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Title: Connie Morgan with the Mounted
Author: James B. Hendryx
Release date: September 28, 2026 [eBook #79664]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1918
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79664
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONNIE MORGAN WITH THE MOUNTED ***
[Illustration: Cover]
[Frontispiece: As Ick Far applied a rude tourniquet, Connie glanced
up. A face leered over the barricade and the muzzle of an old
smooth-bore appeared _Chapter VIII_]
CONNIE MORGAN
WITH
THE MOUNTED
BY
JAMES B. HENDRYX
AUTHOR OF "CONNIE MORGAN IN ALASKA," "THE PROMISE," ETC.
[Illustration: Title page vignette]
_ILLUSTRATED_
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1918
COPYRIGHT, 1918
BY
J. B. HENDRYX
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.--WHEN THE ICE WENT OUT
II.--CONNIE JOINS THE MOUNTED
III.--THE CANOE ON THE YUKON
IV.--THE HAND OF THE RED DEATH
V.--WHAT HAPPENED ON CAMERON CREEK
VI.--CONNIE GETS UP IN THE MORNING
VII.--ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR BAND
VIII.--IN THE NICK OF TIME
IX.--THE TEST
X.--THE PRISONER
XI.--NOTORIOUS BISHOP
XII.--CONNIE PUTS ONE OVER
XIII.--THE TRAIL OF THE "DEMON'S HEART"
XIV.--THE END OF THE TRAIL
XV.--THE HART RIVER _CACHE_
XVI.--THE "HARD GUYS"
XVII.--CONNIE PLAYS A HUNCH
XVIII.--AN AMENDED REPORT
ILLUSTRATIONS
"AS ICK FAR APPLIED A RUDE TOURNIQUET, CONNIE GLANCED UP. A FACE
LEERED OVER THE BARRICADE AND THE MUZZLE OF AN OLD SMOOTH-BORE
APPEARED" _Frontispiece_
"IT WAS A NEW EXPERIENCE FOR CONNIE, THIS SCOW TRAVEL AMONG FLOATING
ICE CAKES"
"A FEW MOMENTS LATER TWO DRIPPING FIGURES CRAWLED PAINFULLY OUT UPON
A HUGE CAKE OF ICE"
"IN ALL THE NORTH THERE WAS No TRACKER LIKE ICK FAR"
"WITH ONE KICK CONNIE HURLED THE BLAZING TORCH FULL INTO THE FACE OF
THE STOOPING MEDICINE MAN"
"CONSTABLE MORGAN AND SERGEANT MCKEEVER KNEW THAT WORD OF THEIR
COMING HAD PRECEDED THEM"
"CROSSING SWIFTLY TO THE RACK OF RIFLES, HE REMOVED THE CARTRIDGES"
"THERE, CLOSE AT HAND, CROUCHED TWO HALF-NAKED, PAINT-SMEARED
MOOSE-HEADS"
"DIMLY, BEFORE HIM, HE COULD SEE THE RIVER. THE WOMAN TUGGED
FRANTICALLY AT THE HEAVY SCOW, AND THE LITTLE BOY PUSHED AND PULLED
IN A VAIN EFFORT TO HELP HIS MOTHER"
"BACK UP, THERE!" CRIED CONNIE, AND STEPPING PAST THE 'PROSPECTOR,'
HE SECURED THE GUN
"THAT'S THE TROUBLE WITH JUST BEING A BOY," CONNIE EXPLAINED TO
MCDOUGALL'S BIG LEADER. "THE OTHERS GET REAL WORK TO DO, AND I GOT TO
COUNT A LOT OF GREASY INDIANS"
"IN AN OPEN SPACE TWO MEN WERE QUARTERING THE CARCASS OF A COW MOOSE"
"YOUR REPORTS ARE TOO LONG, PETERS," GROWLED THE SUPERINTENDENT
Connie Morgan with the Mounted
CHAPTER I
WHEN THE ICE WENT OUT
Into a damp, soggy camp on the left bank of the Yukon near the mouth
of Sixty Mile, where fifty rough men awaited the breaking up of the
ice, swung a dog team. Now, in the land of the long, lone trails a
dog team arouses small comment--but when the team is a ten-team, each
dog of which is a superbly muscled, finely poised _malamute_--and
when the musher is a small boy with a square-set jaw, who stops the
team in its tracks with a single, short, sharp word--the outfit
becomes, at once, a thing of much interest. And especially is this
true at a time when travel in the Northland, even for the toughest
and most hardened of trail mushers, is fraught with peril and
heart-breaking discomfort.
So it was that the big men crowded about and shouted hearty greetings
to the diminutive Jehu. And Connie Morgan, the boy of the dog team,
returned the greeting in kind, even as his eyes swept the faces of
the encircling crowd.
"Bet a stack o' blues I c'n name him!" cried a voice from the rear of
the throng: "He's Sam Morgan's boy, an' take it from me, pards, he's
shore some _tillicum_!" The speaker elbowed his way to the forefront
and extended a huge, red hand: "Do I win?" he smiled.
"You win," laughed the boy as the man turned toward the others:
"Heer'd 'bout him in Eagle--how he gi'n 'em all the slip an' tuck out
arter his pardner--out yonder, beyond the Ogilvies, wher' they say--"
The man paused and shuddered: "Well--they's some here that know'd
Carlson, an' Carlson wasn't no _chechako_--not what ye c'd notice.
That there country got him--but this kid, here, he come back--an' not
ondly he come back hisself, but he fetched out his pardner, an'
another----"
"He beat out th' Ten Bow stampede--I was there, an' I _know_."
"Black Jack Demaree tol' me about him," interrupted a huge man who
carried his arm in a sling.
"I know'd Sam Morgan!" exclaimed another, whose beard was shot with
grey. "They don't make 'em no better'n Sam. His grave's down by
Ragged Falls trail." Other men crowded about, offering their hands,
and just when Connie was beginning to fear that his arm would be
jerked out by the roots, a loud cry sounded from the direction of the
river, and all turned to see a man excitedly gesticulating and
pointing upstream where, far out upon the river, a black speck was
discernible upon the surface of a drifting ice floe. As a unit the
men rushed to the bank which rose sharply from the water's edge. And
as they gazed out over the field of grinding ice-cakes, a cry of
horror arose from fifty throats:
"It's a _man_!" "Ther's a man out there!" Men rushed up and down
the bank in their excitement, shouting useless advice, while others,
seizing poles and ropes, dashed out upon an anchored floe whose outer
edge extended to the middle of the river.
The spring "break-up" had come that very morning, and the whole
surface of the river was heaving with huge ice-cakes that ground and
crushed against each other as they were swept seaward upon the crest
of the resistless flood.
"Ye can't do no good that-a-way!" called a man to those who ran out
upon the shore floe.
"Nor no other way, neither!" supplemented another. "His cake ain't
a-goin' to rub the shore ice, nohow--an' he'll be past 'fore they c'n
git there."
"Isn't there _something_ we can do?' cried a young man--evidently a
_chechako_.
"Not a blame thing!" answered another. "It's tough, pardner, to hev
to stand an' see a man carried down ag'in' that--but it's got to be."
He pointed toward a spot a half-mile below, where, at the head of a
white-water rapid, the ice-cakes had formed a huge jam. Cake after
cake swept against the barrier, reared high--crunching, grinding,
climbing--only to fall back upon other cakes with the roar of a
thousand thunders. And it was toward this that the man on the floe
was drifting in the middle of the mile-wide river! Men on the bank
stared in white-faced fascination, while others ran frantically
about, shouting and waving their caps.
Connie Morgan had rushed to the bank with the crowd. No sound had
escaped his lips, and he took in all the details of the situation at
a glance. He, too, saw the futility of the efforts of the men who
ran out over the surface of the anchored floe.
"They can't make it!" he muttered, and then, suddenly, while some
stared and others shouted, the boy reached swiftly for his sheath
knife and, turning, dashed straight toward the spot where the ten
great _malamutes_ stood harnessed. Stooping, he slashed the lashings
of his sled-pack and, snatching up a coiled _babiche_ line, knotted
one end to the trace-line of a near-by toboggan and the other end to
the rear of his own sled.
"_Get out of the way! Fall back, there! Gangway! Gangway!_" The
voice of the boy cut thin and clear, and as the men sprang aside,
Connie cracked his whip, threw himself upon the sled, and the ten
great _malamutes_ leaped straight for the river. Down the steep bank
they plunged and out onto the anchored floe, with the empty toboggan
whipping along behind at the end of the sixty-foot line. Straight as
an arrow toward the outer edge of the floe swept the fastest dog team
in all the North. Within a minute they had flashed past the men who
ran, while those on the bank gasped as the outfit dashed toward the
channel that separated the two floes.
"He'll pile them dogs up in the river!" cried a voice.
"Never I seen such a run!" yelled another. "He'll never turn 'em!"
Seconds counted, now. The doomed man caught sight of the dog team
and was running along the edge of his floe which was sweeping past at
a terrific speed. Fully thirty feet of madly rushing water separated
the two great ice-cakes, and the ten flying _malamutes_ were
approaching this channel with the speed of an express train--another
moment and they would be in the water!
Suddenly, almost at the edge, it seemed to the breathless watchers,
sounded the sharp, clear word of command. Instantly each dog whirled
as on a pivot, slid several yards clawing frantically at the ice, and
then swerved sharply to the left. Another short command and they
halted as if glued to their tracks, while the empty toboggan shot
past, missing the sled by a narrow margin. The toboggan with its
upturned front seemed hardly to touch the surface of the water as it
skimmed, light as a feather, across the channel and leaped onto the
ice of the passing floe.
The man on the ice wasted no time. Even before the toboggan came to
rest, he had thrown himself face downward upon its flat surface, and
the next instant the voice of the boy rang in his ears: "_Mush! Hi!
Hi! Go!_" The sled shot back toward the bank, the _babiche_ line
snapped taut, and with a leap the toboggan with its human freight
took the water, sending white spray to the left and to the right.
The man felt the shock as the toboggan was jerked onto the shore
floe. He raised his head and looked about him. Sixty feet in front
a small boy sat upon his sled and cracked a prodigiously long-lashed
whip above the heads of the ten big dogs whose feet seemed scarcely
to touch the ice as they dashed shoreward with almost incredible
speed. Behind him the man saw his floe pass on toward the mighty
jam. Upon his ears burst the sound of a great shout and down the
steep bank to meet them swarmed fifty big, rough men who yelled and
danced and flung caps and even mackinaws high into the air. And
then, suddenly, from the direction of the jam, came another sound as
the big floe struck the barrier. Higher and higher it climbed,
tearing, grinding, smashing--until suddenly it broke in two and the
upper half crashed backward with the roar of an exploding mountain.
The whole jam trembled a moment and then let go, and the next instant
the wide Yukon was a mass of tossing, heaving, crunching ice-cakes.
Big Sergeant Dan McKeever, of the Royal North-west Mounted Police,
grasped the hand of his small deliverer in a mighty grip:
"It looked like my last patrol, kid--an' if it hadn't be'n for you--"
The words ceased and the man's eyes sought the reaches of the river
where a broad field of ice-cakes flashed silver in the rays of the
noonday sun. The boy laughed.
"Oh, it was the dogs!" he said. "It was lucky I hadn't unharnessed."
"Dawgs nawthin'!" exclaimed a man. "Here stud us gillies an' never
even thought of no dawgs--let alone whip-lashin' that there t'boggan
acrost th' open water!"
And Sergeant McKeever smiled down into the face of the small boy.
"Lucky--eh?" he said. "Well, son, luck's a great thing--when it's
handled right." And Connie Morgan wondered why the men of the North
laughed.
"Where you headin', kid? An' where's your folks?" asked the Sergeant.
"I haven't got any. I----"
"He's Sam Morgan's boy," volunteered the man with the grizzled beard,
"an' Sam--he lays back yonder. He never had no luck--Sam didn't."
"No luck! With a kid like _that_!" The man who knew Black Jack
Demaree snorted with disgust, and was interrupted by the officer of
the Mounted:
"Sam Morgan!" he exclaimed. "You don't mean big Sam Morgan, that
used to prospect through here! The one that followed British Kronk
clean through to Candle an'----"
"That's him! I was in Candle when he done it!"
Again the Sergeant turned to the small boy and the gruff voice
lowered to softness:
"I know'd your daddy, kid. Folks called him unlucky--but, he never
_quit_ When his diggin's didn't pan out he'd jest spit on his hands
an' sink a new shaft. An' he was never too busy to lend a hand when
folks was in trouble. He never made no strike. But here in the
North, kid, men will remember Sam Morgan when most of them that's
cleaned up their millions will be fergot."
"Ye said a mouthful then, Dan!" spoke Rip Wade, a man with a shirt of
multi-coloured checks. "An' now, kid, s'posin' ye tell us where
ye're headin'. The jam's busted an' if ye're goin' down river they's
room in my scow fer yer outfit. An' you, too, Dan--'less 'en ye'd
ruther ride a ice-cake."
"I'm hitting for Dawson," answered Connie. "There is a man--a little
weasel-faced man, named Squigg----"
"Squigg!" exclaimed Sergeant McKeever. "So _he's_ showed up again,
has he?"
"Do you know him?" asked the boy.
"Know him! You bet your boots, I know him--ordered him out of the
territory back in '98. Drifted over into Alaska, somewhere, an' if
he had any sense he'd _stayed_ there."
"Crossed the river two days ago," volunteered a man in the crowd,
"him an' another one. We tol' 'em they was fools. They was a foot
o' water on top o' the ice, an' no one but a fool or a crazy man w'd
of tackled it. Said they'd take a chanct, bein' in some consid'ble
of a hurry fer to fetch a doc fer a sick pard. We 'lowed they was
lyin', but 'tworn't our funeral. They made it, though. We watched
'em acrost."
"What do you want of this here Squigg?" asked the officer.
"Got to beat him to Dawson. He's trying to file a claim that belongs
to my pardner and me. I cut across from Ten Bow in hope of crossing
the river before the break-up."
"Never mind, kid, we'll beat him to it! He can't make no time
without a boat. Of course, he might of got holt of a canoe, but the
chances is, he's still this side of Indian River." The officer
turned to him of the festive shirt:
"Come on, Rip, throw your stuff in the scow an' the three of us'll
nail this here Squigg. I want him for a little job of swindlin' I
run foul of up river--didn't place it, then--but I know now it's
Squigg--'bout his size."
Rip Wade glanced toward the moving river ice.
"Jest as you say, Dan," he replied, "but the ice is runnin' pretty
strong yet. Tomorrow, mebbe, she'd be cleaned up a bit."
The Sergeant frowned:
"Look here, Rip. Tomorrow might be too late. D'you think I'm goin'
to set around an' let that measly cur put anything over on this kid?
Come alive, now, an' throw in your stuff, or I'll requisition your
boat, an' me an' the kid'll go it alone."
"Aw, can that, Dan. Sure I'll go. How long since you've et?" The
man glanced toward the group of tents where smoke ascended from many
fires. "Skookum Pete's grub's ready. Go an' divide it between you
an' the kid, an' ag'in ye're done the scow'll be loaded."
Twenty minutes later the stout scow was shoved into the current and
Rip Wade, expert riverman, took his place in the stern to do the
steering, while Connie and Sergeant McKeever, each armed with a light
spruce pole, sat well forward and made ready to fend the boat clear
of floating ice. Amidships the wolf-dogs curled comfortably among
the robes and packs, glad of a respite from the sodden snow-trail.
Rip held the flat-bottomed scow close in, and as the boat felt the
grip of the current its speed increased until the rugged shore
slipped past in a swift-moving panorama of grandeur. Connie was
surprised at the changed aspect of the surface of the river. From
the time he had first sighted it until the present moment, the boy
had been awed by the mighty sweep of the floating ice-field. Now,
however, with the scow rushing down stream the surrounding ice-cakes
seemed stationary--floating placidly upon still water, while the
shores slipped swiftly past.
[Illustration: "It was a new experience for Connie--this scow travel
among floating ice-cakes."]
It was a new experience for Connie--this scow travel among the
floating ice-cakes. And big Sergeant McKeever noted with a smile of
approval that the small boy at his side asked no questions, but with
absorbing interest watched each movement of the skilled steersman as
he deftly guided the heavy scow into the channels and water-lanes
that opened between the cakes. An hour passed and Connie wondered at
the intense vigilance of the riverman, whose sharp eyes never for a
moment left the floating ice-cakes. Gradually, a floe several acres
in extent worked its way shoreward in the immediate forefront of the
scow, leaving in its wake a wide strip of open water comparatively
free of floating ice. To the boy's mind this was a situation to be
desired, and he watched in surprise as Rip Wade worked like a Trojan
to force the scow out among the smaller cakes well to one side of the
floating ice-island. For a long half-hour the boy was so busy with
his fending pole that he had scant time for observation. And then,
suddenly, the thing happened that impressed him as nothing else had,
with the value of eternal vigilance. With a dull, grinding,
crunching sound the huge floe shuddered and stopped; and the scow,
which a moment before had seemed motionless, appeared to shoot
forward like a thing of life. Along the front of the floe appeared a
ridge of ice fragments, while from the rear sounded the gurgle of
rushing water. Connie glanced backward--the strip of open water was
nowhere visible, there was the sound of crashing and rending of ice
as cake after cake was hurled by the current against the rear of the
grounded floe and dashed into a million flashing fragments. An
involuntary shudder shook the small shoulders as the boy realized
what would have happened had the man in the stern been unskilled in
the ways of the river-trail.
"That's the reason, kid," laughed McKeever, who had watched the boy's
evident perplexity. "The scow would have smashed like an
egg-shell--we wouldn't have had a chance in a thousan'."
As the shadows lengthened, the scow was worked to the opposite bank,
and in the long twilight they camped on a high bit of ground well
back from the water, a few miles above the mouth of Indian River.
CHAPTER II
CONNIE JOINS THE MOUNTED
Supper over, Sergeant McKeever and Rip Wade lighted their pipes and
the three drew close about the little camp-fire. In the daytime the
air was soft with the feel of spring, but the nights were cold and
the warmth of the flaring fire was grateful.
The dogs wolfed down their evening meal and, finding the snow frozen
to a hard crust into which they could not burrow, returned to the
scow to nestle among the canvas-covered packs that littered its floor.
"So you come from over Ten Bow way, kid?" asked the Sergeant.
"Yes, we've got a claim over there--my pardner and I have. He's
Waseche Bill--maybe you know him."
"Waseche Bill! Well, I guess I _do_ know him! Heard a while back
he'd struck it rich over in the hills. He's a good man--Waseche is.
Prospected with him way back before the big stampede. Then he
drifted across the boundary an' I joined the Mounted. How is old
Waseche, anyhow?"
"He's just the finest man that ever swung a pick!" exclaimed the boy
with eyes alight. "But just now he's gone outside."
"Outside! Waseche Bill! What in thunder does he want outside? Why,
he's be'n in the big country goin' on fifteen year!"
"It's this way: Waseche busted his leg last winter and it didn't knit
right. The doc down at the fort told him if he didn't have it
'tended to right away he'd be lame all his life. He gave him the
name of some great surgeon in the States. Waseche didn't want to
go--but I made him."
McKeever grinned: "How long is he goin' to be gone? An' what will
you do in the meantime?"
"About a year, the doc said--maybe more. I'll just wait around. He
wanted me to go, too. But, someway, I'd rather stay in the North.
You see, my dad, he loved the North--and--well, it seems like
everyone up here was his friend, and I--I kind of feel _at home_."
The Sergeant laid a big hand on the boy's shoulder. "Yes, son," he
said. "Your dad had plenty of friends in the North. There's many a
man's a better man for knowin' Sam Morgan. He never made no big
_hurrah_, Sam didn't. Jest went ahead an' done the thing he thought
ort to be done--an' he smiled when he done it."
"Ye said a mouthful then, Sarg," acquiesced Rip Wade. "Me--I _know_!"
"An' when we head off this here Squigg, you're goin' back to Ten
Bow?" asked McKeever.
"Why, yes--I suppose so. It will be awful lonesome without Waseche,
but----"
"It sure will!" interrupted the officer. "Why not join the Mounted?"
"Join the Mounted!" exclaimed the boy. "Why, I'm too young, and too
little."
"Wait a bit! 'Course, you couldn't 'list regular--that's a five-year
job, an' you are too young. But there's Special Constables, an'
they're appointed. I'll speak to the Superintendent, onct we get to
Dawson. You might be young--an' little, too--but, By Thunder! The
Mounted needs 'em like you! Brains an' nerve is worth more than beef
in the service. That hair-trigger stunt you pulled up river this
mornin' meant jest the difference between life an' death to me--an'
Dan McKeever ain't the one to ferget it! An' a kid that can set
tight an' jam down through twenty miles of floatin' ice, with his
eyes open an' his mouth shut--he's good enough for _us_. You're
alone, now--till Waseche gets back--an', in the Service you'll get a
whole lot of experience that's worth havin', an' you'll see a lot of
country that's worth seein', an' you'll be in with a good bunch of
boys--if I do say it myself. We ain't no Holy Moseses, us men of the
Mounted--but we _run straight_! You ain't got no folks on the
outside. Your dad loved the North, an' you love it. Here's a chanct
to _know_ the North. You ain't no _chechako_--no tin horn. This is
your country--an' whether it's in the Yukon, or over acrost the
boundary, sometime the North'll need you." The officer stopped
abruptly. It was a long speech for Dan McKeever, who was a man not
much given to words. Beyond the fire Rip Wade slowly nodded.
"He spoke a mouthful, kid," he said, "Me--I _know_." And the boy
believed that Rip Wade _did_ know. A small, strong hand extended
toward Sergeant McKeever.
"Shake," the boy said, "I'm with you." And the big man shook, and so
did Rip Wade. And the three crawled between their blankets and slept.
"Hey! Wake up! Wake up, Dan! The scow's gone!" Rip Wade rushed up
from the bank of the river to the little camp where he had already
kindled the fire. At the first sound of the voice, Sergeant McKeever
and Connie Morgan threw back their blankets and fumbled at their
boots.
"Gone?" asked McKeever, gazing sleepily toward the river. "What do
you mean, 'gone'?"
"Why, _gone_! Stole! Wha'd'ye think I mean?"
The two followed Wade to the river and stared at the spot where, the
previous evening, they had drawn the scow up on the bank and secured
it to a snaggy tree-stub.
"Squigg," grunted McKeever. "He cert'nly had his nerve! Ain't be'n
gone so long, neither," he added, as he stooped to examine the tracks
at the water's edge. "He sure has put us in a hole, but--come on,
le's eat."
"Ye don't seem to be in no great hurry," grumbled Rip. Sergeant
McKeever grinned.
"The Dawson trail ain't so far back," he answered, "an' the telegraph
line--an' here's a little trick that'll send word faster'n what he
c'n travel." The Sergeant fumbled in his pack and drew forth a small
brass instrument about which were carefully coiled two lengths of
insulated wire. It was a lineman's "test set." "They'll be a
Constable waitin' for Squigg an' his pardner at Dawson," he grinned.
Twenty minutes later they proceeded to the trail and Sergeant
McKeever climbed a pole and made the connection. He slid to the
ground and opened his key--the result was the dull click of a dead
wire. The Sergeant whistled. "Wire's cut," he growled, after
another attempt. "He's a slick one!" And, indeed, the full extent
of Squigg's "slickness" was soon manifest, for he had cut the wires
where the telegraph line crosses Indian River, and the loose ends
trailed in the swollen torrent beyond any hope of recovery. With a
deep scowl, McKeever headed toward the Yukon and at the mouth of
Indian River came to a small shack built close against the bank. A
tousle-headed half-breed threw open the door in answer to McKeever's
peremptory knock, and blinked stupidly at his visitors.
"Come alive, Pierre! Where's your boat?" The Sergeant spoke
sharply, and the half-breed stepped from the filthy interior.
"She bre'k oop. I got no boat."
"No boat! Not even a canoe?"
"Canoe! _Oui_, canoe no good. She too mooch ice."
"Never mind the ice--that's our lookout! Show us where the canoe is,
and hustle some paddles out here! Quick, now--or off comes your hind
legs!"
The man led the way to a _cache_ where the canoe had lain throughout
the winter, protected from the weather by a clever thatching of
spruce boughs.
"She too mooch leak," opined the half-breed, "I got no pitch."
"Fetch a pail, then!" called McKeever, as the man returned to the
shack for the paddles.
"Here, kid, you bail!" The Sergeant tossed Connie the pail. "We'll
show that shrimp he can't slip anything over on us--if we have to
swim for it!"
They had proceeded but a short distance down stream when it became
plainly evident that the half-breed knew whereof he spoke when he
said: "She too mooch leak." Water seeped, and trickled, and spurted
through the seams and cracks of the old canoe and, while the two men
toiled at the paddles, Connie bailed for dear life.
The situation the three faced was anything but enviable. Between
them and Dawson raged thirty miles of swirling, ice-choked flood.
Their canoe was leaking like a sieve and each moment jagged ice-cakes
threatened to rip away sides or bottom.
"They didn't have no great start," cheered McKeever, "an' we're
travellin' a heap faster'n what they are with that heavy scow. If we
can only stay afloat we'll catch 'em sure--an' when we do, Squigg'll
wisht he never seen the Yukon!"
"Ye spoke a mouthful, Dan!" vociferated Rip Wade, as his eyes eagerly
sought the river ahead.
Despite the utmost efforts of the men, ice-cakes occasionally rasped
the sides of the rotten canoe, until at the end of an hour, although
Connie redoubled his efforts, the water gained so fast that Sergeant
McKeever was forced frequently to abandon his paddle and bail with
his cap. To add to the peril of their position, a stiff breeze
sprang up from the west, which caught them broadside and forced the
floating ice to their side of the river. Waves broke over the
gunwale of the loggy craft and the thickening ice-field seriously
hampered its movement. It was high noon when the canoe rounded a
rocky point which gave the toilers a glimpse of the low wooden
buildings of Dawson--and a view, also, of a scow manned by two men,
which laboured with the ice, scarcely a quarter of a mile away. The
exclamations of satisfaction that sprang to the lips of the pursuers
gave place to growls of disappointment as they noted the floating ice
which had been driven by the wind into an almost solid pack, cutting
them off from their quarry. True, the whole mass was drifting toward
Dawson, but owing to the wind, which drove the pack against the bank,
its progress was slow--so slow that McKeever estimated that Squigg
and his confederate would be able to effect a landing fully a
half-hour before the canoe could possibly reach the town.
"They see us!" cried Connie. "Maybe, now, they won't dare stop to
file the claim."
"They'll stop, all right," growled McKeever.
"But they stole the scow. They know they'll be arrested as soon as
we land!"
"Sure they do. They won't even try to dodge it. They'll be
convicted, too. But, if the claim's any good, what's six months, or
a year?"
"But think of having to go to _jail_!"
"That don't worry them kind--they're reg'lar crooks. They figger on
doin' time every now in so often--charge it up to profit an' loss,
like a storekeeper."
Rip Wade, who had been intently watching the efforts of the men in
the scow, turned explosively toward Sergeant Dan:
"Why in blazes don't ye pot 'em? Can't ye see they're a-goin' to
beat us to it?"
"In the Service we don't shoot first," answered the officer, "an' we
don't shoot at all--if there's any other way."
"Well, they hain't no other way, here--an' I hain't in the Service!"
The man dropped his paddle and jerked a heavy revolver from its
holster. "Ef I c'n wing one of 'em they can't make no landin'."
"_Rip!_" The single word--low spoken--yet with a peculiar hardness
of tone, caused the man in the bow and the boy to glance swiftly into
the officer's face. They noted a slight narrowing of grey eyes and a
perceptible hardening of the muscles of the jaw.
"Drop that gun!" The words sounded in the same quiet tone, yet in
them was something of deadly import--the voice was the voice of
authority. And, without a word, the man of the North returned the
gun to its holster and picked up his paddle.
They redoubled their efforts, but try as they would, they found it
impossible to gain on the scow which the men were already poling in
toward the landing. It was plainly evident that unless something
happened, and happened soon, Mr. Squigg would file his claim.
Suddenly Connie ceased bailing and gazed intently toward the scow.
He jerked the sodden mitten from his hand, raised his fingers to his
lips, and a loud, peculiar whistle shrilled across the ice-field.
Seconds passed and then, amidships of the scow, heads
appeared--tawny, grizzled heads, with long, sharp muzzles, and sharp
ears cocked to catch the sound. Again the whistle sounded across the
bobbing cakes and the commotion in the scow increased. Hairy
forefeet appeared upon the gunwale of the scow and broad-chested
bodies reared high as the great _malamutes_ looked eagerly toward the
black canoe from whence came the familiar whistle-sound. Loud,
excited cries reached the ears of the pursuers as the men endeavoured
to quiet the excited dogs, whose concerted rush to the side
threatened momentarily to upset the scow. But the wolf-dogs paid no
heed, and as the sound of the whistle again broke upon his ears, the
huge leader threw back his head and gave voice to a long
ululation--half wolf-cry, half dog--and instantly the cry was taken
up by others of the pack, and the sound of the shouting voices was
drowned.
Then it was that Squigg, himself, precipitated the disaster that made
for his own undoing. Raising his spruce pole, he brought it crashing
down upon the head of the howling leader--and the next moment the
scow was filled with leaping, whirling bodies, and a pandemonium of
growls and yelps, and frightened man-cries reached the ears of the
three canoemen. The battle was short and decisive. Suddenly, with a
wild yell, a man plunged overboard, and as the dogs, with one accord,
surged toward the remaining man, he, too, stood not upon the order of
his going, but leaped far out into the icy waters to escape the death
of the flashing fangs. A few moments later, two dripping black
objects crawled painfully onto a huge cake of drifting ice which
swept on past the Dawson landing.
[Illustration: "A few moments later two dripping figures crawled
painfully out upon a huge cake of ice."]
The rotten bark canoe was forced shoreward and three very stiff and
very weary travellers stepped out upon firm ground, and as they
stretched their aching muscles they glanced down the river where, a
half-mile away, floated a scow full of angry _malamutes_, and two
dejected-looking figures upon a cake of ice.
Connie Morgan and big Sergeant Dan McKeever turned from the
recorder's office and proceeded to the headquarters of B Division of
the Royal North-west Mounted Police. In a terse, one-hundred word
epic, Sergeant McKeever turned in the report of his long patrol. Ten
minutes later, a swift motor-boat manned by two constables of the
Mounted, swept out into the river and headed down stream, while
Sergeant McKeever sought an interview with the Superintendent.
As the Sergeant advanced with military precision and saluted, the
grey-haired official glanced inquiringly into the face of the small
boy who stood erect and trim by the Sergeant's side and returned his
glance with an expression of frank interest.
"A prisoner, Sergeant?" questioned the Superintendent, with a smile.
"No, sir--a recruit." And as the expression of surprise upon his
superior's face was followed by a nod, which meant. "Go ahead and
explain," the officer told the story of his rescue from the river,
and of the events that followed. Much more, he told, also--and when
he had finished, the Superintendent tugged thoughtfully at his dark
moustache.
"So you want to join the Service, son?" he asked, in a kindly tone.
"Yes, sir."
"Well--it is a bit irregular, but Sergeant McKeever has vouched for
you, and--you will do--you see, I knew Sam Morgan."
Thus was Connie Morgan's name entered upon the roster of the Mounted
and he became Special Constable Morgan, Reg. No. 4524, B Div.,
Dawson, And as he accompanied his new-found friend toward the
barracks, they met the special detail of Constables who were
proceeding toward the jail, escorting between them two shivering
prisoners--there was a rush of great tawny bodies, and the boy was
nearly knocked from his feet as the ten huge _malamutes_ leaped and
crowded about their young master.
CHAPTER III
THE CANOE ON THE YUKON
With the opening of the Yukon, the men of B Division, Royal
North-west Mounted Police, threw themselves into the work of checking
up boats from above, and rendering assistance or relief to the many
who had ventured into the land of gold, ignorant and ill-equipped for
their battle with the raw. Up and down the river from Dawson the
police flag waved above tiny far-flung outpost stations where one or
two of the guardians of the wilds stood ready at a moment's notice to
rip a man from the jaws of ungentle death, or maintain the order that
has made the vast Canadian North-west conspicuous as the only great
frontier the world has ever seen upon which respect for law is the
rule rather than the exception.
"Boat ahead!" cried Special Constable Connie Morgan, as the fast
little speed boat _Aurora_ chugged around a bold headland of the
great river's East bank. The boy held a pair of binoculars upon a
tiny brown speck which floated afar out upon the surface of the river.
"What is she?" asked Sergeant McKeever, who, with an ear for the
exhaust, was "tuning up" his new engine.
"Looks like a canoe. She's in trouble. Drifting sideways, now.
Busted paddle, I guess. No, I believe she's empty." Connie jerked
out his observations, as he held the binoculars upon the rapidly
approaching craft.
"Guess you're right," assented McKeever, as he scrutinized the canoe
which swung aimlessly about in the current. "We'll just slip a line
on her an' tow her ashore." He twisted the wheel a trifle and the
_Aurora_, exhaust sputtering like a gattling gun, swept in a wide
curve toward the floating canoe.
"There's someone in her!" exclaimed Connie. "Look! He's hurt--or
something--all doubled up in the bottom!"
McKeever cut off his power and the speed boat glided alongside. As
Connie had observed, there was a man in the canoe. The man was an
Indian. He was dead.
Grasping the gunwale of the lighter craft, the two held it close
against the side of the motor boat, the trained eyes of the older man
taking in at a glance every detail of their find. His brows drew
together in a frown and he gave a low whistle.
"Somethin' queer, here, kid. We ain't the first that's found him!
Come on, let's get him ashore."
Connie made a light line fast to the bow of the canoe, McKeever
started his engine, and the _Aurora_ chugged slowly toward the bank,
dragging the canoe in her wake.
A worn blanket in which were rolled a small can of tea, a corked
"pain killer" bottle containing a few sulphur matches, an old velvet
"moss bag" in which were some shreds of pemmican, a small bottle of
black rifle powder, and a filthy rag in which were wrapped a few lead
slugs, constituted the Indian's trail pack. The officers removed the
body and laid it upon the worn blanket, and Sergeant McKeever turned
to the boy:
"What do you make of it, son? Look sharp. You're a member of the
Force, now, an' it's up to you to use your brains."
"It's smallpox,' ventured Connie, with an involuntary shudder.
"No, it ain't!" contradicted the officer, gruffly. The boy looked
puzzled. "Go, on," growled the older man.
"Well--he came a long distance----"
"How do you figger that out?"
"Why, his grub is all gone, and----"
"Mightn't of had none to start with. Go on."
Connie was rapidly losing his confidence. He glanced uncertainly
into the face of his companion, who was scowling at the still form on
the blanket.
"Go on. What else?" urged the Sergeant
"He was nearly starved----"
"Might of be'n a skinny Injun to start with. Go on." So thick and
fast came the objections that Connie was completely crestfallen.
"That's about all I can see--and I guess that's mostly wrong. What
do you make of it?"
Dan McKeever grinned: "You're all right, kid--far as you go. But you
don't go far enough."
"You said it wasn't smallpox," interrupted the boy.
"Take another look. Look careful." The man pointed to the mottled
and festered face of the dead Indian. "Does that look like
smallpox?" Connie looked again and turned a puzzled face toward the
big officer.
"Yes," he answered, "it does, but----"
"There ain't no 'buts' about it. Look-a-here, kid. You're a-gettin'
your first lesson in police work. It's a business that calls on a
man for all the power of observation he's got, because, most always,
up here in the North, there ain't no witnesses to what's goin' on,
an' a man's got to depend on the sign. But observation ain't all.
You've got to be sure of yourself. It don't do a man no good to be
right if he don't _know_ he's right. If a man's right an' don't
_know_ he's right, he might better be wrong--see? Now, take our
friend, here. You say: 'It's smallpox.' I say: 'No, it ain't.' An'
you believed me, an' let it go at that."
The big officer smote his palm with a mighty fist. "When you seen
that there blotched-up face _you know'd doggone well it was
smallpox_! Now, why didn't you stick to it? When you know a thing,
stick to it, no matter who tells you contrary; me, or the
Commissioner, or the Governor-General, or the King, hisself--it
doesn't make no difference what we think about it. Just you say to
yourself: 'All right, you poor simps--think it ain't smallpox, if you
want to. But--me, I'm Connie Morgan, Regimental Number 4524,
R.N.W.M.P. I'm paid to be right--an' _I am right_! If you want to
think this here defunk Injun is a nice ol' lady that died in her bed
of the pip--go to it! But, bein' as this here is _my_ case, I'll
work it out on the idee that he's a starvin' Injun that's travelled a
long distance, an' has died of smallpox! 'Cause you was right in all
your guesses--far as you went. Do you get me?'
"Sure, Dan, I see, now," smiled the boy. "And I'll not forget it,
either. But you said I didn't go far enough. What else do you see?"
Sergeant Dan looked thoughtful: "I see enough to tell me that you an'
me has stumbled onto some real work. An' it'll be work that'll take
us many a mile back from the big river. This here specimen is from
beyond the mountains--he's got deer-skin moccasins an' a carcajo cap,
an' they ain't neither deer nor carcajo in the land of the Rats an'
North Yukons. Besides that, he's packin' an H.B. blanket, an' H.B.
tea, an' H.B. powder, so he must trade on the Mackenzie, or to the
southward--an' it's the Mackenzie, 'cause he come down the
McQuesten--see that yaller mud? That's McQuesten River mud, an' the
McQuesten comes out of the north-east. He ain't wintered none too
good an' for some reason he's come acrost to the Yukon, 'stead of
tradin' where he used to. They must of be'n two of 'em----"
"How do you know?" interrupted Connie, who had followed every word.
"'Cause no Injun never died of smallpox in no canoe--they'd of died
on shore--which he done an' was put in the canoe. Didn't you see how
he was layin'? An' look there where his hide come against them canoe
ribs. If he'd of died there, he'd of be'n warm when he died an' them
ribs would of be'n dented way into his flesh--but they ain't. He was
cold when he was put in. His flesh had set, an' you can't hardly see
the marks of the canoe ribs. Likewise, no canoe couldn't of come
down them white-water rivers without they was a good man at the
paddle. An' this other must of be'n an Injun, too, 'cause no white
man would turn a canoe-load of smallpox loose to pestelize the whole
country."
"What's this!" exclaimed Connie, as he drew from the moss bag a
tightly rolled cylinder of paper that had been overlooked in the
first inspection. It was a page from a police note-book and upon it
were scribbled the words:
Hustle vaccination points up here quick. 100 Indians, smallpox--very
bad. The Indians will bring you back, but if anything happens,
follow up McQuesten to creek marked by blasted pine. Cross divide at
head of creek and follow down first creek s.e.
J. RICKEY, _Corporal_, R.N.W.M.P.
Over and over the Sergeant read the note, and as he read, his brows
drew together in a frown. Suddenly he looked up:
"I've got it, kid! Rickey run onto this band that was down with the
Red Death, an' he stayed with 'em an' sent a couple of bucks for
help. They come down with it on the trail. One dies, an' the other
put him in the canoe an' come on to the big river, where he either
died or else hit back for the Injun camp."
The two officers placed the body and effects in the speed boat and,
towing the canoe behind, headed the _Aurora_ for Dawson.
Early the following morning Connie Morgan and Sergeant McKeever,
together with Ick Far, Indian scout, interpreter, and guide, stepped
into the _Aurora_ and sent her roaring full speed for the mouth of
Stewart River. Here the _Aurora_ was abandoned and the ascent of the
Stewart begun in a canoe. The ensuing five days were days of
bone-racking toil, now paddling against the swift current, now
poling, and again packing the outfit around a foaming, rock-ribbed
rapid, or tugging waist-deep at the tracking line. They arrived,
however, without mishap and, halting at the small outpost police
station only long enough to replenish the outfit, tackled the smaller
and swifter McQuesten.
The nights were short, now, the days long and warm, and from
river-bed to timber-line, the Northland was gay with colour. For
there is no spring here. As at the touch of a magician's wand,
summer leaps from winter's boreal embrace, full fledged in her wild
riot of glory. Wild-flowers bloomed everywhere in profusion, showing
against the light green of the lower levels in great patches of white
and purple and scarlet; while above, the dark, almost sombre green of
the spruce and fir stood out sharply against the everlasting snows of
the naked peaks that flashed and gleamed their blue and coral lights
from a million ice-facets in cold defiance of the brighter, more
intense colours of the wild gardens of the valleys.
The ascent of the McQuesten was laboriously slow. Day after day the
three indomitable officers pushed into the wild, and each day their
progress became more difficult. Rapid succeeded rapid with
discouraging frequency necessitating innumerable portages, while the
steep, stony banks of the diminishing river gave scant foothold for
work at the tracking line. But each day the three laboured from
daylight to dark, with faces and hands swollen and red from the sting
of the mosquitoes that whined about them in countless millions.
Unprotesting they toiled, as became sourdoughs, indulging at rare
intervals in a rough-growled word of encouragement or approbation.
On the morning of the tenth day, they halted at the mouth of a small
creek that bore in from the south-east. High above them, upon a
rocky crag, separated far from its kind, like some gaunt,
battle-scarred sentinel of the unknown, stood a gnarled, storm-riven
banskian tree.
"Look!" cried Connie. "The creek of the blasted pine!"
[Illustration: "In all the North there was no tracker like Ick Far."]
Ick Far was sent on a scouting expedition and shortly returned with
the information that the back trail of the two Indians led up the
smaller confluent. He was an odd bit of humanity--was Ick Far. A
finished product of the lean, lone land of cold. In all the North
was no tracker like him. His skill amounted almost to instinct, for
he could tell at a glance, by signs invisible to the eyes of white
men, not only that a man or an animal had passed, but its kind, the
time of its passing, and its rate of speed.
Dour and haughty and silent, he had stepped one day out of a furious
blizzard into a police outpost on Teslin. And dour and haughty and
silent he had remained, although for five years he had eaten the salt
of the king. They asked him where he came from and he answered
"far," and where he was going, and again he answered "far." And that
one word sums up the entire known biography of the leathern-skinned
scout. "Ichabod," someone named him, and down on the roster he went:
"Ichabod Far, Indian, tribe unknown. Guide, interpreter, scout,"
Not even in his speech did he reveal a clue to his identity, for
twenty dialects of the North were his, and the men of twenty tribes
welcomed him as friend, but knew not of his origin. For, beneath the
morose, forbidding exterior, men knew that the heart of Ick Far was
good, and upon more than one occasion he had faced death that others
might live.
So, when Ick Far reported, the canoe and a considerable portion of
the grub was _cached_ and the three struck out on foot. The small
creek was hardly more than a succession of shallow rapids and tiny
cascades, by means of which the waste from the melting snows of the
higher levels rushed and plunged toward the river.
"If it wasn't for the trail leadin' up this creek, I'd sure never
look for no pass yonder," announced McKeever, pointing to the fore,
where a sea of snow-capped peaks were jumbled in titanic confusion.
"You're sure about that trail, Ick?"
The Indian regarded the officer with a pitying expression and,
without a word, pointed to the ground at his feet. But although both
Connie and the Sergeant stared with all their might, it looked not
one whit different from the ground a yard, or a rod to the left, or
to the right.
"Oh, sure--clear as mud!" laughed the Sergeant. "All right, Ick, old
hand, go to it. But jest the same, them Injuns ain't mussed up the
scenery none scand'lus with their road buildin'."
The tiny valley narrowed and the way became steeper and rougher.
Sodden snow lay in sheltered nooks and gashes, through which the
three were forced to wallow to the thighs. The air grew perceptibly
colder and, except for stunted evergreen growths, vegetation
disappeared.
It was well toward evening when a sudden turn of the narrow ravine
revealed sight of the divide; or pass--a jagged notch that cut clean
and sharp upon the dimming sky line. Ick Far crept ahead to
reconnoitre, while Connie and McKeever snatched a moment's rest.
"Some pass, kid. What ails old Gay an' Festive?" Even as the
Sergeant spoke, Ick Far's rifle barked sharply. A second or two of
silence, and it barked again--and this time there was no silence!
From the scrub in front, and a little to the right of the narrow,
rock-, and ice-strewn trail, came a quick, surprised grunt, followed
by a roar of mingled pain and rage that rolled and reverberated
through the narrow valley.
The next moment, with a scattering of loose stones and a crashing of
scrub trees, the form of a giant "bald face" grizzly loomed almost
upon the two officers. There was no time for thought. Quick as a
flash, Connie threw himself between two rocks and, as the great brute
thundered past, the boy saw McKeever slip on a patch of old ice, try
to recover, and then, as though hurled from a catapult, ricochet from
a rock-wall to bring up against a small twisted sapling, and drop,
limp as a rag at its base. From beyond, down the steep valley, a
mighty roaring and a rattling avalanche of small stones marked the
flight of the wounded bear.
Connie leaped to his feet and rushed to the side of the Sergeant,
where he was joined a few moments later by the Indian scout whose
ill-timed shot had precipitated the disaster. Together they moved
the unconscious man to a flat shelf of rock and proceeded to examine
him for injuries. Upon his forehead, above the left eye, a lump the
size of a hen's egg had swelled to an angry blue-black, but this gave
them scarcely a thought, for they saw that from the thigh to the top
of his high-laced boot, the man's khaki trousers hung in ribbons
where the huge claws had ripped downward almost the entire length of
the leg. For a moment the boy gazed at the widening stain that
reddened the tattered undergarment, and then, working swiftly with
his sheath knife, he bared the injured leg and saw that his worst
fears were realized. At the lower termination of the scars the leg
was broken where the weight of the twelve-hundred-pound monster had
rested for a moment in his wild stampede. Thanks to the strong cloth
of the Service trousers and the thickness of the undergarment, the
gashes were not deep, and after a careful bathing with ice-water the
flow of blood was staunched and the wounds bound up.
With the aid of Ick Far, a _babiche_ line, and a small sapling for a
lever, Connie at length succeeded in setting the bones and soon had
the satisfaction of seeing the injured member bound tightly in
splints. As the last bandage was drawn into place, McKeever opened
his eyes and stared foolishly about.
"What--happened?" he asked, weakly.
"Oh, nothing--much," grinned Connie. "A wounded grizzly wanted to
rampse over the spot where you were standing--and he rampsed."
"I saw him--comin'," muttered the Sergeant, with a bewildered glance
at his leg. "An' the next thing I remembered the whole mountain
jumped sideways an'--" He pointed toward the bandages. "Busted?" he
asked. Connie nodded.
Followed a long silence, and again the Sergeant spoke: "Guess I won't
be able to mush on over the pass. You an' Ick, here, take the points
to Rickey. Pack me up some grub from the canoe, an' I'll camp here
till you get back."
"Not on your life, Dan! Listen to me," objected Connie. "I've had
time to figure it out. I'll take the points to Rickey, and Ick
will----"
"No you don't! Remember, kid, I'm in command of this patrol----"
"You're incapacitated!" fired the boy, "and that leaves me in
command. You can't stay alone in the shape you're in. Suppose----"
"All right, kid," grinned McKeever, "we'll split the difference. You
stay with me, an' Ick can go on with the points. He'll get 'em there
quicker'n what you would; an' then him an' Rickey can pick us up on
the way out."
Connie shook his head: "Now, listen, Dan. It's like this: your leg
is broken--and broken bad. The quicker you get to a doctor, the
better. Ick knows the river and he can get you to McQuesten in two
days, and down the Stewart in two more. What would happen if I tried
to take a canoe down through those rapids? You know, and so do I.
If Ick goes on, we've got to wait. Suppose he misses Rickey, or
things don't go right beyond the divide? Suppose your leg doesn't
get along right? We're still waiting--and we're not long on grub.
"There's the divide--I can't miss it. Ick and I will pack you down
to the river, and I'll mush on with the points."
"You're so good at supposin': supposin' you don't find no Injuns?
Supposin' somethin's happened to Rickey?'
"Well, I can come back, can't I? I'm no _chechako_! When you hit
the Yukon, you can send Ick back. Anyhow, if things don't go right,
it will only be me--and Rickey, maybe. But if I stay with you and
anything should go wrong with Ick, we wouldn't any of us get out."
Sergeant McKeever saw the truth of the boy's words and at length gave
a grudging assent:
"All right. You ain't no _chechako_. You'll make it. Roll in, now,
'cause we got a hard job ahead."
The task of transporting the injured Sergeant down the steep, rough
trail to the river was indeed "a hard job," consuming the better part
of two days--days of muscle-straining labour for Connie and Ick Far,
and of excruciating agony for McKeever, whose injured leg protested
with a wrench of fierce pain at each jolt or unavoidable bumping of
the rude blanket and pole litter. But not a groan, nor a word of
protest escaped him, and always he greeted the anxious looks of his
bearers with encouraging, if often white-lipped, smiles. At last the
river was reached and McKeever made comfortable upon his blankets in
the bottom of the canoe. Ick Far took his place and, with paddle
resting against the bank, looked at Connie.
"Dem Yella Knife," he grunted, "y'u watch 'em good. Too mooch
medicine man. Som' tam' good Injun--som' tam' ver' bad."
"So long, kid," called McKeever, waving his hand, "you'll go through
a-whoopin'. One policeman is worth a whole band of Injuns--an' they
know it. Let 'em see _you_ know it, too. Handle 'em like you owned
'em--an' if anything goes wrong, jest you remember that the Mounted
will comb Canada for the last crawlin' varmint of 'em!"
Ick Far shoved off, and Connie watched the canoe shoot out into the
current under the short, powerful strokes of the Indian's paddle.
CHAPTER IV
THE HAND OF THE RED DEATH
On the evening of the third day after his parting with Ick Far and
McKeever on the bank of the McQuesten, Connie Morgan inched his way
through a thick growth of aspens that fringed a narrow beaver meadow
from whence floated the sounds of an Indian village. For an hour he
had proceeded cautiously, guided by the sounds, and now, crawling
stealthily through the bush, he could see the twinkling lights of
many camp-fires. Husky dogs howled in concert, babies cried, and
from one of the dark, conical tepees came the monotonous sound of a
drum. The boy edged nearer. Forsaking the friendly shelter of the
aspen copse for the high lush grass of the open ground, he wriggled
snakewise toward the dark shadow of a tepee fifty yards distant.
Behind him the thicket loomed black with its promise of concealment,
and in front, fires flared, dogs barked and howled, and now and then
the boy caught scraps of hoarse guttural, as blanketed forms moved in
and out among the fires.
Connie had seen Indian villages before--had eaten and slept in them,
but some way, this camp seemed different. An indefinable something,
like an all-pervading spirit of doom, seemed to hover over the
village and include the entire valley in its miasmal embrace. Even
the mute figures of the squaws humped about the fires spoke absolute
dejection and helpless apathy toward the inevitable. Unconsciously
Connie shuddered, and little tickley chills crawled up and down his
spine. As if to add to the depression and intensify the portent of
evil, a weird wraith-like fog, grey and chill and clammy, crept up
the valley and settled upon the village of tepees. Again Connie
shuddered and drew closer, as the humped figures blurred beside the
fires where the flames burned a sickly yellow and glowed weak and
hazy through the chill fog-mist.
Suddenly the incessant pom, pom, pom of the drum was stilled, a fire
larger than the rest glowed out, and blanketed forms in groups, and
twos, and threes emerged from tepees and moved silently toward it.
The squaws retired to the outer fires and Connie watched the
fog-wraith eddy and swirl in their wake and settle heavily, like
molasses poured from a jug.
Creeping cautiously from tepee to tepee, the boy worked his way
toward the big fire. Now on hands and knees, now flattened into the
trampled grass, as a dark form stalked past within reach of his hand.
The fire blazed sullenly before the door of a tepee, the sides of
which were thickly hung with caribou hides fantastically painted with
ochre of dark red and saffron. Connie flattened himself close
against the base of this tepee and watched the stolid, imperturbable
faces of the Indians who squatted in a circle about the fire. "A
council," he muttered, "I wonder where Rickey is?"
Suddenly, from the interior of the tepee close at his ear, sounded
the beating of the drum, and a moment later a strange figure leaped
into the circle of the firelight--a figure gaunt and fierce-eyed, and
naked save for a gee-string, and several long necklaces of claws and
teeth, and the dried bodies of birds. For fully a minute the figure
stood motionless--rigid--gazing far into the fog as if to penetrate
the secret of its thick, clammy silence. Then, wailing forth the
words of a weird chant, he began slowly to dance, lifting each bare
foot in turn and bringing it down with a peculiar thud. Faster came
the words of the chant, and faster thudded the feet upon the ground,
while the man's long black hair switched about the grease-glistening
shoulders like a black banner of death. The words of the chant died
down, the dancing ceased and, with a weird and solitary incantation,
before the fire, the medicine man opened a small buckskin pouch and,
passing from one to another of the assembled Indians, touched each
upon the forehead with an eagle's feather which he had produced from
his medicine bag. This ceremony over, he grunted an order and four
young bucks arose and passed into the tent, from which they emerged a
few moments later bearing between them the form of a man trussed hand
and foot with caribou-skin thongs. They deposited their burden at
the feet of the medicine man and Connie caught the malevolent gleam
of the glittering black eyes as the naked savage peered into the
upturned face that returned the stare with a white man's laughing
sneer. The man was Corporal Rickey, and for a moment Connie could
scarcely restrain the impulse to dash into the circle and free his
bound comrade. But the boy bided his time, and with clenched fists
awaited the next move. The medicine man was haranguing the Indians
in their own language, not a word of which the boy could understand,
yet he knew from the gestures that the words boded no good for the
future of Corporal Rickey. Eagerly Connie scanned the faces of the
squatting Indians and, with a thrill of hope, read disapproval upon
the faces of many of the older men. The medicine man had evidently
reached the climax of his argument, for he ceased speaking and,
stooping swiftly, caught a blazing brand from the fire. Slowly--very
slowly he advanced to the bound feet of the captive. Then, for the
first time, Connie saw that the feet were bare--saw, also, that which
caused the hot blood to rush to his head in a red surge of rage--the
medicine man in the act of applying the flaming brand to the naked
soles of Corporal Rickey's feet.
With no thought for consequences, the boy threw caution to the wind,
sprang into the fire-light, and with one kick hurled the blazing
torch full into the face of the stooping medicine man. Instantly the
air was filled with red sparks and the frenzied shrieks of the naked
savage, as, with hair ablaze, he clawed and slapped wildly at the
glowing sparks that clung close and bit deep into his grease-smeared
flesh.
[Illustration; "With one kick Connie hurled the blazing torch full
into the face of the stooping medicine man."]
"Good work!" yelled Rickey. "Well, Jumpin' Jerushelam, if it ain't
the kid!"
The Indians were on their feet, now. Some springing to the
assistance of the discomfited medicine man, and others advancing
threateningly upon the diminutive figure that had leaped so suddenly
out of the fog.
"Look alive, kid! Where's the others?" The voice of Rickey was low
and tense, and Connie whispered quickly:
"I'm alone. Can they talk English?"
"Some of 'em--a little. They trade on the Mackenzie."
Without answering, the boy faced the Indians who were closing about
him, urged on by the frantic medicine man. He held up a small hand
and, for an instant, the red men hesitated. The boyish voice cut
clear, in tones of authority: "Stop! The first man that moves,
dies!" The Service gun flashed from its holster and the firelight
glinted ominously on its blue-black barrel as the hesitating Indians
glanced uncertainly from one to the other.
"You can't get away with it, kid!" warned Rickey. "It's the old
dervish, yonder. He's got 'em all gloomed up to die anyhow." His
words were drowned in a flood of unintelligible vituperation, as the
medicine man urged the Indians on. But, either the bucks knew they
had plenty of time, or none cared to hasten his forthcoming journey
to the Happy Hunting Ground, for despite the medicine man's raving,
the Indians evinced a noticeable reluctance to obey. Pressing his
momentary advantage, Connie again addressed them, his voice
unconsciously falling into the oratorical swing he had heard at
council fires beyond the Yukon.
"I am the medicine man of the white men. From beyond the mountains I
come to conquer the Red Death." Slipping the revolver into its
holster, he advanced until he faced the medicine man, and in his
voice was no tremor of fear: "Your lips speak lies. Your heart is
bad. Your medicine is no good. My medicine is strong. The Yellow
Knives shall live. I have spoken."
At the words of the boy, the naked savage forgot for a moment the
pain of his many burns and, drawing himself erect, addressed the
Indians:
"The white men have come to the land of the Yellow Knives. They have
seen that the land is good. The lakes and the rivers are full of
fish. The forest is full of game. There is much fur. They would
take the land for their own. Death! Death to the Yellow Knives!
The white men's medicine is strong. They call upon the Evil Spirits
that dwell in the caves at the home of the South Wind. The Evil
Spirits journey to the land of the Yellow Knives, and behold the hand
of the Red Death is upon us--and we die! Our women and little
children die also--and none shall be left alive. Only when the
medicine of the red men is stronger than the medicine of the white
men shall the Yellow Knives be freed from the hand of the Red Death.
Only when the bodies of the white men are burned with fire will the
Evil Spirits flee in fear from the land of the Yellow Knives, and the
Red Death depart from our lodges. I, Spotted Dog, have spoken."
Connie was quick to see that the man's words had carried weight with
the Indians, and once more his young voice rang clear as he glanced
fearlessly into the circle of scowling faces:
"Yellow Knives, you have heard the great lie from the lips of your
medicine man. His heart is black, and he speaks with a forked tongue
when he says only when the bodies of the white men are burned will
the Red Death depart from your lodges. Hear me, now--and you shall
live, and your women and children shall live, and the Red Death shall
depart from your lodges forever."
He reached into his pocket and produced the package of vaccination
points, which he held aloft. "See! The little medicine arrows of
the white men! Whoever is wounded upon the arm by the little arrow
fears not the Red Death. A little wound like the scratch of a
twig--in a few days a small sickness--and never more can the Red
Death harm him. If my lips have spoken a lie, then shall you burn
me, and my brother, also." Swiftly he rolled back the sleeve of his
coat and of his shirt and bared his arm upon which, still red from
recent vaccination, a scar showed plainly in the flare of the
firelight. "See, it is the sign of the medicine arrow! The Red
Death cannot harm me!"
Suddenly he whirled upon the medicine man: "Come, we shall see who
speaks with the forked tongue! It shall be the test. Together we
will go into a lodge of the Red Death. We shall pick out the man
most festered, upon whom the hand of the Red Death lies heaviest, and
we shall touch with our hands his sores, and shall breathe his
breath, and stay in his lodge for an hour. Then shall we wait eight
sleeps--and these shall be the judges. Before the eighth sleep, you
shall be stricken, and the hand of the Red Death shall be upon you,
and I shall be unharmed. If my words are true, then all shall be
wounded upon the arm, for I have arrows for all--and they shall live."
Connie ceased, and Corporal Rickey, who had listened to the words,
saw that the Indians were divided among themselves. With a great
effort he wriggled to a sitting posture and called loudly: "White
Eagle!" At the sound, an old Indian advanced a step and remained
motionless, while Rickey spoke in a loud voice: "You, and not yonder
lying fool are Chief of the Yellow Knives. Speak, now. You have
heard the words of truth from the lips of my brother. You have been
to the posts. You are very wise, and you know the white men of the
rivers--the factors, and the traders of fur. Have they not dealt
fairly with you? And is not the plan of my brother a fair one? We
still remain in your power. If my brother has lied, you may burn us."
The chief glanced over the faces of his people and his eye fell upon
the face of the medicine man, who seemed in no wise anxious to accept
Connie's challenge. And then he spoke, slowly, and with much wisdom:
"You have listened, oh, Yellow Knives, to the words of Spotted Dog,
the medicine man. You have listened, also, to the words of the small
white man. Spotted Dog says death shall overtake all the Yellow
Knives, and our wives, and our children. The white man says the
Yellow Knives shall live. Is death better than life?"
Slowly he rolled back the sleeve of his heavy Hudson's Bay Company
shirt. "We must all die--Spotted Dog has spoken. If we be wounded
with the little medicine arrows, we shall live--the small white man
has spoken. If we must die, one small wound upon the arm is nothing.
If, by one small wound, and one small sickness, we shall live--what
is one small wound? Life is better than death, and we can do no
worse than die--and Spotted Dog says we shall die anyway."
He extended his arm toward Connie. "Come, we shall be wounded upon
our arms, and we shall bring in our squaws and papooses." A volley
of protest surged from the lips of Spotted Dog--but the star of the
medicine man had set--White Eagle silenced him with a gesture, and,
motioning to the young men, ordered them to bind him and throw him
into his lodge.
"We weary of your howling," spoke the chief. "Not one life has it
saved in the village. When the white man has finished with us, you
shall go with him to the tepee of Long Raven, who is covered with the
sores of the Red Death, and you shall touch him with your hands, and
we shall see whose medicine is strong." The young men bound Spotted
Dog and carried him howling to his lodge and pitched him into its
blackness.
One by one, following the lead of their chief, the braves of the
Yellow Knives bared their arms and allowed Connie to scratch the skin
with the tiny vaccination points. Then the squaws and papooses were
herded to the fire and it was long past midnight when Connie
scratched the last arm and returned the remaining points to his
pocket. Then he turned to White Eagle and extended his hand:
"Your words are words of wisdom. The Red Death will depart from your
lodges. Only those already sick shall die. Loose, now, my brother.
We shall remain among you until the danger is past. We shall carry
food to the sick, and bury those who die, that the Yellow Knives need
not visit the lodges of the Red Death."
And White Eagle himself stooped and cut the thongs and, as Rickey
rose stiffly, he spoke:
"You are free to move about the village, only do not seek to escape.
My young men will watch you, and if you leave the village, you shall
surely die. If at the end of eight sleeps none of those who are
wounded have been stricken with the Red Death, then will the Yellow
Knives swear a great friendship for the white men, and you may return
to the land of your people. But, if these are stricken, then shall
you both be burned. Come, we shall take Spotted Dog and the small
white man to the lodge of Long Raven." But when they entered the
lodge of Spotted Dog, they found it empty--and Spotted Dog was
nowhere to be found.
"I always said it!" exclaimed Sergeant McKeever, as he lay propped on
his elbow upon a couch in the barracks at Dawson, and listened to
Corporal Rickey's account of what happened that night at the council
fire of the Yellow Knives, "Brains an' nerve is worth more than beef,
anyways you take it."
"Sure are!" assented Rickey, chuckling with laughter. "You should of
seen that medicine man dancin' around with his hair all a-fire,
howlin' bloody murder, an' a-clawin' at the sparks that settled over
his greasy hide like a swarm of red-hot mosquitoes." And his
laughter was echoed by a dozen or more officers who had listened to
the tale, until Connie felt his face redden under their approving
glances. And then, from the doorway, where he had stood a silent and
an unseen listener, the Superintendent himself stepped into the room
and laid a kindly hand on Connie's shoulder:
"Great work, son. We are proud of you, in the Mounted." Which was a
very long speech of approbation for the Superintendent to make. And,
later, when the long envelope went southward in the mail, bearing his
official report to general headquarters in far-off Regina, the name
of Special Constable Connie Morgan was mentioned for extraordinary
bravery in the rescue of Corporal Rickey from the Yellow Knife
Indians.
CHAPTER V
WHAT HAPPENED ON CAMERON CREEK
Connie Morgan laid aside his year-old magazine and stepped to the
door of the little police cabin, perched upon the verge of a high
bank of the Yukon. At the foot of the steep descent Sergeant
McKeever stood in a canoe and finished buttoning the canvas cover
over the deck of the light speed boat that lay anchored a few feet
out from the bank. Then, still standing, he paddled ashore and drew
the canoe from the water.
Connie thrust a pan of baking-powder biscuits into the oven of the
sheet-iron stove, drew the coffee-pot forward, poked some bull-pine
sticks into the stove, and sliced bacon into a blackened frying-pan.
A few moments later, through a blue haze of bacon-smoke, he greeted
the officer who stooped to enter the low door:
"Hi, Dan! Just in time for supper--didn't expect you till midnight."
The Sergeant grinned: "Can't make me mad with supper--I'm hungry as a
grizzly--Come clean through from Dawson without a stop."
"What's your hurry? But, come on, let's eat first. You can tell me
the news later."
The two ate heartily, and in silence. For, with the men of the open
places, a meal is a matter of serious business, rather than a social
event. Also, in silence, they washed the dishes, and sought the log
that answered the double purpose of door-step and chopping-block.
The scene before them was one of infinite grandeur. The
long-gathering twilight of an early summer night enfolded the wide
valley of the Yukon in a mantle of exquisite softness. Beyond,
jumbled and blurred in the indistinct half-light, rose the dark,
timbered foot-hills of the great white range to the eastward. And
still beyond, rearing its naked crags and gilded pinnacles above the
shadowed foreground, rose the great range itself--all bright and
flashing many-coloured lights--like the turrets, and spires, and
battlements of a wonderful city of gold. For the rays of the
low-swung sun, withdrawn a full two hours from the valley, shone
directly upon the ice-peaks, so that fairyland seemed to leap in full
glory from the black pall of night. For many minutes the two
officers of the Mounted gazed, speechless, upon the sight.
"Oh, isn't it wonderful!" breathed the boy.
"Yes, son, it's wonderful," answered Sergeant McKeever, softly.
"Us--up here in the North--we ain't got many of what you might call
luxuries, but, son--" he pointed toward the gilded mountains, "seems
like God more'n makes it up to us, with sights like _that_, an' the
aurora, an'----"
"I love it all!" exclaimed the boy, "it's so big, and free, and
grand! I love even the cold, and the white snow-levels, and the
roaring rapids, and the grinding ice! Why, I wouldn't live back
there," his hand swept the southern horizon, "for all the money in
the world!"
"No, son--you won't go back," said McKeever, gravely, "the big North
has got you. You're a sure enough _tillicum_--an' you can't go
back!" The Sergeant paused, and his next observation drew the boy's
mind from the beauties of nature to the affairs of the world of men.
"I seen Bill Cosgrieve in Dawson."
Now, Bill Cosgrieve was known as "The King of Cameron Creek," and
Cameron Creek enjoyed an unsavoury reputation among the
law-abiding--and, the more unsavoury became its reputation, the more
Cameron Creek enjoyed it.
In the days of the great gold rush, the camp of Two Prong flourished
on the site of old Jimmie Ferguson's rich placer strike. But the
sand was only shallow drift, the placers ran out, and, as a
disgruntled miner told it: "Two Prong jes' na'ch'ly flourished itself
plumb down to bed rock, an' blow'd up." One by one, the cabins were
deserted as their owners sought other fields, or followed fresh
stampedes. Freight-loaded poling-boats, and light bark canoes no
longer ascended the creek, and in the winter, snow lay deep over its
valley. But Cameron Creek was not entirely deserted. Two or three
of the rotting cabins of Two Prong were still tenanted, and in the
long, log room that had once been the N.C. Company's store, old Jap
Kinkade kept a few shelves of canned goods, and a dejected assortment
of mittens, tobacco, and clothing. And, above Two Prong, strung
along the whole length of its hundred miles of mountain windings,
were the isolated cabins of trappers, and old-time prospectors who
may be found in the hills about the head-waters of any placer creek,
hammering and chipping their lives away in vain search for that
will-o'-the-wisp of the prospector's dreams--the mother lode.
Possibly twenty white men, all told, and a band of half-starved
Indians, who dwelt near the head waters, comprised the population of
Cameron Creek--and these were they who enjoyed, and encouraged the
disrepute into which the valley had fallen. For the trappers of fur
desire solitude and bear no love for the miners, whose noisy camps,
detonating blasts, and creaking windlasses drive the fur-bearers to
the fastness of far hills. The lean, distant-eyed prospectors for
the mother lode desire solitude. And the Indians upon the
head-waters--well, nobody cares what they desire. So Cameron Creek
enjoyed her unsavoury repute.
"What was Bill Cosgrieve doing in Dawson?" asked Connie, as the big
Sergeant showed no disposition to further enlighten him.
"Spendin' money."
"Wonder if he's made a strike. Guess not, though. When Cameron
Creek blew up, she blew right."
"I said _money_," affirmed the Sergeant, "not dust."
The boy's shoulders straightened with interest. "You mean--treaty
money?"
The older man shrugged: "It was paid on the first. Guess you an'
me'd better jest slip up Cameron Creek an' have a look at them there
aborigines."
Although Constable Morgan and Sergeant McKeever left the speed boat
anchored in front of the little police cabin, crossed the river, and
slipped down the ten intervening miles to the mouth of Cameron Creek
in a canoe, under cover of darkness, they knew before they had
proceeded five miles up the creek, that word of their coming had
preceded them. A mile in advance, a couple of eagles rose in swift
spirals, and numerous flocks of startled ducks whizzed past in their
flight to the big river. Also, the path of a short portage across
the neck of a horseshoe bend was wet, where a canoe had been dragged
from the water, and the scar of its relaunching was plain in the clay
of the upriver end.
"Moccasin telegraph!" growled McKeever, "can you beat it?"
[Illustration: "Constable Morgan and Sergeant McKeever knew that word
of their coming had preceded them."]
Twelve miles above the mouth, where the deserted cabins of Two Prong
straggled along the bank, the officers landed and banged upon the
door of old Jap Kinkade's store.
"What's wanted?" queried a petulant voice. "Can't ye give a man time
to git up?"
"Oh, can that rot, Jap! I'm hep to you--I'm McKeever." The door
opened and the ill-kempt old man blinked sleepily.
"Somethin' ye wanted?" he inquired, sourly.
"Breakfast," answered McKeever.
"This ain't no _hotel_. This here's a store," growled the proprietor.
"Never you mind about that. You cook breakfast--an' do it _pronto_.
An' while you're doin' it you can tell me who's be'n here this
mornin'."
"Wha' d' ye mean--be'n here? Ain't I jes' got up? Youse is the
firs' ones I've see. 'Pears to me ye're almighty early, too. What's
up?" The little eyes of the old man leered wickedly, as he threw
some bacon into a frying-pan.
"You're lyin', Jap. Some day I'm goin' to have the fun of squintin'
at you through the bars, at Dawson----"
"'Tain't no crime to lay a-bed till four in the mornin'. Not as I've
heerd tell, it ain't," sneered the man.
"Who's be'n here, I said?" snapped McKeever, ignoring the
interruption.
"Ef any one's be'n here, they've passed on. I ain't saw no one--but
my eyesight ain't no good no more--'special, when I'm asleep."
"Where's Cosgrieve?"
Again the little eyes leered wickedly: "Ef ye don't know, ye mout
step acrost to his cabin, an' ef he ain't there, ye mout take a guess
at it. How'd ye s'pose I know where Cosgrieve's at. Dang him!
He----"
"He, _what_?" asked McKeever, quickly. But the other only eyed him
insolently.
"He what! He what!" mocked the old man. "Ye talk like a jackass.
He what--he what--he haw--he haw!"
McKeever curbed his wrath, and the two officers ate in silence, while
old Jap glared malevolently from his seat on the pine counter. When
they arose to go the old man followed them to the door: "Toddle along
up the crick an' have a look at ye're dear Injuns. See ef some of
'em's be'n stole by us Cameron Crickers. An' then toddle back an'
climb in ye're canoe an' report to Dawson that all's well--like ye
allus do. Ye're a smart bunch--youse Mounteds is--but ye ain't the
ondly smart folks in the world--Ta-ta!"
"I'll get that old scoundrel yet!" gritted McKeever. "They's
somethin' crooked about this whole blame creek--but we've never be'n
able to hang anythin' _on_ 'em."
Above Two Prong the water was too fast for canoe work, so the
officers took the foot trail that followed its banks. For three days
they pushed onward and upward, stopping in every cabin along the
trail for a chat with the surly, close-mouthed trappers and
prospectors. But nothing did they see that could possibly be
construed as "crooked," except the interminable windings of the
creek, itself, and so they came to the camp of the Indians. The
chief, a lazy, ragged, no-account, who went by the name of
Four-Bits-And-A-Thin-Dime, greeted the policemen civilly enough, and
motioned them to a seat upon a bearskin in front of his tepee.
"Any complaints?" asked McKeever. The Indian shook his head.
"No."
"Get your treaty money all right?"
The chief nodded: "Um-hum."
"Where is it?" This last question came as a surprise. The chief
looked nonplussed for a moment.
"Got some lef. De young men, she tak' de res' down to buy de grub."
"Where?"
"Me not know--mebbe-so, Coal Creek--Buxton--Forty-mile--mebbe-so Jap
Kinkade."
"What's the use of lyin'? Get up! I'm goin' to search every tepee
in the village. The young men bought fire-water with it--an' you
did, too! An' you bought it of Cosgrieve!"
The Indian smiled and shrugged, and followed behind while McKeever
and Connie searched the lodges and found nothing.
"Wish I could talk to them squaws," mused McKeever, "but they can't
understand no English--let alone talk it. I guess it's goin' to be
the same old story. It's the moccasin telegraph does it--everyone on
Cameron knows we're comin' soon as we hit the mouth, an' time we get
to Two Prong, the whole creek's good as a Sunday-school before
Christmas."
In silence, the two made their way out of the encampment and down the
creek. At the end of an hour, Connie spoke:
"Dan, you've always used this trail, haven't you--and the rest of the
boys, too--when they've visited Cameron Creek?"
"Sure, it's the only trail they is."
"Well, maybe," assented Connie, "but suppose it isn't? The valley is
anywhere from a quarter- to a half-mile wide. Maybe there is
something we might find along the edges. We've got lots of time,
let's each take a side and work along the foot of the hills----"
"Time!" exclaimed McKeever, "I'd stay here all summer, if I thought
we could clean up this gang! That's a good idee. The goin's a-goin'
to be rough, an' it mightn't do no good--but it won't do no harm.
The first one to get to Jap's waits for the other. An' if we want
one another, here's the signals: two quick shots an' one fifteen
seconds later means, come a-runnin'. One shot first, an' then two
quick ones means, come cautious, look for trouble."
"I got you," assented Connie; "I'll tackle the left bank, and you
take the right--So long!"
"So long!" cried McKeever, and both turned from the trail.
The valley was a quarter of a mile wide at the point where they
separated, the ground rising gently from the bed of the creek to the
base of almost perpendicular rock walls. Connie worked his way to
the foot of the rock ledge and headed down stream, picking his way
among boulders and through thickets of spruce and of aspen, and
tangles of underbrush which, in many places, grew so thick that the
boy was forced to chop his way through with his camp axe, to emerge
onto a stretch of bare rock where the footing was good. But, on rock
or in the timber, Connie's eyes were always busy, searching the
ground for sign, and the timber and rock wall for a hidden _cache_,
or a trail leading into the hills. It was slow, hard work, darkness
overtook him upon the edge of a thin strip of stunted timber, and he
spread his blankets beside a tiny spring that welled up between the
roots of a banskian. He made no fire, but ate _charqui_ and cold
biscuits which he washed down with water from the spring.
It was darker here than in the wide valley of the Yukon, and the high
walls shut out the view of the sunshine on distant peaks. Suddenly,
the boy's eyes caught the flicker of a light through the trees. All
thought of sleep vanished and, looking to his Service revolver in its
holster at his belt, he gripped his camp axe, threw himself face
downward, and began to wriggle toward the light, pausing every few
seconds to listen. But the valley was silent as the grave, and
presently, peering through the underbrush, he made out the outlines
of a cabin, from whose uncurtained window shone a bright square of
candlelight. Slowly and cautiously, he edged forward: "If they've
got dogs I'm up against it," he muttered, and tightened his grip on
his axe. A small clearing surrounded the cabin--so small that
although Connie lay concealed by the underbrush, the window was only
twenty-five feet distant. "If there are dogs, so much the worse for
the dogs," he gritted, and crawling into the open, wriggled swiftly
to the wall of the cabin. From within came the voices of men, but
strain his ears as he would, he could not catch their words, and
dared not risk showing his face at the window. Cautiously he
explored the wall with his fingers. The rough logs were chinked with
moss, and Connie drew the sheath knife from his belt. Carefully he
picked and prodded at the moss chinking, removing it shred by shred
from between the logs. Being ignorant of the positions of the men,
he did not dare punch the moss inward. As the chinking thinned, the
voices became more distinct, and at length the boy placed his eye to
a tiny hole through which filtered a single ray of candlelight.
There were two men in the room--one he could not see, the other was a
shaggy man who sat beside the stove and smoked a pipe. The man out
of line was speaking and Connie applied his ear to the crevice.
"--never found out nawthin' yet, an' they never won't, neither. Bill
Cosgrieve's a heap too smart fer them geezers."
"Ye say they searched the Injin camp, an' went on down the crick?"
"Searched every blame wigwam, an' nary a find. Bowen an' the Swede
had the stuff an' the young bucks _cached_ up a branch where they
c'd a scattered to the high places if needful."
"When'd th' p'lice hike back?"
"This mornin'. Ort to fetch Split Rock tonight, an' Jap's place
tomorry. Ol' Jap's sore on Bill Cosgrieve."
"So much the worse f'r Jap, then. He better haul in his horns an'
not crowd Bill too fer. Bill'll croak him, like he done th'
German----"
"Shet up! Each one of them two has got enough on t'other to swing
'em both. Jap ort to know Bill ain't a-goin' to leave him grab no
more'n what the rest of us gits--" The speaker paused abruptly.
"What's ailin' ye? Hear sunthin'?" Connie's heart thumped almost
audibly as the man delayed his reply.
"Naw, I wuz a-thinkin'. How much stuff has Ol' Jap got in th' shaft?"
"'Bout two hundred gallon."
"Ef we c'd git red of it fer him--unbeknownst to Bill--gimlet it off,
so's he'd think it leaked out----"
"Be y'u a plumb fool?" The voice of the man by the stove held a note
of fear. "Don't y'u never try to double-cross Bill Cosgrieve. Y'u
won't git away with it--an' they'll be another shaft to cave in down
to Two Prong."
"Guess y'u're right--but----"
"Bill, he'll be back tomorry, an' we'll hev a hard day, totin' that
stuff up to th' _cache_. He'll likely fetch four-hundred
gallon--them Injins has got jes' about enough left to pay fer it.
I'm a-goin' to roll in." The shaggy man unlaced a hobnailed boot.
The other crossed to the bunk, and Connie recognized him as Crane,
whom Corporal Rickey had once pointed out to him in Dawson, as a
member of the Cameron Creek gang.
"Bill, he's a wise ol' owl," grinned Crane; "with two of the Mounted
scourin' Cameron Crick, he's a-keepin' the rest a-watchin' him in
Dawson, whilst McCarty an' High Light Hank runs the cargo up
Henderson to the divide. Beats all they ain't no one tumbled to th'
Henderson Crick racket----"
"It's so durn little an' puny lookin'--'tain't more'n eight foot wide
at the mouth--an' comin' out th' way it does, behine that shoulder of
rock. It ain't on no map that I ever see--but she shore is deep!"
The shaggy man blew out the candle, and Connie Morgan wriggled back
into the timber and sought his blanket beside the spring.
CHAPTER VI
CONNIE GETS UP IN THE MORNING
With the faintest grey of approaching dawn, the boy rolled his
blankets and, without stopping for breakfast, stole noiselessly
away--intent only upon placing distance between himself and the cabin
in the timber. He was fairly bursting with importance. Here was he,
Connie Morgan, the youngest and newest of all the officers of the
Royal North-west Mounted Police Force, in possession of the key to
the Cameron Creek mystery! He had listened to the talk of the
barracks, and knew that for years the men of the Mounted had been
trying to 'get something on' this gang of outlaws--and, always they
had failed. But the Mounted never "quits"--not a man in the Service
but knew that some day the gang would be bested--and not a man in the
Service but longed to be the means of its undoing.
For two hours the boy plodded onward and then sat down to a cold
breakfast. He got out his police map and searched for Henderson's
Creek. It was not there. Connie was in a dilemma--Should he summon
McKeever? Or, should he go it alone?
"I'll go it alone, anyway, for a while," he decided. "If I shoot
now, other ears besides Dan's would hear it, and it would be all off,
for this trip."
Folding his map, he shouldered his pack and struck off along the rock
wall. Suddenly he halted. So engrossed had he become with his
problem that he had failed to notice that his feet were following a
well-defined trail! He proceeded more cautiously, now, pausing
frequently to listen. Only silence. The trail bent sharply to the
wall and the boy found himself before a narrow crevice, or crack, in
the solid rock. The trail ended at the crevice whose floor slanted
upward at a gradient so steep as to be a veritable stairway. Only
for a second, Connie hesitated, and then plunged into the opening.
Up, up, he climbed, following the steep windings of the crack. The
click of his boot-heels sounded like thunder in his ears.
"If I meet one of 'em coming down, it will be Good Night, for one of
us," he panted; "and it won't be me, either," he added, as he glanced
toward the holster where the rubber-plated butt of his Service
revolver showed within easy reach of his hand. Without warning, his
head and shoulders emerged into bright sunlight, and before him, not
ten yards distant, was a cabin. Back into the crack he popped, and
held his breath. Silence. He removed his cap and cocked a
scrutinizing eye over the edge--the cabin looked tenantless, and he
saw that it was a very small cabin, and that it was cunningly built
upon the rim of the high cliff, but cleverly concealed from the
valley below by a thick growth of scraggy cedars, that extended out
over the edge. Toward the south and west the ground slanted abruptly
into the timber. The valley lay to the northward, and on the east, a
higher shoulder of rock cut off all view. Warily the boy drew
himself up and, after a reassuring survey, crossed noiselessly to the
door. It was of heavy whip-sawed timber, and instead of windows
there were narrow slits between the logs. "Loopholes," thought
Connie, and noticed that the slits commanded the head of the trail,
and of another trail that led into the timber to the southward.
"It's like a fort," he muttered, and placed his eye to a slit.
Inside were a bunk, a small stove, a rack containing a dozen rifles,
and along the farther side, several stout casks. "The _cache_!" he
breathed, and slipping the heavy iron hasp from its staple, pushed
open the door and entered. Crossing swiftly to the rack of rifles,
he removed the cartridges from magazines and chambers, replaced the
guns, carried the cartridges, together with twenty-five or thirty
unopened boxes of ammunition to the cliff, and tossed them over the
edge. Returning to the cabin, he closed the door, slipped the hasp
over the staple as he had found it, and retired to the shelter of the
timber to think. The boy had formulated no plan--the removal of the
cartridges had been done on the spur of the moment--they were guns of
the enemy, and therefore were safer empty,--he had drawn the fangs of
the serpent--that's all. But, for all that, he was in a serious
quandary--undecided as to his next move. Should he summon McKeever?
Or explore the trail that entered the timber--undoubtedly, the trail
to the mysterious Henderson's Creek? Connie gazed out across the
valley of Cameron Creek. Because of his forced march in the early
grey of the morning, he reasoned that the older officer would be
still above the mouth of the cleft and in all probability would
remain within sound of his shots for several hours to come. The
small jaw clamped shut, and the boy stepped into the trail that
slanted steeply toward the south.
[Illustration: "Crossing swiftly to the rack of rifles, he removed
the cartridges."]
Evidently, on this side of the divide the gang felt secure from
interference, for little precaution had been taken to blind the trail
which wound and zigzagged down the steep descent. At the end of a
quarter of an hour, Connie heard the sound of running water, and the
next moment, came abruptly upon the bank of a narrow stream. At the
foot of the trail was a broad, flat rock that evidently did service
as a wharf, for littered about were bits of rope, a broken boat-pole,
or two, and the staves and hoops of several casks, probably the
result of a mishap in landing. The boy's eyes sparkled with pride,
he had tracked the gang of whisky-runners to their lair, and now all
that remained was to summon McKeever and gather them in. He turned
to retrace his steps, then suddenly paused, tense as a
pointer--listening. Yes, there it was again, and apparently but a
short distance down stream--the unmistakable sound of voices! Like a
shadow the boy slipped into the underbrush beside the trail and
crawled beneath a low killikinick bush that had just burst into full
leaf. Small as he was, at that moment Connie Morgan wished himself
smaller, and watched with envy a thick black beetle burrow from sight
beneath a piece of bark. The voices were close beside him and,
peering through his screen of leaves, the boy made out the forms of
three men--and the foremost of them was Bill Cosgrieve.
"--prob'ly up Cameron Crick, now," the outlaw was saying. "Him an'
that kid they've took onto the force. I seen him in Dawson, an' he
slipped down river in a speed boat. When I come down river yeste'day
the speed boat was tied up in front of the police cabin--but the
cabin was empty. Crane'll keep an' eye on 'em though. He'd ort to
report today."
"Le's tote this here cargo to the _cache_, an' git shet of it,"
suggested one of the others. Cosgrieve turned on him fiercely:
"Who's runnin' this outfit--me, or you?" he rasped, and then, to the
other man: "Come on, High Light, me an' you's goin to the _cache_ an'
git breakfast. You stay an' make the boat fast, McCarty, an' when
she's ready, I'll fire three shots an' you come on up. Then you an'
High Light go back an' stay with the boat, an' I'll slip down on
Cameron an' see if them p'lice has got through nosin' around.
Doggone 'em! They can't leave a man turn an honest dollar! But
they've got to git up early in the mornin' to git Bill Cosgrieve--an'
you c'n bet your sweet life on that!" The man led the way up the
trail, followed by High Light Hank, and Connie grinned to himself as
he watched them disappear: "Early in the morning is right, old hand.
You sure know where yours is coming from--but you don't know when!"
With an eye upon McCarty who was busy with the boat, the boy removed
his boots and, stealthily as an Indian, followed Cosgrieve and High
Light Hank up the trail. "I'm in a pretty fix, now," he
soliloquized; "I can't signal Dan, and the chances are, I can't make
the trail to Cameron Creek without being seen from the _cache_." He
remembered the long rifle-slits that covered the heads of the two
trails. "Anyway they can't shoot--they didn't pack guns, and those
in the _cache_--Gee! Won't they be sore! Just the same, I wish they
hadn't happened along so soon." A half-hour later, the boy watched
from the edge of the timber while Bill Cosgrieve and High Light
crossed the short open space and entered the _cache_. And then, the
very smallness of the cabin made for the rum smugglers' undoing, for
when they entered, they closed the door behind them to make room.
Like a flash, a small figure shot from the timber, and, noiseless as
a shadow, darted across the open. There was a grating of iron as the
hasp slipped over the strong staple. The "King of Cameron Creek"
heard the sound and, with a loud cry, sprang to the door and wrenched
mightily. But the staple and hasp held--would have held to the pull
of forty men--and through the rifle-slits came the sound of a
laugh--a light, boyish laugh, as Connie Morgan drove a stout plug
into the eye of the staple.
High Light leaped to the gun rack, and the next instant the wicked
blue-black muzzle of a rifle protruded from a slit. Then, a small
hand covered the muzzle, and a small face appeared at the opening.
"You mustn't shoot folks," said a boyish voice. "It isn't nice, and
besides, you are under arrest----"
"Who in the name of Sam Hill are you?" roared the man behind the gun.
"Open that door, or I will shoot!"
"Oh, no, you won't!" laughed the boy, "I'm Constable Morgan, of the
Mounted, and you are my prisoners." There was a swift movement
within, and the voice of High Light rang loud:
"Don't shoot a kid, Bill! _Duck kid_!" And at the same instant,
Connie heard the futile snap of a hammer descending upon a
firing-pin, and, with the bellow of a wild beast, Bill Cosgrieve
slammed the rifle onto the floor and reached for another--and
another--and another--all the time yelling, and all but frothing with
an insane rage, from the noise of which, Connie caught fragments of
sentences: "Double-crossed--Imp o' Satan--stole them shells--trapped
like a rat!" The passion wore itself out, the man subsided into low,
vicious mutterings, and Connie peeked in at a rifle slit.
"Don't fuss, Willie. Eat your breakfast,--and don't bite the poker.
I'm going to call McCarty, now--he'll want some breakfast, too."
Then, suddenly dropping the note of mockery, the young voice sounded
dry, and hard: "And you _shut up_! You try to warn him and it will
go hard with _you_. In the Mounted we don't stand for fooling. One
yip out of you, and you'll get yours--_pronto_!"
The boy walked to the edge of the cliff so that the sound would carry
far out over the Cameron valley, and drew the revolver from its
holster: "Bang--bang!----Bang!" He fired three shots--the same signal
that would call McCarty would also bring big Dan McKeever--and bring
him on the run!
Connie walked to the edge of the timber and seated himself upon a log
close beside the trail. Ten minutes passed--twenty minutes--and then
the sound of footsteps brought the revolver again from its holster.
"Hands up!" McCarty whirled and looked into the muzzle of the
long-barrelled Service gun, behind which appeared the set face of a
small boy--and the man noted that the boy wore the uniform of the
Royal North-west Mounted Police. Swiftly, he elevated his hands.
"March!" And the man, with hands reaching high above his head walked
out into the clearing, followed closely by Connie.
"Well, I'll be _jiggered_!" he gasped, when his eyes took in the
situation, and in spite of himself, he snickered. The sound threw
Bill Cosgrieve into another fit of passion:
"Laff! You eediot! Laff, an' laff, an' laff! It means a long space
fer you as well as me--Ondly, personal, I don't see where the joke
comes in!"
"You can go sit on that rock, McCarty," said Connie, indicating a
boulder at the edge of the cliff. "You can't get away unless you
jump over--and it's a good two hundred feet to the nearest rocks
below."
"I ain't aimin' to git away, kid--leastwise, not that-a-way," he
grinned, and lapsed into silence.
An hour dragged by before the sound of footsteps on the rock floor of
the trail from Cameron Creek reached the ears of the boy. Beckoning
to McCarty, he motioned him to be seated close beside the head of the
steep rock trail, and took his own position close behind him.
"Hey!" objected the man, "you goin' to use me fer a fort?"
"You're a good little guesser," assented Connie. "You see, I'm
expecting my pardner, Sergeant McKeever, any minute. If that is he,
you needn't worry that he will shoot. But, if it should happen to be
one of _your_ friends--well, I won't worry if _he_ shoots, either."
Suddenly a man burst panting into the open: "Beat it!" he cried, "The
Mounted!"
"_Reach!_" commanded Connie, and with a gasp, the man saw the gun
behind McCarty's back. He "reached" extending his arms to full
length, and even standing on tiptoe, and the boy recognized him as
Crane. There was a noise at the mouth of the crevice, and another
man turned and whisked from sight, the clatter of loose rocks
proclaiming his frenzied haste to be elsewhere. But he did not get
far. A short, sharp word of command floated upward. Silence--and
once more, the sound of footsteps. The man appeared again at the
opening, only this time he, too, was "reaching." It was the shaggy
man, and behind him walked Sergeant Dan McKeever.
"Hello, Dan!" called Connie, rising to his feet, "we've got 'em dead
to rights! Three of 'em here--Cosgrieve and another in there, and
some kegs, too--and more kegs in the poling-boat, down on Henderson's
Creek! And evidence enough to include our friend Jap Kinkade along
with 'em!"
Sergeant Dan McKeever gazed open-mouthed at the youngest constable.
"For the love of Mike, kid! I'm dreamin'!
You--you--single-handed--rounded up the Cameron Creek gang! Got 'em
with the goods, at last--Bill Cosgrieve, too! It ain't so--but it
_is_! You little old sourdough, you! How'd you do it?"
Connie laughed; and affected an exaggerated yawn: "Oh, that's easy,
_son_--when you get up early in the morning!"
CHAPTER VII
ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR BAND
Connie Morgan and Ick Far were on special patrol, the object of which
was to thread certain rivers and creeks to their sources in hope of
finding a pass between some tributary of upper Stewart River and a
tributary of Wind River. The wilderness mail route between Dawson
and far-off Fort McPherson, way up near the shore of the Arctic, was
both devious and dangerous, and had already been responsible for one
terrible tragedy of the wilds. Therefore, the department desired a
more direct and a safer route; and Special Constable Connie Morgan
and Ick Far, the weather-hardened Indian scout, after twenty days of
fruitless search among the high-flung peaks of the continental
backbone, stood at the head of a little valley and gazed at a rough
mountain wall down which a tiny stream cascaded from ledge to ledge
to plunge, almost at their feet, into a seething cauldron of white
water.
"Go oop?" asked the scout.
Connie shook his head. "No," he replied, eyeing the precarious
ascent, "it would be all we could do to make it even now, in the
summer. How could a mail patrol climb it in the winter--with a dog
outfit besides?"
"No kin do," opined the Indian, with a grin. "Mebbe-so we find um
nudder pass." And, turning, he led the way over the back trail
toward the point, ten miles below, where they had left their canoe at
the head of birch-bark navigation.
The ascent of the creek had taken four days, its descent took two.
And on the evening of the second day they grounded the canoe on a
wide bar, where the creek flowed into a larger tributary of the
Stewart.
Hardly had the two set foot upon shore before Ick Far's attention
became riveted upon some marks in the gravel--marks that, in the
twilight, were hardly discernible to Connie--being merely a
displacement of pebbles here and there among the myriads of pebbles
that formed the bar. To Connie these marks meant nothing. Game was
plentiful along the creeks--some animal had probably crossed here.
Besides, there was "Soapy" White's trading post a few miles below,
and several outfits of prospectors. The boy was much surprised at
Ick Far's evident concern. Forward and back, he walked, along the
water line, leaning far over and examining minutely each foot of
gravel. Finally he turned to Connie:
"Injun cross here," he reported.
"Well, what if he did?" asked the boy.
"Mooch Injun! Two--t'ree sun 'go, she camp on de woods. Come." He
turned and, following the sign in the gravel, led the way into the
thicket of scrub timber that fringed the bar. A few moments later
they came upon the abandoned camp--the dead ashes of a dozen small
fires over which the passing Indians had cooked a hurried meal.
Figuring four or five Indians to the fire, Connie realized that a
considerable party had been on the move.
"What do you make of it, Ick?" he asked. "What are they up
to--hunting--fishing?"
The scout shook his head and busied himself with a minute inspection
of the ground.
"Dem Mooseheads," he announced, holding in his hand a peculiarly
shaped slate knife blade which he picked from the ashes at the edge
of a fire. "On de black montaine," he explained, "de Moosehead, she
git de stone for de knife."
"But--what are the Mooseheads doing way down here?"
"War ban'. Dem Moosehead, she _kultus_ Injun. Some tam' she lak
fight. Come down an' fight dem Brushwood, on Lansing Creek."
"The Brushwoods!" exclaimed Connie. "The Brushwoods won't fight!"
Ick Far grinned: "Da's w'y de Moosehead lak for fight um. De
Brushwood run hide in de timbaire--in de rocks--on de montaine. Den
de Moosehead she mak' de beeg yell. She shoot de gun. She bus' de
_cache_. She steal de Brushwood feesh, an' de dog, an' all she kin
car' 'way from de camp. She t'ink she heap _skookum_ Injun. Den she
gon' back home, she mak' de beeg fire on de black montaine, an' git
de _kloochmen_ all 'roun' an' mak' de beeg talk--heap fine fightin'
mans--heap brave Injun--_Skookum tumtum_!" As the old Indian talked,
Connie thought rapidly.
"How far is Lansing Creek?" he asked.
"'Bout forty--feefty mile."
"Can we run this river in the night? Five or six hours ought to put
us at the mouth of the Lansing."
The Indian shook his head vigorously: "No! No! No! Too mooch--w'at
y'u call, _skookum chuck_--too mooch rapids! Daylight we start--come
Lansing Creek, nine 'clock--ten 'clock."
"Roll in, then. Tomorrow, we'll have a _real_ job."
"W'at y'u goin' do?"
"Do! We're going to run those thieving Mooseheads back where they
belong--that's what we're going to do!"
Ick Far nodded: "Mebbe-so not wan' for go back. Mebbe-so ain' 'fraid
for leetle p'lice."
"Want to go back! Well, they're going whether they want to or not.
I'll show 'em who's running this country! I guess they won't try to
buck the Mounted!"
Ick Far refrained from comment; but in his eye smouldered the gloom
of foreboding.
The trail of the Mooseheads led down stream in the direction of
Lansing Creek. Having come overland along the ridges, the marauding
band brought no canoes and their progress was slow, as the
conformation of the valley necessitated frequent fording of the river
to avoid impassable barriers. Again and again, as the canoe shot
down stream, Connie and the scout saw signs of these crossings upon
gravel bars and clay banks, and at each crossing the trail grew
fresher.
Two weeks before, while ascending the river, the officers had passed
the tepees of isolated families of Brushwoods, who had strayed to the
larger river to fish. They had passed, also, three different outfits
of prospectors and the post of "Soapy" White, a free-trader whose
record in his dealings with the Indians of many tribes was described
on the books of the Mounted as "shady."
The tepees of the Indians were missing, now. At each deserted camp
the two landed, carefully examined the ground, and read signs of
hurried flight and the abandonment of the poor effects of the
campers--effects that the Mooseheads, not deeming of sufficient value
to carry away, had ruthlessly destroyed, leaving only charred
remnants of burned tepees and nets, and the broken fragments of
utensils.
The white prospectors had fared no better. Their camps were deserted
and their goods carried away or burned, but, as yet, Ick Far had been
unable to find any evidence of bloodshed.
"Dem all skeep oot. Brushwood, she skeep for Lansing. Mebbe-so we
fin' dem white men. Tak' um 'long. She be glad for git crack at dem
Moosehead." And, in a short time, Ick's prophecy was fulfilled, for
the canoe was greeted by a shout from a niche in the rocks of a
narrow canyon, and two heads with bearded faces peered over the rim
of a natural rock barrier. Ick Far shot the canoe shoreward and the
men came out of their fortress--a short man, and a tall man.
"Come on!" cried Connie. "Bring your rifles and all the shells
you've got, and we'll dig out after those Indians."
"Well, f'r th' love o' Pete!" exclaimed the short man. "It's a kid
an' a _Siwash_! What d'ye mean, dig out after them Injuns? Great
sufferin' cats! They's a milliun of 'em!'
"No, there aren't," contradicted Connie. "There are only fifty or
sixty at the most--hurry up! I'm Special Constable Morgan, of the
Mounted, and I'm going to round 'em up."
"What, you? The Mounted! Holy mackerel! I thought that unyform
looked f'miliar, but, seein' it onto a kid, that-a-way, it th'ow'd me
off complete. But, how in time _y'u_ goin' to round up them here
Injuns?'
"Come along and see. I need your help. We'll show 'em. Where are
the other white men?"
"Got acrost th' ridge," answered the tall man, who glanced into his
partner's face, and then dubiously at the two in the canoe.
"Shove off!" commanded Connie. "These specimens are afraid to tackle
it, and we can't waste time." Ick Far placed the end of his paddle
against the bank, but before he could bear his weight on it, the tall
man stepped forward.
"Hold on, kid, we ain't afraid. Y'u got us wrong--dead wrong. We're
peaceable parties when they's any chanst to be, but when a hull pack
o' howlin' red-skins comes a-kihootin' down th' crick an'
confisticates our outfit, an' trees us up a rock ledge, it's time
sunthin' was did. We can't figger out how such a little shaver
happens to be a-wearin' that unyform, but if y'u're good enough f'r
th' Mounted y'u're good enough f'r we--eh, Toad?" The other
emphatically assented and as they took their places the tall man
further elucidated:
"I'm Tex Gordon, which my pardner, here, he's Toad Jones, owin' of
him bein' short an' ugly, that-a-way, an' warty. Toad's hide's a
reg'lar garden f'r warts--but inside, he's all to th' good. Wisht we
had couple more paddles."
Once in the current, there was small need for paddles, and an hour
later, riding straight and true through the rock-tossed waves of a
white water rapid, the canoe, under the skilful guidance of Ick Far,
shot into comparatively smooth water, and Connie's shoulders suddenly
stiffened. There on the bank, unmolested by the marauding Indians,
stood "Soapy" White's trading post.
"Land here!" cried the boy, sharply. And a moment later, the canoe
grounded in front of the log building. Hardly had its nose touched
the gravel before the boy leaped ashore and made straight for the
door, closely followed by Ick Far and the two prospectors. Without
ceremony, Connie pushed open the door and was met by the leering face
of "Soapy" himself, who sat propped against a bale of blankets upon
his counter. The man's blotched face and bleared eyes told that he
had been drinking heavily, but, at the sight of the uniform he pulled
himself together and favoured the newcomers with a thick-lipped,
vacuous grin. Connie wasted no time:
"Where are those Indians?" he jerked out, sharply.
"Wot Injuns--yer mean them Brushwoods up ther crick?"
"You know what Indians! Come, I'm not here to fool with _you_!
Speak up--or you'll wish you had!"
The smile left the man's face and he glanced uneasily from the trim
figure in uniform to the two prospectors. Then his lips moved and he
growled an answer: "Passed here at sun-up."
"What did they camp here for? Where are they heading for? And why
did they leave you alone?" The questions came hard, and quick--like
shots from an automatic.
The man answered in confusion: "Camped here to trade. Why shouldn't
they leave me 'lone--wash y'u mean, leave 'lone, anyhow? They went
on down the crick. They camped here to trade, wash y'u s'pose----"
"Trade what?"
"Trade--wash y'u s'pose, trade? I got a tradin' license, ain't I?"
Connie's eyes swept the room. He pointed to a shelf: "Those shells,
Ick--take 'em all!"
The scout walked over to a shelf and began to take down boxes of
cartridges.
"You sold a lot of shells, didn't you?" flashed the boy. "When we
went up the river you had about two hundred boxes, now you have about
thirty."
"Well, wot if I did?"
Connie cut him short: "All right, boys, bring the shells and come on.
How about grub? Pack what we need down to the canoe."
"Hey! Don't I git paid?" whined "Soapy," who watched as the three
made up packs from the shelves.
"Requisitioned," snapped Connie.
"Sign a requisition, then," demanded "Soapy," who had risen to his
feet.
"I'll sign nothing!" exclaimed the boy, shaking his fist in the man's
face. "And what's more, I'm coming back here and tend to your
case--get out of my way!"
"All aboard, boys--come alive!" he cried and, pushing past the
swaying, blinking figure by the counter, made for the canoe.
On Lansing Creek, a mile above its mouth, the spur of a timbered
ridge terminates abruptly in a high promontory around which the creek
makes a sharp curve, forming a horseshoe bend. And upon this spur,
whose timber formed some slight protection from the bitter winds of
winter, a small band of the Brushwoods had set up their village of
tepees. They are a peaceful people, lazy and self-satisfied, living
upon game and fish, and the barter of fur. To supply their need for
firewood, lodge-poles, and timber for sleds and _caches_, the Indians
had cleared the trees from the ridge for a space of several hundred
yards between the village on the extreme end of the spur and the
mountains that towered upon the land side. And this was the village
the Mooseheads had undertaken to plunder.
Long before Ick Far beached the canoe at the mouth of the Lansing,
the sound of scattering shots reached the ears of its occupants.
"They've run onto th' Brushwoods!" exclaimed Toad. "They's a-goin'
to be some scrappin' along this here crick, an' if we aim to do any
good we'd better dive into it--listen at that!" Even as the man
spoke, the shots suddenly burst into a furious fusilade. Volley
after volley came rattling down the creek, and at the sound a strange
sense of elation possessed Connie Morgan, his heart felt light and
his small hands gripped tightly his carbine as he curbed a desire to
dash madly into the thick of the fray. Just one short mile away a
real battle was raging--a battle that was his to command, and that he
must win against fearful odds. The thought steadied his nerves and
his jaw clamped firm. The canoe was drawn from the water and
_cached_ in the thicket.
"They're a-wastin' shells!' exclaimed Tex Gordon.
"Dem droonk--'Soapy' White, she trade um de firewater," explained Ick
Far.
Connie nodded: "I knew it," he said, quietly. "That's why I told him
I would tend to his case later." He dug the butt of his carbine
viciously into the gravel. "I'll fix his clock! I'll take him down
to Dawson and he'll stand trial, not only for boot-legging, but for
murder--and I'll see to it that he gets a separate trial for every
person--white or red, that's killed or wounded in this fight! We've
been after him for a long time, and I guess what we've got on him now
will hold him for a while."
A short council was held and the four decided to slip through the
bush to a point opposite the spur, from whence the scout assured them
he could gain access to the village by means of an obscure foot trail
that zigzagged up the face of the cliff.
The three found it no easy task to follow Ick Far through the scrub,
dodging silently from bush to bush, making swift, low dashes across
open spaces, or flattening themselves among the rocks of the creek
bank. Nearly an hour was consumed in traversing the distance that
brought them to the crest of a low hill which commanded a view of the
village--or rather of the timber-crowned ridge where the village had
been. For no tepees were visible, evidently having been pulled down
to render a less conspicuous target for the bullets of the enemy, or
because the lodge-poles were needed to strengthen the barricade that
was being erected across the base of the horseshoe at the edge of the
clearing, upon the opposite edge of which the attacking party had
massed and was firing volley after volley with the evident intention
of intimidating the Brushwoods. The four onlookers noted with
satisfaction that the besieged Indians were not returning the fire,
but were working like beavers in the strengthening of their
barricade. So precipitous were the escarpments of the ridge upon the
three sides bounded by the creek that any attack from this quarter
was out of the question; and Ick Far pointed out the narrow foot
trail that showed as a faint tracery upon the face of the rock wall.
"Me go oop. Tell de Brushwood we com'. You stay here. I wave um
blanket, you com' oop."
Connie nodded: "Go ahead--and hurry. Before the Mooseheads find out
there is a path on this side."
Swift and silent as a shadow, the Indian scout made his way to the
creek, forded it, and began the ascent of the foot trail, while from
their position among the rocks of the hilltop, the three watched his
movements with breathless interest.
"Looks like a fly a-crawlin' up a wall," whispered Toad Jones.
"P-s-s-s-s-t," the sound hissed sharply between Tex Gordon's clenched
teeth, and his hand pressed Toad closer behind his rock. And not a
moment too soon, for there, not twenty yards distant, also intently
watching Ick Far's ascent, crouched two half-naked, paint-smeared
Mooseheads. Even as those on the hilltop looked, the savages, rifles
in hand, slipped noiselessly into the shelter of another rock and
shortened their range on the climbing scout by five yards. As Connie
drew back the hammer of his carbine, he noted the scowling faces and
the ugly, painted bodies--noted, too, the swift, gliding movements
that would carry them within easy range long before Ick Far could
possibly gain the top of the ridge. There was a soft movement beside
him, and two muffled 'clicks' told him that the prospectors also had
cocked their rifles.
[Illustration: "There, close at hand, crouched two half-naked,
paint-smeared Mooseheads."]
"Wait," whispered the boy, "don't shoot till you have to. I'm going
to give them a chance to surrender." He stood upright, carbine in
hand and, although the backs of the two Indians were, by this time,
almost directly toward him, both whirled on the instant. At the same
time, behind their rocks, the eyes of Tex Gordon and Toad Jones
squinted along the barrels of their rifles until the sights found the
exact centre of the great yellow circle that adorned the breast of
each Indian. For a moment the two bucks stared in astonishment at
the slight, uniformed figure that had seemingly sprung from the earth
itself, then, without warning, both rifles flew up--two reports
sounded as one, and two thin puffs of smoke dissolved into the
air--from the muzzles of the prospectors' rifles. One Indian pitched
forward and crashed heavily to the ground, where he lay without a
sound, but the other, dropping his rifle, clutched frantically at his
shoulder and staggered backward among the rocks.
"Better le' me finish him," pleaded Toad Jones. "A doggone skeeter
lit plumb on th' notch o' my hine sight jest as I pulled, er they'd a
be'n another good Injun--you bet!" But Connie shook his head.
"We'll take him with us. I want some information, and I guess Ick
Far can make him talk."
"Ye're th' doctor," the man replied, with reluctance, as they
approached the wounded Indian, who had sagged against an upstanding
rock.
"We won't need to tie that hand," grinned Toad, pointing to the
Indian's right arm which dangled loosely from the shoulder. "Come
along ye murderin' houn'!" he cried jerking the savage to his feet.
"An' no foolin', neither." As he talked, he produced a stout caribou
hide thong, which he knotted skilfully about the Indian's good wrist,
and deftly inserted a short stick into the knot. "Guess this here
little persuader'll break ye to lead all right," he remarked, as the
captive flinched under the pain of a tentative twist of the stick.
"Hullo! There's our frien' with his blanket!"
"Let's hike, then," urged Connie, stooping to recover the cartridges
from the body of the dead Indian. "Bring the rifles," he ordered.
"We may need 'em."
When the three reached the village with their prisoner, the
Brushwoods could scarcely be restrained from meting out swift
vengeance upon him--five members of the tribe having been killed and
a half-dozen wounded during the first attack. But Connie stood firm
for the protection of his captive, whom he turned over to Ick Far for
examination. Two hours later the scout reported:
"'Soapy' White, she ver' bad mans--_hyas kultus_. She sen' runner to
de Moosehead. Say: 'De Brushwood got um plent' skin hoi' over from
las' weenter.' Say: 'Com' an' tak' de skin an' run de Brushwood
'cross de montaine, an' tak' de village. Ver' mooch game--ver' mooch
fur where de Brushwood hunt.' Say: 'She giv' de Moosehead plent'
firewater.'
"De Moosehead she hav' ver' bad year. Too mooch no rabbit--too mooch
no feesh--too mooch no fur. Com' 'cross de montaine for run de
Brushwood out an' keel heem. 'Soapy,' White, she giv' de Moosehead
plent' firewater--plent' shell. He say de Brushwood don' trade wit'
heem no more--go down Yukon, trade on de A.C. store--das w'y 'Soapy'
White, she don' lak' de Brushwood no more.'
"I'll fix _him_!" exclaimed Connie, with blazing eyes. "But, first,
let's see how we stand here."
A hurried inspection of the barricade showed that, properly manned,
it would prove a very effective fort--constructed as it was, of
poles, and rocks, and newly-fallen trees. The fighting force Connie
counted to be nineteen, exclusive of the women, children, and old men.
The captured Indian said there had been fifty of his own tribe, but
that several had been drowned in the river after drinking liberally
of 'Soapy' White's liquor, and several more killed and wounded in the
first attack on the village.
"They've got us at least two to one," said Connie, "but we'll hold
'em off! We've got the fort!"
"Besides, an' accordin' to which," interrupted Toad Jones, "we got
the best end of it--they's twict as many fer us to shoot at. Ye kin
hit 'bout forty men a heap easier'n what ye kin twenty er nineteen.'
"'Cordin' to how the grub holds out," said Tex Gordon. "I reckon we
kin slip a man down the trail at night fer water. But, grub--that's
the main thing!" The man's words were cut short by a loud cry from
the front--a cry that brought the whole force of defenders to the
barricade with a rush. And then--a wild chorus of yells and savage
whoops from beyond the barrier--the crash and blaze of many rifles,
and the nasty spat and thud of bullets striking close.
_The Mooseheads were charging!_
CHAPTER VIII
IN THE NICK OF TIME
From his position at a wide loophole, low down near the centre of the
barricade, Connie Morgan could see the yelling, leaping figures as
they sprang straight toward him across the clearing, firing as they
ran. Mechanically, the boy worked the lever of his carbine, sighting
and firing as in a dream. Above the crash and din of the rifles and
the war-whoops of the painted savages, other sounds broke upon his
ears--sharp, high-pitched shrieks of pain--the singing whine of
bullets--the heavy breathing of Toad Jones, who had climbed to the
top of the barricade almost directly above him--the defiant roars of
Tex Gordon, who was keeping two rifles hot while an old man loaded.
On came the Mooseheads. Connie sighted and fired, first at one
painted form and then at another--the whole clearing seemed alive
with howling fiends who advanced in short rushes, dodging now behind
a tree-stump, now dropping to one knee and firing, so that the little
puffs of blue smoke blurred the hideous distinctness of gaping mouths
and glaring eyeballs. Many were stopped in their advance, some
pitching forward to lie still and inert among the weeds, others
leaping high in the air to fall into a grotesque crumpled mass while
their rifles struck the rocks with the sharp ring of steel, and still
others, pausing, staggered ahead, and sank slowly to the ground to
load and fire weakly.
There was the sound of tearing wood. A sharp pain stung the boy's
cheek, and the air seemed filled with flying chips. He put his hand
to his face and tugged at a sliver the thickness of a lead pencil
that protruded from his jaw. The sliver yielded, and warm blood
tickled his neck as it trickled beneath his soft collar. A Brushwood
staggered past, screaming and dragging his rifle. Connie jammed his
magazine full and turned again to his loophole, whose edge was
splintered and torn at the point where he had been sighting.
There was a dull, scrunching thud above him. A rifle slipped past,
grazing his shoulder, and clattered on the rocks at his feet. The
body of a man followed the rifle, sliding slowly down the lodge-poles
and tree-trunks of the barrier. It, too, stopped at his feet, where
it lay with mouth open and a smallish blue hole over the left eye.
The man was Toad Jones.
Connie saw all this as he jerked at the lever of his carbine, pumping
fresh shells into the chamber and firing through his loophole. Saw,
also, other bodies lying close along the inside of the barricade. He
was not afraid--was not even excited. The whole thing was
unreal--like the climax of a great play. Only at first were his
nerves out of control--when he had dodged at the whine of the
bullets. He was firing faster, now--his carbine barrel was hot--it
burned his fingers, and he spit on his hand. He picked up Toad
Jones's rifle and fired till it was empty--then his own carbine was
thrust into his hand, reloaded, and a squaw caught up the empty
rifle. The yellow painted bodies of the Mooseheads were close to the
barrier, now, and they pitched forward as he fired,--but, their
places were taken by others--always, there were more.
The poles above him moved. He glanced upward into the glaring
eyeballs of a hideously painted face. Connie could see the yellow
teeth behind the lips drawn wide in a great oblong of ferocity. The
Indian's body was outside the barrier, but one arm was inside. And
the hand held a short carbine--held it like a pistol. The carbine
went off. There was a deafening roar and the boy heard his own
carbine clatter upon the rocks. His face burned and he choked as the
pungent powder smoke bit into his lungs. Again he looked up. The
face was still there. He tried to recover his carbine, but his arm
seemed tied to his body. Then, from close behind him sounded another
loud report, the painted face with its ferocious grin disappeared,
and beyond the barricade a heavy body thumped upon the ground. Ick
Far stood at his side with Toad Jones's rifle in his hand. He
dropped the rifle and, jerking the knife from his belt, slashed the
sleeve from Connie's jacket and shirt. There was blood on the white
skin of his arm--the arm that wouldn't move. The boy felt no pain,
only a restful numbness, and he watched with interest while the scout
applied a rude tourniquet. He glanced toward the barricade. A face
leered at the splintered loophole, and the muzzle of an old
smooth-bore appeared. Automatically, Connie reached for his revolver
and fired point-blank into the face at a distance of two feet. The
face disappeared. The black muzzle of the smooth-bore veered sharply
upward and rocked to a standstill. Then, Ick Far was shooting again,
and Connie was firing his service revolver at heads on top of the
barricade. There were painted bodies now, among the others inside
the barrier.
[Illustration: As Ick Far applied a rude tourniquet, Connie glanced
up. A face leered over the barricade and the muzzle of an old
smooth-bore appeared.]
An aged squaw, with a face withered and drawn, like a sun-dried
moccasin, pulled the smooth-bore, muzzle first, through the loophole.
She raised the butt to her shoulder, jerked the barrel upward toward
a painted figure that straddled the barricade, and pulled the
trigger. There was a report like the roar of a cannon. The recoil
flattened the squaw among the rocks. The painted figure rocked to
and fro, sagged side wise, and slithered slowly toward the ground.
The foot caught at the ankle in a crotch, and the Indian hung head
downward, with grotesquely twitching limbs and wide-staring eyes.
Upon the ground the old squaw laughed--a horrid, cackling laugh--and
Connie shuddered.
His revolver was empty and a wounded Brushwood reloaded it for him.
But he could see no more faces above the barricade. He heard loud
yells of triumph. Tex Gordon, with a strip of blanket bound tightly
about his head, rushed up.
"They've quit! They've quit, kid! Look at 'em run!" Connie peered
through the loophole and saw the half-naked forms running toward the
timber across the clearing. The battle for that day was won!
The sun had long set before the full extent of the fierce onslaught
was ascertained. Thanks to the barricade, the defenders of the
village, although outnumbered fully two to one, had not fared nearly
so badly as the attacking party, which had retreated, leaving more
than half its number dead or wounded upon the ground. The loss
within the barricade, however, was serious. Seven dead, including
Toad Jones, who had climbed recklessly to the top of the barrier, and
whose rifle had spoken to purpose during the earlier moments of the
fray. Of the living, only Ick Far and three others had escaped
without a scratch, while four were so badly wounded as to be
incapable of further action. This left only eight of the original
fighting force, but to offset the loss, fifteen squaws clamoured for
a place on the firing line, and so eagerly and efficiently did they
throw themselves into the work of preparing food, burying the dead,
strengthening the defences, and cleaning the rifles, that Connie felt
extremely hopeful for the future.
When Tex Gordon and Ick Far had bound up his wounded arm, the boy
called a council. It was the unanimous opinion that the Mooseheads
would not risk another charge. Their losses could only be estimated
as Connie forbade any one to venture beyond the barricade. An
Indian, like a rattlesnake, is never dead till he is good and dead,
and many a man has been treacherously murdered while endeavouring to
aid a wounded enemy.
The gravest danger that confronted the small garrison was the
shortage of provisions. Figuring only one meal a day, Connie and Tex
saw that their slender stock could last but four days--five at the
most. Water, the Brushwoods assured them, could be procured by
lowering a bucket on a line to the creek from a projecting ledge--but
food they must have.
The small amount hastily commandeered from "Soapy" White's stock had
been _cached_ with the canoe, and Tex Gordon volunteered to slip out
with a couple of Indians under cover of darkness and recover it. To
this Connie reluctantly consented, but it would only stave off the
inevitable for one day.
"They'll try to starve us out," Connie said. "We've got to get word
to Mayo--Dan McKeever's there, and Rickey."
"Me go!" cried Ick Far. "Me ketch um help. Seex sleeps, an' dem
Moosehead, she weesh she stay on de black montaine."
"We c'n hold out six days--eight, on a pinch--can't we, kid?" said
Tex Gordon, as he reached over and shook the scout's hand in a mighty
grip. "Y'u're a _man_! Doggone my buttons! Y'u might be a Injun,
but y'u're _white_--clean through to y'ur gizzard! Good-bye an' good
luck to y'u--an' if ever any one tries to tell me they ain't no good
Injuns, y'u bet I'll go to the floor with him till he yelps they're
_all_ good! An', jes' betwixt me an' y'u, they're th' orneriest sect
they is--an' we know it," he added with a grin.
Connie also grasped the old scout's hand as he stepped onto the
narrow foot trail and, although no word passed between them, each
knew what was in the mind of the other.
Ick Far knew the mountains as few men ever know them. While he had
never been there before, he knew instinctively that the steep divide
at whose base he and Connie Morgan had stood in their search for a
mail-route pass, would let him through somewhere in the vicinity of
the village of the Yellow Knives--the Indians whose old chief, White
Eagle, had sworn eternal friendship for the _Kloshe Tenas Tyee_, the
good little chief whose medicine arrows had delivered his tribe from
the hand of the Red Death.
The scout knew, also, that to undertake the trip to Mayo station
would mean ten days at the very least before help could reach the
besieged village. He knew that only two officers of the Mounted
would be found at the station, and that the Mooseheads, crazy with
drink and blood-lust, would stand under no authority, but would
murder the uniformed officers as they would murder an obscure Indian.
Of course, later, the tribe would suffer the consequences,
but--later--well, Ick Far formed his own plan.
And, as the scout knew the mountains, he knew Indians. He knew that
not only White Eagle, but every buck in the Yellow Knife village
would welcome gladly the chance to show the _Kloshe Tenas Tyee_ that
they were his friends. He knew that the Yellow Knives were friendly
with the Mooseheads, and hated the Brushwoods, but he knew, also,
that above any friendship for the Mooseheads was the bond, amounting
almost to idolatry which attached them to Connie Morgan, the _Kloshe
Tenas Tyee_.
Therefore, the scout turned northward from the mouth of the Lansing.
In "Soapy" White's store a light burned and, unseen in the darkness,
Ick Far paused and looked in at the window at the man who sat smoking
upon his counter. He gripped tightly his carbine, and lightly his
lean fingers played with the hilt of his sheath knife. But he
pressed his lips tightly and hurried on into the dark. Up the
river--up the small creek, he passed, travelling night and day. Up
and over the steep divide, and down on the other side into a maze of
creeks and feeders. Then, on the morning of the third day, he
staggered into the village--straight into the lodge of White Eagle,
where he told the chief his story--and collapsed upon the robes that
covered the floor of the lodge.
It was toward evening of the sixth day after the scout's departure.
The setting sun blazed red and angry above the peaks to the westward.
Behind the barricade the little garrison, with set, tense faces,
watched the preparation of the final move of the painted Mooseheads.
The provisions had been exhausted. Tex Gordon and his two Indians
had found the _cache_ rifled, and the small stock on hand had been
consumed the previous evening. Even this meagre store had not lasted
as long as anticipated. Connie had been awakened upon the fourth
night by a commotion near the commissary, which consisted of some
skins thrown over the buckets of provisions. There was the sound of
a struggle--a loud shriek--silence--a muffled splash from the
creek-bed far below, and when the boy investigated, a huge squaw rose
up from the ground beside the skins and pointed at her sheath
knife--at an empty provision bucket--at the cliff's edge. And, in
the morning, the garrison was short one defender. After that a guard
was set, but the harm had been done, and now the Mooseheads were
getting ready to rush the hungry little band. For six days they had
showed themselves in the clearing to shoot random shots and draw the
fire of the village. But the ruse failed because Connie gave orders
to save ammunition, and now, as the boy walked up and down the line
of his grim fighters, his eyes were serious; for he knew that only
five rounds of cartridges remained for each rifle, and that most of
the rifles were in the hands of squaws whose zeal far outweighed
their marksmanship.
The Mooseheads were forming, now--scattering out among the stumps of
the clearing--yelling and exposing themselves to draw the fire at
long range--but no shots were fired and, tiring of these tactics, the
painted savages advanced. Only one hundred yards separated the
nearest Indian from the barricade and Connie was about to give the
order to fire, when, from the timber beyond the clearing, came a
chorus of the wildest, most blood-curdling yells and whoops that ever
assailed the ears of mortal man, and the next instant the whole
clearing was filled with howling, shooting forms, and the crashing
reports of their rifles drowned all other sounds. Connie stared in
horror at what appeared to be the reinforcements of the enemy, while
all about him the Brushwoods were dropping the rifles from their
nerveless hands: "The Yellow Knives!" "The Yellow Knives!" "We die!"
"_Nesika memaloose_--we die!" "They are the friends of the
Mooseheads!" "We die!" "We die!"
An old crone started the death chant and in a moment it was taken up
by every Brushwood behind the barricade. It rose and mingled in a
weird phantasmagoria of horror with the war cry of the Yellow Knives,
the crash of rifles, and the shrieks of the stricken Mooseheads. The
events of the next few moments transpired with bewildering rapidity.
Connie saw the Yellow Knives fall upon the surprised Mooseheads; saw
the Mooseheads go down like grain before the reaper. He saw a few
stragglers turn and dash for the forest, only to be pursued and
stricken to the last man. Then, old White Eagle himself leaped over
the barricade and picked Connie up in his arms--and his warriors
followed, all yelling and howling and singing their wild chant of
victory.
The death chant died on the lips of the Brushwoods and they gazed in
stupid wonder into the faces of their ancient enemies--these wild,
fierce enemies who had rushed to their aid upon the word of the
small, white policeman.
Next day came Sergeant Dan McKeever and Corporal Rickey, and the
prospectors who had escaped across the mountains when the Mooseheads
swept down the river. Came, also, Ick Far, from the village of the
Yellow Knives, where he had lain in a heavy sleep while the hands of
his huge silver watch crept twice around its dial.
The bodies of the Mooseheads were buried and the soldier-policemen
shook warmly the hands of the Yellow Knives--and of Tex Gordon.
Then, the prospectors returned to their diggings--and the Yellow
Knives to their lodges beyond the divide.
"And, now," said Connie, as the officers sat around their camp-fire
at the close of the gruesome day, "there is just one more thing to
do. 'Soapy' White was at the bottom of all this. We've got him with
the goods at last."
"He'll go to Stony Mountain fer seven hundred years!" growled
McKeever.
"He'll be lucky if he ever sees Stony Mountain!" opined Rickey. But
Ick Far said nothing, and continued to stare gloomily into the
camp-fire's glowing coals.
Next morning the four officers stood beside the heap of ashes that
had been the trading post of "Soapy" White. From a corner of the
heap they dug a burned, charred _thing_, which they buried in a hole
scooped in the gravel of the bar. "Soapy" White's score had been
paid in full. But, whether by accident, by the hands of the
Mooseheads who had returned for liquor during the days of the siege,
by the avenging hand of the Yellow Knives as they swooped down the
valley to the rescue of the _Kloshe Tenas Tyee_, or by the
retributive hand of Ick Far, who followed in the space of a day, will
never be known. For no investigation was conducted by the Mounted.
And Ick Far, man of silence and mystery, stares gloomily into the
distance--thinking his own thoughts.
CHAPTER IX
THE TEST
The late evening twilight deepened as Special Constable Connie
Morgan, of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, paused upon the edge
of a tiny clearing to reconnoitre. Before him a small cabin of
mud-chinked logs perched precariously between the steep, rock-studded
shoulder of a mountain and the high-water line of a nameless feeder
to the upper Stewart River. For a mile the boy had followed a
well-defined trail that led from a point on the main river where a
crude flatboat lay upon the bank ready for launching. He had
expected to find a cabin--but, a cabin with curtains! Three hundred
miles from the Yukon, in the very heart of the high outlands! This,
he most certainly had not expected to find.
His glance strayed from the cabin to a rude sluice box in the bed of
the stream, and back again to the cabin with its single
chintz-curtained window. Smoke floated from the chimney, and Connie
stepped boldly into the clearing. As he did so, the door opened and
a little girl, a tiny tot of five, with bright golden hair, dashed
laughing from the cabin, followed closely by a sturdy boy, perhaps a
year her senior. Connie stared incredulously at the two children who
had stopped short and were regarding him in wide-eyed wonder. He
noticed that their eyes were blue and that neither showed the least
sign of fear. "She's just like a picture," thought the boy, and
smiled broadly at the two tots who stood before him.
"Hello, there!" he called, and then, remembering something long
forgotten, he jerked the Stetson from his head and bowed. At the
sound of his voice a woman appeared in the doorway. It came over
Connie with a rush that she was quite the most beautiful woman he had
ever seen, and that her eyes were blue, like the children's. His
keen glance noted the look that came into the woman's eyes as they
rested for a moment on his uniform--a look of extreme
surprise--almost of fear. But the look passed, and the woman smiled.
Ever since he had ventured alone and friendless into the big North in
search of his father, Connie Morgan's lot had been cast among men.
He knew men--women he did not know. And now, as he looked over the
heads of the children into the face of the woman with the blue eyes,
he felt, somehow, uncomfortably prominent; his hands and his feet
seemed suddenly to have become ungainly things, whose appearance and
movements were clumsy and ridiculous. He turned red.
"He--hello! I mean--How are you?" he stammered. And, again
remembering his long-forgotten manners, he reached for his Stetson,
and was surprised to find that he still held it in his hand. So, in
lieu of raising it from his head, he waggled it uncertainly, and
tried again:
"Good evening!"
The woman was still smiling. "Good evening," she answered, in a low
voice. "Won't you come in?"
"Yes--yes'm--if you don't mind," answered the boy in confusion. "I'm
Connie Morgan--Special Constable Morgan, of the Mounted," he
confided. The woman nodded and drew back from the door as the boy
entered, closely followed by the two children who continued to stare
mutely at the visitor.
"Why, you're just a little boy!" exclaimed the woman when she had
lighted the tin bracket-lamp. Again Connie flushed.
"Yes'm; that is, I'm not so awful old."
"And you are out here in these mountains all alone?"
Connie avoided a direct answer. "That's nothing for us fellows. We
run the country, you know."
The woman laughed. "But you are such a little fellow! Aren't you
afraid?"
"No'm. You've got pretty babies." He nodded shyly toward the
golden-haired little girl. "She looks like a calendar."
"Like a _what_?"
"Like the picture on the calendar the A.C. Company gave out. Didn't
you get one?" His glance swept the walls of the room. The woman
shook her head.
"We trade on the other side," she said, and suddenly stopped.
"The other side!" exclaimed the boy. "Over on the Mackenzie?" But
the woman was noisily rattling pots and pans about the stove and did
not answer. The little girl and boy had drawn close, and Connie
showed them his knife, his service revolver, and his belt of yellow
cartridges.
"You don't live here alone, do you?" he asked, as the woman turned
from the stove.
"No, my husband is a--a prospector. He will be home presently."
"There isn't much use fooling with a creek like this," the boy said
earnestly. "The rock isn't right. He's just wasting his time. He's
a _chechako_, isn't he?"
Again the woman smiled. "Yes," she answered, "he's a _chechako_.
But he has done pretty well, so far."
"That's funny, 'cause the rock isn't right," answered Connie, and
noticed that the woman shot him a keen glance as he played with the
children.
A few minutes later the door opened and a man entered--and started in
surprise as he saw a uniformed officer of the Mounted seated upon the
floor industriously fashioning a toy wagon from a bit of board and
some spools, while close against either knee, watching his every
move, leaned the two children. Connie glanced up, and out of the
tail of his eye saw the man and the woman exchange a peculiar glance.
The woman spoke:
"We have a visitor," she said. "He is Constable Morgan, of the
Mounted; and he is having the best time with the children--he is only
a boy himself."
Connie grinned and extended his hand. "Just dropped in to spend the
evening," he said.
The man took the hand and nodded. "You're welcome," he answered
gruffly. "Hank Dubro's my name--I'm a new settler in these parts."
"Supper is ready!" announced the woman, and Connie noticed that the
man carefully lifted the children to their places and saw that his
wife was seated before drawing up his own chair. Somehow, in spite
of the man's gruffness, the boy liked him for that. When the meal
was finished the man lifted the children down and then filled his
pipe.
"Where you headin'?" he asked.
"Oh, just on special patrol," answered the boy. "Thought I'd cross
over and have a look at the Indians on the head-waters of the Gravel
River." Again he was conscious that a swift glance passed between
the man and his wife.
"You headed up the wrong creek!" exclaimed the man. "You should have
kept on up the Stewart till you struck Little Brown Bear. It's
the--one--two--three--it's the fourth creek above here. The pass to
the Gravel is at the head of it."
Connie nodded. "Thanks," he said; "but I'm not so far out of my way,
and I'm glad I came. It's worth a little extra work just to have a
look at these kids."
The man laughed--a laugh of relief, the boy thought. "It sure is!"
he agreed. "We just couldn't live without 'em, could we, Alice?"
"No, indeed!" the woman answered. "They're all the company I have
when you are away."
"I prospect quite a bit, back in the hills," the man hastened to add.
And again Connie nodded. He did not tell the man that he knew all
about Little Brown Bear, nor that Sergeant Dan McKeever was even then
pushing toward the pass, nor that officers of the Mounted were
exploring each of the intervening creeks.
For word had come to B Division that a band of Athapascans who lived
beyond the divide were being systematically supplied with liquor.
And the fact that N Division was responsible for the Gravel River
country but added zest to the work of the men of B.
Connie was not in the least surprised when he awoke the following
morning to find that Hank Dubro was gone.
"He wanted to get an early start," explained the woman. "He is going
away back in the hills."
After breakfast, Connie sauntered down and examined the sluice box.
"I thought so," he muttered. "He is no prospector. This is just a
blind--and a blamed clumsy one. He couldn't sluice a dump through
that thing in a hundred years. There's no _cache_ here, though. I
guess I'll be on my way."
He returned to the cabin, thanked the woman for her hospitality, said
good-bye to the children, who protested loud and lustily at thus
losing their play-fellow, and started down the creek in the direction
from which he had come. A few minutes later he crossed to the
opposite side, and doubling back, came out on a faint trail well
above the cabin. This trail, following the windings of the stream,
grew rougher and steeper as it approached the divide. The keen eyes
of the boy told him that some one had recently passed that way--and
passed hurriedly. And he smiled as he saw, _cached_ in a niche of
rock, a light pick and a battered gold-pan--a pick and pan that he
had noticed the night before reposing behind the door of the
"prospector's" cabin.
"It's too bad," Connie muttered, "that the woman and kids have got to
be mixed up in this. He's a _fool_ to think he can get away with it.
We've got him--sure as shooting!" He remembered the peculiar look
that had leaped into the woman's eyes at the sight of his uniform and
the unguarded admission that they traded on the other side.
Remembered, too, that she had said the man "had done pretty well, so
far," when any one ought to know that the rock on that creek wasn't
right for colour. And, at the thought of the man's sluice box, the
boy grinned. "She knows what his game is, all right, and she's
trying to shield him.... But, all the same, I wish I didn't know
about those kids." He set his lips resolutely. "Duty is duty,
though," he muttered, "and it's dirty business selling booze to the
Indians." But, try as he would, the picture of a golden-haired
little girl and a sturdy, blue-eyed boy kept recurring to his mind as
he toiled up the steep trail.
The day was terrifically hot. The season had been an unusually dry
one, and the August sun beat down mercilessly as the boy paused for
breath on the ridge of a high shoulder. On three sides of him rolled
a vast panorama of the hills. Jagged, rocky peaks reared their heads
like icebergs above the timbered ridges that stretched in endless
confusion, like the waves of a wind-tossed sea.
Connie's attention riveted upon a rising column of smoke, several
miles to the southward. "A signal fire!" he cried, and then his
brows drew together in a frown as a sudden shift in the wind whipped
a dense cloud of heavy smoke around the spur of a high butte. "The
timber's on fire!" And the next moment, along the lower edge of the
smoke cloud, he caught the red glare of the high-flung flames! "The
wind's changed! It's coming this way!" he cried. He was conscious
of a low, dull roar. It was the angry voice of the fire-fiend!
Instantly he cast about for a place of safety. Above him, a quarter
of a mile away, a deep rock coulee reached upward, high above the
timber-line. He turned and ran. Then suddenly he stopped in his
tracks. Before his eyes rose the vision of a little girl with golden
hair, and a sturdy, blue-eyed little boy, and the woman who had
treated him kindly though she knew he was a police officer. Once
more he glanced toward the fire, nearer, now, by two or three ridges.
The smoke cloud had reached him and cut off his view of the lower
hills. Swiftly his brain calculated the chances. He glanced at his
watch. "Two hours to climb up--I can make it down in half an hour."
One glance, he gave, toward the rock coulee that meant safety; and
one toward the leaping flames. The roar was loud, now, and
incessant, and as he looked, a current of wind whirled the smoke pall
upward, and he saw the long line of leaping flames that shot high
above the timbered ridges.
A huge brown bear lumbered past, seeking the higher levels.
With set lips he sprang down the steep trail. The acrid smoke stung
his eyes and bit into his throat and lungs as he breathed. The trail
blurred, but he ran, as if by instinct, following its tortuous
windings. In the narrow valley the smoke was not so thick and he
breathed easier. It grew dark. He glanced upward. The sky was
completely hidden by the dense smoke cloud that rolled and eddied
above the ridges. The sun glared dull and red, like a splash of
blood. A sickly, yellowish light filtered thinly into the valley,
distorting outlines. Connie tore the pack from his shoulders and
threw it into the bush as he ran. He fancied he could hear the
crackle of flames above the hoarse roar of the fire. The smoke
thickened until the air of the valley became almost unbreathable,
like the air of the ridge he had left. He passed the place where the
"prospector" had _cached_ his pick and gold-pan. The cabin was not
far, now. He dashed the smoke-stinging tears from his streaming
eyes. His breath came in great sobs, and he coughed the smoke from
his lungs. Suddenly a great wave of heat all but overpowered him.
The mountain that formed the south wall of the valley was a solid
mass of fire. The crackling of flames was real, now. It was
everywhere. Great flaring sheets detached themselves, and hurtled
through the air high above him. Pockets of gas exploded into red
flame and tore great rifts in the writhing smoke cloud. The heat was
intense. Gasping for air, Connie ran on, the sweat streaming from
every pore. His blouse smoked, and he slapped at his shoulder. The
flames had leaped the valley and already the north wall was ablaze.
Even the scrub of the bottom was burning in places. The boy dashed
into the clearing and crossed at a bound to the door of the cabin.
It was empty! He called loudly. His voice cracked, and he coughed.
He breathed more freely; the smoke had not yet penetrated to the
interior of the cabin, and the roof sheltered him from the intense
heat of the curtain of fire. Tearing a blanket from the bed, he
dashed to the creek. It was shallow, and he rolled in the water and
saturated his blanket. Then, holding it above his head, he sprang
down the trail to the Stewart. The low timber of the valley was
blazing on both sides of the trail and steam rose from his soaked
clothing and blanket. He rounded a turn and caught a glimpse of the
water of the river. The next instant the water was blotted out. A
cloud of dense black smoke rolled upon him, and before him appeared
the red flare of flames. He was trapped! He turned back.... The
whole valley was a mass of fire!
He pulled the blanket close about his head, turned again, and dashed
straight into the flames at the point where, a moment before, he had
sighted the water of the river. The fire bit into his wrists and
hands as he gripped tightly his blanket. Only a few more steps, and
the boy knew that he must go down. His knees weakened, and he felt
dizzy. "Not till I have to, though!" he gasped, as he staggered on.
"I'll never _lie down_! When I'm done, I'll _fall_! And when they
find me, they'll know I went the limit.... A man's _got_ to die
game!" And then--a cool current of air fanned his tortured wrists,
he hurled the blazing blanket from his head, and pitched headlong
onto the gravel. He was out of the bush! Dimly, before him, he
could see the river. Puny and thin, after the mighty roar of the
fire, sounded in his ears the cry of a child. Instantly the boy was
on his feet, staggering across the gravel bar, upon the outer edge of
which he could make out blurred forms. He forgot his own
suffering--forgot the pain of his blistered wrists, his smarting
eyes, his stinging throat and lungs. He knew vaguely that the woman
was staring at him as she tugged frantically at the heavy
scow--sobbing as she tugged. The little girl cried upon the gravel,
and the little boy pushed and pulled, exerting his tiny strength to
the utmost in a vain effort to help his mother.
[Illustration: Dimly, before him he could see the river. The woman
tugged frantically at the heavy scow, and the little boy pushed and
pulled in a vain effort to help his mother.]
Connie reached the boat and grasped the gunwale. Instantly the woman
gripped his shoulder.
"Your blouse is on fire!" she screamed, and pointed to the water.
"Jump in!" And Connie did jump in, and when he came up out of the
cold water he felt wonderfully revived.
"Where is he--my husband?" cried the woman, when the boy was again at
her side.
"He's all right. He crossed the divide. He was a good three hours
ahead of me, and I had almost reached the timber-line."
It was but the work of a few moments, with the aid of a pole lever,
to launch the boat. They lifted the children in and pushed off--and
just in time! For as the boat swung out into the current, Connie
pointed toward the mouth of the creek, and as the woman looked she
shuddered. The full force of the fire was roaring down the valley,
and from its mouth flames shot across the gravel bar to its very
edge. The valley had become a veritable furnace. To the northward
the fire roared and crackled, but toward the south-west, where the
fast-floating scow was carrying them, nothing was visible upon the
left bank but blackened stubs, and grey, smouldering ashes, with the
smoke cloud drifting above them.
CHAPTER X
THE PRISONER
The fire did not cross the Stewart, and after running down a few
miles Connie beached the scow at the point where the officers had
camped and left a _cache_ before separating to take their respective
routes to the head-waters of the Gravel.
"You followed him?" asked the woman, when they had got a light
shelter tent up.
Connie nodded. "Yes'm. I hated to, on account of you and the kids,
but--duty is duty. I'm sorry he is mixed up in it. Whisky running
is dirty. I'm sorry for you, and them," he pointed to the children,
who were industriously panning gravel in an empty bean tin. Again he
surprised the peculiar look in the woman's eyes, but instantly it was
gone.
"But you didn't catch him!" she cried.
"No'm. I didn't. But, the others will. There are five of us, and
we each took a different route."
"But, the fire! Maybe it caught them."
Connie shook his head. "No'm," he said, "they had plenty of time to
get beyond the timber. They were north of me, and they didn't have
to turn back."
"Why did you turn back?"
The boy looked at her in surprise. "Why, it was up to me to try to
save you and the kids."
The woman's voice faltered: "But your orders were to--to arrest
the----"
"Huh!" interrupted the boy, "I guess you don't know the Mounted!"
The woman turned her face swiftly away and Connie saw that she was
crying.
The boy's burns were found not to be serious and the woman tenderly
bound them up, and for the remainder of the day, while she rested,
Connie played with the children.
Early next morning he made up a light pack and telling the woman to
remain where she was until someone came he started up stream,
following the bank.
"Where are you going?" she called.
"To find your husband, and tell him you are safe."
"Is that all?"
Connie glanced away. "No'm," he answered, "that is not all," and
plunged into the bush.
He forded the river opposite the mouth of the valley that had
contained the cabin, but so changed was it that he scarcely
recognized the place. No green thing was visible along the whole
south bank of the river. Mountain slopes covered with blackened
stubs and grey ashes reared skyward, and long naked ridges showed
where, the day before, all was the rich dark green of the timber.
The whole landscape spoke desolation and ruin. He passed on up the
creek and halted suddenly. Two men were digging frantically among
the ruins of the cabin, which still smouldered sullenly. Near-by a
rifle leaned against a rock. One of the men looked up. It was the
"prospector," and Connie saw that his face was seamed by deep lines
of suffering.
"I can't find even a trace of them," said the man, in a dull,
toneless voice. "My poor wife--and the babies----"
"Not there, you can't!" smiled Connie.
"What do you mean?" The man leaped toward him, his eyes alight with
a sudden hope. "Tell me! Speak, can't you!"
The other man moved stealthily toward the rifle.
"Back up, there! Back away!" cried the boy, and stepping past the
"prospector," he secured the gun. Then he answered the man who could
scarce restrain his impatience:
[Illustration: "Back up, there!" cried Connie, and stepping past the
"Prospector," he secured the gun.]
"Your wife and the kids are safe and sound a couple of miles down the
Stewart." The man's face went white. He groped for words. "And
now," broke in Connie, "I've got to take you two along. You're my
prisoners. I charge you with running liquor to the Indians."
"You'll take me where they are?" asked the "prospector." Connie
nodded.
"Look-a here! What in thunder's th' meanin' o' this? What's th'
game?" The other man was staring from Connie to the "prospector" in
bewilderment.
"You shut up!" commanded Dubro. "Another word out of you, and you'll
wish you hadn't said it! You heard what the kid said, didn't you?
Well, he talked like he meant it--the Mounted generally does." Then,
turning to Connie, he added: "We're ready."
The boy pointed down the trail. "Hike!" he said, and followed
closely as the two men headed for the river.
Connie's position was far from an enviable one. All the way down the
trail he thought deeply. The actions of the men perplexed him: the
ready submission of the "prospector" to arrest, and the puzzled
exclamation of the other. "I've got to keep my eyes open," he
muttered. "I can stand guard over 'em one night--maybe two," he
decided, grimly, "but, after that.... Well, some of the boys better
hike back over the divide. I've got to sleep, sometime. Gee! I
wish I'd taken the bracelets out of my pack before I ditched it. I
could have 'cross-toggled' 'em and slept like a log."
No matter with what suspicion Connie viewed the "prospector's"
submission to arrest, his affection for his wife and children was
genuinely unassumed, and as the boy noted the warmth of their
reunion, a hope entered his mind that, out of gratitude for their
deliverance, the man might consent to remain a willing prisoner until
the return of the officers. He was evidently the leader of the gang;
at least, he had spoken with authority when the other man had seemed
on the point of resisting arrest. But at the very first words of the
woman that reached his ears he dismissed the thought, for he suddenly
realized that he had not only the two men to deal with but the woman
also, and that her brain, in all probability, was the most
resourceful of the three.
"Have you told him, Jack?" she asked, and the man smiled as he shook
his head. "Well, you go right this minute and tell him or I will!
He's the bravest and gamest little boy in the world! You should have
seen him come staggering out of the woods with his blouse all on
fire, and without waiting to put it out, start to help me launch the
boat. And I never could have done it alone--Jackie, and I--could we,
Jackie?" She caught up the youngster and covered his face with
kisses.
"Big boat!" the little fellow cried, and pointed toward the scow,
partially drawn onto the bank. The man laughed aloud.
"All right, I'll tell him." He motioned to Connie, who drew nearer.
"It's kind of worrying you, ain't it, kid, to figure out how you are
going to hold us till your pals come?"
Connie met his smile with a level stare. "Not a bit," he
prevaricated; "I could hold a dozen like you." He glanced
significantly toward the service revolver that dangled in its
holster. The man still smiled.
"But, you've got to sleep. Suppose the others don't get back for
three or four days?"
"They'll be here today, or tomorrow at the latest," answered the boy.
"Maybe they will, and maybe they won't. That gang may keep them busy
for a couple of days. I have an idea they're bad actors."
It was Connie's turn to smile. "Oh, you have an idea, have you?
Well, you ought to know."
"Yes, I ought to, but I don't--that is, not all of them." He paused
and Connie waited for him to proceed. "Look here, kid, who do you
think I am?"
Connie shook his head. "Search me! You said you are Hank Dubro. I
am _guessing_ that you are the boss of the whisky-runners. I took a
look at your sluice--so I _know_ you're no prospector."
The woman laughed, and the other man turned his scowling face toward
the group. "Tell him!" she urged.
"I'll admit, kid, the name was a fake, and so was the prospector
bluff. I never worked in the gold country before, and I was afraid
that sluice wouldn't stand inspection. In real life I'm Inspector
Jack Cartwright, of N Division, working out of Fort Simpson."
Connie snickered. "Guess again! Surely, you aren't just an
Inspector! Why, I thought you were the Commissioner, or at least, a
Superintendent!" The man ignored the sarcasm.
"I've been on this case for six months. There are three of us
working together; the others are over on the Gravel. We wanted to
slip one over on B Division and, because I was satisfied all the
contraband wasn't coming in from our side, I crossed the divide and
located on the creek, yonder. My wife always has wanted to get a
taste of the big outdoors, and I've always promised to take her, so
when we got the cabin rolled up we brought her over from Fort
Simpson. She's only been here two months--but I guess she's had
enough."
"Yes, indeed!" interrupted the woman. "And more than enough!" The
man continued: "We figured that if we could catch some of the gang
with the goods, on your side of the divide, we'd have the laugh on
you. We didn't know that B Division had got wind of this job, and
when you came along the other night, I figured you weren't alone, so
I jumped out early to close down on the gang over on our side before
you B Division fellows could beat us to it and turn the tables on us.
Some of 'em must have beat me across, though, because this specimen,
here, came tearing over the divide like something real was after him.
I gathered him in--and then the fire came. All I could think of,
then, were my wife and the babies down there alone. I thought of
you, but I figured you'd be almost as far on your way as I was on
mine--and I was cut off from the first. No one will ever know what a
night I spent there on the rocks above the burned timber, waiting for
the ashes to cool, and standing guard over my prisoner. Maybe you
can get some idea, when I tell you that my brightest hope was that
they had managed to reach the river. I knew the scow was too heavy
for her to put into the water, and I knew she couldn't make it across
the ford with the babies--even if she found it. But, drowning is a
heap easier than burning--I hoped they would drown. As soon as it
was light enough, we hit down through the ashes--and they weren't any
too cool--nor the rocks, either." He extended a boot scorched and
cracked to bursting. "We reached the ruins of the cabin and--well,
you know the rest."
Connie nodded. "Yes, I know the rest," he answered. "And, of
course, I know you are no prospector." The man grinned, and the boy
continued: "And, of course I know you are a whisky-runner and a
mighty slick one, too. You put up a good bluff. You've got brains,
but just let me tell you something, Mr. Prospector, or Dubro, or
Inspector, or whatever you call yourself, you haven't got _all_ the
brains, and if I were to believe your yarn, you sure would have the
laugh on B Division. If I turned you loose, Dan McKeever and Rickey
never would get through kidding me! And wouldn't the Superintendent
be proud of me?" Connie laughed aloud.
"But, kid, I _am_ Inspector Cartwright! I've given it to you
straight! Haven't I, Alice?"
The woman nodded. "Yes, indeed! Every word of it is true."
"I'm sorry you're mixed up in this, ma'm," said the boy, gravely. "I
don't blame you for trying to help him--I would, too, in your
place--but, it won't work."
"Look here, kid," broke in the man, and moving closer whispered
earnestly into Connie's ear. The boy shook his head.
"You know a lot about the inside, all right. I guess you've been in
the service, some time or other." His voice hardened. "And so much
more shame to you for turning crook, too. But, your story is too
thin!" He glanced at the man's clothing. "Funny kind of uniform
they wear in N Division, isn't it?"
"You don't expect a man to pose as a prospector in a scarlet tunic
and a 'pill-box,' do you?"
"Don't expect one to pose as a prospector with a chicken-coop for a
sluice, either. Where's your service outfit?"
"Burnt up!"
"Hard luck!" exclaimed Connie, with mock sympathy. "I suppose they
furnish N Division with Marlin rifles, too?" He glanced toward the
captured gun.
The man flushed. "Constable Morgan, as your superior, I order you to
release me from restraint! We should be working together to round up
the rest of the gang, instead of hanging around camp doing nothing!"
"Don't worry! Your gang is prob'ly rounded up by this time."
"And B Division will get the credit!"
"Too bad!"
"You said the boys never would get through kidding you, if you turned
me loose--I tell you, it won't be a patching to the way they'll kid
you, when they find you've held me prisoner."
Connie interrupted with a laugh. "You're some bluffer, old hand.
But, even if you are telling the truth, I guess the kidding will be
the other way around--'specially, if B Division makes those arrests.
What'll your report look like?"
The man was plainly annoyed. "Once for all, I order you to release
me!"
"And once for all, I order you to shut up! I don't take orders from
my prisoners. And, besides, prisoners do the work in my camp. You
were kicking about hanging around with nothing to do. Get busy, now,
and cook dinner! Here, you!" he called to the other man, "make you a
wedge, and unravel these old socks, and pound the yarn into the
cracks of that scow till she's tight. Come on, kiddies," he smiled
at the two youngsters, "I guess you're my prisoners, too, I'll show
you how to make a water wheel, while we watch 'em work."
The "prospector" glanced at his wife in dismay. But the corners of
her mouth were twitching, and she laid a hand on his arm.
"The boy is right, Jack. Come on--be game! You fetch the wood and
water, and build the fire, and I'll cook dinner."
And thus it was that a half-hour later, when Sergeant McKeever, and
Corporal Rickey, and Constable Emmons, and Ick Far marched into camp
escorting five manacled prisoners, they found a whisky-runner
caulking a scow, and an Inspector of the Mounted and his wife
preparing the noonday meal, while Special Constable Connie Morgan sat
on the gravel and supervised the proceedings while he showed two
round-eyed, and very much interested children how to build a water
wheel out of a few round sticks and an old tin can.
For the "prospector" really was Inspector Jack Cartwright. McKeever
had served with him in D Division, and Rickey in F. And when the
roars of laughter that followed the recital had subsided, Inspector
Cartwright stepped to Connie's side and threw his arm about him, and
the boy felt the grip of the strong fingers upon his shoulder.
"You're all right, son! The joke's on me--but, laying the joke
aside, you've got a head that's a credit to the service. And as for
your nerve--the real _courage_, that shows what stuff a man's made
of--the _big test_ that comes sometimes to some men--I know you must
have been mighty close to the timber-line, son, yesterday morning.
You could have saved yourself, sure. And, instead--you turned back!
You took a long chance in the face of the worst death of all for
them. That's the kind of thing, son, that men are remembered for.
It's above gold, above power, above fame--this big test of a man is.
And you have stood the test, son--the test by fire."
CHAPTER XI
NOTORIOUS BISHOP
In the barracks of B Division, R.N.W.M.P., a dozen non-commissioned
officers and constables looked up from the polishing of kits as the
Superintendent entered, saluted, and awaited the accustomed tug at
the grey military moustache with which the commanding officer
invariably introduced a subject.
"It looks as though we are going to have a live one on our hands,"
began the Superintendent. "You remember a month ago Stony Mountain
reported the escape of Notorious Bishop--climbed to the roof through
a scuttle--must have had wings, for they never found how he reached
the ground. And now comes the report that he crossed the Mackenzie
above Fort Simpson. Didn't dare risk a dash for the States, I
suppose, and thought he would leave Canada by way of Alaska. The
chances are, if he has succeeded in reaching a point above Fort
Simpson, N Division won't pick him up, so it's up to us. He must
never cross the Yukon. If it were anybody but Notorious Bishop I
would detail a man or two to watch the passes, Bonnet Plume and
Gravel River, and notify Fort Selkirk and Lapierre House, and let it
go at that, but Notorious Bishop never does the obvious. I'm going
to string a dozen men through the mountains, because if there is a
strip of range that looks absolutely impassable, that's right where
Notorious Bishop will cross." The Superintendent laid a small packet
upon the reading table. "Better look over these photographs and
descriptions," he advised, "and report for assignments in an hour."
As the commanding officer left the room constables and non-coms
crowded about the table, and Special Constable Connie Morgan, who had
been playing checkers with Sergeant Dan McKeever, rose to join them.
The Sergeant, who had shown no interest in the documents, smiled into
the boy's face.
"Set down, son," he said. "This ain't your job."
"Why not?" asked the boy, "and why aren't you taking a squint at
those pictures?"
McKeever laughed: "Well, in the first place," he answered, "they
don't send rookies after men like Notorious Bishop. He'd eat you up
in two bites. In the second place, I don't need to look at no
pictures nor no descriptions, neither, 'cause I'm the little lad that
run Notorious down. Five years ago, it was, down on Bow River. An',
believe me! I knew I'd been somewheres when I done it!"
"What did he do?" asked Connie.
"Do! Why take it first an' last, Notorious done everything the books
says not to. But it was in his getaways he showed his real class.
That's how he got his name. Wasn't satisfied with just gettin' away.
Always had to add a few flourishes. It got so, I don't believe
Notorious would of _snuck_ away if he got the chance. One time he
jumped off the middle of a sixty-foot trestle into the Saskatchewan.
Another time he rode his horse full tilt over a twenty-foot cut-bank,
when five of us thought sure we had him cornered, an' got off horse
and all, acrost Milk River into Montana. Another time, when Corporal
Ross was crowdin' him pretty close down in the Cypress Hills, he
slipped up on the Corporal's camp one night, tied him up an' borrowed
his whole outfit, uniform an' all. He rode the Corporal's mount till
it dropped an' then stopped at a ranch on French Creek, requisitioned
the best horse in the corral, an' got acrost the line. A week later
he sent the outfit back by a Swede along with a note of thanks.
"But all that ain't a patchin' to the stunt he pulled down on the
C.P.R. Inspector Rooney an' a couple of constables rounded him up
onct in some little town--Blairmore or Cowley maybe. It happened
that a freight train had pulled onto the sidin' to let the Imperial
Limited by, an' Notorious was makin' his stand amongst the freight
cars. The little town, whatever it was, wasn't a stoppin' place for
the Limited an' directly she showed up down the track runnin' full
tilt. Somehow, Notorious managed to cut the engine off that freight
on the side-track. Quite a crowd had collected to see the boys
gather Notorious in, an' when they crowded back to watch the Limited
go by, Notorious he lets out a yell like a Comanche, jumps onto the
freight engine an' pulls her wide open. Rooney says the engine
started so quick it never took the switch, but jumped plumb over onto
the main track an' went a-roarin' off ahead of the Limited that was
comin' fifty miles an hour, not a quarter of a mile away. Well, they
stopped the Limited, cut her engine off, an' Rooney an' his
constables took out after Notorious. That freight engine wasn't no
slow-crawlin' bug when she was wide open. All they could see ahead
was a black smudge." McKeever paused, grinning while several of the
constables and non-coms who knew of the Sergeant's first-hand
acquaintance with the outlaw, crowded about and were listening to the
narrative. And Rickey, who had also chased Notorious on more than
one occasion, cut in with an observation:
"Yes, and he whistles _Yankee Doodle_, blast him!"
McKeever laughed aloud. "I was comin' to that," he said. "Notorious
is a Yankee, an' Rooney swears when that engine had got plumb out of
sight down the track, an' them a-followin' so fast the telegraph
poles looked like the teeth of a fine-toothed comb, Notorious was
playin' _Yankee Doodle_ on the whistle. That might be true, and
again it mightn't--it ain't in the report. But, believe me, if a man
can play Yankee Doodle on an engine whistle, Notorious done it!
That's his way."
"Did they catch him?" asked Connie, who had listened wide-eyed.
"Catch him!" snorted McKeever. "I don't believe they got anyways
close to him, 'cause right then he pulled the most spectacular stunt
of his whole notorious career. He waited till he got amongst the
foothills an' stopped his engine, then he threw her wide open on the
reverse an' jumped off. Rooney says he hopes he'll never see another
sight like that. With the passenger engine a-tearin' along better
than sixty miles an hour, they rounded a curve an' there, down a
two-mile stretch of track, straight at 'em come that freight engine."
"Did it hit 'em?" asked Connie, excitedly.
"Hit 'em!" roared McKeever. "Ain't I just got through tellin' that
Rooney turned in his report? Well, he wouldn't, if that engine had
hit 'em. They managed to stop their engine, an' take to the brush
just before the two engines hit. They sure mussed up the right of
way. Rooney says there wasn't a piece left big enough but what a
section crew loaded 'em by hand on a flat car."
"Let's see his picture," said Connie, and Rickey extended a bunch of
photographs which he held in his hand.
"Pay your money an' take your pick," grinned the Corporal. "He never
shows twice alike. The only thing you can really _tell_ him by, they
can't photograph--he whistles _Yankee Doodle_."
Connie scrutinized the pictures closely. He saw at a glance that
Rickey had spoken the truth. No two pictures showed the same
likeness.
"How did you catch him at last, Dan?" he asked.
"Who me?" winked the modest McKeever. "Why, I--I just surrounded
him." And the boy joined in the laugh that followed, for he knew
that here was a story he must hear from other lips. Big Sergeant Dan
McKeever never boasted of his own exploits.
An hour later, Connie stood with the others awaiting assignment. In
spite of Big Dan's prediction that they wouldn't detail a rookie to
capture Notorious Bishop, a hope lingered in the boy's mind that
possibly the Superintendent might pick him for the job. He had said
a dozen men would be detailed. "A fellow ought to stand a pretty
good show out of a dozen," muttered the boy, as he took his place at
the end of the line, and with chest thrown out, glanced eagerly into
the face of the Superintendent whose grey eyes twinkled as he noticed
that the boy's service hat was pinched into its very tallest peak,
and that his boot heels missed the floor by a good two inches--noted
also that the youngster had taken up his position beside Constable
Peters, who was the shortest man in B Division, and that even as he
stood on tiptoe the peak of the boy's service hat did not show very
much above Constable Peters's shoulder.
"For special detail to patrol the divide in search of one Notorious
Bishop," the Superintendent was saying, "McKeever, ... Rickey, ..."
Name after name was called, and as the list grew the boy's hopes
sank. Even Constable Peters was mentioned and Connie winked hard as
he realized the list was closed. Again the Superintendent was
speaking: "For special detail to take census of Indians on the
head-waters of the McQuesten, Special Constable Morgan, with Ick Far,
interpreter."
The assignments were over. The men crowded into the barracks while
Connie Morgan passed around to the dog corral, and ten minutes later,
Dan McKeever paused at the sound of a small voice and peered over
into the corral where the boy sat on the ground, surrounded by his
ten great _malamutes_. "That's the trouble with being just a boy,"
Connie was explaining to McDougall's big leader, "here's Dan and
Rickey and even that sawed-off Peters got some real work to do. And
I got to go off and count a lot of greasy Indians! Well," he
consoled himself, "that's better than no assignment at all, like some
of 'em got. You bet, I'll hike up that river and I'll count those
Indians the best they ever was counted--and don't you forget it!"
Whereupon he fell to playfully thumping McDougall's great leader with
both fists, and Dan McKeever passed on with a grin.
[Illustration: "That's the trouble with being just a boy," Connie
explained to McDougall's big leader. "The others get some work to
do. And I got to count a lot of greasy Indians."]
Counting the Indians on the upper McQuesten was not a very strenuous
job and twenty days after their arrival upon the farther reaches of
the river, Connie Morgan and Ick Far began the return journey. The
McQuesten is a quick-water river, and as the canoe shot swiftly
around the bend on the second day of the return trip, Connie, who was
in the bow, saw at the edge of the scrub upon a long bar, a one-man
camp where no camp had been when they made the ascent of the river.
The boy passed a swift signal and with a dexterous twist of the
paddle Ick Far shot the canoe shoreward. Here, evidently, was an
Indian who had been missed in the counting. Suddenly, just as the
bow scraped the gravel, the boy's heart gave a great bound. Darkness
had gathered and in the scrub near a tiny fire someone was whistling.
The man then, was a white man, and _the air was Yankee Doodle_! With
his heart in his throat, the boy glanced toward the west where the
high peaks of the main divide of the Rockies loomed big and vast and
mysterious in the lingering half-light of the afterglow. For he knew
that somewhere among those peaks and passes lay twelve picked
men--stern-faced--experienced. Men who were the very flower of the
Mounted, and who were there for the express purpose of preventing one
certain man from crossing that divide. And despite their
vigilance--despite the best efforts of that grim patrol, the man had
crossed the divide! Notorious Bishop was upon the McQuesten and it
was up to him, Special Constable Connie Morgan, to take into Dawson
the man who had time and again flaunted his escapes in the face of
the Mounted!
The boy stepped onto the gravel. "Dan said, that day on the river,
that brains and nerve are worth more than beef in the service," he
muttered. "They better be!" he added thoughtfully, with a glance
toward his slender wrists. "'Cause I sure haven't got much beef."
The man evidently had not noted their approach for the strains of
_Yankee Doodle_ continued to sound from the scrub. The boy filled
his lungs.
"Hello!" he called. _Yankee Doodle_ ceased abruptly. There was a
quick movement by the fire and a man stepped from the scrub with a
rifle in his hand. Leaving Ick Far to draw up the canoe Connie
advanced boldly toward the silent figure. "Hi!" he greeted,
casually. "How they coming?"
Halting within a few feet of the other he noted the swift glance with
which the man swept his uniform--a glance that strayed past him and
rested upon the figure of Ick Far who was walking toward them from
the direction of the river. Noted also, that if the sight of the
uniform had in any way disconcerted the man he did not show it by so
much as the flicker of an eyelash.
"Hello, kid," he smiled, "'pears like you're quite a ways from
somewheres, ain't you? Where you headin'?"
"Dawson," answered Connie. "I'm Special Constable Morgan of the
Mounted, and this is Ick Far. Ick is the best scout and interpreter
in the service."
"Pleased to meet you," acknowledged the man, "an' bein' as it's
comin' dark, you'd better camp here along with me till mornin'."
"Sure will," replied Connie. "We'll pack our blankets and grub from
the canoe."
The stranger helped with the packing, and the three sat down to a
supper of bacon and bannock and tea. "Come far?" asked the man at
length.
"Uh-huh, pretty far," answered Connie, with a wave of his hand toward
the mountains to the westward.
"What's the good word with the Mounted?" asked the man, casually.
"Anythin' in p'tic'lar stirrin'?"
"Yes," answered the boy. "There's a big patrol out. They're strung
along the divide for a couple of hundred miles to pick up a man
called Notorious Bishop. He escaped from Stony Mountain about a
month ago and we got the report that he crossed the Mackenzie and was
prob'ly heading for Alaska." While Connie talked the man laid aside
his cup and plate and deliberately filled his pipe, and the boy noted
with admiration that the hand which held the glowing brand to the
bowl was as steady as a hand of stone. The man puffed at his pipe
and tossed the brand back into the fire.
"This here party, Notorious--which did you say?"
"Bishop," supplied Connie.
"Yeh, Bishop. What for lookin' _hombre_ is he? Would you know him
if you seen him?"
"Sure I'd know him!" exclaimed the boy. "We've got his picture at
headquarters and his description, too."
"I was over on the other side about a month back, myself. Was
working some creeks along the Carcajo."
"Did you see anybody over there?" eagerly inquired the boy. "Any
white men, I mean."
"Yeh, they was a couple or so. What did he look like, this here
Notorious gent?"
"Medium height, light hair, blue eyes, smooth face, weight about one
hundred and sixty, and two gold teeth," described the boy, glibly
remembering one of the photographs taken five years before. A
description that Connie knew could by no stretch of the imagination
be said to fit the man before him. "Why, do you think you saw him?"
he asked eagerly.
The man appeared to consider: "Well, let's see. There was a couple
of free-traders, but them wasn't him 'cause one wore a black beard
and one was about six foot. Then they was a prospector on a creek
called Willow Bunch he was light-haired all right, but he didn't
weigh no more'n a hundred an' twenty or thirty, he couldn't of be'n
him, neither. That's all I seen except Injuns. If you fellows got
all the passes watched 'taint likely he could of got acrost to this
side, nohow."
"You bet he won't!" assented Connie. "He'll never get by. Why, all
the good men of B Division are strung up there among the mountains!"
"An' what you doin' way down in here?" asked the man.
Connie grinned: "Who me? Oh, I don't count, I'm just hiking back to
Dawson to report. You don't happen to be going down Dawson way, do
you?" he added.
"Well, I do'no," answered the man. "I ain't had no luck on the
McQuesten, an' I never had none acrost the divide. I was figurin'
maybe I'd winter on some of these here creeks if I could strike a
colour, and maybe I'd go on over into Alaska. This here country has
been worked out though."
"Sure has," assented Connie, "and if you are going over to Alaska you
had better make up your mind pretty quick. That is, unless you want
to mush down the river. 'Cause the last boat leaves on the fifteenth
of September, and it's about the first now."
"Third," corrected the man.
"Well, the third then. It will take a good week, and maybe more, to
reach Dawson. There's plenty of room in our canoe, if you want to go
along."
The man considered the proposition. "Well, I'll study about it an'
let you know in the mornin'," he said at length. "Anyhow I'm obliged
to you, whether I go 'long, or whether I don't."
"Suit yourself," replied Connie indifferently. "Guess we'd better
roll in now. I want to get an early start."
CHAPTER XII
CONNIE PUTS ONE OVER
For a long time after Ick Far and the boy were asleep the man sat
smoking by the fireside. His eyes sparkled with daring and time and
again he smiled into the coals. Once or twice he pursed his lips to
whistle, but with a glance toward the sleeping forms, grinned
instead. As a matter of fact Notorious Bishop had been at his wit's
end to know how to proceed. True to the Superintendent's prediction
he had avoided the passes and crossed the divide at the head of a
steep and almost inaccessible canyon; a proceeding by which he gained
the Yukon country unobserved, but which, also, necessitated the
abandonment of all his outfit except a very light pack which
contained only the barest necessities. Furthermore, he was
unfamiliar with the Yukon territory, and knew nothing of the patrols
or the stations of the Mounted. He was proceeding, therefore, with
the utmost caution. The man was determined to outwit the Mounted,
and cross the International Boundary into Alaska. But the details of
his bold undertaking had not yet been fully worked out. Therefore,
Connie's offer appealed to the man strongly. Not only would it
afford a means of transportation but the adventure appealed to him.
With the pick of B Division guarding the passes, the interior of the
Yukon country was the safest place he could possibly be. And what a
chance to put one over on his ancient enemies! To travel through the
country as a guest of the Mounted, when from the boundary to the
Arctic, and from Hudson Bay to the Pacific, every officer in the
service was on the _qui vive_ to effect his arrest!
Notorious Bishop grinned into the camp-fire. At the moment of the
boy's offer he had decided to accept it, and it was only to avoid the
appearance of eagerness that he delayed his answer until morning. He
would play the adventure to the limit and later from some far-off
point of safety, would write thanking the Mounted for its
hospitality. The man knocked the ashes from his pipe, and as he drew
his blanket over him, glanced across the fire at the sleeping boy.
"Ain't you the cock-sure little rookie?" he muttered. "'Sure I'd
know him,' he says. Gee whiz! I'd like to whistle _Yankee Doodle_!"
The next morning the camp was early astir and after breakfast while
Connie was rolling his blankets, Notorious Bishop filled his pipe.
"D'you say, Constable, that the last boat leaves for Alaska on the
fifteenth?"
"Yes," answered the boy. "That's when she's due to leave. She
always gets away by the seventeenth."
The man removed his Stetson, and thoughtfully scratched his head as
his gaze travelled up and down the river. "Seems like a man can't do
no good here," he mused. "You say you got room in your canoe?"
"Sure," answered Connie, "that is, if you don't pack too big an
outfit."
Notorious Bishop laughed: "My outfit ain't hardly worth worryin'
about. You see I hit the river a piece above here an' throwed
together a raft, an' comin' around the bend yonder the raft run plumb
square onto a rock. I managed to save my blankets an' one pack-sack
an' the river took the rest. It's a lucky thing you happened along.
I just about made up my mind I'd have to hunt a tradin' post
somewheres."
"You'd have had a long hunt," said Connie. "The nearest trading post
is about fifty miles from here, and you'd have had to track-line all
the way back."
"All right, Constable," the man replied, "if it ain't going to
discommodate you none I believe I'll just go on along with you and
try my luck over in Alaska. It can't be no worse than it is here,
nohow. I'm sure obliged to you for the lift, an' if anything turns
up you'll find I ain't the one to forget it."
With his back to the man, Connie tightened the hitch of his bed-roll,
and he grinned as he tugged at the rope. "You said something then,
Mr. Notorious Bishop," he muttered to himself. "Cause something sure
is going to turn up and you can bet your boots you won't forget it,
either!"
The trip down the McQuesten was uneventful enough. Notorious Bishop
proved an actor of unusual ability. He played the part of a
prospector so well that Connie himself would have been deceived had
it not been for the fact that he had heard him whistle _Yankee
Doodle_. Even with _Yankee Doodle_ the boy was not quite sure of his
man. It was possible, after all, that the man was a prospector.
For, try as he would, Connie could trace no slightest resemblance
between the features of his passenger and those of the photographs on
file at headquarters. The chance word dropped by Corporal Rickey
that Notorious Bishop was in the habit of whistling _Yankee Doodle_
was the only clue to the man's identity. "'Course any one _could_
whistle _Yankee Doodle_," thought the boy to himself as the canoe
shot down toward the Yukon. "But way up here, somehow, the chances
are they _wouldn't_. Anyway, I'm going to play safe. If he ain't
Notorious Bishop, he can easily prove it, and if he is--Gee, won't
Dan's eyes stick out! The Sarg said he'd eat me up in two bites.
But I guess if he tries it he'll find out he's bit off more than he
can chew."
During the days of the journey the man talked freely. His mind was
evidently clear of any slightest suspicion that the boy was aware of
his identity, and he whiled away the time with accounts of adventures
in various parts of the world--adventures that made no mention of
police, but included stories of the diamond mines of Africa, the
sailing of ships, and the wonders of far Cathay. Connie listened,
wide-eyed to the stories, the while he noted that the man asked many
guarded questions pertaining to the country--questions that any
stranger might ask regarding settlements, trails, telegraph lines,
and the customs inspection on boats. And at all times was he loud in
his praise of the Mounted, and of their ability to preserve order
throughout the vast territory under their jurisdiction. He even
asked to be allowed to inspect the headquarters of B Division and to
meet the commanding Superintendent. Connie marvelled at the man's
audacity and promised to see what he could do toward the granting of
his request.
The Stewart River was run without mishap and shortly after the canoe
passed into the Yukon, the police launch _Aurora_, containing a
Corporal and a Constable on river patrol, chugged close alongside.
For a moment Connie was tempted to enlist the aid of the two officers
in conveying his prisoner to Dawson. But at the thought of
McKeever's words the boy's hand gripped tight upon his paddle.
"No, siree," he thought. "I've come this far alone, and I'm going to
see it through." So when the boat drew alongside the boy merely
saluted and joked a bit with the Constable, while Notorious Bishop,
with all the assurance in the world, begged a pipe of tobacco from
the Corporal. And the launch passed on and left the canoe to
continue her way toward Dawson.
That night they camped at the little police post on Indian River
where Notorious Bishop played checkers until far into the night with
the Constable in charge while Connie looked on and wondered at the
man's nerve. Next morning when they set out for Dawson, the
Constable accompanied them to the river and waved them good-bye with
a cordial invitation to the "prospector" to be sure and stop in
whenever he passed that way--an invitation which Notorious Bishop
laughingly accepted providing the Constable would brush up his
checker game.
The buildings of Dawson were sighted long before sundown and Connie's
heart thumped with suppressed excitement as the canoe beached close
to the wharf where the _Sarah_ was being loaded for her last trip
down the river.
"Guess I'll just go over an' get my ticket while the gettin's good,"
said Notorious, as he shouldered his rifle, blankets, and pack-sack.
"Come on along, Constable," he invited, "an' I'll go on up to
headquarters with you. I'd sure like to see what kind of a layout
you've got up here." The man booked passage for Fort Yukon, and
Connie accompanied him while he stowed his effects in his tiny cabin.
Returning to the wharf they were informed that the boat was due to
sail the following day.
"That sure suits me fine," said Notorious. "I've heard a lot about
Dawson, an' my friend, the Constable, here, he's promised to show me
'round a bit." Then, turning to the boy. "All right, Constable,
just you lead the way an' we'll start on our sight-seein' tour. You
be the guide, and I'll pay the freight." He laughed boisterously and
Connie noticed that his grey eyes were unusually bright. A sudden
fear clutched his heart. Was it possible that in some way he had
overplayed his game and that Notorious Bishop knew that he had been
recognized? Was the man planning a spectacular dash for liberty? Or
was his evident state of suppressed excitement occasioned by the fact
that he was soon to be brought face to face with the Superintendent,
himself, while the Superintendent's picked men were at that very
moment scouring the mountains for him many miles to the westward?
The boy wondered whether the man really had the nerve to visit
headquarters. He glanced swiftly into the grey eyes and decided he
had. They were almost at the barracks now. Upon the wooden sidewalk
of Front Street a couple of officers passed them with a cheery
greeting for the boy and a casual glance at his companion. Connie
found himself taxed to the utmost to conceal his excitement, and as
they entered the barracks side by side the boy fancied the other must
certainly hear the thumping of his heart. In the big room two or
three men were polishing kits. Connie motioned his companion to a
seat and hurried at once toward the office where he found the
Superintendent seated behind his flat-top desk. He looked up as the
boy entered and stood at attention.
"What, back already!" the commanding officer smiled as he glanced
over the trim figure of his youngest constable. Connie saluted and
advanced to the desk.
"Yes, sir," he answered, "here's my report." He extended the paper
and as the officer took it he noticed that the small hand trembled.
"What's on your mind, son?" he asked.
"If you please, sir," stammered Connie, "can I report later?"
The Superintendent smiled: "A matter of importance?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," answered Connie, "but there's a man out here that says he
wants to see you. Can I bring him in?"
"Who is he? What does he want?'
"Oh, he's--he says he's been prospecting up on the McQuesten. He's
heard a lot about the Mounted, and he'd like to visit headquarters."
"All right, show him in," growled the Superintendent, fingering the
report, "probably another one of those fellows that want to tell us
how to run the country." And the Superintendent wondered whether he
had seen a smile on Special Constable Morgan's lips as he hurried
from the room.
In the barracks Connie found the prospector seated at the table
between two constables. The man was glancing over some photographs
which he held in his hand. They were photographs of Notorious
Bishop, and the constables were eagerly detailing some of the man's
spectacular adventures. The boy advanced toward the group, smiling.
"He's the man I was telling you about."
The prospector nodded: "Seems to be a hard man to gather," he smiled,
"if what these lads been tellin' me is true."
"Oh, I don't know," answered Connie, "I bet I could manage him."
And the prospector joined loudly in the laughter which followed.
"The Superintendent says he'll see you now," said Connie, and the man
arose and followed toward the office. As the boy stepped aside to
allow the other to pass out the door, he motioned swiftly to the two
men at the table. The men arose and followed as Connie led the way
to the office. The Superintendent glanced up as the prospector
approached his desk. Connie saluted, and his right hand closed upon
the butt of his service revolver.
"Superintendent," said the boy standing very straight and very alert,
"I want to introduce--Notorious Bishop!"
The man whirled like a flash to stare squarely into the ugly black
muzzle of the revolver. For just an instant he hesitated as if
calculating his chance, and then with a shrug turned again to face
the Superintendent who was upon his feet staring incredulously from
the man to the boy.
The prospector was the first to speak, and Connie marvelled at the
consummate assurance of him as he smiled into the Superintendent's
face.
"Kid's kind of had this feller on his mind, I guess, 'til it's turned
his head," he said, with a wink.
"Yes," interrupted the boy, "I haven't had much else on my mind for
more than a week. But it hasn't turned my head any--not so you could
notice it! You thought you had me fooled, didn't you? You thought
because I was a boy you could run another one of your whizzers, but
you can't get away with it, this time--not with me you can't! We'll
just hold you 'til Dan McKeever comes. He knows you, all right."
"McKeever!" cried the man in sudden alarm. "Why he belongs down
on--." Suddenly he checked himself, and the Superintendent with a
puzzled look motioned the two constables to the man's side. "This is
an outrage!" stormed the prospector as he felt his arms seized from
behind. "Who is McKeever? An' what's he got to do with it?" For an
answer the Superintendent smiled.
"We will let him answer that question for himself," he said.
"Constable Morgan, if you will step out, I think you will find
Sergeant McKeever in his bunk. He reported in a couple of hours ago
for permission to push across into the Mackenzie Basin."
A moment later, Connie was shaking the big Sergeant's shoulder.
"Hey, Dan," he called, "wake up!"
"What you want?" growled McKeever, sleepily opening his eyes.
"The Superintendent wants you over at the office to identify an
acquaintance of yours."
"Who is it?" growled the Sergeant as he reached for his trousers.
"Oh, just a fellow by the name of Notorious Bishop I picked up about
a week ago out in the hills," answered the boy with a great show of
nonchalance.
"Notorious Bishop!" cried McKeever, staring into the boy's face.
"What do you mean, Notorious Bishop? If Notorious Bishop is in this
country he's over on the Mackenzie."
"Is he?" asked the boy with a grin, "you wait and see."
A few moments later, Dan McKeever entered the office and stared
wide-eyed into the face of the most wanted man in all Canada.
"Well I'll be--well I'll be _doggoned_!" he cried. "It's him! It's
him, all right! For the love of Mike, kid, how did you do it?" He
grabbed Connie by the arm.
"Who me?" grinned Connie, imitating to a nicety the tone in which
McKeever had answered the same question, "Oh, I just _surrounded
him_. He ain't hard to handle, if you know how. I just hung around
and let him arrest himself, didn't I, Notorious?" And Notorious
Bishop who saw that the game was up laughed sheepishly.
"I guess that's right, kid," he answered. "But you see, you're so
pumb little that-a-way, it throwed me off. I figured the safest
thing I could do was to come through the territory with an officer.
An' it would of be'n, too. Didn't we pass seven or eight of 'em?
Didn't I borrow tobacco off one of 'em, an' play checkers with 'em,
an' talk to 'em without one of 'em spottin' me? Tell me, straight,
Superintendent, would you of know'd me, yourself?"
The Superintendent smiled. "I'm afraid not," he admitted, with
puckered brow.
"What I can't figger," continued the prisoner, "is how the kid
spotted me when all the others couldn't."
"Just a trick of the trade," smiled the boy, and the twinkle in his
eye belied the innocence of his words as he continued: "The trouble
with you is that you couldn't take a fellow at his word. When I told
you to your face I would know Notorious Bishop if I saw him, didn't
you _believe_ me?"
CHAPTER XIII
THE TRAIL OF THE "DEMON'S HEART"
The _tillicums_ of the gold country still speak with bated breath of
the "Demon's Heart," the great nugget that left its trail of
ill-luck, misfortune, and death, from the Black Fork Kaskana to
Dawson, and from Dawson to the divide--and beyond. The _tillicums_
wonder how far beyond.
About hot stoves in far-away trading posts men ask each other if the
great nugget is still working its harm among men. Has it found its
way to the mint and been stamped into coins? Or, to the jeweler, and
been fashioned into costly rings to encircle fair fingers? And if
so, have the crucibles and the melting pots removed the bane? Or,
will misfortune forever dog the footsteps of the women who wear the
rings, and the men who possess the coins, stamped from the gold of
the "Demon's Heart"?
But of all the _tillicums_ in the land of the peaks and passes, only
two know that the trail of the great nugget is ended. For Special
Constable Connie Morgan of the Royal North-west Mounted Police
prefers to speak of other things. And Ick Far, the leathern-faced,
the imperturbable, speaks nothing at all, but sits in sphinx-like
silence with his eyes fixed upon far things--thinking his own
thoughts.
As the _June Altroff_ sheered in toward the Dawson wharf, her stern
wheel lashing the waters of the Yukon into white foam, the little
knot of men who awaited her arrival were horrified by a dull roar and
a sudden high-flung column of smoke and steam, as before their very
eyes the little steamer disappeared from sight, leaving the surface
of the Yukon strewn with a mass of white wreckage, and the struggling
forms of men.
Five minutes later, the police launch _Aurora_, manned by Sergeant
McKeever, Corporal Rickey, and Special Constable Connie Morgan, shot
out from the bank and returned with the half-dozen survivors of the
wreck.
It was during the investigation which followed, that the great nugget
first came under the notice of the Mounted. In the Miners' and
Marines' Hospital the three officers who had accomplished the rescue,
closely examined the surviving members of the crew of the ill-fated
_June Altroff_. Neither the captain nor the chief engineer could
throw any light whatever upon the cause of the accident. The
engineer affirmed that the steam pressure had been well within the
safety limit, and the captain testified as to the recent overhauling
and inspection of his boilers.
"She jest up and nach'lly let go without no cause nor reason
whatsumever," he concluded, and at the words a man in the adjoining
cot, who had been frightfully scalded in the explosion, raised a
bandaged hand and beckoned weakly to the officers. Connie and Dan
McKeever bent over him.
"It's in my coat," he muttered thickly; "the thing that made the boat
blow up."
"You mean a bomb?" cried McKeever.
"No--gold," muttered the man. "It's a nugget. One hundred an' four
ounces, she weighs! An' she saps men's lives!" McKeever glanced
significantly toward Connie who stood upon the other side of the cot.
Interpreting the glance, the injured man continued, speaking with
difficulty: "You think I'm out of my head, but I ain't. I'm a goner!
I'm all burnin' up inside, an' my heart's on fire! But I tell you my
head's clear! Tell 'em to bring my coat. It's sewed in the linin'."
An attendant handed McKeever a soggy mackinaw from which the river
water still dripped to stand in little pools upon the floor. The
coat sagged heavily upon one side, and as the Sergeant held it he
noted that its weight far exceeded the weight of any water which the
thick garment could possibly have absorbed. As Connie slit the
lining with his knife, a heavy object thudded loudly upon the pine
floor. Lifting the object to the bed, the boy unwound a wrapping of
cloth. The next instant the officers, the hospital attendant, and
the men upon the adjoining cots stared with bulging eyes upon a great
nugget of gold that showed dull yellow against the grey of the
blanket.
"It's streaked with red--an' it saps men's lives!" moaned the man in
the cot as he sought to draw his bandaged body away from its fancied
contact. Connie lifted the lump to examine it more closely. It was
rudely heart-shaped in form, with one side rough as furnace slag, and
the other ground smooth as velvet by the action of sand and water.
But its most peculiar feature was the band of a darker yellow, almost
reddish cast, that appeared on the smooth surface and struck through
to reappear on the opposite side.
"Where did you get it?" asked McKeever hoarsely. "An' what's it got
to do with the blowin' up of the _June Altroff_?"
"Aye, what's it got to do?" shuddered the man in the cot, as he
stared with horrified eyes at the huge nugget. "It got the Injun,
an' it got Hans Anderson, an' me, an' them out there in the
river--that went down with the boat an' never come up ag'in. What's
it got to do with us all? An' why is it red, an' heart-shaped? It's
ha'nted, that's why! It's demon gold----!"
"But where did you get it?" persisted McKeever. "An' who is the
Injun, an' Hans Anderson?"
The man called for water and the attendant held a glass to his lips.
"The Injun was just an Injun," he muttered dully, after a brief
pause. "Hans Anderson found him dead in a wickiup on a crick an' in
his hand he held that!" The man stared in strange fascination at the
nugget as he talked. "An' he took it, an' buried the Injun. Hans
Anderson was trappin' an' prospectin', an' he had a cabin on Black
Fork Kaskana. My camp was ten miles above his'n. One day I paddles
down to see about us runnin' in our winter's grub by canoe before the
freeze-up. An' when I gets to his cabin there ain't no smoke comin'
out the chimbly, an' I shoves open the door, an' there lays Hans
Anderson in his bunk, an' a ragin' fever was on him, an' he talks
wild an' delirious about a big nugget streaked with red. I done what
I know'd how for him, an' bye 'n' bye he quieted down. 'Twas then he
told me about the Injun. 'There's a curse,' he says, 'on the gold
from a dead man's hand!' An' he showed me the nugget. 'It's got
me,' he says, 'an' it'll get any one that owns it.' An' he wanted me
to take it up to the crick an' bury it with the Injun. But I
wouldn't, an' that night Hans Anderson died. I wanted him to give me
the nugget, but he said it would bring me bad luck. An' he died with
his fingers a-grippin' it tight.
"Him a-tellin' me that-a-way, 'bout takin' it from the hand of the
dead Injun, an' then him a-dyin' like he done, when he was well an'
hearty the last time I seen him, a few days before, it give me the
creeps, an' had me plumb scairt of the red-streaked nugget. I
allowed I'd bury it with him. The next day I dug a grave an' I put
Hans Anderson in it, with the nugget still clutched in his hand. An'
then, jest as I give a last look, a shaft of sunlight struck down an'
lit up the gold till it shined, an' glittered--" the man paused,
shuddered, and moistened his lips with his tongue. "'The gold's got
you! You're a fool!' I yells to myself out loud. 'Gold's gold! An'
here's more of it in one lump than you ever seen or ever will see.
Gold ain't nothin' but rock, or whatever it is. It can't do him no
good, nor you no harm. An' it's as much yourn, now, as it was his'n
when he took it from the Injun!' An' I reaches down and tears the
chunk from his fingers, an' throws in the dirt, an' jumps into my
canoe an' paddles for the big river. I sewed the nugget in the
linin' of my coat. At Five Finger I caught the _June Altroff_,
an'--an'--it's got me--like Hans Anderson said it would."
The scalded man died. And that same night occurred the fire that
razed the Miners' and Marines' Hospital to the ground. By dint of
much work and no little heroism the patients were all removed. In
the official records the cause of the fire is given as a defective
flue, but those who had looked upon the nugget and listened to the
scalded man's story wonder. The hospital attendant, and the captain
and the chief engineer of the _June Altroff_ talked. And up and down
the river, and among the far hills, the nugget became known as the
"Demon's Heart," and men spoke in awed whispers of the ill-luck that
followed its trail.
During the excitement incident to the fire, the nugget was forgotten.
And though men searched and dug in the ruins for many days, no trace
of it could be found in the ashes. Then, suddenly, it reappeared as
mysteriously as it had vanished. This time in the possession of Nick
Mullane, who affected scorn for its power for harm, and exhibited it
in his store, where men flocked in numbers to gaze upon the misshapen
talisman of ill omen. These men who came to gaze remained to buy,
and Nick Mullane's business began suddenly to rival that of the A.C.
Company.
But the man's prosperity was short-lived. No more does Nick Mullane
scoff at the power of the nugget to work harm. And the men of the
Yukon add one more milestone to the trail of the "Demon's Heart."
For, between two days, the nugget disappeared, and with it all the
gold that had accrued by reason of Nick Mullane's sudden increase of
business.
Nick Mullane appealed to the Mounted. And Sergeant Dan McKeever
accompanied by Ick Far headed into the hills, following a three-man
trail. On Burton Creek they buried a man, and at Hot Springs,
another, and at Bonnet Plume Pass the trail of the third man was so
completely lost among the rocks that even Ick Far could not follow
it. And the "Demon's Heart" passed beyond the ken of the men of the
Yukon.
But the _tillicums_ still wonder what lies at the end of the trail.
"Afraid of ghosts?" asked the Superintendent commanding B Division,
as Connie entered the office in answer to the summons of his chief,
and stood at attention.
Connie smiled. "No, sir!" he answered. "That is, I don't think I
am. I never saw one. I don't believe there are any. And if there
aren't, I _couldn't_ be afraid of 'em."
"Yes, but suppose there are," persisted the Superintendent with a
twinkle in his eyes.
"Well, then I _wouldn't_ be afraid. I guess if they're sensible
ghosts they won't try any monkey business with the Mounted."
The officer laughed. "You'll do," he said. "Of course there are no
such things as ghosts, but it's hard to make the Indians believe it.
In fact, it's hard to make 'em believe anything a white man believes.
Ordinarily I don't pay any attention to their yarns. But this case
is a little different." He picked a paper from his desk. "Here's a
letter that was brought in by a trapper yesterday. It's from
MacFarland, chief trader at the Tilton Lake, H.B.C. Post:
"'Superintendent commanding B Division,
Royal North-west Mounted Police,
Dawson, Y.T.
"'Sir:
"'I beg to call your attention to the fact that the Indians in the
vicinity of Red Tail Lake have abandoned their hunting ground and
have moved to the immediate vicinity of this post. They insist that
a ghost or _tamahnawus_ has taken possession of the Red Tail Lake
country, and they refuse to go back until the police come and chase
it away. These Indians have great respect for the Mounted, and if
you can spare a man or two I think they can be persuaded to return
without trouble. I am calling your attention to this matter because
the Tilton Lake Indians are beginning to resent the invasion of their
hunting grounds; and while there has been no open hostility, trouble
may break out at any minute. Also, because the Red Tail Lake country
is winter range for thousands of barren-ground caribou which are the
main dependence of these people for meat, and if the Indians are not
made to return to that section, the forthcoming cold weather will
cause a great deal of suffering among them.
"'I should have investigated this matter myself, but I am alone at
the post, my clerk having gone outside with the brigade. I am, sir,
"'Faithfully yours,
"'T. J. MacFarland, chief trader,
"'H.B.C. at Tilton Lake.'
"So you see," said the Superintendent, "that it is up to us to
straighten this business out. Your job will be to mush over there,
shoo the ghost out of the woods, and round the Red Tail Lake Injuns
back to their own stamping ground. Red Tail Lake is only forty or
fifty miles north of Tilton Lake Post, and I advise that you swing
around and have a talk with MacFarland before you visit Red Tail
Lake. Better talk with the Indians, too. Take Ick Far along. Use
your own judgment when you get there, and if you find that any white
men have put up a job on the Indians to scare them from their hunting
ground, bring them in, and I'll see that they get what's coming to
them. The thing is to get these Indians back home. You'll have to
step lively if you do it before snow flies."
Connie saluted, and as he crossed the room the Superintendent glanced
with pride at the trim figure of his youngest recruit. "He'll get to
the bottom of it," he muttered. "He's a sure enough _tillicum_."
Red Tail Lake lies beyond the Bonnet Plume Pass. On the second day
out, when Connie explained to Ick Far the object of their patrol, the
Indian listened in silence and at the end wagged his head gloomily.
Despite years of service with the Mounted, the Indian, Ick Far,
retained the savage's dread of the supernatural. But stronger than
this dread was his loyalty to the service. Orders were orders. And
Ick Far, albeit with fear and trembling, would have followed an
officer of the Mounted to the very place of departed spirits.
On Burton Creek, and again at Hot Springs, the scout with much
muttering and foreboding of evil, pointed out the graves of the men
he had helped McKeever to bury.
"I'm t'ink dat _kultus_ gol' she cross to de Red Tail Lak'," he
grumbled. And as they pushed forward Connie's thoughts recurred to
the great misshapen nugget of pure gold with its uncanny streaks of
red, and to the graves that marked its trail.
At Tilton Lake Post, Connie interviewed MacFarland. But the
Scotchman could add nothing to what he had already written.
Whereupon, the boy turned his attention to the Indians.
With much gravity the chief of the band expounded: "In the first days
of the dripping moon came a white man and a woman to Red Tail Lake.
They came from the north-westward and not from the country of the
Mackenzie. And upon the shore of a spruce-sheltered bay, they built
a cabin. The man did not seek to trade, nor did he give any presents
of tobacco, or fish-hooks, or files.
"For the space of a moon they lived in the cabin, and each day his
canoe was to be seen on the lake where, always in company with the
woman, he fished and hunted to obtain his winter supply of meat.
Always the man appeared to be afraid. Always his eyes searched the
shores. And always he scanned the faces of the Indians who
approached in canoes as though he feared some man who would come to
him over the water. But now, the Indians know that it was no man he
feared, but the _kultus tamahnawus_. For one day, a small party of
Indians who were hunting upon a hill saw the canoe of the white man
driving rapidly down the lake. In the bow was the woman and the man
was in the stern, and both paddled furiously so that the canoe shot
forward with great speed. And they turned to pass down the river by
which the waters of the lake find their way to the frozen sea. And
even as the Indians looked, the canoe, in the time of a lightning
flash, was gone. The _kultus tamahnawus_ had reached from the depths
and had pulled them beneath the surface of the swift-flowing river.
With their own eyes, the young men who hunted had, seen this thing.
And in great fear they hastened to the village, and would have fled
from the Red Tail Lake country. But there the hunting and trapping
is good. And there come the caribou in thousands to winter, so that
always there is meat in our bellies, and the robes in our lodges are
warm.
"I, Sam Spotted Raven, am chief, and that night I called a council.
The young men who were fearful spoke with eloquence and were loud in
their demands that the village be moved far from the shores of the
spirit-ridden lake. One or two even affirmed that they had seen the
great hand of the _kultus tamahnawus_ rise from the water and drag
the canoe into the depths. But this I did not believe. For I know
that young men who are stricken with fear are more apt to see with
the eyes of the heart than with the eyes of the head. And there are
many strange and terrible things told which, in truth, never
occurred. Many of the older men were like-minded. For they knew
that to move from good hunting grounds at the coming on of winter is
bad. I told the young men that the canoe had struck upon a rock and
had been destroyed after the manner of canoes since the memory of
man. I told them they would find the broken canoe and the bodies of
the drowned ones upon the bank of the river below.
"In the morning I selected three young men and three old men and we
started at a point far below to search the banks of the river. In an
eddy, revolving close beside the bank, we found fragments of the
broken canoe with the bark battered and scraped where it had pounded
against rocks. 'See?' I said to the young men. 'Your _tamahnawus_
has chewed up the canoe but he did not like it and he has spewed it
into the river.' And the old men laughed, but the young men scowled
and said nothing. And farther on, upon a bar of white gravel, the
body of the man bumped softly against the pebbles in the current.
He, too, had been battered upon the rocks of the rapids and we
dragged him from the water and buried him after the manner of the
white men." The old chief paused and puffed at his pipe of heavy
tobacco:
"Once more I ridiculed the young men, and once more the old men
laughed, but the young men replied that the body of the woman we had
not found. That the _kultus tamahnawus_ had broken the canoe and
killed the man, but the woman he had taken to live with him upon the
floor of the river. We continued on toward the lake, searching the
banks, for I did not believe the young men. I believed we would find
the body of the woman even as we had found the man.
"It was noon when we camped in the scrub but a short distance below
the place where the canoe had disappeared. I wanted to visit the
spot but the young men would venture no nearer, for the fear of the
_kultus tamahnawus_ was heavy upon them. I persuaded them to
accompany me to the hill, and point out the spot so that I and the
old men who were not afraid might visit the place. The hill was but
a short rifle shot from the river and as we reached the top there
came to our ears the sound of a splash. All looked toward the river,
but nothing was to be seen save the sunlight glistening upon the
surface of the swift-flowing water."
Again the old man paused and glanced nervously about: "I, Sam Spotted
Raven, believe only what I see with the eyes of my head. In my heart
was no fear of the _kultus tamahnawus_. And my words are true. Even
as we looked, the surface of the water was broken and the head of a
woman appeared with the long hair floating out upon the water and she
started to swim to the shore toward the base of the hill whereon we
stood. With my eyes I saw it. For I looked after the others had
fled. There is no mistake. The woman came up from the water at the
spot where she went down the day before. She drew near the bank and
I waited no longer. No woman of flesh and blood could remain under
the water for a day and a night. She, herself, was a _tamahnawus_,
and she was drawing nearer!
"When I arrived at the village I found that my people had waited not
upon my orders, for the lodges were already struck. And so we came
to Tilton Lake, and will return no more to the Red Tail Lake country
until the white-man police has come and chased the _tamahnawus_ far
from there."
CHAPTER XIV
THE END OF THE TRAIL
Following the back trail of Sam Spotted Raven's valiant band, Connie
and Ick Far came to the site of the deserted village. That the
departure of the Indians had been a hasty departure was evidenced by
the litter of abandoned goods and utensils with which the ground was
bestrewn. In the dusk of evening, the depressing atmosphere of
abandoned habitation enshrouded the deserted encampment.
Supper was eaten in silence. On the trail Connie had ridiculed the
old chief's story, and assured Ick Far they would unearth a perfectly
simple explanation of the events that had struck fear to the hearts
of the Indians. But the boy knew that Ick Far believed the story of
Sam Spotted Raven, and as he glanced at the old scout he noted that
his features were gloomy with forebodings of evil.
After carefully drawing a circle about his blankets with a forked
stick of peeled willow, the Indian turned in, leaving Connie beside
the dying fire to think over the chief's story. Charred ends of
brushwood fell into the red coals and flared into flame that caused
shifting shadows to dance among the litter of abandoned equipage, and
threw into uncanny relief the twisted trunks of scrub timber. Connie
caught himself darting swift, furtive glances toward the rim of the
circle of firelight, while little tickly chills chased up and down
his spine. The boy's fists clenched in a sudden flash of anger.
"You tin horn! You're scared!" he hissed through clenched teeth.
"You're a coward. You're worse than the Indians! About the only
detail you're fit for is to sweep out the barracks!" Suddenly he
stood erect. "Who says I'm afraid of ghosts?" he cried. "Or _kultus
tamahnawuses_, or whatever they call 'em!" And with outthrust jaw,
walked deliberately into the scrub and beyond the dancing shadows,
nor did he return to the fire until he had made a complete circuit of
the camp. A few moments later he crawled between his blankets and as
he drew them over his head an owl hooted in a near-by tree and upon a
far sand-hill a lone wolf howled dismally.
After an early breakfast Connie and Ick Far examined their
surroundings more closely. As the scout prowled about the litter,
his attention was suddenly attracted to some faint marks which to
Connie's eyes were scarcely discernible upon the hard surface of the
ground.
"Someone be'n here!" he exclaimed. Then, after a few moments of
silence during which he moved slowly from place to place, studying
the almost invisible marks, he turned sombre eyes upon the boy.
"It's de 'oman. She com,' from de riv', an' she tak' de grub, here,
an' here, an' here."
"Well let's not waste any time!" cried Connie. "We must follow that
trail."
For just an instant Ick Far hesitated, but after a glance into the
determined face of the boy, he shrugged and lead into the scrub in
the direction of Red Tail Lake. The old Indian followed almost
without hesitation the trail that was several days' old and so faint
that only at rare intervals, where it skirted marshes or followed the
banks of creeks, was it discernible at all to the eyes of the boy.
At noon they halted upon the top of a high ridge that overlooked the
bay upon which the Indian said the man had built his cabin. But
instead of leading to the bay the trail turned sharply to the left as
if to avoid the place. And abandoning it for the moment the two
scrambled down the steep descent to examine the cabin, which was
visible in a grove of spruce.
At the water's edge Ick Far came again to an abrupt halt and pointed
to marks on the bank. "Canoe, she lan' here," he said glancing
sharply about him. "Only two, t'ree days ago. A man com' een dat
canoe. Dat man he no lak' to stay bury. He com' back to hees cabin."
Connie pushed open the door and here, too, were evidences of hasty
departure. The blankets had been ripped from the spruce bows that
covered the bunk, and upon the table the dishes remained unwashed.
"De man com' back for hunt hees 'oman, but she ain't here. He gon'
'way ag'in," remarked the scout.
Once more they returned to the water's edge. And as Ick Far again
examined the signs on the bank, Connie noticed that he became
suddenly excited. He dropped to his hands and knees and studied
minutely the faint imprints. "Dees man, she ain't de man w'at liv'
here!" he exclaimed suddenly. "She de man w'at got cross de divide
wid de _kultus_ gol'."
"What!" cried Connie, stooping to examine the marks. "How do you
know?"
For answer Ick Far shrugged and pointed a lean finger at the almost
invisible marks, which for all Connie could tell might have been made
by a rolling stone or a hurrying wolf. "Me, I'm fol' dem track from
Dawson to de divide, an' she got los' een de rocks. I know dem
track. Wat I'm tell you we fin' dat _kultus_ gol' mak' de trouble on
Red Tail Lak'? De _tamahnawus_ she mad 'cause men fin' dat gol'.
She wan' dat back, an' mebbe-so dey bury you an' me, too."
"Not yet they won't!" grinned Connie. "We're a long ways from dead
ones yet. If the fellow that's got the nugget is on Red Tail Lake
we'll just stick around and get him after we clean up the job we're
detailed on. I sure would like to take that hombre back to Dawson!"
Finding nothing further of importance, they returned to the ridge and
took up the trail of the woman. After detouring the bay this trail
led to the western shore of the lake where the country became rapidly
more broken and rocky, so that the scout, trained tracker that he
was, was forced to exert his powers to the utmost. Towards evening,
among the rock-hills and ridges, the trail disappeared entirely, and
that night the two camped on the bank of a tiny creek. Morning found
them again at work seeking to pick up the lost trail. But their
efforts went for naught, and for several days the two searched
unceasingly among the ridges and rock-crags of the western shore.
Here and there, the scout was able to point out where the strange
woman had crossed a creek, or descended to the shore of the lake.
But always the trail would return to lose itself among the rocks.
Several times also he found evidence of the presence of the man who
had visited the cabin after its owner's hasty departure. But this
trail, too, was lost among the rocks.
Upon the evening of the fourth day as they were returning to their
camp beside the little creek, both halted abruptly and stared
wide-eyed toward the sky line of a naked ridge which terminated
abruptly in a sheer drop of a hundred feet to the cold black waters
of Red Tail Lake. For an instant there appeared, running swiftly
upon the very summit of the ridge, the figure of a woman. Clean-cut
and sharp, the figure was silhouetted against the afterglow of the
evening sky. Only for a moment did Connie pause to stare at the
flying figure, and calling to Ick Far to follow, rushed in headlong
pursuit. Across a narrow valley they dashed and, clawing,
scrambling, stumbling, succeeded at length in gaining the summit of
the ridge. As they paused to regain their breath the eyes of both
scrutinized their surroundings. A strip of naked rock interposed
between the scrub growth and the extreme end of the ridge upon which
a mass of huge rock fragments stood high above the lake. And it was
across this bare strip that the woman had run from the direction of
the scrub.
"We've got her, now!" exclaimed Connie excitedly. "It's too steep
for her to get down. She's hiding there in the rocks."
But Ick Far shook his head gloomily and pointed to the black waters
which lapped at the base of the rock-wall far below. "I'm t'ink we
no ketch," he said tersely. "She gon' to de _tamahnawus_--deep down
on de floor of de lak'."
Connie laughed nervously. "Come on!" he said shortly, "we'll see,"
and led the way toward the mass of rock fragments.
Hardly had they begun to explore the crevices and angles of the
rocks, before a cry from Connie brought the old scout to his side.
The boy was peering into a dark, triangular opening where a great
mass of rock, in some mighty convulsion of nature, had been toppled
against a shoulder of the ridge.
Seconds passed as the two stared into the black opening. Then, lying
flat, Ick Far placed his ear to the rock and Connie waited in
breathless suspense until the old scout scrambled to his knees.
"Som't'ing een dere," he said.
"What do you think it is?" asked Connie.
The man shrugged: "Mebbe-so, 'oman, mebbe bear, _loup cervier_, wolf,
man wid' de _kultus_ gol'--an' mebbe-so _tamahnawus_."
The inky cavern looked uninviting enough as the boy peered into its
depths, and for several moments he hesitated. Then, suddenly, with
the same outthrusting of the jaw with which he had ventured beyond
the firelight at the deserted camp of the Indians, he dropped to his
hands and knees. Feeling a tug at his sleeve, he turned to look into
the face of Ick Far.
"Better you don' go een dere. Mebbe-so, one day--two--t'ree, bye 'n'
bye eet git 'ongre an' com' out, den mebbe-so we ketch um.'
"But if it's a _tamahnawus_ it won't get hungry," grinned Connie,
"and it won't come out."
Ick Far shrugged: "Heap _skookum_, li'l p'lice. But eef eet's
_tamahnawus_ een dere, you no com' out neider."
Connie considered the man's words. To tell the truth, the boy had no
liking for the task, and the plan of Ick Far sounded reasonable. For
a moment he considered adopting it, then, turning once more to the
opening, shook his head. "If I don't go in," he muttered, "it's
because I'm a _coward_! Even if we did stick around until the thing
came out, I'd always know that I'd run up against something I was
afraid to do! And I'm more afraid of _that_, of the nights and the
days I'd spend thinking about it, than I am of anything that could
squeeze through that three-cornered hole. Besides, my dad never
tackled anything, he didn't see through, and I won't either. If a
fellow funks once it would always be easy to do it again, but if he
kind of--kind of cleans up as he goes, he can keep on believing in
himself. I'd rather go in and not come out than not go in at all!"
And Connie did go in, and a few minutes later he came out again, and
with him came a woman who laughed and sobbed hysterically as she
clutched tightly to her breast a packet wrapped in a piece of
smoke-tanned buckskin. The woman sank down upon the rock and it was
some moments before Connie's awkward efforts to quiet her met with
any response. Finally, however, she gained control of herself with
an effort:
"I thought you were--were that man. I saw his canoe down there and I
thought he had found my hiding place. For days I have been hiding
from him--" She paused and Connie cleared his throat.
"Yes'm--I mean no'm. We aren't him," he floundered; "I'm Connie
Morgan of the Mounted and this is Ick Far, and we're your friends.
But suppose you begin somewhere. Who is this man? And why are you
hiding from him? And who was the drowned man? And what made you
come up out of the water and scare the Indians?"
"It was this way," began the woman, speaking in nervous haste, so
that her words came in short, jerky sentences. "It all began with
_that_," she pointed to the packet that lay upon the rock between
them. "We lived over near the divide in the Bonnet Plume Pass
country. My husband was a prospector and trapper, and one day a man
met him near the cabin. He seemed very nervous and, thrusting the
packet into my husband's hand, asked him to keep it. And the next
moment he was gone.
"Several days passed and the man did not return. And then, one
night, my husband opened the packet. I did not know it, then, but
afterwards he told me. But he would not tell me what it contained.
After that he was never the same. We left the cabin and came to Red
Tail Lake, and built a new cabin. All during our journey we avoided
the trading posts, and we even avoided the Indians. Always my
husband seemed fearful of pursuit. I asked him what was in the
packet, but he never would tell me. One day he came tearing into the
cabin and seized the packet, tore the blankets from the bed, and
ordered me to throw some food into the canoe. And then we paddled as
fast as we could to the end of the lake and headed down the river.
But just as we got into the current the canoe struck a rock that
ripped her whole bottom out. I am a good swimmer, and easily reached
shore a short distance below. But my husband, who could not swim,
must have been drawn into the swifter current beyond the rock, for I
never saw him again. I made my way back to the cabin, but from a
near-by ridge I saw there was someone there. So I hid in the scrub
and the next morning made my way back to the scene of the accident.
I was hungry, and hoping that one of the packs of provisions might
have caught on the rock, that reaches almost to the surface of the
water, I swam to the rock, and while peering down in the clear water
I saw the strange packet that was the cause of all our trouble lying
upon the white gravel.
"First I thought I would let it lie there, then a strange curiosity
to see what the packet contained took possession of me and, balancing
upon the rock, I dived down and recovered it. Of all the contents of
the canoe this packet alone had not been carried down by the current.
Taking the packet with me I started in search of the Indian village
which I knew was somewhere in the vicinity. I thought they would
give me food and possibly take me to some trading post. I found the
village, but the Indians were gone. They had evidently fled in great
haste, for the ground was littered with things they had left behind.
I took a pair of blankets and all the food I could carry and made my
way again to the cabin, and once more I saw from the top of the ridge
that someone was there, and I dared not go down. So I came on to
this cave in which my husband and I had once found shelter from a
storm. I knew this lake was a favourite hunting-ground of the
Indians, and sooner or later I would be rescued. But no Indians have
appeared, and the man my husband feared is still searching.
"I often see his canoe upon the waters of the lake. And today, when
I was returning from a visit to some snares I had set, I found it
drawn up in a cove close by. I saw that his tracks headed into the
scrub, and I feared he had found my cave where the packet was hidden.
I ran with all my might, but the packet was safe. And then you came
and I thought it was he."
The woman paused and glanced about her fearfully: "But he must be
very near because his tracks lead to the ridge."
"But the packet!" cried Connie. "What is in the packet?"
For answer the woman reached swiftly and tore off the buckskin
covering, and once more Connie's eyes rested upon the misshapen
outlines of the "Demon's Heart" that showed dull yellow, with its
mysterious streaks of red just visible in the fast deepening twilight.
There was a swift movement, a sharp rattle of loose stones, and from
the angle of a huge rock fragment a man leaped straight toward them.
One hand held a tightly clutched carbine and, stooping swiftly, he
snatched the nugget from the ground.
So suddenly had the man appeared, and so swift were his movements
that the three stared speechless with amazement. But as his fingers
closed about the great nugget, Connie's voice cut sharp and clear on
the silence: "Drop that!" The command rang like a pistol shot and,
even as he spoke, the boy jerked the service revolver from its
holster. With a snarl the man sprang erect and leaped backward to
swing his carbine into line. As he did so his heel caught a
projecting sliver of rock and with a shrill scream he toppled
backward, his body shot out from the edge of the cliff, and went
hurtling downward into the darkness.
A moment later a loud splash sounded from far below. And upon the
ridge the three gazed in silence into each other's faces.
When the Indians at Tilton Lake Post heard the story of the accident
and saw that the woman who returned with Connie Morgan and Ick Far
was a real woman of flesh and blood, they returned once more to their
hunting-ground on Red Tail Lake.
And while the men of the Yukon wonder, Connie Morgan and Ick Far
know, that the trail of the "Demon's Heart" is ended. For the great
nugget lies to this day griplocked in the hand of a dead man on the
floor of a black water lake in the heart of the land of gold.
CHAPTER XV
THE HART RIVER _CACHE_
The iron-clawed winter had come roaring out of the North and
descended upon the hill country in a series of furious blizzards that
enveloped the rock-ribbed land and the frozen surface of lakes and
rivers in a man-deep thickness of snow. B Division slept in its
_mukluks_, and generally speaking, its _mukluks_ were far from
headquarters. For the malevolent ferocity of the storms had caught
many of the dwellers of the hills and the barrens unprepared, and
tons of relief grub went out with the dog trains of the Mounted.
Corporal Rickey and Special Constable Connie Morgan were crowding
Connie's team of ten big _malamutes_ to reach Hart River cabin where
the police _cache_ would supply the grub for the one hundred and
twenty mile return trip to Dawson.
"The MacPherson patrol ort to be along any day now," said Rickey, as
the two camped for lunch in the shelter of a thicket of scrub. "But
they'll be enough grub fer them an' us, too. They's fifty pound of
flour, an' seventy-five pound of bacon, and forty or fifty pound of
beans, besides five hundred-odd pound of fish fer the dogs."
"We'll pull in there this afternoon," opined Connie as he split off
some shavings, while Rickey attacked a near-by spruce with his axe.
Dropping to his knees the boy thrust a match into his pile of
shavings, but even as the tiny flame began to lick at the light, dry
wood, he straightened swiftly and glanced toward the spot where a
moment before the sound of Rickey's axe had rung upon the slender
trunk of a dead spruce a dozen yards away.
The sound of the axe strokes had suddenly ceased and in his ears
sounded a half-stifled grunt of surprise and pain. With his back
toward the boy, Rickey leaned heavily upon the fallen tree-trunk,
while his right hand wrenched to loosen something from the snow at
his feet. With a jerk the man straightened, and Connie saw that his
face showed yellowish white against the glistening background of
snow. With a cry the boy leaped to his feet, as his eyes encountered
the object Rickey held in his hand. It was the light camp axe, red
to half the depth of its blade with a filming of blood, that had
already frozen upon its polished surface. Rickey took one step
forward, and the boy was at his side.
"Struck a knot," explained the Corporal between clenched teeth, "an'
glanced. Serves me right, I guess. I hadn't ort to had my foot
there. I know'd better but--Jimminy--she hurts! Le's get over to
the fire an' have a look at her."
Connie helped Corporal Rickey to a blanket spread beside the tiny
blaze and hurriedly collected dead branches, while the injured man
removed his _mukluk_ and legging and a double thickness of
blood-soaked woollen socks. As the flames bit into the dry wood, the
boy made a dive for the First-Aid kit. The gash was a nasty one,
bone-deep just below the ankle joint; and though they twisted a
tourniquet until Rickey growled with pain, it was an hour before the
flow of blood was staunched and the wound properly bandaged.
"This is a fine layout," grumbled the officer. "Ten years in the
service lackin' two months, an' here I up an' sink an axe in my hoof
like the rawest _chechako_ that ever mushed over the Chilkoot."
"Any one would think you did it on purpose," laughed Connie.
"Couldn't of done no better job if I had," grumbled Rickey, and
trailed off into a long tirade of self-accusation.
"Get it out of your system," urged the boy, "and then get some of
this grub into it, and we'll hit the trail. We might be a lot worse
off. We'll make the cabin tonight and you can rest up for a couple
of days. The MacPherson patrol may be along before that, but even if
it don't come, the old ten-team will jerk us back to Dawson, without
your setting a foot on snow."
"Oh, 'tain't that," groaned Rickey, "an' 'tain't the hurtin', though
that's bad enough--it bites clean up to the hip. But it's pullin'
the fool stunt, an' what the boys'll say when we git back."
"That's all right," soothed Connie. "Most of 'em have pulled stunts
like that themselves. Didn't McKeever shoot himself through the arm
with his own gun? And didn't Peters let his canoe get away and have
to walk thirty miles through swamps and over rock ridges in fly time?
And didn't----"
"Yeh, that's the trouble. An' what did I say to 'em when they done
it? I've kidded 'em an' ragged 'em an' made 'em so sore that take it
first an' last, I've like to had to fight the whole kit and caboodle
of 'em. An' now--" he grunted dismally. "My time's up, come
Febrooary, an' I've almost got a notion to lay up here on Hart River
'til then an' not 'list no more."
Connie laughed. "You ain't got nerve enough to do that, Rickey.
You've got nerve enough to go back and face 'em, but you ain't got
nerve enough to quit!" Whereat Rickey grinned and with his foot
wrapped in an enormous thickness of blankets he allowed Connie to
ease him onto the sled, where he suffered in grim silence with his
back against the bed-rolls, until the outfit drew up before the door
of Hart River cabin.
Although it was Connie's first visit to the place, he sensed from the
moment he halted the dogs that something was wrong. For the snow was
well trampled about the cabin and its door stood slightly ajar.
Hastily removing his rackets, he pushed inside, where one swift
glance assured him that his worst fears were realized. The Hart
River _cache_ had been robbed!
Within the four walls of the cabin there remained not a single ounce
of flour, or beans, or tea, or bacon. But not alone because the
_cache_ had been rifled was Connie seized with the blind fury that
left him white and shaking, nor was it because the five hundred-odd
pounds of dry fish, which had been laid by for dog feed, was
scattered promiscuously about the floor and bunk, but because of the
abject wantonness, the abysmal meanness of soul that had caused the
marauders to smash the little sheet-iron stove into a useless pile of
junk. The voice of Rickey calling from the sled aroused the boy from
his transport of rage. With a bound he reached the door.
"Someone has busted the _cache_!" he cried hoarsely, "and scattered
the fish, and smashed the stove!" Suddenly he leaped for the sled.
"Get off there and give me that carbine! They didn't have any dogs
or sled. They're packing the stuff afoot. I'll put this old
ten-team on their trail and I'll-- You bet they'll wish they never
saw Hart River cabin!"
"Hold on there, kid," soothed Rickey, as he stared up into the face
of the youngest recruit in the Yukon. "Le's don't go off
half-cocked. Jest help me inside now an' we'll size up the layout.
Mebbe things ain't as bad as they look."
"Not as bad as they look!" cried Connie, his eyes blazing. "With the
grub all gone, and the stove smashed, and us with only grub enough
for a day or two, and the MacPherson patrol due any time and
depending on this _cache_ to take 'em on to Dawson, and you with your
foot half cut off!"
Rickey grinned: "Well, that's the first time I ever heard you growl,
an' believe me, when you growl you roar, don't you, kid? Come here
now an' git in under my arm and h'ist me up offen this sled. You say
they didn't take the fish. Well, there's grub, ain't it? They ain't
no law ag'in a man eatin' fish jest because it's billed fer the dogs,
is they?"
Connie helped Rickey into the cabin and piloted him through the
litter of dry fish that covered the floor to a seat on the edge of
the bunk. "That stove is sure bunged up consid'able," admitted the
Corporal, "but it can be straightened out to hold a fire. It may
smoke some, but that ain't going to hurt us none. 'Tain't no fancy
cookin' utensil no more, but it'll boil water. And them dried fish
ain't so bad. Jest dig in now and red up the place a bit, an' then
we'll make medicine."
While Connie collected the fish from the floor, unharnessed and fed
his dogs, and carried firewood from the pile from behind the cabin,
Rickey with the aid of his axe, succeeded in restoring the stove to
some semblance of its original appearance. Luckily the pipe had
escaped notice of the marauders, and the boy soon had a fire going
and a kettle of fish boiling. As he busied himself about the camp,
his brain worked rapidly, and later, while the two devoured their
boiled fish, he broached his plan.
"We'll stay here in the cabin tonight," he began "and I'll get a good
rest and rest up the dogs, and in the morning I'll hit out after
those fellows. They haven't got more than two or three days' start.
And when once that old leader of mine ties onto a trail, he never
quits. You'll have to stay here 'til I get back with the grub and
the outfit that's got it. Then we'll leave enough in the _cache_ for
the MacPherson patrol and hike on into Dawson with our prisoners."
"How many of 'em is they?" asked Rickey dubiously.
"Four," answered the boy promptly. "They came in from the north-west
and hit straight east toward the Mackenzie. They can't travel fast
with the packs they've got."
"Hit east, did they?" mused Rickey, "an' come from the north-west?
Must be part of a whalin' outfit that's got wrecked somewhere. An'
believe me, they're headin' into a bleak country when they hit east
from Hart River. Why, they ain't nothin' over there! Not a blame
thing between here an' the Mackenzie except old man Wurtz's cabin,
about fifty miles east of here. Wurtz, he was a kind of a prospector
an' trapper. Died a couple of years back. But he sure did build
some cabin. It's little, but it's a reg'lar fort--loopholes an' all.
He didn't trust the Injuns none. Like as not that's where them
fellows is right now. An' if they be, how in thunder do you expect
to git 'em out of there? The cabin's in a kind of a bowl or basin at
the head of a red rock draw, an' they can see you comin' half a mile."
Rickey shook his head. "You couldn't do it, kid. The odds ain't
right. The only way to git 'em out of there would be to surround 'em
an' starve 'em out. An' we ain't in no shape to do that. Them
fellows ain't goin' to be no easy job to handle. Any one that'd bust
a _cache_, 'specially a police _cache_, ain't goin' to stop at
nothin'. If my foot was so's I could go with you, we'd tackle it in
a minute."
"Look here, Rickey," interrupted Connie, "you've got to let me try
anyway. Who got you out of that pickle with the Yellow Knives? And
who brought in Notorious Bishop? And who did a lot of things I could
mention, if I wanted to brag? I'm no _chechako_! You needn't think
I'm going to run out there and make any fool play with odds of four
to one against me. But it won't hurt to have a look, anyway. And
besides, if they haven't got any more sense than to bust a police
_cache_, it ain't going to be hard to outguess 'em."
Rickey grinned. "If it comes down to a guessin' match you can
outguess 'em, son," he admitted, eying the boy proudly. "But after
you git 'em outguessed--what you going to do then? Outguessin' 'em's
one thing, an' bringin' 'em in is another."
Connie was quick to see that his superior's decision was wavering.
"That'll be my job," he answered. "I brought in Notorious Bishop,
didn't I?"
"Yeh," admitted Rickey. "But they was only one of him, an' anyway he
just _come_ along."
Connie laughed. "Maybe these fellows will _come_ along, too. Anyway
Notorious was smart, and these fellows are fools or they wouldn't
have busted the _cache_."
"Looks like a fool trick fer one kid to go after a hull gang."
"Four fools are four times as foolish as one fool," retorted the boy.
"Anyway, you've got to let me try!"
Rickey's further objections were promptly met, and the boy obtained
reluctant consent to be allowed to slip over and "have a look at
'em." After that the two redressed Rickey's wound and rolled into
their blankets.
The stars were beginning to pale in the night sky when Connie's ten
great _malamutes_ shot out upon the trail of the four marauders. The
boy was travelling light. A half-pound of tea, five pounds of
pemmican, and a hundred pounds of dry fish, together with his
bed-roll and carbine, made up his entire load. And on the tail of
the sled the boy bent low to the sweep of the wind as the runner
slipped smoothly over the wind-packed, cold-hardened snow. On and on
he flew, dipping now into a deep ravine and again topping a ridge or
circling a low snow mountain. At noon he boiled a pot of tea at the
place where the fugitives had evidently spent their first night in
camp. "A good twenty miles," muttered the boy. "To-night ought to
put me within ten miles of Wurtz's cabin."
That night he camped in a patch of scrawny scrub, where the four had
made their second night's encampment. And after feeding his dogs, he
ate sparingly of the pemmican, drank a little tea, and boiled half of
a fish. After supper he removed his carbine from its case, assured
himself that it was in proper working order, and carefully went over
his service revolver. Then, spreading his bed close beside the fire
he rolled in.
He breakfasted before dawn and was surprised to see that only six
dogs crowded to the fire in eagerness for their morning fish. In
vain the boy called and whistled, and with a sudden fear in his
heart, hurried to the edge of the scrub. A slight movement attracted
his attention, and, peering through the bushes, Connie saw one of the
missing_ malamutes_ rise slowly, stagger stiffly for a step or two,
and then fall in the snow. White froth foamed from its lips, and
even as the boy looked the dog writhed in a sudden convulsion. Then
with stiffened limbs, it shuddered, and lay dead in the snow at his
feet. In the open another tawny shape lay rigid and frozen, and
beyond a little hummock the other two huddled together--dead, their
back-curled lips sealed with frozen foam.
"Poisoned!"
The single word fairly hissed from the boy's lips, and turning, he
dashed toward camp where, after satisfying himself that the remaining
six dogs showed no traces of illness, he began feverishly to pack the
sled.
"They're the best dogs in the Yukon," he choked, striving vainly to
swallow the great lump that rose in his throat. "You just wait! You
just wait!" he sobbed, shaking his fist toward the east, where the
grey dawn was beginning to lighten the far horizon. He did not
return the carbine case to its straps, but harnessing his dogs, threw
himself upon his sled with the carbine lying conveniently beneath his
legs.
For two hours the tireless leader held to the trail that bore to the
eastward, while Connie with set jaw and narrowed eyes scanned the
bleak barrens for sight of the patch of scrub timber that Rickey had
told him fringed the broad depression, in the centre of which old man
Wurtz had built his cabin. The dogs topped a long, low ridge, and
before him, a half-mile away, the boy saw the timber--a scraggling
patch of scrub, the first he had encountered since his camp of the
night before. With a tightening of the lips, he urged the dogs
forward and a few minutes later came to a halt in the shelter of the
stunted growth.
The trail of the four continued on through, and, carbine in hand,
Connie crept forward to the opposite edge. Throwing himself flat, he
scanned the bowl-like depression before him. Almost in the exact
centre of the mile-wide sweep of snow stood the cabin. And the boy's
heart gave a bound as he noted that smoke curled from its chimney.
Old man Wurtz had planned well against surprise, for, as he studied
the lay of the land, Connie saw that by no possible chance could any
one approach the cabin by daylight unknown to its occupants. A long
time he lay turning over in his mind scheme after scheme. The
poisoning of his dogs had moved the boy as nothing had ever moved
him, and he determined that he would never return to Hart River with
his friends' deaths unavenged.
His attention suddenly became riveted upon the cabin. The door
opened and a man, closely followed by three others, stepped out upon
the snow. Connie saw that they all carried rifles and his mittened
hands tightened unconsciously upon his carbine. For what seemed an
interminable period the four talked, gesticulated, and pointed, and
then having apparently reached an agreement, each started in a
different direction. The boy noted with a sudden thrill that they
carried no packs. They had left the supplies in the cabin!
Evidently then, this was a hunting expedition, or possibly they meant
to lay out a trap line. The boy's brain worked rapidly as the
distance widened between the four men. One was approaching directly
toward him, and, wriggling back from the edge of the timber, but
still keeping the man in sight, he took his position close beside the
trail, screened from it by a thick growth of scrub. The dogs were
upon the outer edge of the patch some two hundred yards in the rear
and the boy hoped fervently that they would not get wind of the
stranger until he entered the thicket. Every little way the man
paused to toss something into the snow.
"Fur poisoner!" muttered Connie between clenched teeth. "Gee whiz!
You fellows'll have a lot to answer for! Guess they're whalers, all
right," he added as he studied the man who was garbed from head to
foot in sealskin. "Anyway, they've come down from the Eskimo
country. And before I get through with 'em I'll bet they'll wish
they'd stayed there!"
The man was nearing the scrub. Drawing back the hammer of his
carbine, Connie levelled it between the branches of his bush. Not
ten yards away at the edge of the scrub the man paused and the boy
followed his glance as it swept the wide basin. The other three
figures showed like little black bugs at widely separated points
almost upon the rim of the basin. Dropping the butt of his rifle
into the snow, the man reached into a pouch, produced a small ball of
suet which he rolled for a moment between his mittens, and tossed
onto the crust. Then gripping his rifle by the barrel, he turned and
abruptly entered the scrub. Connie crouched until the man was within
six feet of him:
"Hands up!" The words snapped short, and half-turning the man stared
in round-eyed surprise at the figure, which appeared suddenly above
the top of a bush almost at his side. "Drop that gun! Quick!"
The man's gaze focused upon the muzzle of Connie's carbine and his
rifle dropped into the snow. "Now reach!" Up went the man's hands.
"Walk straight ahead!" The man obeyed and came a few yards farther
on to a small open space. "Lie down!" commanded the boy shortly.
The man dropped to his hands and knees. "Flat! Flat on your belly!
And keep on reaching!"
When the man was stretched helplessly before him, Connie approached
and slipping his hand beneath the sealskin parka, withdrew a heavy
cutlass, which he transferred to his own belt. After making sure
that he carried no other weapon the boy backed off a few steps. "You
can sit up now," he said. The man obeyed clumsily, like a trained
bear. He was a low-browed, repulsive creature, his face covered by
an unkempt growth of hair, above which two eyes gleamed hatefully.
"Who be ye?" he growled. "An' w'at d'ye mean orderin' a cove around
that way? It'd pay ye to be more civil-like meetin' up with me. I'm
hard! An' the three that's with me's hard. We're hard men, I tell
ye, an' it don't go good with them that riles us. Who be ye, I says?"
"Who? Me?" answered the boy. "I'm Special Constable Morgan of the
Mounted." At the name the man started and eyed Connie searchingly.
Opening his mouth he emitted a loud guffaw.
"The Mounted!" he scoffed. "Him 'thout no ha'r on 'is chin in the
Mounted! Come on now, a joke's a joke, an' I will say ye got me
foul. But 'nough's 'nough. I tell ye we're hard men--me an' my
mates." As the man talked Connie backed, always keeping him covered,
to the point where he had dropped his rifle in the snow. It was of
modern bolt construction and in a jiffy the boy had unshipped the
bolt and hurled it far into the scrub.
"Hey, quit that!" yelled the man starting to scramble to his feet.
"Sit down!"
Once more the man's eyes sought the muzzle of the carbine and he sat
down. "Toss me that pack of poison balls!" commanded Connie. The
man did not move. The next instant there was a loud report, and with
a frightened cry he keeled backward into the snow. Hastily he shook
off a mitten and his fingers explored the ragged gash that Connie's
bullet had ripped in the side of his parka-hood. Then, without a
word, he unslung the bag and tossed it to the feet of the boy.
"Get up!" commanded Connie shortly.
The man scrambled hastily to his feet. A look of fear had replaced
the hateful gleam in his eyes, and Connie pointed to the rifle.
"Pick that up an' smash it against a tree." The man reached for the
harmless gun and banged it against the trunk of a near-by sapling.
"Smash it, I said!" And with one terrified glance at the muzzle of
the carbine the man sent it crashing against the tree-trunk with a
force that sent the walnut stock spinning into the brush. Whereupon
Connie turned upon his heel and walked towards his waiting dogs. The
man followed him to the edge of the scrub.
"Hey," he called, "w'at you goin' to do?"
Connie ignored him and swung the leader into the trail.
"Hey," he persisted, "mebbe ye be the Mounted after all. Le's git
together. Ye can't handle us all. They's four of us an' I'm tellin'
ye we're hard! W'at you goin' to do w'en ye git us 'rested."
Connie grinned into his face. "You ain't arrested," he answered.
"You can go wherever you please. I'm going down to the cabin." The
boy worked his dogs through the scrub and heading them for the open,
threw himself on the sled.
"But, hey!" called the man. "How ye goin' to--" Without so much as
turning his head, Connie cracked the whip above the ears of his dogs,
and the six great _malamutes_ tore over the surface of the snow that
sloped gently away from the rim of the huge bowl.
CHAPTER XVI
THE "HARD GUYS"
At the door of the cabin he leaped from the sled, unharnessed the
dogs, and drove them inside. As he returned for the sled and the
harness he laughed at the sight of his late captive who at top speed
was cutting across the snow-level in the direction taken by the
others.
"He'll round 'em up," grinned the boy as he worked the sled over the
sill and into the cabin. "I'll just make snug here and get ready for
callers."
As Connie closed the door he noticed with satisfaction that it was
fully four inches thick and fastened on the inside by means of two
ponderous bars. As Rickey had said, the cabin was built like a fort.
Dragging a heavy bench into place Connie mounted it and peered
through the loopholes, which were placed high in the walls in such a
position that they commanded every approach to the cabin. Making
sure that the bars would slide securely into place the boy once more
threw open the door, and with an old shovel, which he took from the
corner, set about filling one side of the interior with snow.
At the end of a half-hour he surveyed with satisfaction the pile that
slanted four feet high against the wall.
"That will give me all the water I need," he muttered, and surveyed
the wide snow sweep, where three figures were hurrying toward him
from the rim of the bowl while a fourth figure slanted to intersect
their trail at a point not far distant from the cabin.
As Connie watched them his jaw set tight and his eyes narrowed.
"Come on, you hard guys! But before I get you down to Dawson you'll
know who's _hard_! I'll bet when I get through with you the next
time you see a _cache_ or a poison ball you never _will_ quit
running!"
He fastened the bars, and, drawing the bench to the loophole, watched
the approaching four. A hundred yards from the door they paused
while one of their number, advancing a few steps, called loudly:
"Ahoy, in there, git out o' that cabin! That's our'n."
Connie laughed. "Come and get it then!" he invited. "Just help
yourselves to anything around the place. Don't mind me."
"Who be ye?" roared the man.
"Special Constable Morgan of the Royal North-west Mounted Police,"
answered Connie, cheerfully.
"You got our grub in there!"
"Oh, is this yours?" asked the boy. "Where did you get it?"
The man turned to his companions and a long argument ensued. Once
more he advanced and stopped.
"Say, w'at ye goin' to do 'bout it?"
"Do about what?" tantalized Connie.
"'Bout our grub!" roared the man. "Ye can't take folks' grub 'way
from 'em no matter who ye be."
"Can't I?"
"Say, look-a here," continued the man, "ef ye ain't got grub 'nough
we'll let ye ship 'nough to take ye w'ere ye're goin' to, an' that's
fair."
"Oh, I've got grub enough. I've got enough to last me all winter.
And besides, I'm not going anywhere."
Once more the man turned to his companions, and after some moments of
excited conversation, another stepped forward.
"Hey, look-a here," he bellowed, fiercely, "we don't b'lieve ye're no
p'lice!" Connie's only answer was a taunting laugh. "We don't know
who ye be or w'ere ye come from, but ye hain't nothin' but a kid, an'
I'm a-tellin' ye w'en ye cross us ye're tampering with death. We're
men o' short temper, we are! We're hard!"
Again Connie laughed. "So your partner told me this morning," he
drawled, "when I walked up and took his gun away from him and made
him roll around in the snow like a trick bear. Who's been kidding
you? Trot along now and don't bother me. I'm hungry. I'm going to
fry some nice sizzly bacon and cook up a pot of beans." Suddenly,
one of the men raised his rifle and fired and the bullet sputtered
dully against the thick logs. "Have all the fun you want," called
Connie, "only don't break any windows, or I'll have to take your guns
away."
A few more scattering shots were fired, and, as Connie prepared his
meal, he hopped up every few minutes to peek through the loophole at
the four sealskin-clad figures, who, after circling the cabin a few
times, settled themselves upon the snow. Standing upon his bench,
the boy ate his bacon and beans as he watched the men jump up at
intervals to slap their arms across their chests and stamp about in
the snow to keep warm. A stiff wind had arisen and it was growing
colder. With his axe Connie drove the plugs into the loopholes on
the windy side of the cabin.
"Ahoy!" called a voice from the outside. "We're froze!"
"Why, hard men like you oughtn't to freeze," taunted the boy. "If
you're cold why don't you build a fire?"
"They hain't no wood."
"Plenty back in the scrub."
"But we hain't got no grub, an' we're hungry."
"Hard men oughtn't to get hungry. Eat a few of those suet balls."
"They're pizen!" cried the man.
"Eat 'em anyway. You're hard."
"Hey, ye can't starve us!" broke in another.
"If I can't you must have grub."
"I mean, it's murder!" yelled the man.
"Oh, don't let a little thing like that worry you," mocked Connie.
"You're hard!"
"We'll burn ye out!" threatened another.
Connie laughed. "How you going to do it?" he asked. "Hold a match
against the logs 'til they catch?'
"Hey, w'at be ye goin' to do?" roared the first speaker.
"Who? Me?" asked Connie. "Well, after a while I'm going to have
some more nice bacon, and some nice hot bean soup, and some tea, and
make me up a batch of biscuits. What you going to do?"
"Come out here an' we'll show ye."
"Hey!" called the man whose gun Connie had taken away in the morning.
"It'll go sixty below tonight an' we'll freeze. An' we hain't got no
grub. Hain't ye goin' to give us no grub?"
"Sure," answered the boy.
"Well, give it here, then. We're hungry."
"All right, come and get it."
The man turned to his companions and there followed a short colloquy.
"W'at d'ye mean, come an' git it?" he asked.
"I mean just what I say! Do what I tell you to and I'll give you the
grub. And you'd better do it quick because I'm tired fooling with
you. Stand in a row, the four of you."
The men looked at each other and slowly formed themselves into a row.
"Now, forward march!" cried the boy. "Toward the door."
The men advanced uncertainly.
"Go back and get your guns!" commanded Connie and the men obeyed.
"Now march!"
When they were fifty yards from the cabin, he called halt. The men
stopped.
"Stick your guns, muzzle down in the snow. All three of 'em. Now
hang your cutlasses on 'em."
Two of the men obeyed, jamming the rifles into the snow with the
stocks in the air. The third was slower, evidently trying to
dissuade the others. But presently he, too, stuck his rifle in the
snow and took his place beside it.
"Hang your cutlasses on the butts!" called Connie. "Quick!" The men
obeyed. "Now, turn around and walk the other way."
Three of them turned, but the man who had been reluctant to comply
with the order leaped to recover his rifle, and as he did so Connie's
carbine cracked loud and sharp and the rifle with its stock shattered
went spinning into the snow. The man started backward with a cry and
after one frightened look towards the cabin hastily joined his
companions. Thirty yards away they paused.
"Keep going!" yelled the boy. "Keep going 'til you hear a shot."
And the four turned dejectedly.
"Were's the grub?" one of them called.
"You can come back for that after I've got your rifles in the cabin."
On and on the men tramped pausing every now and then to listen. But
not until they were half-way to the edge of the bowl did Connie fire.
Jumping down from his bench he threw open the door and carried the
weapons to the cabin. He presently emerged with a light kettle and
some dried fish which he carried to the spot where the men had left
the rifles. Motioning them in, he once more barred the door and ten
minutes later was greeted by an angry howl.
"Hey, this here's dog feed!"
"I know," answered Connie from his loophole. "And it's a shame to
waste it. It looks better than it tastes, too. But you won't mind
that, you're hard.'
"We hain't got no fire to cook it with, an' we hain't got but three
or four matches," complained one man.
"Better not waste 'em, then," called Connie cheerfully. "But if you
do, they say you can make a fire by rubbing two sticks together. You
might try anyhow. Skip along over the timber, now, and show up in
the morning in time for breakfast."
"Our blankets is in there," whined another.
"So they are," answered Connie. "I'll let my dogs use 'em tonight.
Build a big fire and if you're too cold to sleep, jump around."
"We hain't got no axe, nor nothin'," called another.
"Use dead limbs. If you haven't got an axe bite 'em off, you're
hard. And I'll bet you're mad enough to. I'd be." And the boy
chuckled as he watched the men pick up the kettle of fish and start
laboriously for the fringe of timber.
Hardly had he finished his breakfast next morning, when a call from
without brought Connie to the loophole for a peep at the four
dejected-looking figures that stood in a row before the cabin.
"Ahoy!" called one of the men. "We want somethin' to eat. An' we
don't want no fish neither! We hain't no dogs!"
"It ain't what a man wants, it's what he gets that makes him fat,"
grinned the boy. "You'll eat snow, or fish. And you won't get fish
unless you work for it. There's the nose of an old sled sticking out
of the snow at the corner of the cabin. Dig it out and drag it up in
front of the door. And while you're doing it, I'll boil your fish."
"Look-a here!" roared one of the men. "We knows our rights. Ef
ye're a Mounted ye hain't got no right to starve prisoners nor make
'em work neither."
"Prisoners!" exclaimed Connie in feigned astonishment. "I haven't
got any prisoners. You fellows are free to come and go as you like.
I'm not holding you."
"But we hain't got no grub, nor blankets."
"Well, I'm giving you a chance to earn some grub. If you want to eat
you can dig that sled out. And if you don't you can go swimming, or
do whatever you want to do."
"We hain't got nothin' to dig with," whined a man, "an' the snow's
hard."
"You're hard, too," reminded Connie. "Use your hands."
"We'll give ourself in charge," broke in another. "Now, ye've got to
feed us an' ye dasen't freeze us or make us work neither! Come out
here an' put us in irons like a man!"
Connie laughed. "I don't want you. I haven't got any orders to
arrest anybody. But if I was four hard guys, and hungry as you
fellows look, I'd dig that sled out. 'Cause you don't eat till it's
in front of the door. And that goes!"
After some wrangling among themselves the men advanced to the corner
of the cabin and as Connie put the kettle of fish to boil he heard
the low growl of their voices as they worked. Fifteen minutes later
the sled, a heavy, roughly constructed affair, was before the door
and once more the men were clamouring for food. Connie inspected the
job through the loophole.
"All right!" he approved. "Now hike and I'll bring your grub out.'
"We want to come in where it's warm!" whimpered one.
"You'll be warm enough directly," answered the boy. "'Cause when you
get through eating you're going to tackle a job that just to think
about will keep you warm all the rest of your lives. You're so hard
maybe you won't mind it. But believe me, by the time you get back to
Hart River cabin you'll know you've been somewhere."
"Look-a here," began one of the men, "if we hain't prisoners ye can't
take us now'eres, an' if we be ye got to feed us an' ye can't make us
work. Wat yer going to do 'bout _that_?"
"You must be a lawyer," grinned Connie. "I don't like lawyers. I've
only known one. His name was Mr. Squigg, and when we got through
with him, he started out and I guess he's going yet. I'm going to
hit for Hart River in about an hour. You don't have to come. You
can stick around here if you want to. But somehow I've got a hunch
you're coming along. Hike out there, now, your fish is ready."
The men hiked. When they were a quarter of a mile away Connie opened
the door and, jerking the cumbersome sled to one side, tossed the
blankets of the four upon it. Then removing the kettle of boiling
fish from the stove he walked a hundred yards or so from the door and
deposited it on the snow. Returning to the cabin he proceeded to
pack his own sled. Every ounce of grub about the place was neatly
packed, then his own bed-roll, into which was bound the axes, and
cutlasses of the men, and the bolts from their rifles, was bound to
the top of the load and the six big _malamutes_ harnessed. Once more
Connie mounted his bench. The men had finished their fish and stood
eying the cabin sullenly.
"How did you like your breakfast?" asked the boy and laughed. "I'm
feeding you dog's feed, and I'll make you do dog's work. It's an
insult to dogs, and I ought to get bit for doing it. But I'm going
to poke a _babiche_ line out through this hole. Your beds are on
that sled. Make the line fast and hike out on the back-trail."
"W'ere's our grub?" asked one of the men in sudden alarm.
"Oh, I'll take care of the grub end of it," answered Connie. "All
you've got to do is to tie onto that sled and beat it. And the
quicker you get at it the quicker you'll eat again because we're
going to be ten miles from here by dinner time." He poked the rope
through the hole and with much muttering and grumbling the men made
it fast to the sled, and pulled it out onto the trail.
"Her bottom needs scrapin'," complained one, "she's listed to port,
an' she don't tow true."
"You can't worry and keep your health," grinned Connie.
"We can pack them blankets handier," said one of the men. "We hain't
used to no sled."
"You will be before you get through with it," encouraged the boy.
"'Cause that sled is your meal-ticket, and if you don't show up at
feeding time with it there ain't going to be any feeding time, see?
Now get!"
When the cumbersome outfit was well on its way Connie left the cabin
and, circling widely around the four toiling men, came into the trail
ahead of them.
"Your dinner will be waiting for you where you camped in the scrub
the second night out from Hart River cabin!" he called and, cracking
his whip loudly, headed his dogs over the back-trail.
Connie arrived at the appointed place hours ahead of the four
marauders. Toggling his dogs to prevent them picking up stray poison
balls he ate his dinner and then, one by one, carried the four dead
dogs and laid them in a row beside the trail. When he had finished
he boiled a kettle of fish and sat down upon his pack to wait.
It was nearly three o'clock before he caught sight of the men toiling
around the foot of a near-by hillock. The boy raised his hand and
the men halted, and sank wearily onto the sled. "Dinner's ready!" he
called, "and after dinner you can load on those four dead dogs. It's
forty miles from here to Hart River cabin and I'm in a hurry. You
fellows ought to make fifteen miles a day. Every fifteen miles I'll
_cache_ enough grub to take you to the next _cache_--and matches,
too. I'll stick 'em on a pole in the trail so you can't miss 'em.
You know by this time that I mean what I say, and if you don't bring
in those four dogs you don't eat when you get to Hart River!"
"Wat ef a storm blows up an' we loose our course?" whined one of the
men.
Connie glanced at the sky. "There won't be any storm for the next
couple days," he answered. "But if I were you fellows, I'd make good
time."
"Our feet's sore," whined another.
"Were you takin' us?" cried a third.
"I ain't taking you anywhere. I'm just telling you where you'll find
some grub _caches_ if you happen to be going that way.'
"We can't make no fifteen mile a day. Not with no deck cargo o' dead
dogs."
"Then you won't eat so often," answered Connie. "So long! I must be
going."
It was long after dark the next night when Connie pushed open the
door of the Hart River cabin. Rickey lay on the bunk and stared in
surprise as the boy unloaded the missing supplies.
"Where's the rest of your dogs?" he asked.
"Poisoned!" answered the boy laconically.
"But how did you git the grub?"
"Outguessed 'em.'
"But didn't they have no guns? An' where are they at?"
"Yeh, they had guns," answered Connie, "but I took 'em away from 'em.
They'll be along day after tomorrow. They're travelling kind of
slow, 'cause they got a big load and a bad sled. But they'll get
here."
"But who's with 'em? Who's bringin' 'em in?" persisted Rickey.
"Oh, they're just coming of their own accord. You see there's no
place else for 'em to go. I _cached_ some grub in fifteen-mile
spaces and they've got to keep humping or they'll get hungry."
Rickey regarded the serious-faced boy for a full minute. "Well I'll
be doggoned!" he howled, bursting into a roar of laughter. "Lettin'
prisoners bring in theirselves! Ow! My gran'mother! But how did
you----"
"They ain't prisoners!" Connie hastened to explain. "You see, I
didn't arrest 'em."
"But what's the idee of makin' 'em bring in the dogs?"
"Those were good dogs," answered the boy, gravely. "They never knew
what it was to quit. They died in the service. They're going to be
buried right here in decent graves. And the men that killed 'em are
going to bury 'em. You see, if I had arrested those men I couldn't
make 'em work."
The next morning the MacPherson patrol came in, and three days later,
when the whole outfit pulled out for Dawson, they had in charge four
very sore and dejected prisoners. As they strung out onto the trail,
Special Constable Connie Morgan dropped back, removed his cap, and
turned for one last look at the cabin beside which four little wooden
crosses rose from mounds of snow.
Into each cross was burned deeply the name of a dog, and following
the name were the letters, O.H.M.S., which in the far Northland is a
mark of honour upon any grave. For it means that the cross was
erected to the memory of one who died On His Majesty's Service.
And then Connie caught up with the patrol, but, although his brother
officers questioned him unceasingly, the boy kept his own council,
and it was only by patching together the whimpered complaints of the
prisoners that the men of the Mounted learned the whole story of what
happened at Wurtz's cabin.
CHAPTER XVII
CONNIE PLAYS A HUNCH
Connie Morgan halted his great _malamutes_ in the middle of the
ice-locked Yukon and gazed wistfully toward the familiar outlines of
Dawson. For a year the little sub-arctic city had been home to him.
And as his eyes rested upon the buildings of B Division standing
spick and span and clean in their coats of whitewash and paint, his
lips pressed tight. Behind those walls from which, only a few
minutes before, he had stepped for the last time, were the men who
had been his friends--big men, those--great hearted and clean
minded--the men who kept the Yukon good. He thought of the
grey-haired Superintendent with the twinkling eyes and military
moustache; of big Sergeant Dan McKeever, and Corporal Rickey; and Ick
Far, the silent reader of signs. Then there were the constables:
Beatty, and Dowling, and Shorty Peters--the boy's forehead puckered
in a frown as he thought of Peters.
"I liked Shorty," he muttered. "He would do anything in the world
for a friend. Everybody likes him. The Superintendent said this
morning that all Shorty needs to make a first-class man is a good
stiff jolt that will wake him up."
For three weeks past the men of B Division had mentioned Peters's
name rarely, with grave faces and in the past tense, as men speak of
the dead. "Trouble with Shorty was, he never stopped to think. He
did the first thing that popped into his head. But just the same he
was a fool to desert. His time will be up next month. Wherever he
is I bet he is wishing that he was back this very minute." With a
last look at the town Connie cracked his long whip and started the
dogs northward down the Yukon.
It was a late spring, and as the sled slipped smoothly over the
hard-packed snow the boy thought of that other day just a year ago
when he had slashed the lashings of his pack and shot those same dogs
out over the shore ice to rescue Big Dan McKeever from death on the
floating ice-pan.
One by one, as he mushed steadily northward, the incidents of the
past year crowded through his brain. It had been a great year for
the boy--those twelve months during which he had served side by side
with the men of the Mounted--a year that had rounded out and
crystallized the hand-hammered principles that were his heritage from
Sam Morgan and that his association with Waseche Bill and the rough
men of the gold country had taught him to apply to life in its daily
round.
Connie Morgan was not one whit less a boy than the day he stepped
onto the wharf at Anvik with eight dollars in his pocket and abiding
faith in his ability to find his father somewhere in the great white
land of snow. But he was a boy trained now by experience. A boy
whose nerve and grit and impulsive nature had become subserved to
cool reason, and who had learned to probe deep into the heart in his
judgment of men. Time and again in the big country, where only the
fit survive, he had proven himself fit. Bearded men spoke his name
with respect--as they had spoken the name of Sam Morgan. They called
him a sourdough, and a _tillicum_--and north of sixty, above those
words sounds no higher praise.
"Hello, Const'ble!" a man stepped from the trail and thrust out a
dark hand.
"Hello, Tim!" cried Connie, as he grasped the hand.
"A-ha, Tim Big Martin, she got for say t'ank to l'il p'lice. Som'
day she mebbe-so git chanst to show she no fergit."
Connie grinned: "That's all right, Tim. How's the family?"
The half-breed's homely face stretched into a broad grin: "A-ha,
_bien_! Das fambly she got wan more now--I'm not fergit das night
you breeng de doctaire. Das li'l bab' w'ot com' in de night ob de
beeg snow--she fine boy I'm tell you! We mak' de nam' Spes'
Const'ble Mo'gan Big Martin," he announced proudly. "An' mebbe-so
som' tam's he grow oop an' be _kloshe_ p'lice, too, Ba Gos'!"
"You're all right, Tim," laughed the boy; "when he's old enough to go
to school, let me know. We'll make a policeman out of him, you bet!
With a name like that he'll just naturally have to break into the
Service!" Connie called sharply to his dogs and as they leaped to
their feet the half-breed stepped closer and laid a hand on the boy's
arm!
"Oop on de head Coal Creek, two men, dey hunt de moose for sell."
"Poachers, eh!"
The man nodded and with his lips close to the boy's ear whispered:
"Wan man you know--mebbe-so she gone _kultus_.'
"A man I know gone _kultus_!" exclaimed Connie. "What do you mean?
Who is he?" But the other only shrugged, and shifting his pack,
stepped into the trail and swung off toward Dawson.
"Now what in thunder does that breed mean?" soliloquized the boy as
the dogs strung out onto the trail. "One of those poachers is Brek
Wiley all right, he's an old hand at the game and a mighty slippery
customer--Big Dan McKeever has tried for years to catch him with the
goods. But who is the other one--the man that's gone _kultus_? Tim
didn't mean Brek Wiley--he always was _kultus_. Guess I'll just
swing over onto the head of Coal Creek and see what's doing."
Suddenly the boy stopped dead in his tracks: "Gee Whiz!" he exclaimed
aloud, "I forgot I'm no longer in the Service!" He ran to catch up
with the dogs. 'I could turn the job over to Ewing at Fortymile,' he
muttered as he mushed northward; "but, somehow, I'd kind of like to
handle this one myself. I've just got to know who that other man is.
Maybe--By George! _I'll do it_! I haven't got any authority to, but
_they_ won't know my time's up. And if I can bring 'em in I'll take
a chance on getting the authority afterwards.
"Wouldn't Dan roar if I should bring in Brek Wiley with a good clear
case against him!"
Avoiding Fortymile, Connie swung from the Yukon and headed up a small
tributary that flows in from the north-east. The long winter was
losing its grip on the hill country and the surface of the snow
softened at mid-day. On the first day after leaving the big river
the boy camped and made moccasins for his dogs. With their feet
protected from the flinty surface of the crust that formed as the sun
sank low the big _malamutes_ made good time, and noon of the third
day off the river found him camped on a spruce-capped ridge of the
Ogilvie Range with the deep-gored valleys of the feeders of Coal
Creek spread out before him like giant fingers reaching into the
hills.
"Somewhere in that tangle of ridges and canyons I'm going to find
Brek Wiley and the _kultus_ man," gritted the boy, as he boiled a pot
of tea over a tiny smokeless fire. "I've got to be mighty careful,
too, 'cause they say Brek Wiley can pick up a trail like an Injun."
For three days Connie busied himself snaring rabbits and ptarmigans
to eke out his slender larder and provide food for his dogs, and
always he strained his ears for the sound of a shot that would
disclose the whereabouts of the poachers.
The first day he surprised a moose at close range, and on the third
day a huge bull and two cows crossed the divide a half-mile to the
eastward and descended into the valley of Coal Creek.
"That ought to help 'em out," muttered Connie as he watched the huge
animals disappear in the scrub.
An hour later, sharp and clear, from a point some two or three miles
below where the moose had entered the timber, rang the sound of a
shot swiftly followed by another, and after a short interval of
silence four or five more in rapid succession.
"Three less moose and two less poachers in the Yukon," grinned the
boy, as he slipped into the valley and hurried in the direction of
the shots. On and on he went, following the trail of the three
moose. At the end of an hour he slackened his pace and began to
advance cautiously from boulder to boulder, pausing every few moments
to listen and reconnoitre the foreground. At length the sound of
voices reached his ears, and throwing himself flat upon the crust, he
wriggled forward into the shelter of a huge rock that jutted sharply
from the shoulder of a low ridge.
[Illustration: "In an open space two men were quartering the carcass
of a cow moose."]
In an open space formed by a bend of the creek two men were busily
engaged in quartering the carcass of a cow moose. The bull had
already been quartered and loaded upon a sled, with the huge antlered
head bound securely upon the top of the load. The other cow lay
where she had fallen. The smaller of the two men straightened
himself, glanced cautiously about him, and cleansed his sheath knife
by drawing the flat of it across the sleeve of his coat. "I tell
yeh, Brek Wiley, it's rotten business, an' I wisht I was well out of
it." Something in the man's voice caused Connie to strain forward
for a closer view as Wiley paused in the act of cleaving the backbone
of the moose with an axe.
"Cold feet, eh," sneered the poacher. "Ye're 'fraid the Mounted'll
grab ye an' take ye in out o' the cold. Well, they won't. I be'n
doin' 'bout as I pleased ever sence I hit this here country, ten year
back. An' I hain't allus pleased to do jest what the law says,
neither. Take the moose business, I be'n sellin' 'mountain beef fur
goin' on three year, an' I hain't be'n nabbed fur it nuther. They's
good money in it--beats gougin' fer gold where they hain't none no
more, an' it beats crankin' win'lasses an' choppin' cord wood fer
wages."
"They ain't got yeh yet--but they will, sure as shootin'--an' me,
too. Yeh don't know 'em like I do. I served with 'em its goin' on
five year an' I ought to be with 'em yet--would of, too, if it hadn't
be'n fer you--" Connie caught a glimpse of the man's face. It was
Shorty Peters!
"There ye go! Still chawin' over that ol' cud!" cried the other--"ef
yer so blame anxious to be in the Mounted why'n't ye go back to 'em
then. Ye don't dast to, that's why! Ye're a deserter, an' they'd
stick ye in the pen 'til yer hair turned white 'cause ye happened to
quit 'em a couple months afore yer time was out. An' now yer blamin'
me 'cause ye hain't back doin' time! I tell ye ye was a deserter
'fore I hooked up with ye! An' 'cause I tol' ye ye was a fool to go
back, yer tryin' to shove it off onto me!"
"I wisht I was back in the service right now. An' if I done what's
right I'd take you in."
The other laughed shortly: "Jest you try it onct an' see how fer ye'd
git! Ye're 'fraid to try it. Ef ye did happen to fetch me in,
what'd happen? I s'pose ye didn't kill none of the meat that's in
the _cache_. An' I s'pose ye hain't helped sell none. Guess I
didn't know what I was doin' when I tuk ye along to dicker with Swede
Johnson down to No Luck, an' Tom Ashley, an' them contractors down on
the river? An' I guess ye didn't help deliver none of it neither!
An', of course, if ye tuk me in, I'd take my medicine an' shet up
about it, wouldn't I? An' I wouldn't put up no holler fer them other
fellers to testify that me an' you was pardners, would I? No, sure
not! I'd jest shet up an' let ye git credit fer fetchin' in Brek
Wiley. I tell ye, Shorty, yer in too deep. Ye'd git it worser'n
what I would, 'cause on top of yer game-law sentence, ye'd git soaked
good an' proper fer desertin'. They's more money in meat than they
is in policin'. Wild game is as much mine an' yourn as it is any one
else's an' they hain't no one got no right to tell us when we kin
kill it or how many we kin kill, nohow. Buck up, now, an' git to
work on that there other cow--an' when the meat business plays out I
got another little scheme up my sleeve."
Shorty set to work upon the carcass of the dead moose. "When the
meat business plays out I'm through," he retorted sharply. "I ain't
no crook an' I'm goin' outside an' live decent. I won't go in on no
other scheme."
Once more Brek Wiley laughed. "Won't ye? We'll see when the time
comes. Guess I'm the boss o' this outfit. Ye'll do as I say. Fat
chanst ye've got o' gittin' outer the Yukon if I slip the word to the
Mounted."
A half-hour later their task was finished, and the two men turned
their attention to the sled. With Wiley in the trace ropes and
Shorty pushing behind, the heavily loaded sled was worked over the
hard crust to a point scarcely a quarter of a mile away where it was
halted before the cleverly concealed door of a dug-out. Connie
managed to follow, keeping well within the shelter of boulders and
scrub timber, and from the vantage point of an old shaft dump watched
the men carry the quarters into the _cache_.
The boy noted that the abandoned cabin of a miner had been patched up
and made habitable, and when the men returned for the remainder of
the moose meat, he made a wide detour which brought him to the creek
far above, from which point, after a hard climb, he regained his camp
on the ridge.
CHAPTER XVIII
AN AMENDED REPORT
It was almost dark when Connie Morgan swung his outfit in toward the
little cabin on Coal Creek. As the dogs stopped at the sharp word of
command the door flew open and a man appeared on the threshold. The
man was Brek Wiley and Connie knew that his keen eyes had taken in at
a glance every detail of the outfit.
"Onharness an' come in," he invited surlily, "grub'll be ready when
my pardner gits back."
As Connie entered the room the man slipped a pan of baking-powder
bread into the oven.
"Prospecting?" asked the boy as he seated himself on a case of canned
goods, behind which he saw the butt of a service revolver protruding
from its holster.
"Uh-huh, that is, we was. We're a-waitin' fer water now to clean up
the dump with."
"You haven't done any digging lately, I see. Your dump is pretty
well snowed under."
The man shot him a sidewise glance: "Not fer quite a spell," he
answered. "The gravel kind o' run out an' we figgered on seein' how
she shows 'fore we go no deeper. Spring's so late, though, it looks
like it never would git here."
"That meat smells good"; Connie eyed the thick moose steak that
sizzled in the frying-pan. "I've been kind of low on fresh meat."
"Where ye headin', an' what might yer name be?" queried the man as he
turned the steak in the pan.
"Connie Morgan, and I'm----"
The fork clattered noisily upon the floor as the man regarded him
with out-popping eyes: "Connie Morgan--Sam Morgan's boy, that's with
the Mounted? That got the best of Bill Cosgrieve an' his Cameron
Crickers, an' fetched in Notorious Bishop, an'----"
Connie laughed: "That's me. And this time I'm after poachers. How's
the hunting?"
Brek Wiley was a man schooled to emergency. Stooping, he recovered
the fork from the floor and wiped it carefully upon the sleeve of his
shirt.
"I don't know how ye fellers does it," he said, looking squarely into
the eyes of the boy, "but ye sure come to the right place when ye
come to Coal Crick. They's be'n a sight o' moose kilt in this here
valley 'thin the last month or so. I hain't a informer, mind ye, an'
I don't b'lieve in makin' no trouble fer no man. But, a word to the
wise is foolish, as the feller says, an' if I was a-huntin' poachers,
when I hit the forks, 'bout six or eight mile above here, I'd foller
the north prong--that's all. It's a doggone shame a-killin' off all
the moose an' caribou, that-a-way, an' what they don't kill they run
out of the country. It's got so me an' my pardner's got to take a
hull week fer to kill us a moose fer meat, an' when we come here we
c'd step out the door an' git one most any time." The man slid the
frying-pan to the back of the stove. "An' that reminds me--it's grub
time an' he hain't showed up yet. Guess I'll jest step out an' see
what's a-keepin' him."
"You needn't mind, Brek. Shorty can find his way back." There was a
hard note in the boy's voice and at the words the man whirled midway
of the floor--whirled to stare into the muzzle of the service
revolver which the boy had slipped from its holster behind the canned
goods' case.
"What ye mean?" he snarled. "An' what's the meanin' o' the gun play?"
"It means that your game is up, Brek Wiley. It means that you are
under arrest for violating the game law of the Yukon Territory, and
that you are caught with the goods." As the boy spoke the door
opened and Shorty Peters stood staring open-mouthed at the grim
tableau.
"Come on in, Shorty, and shut the door. It's cold. I've just been
telling Mr. Brek Wiley that he is under arrest for poaching."
Mechanically Peters entered and closed the door still staring
uncomprehendingly from one to the other.
"As I was saying," continued the boy, once more addressing Wiley: "It
means that Constable Peters has taken his time and worked up an
iron-clad case against you. He's got all the evidence he needs, and
then some. It's about as pretty a piece of work as has been put over
in B Division in a long while."
Beside the door Shorty Peters listened incredulously to the boy's
words. Suddenly he stepped forward and cleared his throat gruffly:
"But----"
"That's all right, Shorty," interrupted Connie, speaking rapidly, "I
tell you the Superintendent will be tickled with this job. They'll
make you a Corporal for this."
At the words Brek Wiley turned upon the astounded Shorty and from his
lips poured a perfect tirade of vituperation and invective. And as
the man's words flowed his rage increased until in a very paroxysm of
fury he turned on Connie, who noted with satisfaction that the man's
abuse had angered Peters.
"But it's a lie!" he roared. "I tell ye it's a lie! Shorty's a
deserter! An' him an' me throw'd in together to sell meat. I kin
prove it by Swede Johnson, an' Tom Ashley, an' them contractors. I
hain't no fool! He's in as deep as me. He done his share of the
killin', an' the deliverin', too, an' he got his share of the money."
Connie laughed: "Of course he did, and that's the best evidence he's
got. And if he hadn't done his share of the killing he'd never have
got any evidence on you. And you fell for the 'deserter' game like
any _chechaka_! Dan McKeever could never have worked that--you know
him too well. But Shorty did, and you grabbed the bait like a hungry
salmon." The boy shot a glance toward Peters who was studying the
floor intently, and continued with scarcely a pause. "If you had
been really smart, Wiley, you would have known that no man in his
right senses would desert the Service and throw in with you. Why,
he'd know in a minute that it would be only a question of time before
we'd get him. But aside from all that there is something you don't
know anything about--something that you couldn't understand if I
should tell you: It's the Honour of the Mounted--but in the Service
we know what it means. We'd give our lives for it." He paused and
turned to Peters, "Wouldn't we, Shorty?" he asked suddenly.
The man jerked himself erect: "You bet we would, kid!" he exclaimed,
huskily. And Brek Wiley glancing into his face knew that he meant
what he said.
The journey down Coal Creek was made without incident except that the
usually loquacious and light-hearted Shorty maintained a tight-lipped
silence upon which Connie did not seek to intrude. At No Luck the
man disappeared to return an hour later wearing his service uniform,
and thereafter the boy noticed that Shorty's eyes gleamed balefully
whenever they rested for a moment upon the back of Brek Wiley who was
made to break trail ahead of the dogs.
The boy knew that his brother officer was thinking as he had never
thought before, and that the decision he arrived at by the time they
reached the big river would be the shaping decision of his life. And
neither by word nor look did Connie intimate that he entertained so
much as the slightest doubt of the other's sincerity.
Twenty miles above its mouth, they swung from Coal Creek and cutting
through the hills came out upon the Yukon at some distance above
Fortymile. And when the boy saw Shorty turn resolutely toward
Dawson, he knew that from that moment the Mounted could boast no
stauncher officer than Constable Peters. When they had camped for
dinner on the river trail Connie turned to the Constable: "Well,
Shorty, I'll be leaving you here," he said; "I'm going the other way."
Peters regarded him with amazement.
"Goin' the other way!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean? Wasn't you
detailed to patrol Coal Creek after poachers?"
Connie laughed: "No, I wasn't detailed for anything. I'm 'on my
own,' now. My time was up last week, and I'm heading for Eagle. I
just cut across to the head of Coal Creek on a hunch. I didn't have
any authority to arrest anybody. You'll have to take the prisoner
in--anyway, he's your prisoner. You've worked up the evidence."
"On your own!" muttered the Constable as if unable to grasp the idea.
"You mean that--that you ain't goin' to re-enlist? That you're
quittin' us fer good?"
Connie nodded: "Yes," he answered, "I've got to get back to Alaska.
You see I've got a mine there and I expect my pardner will be coming
inside again this year. You won't have any trouble taking Wiley in."
The boy thrust out his hand. "So long, Shorty. Your time's up this
spring, too--but I suppose you'll re-enlist!"
Shorty, who had been studying minutely the toes of his _mukluks_
raised his eyes to the boy's. "You bet, I'm goin' to re-enlist," he
answered gruffly. "That is, if--" he stopped abruptly and gripped
the outstretched hand of the boy. "I'll take him in, all right," he
said. "They might be some chanst that strawberries'll be ripe along
this here river tomorrow, but they ain't no chanst I won't take Brek
Wiley into Headquarters--an' don't you ferget it! So long, kid.
We'll sure miss you back here. You've done some big things over here
in the Yukon--things that'll be remembered an' talked about. But
they's other things--things that mebbe won't be talked about, that
you've done. An' mebbe them things is bigger than the ones that is.
An' say, kid," he added, as Connie swung his dogs toward Eagle,
"whenever you get one of them hunches--you play it--see!"
Finding the police station at Fortymile vacant, Connie took the
receiver from the hook, called Headquarters, and for an hour held
earnest conversation with the Superintendent.
Late the following evening Constable Peters turned Brek Wiley over to
the officer in charge of the guard room and proceeded to make out his
report. At its conclusion he noticed that a light still burned in
the office of the Superintendent. He opened the door and crossing to
the desk saluted and turned in his report. The grey-haired
Superintendent picked up the paper and read:
"The Officer Commanding
B Division, R.N.W.M. Police,
Dawson, Y.T."
SIR:
I have the honour to submit the following report. On March 1st, I
deserted the service and threw in with one Brek Wiley for the purpose
of killing moose and caribou out of season and selling same to Swede
Johnson, Tom Ashley, and Contractors Kirby and Jones. We went to the
head of Coal Creek and set up a camp. We killed nine moose and seven
caribou, part of which we delivered to above parties, and the rest is
_cached_ on Coal Creek.
Three days ago ex-special Constable C. Morgan arrested Brek Wiley in
the cabin on Coal Creek and supposing I was in the service and was
working on the case, turned him over to me.
I brought the prisoner in and can produce evidence that will convict
him of violation of the game law.
I am equally guilty, and I hereby surrender myself on charges of
desertion from the service of the R.N.W.M. Police, and violation of
the game law.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Your obedient servant,
J. H. PETERS, Constable.
Twice the Superintendent read the words from beginning to end, then
scowling darkly he placed the paper upon the desk and drew a blue
pencil through line after line. At length he looked squarely into
the eyes of the man who stood before him at attention.
[Illustration: "Your reports are too long, Peters," growled the
superintendent.]
"Your reports are too long, Peters," he growled, and extended the
paper toward the Constable who read:
"The Officer Commanding
B Division R.N.W.M. Police,
Dawson, Y.T."
SIR:
I have the honour to submit the following report.... Three days ago
ex-special Constable C. Morgan arrested Brek Wiley in the cabin on
Coal Creek and ... turned him over to me.
I brought the prisoner in and can produce evidence that will convict
him of violation of the game law....
I have the honour to be, sir,
Your obedient servant,
J. H. PETERS, Constable.
"But, sir," stammered the astonished Constable, "it's true--the
desertion. I don't know how I come to do it--an' I was mighty
ashamed of myself an' disgusted after I done it. But----"
The Superintendent interrupted him with a gesture--"Yes, yes! I know
all about it. Morgan reported unofficially by phone from Fortymile.
And I may as well tell you, Peters, that it is at his urgent request
that I have allowed you to amend your report--that, and the fact that
you were man enough to own up without a hint of excuse for your
conduct----"
"But, sir--the kid--he didn't know! He thought I was straight all
the time! It was that more than anything else that made me want to
come clean."
The Superintendent smiled grimly: "Don't you think for a minute he
didn't know all about you. You see he lay behind a rock and listened
to a little conversation you had with Brek Wiley while you were
quartering those last three moose."
"Now, what do you think of that!" gasped the astounded Peters, as the
full significance of the boy's course dawned upon him.
"He--he's a great kid," he added thoughtfully as he turned toward the
door.
"Yes," answered the officer commanding B Division, "he's a great kid,
and we're going to miss him around here--a great kid. And, by the
way, Peters, your enlistment papers are ready--if you want them."
THE END.
_by James B. Hendryx_
The Promise
Connie Morgan in Alaska
Connie Morgan with the Mounted
The Gun Brand
Connie Morgan in Alaska
By
James B. Hendryx
Author of "The Promise," "The Law of the Woods," etc.
_12°. Over twenty illustrations. $1.25 net.
By mail, $1.35_
Mr. Hendryx, as he has ably demonstrated in his many well-known
tales, knows his Northland thoroughly, but he has achieved a
reputation as a writer possibly "too strong" for the younger literary
digestion. It is a delight, therefore, to find that he can present
properly, in a capital story of a boy, full of action and adventure,
and one in whom boys delight, the same thorough knowledge of people
and customs of the North.
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York London
The White Blanket
By
Belmore Brown
Author of "The Quest of the Golden Valley," etc.
_12°, Illustrated. $1.25 net. By mail $1.35_
A sequel to _The Quest of the Golden Valley_, this time taking the
chums through the vicissitudes of an Alaskan winter. They trap the
many fur-bearing animals, hunt the big game, camp with the Indians,
do dog-driving, snowshoeing, etc. With the coming of spring they
descend one of the wilderness rivers on a raft and at the eleventh
hour, after being wrecked in a dangerous canyon, they discover a
fabulous quartz lode, and succeed in reaching the sea coast.
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York London
Sheridan's Twins
By
Sidford F. Hamp
_12°. Illustrated by Belmore Browne_
_Price, $1.25; by mail, $1.35_
The "twins," though not brothers, are of one age and have been
brought up together. They are partners, in fact, in spirit, in the
stirring adventures of frontier life that the story records. It
tells how they get their start in life by an act of service, and how
clean in thought, clear in head, with courage and brawn, they win
their way, starting as market gardeners and ending as owners of a
valuable mine.
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York London
The Treasure of Mushroom Rock
A Story of Prospecting in the Rocky Mountains
By
Sidford F. Hamp
_12°. Illustrated. $1.25 net. By mail, $1.35_
This story concerns the adventure of two boys, one American and one
English, who find themselves by mistake on a vessel bound for New
Orleans. Fearing to return to England, they journey to the mining
town of Golconda in Utah, which they reach after an adventure with
train robbers. In company with a relative of one of the boys they
proceed upon a hunting and prospecting expedition, during which they
meet with many exciting adventures, but finally succeed in securing
the treasure of Mushroom Rock. The story is bound to be of great
interest to every boy.
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York London
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