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

Author: James Oliver Curwood

Release Date: December, 2003 [Etext #4707]
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[This file was first posted on March 5, 2002]

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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 fingers closed more tightly
about his hand. And in that crash he heard her voice, half
laughing, half broken, saying,

"I'm afraid--of thunder!"

In that storm his laugh rang out, a great, free, joyous laugh. He
wanted to stop in that instant, sweep her up into his arms, and
carry her. He wanted to shout like an insane man in his mad joy.
And a moment before she had risked everything in facing three of
the bravest men in the service and had shot one of them! He
started to say something, but she increased her speed until she
was almost running.

She was not leading Jim in the direction of the river, but toward
the forest beyond Kedsty's bungalow. Not for an instant did she
falter in that drenched and impenetrable darkness. There was
something imperative in the clasp of her fingers, even though they
tightened perceptibly when the thunder crashed. They gave Kent the
conviction that there was no doubt in her mind as to the point she
was striving for. He took advantage of the lightning, for each
time it gave him a glimpse of her bare, wet head bowed to the
storm, her white profile, and her slim figure fighting over the
sticky earth under her feet.

It was this presence of her, and not the thought of escape, that
exalted him now. She was at his side. Her hand lay close in his.
The lightning gave him glimpses of her. He felt the touch of her
shoulder, her arm, her body, as they drew close together. The life
and warmth and thrill of her seemed to leap into his own veins
through the hand he held. He had dreamed of her. And now suddenly
she had become a part of him, and the glory of it rode
overwhelmingly over all other emotions that were struggling in his
brain--the glory of the thought that it was she who had come to
him in the last moment, who had saved him, and who was now leading
him to freedom through the crash of storm.

At the crest of a low knoll between barracks and Kedsty's bungalow
she stopped for the first time. He had there, again, the almost
irresistible impulse to reach out in the darkness and take her
into his arms, crying out to her of his joy, of a happiness that
had come to him greater even than the happiness of freedom. But he
stood, holding her hand, his tongue speechless, and he was looking
at her when the lightning revealed her again. In a rending flash
it cut open the night so close that the hiss of it was like the
passing of a giant rocket, and involuntarily she shrank against
him, and her free hand caught his arm at the instant thunder
crashed low over their heads. His own hand groped out, and in the
blackness it touched for an instant her wet face and then her
drenched hair.

"Marette," he cried, "where are we going?"

"Down there," came her voice.

Her hand had left his arm, and he sensed that she was pointing,
though he could not see. Ahead of them was a chaotic pit of gloom,
a sea of blackness, and in the heart of that sea he saw a light.
He knew that it was a lamp in one of Kedsty's windows and that
Marette was guiding herself by that light when she started down
the slope with her hand still in his. That she had made no effort
to withdraw it made him unconscious of the almost drowning
discomfort of the fresh deluge of rain that beat their faces. One
of her fingers had gripped itself convulsively about his thumb,
like a child afraid of falling. And each time the thunder crashed
that soft hold on his thumb tightened, and Kent's soul acclaimed.

They drew swiftly nearer to the light, for it was not far from the
knoll to Kedsty's place. Kent's mind leaped ahead. A little west
by north from the inspector's bungalow was Kim's Bayou and it was
undoubtedly to the forest trail over which she had gone at least
once before, on the night of the mysterious assault upon Mooie,
that Marette was leading him. Questions began to rush upon him
now, immediate demanding questions. They were going to the river.
They must be going to the river. It was the quickest and surest
way of escape. Had Marette prepared for that? And was she going
with him?

He had no time to answer. Their feet struck the gravel path
leading to the door of Kedsty's place, and straight up this path
the girl turned, straight toward the light blazing in the window.
Then, to his amazement, he heard in the sweep of storm her voice
crying out in glad triumph,

"We're home!"

Home! His breath came in a sudden gulp. He was more than
astounded. He was shocked. Was she mad or playing an amazingly
improper joke? She had freed him from a cell to lead him to the
home of the Inspector of Police, the deadliest enemy the world now
held for him. He stopped, and Marette Radisson tugged at his hand,
pulling him after her, insisting that he follow. She was clutching
his thumb as though she thought he might attempt to escape.

"It is safe, M'sieu Jeems," she cried. "Don't be afraid!"

M'sieu Jeems! And the laughing note of mockery in her voice! He
rallied himself and followed her up the three steps to the door.
Her hand found the latch, the door opened, and swiftly they were
inside. The lamp in the window was close to them, but for a space
he could not see because of the water in his eyes. He blinked it
out, drew a hand across his face, and looked at Marette. She stood
three or four paces from him. Her face was very white, and she was
panting as if hard-run for breath, but her eyes were shining, and
she was smiling at him. The water was running from her in streams.

"You are wet," she said. "And I am afraid you will catch cold.
Come with me!"

Again she was making fun of him just as she had made fun of him at
Cardigan's! She turned, and he ran upstairs behind her. At the top
she waited for him, and as he came up, she reached out her hand,
as if apologizing for having taken it from him when they entered
the bungalow. He held it again as she led him down the hall to a
door farthest from the stair. This she opened, and they entered.
It was dark inside, and the girl withdrew her hand again, and Kent
heard her moving across the room. In that darkness a new and
thrilling emotion possessed him. The air he was breathing was not
the air he had breathed in the hall. In it was the sweet scent of
flowers, and of something else--the faint and intangible perfume
of a woman's room. He waited, staring. His eyes were wide when a
match leaped into flame in Marette's fingers. Then he stood in the
glow of a lamp.

He continued to stare in the stupidity of a shock to which he was
not accustomed. Marette, as if to give him time to acquaint
himself with his environment, was taking off her raincoat. Under
it her slim little figure was dry, except where the water had run
down from her uncovered head to her shoulders. He noticed that she
wore a short skirt, and boots, adorably small boots of splendidly
worked caribou. And then suddenly she came toward him with both
hands reaching out to him.

"Please shake hands and say you're glad," she said. "Don't look
so--so--frightened. This is my room and you are safe here."

He held her hands tight, staring into the wonderful, violet eyes
that were looking at him with the frank and unembarrassed
directness of a child's. "I--I don't understand," he struggled.
"Marette, where is Kedsty?"

"He should be returning very soon."

"And he knows you are here, of course?"

She nodded. "I have been here for a month."

Kent's hands closed tighter about hers. "I--I don't understand,"
he repeated. "Tonight Kedsty will know that it was you who rescued
me and you who shot Constable Willis. Good God, we must lose no
time in getting away!"

"There is great reason why Kedsty dare not betray my presence in
his house," she said quietly. "He would die first! And he will not
suspect that I have brought you to my room, that an escaped
murderer is hiding under the very roof of the Inspector of Police!
They will search for you everywhere but here! Isn't it splendid?
He planned it all, every move, even to the screaming in front of
your cell--"

"You mean--Kedsty?"

She withdrew her hands and stepped back from him, and again he saw
in her eyes a flash of the fire that had come into them when she
leveled her gun at the three men in the prison alcove. "No, not
Kedsty. He would hang you, and he would kill me, if he dared. I
mean that great, big, funny-looking friend of yours, M'sieu
Fingers!"





CHAPTER XIV


The manner in which Kent stared at Marette Radisson after her
announcement that it was Dirty Fingers who had planned his escape
must have been, he thought afterward, little less than imbecile.
He had wronged Fingers, he believed. He had called him a coward
and a backslider. In his mind he had reviled him for helping to
raise his hopes to the highest pitch, only to smash them in the
end. And all the time Dirty Fingers had been planning this! Kent
began to grin. The thing was clear in a moment--that is, the
immediate situation was clear--or he thought it was. But there
were questions--one, ten, a hundred of them. They wanted to pile
over the end of his tongue, questions that had little or nothing
to do with Kedsty. He saw nothing now but Marette.

She had begun to take down her hair. It fell about her in wet,
shining masses. Kent had never seen anything like it. It clung to
her face, her neck, her shoulders and arms, and shrouded her
slender body to her hips, lovely in its confusion. Little drops of
water glistened in it like diamonds in the lamp glow, trickling
down and dropping to the floor. It was like a glowing coat of
velvety sable beaten by storm. Marette ran her arms up through it,
shaking it out in clouds, and a mist of rain leaped out from it,
some of it striking Kent in the face. He forgot Fingers. He forgot
Kedsty. His brain flamed only with the electrifying nearness of
her. It was the thought of her that had inspired the greatest hope
in him. It was his dreams of her, somewhere on the Big River, that
had given him his great courage to believe in the ultimate of
things. And now time and space had taken a leap backward. She was
not four or five hundred miles north. There was no long quest
ahead of him. She was here, within a few feet of him, tossing the
wet from that glorious hair he had yearned to touch, brushing it
out now, with her back toward him, in front of her mirror.

And as he sat there, uttering no word, looking at her, the demands
of the immense responsibility that had fallen upon him and of the
great fight that lay ahead pounded within him with naked fists.
Fingers had planned. She had executed. It was up to him to finish.

He saw her, not as a creature to win, but as a priceless
possession. Her fight had now become his fight. The rain was
beating against the window near him. Out there was blackness, the
river, the big world. His blood leaped with the old fighting fire.
They were going tonight; they must be going tonight! Why should
they wait? Why should they waste time under Kedsty's roof when
freedom lay out there for the taking? He watched the swift
movements of her hand, listened to the silken rustle of the brush
as it smoothed out her long hair. Bewilderment, reason, desire for
action fought inside him.

Suddenly she faced him again. "It has just this moment occurred to
me," she said, "that you haven't said 'Thank you.'"

So suddenly that he startled her he was at her side. He did not
hesitate this time, as he had hesitated in his room at Cardigan's
place. He caught her two hands in his, and with them he felt the
soft, damp crush of her hair between his fingers. Words tumbled
from his lips. He could not remember afterward all that he said.
Her eyes widened, and they never for an instant left his own.
Thank her! He told her what had happened to him--in the heart and
soul of him--from the hour she had come to him at Cardigan's. He
told her of dreams and plans, of his determination to find her
again after he had escaped, if it took him all his life. He told
her of Mercer, of his discovery of her visit to Kim's Bayou, of
his scheme to follow her down the Three Rivers, to seek for her at
Fort Simpson, to follow her to the Valley of Silent Men, wherever
it was. Thank her! He held her hands so tight they hurt, and his
voice trembled. Under the cloud of her hair a slow fire burned in
Marette Radisson's cheeks. But it did not show in her eyes. They
looked at him so steadily, so unfalteringly, that his own face
burned before he had finished what was in his mind to say, and he
freed her hands and stepped back from her again.

"Forgive me for saying all that," he entreated. "But it's true.
You came to me there, at Cardigan's place, like something I'd
always dreamed about, but never expected to find. And you came to
me again, at the cell, like--"

"Yes, I know how I came," she interrupted him. "Through the mud
and the rain, Mr. Kent. And it was so black I lost my way and was
terrified to think that I might not find barracks. I was half an
hour behind Mr. Fingers' schedule. For that reason I think
Inspector Kedsty may return at any moment, and you must not talk
so loud--or so much."

"Lord!" he breathed in a whisper. "I have said a lot in a short
time, haven't I? But it isn't a hundredth part of what I want to
get out of my system. I won't ask the million questions that want
to be asked. But I must know why we are here. Why have we come to
Kedsty's? Why didn't we make for the river? There couldn't be a
better night to get away."

"But it is not so good as the fifth night from now will be," she
said, resuming the task of drying her hair. "On that night you may
go to the river. Our plans were a little upset, you know, by
Inspector Kedsty's change in the date on which you were to leave
for Edmonton. Arrangements have been made so that on the fifth
night you may leave safely."

"And you?"

"I shall remain here." And then she added in a low voice that
struck his heart cold, "I shall remain to pay Kedsty the price
which he will ask for what has happened tonight."

"Good God!" he cried. "Marette!"

She turned on him swiftly. "No, no, I don't mean that he will hurt
me," she cried, a fierce little note in her voice. "I would kill
him before that! I'm sorry I told you. But you must not question
me. You shall not!"

She was trembling. He had never seen her excited like that before,
and as she stood there before him, he knew that he was not afraid
for her in the way that had flashed into his mind. She had not
spoken empty words. She would fight. She would kill, if it was
necessary to kill. And he saw her, all at once, as he had not seen
her before. He remembered a painting which he had seen a long time
ago in Montreal. It was L'Esprit de la Solitude--The Spirit of the
Wild--painted by Conne, the picturesque French-Canadian friend of
Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, and a genius of the far backwoods
who had drawn his inspiration from the heart of the wilderness
itself. And that painting stood before him now in flesh and blood,
its crudeness gone, but the marvelous spirit it had breathed
remaining. Shrouded in her tumbled hair, her lips a little parted,
every line of her slender body vibrant with an emotion which
seemed consuming her, her beautiful eyes aglow with its fire, he
saw in her, as Conne must have seen at another time, the soul of
the great North itself. She seemed to him to breathe of the God's
country far down the Three Rivers; of its almost savage
fearlessness; its beauty, its sunshine, and its storm; its
tragedy, its pathos, and its song. In her was the courage and the
glory of that North. He had seen; and now he felt these things,
and the thrill of them swept over him like an inundation.

He had heard her soft laugh, she had made fun of him when he
thought he was dying; she had kissed him, she had fought for him,
she had clung in terror to his hand when the lightning flashed;
and now she stood with her little hands clenched in her hair, like
a storm about to break. A moment ago she was so near that he had
almost taken her in his arms. Now, in an instant, she had placed
something so vast between them that he would not have dared to
touch her hand or her hair. Like sun and cloud and wind she
changed, and for him each change added to the wonder of her. And
now it was storm. He saw it in her eyes, her hands, her body. He
felt the electrical nearness of it in those low-spoken, trembling
words, "YOU SHALL NOT!" The room seemed surcharged for a moment
with impending shock. And then his physical eyes took in again the
slimness of her, seized upon the alluring smallness of her and the
fact that he could have tossed her to the ceiling without great
effort. And yet he saw her as one sees a goddess.

"No, I won't ask you questions, when you look at me like that," he
said, finding his tongue. "I won't ask you what this price is that
Kedsty may demand, because you're not going to pay it. If you
won't go with me, I won't go. I'd rather stay here and be hung.
I'm not asking you questions, so please don't shoot, but if you
told me the truth, and you belong in the North, you're going back
with me--or I'm not going. I'll not budge an inch."

She drew a deep breath, as if something had greatly relieved her.
Again her violet eyes came out from the shadow into sunlight, and
her trembling mouth suddenly broke into a smile. It was not
apologetic. There was about it a quick and spontaneous gladness
which she made no effort at all to conceal.

"That is nice of you," she said. "I'm glad to hear you say it. I
never knew how pleasant it was to have some one who was willing to
be hung for me. But you will go. And I will not go. There isn't
time to explain all about it just now, for Inspector Kedsty will
be here very soon, and I must dry my hair and show you your
hiding-place--if you have to hide."

She began to brush her hair again. In the mirror Kent caught a
glimpse of the smile still trembling on her lips.

"I'm not questioning you," he guarded himself again, "but if you
could only understand how anxious I am to know where Kedsty is,
how Fingers found you, why you made us believe you were leaving
the Landing and then returned--and--how badly I want to know
something about you--I almost believe you'd talk a little while
you are drying your hair."

"It was Mooie, the old Indian," she said. "It was he who found out
in some way that I was here, and then M'sieu Fingers came himself
one night when the Inspector was away--got in through a window and
simply said that you had sent him, when I was just about to shoot
him. You see, I knew you weren't going to die. Kedsty had told me
that. I was going to help you in another way, if M'sieu Fingers
hadn't come. Inspector Kedsty was over there tonight, at his
cabin, when the thing happened down there. It was a part of
Fingers' scheme--to keep him out of the way."

Suddenly she grew rigid. The brush remained poised in her hair.
Kent, too, heard the sound that she had heard. It was a loud
tapping at one of the curtained windows, the tapping of some
metallic object. And that window was fifteen feet above the
ground!

With a little cry the girl threw down her brush, ran to the
window, and raised and lowered the curtain once. Then she turned
to Kent, swiftly dividing her hair into thick strands and weaving
them into a braid.

"It is Mooie," she cried. "Kedsty is coming!"

She caught his hand and hurried him toward the head of the bed,
where two long curtains were strung on a wire. She drew these
apart. Behind them were what seemed to Kent an innumerable number
of feminine garments.

"You must hide in them, if you have to," she said, the excited
little tremble in her voice again. "I don't think it will come to
that, but if it does, you must! Bury yourself way back in them,
and keep quiet. If Kedsty finds you are here--"

She looked into his eyes, and it seemed to Kent that there was
something which was very near to fear in them now.

"If he should find you here, it would mean something terrible for
me," she went on, her hands creeping to his arms. "I can not tell
you what it is now, but it would be worse than death. Will you
promise to stay here, no matter what happens down there, no matter
what you may hear? Will you--Mr. Kent?"

"Not if you call me Mr. Kent," he said, something thickening in
his throat.

"Will you--Jeems? Will you--no matter what happens--if I promise--
when I come back--to kiss you?"

Her hands slipped almost caressingly from his arms, and then she
had turned swiftly and was gone through the partly open door,
closing it after her, before he could give his promise.





CHAPTER XV


For a space he stood where she had left him, staring at the door
through which she had gone. The nearness of her in those last few
seconds of her presence, the caressing touch of her hands, what he
had seen in her eyes, her promise to kiss him if he did not reveal
himself--these things, and the thought of the splendid courage
that must be inspiring her to face Kedsty now, made him blind even
to the door and the wall at which he was apparently looking. He
saw only her face, as he had seen it in that last moment--her
eyes, the tremble of her lips, and the fear which she had not
quite hidden from him. She was afraid of Kedsty. He was sure of
it. For she had not smiled; there was no flicker of humor in her
eyes, when she called him Jeems, an intimate use of the names Jim
and James in the far North. It was not facetiously that she had
promised to kiss him. An almost tragic seriousness had possessed
her. And it was that seriousness that thrilled him--that, and the
amazing frankness with which she had coupled the name Jeems with
the promise of her lips. Once before she had called him Jeems. But
it was M'sieu Jeems then, and there had been a bit of taunting
laughter in her voice. Jim or James meant nothing, but Jeems--He
had heard mothers call little children that, in moments of
endearment. He knew that wives and sweethearts used it in that
same way. For Jim and James were not uncommon names up and down
the Three Rivers, even among the half-breeds and French, and Jeems
was the closer and more intimate thing bred of it.

His heart was thumping riotously as he went to the door and
listened. A little while ago, when she faced him with flashing
eyes, commanding him not to question her, he had felt an abyss
under his feet. Now he was on a mountain. And he knew that no
matter what he heard, unless it was her cry for help, he would not
go down.

After a little he opened the door a mere crack so that sound might
come to him. She had not forbidden that. Through the crack he
could see a dim glow of light in the lower hall. But he heard no
sound, and it occurred to him that old Mooie could still run
swiftly, and that it might be some time before Kedsty would
arrive.

As he waited, he looked about the room. His first impression was
that Marette must have lived in it for a long time. It was a
woman's room, without the newness of sudden and unpremeditated
occupancy. He knew that formerly it had been Kedsty's room, but
nothing of Kedsty remained in it now. And then, as his wondering
eyes beheld the miracle, a number of things struck him with
amazing significance. He no longer doubted that Marette Radisson
was of the far Northland. His faith in that was absolute. If there
had been a last question in his mind, it was wiped away because
she called him Jeems. Yet this room seemed to give the lie to his
faith. Fascinated by his discovery of things, he drew away from
the door and stood over the dressing-table in front of the mirror.

Marette had not prepared the room for him, and her possessions
were there. It did not strike him as sacrilege to look at them,
the many intimate little things that are mysteriously used in the
process of a lady's toilette. It was their number and variety that
astounded him. He might have expected them in the boudoir of the
Governor General's daughter at Ottawa, but not here--and much less
farther north. What he saw was of exquisite material and
workmanship. And then, as if attracted by a magnet, his eyes were
drawn to something else. It was a row of shoes neatly and
carefully arranged on the floor at one side of the dressing-table.

He stared at them, astounded. Never had he seen such an array of
feminine footwear intended for the same pair of feet. And it was
not Northern footwear. Every individual little beauty in that
amazing row stood on a high heel! Their variety was something to
which he had long been a stranger. There were buttoned boots,
laced boots, brown boots, black boots, and white boots, with
dangerously high and fragile looking heels; there were dainty
little white kid slippers, slippers with bows, slippers with cut
steel buckles, and slippers with dainty ribbon ties; there were
high-heeled oxfords and high-heeled patent leather pumps! He
gasped. He reached over, moved by an automatic sort of impulse,
and took a satiny little pump in his hand.

The size of it gave him a decidedly pleasant mental shock, and,
beginning to feel like one prying into a sleeper's secrets, he
looked inside it. The size was there--number three. And it had
come from Favre's in Montreal! One after another he looked inside
half a dozen others. And all of them had come from Favre's in
Montreal. The little shoes, more than all else that he had seen or
that had happened, sent a question pounding through his brain. Who
was Marette Radisson?

And that question was followed by other questions, until they
tumbled over one another in his head. If she was from Montreal,
why was she going north? If she belonged in the North, if she was
a part of it, why was she taking all of this apparently worthless
footwear with her? Why had she come to Athabasca Landing? What was
she to Kedsty? Why was she hiding under his roof? Why--

He stopped himself, trying to find some one answer in all that
chaos of questions. It was impossible for him to take his eyes
from the shoes. A thought seized him. Ludicrously he dropped upon
his knees in front of the row and with a face growing hotter each
moment examined them all. But he wanted to know. And the discovery
he made was that most of the footwear had been worn, some of it so
slightly, however, that the impression of the foot was barely
visible.

He rose to his feet and continued his inquiry. Of course she had
expected him to look about. One couldn't help seeing, unless one
were blind. He would have cut off a hand before opening one of the
dressing-table drawers. But Marette herself had told him to hide
behind the curtains if it became necessary, and it was an
excusable caution for him to look behind those curtains now, to
see what sort of hiding-place he had. He returned to the door
first and listened. There was still no sound from below. Then he
drew the curtains apart, as Marette had drawn them. Only he looked
longer. He would tell her about it when she returned, if the act
needed an apology.

His impression was a man's impression. What he saw was a
billowing, filmy mass of soft stuff, and out of it there greeted
him the faintest possible scent of lilac sachet powder. He closed
the curtains with a deep breath of utter joy and of consternation.
The two emotions were a jumble to him. The shoes, all that mass of
soft stuff behind the curtains, were exquisitely feminine. The
breath of perfume had come to him straight out of a woman's soul.
There were seduction and witchery to it. He saw Marette, an
enrapturing vision of loveliness, floating before his eyes in that
sacred and mysterious vestment of which he had stolen a half-
frightened glimpse. In white--the white, cobwebby thing of laces
and embroidery that had hung straight before his eyes--in white--
with her glorious black hair, her violet eyes, her--

And then it was that the incongruity of the thing, the almost
sheer impossibility of it, clashed in upon his vision. Yet his
faith was not shaken. Marette Radisson was of the North. He could
not disbelieve that, even in the face of these amazing things that
confronted him.

Suddenly he heard a sound that was like the explosion of a gun
under his feet. It was the opening and closing of the hall door--
but mostly the closing. The slam of it shook the house and rattled
the glass in the windows. Kedsty had returned, and he was in a
rage. Kent extinguished the light so that the room was in
darkness. Then he went to the door. He could hear the quick, heavy
tread of Kedsty's feet After that came the closing of a second
door, followed by the rumble of Kedsty's voice. Kent was
disappointed.

The Inspector of Police and Marette were in a room too far distant
for him to distinguish what was said. But he knew that Kedsty had
returned to barracks and had discovered what had happened there.
After an interval his voice was a steady rumble. It rose higher.
He heard the crash of a chair. Then the voice ceased, and after it
came the tramping of Kedsty's feet. Not once did he catch the
sound of Marette's voice, but he was sure that in the interval of
silence she was talking. Then Kedsty's voice broke forth more
furiously than before. Kent's fingers dug into the sill of the
door. Each moment added to his conviction that Marette was in
danger. It was not physical violence he feared. He did not believe
Kedsty capable of perpetrating that upon a woman. It was fear that
he would take her to barracks. The fact that Marette had told him
there was a powerful reason why Kedsty would not do this failed to
assure him. For she had also told him that Kedsty would kill her,
if he dared. He held himself in readiness. At a cry from her, or
the first move on Kedsty's part to take her from the bungalow, he
would give battle in spite of Marette's warning.

He almost hoped one of these two things would happen. As he stood
there, listening, waiting, the thought became almost a prayer. He
had Pelly's revolver. Within twenty seconds he could have Kedsty
looking down the barrel of it. The night was ideal for escape.
Within half an hour they would be on the river. They could even
load up with provisions from Kedsty's place. He opened the door a
little more, scarcely making an effort to combat the impulse that
dragged him out. Marette must be in danger, or she would not have
confessed to him that she was in the house of a man who would like
to see her dead. Why she was there did not interest him deeply
now. It was the fact of the moment that was moving him swiftly
toward action.

The door below opened again, and Kent's body grew rigid. He heard
Kedsty charging through the lower hall like a mad bull. The outer
door opened, slammed shut, and he was gone.

Kent drew back into the darkness of his room. It was some moments
before he heard Marette coming slowly up the stairs. She seemed to
be groping her way, though there was a dim illumination out there.
Then she came through the door into the blackness of her room.

"Jeems," she whispered.

He went to her. Her hands reached out, and again they rested on
his arms.

"You--you didn't come down the stair?"

"No."

"You--didn't hear?"

"I heard no words. Only Kedsty's voice."

It seemed to him that her voice, when she spoke again, trembled
with an immeasurable relief. "You were good, Jeems. I am glad."

In that darkness he could not see. Yet something reached into him,
thrilling him, quickening his pulse with a thing to which his eyes
were blind. He bent down. He found her lips upturned, offering him
the sweetness of the kiss which was to be his reward; and as he
felt their warmth upon his own, he felt also the slightest
pressure of her hands upon his arms.

"He is gone. We will light the lamp again," she said then.





CHAPTER XVI


Kent stood still while Marette moved in that gloom, found matches,
and lighted the lamp. He had not spoken a word after the kiss. He
had not taken advantage of it. The gentle pressure of her hands
had restrained him from taking her in his arms. But the kiss
itself fired him with a wild and glorious thrill that was like a
vibrant music to which every atom of life in his body responded.
If he claimed his reward at all, he had expected her kiss to be
perhaps indifferent, at least neutral. But the lips she had given
him there in the darkness of the room were warm, living, breathing
lips. They had not been snatched away from him too quickly. Their
sweetness, for an instant, had lingered.

Then, in the lamp glow, he was looking into Marette Radisson's
face. He knew that his own was aflame. He had no desire to hide
its confession, and he was eager to find what lay in her own eyes.
And he was astonished, and then startled. The kiss had not
disturbed Marette. It was as if it had never happened.

She was not embarrassed, and there was no hint of color in her
face. It was her deathly whiteness that startled him, a pallor
emphasized by the dark masses of her hair, and a strange glow in
her eyes. It was not a glow brought there by the kiss. It was
fear, fading slowly out of them as he looked, until at last it was
gone, and her lips trembled with an apologetic smile.

"He was very angry," she said. "How easily some men lose their
tempers, don't they--Jeems?"

The little break in her voice, her brave effort to control
herself, and the whimsical bit of smile that accompanied her words
made him want to do what the gentle pressure of her hands had kept
him from doing a few moments before--pick her up in his arms. What
she was trying to hide he saw plainly. She had been in danger, a
danger greater than that which she had quietly and fearlessly
faced at barracks. And she was still afraid of that menace. It was
the last thing which she wanted him to know, and yet he knew it. A
new force swept through him. It was the force which comes of
mastery, of possessorship, of fighting grimly against odds. It
rose in a mighty triumph. It told him this girl belonged to him,
that she was his to fight for. And he was going to fight. Marette
saw the change that came into his face. For a moment after she had
spoken there was silence between them. Outside the storm beat in a
fiercer blast. A roll of thunder crashed over the bungalow. The
windows rattled in a sweep of wind and rain. Kent, looking at her,
his muscles hardening, his face growing grimmer, nodded toward the
window at which Mooie's signal had come.

"It is a splendid night--for us," he said. "And we must go."

She did not answer.

"In the eyes of the law I am a murderer," he went on. "You saved
me. You shot a man. In those same eyes you are a criminal. It is
folly to remain here. It is sheer suicide for both of us. If
Kedsty--"

"If Kedsty does not do what I told him to do to-night, I shall
kill him!" she said.

The quietness of her words, the steadiness of her eyes, held him
speechless. Again it seemed to him, as it had seemed to him in his
room at Cardigan's place, that it was a child who was looking at
him and speaking to him. If she had shown fear a few moments
before, that fear was not revealed in her face now. She was not
excited. Her eyes were softly and quietly beautiful. She amazed
him and discomfited him. Against that child-like sureness he felt
himself helpless. Its potency was greater than his strength and
greater than his determination. It placed between them instantly a
vast gulf, a gulf that might be bridged by prayer and entreaty,
but never by force. There was no hint of excitement in her threat
against Kedsty, and yet in the very calmness of it he felt its
deadliness.

A whimsical half-smile was trembling on her lips again, and a
warmer glow came into her eyes. "Do you know," she said, "that
according to an old and sacred code of the North you belong to
me?"

"I have heard of that code," he replied. "A hundred years ago I
should have been your slave. If it exists today, I am happy."

"Yes, you see the point, Jeems, don't you? You were about to die,
probably. I think they would have hanged you. And I saved your
life. Therefore your life belongs to me, for I insist that the
code still lives. You are my property, and I am going to do with
you as I please, until I turn you over to the Rivers. And you are
not going tonight. You shall wait here for Laselle and his
brigade."

"Laselle--Jean Laselle?"

She nodded. "Yes, that is why you must wait. We have made a
splendid arrangement. When Laselle and his brigade start north,
you go with them. And no one will ever know. You are safe here. No
one will think of looking for you under the roof of the Inspector
of Police."

"But you, Marette!" He caught himself, remembering her injunction
not to question her. Marette shrugged her slim shoulders the
slightest bit and nodded for him to look upon what she knew he had
already seen, her room.

"It is not uncomfortable," she said. "I have been here for a
number of weeks, and nothing has happened to me. I am quite safe.
Inspector Kedsty has not looked inside that door since the day
your big red-headed friend saw me down in the poplars. He has not
put a foot on the stair. That is the dead-line. And--I know--you
are wondering. You are asking yourself a great many questions--a
bon droit, M'sieu Jeems. You are burning up with them. I can see
it. And I--"

There was something suddenly pathetic about her, as she sank into
the big-armed, upholstered chair which had been Kedsty's favorite
reading chair. She was tired, and for a moment it seemed to Kent
that she was almost ready to cry. Her ringers twisted nervously at
the shining end of the braid in her lap, and more than ever he
thought how slim and helpless, she was, yet how gloriously
unafraid, how unconquerable with that something within her that
burned like the fire of a dynamo. The flame of that force had gone
down now, as though the fire itself was dying out; but when she
raised her eyes to him, looking up at him from out of the big
chair, he knew that back of the yearning, child-like glow that lay
in them the heart of that fire was living and unquenchable. Again,
for him, she had ceased to be a woman. It was the soul of a child
that lay in her wide-open, wonderfully blue eyes. Twice before he
had seen that miracle, and it held him now, as it had held him
that first time when she had stood with her back at Cardigan's
door. And as it had changed then, so it changed now, slowly, and
she was a woman again, with that great gulf of unapproachableness
between them. But the yearning was still there, revealing itself
to him, and yet, like the sun, infinitely remote from him.

"I wish that I might answer those questions for you," she said, in
a voice that was low and tired. "I should like to have you know,
because I--I have great faith in you, Jeems. But I cannot. It is
impossible. It is inconceivable. If I did--" She made a hopeless
little gesture. "If I told you everything, you would not like me
any more. And I want you to like me--until you go north with
M'sieu Jean and his brigade."

"And when I do that," cried Kent, almost savagely, "I shall find
this place you call the Valley of Silent Men, if it takes me all
my life."

It was becoming a joy for him to see the sudden flashes of
pleasure that leaped into her eyes. She attempted no concealment.
Whatever her emotions were they revealed themselves unaffectedly
and with a simple freedom from embarrassment that swept him with
an almost reverential worship. And what he had just said pleased
her. Unreservedly her glowing eyes and her partly smiling lips
told him that, and she said: "I am glad you feel that way, Jeems.
And I think you would find it--in time. Because--"

Her little trick of looking at him so steadily, as if there was
something inside him which she was trying to see more clearly,
made him feel more helplessly than ever her slave. It was as if,
in those moments, she forgot that he was of flesh and blood, and
was looking into his heart to see what was there before she gave
voice to things.

And then she said, still twisting her braid between her slim
fingers, "You would find it--perhaps--because you are one who
would not give up easily. Shall I tell you why I came to see you
at Doctor Cardigan's? It was curiosity, at first--largely that.
Just why or how I was interested in the man you freed is one of
the things I can not tell you. And I can not tell you why I came
to the Landing. Nor can I say a word about Kedsty. It may be, some
day, that you will know. And then you will not like me. For nearly
four years before I saw you that day I had been in a desolation.
It was a terrible place. It ate my heart and soul out with its
ugliness, its loneliness, its emptiness. A little while longer and
I would have died. Then the thing happened that brought me away.
Can you guess where it was?"

He shook his head, "No."

"To all the others it was a beautiful place, Montreal."

"You were at school there?" he guessed.

"Yes, the Villa Maria. I wasn't quite sixteen then. They were
kind. I think they liked me. But each night I prayed one prayer.
You know what the Three Rivers are to us, to the people of the
North. The Athabasca is Grandmother, the Slave is Mother, the
Mackenzie is Daughter, and over them watches always the goddess
Niska, the Gray Goose. And my prayer was that I might go back to
them. In Montreal there were people, people everywhere, thousands
and tens of thousands of them, so many that I was lonely and
heartsick and wanted to get away. For the Gray Goose blood is in
me, Jeems. I love the forests. And Niska's God doesn't live in
Montreal. Her sun doesn't rise there. Her moon isn't the same
there. The flowers are not hers. The winds tell different stories.
The air is another air. People, when they look at you, look in
another way. Away down the Three Rivers I had loved men. There I
was learning to hate them. Then, something happened. I came to
Athabasca Landing. I went to see you because--"

She clasped her two hands tightly in her lap. "Because, after
those four terrible years, you were the first man I found who was
playing a great, big, square game to the end. Don't ask me how I
found it out. Please don't ask me anything. I am telling you all
you can know, all you SHALL know. But I did find it out. And then
I learned that you were not going to die. Kedsty told me that. And
when I had talked with you I knew that you would play any game
square, and I made up my mind to help you. That is why I am
telling you all this--just to let you know that I have faith in
you, and that you must not break that faith. You must not insist
on knowing more about me. You must still play the game. I am
playing mine, and you must play yours. And to play yours clean,
you must go with Laselle's brigade and leave me with Kedsty. You
must forget what has happened. You must forget what MAY happen.
You can not help me. You can only harm me. And if--some day, a
long time from now--you should happen to find the Valley of Silent
Men--"

He waited, his heart pounding like a fist.

"I may--be there," she finished, in a voice so low that it was
scarcely above a whisper.

It seemed to him that she was looking a long way off, and it was
not in his direction. And then she smiled, not at him, but in a
half-hopeless little way.

"I think I shall be disappointed if you don't find it," she said
then, and her eyes were pure as the blue flowers from which they
had stolen their color, as she looked at him. "You know the great
Sulphur Country beyond Fort Simpson, westward between the Two
Nahannis?"

"Yes. That is where Kilbane and his patrol were lost. The Indians
call it the Devil Country. Is that it?"

She nodded. "They say no living thing has ever been through the
Sulphur Country," she said. "But that is not true. I have been
through it. It is beyond the Sulphur Country you must go to find
the Valley of Silent Men, straight through that gap between the
North and the South Nahanni. That is the way YOU must go if you
should ever find it, Jeems, for otherwise you would have to come
down from Dawson or up from Skagway, and the country is so great
that you would never come upon it in a thousand years. The police
will not find you there. You will always be safe. Perhaps I shall
tell you more before the Brigade comes. But that is all tonight. I
may never tell you anything more. And you must not question me."

Speechless he had stood, all the life of his soul burning like a
fire in his eyes as he looked at her and listened to her, and now,
quietly and unexcitedly, he said:

"Marette, I am going to play this game as you want me to play it,
because I love you. It is only honest for me to tell you in words
what you must already know. And I am going to fight for you as
long as there is a drop of blood in my body. If I go with Jean
Laselle's brigade, will you promise me--"

His voice trembled. He was repressing a mighty emotion. But not by
the quiver of one of her long lashes did Marette Radisson give
evidence that she had even heard his confession of love. She
interrupted him before he had finished.

"I can promise you nothing, no matter what you do. Jeems, Jeems,
you are not like those other men I learned to hate? You will not
INSIST? If you do--if you are like them--yes, you may go away from
here tonight and not wait for Jean Laselle. Listen! The storm will
not break for hours. If you are going to demand a price for
playing the game as I want you to play it, you may go. You have my
permission."

She was very white. She rose from the big chair and stood before
him. There was no anger in her voice or gesture, but her eyes
glowed like luminous stars. There was something in them which he
had not seen before, and suddenly a thought struck his heart cold
as ice.

With a low cry he stretched out his hands, "My God, Marette, I am
not a murderer! I did not kill John Barkley!"

She did not answer him.

"You don't believe me," he cried. "You believe that I killed
Barkley, and that now--a murderer--I dare to tell you that I love
you!"

She was trembling. It was like a little shiver running through
her. For only a flash it seemed to him that he had caught a
glimpse of something terrible, a thing she was hiding, a thing she
was fighting as she stood there with her two little clenched
hands. For in her face, in her eyes, in the beating throb of her
white throat he saw, in that moment, the almost hidden agony of a
hurt thing. And then it was gone, even as he entreated again,
pleading for her faith.

"I did not kill John Barkley!"

"I am not thinking of that, Jeems," she said. "It is of something--"

They had forgotten the storm. It was howling and beating at the
windows outside. But suddenly there came a sound that rose above
the monotonous tumult of it, and Marette started as if it had sent
an electric shock through her. Kent, too, turned toward the
window.

It was the metallic tap, tap, tapping which once before had warned
them of approaching danger. And this time it was insistent. It was
as if a voice was crying out to them from beyond the window. It
was more than premonition--it was the alarm of a near and
impending menace. And in that moment Kent saw Marette Radisson's
hands go swiftly to her throat and her eyes leap with sudden fire,
and she gave a little cry as she listened to the sound.





CHAPTER XVII


In ten seconds, it seemed to Kent, Marette Radisson was again the
splendid creature who had held the three men at bay over the end
of her little black gun at barracks. The sound of Mooie's second
warning came at first as a shock. Accompanying it there was a
moment of fear, of fear driven almost to the point of actual
terror. Following it came a reaction so swift that Kent was dazed.
Within those ten seconds the girl's slender body seemed to grow
taller; a new light flamed in her face; her eyes, turning swiftly
to him, were filled with the same fire with which they had faced
the three constables. She was unafraid. She was ready to fight.

In such moments as these it was the quiet and dispassionate
composure of her voice that amazed him most. It was musical in its
softness now. Yet in that softness was a hidden thing. It was like
velvet covering steel. She had spoken of Niska, the Gray Goose,
the goddess of the Three Rivers. And he thought that something of
the spirit of a goddess must be in Marette Radisson to give her
the courage with which she faced him, even as the metallic thing
outside tapped its warning again at the window.

"Inspector Kedsty is coming back," she said. "I did not think he
would do that--tonight."

"He has not had time to go to barracks," said Kent.

"No. Possibly he has forgotten something. Before he arrives, I
want to show you the nest I have made for you, Jeems. Come
quickly!"

It was her first intimation that he was not to remain in her room,
a possibility that had already caused him some inward
embarrassment. She seized a number of matches, turned down her
light, and hurried into the hall. Kent followed her to the end of
this hall, where she paused before a low half-door that apparently
opened into some sort of a space close under the sloping roof of
the bungalow.

"It is an old storeroom," she whispered. "I have made it quite
comfortable, I think. I have covered the window, so you may light
the lamp. But you must see that no light shows under this door.
Lock it on the inside, and be very quiet. For whatever you find in
there you must thank M'sieu Fingers."

She pulled the door slightly open and gave him the matches. The
illumination in the lower hall made its way only dimly to where
they stood. In the gloom he found himself close to the soft glow
of her eyes. His fingers closed about her hand as he took the
matches.

"Marette, you believe me?" he entreated. "You believe that I love
you, that I didn't kill John Barkley, that I am going to fight for
you as long as God gives me breath to fight?"

For a moment there was silence. Her hand withdrew gently from his.

"Yes, I think that I believe. Good-night, Jeems."

She went from him quickly. At her door she turned. "Go in now,
please," she called back softly. "If you care as you say you do,
go IN."

She did not wait for his reply. Her own door closed behind her,
and Kent, striking a match, stooped low and entered his hiding-
place. In a moment he saw directly ahead of him a lamp on a box.
He lighted this, and his first movement then was to close the door
and turn the key that was in the lock. After that he looked about
him. The storeroom was not more than ten feet square, and the roof
was so close over his head that he could not stand upright. It was
not the smallness of the place that struck him first, but the
preparations which Marette had made for him. In a corner was a bed
of blankets, and the rough floor of the place was carpeted with
blankets, except for a two-or-three-foot space around the edge of
it. Beyond the box was a table and a chair, and it was the burden
of this table that made his pulse jump quickest. Marette had not
forgotten that he might grow hungry. It was laid sumptuously, with
a plate for one, but with food for half a dozen. There were a
brace of roasted grouse, brown as nuts; a cold roast of moose meat
or beef; a dish piled high with golden potato salad; olives,
pickles, an open can of cherries, a loaf of bread, butter, cheese
--and one of Kedsty's treasured thermos bottles, which undoubtedly
held hot coffee or tea. And then he noticed what was on the chair
--a belt and holster and a Colt automatic forty-five! Marette had
not figured on securing a gun in the affair at barracks, and her
foresight had not forgotten a weapon. She had placed it
conspicuously where he could not fail to see it at once. And just
beyond the chair, on the floor, was a shoulder-pack. It was of the
regulation service sort, partly filled. Resting against the pack
was a Winchester. He recognized the gun. He had seen it hanging in
Dirty Fingers' shack.

For a matter of five minutes he scarcely moved from where he stood
beside the table. Nothing but an unplastered roof was between him
and the storm, and over his head the thunder crashed, and the rain
beat in torrents. He saw where the window was, carefully covered
with a blanket. Even through the blanket he caught faintly the
illumination of lightning. This window overlooked the entrance to
Kedsty's bungalow, and the idea came to him of turning out the
light and opening it. In darkness he took down the blanket. But
the window itself was not movable, and after assuring himself of
this fact he flattened his face against it, peering out into the
chaos of the night.

In that instant came a flare of lightning, and to Kent, looking
down, was revealed a sight that tightened every muscle in his
body. More vividly than if it had been day he saw a man standing
below in the deluge. It was not Mooie. It was not Kedsty. It was
no one that he had ever seen. Even more like a ghost than a man
was that apparition of the lightning flare. A great, gaunt giant
of a ghost, bare-headed, with long, dripping hair and a long,
storm-twisted beard. The picture shot to his brain with the
swiftness of the lightning itself. It was like the sudden throwing
of a cinema picture on a screen. Then blackness shut it out. Kent
stared harder. He waited.

Again came the lightning, and again he saw that tragic, ghost-like
figure waiting in the storm. Three times he saw it. And he knew
that the mysterious, bearded giant was an old man. The fourth time
the lightning came, the figure was gone. And in that flare it was
the bowed figure of Kedsty he saw hurrying up the gravel path to
the door.

Quickly Kent covered the window, but he did not relight the lamp.
Before Kedsty could have reached the foot of the stair, he had
unlocked the door. Cautiously he opened it three or four inches
and sat down with his back against the wall, listening. He heard
Kedsty pass through into the big room where Marette had waited for
him a short time before. After that there was silence except for
the tumult of the storm.

For an hour Kent listened. In all that time he did not hear a
sound from the lower hall or from Marette's room. He wondered if
she was sleeping, and if Kedsty had gone to bed, waiting for
morning before he set in action his bloodhounds of the law.

Kent had no intention of disturbing the comfortable looking bed of
blankets. He was not only sleepless, but filled with a premonition
of events about to happen. He felt impinging itself more and more
upon him a sense of watchfulness. That Inspector Kedsty and
Marette Radisson were under the same roof, and that there was some
potent and mysterious reason which kept Kedsty from betraying the
girl's presence, was the thought which troubled him most. He was
not developing further the plans for his own escape.

He was thinking of Marette. What was her power over Kedsty? Why
was it that Kedsty would like to see her dead? Why was she in his
house? Again and again he asked himself the questions and found no
answers to them. And yet, even in this purgatory of mystery that
environed him, he felt himself happier than he had ever been in
his life. For Marette was not four or five hundred miles down the
river. She was in the same house with him. And he had told her
that he loved her. He was glad that he had been given courage to
let her know that. He relighted the lamp, and opened his watch and
placed it on the table, where frequently he could look at the
time. He wanted to smoke his pipe, but the odor of tobacco, he was
sure, would reach Kedsty, unless the Inspector had actually
retired into his bedroom for the night.

Half a dozen times he questioned himself as to the identity of the
ghostly apparition he had seen in the lightning flare of the
storm. Perhaps it was some one of Fingers' strange friends from
out of the wilderness, Mooie's partner in watching the bungalow.
The picture of that giant of a man with his great beard and long
hair, as his eyes had caught him in a sea of electrical fire, was
indelibly burned into his brain. It was a tragic picture.

Again he put out the light and bared the blanketed window, but he
saw nothing but the sodden gleam of the earth when the lightning
flashed. A second time he opened the door a few inches and sat
down with his back to the wall, listening.

How long it was before drowsiness stole upon him he did not know,
but it came, and for a few moments at a time, as his eyes closed,
it robbed him of his caution. And then, for a space, he slept. A
sound brought him suddenly into wide wakefulness. His first
impression was that the sound had been a cry. For a moment or two,
as his senses adjusted themselves, he was not sure. Then swiftly
the thing grew upon him.

He rose to his feet and widened the crack of his door. A bar of
light shot across the upper hall. It was from Marette's room. He
had taken off his boots to deaden the sound of his feet, and he
stepped outside his door. He was positive he heard a low cry, a
choking, sobbing cry, only barely audible, and that it came from
down the stair.

No longer hesitating, he moved quickly to Marette's room and
looked in. His first glimpse was of the bed. It had not been used.
The room was empty.

Something cold and chilling gripped at his heart, and an impulse
which he no longer made an effort to resist pulled him to the head
of the stair. It was more than an impulse--it was a demand. Step
by step he went down, his hand on the butt of his Colt.

He reached the lower hall, which was still lighted, and a step or
two brought him to a view of the door that opened into the big
living-room beyond. That door was partly open, and the room itself
was filled with light. Soundlessly Kent approached. He looked in.

What he saw first brought him relief together with shock. At one
end of the long desk table over which hung a great brass lamp
stood Marette. She was in profile to him. He could not see her
face. Her hair fell loose about her, glowing like a rich, sable
cape in the light of the lamp. She was safe, alive, and yet the
attitude of her as she looked down was the thing that gave him
shock. He was compelled to move a few inches more before he could
see what she was staring at. And then his heart stopped dead
still.

Huddled down in his chair, with his head flung back so that the
terrible ghastliness of his face fronted Kent, was Kedsty. And
Kent, in an instant, knew. Only a dead man could look like that.

With a cry he entered the room. Marette did not start, but an
answering cry came into her throat as she turned her eyes from
Kedsty to him. To Kent it was like looking upon the dead in two
ways. Marette Radisson, living and breathing, was whiter than
Kedsty, who was white with the unbreathing pallor of the actually
dead. She did not speak. She made no sound after that answering
cry in her throat. She simply looked. And Kent spoke her name
gently as he saw her great, wide eyes blazing dully their agony
and despair. Then, like one stunned and fascinated, she stared
down upon Kedsty again.

Every instinct of the man-hunter became alive in Kent's brain as
he, too, turned toward the Inspector of Police. Kedsty's arms hung
limp over the side of his chair. On the floor under his right hand
was his Colt automatic. His head was strained so far over the back
of the chair that it looked as though his neck had been broken. On
his forehead, close up against his short-cropped, iron-gray hair,
was a red stain.

Kent approached and bent over him. He had seen death too many
times not to recognize it now, but seldom had he seen a face
twisted and distorted as Kedsty's was. His eyes were open and
bulging in a glassy stare. His jaws hung loose. His--

It was then Kent's blood froze in his veins. Kedsty had received a
blow, but it was not the blow that had killed him. Afterward he
had been choked to death. And the thing that had choked him was a
TRESS OF WOMAN'S HAIR.

In the seconds that followed that discovery Kent could not have
moved if his own life had paid the penalty of inaction. For the
story was told--there about Kedsty's throat and on his chest. The
tress of hair was long and soft and shining and black. It was
twisted twice around Kedsty's neck, and the loose end rippled down
over his shoulder, GLOWING LIKE A BIT OF RICH SABLE IN THE
LAMPLIGHT. It was that thought of velvety sable that had come to
him at the doorway, looking at Marette. It was the thought that
came to him now. He touched it; he took it in his fingers; he
unwound it from about Kedsty's neck, where it had made two deep
rings in the flesh. From his fingers it rippled out full length.
And he turned slowly and faced Marette Radisson.

Never had human eyes looked at him as she was looking at him now.
She reached out a hand, her lips mute, and Kent gave her the tress
of hair. And the next instant she turned, with a hand clasped at
her own throat, and passed through the door.

After that he heard her going unsteadily up the stairs.





CHAPTER XVIII


Kent did not move. His senses for a space were stunned. He was
almost physically insensible to all emotions but that one of shock
and horror. He was staring at Kedsty's gray-white, twisted face
when he heard Marette's door close. A cry came from his lips, but
he did not hear it--was unconscious that he had made a sound. His
body shook with a sudden tremor. He could not disbelieve, for the
evidence was there. From behind, as he had sat in his chair
Marette Radisson had struck the Inspector of Police with some
blunt object. The blow had stunned him. And after that--

He drew a hand across his eyes, as if to clear his vision. What he
had seen was impossible. The evidence was impossible. Assaulted,
in deadly peril, defending either honor or love, Marette Radisson
was of the blood to kill. But to creep up behind her victim--it
was inconceivable! Yet there had been no struggle. Even the
automatic on the floor gave no evidence of that. Kent picked it
up. He looked at it closely, and again the unconscious cry of
despair came in a half groan from his lips. For on the butt of the
Colt was a stain of blood and a few gray hairs. Kedsty had been
stunned by a blow from his own gun!

As Kent placed it on the table, his eyes caught suddenly a gleam
of steel under the edge of a newspaper, and he drew out from their
hiding-place the long-bladed clipping scissors which Kedsty had
used in the preparation of his scrap-books and official reports.
It was the last link in the deadly evidence--the automatic with
its telltale stain, the scissors, the tress of hair, and Marette
Radisson. He felt a sensation of sudden dizziness. Every nerve-
center in his body had received its shock, and when the shock had
passed it left him sweating.

Swiftly the reaction came. It was a lie, he told himself. The
evidence was false. Marette could not have committed that crime,
as the crime had visualized itself before his eyes. There was
something which he had not seen, something which he could not see,
something that was hiding itself from him. He became, in an
instant, the old James Kent. The instinctive processes of the man-
hunter leaped to their stations like trained soldiers. He saw
Marette again, as she had looked at him when he entered the room.
It was not murder he had caught in her wide-open eyes. It was not
hatred. It was not madness. It was a quivering, bleeding soul
crying out to him in an agony that no other human eyes had ever
revealed to him before. And suddenly a great voice cried out in
his brain, drowning all other things, telling him how contemptible
a thing was love unless in that love was faith.

With his heart choking him, he turned again to Kedsty. The
futility of the thing which he had told himself was faith gripped
at him sickeningly, yet he fought for that faith, even as his eyes
looked again upon the ghastly torture that was in Kedsty's face.

He was becoming calmer. He touched the dead man's cheek and found
that it was no longer warm. The tragedy must have occurred an hour
before. He examined more closely the abrasion on Kedsty's
forehead. It was not a deep wound, and the blow that had made it
must have stunned the Inspector of Police for only a short time.
In that space the other thing had happened. In spite of his almost
superhuman effort to keep the picture away from him, Kent saw it
vividly--the swift turning to the table, the inspiration of the
scissors, the clipping of the long tress of hair, the choking to
death of Kedsty as he regained consciousness. Over and over again
he whispered to himself the impossibility of it, the absurdity of
it, the utter incongruity of it. Only a brain gone mad would have
conceived that monstrous way of killing Kedsty. And Marette was
not mad. She was sane.

Like the eyes of a hunting ferret his own eyes swept quickly about
the room. At the four windows there were long curtain cords. On
the walls, hung there as trophies, were a number of weapons. On
one end of Kedsty's desk, used as a paperweight, was a stone
tomahawk. Still nearer to the dead man's hands, unhidden by
papers, was a boot-lace. Under his limp right hand was the
automatic. With these possible instruments of death close at hand,
ready to be snatched up without trouble or waste of time, why had
the murderer used a tress of woman's hair?

The boot-lace drew Kent's eyes. It was impossible not to see it,
forty-eight inches long and quarter-inch-wide buckskin. He began
seeking for its mate, and found it on the floor where Marette
Radisson had been standing. And again the unanswerable question
pounded in Kent's brain--why had Kedsty's murderer used a tress of
hair instead of a buckskin lace or one of the curtain cords
hanging conspicuously at the windows?

He went to each of these windows and found them locked. Then, a
last time, he bent over Kedsty. He knew that in the final moments
of his life Kedsty had suffered a slow and torturing agony. His
twisted face left the story. And the Inspector of Police was a
powerful man. He had struggled, still partly dazed by the blow.
But it had taken strength to overcome him even then, to hold his
head back, to choke life out of him slowly with the noose of hair.
And Kent, now that the significance of what he saw began to grow
upon him more clearly, felt triumphing over all other things in
his soul a slow and mighty joy. It was inconceivable that with the
strength of her own hands and body Marette Radisson had killed
Kedsty. A greater strength than hers had held him in the death-
chair, and a greater strength than hers had choked life from the
Inspector of Police!

He drew slowly out of the room, closing the door noiselessly
behind him. He found that the front door was as Kedsty had left
it, unlocked.

Close to that door he stood for a space, scarcely allowing himself
to breathe. He listened, but no sound came down the dimly
illumined stairway.

A new thing was pressing upon him now. It rode over the shock of
tragedy, over the first-roused instincts of the man-hunter,
overwhelming him with the realization of a horror such as had
never confronted him before. It gripped him more fiercely than the
mere killing of Kedsty. His thought was of Marette, of the fate
which dawn and discovery would bring for her. His hands clenched
and his jaws tightened. The world was against him, and tomorrow it
would be against her. Only he, in the face of all that condemning
evidence in the room beyond, would disbelieve her guilty of
Kedsty's death. And he, Jim Kent, was already a murderer in the
eyes of the law.

He felt within him the slow-growing inspiration of a new spirit,
the gathering might of a new force. A few hours ago he was an
outcast. He was condemned. Life, for him, had been robbed of its
last hope. And in that hour of his grimmest despair Marette
Radisson had come to him. Through storm that had rocked the earth
under her feet and set ablaze the chaotic blackness of the sky
over her head she had struggled--for him. She had counted no cost.
She had measured no chances. She had simply come--BECAUSE SHE
BELIEVED IN HIM. And now, upstairs, she was the victim of the
terrible price that was the first cost of his freedom. For he
believed, now that the thought came to him like a dagger stroke,
that this was so. Her act in freeing him had brought about the
final climax, and as a result of it, Kedsty was dead.

He went to the foot of the stair. Quietly, in his shoeless feet,
he began to climb them. He wanted to cry out Marette's name even
before he came to the top. He wanted to reach up to her with his
arms outstretched. But he came silently to her door and looked in.

She lay in a crumpled, huddled heap on her bed. Her face was
hidden, and all about her lay her smothering hair. For a moment he
was frightened. He could not see that she was breathing. So still
was she that she was like one dead.

His footsteps were unheard as he moved across the room. He knelt
down beside her, reached out his arms, and gathered her into them.

"Marette!" he cried in a low voice.

He felt the sudden quiver, like a little shock, that ran through
her. He crushed his face down, so that it lay in her hair, still
damp from its wetting. He drew her closer, tightening his arms
about her slender body, and a little cry came from her a cry that
was a broken thing, a sob without tears.

"Marette!"

It was all he said. It was all he could say in that moment when
his heart was beating like a drum against her breast. And then he
felt the slow pressure of her hands against him, saw her white
face, her wide, staring eyes within a few inches of his own, and
she drew away from him, back against the wall, still huddled like
a child on the bed, with her eyes fixed on him in a way that
frightened him. There were no tears in them. She had not been
crying. But her face was as white as he had seen it down in
Kedsty's room. Some of the horror and shock had gone out of it. In
it was another look as her eyes glowed upon Kent. It was a look of
incredulity, of disbelief, a thing slowly fading away under the
miracle of an amazing revelation. The truth thrust itself upon
him.

Marette had not expected that he would come to her like this. She
had believed that he would take flight into the night, escaping
from her as he would have run from a plague. She put up her two
hands, in the trick they had of groping at her white throat, and
her lips formed a word which she did not speak.

Kent, to his own amazement, was smiling and still on his knees. He
pulled himself to his feet, and stood up straight, looking down at
her in that same strange, comforting, all-powerful way. The thrill
of it was passing into her veins. A flush of color was driving the
deathly pallor from her face. Her lips were parted, and she
breathed quickly, a little excitedly.

"I thought--you would go!" she said.

"Not without you," he said. "I have come to take you with me."

He drew out his watch. It was two o'clock. He held it down so that
she could look at the dial.

"If the storm keeps up, we have three hours before dawn," he said.
"How soon can you be ready, Marette?"

He was fighting to make his voice quiet and unexcited. It was a
terrific struggle. And Marette was not blind to it. She drew
herself from the bed and stood up before him, her two hands still
clasped at her throbbing throat.

"You believe--that I killed Kedsty," she said in a voice that was
forced from her lips. "And you have come to help me--to pay me for
what I tried to do for you? That is it--Jeems?"

"Pay you?" he cried. "I couldn't pay you in a million years! From
that day you first came to Cardigan's place you gave me life. You
came when the last spark of hope in me had died. I shall always
believe that I would have died that night. But you saved me.

"From the moment I saw you I loved you, and I believe it was that
love that kept me alive. And then you came to me again, down
there, through this storm. Pay you! I can't. I never shall be able
to. Because you thought I had killed a man made no difference You
came just the same. And you came ready to kill, if necessary--for
me. I'm not trying to tell myself WHY! But you did. You were ready
to kill. And I am ready to kill--tonight--for you! I haven't got
time to think about Kedsty. I'm thinking about you. If you killed
him, I'm just telling myself there was a mighty good reason for
it. But I don't believe it was you who killed him. You couldn't do
it--with those hands!"

He reached out suddenly and seized them, slipping his grip to her
wrists, so that her hands lay upward in his own, hands that were
small, slim-fingered, soft-palmed, beautiful.

"They couldn't!" he cried, almost fiercely. "I swear to God they
couldn't!"

Her eyes and face flamed at his words. "You believe that, Jeems?"

"Yes, just as you believe that I did not kill John Barkley. But
the world is against us. It is against us both now. And we've got
to hunt that hidden valley of yours together. Understand, Marette?
And I'm--rather glad."

He turned toward the door. "Will you be ready in ten minutes?" he
asked.

She nodded. "Yes, in ten minutes."

He ran out into the hall and down the stair, locking the front
door. Then he returned to his hiding-place under the roof. He knew
that a strange sort of madness was in his blood, for in the face
of tonight's tragedy only madness could inspire him with the
ecstatic thrill that was in his veins. Kedsty's death seemed far
removed from a more important thing--the fact that from this hour
Marette was his to fight for, that she belonged to him, that she
must go with him. He loved her. In spite of whoever she was and
whatever she had done, he loved her. Very soon she would tell him
what had happened in the room below, and the thing would be clear.

There was one little corner of his brain that fought him. It kept
telling him, like a parrot, that it was a tress of Marette's hair
about Kedsty's throat, and that it was the hair that had choked
him. But Marette would explain that, too. He was sure of it. In
the face of the facts below he was illogical and unreasonable. He
knew it. But his love for this girl, who had come strangely and
tragically into his life, was like an intoxicant. And his faith
was illimitable. She did not kill Kedsty. Another part of his
brain kept repeating that over and over, even as he recalled that
only a few hours before she had told him quite calmly that she
would kill the Inspector of Police--if a certain thing should
happen.

His hands worked as swiftly as his thoughts. He laced up his
service boots. All the food and dishes on the table he made into a
compact bundle and placed in the shoulder-pack. He carried this
and the rifle out into the hall. Then he returned to Marette's
room. The door was closed. At his knock the girl's voice told him
that she was not quite ready.

He waited. He could hear her moving about quickly in her room. An
interval of silence followed. Another five minutes passed--ten--
fifteen. He tapped at the door again. This time it was opened.

He stared, amazed at the change in Marette. She had stepped back
from the door to let him enter, and stood full in the lamp-glow.
Her slim, beautiful body was dressed in a velvety blue corduroy;
the coat was close-fitting and boyish; the skirt came only a
little below her knees. On her feet were high-topped caribou
boots. About her waist was a holster and the little black gun. Her
hair was done up and crowded under a close-fitting turban. She was
exquisitely lovely, as she stood there waiting for him, and in
that loveliness Kent saw there was not one thing out of place. The
corduroy, the turban, the short skirt, and the high, laced boots
were made for the wilderness. She was not a tenderfoot. She was a
little sourdough--clear through! Gladness leaped into Kent's face.
But it was not the transformation of her dress alone that amazed
him. She was changed in another way. Her cheeks were flushed. Her
eyes glowed with a strange and wonderful radiance as she looked at
him. Her lips were red, as he had seen them that first time at
Cardigan's place. Her pallor, her fear, her horror were gone, and
in their place was the repressed excitement of one about to enter
upon a strange adventure.

On the floor was a pack only half as large as Kent's and when he
picked it up, he found it of almost no weight. He fastened it to
his own pack while Marette put on her raincoat and went down the
stair ahead of him. In the hall below she was waiting, when he
came down, with Kedsty's big rubber slicker in her hands.

"You must put it on," she said.

She shuddered slightly as she held the garment. The color was
almost gone from her cheeks, as she faced the door beyond which
the dead man sat in his chair, but the marvelous glow was still in
her eyes as she helped Kent with his pack and the slicker and
afterward stood for an instant with her hands touching his breast
and her lips as if about to speak something which she held back.

A few steps beyond them they heard the storm. It seemed to rush
upon the bungalow in a new fury, beating at the door, crashing
over their heads in thunder, daring them to come out. Kent reached
up and turned out the hall light.

In darkness he opened the door. Rain and wind swept in. With his
free hand he groped out, found Marette, drew her after him, and
closed the door again. Entering from the lighted hall into the
storm was like being swallowed in a pit of blackness. It engulfed
and smothered them. Then came suddenly a flash of lightning, and
he saw Marette's face, white and drenched, but looking at him with
that same strange glow in her eyes. It thrilled him. Even in the
darkness it was there. It had been there since he had returned to
her from Kedsty and had knelt at her bedside, with his arms about
her for a moment.

Only now, in the beat of the storm, did an answer to the miracle
of it come to him. It was because of HIM. It was because of his
FAITH in her. Even death and horror could not keep it from her
eyes. He wanted to cry out the joy of his discovery, to give wild
voice to it in the teeth of the wind and the rain. He felt
sweeping through him a force mightier than that of the night. Her
hands were on his arm, as if she was afraid of losing him in that
pit of blackness; the soft cling of them was like a contact
through which came a warm thrill of electrical life. He put out
his arm and drew her to him, so that for a moment his face pressed
against the top of her wet little turban.

And then he heard her say: "There is a scow at the bayou, Jeems.
It is close to the end of the path. M'sieu Fingers has kept it
there, waiting, ready."

He had been thinking of Crossen's place and an open boat. He
blessed Fingers again, as he took Marette's hand in his own and
started for the trail that led through the poplar thicket.

Their feet slopped deep in wet and mud, and with the rain there
was a wind that took their breath away. It was impossible to see a
tree an arm's length away, and Kent hoped that the lightning would
come frequently enough to guide him. In the first flare of it he
looked down the slope that led riverward. Little rivulets of water
were running down it. Rocks and stumps were in their way, and
underfoot it was slippery. Marette's fingers were clinging to his
again, as she had held to them on the wild race up to Kedsty's
bungalow from the barracks. He had tingled then in the sheer joy
of their thrill, but it was a different thrill that stirred him
now--an overwhelming emotion of possessorship. This night, with
its storm and its blackness, was the most wonderful of all his
nights.

He sensed nothing of its discomfort. It could not beat back the
joyous racing of the blood in his body. Sun and stars, day and
night, sunshine and cloud, were trivial and inconsequential to him
now. For close to him, struggling with him, fighting through the
night with him, trusting him, helpless without him, was the
living, breathing thing he loved more than he loved his own life.
For many years, without knowing it, he had waited for this night,
and now that it was upon him, it inundated and swept away his old
life. He was no longer the huntsman, but the hunted. He was no
longer alone, but had a priceless thing to fight for, a priceless
and helpless thing that was clinging to his fingers in the
darkness. He did not feel like a fugitive, but as one who has come
into a great triumph. He sensed no uncertainty or doubt.

The river lay ahead, and for him the river had become the soul and
the promise of life. It was Marette's river and his river, and in
a little while they would be on it. And Marette would then tell
him about Kedsty. He was sure of that. She would tell him what had
happened while he slept. His faith was illimitable.

They came into the sodden dip at the foot of the ridge, and the
lightning revealed to him the edge of the poplar growth in which
O'Connor had seen Marette many weeks ago. The bayou trail wound
through this, and Kent struck out for it blindly in the darkness.
He did not try to talk, but he freed his companion's hand and put
his arm about her when they came to the level ground, so that she
was sheltered by him from the beat of the storm. Then brush
swished in their faces, and they stopped, waiting for the
lightning again. Kent was not anxious for it to come. He drew the
girl still closer, and in that pit of blackness, with the deluge
about her and the crash of thunder over her head, she snuggled up
against his breast, the throb of her body against him, waiting,
watching, with him. Her frailty, the helplessness of her, the
slimness of her in the crook of his arm, filled him with an
exquisite exultation. He did not think of her now as the splendid,
fearless creature who had leveled her little black gun at the
three men in barracks. She was no longer the mysterious, defiant,
unafraid person who had held him in a sort of awe that first hour
in Kedsty's place. For she was crumpled against him now, utterly
dependent and afraid. In that chaos of storm something told him
that her nerve was broken, that without him she would be lost and
would cry out in fear. AND HE WAS GLAD! He held her tighter; he
bent his head until his face touched the wet, crushed hair under
the edge of her turban. And then the lightning split open the
night again, and he saw the way ahead of him to the trail.

Even in darkness it was not difficult to follow in the clean-cut
wagon path. Over their heads the tops of the poplars swished and
wailed. Under their feet the roadway in places was a running
stream or inundated until it became a pool. In pitch blackness
they struck such a pool, and in spite of the handicap of his packs
and rifle Kent stopped suddenly, and picked Marette up in his
arms, and carried her until they reached high ground. He did not
ask permission. And Marette, for a minute or two, lay crumpled up
close in his arms, and for a thrilling instant his face touched
her rain-wet cheek.

The miracle of their adventure was that neither spoke. To Kent the
silence between them had become a thing which he had no desire to
break. In that silence, excused and abetted by the tumult of the
storm, he felt that a wonderful something was drawing them closer
and closer together, and that words might spoil the indescribable
magic of the thing that was happening. When he set Marette on her
feet again, her hand accidentally fell upon his, and for a moment
her fingers closed upon it in a soft pressure that meant more to
him than a thousand words of gratitude.

A quarter of a mile beyond the poplar thicket they came to the
edge of the spruce and cedar timber, and Soon the thick walls of
the forest shut them in, sheltering them from the wind, but the
blackness was even more like that of a bottomless pit. Kent had
noticed that the thunder and lightning were drifting steadily
eastward, and now the occasional flashes of electrical fire
scarcely illumined the trail ahead of them. The rain was not
beating so fiercely. They could hear the wail of the spruce and
cedar tops and the slush of their boots in mud and water. An
interval came, where the spruce-tops met overhead, when it was
almost calm. It was then that Kent threw out of him a great, deep
breath and laughed joyously and exultantly.

"Are you wet, little Gray Goose?"

"Only outside, Big Otter. My feathers have kept me dry."

Her voice had a trembling, half-sobbing, half-rejoicing note in
it. It was not the voice of one who had recently killed a man. In
it was a pathos which Kent knew she was trying to hide behind
brave words. Her hands clung to the arm of his rubber slicker even
as they stood there, close together, as if she was afraid
something might drag them apart in that treacherous gloom. Kent,
fumbling for a moment, drew from an inner pocket a dry
handkerchief. Then he found her face, tilted it a bit upward, and
wiped it dry. He might have done the same thing to a child who had
been crying. After that he scrubbed his own, and they went on, his
arm about her again.

It was half a mile from the edge of the forest to the bayou, and
half a dozen times in that distance Kent took the girl in his arms
and carried her through water that almost reached his boot tops.
The lightning no longer served them. The rain still fell steadily,
but the wind had gone with the eastward sweep of the storm. Close-
hung with the forest walls, the bayou itself was indiscernible in
the blackness. Marette guided him now, though Kent walked ahead of
her, holding firmly to her hand. Unless Fingers had changed its
location, the scow should be somewhere within forty or fifty paces
of the end of the trail. It was small, a two-man scow, with a
tight little house built amidships. And it was tied close up
against the shore. Marette told him this as they felt their way
through brush and reeds. Then he stumbled against something taut
and knee-high, and he found it was the tie-rope.

Leaving Marette with her back to the anchor tree, he went aboard.
The water was three or four inches deep in the bottom of the scow,
but the cabin was built on a platform raised above the floor of
the boat, and Kent hoped it was still dry. He groped until he
found the twisted wire which held the door shut. Opening it, he
ducked his head low and entered. The little room was not more than
four feet high, and for greater convenience he fell upon his knees
while fumbling under his slicker for his water-proof box of
matches. The water had not yet risen above the floor.

The first light he struck revealed the interior to him. It was a
tiny cabin, scarcely larger than some boxes he had seen. It was
about eight feet long by six in width, and the ceiling was so low
that, even kneeling, his head touched it. His match burned out,
and he lighted another. This time he saw a candle stuck in a bit
of split birch that projected from the wall. He crept to it and
lighted it. For a moment he looked about him, and again he blessed
Fingers. The little scow was prepared for a voyage. Two narrow
bunks were built at the far end, one so close above the other that
Kent grinned as he thought of squeezing between. There were
blankets. Within reach of his arm was a tiny stove, and close to
the stove a supply of kindling and dry wood. The whole thing made
him think of a child's playhouse. Yet there was still room for a
wide, comfortable, cane-bottomed chair, a stool, and a smooth-
planed board fastened under a window, so that it answered the
purpose of a table. This table was piled with many packages.

He stripped off his packs and returned for Marette. She had come
to the edge of the scow and called to him softly as she heard him
splashing through the water. Her arms were reaching toward him, to
meet him in the darkness. He carried her through the shallow sea
about his feet and laughed as he put her down on the edge of the
platform at the door. It was a low, joyous laugh. The yellow light
of the candle sputtered in their wet faces. Only dimly could he
see her, but her eyes were shining.

"Your nest, little Gray Goose," he cried gently.

Her hand reached up and touched his face. "You have been good to
me, Jeems," she said, a little tremble in her voice. "You may--
kiss me."

Out in the beat of the rain Kent's heart choked him with song. His
soul swelled with the desire to shout forth a paean of joy and
triumph at the world he was leaving this night for all time. With
the warm thrill of Marette's lips he had become the superman, and
as he leaped ashore in the darkness and cut the tie-rope with a
single slash of his knife, he wanted to give voice to the thing
that was in him as the rivermen had chanted in the glory of their
freedom the day the big brigade started north. And he DID sing,
under his laughing, sobbing breath. With a giant's strength he
sent the scow out into the bayou, and then back and forth he swung
the long one-man sweep, twisting the craft riverward with the
force of two pairs of arms instead of one. Behind the closed door
of the tiny cabin was all that the world now held worth fighting
for. By turning his head he could see the faint illumination of
the candle at the window. The light--the cabin--Marette!

He laughed inanely, foolishly, like a boy. He began to hear a
dull, droning murmur, a sound that with each stroke of the sweep
grew into a more distinct, cataract-like roar. It was the river.
Swollen by flood, it was a terrifying sound. But Kent did not
dread it. It was his river; it was his friend. It was the pulse
and throb of life to him now. The growing tumult of it was not
menace, but the joyous thunder of many voices calling to him,
rejoicing at his coming. It grew in his ears. Over his head the
black sky opened again, and a deluge of rain fell straight down.
But above the sound of it the rush of the river drew nearer, and
still nearer. He felt the first eddying swirl of it against the
scow head, and powerful hands seemed to reach in out of the
darkness. He knew that the nose of the current had caught him and
was carrying him out on the breast of the stream. He shipped the
sweep and straightened himself, facing the utter chaos of
blackness ahead. He felt under him the slow and mighty pulse of
the great flood as it swept toward the Slave, the Mackenzie, and
the Arctic. And he cried out at last in the downpour of storm, a
cry of joy, of exultation, of hope that reached beyond the laws of
men--and then he turned toward the little cabin, where through the
thickness of sodden night the tiny window was glowing yellow with
candle-light.





CHAPTER XIX


To the cabin Kent groped his way, and knocked, and it was Marette
who opened the door for him and stepped back for him to enter.
Like a great wet dog he came in, doubling until his hands almost
touched the floor. He sensed the incongruity of it, the
misplacement of his overgrown body in this playhouse thing, and he
grinned through the trickles of wet that ran down his face, and
tried to see. Marette had taken off her turban and rain-coat, and
she, too, stooped low in the four-feet space of the cabin--but not
so ridiculously low as Kent. He dropped on his knees again. And
then he saw that in the tiny stove a fire was burning. The crackle
of it rose above the beat of the rain on the roof, and the air was
already mellowing with the warmth of it. He looked at Marette. Her
wet hair was still clinging to her face, her feet and arms and
part of her body were wet; but her eyes were shining, and she was
smiling at him. She seemed to him, in this moment, like a child
that was glad it had found refuge. He had thought that the terror
of the night would show in her face, but it was gone. She was not
thinking of the thunder and the lightning, the black trail, or of
Kedsty lying dead in his bungalow. She was thinking of him.

He laughed outright. It was a joyous, thrilling thing, this black
night with the storm over their heads and the roll of the great
river under them--they two--alone--in this cockleshell cabin that
was not high enough to stand in and scarcely big enough in any
direction to turn round in. The snug cheer of it, the warmth of
the fire beginning to reach their chilled bodies, and the
inspiring crackle of the birch in the little stove filled Kent,
for a space, with other thoughts than those of the world they were
leaving. And Marette, whose eyes and lips were smiling at him
softly in the candle-glow, seemed also to have forgotten. It was
the little window that brought them back to the tragedy of their
flight. Kent visioned it as it must look from the shore--a
telltale blotch of light traveling through the darkness. There
were occasional cabins for several miles below the Landing, and
eyes turned riverward in the storm might see it. He made his way
to the window and fastened his slicker over it.

"We're off, Gray Goose," he said then, rubbing his hands. "Would
it seem more homelike if I smoked?"

She nodded, her eyes on the slicker at the window.

"It's pretty safe," said Kent, fishing out his pipe, and beginning
to fill it. "Everybody asleep, probably. But we won't take any
chances." The scow was swinging sideways in the current. Kent felt
the change in its movement, and added: "No danger of being
wrecked, either. There isn't a rock or rapids for thirty miles.
River clear as a floor. If we bump ashore, don't get frightened."

"I'm not afraid--of the river," she said. Then, with rather
startling unexpectedness, she asked him, "Where will they look for
us tomorrow?"

Kent lighted his pipe, eyeing her a bit speculatively as she
seated herself on the stool, leaning toward him as she waited for
an answer to her question.

"The woods, the river, everywhere," he said. "They'll look for a
missing boat, of course. We've simply got to watch behind us and
take advantage of a good start."

"Will the rain wipe out our footprints, Jeems?"

"Yes. Everything in the open."

"But--perhaps--in a sheltered place--?"

"We were in no sheltered place," he assured her. "Can you remember
that we were, Gray Goose?"

She shook her head slowly. "No. But there was Mooie, under the
window."

"His footprints will be wiped out."

"I am glad. I would not have him, or M'sieu Fingers, or any of our
friends brought into this trouble."

She made no effort to hide the relief his words brought her. He
was a little amazed that she should worry over Fingers and the old
Indian in this hour of their own peril. That danger he had decided
to keep as far from her mind as possible. But she could not help
realizing the impending menace of it. She must know that within a
few hours Kedsty would be found, and the long arm of the
wilderness police would begin its work. And if it caught them--

She had thrust her feet toward him and was wriggling them inside
her boots, so that he heard the slushing sound of water. "Ugh, but
they are wet!" she shivered. "Will you unlace them and pull them
off for me, Jeems?"

He laid his pipe aside and knelt close to her. It took him five
minutes to get the boots off. Then he held one of her sodden
little feet close between his two big hands.

"Cold--cold as ice," he said. "You must take off your stockings,
Marette. Please."

He arranged a pile of wood in front of the stove and covered it
with a blanket which he pulled from one of the bunks. Then, still
on his knees, he drew the cane chair close to the fire and covered
it with a second blanket. A few moments later Marette was tucked
comfortably in this chair, with her bare feet on the blanketed
pile of wood. Kent opened the stove door. Then he extinguished one
of the smoking candles, and after that, the other. The flaming
birch illumined the little cabin with a mellower light. It gave a
subdued flush to the girl's face. Her eyes seemed to Kent
wonderfully soft and beautiful in that changed light. And when he
had finished, she reached out a hand, and for an instant it
touched his face and his wet hair so lightly that he sensed the
thrilling caress of it without feeling its weight.

"You are so good to me, Jeems," she said, and he thought there was
a little choking note in her throat.

He had seated himself on the floor, close to her chair, with his
back to the wall. "It is because I love you, Gray Goose," he
replied quietly, looking straight into the fire.

She was silent. She, too, was looking into the fire. Close over
their heads they heard the beating of the rain, like a thousand
soft little fists pounding the top of the cabin. Under them they
could feel the slow swinging of the scow as it responded to the
twists and vagaries of the current that was carrying them on. And
Kent, unseen by the girl who was looking away from him, raised his
eyes. The birch light was glowing in her hair; it trembled on her
white throat; her long lashes were caught in the shimmer of it.
And, looking at her, Kent thought of Kedsty lying back in his
bungalow room, choked to death by a tress of that glorious hair,
so near to him now that, by leaning a little forward, he might
have touched it with his lips. The thought brought him no horror.
For even as he looked, one of her hands crept up to her cheek--the
small, soft hand that had touched his face and hair as lightly as
a bit of thistle-down--and he knew that two hands like that could
not have killed a man who was fighting for life when he died.

And Kent reached up, and took the hand, and held it close in his
own, as he said, "Little Gray Goose, please tell me now--what
happened in Kedsty's room?"

His voice thrilled with an immeasurable faith. He wanted her to
know, no matter what had happened, that this faith and his love
for her could not be shaken. He believed in her, and would always
believe in her.

Already he was sure that he knew how Kedsty had died. The picture
of the tragedy had pieced itself together in his mind, bit by bit.
While he slept, Marette and a man were down in the big room with
the Inspector of Police. The climax had come, and Kedsty was
struck a blow--in some unaccountable way--with his own gun. Then,
just as Kedsty was recovering sufficiently from the shock of the
blow to fight, Marette's companion had killed him. Horrified,
dazed by what had already happened, perhaps unconscious, she had
been powerless to prevent the use of a tress of her hair in the
murderer's final work. Kent, in this picture, eliminated the boot-
laces and the curtain cords. He knew that the unusual and the
least expected happened frequently in crime. And Marette's long
hair was flowing loose about her. To use it had simply been the
first inspiration of the murderer. And Kent believed, as he waited
for her answer now, that Marette would tell him this.

And as he waited, he felt her fingers tighten in his hand.

"Tell me, Gray Goose--what happened?"

"I--don't--know--Jeems--"

His eyes went to her suddenly from the fire, as if he was not
quite sure he had heard what she had said. She did not move her
head, but continued to gaze unseeingly into the flames. Inside his
palm her fingers worked to his thumb and held it tightly again, as
they had clung to it when she was frightened by the thunder and
lightning.

"I don't know what happened, Jeems."

This time he did not feel the clinging thrill of her little
fingers and soft palm. Deep within him he experienced something
that was like a sudden and unexpected blow. He was ready to fight
for her until his last breath was gone. He was ready to believe
anything she told him--anything except this impossible thing which
she had just spoken. For she did know what had happened in
Kedsty's room. She knew--unless--

Suddenly his heart leaped with joyous hope. "You mean--you were
unconscious?" he cried in a low voice that trembled with his
eagerness. "You fainted--and it happened then?"

She shook her head. "No. I was asleep in my room. I didn't intend
to sleep, but--I did. Something awakened me. I thought I had been
dreaming. But something kept pulling me, pulling me downstairs.
And when I went, I found Kedsty like that. He was dead. I was
paralyzed, standing there, when you came."

She drew her, hand away from him, gently, but significantly. "I
know you can't believe me, Jeems. It is impossible for you to
believe me."

"And you don't want me to believe you, Marette."

"Yes--I do. You must believe me."

"But the tress of hair--your hair--round Kedsty's neck--"

He stopped. His words, spoken gently as they were, seemed brutal
to him. Yet he could not see that they affected her. She did not
flinch. He saw no tremor of horror. Steadily she continued to look
into the fire. And his brain grew confused. Never in all his
experience had he seen such absolute and unaffected self-control.
And somehow, it chilled him. It chilled him even as he wanted to
reach out and gather her close in his arms, and pour his love into
her ears, entreating her to tell him everything, to keep nothing
back from him that might help in the fight he was going to make.

And then she said, "Jeems, if we should be caught by the Police--
it would probably be quite soon, wouldn't it?"

"They won't catch us."

"But our greatest danger of being caught is right now, isn't it?"
she insisted.

Kent took out his watch and leaned over to look at it in the
fireglow. "It is three o'clock," he said. "Give me another day and
night, Gray Goose, and the Police will never find us."

For a moment or two more she was silent. Then her hand reached
out, and her fingers twined softly round his thumb again. "Jeems--
when we are safe--when we are sure the Police won't find us--I
will tell you all that I know--about what happened in Kedsty's
room. And I will tell you--about--the hair. I will tell you--
everything." Her fingers tightened almost fiercely. "Everything,"
she repeated. "I will tell you about that in Kedsty's room--and I
will tell you about myself--and after that--I am afraid--you won't
like me."

"I love you," he said, making no movement to touch her. "No matter
what you tell me, Gray Goose, I shall love you."

She gave a little cry, scarcely more than a broken note in her
throat, and Kent--had her face been turned toward him then--would
have seen the glory that came into it, and into her eyes, like a
swift flash of light--and passed as swiftly away.

What he did see, when she turned her head, were eyes caught
suddenly by something at the cabin door. He looked. Water was
trickling in slowly over the sill.

"I expected that," he said cheerfully. "Our scow is turning into a
rain-barrel, Marette. Unless I bail out, we'll soon be flooded."

He reached for his slicker and put it on. "It won't take me long
to throw the water overboard," he added. "And while I'm doing that
I want you to take OFF your wet things and tuck yourself into bed.
Will you, Gray Goose?"

"I'm not tired, but if you think it is best--" Her hand touched
his arm.

"It is best," he said, and for a moment he bent over her until his
lips touched her hair.

Then he seized a pail, and went out into the rain.





CHAPTER XX


It was that hour when, with clear skies, the gray northern dawn
would have been breaking faintly over the eastern forests. Kent
found the darkness more fog-like; about him was a grayer,
ghostlier sort of gloom. But he could not see the water under his
feet. Nor could he see the rail of the scow, or the river. From
the stern, ten feet from the cabin door, the cabin itself was
swallowed up and invisible.

With the steady, swinging motion of the riverman he began bailing.
So regular became his movements that they ran in a sort of
rhythmic accompaniment to his thoughts. The monotonous splash,
splash, splash of the outflung pails of water assumed, after a few
minutes, the character of a mechanical thing. He could smell the
nearness of the shore. Even in the rain the tang of cedar and
balsam came to him faintly.

But it was the river that impressed itself most upon his senses.
It seemed to him, as the minutes passed, like a living thing. He
could hear it gurgling and playing under the end of the scow. And
with that sound there was another and more indescribable thing,
the tremble of it, the pulse of it, the thrill of it in the
impenetrable gloom, the life of it as it swept on in a slow and
mighty flood between its wilderness walls. Kent had always said,
"You can hear the river's heart beat--if you know how to listen
for it." And he heard it now. He felt it. The rain could not beat
it out, nor could the splash of the water he was throwing
overboard drown it, and the darkness could not hide it from the
vision that was burning like a living coal within him. Always it
was the river that had given him consolation in times of
loneliness. For him it had grown into a thing with a soul, a thing
that personified hope, courage, comradeship, everything that was
big and great in final achievement. And tonight--for he still
thought of the darkness as night--the soul of it seemed whispering
to him a sort of paean.

He could not lose. That was the thought that filled him. Never had
his pulse beat with greater assurance, never had a more positive
sense of the inevitable possessed him. It was inconceivable, he
thought, even to fear the possibility of being taken by the
Police. He was more than a man fighting for his freedom alone,
more than an individual struggling for the right to exist. A thing
vastly more priceless than either freedom or life, if they were to
be accepted alone, waited for him in the little cabin, shut in by
its sea of darkness. And ahead of them lay their world. He
emphasized that. THEIR world--the world which, in an illusive and
unreal sort of way, had been a part of his dreams all his life. In
that world they would shut themselves in. No one would ever find
them. And the glory of the sun and the stars and God's open
country would be with them always.

Marette was the very heart of that reality which impinged itself
upon him now. He did not worry about what it was she would tell
him tomorrow, or day after tomorrow. He believed that it was then
--when she had told him what there was to tell, and he still
reached, out his arms to her--that she would come into those arms.
And he knew that nothing that might have happened in Kedsty's room
would keep his arms from reaching, to her. Such was his faith,
potent as the mighty flood hidden in the gray-ghost gloom of
approaching dawn.

Yet he did not expect to win easily. As he worked, his mind swept
up and down the Three Rivers from the Landing to Fort Simpson, and
mentally he pictured the situations that might arise, and how he
would triumph over them. He figured that the men at Barracks would
not enter Kedsty's bungalow until noon at the earliest. The Police
gasoline launch would probably set out on a river search soon
after. By mid-afternoon the scow would have a fifty-mile start.

Before darkness came again they would be through the Death Chute,
where Follette and Ladouceur swam their mad race for the love of a
girl. And not many miles below the Chute was a swampy country
where he could hide the scow. Then they would start overland, west
and north. Given until another sunset, and they would be safe.
This was what he expected. But if it came to fighting--he would
fight.

The rain had slackened to a thin drizzle by the time he finished
his bailing. The aroma of cedar and balsam came to him more
clearly, and he heard more distinctly the murmuring surge of the
river. He tapped again at the door of the cabin, and Marette
answered him.

The fire had burned down to a bed of glowing coals when he
entered. Again he fell on his knees, and took off his dripping
slicker.

The girl greeted him from the berth. "You look like a great bear,
Jeems." There was a glad, welcoming note in her voice.

He laughed, and drew the stool beside her, and managed to sit on
it, the roof compelling him to bend his head over a little. "I
feel like an elephant in a birdcage," he replied. "Are you
comfortable, little Gray Goose?"

"Yes. But you, Jeems? You are wet!"

"But so happy that I don't feel it, Gray Goose."

He could make her out only dimly there in the darkness of the
berth. Her face was a pale shadow, and she had loosened her damp
hair so that the warmth and dry air might reach it more easily.
Kent wondered if she could hear the beating of his heart. He
forgot the fire, and the darkness grew thicker. He could no longer
see the pale outline of her face, and he drew back a little,
possessed by the thought that it was sacrilegious to bend nearer
to her, like a thief, in that gloom. She sensed his movement, and
her hand reached to him and lay lightly with its fingertips
touching his arm.

"Jeems," she said softly. "I'm not sorry--now--that I came up to
Cardigan's place that day--when you thought you were dying. I
wasn't wrong. You are different. And I made fun of you then, and
laughed at you, because I knew that you were not going to die.
Will you forgive me?"

He laughed happily. "It's funny how little things work out,
sometimes," he said. "Wasn't a kingdom lost once upon a time
because some fellow didn't have a horseshoe? Anyway, I knew of a
man whose life was saved because of a broken pipe-stem. And you
came to me, and I'm here with you now, because--"

"Of what?" she whispered.

"Because of something that happened a long time ago," he said.
"Something you wouldn't dream could have anything to do with you
or with me. Shall I tell you about it, Marette?"

Her fingers pressed slightly upon his arm. "Yes."

"Of course, it's a story of the Police," he began. "And I won't
mention this fellow's name. You may think of him as that red-
headed O'Connor, if you want to. But I don't say that it was he.
He was a constable in the Service and had been away North looking
up some Indians who were brewing an intoxicating liquor from
roots. That was six years ago. And he caught something. Le Mort
Rouge, we sometimes call it--the Red Death--or smallpox. And he
was alone when the fever knocked him down, three hundred miles
from anywhere. His Indian ran away at the first sign of it, and he
had just time to get up his tent before he was flat on his back. I
won't try to tell you of the days he went through. It was a living
death. And he would have died, there is no doubt of it, if it
hadn't been for a stranger who came along. He was a white man.
Marette, it doesn't take a great deal of nerve to go up against a
man with a gun, when you've got a gun of your own; and it doesn't
take such a lot of nerve to go into battle when a thousand others
are going with you. But it does take nerve to face what that
stranger faced. And the sick man was nothing to him. He went into
that tent and nursed the other back to life. Then the sickness got
him, and for ten weeks those two were together, each fighting to
save the other's life, and they won out. But the glory of it was
with the stranger. He was going west. The constable was going
south. They shook hands and parted."

Marette's fingers tightened on Kent's arm. And Kent went on.

"And the constable never forgot, Gray Goose. He wanted the day to
come when he might repay. And the time came. It was years later,
and it worked out in a curious way. A man was murdered. And the
constable, who had become a sergeant now, had talked with the dead
man only a little while before he was killed. Returning for
something he had forgotten, it was the sergeant who found him
dead. Very shortly afterward a man was arrested. There was blood
on his clothing. The evidence was convincing, deadly. And this
man--"

Kent paused, and in the darkness Marette's hand crept down his arm
to his hand, and her fingers closed round it.

"Was the man you lied to save," she whispered.

"Yes. When the halfbreed's bullet got me, I thought it was a good
chance to repay Sandy McTrigger for what he did for me in that
tent years before. But it wasn't heroic. It wasn't even brave. I
thought I was going to die and that I was risking nothing."

And then there came a soft, joyous little laugh from where her
head lay on the pillow. "And all the time you were lying so
splendidly, Jeems--I KNEW," she cried. "I knew that you didn't
kill Barkley, and I knew that you weren't going to die, and I knew
what happened in that tent ten years ago. And--Jeems--Jeems--"

She raised herself from the pillow. Her breath was coming a little
excitedly. Both her hands, instead of one, were gripping his hand
now. "I knew that you didn't kill John Barkley," she repeated.
"And--SANDY MCTRIGGER DIDN'T KILL HIM!"

"But--"

"He DIDN'T," she interrupted him, almost fiercely. "He was
innocent, as innocent as you were. Jeems--I Jeems--I know who
killed Barkley. Oh, I KNOW--I KNOW!"

A choking sob came into her throat, and then she added, in a voice
which she was straining to make calm, "Don't think that I haven't
faith in you because I can't tell you more now, Jeems," she said.
"You will understand--quite soon. When we are safe from the
Police, I shall tell you. I shall keep nothing from you then. I
shall tell you about Barkley, and Kedsty--everything. But I can't
now. It won't be long. When you tell me we are safe, I shall
believe you. And then--" She withdrew her hands from his and
dropped back on her pillow.

"And then--what?" he asked, leaning far over.

"You may not like me, Jeems."

"I love you," he whispered. "Nothing in the world can stop my
loving you."

"Even if I tell you--soon--that I killed Barkley?"

"No. You would be lying."

"Or--if I told you--that I--killed--Kedsty?"

"No matter what you said, or what proof there might be back there,
I would not believe you."

She was silent. And then, "Jeems--"

"Yes, Niska, Little Goddess--?"

"I'm going to tell you something--now!"

He waited.

"It is going to--shock you--Jeems."

He felt her arms reaching up. Her two hands touched his shoulders.

"Are you listening?"

"Yes, I am listening."

"Because I'm not going to say it very loud." And then she
whispered, "Jeems--I LOVE YOU!"





CHAPTER XXI


In the slowly breaking gloom of the cabin, with Marette's arms
round his neck, her soft lips given him to kiss, Kent for many
minutes was conscious of nothing but the thrill of his one great
hope on earth come true. What he had prayed for was no longer a
prayer, and what he had dreamed of was no longer a dream; yet for
a space the reality of it seemed unreal. What he said in those
first moments of his exaltation he would probably never remember.

His own physical existence seemed a thing trivial and almost lost,
a thing submerged and swallowed up by the warm beat and throb of
that other life, a thousand times more precious than his own,
which he held in his arms. Yet with the mad thrill that possessed
him, in the embrace of his arms, there was an infinite tenderness,
a gentleness, that drew from Marette's lips a low, glad whispering
of his name. She drew his head down and kissed him, and Kent fell
upon his knees at her side and crushed his face close down to her
--while outside the patter of rain on the roof had ceased, and the
fog-like darkness was breaking with gray dawn.

In that dawn of the new day Kent came at last out of the cabin and
looked upon a splendid world. In his breast was the glory of a
thing new-born, and the world, like himself, was changed. Storm
had passed. The gray river lay under his eyes. Shoreward he made
out the dark outlines of the deep spruce and cedar and balsam
forests. About him there was a great stillness, broken only by the
murmur of the river and the ripple of water under the scow. Wind
had gone with the black rainclouds, and Kent, as he looked about
him, saw the swift dissolution of the last shadows of night, and
the breaking in the East of a new paradise. In the East, as the
minutes passed, there came a soft and luminous gray, and after
that, swiftly, with the miracle of far Northern dawn, a vast, low-
burning fire seemed to start far beyond the forests, tinting the
sky with a delicate pink that crept higher and higher as Kent
watched it. The river, all at once, came out of its last drifting
haze of fog and night. The scow was about in the middle of the
channel. Two hundred yards on either side were thick green walls
of forest glistening fresh and cool with the wet of storm and
breathing forth the perfume which Kent was drawing deep into his
lungs.

In the cabin he heard sound. Marette was up, and he was eager to
have her come out and stand with him in this glory of their first
day. He watched the smoke of the fire he had built, hardwood smoke
that drifted up white and clean into the rain-washed air.

The smell of it, like the smell of balsam and cedar, was to Kent
the aroma of life. And then he began to clean out what was left of
the water in the bottom of the scow, and as he worked he whistled.
He wanted Marette to hear that whistle. He wanted her to know that
day had brought with it no doubt for him. A great and glorious
world was about them and ahead of them. And they were safe.

As he worked, his mind became more than ever set upon the
resolution to take no chances. He paused in his whistling for a
moment to laugh softly and exultantly as he thought of the years
of experience which were his surest safeguard now. He had become
almost uncannily expert in all the finesse and trickery of his
craft of hunting human game, and he knew what the man-hunters
would do and what they would not do. He had them checkmated at the
start. And, besides--with Kedsty, O'Connor, and himself gone--the
Landing was short-handed just at present. There was an enormous
satisfaction in that. But even with a score of men behind him Kent
knew that he would beat them. His hazard, if there was peril at
all, lay in this first day. Only the Police gasoline launch could
possibly overtake them. And with the start they had, he was sure
they would pass the Death Chute, conceal the scow, and take to the
untracked forests north and west before the launch could menace
them. After that he would keep always west and north, deeper and
deeper into that wild and untraveled country which would be the
last place in which the Law would seek for them. He straightened
himself and looked at the smoke again, drifting like gray-white
lace between him and the blue of the sky, and in that moment the
sun capped the tall green tops of the highest cedars, and day
broke gloriously over the earth.

For a quarter of an hour longer Kent mopped at the floor of the
scow, and then--with a suddenness that drew him up as if a whip-
lash had snapped behind him--he caught another aroma in the clean,
forest-scented air. It was bacon and coffee! He had believed that
Marette was taking her time in putting on dry footwear and making
some sort of morning toilet. Instead of that, she was getting
breakfast. It was not an extraordinary thing to do. To fry bacon
and make coffee was not, in any sense, a remarkable achievement.
But at the present moment it was the crowning touch to Kent's
paradise. She was getting HIS breakfast! And--coffee and bacon--To
Kent those two things had always stood for home. They were
intimate and companionable. Where there were coffee and bacon, he
had known children who laughed, women who sang, and men with
happy, welcoming faces. They were home-builders.

"Whenever you smell coffee and bacon at a cabin," O'Connor had
always said, "they'll ask you in to breakfast if you knock at the
door."

But Kent was not recalling his old trail mate's words. In the
present moment all other thoughts were lost in the discovery that
Marette was getting breakfast--for him.

He went to the door and listened. Then he opened it and looked in.
Marette was on her knees before the open door of the stove,
toasting bread on two forks. Her face was flushed pink. She had
not taken time to brush her hair, but had woven it carelessly into
a thick braid that fell down her back. She gave a little
exclamation of mock disappointment when she saw Kent.

"Why didn't you wait?" she remonstrated. "I wanted to surprise
you."

"You have," he said. "And I couldn't wait. I had to come in and
help."

He was inside the door and on his knees beside her. As he reached
for the two forks, his lips pressed against her hair. The pink
deepened in Marette's face, and the soft little note that was like
laughter came into her throat. Her hand caressed his cheek as she
rose to her feet, and Kent laughed back. And after that, as she
arranged things on the shelf table, her hand now and then touched
his shoulder, or his hair, and two or three times he heard that
wonderful little throat-note that sent through him a wild pulse of
happiness. And then, he sitting in the low chair and she on the
stool, they drew close together before the board that answered as
a table, and ate their breakfast. Marette poured his coffee and
stirred sugar and condensed milk in it, and so happy was Kent that
he did not tell her he used neither milk nor sugar in his coffee.
The morning sun burst through the little window, and through the
open door Kent pointed to the glory of it on the river and in the
shimmering green of the forests slipping away behind. When they
had finished, Marette went outside with him.

For a space she stood silent and without movement, looking upon
the marvelous world that encompassed them. It seemed to Kent that
for a few moments she did not breathe. With her head thrown back
and her white throat bare to the soft, balsam-laden air she faced
the forests. Her eyes became suddenly filled with the luminous
glow of stars. Her face reflected the radiance of the rising sun,
and Kent, looking at her, knew that he had never seen her so
beautiful as in these wonderful moments. He held his own breath,
for he also knew that Niska, his goddess, was looking upon her own
world again after a long time away.

Her world--and his. Different from all the other worlds God had
ever made; different, even, from the world only a few miles behind
them at the Landing. For here was no sound or whisper of
destroying human life. They were in the embrace of the Great
North, and it was drawing them closer, and with each minute nearer
to the mighty, pulsing heart of it.

The forests hung heavy and green and glistening with the wet of
storm; out of them came the tremulous breath of life and the glory
of living; they hugged the shores like watchful hosts guarding the
river from civilization--and suddenly the girl held out her arms,
and Kent heard the low, thrilling cry that came to her lips.

She had forgotten him. She had forgotten everything but the river,
the forests, and the untrod worlds beyond them, and he was glad.
For this world that she was welcoming, that her soul was crying
out to, was his world, for ever and ever. It held his dreams, his
hopes, all the desires that he had in life. And when at last
Marette turned toward him slowly, his arms were reaching out to
her, and in his face she saw that same glory which filled her own.

"I'm glad--glad," she cried softly. "Oh, Jeems--I'm glad!"

She came into his arms without hesitation; her hands stroked his
face; and then she stood with her head against his shoulder,
looking ahead, breathing deeply now of the sweet, clear air filled
with the elixir of the hovering forests. She did not speak, or
move, and Kent remained quiet. The scow drifted around a bend.
Shoreward a great moose splashed up out of the water, and they
could hear him afterward, crashing through the forest. Her body
tensed, but she did not speak. After a little he heard her
whisper,

"It has been a long time, Jeems. I have been away four years."

"And now we are going home, little Gray Goose. You will not be
lonely?"

"No. I was lonely down there. There were so many people, and so
many things, that I was homesick for the woods and mountains. I
believe I would have died soon. There were only two things I
loved, Jeems--"

"What?" he asked.

"Pretty dresses--and shoes."

His arms closed about her a little more tightly. "I--I
understand," he laughed softly. "That is why you came, that first
time, with pretty high-heeled pumps."

He bowed his head, and she turned her face to him. On her upturned
mouth he kissed her.

"More than any other man ever loved a woman I love you, Niska,
little goddess," he cried.

The minutes and the hours of that day stood out ever afterward in
Kent's life as unforgettable memories. There were times when they
seemed illusory and unreal, as though he lived and breathed in an
insubstantial world made up of gossamer things which must be the
fabric of dream. These were moments when the black shadow of the
tragedy from which they were fleeing pressed upon him, when the
thought came to him that they were criminals racing with the law;
that they were not on enchanted ground, but in deadly peril; that
it was all a fools' paradise from which some terrible shock would
shortly awaken him. But these periods of apprehension were, in
themselves, mere shadows thrown for a moment upon his happiness.
Again and again the subconscious force within him pounded home to
his physical brain the great truth, that it was all
extraordinarily real.

It was Marette who made him doubt himself at times. He could not,
quite yet, comprehend the fulness of that love which she had given
him. More than ever, in the glory of this love that had come to
them she was like a child to him. It seemed to him in the first
hours of the morning that she had forgotten yesterday, and the day
before, and ill the days before that. She was going home. She
whispered that to him so often that it became a little song in his
brain. Yet she told him nothing of that home, and he waited,
knowing that the fulfilment of her promise was not far away. And
there was no embarrassment in the manner of her surrender when he
held her in his arms, and she held her face up, so that he could
kiss her mouth and look into her glowing, lovely eyes. What he saw
was the flush of a great happiness, the almost childish confession
of it along with the woman's joy of possession. And he thought of
Kedsty, and of the Law that was rousing itself into life back at
Athabasca Landing.

And then she ran her fingers through his own and told him to wait,
and ran into the cabin and came out a moment later with her brush;
and after that she seated herself at the fulcrum of the big sweep
and began to brush out her hair in the sun.

"I'm glad you love it, Jeems," she said.

She unbound the thick braid and let the silken strands of it run
caressingly between her fingers. She smoothed it out, brushed it
until it was more beautiful than he had ever seen it, in that glow
of the sun. She held it up so that it rippled out in shimmering
cascades about her--and then, suddenly, Kent saw the short tress
from which had been clipped the rope of hair that he had taken
from Kedsty's neck. And as his lips tightened, crushing fiercely
the exclamation of his horror, there came a trembling happiness
from Marette's lips, scarcely more than the whisper of a song, the
low, thrilling melody of Le Chaudiere.

Her arms reached up, and she drew his head down to her, so that
for a time his visions were blinded in that sweet smother of her
hair.

The intimacy of that day was in itself like a dream. Hour after
hour they drifted deeper into the great North. The sun shone. The
forest-walled shores of the river grew mightier in their stillness
and their grandeur, and the vast silence of unpeopled places
brooded over the world. To Kent it was as if they were drifting
through Paradise. Occasionally he found it necessary to work the
big sweep, for still water was gradually giving way to a swifter
current.

Beyond that there was no labor for him to perform. It seemed to
him that with each of these wonderful hours danger was being left
farther and still farther behind them. Watching the shores,
looking ahead, listening for sound that might come from behind--at
times possessed of the exquisite thrills of children in their
happiness--Kent and Marette found the gulf of strangeness passing
swiftly away from between them.

They did not speak of Kedsty, or the tragedy, or again of the
death of John Barkley. But Kent told of his days in the North, of
his aloneness, of the wild, weird love in his soul for the deepest
wildernesses. And from that he went away back into dim and distant
yesterdays, alive with mellowed memories of boyhood days spent on
a farm. To all these things Marette listened with glowing eyes,
with low laughter, or with breath that rose or fell with his own
emotions.

She told of her own days down at school and of their appalling
loneliness; of childhood spent in the forests; of the desire to
live there always. But she did not speak intimately of herself or
her life in its more vital aspects; she said nothing of the home
in the Valley of Silent Men, nothing of father or mother, sisters
or brothers. There was no embarrassment in her omissions. And Kent
did not question. He knew that those were among the things she
would tell him when that promised hour came, the hour when he
would tell her they were safe.

There began to possess him now a growing eagerness for this hour,
when they should leave the river and take to the forests. He
explained to Marette why they could not float on indefinitely. The
river was the one great artery through which ran the blood of all
traffic to the far North. It was patrolled. Sooner or later they
would be discovered. In the forests, with a thousand untrod trails
to choose, they would be safe. He had only one reason for keeping
to the river until they passed through the Death Chute. It would
carry them beyond a great swampy region to the westward through
which it would be impossible for them to make their way at this
season of the year. Otherwise he would have gone ashore now. He
loved the river, had faith in it, but he knew that not until the
deep forests swallowed them, as a vast ocean swallows a ship,
would they be beyond the peril that threatened them from the
Landing.

Three or four times between sunrise and noon they saw life ashore
and on the stream; once a scow tied to a tree, then an Indian
camp, and twice trappers' shacks built in the edge of little
clearings. With the beginning of afternoon Kent felt growing
within him something that was not altogether eagerness. It was, at
times, a disturbing emotion, a foreshadowing of evil, a warning
for him to be on his guard. He used the sweep more, to help their
progress in the current, and he began to measure time and distance
with painstaking care. He recognized many landmarks.

By four o'clock, or five at the latest, they would strike the head
of the Chute. Ten minutes of its thrilling passage and he would
work the scow into the concealment he had in mind ashore, and no
longer would he fear the arm of the law that reached out from the
Landing. As he planned, he listened. From noon on he never ceased
to listen for that distant putt, putt, putt, that would give them
a mile's warning of the approach of the patrol launch.

He did not keep his plans to himself. Marette sensed his growing
uneasiness, and he made her a partner of his thoughts.

"If we hear the patrol before we reach the Chute, we'll still have
time to run ashore," he assured her. "And they won't catch us.
We'll be harder to find than two needles in a haystack. But it's
best to be prepared."

So he brought out his pack and Marette's smaller bundle, and laid
his rifle and pistol holster across them.

It was three o'clock when the character of the river began to
change, and Kent smiled happily. They were entering upon swifter
waters. There were places where the channel narrowed, and they
sped through rapids. Only where unbroken straight waters stretched
out ahead of them did Kent give his arms a rest at the sweep. And
through most of the straight water he added to the speed of the
scow. Marette helped him. In him the exquisite thrill of watching
her slender, glorious body as it worked with his own never grew
old. She laughed at him over the big oar between them. The wind
and sun played riot in her hair. Her parted lips were rose-red,
her cheeks flushed, her eyes like sun-warmed rock violets. More
than once, in the thrill of that afternoon flight, as he looked at
the marvelous beauty of her, he asked himself if it could be
anything but a dream. And more than once he laughed joyously, and
paused in his swinging of the sweep, and proved that it was real
and true. And Kent thanked God, and worked harder.

Once, a long time ago, Marette told him, she had been through the
Chute. It had horrified her then. She remembered it as a sort of
death monster, roaring for its victims. As they drew nearer to it,
Kent told her more about it. Only now and then was a life lost
there now, he said. At the mouth of the Chute there was a great,
knife-like rock, like a dragon's tooth, that cut the Chute into
two roaring channels. If a scow kept to the left-hand channel it
was safe. There would be a mighty roaring and thundering as it
swept on its passage, but that roaring of the Chute, he told her,
was like the barking of a harmless dog.

Only when a scow became unmanageable, or hit the Dragon's Tooth,
or made the right-hand channel instead of the left, was there
tragedy. There was that delightful little note of laughter in
Marette's throat when Kent told her that.

"You mean, Jeems, that if one of three possible things doesn't
happen, we'll get through safely?"

"None of them is possible--with us," he corrected himself quickly.
"We've a tight little scow, we're not going to hit the rock, and
we'll make the left-hand channel so smoothly you won't know when
it happens." He smiled at her with splendid confidence. "I've been
through it a hundred times," he said.

He listened. Then, suddenly, he drew out his watch. It was a
quarter of four. Marette's ears caught what he heard. In the air
was a low, trembling murmur. It was growing slowly but steadily.
He nodded when she looked at him, the question in her eyes.

"The rapids at the head of the Chute!" he cried, his voice vibrant
with joy. "We've beat them out. WE'RE SAFE!"

They swung around a bend, and the white spume of the rapids lay
half a mile ahead of them. The current began to race with them
now. Kent put his whole weight on the sweep to keep the scow in
mid-channel.

"We're safe," he repeated. "Do you understand, Marette? WE'RE
SAFE!"

He was speaking the words for which she had waited, was telling
her that at last the hour had come when she could keep her promise
to him. The words, as he gave them voice, thrilled him. He felt
like shouting them. And then all at once he saw the change that
had come into her face. Her wide, startled eyes were not looking
at him, but beyond. She was looking back in the direction from
which they had come, and even as he stared her face grew white.

"LISTEN!"

She was tense, rigid. He turned his head. And in that moment it
came to him above the growing murmur of the river--the PUTT, PUTT,
PUTT of the Police patrol boat from Athabasca Landing!

A deep breath came from between his lips. When Marette took her
eyes from the river and looked at him, his face was like carven
rock. He was staring dead ahead.

"We can't make the Chute," he said, his voice sounding hard and
unreal to her. "If we do, they'll be up with us before we can land
at the other end. We must let this current drive us ashore--NOW."

As he made his decision, he put the strength of his body into
action. He knew there was not the hundredth part of a second to
lose. The outreaching suction of the rapids was already gripping
the scow, and with mighty strokes he fought to work the head of
his craft toward the westward shore. With swift understanding
Marette saw the priceless value of a few seconds of time. If they
were caught in the stronger swirl of the rapids before the shore
was reached, they would be forced to run the Chute, and in that
event the launch would be upon them before they could make a
landing farther on. She sprang to Kent's side and added her own
strength in the working of the sweep. Foot by foot and yard by
yard the scow made precious westing, and Kent's face lighted up
with triumph as he nodded ahead to a timbered point that thrust
itself out like a stubby thumb into the river. Beyond that point
the rapids were frothing white, and they could see the first black
walls of rock that marked the beginning of the Chute.

"We'll make it," he smiled confidently. "We'll hit that timbered
point close inshore. I don't see where the launch can make a
landing anywhere within a mile of the Chute. And once ashore we'll
make trail about five times as fast they can follow it." Marette's
face was no longer pale, but flushed with excitement. He caught
the white gleam of teeth between her parted lips. Her eyes shone
gloriously, and he laughed.

"You beautiful little fighter," he cried exultantly. "You--you--"

His words were cut short by a snap that was like the report of a
pistol close to his ears. He pitched forward and crashed to the
bottom of the scow, Marette's slim body clutched in his arms as he
fell. In a flash they were up, and mutely they stared where the
sweep had been. The blade of it was gone. Kent was conscious of
hearing a little cry from the girl at his side, and then her
fingers were gripping tightly again about his thumb. No longer
possessed of the power of guidance, the scow swung sideways. It
swept past the wooded point. The white maelstrom of the lower
rapids seized upon it. And Kent, looking ahead to the black maw of
the death-trap that was waiting for them, drew Marette close in
his arms and held her tight.





CHAPTER XXII


For a brief space after the breaking of the scow-sweep Kent did
not move. He felt Marette's arms closing tighter and tighter
around his neck. He caught a flash of her upturned face, the flush
of a few moments before replaced by a deathly pallor, and he knew
that without explanation on his part she understood the almost
hopeless situation they were in. He was glad of that. It gave him
a sense of relief to know that she would not go into a panic, no
matter what happened. He bowed his face to hers, so that he felt
the velvety smoothness of her cheek. She turned her mouth to him,
and they kissed. His embrace was crushing for a moment, fierce
with his love for her, desperate with his determination to keep
her from harm.

His brain was working swiftly. There was possibly one chance in
ten that the scow--rudderless and without human guidance--would
sweep safely between the black walls and jagged teeth of the
Chute. Even if the scow made this passage, they would be in the
power of the Police, unless some splendid whimsicality of Fate
sent it ashore before the launch came through.

On the other hand, if it was carried far enough through the lower
rapids, they might swim. And--there was the rifle laying across
the pack. That, after all, was his greatest hope--if the scow made
the passage of the Chute. The bulwarks of the scow would give them
greater protection than the thinner walls of the launch would give
to their pursuers. In his heart there raged suddenly a hatred for
that Law of which he had been a part. It was running them to
destruction, and he would fight. There would not be more than
three men in the launch, and he would kill them, if killing became
a necessity.

They were speeding like an unbridled race-horse through the
boiling rapids now. The clumsy craft under their feet twisted and
turned. The dripping tops of great rocks shot past a little out of
their channel. And Marette, with one arm still about his neck, was
facing the peril ahead with him. They could see the Dragon's
Tooth, black and grim, waiting squarely in their path. In another
hundred and twenty seconds they would be upon it--or past it.
There was no time for Kent to explain. He sprang to his pack,
whipped a knife from his pocket, and cut the stout babiche rope
that reenforced its straps. In another instant he was back at
Marette's side, fastening the babiche about her waist. The other
end he gave to her, and she tied it about his wrist. She smiled as
she finished the knot. It was a strange, tense little smile, but
it told him that she was not afraid, that she had great faith in
him, and knew what the babiche meant.

"I can swim, Jeems," she cried. "If we strike the rock."

She did not finish because of the sudden cry that came to his
lips. He had almost forgotten the most vital of all things. There
was not time to unlace his boots. With his knife he cut the laces
in a single downward thrust. Swiftly he freed his own feet, and
Marette's. Even in this hour of their peril it thrilled him to see
how quickly Marette responded to the thoughts that moved him. She
tore at her outer garments and slipped them off as he wriggled out
of his heavy shirt. A slim, white-underskirted little thing, her
glorious hair flying in the wind that came through the Chute, her
throat and arms bare, her eyes shining at Kent, she came again
close within his arms, and her lips framed softly his name. And a
moment later she turned her face up, and cried quickly,

"Kiss me, Jeems--kiss me--"

Her warm lips clung to his, and her bare arms encircled his neck
with the choking grip of a child's. He looked ahead and braced
himself on his feet, and after that he buried one of his hands in
the soft mass of her hair and pressed her face against his naked
breast.

Ten seconds later the crash came. Squarely amidships the scow
struck the Dragon's Tooth. Kent was prepared for the shock, but
his attempt to hold his feet, with Marette in his arms, was
futile. The bulwark saved them from crashing against the slippery
face of the rock itself. Amid the roar of water that filled his
ears he was conscious of the rending of timbers. The scow bulged
up with the mighty force beneath, and for a second or two it
seemed as though that force was going to overturn and submerge it.
Then slowly it began to slip off the nose of the rock.

Holding to the rail with one hand and clinging to Marette with his
other arm, Kent was gripped in the horror of what was happening.
The scow was slipping INTO THE RIGHT HAND CHANNEL! In that channel
there was no hope--only death.

Marette was squarely facing the thing ahead. In this hour when
each second held a lifetime of suspense Kent saw that she
understood. Yet she did not cry out. Her face was dead white. Her
hair and arms and shoulders were dripping with the splash of
water. But she was not terrified as he had seen terror. When she
turned her eyes to him, he was amazed by the quiet, calm look that
was in them. Her lips trembled.

His soul expressed itself in a wordless cry that was drowned in
another crash of timber as a jutting snag of the Tooth crumpled up
the little cabin as if it had been pasteboard. He felt
overwhelming him the surge of a thing mightier than the menace of
the Chute. He could not lose! It was inconceivable. Impossible!
With HER to fight for--this slim, wonderful creature who smiled at
him even as she saw death.

And then, as his arm closed still more tightly about her, the
monsters of power and death gave him their answer. The scow swung
free of the Dragon's Tooth, half-filled with water. Its cracked
and broken carcass was caught in the rock jaws of the eastern
channel. It ceased to be a floating thing. It was inundation,
dissolution, utter obliteration almost without shock. And Kent
found himself in the thundering rush of waters, holding to
Marette.

For a space they were under. Black water and white froth fumed and
exploded over them. It seemed an age before fresh air filled
Kent's nostrils. He thrust Marette upward and cried out to her. He
heard her answer.

"I'm all right--Jeems!"

His swimming prowess was of little avail now. He was like a chip.
All his effort was to make of himself a barrier between Marette's
soft body and the rocks. It was not the water itself that he
feared, but the rocks.

There were scores and hundreds of them, like the teeth of a mighty
grinding machine. And the jaw was a quarter of a mile in length.
He felt the first shock, the second, the third. He was not
thinking of time or distance, but was fighting solely to keep
himself between Marette and death. The first time he failed, a
blind sort of rage burned in his brain.

He saw her white body strained over a slippery, deluge-worn rock.
Her head was flung back, and he saw the long masses of her hair
streaming out in the white froth, and he thought for an instant
that her fragile body had been broken. He fought still more
fiercely after that. And she knew for what he was fighting. Only
in an unreal sort of way was he conscious of shock and hurt. It
gave him no physical pain. Yet he sensed the growing dizziness in
his head, an increasing lack of strength in his arms and body.

They were halfway through the Chute when he shot against a rock
with terrific force. The contact tore Marette from him. He plunged
for her, missed his grip, and then saw her opposite him, clinging
to the same rock. The babiche rope had saved her. Fastened about
her waist and tied to his wrist, it still held them together--with
the five feet of rock between them.

Panting, their life half beaten out of them, their eyes met over
that rock. Now that he was out of the water, the blood began
streaming from Kent's arms and shoulders and face, but he smiled
at her as a few moments before she had smiled at him. Her eyes
were filled with the pain of his hurts. He nodded back in the
direction from which they had come.

"We're out of the worst of it," he tried to shout. "As soon as
we've got our wind, I will climb over the rock to you. It won't
take us longer than a couple of minutes, perhaps less, to make the
quiet water at the end of the channel."

She heard him and nodded her reply. He wanted to give her
confidence. And he had no intention of resting, for her position
filled him with a terror which he fought to hide. The babiche
rope, not half as large around as his little finger, had swung her
to the downstream side of the rock. It was the slender thread of
buckskin and his own weight that were holding her. If the buckskin
should break--

He thanked God that it was the tough babiche that had been around
his pack. An inch at a time he began to draw himself up on the
rock. The undertow behind the rock had flung a mass of Marette's
long hair toward him, so that it was a foot or two nearer to him
than her clinging hands. He worked himself toward that, for he saw
that he could reach it more quickly than he could reach her. At
the same time he had to keep his end of the babiche taut. It was,
from the beginning, an almost superhuman task. The rock was
slippery as oil. Twice his eyes shot down-stream, with the thought
that it might be better to cast himself bodily into the water, and
after that draw Marette to him by means of the babiche. What he
saw convinced him that such action would be fatal. He must have
Marette in his arms. If he lost her--even for a few seconds--the
life would be beaten from her body in that rock-strewn maelstrom
below.

And then, suddenly, the babiche cord about his wrist grew loose.
The reaction almost threw him back. With the loosening of it a cry
came from Marette. It all happened in an instant, in almost less
time than his brain could seize upon the significance of it--the
slipping of her hands from the rock, the shooting of her white
body away from him in the still whiter spume of the rapids, The
rock had cut the babiche, and she was gone! With a cry that was
like the cry of a madman he plunged after her. The water engulfed
him. He twisted himself up, freeing himself from the undertow.
Twenty feet ahead of him--thirty--he caught a glimpse of a white
arm and then of Marette's face, before she disappeared in a wall
of froth.

Into that froth he shot after her. He came out of it blinded,
groping wildly for her, crying out her name. His fingers caught
the end of the babiche that was fastened about his own wrist, and
he clutched it savagely, believing for a moment that he had found
her. Thicker and more deadly the rocks of the lower passage rose
in his way. They seemed like living things, like devils filled
with the desire to torture and destroy. They struck and beat at
him. Their laughter was the roar of a Niagara. He no longer cried
out. His brain grew heavy, and clubs were beating him--beating and
breaking him into a formless thing. The rock-drifts of spume,
lather-white, like the frosting of a monster cake, turned gray and
then black.

He did not know when he ceased fighting. The day went out. Night
came. The world was oblivion. And for a space he ceased to live.





CHAPTER XXIII


An hour later the fighting forces in his body dragged Kent back
into existence. He opened his eyes. The shock of what had happened
did not at once fall upon him. His first sensation was of
awakening from a sleep that had been filled with pain and horror.

Then he saw a black rock wall opposite him; he heard the sullen
roar of the stream; his eyes fell upon a vivid patch of light
reflected from the setting sun. He dragged himself up until he was
on his knees, and all at once a thing that was like an iron hoop--
choking his senses--seemed to break in his head, and he staggered
to his feet, crying out Marette's name. Understanding inundated
him with its horror, deadening his tongue after that first cry,
filling his throat with a moaning, sobbing agony. Marette was
gone. She was lost. She was dead.

Swiftly, as reason came, his eyes took in his environment. For a
quarter of a mile above him he could see the white spume between
the chasm walls, darkening with the approach of night. He could
hear more clearly the roar of the death-floods. But close to him
was smooth water, and he stood now on a shelving tongue of rock
and shale, upon which the current had flung him. In front of him
was a rock wall. Behind him was another. There was no footing
except where he stood. And Marette was not with him.

Only the truth could batter at his brain as he stood there. But
his physical self refused to accept that truth. If he had lived,
she must live! She was there--somewhere--along the shore--among
the rocks--

The moaning in his throat gave way to the voicing of her name. He
shouted, and listened. He swayed back along the tongue of rock to
the boulder-strewn edge of the chasm wall. A hundred yards farther
on was the opening of the Chute. He came out of this, his clothes
torn from him, his body bleeding, unrecognizable, half a madman,--
shouting her name more and more loudly. The glow of the setting
sun struck him at last. He was out from between the chasm walls,
and it lighted up the green world for him. Ahead of him the river
widened and swept on in tranquil quiet.

And now it was no longer fear that possessed him. It was the
horrible, overwhelming certainty of the thing. The years fell from
him, and he sobbed--sobbed like a boy stricken by some great
childish grief, as he searched along the edge of the shore. Over
and over again he cried and whispered Marette's name.

But he did not shout it again, for he knew that she was dead. She
was gone from him forever. Yet he did not cease to search. The
last of the sun went out. Twilight came, and then darkness. Even
in that darkness he continued to search for a mile below the
Chute, calling her name more loudly now, and listening always for
the answer which he knew would never come. The moon came out after
a time, and hour after hour he kept up his hopeless quest. He did
not know how badly the rocks had battered and hurt him, and he
scarcely knew when it was that exhaustion dropped him like a dead
man in his tracks. When dawn came, it found him wandering away
from the river, and toward noon of that day, he was found by Andre
Boileau, the old white-haired half-breed who trapped on Burntwood
Creek. Andre was shocked at the sight of his wounds and half
dragged and half carried him to his shack hidden away in the
forest.

For six days thereafter Kent remained at old Andre's place, simply
because he had neither the strength nor the reason to move. Andre
wondered that there were no broken bones in him. But his head was
terribly hurt, and it was that hurt that for three days and three
nights made Kent hover with nerve-racking indecision between life
and death. The fourth day reason came back to him, and Boileau fed
him venison broth. The fifth day he stood up. The sixth he thanked
Andre, and said that he was ready to go.

Andre outfitted him with old clothes, gave him a supply of food
and God's blessing. And Kent returned to the Chute, giving Andre
to understand that his destination was Athabasca Landing.

Kent knew that it was not wise for him to return to the river. He
knew that it would have been better for him both in mind and body
had be gone in the opposite direction. But he no longer had in him
the desire to fight, even for himself. He followed the lines of
least resistance, and these led him back to the scene of the
tragedy. His grief, when he returned, was no longer the
heartbreaking agony of that first night. It was a deep-seated,
consuming fire that had already burned him out, heart and soul.
Even caution was dead in him. He feared nothing, avoided nothing.
Had the police boat been at the Chute, he would have revealed
himself without any thought of self-preservation. A ray of hope
would have been precious medicine to him. But there was no hope.
Marette was dead. Her tender body was destroyed. And he was alone,
unfathomably and hopelessly alone.

And now, after he had reached the river again, something held him
there. From the head of the Chute to a bend in the river two miles
below, his feet wore a beaten trail. Three or four times a day he
would make the trip, and along the path he set a few snares in
which he caught rabbits for food. Each night he made his bed in a
crevice among the rocks at the foot of the Chute. At the end of a
week the old Jim Kent was dead. Even O'Connor would not have
recognized him with his shaggy growth of beard, his hollow eyes,
and the sunken cheeks which the beard failed to hide.

And the fighting spirit in him also was dead. Once or twice there
leaped up in him a sudden passion demanding vengeance upon the
accursed Law that was accountable for the death of Marette, but
even this flame snuffed itself out quickly.

And then, on the eighth day, he saw the edge of a thing that was
almost hidden under an overhanging bank. He fished it out. It was
Marette's little pack, and for many minutes before he opened it
Kent crushed the sodden treasure to his breast, staring with half-
mad eyes down where he had found it, as if Marette must be there,
too. Then he ran with it to an open space, where the sun fell
warmly on a great, flat rock that was level with the ground, and
with sobbing breath he opened it. It was filled with the things
she had picked up quickly in her room the night of their flight
from Kedsty's bungalow, and as he drew them out one by one and
placed them in the sun on the rock, a new and sudden rush of life
swept through his veins, and he sprang to his feet and faced the
river again, as if at last a hope had come to him. Then he looked
down again upon what she had treasured, and reaching out his arms
to them, he whispered,

"Marette--my little goddess--"

Even in his grief the overwhelming mastery of his love for the one
who was dead brought a smile to his. haggard and bearded face. For
Marette, in filling her little pack on that night of hurried
flight, had chosen strange things. On the sunlit rock, where he
had placed them, were a pair of the little pumps which he had
fallen on his knees to worship in her room, and with these she had
crowded into the pack one of the billowing, sweet-smelling dresses
which had made his heart stand still for a moment when he first
looked into their hiding-place. It was no longer soft and cobwebby
as it had been then, like down fluttering against his cheeks, but
sodden and discolored, as it lay on the rock with little rivulets
of water running from it.

With the shoes and the dress were the intimate necessities which
Marette had taken with her. But it was one of the pumps that Kent
picked up and crushed close to his ragged breast--one of the two
she had worn that first wonderful day she had come to see him at
Cardigan's place.

This hour was the beginning of another change in Kent. It seemed
to him that a message had come to him from Marette herself, that
the spirit of her had returned to him and was with him now,
stirring strange things in his soul and warming his blood with a
new heat. She was gone forever, and yet she had come back to him,
and the truth grew upon him that this spirit of her would never
leave him again as long as he lived. He felt her nearness.
Unconsciously he reached out his arms, and a strange happiness
entered Into him to battle with grief and loneliness. His eyes
shone with a new glow as they looked at her little belongings on
the sunlit rock. It was as if they were flesh and blood of her, a
part of her heart and soul. They were the voice of her faith in
him, her promise that she would be with him always. For the first
time in many days Kent felt a new force within him, and he knew
that she was not quite gone, that he had something of her left to
fight for.

That night he made his bed for a last time in the crevice between
the rocks, and his treasure was gathered within the protecting
circle of his arms as he slept.

The next day he struck out north and east. On the fifth day after
he left the country of Andre Boileau he traded his watch to a
half-breed for a cheap gun, ammunition, a blanket, flour, and a
cooking outfit. After that he had no hesitation in burying himself
still deeper into the forests.

A month later no one would have recognized Kent as the one-time
crack man of N Division. Bearded, ragged, long-haired, he wandered
with no other purpose than to be alone and to get still farther
away from the river. Occasionally he talked with an Indian or a
half-breed. Each night, though the weather was very warm, he made
himself a small camp-fire, for it was always in these hours, with
the fire-light about him, that he felt Marette was very near. It
was then that he took out one by one the precious things that were
in Marette's little pack. He worshipped these things. The dress
and each of the little shoes he had wrapped in the velvety inner
bark of the birch tree. He protected them from wet and storm. Had
emergency called for it, he would have fought for them. They
became, after a time, more precious than his own life, and in a
vague sort of way at first he began to thank God that the river
had not robbed him of everything.

Kent's inclination was not to fight himself into forgetfulness. He
wanted to remember every act, every word, every treasured caress
that chained him for all time to the love he had lost. Marette
became more a part of him every day. Dead in the flesh, she was
always at his side, nestling close in the shelter of his arms at
night, walking with her hand in his during the day. And in this
belief his grief was softened by the sweet and merciful comfort of
a possession of which neither man nor fate could rob him--a
beloved Presence always with him.

It was this Presence that rebuilt Kent. It urged him to throw up
his head again, to square his shoulders, to look life once more
straight in the face. It was both inspiration and courage to him
and grew nearer and dearer to him as time passed. Early Autumn
found him in the Fond du Lac country, two hundred miles east of
Fort Chippewyan. That Winter he joined a Frenchman, and until
February they trapped along the edges of the lower fingers of the
Barrens.

He came to think a great deal of Picard, his comrade. But he
revealed nothing of his secret to him, or of the new desire that
was growing in him. And as the Winter lengthened this desire
became a deep and abiding yearning. It was with him night and day.
He dreamed of it when he slept, and it was never out of his
thoughts when awake. He wanted to go HOME. And when he thought of
home, it was not of the Landing, and not of the country south. For
him home meant only one place in the world now--the place where
Marette had lived. Somewhere, hidden in the mountains far north
and west, was that mysterious Valley of Silent Men where they had
been going when her body died. And the spirit of her wanted him to
go to it now. It was like a voice pleading with him, urging him to
go, to live there always where she had lived. He began to plan,
and in this planning he found new joy and new life. He would find
her home, her people, the valley that was to have been their
paradise. So late in February, with his share of the Winter catch
in his pack, he said good-by to Picard and faced the River again.





CHAPTER XXIV


Kent had not forgotten that he was an outlaw, but he was not
afraid. Now that he had something new and thrilling to fight for,
he fell back again upon what he called "the finesse of the game."
He approached Chippewyan cautiously, although he was sure that
even his old friends at the Landing would fail to recognize him
now. His beard was four or five inches long, and his hair was
shaggy and uncut. Picard had made him a coat, that winter, of
young caribou skin, and it was fringed like an Indian's. Kent
chose his time and entered Chippewyan just before dusk.

Oil lamps were burning in the Hudson's Bay Company's store when he
went in with his furs. The place was empty, except for the
factor's clerk, and for an hour he bartered. He bought a new
outfit, a Winchester rifle, and all the supplies he could carry.
He did not forget a razor and a pair of shears, and when he was
done he still had the value of two silver fox skins in cash. He
left Chippewyan that same night, and by the light of a Winter moon
made his camp half a dozen miles northward toward Smith Landing.

He was on the Slave River now and for weeks traveled slowly but
steadily northward on snowshoes. He avoided Fort Smith and Smith
Landing and struck westward before he came to Fort Resolution. It
was in April that he struck Hay River Post, where the Hay River
empties into Great Slave Lake. Until the ice broke up, Kent worked
at Hay River. When it was safe, he started down the Mackenzie in a
canoe. It was late in June when he turned up the Liard to the
South Nahani.

"You go straight through between the sources of the North and the
South Nahani," Marette had told him. "It is there you find the
Sulphur Country, and beyond the Sulphur Country is the Valley of
Silent Men."

At last he came to the edge of this country. He camped with the
stink of it in his nostrils. The moon rose, and he saw that
desolate world as through the fumes of a yellow smoke. With dawn
he went on.

He passed through broad, low morasses out of which rose sulphurous
fogs. Mile after mile he buried himself deeper in it, and it
became more and more a dead country, a lost hell. There were berry
bushes on which there grew no berries. There were forests and
swamps, but without a living creature to inhabit them.

It was a country of water in which there were no fish, of air in
which there were no birds, of plants without flowers--a reeking,
stinking country still with the stillness of death. He began to
turn yellow. His clothing, his canoe, his hands, face--everything
turned yellow. He could not get the filthy taste of sulphur out of
his mouth. Yet he kept on, straight west by the compass Gowen had
given him at Hay River. Even this compass became yellow in his
pocket. It was impossible for him to eat. Only twice that day did
he drink from his flask of water.

And Marette had made this journey! He kept telling himself that.
It was the secret way in and out of their hidden world, a region
accursed by devils, a forbidden country to both Indian and white
man. It was hard for him to believe that she had come this way,
that she had drunk in the air that was filling his own lungs,
nauseating him a dozen times to the point of sickness. He worked
desperately. He felt neither fatigue nor the heat of the warm
water about him.

Night came, and the moon rose, lighting up with a sickly glow the
diseased world that had swallowed him. He lay in the bottom of his
canoe, covering his face with his caribou coat, and tried to
sleep. But sleep would not come. Before dawn he struck on,
watching his compass by the light of matches. All that day he made
no effort to swallow food. But with the coming of the second night
he found the air easier to breathe. He fought his way on by the
light of the moon which was clearer now. And at last, in a resting
spell, he heard far ahead of him the howl of a wolf.

In his joy he cried out. A western breeze brought him air that he
drank in as a desert-stricken man drinks water. He did not look at
his compass again, but worked steadily in the face of that fresh
air. An hour later he found that he was paddling again a slow
current, and when he tasted the water it was only slightly tainted
with sulphur. By midnight the water was cool and clean. He landed
on a shore of sand and pebbles, stripped to the skin, and gave
himself such a scouring as he had never before experienced. He had
worn his old trapping shirt and trousers, and after his bath he
changed to the outfit which he had kept clean in his pack. Then he
built a fire and ate his first meal in two days.

The next morning he climbed a tall spruce and surveyed the country
about him. Westward there was a broad low country shut in fifteen
or twenty miles away by the foothills. Beyond these foothills rose
the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies. He shaved himself, cut his
hair, and went on. That night he camped only when he could drive
his canoe no farther. The waterway had narrowed to a creek, and he
was among the first green shoulders of the hills when he stopped.
With another dawn he concealed his canoe in a sheltered place and
went on with his pack.

For a week he picked his way slowly westward. It was a splendid
country into which he had come, and yet he found no sign of human
life. The foothills changed to mountains, and he believed he was
in the Campbell Range. Also he knew that he had followed the
logical trail from the sulphur country. Yet it was the eighth day
before he came upon a sign which told him that another living
being had at some time passed that way. What he found were the
charred remnants of an old camp-fire. It had been a white man's
fire. He knew that by the size of it. It had been an all-night
fire of green logs cut with an axe.

On the tenth day he came to the westward slope of the first range
and looked down upon one of the most wonderful valleys his eyes
had ever beheld. It was more than a valley. It was a broad plain.
Fifty miles across it rose the towering majesty of the mightiest
of all the Yukon mountains.

And now, though he saw a paradise about him, his heart began to
sink within him. It seemed to him inconceivable that in a country
so vast he could find the spot for which he was seeking. His one
hope lay in finding white men or Indians, some one who might guide
him.

He traveled slowly over the fifty-mile plain rich with a verdure
of green, covered with flowers, a game paradise. Few hunters had
come so far out of the Yukon mountains, he told himself. And none
had come from out of the sulphur country. It was a new and
undiscovered world. On his map it was a blank space. And there
were no signs of people. Ahead of him the Yukon mountains rose in
an impenetrable wall, peak after peak, crested with snow, towering
like mighty watchdogs above the clouds. He knew what lay beyond
them--the great rivers of the Western slope, Dawson City, the gold
country and its civilization. But those things were on the other
side of the mountains. On his side there was only the vast and
undisputed silence of a paradise as yet unclaimed by man.

As he went on into this valley there grew upon him a strange and
comforting peace. Yet with it there was a steadily increasing
belief that he would not find that for which he had come in
search. He did not attempt to analyze this belief. It became a
part of him, just as his mental tranquillity had grown upon him.
His one hope of success was that nearer the mountains he might
find white men or Indians.

He no longer used his compass, but guided himself by a cluster of
three gigantic peaks. One of these was taller than the other two.
As he journeyed, his eyes were always returning to it. It
fascinated him, impinged itself upon him as the watcher of a
million years, guarding the valley. He began to think of it as the
Watcher. Each hour of his progress seemed to bring it a little
more intimately to his vision. From his first night's camp in the
valley he saw the moon sink behind it. Within him a voice that
never died kept whispering to him that this mountain, greater than
all the others, had been Marette's guardian. Ten thousand times
she must have looked at it, as he had looked at it that day--if
her home was anywhere this side of the Campbell Range. A hundred
miles away she could have seen the Watcher on a clear day.

On the second day the mountain continued to grow upon Kent. By
mid-afternoon it began to take on a new character. The peak of it
was in the form of a mighty castle that changed as he advanced.
And the two lesser peaks were forming into definite contours.
Before the haze of twilight dimmed his vision, he knew that what
he had seen was not a whimsical invention of his imagination. The
Watcher had grown into the shape of a mighty human head facing
south. A restless excitement possessed him, and he traveled on
long after dusk. At dawn he was on the trail again. Westward the
sky cleared, and suddenly he stopped, and a cry came from him.

The Watcher's head was there, as if chiseled by the hands of
giants. The two smaller peaks had unveiled their mystery.
Startling and weird, their crests had taken on the form of human
heads. One of them was looking north. The other faced the valley.
And Kent, his heart pounding, cried to himself,

"The Silent Men!"

He did not hear himself, but the thought itself was a tumultuous
thing within him. It came upon him like an inundation, a sudden
and thrilling inspiration backed by the forces of a visual truth.
THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN. He repeated the words, staring at the
three colossal heads in the sky. Somewhere near them, under them,
--one side or the other--was Marette's hidden valley!

He went on. A strange joy consumed him. In it, at times, his grief
was obliterated, and it seemed to him in these moments that
Marette must surely be at the valley to greet him when he came to
it. But always the tragedy of the Death Chute came back to him,
and with it the thought that the three giant heads were watching--
and would always watch--for a beloved lost one who would never
return. As the sun went down that day, the face bowed to the
valley seemed alive with the fire of a living question sent
directly to Kent.

"Where is she?" it asked. "Where is she? Where is she?"

That night Kent did not sleep.

The next day there lay ahead of him a low and broken range, the
first of the deeper mountains. He climbed this steadily, and at
noon had reached the crest. And he knew that at last he was
looking down into the Valley of Silent Men. It was not a wide
valley, like the other. On the far side of it, three or four miles
away, rose the huge mountain whose face was looking down upon the
green meadows at its foot. Southward Kent could see for a long
distance, and in the vivid sunlight he saw the shimmer of creeks
and little lakes, and the rich glow of thick patches of cedar and
spruce and balsam, scattered like great rugs of velvety luster
amid the flowering green of the valley. Northward, three or four
miles away the range which he had climbed made a sharp twist to
the east, and that part of the valley--following the swing of the
range--was lost to him. He turned in this direction after he had
rested. It was four o'clock when he came to the elbow in the
valley, and could look down into the hidden part of it.

What he saw at first was a giant cup hollowed out of the
surrounding mountains, a cup two miles from brim to brim, the end
of the valley itself. It took him a few moments to focus his
vision so that it would pick up the smaller and more intimate
things half a mile under him, and yet, before he had done this, a
sound came up to him that set aquiver every nerve in his body. It
was the far-down, hollow-sounding barking of a dog.

The warm, golden haze that precedes sunset in the mountains, was
gathering between him and the valley, but through this he made out
after a time evidences of human habitation almost straight under
him. There was a small lake out of which ran a shimmering creek,
and close to this lake, yet equally near to the base of the
mountain on which he was standing, were a number of buildings and
a stockade which looked like a toy. He could see no animals, no
movement of any kind.

Without seeking for a downward trail he began to descend. Again he
did not question himself. An overwhelming certainty possessed him.
Of all places in the world this must be the Valley of Silent Men.

And below him, flooded and half-hidden in the illusive sun-mist,
was Marette's old home. It seemed to him now that it belonged to
him, that he was a part of it, that in going to it he was
achieving his last great resting place, his final refuge, his own
home. And the thought became strangely a part of him that a
welcome must be waiting for him there. He hurried until his breath
came pantingly between his lips and he was forced to rest. And at
last he found himself where his progress was made a foot at a
time, and again and again he was forced to climb back and detour
around treacherous slides and precipitous breaks which left sheer
falls at his feet. The mist thickened in the valley. The sun sank
behind the western peaks, and swiftly after that the gloom of
twilight deepened. It was seven o'clock when he came to the edge
of the plain, at least a mile below the elbow which shut out the
cup in the valley. He was exhausted. His hands were bruised and
bleeding. Darkness shut him in when he went on.

When he rounded the elbow of the mountain, he did not try to keep
back the joyous cry that came to his lips. Ahead of him there were
lights. A few of them were scattered, but nearest to him he saw a
cluster of them, like the glow that comes from a number of
illumined windows. He quickened his pace as he drew nearer to
them, and at last he wanted to run. And then something stopped
him, and it seemed to him that his heart had risen into his throat
and was choking him until he could not breathe.

It was a man's voice he heard, calling through the twilight gloom
a name. "Marette--Marette--Marette--"

Kent tried to cry out, but his breath came only in a gasp. He felt
himself trembling. He reached out his arms, and a strange madness
rushed like fire into his brain.

Again the voice called, "Marette--Marette--Marette--"

The cup in the valley echoed the name. It rolled softly up the
mountainside. The air trembled with it, whispered it, passed it
on--and suddenly the madness in Kent found voice, and he shouted,

"Marette--Marette--"

He ran on. His knees felt weak. He shouted the name again, and the
other voice was silent. Things loomed up out of the mist ahead of
him, between him and the glowing windows. Some one--two people--
were advancing to meet him, doubtfully, wonderingly. Kent was
staggering, but he cried the name again, and this time it was a
woman's cry that answered, and one of the two came toward him
swift as a flash of light.

Three paces apart they stood, and in that gloom of the after-
twilight their burning eyes looked at each other, while for a
space their bodies remained stricken in the face of this miracle
of a great and merciful God.

The dead had risen. By a mighty effort Kent reached out his arms,
and Marette swayed to him. When the other man came up, he found
them crumpled to their knees on the earth, clasped like children
in each other's arms. And as Kent raised his face, he saw that it
was Sandy McTrigger who was looking down at him, the man whose
life he had saved at Athabasca Landing.





CHAPTER XXV


How long it was before his brain cleared, Kent never could have
told. It might have been a minute or an hour. Every vital force
that was in him had concentrated into a single consciousness--that
the dead had come to life, that it was Marette Radisson, the flesh
and blood and living warmth of her, he held in his arms. Like the
flash of a picture on a screen he had seen McTrigger's face close
to him, and then his own head was crushed down again, and if the
valley had been filled with the roar of cannon, he would have
heard only one sound, a sobbing voice crying over and over again,
"Jeems--Jeems--Jeems--"

It was McTrigger, in the beginning of the starlight, who alone
looked with clear vision upon the wonder of the thing that was
happening. After a little Kent realized that McTrigger was
talking, that a hand was on his shoulder, that the voice was both
joyous and insistent. He rose to his feet, still holding Marette,
her arms clinging to him. Her breath was sobbing and broken. And
it was impossible for Kent to speak. He seemed to stumble over the
distance between them and the lights, with McTrigger on the other
side of Marette. It was McTrigger who opened a door, and they came
into a glow of lamplight. It was a great, strange-looking room
they entered. And over the threshold Marette's hands dropped from
Kent, and Kent stepped back, so that in the light they faced each
other, and in that moment came the marvelous readjustment from
shock and disbelief to a glorious certainty.

Again Kent's brain was as clear as the day he faced death at the
head of the Chute. And swift as a hot barb a fear leaped into him
as his eyes met the eyes of the girl. She was terribly changed.
Her face was white with a whiteness that startled him. It was
thin. Her eyes were great, slumbering pools of violet, almost
black in the lamp glow, and her hair--piled high on her head as he
had seen it that first day at Cardigan's--added to the telltale
pallor in her cheeks. A hand trembled at her throat, and its
thinness frightened him. For a space--a flash of seconds--she
looked at him as if possessed of the subconscious fear that he was
not Jim Kent, and then slowly her arms opened, and she reached
them out to him. She did not smile, she did not cry out, she did
not speak his name now; but her arms went round his neck as he
took her to him, and her face dropped on his breast. He looked at
McTrigger. A woman was standing beside him, a dark-haired, dark-
eyed woman, and she had laid a hand on McTrigger's arm, Kent,
looking at them, understood.

The woman came to him. "I had better take her now, m'sieu," she
said. "Malcolm--will tell you. And a little later,--you may see
her again."

Her voice was low and soft. At the sound of it Marette raised her
head, and her two hands stole to Kent's cheeks in their old sweet
way, and she whispered,

"Kiss me, Jeems--my Jeems--kiss me--"





CHAPTER XXVI


A little later, clasping hands in the lamp glow, Kent and Sandy
McTrigger stood alone in the big room. In their handclasp was the
warm thrill of strong men met in an immutable brotherhood. Each
had faced death for the other. Yet this thought, subconsciously
and forever a part of them, expressed itself only in the grip of
their fingers and in the understanding that lay deep in their
eyes.

In Kent's face the great question was of Marette. McTrigger saw
the fear of it, and slowly he smiled, a glad and yet an anxious
smile, as he looked toward the door through which Marette and the
older woman had gone.

"Thank God you have come in time!" he said, still holding Kent's
hand. "She thought you were dead. And I know, Kent, that it was
killing her. We had to watch her at night. Sometimes she would
wander out into the valley. She said she was looking for you. It
was that way tonight."

Kent gulped hard. "I understand now," he said. "It was the living
soul of her that was pulling me here. I--"

He took his pack with its precious contents from his shoulders,
listening to McTrigger. They sat down. What McTrigger was saying
seemed of trifling consequence beside the fact that Marette was
somewhere beyond the other door, alive, and that he would see her
again very soon. He did not see why McTrigger should tell him that
the older woman was his wife. Even the fact that a splendid chance
had thrown Marette upon a log wedged between two rocks in the
Chute, and that this log, breaking away, had carried her to the
opposite side of the river miles below, was trivial with the
thought that only a door separated them now. But he listened. He
heard McTrigger tell how Marette had searched for him those days
when he was lost in fever at Andre Boileau's cabin, how she had
given him up for dead, and how in those same days Laselle's
brigade had floated down, and she had come north with it. Later he
would marvel over these things, but now he listened, and his eyes
turned toward the door. It was then that McTrigger drove something
home. It was like a shot piercing Kent's brain. McTrigger was
speaking quietly of O'Connor. He said:

"But you probably came by way of Fort Simpson, Kent, and O'Connor
has told you all this. It was he who brought Marette back home
through the Sulphur Country."

"O'Connor!"

Kent sprang to his feet. It took McTrigger but a moment to read
the truth in his face.

"Good God, do you mean to tell me you don't know, Kent?" he
whispered tensely, rising in front of the other. "Haven't you seen
O'Connor? Haven't you come in touch with the Police anywhere
within the last year? Don't you know--?"

"I know nothing," breathed Kent.

For a space McTrigger stared at him in amazement

"I have been in hiding," said Kent. "All this time I have been
keeping away from the Police."

McTrigger drew a deep breath. Again his hands gripped Kent's, and
his voice was incredulous, filled with a great wonder. "And you
have come to her, to her old home, believing that Marette killed
Kedsty! It is hard to believe. And yet--" Into his face came
suddenly a look of grief, almost of pain, and Kent, following his
eyes, saw that he was looking at a big stone fireplace in the end
of the room.

"It was O'Connor who worked the thing out last Winter," he said,
speaking with, an effort. "I must tell you before you see her
again. You must understand everything. It will not do to have her
tell you. See--"

Kent followed him to the fireplace. From the shelf over the
stonework McTrigger took a picture and gave it to him. It was a
snapshot, the picture of a bare-headed man standing in the open
with the sun shining on him.

A low cry broke from Kent's lips. It was the great, gray ghost of
a man he had seen in the lightning flare that night from the
window of his hiding-place in Kedsty's bungalow.

"My brother," said McTrigger chokingly. "I loved him. For forty
years we were comrades. And Marette belonged to us, half and half.
It was he--who killed--John Barkley." And then, after a moment in
which McTrigger fought to speak steadily, he added, "And it was
he--my brother--who also killed Inspector Kedsty."

For a matter of seconds there was a dead silence between them.
McTrigger looked into the fireplace instead of at Kent. Then he
said:

"He killed those men, but he didn't murder them, Kent. It couldn't
be called that. It was justice, single-man justice, without going
to law. If it wasn't for Marette, I wouldn't tell you about it--
not the horrible part of it. I don't like to bring it up in my
memory. ... It happened years ago. I was not married then, but my
brother was ten years older than I and had a wife. I think that
Marette loves you as Marie loved Donald. And Donald's love was
more than that. It was worship. We came into the new mountain
country, the three of us, even before the big strikes at Dawson
and Bonanza. It was a wild country, a savage country, and there
were few women in it, but Marie came with Donald. She was
beautiful, with hair and eyes like Marette's. That was the tragedy
of it.

"I won't tell you the details. They were terrible. It happened
while Donald and I were out on a hunt. Three men--white men--
remember that, Kent; WHITE MEN--came out of the North and stopped
at the cabin. When we returned, what we found there drove us mad.
Marie died in Donald's arms. And leaving her there, alone, we set
out after the white-skinned brutes who had destroyed her. Only a
blizzard saved them, Kent. Their trail was fresh when the storm
came. Had it held off another two hours, I, too, would have
killed.

"From that day Donald and I became man-hunters. We traced the back
trail of the three fiends and discovered who they were. Two years
later Donald found one of the three on the Yukon, and before he
killed him he made him verify the names of the other two. It was a
long search after that, Kent. It has covered thirty years. Donald
grew old faster than I, and I knew, after a time, that he was
strangely mad. He would be gone for months at a time, always
searching for the two men. Ten years passed, and then, one day, in
the deep of Winter, we came on a cabin home that had been stricken
with the plague--the smallpox. It was the home of Pierre Radisson
and his wife Andrea. Both were dead. But there was a little child
still living, almost a babe in arms. We took her, Donald and I.
The child was--Marette."

McTrigger had spoken almost in a monotone. He had not raised his
eyes from the ash of the fireplace. But now he looked up suddenly
at Kent.

"We worshipped her from the beginning," he said, his voice a bit
husky. "I hoped that love for her would save Donald. It did, in a
way. But it did not cure his madness, his desire for vengeance. We
came farther east. We found this marvelous valley, and gold in the
mountains, untouched by other men. We built here, and I hoped even
more that the glory of this new world we had discovered would help
Donald to forget. I married, and my wife loved Marette. We had a
child, and then another, and both died. We loved Marette more than
ever after that. Anne, my wife, was the daughter of a missioner
and capable of educating Marette up to a certain point. You will
find this place filled with all kinds of books, and reading, and
music. But the time came when we thought we must send Marette to
Montreal. It broke her heart. And then--a long time after--"

McTrigger paused a moment, looking into Kent's eyes. "And then--
one day Donald came in from Dawson City, terrible in his madness,
and told us that he had found his men. One of them was John
Barkley, the rich timber man, and the other was Kedsty, Inspector
of Police at Athabasca Landing."

Kent made no effort to speak. His amazement, as McTrigger had gone
on, was beyond the expression of words. The night held for him a
cumulative shock--the discovery that Marette was not dead, but
alive, and now the discovery that he, Jim Kent, was no longer a
hunted man, and that it was O'Connor, his old comrade, who had run
the truth down. With dry lips he simply nodded, urging McTrigger
to continue.

"I knew what would happen if Donald went after Barkley and
Kedsty," said the older man. "And it was impossible to hold him
back. He was mad, clean mad. There was just one thing for me to
do. I left here first, with the intention of warning the two
brutes who had killed Donald's wife. I knew, with the evidence in
our hands, they could do nothing but make a getaway. No matter how
rich or powerful they were, our evidence was complete, and through
many years we had kept track of the movements of our witnesses. I
tried to explain to Donald that we could send them to prison, but
there was but one thought in his poor sick mind--to kill. I was
younger and beat him south. And after that I made my fatal
mistake. I thought I was far enough ahead of him to get down to
the line of rail and back before he arrived. You see, I figured
his love for Marette would take him to Montreal first, and I had
made up my mind to tell her everything so that she might
understand the necessity of holding him if he went to her. I wrote
everything to her and told her to remain in Montreal. How she did
that, you know. She set out for the North as soon as she received
my letter."

McTrigger's shoulders hunched lower. "Well, you know what
happened, Kent. Donald got ahead of me, after all. I came the day
after Barkley was killed. I took it as a kind fate that the day
preceding the killing I shot a grouse for my dinner, and as the
bird was only wounded when I picked it up, I got blood on the
sleeves of my coat. I was arrested. Kedsty, every one, was sure
they had the real man. And I kept quiet, except to maintain my
innocence. I could say nothing that would turn the law on Donald's
trail.

"After that, things happened quickly. You, my friend, made your
false confession to save one who had done you a poor service years
ago. Almost simultaneously with that, Marette had come. She came
quietly, in the night, and went straight to Kedsty. She told him
everything, showed him the written evidence, telling him this
evidence was in the hands of others and would be used if anything
happened to her. Her power over him was complete. As the price of
her secrecy she demanded my release, and in that black hour your
confession gave Kedsty his opportunity.

"He knew you were lying. He knew it was Donald who had killed
Barkley. Yet he was willing to sacrifice you to save himself. And
Marette remained in his house, waiting and watching for Donald,
while I searched for him on the trails. That is why she secretly
lived in Kedsty's house. She knew that Donald would come there
sooner or later, if I did not find him and get him away. And she
was plotting how to save you.

"She loved you, Kent--from that first hour she came to you in the
hospital. And she tried to exact your freedom also as an added
price for her secrecy. But Kedsty had become like a cornered
tiger. If he freed you, he saw his whole world crumbling under his
feet. He, too, went a little mad, I think. He told Marette that he
would not free you, that he would go to the hangman first. Then,
Kent, came the night of your freedom, and a little later--Donald
came to Kedsty's home. It was he whom you saw that night out in
the storm. He entered and killed Kedsty.

"Something dragged Marette down to the room that night. She found
Kedsty in his chair--dead. Donald was gone. It was then that you
found her there. Kent, she loved you--and you will never know how
her heart bled when she let you think she had killed Kedsty. She
has told me everything. It was her fear for Donald, her desire to
keep all possible suspicion from him until he was safe, that
compelled her not to confide even in you. Later, when she knew
that Donald must be safe, she was going to tell you. And then--you
were separated at the Chute." McTrigger paused, and Kent saw him
choke back a grief that was still like the fresh cut of a knife in
his heart.

"And O'Connor found out all this?"

McTrigger nodded. "Yes. He defied Kedsty's command to go to Fort
Simpson and was on his way back to Athabasca Landing when he found
my brother. It is strange how all things happened, Kent. But I
guess God must have meant it that way. Donald was dying. And in
dying, for a space, his old reason returned to him. It was from
him, before he died, that O'Connor learned everything. The story
is known everywhere now. It is marvelous that you did not hear--"

There came an interruption, the opening of a door. Anne McTrigger
stood looking at them where a little time before she had
disappeared with Marette. There was a glad smile in her face. Her
dark eyes were glowing with a new happiness. First they rested on
McTrigger's face, and then on Kent's.

"Marette is much better," she said in her soft voice. "She is
waiting to see you, M'sieu Kent. Will you come now?"

Like one in a dream Kent went toward her. He picked up his pack,
for with its precious contents it had become to him like his own
flesh and blood. And as the woman led the way and Kent followed
her, McTrigger did not move from the fireplace. In a little while
Anne McTrigger came back into the room. Her beautiful eyes were
aglow. She was smiling softly, and putting her arms about the
shoulders of the man at the fireplace, she whispered:

"I have looked at the night through the window, Malcolm. I think
that the stars are bigger and brighter than they have been in a
long time. And the Watcher seems like a living god up in the sky.
Come, please."

She took his hand, and Malcolm went with her. Over their heads
burned a glory of stars. The wind came gently up the valley, cool
with the freshness of the mountain-tops, sweet with the smell of
meadow and flowers. And when the woman pointed through the glow,
Malcolm McTrigger looked up at the Watcher, and for an instant he
fancied that he saw what she had seen--something that was life
instead of death, a glow of understanding and of triumph in the
mighty face of stone above the lace mists of the clouds. For a
long time they walked on, and deep in the heart of the woman a
voice cried out again and again that the Watcher knew, and that it
was a living joy she saw up there, for up to that unmoving and
voiceless god of the mountains she had cried and laughed and sung
--and even prayed; and with her Marette had also done these
things, until at last the pulse and beat of women's souls had
given a spirit to a form of rock.

Back in the chateau which Malcolm McTrigger and his brother Donald
had built of logs, in a room whose windows faced the Watcher
himself, Marette was unveiling the last of mystery for Jim Kent.
And this, too, was her hour of triumph. Her lips were red and warm
with the flush brought there by Kent's love.

Her face was like the wild roses he had crushed under his feet all
that day. For in this hour the world had come to her, and had
prostrated itself at her feet. The sacred contents of the pack
were in her lap as she leaned back in the great blanketed and
pillowed chair that had been her invalid's nest for many days. But
it was an invalid's nest no longer. The floods of life were
pounding through her body again, and in that hour when Malcolm
McTrigger and his wife were gone, Kent looked upon the miracle of
its change. And now Marette gave to him a little packet, and while
Kent opened it she raised both hands to her head and unbound her
hair so that it fell about her in shining and glorious confusion.

Kent, unwrapping a last bit of tissue-paper, found in his hands a
long tress of hair.

"See, Jeems, it has grown fast since I cut it that night."

She leaned a little toward him, parting her hair with slim, white
fingers so that he saw again where the hair had been clipped the
night of Kedsty's death.

And then she said: "You may keep it always if you want to, Jeems,
for I cut it from my head when I left you in the room below, and
when you--almost--believed I had killed Kedsty. It was this--"

She gave him another packet, and her lips tightened a little as
Kent unwrapped it, and another tress of hair shimmered in the lamp
glow.

"That was father Donald's," she whispered.

"It--it was all he had left of Marie, his wife. And that night--
when Kedsty died--"

"I understand," cried Kent, stopping her. "He choked Kedsty with
it until he was dead. And when I found it around Kedsty's neck--
you--you let me think it was yours--to save father Donald!"

She nodded. "Yes, Jeems. If the police had come, they would have
thought I was guilty. I planned to let them think so until father
Donald was safe. But all the time I had here in my breast this
other tress, which would prove that I was innocent--when the time
came. And now, Jeems--"

She smiled at him again and reached out her hands. "Oh, I feel so
strong! And I want to take you out now--and show you my valley--
Jeems--our valley--yours and mine--in the starlight. Not tomorrow,
Jeems. But tonight. Now."

A little later the Watcher looked down on them, even as it had
looked down on another man and another woman who had preceded
them. But the stars were bigger and brighter, and the white cap of
snow that rested on the Watcher's head like a crown caught the
faint gleam of a far-away light; and after that, slowly and
wonderfully, other snow-crested mountain-tops caught that greeting
radiance of the moon. But it was the Watcher who stood out like a
mighty god among them all, and when they came to the elbow in the
plain, Marette drew Kent down beside her on a great flat rock and
laughed softly as she held his hand tightly in her lap.

"Always, from a little child, I have sat and played on this rock,
with the Watcher looking, like that," she said in a low voice. "I
have grown to love him, Jeems. And I have always believed that he
was gazing off there, night and day, into the east, watching for
something that was coming to me. Now I know. It was you, Jeems.
And, Jeems, when I was away--down there in the big city--"

Her fingers gripped his thumb in their old way, and Kent waited.

"It was the Watcher that made me want to come home most of all,"
she went on, a bit of tremble in her voice. "Oh, I grew lonely for
him, and I could see him in my dreams at night, watching,
watching, watching, and sometimes even calling me. Jeems, do you
see that hump on his left shoulder, like a great epaulet?"

"Yes, I see," said Kent.

"Beyond that, on a straight line from here--hundreds of miles
away--are Dawson City, the Yukon, the big gold country, men,
women, civilization. Father Malcolm and father Donald have never
found but one trail to this side of the mountains, and I have been
over it three times--to Dawson. But the Watcher's back is on those
things. Sometimes I imagine it was he who built those great
ramparts through which few men come. He wants this valley alone.
And so do I. Alone--with you, and with my people."

Kent drew her close in his arms. "When you are stronger," he
whispered, "we will go over that hidden trail together, past the
Watcher, toward Dawson. For it must be that over there--we will
find--a missioner--" He paused.

"Please go on, Jeems."

"And you will be--my wife."

"Yes, yes, Jeems--forever and ever. But, Jeems"--her arms crept up
about his neck--"very soon it will be the first of August."

"Yes--?"

"And in that month there come through the mountains, each year, a
man and a woman to visit us--mother Anne's father and mother. And
mother Anne's father--"

"Yes--?"

"Is a missioner, Jeems."

And Kent, looking up in this hour of his triumph and joy, believed
that in the Watcher's face he caught for an instant the passing
radiance of a smile.

THE END





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