had suffered attack from the frost. A
patch of blackening skin stood over each cheek-bone.

“I see you got bitten, too,” I remarked—and
went on to tell him of my clash with the huskies.

“I had worse than husky dogs to contend with,”
he returned in a matter of fact way. “Our two
Frenchmen, the cabin and everything in it, has been
spirited away. I went on a scouting trip, thinking
I might get track of something. I’ve laid out every
night since I left here. Hull fared even worse than
I; he may lose some of his toes.”

“And you found——” I started to ask.

“Nothing,” he replied carelessly. “I don’t think
the men came to any harm. But it’s one more item
on the debit side.”

Over in the mess-house we had the long room
to ourselves, except for the cook pottering over his
fire. And in the midst of the meal I bethought
me to tell Barreau of the two strangers, and Montell’s
account of their mission. He laid down his
knife and fork and listened intently.

“Free traders, eh?” he drawled. “Not so bad
for Montell, that—or has the Company taken a
fresh tack, I wonder? They knew I was away.
I had a feeling that we were being watched, and
so had Hull. Quite an engrossing little three-cornered
game, isn’t it, Bob?”

We left the cookhouse without referring to this
again. A light shone dully through the store window
nearest us, and we walked toward our cabin,
and just short of the door Barreau turned aside.

“I may as well go and tell him that the brothers
Grau have gone over to the enemy,” he said to me.
“Come along, Bob, and see him squirm. He always
does when he is stabbed in such a vital point as
the purse. That’s a veritable heel of Achilles with
him.”

Montell was alone. He stood with his back to
the fire, legs spread apart, hands clasped behind him.
He looked very well satisfied with himself. His
little eyes surveyed us placidly from under the blinking,
puffy lids.

“Well, George, you’re back, eh?” he observed.
“How’s everything below?”

“Very well, I dare say,” Barreau answered, during
the process of making a cigarette, “from the
other fellow’s point of view.”

Montell’s eyelids drew a little nearer together.

“How’s that?” he inquired, in his mildest manner.

And Barreau, when he had found a box to his
liking and seated himself on it beside the fire, proceeded
to tell him very much as he had told me.
The two of them eyed each other a few seconds.
Then Montell bit the end off the cigar he had
tucked in one corner of his thick-lipped mouth and
spat it viciously into the fireplace.

“God damn ’em!” he snarled. But whether the
Company or the two Frenchmen he did not specify—perhaps
both. Barreau laughed softly.

“Don’t let your angry passions rise,” he sneered.
“Temper always induces apoplexy in fat people. A
man of your beefy tendency should be very careful.”

Montell’s heavy jowl quivered slightly, and his
jaws clamped together. Aside from that he kept
an impassive front. With that last shot Barreau
turned his gaze to the fire, and as Montell stood
staring intently before him there was an interval
of silence. In the hush a scuffling sound arose in
the rear of the store.

“Them darned rats,” Montell muttered.

He cocked his head aside and stood in a listening
attitude, I, watching him unobtrusively, saw his
glance flit furtively from me to Barreau and then
to a table standing just back from the hearth. For
the first time I noticed then that a rifle lay upon it,
the general direction of the muzzle toward Barreau.
Again he looked swiftly from me to George,
and then stared straight away into the black
shadows that shrouded the far end of the long
room. Once more the rustling and scraping
sounds could be heard.

“Them darned rats,” he repeated. “They’ll eat
us out before spring.”

He left the fire and stole softly back among the
shadows, whence presently came the noise of something
being thrown, followed by Montell’s voice
cursing the rats.

Barreau had not once turned his head. But I
had watched Mr. Simon Montell as much because
his actions interested me as because I expected anything
to happen. And I distinctly saw the rifle
shift its position when he passed the table end;
as if he had accidentally brushed against the projecting
stock. Accidentally or otherwise, the muzzle
then pointed straight at Barreau. I have a deep-rooted
aversion to seeing the business end of a gun
directed at a man unless such is the intention of
the man behind it. Loaded or empty, my father
taught me, never point a gun at anybody unless you
mean to hurt him. And so I reached over and gave
the rifle a hitch that pointed it toward the opposite
wall, just as Montell returned from his rat hunting.

“By thunder, I’d oughto took that to ’em,” he declared—as
if he had but noticed the rifle.

He placed himself before the fire again. In a
minute or so came the subdued rustling of the rats.
Montell winked at me, picked up the Winchester,
cocked it, and went tip-toeing toward the rear.
Barreau came out of his study at the click of the
hammer. He flashed a quick glance after Montell.
Then quietly he moved his box backward till his
body, when he seated himself, was no longer clearly
outlined in the firelight.

The rat activities ceased. After a time Montell
came poking back again, carrying the rifle in his
right hand. As he reached the end of the table,
so close to me that I could have touched him, and
within six feet of Barreau, he stumbled, pitched
sharply forward, and the report of the gun made
my heart leap.

With the forward lurch of Montell’s body Barreau
cast himself backward like an uncoiled spring,
and fell full length, thus escaping the bullet. He
made no attempt to rise, simply rolled over on his
side. For an instant a pistol glinted in his hand,
and his thin lips were drawn back from his white,
even teeth. As quickly as he had drawn it he thrust
the six-shooter back out of sight. The habitual
unruffled expression came back to his face as Montell
got upon his feet, leaving the rifle upon the
floor. Barreau sat up then.

“By the great horn spoon,” Montell stammered.
“I—I oughto be kicked. By gosh, I thought that
hammer was down. Darn me for a careless fool,
runnin’ round with a loaded gun and stumblin’
over a little piece of wood. I’d no idee I was so
blamed clumsy. I guess I’m gettin’ old all right.”

Barreau laughed, a cold-blooded unmirthful
sound. He got up from his sitting posture, laid
hold of the rifle, and stood it against the wall beside
him. Then he sat down on his box, and felt
with his fingers till he located the bullet hole. It
was embedded in the log, on a level with his breast.

“Clumsy?” Barreau said, in a voice nearly devoid
of inflection. “Well, yes; it was rather
clumsy.”

Montell was facing the light now. Barreau got
up from his box again, and Montell took a step
backward. Thus for a half-minute the two faced
each other silently, gray eye pitting itself against
cold, steel-blue. Montell weakened under that direct
contemptuous glare. His glance sought me in
a furtive way, and the fat, pudgy hands of him
began to fidget.

“Don’t do it again, Montell,” Barreau said
slowly, and his tone was like a slap in the face.

Then he sat down upon the box and rolled himself
another cigarette.

CHAPTER XVI—CLAWS UNSHEATHED
============================

The heavy log walls must have muffled the shot
completely, for, contrary to my expectations, no inquiring
faces came poking in the door. In pure
defiance, I believe, Barreau kept his place by the
fire, smoking placidly till it wore on to ten o’clock.
Then Montell, pursing up his lips, put on his overcoat
and left without a word. Shortly after that
Cullen came in, followed by Ben Wise. They slept
in the store, one at each end. At their entrance
Barreau drew the *parka* hood about his ears and we
took our departure.

The fire was down to a single charred stick, but
the chill had not yet laid hold of the air within,
and we made ready for bed before the numbing fingers
of the frost made free with our persons. I
stretched myself on my bunk and wrapped the
blankets and a rabbit-skin robe about me, but Barreau
sat on the edge of his bed, staring into the candle
flame as if he sought therein the answer to a
riddle.

“If those Company men made the same proposition
to Montell,” he broke out suddenly, “that they
made to me, it is ten to one that Montell stands
ready to deliver the goods. That would account
for the baldness of that play to-night.”

“You think he did mean it, then?” I had so far
given Montell the benefit of the doubt, despite a
growing conviction that he had stumbled purposely.

“Why, of course; that’s obvious, isn’t it?” Barreau
declared. “You know he did. Else why did
you move that gun after he’d very artfully contrived
to point it my way?”

“So you were watching him, after all?” said I.

“I always watch him,” he answered drily.

“I feel sure that he sees—or thinks he sees—the
way clear, once I’m attended to,” Barreau continued.
“I’ve been looking for this very thing.
It came to me that day we struck the pack-trail.
You remember? I started to tell you, and changed
my mind.”

I nodded. The incident was quite fresh in my
memory—my juvenile egotism had received a bump
on that very occasion.

“It struck me with a sort of premonitory force,
as I stood there looking at those mule tracks,” he
went on, “that if the Company offered him the
same terms they did me he would jump at it. They
offered me forty thousand dollars to get out of the
game, to give them a bill of sale of my interest—*and
they would take care of my partner*. You
see? Now I’m satisfied they wouldn’t incorporate
that last clause in any offer to Montell. I’m not
boasting when I say that from the beginning I’ve
been the thorn in the Company’s flesh. Every time
they’ve locked horns with me, I’ve come out on top.
They might offer him forty thousand, but he’d have
to guarantee them against me. And I think that
performance to-night is a sample of how he will
try to clear the way.”

“To put it baldly,” I said. “You think he’ll
kill you out of hand—if he gets a chance to do it
in a way that won’t prove a boomerang?”

“Exactly,” Barreau observed.

“Then,” I suggested, and even as the words
were on my tongue I stood amazed at the ruthless
streak they seemed to uncover, “why not catch him
at it—and do the killing yourself. There’s no law
here to restrain *him*, apparently. Be your own law—if
you know you’re *right*.”

“I can’t.” Barreau muttered. “Not that my conscience
would ever trouble me. He’s protected
in a way he doesn’t dream of. And he’s too wary
of me to lay himself liable. If anything happens
it will be an accident; you know how it would have
been to-night. You, sitting right there, could not
have declared it otherwise, no matter what your
private opinion might have been. He has pretty
well calculated the chances. No, Mr. Montell is
not going to put himself in any position where I’d
be clearly justified in snuffing him out.”

For a minute or so he sat silent, frowning at the
candle on the table between my bunk and his.

“How he would bait me,” he went on presently,
“if he knew that killing him is the one thing I desire
to avoid, at any cost! I hope it doesn’t come
to that. It would be only just, but I have no wish
to mete out justice to him. His miserable life is
safe from me, for her sake—no, I’ll be honest: for
my own. I want him to live, till I can force him to
tell her a few truths that she will never believe except
from his own lips. I was a seven times fool
for not doing that long before we reached Benton.
I could have forestalled all this. But I didn’t suspect
he was tolling her on—for a purpose.”

He stopped again. It was not the first time that
Barreau had touched upon that theme, and always
his tongue had been stricken with a semi-paralysis
just short of complete revelation. In a general way
it was plain enough to me, from the verbal collisions
between himself and Montell on that same
subject. And though I was humanly curious
enough to want the particulars at first hand, I
made no effort to draw forth his story. Hence I
was surprised when he took up the thread of the
conversation where he had left off.

“One reads of these peculiar situations in books,”
he rested his chin in the palms of his hands and
stared abstractedly at me, “but they are seldom
encountered in everyday living. I dare say the
world is full of women, good women, beautiful,
brilliant women, that I might have won. Yet I
must fall victim to an insane craving for an elfin-faced,
hot-tempered sprite who will have none of
me. Six or seven years ago she was a big-eyed
school-girl, with a mop of unruly hair. Then all at
once, she grew up, and—and I’ve been the captive
of her bow and spear ever since. Love—the old,
primal instinct to mate! It’s a brutal force, Bob,
when it focuses all a man’s being on one particular
woman. I never told her, but I’m sure she knew; I
know she did. And she—well, a man never can
tell what a woman thinks or feels or will do or say,
or whether she means what she says when she says
it. I don’t know. But I’ve thought that she did
care—only she wouldn’t admit it until I made her.
She’s the type that wouldn’t give herself to even
the man she loved without a struggle. And I’m
just savage enough to be glad of that. I’ve only
been waiting till this spring and the end of this fur
deal, so that we would have the wherewith to live,
before I cornered her and fought it out.

“But I’ve waited too long, I’m afraid. You see,
Montell has always been against me; that is, he has
secretly been cutting the ground from under my
feet since he learned that I wanted *her*. The old
fool looks into his own heart and seeing perfect
bliss in an alliance with ‘blood’ and ‘money,’
straightway determines that these two will insure
her future happiness—oh, I can read him, like an
open book. He’d move the heavens to bring about
what he’d term ‘a good match.’

“As it happens I can compare pedigrees with the
best of them—Good Lord!” he broke off and laughed
ironically. “That’s sickening; but I’m trying to
make the thing clear. Naive recital this, I must
say. Well, anyway, I measured up to the standard
of breeding, but fell wofully short on the financial
requirements. And, somehow, foxy Simon grew
afraid that I was in a fair way to upset his cherished
plans for Jess. This was after we’d gone
in together on this fur business. He had always
acted rather guardedly about Jessie and myself, but
I had him there; so long as she went out, I could
meet her socially, and he could not prevent. Then
a year ago last summer the Hudson’s Bay undertook
to run me out of this country. That bred
the trouble on High River, and after that I was
really outlawed. I expect he began at once to
figure how he could turn that to his advantage—regarding
me as a dishtowel that he could wring
dry and throw aside. He has nursed a direct, personal
grudge since the first season. Naturally, he
wanted to dominate everything, and I wouldn’t let
him. He thought himself the biggest toad in the
puddle, and it angered him when he found himself
outsplashed. He made mistakes. I corrected
them, and held him down at every turn; I had to.
It was a ticklish job, and I made him move according
to my judgment. Which was a very bitter sort
of medicine for a man of Montell’s domineering
stamp. So he was not long in developing a rancorous
dislike of me, which seems to have thrived on
concealment.

“Where I made the grand mistake was in letting
him keep her from knowing that we were partners
in this business. Without giving the matter a second
thought I had kept our business strictly to myself.
He hinted that others might follow our lead,
and at first we had visions of making terms with
the Hudson’s Bay and building up a permanent
trade here. After two or three years of this I
didn’t think it well to plunge into explanations last
spring. I made a mistake there, however; the mistake,
I should say. Jessie had gone out a good
deal the last two winters, both in St. Louis and
New Orleans, and she was becoming quite a belle.
For all that, I think—oh, well, it doesn’t matter
what I think. To make a long story short, a day or
two before the *Moon* went upstream she told me
that she was going as far as Benton with her father.
I, of course had to rise to the occasion, be very
properly surprised and inform her that I, too, contemplated
a trip on that same steamer. And I
straightway hunted Montell up and tried to have
him dissuade her from the journey.

“I didn’t fathom the purport of it, even then—although
I knew that he would welcome any chance
to put me wrong in her eyes. It was too late, I felt,
to volunteer any details concerning my part in her
father’s business up North. So I contented myself
with his assurance and her statement, that she
would see him as far as Benton and then return on
the *Moon*.

“You see, I could easily imagine what would be
her opinion of me, if she learned all the unsavory
details with which the Northwest has been pleased
to embellish the record of Slowfoot George. She
has such a profound scorn for anything verging on
dishonesty, and according to the sources of her information
I’ve got some very shady things laid at
my door. I can’t be anything but a moral degenerate,
in her eyes. Oh, he engineered it skilfully. If
I had only waited at Benton till the bull-train was
ready to start!

“You know how her returning panned out. I
believe now, that he intended from the first that she
should go on to MacLeod. I’d come to the conclusion
that he would knife me on the business end,
and that was why I wanted Walt Sanders with me.
But it didn’t occur to me that his plans were so
far-reaching. That unfortunate Police raid delivered
me into his hands at the psychological moment
I was like a cornered rat that day she came to the
guardhouse and peered in on us through the cell
door. I couldn’t help lashing back when she was
so frankly contemptuous. I could see so clearly
how he had managed it. And having accomplished
his purpose he saw to it that escape was made easy,
for he still needed me up here. Mind you, it would
have been pretty much the same if I had not been
taken by the Police. He would have seen that
she was well posted before she left MacLeod.

“The rest you have seen for yourself. She spoiled
his plan a little, perhaps, by coming all the way
once she had started. That wasn’t his fault; he
didn’t want her to come here, especially after I
picked up one of her combs that night we came
to the camp, and threatened him if he didn’t send
her home. She *is* wilful. And the only way he
could have kept her from coming to the Sicannie
would have been to go back himself.

“If our presence here has puzzled her you may be
sure he has made satisfactory explanations. I am
only biding my time. If I can hold him down and
stand off the Hudson’s Bay till the furs come in, I
can win out so far as the money end is concerned.
And if I am to lose her, by God he’ll pay for it!
She shall know the truth if I have to choke it out
of him one word at a time.”

“It looks like a big contract,” I sympathized.

He made a gesture that might have meant anything,
but did not reply. Presently he reached for
his tobacco. When his cigarette was lighted he
blew out the candle. By the glowing red tip I
could follow his movements as he settled himself
and drew the bedding about him.
“Oh, Bob,” he addressed me after a long interval.

“What is it?” I answered.

“If that old hound and I should get mixed up,
you keep out of it. Somebody will have to see that
Jess gets out of this God-forsaken country. You’re
woods-wise enough to manage that now.”

“Why, of course I’d do that,” I replied. It was
a startling prospect he held forth. “But I hope
nothing like that happens.”

“Anything might happen,” he returned. “We’re
sitting on a powder-keg. I can’t guarantee that it
won’t blow up. Montell is a bull-headed brute, and
so am I. If he should throw a slug into me, I’d
probably live long enough to return the favor.”

Then, after a pause: “I’ve been running on like
an old woman. That rifle business to-night jarred
me like the devil. Maybe a decent night’s rest
will scatter these pessimistic ideas. Here goes,
Robert; good-night.”

With which he turned his face to the wall, and
did, I verily believe, go at once to sleep. And he
was still asleep, his head resting on one doubled-up
arm, when I got up and lighted the candle at
seven in the morning. My slumbers had been beset
by disturbing visions of violent deeds, the by-product
of what I had seen and heard that evening;
Barreau, by his cheerful aspect on arising, had
banished his troubles while he slept.

The day dawned, clear and cold and very still.
It passed, and another followed, and still others,
till I lost track of their number in the frost-ridden
cycle of time. Montell’s momentous stumble
grew to be a dim incident of the past; sometimes
I was constrained to wonder if, after all, he had
done that with malice aforethought. Upon divers
occasions I met and talked with Jessie, but I did
not go to the house again, until Barreau hinted,
one day, that unless I continued the intimacy I had
accidentally begun, Montell would think I suspected
him, that I was taking Barreau’s side.

“There is no use in your making an enemy of
him,” he said.

“Well,” I replied, “I must say I don’t altogether
like his fatherly manner. He makes me uncomfortable.”

“Nevertheless,” Barreau declared, “he has taken
a fancy to you. He’s human. And seeing it’s not
your fight, you’d better not break off short on that
account. Better not antagonize him. It’s different
with me; I have no choice.”

Influenced more or less by Barreau’s suggestion,
I suppose, I found myself giving assent that very
afternoon when Montell asked me to the cabin for
supper and a session at cribbage. Over the meal
and the subsequent card-game he was so genial, so
very much like other big easy-going men that I had
known, I could scarcely credit him as cold-bloodedly
scheming to defraud and, if necessary, murder
another man. Somehow, without any logical
reason, I had always associated fat men, especially
big, fat men, with the utmost good-nature, with a
sort of rugged straightforward uprightness that
frowned on anything that savored of unfair advantage.
I could not quite fathom Mr. Simon Montell—nor
George Barreau, either, so far as that goes.

Shortly after that, at the close of an exceeding
bitter day, an Indian came striding down the Sicannie
to the post. When the guard at the big
gate let him in his first word was for the “White
Chief,” as Barreau was known among the men of
the lodges. Ben Wise came shouting this at the
door of our cabin, and we followed Ben to the
store. The Indian shook hands with Barreau.
Then he drew his blanket coat closer about him and
delivered himself of a few short guttural sentences.
Barreau stood looking rather thoughtful when the
copper-skinned one had finished. He asked a few
questions in the native tongue, receiving answers
as brief. And after another period of consideration
he turned to me.

“Crow Feathers is sick,” he said. “Pneumonia,
I should judge, by this fellow’s description of the
symptoms. The chances are good that he’ll be
dead by the time I get there—if he isn’t already.
The medicine man can’t help him, so old Three
Wolves has sent for me, out of his sublime faith in
my ability to do anything. I can’t help him, but
I’ll have to go, as a matter of policy. Do you
want to come along, Bob? It won’t be a long
jaunt, and it will give you some real snowshoe practice.”

I embraced the opportunity without giving him
a chance to reconsider which he showed signs of
doing later in the evening. Curiously enough Montell
also attempted to dissuade me from the trip.

“What’s the use?” he argued. “You’ll likely get
your fingers or your feet frozen. It’s a blamed
poor time of the year to go trapesin’ around the
country. You better stay here where there’s houses
and fires.”

The cold and other disagreeable elements didn’t
look formidable enough to deter me, however; I
wanted something to break the monotony. A trip
to Three Wolves’ camp in mid-winter appealed very
strongly to me, and I turned a deaf ear to Montell’s
advice, and held Barreau strictly to the proposal
which he evinced a desire to withdraw.

That evening we got the dog harness ready, and
rigged up a toboggan for the trail, loading it with
food, bedding, and a small, light tent. Two hours
before daybreak we started. There was a moon,
and the land spread away boldly under the silver
flood, like a great, ghostly study in black and white.

All that day our Indian led us up the Sicannie.
There was no need to use our snowshoes or to
“break” trail, for we kept to the ice, and its covering
of snow was packed smooth and hard as a
macadam roadway. By grace of an early start and
steady jogging we traversed a distance that was
really a two days’ journey, and at dusk the lodges
of Three Wolves’ band loomed in the edge of a
spruce grove. Then our Indian shook hands with
Barreau and me, and swung off to the right.

“He says his lodge is over there in a draw,” Barreau
told me, when I asked the reason for that.

The dogs of the camp greeted us with shrill yapping,
and two or three Indians came out. They
scattered the yelping huskies with swiftly thrown
pieces of firewood, and greeted Barreau gravely.
After a mutual exchange of words Barreau vented
a sharp exclamation.

“The devil!” he said, and followed this by stripping
the harness from the dogs.

“What now?” I asked, as I bent over the leader’s
collar.

“You’ll see in a minute,” he answered briefly, and
there was an angry ring in his voice.

The dogs freed and the toboggan turned on its
side, he led the way to a lodge pointed out by
one of the hunters. A head protruded. It was
withdrawn as we approached, and some one within
called out in Cree. And when we had inserted ourselves
through the circular opening I echoed Barreau’s
exclamation. For sitting beside the fire
which burned cheerfully in the center, was Crow
Feathers himself, smoking his pipe like a man in
the best of health. Nor was there any suggestion
of illness in the voice he lifted up at our entrance.
Barreau fired a question or two at him, and a look
of mild interest overspread Crow Feathers’ aquiline
face as he answered.

“It was a plant all the way through,” Barreau
declared, sitting down and slipping off his mitts.
“Three Wolves sent no message to me. Crow
Feathers never was sick in his life.”

“I wonder who’s responsible?” said I. “Do Indians
ever play practical jokes?”

He shrugged his shoulders at the suggestion.
Crow Feathers’ squaw pushed a pot of boiled venison
before us, and some bannock, and we fell upon
that in earnest. Not till we had finished and were
fumbling for tobacco *did* Barreau refer to our
wild-goose chase again.

“I’d like to have speech with that red gentleman
who led us up here,” he said grimly. “It may be
that Mr. Montell has unsheathed his claws in earnest.
If he has, I’ll clip them, and clip them
short.”

CHAPTER XVII—NINE POINTS OF THE LAW
===================================

A perceptible wind from out the east blew
squarely in our teeth all the way down the Sicannie.
Slight as it was, a man could no more face it
steadily than he could hold his nostrils to sulphur
fumes blown from a funnel. All day it held us
back from our best speed. Time and again we were
forced to halt in the lee of a wooded point, where
with threshing of arms we drove the sluggish
blood back into our numbing finger-tips. Twice
the frost struck its fangs into my cheeks, despite
the strap of rabbit fur that covered my face between
eyes and mouth. Barreau rubbed the whitened
places with snow till the returning blood stung
like a searing iron. Twice I performed a like office
for him. So it came that night had fallen when
we lifted up our voices at the gate of the stockade.
And while we waited for it to open, our dogs whining
at the snarl of their fellows inside, some one in
the glimmer behind us hailed the post in French.
A minute later the frosty creak of snowshoes
sounded near and a figure came striding on our
track. As he reached us the gate swung open. A
group of men stood just within. One held a lantern
so that the light fell upon our faces—and, incidentally,
their own. They were strangers, to the
last man. Barreau ripped out an oath. For a second
we surveyed each other. Then one of the men
spoke to him who had come up with us:

“Is there aught afoot?” he asked, with a marked
Scotch accent.

“Not that I have seen, Donald,” the other replied.

“Then,” said the first, speaking to Barreau,
“come ye in an’ put by your dogs. Dinna stand
there as if ye looked for harm.”

“I am very sure there will be no harm done us,”
Barreau drawled, unmoved in the face of this
strange turn of affairs. “But I am of two minds
about coming in.”

The Scot shrugged his shoulders. “That’s as
ye like,” he observed. “’Tis not for me tae compel
ye. ’Tis merely the factor’s word that if ye came,
he desired speech wi’ ye. Ye will find him noo at
the store.”

Barreau considered this a moment. “Lead the
way then, old Bannockburn,” he said lightly, “we
will take our dog-team with us.”

“Keep an eye to the rear, Bob,” he muttered to
me. “This may be a trap. But we’ve got to chance
it to find out how things stand.”

I nodded acquiescence to this; for I myself
craved to know how the thing had been brought
to pass.

The group of men scattered. Save the Scot with
the lantern, not one was in sight when Barreau
halted the dogs and turned the toboggan on its side
by the front of the store. Our lantern-bearer
opened the door and stepped inside, motioning us to
enter. My eyes swept the long room for sign of
violent deeds. But there were none. The goods
lay in their orderly arrangement upon the shelves.
The same up-piled boxes and bales threw huge
shadows to the far end. There was no change
save in the men who stood by the fire. Instead of
Montell warming his coat-tails before the crackling
blaze, a thin-faced man stood up before the fire;
a tall man, overtopping Barreau and myself by a
good four inches. He bowed courteously, looking
us over with keen eyes that were black as the long
mustache-end he turned over and over on his forefinger.
A thatch of hair white as the drifts that
hid the frozen earth outside covered his head. He
might have been the colonel of a crack cavalry
regiment—a leader of fighting men. His voice,
when he spoke, bore a trace of the Gaul.

“Gentlemen,” he greeted, “it is a very cold night
outside. Come up to the fire.”

He pushed a stool and a box forward with his
foot and turned to a small, swarthy individual who
had so far hovered in the background.

“Leave us now, Dufour,” he said. “And you,
Donald, come again in a half hour.”
“*Oui, M’sieu.*” Dufour gathered up his coat and
departed obediently, the Scot following.

As nonchalantly as if he were in the house of a
friend Barreau drew his box up to the fire and sat
down; thrust the parka hood back from his face
and held his hands out to the blaze. But I noticed
that he laid the rifle across his knees, and taking
my cue from this I did the same when I sat down.
A faint smile flitted across the tall man’s features.
He also drew a seat up to the fire on the opposite
side of the hearth so that he faced us.

“It is to Mr. Barreau I speak, is it not?” he
inquired politely.

“It is,” Barreau acknowledged. “And you, I
take it, are Factor Le Noir of King Charles’
House.”

“The Black Factor, as they call me—yes,” he
smiled. “I am glad to have met you, Mr. Barreau.
You are a hardy man.”

“I did not come seeking compliments,” Barreau
returned curtly. “Why are you here—you and
your *voyageurs*, making free with another man’s
house? And what have you done with Simon Montell
and his daughter? and the forty-odd men that
were here two days ago?”

“One thing at a time,” Le Noir answered imperturbably.
“Is it possible that you do not know of
the arrangement which was made?”

“It is obvious that there was an arrangement,”
Barreau snorted. “What I would know is the
manner of its carrying out.”

“To be brief, then,” the other said, speaking very
slowly and distinctly, as if he measured out his
words, “for a consideration Simon Montell has
abandoned the field. While my Company permits
no competitor in the trade, according to our charter,
yet sometimes it is cheaper to buy than to
fight.”

Barreau’s shoulders stiffened. “Your charter is
a dead letter,” he declared. “You know it as well
as I. That, however, is beside the point. You have
made terms with Montell—but you have made none
with me.”

“Possession is nine points of the law,” Le Noir
returned tranquilly. “Having bought we will now
fight, if it be necessary. One does not pay twice
for the same goods. Be wise, and seek redress
from—well, if the fat man has tricked you, make
*him* pay.”

“Suppose I choose instead to make the Company
pay,” Barreau drawled. “What if I come to
you with a hundred well-armed red men at my
back?”

“Ah, it is of that I wished to speak with you,”
the Black Factor crossed his legs and emphasized
his remarks with a waggling forefinger. “Of that
very thing. I know that you are not easily turned
aside, but this time—listen. To-night, here within
these stockade walls, there are four redcoat men
from MacLeod. They have come seeking”—he
paused significantly—“you can guess whom they
seek. Now, if, when you leave here, your tracks
should point to the Indian camps of the west—why,
then the redcoats shall be shown it. And I
will send twenty men to help them. But if you
take the south trail these four will return empty-handed.”

Barreau sat a minute or two pondering this.
“You win,” he said at length. “I am not the man
to beat my fists on a stone. Give us flour and tea—and
your word as a gentleman that the Police
shall not be put on our track—and we quit the
Sicannie.”

“You shall have the tea and the flour,” Le Noir
agreed. “There are the shelves. Take what you
want. I give my word for the Police. I would beg
of you to stay to-night, but these government men
have sharp ears and eyes. Should they get a hint—I
cannot put a blanket over the mouths of my
men——” he spread his hands as if to indicate that
anything might happen.

Throughout our brief stay Barreau’s thinly
veiled vigilance did not once relax. The supplies he
selected I carried to the door while he stood back
watching me with his rifle slung in the hollow of
his arm. If this wary attitude irked Le Noir he
passed it by. To me it seemed that Barreau momentarily
expected some overt act.

Eventually we had the food, a hundred pounds
of flour, a square tin of tea, a little coffee, some
salt and pepper and half a dozen extra pairs of
moccasins lashed on the toboggan. Then he stirred
up the surly dogs and we went crunching over the
harsh snow to the stockade wall attended by Donald
and his lantern, and the Factor himself swathed
to the heels in a great coat of beaver.

At the drawing of the bar and the inward swing
of the great gate, Barreau put a final question to
Le Noir. “Tell me, if it is not betraying a confidence,”
he said ironically, “how much Montell’s flitting
cost the Company?”

“It is no secret,” the Factor replied. “Sixty
thousand dollars in good Bank of Montreal notes.
A fair price.”

“A fair price indeed,” Barreau laughed “Good-night,
M’sieu the Black.”

The gate creaked to its close behind us as the
dogs humped against the collars. A hundred yards,
and the glimmering night enfolded us; the stockade
became a vague blur in the hazy white.

Barreau swung sharp to the west. This course
he held for ten minutes or more. Then down to
the river, across it and up to the south flat. Here
he turned again and curtly bidding me drive the
dogs, tramped on ahead peering down at the unbroken
snow as he went. We plodded thus till we
were once more abreast of the stockade. For a
moment I lost sight of Barreau; then he called to
me and I came up with him standing with his back
to the cutting wind that still thrust from out the
east like a red-hot spear.

He took the dog-whip from me without a word,
swinging the leaders southward. In the uncertain
light I could see no mark in the snow. But under
my webbed shoes there was an uneven feeling, as if
it were trampled. We bore straight across the flat
and angled up a long hill, and on the crest of it
plunged into the gloomy aisles of the forest. Once
among the spruce, Barreau halted the near-winded
dogs for a breathing spell.

“We will go a few miles and make camp for
the night,” he said. “This is Montell’s trail.”

“The more miles the better,” I rejoined. “I’m
tired, but I have no wish to hobnob with the Policemen.”

“Faugh!” he burst out. “There are no Policemen.
That was as much a bluff as my hundred
well-armed Indians. Le Noir is a poser. Do you
think I’d ever have gotten outside that stockade
if there had been a redcoat at his call? Oh, no!
That would have been the very chance for him—one
that he would have been slow to overlook. I
know him. He’s well named the Black Factor.
His heart is as black as his whiskers and the truth
is not in him—when a lie can make or save a dollar
for his god—which is the Company. We have
not quite done with him yet, I imagine. Hup there,
you huskies—the trail is long and we are two days
behind!”

CHAPTER XVIII—THE LONG ARM OF THE COMPANY
=========================================

The fourth day out, at a noon camp by a spring
that still defied the frost, Barreau straightened up
suddenly from his stooping over the frying-pan.

“Listen,” he said.

His ears were but little keener than mine, for
even as he spoke I caught a sound that was becoming
familiar from daily hearing: the soft *pluff*,
*pluff* of snowshoes. In the thick woods, where no
sweeping winds could swirl it here and there and
pile it in hard smooth banks, the snow was spread
evenly, a loose, three-foot layer, as yet uncrusted.
Upon this the foot of man gave but little sound,
even where there was a semblance of trail. So
that almost in the instant that we heard and turned
our heads we could see those who came toward us.
Three men and two women—facing back upon the
trail we followed.

The men I recognized at once. One was Cullen,
the bookkeeping automaton; the other two were
half-breed packers. They halted at sight of us, and
from their actions I believe they would have turned
tail if Barreau had not called to them. Then they
came up to the fire.

“Where now?” Barreau demanded.

“We go back on ze pos’, M’sieu,” one of the
breeds declared.

“What of the others?” Barreau asked sharply.
“And why do you turn back?”

“Because Ah’m not weesh for follow ze fat trader
an’ die een som’ snowbank, me,” the breed retorted
sullenly. “M’sieu Barreau knows zat ze Companie
has taken ze pos’, eh?”

“I do,” Barreau answered. “Go on.”

“Ze Black Factor hees say to heem, ‘w’y not you
stay teel ze spreeng,’ but M’sieu Montell hees not
stay, an’ hees mak talk for us to com’ wees heem
on ze sout’ trail. Eet don’ mak no diff’rence to me,
jus’ so Ah’m geet pay, so Ah’m tak ze ol’ woman
an’ com’ long. Montell hees heet ’er up lak hell.
Ever’ seeng she’s all right. Zen las’ night som’body
hees mak sneak on ze camp an’ poison ze dog—ever’
las’ one—an’ hees steal som’ of ze grub,
too. Zees morneeng w’en Jacques Larue an’ me
am start out for foller dees feller’s track, hees lay
for us an’ tak shot at us. Firs’ pop hees heet Larue—keel
heem dead, jus’ lak snap ze feenger. Ah’m
not go on after zat. MacLeod she’s too dam’ far
for mak ze treep wit’ no dog for pull ze outfeet.
Not me. Ah’m gon’ back on ze pos’. Ze Companie
hees geev me chance for mak leeveeng. For why
som’body hees poison ze dog an’ bushwhack us Ah
don’ can say; but Ah know for sure Montell hees
dam’ crazee for try to go on.”

“You, too, eh, Cullen?” Barreau observed. “Oh,
you are certainly brave men.”

“He was a fool to start,” Cullen bristled; the
first time I had ever seen a flash of spirit from the
man of figures, “and I am not fool enough to follow
him when it is plain that he is deliberately
matching himself against something bigger than he
is. There was no reason for starting on such a hard
trip. The Hudson’s Bay men did us no harm.
The factor did advise him to stay there till spring
opened—I heard him, myself. But he was bound
to be gone. Whoever is dogging him means business,
and I have no wish to die in a snowbank—as
Jean puts it.”

“How was the taking of the post managed?”
Barreau asked him next.

Cullen shook his head. “I don’t know,” he mumbled.
“It was just at daylight of the morning you
left for Three Wolves camp. Somebody yelled, and
I ran out of the cookhouse where I sat eating
breakfast. The yard was full of Company men.
And when I got to the store why there was Montell
making terms with the Company chief; a tall,
black-mustached man. We started within an hour
of that. Montell seemed in great haste. He is determined
to go on. I felt sorry for Miss Montell.
I tried to show him the madness of attempting to
walk several hundred miles with only what supplies
we could carry on our shoulders. *He* wouldn’t
turn back, though.”

“For a very good reason,” Barreau commented.
“Which a man who knew as much of our affairs as
you did, Cullen, should have guessed. Well, be on
your way. Doubtless the Black Factor will welcome
your coming.”

The three men had laid down the shoulder-packs
with which they were burdened. They re-slung
them, and passed on with furtive sidelong glances;
the women followed, dragging a lightly loaded toboggan.

“Rats *will* quit a doomed ship,” Barreau remarked.
Then he resumed his turning of the meat
that sizzled in the pan.

“We will soon come up with them,” he said, when
we had eaten and were putting the dogs to the
toboggan again. “They cannot make time from
their morning camp.”

The beaten track was an advantage. Now, since
the returning party had added a final touch to it,
we laid aside our snowshoes and followed in the
wake of the dogs, half the time at a jogging trot.
In little more than an hour of this we came to the
place where Montell had lost his dogs—and his followers.
The huskies lay about the trodden campground,
stiff in the snow. Scattered around the
cleared circles where the tents had stood overnight
were dishes, articles of food, bedding. Montell
had discarded all but absolute essentials. A toboggan
and its useless dog-harness stood upended,
against a tree.

“So much for loss of motive power,” Barreau
said grimly. “It is a pity to leave all this, but we
are loaded to the limit now. If we should lose our
dogs——” he left the sentence unfinished.

And so we passed by the abandoned goods and
followed on the trail that led beyond. There is a
marked difference between the path beaten through
snow by seven persons with three full dog-teams,
and that made by one man and a slight girl, dragging
a toboggan by hand. Barreau took to his
snowshoes again, and strode ahead. I kept the
dogs crowding close on his heels. It was the time
of year when, in that latitude, the hours of daylight
numbered less than five. Thus it was but a
brief span from noon to night. And nearing the
gray hour of twilight he checked the straining
huskies and myself with a gesture. Out of the
woods ahead uprose the faint squeal of a toboggan-bottom
sliding over the frosty snow. Barreau’s
eyebrows drew together under his hood.

“It’s a hundred to one that there will be fireworks
the moment I’m recognized,” he muttered
finally. “But I can see no other way. Come on.”

A hundred yards farther I caught my first
glimpse of the two figures, Montell’s huge body
bent forward as he tugged at his load. Barreau increased
his speed. We were up with them in a half
minute more. Montell whirled with a growl half
alarm, half defiance. He threw up the rifle in his
hands. But Barreau was too quick for him, and the
weapon was wrenched out of his grasp before he
could use it. With an inarticulate bellow Montell
shook himself free of the shoulder-rope by which
he drew the toboggan and threw himself bodily
upon Barreau, striking, pawing, blaspheming terribly.
Strangely enough Jessie made no move, nor even
cried out at the sight. She stood like one fascinated
by that brute spectacle. It did not endure for long.
The great bulk of Montell bore Barreau backward,
but only for a moment. He ducked a wild swing
that had power enough behind it to have broken
his neck, came up under Montell’s clutching arms
and struck him once under the chin—a lifting blow,
with all the force of his muscular body centered
therein. It staggered the big man. And as I
stepped forward, meditating interference, Barreau
jammed him backward over our loaded toboggan,
and held him there helpless.

He pinned him thus for a second; then suddenly
released him. Montell stood up, a thin stream of
blood trickling from one nostril. He glowered sullenly,
but the ferocious gleam of passion had died
out of his eyes.

“Get a fire built,” Barreau ordered, “and a tent
pitched. We shall camp here to-night. Make no
more wild breaks like that, unless you want to be
overtaken with sudden death. When we are warm
I have something to say to you.”

Twilight merged into gray night, and the red
blaze of the fire we built glowed on the surrounding
trees and the canvas of the tent. A pot of
melted snow bubbled and shed steam. Close by it
a piece of moose-flesh thawed in the heat. Jessie,
still mute, sat on a piece of canvas I spread for her,
and held her hands to the flame.

“Now,” Barreau challenged Montell, “is a good
time for explanations. Only facts, no matter how
they gall you, will serve. Speak up. First begin at
the beginning, and tell the truth—to her.” He motioned
to Jessie. She started slightly. A half dozen
times I had noticed her looking first at myself and
then at Barreau, and there was wonder and something
else in her heavy-lashed eyes. Now she
flashed a glance of inquiry at her father. For a
moment I thought she was about to speak.

I cannot say what there was in Barreau’s tone
that stirred Montell to the depths. It may have
been that finding himself checkmated, dominated by
a man he hated so sincerely, another fierce spasm of
rage welled up within and ruptured some tautened
blood-vessel. It may have been some weakness of
the heart, common to fleshy men. I cannot diagnose,
at best I can but feebly describe.

Montell’s jaw thrust forward. He blinked at
Barreau, at his daughter, at me, and then back to
Barreau. A flush swept up into his puffy cheeks,
surged to his temples, a flush that darkened to
purple. His very face seemed to swell, to bulge
with the rising blood. His little, swinish eyes dilated.
His mouth opened. He gasped. And all at
once, with a hoarse rattling in his throat, he swayed
and fell forward on his face.

We picked him up, Barreau and I, and felt of his
heart. It fluttered. We loosened his clothing, and
laved his wrists and temples with the snow water.
The body lay flaccid; the jaw sagged. When I
laid my ear to his breast again the fluttering had
ceased. Barreau listened; felt with his hand; shook
his head.

“No use,” he muttered.

Jessie was standing over us when we gave over.

“He’s dead,” Barreau looked up at her and murmured.
“He’s dead.” He rose to his feet and
stared down at the great hulk of unsentient flesh
that had vibrated with life and passion ten minutes
before. “After all his plotting and planning—to
die like that.”

The girl stood looking from one to the other,
from the dead man in the firelight to me, and to
Barreau. Of a sudden Barreau held out his hands
to her. But she turned away with a sob, and it
was to me she turned, and it was upon my shoulder
that she cried, “Oh, Bobby, Bobby!” as if her
heart would break.

And at that Barreau dropped to his haunches beside
the fire. There, when the storm of her grief
was hushed, he still sat, his chin resting on his
palms, his dark face somber as the North itself.

CHAPTER XIX—THE STRENGTH OF MEN—AND THEIR WEAKNESS
==================================================

No wind could reach us where we sat. At the
worst, a gale could little more than set the tree-tops
swaying, so thick stood the surrounding timber.
But the blasting cold pressed in everywhere. Our
backs chilled to freezing while our faces were hot
from nearness to the flame.

Presently, at Barreau’s suggestion, we set up
Montell’s tent—fashioned after an Indian lodge—in
the center of which could be built a small fire.
This was for her. We chopped a pile of dry wood
and placed it within. By that time the moose meat
was thawed so that we could haggle off ragged
slices. These I fried while Barreau mixed a bannock
and cooked it in an open pan. Also we had tea.
Jessie shook her head when I offered her food.
Willy-nilly, her eyes kept drifting to the silent figure
opposite.

“You *must* eat,” Barreau broke in harshly upon
my fruitless coaxing. “Food means strength.
You can’t walk out of these woods on an empty
stomach, and we can’t carry you.”

A swarm of angry words surged to my tongue’s
end—and died unspoken. Right willingly would I
have voiced a blunt opinion of his brutal directness—to
a grief-stricken girl, at such a time—but she
flashed him a queer half-pleading look, and meekly
accepted the plate I held before her. He had
gained my point for me, but the hard, domineering
tone grated. I felt a sudden, keen resentment
against him. To protect and shield her from
everything had at once become a task in which I
desired no other man’s aid.

“Now let us see how much of the truth is in the
Black Factor,” Barreau began, when we had
cleaned our plates and laid them in the grub-box.

He turned down the canvas with which I had
covered Montell, and opened the front of the buckskin
shirt. Jessie stirred uneasily. She seemed
about to protest, then settled back and stared blankly
into the fire. Deliberately, methodically, Barreau
went through the dead man’s pockets. These
proved empty. Feeling carefully he at last found
that which he sought, pinned securely to Montell’s
undershirt, beneath one arm. He brought the package
to our side of the fire, considered a moment and
opened it. Flat, the breadth of one’s hand, little
over six inches in length, it revealed bills laid
smoothly together like a deck of cards. Barreau
counted them slowly. One—two—three—four—on
up to sixty; each a thousand-dollar Bank of
Montreal note. He snapped the rubber band back
over them and slid the sheaf back into its heavy
envelope.

“Le Noir did not draw such a long bow, after
all,” he observed, to no one in particular. “Yet this
is more than they offered me. Well, I dare say they
felt that it would not be long——” He broke off,
with a shrug of his shoulders. Then he put the
package away in a pocket under his *parka*. Jessie
watched him closely, but said nothing. A puzzled
look replaced her former apathy.

That night we slept with the dogs tied inside our
tent, and the toboggan drawn up beside our bed.
I did not ask Barreau his reason for this. I could
hazard a fair guess. Whosoever had deprived
Montell of his dogs, might now be awaiting a
chance to do a like favor for us. I would have
talked to him of this but there was a restraint between
us that had never arisen before. And so I
held my peace.

I fell asleep at last, for all the silent guest that
lay by the foot of our bed. What time I wakened
I cannot say. The moon-glare fell on the canvas
and cast a hazy light over the tent interior. And
as I lay there, half-minded to get up and build a
fire Barreau stirred beside me, and spoke.

“Last night was Christmas Eve,” he muttered.
“To-day—Peace on earth, good-will to men!
Merry Christmas. What a game—what a game!”

He turned over. We lay quite still for a long
time. Then in that dead hush a husky whined, and
Barreau sat up with a whispered oath, his voice
trembling, and struck savagely at the dog. The
sudden spasm of rage subtly communicated itself
to me. I lay quivering in the blankets. If I had
moved it would have been to turn and strike him
as he had struck the dog. It passed presently, and
left me wondering. I got up then and dressed.
So did Barreau. We built a fire and sat by it, thawing
meat, melting snow for tea, cooking bannock;
all in silence, like folk who involuntarily lower their
voices in a great empty church, the depths of a
mine, or the presence of death. Afraid to speak?
I laughed at the fancy, and looked up at the raucous
sound of my own voice, to find Barreau scowling
blackly—at the sound, I thought.

Before long Jessie came shivering to the fire.
The rigors of the North breed a wolfish hunger.
We ate huge quantities of bannock and moose-meat.
That done we laid Montell’s body at the base of
a spruce, and piled upon it a great heap of brush.
Jessie viewed the abandonment calmly enough—she
knew the necessity. Then we packed and put
the dogs to the toboggan, increasing the load of
food from Montell’s supply and leaving behind our
tent and some few things we could not haul. Barreau
went ahead, bearing straight south, setting his
snowshoes down heel to toe, beating a path for
the straining dogs. Fierce work it was, that trail-breaking.
My turn at it came in due course. Thus
we forged ahead, the black surrounding forest and
the white floor of it irradiated by the moonbeams.
Away behind us the Aurora flashed across the Polar
horizon, a weird blazon of light, silky, shimmering,
vari-colored, dying one moment to a pin-point
leaping the next like sheet lightning to the height
of the North Star. This died at the dawn. Over
the frost-gleaming tree-tops the sun rose and
bleared at us through the frost-haze. “And that
inverted Bowl they call the Sky, whereunder crawling,
cooped, we live and die——” The Tentmaker’s
rhyme came to me and droned over and over in my
brain. The “Bowl” arched over us, a faded blue,
coldly beautiful.

At our noon camp a gun snapped among the trees,
and a dog fell sprawling. As we sprang to our feet
another husky doubled up. Barreau caught the remaining
two by the collars and flung a square of
canvas over them. A third shot missed. He caught
up his rifle and plunged into the timber. An hour
or more we waited. When he returned I had the
toboggan ready for the road.

“I got his track,” he said between mouthfuls of
the food I had kept warm. “One man. He struck
straight east when he saw me start. There may
be more though. It is not like the Company to
put all its eggs in one basket.”

“You think the Company is behind this?” I
asked.

“Who else?” he jeered. “Isn’t this money worth
some trouble? And who but the Company men
know of it?”

“Why bother with dogs if that is so?” I replied.
“The same bullets would do for us.”

“Very true,” Barreau admitted, “but there is a
heavy debit against me for this last four years of
baiting the Hudson’s Bay, and this would be of
a piece with the Black Factor’s methods. Their
way—his way is the policy of the Company—to an
end is often oblique. Only by driving a bargain
could they have taken the post—Montell could
have fought them all winter. Even though they
bought it cheaply, I do not think they had any intention
of letting him get away with money. Le
Noir paid—and put me on the trail; at the same
time this bushwhacker held Montell back so that we
overtook him—otherwise, with two days’ start, he
might have beaten us to the Police country, where
we would not dare follow. Can you appreciate the
sardonic humor that would draw out our misery to
the last possible pang, instead of making one clean
sweep? Le Noir knows how the North will deal
with us, once we are reduced to carrying our food
and bedding on our backs. He has based his calculations
on that fact. These breeds of his can hover
about us and live where we shall likely perish.
Then there will be no prima facie evidence of
actual murder, and the Company will have attained
its end. They have done this to others; we can
hardly be exempt. If we seem likely to reach the
outer world, it will be time enough then for killing.
Either way, the Company wins. I wish to
God it would snow. We might shake them off
then.”

We harnessed the two remaining dogs and pushed
on. There was nothing else to do. Either in
camp or on trail the huskies, to say nothing of ourselves,
were at the mercy of that hidden marksman.
So we kept our way, praying only for a
sight of him, or for a thick swirl of snow to hide
the betraying tracks we made. We moved slowly,
the lugging of the dogs eked out by myself with a
rope. Barreau broke trail. Jessie brought up the
rear.

At sundown, midway of a tiny open space in the
woods, our two dogs were shot down. Barreau
whirled in his tracks, stood a moment glaring furiously.
Then, with a fatalistic shrug of his shoulders,
he stooped, cut loose the dead brutes, harness
and all, and laid hold of the rope with me.

That night we were not disturbed. Jessie slept
in the little round tent. Barreau and I burrowed
with our bedding under the snow beside the fire.
The time of arising found me with eyes that had
not closed; and the night of wakefulness, the nearness
of a danger that hovered unseen, stirred me
to black, unreasoning anger. I wanted to shout
curses at the North, at the Hudson’s Bay Company,
at Barreau—at everything. And by the snap of his
eye, the quick scowl at trivial things, I think Barreau
was in as black a mood as I. The girl sensed
it, too. She shrank from both of us. So to the
trail again, and the weary drag of the shoulder-rope.

At noon we ate the last of our moose-meat, and
when next we crossed moose-tracks in the snow,
Barreau ordered me in a surly tone to keep straight
south, and set out with his rifle.

It was slow work and heavy to lug that load
alone. Jessie went ahead, but her weight was not
enough to crush the loose particles to any degree
of firmness. For every quarter mile gained we sat
down upon the load to rest, sweat standing in drops
upon my face and freezing in pellets as it stood.
And at one of these halts I fell to studying the
small oval face framed in the *parka*\ -hood beside
me. The sad, tired look of it cut me. There was a
stout heart, to be sure, in that small body. But it
was killing work for men—I gritted my teeth at
the mesh of circumstance.

“If you were only out of this,” I murmured.

I looked up quickly at a crunching sound, and
there was Barreau, empty-handed. I shall never
forget the glare in his eyes at sight of me standing
there with one hand resting lightly on her shoulder.
There was no word said. He took up the
rope with me, and we went on.

“Where in the name of Heaven are you heading
for?” something spurred me to ask of him. The
tone was rasping, but I could not make it otherwise.

“To the Peace,” he snapped back. “Then west
through the mountains, down the Fraser, toward
the Sound country. D’ye think I intend to walk
into the arms of the Police?”

“You might do worse,” some demon of irritability
prompted me to snarl.

He looked back at me over his shoulder, slackening
speed. For a moment I thought he would turn
on me then and there, and my shoulder-muscles
stiffened. There was a thrill in the thought. But
he only muttered:

“Get a grip on yourself, man.”

Just at the first lowering of dusk, in my peering
over Barreau’s shoulder I spotted the shovel-antlers
of a moose beside a clump of scraggy willows.
I dropped the rope, snatched for my rifle
and fired as Barreau turned to see what I was about.
I had drawn a bead on the broad side of him as he
made the first plunge, and he dropped.

“Well, that’s meat,” Barreau said. “And it
means camp.”

He drew the toboggan up against a heavy stand
of spruce, and taking a snowshoe shovel-wise fell
to baring the earth for a fire base. I took my skinning
knife and went to the fallen moose. Jessie
moved about, gathering dry twigs to start a fire.

Once at the moose and hastily flaying the hide
from the steaming meat my attention became centered
on the task. For a time I was absorbed in
the problem of getting a hind quarter skinned and
slashed clear before my fingers froze. Happening
at length to glance campward, I saw in the firelight
Barreau towering over Jessie, talking, his
speech punctuated by an occasional gesture. His
voice carried faintly to me. I stood up and
watched. Reason hid its head, abashed, crowded
into the background by a swift flood of passion.
I could not think coherently. I could only stand
there blinking, furious—over what I did not quite
know, nor pause to inquire of myself. For the
nonce I was as primitive in my emotions as any
naked cave-dweller that ever saw his mate threatened
by another male. And when I saw her shrink
from him, saw him catch at her arm, I plunged for
the fire.

“You damned cub!” he flashed, and struck at me
as I rushed at him. I had no very distinct idea of
what I was going to do when I ran at him, except
that I would make him leave *her* alone. But when
he smashed at me with that wolf-like drawing apart
of his lips—I knew then. I was going to kill him,
to take his head in my hands and batter it against
one of those rough-barked trees. I evaded the first
swing of his fist by a quick turn of my head. After
that I do not recollect the progress of events with
any degree of clearness, except that I gave and
took blows while the forest reeled drunkenly about
me. The same fierce rage in which I had fought
that last fight with Tupper burned in my heart. I
wanted to rend and destroy, and nothing short of
that would satisfy. And presently I had Barreau
down in the snow, smashing insanely at his face
with one hand, choking the breath out of him with
the other. This I remember; remember, too, hearing
a cry behind me. With that my recollection
of the struggle blurs completely.

I was lying beside the fire, Jessie rubbing my
forehead with snow in lieu of water, when I again
became cognizant of my surroundings. Barreau
stood on the other side of the fire, putting on fresh
wood.

“I’m sorry, sorry, Bob,” she whispered, and her
eyes were moist. “But you know I couldn’t stand
by and see you—it would have been murder.”

I sat up at that. Across the top of my head a
great welt was now risen. My face, I could feel,
was puffed and bruised. I looked at Barreau more
closely; his features were battered even worse than
mine.

“Did you hit me with an axe, or was it a tree?”
I asked peevishly. “That is the way my head
feels.”

“The rifle,” she stammered. “I—it was—I
didn’t want to hurt you, Bob, but the rifle was so
heavy. I couldn’t make you stop any other way;
you wouldn’t listen to me, even.”

So that was the way of it! I got to my feet.
Save a dull ache in my head and the smarting of
my bruised face, I felt equal to anything—and the
physical pain was as nothing to the hurt of my
pride. To be felled by a woman—the woman I
loved—I did love her, and therein lay the hurt of
her action. I could hardly understand it, and yet—strange
paradox—I did not trouble myself to
understand. My brain was in no condition for
solving problems of that sort. I was not concerned
with the why; the fact was enough.

If I had been the unformed boy who cowered
before those two hairy-fisted slave-drivers aboard
the *New Moon*—but I was not; I never could be
again. The Trouble Trail had hardened more than
my bone and sinew; and the last seven days of it,
the dreary plodding over unbroken wastes, amid
forbidding woods, utter silence, and cold bitter beyond
Words, had keyed me to a fearful pitch. There
was a kink to my mental processes; I saw things
awry. In all the world there seemed to be none
left but us three; two men and a woman, and each
of us desiring the woman so that we were ready
to fly at each other’s throats. Standing there by
the fire I could see how it would be, I thought.
Unless the unseen enemy who hovered about us
cut it short with his rifle, we were foredoomed to
maddening weeks, perhaps months, of each other’s
company. Though she had jeered at him and
flaunted her contempt for him at both MacLeod
and the post, Jessie had put by that hostile, bitter
spirit. To me, it seemed as if she were in deadly
fear of Barreau. She shrank from him, both his
word and look. And I must stand like a buffer
between. Weeks of suspicion, of trifling, jealous
actions, of simmering hate that would bubble up in
hot words and sudden blows; I did not like the
prospect.

“I have a mind to settle it all, right here and
now!”

I did not know until the words were out that
I had spoken aloud. As a spark falling in loose
powder, so was the effect of that sentence upon a
spirit as turbulent and as sorely tried as his.

“Settle it then, settle it,” he rose to his feet and
shouted at me. “There is your gun behind you.”

I blurted an oath and reached for the rifle, and
as my fingers closed about it Jessie flung herself
on me.

“No, no, *no*,” she screamed, “I won’t let you.
Oh, oh, for God’s sake be men, not murdering
brutes. Think of me if you won’t think of your
own lives. Stop it, stop it! Put down those guns!”

She clung to me desperately, hampering my
hands. He could have killed me with ease. I
could see him across the fire, waiting, his Winchester
half-raised, the fire-glow lighting up his
face with its blazing eyes and parted lips, teeth set
tight together. And I could not free myself of
that clinging, crying girl. Not at once, without
hurting her. Mad as I was, I had no wish to do
that. At length, however, I loosened her clinging
arms, and pushed her away. But she was quick as
a steel trap. She caught the barrel of my rifle as
I swung it up, and before I could break her frenzied
grip the second time, a voice in the dark nearby
broke in upon us with startling clearness.

“Hello, folks, hello!”

The sound of feet in the crisp snow, the squeaking
crunch of toboggans, other voices; these things
uprose at hand. I ceased to struggle with Jessie.
But only when a man stepped into the circle of firelight,
with others dimly outlined behind him, did
she release her hold on my gun. Barreau had
already let the butt of his drop to his feet. He
stood looking from me to the stranger, his hands
resting on the muzzle.

“How-de-do, everybody.”

The man stopped at the fire and looked us over.
He was short, heavily built. Under the close-drawn
*parka* hood we could see little of his face. He was
dressed after the fashion, the necessity rather, of
the North. His eyes suddenly became riveted on
me.

“God bless my soul!” he exclaimed.

He reached into a pocket and took out a pair of
glasses wrapped in a silk handkerchief. The lenses
he rubbed hastily with the silk, and stuck them upon
the bridge of his nose. I could hear him mumbling
to himself. A half dozen men edged up behind
him.

“God bless me,” he repeated. “Without a doubt,
it *is* Bob Sumner. Somewhat the worse for wear,
but Bob, sure enough. Ha, you young dog, I’ve
had a merry chase after you. Don’t even know me,
do you?”

He pushed back the hood of his *parka*. The
voice had only puzzled me. But I recognized that
cheerful, rubicund countenance with its bushy black
eyebrows; and the thing that favored me most in
my recollection was a half-smoked, unlighted cigar
tucked in one corner of his mouth. It was my
banker guardian, Bolton of St. Louis.

-----

Wakening out of the first doze I had fallen into
through that long night I was constrained to rise
and poke my head out of the tent in which I slept
to make sure that I had not dreamed it all. For the
event savored of a bolt from a clear sky. I could
scarcely believe that only a few hours back I had
listened to the details of its accomplishment; how
Bolton had in the fullness of time received both
my letters; how he had traced me step by step from
MacLeod north, and how he had only located me on
the Sicannie River, through the aid of the Hudson’s
Bay Company. He was on his way to the
post. Our meeting was purely accidental. And
so on. From the tent I saw a lone sentinel plying
the fire. I slipped on the few clothes I had taken
off, and sat down beside the cheery crackle of the
blaze, to meditate upon the miracle. I was sane
enough to shudder at what might have been, if
Barreau and I had had a few minutes longer.

In an hour all the camp was awake. Bolton’s
cook prepared breakfast, and we ate by candle-light
in a tent warmed by a sheet-iron stove. How
one’s point of view shuffles like the needle of a compass!
A tent with a stove in it, where one could
be thoroughly comfortable, impressed me as the
pyramid-point of luxury.

After that there was the confusion of tearing up
camp and loading a half-dozen dog-teams. Jessie
sat by the great fire that was kept up outside, and
her face was troubled. Barreau, I noticed, drew
Bolton a little way off, where the two of them stood
talking earnestly together, Bolton expostulating,
Barreau urging. Directly after that I saw Barreau
with two of Bolton’s men to help him, load
one of the dog-teams over again. He led it to one
side; his snowshoes lying on the load. Then he
came over to Jessie. Reaching within his *parka* he
drew forth the package he had taken off Montell’s
body, and held it out to her.

“Girl,” he said, and there was that in his voice
which gave me a sudden pang, and sent a flush of
shame to my cheek, “here is your father’s money.
There is no need for me to take care of it now.
Good-bye.”

She stared up at him, making no move to take
the package, and so with a little gesture he dropped
it at her feet and turned away. And as he laid hold
of the dog-whip she sprang to her feet and ran
after him.

“George, George!” If ever a cry sounded a note
of pain, that did. It made me wince. He whirled
on his heel, and the dog-whip fell unheeded in the
snow.

“Oh, oh,” she panted, “I can’t take that. It
isn’t mine. It’s blood-money. And—and if you
go by yourself, I shall go with you.”

“With me,” he held her by the shoulder, looking down
into her upturned face. Never before
had I seen such a variety of expression on his features,
in so short a span of time, hope, tenderness,
puzzlement, a panorama of emotions. “I’m an
outlaw. There’s a price on my head—you know
that. And you yourself have said—ah, I won’t
repeat the things you have said. You know—you
knew you were stabbing me when——”

“I know, I know!” she cried. “I believed those
things then. Oh, you can’t tell how it hurt me to
think that all the time you had been playing a
double part—fooling my father and myself. But
now I *know*. I know the whole wretched business;
or at least enough to understand. I got into his
papers back there on the Sicannie. There were
things that amazed me—after that—I stormed at
him till he told me the truth; part of it. You
don’t know how sorry I am for those horrible, unwomanly
things I said to you. How could I know?
He lied so consistently—even at the last he lied to
me—told me that the Company men had taken the
post by surprise, that we were lucky to get away
with our lives. I believed that until I saw you
find that money. Then I knew that he had sold
you out—his partner. I’ve been a little beast,”
she sobbed, “and I’ve been afraid to tell you. Oh,
you don’t know how much I wanted to tell you;
but I was afraid. I’m not afraid now. If you
are going to strike out alone, I shall go, too.”

He bent and kissed her gravely.

“The Northwest is no place for me, Jess,” he
said. “I cannot cross it in the winter without being
seen or trailed, and there is no getting out of
that jail-break, if I am caught. I must go over the
mountains, and so to the south, where there are
no Police. You cannot come. Bolton, and—and
Bob will see you safe to St. Louis. If nothing
happens I shall be there in the spring.”

She laid her head against his breast and sobbed,
wailing over him before us all. I bit my lip at
the sight, and putting my pride in my pocket went
over to them.

“Barreau,” I said, “I don’t, and probably never
will, understand a woman. You win, and I wish
you luck. But unless you hold a grudge longer
than I do, there’s no need for you to play a lone
hand. Let the dead past bury its dead, and we
will all go over the mountains together. I have
no wish to take a chance with the Police again, myself.
You and Bolton seem to forget that I’m just
as deep in the mud as you are in the mire.”

Barreau stood looking fixedly at me for a few
seconds. Then he held out his hand, and the old,
humorous smile that had been absent from his face
for many a day once more wrinkled the corners
of his mouth.

“Bob,” he said, “I reckon that you and I are
hard men to beat—at any game we play.”

-----

That, to all intents and purposes, ends my story.
We did cross the mountains, and traverse the vast,
silent slopes that fall away to the blue Pacific. Bolton
had gilded the palm of the Hudson’s Bay Company
in his search for me, and so they considerately
dropped their feud with Barreau—at least there
was no more shooting of dogs, nor any effort to
recover the money that cost Montell his life. Or
perhaps they judged it unwise to meddle with a
party like ours.

So, by wide detour, we came at last to St. Louis.
There Barreau and Jessie were married, and departed
thence upon their honeymoon. When their
train had pulled out, I went with Bolton back to
his office in the bank. He seated himself in the
very chair he had occupied the day I came and
saddled the burden of my affairs upon him. He
cocked his feet up on the desk, lighted a cigar and
leaned back.

“Well, Robert,” he finally broke into my meditations,
“how about this school question? Have
you decided where you’re going to try for a B. A.?
And when? What about it?”

“I can take up college any time,” I responded.
“Just now—well, I’m going to the ranch. A season
in the cow camps will teach me something; and
I would like to run the business just as my father
did. I don’t think I’ll slip back so that I can’t
take up study again. Anyway, the schools have
no monopoly of knowledge; there’s a wonderful lot
of things, I’ve discovered, that a fellow has to teach
himself.”

He surveyed me in silence a few minutes, his cigar
pointed rakishly aloft, his eyes half shut. Then
he took the weed between his thumb and forefinger
and delivered himself of this sapient observation:

“You’ll do, Bob. As a matter of fact, the North
made a man of you.”

I made no answer to that. I could not help reflecting,
a trifle bitterly, that there were penalties
attached to the attaining of manhood—in my case,
at least.

.. class:: center
   
   THE END.

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   | 9 — Boy Scouts beyond the Arctic Circle; or, the Lost Expedition
   | 10 — Boy Scout Camera Club; or, the Confessions of a Photograph
   | 11 — Boy Scout Electricians; or, the Hidden Dynamo
   | 12 — Boy Scouts in California; or, the Flag on the Cliff
   | 13 — Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay; or, the Disappearing Fleet
   | 14 — Boy Scouts in Death Valley; or, the City in the Sky
   | 15 — Boy Scouts on Open Plains; or, the Roundup not Ordered
   | 16 — Boy Scouts in Southern Waters; or the Spanish Treasure Chest
   | 17 — Boy Scouts in Belgium; or, Imperiled in a Trap
   | 18 — Boy Scouts in the North Sea; or, the Mystery of a Sub
   | 19 — Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal; or, Perils of the Black Bear Patrol
   | 20 — Boy Scouts with the Cossacks; or, a Guilty Secret

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