Alan took the check. "I guess only a fool would refuse an offer like this, Rossland."

"Yes, only a fool."

"And I am that fool."

So quietly did Alan speak that for an instant the significance of his words did not fall with full force upon Rossland. The smoke cleared away from before Alan's face. His cigar dropped to the floor, and he stepped on it with his foot. The check followed it in torn scraps. The fury he had held back with almost superhuman effort blazed in his eyes.

"If I could have Graham where you are now—in that chair—I'd give ten years of my life, Rossland. I would kill him. And you—you—"

He stepped back a pace, as if to put himself out of striking distance of the beast who was staring at him in amazement.

"What you have said about her should condemn you to death. And I would kill you here, in this room, if it wasn't necessary for you to take my message back to Graham. Tell him that Mary Standish—not Mary Graham—is as pure and clean and as sweet as the day she was born. Tell him that she belongs to me. I love her. She is mine—do you understand? And all the money in the world couldn't buy one hair from her head. I'm going to take her back to the States. She is going to get a square deal, and the world is going to know her story. She has nothing to conceal. Absolutely nothing. Tell that to John Graham for me."

He advanced upon Rossland, who had risen from his chair; his hands were clenched, his face a mask of iron.

"Get out! Go before I flay you within an inch of your rotten life!"

The energy which every fiber in him yearned to expend upon Rossland sent the table crashing back in an overturned wreck against the wall.

"Go—before I kill you!"

He was advancing, even as the words of warning came from his lips, and the man before him, an awe-stricken mass of flesh that had forgotten power and courage in the face of a deadly and unexpected menace, backed quickly to the door and escaped. He made for the corrals, and Alan watched from his door until he saw him departing southward, accompanied by two men who bore packs on their shoulders. Not until then did Rossland gather his nerve sufficiently to stop and look back. His breathless voice carried something unintelligible to Alan. But he did not return for his coat and hat.

The reaction came to Alan when he saw the wreck he had made of the table. Another moment or two and the devil in him would have been at work. He hated Rossland. He hated him now only a little less than he hated John Graham, and that he had let him go seemed a miracle to him. He felt the strain he had been under. But he was glad. Some little god of common sense had overruled his passion, and he had acted wisely. Graham would now get his message, and there could be no misunderstanding of purpose between them.

He was staring at the disordered papers on his desk when a movement at the door turned him about. Mary Standish stood before him.

"You sent him away," she cried softly.

Her eyes were shining, her lips parted, her face lit up with a beautiful glow. She saw the overturned table, Rossland's hat and coat on a chair, the evidence of what had happened and the quickness of his flight; and then she turned her face to Alan again, and what he saw broke down the last of that grim resolution which he had measured for himself, so that in a moment he was at her side, and had her in his arms. She made no effort to free herself as she had done in the cottonwoods, but turned her mouth up for him to kiss, and then hid her face against his shoulder—while he, fighting vainly to find utterance for the thousand words in his throat, stood stroking her hair, and then buried his face in it, crying out at last in the warm sweetness of it that he loved her, and was going to fight for her, and that no power on earth could take her away from him now. And these things he repeated until she raised her flushed face from his breast, and let him kiss her lips once more, and then freed herself gently from his arms.



CHAPTER XXIII

For a Space they stood apart, and in the radiant loveliness of Mary Standish's face and in Alan's quiet and unimpassioned attitude were neither shame nor regret. In a moment they had swept aside the barrier which convention had raised against them, and now they felt the inevitable thrill of joy and triumph, and not the humiliating embarrassment of dishonor. They made no effort to draw a curtain upon their happiness, or to hide the swift heart-beat of it from each other. It had happened, and they were glad. Yet they stood apart, and something pressed upon Alan the inviolableness of the little freedom of space between them, of its sacredness to Mary Standish, and darker and deeper grew the glory of pride and faith that lay with the love in her eyes when he did not cross it. He reached out his hand, and freely she gave him her own. Lips blushing with his kisses trembled in a smile, and she bowed her head a little, so that he was looking at her smooth hair, soft and sweet where he had caressed it a few moments before.

"I thank God!" he said.

He did not finish the surge of gratitude that was in his heart. Speech seemed trivial, even futile. But she understood. He was not thanking God for that moment, but for a lifetime of something that at last had come to him. This, it seemed to him, was the end, the end of a world as he had known it, the beginning of a new. He stepped back, and his hands trembled. For something to do he set up the overturned table, and Mary Standish watched him with a quiet, satisfied wonder. She loved him, and she had come into his arms. She had given him her lips to kiss. And he laughed softly as he came to her side again, and looked over the tundra where Rossland had gone.

"How long before you can prepare for the journey?" he asked.

"You mean—"

"That we must start tonight or in the morning. I think we shall go through the cottonwoods over the old trail to Nome. Unless Rossland lied, Graham is somewhere out there on the Tanana trail."

Her hand pressed his arm. "We are going—back? Is that it, Alan?"

"Yes, to Seattle. It is the one thing to do. You are not afraid?"

"With you there—no."

"And you will return with me—when it is over?"

He was looking steadily ahead over the tundra. But he felt her cheek touch his shoulder, lightly as a feather.

"Yes, I will come back with you."

"And you will be ready?"

"I am ready now."

The sun-fire of the plains danced in his eyes; a cob-web of golden mist rising out of the earth, beckoning wraiths and undulating visions—the breath of life, of warmth, of growing things—all between him and the hidden cottonwoods; a joyous sea into which he wanted to plunge without another minute of waiting, as he felt the gentle touch of her cheek against his shoulder, and the weight of her hand on his arm. That she had come to him utterly was in the low surrender of her voice. She had ceased to fight—she had given to him the precious right to fight for her.

It was this sense of her need and of her glorious faith in him, and of the obligation pressing with it that drove slowly back into him the grimmer realities of the day. Its horror surged upon him again, and the significance of what Rossland had said seemed fresher, clearer, even more terrible now that he was gone. Unconsciously the old lines of hatred crept into his face again as he looked steadily in the direction which the other man had taken, and he wondered how much of that same horror—of the unbelievable menace stealing upon her—Rossland had divulged to the girl who stood so quietly now at his side. Had he done right to let him go? Should he not have killed him, as he would have exterminated a serpent? For Rossland had exulted; he was of Graham's flesh and desires, a part of his foul soul, a defiler of womanhood and the one who had bargained to make possible the opportunity for an indescribable crime. It was not too late. He could still overtake him, out there in the hollows of the tundra—

The pressure on his arm tightened. He looked down. Mary Standish had seen what was in his face, and there was something in her calmness that brought him to himself. He knew, in that moment, that Rossland had told her a great deal. Yet she was not afraid, unless it was fear of what had been in his mind.

"I am ready," she reminded him.

"We must wait for Stampede," he said, reason returning to him. "He should be here sometime tonight, or in the morning. Now that Rossland is off my nerves, I can see how necessary it is to have someone like Stampede between us and—"

He did not finish, but what he had intended to say was quite clear to her. She stood in the doorway, and he felt an almost uncontrollable desire to take her in his arms again.

"He is between here and Tanana," she said with a little gesture of her head.

"Rossland told you that?"

"Yes. And there are others with him, so many that he was amused when I told him you would not let them take me away."

"Then you were not afraid that I—I might let them have you?"

"I have always been sure of what you would do since I opened that second letter at Ellen McCormick's, Alan!"

He caught the flash of her eyes, the gladness in them, and she was gone before he could find another word to say. Keok and Nawadlook were approaching hesitatingly, but now they hurried to meet her, Keok still grimly clutching the long knife; and beyond them, at the little window under the roof, he saw the ghostly face of old Sokwenna, like a death's-head on guard. His blood ran a little faster. The emptiness of the tundras, the illimitable spaces without sign of human life, the vast stage waiting for its impending drama, with its sunshine, its song of birds, its whisper and breath of growing flowers, struck a new note in him, and he looked again at the little window where Sokwenna sat like a spirit from another world, warning him in his silent and lifeless stare of something menacing and deadly creeping upon them out of that space which seemed so free of all evil. He beckoned to him and then entered his cabin, waiting while Sokwenna crawled down from his post and came hobbling over the open, a crooked figure, bent like a baboon, witch-like in his great age, yet with sunken eyes that gleamed like little points of flame, and a quickness of movement that made Alan shiver as he watched him through the window.

In a moment the old man entered. He was mumbling. He was saying, in that jumble of sound which it was difficult for even Alan to understand—and which Sokwenna had never given up for the missionaries' teachings—that he could hear feet and smell blood; and that the feet were many, and the blood was near, and that both smell and footfall were coming from the old kloof where yellow skulls still lay, dripping with the water that had once run red. Alan was one of the few who, by reason of much effort, had learned the story of the kloof from old Sokwenna; how, so long ago that Sokwenna was a young man, a hostile tribe had descended upon his people, killing the men and stealing the women; and how at last Sokwenna and a handful of his tribesmen fled south with what women were left and made a final stand in the kloof, and there, on a day that was golden and filled with the beauty of bird-song and flowers, had ambushed their enemies and killed them to a man. All were dead now, all but Sokwenna.

For a space Alan was sorry he had called Sokwenna to his cabin. He was no longer the cheerful and gentle "old man" of his people; the old man who chortled with joy at the prettiness and play of Keok and Nawadlook, who loved birds and flowers and little children, and who had retained an impish boyhood along with his great age. He was changed. He stood before Alan an embodiment of fatalism, mumbling incoherent things in his breath, a spirit of evil omen lurking in his sunken eyes, and his thin hands gripping like bird-claws to his rifle. Alan threw off the uncomfortable feeling that had gripped him for a moment, and set him to an appointed task—the watching of the southward plain from the crest of a tall ridge two miles back on the Tanana trail. He was to return when the sun reached its horizon.

Alan was inspired now by a great caution, a growing premonition which stirred him with uneasiness, and he began his own preparations as soon as Sokwenna had started on his mission. The desire to leave at once, without the delay of an hour, pulled strong in him, but he forced himself to see the folly of such haste. He would be away many months, possibly a year this time. There was much to do, a mass of detail to attend to, a volume of instructions and advice to leave behind him. He must at least see Stampede, and it was necessary to write down certain laws for Tautuk and Amuk Toolik. As this work of preparation progressed, and the premonition persisted in remaining with him, he fell into a habit of repeating to himself the absurdity of fears and the impossibility of danger. He tried to make himself feel uncomfortably foolish at the thought of having ordered the herdsmen in. In all probability Graham would not appear at all, he told himself, or at least not for many days—or weeks; and if he did come, it would be to war in a legal way, and not with murder.

Yet his uneasiness did not leave him. As the hours passed and the afternoon lengthened, the invisible something urged him more strongly to take the trail beyond the cottonwoods, with Mary Standish at his side. Twice he saw her between noon and five o'clock, and by that time his writing was done. He looked at his guns carefully. He saw that his favorite rifle and automatic were working smoothly, and he called himself a fool for filling his ammunition vest with an extravagant number of cartridges. He even carried an amount of this ammunition and two of his extra guns to Sokwenna's cabin, with the thought that it was this cabin on the edge of the ravine which was best fitted for defense in the event of necessity. Possibly Stampede might have use for it, and for the guns, if Graham should come after he and Mary were well on their way to Nome.

After supper, when the sun was throwing long shadows from the edge of the horizon, Alan came from a final survey of his cabin and the food which Wegaruk had prepared for his pack, and found Mary at the edge of the ravine, watching the twilight gathering where the coulee ran narrower and deeper between the distant breasts of the tundra.

"I am going to leave you for a little while," he said. "But Sokwenna has returned, and you will not be alone."

"Where are you going?"

"As far as the cottonwoods, I think."

"Then I am going with you."

"I expect to walk very fast."

"Not faster than I, Alan."

"But I want to make sure the country is clear in that direction before twilight shuts out the distances."

"I will help you." Her hand crept into his. "I am going with you, Alan," she repeated.

"Yes, I—think you are," he laughed joyously, and suddenly he bent his head and pressed her hand to his lips, and in that way, with her hand in his, they set out over the trail which they had not traveled together since the day he had come from Nome.

There was a warm glow in her face, and something beautifully soft and sweet in her eyes which she did not try to keep away from him. It made him forget the cottonwoods and the plains beyond, and his caution, and Sokwenna's advice to guard carefully against the hiding-places of Ghost Kloof and the country beyond.

"I have been thinking a great deal today," she was saying, "because you have left me so much alone. I have been thinking of you. And—my thoughts have given me a wonderful happiness."

"And I have been—in paradise," he replied.

"You do not think that I am wicked?"

"I could sooner believe the sun would never come up again."

"Nor that I have been unwomanly?"

"You are my dream of all that is glorious in womanhood."

"Yet I have followed you—have thrust myself at you, fairly at your head, Alan."

"For which I thank God," He breathed devoutly.

"And I have told you that I love you, and you have taken me in your arms, and have kissed me—"

"Yes."

"And I am walking now with my hand in yours—"

"And will continue to do so, if I can hold it."

"And I am another man's wife," she shuddered.

"You are mine," he declared doggedly. "You know it, and the Almighty God knows it. It is blasphemy to speak of yourself as Graham's wife. You are legally entangled with him, and that is all. Heart and soul and body you are free."

"No, I am not free."

"But you are!"

And then, after a moment, she whispered at his shoulder: "Alan, because you are the finest gentleman in all the world, I will tell you why I am not. It is because—heart and soul—I belong to you."

He dared not look at her, and feeling the struggle within him Mary Standish looked straight ahead with a wonderful smile on her lips and repeated softly, "Yes, the very finest gentleman in all the world!"

Over the breasts of the tundra and the hollows between they went, still hand in hand, and found themselves talking of the colorings in the sky, and the birds, and flowers, and the twilight creeping in about them, while Alan scanned the shortening horizons for a sign of human life. One mile, and then another, and after that a third, and they were looking into gray gloom far ahead, where lay the kloof.

It was strange that he should think of the letter now—the letter he had written to Ellen McCormick—but think of it he did, and said what was in his mind to Mary Standish, who was also looking with him into the wall of gloom that lay between them and the distant cottonwoods.

"It seemed to me that I was not writing it to her, but to you" he said. "And I think that if you hadn't come back to me I would have gone mad."

"I have the letter. It is here"—and she placed a hand upon her breast. "Do you remember what you wrote, Alan?"

"That you meant more to me than life."

"And that—particularly—you wanted Ellen McCormick to keep a tress of my hair for you if they found me."

He nodded. "When I sat across the table from you aboard the Nome, I worshiped it and didn't know it. And since then—since I've had you here—every time. I've looked at you—" He stopped, choking the words back in his throat.

"Say it, Alan."

"I've wanted to see it down," he finished desperately. "Silly notion, isn't it?"

"Why is it?" she asked, her eyes widening a little. "If you love it, why is it a silly notion to want to see it down?"

"Why, I though possibly you might think it so," he added lamely.

Never had he heard anything sweeter than her laughter as she turned suddenly from him, so that the glow of the fallen sun was at her back, and with deft, swift fingers began loosening the coils of her hair until its radiant masses tumbled about her, streaming down her back in a silken glory that awed him with its beauty and drew from his lips a cry of gladness.

She faced him, and in her eyes was the shining softness that glowed in her hair. "Do you think it is nice, Alan?"

He went to her and filled his hands with the heavy tresses and pressed them to his lips and face.

Thus he stood when he felt the sudden shiver that ran through her. It was like a little shock. He heard the catch of her breath, and the hand which she had placed gently on his bowed head fell suddenly away. When he raised his head to look at her, she was staring past him into the deepening twilight of the tundra, and it seemed as if something had stricken her so that for a space she was powerless to speak or move.

"What is it?" he cried, and whirled about, straining his eyes to see what had alarmed her; and as he looked, a deep, swift shadow sped over the earth, darkening the mellow twilight until it was somber gloom of night—and the midnight sun went out like a great, luminous lamp as a dense wall of purple cloud rolled up in an impenetrable curtain between it and the arctic world. Often he had seen this happen in the approach of summer storm on the tundras, but never had the change seemed so swift as now. Where there had been golden light, he saw his companion's face now pale in a sea of dusk. It was this miracle of arctic night, its suddenness and unexpectedness, that had startled her, he thought, and he laughed softly.

But her hand clutched his arm. "I saw them," she cried, her voice breaking. "I saw them—out there against the sun—before the cloud came—and some of them were running, like animals—"

"Shadows!" he exclaimed. "The long shadows of foxes running against the sun, or of the big gray rabbits, or of a wolf and her half-grown sneaking away—"

"No, no, they were not that," she breathed tensely, and her fingers clung more fiercely to his arm. "They were not shadows. They were men!"



CHAPTER XXIV

In the moment of stillness between them, when their hearts seemed to have stopped beating that they might not lose the faintest whispering of the twilight, a sound came to Alan, and he knew it was the toe of a boot striking against stone. Not a foot in his tribe would have made that sound; none but Stampede Smith's or his own.

"Were they many?" he asked.

"I could not see. The sun was darkening. But five or six were running—"

"Behind us?"

"Yes."

"And they saw us?"

"I think so. It was but a moment, and they were a part of the dusk."

He found her hand and held it closely. Her fingers clung to his, and he could hear her quick breathing as he unbuttoned the flap of his automatic holster.

"You think they have come?" she whispered, and a cold dread was in her voice.

"Possibly. My people would not appear from that direction. You are not afraid?"

"No, no, I am not afraid."

"Yet you are trembling."

"It is this strange gloom, Alan."

Never had the arctic twilight gone more completely. Not half a dozen times had he seen the phenomenon in all his years on the tundras, where thunder-storm and the putting out of the summer sun until twilight thickens into the gloom of near-night is an occurrence so rare that it is more awesome than the weirdest play of the northern lights. It seemed to him now that what was happening was a miracle, the play of a mighty hand opening their way to salvation. An inky wall was shutting out the world where the glow of the midnight sun should have been. It was spreading quickly; shadows became part of the gloom, and this gloom crept in, thickening, drawing nearer, until the tundra was a weird chaos, neither night nor twilight, challenging vision until eyes strained futilely to penetrate its mystery.

And as it gathered about them, enveloping them in their own narrowing circle of vision, Alan was thinking quickly. It had taken him only a moment to accept the significance of the running figures his companion had seen. Graham's men were near, had seen them, and were getting between them and the range. Possibly it was a scouting party, and if there were no more than five or six, the number which Mary had counted, he was quite sure of the situation. But there might be a dozen or fifty of them. It was possible Graham and Rossland were advancing upon the range with their entire force. He had at no time tried to analyze just what this force might be, except to assure himself that with the overwhelming influence behind him, both political and financial, and fired by a passion for Mary Standish that had revealed itself as little short of madness, Graham would hesitate at no convention of law or humanity to achieve his end. Probably he was playing the game so that he would be shielded by the technicalities of the law, if it came to a tragic end. His gunmen would undoubtedly be impelled to a certain extent by an idea of authority. For Graham was an injured husband "rescuing" his wife, while he—Alan Holt—was the woman's abductor and paramour, and a fit subject to be shot upon sight!

His free hand gripped the butt of his pistol as he led the way straight ahead. The sudden gloom helped to hide in his face the horror he felt of what that "rescue" would mean to Mary Standish; and then a cold and deadly definiteness possessed him, and every nerve in his body gathered itself in readiness for whatever might happen.

If Graham's men had seen them, and were getting between them and retreat, the neck of the trap lay ahead—and in this direction Alan walked so swiftly that the girl was almost running at his side. He could not hear her footsteps, so lightly they fell! her fingers were twined about his own, and he could feel the silken caress of her loose hair. For half a mile he kept on, watching for a moving shadow, listening for a sound. Then he stopped. He drew Mary into his arms and held her there, so that her head lay against his breast. She was panting, and he could feel and hear her thumping heart. He found her parted lips and kissed them.

"You are not afraid?" he asked again.

Her head made a fierce little negative movement against his breast. "No!"

He laughed softly at the beautiful courage with which she lied. "Even if they saw us, and are Graham's men, we have given them the slip," he comforted her. "Now we will circle eastward back to the range. I am sorry I hurried you so. We will go more slowly."

"We must travel faster," she insisted. "I want to run."

Her fingers sought his hand and clung to it again as they set out. At intervals they stopped, staring about them into nothingness, and listening. Twice Alan thought he heard sounds which did not belong to the night. The second time the little fingers tightened about his own, but his companion said no word, only her breath seemed to catch in her throat for an instant.

At the end of another half-hour it was growing lighter, yet the breath of storm seemed nearer. The cool promise of it touched their cheeks, and about them were gathering whispers and eddies of a thirsty earth rousing to the sudden change. It was lighter because the wall of cloud seemed to be distributing itself over the whole heaven, thinning out where its solid opaqueness had lain against the sun. Alan could see the girl's face and the cloud of her hair. Hollows and ridges of the tundra were taking more distinct shape when they came into a dip, and Alan recognized a thicket of willows behind which a pool was hidden.

The thicket was only half a mile from home. A spring was near the edge of the willows, and to this he led the girl, made her a place to kneel, and showed her how to cup the cool water in the palms of her hands. While she inclined her head to drink, he held back her hair and rested with his lips pressed to it. He heard the trickle of water running between her fingers, her little laugh of half-pleasure, half-fear, which in another instant broke into a startled scream as he half gained his feet to meet a crashing body that catapulted at him from the concealment of the willows.

A greater commotion in the thicket followed the attack; then another voice, crying out sharply, a second cry from Mary Standish, and he found himself on his knees, twisted backward and fighting desperately to loosen a pair of gigantic hands at his throat. He could hear the girl struggling, but she did not cry out again. In an instant, it seemed, his brain was reeling. He was conscious of a futile effort to reach his gun, and could see the face over him, grim and horrible in the gloom, as the merciless hands choked the life from him. Then he heard a shout, a loud shout, filled with triumph and exultation as he was thrown back; his head seemed leaving his shoulders; his body crumbled, and almost spasmodically his leg shot out with the last strength that was in him. He was scarcely aware of the great gasp that followed, but the fingers loosened at his throat, the face disappeared, and the man who was killing him sank back. For a precious moment or two Alan did not move as he drew great breaths of air into his lungs. Then he felt for his pistol. The holster was empty.

He could hear the panting of the girl, her sobbing breath very near him, and life and strength leaped back into his body. The man who had choked him was advancing again, on hands and knees. In a flash Alan was up and on him like a lithe cat. His fist beat into a bearded face; he called out to Mary as he struck, and through his blows saw her where she had fallen to her knees, with a second hulk bending over her, almost in the water of the little spring from which she had been drinking. A mad curse leaped from his lips. He was ready to kill now; he wanted to kill—to destroy what was already under his hands that he might leap upon this other beast, who stood over Mary Standish, his hands twisted in her long hair. Dazed by blows that fell with the force of a club the bearded man's head sagged backward, and Alan's fingers dug into his throat. It was a bull's neck. He tried to break it. Ten seconds—twenty—half a minute at the most—and flesh and bone would have given way—but before the bearded man's gasping cry was gone from his lips the second figure leaped upon Alan.

He had no time to defend himself from this new attack. His strength was half gone, and a terrific blow sent him reeling. Blindly he reached out and grappled. Not until his arms met those of his fresh assailant did he realize how much of himself he had expended upon the other. A sickening horror filled his soul as he felt his weakness, and an involuntary moan broke from his lips. Even then he would have cut out his tongue to have silenced that sound, to have kept it from the girl. She was creeping on her hands and knees, but he could not see. Her long hair trailed in the trampled earth, and in the muddied water of the spring, and her hands were groping—groping—until they found what they were seeking.

Then she rose to her feet, carrying the rock on which one of her hands had rested when she knelt to drink. The bearded man, bringing himself to his knees, reached out drunkenly, but she avoided him and poised herself over Alan and his assailant. The rock descended. Alan saw her then; he heard the one swift, terrible blow, and his enemy rolled away from him, limply and without sound. He staggered to his feet and for a moment caught the swaying girl in his arms.

The bearded man was rising. He was half on his feet when Alan was at his throat again, and they went down together. The girl heard blows, then a heavier one, and with an exclamation of triumph Alan stood up. By chance his hand had come in contact with his fallen pistol. He clicked the safety down; he was ready to shoot, ready to continue the fight with a gun.

"Come," he said.

His voice was gasping, strangely unreal and thick. She came to him and put her hand in his again, and it was wet and sticky with tundra mud from the spring. Then they climbed to the swell of the plain, away from the pool and the willows.

In the air about them, creeping up from the outer darkness of the strange twilight, were clearer whispers now, and with these sounds of storm, borne from the west, came a hallooing voice. It was answered from straight ahead. Alan held the muddied little hand closer in his own and set out for the range-houses, from which direction the last voice had come. He knew what was happening. Graham's men were cleverer than he had supposed; they had encircled the tundra side of the range, and some of them were closing in on the willow pool, from which the triumphant shout of the bearded man's companion had come. They were wondering why the call was not repeated, and were hallooing.

Every nerve in Alan's body was concentrated for swift and terrible action, for the desperateness of their situation had surged upon him like a breath of fire, unbelievable, and yet true. Back at the willows they would have killed him. The hands at his throat had sought his life. Wolves and not men were about them on the plain; wolves headed by two monsters of the human pack, Graham and Rossland. Murder and lust and mad passion were hidden in the darkness; law and order and civilization were hundreds of miles away. If Graham won, only the unmapped tundras would remember this night, as the deep, dark kloof remembered in its gloom the other tragedy of more than half a century ago. And the girl at his side, already disheveled and muddied by their hands—

His mind could go no farther, and angry protest broke in a low cry from his lips. The girl thought it was because of the shadows that loomed up suddenly in their path. There were two of them, and she, too, cried out as voices commanded them to stop. Alan caught a swift up-movement of an arm, but his own was quicker. Three spurts of flame darted in lightning flashes from his pistol, and the man who had raised his arm crumpled to the earth, while the other dissolved swiftly into the storm-gloom. A moment later his wild shouts were assembling the pack, while the detonations of Alan's pistol continued to roll over the tundra.

The unexpectedness of the shots, their tragic effect, the falling of the stricken man and the flight of the other, brought no word from Mary Standish. But her breath was sobbing, and in the lifting of the purplish gloom she turned her face for an instant to Alan, tensely white, with wide-open eyes. Her hair covered her like a shining veil, and where it clustered in a disheveled mass upon her breast Alan saw her hand thrusting itself forward from its clinging concealment, and in it—to his amazement—was a pistol. He recognized the weapon—one of a brace of light automatics which his friend, Carl Lomen, had presented to him several Christmas seasons ago. Pride and a strange exultation swept over him. Until now she had concealed the weapon, but all along she had prepared to fight—to fight with him against their enemies! He wanted to stop and take her in his arms, and with his kisses tell her how splendid she was. But instead of this he sped more swiftly ahead, and they came into the nigger-head bottom which lay in a narrow barrier between them and the range.

Through this ran a trail scarcely wider than a wagon-track, made through the sea of hummocks and sedge-boles and mucky pitfalls by the axes and shovels of his people; finding this, Alan stopped for a moment, knowing that safety lay ahead of them. The girl leaned against him, and then was almost a dead weight in his arms. The last two hundred yards had taken the strength from her body. Her pale face dropped back, and Alan brushed the soft hair away from it, and kissed her lips and her eyes, while the pistol lay clenched against his breast. Even then, too hard-run to speak, she smiled at him, and Alan caught her up in his arms and darted into the narrow path which he knew their pursuers would not immediately find if they could bet beyond their vision. He was joyously amazed at her lightness. She was like a child in his arms, a glorious little goddess hidden and smothered in her long hair, and he held her closer as he hurried toward the cabins, conscious of the soft tightening of her arms about his neck, feeling the sweet caress of her panting breath, strengthened and made happy by her helplessness.

Thus they came out of the bottom as the first mist of slowly approaching rain touched his face. He could see farther now—half-way back over the narrow trail. He climbed a slope, and here Mary Standish slipped from his arms and stood with new strength, looking into his face. His breath was coming in little breaks, and he pointed. Faintly they could make out the shadows of the corral buildings. Beyond them were no lights penetrating the gloom from the windows of the range of houses. The silence of the place was death-like.

And then something grew out of the earth almost at their feet. A hollow cry followed the movement, a cry that was ghostly and shivering, and loud enough only for them to hear, and Sokwenna stood at their side. He talked swiftly. Only Alan understood. There was something unearthly and spectral in his appearance; his hair and beard were wet; his eyes shot here and there in little points of fire; he was like a gnome, weirdly uncanny as he gestured and talked in his monotone while he watched the nigger-head bottom. When he had finished, he did not wait for an answer, but turned and led the way swiftly toward the range houses.

"What did he say?" asked the girl.

"That he is glad we are back. He heard the shots and came to meet us."

"And what else?" she persisted.

"Old Sokwenna is superstitious—and nervous. He said some things that you wouldn't understand. You would probably think him mad if he told you the spirits of his comrades slain in the kloof many years ago were here with him tonight, warning him of things about to happen. Anyway, he has been cautious. No sooner were we out of sight than he hustled every woman and child in the village on their way to the mountains. Keok and Nawadlook wouldn't go. I'm glad of that, for if they were pursued and overtaken by men like Graham and Rossland—"

"Death would be better," finished Mary Standish, and her hand clung more tightly to his arm.

"Yes, I think so. But that can not happen now. Out in the open they had us at a disadvantage. But we can hold Sokwenna's place until Stampede and the herdsmen come. With two good rifles inside, they won't dare to assault the cabin with their naked hands. The advantage is all ours now; we can shoot, but they won't risk the use of their rifles."

"Why?"

"Because you will be inside. Graham wants you alive, not dead. And bullets—"

They had reached Sokwenna's door, and in that moment they hesitated and turned their faces back to the gloom out of which they had fled. Voices came suddenly from beyond the corrals. There was no effort at concealment. The buildings were discovered, and men called out loudly and were answered from half a dozen points out on the tundra. They could hear running feet and sharp commands; some were cursing where they were entangled among the nigger-heads, and the sound of hurrying foes came from the edge of the ravine. Alan's heart stood still. There was something terribly swift and businesslike in this gathering of their enemies. He could hear them at his cabin. Doors opened. A window fell in with a crash. Lights flared up through the gray mist.

It was then, from the barricaded attic window over their heads, that Sokwenna's rifle answered. A single shot, a shriek, and then a pale stream of flame leaped out from the window as the old warrior emptied his gun. Before the last of the five swift shots were fired, Alan was in the cabin, barring the door behind him. Shaded candles burned on the floor, and beside them crouched Keok and Nawadlook. A glance told him what Sokwenna had done. The room was an arsenal. Guns lay there, ready to be used; heaps of cartridges were piled near them, and in the eyes of Keok and Nawadlook blazed deep and steady fires as they held shining cartridges between their fingers, ready to thrust them into the rifle chambers as fast as the guns were emptied.

In the center of the room stood Mary Standish. The candles, shaded so they would not disclose the windows, faintly illumined her pale face and unbound hair and revealed the horror in her eyes as she looked at Alan.

He was about to speak, to assure her there was no danger that Graham's men would fire upon the cabin—when hell broke suddenly loose out in the night. The savage roar of guns answered Sokwenna's fusillade, and a hail of bullets crashed against the log walls. Two of them found their way through the windows like hissing serpents, and with a single movement Alan was at Mary's side and had crumpled her down on the floor beside Keok and Nawadlook. His face was white, his brain a furnace of sudden, consuming fire.

"I thought they wouldn't shoot at women," he said, and his voice was terrifying in its strange hardness. "I was mistaken. And I am sure—now—that I understand."

With his rifle he cautiously approached the window. He was no longer guessing at an elusive truth. He knew what Graham was thinking, what he was planning, what he intended to do, and the thing was appalling. Both he and Rossland knew there would be some way of sheltering Mary Standish in Sokwenna's cabin; they were accepting a desperate gamble, believing that Alan Holt would find a safe place for her, while he fought until he fell. It was the finesse of clever scheming, nothing less than murder, and he, by this combination of circumstances and plot, was the victim marked for death.

The shooting had stopped, and the silence that followed it held a significance for Alan. They were giving him an allotted time in which to care for those under his protection. A trap-door was in the floor of Sokwenna's cabin. It opened into a small storeroom and cellar, which in turn possessed an air vent leading to the outside, overlooking the ravine. In the candle-glow Alan saw the door of this trap propped open with a stick. Sokwenna, too, was clever. Sokwenna had foreseen.

Crouched under the window, he looked at the girls. Keok, with a rifle in her hand, had crept to the foot of the ladder leading up to the attic, and began to climb it. She was going to Sokwenna, to load for him. Alan pointed to the open trap.

"Quick, get into that!" he cried. "It is the only safe place. You can load there and hand out the guns."

Mary Standish looked at him steadily, but did not move. She was clutching a rifle in her hands. And Nawadlook did not move. But Keok climbed steadily and disappeared in the darkness above.

"Go into the cellar!" commanded Alan. "Good God, if you don't—"

A smile lit up Mary's face. In that hour of deadly peril it was like a ray of glorious light leading the way through blackness, a smile sweet and gentle and unafraid; and slowly she crept toward Alan, dragging the rifle in one hand and holding the little pistol in the other, and from his feet she still smiled up at him through the dishevelment of her shining hair, and in a quiet, little voice that thrilled him, she said, "I am going to help you fight."

Nawadlook came creeping after her, dragging another rifle and bearing an apron heavy with the weight of cartridges.

And above, through the darkened loophole of the attic window, Sokwenna's ferret eyes had caught the movement of a shadow in the gray mist, and his rifle sent its death-challenge once more to John Graham and his men. What followed struck a smile from Mary's lips, and a moaning sob rose from her breast as she watched the man she loved rise up before the open window to face the winged death that was again beating a tattoo against the log walls of the cabin.



CHAPTER XXV

That in the lust and passion of his designs and the arrogance of his power John Graham was not afraid to overstep all law and order, and that he believed Holt would shelter Mary Standish from injury and death, there could no longer be a doubt after the first few swift moments following Sokwenna's rifle-shots from the attic window.

Through the window of the lower room, barricaded by the cautious old warrior until its aperture was not more than eight inches square, Alan thrust his rifle as the crash of gun-fire broke the gray and thickening mist of night. He could hear the thud and hiss of bullets; he heard them singing like angry bees as they passed with the swiftness of chain-lightning over the cabin roof, and their patter against the log walls was like the hollow drumming of knuckles against the side of a ripe watermelon. There was something fascinating and almost gentle about that last sound. It did not seem that the horror of death was riding with it, and Alan lost all sense of fear as he stared in the direction from which the firing came, trying to make out shadows at which to shoot. Here and there he saw dim, white streaks, and at these he fired as fast as he could throw cartridges into the chamber and pull the trigger. Then he crouched down with the empty gun. It was Mary Standish who held out a freshly loaded weapon to him. Her face was waxen in its deathly pallor. Her eyes, staring at him so strangely, never for an instant leaving his face, were lustrous with the agony of fear that flamed in their depths. She was not afraid for herself. It was for him. His name was on her lips, a whisper unspoken, a breathless prayer, and in that instant a bullet sped through the opening in front of which he had stood a moment before, a hissing, writhing serpent of death that struck something behind them in its venomous wrath. With a cry she flung up her arms about his bent head.

"My God, they will kill you if you stand there!" she moaned. "Give me up to them, Alan. If you love me—give me up!"

A sudden spurt of white dust shot out into the dim candle-glow, and then another, so near Nawadlook that his blood went cold. Bullets were finding their way through the moss and earth chinking between the logs of the cabin. His arms closed in a fierce embrace about the girl's slim body, and before she could realize what was happening, he leaped to the trap with her and almost flung her into its protection. Then he forced Nawadlook down beside her, and after them he thrust in the empty gun and the apron with its weight of cartridges. His face was demoniac in its command.

"If you don't stay there, I'll open the door and go outside to fight! Do you understand? Stay there!"

His clenched fist was in their faces, his voice almost a shout. He saw another white spurt of dust; the bullet crashed in tinware, and following the crash came a shriek from Keok in the attic.

In that upper gloom Sokwenna's gun had fallen with a clatter. The old warrior bent himself over, nearly double, and with his two withered hands was clutching his stomach. He was on his knees, and his breath suddenly came in a panting, gasping cry. Then he straightened slowly and said something reassuring to Keok, and faced the window again with the gun which she had loaded for him.

The scream had scarcely gone from Keok's lips when Alan was at the top of the ladder, calling her. She came to him through the stark blackness of the room, sobbing that Sokwenna was hit; and Alan reached out and seized her, and dragged her down, and placed her with Nawadlook and Mary Standish.

From them he turned to the window, and his soul cried out madly for the power to see, to kill, to avenge. As if in answer to this prayer for light and vision he saw his cabin strangely illumined; dancing, yellow radiance silhouetted the windows, and a stream of it billowed out through an open door into the night. It was so bright he could see the rain-mist, scarcely heavier than a dense, slowly descending fog, a wet blanket of vapor moistening the earth. His heart jumped as with each second the blaze of light increased. They had set fire to his cabin. They were no longer white men, but savages.

He was terribly cool, even as his heart throbbed so violently. He watched with the eyes of a deadly hunter, wide-open over his rifle-barrel. Sokwenna was still. Probably he was dead. Keok was sobbing in the cellar-pit. Then he saw a shape growing in the illumination, three or four of them, moving, alive. He waited until they were clearer, and he knew what they were thinking—that the bullet-riddled cabin had lost its power to fight. He prayed God it was Graham he was aiming at, and fired. The figure went down, sank into the earth as a dead man falls. Steadily he fired at the others—one, two, three, four—and two out of the four he hit, and the exultant thought flashed upon him that it was good shooting under the circumstances.

He sprang back for another gun, and it was Mary who was waiting for him, head and shoulders out of the cellar-pit, the rifle in her hands. She was sobbing as she looked straight at him, yet without moisture or tears in her eyes.

"Keep down!" he warned. "Keep down below the floor!"

He guessed what was coming. He had shown his enemies that life still existed in the cabin, life with death in its hands, and now—from the shelter of the other cabins, from the darkness, from beyond the light of his flaming home, the rifle fire continued to grow until it filled the night with a horrible din. He flung himself face-down upon the floor, so that the lower log of the building protected him. No living thing could have stood up against what was happening in these moments. Bullets tore through the windows and between the moss-chinked logs, crashing against metal and glass and tinware; one of the candles sputtered and went out, and in this hell Alan heard a cry and saw Mary Standish coming out of the cellar-pit toward him. He had flung himself down quickly, and she thought he was hit! He shrieked at her, and his heart froze with horror as he saw a heavy tress of her hair drop to the floor as she stood there in that frightful moment, white and glorious in the face of the gun-fire. Before she could move another step, he was at her side, and with her in his arms leaped into the pit.

A bullet sang over them. He crushed her so close that for a breath or two life seemed to leave her body.

A sudden draught of cool air struck his face. He missed Nawadlook. In the deeper gloom farther under the floor he heard her moving, and saw a faint square of light. She was creeping back. Her hands touched his arm.

"We can get away—there!" she cried in a low voice. "I have opened the little door. We can crawl through it and into the ravine."

Her words and the square of light were an inspiration. He had not dreamed that Graham would turn the cabin into a death-hole, and Nawadlook's words filled him with a sudden thrilling hope. The rifle fire was dying away again as he gave voice to his plan in sharp, swift words. He would hold the cabin. As long as he was there Graham and his men would not dare to rush it. At least they would hesitate a considerable time before doing that. And meanwhile the girls could steal down into the ravine. There was no one on that side to intercept them, and both Keok and Nawadlook were well acquainted with the trails into the mountains. It would mean safety for them. He would remain in the cabin, and fight, until Stampede Smith and the herdsmen came.

The white face against his breast was cold and almost expressionless. Something in it frightened him. He knew his argument had failed and that Mary Standish would not go; yet she did not answer him, nor did her lips move in the effort.

"Go—for their sakes, if not for your own and mine," he insisted, holding her away from him. "Good God, think what it will mean if beasts like those out there get hold of Keok and Nawadlook! Graham is your husband and will protect you for himself, but for them there will be no hope, no salvation, nothing but a fate more terrible than death. They will be like—like two beautiful lambs thrown among wolves—broken—destroyed—"

Her eyes were burning with horror. Keok was sobbing, and a moan which she bravely tried to smother in her breast came from Nawadlook.

"And you!" whispered Mary.

"I must remain here. It is the only way."

Dumbly she allowed him to lead her back with Keok and Nawadlook. Keok went through the opening first, then Nawadlook, and Mary Standish last. She did not touch him again. She made no movement toward him and said no word, and all he remembered of her when she was gone in the gloom was her eyes. In that last look she had given him her soul, and no whisper, no farewell caress came with it.

"Go cautiously until you are out of the ravine, then hurry toward the mountains," were his last words.

He saw their forms fade into dim shadows, and the gray mist swallowed them.

He hurried back, seized a loaded gun, and sprang to the window, knowing that he must continue to deal death until he was killed. Only in that way could he hold Graham back and give those who had escaped a chance for their lives. Cautiously he looked out over his gun barrel. His cabin was a furnace red with flame; streams of fire were licking out at the windows and through the door, and as he sought vainly for a movement of life, the crackling roar of it came to his ears, and so swiftly that his breath choked him, the pitch-filled walls became sheets of conflagration, until the cabin was a seething, red-hot torch of fire whose illumination was more dazzling than the sun of day.

Out into this illumination suddenly stalked a figure waving a white sheet at the end of a long pole. It advanced slowly, a little hesitatingly at first, as if doubtful of what might happen; and then it stopped, full in the light, an easy mark for a rifle aimed from Sokwenna's cabin. He saw who it was then, and drew in his rifle and watched the unexpected maneuver in amazement. The man was Rossland. In spite of the dramatic tenseness of the moment Alan could not repress the grim smile that came to his lips. Rossland was a man of illogical resource, he meditated. Only a short time ago he had fled ignominiously through fear of personal violence, while now, with a courage that could not fail to rouse admiration, he was exposing himself to a swift and sudden death, protected only by the symbol of truce over his head. That he owed this symbol either regard or honor did not for an instant possess Alan. A murderer held it, a man even more vile than a murderer if such a creature existed on earth, and for such a man death was a righteous end. Only Rossland's nerve, and what he might have to say, held back the vengeance within reach of Alan's hand.

He waited, and Rossland again advanced and did not stop until he was within a hundred feet of the cabin. A sudden disturbing thought flashed upon Alan as he heard his name called. He had seen no other figures, no other shadows beyond Rossland, and the burning cabin now clearly illumined the windows of Sokwenna's place. Was it conceivable that Rossland was merely a lure, and the instant he exposed himself in a parley a score of hidden rifles would reveal their treachery? He shuddered and held himself below the opening of the window. Graham and his men were more than capable of such a crime.

Rossland's voice rose above the crackle and roar of the burning cabin. "Alan Holt! Are you there?"

"Yes, I am here," shouted Alan, "and I have a line on your heart, Rossland, and my finger is on the trigger. What do you want?"

There was a moment of silence, as if the thought of what he was facing had at last stricken Rossland dumb. Then he said: "We are giving you a last chance, Holt. For God's sake, don't be a fool! The offer I made you today is still good. If you don't accept it—the law must take its course."

"The law!" Alan's voice was a savage cry.

"Yes, the law. The law is with us. We have the proper authority to recover a stolen wife, a captive, a prisoner held in restraint with felonious intent. But we don't want to press the law unless we are forced to do so. You and the old Eskimo have killed three of our men and wounded two others. That means the hangman, if we take you alive. But we are willing to forget that if you will accept the offer I made you today. What do you say?"

Alan was stunned. Speech failed him as he realized the monstrous assurance with which Graham and Rossland were playing their game. And when he made no answer Rossland continued to drive home his arguments, believing that at last Alan was at the point of surrender.

Up in the dark attic the voices had come like ghost-land whispers to old Sokwenna. He lay huddled at the window, and the chill of death was creeping over him. But the voices roused him. They were not strange voices, but voices which came up out of a past of many years ago, calling upon him, urging him, persisting in his ears with cries of vengeance and of triumph, the call of familiar names, a moaning of women, a sobbing of children. Shadowy hands helped him, and a last time he raised himself to the window, and his eyes were filled with the glare of the burning cabin. He struggled to lift his rifle, and behind him he heard the exultation of his people as he rested it over the sill and with gasping breath leveled it at something which moved between him and the blazing light of that wonderful sun which was the burning cabin. And then, slowly and with difficulty, he pressed the trigger, and Sokwenna's last shot sped on its mission.

At the sound of the shot Alan looked through the window. For a moment Rossland stood motionless. Then the pole in his hands wavered, drooped, and fell to the earth, and Rossland sank down after it making no sound, and lay a dark and huddled blot on the ground.

The appalling swiftness and ease with which Rossland had passed from life into death shocked every nerve in Alan's body. Horror for a brief space stupefied him, and he continued to stare at the dark and motionless blot, forgetful of his own danger, while a grim and terrible silence followed the shot. And then what seemed to be a single cry broke that silence, though it was made up of many men's voices. Deadly and thrilling, it was a message that set Alan into action. Rossland had been killed under a flag of truce, and even the men under Graham had something like respect for that symbol. He could expect no mercy—nothing now but the most terrible of vengeance at their hands, and as he dodged back from the window he cursed Sokwenna under his breath, even as he felt the relief of knowing he was not dead.

Before a shot had been fired from outside, he was up the ladder; in another moment he was bending over the huddled form of the old Eskimo.

"Come below!" he commanded. "We must be ready to leave through the cellar-pit."

His hand touched Sokwenna's face; it hesitated, groped in the darkness, and then grew still over the old warrior's heart. There was no tremor or beat of life in the aged beast. Sokwenna was dead.

The guns of Graham's men opened fire again. Volley after volley crashed into the cabin as Alan descended the ladder. He could hear bullets tearing through the chinks and windows as he turned quickly to the shelter of the pit.

He was amazed to find that Mary Standish had returned and was waiting for him there.



CHAPTER XXVI

In the astonishment with which Mary's unexpected presence confused him for a moment, Alan stood at the edge of the trap, staring down at her pale face, heedless of the terrific gun-fire that was assailing the cabin. That she had not gone with Keok and Nawadlook, but had come back to him, filled him with instant dread, for the precious minutes he had fought for were lost, and the priceless time gained during the parley with Rossland counted for nothing.

She saw his disappointment and his danger, and sprang up to seize his hand and pull him down beside her.

"Of course you didn't expect me to go," she said, in a voice that no longer trembled or betrayed excitement. "You didn't want me to be a coward. My place is with you."

He could make no answer to that, with her beautiful eyes looking at him as they were, but he felt his heart grow warmer and something rise up chokingly in his throat.

"Sokwenna is dead, and Rossland lies out there—shot under a flag of truce," he said. "We can't have many minutes left to us."

He was looking at the square of light where the tunnel from the cellar-pit opened into the ravine. He had planned to escape through it—alone—and keep up a fight in the open, but with Mary at his side it would be a desperate gantlet to run.

"Where are Keok and Nawadlook?" he asked.

"On the tundra, hurrying for the mountains. I told them it was your plan that I should return to you. When they doubted, I threatened to give myself up unless they did as I commanded them. And—Alan—the ravine is filled with the rain-mist, and dark—" She was holding his free hand closely to her breast.

"It is our one chance," he said.

"And aren't you glad—a little glad—that I didn't run away without you?"

Even then he saw the sweet and tremulous play of her lips as they smiled at him in the gloom, and heard the soft note in her voice that was almost playfully chiding; and the glory of her love as she had proved it to him there drew from him what he knew to be the truth.

"Yes—I am glad. It is strange that I should be so happy in a moment like this. If they will give us a quarter of an hour—"

He led the way quickly to the square of light and was first to creep forth into the thick mist. It was scarcely rain, yet he could feel the wet particles of it, and through this saturated gloom whining bullets cut like knives over his head. The blazing cabin illumined the open on each side of Sokwenna's place, but deepened the shadows in the ravine, and a few seconds later they stood hand in hand in the blanket of fog that hid the coulee.

Suddenly the shots grew scattering above them, then ceased entirely. This was not what Alan had hoped for. Graham's men, enraged and made desperate by Rossland's death, would rush the cabin immediately. Scarcely had the thought leaped into his mind when he heard swiftly approaching shouts, the trampling of feet, and then the battering of some heavy object at the barricaded door of Sokwenna's cabin. In another minute or two their escape would be discovered and a horde of men would pour down into the ravine.

Mary tugged at his hand. "Let us hurry," she pleaded.

What happened then seemed madness to the girl, for Alan turned and with her hand held tightly in his started up the side of the ravine, apparently in the face of their enemies. Her heart throbbed with sudden fear when their course came almost within the circle of light made by the burning cabin. Like shadows they sped into the deeper shelter of the corral buildings, and not until they paused there did she understand the significance of the hazardous chance they had taken. Already Graham's men were pouring into the ravine.

"They won't suspect we've doubled on them until it is too late," said Alan exultantly. "We'll make for the kloof. Stampede and the herdsmen should arrive within a few hours, and when that happens—"

A stifled moan interrupted him. Half a dozen paces away a crumpled figure lay huddled against one of the corral gates.

"He is hurt," whispered Mary, after a moment of silence.

"I hope so," replied Alan pitilessly. "It will be unfortunate for us if he lives to tell his comrades we have passed this way."

Something in his voice made the girl shiver. It was as if the vanishing point of mercy had been reached, and savages were at their backs. She heard the wounded man moan again as they stole through the deeper shadows of the corrals toward the nigger-head bottom. And then she noticed that the mist was no longer in her face. The sky was clearing. She could see Alan more clearly, and when they came to the narrow trail over which they had fled once before that night it reached out ahead of them like a thin, dark ribbon. Scarcely had they reached this point when a rifle shot sounded not far behind. It was followed by a second and a third, and after that came a shout. It was not a loud shout. There was something strained and ghastly about it, and yet it came distinctly to them.

"The wounded man," said Alan, in a voice of dismay. "He is calling the others. I should have killed him!"

He traveled at a half-trot, and the girl ran lightly at his side. All her courage and endurance had returned. She breathed easily and quickened her steps, so that she was setting the pace for Alan. They passed along the crest of the ridge under which lay the willows and the pool, and at the end of this they paused to rest and listen. Trained to the varied night whisperings of the tundras Alan's ears caught faint sounds which his companion did not hear. The wounded man had succeeded in giving his message, and pursuers were scattering over the plain behind them.

"Can you run a little farther?" he asked.

"Where?"

He pointed, and she darted ahead of him, her dark hair streaming in a cloud that began to catch a faint luster of increasing light. Alan ran a little behind her. He was afraid of the light. Only gloom had saved them this night, and if the darkness of mist and fog and cloud gave way to clear twilight and the sun-glow of approaching day before they reached the kloof he would have to fight in the open. With Stampede at his side he would have welcomed such an opportunity of matching rifles with their enemies, for there were many vantage points in the open tundra from which they might have defied assault. But the nearness of the girl frightened him. She, after all, was the hunted thing. He was only an incident. From him could be exacted nothing more than the price of death; he would be made to pay that, as Sokwenna had paid. For her remained the unspeakable horror of Graham's lust and passion. But if they could reach the kloof, and the hiding-place in the face of the cliff, they could laugh at Graham's pack of beasts while they waited for the swift vengeance that would come with Stampede and the herdsmen.

He watched the sky. It was clearing steadily. Even the mists in the hollows were beginning to melt away, and in place of their dissolution came faintly rose-tinted lights. It was the hour of dawn; the sun sent a golden glow over the disintegrating curtain of gloom that still lay between it and the tundras, and objects a hundred paces away no longer held shadow or illusionment.

The girl did not pause, but continued to run lightly and with surprising speed, heeding only the direction which he gave her. Her endurance amazed him. And he knew that without questioning him she had guessed the truth of what lay behind them. Then, all at once, she stopped, swayed like a reed, and would have fallen if his arms had not caught her.

"Splendid!" he cried.

She lay gasping for breath, her face against his breast. Her heart was a swiftly beating little dynamo.

They had gained the edge of a shallow ravine that reached within half a mile of the kloof. It was this shelter he had hoped for, and Mary's splendid courage had won it for them.

He picked her up in his arms and carried her again, as he had carried her through the nigger-head bottom. Every minute, every foot of progress, counted now. Range of vision was widening. Pools of sunlight were flecking the plains. In another quarter of an hour moving objects would be distinctly visible a mile away.

With his precious burden in his arms, her lips so near that he could feel their breath, her heart throbbing, he became suddenly conscious of the incongruity of the bird-song that was wakening all about them. It seemed inconceivable that this day, glorious in its freshness, and welcomed by the glad voice of all living things, should be a day of tragedy, of horror, and of impending doom for him. He wanted to shout out his protest and say that it was all a lie, and it seemed absurd that he should handicap himself with the weight and inconvenient bulk of his rifle when his arms wanted to hold only that softer treasure which they bore.

In a little while Mary was traveling at his side again. And from then on he climbed at intervals to the higher swellings of the gully edge and scanned the tundra. Twice he saw men, and from their movements he concluded their enemies believed they were hidden somewhere on the tundra not far from the range-houses.

Three-quarters of an hour later they came to the end of the shallow ravine, and half a mile of level plain lay between them and the kloof. For a space they rested, and in this interval Mary smoothed her long hair and plaited it in two braids. In these moments Alan encouraged her, but he did not lie. He told her the half-mile of tundra was their greatest hazard, and described the risks they would run. Carefully he explained what she was to do under certain circumstances. There was scarcely a chance they could cross it unobserved, but they might be so far ahead of the searchers that they could beat them out to the kloof. If enemies appeared between them and the kloof, it would be necessary to find a dip or shelter of rock, and fight; and if pursuers from behind succeeded in out-stripping them in the race, she was to continue in the direction of the kloof as fast as she could go, while he followed more slowly, holding Graham's men back with his rifle until she reached the edge of the gorge. After that he would come to her as swiftly as he could run.

They started. Within five minutes they were on the floor of the tundra. About them in all directions stretched the sunlit plains. Half a mile back toward the range were moving figures; farther west were others, and eastward, almost at the edge of the ravine, were two men who would have discovered them in another moment if they had not descended into the hollow. Alan could see them kneeling to drink at the little coulee which ran through it.

"Don't hurry," he said, with a sudden swift thought. "Keep parallel with me and a distance away. They may not discover you are a woman and possibly may think we are searchers like themselves. Stop when I stop. Follow my movements."

"Yes, sir!"

Now, in the sunlight, she was not afraid. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright as stars as she nodded at him. Her face and hands were soiled with muck-stain, her dress spotted and torn, and looking at her thus Alan laughed and cried out softly:

"You beautiful little vagabond!"

She sent the laugh back, a soft, sweet laugh to give him courage, and after that she watched him closely, falling in with his scheme so cleverly that her action was better than his own—and so they had made their way over a third of the plain when Alan came toward her suddenly and cried, "Now, run!"

A glance showed her what was happening. The two men had come out of the ravine and were running toward them.

Swift as a bird she was ahead of Alan, making for a pinnacle of rock which he had pointed out to her at the edge of the kloof.

Close behind her, he said: "Don't hesitate a second. Keep on going. When they are a little nearer I am going to kill them. But you mustn't stop."

At intervals he looked behind him. The two men were gaining rapidly. He measured the time when less than two hundred yards would separate them. Then he drew close to Mary's side.

"See that level place ahead? We'll cross it in another minute or two. When they come to it I'm going to stop, and catch them where they can't find shelter. But you must keep on going. I'll overtake you by the time you reach the edge of the kloof."

She made no answer, but ran faster; and when they had passed the level space she heard his footsteps growing fainter, and her heart was ready to choke her when she knew the time had come for him to turn upon their enemies. But in her mind burned the low words of his command, his warning, and she did not look back, but kept her eyes on the pinnacle of rock, which was now very near. She had almost reached it when the first shot came from behind her.

Without making a sound that would alarm her, Alan had stumbled, and made pretense of falling. He lay upon his face for a moment, as if stunned, and then rose to his knees. An instant too late Graham's men saw his ruse when his leveled rifle gleamed in the sunshine. The speed of their pursuit was their undoing. Trying to catch themselves so that they might use their rifles, or fling themselves upon the ground, they brought themselves into a brief but deadly interval of inaction, and in that flash one of the men went down under Alan's first shot. Before he could fire again the second had flattened himself upon the earth, and swift as a fox Alan was on his feet and racing for the kloof. Mary stood with her back against the huge rock, gasping for breath, when he joined her. A bullet sang over their heads with its angry menace. He did not return the fire, but drew the girl quickly behind the rock.

"He won't dare to stand up until the others join him," he encouraged her. "We're beating them to it, little girl! If you can keep up a few minutes longer—"

She smiled at him, even as she struggled to regain her breath. It seemed to her there was no way of descending into the chaos of rock between the gloomy walls of the kloof, and she gave a little cry when Alan caught her by her hands and lowered her over the face of a ledge to a table-like escarpment below. He laughed at her fear when he dropped down beside her, and held her close as they crept back under the shelving face of the cliff to a hidden path that led downward, with a yawning chasm at their side. The trail widened as they descended, and at the last they reached the bottom, with the gloom and shelter of a million-year-old crevasse hovering over them. Grim and monstrous rocks, black and slippery with age, lay about them, and among these they picked their way, while the trickle and drip of water and the flesh-like clamminess of the air sent a strange shiver of awe through Mary Standish. There was no life here—only an age-old whisper that seemed a part of death; and when voices came from above, where Graham's men were gathering, they were ghostly and far away.

But here, too, was refuge and safety. Mary could feel it as they picked their way through the chill and gloom that lay in the silent passages between the Gargantuan rocks. When her hands touched their naked sides an uncontrollable impulse made her shrink closer to Alan, even though she sensed the protection of their presence. They were like colossi, carved by hands long dead, and now guarded by spirits whose voices guttered low and secretly in the mysterious drip and trickle of unseen water. This was the haunted place. In this chasm death and vengeance had glutted themselves long before she was born; and when a rock crashed behind them, accidentally sent down by one of the men above, a cry broke from her lips. She was frightened, and in a way she had never known before. It was not death she feared here, nor the horror from which she had escaped above, but something unknown and indescribable, for which she would never be able to give a reason. She clung to Alan, and when at last the narrow fissure widened over their heads, and light came down and softened their way, he saw that her face was deathly white.

"We are almost there," he comforted. "And—some day—you will love this gloomy kloof as I love it, and we will travel it together all the way to the mountains."

A few minutes later they came to an avalanche of broken sandstone that was heaped half-way up the face of the precipitous wall, and up this climbed until they came to a level shelf of rock, and back of this was a great depression in the rock, forty feet deep and half as wide, with a floor as level as a table and covered with soft white sand. Mary would never forget her first glimpse of this place; it was unreal, strange, as if a band of outlaw fairies had brought the white sand for a carpet, and had made this their hiding-place, where wind and rain and snow could never blow. And up the face of the cavern, as if to make her thought more real, led a ragged fissure which it seemed to her only fairies' feet could travel, and which ended at the level of the plain. So they were tundra fairies, coming down from flowers and sunlight through that fissure, and it was from the evil spirits in the kloof itself that they must have hidden themselves. Something in the humor and gentle thought of it all made her smile at Alan. But his face had turned suddenly grim, and she looked up the kloof, where they had traveled through danger and come to safety. And then she saw that which froze all thought of fairies out of her heart.

Men were coming through the chaos and upheaval of rock. There were many of them, appearing out of the darker neck of the gorge into the clearer light, and at their head was a man upon whom Mary's eyes fixed themselves in horror. White-faced she looked at Alan. He had guessed the truth.

"That man in front?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yes."

"Is John Graham."

He heard the words choking in her throat.

"Yes, John Graham."

He swung his rifle slowly, his eyes burning with a steely fire.

"I think," he said, "that from here I can easily kill him!"

Her hand touched his arm; she was looking into his eyes. Fear had gone out of them, and in its place was a soft and gentle radiance, a prayer to him.

"I am thinking of tomorrow—the next day—the years and years to come, with you," she whispered. "Alan, you can't kill John Graham—not until God shows us it is the only thing left for us to do. You can't—"

The crash of a rifle between the rock walls interrupted her. The snarl of a bullet followed the shot. She heard it strike, and her heart stopped beating, and the rigidity of death came into her limbs and body as she saw the swift and terrible change in the stricken face of the man she loved. He tried to smile at her, even as a red blot came where the streak of gray in his hair touched his forehead. And then he crumpled down at her feet, and his rifle rattled against the rocks.

She knew it was death. Something seemed to burst in her head and fill her brain with the roar of a flood. She screamed. Even the men below hesitated and their hearts jumped with a new sensation as the terrible cry of a woman rang between the rock walls of the chasm. And following the cry a voice came down to them.

"John Graham, I'm going to kill you—kill you—"

And snatching up the fallen rifle Mary Standish set herself to the task of vengeance.



CHAPTER XXVII

She waited. The ferocity of a mother defending her young filled her soul, and she moaned in her grief and despair as the seconds passed. But she did not fire blindly, for she knew she must kill John Graham. The troublesome thing was a strange film that persisted in gathering before her eyes, something she tried to brush away, but which obstinately refused to go. She did not know she was sobbing as she looked over the rifle barrel. The figures came swiftly, but she had lost sight of John Graham. They reached the upheaval of shattered rock and began climbing it, and in her desire to make out the man she hated she stood above the rampart that had sheltered her. The men looked alike, jumping and dodging like so many big tundra hares as they came nearer, and suddenly it occurred to her that all of them were John Grahams, and that she must kill swiftly and accurately. Only the hiding fairies might have guessed how her reason trembled and almost fell in those moments when she began firing. Certainly John Graham and his men did not, for her first shot was a lucky one, and a man slipped down among the rocks at the crack of it. After that she continued to fire until the responseless click of the hammer told her the gun was empty. The explosions and the shock against her slight shoulder cleared her vision and her brain. She saw the men still coming, and they were so near she could see their faces clearly. And again her soul cried out in its desire to kill John Graham.

She turned, and for an instant fell upon her knees beside Alan. His face was hidden in his arm. Swiftly she tore his automatic from its holster, and sprang back to her rock. There was no time to wait or choose now, for his murderers were almost upon her. With all her strength she tried to fire accurately, but Alan's big gun leaped and twisted in her hand as she poured its fire wildly down among the rocks until it was empty. Her own smaller weapon she had lost somewhere in the race to the kloof, and now when she found she had fired her last shot she waited through another instant of horror, until she was striking at faces that came within the reach of her arm. And then, like a monster created suddenly by an evil spirit, Graham was at her side. She had a moment's vision of his cruel, exultant face, his eyes blazing with a passion that was almost madness, his powerful body lunging upon her. Then his arms came about her. She could feel herself crushing inside them, and fought against their cruel pressure, then broke limply and hung a resistless weight against him. She was not unconscious, but her strength was gone, and if the arms had closed a little more they would have killed her.

And she could hear—clearly. She heard suddenly the shots that came from up the kloof, scattered shots, then many of them, and after that the strange, wild cries that only the Eskimo herdsmen make.

Graham's arms relaxed. His eyes swept the fairies' hiding-place with its white sand floor, and fierce joy lit up his face.

"Martens, it couldn't happen in a better place," he said to a man who stood near him. "Leave me five men. Take the others and help Schneider. If you don't clean them out, retreat this way, and six rifles from this ambuscade will do the business in a hurry."

Mary heard the names of the men called who were to stay. The others hurried away. The firing in the kloof was steady now. But there were no cries, no shouts—nothing but the ominous crack of the rifles.

Graham's arms closed about her again. Then he picked her up and carried her back into the cavern, and in a place where the rock wall sagged inward, making a pocket of gloom which was shut out from the light of day, he laid her upon the carpet of sand.

Where the erosion of many centuries of dripping water had eaten its first step in the making of the ragged fissure a fairy had begun to climb down from the edge of the tundra. He was a swift and agile fairy, very red in the face, breathing fast from hard running, but making not a sound as he came like a gopher where it seemed no living thing could find a hold. And the fairy was Stampede Smith.

From the lips of the kloof he had seen the last few seconds of the tragedy below, and where death would have claimed him in a more reasonable moment he came down in safety now. In his finger-ends was the old tingling of years ago, and in his blood the thrill which he had thought was long dead—the thrill of looking over leveled guns into the eyes of other men. Time had rolled back, and he was the old Stampede Smith. He saw under him lust and passion and murder, as in other days he had seen them, and between him and desire there was neither law nor conscience to bar the way, and his dream—a last great fight—was here to fill the final unwritten page of a life's drama that was almost closed. And what a fight, if he could make that carpet of soft, white sand unheard and unseen. Six to one! Six men with guns at their sides and rifles in their hands. What a glorious end it would be, for a woman—and Alan Holt!

He blessed the firing up the kloof which kept the men's faces turned that way; he thanked God for the sound of combat, which made the scraping of rock and the rattle of stones under his feet unheard. He was almost down when a larger rock broke loose, and fell to the ledge. Two of the men turned, but in that same instant came a more thrilling interruption. A cry, a shrill scream, a woman's voice filled with madness and despair, came from the depth of the cavern, and the five men stared in the direction of its agony. Close upon the cries came Mary Standish, with Graham behind her, reaching out his hands for her. The girl's hair was flying, her face the color of the white sand, and Graham's eyes were the eyes of a demon forgetful of all else but her. He caught her. The slim body crumpled in his arms again while pitifully weak hands beat futilely in his face.

And then came a cry such as no man had ever heard in Ghost Kloof before.

It was Stampede Smith. A sheer twenty feet he had leaped to the carpet of sand, and as he jumped his hands whipped out his two guns, and scarcely had his feet touched the floor of the soft pocket in the ledge when death crashed from them swift as lightning flashes, and three of the five were tottering or falling before the other two could draw or swing a rifle. Only one of them had fired a shot. The other went down as if his legs had been knocked from under him by a club, and the one who fired bent forward then, as if making a bow to death, and pitched on his face.

And then Stampede Smith whirled upon John Graham.

During these few swift seconds Graham had stood stunned, with the girl crushed against his breast. He was behind her, sheltered by her body, her head protecting his heart, and as Stampede turned he was drawing a gun, his dark face blazing with the fiendish knowledge that the other could not shoot without killing the girl. The horror of the situation gripped Stampede. He saw Graham's pistol rise slowly and deliberately. He watched it, fascinated. And the look in Graham's face was the cold and unexcited triumph of a devil. Stampede saw only that face. It was four inches—perhaps five—away from the girl's. There was only that—and the extending arm, the crooking finger, the black mouth of the automatic seeking his heart. And then, in that last second, straight into the girl's staring eyes blazed Stampede's gun, and the four inches of leering face behind her was suddenly blotted out. It was Stampede, and not the girl, who closed his eyes then; and when he opened them and saw Mary Standish sobbing over Alan's body, and Graham lying face down in the sand, he reverently raised the gun from which he had fired the last shot, and pressed its hot barrel to his thin lips.

Then he went to Alan. He raised the limp head, while Mary bowed her face in her hands. In her anguish she prayed that she, too, might die, for in this hour of triumph over Graham there was no hope or joy for her. Alan was gone. Only death could have come with that terrible red blot on his forehead, just under the gray streak in his hair. And without him there was no longer a reason for her to live.

She reached out her arms. "Give him to me," she whispered. "Give him to me."

Through the agony that burned in her eyes she did not see the look in Stampede's face. But she heard his voice.

"It wasn't a bullet that hit him," Stampede was saying. "The bullet hit a rock, an' it was a chip from the rock that caught him square between the eyes. He isn't dead, and he ain't going to die!"

How many weeks or months or years it was after his last memory of the fairies' hiding-place before he came back to life, Alan could make no manner of guess. But he did know that for a long, long time he was riding through space on a soft, white cloud, vainly trying to overtake a girl with streaming hair who fled on another cloud ahead of him; and at last this cloud broke up, like a great cake of ice, and the girl plunged into the immeasurable depths over which they were sailing, and he leaped after her. Then came strange lights, and darkness, and sounds like the clashing of cymbals, and voices; and after those things a long sleep, from which he opened his eyes to find himself in a bed, and a face very near, with shining eyes that looked at him through a sea of tears.

And a voice whispered to him, sweetly, softly, joyously, "Alan!"

He tried to reach up his arms. The face came nearer; it was pressed against his own, soft arms crept about him, softer lips kissed his mouth and eyes, and sobbing whispers came with their love, and he knew the end of the race had come, and he had won.

This was the fifth day after the fight in the kloof; and on the sixth he sat up in his bed, bolstered with pillows, and Stampede came to see him, and then Keok and Nawadlook and Tatpan and Topkok and Wegaruk, his old housekeeper, and only for a few minutes at a time was Mary away from him. But Tautuk and Amuk Toolik did not come, and he saw the strange change in Keok, and knew that they were dead. Yet he dreaded to ask the question, for more than any others of his people did he love these two missing comrades of the tundras.

It was Stampede who first told him in detail what had happened—but he would say little of the fight on the ledge, and it was Mary who told him of that.

"Graham had over thirty men with him, and only ten got away," he said. "We have buried sixteen and are caring for seven wounded at the corrals. Now that Graham is dead, they're frightened stiff—afraid we're going to hand them over to the law. And without Graham or Rossland to fight for them, they know they're lost."

"And our men—my people?" asked Alan faintly.

"Fought like devils."

"Yes, I know. But—"

"They didn't rest an hour in coming from the mountains."

"You know what I mean, Stampede."

"Not many, Alan. Seven were killed, including Sokwenna," and he counted over the names of the slain. Tautuk and Amuk Toolik were not among them.

"And Tautuk?"

"He is wounded. Missed death by an inch, and it has almost killed Keok. She is with him night and day, and as jealous as a little cat if anyone else attempts to do anything for him."

"Then—I am glad Tautuk was hit," smiled Alan. And he asked, "Where is Amuk Toolik?"

Stampede hung his head and blushed like a boy.

"You'll have to ask her, Alan."

And a little later Alan put the question to Mary.

She, too, blushed, and in her eyes was a mysterious radiance that puzzled him.

"You must wait," she said.

Beyond that she would say no word, though he pulled her head down, and with his hands in her soft, smooth hair threatened to hold her until she told him the secret. Her answer was a satisfied little sigh, and she nestled her pink face against his neck, and whispered that she was content to accept the punishment. So where Amuk Toolik had gone, and what he was doing, still remained a mystery.

A little later he knew he had guessed the truth.

"I don't need a doctor," he said, "but it was mighty thoughtful of you to send Amuk Toolik for one." Then he caught himself suddenly. "What a senseless fool I am! Of course there are others who need a doctor more than I do."

Mary nodded. "But I was thinking chiefly of you when I sent Amuk Toolik to Tanana. He is riding Kauk, and should return almost any time now." And she turned her face away so that he could see only the pink tip of her ear.

"Very soon I will be on my feet and ready for travel," he said. "Then we will start for the States, as we planned."

"You will have to go alone, Alan, for I shall be too busy fitting up the new house," she replied, in such a quiet, composed, little voice that he was stunned. "I have already given orders for the cutting of timber in the foothills, and Stampede and Amuk Toolik will begin construction very soon. I am sorry you find your business in the States so important, Alan. It will be a little lonesome with you away."

He gasped. "Mary!"

She did not turn. "Mary!"

He could see again that little, heart-like throb in her throat when she faced him.

And then he learned the secret, softly whispered, with sweet, warm lips pressed to his.

"It wasn't a doctor I sent for, Alan. It was a minister. We need one to marry Stampede and Nawadlook and Tautuk and Keok. Of course, you and I can wait—"

But she never finished, for her lips were smothered with a love that brought a little sob of joy from her heart.

And then she whispered things to him which he had never guessed of Mary Standish, and never quite hoped to hear. She was a little wild, a little reckless it may be, but what she said filled him with a happiness which he believed had never come to any other man in the world. It was not her desire to return to the States at all. She never wanted to return. She wanted nothing down there, nothing that the Standish fortune-builders had left her, unless he could find some way of using it for the good of Alaska. And even then she was afraid it might lead to the breaking of her dream. For there was only one thing that would make her happy, and that was his world. She wanted it just as it was—the big tundras, his people, the herds, the mountains—with the glory and greatness of God all about them in the open spaces. She now understood what he had meant when he said he was an Alaskan and not an American; she was that, too, an Alaskan first of all, and for Alaska she would go on fighting with him, hand in hand, until the very end. His heart throbbed until it seemed it would break, and all the time she was whispering her hopes and secrets to him he stroked her silken hair, until it lay spread over his breast, and against his lips, and for the first time in years a hot flood of tears filled his eyes.

So happiness came to them; and only strange voices outside raised Mary's head from where it lay, and took her quickly to the window where she stood a vision of sweet loveliness, radiant in the tumbled confusion and glory of her hair. Then she turned with a little cry, and her eyes were shining like stars as she looked at Alan.

"It is Amuk Toolik," she said. "He has returned."

"And—is he alone?" Alan asked, and his heart stood still while he waited for her answer.

Demurely she came to his side, and smoothed his pillow, and stroked back his hair. "I must go and do up my hair, Alan," she said then. "It would never do for them to find me like this."

And suddenly, in a moment, their fingers entwined and tightened, for on the roof of Sokwenna's cabin the little gray-cheeked thrush was singing again.

THE END