[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.