For the rest it was peopled by the hard-faced, powerful-looking clerks behind the iron grid of the counter, and a gathering of men sitting about at the small tables, or lounging with their feet on the anthracite stove which stood out in the centre of the great apartment.

It was a mixed enough gathering. There were well-dressed men, and men who were obviously of the sea. There were the flashily dressed crooks, whose work was the haunt of sidewalk, and trains, and the surface cars. There were out and out toughs, careless of all appearance, and with their evil hall-marked on harsh faces and in their watchful eyes. Then there were others whom no one but the police of the city could have placed. There were Chinamen and Lascars. There were square-headed Germans, and the Dagos from Italy and other Latin countries. There were niggers, too, which was a tribute to the generosity of Mallard's hospitality.

Those at the tables were mostly drinking and gambling. Poker seemed to be the favoured pastime, but "shooting craps" was not without its devotees. There were one or two groups in close confabulation over their drinks. While round the stove was a scattering of loungers.

A dark good-looking man, with an ample brown beard, was amongst the latter. He was reclining with little more than his back resting on the seat of an armed Windsor chair. His feet, well shod, were thrust up on the stove in approved fashion. He was smoking a cheap cigar which retained its highly coloured band, and contemplating the brazen pages of an early edition of a leading evening paper.

A man beside him, an Englishman, to judge by the make of his clothes and his manner of speech, had a news sheet lying in his lap. But he was not reading. His fair face and blue eyes were turned with unfailing interest on the dull sides of the glowing stove. Occasionally he spoke to his bearded neighbour, who also seemed to be something of a companion.

"I can't find anything that's likely to be of any use to me," he said.

His speech was curiously refined and seemed utterly out of place in the office of Mallard's. "I quit London because—It seems to me cities are all the same. They're all full to overflowing, and the only jobs going are the jobs no one wants. Why in hell do we congregate in cities?"

The man beside him replied without looking up from his paper.

"Because we've a ten cent sense with a fi' dollar scare." He laughed harshly. "How long have you been out? Six months? Six months, an' you've learned to guess hard when you see Saney bumming around, or a uniform in the crowd. You've learned to wish you 'hadn't,' so you dream things all night. You're yearning to get back to things as they were before you guessed you'd fancy them diff'rent, and you find that way the door's shut tight, and a feller with a darn sharp sword is sitting around waiting on you. Take a chance, man. Get out in the open. It's big, and it's good. It's a hell of a sight in front of a city, anyway. If they get you—well, what of it? You've asked for it. And anyway they're going to get you some time. You can't get away with the play all the time."

"Yes. I s'pose that's right. It's a big country, and—" The man's fair brows drew together. The regret was plain enough in his eyes. There was more weakness than crime in them.

The bearded man tapped the page of the news sheet he was reading with an emphatic forefinger that was none too clean.

"What in hell?" he exclaimed. "These fellers beat me. Here, look at that, and read the stuff some darn hoodlum has doped out."

He passed the paper to the Englishman. That at which the other pointed was the photograph of a man. The letterpress was underneath it.

"Get a good look at the picture. Then read," the other exclaimed, while his dark eyes searched the Englishman's face.

He waited, watchful, alert. He saw the other's eyes scan the letterpress. Then he saw them revert again to the picture.

"Well, what d'you make out? Aren't they darn suckers? Look at that job line in bum ink. Could you get that face from a Limburger cheese? And the dope? After handing you a valentine that 'ud scare a blind Choyeuse, and you couldn't rec'nize for a man without a spy glass, they set right in to tell you he's 'wanted' for things he did in the North-west two and a haf years ago. The p'lice have been chasing him for two and a haf years. They've never located him, and he's likely living in the heart of Sahara or some other darn place by now. And now—now some buzzy-headed 'cop' reckons he's got a line, and dopes out that stuff to warn him they're coming along, so he can get well away in time. Makes you laff."

There was irritation in the man's tone. There was something else besides.

The blue-eyed English crook was studying the picture closely.

"It sort of seems foolish," he said at last.

"Foolish? Gee!"

"Still, it is the face of a man, and a good-looking man," he went on. "And there's something familiar about it, too; I seem to know the face." Suddenly he looked round, and his pale, searching eyes looked hard at his companion. "Say, he's not unlike you. He's got the same forehead, and the same eyes and nose. If you'd got no beard, and your hair was brushed smooth——"

"Tchah!"

The bearded man reclaimed the paper with a laugh that carried no conviction.

"The courts 'ud hand me big money damages for a libel like that," he declared.

"Would they?"

The smiling eyes of the Englishman were challenging. The other shrugged as well as his attitude would permit, and, emitting a cloud of smoke from his rank cigar, pretended to continue his reading.

At that moment a stir recurred amongst the "crap-shooters" under one of the windows, and the Englishman looked round. His alert ears had caught the sound of Saney's name on the lips of one of the men who had ceased his play to peer out of the window.

He rose swiftly from his chair and joined the group. The man with the beard had made no movement. He, too, had heard Saney's name, and a keen, alert, sidelong glance followed his neighbour's movements.

The other was away some seconds. When he returned his breathing seemed to have quickened, and a light of uncertainty shone in his eyes.

"It's Saney," he said, without waiting for any question. "He's coming down the street. I should think he's coming here. He's crossed over as if he were."

"Alone?"

The bearded man's question was sharp.

"No. There's another fellow with him. He's in plain clothes. A youngish looking fellow, with a clean shaven face, and a pair of shoulders like an ox. Looks to me like a cavalryman in mufti. He certainly looks as if he ought to have a saddle under him. I——"

The other waited for no more. He was on his feet and across the room at the window in a twinkling. And the smiling eyes of the Englishman gazed after him. In the other's absence he picked up the paper which had fallen upon the floor, and looked again at the portrait of the man, and re-read the letterpress underneath it.

"Hervey Garstaing," he murmured, as though impressing the name upon his mind. Then he laid the paper quickly aside as the thrusting of chairs announced his companion's return.

The next few minutes were full of a tense interest for the man who had only just crossed the border line into the world of crime. The man with the brown beard passed him by without a word. He thrust the chairs, which stood in his way, hastily aside. He seemed to have no regard for anything but his own rapid progress. He was making for the counter with its iron defences.

The smile in the Englishman's eyes deepened. His interest rose to a wave of excitement. He felt assured that "things" were about to happen.

A hard-faced clerk with the shoulders of a prizefighter, was waiting to receive the hurried approach of his client.

These men were always alert and ready at the first sign.

The bearded man's demand came sharply back across the room.

"Guess I need to 'phone—quick!" he said. "I'll take No. 1."

The face of the clerk remained expressionless, but the tone of his reply had doubt in it.

"No. 1?" he said.

"That's how I said."

"It'll cost you a hundred dollars."

"You needn't hand me the tariff," returned the bearded man with a laugh that jarred. "Here's the stuff. Only open it—quick."

The onlooker saw the applicant dive a hand into his hip pocket and draw out a roll of money. He heard the crumple of paper as he counted out a number of bills. Then, in a moment, his whole attention was diverted to the entrance door of the room. The swing door was thrust open and two men pushed their way in.

The man who came first was of medium height and square build. He had a disarming, florid face, and the bland, good-natured expression of a genial farmer. The other glanced swiftly over the room. He was the shorter of the two, and his clean shaven face and his undistinctive tweed clothing would have left him quite unremarkable but for his air of definite decision and purpose.

The first man the Englishman recognized as Saney, head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the province. The other was a stranger.

From the newcomers, the onlooker's attention was suddenly distracted by the slamming of a heavy door. It was the door of a telephone box, and he knew it was the door of "No. 1," the use of which had cost his friend one hundred dollars. He looked for the man with the beard. He had gone.

Saney's inspection of the room was rapid, and every individual foregathered came under his eye. Then he stepped up to the counter and spoke to the clerk.

His voice did not carry to the rest of the room, but the clerk's swift reply was plainly audible.

"I haven't had a sight of him, if that's what he's like," he said, handing back a photograph. "Still, the place is here for you to go through if you fancy that way. You know that, Mr. Saney. It's open to you the whole time."

The officer's reply was inaudible. But the voice of the stranger came sharply.

"Guess we'll just have a look at the fellow that passed into that 'phone box as we came in," he said.

Again came the clerk's reply.

"There's no one in them boxes, Mister. I haven't sold a call in haf an hour," he said with a smile that lent no softening to his watchful eyes. He stooped and released a series of levers. "Get a peek for yourselves, gents."

Each door was set ajar and the stranger moved swiftly across and flung them wide open in rapid succession. The boxes were empty. At "No. 1" he paused considering. Then he passed within. And, for a few moments, stood examining the instrument, which was no different from any other 'phone in any other hotel in the city.

After the examination the two men passed out of the room and the Englishman watched the smiling contempt that promptly lit the eyes of the clerk as he looked after them.

Outside on the landing Saney led the way. Nor did the two men speak until they had passed down the stairs and out into the street.

"Well?"

Saney spoke with an ironical smile lighting his genial eyes.

"You'll search the place?" the other suggested.

Saney shrugged.

"If you feel that way. But it's useless," he said. "I said that to you before. You've tracked this feller to this city. You've tracked him to Mallard's. It's taken you nearly two years. We've all been out after him, and failed. You've succeeded in hunting him down to Mallard's. Well, I'd say your work's only just started. Maybe he's there right now. If we searched with a hundred men we couldn't exhaust that darn gopher nest. If we blocked every outlet we know and don't know, he could still sit tight and laff at us. No. We need to start right in again. So long as he's got the stuff, and hangs to Mallard's, he's safe."

"You might have those 'phone boxes torn down. I saw a feller go into one of them as we came in. I'd swear to that."

Saney nodded.

"So would I. A feller did go in. Maybe it was some guy that didn't fancy seeing me. Maybe it was your man. It wouldn't help us tearing out those boxes. We know them. 'No. 1' is a clear way out of that room. Guess the whole back of it opens into some darn passage, which you could easily reach from anywhere outside that room. That's the trick of the place. Short of pulling the place down you can't do a thing that 'ud help. It's honeycombed with concealed doors, that in themselves don't mean a thing but a 'get out' of any old room. It's the whole place that's the riddle. Meanwhile it's a gravitating spot for crooks, and so has its uses—for us."

* * * * *

The room was sufficiently large, but it was low ceiled and suggested the basement of an old-fashioned house. It was badly lit, too. Only an oil-lamp, on a table set with a cold supper for two, sought to discover the obscure limits of its tunnel-like length.

There was no suggestion of poverty about the place. It was modest. That was all. Its chief characteristic lay in the fact that it was obviously the full extent of the present home of its occupants. At the far end stood a bedstead, and by its side a large wicker hamper. The centre was occupied by the supper table, and, at the other end, under the window, which was carefully covered by heavy curtains, stood a child's cot.

For the rest there were the usual furnishings of a cheap apartment house, where the proprietors only cater for the class of custom which lives in a state of frequent and rapid migration.

A woman was sitting in front of a small anthracite stove. A book was in her lap. But she was not reading. Her deep violet eyes were widely gazing down into the fire glow through the mica front, in that dreaming fashion which so soon becomes the habit of those condemned to prolonged hours of solitude.

It was by no means the face of a completely happy and contented woman. It was a tired face with the weariness which is of the mind rather than of the body. There were a few tracings of lines about the eyes and the pretty forehead which were out of place in a woman of her age. Only anxiety could have set them there. Suspense, an unspoken dread of something which never ceased to threaten. Now, in an unguarded moment, when all disguise was permitted to fall from her, they were pronounced, painfully pronounced.

Her thought was plainly regretful. It was also obviously troubled. Occasionally she would start and listen as some sound outside penetrated the profound stillness of the room. It was at these moments that her glance would turn swiftly, and with some display of anxiety, to the child's cot where she knew her baby lay sleeping. Once she sprang nervously to her feet and passed over to the cot. She stood bending over the child gazing yearningly, hungrily down at the innocent, beautiful three-year-old life dreaming its hours away without understanding of that which surrounded it, or that which haunted the mind of its mother.

Then the stove and the wicker chair claimed her again, as did the suspense of waiting, with its burden of apprehension.

At last relief leapt to the troubled eyes, and, in a moment it seemed, every line which had been so deeply indicative before was suddenly smoothed out of her pretty face. The woman sprang from her chair transformed with an expression of deep relief and content. She glanced swiftly over the supper table as a key turned in the latch of the door.

A man with a brown beard thrust his way in and glanced swiftly over the whole length of the room. It was the searching look of a mind concerned, deeply concerned, with safety. Then his dark eyes came to the woman's face which was turned upon him questioningly.

"Well?" she demanded.

The monosyllable was full of deep significance. It asked a hundred questions.

Just for a moment no answer was forthcoming. The man turned from the woman, and his eyes sought the child's cot. There was no softness in his regard. It was deeply contemplative. That was all. It was the woman who displayed feeling as she followed his gaze, and the lighting of her beautiful eyes was with swift apprehension.

"Something's the matter, Hervey!" she demanded sharply.

The lamplight caught the man's eyes as they came back to her face, and its rays left them shining with a curious, lurid reflection.

"Matter?" A sharp, impotent oath broke from him. Then he checked his impulse to rave. "Yes. See here, Nita," he went on, with a restraint which added deep impressiveness, "we've got to quit. We've got to get out—quick. Steve's hard on our trail. I've seen him to-day at Mallard's. He didn't see me. Only my back. But I saw him. He came with Saney. And there's only one thing I guess to bring Steve to Mallard's. Saney's never given me a moment's nightmare. But Steve—Steve back from Unaga, Steve in plain clothes in Quebec with Saney, and me sheltering at Mallard's, tells its own story to anyone with savee. It means he's got a hot scent, and he's following it right up. He's not the sort to let go of it—easy. It's quit for us—and quit right away."

Nita sighed. She passed a shaking hand across her forehead, and when it had passed all the tracery of lines had returned and stood out even more sharply.

"It's come—at last," she said, in a weary, hopeless tone. "It was bound to. I knew it right along. I told you."

"Oh, yes, you told me," Garstaing retorted, with a sneer that was always ready when anger supervened. "Guess you told me a whole heap of fool stuff one time and another. But you needn't reckon we're going to sit around under things, just because Mister Steve seems to put the fear of God into you. It's hastened the things I've had in my mind quite awhile. That's all. We're going to beat it. We're quitting for up north. It was my notion from the start. Only I weakened with your squeal about the country. Well, your squeals are no account now. We got to save our skins. I'm going to beat Mister Steve, and show you he's just the same as most other folks who've got a grip on the game. We're making north where, if he gets a notion to follow, he'll need to play the lone hand. And Steve on a lone hand can't scare me five cents. Up there I'll meet him. We won't need to live a gopher's life in a cellar. And when he comes along, if he's the guts you reckon he has, I'll meet him, and kill him as sure as Hell's waiting for him." The man's hot eyes were suddenly turned on the distant child's cot, and he nodded at it. "It's that makes me sick," he cried vehemently. "It's his!"

"She's mine!" Nita cried sharply. "And where I go she goes."

Nita read the man's mood with all the instinct of a mother. Three years ago when she brought Coqueline into the world the infant claim upon her had been loose enough. It was different now. Her woman's weakness and discontent had yielded her a ready victim to the showy promises and good looks of Hervey Garstaing. But the road they had had to travel since had been by no means easy. It had been full of disillusionment for the silly woman. They had lived in fear of the law, in fear of Steve, for over two years. And the grind of it, for the pleasure-loving wife who had buoyed herself with dreams of gaiety and delight which her life in the North had denied her, had driven her back upon the elemental that was only latent in her. Coqueline was her all now. Nita clung to her baby as the one indestructible link with that purity of life which no woman, however fallen, can ever wholly disregard, or forget. The child was a sheet-anchor for all time. Whatever the future had in store, little Coqueline was her child, born in wedlock, the pledge of her maiden dreams.

"Tchah! She's his!" The man's restraint was giving before the brutal, the criminal, that was the essence of him. "Why in hell should I feed his brat? Why should I be burdened with it? Can't you see? We've got to drag her wherever we go, delaying us, an unhallowed worry, and a darn danger at all times. Cut it out. Pass her along to some blamed orphan outfit. Leave her to the mule-headed folks who guess their mission in life is to round up other folks' 'strays.' Steve's not a thing to you now, Nita, and never will be again. You can't ever go back to him. He'd kick you out without mercy, if I know Steve. He's hard—hard as hell. You're mine, my dear, mine for keeps. Steve don't want any woman who's shared her bed with another feller. You know that well enough. Well, say, be reasonable. Let the kid go. You don't need her. You and me together, we can play the game out. I can make good up there. And all I make you've a half share stake in. It's up to you, kid. Just say the word, and I'll fix things so that brat can get to an institution. Will you——?"

"It's no use, Hervey." Nita shook her head decidedly. But his coarseness, his brutality had had its effect. The violet of her eyes remained hidden lest it should reveal the terror that lay in her heart. "We've argued all this before. I'll go where you like, when you like, but—my baby girl goes with me."

The decision was irrevocable and the man understood the obstinacy which was so great a part of Nita's character. So he added no further pressure at the moment. Only his dark eyes regarded her while his thought travelled swiftly. At last, as he made no reply, Nita raised her eyes to his face. Her gaze encountered his, and she turned abruptly from the lurid reflection of the lamplight she beheld in his eyes, to the refuge of the child's cot, which never failed her.

Garstaing laughed. It was a coarse, hard laugh that meant nothing. He threw his hat aside.

"Let's eat," he cried. "Then we'll start right in to pack up our outfit. We're taking no chances. We got to be on the road north by noon to-morrow. We'll take the kid. Oh, yes, we'll take his precious kid," he laughed. "But God help you if things happen through it. You know what this thing means? If Steve and I come up with each other there's going to be a killing. And murder's a big thing beside pouching the Treaty Money of a bunch of darn neches."



CHAPTER XV

THE SET COURSE

Delight and excitement were running high. It was a game. In Marcel's child-mind there was nothing better in the world. And it was An-ina's invention. It was the gopher hunt.

They often played it in the cool summer evenings. The gophers destroyed the crops of men, therefore men must destroy the gophers. It was the simple logic that satisfied the child-hunter's mind. Besides, it was his own game which An-ina had taught him, and no one else played it in the same way. Every dead gopher An-ina told him meant more food for the pappoose on the Reserve. And it was the child's desire that the pappoose on the Reserve should eat to repletion.

The game entailed the lighting of a fire. That in itself demanded a hundred excited instructions to the faithful An-ina, who contrived the fire unfailingly, in her quick Indian way, in spite of them. Then there was the collection of dried grass which demanded a search and laborious consideration as to its suitability. Then came the stuffing of it into a score and more of the principal holes in the selected gopher warren. During this operation strict silence had to be observed. Then the crowning moment. Erect, alert, in his woolen jersey and the briefest of knickers, the child took his stand in the centre, where, with youthful optimism, he sought to take within his purview the numberless exits for the panic-stricken quarry. With stick raised, and every nerve quivering with excitement, he was there to do battle with the destructive foe.

So he waited whilst An-ina advanced with her fire brand. With rapid breathing and shining eyes the hunter watched as each plugging of dried grass was fired. The smoke, rising in a circle about him, left him a picture like some child martyr being burned at the stake.

Her work completed An-ina stood looking on, her beautiful dusky face wreathed in a smiling delight which the sight of the boy's happiness never failed to inspire.

A wild shriek. A flourishing and slashing of the stick. A scuttle of racing moccasined feet. The quarry had broken cover and the chase had begun!

A dozen gophers with bristling tails bounded clear of the smoke ring. They scattered in every direction. The boy was in pursuit. Shrieking, laughing, slashing, headlong he ran, nimble as the gophers themselves.

It was wide open grassland, and An-ina contented herself with watching from the distance. It was the boy's game. His was the chase. Hers was the simple happiness of witnessing his enjoyment.

"Gee!"

An-ina started at the sound of the exclamation behind her. She turned, and her movement had something of the swiftness of some wild animal. But it was not a defensive movement. There was no apprehension in it. She knew the voice. It was the voice she had been yearning to hear again for something over two years.

"Boss Steve!" she cried, and there was that in her wide, soft eyes which her aboriginal mind made no effort to conceal.

Steve was standing some yards away, with his horse's reins linked over his arm. As the woman approached he moved forward to meet her. But his eyes were on the boy, still in vain pursuit of the escaped gophers, pausing, stalking, completely and utterly absorbed.

The woman realized the white man's pre-occupation. She was even glad of it. So, in her simple way, she explained.

"This—his game," she said. "He mak' great hunter," she added with simple pride. "An-ina tell him gophers bad—much. So he say Marcel hunt 'em. Him kill 'em. Him say Uncle Steve say all things bad must be kill."

"He still thinks of—Uncle Steve?"

The enquiry came with a smile. But the man had withdrawn his gaze from the distant child, and was earnestly searching the woman's smiling face.

"Marcel think Uncle Steve all man," she said quickly. "Uncle Mac, oh, yes. Auntie Millie, oh, very good. An-ina. Yes. An-ina help in all things. Uncle Steve? Uncle Steve come bimeby, then all things no matter."

"Is that so? Does he feel that way? After two years?"

"Marcel think all things for Uncle Steve—always. An-ina tell him Uncle Steve come bimeby. Sure come. She tell him all time. So Marcel think. He not forget. No. He speak with the good spirit each night: 'God bless Uncle Steve, an' send him back to boy.'"

The man's smile thanked her. And a deep tenderness looked out of his steady eyes as they were turned again in the direction of the distant, running figure.

"You come back—yes?"

The woman's voice was low. It was thrilling with a hope and emotion which her words failed to express.

"Yes. I'm back for keeps." Steve's gaze came back to the soft eyes of the woman. "That is, I'm going back to Unaga—with the boy. Will An-ina come, too?"

"Boss Steve go back—Unaga?"

A startled light had replaced the softness of the Woman's eyes. Then, after a moment, as no reply was forthcoming, she went on.

"Oh, yes. An-ina know." She glanced away in the direction where the police post stood, and a woman's understanding was in the sympathy shining in her eyes. "White man officer no more. Oh, yes. No little baby girl. No. No nothing. Only Marcel, an'—maybe An-ina. So. Oh, yes. Unaga. When we go?"

There was no hesitation, no doubt in the woman's mind. And the utter and complete self-abnegation of it all was overwhelming to the man.

"You—you're a good soul, An-ina," he said, in the clumsy fashion of a man unused to giving expression to his deeper feelings. "God made you a squaw. He handed you a colour that sets you a race apart from white folk, but he gave you a heart so big and white that an angel might envy. Yes, I want you An-ina. So does Marcel. We both want you bad. Unaga—it's a hell of a country, but you come along right up there with us, and I'll fix things so you'll be as happy as that darn country'll let you be. Julyman and Oolak are going along with us. They've quit the police, same as I have. I can't do without them, same as we can't do without An-ina. We're going there for the boy. Not for ourselves. It's the weed. We got to do all that Marcel's father reckoned to do. And when we've done it Marcel will be rich and great. Same as you would have him be. There's 'no nothing' for me anywhere now but with Marcel. You understand? You'll help?"

All the softness had returned to the woman's eyes, untaught to hide those inner feelings of her elemental soul.

"An-ina help? Oh, yes." Then she added with a smile of patient content: "An-ina always help. She love boy, too. You fix all things. You say 'go.' An-ina go. So we come by Unaga. It storm. Oh, yes. It snow. It freeze. It no matter. Nothing not matter. Auntie Millie mak' boy and An-ina speak with the Great Spirit each night. An' He bless you all time. Him mak' you safe all time. An-ina know—sure."

The frank simplicity of it all left the white man searching for words to express his gratitude. But complete and utter helplessness supervened.

"Thanks, An-ina," he articulated. And he dared not trust himself to more.

Diversion came at a moment when he was never more thankful for it. The shrill treble of the boy reached them across the stretch of tawny, summer grass.

"Uncle Stee-e-ve! Uncle St-ee-ee-ve!"

Little Marcel was unstinting in all things. His call was not simply preliminary. His enthusiasm for the hunt was incomparable with his new enthusiasm. His call of recognition came as he ran towards the object of his hero-worship, and he ran with all his might.

It was a breathless child that was lifted into Steve's arms and hugged with an embrace the sight of which added to the squaw's smile of happiness. The boy's arms were flung about the man's neck with complete and utter abandonment. An-ina looked on, and no cloud of jealousy shadowed her joy. She had done all in her power that the white man should not be forgotten in his absence. The great white man, who was her king of men. And she had her reward.

The first wild moments of greeting over, the boy's chatter flowed forth in a breathless torrent. And all the while the man was observing those things that mattered most to his maturer mind.

Marcel had grown astoundingly in the prolonged interval. The promise of the sturdy body Steve had so often watched trundling across the snows of Unaga in its bundle of furs had developed out of all knowledge under the ample hospitality of Millie Ross's home. Tall, straight, muscular it had shot up many inches. The boy was probably seven years of age. Steve did not know for sure. Nor did it signify greatly. The things that mattered were the ruddy, sunburnt cheeks of perfect health, the big, intelligent blue eyes, the shapely mouth, and the sunny, wavy hair, all containing the promise of a fine manhood to come. Then the firm, stout limbs, and the powerful ribs. That which was in the handsome boyish face was in the body, too. God willing, the man knew that the coming manhood would be amply worth.

Slackening excitement brought the boy back to the thing which held his vital interest, and he told of the great game he and An-ina were engaged upon. He told of his failures and successes with impartial enthusiasm. And finally invited his "Uncle" to join in the game.

"No, old fellow," he said. "I've got to get right along down to the house to see Uncle Mac and Auntie Millie. You see, I've only just got along from Reindeer. Guess I've been chasing a gopher for two years and more. But like you I just didn't get him. Some day——"

"You been hunting gophers, Uncle Steve?" The childish interest leapt afresh.

The man nodded, and his smiling eyes encountered those of the squaw. He read the understanding he beheld there, and turned quickly to the child again.

"Sure," he said drily. "But I didn't get him."

"No." The boy turned regretful eyes towards the open, where he, too, had just failed to bag his quarry. "You kill 'em when you get 'em, Uncle. We do, don't we, An-ina?" he added, appealing for corroboration.

"We always kills 'em, Uncle Steve," he went on, "'cos gophers are very bad."

"Yes. Gophers are bad, old fellow. Always kill them. That's how I'd have done if I'd got the one I was after. But I didn't get him. He ran too fast for me. Maybe I'll find him another time. You never know. Do you? Boy and Uncle and An-ina are going a great long way soon. We'll find better than gophers to hunt, eh?"

"Yes—wolves! Where we go?"

"We go back to the Sleepers—and the old fort."

Steve searched the child's face anxiously as he made the announcement. He was half afraid of a lingering memory that might jeopardize his plans, or, at least make their fulfilment more difficult. But he need have had no fear. The child remembered, but only with delight. And again the man recognized the guiding hand of the squaw.

"Oo-o, Uncle! Soon? We go soon?" Marcel cried, his eyes shining. "The forests where the wolves are. And the Sleepers. And the snow comes down, and we dig ourselves out. And the dogs, and sleds, and—we go soon—very soon! Can't we go now? Oo-o!"

"Not now, but—soon."

Steve's satisfaction was in the glance of thanks which he flashed into An-ina's watching eyes.

"But now I must really go along to the house, old fellow," he said, with a sigh. "Guess boy'll come, too, or maybe he'll go on with his game?"

The question was superfluous. Gopher hunting was a glorious sport, but walking hand in hand with Uncle Steve back to the house, even though bed and a bath were awaiting him, was a delight Marcel had no idea of renouncing.

* * * * *

The plump figure of Millie Ross half filled the doorway, while the sunset sought out the obscure corners of the comfortably furnished hall place behind her.

The doctor's great figure was supported on the table on which he had flung his hat while he welcomed Steve. The latter's arrival had been quite unheralded, completely unexpected. So long was it since his going that husband and wife had almost abandoned the thought that some day they would be called upon to render an account of their stewardship with regard to young Marcel, and hand over the little human "capital" originally entrusted to them. It was not to be wondered at. They loved the boy. They had their two girls, but they had no son. And Marcel—well, Steve was so long overdue, and his absence had been one long, unbroken silence. So, all unconsciously, they had come to think that something had happened, something which had caused him to change his mind, or which had made it physically impossible for him to return. Now, after the first warmth and delight of the meeting had passed, a certain pre-occupation restrained the buoyancy so natural to the warm-hearted pair.

Steve was seated in the chair beside the table, the chair which the doctor was wont to adopt when the mosquitoes outside made the veranda impossible. Perhaps he understood the preoccupation which more particularly looked out of Millie's eyes. He felt the burden of his debt to these people, a debt he could never repay; he understood the feelings which his return must inspire if the child, left in their care, had become to them a tithe of that which he had become to him. He knew it was his purpose to tear the child out of their lives. And the wrench would be no less for the thought that he purposed carrying him off to those regions of desolation which had already come very near to costing the child's helpless little life.

So his steady eyes were watchful of the woman's attitude, and he looked for the sign of those feelings which he knew his return must have set stirring. He knew that, whatever the big Scotsman felt and thought, the woman was the real factor with which he must reckon.

With this understanding he frankly laid bare much which he otherwise would have kept deep hidden. He told these two, who listened in deep sympathy, the story of his pursuit of the man who had wronged him, from the beginning to the end. And, in the telling, so shorn of all unnecessary colouring, the simple deliberateness of his purpose, contemplated in the coldly passionate desire of an implacable nature, the story gained a tremendous force, the more so that his pursuit had ended in failure.

He told them how for nearly a year, after winding up the affairs of his dead father, which had left him with even a better fortune than he had expected, he had systematically devoted himself to spreading a wide net of enquiries. In this process he had to travel some thousands of miles, and had to write many hundreds of letters, and had spent countless hours in the official bureau of local police.

He told them how finally he had discovered the trail he, sought in a remote haunt in the poorer quarters of Winnipeg. This, after many tortuous wanderings and blind alley searchings, had finally led him to the waterside of Quebec, and the purlieus of Mallard's, where, under the guidance of the celebrated Maurice Saney, he ran up against the blank wall of that redoubtable harbour of crime.

"All this," he said, without emotion, "took me over two years. And I guess it wasn't till I hit up against Mallard's that I sat down and took a big think. You see," he went on simply, "I wanted to kill that feller. I wanted to kill that feller, and take my poor girl back and get back my little, little baby. I had a notion I might have to hang for the job, but, anyway, I'd have saved her from a life—well, I'd have saved them both, and been able to fix them so they didn't need a thing in life. What happened to me didn't seem to worry any. But when I hit up against Mallard's, and I'd listened some to Saney I started in to figure. To get that far had taken me over two years, and big money. There might be still years of it ahead of me. And when I'd done, was I sure I'd get Nita and the kiddie back? And if I did, how would I be able to fix them after all the expense? Then there was Marcel. Maybe it was something else urging me to quit. Something I wasn't just aware of. I don't know. I've heard say that a feller who yearns to kill, either kills quick or goes crazy. There wasn't a thing foolish about me. I hadn't any of the foolishness of a crazy man. Which is a way of saying the yearning to kill hadn't the grip on me it had. It was a big fight, but sense—or something else—won out. I quit for those other things I'd got in my head. Guess I heard that little feller's 'Hullo!' ringing in my ears. Same as I heard it up in Unaga. So I cut out the other, and got busy right away fixing things for the big play I mean to put up for the kiddie that Providence has left to me. There are times when my whole body kicks at the thought of that skunk getting away with his play. But there's others when I'm glad—real glad—I quit. I can't judge the thing right. I'm sort of torn in different directions. Anyway, there it is. Maybe the thing I haven't been allowed to do will be done sometime by the Providence that reckons to straighten out most things as it sees fit. I hope the way it sees is my way. That's all. Now I'm ready for the big play. My outfit has gone up by water on Hudson's Bay, a special charter. It's to be landed and cached on the shores of Chesterfield Inlet. I've sunk every cent of my inheritance in it. It's an outfit that'll give Marcel and me a life stake in the work lying ahead. And all that comes out of it is for him. With all this fixed I got back right away."

"But not—in a 'hurry.'"

There was a half smile in the Scotsman's eyes.

"The only 'hurry' I'm in is to get all the season we need," Steve replied simply.

"That means you want Marcel—right away."

Millie spoke without turning from her contemplation of the view beyond the doorway. And there was that in her voice which told Steve of the inroads Marcel had made upon her mother's heart.

"I've thought of all this a whole heap," he said gently. "It's one of the things that clinched my idea of quitting. Later I don't guess I'd have had the nerve to—ask for Marcel."

Millie turned abruptly. And the husband was watching her as urgently as Steve himself.

"That's not fair, Steve," she declared, without attempting to soften the challenge.

"But, Millie—"

The husband's protest was cut short.

"Don't worry, Mac," Millie cried. "I know just the feelings that prompted Steve to think that way. But it's not fair. It's making out that I'd like to go back on my word, and refuse to give Marcel up to the moloch of Unaga. That's the part that isn't fair. Steve, if you'd come to me in twenty years my word would have gone every time. That boy might be my own son, I never had a son, and maybe you can guess just what that means to me when I say it. But there's bigger things in the world than my feelings, and I'm full wise to them. That boy loves you the same as if you were his father. I've helped to see to that. I and An-ina. You've been through hell for him. You've been through a hell of your own besides. Now you're ready to give your all for him—including your life. Do you know what I feel in my fool woman's way? I'll try and tell you," she went on, forcing back the threatening tears. "There's men in the world made to give their everything for those they love. You're one of them. To rob you of an object for you to work and sacrifice yourself for would be to rob you of the greatest thing in your life. It would be an unforgivable crime, and though it broke my heart I would refuse to commit that crime. Marcel is ready for you the moment you ask for him. Oh, yes, it's just as I said. His outfit is ready. We've enlarged it as he's grown. An-ina has done her share. There's two of everything, as I said there would be—and a good deal over. But," she added, with a little pitiful break in her voice that showed how near were her tears, "I wish, oh, how I wish, it was not Unaga, and that, some day, I might hope to see his smiling, happy face again. You'll be good to him, Steve, won't you? Raise him, train him, teach him. Don't let him become a wild man. I want to think of him, to always remember him as he is now, and to think that when he grows to manhood at least he's as good a man as you."



PART II



CHAPTER I

AFTER FOURTEEN YEARS

It was boasted of Seal Bay that its inhabitants produced more wealth per head than any other community in the Northern world, not even excluding the gold cities of Alaska and the Yukon. It was a considerable boast, but with more than usual justice. A cynic once declared that it was the only distinction of merit the place could fairly claim.

The boast of Seal Bay was sufficiently alluring to those who had not yet set foot on its pestilential shores. For once, by some extraordinary chance, truth had been spoken in Seal Bay. No one need starve upon its deplorable streets, if sufficiently clever and unscrupulous.

A photographic plate would have yielded a choice scene of desolation, if sun enough could have been found to achieve the necessary record. The long, low foreshore of Seal Bay was dotted with a large number of mud huts, thatched with reeds from adjacent marshes, and a fair sprinkling of frame houses of varying shapes and sizes. There were no streets in the modern sense, only stretches of mire which were more or less bottomless for about seven months in the year, and lost in the grip of an Arctic winter for the rest of the time. Foot traffic was only made possible in the softer portion of the year by means of disjointed sections of wooden sidewalks laid down by those who preferred the expense and labour to the necessary discomfort of frequent bathing.

There was no doubt that Seal Bay as a trading port owed its existence to two spits of mud and sand on either side of a completely inhospitable foreshore. They stretched out, forming the two horns of a horseshoe, like puny arms seeking to embrace the wide waters of Hudson's Bay.

Within their embrace was a more or less safe anchorage for light draft craft. There was a pier. At least it was called a pier by the more reckless. It was propped and bolstered in every conceivable way to keep it from sinking out of sight in its muddy bed, and became a source of political discord on the subject of its outrageous cost of maintenance.

As for the setting which Seal Bay claimed it was no more happy than the rest. There was no background until the far-off distance was reached, and then it was only a serrated line of low and apparently barren hills. Everything else was a wide expanse of deplorable morass and reed-grown tundra, through which ran a few safe tracks, which, except in winter, were a deadly nightmare to all travellers.

The handiwork of man is not usually wholly without merit, but Seal Bay would have sent the most hardened real estate agent seeking shelter in a sanatorium as a result of overwork. Still, traffic was possible. Seal Bay was an ideal spot for robbing Indian and half-breed fur traders who knew no better, and the plunder could be more or less safely dispatched to the markets of the world outside. Oh, yes, there was easy money and plenty. So what else mattered?

These were the opinions of those who really counted, such men as Lorson Harris, head of the Seal Bay Trading Corporation, and Alroy Leclerc, who kept a mud shelter of extensive dimensions for the sale of drink and food and gambling. There were others, those who came over the great white trail from the north, who possessed very definite opinions of their own, but were wise enough to refrain from ventilating them within the city limits.

A man who hugged to himself very strong views had just entered the city. He always came when Seal Bay was quite at its best. It may have been simple chance. Anyway, it was one of the coldest days of winter, with a sharp north wind blowing, and the thermometer hard down to zero. Seal Bay's sins lay concealed under a thick garment of snow, while its surrounding terrors were rendered innocuous by the iron grip of frost.

Seal Bay was astir. It always was astir when this man paid his annual visit. He excited a curiosity that never flagged. His coming was looked for. His going was watched. His coming and going were two of the most baffling riddles confronting the sophisticated minds of a people whose pursuits had no relation to purity or honesty.

The man came with three great dog-trains. Sometimes he came with four, and even five. His sleds were heavy laden, packed to the limits of the capacity of his dogs. They, in turn, were more powerful and better conditioned than any Indian train that visited the place, and each was a full train of five savage creatures more than half wolf.

He drove straight through the main thoroughfare of the town. The onlookers were fully aware of his destination. It was the great store-house over which Lorson Harris presided. And this knowledge set much ill-feeling and resentment stirring. It was always the same. The sturdy, hard-faced man from the north ignored Seal Bay as a community, and only recognized a fellow creature in the great man who wove the net which the Seal Bay Trading Corporation spread over the Northern world.

Something of the position found illumination in the dialogue which passed between two men lounging in Alroy's doorway as the great train passed them by.

"Gee! Makes you wonder if us folks has the plague," laughed Kid Restless, the most successful gambler that haunted Alroy's dive. "He don't see a thing but Lorson's. He'd hate to pass a 'how-dy' to a cur. But his trade ain't as big as last year. Guess Lorson'll halve his smile. He's been coming along fourteen year, ain't it?"

Dupont nodded, his contemplative gaze following the procession of sleds under the skilful driving of their attendants.

"Yep." Dupont was a lesser trader who lived in a state of furious discontent at the monopoly of the greater store. "The Brand outfit's been trading here fourteen years—and more."

"How's that?"

"Oh, ther's a heap queer about that outfit," said the envious whiskered man, whose dark, sallow features suggested plainly enough his Jewish origin. "Maybe it's that makes that feller act same as if we had the—plague. He calls himself Brand, but he ain't the Brand who traded here more than twenty years ago. Guess you wasn't around then. Guess I wasn't, neither. I'd be crazy by now if I had been. But the story's right enough. Brand—Marcel Brand—and his pardner traded here with Lorson more than twenty years back. He came from God knows where, an' he just went right back to the same place. Then him an' his pardner got done up. The darn Eskimos, or neches, or ha'f-breeds, shot 'em both up to small chunks. Lorson was nigh crazy for the trade he lost, for all Brand was a free-trader like Lorson hates best. Then, three years or so later, along comes this guy with the name of 'Marcel Brand,' and carried on the trade. And he's a white man same as the other. It was then Lorson took to smiling plenty again."

"You figger he's the feller that?——"

"I don't know. I 'low' got notions though."

Kid Restless was interested. There was little enough to interest him in Seal Bay beyond the life of piracy he carried on at the card tables.

"It's some queer sort o' trade, ain't it?" he asked.

"Queer?" Dupont spat. "Oh, he trades pelts, some o' the best seals ever reach this darnation swamp. But the trade that makes Lorson smile is queer. I've seen bales of it shipped out of this harbour, an' it looks like dried seaweed, an' smells like some serrupy flower you'd hate to have around. Lorson just loves it to death, and I guess it needs to be a good trade that sets him lovin'. But he keeps his face closed. Same as the feller that calls himself Brand. Oh, yes, Lorson's the kind of oyster you couldn't hammer open with a haf ton maul."

"Why don't they trail him—this guy?" demanded Kid sharply.

"Trail? Why, the sharps are after him all the time. But he skins 'em to death. Lorson's at the game, too. Oh, yes. Guess Lorson 'ud jump the claim if he could get wise. But he ain't wise. No one is. But they'll get that way one time, and then that mule-faced guy, who guesses we'll hand him plague, will forget to get around in snow time. You can't beat the Seal Bay 'sharps' all the time, though I allow he's beat 'em plumb to death fourteen years."

"I'd guess it'll need grit to beat him," returned the Kid. "That is," he added thoughtfully, "if you can judge the face of a—mule."

"Oh, he's got grit—in plenty. Even Lorson gets his hat off to him when he's around."

Dupont laughed maliciously.

"You mean——?"

"I was remembering Lorson's play," the trader went on. "He had his 'toughs' that time. Brand had pulled out two weeks and more. Then one day a bunch of Northern neches pulled in. They'd beat down the coast in a big-water canoe. The folks didn't notice them. It's the sort of thing frequent happens. But Lorson got the scare of his life. He woke up next morning with his pet 'tough'—a big breed—lying across his home doorstep. He guessed he was dead. But he wasn't. He woke up about midday and started guessing where he was. Later on he handed out a fancy yarn what the neches had done to him. An', happening to dove a hand into a pocket, he hauled out a letter addressed to Lorson himself. It just said four words, an' Lorson spoke them. I don't guess they'd mean a thing to the likes of him. They just said, 'Play the darn game.' And under them was wrote 'Brand.'"

Kid grinned back into the other's eyes which were alight with malicious delight.

"That's the med'cine to hand a feller that can understand white—not Lorson," the gambler said. "I like that guy that calls himself 'Brand.'"

"Guess he's some boy all right. But—I was thinkin' of that breed. He was doped."

The other nodded.

"You're guessing about that—queer trade," he said.

Dupont gazed out in the direction whence the dog train had disappeared behind the group of great frame buildings which represented the establishment of the Seal Bay Trading Corporation.

"Yep," he said thoughtfully.

* * * * *

Lorson Harris was a type common enough in outland places, where money is easy and conscience does not exist. He was vulgar, he was brutal, he was a sensualist in his desire for all that wealth could buy him. He was not a man of education. Far from it. He was a clever, unscrupulous schemer, a product of conditions—rough conditions.

He was a large, coarse man who had permitted his passions to gain the upper hand in the control of his life, but they by no means interfered with his capacity as the head of the Seal Bay Trading Corporation.

He overflowed a big armchair before his desk in the office of his great store, and beamed a hard-breathing good-nature upon all those who seemed likely to be useful in his multitudinous schemes. Just now the victim of his smile was a man at the zenith of middle life. He was of medium height, but of herculean muscle, and the fact was patent enough even under the dense bulk of fur-lined buckskin clothing he was wearing.

There was no more sympathy in the two men's appearance than there was in their condition of mind. While a passionate desire for the flesh-pots enjoyed by other magnates of commerce, whose good fortune had provided them with a happier hunting-ground than Seal Bay, was the primal motive power of the trader, the man who had just come off the great white trail was driven by a desire no less strong, but only selfish in that the final achievement should be entirely his.

Just now the fur cap was removed from the visitor's head, and a tingeing of grey was apparent in the shock of brown hair he had bared. A few sharp lines scored his forehead and played about his clean-shaven mouth, but the steady, serious eyes, with their strongly marked, even brows were quite devoid of all sign of passing years. They accentuated the impression of tremendous vigour and capacity his personality conveyed.

The smiling eyes of Lorson read all these things. It was his business to read his visitors. He pushed the cigar box across the desk invitingly.

"They're some cigars, boy," he said complacently. "Try one."

The other shook his head.

"Don't use 'em, thanks. Maybe I'll try my pipe."

"Sure. Do. A horn of whisky—imported Scotch?"

The same definite shake of the head followed, but before the visitor could pass a verbal negative the trader laughed.

"Nothing doing?" he said amiably. "Well, maybe you're right. You boys need fit stomachs. Drink's a darn fool play, but—Here's 'how,'" he added, as he gulped down the dash of spirit he had poured out for himself. He smacked his heavy, appreciative lips, and fondly contemplated the label on the bottle. But he was not really reading it.

"Your trade in the dope's growing," he said, his fat fingers fondling the glass bottle neck as though he were loth to release it. "Nearly fifty thousand dollars. That's your credit for a year's trade. It's the biggest in—fourteen years. And it don't begin to touch the demand I got for the darn stuff. I could sell you a hundred thousand dollars' worth, and still ask for more at the same price. You don't get what that means to me," he went on, with a laugh intended to be disarming. "You ain't running a great store that's crazy to hand out dividends. Here's a market gasping. Prices are sky high, an' we can't 'touch.' I tell you it wouldn't lower the price a haf cent if you quadrupled your output. I want to weep. I sure do."

The man in buckskin was filling his pipe from a bag of Indian manufacture.

"Sure," he nodded. "I get that." Then he added very deliberately. "That's why you send your boys out scouting my trail."

Lorson laughed immoderately to hide the effect of the quietly spoken challenge.

"That's business, boy. I buy your stuff—all you can hand me. But if I can jump into your market, why—it's up to me."

"It certainly is up to you." The man lit his pipe and pressed down the tobacco with one of his powerful fingers. "It's up to you more than you know. I once sent back one of your boys. I shan't worry to send back any more. Best save their skins whole, Harris. You'll never jump my market till you can find a feller who can hit a trail such as you never dreamed of. And it's a trail they got to locate first."

The trader leant back in his chair and linked his fat fingers across his wide stomach. His eyes were twinkling as he regarded the visitor from the North. The smile was still in them, but there was a keen speculation in them, too.

"You can't blame me, boy," he said, with perfect amiability. "Hand me all the stuff I'm asking, and your market's as sacred as a woman's virtue. But you don't hand it me, or maybe you can't. Well, it's up to me to supply my needs any way I know. There's nothing crooked in that. If you're reckoning to squeeze my market you can't kick if I try to open it wide. You see, Brand, this stuff grows. I guess it grows in plenty, because you admit you trade it, and I know the Northern neche well enough to guess he only trades sufficient for his needs. See? Well, I've the same right you have to get on to that source. If you know it, hand me what I'm asking for. If you don't, then you can't stop me trying to locate it for myself. If all business propositions were as straight as that there'd be no kick coming to anyone. As it is, the man who's got a kick is me—not you."

"I get all that," the visitor said, without relaxing his attention. "There's no kick on the moral side of this thing. I never said there was. I said save your boys' skins whole. That's all. If you fancy jumping my claim, jump it, but I guess I don't need to tell you what to expect. You sit around here and order other folks to the job. It's they who're going to suffer. Not you."

"I pay them. They take it on with their darn eyes open," snapped the trader, his amiability slipping from him in a moment.

The other gathered a half smile at the display. He blew a great cloud of smoke, and removed his pipe.

"I'd best tell you something I haven't seen necessary to tell you before," he said. "And it's because I'm not yearning for any feller to get hurt in this thing. And, further, I'm telling you because you'll see the horse sense in cutting out sharp business for real business. There's a big source of this stuff. Oh, yes. I know that. I've been chasing it for fourteen years, and—I haven't found it. When I do—if I do, I'll hand you all you need, and save that weep you threatened. Meanwhile you're sinking dollars in a play that maybe fits your notion of business, but is going to snuff out uselessly the lights of some of your boys, who I agree 'ud be better off the earth. Here's where the horse sense comes in. I know all about this stuff, all there is to know. I know the folks, all of them, who can supply me. They wouldn't trade with your folks. They wouldn't trade with a soul but me. This is simple fact, and no sort of bluff. But the whole point is that I—I wish an outfit ready to face anything the North can hand me, with the confidence of the folks who know the source, have been chasing for it fourteen years and failed, while you, with a bunch of toughs who couldn't live five minutes on one of my winter trails, are guessing to do something that for fourteen years has beaten me. That's the horse sense I want to hand you, and I'm only handing it you so you don't pitchfork any more lives into the trouble that's waiting on them. They won't find it. I'll see to that, and what I don't see to the Northern trail will. If you don't see the sense of this, it's up to you, and anyway, as I'm needing to pull out early, I'll take a draft on the bank for those dollars. I'll be along down again this time next year."

He rose from his chair preparatory to departure, and picked up the warm seal cap he had flung aside.

For a moment the trader sat lost in thought. Then, quite suddenly, he stirred, and reached the check book lying on the desk. He wrote rapidly, and finally tore the draft from its counterfoil and blotted it. Then he looked up, and his smiling amiability was uppermost once more.

"Thanks, Brand," he said. "I'm not sure you aren't right. It's hoss sense anyway. You aren't given to talk most times. I wanted to know how you stood about that stuff. I'm glad you told me. What's more, I guess it's true. Still, what I figger to do in the future don't concern anyone but me. All I can say is I built this enterprise up on a definite hard rule. I never compromise with a rival trading concern, particularly with a free-trading outfit. I trade with 'em, but I'm out to beat 'em all the time."

The other accepted the draft and signed a receipt. Then he thrust his cap over his head and his steady eyes smiled down into the amiable face smiling up at him.

"That's all right, Harris," he said easily. "The feller who don't know wins a pot now and again. But it's the feller who knows wins in the long run. You back the game if you feel that way. You won't hand me a nightmare. Later you'll wake up and get a fresh dream. The game's lost before you start. So long."

* * * * *

Alroy Leclerc beamed on the man who was perhaps the greatest curiosity amongst the many to be found in Seal Bay. His "hotel" had sheltered the trader, who called himself Brand, for three days. A fact sufficiently unusual to stir the saloon-keeper to a high pitch of cordiality. For all his most liberal sources of revenue came from the scallywags of the town, Alroy, with sound instinct, infinitely preferred the custom of the stable men of the Northern world. Brand was more than desirable.

It was early morning. Much too early for Alroy. He felt lonely in the emptiness of the place. A grey daylight, peering in through the window of the office, scarcely lit the remote corners of the room. Brand had breakfasted by lamplight. The saloon-keeper was more than thankful for the comforting warmth of the great wood stove they were standing over.

"Guess it looks like bein' our last real cold snap," Alroy said, by way of making talk with a man who was always difficult. "We'll be running into May in a week. 'Tain't as easy with your folks. We git the warm wind of this darn old bay, with all that means, which," he added with a laugh, "is mostly rain. You'll be runnin' into cold right up to July."

The man from the trail was unrolling a bundle of notes for the settlement of the bill Alroy had presented. He glanced up with a smiling amusement in his eyes.

"Guess that's as may be," he said indifferently. "We get fancy patterns where I come from."

He passed the account and a number of bills to the other, and returned his roll to his pocket.

"And wher' may that be?" enquired the saloon-keeper, with as much indifference as his curiosity would permit.

"Just north," returned the other. "Guess you'll find that right. Twenty-five fifty. I'll take a receipt."

Alroy turned hastily to the table supporting the hotel register, and, producing an ornate fountain pen, forthwith prepared to scratch a receipt, which was rarely enough demanded by his customers amongst the trail men.

"Sure," Brand went on, while the other bent over his unaccustomed work. "We get all sorts. You can't figger anything this time of year, except it'll be a hell of a sight more cussed than when winter's shut down tight. I once knew a red hot chinook that turned the whole darn country into a swamp in April, and never let it freeze up again. I once broke trail at Fort Duggan at the start of May on open water with the skitters running, like midsummer."

Alroy looked up.

"Duggan?" he questioned sharply. "That's the place Lorson opened up last spring. It's right on the edge of a territory they call Unaga, ain't it? The boys were full of it last summer and were guessing what sort of murder lay behind his play."

Brand took the receipt the other handed him and folded it. He thrust it into a pocket inside his fur-lined tunic.

"Why?" he demanded, in the curt fashion that seemed so natural to him.

"Why?" Alroy laughed. "Well, the boys around here guess they know Lorson Harris, and ain't impressed with his virtues. You see, Fort Duggan, they reckon, is a bum sort of location, eaten up by bugs an' a poor sort of neche race. There's an old fort there, ain't there? One o' them places where a hundred an' more years ago the old fur-traders stole, and looted, and murdered the darn neches, and mostly drank themselves to death when they didn't do it by shootin'. That don't figure a heap in the boys' reckonin'. What does, is the feller Lorson sent there. The yarn goes that this feller Nicol—David Nicol—that's his name, I reckon, has been working for the Seal Bay Trading for some years. He seems to be some crook, and Harris found him out. Guess he seems to have cost the Seal Bay outfit a big bunch of money. They were all for sending him down for penitentiary. Then a sort of miracle happened. Lorson begged off. Why? It ain't usually Lorson's way. Next thing happens is Lorson opens up Fort Duggan, and puts the tough in. So the boys are guessin'. There sure is some sort of murder behind it. Lorson don't miss things. His chances are mostly a cinch."

"Yes, he's pretty wise." The thoughtful eyes of the trail man were turned on the sides of the glowing stove so that the saloon-keeper had no chance of observing them. "You can't guess the things behind Lorson's smile," he went on. "But I reckon you can figger there's always something. As far as I can recollect of Fort Duggan—and I haven't been there these years—I'd say he's no mean judge. I always wondered when a big corporation would come along and open it up. There's big trade there in pelts. Still, it's a tough sort of place."

"From what I hear it can't be too tough for the feller Lorson's sent there. There'll be blood and murder amongst the neches there if they don't hand over easy."

Alroy laughed immoderately at the prospect he contemplated, and held out his hand in friendly farewell as his customer prepared to depart.

"Well, so long, Mister," he grinned amiably. "I guess there's things worse in the world than the shelter of this old shanty. Anyway I'd sooner you hit the Northern trail than me. I'll be mighty pleased to see you around come—next year."

"So long."

Alroy's cordiality found very little that was responsive in the other. Perhaps the trail man understood its exact value. Perhaps he was simply indifferent. The saloon-keeper served a purpose, and was amply paid for his service. Anyway he shook hands, and departed without any other response.

Alroy watched him go. There was nothing else to do at this early hour with his entire establishment still abed, and Seal Bay's main thoroughfare still a desert of dirty, rutted snow, some foot or more deep. He stood in his doorway gazing out at the cheerless grey of early morning, watching with interest the handling of the three great dog trains which he had seen come into town with their laden sleds only three days before.

For all the cold and the early morning drear, for all he was of the life of the desolate shores of Seal Bay, for all the comings and goings of the men of the trails, for whom he mostly entertained a more or less profound contempt, for Alroy Leclerc there was still a fascination attached to the mysterious beyond to which these people belonged. Somewhere out there was a great white world whose secrets he could only guess at. The life was a life he did not envy. He knew it by the thousand and one stories of disaster and miraculous escape he had listened to, but that was all. There was more in it, he knew. Much more. It held fascinated the adventurous, untamed spirits of men whose superhuman efforts, yielding them little better than a pittance, still made possible the enormous profits of a parasitic world which battened upon them, and sucked them dry. Oh, yes. Whatever his sympathies he had a pretty wide understanding of the lives of these men. He also knew that he was one of the parasites which battened upon them. But he had no scruples. Nor had he envy. Only a sort of fascination which never failed at the sight of a sled, and a powerful train of well-handled dogs.

It was that which he looked upon now. He watched the two Indians stir the savage creatures from their crouching upon the snow. It was the harsh law of the club administered by skilled but merciless hands. The great, grey beasts, fully half wolf, understood nothing more gentle.

In moments only the whole of the three trains were alert and ready on their feet straining against the rawhide breast draws of their harness. Then the white man shouted the word to "mush." The long hardwood poles of the men broke out the sleds from the frozen grip of snow, and the whole of the lightened outfit dashed off at a rapid, almost headlong gait.

For a few moments Alroy remained at his post gazing after them. Then of a sudden his attention was drawn in an opposite direction.

It was an incoming train. A single sled, heavily laden, but with only a team of three dogs, far inferior to those which had just passed out of the town. They cut into the main thoroughfare out of a side turning and headed at once for the store of the Seal Bay Trading Company.

He looked for the owner. The owner was always his chief interest. He anticipated that a liberal share of the value of the man's cargo would find its way across his counter, and the extent of his profit would depend on the man's identity.

He was destined to receive the surprise of his life. He looked for an Indian, a half-breed, or a white man. Some well-known man of the trail. But it was none of these. Despite the fur-lined tunic almost to the knees, despite the tough, warm nether garments, and the felt leggings, and beaded moccasins, and the well-strung snow-shoes, there remained no doubt in his startled mind. None whatsoever. It was a woman! A girl!

Alroy ran a hand across his astonished eyes. He pushed back his fur cap and stared. The girl was moving down the trail towards him. He had a full view of the face looking out of the fur hood which surrounded it. A white girl, with the heightened colour and brightening eyes of youth and perfect health and strength. She was tall, beautifully tall, and as she swept on past him in her gliding snow-shoes he had a fleeting vision of a strand of fair hair escaped from beneath her fur hood, and a pair of beautiful blue eyes, and pretty, parted lips which left him hugging himself.

The vision had rewarded him for his early rising.



CHAPTER II

THE SPRING OF LIFE

It was a moment when memories were stirring. An-ina searched the distance with eyes untroubled and full of a glad content. Had she not every reason for content? Oh, yes. She knew.

It was the same scene she had gazed upon for many seasons, for many years, and the limit of her vision had become practically the limits of her world. There stretched the white snow-clad valley with the still frozen river winding its way throughout its length to the north and south. There were the far-off hills beyond, white, grey; and purpling as the distance gained. Dark forest patches chequered the prospect. It was the same all ways, north, south, and west.

For all the few changings of aspect with the passing of the seasons there was no weariness in the woman's heart. She was bound up to the exclusion of all else with the human associations which were hers. No prison could hold bondage for her, so long as those associations were not denied her.

Out of the tail of her eyes she glanced at the great figure that was standing near her in the gateway of the fort. It was a figure, the sight of which filled her with a great sense of pride, and joy, and gratitude. In her simple way she understood something of the debt owed her for her years of untiring, watchful care of the small body which had grown to such splendid manhood. But the thought of its discharge never occurred to her uncalculating mind. That which she beheld more than repaid.

Marcel was great for Indian eyes to gaze upon. Tall as was the woman, comely in her maturing years, she was left dwarfed beside the youthful manhood she had watched grow from its earliest days. The young man had the erect, supple, muscular body of a trained athlete and the face of the mother who had long since been laid to rest in the woods of the Sleeper Indians. He had moreover the strength of the father's unspoiled character, and all the purposeful method which the patient upbringing of "Uncle Steve" had been capable of inspiring. He was a simple human product, unspoiled by contamination with the evil which lurks under the veneer of civilization, yet he possessed all the trained mind that both Steve and he had been able to achieve from the wealth of learning which his father's laboratory had been found to contain.

Beyond this, the bubbling springs of youth were in full flood, and the tide ran strong in his rich veins. A passionate enthusiasm was the outlet for this tide. A buoyant, fearless energy, a youthful pride in strenuous achievement. It was with these he faced the bitterness of the cruel Northland which he had grown to look upon like the Indians, who knew no better, as the whole setting of human life and all that was to be desired.

He was a hunter and a man of the trail before all things. His every thought was wrapt up in the immensity of the striving. He had absorbed the teachings of Steve, and added to them his own natural instincts. And in all this he had raised himself to that ideal of manhood which nature had implanted in An-ina's Indian heart. If she had thought of him as she would have thought of him years ago in the teepees of her race, she would have been content that he was a great "brave" and a "mighty hunter." As it was her feelings were restricted to an immense pride that she had been permitted the inestimable privilege of raising a real white child to well-nigh perfect manhood.

Marcel knocked out the pipe he was smoking. It was with something like reluctance he withdrew his gaze from the far distance.

"I've only two days more, An-ina," he said. "The outfit's ready to the last ounce of tea and the filling of the last cartridge. The Sleepers are wide awake, and squatting around waiting for the word to 'mush.' We just daren't lose the snow for the run to our headquarters. I wish Uncle Steve would get around. I just can't quit till he comes."

"No."

The squaw's reply was one of complete agreement. She understood. The long summer trail was claiming the man. The hunter in him was clamouring for the silent forests, where King Moose reigned supreme, the racing mountain streams alive with trout and an untold wealth of salmon, the open stretches of plain where the caribou browsed upon the weedy, tufted Northern grass, the marsh land and lakes, where the beavers spend the open season preparing their winter quarters. Then the traps, and the wealth of fox pelts they would yield, while the eternal dazzle of the much-prized black fox was always before his eyes. But stronger than all was his thought for Steve. No passion, so far, was greater in his life than his regard for this man who had been father, mother, and mentor to him in the years of his helplessness.

An-ina pointed down the course of the winding river where it came out of the southern hills.

"He come that way," she said. Then she smiled. "The same he come always. The same he come long time gone, when Marcel hide by waters and make big shout. Him much scared. Marcel think? Oh, yes."

The man laughed in a happy boyish way.

"I'd like to, but I just can't," he said. Then he added: "You always think of that, An-ina. No," he went on with a shake of the head. "I remember riding Uncle Steve's back. Seems it was for days and days. I sort of remember sitting around and watching him while he looked down at a pair of feet like raw meat, with the flies all trying to settle on them. The sort of way flies have. Then there were his eyes. I've still got the picture of 'em in my mind. They were red—red with blood, it seemed. They were sort of straining, too. And they shone—shone like the blazing coals of a camp-fire."

An-ina nodded, and into her dark eyes came a look of the dread of the days he had recalled.

"That so," she said, in a tone of suppressed emotion. "It was bad—so bad. Him carry Marcel. Oh, yes. Carry all time, like the squaw carry pappoose. So you live,—and An-ina glad."

"Yes." The man bestirred himself abruptly. He stood up from his lounging against the gatepost, and his great height and breadth of muscular shoulders seemed suddenly to have grown. "So I live. And you are glad. That's it. So I live. It's always that way—with you and Uncle Steve. It's for me. All the time for me. Not a thing for yourselves—ever."

The woman's eyes were suddenly filled with startled questioning and solicitude.

"Oh, yes? That so," she said simply. "Why not? You all Uncle Steve got. You all An-ina got. So."

"And aren't you both all—I've got?" The man's smile disarmed the sudden passionate force which had taken possession of his voice and manner. "Can't I act that way, too? Can't I sort of carry you and Uncle Steve on my back? Can't I come along and say, 'Here, you've done all this for me when I couldn't act for myself, now it's my turn? You sit around and look on, and act foolish, like I've done all the time, while I get busy.' Can't I say this, same as you've acted all these years? No. You two great creatures won't let me. And sometimes it makes me mad. And sometimes it makes me want to stretch out these fool arms of mine and hug you for the kindest, bravest, and best in the world."

An-ina laughed in her silent Indian fashion, and the delight in her eyes was a reflection of the joy in her soul.

"You say all those. It make no matter," she said.

"But it does make matter." The man's handsome face flushed, and his keen blue eyes shone with a half angry, half impatient light. With a curious gesture of suppressed feeling he passed a hand over his clean-shaven mouth, as though to smooth the whiskers that had never been permitted to disfigure it. "It makes me feel a darn selfish, useless hulk of a man. And I'm not," he cried. "I'm neither those things. Say An-ina," he went on, more calmly, and with a light of humour in his eyes, "Don't you dare to laff at me. Don't you dare deny the things I'm saying. I won't stand for it. For all you're my old nurse I'll just pick you up like nothing and throw you to the dogs back in the yard there. And maybe that'll let you see I can do the things I figure to. I'm a grown man, and Uncle Steve says 'no' every time I ask to take on the work of locating where the weed grows, which he hasn't found in fourteen years, and which my father was yearning to find before he died. 'No,' he says. 'This is for me. It's my work. It's the thing I set out to do—for you.' When I ask to do the trade at Seal Bay, it's the same. He guesses the 'sharps' would beat me. Me! who could break a dozen of their heads in as many minutes. So I'm left to the trail—the summer trail—to gather pelts, and learn a craft I know by heart. I keep the Sleeper boys busy, and in good heart. I'm the big hunter they like to follow. I'm the son of a great white chief they say, and, for me, they're sort of fool dolls I pull the strings of, while Uncle Steve does the big man's work. Can you beat it? It's all wrong. You and Uncle Steve are twice my age. You've crowded a life's work—for me. You both reckon to go on—always for me. While I sit around guessing I'm a man because I know a jack-rabbit from a bull-moose. It's got to alter. It's going to alter—after the summer. I want the big scrap, An-ina. The real scrap life can hand a feller that can write 'man' to his name. I'm out for it all. I want it all. And if Uncle Steve's right, and I'm wrong, and I go under, I'm ready to take the med'cine however it comes."

The smile of the woman was full of the mother. It was full of the Indian, too.

"Oh, yes," she said quickly. "What you call him, 'chance.' The 'big chance.' So it is. It good. So very, very good for the big man. Marcel the big man. I know. Oh, yes. I know. The chance it come. Maybe easy. Maybe not. It come. So it is always. It come, you take it. You not must look, or you find trouble. You take it. Always take it when it come. That how An-ina think."

Marcel laughed. His impatience had vanished before the sun of his happy temperament.

"You've dodged the dogs, An-ina," he cried. "You're too cute for me. You've agreed with me, and haven't handed an inch of ground. But I tell you right here, you dear old second mother of mine, I'm going to play the man as I see the game. And I'm going to play it good."

* * * * *

The expression on the man's dusky face was deadly earnest. His lean brown hands were spread out over the fire for warmth. His fur-clad body was hunched upon his quarters, as near to the glowing embers as safety permitted. And as he talked a look of awe and apprehension dilated his usually unexpressive eyes.

"The fire run this way—that way," he cried, in a voice of monotonous cadence, but with a note of urgency behind it. "The man stand by dogs. He look—look all the time. Fire all same everywhere. It burn up all. Nothing left. Only two men. Boss Steve and Julyman. Oh, yes. They stan'. They look, too. They no fear. So they not burn all up. The man by the dogs much scare. He left him club, an' beat all dogs. So they all crazed with him club. They run. Oh, yes. An' the man turn. He run, too. Then Oolak see him face. Oh, yes. Him face of Oolak. Him eyes big with fear. Him cry out. So him run lak hell so the fire not get him."

The silent Oolak had committed himself to speech. He had talked long out of the superstitious dread that beset his Indian heart. He had dreamed a dream that filled him with fear of the future, towards which he looked for its fulfilment.

The grey dawn was searching the obscurity of the fringe of woody shelter in which the camp was made—the last camp on the return journey from Seal Bay to the fort. The smell of cooked meat rose from the pan which Julyman held over the fire. Steve sat on a fallen log, smoking, and listening tolerantly to the man's recital, while the sharp yapping of the dogs near by suggested the usual altercation over their daily meal of frozen fish. The cold was intense, but the cracking, splitting booming which came up out of the heart of the woods told of the reluctant yielding of the tenacious grip of winter.

Something of Oolak's awe found reflection in the eyes of Julyman. He, too, was an easy prey to the other's primitive superstition. Steve alone seemed untroubled. He understood these men. They were comrades on the trail. There was no distinction. There was no master and servant here. They fought the battle together, the Indians only looking to him for leadership. Thus he restrained the lurking smile of irony as he listened to the awesome recital of a dream that filled the dreamer with serious apprehension.

"And this fire? Where did it come from?" he demanded, with a seriousness he by no means felt.

Oolak met his gaze with a look of appeal.

"The earth all fire," he said. "The hills, the valleys, the trees. All same. Him fire everywhere. Oh, yes. It run so as water. It fill 'em up all things—everywhere. An' it burn all up. Not boss Steve an' Julyman. Oh, no."

Steve meditated awhile. Oolak needed an interpretation of his dream, or, anyway, must listen to the voice of comfort. He understood this as he gazed upon the partially crippled body of the man who was still a giant on the trail.

The passing of years had touched Steve lightly enough. Time might almost have stood still altogether. A few grey hairs about the temples. A thinning of his dark hair perhaps. Then the lines of his face had perhaps deepened. But in the fourteen years that had elapsed since his return to Unaga the raw muscle and the powerful frame of his youthful body had only gained in mass and left him the more capable of withstanding the demands which his life on the merciless plateau made upon his endurance.

Julyman, too, was much the Julyman of bygone years. The only change in him was that opportunity had robbed him of many of those lapses he had been wont to indulge in. But he was still no nearer the glory of a halo. Oolak alone displayed the wear and tear of the life that was theirs. His body was slightly askew from the disaster of the return from the first visit to Unaga, and one leg was shorter than the other. But the effect of these things was only in appearance. His vigour of body remained unimpaired. His silence was even more profound. And his mastery of the trail dogs left him a source of endless admiration to his companions.

Steve dipped some tea into a pannikin.

"Oolak had a nightmare, I guess," he said, feeling that a gentle ridicule could do no harm.

Julyman grinned his relief that the white man saw nothing serious in that which all Indians regard as the voice of the spirits haunting their world.

"Oolak eat plenty, much," he observed slyly.

Steve helped himself to meat from the pan and dipped some beans from the camp kettle beside the fire.

"Dreams are damn-fool things, anyway," he said. Then he laughed, "Guess we've dreamed dreams these fourteen years. And we're still sitting around waiting for things to happen."

Despite his concern Oolak tore at the meat with his sharp teeth, and ate with noisy satisfaction.

"Him all fire. Burn up all things. Oh, yes. Bimeby we find him," he said doggedly.

Steve was in the act of drinking. He paused, his pannikin remaining poised.

"You guess——"

"Him fire," said Oolak, wiping the grease from his lips on the sleeve of his furs. "Him big fires. Oolak know. Him not eat plenty. Him see this thing. The spirits show him so he know all time."

Steve gulped his tea down, and set the pannikin on the ground.

"That's crazy," he declared. "It's not spirits who show Oolak. It's as Julyman says. He eats plenty. So he dreams fool things that don't mean a thing. Oolak doesn't need to believe the spirits are busy around him when he sleeps."

He laughed in the face of the unsmiling Oolak. But his laugh was cut short by the Indian's stolid response.

"Boss white man know all things plenty," he said, with the patient calm of a mind made up. "He big man. Oh, yes. Him bigger as all Indian man. Sure. But he not know the voice of the spirits that speak much with Indian man. Oolak know him. So. An' the father of Oolak. Oh, yes. So we find this fire sometime. We find him. This fire of the world. The spirits tell Oolak, so him not afraid nothing."

Julyman set a pannikin down with a clatter. He raised a brown hand pointing. He was pointing at Oolak, and his eyes were wide with inspiration.

"He dream of Unaga—him fire of Unaga! So!"

Steve started. In a moment, at the challenge of Julyman, his mind had bridged a gulf of fourteen years. He was gazing upon a scene he had almost forgotten. A strange, magnificent scene in the heart of a white world where snow and ice held nature's wonderful creation buried deep in its crystal dungeons. The distant, towering spire rising sheer above a surrounding of lofty mountains. The pillar of ruddy smoke and mist piercing deep into the heart of a cloud belt lit with the vivid reflection of blazing volcanic fires. The splendour of it had been awesome, terrific. He remembered it now.

All thought of ridicule had died within him. For the inspiration of Julyman had stirred his own inspiration beyond all reason. In a moment his mind was a surge of teeming thought, with Unaga—the fires of Unaga—the centre of a vivid, reckless imagination.