The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Luck of the Kid, by Ridgwell Cullum

The sub-Arctic summer was at its height. The swelter of heat was of almost tropical intensity. No wisp of cloud marred the perfect purity of the steely blue sky, and no breath of wind relieved the intemperate scorch of the blazing sun.

The two men on the river bank gave no heed to the oppressive heat. For the moment they seemed concerned with nothing but their ease, and the swarming flies, and the voracious attacks of the mosquitoes from which the smoke of their camp fire did its best to protect them. Down below them, a few yards away, their walrus-hide kyak lay moored to the bank of the river, whose sluggish, oily-moving waters flowed gently northward towards the far-off fields of eternal ice. It was noon, and a rough midday meal had been prepared and disposed of. Now they were smoking away a leisurely hour before resuming their journey.

The younger of the two flung away the end of a cigarette with a movement that was almost violent in its impatience. He turned a pair of narrow black eyes upon his companion, and their sparkle of resentment shone fiercely in sharp contrast against the dusky skin of their setting.

“It’s no use blinding ourselves, sir,” he said, speaking rapidly in the tongue of the whiteman, with only the faintest suspicion of native halting. “It’s here. But we’ve missed it. And another’s found it.”

He was a youthful creature something short of the completion of his second decade. But that which he lacked in years he made up for in the alertness of purpose that looked out of his keen eyes. He was dark-skinned, its hue something between yellow and olive. He had prominent, broad cheek bones like those of all the natives of Canada’s extreme north. Yet his face differed from the general low type of the Eskimo. There was refinement in every detail of it. There was something that suggested a race quite foreign, but curiously akin.

The older man stirred. He had been lounging full length on the ground so that the smoke of the camp fire rolled heavily across him, and kept him safe from the torment of winged insects. Now he sat up like the other, and crossing his legs tucked his booted feet under him.

He was older than his companion by more than twenty years. But the likeness between them was profound. He, too, was dusky. He, too, had the broad, high cheek bones. He was of similar stature, short and broad. Then, too, his hair was black and cut short like the other’s, so short, indeed, that it bristled crisply over the crown of his bare head with the effect of a wire brush. He, too, was clad in the rough buckskin of the trail with no detail that could have distinguished him from the native. The only difference between the two was in age, and the colour of their eyes. The older man’s eyes were a sheer anachronism. They were a curious gleaming yellow, whose tawny depths shone with a subtle reflection of the brilliant sunshine.

“Tell me of it again, Sate,” he went on, knocking out the red clay pipe he had been smoking, and re-filling it from a beaded buckskin pouch.

But the youth was impatient, and the quick flash of his black eyes was full of scorn for the unruffled composure of the other.

“He’s beaten us, father,” he cried. “He has it. I have seen.” He spread out his hands in an expressive gesture. And they were lean, delicate hands that were almost womanish. “This priest-man with his say-so of religion. He search all the time. It is the only thing he think of. Gold! Well, he get it.”

“And he get it here on this Loon Creek, that you make us waste three months’ search on, son?”

The father shook his head. And his eyes were cold, and the whole expression of his set features mask-like. The youth flung out his hands.

“I go down for trade to Fort Cupar. This missionary, Marty Le Gros, is there. He show this thing. Two great nuggets, clear yellow gold. Big? They must be one hundred ounces each. No. Much more. And he tell the story to McLeod, who drinks so much, that he find them on Loon Creek. I hear him tell. I listen all the time. They don’t know me. They think I am a fool Eskimo. I let them think. Well? Where is it on Loon Creek? We go up. We come down. There is no sign anywhere. No work. The man lies, for all his religion. Or we are the fools we do not think we are.”

Sate turned his searching eyes on the northern distance, where the broad stream merged itself into the purple of low, far-off hills.

It was a scene common enough to the lower lands of Canada’s extreme north. There was nothing of barren desolation. There were no great hills, no great primordial forests along the broad valley of Loon Creek. But it was a widespread park land of woodland bluffs of hardy conifers dotting a brilliant-hued carpet of myriads of Arctic flowers, and long sun-forced grasses, and lichens of every shade of green. It was Nature’s own secret flower garden, far out of the common human track, where, throughout the ages, she had spent her efforts in enriching the soil, till, under an almost tropical summer heat, it yielded a display of vivid colour such as could never have been matched in any wilderness under southern skies.

“Sate, my son,” he said at last, “you are discontented. Why? This man has a secret. He has gold. Gold is the thing we look for. Not all the time, but between our trade which makes us rich, and our people rich. We are masters of the north country. It is ours by right of the thing we do. It must be ours. And all its secrets. This man’s secret. We must have it, too.”

The man spoke quietly. He spoke without a smile, without emotion. His tawny eyes were expressionless, for all the blaze of light the sun reflected in them.

“You are right to be discontented,” he went on, after the briefest pause. “But I look no longer on Loon Creek or any other creek. We get this secret from Marty Le Gros. I promise that.”

The youth’s quick eyes were searching his father’s face. He had listened to the thing he had hoped to hear. And now he was stirred to a keen expectancy that was without impatience.

The black eyes of the youth abruptly shifted their gaze. Something in the curious eyes of his parent communicated the purpose lying behind his words. But it was insufficient to satisfy his headlong impulse.

“But it is far south and west. It is beyond—our territory. It is within the reach of the northern police. There is big risk for you to ask him the—question.”

“Your mother looked for you to be a girl. Maybe her wish had certain effect. Risk? There is no risk. I see none. It is simple. I bend this man to my will. If he will not bend I break him. Yes. He is white. That is as it should be. Someday—sometime the whites of this country will bend, or break before us. They know that. They fear that. The thing they do not yet know is that they bend now. This man, Le Gros, we will see to him without delay.”

He rose from his cross-legged position almost without an effort. He stood up erect, a short, broad-shouldered, virile specimen of manhood in his hard trail clothing. Then he moved swiftly down towards the light canoe at the water’s edge.

The youth, Sate, was slow to follow him. He watched the sturdy figure with unsmiling eyes. He resented the imputation upon his courage. He resented the taunt his father had flung. But his feelings carried nothing deeper than the natural resentment of a war-like, high-strung spirit.

He understood his father. He knew him for a creature of iron nerve, and a will that drove him without mercy. More than that he admitted the man’s right to say the thing he chose to his son. His attitude was one of curious filial submission whatever the hurt he suffered. He may have been inspired by affection, or it may simply have been an expression of the filial obedience and subservience native to the race from which he sprang. But the taunt hurt him sorely. And he jumped to a decision as violent as it was impulsive.

He leapt to his feet, slight, active as a panther, and hastily descended to the water’s edge and joined his parent.

“No,” he said, and bent again to his work of hauling the little craft clear of the drift-wood that had accumulated about it.

Sate nodded, and a great light shone in his black eyes. They were fierce with exultation.

“Then we must waste no time. The way is long. There are many miles to Fox Bluff.” He laughed. “Le Gros,” he went on. “It is a French name, and it means—Tcha!” he exclaimed with all the impetuous feeling which drove him like a whirlwind. “We show him what it means.”

The man with the tawny eyes looked up from his work. For one moment he gazed searchingly into the dark face of his son. Then he returned again to his work without a word.

CHAPTER II

“Man, I’d sooner they’d put out my eyes, or cut out my tongue. I’d sooner they’d set my body to everlasting torture. Look! Look there! Yes, and there! Oh, God! It’s everywhere the same.” A shaking hand was outthrust. “Dead! Mutilated! Old men! Old women! And poor little bits of life that had only just begun. The barbarity! The monstrousness!”

Marty Le Gros, the missionary of the Hekor River, spoke in a tone that was almost choking with grief. His eyes, so dark and wide, were full of the horror upon which they gazed. His Gallic temperament was stirred to its depths. The heart of the man was overflowing with pity and grief, and outraged parental affection.

Usak, the Indian, his servant, stood beside him. He offered no verbal comment. His only reply to the white-man was a low, fierce, inarticulate grunt, which was like the growl of some savage beast.

The men were standing at the entrance to a wide clearing. The great Hekor River flowed behind them, where the canoe they had just left swung to the stream, moored at the crude landing stage of native manufacture. They were gazing upon the setting of a little Eskimo encampment. It was one of the far flung Missions which claimed the spiritual service of Le Gros. He had only just arrived from his headquarters at Fox Bluff, on the river, near by to Fort Cupar the trading post, on his monthly visit, and the hideous destruction he had discovered left him completely staggered and helpless.

The devastation of the settlement was complete. Dotted about the clearing, grimly silhouetted against a background of dull green woods, stood the charred remains of a dozen and more log shanties. Broken and burnt timbers littered the open ground, and filled the room spaces where the roofs had fallen. Every habitation was burnt out stark. Not even the crude household goods had been spared.

But this was the least of the horror the two men gazed upon. The human aspect of the destruction was a thousand-fold more appalling. The ground was littered with mutilated dead. As the missionary had said, there were old men, old women, and babes torn from their mothers’ arms. Silent and still, death reigned everywhere. The young men? The young women? There was no sign of these. And therein lay a further horror which the onlookers were swift to appreciate.

The hideous fascination of the scene held them. But at last it was Usak who broke from under its spell.

“Euralians!” he cried fiercely. And again in his voice rang that note which sounded like the goaded fury of some creature of the forest.

To the mind of every far northwestern man, in that territory which lies hundreds of miles beyond the efficient protection of the northern police, the name of this people was sufficient to set stirring a chill of unvoiced terror that was something superstitious. Who they were? It was almost impossible to say. It was still a problem in the minds of even the farthest travelled trail men and fur hunters. But they were known to all as a scourge of the far flung border which divides Alaska from the extreme north of Yukon Territory.

The threat they imposed on the region was constantly growing. It had grown lately from the marauding of mere seal ground and fur poachers, who came down out of the iron fastnesses beyond the Arctic fringes of Alaska, where they lived hidden in security beyond the reach of the strong arm of the United States law, into a murder scourge threatening all human life and property within reach of their ruthless operations.

Hitherto, Le Gros had only known them from the tales told by the native pelt hunters, the men who came down to trade at Fort Cupar. He knew no more and no less than the rest of the handful of white folks who peopled the region. The stories he had had to listen to, for all their corroborative nature, were, he knew, for the most part founded upon hearsay. He had listened to them. He always listened to these adventurers. But somehow his gentle, philosophic mind had left him missing something of the awe and dread which beset the hearts of the men whose lurid stories took vivid colour from the stirring emotions which inspired them.

But now, now he was wide awake to the reality of the terror he had so largely attributed to superstitious exaggeration. Now he knew that no story he had ever listened to could compare with the reality. He was gazing upon a scene of hideous murder and wanton, savage destruction that utterly beggared description.

His feelings were torn to shreds, and his heart cried out in agony of helpless pity.

These poor benighted folk, these simple, peaceful Eskimo, amiable, industrious, yearning only for the betterment he was able by his simple ministrations to bring into their lives. What were they to claim such barbarity from a savage horde? What had they? What had they done? Nothing. Simply nothing. They were fisher-folk who spent their lives in the hunt, asking only to be left in peace to work out the years of their desperately hard-lived lives. Now—now they were utterly wiped out, a pitiful sacrifice to the insensate lust of this mysterious scourge.

Le Gros thrust his cap from his broad forehead. It was a gesture of impotent despair.

“God in Heaven!” he cried, and the words seemed to be literally wrung from him.

“What I tell you plenty time,” he went on sharply. “The great God. He look down. He see this thing. He do nothing. No. It this way. Man do this. Yes. Man do this. Man must punish this dam Euralian. I know.”

The missionary turned from the slaughter ground. He searched the Indian’s broad, dusky face. It was a striking face, high-boned and full of the eagle keenness of the man’s Sioux Indian forbears. He was a creature of enormous stature, lean, spare and of tremendous muscle. For all he was civilized, for all he was educated, this devoted servant lacked nothing of the savage which belonged to his red-skinned ancestors.

Servant and master these two comrades in a common cause stood in sharp contrast. Usak was a savage and nothing could make him otherwise. Usak was a man of fierce, hot passions. The other, the whiteman, except for his great stature, was in direct antithesis. The missionary was moulded in the gentlest form. He was no priest. He represented no set denomination of religion. He was a simple man of compassionate heart who had devoted his life to the service of his less fortunate fellow creatures where such service might help them towards enlightenment and bodily and spiritual comfort.

He had been five years on his present mission at Fox Bluff. He had come there of his own choice supported by the staunch devotion of a young wife who was no less prepared to sacrifice herself. But now he stood almost alone, but not quite. For though death had swiftly robbed him of a wife’s devotion, it had left him with the priceless possession they had both so ardently yearned. The motherless Felice was at home now in the care of Pri-loo, the childless wife of Usak, who had gladly mothered the motherless babe.

Even as he gazed into the Indian’s furious eyes Le Gros’ mind had leaped back to his home at Fox Bluff. A sudden fear was clutching at his heart. Oh, he knew that Fox Bluff was far away to the east and south. He knew that the journey thither from the spot where they stood was a full seven days’ of hard paddling on the great river behind them. But Pri-loo and his infant child were alone in his home. They were utterly without protection except for the folk at the near-by Fort. And these Euralians, if they so desired, what was to stop them with the broad highway of the river which was open to all?

“You’re wrong, Usak,” he said quietly. “God sees all. He will punish—in his own good time.”

“You say that? Oh, yes. You say that all the time, boss,” he cried. “I tell you—no. You my good boss. You mak me man to know everything so as a whiteman knows. You show me all thing. You teach me. You mak me build big reindeer farm so I live good, an’ Pri-loo eat plenty all time. Oh yes. I read. I write. I mak figgers. You mak me do this thing. You, my good boss. I mak for you all the time. I big heart for you. That so. But no. I tell you—No! The great God not know this thing. He not know this Euralian wher’ he come from. No. Not no more as you he know this thing. But I know. I—Usak. I know ’em all, everything.”

At another time the missionary would have listened to the man’s quaint egoism with partly shocked amusement. His final statement, however, startled him out of every other feeling.

Usak nodded. A curious vanity was shining in the dark eyes which looked straight into the whiteman’s.

There was doubt in the missionary’s tone, and in the regard of his brown eyes.

“I know him,” Usak returned shortly. Then, in a moment, he flung out his great hands in a vehement gesture. “I say I know him—an’ we go kill ’em all up.”

All doubt was swept from the missionary’s mind. He understood the passionate savagery underlying the Indian’s veneer of civilization. The man was in desperate earnest.

“No.” Le Gros’ denial came sharply. Then his gaze drifted back to the scene of destruction, and a deep sigh escaped him. “No,” he reiterated simply. “This is not for us. It is for the police. If you know the hiding-place of these—”

“No good, boss. No,” Usak cried, in fierce disappointment. “The p’lice? No. They so far.” He held up one hand with two fingers thrusting upwards. “One—two p’lice by Placer. An’ Placer many days far off. No good.” He shrugged his great shoulders. “Us mans all dead. Yes. Pri-loo all dead. Felice dead, too. All mans dead when p’lice come. I know. You not know. You good man. You not think this thing. Usak bad man Indian. He think this thing all time. Listen. I tell you, boss, my good boss. I say the thing in my mind. The thing I know.”

He broke off and glanced in the direction of the river, and his eyes dwelt on the gently rocking canoe. He turned again, and his thoughtful eyes came once more to the scene of horror that infuriated his savage heart. He was like a man preparing to face something of desperate consequence. Something that might grievously disturb the relations in which he stood to the man to whom he believed himself to owe everything he now treasured in life. At last his hands stirred. They were raised, and moved automatically under emotions which no words of his were adequate to express.

“I big trail man,” he began. “I travel far. I go by the big ice, by the big hills, by the big water. I mak trade with all mans Eskimo. I mak big reindeer trade with him Eskimo, same as you show me, boss. So I go far, far all time. So I know this Euralian better as ’em all. I not say. Oh, no. It not good. Now I say. This mans Euralian look all time for all thing. Furs? Yes. They steal ’em furs, an’ kill ’em up all Eskimo. So Eskimo all big scare. Gold? Yes. They look for him all same, too. Oil? Yes. Coal? Yes. All this thing they look, look for all time. Him mans not Eskimo. They not Indian. They not whiteman. No. They damn foreign devil so as I not know. Him all mans live in whiteman house all time. Big house. I know. I find him house.”

The man’s unease had passed. He was absorbed in the thing he had to tell. Suddenly after a moment’s pause, he raised a hand pointing so that his wondering companion turned again to the spectacle he would gladly have avoided.

Le Gros’ horrified gaze swept back to the face of the accusing man. The Indian was fiercely smiling. He nodded.

“You mak ’em this, but you not know. You not know nothing,” he said in a tone that was almost gentle. “Oh, I say ’em this way, but I not mean you kill ’em all up. You? No. Listen, boss,” he went on, coming close up and lowering his harsh tones. “You kill ’em all up because you tell all the mans you mak big find gold on Loon Creek. Boss, you tell the mans. You think all mans good like so as you. So you not hide this thing. You tell ’em, an’ you show big piece gold—two. Now you know how you kill ’em all up.”

Usak waited. The amazement in the eyes of the missionary gave place to a grave look of understanding.

“You mean that my story of the discovery of gold I made has caused—this?” He shook his head, and the question in his mild eyes was urgent. “How? Tell me, Usak, and tell it quick.”

“Oh, it easy. Yes. You tell the story. It go far. It go quick. All mans know it. Gold! The good boss, Le Gros, find gold! Him Euralian. Ears, eyes, they all time everywhere. Him hear, too. Maybe him see, too. I not say. Him mak big think. Him say: ‘This man, this good boss, him find gold! How we get it? How we rob him, an’ steal ’em all up gold! Euralian think. It easy. Le Gros good man. Us go. Us kill ’em all up him Mission. One Mission. Two Mission. All Mission. Then us go kill up all mans at Fort Cupar. Kill up Marty Le Gros an’ Usak. Then we get ’em all this gold.’”

There was fierce conviction in every word the man said. For all the crudeness of his argument, if argument it could be called, the force of his convictions carried weight even with a man who was normally devoid of suspicion. Then, too, there was still the horror of the spectacle in the clearing to yield its effect. But greater than all the other’s conviction or argument, greater than all else, was the missionary’s surge of terror for the safety of his little baby daughter with her nurse back there in his home.

Le Gros breathed deeply. His dark eyes were full of the gravest anxiety. For the moment he had forgotten everything but the personal danger he had suddenly realised to be threatening.

Usak was watching him. He understood the thing that was stirring behind the whiteman’s troubled eyes. He had driven home his conviction and he was satisfied. Now he awaited agreement with his desire that they should themselves go and deal with these fierce marauders. He saw no reason for hesitation. He saw nothing in his desire that could make it impossible, hopeless. But then he was a savage and only applied calm reason when passion left him undisturbed. The only thing to satisfy his present mood was to go, even singlehanded if necessary, and retaliate slaughter for slaughter.

Finally it was he again who broke the silence. The spirit driving him would not permit of long restraint.

“We do this thing. The poor dead things must be hidden up. They were Christians, and we must give them Christian burial. After that we go. We go back home. There is my little Felice. There is your Pri-loo. They must be made safe.”

The man’s decision was irrevocable. The Indian recognised the tone and understood. But his disappointment was intense.

“Us not go?” he cried. His words were accompanied by a sound that was like a laugh, a harsh, derisive laugh. “So,” he said. “We bury ’em all these people. Yes. The good boss say so. Then we go home, an’ mak safe Felice. We mak safe Pri-loo. Then us all get kill up—sure.”

CHAPTER III

It was still broad daylight for all the lateness of the hour. At this time of year darkness was unknown on the Hekor River. The sky was brilliant, with its cloudless summer blue shining with midday splendour.

Marty Le Gros was standing in the doorway of his log-built home, a home of considerable dimensions and comfort for his own hands, and those gentle hands of his dead wife, had erected every carefully trimmed log of it. He had only that day returned, sick at heart with the hideous recollection of the tragedy of his far-off Mission.

He was gazing out over the bosom of the sluggish river, so broad, so peacefully smiling as it stole gently away on its never-ending task of feeding the distant lake whose demands upon it seemed quite insatiable. His mind was gravely troubled, and it was planning the thing which had so suddenly become imperative. In a moment it seemed all the peace, all the quiet delight of his years of ardent labour amongst the Eskimo had been utterly rent and dispelled. He had been caught up in the tide of Usak’s savage understanding of the position of imminent danger in which he and all his belongings were standing. The thing he contemplated must be done, and done at once.

The evening hour, for all its midday brilliance, was no less peaceful than the hours of sundown in lower latitudes. He had learned to love every mood of this far northern world from its bitter storms of winter to the tropical heat of its fly and mosquito-ridden summer. It was the appeal of the remote silence of it all; it was the breadth of that wide northern world so far beyond the sheer pretences of civilization; it was the freedom, the sense of manhood it inspired. Its appeal had never once failed him even though it had robbed him of that tender companionship of the woman whose only thought in the world had been for him and his self-sacrificing labours.

At another time, with the perfect content of a mind at ease, he would have stood there smoking his well-charred pipe contemplating the beauty of this world he had made his own. But all that was changed now. The beauty, the calm of it all, only aggravated his moody unease.

Beyond the mile-wide river the western hills rose up to dizzy, snow-capped heights. Their far off slopes were buried under the torn beds of ages-old glacial fields, or lay hidden behind the dark forest-belts of primordial growth. The sight of them urged him with added alarm. He was facing the west, searching beyond the Alaskan border, and somewhere out there, hidden within those scarce trodden fastnesses lay the pulsing heart of the thing he had suddenly come to fear. Usak had warned him. Usak had convinced him on the seven day paddle down the river. So it was that those far-off ramparts, with their towering serrated crowns lost in the heavy mists enshrouding them, no longer appealed in their beauty. Their appeal had changed to one of serious dread.

He avoided them deliberately. His gaze came back to the nearer distance of the river, and just beyond it where the old fur-trading post, which gave its name to the region, stood out dark and staunch as it had stood for more than a century. A heavy stockade of logs, which the storms of the years had failed to destroy, encompassed it. The sight of the stockade filled him with a satisfaction it had never inspired before. He drew a deep breath. Yes, he was glad because of it. He felt that those old pelt hunters had built well and with great wisdom.

Then the wide river slipping away so gently southward. It was the road highway of man in these remotenesses, passing along just here between low foreshores of attenuated grasses and lichen-covered boulders, lit by the blaze of colour from myriads of tiny Arctic flowers. It was very, very beautiful. But its beauty was of less concern now than another thought. Just as it was a possible approach for the danger he knew to be threatening, so it was the broad highway of escape should necessity demand.

For the time Le Gros was no longer the missionary. He was no less a simple adventurer than those others who peopled the region. Spiritual things had no longer place in his thought. Temporal matters held him. His motherless child was there behind him in his home in the care of the faithful Pri-loo.

Gold! He wondered. What was the curse that clung to the dull yellow creation of those fierce terrestrial fires? A painful trepidation took possession of him as he thought of the tremendous richness of the discovery which the merest chance had flung into his hands. It had seemed absurd, curiously absurd, even at the time. He had had no desire for any of it. He had not yielded himself to the hardship and self-sacrifice of the life of a sub-Arctic missionary and retained any desire for the things which gold would yield him. Perhaps for this very reason an ironical fate had forced her favours upon him.

He had been well-nigh staggered at the wealth of his discovery, and he had laughed in sheer amazed amusement that of all people such should fall to his lot. The discovery had been his alone. Not even Usak had shared in it. There had been no reason for secrecy, so he had been prepared to give the story of it broadcast to the world.

He had shown his specimens, and he had enjoyed the mystery with which he had enshrouded his discovery when he displayed them to Jim McLeod, the factor at Fort Cupar, and a small gathering of trailmen. This had been at first. And chance alone had saved him from revealing the locality of his discovery. It came in a flash when he had witnessed the staggering effect which the two great nuggets he offered for inspection had had upon his audience. In that moment he had realised something of the potentiality of the thing that was his.

Instantly re-action set in. Instantly he was himself transformed. The missionary fell from him. He remembered his baby girl, and became at once a plain adventurer and—father. Someday Felice would grow to womanhood. Someday he would no longer be there to tend and care for her. What could he give her that she might be freed from the hardships waiting upon a lonely girl in a world that had so little of comfort and sympathy to bestow upon the weak? Nothing. So, when they pressed him for the locality whence came his discovery, he—deliberately lied.

More than ever now was he concerned for his secret. More than ever was he concerned for the thing which the savage understanding of Usak had instilled into his simple mind. His secret must be safeguarded at once. Whatever the future might have in store for him personally he must make safe this thing for—little Felice.

A sound came to him from within the house. It was the movement of the moccasined feet of Usak’s woman, Pri-loo. He spoke over his shoulder without leaving the doorway.

“Does she sleep, Pri-loo?” he inquired in a low voice. The answer came in the woman’s deep, velvet tones.

The man bestirred himself. He turned about, and the woman’s dusky beauty came under his urgent gaze.

“Then I go,” he said. “I’m going right over to see Jim McLeod, at the Fort. You just sit around till Usak comes back from the farm. You won’t quit this doorway till he comes along. That so? I’ll be back in a while, anyway. Felice’ll be all right? You’ll see to it?”

There was smiling confidence and assurance in the woman’s wide eyes, so dark and gentle, yet so full of the savage she really was.

“Good.” Marty Le Gros reached out his hand and patted the woman’s rounded shoulder under the elaborately beaded buckskin tunic she had never abandoned for the less serviceable raiment of the whitewoman. “Then I go.”

The missionary nodded and passed out. And the squaw stood in his place in the doorway gazing after him as he hurried down to the canoe which lay moored at the river bank.

The scene about the Fort was one of leisurely activity. The day’s work was nearly completed for all the sun was high in the heavens. The smoke of camp fires was lolling upon the still evening air, and the smell of cooking food pervaded the entire neighbourhood.

Now the store had emptied of its human, bartering freight, and with the close of the day’s trading, Jim McLeod and his young wife, like all the rest, were about to retire to their evening meal.

The man was leaning on the long counter contemplating the narrow day book in which he recorded his transactions with the Eskimo, and those other trailmen who were regular customers. His wife, Hesther, young, slight and almost pretty, was standing in the open doorway regarding the simple camp scenes going on within the walls of the great stockade which surrounded their home. She was simply clad in a waist and skirt of some rough plaid material. Her soft brown eyes were alight and smiling, and their colour closely matched the wealth of brown hair coiled neatly about her head.

“It ain’t so bad as it’s been,” he said. “But it’s short. A hell of a piece short of what it should be.” He moved out from behind his counter and came to the woman’s side. “You know, Hes, I went into things last night. We’re three hundred seals down on the year and I’d hate to tell you the number of foxes we’re short. We’re gettin’ the left-overs. That’s it. Those darn Euralians skin the pore fools of Eskimo out of the best, an’ we get the stuff they ain’t no use for. It’s a God’s shame, gal. If it goes on ther’s jest one thing in sight. We’ll be beatin’ it back to civilization, an’ chasing up a grub stake. The company’ll shut this post right down—sure.”

The man glanced uneasily about him. His pale blue eyes were troubled as he surveyed the shelves laden with gaudy trading truck, and finally came to rest on the small pile of furs baled behind the counter ready for the storeroom. He understood his position well enough. He held it by results. The Fur Valley Trading Company was no philanthropic institution. If Fort Cupar showed no profit then Fort Cupar, so far as their enterprise was concerned, would be closed down.

He was worried. He knew that a time was coming in the comparatively near future when Hesther would need all the comfort and ease that he could afford her. If the Company closed down as it had been threatening him, it would, he felt, be something in the nature of a tragedy to them.

“Don’t you feel sore, Jim,” she said in her cheerful inspiriting way. “Maybe the Good God hands us folk out our trials, but I guess He’s mighty good in passing us compensations. Our compensation’s coming along, boy. An’ I’m looking forward to that time so I don’t hardly know how to wait for it.”

Jim’s blue eyes wavered before the steadfast encouragement in his wife’s confident, slightly self-conscious smile.

“Yes,” he said, and turned away again to the inadequate pile of furs that troubled him.

Nature had been less than kind to Jim McLeod. His body was ungainly with fat for all his youth. His face was puffy and almost gross, which the habit of clean shaving left painfully evident. In reality the man was keen and purposeful. He was kindly and intensely honest. His one serious weakness, the thing that had driven him to join up with the hard life of the northern adventurers was an unfortunate and wholly irresistible addiction to alcohol. In civilization he had failed utterly for that reason alone, and so, with his young wife, he had fled from temptation whither he hoped and believed his curse would be unable to follow him.

“You see, Jim,” Hesther went on reassuringly, “if they close us down, what then? I guess we’ll be only little worse off. They’ve got to see us down to our home town, and we can try again. We—”

“I don’t quit this north country,” he said definitely. “Ther’s things here if we can only hit ’em. And besides it’s my only chance. An’, Hes, it’s your only chance—with me. You know what I mean, dear.” He nodded. “Sure you do, gal. It means drink an’ hell—down there. It means—”

“Have you escaped it here, Jim?” She shook her head. “But I don’t worry so I have you. You’re mine. You’re my husband,” she went on softly. “God gave you to me, an’ whatever you are, or do, why I guess I’d rather have you than any good angel man who lived on tea and pie-talk. Please God you’ll quit the drink someday. You can’t go on trying like you do without making good in the end. But even if you didn’t—well, you’re just mine anyway.”

Jim smiled tenderly into his wife’s up-turned face. And he stooped and kissed the pretty, ready lips. And somehow half his trouble seemed to vanish with the thought of the beautiful mother heart that would so soon be called upon to exercise its natural functions. This frail, warm-hearted, courageous creature was his staunch rock of support. And her simple inspiriting philosophy was the hope which always urged him on.

“That’s fine, my dear,” he said. “You’re the best in the world, but you can’t conjure furs so we can keep this darn old ship afloat. But it don’t do to think that way. We’ll jest think of that baby of ours that’s comin’ an’ do our best, an’—Say!” He broke off pointing through the doorway and beyond the gateway of the great stockade in the direction of the river. “Ther’s Marty comin’ along up from the river—and—he’s in one hell of a hurry.”

The girl turned at once, her gaze following the pointing finger. The great figure of the missionary was hastily approaching. The sight of his hurry was sufficiently unusual to impress them both.

“Say best run along, Hes, an’ see about food. I’ll ask him to eat with us.”

The wife needed no second bidding. She understood. She nodded smilingly and hurried away.

The two men were standing beside the counter. Jim McLeod had his broad back turned to it, and his fat hands, stretched out on either side of him, were gripping the over-hanging edge of it. His pale eyes were gazing abstractedly out through the doorway searching the brilliant distance beyond the river, while a surge of vivid thought was speeding through his brain.

Marty Le Gros was intent upon his friend. His dark eyes were riveted upon the fleshy features of the man upon whom he knew he must depend.

There was a silence between them now. It was the silence which falls and endures only under the profoundest pre-occupation. The store in which they stood, the simple frame structure set up on the ruins of the old-time Fort, which it had displaced, was forgotten. The lavish stock of trading truck, the diminished pile of furs. Neither had cognizance of the things about them. They were concerned only with the thing which Marty had told of. The desperate slaughter, the destruction of his Mission, seven days higher up the river.

After awhile Jim stirred. His gaze came back to the surroundings in which they stood. He glanced over the big room with its boarded walls, adorned here and there with fierce, highly-coloured showcards which he had fastened up to entertain his simple customers. His wavering eyes paused at the great iron stove which in winter made life possible. They passed on and finally rested on the simple modern doorway through which his young wife had not long passed on her way to prepare food. Here they remained, for he was thinking of her and of their baby so soon to be born. Finally he yielded his hold on the counter and turned on the man who had told of the horror he had so recently witnessed.

“It’s bad, Marty,” he said in a low tone. “It’s so bad it’s got me scared. Why? Why? Say, it don’t leave me guessing. Does it you?”

He looked searchingly into the steady, dark eyes of the man he had come to regard above all others.

“No,” he went on emphatically. “You’re not guessing. They’ve heard of your gold—these cursed Euralians. This is their way of doin’ things sure. They’ll be along down on us—next.”

The door opened at the far end of the store. Hesther stood for a moment framed in the opening. She gazed quickly at the two men, and realised something of the urgency under which they were labouring. In a moment she forced a smile to her eyes.

“Supper’s fixed, Jim,” she said quietly. “Marty’ll join us—sure. Will you both come right along?”

CHAPTER IV

“Guess we got an hour to talk, Marty. Hesther won’t be through her chores in an hour.”

“Sure. That’s how I feel. I make it you’ve a heap of trouble back of your head.”

The missionary settled himself more comfortably in the hard chair he had turned from the supper table. He had set it in the shade of the printed cotton curtain that adorned the parlor window.

Jim McLeod was less concerned for the glaring evening sunlight. He sat facing it, bulking clumsily on a chair a size too small for him. His pale blue eyes gazed out of the window which was closely barred with mosquito-netting.

The last of the supper things had been cleared from the table, and the sounds penetrating the thin, boarded walls of the room told of the labours of the busy housewife going on in the lean-to kitchen beyond. There was no need for these added labours which Hesther inflicted upon herself. There were native women who worked about the store quite capable of relieving her. But Hesther understood that the men wanted to talk in private.

Besides, it was her happy philosophy that God made woman to care for the creature comforts of her man, and to relegate that duty, all those duties connected therewith, would be an offence which nothing could condone.

Le Gros removed his pipe from his mouth. His eyes were full of reflective unease.

“Yes,” he reiterated, “and I guess it’s trouble enough to scare more than a woman.”

He thrust a hand into a pocket of his coat. He pulled out a little canvas bag and unfastened the string about its top. He peered at the yellow fragmentary contents. It was of several ounces of gold dust, that wonderful alluvial dust ranging in size from sheer dust to nuggets the size of a schoolboy’s marbles.

“Get a look at that,” he said. “It’s the wash-up of a single panning. Just one. I only showed you the two big nuggets before—when I—lied to you where I made the ‘strike.’”

Jim took possession of the bag of dust. He peered into its golden depths. And the man observing him noted the keen lighting of his eyes, and the instant, absorbed interest that took possession of him. After a moment the trader looked up.

Jim drew a deep breath. It was an expression of that curious covetous thrill at the sight of unmeasured wealth which is so human. He weighed the bag in his hand.

“Ther’s more than three ounces of stuff here,” he said, gazing into the dark eyes opposite him. “Guess it’s nearer four.” Again he breathed deeply. “One panning!” he exclaimed. Then followed an ejaculation which said far more than any words.

“You reckon it’s this bringing them down—our way,” he said. “That’s what Usak reckons, too. Maybe I feel you’re both right—now. I was a fool to give my yarn out. I should have held it tight, and just let you know quietly. Yes, I see it now. You see, I didn’t think. I guess I didn’t understand the temptation of it. When I lit on that ‘strike’ it scarcely interested me a thing, and I didn’t see why it should worry anybody else. I forgot human nature. No, it wasn’t till the gold spirit suddenly hit me that I realised anything. And when it did it made me lie—even to you.”

Jim twisted up the neck of the bag and re-set the lashings about it. Then, with a regretful sigh, he passed the coveted treasure back to its owner.

“Let’s see. How long is it since you handed out your yarn? It’s more’n two months. Two months,” he repeated thoughtfully. “They’ve had two months on Loon Creek, an’ they’ve drawn blank. There—Yes, I see. They’re coming back on you. They started by way of your Mission, an’ they mean you to git a grip on their way of handlin’ the thing. Man, it sets my blood red hot. They’ve cleaned this region out of furs, an’ every other old trade, so I’m sittin’ around waitin’ for my people to close us down, and now—this. Is there no help? Ain’t ther’ a thing we can do? God! It makes me hot.”

The blue eyes were fiercely alight. There was no wavering in them now. Passionate desire to fight was stirring in the trader. And somehow his emotion seemed to rob his body of its appearance of physical ungainliness.

The missionary seemed less disturbed as he set the bag back in his pocket. He had passed through his bad time. Now his decision was taken. Now he was no longer the missionary but a simple man of single purpose which he intended to put through in such way as lay within his power, aided by the friendship of Jim McLeod.

“Yes. It’s the gold now,” he said, with an expressive gesture. “But,” he went on, with a shake of the head, “for the life of me I can’t get behind the minds of these mysterious northern—devils. Why, why in the name of all that’s sane and human should these Euralians descend on a pitiful bunch of poor, simple fisher-folk, and butcher and burn them off the face of the earth? It’s senseless, inhuman barbarity. Nothing else. If they want my secret, if they want the truth I denied to you as well as the rest, it’s here, in my head,” he said, tapping his broad forehead with a forefinger. “Not out there with those poor dead creatures who never harmed a soul on God’s earth. If they want it they must come to me. And when they come they—won’t get it.”

The man was transformed. Not for a moment had he raised his voice to any tone of bravado or defiance. Cold decision was shining in his eyes and displayed itself in the clip of his jaws as he returned his pipe to his mouth. Jim waited. His moment of passionate protest had passed. He was absorbed in that which he felt was yet to come.

“Here, listen, Jim,” Le Gros went on, after the briefest pause, with a sharp intake of breath which revealed something of the reality of the emotions he was labouring under. “You’re my good friend, and I want to tell you things right here and now, to-night. That’s why I came over in a hurry. You’ve always known me as a missionary. The man in me was kind of lost. That’s so. But now you’ve got to know me as a man. You were the first I told of my ‘strike.’ You were the first I showed those nuggets to. And you guessed they were worth five thousand dollars between ’em.”

“When I showed you that stuff I was the missionary. The thing began to fall off when I watched you looking at them. But it wasn’t till some of the trailmen, and even the Indians, heard the story, and showed their amazing lust for the thing I’d discovered, that I got a full grip on all that yellow stuff meant. Then I forgot to be a missionary and was just a man the same as they were. I was startled, shocked. I was half scared. I saw at a glance I’d made a bad break in telling my story, and so, when you all asked me the whereabouts of the strike, I—lied.”

He paused, passing a hand over his forehead, and smoothed back his ample black hair.

“I surely am.” Jim spread out his hands. “Here, Marty,” he cried, “I was sick to death hearing you hand out your yarn to the boys. I kind of saw a rush for Loon Creek comin’ along and beating you—an’ me—right out of everything. Knowing you I thought it was truth. But I’m mighty glad you—lied.”

“Knowing me?” he said, with a gentle smile of irony. “I wonder.” He shook his head. “I didn’t know myself. No, you didn’t know me. I’m different now. Quite different. And it’s that gold changed me. Do you know how—why? No.” He shook his head. “I guess you don’t. I’ll tell you. It’s Felice. My little Felice. And that’s why I came right over to see you, and tell you the things in my mind.”

Jim shifted his chair as the other paused. He leant forward with his forearms resting on his knees. The thought of the gold was deep in his mind. There was personal, selfish interest in him as well as interest for that which the other had to tell him about his baby, Felice.

Marty drew a deep breath. His eyes turned from the man before him. The intensity of Jim’s regard left him with an added realisation of the power that gold exercises over the simplest, the best of humanity.

“If I live, Jim, I’m going to let you into this ‘strike.’ Maybe it’ll help you, and leave you free of your Company,” he said gently. “You shall be in it what you folk call ‘fifty-fifty.’ If I die you shall be in it the same way, only it’ll be with my baby girl. And for that I want to set an obligation on you. Can you stand for an obligation?”

“Anything for you, Marty,” Jim replied at once, and earnestly. “Anything for you,” he repeated. “And I’ll put it through with the last breath of life.”

“Good.” The missionary’s gaze came back to the trader’s face, and a smiling relief shone in his eyes. He nodded. “You see, with these wretched Euralians on the war path, and with me standing around in their path, you can never tell. Maybe I’ll live. Maybe I won’t. If I live you’ll be up to your neck in this ‘strike’ anyway. If I die you’ll work it for Felice, and hand her her ‘fifty’ of it when the time comes. Is it good?”

“Will you swear to do this, Jim? Will you swear on—on the thing you hold most sacred?”

“I’ll swear it on the little life that’s just goin’ to be born to Hesther an’ me. If a thing happens to you, Marty, so you lose the daylight, your little Felice shall be seen right, and all you can wish for her shall be done, though you never tell me a thing of this ‘strike.’”

The simple honesty looking out of Jim’s eyes eased the troubled heart of the older man. He nodded.

“I knew it would be that way. I’m glad,” he said. “I’m not passing you thanks. No thanks could tell you the thing you’ve made me feel, Jim.” He laughed shortly. “Thanks? I guess it would be an insult when a boy like you is ready to set himself to carrying the whole of another feller’s burden.”

“This is how I’ve planned, Jim,” he went on, after a moment. “I’m going right back home now, and I’m going to pass some hours drawing out the plan and general map of the ‘strike.’ I’ll write it out in the last detail. Then I’ll set it in a sealed packet and hand it to you. You’ll have it, and keep it, and you won’t open it while I’m alive. It’s just so the thing shan’t be lost if they kill me up. See? If I live we’ll work this thing together at ‘fifty-fifty.’ That way there won’t be need for you to open up those plans. Do you get it? The whole thing is just a precaution for you and my little Felice. You see, if I pass over I’ve nothing else to hand that poor little kiddie. It’s her bit of luck.”

Jim sat back in his chair and began to refill his pipe which had gone out. For some moments his stirring emotions prevented speech, while the smiling eyes of the missionary watched his busy, clumsy fingers. At last, however, he looked up. And as he did so he thrust the tobacco hard into the bowl of his pipe, and the force of his action was no less than the headlong rush of words that surged to his lips.

“Oh, it’s Hell! Simple Hell!” he cried passionately. “What have we done that we should be cursed by these murdering Euralians. They’re not going to get you, Marty. We’ve got to fix that. Come right over here. Quit your shanty, an’ bring Felice, an’ Pri-loo, an’ Usak right over here. It’s no sort of swell place, this old frame house the Company’s set up for me. But the stockade outside it stands firm twelve feet high right around. And I’ve guns an’ things plenty to defend it. I can corral plenty trailmen who’d be glad enough to scrap these folk, and we could fight ’em an’ beat ’em, till we get help from Placer where the p’lice can collect a posse of ‘specials.’ We’re not goin’ to sit down under this thing. It’s not my way. An’ it’s not goin’ to be your way. We’ll fight. Come right over to-morrow, Marty. We’ll just be crazy for you to come, and—”

“That’s all right boy,” he said. “I know just how you feel and I’m glad. But you don’t know the thing you’re trying to bring on your Hesther, and your unborn baby. You haven’t seen the thing I’ve seen. You haven’t seen old men and women, butchered and mutilated, lying stark on the ground. You haven’t seen babes scattered around legless, armless, headless. And the young men and young women—gone.” He shook his head, and the horror of recollection was in his eyes. “No. You haven’t seen those things, and you haven’t remembered that I carry this curse about with me. Sheltering here I bring it to your door. To you, and your Hesther, and your babe. With me across the river there you’re free and safe. No. I stand or fall by my wits, my luck, my own efforts. You are doing for me the only thing I ask in safeguarding my secret and caring for little Felice. That’s what I ask. And you’ve promised me. That’s all, Jim, my friend, and now I’ll get along back and fix those plans.”

He rose from his chair, tall, strong and completely calm. And the trader rose, too, and gazed up into the other’s face.

“You’re a good friend, Jim. But my mind’s made up. While I’ve life I’ll fight my own fight. When I’m dead please God you’ll do—what I can’t. So long Jim,” he added wringing the fleshy hand he was still gripping. “I’ll be along over with those plans before you eat your breakfast.”

CHAPTER V

The brilliant June night was like a midsummer day. The deathless sun knew no rest for all the Arctic world was wrapt in slumber. The stillness of it all, the perfect quiet; it was a world of serene solitude, with only the sounds which came from unseen creatures, and the rustle of stirred vegetation caught on a gentle zephyr, to whisper of the life prevailing.

Marty Le Gros was back in his own home. He was at the little table which served him for such writing as his work as missionary entailed. It was a simple apartment characteristic of the habitation he had set up. The walls were plastered with a dun-coloured mud smoothed down but retaining all its crudeness which nothing could disguise. The room was of considerable extent. Its furnishing was no less primitive than its walls, but also no less robust. Every article was of his own design and manufacture, and that which it lacked in refinement it made up in substance. Chairs were rawhide-strung, square and solid. The table had legs of saplings, and a top that was made from packing cases obtained from Jim McLeod. The ceiling above his head was of cotton. So were the two windows which were flung open to admit air through the mosquito netting beyond them.

Yes, it was all very crude. Nevertheless it lost nothing of its sense of home. The floor was strewn with sun-dried furs, and there were shelves of well-read books. The man’s simple sleeping bunk was curtained off in one corner near by to the doorway which communicated with a lesser room where slept his motherless child. And there was still another doorway which led to a third room. It was the kitchen place where Usak and Pri-loo slept, and where the latter prepared such food as was needed.

There was no sound in the place but that of the man’s occasional movements and the scratching of the pen with which he was working. Felice was asleep in the next room in the cot which he and his dead wife had long since fashioned and adorned. Pri-loo, awaiting the return of her man from the reindeer farm, which was his work, had finally yielded her vigil and retired to her blankets in the kitchen. It was the calving season down at the farm, and as likely as not Usak would not return to her for many hours.

The missionary had applied himself to his task with that close concentration which betokened the urgency of his desire. He had been at work for over an hour. Now he sat with his great body hunched over the table, and, with poised pen, was at last regarding his completed work. The large sheet of paper stared back at his darkly brooding eyes, and the careful tracery on its surface spread from one end of it to the other. It was the drawing of a wide, winding river. And along its entire course was dotted every detail of natural formation which his keen memory supplied him with. Hills were carefully drawn. Woodland bluffs were marked with due regard to their extent. Everything that could serve to guide the explorer was there set out. Every title for each natural feature was inscribed, and one wide stretch of river foreshore was outlined in red ink and inscribed with the words “mouth of creek.”

It was complete. It was complete with that care and consideration which spoke of the tremendous anxiety lying behind the man’s purpose.

At last he abandoned his scrutiny and a deep sigh escaped him. Then he leisurely picked up his tobacco bag and began to fill his pipe. Leaning back in his chair his gaze sought the daylight beyond the window, and in a moment he became absorbed in profound, wakeful dreaming and his pipe remained forgotten.

He had reached another great crisis in his simple life. He knew it. He understood to the last detail the ominous significance of the thing he had just completed. His thought began by searching ahead, but swiftly it was caught and flung back into the deep channels of memory such as never fail to claim when the heart of man is deeply stirred.

A wide panorama of the past swept into his view. It began, as everything seemed to begin with him now, at that time when he and his young wife had taken their final decision to move northwards where their spiritual desires could find expression in the wilderness of untamed Nature. He remembered, how keenly he remembered, the surge of thrilling anticipation with which they had embarked on their mission. The bitter hardships they had had to endure, and the merciless labours that had been theirs to make even their simple lives possible here on the Hekor River, which followed so nearly the course of the Arctic Circle. He remembered the selfless kindness of Jim McLeod and his gentle wife. How they had helped him with everything that lay in their power. Yes, it was a happy memory which eased the strain of the thing besetting him now.

Then had come that first great happiness and finally disaster. Jim was looking forward now to just the same moment in his life. That first-born child. It was an ineffaceable landmark in the life of any man.

He sighed. He was contemplating again the tragedy which had followed hard in the wake of his overwhelming happiness. Poor little Jean. Poor, poor little woman.

Her happiness was short enough lived, and his— In his simple, earnest fashion he prayed God that Jim and Hesther should never know a similar disaster. He wondered if little Jean knew of the thing he was doing now. And if she would have approved had she been there to witness it. Yes. Somehow he felt that her full approval would have been his. It was for Felice. He desired nothing for himself but to be permitted to carry on the labours of his Mission. But for Felice—

He stirred uneasily. The scene of his devastated Mission lit again before his mental gaze and tortured him. And suddenly he sat up and carefully folded the annotated map he had prepared. He finally enclosed it in a piece of American cloth, tied it up securely, and sealed it with the fragment of wax he had discovered for that purpose. Then he stood up and gazed about him. His dark eyes took in every happy detail of the home which had served him so long. And presently the man of peace found himself contemplating the cartridge belt, with its two great revolvers protruding from their holsters, which was hanging from its nail on the log wall.

For some moments he regarded it without any change of expression. Then of a sudden he stirred and moved quickly over to it. He removed first one gun from its holster, then the other. He examined them. They were old-fashioned, and their chambers were empty. Very deliberately, almost reluctantly, he loaded them in each chamber. Then with another sigh he returned them to the holsters where they belonged.

He turned away quickly. It was as though he detested the thing he had just done and was anxious to rid himself of the memory of it. So he passed into the room which he had always shared with his wife, but which now was given up to the atom of humanity which was the priceless treasure of his life.

The man was sitting on the stool set beside the simple bedcot. It was the stool which Pri-loo was wont to occupy when watching over the slumbers of the child she had taken to her mother heart. He was gazing down upon the sleeping babe as she lay there under the coloured blankets and patch-work quilt which was the daintiest covering with which he had been able to provide her.

Fair-haired and sweetly cherubic the child lay breathing in that calm, almost imperceptible fashion so sure an indication of perfect health. Her colouring was exquisite. A subtle tracery of blue veins was plainly visible beneath the delicate, fair skin. She was sweetly pretty, and her brief four years of life had afforded her a generous development sufficient to satisfy the most exacting parent.

The man’s dark eyes were infinitely tender as he regarded the sleeping child. Gold? There was no treasure in the world comparable with that, which, with her dying effort, his well-loved wife had presented him. Felice—little Felice. The smiling, prattling creature, the thought of whose wide blue eyes was unfailing in lightening even the darkest shadows which the cares of her father’s life imposed upon him.

He feasted himself now on the beauty which was so like to that of the mother who had given up her life for his desire. And as he gazed a surge of deep, tender feeling recalled a hundred happy memories. And so for awhile he was filled with smiling thought.

But it passed. It passed with a suddenness that left a cold dew of fear upon his brow for all the warmth of the Arctic summer night. For even as memory had transported him to the days wherein his life had known no shadow, so it had brought him again to the recollection of the scene of mutilation he had witnessed at his Mission. There he had seen children, younger even than Felice, lying upon the ground limbless, headless, almost unrecognisable trunks.

An unconscious movement stirred him, and he shook his head as though in denial of his thought. Then he gazed down upon the sealed packet he was carrying in his hand. For long moments he looked at it, and then, of a sudden, his eyes came back to the face of the sleeping babe, and words came in a low, tender whisper.

“No, kiddie,” he murmured, “not while I have life. My poor Jean gave you to me, little bit. And you’re just mine. All I am in the world will defend you from harm such—such as—God! No. Not that. Psha! No, it couldn’t be.” He wiped his forehead with a hand that was unsteady. Then he forced a smile to his eyes just as he forced his fears back and strove to think of the thing he had spent so many hours preparing. He held up the packet in his hand before the child’s closed eyes. “This wasn’t sent my way for nothing,” he whispered. “It’s your luck, little kid. Yours. It’s for you, half of it. And—and if I should fail—well, there’s others’ll see you get it. My little kiddie. My little—”

He broke off. The man’s tender admonition died on his lips which closed almost with a snap. His whole attitude underwent a change. He sat rigid and listening, and his dark eyes were turned as though seeking to peer over his shoulder.

It was a sound. A sound that came from beyond the outer room. It was not from the direction of the kitchen place where Usak might be returning home. No. It came from beyond the front door of the shanty which was not the way Usak would come.

The missionary made no movement. Every sense was straining, every faculty was alert. Sounds came in the night. It was a common enough thing. But he had that in his mind now which gave to any sound in the night the possibility of a new interpretation.

The moments passed. The tension eased. And again the fathers eyes came back to the face of the sleeping child. But it was only for an instant. Of a sudden he dropped the sealed packet into the child’s cot and leapt to his feet.

Headlong he ran for the open doorway, and the purpose in his mind was obvious. He passed it, and ran for the loaded guns hanging upon the wall of his room. But he failed to reach them. A shot rang out and he stumbled. Putting forth a superhuman effort he sought to recover himself. But his legs gave under him and he crashed to the floor with the first tearful cry of his wakened child ringing in his ears.

CHAPTER VI

Marty Le Gros lay sprawled on the ground. He had scarcely moved from the position in which he had fallen. Pri-loo, her handsome eyes aflame with fierce anger, was standing just within the doorway leading to the kitchen place. A man stood guard over her, a small dark-skinned creature whose eyes slanted with a suggestion of Mongol obliqueness. It was obvious that she was only held silent under threat of the gun that her guard held ready. Two other dark-skinned strangers moved about the living room clearly searching, and a third stood looking on, propped against the table which served the missionary for writing. Beyond the movements of the searching men, and such disturbance as the process of their work entailed, and the insistent cries of the child Felice in the adjoining room, an ominous silence prevailed.

The expression of the almost yellow eyes of the man at the table was intense with cold, deliberate purpose. It was without one gleam of pity for the fallen missionary. It was without concern for the angry woman held silent in the doorway. He was regarding only the movements of the men acting under his orders. He, like the man in charge of Pri-loo, was clad in the ordinary garb customary to whitemen of the northern trail. But the others, the searchers, had no such pretensions. They were in the rough clothing native to the Eskimo when Arctic summer prevails.

After awhile the terrified cries of the suddenly awakened Felice died down to the intermittent sobs which so surely claim the sympathies of the mother-heart. Even Pri-loo’s fierce native anger yielded before their appeal. Distress stirred her, and only the threatening gun held her from rushing to comfort the helpless babe who was her treasured charge.

The great prone figure of the missionary on the ground stirred. It was the preliminary to returning consciousness. Quite abruptly his head was raised. Then, by a great effort, he propped himself on to his elbow and gazed about him. Finally his dark, troubled eyes came to rest on the face of the still figure of the man who stood regarding him.

There was a searching pause while eye met eye. Then the missionary sought to moisten his lips with a tongue little less parched.

“Well?” he demanded in the low, husky voice of a man whose strength is rapidly waning.

The man at the table inclined his dark, close-cropped head and turned again to the man on the ground.

“You’re going to tell us of that gold ‘strike,’ Le Gros,” he said simply, without the slightest sign of foreign or native accent. “You’re going to tell us right away. Because if you don’t we’ve a way of making you. Do you get that? You’d better get it. It’ll be easier for you and for those belonging to you. We’ve come many miles to hear about that ‘strike,’ and we aren’t returning empty-handed. Do you fancy handing your story? Or—”

Marty Le Gros’ voice had suddenly become harsh and furious. All his ebbing strength was flung into his retort.

“I shall,” he said, with calm decision. “I’m not here to ask twice. You’ve seen the—remains—of your Mission, ’way up the river. Doesn’t that tell you about things? It should—if you have sense.”

The missionary’s eyes lit. For all his growing weakness, for all the suffering the wound in his side was causing him, a tinge of hot colour mounted to his pallid cheeks.

“I tell you you’ll get nothing from me,” he said, and the strength of his voice had ominously lessened. He raised his body till he was supporting himself on one hand which rested in the pool of his own life-blood staining the earthen floor. His dark eyes were fiercely defiant as they gazed up at the other.

“We’ll see.” Then he pointed at Pri-loo standing in the doorway watching the pitiful duel, hardly realising the full meaning of what she beheld. “You see her? Watch!”

There was a sign. It was given on the instant. And the dying man gasped in horror.

“Your woman, eh?” The Euralian went on. “Well, she won’t be any longer. Are you going to—speak?”

“She’s not my woman. She’s the wife of Usak. If—if you harm her it’s—it’s sheer, wanton—”

The words died on the missionary’s lips. There was a sharp report. It was the gun of the man guarding Pri-loo fired at close range. It rang out tremendously in the narrow confines of the room. The foster-mother of Felice was shot through the head, which was completely shattered. The poor dead creature dropped where she stood, without a sound, without a cry. To the last moment of her staunch life her angry eyes had defied her captors.

The dying missionary reeled. He would have fallen again to the ground. But the searchers were beside him, and they seized and held him lest he should miss a single detail of that which was intended for his infliction.

The Euralian’s eyes lit as he made his taunting demand. The tearful cries of the terrified Felice were again raised in response to the deafening report of the gun that had slain her foster-mother.

But Marty Le Gros’ strength was oozing through the wound that had laid him low. The shock of the hideous massacre of the helpless Pri-loo was overwhelming. Consciousness was nearing its extremity.

The man at the table bestirred himself. Perhaps he realised that opportunity was slipping away from him. A swift, imperative sign to the youth who had slain Pri-loo, and the next moment he had passed into the room whence came the redoubled cries of the distracted Felice.

The closing eyes of the dying man widened on the instant. A surge of hopeless terror stared out of their dark depths. His lolling head was lifted erect and it turned in the direction of the door through which the Euralian had vanished. In supreme anguish he realised the thing contemplated. His child! Felice! In a spasm of recollection he saw again the headless trunks of the children of his Mission. The man at the table was forgotten. His own sufferings. Even he had forgotten the thing he was trying to safeguard. Felice! His babe! They—

“If the woman wasn’t yours, Le Gros, the child is,” the man at the table taunted. “Well? Will you—talk?”

The terrible yellow eyes were irresistible. There was no escape from them. And Marty Le Gros forgot everything but the anguish which the taunt inspired.

“Not her! Not that!” he cried. “Yes,” he went on urgently. “You can have it. For God’s sake spare—”

The man at the table had moved. He had approached his victim. His voice was fiercely urgent for he realised the thing that was happening.

It was his supreme effort, and it remained uncompleted. His words died away in a gasping jumble of sounds that rattled in his throat. For one brief spasm his arms struggled with the men supporting him. Then his head lolled forward again, and his body limpened. A moment later the supporting hands were removed and Marty Le Gros fell back on the ground—dead.

The yellow eyes of the leader were turned on the young man who had just re-entered the room bearing in his arms the screaming Felice.

“Too late,” he said coldly. “You’ve blundered, Sate. It was that clumsy shot of yours. Maybe you’ll learn someday. Tcha!”

Sate dropped the screaming child roughly to the ground. His black eyes sparkled. There was triumph as well as resentment in them.

“That so? Oh, yes. Well, here are the plans. He sealed them when they were finished. We saw that. Eh?”

He held out the packet he had found in Felice’s cot, and the older man accepted it without a sign. In a moment he withdrew a sheath knife and severed the fastenings. Flinging off the outer cover he unfolded the contents. A glance was sufficient and he looked up without a smile.

Then he glanced down at the dead man. Felice had crawled up close to the body of her father. Her baby arms were thrust about his neck as though clinging to him for protection. Or maybe it was only in that fond baby fashion she had long since learned. Her cries had wholly ceased. Even in death the comfort of her father’s presence and proximity were all sufficient to banish her every terror.

“Take her out,” he ordered, without a shadow of softening. “Set her somewhere near by in the bluff. Maybe the folk across the river will come along and find her when they see the fire. If they don’t, well, maybe the—wolves will.”

Usak gazed about him in a hopeless amazement. He was standing before the smoking remains of Marty Le Gros’ Mission. He had hastened home from the farm which lay several miles away to the east. In the midst of his work amongst his herd of reindeer he had suddenly observed the smoke cloud lolling heavily upon the near horizon, and without a moment’s hesitation he had abandoned the new-born fawn he was attending to ascertain its cause.

He had been filled with alarm at the sight. There was nothing he knew of in the neighbourhood to fire but the bluff that sheltered the Mission and the house itself. So he had come at once at a speed that only he could have achieved.

His worst fears were realised. It was not the sheltering bluff. That was still standing. It was the house itself, that home which had been his shelter as well as that of those others.

For some moments he contemplated the scene without any attempt at active investigation. It almost seemed as if his keen wit had somehow become dulled under the shock of his discovery. Just at first it was the fire itself that pre-occupied. Somehow he did not associate it with disaster to the occupants. That did not occur to him. Doubtless at the back of his mind lay the conviction that the missionary, and Pri-loo, and little Felice had crossed the river and gone to McLeod’s store for shelter. That was at first.

A light breeze drifted the smoke down upon him. For a moment he was enveloped in it. Then it passed. A fresh current of wind—a cross current—drifted it back whence it came, and the man which the passing of the smoke revealed had somehow been transformed.

Amazement was no longer in his black eyes. They were alight and burning with a passion of anxiety. That cloud of smoke had borne upon his sensitive nostrils the smell of burning flesh.

Usak moved up to the charred walls. They were hot and smoking. Most of them were in a state of wreckage, for the roof had fallen and many of the logs had crashed from the tops of the walls. He passed round them, a swift-moving, silent figure seeking access where the smouldering fire would permit. The back door of the kitchen-place was impossible. Flames were still devouring that which remained. The windows were surrounded with hot, fiery timbers. The front door giving on to the sitting room alone seemed possible. But here again was fire, though it had almost burnt out.

But the man’s mood was not such as to leave him standing before obstacles. In his half savage heart was a native terror of fire. But just now all that was completely overborne by emotions that were irresistible. The smell of burning flesh was strong in his nostrils, he even fancied he could taste something of it on his lips.

Just for one instant he paused before the doorway measuring the chances of it all. Then he leapt forward and vanished into the smoking ruin.

Jim McLeod was standing in the doorway of his store. He had been roused from sleep by a furious hammering on the door. He had flung on a heavy skin coat over his night clothes and hastily thrust a gun in each pocket of it. Then he had cautiously proceeded to investigate, for the memory of his long talk with Marty Le Gros was still with him.

But his apprehensions had been swiftly allayed, or at least changed, for the harsh deep tones of Usak had replied to his challenge through the barred door.

Now he was listening to the thing the Indian had to say and the horror of the story he listened to found reflection in his pale blue eyes.

“They’ve killed ’em an’ burnt ’em out?” he cried incredulously as the furious man broke off the torrent of the first rush of his story.

Usak’s black eyes were aflame with a light that was bordering on frenzy. The infant Felice, wrapped in a blanket, was in his arms and clinging to him with her tiny arms about the man’s trunk-like neck, silent, wide-eyed, but content with a presence understood and loved.

“Here I tell you. I tell you quick so no time is lost. I work by the farm all night. So. It is the season when I work that way. The young deer need me. Oh, yes. So I work. Then I mak look up in the corral. There is smoke to the west. Smoke. I look some more, an’ I think quick. Smoke? Fire? What burns that way? Two things, maybe. The bluff. The house of Marty Le Gros. So I mak quick getaway. Oh, yes. Very quick. Then I come by the house. It all burn. Yes. No house. Only burning logs all break up. So I stand an’ think. An’ while I stand I smell. So. I smell the cooking of meat. Meat. First I have think Marty an’ Pri-loo mak big getaway to here. Then, when I smell this thing, I think—no. Not getaway.”

“Yes. They burn. They burn all up. But not so they die. Oh, no.” The Indian shook his head, and the brooding light in his black eyes suddenly blazed up afresh. “Listen,” he cried, in his fierce way. “I tell you. I—Usak. I see him all. I go mad. Oh, yes. I think of Pri-loo. I think of little Felice. I think of the good Marty. So I go into the house just wher’ I can. I go by the door which him burn right out. Then I find ’em. Then I find ’em all dead. An’ the fire cook ’em lak—meat.”

The great rough creature thrust the greasy fur cap back from his forehead. There was sweat on his low brow. But it was the sweat inspired by his fierce emotions.

He turned away in desperation, and so his black eyes were hidden from the search of the trader’s. A curious feeling of helplessness in the midst of the storm of rage besetting him threatened overwhelming. There was a moment even when the soft arms about his neck seemed to be stifling him. But his weakness passed in a flash. The next moment the furious onslaught of the savage in him held sway.

“But the fire not kill him,” he cried, his tone lowered to something like a snarl of savagery. “I look. I find ’em, Pri-loo. My woman. I find her, yes, an’ I think I go crazy sure. They kill her—my woman. My good woman. They shoot her by the head. It all break up. Oh, yes. My woman. They kill her—dead.” His voice died out and his black eyes were turned away again to hide that which looked out of them. But in a moment he went on. “Then I find him. The good boss, Marty. Him belly all shoot to pieces. Oh, yes. They kill him all up dead, too. Then I look for Felice. Little Felice.” His arms tightened about the child nestling against his shoulder. “No Felice. She all gone. I think maybe they eat her. I think. I look. No. No Felice. So I go out an’ think some more. I stand by bluff. Then I find ’em. She mak big cry out. She by the bluff. So I find her. They throw her in the bush in the blanket of my woman, Pri-loo.”

The man paused again and a deep breath said far more of the thing he was enduring than his words told. After a moment he nodded his head, and his lank, black hair brushed the fair face of the child in his arms.

“So I bring her, an’ you tak her. You, an’ your good whitewoman tak her like your own. I go. I find this Euralian mans. I know ’em wher’ they camp. Oh, yes. Usak big hunter. Shoot plenty much good. I kill ’em all up dead. They kill ’em my woman, Pri-loo. My good woman. They kill ’em my good boss, Marty. So I kill ’em, too. Now I go. You tak Felice. Bimeby I come back when all Euralian kill dead. Then I tak Felice. I raise her like the good boss, by the farm. It for her. Yes. That farm. Marty love little Felice all the time. He mak all good thing for Felice. So I mak same all good thing, too. That so.”

Jim McLeod made no attempt to reply. Somehow it seemed impossible even to offer comment in face of the terrible story the man had brought to him, and the simple irrevocable purpose in his spoken determination. He held out his arms to receive the murdered man’s child, and Usak, with infinite gentleness, released himself from the clinging arms so reluctant to part from him.

“You tak ’em. Yes,” he said as he passed the babe over. “Bimeby I come back. Sure.”

Jim folded the child to his broad bosom in clumsy, unaccustomed fashion. He was hardly conscious of the thing he did. His horrified imagination was absorbed by the terrible scene he was witnessing through the eyes of the Indian. Quite suddenly his mind leapt back to the thing Marty had intended and had been at such pains to discuss with him, and his question came on the instant.

“Everything? Everything was burnt out? There was nothing left? Books? Papers?”

Felice began to cry. In a moment her little chubby hands were beating her protest against the broad bosom of the trader. The sight of her rebellion somehow had a softening effect on the coloured man, and he spoke in a manner and in a tone of gentleness which must have seemed impossible in him a moment before.

But even his encouragement was without effect. The child’s cries rose to a fierce, healthly pitch of screaming which promptly called forth protest from the trail dogs about the camps within the stockade. For some moments pandemonium reigned, and in the midst of it the voice of Hesther, who had hurried from her bed, brought comfort to her helpless husband.

“For goodness’ sake!” she cried at the sight of the terrified child in her husband’s arms. “Are you crazy, Jim, havin’ that pore baby gal—Felice? Little Felice? Say, what—? Here, pass her to me.”

The trader made no demur. In a moment the distracted child was exchanged into his wife’s outstretched arms which tenderly embraced and snuggled her close to her soft motherly bosom.

The child’s cries were quickly hushed, and the dogs abandoned their savage, responsive chorus. Hesther looked searchingly up into Jim’s troubled face. Then her gentle, inquiring eyes passed on to scrutinize the face of the Indian.

“Tell me,” she demanded. And her words were addressed to Usak, as she rocked the child to and fro in her arms.

But Usak was reluctant. He averted his gaze while the whiteman became pre-occupied with the broad expanse of the river beyond the gateway of the stockade.

“Something’s happened,” she went on urgently. “What is it? I’ve got to know. I shall know it later, anyhow, Jim!”

The trader shook his head. But it was different with the Indian. His eyes came back to the woman’s face and he nodded.

“Sure. You know him bimeby,” he said quietly. “Maybe your man tell him all now. I tell him. He know this thing. Yes. Now I go. I go hunt all him Euralian mans. I find ’em. I kill ’em all up dead, same lak him kill up Pri-loo, an’ my good boss, Marty. I go now. Bimeby I come back, an’ I mak all good thing for little Felice. I not come back, then you mak raise ’em Felice lak your child. That so.”

CHAPTER VII

The towering Alaskan hills overshadowed the broad waterway of the Hekor River. From the level of the water the shores rose up monstrously. There were precipitate, sterile, encompassing walls of granite that rose hundreds of feet without a break. And back of them, mounting by dizzy slopes, the great hills raised their snow-crowned crests till the misty cloud line enveloped them. The world was grey, and dark, and something overwhelming towards the headwaters of the great river. It was a territory barren of everything but the tattered clothing of scattered primordial forest bluffs clinging to sheer slopes, or safely engulfed in the shelter of deep, shadowed ravines. It was a scene of crude grandeur in which Nature had designed no place for man.

Yet man refused Her denial. Man with his simple skill and profound daring. No rampart set up by Nature was sufficient to bar the way.

A small kyak was driving against the stream of waters surging at its prow. It was driven with irresistible skill and power, for the man at the paddle was consuming with passionate desire and purpose. For days and days he had driven on up against a stream that was growing in speed with every passing mile. He knew the thing confronting him. He knew every inch of the great waterway’s rugged course. Every shoal, every rapid was an open book to him. So, too, were the shelters and easements where the stream yielded its strength. The man behind the paddle faced his task with the supreme confidence of knowledge and conscious power. And so he neared the canyon of the Grand Falls without the smallest perturbation.

A mere speck in the immensity of its surrounding the kyak glided on. Here it rocked on a ruffled surface, there it passed, perfectly poised, a ghostly shadow upon a smooth mirror-like surface. The dip of the man’s paddle was precise and rhythmic. Every ounce of strength was in every stroke, and every stroke yielded its full of propulsion. For Usak was a master of river craft, and understood the needs of the journey that still lay ahead of him.

His goal was still far off. It was less than a day since he had crossed the unmarked border which opened the gates of Alaska to him. He knew there must be more than another nightless day pass before he reached the toilsome portage where stood the mighty Falls which emptied themselves from the summit of the barrier which he had yet to scale. The goal he sought lay hidden away up amidst those high lands where the drainings of the snow-clad hills foregathered before hurling themselves to feed the river below. But time mattered nothing to his Indian mind. He asked nothing of the great world about him. He sought no favours or clemency. The spur of his savage heart drove him, and death alone could deny him. As he had already driven throughout the endless Arctic days so he would continue to drive until his task was accomplished.

The man’s dark face was hard bitten by his mood. Fierce resolve looked out of eyes that brooded as he gazed alertly over the waters. The soul of the man was afire with the instincts and desires of centuries of savage forbears, just as his mental faculties were similarly keyed for their achievement.

Not a detail of the world about him that might affect his labours escaped the eagle vision of his wide eyes, and his swift understanding taught him how to avail himself of every clemency which the scheme of Nature vouchsafed.

So the kyak progressed seemingly with inadequate speed, but in reality little less swiftly than the speed of the avenging creature’s desire. It gained incredible way against the surge of water that split upon its prow. And as the shadows of the mighty walls enveloped it, and grew ever more and more threatening, the man at the paddle laboured on without pause or hesitation, certain of the course, certain of his powers, certain that no earthly barrier was staunch enough to seriously obstruct him.

The kyak was hauled out of the water. It lay there on a shelving foreshore strewn with grey, broken granite, a graceful thing, so small and light as to look utterly inadequate in face of the terrific race of troubled waters that was speeding by. It was set ready for the portage. The man’s simple outfit was securely lashed amidships, and his precious rifle, long old-fashioned, but well cared for, was made fast to the struts that held the frail craft to its shape.

The Indian was standing at the water’s edge. He was gazing up-river where its course was a dead straight canyon several miles in length. It was wide, tremendously wide. But so high were its sides that its breadth became dwarfed. It was a gloomy, threatening passage of black, broken water, whose rushing torrent no canoe could face.

But the awe of the scene left Usak untouched. It was not the sheer cliffs that concerned him. It was not the swirling race of water blackened by the shadows. It was neither the might of the great river, nor the vastness of the hill country about it that pre-occupied him. It was the far-off white wall of mist and spray at the head of the passage, and the dull distant thunder of the Falls, the Grand Falls, the picture of whose might had lain hidden from the eyes of man throughout the centuries.

He stood for long contemplating the mysterious far-off. His object was uncertain. Perhaps the wonder of it had power to stir him. Perhaps he was not insensible to the might of the things about him for all the absorbing passion that filled him. Perhaps he was contemplating with a sense of triumph this last barrier which still remained to be surmounted.

At last he turned away. He came back to the burden which he knew he had to shoulder. He measured the little vessel, and the stowage of his outfit, with a keen eye for the necessity of his work. And that which had been done left him completely satisfied.

He bent down. He gripped the gunwale of the little craft and tilted it. Then with a swift, twisting movement he lifted, and, rearing his great body erect again, the vessel was safely set where his muscular neck checked it to a perfect balance.

It was the wide smooth waters of a high perched mountain lake. Its expanse was dwarfed by the great hills on every hand. Its surface shone like a mirror in the brilliant sunshine, yet it was without one single grace to temper the fierce austerity of its tremendous setting. On the hillsides there were dark veins which suggested the tattered remnants of Nature’s effort to clothe their naked sides. There were low fringes of attenuated vegetation marking the line where land and water met. But the main aspect was one of barren hills crowned about their lofty summits with eternal snow, and the grey fields of glacial ice that never entirely yielded up possession of the earth they held prisoned.

Usak’s kyak was hugging the southern shore. Now his paddle dipped leisurely, for he had no stream with which to battle and his eyes were searching every yard of the dishevelled scrub which screened the shore.

Slowly the little craft crept on. There was no uncertainty in its progress. It was simply that the man sought for the thing he knew he would find and had no desire to waste a single moment of precious time through careless oversight.

He was rounding a headland. The fringe of scrub had faded out, leaving only the grey rock that sank sheer into the depths of the water. In a moment he flung power into the dip of his paddle and the kyak shot ahead. There was current here. Swift, crossing current that strove to head his craft put for the bosom of the lake. The man counted with prompt skill, and a savage satisfaction shone in his eyes.

Passing the headland he gazed upon the thing he had been searching. It was a narrow inlet debouching from a wide rift in the rampart of hills.

In a moment his vessel shot head on to the current. Then, swiftly, it passed from view of the open lake between the sheltered banks which were heavily overgrown by unbroken stretches of dense pine-wood bluffs.

An amazing transformation left the sterile setting of the mountain lake forgotten. Farther and farther, deeper and deeper into the hills the country seemed to change as by magic. East and west of the valley the hills rose up sheltering the gracious vegetation that looked to belong to latitudes hundreds of miles to the south, and a heat prevailed that was even greater than the intemperate Arctic summer.

Usak needed no explanation of the phenomenon. He knew that he was in the region of the great Fire Hills of the North. Hills that were always burning, whether in the depths of winter or the height of summer. And the heat of the earthly fires transformed the countryside into an oasis of verdant charm, a jewel of Nature set in the cold iron of the North.

A large habitation stood in the heart of a wide clearing in the forest. It was deep hidden from the waterway which split up the length of the valley. Nearly a mile of narrow roadway cut through the forest alone gave access to the river. And the course of the roadway was winding, and its debouchment on the river was left screened with trees. The object of the latter must have been clear to the simplest mind. A perfect secrecy had been achieved, and the great house lay hidden within the forest.

It was a remarkable building whose only relation to the country in which it stood was the material of its construction. Its two lofty stories were built of lateral, rough-hewn green logs. It was of logs carefully dovetailed, from the ground to the summit of a central tower which rose to the height of the forest trees about it. Its walls rambled over a wide extent of ground, and dotted about its main building were a number of lesser buildings, both habitations and accommodation for material. It was rather like a log-built feudal fortress surrounded by, and protecting, the homes of its workers and dependents.

A figure was moving cautiously through the woods beyond the clearing. The moccasined feet gave out no sound as it passed from tree to tree or sought the shelter of such dense clumps of undergrowth as presented themselves. The buckskin-clad creature crouched low as he moved, and the colour of his garments seemed to merge itself into the general hue about him. Now and again he paused for long contemplative moments. And in these he searched closely with keen, purposeful black eyes that nothing escaped.

He was seeking every sign of life the place might afford. And so far he had discovered none. There were one or two prowling dogs, great husky, trail dogs, searching leisurely for that offal which seems to be the sole purpose of their resting moments, but that was all.

He was gazing upon the main frontage of the building which faced the south with a long, deep, heavily constructed verandah running its entire length. The several windows which gave on to it, covered with mosquito netting, were wide open to admit such cooling breeze as might chance in the heat of the day. But the rich curtains hung limply over them undisturbed by the slightest movement. It was the same with the windows of the upper story. They, too, were wide open, but again the curtains were unmoving. The searcher’s eyes passed over the lounging chairs on the verandah. None were occupied, yet each and all looked to be standing ready.

He passed on. Making a wide detour within the shelter of the woods he passed round to the western side of the building. Here there were other habitations. Many were mere log shanties, cabins such as the searcher knew by heart. The cabin of whiteman or coloured in a country where makeshift ruled.

Again there was no sign of life. There was not even a dog prowling loose in this direction. Maybe those who peopled these cabins were resting in the heat. Maybe—but the searching man was concerned with no such speculation. The thing was largely as he had expected to find it, but he desired to re-assure himself. He moved on rapidly. From every point of the compass his searching eyes surveyed the scene, and finally he came back to the spot where his prolonged search had started. He was satisfied.

He stood for a moment while he made his final preparations. They were simple, savagely simple. He moved the belt about his waist, and the two long hunting knives thrusting from their sheaths were brought to the front where they remained ready to each hand. Then he thrust one hand into a voluminous pocket in his buckskin and withdrew a heavy pistol. It was a modern pistol, such as one would hardly expect to find in the dark-skinned hands of the native bred. This he examined with care and deliberation. Then he thrust it back whence it came, and moved swiftly out into the open.

The quick eyes of a scavenging dog discovered him and a low snarl accompanied the canine discovery. Instantly a well-aimed stone silenced the creature and sent it slinking to cover.

The point the man had selected for his approach had been deliberately chosen. It was a door that stood ajar on the north side of the house. It obviously admitted to the kitchen place of the building.

With the vanishing of the man through the doorway the lifelessness of the place which had been momentarily broken descended upon it again. The still air hummed with the somnolent drone of myriads of winged insects. The hush of the surrounding forest seemed to crowd down upon it. The very breathlessness of the day seemed to suggest the utter impossibility of stirring life.

After a moment, the deathly silence was broken. A sound came hard in the wake of the passing man. It was a curious, half-stifled cry, and it came from the direction of the open doorway. It was low, inarticulate, but it was human. It suggested much and betrayed nothing. Then as it died out the engulfing silence descended once more and it remained unbroken.

The wide central hall was unlit by any visible window, yet the light was perfectly distributed and ample. Furthermore it was the light of day without one gleam of the dazzling sunshine.

It was a spacious apartment, lofty and square. Its walls were covered with rich hangings of simple eastern design. They were unusually tasteful and delicate, and obviously the handiwork of home manufacture. The floor of the room was of polished yellow pine littered with a wealth of natural furs without any mountings. Every skin was native to the north of Alaska, and the variety was extensive. In the centre of the room stood a large, open, log fire set up on a built hearth, above which rose a chimney passing straight up through the timbered ceiling in the fashion of an inverted funnel. For all the summer heat the fire was alight, smouldering pleasantly, a heap of white wood ash yielding a delightful aroma as the thin spiral of smoke drifted leisurely up into the mouth of the funnel above it.

About the walls stood several low couches. They were loaded with silken cushions adorned in a fashion similar to the hangings upon the wall with a lavish display of the representations of brilliant-hued flowers, and birds, amongst which chrysanthemum, wistaria, and longbilled, long-legged storks were very prominent.

The only other furnishings in the place were a magnificent pair of oriental vases standing on carved wood plinths, a large bookcase that was also a desk with an armchair before it, and two great, manifold wooden screens with elaborate, incised designs decorating their panels.

In the shelter of one of the latter a small woman was seated on a couch surrounded by the materials of the delicate embroidery she was engaged upon. She was seated with her feet tucked under her, and a book lay in her lap. But she was neither reading nor sewing now. Her dark eyes were raised alertly. They were gazing steadily at an angle of the room where a curtain hung in heavy folds over what was clearly a doorway.

The solitary occupant of the room was not young. She was nearing middle life, yet she bore small enough traces of her years. She was pretty for all the large tortoise-shell rimmed glasses she was wearing. Her jet black hair, dressed closely to her shapely head, bore not a trace of greying, and the small mouth and softly tinted cheeks were as fresh and delicate as a young girl’s.

At the moment a keen look of enquiry was revealed through her large glasses as she regarded the covered doorway. Nor was her look without a suggestion of unease. For a sound had reached her a moment before, which, in the silence of the house about her, had suggested a cry—a cry of pain. Even a call for help.

Apparently, however, she dismissed the idea. For she presently bent over the work she had laid aside in the interest of the book she had been reading.

She was not easily disturbed. She was accustomed to long periods of almost complete solitude. There were two servants in the house. She knew that. Men who were fully capable of safeguarding the place, even though the rest of the folk were abroad on their labours. No. A long life in the remote fastnesses of the northern Alaskan hills had taught her many things, and amongst the things she had learnt was that perfect immunity from intrusion was vouchsafed to the home which had been provided for her. There were times, even, when she felt that her lot resembled that of a closely guarded prisoner.

She plied her needle with the skill and rapidity of long practice. The chrysanthemum she was working was rapidly developing its full beauty under her delicate hands. Then suddenly she dropped her hands into her lap and raised her eyes again to the doorway.

There was no mistaking her expression now. A voiceless alarm gazed out through her glasses. There was a sound of hurried approach. Someone was running beyond the doorway. They were approaching—

The curtain was abruptly dragged aside. A man lurched into the room. He was a smallish, elderly man, dark-skinned and eastern-looking. He was clad in the ordinary garments of civilization, and wore a short apron about his waist. He stood for a moment clinging to the curtain for support. Agony looked out of his black eyes, and his lined face was distorted. He sought to make a gesture with one hand and nearly fell. Then a sound broke from his lips. It was one word. Only one. And that barely articulate.

With a last gasping effort his hand released its hold on the curtain and he crashed to the floor. And as he fell a stream of blood trickled on to the immaculate woodwork from somewhere in the region of his neck.

The woman was on her feet. A wild panic shone in the eyes behind her glasses. She stood there a pretty, pathetic, helpless little figure.

The word was ringing in her ears as she gazed in horror upon the still, fallen figure of the man who had brought her warning as the last faithful act of his life.

She abruptly turned away. She bent down and gathered up her sewing and her book. Then she passed rapidly behind the screen which sheltered her couch. Only for one instant did she pause before passing out of view. It was to regard again, with a gaze that was filled with horror and terror, the poor thing that had brought her warning.

Usak was standing in the middle of the great room. He was gazing about him. His dark eyes were aflame with furious desire. His great body bulked enormously and his rough clothing left him a sinister figure in a place of such lavish refinement.

He took in every detail of the place, and at last his fierce eyes came to rest on the dead creature lying just within the doorway. He stared at it without pity or remorse. Without a sign of added emotion. His thin lips were shut tight and the muscles of his jaws stood out with the intensity of their grip. That was all.

After awhile he moved away. He passed over to the couch sheltered by the screen. He bent over it searching closely, and from among the cushions drew some fragments of sewing silk and cuttings of material. He gazed at them. But he was not thinking of them. He was thinking of another woman, a woman whose hands had been accustomed to ply a needle, and to cut out material. But the material was different. It was less refined, rougher. In Usak’s mind Pri-loo’s sewing was mostly to do with the buckskin and beads so dear to the Indian heart.

He flung the things aside. Then he hurried from the room, passing again the doorway through which he had followed the man he had slain.

CHAPTER VIII

The sun blazed down on a silent world. The glare was merciless, and the heat, by reason of the weight of moisture saturating the atmosphere of the valley, was almost a torture.

The stillness of the world was awesome. The hum of insect life accentuated it, and so, too, with the murmur of summer waters, which is the real music of the silent places. The breathlessness of it all suggested suspense, threat. So it is always in the great hill countries. The sense of threat is ever present to the human mind, driving men to seek companionship, even if it be only association with the creatures who are there to bear his burdens.

Threat was stirring acutely now. It was in the profound quiet, in the saturating heat; it was in the portentous silence wrapt about the hidden habitation which the man at the water’s edge had just left behind him.

Leaning on his old-fashioned rifle the Indian, Usak, was gazing out northwards over the winding course of the river. His dark eyes were alert, fiercely alert. No detail of the scene escaped his searching gaze as he followed the little water-course on its way to the mountain lake beyond. He searched it closely right up to the great bend where stood the three isolated fire hills. His Indian mind was calculating; it was seeking answers to doubts and questions besetting him. For he knew that on the result of his right thinking now depended the achievement he had marked out for himself.

Quite motionless he stood for many minutes. Yet for all his great height and the physical strength of his muscular body his presence was without effect upon the immense solitude of the world about him. It had no more impression than had one single creature amongst the myriads of flies and mosquitoes swarming hungrily about his dark head.

The house in the woods behind him was no longer of any concern. There, as he had set out to do, he had already worked his fierce will. It was sufficient. That which was yet to be accomplished he knew to lie on the waterway approach, and his mind was focussed upon the three black, smoking hills which he had passed on his way from the distant lake.

He stirred out of his deep contemplation. He raised his rifle and slung it upon his buckskin-clad shoulder. Then he turned about, and raised one lean, brown hand. It was an expressive gesture. There was something in it similar to the shoulder-shrug of callous indifference. He passed on down the river.

The canoe was making its leisurely way up the river. The dip of the paddles was easy; it was rhythmic and full of the music so perfectly in tune with Nature in her gentler mood. The vessel was long and low, and built for rapid, heavy transport where the waters were not always at rest, and the battle with the elements was fierce and unrelenting. It was the hide-built craft native to the Eskimo, whose life is spent in the Polar hunt.

The vessel was served by eight paddles. But there were two other occupants lounging amidships against the rolls of blankets and furs which were part of their camp outfit. These two were talking in low voices while the men at the paddles, stripped to the waist, squat, powerful, yellow-skinned creatures whose muscles rippled in response to their efforts under a skin that shone like satin, remained concerned only for their labours.

The snapping eyes of the younger man were half smiling as he contemplated the shimmering waters of the river ahead. The man beside him stirred. His curious eyes lit with a gleam of irony as he withdrew his gaze from the distant smoke cloud which lolled ponderously on the still air.

“Oh, yes. There will be a big noise,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. Maybe p’lice will come.” He laughed coldly. “An’ when they come—what? Later they go away. Later it is forgotten. Winter comes and everything is forgotten. It is the way of this far-north country. Only is this country for the man who lives in it. Not for those who mark it on a map, and say—‘it is mine.’ No. It is for us, Sate. It is ours. We make the law which says the thing we desire must be ours. Le Gros was a big fool. But it would have been useless to have his secret and leave him living. One word, and they would have flooded the country with white trash from every corner of the earth. It will not be that way now. We wait for the p’lice to come. We wait for them to go. Then this thing is ours, the same as all the rest.”

There was usually a question in his eyes when regarding his parent; a question in his hot impulsive mind when he listened to the cold tone of authority that was always addressed to him. The filial attitude of the youth was no more than skin deep.

“You have the plans safe?” he inquired presently, while he watched the brown fingers of the other filling the familiar red-clay pipe. “You have not passed them for me to read?”

The tone was a complaint, and it brought the curious regard of the tawny eyes to the discontented face. For a moment Sate confronted them boldly. Then he yielded, and his gaze was turned upon the scenes of the river. “You will see them when—it is necessary.”

A dark fire was burning behind the boy’s pre-occupied gaze. Nor was it likely that the father failed to understand the mood his denial had aroused. He watched the lowering of the black brows, the savage setting of the youthful jaws, and a shadowy smile that had nothing pleasant in it made its way to his cold eyes.

For all his surge of feeling Sate continued to regard the surrounding mountains through which they were passing. There was not a detail of the course of this little, hidden river that held even a passing interest for the youth. His whole life had been lived within the Valley of the Fire Hills and its beauty, the mystery of it affected him no more congenially than might a prisoner be affected by the bare walls and iron bars of his cell. His heart and mind were in fierce rebellion. He was chafing impotently. But he was held silent, for he dared not pit himself against the iron will, the inhuman cruelty which he knew to lie behind the cold eyes which, in his brief twenty years of life, he had only learned to obey through fear.

The man beside him had lit his pipe without a shadow of concern, and now he sat smoking it like any native, with its stem supported by his strong jaws thrust in the centre of his hard mouth. He held the little bowl in both hands.

The vessel passed out of the shadow of the canyon, and the welcome shade gave place to the blazing heat of full sunlight. The sky was without a cloud except for the overhanging smoke patch. The great hills had suddenly leapt back and the world had become radiant with a hundred verdant hues, and the soft purple of the distance.

It was the arena of the Fire Hills. They stood up in the heart of it, three of them. Three comparatively low, expansive hummocks dwarfed by the tremendous altitude of the surrounding mountain ring. Standing widely separated on the low flat, about which the shrunken summer river skirted, they stood ominous, black and smoking. They were bare to the basaltic rock which was their whole structure, burnt black by the centuries of fire contained within their troubled hearts. They were stark, hideous, like malevolent dwarfs, monstrous and threatening, frowning down upon a world made gracious the year round by reason of their own involuntary beneficence.

The man removed his pipe from between his lips and inclined his head in the direction of the smoking hills.

His eyes, too, were on the three hills. It would have been impossible for it to have been otherwise. Their great ugly shoulders rose high above the belt of forest trees which lined the left bank of the river, and the smoke cloud hung heavily over the summits, till their appearance was like that of giant mushrooms. The smoke was motionless, dense, threatening.

“It’s thick,” the father observed reflectively. “We need a wind to carry it away. If the weather changes it’ll come down in a fog. They’re queer—those hills. Someday they’ll—”

The sharp crack of a rifle rang out. The man in the prow of the vessel jerked forward in the act of dipping his paddle, and sprawled with his body lolling over the vessel’s side.

The man with the yellow eyes scrambled to his feet and Sate sat up. For one tense moment every eye was turned upon the belt of trees that lined the shore masking the base of the Fire Hills. The shot had come from that direction, but there was nothing, no sign of any sort to give a clue to the whereabouts of the man who had fired with such murderous accuracy.

The man standing amidships gave a sharp order. His crew had quit paddling in the complete confusion into which the attack had flung them. And, in a moment, the paddles dipped again, but only seven of them.

Sate passed forward to the wounded man, and his father waited, still standing, for the result of his investigations. It was some time before the youth gave a sign. But at last he dragged the fallen body into the boat and laid it out in the bottom of it.

The demand came sharply. But the tawny eyes were still steadily searching the wood-clad bank of the river.

“Drop him overboard. We’ve no room for dead men. Take the paddle yourself, Sate.” After delivering his order the man amidships turned about and spoke in a foreign tongue to the man in the stern. Instantly the prow of the vessel swung towards the shore.

Again a shot rang out. This time it was the man whose paddle had changed the vessel’s course who was the victim. He lolled forward like a tired man at the finish of the stroke of his paddle. Then he crumpled, collapsing against the man in front of him, shot through the heart.

The dusky figure was moving rapidly down the shadowed aisles of leafless tree-trunks. Its movements were almost without sound. They were the stealthy, swift movements of the Indian in pursuit of a wary quarry.

Every now and again Usak paused in the shelter of a great forest bole, and his fierce eyes searched for opening in the barrier of undergrowth that hid the waters of the river beyond. His patience seemed inexhaustible. Effort was unrelaxing. He was spurred by a lust that was all-consuming.

So he kept pace with the moving vessel that was behind him on the river. His object was to keep ever ahead of it, not remaining a second longer at any given point than his purpose demanded. On, and on, with the swift, silent gait of the hunter, he passed from tree to tree but never did he permit himself to pass out of gunshot of his quarry.

He paused at a fallen tree. To the right of him, looking down the river, was a narrow break in the tangle of undergrowth. He rested his queer, long rifle and searched over the sights, holding a definite spot on the shining waters covered. The man was deadly in his deliberation. Twice he re-adjusted his sights. Then at last, apparently satisfied, stretched prone on the ground under cover of the protecting tree trunk, he waited with the weapon pressed hard into his shoulder, his lean tenacious finger on the trigger, and an eye, that displayed no shadow of mercy, glancing over his sights.

The moments passed in deathly silence. The trees above him creaked in the super-heated twilight. But none of the forest sounds distracted him. His keen ears were listening for one familiar sound. His searching eyes were waiting for one vision in the narrow opening of the undergrowth.

The sound came. And into the open flashed the prow of the approaching canoe. It was more than two hundred yards from the man’s place of concealment, but the distance had been calculated to a fraction with the skill of a great hunter. The finger pressed the trigger.

The hidden man leaped to his feet, a grim look of satisfaction shining in his eyes. He had witnessed the thing he desired. He had seen the man at the vessel’s prow fall forward. And he knew it was the man who had taken the place of an earlier victim.

He was off on the run as an answering shot rang out, and he heard the spat of a bullet strike one of the tree trunks somewhere behind him. There was another shot, and another. But each shot found its home in the upstanding tree-trunks far in the rear of him, and left him grimly unconcerned. It was a battle to the death in a fashion of which he was absolutely master. It mattered not to him if the canoe continued on its course, or retreated, or if the enemy abandoned the river and sought to continue the fight in the twilight of the forests. He knew he held him at his mercy on this great bend of the river. For the far bank was walled by the granite of the great hills which closed in the arena of the Fire Hills. There was no escape.

After awhile he paused again at the foot of a tree that had been rudely storm-blasted. Its crown was shorn and lay a vast tangle on the ground beside it. In a moment, with rifle slung, he had swarmed the broken trunk and lodged himself in the lower branches which still remained. He gazed out over the top of the undergrowth, and a great length of the sweep of the river was spread out before his hungry eyes. The canoe was just entering his field of vision. He settled himself with his back to the tree-trunk, and his knees were bent in a squatting posture with his feet supported on a projecting limb which also helped to screen him from those on the river. He adjusted his sights and prepared to hurl death from his hiding-place.

Slowly he pressed the trigger and his ancient weapon faithfully responded. The ivory sights were unfailing to an eye behind which burned so fierce a desire. He saw the result even with the rifle still pressed to his shoulder, and unconsciously he pronounced the triumphant thought in his mind.

He re-loaded. The canoe was in full view now, and the temptation was irresistible. Again he pressed the trigger, and another life had passed.

He lowered his weapon and watched. The short man amidships was about to answer. He saw a rifle raised. The shot echoed against the granite walls behind it. And something like a smile lit the hunter’s eyes, for the man had fired into the forest far below where he was securely seated. Instantly he re-loaded, and, a moment later, a sixth victim fell to his lethal weapon.

He dropped from his “crow’s nest” and ran on through the dark aisles that hid him so well. Every foot of the way was mapped in his mind. He had laid his trail with the skill of a man who, knowing his craft, will not yield one fraction of his advantage. So he passed on to where the forest narrowed down by reason of the Fire Hill, whose ponderous slopes came down almost to the river bank.

He passed from the forest and began the ascent of the hill. Here there was no cover but the rough, protruding boulders on the blackened slopes. But he had reached a point of calculated recklessness when he knew he must court greater chances for the success he desired. There had been ten men in the canoe when first he had welcomed the sight of it upon the river. Ten men, all of whom had participated in the wanton destruction of everything in the world that had meant life, and hope, and home to him. Now there were only four.

The canoe was within a mile of its destination, and he had decided before that destination was reached only one single man of its complement must remain alive. His purpose was implacable. Vengeance consumed the man. And it was the vengeance that only the savage heart of a creature of his ancestry could have contemplated.

He passed on up the slope with the speed of some swiftfooted forest creature. And the smoke haze rising from the summit partially obscured the drab of his clothing against the blackened ground. Up towards the belching crown he moved, but ever with a glance flung backward lest the increasing density of the smoke cloud should mar his view of the things below.

At last he came to a halt. The point had been reached when he dared proceed no farther. The haze, in the brilliant air, was sufficient to screen him without obscuring his vision of the river. So he took up a position behind a boulder, and leant upon it with his rifle supported for steadiness on its clean-cut surface. For some moments he watched the fierce efforts of the remainder of the crew of the canoe to make the shelter of the house something less than a mile away to his left.

Yes, there were four of them only. And all four were paddling literally for their lives. He watched them closely, a devilish smile lighting his satisfied eyes. And he saw that the rhythm of their stroke had been lost, and the speed of the vessel was infinitely slow. Oh, yes, he understood. Panic had done its work. The panic inspired by complete impotence. They were there a target for just so long as they were in the open of the river. There was no shelter for them anywhere. The granite of the far wall of the river cut off escape, and the forest on the hither side contained the deadly, unseen danger. So there was nothing left them but to race on, zigzagging a course down the river in the hope of escape from the deadly fire.

He re-adjusted the sights of his rifle and judged his distance. Slowly and very deliberately he pressed the trigger. The shot passed over the canoe. He re-loaded without concern, and his second shot left only three paddles dipping. The man in the bow of the boat squatted drooping and clutching for support.

He waited for the final result of his shot, and it came as the man yielded his hold and dropped helplessly into the bottom of the boat. Again he laid his weapon. Two more shots rang out from the smoke shroud of the burning hill. Then, after a brief interval, two more carried their deadly burden. The man re-loaded again and again till a pile of empty shells lay close beside him. Then, at last, he rose from his crouching position and stretched his cramping limbs. He slung his hot rifle upon his shoulder, and stood gazing down upon the slowly moving boat as it laboured over the water. He was completely satisfied. Now there was left but one man to drive the heavy vessel to the haven which should mean shelter from his murderous sniping.

The man with the yellow eyes drove hard with his paddle and the nose of the vessel thrust deep into the mud of the landing. For a moment he remained kneeling, supported against the strut where he had laboured. He made no attempt to leave his post. Only he gazed along down the river bank at the screen of bush which lined it. There was no emotion visible in his mask-like face. There was nothing in his eyes to tell of the swift, urgent thought behind them.

After awhile his gaze was withdrawn to the grim freight of his vessel. Then he stood up quickly and moved forward. Four bodies were lying huddled in the bottom of the canoe. With three of them he was completely unconcerned. But with the fourth it was different. He stood for a moment gazing down unemotionally at the dead body of the youthful Sate. Then he stooped, and, gathering it in his powerful arms, carried it quickly ashore. He laid it gently down on a vivid bed of Arctic wild flowers and stood over it in silent contemplation.

His pre-occupation was intense. But he gave no sign. Such emotions as were his were his alone. They were stirring in a heart deep hidden. And his tawny eyes masked no less surely now than was always their habit.

A sound disturbed him at last, and he turned like a panther ready for anything it might portend. But the flash of alertness died out of his eyes at the sight of a woman’s small figure as it broke its way through the bush in the direction of the house which was his home.

The pretty face the man was looking into was drawn and haggard. The slanting eyes were full of a terror that even the long awaited return of her man could not banish. The woman had run to him with little, hurried strides and hands outstretched in piteous appeal.

“Hela!” she cried. And into the pronunciation of the man’s name, and in the pitch of her voice she contrived to fling a world of woman’s terrified despair.

For once the man’s eyes revealed something of that which was passing behind them.

The distraught woman stood clinging to the arm which made no effort to yield her support. She broke at once into hysterical speech in a foreign tongue.

“They have killed them all. Even the dogs. There is not one left. All—all are killed. Myso, Oto, Lalman. Oh, they murder them with the knife. I hid in the secret place. It was Oto who gave me warning with his dying words. He was dead—all dead in a moment. I can see the blood on the floor now. Devils came to the house. An army of them. They—Oh!” she cried breaking off the torrent of her disjointed story in a spasm of new horror.

Her gaze had fallen on the still, prone figure at her man’s feet. Her hands dropped from his arm. She moved a step from him, and bending forward, peered down.

Then she recognized the dark features of the boy who was her son. Suddenly a piercing cry broke the silence of the woods about them, and echoed against the far walls that shut in the river.

“Sate!” she cried. “Our Sate!” And in a moment she had flung her frail body upon the still figure stretched upon its bed of wild flowers.

The man looked on. He watched the delicate hands as they beat the ground in his wife’s paroxysm of grief. He listened to her demented shrieks of lamentation. But he gave no sign; he offered no comfort. Maybe he found himself simply helpless. Maybe in his hard, unyielding mood he felt it best that the woman’s storm of grief should spend itself. Perhaps, even, the disaster of his journey home had left him indifferent to everything else. Certainly his cruel eyes were without any softening, without any expression but that which was usual to them.

The woman’s lamentations died down to heart-racked sobs, and the man turned away. He passed slowly down to the boat, so deeply nosed into the mud, and the lessening cries of the distracted mother pursued him. But he no longer gave heed to them.

He laid hold of the canoe and set to hauling it clear of the water. Once, twice, thrice he heaved with all the strength of his powerful body. The boat was half way up the bank. Then, as he lay to the work again, a cry that was something like a snarl broke from him. Some great body had leapt on him from behind. His hold was torn loose from his task, and he was flung bodily, with terrific force, sprawling amidst the radiant flowers that littered the river bank. The dark, avenging figure of the Indian, Usak, stood over him.

For one brief instant eye searched eye. No word passed the lips of either. It was a moment of furious challenge, a moment of murderous purpose. It passed. And its passing came with the lunging of the Indian as he precipitated himself upon his victim.

They lay writhing, and twisting, and struggling on the ground. No vocal sound, no sound but the sound of furious movement came in the struggle. The Indian was uppermost, as he had intended to be from the moment and the method of his attack. He had one object, and one object only.

The Indian’s great size and strength were overwhelming with the other caught at a disadvantage. Then the man with the yellow eyes was fully two decades older. Usak was lithe, active as a wild cat, with all the bulk of a greater forest beast. Then there was his simple, terrible purpose.

It was done, finished in a few awful moments. A sound broke from the man underneath the Indian’s body. It was a half-stifled choking cry. It was inarticulate except that it was a cry of pain and suffering for which there could be no other expression. And instantly all struggling ceased.

The arms of the man underneath fell away. Usak leapt to his feet and his savage eyes glowered down on the writhing body on the ground. For a moment he watched the tortured creature, effortless except for the physical contortions of unspeakable suffering. And presently he heard the thing he had awaited. It was a faint, low moaning forced at last from between the blinded man’s stubbornly pressed lips.

Fierce, harsh words leapt in answer to the sound, and the Indian spoke out of the original savagery that was his.

“So! Euralian Chief!” he cried exultantly. “You not know all this you mak, or you not mak it so. No. I tell you this—I, Usak. You come kill my woman, Pri-loo. You kill my good boss, Marty Le Gros. You come to steal. But you not steal. Only you kill my woman, Pri-loo, an’ my good boss. So I, Usak, come. I kill up all the mans, everything. But not so I kill your woman. Not so I kill you. Oh, no. That for bimeby. Now I tak out your eyes. If I kill up your woman you die. No good. No. So I leave you your woman. She lie there by your son. She look this way now to see the thing I do. Bimeby she come. She forget the son I shoot all up. She remember only her man who will live in darkness. It good. It just how I think. Bimeby she come. She mak you live. She, your woman. She lead you by the hand. She feed you. She mak you see through her eyes. So you know the hell you show to me. Oh, yes. It black hell for you. No light no more. Your folk come. They find you. You not see them. Nothing. Then they go leave you. An’ so you live—in hell. Bimeby I come. Big long time I come. An’ when I come I kill you. I kill you an’ your woman all up dead, same as you kill my woman, Pri-loo. Now I go. I go an’ think, think, how I mak kill you—sometime.”

CHAPTER I

Bill Wilder smiled in an abstracted, wry sort of fashion as he strode down the boarded sidewalk, which was no more than sufficient for its original purpose of saving pedestrians from wallowing in the mire and stagnant water of the unmade main throughfare of Placer City.

He was on his way to his office from his house. His house was built well beyond the tattered city’s limits with a view to escape from the sordid atmosphere of the northern gold city, which in the long years of acquaintance he had learned to detest.

Bill Wilder was the wealthiest gold man in a city of extreme wealth. Ten years of abounding success had transformed a youth of barely eighteen, lean, large, angular, yearning with every wholesome human desire, into a man of twenty-eight, glutted and overburdened with a fortune and mining interests the extent of which even he found it well nigh impossible to estimate. In ten years, under the driving force of inflexible resolve, backed by amazing good fortune, he had achieved at an age when the generality of men are only approaching the threshold of affairs that really matter.

But somehow his success had brought him little enough joy. It had brought him labour that was incessant. It had made it possible that every whim of his could be satisfied by the stroke of the pen. But instead of satisfaction, he reminded himself that somehow his life had become completely and utterly empty, and he yearned to set the clock back to those long, arduous, struggling days, when hope and resolve had been able to drive him to greater and greater exertions, with a pocket-book that was almost as lean and hungry as his stomach.

His smile now was inspired by the memory of a brief interview he had just had on his way down, in the hall of the McKinley Hotel, with a Hebrew acquaintance, a wealthy and influential saloon-proprietor. A. Feldman had spent half-an-hour in endeavouring to get him to join forces in the erection of a new dance hall that was intended to eclipse anything of the kind in the country in size, splendour, and profits. His reply had been curt. It had been harsh in its bitter condemnation. And the memory of the Jew’s hopeless stare of amazement was with him now.

“Not on your life, Feldman,” he had said in conclusion. “I’m a gold man. No better and no worse. I’m not a brothel keeper.”

His smile passed, and he gazed about him at the moving traffic surging along the miserable highway under the dazzling sunlight of a perfect spring day. He had no particular claim to good looks. His face was strong, and his expression open. There was a certain angularity about his clean-shaven features, and a simple directness in his clear-gazing grey eyes. He looked a typical gold man without pretence or display, and from the careless roughness of his tweed clothing no one would have taken him for a man who counted his wealth in millions of dollars.

But that was the man. Achievement was the sole purpose of his life. And it must be the achievement of a great body and muscles rather than the subtle scheming of the acute commercial mind which he by no means lacked.

The life of this mushroom northern city only stirred him to repugnance. He was no prude. He had tasted of the life in the fevered moments of youth. But he knew, he had strong reason to know, there was nothing in it that money could not buy, from the governing corporation to the women and gunmen who haunted the dance halls, except the Mounted Police detachment. And somehow the knowledge had become completely hateful to him.

He had migrated to the place during one of its early “rushes,” when it was only a few degrees removed from a mining camp. A whirlwind rush of humanity had swept down upon it bearing him on its tide. And he had remained to witness its leaping development into an established city of wealth and wanton freedom. Later he had participated in an attempt at real government by the saner element of its people, and the making safe of life and property. With them he had hoped. He had looked on at the mushroom growth of great hotels and offices, and greater and more elaborate halls of public entertainment. Then, with those others, he had watched the wreckage of the new authority under pressure of vested interests, and witnessed the passing of the moment or moral uplift. The falling back into a mire of corruption had been literally headlong.

The city had grown up in the wide valley of the Hekor River at the point where the first alluvial strike had been made. It was at a point where the river widened out before dispersing its northern waters into a great lake surrounded by the lofty range of hills which had created it. It followed the usual lines of all these improvised northern places of habitation. It was designed in a rectangular fashion based on one interminable main thoroughfare, which was the centre of haphazard development. The road had sidewalks, but for the rest it remained unconstructed. Vehicular traffic wallowed in mire during the spring, jolted and bumped over a broken, dusty surface in summer, and, in winter, enjoyed a foundation of snow on which to travel that frequently stood five and six feet in depth.

The whole place was hopelessly straggling and unkempt. Lofty seven- and eight-storied buildings looked down on the log shanties and frame hutments grovelling at their feet in that incongruous fashion which never seems to disturb the human sense of fitness. There were even men amongst its cosmopolitan people who found joy in the disparity. But these were mainly the folk who owned or had designed the greater structures.

Throughout the long winter night the place was ablaze with electric light, a never-ending source of joy to the crude pioneering mind. Arc lamps lit the main thoroughfare, while a multitude of winking signs served to guide the unwary to those accommodating dens waiting to unloose inflated bank rolls. During the six months of summer daylight this service was unnecessary. And only the cold light standards, and the hideous framing of the signs, and the tawdry decorations of the places of entertainment were left to replace the winter splendour.

Bill Wilder knew it all by heart, from the elaborate Elysee, down to the meanest cabaret from which a drunken miner would be fortunate to escape with nothing worse than a vanished store of “dust.” He hated it. The knowledge of the life that went on every hour of the twenty-four sickened and bored him. He longed for the free, wholesome, hard-living life of the outworld beyond the sordid prison bars which his fortune had set up about him.

It was always the same now. Month in, month out, there was nothing but the solitude of his home and the work of the office in the great commercial block he had built, or the pastimes of the dance hall and gambling hell.

He wanted none of it. His great body was rusting with disuse, while the mental effort of the administration of his affairs was fast robbing his sober senses of all joy of life. He yearned for the open with all its privations. He wanted the canoe nosing into the secret places of the far world. The burden of the battle against Nature in her fiercest mood was something to be desired. And so, too, with the howl of the deadly blizzard beyond the flap door of a flimsy tent. At this moment Placer City and all its alleged attractions were anathema to the man on the sidewalk.

He came to an abrupt halt. His grey eyes were turned on the elaborate entrance doors of the Elysee on the opposite side of the road. It was disgorging its freight into the smiling spring sunlight, a throng of men and painted women who had spent the daylit night drinking, and dancing, and gambling. He watched them out of sheer disgust. Here at something like ten in the morning, when the sidewalks were thronged with business traffic, they were just about to seek their homes for that brief sufficiency of rest which would enable them to return to another night of loose pleasure. For all he was on the youthful side of thirty, for all he was inured to the life of the city, for all his blood was no less warm, and rich, and swift flowing, the sight mingled pity with disgust and left him depressed and even saddened. The terrible falseness of it; the price that must be ultimately paid. The bill of interest that would be presented by an outraged Nature later on would mean overwhelming bankruptcy for the majority. He turned away and collided with an officer of the police.

“Bill Wilder gawking at the Elysee’s throw-outs? Guess you aren’t yearning to join that bunch?”

Bill replied without any responsive laugh. Superintendent Raymes was his oldest friend in Placer City. A brisk, dapper man of medium height he was almost dwarfed by Wilder’s great size. He was approaching middle life, and already a slight greying tinged the dark hair below his smart forage cap. He was wearing a black-braided patrol jacket, and the yellow-striped breeches and top-boots so familiar in the regions under the control of the Mounted Police.

“No. That’s only for the sharks and darn fools that life seems to set around like the sands on the sea shore. Can you beat it? Look at ’em piling into the rigs. They’re sick and mighty weary, and they’ll be at it again in a few hours. It beats me the way those poor women keep going. As for the boys—God help ’em when those vultures have wrung them dry. Where are you making?”

“That’s how it seems to me,” he said, as they walked on together. “The cemetery of all that’s worth while. It’s tough, Raymes. I’m sick to death counting dollars and looking at that sort of stuff.” He jerked his head in the direction of the Elysee. “I tell you I’m going to make a break. I’ve just got to. It’s that or go crazy. I guess I love this Northland to death for all the flies, and skitters, and the other things, but I can’t face its cities any longer without qualifying for the bughouse.”

The policeman remained silent in face of the man’s desperate, half-laughing earnestness. He knew Wilder’s moods. He understood that tremendous fighting spirit which was consuming all his peace of mind. They passed on down the sidewalk.

It was not a little curious how these two men had come together in intimate friendship. It had begun when Raymes was only an Inspector and Wilder was only beginning to realise the burden of a wealth that grew like a snowball. They had found themselves in deadly opposition as a result of a desperate outbreak of lawlessness on a big new “strike” for which the gold man had been responsible. The position had been gravely threatening. There had been murder, and claim jumping, and the whole camp was on edge and threatening something like civil warfare. In the absence of police there was no authority to control the camp. Realising the seriousness of the position Wilder had jumped in. Organizing his men, and collecting others who could be relied on, he armed them for the task, and forthwith launched his forces against the marauding gunmen who had established a reign of terror. There was no mercy and only summary justice. Every offender was dealt with on the spot, and, in the end, the camp was swept clean.

When it was all over the gold man found the consequences of his action were far more serious than his logic had suggested. He had to face the tribunal of Placer City and render a complete accounting, with Inspector Raymes, keenly jealous of the law of which he was guardian, in deadly opposition. It had been a bitter fight. But Wilder’s downright honesty, his frank sincerity had finally broken down the police officer’s case and left him victor in a battle that had been fought out mainly on technicalities. And in the end, in place of the bitter antagonism which might well have arisen between them, a bond of great friendship was founded, based on a deep, mutual admiration for the purpose by which both were inspired.

All this had taken place about five years earlier. And since that time their regard for each other had ripened to an intimacy that had never known set-back.

“Yes, Bill,” he said presently. “It’s tough on a boy like you. You collected your dust too quick. You haven’t the temper of a millionaire. You aren’t the man to sit around spinning every darn dollar into two, and grousing because you can’t make three of it.” He laughed. “You’re the kind of hoss built for the race track of life. You weren’t made to stand around in the barn waiting to haul a swell buggy by way of exercise. That break away is the thing for you, only I’ll hate to lose you out of this darn sink.”

“That’s the best I’ve listened to in months,” he said. “I guessed you’d say I was all sorts of a darn fool not fancying stopping round and counting my dollars. But this ‘sink’ as you rightly call it. I’m a bit of a kid to you. Maybe I’m a long-headed kid in a way. But a sink don’t count much on that. If you live in a sink at my age there’s a mighty big chance you’ll sooner or later join up with the sort of muck you mostly find in a sink. And the thought scares me.”

“You can always sit around on top. You can breathe good air that way and enjoy the sunlight.”

“An’ risk falling in when it gets you—well asleep. No, George. You were right first time. I’ll make the break an’ get out of the way of any chance of—mishap.”

They had reached the square frame building of the police post and paused at the door.

“There mustn’t be any mishap,” Raymes said smiling up into the earnest face of the man for whom he felt some sort of responsibility. “Are you yearning for that office of yours? Or do you feel like wasting an hour while I talk.”

“What’s the game?” he asked with a directness that was almost brusque. Then he laughed. “But there, I guess I’m mostly ready to listen when George Raymes fancies talking. It isn’t every oyster that’s full of pearls. Sure. I’ll be glad of the excuse to dodge the office.”

The superintendent shook his head and his smile passed, leaving his face set and purposeful.

“Typhoid’s a deal more prevalent in oysters than pearls,” he said grimly. “Come right in.”

It was a bare, comfortless office, clean scrubbed and dusted but quite without anything in its furnishing to indicate the superior rank of the man who used it. It was characteristic, however, of the men whose ceaseless activities alone contrive that the northern outlands shall escape the worst riot of human temper. The boarded walls were hung with files. A small iron safe stood in one corner of the room, and a large woodstove occupied another. There was a roll-top desk near by the one window that lit the room, and a plain wooden cupboard stood against the wall directly behind the chair which Superintendent Raymes occupied. There were two or three Windsor chairs about the walls, and the only luxury the room afforded was a large rocker-chair into which Bill Wilder had sprawled his great body.

On the desk in front of the officer was a musty-looking file of papers. It was unopened at the moment for the man was contemplating one of several letters that lay beside it. He was leaning back in his revolving chair, and a curious, thoughtful look was in his reflective eyes. Bill Wilder was removing the paper band from the cigar the other had forced upon him.

“So you’re going to sell out, Bill,” he said quietly. “You’re going to sell out everything, all your interests, and—quit?”

“And make some sort of use of a life that’s creaking with rust in every blamed joint.”

“We mustn’t lose you, Bill. You’re the only feller in this muck hole we can’t do without. I’m not thinking of Placer City only. I’m thinking of this great old north country to which—you belong.”

The policeman watched the cloud of smoke which the gold man’s powerful lungs exhaled. He saw the match extinguish, and followed its flight as it was flung into the cuspidor which stood beside the stove. He was thinking hard and wondering. He was not quite sure how best to deal with the thing he had in his mind.

“That’s like you, George,” he said. “If I listened to you, and took you seriously, I’d guess I’m some feller—with dollars or without. But you’re right when you say I belong to this old north country. I’d hate quitting it. I’d hate it bad. If I could locate a real use for myself in it I’d sooner serve it than any other. And the tougher the service the better it would make me feel. Gee! I’m soft and flabby like some darn fish that’s been stewing in the sun.”

“I know.” The policeman forced a laugh. He had made up his mind. “Here, I’ve a mighty interesting letter come along. It’s from the Fur Valley Corporation. Do you know ’em? They’ve a big range of trading posts up an’ down the country. They’ve got one on the Hekor, away up north on the edge of the Arctic. It’s mainly been a seal trading post, and they collect sable and fox up that way. This letter says they’re closing it down. There’s a reason. And they fancied handing it on to me. Do you feel like taking a read of it? It’s quite short. These folk are business people without a big imagination so they keep to plain facts.”

Bill reached out and took the proffered letter. It was dated Seattle, and was clearly from the head office of the company. He glanced at the signature to it and noted the paper heading. Then he read slowly and carefully, for he knew that George Raymes had serious reason for handing it to him.

In the ordinary course of business we should not think of troubling you, a distinguished officer of the incomparable force to which you belong, with the contents of this letter. Although it is merely to notify our intention of closing down our trading post, Fort Cupar, at Fox Bluff, on the Hekor River, which is within one hundred miles of the Alaskan boundary, there are reasons lying behind the simple fact such as we feel you, in your official capacity, will be interested to hear.

Fort Cupar at Fox Bluff has been one of our fur-trading posts, yielding us a very fair harvest of Beaver, Fox, Sable, Seal. Up to some eighteen years ago we had reason to consider it our most profitable post. Then came a slump. This came suddenly. And, according to our factor’s interpretation, it was simply, and solely due to the appearance of a large band of foreign poachers, who, without scruple for humanity, or international honesty, terrorized the Eskimo into passing them their trade at starvation values, or, if they refused, robbed them with the utmost violence.

These reports at the time were duly passed on to the headquarters of the police, and were, I believe, carefully looked into. But for reasons of which we have no cognizance, possibly the far inaccessibility of the country, possibly because these poachers were located on the United States side of the Alaskan border, possibly under pressure of work in the various gold regions, which is the primary duty of your officers, these poachers were permitted to continue their depredations, which, as far as we can ascertain, involved amongst other crimes that of almost wholesale murder.

Our concern now is to tell you that for the last fifteen to eighteen years we have struggled to carry on our post in this region in the hope that things would ultimately straighten themselves out, and our trade return to its normal prosperity. But this has not been the case. Apparently, from our factor’s reports, the methods of these poachers, who seem to be a race of Alaskan Eskimo, who are known as the Euralians, have changed only in process but not in effect. Now they seem to be divided up into lone bands of marauders, frequently at war with each other. There seems to be no controlling chief as there was in years gone by. They operate within the Arctic Circle, and only amongst the Eskimo of that region. And the one time descents upon the more southern communities of whites and natives no longer take place. Meanwhile, however, all trade in the furs we desire is at an end. Therefore we are reluctantly forced to close down, and thus another serious blow to the Canadian fur trade is involved.

Bill looked up from his reading and encountered the searching gaze of his friend.

“Not more than I’d have put in it if I’d been general manager of that corporation.”

“No. And you’d have been right. That letter’s mighty reasonable, and I’m with the feller who wrote it.”

Superintendent Raymes turned to his desk and opened the rusty-looking file that was lying in front of him.

“You know, Bill, that letter got me right away. But I was a bit helpless. Here, now, you sit right there and smoke that cheap cigar I pushed at you while I do a talk. I’ve got a yarn to hand you that’ll maybe set you thinking hard.”

He sat back tilting his chair, and the rusty file lay open on his lap. The papers it held had lost their pristine whiteness. There were distinct signs of age in their hues.

“You know I’ve only had charge of Placer City for something like seven years, and things have been so darned busy since I first got around I haven’t had a great chance of looking into the remoter things my predecessor left behind him. Eighteen years of police life is liable to accumulate a bunch of stories it would take a lifetime reading.

“However,” he went, glancing down at the file, “when I received that letter I got tremendously busy hunting up old records, and, after nearly a day’s work I came to the conclusion that I’d opened up one of the worst stories, and one of the most important, that I’d found in years. I found story after story of these Euralians. They mostly came from Fort Cupar at Fox Bluff, but they also came from simple, uneducated trappers, and from whitemen who adventured northward of here after gold. They came from all sorts of folk, and one and all corroborated all that that letter contains besides presenting many lurid pictures of the doings of these toughs which that letter only hints at.”

He removed several sheets of discoloured foolscap from the file. They were pinned together.

“I’ve selected this report which is dated fifteen years ago. It comes from a man named Jim McLeod, and he was factor for the Fur Valley Corporation at Fort Cupar at that time. It’s one of several reports he sent down from time to time pointing the conditions of his district, and giving pretty red-hot accounts of the terror which these Euralians had created there. But I’m not going to worry you with all that stuff. I’ll simply tell you that the terror of these folk was very real. That these marauders were undoubtedly at that time a large well-organised outfit who had completely succeeded in cleaning up the furs of that region and were passing them over the Alaskan border into foreign hands.

“This is a long report and I’m not going to read it to you. I’m just going to hand it you in my own words. It’s a bad story, but it’s full of an interest that’ll appeal to you. Fifteen years ago there was a swell sort of missionary feller up at Fox Bluff, a great friend of the man who wrote this report. His name was Marty Le Gros. He wasn’t a real churchman, but just a good sort of boy who was yearning to hand help to the Eskimo and Indians. I gather, at the time this story occurred, he was a widower with a baby girl of about four years. He also had an Indian called Usak, and his squaw, working for him about his house. The squaw was kind of foster-mother to the kid. Well, this report tells how in chasing over the country visiting his Missions this Le Gros happened on a most amazing gold ‘strike.’ It doesn’t say how or just where. But it says that the missionary showed this factor man two chunks of pure gold, and a bunch of dust that well nigh paralysed him. Le Gros being a simple sort of feller didn’t worry to keep his news to himself, but blurted his story broadcast, and I gather the only thing he didn’t tell about it was the actual whereabouts of the ‘strike.’ Apparently he let it be understood that Loon Creek was the locality without giving any exact particulars. This man gives such a brief sketch of this gold business I sort of feel he wasn’t anxious to say too much. The reason’s a bit obvious. And anyway I haven’t ever heard of a rush in that direction. So the news never got around down here. But it seems to have got to the ears of these Euralian poachers and set them crazy to jump in on him with both feet.

“Now this is what happened,” Raymes went on, after a brief reflective pause, while Bill sat still, absorbed in the interest which the magic of a gold discovery had for him. His cigar had gone out. “Up to that time the Euralians and their doings were well enough known to these people, but only by hearsay. These ruffians had never operated as far south-east as Fox Bluff and Fort Cupar. Well, the missionary was out on the trail on a visit to some of his Missions with his man, Usak. He arrived at one of them on the Hekor. It was a settlement of fishing Indians. The whole camp was burned out, and the old men, and women, and infants had been butchered to death. Further, from their complete absence, it is supposed the young men and women had been carried off into captivity for slavery and harlotry. There was no doubt of its being the work of these Euralians. The whole thing was characteristic of every known story of them. Le Gros returned home in a panic.

“He came to McLeod and told him the story of it, and together they realised that it was merely prelude to something further. They got it into their heads that it was the Euralian method of embarking on a campaign to get the secret of Le Gros’ gold discovery. You see? Terror. They meant to terrorize Le Gros, and I gather they succeeded. But he meant to fight. You see, he reckoned this ‘strike’ was for his child. He wanted it for her. Well, these two made it up between them to outwit these folk. The missionary crossed the river to his home to prepare a map of his discovery which he was to place in McLeod’s hands for the benefit of his child and McLeod, in half shares, should anything happen to him, Le Gros. Something did happen. It happened the same night. Apparently before the map could be drawn. Sure enough the Euralians descended on the missionary’s house. They killed Le Gros, and they killed the squaw foster-mother. The Indian, Usak, was away from home and so escaped. The child was left alive, flung into an adjacent bluff, and the whole place was burned to the ground. That’s the story in brief. I daresay there’s a heap more to it, but it’s not in that report, and it’s not in subsequent reports, or in other records of my predecessor.

“It would seem that this boy, McLeod, died about eight years after all this happened and was succeeded by another factor for his company. In the meantime my predecessor had sent a patrol up to investigate. The only result of this investigation was a complete corroboration of McLeod’s report, with practically nothing added to it beyond an urgent report on the necessity for definite international action on the subject of these Euralians who came in from Alaska. After that the thing seems to have passed out of my predecessor’s hands. It seems it was taken up by Ottawa with the usual result—pigeon-holed. Does it get you? There it is, a great gold discovery, somewhere up there on the Hekor, I suppose, and the mystery of this people filching our trade through a process of outrageous crime. Somewhere up there there’s a girl-child, white—she’d be about nineteen or twenty now—lost to the white world to which she belongs. But above all, from my point of view, there’s a problem. Who are these Euralians, and what becomes of the wealth of furs they steal? Remember they were at one time at least an organised outfit.” The policeman replaced the file on his desk and returned the report to its place. And the pre-occupation he displayed was a plain index of the depth of interest he had in the problem which had presented itself to his searching mind. Bill Wilder struck a match and re-lit his cigar. “That’s a story of the country I know and love,” he said quietly. “It’s a story of the real Northland. Not the story of one of these muck-holes which are like boils in the face of civilization. I guess you haven’t passed me the whole thing you’ve got in your mind, George.”

The policeman swung round in his chair and faced the clear gazing grey eyes of the man whose enormous wealth had still left him the youthful enthusiasm for the battle of the strong which had first driven him to the outlands of the North.

“Sure I will, if you’ve nothing to ask, nothing to comment on that story.”

“It’ll keep. Maybe I’ll have a whole big heap to talk when you’re through with your—proposition.”

“You want to quit. You want to sell out and pass on where you can make some use of the life that’s creaking with rust in every joint. Well, it’s easy. Don’t quit. Don’t sell out. Take a trip north where there’s a big ‘strike’ waiting on a feller with a nose for gold. Where there’s a mighty big mystery to be cleaned up, and the hard justice of this iron country to be handed out to a crowd of devils who’ve battened on its wealth and are sucking the life out of its vitals. Is it good enough? You’ll be able to forget the dollars you’re forced to count daily in this city. You’ll lose sight of the Feldman crowd and the brothels they set going to hand them a stake. It’s the open, where God’s pure air’s blowing. Where there’s room for you to move, and breathe, and live, and where you can hit mighty hard when the mood takes you, and you can feel good all over that you’re doing something for the country you like best. This thing’s my job, but I haven’t the troops or time to fix it the way I should. I’m so crowded to the square inch I don’t know how to breathe right. I haven’t any sort of right offering you this thing. I know that, and I guess you’re wise it’s so. But it don’t matter. I do offer it to you, Bill, and it’s because I know you. I offer it you because you’re the feller to put it through, and because you’re a feller we can’t afford to lose out of our territory. Well?”

The police officer’s manner had become seriously earnest, and the other remained silent for some moments buried in deep thought. George Raymes waited. He watched for the passing of the gold man’s deep consideration. He understood that the thing he required of him was no light task and looked like involving a tremendous sacrifice.

At last Bill’s cigar stump was flung into the cuspidor, and the policeman realised that a decision had been arrived at. The gold man looked up, and a whimsical smile lit his clear eyes.

“If I was crazy enough to take a holt on this thing I don’t just see—I’ve no authority. I’m no policeman. I’m just a bum civilian without police training. You boys are red-hot on the trail of crime. It’s your job, and I guess there’s no folk in the world better at it. But—”

“You’ve forgotten,” Raymes broke in. “There’s the trail of a gold ‘strike’ in this. And Bill Wilder’s got the whole country beaten a mile on a trail of that nature. Make that ‘strike’ an’ I guess you’ll locate the rest in the process. I’m asking for that from you.”

Wilder laughed. It was the clear, ringing laugh of the youth he really was. It was a laugh of appreciation at the simple tactics of his friend. It was a laugh of rising enthusiasm.

The other’s grey eyes lit. Again his laugh rang out. “Yes. I forgot. Of course you can enrol ‘specials.’” Suddenly he sprang from the depths of the rocker, and left it violently disturbed. He stood erect, bulking largely, and a flush of excitement dyed his weather-stained cheeks. “Of course you can,” he cried. “Yes. I’ll get after it. A gold trail! A bunch of toughs! A girl—a white girl! Ye Gods! I’m after it. You can swear me in on any old thing from a Bible to a harvester. That’s all I need. I’ll find my own outfit, and I’ll get busy right away and collect up my old partner Chilcoot Massy. I’ll get right off now down to my office and start fixing things, and I’ll be back again after supper to-night. But I warn you you’ll need to answer a hundred mighty tiresome questions, and pass me all the literature you’ve collected on this subject when I come back. Say, the gold trail again! I’m just tickled to death.”

CHAPTER II

The man was standing at the edge of the river landing gazing out across the broad waters as they drifted slowly by, a calm, gentle flood undisturbed by the rushing freshet of spring, which had already spent its turbulent life leaving the sedate Hekor embraced in the gentler arms of advancing summer.

The landing was little better than a wreck. The green log piles were awry. There were rifts where last summer’s timbers had been carried bodily away by the crash of ice at winter’s break up. For the annual rebuilding necessitated by the tremendous labour at the birth of the Arctic spring had been dispensed with. There was no longer any need for it.

The man’s gaze was far-searching. It was seriously ruminating. Perhaps, even, it was regretful. For he knew that in a few hours all that he had looked out upon for the past seven years would lay behind him, possibly never to be looked upon again.

The mile-wide river lay open to the caressing sunlight. It was unshaded anywhere. The far bank rose in a gentle slope, a perfect carpet of wild flowers, and beyond, as the valley rose upwards, the shimmer of summer heat bathed the purpling distance in an almost dazzling haze. Away to his left, beyond the waters, stood the dark spread of Fox Bluff, which gave the place its name, a wide stretch of tattered forest, isolated on an undulating plain many miles in extent. And the ruins of the old Mission House, long since burned out by the Euralian marauders, still stood gaunt and bare, a monument to the tragedy that was now some fifteen years old.

Behind him, well above the highest water level of the river, the staunch walls of the stockade of old Fort Cupar still sheltered the frame building which was about to be abandoned. But already the place had assumed something of the lifelessness which human desertion leaves in its wake. There were no Eskimo encampments gathered about its timbers. There were no columns of smoke arising from camp fires. The familiar yelp of trail dogs, and the shrill voices of native children were silent. There was no life anywhere but in the presence of the man on the landing, and in that of the girl clad in native buckskin standing beside him, and in the slow movements of five Indians and half-breeds who, under the guidance of the factor, were completing the stowage of cargo in the three canoes moored to the derelict landing.

It was the day of the great retreat. It was the final yielding after years of struggle. It was the giving up of that last thread of hope which is the most difficult thing in human psychology.

Old Ben Needham was more than reluctant. He was a hard-bitten fur-trader of the older school. A man of force and wide experience. A man bred to the work, acute, rough, and not too scrupulous. He had been born in the Arctic, schooled in the Arctic, and only when the needs of his trade demanded had he ever passed out of that magic circle. He was a man approaching sixty, full of an aggressive fighting spirit which usually modifies in men of advancing years. And he knew that he was about to acknowledge complete defeat after seven years of battling against invisible odds. He knew that the company had selected him out of all their army of servants to attempt the rehabilitation of the fortunes of Fort Cupar, and he had utterly and completely failed. And so, as he stood on the landing superintending the last removal of stores, and contemplating the return with his story of failure to those who had sent him on his forlorn hope, his mood was uneasy, his temper was sour and inclined to violence.

The voice of the girl beside him roused him out of his contemplation of the familiar scene.

“You need Mum here to put heart into you, Ben,” she said with a smile that masked her own feelings. “You know, Mum’s the wisest thing in a country where fools are dead certain to go under. She’d tell you there’s nothing so bad in the world as flogging a dead mule. The feller who acts that way most generally gets kicked to death by a live one. Which, I guess, is only another way of saying it’s a fool’s game anyway.”

The man turned from the scene that had so preoccupied him, and his deep-set, hard grey eyes surveyed the speaker from beneath his bushy, snow-white brows. For all his mood there was a sort of mild tolerance in his tone.

The girl he addressed as Kid smiled blandly into his unresponsive face, and her wide blue eyes were full of girlish raillery. For all the sunburn on her rounded cheek, and the rough make of her almost mannish clothing, or perhaps because of these things, she was amazingly attractive. She was young. Something less than twenty. But she was tall, taller than the broad figure of the man beside her. And there was physical strength and vigour in her graceful girlish body.

She was clad in buckskin from her head to the reindeer moccasins on her shapely feet. Her tunic, or parka, was tricked out with beads and narrow fur trimmings in truly Indian fashion. And the leather girdle about her slim waist supported a long sheath knife, much as the native hunters were equipped. But she was white, with fair curling hair coiled in a prodigal mass under her fur cap, with wide, smiling eyes that rivalled the blue of the summer sky, and a nose as perfectly modelled, and lips as warm and ripe as any daughter of the more southern latitudes. Her manner was easy and self-reliant. It was full of that cool assurance bred of the independence which the hard life of the Northland forces upon its children. Nature had equipped her with splendid generosity, and the man understood that her sex robbed her of nothing that could make her his equal in understanding of the conditions in which their lives were cast.

“She says a whole lot of things, Ben,” she cried. “But then you see she’s the mother of six bright kids who’re yearning to learn, and she doesn’t guess to let them down, or have them tell her instead. Yes, she said that sure, when we were wondering how your quitting was going to fix us. You see, I’ve depended on your store for trade. I guess I was the only supply of pelts that came your way. And you were the only supply for our needs. Your folks are right,” she added, with a sigh. “You can’t run a trading post to hand out to a bunch of kids the stuff that makes life reasonable, and for the sake of the few bales of furs we’re able to snatch before they fall into the hands of foreign poachers. It was sure flogging a dead mule. But it’s going to be tough. It’s going to be tough for us, as well as for you and your folk. I’ve tried to look ahead and see what’s to be done, but I can’t see all I’d like to. Mum reckons we’ll get through, but she leaves it to Providence and me to say how.”

The man bit off a chew of tobacco and shouted some orders at the men stowing the last of the stores. His words came forcefully amidst a shower of harsh expletives. Then he turned again to the girl.

“I’d say your Mum’s as bright a woman as the good God ever permitted to use up his best air,” he said, with a shake of his grey head. “But I just can’t see how trading reindeer with the fool Eskimo up north’s goin’ to feed a whole bunch of hungry mouths, and clothe a dandy outfit of growin’ bodies right, if there ain’t a near-by market for your goods, and a store to trade you the things you need. There ain’t a post from here to Placer, which is more than three hundred and fifty miles by the river. It kind o’ looks bad to me.”

The smile had passed out of the girl’s eyes, and her fair brows had drawn slightly together under the rim of her fur cap.

“You see, Kid,” the man went on, in a tone that was almost gentle for all the natural harshness of his voice, “I’d be mighty glad to fix you as right as things’ll let me. We’ve figgered on this thing all we know, you and me, and you’ve a year’s store of canned goods and groceries by you paid for by your last bunch of pelts. But after that—what?”

The swift glance of the Kid’s eyes took in the earnest expression of the man’s rugged face. She realised his genuine concern in spite of all the worries with which his own affairs beset him. And forthwith she broke into a laugh that completely disarmed.

“We’ll need to feed caribou meat,” she said. “The farm’s plumb full of it. Mum says the good God’s always ready to help those who help themselves. And I guess the bunch at home’ll do that surely when they find their vitals rattling in the blizzard. Don’t just worry a thing, Ben. You’ve done the best for us, you know. For all the grouch you hand out to most folk you’re white all thro’. You’re forgetting there’s Usak and me. If it means Placer for trade and food for the bunch I guess we’ll make it.”

The girl’s laugh, and her lightness of manner in her dismissal of the threat overshadowing her future and that of those who were largely her care made their talk easy. But there was seriousness and a great courage lying behind it. She knew the nightmare this break up of her market was to all those she cared for. But she had no intention of adding one single moment of disquiet to the burden of the man’s concern for his own future.

“But it’s a hell of a long piece, Kid,” the factor protested with a shake of his shaggy grey head. “Couldn’t you folks quit too?”

The girl shook her head while her blue eyes were turned on the broad expanse of water where it vanished in the south. Perhaps it was the trend of their talk which had attracted her gaze in that direction.

“Surely we could quit if—we had the notion,” she said, after a moment’s reflection. “But what if we did? I mean how would it help? Maybe I don’t know. Placer? What if we made Placer where there’s food and trade? What could we do? There’s Mum, and my six little brothers and sisters, running up like a step-ladder from inches to feet. Then there’s Usak, an Indian man who’s got no equal as a pelt hunter and trailman. Here we’re lords over a limitless territory. We’ve a herd of deer that runs into thousands, and reindeer are the beginning and end of everything to the Eskimo, but wouldn’t be worth dog meat in Placer. Show me. I’m ready to think. We can go on making out right here if we only make one trip a year to Placer. If we quit, I guess there’d be nothing but the dance halls of Placer you’ve told me about for me and my little sisters as they grow up, while Usak, with a temper like a she-wolf, would run foul of half the city in a week. No. You said a thing once to me, Ben, that’s stuck in my stupid head since. What was it? ‘The North’s big, an’ free, an’ open, an’ clean. The longer you know it the more you’ll curse it. But the feller who’s bred to it can’t go back on it. There’s no place on God’s earth for him outside it but the hell of perdition.’ I guess that fits my notion of—Say, there’s an outfit coming up out of the south.”

She stood pointing out over the water where the river seemed to rise out of the distance between two low hill breasts. A group of canoes, infinitely small in the distance, had suddenly leapt into view.

The man became absorbed in the unaccustomed vision. He raised a gnarled hand, broad and muscular for all its leanness, and shaded his eyes from the sun-glare. After a moment he dropped it to his side. A grim, cynical light shone in his eyes.

“How d’you know?” The girl was full of that interest and curiosity bred of the solitude in which she lived.

“They’re loaded down with truck so they look like swamping. It’s a big outfit, an’ they look mighty like they’ve bought up haf the dry goods the gold city can scratch together. Yes. They’re Cheechakos, sure. An’ they’re huntin’ the gold trail. I can locate ’em at a hundred miles. I’ve seen ’em come, but most generally go, on every blamed river runnin’ north of Dawson.”

“To listen to you, Ben, folk might guess you hadn’t feeling softer than tamarack for a thing in the world. I want to laugh sure. Sometimes I feel I could shake you till the bones rattled in your tough old body. Then I remember. An’ I—I don’t want to do a thing but laff. If you’re not through with your outfit, and beating it down the river by the time those folk happen along I’ll gamble a caribou cow to a gopher you’ll be handing them just anything you reckon they need, if it’s only the wise old talk I know you’re full up to the brim with. You can’t bluff me.”

The girl shook her head and her eyes were full of a smiling, almost motherly tenderness for the strong man of many years who was tasting the bitterness of real defeat. She had known him from the day he first set foot at Fort Cupar with that sort of family intimacy which is part of the life of the great solitudes. She had been a child then. Now she was a grown woman with a mind that was simply serious despite her ready laugh, and a heart full of deep, womanly sympathy. All life and hope still lay before her. This man had gone far beyond the meridian of both. He was rapidly approaching those declining years with a great failure to his credit, and she realised the tragedy of it.

“No,” he said. “I guess I can’t bluff you, Kid. You’re kind of nimble.” His eyes were still on the approaching outfit. “I wonder,” he went on. “That wise old talk you reckon I’m full of. Do you fancy me passing it to you before I quit, instead of to that bunch of Cheechakos?”

Ben Needham laughed in that short, dry fashion which was his limit of hilarious expression.

“Well, you best pull your freight out of here before that bunch of Cheechakos come alongside. Ther’s a whole heap o’ things you know, but a sight bigger heap of the things you don’t know. The junk that comes up out of Placer is mostly junk, mean, human junk. The men of the gold trail ain’t like the metal they’re chasing, except in the colour of their livers. One of the things I haven’t figgered you’re wise to is you’re a gal of nigh twenty, and you’ve a face that smiles like spring sunshine, and the sort of eyes that makes a man feel like shooting up the other feller. Do you get me? Beat it, my dear. You’ve a Mum, an’ you’ve got a dandy bunch of brothers an’ sisters. You’ve got a home way out there on the Caribou River that ain’t ever known a thing but what a good woman can make it. Wal, keep things that way. But you won’t do it if the muck of the gold trail hits your tracks.”

The girl’s smile had passed as she watched the old man expectorate into the clear waters at his feet. She remained completely silent while, in an utterly changed tone, he hurled violent expletives at his workers. She looked on while he passed down to where the lashings were being made fast on the last canoe whose load had just been completed. When he came back her thoughtful mood had passed, and her smile was supreme once more.

“I’d wanted to see you start out, Ben,” she said gently. “You know it’s hard not to be able to speed a real friend, when—when— But there, it’s no use. The kids are needin’ me, so’s Mum, and Usak and the deer. You’re so slow getting away I just can’t stop.” Her gaze wandered again to the approaching outfit, and it was a little regretful, and something wistful. “Are all the men of the gold trail tough? I mean are they just all bad?”

“The men ain’t no better, an’ no worse than most of us,” he said slily. “That is till they get the yellow fever of it all. When that gets around they’re mighty sick folk till the fever passes. Guess your memory don’t carry you back to the days when you weren’t more than knee-high to a grasshopper. If it did maybe you’d be wise to the thing that’s got a mighty big place in your dandy life. It’s gold. The yarns I’m told say it was gold that robbed you of a father. It was gold that left you helpless, feed for the coyotes that didn’t find you. It was gold,” he went on, pointing across the river, “that left them burnt out sticks, which one time was your rightful home. Gold, I guess, has played a mighty tough part in your life, Kid, and maybe it ain’t goin’ to let up. That’s the way of things. I’d say you ain’t done with gold yet. You see, ther’s the story of that ‘strike’ your father made, an’—lost. No,” he added thoughtfully. “It’s goin’ to come back on you. An’ that’s why I say beat it. Don’t wait around for those folks comin’ up the river. They got the fever bad, I guess, or they wouldn’t be makin’ a country that’s cursed by the Euralian fur poachers. Yes. Beat it, Kid. Light out. They’re comin’ right in.”

The swift stroke reached its length. The Kid lifted the paddle from the water and laid it across the little vessel in front of her. Resting against the paddling strut she craned round and gazed back over the shining waters.

She had passed the wooded bend of the river, and the far-reaching shelter of Fox Bluff completely shut her off from observation at the Fort. The landing was hidden; so, too, were the three great canoes that were to carry the defeated factor and his outfit down the river to those who quite possibly would have no further use for his services.

Even the Fort itself, on the higher ground of the opposite bank, was no longer visible.

The girl was satisfied. She returned to her labours, for the drift of the stream had carried her canoe back some few yards.

It shot forward again, however, under the skilful strokes of her strong young arms, and the water rippled and sang as it smote the sharp cutwater that drove into it. Three miles farther on she had reached the limits of the great woods, and the turbulent rapids came into view.

They were the rapids at the junction of the two rivers. It was here that the Caribou River disgorged itself upon the flood of the greater river. A wide litter of frothing, churning popple disported itself over the shallows at the mouth of the invading stream. In the passage of time, the Caribou had battled its way up out of the south-east. It had broken into the sedate course of the Hekor diagonally, meeting its stream defiantly. Final overwhelming had been its lot, in the process of which a vast stretch of sheltering banks had been washed completely out and transformed into treacherous shoals. It was the girl’s immediate objective.

Again she ceased from her labours and gazed smilingly over the distant view. It was alight with a lavish wealth of colour, the vivid hues of Arctic blossoms with which the ripening sun of spring had set the whole country ablaze. Her smile was full of girlish enjoyment. For she was thinking of the wise, friendly, cynical old Ben Needham and his earnest warning.

She was thinking of him in no spirit of ridicule, but she knew she meant to disregard his warning utterly. It was the youth in her. It was the girlish curiosity and a spirit of independence that urged her. The world beyond was a sort of dream place of wonder to her; a book whose pages were sealed lest her eyes should seek the things that were there written. He had warned her that these folk coming up out of the south were the Cheechakos of the gold trail. He was probably right, but at least they were white folk who belonged to that world from which she was wholly cut off. It was an opportunity she had no intention of missing. She would transform herself into something resembling the creatures of the shy world to which she belonged. She would lie hidden, and gaze upon these strange and terrible people from another world, against whom she had been so gravely warned.

She turned her little vessel sharply towards the bank of the river where it rose high, and the last of Fox Bluff projected a dense mass of Arctic willow which hung down, a perfect screen, till the delicate foliage buried itself in the bosom of the stream. A few swift strokes of her paddle and she passed from view behind it.

The nose of her vessel was securely resting on the sticky mud of the bank. She had turned about. And now she sat waiting, peering out through the foliage as might some hunted silver fox, whose pelt was one of the chief objects of her trade. She gave no sign, she made no sound. She had no intention of revealing her presence. But she would see for herself the thing she must shun, the thing whose presence in her home she must always deny.

It was a long waiting, but it mattered nothing. The daylight was almost unending now, and anyway time had small enough bearing on the simple affairs of her life. She had time for the indulgence of every whim, and the youth in her prompted a full measure of such indulgence.

A happy excitement thrilled her. Everything that lifted her out of the humdrum routine of her life on the farm became an exhilarating excitement. She was completely happy in her life. She was happy in her support of the mother woman labouring in her home for her many offspring, she was happy in her association with the Indian, Usak, whose untiring labours had built up the great reindeer farm of which he had assured her she was mistress. But her mind was groping amongst a world of girlish dreams, yearning and full of unspoken, unadmitted desires. A subtle restlessness was at work in her, and it found expression in the impulse which had become so irresistible. All her life had been bounded by narrow limits of association. Her only human associations had always been those of her far-off home, and the trading post with its factor, and those men of the fur trail who foregathered about its staunch walls. Here, for the first time, was something new. And more than all it was something that was prohibited.

The two men were gazing out at the churning waters storming over the shoals, and the outlook was threatening. They were standing on the low bank, trampling underfoot the carpet of flowers which grew in profusion down to the very edge of the river. They were surveying the junction of the two rivers where the Caribou broke its way into the flood of the Hekor, and the endless battle of conflicting streams was being fought out. The cauldron of boiling rapids extended for nearly two miles.

Wilder raised a sunburnt hand and crushed the blood glutted bodies of half a hundred mosquitoes on the back of his powerful neck.

“It’s portage, sure, Chilcoot,” he said, with that finality which denoted a mind made up. “I don’t see a passage anywhere fit to take the big boats. I’d say the stream’s deep this side under the bank, but we can’t chance things.”

Chilcoot Massy chewed on for a moment in deep contemplation. He was a silent creature, squat, powerful and grey-headed, with the hard-beaten face of a pugilist. He was a product of the northern gold trail whose experience went far back to the first rush over the Skagway in ’98, and looked it all in the rough buckskin and cord clothing in which he was clad. He was Bill Wilder’s chief lieutenant; a man whose force and courage was unabated for all his years, and whose restless spirit denied him the comfort and leisure which the ample wealth he had achieved in association with his friend and one-time employer, entitled him to.

“It certainly looks that way,” he agreed. Then he demurred. “You never can tell on these rivers,” he said. “We’d have done a heap better breaking down our outfit, an’ takin’ on a bigger bunch of lighter canoes. Maybe we’ll run into this sort of stuff right away up the river as we get nearer the headwaters.”

“That trader feller didn’t reckon that way,” he said. “There isn’t a thing to worry from here to the Great Falls,” he said. “And Loon Creek is twenty miles this side of them. We’re liable to find it tough on the creek. But that’s not new. We’ll be at work then with a fixed headquarters, and we can travel light. Ben Needham said we could get through this stuff if we fancied taking a chance. He guessed if we knew it there wasn’t any sort of chance about it. Well, we don’t know it. And I’m taking no chances. You see, there’s more to this thing than chasing a simple gold trail.” He laughed. “Guess we aren’t civilians any longer. We’re police. You and me, and Mike. And we’ve got our orders from our superiors who don’t stand for disobedience. We’re being paid a dollar a day to make good. And I don’t reckon the police pay out such a powerful bunch of money to folks to make a failure. Come right on. We’ll get back and eat. Then we’ll start in on the portage.”

They re-traced their steps to the camp that had been pitched well below the rough waters.

It was a busy scene. The five great laden canoes were moored nose on to the bank, and two smaller vessels were drawn up clear of the water on the mud. It was an imposing fleet, equipped to the last detail, and old Ben Needham had done it less than justice when he had contemptuously characterised it for the benefit of the Kid. This was no Cheechako outfit laden with the useless equipment engendered of inexperience.

It was an equipment such as only the wide experience of Wilder and Chilcoot could have designed. It was made up of everything which the outlands of the North demanded, from dogs and sleds to a miniature army of Breeds and hard-living whitemen, armed to encounter human hostility as well as the fiercest onslaughts of Nature’s most antagonistic moods. Furthermore, full preparation for a long sojourn in an inhospitable region had been made.

Hot food had been made ready when they reached the camp, and dogs and men were busily engaged satisfying keen appetite for all the fierce heat of the day and the shadelessness prevailing everywhere. The leader’s camp had been set apart, and Red Mike, a red-haired, giant Irishman, whose only sober moments were breathed beyond the drink-laden atmosphere of the dance halls of Placer, was awaiting their return. He was third in command, and his responsibility was that of quartermaster, and river man, and for the discipline of the ruffian crew of the expedition. His greeting was characteristic.

“Chance is the salt of life,” he cried, in a pleasant brogue, addressing Wilder. “Are we takin’ it, boss?”

“Then sure you’ll set in an’ eat,” was the prompt retort. “Guess portage was invented by the divil himself, an’ the Holy Fathers don’t reckon we need to get in a hurry knockin’ at Hell’s gates. This sow-belly’s as tough as dried snakes. I don’t seem to notice even the flies yearning. Tea? Gee! It’s poor sort of hooch, even when you’ve skimmed the stewed flies clear. I—Mother of Snakes! Wher’ did that come from?”

The man’s blue eyes were turned on the shining waters. His roving gaze had been caught by the sight of a small hide kyak heading for the camp. It was propelled by a single paddle dipping in the noiseless fashion which belongs to the river Indians. And he squatted with a mouthful of sow-belly poised ready to be devoured.

Chilcoot had flung his length on the ground, but Bill Wilder was still standing. His eyes were turned at once on the approaching vessel.

“That trader guy’s sent us along a scout,” he said. “He’s a reas’nable sort of citizen. I guess that Injun’s goin’ to save us portage.”

Chilcoot was sitting up. His hard face was wearing a grin that might well have seemed impossible to it. And he spoke with an assurance that brought the Irishman to his feet, with his food thrown aside as though it were the last thing to be desired at such a moment.

The kyak approached the bank within some twenty yards. Then with a thrust of the paddle the Kid held it up and sat contemplating the men on the shore.

The whole camp was agog. The crews lounging over their rough trail food watched the intruder curiously. But seemingly they had missed, in the sunburnt figure, clad in familiar mannish buckskin, the thing which the lightning eye of Chilcoot had discovered on the instant.

Wilder and Red Mike passed hastily down the bank while the older man followed more leisurely.

It was just a little difficult. Once the men reached the waterside Chilcoot’s assertion was left beyond question. Had the intruder been a man, greeting and possible invitation would have been forthcoming on the instant. As it was even the Irishman was reduced to silence in sheer amazement. The girl was less than twenty yards away beyond the vessels moored, a rampart between herself and the Cheechakos against whom the factor had warned her. Her beautiful blue eyes were unsmiling. Her sunburnt face was almost painfully serious. And her whole manner, and her attitude told the men on the bank that her approach had definite meaning which had nothing to do with idle curiosity. So they waited, and finally the difficulty was solved by the girl herself.

It was Wilder who replied to her, and a smile lit his angular face as he noted the sweetly girlish tones of the voice that reached him.

“You don’t need to,” came back the Kid’s prompt reply, and her paddle stirred in the water and her little vessel crept in towards the laden canoes. “There’s a deep channel. It’s right along under the bank, and it’ll take the biggest boat you’ve got without a worry.”

Wilder stepped on to the nearest vessel and moved down its length. The prow of the girl’s canoe had come within a yard of him, and he looked down into the wide eyes gazing so confidently up into his.

“That’s just kind of you,” he said, in a tone he intended should escape the listening ears behind him. “It’s a mighty big proposition portaging this outfit, and I was feeling kind of reluctant.” He withdrew his gaze from the fascinating picture of the white girl in the boat and glanced in the direction she had indicated. “The channel cuts in under this bank, you say? And it’s clear all the way?”

The Kid’s bright eyes were measuring. In her mind was the haunting memory of old Ben’s warning, but somehow it was powerless before her inclination and the sight of this large man with his steady, good-looking eyes, and wholesome, clean-shaven face. Her confidence increased and her impulse became irresistible.

“If you feel like it I’ll give you a lead,” she said. “I know it by heart. You see,” she added, with simple conclusiveness, “I was raised on this river.”

Wilder nodded. His smiling eyes had come back again to the girl’s face as she sat with her paddle stirring in the water to keep her place against the stream.

“Oh, no,” the Kid denied frankly. “I just saw you pass up stream and guessed you were strangers. So—” She broke off. In a moment she realised her mistake from the flash of inquiry she saw in the man’s eyes.

The girl’s moment of confusion passed, and frank impulse again took hold of her. She laughed happily, and the man felt the infection of it.

“I saw you coming an’ took cover,” she said simply. “I guessed you were Cheechakos and reckoned I’d take a look—at a distance.”

“No.” The Kid shook her head a little dubiously. “There wasn’t real need. Only—”

“Well, anyway I’ll be glad to pass you through the rapids if it’ll help you. It’ll save you more than a day.”

“You see, my name’s Wilder—Bill Wilder. And I was wondering what yours was.”

Again the girl broke into a happy laugh and the gold man, in sheer delight, joined in. Somewhere out of the blue a pretty white girl, with blue eyes and a wealth of fair hair, clad in the vividly ornamented buckskin which he associated only with the Indian, had descended upon him at a time and place when he had only looked for the roughness of the northern trail. It was all a little amazing. It was all rather absurd. And she was offering to pass him practical help in the work in which he had always believed himself complete master.

“Then I guess it’s good enough for me.” Bill Wilder drew a quick breath. “Well, Kid,” he went on with a smile, “we were just about to eat. Will you step ashore and join us? Then, after, I’ll be mighty glad to have you pass us up those rapids.”

The smile died abruptly out of the girl’s eyes. She remembered Ben Needham and his warning.

“No,” he said. “No, Kid. We’re an outfit on the gold trail, sure,” he went on quite seriously. “But we’re decent citizens. And there’s not a thing to this camp to scare you. Will you come right ashore?”

For answer the girl’s paddle stirred more deeply and the nose of her canoe shot up to the vessel on which the man was standing. He held out one brown hand to assist her, but it was ignored. The Kid rose to her feet, tall and beautifully slim, and sprang on to the vessel beside him, carrying her own mooring rope of rawhide in her hand.

And they both laughed as they passed back together over the bales of outfit with which the boat was laden, and reached the river bank where Chilcoot and Mike were waiting for them.

CHAPTER III

The Indian, Usak, and the Kid were standing in the great enclosure where three half-breed Eskimos were engaged in the operation of breaking young buck reindeer to the sled work of the trail. They took no part in it. It was the daily occupation in the springtime of the year. It began before the break-up of winter, when it was conducted with heavily weighted sleds, and, with the passing of the snow it was continued with the long pole carryalls, which is the Eskimo means of transport over land in summer. The carryall was in use now and it was an interesting struggle between the skill of the squat, sturdy, brown-skinned breakers, and the half-scared, half-angry fighting will of a finely grown buck deer whose ragged coat of winter gave him the size of a three-year-old steer.

Haltered, and ranged along the rough-poled fence of the great corral stood twenty or thirty young bucks awaiting their turn in the rawhide harness, and they gazed round on the spectacle of their fighting brother with eyes of mild wonder at the commotion he was creating. Otherwise they seemed utterly unconcerned in their gentle submissiveness. They were all man-handled and tame. They had been handled almost from their birth, for the whole success of the farm depended on the turning out of fully broken cattle, trained for the work of transport within the Arctic, where the Eskimo estimate them above every other means of traversing the vast spaces of snow and ice, or the barren, lichen-grown territory of summer over which they were wont to roam.

The great deer was quieting down. His sense of the indignity of the forked carryall resting on his high withers seemed to be passing. His wild jumps and slashing forefeet were less violent, and his snortings of fear and anger were replaced by meaningless shakings of the graceful head on which his annual re-growth of antlers was only just beginning to display itself. Finally, under the skilful handling of the breakers, good-temper prevailed, and the beautiful creature was induced to move forward dragging the boulder-weighted poles with their ends resting on the ground.

“Him good buck,” Usak said approvingly, as the men led the now docile creature round the circle of the breaking track.

The Kid had nothing to add. Truth to tell for once she had little interest in the work the result of which represented the livelihood, the whole fortunes of them all. Her thoughts were far away, somewhere miles along the broad course of the Hekor River. She was thinking of her previous day’s adventure, and her pretty eyes reflected her thoughts. Somehow her mood had lost its buoyancy. Somehow the years of happy life on this far-off northern homestead seemed to have dropped away behind her. Something had broken the spell of it. Something had robbed it of half its simple, happy associations.

Gazing upon the mild-eyed creature now gracefully pacing the well-worn track under the careful guidance of the dark-skinned men of the North, she was thinking of a pair of clear-gazing, fearless honest eyes which had looked into hers with a man’s kindly smile for something more weak and tender than himself, for something that stirred his sense of chivalry to its deepest. She understood nothing of his emotions, and little enough of her own. She only remembered the smile and the kindness, and the man whose outfit she had unfalteringly guided up the open channel of the river where it skirted the deadly rapids. And somehow, her adventure marked an epoch in her life which had completely broken the hitherto monotonous continuity of it.

Bill Wilder. The man’s name was no less graven on her memory than was the recollection of his great stature and the lean face which had so re-assured her of the honesty and ability which old Ben Needham’s warning had denied him. She remembered the half hour she had squatted in company of these men, sharing in their rough, midday meal, and listening to, and taking part, in their talk. It had been a thrilling excitement, not one detail of which would she have missed for all the world. It had been a deliriously happy time. She remembered how the man called Mike had pressed her to say where she lived, and to tell them the name to which she was born, and she remembered the sharp fashion in which, at the first sign of reluctance on her part, remembering as she had Ben’s warning, Bill Wilder had told him to mind his business.

Then had come her little moment of triumph when she had passed the outfit up the open channel. How she had nursed it, and delivered her orders to the men behind. How she had taken Wilder himself a passenger in her pilot kyak, and left him wondering at her skill and knowledge. Then had come the parting with her new friends, when the man had told her in his quiet assured fashion that someday they would meet again when his work was done. Someday he would come back, perhaps in two years, and wait by the rapids till she appeared. And then on the impulse of the moment she had said there would be no need for him to wait by the rapids. All he had to do was to turn off into the mouth of the Caribou River and pass some ten miles up its course.

She was wondering and dreaming now. Her wonder was if the man would remember his promise, and her simply given invitation. And her dreaming was of a steady pair of grey eyes that haunted her no matter where she gazed and robbed her of all interest in the things which had never before failed to hold her deepest concern.

“We mak fifty buck ready,” Usak went on, failing to realise the girl’s abstraction. “Fifty good dam buck. An’ I mak north an’ mak plenty big trade. Yes?” He shook his head, and his dark eyes, a shade more sunken with the passing of years, but lacking nothing of the passionate fire of his earlier days, took on a moody light. “Us mak no good plenty trade no more. No. I go east, ’way nor-east plenty far. All time more far as I go. What I mak? Fox? Yes. Beaver? Yes. Maybe I mak wolf bear. I mak small truck. No seal. No ivory. No anything good. Now I mak none. Not little bit. Him Euralian mak east. All time him go east, too. Him eat up all fur. Eskimo all much scare. Him go all time farther. So I not mak him.”

The man’s half angry protest impressed itself upon the girl. Her pre-occupied gaze came back to his dark, saturnine face. An ironical smile played for a moment in the blue of her eyes.

“Does it matter, Usak?” she asked. “Old Ben Needham has gone, an’ the store’s closed down. If you made good trade I guess we’d be left with it piling in our store.” She shook her head almost disconsolately. “Ther’s only Placer for us now. We’ll need to make the trip once a year, and trade the small truck we can scratch together. It’s that or—”

The girl broke off. Ben Needham had gone. Bill Wilder and his party had vanished up the river. Quite suddenly the desolation of it all seemed complete.

There was moisture in her eyes as she turned from the man’s dark face to the familiar scenes about her. The wide Caribou River Valley was bright green with a wealth of summer grass and tiny flowers which the spring floods had left behind them. The river was shrunken now to its normal bed in the heart of the valley, which was walled in by high shoulders separated by nearly two miles of flat. So it went on for many miles; sometimes narrowing, sometimes widening. Sometimes the valley was almost barren of all but the Arctic lichens. Sometimes it was filled with wind-swept pine bluffs, often dwarfed, but occasionally extensive and of primordial characteristics. The farm was set in a deep shelter of a bluff of the latter kind. The house lay behind them, nestling just within great lank trees that in turn were sheltered by a granite spur of the great walls which lined the course of the valley. It was a crude but snug enough home. It was a structure that had grown as the mood and ability of Usak, and the needs of those who had elected to share it with him, had prompted.

It was seven years since the change had taken place. Before that, for eight long years, it had been the home of the child Felice and her Indian, self-appointed, guardian. Usak had been as good as his word. Felice had been left to the care of Hesther and Jim McLeod while he went on his mission of vengeance after he had been left wifeless, and Felice had been left a helpless orphan. He had returned as he said he would. He had returned to claim the orphaned child of his “good boss.”

The whiteman and his wife had been reluctant. They had realised their duty. Usak was an Indian, and they felt that in giving the child into his keeping they were committing a serious wrong.

But it so happened that with the return of Usak from his journey into the great white void of the North, the story of which he refused to reveal, Hesther’s first baby was about to be born. And the coming of that new life pre-occupied both husband and wife to the exclusion of all else, and helped to blind them to their sense of duty. So the Indian’s appeal had double force. And finally they yielded, convinced of the man’s honesty, convinced that in denying him they would have inflicted a grievous wound on the already distraught creature.

So Usak had come into possession of the treasure he claimed as an offset to the monstrous grief of his own personal loss, and he set about the task of raising the child with the inimitable devotion of a single-minded savage.

The man had laboured for her with every waking moment. He had laboured to replace the mother woman who had nursed her, and the great white father whom he had loved. He had laboured to build up about her the farm which was to yield her that means of livelihood which his simple understanding warned him that Marty, himself, would have desired for her.

It had been a great struggle with his limited education and only his savage mind to guide him in the barter which was the essence of the success he desired. Then, too, with each passing year the depredations of the invading Euralians spread wider and wider afield as the central control, which apparently had always existed, seemed to lose its grip on the rapidly increasing numbers of the foreign marauders. Futhermore, his trade with the little people of the Arctic had in consequence receded farther and farther, till, as he had just said, it had passed almost beyond his reach.

So things had gone on till eight years had passed and the dark eyes of the man saw the womanly development of the pretty white child. Then had happened another one of those strokes of ill-fortune which so often react in a direction quite undreamed.

Hesther and Jim McLeod had developed a family of three boys and three girls in the course of the eight years. Trade was bad, and the threat of closing down the store was always hanging over them. Then, one day, in the depths of the terrible Arctic winter, the man was taken ill with pneumonia, and, in a week, Hesther was left a widow with six small children and no one to turn to for support and comfort, and with little more in the world than the shelter of the store, and such food as it provided, until the Fur Valley Company should remove her and replace her dead husband with a new Factor.

The Company dealt fairly, if coldly, with her. Ben Needham was sent up to replace the dead Jim McLeod at the opening of spring. And the widow and her children were to be brought down to Dawson, and, forthwith sent on to such destination as she desired. The Company gave her travelling expenses, and a sum of money to help her along. And that was to be the limit of its obligations.

But Hesther McLeod had definite ideas. Her cheerful optimism and gentle philosophy never for a moment deserted her. During the dark months of winter, when she was left with only the ghost of her dead, she strove with all the calm she possessed to review the thing which life had done to her. She was quite unblinded to the seriousness of her position. She probed to the last detail all it meant to those lives belonging to her which were only just beginning. And finally the decision she took had nothing in it of the promptings of hard sense, but came from somewhere deep down in a gentle, brave, motherly heart.

She would not quit the country in which had been consummated all the joys of motherhood. Her children were of the North, and should be raised men and women of the great wide country which had yielded her all the real emotions of her life. She would stay. She would take the pittance which the Company offered, but the North should remain her home. And curiously enough the main thought prompting her heroic decision was the memory of the white girl she had handed over to the care of the Indian, Usak.

The rest had been easy to a creature of her simple practice. Usak was forthwith consulted, and the loyal creature jumped at the idea that the whitewoman and her children should make their home on the farm he was so ardently labouring to build up for the daughter of his “good boss.”

In short order the three-roomed log shanty grew. It spread out in any convenient direction under the man’s indefatigable labours, and the mother’s domestic mind. A room here was added. A room there. And so it went on, regardless of all proportion, but with keen regard for necessity and convenience. And Hesther brought all her chattels with her from the store, and her busy hands and invincible courage swiftly turned the place into a real home for the children, and everything else calculated for the well-being of the lives it was her cherished desire to do her best for.

So in the course of years, sometimes under overwhelming difficulties, Felice, who, from the start had been affectionately designated “the Kid” had grown up to womanhood, taught to read and write and sew by Hesther, and made adept in the laborious work of the farm and trail and river by Usak.

And through every struggle, under the radiance of the mother’s courage and sweetness of temper, and watched over by the fierce dark eyes of the devoted Indian, it had always been a home of happiness and hope. And this despite the fact that every factor to make for hope was steadily diminishing.

The Indian was in the mood for plain speaking now. And the Kid, her mind disturbed out of its usual calm by her recent adventure, was eagerly responsive.

The Indian shook his head so that his lank hair swept the greasy collar of his buckskin shirt.

“I know,” the Kid broke in impulsively, and with some impatience. “Guess you’ve told me before. ‘When the fox sheds his coat the winds blow warm.’ We know about that, don’t we?” She smiled for all her real distress. “But I’d say Nature’s mighty little to do with human trade. When ther’s no food in the house we’ll have to go hungry, or live on caribou meat. Say, can you see us sitting around with the wind whistling through our bones? Does the notion tell you anything? It won’t blow warmer because Mary Justicia, an’ Clarence, an’ Algernon, an’ Percy, an’ Gladys Anne, an’ Jane Constance are hungry. It won’t be so bad for mother, an’ me, an’ you. We’re grown. And it won’t be the first time we’ve been hungry. No. It’s no use. You and me, we’ll have to make Placer, where the folks drink and gamble, and dance, most all the time, and, when they get the chance, rob the folks who don’t know better. We’ll have to make the river trail once a year and buy the truck we need with the furs we can scrape together. It’s that or quit.”

For some moments the man’s resentful eyes watched the harnessing of a fresh buck. The creature bellowed and pawed the ground with slashing, wide-spreading hoofs.

“We mak ’em, yes,” he said, as the beast quietened down. Then he broke into a sudden fierce expletive. It was the savage temper of the man as he thought of the cause of all their woes. “Tcha!” he cried, and his white, strong teeth bared. “They kill your father. They kill Pri-loo. Now they kill up all trade—dead. I go all mad inside. I tak ’em in my two hand, an’—an’ I choke ’em dis life out of ’em. I know. They mak it so we all die dead. No pelts, no food, no deer. So we not wake up no more. Your father—him live—plenty much gold. Oh, big plenty. Us rich. Us not care for trade. Us buy ’em up all thing. Yes.” His dark eyes were on the movements of the men with the deer. But he saw nothing. Only the vision which his passionate heart conjured out of the back cells of memory. “Bimeby,” he went on at last, in a tone that was ominously quiet, “I mak one big trip. I go by the river so I come by the big hills. Maybe I mak big trade that place.” His eyes shone with a fierce smile. “Oh, yes, maybe. Then maybe I come back. An’ when I come back then us break big trail an’ quit. I know him dis trail. Great big plenty long trail. Us come by the big river an’ the big lak’. The good boss, your father speak plenty him name. M’Kenzie. Oh, yes. M’Kenzie River. Much heap fur. All fur. Seal, bear, beaver, silver fox. Much, oh much. Black fox, too. All him fur. Plenty Eskimo. Plenty trader mans. Us not mak him Placer. Oh, no. Plenty whiteman by Placer. Him see little Felice, white girl Kid, him steal him. Oh, yes. Usak know. Him steal up all child, too. So. Missis Hesther, too. They mak Felice to dance plenty an’ drink the fire water. Not so Hesther woman. Him mak him work. All time work. Him old. Not so as Felice. So I go by the trail. Bimeby I come back. Then us mak big trail. Yes?”

In spite of herself the Kid was interested. But her interest was for that part of the man’s planning which related to the mysterious journey which the Indian declared his intention of taking. The talk of the McKenzie was by no means new to her. She had heard it all before. It was the dream place of the Indian’s mind, which the talk of her dead father had inspired. She shook her head as her eyes followed the docile movements of the newly broken buck.

“Why must you go up the river to the big hills?” she asked seriously. “That’s new. The other isn’t.”

The blue eyes were searching the dark face narrowly. But the man refused to be drawn.

“It plenty good place by the hills. Maybe I get fur. Maybe—gold. I not know. Sometime I dream dis thing. I go by the hills, an’ then I—come back. I know. Oh, yes.”

The girl smiled, and the Indian responded for all his mood. This girl was as the sun, moon, and stars of his life.

“Say, Usak,” she went on, with a little laugh, “maybe I guess about this. You have a friend there by the hills. A woman eh? That so?”

The man’s eyes were sparkling as they grinned back into the Kid’s face. But it was a different smile from that of the moment before.

“Then I don’t figger I better ask any more,” the girl said simply. “But we’re not going to the McKenzie. We’re not going to quit here—yet. No. We’re going to make such trade as maybe at Placer first. Later, if we figger it’s too worrying to make Placer, then we’ll think of McKenzie, an’ you I guess’ll be free to go right along an’ say good-bye to your lady friend up in the hills. Let’s get this fixed right now. You guess this farm is mine, my father started it for me. An’ you, big Indian that you are, have done all you know to make it right for me. Well, I guess it’s up to me to figger the thing I’m going to do. That’s all right. I’ve figgered. So has our little mother. We’re goin’ to give this change two summers’ trial. And after that, if things are still bad, why, we’ll think about—McKenzie.”

The Kid’s manner was decided. Usak was an Indian, a man of extraordinary capacity and wonderful devotion. But from her earliest days he had taught Felice that the farm was hers and he was her servant. And the child had grown to feel and know her authority, and the difference which colour made between them. Whatever the man proposed, hers was the final decision. And for all her real, deep regard for the man who had raised her, she understood he was still her servant.

Now her decision was taken out of something that had no relation to the welfare of those depending upon it. It had nothing to do with the prosperity of the farm. It had nothing to do with wisdom or judgment. It was inspired by one thing only. The man whom she had passed up the rapids had said he would come back. And she had told him to seek her ten miles up the Caribou River. Two summers. Yes. He must surely be back in that time. If not—well, perhaps, the McKenzie would be preferable to the Hekor if he had not returned in that time.

A shrill of childish voices broke upon the quiet of the sunlit corral, and Usak turned as a troop of children came racing across to where they were standing. Mary Justicia, by reason of her long bare legs and superior age, led the way. And she was followed in due sequence of ages by Clarence, Algernon, Percy, Gladys Anne, and the rear was brought up by Jane Constance, a brownfaced, curly-headed girl of about seven years. They were all bare-legged, and the boys were scarcely clad at all above the buckskin of their breeches. But they were full to the brim of reckless animal spirits and the perfect health provided by a life lived almost entirely in the open.

The name rang out in a chorus of summons ranging from the rough, breaking voice of Clarence to the almost baby treble of Jane Constance.

The Kid swung about as the youthful avalanche swept down upon her, and, in a moment, she was almost smothered by the struggling children reaching to get hold of some part of her clothing. There could be no mistake. Adoration was shining in every eye as the children reached her. There was laughter and a babel of voices as they took possession of her and started to drag her towards the house where dinner was waiting ready.

Usak looked on without a word. He was more than content. The girl had given him her decision as to the future, and though it clashed with his own ideas it was her decision, and, therefore, would be obeyed. He was as nearly happy as his fierce, passionate temper would permit. These children in their amazing hero worship of their older sister, as they considered her, had his entire approval. They were only little less to him than the Kid. He was Indian and they were white. And the big heart of the man thrilled at the thought that these helpless whites were no less his charge than the grown woman-child of his “good boss.”

They were ranged about the rough table for their midday meal. The step-ladder sequence of their ages and sizes was only broken by the presence of the Kid, who sat at one end of it between Algernon, of the red-head and freckles, and the grey-eyed Percy, who was the born trader of the community. Hester McLeod, grey of hair for all her comparative youth, smiling, small, and workworn sat at the head of the table between the head and tail of her reckless brood. Mary Justicia was at her right, a pretty, black-haired angular girl of nearly fifteen, ready to minister to everyone’s wants, a sort of telephonic communication with the cookstove, and Jane Constance, with her mass of brown curls, and a face more than splashed with the stew she was devouring, on her left.

At the moment they were all hungrily devouring, and silence, only broken by sounds of mastication, prevailed. Each child had a tin platter of venison stew to consume, and a beaker of hot tea was set close to their hands. They fed themselves with spoons as being the most convenient weapons, and attacked the fare, which was more or less their daily menu, with an appetite that was utterly unimpaired through monotony of diet.

The Kid looked up from her food. For a moment her fond eyes dwelt on the unkempt ragamuffins gathered about the table. There was not one of the six that was without individual interest for her. They often plagued her, but right down to the generally incoherent Jane Constance they looked to her in everything, from their games, to the needs of their growing bodies. She loved them all for just what they were, unkempt, often up to their eyes in dirt and mischief. But more than all she loved the patient, mild-eyed woman at the head of the crazy table, whose purpose in life seemed to be the whole and complete sacrifice of self.

Her gaze wandered over the mud-plastered walls of the living room of this Indian-built shanty. Every crack in it, every uneven contour of the green logs of which it was constructed, was known to her by heart. There were no decorations. There were no other furnishings but the table, and the benches on which the children sat for their food and lessons, and a makeshift cupboard in which were stored groceries, and such domestic articles as Hesther had been able to bring with her from the Fort. It was all crude. It was all unlovely, except for the wealth of generous humanity it sheltered. But every roughness it contained was bound up with simple happiness for the girl, and the memory of long years of childish delights.

“We’re going to give it two years’ trial, Mum,” she said, while the children’s voices were held silent. “It’s the best we can do, I guess, now old Ben’s pulled out. You’ll have to make out the best you know while Usak and I beat down the river to Placer once a year. Maybe it won’t be so bad for you now with Clarence and Alg nearly grown men, and Mary fit to run the whole bunch herself. If things don’t get worse, and we make good trade in Placer I guess we’ll scratch along right here till the boys are full grown. Then we’ll see the thing best to be done. If things get worse Usak wants to make McKenzie River. He’s crazy for the McKenzie Valley. With him it’s the thing to fix everything right.”

The mild-eyed mother reached out with a handful of apron and wiped away the lavish helping of stew which had embedded itself in Jane Constance’s thick brown curls. The smears on her chubby face were hopeless. They could remain for the wash tub afterwards.

“I guess it’s what you say, Kid,” she acquiesced. “The good God gave me two hands and the will to work. But I guess he forgot about the means of guessin’ right when things got awry. The twins are some men—now,” she went on fondly, gazing with pride upon Clarence and Algernon, with his fiery red-head, the possession of which was always a mystery to her contented mind. “We’ll make out. Eh, Mary?” she cried, turning to the dark-eyed girl who was her eldest child. “Things don’t figger to worry you if you don’t worry them, I say. When do you pull out?”

“When the breaking’s through, and the deer are ready for the winter trail. The season’s good with us if we could only get the pelts. We’ve more deer to trade than we’ve ever had before.”

“Why don’t we quit trade and chase up that gold Usak’s always yarning about,” he said eagerly. “It’s yours, Kid. Leastways it was your paw’s. We wouldn’t need to worry with furs then.”

The boy pushed his plate away. For all he was not yet twelve, gold held a surpassing fascination for his alert, trading mind.

“I’m all for the gold, Mum,” he went on soberly. “An’ I’m real glad old Ben’s gone. Ther’s no one around but ourselves now, when we find it. Breeds don’t figger in it. When we get it we’ll divide it all up. Kid’ll have most, ’cos it’s hers, anyway. The one who finds it’ll have next. An’ Jane don’t need any. You see, she’s a fool kid, an’ would maybe try to eat it. Guess I’m goin’ to find it.” The Kid laughed, and exchanged meaning glances with the mother across the table.

“Can you beat him?” she cried, and all the children laughed with her. “He’s arranged for the finder to have next most to me. Say Perse, Mum had best read you out of the Testament. Ther’s a man in it they used to call Judas. I guess you ought to know about him. Ther’s another feller, but I don’t know about him. He was in another book. He was the same sort of feller only not so bad. I think they called him Shylock. He’s in one of old Ben Needham’s books, so you can’t read about him.”

“Don’t want to anyway,” retorted the unabashed Perse. “Soon as I’m as big as Clarence an’ Red-head I’m goin’ out after that gold, an’ I’ll buy you all a swell ranch an’ fixings, an’ give you all you want, an’ Mum won’t have to work no more. I reckon Clarence an’ Red-head are kites. Wish I was big as them.”

“Kite’s nothin’!” Clarence was without humour, and took his small brother seriously. “You’ll do the chores same as us when you’re big as us. Ther’ ain’t no gold ’cept in Usak’s head. Mum said the Euralians got it years back. You’d do a heap better gettin’ after pelts same as us—only we can’t get ’em. Gold—nothin’!” Perse thrust his empty plate towards Mary Justicia who took it for replenishment, and he watched while his mother wrung the small nose of Jane Constance which had got mixed up with her stew.

“When I’m growed I won’t do a thing I can’t do,” he observed graphically. “If ther’ ain’t pelts wot’s the use chasin’ ’em? You can’t say ther’ ain’t gold till you chased it. I’m goin’ to chase that gold,” he finished up stubbornly.

“Well, it doesn’t matter anyway what any of you are going to do in the future,” the Kid said with finality. “Just now we’re kind of up against it, and you’ve all got to help Mum all you know. Isn’t that so, Mum?”

Hesther beamed mildly round on the children, not one of whom she would have been without for all the world.

“I guess that’s so,” she said. “We’re all goin’ to do our best, sure. That’s what God set us to do. You see, kids, the folk who do the best that’s in ’em mostly get the best of life. An’ the best of life don’t always mean a heap of gold, an’ not even a heap of pelts. It mostly means a happy heart, an’ a healthy body. And when you die it ain’t no more uncomfortable or worrying than goin’ to sleep when you’re tired, same as you do most every night when the flies an’ skitters’ll let you. Now if you’re all through we’ll clean up. You boys see an’ pass Mary Justicia the chattels, an’ fix ’em dry after she’s swabbed ’em clean, while I huyk Jane Constance from under the stew that’s missed her mouth. I guess Gladys Anne needs fixing some that way, too. Perse, you get me a bucket o’ water an’ a swab. Maybe I won’t need soap—we ain’t got none to spare.”

CHAPTER IV

Bill Wilder was squatting on a boulder under cover of the stone-built fortifications. His rifle was lying in an emplacement overlooking the waterway below. His grey eyes were pre-occupied, searching the red, sandy foreshore across the river, which rose gently, baldly, sloping steadily upwards to the boulder-strewn, serrated skyline beyond.

Chilcoot was seated near by. His rifle lay in another emplacement ready for immediate use. He was chewing in the thoughtful fashion habitual to him, even under the greatest stress. He, too, was searching the far side of the river. His gaze was no less intent. It was the look of a man whose habit has become that of ceaseless watchfulness.

“I wish I hadn’t let him go now.” Wilder spoke without turning. It was almost as though he were thinking aloud. “He’s a crazy sort of hot-head who can’t sit around when ther’s a scrap to be had.”

“You don’t need to worry for Mike,” he said, with a short laugh that was not intended as an expression of mirth. “He’ll get along when he’s through. Ther’ ain’t the darn Euralian born that could chew him up. He’s spent the worst part of a rotten bad life doin’ his best to lose it by every fool play Placer could offer him—an’ failed. I guess a wild-cat’s a poor sort of circumstance in the matter of lives alongside Mike. I don’t worry a thing.”

The break in their silence closed up at once. Chilcoot took a fresh chew and wiped the mosquitoes from the back of his neck. Wilder filled his pipe. The smell of cooking was in the air. There were others lining the fortifications at every point, and one or two men were moving about the camp fire behind them. But for all the watch at the outer walls the place suggested noonday idleness. Even the trail dogs were drowsing in the shade of the walls.

The Arctic sun shone down out of a cloud-flecked sky on a scene of barren unloveliness. Long since it had burned up such meagre foliage as the floods of spring had made possible. The whole country-side was as bald as an African sand desert. The blaze of miniature spring flowers had been swept away, and the dried grass was as brown and wiry as the sparse bristles on the back of some hoary hog. Even the lichens which flourished on the low, rock formations of which the whole country of this northern river was composed, were in little better case. Utter sterility lay in every direction. The desolation, the heat, the flies, the mosquitoes, these things made for a condition that was well nigh intolerable.

The camp was set at the far headwaters of Loon Creek. It was nominally a gold camp; in reality it had little to do with anything but defence. It was a veritable fortress built out of the millions of storm-worn boulders that littered the region. A wide, encompassing stone corral, nearly ten feet high, formed the outer defence, which, in turn, contained a stout, similarly built citadel which sheltered quarters for men and dogs, and the stores and gear of the outfit.

Bill Wilder and his men had embarked on their expedition with no greater concern than had usually been the case when the magic of gold had been the sole lure. George Raymes had despatched him to these uncharted regions with a curiosity deeply stirred, but with the gold fever burning fiercely in his veins. And Wilder had prepared for every emergency, but always with a smile of deprecation for the extent of the war-like stores which the police officer insisted were absolutely necessary. Now he was more than thankful for the foresight of the man who had some twenty-five years of police experience behind him.

He was under no illusion now after a year of this deplorable territory. None of the men with him had any illusion either. The lure of gold may have been the original inspiration with them, but from the moment of embarking upon the waters of Loon Creek it had been swept from their minds in the fight for their very existence that was swiftly forced upon them. For all they only contemplated the pursuit of a legitimate calling in their own Canadian territory they found themselves cut off by many hundreds of miles from all help in a country peopled by a race of beings who were furiously hostile.

All through the previous summer the war had been waged. It had been a heart-breaking guerilla warfare that knew no cessation. The mysterious enemy seemed to be waiting for them at every possible point along the river, and in each and every case the resulting fight was of that comparatively long range character that was more irritating than disastrous.

The Euralians were past masters in the art of challenging Wilder’s progress. They never offered a pitched battle. They attacked at a distance with rifle and soft-nosed bullet, and the pin-pricking of it was like the maddening attacks of the swarming mosquitoes. The whole thing was amazingly well-calculated. There was no respite, there was not a moment in which the creek could be adequately explored for gold. The expedition was forced to defence almost every hour of the unending daylight.

In this fashion, during the first summer, the headwaters of the creek had been reached. But they had been reached with barely time to build winter quarters before the freeze up and the long night of winter descended upon the world.

With the closing in of the Arctic night hostilities ceased as far as the human enemy was concerned. The Euralians fled before the overwhelming forces which Nature was about to turn loose. Perhaps they understood the terror which the intruders would be forced to endure on these barren lands where shelter was unknown. Perhaps they considered it sufficient. Perhaps they feared for themselves the ferocity of the Arctic night. Doubtless they were simply satisfied that their prey was held fast, a helpless prisoner within the walls of the stronghold he had set up in defence, and was powerless to operate in any of the desired directions. At any rate Wilder was left unmolested in the grip of the northern man’s natural enemy.

It had been a desperate time in which the intensity of cold was the least of many hardships. Fuel had been scarce enough, but sufficient driftwood and masses of dried lichen had been collected to make life possible. So the expedition had endured through alternating periods of snow-storm and blizzard, when the blackness of the northern night could well-nigh be felt. Then had come those brilliant intervals of starlight when the twilight grew under the splendour of a blazing aurora, and the temperature dropped, dropped till the depths of cold seemed illimitable.

It was in these extremities that the whiteman displayed his right to his position in the scheme of life. An iron discipline ruled the camp, and never for a moment was it relaxed. Never was the mind permitted to drift from the appointed labours. Storm or calm it was the same. For Bill Wilder, and Chilcoot, and even the hot-head, Red Mike knew that it was work, or the complete disintegration of the will to endure, which, in turn, would mean disruption and final disaster to the whole of their outfit.

So desperate was the interminable winter that every man of the outfit welcomed the deluge of spring with its promptly swarming flies and mosquitoes, and the reopening of hostilities with their almost unseen human enemy. Within a month summer was upon them, and the previous summer’s battle was again in full swing. So it had gone on. And now at last the wear and futility of it all was beginning to have its effect. The expedition had endured for a year under conditions almost unendurable. And during the whole of that period not one single detail of its original purpose had been achieved.

Gold? It was the last thing in their thoughts now. And as for the Euralians, with whom they had been in fighting contact for at least half the time, their identity, their personality was the same sealed book to Wilder that it had been before he had listened to their story from the lips of George Raymes. They had never yet made one single prisoner, or possessed themselves of the slain body of a single victim of their rifles. No member of the outfit had as yet more than a rifle shot view of these savages, who so skilfully avoided contact while yet prosecuting their warfare.

Chilcoot regarded his leader and friend with eyes that twinkled for all they were serious.

Wilder lit his pipe. Then he reached out and opened the breech of his rifle to let the air pass through the fouled barrel.

“Sure,” Chilcoot again laughed shortly. “Ther’s bigger things to worry for than Red Mike—crazy as he is.”

Wilder nodded. He laid his rifle back in its place with the breech closed, and a fresh clip of cartridges in its magazine.

“The boys are worrying, an’ it ain’t good. Buck Maberley told me a bunch of stuff,” the other went on. “But it ain’t the trouble they’re liable to make. We ken fix that sort o’ junk easy—up here. No. They’ve a reas’nable grouch though. For once their fool brains are leaking something better than Placer hooch. I guess they’re askin’ each other the questions you an’ me have been askin’ ourselves without makin’ a shout of it. And they’re mostly finding the same answer we get. They’re guessing if we lie around here about another month, makin’ target practice for them crazy foreign Injuns we look like takin’ a big chance of never hitting up against Placer hooch ever again. Which is only another way o’ sayin’ winter’ll fall on us before we can get back on to the Hekor, an’ if we’ve the grub we ain’t got the guts to see it through. You see, it would be kind o’ diff’rent if we’d the colour of gold to sort of cheer us up. But what spare time those blamed Injuns leave the boys they spend in panning river dirt for the stuff it never heard about since ever the world began. An’ they’re sick to death makin’ fools of their better judgment. Curse the skitters.” Again Chilcoot brushed his hand across his blistered neck and wiped its palm on his moleskin trouser leg.

“We’ll have to beat it,” he said with a sigh of regret, but with decision. “I hate quitting,” he went on a little gloomily. “I wouldn’t say you’re right, boy, ther’s no gold on this river. But we can’t get after it right. If the stuff right down here on the river in front of us ain’t pay dirt I’m all sorts of a sucker. But it don’t matter. These cursed Euralians have got us dead set so we can’t shake a pan right. We’re beat. Plumb beat. They got us worried and guessing, which in a territory like this, means—finished. Man, I’m sick to death of the bald hummocks and the flies. Another winter up here would get me yeppin’ around like a crazy coyote.”

Chilcoot had turned back to his watch on the river. “Yep,” he agreed, relieved at his chief’s swift decision. “When’ll we pull out?”

The men continued their vigil in silence for awhile. The contemplation of retreat, the acknowledgment of defeat were things that affected them deeply. Both were of a keen fighting disposition. But their inclinations were coldly tempered by the experience and wisdom which in earlier days must have been impossible.

“You know, boy,” Wilder went on presently, in the contemplative fashion of a mind groping, “these Indians have got me guessing harder than I’ve ever guessed in my life. It’s up to us handing a report to old Raymes when we get along down. Well, I guess if I was to pass him haf the stuff jangling around in my head, I’d be liable to get a laugh from our superior that ’ud make me want to commit murder. These darn neches are fighting like Prussian Junkers. They’re armed like Bolsheviks. And they’re using the soft-nosed slugs you’d reckon to find in the hands of modern Communists. Here they are thousands of miles beyond the reach of the folk who could hand ’em that stuff. Yet they’ve got it plenty, and know every darn move in the game played by European armies. Say, it wouldn’t stagger me to find our fort doused with poison gas.”

“You’re guessin’ ther’s something white behind ’em?” he said sharply.

“White?” Wilder laughed. He shook his head. “Maybe though,” he said, “the thing that would best please me just now would be for that darnation Irishman to bring us in a prisoner. Say, has it hit you we’ve never got a close sight of these folks. Have you discovered that looking at results it looks like we’ve never killed one blamed rascal of ’em, and yet we reckon to carry with us some of the best artists with a rifle this darned country possesses. We’ve had hundreds of brownfaced targets for ’em, too. What does it mean? Why just this. Dead or alive these neches don’t mean us to get a close view of their men. They’re afraid for a whiteman to—recognise them. Well?” He laughed again. “Say, ther’s a big play behind this thing, and we haven’t begun to discover it. I’m not through with it. But I’m going to beat it down to the Hekor right away, and get a look into it from another angle. Raymes was right. It looks to me as if the feller who solves the riddle of these—Euralians—is doing something mighty good for a whiteman’s country. The gold’s quit worrying me a little bit. Say—”

He broke off and gazed musingly over the glittering waters of the river, which was visible for miles away to the north in the flat, barren country through which it meandered.

Chilcoot waited. His friend’s unusual burst of confidence was not a thing he desired to interrupt. Besides he had voiced much of the thing that had disturbed his less sensitive mind. So he went on chewing with his eyes glued to the opposite shore.

“You know, boy, we’d have done well to have kept touch with that dandy Kid we found at the mouth of the Caribou,” Wilder continued. “I’ve the notion that bright girl was wiser to the things up this way than that factor feller. An’ certainly wiser than George Raymes. She said she was born an’ raised on the river. I wonder. I guess I’ve been wondering ever since. You know there’s more to this play of ours than gold, an’ Euralians an’ things. There’s a ‘girl child—white.’ You remember?”

Chilcoot’s eyes were grinning into the other’s face as Wilder broke off. He nodded.

“But she’d got six brothers an’ sisters an’ a mother, an’ I don’t remember that Raymes said a word about them. You were feelin’ particular not to ast questions of her. Well, I guess it was a pity. Ben Needham never passed us a hint of her, either. Say, this is the queerest darn country. It hides up a whole heap of queer things. Guess it’s that gets hold of us mutts who waste precious years trying to beat it. We can locate that Kid passing down river, though. An’ maybe you’ll feel less a’mighty delicate astin’ questions.”

Chilcoot stood up as he spoke and leant over the hot stone parapet. He was searching the canoe which had suddenly appeared driving down the sluggish stream from the north.

Wilder, too, had risen to his feet. He was looking for the desired prisoner in the boat. He counted the occupants. There were four. Only four. And that was the number the Irishman had set out with. No. There was no prisoner. The men in the boat were all whitemen. There could be no doubt about it. Nor was there any sign of a wounded man lying in the bottom of the little craft.

A shot rang out. It was followed by another and another. The men at the fort saw the water splash about the canoe where the bullets took effect. But the boat came on through the sudden hail, and the men at the paddles remained unscathed.

“That’s Indian shooting,” Chilcoot exclaimed contemptuously. Then in a tone of deep regret. “If those guys would only give our boys such a target.”

“That’s so.” Bill stood with his rifle ready, waiting for a sign of the lurking enemy. “That boat would never make the bank if it was full of Euralians. It makes you think they aren’t yearning to kill. Only to worry. Come on. Let’s go down and get Mike’s news.”

Wilder’s outfit was lying moored and camped at the mouth of Loon Creek where its waters debouched on the broad course of the Hekor. The barrens were left far behind, and these men had come again to a country where shade from the blistering sunlight was to be found in occasional bluffs of forest, and where there was complete rest from the curiously unnerving warfare they had so long endured.

The camp was pitched on a great spit of land supporting a dwarfed, windswept bluff of forest trees. The shade from the burning sun was more than welcome for all the haunting mosquitoes made it their camping ground too. Great smudge fires of dank vegetation and lichen had been lit, and, for the moment, even insect hostilities had ceased. The canoes had been safely stowed for the night, and the men sat around in the drifting smoke after their supper, while the trail dogs prowled in search of any refuse which the meal of their human masters provided.

For all it was night, and rest and sleep lay ahead, the sun had only changed its position in the sky and daylight was unabated. It might have been high noon from the unshadowed brilliance of the world about them. As Red Mike had once said in his graphic complaining: “God A’mighty created the summer sun, but the Divil set it afire to burn everlastin’ north of 60 degrees.”

The three leaders were squatting on their outspread blankets in the shade cast by a small clump of storm-driven spruce. They were luxuriating in the smoke of three smudge fires set triangularly about them. Each was clad as lightly as circumstances would permit. Cotton shirts and hard moleskin trousers belted about their waists was all and more than sufficient. Their arms and chests were bare. Each man was smoking a reeking pipe, and a curiously fascinating, somnolent atmosphere prevailed over the camp. It was the quiet of physical repose after heavy labour, intensified by the Nature sounds which are never absent in the northern wilderness.

Red Mike chuckled in his irrepressible fashion, and Wilder and Chilcoot turned their reflective eyes inquiringly on his grinning countenance.

“Say, it’s a night—if you can call it night with hell’s own sun burning blisters on the water—for rejoicin’,” he said. “Is it a drop o’ the stuff you’re goin’ to open, Bill Wilder? Or has the water wagon got you still tied to its tail? Man, I could drink the worst home-brew ever came out of a prohibition State.”

Wilder hunched himself up with his hands locked about his knees, and a faint smile of derision lit his steady eyes. “Rejoicing?” he said. “I don’t get you, Mike.”

The Irishman’s blue eyes widened good-humouredly. “Ther’s folks never made to rec’nize the time for rejoicin’, ’less it’s set for ’em by politician-made law. It seems to me I remember the time when Bill Wilder didn’t need the other feller to learn him that way. Say, we come down that mud-bottomed creek nigh two-hundred an’ fifty mile without a shot fired. From the moment we broke that crazy camp we set up to hold our place on the map of this fool country them Euralians quit us cold. Guess they said, ‘The gophers are on the run, let ’em beat it. They’re quittin’, an’ we ain’t got time worritin’ with quitters.’ So they handed us an elegant sort o’ Sunday School picnic passin’ down stream, makin’ twenty-five a day without puttin’ the weight of a fly on the paddles. Well? Ain’t it time fer rejoicin’? Here we are right back in a territory that looks almost good to me after those blazin’ barrens we left behind. We’re right back with whole skins by courtesy of a bunch of dirty neches.” He laughed again. “It’s sure time to—celebrate.”

It was Chilcoot who replied to him. And his retort came in the sharp tones of a man unable to appreciate the raillery of the Irishman.

“We ain’t quittin’ them neches,” he said, his deep-set eyes snapping. “Guess our work’s only started. But you’re right. It’s time to rejoice when we quit, which won’t be this side of winter. If you’d hoss sense you’d know we’re out-fitted for—three years. Guess Bill here ain’t openin’ any old corks till we’re through.”

“The Hekor, Mike,” he said seriously. “Ther’s no home run yet. There’s nearly four months to the freeze up, an’ we pull out of here, west, after we’ve slept. We’re making west to the headwaters, an’ to get a look at the hill country. Ther’s gold around somewhere, and there are those neches—as you choose to call ’em. We aren’t ‘quitting’ till we know more about both.”

It was a scene which years before other eyes had gazed upon. It was the canyon of the Grand Falls where the Hekor fell off the highlands of the Alaskan hills. Wilder and his men were ashore at the only landing available, and again it was a landing which had been used by another years before.

The gold man and his fellows were fascinated by the tremendous grandeur of the canyon, with the dull roar of great waters coming back to them out of the dense clouds of spray which enveloped the far distance of the straight hewn rift down which the surge of dark waters rushed.

“We can’t make that stuff,” Chilcoot demurred, his eyes on the turbulent race of water which the canyon disgorged.

“We aren’t going to attempt it.” Wilder shrugged. He turned to Mike who stood gazing out into the far distance absorbed by the magnificence which so deeply appealed to his Gallic imagination.

“We got to see the thing lying back of those Falls,” he said pointing. “Will you make it, Mike? Will you make it with Chilcoot and me? We can leave camp to Buck Maberley. He can handle the boys good, and you can put it up to him. I guess it means a portage up there. Then—Well, who knows? Maybe we’ll be back here in two weeks. Maybe two months. I’ve got a notion, and I’ve got to put it through. That territory out there is Alaskan, and I want to get a look. Are you falling for it? I want the answer right now. I’m guessing all the time. I don’t know a thing. But I’ve got to get a look back of those Falls. Well?”

Mike’s gaze remained on the distance. The fascination of it refused to release him. He replied without turning.

“Sure boss,” he said simply. Then he added whimsically “I’ll fall for water—like that.”

And Chilcoot laughed. Even he found the frank admission of the red-headed creature’s weakness irresistible.

CHAPTER V

Squat, broad, watchful Chilcoot Massy was standing on a crazy, log-built landing which the years had rotted and clad with dank mosses and leathery fungus. His deep-set eyes were full of wondering curiosity. For the moment his work was standing guard over the canoe which was moored to the landing, and which was the only means by which he and his companions could hope to return in safety to Buck Maberley and the rest of the outfit encamped three weeks’ journey away below the Falls of the Hekor River.

Bill Wilder and Red Mike had been away a full hour or more. They had gone to search the woods which came down almost to the water’s edge. They had gone to reconnoitre the crowning discovery which the search behind the Falls had yielded them.

Chilcoot had spent his time usefully. With his friends’ going he had turned his attention first to the human signs about him. They had not been many, but they had been such as he could read out of his wide experience. The rusted mooring rings on the landing told of comparatively recent use. The moss and fungus had been trodden by other feet than his own and those of his companions. Then, on the bank, there were the ashes of camp fires, and a certain amount of litter which camping never fails to leave behind it. There was no doubt in his mind. For all the landing was more or less derelict, it was still a place of call for those who used this hidden waterway.

Chilcoot regretted not one moment of the labours of the past three weeks. The portage up the canyon of the Falls of the Hekor River had been gruelling. But compensation had awaited them. The grandeur of the scene, the immensity of the Falls had been something overwhelming. He had seen nothing comparable with either. Then had come the journey up the wide river above them, and ultimately the lake supported high up in a cup formed by the snow-clad hills. He had felt, if no other purpose had been achieved, the wonders of this rugged hill country were amply worth while. But the ultimate discovery of the hidden channel, debouching into the lake through a narrow, twisted canyon cut through the walls of the surrounding hills, which had brought them to the strange, super-heated, mysterious Valley of the Fire Hills, had changed his entire estimate of the reckless journey upon which Wilder had embarked. Out of his long experience of the northern world he realised that here was a discovery of real importance.

First it had been the curious black sand bed, over which the sluggish, oily waters of the creek flowed, that had caught and riveted his attention. Then had come the black slopes of the three smoking hills. But, at last, when they reached the human construction of the lumber-built landing, and glimpsed the lofty watch tower, erected within the heart of the woods just inland of it, he realised something of the real meaning of the thing they had chanced upon. There was nothing of Indian or Eskimo about the landing. No watch tower such as they had sighted above the tree-tops owed its origin to savage ideas of defence or construction. No. Here was habitation deeply hidden with more than native cunning. Here was something which pointed, in conjunction with the curious features of the creek, to whiteman enterprise of some serious commercial value. So, in an atmosphere of suffocating humidity, he was waiting, keeping guard upon the canoe, lest, as in the past, they were to find themselves again in hostile territory.

Having explored the signs about him he remained gazing down upon the black sand bordering the sluggish waters, and thought and speculation ran on while he searched as far as he could see up and down the creek. Was he dreaming? Was it all fancy? Would he waken presently to the rock-littered country of the “barrens” on Loon Creek?

No. He gazed out at the distant smoke cloud overhanging the valley, and shook his head in answer to his unvoiced questions. No. There was no fancy to any of it. It was real. Amazingly real. The valley was no magic, but a substantial reality of Nature.

Memory was stirring. Other scenes and other times had come back to him. He remembered his early days on the McKenzie. He remembered the tar-sands which were common enough along its almost illimitable course. He remembered the queer of it. How the precious liquid tar oozed up through the sand and settled into great pools. He remembered the curious jets of gas which spouted through the sand, and how they used to set fire to them, and cook by the flame, and heat the tar with which they smeared the bottoms of their light kyaks. He remembered how the Indians and Breeds did the same thing, and had done so throughout the centuries. The thing which chance had now found for them was something of the same. Here was a valley whose heart was flooded with coal tar and oil. Oil? To judge by the signs all down the length of the valley they had so far traversed, there should be supplies of oil sufficient for the world’s needs for years. The secret of the habitation which his comrades had gone to reconnoitre was no longer a secret in his estimation. Somewhere along this creek must be commercial workings of the precious material with which he judged the region to be flooded. Who? Who? His mind groped along every channel for an explanation. Whiteman? Perhaps. Euralian? He left his final question without an answer.

Mike laid a detaining hand on the arm of Wilder. They were moving cautiously through the woods skirting the clearing in which the great, sprawling, log-built house stood.

Wilder had halted in response to the Irishman’s gesture, and whispered back his inquiry with some impatience.

“Someone behind us.” The eyes of the other were searching amongst the trees and undergrowth through which they had just passed. “Guess the bush broke twice. It’s no sort of fancy. Ther’s someone—”

He broke off listening, and Wilder distinctly recognised the faint snapping of brushwood somewhere away in rear of them.

They waited. But as no further sound was forthcoming Wilder shrugged his shoulders and nodded in the direction of the clearing.

“Guess we can’t worry with that,” he said, his eyes regarding the pile of buildings upon which the sunlight was pouring. “There’s not a soul around that house anyway, so far as I can see. Guess there isn’t even a cur dog. We best quit this wood, and make a break for it. We got to know who lives there. And it don’t much matter how they take our visit. You got your guns fixed right?”

The Irishman chuckled in his light-hearted fashion. The invasion of the house appealed to his reckless spirit. His fighting temper made him hope, and his hope found swift expression.

“I’ll be sick to death if it’s white folk,” he said. “I’m yearning to hit up against some of the Euralian gang. Come right on, boss. I’m your man if you’re goin’ to break in on ’em. My guns are sure fixed.”

Their guns were utterly unneeded. As Wilder had surmised the place was completely deserted. Their intrusion had passed unchallenged by any living thing from the moment of entering the clearing. Now at last, having passed through a seemingly endless series of rooms and passages, they found themselves standing in a great central hall, beautiful in its simple display of rich oriental decorations.

The Irishman’s blue eyes were grinning as they surveyed the deserted splendour with which he was surrounded. He was incapable of appreciating the full significance of that upon which he gazed. He had been robbed of a forcible encounter, but he found some sort of compensation in the astounding thing they had discovered.

“Gee!” he cried. “Makes you feel you’ve quit the dam old north country, an’ hit up against some buzzy-headed Turk’s harem. Say, get a peek at them di-vans. An’ them curtain things. An’ them junk china pots. Holy—!”

He broke off and his grinning eyes sobered. A thought had flashed through his impulsive brain and held him silent.

Wilder was regarding him. All that Mike had only just sensed he had realised from the moment they had set foot in the house. The place was a miniature palace, something decaying, but the whole interior told of Eastern tastes, Eastern habits, Eastern life. The place had been furnished for oriental occupation. And realising this the name of one race alone had flashed into his mind. Japanese!

A surge of excitement stirred. He gazed about the great hall, with its silken hangings, heavily encumbered with the dust of years, with its low silken couches. Then the carved wooden screen, and the central fireplace elaborately built under its smoke funnel. He glanced at the bureau bookcase of modern fashioning, and with every detail added conviction came to him.

But desertion, or at least neglect, was stamped everywhere. There was dust on everything. There was a curious musty smell which could not be mistaken. But, somehow, for all that, there were signs, unmistakable signs that desertion was not absolute. There had been remains of food in the pantries. There were ashes in the cookstoves in the kitchen. There was water in various pitchers and buckets. No. Utter neglect, but not complete desertion. This was Wilder’s final verdict, gaining corroboration as he remembered the sounds of breaking bush which Red Mike’s ears had been so swift to detect.

“We best make the sleeping quarters, Mike,” Wilder said after awhile. “They’re liable to tell us the last thing we need to know.” And he passed round the room in search of an outlet which might lead to the apartments above.

Wilder flung the curtains quickly aside. It was an arched entrance to one of the upper rooms. He stepped within the room closely followed by Mike, and they stood silently regarding the interior with appraising eyes.

Here again there was no occupant. It was a bedroom, and, judging by its proportions, the principal bedroom. As it had been in the hall below the furnishings were largely of Eastern fashion. But a modern, Western bedstead occupied the central place, and a bureau dressing-chest stood near to a window. For the rest there were silken curtains of lavish wistaria and chrysanthemum design hanging at the windows, and the floor of yellow pine was covered with Eastern, tufted rugs.

But the furnishings and decorations of this far hidden home no longer pre-occupied Wilder. He had discovered the thing he wanted in the modern bed and the faint, rather noxious odour which human occupation leaves behind it for senses sufficiently acute. The bed was unmade. It was in the condition left by a person who has just arisen from it. But he also realised that not one but two persons had been its last occupants. This in itself was illuminating, but not nearly so enlightening as the prevailing odour of the room. That curious human odour had been instantly recognised. And Wilder knew it had no relation to beings of his own race. Again the name of the sons of Nippon flashed through his mind, and a deep satisfaction warmed him as he remembered that after all it looked as though he would not have to return entirely empty-handed to his friend, George Raymes.

He turned sharply to his companion who had lost interest under his chief’s silence.

“Guess I’ve seen all I need,” he said, while his eyes continued to regard the bedstead. “We’ll get right back to the landing.” He thrust back his cap from his broad forehead and turned towards the window which looked out to the south. “Yes, we’ll get right back. This darn place is not deserted. There are folks around. That being so there’s just one thing worrying. It’s the safety of our canoe, and our outfit. So we’ll get along, and you and Chilcoot will have to share guard on the outfit between you.”

Mike’s blue eyes lit. The thing his chief suggested restored hope to his fighting spirit.

“If ther’s folk around—an’ I guess you’re right—we’re liable to— Say, what’s your play, boss, with us two standin’ by the outfit?”

Wilder’s gaze came back from the window. He had only looked out upon what seemed to be unbroken forest. He shrugged. And a half smile lit his eyes.

“Why, I’m goin’ to eat first,” he said. “After that—why, after that I’m goin’ to take up a considerable temporary abode in this shanty.”

“Here. Listen, Mike,” Wilder exclaimed a little impatiently. “That goes. You understand. I’m going to sleep one night at least under this roof. And I’ve got to do it alone. Ther’s folks belonging to this place, and they’re around. If I’ve the sense of a blind mule I reckon they’ll sure come back to their camp. Well, that’s what I want. And I want ’em to find me here first. Come on. Let’s go an’ eat, an’ see how Chilcoot’s making out.”

The quiet of the place was intense. Not a sound of any sort penetrated the thick log walls of the house in the clearing. The brilliant, interminable daylight went on, for all the hour belonged to night. No ripple of air served to temper the humid heat of the valley outside. And within the house the feeling of suffocation was well-nigh intolerable.

Bill Wilder had flung himself into the upholstered chair which stood before the bureau bookcase which stood in the central apartment. It was midnight, and he was completely weary of his solitary wanderings through the deserted house. He had searched in every direction, in every outhouse, and every nook and corner of the great building. For something like four hours he had continued his work from the summit of the look-out tower to the empty, filthy dog corrals on the fringe of the clearing. And all his labours had yielded him nothing beyond that which the place had told him in the first few minutes of his earlier visit with Red Mike. He was disappointed. He was tired. But somehow he felt that, for all the negative result he had obtained so far, there was something still to come. Something which would ultimately reward his persistence.

He felt his early inspiration was not for nothing. He knew it was not. A subtle conviction pursued him, had pursued him every minute of his lonely search. He could not have explained his reasons for the belief that obsessed him. There were no tangible grounds for it, but he knew, he felt that from the moment he had set foot within the strange house there had been eyes following his every movement, there was someone, who, all unseen, had never for a single moment permitted him to pursue his investigations unobserved.

He was by no means imaginative in the ordinary way. His nerves were like highly tempered steel. He had no fear of any sort either physical or superstitious. He had no thought of any ghostly presence. But he knew instinctively that someone belonging to that place was moving through it with him, but along ways, and possibly hidden passages, which he had been unable to discover.

His automatic pistol was fully loaded, and, from the first moment of his vigil, he had been reasonably prepared for any eventuality, but he knew, his hard common sense told him, that if his belief was justified there was not one single instant as he plodded his way through apartment after apartment, or even while sitting in the chair at the desk with his back turned on the rest of the great hall, that he was not at the complete mercy of those who were observing his movements.

Now he prepared for the last act of his search. That completed he would carry out the rest of his simple programme. Yes, he must search the desk, and the book shelves above it. Then he would betake himself to the great bedroom upstairs and occupy the bed which he knew had recently been occupied by others. A grim smile hovered for a moment in his steady eyes as he thought of the outrage this taking of the bed of another constituted in his understanding of the decencies of life. Maybe it would— He dismissed the thought from his mind, and, reaching out, lowered the flap front of the desk.

But he did not commence the search of the array of drawers and pigeon-holes laden with documents with which the interior was furnished. Instead, he sat back in the capacious chair regarding the rich inlay of mother-of-pearl, and the exquisite carving which was revealed. The beauty of the workmanship of the desk made only a passing impression. It was not admiration that left him idly contemplating the thing before him. It was something else. Something all unexpected and uncalculated. Quite suddenly a wave of reluctance, that was closely akin to sheer repugnance, had taken hold of him, and denied him the completion of the work he had set his hand to. For the life of him he could not pry into the private papers of his unknown host. Japanese, or any other, it made no difference. That sort of thing was sheer police work, and, for all he had been sworn a special constable for the occasion by his friend, George Raymes, the police spirit had not yet fully taken possession of his civilian feelings. No. He shut the desk up with something of the rough force which his self-disgust inspired. He shot back the supporting arms into their sockets, and turned his chair about in a manner which displayed his irrevocable decision.

So he sat back, and drew his pipe from his pocket and filled it contemplatively. His eyes were half smiling, and his expression was wholly ironical for what he regarded as his own contemptible weakness.

He lit his pipe and gazed about him over the apartment. It was well past midnight now, and the broad light of day lit the place with a soft evenness that was something monotonous. And, smoking, he permitted his thoughts to pursue the trend which his position inspired.

Strangely enough they left him without a shadow of concern for himself, and only sought to unravel the mystery with which he knew he was surrounded.

He was in the heart of the hills whence the Euralians were reputed to hail from. He had discovered a miniature palace, not a rough shanty, and it was furnished with the taste, and for the abode of someone of unquestionably Japanese origin. A certainty existed in his mind that the owner of it all was somewhere present in the house and in hiding. Why? The territory was Alaskan. It had nothing to do with Canada, where he had come from. Why, then, should the owner fear to show himself? What object could he have in remaining hidden? He found several possible answers, but none seemed to furnish an adequate solution. The whole thing was an enigma that completely defeated him. But he meant to solve it even if he was forced to remain a month in the place. The only certainty he felt, and that for the reason of his belief that the owner was watching him possibly at that very moment, was that his invisible host possessed none of the hostility which the Euralians on Loon Creek had displayed. Had it been otherwise, surely, long since, he would have discovered it in a definite attack whilst engaged on his work of unjustifiable intrusion and search.

However, it was all useless speculation. There was nothing further to be gained by it. Possibly the bureau behind him might have told him something. But there it was. A man’s private papers were sacred. And he could not outrage such sense of honour as the traffic of gold had left to him. No. He would go to the bed he had selected and—see what happened.

He stood up and knocked out his pipe on the stone-built fireplace and moved quickly, but without attempting to conceal his movements, from the room.

CHAPTER VI

A belated sense of humour was stirring in Bill Wilder as he passed on to the quarters he had selected for his occupation. The room, he felt certain, was that usually occupied by his invisible hosts. Convinced of their secret surveillance of his movements he believed they would surely witness his audacious usurpation of their private apartment. It was the thought of this that brought the smile to his eyes. He was wondering what form their very natural resentment would take, for he had no doubt whatever as to what would happen with the position reversed. Anyway, he felt he was playing a trump card for bringing them into the open, and that, at present, was the thing he most desired. He would chance the rest. Meanwhile further speculation was useless, and he shrugged his broad shoulders, and his smile vanished under his resolve. He was determined on a prolonged vigil. He would pretend sleep and—await developments.

That was his purpose. But he failed to reckon with Nature and a vigorous, healthy body. And, furthermore, he had forgotten the oppressive humidity which weighed heavily upon the faculties. He had also forgotten that he had been bodily occupied for something like eighteen hours of the endless daylight. So it came that within five minutes of flinging himself fully dressed upon the dishevelled bed he fell into a deep slumber of the completely weary.

How long he slept he never knew. He was dreaming chaotically. He seemed to be deeply concerned with a hideously misshapen mountain from the sight of which it was impossible to escape. It was lofty, and heavily snow-clad, and its fantastic shape continually changed, assuming absurd likenesses to still more stupid things. First it looked like his block of offices in Placer. Then it resembled the Irishman Mike, with flaming top instead of red hair. Then, again, it somehow flattened out to a burlesque of the barren surroundings of Loon Creek, only to leap again into the shape of a golden domed palace with a watch tower reaching far up into the clouds. The last kaleidoscopic variation it assumed was the huge head of a dark-faced man, crowned with snow-white hair that streamed down over shoulders completely hidden under its dense cloak, and with a pair of eyes flaming with a fire that became agony to gaze upon. It was the lurid horror of those eyes that finally startled him into actual wakefulness. And he found himself sitting on the side of his bed staring at something that sufficiently resembled the nightmare horror of his dream to leave him in doubt of its reality.

He passed a sweating palm across his forehead. It was a gesture of uncertainty. Then, in a moment, full realisation came, and he leapt to his feet and his challenge rang out vital and determined.

“Not a move!” he cried. “Move and you’re dead as mutton! You’re covered! An’, sure as God, I’ll drop you at the first sign!”

He moved a step forward. His body was half crouching, and his fully loaded automatic pistol was leading threateningly.

There was no movement in response to his threat and he remained just where his first step had carried him, while horrified curiosity, as he gazed on the spectacle framed between the silken curtains of the arched entrance to the room, replaced his urgency of a moment before.

It was a man and a woman. And they were standing side by side. They were both something diminutive. Particularly was this the case in the woman. The man was sturdily built, with lank, snow-white hair that reached from the crown of his head, and hung down upon his broad shoulders. A long, snowy beard covered his chest with such luxuriance that it almost seemed part of the mane that flowed down to his shoulders. But all this, striking as it was to the just awakened man, was quickly lost sight of in the painful vision of a pair of eyeless sockets that gaped at him, filled and surrounded with vivid inflammation.

The man was in rough clothing not dissimilar from that which Wilder himself was wearing. His sturdy body was coatless and clad in a simple grey flannel shirt, while his nether garments were of the common moleskin type. He was old, but how old Wilder could not estimate with any certainty. His eyelessness, and his snow-white hair and beard made the task impossible. One thing alone impressed the onlooker in those first startled moments. The man was blind, and his skin, in sharp contrast with his hair, was of a darkish yellow. In a moment he had realised the truth of his original estimate of the nationality of his unwilling hosts.

The woman at the blindman’s side was a quaint, pathetic little figure. She, too, was old, with greying black hair. She was clad in something in the nature of a silken kimono, and looked as fragile as a figure of exquisite porcelain. Her slightly slanting black eyes were steadily searching the face of the white intruder while she stood clasping the hand of the man at her side, in a manner suggesting motherly solicitude. There was nothing resentful in her gaze. It was simply appealing, troubled, appraising.

The whiteman’s order held them. They remained motionless, without a word or sign, just where they had been discovered. It was almost as if, like naughty children, they were awaiting the expected chiding following upon some escapade in which they had been found out.

Realising their submission Wilder’s attitude underwent a change. He dismissed his tone of sharp authority, but retained his threatening gun in evidence.

“If you’ve a notion to come out into the open instead of spying around in hiding I’ll put this gun up, and we can talk,” he said, with a look in his eyes closely approaching a smile. “You see, I knew you were around, and only took possession of your room in the hope of bringing you out into daylight. Guess you’ve nothing to worry with if ther’s no monkey-play doing. Well?”

He eyed them both searchingly while he spoke, but it was the queer little, troubled-eyed woman whom he really addressed. The painful fascination of the man’s terrible eyes had passed leaving behind only a feeling of nausea.

After the briefest hesitation the woman spoke. She spoke in good enough English with just the faintest foreign accent and occasional awkward twist in her phraseology. Her voice was low and infinitely sweet, and her whole manner suggested intense relief from some overwhelming burden of terror.

“We feared it was the man, Usak, come back,” she said. “He say he would come, and we look for him all the time. But you are white. Oh, yes. You are not the Indian that he is. You come like all those others who look for the thing this country has to give. It is so? Yes?”

With the mention of the Indian whom Wilder knew to have been the servant of the murdered Marty Le Gros there came a movement on the part of the blindman. It was a gesture, sudden and almost forceful. And the hand that made it was that which the woman beside him was grasping. He half turned as though about to speak. But he remained silent, obviously restraining himself with difficulty.

Wilder saw the movement. He realised the man’s sudden disquiet. And he understood. A feeling of elation swept over him. These people feared the coming of Usak. These two strange, shy creatures in their far-off secret home. And Usak had threatened them with his return. Why?

Suppressing his elation Wilder smiled down at the woman, so helpless, so appealing in the terror she was unable to conceal.

“No,” he said almost gently. “I’m not Usak. I’m just a whiteman with two companions. Guess they’re white, too. You see, we came right on this place of yours without knowing about it. You don’t need to be worried. But I got to make a big talk with you before I quit. And seeing ther’s not a big diff’rence between day an’ night in this queer country do you feel like making that swell hall of yours below and sitting around for that talk? Do you? Both?”

Wilder’s gentleness was the outcome of an irresistible feeling of pity for the frightened woman. It had nothing to do with the thing he had in mind. The name of Usak was uppermost with him now, and he knew that one, at least, of these strange figures was in some way deeply connected with the ugly riddle it was his work to solve. His chivalry refused to associate the woman with it. It was different, however, with the man for all his terrible sightlessness. The man replied to him immediately and his voice was harsh and cold. Its tone was wholly uncompromising.

Wilder’s whole manner hardened on the instant. And his answer came sharply, and his tone was no less uncompromising than that of the other.

“That’s all right,” he said. “Lead the way down. And don’t forget ther’s a ‘forty-five’ gun right behind you all the way.”

Bill Wilder had long since learned the lessons of a country in which chance seemed to be the dominating factor of life. His hard schooling in the wide scattered goldfields of Yukon Territory had forced the conviction on him that chance was a better servant in this northern country than hard sense. And he knew now that sheer chance had flung him stumbling upon something that, if not actually the heart of the mystery of the murder of Marty Le Gros by the Euralians, was at least no mean key to it.

At the woman’s mention of the Indian, Usak, his mind had leapt back to the story which George Raymes had been able, however inadequately, to piece together from his old police reports. Usak, he remembered, was the husband of the squaw who had been murdered. These two people feared his coming so that they completely hid themselves at the approach of strangers. Usak had threatened them with his return. Therefore he had visited them before. For what purpose? They were frightened for their lives of him. Why should they be? Usak’s squaw had been murdered by—Euralians.

Surveying the sturdy back of the white-haired man, blinded, helpless, being led by the pathetic, devoted woman at his side, as he shepherded them to the hall below, he remembered once long ago, in his chequered career in Placer, to have seen a man whose eyes had been gouged in a bar-room fight. He remembered the hideous spectacle he had been left, and he knew that the man he had just discovered had endured the same terrible, inhuman, treatment. Usak? Was that the source of the terror he had inspired?

Reaching the hall his hosts took up their position standing near the centre, stone-built fireplace. They had faced about so that they confronted him, and Wilder understood the woman had simply obeyed the man’s unspoken command.

“You are an intruder,” he declared, his eyeless sockets turned unerringly on the whiteman’s face. “You invade our home unbidden. You threaten us with your gun unprovoked. You say you are a whiteman. We are helpless. I cannot even see you, and my wife is defenceless. Well?” He shrugged with infinite contempt. “You demand talk with us. Go on.”

Wilder’s impulse was to retort sharply. But he restrained it. Where there should have been pity for a blindman living out a darkened life in these far-off mountains there was only antagonism and instant prejudice. He understood how it came well enough. Instinct as well as swift conclusion warned him that behind those eyeless sockets there dwelt a mind driven by a nature something evil. For the moment, however, he must adopt conciliation. Any other course would, in all probability, defeat his ends. So his tone became that of easy moderation. He laughed.

“Guess I’m all you reckon, sir,” he said. “Yes, I’m an intruder, and I need to pass you a hundred apologies. But what else could I do? Anyway, the best now would be to hand you the meaning of the thing I’m doing. You see, I’m out looking for things. The sort of things this queer valley looks like handing out. I’m on a big prospect, and these hills look to be full of the things I want. This is the second year I’ve been on the trail, east, and west, and north, and now—well, I guess it hasn’t been for nothing.”

“Oil? You’ve found the oil this valley is full of?” The blindman’s question came sharply, but without alarm. His tone had lost something of its harshness, and Wilder was satisfied. With deliberation, and almost ostentatiously, he put his automatic pistol back into his hip pocket. And he knew that the quick eyes of the woman were watching his movements and conveying the story of them voicelessly, through her hand clasp, to the man. Then he moved over to the chair which was turned about from the bureau, and flung himself into it.

“Maybe,” he said. Then he indicated the couch which stood nearby to a tall carved wooden screen. “Won’t you sit?” he went on pleasantly. “It’s not for me to offer you a seat in your own house, but—” He broke off with a light laugh. “Maybe we’ll be quite a while talking.” His whole manner had assumed the cordiality he intended. There was a moment of hesitation. Then, without a word, the woman led her charge across to the dusty couch. But she did not move directly across. The couch stood opposite where they stood yet she led the man making a deliberate detour and Wilder was puzzled. Then, glancing down at the floor, he realised something which had hitherto escaped him. A large ugly stain of brown was splashed on the polished flooring.

It was unquestionably a blood-stain, and by its extent he judged it to be blood from a mortal wound. His questioning gaze sought the two queer figures at once. The woman had carefully avoided it, and he interpreted her action in the only way possible. She evidently understood the origin of that stain, and repugnance inspired her movements.

They sat themselves on the couch side by side and Wilder went on as though nothing had distracted his attention. He turned his chair so that he faced them.

“Yes, ther’s oil in this valley,” he said. “My two friends reckon there’s enough oil to feed the whole world. But I’ve got scruples,” he laughed, “for all you may be guessing the other way. Say, before I get busy farther up the creek I’d be glad to know just how we stand. You’re here on an oil play? And I’m not yearning for trouble. Is this oil game your play? Have you a concession? Am I butting in on a big commercial proposition that’s already established? I’d be glad to know, Mr.—”

Wilder broke off invitingly. Yet, for all there were signs of the mollifying effect of his attitude in the man, several moments passed before a reply was forthcoming.

“You have scruples,” he said. “You desire not to butt in. Yet you invade my house. You ransack it. You treat it so as it is your right to do these things. You threaten with your gun when I come forth.”

He shrugged. But this time it was without any display of feeling. He was calmly questioning, and his attitude displayed a suspicion of puzzlement.

“Here,” he cried. “Let’s be frank. My name’s Wilder. Bill Wilder. I’m a gold man first and foremost. After that, why, I guess I’m just as much an adventurer as most of the folk of this Northland. That’s all right. I’m not out to rob a soul of anything he’s a right to. And as for the things you guess I had no right to do, just think a bit. Here I find a house without a sign of life. You choose to hide yourselves up. Well? A derelict house here in the Arctic? Why, I guess I’ve as much right to search it as to search for anything else this country’s got to show us. As for the gun play it seems to me a man has every right to protect himself when folks sneak in on him in the night. That’s my answer to all that’s worrying you. And my name, as I said, is Wilder. Who are you?”

There was a sweeping bluntness about the challenge that should have been irresistible. Wilder waited for the answer he demanded while reserving a trump card to play in case of refusal.

There was no change in the blindman’s attitude. There was no movement. His yellow face remained sphinx-like.

“Maybe I should not blame you,” he said, in his harsh fashion. “You make a good case. But—I am blind.

“Here,” he went on, in imitation of the other, with a slight gesture of his disengaged hand, “I will not tell you the things you ask. But I tell you some other. This valley is the great oil bed of these mountains, and the oil is being tapped. If you touch on this oil you will never leave the valley alive. Those who are working it have been doing so for many years. It is their established right, for no one has denied them in all the years. No one has come near. They find it and work it. It is equity. I have no place in this thing. I am—blind.”

Wilder’s eyes hardened. He glanced from the man to the woman. In the latter’s eyes was a look of renewed apprehension, almost of pleading, and he felt that she was waiting for the effect of her man’s words.

“Nothing? Yet you fear the coming of this man you call—Usak. You fear the sight of every stranger?”

Wilder’s gaze was on the anxious face of the woman. His words were for her benefit. But they had an unexpected effect. The blindman suddenly unbent.

“It is as I said,” he declared, his tone moderating but assuming a bitterness of real feeling. “I fear no one and nothing. I am blind. I am completely alone, but for my good wife. I live through her hands, her eyes, her will. What is the worst that may happen? Death? It is nothing—now. I am a dead man to the world—now. I am blind. Once it was not so. Once in this home, here in this valley, there were servants who worked at my command. There were many interests in my life. Now it is changed. The light has gone out, and with it have passed those who obeyed my will, those who depended for their well-being on my word. It is the way of such service. Rats never fail to quit the doomed ship,” he cried bitterly. “I have nothing to fear. Least of all—death.”

Wilder’s hazard came instantly. It was well calculated. The blood-stain on the floor was within his view. Then there was the story of Marty Le Gros, and of Usak, who inspired such terror in the woman.

The yellow man started. It was as if an effort of will was striving for vision through his empty sockets. For a moment he made no answer, and headlong panic had returned to the woman’s eyes. It was the latter that removed the last shadow of doubt from Wilder’s mind.

Wilder thought swiftly before replying. He understood that he was right up against the stone wall of the yellow man’s determination. There was only one course left him. If he could not climb it he must batter it to ruins. His earlier hazard was a small enough thing compared with the decision he took now. He rose from his chair and stood towering over the diminutive pair on the couch. His eyes were coldly compelling, and his whole manner was carefully calculated for its effect upon the helpless little woman, whom he could not help pitying.

“Here,” he cried sharply. “Let’s cut this fencing right out. You refuse to pass me the name you are known by. You refuse to tell me the meaning of this home hidden beyond human sight in a valley that’s full to the lips of oil. Well, I guess I’ll hand you the story you’re scared to hand me. You reckon you don’t fear a thing. Psha! You can’t get away with that play. It wouldn’t leave a two-year-old kid guessing. I’m quitting now. I’ve brought you into the open, an’ I’ve located in you an answer to a hundred guesses. I’m quitting now, but you won’t be left unwatched. You won’t get a chance to make a get-away. You’ve had mostly fifteen years to do that, an’ I don’t know why you stopped around with the man, Usak, threatening to come right back on you. Maybe because you’re blind and deserted. Maybe because you’ve a mighty big stake lying around. Maybe it’s because ther’s other queer folk of your own race, who, for their own reasons, don’t fancy letting you quit. It don’t matter. What does matter is I’m quitting now because this is Alaskan Territory. I’m going down country to get things fixed with the United States authority to have you brought right into our country to tell us how the missionary, Marty Le Gros was murdered by the Euralians who people these hills, and who I guess are nothing but a crowd of Japanese pirates out grabbing in whiteman’s territory. You’re scared of nothing, eh? Can you face that? Can you face the return of the man, Usak, whose wife was murdered at the same time? Can you tell us why they were murdered, and what happened to the great gold ‘strike’ that poor darn feller made? I’m quitting now just to fix this thing. An’ my boys’ll see you make no get-away meanwhile. And as for your threat of the Euralian pirates working the oil on this valley, that cuts no sort of ice with us. We’ve been fighting these folk a year an’ more. You see, we’re officers of the Canadian Police.”

The imagination, the sweeping grasp of the clear-thinking mind that had lifted Bill Wilder from the depths of the whirlpool of humanity that had early flooded the gold regions of the North, to the highest pinnacle of success in a traffic wherein vision and courage were the chief essentials, had served him now far better than he knew.

The first spoken words of the little Japanese woman in her terror had welded a hundred links together into a connected chain such as no amount of ordinary labour in investigation could have supplied him with.

There was no question except the given names of these people left in his mind. There were convictions that perhaps needed corroboration to reduce them to concrete facts. But that caused him no worry. It had been said of Wilder that half a story was all he needed, he could always supply the rest. It was so in the present case.

He left the house without a doubt remaining. This place was the home of the Euralian organization, or had been before that fantastic figure of avenging had left the man he had just parted from with eyeless sockets. What scenes had been enacted there he could only guess at. But there it was, safely hidden, with its watch tower, the heart of a natural fortress located with the profoundest judgment for the purposes desired. And he was convinced, that, at any rate, the man who still lived his darkened life there was surely one of the instruments, if not the actual instrument, through which the man, Marty Le Gros, had met his death. He was one of the Euralians, and, like as not, the chief organizing head, since deposed through his physical disability by his lawless subjects. Furthermore he had finally satisfied himself that he had achieved the thing he had set out to accomplish. The Euralians as they called themselves were definitely of Japanese origin.

As he passed into the surrounding woods the immensity of the truth he had stumbled upon came home to him in an almost overwhelming rush. The Yellow Peril which the world had talked of, feared, and politically discussed for over a decade, had suddenly become a reality to him. Here was just one little branch of it. And the manner of it gave point to the subtle, secret fashion in which it was being developed. Imagination was a-riot. These people were Japanese. They were probably a hardy people from northern Japan, under the control of a carefully chosen leader of capacity and knowledge, such as he realised the man he had just left to have been before his disaster of blindness. They were imported through the far-hidden northern inlets to the country on which, leech-like, they had battened. They came, a sea-faring race, over the northern waters, and set about the simple task of possessing this far, almost unpeopled territory, and extracting its wealth for their own service. And what became of that wealth, mineral and animal? What of the furs which they stole, or traded with the Eskimo? What of the oil of this valley? What of the unguessed wealth of coal deposits which were believed to exist? The gold, too, and the hundred and one other raw materials which littered this far-off, unexplored land?

The northern seas; the great harbours of the northern coasts, lost from view of the few scattered white folks, hidden amongst rugged, snow-capped hills, and more than half their time completely icebound. It was simple, so very simple to the north-men of Japan, who were born sailors. Doubtless a steady traffic among those hidden inlets went on, and disguised freighters passed to-and-fro between the Alaskan coast and the remoter ports of the land of Nippon.

And meanwhile the penetration of this whiteman’s country was steadily progressing. Who could say the extent of that penetration? It was southern California over again. And the invaders were only waiting, waiting for the day to dawn when—

The breaking of bush just behind him as he passed on towards the creek brought him to a halt. He faced about alertly and his hand shot into the pocket where his automatic pistol lay ready for use. But it was withdrawn empty almost immediately. The diminutive woman with the slanting, terrified eyes broke from the undergrowth, something breathless from her exertion, and stood before him.

His eyes were smiling with a kindliness he made no attempt to disguise at sight of her. The memory of her devotion to her sightless man was uppermost for all he had fathomed the meaning of their presence on the river. She seemed to him a gentle creature, hopelessly condemned to a task of utter self-sacrifice. And he deplored the painful terror under which she suffered so acutely. The shame and pity of it all touched him deeply.

“Say, mam,” he said, in a re-assuring tone, “you took a big chance coming that way. I’m guessing for the thing that set you worrying to come up with me on the run in a heat liable to hand apoplexy to a brass image.”

But there was no re-assurance in the urgent gaze that looked up into his face. The poor creature’s bosom heaved with obvious emotion. She opened her almost colourless lips to speak, but no sound came. Instead she closed them again and glanced behind her fearfully.

Wilder understood. He had supposed her to be simply a messenger. Now he realised she feared discovery by the blindman she had left behind her.

Presently she turned to him again, and thrust one thin, delicate hand into the bosom of her gown where it remained while she flung a terrified inquiry at him.

“You go so to make it that they come and take him, and kill him, for the killing of the miss—the man, Le Gros?” she shook her head violently. “No, no!” she cried passionately. “He not kill Le Gros! They must not kill him. Sate kill Le Gros, and Usak come and kill Sate, and all the men. He fight to kill my Hela, too. But he put out his eyes. You are officer police. The great Canadian Police. You know good what is right, what is wrong. I tell you all. I tell you all the truth. My Hela not kill no man. It our dead son kill this man, an’ the other. I know. Hela tell me. He tell me all.” The smile had passed from Wilder’s eyes as he listened to the almost breathless, headlong rush of the poor creature’s desperate appeal for her man.

“Did he send you to say this?” he asked, knowing well that the man could not have inspired such acting in her.

“Hela send me?” The woman’s eyes widened. “No! Oh, no! If he know I am come then I—I know no more. Hela send me? No! I come for him. I come so you know all the thing he will not tell.”

“Because I die if you send and kill my Hela,” she cried, with a world of despair in the simple declaration.

Wilder stood for a moment thinking deeply. He turned from the pathetic figure which somehow distracted his judgment. And he knew that he must decide quickly and make no mistake.

“Tell me so I can understand,” he said gently. “Tell me all there is to it, just the truth. Tell me who you are, and what you’re doing around this valley. And if you show me the whole thing right, and if your—Hela—did not kill, then you need have no sort of worry he’ll come to harm through me. You get that? Pass me the story, and make it short. But it’s got to be sheer truth.”

The woman’s hand remained buried in the bosom of her gown, and now she raised the other, and, a picture of submission and humility, she stood with it pressed over that which was hidden in her bosom. Her black eyes were less fearful, her lined cheeks were less drawn. Her whole appearance suggested the passing of something of the weight of terror under which she had been labouring.

She began her story at once. She spoke quietly, in contrast with her recent emotion, and in the curious broken phraseology which denoted her rare use of a tongue she otherwise knew well enough.

She told him that her man was Count Ukisama—Hela Ukisama—and that she was his wife, Crysa. She told him that he was the head, and original organizer of the people who were called the Euralians. She told him they came, as he had already guessed, from Northern Japan, and were engaged in a great traffic in furs with the Eskimo, which were secretly exported in whalers from the far northern harbours of the country. But she warned him this was not the whole trade. There was oil and coal. But most desired of all was the gold which they had found in these northern valleys for years.

Close questioning, as she proceeded, quickly showed Wilder that she was completely ignorant of the methods by which this traffic was carried on. She knew nothing of the hideous murder and piracy which was the whole story of these yellow marauders. Obviously she was told by her husband only those things he considered were sufficient for her to know.

When she came to the story of Marty Le Gros, and his gold “strike,” it was clearly different. Here she was apparently aware of every detail, and she made it plain that after the coming of Usak, and Ukisama had been so inhumanly blinded, she had forced her husband to tell her the true meaning of the terrible thing that had happened.

It was a story that lost nothing of its awful significance from her broken and sometimes almost incoherent way of telling it. He learnt how Ukisama and his son Sate had heard of Le Gros’ “strike,” and how they strove by every means in their power to jump in on it. How they had searched Loon Creek from end to end, and finally abandoned their search convinced that the missionary had given that as the locality simply to mislead. Then at once they became angry and were determined to make him yield them his secret.

She told him of the descent upon the mission at Fox Bluff, where they meant to wring his secret from him, and how they had utterly failed through the impetuosity of her son, Sate, who, when the missionary prepared to defend himself with his guns, fired a reckless shot which mortally wounded him. Hela, she declared, deplored the act as ruining his chance of learning the man’s secret. Then she declared that the squaw of the man Usak had interfered, and again the hot-headed Sate had taken the matter into his own hands and shot her down.

Wilder’s question came sharply when the woman narrated this incredible detail of her story with an air of entirely honest conviction.

“No, no,” she cried, and hastily launched a torrential defence of her blinded charge.

She denied flatly that her husband desired to harm a hair of the head of anyone. But Sate was a wild youth whom none could tame, and least of all his father. No. When his father found what had been done he became scared, and it was then he did the only thing left him. He fired the mission in the hope of hiding up his son’s crime. Then she said they hastened away, and came up the river with all speed. But they had forgotten Usak, whom they had not encountered. She did not know how it came, nor did her husband. But Usak knew them. He knew their home here in this valley, and he set out, and, by means they did not understand, he arrived at this house before them.

Then she detailed, with painful emotion the things that happened with Usak’s coming. How he, a great, fierce Indian man, stole in on the house and murdered their three servants—the rest all being away with her husband. The last one, after being mortally wounded by the Indian’s hunting knife, managing to reach her in the sitting hall to warn her. He fell dead on the floor in a pool of blood before her eyes. In her terror she had hastily fled to the secret cellars which were under the house, where they stored their trade in gold. And so she remained until Usak had passed from the house of death. Then long afterwards, she learned from Hela that he passed down the river and waited for their return with the canoe. He waited hidden on the bank. And he shot every man in the canoe as it passed, including their son Sate. He spared none. Not one—except her husband. And so her husband made the landing where she was awaiting him.

Then came the final tragedy. The Indian was in hiding. He had kept pace with the boat, and when Hela landed he leapt out on him to complete his terrible purpose. He fought not to kill but to blind. And he succeeded. He left her man alive, but with his eyes lying on his cheeks. And, before he went, he warned them what he had done was sufficient for the time. But that later, after a long time, he would return and kill them both.

“And he will come,” she wailed in conclusion. “For he is an Indian, and his squaw was killed by our son. He will come. Oh, yes.”

“Yet you stay here? Why?” Again came Wilder’s sharp question. He had steeled himself against the pity which the woman’s unutterable despair inspired.

“How we go?” she asked. “It cannot be. He is blind. We are alone. The men leave us now he is blind. They trade for themselves. Hela no longer has power. They laugh in his face if he make order for them to obey. No. And they will not let him go either. They keep him here. They know. If he go back to Japan then another is sent who sees. Then these men no longer trade for themselves. No. They will not let him go. They keep him here. They pass us food. They let them not know in Japan the thing it is. An’ so they work the oil, and coal, and gold. And they travel far for the furs. And so it is. And then sometime Usak will come again, and then—and then—”

Suddenly she withdrew the hand which had remained all the time she was telling her story in the bosom of her dress. It was grasping a large, folded paper. She held it out, literally thrusting it at Wilder, who took it from her with gravely questioning eyes.

“What is it?” he demanded, and curiosity had replaced the sharpness in his voice.

“The plan of the gold. The gold of this Marty Le Gros. It is for you. I give it. So you will make it that Usak not come again to kill. You, an officer police.”

Wilder opened the paper and glanced at it. A clear exact drawing was inscribed on its discoloured surface. It was a map in minute detail, and he re-folded it quickly while his gaze searched the urgent eyes raised to his.

“You give me this?” he said, in a quiet fashion that revealed none of the surge of excitement with which he was suddenly filled.

The little woman who had called herself Crysa Ukisama suddenly flung out her hands in an agony of vehement appeal.

“I give it. I take this thing from its place. This bad thing, which is evil to us. He not know I take it. Oh, no. Sate find it in the house of the missionary before they fire it. And he, Hela, not give it up. No. Yet he cannot see it. He cannot find this place. He say, too, it is evil, and no one must see it. So I hide it all this long time, and keep it. But I know. So long we keep it this Usak sure come back an’ kill us. It is for that bad paper he come. It make him come. You take it. You have it. And maybe you give it Usak so he will not come back. You officer police. You know this man? You say, Hela Ukisama send it so he not come an’ kill my Hela? You think that? You make him not come? Oh, I go mad when he come bimeby. Yes. He kill my Hela. Same as he kill all other man. I know. Oh!”

With her last wailing cry Crysa buried her face in her delicate, ageing hands, and a passion of emotion racked her frail body. Wilder looked on in that helplessness which all men experience in face of a woman’s outburst of genuine grief. He waited. There was nothing else for him to do, and, presently, the distraught creature recovered herself.

“You’ve told me the truth as far as you know it, my dear,” he said very gently. “You’ve been hit hard. Darn hard. So hard I don’t know just what to say to you. But you’ve done well passing me that story and that paper, and I’m going to do all I know to help you. See here, I’m not going to hand you out all sorts of rash promises, but, if there’s a thing I can do to stop that Indian man, Usak, getting around back here to hurt you, why, I’m just going to do it. Go right back to your man now. He’s been pretty badly punished. So badly it don’t seem to me he needs a thing more of that sort this earth can hand him. And as for you you’ve deserved none of it. Go back to him, and you have my given word, that, just as hard as I’ve worked on the thing the p’lice have sent me out to do, I’ll work to see no harm comes to you from this Indian man. So long.”

CHAPTER VII

It was less than ten weeks to the time when the first fierce rush of winter might be expected. Already the days were shortening down with their customary rush, and in a brief time only the Caribou Valley, the river, the whole world of the far North would be lost to sight under the white shroud of battling elements, whose merciless warfare would be waged, with only brief intervals of armistice, until such time as the summer daylight dawned again.

Hesther McLeod was sitting in her doorway. It was the favoured sitting place she usually selected when the flies and summer heat made her rough kitchen something approaching the intolerable. The intense heat of summer was lessening, but the ominous chill of winter had not yet made itself felt. The sky had lost something of its summer brilliance, and clouds were wont to bank heavily with the threat of the coming season. But the flies remained. They would undoubtedly remain until swept from the face of the earth by the first heavy frost.

Hesther was assiduously battling with one of her many tasks while she talked in her simple, homely fashion to the Kid, who was standing beside her. The foster-mother was frail but wiry, and, with her greying brown hair and thin face, looked the work-worn, happy philosopher she actually was. The Kid was a picture of charming femininity for all the mannish mode of her working clothes. Her pretty, rounded figure would not be denied under the beaded caribou-skin parka that reached almost to her knees. It was belted in about the waist, and a fierce-looking hunting knife protruded from its slung sheath. Her wealth of fair hair was supposed to be tightly coiled under the enveloping cap drawn down over it. But it had fallen, as it usually fell, upon her shoulders as though refusing to endure imprisonment when the sun it loved to reflect was shining. Her blue eyes were deeply thoughtful just now as they regarded the bowed head of the beloved mother woman. She watched the nimble fingers spread the buckskin patch out over the jagged rent in the seat of Perse’s diminutive breeches.

“You know,” Hesther said, without looking up, “that little feller Perse’ll make good someways. I can’t guess how. But his queer little head’s plumb full of things that stick worse than flies. An’ even though the seat of his pants drops right out, which it’s mostly doing all the time, he’ll foller his notion clear through to the end. He’s got the gold bug now, an’ spends most all his time skiddin’ himself over rocks an’ things chasin’ what he wouldn’t rec’nise if he beat his pore little head right up against it. I want to laff most all the time at his yarns. But I just don’t. I’ve a hunch to see him do things.”

“Yes,” she agreed simply. Then her gaze was turned to the distant river where its shining waters could just be seen beyond the lank jack pines which surrounded the rambling house. “Perse is the brightest of the bunch. You know, Mum, it’s kind of queer us talking of the kids making good. We don’t ever stop to guess how they’re going to do it—away up here, thousands of miles from, from anywhere.”

Hesther flung a quick upward glance at the sweet weather-tanned face that was no longer smiling. She was wondering, for the girl’s tone had a note in it to which she was quite unaccustomed. In a moment, however, her eyes had dropped again to the thick patch cut from a caribou moccasin she was endeavouring to make fast to the child’s tattered pants.

These two understood each other. A deep bond of sympathy and love held them. The girl looked to this brave little widow of Jim McLeod for sympathy and comfort in her distress as a child looks to its mother. In affairs which needed capacity and strong execution the position was reversed. This girl of twenty, supported by the staunch Usak, strong in spirit and youthful optimism, wide in her grasp of the affairs of the farm, was responsible leader in all pertaining to their livelihood. Just now the girl was troubled and Hesther realised that the Kid had not abandoned her afternoon’s work at the corrals simply for idle talk at her doorway. Her interrogation was calculated. She wanted the girl to talk.

“Nothing worse than usual, Mum,” she said with a sigh. “It’ll be two years since Ben Needham went, come next opening. We’ve enough supplies to see us through six months. That’s the limit. Usak’ll be along back before the freeze-up. Well, things depend on the trade he brings back, and a winter trail to Placer. Do you get it? By next spring our stores’ll be run out. If he brings back good trade, and no accident happens along on our winter trail, we’ll be in fairly good shape for awhile. But it just means we can’t put in another season right through. I don’t see how we can, unless we have mighty good luck. The thing’s as dead as caribou meat without a market right alongside, like it was when Ben Needham was around. We’re right here beyond the edge of the world, and—and it can’t be done.”

“You mean—quit? An’ with the boys coming along? The twins are nearly sixteen.”

The mother laboured on assiduously. The busy needle punched its way through the tough buckskin with a sharp click as the strong fingers plied it.

“The boys are good. Alg is a real man around the deer,” she said, with a shadow of a smile in her pretty eyes. “Clarence is hardening into a tough trail man. Usak reckons he’s a great feller to have with him. But it’s not that, Mum. It’s the trade these wretched Euralians beat us out of, and the distance to our market.”

Hesther’s needle was still. She was looking up with a pair of soft, brown, questioning eyes, and the gentle mentality behind them was reading the girl through and through with a certainty that her transparent simplicity and innocence made possible.

“How can it be anything else, Mum? I guess ther’s nothing around this farm to worry with but the feeding of hungry mouths.”

The Kid had turned away. Again her eyes had sought the gleam of waters sedately flowing on to their junction with the greater river beyond.

The mother shook her head. She leant forward on her door-sill with her lean, bare arms folded over her offspring’s clothing.

“I don’t just see how it can be a thing else,” she admitted promptly. “But I was thinkin’. You see, Kid, you’re over twenty. Let’s see. Why, I guess you’re over twenty-one. Yes. Sure you must be.”

And she deliberately began to count up the years that had passed since the terrible time of the descent of the Euralians on Fox Bluff. The girl watched the counting fingers, and the abstracted gaze of the other as she reckoned up her sum.

“There was no talk of quitting, whatever our trade, before you made Placer last year with Usak. Say, Kid,” she went on, with infinite sympathy and gentleness, “you’re a woman now. You aren’t a—Kid—any longer. Does it tell you anything?” She raised a pointing finger that was painfully work-worn, and admonished her. “My dear, things are a heap different through a woman’s eyes. When you’re a kid you’re mostly crazy with every new thing just living can show you. When you’re a woman it isn’t life just to live. Ther’s a whole book full o’ feelings, and wants, an’ notions start in to worry around, and the answer to ’em isn’t found in the work of running a caribou farm, and beating a bunch of scallawags who’re grabbing your trade. It isn’t found in yearning to hand a stomach full o’ food to a crowd of kids you love like brothers an’ sisters, either.”

The girl’s eyes were searching for all their responsive smile, and she made no attempt at denial.

“I found it in two things when I was your age,” she said. “First it was in the excitement of fancy clothes, and parties, where folks of my own age got around, boys and gals. Then I guessed the answer to every yearning I had was in my Jim, and in the bunch o’ scallawags he set crawling around my knees. Why, Kid, this queer old world’s just got only one place where it can make me feel good. It’s where my Jim’s babies are. You been down to Placer. You and Usak. You’ve seen a big city where ther’s white-folk like yourself, where ther’s lights burning on the streets, and folks dancing, and parties racketing, and the boys and gals are having quite a time. Then you get along back to the farm here, and the kids, and, maybe, me. And I guess you’re glad—for awhile.”

The girl moved from the door-casing where she had been leaning. She abruptly dropped to a seat on the door-sill beside Hesther, and took possession of the thin, strong hand nearest to her. There was a change in her as sudden as had been her movements. Her eyes were shining and full of something Hesther had never seen in them before. And somehow the magnetism of it, her sudden, almost passionate earnestness claimed the older woman and left her with a feeling that was something scared.

“Tell me, Mum,” she cried, in a thrilling voice. “You haven’t told me enough. You loved your Jim. Tell me just how you loved him.”

“It ’ud be easier to tell you how the thunder banks up in summer and bursts over us,” Hesther replied with a headshake, while her hand responded with sympathetic pressure to the clasp of the girl’s.

She gazed into the earnest face that so reminded her of the father who had been slain so many years before, and the pretty, fair-haired woman who had borne this foster child of hers. She was wondering at the girl’s sudden passion of interest in her love for the dead man who had given her such a wealth of simple happiness. It was a new phase, and it meant something. And she wondered what the meaning was.

“No, Kid,” she went on. “I don’t reckon if I talked from now to Kingdom Come I could ever tell you the thing you’re asking. He was my man, just all of him. Could you feel so that any feller could tell you to do the craziest thing and you’d want to get busy right away doing it? Could you feel so that a feller’s frown was better than the whole world’s smile? Could you feel you’d rather have one man call you a crazy fool, and beat you over the head with a club, than a hundred swell fellers bowing an’ scraping to hand you a good time? If you could feel all that foolish stuff you’d know something how I loved my Jim. He was mine, Kid,” she went on squeezing the girl’s plump hand in her thin, strong fingers. “He was mine from the roof of his head to the soles of his caribou moccasins, and life with him was full of sunshine, even when the night of winter shut down. And he handed me all these ‘God’s blessings’ that aren’t never content but that I’m doing an’ making for them all the time. My, but I’d be glad to have you feel all those things.”

The girl nodded. Her eyes were deeply contemplative. She was not looking at the woman beside her but gazing abstractedly into space.

“I—I think I could feel all that,” she said after awhile. “I—I think I could feel so a man could beat me to death if he wanted to. But—”

She broke off. Then her gaze came back to the brown eyes beside her, and a sort of ecstatic smile lit her eyes and transformed her with its radiance.

“But he’d have to be a great feller, with the courage of a fighter. He’d have to be a man who ordered other folks around, a man who knew no fear. A man who’d help a friend with his last dollar or kill the enemy who hurt him. Yes,” she went on dreamily, “and he’d have grey eyes, and a strong face that wasn’t maybe too good-looking, and dark hair, and shoulders like a bull caribou, and—”

Hesther had returned to her work, and drew a deep breath of expectancy. But the girl ignored the challenge. She turned suddenly and spoke with feverish eagerness.

“You felt that way, Mum, for your Jim?” she demanded. “That’s the way all gals feel when they want—want to marry someone? Maybe the Eskimo squaws feel that way, too? Just every woman? Is that so?”

The older woman’s philosophy had been swallowed up by the irresistible emotions of her sex. She wanted to hear the story of this child’s tender romance. She had made up her mind there was a romance deeply hidden within her innocent heart, and that it had taken place in that great gold city the girl had visited with Usak. She was hungering for the story of it as every real woman hungers for the love story of another, after having passed a similar milestone in her own life. She was thrilled, and her calm veins were afire with the recrudescence of her youth.

But the Kid suddenly came out of her dreaming, and smilingly shook her head in a fashion that flooded the other with disappointment.

“No, Mum,” she said. “There wasn’t a feller in Placer made me feel that way. Not one. I—I was just thinking. That’s all.”

“And it makes you want to quit and get around where life’s real life?” Hesther cried incredulously. “An’ where there’s folks and parties, and marrying, and you can have a place in it all?”

Again the girl shook her head. This time all smiling had passed. Her lips were no longer happily parted. And the corners of her mouth were slightly depressed.

“No, dear,” she said, with a decision which the other felt had cost her an effort. “I don’t feel like quitting. I don’t want to quit. Ever! I want to stay right here, till—till—I want to stay here always with you, and the kids, and Usak. But sense says I can’t. None of us can. We’ve played our game to the limit, an’ I guess the cards are dead against us. We must go next year for—the sake of those babies your Jim handed to you. I don’t just know all it means. I don’t just see what we’re to do to earn our food. But we’ll have to make the break, and take what the good God hands—Hello!”

The girl broke off. Her final exclamation came at the sight of a little procession which hurried round the angle of the building. It was headed by Mary Justicia and the adventurous Perse. Alg was behind carrying Jane Constance in his sturdy arms, while Gladys Anne clung to him yielding him her moral support.

It was a subdued procession, and the Kid and the mother looked for the thing which had affected them so seriously. Their attention became promptly fixed on the dripping bundle of humanity in the elder boy’s arms. An explanation was instantly forthcoming in the coolest phraseology.

“Darn crazy little buzzock reckoned to drown herself,” the boy said with a grin. “Hadn’t no more sense than to fall off’n the driftwood pile into six foot of water. We shaken most of it out of her.”

The mother was on her feet in a moment, and the child, despite her liquid condition, was snatched to her eager bosom. And in her anxiety everything else was completely forgotten.

“You pore little bit,” she cried solicitously as she hugged the moist bundle in her arms. Then she turned on the gawking youth with which she was surrounded. She glanced swiftly over the faces grinning up at her, and punctuated her survey with a sweeping condemnation.

“You bunch o’ hoodlams,” she cried. “The good God gave you the image of Hisself, did He? Well, I guess He must ha’ forgot the mush you need to think with. Be off with you. The whole bunch. You, Mary Justicia, stay around an’ help me scrape the pore mite clean. The rest of you get out o’ my sight. I don’t feel like looking at any of you again—ever.”

She vanished into the house, a diminutive figure of righteous indignation, and the Kid was left to the eager, laughing explanations of the unimpressed culprits.

The kyak darted down the river on a stream that made its progress something like the flight of an arrow. Its great length and narrow width left it a crazy enough vessel to handle, but the Kid had been born and bred to its manipulation, and she played with it as she chose without concern for its crankiness. Her gun lay in the bottom of the hide-built craft, for she was speeding down towards the marshes in quest of water-fowl.

With the rapid passing of the shortening northern day she knew she would find the marsh alive with duck. Game was plentiful just now. In another few weeks the approach of winter would drive the migratory fowl south, where the waters remained open and winter feed was to be had in abundance. The girl was pot-hunting, and the full stocking of the farm larder was an important duty in her routine of life.

Silently, almost ghostlike, the dip of her paddle giving out no sound, she sped on over the shining waters between high, lichen-grown banks, that were mostly rock-bound and almost completely sterile. It was a wild, broken stretch of country, without any of the vegetation which was the inspiration of the setting of the farm. It was without any graciousness, from the southern hills to the northern limits containing the shallow valley. But even so, to this girl, who had known the Caribou Valley all her young life, there was intense attraction in every detail of its familiar uncouthness.

Quite abruptly she passed beyond the undulating, rock-bound stretch, and shot into the jaws of a short but narrow canyon. For no apparent reason the country about her suddenly reared itself into a tumbled sea of low, broken hills that darkly overshadowed the passage which the river had eaten through them. The gleaming waters had lost their vivid, dancing light and assumed an almost inky blackness. Their speed had increased, and they frothed and churned as they beat against the facets of the encompassing walls, as though in anger at a resistance they had never been able to overcome.

The girl was gazing ahead at the far opening, where the hills gave way to the wide muskeg which was her goal. It was at the sort of giant gateway which was formed by two sheer sentry rocks standing guard on either side of the river, overshadowing, frowning, lofty, windswept and bare.

A girlish impulse urged her. These two barren crests were old-time friends of her childhood. The leaning summit of the hill on the left bank was the dream place of childish fancy. It was always windswept, even on the calmest day. It was beyond the reach of the mosquitoes and flies abounding on the river. It was free and open to the sunlight, which was getting shorter now with every passing day. And, somehow, an hour passed on its chilly summit never failed to inspire her heart with feelings freed from the oppressive weight of the cares of her life below.

Yes. She would leave the feeding fowl to their evening meal. For the present there was no shortage in the farm larder. The marshes could wait till to-morrow. For the moment she felt deeply in need of that consolation she never failed to find in this old friend of her earlier years. She would pass an hour with it. She would confide to it the story of those feelings and desires, which, with every passing month, were absorbing her more and more deeply. For she was restless, disturbed. As Hesther had suggested, the dawning womanhood in her was crying out.

Oh, yes. She understood now. The life of the farm was no longer the satisfying thing it had always been. Something was amiss with her. A great, unrecognised longing had been urgent in her for months past. And a glimmer of its meaning had come to her while listening to Hesther’s endeavour to show her the thing which her own love for her dead husband had been.

Suddenly she dipped her paddle and held it. Instantly her light vessel swung about and headed up stream. Slowly, laboriously it nosed in against the stream and glided gently up to the familiar landing place.

Leaping ashore, the Kid stooped and grasped the central struts of her craft. Then she lifted it bodily out of the water, and set it in safety on the broad strand.

The Kid was squatting trail fashion with her back thrust against the smooth-worn, almost polished sides of a great boulder. The chill wind was beating against her rounded cheeks. There were moments when its nipping blast brought tears to her eyes. And her soft, fair hair streamed from under her cap in response to its rough caresses.

Her eyrie was set more than a hundred feet above the rest of the world about her. Her gaze was free to roam the length and breadth of the valley below her. There was nothing whatsoever but the limit of vision to deny her. Here she could feast herself upon the world she had learned to love, with fancy free to riot as it listed.

It was a wonderful panorama for all its harshness. Away to the north lay endless miles of barren, low hills and shallow valleys which lost themselves in the far-off purple of falling daylight. To the south of her it was the same, except that the dying sun of summer lolled heavily on the horizon, gleaming, blinding in its last passion. To the east lay the farm and the corrals that claimed all her working hours, and beyond that was the purple of distance enshrouding lank, sparse, woodland bluffs whose stunted, windswept tops cut sharp drawn lines against the far-off shadows. It was all wide flung, and harsh, and infinitely small viewed from her lofty crow’s-nest. And even the river, immediately below, was no better than a silver ribbon dropped by some careless hand on a carpet that was drab, and worn, and utterly without beauty.

But none of these claimed her now. The girl’s gaze was to the westward. Even the hour was forgotten, and the spread of cold grey cloud which the biting wind was driving down upon the world out of the fierce north-east. Her gaze was on the dark line beyond which flowed the mighty Hekor, where it beat the meeting waters of the two rivers into a cauldron of boiling rapids. It was on the great bluff of woodland which had sheltered her original home, and beyond which lay the deserted Fort, which had been the pulsing heart making life possible for them all. And she was thinking, thinking of a man with “grey eyes, and a strong face that wasn’t too good-looking, and dark hair, and shoulders like a bull caribou.”

He had said he would return, this man who called himself Bill Wilder. He and his red-headed companion and the grey hard-bitten creature he called Chilcoot. They had gone out into the far North. The great, wide-open North with its treacherous smiling summer masking a merciless wintry heart. Would he return? Would he come again down the river? Would he forget, and pass right on down to the city which contained his home? She wondered. And, with each possibility that presented itself, a cold constriction seemed to grip her strong young heart.

How long had he said? She remembered. She had never forgotten. She could never forget. The man’s smiling eyes had haunted her ever since the first moment they had gazed so earnestly, so kindly into hers. Oh, she knew nothing of whence he came or whither he was bound. She knew nothing of the man he might be. These things concerned her not at all. She had judged him in the first moments of her meeting with him nearly two years ago, and from the first words he had spoken in his easy way, and her judgment had been of a splendid manhood that harmonised with the deep woman instinct, which, for good or ill, is the final tribunal of a woman’s life.

He had been the ideal of everything that appealed to her in manhood. She had learned her simple understanding of life amongst the rough men of the northern trail. Here was a man recklessly plunging into the far-off world, ready to face and battle with every chance with which that world was crowded. He was fearless. Yes. He was all she looked for in courage. He was a leader, a strong, determined leader of men no less brave and adventurous than himself. And as for the rest it was all there. She had seen for herself. A great stature, a strong man’s face. And eyes that calmly shone with honesty and kindliness.

She sighed. Would he return? The hands about her knees broke apart. They fell from about her knees, and she stirred, and twisted her body round so that she sat with one hand on the bare rock supporting it. She was facing round to the west.

Why, why did she so long for his return? He had said he would return in two years. Two years? That would not be up till next opening. The winter ahead suddenly looked to be an interminable period of waiting. Winter. And anything might happen to him in—winter. Suddenly she became weakly anxious for his safety. She knew the dangers. She knew the conditions of the country into which he had gone. The Euralians. The desperate storms. The— But she dismissed her fears. She remembered the man’s equipment. But more than all she remembered his confident, commanding eyes. No. Nothing could harm him. Nothing. Nothing. But would he remember. Would he—?

She started. Suddenly she sprang to her feet with the easy agility of one of the young deer it was her work to handle. And she stood against the sweeping breeze, at the very edge of the ledge, silhouetted against the background of a dying sun.

The biting wind swept her hair across her eyes. She raised a brown hand and thrust it aside and held its mass firmly, while she stared out wide-eyed in amazement. Then she raised the other hand, pointing, a thrill of excitement, and gladness, and hope, surging through her heart. And as she stood, utterly unconscious of the thing she did, words sprang to her lips and she counted aloud.

And with each numeral she uttered, her pointing hand moved from one tiny distant object on the river to another.

For awhile she remained spellbound by the vision. She remembered. Oh, yes. There could be no mistake. Five large canoes and two smaller. That had been the extent of Bill Wilder’s outfit as she had first discovered it. It was he. He was coming up the river. He had returned. And—he had returned sooner than he promised.

A wild tumult of feeling consumed her as she stared at the distant procession of boats. Then, in a moment, a surge of colour swept up into her cheeks, and a fierce panic of shame robbed her of all her delight. She turned; tearing herself from the glad sight, and fled headlong to her kyak below.

CHAPTER VIII

Hesther was perturbed, yet she was engaged on the task of all tasks which appealed to her in her life’s routine.

It was wash-day. She was standing over a boiler of steaming water, frothing with soap suds and full of a laundry made up of the rainbow hues of a Joseph’s coat. The kitchen was reeking with steam. It was also littered with piles of well-wrung garments awaiting the services of Mary Justicia for transfer to the drying ground outside. The swarming flies were more than usually sticky in the humid atmosphere, and the prevailing confusion in the rough living room was as splendid as the most ardent housewife could have desired on such an occasion.

Perturbation with Hesther could only have one source. Something must be amiss with one of the large family for which she held herself responsible. Nothing else could have disturbed her equanimity. She was completely single-minded and even in her emotions. Beyond the four walls of her house she had no concern. She was utterly abandoned to the six young lives entrusted to her efforts by her dead husband, and the girl who, from her earliest infancy, had been called “the Kid.”

It was of the Kid she was thinking now. Their talk of the day before had filled her with disquiet. The girl had denied so much, and yet, to the patient mother-woman, there had been signs that only afforded one interpretation.

And now she was asking herself all the many questions which her woman’s heart instinctively prompted. Who was the man? Where was the man? When had the Kid encountered the man? What was he like? How far had this thing gone that it had stirred the child to a fever of excited interest in another woman’s love for her man? She was mystified beyond words. None but trailmen and trappers had come near them throughout the years. They were mostly half-breeds and Eskimos, and one or two poor whites who thought of nothing but the mean living they were able to scratch out of this Euralian-ridden territory.

No. It was none of these. Of that she was convinced. And for all the girl’s denial her mind persistently turned to Placer. There had been a definite change in the Kid, she fancied, since her return from the gold city. A change which her keen anxiety of the moment forthwith exaggerated. She felt that she must take Usak into her confidence. Yes. When he returned from his summer trip with Clarence, trading the trail-broken deer, she would question him. She warned herself that it was imperative for all it seemed like disloyalty, and distrust of the Kid’s denial. Yes. That was the only course for her.

She glanced up from her steaming tub where her busy hands were rubbing and squeezing the highly coloured garments in the suds. Mary Justicia had appeared in the doorway and was standing outlined foggily in the steam.

“Those,” Hesther said, indicating the litter on the rough-boarded table. “It’s a big wash, child,” she observed contentedly, “but I guess we’ll get through in time for dinner. You see we got all Janey’s stuff, an’ it’s that stained with mud an’ the like it makes you wonder the sort o’ muck that comes down the river.”

Mary Justicia seized on the garments. Then she paused and turned with her arms full.

“The kids are comin’ right along up from the river, Mum,” she declared, dismissing her mother’s remarks under an interest much more to her liking. “Guess they’re coming along up on the run, an’ Alg’s with ’em. You wouldn’t say Perse had located something, or—or got hurt? I didn’t just see him comin’ along with the bunch.”

“It’s an hour an’ more to food,” she said, with a sharp inquiry in her tone and look. “Wot’s got ’em beatin’ it to home now? Alg should be along up at the corrals with the Kid.”

She hurried to the door and looked out. Sure enough there was a tailing procession of children racing for the house. But all four of them were there. Perse was running last, behind the toddling figure of Jane Constance.

It was a breathless crew that broke into the steaming kitchen. From the sixteen-year-old Alg down to the round, grubby-faced Janey, with her mass of curling brown hair and dark eyes, excitement was a-riot, and they hurled their amazing news at the busy mother in a chorus that set her flourishing a half-wrung garment at them in protest.

“Say, quit it, all of you!” she cried. “I haven’t ears all over my head if you think I have. Outfit? What outfit? Here, quit right away, the whole bunch. An’ you Alg, tell your crazy yarn while I get right on with the wash. You ‘shoo’ the others right out into the open, Mary Justicia, while Alg hands me his fairy tale. They’ll be takin’ pneumonia in this steam else.”

The elder girl obediently “shooed” the rest of the children from the room, and stood guard in the doorway lest the avalanche returned. But she was all eyes and ears for Alg who was simply bursting with his astonishing news.

“It’s an outfit come right up the river,” he began at once, his eyes alight and dilating with an excitement he could scarcely contain sufficiently to leave him coherent. “It’s a swell outfit of white folk, ever so many of ’em. I guess they must ha’ come through in the night an’ passed right up to the gravel flats along up beyond the corrals. Guess they pitched camp three miles up, an’ they got five big canoes, an’ all sorts of camp stuff. Ther’s a feller with bright red hair, an’ two fellers who’re sort of bosses. The rest are just river folk, an’ the like. It was Perse located ’em, an’ I guess he come along and tell us, and we went right up, an’—”

Hesther’s sharp demand was the natural impulse which the boy’s news stirred in her. The arrival of a strange outfit of white folk on the river was a matter of serious enough importance in their lives, but it was outside her province. Her real concern was for her washing and all that that implied. The Kid, in the absence of Usak, was her resource in such a situation. The boy shook his rough head.

“I didn’t see her around as we came along back,” he said, “an’ I didn’t wait to chase her up. I guessed I best come along an’ tell you first.”

The mother nodded and wrung and rinsed a flannel garment as though nothing else in the world mattered. She was thinking as hard as a mind concentrated upon her manual effort would permit. And somehow the result was sufficiently negative to leave her without any inspiration beyond that the Kid should be told at once so that there should be no delay in the responsibility of the newly developed position finding the proper person to deal with it.

“Beat it right up to the corrals,” she said at last, “an’ locate the Kid, and hand her your yarn, son.” Then the working of her simple mind eased to its normal condition. “An’ when you done that come right back to home, an’ don’t get running around pecking at them folks. We don’t know who they are. Maybe they’re a bum outfit o’ low down whites chasing after no good. You’re mostly a grown feller, Alg, an’ you got women-folk around. I guess it’s right up to you, an’ me, an’ the Kid, with Usak away, an’ with strangers around. Now you get right along an’ beat it. Food’ll be about ready against you get along back. An’ I’ll finish the wash after. Ho, Mary, here’s another bunch to set out dryin’.”

But Hesther was infinitely disturbed. Her perturbation on the Kid’s account had been something very much less disturbing than this sudden and totally unlooked for development. Strangers! White strangers! Strangers on their river! What had they come for? And, more than all, what manner of white folk were they? The woman in her had taken alarm, for all she gave no sign. There was the Kid and Mary. They were alone, without any sort of help except Alg and the two or three half-breed Eskimo working about the farm. At that moment she would have given all she possessed to have had Usak on hand to look to for the protection she desired.

It was curious. For years she had lived under the threat of the Euralian marauders who had passed through the country like a devastating pestilence. They were foreigners. They were savages. Their crimes were wanton in their cruelty. Yet the dread of them failed to quicken her sturdy pulse by a single beat. Now, however, at the coming of these men of her own race, it was utterly different. A sort of stupefied panic suddenly descended upon her, and her wash day had ceased to interest her. She removed the boiler from her cook-stove, and prepared for the mid-day meal.

Mary Justicia had abandoned her post at the doorway. She had cleared the table of the litter of washing and was setting the meal ready while her mother gave herself up to the work at the cookstove, when a small head was thrust in at the doorway.

“Tain’t food, Mum,” retorted the boy urgently, as he gazed into the steam-filled room. “It’s a feller, a great big feller, bigger than Usak, comin’ right along. What’ll I do? Tain’t any use tryin’ to ‘shoo’ him. He’s too big fer that. Guess it wouldn’t be any use Mary ‘shooin’’ him either. I—”

Hesther ran to the doorway. She stood framed in it, her thin, bare arms folded across her spare bosom. It was an attitude that might have suggested defiance. But at that moment there was only a deepening panic surging in her mother heart.

And standing there she beheld the approach of a man of unusual stature. He was clad in trail-stained, hard clothing that by no means helped his appearance. His buckskin coat was open, and under it was revealed a plain cotton shirt that gaped wide at the neck, about which was knotted a coloured scarf. His dark hair hung loose below his low-pressed cap. But these things passed unnoticed. For the woman was concerned only with the face of the man, and the thing she was trying to read there. As he came up he removed his cap and stood bareheaded before her. And he smiled down into her troubled, inquiring face out of a pair of grey eyes that never wavered for a moment.

“I guessed I’d best come right along down at once, mam,” he said in easy, pleasant tones. “We pulled in up the river last night And seeing things are kind of lonesome about here, and we’re a biggish outfit of strangers such as maybe you weren’t guessing to see about, I felt it might get you worried. Well, I just want to make it so you don’t feel that way. We’re a gold outfit figgering to prospect this river, and I’m running it. My name’s Bill Wilder. It won’t tell you a thing, I fancy. But I want to say right here that just so long as we’re around ther’s not a feller in my bunch that’s going to worry you or yours without getting a broken neck from me. That’s all I came along to pass you. You see, mam, it’s a queer country full of queer folk, and I sort of fancied making things easy for you.”

The woman in Hesther was deeply stirred. The man’s whole attitude was one of simple respect and kindliness. There was no mistaking it, and her favourable judgment of him was as instantaneous and headlong as had been her panic of the moment before. It was the voice, the clear smiling eyes of this whiteman stranger that claimed her ready confidence. For she was a woman whose simplicity of heart dictated at all times.

“Why, say, now, that’s real kind of you, sir,” she replied beaming with genuine relief. “It surely is a rough country for a lone woman with a bunch of God’s Blessings around her.” Then she moved back into the house with an air of removing the hurriedly set up defences of her home, and turned to Mary Justicia, while the other children gawked at the stranger. “You’ll set another platter, girl. I guess Mr. Wilder’ll take hash with us, if he ain’t scared to death eating with a bunch of kids with the manners of low-grade Injuns.” Then she smiled apologetically at the man with his powerful shoulders and great height. “You see, it’s wash-day with us, sir,” she went on, “an’ it ’ud take a wise feller to rec’nise our kitchen from a spring fog. But the ducks have been shot four days by the Kid, an’ I reckon they’ll eat as tender as Thanksgiving turkey. Will you step right in an’—welcome?”

The cordiality of the little woman’s invitation was irresistible. But Wilder shook his head in partial denial. Her reference to “the Kid” had changed his original intention of complete refusal.

“Mam,” he said, “ordinarily I’d be mighty glad to take that food with you all. But I guess I need to get back to camp in awhile. You see, we only pulled in last night at sundown, and ther’s a deal needs fixing when you’re runnin’ a bunch of tough-skinned gold men. But I’d be glad to step in and yarn some if wash-day permits.”

Wilder’s reputation amongst the men of his craft was that of scrupulous straight dealing and honesty for all he was an astute man of affairs in the business in which they trafficked. They knew him for a man who never needed to sign when his word was given. Beyond that they knew little of the real man. Amongst those whom he counted as friends there was an infinitely warmer side to the man. They saw the native simplicity and kindliness which he usually kept closely hidden under a harder surface. But, somehow, the real man was reserved for the eyes of such women as he encountered. His chivalry for the sex was innate. It was no make-believe veneer. To him it mattered nothing if a woman were plain or beautiful, old or young. Even her morals had no power to influence his attitude. A woman, with all her faults and virtues, was just the most sacred creature that walked the earth. Good, bad, or in a category between the two, she left the mundane gods of daily life nothing comparable in their claim upon him.

His feelings, however, reduced him to no extravagant display of sentiment towards women. On the contrary. He loved to regard them as creatures created for the beautifying of human life, companions on complete equality with man, except where the disability of sex was involved. It was in such circumstances he claimed man’s right to succour to the limit of his powers.

Something of all this had stirred him at the sight of the brown-eyed, work-worn woman with her “God’s Blessings,” as she called them, about her. But it had had nothing to do with the inspiration of his prompt visit to the homestead he had discovered ten miles up from the mouth of the Caribou River. He had contemplated this visit all the way down the long journey on the Hekor River. He had visualized the existence of some such home, and had determined to locate it. And the purpose had remained in his mind ever since that day, two summers ago, when the girl who was called “the Kid” had flung him her parting invitation. Even now, as he bulked so hugely in the one real chair the homestead afforded, and which was the rest place for Hesther when her many labours permitted, he saw again in fancy the girl’s frankly smiling blue eyes, full of delight and pride at the masterly fashion in which she had piloted the great outfit up the narrow channel of the Hekor rapids. Her pretty weather-tanned face had lived with him every day of his long sojourn in the desolate wastes farther north, and he had longed for the time when he could run her to earth in that home which she had told him lay ten miles from the mouth of the Caribou River.

At last it had come. And in how strange a fashion. It almost looked as though Fate had taken a hand in bringing about the thing he desired. It was not only his desire to look again upon the sun-browned face of the girl who had so surely leapt into his heart that had brought him to the Caribou River. It was the diagram map, so carefully drawn by the dead Marty Le Gros’ hand, which the terrified little Japanese woman had thrust upon him in the hope of saving her blinded husband. The great gold “strike” of the dead missionary was on the Caribou River, and he held the detailed key of it.

He was thinking of the Kid now as he listened to the ripple of talk which flowed so naturally from Hesther’s lips as she stood over the savoury stew on the cook-stove.

“It makes me want to laff,” she said, “you folks reckoning to try out the Caribou for gold. You’re jest like my Perse, only you don’t skid out the seat of your pants chasing the stuff. Say, that kid—he’s nigh thirteen years—has the gold bug dead right, an’ he reckons to locate it around this valley. I’d say you couldn’t beat it, only you’re reckoning that way, too. Gold? Gee! Gold on this mud an’ rock bottom? Why, you’ll need all the dynamite in the world to loosen up this territory, ’cept where it’s muskeg, an’ then you’ll need a mighty long life line to hit bottom.”

“Guess you folks should know the valley, mam,” he admitted, with a smile of amusement in his eyes.

“Ah, that’s a man all through. You reckon ther’s gold on Caribou, and you’ll chase it to a finish. Say, my Perse ’ud just love you to death for that.”

Wilder watched Mary Justicia moving silently around the room preparing the table.

“Where did—Perse—get his notion from, mam?” Wilder inquired disarmingly.

In a moment Hesther’s brown eyes became serious. There crept into them an abstracted far-off look. And in repose a curious sadness marked her expression.

“Why, the Kid’s father. The missionary, Marty Le Gros, who was murdered by the Euralians nigh eighteen years back.”

Wilder started. A flood of excitement hurled through his body. He almost sprang from the square, raw-hide seat of his chair. But he controlled himself with an effort and spoke with a calmness that betrayed nothing of his sudden emotion.

“That’s so,” Hesther nodded, setting the tea-kettle to boil beside the stew. Then she turned about to the two children squatting on the doorstep. “That’s Perse,” she said, indicating the boy who was listening avidly to the talk. “He’s only heard of the yarn that the Kid’s pore father made a big ‘strike.’ I know he made it. Jim and me—Jim’s my dead husband who used to run the Fur Valley Store at Fort Cupar—handled the chunks of yellow stuff he showed us. They were wonderful. Oh, yes, he made a big ‘strike’—somewhere. But I don’t guess it was on Caribou. We were to have known. He was going to hand us the yarn. But he didn’t. You see, they got after him, an’ murdered him. So no one ever knew. You see Perse hasn’t a notion beyond Caribou. So he reckons if ther’s gold anywhere in creation it must be on Caribou.”

“Sure. But say, mam, I guess you’re waiting to serve out that food and I’m holding things up.”

“Say, mam,” he went on with a gesture of deprecation, “you’ve got me guessing good. I’m just a gold man an’ not a highbrow logician or guesser of riddles. You’re here with your bunch of God’s Blessings, as you call these dandy kids of yours. You talk of corrals as if you were running a swell cattle ranch. You talk of the Kid’s father who was Marty Le Gros, a missionary, murdered by Euralians eighteen years ago. An’ you haven’t even spoke as if you had any sort of name yourself. Well, as I said I’m just a gold man chasing up a creek you don’t reckon to hold anything better than mud and rock, but I’m liable to be a neighbour of yours for something like a year at least. And if it isn’t putting you about I’d just love to sit and listen to anything you feel like handing out.”

It was the way it was said. It was so frankly ingenuous and inviting. Hesther looked into the stranger’s grey eyes, and no question remained in her mind. So she laughed in response and shook her greying head.

“Say, living on the edge of the Arctic has quite a way of cutting out the manners we’re brought up to,” she said at once. “I’m Mrs. McLeod, and my man, Jim, as I said, was factor at Fort Cupar. Well, he died.”

For one thoughtful moment she glanced into the stew pot. Then she dipped some steaming beans from a boiler and emptied them into the stew. After that she turned again to the waiting man in the chair.

“This is a reindeer farm. It’s a sort of crazy notion in a way, but it’s handed us a living ever since Marty Le Gros, who started it up, was murdered by the Euralian toughs. Will I hand you the story of that? Or maybe you’re heard it? Most folks in the North have.”

“Don’t trouble to tell it, mam,” he said quickly. “It’s bad med’cine that I’ve heard all about. And it’s not likely to hand you comfort in the telling. So this was his farm?”

“Sure it was. He started it reckoning to build it up for his little baby, Felice, who we call the Kid, and the Indian man, Usak, who was his servant, ran it for him. Well, after he was done up and his place was burnt out, Usak came along from here and found his little kiddie flung into the bluff to die, or get eaten by wolves and things. Usak was nigh crazy. But he claimed the Kid and raised her on this farm, which he went on building for her. When the Kid was about twelve my man Jim took ill and died, and I came along right over from the store with my bits and my kiddies, and just live with ’em. It helped me and mine, and it helped the Kid and Usak some. And that’s all ther’ is to it. I’m sort of foster-mother to the Kid. And we all scratch a living out of Usak’s trading the trail-broke caribou with such Eskimo as the Euralians have left within reach.” She laughed, shortly and without mirth. “It’s nothing much to tell, sir, but there it is, and you’re welcome to know it.”

The woman’s brief outline contained the whole drama of the past eighteen years told without emphasis, almost as though it were a simple matter of everyday occurrence. Years ago it might have been different, but now—why, now only the present seriously concerned her, and that was the preparation of food and the execution of those many duties which were demanded by the young lives who looked to her mothering.

For some moments Wilder offered no comment. He was concerned, deeply concerned. This woman’s homely trust and courage affected him deeply. But more than all else was a superlative thankfulness that Providence, through George Raymes, had sent him on what had first looked to be a hopeless pursuit of something completely impossible of achievement. He remembered the Superintendent’s final summing up of the work set for him to accomplish.

“Does it get you?” he had asked, “there it is, a great gold discovery, somewhere up there on the Hekor, I suppose, and the mystery of this people filching our trade through a process of outrageous crime. Somewhere up there there’s a girl-child, white—she’d be about nineteen or twenty now—lost to the white world to which she belongs. But above all, from my point of view, there’s a problem. Who are these Euralians, and what becomes of the wealth of furs they steal?”

The whole of the work was well-nigh completed. He is had completely satisfied himself on the problem of the Euralians. He had recovered the plans of Marty Le Gros’ gold “strike” and it only remained for him to follow their directions to complete the re-discovery of the find itself. And now—now he had at length discovered the “girl-child, white,” who, to his mind was heir to the things her dead father had left behind.

Yes, the end of his task looked to be drawing near, but he could not resign himself to the fact. Somehow it seemed to him that he was only approaching the threshold. That the drama of the whole thing was still in being. That there were scenes yet to be depicted that would deeply involve him. There was the blind Japanese man and his panic-stricken woman. There was the terrible Usak whom he had yet to meet. Then there was The Kid.

The Kid. What was her real name? Felice. Yes. That was the name Mrs. McLeod had told him. Felice. It meant happiness. It was a good name. But the irony. Poor child. Raised by the terrible Usak. Fostered here on the barren lands of the North, without a hope beyond the hard living these poor folk were able to scrape with the crude, uncultured assistance of an Indian. The whole thing was appalling. He loved the Northland. But to be condemned to it without hope of better things left him wondering at the amazing courage which Felice and this gentle mother must possess.

In that one brief moment headlong determination came to his assistance. It was not for nothing that Providence had directed his steps into this crude, desolate valley. No. And his heart warmed, and emotions stirred under the gladness of his inspiration.

“Mam,” he said, thrusting out a hard brown hand towards Hesther, “I want to thank you—I—”

But the out-held hand dropped abruptly to his side, and he broke off in the midst of the thing he had to say. For Perse and Jane Constance had rolled themselves clear of the door-sill to admit their foster-sister. The Kid stood framed in the opening with the grey-noon daylight shining behind her. She was radiant in her mannish parka, and the buckskin trousers terminating in high moccasins reaching almost to her knees. Her eyes were alight and shining in their sunbrowned setting, and her fair hair had fallen from beneath her low-pressed cap. Health and beauty were in every contour of her vigorous young body, and in her smiling eyes as she gazed upon the plain, angular face of the man who had just risen from Hesther’s chair. But a curious shyness left her hesitating and something dismayed.

For one instant the girl’s eyes encountered the man’s. Then she swiftly glanced at the older woman by the stove. And Hesther jumped at the cue she felt to be hers.

“It’s Felice, who we all call the Kid,” she said for the man’s benefit. Then she turned to the girl. “This is Mr. Wilder, my dear—Mr. Bill Wilder.”

The girl’s shyness passed in a quick smile that was like a sudden burst of sunshine.

“I know, Mum, dear,” she cried. “I met him two summers ago on the river and passed him and his outfit up through the rapids at the mouth of the river.” Then she crossed over to the man whose eyes were smiling in perfect content. “You’ve found our little shanty,” she said holding out a soft brown hand, “and I’m glad. You’re real welcome.”

The frankness of her greeting was utterly without embarrassment, and Wilder took the outstretched hand in both of his and held it for a moment while he turned to the mother who was looking on in amazement.

“She saved me a two days’ portage, mam,” he said, in explanation. “And I guess she’s the brightest jewel of a waterman I’ve seen in years.”

“My!” Hesther’s exclamation was almost a gasp as she watched their hands fall apart. Then with the mildest shadow of reproach: “An’ you never told me, Kid, You never said a word.”

CHAPTER IX

Usak stood up from the camp fire that was more than welcome. He stood with his broad back to the shelter of low scrub to leeward of which the midday camp had been pitched, and gazed out over a wide expanse of barren, windswept country. The threat overhanging the grey world was very real. Winter was in the dense, ponderously moving clouds; it was in the bite of the northerly wind, which was persistent and found the weak spot in such human clothing as had not yet given place to the furs of winter. The light of noonday, too, was sadly dull. For the hidden sun had lost so much of its summer power, and its range of daily progress had narrowed down to a line that was low on the horizon.

But the savage was unconcerned for the outlook of the day. He was unconcerned for the sterile territory over which his long summer journey had carried him. The man’s whole being was focussed upon the needs of life. The needs of those who depended on him. The needs which were no less his own. And for once a sense of satisfaction, of ease, was all-pervading. His trade had been something more profitable than it had been for years, and he understood that the needs of the coming winter, and next year’s open season, looked like being comfortably provided for. Oh, yes, there was much labour ahead.

His trade must be translated into the simple provisions which must ultimately be obtained in far-off Placer. He knew all that. But it left his staunch, fierce spirit unafraid. The means of obtaining the things needed were in his hands. The rest was the simple battle with the winter elements which had no terrors for his unimaginative mind.

It was the last lap of a journey of several months. Night would find him in the shelter of his own home, with the voices of the white children, who had become so much a part of his life, ringing in his ears. And before he slept he knew that he would have witnessed the glad smile of welcome and satisfaction in the white girl who was as the sun, moon, and stars of his life. He would have told her of his good news, and together they would have examined and appraised the values with which he had returned from the far-off Eskimo camps which good fortune had flung into his path.

So the grey world looked good. Even the naked undulations amongst which the ribbon-like river wound its way had lost something of their forbidding aspect. It was the world he knew, the world he had battled with all his manhood. His satisfaction had translated it.

He stood for a moment or two, a figure of splendid manhood. His far-gazing eyes looked out with something in them akin to that which looks out of the sailor-man’s eyes. They were searching, reposeful and steady with quiet confidence.

He turned at last at the sounds of movement at the fire, and, for a moment, he watched the white youth, who was his companion, as he collected the chattels out of which they had taken their midday meal.

Then he moved quickly to the boy’s side and took the pan and camp kettle from his hands. And his actions were accompanied by a swift protest in a voice that rarely softened.

“Him Injun work,” he said gruffly. And the manner of it left no doubt as to the definite understanding of their relations. It was the man’s fierce pride that his mission was to serve the white folk entrusted to his care.

Clarence yielded, but his thin cheeks flushed. Then he laughed but without mirth. He was a strapping youth of unusual physique. At sixteen he was all the man his mother claimed for him, for somehow the hardship of the trail had eaten into his youthful character and robbed it of the boyhood his years should have made his. He was serious, completely serious, and his freckled face and brown eyes looked something weary of the labour thus early flung on him.

“It’s most always that way, Usak,” he grumbled sharply. “Nothin’s my work you’ve got time to do.”

The Indian made no reply. He moved quickly over to the three great caribou, standing ready for the trail, harnessed to their long, trailing carryalls. They were fine, powerful bucks, long-trained to the work, and their widespreading, downy antlers, now in full growth and almost ready for their annual shedding, indicated their tally of years in the service of the northern trail. He bestowed the gear in its allotted place in the outfit and returned to the fire.

For a few moments he held out his brown hands to the warming embers, squatting low on his haunches. Then he turned to the boy. His reply to the youth’s challenge had been carefully considered.

“What you mak him this word?” he said, in his harsh way. “You my white boss I lak him mak work for. It good. Oh, yes. Someday it come you grow big white man lak to the good boss, Marty. I know. Then you think ’em this dam Injun no good. Him mak white boy-work for him. No good. I, whiteman, no work for Injun man. Oh no.” His black eyes smiled, and his smile had no more softness in it than his frown. “I tell you,” he went on. “I think much big think. You mak big trail man bimeby. Bimeby Usak die dead. Maybe he get kill ’em all up on winter trail. Who knows? Then he think much for him Kid. He think much for him white-mother, Hesther. Him say, Usak all dead. No matter. Him Clarence big fine trail man. Him mak good all thing Usak no more do. So Usak not care the big spirit tak him. So. Whiteman tell Injun all time work. It so. The good boss, Marty, speak so. Injun man no good, never.”

Clarence turned quickly. He, too, was squatting over the welcome fire. A sharp retort was on his lips. He knew that the Indian was his master on the trail. He knew that the man was almost superhuman in his ability. He knew that the man’s desire was just as he said. But somehow the spirit in him refused to accept the other’s self-abnegation. Usak was his teacher, not his servant. And somehow he felt there was no right, no justice, for all the difference in colour, that this creature should so humble himself by reason of that absurd difference.

But his lips closed again without a spoken word. He was held silent under the sway of the man’s powerful influence. And so, as it was always, Usak had his way.

The Indian nodded. Then his dark eyes smiled again, and his powerful hands rubbed themselves together over the luxurious warmth.

“I wait for that,” he said quietly. “You my boss. My good white boss. Same lak the white-girl, Kid, an’ the good Marty. Sure we pull out. We mak him the farm this night. It good. Much good.”

He rose to his full height without effort, and turned at once to the waiting caribou.

The night was dark but the burden of cloud had completely dispersed. In its place was a velvet sky studded with myriads of starry jewels. Then away to the north the world was lit by a shadowy movement of northern lights. The night was typical of the fall of the northern year, chill, still, haunted, for all its perfect calm, by the fierce threat of the approach of winter.

The ice-cold waters of the river lay behind the outfit. They had just crossed the shallow ford where the stream played boisterously over the boulder-strewn gravel bed. The labouring caribou were moving slowly up the gentle incline of lichen-covered foreshore. And the Indian on the lead, and the white youth trailing behind the last of the three beasts of burden, knew that in less than two hours the last eight miles or so of their summer-long journey would be accomplished.

Usak dropped back from his lead and permitted the caribou to pass him, and took his place beside the leg-weary youth. For some time they paced on in silence each absorbed in his own thought.

It was a great looking forward for both. Both were contemplating that modest home they were approaching with feelings of something more than content. Clarence was yearning for the boisterous companionship of his brothers and sisters. The boy in him was crying out for the youth which the rigours of the northern trail had so long denied him. The ramshackle habitation which was his home possessed for him just now a splendour of comfort, and ease, and delight such as only a starving imagination could create about it. He was heart-sick and bodily weary with the interminable labour which the long trail demanded.

With the Indian it was different. The joy of return for him had no relation to any weariness of body or spirit. He was contemplating only the good news which was carefully packed up on the primitive carryalls to which the caribou were harnessed, and the happiness he looked to see shining in the eyes of the whitewoman it was his mission to serve.

It was out of this spirit of happy satisfaction he had abandoned his place at the head of the outfit, and dropped abreast of his white companion. For once in his life it was his desire to talk. And the inspiration came from the fulness of his savage heart.

“The white mother much glad bimeby,” he said, in his curious halting fashion.

Clarence nodded. He paused a moment and ran his strong hands down the legs of his buckskin nether garments. The ice cold water of the river was partially squeezed out of them, but they remained saturated and chilly to the sturdy legs they covered.

“I think much,” Usak went on. “This winter trail. You mak him with me? Him Kid much good trail man. Plenty big white heart. She mak ’em good, yes. But she much soft white woman. Winter trail him hard. Placer long piece far. It no good. No. Clarence big trail man now. Snow. Ice. Storm. It nothing to big trail man Clarence—now. You come mak him with Usak? Then him Kid sleep good by the farm. All time much warm. All time much eat good. Yes?”

The boy looked up into the darkly shadowed face in the starlit night as they walked rapidly behind the great deer who were hurrying towards the homestead which they knew lay ahead. For all his weariness a great pride uplifted the youth. The desperate winter trail. The long trail which hitherto had been steadily denied him by reason of his youth and lacking experience. Usak had bid him face it. The vanity of the youth flamed up in him.

“You mean that, Usak?” he demanded sharply. And the Indian realised the tone.

Clarence drew a deep breath. Then after a moment he went on. And again the Indian recognised and approved the new tone that rang in his voice.

“That goes, Usak,” he said. Then with sudden passionate energy: “I’m no kid now,” he cried. “The winter trail I guess needs menfolk, not women or kids. I’m with you, sure. And I play my hand right through. Say, I go, but I go right. Ther’s goin’ to be no play. The work that’s yours is yours. The work that’s mine’s mine. An’ I don’t let any feller do my work on the trail. Not even you. Does that go? Say it right here an’ now.”

The smile that changed the Indian’s expression so little was there under cover of the shadows of night.

“Him go all time, sure. You big boss whiteman mak him trade by Placer. You say all time the thing we do. Oh, yes. That’s so. Usak—Sho!”

The man broke off and his final exclamation had in it the curious hiss so indicative of a mind started profoundly and unpleasantly. He had halted on the summit of a high ground roller and stood pointing out ahead, somewhere on the opposite shore of the river where the twinkling lights of camp fires were burning brightly. He stood awhile in deep, concentrated contemplation, and his arm remained out-flung for his companion’s benefit Clarence, too, was gazing at the amazing sight of the twinkling, distant camp fires.

The same thought was in the mind of each. But it was the uncompromising spirit of the savage that first gave it expression.

Bill Wilder kicked the embers of the fire together. Then he leant over to the driftwood stack and clawed several sticks from the pile. He flung them on the fire and watched the stream of sparks fly upward on the still night air.

It was the second night of camping on the gravel flats of the Caribou River, and the last brief hour before seeking the fur-lined bags in which the northern man is wont to sleep. Chilcoot and Wilder were squatting side by side, Indian fashion, over the camp fire burning adjacent to the tent they shared with the Irishman. And the latter faced them beyond the fire, sprawled on the ground baked hard by the now departed summer heat.

Talk had died out. These men rarely wasted words. They had long since developed the silent habit which the northern solitudes so surely breed. But even so, for once there was a sense of restraint in their silent companionship. It was a restraint which arose from a sense of grievance on the part of both Chilcoot and the Irishman. And it had developed from the moment of quitting the mysterious habitation in the western hills.

The facts were simple enough from their point of view. Both the Irishman and Chilcoot had been left in complete ignorance of their leader’s adventures during his long night vigil in the deserted house. He had returned to them only to order a hurried departure, and had definitely avoided explanations in response to their eager inquiries by evasive generalisations.

“I just don’t get the meaning of anything, anyway,” he had declared, with a shake of the head. “Ther’s some queer secret to that shanty the folks who own it don’t reckon to hand out. If we’d the time to pass on up the creek maybe we’d locate the meaning of things. But we haven’t and seemingly that darn house is empty, and there isn’t a thing to it to tell us anything. No,” he said, “I’ve passed a long night in it and taken chances I don’t usually reckon to take, and I’ve quit it feeling like a feller who’s got through with a nightmare, an’ wonders what in hell he’s eaten to give it him. I’m sick to death chasing ghosts, and mean to quit right here. We’ll just need to report to our superiors,” he smiled, “an’ leave ’em to investigate. Meanwhile we’ll get right on after the stuff which seems to me to lie in one direction, and that’s the location where the dead missioner worked around. We’ll beat it down to the Caribou River for a last fling, and after that Placer’s the best thing I know.”

Chilcoot who understood his friend through long years of experience and association was by no means deceived. But his loyalty was the strongest part of him. He read behind the man’s words. He saw and appreciated the suggestion of excitement lying at the back of Wilder’s smiling eyes, and understood that the claimed unproductiveness of the night’s vigil was sheer subterfuge. Furthermore he realised that the hurriedly ordered departure had been inspired by the events of the night. But he attempted no further question. And even aided his friend in denying the torrent of questioning which the Irishman did not scruple to pour out.

Mike’s reminders of the obvious oil and coal wealth of the black, mysterious hills, and the queer soil of the whole region, left Wilder unmoved. He agreed simply. But he dismissed the whole proposition as being outside anything but the range of their natural curiosity. He reminded the persistent creature that the territory was Alaskan, and they were for the time being debarred from further investigation through being enrolled officers of the Canadian Police.

So he had had his way and the eastward journey was embarked upon. And as the waters of the oily creek passed away behind them, and the queer Fire Hills dropped back into the distance he hugged his secrets of the night to himself for the purpose of using them in the fashion he had already designed. Thus his companions were left puzzled and dissatisfied.

All the way down the great waterway of the Hekor, Wilder had pondered the position in which he found himself and the events which had led up to it. The figures of the blinded Japanese and his little wife haunted him. Then there was that carefully detailed chart which showed the locality of the dead missionary’s discovery to be on the Caribou River. And the thought of the Caribou had brought again into the forefront of his vision the memory of the fair young white girl who had passed him up the rapids which churned about its mouth, and with her parting farewell, had flung her invitation at him to that home which was ten miles up from the junction of the two rivers.

The memory of the Kid had been with him ever since he had first gazed down into her wonderful blue eyes, and had realised the perfect rounded figure of her womanhood under her mannish garb. He had always remembered those peeping golden strands of hair, which, despite her best effort to conceal them, never failed to escape from under the fur cap which was so closely drawn down over her shapely head. Then her wonderful skill on the water, her confidence and her pride in her achievement. He needed nothing beyond those things. The girl had held him fascinated. She had set all the youth in him afire. And now—now the wonder of it. The chances of those remote hills had sent him racing down towards her home full of a dream that surged through his senses with all the pristine fire of his hitherto unstirred manhood.

He was thinking of her now. He was thinking of his visit to her home that very noonday, the first of his arrival upon the river. As he sat over the fire silently contemplating the depth of its ruddy heart with calm unsmiling eyes, a passionate desire was stirring within him. Since the moment of return to his camp on the gravel flats, with the picture of that happy, unkempt home full of sturdy young life haunting him, he had been concerned only for the sweet, blue, smiling eyes of the girl of the northern wild.

He had heard the story of the courageous mother. He had heard the girl’s story from her own pretty lips as they had walked, to the bank of the river where he had left his canoe moored. And he had been filled with only the greater admiration for the simple strength and courage with which these devoted souls had embarked upon their tremendous struggle for existence.

At last he knocked out his charred pipe and thrust it away into a pocket. Again his hands were outspread to the blaze, but now his eyes were directed to the red-headed creature beyond the fire. Wilder suddenly cleared his throat. He began to speak, addressing himself to the Irishman. And Chilcoot looked round from his contemplation of the fire.

“You boys best listen awhile while I make a talk.” Wilder’s manner was quiet enough, but there was that in his tone which impressed his companions. “You’ve maybe both got a grouch on me. And I’ll admit I’d feel the same if I were you. You’re both of you guessing all sorts of bad med’cine about that business back there in the hills. You’re reckoning I got visions I haven’t figured to pass on to you. Well, I sort of feel like clearing things up some—I mean that old grouch.”

His eyes began to smile and he turned to the older man beside him and shook his head.

“No,” he went on, “I’m not going to say a word about that night I passed in that darn place. I’m just going to ask you boys to sort of forget it, and forget your grouch. You just got to trust me same as you’ve done right along, and maybe later, I’ll be able to hand you the story as I know it. You, Chilcoot, know me, and I guess you’ll act that way without a kick. It’ll be harder for Mike, who hasn’t worked with me the years you have. Still, maybe I can make it easy even for him.”

He thrust out a foot and kicked the fire together while the two men maintained their silent regard.

“The thing I’ve to talk about is the thing we got to do right here,” he went on. “I’ve got it planned, and I want to hand you the schedule of it. We’ve drawn a bad run of blanks for the stuff we’ve been chasing for the past year, but the run’s ended. The stuff’s in sight. It’s right here on these mud flats, for all the notion’ll seem plumb crazy to you boys.”

“Ther’s no reason for me to hand you that, Mike,” he said sharply. “Ther’s no reason for me to hand you a word that way. You signed a partnership in this layout, with me to lead without question. The thing that concerns you is the stuff. Here. You don’t believe that stuff is on this creek. That’s so. I say it is. Our partnership doesn’t quit till fall next year. Well, I guess I’m not yearning to hand you presents. Guess you haven’t found it my way—”

“Just so,” Wilder nodded. “That being so it’ll make you appreciate the thing I’ll hand you now. I’ll pass you a bank draft for haf a million dollars the day we set foot in Placer if we haven’t located that missioner’s ‘strike’ somewhere along this mud-bottomed creek. An’ I’ll call Chilcoot to witness that goes.”

The two men gazed eye to eye through the haze of smoke. Mike made no movement, but a look of almost foolish doubt was in his mute regard of the man who made his amazing offer. It was different with Chilcoot. He turned almost with a jump.

“I’m not,” Wilder snapped, while his gaze remained steadily fixed on the face of the man beyond the fire. “Does it go, Mike?” he asked. “And does it cut out your kick? That’s the thing I’m looking for. You get the thing we’re looking for under my leadership, or I hand you haf a million dollars a present. Well?”

The Irishman raised a hand and thrust his fur cap back from his forehead. His amazement was almost ludicrous.

The Irishman suddenly broke into a laugh of derision. “Well,” he cried, “Chilcoot’s witness.” Then he flung up his hands. “Say, I haven’t any sort of kick left in me. I don’t care a curse if you passed the night in that darnation shanty with an army of murderin’ spooks. Gee! Haf a million dollars. I’d hate to death a sight of that missioner’s ‘strike’ between now an’ next fall. Hand out your dope, Bill. You’re boss of this layout. Haf a million! Gee!”

Wilder nodded. He turned at once to Chilcoot. He shook his head with quiet confidence.

“I’m not crazy, boy,” he cried, in a tone of pleasant tolerance. “Do you mind our ‘strike’ back there on Eighty-mile in those days when we were worried keeping our bellies from rattling against our backbones? Get a look into this darn swamp and think back. It’s twin to Eighty-mile. The formation is like as two beans. The same mud, an’ granite, with the same queer breaks of red gravel miles on a stretch. Ther’s that. But ther’s more. That missioner lived right on this creek. It was his home country. And he wasn’t the boy to chase around on a prospect. If he made a ‘strike’ it was on home territory that was always under his eye. And you’ll mind he never mentioned Caribou in his yarns. He said Loon Creek, which is far enough to keep prying eyes from getting around the real location. Maybe he was wise for all they beat him. There it is anyway. I’ve got a mighty hunch for this creek.”

“An’ you reckon to stake a haf million on your notion?” Chilcoot cried uneasily.

“I’ll play my luck.” Wilder nodded. “I’ll go further. I know the stuff is here.”

“Here,” he said quietly spreading out his hand in an expressive gesture, “we only got a matter of weeks to the freeze-up. We’re liable to snow any day now, and every night ther’s frost. In awhile the ground’ll be solid so we can’t break into it without more dynamite than we got stowed. That being so, here’s the schedule. You, Mike, now you feel good about it, ’ll need to beat up stream and locate prospect ground for next spring. You’ll use the whole outfit and you’ll locate camp ground. That’s your billet till the freeze-up, and you’ll need to make right up to the head waters. Chilcoot and I’ll beat our own trail. An’ don’t forget it, boy, Chilcoot’s witness ther’s haf a million for you if we don’t make that ‘strike.’ Does it tickle you any?”

The Irishman was grinning from the roots of his flaming hair to a neck that was none too clean. The last shadow of his discontent had vanished from his expressive eyes. And even Chilcoot was smiling in his slow fashion.

“That’s good,” said Wilder. “Guess we can roll into our—Hello! What the—?”

He sat peering out down the river bank with a hand shading his eyes from the firelight. Chilcoot too had turned searching into the night. The Irishman, standing, was in possession of the better view.

“It’s two fellers comin’ up from the river,” he said. “An’ they got a small kyak drawn up on the shore.”

The gathering about Wilder’s camp fire had been augmented. Five men sat about it where before there had only been three. Of the newcomers one was a white youth and the other was an Indian, who left Wilder’s stature no more than ordinary. The newcomers were squatting on the river side of the fire, slightly apart from the others. And they sat side by side, closely, as though there remained a definite barrier of antagonism between them and the strangers they had found on the river.

Usak sat with his long old rifle laid across his knees. Clarence was armed, too, but his weapon was in the nature of a more modern sporting rifle. Of the gold men one at least realised the personality of these visitors in the night.

There had been no greeting. The Indian and his companion had approached watchfully. They had reached the fire without a word. But their eyes had been busy, and their minds full of searching questions. Forthwith they had squatted. But only on their recognition that their hosts were whitemen.

It was Wilder who broke up the strained silence. The moment the flame of fire had lit up the white youth’s face recognition had been instant. The likeness in it to the faces of those brothers and sisters he had encountered that noonday left the identity of both him and his dusky companion beyond question.

“You are Clarence,” he said, with quiet friendliness. Then his gaze rested thoughtfully upon the inscrutable eyes, and harshly moulded features of the Indian. “And you are Usak.”

It was the white youth who replied. He nodded while the Indian sat searching the whitemen’s faces with a gaze that was almost lost in eyes narrowed down to the merest slits.

His young white boss having answered the first question Usak had no scruple but to take up the rest of the matter himself.

Wilder’s ready reply was in studied friendliness. But his keen eyes searched the Indian’s face, which was completely expressionless. The dusky face had neither friendliness nor antagonism. Yet it was potential for either under the harsh mask which Nature had set upon it.

Chilcoot and Mike left the situation in the hands of their chief, and simply sat waiting and curious. The white boy afforded them little concern. It was the Indian, with his grim manner, and his long, old-fashioned rifle that claimed their whole attention, as it did their chief’s.

But Wilder was studying the man out of his knowledge of his malevolent reputation. He knew he was confronting the dreaded creature who had perpetrated his terrible vengeance upon those two people he had encountered at the house in the hills. He knew it at once when he recognised Clarence as one of the family he had visited that noonday. And he was anxious to discover the impression his presence on the river made upon the man.

“You gold men,” Usak said, in a tone that was deep-throated and full of the latent savage in him. “You come for gold? You come to Caribou.” He shook his head, and his eyes suddenly opened wide, and their black depths were full of that fierce resentment which was to be feared like a cyclonic storm. “I tell you no!” he cried hotly. “Caribou is not for whiteman gold man. No. It is for the white girl the good boss Marty leave to the care of Usak. Him all mans quit Caribou quick. I say him. I—Usak. You’m go quick as you come. You not go, then all mans get kill up dead. It so. Him no gold on Caribou, an’ Caribou him for my good white-girl boss, Kid.”

With his last word the man stood erect and his movement was without any apparent effort. He stood a creature of mighty stature grasping a long rifle that was dwarfed beside him. He deliberately spat in the fire and turned away. Then it was, for the first time, he experienced the authority he had forced on his white companion’s shoulders. Clarence, too, had risen, but he did not turn away.

The Indian was startled. He turned again and waited at the boy’s bidding, while his passionate eyes narrowed on the instant.

Clarence gave him no time to speak. He passed round the fire to Wilder and thrust out a welcoming hand.

“I’m glad to meet you, sir,” he said, with an amiable boyish smile. “Guess I’m only a kid, but I can speak for my mother an’ the Kid. You see, Usak’s our guardian around here. He’s the best thing to us that was ever put into an Indian’s body. But he reckons this river and all the territory around it belongs to my mother an’ the Kid, an’ hates the sight of folks he thinks likely to do us hurt. You get that? But he don’t quite understand things between whitefolk. I’m glad to welcome you to our country, an’ I’ll be glad to welcome you by our home down the river. And I guess Mum, and the Kid’ll feel that way, too. Maybe you’ll forget Usak spat into your fire.”

Wilder took the boy’s hand in a powerful grip, and smiled up into his ingenuous tired face.

“Why, sure,” he cried. “You don’t need to say another word. I’ve been along this morning to pay my respects to your splendid mother, and your—Kid. And seeing I’m located on this river of yours for the next year, why, I’m hoping I’ll see a deal of you all. My friends here feel that way, too. We’re not pirates come to steal anything you reckon is yours, or to hand you a moment’s worry. That goes, an’ I guess your mother’ll tell you the same.”

The boy stood for a moment a little overwhelmed by the easy, friendly manner of the stranger. And in his confusion at his impulsive assertion of authority over the Indian he resorted to the only thing his wit suggested. He took refuge in a swift withdrawal.

“Thank you, sir,” he said lamely. “I guess we’ll get right on home. You see, we’re just in off a summer trail.” He turned away and looked squarely into the Indian’s face. “We’ll beat it home, Usak,” he said shortly.

They watched the shadowy figures in silence as they passed down the river bank and were swallowed up by the shadows of the chilly night.

“I’d sooner be up against the worst Euralian ever bred than that darn redskin,” he said meditatively.

“Yes,” he said, regarding the fire with serious eyes. “Or a whole darn legion of ’em.”

CHAPTER X

The Kid stood up from her task. She was no longer in her working clothes, and the translation was something almost magical. Her tall, slim, yet beautifully rounded figure was clad in a simple shirtwaist of some cheap cotton material, which, with a plain, dark cloth, shortish skirt, completed the costume in which she loved to array herself at the close of her working day. She was smiling her delight, and her whole expression was radiant. Her pretty eyes were alight with all that satisfaction which Usak, in his simple mind, had dreamt he would witness in them. Her lips were parted for the eager talk which sprang so readily to them. And as the brooding eyes of the savage gazed upon her he felt that his reward was ample.

They were in the leanto storehouse built against the log shanty which was Usak’s own abode. It was all a part of the ramshackle homestead which housed them all, but it was set apart and without communication with the abode given up to the white folks of the queerly assorted household.

An oil lamp lit the place with its inadequate yellow light, and produced profound shadows amongst the general litter. It was set on an up-turned packing case which was part of the stock-in-trade for transport. The dry mud floor was littered with the result of the Indian’s summer trade, the extent and quality of which was far more generous than the girl had hoped would be the case. There were a number of pelts amongst which were several white and red fox. There were two or three freshwater seals, some beaver and fishers, and a makeweight of wild cat. But best of all were several ivory walrus tusks, and the prize of all prizes to the pelt hunter, which the girl was holding in her brown hands and stroking gently in her delight. It was a jet black fox. And she knew its value to be far more than the rest of the trade put together.

“It’s a wonderful, wonderful skin, Usak,” she said, her eyes feasting on the crudely dried fur, which, even in its rough state was still soft, and thick, and full of promise. “Whoever took it was a swell hunter,” she declared, scrutinising it with the eye of an expert. “Trapped. And not a scar to show how. My, but it’s worth a pile. How much?”

“Sho!” The Indian shrugged. “I not say him. Tousand dollar, maybe. Him much plenty good pelt. Oh, yes.”

“Thousand?” The girl’s tone was scornful. “More like fifteen hundred. We’ll get that in Placer, sure. An’ these ivories,” she went on. “Oh, it’s a good trade.” She laid the skin aside reluctantly and smiled again into the man’s face. “Guess if I know a thing we haven’t a worry for a year an’ more. Mum’ll sleep easy for a year certain, I guess. An’ Perse’s pants won’t always have her figgering.”

Then the woman in her became uppermost as she contemplated the further meaning of the Indian’s success.

“Mum’ll get a new outfit. And so will Mary Justicia. An’ we can fix up all the others, the boys as well, I mean. It’s just great, Usak. You’re—you’re a wonder. How did you do it? Did you locate a bunch of Euralian robbers, an’—”

The Indian shook his head. But he offered no verbal denial. Truth to tell the girl’s curiosity and obvious desire for the story of his summer-long labours made no appeal to him. For all his satisfaction at the Kid’s readily expressed delight he had been robbed of more than half his joy of return by that final incident of his journey home. His passionate heart was full of a sort of crazy resentment at the presence of the outfit of white intruders on the river. And even as the girl talked and questioned he remained absorbed in, and nursing his bitter grievance.

His silence and lack of interest were too painfully obvious to be missed. And the Kid suddenly dropped to a seat on a box beside the beautiful fur she had laid aside.

“What is it, Usak?” she asked, with that quick return to the authority which existed between them. “Ther’s things worrying. I can see it in your face. Best tell it right away. Is it Clarence? Has he failed after the good things you hoped of him? Yes. Best tell it. I can stand things to-night with a clean up of trade like this around me.”

The Indian moved away. He squatted himself on an upturned sled awaiting repairs to its runners. And the girl watched him closely.

Young as she was there was much that the Kid understood instinctively. She had not spent all her childhood’s days with this great savage without learning something of his almost insanely passionate moods, and the potentialities of them. To her he was just a savage watch-dog, loyal from the crown of his black head to the soles of his moccasined feet. But she understood that his curious ferocity was none the less for it. There was one thing in him that never failed to stir her to some alarm. It was the narrowing of his black eyes, which, in his more violent moods, had a knack of closing to mere slits. His eyes were so closed just now.

While she waited for him to speak she watched him reach out and possess himself of his beloved rifle which had been stood against the wall of the leanto. He took it, and laid it across his knees, and his powerful fingers caressed the quaint old trigger-guard. It seemed to her that never in her life had she observed him in so ominous a mood.

“Well?” she demanded sharply, and her alarm added a strident ring to her voice.

“You mak him this question?” he demanded, without softening. “This thing I mak to myself. Oh, yes. It for me. I feel him all here,” he beat his chest with one clenched fist to indicate his bosom. “I mak him no say. Not nothing. Clarence him big whiteman. Much good trail man. So. I mak you big trade. Plenty food come next year. Plenty good thing much. So. You lak him? Oh, yes. It good. Then why you mak him this question?”

The Kid smiled with an effort. She was without personal fear. Her smiling blue eyes confronted and held him as she determined they should.

“I’m waiting,” she said. “If I wait here all night in the cold you’ll surely have to say it. What’s troubling?”

The girl’s power over the savage was tremendous. In a curious negative sort of way she understood that this was so. She never looked for the reason, simply accepting the obvious fact, and sometimes rejoicing in it.

For all her youth she understood the danger of his untamed spirit. And many times in her young life she had learned the value of the restraining influence she exercised over him.

The man knew his weakness in confronting her. There were times when his hot soul rebelled at his own powerlessness. It was that way now. But through it all a subtle gladness never failed to soften the irritation their clashes of will were wont to inspire. The truth was his utter and complete worship of her was irresistible. As an infant the Kid had caught the rebound of his devotion to his murdered wife, Pri-loo, and the perfect loyalty that had been his for her father. From the moment of the passing of these two creatures, who had bounded the whole of his life’s horizon, he had found salvation from the wreckage of his savage passions in the infant life that had been flung into his empty arms. Perhaps his worship of her was a sheer insanity. But it was an idolatry of parental purity.

He chafed under her insistence. Once he sought to avoid those compelling eyes. He gazed about among the shadows of the hut in a helpless fashion that was almost pathetic, whilst his great hand fondled the breech of his beloved weapon. But he returned to the magnet that never failed to claim him as surely held as any bond-slave.

“Tcha!” The exclamation was the man’s final, ungracious yielding. He flung his rifle aside and stood up. And in a moment he was rapidly pacing the narrow limits of the hut. “You ask him this? I tell you, ‘no.’ No good. So I tell you.” He paused and flung out an arm pointing in the direction of the river. “This white-man. Bimeby I go kill ’em all up.”

He remained pointing. His eyes were wide now and full of deadly purpose. A volcanic rage was consuming him.

The Kid’s eyes also widened for an instant. She remained unmoving. Then a smile dawned about her lips and presently illuminated her whole face. She raised one hand and thrust out a pointing finger at him, and a clear, happy, ringing laugh broke from her parted lips.

“You kill up these whitemen?” she cried. “These folks who’ve just come along up the river? No,” she said, suddenly sobering, and shaking her head. “If you kill them you kill me, too. They’re all my good friends, Usak. An’ if you hurt a hair of their heads I’ll just hate you to death for ever an’ ever.”

It was a tense moment. The man had come to a standstill, staring incredulously down at the fair-haired creature who was his whole earthly delight. For all her laugh there was fear in the Kid’s heart. The impulse had been irresistible. There could be no half measures. The situation had called for strong and definite challenge.

“You say him this?” The man’s tone was like the threatening growl of a wild beast. “This whitemans all your good friend? I tell you—No! Him mans your enemy. Him come steal all things what are yours. Him river. Him land. Him—gold. Usak know plenty much. Him no damfool Injun man. Oh, no. Him wise plenty. Him say this whitemans no good friend. Only big thief come steal all thing. So I kill ’em up, sure.”

The Kid breathed a deep sigh. The joy of this wild man’s return had lost its glamour. Deepening fear gripped her heart. And it was for the whiteman with the grey eyes that smiled so gently, and reflected so clearly the big, honest soul behind them.

“You just got to listen, Usak,” she cried urgently, stifling the fear which was striving to display itself in eye and voice. “An’ when I’ve done my talk you’ll need to quit that wicked spirit that’s always wanting to kill when folks offend you. I didn’t know you’d had time to locate these folks. But it don’t matter a thing. I tell you they’re friends—of mine. I’ve known Bill Wilder since two summers back. I found him in trouble with his outfit on the river below the rapids, and passed him right up through the channel on his way north. And I asked him right then, when he got along down, to come up the Caribou an’ make a friendly visit. He’s come along because I asked him. He’s my friend an’—”

“You lak him, this man? Him your man? You marry him same lak Pri-loo was my woman?”

The man’s tone had changed to one of simple wonder and almost of incredulity. His understanding had only one interpretation for a man and woman’s friendship, and perhaps he was the wiser for it. But his savage, untutored directness of expression sent the hot blood of shame to the simple girl’s cheeks. The yellow lamp-light revealed the flushed cheeks and the half closed eyelids that sought to defend the woman’s secret from the man’s searching gaze.

The Kid shook her head, and denial cost her an effort. “It’s not that way with white-folk,” she said endeavouring to evade direct denial. “Maybe I just like him. He’s big, an’ strong, an’ good. I like his talk. So I think Mum an’ the children like him, too.”

“So you say this man to come by Caribou—that you see him some more? Oh, yes. So white mother Hesther may lak him, too? An’ those others?”

The man’s eyes were no longer fierce. They were smiling derisively out of his savage wisdom.

The Kid stirred restlessly under his words and manner. His smile, which was intended for no unkindness, became a hateful thing to her. And she understood the reason. She knew that her explanation was without truth. She had trapped herself into foolish evasion. She knew she had desired herself to see this man again. She knew— But she permitted herself no further admission. Anger rose swiftly in her, and she sprang to her feet. Her pretty eyes flashed in the yellow light and for the first time in his life the Indian realised something of that which centuries of civilization has bred into the white-woman.

“How dare you say that to me?” she cried. “You—an Indian!” She laughed a curious shrill sort of laugh. “What is it you say? ‘Injun man no good.’ Maybe you’re right. I’m your good boss Marty’s daughter. Remember that. I’m your boss. Your white boss. And now I tell you to obey. You leave that whiteman, all those whitemen alone. I tell you this. Who’re you to say who comes on this river? Who’re you anyway? Usak, the Indian. An Indian—the servant of my dead father, and now my servant. Remember!”

She stood in the fitful light a tall slim figure of angry authority and outraged womanhood. And the great Indian stood cowed before the torrent of her scorn and wrath. No longer was the smiling derision in his eyes. No longer was that blaze of volcanic wrath in them. She had smote him in the most vulnerable joint of his armour. His worshipped idol had turned and rended him, and spurned him as she might some pariah.

The great fellow’s eyes avoided the girl’s. His simian length of arms left his great hands hanging seemingly helpless by his sidies. His great size reduced him to a painful picture of pathetic dejection. The Kid’s swift scorn had beaten him as nothing else in the world could have beaten him.

She moved towards the door without a further glance in his direction. Her body was erect, and her heart was hard set and coldly determined. There was no pause or further word. But she knew.

It came as she reached the door. There was a sound behind her. The next moment Usak was beside her holding out the precious black fox skin she had left.

“You tak him this?” he said, in a tone of humility and appeal that was irresistible to the girl who knew so well all he had always been to her. “I mak him this trade for the white boss, Kid. I see ’em five Euralian by the camp. I kill ’em all up dead. So I mak tak ’em this black fox, an’ this ivory. Oh, yes. I kill ’em all man’s for white boss, Kid. All time I do this. I do all thing for Kid. So as she say—all time.”

The girl looked up into the man’s dark eyes. In a moment her heart melted. She took the priceless skin from his hands and laid it over her arm with one hand resting caressingly upon it.

“Euralian?” The man’s eyes widened. “It not matter nothing,” he said, with a shrug. “So I get him skin an’ him ivory for white boss, Kid. I kill all thing. Yes.”

The two men were standing on a gravel foreshore. It was the foreshore of a well-nigh dried out creek which in more abundant season was wont to flow turbulently into the greater stream of the Caribou. It was an almost hidden creek, for there existed no apparent inlet to the bigger river, except at such times as the spring freshet translated it into a surge of flood water. Now, in the late fall, there was scarcely water enough in its bed to do more than moisten the soles of a man’s moccasins, and, at the junction with Caribou, there was scarcely an indentation in the latter’s banks to mark its course.

But a mile and more to the north it was quite different. Here the creek was sharply marked between high, wide, barren shoulders that gave its course a breadth of something little less than a quarter of a mile. And its whole bed was a curious, copper-hued gravel which every gold man recognises as the precious “pay-dirt,” in pursuit of which he spends his life.

Bill Wilder and Chilcoot were moving slowly over this loose gravel gazing searchingly at the higher ground which enclosed the deepening cutting. For the moment they had no concern for the stuff they were treading under foot. They were looking for signs and landmarks which they had already learned by heart from minute descriptions.

With every furlong they explored the encompassing walls rose steadily higher, and grew ever more and more rugged. Their formation was rapidly changing. The rock walls were cut with sharp facets and riven in a hundred directions. There was no foliage anywhere. The cliffs were bald and not a yard of the wide pay-dirt bottom yielded a scrag of grass, or a single Arctic flower. It looked as if Nature had refused one atom of fertility to the soil in which she had chosen to bestow her treasure.

It was nearly noon when the explorers’ investigations were first interrupted. And the interruption came at a low headland where the whole course of the ravine swung away in an easterly direction, which looked to carry it in an exact parallel with the upper waters of the Caribou.

Chilcoot was on the lead at the bend and he came to a standstill, and flung out an arm pointing.

“Get a look, Bill,” he cried, in the rough tone that for him was something indicative of the unusual. “It’s a shanty, or I’m a ‘dead-beat.’”

The ravine had narrowed abruptly, but beyond the bend it instantly widened. Chilcoot was standing gazing beyond, where the dark, rocky walls had risen to a great height and overhung, shadowing the canyon ominously. He was pointing across the almost dried out stream at a tiny human habitation crushed in against the base of the opposite wall.

Wilder instantly abandoned his pre-occupation with a curious facet of black rock that was not unlike pumice in its queer formation. He had been examining a vein of crystal quartz running through it. He hurried up to his companion and gazed at the strange vision of a log-built shack that seemed a complete anachronism in this wilderness of Nature.

Wilder gazed about him. The interior of the dilapidated hut was no less interesting than its exterior. It was old and decayed, hanging together simply by reason of the support of the cliff against which it had been built. For the moment imagination was stirred, and he saw in fancy the picture of a simple missionary carrying on, in his untutored fashion, a work that had no relation to his spiritual calling.

Chilcoot, with the practical interest which the discovery inspired in his lesser imagination, was examining the signs and indications with which the place was littered. There was a rusted, riffled pan. There were several shovels in a more or less state of decay. There was an old packing case filled with odds and ends for a camper’s needs. There were the remains of a fire set between two blackened stones, a battered camp kettle and a pannikin or two. Just within the doorway stood a bent crowbar and a haftless pick. Another pick was leaning up against the box of oddments.

It was easy enough to interpret the story of this decayed and deserted shelter. And the men who had discovered it were prompt in their reading of its story. It was a gold prospector’s shelter littered with the crudest implements of his craft. And from the decaying walls and rafters, and the rust-eaten condition of every metal utensil, they read a story of long years of disuse and the stress of the northern seasons.

Chilcoot was stooping over the box of camp rubbish. Wilder had turned to the doorway, leaning out of its original truth, and, for awhile, the scene beyond it completely preoccupied him. It was a shadowed canyon which, as the distance gained, grew more and more rugged with vastly higher surroundings. But the gravel bed remained with its tiny stream of water drifting gently down from its far-off source. Directly opposite him stood a spire of rock that rose up like a monolith far above all its surroundings, and the sight of it seemed to absorb all his interest.

Chilcoot was standing over the box and its contents were littered about him on the ground. He was peering into a rusted tin box, stirring the contents with a knotted forefinger.

Bill came quickly to his side and together they gazed down at the loose yellow stuff that shone dully against the red rust with which the years had corroded the tin containing it. In spite of their years, their wealth, the sight of the precious metal held them fascinated, and stirred emotions deeply. It was a generous sample weighing several ounces, and amongst it were two or three nuggets the size of well-grown peas. Chilcoot picked out the largest and held it up for his companion’s inspection.

“Sure,” he said. Then he turned away. “Set it aside, old friend,” he went on, “an’ let’s get outside. We need to talk.”

The sky was drearily overcast, and the walls of the canyon further helped to overshadow the world about them. The two men were lounging on the bare gravel which formed the bed of the creek. Wilder had his back propped against the crazy shanty they had just explored.

Chilcoot folded up the paper which the other had passed him for examination. It was the plan of Marty Le Gros’ gold “strike,” and it was the first time since it had come into Wilder’s possession that other eyes than his had been permitted to gaze upon it.

The older man returned it without comment, but his deepset grey eyes were expressive. There was puzzlement in them. There was something else. They had narrowed curiously. And the hard lines of his weatherbeaten face were a shade more hardly set.

Wilder returned the map to the bosom of his buckskin parka. He flaked some tobacco from a plug with his sheath knife and lit his pipe. He ignored his companion’s mood, although perfectly aware of it.

“Ther’s a deal to do yet,” he said calmly. “A piece farther up the creek is Le Gros’ old working. The map shows that just as it hands us a picture of this shanty, and that queer spire of rock standing up right over there,” he added, nodding his head at the curious crag which rose sheer from the bed of the creek and towered above the high walls enclosing it. “Yes, we got to prospect that working, and try out the creek right along. If the ‘strike’ is right, and the old yarn proves true, the rest’s easy—or should be.”

“Guess I can’t hand no sort of opinion,” he said coldly. “I ain’t wise to a thing.”

The tone of voice, the curtness of the thing he said, should have had their effect. But Wilder still refused to be disturbed out of his calm. His eyes smiled as he gazed out over the gravel bed where the thin stream of the creek flowed on almost without a murmur. He was smoking with that leisurely luxury suggesting a contented mind.

“Just so, old friend,” he replied. “You don’t know a thing—yet. But you’re going to know it right now. All of it.”

“I’m glad.” The asperity was still in the other’s tone and Wilder’s smile deepened.

“You see I hadn’t the nerve to insult your intelligence, boy, by handing you a fairy tale—while it was just a fairy tale,” he said. “Guess I can’t stand the laff when it’s on me, either. So I guessed I best cut the talk and stand for a grouch. Well, it’s not a fairy tale now. No. Not by a long piece. An’ the laff—well, it’s not on me anyway.”

Chilcoot had sat up. His sturdy legs were drawn up and tucked under him in the fashion supposed to belong to the tailor. He was gazing round on his friend with a look of expectancy. Somehow his whole expression had undergone a swift change. He had clearly forgotten his resentment. He was always quick to react. His nature was easy where Wilder was concerned. Now a twinge of compunction at his own hastiness set him eager to make amends.

“You don’t need to say a thing, Bill. If it suits you to keep your face shut it goes with me all the time.”

But Wilder shook his head. He grinned and raised a hand and thrust back his cap.

“I need to say a whole heap. Maybe when I’m through you’ll wish I hadn’t. Say.” He paused thoughtfully. Then his eyes lit and gazed straight into the eyes of the older man. “I best tell you the thing that lies back of everything first. You’ll feel like laffing, maybe. But I don’t care a curse. You got to know, an’ I’m crazy to tell you. You see, you’ve been pardner an’ friend to me ever since the gold bug got into my liver. I’m nigh crazy for a pair of dandy blue eyes, just as blue as—as a summer sky in California, and a golden halo of hair like—like an angel’s. Yes, an’ for a kit of buckskin, all beaded an’ fine sewn like an Indian’s. I surely am crazy for it—all.”

The man had removed his pipe, and his hands had made a gesture of emphasis that told his companion far more than his words.

Chilcoot’s eyes were grinning, but there was no derision in them. They were shining with a depth of interest that changed his whole expression.

“Snakes, man!” he cried. “You’ve fallen fer that gal? That Kid that floated us up the river goin’ north? An’ who you’ve located again right now over at that darn queer outfit of a Reindeer farm? Say!”

“I surely have, old friend,” he said, with a restraint that the look in his eyes denied. “I’ve fallen fer that—Kid. That Kid whose name is Felice Le Gros. She’s just been a dream picture to me ever since I saw her handling that queer skin kyak of hers on the river, looking like some fairy Injun gal such as maybe you used to read about when story books were filled with wholesome fairy tales that set you crazy for the darn old wilderness. I’ve fallen for her so I don’t even want to pick myself up. I want her bad. She’s got to be my wife, or this darn life don’t mean a thing to me ever again. Life? Gee! I can’t see a day of it worth a regret on a deathbed if I can’t make that Kid feel the way I do.”

Chilcoot’s ill mood was entirely swept away. Hard old citizen as he was, saturated as he was with the iron of his early days of struggle to loot the earth, a surge of delighted interest thrilled him to the depths of his rough soul. No mother listening to the first love-story of an only daughter could have been moved more deeply. His years were nearly twice those of the other, but it made no difference, unless it were to add to the feeling of the moment.

“Does she know about it?” he demanded. “Does— Say, her name’s—she’s daughter to Marty Le Gros? She’s the ‘gal-child, white,’ Raymes told us of? Say, Bill, I’m crazy for the rest. Best get right in. I just don’t know a thing. An’ I seem to know less than ever I did before you began. But you’ve found a gal to share life with you. And I’m just so glad I can’t rightly say. Get right on with the yarn an’ I won’t butt in. I’m all out to pass you any old hand you’re needing.”

“That’s how I figgered, Chilcoot, knowing you,” Wilder said in his earnest fashion. “That’s why I told you this thing first. Now just sit around and I’ll tell you the stuff that looked like a fairy tale and kept my mouth shut.”

Wilder began his story at once and talked on without any sort of interruption from his companion. Lost in the dark heart of the ravine, overshadowed by a wintry sky and the rugged, barren, encompassing walls that rose up and shut out so much of the grey northern daylight, he told the story as he had learned it, and pieced together, of the tragedy of the apparently deserted habitation which he knew to be the home and secret hiding-place of the one-time leader of the fierce Euralian horde. He told of the events of his search and vigil in the house from the time of his discovery of the blinded Japanese, Count Hela, and his panic-stricken wife, to the final moment when the woman had pursued him with her story, and sought to bribe him with the precious map stolen from the murdered missionary. He told it all in close detail, dwelling upon the mention of the dreaded Usak’s name by the terror-stricken woman, that the other might follow out all his subsequent reasoning and re-construction of the story of Le Gros and his orphaned daughter. He told it right down to the story of his visit to the Reindeer Farm, on their arrival on the Caribou, which furnished him with the final corroboration.

“There it is, old friend,” he said in conclusion. “Usak, the husband of the murdered Pri-loo, never gave those folk the chance to use that map. He deliberately blinded the man and killed his son. And when I got wise from the map that this precious strike was on Caribou I got my big notion. I jumped for it right away and jumped right. This wonderful—Kid—with a face like— Say, I guessed right away at the start she was the ‘girl-child, white’ I was chasing up, and the rightful heir to her murdered father’s ‘strike.’ It was that closed up my mouth. I just couldn’t say a word. We—you boys—the whole outfit were on a gold trail looking to share in the stuff. And I knew that when it was located, by every sort of moral right an’ justice, it would belong to the Kid. And anyway she’d be entitled, an’ all her folks, to the first rake over of the claims. Ther’ could be nothing for you boys till her interest was safeguarded. See? She’s the daughter of Marty Le Gros, and was raised by that murdering Indian, Usak, who came right along the other night and threatened to clear us out of Caribou at the muzzle of a rifle that looked to have served an interior decoration for old Noah’s Ark. Can you beat it?”

Chilcoot shook his head helplessly. The story had lost nothing from his companion’s telling. He was well-nigh staggered at the hideous completeness of it all, and certainly amazed. His pipe had been forgotten until that moment, and he knocked the charred remains of tobacco out of it on a large flint lying nearby.

“I’d say it ’ud be the sort of crazy stunt most folks wouldn’t reckon to find come out of the mighty clear head they guess stands on the shoulders of Bill Wilder.”

“Maybe that’s so, boy,” Wilder retorted without umbrage. “But anyway, it’s a stunt to suit my notion of honesty, and—yours. See? I sent Mike an’ the bunch off to get ’em right out of the way while we came along here. That’s all right. Our work’s just beginning. You an’ me we’re going to get right to it and test out this queer old canyon. We got the time before winter, if the thing’s what I guess it is. When we’ve located the stuff ther’s got to be the pick of the claims for that gal. An’ one each for Mrs. McLeod, at the farm, and her kids. Then we’ll pass right down to Placer and make the titles good with the Commissioner. After that— next Spring—we’ll turn the bunch loose on the ground, and they can grab how they please. How’s that? Does it go? Yes, sure it does. I know you. You and me, we can afford to cut right out and play the game to help these others along. That’s my crazy notion. Well?” Chilcoot rose to his feet. There was no doubt of his agreement. An almost child-like delight was stirring his rugged heart.

“Surely, Bill,” he said simply. “It’s good for me. But that murdering Indian. Does he come in?”

Wilder’s eyes suddenly sobered. He, too, scrambled to his feet. And for a moment he stood gazing thoughtfully down the shadowed ravine.

“He worries me some,” he admitted at last. “Ther’s things mighty good in him, I guess. Ther’ must be. He raised the Kid. But ther’s things mighty bad I haven’t told you about.” Then he shrugged. “It don’t matter anyway. No, he don’t stand in. Maybe things’ll happen. We’ll just have to wait. You never can tell with a darn neche.”

A vision of the terrified Japanese woman had risen up before his mind’s eye. He remembered the nightmare she was enduring at the thought of Usak’s promised return. Suddenly he flung out his hands dismissing the vision.

“It’s all queer, Chilcoot,” he cried. “But we must see it through. It’s strange. To think I’ve had to beat about this darn old North to find the thing—the only thing to make life worth while. I could laff, only I don’t feel like laffing. Say, boy, you just don’t know how I want that—that Kid.”

CHAPTER XI

Each day the sun’s brief reign was growing less. There was perhaps six hours of daylight, fiercely bright when the snow clouds permitted, but otherwise grey and cold, and without beneficence. To the human mind day was no longer a thing of joy, but only a respite in which to complete those labours essential to existence in the northern wilderness before the long twilight of night finally closed down upon the world.

At the farm on the Caribou preparations for the winter were already in full swing. Already the reindeer herd had been passed up to the shelter of the hills to roam well-nigh free through the dark aisles of the woodland bluffs which lined the deeper valleys of the great divide, out of the heart of which the waters of the Caribou sprang. The labour of banking the outer walls of the homestead with soil for greater security against the cold had been completed. For the ground was already hardening under the sharp night frosts, and almost any day now might see the first flurry of snow. Daily the hauling of fuel went on from the distant forest bluff which sheltered the ruins of the missionary’s home where the Kid had first seen the light of the northern day. And this work was undertaken by the boys, and the half-breed Eskimos, whose work amongst the deer herd had ceased with its departure to the hills in search of winter keep.

Life just now was a sheer routine. A routine which demanded faithful observance. The least neglect might well spell disaster for those who knew the narrowness of the margin in human victory over the merciless winter season. But these northern people knew the routine of it by heart, and nothing would be neglected, nothing forgotten. The haulage of fuel would go on far into the winter, and when the world froze up and the white pall was spread over its dead body only the method of its transport would be changed.

But for all the drear of outlook in the coming season life was apparently no less the care-free thing which the youth of the farm so surely made it appear. Childish laughter was proof against a falling sun. It was proof against the anxious labour of it all, just as it was proof against the contemplation of unending darkness. It was almost as though the change had its appeal. Was not the twilight of winter something to inspire imagination? Was not the fierce blizzard, when the world was completely blinded for days on end, something to confront and defy with all the hardy spirit of youth? Was not the brilliant aurora something about which to weave romantic dreams as fantastic as was the great crescent of dancing light itself? And the ghostly northern lights, and the brilliant night-lit heavens, with their moon, and reflected moons, were not these matters in which the budding human mind could find a wealth of inspiration for the riot of imagination?

Yes, the long night of winter was not without its appeal to the young life on the Caribou River. Only was it for those elders, who knew its desperateness, who had long since learned the littleness of human life in the monstrous battle of the elements, a season of grave anxiety that left them indifferent to the irresponsible imaginings and dreamings of those at the threshold of life.

For Mary Justicia down to the youthful Jane Constance, with her curling brown hair and her velvet dark eyes, the coming of winter was a season of exciting interest. And this year even more so than usual. This year there was a curious hopeful change in their lives. The measure of it, perhaps, they failed to fully understand. But the effect was there, and they felt its influence. They one and all knew that Usak had returned with a really good trade. Usak was the genius of their lives, and this year he had waved his magic wand to some purpose. They had heard whispers amongst their elders of a good time coming. They had heard the Kid and their mother discussing colours and materials for suitings. They had heard talks of dollars in thousands. And visions of canned delicacies, of nice, fat, sticky syrup, and succulent preserves, had crept into their yearning minds.

But that was not all. There was a wondrous change in the hero of their youthful worship. The Kid’s smile was rarely shadowed as she ordered their lives. A soft delight looked out of her pretty eyes which shone with happy contentment whatever their childish aggravations. Then the mother of them all. Infrequent and gentle as were her scoldings generally, just now she seemed to have utterly forgotten her dispensing of them. The wash tub claimed her, her needle claimed her, her cooking claimed her, leaving her happily oblivious to their many and frequent shortcomings.

Then there were the gold seekers on the river. The laughing, red-headed Irishman, who had vanished up the river with the rivermen and those poorer whites in whom they were less interested. But the two others visited the homestead pretty regularly, and laughed, and talked, and did their best to make life one long joy for them.

Especially was this the case with the man Bill Wilder. Bill Wilder had caught the fancy of all, from their mother down to the merry Janey, whose table manners were a source of never-ending anxiety to Hesther. The children loved him as children will so often love a big man who is never reluctant to encourage their games. Perse clung to him at every opportunity. Was he not a gold man, and was not his coming to Caribou a justification of his own boyish dreams of gold? Clarence found in him a kindred spirit of the trail. And Alg sought his advice on his domestic labours on any and every excuse. But Gladys Anne and Janey were his favourites—next to the smiling Kid.

And the mother looked on, watchful and wisely alert. Her busy mind was full of speculation and contentment. She was thinking how she and her brood would fare should these men ultimately find the gold they sought. She refused to build on the notion. It was not her way. And just now, as a result of Usak’s return, she felt that ways and means were less pressing, and so, in her easy philosophy, that aspect of the position was permitted to drift into the background.

The Kid was her main thought just now. Her woman’s wisdom was sufficient for her to grasp the real meaning of Wilder’s frequent attendance at the farm. It was plainly written in his manner. It was still more plainly written in the manner of the girl in his absence. She had long since dragged the full story of their original meeting at the Hekor rapids from the diffident and almost reluctant girl. She had laughingly chidden her for her long reticence. She had even admonished her for the invitation she had flung at him, a gold man stranger.

But under it all, away back in her simple woman’s mind she nursed the romance of it all, and hoped and hoped, while yet she gravely feared for the orphan she had mothered.

The brief days flew rapidly by. Almost every night the tall figure of Wilder came up from the river bearing something for their supper, which he was scrupulously determined to share. The meal was partaken of by the yellow light of an oil lamp. Big Bill, as the children loved to call him, was for a brief while a part of the family, and sat around in the warm kitchen, smoking and laughing, and submitting to the ready banter which his search for gold on the Caribou inspired. Then later he strode off to his canoe lying drawn up on the river bank, and, not infrequently, he was accompanied by some of the elder children, and on occasions by the Kid, herself, alone.

Of all the folk at the homestead Usak took no delight in these visits. He definitely resented them. But he said no word, and simply refrained from taking any part in the welcome extended to the intruding whiteman. There was never a protest forthcoming. His protest had been made on the occasion he had stirred the Kid to wrath, and he had no desire to experience another such encounter. So he remained at his labours in his own quarters, watchful, alert, determined. And he made his preparations for the winter trail which was to yield something approaching affluence for those he served.

It was at the end of his first week on the river that Bill’s voice hailed the homestead as he came up from the landing, bearing a string of a dozen or more speckled mountain trout. The night was dark with heavy cloud, but the younger children raced out of the house to meet him at his summons.

A few moments later Perse dashed into his mother’s presence flourishing the shining fish at her.

“It’s a dandy bunch, Mum,” he cried, sprawling them on the table. “They’re for supper. Big Bill’s comin’ right along up with Janey an’ Gladys Anne.”

He turned to the Kid who was gazing down at the fish without any display of interest. The boy’s grinning eyes were full of mischief. He came round to her side and looked into her unsmiling eyes.

“Guess you didn’t get it, Kid,” he said. “Big Bill’s comin’ right along up.”

Then he jumped and ran for the door under a swift cuff that came from his mother’s work-worn hand.

“Be right off you imp o’ perdition,” she cried. “The Kid ain’t worried whose comin’ to this house. Ef I get that talk agin ther’s a rawhide waitin’ on you.”

Then she moved to the girl’s side. She reached up and laid a sympathetic hand on her slim shoulder.

“Say, Kid,” she said, with a gentle smile. “Ther’s scarce a night he don’t come along.” She glanced hastily round the room to be sure they were alone. “Are you kind o’ glad?” she ventured anxiously. “Does it make you feel sort o’—glad?”

“Yes, Mum, I’m just glad all through.” She paused. “But I was kind of thinking. It was fixed Clarence was to make the trail to Placer with Usak. Well, Usak don’t reckon it’s safe to trust to him—a boy. He figgers I best go.”

The man was standing just inside the doorway. The pleasant warmth was welcome enough in contrast to the sharp night air outside. But he made no attempt to remove the seal parka which had replaced the thick pea-jacket he usually wore.

“No,” he said with a laugh, in response to the mother’s urging to “sit around” while she prepared the supper. “Guess I’m not eating with you dear folk to-night.” His gaze sought the shyly smiling eyes of the Kid. “There aren’t enough of those trout to make a right feed for the bunch. And, anyway, Chilcoot and I are making a party to ourselves.”

He turned to the mother who was at the stove, about to shake down the ashes and fire-up for the preparation of the evening meal.

“We’d have fancied askin’ you all, the whole bunch, to come right along up and eat with us. But I guess the kiddies need to make their blankets early, and anyway our camp fixings aren’t unlimited. So we reckoned to ask you, mam, and the Kid, here, and say one of the boys. That ’ud leave Mary and the other standing guard over the bunch of mischief you leave behind to see they don’t choke themselves. And there’s always the great Usak to see no harm comes to them. Do you feel like making the trip? Chilcoot’s waiting around at the landing, and ther’s two canoes to take us up.”

It was Perse, who had flung himself into the chair usually at the disposal of Big Bill on his evening visits. His small body was lost in the ample rawhide seat.

“I call that dirt mean,” he went on, in an aggrieved treble. “What you makin’ the party for, Bill? Ha’ you made the big ‘strike’?” Then his intelligent grey eyes turned shrewdly on the Kid. “Guess I know though. I’ll—”

For a second time he hastily vacated the room. The ready hand of the mother, quick as it was, had no time to descend before he had jumped clear.

“Yes,” she cried after him, “you beat it, and send Clarence along right at once. He’s working around with Usak an’ Alg in the fur store. You ken send Mary Justicia right along, too.”

Then she turned to the smiling man who found keen amusement in the outrageous Perse.

“He’s an imp, that’s what he is,” she declared, while the Kid moved quickly to the stove and shook it down. “But that’s real kind of you, Bill. I’d like fine to come along and eat with you, but I guess these ‘God’s Blessings’ o’ mine ’ud run wild without me. Would you fancy takin’ Mary Justicia along, and that bright little feller, Perse, an’ Clarence, an’ the Kid? I’ll pass Perse a word and set him behavin’ right. He’ll make one more bit for you to feed than you reckon, but I don’t guess that’ll worry your outfit. He can take his own platter an’ pannikin. He’d be mighty grieved not to go. You see, he thinks Big Bill the greatest proposition north o’ ‘sixty’—seeing he guesses ther’s gold on Caribou.”

The woman’s eyes twinkled with humour as she concluded with the now time-honoured jest at her visitor’s expense.

Bill nodded good-humouredly, and his eyes sought the face of the girl standing in the background beside the stove.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll be real glad for the boy to come along.” He laughed. “Ther’ won’t be anything fancy for him t’ eat. It’s just duck, an’ some trout, an’ some canned truck. But I’d sure be glad. Wot you say, Kid?” he asked, his tone not without a shade of concern. “Will you come along up with us? I’d been mighty thankful for your Mum to share in, but I sort of knew beforehand the social whirl on Caribou hadn’t a claim on her to compare with her ‘God’s Blessings.’ Will you come? Chilcoot reckons he’s all sorts of a feller at entertaining women folk to supper. An’ maybe he’ll start in to yarn of the gold trail, an’ we’ll be hard set to stop him. Ther’s an elegant moon for the trip. And you’ll all be right back before she sets.”

His manner was light but behind it was real earnestness, and a shade of anxiety. Hesther, all the mother in her alert, was swift to detect it. She smiled encouragingly round on the girl.

“I’d just love the trip,” she declared quickly. Then her shyness passed and her sweet blue eyes laughed happily into the man’s face. “What is it? Have you found Perse’s color? Ther’s sure something back of this,” she went on in delighted enjoyment, as she watched the man’s expressive face as he strove for unconcern. She shook her head. “No,” she declared. “Guess it’s not Perse’s gold. I guess you reckon Mum’s cooking isn’t the thing she believes, and you’re goin’ to show us the sort of swell thing Chilcoot and you make of it. My! I’m dying to see how two great men live on the trail. Sure I’ll come, an’ so will Mary, an’ Clarence, an’ Perse. Do we need to fix ourselves for the party? Perse most always needs fixing, anyway.”

There was a laugh in every word the girl spoke, and to the man it was a delight to listen to her, and to watch the play of her expressive face.

To the mother eyes there was that in the girl’s manner which wholly escaped the man. She knew the Kid was striving with everything in her power to conceal the feelings Wilder had so deeply stirred in her. She sighed quietly, and hoped and prayed that all might be for the best happiness of the girl she had come to lean on so surely in the battle they fought together for existence. She only had her instinct to guide her. She had no real worldly wisdom. She liked the steady, honest gaze of Bill’s eyes. So she yielded to that best philosophy in the world, which, in sober moments, she was wont to hurl at her inquiring offspring: “Act right, an’ eat good, an’ don’t worry to get after Fate with a club.”

“No,” he said. “Come right along, just as you’re fixed. Chilcoot don’t reckon to receive you in swallowtails. Maybe he’s greased his roof with seal oil to make it shine some. I can’t say. Ah, here’s Clarence, an’ Mary, and Master Perse. Now beat it all of you and get right into parkas. Your Mum figgers to be rid of you awhile so you’re coming right along to eat with me. Guess Chilcoot’ll be nigh frozen to death waiting down at the river.”

The leanto was shadowed. The single oil lamp cast its feeble rays on the general litter. And the scene was characteristic of the Indian whose methods obtained so largely in the running of the farm.

Usak laboured silently, grimly amongst the shadows. His movements were in that quiet fashion which the padding of moccasined feet on an earthen floor never fails to intensify. He was quite alone now, for the last of his helpers had departed at the urgent summons of the boy, Perse, who had bidden them to the presence of their visitor.

The man’s dusky face was hard-set as he moved about amongst his chattels. His black eyes were narrowed and pre-occupied. There were moments when he paused from his labours and stood listening. It was as though he expected some jarring sound which he was ready to resent and hate with all the strength of his heart.

It was at such moments that his gaze seemed inevitably to be drawn to the long, old rifle leaning against the wall just within the wide doorway. It was his life-long friend. It was his oldest associate in his lighter as well as his darker moods. And just now his mood left him yearning for the feel of its ancient trigger under a mercilessly compressing forefinger.

The man was sorting and classifying his summer trade, and preparing it for transport. Pelts lay scattered about, and the smell of pepper, and other preservatives, was in the air. The long sled was set on its runners, repaired, and ready to face the coming winter trail to Placer. And about it, littered in almost hopeless confusion, was an ill assortment of camp outfit which needed cleansing and repair. The whole scene was of the tentative preparations of the trail man. There might be many weeks before the snow and freeze-up would make the journey possible. But Usak was possessed of that restless spirit which refuses to submit to idleness, and whose sense of responsibility drove him at all times.

As the moments passed his pauses from the work of sorting and bestowing became prolonged. Once he passed to the doorway and stood out in the chill night air, and his sense of hearing was clearly directed to windward where the night breeze came directly across the white-folk’s portion of the rambling habitation. And on its breath sounds of laughter and happy voices came to him. And amongst them he was clearly able to distinguish the strong, deep tones of the big man whose presence he so deeply resented on the river.

He stood thus for some moments. Then a sharp sound escaped his set lips and he passed again within, as though in self-defence against the passions which the sound of that hated voice had stirred.

His examination of the skins had lost its deliberateness. He picked them up and flung them aside only half scrutinized. And, at last, he abandoned his task altogether. He deliberately squatted on the blackened, up-turned bottom of an iron camp kettle, and sat staring out into the dark night in the direction in which he knew lay the landing at the river bank.

There was no longer any attempt to hide the desperateness of his mood. It was in every line of his dusky features; it was in the coming and going of his turbulent breathing; it was in the smouldering fire that shone in his black eyes. The native savage was definitely uppermost. And insane passion was driving.

He remained, statue-like, on his improvised seat, and every sound that reached him from the house was noted and interpreted. Sometimes the sounds were so low as to be almost inaudible. Sometimes they were the sounds of laughter. Sometimes they smote his ears with clear definite words, for the night was very still, and the darkness rendered his animal-like hearing profoundly acute.

Suddenly there came the opening and shutting of a door, and with it a sound of voices and laughter. He started. He rose from his seat and moved almost furtively to the doorway, and his hand instinctively fell upon the muzzle of his leaning rifle.

He listened intently. The voices were still plain, but becoming rapidly fainter. Yes. He could clearly distinguish the individual tones he knew so well. He heard the voice of the Kid. And replies came in the voice of the man. There were other voices, but somehow, they seemed quite apart from these two.

He could stand it no longer. He turned about and extinguished the lamp. Then he moved over to his leaning rifle and possessed himself of his old friend. Just for one moment he remained listening. Then, with a curious movement suggesting a shrugging of his great shoulders, he passed out into the night.

CHAPTER XII

The silence of the night was broken by the sounds of youthful voices, and the gentle splash of the driving paddles. There was laughter, and the passing backwards and forwards of care-free, light-hearted banter. Now and again came the deeper note of strong men’s voices, but for the most part it was the shriller treble of early youth that invaded the serene hush of the night.

The two small canoes glided rapidly up the winding ribbon of moon-lit waters. They were driven by eager, skilful hands, hands with a life-training for the work. And so they sped on in that smooth fashion which the rhythmic dip of the paddle never fails to yield.

The Kid was at the foremost strut of the leading canoe with Big Bill Wilder at the stern. Their passenger was the irrepressible Perse, who lounged amidships on a folded blanket. Behind them came the sturdy form of Chilcoot Massy guiding the destiny of the second vessel which carried the youth, Clarence, and the sedate form of Mary Justicia lifted, for the moment, out of the sense of her responsibility, which years of deputising for her mother in the care of her brothers and sisters had impressed upon her young mind.

Hearts were light enough as they glided through the chill night air. Even Chilcoot Massy, so perilously near to middle life—and perhaps because of it—found the youthful gaiety of his guests irresistible. It was a journey of delighted, frothing spirits rising triumphant over the dour brooding of the cold heart of the desolate territory which had given them birth.

The cold moon had driven forth the earlier bankings of snow-clouds. It lit the low-spread earth from end to end, a precious beacon, which, in the months to come, would be the reigning heavenly light. The velvet heavens, studded with myriads of sparkling jewels, and slashed again and again from end to end with the lightning streak of shooting stars, were filled with a superlative vision of dancing northern light. The ghostliness of it all was teeming with a sense of romance, the romance which fills the dreams of later life when the softening of recollection has rubbed down the harshnesses of the living reality.

The delight of this sudden break in the crudeness of life waxed in the hearts of these children of the North. There were moments when silence fell, and the hush of the world crowded full of the ominous threat which lies at the back of everything as the winter season approaches. But all such moments were swiftly dismissed, as though, subconsciously, its dampening influence were felt, and the moment was ripe for sheer rebellion. It was an expression of the sturdy spirit which the Northland breeds.

There was no thought of lurking danger other than the dangers they were bred to. How should there be? Was not this Caribou River, with its spring floodings, with its summer meanderings, with its winter casing of ice, right down to the very heart of its bed, their very own highway and play ground? Did not these folk know its every vagary from the icy moods of winter, to its beneficent summer delights? How then could it hold for them the least shadow of terror on a night to be given up to a gaiety such as their lives rarely enough knew?

Yet the shadow was there, a grim, voiceless shadow, soundless as death, and as unrelenting in its pursuit. A kyak moved over the silvery bosom of the water hard behind the rear-most canoe of the revellers, driven by a brown hand which made no sound as the paddle it grasped passed to and fro, without lifting, through the gleaming water.

It was a light hide kyak, a mere shell that scarce had the weight of a thing of feathers. And the brown man driving it was its only burden, unless the long old rifle lying thrusting up from its prow could be counted. It crept through the shallows dangerously near to the river bank, and every turn in the twisting course of the silver highway was utilized as a screen from any chance glance cast backwards by those whose course it was dogging.

The shadowy pursuit went on. It went on right up to within a furlong of the final landing. For the mood of the brown man was relentless with every passion of original man stirring. But he never shortened by a yard the distance that lay between him and his quarry. And as the leading boats drew into the side, and the beacon light of a great camp fire suddenly changed the silvery tone of the night, the pursuing kyak shot into the bank far behind, and the brown man leapt ashore.

The feast was over. And what a feast it had been. There had been mountain trout, caught and prepared by the grizzled camp cook, whose atmosphere of general uncleanness emphasised his calling, and who was the only other living creature in this camp on the gravel flats. There had been baked duck, stuffed with some conglomeration of chopped “sow-belly,” the mixing of which was the cook’s most profound secret. There had been syrupy canned fruit, and canned sweet corn, and canned beans with tomato. There had been real coffee. Not the everlasting stewed tea of the trail. And then there had been canned milk full of real cream.

That was the feast. But there had been much more than the simple joy of feasting. There had been laughter and high spirits, and a wild delight. How Perse had eaten and talked. How Clarence had eaten and listened. How the Kid had shyly smiled, while Bill Wilder played his part as host, and looked to the comfort of everybody. Then Mary Justicia. There was no cleaning to do after. There was no Janey to wipe at intervals. So she had given all her generous attention to the profound yarning of the trail-bounded Chilcoot Massy.

The happy interim was drawing to a close. The camp fire was blazing mountains high, a prodigal waste of precious fuel at such a season. And the revellers were squatting around at a respectful distance, contemplating it, and settling to a calm sobriety in various conditions of delighted repletion.

The cold moonlight was forgotten. The chill of the air could no longer be felt with the proximity of the fire. The Coming season gave no pause for a moment’s regret. The only thought to disturb utter contentment was that soon, all too soon, the routine of life would close down again, and, one and all, it would envelop them.

Bill was lounging on a spread of skin rug, and the Kid and Mary Justicia shared it with him. A yard away Chilcoot, who could never rise above a seat on an upturned camp pot, was smoking and addressing Clarence, and the more restless Perse, much in the fashion of a mentor. Their talk was of the trail, the gold trail, as it was bound to be with the veteran guiding it. He was narrating stories of “strikes,” rich “strikes,” and wild rushes. He was recounting adventures which seemed literally to stream out of his cells of memory to the huge enjoyment, and wonder, and excitement of his youthful audience. And it was into the midst of this calm delight the final uplift of the night’s entertainment came.

The whole thing was planned and worked up to. Chilcoot had led along the road through his wealth of narrative. He was telling the story of Eighty-Mile Creek. Of the great bonanza that had fallen into the laps of himself and Bill Wilder. Of the tremendous rush after he and his partner had secured their claims.

“It was us boys who located the whole darn ‘strike’” he said appreciatively. “Us two. Bill an’ me. Say, they laffed. How they laffed when we beat it up Eighty-Mile. Gold? Gee! Ther’ wasn’t colour other than grey mud anywheres along its crazy course. That’s how the boys said. They said: ‘Beat it right up it an’ feed the timber wolves.’ They said—But, say, I jest can’t hand you haf the things them hoodlams chucked at us. But Bill’s got a nose fer gold that ’ud locate it on a skunk farm. He knew, an’ I was ready to foiler him if it meant feedin’ any old thing my carkiss. My, I want to laff. It was the same as your Mum said when she heard we’d come along here chasin’ gold, only worse. She couldn’t hand the stuff the boys could. An’ queer enough, now I think it, Eighty-Mile was as nigh like this dam creek as two shucks. Ther’s the mud, an’ the queer gravel, an’ the granite. Guess ther’ ain’t the cabbige around this lay out like ther’ was to Eighty-Mile. You see, we’re a heap further north, right here. No. Ther’ was spruce, an’ pine, an’ tamarack to Eighty-Mile. Ther’s nothing better than dyin’ skitters an’ hies you can smell a mile to Caribou. But the formation’s like. Sure it is. An’ Bill’s nose—”

“Cut out the nose, Chilcoot, old friend,” Wilder broke in with a laugh. “Ther’s a deal too much of my nose to this precious yarn. What you coming to?”

“It’s good listenin’ to a yarn of gold,” he said. “It don’t hurt hanging it up so we get the gold plenty at the end.”

“That’s so boy,” Chilcoot nodded approvingly. “That’s the gold man talkin’. That’s how it was on Eighty-Mile. Ther’ was just tons of gold, an’ we netted the stuff till we was plumb sick to death countin’ it. Gold? Gee! Bill’s bank roll is that stuffed with it he could buy a—territory. Yes, that was Eighty-Mile, the same as it is on—Caribou!”

Perse had leapt to his feet staring wide-eyed in his amazement. The Kid had faced round gazing incredulously into Wilder’s smiling face. Even Mary Justicia was drawing deep breaths under her habitual restraint. The one apparently unmoved member of the happy party was Clarence. But even his attitude was feigned.

“Same as it is on—Caribou?” he said, in a voice whose tone hovered between youth and manhood. “Have you struck it on—Caribou?”

“Ask him,” he said, with a smile twinkling in his eyes. “It’s that he got you kids for right here this night. Jest to ask him that question. Have you made the ‘strike,’ Bill? Did your darn old nose smell out right? You best tell these folks, or you’ll hand ’em a nightmare they won’t get over in a week. You best tell ’em. Or maybe you ken show ’em. Ther’s folk in the world like to see, when gold’s bein’ talked, an’ I guess Perse here’s one of ’em. Will you?”

All eyes were on Big Bill. The girls sat voicelessly waiting, and the smiles on their faces were fixed with the intensity of the feeling behind them. Clarence, like Perse, had stood up in his agitation, and both boys gazed wide-eyed as the tall figure leapt to its feet and passed back to the low “A” tent, which was his quarters.

While he was gone Chilcoot strove to fill in the interval with appropriate comment.

But no one was listening. Four pair of eyes were gazing after Big Bill, four hearts were hammering in four youthful bosoms under stress of feelings which in all human life the magic of gold never fails to arouse. It was the same with these simple creatures, who had never known a sight of gold, as it was with the most hardened labourer of the gold trail. Everything but the prize these men had won was forgotten in that thrilling moment.

Wilder came back almost at once. He was bearing a riffled pan, one of those primitive manufactures which is so great a thing in the life of the man who worships at the golden shrine. He was bearing it in both hands as though its contents were weighty. And as he came, the Kid, no less eagerly than the others, hurriedly dashed to his side to peer at the thing he was carrying.

“Get right along back,” he laughed. “Sit around and I’ll show you.” Then his eyes gazed down into the Kid’s upturned face, and he realised her moment of sheer excitement had passed and something else was stirring behind the pretty eyes that had come to mean so much to him. He nodded.

“Don’t be worried, Kid,” he said quietly. “Maybe I guess the thing that’s troubling. I’m going to fix that, the same as I reckon to fix anything else that’s going to make you feel bad.”

The girl made no reply. In her mind the shadow of Usak had arisen. And even to her, in the circumstances, it was a threatening shadow. She remembered the thing the savage had said to her in his violent protest. “Him mans your enemy. Him come steal all thing what are yours. Him river. Him land. Him—gold.” There was nothing in her thought that this man was stealing from her. Such a thing could never have entered her mind. It was the culminating threat of the savage that had robbed her of her delight, and made the thing in the pan almost hateful to her. Usak had deliberately threatened the life of this man, and the full force of that threat, hitherto almost disregarded, now overwhelmed her with a terror such as she had never known before.

She was the last to take her place on the spread of skins before the fire. The others were crowding round the man with the pan. But he kept them waiting till the girl had taken her place beside him. Then, and not till then, without a word he squatted on the rugs and slowly withdrew the bagging.

It was a breathless moment. Everything was forgotten but the amazing revelation. Even the Kid, in that supreme moment, found the shadow of Usak less haunting. The bagging was drawn clear.

There it lay in the bottom of the pan. A number of dull, yellow, jagged nuggets lying on a bed of yellow dust nearly half an inch thick.

“Phew!” he cried with something resembling a whistle. “Dollars an’ dollars! How many? Did you get it on— Caribou?”

The Kid looked up. She had been dazzled by the splendid vision. Now again terror was gripping her.

“You’ll not say a word of this. None of you,” she said sharply. “Mum shall know. Oh, yes. But not a word to—Usak.”

“Don’t worry a thing,” he said gravely. “Usak’s going to know. I’m going to hand him the talk myself.” Then he laughed. And the tone of his laugh added further to the girl’s unease. It was so care-free and delighted. “Sit around, kids,” he cried. “All of you.”

He was promptly obeyed by the two boys who had remained standing. They seated themselves opposite him. Then he dipped into the pan and picked out the largest of the nuggets of pure gold and offered it to the Kid.

“That’s for your Mum,” he said quietly. “It’s pure gold, same as the woman she is. Here,” he went on, quickly selecting the next biggest. “That’s yours Kid— by right.”

Then he passed one each to the two boys and Mary Justicia, and finally shot the remainder of the precious wash-up into the bag that had covered the pan and held it out to the Kid.

“There it is,” he cried. “Take it. It’s for you, an’ all those folk belonging to you. It’s just a kind of sample of the thing that’s yours, an’ is going to be yours. Guess old Perse, here, was right. It’s the gold from Caribou, an’ right out of your dead father’s ‘strike’— which is for you, Kid. Say, you’re a rich woman, for the best claim on it is yours, an’ it’s the richest ‘strike’ I’ve ever nosed out. Richer even than Chilcoot’s Eighty-Mile.”

The party was over. The journey back to the homestead was completed. The full moon had smiled frigidly down upon a scene of such excitement as was rare enough in her northern domain. Maybe the sight of the thing she had witnessed had offended her. Perhaps, with her wealth of cold experience, she condemned the humanness of the thing she had gazed upon. For on the journey home she had refused the beneficence of her pale smile, and had hidden her face amidst those night shadows which she had forthwith summoned to her domain.

But her displeasure had in nowise concerned. A landmark in life had been set up, a radiant beacon which would shine in the minds of each and every one of these children of the North so long as memory remained to them.

Somehow the order of return home to the homestead had become changed. Neither Wilder nor the Kid realised the thing that had taken place until it had been accomplished. It seemed likely that it was the deliberate work of Chilcoot, who, for all his roughness, was not without a world of kindly sentiment somewhere stowed away deep down in his heart. Perhaps it had been the arrangement of the less demonstrative Mary Justicia, who was so nearly approaching her own years of womanhood. However it had come to pass Chilcoot had carried off the bulk of the visitors, with Mary and Perse and Clarence for his freight, leaving Bill and the Kid to their own company in following his lead.

It was the ultimate crowning of the night’s episodes for the Kid. Bill had demanded that she become his passenger; that the sole work of paddling should be his. And he had had his way. The Kid was in the mood for yielding to his lightest wish. If he had desired to walk to the homestead she would not have demurred. So she lounged on skin rugs amidships in the little canoe, with her shoulders propped against the forward strut, and yielded herself to the delight with which the talk and presence of this great, strong, youthful man filled her. The shadow of Usak still haunted her silent moments, but even that, in this wonderful presence, had less power to disturb.

The impulse of the man had been to abandon all caution, and bask in the delight and happiness with which this child of nature filled him. Her beauty and sweet womanhood compelled him utterly, while her innocence was beyond words in the sense of tender responsibility it inspired in him. He loved her with all the strength of his own simple being. And the sordid world in which he dwelt so long only the more surely left him headlong in his great desire.

But out of his wisdom he restrained the impulse. Time was with him and he feared to frighten her. He realised that for all her courage, for all her wonderful spirit in the fierce northern battle, the woman’s crown of life must be as yet something little more than a hazy vision, a nebulous thing whose reality would only come to her, stealing softly upon her as the budding soul expanded. Yes, he could afford to wait. And so he held guard over himself, and the journey was made while he told her all those details of the thing that had brought him to Caribou.

His mind was very clear on the things he desired to tell, and the things he did not. And he confined himself to a sufficient outline of the reasons of the thing he was doing with his discovery on Caribou, and the things he contemplated before the opening after the coming winter.

The journey down the river sufficed for this outline of his purpose, and the distance was covered almost before they were aware of it. At the landing they looked for the others. But they only discovered Chilcoot’s empty boat, which left them no alternative but to walk up to the homestead.

As they approached the clearing the girl held out a hand. “Will I take that—bag?” she asked. “I—I’d like to show it to Mum with my own hands. You know, Bill, I can’t get it all yet. All it means. It’s a sort of dream yet, an’ all the time I sort of feel I’ll wake right up an’ set out for Placer to make our winter trade.”

She laughed. But her laugh was cut short. And as the man passed her the bag of dust he had been carrying a spasm of renewed fear gripped her.

“Yes. I’d forgotten,” she went on. “I’d forgotten Usak. This thing’s kind of beaten everything out of my fool head. You’re going to tell him, Bill? When?” They had reached the clearing and halted a few yards from the home the Kid had always known. The sound of voices came to them from within. There was laughter and excitement reigning, when, usually, the whole household should have been wrapped in slumber.

Bill stood before her silhouetted against the lamplight shining through the cotton-covered window of the kitchen-place. There was something comforting in the man’s bulk, and in the strong tones of his voice. The Kid’s fears relaxed, but anxiety was still hers.

“Say, little gal,” he went on at once, in that tender fashion he had come to use in his talk with her. “That feller’s got you scared.” He laughed. “I guess he’s the only thing to scare you in this queer territory. But he doesn’t scare me a thing. I’ve got him beat all the while—when it comes to a show-down.”

“But I do. I can’t help it.” The Kid’s tone was a little desperate. “You see, I know Usak. I’ve known him all my life. He threatened your life to me the night he found you on the river. I jumped in on him and beat that talk out of him. But—you see, he reckons you’re out to steal our land, our river, our—gold. It’s the last that scares me. If he knows the stuff’s found, and unless he knows right away the big things you’re doing—Don’t you see? Oh, I’m scared for you, Bill. Usak’s crazy mad if he thinks folk are going to hurt me. You’ll tell him quick, won’t you? I won’t sleep till I’m—sure. You see, if a thing happened to you—”

The man’s words came deep, and low, and thrilling with something he could not keep out of them. It was the girl’s unfeigned solicitude that stirred him. And again the old headlong impulse was striving to gain the upper hand. He resisted it, as he had resisted it before.

But this time he sought the coward’s refuge. He reached out a hand and laid it gently on the girl’s soft shoulder.

“Come right in, an’—show your Mum,” he said. “Hark at ’em. That’s Perse. I’d know his laugh in a thousand. Say, we’re missing all sorts of a time.”

The two men were back at their camp. They were seated over the remains of their generous camp fire. It had sadly fallen from its great estate. It was no longer a prodigal expression of their hospitality, but a mere, ruddy heap of hot cinders with a wisp of smoke rising out of its glowing heart. Still, however, it yielded a welcome temperature to the bitter chill of the now frowning night.

Chilcoot remained faithful to his up-turned camp kettle, but Bill concerned himself with no such luxury. He was squatting Indian-fashion on his haunches, with his hands clasped about his knees. It was a moment of deep contemplation before seeking their blankets, and both were smoking.

It was the older man who broke the long silence. He was in a mood to talk, for the events of the night had stirred him even more deeply than he knew.

“They felt mighty good,” he observed contentedly. “Them queer bits o’ life.”

His gaze remained on the heart of the fire for his words were in the manner of a thought spoken aloud.

In a moment the older man’s eyes were turned upon him, and their smiling depths were full of amiable derision.

“Pore?” he exclaimed. Then his hands were outspread in an expressive gesture. “Say, you’ve handed ’em a prize-packet that needs to cut that darn word right out of your talk.”

He looked for reply to his challenge, but none was forthcoming. And he returned again to his happy contemplation of the fire.

Bill smoked on. But somehow there was none of the other’s easy contentment in his enjoyment. He was smoking rapidly, in the manner of a mind that was restless, of a thought unpleasantly pre-occupied. The expression of his eyes, too, was entirely different. They were plainly alert, and a light pucker of concentration had drawn his even brows together. He seemed to be listening. Nor was his listening for the sound of his companion’s voice.

At long last Chilcoot bestirred himself and knocked out his pipe, and his eyes again sought his silent partner.

“The blankets fer me,” he said, and rose to his feet. He laughed quietly. “I’ll sure dream of kids an’ things all mussed up with fool men who don’t know better.”

“Sure.” Bill nodded without turning. Then he added: “You best make ’em. I’ll sit awhile.”

Bill had turned, and was gazing up into the other’s smiling face. But there was no invitation to continue the talk in his regard. On the contrary. And Chilcoot’s smile passed abruptly.

“Guess I’ll beat it,” he said a little hurriedly. And the sitting man made no attempt to detain him.

The man at the fire was no longer gazing into it. He was peering out into the dark of the night. Furthermore he was no longer squatting on his haunches. He had shifted his position, lying on his side so that his range of vision avoided the fire-light as he searched in the direction of the water’s edge below him. His heavy pea-jacket had been unfastened, and his right hand was thrust deep in its pocket.

The fire had been replenished and raked together. It was burning merrily, as though the man before it contemplated a prolonged vigil. The night sounds were few enough just now in the northern wilderness. The flies and mosquitoes were no longer the burden they were in summer. The frigid night seemed to have silenced their hum, as it had silenced most other sounds. The voice of the sluggish river alone went on with that soothing monotony which would continue until the final freeze-up.

But Wilder was alert in every fibre. He had reason to be. For all the silence he knew there was movement going on. Secret movement which would have to be dealt with before the night was out. His ears had long since detected it. They had detected it on the river, both going down and returning. And imagination had supplied interpretation. Now he was awaiting that development he felt would surely come.

He had not long to wait. A sound of moccasined feet padding over the loose gravel of the river bed suddenly developed. It was approaching him. And he strained in the darkness for a vision of his visitor. After awhile a shadowy outline took definite shape. It was of the tall, burly figure of a man coming up from the water’s edge.

He came rapidly, and without a word he took his place at the opposite side of the fire.

Bill made no move. He offered no greeting. He understood. It was the thing he had looked for and prepared for. It was Usak. And he watched the Indian as he laid his long rifle across his knees, and held out his hands to the crackling blaze.

The Indian seemed in no way concerned with the coolness of his reception. It was almost as if his actions were an expression of the thing he considered his simple right. And having taken up his position he returned the silent scrutiny of his host with eyes so narrowed that they revealed nothing but the fierce gleam of the firelight they reflected.

He leant forward and deliberately spat into the fire. Then the sound of his voice came, and his eyes widened till their coal black depths revealed something of the savage mood that lay behind them.

“I see him, all thing this night,” he said. “So I come. I, Usak, say him this thing. I tell ’em all peoples white-mans no good. Whitemans steal ’em all thing. White-mans him look, look all time. Him look on the face of white girl. Him talk plenty much. Him show her much thing. Gold? Yes. Him buy her, this whiteman. Him buy her with gold which he steal from her land.”

“I tak him this gun,” he went on fiercely. “Him ready to my eye. One—two—three time I so stand. You dead all time so I mak him. Now I say you go. One day. You not go? Then I mak ’em so kill quick.”

Wilder moved. But it was only to withdraw his hand from the pocket of his pea-jacket. He was grasping an automatic pistol of heavy calibre. He drew up a knee in his lolling position, and rested hand and weapon upon it. The muzzle was deliberately covering the broad bosom of the man beyond the fire, and his finger was ready to compress on the instant.

“That’s all right, Usak,” he said calmly. “What are we going to do? Talk or—shoot?” His eyes smiled in the calm fashion out of which he was rarely disturbed. “I’m no Euralian man to leave you with the drop on me.”

The final thrust was not without effect. For an instant the Indian’s eyes widened further. Then they narrowed suddenly to the cat-like watchfulness his manner so much resembled.

“We talk,” he said, after a brief conflict with his angry mood, his gaze on the ready automatic whose presence and whose offence he fully appreciated.

“That’s better,” he said. Then he went on after a pause. “Say boy, if you’d been a whiteman I’d have shot you in your darn tracks for the thing you just said, and the thing you kind of hinted at. I had you covered right away as you came along up. But you’re an Indian. An’ more than that you belong to Marty Le Gros’ lone Kid. You’ve raised her, an’ acted father an’ mother to her, an’ you guess the sun just rises an’ sets in her. I’m glad. An’ I’m glad ther’ isn’t to be any fool shooting—yet. But, anyway, when ther’ is I want you to get a grip on this. I’m right in the business, an’ I’ve got your darn ole gun a mile beaten. I guess that makes things clear some, an’ we can get busy with our talk.”

The Indian made no reply, but there was a flicker of the eyelid, and an added sparkle in the man’s eyes as he listened to the whiteman’s scathing words.

Bill suddenly sat up and clasped his hands about his knees while the automatic pistol was thrust even more prominently.

“Here, Usak,” he went on, in the same quiet fashion, but with a note of conciliation in his tone. “You’re guessing all sorts of fool Indian things about that gal coming along up here to my camp. You talk of buying her with the gold I’ve stolen from her. If you’d been the man you guess you are you’d have got around, and sat in an’ heard all the talk of the whole thing. But you’re an Indian man, a low grade boy that guesses to steal around on the end of a gun, ready to play any dirty old game. No. Keep cool till I’ve done.”

Wilder’s gun was raised ever so slightly, and he waited while the leaping wrath of the Indian subsided. He nodded.

“That’s better,” he went on quickly. “You got to listen till I’m done. I’m goin’ to tell you things, not because I’m scared a cent of you, but because you’ve been good to the Kid, and you’re loyal, an’ maybe someday you’re going to feel that way to me. See? But right away I want you to get this into your fool head. I came along for two reasons to Caribou. One was to locate Marty Le Gros’ gold, an’ pass it over to the gal who belongs to it, an’ the other was to marry Felice Le Gros, the same as her father married her mother, an’ you, I guess, in your own fashion, married Pri-loo, who the Euralians killed for you. Now you get that? I don’t want the Kid’s gold, or land, or farm. They cut no ice with me. I’m so rich I hate the sight of gold. But I want the Kid. I want to marry her and take her right away where the sun shines and the world’s worth living in. Where she won’t need to worry for food or trade, an’ won’t need to wear reindeer buckskin all the time. And anyway won’t have to live the life of a white-Indian.”

The keen gaze of the whiteman held the Indian fast. There was no smile in his eyes. But there was infinite command and frank honesty. Usak stirred uneasily. It was an expression of the reaction taking place in him.

The savage had gone out of the man’s tone. The narrowed eyes had widened, and a curious shining light filled them.

“You give him all him gold? The gold of my good boss, Marty?” he went on, as though striving for conviction that he had heard aright. “Sure? You mak him this? You not mak back to Placer wher’ all him white-woman live? You want only him Kid, same lak Usak want him Pri-loo all time? Only him Kid? Yes?”

“You big man all much gold?” the Indian went on urgently. “You not mak want him gold of the good boss, Marty?”

The Indian moved. He laid his rifle aside as though it had suddenly become a hateful thing he desired to spurn. Then he reached out, thrusting a hand across the fire to grip that of the whiteman.

But no response was forthcoming. Bill remained motionless with his hands about his knees and his weapon thrusting. Usak waited a moment. Then his hand was sharply withdrawn. His quick intelligence was swift to realise the deliberate slight. But that which the crude savage in him had no power to do was to remain silent.

“You not shake by the hand?” he said doubtfully. “You say all ’em good thing by the Kid? It all mush good. Oh, yes. Yet you—” He broke off and a great light of passion suddenly leapt to his black eyes. “Tcha!” he cried. “What is it this? The tongue speak an’ him heart think mush. No, no!” he went on with growing ferocity. “The good boss, Marty, say heap plenty. Him tell ’em Indian man all time. Him whitemans no shake, then him not mean the thing him tongue say.”

“You’re dead wrong, Usak. Plumb wrong. That’s not the reason I don’t guess to grip your hand.”

Bill’s gaze was compelling. There was that in it which denied the other’s accusations in a fashion that even the mind of the savage could not fail to interpret.

“Indian man’s hand good so as the white man,” he said. “Yet him not shake so this thing is mush good. This Kid. Him mak wife to you. You give her all thing good plenty. So. That thing you say big. Usak give her all, too. Usak think lak she is the child of Pri-loo. Usak love him good boss, Marty, her father. Oh, yes. All time plenty. Usak fight, kill. All him life no thing so him Kid only know good.”

Bill inclined his head. The man was speaking out of the depth of his fierce heart, and he warmed to the simple sturdiness of his graphic pleading.

The Indian’s hand was slowly, almost timidly thrust towards him again. But the movement remained uncompleted.

“Usak,” Bill began deliberately, and in the tone of a purpose arrived at. “I know you for the good feller you’ve been to all these folk. I know you better than I guess even they know you. I guess it don’t take me figgering to know if I’d hurt a soul of them you’d never quit till you’d shot me to pieces. I know all that. Let it go at that. A whiteman grips the other feller by the hand when he knows the things back of that other feller’s mind. Do you get that? Ther’s a mighty big stain of blood on the hand you’re askin’ me to grip, an’ I’m not yearning to shake the hand of a—murderer.”

The men were gazing eye to eye. The calm cold of Wilder’s grey eyes was inflexible. The Indian’s had lit with renewed fire. But his resentment, the burning fires of his savage bosom were no match for the whiteman’s almost mesmeric power. The gaze of the black eyes wavered. Their lids slowly drooped, as though the search of the other’s was reading him through and through and he desired to avoid them.

Wilder released his knees and spread himself out on the ground, and almost ostentatiously returned his pistol to his pocket.

Usak talked at long length in his queer, broken fashion. His mind was flung back to those far-off years when the great avenging madness had taken possession of him. He told the story of Marty Le Gros from its beginning. He told the story of the man’s great hopes and strivings for the Eskimo he looked upon as children. He told of the birth of the Kid, and the ultimate death of the missionary’s wife. Then had come the time of his boss’s gold “strike,” the whereabouts of which he kept secret even from him, Usak. Then came the time of the murderous descent of the Euralians, and the killing and burning that accompanied it. And how he had returned to the Mission to find the dead remains of Pri-loo his wife, and of his good boss, Marty, and the living child flung into the wood which sheltered its home.

He told how he went mad with desire to kill, and set out to wreak his vengeance. He had long since by chance discovered where these people hid themselves in the far-off mountains, and he went there, and waited until they returned from their war trail.

Now for the first time Wilder learned all the intimate details of the terrible slaughter which this single savage had contrived to inflict. Nor did the horror of the story lose in the man’s telling. He missed nothing of it, seeming to revel in a riot of furious memory. Once or twice, as he gloated over the fall of an enemy, he reached out, and his lean hand patted the butt of his queer old rifle almost lovingly. And with the final account of his struggle with the leader himself, even Wilder shrank before the merciless joy the man displayed as he contemplated the end of the battle with the man’s sockets emptied of the tawny eyes that had gazed upon the murder of those poor, defenceless creatures the Indian had been powerless to protect.

“Oh, yes,” he said in conclusion. “Him see nothing more, never. Him have no eyes never no more. Him live, yes. I leave him woman. So I go. So I come back. I come back to the little Kid, him good boss, Marty, leave. I live. Oh, yes. I live for him Kid. I mak big work for him Kid. Big trade. So him grow lak the tree, him flower, an’ I think much for him. It all good. It mak me feel good all inside. Him to me lak the child of Pri-loo. You marry him Kid? Good. You give him gold? Good. Usak plenty happy. Now I mak him one big trip. Then no more. Then I do so as the good whiteman of him Kid say. Yes.”

The Indian spread out his hands in a final gesture. Then he drew up his knees, and clasped them tightly, while his burning eyes dwelt broodingly upon the leaping fire.

The Indian raised his eyes. Then they dropped again to the fire and he shook his head.

“You won’t tell me? Why?” Bill demanded again. “Ther’s no need for any trip. Ther’s work right here for you, for all. Ther’s gold, plenty, which you can share. Why?”

Again came the Indian’s shake of the head. His eyes were raised again for a moment and Bill read and interpreted the brooding light that gazed out of them. The man seemed about to speak, but his hard mouth tightened visibly, and again he stubbornly shook his head and returned to his contemplation of the fire.

Suddenly Bill sprang to his feet and held out his hand. In an instant the Indian was on his feet, and his dark face was even smiling. His tenacious hand closed over that of the whiteman.

“That’s all right, Usak,” Bill said quietly. “I’m glad to take your hand. You’re a big man. You’re a big Indian savage. But you’re a good man, anyway. Get right back to your shanty now, an’ take that darn old gun with you. You don’t need that fer shooting me up, anyway. Just keep it—to guard the Kid, and those others. Just one word before you go. Marty kept his gold secret. You keep it secret, too, until the Kid lets you speak. I’ve got to make a big trip to secure the claims before we can talk. When I done that talk don’t matter. Say, an’ not a word to the Kid of our talk. Not one word. I want to marry her. And being white folk it’s our way to ask the girl first. See? I haven’t asked her yet. An’ if you were to boost in your spoke, maybe she’d get angry, and—”

The Indian was grinning in a fashion that left the whiteman satisfied. Their hands fell apart, and Usak picked up his gun. Then he turned away without another word and the night swallowed him up.

Wilder stood gazing after him, There was no smile in his eyes. He was thinking hard. And his thought was of that one, big, last trip the Indian had threatened to make.

CHAPTER XIII

Bill Wilder and Chilcoot moved slowly up from the water’s edge. The outlook was grey and the wind was piercing. The river behind them was ruffled out of its usual oily calm, and the two small laden canoes, lying against the bank, and the final stowing of which the men had been engaged upon, were rocking and straining at their raw-hide moorings.

The change of season was advancing with that suddenness which drives the northern man hard. Still, however, the first snow had not yet fallen, although for days the threat of it had hung over the world. The ground was iron hard with frost, and each morning a skin of ice stretched out on the waters of the river from the low, shelving banks. But the grip of it was not permanent. There was still melting warmth in the body of the stream, and, each day, the ice yielded up its hold.

It was three days since the camp had witnessed the gathering of children about its camp fire. Three days which Bill had devoted to those preparations, careful in the last detail, for the rush down to Placer before the world was overwhelmed by the long winter terror. Now, at last, all was in readiness for the start on the morrow. All, that is, but the one important matter of Red Mike’s return to camp. Until that happened the start would have to be delayed.

Clarence McLeod had even been called upon to assist, in view of the race against time which the task these men had set themselves represented. Three days ago he had been despatched up the river to recall the Irishman. His immediate return was looked for. Chilcoot had hoped for it earlier. But this third day was allowed as a margin in case the gold instinct had carried Mike farther afield than was calculated.

The last of the brief day was almost gone. And only a belt of grey daylight was visible in the cloud banks to the south-west. Half way up to the camp Wilder paused and gazed out over the ruffled water, seeking to discover any sign of the man’s return in the darkening twilight. He stood beating his mitted hands while Chilcoot passed on up to the camp fire.

There was no sign, no sound. And a feeling of keen disappointment took possession of the expectant man. So much depended on Mike’s return. Under ordinary circumstances the season was not the greatest concern, and Wilder would have been content enough to wait. But the circumstances were by no means ordinary. There was that lying back of his mind which disturbed him in a fashion he was rarely disturbed. And it was a thought and concern he had imparted to no one, not even to his loyal partner, Chilcoot.

He moved on up to the camp, and the keenness of his disappointment displayed itself in his eyes, and in the tone of his voice as he conveyed the result of his search to his comrade.

He had halted at the fire over which Chilcoot was endeavouring to encourage some warmth into his chilled fingers. He removed his mitts and held his hands to the blaze.

“I was kind of wondering,” he went on, “about that boy, Clarence. Maybe he’s hit up against things. Maybe—Say—”

A faint, far-off echo came down stream. It was a call. A familiar cry in a voice both men promptly recognised. Chilcoot grinned.

“I’m glad. I’m mighty thankful,” he exclaimed with a short laugh. “We’ll be away to-morrow after all.”

“I hadn’t worried fer that,” he said. “Guess we can’t make Placer in open weather.” He shrugged a pair of shoulders that were enormous under his fur parka. “It’ll be dead winter ’fore we’re haf way. It’ll be black night in two weeks, anyway. The big river don’t freeze right over till late winter, but ther’ll be ice floes ’most all the way. I can’t see a day more or less is going to worry us a thing.”

“The Hekor don’t freeze right up easy,” he went on. “That’s so. But it’ll sure be black night.” Then he looked up, and Chilcoot recognised his half smile of contentment. “It don’t matter anyway. The thing’s worth it.”

“It would ha’ been the first time in your life,” he said. “I’ve seen you take the chances of a crazy man.”

The Irishman had listened to the story of the “strike” and sat raking his great fingers through the thick stubble of flaming beard he had developed, and grinned first across at his chief, Bill Wilder, then at the twinkling, deep-set eyes of Chilcoot.

They were all gathered about the fire, that centre of everything to the northern man. The youth Clarence was sprawled full length on the ground, happy in the thought that he was playing his part in the great game on which these men were engaged. He was content to listen while the others talked. But he drank in every word with the appetite of healthy youth, digesting and learning as his young mind so ardently desired.

“An’ it’s rich? Full o’ the stuff?” Mike’s lips almost smacked as he persisted.

Chilcoot nodded while his eyes sparkled. Mike drew a deep breath. The two summers behind them looked like a happy picnic instead of the months of wasted endeavour they had seemed to his impetuous soul.

“Ther’s more than a hundred claims on it we know of,” Bill said soberly. “Maybe ther’s miles of it up that queer, crazy stream. We haven’t worried farther. The stakes are in fer the whole of our bunch, an’ the folks across the water. That’s as far as we’re concerned. We’re beating it to Placer to-morrow to register. Say,” he went on impressively, “ther’ll be a rush like the days of ’98, and we can’t take chances. If the thing’s like what I guess we’ll cheapen gold worse than the Yukon boom did. Does it hit you?”

“Between the eyes.” Mike laughed out of his boisterous feelings. “We ken get the bunch right down, an’ get a dump of stuff out before the freeze-up,” he went on eagerly. “What’s it to be? A pool or claim work?”

“Ther’s goin’ to be no pool. An’ ther’s goin’ to be no rake over till spring.” Wilder’s tone was decided, and the grin died out of the Irishman’s eyes. “I told you we’re takin’ no chances. Chilcoot and I have planned this thing right out. Of the three best claims we’re sure about, one is yours. But you don’t pan an ounce of soil till the register’s made, and you’ve got your ‘brief.’ Then it’s yours on your own, the same as the others belong to each of the other folk. An’ you can work how you darn please. But you won’t see the place, even, till we get right back from Placer. An’ the boys aren’t hearing a word of it till spring. It’s this I sent Clarence, here, up to get you around for. I want you to sit tight, right here, till we get back with the whole thing fixed. It’s worth waiting for, Mike. It’s so good you just haven’t figgers enough in your fool head to count your luck. You’ll act this way, boy. I promised you haf a million dollars if you hit back to Placer without a colour. That still goes, but you won’t need a thing from me. You’ll play our hand right?”

Mike’s disappointment was all the keener for his mercurial temperament, but he nodded readily and Wilder was satisfied.

“Sure I’ll play it right, the way you want it. But I don’t see we need act like ther’ was spooks around waitin’ to jump in on us before the register’s fixed.”

“But ther’ are,” he said. “If you’d the experience I’ve had of this blamed old North you’d be scared to death for our ‘strike.’ It’s a ghost-haunted country this, and most of the spooks have got a kind of wireless of their own that ’ud beat anything we Christian folk ever heard tell of. Ther’s six months of winter ahead, and most of that we’ll be on the trail, or fixing things. It just needs one half-breed pelt hunter to get wise to the game happening around, or a stray bunch of Euralian murderers, and we’d have haf the north on us before the Commissioner could sign our ‘briefs.’ No, boy, get it from me, and just sit around till daylight comes again, an’ dream of the hooch you’re going to drink to the luck of the Kid. It’s the Kid’s luck that’s handed us this thing. It’s the luck her father reckoned was to be hers. And by no sort of crazy act are we going to queer it. I’m taking your scow, and beating it down stream. Clarence’ll feel like gettin’ to home.”

The grinning eyes of Mike followed the tall figure of his leader, with the youth, Clarence, striding beside him, as it vanished in the darkness on its way to the water’s edge. And as they passed from view he turned to the man who displayed no desire to quit the comfort of the fire.

“I’d guessed he’d fallen for it two summers back,” he said. “You can locate it with both eyes shut, an’ cotton batten stuffed in your brain box. That gal had him fast by the back of the neck on sight. The Kid, eh? It’s not Bill Wilder’s way of playing safe on a gold ‘strike.’ That gal’s got him scared to death for the plum he guesses to hand her. No, sirree,” he went on, with a shake of his disreputable head, “the Jezebels o’ Placer for mine, an’ a bunch o’ hooch you could drown a battleship in. It’s easy game that don’t hand you a nightmare, if it’s liable to empty your sack o’ dust. That Kid! What’s he goin’ to do?”

“He ain’t crazy enough to—marry her?” Mike went on contemptuously. “No. He’s no fool kid.”

A deep flush mounted to the veteran’s temples. His deepset eyes sparkled as he surveyed the other through the smoke of the fire.

“You best ask Bill the things you want to know,” he said coldly. “It don’t matter what you think. It don’t matter what any darn fool thinks. Bill’s mostly spent his life playin’ the game as he sees it. An’ I guess he’ll go right on doin’ the same. And the game he plays is a right game. An’ he’s as ready to hand it out to a hooch-soused no-account, as he is to a gal with a dandy pair of blue eyes.”

It had been a quiet, almost subdued evening at the homestead. Somehow Bill Wilder’s manner had been graver than was its wont, and these simple folk, who, since his re-discovery of Marty Le Gros’ gold “strike,” had so quickly come to regard him as something in the nature of the arbiter of their destinies, had been clearly affected by his change of manner.

He had shared their supper, and listened to Clarence’s story of his search for Red Mike. He had found it easier to listen than to talk. Hesther, too, had spent her time in listening, while the children chattered all unconscious of the real mood of their elders.

For the Kid it was a time of quiet happiness, marred only by the thought that with the first streak of brief daylight on the morrow this man would be speeding on his race with the season to ensure her own, and the good fortunes of all those she loved.

The girl looked forward to the coming months of winter clarkness without any glimmer of that happy, contented philosophy which had always been hers. Looking ahead the whole prospect seemed so dark and empty. The days since Bill’s coming to the Caribou had been so overflowing, so thrilling with happy events and delirious joy that the contrasting prospect was only the more deplorably void. And with all the untamed spirit in her she rebelled at the coming parting.

Yet she understood the necessity. She realised the enormous stake he was playing for on their behalf, and so she was determined that no act or word of hers should hinder him. There had been moments when the impulse to plead permission to accompany him was almost irresistible. It filled her heart with delighted dreams of displaying, for his appreciation, her skill and sturdy nerve on the winter trail. She felt that for all her sex she could easily accept more than her due share of the labour, and could increase his comfort a hundredfold. But in sober moments she knew it could not be. If nothing else the woman instinct in her forbade it.

The girl never for one moment paused to question her feelings. Why should she? The life she knew, the life she had always lived, had left her free of every convention which encompasses a woman’s life in civilization. Bill Wilder had leapt into her life as her dream man. He was her all in all, the whole focus of her simple heart. Why then should she deny it? Why then should she attempt to blind herself? There had been no word of love between them. It almost seemed unnecessary. She loved his steady grey eyes, with their calm smile. She revelled in his unfailing, kindly confidence. His spoken word was always sufficient, backed as it was by his great figure, so full of manhood’s youthful strength. Then he was of her own country. That vast Northland which claimed their deepest affection for all its terror. Oh, yes, she loved him with her whole soul and body. And her love inspired the surging rebellion which her sturdy sense refused outlet or display.

No. She had long since learned patience. It was the thing her country taught her as surely as anything on earth. Besides, the planning was all Bill’s. Every detail had been weighed and measured by him. Even it was his veto that had been set on her own journey for trade. He had urged its abandonment, demanding both her and Usak’s presence on the river during his absence. So it must be.

For the girl this last evening together passed all too swiftly. Much of the time, while the others chattered, she remained scarcely heeding sufficiently to respond intelligently to the occasional appeals made to her. And then, when the time came for Bill’s going, she rose quickly from her seat beside the stove and slipped her fur parka over her buckskin clothing. She regarded the privilege she contemplated as her right.

Hesther observed, but wisely refrained from comment. But her children were less merciful. Perse grinned impishly.

“Lightin’ Bill to the landin’,” she said sharply. “Which the scallawag menfolk around this shanty don’t seem yearnin’ to do.”

“Don’t she?” The mother laughed. “You’re too late, boy. Guess Bill, here, ’ud hate to be lit by folks who need reminding the thing’s due. You boys beat it to your blankets. Kid’ll see Bill on his way.”

The man was ready. He bulked tremendously under the thick fur of his outer clothing. He pulled his fur cap low down on his head, while the Kid lit the queer old hurricane lamp with a burning brand from the stove. Hesther’s diminutive figure was further dwarfed beside him as she prepared to make her farewell.

“It’ll be quite a piece before you get along again,” she said, in a voice that was not quite steady. And the man laughed shortly for all there seemed no reason.

“I just can’t figger how soon before I’m along back,” he said. “I’d like to fix it, but it wouldn’t be reasonable anyway. You see, mam,” he went on, his gaze turned on the girl who shut the lamp with a slam, “Gold Commissioners have their ways, and sort of make their own time. And though I reckon to pull some wires I can’t say when I’ll get through. And then ther’s always the winter trail. But I’ll sure be along back before the spring break.”

His gaze came back to the little woman who was regarding him with wistful eyes of affection, as though he were one of her own boys, and he thrust out a hand which was instantly clasped between both her rough palms.

“I just got to be back then,” he went on. “And when I come you can gamble I got things fixed so tight you’ll only need to sit around and act the way I tell you.” He smiled down into the misty brown eyes. “You keep a right good fire, mam,” he said gently. “Ther’s no trouble for you while I’m gone. Mike’s not a thing but a nightmare to look at, but he’s got clear orders while Chilcoot and I are on the trail. And he’ll put ’em through to the limit. You won’t need for a thing he can hand you. So long.”

The mist in the mother’s eyes had developed into real tears, and they overflowed down her worn cheeks.

“God bless you, Bill,” she stammered, as she released his hand with obvious reluctance. “I’ll sure do my best. I just can’t say the things in here,” she went on, clasping her thin bosom with both hands. Then she struggled to smile. “Guess we’ll all be countin’ up till you get back, an’ it can’t be a day sooner than we’re all wishin’. So long, boy.”

Bill turned to the elder children who had remained to speed him on his way and nodded comprehensively.

He passed quickly to the door, where the Kid was awaiting him, and moved out. And a final glance back revealed Hesther framed in the open doorway, with the yellow light of the room behind her, silhouetting her fragile figure, as she waved a farewell in the direction of the swinging lantern.

The Kid’s pretty blue eyes were raised to the smiling face looking down into hers. It was a moment tense with feeling. It was that moment of parting when she felt that all sense of joy, all sense of happiness was to be snuffed right out of her life. And the responsive smile she forced to her eyes was perilously near to tears.

The lantern in her hand revealed the canoe hauled up against the crude landing. Its rays found reflection in the dark spread of water where a skin of ice was already forming, seeking to embed the frail craft at its mooring.

There was little enough relief from the darkness under the heavy night clouds. There was no visible moon. That was screened behind the stormy threat, yet it contrived a faint twilight over the world. Not a single star was to be seen anywhere and the ghostly northern lights were deeply curtained.

Now, in these last moments of parting, the youth in Bill Wilder was once more surging with impulse. As he gazed down into the bravely smiling eyes a hundred desires were beating in his brain. And he yearned desperately to fling every caution to the winds and abandon himself to the love which left him without a thought but of the delight with which the Kid’s presence filled him.

Somehow it seemed to his big nature a wanton cruelty that this girl should be charged with the cares of a struggle for existence in this far-flung northern wilderness. Perhaps as great a feeling as any that stirred him at this moment was a desire to relieve her of the last shadow of anxiety in the monstrous season about to descend upon them. And yet he was compelled to leave her to face alone the very hardships he would have saved her from. And this with an acute understanding of the uncertainty of the outcome of the thing he had planned to accomplish in the darkness of the long winter night. For once in his life his usual confidence was undermined by curious forebodings. But he gave no outward sign, while he listened to the urgent little story the girl had to tell of the Indian Usak.

“He’s a queer feller,” he said thoughtfully. Then he added: “You told him clear out ther’s to be no trading trip to Placer? An’ still he’s making ready a trip?”

The girl laughed shortly. There was no mirth in it. It was a little nervous expression of feeling.

“You just can’t get back of that feller’s mind,” she said. “Usak’s dead obstinate. He’s obstinate as a young bull caribou when he feels like it. It was when I told him it was your plan we shouldn’t make Placer. I sort of read it in his queer black eyes, even though he took the order without a kick. Maybe he was disappointed. You see, he’s got that swell black fox. Next day I found him fixing for a trip on his own. I asked him right away about it, an’ his answer left me worried an’ guessing. ‘That all right,’ he said, ‘I know us not mak Placer. So. Then I mak one big trip.’”

The girl’s imitation of the Indian’s broken talk brought a deepening smile to Bill’s eyes for all the concern her story inspired.

“I told him right away you guessed it best for him to stop around,” she went on. “An’ it was then he got mulish. He snapped me like an angry wolf. ‘Who this whiteman say I not mak big trip? Him not all thing, this man. No. I mak big trip.’ He went right on fixing his outfit after that and wouldn’t say another word. He’s right up ther’ in his shanty now. I saw the lamp burning as we came down. He means to go his trip, and-”

“Nothing’s goin’ to stop him.” The man’s jaws shut with a snap. “He’s surely got a mule beat.”

He remained buried in deep thought for some moments while the girl watched him, wondering anxiously at his interpretation of Usak’s attitude. She was filled with an unease she could not shake off.

Quite suddenly Bill’s manner underwent a change. He laughed quietly, and his gaze, which had passed to the dark river came again to the troubled face beside him.

“Just don’t worry a thing, Kid,” he said, with an assumption of lightness which drew a responsive sigh of relief. “It don’t matter. Ther’s the boys around, and Mike, and my bunch. Usak’s full of his own notions, an’ it’s best not to drive him too hard. If he guesses to make a trip, just let him beat it. No. Don’t you worry a thing.”

The Kid sighed again. And the man understood that the comfort he had desired for her had been achieved.

The girl shook her head. In a moment she had forgotten the Indian and remembered only the thing about to happen. It was their farewell that had yet to be spoken, and this man would be speeding up the darkened river to his camp, and it would be months—long, dreary months before she would witness again those calm smiling grey eyes, and hear again the voice that somehow made the heaviest burdens of her life on the river something that was a joy to contemplate. The desolation of his going appalled her now that the moment of parting had actually arrived.

The girl remained silent, and her blue eyes sought the dark course of the river in self-defence.

Bill’s voice had lowered. There was a wonderful depth of tenderness in its tone.

It was a little wistful, a little desperate. For the first time the girl’s voice had become unsteady.

He turned swiftly in the shadow that hid them up. His eyes were no longer calm. They were hot with those passions which are only the deeper and stronger for the strong man’s restraint. Suddenly he thrust a hand into the bosom of his parka and withdrew the folded plans of Marty Le Gros’ gold “strike.”

“Here, Kid,” he said urgently. “You best have these. They’re yours anyway whatever happens. You never can guess in this queer old country. Take ’em in case. I’ll sure get right back in the spring. If I don’t you’ll just have to figger—I can’t.”

He waited for the girl to take the paper. But she only gazed round on him with eyes that had widened in real terror.

“You mean you’ll be—dead?” There was an instant’s pause as though the thought had paralysed her. Then a piteous cry broke from her. “Oh, no, no, no!” she cried. “You’ll come back, Bill. You won’t let a thing kill you. I want you, Bill. You’ll come back to me. Oh, say you will.”

It was a distracted face that was raised to his with widened eyes that had filled with tears.

Just for one instant the tearful eyes stared up at him. Then the threatened storm broke. The lantern clattered to the ground and extinguished itself, and the girl’s face was buried in her mitted hands.

The sight of her distress was unendurable. The man no longer had power to deny himself. Impulse leapt from under all restraint. That wonderful impulse that is the very essence of the human soul, the inspiration of all life. He caught her up in his fur-clad arms, and held her crushed against a heart leaping madly with the triumph of glowing manhood.

The grey daylight was still faint over the south-eastern horizon. It was growing slowly, transforming the darkened world under a grey twilight that was hard set to dispel the night shadows. Still it was daylight, and just sufficient to serve as a reminder that behind the drear Arctic winter lay the promise of ultimate golden day.

The teeming rapids lay ahead, a cauldron of furiously boiling waters, and away beyond them the stately course of the Hekor River. To the south lay the wide woodland bluff that had witnessed the years-old tragedy of Marty Le Gros’ home, flinging deep shadows across the turbulent waters. While to the north, far as the eye could see, lay the low lichen-grown land rollers inclining gently away to the purple distance.

Bill Wilder and Chilcoot had pulled in to the northern bank. Their two light canoes were moored just at the head of the narrow, deep, swift channel down to the greater river, which was the only open passage through the boiling rapids. They were made fast to an up-standing boulder, and the men were afoot on the shore, gazing down at their outfit, and engaged in earnest talk.

Chilcoot was listening for the moment while his thoughtful eyes searched anywhere but in the direction of the purposeful face of his friend. And Wilder was talking rapidly and with a decision that forbade all protest.

“Old friend, ther’s just one thing I don’t want from you now,” he said. “That’s any sort of old kick. Maybe I’m handing you reason enough to set you kicking like a crazy steer. But you won’t do it, boy, for the sake of all the years we’ve ground at the queer old mill of life together. You’re the one feller, the only feller, I look to to help me along when I’m set neck deep in a tight hole, and if you fail me I’ll have to squeal on the thing above all others that seems right to me. I gave a promise, and I’ve got to make that promise good if it beats the life out of me, and robs me of all that little gal back there means to me. I’m going right up the big river to the Valley of the Fire Hills, while you get right on down to Placer, and pull every darn wire in my name and your own to fix the ‘strike’ right. Later I’m gambling to get along down and join you, if this darn country don’t beat the life out of me. I’ve got to go if hell freezes over. Ther’s a helpless woman, and a blinded man right up there, and if I don’t make ’em first they’ll be murdered by a savage who’s just stark mad to slaughter ’em. They’re the folk I got the plans of the ‘strike’ from. And I got it on a sort of promise I’d see no harm got around their way from the feller who hates ’em so he’d beat his way out of the gates of hell to get after ’em.”

“Yes.” Then he laughed mirthlessly. “I got to beat it up that river as if all the legions of hell were hard on my heels. Say, boy, I got to beat the hardest trail man around the North, with a crazy eye running over levelled sights. I’ve got to beat him and I’ve got to beat the winter night. I just don’t know a thing how it’s to be done, but if I don’t do it I’ll have broke my fool word—which ’ud break me.”

Chilcoot’s gaze was turned up the river in the direction of the queer homestead whose simple dwellers had flung them their farewell as they passed down on their journey in the darkness.

“An’ that little gal, Bill,” he said slowly. “That little gal you reckon to take right out of here, an’ marry, an’ educate, an’ set around in a land of sunshine to raise your dandy kids. Ain’t ther’ a promise there that it’ll break you to fail in? Are you feelin’ like makin’ a great give-up for lousy scum of—Euralians? Are you?”

“There’s sure a promise there, boy, I’ll make good. If I don’t it’ll only be I’m dead.”

“I jest don’t get the argument,” he said in his blunt fashion. “If I didn’t know you I’d say you’re dead crazy. But you ain’t,” he went on, with another shake of the head. “Your promise is the biggest thing in your life, bigger than that Kid’s happiness. Maybe you just can’t help it. Maybe none of us ken help the things we are. I ain’t goin’ to kick. It ain’t my way with you. I’m goin’ right on down to Placer, an’ I’m goin’ to put things through, same as if you was along. An’ I’ll wait fer you to come along till I know you can’t get. Then I’ll get back to here, an’ see the Kid, an’ her folks get the thing you fancy for them, an’ I’ll see ’em along their trail till they can handle their own play. That goes, Bill. Guess it goes all the time with me.”

Wilder’s real acknowledgment was in the faint smile that shone in his eyes. There was no attempt to find words to express himself. And anyway with Chilcoot there was no need.

It was then the older man voiced something of the real feeling that so deeply stirred his rough heart.

“You know, Bill, ther’s things in life make a feller wish they weren’t. You’re bug on a promise, an’ it’s the thing that’s left you the feller you are in other folks’ minds. I’d make any old promise, so it suited me, to folks I ain’t worried about. An’ I wouldn’t lie awake o’ nights breakin’ it. But I ain’t any sort o’ high notions. Japs—Euralians?” he snorted, “Why, I’d promise ’em the earth with a dandy barbed wire fence set all round it to get the thing I wanted from ’em. I’d—”

“Not if you’d seen a queer little woman whose worst crime was giving up her life nursing a blinded devil of a murdering Euralian husband, and was nigh crazy that some feller was coming along to rob her of his life. Man, the sight made me sweat pity. If I can save that poor soul that much, why—I want to do it.”

Bill sighed and passed a hand across his broad brow. “It’s no sort of self-righteousness with me, boy,” he went on. “I just won’t know an easy moment if I don’t do everything in my power to beat that crazy Indian. Come on. We’ll get right on. We’ll clear these rapids and part the other side.”

He moved hurriedly down to the water’s edge and began to cast the moorings adrift. Chilcoot held the canoes ready. In a few moments both had taken their places, and the thrusting paddles still held the little vessels against the stream.

Bill suddenly held out a hand from which the mitt had been removed, and Chilcoot gripped it forcefully.

“We’ll shake right here, old pard,” Bill said quietly. “When we get below we’ll be full up keeping clear of the popple. You got everything clear. An’ ther’s nothing on the river to beat you. I’ll be glad to have your wish of luck.”

“You sure have it, Bill, all the luck that’s always yours rolled right up into one.”

Chilcoot nodded and his eyes sparkled with real feeling. “So long,” he cried.

Bill’s farewell came ringing back as his little craft shot out into the stream under the plunging stroke of his paddle.

CHAPTER XIV

The grey dawn yielded to the many hues of the sunrise. For the moment a cloudless azure dome smiled down upon a world with a soft crystal-white carpet outspread. For days the temperature had hovered about zero, and ice had formed upon the waterways with that fierce rapidity which the northern man knows so well. Its frigid grip was reaching in every direction seeking to seal the world under iron bonds.

But the Valley of the Fire Hills was dripping and steaming. Everywhere the snow was melting, and the dark waters of the little river flowed smoothly on still free from the smallest trace of ice. The temperature was well above freezing, for the terrestrial furnaces of the blackened hills were banked and glowing.

The valley was dense with a fog of steam. It was a ghostly world without shape or form. A blind world with only the river bank to guide the adventurer through its heart. There was no sound of life for all the coming of the pitiful light of the briefest day. The world was still, remote, bewildering.

Yet life was there; staunch, indomitable life. It was there with purpose, simple, unwavering, and no qualm or doubt marred the clarity of its resolution. A boat, a small whiteman-built canoe, was moving up the eastern bank of the stream, feeling groping, taking every chance so that it made its final destination.

With the first lift of the sun above the horizon a current of air stirred the fog, and a cold breath shot through the tepid air. It came and passed. Then it came again with added force. It was low on the ground and the fog lifted. Swift and keen it pursued its advantage, and the blinding mist thinned, and a dull sheen of the risen sun replaced the cold grey. The wind increased. It bit fiercely as it swept down the heated valley. And in a moment, it seemed, out of the bewildering fog there appeared the graceful outline of the nosing canoe.

Bill Wilder breathed a sigh of relief. At last the scales had fallen from before his eyes, and his way lay open to him. Instantly his paddle dipped, and his boat shot out into midstream. It leapt forward under the mighty thrusts of his arms, and as it raced on a fervent prayer went up that the wind might hold and increase in strength.

The canoe lay moored at the old log landing. There had been no hesitation. No doubt had been entertained for its security. Wilder had left it to such chances as might befall, his only means of return to the outer world, while he made his way over the snow-slush to the shades of the woodlands surrounding the secret habitation that was his goal.

Half way through the woods the thing Wilder looked for came to pass. Eyes and ears were keenly alert. He had realised that his approach would be observed. That seeing eyes, faithful to the service of the woman’s blinded charge, would be unfailing in their watch. The terror he had once witnessed in them had been sufficient to warn him that her life was comparable to that of a vigilant watchdog, everlastingly searching for the approach of the dark, avenging figure that hypnotized her with the horror of its return.

The diminutive figure of the Japanese woman came hurriedly to meet him from her hiding somewhere screened amidst the dull green foliage of these northern woods. She stood before him, her slanting black eves widely gazing, and her thin, lined face eagerly demanding in its expression of scarcely suppressed agitation.

Crysa began at once. She had no fear of this white-man. But she realised that his coming had to do with her safety and the safety of her charge. His promise had been her comfort, her most treasured memory.

“You give him the paper?” she said, as though no space of time had elapsed since their last meeting, and the memory of every word then spoken was as fresh in her mind as though their meeting had occurred only the day before. “You give him this thing? And now you come that I may know it is so? And Usak is satisfied? Oh, yes. You come to say that thing? There is no more fear? None? I sleep, I eat, I know peace. Usak will not come?”

Wilder gripped himself before this poor creature’s heart-breaking appeal. He knew he must dash her last hope, and hurl her again to that despair which had beset her so long. It was useless to attempt to soften the facts. His resolve was clear in his mind. He shook his head.

“Nothing will satisfy him,” he said sombrely, “but the life of your man. He’s on his way now, I guess. But I got away first. I came right along up to get you folks away to safety. I don’t reckon to know how you’re fixed for a quick get-away. But you both got to make it right now, or Usak’ll be along and kill you both up. Maybe I can get you right out of the country back to your own folk. That’s how I figger. But if I’m to do that you need to beat it down the river with me—now. I came because of my promise. See? I’m here with a white-man’s word to do the best I know. You’ve got to take me to Ukisama, and both of you need to make up your minds right away. Money don’t need to worry you. Only outfit for the journey along down to Placer. Well?”

While he was speaking the woman’s face was a study in emotions. With his first words the urgent hope fell from her in one tragic flash. There were no tears. But panic closed down upon her in a staggering contrast to her hope of the moment before. The dreadful fear she was enduring left her lips moving. She followed the man’s words, as though she was repeating them the more surely to impress them upon her staggered faculties. But a measure of comfort seemed to come to her as he propounded his purpose for their safety. And a desperate sort of calm helped her as he made his final demand.

“You come with me,” she cried at once. “I take you to Hela. You say all this thing. I, too, say much. Maybe he go. I not know. Come.”

Wilder experienced a curious sensation of repugnance as he entered the presence of the blinded man. He was not usually troubled by such sensitiveness. But somehow he now realised more surely than ever contact with something inexpressively evil. The yellow face of the man was almost grey. But whether it was the result of any emotion of fear that had produced the noisome hue he could not tell. The man’s eyeless sockets seemed even more repulsive than when first he had looked upon them. Then there were his restlessly moving hands, which, in his blind helplessness, never for a moment seemed to remain quite still.

They were in the central hall of the house, that Eastern apartment so full of vivid memories for the whiteman. It was unchanged from that which he knew of it, even to the dust, and the sense of neglect and disuse that pervaded it. Wilder remembered acutely. His eyes passed over every familiar detail of the place and brought back to him a picture of the happenings of that night, when, unbidden, unwelcome, he had been a guest in the house.

The blinded man confronted him on his seat upon the cushioned divan beside the carved screen. And he spoke at once as Bill entered and moved over to the chair which was set before the bureau. Crysa went at once to her husband and took her place on the seat beside him.

And the challenge warned Wilder of the amazing watchfulness which fear had inspired in these two. Crysa had said no word as she entered, yet this sightless man knew him and understood.

“I’m here to help you,” he went on. “If you reckon to save the life remaining to you you’ll need to take my talk at its face value and make a quick get-away right off. I’ve just handed your wife, as quick as I could, the trouble beating up the river for you. Usak’s behind me with his gun. He’s crazy for your blood. An’ I’m crazy he shan’t get you. I took an almighty chance pushing up from the Caribou here because I handed your wife a promise I’d do the best I knew to save the murder that crazy Indian looks for. With winter closing right down no one can figger the chances of getting through back. Still, I handed my word, and it goes with me. The thing I can do is to get you down to Caribou if the winter don’t queer us. I can get you right on to your own country, which, seeing you are who and what you are, is the only thing. Maybe I’ll be going beyond the right I have in doing this, but I’ll do it because you’re blind and helpless, and because your wife seems to have suffered enough for being your wife. There’s going to be no argument as far as I’m concerned. That I’m a police officer cuts no ice. In this thing I’m just a plain whiteman who’s given his word, and it goes. Now, here’s the proposition so far as I’m concerned. I’m going right back to the landing, and I’ll wait around there till, the daylight goes. If you come along in that time with the truck you need for the journey—you needn’t worry with the food, I’ve got all we need—you have my promise I’ll get you safe through, if its humanly possible, to your own country. If I fail my life will pay just as surely as yours. You got my promise, a whiteman’s promise, and you’ve got to be satisfied with it if you fancy making a get-away. The moment night closes in I pull out, whether you come with with me or not. That’s all.”

The repulsion inspired by the blind man’s presence had a deeper effect on Wilder than he knew. He had planned his method, but his planning had not provided for the cold fashion in which he delivered his proposition. His tone was even more frigid than he realised. He rose from his seat to depart. And instantly the Count’s harsh voice stayed him.

“And how do I know Usak is on the river? How I know this is not a police trap?”

Wilder searched the ghastly features. A surge of anger leapt, and his cheeks flushed till his broad brow was suffused to the edge of his thick fur cap.

“It don’t matter a thing to me what you know, or what you don’t know,” he said sharply. “Usak’s on the river, making right here with his gun. Ther’s a getaway there at the landing till the daylight goes. You can take it or not. It’s right up to you. It’s there because murder’s going to happen around, and it’s my notion to prevent it. You’re blind, and your woman helpless. It don’t seem to me you matter a hoot in hell. But I’m glad to help a woman—any woman. You’ll think it over. An’ don’t forget there isn’t more than two hours before the daylight goes. That’s all I’ve to say.”

He turned and passed out the way he had come, and as he went he avoided the dark stains on the floor, those stains so grimly significant, which even he could not bring himself to pass over.

Wilder was ready to cast off. He had spent the interim in preparing room in his vessel for the added burden of his passengers. He knew they would come.

There had been no doubt in his mind whatsoever. And curiously enough, he was the more sure since the man was blind. In his philosophy the more surely the man was afflicted the more surely he would cling to life, and dread the final slaughtering of his body by an unseen enemy. Then in addition there was the urgent appealing of the little woman, who was surely something more than a ministering angel to this helpless demon.

Oh, yes, he had known they would come, but he had not suspected the manner of their coming. They came in their own canoe, the blind man paddling in the bow, and the woman, infinite in her despairing devotion, serving her man to the last at the steering paddle.

It was a display of devotion that thrilled the whiteman for all the worthlessness of the object of it. And he accepted the position readily. It might add to his care, but it would lessen his labours. Their escape from the avenging Usak was all he desired. But he was by no means blinded to the reason that they came in their own boat. It was the man’s distrust. He had no desire to yield himself a possible prisoner in the whiteman’s craft.

Wilder nodded approval as they drew alongside, and he realised the considerable outfit, including food, that had been provided.

“You prefer it that way,” he said quietly. “That’s all right. Keep right on my tail,” he went on, reaching up and casting his mooring adrift. “It’s mighty dark along the river, an’ maybe we’ll be thankful it is that way. If it beats you you can make fast to me. If you’ve sense you’ll act that way. I got two eyes an’ I know all ther’ is to this darn trail.”

He thrust out into the stream, and the second vessel followed him like a ghostly shadow in the twilight.

A man sat gazing out from his rocky shelter. His dark eyes were brooding as he contemplated the falling snow. Below him, rendered invisible by the storm, lay the still bosom of the mountain lake with shore ice supporting its white burden. The bulk of the water still resisted the grip of winter, but with every passing day, every hour, the spread of shore ice was encroaching.

The grey curtain of falling snow was impenetrable even to the accustomed eyes of Usak. The world about him was silent, and windless, and alive with that desolate threat which drives man to despair. He had reached the mouth of the Valley of the Fire Hills, and, blinded by the sudden snow-storm, had sought what shelter he could find.

His shelter was half cavern and half overhung in the towering headland at the mouth of the valley. Yet it served. His kyak was hauled from the icy water and lay on the foreshore. And the man sat over a smoulder of fire made of the driftwood he had collected on his way, and the profusion of lichen he had gathered from the snow-free shelter in which he sat.

Usak crouched huddled and smoking, over the inadequate fire. Its warmth was negligible, but it afforded that without which no human being in such desolation could endure, a mental comfort and companionship. He was content to wait. For all the winter was advancing apace, for all he knew that soon, desperately soon, the great lake, out upon which he was gazing, would be one broad sheet of ice many feet in thickness, and impossible for the light craft which was his vehicle, he was content enough. The Valley of the Fire Hills would remain unfrozen, and the great river below him would remain open long enough for his navigation. For the rest there was always portage. Oh, yes. Time was with him. The real freeze-up was not yet. The snow would cease later, and meanwhile he could contemplate the thing he had looked forward to for so many years.

So there was no impatience that the world was blinded by snowflakes half the size of his brown palm. With the passing of the silent storm, so still, so windless, doubtless the cold would increase, but also, doubtless, the sky could clear, and the Arctic twilight would again light the world with its ghostly rays.

He thrust out a moccasined foot and kicked the embers of his fire together. He removed the pipe from his strong jaws, and held its stem to the warmth. The saliva in it had frozen, and it had gone out.

Presently he reached down and picked up a live coal. He tossed it into the pipe bowl and sucked heavily at the stem, belching clouds of reeking smoke. His enjoyment was profound.

After awhile the pipe was neglected. His enjoyment of it was merged into something more absorbing. His savage mind was lost in the thing that had brought him to the heart of the great Alaskan hills, and he was gazing on a vision of savage delight. As his hands gripped each other about his knees there was movement in them, nervous, twitching movement. For, in fancy, they were slowly crushing out the life he was determined should know the hideous meaning of prolonged death agony.

His delight was in his darkly brooding eyes as they looked into the flicker of the fire. His mind was teeming with the thing he would say while that life was conscious and could know the terror and agony of those last moments. Oh, yes. It was worth all the waiting and he was glad, glad that now, at last, the moment of his final vengeance was approaching. Sheer insanity was driving, but it was that calm insanity where the border line is passed coldly and calmly with hate the dominating influence. Suddenly he started and leant forward.

His hands parted from about his knees, and, in a moment, he was on his feet crouching and gazing out into the impenetrable snowfall. He moved aside from his fire and crept forward. Then he stood up tall and straight, and his head was turned with an ear to the outer world.

A sound had reached ears trained to the pitch of any forest creature. It had been faint, so faint, yet to Usak it was quite unmistakable. It had come from out there on the water beyond the ground ice, and he knew that some living thing was passing, hidden by the grey of the snowfall.

He stood for a long time listening, his dark eyes no less alert than his ears. Then with something like reluctance he came back to the fire and spread his hands out over it. After awhile he returned to his seat. There was no doubt in his mind. The sound he had heard was the ruffling of the water stirred by the dip of a paddle.

But his shoulders moved in a shrug, and he dismissed the matter. Why not? There were folk in the Valley of the Fire Hills, other folk than those—Yes, far up, there were many of the folk he hated but did not fear—the Euralians.

Usak was standing on the landing almost lost in the billows of smoke surging down upon him. They belched out of the heart of the wood which concealed the clearing, wherein had stood the secret habitation of the man whom he had designed should know his final vengeance.

The whole of the dripping valley seemed to be afire. Behind him the roar and crackle of the burning forest grew louder, and the suffocating smoke grew denser and denser while the heat was blistering.

He stepped quickly into his waiting kyak and pushed out into the stream, vanishing in the twilight of the night. He paddled rapidly till he had cleared the woodland belt and approached the unlovely barrens of the Fire Hills. Then he sought the shelter of the bank and shipped his paddle.

He knelt up in the little vessel gazing back at the ruthless work of his hands. It was there plain enough for him to see. The billows of drifting smoke were darkly outlined against the moonlit, star-decked heavens. And farther inland was the glowing heart of the fire, with leaping splashes of flame lightening up the world around it, hungrily devouring the splendid dwelling that had once been the home of his most hated enemy.

But there was none of the joy in his mood that might have been looked for. No. A light of fury was burning in his merciless eyes. He had been thwarted in his long contemplated vengeance, and he had been driven to the impotent devastation which his savage heart had prompted. He had reached the place only to find it utterly deserted. The house he found devoid of all life, and his search had only yielded him further confirmation that his intended victims had escaped him. So, in his insane savagery, he had done the thing that alone would satisfy. He had fired the house, and seen to it that even the woods about it should not escape destruction.

He remained for awhile contemplating the mischief of his handiwork and drawing such comfort from it as his mood would allow. Then, at last, feasted, satiated, he dipped his paddle again into the sluggish waters.

He knew. He understood. The chance had been his far back there at the mouth of the creek. He had heard the sound of a paddle, and should have guessed. But his wits had failed him, and the snow had blinded him. But even now he did not wholly despair. There was the winter. The man was blind. And the woman—Psha! He drove his paddle with all the fury of his desire.

CHAPTER XV

Yes, Bill Wilder was well enough satisfied. Not a day, not an hour had been lost in his rush to the hills. He had spared no effort. And on the return he had driven hard with the full weight of the stream speeding him. There had been the one heavy snowstorm as he had passed out of the mouth of the Valley of the Fire Hills. For a few hours it had blinded him and forced him to shelter. For the rest the luck of the weather had been with him, with only the increasing cold and the twenty hour nights with which to do battle.

He was feeling good as he came to the familiar landing above the Grand Falls, and prepared for his portage down to the canyon of the rapids.

It was all curious in its way, and there were moments on the journey when he found himself half whimsically wondering at the thing he was doing. For the man he was endeavouring to save from the hands of Usak he had only utter loathing and detestation. There was no pity in him, not a moment’s thought of it. For the little distracted woman it was different. He knew he was risking everything in life out of pity for this poor creature, who was nothing in the world to him except that she was a woman, and not even white at that. He realised his utter folly. He even reminded himself that the thing he was doing was not only unfair to himself, but to those others who looked to him for succour, that other whose life had become focussed in him.

He knew that an encounter with Usak would mean a battle to the death of one or perhaps all of them. He knew that, embarrassed by these helpless creatures, a sudden final onslaught of the Arctic winter night might well mean the end of all things. But he had not hesitated. No. He had calculated closely. His knowledge of the northern world had told him that there was time—even time to spare. The daylight had not yet passed, and, unless the season was one of unusual severity, the dreaded freeze-up was not due for several weeks more. No. The cold was steadily increasing. There would be more snow yet. But there would be relapses of temperature, and the final sealing of the great river was still a long way off. So he had refused to be turned aside from his purpose.

He had laboured on with a mind steadily poised and with nerves in perfect tune. His greatest apprehension was the possible encountering of the Indian, Usak. And even on this his resolve was clear and as merciless as anything the savage, himself, might have contemplated. He was armed and ready, and no interference would be tolerated even if his necessity drove him to slaughter.

The daylight had been spent in disgorging the two canoes of their freight. He and the little Japanese woman had spent the time preparing his packs. They were not vast, but the whole portage would mean three laborious trips over the rough territory of the great gorge down to the landing below.

The first trip was to be his own canoe. The second was to be the camp outfit of his passengers. The blind-man and the woman would accompany him on that trip and help with the packs. Then, with these folk safely encamped below the gorge, he would return alone to bring down their canoe.

Yes. It was all clearly planned with a view to the simplest and best advantage, and the preliminary work had gone on rapidly under his energetic guidance. There was not one moment’s unnecessary delay, for he understood, only too well, the value of every precious hour he could steal on his human and elemental adversaries.

The last pack had been made up of the things that could be dispensed with. His canoe was hauled up empty, ready to be shouldered. And now, with the last flash of daylight shining in the south-west, he stood low down on the foreshore gazing out over the water in the direction of the misty falls. Mid-day was only two hours gone and the daylight was already collapsing with the falling sun.

The peace of this far-off world was a little awesome, the silence was something threatening. The dull roar of the Grand Falls alone robbed it of utter, complete soundlessness. The snow was a soft virgin carpet in every direction. The hardy, dark woods were weighted down with its burden. For all there was shore ice against the river bank the whole breadth of the waters of the river were silently, heavily flowing on to the tremendous precipitation far beyond. But it was not of these things that Wilder was thinking. In the emergency besetting he was concerned only for the signs which, out of his experience, he was striving to interpret.

They were very definite. The sun had fallen below the horizon, accompanied by two pale sundogs that strove but failed to display an angry glare. The horizon was clear of all cloud, a vault of wonderful colour. Such breath of wind as was stirring was coming up out of the south-east. It was good. It was all good. The sundogs suggested possible, ultimate change, but not yet. The breeze was almost mild. But above all there was not a single cloud to shut out the light of the moon that would presently rise, and the brilliant starlight, and the beneficent northern lights. No. It would be a perfect night.

He turned back to the couple hugging the tiny fire they had ventured to light in the shelter of an attenuated bluff of woods.

“Just get this clear,” he said thrusting his hands out to the warmth. “I’m setting out right away. It’ll take me six hours to make back here. Six hours good. I’d have been glad to cache your boat back there in the woods, an’ hide up our tracks right. But the snow on the ground beats us on that play. Any pair of eyes happening along could follow us anywhere. No. If Usak’s around I give him credit for being able to read our tracks anyway, and with the snow, why they’re just shriekin’ at him. We got to take a big chance. But ther’s one play we can make.”

He paused and rubbed his hands thoughtfully while the eyeless man gazed unerringly up into his face, and the woman beside him waited a prey to apprehension.

“You best beat it back into these woods,” he went on quickly. “Leave that fire—burning. Leave it so it looks like dying out. As if we were all out on portage. See? And you two make the woods, dodging the snow patches, an’ walking on the bare ground. Take your sleeping kit, and get what sleep you can—without a fire. That’s all. I’ll get right back just as quick as I know. Once we’re on the river below these Falls, why I guess Usak hasn’t a chance. But I got to leave you one end or the other while I make this first portage, an’ it seems horse sense leaving you above the Falls. We haven’t seen a sign of that murdering Indian above here the whole way.”

The woman silently acquiesced. It was sufficient that the man had agreed. But her troubled eyes told of the haunting dread that obsessed her.

Wilder turned away and moved over to his canoe lying ready. He stooped down, and when he stood up again the little vessel was exactly poised upon his broad back.

The hush of the woods was profound. The dark aisles of the trees were visible in the moonlight, for the foliage above was thin, and meagre, and tattered under the fierce storms which roared down out of the heart of the hills. The promise of sun-down had been fulfilled. A full moon shone down upon a chill, silvery world, and the starlight was of that amazing brilliance which is the great redeeming of the Arctic night. There was no wind, not a breath. It was cold, intensely cold, and the northern heavens were lit by an amazing wealth of vivid, moving lights.

The blindman and his woman made no pretence of the sleep that Wilder had suggested. Sleep was impossible to them. They crouched together in their sleeping furs, striving for any measure of warmth for their chilled bodies. But they had otherwise obeyed. For the thing suggested had appealed. They were deep hidden amidst the tree trunks, waiting, waiting for that return which alone could yield them any sense of security.

For the most part they talked in their own native tongue, but sometimes they used the language of the country of their adoption.

The blindman’s hearing was doubly acute for his affliction. And he crouched straining for any sound to warn them of lurking danger. But the hours passed, and only the droning roar of the distant Falls broke the soundlessness of the night.

Crysa could contain her fears no longer. A sigh escaped her and she stirred restlessly.

The man’s reply was slow in coming. It almost seemed as though the straining effort of listening completely pre-occupied him.

A long low kyak glided up to the landing. It came without sound, for the stream was swift, and the shore ice had been broken up by those who had come before. The trailing paddle was lifted quickly from the water and the vessel’s occupant reached out and caught the side of the boat lying moored against the bank. Skilfully he guided the nose of his craft in between the moored vessel and the bank, and the whole thing was completed in absolute soundlessness.

With his vessel lying stationary he remained for a moment unmoving. His great body towered as he knelt up against his paddling strut. He was surveying the moored boat with eager, dark eyes and an acutely reading mind. Presently he turned from the contemplation of the thing that had set a wild fierce hope stirring in his savage heart. His gaze was flung upon the landing itself, and upon the surrounding slope of the river bank, and the adjacent bluff of woods. The brilliant night revealed all he sought with a clearness which left him without a shadow of doubt. Finally he discovered beyond, just within the shelter of the woods, the last dying smoulder of the camp fire. He reached towards the nose of his kyak, and seized the long rifle lying there. Then he stepped ashore.

The dark figure moved swiftly up the shore. It reached the edge of the woods and stood for a moment gazing down on the dying camp fire. The dark eyes had suddenly become fiercely urgent as he searched every sign that was there for his interpretation.

After a few moments the man moved about in the neighbourhood of the fire. His moccasined feet gave out no sound. He was searching diligently in the trodden snow. At last he came again to a halt. He threw up his head and stared about him. It was the attitude of a creature of the forest scenting its prey, and in his eyes was a look of fierce exulting as he gazed into the dark shelter of the woods. Then his whole attitude underwent a change. He seemed to crouch down. His long rifle was borne at the trail in his hand, and he moved forward stealthily, and became swallowed up by the shadowed depths.

The hush of the night left the falling of a pine cone a sound that was almost startling. The droning roar of the distant Falls was only part of the awesome quiet. The windlessness was a threat of greater and greater depths of cold, while the brilliant moon and cloudless sky only helped to impress more deeply the intense frigidity of the coming season. It was all perfect, in its exquisite peace, a vision of superlative splendour in the amazing twilight. It suggested a sublime creation unspoiled, unsullied by any inharmonious blemish, a broad indefinite sketch set out by the mighty brush and divine inspiration of a God-like artist who only requires to inset the subtle, finishing details. Such was the seeming of the moment.

A cry. A series of raucous human cries. They came from somewhere within the forest belt. They came full of terror, and maybe pain. They came full of ferocious unyielding and savage passion. They came again and again, with the shrill of a woman’s voice mingling. Then the last sound died out, swallowed up by the immense silence.

So the grandeur of the night scene, the sublimity of Nature’s profound calm, lost for a few brief moments by the invasion of an expression of surging human passions, returned again, all undefeated, to the rugged heart of the northern wilderness.

The moon was still high in the starlit heavens, shedding its cold benignity upon the flowing waters. The belt of the northern lights had extended. Their ghostly sheen had deepened, and the vivid arc of a burnished aurora had joined their legions. The world was lit anew. The twilight had glorified; the night was transformed. No longer was the moon the dominant light giver. The jewel-like sparkle of the stars had dimmed in contrast. For the aurora, the glory of the Arctic night, had ascended its triumphant throne.

The whiteman swung along, approaching the camping ground above the Falls, filled with satisfaction and hope at the beneficent change. For practical purposes the night light was all-sufficient. In fancy he saw the completion of his labours in far less time than he had anticipated, and something like ultimate security for those he sought to succour.

The further portage would be easy now. The first trip was over. Now there was the bearing of the packs in which he would have the assistance of those others. Then the last—the portage of their—

He had reached the low shore clearing of the landing. A great flood of silvery light illuminated the whole breadth of the river. There it lay a wide, swift tide, with the great hills far across its bosom rising a jagged snowcapped line, gleaming like burnished silver under the amazing heavenly lights.

But the scene as Nature had painted it made not an instant’s claim upon him. How should it? He had come to a sudden halt, his gaze riveted upon a vision that made him draw his breath sharply, and set his heart leaping. He became rooted to the spot. Two boats were out there on the broad bosom of the river. Two of them. And both were moving on down the stream towards—

A shout broke from him. It came with all the power of his well-nigh bursting lungs. It was the natural impulse which his surge of feeling inspired. He shouted again and again. Then of a sudden he charged down to the water’s edge, and stood staring helplessly, silently, a prey to unspeakable horror.

Two boats! The leading vessel was a long low kyak. There was no mistaking its build. Just as there was no mistaking, to his mind, the burly figure propelling it. The second boat he recognised on the instant. It was the canoe he had expected to portage on his third trip. In it were two figures sitting up. They were motionless. They were paddleless. They were sitting, inert, like bundles set there, and quite incapable of any movement, incapable of any resistance. And between the two boats stretched a taut line.

It needed no second thought for Wilder to realise the thing that was being enacted. The inhuman vengeance of the crazy Indian had descended upon those benighted helpless folk and no power on earth could save them.

Usak’s purpose was as clear as the brilliant light of the night. The ruthless savage was towing them out into mid-stream. Presently he would, doubtless, release their vessel when it had reached the limit of safety for himself. Then he would leave them to the hideous destruction awaiting them at the great waterfall flinging back its thunderous roar out of the heart of the mists enshrouding it.

There was no succour that he could offer. He was without any means of reaching them with his own canoe already below the Falls. And his automatic pistol was useless. No. He could only stand there helplessly watching the terrible tragedy of it all.

Now he knew the thing that must have happened. He vividly pictured the coming of Usak, whom they must have passed higher up the river on their way down. The stillness of the figures in the boat was terribly significant.

The man must have come upon them in their hiding, perhaps asleep. He must have overpowered them. Probably he had bound them hand and foot when he set them in the boat, so that the blindman, no less than the other, should contemplate, even if it was only through his hearing, the dreadful death he was preparing for them.

He caught his breath. Then in a moment he hurled the full force of his impotent loathing in a furious shout across the water.

The exclamation came as he saw the man cease paddling and reach out to the rope behind him. In a moment it was severed, and the trailing boat began instantly to turn broadside on to the current.

The watching man gave a gasp. Then the broadside boat was forgotten, and his whole attention was given to the other, the boat containing the demented creature perpetrating his long-pondered crime.

Usak’s paddle was beating the water furiously. He was striving with all his enormous strength and skill to swing his light vessel out of the stream. He was labouring in a fashion that instantly warned the on-looker of the peril besetting him. And the sight of the struggle thrilled him with an excitement which had no relation to any desire for the man’s escape.

Usak was a superb river man. Perhaps he had no equal upon the northern waters. But he was an Indian with the lust to kill, and without the sober judgment of the whiteman watching him from the shore. Wilder understood. It was there for him to see. The Indian had gone too far in his desire. He had passed the limits of safety before he severed the rope to hurl his victims to the fate he had designed for them. He was caught in the same overwhelming rush of silent water. His paddle was no better than a toy thing to stay the rush. His kyak was caught and flung broadside. And abreast of the other it was drifting, drifting down upon the roaring cataract ahead.

Usak had ceased paddling. There was a moment in which he remained utterly unmoving like those others. To the on-looker it seemed that he was contemplating the full horror in which his mistake had involved him. Then, of a sudden, he saw the dark figure rear itself up in the boat, which, even at that distance, seemed to rock perilously. The man stood erect. Then an arm was raised and the paddle was flung into the racing waters. After that it seemed that the doomed creature’s arms were folded across his broad bosom, and, like a statue, unmoved by any emotion of fear, he stood boldly contemplating the terrible doom towards which he and his victims were inevitably being borne.

Wilder turned away. It was all too painful. It was all too horrible in its human wantonness. He passed up the shore and sat down, pondering the irony of the fate that had descended upon the demented man out there on the water.

And after awhile, when the cold of the night drove him, and he bestirred himself, and again moved down to the water’s edge, it was to witness the placid unruffled bosom of the great river flowing heavily on as it had done throughout the ages. The trifling human tragedy it had witnessed was far too infinitely small to leave its impress upon a scene so tremendous in its expression of overwhelming Nature.

CHAPTER XVI

The transformation was complete. It was beyond anything that had been dreamed of by those who had foreseen the thing that would happen. It had come with that startling rapidity which the lure and magic of gold never fails to bring about.

Just before the break of spring saw the return to the Caribou of Chilcoot and Bill Wilder. But their return was very different from their adventurous going, when it had been a desperate race against the season. They came while the grip of the Arctic night was still fast upon the great waterways, and before the sun had lifted its shining face above the horizon. They came with a great equipment of men and material on heavily laden dog-sleds. They came with all speed that not a moment of the coming daylight might be lost, and to head off the rush of the human tide that was already strung out behind them for the new adventure.

Bill Wilder had not permitted the grievous tragedy he had witnessed on the upper waters of the Hekor to deflect his purpose one iota. The shock of the thing he had witnessed had been painful beyond words. For the blind leader of the Euralian marauders he had had not one grain of pity. For the great Indian, who had given his life to the loyal service of the girl he loved, there had been a regret that was not untinged with a sensation of relief. He felt somehow that the thing was right; he felt that had the demented creature achieved his purpose and himself escaped, the position would have been fraught with serious complications, not to say dangers. Usak would have expected to return to his service of Felice as though nothing had happened. He would have demanded the thing he looked upon as his right. And to hold his place at her side he would have been prepared to use any and all the methods his savage mind prompted.

Wilder’s duty would have been obvious. The man had committed his wanton crime. He was a serious danger to them all. Even, he felt, to the girl herself. There would have been nothing for him to do but hand the story of the crime to his friend, George Raymes. That would have deeply involved him. The Kid would have been hurt, hurt as he had no desire to hurt her, with the knowledge of the hideous crime, and that the full penalty of whiteman’s law had fallen upon the man who had been a second father and devoted servant to her. As it was she need never know the thing that had happened. No one need ever know the thing that had happened, except Raymes, and perhaps Chilcoot, who would, he knew, remain as silent as the grave.

He had felt it was all for the best. And somehow, in those moments in which he had witnessed the calm courage with which the Indian had faced his terrible end a feeling of intense admiration and sympathy went out to the savage whose conception of manhood was so curious a blending of downright honesty and loyalty, of hate to the limit of fiendish cruelty, and of an invincible courage in face of personal disaster.

But for the little Japanese woman his feelings were stirred to the deepest. When he thought of her, body and soul he hated the ruthless Indian with all the passionate manhood in him. And the more deeply he pondered her tragic end, the more surely he cried out against the seeming injustice that Fate could have allowed it to come to pass.

He had sat for hours over the flickering camp fire before he contemplated continuing his labours. But in the end the shock of the horror passed, and the urgency of the moment bestirred him. There was nothing to be done but to continue his journey. There was no need even to obliterate such traces of the camp as might remain. It was the way of Nature in these far-flung regions to hide up man’s track almost in the moment of his passing.

So he had made his way down to Placer, not even pausing at the rapids at the mouth of the Caribou, so vivid with happy memories for him. It was a journey of weeks that taxed every ounce of the manhood in him. For the night of winter had fallen, and the storming world about him was often doubly blinded. But he reached his destination at last, and reached it with the last of the open water.

It was his return to Placer that set the whole city agog. It was known he had been about in the north for two open seasons. And the conclusions drawn were natural enough in a gold community watching the movements of the man who was the leading figure in the traffic upon which it was engaged.

He denied every inquiry by which he was assailed. He denied even his friend, and, for the time being, chief, George Raymes. He visited him at once. And with his first greeting explained in a fashion he had long since prepared.

“I’m right glad to see you again, George,” he declared, as they gripped hands. “Ther’ve been times when I didn’t guess it would happen ever. But I’ve so far beat the game, and I’m glad. Now, see, right here,” he went on, smiling whimsically into the other’s questioning eyes, “I haven’t any report to hand you yet. And I’ll take it more than friendly you don’t ask me a thing. I’m setting right out with one big outfit, and if the game goes my way I’ll be right back when the earth’s dry, and the skitters are humming. And when that time comes I’ll hand you a story that ought to set you sky high with the folks who run your end of the game. Do you feel like acting that way?”

The policeman was content. He knew Wilder too well to press him. Besides, Chilcoot had been in the city weeks. Chilcoot had been in close contact with the Gold Commissioner. Furthermore, Chilcoot had been preparing the return outfit, collecting men and material for a swift rush, and had talked with him in his office. So he readily acquiesced, and left these “special” constables to work out their plans in the way they saw fit.

But the whisper had gone round. Bill Wilder and Chilcoot Massy were preparing a great outfit for the trail. Bill Wilder and Chilcoot Massy were buying largely. And their purchases were of all that material required in the exploitation of a big “strike.” Then word had leaked out through the Gold Commissioner’s office, as, somehow, it always contrived to do when something of real magnitude was afoot. So the “sharps,” and the “wise-guys,” and the traders, and all the riff-raff, ready to jump in on anything offering a promise of easy gain, bestirred themselves out of their winter’s pursuit of pleasure. Not one, but a hundred outfits were quietly being prepared with the deliberate intention of dogging these great captains of the gold trade to their destination. Chilcoot and Wilder were preparing for the winter trail. And as a result every dog and sled within the city was brought into commission.

Then had come the setting out. It was arranged with the utmost secrecy. The preparations of these men had been made beyond the straggling town’s limits, so that the get-away could be as sudden as they chose to make it. Every man engaged to accompany them was under bond to report each day at the camp at a given hour, and this had gone on since the moment of their engagement. It was on this rule Wilder depended for his get-away from those who were determined to follow.

For days and weeks the outfit stood ready. Each day the dogs were harnessed, and every man was in his place. Then the word was passed to unhitch, and the men were permitted to return to the city.

The intending pursuit knew the game from A to Z. It was not new. It had been practised a hundred times. It was no less ready. It was no less on the watch. When the start was actually made word would reach them within two hours and the whole wolf pack would jump.

So it happened. One day the men did not return to the city. But word came back, and the rush began. Out into the twilight of the Arctic night leapt the army of trail dogs and their teamsters. Hundreds of sleds hissed their way over the snow-bed on the great river. Hundreds of voices shouted the jargon of the trail at their eager beasts of burden, and the fierce whips flung out. Many were rushing on disaster in the blind northern night. Many would never reach the hoped-for goal to grab the alluring wealth from the bosom of mother earth. But that was always the way of it. Whatever the threat, whatever the dread, whatever the possibility of disaster, the lust of gold in the hearts of these people remained triumphant.

But the thing worked out for Wilder as he designed. The old tried artifice gave him the start he needed. Three hours was all he required. For the rest these hardy adventurers behind him would never see the snow dust from his sled runners. He was equipped for a speed such as none of them could compete with, and if the weather became bad he calculated to lose the pursuit utterly.

It was a storming journey. The North he loved and courted did her best for him in return. Snow-storm and blizzard came to his aid, and, after weeks of terrible hardship, he reached the Caribou with his track lost beneath feet of drift snow.

He had gained all the time he needed. And so when the spring sun rose above the horizon, and the world of ice began its thunderous peals of disintegration, and the hordes of Placer swarmed on the banks of the Caribou he had established his outfit upon the staked claims ready to hurl at the work before him, and defend his property from all lawless aggression.

With the return of daylight it was a bewildering scene on the river. From its mouth right up to the gold-working on the creek, which had lain so long hidden, the tide of adventurers was swarming. And almost with every passing hour the flood seemed to grow. The low banks were dotted with tents and habitations of almost every sort of primitive construction. And men and women, and even children, were like human flies where for ages the silence of the North had remained all unbroken.

As the season advanced and the fever of work developed to its height, the reality of the thing became evident. Gold? Why the original strike was little more than the fringe of the thing awaiting those whose hardihood had been sufficient for them to survive the winter journey. The creek, as Chilcoot had suggested, was laden with its immense treasure, and rich claims were staked for ten miles up its narrow course. “The Luck of the Kid,” as Wilder had christened it, was a veritable Eldorado.

The homestead lying back in its shelter of windswept bluff had no place in the bustle and traffic on the river. It was a home of even deeper calm now than was its wont when the northern world aroused itself at the dawn of the open season. Usually at such a time the caribou herd was brought in, and the work its advent entailed never failed to absorb the rising spirits of those young lives, ready like the simple wild flowers of spring, to hurl themselves into their annual labours after the long night of winter’s inactivity. Usually at such a time it was the hub of life upon the river, literally teeming in contrast with the stillness of the cheerless valley. But now the herd remained at large free to drift back to its original wild state. The corrals were empty and unrepaired, for there was no Usak to guide the efforts of the half-breed Eskimo, and no half-breed Eskimo to need such guidance.

The farm had died in the winter night. And curiously enough there were no mourners. All that remained was the homestead itself, with Hesther McLeod and the girl children, and the Kid, to enjoy its sturdy shelter. The half-breeds had joined in the rush for gold. And Clarence, and Alg, and Perse were out there, away up the river “batching it” on their claims, absorbed in the exhilarating pursuit of extracting the wealth which had been literally flung into their hands. Then Usak had failed to return from his “one big trip.”

Hesther and the Kid were at the kitchen door, and with them was the author of the amazing transformation.

It was a day of brilliant sunshine with a spring sky of white, frothing, windswept cloud that broke, and gathered, and swept on, yielding a vision of brilliant blue sky at every break. Already the flies were making their presence felt, and the river was a rushing torrent, wide, and deep, and brown with the sweepings of its completely submerged banks.

They were gazing out upon the distant panorama of the busy river. They were watching the general movement going on. There were men moving up, packing their goods afoot since the river was for the moment un-navigable for the light craft, which, as yet, were alone available. There were traders building shanties for the housing of their wares. There were tents which sheltered those who were relying on the gambler’s desire for their share in the feast. There were other habitations which housed, the even more disreputable creatures, who, like vultures, hover always in the distance waiting to glut themselves upon the spoils of the wayside. Then, much more in their appeal to the gentle mind of Hesther, there were the figures of women, staunch, devoted women carrying on their simple domestic labours while their men were absent farther up the river seeking the treasure which their dazzled eyes yearned to gaze upon.

For all they were gazing upon the scene Hesther and the Kid were far more deeply interested in Bill Wilder and the thing he was saying. The eyes of the girl were shining with unfeigned happiness and delight. The long winter of his absence had been ended weeks ago, and his early return had transformed her whole outlook. From the moment of his coming there had been no more darkness for her, no more anxious waiting. For had not almost his first words been to tell her that his work, that work which had taken him from her side, was finished; completely, successfully finished. The excitement of the gold rush, the excitement of the boys had left her undisturbed. But the happy excitement of this man’s return had thrilled her in a fashion that left her without thought or care for anything else. And now he was detailing those plans which envisaged for her simple mind all that was beautiful and desirable in life.

“You see,” he said, “ther’s not a thing here now to keep us. It’s just the other way around. All this.” He indicated the life on the river. “We best get out before—before it gets worse, as it surely will.”

“My organization’s right up there on the claims, under the control of Chilcoot, and they’re working your stuff same as if it was for me. And the result of it’ll come along through my office, just the same as if it was mine. I’m not needed around up there. Maybe I best tell you I’m so full of gold I don’t care ever to see fresh colour. I want to quit it all, and take you folks along with me. The boys can stop around and Chilcoot’ll see to ’em. And we’ll just get along down and fix things the way we want ’em. Ther’s a swell house waiting in Placer for you, mam. It’s all fixed good. It’s your home, for you an’ yours just as soon as you feel like taking possession, and maybe the Kid here’ll feel like stopping along with you till—till—Say,” he turned to the smiling girl, “we won’t let a thing keep us waiting, eh? We’ll get married right away in Placer, just as quick as things can be fixed right. Then your Mum, here, can choose just where she feels like living. That so?”

There was no need for verbal response. It was there in the girl’s eyes, which smiled happily up into his as she slipped her brown hand through his arm.

“That’s the way I’d like to fix things,” he went on, taking possession of the girl’s hand. “Does it suit you, mam?” he said, turning again to Hesther. “Just say right here. Ther’s a bank roll waiting on you down there, in the way of an advance on the stuff that’s coming to you out of your claim. And I’ll be around all the time to see you ain’t worried a thing.”

The gentle-eyed mother opened her lips to speak. But words seemed difficult under his steady gaze. Wilder glanced quickly away, and the woman’s emotion passed.

“I just don’t know how to say the thing I feel, Bill,” she said softly. “The thing you’ve been to me an’ mine. God’ll surely bless you, an’—an’—”

“Sure. The thing you say goes with me—all the time.” Hesther glanced hastily back into the kitchen. She was seeking excuse and found it in her simple labours.

And Billy’s happy smile followed her into the room, while he caressed the hand he was holding.

Bill and the Kid had passed on down to the landing so pregnant with memories for them both.

It was the girl who was talking now while the man stared out down the busy river.

“You know, Bill. I just don’t sort of understand the way this—this gold makes folks act. It sort of seems to set them kind of crazy. The boys are the same. I used to feel it would be fine to have dollars an’ dollars. I used to think of all the swell food and clothes I’d buy for the boys, an’ Hesther, an’ the girls. That was all right. But I didn’t get crazy for gold like these folk. You say ther’s a heap of gold in my claim. I—I don’t seem to feel I want a thing of it. True I don’t.” She laughed. “Maybe you’ll guess I’m more crazy than they are. Do you?”

“No, Kid. I don’t,” he said gently. “I’m glad. Later, maybe, when we’re married, and you’ve got around, and learned about things, and seen the things you can have with gold you’ll feel different. But I’m glad it don’t get you that way now. I tell you ther’s a big heap more to life than this gold. But ther’s a heap of good things you can do with gold. You feel you want to make other folks happy and comfortable? Well, gold’ll help you that way. I bin all my life collecting a bunch of this dam old stuff, and I’d learned to hate it good. Well, it’s not that way now. Say, I just lie awake at nights thinkin’ the things I can do for you, and the folks belonging to you. And I got to like the darn stuff again. And I’m just as crazy glad as all those other poor folk I got it.” He smiled whimsically down into the girl’s eyes. “The outfit’s ready, Kid. I’ve had it ready days,” he went on. “Ther’s two big canoes, and they’ll hold your Mum, and the gals, and you and me and the half-breeds to paddle. When do you say, little girl? It’s right up to you.”

He waited anxiously for the girl’s reply. Watching her he saw the happy smile fade abruptly out of her eyes, and he knew the bad moment he had foreseen had arrived.

Suddenly the girl withdrew her hand from the rough cloth arm of the man’s pea-jacket.

“You know I just can’t understand the thing that’s happened. He’s been gone six months. He went, as I told you, right after you, and we haven’t heard a thing. You know, Bill, it kind of seems to me he’s—dead. I sort of feel it right here,” she went on, pressing her hands to her bosom. “An’—an’ I feel—Oh, he was an Indian I know, but he was the feller who raised me like a father an’ mother. An’ I sort of loved him for it, an’—an’—I just can’t bear to quit till—till— Don’t you understand? I sort of feel I must wait for him. It would break him all up if I quit him. And I—I don’t want to quit him. Indeed I don’t.”

For some moments Bill made no attempt to reply. He remained staring out at the surging river as it roared on down under the freshet. He did not even attempt to comfort the girl in her obvious distress.

It was difficult. But Bill was steadily resolved not to tell the real truth as he knew it. It would break her heart to know Usak to be the fierce fiend he was. No. If necessary he would lie in preference.

“He won’t come back,” he said decidedly. “Get a grip on the position. He went on a winter trip. He set out in his kyak, you told me. He went with a light outfit and his rifle. Why, his kyak couldn’t carry two months’ grub, an’ he’s been away six. Let’s guess a bit. We know this old North. The winter trail. We know these rivers with the ice crowding down on ’em. We know you’ve only to beat the winter trail long enough to get your med’cine. The North gets us all beaten in the end if we don’t quit in time. The one way trail’s claimed Usak, little girl, if I’m a judge. No. Don’t wait on his return. If he gets back Chilcoot’ll send him right along on to us. If he’s alive I mean to have him with us. I squared things with him before he went so he’ll be glad to be with us both. Let’s leave it that way. Eh?”

The girl’s hand had stolen back to its place on the man’s arm, and he took possession of it again. To her he was irresistible, and then there was that wonderful, wonderful time coming.

The man drew a deep breath of relief. He had been saved a deliberate lie. And his eyes smiled.

“I forgot. This day week, eh?” he went on urgently. “The river’ll slacken then. That do?”

The Kid laughed happily as he squeezed the soft hand lying so contentedly in his.

Superintendent Raymes laid aside the folded sheets of the closely written report which he had read several times over. For a moment he sat gazing at it thoughtfully. Then he reached across his desk and selected a long cigar, and passed the box to his visitor and temporary subordinate.

“Best take one, Bill,” he said. Then he laughed quietly. “You can only die once.”

In a moment both men were smoking. Bill gazed about him while he waited for the other to speak. It was the same office he had always known. Simple, plain, typical of the lives of these Mounted Policemen. Somehow it appealed to him just now infinitely more than it had ever done before. He remembered his mood that time when he had sat in the same chair two years before. And somehow he wanted to laugh.

“It’s an amazing story, Bill,” Raymes said after awhile. “I guessed when I got you interested two years back there was a deal to it. But I never reckoned it was going to be the thing it is. Say—” His eyes lit and he swung his chair about and faced the other while he held his cigar poised streaming its smoke upon the somewhat dense atmosphere of the room. “By all accounts the folk hereabouts owe you a deal for the nosing of Le Gros’ ‘strike.’ It’s the biggest since ‘Eighty-Mile’?”

“Nobody owes me a thing—not even thanks. We’ve helped ourselves. And I’ve helped myself most of all.”

“Guess you’ve forgotten the ‘girl-child, white.’” Raymes nodded. His usually sober face was smiling in response.

“Sure I did.” Bill sucked happily at his old pipe. “I located her. And I brought her and her folks right down with me to this city. I fixed ’em all up in a swell house, and made things right for them. The Kid and I are going to be married in two weeks from now. And I’ll take it friendly for you to stand by me when the passon fixes things. No, I don’t guess anyone owes me a thing. The Kid herself is my claim, an’ she’s chock full of the only gold that sets me yearning.”

“No. I’m just glad I’ve had a hand in passing you that claim. Good luck, Bill. I’m sure your man.”

Bill gripped the hand thrust out at him. Then the smile passed out of both men’s faces as if by agreement. After all the policeman’s work was his foremost concern.

“It don’t seem to me there’s a thing to do about your story of this murdering Indian, and the folks he dragged to death with him,” he said, in his alert official way. “In a way it’s a sort of poetic justice on all concerned. I’ll need to pass it along with the official report, but it’ll maybe just end right there. But these Euralians. That’s a swell scoop for me, sure. It’s a thing for Ottawa, an’ll need to go down in detail. Maybe you’ll be needed to hand further information. Japanese, eh? Well, it isn’t new in this western country. It’s the same from northern Alaska down to Panama. The darn continent’s alive with ’em, penetrating peacefully, and robbing us white folks of our birthright. You know, Bill ther’s a bad day coming for us whites. We sit around an’ look on, shrugging our shoulders, and eating and sleeping well. And all the time this thing’s creeping on us, like some dam disease. The Americans know it, and are alive to the danger. We don’t seem to worry. At least, not officially. But I sort of see the day coming when this thing’s got to be fought sheer out, and I’m by no means sure of the outcome. We’re told the Yellow man in the West outnumbers the White. But that don’t suggest a thing of the reality. When the Yellow men mean to strike you’ll find they’ve honeycombed this country, and the States, and it’ll be something like four to one waiting to rise at the given word. Yes, it’s bad,” he finished up, with a grave shake of the head. “But you certainly have given me a swell scoop that should help my boat along with Ottawa. Guess you won’t feel like quitting our territory now, eh?”

The man’s manner had changed from gravity to something bantering as he put his question.

“Yes. That’s so, George.” Bill knocked out his pipe. “But you don’t know. Felice has been raised in the darkness of that darn region, almost without decent human comfort. She hasn’t known a thing but buckskin and the river trail, and the flies and skitters of a barren world for twenty of the best years of her life. She doesn’t know a thing but an almighty fight to make three meals of food a day, and a night passed in queer brown blankets an’ caribou pelts. Well, it’s up to me to teach her the thing life is and can be. I’m going to. I’m going to give her such a time she won’t remember those days. She’s going where the sun’s warm and life’s dead easy. And so are those belonging to her. It’s up to me, and I’m out to do it. You haven’t seen her yet. You’d understand if you had. She’s right outside sitting waiting for me in the buggy. Will you come along and say a word of welcome to her?”

Bill had risen to his feet. There was just a shade of eagerness in his invitation. It was almost as if he feared reluctance in this old friend of his.

But there was none. Not a shadow. Raymes rose from his desk on the instant, and his eyes were full of swift censure.

“You kept her waiting there, Bill?” he cried. “You? Say, come right on and present me, so I can tell her the thing I think of you.”

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