"Charliet—oh, Charliet, come quick," whispered Paulette. She was snow from head to foot where she stood in the shack door. "I couldn't find——" But she recoiled as she saw me, against the light Marcia had burning inside her own half-open door. "Oh, my God, Nicky!" she cried in a voice that brought my soul alive, that fool's soul that had lost her. She caught at me like a child, incredulously, wildly. "Oh, Nicky!"

There was no time to ask where she'd been, nor even of Macartney. I think the unsuitable thing I said was "Marcia!" For I heard Marcia jump and fall over Paulette's open trunk, before she was out of her door like one of the wolves Macartney was so fond of. I didn't think she saw us, but she did see Collins. The thing that cut her off was his rush out of somewhere. I heard her scream with furious terror; heard Paulette's door bang on her; and Collins was beside me with a rifle and some dunnage I scarcely saw in the sudden dark of the passage after that banged door.

"Run," said he, through his teeth. "Gimme that stuff! Run!" he stuffed my snowshoes under the arm that held the rifle. "No, not that way! This way." He cut across the clearing in the opposite direction from the hole that led to his underground den, and it was time. Half of Macartney's men were tearing through the passage toward Marcia's screams, and the rest were pouring out of the kitchen door. In the storm we could only hear them. I was carrying Paulette like a baby, and with her head against me I could not see her face. All I could see was swirling, stinging snow in my eyes, and the sudden dark of the bush we brought up in. I kept along the edge of it, circling the clearing, and all but fell over the end of Collins's jutting rock. And this time I thanked God for the furious snow; in ten minutes there would be no sign of our tracks from the front door to the hold the rock shielded, and there was no earthly chance of Macartney's men picking them up before we were safe.

It felt like years before the three of us were inside the curtain of juniper, swarming up the smooth rock face, but Collins observed contrarily that he'd never done it so quickly. He led the way up to the passage angle where he had pinched out his light, put down the snowshoes and the rifle, laid something else on the ground with remarkable caution, and walked on some feet before he lit his candle.

"Better travel light and get home. Dunn and I'll come back presently and bring up the dunnage," he observed as blandly as if the three of us had been for an evening stroll, and suddenly laughed as he saw me glance at his stockinged feet. "By golly, I've left my boots in the shack, and I haven't any others—but it was worth a pair of boots! I stubbed my toe on Miss Wilbraham's little revolver she must have dropped on the passage floor, and I've got it. Also, let alone her lost toy-dog gun, I got all her ammunition and her rifle, while she was grabbing in Miss Paulette's trunk.

"'Taffy went to my house, Thought I was asleep. I went to Taffy's house, And stole a side of beef'

—as I learned when I was young. Come on, Stretton; I bet we'll be top-sides with Macartney-Hutton yet!"

"He's out, looking for me——" but Paulette's sentence broke in a gasp. "Why, it's Collins!" She stared incredulously in the candlelight.

"Just that," imperturbably. "Stretton can tell you all about me presently, Miss Paulette. For now I imagine you'd sooner see a fire and something to eat. Put her in between us, Stretton, Indian file, and we'll take her down."

Women are queer things. Tatiana Paulina Valenka had tramped the bush most of the day before looking for a dead man, had found him—a sight no girl should have looked on; had run for more than her life with me, and been through God knew what since; and she walked down that unknown, dark passage with Collins and me as if nothing had ever happened to her. She greeted Dunn, too; and then, as he and Collins disappeared to fetch down our snowshoes and rifle, went straight to pieces where she and I stood safe by their fire. "Oh, oh, oh, I thought you were dead! I saw them get you. I can't believe—can't believe——" she gasped out in jerks, as if she fought for her very breath, and suddenly dropped flat on Dunn's old blanket. "Oh, Nicky," she moaned, "don't let me faint—now. Nicky!"

There was something in her voice—I don't know—but it made me dizzy with sheer, clear joy. She had said my name as if I were the one man in the world for her, as if I had risen from the dead. But I dared not say so. I knew better than even to lift her head where she lay with closed eyes on Dunn's blanket, but I got Collins's old tin cup to her lips somehow and made her drink his strong coffee till it set her blood running, as it had set mine. After a minute she sat up dizzily, but she pushed away my bread and meat. "Presently—I'd be sick now," she whispered. "How did you get—out of Thompson's stope? And where—I mean I can't understand, about Collins and Dunn!"

"They got me out," said I, and explained about them. But there was no particular surprise on Paulette's face. She never made an earthly comment, either, when I told her they'd always known all about her and Hutton, except, "I never thought they were dead; I told you that. I'd an idea, too, that Charliet didn't think so either."

I had one arm round her by that time, feeding her with my other hand like a child, with bits of bread soaked in black coffee. If I had any thoughts they were only fear that she might move from me as soon as she really came to herself. But Charliet's name brought me back from what was next door to heaven. "Charliet," said I blankly; "where in the world is he? D'ye mean he hadn't told you about Collins and Dunn? Why, he was to bring you to them—here—hours ago!"

"Charliet was? But——" Suddenly, beyond belief, my dream girl turned and clung to me. God knows I knelt like a statue. I was afraid to stir. It was Dudley she loved: I was only a man who was trusted and a friend. "Oh, Nicky, you don't know," she cried, "you don't know! You and I ran straight into some of Dick Hutton's men when we raced out of the shack. And you threw me—just picked me up like a puppy and threw me—out of their way, into the deep snow. I heard them get you, but I was half smothered; I couldn't either see or speak. But I heard Dick shout from somewhere to 'chuck Stretton into Thompson's old stope!' I thought it meant they'd killed you; that it was another man I'd let—be murdered!"

She caught her breath as if something stabbed her, and I know it stabbed me to think I was just "another man" to her. But I knelt steady. I had been a fool to think it was I she cared for, personally, and whether she did or not she needed my arm. "Well?" I asked. "Next?"

"I was scrambling out of the snow," I felt her shiver against me, "only before I could stand up Charliet raced up from somewhere and shoved me straight down in the drift again. He said Dick was looking for me, and to lie still, while he got him away; then to race for the shack and hide just outside the front door, till he came for me—but before he could finish Dick ran down on the two of us, with a lantern. He'd have fallen over me, if Charliet hadn't stopped him by yelling that I'd run for the bush. I think he grabbed the lantern—but anyhow, they both tore off. I got to the shack, but——Oh, Nicky, I couldn't wait there. I——"

"Well?" It seemed to be the only word in my brain.

"I went down to Thompson's stope. But I was too late. The men had walled you in with rocks, and I couldn't move them. I tried!" (I thought she must hear the leap my heart gave. I know I shut my jaws to keep my tongue between my teeth at the thought of her trying to dig her way in to me, the only friend she had in the world except a French-Canadian cook.) "I——Oh, I thought if I could find Charliet we might do something! I went back to look for him, and I found you——Oh, I found you!" Her arms were still on my shoulders as I knelt by her, and suddenly her voice turned low and anxious. "What do you suppose became of Charliet? He's so faithful. We can't leave him for Dick to turn on when he can't find me!"

I was not thinking of Charliet. I couldn't honestly care what had become of him, with my dream girl in my arms. I may as well tell the truth; I forgot Dudley, too. I don't know what mad words would have come out of my mouth if Paulette had not pushed me away violently. What was left of her coffee upset; I got to my feet with the empty cup in my hand, just as Collins and Dunn and their candle emerged round the boulder. I remembered long afterwards that it was before I had answered Paulette one word about myself, Thompson's stope, anything. But then all I did was to stare at something Collins was carrying carefully in his two hands. "What's that?" I said—just to say something.

"Some new kind of high explosive Wilbraham got to try and never did," Collins returned casually. "Saw it in his office to-night and thought it was better with us than with Macartney. Don't know just how it works, so I'm treating it gingerly." He moved on into the darkness of his own tunnel and came back empty-handed. "What are we going to do—first?" he inquired calmly.

I took a look at Paulette. Whether it was from Collins's casual mention of Dudley's name or not, she was ghastly. Who she was looking at I don't know; but it wasn't at me.

"Sleep," said I grimly. "Two of us need it, if you and Dunn don't. Macartney can't get us to-night." Though of that I was none too sure. Charliet might get rattled any moment and give us away. But there was no good in sticking at trifles.

But Collins was an astute devil. "He won't," he rejoined as calmly as if I had spoken of Charliet out loud. "He won't get hurt, either; you can bank on that. Make up that fire, Dunn, and we'll give Miss Paulette the blankets."

We did, where she lay at one side. We three men dropped like dogs in a row in front of the fire. I was next Paulette, with the space of a foot or so between us. I had not known how dead weary I was till I stretched out flat. Collins and Dunn may have slept; I don't know; but Paulette certainly did, as soon as she got her head down. I thought I lay and watched the fire, but I must have slept, too. For I woke—with my heart drumming as if I'd heard the trump for the Last Judgment, and Paulette's hand in mine. I must have flung out my arm till I touched her, and her little fingers were tight round my hard, dirty hand, clinging to it. I lay in heaven, in the dark of a frowsy cave we might be hunted out of any minute, with the dying glow of the fire in my eyes and my dream girl's hand in mine. And suddenly, like a blow, I heard her whisper in her sleep, "Dudley! Oh, dear Dudley!"

I was only Nicky Stretton, and a fool. I lay in the dark with a heart like a stone and a girl's warm, clinging hand in mine.



CHAPTER XVII

HIGH EXPLOSIVE

There was nothing to tell of any handclasp when I woke in the morning. Paulette lay in her blankets with her back to me, as if she had lain so all night; Dunn was making up the fire; Collins was absent, till he appeared out of his tunnel where he had put Dudley's high explosive the night before and nodded to me. None of us spoke: we all had that chilly sort of stiffness you get after sleeping with your clothes on. As we ate our breakfast I took one glance at Paulette and looked away again. She was absolutely white, almost stunned looking, and her eyes would not meet mine. I had an intuition she had waked in the night after I slept and discovered what she had been doing; but if she were ashamed there was no need. God knows I would not have reminded her of the thing. I knew the dark hollows and the tear marks under her eyes were for Dudley, not for me. But I had to take care of her now, and Collins glanced at me as I thought it.

"I suppose you realize Charliet's our only line of communication, and that he and all the La Chance guns are in the hands of the enemy," he observed drily. "What do you think of doing about it?"

"Get Charliet; all the guns and ammunition he can steal; hold this place and harry Macartney," I supposed. "What do you think?"

I had turned to Paulette, but she only shook her head with an, "I don't know, Mr. Stretton!" I had time to decide she had only called me Nicky by mistake six hours ago, before Collins disagreed with me flatly.

"Stay here? Not much! Won't work—Macartney'd drop on us! Oh, I know he won't be able to find our real entrance to this place unless Charliet gives us away, and I'm not worrying about that! But, after he realizes Miss Valenka has vanished"—he said her real name perfectly casually—"and when Charliet and most of his guns vanish too, and his men begin to get picked off one by one, how long do you suppose it will be before Macartney connects the three things—and smells a rat? He'll sense Charliet and a girl can't be fighting him alone. For all we know he'll guess you must have got out of Thompson's stope somehow, and dig away his rock fence to see! And I imagine we'd look well in here if he did!"

"It's just what we would look," said I. "You ass, Collins, with Macartney ignorant of the real way in on us, and he and his gang digging open Thompson's tunnel against the daylight, with you and me and Dunn in the dark on that shelf in Thompson's stope we came in here by, we'd have the drop on the lot. Except—Marcia!" Her name jerked out of me. We would have to count Marcia in with Macartney's gang; and, remembering she had known me all her life, it made me smart.

"Oh, Miss Wilbraham—I should let her rip!" Collins returned callously. "Listen, Stretton; what you say's all very well, only we can't count on holding this place when we're discovered, while it's a matter of if Charliet can get guns! Miss Marcia's rifle and her toy popgun aren't going to save us, and I doubt if Charliet can swipe any more. What I say is let's cut some horses out of the stable after dark, all four of us clear out on them to Caraquet, and set the sheriff and his men after Macartney. Unless," he turned boldly to her, "you don't want that, Miss Valenka?"

But if she had been going to answer, which I don't think she was, I cut her off. "We can't let Marcia rip—don't talk nonsense, Collins! She's Dudley's sister, if she and Macartney are a firm. We can't clear out and leave her with a man like that!"

"We can't take her to Caraquet," Collins argued with some point. "You own she doesn't know anything about Macartney's wolf dope; you haven't any witnesses to prove he tried it on your wagon, or to set the wolves on Dudley. Miss Marcia would just up and swear your whole story was a lie—and all Caraquet would believe her! Nobody alive ever heard of such a thing as wolf dope!"

"That's just where you're wrong!" I remembered the boy I'd left cached in Skunk's Misery—and something else, that had been in my head ever since wolves and the smell of a Skunk's Misery bottle seemed to go together. "Two Frenchmen were run in for using wolf dope in Quebec province last winter, for I've an account of their trial somewhere that I cut out of an Ottawa paper. And as for a witness, I've a boy cached at Skunk's Misery who can prove Macartney made the same stuff there. The only thing we might get stuck on in Caraquet is the reason for all the murders he's done—with, and without it!"

"I guess Miss Valenka knows the reason all right," Collins spoke as coolly as if she were not there, which may have been the wisest thing to do, for though she flushed sharply she said nothing. He went on with exactly what she had said herself. "But after Hutton came here to get her, he saw he'd be a fool not to grab the La Chance mine, too; and unless we can stop him you bet he and his gang have grabbed it! They've disposed of Thompson, of all our own men who might have stood by us, of Wilbraham," categorically; "they think they've disposed of Dunn and me and buried you alive, and—except for having lost Miss Valenka—Macartney's made his game! Nobody'll know there's anything wrong at the mine till the spring, because there's no one interested enough to ask questions till Wilbraham's bank payments have stopped long enough to look queer. And by that time Macartney and his gang will be gone, and the cream of Wilbraham's gold with them. As for us, we can't fight him by sitting in this burrow with Miss Paulette, and without any guns, even if he doesn't end by nosing out Dunn's and my gold as well as Wilbraham's. Why, we depend on Charliet for our food, let alone anything else; and for all we know, Charliet may have squeaked on us by this time. I say again, let's get a sheriff and posse at Caraquet, and come back here and get Macartney! We could do it, if we took Miss Paulette and hit the trail to-night."

"And Macartney'd get us, if we tried it!" I had thrashed all that out in my head before, while I was tying up Macartney with Charliet's clothesline. "We'd be stopped by his picket at the Halfway, if ever we got to the Halfway, for the Caraquet road's likely drifted solid and you don't make time digging out smothering horses. No; we'll fight Macartney where we are! And the way to do it is with Charliet and guns."

"If you'll tell me how we're to connect with either!" Collins was grim. "It's a mighty dangerous thing calling up Charliet on number one Wolf, with the whole of La Chance crawling with Macartney and his gang, hunting for Miss Paulette. But we can go up to the back door and try it!"

"Oh, no," Paulette burst out wildly, "I'm afraid! I mean I know we must find out first if Charliet's all right, but you mayn't get him—and you'll give yourselves away!"

It was almost the first time she had spoken, and it was more to Collins than to me, but I answered. "We'll get Charliet all right," I began—and Collins gripped me.

"I dunno," he drawled. "Strikes me some one's going to get us—first!"

He snapped out our candle, which was senseless, since Dunn's red-hot fire showed us up as plain as day, and all four of us stood paralyzed. Somebody—running, slipping, with a hideous clatter of stones—was coming down the long passage Collins called his back door.

"Macartney," said I, "and Charliet's given us away!" And with the words in my mouth I had Paulette around the waist and shoved out of sight behind the boulder that separated Collins's cave from his tunnel and the pierced wall of Thompson's stope. Macartney might be a devil, but there was no doubt the man was brave to come like that for a girl, through the dark bowels of the earth where Charliet must have warned him Dunn and Collins would be lurking. Only he had not got Paulette yet, and he would find three men to face before he even saw her. I stooped over her in the dark of Collins's tunnel, where just a knife-edge of the cave firelight cut over the boulder's top. "Keep still, Paulette—and for any sake don't move and kick Collins's devilish explosive he's got stuck in here somewhere," I said, exactly as if I were steady. Which I was not, because it was my unlooked for, heaven-sent chance to get square with Macartney. I sprang around the boulder to do it and saw Collins strike up the barrel of Marcia's rifle in Dunn's stretched left arm.

"Don't shoot," he yelled. "You fool, it's Charliet!"

I stood dead still. It was Charliet, but a Charliet I had never seen. His French-Canadian face was tallow white, as he tore into the cave, grinning like a dog with rage and excitement. He brushed Dunn and Collins aside like flies and grabbed my arm. "Come out," he panted. "Sacre damn, bring Mademoiselle Paulette and come out! It is that Marcia! She sees you in the shack last night; sees you—alive and out of Thompson's stope where they buried you—carrying Mademoiselle away! She tells Macartney so this morning, when he and I get in after hunting for Mademoiselle all night—praying, me, that I might not make a mistake and find her, and that you might. Oh, I tell you I was crazy—dog crazy! I cannot get away from Macartney, I think she may be dead in the snow, looking for me who was not there, till first thing this morning we come in—and that she-devil tells Macartney Stretton takes Mademoiselle away! Not till now, till all are out of the house, do I have the chance to come and warn you what is coming! They—that Marcia, Macartney, all of the men—start now to dig you out of Thompson's stope they put you in. They think they left some hole you crawl out of in the snow and dark, that you come for Mademoiselle and take her back into. I could not get you even one small cartridge to hold this place, and—Macartney is clever! He will be in here, with all his guns, all his men. And then, quoi faire? Come now, all of you, while there is the one chance to come unseen, and get on horses and go away. Ah," the man's fierce voice broke, ran up imploringly, "I beg you, Mademoiselle, like I would beg the Blessed Virgin, to make them come! Before Macartney, or that Marcia, finds—you!"

I jumped around and saw Paulette, in the cave. I had left her safe in Collins's tunnel; and there she stood, come out into plain view at the sound of Charliet's voice. But she was not looking at him, or me, or any of us. Her eyes stared, sword-blue, at the hole where Charliet had rushed in from Collins's secret passage: I think all I realized of her face was her eyes. I turned, galvanized, to what she stared at,—and saw. Marcia Wilbraham was standing in the entrance from the long passage, behind us all, except Paulette; meeting Paulette's eyes with her small, bright brown ones, her lips wide in her ugly, gum-showing smile. I knew, of course, that she had picked up Charliet's track in the snow from his kitchen door to Collins's juniper-covered back door, had followed fair on his heels down the dark passage, instead of going with Macartney to dig me out of Thompson's stope; that in one second she would turn and run back again, to show Macartney Collins's back door.

My jump was late. It was Dunn who saved us. He sprang matter-of-factly, like a blood-hound, and pulled Marcia down. She was as strong as a man, pretty nearly; she fought fiercely, till she heard the boy laugh. That cowed her, in some queer way. I heard Dunn say: "You'd better stay here a while, Miss Wilbraham. It's safer—than with Macartney;" saw Charliet run to help him, and the two of them placidly tie and gag Marcia Wilbraham with anything they could take off themselves. It was with a vivid impression of Charliet's none too clean neck-handkerchief playing a large part in Marcia's toilette that Collins and I jumped, with one accord, to Paulette. I don't know what he said to her. I saw her nod.

I said, "We're done for if Macartney gets in on us through Thompson's stope and finds this place. He'll just send half his men to scout for the other entrance; they'll find it from Charliet's and Marcia's tracks and get at us both ways. You stay here with Charliet, while Collins and I meet Macartney in Thompson's stope. When—if—you hear we can't best him, run—with Charliet! Dunn'll look after Marcia."

She gave me a stunned sort of look, as if I were deserting her, as if I didn't—care! I would have snatched her in my arms and kissed her, Dudley or no Dudley lying dead in the bush, but I had no time. Collins had me by the elbow, his fierce drawl close to my half-comprehending ear. We'd no guns but Marcia's popgun and her rifle; two of us, even on the shelf in Thompson's stope, would do little good with those against all Macartney's men crowding into the stope and giving us a volley the second our fire from the shelf drew theirs. We might pick off half a dozen of them before our cartridges gave out. But there was no sense in that business. We would have to try——But here I came alive to what Collins was really talking about.

"That high explosive," he was saying. "It's a filthy trick, but God knows they deserve it! If we blow them back far enough at the very entrance of the tunnel, they may never come on again to get in."

I daresay I'd have recoiled in cold blood. But my blood ran hot that morning. I did think, though; hard. I said, "Can't do it! No fuse."

"Heaps. Dunn's and mine!" I heard Collins grabbling for it, somewhere in the dark of the tunnel.

Behind me somebody lit a candle; who, I never looked to see. In the light of it I saw Collins pick up his bundle of blasting powder and warned him sharply.

"Look out with that stuff! We don't know it; it may work anyway. If it bursts up in the air the stope roof'll be down on us. It may fire back, too—and we'd be hit behind the point of burst!"

"We won't be," said Collins, between his teeth. "I'll burst it out the tunnel, and blow Macartney's gang to rags!"

But that lighted candle at my back had shown me other than explosives: the silly, pointless snowshoes I had lugged from my own room in the shack. My conscious mind knew now what my subconscious mind had wanted them for, like a mill where some one had turned on the current. I swore out loud. "By gad, Collins, listen! If we don't smash Macartney, and he gets in on us, he'll get Paulette! I've got to stop that, somehow. Macartney doesn't know she's here yet; Marcia only guessed it. Supposing he were to see only me, alone in Thompson's stope, he might never know she was here too!"

"Dunno what you mean," Collins snapped. And I snapped back:

"I mean that if we blow a clean hole at the tunnel entrance, and I burst out of it and run, I can get the whole gang after me—and make time for you and Charliet to get Paulette away somewhere, by the back door."

"But"—Collins halted where he swarmed up into Thompson's stope—"where'll you go? You can't, Stretton. It's death!"

"It's sense," said I. "As for where I'll go, Lac Tremblant'll do for me; and I bet it will finish any man of Macartney's who tries to come after me! Get through into that stope with your fuse, man; I'll hand you the blasting stuff. Got it? All right. Here you, gimme that candle!" I turned and took it—out of Paulette's hand!

I gasped, taken aback all standing, before I lied, "It's all right, Paulette. I'll be back in a minute." And though I knew she must have heard what I was going to do, I had no better sense than to stoop before the girl's blank eyes and snatch up my two pairs of snowshoes, that had been lying beside the explosive I had just passed up to Collins, before I clambered up through the hole into Thompson's stope, on to the shelf from whence I had first dropped into Collins's cave.

Collins was down in Thompson's tunnel already, laying his fuse with deadly skill. Already, too, we could hear Macartney's men outside, leveraging away the boulders that had plugged up the tunnel entrance where I was to starve and die. Collins placed the stuff I carried down to him. I said, "My God, you can't use all that; the whole stope'll be down on us!" And he answered, "No; I've done it right." That was every word we uttered till we were back on our high shelf, with a lit fuse left behind us in the stope. The fuse burned smooth as a dream, and Collins nudged me with fierce satisfaction. But I was suddenly sick with horror. Not at the thing we were doing—if it were devil's work we had been driven to be devils—but at the knowledge that Paulette was standing within reach of my feet, that were through the stope wall and were hanging down into Collins's tunnel,—that tunnel every bone in me knew was amateur, unsafe, a death trap. The shock of a big explosion in Thompson's stope might well bring its roof down on Paulette, standing alone in it, waiting,—trusting to me for safety. I turned my head and yelled at her as a man yells at a dog—or his dearest—when he is sick with fear for her: "Get back out of that into the cave! Run!"

I heard her jump. Heard her——But thought stopped in me, with one unwritable, life-checking shock. The whole earth, the very globe, seemed to have blown to pieces around me. The flash and roar were like a thousand howitzers in my very face; the solid rock shelf I was on leapt under me; and behind me the whole of Collins's tunnel collapsed, with a grinding roar. I heard Collins gasp, "Good glory"; heard the rocks and gravel in the stope before me settling, with an indescribable, threatening noise, between thunder and breaking china—and all I thought of was that I'd warned my dream girl in time, that she'd answered me, that she was back in Collins's cave, and safe. Till, suddenly to eyes that had been too dazzled and seared to see it clearing, the smoke before me cleared, the choking fumes lessened, and I saw. Saw, straight in front of me, where a tunnel had been and was no longer, a clean hole like a barn door where Thompson's tunnel entrance had been but two-men wide; saw out, into furious, crimson color that turned slowly, as my sight grew normal, into the golden, dazzling glory of winter sun on snow.

There was silence outside in the sun, all but some yells and moaning. How much damage we'd done I couldn't see; or where Macartney's men were, dead or alive. But now, while they were paralyzed with shock and surprise, now was my time to get through them. I lowered myself gingerly to the rubbish heap that had been the smooth floor of Thompson's stope; edged to the tunnel entrance; slipped my feet into the toe and heel straps of the snowshoes I had held tightly against me through all the unspeakable, hellish uproar of rending rock, and sprang,—sprang out into the sunlight, out on the clear snow, past wounded men, reeling men, dying men, and raced as I never put foot to ground before or since, for Lac Tremblant, glittering clear and free in front of me,—that Lac Tremblant I had thought of subconsciously when I carried snowshoes into Collins's cave.

In the beginning of this story I said what Lac Tremblant was like. It was a lake that was no lake; that should have been our water-way out of the bush instead of miles of expensive road; and was no more practicable than a rope ladder to the stars. For the depth of Lac Tremblant, or its fairway, were two things no man might count on. It would fall in a night to shallows a child might wade through, among bristling rocks no one had ever guessed at; and rise in a morning to the tops of the spruce scrub on its banks,—a sweet spread of water, with never a rock to be seen. What hidden spring fed it was a mystery. But in the bitterest winter it was never frozen further than to form surging masses of frazil ice that would neither let a canoe push through them, nor yet support the weight of a man. It was on that frazil ice, that some people called lolly, that I meant to run for my life now, trusting to the resistance of the two feet of snow that lay on the lake in the mysterious way snow does lie on lolly, and to the snowshoes on my feet. And as I slithered on to the soft snow of the lake, from the crackling, breaking shell ice on the La Chance shore, I knew I had done well. Some—a good many—of Macartney's men were killed or half-killed by our deadly blast, but not all. He had been more cautious than I guessed. I saw the rest of his men bunched some hundred feet from the smashed-out tunnel; saw Macartney, too, standing with them. But all I cared for was that he should see me and come out after me on the crust of snow and lolly over Lac Tremblant,—that would never carry him without the snowshoes he did not have—and give Paulette her chance to get away. I yelled at him and skimmed out over the trembling ice like a bird.

Neither Macartney nor his men had stirred in that one flying glance I had dared take at them. But sheer tumult came out of them now. Then shots—shots that missed me, and a sudden howled order from Macartney I dared not turn my head or break my stride to understand. The giving surface under me was bearing, but a quarter-second's pause would have let me through. There was no sense in zigzagging. Once I was clear, I ran as straight as I dared for the other shore, five miles away; but—suddenly I realized I was not clear! I was followed.

Somebody else on snowshoes had shot out of Thompson's tunnel, over the crackling shore ice on to the snow and frazil; was up to me, close behind me.

"Run, Nicky," shrieked Paulette's voice. "Run!"

I slewed my head around and saw her, running behind me!



CHAPTER XVIII

LAC TREMBLANT

"Across the ice that never froze The snow that never bore, My love ran out to follow me— To follow to the shore."

The Day the World Went Mad.

It may be true that I swore aloud; but what I meant by it was more like praying. Over me was the blue winter sky and the gold sun; under me the treacherous spread of the lake that was no lake, that one misstep might send me through, to God knew what hideous depth of unfrozen water, or bare, bone-shattering stone; behind me were Macartney and Macartney's men; and close up to me, nearer every second, my Paulette, my dream girl who had never been mine. There was nothing to do for both of us but to keep on crossing Lac Tremblant. Missteps might be death, but turning back was worse—for her, anyway.

I yelled, "Keep wide! Get abreast of me—don't take any direction you don't see me take. But keep wide!" Because what held one of us would never hold two, and behind me, running in my tracks——Well, even a light girl would not run long!

Paulette only screamed, "Yes. Keep on! They're coming!" She may have needed her breath, I don't know; but she didn't run like it. She ran like a deer, with my own flat, heel-dragging stride on the snowshoes I had not thought she knew how to use. One more shot came after us. I yelled again to her to keep wide and heard her sheer off a little to obey me; but she still ran behind me. God knows I didn't realize, till afterwards, that it was to keep Macartney from shooting me. I didn't even wonder why Collins and Dunn weren't firing into the brown of Macartney's men with Marcia's rifle and popgun. I was too busy watching the snow surfaces before me.

There was a difference in them. I can't explain what, but a difference between where there was water to buoy the snow, and where it lay on shell ice. The open black holes where there was nothing at all any one could see, and I didn't worry over them. I only knew we must run over water, or the light stuff under us would let us through. I kept moving my hand in infinitesimal signals to Paulette, and God knows she was quick at understanding. My heart was in my mouth for her, but she never made a mistake, or a stumble where a stumble would have meant the end. She called to me suddenly; something that sounded like, "They're coming!"

I turned my head and saw out of the tail of my eye, as a man sees when he's riding a race. They were coming! Macartney's men, and—I thought—Macartney; but I knew better than to look long enough to make sure. His men, anyhow, had raced out on the lake as we had raced, and there was no need to watch what became of them. Their dying screams came to us, as they floundered and sank in their heavy boots through snow and frazil ice, to depths they would never get out of. I might have been sick anywhere else. I was fierce with joy out there in Lac Tremblant, running with a girl over the thin crust under which death lurked to snatch at us, as it had snatched at Macartney's men. Neither of us spoke. I was thinking too hard. I could have run indefinitely as we were running, but Paulette was just a girl. What of Paulette if she slackened with weariness, if I led her wrong by six inches, or missed a single threatening sign on the stuff we fled over?

If I had been sure Macartney was drowned with his men, I might have taken her back to La Chance; but I was not sure. And, Macartney or no Macartney, the track I had led her out on the lake by was the only one I would have dared trust to return on,—and it was all lumps of snowy lolly and blue water, where Macartney's men had broken through. I looked ahead of me with my mind running like a mill. We had done about half the five-mile crossing; we might do the rest if we could stop and breathe for ten minutes, for five, even for two. Only, in all the width of the lake that lay like cake icing in front of us, there was not one place where we could dare to stand. The water under us was higher than I had ever known it. Not one single dagger-toothed rock showed as they had showed when I crossed it in a canoe the night before it froze to the thick slush that was all it ever froze to. There was not one single place to——But violently, out of the back of my memory, something came to me. There was one place in Lac Tremblant where, high water or low, a man might always stand—if I could hit it in the smothering, featureless snow.

"The island!" I gasped out loud. Because there was one—a high, narrow island without even a bush on it—rising gradually, not precipitately like the rest of the rocks in Lac Tremblant, out of the uncertain water. But for half an hour I thought it might as well be non-existent. Stare as I might I could see no sign of it—and suddenly I all but fell with blessed shock. I was on it; on the highest end of it, with solid ground under my feet; solid ground and safety, breath and rest. I yelled to Paulette, "Jump to me!" and she jumped. That was all there was to it, except a man and a girl, panting, staggering, clinging together, till sense came to them, and they dropped flat in the snow.

I said sense, but I don't know that I had any. I lay there staring at Paulette and her long bronze hair that had come down as she ran, till it was like a mantle over her and the snow round her. I had never thought women had hair like that. I cried out, "My God, Paulette, why did you come?"

I may have sounded angry. I was, as a man always is angry when he has dragged a woman into his danger. Paulette panted without looking at me. "I—had to! The tunnel—caved in!"

"I told you to get out of it!" I sat up where I had flung myself down and stared at her. She sat up, too, both of us crimson-faced and dishevelled. But neither of us thought of that. I stormed like a fool. "What possessed you to stay in the tunnel—or to follow me? I told you to jump for the cave!"

"Well, I didn't!" Paulette stiffened as if she froze. "I hadn't time. I would have had to cross the tunnel. And I hadn't time to do anything but jump to you and Collins before your stuff blew up. I'd just got on your shelf when it went off, and it stunned me till I had just sense enough left to lie still and hold on. But afterwards, when I saw what you were going to do, I put on the snowshoes you'd left by the tunnel entrance and came after you. I'm sorry I did, now!"

"But Collins——" I looked blankly across the two miles of quivering death trap we still had to cross before we gained what safety there might be in the Halfway shore and the neighborhood of Macartney's picket, and my thoughts were not of Collins—"Why, in heaven's name, didn't Collins have sense enough to lug you back into his cave with him and Charliet, instead of letting you take a chance like this?"

"Collins couldn't get back himself," Paulette retorted, as if I were unbearably stupid. "Nobody could get back! I told you the tunnel caved in, till it was solid between us and the others. Collins saw I had to follow you. In two more minutes Dick would have come to hunt Thompson's stope for me, and we had no guns to stave him off. You and Collins left them in the tunnel!" It was just what we had done, and I wasted good time in remembering it, guiltily. Paulette stood up and twisted back her streaming cloud of hair. "So, as I had to come with you," she resumed without looking at me, "don't you think we'd better get on? If you're waiting for me to rest, you needn't."

I wasn't, altogether. I stared back over the perilous way we had come. There was no black speck of any one following us on its treacherous face; no sound of shots; no anything from the shore we had left. Yet, "Where do you suppose Macartney is?" I asked involuntarily.

"Dead." Her voice was almost indifferent, but she shivered. "Or he'd have gone on shooting at us."

I nodded, but I would have felt easier if I had thought so. Somehow I didn't, I don't know why. I know nothing would have induced me to take Paulette back to La Chance, even if the trodden lolly would have borne us again. I had a pang about Collins, left alone there; but Collins could take care of himself, and Paulette's shiver had reminded me we should freeze to death if we loitered where we were. I pointed to the snowy lake between us and the Halfway shore. "Can you do two more miles of running, over that?"

"Yes," she glanced down at her slim, trained body, rather superbly. "Only—there's no one following us! Have we got to be quite so quick?"

"Quicker! We don't know about Macartney. If he's alive he has a stable full of horses, and he knows where we're running to. He may try to cut us off." I half lied; he could not cut us off, since horses would be of no use to him in the heavy snow, and on foot it would take him two days to go round Lac Tremblant to the Halfway, where crossing the lolly could bring us in two hours. But I had no mind to air my real reason for haste.

I should have known Paulette was too shrewd for me. "I'm a fool—Lac Tremblant never bears, of course," she said quite quietly. "Go on, Mr. Stretton. Only—don't stop, if anything goes wrong with me!"

"Nothing will go wrong," said I, just as if I believed it. If she had called me Nicky, as she had done by mistake the night before, when she slept with her hand clasping mine, if she'd even looked at me, I must have burst out that I loved her, past life and death, and out to the world to come. But it was no time to force love-making on a girl who had seen the man she meant to marry lie dead before her eyes. If she turned shaky, or cried, I could never save her. For the bit of lake in front of us was ten times worse than what we'd crossed. I knew that when I tightened up the snowshoes silently and led my dream girl out on it. I would have given half my life for a rope, such as people have on glaciers. But I had no rope, and each of us would have to run, or sink, alone.

I meant, of course——But that's no matter. I got Paulette off the island and, inch by inch, feeling my way, back to the channel where buoyant water, at least, lay under us. I twisted and turned like a corkscrew, but I dared not leave it. Once I cautioned Paulette never to try a short cut, just to keep abreast of me; and twice my heart was in my mouth at a hollow, instant-long clatter under our shoes. But we got on over the stuff somehow, leaving holes of blue water in our tracks, with great gobbets of snow floating in them. The shore lay close in front of us, with a hard distinct edge of shell ice showing where the water stopped. I was just going to call out that in ten feet more we'd be safe over the lolly, when—smash—both of us went through! I thought I fell a mile before I hit the water that was going to drown us; hit it knees first, just as I'd gone through, and—I sprawled in icy slush that rose no higher than my waist. I was in a sort of pocket between two rocks that were holding up the lolly. There was an avalanche of caving snow and ice all round me, but I was not drowned or likely to be,—only I barely thought of it. For I could not see Paulette. Suddenly, past belief, I heard her scream: "Nicky!"

I fought blindly to the sound of her voice, wormed between my screening rocks, and shouted as I stood up. She was not even in slush! She had gone through shell ice to bare ground, a long strip of bare ground that led straight to the Halfway shore; roofed, high above my head, with shell ice and lolly that filtered a silver-green light. My dream girl lay there in her little blue sweater with the wind knocked out of her—and that was all. I kicked off my snowshoes that were not even broken and carried her under the ice roof to the Halfway shore. I may have thanked God aloud; I don't know. Only I carried her, with my face close to hers, and the slush and snow from her falling over me as I stumbled under the ice roof to the blessed shore. I had just sense enough to drop her in the blinding daylight, and drop myself beside her. I couldn't speak, from dead cold fear, now that I had saved her, of what it would have been if I had not. For two gasping minutes we just lay there.

Then Paulette said pantingly, "I'm so dreadfully sorry—I've been such a trouble! But I couldn't do anything but come, and—I forgot you couldn't want me!"

I sat up and saw her, sitting on a cold, bare, wind-swept rock that was all the refuge I had to offer her. Half a mile farther on were food and shelter in the Halfway shack—and it might as well have been in Heaven, for with Macartney's men cached in it I naturally could not take her there. Behind that, twenty-seven miles off, was Caraquet; but even a girl with a trained body like Paulette's could never make twenty-seven miles on top of all we'd done.

"It's no question of wanting you," I exclaimed angrily. "It is that I don't know what to do. But want you—when do you suppose I haven't wanted you, ever since the night I first saw you by Dudley's fire? What do you suppose I'd ever have been in this game for, if I hadn't wanted just you in all this world? My heart of hearts, don't you know I love you?" I lost my head, or I never would have said it, for I saw her flinch. That brought me back to myself in the snow and desolation round us that stood for God's world as nothing else would have done. I burst out in shame, "Oh, forgive me! I never meant to let that out. I know you never cared a hang for me; that you were going to marry Dudley, if he hadn't been killed!"

For one solid minute Paulette never opened her mouth. She sat like a colored statue, with rose-crimson cheeks and gold-bronze hair, under the white January sun. Her eyes were so dark in her face that they looked like blue-black ink. "I—I never was engaged to Dudley," she gasped at last, more as if it were jerked out of her than voluntarily. "I didn't think it was any business of yours, but I never was. We—Dudley and I—only said so, because it seemed the simplest way to manage Marcia, when Dudley brought me here to get me out of that emerald business. He was good to me, if ever a man was good to a girl he was only sorry for; I can't forget that brought him to his death. I'm sick with sorrow for him,—but I never was going to marry Dudley! He didn't even want me to. He——Oh, Nicky!"

Because I couldn't stand it; I'd seen her eyes. I had both her hands in mine, I think I was telling her over and over how I had always loved her, how I had stood out of Dudley's way, that I didn't expect, of course, that she could care about an Indian-faced fool like me, when—suddenly—I knew! Like roses and silver trumpets and shelter out there in the homeless snow, I knew! All Paulette said was, "Oh, Nicky," again. But the two of us were in each other's arms.

I don't know how long we clung or what we said. But at last I lifted my Indian-dark head from her gold one and spoke abruptly out of Paradise. "By gad, I have it!"

"Have what?" Paulette gasped. "Oh, you certainly have most of my hair; it's all wound up in your coat buttons—if you mean that!"

I didn't. "I meant I knew where we could go, and that's to Skunk's Misery," I harked back soberly, remembering the boy I had left there with a fire and shelter anyhow, if not food.

"But you said it was a horrible place!"

"So it is, when you have anywhere else to go. But we can't try the Halfway with Macartney's men in it, and neither of us could make Caraquet to-night. We've got to have shelter, darling."

Paulette stopped plaiting her hair in a thick rope. "Say that again," she ordered curiously.

"What—Skunk's Misery?" But suddenly I understood, and used that word I had never said aloud before:

"Darling darling, Skunk's Misery is our only chance. Get up and come on!"

But she answered without moving.

"Want to tell you something first. The tunnel falling in wasn't all the reason I ran after you. I thought—thought Dick might not dare to shoot at you if I were between you and him, so——Oh, Nicky, don't kiss my horrid, chapped hands!"

But I was glad to hide my humbled face on them, remembering how I had stormed at her. I muttered, "Why didn't you tell me—out there on the lake?"

"Well, you were pretty unpleasant, and"—as I kissed her, my dear love I had never thought to touch—"oh, Nicky, how could I tell you? I said everything to you last night but 'Nicholas Dane Stretton, I love you!'—and all the notice you took was to kneel perfectly silent, with a face as long as your arm. You never even answered me, when I called you Nicky by mistake!"

I hadn't dared. But it was no time to be talking of those things. Let alone that my wet breeches had frozen till I felt as if my legs didn't belong to me, we had landed exactly where old Thompson had been drowned. I wanted to get away from there, quickly; leaving no more trail than was necessary. I looked round me and saw how to do it.

In front of us was the hole in the shore ice and all the smash and flurry where we had gone through. Where we had crawled on shore, from under the intact ice roof, was bare rock, wind-swept clean. It struck me that with a little management, and to a cursory inspector, it could look as though Paulette and I were drowned like Thompson. The snow had not piled on this side the lake as it had on ours. Detached rocks, few but practicable stepping-stones, lifted their bare bulk out of it, between us and the spruce bush we had to strike through to avoid the Halfway and Macartney's picket. Some kind of a trail we must leave to Skunk's Misery, but it need not begin here, in the first place Macartney would look, if he were alive to look anywhere. Paulette's eyes followed mine as I thought it, and she nodded. It was without a track of any sort, after the lake trail ended, that she and I stopped in the thick spruces and put on our snowshoes for the last lap of the way to Skunk's Misery.

My dream girl's trained young body served her well. As she stepped out after me, I would never have guessed she had run a yard. It was easy enough to avoid the Halfway, and unlikely that Macartney's men would ever discover our devious track in the thick bush. Crossing the Caraquet road was the only place where we had to leave a track in the open. I did the best I could with it by picking up Paulette, and carrying her and her shoes into thick bush again; but I could not honestly feel much pleasure in the result. Any one with any sense would know my sunken shoe marks had carried double, but it was the best I could do. It was no pleasure to me either to hear Paulette exclaim sharply, as I set her down:

"Nicky, I forgot! Dick can snowshoe after us, if he's alive. Charliet made a lot of snowshoes at odd times, to sell in Quebec if he ever went back there. They were piled up in the shed behind the kinty, and I believe Dick knew—though he didn't remember it in time to save his men. If he follows us I"—her lip curled in fear and hatred—"Oh, I hope he's dead!"

So did I. Yet somehow I had never felt it. "Well, if he isn't," I said roughly, "he'll have to do twenty-two miles to catch up to our five, and then some to Skunk's Misery. He couldn't make good enough time round the lake to catch us to-night, supposing he knew where we were going; even on the chance of him, we've got to have one night's rest. And our only place to find it is Skunk's Misery!"

Paulette nodded and stepped out after me once more. It was dead toil in the soft snow, and it was slow; for Macartney or no Macartney, there was no making time in the untrodden bush. I cut our way as short as I dared, but do the best I could it was dark when we came to that forlorn, evil hollow in the gap of desolate hills that Caraquet folk called Skunk's Misery. That had its points though, considering we needed to reach Macartney's old lean-to unseen, for the Skunk's Misery population was in bed, and as I said before, they had no dogs to bark at us. In dead silence, with Paulette holding to my coat and our snowshoes under our arms, we went Indian file through the maze of winding tracks Skunk's Misery used for roads, under rocks and around them; and on the hard-trodden paths our feet left no trace. At least, I thought so: and it was just where I slipped up! If I had looked behind me, when Paulette would not let me carry her snowshoes, I would have seen the tails of them dragging a telltale cut in the snow behind her, as they sagged from her tired arm. But my eyes were straight before me, on the door of Macartney's lean-to. It hung open, as it had always hung, but I only glanced in to make sure it was empty. It was elsewhere I was going, around the huge boulder that backed the place, and down a gully that apparently brought up against blind rock—only I knew better. I found the opening of the rocky passage I had wormed down once before with my back scraping the living rock between me and the sky, and on my hands and knees, with Paulette after me, I went down it again. It ended without warning, just as I had known it would end, in an open cave. A glow of fire was ahead of me; and, stooping over it—what I had never imagined I should see with joy and gratitude—the boy I had left there, toasting a raw rabbit on a stick. That was all I saw. And what possessed me I don't know, but as I stood up I turned on Paulette with a sudden wave of stale jealousy overwhelming me, and a question I had kept back all the afternoon:

"Paulette, you're sure—sure—it's me, and not Dudley? That you didn't love the poor chap best?"

Paulette scrambled to her feet beside me. "It's you," she said clearly. "I told you Dudley never loved me, or I him. I'll mourn for him always, for he met his death through me. But he never wanted to marry me, and if he were alive, he'd be the first person to tell you so!"

There was a pause, definite, distinct, while you could count five. The boy at the fire started to frozen attention at sight of us, as sharply as his distorted body could start. But before he could speak, or I did, another voice answered Paulette's from the dark of the cave behind the fire,—an unexpected, mind-shattering voice, that took me toward it with one bound. "By gad," it said, "he would, would he? Two things have to go to that!"

I stood paralyzed where I had jumped. Paulette's snowshoes dropped clattering on the cave floor. Dudley Wilbraham, whom the wolves had eaten—little, fat, with a face more like an egg than ever, but whole and alive—stood in the dimness of the cave behind the fire and my Skunk's Misery boy!



CHAPTER XIX

SKUNK'S MISERY

Paulette said, "Oh my heavens, Dudley!" and went straight to pieces.

I don't know that I made much of a job of being calm myself. All I could get out was, "The wolves! We thought they'd eaten you—Paulette found your cap out by the Caraquet road."

Dudley, for whom the whole of La Chance had beaten the bush all one livelong night, whom his own sister had sworn was killed and eaten, Dudley made the best show of the three. He had a flask, of course,—when had he not? He dosed Paulette and me with what was left in it, but even with the whisky limbering my parched throat I hadn't sense to ask a coherent question. Dudley looked from Paulette to me and spoke pretty collectedly to both of us.

"I wasn't eaten, if that's what brought you two here—though judging from your conversation I imagine it wasn't. Thank the Lord you are here though, anyway. I've been pretty wild, tied up here with this snow. But"—sharply—"where the devil's Marcia?"

"Hidden away from Macartney, with Charliet to look after her." It was all I could bring myself to say, except that she thought Dudley was dead.

"Does Macartney think so too?" the corpse demanded.

"He worked hard enough to feel safe in thinking it," I returned bitterly, and came out with the whole story. How Macartney said the wolves had howled around the shack till their noise drove Dudley distracted, and he had slipped out after them unnoticed, with a gun; that Macartney, the two girls and half the men had gone to look for him, when he never returned, till Paulette found his wolf-doped cap torn up by the Caraquet road, and Marcia found him, in the bush—unrecognizable but for what rags of his sable-lined coat were left on his body. And Dudley's hard-boiled egg face never changed with one word of it.

"So that was how it was worked," he reflected quite composedly. "And Macartney thinks it was I Marcia found! Well, it wasn't—though I daresay it was my coat, all right, just as it was my cap Paulette picked up by the road. But it damn well would have been me, if it hadn't been for"—he paused casually, and pointed behind him—"Baker."

"Baker! That good-for-nothing devil who was always trailing after you? Why, Macartney said——" but I remembered Macartney had only said Baker was missing, too. I wheeled on the dimness of the inside cave and saw what I had missed in my flurry over Dudley. A second man—white-faced, black-eyebrowed, slim looking—was standing just where the fire glow did not reach him, staring at Paulette and me. I said, "Land of love, Baker!" And I may be forgiven if I swore.

Baker nodded as undramatically as Dudley. "Yes, it was me. I had sense enough all along to guess Macartney was going to finish Mr. Wilbraham with the wolf dope he'd tried out on you, if the rest of the gang hadn't. And I wouldn't stand for sculduddery like that, for one thing; and for another I thought I'd come out better in the end by sticking to the boss, like you seen me doing often enough! So I just told him he was being lain for and brought him out here. I knew this cave was safe, for I lived here two months before me and the rest of us dribbled into La Chance. And I knew the Halfway wasn't—for the two men who turned Billy Jones out of it, with a sham letter from the boss, were the two who drowned old Thompson! I've played honest in my way, Mr. Stretton, if you never thought so."

"Shut up," Dudley interrupted him indignantly. "I'd be where Marcia thought she found me, if it hadn't been for you. Listen, Stretton! I got fussy after you left for Billy Jones's that afternoon; I'd been hitting it up the day before, and you know how that leaves me! I didn't see why in blazes I hadn't gone with you to Billy's instead of sitting around the house, and a couple of hours after you left I started out to get a horse and follow you. But it's a lie that I heard wolves, or thought of them: there wasn't one around the place. Macartney wasn't around, either. I guess he was out in the bush fixing up the wolf-baited ground that was to get me, for he'd fixed up my coat and cap with it before he started. I thought something smelt like the devil when I put them on, but I never guessed it was my own things. I went out to the stable just as I might on any other day, only nobody happened to see me go, and right there I ran on Baker. I told him to come for a ride with me, but he didn't seem to think much of the horse racket; said he knew a short cut to Billy's, and it would be better for my head if we just walked. It was Baker told me the devilish reek I smelled was coming from my own coat, and I chucked it down by the stable door. God knows which of Macartney's men picked it up and wore it after I left it, for Marcia to find," even Dudley looked sick, "but it wasn't me! I smelt my cap, too, after I'd walked some of the muzziness out of me, and I threw that away—where Paulette found it. We didn't leave a sign of a track, of course; it was long before there was any snow. If I'd known why Baker had me out there, walking away from La Chance, I'd have turned back and defied Macartney, or I'd never have started. But it wasn't till it was black dark, and I'd walked enough sense into myself to ask why we were not getting to Billy Jones's, that Baker took his life in his hands—for you may bet I was fighting mad at having seemed to run away—and told me that you and I and all of us were in a trap that was going to spring and get us, and give Macartney our mine. He let out about Thompson's murder, and you and the wolf dope; and that Macartney'd kicked Billy Jones out of the Halfway with a forged dismissal from me, and had his own men waiting there to get you while he limed the bush and my cap and coat, for the wolves to get me. And you know I'd have been dead sure to go out after them with a gun, just as he said I did, if I'd heard them come yowling around the shack while I was in it! I'd have gone back to face Macartney, even then, only——Well, you've had experience of Macartney's wolves, and you'd know I couldn't! We could hear the row they were making even where we stood, miles away. We set off on the dead run for Caraquet and help, but we had to break the journey somewhere. We couldn't face Macartney's men at Billy's, for neither of us had a gun—and that's another lie to Macartney—and it was no good leaving the devil to run into hell. So Baker brought me here."

"But," I gasped, "I don't see how you missed me! I was here, too, that night!"

"Well, we weren't—till the morning," Dudley snapped in his old way. "It was just beginning to snow when we crawled down the burrow you'd crawled out of and found this place—and your boy."

"But I told him——D'ye mean he just let you find him?"

"He did not," grimly. "He was hidden away somewhere, and I don't suppose he'd ever have come out, if I hadn't happened to use what seems to have been your password! I said out loud that I'd give twenty dollars to any one who'd get me some food; and out comes your friend, and says you told him to trust any one who said that, and where was the twenty? So, after that, we settled down!"

"But——" Dudley's selfishness had always been colossal, yet this time it beat even me. "What did you suppose was going to become of your sister and Paulette—left with Macartney when you'd disappeared, and the Halfway picket had got me?" I burst out.

"My acquaintance with you made me hopeful they wouldn't get you," Dudley began drily, "and as for the girls——" but his sham indifference broke down. "Don't talk of it, will you?" he bellowed. "I did think you'd be all right, but I was in hell for those girls till I could get to Caraquet and take back help for them! Only this cursed snow stopped me. We had to wait till it was packed enough for Baker to sneak down to the Halfway and steal a couple of my own horses, for us to ride to Caraquet. But that's how I'm here—and how Marcia found a half-eaten man in my top-coat, that she thought was me!"

I was speechless. It was all so simple, even to Dudley's twenty dollars and my boy. But before I could say so, Dudley turned on me with his old vicious pounce. "Why in blazes don't you tell me what you left Marcia for, after bullying me because I did? And why are you and Paulette here, if you thought I was killed?"

"We left her because we had to, with a thousand tons of earth between us and the only way we could have got back to her alive," said I wrathfully. "And as for why we're here,"—I poured out the whole story of my return to La Chance, from Dudley's own funeral procession that met me and my bootless fight with Macartney, to the resurrection of Collins and Dunn, and Paulette's and my race across Lac Tremblant. I left out Marcia's share in my defeat, but Dudley gave a comprehending sniff.

"Marcia always was a fool about Macartney! But it's no matter, since she isn't with him—whether he's alive or dead. Only you were a worse fool, Stretton, to cross that lake with a girl in tow. I don't know why you weren't both drowned, like Thompson——" but his voice broke. He was a good little man, under his bad habits, or he never would have done what he had for Paulette. He muttered something about all the decent men who'd met their death because he wouldn't listen to Paulette when she tried to tell him the truth about Macartney, damned him up and down, and turned to Paulette with a sweet sort of roughness:

"You look done up, my girl! Here, get down by the fire and eat what our chef's got ready!" For the crippled boy had gone on with his cooking, regardless of the talk round him, and his rabbit was done.

But Paulette never looked at the food Dudley held out to her. "You're not angry, Dudley?" she asked very low. "I mean—for what I said to Nicky as we came in?"

"I was," but Dudley grinned in the half dark. "It was true enough, only nobody likes to hear their own obituary. But I knew about Stretton long ago, if you hadn't the sense to! You take him, my child, and my blessing. God knows I never asked you to marry an old soak like me!"

He shoved Paulette's hand into mine and stared at the two of us for a second. Then—"By gad," he added, in a different voice, "I hope Macartney's got drowned, or he may walk in on the lot of us!"

"How?" I demanded scornfully. "He couldn't do thirty-two miles in the time Paulette and I did fifteen, even if he knew where to do it to!"

"He doesn't have to, my young son," Dudley stood musing on it. "Baker and I didn't do any twenty, coming here; and it was Macartney's own path we came by. That doesn't go round by any Halfway! If he takes a fancy to come here by it, and strikes your tracks as you two came into Skunk's Misery, the rest wouldn't take him long! I believe—hang on a minute, while I speak to Baker!" He wheeled suddenly and disappeared into the dark of the cave where Baker stood aloof.

"You needn't worry about Macartney," I said to Paulette. "We didn't leave any tracks, once we got into broken snow!"

I turned at a rustle behind me and looked straight into the muzzle of Macartney's revolver and into Macartney's eyes!



CHAPTER XX

THE END

The boy at the fire let out a yelp and dropped flat. Dudley and Baker, invisible somewhere, neither spoke nor stirred. And I stood like a fool, as near the death of Nicholas Dane Stretton as ever I wish to get.

But Macartney only stood there, looking so much as usual that I guessed he must have rested outside the mouth of our burrow before he wormed down to tackle me.

"You wouldn't have left any tracks," he said, picking up what I'd just said in his everyday manner, if it had not been for the dog's grin he always wore when he was angry, "if I hadn't run on single snowshoe tracks carrying double, where you crossed the Caraquet road. And if one of you hadn't trailed your shoe tails through Skunk's Misery—that doesn't wear them!"

"How did you get here?" said I slowly, because I was calculating my spring to Macartney's gun hand.

"I walked," and I thought he had not noticed I was half a step nearer him. "If you meant me to drown myself following you over your lake, I didn't—thanks to the kind warning you made of my men. But I didn't imagine you'd drowned yourselves either—after I looked through a field glass! Charliet had plenty of snowshoes cached away; I was always quick on my feet; and after I struck your track the rest was simple—especially as you were fool enough to bring a girl here. I——" but his level voice was suddenly thick with passion. "Get back! If you try to grab my gun I'll shoot you, and your boy too, like dogs! You'll stay still and listen—to what I've to say. I've an account to settle with you, Stretton; now that I've cleaned up Dudley's, and he's dead!"

You could have heard a pin drop on the dead silence of that underground hole. Neither Dudley nor Baker stirred, and it hit me like a hammer that Macartney didn't know they were alive; he didn't know!

I stood as though I had been struck dumb; so did Paulette. Neither of us even flickered an eyelash toward the shadows behind us, where Dudley must be crouching, anything but dead, with Baker beside him. Perhaps it struck both of us, simultaneously, that Dudley had heard Macartney coming before we did and disappeared on purpose, thinking Macartney might speak naked truth to Paulette and myself, where he would have varnished it up to a mysteriously resurrected employer whom he might yet bamboozle as he always had bamboozled him. Anyhow, neither of us saw fit to give Dudley away. Macartney sneered into our silent faces.

"There's not much fight in you," he commented contemptuously. "Though it was never any good to try to fight me! If you like to have it in black and white, I've been all the brains of the business here—single-handed! It was I got the secret of the wolf bait from the mother of your lame friend here," he pointed with his unoccupied hand to my grovelling boy, "when first I followed Paulette out from New York and laid up in Skunk's Misery to wait till I had a clear way to get to La Chance. That old ass Thompson gave me that, when I scooped him up on the road. After I'd used him, two of my men drowned him in Lac Tremblant—and you'd never have guessed a word about it, if it hadn't been for his cursed card they overlooked in the shack here, where you found it. It was I put that bottle in your wagon the day it broke there. I did it before I knew Paulette was going to drive with you; that was the only thing in the whole business that ever gave me a scare! It was I got rid of Collins and Dunn"—I saw that he believed it, just as he believed he was rid of Dudley—"and the most of your men who might have stuck by you if it came to a fight for the mine. I had to shoot the last four of them, as you didn't find out that night in the assay office! I baited the bush that rid me of Dudley Wilbraham, with his yells about emeralds and hunting down Thompson's murderer; and I've got your and his mine, in spite of your blowing up and drowning all the men I meant to hold it with. But you found out most of that, even if it was a little late. What you didn't find out, or Dudley either, was that he was right about Van Ruyne's emeralds!"

Paulette leapt up like a wildcat. "You mean you took them?"

"I took them," he nodded sneeringly, and I saw her eyes blaze. "I took them—to get you into a hole you'd have to come to me to get out of!"

"But I didn't have to come to you! I——" but she spoke with sudden cutting deliberation. "I don't believe you. You were never in the Houstons' house that night. I should have seen you."

"Oh, seen me!" Macartney grinned. I think the two of them forgot me, forgot everything but that they were facing each other at last with the masks off. I know neither of them heard a slow, creeping, nearing sound in the long burrow behind Macartney, a sound that swung my blood up with the wild, furious hope that Collins and Dunn—anyhow Collins—was hot on Macartney's trail, as Macartney had been on Paulette's and mine, and was creeping down the burrow behind him now, ready to take him in the rear when I jumped at him from the front. I waited till whoever it was came close up; waited for the moment to grab Macartney, watching his triumphant, passionate eyes as he stared victoriously at Paulette.

"Seen me?" he repeated, and I hoped the sound of his own voice would deafen him to that other sound, that was so loud to me. "You saw the Houstons' guests, and their servants! You never thought of seeing the expert who was down from New York about the heating of Mrs. Houston's new orchid houses! I left the real man dead drunk in New York, in a place he wouldn't leave in a hurry; and the week-end you spent at the Houstons' I, and my plans, had the run of Mrs. Houston's library, that neither she nor any one else ever goes into. And," he laughed outright, "it was next your sitting room, opening on the same upstairs balcony! I had only to put my hand through an open window to scoop Van Ruyne's emeralds out of their case while you had your back turned, writing the note you sent outside the case, instead of inside! Remember?" But this time he did not laugh. "I missed fire about getting you that night, thanks to that fool Wilbraham happening round with his car. But now I'll take all I did this whole business for—and that's you,—Paulette Valenka!"

Paulette never took her eyes from him. "That's a lie," she said quite evenly. "Oh, not that you took the emeralds; I believe that. But it was not only to get me into trouble. It was for themselves! You had to steal something. You hadn't one penny."

"Not then!" Even in the gloom I saw two scarlet spots flare out like sealing-wax on the always dead blondeness of Macartney's cheeks. I thought I could hear his heart beat where I stood. "But I have now! With the emeralds, your late friend Dudley's mine, and you,"—his voice was unspeakably, insultingly significant, but that unheard rustle behind him, growing nearer, more unmistakable, kept me motionless. "By heaven, a man might call himself rich! Did you suppose Stretton here could fight me? Why, I've been the secret wolf he never had the nous to guess at! I——" he swung around on me like light, his revolver six inches from my ear. "Stand there," he shouted at me, "and die like Wilbraham, you——"

His hand dropped, his jaw fell with the half-spoken words in it; his eyes, all pupils, stared over my shoulder. I turned and saw Dudley,—Dudley, silent, watching us both; saw him even before I grabbed the gun out of Macartney's hanging, lax hand. But Macartney never so much as felt me do it. He stared paralyzed at Dudley—little, fat, with a face like a hard-boiled egg—standing silent against the dark of the inner cave.

Dudley had a nerve when you came through to it. "I've not died, yet," he snarled out suddenly.

I had the only gun in the place and the drop on Macartney; but I never stirred. That long-heard rustle in the burrow was close on me: was—

"My God, Marcia!" said I. I never even wondered about Collins and Dunn letting her get away. Marcia stood up in the entrance from the burrow, panting, purple-faced, exhausted. Marcia sprang to Macartney—not Dudley, I doubt if she even saw Dudley—with a cry out of her very soul.

"Mack, you're not Hutton—you never took those emeralds—and for that girl! Say it's a lie, and it's I you love! Mack, say you love me still!"

Macartney flung back a mechanical hand and swept her away from him like a fly. She fell and lay there. None of us had said a word since Dudley came out and faced Macartney. None of us said a word now. I saw, almost indifferently, Collins burst out of the burrow behind Macartney, as Marcia had burst out, and grab me. "Stretton," he gasped, "thank God—found your tracks. But that she-devil Marcia got away from me, and——" But in his turn he jerked taut where he stood, at sight of Dudley, and stood speechless.

But I never looked at him. I looked at nothing but Macartney's face.

It was rigid, as if it were a mask that had frozen on him. The sealing-wax scarlet on his cheeks had gone out like a turned-out lamp. His eyes went from Dudley to Collins and back again, as if they were the only living part of his deathly face.

"Ah," said Macartney, "A-ah!" He dropped on the floor all in one piece, like a cut-down tree.

Collins made a plunge for him. I sent Collins reeling.

"Let him alone, you young fool," I swore. "We've got him, and he's fainted. I've seen him like this before—the night he shot our own men in the assay office. It's only his old fainting fits."

"It's his new death," said Dudley, quite quietly. He came forward and bent over Macartney, laid a hand on his breast. "Can't you see the man's gone, Stretton? It killed him: the run here—the shock of seeing me. He must have had a heart like rotten quartz!"

Paulette, Collins, Baker, all of us, stood there blankly. We had not struck a blow, or raised a voice among the whole lot of us; Macartney's gun was still warm from his grasp whence I had snatched it; and Macartney—the secret wolf at La Chance, masquerader, thief, murderer—lay dead at our feet. I heard myself say out loud: "His heart was rotten: that was why he fainted in the assay office. But——Oh, the man was mad besides! He must have been." And over my words came another voice. It was Marcia's, and it made me sick.

"Macartney," she was screaming, "Macartney!" She ran round and round like a hen in a road, before me, Dudley, all of us; then flung herself on her brother as if she had only just realized him. "You're alive—you're not dead! Can't you see he never stole any emeralds nor loved that girl, any more than he killed you? You made up lies about him, all of you! And you stand here doing nothing for him. He——Oh, Mack, speak to me! Mack!"

She sprang to Macartney; dropped on her knees by the dead, handsome length of him; tore open his coat and shirt. But she knelt there, rigid, with her hand on his quiet heart.

Macartney had never stolen Van Ruyne's emeralds: she had just said it. There, around Macartney's bared throat, lying on the white skin of his chest, green lights in the dull fire-glow of the cave, were Van Ruyne's emeralds, that Paulette Brown—whose real name was Tatiana Paulina Valenka—had never seen or touched since she put them back into Van Ruyne's velvet case!

I will say Marcia Wilbraham knew when she was beaten. She cowered back to Dudley and began to cry; but it was with her arms round his neck. And the fat little man held her to his queer, kind heart. I turned my back sharply on the pair of them, and——My eyes met Paulette's!

There would be all sorts of fuss and unpleasantness to go through with the sheriff from Caraquet, over what was left of Macartney; there was old Thompson's death to be accounted for; Van Ruyne's emeralds to be returned to him, so that Tatiana Paulina Valenka, and not Paulette Brown, could marry that lucky, Indian-dark fool who was Nicky Stretton. There was Dudley's mine, too, all safe again, and such an incredible mine that even I would be passably rich out of it,—but I barely, just barely, thought of all those things. My dream girl's blue eyes were like stars in mine, under the burnt gold of her silk-soft hair. The clear carnation rose in her cheeks as I looked at her, where she stood close to me, all mine, as I had always dreamed she would be,—till I met her and was sick with doubt of it. She was mine! As far as I was concerned, this story had ended at Skunk's Misery,—where it had begun, if I had only guessed it. I gave an honest start as Collins jogged my elbow.

"We can't stay here, with that," he whispered, nodding at Macartney. "What do you think about getting out of this? We could leave—him—here, with Baker and the boy for a guard, till we can get the Caraquet people to come and see him. We've our snowshoes, and mine and the girls', besides Macartney's, that I guess he's done with. I think we could manage along as far as the Halfway in the morning, if we made a travois of boughs for Wilbraham!"

"But," I stared at him, "Macartney's picket's there!"

"Oh, Charliet and Dunn were going to clear them out with Miss Wilbraham's rifle, while I got after her, when she broke away on to Macartney's track here," Collins returned calmly. "I expect that's all right, and they've run. Anyhow, you've got Macartney's gun! You can go ahead and see."

But I had no need to. An abandoned picket has a way of knowing when the game is up, and Macartney's men had cleared out on the double, even before Charliet's first rifle bullet missed them. We caught them afterwards, half dead in the bush,—but that doesn't come in here. I walked into the Halfway with my dream girl beside me, and both of us jumped as Dudley suddenly poked his pig-eyed face between us.

"You needn't hop, you two," he commented irritably; "you can have your Old Nick, Paulette, for all me! What I'm thinking of's that boy—and Baker! I guess they saved my life all right between them, and I'm going to set them up for what's left of theirs. Got anything to say against that, hey?" with his old snarl.

"Not much," I returned soberly. But Paulette clasped both Dudley's podgy hands in hers.

"Oh, dear Dudley," she said softly. But there were tears in her eyes.

I know; for I kissed them away afterwards, when we were alone.

THE END