The mother had reluctantly agreed. For herself she had been willing enough. But for Jessie she had stipulated that he should place the matter before her himself. She had no desire that the one child remaining to her should be made to slave her days at the Fort. She would use none of her influence. Her whole interest in the trade which had been her life for so long was waning. There were times when she realized, in the loneliness which had descended upon them with Alec's going, that only habit kept her to the life, and even that held her only by the lightest thread. It was coming to her that the years were passing swiftly. The striving of the days at the side of her idolized husband had seemed not only natural, but a delight to her. Since his cruel end no such feeling had stirred her. There were her children, and she had realized that the work must go on for them. But now—now that Alec had gone to the world outside her whole perspective had changed. And with the change had come the realization of rapidly passing years.

There were times, even, when she speculated as to how and where she could set up a new home for her children. A home with which Alec could find no fault, and Jessie might have the chances due to her age. But these things were kept closely to herself. The habit of years was strong upon her, and, for all her understanding of her wealth, it was difficult to make a change.

"Can't you tell me, mother? I'd rather have you explain!"

The likeness between mother and daughter was very strong. Even in the directness with which they expressed their feelings. Jessie's feelings were fully displayed in the expression of her preference.

"Why don't you want to see Murray?"

The mother's question came on the instant. It came with a suggestion of reproach.

"Oh, I'm not scared, mother," the girl smiled. "Only I don't just see why Murray should ask me things you don't care to ask me. That's all."

"Is it?" The mother's eyes were searching.

"Nearly."

Jessie laughed.

"Best tell me the rest."

The girl shook her head decidedly.

"No, mother. There's no need. You're wiser than you pretend. Murray's a better friend and partner—in business—than anything else. Guess we best leave it that way."

"Yes, it's best that way." The mother was regarding the pretty face before her with deep affection. "But I told Murray he'd have to lay his plans before you—himself. That's why he wants to see you up at the Fort."

The girl's response came at once, and with an impulsive readiness.

"Then I'll go up, right away," she said. Nor was there the smallest display of any of the reluctance she really felt.

The girl stood framed in the great gateway of the old stockade. The oilskin reached almost to her slim ankles. It was dripping and the hat of the same material which almost entirely enveloped her ruddy brown head was trailing a stream of water on to her shoulders.

Murray McTavish saw her from the window of his office. He saw her pause for a few moments and gaze out at the distant view. He remembered seeing her stand so once before. He remembered well. He remembered her expressed fears, and all that which had happened subsequently. The smile on his round face was the same smile it had been then. Perhaps it was a smile he could not help.

This time he made no move to join her. He waited. And presently she turned and passed round to the door of the store.

"Mother said you wanted to see me about something. Something you needed to explain—personally. That so?"

Jessie was standing beside the trader's desk. She was looking down squarely into the man's smiling face. There was a curious fearlessness in her regard that was not quite genuine. There was a brusquerie in her manner that would not have been there had there been any one else present.

She removed the oilskin hat, and laid it aside on a chair as she spoke, and the revelation of her beautiful chestnut hair, and its contrast with her gray eyes, quickened the man's pulses. He was thinking of her remarkable beauty even as he spoke.

"Say, it's good of you to come along. You best shed that oilskin."

He rose from his desk to assist. But the girl required none of his help. She slipped out of the garment before he could reach her. He accepted the situation, and drew forward the chair from the desk at which Alec had been wont to work.

"You'll sit," he said, as he placed it for her.

But Murray's consideration and politeness had no appeal for Jessie. She was anxious to be done with the interview.

"That's all right," she said, with a short laugh. "The old hill doesn't tire me any. I got the school in an hour, so, maybe, you'll tell me about things right away."

"Ah, there's the school, and there's a heap of other things that take your time." Murray had returned to his desk, and Jessie deliberately moved to the window. "It's those things made me want to talk to you. I was wondering how you could fix them so you could hand us a big piece of time up here."

"You want me to work around the store?"

The girl had turned. Her questioning eyes were regarding him steadily. There was no unreality about her manner now. Murray's smile would have been disarming had she not been so used to it.

"Just while I'm—away."

There was the smallest possible twist of wryness to the man's lips as he admitted to himself the necessity for the final words.

"I see."

The girl's relief was so obvious that, for a moment, the man's gaze became averted.

Perhaps Jessie was unaware of the manner in which she had revealed her feelings. Perhaps she knew, and had even calculated it. Much of her mother's courage was hers.

"You'd better make it plain—what you want. Exactly. If it's in the interest of things, why, I'll do all I know."

Murray's remarkable eyes were steadily regarding her again. His mechanical smile had changed its character. It was spontaneous now. But its spontaneity was without any joy.

"Oh, it's in the interest of—things, or I wouldn't ask it," he said. "Y'see," he went on, "I got right back home here to get news of things happening north that want looking into. I've got to pull right away before summer settles down good, and get back again. That being so it sets everything on to your mother's shoulders—with Alec away. Your mother's good grit. We couldn't find her equal anywhere when it comes to handling this proposition. But she doesn't get younger. And it kind of seems tough on her." He sighed, and his eyes had sobered to a look of real trouble. "Y'see, Jessie, she's a great woman. She's a mother I'd have been proud to call my own. But she's yours, and that's why I'm asking that you'll weigh in and help her out—the time I'm away. It's not a lot when you see your mother getting older every day, is it? 'Specially such a mother. She's too big to ask you herself. That's her way. It makes me feel bad when I get back to find her doing and figgering at this desk when she ought to be sitting around at her ease after all she's done in the past. It's that, or get white help in from down south. And it don't seem good getting white help in, not while we can keep this outfit going ourselves. There's things don't need getting 'outside,' or likely we'll get a rush of whites that'll leave us no better than a bum trading post of the past. It wouldn't be good for us sitting around at this old post, not earning a grub stake, while other folks were eating the—fruit we'd planted."

The girl had remained beside the window the whole time he was talking. But her eyes were on him, and she was filled with wonder, and not untouched by the feeling he was displaying. This was a side to his character she had never witnessed before. It astounded. But it also searched every generous impulse she possessed.

Her answer came on the instant.

"You don't need to say another word," she cried. "Nothing matters so I can help mother out. I know there's secrets and things. I've every reason to know there are. The good God knows I've reason enough. We all have. What those secrets are I can only guess, and I don't want even to do that—now. I hate them, and wish they'd never been."

"Your mother would never have been the wealthy woman she is without them."

"No, and I'd be glad if that were so."

There was a world of passionate sincerity in the girl's denial. It came straight from her heart. The loss of a father could find no compensation in mere wealth. She understood the grasping nature of this man. She understood that commercial success stood out before everything in his desires.

Her moment of more kindly feeling towards him passed, and a breath of winter chilled her warm young heart.

"Would you?"

The man's smile had returned once more. His questioning eyes had a subtle irony in their burning depths.

"Sure. A thousand times I'd have us be just struggling traders as we once were. Then I'd have my daddy with us, and mother would be the happy woman I've always remembered her—before those secrets."

The man stirred with a movement almost of irritation.

"There's things I can't just see, child," he said, with a sort of restrained impatience. "You're talking as if you guessed life could be controlled at the will of us folk. You guess your father could have escaped his fate, if he'd left our trade on Bell River alone. Maybe he could, on the face of things. But could he have escaped acting the way he acted? Could any of us? We all got just so much nature. That nature isn't ours to cut about and alter into the shape we fancy. What that nature says 'do,' we just got to do. Your nature's telling you to get around and help your mother out. My nature says get busy and see to things up north. Well, a landslide, or a blizzard, or any old thing might put me out of business on the way. A storm, or fire might cost you your life right here in this Fort. It's the chances of life. And it's the nature of us makes us take the chances. We just got to work on the way we see, and we can't see diff'rent—at will. If we could see diff'rent at will, there's a whole heap I'd have changed in my life. There's many things I'd never have done, and many things I figger to do wouldn't be done. But I see the way I was born, and I don't regret a thing—not a thing—except the shape Providence made me. I'm going to live—not die—a rich man, doing the things I fancy, if Life don't figger to put me out of business. And I don't care a curse what it costs. It's how I'm born, and it's the nature of me demands these things. I'm going to do all I've set my mind to do, and I'll do it with my last kick, if necessary. Do you understand me? That's why I'm glad of those secrets we're talking of. That's why I'll work to the last to hold 'em. That's why I don't mean to let things stand in my way that can be shifted. That's why I'm asking you to help us get busy. Our interests I guess are your interests."

It was another revelation of the man such as Jessie had had at intervals before, and which had somehow contrived to tacitly antagonize her. Her nature was rebelling against the material passion of this man. There was something ruthlessly sordid underlying all he said.

"I'm glad it doesn't need those feelings to make me want to help my mother," she said quietly. "Interests? Say, interests of that sort don't matter a thing for me. Thought of them won't put an ounce more into the work I'll do to help—my mother. But she counts, and what you said about her is all you need say. The other talk—is just talk."

"Is it?" The man had risen from his chair. Jessie surveyed him with cool measuring eyes. His podgy figure was almost ludicrous in her eyes. His round, fleshy face became almost contemptible. But not quite. He was part of her life, and then those eyes, so strange, so baffling. So alive with an intelligence which at times almost overwhelmed her.

"It isn't just talk, Jessie," he said approaching her, till he, too, stood in the full light of the window. "Maybe you don't know it, but your interests are just these interests I'm saying. It'll come to you the moment you want to do a thing against 'em. Oh, I'm not bullying, my dear. I'll show you just how. If a moment came in your life when you figgered to carry out something that appealed to you, and your sense told you it would hurt your mother's proposition right here, you'd cut it out so quick you'd forget you thought of it. Why? Because it's you. And you figger that no hurt's going to come to your mother from you. There isn't a thing in the world to equal a good woman's loyalty to her mother. Not even the love of a girl for a man. There's a whole heap of women-folk break up their married lives for loyalty to a—mother. That's so. And that's why your interests are surely the interests I got back of my head—because they're the interests of your mother."

But the girl was uninfluenced by the argument. His words had come rapidly. But she saw underneath them the great selfish purpose which was devouring the man. Her antagonistic feeling was unabated. She shook her head.

"You can't convince me with that talk," she said coldly. "I wouldn't do a thing to hurt my mother. That's sure. But interests to be personal need to be backed by desire. I hate all that robbed me of a father."

The man shook his head.

"We most always get crossways," he said. "And it's the thing I just hate—with you." Suddenly he laughed aloud. "Say, Jessie, I wonder if you'd feel different to my argument if I didn't carry sixty pounds too much weight for my size? I wonder if I stood six feet high, and had a body like a Greek statue, you'd see the sense of my talk."

The girl missed the earnestness lying behind the man's smiling eyes. She missed the passionate fire he masked so well. She too laughed. But her laugh was one of relief.

"Maybe. Who knows," she said lightly.

But, in a moment, regret for her unguarded words followed.

"Before God, Jessie, if I thought by any act of mine I could get you to feel diff'rent towards me, I'd rake out all the ashes of the things I've figgered on all these years, to please you. I'd break up all the hopes and objects, and ambitions I've set up, if it pleased you I should act that way. I'd live the life you wanted. I'd act the way you chose.

"Say, Jessie," he went on, with growing passion, "I've wanted to tell you all there is in the back of my head for months. I've wanted to tell you the work I'm doing, the driving towards great wealth, is just because I've sort of built up a hope you'd some day help me spend it. But you've never given me a chance. Not a chance. I had to tell you this to-day. It's got to be now—now—or never. I'm going away on work that has to be done, and I can't just wait another day till I've told you these things.

"If you'd marry me, Jessie," the man continued, while the girl remained mute, dumbfounded by the suddenness with which the passionate outburst had come, "I'd hand you all you can ever ask in life. We'd quit this God-forgotten land, and set up home where the sun's most always shining, and our money counts for all that we guess is life. Don't turn me down for my shape. Think of what it means. We can quit this land with a fortune that would equal the biggest in the world. I know. I hold the door to it. Your mother and I. I just love you with a strength you'll never understand. All those things I've talked of are just nothing to the way I love you. Say, child——"

The girl broke in on him with a shake of the head. It was deliberate, final. Even more final than her spoken words which sought for gentleness.

"Don't—just don't say another word," she cried.

She started. For an instant her beautiful eyes flashed to the window. Then they came back to the dark eyes which were glowing before her. In a moment it seemed to her they had changed from the pleading, burning passion to something bordering on the sinister.

"I don't love you. I never could love you, Murray," she said a little helplessly.

There was the briefest possible pause, and a sound reached them from outside. But the man seemed oblivious to everything but the passion consuming him. And the manner of that seemed to have undergone a sudden change.

"I know," he broke out with furious bitterness and brutal force. "It's because of that man. That Kars——"

"Don't dare to say that," Jessie cried, with heightened color and eyes dangerously wide. "You haven't a right to speak that way. You——"

"Haven't I?" There was no longer emotion in the man's voice. Neither anger, nor any gentler feeling. It was the tone Jessie always knew in Murray McTavish. It was steady, and calm, and, just now, grievously hurtful.

"Well, maybe I haven't, since you say so. But I'm not taking your answer now. I can't. I'll ask you again—next year, maybe. Maybe you'll feel different then. I hope so."

He swung about with almost electrical swiftness as his final words came with a low, biting emphasis. And his movement was in response to the swift opening of the door of the office.

John Kars was standing in its framing.



CHAPTER XXIII

THE DARKNESS BEFORE DAWN

It was a moment of intensity such as rarely fails to leave a landmark in the lives of those concerned. For Murray McTavish it was as though every fear that had ever haunted him from the rivalry of John Kars had suddenly been translated into concrete form. For Jessie the hero of all her dreams had magically responded to her unspoken appeal for succor. John Kars felt something approaching elation at the unerring instinct which had prompted his visit to the Fort on the instant of arrival. Bill Brudenell looked on as usual with eyes calm in their passionless wisdom. To him fortune's wheel was distinctly revolving in their favor.

Passing the window both he and Kars had caught and read the girl's half terrified glance. Both of them had seen Murray standing before her, and realized something of the passionate urgency of manner he was laboring under. Their interpretation of the scene remained each to himself. No word passed between them. Only had Kars' gait increased as he hurried round towards the door.

Now Kars' tone gave his friend and supporter infinite satisfaction. Bill even felt he had miscalculated the primal instincts which governed this man. He knew he was exercising a powerful restraint. And it pleased as well as astonished him.

"Why, say, you folks, I'm glad to have found you right away," Kars said, with perfect cordiality. "We just pulled in on the trail, and came right along up while Charley fixes things. We weren't sure of getting Murray this time of year."

Murray was completely master of himself. He was smiling his usual greeting while John Kars shook hands with Jessie. Nor was his smile any the less that his rival's words were for Jessie rather than for him. He watched the new look born in the girl's eyes at sight of Kars without a sign of emotion. And though it roused in him a fury of jealousy his response only seemed to gain in cordiality. He laughed.

"You're kind of lucky, too," he said. "I only got in from Leaping Horse two days back, and I'm pulling out north right away."

It was Bill who answered him. Jessie had picked up her oilskin, and Kars was assisting her into it.

"You only got in two days back?" Bill's brows were raised questioningly. "You didn't drive as hard in the trail as folks guess."

His shrewd eyes were twinkling as he watched the shadow of annoyance pass swiftly across the trader's face. But Murray excused himself, and his excuse seemed to afford Dr. Bill a certain amusement.

"The trail was fierce," he said, with a shrug. "The devil himself couldn't have got a hustle on."

"No. We came the same trail."

Kars seemed oblivious to what was passing between the two men. He seemed to have no concern for any one but Jessie.

"You going right down home now?" he asked.

His eyes were smiling gently into the girl's upturned face, for all that his mind was full of the tragic news he had yet to convey.

He was so big as he stood there fastening the coat about her neck. His rugged face was a picture of strength as he searched out the fastening of the collar and secured it. His fur-lined pea-jacket, stained and worn, his loose, travel-stained trousers tucked into his heavy knee boots. These things aggravated his great bulk, and made him a very giant of the world it was his whim to roam.

The girl's moment of fear had entirely passed. There could be no shadow for her where he was. Nor had the rapid beatings of her heart anything to do with the scene through which she had just passed. It was the touch of his great hands that stirred her with a thrill exquisite beyond words.

"Why, yes," she answered readily. "I've got school at the Mission. I came up to get Murray's plans he needed to fix. He's going north, as he said, and guessed I ought to help mother right here while he's away. You see, we haven't got Alec now."

"No."

The smile passed out of Kars' eyes. The girl's final words shocked him momentarily out of his self-command. There was one other at least who held his breath for what was to follow that curt negative. But Bill Brudenell need have had no fear.

"But you'll be through after a while," Kars went on with a swift return to his usual manner. "I'll be along down to pay my respects to your mother. Meanwhile Bill and I need a yarn with Murray here. We're stopping a while."

While he was speaking he accompanied the girl to the door and watched her till she had passed the angle of the building in the direction of the gates of the stockade. Then he turned back to the trader, who was once more seated at his desk.

His whole manner had undergone a complete change. There was no smile in his eyes now. There was a stern setting of his strong jaws. He glanced swiftly at Bill, who had moved to the window. Then his eyes came back to the mechanical smile on Murray's face.

"Alec's out," he said. "He was shot up in the dance hall at the Elysian Fields. It happened the night of the day you pulled out. He ran foul of a 'gunman' who'd been set on his trail. He did the 'gunman' up. But he was done up, too. It's one of the things made us come along up to you right away."

John Kars made his announcement without an unnecessary word, without seeking for a moment to lessen any effect which the news might have on this man. He felt there was no need for any nicety.

The effect of his announcement was hardly such as he might have expected. There was a sort of amazed incredulity in Murray's dark eyes and his words came haltingly.

"Shot up? But—but—you're fooling. You—you must be. God! You—must be!"

Kars shrugged.

"I tell you Alec is dead. Shot up." There was a hard ring in his voice that robbed his words of any doubt.

"God!" Then came a low, almost muttered expression of pity. "The poor darn women-folk."

The last vestige of Murray's mechanical smile had gone. An expression of deep horror had deadened the curious light in his eyes. He sat nerveless in his chair, and his bulk seemed to have become flabby with loss of vitality. Bill was watching the scene from the window.

"Yes. It's going to be terrible—for them."

Kars spoke with a force which helped disguise his real emotions. By a great effort Murray pulled himself together.

"It's—it's Shaunbaum," he said. Then he went on as though to himself: "It's over—that woman. And I warned him. Gee, I warned him for all I knew! Josh Wiseman was right. Oh, the crazy kid!"

Kars, looking on, remembered that this man had lied when he had said that he had urged Alec to quit his follies. He remembered that he had given Alec money, his money, to help him the further to wallow in the muck of Leaping Horse. He remembered these things as he gazed upon an outward display of grief, and listened to words of regrets which otherwise must have carried complete conviction.

He saw no necessity to add anything. And in a moment Murray had started into an attitude of fierce resentment, and crashed his fleshy fist down upon the pages of the ledger before him.

"I warned him," he cried fiercely, his burning eyes fixed on the emotionless face of his rival. "God! I warned him. I had it from Josh Wiseman the 'gunmen' were around. Shaunbaum's 'gunmen.' Say, Kars," he went on, reaching out with his clenched fist for emphasis, "that boy was in my hotel to tell me he was quitting the city on a big play for a great stake. And I tell you it was like a weight lifted right off my shoulders. I saw him getting shut of Shaunbaum and that woman. I told him I was glad, and I told him Josh Wiseman's yarn. I told him they reckoned Shaunbaum meant doing him up some way. An' he laffed. Just laffed, and—guessed he was glad. And now—they've got him. It's broke me all up. But the women. Jessie! His mother! Say, it's going to break their hearts all to pieces."

Kars stirred in his chair.

"We figgered that way," he said coldly. "That's why we came around to you first. I'm going to tell the women-folk. And when I've told 'em I guess you'll need to stop around a while. That's if you reckon this place is to—— Say, they'll need time—plenty. It's up to you to help them by keeping your hand on the tiller of things right here."

Murray leaned back in his chair. His forcefulness had died out under Kars' cold counsel.

"Yes, it's up to me," he said with a sort of desperate regret.

Presently he looked up. A light of apprehension had grown in his dark eyes.

"You said you'd tell them?" he demanded eagerly. "Say, I couldn't do it. I haven't the grit."

"I'm going to tell them."

There was no relaxing of manner in Kars.

A deep relief replaced Murray's genuine dread. And presently his fleshy chin sank upon his broad bosom in an attitude of profound dejection. His eyes were hidden. His emotion seemed too deep for further words. Bill, watching, beheld every sign. Nothing escaped him.

For some moments the silence remained. Then, at last, it was Murray who broke it. He raised his eyes to the cold regard of the man he had so cordially come to hate.

"Shaunbaum isn't going to get away with it?" he questioned. "The p'lice? They've got a cinch on him?"

"Shaunbaum won't get away with it."

"They've—arrested him?"

Kars shook his head.

"No. Shaunbaum didn't shoot him. The boy did the 'gunman' up. You see, it was the outcome of a brawl. There's no one to arrest—yet."

"Who did shoot him up? The other 'gunman'? Josh spoke of two. Can't he be got? He could give Shaunbaum away—maybe."

"That's so. Guess that's most how it stands. Maybe it was the other 'gunman.'"

Murray's satisfaction was obvious. He nodded.

"Sure. It's Shaunbaum's play. There's no question. Everybody got it ahead. It wouldn't be his way to see another feller snatch his dame without a mighty hard kick. It's Shaunbaum—sure."

He bestirred himself. All his old energy seemed to spring suddenly into renewed life. Again came that forceful gesture of the fist which Bill watched with so much interest, and the binding of the ledger creaked under its force.

"By God! I hope they get him and hang him by his rotten vulture neck! He's run his vile play too long. He's a disease—a deadly, stinking, foul disease. Maybe it was a 'gunman' did the shooting. But I'd bet my life it was Shaunbaum behind him. And to think these poor lone women-folk, hundreds of miles away from him, should be the victims. See here, Kars, I'm no sort of full-fledged angel. I don't set myself up as any old bokay of virtue. There's things count more with me, and one of 'em's dollars. I'm out after all I can get of 'em. But I'd give half of all I possess to see a rawhide tight around Shaunbaum's neck so it wouldn't give an inch. I haven't always seen eye to eye with young Alec. Maybe our temperaments were sort of contrary. But this thing's got me bad. Before God, there's not a thing I wouldn't do to save these poor women-folk hurt. They're right on their lonesome now. Do you get all that means to women-folk? There isn't a soul between them and the world. You ask me to stand by. You ask me to keep my hand on the tiller of things. I don't need the asking—by any one. I was Allan's partner, and Allan's friend. It's my duty and my right to get in between these poor folk and a world that would show them small enough mercy. And I don't hand my right to any man living. I got to thank you coming along to me. But it don't need you, or any other man, to ask me to get busy for the sake of these folk. You can reckon on me looking after things right here, Kars. I'm ready to do all I know. And God help any one who'd rob them of a cent. Allan left his work only half done. It was for them. And I'm going to carry it through. The way he'd have had it."

The rain had ceased. A watery sunshine had broken through the heavy clouds which were reluctantly yielding before a bleak wintry wind. It was the low poised sun of afternoon in the early year, and its warmth was as ineffectual as its beam of light. But it shone through the still tightly sealed double windows of Ailsa Mowbray's parlor, a promise which, at the moment, possessed neither meaning nor appeal.

The widowed mother was standing near the wood stove which radiated a welcome warmth, and still roared its winter song through its open dampers. John Kars was leaning against the centre table. His serious eyes were on the ruddy light shining under the damper of the stove. His strong hands were gripping the woodwork of the table behind him. His grip was something in the nature of a clutching support. His fixed gaze was as though he had no desire to shift it to the face of the woman on whom he had come to inflict the most cruel agony a woman may endure.

"You have come to talk to me of Alec? Yes? What of him?" Ailsa Mowbray's eyes, so steady, so handsome, eyes that claimed so much likeness to Jessie's, were eager. Then, in a moment, a note of anxiety found expression. "He—is well?"

The man's own suffering at that moment was lacerating. All that was in him was stirred to its deepest note. It was as though he were about to strike this woman down, a helpless, defenceless soul, and all his manhood revolted. He could have wept tears of bitterness, such as he had never dreamed could have been wrung from him.

"No."

"What—has happened? Quick! Tell me!"

The awful apprehension behind the mother's demand found no real outward sign. She stood firmly—unwaveringly. Only was there a sudden suppressed alarm in her voice.

Kars stirred. The jacket buttoned across his broad chest seemed to stifle him. A mad longing possessed him to reach out and break something. The pleasant warmth of the room had suddenly become unbearable. He could no longer breathe in the atmosphere. He raised his eyes to the mother's face for one moment. The next they sought again the ruddy line of the stove.

"He—is dead."

"Dead? Oh, no! Not that! Oh—God help me!"

Kars had no recollection of a mother's love. He had no recollection of anything but the hard blows in a cruel struggle for existence, beside a man whose courage was invincible, but in whom the tender emotions at no time found the smallest display. But all that which he had inherited from the iron man who had founded his fortunes had failed to rob him of any of the gentler humanity which his unremembered mother must have bestowed upon him. His whole being shrank under the untold agony of this mother's denial and ultimate appeal.

Now he spoke rapidly. The yearning to spare this woman, who had already suffered so much, urged him. To prolong the telling he felt would be cruelty unthinkable. He felt brevity to be the only way to spare her.

"He was shot by a tough," he said. "It was at the Elysian Fields. He was dancing, and there was a quarrel. If blame there was for Alec it was just his youth, I guess. Just sit, and I'll hand it you—all."

He moved from the table. He came to the mother's side. His strong hand rested on her shoulder, and somehow she obeyed his touch and sank into the chair behind her. It was the chair from which she had watched her little world grow up about her, the chair in which she had pondered on the first great tragedy of her life.

Her lips were unmoving. Her eyes terrible in their stony calm. They mechanically regarded the man before her with so little understanding that he wondered if he should proceed.

Presently, however, he was left no choice.

"Go on," she said, and her hands clasped themselves in her lap with a nerve force suggesting the physical clinging which remained her only support.

And at her bidding the man talked. He told his story in naked outline, smothering the details of her boy's delinquencies, and sparing her everything which could wound her mother's pride and devotion. His purpose was clearly defined. The wound he had to inflict was well-nigh mortal, but no word or act of his should aggravate it. His story was a consummate effort of loyalty to the dead and mercy to the living.

Even in the telling he wondered if those wide-gazing, stricken eyes were reading somewhere in the depths of his soul the real secrets he was striving so ardently to withhold. He could not tell. His knowledge of women was limited, so limited. He hoped that he had succeeded.

At the conclusion of his pitiful story he waited. His purpose was to leave the woman to her grief, believing that time, and her wonderful courage, would help her. But it was difficult, and all that was in him bade him stay, and out of his own great courage seek to help her.

He stirred. The moment was dreadful in its hopelessness.

"Jessie will be along," he said.

The mother looked up with a start.

"Yes," she said. "She's all I have left. Oh, God, it will break her young heart."

There was no thought of self in that supreme moment. The mother was above and beyond her own sufferings, even when the crushing grief was beating her down with the full force of merciless blows. Her thought for the suffering of her one remaining child was supreme.

The man's hands gripped till his nails almost cut the hard flesh of his palms. He had no answer for her words. It was beyond his power to answer such words.

He turned with a movement suggesting precipitate flight. But his going was arrested by the voice he knew and loved so well.

"What—what—will break her young heart?"

Jessie was standing just within the room, and the door was closed behind her. Her eyes were on the drawn face of her mother, but, somehow, it seemed to Kars that her words were addressed to him.

In the agony of his feelings he was about to answer. Perhaps recklessly. For somehow the dreadful nature of his errand was telling on a temper unused to such a task. But once again the fortitude of the elder woman displayed itself, and he was saved from himself.

"I'll tell you, Jessie, when—he's gone." And the handsome, tragic eyes looked squarely into the man's.

For a moment the full significance of the mother's words remained obscure to the man. Then the courage, the strength of them made themselves plain. He realized that this grief-stricken woman was invincible. Nothing—just nothing could break her indomitable spirit. In the midst of all her suffering she desired to spare him, to spare her one remaining child.

There could be no reply to such a woman. Nor could he answer the girl—now. He came towards her. Resting one great hand on the oilskin covering her shoulders, he looked down into her questioning, troubled eyes with infinite tenderness.

"Jessie, there's things I can say to you I can't say even to your mother. I want to say them now, with her looking on. I can't put all I feel into words. Those things don't come easy to me. You see, I've never had anything beyond my own concerns to look after, ever before in my life. Other folks never kind of seemed to figger with me. Maybe I'm selfish. It seems that way. But now—why, now that's all changed. Things I always guessed mattered don't matter any longer. And why? Why? Because there's just two women in the world got right into my heart, and everything else has had to make way for them. Do you get me, child? Maybe you don't. Well, it's just that all I am or ever hope to be is for you. It don't matter the miles between us, or the season. When I get your call I'll answer—right away."



CHAPTER XXIV

THE FIRST STREAK OF DAWN

Fort Mowbray was enveloped in a black cloud of tragedy. Its simple life flickered on. But it seemed to have been robbed of all its past reality, all its quiet strength, all that made it worth while.

Nor was the change confined to the white people. Even the Indians, those stoic creatures born to the worst buffets life knows how to inflict, whose whole object at the Mission was white man's bounty, to be paid for by the worship of the white man's God, yielded to the atmosphere of hopelessness prevailing. Alec had been the young white chief after the great hunter who had paid his debt at the hands of the Bell River terror. He, too, was gone, and they felt that they were in the hands of the "smiling one" for whom their regard was chiefly inspired by fear. The little white Father was their remaining hope, and he was very, very old.

So they set up their lamentations, surrounding them with all the rites of their race. The old women crooned their mystic tuneless dirges. The younger "charmed" the evil spirits haunting their path. The men sat in long and profound council which was beset with doubt of the future.

Ailsa Mowbray and Jessie fought out their own battle, as once before they had had to fight, and herein their native fortitude strove on their behalf. For days they saw no one but the little priest who remained ever at their call. The primitive in their lives demanded for them that none should witness their hurt. They asked neither sympathy nor pity, wherein shone forth the mother's wondrous courage which had supported her through every trial.

The days passed without the departure of Kars and Bill. The excuse was the state of the river, by which they were to make the headwaters. The ice was still flowing northward, but in ever lessening bulk, and the time was filled in with repairs to the canoes which had suffered during the long portage of the trail.

This was the excuse, but it was only excuse. Both men knew it, and neither admitted it verbally. The condition of the river would not have delayed John Kars in the ordinary way. There was always the portage.

The truth lay in the passionate yearning of the heart of a man who had remained so long beyond the influence of a woman upon his life. He had set his task firmly before him, but its fulfilment now must wait till he had made sure for himself of those things which had suddenly become the whole aim and desire of his future. He could not leave the Fort for the adventure of Bell River till he had put beyond all doubt the hopes he had built on the love that had become the whole meaning of earthly happiness to him. Bill understood this. So he refrained from urging, and checked the impatient grumbling of Peigan Charley without much regard for the scout's feelings.

Murray McTavish continued at his post, undemonstrative, without a sign. The stream of spring traffic, which consisted chiefly of outfitting on credit the less provident trappers and pelt-hunters for their summer campaign, went on without interruption. His projected journey had been definitely abandoned. But for all his outward manner he was less at his ease than would have seemed. His eyes were upon Kars at all times. His delayed departure irritated him. Perhaps he, too, like Bill Brudenell, understood something of its meaning.

Although his outward seeming had undergone no change, there was a subtle difference in Murray. His trade methods had hardened. The trappers who appealed to him in their need left him with a knowledge that their efforts must be increased if they were to pay off their credits, and keep up their profits for the next winter's supplies. Then, too, he avoided Kars, who was sharing the Padre's hospitality, and even abandoned his nightly visits to the priest, which had been his habit of years. It was as rarely as possible that he came down to the Mission, and the clearing only saw him when the demand of nature made his food imperative.

It was one day, just after his midday dinner, that Murray encountered Father Jose. He was leaving Ailsa Mowbray's house, and the old priest protested at his desertion. The trader's answer was ready on the moment.

"I hate it, Padre," he said, with unnecessary force. "But I can't act diff'rent. I got to get around for food or starve. This place wouldn't see me in months else. You see, I had too much to do with that boy going down to Leaping Horse. And it's broke me up so bad I can't face it yet—even to myself. Guess Mrs. Mowbray understands that, too. Say, she's a pretty great woman. If she weren't I'd be scared for our proposition here. She must get time. They both must, and the less they see of me, why, it's all to the good. Time'll do most things for women—for us all, I guess. Then, maybe things'll settle down—later."

And the priest's reply was characteristic. It was the reply of a man who has endured life in the land north of "sixty" for the sheer love of the dark souls it is his desire to help.

"Yes," he said, with a sigh. "Time can heal almost anything. But it can't hide the scars. That's the work that falls to the grave."

Murray remained silent while the priest helped himself to snuff. The little man's eyes became tenderly reflective as he went on.

"Sixty years I've been looking around at things. And my conceit made me hope to read something of the meaning that lies behind the things Providence hands out." He shook his white head. "It's just conceit. I'm not beyond the title page. Maybe the text inside isn't meant for me. For any of us. It just bewilders. These folk. I've known them right through from the start. I can see Allan now fixing that old Fort into order, that old Fort with all its old-time wickedness behind it. I've watched him, and his wife, and his kiddies, as only a lonely man in this country can study the folk about him. Wholesome, clean, God-fearing. That was Allan and his folk in my notion. They fought their battle with clean hands, and—merciful. It mostly seemed to me God, was in their hearts all the time. They endured and fought, and it wasn't always easy. Now?" His eyes were gazing thoughtfully at the home which had witnessed so much happiness and so much sorrow. "Why, now God's hand has fallen heavy—heavy. It seems Providence means to drive them from the Garden. The flaming sword is before their eyes. It has fallen on them, and they must go. The reason?"

Again came that meditative head-shake. "It's God's will. So be it."

Murray drew a deep breath. He was less impressed by the priestly view than with the implication.

"Driving them out?" he questioned, his curious eyes searching the wise old face.

"It seems that way. Mrs. Mowbray won't pass another winter here. It's not good to pitch camp on the grave of your happiness."

"No."

Murray stood looking after the little man, whom nothing stayed in his mission of mercy. He watched him vanish within the woods, in the direction of the Indian encampment.

So two weeks, two long weeks passed, and each day bore its own signs of the last efforts of winter in its reluctant retreat. And spring, in its turn, was invincible, and it marched on steadily, breathing its fresh, invigorating warmth upon an earth it was seeking to make fruitful.

The cloud of disaster slowly began to lift. Nothing stands still. Nothing can stand still. The power of life moves on inexorably. It brings with it its disasters and its joys, but they are all passing emotions, and are of so small account in the tremendous scheme being slowly worked out by an Infinite Power.

The blow which had fallen on Jessie Mowbray had robbed her for the moment of all joy in the coming of John Kars. But her love was deep and real, and, for all her sorrow, she had neither power nor desire to deny it. In her darkest moments there was a measure of comfort in it. It was something on which she could lean for support. Even in her greatest depths of suffering it buoyed her, all unknown, perhaps, but nevertheless.

So, as the days passed, and the booming of the glacier thundered under the warming spring sunlight, she yearned more and more for the gentle sympathy which she knew he would readily yield. Thus it came that Kars one day beheld her on the landing, gazing at the work which was going on under his watchful eye.

It was the revelation he had awaited. That night he conferred with Bill, with the resulting decision of a start to be made within two days.

The wonder of it. God's world. A world of life and hope. The winter of Nature's despair driven forth beyond the borders to the outland drear of eternal northern ice. The blue of a radiant sky, flecked with a fleece, white as driven snow, frothing waves tossed on the bosom of a crisp spring breeze. The sun playing a delicious hide-and-seek, at moments flashing its brilliant eye, and setting the channels of life pulsating with hope, and again lost behind its screen of alabaster, that only succeeded in adding to its promise.

As yet the skeleton arms of the winter woods remained unclad. But wild duck and geese were on the wing, sweeping up from the south in search of the melting sloughs and flooded hollows, pastures laid open to them by the rapid thaw. The birth of the new season was accomplished, and the labor of mother earth was a memory.

They were at the bank of the river again. They were in the heart of the willow glade, still shorn of its summer beauty. The man was standing, large, dominating before her, but obsessed by every unmanly fear. The girl was sitting on a fallen tree-trunk, whose screen of tilted roots set up a barrier which shut her from the view of the frowning glances of the aged Fort above them, and whose winter-starved branches formed a breakwater in the ice cold flood of the stream.

Jessie's pretty eyes were gazing up into the man's face. A quick look of alarm had replaced, for the moment, the shadow of grief which had so recently settled in them. Her plain cloth skirt had only utility to recommend it. Her shirt-waist was serviceable in seasons as uncertain as the present. The loose buckskin coat, which reached to her knees, and had been fashioned and beaded by the Mission squaws, had picturesqueness. But she gained nothing from these things as a setting for her beauty.

But for Kars, at least, her beauty was undeniable. Her soft crown of chestnut hair, hatless, at the mercy of the mood of the breeze, to him seemed like a ruddy halo crowning a face of a childlike purity. Her gentle gray eyes were to him unfathomable wells of innocence, while her lips had all the ripeness of a delicious womanhood.

"You were scared that day we pulled into the Fort," he had said, in his abrupt way.

He had been talking of his going on the morrow. And the change of subject had come something startlingly to the girl.

"Yes," she admitted, almost before she was aware of it.

"That's how I guessed," he said. "I reached the office on the dead jump—after I saw. Why? Murray had you scared. How?"

There was no escape from the man's searching gaze. Jessie felt he was probing irresistibly secrets she vainly sought to keep hidden. Subterfuge was useless under that regard.

"Murray asked me to marry him. He—asked me just then. I—wish he hadn't."

"Why?" The inexorable pressure was maintained.

Jessie tried to avoid his eyes. She sought the aid of the bubbling waters, racing and churning amongst the branches of the fallen tree. She would have resented such catechism even in her mother. But she was powerless to deny this man.

"Why?" she echoed at last. Suddenly she raised her eyes to his again. They were frankly yielding. "Guess I'd rather have Murray guiding a commercial proposition than hand me out the schedule of life."

"You don't like him, and you're scared of him. I wonder why."

The girl sat up. She flung back her head, and her outspread hands supported her, resting on the tree-trunk on either side of her.

"Say, why do you talk that way?" she protested. "Is it always your way to drive folks? I thought that was just Murray's way. Not yours. But you're right, anyway. I'm scared of Murray when he talks love. I'm scared, and don't believe. I'd as lief have his hate as his love. And—and I haven't a thing against him."

There was a sort of desperation in the girl's whole manner of telling of her fears. It hurt the man as he listened. But his pressure was not idle. He was seeking corroboration of those doubts which haunted him. Doubts which had only assailed him for the first time when he learned of the nature of Murray's freight with John Dunne, and which had received further support in his realization of the man's lies on the subject of Alec.

"I've got to talk that way," he said. "I'm not yearning to drive you any. Say, Jessie, if there's a person in this world I'd hate to drive it's you. If there's a thing I could do to fix things easy for you, why, a cyclone couldn't stop me fixing them that way. But I saw the scare in your eyes through the window of that feller's office, and I just had to know about it. I can't hand you the things tumbling around in the back of my head. I don't know them all myself, but there's things, and they're things I can't get quit of. Maybe some time they'll straighten out, and when they do I'll be able to show them to you. Meanwhile, we'll leave 'em where they are, and simply figger I'm thinking harder than I ever thought in my life, and those thoughts are around you, and for you, all the time."

The simplicity of his words and manner robbed the girl of all confusion. A great delight surged through her heart. This great figure, this strong man, with his steady eyes and masterful methods was setting himself her champion before the world. The lonely spirit of the wilderness was deeply in her heart, and the sense of protection became something too rapturous for words.

Her frank eyes thanked him though her lips remained dumb.

"I'm quitting to-morrow," he went on. "But I couldn't go till I'd made a big talk with you. Bill's been on the grouch days. And Charley? Why, Charley's come nigh raising a riot. But I had to wait—for you."

He paused. Nor from his manner could any one have detected the depths of emotion stirred in him. A great fear possessed him, and his heart was burdened with the crushing weight of it. For the first time in his life his whole future seemed to have passed into other hands. And those hands were the brown sunburnt hands, so small, so desirable, of this girl whose knowledge and outlook were bounded by the great wilderness they had loved, and so often vilified together. To him it seemed strange, yet so natural. To him it seemed that for the first time he was learning something of the real meaning of life. Never had he desired a thing which was beyond his power to possess. Doubt had never been his. Now he knew that doubt was a hideous reality, and the will of this girl could rob him beyond all hope of all that made his life worth while.

He drew a deep breath. It was the summoning of the last ounce of purpose and courage in him. He flung all caution aside, he paused not for a single word. He became the veriest suppliant at the shrine where woman reigns supreme.

"Y'see, Jessie, I want to tell you things. I want to tell you I love you so that nothing else counts. I want to tell you I've been traipsing up and down this long trail hunting around all the while for something, and I guessed that something was—gold. So it was. I know that now. But it wasn't the gold we men-folk start out to buy our pleasures with. It was the sort of gold that don't lie around in 'placers.' It don't lie anywhere around in the earth. It's on top. It walks around, and it's in a good woman's heart. Well, say," he went on, moving towards the tree-trunk, and sitting down at the girl's side, "I found it. Oh, yes, I found it."

His voice had lowered to an appealing note which stirred the girl to the depths of her soul. She sat leaning forward. Her elbows were resting on her knees, and her hands were clasped. Her soft gray eyes were gazing far out down the naked avenue ahead without seeing. Her whole soul was concentrated on the radiant vision of the paradise his words opened up before her.

"I found it," he went on. "But it's not mine—yet. Not by a sight. Pick an' shovel won't hand it me. The muscles that have served me so well in the past can't help me now. I'm up against it. I guess I'm well-nigh beat. I can't get that gold till it's handed me. And the only hands can pass it my way are—yours."

He reached out, and one hand gently closed over the small brown ones clasped so tightly together.

"Just these little hands," he continued, while the girl unresistingly yielded to his pressure. "Say, they're not big to hold so much of the gold I'm needing. Look at 'em," he added, gently parting them, and turning one soft palm upwards. "But it's all there. Sure, sure. I don't need a thing they can't hand me. Not a thing." He closed his own hand over the upturned palm. "If I got all this little hand could pass me there isn't a thing I couldn't do. Say, little Jessie, there's a sort of heaven on this earth for us men-folk. It's a heaven none of us deserve. And it lies in the soul of one woman. If she guesses to open the gate, why, we can walk right in. It she don't choose that way, then I guess there's only perdition waiting around to take us in. Well, I got to those gates right now." One arm unobtrusively circled the girl's waist, and slowly its pressure drew her towards him. "And I'm waiting. It's all up to you. I'm just standing around. Maybe—maybe you'll—open those gates?"

The girl's head gently inclined towards him. In a moment her lips were clinging to his. Those ripe, soft, warm lips had answered him.

Later—much later, when the warming sun had absorbed the fleecy screen which had served its earlier pastime, and the spring breeze had hastily sought new fields upon which to devote its melting efforts, Jessie found courage to urge the single regret these moments had left her.

"And you still need to quit—to-morrow?" she asked shyly.

"More surely than ever."

"Why?"

A smile lit the man's eyes. She was using his own pressure against himself.

He suddenly sprang from his seat. The girl, too, rose and stood confronting him with questioning eyes. She was tall. For all his great size he was powerless to rob her of one inch of the gracious form which her mother had bestowed upon her. He held out his hands so that they rested on her shoulders. He gazed down into her face with eyes filled with a joy and triumph unspeakable. And he spoke out of the buoyant strength of his heart, which was full to overflowing.

"Because, more than ever I need to go—now. Say, my dear, there's folks who've hurt you in this world. They've hurt you sore. I'm going to locate 'em up here, and down at Leaping Horse. And when I've located them they're going to pay. Do you get what that means? No. You can't. Your gentle heart can't get it all, when men set out to make folk who've hurt women-folk bad pay for their doings. And I'm glad. I know. And, by God, the folk who've hurt you are going to pay good. They're going to pay—me."



CHAPTER XXV

THE OUT-WORLD

Awe was the dominating emotion. Wonder looked out of eyes that have long become accustomed to the crude marvels of nature to be found in the northland. The men of Kars' expedition were gazing down upon the savage splendor of the Promised Land.

But the milk and honey were lacking. The dream of peace, of delight was not in these men. Their Promised Land must hold something more substantial than the mere comforts of the body. That substance they knew lay there, there ahead of them, but only to be won by supreme effort against contending forces, human and natural.

They had halted at the highest point of a great saddle lying between two snow-crowned hills. Peaks towered mightily above the woodlands clothing their wide slopes, and shining with alabaster splendor in the sunlight.

It was the first glimpse of the torn land of the ominous Bell River gorge.

The sight of the gorge made them dizzy. The width, the depth, left an impression of infinite immensity upon the mind, an overwhelming hopelessness. Men used to mountain vastness all the days of their lives were left speechless for moments, while their searching eyes sought to measure the limits of this long hidden land.

The mountains beyond, about them. The broken, tumbled earth, yawning and gaping in every direction. The forests of primordial origin. The snows which never yield their grip upon their sterile bed. And then the depths. Those infinite depths, which the human mind can never regard unmoved.

The long, toilsome journey lay behind them. The goal lay awaiting the final desperate assault, with all its traps and hidden dangers. What a goal to have sought. It was like the dragon-guarded storehouse of the crudest folk-lore.

The white men stood apart from their Indian supporters. Kars knew the scene. He was observing the faces of the men who were gazing upon the gorge for the first time. They were full of interest. But it was left to Bill to interpret the general feeling in concrete form.

"They're reckoning up the chances they've taken 'blind,'" he said.

Kars laughed.

"Sure." Then he added: "And none of them are 'squealers.' Chances 'blind,' or any others, need to be taken, or it's a long time living. It's the thing the northland rubs into the bones."

"Folks are certainly liable to pass it quicker that way."

Bill's shrewd eyes twinkled as he read the reckless spirit stirring behind the lighting eyes of his friend.

Kars laughed again. It was the buoyant laugh of a man full of the great spirit of adventure, and whose lust is unshadowed by a single care.

"Chances are Life, Bill. All of it. The other? Why, the other's just making a darn fool of old Prov. And I guess old Prov hates being made a darn fool of."

But for all Kars' reckless spirit he possessed the wide sagacity and vigorous responsibility of a born leader. It was this which inspired the men he gathered about him. It was this which claimed their loyalty. It was partly this which made Bill Brudenell willingly abandon his profitable labors in a rich city for the hardship of a life at his friend's side. Perhaps the other part was that somewhere under Bill's hardly acquired philosophy there lurked a spirit in perfect sympathy with that which actuated the younger man. There was not a day passed but he deplored to himself the stupendous waste of energy and time involved. But he equally reveled in outraging his better sense, and defying the claims of his life in Leaping Horse.

No less than Kars he reveled in the sight of the battle-field which lay before them.

Abe Dodds and Saunders gazed upon it, too. It was their first sight of it, and their view-points found prompt expression, each in his own way.

"Say, this place kind o' makes you feel old Dante was a libelous guy who'd oughter be sent to penitentiary," Abe remarked pensively. "Guess we'll likely find old whiskers waiting around with his boat when we get on down to the river. Still, it's consoling to figger up the cost o' coaling hell north of 'sixty.'"

An unsmiling nod of agreement came from his companion.

"Makes me feel I bin soused weeks," he said earnestly. He pointed down at the forbidding walls enclosing the river. "That's jest mist around ther', ain't it? It ain't—smoke nor nothin'. An' them hills an' things. They are hills? They ain't the rim of a darn fool pit that ain't got bottom to it? An' them folks—movin' around down there. They are folks? They ain't—things?"

Both men laughed. But their amusement was wide-eyed and wondering.

Kars' half military caravan labored its way forward. It made its own path through virgin woodland breaks, which had known little else than wild or Indian life since the world began. There were muskegs to avoid. Broken stretches of tundra, trackless, treacherous. Cruel traps which only patience, labor, skill and great courage could avoid. Apart from all chances of hostile welcome the Bell River approaches claimed all the mental and physical sweat of man.

The movements of the outfit if slow were sure, and seemingly inevitable. The days of labor were followed by nights of watchful anxiety and council. Nature's batteries were against them. But the lurking human danger was even more serious in the minds of these men. Nature they knew. They had learned her arts of war, and their counters were studied, and the outcome of fierce experience. But the other was new, or, at least, sufficiently new to require the straining of every nerve to meet it successfully, should it come. They were under no delusions on the subject. Come it would. How? Where? But more than all—when?

For all their skill, for all their well-thought organization, these men could not hope to escape scathless against the forces of nature opposed to them. They lost horses in the miry hollows. The surgical skill of Dr. Bill was frequently needed for the drivers and packmen. There was a toll of material, too.

The land seemed scored with narrow chasms, the cause of which was beyond all imagination. There were cul-de-sacs which possessed no seeming rhyme or reason. Time and again the advancing scout party, seeking the better road, found itself trapped in valleys of muskeg with no other outlet than the way by which it had entered. Wherever the eye searched, rugged rock facets, with ragged patches of vegetation growing in the crevices confronted them. It was a maze of desolation, and magnificent hills and forests of primordial growth. It was as crude and half complete in the days when the waters first receded.

But the lure of the precious metal was in every heart. Even Kars lay under its fascination once more, now that the strenuous goal lay within sight. He knew it was there, and in great quantities. And, for all the saner purposes he had in his mind, its influence made itself deeply felt.

The gold seeker, be he master or wage earner, is beyond redemption. Murray McTavish had said that all men north of "sixty" were wage slaves. He might have included all the world. But the truth of his assertion was beyond all question. Not a man in the outfit Kars had organized but was a wage slave, down to the least civilized Indian who labored under a pack.

Bodily ease counted for nothing. These men were inured to all hardship. They were men who had committed themselves to a war against the elements, a war against all that opposed them in their hunger for the wage they were determined to tear from the frigid bosom of an earth which they regarded as the vulture regards carrion.

The days of labor were long and many. Hardship piled up on hardship, as it ever does in the spring of the northland. There was no ease for leader or man. Only labor, unceasing, terrific.

Kars moved aside from the Bell River Indian encampment. He passed to the west of it, beyond all sight of the workings he had explored on the memorable night of his discovery. And he took the gorge from the north, seeking its heart for his camp, on the wide foreshore beyond the dumps of pay dirt which had first yielded him their secret.

It was a movement which precluded all possibility of legitimate protest. And since this territory was all unscheduled in the government of the Yukon, it was his for just as long as he could hold it. The whole situation was treated as though no other white influence were at work. It was treated as a peaceful invasion of Indian territory, and, as is usual in such circumstances, the Indian was ignored. It was an illustration of white domination. In Bill Brudenell's words "they were throwing a big bluff."

But for all their ignoring of the Indians, the outfit was under the closest observation. There was not a moment, not a foot of its way, that was not watched over by eyes that saw, and for the most part remained unseen. But this invisibility was not always the rule. Indians in twos and threes were frequently encountered. They were the undersized northern Indian of low type, who had none of the splendid manhood of the tribes further south. But each man was armed with a more or less modern rifle, and garments of crudely manufactured furs replaced the romantic buckskin of their southern brethren.

These men came round the camps at night. They foregathered silently, and watched, with patient interest, the work going on. They offered no friendship or welcome. They made no attempt to fraternize in any way. Their unintelligent faces were a complete blank, in so far as they displayed any understanding of what they beheld.

The men of the outfit were in nowise deceived. They knew the purpose of these visits. These creatures were there to learn all that could serve the purposes of their leaders. They were testing the strength of these invaders. And they were permitted to prosecute their investigations without hindrance. It was part of the policy Kars had decided upon. The "bluff," as Bill had characterized it, was to be carried through till the enemy "called."

Two weeks from the day when the gorge had been sighted, the permanent camp was completely established. Furthermore, the work of the gold "prospect" had been begun under the fierce energy of Abe Dodds, and the thirst-haunted Saunders. Theirs it was to explore and test the great foreshore, and to set up the crude machinery.

The first day's report was characteristic of the mining engineer. He returned to his chief, who was organizing the camp with a view to eventualities. There was a keen glitter in his hollow eyes as he made his statement. There was a nervous restraint in his whole manner. He chewed unmercifully as he made his unconventional statement.

"The whole darn place is full of 'color,'" he said. "Ther' ain't any sort o' choice anywhere, 'less you set up machinery fer the sake o' the scenery."

"Then we'll set up the sluices where we can best protect them," was Kars' prompt order.

So the work proceeded with orderly haste.

Further up the stream the Indians swarmed about their "placers." Their washings went on uninterruptedly. They, too, were playing a hand, with doubtless a keen head controlling it. The invasion seemed to trouble them not one whit. But this steady industry, and aloofness, was ample warning for the newcomers. It was far more deeply significant than any prompt display of hostility.

Kars spared neither himself nor his men. Every soul of his outfit knew they were passing through the moments immediately preceding the battle which must be fought out. Each laborious day was succeeded by a night which concealed possible terrors. Each golden sunrise might yield to the blood-red sunset of merciless war. And the odds were wide against them, and could only be bridged by determination and skilful leadership. Great, however, as the odds were, these men were before all things gold seekers, all of them, white and colored, and they were ready to face them, they were ready to face anything in the world for the golden wage they demanded.

It was nearing the end of the first week. The mining operations were in full swing under the guidance of Abe Dodds and Saunders. Kars and Bill were left free to regard only the safety of the enterprise, and to complete the preparations for defence. To this end they were out on an expedition of investigation.

Their investigations had taken them across the river directly opposite the camp. The precipitous walls of the gorge at this point were clad in dark woods which rose almost from the water's edge. But these woods were not the only thing which demanded attention. There was a water inlet to the river hidden amongst their dark aisles. Furthermore, high up, overlooking the river, a wide ledge stood out from the wall, and that which had been discovered upon it was not without suspicion in their minds.

For some moments after landing Kars stood looking back across the river. His searching gaze was taking in every detail of the defences he had set up across the water. When he finally turned it was to observe the watercourse cascading down a great rift in the walls of the gorge.

"Guess this is the weak link, Bill," he said. "It's a way down to the water's edge. The only way down in a stretch of two miles on this side. And it's plumb in front of us."

Bill nodded agreement.

"Sure. And that queer old shack half-way up. We best make that right away."

The canoe was hauled clear of the racing stream, and left secure. Then they moved up the rocky foreshore where the inlet had cut its way through the heart of the woods.

It was a curious, almost cavernous opening. Nor was there a detail of it that was not water-worn as far up the confining walls of drab rock as the eyes could see.

Once within the entrance, however, the scene was completely changed, and robbed of the general sternness which prevailed outside. It was not without some charm.

The split was far greater than had seemed from the distance. It was a tumbled mass of tremendous boulders, amidst which the forest of primordial pines found root room where none seemed possible, and craned their ragged heads towards the light so far above them. And, in the midst of this confusion, the mountain stream poured down from heights above, droning out its ceaseless song of movement in a cadence that seemed wholly out of place amidst such surroundings.

The whole place was burdened under a semi-twilight, induced by the crowning foliage so frantically jealous of its rights. Of undergrowth there was no vestige. Only the deep carpet of cones and pine needles, which clogged the crevices, and frequently concealed pitfalls for the steps of those sufficiently unwary. This, and a general saturation from the spray of the falling waters, left the upward climb something more than arduous.

It was nearly an hour later when the two men stood on the narrow plateau cut in the side of the gorge, and overlooking the great river. It yielded a perfect view of the vastness of the amazing reach.

Below them, out of the solid walls, wherever root-hold offered, the lean pines thrust their crests to a level with them. Above, where the slope of the gorge fell back at an easier angle, black forests covered the whole face for hundreds of feet towards the cloud-flecked skies.

These men, however, were all unconcerned with the depths or the heights, for all their dizzy splendor. A habitation stood before them sheltered by a burnt and tumbled stockade. And to practical imagination it held a significance which might have deep enough meaning.

They stood contemplating the litter for some moments. And in those moments it told them a story of attack and defence, and finally of defeat. The disaster to the defenders was clearly told, and the question in both their minds was the identity of those defeated.

John Kars approached the charred pile where it formed the least obstruction, and his eyes searched the staunch but dilapidated shack, with its flat roof. Battered, it still stood intact, hard set against the slope of the hill. Its green log walls were barkless. They were weather-worn to a degree that suggested many, many years and cruel seasons. But its habitable qualities were clearly apparent.

Bill Brudenell was searching in closer detail. It was the difference between the two men. It was the essential difference in their qualities of mind. He was the first to break the silence between them.

"Get a look," he said abruptly. "There! There! And there! All over the darn old face of it. Bullet holes. Hundreds of them. And seemingly from every direction. Say, it must have been a beautiful scrap."

"And the defenders got licked—poor devils."

Kars was pointing down at the strewn bones lying amongst the fallen logs. Beyond them, inside the boundary of the stockade lay a skull, a human skull, as clean and whitened as though centuries had passed since it lost contact with the frame which had supported it.

Bill moved to it. His examination was close and professional.

"Indian," he said at last, and laid it back on the ground with almost reverent care.

He turned his eyes upon the shanty once more. Two other piles of human bones, picked as clean as carrion birds could leave them, passed under his scrutiny, but he was no longer concerned with them. The hut absorbed his whole interest now, and he moved towards its open doorway with Kars at his heels. They passed within.

As their eyes grew accustomed to the indifferent light, more of the story of the place was set out for their reading. There were some ammunition boxes. There were odds and ends of camp truck. But nothing of any value remained, and the fact suggested, in combination with the other signs, the looting of a victorious foe.

Kars was the first to offer comment.

"Do you guess it's possible——?"

"Allan held this shack?" Bill nodded. "These are all white men signs. Those ammunition boxes. They're the same as we've loaded up at the Fort many times. Sure. Allan held this shack, but he didn't die here. Murray found what was left of him down below, way down the river. Maybe he held this till his stores got low. Then he made a dash for it, and—found it. It makes me sick thinking. Let's get out."

He turned away to the door and Kars followed him.

Kars had nothing to add. The picture of that hopeless fight left him without desire to investigate further. It was almost the last fight of the man who had made the happiness he now contemplated possible. His heart bled for the girl who he knew had well-nigh worshiped her "daddy."

But Bill did not pass the doorway. At that moment the sharp crack of a rifle split the air, and set the echoes of the gorge screaming. A second later there was the vicious "spat" of a bullet on the sorely tried logs of the shack. He stepped back under cover. But not before a second shot rang out, and another bullet struck, and ricochetted, hurtling through the air to lose itself in the pine woods above him.

"The play's started," was his undisturbed comment.

Kars nodded and his eyes lit. The emotions of the moment before had fallen from him.

"Good!" he exclaimed. "Now for Mister Louis Creal."

Bill turned, and his twinkling eyes were thoughtful as they regarded his friend.

"Ye-es."

But Kars was paying small attention. His eyes were shining with a light such as is only seen in those who contemplate the things their heart is set upon. In his mind there was no doubt, only conviction.

"We're not fighting those poor, darn-fool neches who fired those shots," he cried in a sudden break from his usual reticence. "Maybe they're the force but they aren't the brain. The brain behind this play is Mister Louis Creal. Say, this thing's bigger than we guessed. This Louis Creal runs these workings. Guess he's been running them since the beginning. He's been running them in some sort of partnership with the men at the Fort. He was Allan's partner, if I'm wise to anything. He was Allan's partner and Murray's. And Allan was murdered right here. He was murdered by these poor darn neches. And the brain behind them was Louis Creal's. Do you get it now? Oh, it's easy. That half-breed's turned, as they always turn when it suits them. He's turned on his partners. And Murray knows it. That's why Murray's got in his arms. It's clear as daylight. There's a three-cornered scrap coming. Murray's going to clean out this outfit, or lose his grip on the gold lying on this river for the picking up. And Murray don't figger to lose a thing without a mighty big kick—and not gold anyway. This feller, Creal, located us, and figgers to wipe us off his slate. See? Say, Bill, I guessed long ago Bell River was going to hand us some secrets. I guessed it would tell us how Allan Mowbray died. Well, Louis Creal's going to pay. He's going to pay good. Murray's wise. Gee, I can't but admire. Another feller would have shouted. Another feller would have told the womenfolk all he discovered when he found Allan Mowbray murdered. Can't you get his play? He was Allan's friend. He kind of hoped to marry Jessie—some day. He worked the whole thing out. He guessed he'd scare Mrs. Mowbray and Jessie to death if he told them all that had happened. He didn't want them scared, or they might quit the place. So he just blamed the neches, and let if go at that. He handled the proposition himself. There was Alec. He didn't guess it would be good Alec butting in. Alec, for all he's Jessie's brother, wasn't bright. He might get killed even. He'd be in the way—anyway. So he got him clear of the Fort. Then he got a free hand. He shipped in an arsenal of weapons, and he's going to outfit a big force. He's coming along up here later, and it'll be him and Creal to the death. And it's odds on Murray. Then the folk at the Fort can help themselves all they need, and the world won't be any the wiser. It's a great play. But Alec's death has queered it some. Do you get it—all? It's clear—clear as daylight."

"Ye-es." Again came that hesitating affirmative. But then Bill was older, and perhaps less impressionable.

Again Kars missed the hesitation.

"Good," he said. "Now we'll get busy. Maybe we'll save Murray a deal of trouble. He'd got me worried. I was half guessing——" He broke off and sighed as though in relief. "But I've got it clear enough now. And Louis Creal'll have to reckon with me first. We'll make back to camp."

Bill offered no comment. He watched the great figure of his companion move towards the door. Nor was the nerve of the man without deep effect upon him. Kars passed out on to the open plateau and instantly a rain of bullets spat their vicious purpose all about him. Even as Bill stepped out after him his feelings were absorbed in his admiration of the other.

The shots continued. They all came from the same direction, from the woods across the river, somewhere just above their camp. It was Indian firing. Its character was unmistakable. It was erratic, and many of the shots failed hopelessly to reach the plateau at all.

The movements of the two men were rapid without haste, and, as they left the plateau, the firing ceased.

An hour later they were walking up the foreshore to their camp, and the canoe was hauled up out of the water. The sluices were in full work under the watchful eye of Abe Dodds. The thirsty Saunders was driving his gang at the placers, from which was being drawn a stream of pay dirt that never ceased from daylight to dark. They had heard the firing, as had the whole camp, and they had wondered. But for the present their responsibility remained with their labors. The safe return of Kars and his companion nevertheless afforded keen satisfaction.

Bill smiled as they moved up towards their quarters. Curiously enough the recent events seemed to have lightened his mood. Perhaps it was the passing of a period of doubt. Perhaps the reconstruction of Murray's doings, which Kars had set out so clearly, had had its effect. It was impossible to say, for his shrewd eyes rarely told more than he intended them to.

"Makes you feel good when the other feller starts right in to play his 'hand,'" he said.

Kars looked into the smiling face. He recognized in this man, whose profession should have robbed him of all the elemental attributes, and whose years should have suggested a desire for the ease of a successful life, a real fighter of the long trail, and his heart warmed.

"Makes you feel better when you know none of your 'suits' are weak," he replied.



CHAPTER XXVI

THE DEPUTATION

Kars was asleep. He was in the deep slumber of complete weariness in the shanty which had been erected for his quarters, and was shared by Bill. The bed was a mere pile of blankets spread out on a rough log trestle which sufficiently raised it from the ground.

It was a mean enough habitation. But it was substantial. Furthermore, it was weather-proof, which was all these men required. Then, too, it was set up in a position on the higher ground whence it overlooked the whole camp, with a full view of the sluices, and the operations going on about them. Adjacent were the stores, and the kitchens, all sheltered by projections of the rocky foreshore, so that substantial cover against hostile attack was afforded them.

While Kars slept the defensive preparations he had designed were being carried out feverishly under the watchful eyes of Bill and Abe Dodds, with Joe Saunders a vigorous lieutenant. He had planned for every possible emergency. Embankments of pay dirt were erected and strengthened by green logs. Loopholes were arranged for concentrated defence in any one direction. The water supply was there open to them, direct from the river, which, in its turn, afforded them a safeguard from a purely frontal attack. The Bell River Indians were no great water men, so the chief defences were set up flanking along the shore.

Kars had spent a day and two nights in unceasing labor, and now, at last, the claims of nature would no longer be denied. He had fallen asleep literally at his work. So the watchful doctor had accepted the responsibility. And the great body was left to the repose which made so small a claim upon it.

There was no man who could fight harder than John Kars, there was no man who could fight more intelligently. Just as no man could fight fairer. He accepted all conditions as he found them, and met them as necessity demanded. But all that was rugged in him remained untainted through the years of his sojourn beyond the laws of civilization. There were a hundred ways by which he could have hoped to survive. But only one suited his temperament. Then he had closed the doors of civilization behind him. He had metaphorically burnt his text-books, if he ever really possessed any. He viewed nothing through the pleasantly tinted glasses such as prevail where cities are swept and garnished daily, and bodily comfort is counted more to be desired than God-fear. He forgot that law and order must be paid for by a yearly toll in currency. But he never failed to remember that a temple had been raised in the human heart, erected firmly on the ashes of savagery.

"Now for Mister Louis Creal!"

It was the situation as he saw it. He by no means underrated the threat of the Indians. But he drove straight to the root of the matter. He believed the Indians had been bought body and soul by this bastard white for his own ends. And his own end was the gold of Bell River. It was his purpose to destroy all competition. He had murdered one partner, or perhaps employer. He hoped, no doubt, to treat the other white man similarly. Now he meant a similar mischief by this new threat to his monopoly. Kars felt it was characteristic of the bastard races. Well, he was ready for the fight. He had sought it.