"Yes. But we're going to get them on our trail anyway."

"Sure we are—when he's rounded 'em up."

Bill produced his timepiece and studied it reflectively.

"It's an hour past midnight," he said. "We'll need to be on the move with daylight. We best hand them all the mileage we can make. We've got to act bright."

He sat lost in thought for some minutes, his watch still held in the palm of his hand. He was thinking of the immediate rather than of the significance of his friend's discovery. His cheerful face was grave. He was calculating chances with all the care of a clear-thinking, experienced brain.

John Kars was thinking too. But the direction which absorbed him was quite different. He was regarding his discovery in connection with Fort Mowbray.

At last he stirred restlessly.

"I can't get it right!" he exclaimed. "I just can't."

"How's that?"

Bill's plans were complete. For a day or so he knew that his would be the responsibility. Kars would have to take things easy.

"What can't you get right?" he added.

"Why, the whole darn play of it. That strike has been worked years, I'd say. We've trailed this country with eyes and ears mighty wide. Guess we haven't run into a thing about Bell River but what's darn unpleasant. Years that's been waiting. Shrieking for us to get around and help ourselves. Gee, I want to kick something."

Bill regarded his friend with serious eyes.

"You're going to butt in? You're going to play a hand in that—game?"

Kars' eyes widened in surprise.

"Sure." Then he added, "So are you." He smiled.

Bill shook his head.

"Not willingly—me," he said.

"Why not?"

Bill stretched himself out on his blankets. He was fully dressed. He intended to pass the night that way. He clasped his hands behind his neck, and his gaze was on the firelight beyond the door.

"First, because it's taking a useless chance. You don't need it," he said deliberately. "Second, because that was Allan Mowbray's strike. It was his big secret that he'd worked most of his days for, and, in the end, gave his life for. If we butt in there'll come a rush, and you'll rob a widow and a young girl who've never done you injury. It don't sound to me your way."

"You think Mrs. Mowbray and Jessie know of it?"

Bill glanced round quickly.

"Mrs. Mowbray—sure."

"Ah—not Jessie?"

"Can't say. Maybe not. More than likely—not."

"Alec?"

Bill shook his head decidedly.

"Not that boy."

"Murray McTavish?"

"He knows."

Kars nodded agreement.

"He knew when he was lying to me he didn't understand Allan visiting Bell River," he said.

Kars' eyes had become coldly contemplative. And in the brief silence that followed, for all his intimate understanding of his friend, Bill Brudenell was unable even to guess at the thoughts passing behind the icy reserve which seemed to have settled upon him.

But his questions found an answer much sooner than he expected. The silence was broken by a short, hard laugh of something like self-contempt.

"You an' me, Bill. We're going up there with an outfit that knows all about scrapping, and something about gold. We're going up there, and d'you know why? Oh, not to rob a widow and orphan." He laughed again in the same fashion. "Not a soul's got to know, or be wise to our play," he went on. "The strike they've worked won't be touched by us. We'll make our own. But for once gold isn't all we need. There's something else. I tell you I can't rest till we find it. There's a gal, Bill, on the Snake River, with eyes made to smile most all the time. They did—till Allan Mowbray got done up. Well, I got a notion they'll smile again some day, but it won't be till I've located just how her father came by his end, after years of working with the Bell River neches. I want to see those eyes smile, Bill. I want to see 'em smile bad. Maybe you think me some fool man. I allow I'm wiser than you guess. Maybe, even, I'm wiser than you, who've never yearned to see a gal's eyes smiling into yours in all your forty-three years. That's why we're going to butt in on that strike, and you're coming right along with me if I have to yank you there by your mighty badly fledged scalp."

Bill had turned over on his side. His shrewd eyes were smiling.

"Sounds like fever," he said, in his pleasant way. "I'll need to take the patient's temperature. Say, John, you won't have to haul on my scalp for any play like that. I'm in it—right up to my neck. That I've lived to see the day John Kars talks of marrying makes me feel I've not lived——"

"He's not talking of marriage," came the swift retort with flushed cheeks.

"No. But he's thinking it. Which, in a man like John Kars, comes pretty near meaning the same thing. Did you ask her, boy?"

Just for a moment resentment lit the other's eyes. It was on his tongue to make a sharp retort. But, under the deep, new emotion stirring him, an emotion that made him rather crave for a sympathy which, in all his strong life, he had never felt the necessity before, the desire melted away. In place of it he yielded to a rush of enthusiasm which surprised himself almost as much as it did his old friend.

"No, Bill." He laughed. "I—hadn't the nerve to. I don't know as I'll ever have the nerve to. But I want that little gal bad. I want her so bad I feel I could get right out an' trail around these darnation hills, an' skitter holes, hollering 'help' like some mangy coyote chasing up her young. Oh, I'm going to ask her. I'll have to ask her, if I have to get you to hand me the dope to fix my nerve right. And, say, if she hands me the G. B. for that bladder of taller-fat, Murray, why I'll just pack my traps, and hit the trail for Bell River, and I'll sit around and kill off every darned neche so she can keep right on handing herself all the gold she needs till she's sitting atop of a mountain of it, which is just about where I'd like to set her with these two dirty hands."

His eyes smiled as he held out his hands. But he went on at once.

"Now you've got it all. And I guess we'll let it go at that. You and me, we're going to set right out on this new play. There isn't going to be a word handed to a soul at the Fort, or anywhere else. Not a word. There's things behind Allan Mowbray's death we don't know. But that dirty half-breed knows 'em, if we don't. And the gold on the river has a big stake in the game. That being so, the folk Allan left behind him are to be robbed. Follow it? It kind of seems to me the folk at the Fort are helpless. But—but we aren't. So it's up to me, seeing how I feel about that little gal."

Kars had propped himself up under the effect of his rising excitement. Now, as he finished speaking, he dropped back on his blankets with some display of weariness.

Bill's eyes were watching him closely. He was wondering how much of this he would have heard had Kars been his usual, robust self. He did not think he would have heard so much.

He rose from his blankets.

"I'm all in, boy, on this enterprise," he said, in his amiable way. "Meanwhile I'm dousing this light. You'll sleep then."

He blew out the lamp before the other could protest.

"I'll just get a peek at the boys on watch. I need to fix things with Charley for the start up to-morrow."

He passed out of the tent crawling on his hands and knees. Nor did he return till he felt sure that his patient was well asleep.

Even then he did not seek his own blankets. For a moment he studied his friend's breathing with all his professional skill alert. Then, once more, he withdrew, and took his place at the camp-fire beside Peigan Charley.

The first sign of dawn saw the camp astir. Kars was accommodated with one of the Alaskan ponies under pressure from Bill, as the doctor. The whole outfit was on the move before daylight had matured. Neither the scout, nor the two white men were deceived. Each knew that they were not likely to make the headwaters of Snake River without molestation.

How right they were was abundantly proved on the afternoon of the second day.

They were passing through a wide defile, with the hills on either side of them rising to several hundreds of feet of dense forest. It was a shorter route towards their objective, but more dangerous by reason of the wide stretching tundra it was necessary to skirt.

Half-way through this defile came the first sign. It came with the distant crack of a rifle. Then the whistle of a speeding bullet, and the final "spat" of it as it embedded itself in an adjacent tree-trunk. Everybody understood. But it took Peigan Charley to sum up the situation, and the feeling of, at least, the leaders of the outfit.

"Fool neche!" he exclaimed, with a world of contemptuous regard flung in the direction whence came the sound. "Shoot lak devil. Much shoot. Plenty. Oh, yes."



CHAPTER XIII

THE FALL TRADE

The fall trade of the post was in full swing, and gave to the river, and the approaches of the Fort, an air of activity such as it usually lacked. Murray McTavish seemed to blossom under the pressure of the work entailed. His good humor became intensified, and his smile radiated upon the world about him. These times were the opportunity he found for the display of his abounding energies. They were healthy times, healthy for mind and body. To watch his activities was to marvel that he still retained the grossness of figure he so deplored.

A number of canoes were moored at the Mission landing. Others were secured at piles driven into the banks of the river. These were the boats of the Indians and half-breeds who came to trade their summer harvest at the old post. A few days later and these same craft would be speeding in the direction of distant homes, under the swift strokes of the paddle, bearing a modicum of winter stores as a result of their owner's traffic.

And what a mixed trade it was. Furs. Rough dried pelts, ranging from bear to fox, from seal to Alaskan sable. Furs of thirty or forty descriptions, each with its definite market value, poured into the Fort. The lucky pelt hunters were the men who brought black-fox, and Alaskan sable, or a few odd seals from the uncontrolled hunting grounds within the Arctic circle. These men departed with amply laden canoes, with, amongst their more precious trophies, inferior modern rifles and ammunition.

But these voyageurs did not make up the full tally of the fall trade which gave Murray so much joy. There were the men of the long trail. The long, land trail. Men who came with their whole outfit of belongings, women and children as well. They packed on foot, and on ponies, and in weird vehicles of primitive manufacture, accompanied by the dogs which would be needed for haulage should the winter snows overtake them before they completed their return journey.

These were of the lesser class trade. It was rare enough to obtain a parcel of the more valuable pelts from these folk. But they not infrequently brought small parcels of gold dust, which experience had taught them the curious mind of the white man set such store by.

Gold came in shyly, however, in the general trade. Indian methods were far too primitive in procuring it. Besides which, for all the value of it, traders in these remotenesses were apt to discourage its pursuit. It was difficult to understand the psychology of the trader on the subject. But no doubt he was largely influenced by the fear of a white invasion of his territory, should the news of the gold trade leak out. Maybe he argued that the stability of his legitimate trade was preferable to the risks of competition which an influx of white folk would bring. Anyway, open trade of this nature was certainly comparatively discouraged.

But Murray was not alone in the work of the fall trade. Ailsa Mowbray supported him in a very definite share. She had returned to the work of the store, such as she had undertaken in the days when her husband was alive and Murray had not yet made his appearance upon the river. Then, too, Alec had returned from his summer trail, his first real adventure without the guiding hand of his father to direct him. He had returned disillusioned. He had returned discontented. His summer bag was incomparable with his effort. It was far below that of the average river Indians.

He went back to the store, to the work he disliked, without any willingness, and only under the pressure of his perturbed mother and sister. Furthermore, he quickly began to display signs of rebellion against Murray McTavish's administration of affairs.

Murray was considering this attitude just now. He was standing alone, just within the gates of the Fort, and his meditative gaze was turned upon a wonderful sunset which lit the distant heights of the outspread glacial field with a myriad of varying tints.

There had been words with Alec only a few minutes before. It was on the subject of appraising values. Alec, in a careless, haphazard fashion, had baled some inferior pelts with a number of very beautiful foxes. Murray had discovered it by chance, and his words to the youth had been sharply admonishing.

Alec, tall as his father had been, muscular, bull-necked in his youthful physical strength, bull-headed in his passionate impetuosity, had flared up immoderately.

"Then do it your darn self!" he cried, the hot blood surging to his cheeks, and his handsome eyes aflame. "Maybe you think I'm hired man in this layout, an' you can hand me any old dope you fancy. Well, I tell you right here, you need to quit it. I don't stand for a thing from you that way. You'll bale your own darn buys, or get the boys to do it."

With this parting the work of his day was terminated. He departed for the Mission clearing, leaving Murray to digest his words at leisure.

Murray was digesting them now. They were rankling. Bitterly rankling in a memory which rarely forgot things. But his round, ample face displayed no definite feeling other than that which its tendency towards a smile suggested.

His own work was finished. Though he would not have admitted it he was tired, weary of the chaffer of it all. But his weariness was only the result of a day's labor, mental and physical, from sunrise to sunset.

The scene before him seemed to hold him. His big eyes never wavered for a moment. There was something of the eagle in the manner in which they stared unflinchingly at the radiant brilliancy of the western sky.

He stood thus for a long time. He displayed no sign of wearying of his contemplation. It was only an unusual sound which finally changed the direction of his gaze.

It was the soft shuffle of moccasined feet that reached his quick ears. It was coming up from the wooded slopes below him, a direction which came from the river, but not from the landing. His questioning eyes searched closely the sharp cut, where the pine trees gave way to the bald crown on which the Fort stood. And presently two figures loomed out of the shadow of the woods, and paused at the edge of them.

They were Indians in beaded buckskin, and each was laboring under a burden of pelts which seemed unusually heavy for its size. They were armed, too, with long rifles of a comparatively modern type.

Some moments passed while they surveyed the figure at the gates. Then, after the exchange of a few words between themselves, they came steadily on towards the Fort.

Murray waited. The men approached. Neither spoke until the men halted in front of the trader and relieved themselves of their burdens. Then it was that Murray spoke, and he spoke fluently in an Indian tongue. The men responded in their brief spasmodic fashion. After which the white man led the way into the store.

The incident was one such as might have occurred any time during these days of busy trading. There was certainly nothing peculiar about it in its general outline. And yet there was a subtle suggestion of something peculiar in it. Perhaps it was in the weight of the bales of pelts these men carried. Perhaps it was that Murray had addressed them in a definite Indian tongue first, without waiting to ascertain whence they hailed, or to what small tribe they belonged. Perhaps it was the lateness of the hour, and the chance that Murray should be waiting there after the day's work was completed, when it was his eager custom to seek his evening meal down at Ailsa Mowbray's home, and spend his brief leisure in company of Alec's sister.

It was nearly an hour before the two Indians reappeared. When they did so the last of the splendid sunset had disappeared behind the distant peaks. They left the Fort relieved of their goods, and bearing in their hands certain bundles of trade. They hurried away down the slope and vanished into the woods. And some minutes later the sound of the dipping paddles came faintly up upon the still evening air.

Murray had not yet reappeared. And it was still some time before his bulky form was visible hurrying down the short cut to the Mission clearing.

The evening meal at Ailsa Mowbray's house was more than half over when Murray appeared. He bustled into the little family circle, radiating good humor and friendliness. There could be no doubt of his apparent mood.

The comfort and homeliness of the atmosphere into which he plunged were beyond words. The large room was well lit with good quality oil lamps, whose warmth of light was mellow, and left sufficient shadow in the remoter corners to rob the scene of any garishness. The stove was roaring under its opened damper. The air smelt warm and good, and the pungent odor of hot coffee was not without pleasure to the hungry man.

Mrs. Mowbray and Jessie retained their seats at the amply filled table. But Alec rose from his and departed without a word, or even a glance in Murray's smiling direction. The rudeness, the petulance of his action! These things left his mother and sister in suspense.

But Murray took charge of the situation with a promptness and ease that cleared what looked like the further gathering of storm-clouds.

"Say, ma'am," he cried at once, "I just deserve all you feel like saying, but don't say, anyway. Late? Why, I guess I'm nearly an hour late. But I got hung up with some freight coming in just as I was quitting. I'm real sorry. Maybe Jessie here's going to hand me some words. That so, Jessie?"

His smiling eyes sought the girl's with kindly good nature. But Jessie did not respond. Her eyes were serious, and her mother came to her rescue.

"That doesn't matter a thing, Murray," she said, in her straightforward fashion, as she poured out the man's coffee, while he took his seat opposite Jessie. Then she glanced at the door through which Alec had taken himself off. "But what's this with Alec? You've had words. He's been telling us, and he seems mad about things, and—you. What's the matter with the boy? What's the matter between you, anyway?"

The man shrugged helplessly. Nor would his face mold itself into a display of seriousness to match the two pairs of beautiful eyes regarding him.

"Why, I guess we had a few words," he said easily. "Maybe I was hasty. Maybe he was. It don't figure anyway. And, seeing it's not Alec's way to lie about things, I don't suppose there's need for me to tell you the story of it. Y'see, ma'am, I ought to remember Alec's just a boy full of high spirits, and that sort of thing, but, in the rush of work, why, it isn't always easy. After supper I figger to get a yarn with him and fix things up."

Then he laughed with such a ring of genuineness that Jessie found herself responding to it, and even her mother's eyes smiled.

"I'm not easy when I'm on the jump. I guess nobody is, not even Alec." Murray turned to Jessie. "It's queer folks act the way they do. Ever see two cats play? They're the best of friends. They'll play an hour, clawing and biting. Then in a second it's dead earnest. The fur you could gather after that would stuff a—down pillow."

Jessie's smile had vanished. She sighed.

"But it's not that way with you two folk. The cats will be playing around again in five minutes. Alec's up against you all the time. And you?"

Murray's smile still remained.

"Alec's his father's son, I guess. His father was my best friend. His mother and sister I hope and believe are that way, too." Then quite suddenly his big eyes became almost painfully serious. The deep glow in them shone out at those he was facing. "Say, I'm going to tell you folks just how I feel about this thing. It kind of seems this is the moment to talk clear out. Alec's trouble is the life here. I can see it most every way. He's a good boy. He's got points I'd like to know I possess. He's his father over again, without his father's experience. Say, he's a blood colt that needs the horse-breaker of Life, and, unless he gets it, all the fine points in him are going to get blunted and useless, and there's things in him going to grow up and queer him for life. He needs to think right, and we folks here can't teach him that way. Not even Father Jose. There's jest one thing to teach him, and that's Life itself—on his own. If I figger right he'll flounder around. He'll hit snags. He'll get bumped, and, maybe, have some nasty falls. But it's the only way for a boy of his spirit, and—weakness."

"Weakness?"

Jessie's echo came sharply. She resented the charge with all a sister's loyalty. But her mother took up her challenge.

"I'm afraid Murray's right—in a way," she admitted, with a sigh. She hated the admission, but she and her dead husband had long since arrived at the same conclusion. "It worries me to think of," she went on. "And it worries me to think of him out on the world—alone. I wish I knew what's best. I've talked to Father Jose, and he agrees with you, Murray. But——"

For some moments Jessie had been thinking hard. She was angry with Murray. She was almost angry with her mother. Now she looked over at the man, and her pretty eyes had a challenge in them.

"I'll go and ask Alec to come right along here," she said. "You can talk to him here and now, Murray. Let him decide things for himself, and you, mother, abide by them. You both guess he's a boy. He's not. He's a man. And he's going to be a good man. There never was any good in women trying to think for men, any more than men-folk can think for women. And there's no use in Murray handing us these things when Alec's not here."

She started up from her seat. Her mother protested.

"It'll make trouble, Jessie," she said sharply. "The boy's in no mood for talk—with Murray," she added warningly.

But Murray, himself, became the deciding factor.

"Jessie's right, ma'am," he said quickly.

And in those words he came nearer to the good-will he sought in the girl than he had ever been before.

"You'll talk to him as you've—said to us?" the mother demanded.

Murray's smile was warmly affirmative.

"I'll do all I know."

Ailsa Mowbray was left without further protest. But she offered no approval. Just for one second Jessie glanced in her mother's direction. It was the girl in her seeking its final counsel from the source towards which it always looked. But as none was forthcoming she was left to the fact of Murray's acceptance of her challenge.

She turned from the table and passed out of the room.

Ailsa Mowbray raised a pair of handsome, troubled eyes to the factor's face. Her confidence in this man was second only to the confidence she had always had in her husband's judgment.

"Do you think it wise?" she demurred.

"It's the only thing, ma'am," Murray replied seriously. "Jessie's dead right." He held up one fleshy hand and clenched it tightly. "Trouble needs to be crushed like that—firmly. There's a whole heap of trouble lying around in this thing. I've got to do the best for the folks Allan left behind, ma'am, and in this I guess Jessie's shown me the way. Do you feel you best step around while I talk to Alec? There's liable to be awkward moments."

The mother understood. She had no desire to pry into the methods of men in their dealings with each other. She rose from the table and passed into her kitchen beyond.



CHAPTER XIV

ARRIVALS IN THE NIGHT

Murray McTavish was standing before the glowing wood stove when Alec entered the room. The factor was gazing down at the iron box of it with his fat, strong hands outspread to the warmth. He was not cold. He had no desire for the warmth. He was thinking.

He was not a prepossessing figure. His clothing bulged in almost every direction. In age this loses its ugliness. In a young man there is no more painful disadvantage. His dark hair was smoothly brushed, almost to sleekness. His clothing was good, and by no means characteristic of the country. He was the epitome of a business man of civilization, given, perhaps, to indulgence in the luxuries of the table. Nature had acted unkindly by him. He knew it, and resented it with passionate bitterness.

Alec Mowbray displayed no hesitation. He entered the room quickly, and in a truculent way, and closed the door with some sharpness behind him. The action displayed his mood. And something of his character, too.

Murray took him in from head to foot without appearing to observe him. Nor was his regard untinged with envy. The youngster was over six feet in height. In his way he was as handsome as his mother had been. There was much of his dead father about him, too. But his eyes had none of the steadiness of either of his parents. His mouth was soft, and his chin was too pointed, and without the thrust of power. But for all these things his looks were beyond question. His fair, crisply curling hair, his handsome eyes, must have given him an appeal to almost any woman. Murray felt that this was so. He envied him and—— He looked definitely in the boy's direction in response to a rough challenge.

"Well—what is it?"

Murray's shining eyes gazed steadily at him. The smile so usual to him had been carefully set aside. It left his face almost expressionless as he replied.

"I want to tell you I'm sorry for—this afternoon. Darn sorry. I was on the jump with work, and didn't pause to think. I hadn't the right to act the way I did. And—well, I guess I'm real sorry. Will you shake?"

The boy was all impulse, and his impulses were untainted by anything more serious than hot-headed resentment and momentary intolerance. Much of his dislike of Murray was irresponsible instinct. He knew, in his calmer moments, he had neither desire nor reason to dislike Murray. Somehow the dislike had grown up with him, as sometimes a boy's dislike of some one in authority over him grows up—without reason or understanding.

But Murray's amends were too deliberate and definite to fail to appeal to all that was most generous and impulsive in Alec. It was impossible for him to listen to a man like Murray, generously apologizing to him, without going more than half-way to meet him. His face cleared of its shadow. His hot eyes smiled, as many times Murray had seen his mother smile. He came towards the stove with outstretched hand. A hand that could crush like a vice.

"Why, you just don't need to say another word, Murray," he exclaimed. "And, anyway, I guess you were right. I'd slacked on those pelts and knew it, and—and that's what made me mad—you lighting on it."

The two men shook hands, and Alec, as he withdrew his, passed it across his forehead and ran his fingers through his hair.

"But say, Murray," he went on, in a tone of friendliness that rarely existed between them. "I'm sick. Sick to death with it all—and that's about the whole of the trouble. It's no sort of good. I can't even keep my mind on the work, let alone do it right. I hate the old store. Guess I must get out. I need to feel I can breathe. I need to live. Say, I feel like some darn cabbage setting around in the middle of a patch. Jess doesn't understand. Mother doesn't. Sometimes I kind of fancy Father Jose understands. But you know. You've lived in the world. You've seen it all, and know it. Well, say, am I to be kept around this forgotten land till my whiskers freeze into sloppy icicles? I just can't do it. I've tried. Maybe you'll never know how I've tried—because of mother, and Jess, and the old dad. Well, I've quit now. I've got to get out a while, or—or things are going to bust. Do you know how I feel? Do you get me? I'll be crazy with six months more of this Fort, and these rotten neches. Gee! When I think how John Kars has lived, and where he's lived, it gets me beat seeing him hunting the long trail in these back lands."

Murray's smile had returned. But it was encouraging and friendly, and lacked all fixity.

"Maybe the other life set him crazy, same as this is fixing you," he said, with perfect amiability.

The boy laughed incredulously. He flung himself into his mother's chair, and looked up at Murray's face above the stove.

"I don't believe that life could set folk crazy. There's too much to it," he laughed. He went on a moment later with a warmth of enthusiasm that must have been heart-breaking to those of greater experience. "Think of a city," he cried, almost ecstatically. "A big, live city. All lights at night, and all rushing in daylight. Men eager and striving in competition. Meeting, and doing, and living. Women, beautiful, and dressed like pictures, with never a thought but the joy of life, and the luxury of it all. And these folk without a smell of the dollars we possess. Folk without a difference from us. Think of the houses, the shows, the railroads. The street cars. The sleighs. The automobiles. The hotels. The dance halls. The—the—oh, gee, it makes me sick to think of all I've missed and you've seen. I can't—I just can't stand for it much longer."

Murray nodded.

"Guess I—understand." Then, in a moment, his eyes became serious, as though some feeling stirred them that prompted a warning he was powerless to withhold. "It's an elegant picture, the way you see it. But it's not the only picture. The other picture comes later in life, and if I tried to paint it for you I don't reckon you'd be able to see it—till later in life. Anyway, a man needs to make his own experience. Guess the world's all you see in it, sure. But there's a whole heap in it you don't see—now. Say, and those things you don't see are darn ugly. So ugly the time'll come you can't stand for 'em any more than you can stand for the dozy life around here now. Those folk you see in your dandy picture are wage slaves worshiping the gods of this darned wilderness just as we are right here. Just as are all the folks who come around this country, and I'd say there's many folks hating all the things you fancy, as bad as you hate the life you've been raised to right here. Still, I guess it's up to you."

"I'd give a heap to have mother think that way," Alec responded with a shade of moodiness.

"She does think that way."

The youngster sprang from his chair. His eyes were shining, and a joyous flush mounted to his handsome brow. There was no mistaking the reckless youth in him.

"She does? Then—say, it's you who've persuaded her. There hasn't been a day she hasn't tried to keep me right here, like—like some darn kid. She figgers it's up to me to choose what I'll do?" he cried incredulously.

Murray nodded. His eyes were studying the youth closely.

"Then I'll tell her right away." Alec laughed a whole-hearted, care-free laugh. "I'll ask her for a stake, and then for Leaping Horse. Maybe Seattle, and 'Frisco—New York! Murray, if you've done this for me, I'm your slave for life. Say, I'd come near washing your clothes for you, and I can't think of a thing lower. You'll back me when I put it to her?"

"There's no need. She'll do just as you say."

Murray's moment of serious regard had passed. He was smiling his inscrutable smile again.

"When? When?"

The eagerness of it. It was almost tragic.

"Best go down with me," Murray said. "I'm making Leaping Horse early this fall on the winter trail. I'm needing stocks. I'm needing arms and stuff. How'd that fix you?"

"Bully!" Then the boy laughed out of the joy of his heart. "But fix it early. Fix it good and early."

The exclamation came in such a tone that pity seemed the only emotion for it to inspire.

But Murray had finished. Whatever he felt there was no display of any emotion in him. And pity the least of all. He crossed to the door which opened into the kitchen. He opened it. In response to his call Ailsa Mowbray appeared, followed by Jessie.

Murray indicated Alec with a nod.

"We're good friends again," he said. "We've acted like two school kids, eh, Alec?" he added. "And now we've made it up. Alec figgers he'd like to go down with me this fall to Leaping Horse, Seattle, 'Frisco, and maybe even New York. I told him I guessed you'd stake him."

The widowed mother did not reply at once. The aging face was turned in the direction of the son who meant so much to her. Her eyes, so handsome and steady, were wistful. They gazed into the joy-lit face of her boy. She could not deny him.

"Sure, Alec, dear. Just ask me what you need—if you must go."

Jessie gazed from one to the other of the three people her life seemed bound up with. Alec she loved but feared for, in her girlish wisdom. Murray she did not understand. Her mother she loved with a devotion redoubled since her father's murder. Moreover, she regarded her with perfect trust in her wisdom.

The change wrought by Murray in a few minutes, however, was too startling for her. Their destinies almost seemed to be swayed by him. It seemed to her alarming, and not without a vague suggestion of terror.

Father Jose was lounging over his own wood stove in the comfort of a pair of felt slippers, his feet propped up on the seat of another chair.

He was a quaint little figure in his black, unclerical suit, and the warm cloth cap of a like hue drawn carefully over a wide expanse of baldness which Nature had imposed upon him. His alert face, with its eyes whose keenness was remarkable and whose color nearly matched the fringe of gray hair still left to him, gave him an interest which gained nothing from his surroundings in the simple life he lived. It was a face of intellect, and gentle-heartedness. It was a face of purpose, too. The purpose which urges the humbler devotee to a charity which takes the form of human rather than mere spiritual help.

Father Jose loved humanity because it was humanity. Creed and race made no difference to him. It was his way to stand beside the stile of Life ready to help any, and everybody, over it who needed his help. He saw little beyond that. He concerned himself with no doctrine in the process. Help—physical, moral. That was his creed. And every day of his life he lived up to it.

The habits of the white folk at St. Agatha Mission varied little enough from day to day. It was the custom to foregather at Mrs. Mowbray's home in the evening. After which, with unfailing regularity, Murray McTavish was wont to join the little priest in his Mission House for a few minutes before retiring for the night to his sleeping quarters up at the Fort.

It was eleven o'clock, and the two men were together now in the shanty which served the priest as a home.

It was a pathetic parody of all that home usually conveys. The comfort of it was only the comfort radiating from the contentment of the owner in it. Its structure was powerful to resist storm. Its furnishing was that which the priest had been able to manufacture himself. But the stove had been a present from Allan Mowbray. The walls were whitened with a lime wash which disguised the primitive plaster filling in between the lateral logs. There were some photographs pinned up to help disguise other defects. There were odds and ends of bookshelves hung about, all laden to the limit of their capacity with a library which had been laboriously collected during the long life of Mission work. Four rough chairs formed the seating accommodation. A table, made with a great expenditure of labor, and covered with an old blanket, served as a desk. Then, at the far end of the room, under a cotton ceiling, to save them from the dust from the thatch above, stood four trestle beds, each with ample blankets spread over it. Three of these were for wayfarers, and the fourth, in emergency, for the same purpose. Otherwise the fourth was Father Jose's own bed. Behind this building, and opening out of it, was a kitchen. This was the entire habitation of a man who had dedicated his life to the service of others.

Murray was sitting at the other side of the stove and his bulky figure was only partly visible to the priest from behind the stovepipe. Both men were smoking their final pipe before retiring. The priest was listening to the trader in that watchful manner of one deeply interested. They were talking of Alec, and the prospects of the new decision. Murray's thoughts were finding harsh expression.

"Say, we're all between the devil and the deep sea," he said, with a hard laugh. "The boy's only fit to be tied to a woman's strings. That's how I see it. Just as I see the other side of it. He's got to be allowed to make his own gait. If he doesn't, why—things are just going to break some way."

The priest nodded. He was troubled, and his trouble looked out of his keen eyes.

"Yes," he agreed. "And the devil's mostly in the deep waters, too. It's devil all around."

"Sure it is." Murray bent down to the stove and lit a twist of paper for his pipe. "Do you know the thing that's going to happen? When we get clear away from here, and that boy's pocket is filled with the bills his ma has handed him, I'll have as much hold on him as he's going to have on those dollars. If I butt in he'll send me to hell quick. And if I don't feel like taking his dope lying down there'll be something like murder done. If I'm any judge of boys, or men, that kid's going to find every muck hole in Leaping Horse—and there's some—and he's going to wallow in 'em till some one comes along and hauls him clear of the filth. What he's going to be like after—why, the thought makes me sweat! And Allan—Allan was my friend."

"But—you advised his mother?" The priest's eyes were searching.

Murray crushed his paper tight in his hand.

"How'd you have done?" he demanded shortly.

The priest weighed his words before replying.

"The same as you," he said at last. "Life's full up of pot holes. We can't learn to navigate right if we don't fall into some of them. I've taught that boy from his first days. He's the makings of anything, in a way. He can't be kept here. He's got to get out, and work off his youthful insanity. Whatever comes of it, it won't be so bad as if he stopped around. I think you've done the best." He sighed. "We must hope, and watch, and—be ready to help when the signal comes. God grant he comes to no——"

He broke off and turned towards the heavy closed door of the shanty, in response to a sharp knocking. In a moment he was on his feet as the door was thrust open, and two familiar figures pushed their way in.

"Why, John Kars, this is the best sight I've had in weeks," cried the priest, with cordiality in every tone of his voice, and every feature of his honest face. "And, Dr. Bill, too? This is fine. Come right in."

The Padre's cordiality found full reflection in his visitors' faces as they wrung his hand.

"It's been some hustle getting here," said Kars. "There wasn't a chance sending on word. We made the landing, and came right along up. Ha, Murray. Say, we're in luck."

Both men shook hands with the factor, while the priest drew up the other chairs to the stove, which he replenished with a fresh supply of logs from the corner of the room.

"But I guess we're birds of bad omen," Kars went on, addressing Murray in particular. "The neches are out on Bell River, and they sniped us right along down to within twenty miles of the Fort."

"The Bell River neches within twenty miles of the Fort?"

It was the priest who answered him. His question was full of alarm. He was thinking of the women of the Mission, white as well as colored.

Murray remained silent while Kars and Bill dropped wearily into the chairs set for them. Then, as the great bulk of the man he disliked settled itself, and he held out his chilled hands to the comforting stove, his voice broke the silence which followed on the priest's expression of alarm.

"Best tell us it right away. We'll need to act quick," he said, his eyes shining under the emotion stirring him.

Kars looked across at the gross figure which suggested so little of the man's real energy. His steady eyes were unreadable. His thoughts were his own, masked as emphatically as any Indian chief's at a council.

"They handed me this," he said, with a hard laugh, indicating the bandage which still surrounded his neck, although his wound had almost completely healed under the skilful treatment of Dr. Bill. "We hit their trail nearly two days from Bell River. They'd massacred an outfit of traveling Indians, and burnt their camp out. However, we kept ahead of them, and made the headwaters of the river. But we didn't shake 'em. Not by a sight. They hung on our trail, I guess, for nearly three weeks. We lost 'em twenty miles back. That's all."

Bill and the priest sat with eyes on Murray. The responsibility of the post was his. Kars, too, seemed to be looking to the factor.

Murray gave no outward sign for some moments. His dark eyes were burning with the deep fires which belonged to them. He sat still. Quite still. Then he spoke, and something of the force of the man rang in his words.

"We got the arms for an outfit. But I don't guess we got enough for defence of the post. It can't come to that. We daren't let it. I'm getting a big outfit up this fall. Meanwhile, we'll need to get busy."

He pulled out his timepiece and studied it deliberately. Then he closed its case with a snap and stood up. He looked down into Kars' watchful eyes.

"They're on the river? Twenty miles back?"

His questions came sharply, and Kars nodded.

"They're in big force?"

Again Kars made a sign, but this time in the negative.

"I don't think it," he said.

"Right. I'll be on the trail in an hour."

The factor turned to the Padre.

"Say, just rouse out the boys while I get other things fixed. There isn't a minute to waste."

He waited for no reply, but turned at once to Kars and Bill.

"Maybe you fellers'll keep your outfit right here. There's the women-folk. It's in case of—accident?"

"I'll join you, and leave Bill, here, with the Padre and the outfit." Kars' suggestion came on the instant.

But Murray vetoed it promptly. He shook his head.

"It's up to me," he said curtly. Then he became more expansive. "You've had yours. I'm looking for mine. I'm getting out for the sake of the women-folk. That's why I'm asking you to stop right here. You can't tell. Maybe they'll need all the help we can hand them. I've always figgered on this play. Best act my way."

There was something like a flicker of the eyelid as Kars acquiesced with a nod. Except for that his rugged face was deadly serious. He filled his pipe with a leisureliness which seemed incompatible with the conditions of the moment. Bill seemed to be engrossed in the study of the stove. Murray had turned to the Padre.

"Not a word to the women. We don't need to scare them. This thing's got to be fixed sudden and sharp."

A moment later he was gone.

The Padre was climbing into a heavy overcoat. The night was chill enough, and the little missionary had more warmth in his heart than he had in his blood channels. He moved across to the door to do his part of the work, when Kars' voice arrested him.

"Say, Padre," he cried, "don't feel worried too much. Murray'll fix things."

His eyes were smiling as the priest turned and looked into them. Bill was smiling, too.

"They are twenty miles back—on the river?"

The priest's demand was significant. The smiles of these men had raised a doubt in his mind.

"Sure."

"Then—the position's bad."

Bill Brudenell spoke for the first time.

"The post and Mission's safe—anyway. Murray'll see to that."



CHAPTER XV

FATHER JOSE PROBES

It was a startled community that awoke next morning at Fort Mowbray. The news was abroad at the earliest hour, and it reached Jessie Mowbray in the kitchen, as she made her appearance to superintend the preparation of breakfast. The Indian wench told her, with picturesque embellishments, such as are reserved for the native tongue. Jessie listened to the story of the descent of the Bell River Indians to the region of the Fort with feelings no less disturbed than those of the colored woman. They were no longer mistress and servant. They were just two women confronting a common danger.

But the news of the arrival of John Kars, wounded, swiftly overwhelmed all other considerations in Jessie's mind. Breakfast was left in the hands of the squaw while the girl hastened to her mother's room.

Ailsa Mowbray listened to the girl's story with no outward signs of fear. She had passed through the worst fires that could assail her a year ago. Nothing the warlike Indians could threaten now could reproduce the terror of that time.

The story of it came in a rush. But it was not until Jessie told of John Kars, and his wounded condition, that the real emotions of the moment were revealed. She implored her mother to permit her to go at once and minister to him, to learn the truth about his condition, to hear, first hand, of the catastrophe that had happened. Nor did she passively yield to her mother's kindly admonishment.

"Why, child," she said, in her steady smiling way, "this country's surely got right into your veins. You're like an unbroken colt. You're as wild as any of those kiddies you figger to teach over at the Mission. It's not for a child of mine to wait around on any man living. Not even John Kars. Guess he's got Dr. Bill and Father Jose, anyway. Maybe they'll get along over later."

The girl flushed scarlet.

"Oh, mother," she cried in distress, "don't—just don't think that way of me. I—love him, and wouldn't help it if I could. But he's sick. Maybe he's sick to death. Men—men can't fix sick folk. They can't—sure."

The mother looked into the girl's eyes with gentle tolerance, and a certain amusement.

"Not even Dr. Bill, who's had sick folk on his hands most all his life?" she demanded. "Not even Jose, who's nursed half the kiddies at the Mission one time or another?" She shook her head. "Besides, you only know the things Susan's handed you out of her fool head. And when Susan talks, truth isn't a circumstance. I wouldn't say but what John Kars hasn't got shot up at all—till I see him."

For all her easy manner she was troubled. And when Jessie had taken herself back to the kitchen the ominous lines, which had gathered in her face since her husband's murder, deepened. Distress looked out of the eyes which gazed back at her out of her mirror as she stood before it dressing her hair in the simple fashion of her life.

Bell River! She had learned to hate and fear its very name. Her whole destiny, the destiny of all belonging to her seemed to be bound up in that fateful secret which had been her husband's, and to which she had been only partially admitted. Somehow she felt that the day must come when she would have to assert her position to Murray, and once and for all break from under the evil spell of Bell River, which seemed to hang over her life.

But the shadow of it all lifted when later in the day John Kars and Dr. Bill presented themselves. Kars' wound was almost completely healed, and Jessie's delight knew no bounds. The mother reflected her daughter's happiness, and she found herself able to listen to the story of the adventures of these men without anything of the unease which had at first assailed her.

Their story was substantially that which had been told to Murray, and it was told with a matter-of-fact indifference, and made light of, in the strong tones of John Kars, on whom danger seemed to have so little effect. As Mrs. Mowbray listened she realized something of the strength of this man. The purpose in him. The absolute reliance with which he dealt with events as they confronted him. And so her thoughts passed on to the girl who loved him, and she wondered, and more than ever saw the hopelessness of Murray's aspirations.

The men took their departure, and, at Kars' invitation, Jessie went with them to inspect their outfit. The mother was left gazing after them from the open doorway. For all the aging since her husband's death, she was still a handsome woman in her simple morning gown of a bygone fashion.

She watched the three as they moved away in the direction of the woodland avenue, which, years ago, she had helped to clear. Her eyes and thoughts were on the man, and the girl at his side. Bill had far less place in them.

She was thinking, and wondering, and hoping, as, perhaps, only a mother can hope. And so engrossed was she that she did not observe the approach of Father Jose, who came from the Indian camp amongst the straight-limbed pine woods. It was only when the little man spoke that she bestirred herself.

"A swell pair, ma'am," he said, pausing beside the doorway, his keen face smiling as his eyes followed the rapid gait of the girl striving to keep pace with her companion's long strides.

"You mean the men?"

There was no self-consciousness in Ailsa Mowbray. The priest shook his head.

"Jessie and Kars."

The woman's steady eyes regarded the priest for a moment.

"I—wonder what you're—guessing."

The priest's smile deepened.

"That you'd sooner it was he than—Murray McTavish."

The woman watched the departing figures as they passed out of view, vanishing behind the cutting where the trees stopped short.

"Is it to be—either of them?"

"Sure." The man's reply came definitely. "But Murray hasn't a chance. She'll marry Kars, or no one around this Mission."

The woman sighed.

"I promised Murray to—that his cause shouldn't suffer at my hands. Murray's a straight man. His interests are ours. Maybe—it would be a good thing."

"Then he asked you?"

The little priest's question came on the instant. And the glance accompanying it was anxious.

"Yes."

For some moments no word passed between them. The woman was looking back with regret at the time when Murray had appealed to her. Father Jose was searching his heart to fortify his purpose.

Finally he shook his white head.

"Ma'am," he said seriously, "it's not good for older folks to seek to fix these things for the young people who belong to them. Not even mothers." Then his manner changed, and a sly, upward, smiling glance was turned upon the woman's face above him. "I haven't a thing against Murray. Nor have you. But I'd hate to see him marry Jessie. So would you. I—I wonder why."

The mother's reply came at once. It came with that curious brusqueness which so many women use when forced to a reluctant admission.

"That's so," she said. "I should hate it, too. I didn't want to say it. I didn't want to admit it—even to myself. You've made me do both, and—you've no right to. Murray was Allan's trusted friend and partner. He's been our friend—my friend—right along. Why should I hate the thought of him for Jessie? Can you tell me?" She shook her head impatiently. "How could you? I couldn't tell myself."

The shadow had deepened in Ailsa Mowbray's eyes. She knew she was unjust. She knew she was going back on her given word. She despised the thought. It was treachery. Yet she knew that both had become definite in her mind from the moment when Jessie had involuntarily confided her secret to her.

Father Jose shook his head.

"No. I can't tell you those things, ma'am," he said. "But I'm glad of them. Very glad."

He drew a deep breath as his gaze, abstracted, far off, was turned in the direction where his Mission stood in all its pristine, makeshift simplicity. The mother turned on him sharply as his quiet reply reached her.

"Why?" she demanded. "Why are you glad?"

Her eyes were searching his clean-cut profile. She knew she was seeking this man's considered judgment. She knew she was seeking to probe the feeling and thought which prompted his approval, because of her faith in him.

"Because Jessie's worth a—better man."

"Better?"

"Surely."

For all his prompt reply Father Jose remained searching the confines of the woodland clearing in his curiously abstracted fashion.

"You see, ma'am," he went on presently, helping himself to a pinch of snuff, and shutting the box with a sharp slam, "goodness is just a matter of degree. That's goodness as we folk of the earth understand it. We see results. We don't see the motive. It's motive that counts in all goodness. The man who lives straight, who acts straight when temptation offers, may be no better than—than the man who falls for evil. I once knew a saint who was hanged by the neck because he murdered a man. He gave his life, and intended to give it, for a poor weak fellow creature who was being tortured out of her senses by a man who was no better than a hound of Hell. That man was made of the same stuff as John Kars, if I know him. I can't see Murray McTavish acting that way. Yet I could see him act like the other feller—if it suited him. Murray's good. Sure he's good. But John Kars is—better."

The mother sighed.

"I feel that way, too." Then in a moment her eyes lit with a subtle apprehension, as though the man's words had planted a poison in her heart that was rapidly spreading through her veins. "But there's nothing wrong with Murray? I mean like—like you said."

The little priest's smile was good to see.

"Not a thing, ma'am," he said earnestly. "Murray's gold, so far as we see. It's only that we see just what he wants us to see. Kars is gold, too, but—you can see clear through Kars. That's all."

The woman's apprehensions were allayed. But she knew that, where Jessie was concerned, the little Padre had only put into words those unspoken, almost unrealized feelings which had been hers all along.

She moved out of the doorway.

"Alec's up at the Fort. Maybe he's fretting I'm not up there to help." She smiled. "Say, the boy's changed since—since he's to get his vacation. He hasn't a word against Murray—now. And I'm glad. So glad."

The Padre had turned to go. He paused.

"I'd be gladder if it was John Kars he was making the trail with," he said, in his direct fashion. Then he smiled. "And at this moment maybe Murray's risking his life for us."

"Yes."

The mother sighed. The disloyalty of their feelings seemed deplorable, and it was the priest who came to her rescue.

"But it can't be. That's all."

"No. It would affront Murray."

Father Jose nodded.

"Murray mustn't be affronted—with so much depending on him."

"No." Ailsa Mowbray's eyes lit with a shadow of a smile as she went on. "I feel like—like a plotter. It's terrible."

For answer Father Jose nodded. He had no word to offer to dispel the woman's unease, so he hurried away without further spoken word between them.

Ailsa Mowbray turned toward the path through the woods at the foot of the hill. As she made her way up towards the Fort her thoughts were painfully busy. What, she asked herself, again and again, was the thing that lay at the back of the little priest's mind? What—what was the curious, nebulous instinct that was busy at the back of her own?



CHAPTER XVI

A MAN AND A MAID

It was the second day after the arrival of John Kars and his outfit. The noon meal at Ailsa Mowbray's house had been shared by the visitors. The river was busy with the life of the post, mother and son had returned to the Fort to continue their long day's work, and the woodland paths approaching it were alive with a procession of those who had wares to trade. It was a busy scene. And one which gave no hint of any fear of the marauders whom Murray had gone to deal with.

Besides John Kars' outfit at the landing a number of canoes were moored along the river bank under the shadow of the gracious, dipping willows, which had survived years of the break up of the spring ice and the accompanying freshet. Indians and half-breeds lounged and smoked, squatting around regardless of the hours which had small enough meaning for them at any time. Just now contentment reigned in their savage hearts. Each hour of their lives contained only its own troubles.

It was the most pleasant time of the northern year. The spring dangers on the river were past. The chill nights had long since sealed up the summer wounds in the great glacier. As yet the summer heat of the earth still shed its beneficent influence on the temperature of the air. And, greatest blessing of all, the flies and mosquitoes were rapidly abating their attacks, and the gaps in their ranks were increasing with every frosty night that passed.

The fall tints in the woods were ablaze on every hand. The dark green of the pine woods kept the character of the northland weird. The vegetation of deciduous habit had assumed its clothing of russet and brown, whilst the scarlet of the dying maple lit up the darkening background with its splendid flare, so like the blaze of a setting sun.

Only the northland man can really appreciate the last weeks before the merciless northern winter shuts him in. The hope inspired by the turbulent spring speaks to him but of the delight of the season to come. Far too often do the summer storms weight down his spirit to make the height of the open season his time of festival. Those are the days of labor. Fierce labor, in preparation for the dark hours of winter. The days of early fall are the days in which he can look on labor accomplished, and forward, with confidence, to security under stress, and even a certain comfort.

Dr. Bill had been left at the landing with the canoes, and Peigan Charley, and the pack Indians. The girl and the man were wandering along the woodland bank, talking the talk of those whose years, for the greater part, lay still before them, and finding joy in the simple fact of the life which moved about them. No threat of the Indians which Murray had gone to encounter on their behalf could cast a shadow over their mood. They were full to the brim of strong young life, when the world is gold tinted, a reflection of their own virile youth.

They had come to a broad ditch which contained in its depths the narrow trickle of a miniature cascade, pouring down from some spring on the hillside, whereon the old Fort stood. It was absurdly wide for the trifling watercourse it now disgorged upon the river. But then, in spring the whole character of it was changed. In spring it was a rushing torrent, fed by the melting snows, and tearing out its banks in a wild, rebellious effort against all restraint.

Just now its marshy bed was beyond Jessie's powers to negotiate. They stood looking across it at the inviting shades of an avenue of heavy red willows, with its winding alley of tawny grass fringing the stately pine woods, whose depths suggested the chastened aisles of some mediaeval cathedral.

To the disappointed girl all further progress in that direction seemed hopeless, and Kars stood watching the play of her feelings in the expression of the mobile features he had learned to dream about on the long trail. His steady eyes were smiling happily. Even the roughnesses of his rugged face seemed to have softened under the influence of his new feelings. His heavy, thrusting jaw had lost something of the grim setting it wore upon the trail. His brows had lost their hard depression, and the smile in his eyes lit up the whole of his face with a transparent frankness and delight. Just now he was a perfect illustration of the man Father Jose beheld in him.

He pointed across the waterway.

"Kind of seems a pity," he said, with a tantalizing suggestion in his smiling eyes. "Git a peek under those shady willows. The grass, too. We don't get a heap of grass north of 'sixty.' Then the sun's getting in amongst those branches. An' we need to turn right around back. Seems a pity."

The girl withdrew her gaze from the scene. Her eyes smiled up into his. They were so softly gray. So full of trusting delight.

"What can we do?" she asked, a woman looking for guidance from the one man.

"Do?"

Kars laughed. He flung out a hand. He was not thinking of what he purposed. The magic of Jessie's personality held him. Her tall gracious figure. Its exquisite modeling. The full rounded shoulders, their contours unconcealed by the light jacket she was wearing. Her neck, soft with the gentle fulness of youth. The masses of ruddy brown hair coiled on her bare head without any of the artificiality of the women he encountered in Leaping Horse. The delicate complexion of her oval cheeks, untouched by the fierce climate in which she lived. To him she had become a perfect picture of womanhood.

The girl laid her small hand in his with all the confidence of a child. The warm pressure, as his fingers closed over it, thrilled her. Without a word of protest she submitted to his lead. They clambered down to the water's edge.

In a moment she was lifted off her feet. She felt herself borne high above the little gurgling cascade. Then she became aware of the splashing feet under her. Then of a sinking sensation, as the man waded almost knee-deep in mud. There were moments of alarmed suspense. Then she found herself standing on the opposite bank, with the man dripping at her side.

Of the two courses open to her she chose the better.

She laughed happily. Perhaps the choice was forced on her, for John Kars' eyes were so full of laughter that the infection became overwhelming.

"You—you should have told me," she exclaimed censoriously.

But the man shook his head.

"Guess you'd have—refused."

"I certainly should."

But the girl's eyes denied her words.

"Then we'd have gone around back, and you'd have been disappointed. I couldn't stand for your being disappointed. Say——" The man paused. His eyes were searching the sunlit avenue ahead, where the drooping willow branches hung like floral stalactites in a cavern of ripe foliage. "It's queer how folks'll cut out the things they're yearning for because other folks are yearning to hand 'em on to them."

"No girl likes to be picked up, and—and thrown around like some ball game, because a man's got the muscles of a giant," Jessie declared with spirit.

"No. It's kind of making out he's superior to her, when he isn't. Say, you don't figger I meant that way?"

There was anxiety in the final question for all the accompanying smile.

In a moment Jessie was all regret.

"I didn't have time to think," she said, "and anyway I wouldn't have figgered that way. And—and I'd hate a man who couldn't do things when it was up to him. You'd stand no sort of chance on the northern trail if you couldn't do things. You'd have been feeding the coyotes years back, else."

"Yes, and I'd hate to be feeding the coyotes on any trail."

They were moving down the winding woodland alley. They brushed their way through the delicate overhanging foliage. The dank scent of the place was seductive. It was intoxicating with an atmosphere such as lovers are powerless to resist. The murmur of the river came to them on the one hand, and the silence of the pine woods, on the other, lent a slumberous atmosphere to the whole place.

Jessie laughed. To her the thought seemed ridiculous.

"If the stories are true I guess it would be a mighty brave coyote would come near you—dead," she said. Then of a sudden the happy light died out of her eyes. "But—but—you nearly did—pass over. The Bell River neches nearly had your scalp."

It was the man's turn to laugh. He shook his head,

"Don't worry a thing that way," he said.

But the girl's smile did not so readily return. She eyed the ominous bandage which was still about his neck, and there was plain anxiety in her pretty eyes.

"How was it?" she demanded. "A—a chance shot?"

"A chance shot."

The man's reply came with a brevity that left Jessie wondering. It left her feeling that he had no desire to talk of his injury. And so it left her silent.

They wandered on, and finally it was Kars who broke the silence.

"Say, I guess you feel I ought to hand you the story of it," he said. "I don't mean you're asking out of curiosity. But we folks of the north feel we need to hold up no secrets which could help others to steer a safe course in a land of danger. But this thing don't need talking about—yet. I got this getting too near around Bell River. Well, I'm going to get nearer still." He smiled. "Guess I've been hit on one cheek, and I'm going to turn 'em the other. It'll be a dandy play seeing 'em try to hit that."

"You're—you're going to Bell River—deliberately?"

The girl's tone was full of real alarm.

"Sure. Next year."

"But—oh, it's mad—it's craziness."

The terror of Bell River was deep in Jessie's heart. Hers was the terror of the helpless who have heard in the far distance but seen the results. Kars understood. He laughed easily.

"Sure it's—crazy. But," his smiling eyes were gazing down into the anxious depths the girl had turned up to him, "every feller who makes the northern trail needs to be crazy some way. Guess I'm no saner than the others. It's a craziness that sets me chasing down Nature's secrets till I locate 'em right. Sometimes they aren't just Nature's secrets. Anyway it don't figger a heap. Just now I'm curious to know why some feller, who hadn't a thing to do with Nature beyond his shape, fancied handing it me plumb in the neck. Maybe it'll take me all next summer finding it out. But I'm going to find it out—sure."

The easy confidence of the man robbed his intention of half its terror for the girl. Her anxiety melted, and she smiled at his manner of stating his case.

"I wonder how it comes you men-folk so love the trail," she said. "I don't suppose it's all for profit—anyway not with you. Is it adventure? No. It's not all adventure either. It's just dead hardship half the time. Yes—it's a sort of craziness. Say, how does it feel to be crazy that way?"

"Feel? That's some proposition." Kars' face lit with amusement as he pondered the question. "Say, ever skip out of school at the Mission, and make a camp in the woods?"

The girl shook her head.

"Ah, then that won't help us any," Kars demurred, his eyes dwelling on the ruddy brown of the girl's chestnut hair. "What about a swell party after three days of chores in the house, when a blizzard's blowing?"

"That doesn't seem like any craziness," the girl protested.

"No, I guess not."

Kars searched again for a fresh simile.

"Say, how'd you feel if you'd never seen a flower, or green grass, or woods, and rivers, and mountains?" he suddenly demanded. "How'd you feel if you'd lived in a prison most all your life, and never felt your lungs take in a big dose of God's pure air, or stretched the strong elastic of the muscles your parents gave you? How'd you feel if you'd read and read all about the wonderful things of Nature, and never seen them, and then, all of a sudden, you found yourself out in a world full of trees, and flowers, and mountains, and woods, and skitters, and neches, and air—God's pure air, and with muscles so strong you could take a ten foot jump, and all the wonderful things you'd read about going on around you, such as fighting, murdering, and bugs and things, and folks who figger they're every sort of fellers, and aren't, and—and all that? Say, wouldn't you feel crazy? Wouldn't you feel you wanted to take it all in your arms, and, and just love it to death?"

"Maybe—for a while."

The girl's eyes were smiling provocatively. She loved to hear him talk. The strong rich tones of his voice in the quiet of the woodland gave her a sense of possession of him.

She went on.

"After, I guess I'd be yearning for the big wood stove, and a rocker, with elegant cushions, and the sort of food you can't cook over a camp-fire."

Kars shook his head.

"Maybe you'd fancy feeling those things were behind you on the day your joints began aching, and your breath gets as short as a locomotive on an up grade. When the blood's running hot there's things on the trail get right into it. Maybe it's because of the things they set into a man when he first stubbed his toes kicking against this old earth; when they told him he'd need to git busy fixing himself a stone club a size bigger than the other feller's; and that if he didn't use it quicker, and harder, he'd likely get his head dinged so his brain box wouldn't work right and he wouldn't be able to rec'nize the coyotes when they came along to pick his bones clean. You can't explain a thing of the craziness in men's blood when they come up with the Nature they belong to. It's the thing that sets lambs skipping foolish on legs that don't ever look like getting sense. It's the same sets a kiddie dancing along a sidewalk coming out of the schoolhouse, and falling into dumps and getting its bow-tie mussed. It's the same sets a boy actin' foolish when a gal's sorrel top turns his way, even when she's all legs and sass. It's the same sets folks crazy to risk their lives on hilltops that a chamois 'ud hate to inspect. Guess it's a sort o' thanks offerin' to Providence it didn't see fit setting us crawling around without feet or hands, same as slugs and things that worry folks' cabbige patches. I allow I can't figger it else."

"You needn't to," Jessie declared, with a happy laugh. "Guess I know it all—now." Then her eyes sobered. "But I—I wish you'd cut Bell River right out."

"Just don't you worry a thing, little Jessie," Kars said, with prompt earnestness. He had no wish to distress her. "Bell River can't hand me anything I don't know. Anyway I'd need to thank it if it could. And when I get back maybe you won't need to lie awake o' nights guessing a coyote's howl is the whoop of a neche yearning for your scalp. Hello!"

Their wanderings had brought them to a break in the willows where the broad flow of the river came into full view, and the overhang of glacial ice thrust out on the top of the precipitous bank beyond. But it was none of this that had elicited the man's ejaculation, or had caused his abrupt halt, and sobered the smile in his keen eyes.

It was a pair of canoes moored close in to the bank. Two powerful canoes, which were larger and better built than those of trading Indians. Then there were two neches squatting on the bank crouching over a small fire smoking their red clay pipes in silent contemplation.

Jessie recognized the neches at a glance.

"Why, Murray must be back or——"

Kars turned abruptly.

"They're Murray's? Say——" He glanced up at the hill which stood over them. A well-beaten path led up through the pine woods.

Jessie understood the drift of his thought.

"That's a short way to the Fort," she said. "I wonder why he landed here. He doesn't generally."

But the man had no speculation to offer.

"We best get his news," he said indicating the path.

The moments of Jessie's delight had been swallowed up in the significance of Murray's return. She agreed eagerly. And her eagerness displayed the nearness to her heart of the terror of the marauding Indians.

John Kars led the way up the woodland path. It was the same path over which the two trading Indians had reached the Fort on the night of his arrival from Bell River. As he went he pondered the reason of the trader's avoidance of the usual landing.

Jessie watched his vigorous movements and found difficulty in keeping pace with him. She saw in his hurry the interest he had in the affairs of Bell River. She read in him something like confirmation of her own fears. So she labored on in his wake without protest.

Later, when they broke from the cover of the woods, she drew abreast of him. She was breathing hard, and Kars became aware of the pace at which he had come. In a moment he was all contrition.

"Say, little Jessie," he cried, in his kindly fashion, "I'm real sorry." Then he smiled as he slackened his gait. "It's my fool legs; they're worse than some tongues for getting away with me. We'll take it easy."

But the girl refused to become a hindrance, and urged him on. Her own desire was no less than his.

The frowning palisade of the old Fort was above them. It stood out staunch against the sky, yet not without some suggestion of the sinister. And for the first time in her years of association with it Jessie became aware of the impression.

The old blackened walls frowned down severely. They looked like the prison walls enclosing ages of secret doings which were never permitted the clear light of day. They suggested something of the picture conjured by the many fantastic folk stories which she had read in Father Jose's library. The ogres and giants. The decoy of beautiful girls luring their lovers to destruction within the walls of some dreadful monster's castle.

They passed in through the great gateway, with its massive doors flung wide to the trade of the river. And they sought Murray's office.

There they found Mrs. Mowbray and Alec. Murray, too, was at his desk.

On their entrance they were greeted at once by the mother. Her eyes were smiling and full of confidence. She looked into John Kars' face, and he read her news even before she spoke.

"The country's clear of them," she cried, and her relief and delight rang in every tone.

Jessie went at once to her side. But Kars turned to the squat figure which filled its chair to overflowing. His steady eyes regarded the smiling features of the trader.

"Did it come to a scrap?" he inquired easily.

Murray shook his head. His dark eyes were no less direct than the other's.

"Guess there were too many in my outfit," he said with a shrug. "It was a bunch of neches I'd have thought your outfit could have—eaten. A poor lot—sure."

He finished up with a deliberate laugh, and his intention was obvious.

Kars understood, and did not display the least resentment.

"I'm glad," he said seriously. "Real glad." Then he added: "I didn't guess you'd have a heap of trouble."

He turned to the women. And his attitude left the trader's purpose mean and small.

"Murray's got us all beaten anyhow," he said easily. "We think we're wise. We think we know it all. But we don't. Anyway I'm glad the danger's fixed. I guess it'll leave me free to quit for the outside right away."

Then he turned to Murray, and their eyes met, and held, and only the two men knew, and understood, the challenge which lay behind.

"Guess I can make Leaping Horse before the rivers freeze. But I'm getting back here with the thaw. I allow next year I'm taking no sort of chance. This hole in my neck," he went on, indicating the bandage about his throat, "has taught me a lot I didn't know before. The outfit I get around with next year will be big enough to eat up any proposition Bell River can hand me."



CHAPTER XVII

A NIGHT IN LEAPING HORSE

Leaping Horse was a beacon which reflected its ruddy light upon the night sky, a sign, a lure to the yearning hearts at distant points, toiling for the wage with which to pay for sharing in its wild excesses. It was the Gorgon of the northland, alluring, destructive, irresistible. It was a temple dedicated to the worship of the Gods of the Wilderness. Light, luxury and vice. Such was the summing up of Dr. Bill, and the few who paused in the mad riot for a moment's sober thought. Furthermore Dr. Bill's estimate of the blatant gold city was by no means a self-righteous belief. He had known the place from its birth. He had treated its every ailment at the height of its burning youth. Now, in its maturity, it fell to him to learn much of the inner secrets of its accruing mental disease. He hated it and loved it, almost one and the same emotion. He cried aloud its shame to listening ears. In secret he wept over its iniquities, with all the pity of a warm-hearted man gazing upon a wanton.

But Leaping Horse was indifferent. It spread its shabby tendrils over hundreds of acres of territory, feeding its wanton heart upon the squalor which gathered about its fringe as well as upon the substance of those upon whom it had showered its fortune.

At night its one main street radiated a light and life such as could be found in no city in the world. The wide, unpaved thoroughfare, with its shabby sidewalks buried to a depth of many feet of snow in winter, and mud in the early open season, gave no indication of the tide of wealth which flowed in this main artery. Only at night, when a merciful dark strove to conceal, did the glittering tide light up. Then indeed the hideous blatancy of the city's life flared out in all its painful vulgarity.

In the heart of the Main Street the Elysian Fields Hotel, and theatre, and dance hall stood out a glittering star of the first magnitude, dimming the lesser constellations with which it was surrounded. A hundred arc lamps flung out their challenge to all roysterers and vice-seeking souls. Thousands of small globular lights, like ropes of luminous pearls, outlined its angles, its windows, its cornices, its copings. All its white and gold shoddy was rendered almost magnificent in the night. Only in the light of day was its true worth made apparent. But who, in Leaping Horse, wanted the day? No one. Leaping Horse was the northern Mecca of the night pleasure seeker.

The buildings adjacent basked in its radiance. Their own eyes were almost blinded. Their mixed forms were painfully revealed. Frame hutches, split log cabins rubbed shoulders with buildings of steel frame and stone fronts. Thousand dollar apartments gazed disdainfully down upon hovels scarcely fit to shelter swine. Their noses were proudly lifted high above the fetid atmosphere which rose from the offal-laden causeway below. They had no heed for that breeding ground of the germs of every disease known to the human body.

Then the roystering throng. The Elysian Fields. It was the beach about which the tide ebbed and flowed. It was a rough rock-bound beach upon which the waters of life beat themselves into a fury of excess. Its lights were the beacons of the wreckers set up for the destruction of the human soul.

Chief amongst the wreckers was Pap Shaunbaum, a Hebrew of doubtful nationality, and without scruple. He prided himself that he was a caterer for the needs of the people. His thesis was that the northland battle needed alleviation in the narrow lap of luxury where vice ruled supreme. He had spent his life in searching the best means of personal profit out of the broad field of human weakness, and discovered the Elysian Fields.

He had labored with care and infinite thought. He had built on a credit from the vast bank of experience, and owned in the Elysian Fields the finest machine in the world for wrecking the soul and pocket of the human race.

Every attraction lay to hand. The dance hall was aglitter, the floor perfect, and the stage equipped to foster all that appealed to the senses. The hotel with its splendid accommodation, its bars, its gaming rooms, its dining hall, its supper rooms, its bustle of elaborate service. There was nothing forgotten that ingenuity could devise to loosen the bank rolls of its clientele, and direct the flow of gold into the proprietor's coffers—not even women. As Dr. Bill declared in one of his infrequent outbursts of passionate protest: "The place is one darnation public brothel; a scandal to the northland, a shame on humanity."

It was here, gazing down on the crowded dance hall, from one of the curtained boxes adjacent to the stage, on which a vaudeville programme was being performed, that two men sat screened from the chance glance of the throng below them.

A table stood between them, and an uncorked bottle of wine and two glasses were placed to their hand. But the wine stood untouched, and was rapidly becoming flat. It had been ordered as a custom of the place. But neither had the least desire for its artificial stimulation.

They had been talking in a desultory fashion. Talking in the pleasant intimate fashion of men who know each other through and through. Of men who look upon life with a vision adjusted to a single focus.

They were watching the comings and goings of familiar faces in the glittering overdressed throng below. The women, splendid creatures in gowns whose cost ran into hundreds of dollars, and bejeweled almost at any price. Beautiful faces, many of them already displaying the ravages of a life that moved at the swiftest gait. Others again bloated and aging long before the years asserted their claims, and still others, fresh with all the beauty of extreme youth and a life only at the beginning of the downward course.

The men, too, were no less interesting to the student of psychology. Here was every type from the illiterate human mechanism whose muscles dominated his whole process of life, to the cultured son of civilization who had never known before the meaning of life beyond the portals of the temples of refinement. Here they were all on the same highway of pleasure. Here they were all full to the brim of a wonderful joy of life. Care was for the daylight, when the secrets of their bank roll would be revealed, and the draft on the exchequer of health would have to be met.

There was displayed no element of the soil from which these people drew their wealth, except for the talk. They had long since risen from the moleskin and top-boot stage in Leaping Horse. The Elysian Fields demanded outward signs of respectability in the habiliments of its customers, and the garish display of the women was there to enforce it. Broadcloth alone was the mode, and conformity with this rule drew forth many delights for the observing eye.

But the people thus disguised remained the same. Every type was gathered, from the sound, reasonable accumulator of wealth to the "hold-up," the gambler, the fugitive from the law. It was said of Leaping Horse that it only required the "dust" to buy any crime known to the penal code. And here, here at the Elysian Fields, on any night in the week, could be found the man or woman to perpetrate it at a moment's notice.

Dr. Bill laughed without mirth.

"Gee, it leaves the Bell River outfit saints beside them," he said.

Kars' contemplative eyes were following the movements of a handsome blond woman with red-gold hair, which was aglitter with a half circle band of jewels supporting an aigrette, which must have cost five thousand dollars. She was obviously young, extremely young. To his mind she could not have been more than twenty—if that. Her eyes were deep blue, with unusually large pupils. Her lips were ripe with a freshness which owed nothing to any salve. Her nose was almost patrician, and her cheeks were tinted with the bloom of exquisite fruit. Her gown was extremely decollete, revealing shoulders and arms of perfect ivory beauty. She was dancing a waltz with a man in elaborate evening dress, who had discarded orthodox sobriety for crude embellishments. The string band in the orchestra was playing with seductive skill.

"Who's that dame with the guy who guesses he's a parakeet?" he demanded, without reply to the other's statement.

"You mean the feller with the sky blue lapels to his swallow-tails?"

"Sure. That's the guy."

"Maude. Chesapeake Maude. She's Pap Shaunbaum's piece. Quite a girl. She's only been along since we quit here last spring. Pap's crazy on her. Folks say he dopes out thousands a week on her. He brought her from the East on a specially chartered vessel he had fitted up to suit her fancy. They figger he's raised his pool here by fifty per cent since she came."

"She plays the old game for him right here?"

"Sure."

Both men were absorbed in the girl's perfect grace of movement, as she and her partner glided in and out through the dancing crowd. Her attraction was immense even to these men, who were only onlookers of the Leaping Horse riot.

Bill touched his friend's arm. He indicated the bar at the far end of the hall.

"There's Pap. He's watching her. Gee, he's watching her."

A slim iron gray man, with a dark, keen face was standing beside one of the pillars which supported the gallery above. He was dressed in evening clothes of perfect cut, which displayed a clean-cut figure. He was a handsome man of perhaps forty, without a sign of the dissipation about his dark face that was to be seen in dozens of younger men about him. As Dr. Bill once said of him, "One of hell's gentle-folk."

A better description of him could not have been found. Under a well-nigh perfect exterior he concealed a depth of infamy beyond description. A confidential police report to the authorities in the East once contained this paragraph:

"Pap Shaunbaum has set up a big hotel in Leaping Horse. It will be necessary to keep a 'special' at work watching him. We should like authority to develop this further from time to time. His record both here, and confidential from the States, leaves him more than undesirable. Half the toughs in Leaping Horse are in his pay."

That was written five years before. Since then the "special" had been developed till a large staff was employed in the observation of the Elysian Fields. And still under all this espionage "Pap," as he was familiarly dubbed, moved about without any apparent concern, carrying on his underground schemes with every outward aspect of inoffensive honesty. All Leaping Horse knew him as a crook, but accepted him as he posed. He was on intimate terms with all the gold magnates, and never failed to keep on good terms with the struggling element of the community. But he was a "gunman." He had been a "gunman" all his life, and made small secret of it. The only change in him now was that his gun was loaded with a different charge.

"You figger he's dopey on her?"

"Crazy. God help the feller that monkeys around that hen roost."

"Yet he uses her for this play?"

"With reserve."

"How?"

Dr. Bill again gave a short hard laugh.

"You won't see her around with folk, except on that floor. Say, get a peek at the boxes across the way, with the curtains half drawn. They're all—occupied. You won't see Maude in those boxes, unless it's with Pap. She's down on that floor because she loves dancing, and for Pap's business. She's there for loot, sure, and she gets it plenty. She's there with her dandy smile to see the rest of the women get busy. Playing that feller's dirty game for all it's worth. And she's just a gal full to the brim of life. He's bought her body and soul, and I guess it's just for folks like us to sit around and watch for what's coming. If I've got horse sense there's coming a big shriek one day, and you'll see Pap clear through to his soul—if he's got one. He's fallen for that dame bad. But I guess he's done the falling. I don't guess any feller can gamble on a woman till she's in love, then I'd say the gamble is she'll act foolish."

Kars had no comment to offer. He was no longer watching Maude. The dancing had ceased, and the floor had cleared. The orchestra had already commenced the prelude to a vaudeville turn, and the drop curtain had revealed the stage.

His interest was centred on Pap Shaunbaum. The man was moving about amongst his customers, exchanging a word here and there, his dark, saturnine face smiling his carefully amiable business smile. To the elemental man of the trail there was something very fascinating in the way this one brain was pitting itself to plunder through the senses of the rest of his world.

But Dr. Bill knew it all with an intimacy that robbed it of any charm. He had only repulsion, but repulsion that failed to deny a certain attraction. His hot words broke through the noisy strumming of vaudeville accompaniment.

"For God's sake," he said, "why do we stop around this sink? You! Why do you? The long trail? And at the end of it you got to come back to this—every trip. I hate the place, I loathe it like a hobo hates water. But I'm bound to it. It's up to me to help mend the poor darn fools who haven't sense but to squander the good life Providence handed them. But you—you with your great pile, Pap, here, would love to dip his claws into, there's no call for you acting like some gold-crazed lunatic. Get out, man. Get right out and breathe the wholesome air Providence meant for you. Oh, I guess you'll say it's all on the long trail in the northland. There isn't a thing to keep you here."

"Isn't there?"

Kars leaned back in his chair. He stretched his great arms above his head, and clasped his hands behind his muscular neck.

"There's so much to keep me here that life's not long enough to see it through. Time was, Bill, when I guessed it was the north that had got into my bones. But I didn't know. The long trail. The search. It was gold—gold—gold. Same as it is with any of the other fools that get around here. But I didn't just understand. That gold. No. I've been searching, and the search for new ground has been one long dream of life. But the gold I've been chasing wasn't the gold I thought it. It wasn't the yellow stuff these folks here are ready to sell their souls—and bodies—for. It was different. You guessed I had all the gold I needed. But I hadn't, not of the gold I've been chasing. I hadn't any of it. I—didn't even know its color when I saw it. I do now. And it's the color I've seen looking out of a pair of wonderful—wonderful gray eyes. Say, I don't quit the northland till I can take it all with me. All there is of that gold I've found on the long trail."

"Jessie?"

"Sure."

"Then why not take her?"

The vaudeville turn was in full swing and the folks below were standing around talking and drinking, and gazing with only partial interest at the feats of a woman acrobatic dancer. Bill was looking at her, too. But his thoughts were on the girl at Fort Mowbray and this man who was his friend.

"Why not take her?" he urged. "Take her away from this storm-haunted land, and set her on the golden throne you'd set up for her, where there's warmth and beauty. Where there's no other care for her than to yield you the wifely companionship you're yearning for. I guess she's the one gal can hand you those things. If you don't do it, and do it quick, you'll find the fruit in the pouch of another. Say, the harvest comes along in its season, and it's got to be reaped. If the right feller don't get busy—well, I guess some other feller will. There's not a thing waits around in this world."

The braying of the band deadened the sound of laughter, and the rattle of glasses, and the talk going on below. Kars was still gazing down upon the throng of pleasure seekers, basking in the brilliant glare of light which searched the pallid and unhealthy, and enhanced the beauty where artificiality concealed the real. His mood was intense. His thoughts were hundreds of miles away. Quite suddenly he turned his strong face to his friend. There was a deep light in his steady eyes, and a grim setting to his lips.

"I'm going to collect that harvest," he said, with a deliberate emphasis. "If you don't know it you should. But I'm collecting it my way. I'm going to marry Jessie, if your old friend Prov don't butt in. But I'm going to cut the ground under the feet of the other feller my own way, first. I've got to do that. I've a notion. It's come to me slow. Not the way notions come to you, Bill. I'm different. I can act like lightning when it's up to me, but I can't see into a brick wall half as far as you—nor so quick. I've bin looking into a brick wall ever since we hit Bell River, and I've seen quite a piece into it. I'm not going to hand you what I've seen—yet. I've got to see more. I won't see the real till I make Bell River again. If what I guess I'm going to see is right, after that I'm going to marry Jessie right away, and she, and her mother, and me—well, we're going to quit the north. There won't be a long trail in this country can drag me an inch from the terminals of civilization after that."

A deep satisfaction shone in the doctor's smiling eyes as he gazed at the serious face of his friend. But there was question, too.

"You've laid a plain case but I don't see the whole drift," he said. "Still you've fixed to marry Jessie, and quit this darnation country. For me it goes at that—till you fancy opening out. But you're still bent on the Bell River play. I've got all you said to me on the trail down. You figger those folks are to be robbed by—some one. Do you need to wait for that? Why not marry that gal and get right out taking her folks with her? Let all the pirates do as they darn please with Bell River. I don't get any other view of this thing right."

"No. But I do." There was a curious, obstinate thrust to this big man's jaw. "By heaven, Bill! The feller responsible for the murder of my little gal's father, a father she just loved to death, don't git away with his play if I know it. The feller that hands her an hour's suffering needs to answer to me for it, and I'm ready to hand over my life in seeing he gets his physic. There's no one going to get away with the boodle Allan gave his life for—not if I can hold him up. That's just as fixed in my mind as I'm going to marry Jessie. Get that good. And I hold you to your word on the trail. You're with me in it. I've got things fixed, and I've set 'em working. I'm quitting for Seattle in the morning. You'll just sit around lying low, and doping out your physic to every blamed sinner who needs it. Then, with the spring, you'll stand by ready to quit for the last long trail with me. Maybe, come that time, I'll hand you a big talk of all the fool things I've got in my head. How?"

The other drew a deep sigh. But he nodded.

"Sure. If you're set that way—why, count me in."

"The man that can 'ante' blind maybe is a fool. But he's good grit anyway. Thanks, Bill. I—what's doing?"

The sharpness of Kars' inquiry was the result of a startled movement in his companion. Dr. Bill was leaning forward. But he was leaning so that he was screened by the heavy curtain of the box. He was craning. In his eyes was a profound look of wonder, almost of incredulity.

The vaudeville act had come to an end with a brazen flourish from the orchestra, and a waltz had been started on the instant. The eyes of the man were staring down at the floor below, where, already, several couples were gliding over its polished surface.

"Look," he said, in a suppressed tone of voice. "Keep back so he don't see you. Get a look at Chesapeake Maude."

Kars searched the room for the beautiful red-gold head. He looked amongst the crowd. Then his gaze came to the few dancers, their numbers already augmenting. The flash of jewels caught his gaze. The wonderful smiling face with its halo of red-gold. An exclamation broke from him.

"Alec Mowbray!"

But it was left to Bill to find expression for the realization that was borne in on them both.

"And he's half soused. The crazy kid!"

Maude seemed to float over the gleaming floor. Alec Mowbray, for all the signs of drink he displayed, was no mean partner. His handsome face, head and shoulders above the tall woman he was dancing with, gazed out over the sea of dancers in all the freshness of his youthful joy, and triumph. He danced well, something he had contrived to learn in the joyless country from which he hailed. But there was no reflection of his joy in the faces of the two men gazing down from the shelter of the curtained box. There were only concern and a grievous regret.

Bill rose with a sigh.

"I quit," he said.

Kars rose, too.

"Yes."

The two men stood for a moment before passing out of the box.

"It looks like that shriek's coming," Bill said. "God help that poor darn fool if Pap and Maude get a hold on him."

"He came down with Murray," Kars said pondering.

"Yes. He ought to have come around with his mam."

Kars nodded.

"Get a hold on him, Bill, when I'm gone. For God's sake get a hold on him. It's up to you."



CHAPTER XVIII

ON THE NORTHERN SEAS

The mists hung drearily on snow-crowned, distant hilltops. The deadly gray of the sky suggested laden clouds bearing every threat known to the elements. They were traveling fast, treading each other's heels, and overwhelming each other till the gloom banked deeper and deeper. It was the mockery of an early spring day. It had all the appearance of the worst depths of winter, except that the intense cold had given place to a fierce wind of higher temperature.

The seas were running high, and the laden vessel labored heavily as it passed the sharp teeth of the jaws of the wide sound which marked the approach to the northern land.

There was no sheltering bar here. The only obstruction to the fierce onslaught of the North Pacific waters was the almost submerged legion of cruel rocks which confined the deep water channel. It was a deadly approach which took years of a ship's captain's life to learn. And when he had learned it, so far as it was humanly possible, it quickly taught him how little he knew. Not a season passed but some unfortunate found for himself a new, uncharted rock.

The land rose up to overwhelming heights on either side, and these vast barriers narrowed the wind channel till the force of the gale was trebled. It swept in from the broad ocean with a roar and a boom, bearing the steamer along, floundering through the racing waters, with a crushing following sea.

There were twelve hours of this yet ahead of him, and John Dunne paced his bridge with every faculty alert. He watched the skies. He watched the breaking waters. He watched the shores on either side of him, as he might watch the movements of a remorseless adversary about to attack him. He had navigated this channel for upwards of fifteen years, and understood to-day how small was his understanding of its virtues, and how real and complete his fears of its vices. But it was his work to face it at all times and all seasons, and he accepted the responsibility with a cheerful optimism and an equal skill.