"What a pretty speech! Your polish—your savoir vivre, does you credit, I am sure."

"I do not understand what you are saying, but——"

"There are many things you do not understand now that perhaps you will later. For instance, in the matter of the Indians—your Indians, I believe you call them—you have warned, or commanded, possibly, would be the better word——"

"Yes," interrupted the man, "that is the better word——"

"Have commanded me not to—what was it you said—molest, question, or proselyte them."

MacNair nodded. "I said that."

"And I say this!" flashed the girl. "I shall use every means in my power to induce your Indians to attend my school. I shall teach them that they are free. That they owe allegiance and servitude to no man. That the land they inhabit is their land. That they are their own masters. I shall offer them education, that they may be able to compete on equal terms with the white men when this land ceases to lie beyond the outposts. I shall show them that they are being robbed and cheated and forced into ignominious serfdom. And mark you this: if I can't reach them upon the river, I shall go to your village, or post, or fort, or whatever you call your Snare Lake rendezvous, and I shall point out to them their wrongs. I shall appeal to their better natures—to their manhood, and womanhood. That's what I think of your command! I do not fear you! I despise you!"

MacNair nodded, gravely.

"I have already learned that women are as honest as men—more so, even, than most men. You are honest, and you are earnest. You believe in yourself, too. But you are more of a fool than I thought—more of a fool than I thought any one could be. Lapierre is a great fool—but he is neither honest nor earnest. He is just a fool—a wise fool, with the cunning and vices of the wolf, but with none of the wolf's lean virtues. You are an honest fool. You are like a young moose-calf, who, because he happens to be born into the world, thinks the world was made for him to be born into.

"Let us say the moose-calf was born upon a great mountain—a mountain whose sides are crossed and recrossed by moose-trails—paths that wind in and out among the trees, stamped by the hoofs of older and wiser moose. Upon these paths the moose-calf tries his wobbly legs, and one day finds himself gazing out upon a plain where grass is. He has no use for grass—does not even know what grass is for. Only he sees no paths out there. The grass covers a quagmire, but of quagmires the moose-calf knows nothing, having been born upon a mountain.

"Being a fool, the moose-calf soon tires of the beaten paths. He ventures downward toward the plain. A wolf, skulking through the scrub at the foot of the mountain, encounters, by chance, the moose-calf. The calf is fat. But, the wolf is cunning. He dares not harm the moose-calf hard by the trails of the mountain. He becomes friendly, and the fool moose-calf tells the wolf where he is bound. The wolf offers to accompany him, and the moose-calf is glad—here is a friend—one who is wiser than the moose-kind, for he fears not to venture into the country of no trails.

"Between the mountain and the plain stands a tree. This tree the wolf hates. Many squirrels work about its roots, and these squirrels are fatter than the squirrels of the scrub, for the tree feeds them. But, when the wolf would pounce upon them, they seek safety in the tree. The moose-calf—the poor fool moose-calf—comes to this tree, and, finding no paths curving around its base, becomes enraged because the tree does not step aside and yield the right of way. He will charge the tree! He does not know that the tree has been growing for many years, and has become deeply rooted—immovable. The wolf looks on and smiles. If the moose-calf butts the tree down, the wolf will get the squirrels—and the calf. If the calf does not, the wolf will get the calf."

MacNair ceased speaking and turned abruptly toward the river.

"My!" Chloe Elliston exclaimed. "Really, you are delightful, Mr. Brute MacNair. During the half-hour or more of our acquaintance you have called me, among other things, a fool, a goose, and a moose-calf. I repeat that you are delightful, and honest, shall I say? No; candid—for I know that you are not honest. But do tell me the rest of the story. Don't leave it like The Lady or the Tiger. How will it end? Are you a prophet, or merely an allegorist?"

MacNair, who was again facing her, answered without a smile. "I do not know about the lady or the tiger, nor of what happened to either. If they were pitted against each other, my bet would be laid on the tiger, though my sympathy might be with the lady. I am not a prophet. I cannot tell you the end of the story. Maybe the fool moose-calf will butt its brains out against the trunk of the tree. That would be no fault of the tree. The tree was there first, and was minding its own business. Maybe the calf will butt and get hurt, and scamper for home. Maybe it will succeed in eluding the fangs of the wolf, and reach its mountain in safety. In such case it will have learned something.

"Maybe it will butt and butt against the tree until it dislodges a limb from high among the branches, and the limb will fall to the ground and crush, shall we say—the waiting wolf? And, maybe the calf will butt, learn that the tree is immovable, swallow its hurt, and pass on, giving the tree a wide berth—pass on into the quagmire, with the wolf licking his chops, as grinning, he points out the way."

Chloe, in spite of herself, was intensely interested.

"But," she asked, "you are quite sure the tree is immovable?"

"Quite sure."

"Suppose, however, that this particular tree is rotten—rotten to the heart? That the very roots that hold it in place are rotten? And that the moose-calf butts 'til he butts it down—what then?"

There was a gleam of admiration in MacNair's eyes as he answered:

"If the tree is rotten it will fall. But it will fall to the mighty push o' the winds o' God—and not to the puny butt of a moose-calf!" Chloe Elliston was silent. The man was speaking again. "Good day to you, madam, or miss, or whatever one respectfully calls a woman. As I told you, I have known no women. I have lived always in the North. Death robbed me of my mother before I was old enough to remember her. The North, you see, is hard and relentless, even with those who know her—and love her."

The girl felt a sudden surge of sympathy for this strange, outspoken man of the Northland. She knew that the man had spoken, with no thought of arousing sympathy, of the dead mother he had never known. And in his voice was a note, not merely of deep regret, but of sadness.

"I am sorry," she managed to murmur.

"What?"

"About your mother, I mean."

The man nodded. "Yes. She was a good woman. My father told me of her often. He loved her."

The simplicity of the man puzzled Chloe. She was at a loss to reply.

"I think—I believe—a moment ago, you asked my name."

"No."

"Oh!" The lines about the girl's mouth tightened. "Then I'll tell you. I am Chloe Elliston—Miss Chloe Elliston. The name means nothing to you—now. A year hence it will mean much."

"Aye, maybe. I'll not say it won't. More like, though, it will be forgot in half the time. The North has scant use for the passing whims o' women!"



CHAPTER VII

THE MASTER MIND

After the visit of MacNair, Chloe noticed a marked diminution in the anxiety of Lapierre to resume his interrupted journey. True, he drove the Indians mercilessly from daylight till dark in the erection of the buildings, but his air of tense expectancy was gone, and he ceased to dart short, quick glances into the North, and to scan the upper reach of the river.

The Indians, too, had changed. They toiled more stolidly now with apathetic ears for Lapierre's urging, where before they had worked in feverish haste, with their eyes upon the edges of the clearing. It was obviously patent that the canoemen shared Lapierre's fear and hatred of MacNair.

In the late afternoon of the twelfth day after the rolling of the first log into place, Chloe accompanied Lapierre upon a tour of inspection of the completed buildings. The man had done his work well. The school-house and the barracks with the dining-room and kitchen were comfortably and solidly built; entirely sufficient for present needs and requirements. But the girl wondered at the trading-post and its appendant store-house they were fully twice the size she would have considered necessary, and constructed as to withstand a siege. Lapierre had built a fort.

"Excellent buildings; and solid as the Rock of Gibraltar, Miss Elliston," smiled the quarter-breed, as with a wave of his hand he indicated the interior of the trading-room.

"But, they are so big!" exclaimed the girl, as her glance swept the spacious fur lofts, and the ample areas for the storing of supplies. She was concerned only with the size of the buildings. But her wonder would have increased could she have seen the rows of loopholes that pierced the thick walls—loopholes crammed with moss against the cold, and with their openings concealed by cleverly fitted pieces of bark. Lapierre's smile deepened.

"Remember, you told me you intend to sell to all alike, while your goods last. I know what that will mean. It will mean that you will find yourself called upon to furnish the supplies for the inhabitants of several thousand square miles of territory. Indians will travel far to obtain a bargain. They look only at the price—never at the quality of the goods. That fact enables us free-traders to live. We sell cheaper than the H.B.C.; but, frankly, our goods are cheaper. The bargains are much more apparent than real. But, if I understand your position, you intend to sell goods that are up to H.B.C. standard at actual cost?"

Chloe nodded: "Certainly."

"Very well, then you will find that these buildings which look so large and commodious to you now, must be crowded to the ceiling with your goods, while the walls of your fur lofts will fairly bulge with their weight of riches. Fur is the 'cash' of the North, and the trader must make ample provision for its storage. There are no banks in the wilderness; and the fur lofts are the vaults of the traders."

"But, I don't want to deal in fur!" objected the girl. "I—since you have told me of the terrible cruelty of the trappers, I hate fur! I want nothing to do with it. In fact, I shall do everything in my power to discountenance and discourage the trapping." Lapierre cleared his throat sharply—coughed—cleared it again. Discourage trapping—north of sixty! Had he heard aright? He swallowed hard, mumbled an apology anent the inhalation of a gnat, and answered in all seriousness.

"A worthy object, Miss Elliston—a very worthy object; but one that will require time to consummate. At present the taking of fur is the business of the North. I may say, the only business of thousands of savages whose very existence depends upon their skill with the traps. Fur is their one source of livelihood. Therefore, you must accept the condition as it exists. Think, if you refused to accept fur in exchange for your goods, what it would mean—the certain and absolute failure of your school from the moment of its inception. The Indians could not grasp your point of view. You would be shunned for one demented. Your goods would rot upon your shelves; for the simple reason that the natives would have no means of buying them. No, Miss Elliston, you must take their fur until such time as you succeed in devising some other means by which these people may earn their living."

"You are right," agreed Chloe. "Of course, I must deal in fur—for the present. Reform is the result of years of labour. I must be patient. I was thinking only of the cruelty of it."

"They have never been taught," said Lapierre with a touch of sadness in his tone. "And, while we are on the subject, allow me to advise you to retain LeFroy as your chief trader. He is an excellent man, is Louis LeFroy, and has had no little experience."

"Do you think he will stay?" eagerly asked the girl. "I should like to retain, not only LeFroy but a half-dozen others."

"It shall be as you wish. I shall speak to LeFroy and select also the pick of the crew. They will be glad of a steady job. The others I shall take with me. I must gather my fur from its various caches and freight it to the railway."

"You are going to the railway! To civilization?"

"Yes, but it will take me three weeks to make ready my outfit. And in this connection I may be of further service to you. I must depart from here tonight. Instruct LeFroy to make out his list of supplies for the winter. Give him a free hand and tell him to fill the store-rooms. The goods you have brought with you are by no means sufficient. Three weeks from today, if I do not visit you in the meantime, have him meet me at Fort Resolution, and I shall be glad to make your purchases for you, at Athabasca Landing and Edmonton."

"You have been very good to me. How can I ever thank you?" cried the girl, impulsively extending her hand. Lapierre took the hand, bowed over it, and—was it fancy, or did his lips brush her finger-tips? Chloe withdrew the hand, laughing in slight confusion. To her surprise she realized she was not in the least annoyed. "How can I thank you," she repeated, "for—for throwing aside your own work to attend to mine?"

"Do not speak of thanking me." Once more the man's eyes seemed to burn into her soul, "I love you! And one day my work will be your work and your work will be mine. It is I who am indebted to you for bringing a touch of heaven into this drab hell of Northern brutishness. For bringing to me a breath of the bright world I have not known since Montreal—and the student days, long past. And—ah—more than that—something I have never known—love. And, it is you who are bringing a ray of pure light to lighten the darkness of my people."

Chloe was deeply touched. "But I—I thought," she faltered, "when we were discussing the buildings that day, you spoke as if you did not really care for the Indians. And—and you made them work so hard——"

"To learn to work would be their salvation!" exclaimed the man. "And I beg you to forget what I said then. I feared for your safety. When you refused to allow me to build the stockade, I could think only of your being at the mercy of Brute MacNair. I tried to frighten you into allowing me to build it. Even now, if you say the word——"

Chloe interrupted him with a laugh. "No, I am not afraid of MacNair—really I am not. And you have already neglected your own affairs too long."

The man assented. "If I am to get my furs to the railway, do my own trading, and yours, and return before the lake freezes, I must, indeed, be on my way."

"You will wait while I write some letters? And you will post them for me?"

Lapierre bowed. "As many as you wish," he said, and together they walked to the girl's cabin whose quaint, rustic veranda overlooked the river. The veranda was an addition of Lapierre's, and the cabin had five rooms, instead of three.

The quarter-breed waited, whistling softly a light French air, while Chloe wrote her letters. He breathed deeply of the warm spruce-laden breeze, slapped lazily at mosquitoes, and gazed at the setting sun between half-closed lids. Pierre Lapierre was happy.

"Things are coming my way," he muttered. "With a year's stock in that warehouse—and LeFroy to handle it—I guess the Indians won't pick up many bargains—my people!—damn them! How I hate them. And as for MacNair—lucky Vermilion thought of painting his name on that booze—I hated to smash it—but it paid. It was the one thing needed to make me solid with her. And I've got time to run in another batch if I hurry—got to get those rifles into the loft, too. When MacNair hits, he hits hard."

Chloe appeared at the door with her letters. Lapierre took them, and again bowed low over her hand. This time the girl was sure his lips touched her finger-tips. He released the hand and stepped to the ground.

"Good-bye," he said, "I shall try my utmost to pay you a visit before I depart for the southward, but if I fail, remember to send LeFroy to me at Fort Resolution."

"I will remember. Good-bye—bon voyage——"

"Et prompt retour?" The man's lips smiled, and his eyes flashed the question.

"Et prompt retour—certainement!" answered the girl as, with a wide sweep of his hat, the quarter-breed turned and made his way toward the camp of the Indians, which was located in a spruce thicket a short distance above the clearing. As he disappeared in the timber, Chloe felt a sudden sinking of the heart; a strange sense of desertion, of loneliness possessed her as she gazed into the deepening shadows of the wall of the clearing. She fumed impatiently.

"Why should I care?" she muttered, "I never laid eyes on him until two weeks ago, and besides, he's—he's an Indian! And yet—he's a gentleman. He has been very kind to me—very considerate. He is only a quarter-Indian. Many of the very best families have Indian blood in their veins—even boast of it. I—I'm a fool!" she exclaimed, and passed quickly into the house.

Pierre Lapierre was a man, able, shrewd, unscrupulous. The son of a French factor of the Hudson Bay Company and his half-breed wife, he was sent early to school, where he remained to complete his college course; for it was the desire of his father that the son should engage in some profession for which his education fitted him.

But the blood of the North was in his veins. The call of the North lured him into the North, and he returned to the trading-post of his father, where he was given a position as clerk and later appointed trader and assigned to a post of his own far to the northward.

While the wilderness captivated and entranced him, the humdrum life of a trader wearied him. He longed for excitement—action.

During the several years of his service with the great fur company he assiduously studied conditions, storing up in his mind a fund of information that later was to stand him in good stead. He studied the trade, the Indians, the country. He studied the men of the Mounted, and smugglers, and whiskey-runners, and free-traders. And it was in a brush with these latter that he overstepped the bounds which, under the changed conditions, even the agents of the great Company might not go.

Chafing under the loss of trade by reason of an independent post that had been built upon the shore of his lake some ten miles to the southward, his wild Metis blood called for action and, hastily summoning a small band of Indians, he attacked the independents. Incidentally, the free-traders' post was burned, one of the traders killed, and the other captured and sent upon the longue traverse. In some unaccountable manner, after suffering untold hardships, the man won through to civilization and promptly had Pierre Lapierre brought to book.

The Company stood loyally between its trader and the prison bars; but the old order had changed in the Northland. Young Lapierre's action was condemned and he was dismissed from the Company's service with a payment of three years' unearned salary whereupon, he promptly turned free-trader, and his knowledge of the methods of the H.B.C., the Indians, and the country, made largely for success.

The life of the free-trader satisfied his longing for travel and adventure, which his life as a post-trader had not. But it did not satisfy his innate craving for excitement. Therefore, he cast about to enlarge his field of activity. He became a whiskey-runner. His profits increased enormously, and he gradually included smuggling in his repertoire, and even timber thieving, and cattle-rustling upon the ranges along the international boundary.

At the time of his meeting with Chloe Elliston he was at the head of an organized band of criminals whose range of endeavour extended over hundreds of thousands of square miles, and the diversity of whose crimes was limited only by the index of the penal code.

Pierre Lapierre was a Napoleon of organization—a born leader of men. He chose his liegemen shrewdly—outlaws, renegades, Indians, breeds, trappers, canoemen, scowmen, packers, claim-jumpers, gamblers, smugglers, cattle-rustlers, timber thieves—and these he dominated and ruled absolutely.

Without exception, these men feared him—his authority over them was unquestioned. Because they had confidence in his judgment and cunning, and because under his direction they made more money, and made it easier, and at infinitely less risk, than they ever made by playing a lone hand, they accepted his domination cheerfully. And such was his disposition of the men who were the component parts of his system of criminal efficiency, that few, if any, were there among them who could, even if he so desired, have furnished evidence that would have seriously incriminated the leader.

The men who ran whiskey across the line, cached it. Other men, unknown to them, disguised it as innocent freight and delivered it to the scowmen. The scowmen turned it over to others who, for all they knew, were bona fide settlers or free-traders; and from their cache, the canoemen carried it far into the wilderness and either stored it in some inaccessible rendezvous or cached it where still others would come and distribute it among the Indians.

Each division undoubtedly suspected the others, but none but the leader knew. And, as it was with the whiskey-running, so was it with each of his various undertakings. Religiously, Pierre Lapierre followed the scriptural injunction; "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." He confided in no man. And few, indeed, were the defections among his retainers. A few had rebelled, as Vermilion had rebelled—and with like result. The man dismissed from Lapierre's service entered no other.

Moreover, he invariably contrived to implicate one whom he intended to use, in some crime of a graver nature than he would be called upon to commit in the general run of his duties. This crime he would stage in some fastness where its detection by an officer of the Mounted was exceedingly unlikely; and most commonly consisted in the murder of an Indian, whose weighted body would be lowered to the bottom of a convenient lake or river. Lapierre witnesses would appear and the man was irrevocably within the toil. Had he chosen, Pierre Lapierre could have lowered a grappling hook unerringly upon a dozen weighted skeletons.

Over the head of the recruit now hung an easily proven charge of murder. If during his future activities as whiskey-runner, smuggler, or in whatever particular field of endeavour he was assigned, plans should miscarry—an arrest be made—this man would take his prison sentence in silence rather than seek to implicate Lapierre, who with a word could summon the witnesses that would swear the hemp about his neck.

The system worked. Now and again plans did miscarry—arrests were made by the Mounted, men were caught "with the goods," or arrested upon evidence that even Lapierre's intricate alibi scheme could not refute. But, upon conviction, the unlucky prisoner always accepted his sentence—for at his shoulder stalked a spectre, and in his heart was the fear lest the thin lips of Pierre Lapierre would speak.

With such consummate skill and finesse did Lapierre plot, however, and with such Machiavelian cunning and eclat were his plans carried out, that few failed. And those that did were credited by the authorities to individual or sporadic acts, rather than to the work of an intricate organization presided over by a master mind.

The gang numbered, all told, upward of two hundred of the hardest characters upon the frontier. Only Lapierre knew its exact strength, but each member knew that if he did not "run straight"—if he, by word or act or deed, sought to implicate an accomplice—his life would be worth just exactly the price of "the powder to blow him to hell."

A few there were outside the organization who suspected Pierre Lapierre—but only a few: an officer or two of the Mounted and a few factors of the H.B.C. But these could prove nothing. They bided their time. One man knew him for what he was. One, in all the North, as powerful in his way as Lapierre was in his. The one man who had spies in Lapierre's employ, and who did not fear him. The one man Pierre Lapierre feared—Bob MacNair. And he, too, bided his time.



CHAPTER VIII

A SHOT IN THE NIGHT

As Lapierre made his way to the camp of the Indians he pondered deeply. For Lapierre was troubled. The fact that MacNair had twice come upon him unexpectedly within the space of a month caused him grave concern. He did not know that it was entirely by chance that MacNair had found him, an unwelcome sojourner at Fort Rae. Accusations and recriminations had passed between them, with the result that MacNair, rough, bluff, and ready to fight at any time, had pounded the quarter-breed to within an inch of his life, and then, to the undisguised delight of the men of the H.B.C., had dragged him out and pitched him ignominiously into the lake.

Either could have killed the other then and there. But each knew that to have done so, as the result of a personal quarrel, would have been the worst move he could possibly have made. And the forebearance with which MacNair fought and Lapierre suffered was each man's measure of greatness. MacNair went about his business, and to Lapierre came Chenoine with his story of the girl and the plot of Vermilion, and Lapierre, forgetting MacNair for the moment, made a dash for the Slave River.

For years Lapierre and MacNair had been at loggerheads. Each recognized in the other a foe of no mean ability. Each had sworn to drive the other out of the North. And each stood at the head of a powerful organization which could be depended upon to fight to the last gasp when the time came to "lock horns" in the final issue. Both leaders realized that the show-down could not be long delayed—a year, perhaps—two years—it would make no difference. The clash was inevitable. Neither sought to dodge the crisis, nor did either seek to hasten it. But each knew that events were shaping themselves, the stage was set, and the drama of the wilds was wearing to its final scene.

From the moment of his meeting with Chloe Elliston, Lapierre had realized the value of an alliance with her against MacNair. And being a man whose creed it was to turn every possible circumstance to his own account, he set about to win her co-operation. When, during the course of their first conversation, she casually mentioned that she could command millions if she wanted them, his immediate interest in MacNair cooled appreciably—not that MacNair was to be forgotten—merely that his undoing was to be deferred for a season, while he, the Pierre Lapierre once more of student days, played an old game—a game long forgot in the press of sterner life, but one at which he once excelled.

"A game of hearts," the man had smiled to himself—"a game in which the risk is nothing and the stakes—— With millions one may accomplish much in the wilderness, or retire into smug respectability—who knows? Or, losing, if worse comes to worst, a lady who can command millions, held prisoner, should be worth dickering for. Ah, yes, dear lady! By all means, you shall be helped to Christianize the North! To educate the Indians—how did she say it? 'So that they may come and receive that which is theirs of right'—fah! These women!"

While the scows rushed northward his plans had been laid—plans that included a masterstroke against MacNair and the placing of the girl absolutely within his power in one move. And so Pierre Lapierre had accompanied Chloe to the mouth of the Yellow Knife, selected the site for her school, and generously remained upon the ground to direct the erection of her buildings.

Up to that point his plans had carried with but two minor frustrations: he was disappointed in not having been allowed to build a stockade, and he had been forced prematurely to show his hand to MacNair. The first was the mere accident of a woman's whim, and had been offset to a great extent in the construction of the trading-post and store-house.

The second, however, was of graver importance and deeper significance. While the girl's faith in him had, apparently, remained unshaken by her interview with MacNair, MacNair himself would be on his guard. Lapierre ground his teeth with rage at the Scotchman's accurate comprehension of the situation, and he feared that the man's words might raise a suspicion in Chloe's mind; a fear that was in a great measure allayed by her eager acceptance of his offer of assistance in the matter of supplies, and—had he not already sown the seeds of a deeper regard? Once she had become his wife! The black eyes glittered as the man threaded the trail toward the camp, where his own tent showed white amid the smoke-blackened teepees of the Indians.

The thing, however, that caused him the greatest uneasiness was the suspicion that there was a leak in his system. How had MacNair known that he would be at Fort Rae? Why had he come down the Yellow Knife? And why had the two Indian scouts failed to report the man's coming? Only one of the Indians had returned at all, and his report that the other had been killed by one of MacNair's retainers had seemed unconvincing. However, Lapierre had accepted the story, but all through the days of the building he had secretly watched him. The man was one of his trusted Indians—so was the one he reported killed.

Upon the outskirts of the camp Lapierre halted—thinking. LeFroy had also watched—he must see LeFroy. Picking his way among the teepees, he advanced to his own tent. Groups of Indians and half-breeds, hunched about their fires, were eating supper. They eyed him respectfully as he passed, and in response to a signal, LeFroy arose and followed him to the tent.

Once inside, Lapierre fixed his eyes upon the boss canoeman.

"Well—you have watched Apaw—what have you found out?"

"Apaw—I'm t'ink she spik de trut'."

"Speak the truth—hell! Why didn't he get down here ahead of MacNair, then? What have I got spies for—to drag in after MacNair's gone and tell me he's been here?"

LeFroy shrugged. "MacNair Injuns—dey com' pret' near catch Apaw—dey keel Stamix. Apaw, she got 'way by com' roun' by de Black Fox."

Lapierre nodded, scowling. He trusted LeFroy; and having recognized in him one as unscrupulous and nearly as resourceful and penetrating as himself, had placed him in charge of the canoemen, the men who, in the words of the leader, "kept cases on the North," and to whose lot fell the final distribution of the whiskey to the Indians. But so, also, had he trusted the boasting, flaunting Vermilion.

"All right; but keep your eye on him," he said, smiling sardonically, "and you may learn a lesson. Now you listen to me. You are to stay here. Miss Elliston wants you for her chief trader. Make out your list of supplies—fill that storehouse up with stuff. She wants you to undersell the H.B.C.—and you do it. Get the trade in here—see? Keep your prices down to just below Company prices, and then skin 'em on the fur—and—well, I don't need to tell you how. Give 'em plenty of debt and we'll fix the books. Pick put a half-dozen of your best men and keep 'em here. Tell 'em to obey Miss Elliston's orders; and whatever you do, keep cases on MacNair. But don't start anything. Pass the word out and fill up her school. Give her plenty to do, and keep 'em orderly. I'll handle the canoemen and pick up the fur, and then I've got to drop down the river and run in the supplies. I'll run in some rifles, and some of the stuff, too."

LeFroy looked at his chief in surprise.

"Vermilion—she got ten keg on de scow—" he began.

Lapierre laughed.

"Vermilion, eh? Do you know where Vermilion is?"

LeFroy shook his head.

"He's in hell—that's where he is—I dismissed him from my service. He didn't run straight. Some others went along with him—and there are more to follow. Vermilion thought he could double-cross me and get away with it." And again he laughed.

LeFroy shuddered and made no comment. Lapierre continued:

"Make out your list of supplies, and if I don't show up in the mean time, meet me at the mouth of the Slave three weeks from today. I've got to count days if I get back before the freeze-up. And remember this—you are working for Miss Elliston; we've got a big thing if we work it right; we've got MacNair where we want him at last. She thinks he's running in whiskey and raising hell with the Indians north of here. Keep her thinking so; and later, when it comes to a show-down—well, she is not only rich, but she's in good at Ottawa—see?"

LeFroy nodded. He was a man of few words, was LeFroy; dour and taciturn, but a man of brains and one who stood in wholesome fear of his master.

"And now," continued Lapierre, "break camp and load the canoes. I must pull out tonight. Pick out your men and move 'em at once into the barracks. You understand everything now?"

"Oui," answered LeFroy, and stepping from the tent, passed swiftly from fire to fire, issuing commands in low guttural. Lapierre rolled a cigarette, and taking a guitar from its case, seated himself upon his blankets and played with the hand of a master as he sang a love-song of old France. All about him sounded the clatter of lodge-poles, the thud of packs, and the splashing of water as the big canoes were pushed into the river and loaded.

Presently LeFroy's head thrust in at the entrance. He spoke no word; Lapierre sang on, and the head was withdrawn. When the song was finished the sounds from the outside had ceased. Lapierre carefully replaced his guitar in its case, drew a heavy revolver from its holster, threw it open, and twirled the cylinder with his thumb, examining carefully its chambers. His brows drew together and his lips twisted into a diabolical smile.

Lapierre was a man who took no chances. What was one Indian, more or less, beside the absolute integrity of his organization? He stepped outside, and instantly the guy-ropes of the tent were loosened; the canvas slouched to the ground and was folded into a neat pack. The blankets were made into a compact roll, with the precious guitar in the centre and deposited in the head canoe. Lapierre glanced swiftly about him; nothing but the dying fires and the abandoned lodge-poles indicated the existence of the camp. On the shore the canoemen, leaning on their paddles, awaited the word of command.

He stepped to the water's edge, where, Apaw the Indian, stood with the others. For just a moment the baleful eyes of Lapierre fixed the silent figure; then his words cut sharply upon the silence.

"Apaw—Chahco yahkwa!" The Indian advanced, evidently proud of having been singled out by the chief, and stood before him, paddle in hand. Lapierre spoke no word; seconds passed, the silence grew intense. The hand that gripped the paddle shook suddenly; and then, looking straight into the man's eyes, Lapierre drew his revolver and fired. There was a quick spurt of red flame—the sound of the shot rang sharp, and rang again as the opposite bank of the river hurled back the sound. The Indian pitched heavily forward and fell across his paddle, snapping it in two.

Lapierre glanced over the impassive faces of the canoemen.

"This man was a traitor," he said in their own language. "I have dismissed him from my service. Weight him and shove off!"

The quarter-breed stepped into his canoe. The canoemen bound heavy stones to the legs of the dead Indian, laid the body upon the camp equipage amidship, and silently took their places.

During the evening meal, Chloe was unusually silent, answering Miss Penny's observations and queries in short, detached monosyllables. Later she stole out alone to a high, rocky headland that commanded a sweeping view of the river, and sat with her back against the broad trunk of a twisted banskian.

The long Northern twilight hung about her like a pall—seemed enveloping, smothering her. No faintest breath of air stirred the piny needles above her, nor ruffled the surface of the river, whose black waters, far below, flowed broad and deep and silent—smoothly—like a river of oil. Ominously hushed, secretive, it slipped out of the motionless dark. Silently portentous, it faded again into the dark, the mysterious half-dark, where the gradually deepening twilight blended the distance into the enshrouding pall of gloom. Involuntarily the girl shuddered and started nervously at the splash of an otter. A billion mosquitoes droned their unceasing monotone. The low sound was everywhere—among the branches of the gnarled banskian, above the surface of the river, and on and on and on, to whine thinly between the little stars.

It was not at all the woman who would conquer a wilderness, that huddled in a dejected little heap at the foot of the banskian; but a very miserable and depressed girl, who swallowed hard to keep down the growing lump in her throat, and bit her lip, and stared with wide eyes toward the southward. Hot tears—tears of bitter, heart-sickening loneliness—filled her eyes and trickled unheeded down her cheeks beneath the tightly drawn mosquito-net.

Darkness deepened, imperceptibly, surely, fore-shortening the horizon, and by just so much increasing the distance that separated her from her people.

"Poor fool moose-calf," she murmured, "you weren't satisfied to follow the beaten trails. You had to find a land of your own—a land that——"

The whispered words trailed into silence, and to her mind's eye appeared the face of the man who had spoken those words—the face of Brute MacNair. She saw him as he stood that day and faced her among the freshly chopped stumps of the clearing.

"He is rough and bearlike—boorish," she thought, as she remembered that the man had not removed his hat in her presence. "He called me names. He is uncouth, cynical, egotistical. He thinks he can scare me into leaving his Indians alone." Her lips trembled and tightened. "I am a woman, and I'll show him what a woman can do. He has lived among the Indians until he thinks he owns them. He is hard, and domineering, and uncompromising, and skeptical. And yet—" What gave her pause was so intangible, so chaotic, in her own mind as to form itself into no definite idea.

"He is brutish and brutal and bad!" she muttered aloud at the memory of Lapierre's battered face, and immediately fell to comparing the two men.

Each seemed exactly what the other was not. Lapierre was handsome, debonair, easy of speech, and graceful of movement; deferential, earnest, at times even pensive, and the possessor of ideals; generous and accommodating to a fault, if a trifle cynical; maligned, hated, discredited by the men who ruled the North, yet brave and infinitely capable—she remembered the swift fate of Vermilion.

His was nothing of the rugged candour of MacNair—the bluff straightforwardness that overrides opposition; ignores criticism. MacNair fitted the North—the big, brutal, insatiate North—the North of storms, of cold and fighting things; of foaming, roaring white-water and seething, blinding blizzards.

Chloe's glance strayed out over the river, where the farther bank showed only the serried sky-line of a wall of jet.

Lapierre was also of the North—the North as it is tonight; soft air, balmy with the incense of growing things; illusive dark, half concealing, half revealing, blurring distant outlines. A placid North, whose black waters flowed silent, smooth, deep. A benign and harmless North, upon its surface; and yet, withal, portentous of things unknown.

The girl shuddered and arose to her feet, and, as she did so, from up the river—from the direction of the Indian camp—came the sharp, quick sound of a shot. Then silence—a silence that seemed unending to the girl who waited breathlessly, one hand grasping the rough bark of the gnarled tree, and the other shading her eyes as thought to aid them in their effort to pierce the gloom.

A long time she stood thus, peering into the dark, and then, an indistinct form clove the black water of the river, and a long body slipped noiselessly toward her, followed by another, and another.

"The canoes!" she cried, as she watched the sparkling starlight play upon the long Y-shaped ripples that rolled back from their bows.

Once more the sense of loneliness almost overcame her. Pierre Lapierre was going out of the North.

She could see the figures of the paddlers, now—blurred, and indistinct, and unrecognizable—distinguishable more by the spaces that showed between them, than by their own outlines.

They were almost beneath her. Should she call out? One last bon voyage? The sound of a voice floated upward; a hard, rasping voice, unfamiliar, yet strangely familiar. In the leading canoe the Indians ceased paddling. The canoe lost momentum and drifted broadside to the current. The men were lifting something; something long and dark. There was a muffled splash, and the dark object disappeared. The canoemen picked up their paddles, and the canoe swung into its course and disappeared around a point. The other canoes followed; and the river rolled on as before—black—oily—sinister.

A broad cloud, pall-like, threatening, which had mounted unnoticed by the girl, blotted out the light of the stars, as if to hide from alien eyes some unlovely secret of the wilds.

The darkness was real, now; and Chloe, in a sudden panic of terror, dashed wildly for the clearing—stumbling—crashing through the bush as she ran; her way lighted at intervals by flashes of distant lightning. She paused upon the verge of the bank at the point where it entered the clearing; at the point where the wilderness crowded menacingly her little outpost of civilization. Panting, she stood and stared out over the smooth flowing, immutable river.

A lightning flash, nearer and more vivid than any preceding, lighted for an instant the whole landscape. Then, the mighty crash of thunder, and the long, hoarse moan of wind, and in the midst of it, that other sound—the horrible sound that once before had sent her dashing breathless from the night—the demoniacal, mocking laugh of the great loon.

With a low, choking sob, the girl fled toward the little square of light that glowed from the window of her cabin.



CHAPTER IX

ON SNARE LAKE

When Bob MacNair left Chloe Elliston's camp, he swung around by the way of Mackay Lake, a detour that required two weeks' time and added immeasurably to the discomfort of the journey. Day by day, upon lake, river, and portage, Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack wondered much at his silence and the unwonted hardness of his features.

These two Indians knew MacNair. For ten years, day and night, they had stood at his beck and call; had followed him through all the vast wilderness that lies between the railways and the frozen sea. They had slept with him, had feasted and starved with him, at his shoulder faced death in a hundred guises, and they loved him as men love their God. They had followed him during the lean years when, contrary to the wishes of his father, the stern-eyed factor at Fort Norman, he had refused the offers of the company and devoted his time, winter and summer, to the exploration of rivers and lakes, rock ridges and mountains, and the tundra that lay between, in search of the lost copper mines of the Indians; the mines that lured Hearne into the North in 1771, and which Hearne forgot in the discovery of a fur empire so vast as to stagger belief.

But, as the canoe forged northward, Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack held their peace, and when they arrived at the fort, MacNair growled an order, and sought his cabin beside the wall of the stockade.

A half hour later, when the Indians had gathered in response to the hurried word of Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack, MacNair stepped from his cabin and addressed them in their own language, or rather in the jargon—the compromise language of the North—by means of which the minds of white men and Indians meet on common ground. He warned them against Pierre Lapierre, the kultus breed of whom most of them already knew, and he told them of the girl and her school at the mouth of the Yellow Knife. And then, in no uncertain terms, he commanded them to have nothing whatever to do with the school, nor with Lapierre. Whereupon, Sotenah, a leader among the young men, arose, and after a long and flowery harangue in which he lauded and extolled the wisdom of MacNair and the benefits and advantages that accrued to the Indians by reason of his patronage, vociferously counselled a summary descent upon the fort of the Mesahchee Kloochman.

The proclamation was received with loud acclaim, and it was with no little difficulty that MacNair succeeded in quieting the turbulence and restoring order. After which he rebuked Sotenah severely and laid threat upon the Indians that if so much as a hair of the white kloochman was harmed he would kill, with his own hand, the man who wrought the harm.

As for Pierre Lapierre and his band, they must be crushed and driven out of the land of the lakes and the rivers, but the time was not yet. He, MacNair, would tell them when to strike, and only if Lapierre's Indians were found prowling about the vicinity of Snare Lake were they to be molested.

The Indians dispersed and, slinging a rifle over his shoulder, MacNair swung off alone into the bush.

Bob MacNair knew the North; knew its lakes and its rivers, its forests and its treeless barrens. He knew its hardships, dangers and limitations, and he knew its gentler moods, its compensations, and its possibilities. Also, he knew its people, its savage primitive children who call it home, and its invaders—good and bad, and worse than bad. The men who infest the last frontier, pushing always northward for barter, or for the saving of souls.

He understood Pierre Lapierre, his motives and his methods. But the girl he did not understand, and her presence on the Yellow Knife disturbed him not a little. Had chance thrown her into the clutches of Lapierre? And had the man set about deliberately to use her school as an excuse for the establishment of a trading-post within easy reach of his Indians? MacNair was inclined to believe so—and the matter caused him grave concern. He foresaw trouble ahead, and a trouble that might easily involve the girl who, he felt, was entirely innocent of wrongdoing.

His jaw clamped hard as he swung on and on through the scrub. He had no particular objective, a problem faced him and, where other men would have sat down to work its solution, he walked.

In many things was Bob MacNair different from other men. Just and stern beyond his years, with a sternness that was firmness rather than severity; slow to anger, but once his anger was fairly aroused terrible in meting out his vengeance. Yet, withal, possessed of an understanding and a depth of sympathy, entirely unsuspected by himself, but which enshrined him in the hearts of his Indians, who, in all the world were the men and women who knew him.

Even his own father had not understood this son, who devoured books as ravenously as his dogs devoured salmon. Again and again he remonstrated with him for wasting his time when he might be working for the company. Always the younger man listened respectfully, and continued to read his books and to search for the lost mines with a determination and singleness of purpose that aroused the secret approbation of the old Scotchman, and the covert sneers and scoffings of others.

And then, after four years of fruitless search, at the base of a ridge that skirted the shore of an unmapped lake, he uncovered the mouth of an ancient tunnel with rough-hewn sides and a floor that sloped from the entrance. Imbedded in the slime on the bottom of a pool of stinking water, he found curious implements, rudely chipped from flint and slate, and a few of bone and walrus ivory. Odd-shaped, half-finished tools of hammered copper were strewn about the floor, and the walls were thickly coated with verdigris. Instead of the sharp ring of steel on stone, a dull thud followed the stroke of his pick, and its scars glowed with a red lustre in the flare of the smoking torches.

Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack looked on in stolid silence, while the young man, with wildly beating heart, crammed a pack-sack with samples. He had found the ancient mine—the lost mine of the Indians, which men said existed only in the fancy of Bob MacNair's brain! Carefully sealing the tunnel, the young man headed for Fort Norman; and never did Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack face such a trail. Down the raging torrent of the Coppermine, across the long portage to the Dismal Lakes, and then by portage and river to Dease Bay, across the two hundred miles of Great Bear Lake, and down the Bear River to their destination.

Seven hundred long miles they covered, at a man-killing pace that brought them into the fort, hollow-eyed and gaunt, and with their bodies swollen and raw from the sting of black flies and mosquitoes that swarmed through the holes in their tattered garments.

The men wolfed down the food that was set before them by an Indian woman, and then, while Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack slept, the chief trader led Bob MacNair to the grave of his father.

"'Twas his heart, lad, or somethin' busted inside him," explained the old man. "After supper it was, two weeks agone. He was sittin' i' his chair wi' his book an' his pipe, an' me in anither beside him. He gi' a deep sigh, like, an' his book fell to the ground and his pipe. When I got to him his head was leant back ag'in his chair—and he was dead."

Bob MacNair nodded, and the chief trader returned to the store, leaving the young man standing silent beside the fresh-turned mound with its rudely fashioned wooden cross, that stood among the other grass-grown mounds whose wooden crosses, with their burned inscriptions, were weather-grey and old. For a long time he stood beside the little crosses that lent a solemn dignity to the rugged heights of Fort Norman.

It cannot be said that Bob MacNair had loved his father, in the generally accepted sense of the word. But he had admired and respected him above all other men, and his first thought upon the discovery of the lost mine was to vindicate his course in the eyes of this stern, just man who had so strongly advised against it.

For the opinion of others he cared not the snap of his fingers. But, to read approval in the deep-set eyes of his father, and to hear the deep, rich voice of him raised, at last, in approbation, rather than reproach, he had defied death and pushed himself and his Indians to the limit of human endurance. And he had arrived too late. The bitterness of the young man's soul found expression only in a hardening of the jaw and a clenching of the mighty fists. For, in the heart of him, he knew that in the future, no matter what the measure of the world might be, always, deep within him would rankle the bitter disappointment—the realization that this old man had gone to his grave believing that his son was a fool and a wastrel.

Slowly he turned from the spot and, with heavy steps, entered the post-store. He raised the pack that contained the samples from the floor, and, walking to the verge of the high cliff that overlooked the river, hurled it far out over the water, where it fell with a dull splash that was drowned in the roar of the rapids.

"Ye'll tak' charge here the noo, laddie?" asked McTurk, the grizzled chief trader, the following day when MacNair had concluded the inspection of his father's papers. "'Twad be what he'd ha' counselled!"

"No," answered the young man shortly, and, without a word as to the finding of the lost mine, hurried Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack into a canoe and headed southward.

A month later the officers of the Hudson Bay Company in Winnipeg gasped in surprise at the offer of young MacNair to trade the broad acres to which his father had acquired title in the wheat belt of Saskatchewan and Alberta for a vast tract of barren ground in the subarctic. They traded gladly, and when the young man heard that his dicker had earned for him the name of Fool MacNair in the conclave of the mighty, he smiled—and bought more barrens.

All of which had happened eight years before Chloe Elliston defied him among the stumps of her clearing, and in the interim much had transpired. In the heart of his barrens he built a post and collected about him a band of Indians who soon learned that those who worked in the mines had a far greater number of brass tokens of "made beaver" to their credit than those who trapped fur.

Those were hard years for Bob MacNair; years in which he worked day and night with his Indians, and paid them, for the most part, in promises. But always he fed them and clothed them and their women and children, although to do so stretched his credit to the limit—raised the limit—and raised it again.

He uncovered vast deposits of copper, only to realize that, until he could devise a cheaper method of transportation, the metal might as well have remained where the forgotten miners had left it. And it was while he was at work upon his transportation problem that the shovels of his Indians began to throw out golden grains from the bed of a buried creek.

When the news of gold reached the river, there was a stampede. But MacNair owned the land and his Indians were armed. There was a short, sharp battle, and the stampeders returned to the rivers to nurse their grievance and curse Brute MacNair.

He paid his debt to the Company and settled with his Indians, who suddenly found themselves rich. And then Bob MacNair learned a lesson which he never forgot—his Indians could not stand prosperity. Most of those who had stood by him all through the lean years when he had provided them only a bare existence, took their newly acquired wealth and departed for the white man's country. Some returned—broken husks of the men who departed. Many would never return, and for their undoing MacNair reproached himself unsparingly, the while he devised an economic system of his own, and mined his gold and worked out his transportation problem upon a more elaborate scale. The harm had been done, however; his Indians were known to be rich, and MacNair found his colony had become the cynosure of the eyes of the whiskey-runners, the chiefest among whom was Pierre Lapierre. It was among these men that the name of Brute, first used by the beaten stampeders, came into general use—a fitting name, from their viewpoint—for when one of them chanced to fall into his hands, his moments became at once fraught with tribulation.

And so MacNair had become a power in the Northland, respected by the officers of the Hudson Bay Company, a friend of the Indians, and a terror to those who looked upon the red man as their natural prey.

Step by step, the events that had been the milestones of this man's life recurred to his mind as he tramped tirelessly through the scrub growth of the barrens toward a spot upon the shore of the lake—the only grass plot within a radius of five hundred miles. Throwing himself down beside a low, sodded mound in the centre of the plot, he idly watched the great flocks of water fowls disport themselves upon the surface of the lake.

How long he lay there, he had no means of knowing, when suddenly his ears detected the soft swish of paddles. He leaped to his feet and, peering toward the water, saw, close to the shore, a canoe manned by four stalwart paddlers. He looked closer, scarcely able to credit his eyes. And at the same moment, in response to a low-voiced order, the canoe swung abruptly shoreward and grated upon the shingle of the beach. Two figures stepped out, and Chloe Elliston, followed by Big Lena, advanced boldly toward him. MacNair's jaw closed with a snap as the girl approached smiling. For in the smile was no hint of friendliness—only defiance, not unmingled with contempt.

"You see, Mr. Brute MacNair," she said, "I have kept my word. I told you I would invade your kingdom—and here I am."

MacNair did not reply, but stood leaning upon his rifle. His attitude angered her.

"Well," she said, "what are you going to do about it?" Still the man did not answer, and, stooping, plucked a tiny weed from among the blades of grass. The girl's eyes followed his movements. She started and looked searchingly into his face. For the first time she noticed that the mound was a grave.



CHAPTER X

AN INTERVIEW

"Oh, forgive me!" Chloe cried, "I—I did not know that I was intruding upon—sacred ground!" There was real concern in her voice, and the lines of Bob MacNair's face softened.

"It is no matter," he said. "She who sleeps here will not be disturbed."

The unlooked for gentleness of the man's tone, the simple dignity of his words, went straight to Chloe Elliston's heart. She felt suddenly ashamed of her air of flippant defiance, felt mean, and small, and self-conscious. She forgot for the moment that this big, quiet man who stood before her was rough, even boorish in his manner, and that he was the oppressor and debaucher of Indians.

"A—a woman's grave?" faltered the girl.

"My mother's."

"Did she live here, on Snare Lake?" Chloe asked in surprise, as her glance swept the barren cliffs of its shore.

MacNair answered with the same softness of tone that somehow dispelled all thought of his uncouthness. "No. She lived at Fort Norman, over on the Mackenzie—that is, she died there. Her home, I think, was in the Southland. My father used to tell me how she feared the North—-its snows and bitter cold, its roaring, foaming rivers, its wild, fierce storms, and its wind-lashed lakes. She hated its rugged cliffs and hills, its treeless barrens and its mean, scrubby timber. She loved the warm, long summers, and the cities and people, and—" he paused, knitting his brows—"and whatever there is to love in your land of civilization. But she loved my father more than these—more than she feared the North. My father was the factor at Fort Norman, so she stayed in the North—and the North killed her. To live in the North, one must love the North. She died calling for the green grass of her Southland."

He ceased speaking and unconsciously stooped and plucked a few spears of grass which he held in his palm and examined intently.

"Why should one die calling for the sight of grass?" he asked abruptly, gazing into Chloe's eyes with a puzzled look.

The girl gazed directly, searchingly into MacNair's eyes. The naive frankness of him—his utter simplicity—astounded her.

"Oh!" she cried, impulsively stepping forward. "It wasn't the grass—it was—oh! can't you see?" The man regarded her wonderingly and shook his head.

"No," he answered gravely. "I can not see."

"It was—everything! Life—friends—home! The grass was only the symbol—the tangible emblem that stood for life!" MacNair nodded, but, by the look in his eye, Chloe knew that he did not understand and that pride and a certain natural reserve sealed his lips from further questioning.

"It is far to the Mackenzie," ventured the girl.

"Aye, far. After my father died I brought her here."

"You! Brought her here!" she exclaimed, staring in surprise into the strong emotionless face.

The man nodded slowly. "In the winter it was—and I came alone—dragging her body upon a sled——"

"But why——"

"Because I think she would have wished it so. If one hated the wild, rugged cliffs and the rock-tossed rapids, would one wish to lie upon a cliff with the rapids roaring, for ever and ever? I do not think that, so I brought her here—away from the grey hills and the ceaseless roar of the rapids."

"But the grass?"

"I brought that from the Southland. I failed many times before I found a kind that would grow. It is little I can do for her, and she does not know, but, somehow, it has made me feel—easier—I cannot tell you exactly. I come here often."

"I think she does know," said Chloe softly, and brushed hot tears from her eyes. Could this be the man whose crimes against the poor, ignorant savages were the common knowledge of the North? Could this be he whom men called Brute—this simple-spoken, straightforward, boyish man who had endured hardships and spared no effort, that the mother he had never known might lie in her eternal rest beneath the green sod of her native land, far from the sights, and sounds that, in life, had become a torture to her soul, and worn her, at last, to the grave?

"Mr.—MacNair." The hard note—the note of uncompromising antagonism—had gone from her voice, and the man looked at her in surprise. It was the first time she had addressed him without prefixing the name Brute and emphasizing the prefix. He stood, regarding her calmly, waiting for her to proceed. Somehow, Chloe found that it had become very difficult for her to speak; to say the things to this man that she had intended to say. "I cannot understand you—your viewpoint."

"Why should you try? I ask no one to understand me. I care not what people think."

"About the Indians, I mean——"

"The Indians? What do you know of my viewpoint in regard to the Indians?" The man's face had hardened at her mention of the Indians.

"I know this!" exclaimed the girl. "That you are trading them whiskey! With my own eyes I saw Mr. Lapierre smash your kegs—the kegs that were cunningly disguised as bales of freight and marked with your name, and I saw the whiskey spilled out upon the ground."

She paused, expecting a denial, but MacNair remained silent and again she saw the peculiar twinkle in his eye as he waited for her to proceed. "And I—you, yourself told me that you would kill some of Mr. Lapierre's Indians! Do you call that justice—to kill men because they happen to be in the employ of a rival trader—one who has as much right to trade in the Northland as you have?"

Again she paused, but the man ignored her question.

"Go on," he said shortly.

"And you told me your Indians had to work so hard they had no time for book-learning, and that the souls of the Indians were black as—as hell."

"And I told you, also, that I have never owned any whiskey. Why do you believe me in some things and not in others? It would seem more consistent, Miss Chloe Elliston, for you either to believe or to disbelieve me."

"But, I saw the whiskey. And as for what you, yourself, told me—a man will scarcely make himself out worse than he is."

"At least, I can scarcely make myself out worse than you believe me to be." The twinkle was gone from MacNair's eyes now, and he spoke more gruffly. "Of what use is all this talk? You are firmly convinced of my character. Your opinion of me concerns me not at all. Even if I were to attempt to make my position clear to you, you would not believe anything I should tell you."

"What defence can there be to conduct such as yours?"

"Defence! Do you imagine I would stoop to defend my conduct to you—to one who is, either wittingly or unwittingly, hand in glove with Pierre Lapierre?"

The unconcealed scorn of the man's words stung Chloe to the quick.

"Pierre Lapierre is a man!" she cried with flashing eyes. "He is neither afraid nor ashamed to declare his principles. He is the friend of the Indians—and God knows they need a friend—living as they do by sufferance of such men as you, and the men of the Hudson Bay Company!"

"You believe that, I think," MacNair said quietly. "I wonder if you are really such a fool, or do you know Lapierre for what he is?"

"Yes!" exclaimed the girl, her face flushed. "I do know him for what he is! He is a man! He knows the North. I am learning the North, and together we will drive you and your kind out of the North."

"You cannot do that," he said. "Lapierre, I will crush as I would crush a snake. I bear you no ill will. As you say, you will learn the North—for you will remain in the North. I told you once that you would soon tire of your experiment, but I was wrong. Your eyes are the eyes of a fighting man."

"Thank you, Mr.—MacNair——"

"Why not Brute MacNair?"

Chloe shook her head. "No," she said. "Not that—not after—I think I shall call you Bob MacNair."

The man looked perplexed. "Women are not like men," he said, simply. "I do not understand you at times. Tell me—why did you come into the North?"

"I thought I had made that plain. I came to bring education to the Indians. To do what I can to lighten their burden and to make it possible for them to compete with the white man on the white man's terms when this country shall bow before the inevitable advance of civilization; when it has ceased to be the land beyond the outposts."

"We are working together then," answered, MacNair. "When you have learned the North we shall be—friends."

"Never! I——"

"Because you will have learned," he continued, ignoring her protest, "that education is the last thing the Indians need. If you can make better trappers and hunters of them; teach them to work in mines, timber, on the rivers, you will come nearer to solving their problem than by giving them all the education in the world. No, Miss Chloe Elliston, they can't play the white man's game—with the white man's chips."

"But they can! In the States we——"

"Why didn't you stay in the States?"

"Because the government looks after the education of the Indians—provides schools and universities, and——"

"And what do they turn out?"

"They turn out lawyers and doctors and engineers and ministers of the gospel, and educated men in all walks of life. We have Indians in Congress!"

"How many? And how many are lawyers and doctors and engineers and ministers of the gospel? And how many can truthfully be said to be 'educated men in all walks of life'? A mere handful! Where one succeeds, a hundred fail! And the others return to their reservation, dissolute, dissatisfied, to live on the bounty of your government; you, yourself, will admit that when an Indian does rise into a profession for which his education has fitted him, he is an object of wonder—a man to be written about in your newspapers and talked about in your homes. And then your sentimentalists—your fools—hold him up as a type! Not your educated Indians are reaping the benefit of your government's belated attention, but those who are following the calling for which nature has fitted them—stock-raising and small farming on their allotted reservations. The educated ones know that the government will feed and clothe them—why should they exert themselves?

"Here in the North, because the Indians have been dealt with sanely, and not herded onto restricted reservations, and subjected to the experiments of departmental fools well-intentioned—and otherwise—they are infinitely better off. They are free to roam the woods, to hunt and to trap and to fish, and they are contented. They remain at the posts only long enough to do their trading, and return again to the wilds. For the most part they are truthful and sober and honest. They can obtain sufficient clothing and enough to eat. The lakes and the rivers teem with fish, and the woods and the barrens abound with game,

"Contrast these with the Indians who have come more intimately into contact with the whites. You can see them hanging about the depots and the grogeries and rum shops of the railway towns, degenerate, diseased, reduced to beggary and petty thievery. And you do not have to go to the railway towns to see the effect of your civilization upon them. Follow the great trade rivers! From source to mouth, their banks are lined with the Indians who have come into contact with your civilization!

"Go to any mission centre! Do you find that the Indian has taken kindly to the doctrines it teaches? Do you find them happy, God-fearing Indians who embraced Christianity and are living in accord with its precepts? You do not! Except in a very few isolated cases, like your lawyers and doctors of the states, you will find at the very gates of the missions, be their denomination what they may, debauchery and rascality in its most vicious forms. Read your answer there in the vice-marked, ragged, emaciated hangers-on of the missions.

"I do not say that this harm is wrought wilfully—on the contrary, I know it is not. They are noble and well-meaning men and women who carry the gospel into the North. Many of them I know and respect and admire—Father Desplaines, Father Crossett, the good Father O'Reiley, and Duncan Fitzgilbert, of my mother's faith. These men are good men; noble men, and the true friends of the Indians; in health and in sickness, in plague, famine, and adversity these men shoulder the red man's burden, feed, clothe, and doctor him, and nurse him back to health—or bury him. With these I have no quarrel, nor with the religion they teach—in its theory. It is not bad. It is good. These men are my friends. They visit me, and are welcome whenever they come.

"Each of these has begged me to allow him to establish a mission among my Indians. And my answer is always the same—'No!' And I point to the mission centres already established. It is then they tell me that the deplorable condition exists, not because of the mission, but despite it." He paused with a gesture of impatience. "Because! Despite! A quibble of words! If the fact remains, what difference does it make whether it is because or despite? It must be a great comfort to the unfortunate one who is degraded, diseased, damned, to know that his degradation, disease, and damnation, were wrought not because, but despite. I think God laughs—even as he pities. But, in spite of all they can do, the fact remains. I do not ask you to believe me. Go and see it with your own eyes, and then if you dare, come back and establish another plague spot in God's own wilderness. The Indian rapidly acquires all the white man's vices—and but few of his virtues.

"Stop and think what it means to experiment with the future of a people. To overthrow their traditions: to confute their beliefs and superstitions, and to subvert their gods! And what do you offer them in return? Other traditions; other beliefs; another God—and education! Do you dare to assume the responsibility? Do you dare to implant in the minds of these people an education—a culture—that will render them for ever dissatisfied with their lot, and send many of them to the land of the white man to engage in a feeble and hopeless struggle after that which is, for them, unattainable?"

"But it is not unattainable! They——"

"I know your sophisms; your fabrication of theory!" MacNair interrupted her almost fiercely. "The facts! I have seen the rum-sodden wrecks, the debauched and soul-warped men and women who hang about your frontier towns, diseased in body and mind, and whose greatest misfortune is that they live. These, Miss Chloe Elliston, are the real monuments to your education. Do you dare to drive one hundred to certain degradation that is worse than fiery hell, that you may point with pride to one who shall attain to the white man's standard of success?"

"That is not the truth! I do not believe it! I will not believe it!"

The steel-grey eyes of the man bored deep into the shining eyes of brown. "I know that you do not believe it. But you are wrong when you say that you will not believe it. You are honest and unafraid, and, therefore, you will learn, and now, one thing further.

"We will say that you succeed in keeping your school, or post, or mission, from this condition of debauchery—which you will not. What then? Suppose you educate your Indians? There are no employers in the North. None who buy education. The men who pay out money in the waste places pay it for bone and brawn, not for brains; they have brains—or something that answers the purpose—therefore, your educated Indian must do one of two things—he must go where he can use his education or he must remain where he is. In either event he will be the loser. If he seeks the land of the white man, he must compete with the white man on the white man's terms. He cannot do it. If he stays here in the North he must continue to hunt, or trap, or work on the river, or in the mines, or the timber, and he is ever afterward dissatisfied with his lot. More, he has wasted the time he spent in filling his brain with useless knowledge."

MacNair spoke rapidly and earnestly, and Chloe realized that he spoke from his heart and also that he spoke from a certain knowledge of his subject. She was at a loss for a reply. She could not dispute him, for he had told her not to believe him; to go see for herself. She did not believe MacNair, but in spite of herself she was impressed.

"The missionaries are doing good! Their reports show——"

"Their reports show! Of course their reports show! Why shouldn't they? Where do their reports go? To the people who pay them their salaries! Do not understand me to say that in all cases these reports are falsely made. They are not—that is, they are literally true. A mission reports so many converts to Christianity during a certain period of time. Well and good; the converts are there—they can produce them. The Indians are not fools. If the white men want them to profess Christianity, why they will profess Christianity—or Hinduism or Mohammedanism. They will worship any god the white man suggests—for a fancy waistcoat or a piece of salt pork. The white man gives many gifts of clothing, and sometimes of food—to his converts. Therefore, he shall not want for converts—while the clothing holds out!"

"And your Indians? Have they not suffered from their contact with you?"

"No. They have not suffered. I know them, their needs and requirements, and their virtues and failings. And they know me."

"Where is your fort?"

"Some distance above here on the shore of this lake."

"Will you take me there? Show me these Indians, that I may see for myself that you have spoken the truth?"

"No. I told you you were to have nothing to do with my Indians. I also warned my Indians against you—and your partner Lapierre. I cannot warn them against you and then take you among them."

"Very well. I shall go myself, then. I came up here to see your fort and the condition of your Indians. You knew I would come."

"No. I did not know that. I had not seen the fighting spirit in your eyes then. Now I know that you will come—but not while I am here. And when you do come you will be taken back to your own school. You will not be harmed, for you are honest in your purpose. But you will, nevertheless, be prevented from coming into contact with my Indians. I will have none of Lapierre's spies hanging about, to the injury of my people."

"Lapierre's spies! Do you think I am a spy? Lapierre's?"

"Not consciously, perhaps—but a spy, nevertheless. Lapierre may even now be lurking near for the furtherance of some evil design."

Chloe suddenly realized that MacNair's boring, steel-grey eyes were fixed upon her with a new intentness—as if to probe into the very thoughts of her brain.

"Mr. Lapierre is far to the Southward," she said—and then, upon the edge of the tiny clearing, a twig snapped. The man whirled, his rifle jerked into position, there was a loud report, and Bob MacNair sank slowly down upon the grass mound that was his mother's grave.



CHAPTER XI

BACK ON THE YELLOW KNIFE

The whole affair had been so sudden that Chloe scarcely realized what had happened before a man stepped quickly into the clearing, at the same time slipping a revolver into its holster. The girl gazed at him in amazement. It was Pierre Lapierre. He stepped forward, hat in hand. Chloe glanced swiftly from the dark, handsome features to the face of the man on the ground. The grey eyes opened for a second, and then closed; but in that brief, fleeting glance the girl read distrust, contempt, and silent reproach. The man's lips moved, but no sound came—and with a laboured, fluttering sigh, he sank into unconsciousness.

"Once more, it seems, my dear Miss Elliston, I have arrived just in time."

A sudden repulsion for this cruel, suave killer of men flashed into the girl's brain. "Get some water," she cried, and dropping to her knees began to unbutton MacNair's flannel shirt.

"But—" objected Lapierre.

"Will you get some water? This is no time to argue! You can explain later!" Lapierre turned and without a word, walked to the lake and, taking a pail from the canoe, filled it with water. When he returned, Chloe was tearing white bandages from a garment essentially feminine, while Big Lena endeavoured to stanch the flow of blood from a small wound high on the man's left breast, and another, more ragged wound where the bullet had torn through the thick muscles of his back.

The two women worked swiftly and capably, while Lapierre waited, frowning.

"Better hurry, Miss Elliston," he said, when the last of the bandages was in place. "This is no place for us to be found if some of MacNair's Indians happen along. Your canoe is ready. Mine is farther down the lake."

"But, this man—surely——"

"Leave him there. You have done all you can do for him. His Indians will find him."

"What!" cried Chloe. "Leave a wounded man to die in the bush!"

Lapierre stepped closer. "What would you do ?" he asked. "Surely you cannot remain here. His Indians would kill you as they would kill a carcajo." The man's face softened. "It is the way of the North," he said sadly. "I would gladly have spared him—even though he is my enemy. But when he whirled with his rifle upon my heart, his finger upon the trigger, and murder in his eye, I had no alternative. It was his life or mine. I am glad I did not kill him." The words and the tone reassured Chloe, and when she answered, it was to speak calmly.

"We will take him with us," she said. "The Indians could not care for him properly even if they found him. At home I have everything necessary for the handling of just such cases."

"But, my dear Miss Elliston—think of the portages and the added burden. His Indians——"

The girl interrupted him—"I am not asking you to help. I have a canoe here. If you are afraid of MacNair's Indians you need not remain."

The note of scorn in the girl's voice was not lost upon Lapierre. He flushed and answered with the quiet dignity that well became him: "I came here, Miss Elliston, with only three canoemen. I returned unexpectedly to your school, and when I learned that you had gone to Snare Lake, I followed—to save you, if possible, from the hand of the Brute."

Chloe interrupted him. "You came here for that?"

The man bowed low. "Knowing what you do of Brute MacNair, and of his hatred of me, you surely do not believe I came here for business—or pleasure." He drew closer, his black eyes glowing with suppressed passion. "There is one thing a man values more than life—the life and the safety of the woman he loves!"

Chloe's eyes dropped. "Forgive me!" she faltered. "I—I did not know—I—Oh! don't you see? It was all so sudden. I have had no time to think! I know you are not afraid. But, we can't leave him here—like this."

"As you please," answered Lapierre, gently.

"It is not the way of the North; but——"

"It is the way of humanity."

"It is your way—and, therefore, it is my way, also. But, let us not waste time!" He spoke sharply to Chloe's canoemen, who sprang to the unconscious form, and raising it from the ground, carried it to the water's edge and deposited it in the canoe.

"Make all possible speed," he said, as Chloe preceded Big Lena into the canoe; "I shall follow to cover your retreat."

The girl was about to protest, but at that moment the canoe shot swiftly out into the lake, and Lapierre disappeared into the bush.

There was small need for the quarter-breed's parting injunction. The four Indian canoemen evidently keenly alive to the desirability of placing distance between themselves and MacNair's retainers, bent to their paddles with a unanimity of purpose that fairly lifted the big canoe through the water and sent the white foam curling from its bow in tiny ripples of protest.

Hour after hour, as the craft drove southward, Chloe sat with the wounded man's head supported in her lap and pondered deeply the things he had told her. Now and again she gazed into the bearded face, calm, masklike in its repose of unconsciousness, as if to penetrate behind the mask and read the real nature of him. She realized with a feeling almost of fear, that here was no weakling—no plastic irresolute—whose will could be dominated by the will of a stronger; but a man, virile, indomitable; a man of iron will who, though he scorned to stoop to defend his position, was unashamed to vindicate it. A man whose words carried conviction, and whose eyes compelled attention, even respect, though the uncouth boorishness of him repelled.

Yet she knew that somewhere deep behind that rough exterior lay a finer sensitiveness, a gentleness of feeling, and a sympathy that had impelled him to a deed of unconscious chivalry of which no man need be ashamed. And in her heart Chloe knew that had she not witnessed with her own eyes the destruction of his whiskey, she would have been convinced of his sincerity, if not of his postulates. "He is bad, but not all bad," she murmured to herself. "A man who will fight hard, but fairly. At all events, my journey to Snare Lake has not been entirely in vain. He knows, now, that I have come into the North to stay; that I am not afraid of him, and will fight him. He knows that I am honest——"

Suddenly the very last words she had spoken to him flashed into her mind—"Mr. Lapierre is far to the Southward"—and then Chloe closed her eyes as if to shut out that look of mingled contempt and reproach with which the wounded man had sunk into unconsciousness. "He thinks I lied to him—that the whole thing was planned," she muttered, and was conscious of a swift anger against Lapierre. Her eyes swept backward to the brown spot in the distance which was Lapierre's canoe.

"He came up here because he thought I was in danger," she mused. "And MacNair would have killed him. Oh, it is terrible," she moaned. "This wild, hard wilderness, where human life is cheap; where men hate, and kill, and maim, and break all the laws of God and man; it is all wrong! Brutal, and savage, and wrong!"

The shadows lengthened, the canoe slipped into the river that leads to Reindeer Lake, and still the tireless canoemen bent unceasingly to their paddles. Reindeer Lake was crossed by moonlight, and a late camp was made a mile to the westward of the portage. The camp was fireless, and the men talked in whispers. Later Lapierre joined them, and at the first grey hint of dawn the outfit was again astir. By noon the five-mile portage had been negotiated, and the canoes headed down Carp Lake, which is the northmost reach of the Yellow Knife.

The following two days showed no diminution in the efforts of the canoemen. The wounded man's condition remained unchanged. Lapierre's canoe followed at a distance of a mile or two, and a hundred times a day Chloe found herself listening with strained expectancy for the sound of the shots that would proclaim that MacNair's Indians had overtaken them. But no shots were fired, and it was with a feeling of intense relief that the girl welcomed the sight of her own buildings as they loomed in the clearing on the evening of the third day.

That night Lapierre visited Chloe in the cottage, where he found her seated beside MacNair's bed, putting the finishing touches to a swathing of fresh bandages.

"How is he doing?" he asked, with a nod toward the injured man.

"There is no change," answered the girl, as she indicated a chair close beside a table, upon which were a tin basin, various bottles, and porcelain cups containing medicine, and a small pile of antiseptic tablets. For just an instant the man's glance rested upon the tablets, and then swiftly swept the room. It was untenanted except for the girl and the unconscious man on the bed.

"LeFroy, it seems, has improved his time," ventured Lapierre as he accepted the proffered chair and drew from his pocket a thick packet of papers. "His complete list of supplies," he smiled. "With these in your storehouse you may well expect to seriously menace the trade of both MacNair and the Hudson Bay Company's post at Fort Rae."

Chloe glanced at the list indifferently. "It seems, Mr. Lapierre, that your mind is always upon trade—when it is not upon the killing of men."

The quarter-breed was quick to note the disapproval of her tone, and hastened to reply. "Surely, Miss Elliston, you cannot believe that I regard the killing of men as a pleasure; it is a matter of deep regret to me that twice during the short period of our acquaintance I have been called upon to shoot a fellow man."

"Only twice! How about the shot in the night—in the camp of the Indians, before you left for the Southward?" The sarcasm of the last four words was not lost upon the man. "Who fired that shot? And what was the thing that was lifted from your canoe and dropped into the river?"

Lapierre's eyes searched hers. Did she know the truth? The chance was against it.

"A most deplorable affair—a fight between Indians. One was killed and we buried him in the river. I had hoped to keep this from your ears. Such incidents are all too common in the Northland——"

"And the murderer——"

"Has escaped. But to return to the others. Both shots, as you well know, were fired on the instant, and in neither case did I draw first."

Chloe, who had been regarding him intently, was forced to admit the justice of his words. She noted the serious sadness of the handsome features, the deep regret in his voice, and suddenly realized that in both instances Lapierre's shots had been fired primarily in defence of her.

A sudden sense of shame—of helplessness—came over her. Could it be that she did not fit the North? Surely, Lapierre was entitled to her gratitude, rather than her condemnation. Judged by his own standard, he had done well. With a shudder she wondered if she would ever reach the point where she could calmly regard the killing of men as a mere incident in the day's work? She thought not. And yet—what had men told her of Tiger Elliston? Without exception, almost, the deeds they recounted had been deeds of violence and bloodshed. When she replied, her voice had lost its note of disapproval.

"Forgive me," she said softly, "it has all been so different—so strange and new, and big. I have been unable to grasp it. All my life I have been taught to hold human life sacred. It is not you who are to blame! Nor, is it the others. It is the kill or be killed creed—the savage wolf creed—of the North."

The girl spoke rapidly, with her eyes upon the face of MacNair. So absorbed was she that she did not see the slim fingers of Lapierre steal softly across the table-top and extract two tablets from the little pile—failed also to see the swift motion with which those fingers dropped the tablets into a porcelain cup, across the rim of which rested a silver spoon.

The man arose at the conclusion of her words, and crossing to her side rested a slim hand upon the back of her chair. "No. Miss Elliston," he said gently, "I am not to blame nor, in a measure, are the others. It is, as you say, the North—the crushing, terrible, alluring North—in whose primitive creed a good man does not mean a moral one, but one who accomplishes his purpose, even though that purpose be bad. End, and not means, is the ethics of the lean, lone land, where human life sinks into insignificance, beneath the immutable law of savage might."

His eyes burned as he gazed down into the upturned face of the girl. His hands stole lightly from the chair back and rested upon her shoulder. For one long, intense moment, their eyes held, and then, with a movement as swift and lithe as the spring of a panther, the man was upon his knees beside her chair, his arms were about her, and with no thought of resistance, Chloe felt herself drawn close against his breast, felt the wild beating of his heart, and then—his lips were upon hers, and she felt herself struggling feebly against the embrace of the sinewy arms.

Only for a moment did Lapierre hold her. With a movement as sudden and impulsive as the movement that embraced her, the arms were withdrawn, and the man leaped swiftly to his feet. Too dazed to speak, Chloe sat motionless, her brain in a chaotic whirl of emotion, while in her breast outraged dignity and hot, fierce anger strove for the mastery over a thrill, so strange to her, so new, so intense that it stirred her to the innermost depths of her being.

Swiftly, unconsciously, her glance rested for a moment upon the lean, bearded face of MacNair; and beside her chair, Lapierre noted the glance, and the thin lips twisted into a smile—a cynical, sardonic smile, that faded on the instant, as his eyes flashed toward the doorway. For there, silent and grim as he had seen her once before, stood Big Lena, whose china-blue eyes were fixed upon him, in that same disconcerting, fishlike stare.

The hot blood mounted to his cheeks and suddenly receded, so that his face showed pallid and pasty in the gloom of the darkened room. He drew his hand uncertainly across his brow and found it damp with a cold, moist sweat. Was it fancy, or did the china-blue, fishlike eyes rest for just an instant upon the porcelain cup on the table? With an effort the man composed himself, and stooping, whispered a few hurried words into the ears of the girl who sat with her face buried in her hands.

"Forgive me, Miss Elliston; for the moment I forgot that I had no right. I love you! Love you more than life itself! More than my own life—or the lives of others. It was but the impulse of an unguarded moment that caused me to forget that I had not the right—forget that I am a gentleman. We love as we kill in the North. And now, good-by, I am going Southward. I will return, if it is within the power of man to return, before the ice skims the lakes and the rivers."

He paused, but the girl remained as though she had not heard him. He leaned closer, his lips almost upon her ear. "Please, Miss Elliston, can you not forgive me—wish me one last bon voyage?"

Slowly, as one in a dream, Chloe offered him her hand. "Good-by!" she said simply, in a dull, toneless voice. The man seized the hand, pressed it lightly, and turning abruptly, crossed to the table. As he drew his Stetson toward him, its brim came into violent contact with the porcelain medicine cup. The cup crashed to the floor, its contents splashing widely over the whip-sawed boards.

With a hurried word of apology he passed out of the door—passed close beside the form of Big Lena onto whose cold, fishlike eyes the black eyes stared insolently, even as the thin lips twisted into a smile—cynical, sardonic, mocking.



CHAPTER XII

A FIGHT IN THE NIGHT

The days immediately following Lapierre's departure were busy days for Chloe Elliston. The word had passed along the lakes and the rivers, and stolid, sullen-faced Indians stole in from the scrub to gaze apathetically at the buildings on the banks of the Yellow Knife. Chloe with pain-staking repetition, through LeFroy as interpreter, explained to each the object of her school; with the result that a goodly number remained and lost no time in installing themselves in the commodious barracks.