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The Valley of Silent Men: A Story of the Three River Country

by James Oliver Curwood · English · Gutenberg #4707 · 416,620 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Valley of Silent Men: A Story of the Three River Country

Author: James Oliver Curwood


        
Release date: December 1, 2003 [eBook #4707]
                Most recently updated: December 28, 2020

Language: English

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[Frontispiece: From the girl's revolver leaped forth a sudden spurt of
smoke and flame.]






THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN

A STORY OF THE THREE RIVER COUNTRY


BY

JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD



AUTHOR OF "THE RIVER'S END," ETC.





THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN


Before the railroad's thin lines of steel bit their way up through the
wilderness, Athabasca Landing was the picturesque threshold over which
one must step who would enter into the mystery and adventure of the
great white North. It is still Iskwatam--the "door" which opens to the
lower reaches of the Athabasca, the Slave, and the Mackenzie. It is
somewhat difficult to find on the map, yet it is there, because its
history is written in more than a hundred and forty years of romance
and tragedy and adventure in the lives of men, and is not easily
forgotten. Over the old trail it was about a hundred and fifty miles
north of Edmonton. The railroad has brought it nearer to that base of
civilization, but beyond it the wilderness still howls as it has howled
for a thousand years, and the waters of a continent flow north and into
the Arctic Ocean. It is possible that the beautiful dream of the
real-estate dealers may come true, for the most avid of all the
sportsmen of the earth, the money-hunters, have come up on the bumpy
railroad that sometimes lights its sleeping cars with lanterns, and
with them have come typewriters, and stenographers, and the art of
printing advertisements, and the Golden Rule of those who sell handfuls
of earth to hopeful purchasers thousands of miles away--"Do others as
they would do you." And with it, too, has come the legitimate business
of barter and trade, with eyes on all that treasure of the North which
lies between the Grand Rapids of the Athabasca and the edge of the
polar sea. But still more beautiful than the dream of fortunes quickly
made is the deep-forest superstition that the spirits of the wilderness
dead move onward as steam and steel advance, and if this is so, the
ghosts of a thousand Pierres and Jacquelines have risen uneasily from
their graves at Athabasca Landing, hunting a new quiet farther north.

For it was Pierre and Jacqueline, Henri and Marie, Jacques and his
Jeanne, whose brown hands for a hundred and forty years opened and
closed this door. And those hands still master a savage world for two
thousand miles north of that threshold of Athabasca Landing. South of
it a wheezy engine drags up the freight that came not so many months
ago by boat.

It is over this threshold that the dark eyes of Pierre and Jacqueline,
Henri and Marie, Jacques and his Jeanne, look into the blue and the
gray and the sometimes watery ones of a destroying civilization. And
there it is that the shriek of a mad locomotive mingles with their
age-old river chants; the smut of coal drifts over their forests; the
phonograph screeches its reply to le violon; and Pierre and Henri and
Jacques no longer find themselves the kings of the earth when they come
in from far countries with their precious cargoes of furs. And they no
longer swagger and tell loud-voiced adventure, or sing their wild river
songs in the same old abandon, for there are streets at Athabasca
Landing now, and hotels, and schools, and rules and regulations of a
kind new and terrifying to the bold of the old voyageurs.

It seems only yesterday that the railroad was not there, and a great
world of wilderness lay between the Landing and the upper rim of
civilization. And when word first came that a steam thing was eating
its way up foot by foot through forest and swamp and impassable muskeg,
that word passed up and down the water-ways for two thousand miles, a
colossal joke, a stupendous bit of drollery, the funniest thing that
Pierre and Henri and Jacques had heard in all their lives. And when
Jacques wanted to impress upon Pierre his utter disbelief of a thing,
he would say:

"It will happen, m'sieu, when the steam thing comes to the Landing,
when cow-beasts eat with the moose, and when our bread is found for us
in yonder swamps!"

And the steam thing came, and cows grazed where moose had fed, and
bread WAS gathered close to the edge of the great swamps. Thus did
civilization break into Athabasca Landing.

Northward from the Landing, for two thousand miles, reached the domain
of the rivermen. And the Landing, with its two hundred and twenty-seven
souls before the railroad came, was the wilderness clearing-house which
sat at the beginning of things. To it came from the south all the
freight which must go into the north; on its flat river front were
built the great scows which carried this freight to the end of the
earth. It was from the Landing that the greatest of all river brigades
set forth upon their long adventures, and it was back to the Landing,
perhaps a year or more later, that still smaller scows and huge canoes
brought as the price of exchange their cargoes of furs.

Thus for nearly a century and a half the larger craft, with their great
sweeps and their wild-throated crews, had gone DOWN the river toward
the Arctic Ocean, and the smaller craft, with their still wilder crews,
had come UP the river toward civilization. The River, as the Landing
speaks of it, is the Athabasca, with its headwaters away off in the
British Columbian mountains, where Baptiste and McLeod, explorers of
old, gave up their lives to find where the cradle of it lay. And it
sweeps past the Landing, a slow and mighty giant, unswervingly on its
way to the northern sea. With it the river brigades set forth. For
Pierre and Henri and Jacques it is going from one end to the other of
the earth. The Athabasca ends and is replaced by the Slave, and the
Slave empties into Great Slave Lake, and from the narrow tip of that
Lake the Mackenzie carries on for more than a thousand miles to the sea.

In this distance of the long water trail one sees and hears many
things. It is life. It is adventure. It is mystery and romance and
hazard. Its tales are so many that books could not hold them. In the
faces of men and women they are written. They lie buried in graves so
old that the forest trees grow over them. Epics of tragedy, of love, of
the fight to live! And as one goes farther north, and still farther,
just so do the stories of things that have happened change.

For the world is changing, the sun is changing, and the breeds of men
are changing. At the Landing in July there are seventeen hours of
sunlight; at Fort Chippewyan there are eighteen; at Fort Resolution,
Fort Simpson, and Fort Providence there are nineteen; at the Great Bear
twenty-one, and at Fort McPherson, close to the polar sea, from
twenty-two to twenty-three. And in December there are also these hours
of darkness. With light and darkness men change, women change, and life
changes. And Pierre and Henri and Jacques meet them all, but always
THEY are the same, chanting the old songs, enshrining the old loves,
dreaming the same dreams, and worshiping always the same gods. They
meet a thousand perils with eyes that glisten with the love of
adventure.

The thunder of rapids and the howlings of storm do not frighten them.
Death has no fear for them. They grapple with it, wrestle joyously with
it, and are glorious when they win. Their blood is red and strong.
Their hearts are big. Their souls chant themselves up to the skies. Yet
they are simple as children, and when they are afraid, it is of things
which children fear. For in those hearts of theirs is superstition--and
also, perhaps, royal blood. For princes and the sons of princes and the
noblest aristocracy of France were the first of the gentlemen
adventurers who came with ruffles on their sleeves and rapiers at their
sides to seek furs worth many times their weight in gold two hundred
and fifty years ago, and of these ancient forebears Pierre and Henri
and Jacques, with their Maries and Jeannes and Jacquelines, are the
living voices of today.

And these voices tell many stories. Sometimes they whisper them, as the
wind would whisper, for there are stories weird and strange that must
be spoken softly. They darken no printed pages. The trees listen to
them beside red camp-fires at night. Lovers tell them in the glad
sunshine of day. Some of them are chanted in song. Some of them come
down through the generations, epics of the wilderness, remembered from
father to son. And each year there are the new things to pass from
mouth to mouth, from cabin to cabin, from the lower reaches of the
Mackenzie to the far end of the world at Athabasca Landing. For the
three rivers are always makers of romance, of tragedy, of adventure.
The story will never be forgotten of how Follette and Ladouceur swam
their mad race through the Death Chute for love of the girl who waited
at the other end, or of how Campbell O'Doone, the red-headed giant at
Fort Resolution, fought the whole of a great brigade in his effort to
run away with a scow captain's daughter.

And the brigade loved O'Doone, though it beat him, for these men of the
strong north love courage and daring. The epic of the lost scow--how
there were men who saw it disappear from under their very eyes,
floating upward and afterward riding swiftly away in the skies--is told
and retold by strong-faced men, deep in whose eyes are the smoldering
flames of an undying superstition, and these same men thrill as they
tell over again the strange and unbelievable story of Hartshope, the
aristocratic Englishman who set off into the North in all the glory of
monocle and unprecedented luggage, and how he joined in a tribal war,
became a chief of the Dog Ribs, and married a dark-eyed, sleek-haired,
little Indian beauty, who is now the mother of his children.

But deepest and most thrilling of all the stories they tell are the
stories of the long arm of the Law--that arm which reaches for two
thousand miles from Athabasca Landing to the polar sea, the arm Of the
Royal Northwest Mounted Police.

And of these it is the story of Jim Kent we are going to tell, of Jim
Kent and of Marette, that wonderful little goddess of the Valley of
Silent Men, in whose veins there must have run the blood of fighting
men--and of ancient queens. A story of the days before the railroad
came.




CHAPTER I


In the mind of James Grenfell Kent, sergeant in the Royal Northwest
Mounted Police, there remained no shadow of a doubt. He knew that he
was dying. He had implicit faith in Cardigan, his surgeon friend, and
Cardigan had told him that what was left of his life would be measured
out in hours--perhaps in minutes or seconds. It was an unusual case.
There was one chance in fifty that he might live two or three days, but
there was no chance at all that he would live more than three. The end
might come with any breath he drew into his lungs. That was the
pathological history of the thing, as far as medical and surgical
science knew of cases similar to his own.

Personally, Kent did not feel like a dying man. His vision and his
brain were clear. He felt no pain, and only at infrequent intervals was
his temperature above normal. His voice was particularly calm and
natural.

At first he had smiled incredulously when Cardigan broke the news. That
the bullet which a drunken half-breed had sent into his chest two weeks
before had nicked the arch of the aorta, thus forming an aneurism, was
a statement by Cardigan which did not sound especially wicked or
convincing to him. "Aorta" and "aneurism" held about as much
significance for him as his perichondrium or the process of his
stylomastoid. But Kent possessed an unswerving passion to grip at facts
in detail, a characteristic that had largely helped him to earn the
reputation of being the best man-hunter in all the northland service.
So he had insisted, and his surgeon friend had explained.

The aorta, he found, was the main blood-vessel arching over and leading
from the heart, and in nicking it the bullet had so weakened its outer
wall that it bulged out in the form of a sack, just as the inner tube
of an automobile tire bulges through the outer casing when there is a
blowout.

"And when that sack gives way inside you," Cardigan had explained,
"you'll go like that!" He snapped a forefinger and thumb to drive the
fact home.

After that it was merely a matter of common sense to believe, and now,
sure that he was about to die. Kent had acted. He was acting in the
full health of his mind and in extreme cognizance of the paralyzing
shock he was contributing as a final legacy to the world at large, or
at least to that part of it which knew him or was interested. The
tragedy of the thing did not oppress him. A thousand times in his life
he had discovered that humor and tragedy were very closely related, and
that there were times when only the breadth of a hair separated the
two. Many times he had seen a laugh change suddenly to tears, and tears
to laughter.

The tableau, as it presented itself about his bedside now, amused him.
Its humor was grim, but even in these last hours of his life he
appreciated it. He had always more or less regarded life as a joke--a
very serious joke, but a joke for all that--a whimsical and trickful
sort of thing played by the Great Arbiter on humanity at large; and
this last count in his own life, as it was solemnly and tragically
ticking itself off, was the greatest joke of all. The amazed faces that
stared at him, their passing moments of disbelief, their repressed but
at times visible betrayals of horror, the steadiness of their eyes, the
tenseness of their lips--all added to what he might have called, at
another time, the dramatic artistry of his last great adventure.

That he was dying did not chill him, or make him afraid, or put a
tremble into his voice. The contemplation of throwing off the mere
habit of breathing had never at any stage of his thirty-six years of
life appalled him. Those years, because he had spent a sufficient
number of them in the raw places of the earth, had given him a
philosophy and viewpoint of his own, both of which he kept unto himself
without effort to impress them on other people. He believed that life
itself was the cheapest thing on the face of all the earth. All other
things had their limitations.

There was so much water and so much land, so many mountains and so many
plains, so many square feet to live on and so many square feet to be
buried in. All things could be measured, and stood up, and
catalogued--except life itself. "Given time," he would say, "a single
pair of humans can populate all creation." Therefore, being the
cheapest of all things, it was true philosophy that life should be the
easiest of all things to give up when the necessity came.

Which is only another way of emphasizing that Kent was not, and never
had been, afraid to die. But it does not say that he treasured life a
whit less than the man in another room, who, a day or so before, had
fought like a lunatic before going under an anesthetic for the
amputation of a bad finger. No man had loved life more than he. No man
had lived nearer it.

It had been a passion with him. Full of dreams, and always with
anticipations ahead, no matter how far short realizations fell, he was
an optimist, a lover of the sun and the moon and the stars, a worshiper
of the forests and of the mountains, a man who loved his life, and who
had fought for it, and yet who was ready--at the last--to yield it up
without a whimper when the fates asked for it.

Bolstered up against his pillows, he did not look the part of the fiend
he was confessing himself to be to the people about him. Sickness had
not emaciated him. The bronze of his lean, clean-cut face had faded a
little, but the tanning of wind and sun and campfire was still there.
His blue eyes were perhaps dulled somewhat by the nearness of death.
One would not have judged him to be thirty-six, even though over one
temple there was a streak of gray in his blond hair--a heritage from
his mother, who was dead. Looking at him, as his lips quietly and
calmly confessed himself beyond the pale of men's sympathy or
forgiveness, one would have said that his crime was impossible.

Through his window, as he sat bolstered up in his cot, Kent could see
the slow-moving shimmer of the great Athabasca River as it moved on its
way toward the Arctic Ocean. The sun was shining, and he saw the cool,
thick masses of the spruce and cedar forests beyond, the rising
undulations of wilderness ridges and hills, and through that open
window he caught the sweet scents that came with a soft wind from out
of the forests he had loved for so many years.

"They've been my best friends," he had said to Cardigan, "and when this
nice little thing you're promising happens to me, old man, I want to go
with my eyes on them."

So his cot was close to the window.

Nearest to him sat Cardigan. In his face, more than in any of the
others, was disbelief. Kedsty, Inspector of the Royal Northwest Mounted
Police, in charge of N Division during an indefinite leave of absence
of the superintendent, was paler even than the girl whose nervous
fingers were swiftly putting upon paper every word that was spoken by
those in the room. O'Connor, staff-sergeant, was like one struck dumb.
The little, smooth-faced Catholic missioner whose presence as a witness
Kent had requested, sat with his thin fingers tightly interlaced,
silently placing this among all the other strange tragedies that the
wilderness had given up to him. They had all been Kent's friends, his
intimate friends, with the exception of the girl, whom Inspector Kedsty
had borrowed for the occasion. With the little missioner he had spent
many an evening, exchanging in mutual confidence the strange and
mysterious happenings of the deep forests, and of the great north
beyond the forests. O'Connor's friendship was a friendship bred of the
brotherhood of the trails. It was Kent and O'Connor who had brought
down the two Eskimo murderers from the mouth of the Mackenzie, and the
adventure had taken them fourteen months. Kent loved O'Connor, with his
red face, his red hair, and his big heart, and to him the most tragic
part of it all was that he was breaking this friendship now.

But it was Inspector Kedsty, commanding N Division, the biggest and
wildest division in all the Northland, that roused in Kent an unusual
emotion, even as he waited for that explosion just over his heart which
the surgeon had told him might occur at any moment. On his death-bed
his mind still worked analytically. And Kedsty, since the moment he had
entered the room, had puzzled Kent. The commander of N Division was an
unusual man. He was sixty, with iron-gray hair, cold, almost colorless
eyes in which one would search long for a gleam of either mercy or
fear, and a nerve that Kent had never seen even slightly disturbed. It
took such a man, an iron man, to run N Division according to law, for N
Division covered an area of six hundred and twenty thousand square
miles of wildest North America, extending more than two thousand miles
north of the 70th parallel of latitude, with its farthest limit three
and one-half degrees within the Arctic Circle. To police this area
meant upholding the law in a country fourteen times the size of the
state of Ohio. And Kedsty was the man who had performed this duty as
only one other man had ever succeeded in doing it.

Yet Kedsty, of the five about Kent, was most disturbed. His face was
ash-gray. A number of times Kent had detected a broken note in his
voice. He had seen his hands grip at the arms of the chair he sat in
until the cords stood out on them as if about to burst. He had never
seen Kedsty sweat until now.

Twice the Inspector had wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. He was
no longer Minisak--"The Rock"--a name given to him by the Crees. The
armor that no shaft had ever penetrated seemed to have dropped from
him. He had ceased to be Kedsty, the most dreaded inquisitor in the
service. He was nervous, and Kent could see that he was fighting to
repossess himself.

"Of course you know what this means to the Service," he said in a hard,
low voice. "It means--"

"Disgrace," nodded Kent. "I know. It means a black spot on the
otherwise bright escutcheon of N Division. But it can't be helped. I
killed John Barkley. The man you've got in the guard-house, condemned
to be hanged by the neck until he is dead, is innocent. I understand.
It won't be nice for the Service to let it be known that a sergeant in
His Majesty's Royal Mounted is an ordinary murderer, but--"

"Not an ORDINARY murderer," interrupted Kedsty. "As you have described
it, the crime was deliberate--horrible and inexcusable to its last
detail. You were not moved by a sudden passion. You tortured your
victim. It is inconceivable!"

"And yet true," said Kent.

He was looking at the stenographer's slim fingers as they put down his
words and Kedsty's. A bit of sunshine touched her bowed head, and he
observed the red lights in her hair. His eyes swept to O'Connor, and in
that moment the commander of N Division bent over him, so close that
his face almost touched Kent's, and he whispered, in a voice so low
that no one of the other four could hear,

"KENT--YOU LIE!"

"No, it is true," replied Kent.

Kedsty drew back, again wiping the moisture from his forehead.

"I killed Barkley, and I killed him as I planned that he should die,"
Kent went on. "It was my desire that he should suffer. The one thing
which I shall not tell you is WHY I killed him. But it was a sufficient
reason."

He saw the shuddering tremor that swept through the shoulders of the
girl who was putting down the condemning notes.

"And you refuse to confess your motive?"

"Absolutely--except that he had wronged me in a way that deserved
death."

"And you make this confession knowing that you are about to die?"

The flicker of a smile passed over Kent's lips. He looked at O'Connor
and for an instant saw in O'Connor's eyes a flash of their old
comradeship.

"Yes. Dr. Cardigan has told me. Otherwise I should have let the man in
the guard-house hang. It's simply that this accursed bullet has spoiled
my luck--and saved him!"

Kedsty spoke to the girl. For half an hour she read her notes, and
after that Kent wrote his name on the last page. Then Kedsty rose from
his chair.

"We have finished, gentlemen," he said.

They trailed out, the girl hurrying through the door first in her
desire to free herself of an ordeal that had strained every nerve in
her body. The commander of N Division was last to go. Cardigan
hesitated, as if to remain, but Kedsty motioned him on. It was Kedsty
who closed the door, and as he closed it he looked back, and for a
flash Kent met his eyes squarely. In that moment he received an
impression which he had not caught while the Inspector was in the room.
It was like an electrical shock in its unexpectedness, and Kedsty must
have seen the effect of it in his face, for he moved back quickly and
closed the door. In that instant Kent had seen in Kedsty's eyes and
face a look that was not only of horror, but what in the face and eyes
of another man he would have sworn was fear.

It was a gruesome moment in which to smile, but Kent smiled. The shock
was over. By the rules of the Criminal Code he knew that Kedsty even
now was instructing Staff-Sergeant O'Connor to detail an officer to
guard his door. The fact that he was ready to pop off at any moment
would make no difference in the regulations of the law. And Kedsty was
a stickler for the law as it was written. Through the closed door he
heard voices indistinctly. Then there were footsteps, dying away. He
could hear the heavy thump, thump of O'Connor's big feet. O'Connor had
always walked like that, even on the trail.

Softly then the door reopened, and Father Layonne, the little
missioner, came in. Kent knew that this would be so, for Father Layonne
knew neither code nor creed that did not reach all the hearts of the
wilderness. He came back, and sat down close to Kent, and took one of
his hands and held it closely in both of his own. They were not the
soft, smooth hands of the priestly hierarchy, but were hard with the
callosity of toil, yet gentle with the gentleness of a great sympathy.
He had loved Kent yesterday, when Kent had stood clean in the eyes of
both God and men, and he still loved him today, when his soul was
stained with a thing that must be washed away with his own life.

"I'm sorry, lad," he said. "I'm sorry."

Something rose up in Kent's throat that was not the blood he had been
wiping away since morning. His fingers returned the pressure of the
little missioner's hands. Then he pointed out through the window to the
panorama of shimmering river and green forests.

"It is hard to say good-by to all that, Father," he said. "But, if you
don't mind, I'd rather not talk about it. I'm not afraid of it. And why
be unhappy because one has only a little while to live? Looking back
over your life, does it seem so very long ago that you were a boy, a
small boy?"

"The time has gone swiftly, very swiftly."

"It seems only yesterday--or so?"

"Yes, only yesterday--or so."

Kent's face lit up with the whimsical smile that long ago had reached
the little missioner's heart. "Well, that's the way I'm looking at it,
Father. There is only a yesterday, a today, and a tomorrow in the
longest of our lives. Looking back from seventy years isn't much
different from looking back from thirty-six WHEN you're looking back
and not ahead. Do you think what I have just said will free Sandy
McTrigger?"

"There is no doubt. Your statements have been accepted as a death-bed
confession."

The little missioner, instead of Kent, was betraying a bit of
nervousness.

"There are matters, my son--some few matters--which you will want
attended to. Shall we not talk about them?"

"You mean--"

"Your people, first. I remember that once you told me there was no one.
But surely there is some one somewhere."

Kent shook his head. "There is no one now. For ten years those forests
out there have been father, mother, and home to me."

"But there must be personal affairs, affairs which you would like to
entrust, perhaps, to me?"

Kent's face brightened, and for an instant a flash of humor leaped into
his eyes. "It is funny," he chuckled. "Since you remind me of it,
Father, it is quite in form to make my will. I've bought a few little
pieces of land here. Now that the railroad has almost reached us from
Edmonton, they've jumped up from the seven or eight hundred dollars I
gave for them to about ten thousand. I want you to sell the lots and
use the money in your work. Put as much of it on the Indians as you
can. They've always been good brothers to me. And I wouldn't waste much
time in getting my signature on some sort of paper to that effect."

Father Layonne's eyes shone softly. "God will bless you for that,
Jimmy," he said, using the intimate name by which he had known him.
"And I think He is going to pardon you for something else, if you have
the courage to ask Him."

"I am pardoned," replied Kent, looking out through the window. "I feel
it. I know it, Father."

In his soul the little missioner was praying. He knew that Kent's
religion was not his religion, and he did not press the service which
he would otherwise have rendered. After a moment he rose to his feet,
and it was the old Kent who looked up into his face, the clean-faced,
gray-eyed, unafraid Kent, smiling in the old way.

"I have one big favor to ask of you, Father," he said. "If I've got a
day to live, I don't want every one forcing the fact on me that I'm
dying. If I've any friends left, I want them to come in and see me, and
talk, and crack jokes. I want to smoke my pipe. I'll appreciate a box
of cigars if you'll send 'em up. Cardigan can't object now. Will you
arrange these things for me? They'll listen to you--and please shove my
cot a little nearer the window before you go."

Father Layonne performed the service in silence. Then at last the
yearning overcame him to have the soul speak out, that his God might be
more merciful, and he said: "My boy, you are sorry? You repent that you
killed John Barkley?"

"No, I'm not sorry. It had to be done. And please don't forget the
cigars, will you, Father?"

"No, I won't forget," said the little missioner, and turned away.

As the door opened and closed behind him, the flash of humor leaped
into Kent's eyes again, and he chuckled even as he wiped another of the
telltale stains of blood from his lips. He had played the game. And the
funny part about it was that no one in all the world would ever know,
except himself--and perhaps one other.




CHAPTER II


Outside Kent's window was Spring, the glorious Spring of the Northland,
and in spite of the death-grip that was tightening in his chest he
drank it in deeply and leaned over so that his eyes traveled over wide
spaces of the world that had been his only a short time before.

It occurred to him that he had suggested this knoll that overlooked
both settlement and river as the site for the building which Dr.
Cardigan called his hospital. It was a structure rough and unadorned,
unpainted, and sweetly smelling with the aroma of the spruce trees from
the heart of which its unplaned lumber was cut. The breath of it was a
thing to bring cheer and hope. Its silvery walls, in places golden and
brown with pitch and freckled with knots, spoke joyously of life that
would not die, and the woodpeckers came and hammered on it as though it
were still a part of the forest, and red squirrels chattered on the
roof and scampered about in play with a soft patter of feet.

"It's a pretty poor specimen of man that would die up here with all
that under his eyes," Kent had said a year before, when he and Cardigan
had picked out the site. "If he died looking at that, why, he just
simply ought to die, Cardigan," he had laughed.

And now he was that poor specimen, looking out on the glory of the
world!

His vision took in the South and a part of the East and West, and in
all those directions there was no end of the forest. It was like a
vast, many-colored sea with uneven billows rising and falling until the
blue sky came down to meet them many miles away. More than once his
heart ached at the thought of the two thin ribs of steel creeping up
foot by foot and mile by mile from Edmonton, a hundred and fifty miles
away. It was, to him, a desecration, a crime against Nature, the murder
of his beloved wilderness. For in his soul that wilderness had grown to
be more than a thing of spruce and cedar and balsam, of poplar and
birch; more than a great, unused world of river and lake and swamp. It
was an individual, a thing. His love for it was greater than his love
for man. It was his inarticulate God. It held him as no religion in the
world could have held him, and deeper and deeper it had drawn him into
the soul of itself, delivering up to him one by one its guarded secrets
and its mysteries, opening for him page by page the book that was the
greatest of all books. And it was the wonder of it now, the fact that
it was near him, about him, embracing him, glowing for him in the
sunshine, whispering to him in the soft breath of the air, nodding and
talking to him from the crest of every ridge, that gave to him a
strange happiness even in these hours when he knew that he was dying.

And then his eyes fell nearer to the settlement which nestled along the
edge of the shining river a quarter of a mile away. That, too, had been
the wilderness, in the days before the railroad came. The poison of
speculation was stirring, but it had not yet destroyed. Athabasca
Landing was still the door that opened and closed on the great North.
Its buildings were scattered and few, and built of logs and rough
lumber. Even now he could hear the drowsy hum of the distant sawmill
that was lazily turning out its grist. Not far away the wind-worn flag
of the British Empire was floating over a Hudson Bay Company's post
that had bartered in the trades of the North for more than a hundred
years. Through that hundred years Athabasca Landing had pulsed with the
heart-beats of strong men bred to the wilderness. Through it, working
its way by river and dog sledge from the South, had gone the precious
freight for which the farther North gave in exchange its still more
precious furs. And today, as Kent looked down upon it, he saw that same
activity as it had existed through the years of a century. A brigade of
scows, laden to their gunwales, was just sweeping out into the river
and into its current. Kent had watched the loading of them; now he saw
them drifting lazily out from the shore, their long sweeps glinting in
the sun, their crews singing wildly and fiercely their beloved Chanson
des Voyageurs as their faces turned to the adventure of the North.

In Kent's throat rose a thing which he tried to choke back, but which
broke from his lips in a low cry, almost a sob. He heard the distant
singing, wild and free as the forests themselves, and he wanted to lean
out of his window and shout a last good-by. For the brigade--a Company
brigade, the brigade that had chanted its songs up and down the water
reaches of the land for more than two hundred and fifty years--was
starting north. And he knew where it was going--north, and still
farther north; a hundred miles, five hundred, a thousand--and then
another thousand before the last of the scows unburdened itself of its
precious freight. For the lean and brown-visaged men who went with them
there would be many months of clean living and joyous thrill under the
open skies. Overwhelmed by the yearning that swept over him, Kent
leaned back against his pillows and covered his eyes.

In those moments his brain painted for him swiftly and vividly the
things he was losing. Tomorrow or next day he would be dead, and the
river brigade would still be sweeping on--on into the Grand Rapids of
the Athabasca, fighting the Death Chute, hazarding valiantly the rocks
and rapids of the Grand Cascade, the whirlpools of the Devil's Mouth,
the thundering roar and boiling dragon teeth of the Black Run--on to
the end of the Athabasca, to the Slave, and into the Mackenzie, until
the last rock-blunted nose of the outfit drank the tide-water of the
Arctic Ocean. And he, James Kent, would be DEAD!

He uncovered his eyes, and there was a wan smile on his lips as he
looked forth once more. There were sixteen scows in the brigade, and
the biggest, he knew, was captained by Pierre Rossand. He could fancy
Pierre's big red throat swelling in mighty song, for Pierre's wife was
waiting for him a thousand miles away. The scows were caught steadily
now in the grip of the river, and it seemed to Kent, as he watched them
go, that they were the last fugitives fleeing from the encroaching
monsters of steel. Unconscious of the act, he reached out his arms, and
his soul cried out its farewell, even though his lips were silent.

He was glad when they were gone and when the voices of the chanting
oarsmen were lost in the distance. Again he listened to the lazy hum of
the sawmill, and over his head he heard the velvety run of a red
squirrel and then its reckless chattering. The forests came back to
him. Across his cot fell a patch of golden sunlight. A stronger breath
of air came laden with the perfume of balsam and cedar through his
window, and when the door opened and Cardigan entered, he found the old
Kent facing him.

There was no change in Cardigan's voice or manner as he greeted him.
But there was a tenseness in his face which he could not conceal. He
had brought in Kent's pipe and tobacco. These he laid on a table until
he had placed his head close to Kent's hearty listening to what he
called the bruit--the rushing of blood through the aneurismal sac.

"Seems to me that I can hear it myself now and then," said Kent.
"Worse, isn't it?"

Cardigan nodded. "Smoking may hurry it up a bit," he said. "Still, if
you want to--"

Kent held out his hand for the pipe and tobacco. "It's worth it.
Thanks, old man."

Kent loaded the pipe, and Cardigan lighted a match. For the first time
in two weeks a cloud of smoke issued from between Kent's lips.

"The brigade is starting north," he said.

"Mostly Mackenzie River freight," replied Cardigan. "A long run."

"The finest in all the North. Three years ago O'Connor and I made it
with the Follette outfit. Remember Follette--and Ladouceur? They both
loved the same girl, and being good friends they decided to settle the
matter by a swim through the Death Chute. The man who came through
first was to have her. Gawd, Cardigan, what funny things happen!
Follette came out first, but he was dead. He'd brained himself on a
rock. And to this day Ladouceur hasn't married the girl, because he
says Follette beat him; and that Follette's something-or-other would
haunt him if he didn't play fair. It's a queer--"

He stopped and listened. In the hall was the approaching tread of
unmistakable feet.

"O'Connor," he said.

Cardigan went to the door and opened it as O'Connor was about to knock.
When the door closed again, the staff-sergeant was in the room alone
with Kent. In one of his big hands he clutched a box of cigars, and in
the other he held a bunch of vividly red fire-flowers.

"Father Layonne shoved these into my hands as I was coming up," he
explained, dropping them on the table. "And I--well--I'm breaking
regulations to come up an' tell you something, Jimmy. I never called
you a liar in my life, but I'm calling you one now!"

He was gripping Kent's hands in the fierce clasp of a friendship that
nothing could kill. Kent winced, but the pain of it was joy. He had
feared that O'Connor, like Kedsty, must of necessity turn against him.
Then he noticed something unusual in O'Connor's face and eyes. The
staff-sergeant was not easily excited, yet he was visibly disturbed now.

"I don't know what the others saw, when you were making that
confession, Kent. Mebby my eyesight was better because I spent a year
and a half with you on the trail. You were lying. What's your game, old
man?"

Kent groaned. "Have I got to go all over it again?" he appealed.

O'Connor began thumping back and forth over the floor. Kent had seen
him that way sometimes in camp when there were perplexing problems
ahead of them.

"You didn't kill John Barkley," he insisted. "I don't believe you did,
and Inspector Kedsty doesn't believe it--yet the mighty queer part of
it is--"

"What?"

"That Kedsty is acting on your confession in a big hurry. I don't
believe it's according to Hoyle, as the regulations are written. But
he's doing it. And I want to know--it's the biggest thing I EVER wanted
to know--did you kill Barkley?"

"O'Connor, if you don't believe a dying man's word--you haven't much
respect for death, have you?"

"That's the theory on which the law works, but sometimes it ain't
human. Confound it, man, DID YOU?"

"Yes."

O'Connor sat down and with his finger-nails pried open the box of
cigars. "Mind if I smoke with you?" he asked. "I need it. I'm shot up
with unexpected things this morning. Do you care if I ask you about the
girl?"

"The girl!" exclaimed Kent. He sat up straighter, staring at O'Connor.

The staff-sergeant's eyes were on him with questioning steadiness. "I
see--you don't know her," he said, lighting his cigar. "Neither do I.
Never saw her before. That's why I am wondering about Inspector Kedsty.
I tell you, it's queer. He didn't believe you this morning, yet he was
all shot up. He wanted me to go with him to his house. The cords stood
out on his neck like that--like my little finger.

"Then suddenly he changed his mind and said we'd go to the office. That
took us along the road that runs through the poplar grove. It happened
there. I'm not much of a girl's man, Kent, and I'd be a fool to try to
tell you what she looked like. But there she was, standing in the path
not ten feet ahead of us, and she stopped me in my tracks as quick as
though she'd sent a shot into me. And she stopped Kedsty, too. I heard
him give a sort of grunt--a funny sound, as though some one had hit
him. I don't believe I could tell whether she had a dress on or not,
for I never saw anything like her face, and her eyes, and her hair, and
I stared at them like a thunder-struck fool. She didn't seem to notice
me any more than if I'd been thin air, a ghost she couldn't see.

"She looked straight at Kedsty, and she kept looking at him--and then
she passed us. Never said a word, mind you. She came so near I could
have touched her with my hand, and not until she was that close did she
take her eyes from Kedsty and look at me. And when she'd passed I
thought what a couple of cursed idiots we were, standing there
paralyzed, as if we'd never seen a beautiful girl before in our lives.
I went to remark that much to the Old Man when--"

O'Connor bit his cigar half in two as he leaned nearer to the cot.

"Kent, I swear that Kedsty was as white as chalk when I looked at him!
There wasn't a drop of blood left in his face, and he was staring
straight ahead, as though the girl still stood there, and he gave
another of those grunts--it wasn't a laugh--as if something was choking
him. And then he said:

"'Sergeant, I've forgotten something important. I must go back to see
Dr. Cardigan. You have my authority to give McTrigger his liberty at
once!'"

O'Connor paused, as if expecting some expression of disbelief from
Kent. When none came, he demanded,

"Was that according to the Criminal Code? Was it, Kent?"

"Not exactly. But, coming from the S.O.D., it was law."

"And I obeyed it," grunted the staff-sergeant. "And if you could have
seen McTrigger! When I told him he was free, and unlocked his cell, he
came out of it gropingly, like a blind man. And he would go no farther
than the Inspector's office. He said he would wait there for him."

"And Kedsty?"

O'Connor jumped from his chair and began thumping back and forth across
the room again. "Followed the girl," he exploded. "He couldn't have
done anything else. He lied to me about Cardigan. There wouldn't be
anything mysterious about it if he wasn't sixty and she less than
twenty. She was pretty enough! But it wasn't her beauty that made him
turn white there in the path. Not on your life it wasn't! I tell you he
aged ten years in as many seconds. There was something in that girl's
eyes more terrifying to him than a leveled gun, and after he'd looked
into them, his first thought was of McTrigger, the man you're saving
from the hangman. It's queer, Kent. The whole business is queer. And
the queerest of it all is your confession."

"Yes, it's all very funny," agreed Kent. "That's what I've been telling
myself right along, old man. You see, a little thing like a bullet
changed it all. For if the bullet hadn't got me, I assure you I
wouldn't have given Kedsty that confession, and an innocent man would
have been hanged. As it is, Kedsty is shocked, demoralized. I'm the
first man to soil the honor of the finest Service on the face of the
earth, and I'm in Kedsty's division. Quite natural that he should be
upset. And as for the girl--"

He shrugged his shoulders and tried to laugh. "Perhaps she came in this
morning with one of the up-river scows and was merely taking a little
constitutional," he suggested. "Didn't you ever notice, O'Connor, that
in a certain light under poplar trees one's face is sometimes ghastly?"

"Yes, I've noticed it, when the trees are in full leaf, but not when
they're just opening, Jimmy. It was the girl. Her eyes shattered every
nerve in him. And his first words were an order for me to free
McTrigger, coupled with the lie that he was coming back to see
Cardigan. And if you could have seen her eyes when she turned them on
me! They were blue--blue as violets--but shooting fire. I could imagine
black eyes like that, but not blue ones. Kedsty simply wilted in their
blaze. And there was a reason--I know it--a reason that sent his mind
like lightning to the man in the cell!"

"Now, that you leave me out of it, the thing begins to get
interesting," said Kent. "It's a matter of the relationship of this
blonde girl and--"

"She isn't blonde--and I'm not leaving you out of it," interrupted
O'Connor. "I never saw anything so black in my life as her hair. It was
magnificent. If you saw that girl once, you would never forget her
again as long as you lived. She has never been in Athabasca Landing
before, or anywhere near here. If she had, we surely would have heard
about her. She came for a purpose, and I believe that purpose was
accomplished when Kedsty gave me the order to free McTrigger."

"That's possible, and probable," agreed Kent. "I always said you were
the best clue-analyst in the force, Bucky. But I don't see where I come
in."

O'Connor smiled grimly. "You don't? Well, I may be both blind and a
fool, and perhaps a little excited. But it seemed to me that from the
moment Inspector Kedsty laid his eyes on that girl he was a little too
anxious to let McTrigger go and hang you in his place. A little too
anxious, Kent."

The irony of the thing brought a hard smile to Kent's lips as he nodded
for the cigars. "I'll try one of these on top of the pipe," he said,
nipping off the end of the cigar with his teeth. "And you forget that
I'm not going to hang, Bucky. Cardigan has given me until tomorrow
night. Perhaps until the next day. Did you see Rossand's fleet leaving
for up north? It made me think of three years ago!"

O'Connor was gripping his hand again. The coldness of it sent a chill
into the staff-sergeant's heart. He rose and looked through the upper
part of the window, so that the twitching in his throat was hidden from
Kent. Then he went to the door.

"I'll see you again tomorrow," he said. "And if I find out anything
more about the girl, I'll report."

He tried to laugh, but there was a tremble in his voice, a break in the
humor he attempted to force.

Kent listened to the tramp of his heavy feet as they went down the hall.




CHAPTER III


Again the world came back to Kent, the world that lay just beyond his
open window. But scarcely had O'Connor gone when it began to change,
and in spite of his determination to keep hold of his nerve Kent felt
creeping up with that change a thing that was oppressive and
smothering. Swiftly the distant billowings of the forests were changing
their tones and colors under the darkening approach of storm. The
laughter of the hills and ridges went out. The shimmer of spruce and
cedar and balsam turned to a somber black. The flashing gold and silver
of birch and poplar dissolved into a ghostly and unanimated gray that
was almost invisible. A deepening and somber gloom spread itself like a
veil over the river that only a short time before had reflected the
glory of the sun in the faces of dark-visaged men of the Company
brigade. And with the gloom came steadily nearer a low rumbling of
thunder.

For the first time since the mental excitement of his confession Kent
felt upon him an appalling loneliness. He still was not afraid of
death, but a part of his philosophy was gone. It was, after all, a
difficult thing to die alone. He felt that the pressure in his chest
was perceptible greater than it had been an hour or two before, and the
thought grew upon him that it would be a terrible thing for the
"explosion" to come when the sun was not shining. He wanted O'Connor
back again. He had the desire to call out for Cardigan. He would have
welcomed Father Layonne with a glad cry. Yet more than all else would
he have had at his side in these moments of distress a woman. For the
storm, as it massed heavier and nearer, filling the earth with its
desolation, bridged vast spaces for him, and he found himself suddenly
face to face with the might-have-beens of yesterday.

He saw, as he had never guessed before, the immeasurable gulf between
helplessness and the wild, brute freedom of man, and his soul cried
out--not for adventure, not for the savage strength of life--but for
the presence of a creature frailer than himself, yet in the gentle
touch of whose hand lay the might of all humanity.

He struggled with himself. He remembered that Dr. Cardigan had told him
there would be moments of deep depression, and he tried to fight
himself out of the grip of this that was on him. There was a bell at
hand, but he refused to use it, for he sensed his own cowardice. His
cigar had gone out, and he relighted it. He made an effort to bring his
mind back to O'Connor, and the mystery girl, and Kedsty. He tried to
visualize McTrigger, the man he had saved from the hangman, waiting for
Kedsty in the office at barracks. He pictured the girl, as O'Connor had
described her, with her black hair and blue eyes--and then the storm
broke.

The rain came down in a deluge, and scarcely had it struck when the
door opened and Cardigan hurried in to close the window. He remained
for half an hour, and after that young Mercer, one of his two
assistants, came in at intervals. Late in the afternoon it began to
clear up, and Father Layonne returned with papers properly made out for
Kent's signature. He was with Kent until sundown, when Mercer came in
with supper.

Between that hour and ten o'clock Kent observed a vigilance on the part
of Dr. Cardigan which struck him as being unusual. Four times he
listened with the stethoscope at his chest, but when Kent asked the
question which was in his mind, Cardigan shook his head.

"It's no worse, Kent. I don't think it will happen tonight."

In spite of this assurance Kent was positive there was in Cardigan's
manner an anxiety of a different quality than he had perceived earlier
in the day. The thought was a definite and convincing one. He believed
that Cardigan was smoothing the way with a professional lie.

He had no desire to sleep. His light was turned low, and his window was
open again, for the night had cleared. Never had air tasted sweeter to
him than that which came in through his window. The little bell in his
watch tinkled the hour of eleven, when he heard Cardigan's door close
for a last time across the hall. After that everything was quiet. He
drew himself nearer to the window, so that by leaning forward he could
rest himself partly on the sill. He loved the night. The mystery and
lure of those still hours of darkness when the world slept had never
ceased to hold their fascination for him. Night and he were friends. He
had discovered many of its secrets. A thousand times he had walked hand
in hand with the spirit of it, approaching each time a little nearer to
the heart of it, mastering its life, its sound, the whispering
languages of that "other side of life" which rises quietly and as if in
fear to live and breathe long after the sun has gone out. To him it was
more wonderful than day.

And this night that lay outside his window now was magnificent. Storm
had washed the atmosphere between earth and sky, and it seemed as
though the stars had descended nearer to his forests, shining in golden
constellations. The moon was coming up late, and he watched the ruddy
glow of it as it rode up over the wilderness, a splendid queen entering
upon a stage already prepared by the lesser satellites for her coming.
No longer was Kent oppressed or afraid. In still deeper inhalations he
drank the night air into his lungs, and in him there seemed to grow
slowly a new strength. His eyes and ears were wide open and attentive.
The town was asleep, but a few lights burned dimly here and there along
the river's edge, and occasionally a lazy sound came up to him--the
clink of a scow chain, the bark of a dog, the rooster crowing. In spite
of himself he smiled at that. Old Duperow's rooster was a foolish bird
and always crowed himself hoarse when the moon was bright. And in front
of him, not far away, were two white, lightning-shriven spruce stubs
standing like ghosts in the night. In one of these a pair of owls had
nested, and Kent listened to the queer, chuckling notes of their
honeymooning and the flutter of their wings as they darted out now and
then in play close to his window. And then suddenly he heard the sharp
snap of their beaks. An enemy was prowling near, and the owls were
giving warning. He thought he heard a step. In another moment or two
the step was unmistakable. Some one was approaching his window from the
end of the building. He leaned over the sill and found himself staring
into O'Connor's face.

"These confounded feet of mine!" grunted the staff-sergeant. "Were you
asleep, Kent?"

"Wide-awake as those owls," assured Kent.

O'Connor drew up to the window. "I saw your light and thought you were
awake," he said. "I wanted to make sure Cardigan wasn't with you. I
don't want him to know I am here. And--if you don't mind--will you turn
off the light? Kedsty is awake, too--as wide-awake as the owls."

Kent reached out a hand, and his room was in darkness except for the
glow of moon and stars. O'Connor's bulk at the window shut out a part
of this. His face was half in gloom.

"It's a crime to come to you like this, Kent," he said, keeping his big
voice down to a whisper. "But I had to. It's my last chance. And I know
there's something wrong. Kedsty is getting me out of the way--because I
was with him when he met the girl over in the poplar bush. I'm detailed
on special duty up at Fort Simpson, two thousand miles by water if it's
a foot! It means six months or a year. We leave in the motor boat at
dawn to overtake Rossand and his outfit, so I had to take this chance
of seeing you. I hesitated until I knew that some one was awake in your
room."

"I'm glad you came," said Kent warmly. "And--good God, how I would like
to go with you, Bucky! If it wasn't for this thing in my chest,
ballooning up for an explosion--"

"I wouldn't be going," interrupted O'Connor in a low voice. "If you
were on your feet, Kent, there are a number of things that wouldn't be
happening. Something mighty queer has come over Kedsty since this
morning. He isn't the Kedsty you knew yesterday or for the last ten
years. He's nervous, and I miss my guess if he isn't constantly on the
watch for some one. And he's afraid of me. I know it. He's afraid of me
because I saw him go to pieces when he met that girl. Fort Simpson is
simply a frame-up to get me away for a time. He tried to smooth the
edge off the thing by promising me an inspectorship within the year.
That was this afternoon, just before the storm. Since then--"

O'Connor turned and faced the moonlight for a moment.

"Since then I've been on a still-hunt for the girl and Sandy
McTrigger," he added. "And they've disappeared, Kent. I guess McTrigger
just melted away into the woods. But it's the girl that puzzles me.
I've questioned every scow cheman at the Landing. I've investigated
every place where she might have got food or lodging, and I bribed
Mooie, the old trailer, to search the near-by timber. The unbelievable
part of it isn't her disappearance. It's the fact that not a soul in
Athabasca Landing has seen her! Sounds incredible, doesn't it? And
then, Kent, the big hunch came to me. Remember how we've always played
up to the big hunch? And this one struck me strong. I think I know
where the girl is."

Kent, forgetful of his own impending doom, was deeply interested in the
thrill of O'Connor's mystery. He had begun to visualize the situation.
More than once they had worked out enigmas of this kind together, and
the staff-sergeant saw the old, eager glow in his eyes. And Kent
chuckled joyously in that thrill of the game of man-hunting, and said:

"Kedsty is a bachelor and doesn't even so much as look at a woman. But
he likes home life--"

"And has built himself a log bungalow somewhat removed from the town,"
added O'Connor.

"And his Chinaman cook and housekeeper is away."

"And the bungalow is closed, or supposed to be."

"Except at night, when Kedsty goes there to sleep."

O'Connor's hand gripped Kent's. "Jimmy, there never was a team in N
Division that could beat us, The girl is hiding at Kedsty's place!"

"But why HIDING?" insisted Kent. "She hasn't committed a crime."

O'Connor sat silent for a moment. Kent could hear him stuffing the bowl
of his pipe.

"It's simply the big hunch," he grunted. "It's got hold of me, Kent,
and I can't throw it off. Why, man--"

He lighted a match in the cup of his hands, and Kent saw his face.
There was more than uncertainty in the hard, set lines of it.

"You see, I went back to the poplars again after I left you today,"
O'Connor went on. "I found her footprints. She had turned off the
trail, and in places they were very clear.

"She had on high-heeled shoes, Kent--those Frenchy things--and I swear
her feet can't be much bigger than a baby's! I found where Kedsty
caught up with her, and the moss was pretty well beaten down. He
returned through the poplars, but the girl went on and into the edge of
the spruce. I lost her trail there. By traveling in that timber it was
possible for her to reach Kedsty's bungalow without being seen. It must
have been difficult going, with shoes half as big as my hand and heels
two inches high! And I've been wondering, why didn't she wear
bush-country shoes or moccasins?"

"Because she came from the South and not the North," suggested Kent.
"Probably up from Edmonton."

"Exactly. And Kedsty wasn't expecting her, was he? If he had been, that
first sight of her wouldn't have shattered every nerve in his body.
That's why the big hunch won't let loose of me, Kent. From the moment
he saw her, he was a different man. His attitude toward you changed
instantly. If he could save you now by raising his little finger, he
wouldn't do it, simply because it's absolutely necessary for him to
have an excuse for freeing McTrigger. Your confession came at just the
psychological moment. The girl's unspoken demand there in the poplars
was that he free McTrigger, and it was backed up by a threat which
Kedsty understood and which terrified him to his marrow. McTrigger must
have seen him afterward, for he waited at the office until Kedsty came.
I don't know what passed between them. Constable Doyle says they were
together for half an hour. Then McTrigger walked out of barracks, and
no one has seen him since. It's mighty queer. The whole thing is queer.
And the queerest part of the whole business is this sudden commission
of mine at Fort Simpson."

Kent leaned back against his pillows. His breath came in a series of
short, hacking coughs. In the star glow O'Connor saw his face grow
suddenly haggard and tired-looking, and he leaned far in so that in
both his own hands he held one of Kent's.

"I'm tiring you, Jimmy," he said huskily. "Good-by, old pal! I--I--" He
hesitated and then lied steadily. "I'm going up to take a look around
Kedsty's place. I won't be gone more than half an hour and will stop on
my way back. If you're asleep--"

"I won't be asleep," said Kent.

O'Connor's hands gripped closer. "Good-by, Jimmy."

"Good-by." And then, as O'Connor stepped back into the night, Kent's
voice called after him softly: "I'll be with you on the long trip,
Bucky. Take care of yourself--always."

O'Connor's answer was a sob, a sob that rose in his throat like a great
fist, and choked him, and filled his eyes with scalding tears that shut
out the glow of moon and stars. And he did not go toward Kedsty's, but
trudged heavily in the direction of the river, for he knew that Kent
had called his lie, and that they had said their last farewell.




CHAPTER IV


It was a long time after O'Connor had gone before Kent at last fell
asleep. It was a slumber weighted with the restlessness of a brain
fighting to the last against exhaustion and the inevitable end. A
strange spirit seemed whirling Kent back through the years he had
lived, even to the days of his boyhood, leaping from crest to crest,
giving to him swift and passing visions of valleys almost forgotten, of
happenings and things long ago faded and indistinct in his memory.
Vividly his dreams were filled with ghosts--ghosts that were
transformed, as his spirit went back to them, until they were riotous
with life and pulsating with the red blood of reality. He was a boy
again, playing three-old-cat in front of the little old red brick
schoolhouse half a mile from the farm where he was born, and where his
mother had died.

And Skinny Hill, dead many years ago, was his partner at the
bat--lovable Skinny, with his smirking grin and his breath that always
smelled of the most delicious onions ever raised in Ohio. And then, at
dinner hour, he was trading some of his mother's cucumber pickles for
some of Skinny's onions--two onions for a pickle, and never a change in
the price. And he played old-fashioned casino with his mother, and they
were picking blackberries together in the woods, and he killed over
again a snake that he had clubbed to death more than twenty years ago,
while his mother ran away and screamed and then sat down and cried.

He had worshiped that mother, and the spirit of his dreams did not let
him look down into the valley where she lay dead, under a little white
stone in the country cemetery a thousand miles away, with his father
close beside her. But it gave him a passing thrill of the days in which
he had fought his way through college--and then it brought him into the
North, his beloved North.

For hours the wilderness was heavy about Kent. He moved restlessly, at
times he seemed about to awaken, but always he slipped back into the
slumberous arms of his forests. He was on the trail in the cold, gray
beginning of Winter, and the glow of his campfire made a radiant patch
of red glory in the heart of the night, and close to him in that glow
sat O'Connor. He was behind dogs and sledge, fighting storm; dark and
mysterious streams rippled under his canoe; he was on the Big River,
O'Connor with him again--and then, suddenly, he was holding a blazing
gun in his hand, and he and O'Connor stood with their backs to a rack,
facing the bloodthirsty rage of McCaw and his free-traders. The roar of
the guns half roused him, and after that came pleasanter things--the
droning of wind in the spruce tops, the singing of swollen streams in
Springtime, the songs of birds, the sweet smells of life, the glory of
life as he had lived it, he and O'Connor. In the end, half between
sleep and wakefulness, he was fighting a smothering pressure on his
chest. It was an oppressive and torturing thing, like the tree that had
fallen on him over in the Jackfish country, and he felt himself
slipping off into darkness. Suddenly there was a gleam of light. He
opened his eyes. The sun was flooding in at his window, and the weight
on his chest was the gentle pressure of Cardigan's stethoscope.

In spite of the physical stress of the phantoms which his mind has
conceived, Kent awakened so quietly that Cardigan was not conscious of
the fact until he raised his head. There was something in his face
which he tried to conceal, but Kent caught it before it was gone. There
were dark hollows under his eyes. He was a bit haggard, as though he
had spent a sleepless night. Kent pulled himself up, squinting at the
sun and grinning apologetically. He had slept well along into the day,
and--

He caught himself with a sudden grimace of pain. A flash of something
hot and burning swept through his chest. It was like a knife. He opened
his mouth to breathe in the air. The pressure inside him was no longer
the pressure of a stethoscope. It was real.

Cardigan, standing over him, was trying to look cheerful. "Too much of
the night air, Kent," he explained. "That will pass away--soon."

It seemed to Kent that Cardigan gave an almost imperceptible emphasis
to the word "soon," but he asked no question. He was quite sure that he
understood, and he knew how unpleasant for Cardigan the answer to it
would be. He fumbled under his pillow for his watch. It was nine
o'clock. Cardigan was moving about uneasily, arranging the things on
the table and adjusting the shade at the window. For a few moments,
with his back to Kent, he stood without moving. Then he turned, and
said:

"Which will you have, Kent--a wash-up and breakfast, or a visitor?"

"I am not hungry, and I don't feel like soap and water just now. Who's
the visitor? Father Layonne or--Kedsty?"

"Neither. It's a lady."

"Then I'd better have the soap and water! Do you mind telling me who it
is?"

Cardigan shook his head. "I don't know. I've never seen her before. She
came this morning while I was still in pajamas, and has been waiting
ever since. I told her to come back again, but she insisted that she
would remain until you were awake. She has been very patient for two
hours."

A thrill which he made no effort to conceal leaped through Kent. "Is
she a young woman?" he demanded eagerly. "Wonderful black hair, blue
eyes, wears high-heeled shoes just about half as big as your hand--and
very beautiful?"

"All of that," nodded Cardigan. "I even noticed the shoes, Jimmy. A
very beautiful young woman!"

"Please let her come in," said Kent. "Mercer scrubbed me last night,
and I feel fairly fit. She'll forgive this beard, and I'll apologize
for your sake. What is her name?"

"I asked her, and she didn't seem to hear. A little later Mercer asked
her, and he said she just looked at him for a moment and he froze. She
is reading a volume of my Plutarch's 'Lives'--actually reading it. I
know it by the way she turns the pages!"

Kent drew himself up higher against his pillows and faced the door when
Cardigan went out. In a flash all that O'Connor had said swept back
upon him--this girl, Kedsty, the mystery of it all. Why had she come to
see him? What could be the motive of her visit--unless it was to thank
him for the confession that had given Sandy McTrigger his freedom?
O'Connor was right. She was deeply concerned in McTrigger and had come
to express her gratitude. He listened. Distant footsteps sounded in the
hall. They approached quickly and paused outside his door. A hand moved
the latch, but for a moment the door did not open. He heard Cardigan's
voice, then Cardigan's footsteps retreating down the hall. His heart
thumped. He could not remember when he had been so upset over an
unimportant thing.




CHAPTER V


The latch moved slowly, and with its movement came a gentle tap on the
panel.

"Come in," he said.

The next instant he was staring. The girl had entered and closed the
door behind her. O'Connor's picture stood in flesh and blood before
him. The girl's eyes met his own. They were like glorious violets, as
O'Connor had said, but they were not the eyes he had expected to see.
They were the wide-open, curious eyes of a child. He had visualized
them as pools of slumbering flame--the idea O'Connor had given him--and
they were the opposite of that. Their one emotion seemed to be the
emotion roused by an overwhelming, questioning curiosity. They were
apparently not regarding him as a dying human being, but as a creature
immensely interesting to look upon. In place of the gratitude he had
anticipated, they were filled with a great, wondering interrogation,
and there was not the slightest hint of embarrassment in their gaze.
For a space it seemed to Kent that he saw nothing but those wonderful,
dispassionate eyes looking at him. Then he saw the rest of her--her
amazing hair, her pale, exquisite face, the slimness and beauty of her
as she stood with her back to the door, one hand still resting on the
latch. He had never seen anything quite like her. He might have guessed
that she was eighteen, or twenty, or twenty-two. Her hair, wreathed in
shimmering, velvety coils from the back to the crown of her head,
struck him as it had struck O'Connor, as unbelievable. The glory of it
gave to her an appearance of height which she did not possess, for she
was not tall, and her slimness added to the illusion.

And then, greatly to his embarrassment in the next instant, his eyes
went to her feet. Again O'Connor was right--tiny feet, high-heeled
pumps, ravishingly turned ankles showing under a skirt of some fluffy
brown stuff or other--

Correcting himself, his face flushed red. The faintest tremble of a
smile was on the girl's lips. She looked down, and for the first time
he saw what O'Connor had seen, the sunlight kindling slumberous fires
in her hair.

Kent tried to say something, but before he succeeded she had taken
possession of the chair near his bedside.

"I have been waiting a long time to see you," she said. "You are James
Kent, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm Jim Kent. I'm sorry Dr. Cardigan kept you waiting. If I had
known--"

He was getting a grip on himself again, and smiled at her. He noticed
the amazing length of her dark lashes, but the violet eyes behind them
did not smile back at him. The tranquillity of their gaze was
disconcerting. It was as if she had not quite made up her mind about
him yet and was still trying to classify him in the museum of things
she had known.

"He should have awakened me," Kent went on, trying to keep himself from
slipping once more. "It isn't polite to keep a young lady waiting two
hours!"

This time the blue eyes made him feel that his smile was a maudlin grin.

"Yes--you are different." She spoke softly, as if expressing the
thought to herself. "That is what I came to find out, if you were
different. You are dying?"

"My God--yes--I'm dying!" gasped Kent. "According to Dr. Cardigan I'm
due to pop off this minute. Aren't you a little nervous, sitting so
near to a man who's ready to explode while you're looking at him?"

For the first time the eyes changed. She was not facing the window, yet
a glow like the glow of sunlight flashed into them, soft, luminous,
almost laughing.

"No, it doesn't frighten me," she assured him. "I have always thought I
should like to see a man die--not quickly, like drowning or being shot,
but slowly, an inch at a time. But I shouldn't like to see YOU die."

"I'm glad," breathed Kent. "It's a great satisfaction to me."

"Yet I shouldn't be frightened if you did."

"Oh!"

Kent drew himself up straighter against his pillows. He had been a man
of many adventures. He had faced almost every conceivable kind of
shock. But this was a new one. He stared into the blue eyes, tongueless
and mentally dazed. They were cool and sweet and not at all excited.
And he knew that she spoke the truth. Not by a quiver of those lovely
lashes would she betray either fear or horror if he popped off right
there. It was astonishing.

Something like resentment shot for an instant into his bewildered
brain. Then it was gone, and in a flash it came upon him that she was
but uttering his own philosophy of life, showing him life's cheapness,
life's littleness, the absurdity of being distressed by looking upon
the light as it flickered out. And she was doing it, not as a
philosopher, but with the beautiful unconcern of a child.

Suddenly, as if impelled by an emotion in direct contradiction to her
apparent lack of sympathy, she reached out a hand and placed it on
Kent's forehead. It was another shock. It was not a professional touch,
but a soft, cool little pressure that sent a comforting thrill through
him. The hand was there for only a moment, and she withdrew it to
entwine the slim fingers with those of the others in her lap.

"You have no fever," she said. "What makes you think you are dying?"

Kent explained what was happening inside him. He was completely shunted
off his original track of thought and anticipation. He had expected to
ask for at least a mutual introduction when his visitor came into his
room, and had anticipated taking upon himself the position of a polite
inquisitor. In spite of O'Connor, he had not thought she would be quite
so pretty. He had not believed her eyes would be so beautiful, or their
lashes so long, or the touch of her hand so pleasantly unnerving. And
now, in place of asking for her name and the reason for her visit, he
became an irrational idiot, explaining to her certain matters of
physiology that had to do with aortas and aneurismal sacs. He had
finished before the absurdity of the situation dawned upon him, and
with absurdity came the humor of it. Even dying, Kent could not fail to
see the funny side of a thing It struck him as suddenly as had the
girl's beauty and her bewildering and unaffected ingenuousness.

Looking at him, that same glow of mysterious questioning in her eyes,
the girl found him suddenly laughing straight into her face.

"This is funny. It's very funny, Miss--Miss--"

"Marette," she supplied, answering his hesitation.

"It's funny, Miss Marette."

"Not Miss Marette. Just Marette," she corrected.

"I say, it's funny," he tried again. "You see, it's not so terribly
pleasant as you might think to--er--be here, where I am, dying. And
last night I thought about the finest thing in the world would be to
have a woman beside me, a woman who'd be sort of sympathetic, you know,
ease the thing off a little, maybe say she was sorry. And then the Lord
answers my prayer, and YOU come--and you sort of give me the impression
that you made the appointment with yourself to see how a fellow looks
when he pops off."

The shimmer of light came into the blue eyes again. She seemed to have
done with her mental analysis of him, and he saw that a bit of color
was creeping into her cheeks, pale when she had entered the room.

"You wouldn't be the first I've seen pop off," she assured him. "There
have been a number, and I've never cried very much. I'd rather see a
man die than some animals. But I shouldn't like to see YOU do it. Does
that comfort you--like the woman you prayed the Lord for?"

"It does," gasped Kent. "But why the devil, Miss Marette--"

"Marette," she corrected again.

"Yes, Marette--why the devil have you come to see me at just the moment
I'm due to explode? And what's your other name, and how old are you,
and what do you want of me?"

"I haven't any other name, I'm twenty, and I came to get acquainted
with you and see what you are like."

"Bully!" exclaimed Kent. "We're getting there fast! And now, why?"

The girl drew her chair a few inches nearer, and for a moment Kent
thought that her lovely mouth was trembling on the edge of a smile.

"Because you have lied so splendidly to save another man who was about
to die."

"Et tu, Brute!" sighed Kent, leaning back against his pillows. "Isn't
it possible for a decent man to kill another man and not be called a
liar when he tells about it? Why do so many believe that I lie?"

"They don't," said the girl. "They believe you--now. You have gone so
completely into the details of the murder in your confession that they
are quite convinced. It would be too bad if you lived, for you surely
would be hanged. Your lie sounds and reads like the truth. But I know
it is a lie. You did not kill John Barkley."

"And the reason for your suspicion?"

For fully half a minute the girl's eyes rested on, his own. Again they
seemed to be looking through him and into him. "Because I know the man
who DID kill him," she said quietly, "and it was not you."

Kent made a mighty effort to appear calm. He reached for a cigar from
the box that Cardigan had placed on his bed, and nibbled the end of it.
"Has some one else been confessing?" he asked.

She shook her head the slightest bit.

"Did you--er--see this other gentleman kill John Barkley?" he insisted.

"No."

"Then I must answer you as I have answered at least one other. I killed
John Barkley. If you suspect some other person, your suspicion is
wrong."

"What a splendid liar!" she breathed softly. "Don't you believe in God?"

Kent winced. "In a large, embracing sense, yes," he said. "I believe in
Him, for instance, as revealed to our senses in all that living,
growing glory you see out there through the window Nature and I have
become pretty good pals, and you see I've sort of built up a mother
goddess to worship instead of a he-god. Sacrilege, maybe, but it's a
great comfort at times. But you didn't come to talk religion?"

The lovely head bent still nearer him. He felt an impelling desire to
put up his hand and touch her shining hair, as she laid her hand on his
forehead.

"I know who killed John Barkley," she insisted. "I know how and when
and why he was killed. Please tell me the truth. I want to know. Why
did you confess to a crime which you did not commit?"

Kent took time to light his cigar. The girl watched him closely, almost
eagerly.

"I may be mad," he said. "It is possible for any human being to be mad
and not know it. That's the funny part about insanity. But if I'm not
insane, I killed Barkley; if I didn't kill him, I must be insane, for
I'm very well convinced that I did. Either that, or you are insane. I
have my suspicions that you are. Would a sane person wear pumps with
heels like those up here?" He pointed accusingly to the floor.

For the first time the girl smiled, openly, frankly, gloriously. It was
as if her heart had leaped forth for an instant and had greeted him.
And then, like sunlight shadowed by cloud, the smile was gone. "You are
a brave man," she said. "You are splendid. I hate men. But I think if
you lived very long, I should love you. I will believe that you killed
Barkley. You compel me to believe it. You confessed, when you found you
were going to die, that an innocent man might be saved. Wasn't that it?"

Kent nodded weakly. "That's it. I hate to think of it that way, but I
guess it's true. I confessed because I knew I was going to die.
Otherwise I am quite sure that I should have let the other fellow take
my medicine for me. You must think I am a beast."

"All men are beasts," she agreed quickly. "But you are--a different
kind of beast. I like you. If there were a chance, I might fight for
you. I can fight." She held up her two small hands, half smiling at him
again.

"But not with those," he exclaimed. "I think you would fight with your
eyes. O'Connor told me they half killed Kedsty when you met them in the
poplar grove yesterday."

He had expected that the mention of Inspector Kedsty's name would
disturb her. It had no effect that he could perceive.

"O'Connor was the big, red-faced man with Mr. Kedsty?"

"Yes, my trail partner. He came to me yesterday and raved about your
eyes. They ARE beautiful; I've never seen eyes half so lovely. But that
wasn't what struck Bucky so hard. It was the effect they had on Kedsty.
He said they shattered every nerve in Kedsty's body, and Kedsty isn't
the sort to get easily frightened. And the queer part of it was that
the instant you had gone, he gave O'Connor an order to free
McTrigger--and then turned and followed you. All the rest of that day
O'Connor tried to discover something about you at the Landing. He
couldn't find hide nor hair--I beg pardon!--I mean he couldn't find out
anything about you at all. We made up our minds that for some reason or
other you were hiding up at Kedsty's bungalow. You don't mind a fellow
saying all this--when he is going to pop off soon--do you?"

He was half frightened at the directness with which he had expressed
the thing. He would gladly have buried his own curiosity and all of
O'Connor's suspicions for another moment of her hand on his forehead.
But it was out, and he waited.

She was looking down, her fingers twisting some sort of tasseled dress
ornament in her lap, and Kent mentally measured the length of her
lashes with a foot rule in mind. They were superb, and in the thrill of
his admiration he would have sworn they were an inch long. She looked
up suddenly and caught the glow in his eyes and the flush that lay
under the tan of his cheeks. Her own color had deepened a little.

"What if you shouldn't die?" she asked him bluntly, as if she had not
heard a word of all he had said about Kedsty. "What would you do?"

"I'm going to."

"But if you shouldn't?"

Kent shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose I'd have to take my medicine.
You're not going?"

She had straightened up and was sitting on the edge of her chair. "Yes,
I'm going. I'm afraid of my eyes. I may look at you as I looked at Mr.
Kedsty, and then--pop you'd go, quick! And I don't want to be here when
you die!"

He heard a soft little note of laughter in her throat. It sent a chill
through him. What an adorable, blood-thirsty little wretch she was! He
stared at her bent head, at the shining coils of her wonderful hair.
Undone, he could see it completely hiding her. And it was so soft and
warm that again he was tempted to reach out and touch it. She was
wonderful, and yet it was not possible that she had a heart. Her
apparent disregard of the fact that he was a dying man was almost
diabolic. There was no sympathy in the expression of her violet eyes as
she looked at him. She was even making fun of the fact that he was
about to die!

She stood up, surveying for the first time the room in which she had
been sitting. Then she turned to the window and looked out. She
reminded Kent of a beautiful young willow that had grown at the edge of
a stream, exquisite, slender, strong. He could have picked her up in
his arms as easily as a child, yet he sensed in the lithe beauty of her
body forces that could endure magnificently. The careless poise of her
head fascinated him. For that head and the hair that crowned it he knew
that half the women of the earth would have traded precious years of
their lives.

And then, without turning toward him, she said, "Some day, when I die,
I wish I might have as pleasant a room as this."

"I hope you never die," he replied devoutly.

She came back and stood for a moment beside him.

"I have had a very pleasant time," she said, as though he had given her
a special sort of entertainment. "It's too bad you are going to die.
I'm sure we should have been good friends. Aren't you?"

"Yes, very sure. If you had only arrived sooner--"

"And I shall always think of you as a different kind of man-beast," she
interrupted him. "It is really true that I shouldn't like to see you
die. I want to get away before it happens. Would you care to have me
kiss you?"

For an instant Kent felt that his aorta was about to give away. "I--I
would," he gasped huskily.

"Then--close your eyes, please."

He obeyed. She bent over him. He felt the soft touch of her hands and
caught for an instant the perfume of her face and hair, and then the
thrill of her lips pressed warm and soft upon his.

She was not flushed or embarrassed when he looked at her again. It was
as if she had kissed a baby and was wondering at its red face. "I've
only kissed three men before you," she avowed. "It is strange. I never
thought I should do it again. And now, good-by!" She moved quickly to
the door.

"Wait," he cried plaintively. "Please wait. I want to know your name.
It is Marette--"

"Radisson," she finished for him. "Marette Radisson, and I come from
away off there, from a place we call the Valley of Silent Men." She was
pointing into the north.

"The North!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, it is far north. Very far."

Her hand was on the latch. The door opened slowly.

"Wait," he pleaded again. "You must not go."

"Yes, I must go. I have remained too long. I am sorry I kissed you. I
shouldn't have done that. But I had to because you are such a splendid
liar!"

The door opened quickly and closed behind her. He heard her steps
almost running down the hall, where not long ago he had listened to the
last of O'Connor's.

And then there was silence, and in that silence he heard her words
again, drumming like little hammers in his head, "BECAUSE YOU ARE SUCH
A SPLENDID LIAR!"




CHAPTER VI


James Kent, among his other qualities good and bad, possessed a
merciless opinion of his own shortcomings, but never, in that opinion,
had he fallen so low as in the interval which immediately followed the
closing of his door behind the mysterious girl who had told him that
her name was Marette Radisson. No sooner was she gone than the
overwhelming superiority of her childlike cleverness smote him until,
ashamed of himself, he burned red in his aloneness.

He, Sergeant Kent, the coolest man on the force next to Inspector
Kedsty, the most dreaded of catechists when questioning criminals, the
man who had won the reputation of facing quietly and with deadly
sureness the most menacing of dangers, had been beaten--horribly
beaten--by a girl! And yet, in defeat, an irrepressible and at times
distorted sense of humor made him give credit to the victor. The shame
of the thing was his acknowledgment that a bit of feminine beauty had
done the trick. He had made fun of O'Connor when the big staff-sergeant
had described the effect of the girl's eyes on Inspector Kedsty. And,
now, if O'Connor could know of what had happened here--

And then, like a rubber ball, that saving sense of humor bounced up out
of the mess, and Kent found himself chuckling as his face grew cooler.
His visitor had come, and she had gone, and he knew no more about her
than when she had entered his room, except that her very pretty name
was Marette Radisson. He was just beginning to think of the questions
he had wanted to ask, a dozen, half a hundred of them--more definitely
who she was; how and why she had come to Athabasca Landing; her
interest in Sandy McTrigger; the mysterious relationship that must
surely exist between her and Inspector Kedsty; and, chiefly, her real
motive in coming to him when she knew that he was dying. He comforted
himself by the assurance that he would have learned these things had
she not left him so suddenly. He had not expected that.

The question which seated itself most insistently in his mind was, why
had she come? Was it, after all, merely a matter of curiosity? Was her
relationship to Sandy McTrigger such that inquisitiveness alone had
brought her to see the man who had saved him? Surely she had not been
urged by a sense of gratitude, for in no way had she given expression
to that. On his death-bed she had almost made fun of him. And she could
not have come as a messenger from McTrigger, or she would have left her
message. For the first time he began to doubt that she knew the man at
all, in spite of the strange thing that had happened under O'Connor's
eyes. But she must know Kedsty. She had made no answer to his
half-accusation that she was hiding up at the Inspector's bungalow. He
had used that word--"hiding." It should have had an effect. And she was
as beautifully unconscious of it as though she had not heard him, and
he knew that she had heard him very distinctly. It was then that she
had given him that splendid view of her amazingly long lashes and had
countered softly,

"What if you shouldn't die?"

Kent felt himself suddenly aglow with an irresistible appreciation of
the genius of her subtlety, and with that appreciation came a thrill of
deeper understanding. He believed that he knew why she had left him so
suddenly. It was because she had seen herself close to the danger-line.
There were things which she did not want him to know or question her
about, and his daring intimation that she was hiding in Kedsty's
bungalow had warned her. Was it possible that Kedsty himself had sent
her for some reason which he could not even guess at? Positively it was
not because of McTrigger, the man he had saved. At least she would have
thanked him in some way. She would not have appeared quite so adorably
cold-blooded, quite so sweetly unconscious of the fact that he was
dying. If McTrigger's freedom had meant anything to her, she could not
have done less than reveal to him a bit of sympathy. And her greatest
compliment, if he excepted the kiss, was that she had called him a
splendid liar!

Kent grimaced and drew in a deep breath because of the tightness in his
chest. Why was it that every one seemed to disbelieve him? Why was it
that even this mysterious girl, whom he had never seen before in his
life, politely called him a liar when he insisted that he had killed
John Barkley? Was the fact of murder necessarily branded in one's face?
If so, he had never observed it. Some of the hardest criminals he had
brought in from the down-river country were likable-looking men. There
was Horrigan, for instance, who for seven long weeks kept him in good
humor with his drollery, though he was bringing him in to be hanged.
And there were McTab, and le Bete Noir--the Black Beast--a lovable
vagabond in spite of his record, and Le Beau, the gentlemanly robber of
the wilderness mail, and half a dozen others he could recall without
any effort at all. No one called them liars when, like real men, they
confessed their crimes when they saw their game was up. To a man they
had given up the ghost with their boots on, and Kent respected their
memory because of it. And he was dying--and even this stranger girl
called him a liar? And no case had ever been more complete than his
own. He had gone mercilessly into the condemning detail of it all. It
was down in black and white. He had signed it. And still he was
disbelieved. It was funny, deuced funny, thought Kent.

Until young Mercer opened the door and came in with his late breakfast,
he had forgotten that he had really been hungry when he awakened with
Cardigan's stethoscope at his chest. Mercer had amused him from the
first. The pink-faced young Englishman, fresh from the old country,
could not conceal in his face and attitude the fact that he was walking
in the presence of the gallows whenever he entered the room. He was, as
he had confided in Cardigan, "beastly hit up" over the thing. To feed
and wash a man who would undoubtedly die, but who would be hanged by
the neck until he was dead if he lived, filled him with peculiar and at
times conspicuous emotions. It was like attending to a living corpse,
if such a thing could be conceived. And Mercer had conceived it. Kent
had come to regard him as more or less of a barometer giving away
Cardigan's secrets. He had not told Cardigan, but had kept the
discovery for his own amusement.

This morning Mercer's face was less pink, and his pale eyes were paler,
Kent thought. Also he started to sprinkle sugar on his eggs in place of
salt.

Kent laughed and stopped his hand. "You may sugar my eggs when I'm
dead, Mercer," he said, "but while I'm alive I want salt on 'em! Do you
know, old man, you look bad this morning. Is it because this is my last
breakfast?"

"I hope not, sir, I hope not," replied Mercer quickly. "Indeed, I hope
you are going to live, sir."

"Thanks!" said Kent dryly. "Where is Cardigan?"

"The Inspector sent a messenger for him, sir. I think he has gone to
see him. Are your eggs properly done, sir?"

"Mercer, if you ever worked in a butler's pantry, for the love of
heaven forget it now!" exploded Kent, "I want you to tell me something
straight out. How long have I got?"

Mercer fidgeted for a moment, and a shade or two more of the red went
out of his face. "I can't say, sir. Doctor Cardigan hasn't told me. But
I think not very long, sir. Doctor Cardigan is cut up all in rags this
morning. And Father Layonne is coming to see you at any moment."

"Much obliged," nodded Kent, calmly beginning his second egg. "And, by
the way, what did you think of the young lady?"

"Ripping, positively ripping!" exclaimed Mercer.

"That's the word," agreed Kent. "Ripping. It sounds like the calico
counter in a dry-goods store, but means a lot. Don't happen to know
where she is staying or why she is at the Landing, do you?"

He knew that he was asking a foolish question and scarcely expected an
answer from Mercer. He was astonished when the other said:

"I heard Doctor Cardigan ask her if we might expect her to honor us
with another visit, and she told him it would be impossible, because
she was leaving on a down-river scow tonight. Fort Simpson, I think she
said she was going to, sir."

"The deuce you say!" cried Kent, spilling a bit of his coffee in the
thrill of the moment. "Why, that's where Staff-Sergeant O'Connor is
bound for!"

"So I heard Doctor Cardigan tell her. But she didn't reply to that. She
just--went. If you don't mind a little joke in your present condition,
sir, I might say that Doctor Cardigan was considerably flayed up over
her. A deuced pretty girl, sir, deuced pretty! And I think he was shot
through!"

"Now you're human, Mercer. She was pretty, wasn't she?"

"Er--yes--stunningly so, Mr. Kent," agreed Mercer, reddening suddenly
to the roots of his pasty, blond hair. "I don't mind confessing that in
this unusual place her appearance was quite upsetting."

"I agree with you, friend Mercer," nodded Kent. "She upset me. And--see
here, old man!--will you do a dying man the biggest favor he ever asked
in his life?"

"I should be most happy, sir, most happy."

"It's this," said Kent. "I want to know if that girl actually leaves on
the down-river scow tonight. If I'm alive tomorrow morning, will you
tell me?"

"I shall do my best, sir."

"Good. It's simply the silly whim of a dying man, Mercer. But I want to
be humored in it. And I'm sensitive--like yourself. I don't want
Cardigan to know. There's an old Indian named Mooie, who lives in a
shack just beyond the sawmill. Give him ten dollars and tell him there
is another ten in it if he sees the business through, and reports
properly to you, and keeps his mouth shut afterward. Here--the money is
under my pillow."

Kent pulled out a wallet and put fifty dollars in Mercer's hands.

"Buy cigars with the rest of it, old man. It's of no more use to me.
And this little trick you are going to pull off is worth it. It's my
last fling on earth, you might say."

"Thank you, sir. It is very kind of you."

Mercer belonged to a class of wandering Englishmen typical of the
Canadian West, the sort that sometimes made real Canadians wonder why a
big and glorious country like their own should cling to the mother
country. Ingratiating and obsequiously polite at all times, he gave one
the impression of having had splendid training as a servant, yet had
this intimation been made to him, he would have become highly
indignant. Kent had learned their ways pretty well. He had met them in
all sorts of places, for one of their inexplicable characteristics was
the recklessness and apparent lack of judgment with which they located
themselves. Mercer, for instance, should have held a petty clerical job
of some kind in a city, and here he was acting as nurse in the heart of
a wilderness!

After Mercer had gone with the breakfast things and the money, Kent
recalled a number of his species. And he knew that under their veneer
of apparent servility was a thing of courage and daring which needed
only the right kind of incentive to rouse it. And when roused, it was
peculiarly efficient in a secretive, artful-dodger sort of way. It
would not stand up before a gun. But it would creep under the mouths of
guns on a black night. And Kent was positive his fifty dollars would
bring him results--if he lived.

Just why he wanted the information he was after, he could not have told
himself. It was a pet aphorism between O'Connor and him that they had
often traveled to success on the backs of their hunches. And his
proposition to Mercer was made on the spur of one of those moments when
the spirit of a hunch possessed him. His morning had been one of
unexpected excitement, and now he leaned back in an effort to review it
and to forget, if he could, the distressing thing that was bound to
happen to him within the next few hours. But he could not get away from
the thickening in his chest. It seemed growing on him. Now and then he
was compelled to make quite an effort to get sufficient air into his
lungs.

He found himself wondering if there was a possibility that the girl
might return. For a long time he lay thinking about her, and it struck
him as incongruous and in bad taste that fate should have left this
adventure for his last. If he had met her six months ago--or even
three--it was probable that she would so have changed the events of
life for him that he would not have got the half-breed's bullet in his
chest. He confessed the thing unblushingly. The wilderness had taken
the place of woman for him. It had claimed him, body and soul. He had
desired nothing beyond its wild freedom and its never-ending games of
chance. He had dreamed, as every man dreams, but realities and not the
dreams had been the red pulse of his life. And yet, if this girl had
come sooner--

He revisioned for himself over and over again her hair and eyes, the
slimness of her as she had stood at the window, the freedom and
strength of that slender body, the poise of her exquisite head, and he
felt again the thrill of her hand and the still more wonderful thrill
of her lips as she had pressed them warmly upon his.

AND SHE WAS OF THE NORTH! That was the thought that overwhelmed him. He
did not permit himself to believe that she might have told him an
untruth. He was confident, if he lived until tomorrow, that Mercer
would corroborate his faith in her. He had never heard of a place
called the Valley of Silent Men, but it was a big country, and Fort
Simpson with its Hudson Bay Company's post and its half-dozen shacks
was a thousand miles away. He was not sure that such a place as that
valley really existed. It was easier to believe that the girl's home
was at Fort Providence, Fort Simpson, Fort Good Hope, or even at Fort
McPherson. It was not difficult for him to picture her as the daughter
of one of the factor lords of the North. Yet this, upon closer
consideration, he gave up as unreasonable. The word "Fort" did not
stand for population, and there were probably not more than fifty white
people at all the posts between the Great Slave and the Arctic. She was
not one of these, or the fact would have been known at the Landing.

Neither could she be a riverman's daughter, for it was inconceivable
that either a riverman or a trapper would have sent this girl down into
civilization, where this girl had undoubtedly been. It was that point
chiefly which puzzled Kent. She was not only beautiful. She had been
tutored in schools that were not taught by wilderness missioners. In
her, it seemed to him, he had seen the beauty and the wild freedom of
the forests as they had come to him straight out of the heart of an
ancient aristocracy that was born nearly two hundred years ago in the
old cities of Quebec and Montreal.

His mind flashed back at that thought: he remembered the time when he
had sought out every nook and cranny of that ancient town of Quebec,
and had stood over graves two centuries old, and deep in his soul had
envied the dead the lives they had lived. He had always thought of
Quebec as a rare old bit of time-yellowed lace among cities--the heart
of the New World as it had once been, still beating, still whispering
of its one-time power, still living in the memory of its mellowed
romance, its almost forgotten tragedies--a ghost that lived, that still
beat back defiantly the destroying modernism that would desecrate its
sacred things. And it pleased him to think of Marette Radisson as the
spirit of it, wandering north, and still farther north--even as the
spirits of the profaned dead had risen from the Landing to go farther
on.

And feeling that the way had at last been made easy for him, Kent
smiled out into the glorious day and whispered softly, as if she were
standing there, listening to him:

"If I had lived--I would have called you--my Quebec. It's pretty, that
name. It stands for a lot. And so do you."

And out in the hall, as Kent whispered those words, stood Father
Layonne, with a face that was whiter than the mere presence of death
had ever made it before. At his side stood Cardigan, aged ten years
since he had placed his stethoscope at Kent's chest that morning. And
behind these two were Kedsty, with a face like gray rock, and young
Mercer, in whose staring eyes was the horror of a thing he could not
yet quite comprehend. Cardigan made an effort to speak and failed.
Kedsty wiped his forehead, as he had wiped it the morning of Kent's
confession. And Father Layonne, as he went to Kent's door, was
breathing softly to himself a prayer.




CHAPTER VII


From the window, the glorious day outside, and the vision he had made
for himself of Marette Radisson, Kent turned at the sound of a hand at
his door and saw it slowly open. He was expecting it. He had read young
Mercer like a book. Mercer's nervousness and the increased tightening
of the thing in his chest had given him warning. The thing was going to
happen soon, and Father Layonne had come. He tried to smile, that he
might greet his wilderness friend cheerfully and unafraid. But the
smile froze when the door opened and he saw the missioner standing
there.

More than once he had accompanied Father Layonne over the threshold of
life into the presence of death, but he had never before seen in his
face what he saw there now. He stared. The missioner remained in the
doorway, hesitating, as if at the last moment a great fear held him
back. For an interval the eyes of the two men rested upon each other in
a silence that was like the grip of a living thing. Then Father Layonne
came quietly into the room and closed the door behind him.

Kent drew a deep breath and tried to grin. "You woke me out of a
dream," he said, "a day-dream. I've had a very pleasant experience this
morning, mon pere."

"So some one was trying to tell me, Jimmy," replied the little
missioner with an effort to smile back.

"Mercer?"

"Yes. He told me about it confidentially. The poor boy must have fallen
in love with the young lady."

"So have I, mon pere. I don't mind confessing it to you. I'm rather
glad. And if Cardigan hadn't scheduled me to die--"

"Jimmy," interrupted the missioner quickly, but a bit huskily, "has it
ever occurred to you that Doctor Cardigan may be mistaken?"

He had taken one of Kent's hands. His grip tightened. It began to hurt.
And Kent, looking into his eyes, found his brain all at once like a
black room suddenly illuminated by a flash of fire. Drop by drop the
blood went out of his face until it was whiter than Father Layonne's.

"You--you don't--mean--"

"Yes, yes, boy, I mean just that," said the missioner, in a voice so
strange that it did not seem to be his own. "You are not going to die,
Jimmy. You are going to live!"

"Live!" Kent dropped back against his pillows. "LIVE!" His lips gasped
the one word.

He closed his eyes for an instant, and it seemed to him that the world
was aflame. And he repeated the word again, but only his lips formed
it, and there came no sound. His senses, strained to the breaking-point
to meet the ordeal of death, gave way slowly to the mighty reaction. He
felt in those moments like a reeling man. He opened his eyes, and there
was a meaningless green haze through the window where the world should
have been. But he heard Father Layonne's voice. It seemed a great
distance off, but it was very clear. Doctor Cardigan had made an error,
it was saying. And Doctor Cardigan, because of that error, was like a
man whose heart had been taken out of him. But it was an excusable
error.

If there had been an X-ray--But there had been none. And Doctor
Cardigan had made the diagnosis that nine out of ten good surgeons
would probably have made. What he had taken to be the aneurismal
blood-rush was an exaggerated heart murmur, and the increased
thickening in his chest was a simple complication brought about by too
much night air. It was too bad the error had happened. But he must not
blame Cardigan!

HE MUST NOT BLAME CARDIGAN! Those last words pounded like an endless
series of little waves in Kent's brain. He must not blame Cardigan! He
laughed, laughed before his dazed senses readjusted themselves, before
the world through the window pieced itself into shape again. At least
he thought he was laughing. He must--not--blame--Cardigan! What an
amazingly stupid thing for Father Layonne to say! Blame Cardigan for
giving him back his life? Blame him for the glorious knowledge that he
was not going to die? Blame him for--

Things were coming clearer. Like a bolt slipping into its groove his
brain found itself. He saw Father Layonne again, with his white, tense
face and eyes in which were still seated the fear and the horror he had
seen in the doorway. It was not until then that he gripped fully at the
truth.

"I--I see," he said. "You and Cardigan think it would have been better
if I had died!"

The missioner was still holding his hand. "I don't know, Jimmy, I don't
know. What has happened is terrible."

"But not so terrible as death," cried Kent, suddenly growing rigid
against his pillows. "Great God, mon pere, I want to live! Oh--"

He snatched his hand free and stretched forth both arms to the open
window. "Look at it out there! My world again! MY WORLD! I want to go
back to it. It's ten times more precious to me now than it was. Why
should I blame Cardigan? Mon pere--mon pere--listen to me. I can say it
now, because I've got a right to say it. I LIED. I didn't kill John
Barkley!"

A strange cry fell from Father Layonne's lips. It was a choking cry, a
cry, not of rejoicing, but of a grief-stung thing. "Jimmy!"

"I swear it! Great heaven, mon pere, don't you believe me?"

The missioner had risen. In his eyes and face was another look. It was
as if in all his life he had never seen James Kent before. It was a
look born suddenly of shock, the shock of amazement, of incredulity, of
a new kind of horror. Then swiftly again his countenance changed, and
he put a hand on Kent's head.

"God forgive you, Jimmy," he said. "And God help you, too!"

Where a moment before Kent had felt the hot throb of an inundating joy,
his heart was chilled now by the thing he sensed in Father Layonne's
voice and saw in his face and eyes. It was not entirely disbelief. It
was a more hopeless thing than that.

"You do not believe me!" he said.

"It is my religion to believe, Jimmy," replied Father Layonne in a
gentle voice into which the old calmness had returned. "I must believe,
for your sake. But it is not a matter of human sentiment now, lad. It
is the Law! Whatever my heart feels toward you can do you no good. You
are--" He hesitated to speak the words.

Then it was that Kent saw fully and clearly the whole monstrous
situation. It had taken time for it to fasten itself upon him. In a
general way it had been clear to him a few moments before; now, detail
by detail, it closed in upon him, and his muscles tightened, and Father
Layonne saw his jaw set hard and his hands clench. Death was gone. But
the mockery of it, the grim exultation of the thing over the colossal
trick it had played, seemed to din an infernal laughter in his ears.
But--he was going to live! That was the one fact that rose above all
others. No matter what happened to him a month or six months from now,
he was not going to die today. He would live to receive Mercer's
report. He would live to stand on his feet again and to fight for the
life which he had thrown away. He was, above everything else, a
fighting man. It was born in him to fight, not so much against his
fellow men as against the overwhelming odds of adventure as they came
to him. And now he was up against the deadliest game of all. He saw it.
He felt it. The thing gripped him. In the eyes of that Law of which he
had so recently been a part he was a murderer. And in the province of
Alberta the penalty for killing a man was hanging. Because horror and
fear did not seize upon him, he wondered if he still realized the
situation. He believed that he did. It was merely a matter of human
nature. Death, he had supposed, was a fixed and foregone thing. He had
believed that only a few hours of life were left for him. And now it
was given back to him, for months at least. It was a glorious reprieve,
and--

Suddenly his heart stood still in the thrill of the thought that came
to him. Marette Radisson had known that he was not going to die! She
had hinted the fact, and he, like a blundering idiot, had failed to
catch the significance of it. She had given him no sympathy, had
laughed at him, had almost made fun of him, simply because she knew
that he was going to live!

He turned suddenly on Father Layonne.

"They shall believe me!" he cried. "I shall make them believe me! Mon
pere, I lied! I lied to save Sandy McTrigger, and I shall tell them
why. If Doctor Cardigan has not made another mistake, I want them all
here again. Will you arrange it?"

"Inspector Kedsty is waiting outside," said Father Layonne quietly,
"but I should not act in haste, Jimmy. I should wait. I should
think--think."

"You mean take time to think up a story that will hold water, mon pere?
I have that. I have the story. And yet--" He smiled a bit dismally. "I
did make one pretty thorough confession, didn't I, Father?"

"It was very convincing, Jimmy. It went so particularly into the
details, and those details, coupled with the facts that you were seen
at John Barkley's earlier in the evening, and that it was you who found
him dead a number of hours later--"

"All make a strong case against me," agreed Kent. "As a matter of fact,
I was up at Barkley's to look over an old map he had made of the
Porcupine country twenty years ago. He couldn't find it. Later he sent
word he had run across it. I returned and found him dead."

The little missioner nodded, but did not speak.

"It is embarrassing," Kent went on. "It almost seems as though I ought
to go through with it, like a sport. When a man loses, it isn't good
taste to set up a howl. It makes him sort of yellow-backed, you know.
To play the game according to rules, I suppose I ought to keep quiet
and allow myself to be hung without making any disturbance. Die game,
and all that, you know. Then there is the other way of looking at it.
This poor neck of mine depends on me. It has given me a lot of good
service. It has been mighty loyal. It has even swallowed eggs on the
day it thought it was going to die. And I'd be a poor specimen of
humanity to go back on it now. I want to do that neck a good turn. I
want to save it. And I'm going to--if I can!"

In spite of the unpleasant tension of the moment, it cheered Father
Layonne to see this old humor returning into the heart of his friend.
With him love was an enduring thing. He might grieve for James Kent, he
might pray for the salvation of his soul, he might believe him guilty,
yet he still bore for him the affection which was too deeply rooted in
his heart to be uptorn by physical things or the happenings of chance.
So the old cheer of his smile came back, and he said:

"To fight for his life is a privilege which God gives to every man,
Jimmy. I was terrified when I came to you. I believed it would have
been better if you had died. I can see my error. It will be a terrible
fight. If you win, I shall be glad. If you lose, I know that you will
lose bravely. Perhaps you are right. It may be best to see Inspector
Kedsty before you have had time to think. That point will have its
psychological effect. Shall I tell him you are prepared to see him?"

Kent nodded. "Yes. Now."

Father Layonne went to the door. Even there he seemed to hesitate an
instant, as if again to call upon Kent to reconsider. Then he opened it
and went out.

Kent waited impatiently. His hand, fumbling at his bedclothes, seized
upon the cloth with which he had wiped his lips, and it suddenly
occurred to him that it had been a long time since it had shown a fresh
stain of blood. Now that he knew it was not a deadly thing, the
tightening in his chest was less uncomfortable. He felt like getting up
and meeting his visitors on his feet. Every nerve in his body wanted
action, and the minutes of silence which followed the closing of the
door after the missioner were drawn out and tedious to him. A quarter
of an hour passed before he heard returning footsteps, and by the sound
of them he knew Kedsty was not coming alone. Probably le pere would
return with him. And possibly Cardigan.

What happened in the next few seconds was somewhat of a shock to him.
Father Layonne entered first, and then came Inspector Kedsty. Kent's
eyes shot to the face of the commander of N Division. There was
scarcely recognition in it. A mere inclination of the head, not enough
to call a greeting, was the reply to Kent's nod and salute. Never had
he seen Kedsty's face more like the face of an emotionless sphinx. But
what disturbed him most was the presence of people he had not expected.
Close behind Kedsty was McDougal, the magistrate, and behind McDougal
entered Constables Felly and Brant, stiffly erect and clearly under
orders. Cardigan, pale and uneasy, came in last, with the stenographer.
Scarcely had they entered the room when Constable Pelly pronounced the
formal warning of the Criminal Code of the Royal Northwest Mounted
Police, and Kent was legally under arrest.

He had not looked for this. He knew, of course, that the process of the
Law would take its course, but he had not anticipated this bloodthirsty
suddenness. He had expected, first of all, to talk with Kedsty as man
to man. And yet--it was the Law. He realized this as his eyes traveled
from Kedsty's rock-like face to the expressionless immobility of his
old friends, Constables Pelly and Brant. If there was sympathy, it was
hidden except in the faces of Cardigan and Father Layonne. And Kent,
exultantly hopeful a little while before, felt his heart grow heavy
within him as he waited for the moment when he would begin the fight to
repossess himself of the life and freed which he had lost.




CHAPTER VIII


For some time after the door to Kent's room had closed upon the ominous
visitation of the Law, young Mercer remained standing in the hall,
debating with himself whether his own moment had not arrived. In the
end he decided that it had, and with Kent's fifty dollars in his pocket
he made for the shack of the old Indian trailer, Mooie. It was an hour
later when he returned, just in time to see Kent's door open again.
Doctor Cardigan and Father Layonne reappeared first, followed in turn
by the blonde stenographer, the magistrate, and Constables Pelly and
Brant. Then the door closed.

Within the room, sweating from the ordeal through which he had passed,
Kent sat bolstered against his pillows, facing Inspector Kedsty with
blazing eyes.

"I've asked for these few moments alone with you, Kedsty, because I
wanted to talk to you as a man, and not as my superior officer. I am, I
take it, no longer a member of the force. That being the case, I owe
you no more respect than I owe to any other man. And I am pleased to
have the very great privilege of calling you a cursed scoundrel!"

Kedsty's face was hot, but as his hands clenched slowly, it turned
redder. Before he could speak, Kent went on.

"You have not shown me the courtesy or the sympathy you have had for
the worst criminals that ever faced you. You amazed every man that was
in this room, because at one time--if not now--they were my friends. It
wasn't what you said. It was how you said it. Whenever there was an
inclination on their part to believe, you killed it--not honestly and
squarely, by giving me a chance. Whenever you saw a chance for me to
win a point, you fell back upon the law. And you don't believe that I
killed John Barkley. I know it. You called me a liar the day I made
that fool confession. You still believe that I lied. And I have waited
until we were alone to ask you certain things, for I still have
something of courtesy left in me, if you haven't. What is your game?
What has brought about the change in you? Is it--"

His right hand clenched hard as a rock as he leaned toward Kedsty.

"Is it because of the girl hiding up at your bungalow, Kedsty?"

Even in that moment, when he had the desire to strike the man before
him, it was impossible for him not to admire the stone-like
invulnerability of Kedsty. He had never heard of another man calling
Kedsty a scoundrel or dishonest. And yet, except that his faced burned
more dully red, the Inspector was as impassively calm as ever. Even
Kent's intimation that he was playing a game, and his direct accusation
that he was keeping Marette Radisson in hiding at his bungalow, seemed
to have no disturbing effect on him. For a space he looked at Kent, as
if measuring the poise of the other's mind. When he spoke, it was in a
voice so quiet and calm that Kent stared at him in amazement.

"I don't blame you, Kent," he said. "I don't blame you for calling me a
scoundrel, or anything else you want to. I think I should do the same
if I were in your place. You think it is incredible, because of our
previous association, that I should not make every effort to save you.
I would, if I thought you were innocent. But I don't. I believe you are
guilty. I cannot see where there is a loophole in the evidence against
you, as given in your own confession. Why, man, even if I could help to
prove you innocent of killing John Barkley--"

He paused and twisted one of his gray mustaches, half facing the window
for a moment. "Even if I did that," he went on, "you would still have
twenty years of prison ahead of you for the worst kind of perjury on
the face of the earth, perjury committed at a time when you thought you
were dying! You are guilty, Kent. If not of one thing, then of the
other. I am not playing a game. And as for the girl--there is no girl
at my bungalow."

He turned to the door; and Kent made no effort to stop him. Words came
to his lips and died there, and for a space after Kedsty had gone he
stared out into the green forest world beyond his window, seeing
nothing. Inspector Kedsty, quietly and calmly, had spoken words that
sent his hopes crashing in ruin about him. For even if he escaped the
hangman, he was still a criminal--a criminal of the worst sort,
perhaps, next to the man who kills another. If he proved that he had
not killed John Barkley, he would convict himself, at the same time, of
having made solemn oath to a lie on what he supposed was his death-bed.
And for that, a possible twenty years in the Edmonton penitentiary! At
best he could not expect less than ten. Ten years--twenty years--in
prison! That, or hang.

The sweat broke out on his face. He did not curse Kedsty now. His anger
was gone. Kedsty had seen all the time what he, like a fool, had not
thought of. No matter how the Inspector might feel in that deeply
buried heart of his, he could not do otherwise than he was doing. He,
James Kent, who hated a lie above all the things on the earth, was
kin-as-kisew--the blackest liar of all, a man who lied when he was
dying.

And for that lie there was a great punishment. The Law saw with its own
eyes. It was a single-track affair, narrow-visioned, caring nothing for
what was to the right or the left. It would tolerate no excuse which he
might find for himself. He had lied to save a human life, but that life
the Law itself had wanted. So he had both robbed and outraged the Law,
even though a miracle saved him the greatest penalty of all.

The weight of the thing crushed him. It was as if for the first time a
window had opened for him, and he saw what Kedsty had seen. And then,
as the minutes passed, the fighting spirit in him rose again. He was
not of the sort to go under easily. Personal danger had always stirred
him to his greatest depths, and he had never confronted a danger
greater than this he was facing now. It was not a matter of leaping
quickly and on the spur of the moment. For ten years his training had
been that of a hunter of men, and the psychology of the man hunt had
been his strong point. Always, in seeking his quarry, he had tried
first to bring himself into a mental sympathy and understanding with
that quarry. To analyze what an outlaw would do under certain
conditions and with certain environments and racial inheritances behind
him was to Kent the premier move in the thrilling game. He had evolved
rules of great importance for himself, but always he had worked them
out from the vantage point of the huntsman. Now he began to turn them
around. He, James Kent, was no longer the hunter, but the hunted, and
all the tricks which he had mastered must now be worked the other way.
His woodcraft, his cunning, the fine points he had learned of the game
of one-against-one would avail him but little when it came to the
witness chair and a trial.

The open window was his first inspiration. Adventure had been the blood
of his life. And out there, behind the green forests rolling away like
the billows of an ocean, lay the greatest adventure of all. Once in
those beloved forests covering almost the half of a continent, he would
be willing to die if the world beat him. He could see himself playing
the game of the hunted as no other man had ever played it before. Let
him once have his guns and his freedom, with all that world waiting for
him--

Eagerness gleamed in his eyes, and then, slowly, it died out. The open
window, after all, was but a mockery. He rolled sideways from his bed
and partly balanced himself on his feet. The effort made him dizzy. He
doubted if he could have walked a hundred yards after climbing through
the window. Instantly another thought leaped into his brain. His head
was clearing. He swayed across the room and back again, the first time
he had been on his feet since the half-breed's bullet had laid him out.
He would fool Cardigan. He would fool Kedsty. As he recovered his
strength, he would keep it to himself. He would play sick man to the
limit, and then some night he would take advantage of the open window!

The thought thrilled him as no other thing in the world had ever
thrilled him before. For the first time he sensed the vast difference
between the hunter and the hunted, between the man who played the game
of life and death alone and the one who played it with the Law and all
its might behind him. To hunt was thrilling. To be hunted was more
thrilling. Every nerve in his body tingled. A different kind of fire
burned in his brain. He was the creature who was at bay. The other
fellow was the hunter now.

He went back to the window and leaned far out. He looked at the forest
and saw it with new eyes. The gleam of the slowly moving river held a
meaning for him that it had never held before. Doctor Cardigan, seeing
him then, would have sworn the fever had returned. His eyes held a
slumbering fire. His face was flushed. In these moments Kent did not
see death. He was not visioning the iron bars of a prison. His blood
pulsed only to the stir of that greatest of all adventures which lay
ahead of him. He, the best man-hunter in two thousand miles of
wilderness, would beat the hunters themselves. The hound had turned
fox, and that fox knew the tricks of both the hunter and the hunted. He
would win! A world beckoned to him, and he would reach the heart of
that world. Already there began to flash through his mind memory of the
places where he could find safety and freedom for all time. No man in
all the Northland knew its out-of-the-way corners better than he--its
unmapped and unexplored places, the far and mysterious patches of terra
incognita, where the sun still rose and set without permission of the
Law, and God laughed as in the days when prehistoric monsters fed from
the tops of trees no taller than themselves. Once through that window,
with the strength to travel, and the Law might seek him for a hundred
years without profit to itself.

It was not bravado in his blood that stirred these thoughts. It was not
panic or an unsound excitement. He was measuring things even as he
visioned them. He would go down-river way, toward the Arctic. And he
would find Marette Radisson! Yes, even though she lived at Barracks at
Fort Simpson, he would find her! And after that? The question blurred
all other questions in his mind. There were many answers to it.

Knowing that it would be fatal to his scheme if he were found on his
feet, he returned to his bed. The flush of his exertion and excitement
was still in his face when Doctor Cardigan came half an hour later.

Within the next few minutes he put Cardigan more at his ease than he
had been during the preceding day and night. It was, after all, an
error which made him happier the more he thought about it, he told the
surgeon. He admitted that at first the discovery that he was going to
live had horrified him. But now the whole thing bore a different aspect
for him. As soon as he was sufficiently strong, he would begin
gathering the evidences for his alibi, and he was confident of proving
himself innocent of John Barkley's murder.

He anticipated ten years in the Edmonton penitentiary. But what were
ten years there as compared with forty or fifty under the sod? He wrung
Cardigan's hand. He thanked him for the splendid care he had given him.
It was he, Cardigan, who had saved him from the grave, he said--and
Cardigan grew younger under his eyes.

"I thought you'd look at it differently, Kent," he said, drawing in a
deep breath. "My God, when I found I had made that mistake--"

"You figured you were handing me over to the hangman," smiled Kent.
"It's true I shouldn't have made that confession, old man, if I hadn't
rated you right next to God Almighty when it came to telling whether a
man was going to live or die. But we all make slips. I've made 'em. And
you've got no apology to make. I may ask you to send me good cigars now
and then while I'm in retirement at Edmonton, and I shall probably
insist that you come to smoke with me occasionally and tell me the news
of the rivers. But I'm afraid, old chap, that I'm going to worry you a
bit more here. I feel queer today, queer inside me. Now it would be a
topping joke if some other complication should set in and fool us all
again, wouldn't it?"

He could see the impression he was making on Cardigan. Again his faith
in the psychology of the mind found its absolute verification.
Cardigan, lifted unexpectedly out of the slough of despond by the very
man whom he expected to condemn him, became from that moment, in the
face of the mental reaction, almost hypersympathetic. When finally he
left the room, Kent was inwardly rejoicing. For Cardigan had told him
it would be some time before he was strong enough to stand on his feet.

He did not see Mercer all the rest of that day. It was Cardigan who
personally brought his dinner and his supper and attended him last at
night. He asked not to be interrupted again, as he felt that he wanted
to sleep. There was a guard outside his door now.

Cardigan scowled when he volunteered this information. It was sheer
nonsense in Kedsty taking such a silly precaution. But he would give
the guard rubber-soled shoes and insist that he make no sound that
would disturb him. Kent thanked him, and grinned exultantly when he was
gone.

He waited until his watch told him it was ten o'clock before he began
the exercise which he had prescribed for himself. Noiselessly he rolled
out of bed. There was no sensation of dizziness when he stood on his
feet this time. His head was as clear as a bell. He began experimenting
by inhaling deeper and still deeper breaths and by straightening his
chest.

There was no pain, as he had expected there would be. He felt like
crying out in his joy. One after the other he stretched up his arms. He
bent over until the tips of his fingers touched the floor. He crooked
his knees, leaned from side to side, changed from one attitude to
another, amazed at the strength and elasticity of his body. Twenty
times, before he returned to his bed, he walked back and forth across
his room.

He was sleepless. Lying with his back to the pillows he looked out into
the starlight, watching for the first glow of the moon and listening
again to the owls that had nested in the lightning-shriven tree. An
hour later he resumed his exercise.

He was on his feet when through his window he heard the sound of
approaching voices and then of running feet. A moment later some one
was pounding at a door, and a loud voice shouted for Doctor Cardigan.
Kent drew cautiously nearer the window. The moon had risen, and he saw
figures approaching, slowly, as if weighted under a burden. Before they
turned out of his vision, he made out two men bearing some heavy object
between them. Then came the opening of a door, other voices, and after
that an interval of quiet.

He returned to his bed, wondering who the new patient could be.

He was breathing easier after his exertion. The fact that he was
feeling keenly alive, and that the thickening in his chest was
disappearing, flushed him with elation. An unbounded optimism possessed
him. It was late when he fell asleep, and he slept late. It was
Mercer's entrance into his room that roused him. He came in softly,
closed the door softly, yet Kent heard him. The moment he pulled
himself up, he knew that Mercer had a report to make, and he also saw
that something upsetting had happened to him. Mercer was a bit excited.

"I beg pardon for waking you, sir," he said, leaning close over Kent,
as though fearing the guard might be listening at the door. "But I
thought it best for you to hear about the Indian, sir."

"The Indian?"

"Yes, sir--Mooie, sir. I am quite upset over it, Mr. Kent. He told me
early last evening that he had found the scow on which the girl was
going down-river. He said it was hidden in Kim's Bayou."

"Kim's Bayou! That was a good hiding-place, Mercer!"

"A very good place of concealment indeed, sir. As soon as it was dark,
Mooie returned to watch. What happened to him I haven't fully
discovered, sir. But it must have been near midnight when he staggered
up to Crossen's place, bleeding and half out of his senses. They
brought him here, and I watched over him most of the night. He says the
girl went aboard the scow and that the scow started down-river. That
much I learned, sir. But all the rest he mumbles in a tongue I can not
understand. Crossen says it's Cree, and that old Mooie believes devils
jumped on him with clubs down at Kim's Bayou. Of course they must have
been men. I don't believe in Mooie's devils, sir."

"Nor I," said Kent, the blood stirring strangely in his veins. "Mercer,
it simply means there was some one cleverer than old Mooie watching
that trail."

With a curiously tense face Mercer was looking cautiously toward the
door. Then he leaned still lower over Kent.

"During his mumblings, when I was alone with him, I heard him speak a
name, sir. Half a dozen times, sir--and it was--KEDSTY!"

Kent's fingers gripped the young Englishman's hand.

"You heard THAT, Mercer?"

"I am sure I could not have been mistaken, sir. It was repeated a
number of times."

Kent fell back against his pillows. His mind was working swiftly. He
knew that behind an effort to appear calm Mercer was uneasy over what
had happened.

"We mustn't let this get out, Mercer," he said. "If Mooie should be
badly hurt--should die, for instance--and it was discovered that you
and I--"

He knew he had gone far enough to give effect to his words. He did not
even look at Mercer.

"Watch him closely, old man, and report to me everything that happens.
Find out more about Kedsty, if you can. I shall advise you how to act.
It is rather ticklish, you know--for you! And"--he smiled at
Mercer--"I'm unusually hungry this morning. Add another egg, will you,
Mercer? Three instead of two, and a couple of extra slices of toast.
And don't let any one know that my appetite is improving. It may be
best for both of us--especially if Mooie should happen to die.
Understand, old man?"

"I--I think I do, sir," replied Mercer, paling at the grimly smiling
thing he saw in Kent's eyes. "I shall do as you say, sir."

When he had gone, Kent knew that he had accurately measured his man.
True to a certain type, Mercer would do a great deal for fifty
dollars--under cover. In the open he was a coward. And Kent knew the
value of such a man under certain conditions. The present was one of
those conditions. From this hour Mercer would be a priceless asset to
his scheme for personal salvation.




CHAPTER IX


That morning Kent ate a breakfast that would have amazed Doctor
Cardigan and would have roused a greater caution in Inspector Kedsty
had he known of it. While eating he strengthened the bonds already
welded between himself and Mercer. He feigned great uneasiness over the
condition of Mooie, who he knew was not fatally hurt because Mercer had
told him there was no fracture. But if he should happen to die, he told
Mercer, it would mean something pretty bad for them, if their part in
the affair leaked out.

As for himself, it would make little difference, as he was "in bad"
anyway. But he did not want to see a good friend get into trouble on
his account. Mercer was impressed. He saw himself an instrument in a
possible murder affair, and the thought terrified him. Even at best,
Kent told him, they had given and taken bribes, a fact that would go
hard with them unless Mooie kept his mouth shut. And if the Indian knew
anything out of the way about Kedsty, it was mighty important that he,
Mercer, get hold of it, for it might prove a trump card with them in
the event of a showdown with the Inspector of Police. As a matter of
form, Mercer took his temperature. It was perfectly normal, but it was
easy for Kent to persuade a notation on the chart a degree above.

"Better keep them thinking I'm still pretty sick," he assured Mercer.
"They won't suspect there is anything between us then."

Mercer was so much in sympathy with the idea that he suggested adding
another half-degree.

It was a splendid day for Kent. He could feel himself growing stronger
with each hour that passed. Yet not once during the day did he get out
of his bed, fearing that he might be discovered. Cardigan visited him
twice and had no suspicion of Mercer's temperature chart. He dressed
his wound, which was healing fast. It was the fever which depressed
him. There must be, he said, some internal disarrangement which would
soon clear itself up. Otherwise there seemed to be no very great reason
why Kent should not get on his feet. He smiled apologetically.

"Seems queer to say that, when a little while ago I was telling you it
was time to die," he said.

That night, after ten o'clock, Kent went through his setting-up
exercises four times. He marveled even more than the preceding night at
the swiftness with which his strength was returning. Half a dozen times
the little devils of eagerness working in his blood prompted him to
take to the window at once.

For three days and nights thereafter he kept his secret and added to
his strength. Doctor Cardigan came in to see him at intervals, and
Father Layonne visited him regularly every afternoon. Mercer was his
most frequent visitor. On the third day two things happened to create a
little excitement. Doctor Cardigan left on a four-day journey to a
settlement fifty miles south, leaving Mercer in charge--and Mooie came
suddenly out of his fever into his normal senses again. The first event
filled Kent with joy. With Cardigan out of the way there would be no
immediate danger of the discovery that he was no longer a sick man. But
it was the recovery of Mooie from the thumping he had received about
the head that delighted Mercer. He was exultant. With the quick
reaction of his kind he gloated over the fact before Kent. He let it be
known that he was no longer afraid, and from the moment Mooie was out
of danger his attitude was such that more than once Kent would have
taken keen pleasure in kicking him from the room. Also, from the hour
he was safely in charge of Doctor Cardigan's place, Mercer began to
swell with importance. Kent saw the new danger and began to humor him.
He flattered him. He assured him that it was a burning shame Cardigan
had not taken him into partnership. He deserved it. And, in justice to
himself, Mercer should demand that partnership when Cardigan returned.
He, Kent, would talk to Father Layonne about it, and the missioner
would spread the gospel of what ought to be among others who were
influential at the Landing. For two days he played with Mercer as an
angler plays with a treacherous fish. He tried to get Mercer to
discover more about Mooie's reference to Kedsty. But the old Indian had
shut up like a clam.

"He was frightened when I told him he had said things about the
Inspector," Mercer reported. "He disavowed everything. He shook his
head--no, no, no. He had not seen Kedsty. He knew nothing about him. I
can do nothing with him, Kent."

He had dropped his "sirs," also his servant-like servility. He helped
to smoke Kent's cigars with the intimacy of proprietorship, and with
offensive freedom called him "Kent." He spoke of the Inspector as
"Kedsty," and of Father Layonne as "the little preacher." He swelled
perceptibly, and Kent knew that each hour of that swelling added to his
own danger.

He believed that Mercer was talking. Several times a day he heard him
in conversation with the guard, and not infrequently Mercer went down
to the Landing, twirling a little reed cane that he had not dared to
use before. He began to drop opinions and information to Kent in a
superior sort of way. On the fourth day word came that Doctor Cardigan
would not return for another forty-eight hours, and with unblushing
conceit Mercer intimated that when he did return he would find big
changes. Then it was that in the stupidity of his egotism he said:

"Kedsty has taken a great fancy to me, Kent. He's a square old top,
when you take him right. Had me over this afternoon, and we smoked a
cigar together. When I told him that I looked in at your window last
night and saw you going through a lot of exercises, he jumped up as if
some one had stuck a pin in him. 'Why, I thought he was sick--BAD!' he
said. And I let him know there were better ways of making a sick man
well than Cardigan's. 'Give them plenty to eat,' I said. 'Let 'em live
normal,' I argued. 'Look at Kent, for instance,' I told him. 'He's been
eating like a bear for a week, and he can turn somersaults this
minute!' That topped him over, Kent. I knew it would be a bit of a
surprise for him, that I should do what Cardigan couldn't do. He walked
back and forth, black as a hat--thinking of Cardigan, I suppose. Then
he called in that Pelly chap and gave him something which he wrote on a
piece of paper. After that he shook hands with me, slapped me on the
shoulder most intimately, and gave me another cigar. He's a keen old
blade, Kent. He doesn't need more than one pair of eyes to see what
I've done since Cardigan went away!"

If ever Kent's hands had itched to get at the throat of a human being,
the yearning convulsed his fingers now. At the moment when he was about
to act Mercer had betrayed him to Kedsty! He turned his face away so
that Mercer could not see what was in his eyes. Under his body he
concealed his clenched hands. Within himself he fought against the
insane desire that was raging in his blood, the desire to leap on
Mercer and kill him. If Cardigan had reported his condition to Kedsty,
it would have been different. He would have accepted the report as a
matter of honorable necessity on Cardigan's part. But Mercer--a toad
blown up by his own wind, a consummate fiend who would sell his best
friend, a fool, an ass--

For a space he held himself rigid as a stone, his face turned away from
Mercer. His better sense won. He knew that his last chance depended
upon his coolness now. And Mercer unwittingly helped him to win by
slyly pocketing a couple of his cigars and leaving the room. For a
minute or two Kent heard him talking to the guard outside the door.

He sat up then. It was five o'clock. How long ago was it that Mercer
had seen Kedsty? What was the order that the Inspector had written on a
sheet of paper for Constable Pelly? Was it simply that he should be
more closely watched, or was it a command to move him to one of the
cells close to the detachment office? If it was the latter, all his
hopes and plans were destroyed. His mind flew to those cells.

The Landing had no jail, not even a guard-house, though the members of
the force sometimes spoke of the cells just behind Inspector Kedsty's
office by that name. The cells were of cement, and Kent himself had
helped to plan them! The irony of the thing did not strike him just
then. He was recalling the fact that no prisoner had ever escaped from
those cement cells. If no action were taken before six o'clock, he was
sure that it would be postponed until the following morning. It was
possible that Kedsty's order was for Pelly to prepare a cell for him.
Deep in his soul he prayed fervently that it was only a matter of
preparation. If they would give him one more night--just one!

His watch tinkled the half-hour. Then a quarter of six. Then six. His
blood ran feverishly, in spite of the fact that he possessed the
reputation of being the coolest man in N Division. He lighted his last
cigar and smoked it slowly to cover the suspense which he feared
revealed itself in his face, should any one come into his room. His
supper was due at seven. At eight it would begin to get dusk. The moon
was rising later each night, and it would not appear over the forests
until after eleven. He would go through his window at ten o'clock. His
mind worked swiftly and surely as to the method of his first night's
flight. There were always a number of boats down at Crossen's place. He
would start in one of these, and by the time Mercer discovered he was
gone, he would be forty miles on his way to freedom. Then he would set
his boat adrift, or hide it, and start cross-country until his trail
was lost. Somewhere and in some way he would find both guns and food.
It was fortunate that he had not given Mercer the other fifty dollars
under his pillow.

At seven Mercer came with his supper. A little gleam of disappointment
shot into his pale eyes when he found the last cigar gone from the box.
Kent saw the expression and tried to grin good-humoredly.

"I'm going to have Father Layonne bring me up another box in the
morning, Mercer," he said. "That is, if I can get hold of him."

"You probably can," snapped Mercer. "He doesn't live far from barracks,
and that's where you are going. I've got orders to have you ready to
move in the morning."

Kent's blood seemed for an instant to flash into living flame. He drank
a part of his cup of coffee and said then, with a shrug of his
shoulders: "I'm glad of it, Mercer. I'm anxious to have the thing over.
The sooner they get me down there, the quicker they will take action.
And I'm not afraid, not a bit of it. I'm bound to win. There isn't a
chance in a hundred that they can convict me." Then he added: "And I'm
going to have a box of cigars sent up to you, Mercer. I'm grateful to
you for the splendid treatment you have given me."

No sooner had Mercer gone with the supper things than Kent's knotted
fist shook itself fiercely in the direction of the door.

"My God, how I'd like to have you out in the woods--alone--for just one
hour!" he whispered.

Eight o'clock came, and nine. Two or three times he heard voices in the
hall, probably Mercer talking with the guard. Once he thought he heard
a rumble of thunder, and his heart throbbed joyously. Never had he
welcomed a storm as he would have welcomed it tonight. But the skies
remained clear. Not only that, but the stars as they began to appear
seemed to him more brilliant than he had ever seen them before. And it
was very still. The rattle of a scow-chain came up to him from the
river as though it were only a hundred yards away. He knew that it was
one of Mooie's dogs he heard howling over near the sawmill. The owls,
flitting past his window, seemed to click their beaks more loudly than
last night. A dozen times he fancied he could hear the rippling voice
of the river that very soon was to carry him on toward freedom.

The river! Every dream and aspiration found its voice for him in that
river now. Down it Marette Radisson had gone. And somewhere along it,
or on the river beyond, or the third river still beyond that, he would
find her. In the long, tense wait between the hours of nine and ten he
brought the girl back into his room again. He recalled every gesture
she had made, every word she had spoken. He felt the thrill of her hand
on his forehead, her kiss, and in his brain her softly spoken words
repeated themselves over and over again, "I think that if you lived
very long I should love you." And as she had spoken those words SHE
KNEW THAT HE WAS NOT GOING TO DIE!

Why, then, had she gone away? Knowing that he was going to live, why
had she not remained to help him if she could? Either she had spoken
the words in jest, or--

A new thought flashed into his mind. It almost drew a cry from his
lips. It brought him up tense, erect, his heart pounding. Had she gone
away? Was it not possible that she, too, was playing a game in giving
the impression that she was leaving down-river on the hidden scow? Was
it conceivable that she was playing that game against Kedsty? A
picture, clean-cut as the stars in the sky, began to outline itself in
his mental vision. It was clear, now, what Mooie's mumblings about
Kedsty had signified. Kedsty had accompanied Marette to the scow. Mooie
had seen him and had given the fact away in his fever. Afterward he had
clamped his mouth shut through fear of the "big man" of the Law. But
why, still later, had he almost been done to death? Mooie was a
harmless creature. He had no enemies.

There was no one at the Landing who would have assaulted the old
trailer, whose hair was white with age. No one, unless it was Kedsty
himself--Kedsty at bay, Kedsty in a rage. Even that was inconceivable.
Whatever the motive of the assault might be, and no matter who had
committed it, Mooie had most certainly seen the Inspector of Police
accompany Marette Radisson to the scow. And the question which Kent
found it impossible to answer was, had Marette Radisson really gone
down the river on that scow?

It was almost with a feeling of disappointment that he told himself it
was possible she had not. He wanted her on the river. He wanted her
going north and still farther north. The thought that she was mixed up
in some affair that had to do with Kedsty was displeasing to him. If
she was still in the Landing or near the Landing, it could no longer be
on account of Sandy McTrigger, the man his confession had saved. In his
heart he prayed that she was many days down the Athabasca, for it was
there--and only there--that he would ever see her again. And his
greatest desire, next to his desire for his freedom, was to find her.
He was frank with himself in making that confession. He was more than
that. He knew that not a day or night would pass that he would not
think or dream of Marette Radisson. The wonder of her had grown more
vivid for him with each hour that passed, and he was sorry now that he
had not dared to touch her hair. She would not have been offended with
him, for she had kissed him--after he had killed the impulse to lay his
hand on that soft glory that had crowned her head.

And then the little bell in his watch tinkled the hour of ten! He sat
up with a jerk. For a space he held his breath while he listened. In
the hall outside his room there was no sound. An inch at a time he drew
himself off his bed until he stood on his feet. His clothes hung on
hooks in the wall, and he groped his way to them so quietly that one
listening at the crack of his door would not have heard him. He dressed
swiftly. Then he made his way to the window, looked out, and listened.

In the brilliant starlight he saw nothing but the two white stubs of
the lightning-shattered trees in which the owls lived. And it was very
still. The air was fresh and sweet in his face. In it he caught the
scent of the distant balsams and cedars. The world, wonderful in its
night silence, waited for him. It was impossible for him to conceive of
failure or death out there, and it seemed unreal and trivial that the
Law should expect to hold him, with that world reaching out its arms to
him and calling him.

Assured that the moment for action was at hand, he moved quickly. In
another ten seconds he was through the window, and his feet were on the
ground. For a space he stood out clear in the starlight. Then he
hurried to the end of the building and hid himself in the shadow. The
swiftness of his movement had brought him no physical discomfort, and
his blood danced with the thrill of the earth under his feet and the
thought that his wound must be even more completely healed than he had
supposed. A wild exultation swept over him. He was free! He could see
the river now, shimmering and talking to him in the starlight, urging
him to hurry, telling him that only a little while ago another had gone
north on the breast of it, and that if he hastened it would help him to
overtake her. He felt the throb of new life in his body. His eyes shone
strangely in the semi-gloom.

It seemed to him that only yesterday Marette had gone. She could not be
far away, even now. And in these moments, with the breath of freedom
stirring him with the glory of new life, she was different for him from
what she had ever been. She was a part of him. He could not think of
escape without thinking of her. She became, in these precious moments,
the living soul of his wilderness. He felt her presence. The thought
possessed him that somewhere down the river she was thinking of him,
waiting, expecting him. And in that same flash he made up his mind that
he would not discard the boat, as he had planned; he would conceal
himself by day, and float downstream by night, until at last he came to
Marette Radisson. And then he would tell her why he had come. And after
that--

He looked toward Crossen's place. He would make straight for it,
openly, like a man bent on a mission there was no reason to conceal. If
luck went right, and Crossen was abed, he would be on the river within
fifteen minutes. His blood ran faster as he took his first step out
into the open starlight. Fifty yards ahead of him was the building
which Cardigan used for his fuel. Safely beyond that, no one could see
him from the windows of the hospital. He walked swiftly. Twenty paces,
thirty, forty--and he stopped as suddenly as the half-breed's bullet
had stopped him weeks before. Round the end of Cardigan's fuel house
came a figure. It was Mercer. He was twirling his little cane and
traveling quietly as a cat. They were not ten feet apart, yet Kent had
not heard him.

Mercer stopped. The cane dropped from his hand. Even in the starlight
Kent could see his face turn white.

"Don't make a sound, Mercer," he warned. "I'm taking a little exercise
in the open air. If you cry out, I'll kill you!"

He advanced slowly, speaking in a voice that could not have been heard
at the windows behind him. And then a thing happened that froze the
blood in his veins. He had heard the scream of every beast of the great
forests, but never a scream like that which came from Mercer's lips
now. It was not the cry of a man. To Kent it was the voice of a fiend,
a devil. It did not call for help. It was wordless. And as the horrible
sound issued from Mercer's mouth he could see the swelling throat and
bulging eyes that accompanied the effort. They made him think of a
snake, a cobra.

The chill went out of his blood, replaced by a flame of hottest fire.
He forgot everything but that this serpent was in his path. Twice he
had stood in his way. And he hated him. He hated him with a virulency
that was death. Neither the call of freedom nor the threat of prison
could keep him from wreaking vengeance now. Without a sound he was at
Mercer's throat, and the scream ended in a choking shriek. His fingers
dug into flabby flesh, and his clenched fist beat again and again into
Mercer's face.

He went to the ground, crushing the human serpent under him. And he
continued to strike and choke as he had never struck or choked another
man, all other things overwhelmed by his mad desire to tear into pieces
this two-legged English vermin who was too foul to exist on the face of
the earth.

And he still continued to strike--even after the path lay clear once
more between him and the river.




CHAPTER X


What a terrible and inexcusable madness had possessed him, Kent
realized the instant he rose from Mercer's prostrate body. Never had
his brain flamed to that madness before. He believed at first that he
had killed Mercer. It was neither pity nor regret that brought him to
his senses. Mercer, a coward and a traitor, a sneak of the lowest type,
had no excuse for living. It was the thought that he had lost his
chance to reach the river that cleared his head as he swayed over
Mercer.

He heard running feet. He saw figures approaching swiftly through the
starlight. And he was too weak to fight or run. The little strength he
had saved up, and which he had planned to use so carefully in his
flight, was gone. His wound, weeks in bed, muscles unaccustomed to the
terrific exertion he had made in these moments of his vengeance, left
him now panting and swaying as the running footsteps came nearer.

His head swam. For a space he was sickeningly dizzy, and in the first
moment of that dizziness, when every drop of blood in his body seemed
rushing to his brain, his vision was twisted and his sense of direction
gone. In his rage he had overexerted himself. He knew that something
had gone wrong inside him and that he was helpless. Even then his
impulse was to stagger toward the inanimate Mercer and kick him, but
hands caught him and held him. He heard an amazed voice, then
another--and something hard and cold shut round his wrists like a pair
of toothless jaws.

It was Constable Carter, Inspector Kedsty's right-hand man about
barracks, that he saw first; then old Sands, the caretaker at
Cardigan's place. Swiftly as he had turned sick, his brain grew clear,
and his blood distributed itself evenly again through his body. He held
up his hands. Carter had slipped a pair of irons on him, and the
starlight glinted on the shining steel. Sands was bending over Mercer,
and Carter was saying in a low voice:

"It's too bad, Kent. But I've got to do it. I saw you from the window
just as Mercer screamed. Why did you stop for him?"

Mercer was getting up with the assistance of Sands. He turned a bloated
and unseeing face toward Kent and Carter. He was blubbering and
moaning, as though entreating for mercy in the fear that Kent had not
finished with him. Carter pulled Kent away.

"There's only one thing for me to do now," he said. "It isn't pleasant.
But the law says I must take you to barracks."

In the sky Kent saw the stars clearly again, and his lungs were
drinking in the cool air as in the wonderful moments before his
encounter with Mercer.

He had lost. And it was Mercer who had made him lose. Carter felt the
sudden tightening of his muscles as he walked with a hand on his arm.
And Kent shut his teeth close and made no answer to what Carter had
said, except that Carter heard something which he thought was a sob
choked to death in the other's throat.

Carter, too, was a man bred of the red blood of the North, and he knew
what was in Kent's heart. For only by the breadth of a hair had Kent
failed in his flight.

Pelly was on duty at barracks, and it was Pelly who locked him in one
of the three cells behind the detachment office. When he was gone, Kent
sat down on the edge of his prison cot and for the first time let the
agony of his despair escape in a gasping breath from between his lips.
Half an hour ago the world had reached out its arms to him, and he had
gone forth to its welcome, only to have the grimmest tragedy of all his
life descend upon him like the sword of Damocles. For this was real
tragedy. Here there was no hope. The tentacles of the law had him in
their grip, and he could no longer dream of escape.

Ghastly was the thought that it was he, James Kent, who had supervised
the building of these cells! Acquainted with every trick and stratagem
of the prisoner plotting for his freedom, he had left no weak point in
their structure. Again he clenched his hands, and in his soul he cursed
Mercer as he went to the little barred window that overlooked the river
from his cell. The river was near now. He could hear the murmur of it.
He could see its movement, and that movement, played upon by the stars,
seemed now a writhing sort of almost noiseless laughter taunting him in
his folly.

He went back to his cot, and in his despair buried his face in his
hands. In the half-hour after that he did not raise his head. For the
first time in his life he knew that he was beaten, so utterly beaten
that he no more had the desire to fight, and his soul was dark with the
chaos of the things he had lost.

At last he opened his eyes to the blackness of his prison room, and he
beheld a marvelous thing. Across the gloom of the cell lay a shaft of
golden fire. It was the light of the rising moon coming through his
little, steel-barred window. To Kent it had crept into his cell like a
living thing. He watched it, fascinated. His eyes followed it to the
foot-square aperture, and there, red and glorious as it rose over the
forests, the moon itself filled the world. For a space he saw nothing
but that moon crowding the frame of his window. And as he rose to his
feet and stood where his face was flooded in the light of it, he felt
stirring within him the ghosts of his old hopes. One by one they rose
up and came to life. He held out his hands, as if to fill them with the
liquid glow; his heart beat faster in that glory of the moonrise. The
taunting murmur of the river changed once more into hopeful song, his
fingers closed tightly around the bars, and the fighting spirit rose in
him again. As that spirit surged stronger, beating down his despair,
driving the chaos out of his brain, he watched the moon as it climbed
higher, changing from the red of the lower atmosphere to the yellow
gold of the greater heights, marveling at the miracle of light and
color that had never failed to stir him.

And then he laughed. If Pelly or Carter had heard him, they would have
wondered if he was mad. It was madness of a sort--the madness of
restored confidence, of an unlimited faith, of an optimism that was
bound to make dreams come true. Again he looked beyond the bars of his
cell. The world was still there; the river was there; all the things
that were worth fighting for were there. And he would fight. Just how,
he did not try to tell himself now. And then he laughed again, softly,
a bit grimly, for he saw the melancholy humour of the fact that he had
built his own prison.

He sat down again on the edge of his cot, and the whimsical thought
struck him that all those he had brought to this same cell, and who had
paid the first of their penance here, must be laughing at him now in
the spirit way. In his mental fancy a little army of faces trooped
before him, faces dark and white, faces filled with hatred and despair,
faces brave with the cheer of hope and faces pallid with the dread of
death. And of these ghosts of his man-hunting prowess it was Anton
Fournet's face that came out of the crowd and remained with him. For he
had brought Anton to this same cell--Anton, the big Frenchman, with his
black hair, his black beard, and his great, rolling laugh that even in
the days when he was waiting for death had rattled the paper-weights on
Kedsty's desk.

Anton rose up like a god before Kent now. He had killed a man, and like
a brave man he had not denied it. With a heart in his great body as
gentle as a girl's, Anton had taken pride in the killing. In his prison
days he sang songs to glorify it. He had killed the white man from
Chippewyan who had stolen his neighbor's wife! Not HIS wife, but his
neighbor's! For Anton's creed was, "Do unto others as you would have
others do unto you," and he had loved his neighbor with the great
forest love of man for man. His neighbor was weak, and Anton was strong
with the strength of a bull, so that when the hour came, it was Anton
who had measured out vengeance. When Kent brought Anton in, the giant
had laughed first at the littleness of his cell, then at the
unsuspected strength of it, and after that he had laughed and sung
great, roaring songs every day of the brief tenure of life that was
given him. When he died, it was with the smiling glory in his face of
one who had cheaply righted a great wrong.

Kent would never forget Anton Fournet. He had never ceased to grieve
that it had been his misfortune to bring Anton in, and always, in close
moments, the thought of Anton, the stout-hearted, rallied him back to
courage. Never would he be the man that Anton Fournet had been, he told
himself many times. Never would his heart be as great or as big, though
the Law had hanged Anton by the neck until the soul was choked out of
his splendid body, for it was history that Anton Fournet had never
harmed man, woman, or child until he set out to kill a human snake and
the Law placed its heel upon him and crushed him.

And tonight Anton Fournet came into the cell again and sat with Kent on
the cot where he had slept many nights, and the ghosts of his laughter
and his song filled Kent's ears, and his great courage poured itself
out in the moonlit prison room so that at last, when Kent stretched
himself on the cot to sleep, it was with the knowledge that the soul of
the splendid dead had given him a strength which it was impossible to
have gained from the living. For Anton Fournet had died smiling,
laughing, singing--and it was of Anton Fournet that he dreamed when he
fell asleep. And in that dream came also the vision of a man called
Dirty Fingers--and with it inspiration.




CHAPTER XI


Where a bit of the big river curved inward like the tongue of a
friendly dog, lapping the shore at Athabasca Landing, there still
remained Fingers' Row--nine dilapidated, weather-worn, and
crazily-built shacks put there by the eccentric genius who had foreseen
a boom ten years ahead of its time. And the fifth of these nine,
counting from either one end or the other, was named by its owner,
Dirty Fingers himself, the Good Old Queen Bess. It was a shack covered
with black tar paper, with two windows, like square eyes, fronting the
river as if always on the watch for something. Across the front of this
shack Dirty Fingers had built a porch to protect himself from the rain
in springtime, from the sun in Summer time, and from the snow in the
months of Winter. For it was here that Dirty Fingers sat out all of
that part of his life which was not spent in bed.

Up and down two thousand miles of the Three Rivers was Dirty Fingers
known, and there were superstitious ones who believed that little gods
and devils came to sit and commune with him in the front of the
tar-papered shack. No one was so wise along those rivers, no one was so
satisfied with himself, that he would not have given much to possess
the many things that were hidden away in Dirty Fingers' brain. One
would not have suspected the workings of that brain by a look at Dirty
Fingers on the porch of his Good Old Queen Bess. He was a great soft
lump of a man, a giant of flabbiness. Sitting in his smooth-worn,
wooden armchair, he was almost formless. His head was huge, his hair
uncut and scraggy, his face smooth as a baby's, fat as a cherub's, and
as expressionless as an apple. His folded arms always rested on a huge
stomach, whose conspicuousness was increased by an enormous watch-chain
made from beaten nuggets of Klondike gold, and Dirty Fingers' thumb and
forefinger were always twiddling at this chain. How he had come by the
name of Dirty Fingers, when his right name was Alexander Toppet
Fingers, no one could definitely say, unless it was that he always bore
an unkempt and unwashed appearance.

Whatever the quality of the two hundred and forty-odd pounds of flesh
in Dirty Fingers' body, it was the quality of his brain that made
people hold him in a sort of awe. For Dirty Fingers was a lawyer, a
wilderness lawyer, a forest bencher, a legal strategist of the trail,
of the river, of the great timber-lands.

Stored away in his brain was every rule of equity and common law of the
great North country. For his knowledge he went back two hundred years.
He knew that a law did not die of age, that it must be legislated to
death, and out of the moldering past he had dug up every trick and trap
of his trade. He had no law-books. His library was in his head, and his
facts were marshaled in pile after pile of closely-written,
dust-covered papers in his shack. He did not go to court as other
lawyers; and there were barristers in Edmonton who blessed him for that.

His shack was his tabernacle of justice. There he sat, hands folded,
and gave out his decisions, his advice, his sentences. He sat until
other men would have gone mad. From morning until night, moving only
for his meals or to get out of heat or storm, he was a fixture on the
porch of the Good Old Queen Bess. For hours he would stare at the
river, his pale eyes never seeming to blink. For hours he would remain
without a move or a word. One constant companion he had, a dog, fat,
emotionless, lazy, like his master. Always this dog was sleeping at his
feet or dragging himself wearily at his heels when Dirty Fingers
elected to make a journey to the little store where he bartered for
food and necessities.

It was Father Layonne who came first to see Kent in his cell the
morning after Kent's unsuccessful attempt at flight. An hour later it
was Father Layonne who traveled the beaten path to the door of Dirty
Fingers' shack. If a visible emotion of pleasure ever entered into
Dirty Fingers' face, it was when the little missioner came occasionally
to see him. It was then that his tongue let itself loose, and until
late at night they talked of many things of which other men knew but
little. This morning Father Layonne did not come casually, but
determinedly on business, and when Dirty Fingers learned what that
business was, he shook his head disconsolately, folded his fat arms
more tightly over his stomach, and stated the sheer impossibility of
his going to see Kent. It was not his custom. People must come to him.
And he did not like to walk. It was fully a third of a mile from his
shack to barracks, possibly half a mile. And it was mostly upgrade! If
Kent could be brought to him--

In his cell Kent waited. It was not difficult for him to hear voices in
Kedsty's office when the door was open, and he knew that the Inspector
did not come in until after the missioner had gone on his mission to
Dirty Fingers. Usually he was at the barracks an hour or so earlier.
Kent made no effort to figure out a reason for Kedsty's lateness, but
he did observe that after his arrival there was more than the usual
movement between the office door and the outside of the barracks. Once
he was positive that he heard Cardigan's voice, and then he was equally
sure that he heard Mercer's. He grinned at that. He must be wrong, for
Mercer would be in no condition to talk for several days. He was glad
that a turn in the hall hid the door of the detachment office from him,
and that the three cells were in an alcove, safely out of sight of the
curious eyes of visitors. He was also glad that he had no other
prisoner for company. His situation was one in which he wanted to be
alone. To the plan that was forming itself in his mind, solitude was as
vital as the cooperation of Alexander Toppet Fingers.

Just how far he could win that cooperation was the problem which
confronted him now, and he waited anxiously for the return of Father
Layonne, listening for the sound of his footsteps in the outer hall.
If, after all, that inspirational thought of last night came to
nothing, if Fingers should fail him--

He shrugged his shoulders. If that happened, he could see no other
chance. He would have to go on and take his medicine at the hands of a
jury. But if Fingers played up to the game--

He looked out on the river again, and again it was the river that
seemed to answer him. If Fingers played with him, they would beat
Kedsty and the whole of N Division! And in winning he would prove out
the greatest psychological experiment he had ever dared to make. The
magnitude of the thing, when he stopped to think of it, was a little
appalling, but his faith was equally large. He did not consider his
philosophy at all supernatural. He had brought it down to the level of
the average man and woman.

He believed that every man and woman possessed a subliminal
consciousness which it was possible to rouse to tremendous heights if
the right psychological key was found to fit its particular lock, and
he believed he possessed the key which fitted the deeply-buried and
long-hidden thing in Dirty Fingers' remarkable brain. Because he
believed in this metaphysics which he had not read out of Aristotle, he
had faith that Fingers would prove his salvation. He felt growing in
him stronger than ever a strange kind of elation. He felt better
physically than last night. The few minutes of strenuous action in
which he had half killed Mercer had been a pretty good test, he told
himself. It had left no bad effect, and he need no longer fear the
reopening of his wound.

A dozen times he had heard a far door open and close. Now he heard it
again, and a few moments later it was followed by a sound which drew a
low cry of satisfaction from him. Dirty Fingers, because of overweight
and lack of exercise, had what he called an "asthmatic wind," and it
was this strenuous working of his lungs that announced his approach to
Kent. His dog was also afflicted and for the same reasons, so that when
they traveled together there was some rivalry between them.

"We're both bad put out for wind, thank God," Dirty Fingers would say
sometimes. "It's a good thing, for if we had more of it, we'd walk
farther, and we don't like walking."

The dog was with Fingers now, also Father Layonne, and Pelly. Pelly
unlocked the cell, then relocked it again after Fingers and the dog
entered. With a nod and a hopeful look the missioner returned with
Pelly to the detachment office. Fingers wiped his red face with a big
handkerchief, gasping deeply for breath. Togs, his dog, was panting as
if he had just finished the race of his life.

"A difficult climb," wheezed Fingers. "A most difficult climb."

He sat down, rolling out like a great bag of jelly in the one chair in
the cell, and began to fan himself with his hat. Kent had already taken
stock of the situation. In Fingers' florid countenance and in his
almost colorless eyes he detected a bit of excitement which Fingers was
trying to hide. Kent knew what it meant. Father Layonne had found it
necessary to play his full hand to lure Fingers up the hill, and had
given him a hint of what it was that Kent had in store for him. Already
the psychological key had begun to work.

Kent sat down on the edge of his cot and grinned sympathetically. "It
hasn't always been like this, has it, Fingers?" he said then, leaning a
bit forward and speaking with a sudden, low-voiced seriousness. "There
was a time, twenty years ago, when you didn't puff after climbing a
hill. Twenty years make a big difference, sometimes."

"Yes, sometimes," agreed Fingers in a wheezy whisper.

"Twenty years ago you were--a fighter."

It seemed to Kent that a deeper color came into Dirty Fingers' pale
eyes in the few seconds that followed these words.

"A fighter," he repeated. "Most men were fighters in those days of the
gold rushes, weren't they, Fingers? I've heard a lot of the old stories
about them in my wanderings, and some of them have made me thrill. They
weren't afraid to die. And most of them were pretty white when it came
to a show-down. You were one of them, Fingers. I heard the story one
Winter far north. I've kept it to myself, because I've sort of had the
idea that you didn't want people to know or you would have told it
yourself. That's why I wanted you to come to see me, Fingers. You know
the situation. It's either the noose or iron bars for me. Naturally one
would seek for assistance among those who have been his friends. But I
do not, with the exception of Father Layonne. Just friendship won't
save me, not the sort of friendship we have today. That's why I sent
for you. Don't think that I am prying into secrets that are sacred to
you, Fingers. God knows I don't mean it that way. But I've got to tell
you of a thing that happened a long time ago, before you can
understand. You haven't forgotten--you will never forget--Ben Tatman?"

As Kent spoke the name, a name which Dirty Fingers had heard no lips
but his own speak aloud in nearly a quarter of a century, a strange and
potent force seemed suddenly to take possession of the forest bencher's
huge and flabby body. It rippled over and through him like an
electrical voltaism, making his body rigid, stiffening what had seemed
to be fat into muscle, tensing his hands until they knotted themselves
slowly into fists. The wheeze went out of his breath, and it was the
voice of another man who answered Kent.

"You have heard--about--Ben Tatman?"

"Yes. I heard it away up in the Porcupine country. They say it happened
twenty years ago or more. This Tatman, so I was told, was a young
fellow green from San Francisco--a bank clerk, I think--who came into
the gold country and brought his wife with him. They were both
chuck-full of courage, and the story was that each worshiped the ground
the other walked on, and that the girl had insisted on being her
husband's comrade in adventure. Of course neither guessed the sort of
thing that was ahead of them.

"Then came that death Winter in Lost City. You know better than I what
the laws were in those days, Fingers. Food failed to come up. Snow came
early, the thermometer never rose over fifty below zero for three
straight months, and Lost City was an inferno of starvation and death.
You could go out and kill a man, then, and perhaps get away with it,
Fingers. But if you stole so much as a crust of bread or a single bean,
you were taken to the edge of the camp and told to go! And that meant
certain death--death from hunger and cold, more terrible than shooting
or hanging, and for that reason it was the penalty for theft.

"Tatman wasn't a thief. It was seeing his young wife slowly dying of
hunger, and his horror at the thought of seeing her fall, as others
were falling, a victim to scurvy, that made him steal. He broke into a
cabin in the dead of night and stole two cans of beans and a pan of
potatoes, more precious than a thousand times their weight in gold. And
he was caught. Of course, there was the wife. But those were the days
when a woman couldn't save a man, no matter how lovely she was. Tatman
was taken to the edge of camp and given his pack and his gun--but no
food. And the girl, hooded and booted, was at his side, for she was
determined to die with him. For her sake Tatman had lied up to the last
minute, protesting his innocence.

"But the beans and the potatoes were found in his cabin, and that was
evidence enough. And then, just as they were about to go straight out
into the blizzard that meant death within a few hours, then--"

Kent rose to his feet, and walked to the little window, and stood
there, looking out. "Fingers, now and then a superman is born on earth.
And a superman was there in that crowd of hunger-stricken and
embittered men. At the last moment he stepped out and in a loud voice
declared that Tatman was innocent and that he was guilty. Unafraid, he
made a remarkable confession. He had stolen the beans and the potatoes
and had slipped them into the Tatman cabin when they were asleep. Why?
Because he wanted to save the woman from hunger! Yes, he lied, Fingers.
He lied because he loved the wife that belonged to another man--lied
because in him there was a heart as true as any heart God ever made. He
lied! And his lie was a splendid thing. He went out into that blizzard,
strengthened by a love that was greater than his fear of death, and the
camp never heard of him again. Tatman and his wife returned to their
cabin and lived. Fingers--" Kent whirled suddenly from the window.
"Fingers--"

And Fingers, like a sphynx, sat and stared at Kent.

"You were that man," Kent went on, coming nearer to him. "You lied,
because you loved a woman, and you went out to face death because of
that woman. The men at Lost City didn't know it, Fingers. The husband
didn't know it. And the girl, that girl-wife you worshiped in secret,
didn't dream of it! But that was the truth, and you know it deep down
in your soul. You fought your way out. You lived! And all these years,
down here on your porch, you've been dreaming of a woman, of the girl
you were willing to die for a long time ago. Fingers, am I right? And
if I am, will you shake hands?"

Slowly Fingers had risen from his chair. No longer were his eyes dull
and lifeless, but flaming with a fire that Kent had lighted again after
many years. And he reached out a hand and gripped Kent's, still staring
at him as though something had come back to him from the dead.

"I thank you, Kent, for your opinion of that man," he said. "Somehow,
you haven't made me--ashamed. But it was only the shell of a man that
won out after that day when I took Tatman's place. Something happened.
I don't know what. But--you see me now. I never went back into the
diggings. I degenerated. I became what I am."

"And you are today just what you were when you went out to die for Mary
Tatman," cried Kent. "The same heart and the same soul are in you.
Wouldn't you fight again today for her?"

A stifled cry came from Fingers' lips. "My God, yes, Kent--I would!"

"And that's why I wanted you, of all men, to come to me, Fingers," Kent
went on swiftly. "To you, of all the men on earth, I wanted to tell my
story. And now, will you listen to it? Will you forgive me for bringing
up this memory that must be precious to you, only that you might more
fully understand what I am going to say? I don't want you to think of
it as a subterfuge on my part. It is more than that. It is--Fingers, is
it inspiration? Listen, and tell me."

And for a long time after that James Kent talked, and Fingers listened,
the soul within him writhing and dragging itself back into fierce life,
demanding for the first time in many years the something which it had
once possessed, but which it had lost. It was not the lazy, mysterious,
silent Dirty Fingers who sat in the cell with Kent. In him the spirit
of twenty years ago had roused itself from long slumber, and the thrill
of it pounded in his blood. Two-Fisted Fingers they had called him
then, and he was Two-Fisted Fingers in this hour with Kent. Twice
Father Layonne came to the head of the cell alcove, but turned back
when he heard the low and steady murmur of Kent's voice. Nothing did
Kent keep hidden, and when he had finished, something that was like the
fire of a revelation had come into Fingers' face.

"My God!" he breathed deeply. "Kent, I've been sitting down there on my
porch a long time, and a good many strange things have come to me, but
never anything like this. Oh, if it wasn't for this accursed flesh of
mine!"

He jumped from his chair more quickly than he had moved in ten years,
and he laughed as he had not laughed in all that time. He thrust out a
great arm and doubled it up, like a prizefighter testing his muscle.
"Old? I'm not old! I was only twenty-eight when that happened up there,
and I'm forty-eight now. That isn't old. It's what is in me that's
grown old. I'll do it, Kent! I'll do it, if I hang for it!"

Kent fairly leaped upon him. "God bless you!" he cried huskily. "God
bless you, Fingers! Look! Look at that!" He pulled Fingers to the
little window, and together they looked out upon the river, shimmering
gloriously under a sun-filled sky of blue. "Two thousand miles of it,"
he breathed. "Two thousand miles of it, running straight through the
heart of that world we both have known! No, you're not old, Fingers.
The things you used to know are calling you again, as they are calling
me, for somewhere off there are the ghosts of Lost City, ghosts--and
realities!"

"Ghosts--and hopes," said Fingers.

"Hopes make life," softly whispered Kent, as if to himself. And then,
without turning from the window, his hand found Fingers' and clasped it
tight. "It may be that mine, like yours, will never come true. But
they're fine to think about, Fingers. Funny, isn't it, that their names
should be so strangely alike--Mary and Marette? I say, Fingers--"

Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall. Both turned from the window as
Constable Pelly came to the door of the cell. They recognized this
intimation that their time was up, and with his foot Fingers roused his
sleeping dog.

It was a new Fingers who walked back to the river five minutes later,
and it was an amazed and discomfited dog who followed at his heels, for
at times the misshapen and flesh-ridden Togs was compelled to trot for
a few steps to keep up. And Fingers did not sink into the chair on the
shady porch when he reached his shack. He threw off his coat and
waistcoat and rolled up his sleeves, and for hours after that he was
buried deep in the accumulated masses of dust-covered legal treasures
stored away in hidden corners of the Good Old Queen Bess.




CHAPTER XII


That morning Kent had heard wild songs floating up from the river, and
now he felt like shouting forth his own joy and exultation in song. He
wondered if he could hide the truth from the eyes of others, and
especially from Kedsty if he came to see him. It seemed that some
glimmer of the hope blazing within him must surely reveal itself, no
matter how he tried to hold it back. He felt the vital forces of that
hope more powerful within him now than in the hour when he had crept
from the hospital window with freedom in his face. For then he was not
sure of himself. He had not tested his physical strength. And in the
present moment, fanned by his unbounded optimism, the thought came to
him that perhaps it was good luck and not bad that had thrown Mercer in
his way. For with Fingers behind him now, his chances for a clean
get-away were better. He would not be taking a hazardous leap chanced
on the immediate smiles of fortune. He would be going deliberately,
prepared.

He blessed the man who had been known as Dirty Fingers, but whom he
could not think of now in the terms of that name. He blessed the day he
had heard that chance story of Fingers, far north. He no longer
regarded him as the fat pig of a man he had been for so many years. For
he looked upon the miracle of a great awakening. He had seen the soul
of Fingers lift itself up out of its tabernacle of flesh and grow young
again; he had seen stagnant blood race with new fire. He had seen
emotions roused that had slept for long years. And he felt toward
Fingers, in the face of that awakening, differently than he had felt
toward any other living man. His emotion was one of deep and embracing
comradeship.

Father Layonne did not come again until afternoon, and then he brought
information that thrilled Kent. The missioner had walked down to see
Fingers, and Fingers was not on his porch. Neither was the dog. He had
knocked loudly on the door, but there was no answer. Where was Fingers?
Kent shook his head, feigning an anxious questioning, but inside him
his heart was leaping. He knew! He told Father Layonne he was afraid
all Fingers' knowledge of the law could do him but little good, that
Fingers had told him as much, and the little missioner went away
considerably depressed. He would talk with Fingers again, he said, and
offer certain suggestions he had in mind. Kent chuckled when he was
gone. How shocked le Pere would be if he, too, could know!

The next morning Father Layonne came again, and his information was
even more thrilling to Kent. The missioner was displeased with Fingers.
Last night, noticing a light in his shack, he had walked down to see
him. And he had found three men closely drawn up about a table with
Dirty Fingers. One of them was Ponte, the half-breed; another was Kinoo
the outcast Dog Rib from over on Sand Creek; the third was Mooie, the
old Indian trailer. Kent wanted to jump up and shout, for those three
were the three greatest trailers in all that part of the Northland.
Fingers had lost no time, and he wanted to voice his approbation like a
small boy on the Fourth of July.

But his face, seen by Father Layonne, betrayed none of the excitement
that was in his blood. Fingers had told him he was going into a timber
deal with these men, a long-distance deal where there would be much
traveling, and that he could not interrupt himself just then to talk
about Kent. Would Father Layonne come again in the morning? And he had
gone again that morning, and Fingers' place was locked up!

All the rest of the day Kent waited eagerly for Fingers. For the first
time Kedsty came to see him, and as a matter of courtesy said he hoped
Fingers might be of assistance to him. He did not mention Mercer and
remained no longer than a couple of minutes, standing outside the cell.
In the afternoon Doctor Cardigan came and shook hands warmly with Kent.
He had found a tough job waiting for him, he said. Mercer was all cut
up, in a literal as well as a mental way. He had five teeth missing,
and he had to have seventeen stitches taken in his face. It was
Cardigan's opinion that some one had given him a considerable
beating--and he grinned at Kent. Then he added in a whisper,

"My God, Kent, how I wish you had made it!"

It was four o'clock when Fingers came. Even less than yesterday did he
look like the old Fingers. He was not wheezing. He seemed to have lost
flesh. His face was alive. That was what struck Kent--the new life in
it. There was color in his eyes. And Togs, the dog, was not with him.
He smiled when he shook hands with Kent, and nodded, and chuckled. And
Kent, after that, gripped him by the shoulders and shook him in his
silent joy.

"I was up all last night," said Fingers in a low voice. "I don't dare
move much in the day, or people will wonder. But, God bless my soul!--I
did move last night, Kent. I must have walked ten miles, more or less.
And things are coming--coming!"

"And Ponte, Kinoo, Mooie--?"

"Are working like devils," whispered Fingers. "It's the only way, Kent.
I've gone through all my law, and there's nothing in man-made law that
can save you. I've read your confession, and I don't think you could
even get off with the penitentiary. A noose is already tied around your
neck. I think you'd hang. We've simply got to get you out some other
way. I've had a talk with Kedsty. He has made arrangements to have you
sent to Edmonton two weeks from tomorrow. We'll need all that time, but
it's enough."

For three days thereafter Fingers came to Kent's cell each afternoon,
and each time was looking better. Something was swiftly putting
hardness into his flesh and form into his body. The second day he told
Kent that he had found the way at last, and that when the hour came,
escape would be easy, but he thought it best not to let Kent in on the
little secret just yet. He must be patient and have faith. That was the
chief thing, to have faith at all times, no matter what happened.
Several times he emphasized that "no matter what happens." The third
day he puzzled Kent. He was restless, a bit nervous. He still thought
it best not to tell Kent what his scheme was, until to-morrow. He was
in the cell not more than five or ten minutes, and there was an unusual
pressure in the grip of his hand when he bade Kent good-by. Somehow
Kent did not feel so well when he had gone. He waited impatiently for
the next day. It came, and hour after hour he listened for Fingers'
heavy tread in the hall. The morning passed. The afternoon lengthened.
Night came, and Fingers had not come. Kent did not sleep much between
the hour when he went to bed and morning. It was eleven o'clock when
the missioner made his call. Before he left, Kent gave him a brief note
for Fingers. He had just finished his dinner, and Carter had taken the
dishes away, when Father Layonne returned. A look at his face, and Kent
knew that he bore unpleasant tidings.

"Fingers is an--an apostate," he said, his lips twitching as if to keep
back a denunciation still more emphatic. "He was sitting on his porch
again this morning, half asleep, and says that after a great deal of
thought he has come to the definite opinion that he can do nothing for
you. He read your note and burned it with a match. He asked me to tell
you that the scheme he had in mind was too risky--for him. He says he
won't come up again. And--"

The missioner was rubbing his brown, knotted hands together raspingly.

"Go on," said Kent a little thickly.

"He has also sent Inspector Kedsty the same word," finished Father
Layonne. "His word to Kedsty is that he can see no fighting chance for
you, and that it is useless effort on his part to put up a defense for
you. Jimmy!" His hand touched Kent's arm gently.

Kent's face was white. He faced the window, and for a space he did not
see. Then with pencil and paper he wrote again to Fingers.

It was late in the afternoon before Father Layonne returned with an
answer. Again it was verbal. Fingers had read his note and had burned
it with a match. He was particular that the last scrap of it was turned
into ash, the missioner said. And he had nothing to say to Kent that he
had not previously said. He simply could not go on with their plans.
And he requested Kent not to write to him again. He was sorry, but that
was his definite stand in the matter.

Even then Kent could not bring himself to believe. All the rest of the
day he tried to put himself in Fingers' brain, but his old trick of
losing his personality in that of another failed him this time. He
could find no reason for the sudden change in Fingers, unless it was
what Fingers had frankly confessed to Father Layonne--fear. The
influence of mind, in this instance, had failed in its assault upon a
mass of matter. Fingers' nerve had gone back on him.

The fifth day Kent rose from his cot with hope still not quite dead in
his heart. But that day passed and the sixth, and the missioner brought
word that Fingers was the old Dirty Fingers again, sitting from morning
till night on his porch.

On the seventh day came the final crash to Kent's hopes. Kedsty's
program had changed. He, Kent, was to start for Edmonton the following
morning under charge of Pelly and a special constable!

After this Kent felt a strange change come over him. Years seemed to
multiply themselves in his body. His mind, beaten back, no longer
continued in its old channels of thought. The thing pressed upon him
now as fatalistic. Fingers had failed him. Fortune had failed him.
Everything had failed, and for the first time in the weeks of his
struggle against death and a thing worse than death, he cursed himself.
There was a limit to optimism and a limit to hope. His limit was
reached.

In the afternoon of this seventh day came a depressing gloom. It was
filled with a drizzling rain. Hour after hour this drizzle kept up,
thickening as the night came. He ate his supper by the light of a cell
lamp. By eight o'clock it was black outside. In that blackness there
was an occasional flash of lightning and rumble of thunder. On the roof
of the barracks the rain beat steadily and monotonously.

His watch was in his hand--it was a quarter after nine o'clock, when he
heard the door at the far exit of the hall open and close. He had heard
it a dozen times since supper and paid no attention to it, but this
time it was followed by a voice at the detachment office that hit him
like an electrical shock. Then, a moment later, came low laughter. It
was a woman who laughed.

He stood up. He heard the detachment office door close, and silence
followed. The watch in his hand seemed ticking off the seconds with
frantic noise. He shoved it into his pocket and stood staring out into
the prison alcove. A few minutes later the office door opened again.
This time it was not closed. He heard distinctly a few light,
hesitating footsteps, and his heart seemed to stop its beating. They
came to the head of the lighted alcove, and for perhaps the space of a
dozen seconds there was silence again. Then they advanced.

Another moment, and Kent was staring through the bars into the glorious
eyes of Marette Radisson!




CHAPTER XIII


In that moment Kent did not speak. He made no sound. He gave no sign of
welcome, but stood in the middle of his cell, staring. If life had hung
upon speech in those few seconds, he would have died, but everything he
would have said, and more, was in his face. The girl must have seen it.
With her two hands she was gripping at the bars of the cell and looking
through at him. Kent saw that her face was pale in the lamp glow. In
that pallor her violet eyes were like pools of black. The hood of her
dripping raincoat was thrown partly back, and against the whiteness of
her cheeks her hair glistened wet, and her long lashes were heavy with
the rain.

Kent, without moving over the narrow space between them, reached out
his hands and found his voice. "Marette!"

Her hands had tightened about the bars until they were bloodless. Her
lips were parted. She was breathing quickly, but she did not smile; she
made no response to his greeting, gave no sign even of recognition.
What happened after that was so sudden and amazing that his heart
stopped dead still. Without warning she stepped back from the cell and
began to scream and then drew away from him, still facing him and still
screaming, as if something had terrified her.

Kent heard the crash of a chair in the detachment office, excited
voices, and the running of feet. Marette Radisson had withdrawn to the
far corner of the alcove, and as Carter and Pelly ran toward her, she
stood, a picture of horror, pointing at Kent's cell. The two constables
rushed past her. Close behind them followed the special officer
detailed to take Kent to Edmonton.

Kent had not moved. He was like one petrified. Close up against the
bars came the faces of Pelly, Carter, and the special constable, filled
with the expressions of men who had expected to look in upon tragedy.
And then, behind their backs, Kent saw the other thing happen. Swift as
a flash Marette Radisson's hand went in and out of her raincoat, and at
the backs of the three men she was leveling a revolver! Not only did
Kent see that swift change, but the still swifter change that came into
her face. Her eyes shot to his just once, and they were filled with a
laughing, exultant fire. With one mighty throb Kent's heart seemed to
leap out through the bars of his prison, and at the look in his face
and eyes Carter swung suddenly around.

"Please don't make any disturbance, gentlemen," said Marette Radisson.
"The first man that makes a suspicious move, I shall kill!"

Her voice was calm and thrilling. It had a deadly ring in it. The
revolver in her hand was held steadily. It was a slim-barreled, black
thing. The very color of it was menacing. And behind it were the girl's
eyes, pools of flame. The three men were facing them now, shocked to
speechlessness. Automatically they seemed to obey her command to throw
up their hands. Then she leveled her grim little gun straight at
Pelly's heart.

"You have the key," she said. "Unlock the cell!" Felly fumbled and
produced the key. She watched him closely. Then suddenly the special
constable dropped his arms with a coarse laugh. "A pretty trick," he
said, "but the bluff won't work!"

"Oh, but it will!" came the reply.

The little black gun was shifted to him, even as the constable's
fingers touched his revolver holster. With half-smiling lips, Marette's
eyes blazed at him.

"Please put up your hands," she commanded.

The constable hesitated; then his fingers gripped the butt of his gun.
Kent, holding his breath, saw the almost imperceptible tensing of
Marette's body and the wavering of Pelly's arms over his head. Another
moment and he, too, would have called the bluff if it were that. But
that moment did not come. From the slim, black barrel of the girl's
revolver leaped forth a sudden spurt of smoke and flame, and the
special constable lurched back against the cell bars, caught himself as
he half fell, and then stood with his pistol arm hanging limp and
useless at his side. He had not made a sound, but his face was twisted
in pain.

"Open the cell door!"

A second time the deadly-looking little gun was pointed straight at
Pelly's heart. The half-smile was gone from the girl's lips now. Her
eyes blazed a deeper fire. She was breathing quickly, and she leaned a
little toward Pelly, repeating her command. The words were partly
drowned in a sudden crash of thunder. But Pelly understood. He saw her
lips form the words, and half heard,

"Open the door, or I shall kill you!"

He no longer hesitated. The key grated in the lock, and Kent himself
flung the door wide open and sprang out. He was quick to see and seize
upon opportunity and swift to act. The astounding audacity of the
girl's ruse, her clever acting in feigning horror to line the guards up
at the cell door and the thrilling decisiveness with which she had used
the little black gun in her hand set every drop of blood in his body
afire. No sooner was he outside his cell than he was the old Jim Kent,
fighting man. He whipped Carter's automatic out of its holster and,
covering Pelly and the special constable, relieved them of their guns.
Behind him he heard Marette's voice, calm and triumphant,

"Lock them in the cell, Mr. Kent!"

He did not look at her, but swung his gun on Pelly and the special
constable, and they backed through the door into the cell. Carter had
not moved. He was looking straight at the girl, and the little black
gun was leveled at his breast. Pelly and the wounded man did not see,
but on Carter's lips was a strange smile. His eyes met Kent's, and
there was revealed for an instant a silent flash of comradeship and an
unmistakable something else. Carter was glad! It made Kent want to
reach out and grip his hand, but in place of that he backed him into
the cell, turned the key in the lock, and with the key in his hand
faced Marette Radisson. Her eyes were shining gloriously. He had never
seen such splendid, fighting eyes, nor the birdlike swiftness with
which she turned and ran down the hall, calling him to follow her.

He was only a step behind her in passing Kedsty's office. She reached
the outer door and opened it. It was pitch-dark outside, and a deluge
of rain beat into their faces. He observed that she did not replace the
hood of her raincoat when she darted out. As he closed the door, her
hand groped to his arm and from that found his hand. Her fingers clung
to his tightly.

He did not ask questions as they faced the black chaos of rain. A
rending streak of lightning revealed her for an instant, her bare head
bowed to the wind. Then came a crash of thunder that shook the earth
under their feet, and her fing

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