Once or twice he howled a confidence to his chief officer, who occupied the bridge with him. There were moments when his lips were at the speaking tubes, and his hand on the telegraph. There were moments when he stood with his arms folded over the breast of his thick pea-jacket, and his half-closed eyes searched the barren shores while he leaned against the shaking rail.

He had been on the bridge the whole night, and still his bodily vigor seemed quite unimpaired. His stocky body concealed a power of endurance which his life had hardened him to. He rarely talked of the dangers through which he had journeyed on the northern seas. He feared them too well to desire to recall them. He was wont to say he lived only in the present. To look ahead would rob him of his nerve. To gaze back over the manifold emergencies through which he had passed would only undermine his will. The benefit of his philosophy was displayed in his habitual success. In consequence he was the commodore of his company's fleet.

He passed down from his bridge at last. And it was almost with reluctance. It was breakfast time, and he had been summoned already three times by an impatient steward. At the door of his cabin he was met by John Kars who was to be his guest at the meal. These men were old friends, bound by the common ties of the northland life. They had made so many journeys together over these turbulent waters. To Kars it would have been unthinkable to travel under any other sea captain.

"Still watching for those jaws to snap?" said Kars, as he passed into the little room ahead of his host, and sniffed hungrily at the fragrant odor of coffee.

"Why, yes," he said. "Jaws that's always snapping generally need watching, I guess. A feller needs the eyes of a spider to get to windward of the things lying around Blackrock Sound. Say, I guess it wouldn't come amiss to dump this patch into the devil's dugout fer fool skippers, who lost their ships through 'souse,' to navigate around in. It has you guessin' most of the time. And you're generally wrong, anyway."

The men sat down at the table, and the steward served the coffee. For a few moments they were busy helping themselves to the grilled kidneys and bacon. Presently the steward withdrew.

"It's been a better trip than usual this time of year," Kars said. "It's a pity running into this squall just now."

The seaman raised a pair of twinkling eyes in his guest's direction.

"It's mostly my experience. Providence generally figgers to hand you things at—inconvenient times. This darn sound's tricky when there ain't breeze enough to clear your smoke away. It's fierce when it's blowing. Guess you'll be glad to see your outfit ashore."

"Ye-es."

"Up country again this year?"

Kars laughed.

"Sure."

The seaman regarded him enviously.

"Guess it must be great only having the weather to beat. A piece of hard soil under your feet must be bully to work on. That ain't been mine since I was fourteen. That's over forty years ago."

"There's something to it—sure." Kars sipped his coffee. "But there's other things," he added, as he set his cup down.

The seaman smiled.

"Wouldn't be Life if there weren't."

"No."

"You're shipping arms," John Dunne went on significantly. "Guns an' things don't signify all smiles an' sunshine. No, I guess we sea folks got our troubles. It's only they're diff'rent from other folks. You ain't the only feller shipping arms. We got cases else. An' a big outfit of cartridges. I was looking into the lading schedule yesterday. Say, the Yukon ain't makin' war with Alaska?"

The man's curiosity was evident, but he disguised it with a broad smile.

Kars' steady eyes regarded him thoughtfully. Then he, too, smiled.

"I don't reckon the Yukon's worrying to scrap. But folks inside—I mean right inside beyond Leaping Horse where the p'lice are—need arms. There's a lot of low type Indians running loose. They aren't to be despised, except for their manners. Guess the stuff you speak of is for one of the trading posts?"

"Can't say. It's billed to a guy named Murray McTavish at Blackrock Flat. There's a thousand rifles an' nigh two million rounds of cartridges. Guess he must be carryin' on a war of his own with them Injuns. Know the name?"

Kars appeared to think profoundly.

"Seems to me I know the name. Can't just place it for—— Say—I've got it. He's the partner of the feller the neches murdered up at Fort Mowbray, on the Snake River. Sure, that explains it. Oh, yes. The folks up that way are up against it. The neches are pretty darn bad." He laughed. "Guess he's out for a war of extermination with such an outfit as that."

"Seems like it." The skipper went on eating for some moments in silence. His curiosity was satisfied. Nor did Kars attempt to break the silence. He was thinking—thinking hard.

"It beats me," Dunne went on presently, "you folk who don't need to live north of 'sixty.' What is it that keeps you chasing around in a cold that 'ud freeze the vitals of a tin statue?"

Kars shook his head.

"You can search me," he said, with a shrug. "Guess it sort of gets in the blood, though. There's times when I cuss it like you cuss the waters that hand you your life. Then there's times when I love it like—like a pup loves offal. You can't figger it out any more than you can figger out why the sun and moon act foolish chasing each other around an earth that don't know better than to spend its time buzzing around on a pivot that don't exist. You can't explain these things any more than you can explain the reason why no two folks can think the same about things, except it is their own way of thinking it's the right way. Nor why it is you mostly get rain when you're needin' sun, and wind when you're needin' calm, and anyway it's coming from the wrong quarter. If you guess you're looking for gold, it's a thousand dollars to a dime you find coal, or drown yourself in a 'gush' of oil. If you're married, an' you're looking for a son, it's a sure gamble you get a gal. Most everything in life's just about as crazy as they'll allow outside a foolish house, and as for life itself, well, it's a darn nuisance anyway, but one you're mighty glad keeps busy your way."

At that moment, the speaking tube from the bridge emitted a sharp whistle, and the skipper, with a broad smile on his weather-beaten face, went to answer it.

The clatter of the winches ceased. The creaking of straining hawsers lessened. The voices of men only continued their hoarse-throated shoutings. The gangways had been secured in place, and while the crew were feverishly opening the vessel's hatches the few passengers who had made the journey under John Dunne's watchful care hustled down the high-angled gangway to the quay, glad enough to set foot on the slush-laden land.

The days of the wild rush of gold-mad incompetents were long since past. The human freight of John Dunne's vessel, with the exception of John Kars, was commercial. They were mostly men whose whole work was this new great trade with the north.

Kars was one of the first to land, and he swiftly searched the faces of the crowd of longshoremen.

It was a desolate quay-side of a disreputable town. But though all picturesqueness was given over to utility, there was a sense of homeliness to the traveler after the stormy passage of the North Pacific. Blackrock crouched under the frowning ramparts of hills which barred the progress of the waters. It was dwarfed, and rendered even more desolate, by the sterile snow-laden crags with which it was crowded. But these first impressions were quickly lost in the life that strove on every hand. In the familiar clang of the locomotive bell, and the movement of railroad wagons which were engaged in haulage for Leaping Horse.

Kars' search ended in a smile of greeting, as a tall, lean American detached himself from the crowd and came towards him. He greeted the arrival with the easy casualness of the northlander.

"Glad to see you, Chief," he said, shaking hands. "Stuff aboard? Good," as the other nodded. "Guess the gang'll ship it right away jest as soon as they haul it out o' the guts of the old tub. You goin' on up with the mail? She's due to get busy in two hours, if she don't get colic or some other fool trouble."

Abe Dodds refused to respond to his friend and chief's smile of greeting. He rarely shed smiles on anything or any one. He was a mining engineer of unusual gifts, in a country where mining engineers and flies vied with each other for preponderance. He was a man who bristled with a steady energy which never seemed to tire, and he had been in the service of John Kars from the very early days.

Kars indicated the snub-nosed vessel he had just left.

"The stuff's all there," he said. "Nearly fifty tons of it. You need to hustle it up to Leaping Horse, and on to the camp right away. Guess we break camp in two weeks."

The man nodded.

"Sure. That's all fixed. Anything else?"

His final inquiry was his method of dismissing his employer. But Kars did not respond. His keen eyes had been searching the crowd. Now they came back to the plain face of Abe, whose jaws were working busily on the wreck of the end of a cigar. He lowered his voice to a confidential tone.

"There's a big outfit of stuff aboard for Murray McTavish, of Fort Mowbray. Has he an outfit here to haul it? Is he still around Leaping Horse?"

Abe's eyes widened. He was quite unconcerned at the change of tone.

"Why, yes," he replied promptly. "Sure he's an outfit here. He's shipping it up to Leaping Horse by the Yukon Transport—express. He quit the city last November, an' come along down again a week ago. Guess he's in the city right now. He's stopping around Adler's Hotel."

Kars' eyes were on the "hauls" of the cargo boat which were already busy.

"You boys kept to instructions?" he demanded sharply. "No one's wise to your camp?"

"Not a thing."

"There's not a word of me going around the city?"

"Not a word."

"The outfit's complete?"

"Sure. To the last boy. You can break camp the day after this stuff's hauled and we've packed it."

"Good." Kars sighed as if in relief. "Well, I'll get on. Hustle all you know. And, say, get a tally of McTavish's outfit. Get their time schedule. I'll need it. So long."

Kars followed his personal baggage which a quayside porter had taken on to the grandiosely named mail train.

John Kars was standing at the curtained window of Dr. Bill's apartment in the Hoffman Apartment House. His back was turned on the luxuriously furnished room. For some time the silence had been broken only by the level tones of the owner of the apartment who was lounging in the depths of a big rocker adjacent to a table laden with surgical instruments. He had been telling the detailed story of the preparations made at the camp some ten miles distant from the city, and the supervision of whose affairs Kars had left in his hands. As he ceased speaking Kars turned from his contemplation of the tawdry white and gold of the Elysian Fields which stood out in full view from the window of the apartment.

"Now tell me of that boy—Alec," he demanded.

The directness of the challenge had its effect. Bill Brudenell stirred uneasily in his chair. His shrewd eyes widened with a shade of trouble. Nor did he answer readily.

"Things are wrong?" Kars' steady eyes searched his friend's face.

"Well—they're not—good."

"Ah. Tell me."

Kars moved from the window. It almost seemed that all that had passed was incomparable in interest with his present subject. He seated himself on the corner of the table which held the surgical instruments.

"No. It's not good. It's—it's darned bad." Bill rose abruptly from his chair and began to pace the room, his trim shoulders hunched as though he were suddenly driven to a desire for aggression. "Look here, John," he cried almost vehemently. "If you or I had had that boy set in our charge, seeing what we saw that first night, and knowing what I've heard since, could we have quit this lousy city for months and left him to his fool play over at Pap's? Not on your life. But it's what Murray's done. Gee, I could almost think he did it purposely."

Kars pointed at the rocker. There was a curious light in his gray eyes. It was a half smile. Also it possessed a subtle stirring of fierceness.

"Sit down, Bill," he said calmly. "But start right in from—the start."

The man of healing obeyed mechanically, but he chafed at the restraint. His usual ease had undergone a serious disturbance. There was nothing calculated to upset him like the disregard of moral obligation. Crime he understood, folly he accepted as something belonging to human nature. But the moral "stunt," as he was wont to characterize it, hurt him badly. Just now he was regarding Murray McTavish with no very friendly eyes, and he deplored beyond words the doings of the boy who was Jessie Mowbray's brother.

"The start!" he exploded. "Where can I start? If the start were as I see it, it 'ud be to tell you that Murray's a callous skunk who don't care a whoop for the obligations Allan's murder left on his fat shoulders. But I guess that's not the start as you see it. That boy!" He sprang from his seat again and Kars made no further attempt to restrain him. "He's on the road to the devil faster than an express locomotive could carry him. He's in the hands of 'Chesapeake' Maude, who's got him by both feet and neck. And he's handing his bank roll over to Pap, and his gang, with a shovel. He's half soused any old time after eleven in the morning. And his back teeth are awash by midnight 'most every day. You can see him muling around the dance floor till you get sick of the sight of his darn fool smile, and you wish all the diamonds Maude wears were lost in the deepest smudge fires of hell. Start? There is no start. But there's a sure finish."

"You mean if he don't quit he'll go right down and out?"

Bill came to a halt directly in front of his friend. His keen eyes gazed straight into the strong face confronting him.

"No, I don't mean that. It's worse," he said, with a gravity quite changed from his recent agitated manner.

"Worse?" Kars' question came sharply. "Go on."

"Oh, I did all you said that night. I got a holt on him next day at the Gridiron, where he's stopping. He told me to go to a certain hot place and mind my own business, which was doping out drugs. I went to Murray, and he served me little better. He grinned. He always grins. He threw hot air about a youngster and wild oats. He guessed the kid would sober up after a fling. They'd figgered on this play. His mother, and Jose, and him. They guessed it was best. Then he was going to get around back and act the man his father was on the trail. That was his talk. And he grinned—only grinned when I guessed he was five sorts of darned fool."

Bill paused. It might almost have been that he paused for breath after the speed at which his words came. Kars waited with deliberate patience, but his jaws were set hard.

"But now—now?" The doctor passed a hand across his broad forehead and smoothed his iron gray hair. He turned his eyes thoughtfully upon the window through which they beheld the white and gold of the Elysian Fields. "The worst thing's happened. It's in the mouth of every one in Leaping Horse. It's the scream of every faro joint and 'draw' table. The fellers on the sidewalk have got the laugh of it. Maude's got dopey on him. She's plumb stuck on him. The dame Pap's spilt thousands on has gone back on him for a fool boy she was there to roll. Things are seething under the surface, and it's the sort of atmosphere Pap mostly lives in. He's crazy mad. And when Pap's crazy, things are going to happen. There's just one end coming. Only one end. That boy's going to get done up, and Pap's to be all in at the doing. Oh, he'll take no chances. There'll be no shriek. That kid'll peter right out sudden. And it'll be Pap who knows how."

"Murray's in the city. Have you seen him?" Kars spoke coldly.

"I saw him yesterday noon. I went to Adler's at lunch time to be sure getting him."

"What did he say?"

"I scared him. Plumb scared him. But it was the same grin. Gee, how that feller grins."

"What did he say?" Kars persisted.

"He'd do all he knew to get the kid away. But he guessed he'd be up against it. He guessed Alec had mighty little use for him, and you can't blame the kid when you think of that grin. But he figgered to do his best anyway. He cursed the kid for a sucker, and talked of a mother's broken heart if things happened. But I don't reckon he cares a cuss anyway. That feller's got one thing in life if I got any sane notion. It's trade. He hasn't the scruples of a Jew money-lender for anything else."

Kars nodded.

"I'm feeling that way—too."

"You couldn't feel otherwise."

"I wasn't thinking of your yarn, Bill," Kars said quickly. "It's something else. That feller's shipped in a thousand rifles, and a big lot of ammunition. I lit on it through John Dunne. What's he want 'em for? I've been asking myself that ever since. He don't need a thousand rifles for trade."

It was Bill's turn for inquiry. It came with a promptness that suggested his estimation of the importance of the news.

"What is it?" he demanded.

"Is he going to wipe out the Bell River outfit?" Kars' eyes regarded his friend steadily.

For some moments no further word was spoken. Each was contemplating the ruthless purpose of a man who contemplated wiping out a tribe of savages to suit his own sordid ends. It was almost unbelievable. Yet a thousand rifles for a small trading post. It was the number which inspired the doubt.

It was Kars who finally broke the silence. He left his seat on the table and stood again at the window with his back turned.

"Guess we best leave it at that," he said.

"Yes. What are you going to do?"

"Look in at the Gridiron, and pass the time of day with young Alec." Kars laughed shortly. Then he turned, and his purpose was shining in his eyes. "Alec's Jessie's brother—and I've got to save that kid from himself."



CHAPTER XIX

AT THE GRIDIRON

Kars was early abroad. He left his apartment on the first floor of the same apartment house which furnished Bill Brudenell with his less palatial quarters, and sauntered down the main street in the direction of the Gridiron.

His mood was by no means a happy one. He realized only too surely that a man bent upon an errand such as he was stood at something more than a disadvantage. His life was made up of the study of the life about him. His understanding was of the cruder side of things. But now, when action, when simple force of character were his chief assets, he was called upon, or he had called upon himself, to undertake the difficult task of making a youth, big, strong, hot-headed, mad with the newly tasted joy of living, detach himself from his new life.

Nor was he without qualms when he passed the portals of the hotel, which ranked second only in ill-fame to Pap Shaunbaum's.

If the Gridiron possessed less ill-fame than its contemporary it was not because its proprietor was any less a "hold-up" than Pap. It was simply that his methods were governed by a certain circumspection. He cloaked his misdoings under a display of earnest endeavor in the better direction. For instance, every room displayed a printed set of regulations against anything and everything calculated to offend the customer of moral scruples—if such an one could be discovered in Leaping Horse. Dan McCrae enforced just as many of these regulations as suited him. And, somehow, for all he had drawn them up himself, none of them ever seemed to suit him. But they had their effect on his business. It became the fashion of the men of greater substance to make it a headquarters. And it was his boast that more wealth passed in and out of his doors than those of any house in Leaping Horse, except the bank.

Dan only desired such custom. He possessed a hundred and one pleasant wiles for the loosening of the bank rolls of such custom. No man ever left his establishment after a brief stay without considerably less bulging pockets.

When Dan espied the entrance of John Kars from behind the glass partition, which divided his office from the elaborate entrance hall, he lost no time in offering a personal welcome. Kars was his greatest failure in Leaping Horse, just as Pap had had to admit defeat. That these two men had failed to attract to their carefully baited traps the richest man in the country, a man unmarried, too, a man whose home possessed no other attraction than that of a well-furnished apartment, was a disaster too great for outward lamentation.

But neither despaired, even after years of failure. Nor did they ever lose an opportunity. It was an opportunity at this moment.

"Glad to see you back, Mr. Kars." The small, smiling, dangerous Dan was the picture of frank delight. "Leaping Horse misses her big men. Had a pleasant vacation?"

Kars had no illusions.

"Can't call a business trip a vacation," he said with a smile. "I don't reckon the North Pacific in winter comes under that heading either. Say, there's a boy stopping around here. Alexander Mowbray. Is he in the hotel?"

Dan cocked a sharp eye.

"I'll send a boy along," he said, pressing a bell. A sharp word to the youth who answered it and he turned again to the visitor.

"Guess you know most of these up-country folk," he said. "There's things moving inside. We're getting spenders in, quite a little. The city's asking questions. Mr. Mowbray's been here all winter, and he seems to think dollars don't cut ice beside a good time. I figger there's going to be a fifty per cent raise in the number of outfits making inside this season. There's a big talk of things. Well, it mostly finds its way into this city, so we can't kick any."

"No, you folks haven't any kick coming," Kars said amiably. This man's inquiries made no impression on him. It was the sort of thing he was accustomed to wherever he went in Leaping Horse.

At that moment a bell rang in the office, and Kars heard his name repeated by the 'phone operator.

"Ah, Mr. Mowbray's in," observed Dan, turning back to the office.

"Mr. Mowbray will be glad if you'll step right up, Mr. Kars." The 'phone clerk had emerged from his retreat.

"Thanks. What number?"

"Three hundred and one. Third floor, Mr. Kars," replied the clerk, with that love of the personal peculiar to his class. Then followed a hectoring command, "Elevator! Lively!"

Kars stepped into the elevator and was "expressed" to the third floor.

A few moments later he was looking into the depressed eyes of a youth he had only known as the buoyant, headstrong, north-bred son of Allan Mowbray.

The change wrought in one brief winter was greater than Kars had feared. Dissipation was in every line of the half-dressed youth's handsome face, and, as Kars looked into it, a great indignation mingled with his pity. But his indignation was against the trader who had left the youth to his own foolish devices in a city whose morals might well have shamed an aboriginal. Nor was his pity alone for the boy. His memory had gone back to the splendid dead. It had also flown to the two loving women whose eyes must have rained heart-breaking tears at the picture he was gazing upon.

The boy thing out a hand, and a smile lit his tired features for a moment as he welcomed the man who had always been something of a hero to him. He had hastily slipped on his trousers and thrust his feet into shoes. His pajama jacket was open, revealing the naked flesh underneath. Nor could Kars help but admire the physique now being so rapidly prostituted.

"It's bully of you looking me up," Alec said, with as much cordiality as an aching head would permit.

Then he laughed shamefacedly. "Guess I'm dopey this morning. I sat in at 'draw' last night, and collected quite a bunch of money. I didn't feel like quitting early."

Kars took up a position on the tumbled bed. His quick eyes were busy with the elaborate room. He priced it heavily in his mind. Nor did he miss the cocktail tray at the bedside, and the litter of clothes, clothes which must have been bought in Leaping Horse, scattered carelessly about.

"It don't do quitting when luck's running," he said, without a shade of censure. "A feller needs to call the limit—till it turns. 'Draw's' quite a game."

Alec had had doubts when John Kars' name had come up to him. He had only been partially aware of them. It had been the working of a consciousness of the life he was living, and of the clean living nature of his visitor. But the big man's words dispelled the last shadow of doubt, and he went on freely.

"Say," he cried, enthusiasm suddenly stirring him, "I'm only just getting wise to the things I missed all these years. It gets me beat to death how a feller like you, who could come near buying the whole blamed city, can trail around the country half your time and the other dope around on a rough sea with the wind blowing clear through your vitals."

"It's cleaner air—both ways."

The boy flung himself on the bed with his back against the foot-rail. He reached out and pressed the bell.

"Have a cocktail?" he said. "No?" as Kars shook his head. "Well, I got to, anyway. That's the only kick I got coming to the mornings. Gee, a feller gets a thirst. But who'd give a whoop for clean air? I've had so much all my life," he went on, with a laugh. "I'm lookin' for something with snap to it."

"Sure." Kars' steady eyes never changed their smiling expression. "Things with snap are good for—a while."

"'A while'? I want 'em all the time. Guess I owe Murray a big lot. It was him who fixed mother so she'd stake me, and let me git around. I didn't always figger Murray had use for me. But he's acted fine, and I guess I—say, I ran short of money a while back, and when he came along down he handed me a bunch out of his own dip, and stood good for a few odd debts! Murray! Get a line on it. Can you beat it? And Murray figgers more on dollars than any feller I know."

"You never know your friends till you get a gun-hole in your stomach," Kars laughed. "Murray's more of a sport than you guessed. He certainly don't unroll easy."

The boy's face was alight with good feeling. He sat up eagerly.

"That's just how I thought," he cried. "I——" A knock at the door was followed by the entrance of a bell-boy with the cocktail. Alec seized it, and drank thirstily.

Kars looked on. He gave no sign.

"That feller knows his job," he said, as the boy withdrew.

Alec laughed. He was feeling in better case already.

"Sure he does. A single push on that bell means one cocktail. He generally makes the trip twice in the morning. But say, talking of Murray, one of these days I'm going to make a big talk with him and just tell him what I feel 'bout things. I've got to tell him I've just bin a blamed young fool and didn't understand the sort of man he was."

"Then you've had trouble with him—again?" Kars' question had a sudden sharpening in it. He was thinking of what Bill had told him.

"Not a thing. Say, we haven't had a crooked word since we quit the old Fort. He's a diff'rent guy when he gets away from his—store. No, sir, Murray's wise. He guesses I need to see and do things. And he's helped me all he knows. And he showed me around some dandy places before I got wise."

He laughed boisterously, and his laugh drove straight to the heart of the man who heard it.

Kars was no moralist, but he knew danger when he saw it, moral or physical. The terrible danger into which this youth, this foolish brother of Jessie, had been plunged by Murray McTavish stirred him as he had not been stirred for years. Women, gaming, drink. This simple, weak, splendid youth. Leaping Horse, the cesspool of the earth. A mental shudder passed through him. But the acutest thought of the moment was of the actions of Murray McTavish. Why had he shown this boy "places"? Why had he financed him privately, and not left it to Ailsa Mowbray? Why, why, had he lied to Bill on the subject of a quarrel with Alec?

But these things, these thoughts found no outward expression. He had his purpose to achieve.

He nodded reflectively.

"Murray's got his ways," he said. "Guess we most have. Murray's ways mayn't always be our ways. They mayn't ever be. But that don't say a thing against 'em." He smiled. It was the patient smile of a man who is entirely master of himself. "Then Murray's got a kick coming to him, too. He's a queer figger, and he knows it and hates it. A thing like that's calculated to sour a feller some. I mean his ways."

Alec's agreement came with a smiling nod. He became expansive.

"Sure," he said. "You know Murray's got no women-folk around him. And I guess a feller's not alive till he's got women-folk around him." He drew a deep breath. "Gee," he cried, in a sort of ecstasy. "I know those things—now."

"Yes."

Kars was watching the play of emotion in the boy's eyes. He was following every thought passing behind them, measuring those things which might militate against his object.

"I can tell you a thing now I'd have hated to remember a while back," Alec went on. "Say, it used to set me plumb crazy thinking of it. There were times I could have shot Murray down in his tracks for it. It was Jessie. He was just crazy to marry her. I know," he nodded sapiently. "He never said a word. Jess knew, too, and she never said a word. She hates him. She hates him—that way—worse than she hates the Bell River neches. I was glad then. But it ain't that way now. We were both wrong. Maybe I'll make a talk with her one day. I owe Murray more than the dollars he handed me."

"Yes."

Not by the movement of an eyelid did Kars betray his feelings. But a fierce passion was tingling in every nerve as the youth went on talking.

"It's queer how folks get narrowed down living in a bum layout like the Fort." He smiled in a self-satisfied way. "I used to think Jose a wise guy one time. There's heaps of things you can't see right in a layout like that. I reckon Jessie ought to know Murray better. It's up to me. Don't you guess that way, too?"

Kars smilingly shook his head.

"It doesn't do butting in," he said. "Y'see folks know best how they need to act. You're feeling that way—now. No feller can think right for others. Guess folks' eyes don't see the same. Maybe it's to do with the color," he smiled. "When a man and a woman get thinking things, there's no room for other folks."

Kars' manner had a profound effect. He was talking as though dealing with a man of wide worldly knowledge, and the youth was more than flattered. He accepted the situation and the suggestion.

"Maybe you're right," he said at once. "I felt I'd like to hand him a turn—that's all."

Kars shrugged.

"It doesn't matter a thing," he said, with calculated purpose. "It's just my notion." Then he laughed. "But I didn't get around to worry with Murray McTavish. It's better than that."

He rose abruptly from the bed and moved across to the window. Alec was in the act of lighting a cigarette. The match burned itself out in his fingers, and the cigarette remained unlighted. His eyes were on his visitor with sudden expectation. Finally he broke into an uneasy laugh.

"Murray isn't the only ice on the river," he said weakly.

Kars turned about.

"Nor is he the only gold you'll maybe locate around. Do you feel like handling—other? Are you looking to make a big bunch of dollars? Do you need a stake that's going to hand you all the things you've dreamed about? You guess I'm a rich man. Folks figger I'm the richest man north of 'sixty.' Maybe I am. Well, if you guess you'd like to be the same way, it's up to you."

Alec was sitting up. The effects of his overnight debauch had been completely flung aside. His eyes, so like his father's, were wide, and his handsome face was alive with a sudden excitement. He flung his cigarette aside.

"Say, you're—fooling," he breathed incredulously.

Kars shook his head.

"I quit that years," he said.

"I—I don't get you," Alec went on at last, in a sort of desperate helplessness.

Kars dropped on to the bed again and laughed in his pleasant fashion.

"Sure you don't. But do you feel like it? Are you ready to take a chance—with me?"

"By Gee—yes! If there's a stake at the end of it."

"The stake's there, sure. But—but it means quitting Leaping Horse right away. It means hitting the old trail you curse. It means staking your life for all it's worth. It means using all that that big man, your father, handed you in life. It means getting out on God's earth, and telling the world right here you're a man, and a mighty big man, too. It means all that, and," he added with a smile that was unreadable, "a whole heap more."

Something of the excitement had died out of Alec's face. A shade of disappointment clouded his eyes. He reached out for another cigarette. Kars watched the signs.

"Well?" he questioned sharply. "There's millions of dollars in this for you. I'll stake my word on it it's a cinch—or death. I've handled the strike, and I know it's all I figger. I came along to hand you this proposition. And it's one I wouldn't hand to another soul living. I'm handing it to you because you're your father's son, because I need a feller whose whole training leaves him with the north trail beaten. It's up to you right here—and now."

The youngster smoked on in silence. Kars watched the battle going on behind his averted eyes. He knew what he was up against. He was struggling to save this boy against the overwhelming forces of extreme youth and weakness. The whole of his effort was supported by the barest thread. Would that thread hold?

Again came that nervous movement as Alec flung away his half-smoked cigarette.

"When should we need to start?" he demanded almost brusquely.

"Two weeks from now."

The egoism of the boy left him almost unappreciative of what this man was offering him. Kars had subtly flattered his vanity. He had done it purposely. He had left the youngster with the feeling that he was being asked a favor. There was relief in the tone of the reply. And complaint followed it up.

"That's not so bad. You said 'right away.'"

Kars' eyes were regarding him steadily.

"I call that right away. Well? I'm not handing you any more of it till you—accept," he added.

Alec suddenly sprang from the bed. He paced the room with long nervous strides. He felt that never in his life had he faced such a crisis. Kars simply looked on.

At last the boy spoke something of his thought aloud.

"By Gee! I can't refuse it. It's—it's too big. Two weeks. She'll be crazy about it. She'll—by gad, I must do it. I can——"

He broke off abruptly. He came to the foot-rail of the bed. He stood with his great hands clenching it firmly, as though for support.

"I'll go, Kars," he cried. "I'll go! And it's just great of you. I—I—it was kind of hard. There's things——"

Kars nodded.

"Sure," he said, with a smile. "But—she'll wait for you—if she's the woman you guess. It's only a year. But say, you'll need to sign a bond. A bond of secrecy, and—good faith. There's no quitting—once it's signed."

The big man's eyes shone squarely into the boy's. And something of the dead father looked back at him.

"Curse it, I'll sign," Alec cried with sudden force. "I'll sign anything. Millions of dollars! I'll sign right away, and I'll—play as you'd have me."

The boy passed a hand through his hair. His decision had cost him dearly. But he had taken it.

"Good." Kars rose from the bed. "Get dressed, Alec," he said kindly. "You'll sign that bond before you eat. After that I'll hand you all the talk you need. Call round at my apartment when you're fixed."

As John Kars passed out of the Gridiron one thought alone occupied him. Murray McTavish had lied. He had lied deliberately to Bill Brudenell. He had made no attempt to save the boy from the mire into which he had helped to fling him. On the contrary, he had thrust him deeper and deeper into it. Why? What—what was the meaning of it all? Where were things heading? What purpose lay behind the man's doings?



CHAPTER XX

THE "ONLOOKERS" AGAIN

The prompt action of John Kars looked as if it would achieve the desired result. His plan had been without any depth of subtlety. It was characteristic of the man, in whom energy and action served him in all crises. Alec had to be saved. The boy was standing at the brink of a pit of moral destruction. He must be dragged back. But physical force would be useless, for, in that direction, there was little if any advantage on the side of the man who designed to save him. Kars had won through the opportunities that were his. And he sat pondering his success, and dreaming of the sweet gray eyes which had inspired his effort, when Alec reached his apartment in fulfilment of his promise.

It was a happy interview. It was far happier than Alec could have believed possible, in view of his passionate regret at abandoning Leaping Horse, and the woman, whose tremendous attractions had caught his unsophisticated heart in her silken toils, for something approaching a year. But then Kars was using all the strength of a powerful, infectious personality in his effort.

He listened to the boy's story of his love and regret with sympathy and apparent understanding. He encouraged him wherever he sought encouragement. He had a pleasantry of happy expression wherever it was needed. In a word he played to the last degree upon a nature as weak as it was simply honest.

The net result was the final departure of Alec in almost buoyant mood at the prospects opening out before him, and bearing in his pocket the signed agreement, whereby, at the price of absolute secrecy, and a year's supreme effort, he was to achieve everything he needed to lay at the feet of a woman he believed to be the most perfect creature on God's beautiful earth.

Kars watched him go not without some misgivings, and his fears were tritely expressed to Bill Brudenell, who joined him a few minutes later.

"There's only one thing to unfix the things I've stuck together," he said. "It's the—woman."

And Bill's agreement added to his fears of the moment.

"Sure. But you haven't figgered on—Pap."

"Pap?"

Bill nodded.

"There's fourteen days. Pap's crazy mad about Maude and the boy. The boy won't figger to quit things for fourteen days. If I'm wise he'll boost all he needs into them. Well—there's Pap."

Bill was looking on with both eyes wide open, as was his way. He had put into a few words all he saw. And Kars beheld in perfect nakedness the dangers to his plans.

"We must get busy," was all he said, but there was a look of doubt in his usually confident eyes.

Maude lived in an elaborate house farther down the main street, and Alec Mowbray was on his way thither. He had kept from Kars the fact that his midday meal was to be taken with the woman who had now frankly abandoned herself to an absorbing passion for the handsome youth from the wilderness "inside."

It was no unusual episode in the career of a woman of her class. On the contrary, it was perhaps the commonest exhibition of her peculiar disposition. Hundreds of such women, thousands, have flung aside everything they have schemed and striven for, and finally achieved as the price of all a woman holds sacred, for the sake of a sudden, unbridled passion she is powerless to control. Perhaps "Chesapeake" Maude understood her risks in a city of lawlessness, and in flinging aside the protection of such a man as Pap Shaunbaum. Perhaps she did not. But those who looked on, and they were a whole people of a city, waited breathless and pulsating for the ensuing acts of what they regarded as a human comedy.

Alec, his slim, powerful young body clad in the orthodox garb of this northern city, swung along down the slush-laden street, his thoughts busy preparing his argument for the persuading of the woman who had become the sun and centre of his life. He knew his difficulties, he knew his own regrets. But the advantages both to her, and to him, which Kars had cleverly pointed out, outweighed both. His mind was set on persuading her. Nor did he question for a moment that for her, as for him, the bond between them was an enduring love that would always be theirs, and would adapt itself to their mutual advantage. The northern wilderness was deeply bred in him.

His way took him past Adler's Hotel, and, in a lucid moment, he remembered that Murray was stopping there. An impulse made him pause and look at his watch. It yet wanted half an hour to his appointment. Yes, he would see if Murray were in. He must tell him of his purpose to leave the city a while. It would be necessary to send word to his mother, too.

Murray was in. He was just contemplating food when he received Alec's message. He sent down word for him to come up to his room, and waited.

Murray McTavish was very much the same man of methodical business here in Leaping Horse as the Fort knew him. The attractions of the city left him quite untouched. His method of life seemed to undergo no variation. A single purpose dominated him at all times. But that purpose, whatever it might be, was his own.

His room was by no means extravagant, such as was the room Alec occupied at the Gridiron. Adler's Hotel boasted nothing of the extravagance of either of the two leading hotels. But it was ample for Murray's requirements. The usual bedroom furnishing was augmented by a capacious writing desk, which was more or less usual throughout the hotel.

He was at his desk now, and his bulk filled the armchair to the limits of its capacity. He pushed aside the work he had been engaged upon, turned away from the desk, and awaited the arrival of his visitor.

There was no smile in his eyes now, nor, which was more unusual, was there any smile upon his gross features. His whole pose was contemplative, and his dark, burning eyes shone deeply.

But it was a different man who greeted the youth as the door was thrust open. The smiling face was beaming welcome, and Murray gripped the outstretched hand with a cordiality that was not intended to be mistaken.

"Sit right down, boy," he said. "You're around in time to eat with me. But I'll chase up a cocktail."

But Alec stayed him.

"I just can't stay, Murray," he said hastily. "And I'm not needing a cocktail just now. I was passing, and I thought I'd hand you the thing I got in my mind, and get you to pass word on to my mother and Jessie."

He took the proffered chair facing the window. Murray had resumed his seat at the desk, which left him in the shadow.

"Why, just anything you say," Murray returned heartily. "The plans?"

The contrast between them left the trader overwhelmed. Alec, so tall, so clean-cut and athletic of build. His handsome face so classically molded. His fair hair the sort that any woman might rave over. Murray, insignificant, except in bulk. But for his curious dark eyes he must inevitably have been passed over without a second thought.

Alec drew up his long legs in a movement that suggested unease.

"Why, I can't tell you a thing worth hearing," he said, remembering his bond. "It's just I'm quitting Leaping Horse in two weeks. I'm quitting it a year, maybe." Then he added with a smile of greater confidence, "I've hit a big play. Maybe it's going to hand me a pile. Guess I'm looking for a big pile." Then he added with a cordial, happy laugh, "Same as you."

Murray's smile deepened if anything.

"Why, boy, that's great," he exclaimed. "That's the greatest news ever. Guess you couldn't have handed me anything I like better. As for your mother, she'll be jumping. She wasn't easy to fix, letting you get around here. You're going to make good. I'll hand her that right away. I'm quitting. I'm getting back to the Fort in a few days. That's bully news. Say, you're quitting in two weeks?"

"Yep. Two weeks."

Alec felt at ease again. He further appreciated Murray in that he did not press any inquisition.

They talked on for a few minutes on the messages Alec wished to convey to his mother, and finally the boy rose to go.

It was then that Murray changed from his attitude of delight to one of deep gravity, which did not succeed in entirely obliterating his smile.

"I was going to look you up if you hadn't happened along," he said seriously. "I was talking to Wiseman last night. You know Wiseman, of the Low Grade Hills Mine, out West? He's pretty tough. Josh Wiseman's a feller I haven't a heap of use for, but he's worth a big roll, and he's in with all the 'smarts' of Elysian Fields. Say, don't jump, or get hot at what I'm going to say. I just want to put you wise."

"Get right ahead," Alec said easily. He felt that his new relations with Murray left him free to listen to anything he had to say.

"Why, it's about Pap," Murray went on, deliberately. "And your news about quitting's made me glad. Wiseman was half soused, but he made a point of rounding me up. He wanted to hand me a notion he'd got in his half-baked head. He said two 'gun-men' had come into the city, and they'd come from 'Frisco because Pap had sent for them. He saw them yesterday and recognized them both. Josh hails from 'Frisco, you see. He handed his yarn to me to hand on to you. Get me? I don't know how much there is to it. I can't figger if you need to worry any. But Josh is a wise guy, as well as tough. Anyway, I'm glad you're quitting."

He held out a hand in warm cordiality, and Alec wrung it without a shadow of concern. He laughed.

"Why say, that's fine," he cried, his eyes shining recklessly. "If it wasn't for that darn pile I'd stop right around here. If Pap gets busy, why, there's going to be some play. I don't give a whoop for all the Paps in creation. Nor for his 'gunmen' either."

He was gone, and Murray was standing at his window gazing upon surroundings of squalid shacks, the tattered fringe of the main street. But he was not looking at these things. His thought was upon others that had nothing to do with the mire of civilization in which he stood. But he gave no sign, except that all his smile was swallowed up by the fierce fires burning deep down in his dark eyes.

The dance hall revel at the Elysian Fields was in full swing. The garish brilliancy of the scene was in fierce contrast with the night which strove to hide the meanness prevailing beyond Pap Shaunbaum's painted portals. The filthy street, the depth of slush, melting under a driving rain, which was at times a partial sleet. The bleak, biting wind, and the heavy pall of racing clouds. Then the huddled figures moving to and fro. Nor were they by any means all seeking the pleasures their money could buy. The "down-and-outs" shuffled through the uncharitable city day and night, in rain, or sunshine, or snow. But at night they resembled nothing so much as the hungry coyotes of the open, seeking for that wherewith to fill their empty bellies. The knowledge of these things only made the scenes of wanton luxury and vice under the glare of light the more offensive.

It was the third night of Alec Mowbray's last two weeks in Leaping Horse. How he had fared in his settlement of affairs with the woman who had taken possession of his moral being was not much concern of any one but himself. Neither Kars nor Bill Brudenell had heard of any contemplated change in his plans. They had not heard from him at all.

Nor was this a matter for their great concern. Their concern was Pap Shaunbaum and the passing of the days of waiting while their outfit was being prepared at the camp ten miles distant from the city, for their invasion of Bell River. They were watching out for the shadow of possible disaster before the youth could be got away.

Kars had verified the last detail of the situation in so far as the proprietor of the Elysian Fields was concerned. Nor was he left with any illusions. Pap had no intention of sitting down under this terrible public and private hurt a boy from the "inside" had inflicted upon him. The stories abroad were lurid in detail. It was said that the storm which had raged in the final scene between Pap and his mistress, when she quit the shelter he had provided for her for good, had been terrible indeed. It was said he had threatened her life in a moment of passion. It was said she had dared him to his face. It was also said that he, the great "gunman," Pap, had groveled at her feet like any callow school-youth. These things were open gossip, and each repetition of the tales in circulation gained in elaboration of detail, till all sorts of wild extravagances were accepted as facts.

But Kars and Bill accepted these things at a calm valuation. The side of the affair that they did not treat lightly was the certainty that Pap would not sit down under the injury. They knew him. They knew his record too well. Whatever jeopardy the woman stood in they were certain of the danger to young Alec. Of this the stories going about were precise and illuminating. Jack Beal, the managing director of the Yukon Amalgam Corporation, and a great friend of John Kars, had spoken with a certainty which carried deep conviction, coining from a man who was one of the most important commercial magnates of the city.

"Pap'll kill him sure," he said, in a manner of absolute conviction. "Maybe he won't hand him the dose himself. That's not his way these days. But the boy'll get his physic, and his folks best get busy on his epitaph right away."

The position was more than difficult. It was well-nigh impossible. None knew better than Kars how little there was to be done. They could wait and watch. That seemed to be about all. Warning would be useless. It would be worse. The probable result of warning would be to drive the hothead to some dire act of foolishness. Even to an open challenge of the inscrutable Pap. Kars and Bill were agreed they dared risk no such calamity. There were the police in Leaping Horse. But the Mounted Police were equally powerless, until some breach was actually committed.

The interim of waiting was long. To Kars, those remaining days before he could get Alec away were perhaps the longest and most anxious of his life. For all the sweet eyes of Jessie were urging him on behalf of her foolish brother, he felt utterly helpless.

But neither he nor Bill remained idle. Their watch, their secret watch over their charge, was prosecuted indefatigably. Every night saw them onlookers of the scene on the dance-floor of the Elysian Fields. And their vantage ground was the remote interior of one of the boxes. Their purpose was simple. It was a certainty in their minds that Pap would seek a public vengeance. Nor could he take it better than in his own dance hall where Maude and Alec flouted him every night. Thus, if their expectations were fulfilled, they would be on the spot to succor. A watchful eye might even avert disaster.

It was the third night of their watch. Nor was their vigil without interest beyond its object. Bill, who knew by sight every frequenter of the place, spent his time searching for newcomers. But newcomers were scarce at this season of the year. The arrivals had not yet begun from Seattle, and the "inside" was already claiming those who belonged to it. Kars devoted himself to a distant watch on Pap Shaunbaum. However the man's vengeance was to come, he felt that he must discover some sign in him of its imminence.

Pap was at his post amongst the crowd at the bar. His dark face hid every emotion behind a perfect mask. He talked and smiled with his customers, while his quick eyes kept sharp watch on the dancers. But never once did he display any undue interest in the tall couple whose very presence in his hall must have maddened him to a murderous pitch.

The clatter of the bar was lost under the joyous strains of the orchestra. Its pleasant quality drew forth frequent applause from the light-hearted crowd. Many were there who had no thought at all for that which they regarded as a comedy. Others again, like the men in the box, watched every move, every shade of expression which passed across the face of the Jewish proprietor. None knew for certain. But all guessed. And the guess of everybody was of a denouement which would serve the city with a topic of interest for at least a year.

"It's thinner to-night."

Bill spoke from the shadow of his curtain.

"The gang?" Kars did not withdraw his gaze.

"Sure. There's just one guy I don't know. But he don't look like cutting any ice. He's half soused anyhow, with four bottles of wine on the table between him and his dame. When he's through I don't think he'll know the Elysian Fields from a steam thresher. That blond dame of his looks like rolling him for his 'poke' without a worry. He'll hit the trail for his claim to-morrow without the color of a dime."

"Which is he?" Kars demanded, with a certain interest.

"Why, right there by that table under the balcony. See that dude with the greased head, and the five dollar nosegay in his coat. There, that one with Sadie Long and the 'Princess.' Get the Princess with the cream bow and her hair trailing same as it did when she was a child forty years ago. Next that outfit."

There was deep disgust in the doctor's tones, but there was something like pity in his half-humorous eyes.

"He hasn't even cleaned himself," he went on. "Looks like he's just quit the drift bottom of a hundred foot shaft, and come right in full of pay dirt all over him. Get his outfit. If you ran his pants through a sluice-box you'd get an elegant 'color.' Guess even Pap won't stand for him if he gets his eyes around his way."

Kars offered no comment, but he was studying the half-drunken miner closely.

At that moment the orchestra struck up again. It was a two step, and for once Alec and the beautiful Maude failed to make an appearance.

"Where's the—kid?" said Kars sharply.

"Sitting around, I guess."

Bill craned carefully. Then he sat back.

"See him?" demanded Kars.

"Sure. They're together. A bottle of wine's keeping them busy."

A look of impatience flashed into the eyes of Kars. His rugged face darkened.

"It's swinish!" he cried. "It's near getting my patience all out. Wine. Wine and women. What devil threw his spell over the boy's mother letting him quit her apron strings——"

"Murray, I guess," interjected Bill.

"Murray! Yes!"

Kars relapsed into silence again. Nor did either of them speak again till the music ceased. A vaudeville turn followed. A disgustingly clad, bewigged soubrette murdered a rag time ditty in a rasping soprano, displaying enough gold in her teeth to "salt" a barren claim. No one gave her heed. The lilt of the orchestra elicited a fragmentary chorus from the audience. For the rest the people pursued the prescribed purpose of these intervals in the dance.

Bill was regarding the stranger from the "inside."

"He's not getting noisy drunk," he said. "Seems dopey. Guess she'll hustle him off in a while."

"You guess he's soused?"

Kars' question startled his companion.

"What d'you make it then?"

"He hasn't taken a drink since you pointed him out. Nor has his dame."

Both men continued to watch the mud-stained creature. Nor was he particularly prepossessing, apart from his general uncleanness. His shock of uncombed, dark hair grew low on his forehead. His dark eyes were narrow. There was something artificial in his lounging attitude, and the manner in which he was pawing the woman with him.

"You guess he's acting drunk?" There was concern in Bill's voice.

"Can't say for sure."

The orchestra had started a waltz, and the new dance seemed to claim all the dancers. Alec and Maude were one of the first couples to appear. But the onlookers were watching the stranger. He had roused up, and was talking to his woman. A few moments later they emerged from their table to join the dancers.

"Going to dance," Bill commented. "He sure looks soused."

The man was swaying about as he moved. Kars' searching gaze missed nothing. The couple began to dance. And for all the man's unsteadiness it was clear he was a good, if reckless, dancer. The sober gait of the other dancers, however, seemed unsuited to his taste, and he began to sweep through the crowd with long racing strides which his woman could scarcely keep pace with.

Kars stood up.

"He'll get thrown out," said Bill. "Pap won't stand for that play. He'll tear up the floor with his nailed boots."

The man had swept round the hall, and he and his partner were lost under the balcony beneath the box in which the "onlookers" were sitting.

In a moment a cry came up from beneath them in a woman's voice. Another second and a chorus of men's angry voices almost drowned the music. The men in the orchestra were craning, and broad smiles lit some of their faces. Other dancers had come to a halt. They, too, were gazing with varying expressions of inquiry and curiosity, but none with any display of alarm.

"He's boosted into some one," said Bill.

A babel of voices came up from below. They were deep with fierce protest. The trouble was gaining in seriousness. Kars leaned out of the box. He could see nothing of what was going on. He abruptly drew back, and turned to his companion.

"Say——"

But his words remained unuttered. He was interrupted by a violent shout from below.

"You son-of-a——!"

Bill's hand clutched at Kars' muscular arm.

"That's the kid! Quick! Come on!"

They started for the door of the box. But, even as the doctor gripped and turned the handle, the sequel to such an epithet in a place like Leaping Horse came. Two shots rang out. Then two more followed on the instant.

In a moment every light in the place was put out and pandemonium reigned.



CHAPTER XXI

DR. BILL INVESTIGATES

All that had been feared by the two men in the box had come to pass. It had come with a swiftness, a sureness incomparable. It had come with a mercilessness which those who knew him regarded as only to be expected in a man of Pap Shaunbaum's record.

Accustomed to an atmosphere very little removed from the lawless, the panic and pandemonium that reigned in the dark was hardly to have been expected on the part of the frequenters of the Elysian Fields. But it was the sudden blacking out of the scene which had wrought on the nerves. It was the doubt, the fear of where the next shots might come, which sent men and women, shrieking and shouting, stampeding for the doors which led to the hotel.

Never had the dance hall at the Elysian Fields so quickly cleared of its revelers. The crush was terrible. Women fell and were trampled under foot. It was only their men who managed to save them from serious disaster. Fortunately the light in the hotel beyond the doors became a beacon, and, in minutes only, the human tide, bedraggled and bruised, poured out from the darkness of disaster to the glad light which helped to restore confidence and a burning curiosity.

But curiosity had to remain unsatisfied for that night at least. The doors were slammed in the faces of those who sought to return, and the locks were turned, and the bolts were shot upon them. The excited crowd was left to melt away as it chose, or stimulate its shaking nerves at the various bars open to it.

Meanwhile John Kars and Bill Brudenell fumbled their way to the floor below. The uncertainty, the possible danger, concerned them in nowise. Alec was in the shooting. They might yet be in time to save him. This thought sent them plunging through the darkness regardless of everything but their objective.

As they reached the floor they heard the sharp tones of Pap echoing through the darkened hall.

"Fasten every darn door," he cried. "Don't let any of those guys get back in. Guess the p'lice'll be along right away. Turn up the lights."

The promptness with which his orders were obeyed displayed something of the man. It displayed something more to the two hurrying men. It suggested to both their minds that the whole thing had been prepared for. Perhaps even the employees of this man were concerned in their chief's plot.

As the full light blazed out again it revealed the bartenders still behind the bar. It showed two men at the main doors, and another at each of the other entrances. Furthermore, it revealed the drop curtain lowered on the stage, and the orchestra men peering questioningly, and not without fearful glances, over the rail which barred them from the polished dance floor.

Besides these things Pap Shaunbaum was hurrying across the hall. His mask-like face displayed no sign of emotion. Not even concern. He was approaching two huddled figures lying amidst a lurid splash of their own blood. They were barely a yard from each other, and their position was directly beneath the floor of the box which the "onlookers" had occupied.

The three men converged at the same moment. It was the sight of John Kars and Dr. Bill that brought the first sign of emotion to Pap's face.

"Say, this is hell!" he cried. Then, as the doctor knelt beside the body of Alec Mowbray, the back of whose head, with its tangled mass of blood-soaked hair, was a great gaping cavity: "He's out. That pore darn kid's out—sure. Say, I wouldn't have had it happen for ten thousand dollars."

"No."

It was Kars who replied. Dr. Bill was examining the body of the man whose clothing was stained with the auriferous soil of his claim.

Two guns were lying on the floor beside the bodies. Pap moved as though to pick one up. Kars' hand fell on his outstretched arm.

"Don't touch those," he said. "Guess they're for the police."

Pap straightened up on the instant. His dark eyes shot a swift glance into the face of the man he had for years desired to come into closer contact with. It was hardly a friendly look. It was questioning, too.

"They'll be around right away. I 'phoned 'em."

Kars nodded.

"Good."

Bill looked up.

"Out. Right out. Both of them. Guess we best wait for the police."

"Can't they be removed?" Pap's eyes were on the doctor.

Kars took it upon himself to reply.

"Not till the p'lice get around."

But Pap would not accept the dictation.

"That so, Doc?" he inquired, ignoring Kars.

"That's so," said Bill, with an almost stern brevity. Then, in a moment, the Jew's face flushed under his dark skin.

"The darn suckers!" he cried. "This'll cost me thousands of dollars. It'll drive trade into the Gridiron fer weeks. If I'd been wise to that bum being soused he'd have gone out, if he broke his lousy neck."

"I'm not dead sure he was soused," said Kars.

The cold tone of his voice again brought Pap's eyes to his face.

"What d'you guess?" he demanded roughly.

"He wasn't a miner, and he wasn't soused. I guess he was a 'gunman.'"

"What d'you mean?"

"Just what I said. I'd been watching him a while from the box above us. I've seen enough to figger this thing's for the p'lice. We're going to put this thing through for what it's worth, and my bank roll's going to talk plenty."

Bill had risen from his knees. He was standing beyond the two bodies. His shrewd eyes were steadily regarding Pap, who, in turn, was gazing squarely into the cold eyes of John Kars.

Just for a moment it looked as though he were about to fling back hot words at the unquestioned challenge in them. But the light suddenly died out of his eyes. His thin lips compressed, and he shrugged his shoulders.

"Guess that's up to you," he said, and moved away towards the bar.

Kars gazed down at the dead form of Alec Mowbray. All the coldness had gone out of his eyes. It had been replaced with a world of pity, for which no words of his could have found expression. The spectacle was terrible, and the sight of it filled him with an emotion which no sight of death had ever before stirred. He was thinking of the widowed mother. He was thinking of the girl whose gray eyes had taught him so much. He was wondering how he must carry the news to these two living souls, and fling them once more to the depths of despair such as they had endured through the murder of a husband and father.

He was aroused from his grievous meditations by a sharp hammering on the main doors. It was the police. Kars turned at once.

"Open that door!" he said sharply to the waiter standing beside it.

The man hesitated and looked at Pap. Kars would not be denied.

"Open that door," he ordered again, and moved towards it.

The man obeyed on the instant.

It was two days before the investigation into the tragedy at the Elysian Fields released Dr. Bill. Being on the spot, and being one of the most skilful medical men in Leaping Horse, the Mounted Police had claimed him, a more than willing helper.

In two issues the Leaping Horse Courier had dared greatly, castigating the morality of the city, and the Elysian Fields in particular, under "scare" headlines. For two days the public found no other topic of conversation, and the "shooting" looked like serving them indefinitely. They had been waiting for this thing to happen. They had been given all they desired to the full. A hundred witnesses placed themselves at the disposal of the Mounted Police, and at least seventy-five per cent of them were more than willing to incriminate Pap Shaunbaum if opportunity served.

Nor was John Kars idle during that time. His attorneys saw a good deal of him, and, as a result, a campaign to track down the instigator of this shooting was inaugurated. And that instigator was, without a shadow of doubt,—Pap Shaunbaum.

Kars saw nothing of Bill during those two days of his preoccupation. But the second morning provided him with food for serious reflection. It was a brief note which reached him at noon. It was an urgent demand that he should take no definite action through his legal advisers, should take no action at all, in fact, until he, Bill, had seen him, and conveyed to him the results of the investigation. He would endeavor to see him that night.

Kars studied the position carefully. But he committed himself to no change of plans. He simply left the position as it stood for the moment, and reserved judgment.

It was late at night when Bill made his appearance. Kars was waiting in his apartment with what patience he could. He had spent a busy day on his own mining affairs, which usually had the effect of wearying him. For the last two or three years the commercial aspect of his mining interests came very nearly boring him. It was only the sheer necessity of the thing which drove him to the offices of the various corporations he controlled.

But the sight of his friend banished every other consideration from his mind. The shooting of Alec Mowbray dominated him, just as, for the present, it dominated the little world of Leaping Horse.

He thrust a deep chair forward in eager welcome, and looked on with grave, searching eyes while the doctor flung himself into it with a deep, unaffected sigh of weariness.

"Guess I haven't had a minute, John," he said. "Those police fellers are drivers. Say, we always reckon they're a bright crowd. You need to see 'em at work to get a right notion. They've got most things beat before they start."

"This one?"

Kars settled himself in a chair opposite his visitor. His manner was that of a man prepared to listen rather than talk. He stretched his long legs comfortably.

"I said 'most.' No-o, not this one. That's the trouble. That's why I wrote you. The police are asking a question. And they've got to find an answer. Who fired the shots that shut out that boy's lights?"

Kars' brows were raised. An incredulous look searched the other's face.

"Why, that 'gunman'—surely."

Bill shook his head. He had been probing a vest pocket. Now he produced a small object, and handed it across to the other with a keen demand.

"What's that?" His eyes were twinkling alertly.

Kars took the object and examined it closely under the electric light. After a prolonged scrutiny he handed it back.

"The bullet of a 'thirty-two' automatic," he said.

"Sure. Dead right. The latest invention for toughs to hand out murder with. The police don't figger there's six of them in Leaping Horse."

"I brought one with me this trip. They're quick an' handy. But—that?"

"That?" Bill held the bullet poised, gazing at it while he spoke. "I dug that out of that boy's lung. There's another of 'em, I guess. The police have that. They dug theirs out of the woodwork right behind where young Alec was standing. It was that opened his head out. Those two shots handed him his dose. And the other feller—why, the other feller was armed with a forty-five Colt."

There was nothing dramatic in the manner of the statement. Bill spoke with all his usual calm. He was merely stating the facts which had been revealed at the investigation.

Kars' only outward sign was a stirring of his great body. The significance had penetrated deeply. He realized the necessity of his friend's note.

Bill went on.

"If we'd only seen it all," he regretted. "If we'd seen the shots fired, we'd have been a deal wiser. I'm figgering if we hadn't quit our seats we'd have been wise—much wiser. But we quit them, and it's no use figgering that way. The police have been reconstructing. They're reconstructing right now. There's a thing or two stands right out," he went on reflectively. "And they're mostly illuminating. First Alec was quicker with his gun than the other feller. He did that 'gunman' up like a streak of lightning. He didn't take a chance. Where he learned his play I can't think. There was a dash of his father in what he did. And he'd have got away with it if—it hadn't been for the automatic from somewhere else. The 'gunman' drew on him first. That's clear. A dozen folk saw it. He'd boosted Alec and his dame in the dance, and stretched Maude on the floor. And he did it because he meant to. It was clumsy—which I guess was meant, too. I don't reckon it looked like anything but a dance hall scrap. That's where we see Pap in it. The 'gunman' got his dose in the pit of his bowels, and a hole in his heart, while his own shots went wide, and spoiled some of the gold paint in the decorations. The police tracked out both bullets that came from his gun. But the automatic?"

He drew a deep breath pregnant with regret.

"It came from a distant point," he went on, after a pause. "There's folks reckon it came from one of the boxes opposite where we were sitting. How it didn't get some of the crowd standing around keeps me guessing. The feller at the end of that gun was an—artist. He was a jewel at the game. And it wasn't Pap. That's as sure as death. Pap was standing yarning to a crowd at the bar when all the shots were fired. And the story's on the word of folks who hate him to death. We can't locate a soul who saw any other gun pulled. I'd say Pap's got Satan licked a mile.

"Say, John," he went on, after another pause, "it makes this thing look like a sink without any bottom for the dollars you reckon to hand out chasing it up. The boy's out. And Pap's tracks—why, they just don't exist. That's all. It looks like we've got to stand for this play the same as we have to stand for most things Pap and his gang fancy doing. I'm beat to death, and—sore. Looks like we're sitting around like two sucking kids, and we can't do a thing—not a thing."

"But there's talk of two 'gunmen.'" Kars was sitting up. His attitude displayed the urgency of his thought. "The folks all got it. I've had it all down the sidewalk."

His emotions were deeply stirred. They were displayed in the mounting flush under his weather-stained cheeks. In the hot contentiousness of his eyes. He was leaning forward with his feet tucked beneath his chair.

"Sure you have. So have I. So have the police." Bill's reply came after a moment's deliberation. "Josh Wiseman handed that out. Josh reckons he's seen them, and recognized them. But Josh is a big souse. He's seeing things 'most all the time. He figgers the feller young Alec shot up was one of them—by name Peter Hara, of 'Frisco. The other, we haven't seen, he reckons is 'Hand-out' Lal. Another 'Frisco bum. But the police have had the wires going, and they can't track fellers of that name in 'Frisco, or anywhere else. Still, it's a trail they're hanging to amongst others. And I guess they're not quitting it till they figger Josh is right for the bughouse. No," he added with a trouble that would no longer be denied, "the whole thing is, Pap's clear. There's not a thing points his way. It's the result of a dance hall brawl, and we—why, we've just got to hand on the whole pitiful racket to two lone women at the Fort."

For moments the two men looked into each other's eyes. Then Kars started up. He began to pace the soft carpet with uneven strides.

Suddenly he paused. His emotions seemed to be again under control.

"It seems that way," he said, "unless Murray starts out before us."

"Murray's quit," Bill shook his head. "He'd quit the city before this thing happened. The morning of the same day. His whole outfit pulled out with him. He doesn't know a thing of this."

"I didn't know he'd quit." Kars stood beside the centre table gazing down at the other.

"The police looked him up. They wanted to hold up the news from the boy's folks till they'd investigated. He'd been gone twenty-four hours."

"I hadn't a notion," Kars declared blankly. "I figgered to run him down at Adler's." Then in a moment his feelings overcame his restraint. "Then it's up to—me," he cried desperately. "It's up to me, and it—scares me to death. Say—that poor child. That poor little gal." Again he was pacing the room. "It's fierce, Bill! Oh, God, it's fierce!"

Bill's gravely sympathetic eyes watched the rapid movements of the man as he paced restlessly up and down. He waited for that calmness which he knew was sure to follow in due course. When he spoke his tones had gathered a careful moderation.

"Sure it's fierce," he said. Then he added: "Murray drives hard on the trail. This story isn't even going to hit against his heels. Say, John, you best let me hand this story on. Y'see my calling makes it more in my line. A doctor's not always healing. There's times when he's got to open up wounds. But he knows how to open 'em."

"Not on your life, Bill!" Kars' denial came on the instant. "I'm not shirking a thing. I just love that child to death. It's up to me. Some day I'm hoping it's coming my way handing her some sort of happiness. That being so I kind of feel she's got to get the other side of things through me. God knows it's going to be tough for her, poor little kid, but well, it's up to me to help her through."

There was something tremendously gentle in the man's outburst. He was so big. There was so much force in his manner. And yet the infinite tenderness of his regard for the girl was apparent in every shadow of expression that escaped him.

Bill understood. But for once the position was reversed. The doctor's kindly, twinkling eyes seemed to have absorbed all that which usually looked out of the other's. They were calm, even hard. There was bitter anger in them. His mellow philosophy had broken down before the human feelings so deeply stirred. He had passed the lover's feelings over for a reversion to the tragedy at the Elysian Fields. It was the demoniac character of the detested Pap Shaunbaum. It was the hideous uselessness of it all. It was the terrible viciousness of this leper city which had brought the whole thing about.

But was it? His mind went further back. There was another tragedy, equally wanton, equally ferocious. The father as well as the son, and he marveled, and wondered at the purpose of Providence in permitting such a cruel devastation of the lives of two helpless, simple women.

His sharp tones broke the silence.

"Yes," he exclaimed, "this thing needs to be hunted down, John. It needs to be hunted down till the 'pound's' paid. Those two lone women are my best friends. Guess they're something more to you. I can't see daylight. I can't see where it's coming from, anyway. But some one's got to get it. And we need a hand in passing it to him, whoever it is. I feel just now there wouldn't be a thing in the world more comic to me than to see Pap Shaunbaum kicking daylight with his vulture neck tied up. And I'd ask no better of Providence than to make it so I could laugh till my sides split. It's going to mean dollars an' dollars, and time, and a big work. But if we don't do it, why, Pap gets away with his play. We can't stand for that. My bank roll's open."

"It doesn't need to be." All the gentleness had passed from Kars' eyes, from his whole manner. It had become abrupt again. "Guess money can't repay those poor folks' losses. But it can do a deal to boost justice along. It's my money that's going to talk. I'm going to wipe out the score those lone women can never hope to. I'm going to pay it. By God, I'm going to pay it!"



CHAPTER XXII

IN THE SPRINGTIME

So the day came when the outfit of John Kars "pulled out." There had been no change in his plans as the result of Alec Mowbray's murder. There could be no change in them, so long as hundreds of miles divided this man from the girl who had come to mean for him all that life contained. The old passion for the trail still stirred him. The Ishmaelite in him refused to change his nature. But since his manhood had responded to natural claims, since the twin gray stars had risen upon his horizon, a magnetic power held him to a definite course which he had neither power nor inclination to deny.

The days before the departure had been busy indeed. They had been rendered doubly busy by the affairs surrounding Alec Mowbray's death. But all these things had been dealt with, with an energy that left a course of perfect smoothness behind as well as ahead.

Everything, humanly possible, would be done to hunt down the instigator and perpetrator of the crime, and a small fortune was placed at the disposal of Kars' trusted attorneys for that purpose. For the rest he would be personally responsible. In Bill Brudenell he had a willing and sagacious lieutenant. In Abe Dodds, and in the hard-living expert prospector, Joe Saunders, he had a staff for his enterprise on Bell River beyond words in capacity and loyalty.

But the "outfit." It was called "outfit," as were all such expeditions. It resembled an army in miniature, white and colored. But more than all else it resembled a caravan, and an extensive one. The preparations had occupied the whole of the long winter, and had been wrapped in profound secrecy. The two men who had carried them out, under Bill Brudenell's watchful eye, had labored under no delusions. They were preparing for a great adventure in the hunt for gold, but they were also preparing for war on no mean scale. Their enthusiasm rejoiced in both of these prospects, and they worked with an efficiency that left nothing to be desired.

The dispositions at departure were Kars' secret. Nor were they known until the last moment. The warlike side of the expedition was dispatched in secret by an alternative and more difficult trail than the main communication with Fort Mowbray. It carried the bulk of equipment. But its way would be shorter, and it would miss Fort Mowbray altogether, and take up its quarters at the headwaters of Snake River, to await the coming of the leaders. Abe and Saunders would conduct this expedition, while Kars and Bill traveled via Fort Mowbray, with Peigan Charley, and an outfit of packs and packmen such as it was their habit to journey with.

The start of the expedition was without herald or trumpet. It left its camp in the damp of a gray spring morning, when, under cover of a gradually lightening dawn, it struck through a narrow valley, where feet and hoofs sank deep into a mire of liquid mud.

To the west the hills rose amidst clouds of saturating mist. To the east the rolling country mounted slowly till it reached the foot of vast glacial crests, almost at the limit of human vision. The purpling distance to the west suggested fastnesses remote enough from the northern man, yet in those deep canyons, those wide valleys, along creek-bank and river bed, the busy prospector was ruthlessly prosecuting his quest for the elusive "color," and the mining engineer was probing for Nature's most deeply hidden secrets.

This was the Eldorado John Kars had known since his boyhood's days, when the fierce fight against starvation had been bitter indeed. Few of the secrets of those western hills were unknown to him. But now that his pouch was full, and the pangs of hunger were only a remote memory, and these hills claimed him only that he was lord of properties within their heart which yielded him fortune almost automatically, his eyes were turned to the north, and to the hidden world eastwards.

It was a trail of mud and washout. It was a trail of landslide and flood. It was a dripping land, dank with melting mists, and awash with the slush of the thaw. The skies were pouring out their flood of summer promise, those warming rains which must always be endured before the hordes of flies and mosquitoes swarm to announce the real open season.

But these men were hard beyond all complaint at physical discomfort. If they cursed the land they haunted, it was because it was their habit so to curse. It was the curse of the tongue rather than of the heart. For they were men who owed all that they were, or ever hoped to be, to this fierce country north of "sixty."

Spring was over all. The northern earth was heaving towards awakening from its winter slumber. As it was on the trail, so it was on Snake River, where the old black walls of Fort Mowbray gazed out upon the groaning and booming glacial bed, burying the dead earth beyond the eyes of man. The fount of life was renewing itself in man, in beast, even in the matter we choose to regard as dead.

Jessie Mowbray was watching the broken ice as it swept on down the flooding river. She was clad in an oilskin which had only utility for its purpose. Her soft gray eyes were gazing out through the gently falling rain with an awe which the display of winter's break up never failed to inspire in her.

The tremendous power of Nature held her spellbound. It was all so vast, so sure. She had witnessed these season's changes since her childhood and never in her mind had they sunk to the level of routine. They were magical transformations wrought by the all-powerful fairy, Nature. They were performed with a wave of the wand. The iron of winter was swept away with a rush, and the stage was instantly set for summer.

But the deepest mystery to her was the glacier beyond the river. Every spring she listened to its groaning lamentation with the same feelings stirring. Her gentle spirit saw in it a monster, a living, moving, heaving monster, whose voice awoke the echoes of the hills in protest, and whose enveloping folds clung with cruel tenacity to a conquered territory laboring to free itself from a bondage of sterility which it had borne for thousands of years. To her it was like the powers of Good battling with influences of Evil. It was as though each year, when the sun rose higher and higher in the sky, these powers of Good were seeking vainly to overthrow an evil which threatened the tiny human seed planted in the world for the furthering of an All-wise Creator's great hidden purpose.

The landing was almost awash with the swollen waters. The booming ice-floes swept on. They were moving northwards, towards the eternal ice-fields, to melt or jamb on their way, but surely to melt in the end. And when they had all gone it would be summer. And life—life would be renewed at the post.

Renewal of the life at the post meant only one thing for Jessie. It meant the early return of John Kars. The thought of it thrilled her. But the thrill passed. For she knew his coming only heralded his passing on.

She sighed and her soft eyes grew misty. Nor had the mist to do with the rain which was saturating the world about her. Oh, if there were to be no passing on! But she knew she could not hope for so much. There was nothing for him here. Besides, he was wedded to the secrets of the long trail.

Wedded! Her moment, of regret passed, and a great dream filled her simple mind. It was her woman's dream of all that could ever crown her life. It was the springtime of her life and all the buoyant hope of the break from a dead winter was stirring in her young veins. She put from her mind the "passing on," and remembered only that he would soon return.

Her heart was full of a gentle delight as at last she turned back from the river, and sought her home in the clearing.

Her eyes were shining radiantly when she encountered Father Jose passing over to his Mission from his ministrations to a sick squaw.

"Been watching the old ice go?" he inquired, smiling into the eyes which looked into his from under the wide brim of a waterproof hat.

Jessie nodded.

"It's spring—isn't it?" she said smiling.

Her reply summed up her whole mood. The priest understood.

"Surely. And it's good to see the spring, my child. It's good for everybody, young and old. But," he added with a sigh, "it's specially good for us up here. The Indians die like flies in winter. But your mother's asking for you."

The girl hurried on. Perhaps second to her love for John Kars came her affection for her brave mother.

Ailsa Mowbray met her at the threshold.

"Murray's asking for you," she said, in her simply direct fashion. "He's got plans and things he needs to fix. He told me this morning, but I guess he needs to explain them himself. Will you go along up to the Fort?"

There was nothing in the mother's manner to invite the quick look of doubt which her words inspired.

Murray had only arrived from Leaping Horse two days before. Since that time he had been buried under an avalanche of arrears of work. Even his meals had had to be sent up to him at the Fort. He had brought back reports of Alec's well-being for the mother and sister. He had brought back all that abounding good-nature and physical and mental energy which dispelled the last shadows of winter loneliness from these women. Ailsa Mowbray had carried on the easy work of winter at the store, but she was glad of the relief from responsibility which Murray's return gave her.

But he had laid before her the necessity of a flying visit up country at once, and had urged her to again carry on the store duties in his absence. Furthermore he had suggested that Jessie's assistance should be enlisted during his absence, since Alec was away, and the work would be heavier now that spring was opening.