A LONELY CABIN
CORPORAL BRACKNELL and Sibou had left the hunting camp of the tribe
two days and were following the trail of the white man and the two
Indians who had visited it more than a week before. The trail, though
it was old, was well defined, for there had been no fall of snow in
the interval, and the frozen surface of the wilderness kept the trail
fresh, and made it easy to follow. It was evident to both of them that
their quarry travelled fast, for the distances between the camping
places were greater than was usual, and it was clear that those whom
they followed had some need for haste. What it could be the corporal
could only guess, and guessing under the circumstances was not a very
profitable occupation. And there were other signs which gave room for
speculation. Now and again the party ahead of them had halted for a
little time, and two of the men had left the dogs and the sled, as
their tracks showed. These halting places, as the corporal was quick
to observe, always occurred when some small stream fell into the main
river, or when some accessible gully or creek opened from the banks.
“What do you make of it, Sibou?” he asked when they had reached the
fifth halting place of this sort.
The Indian who had followed the tracks of two of the gullies to the
point where they reversed glanced at those which now lay before them.
Then he waved a mittened hand.
“These men be looking for something.”
“Or some one!” commented the corporal thoughtfully.
The Indian gave a grave inclination of his head. “It is not good to
follow every trail,” he said in his own tongue. “Sometime perhaps we
shall find a trail that does not return on itself, then we know they
find what they seek and we follow.”
“Yes,” answered the corporal, “that is the best way, I think. We will
push on and not waste time on these excursions.”
They pressed forward and passed two more of these deviations from the
main track without troubling to follow them. Just before daylight
faded, when they were hugging the bank looking for a suitable camping
place, the Indian called the corporal’s attention to a small creek the
entrance to which was masked by low-boughed spruce trees.
“Yes,” said the corporal, “that should do. Those banks and trees should
break this wind.”
They turned the dogs towards it, and negotiating a snow wreath which
the wind was piling up, they entered the sheltering creek. Sibou was
leading, packing the trail, and the corporal clinging to the gee-pole
of the sled, saw him come to a most unexpected halt. Bracknell moved
forward.
“What is the matter, Sibou?”
The Indian did not speak, but pointed silently at the snow, and looking
down the corporal saw the unmistakable trail of snowshoes. The tracks
were quite fresh, and were so unexpected that Bracknell was himself
astonished. He stared at them as Crusoe must have stared when he found
the footprints on the shore of his island. Who had left that tell-tale
trail? Perhaps a wandering Indian. Maybe some solitary prospector
caught by winter, or possibly the man whom he was seeking, the murderer
of Rolf Gargrave. His heart beat quickly at the thought and, still
staring at the trail which came down the bank of the creek and then
turned away from the river, he considered the matter carefully, and
then gave instructions.
“Follow it, Sibou, and find out where it goes and who made it. I will
pitch camp and wait here for you.”
The Indian nodded gravely and departed and Bracknell busied himself
with pitching camp. He had already lit the fire and fed the dogs, and
was busy with the beans and bacon when Sibou returned.
“Well?” asked the corporal expectantly. “Did you find him?”
“Yes,” was the reply. “There is one Indian and one white man. They are
in a cabin at the head of the creek.”
Bracknell was conscious of a sudden excitement.
“Did you see the white man? Is it----”
Sibou shook his head. “I saw him, but it is not the man we follow; and
he is very sick with the coughing sickness!”
The corporal’s excitement died as quickly as it had risen.
“Did you speak with him, Sibou?”
“No,” replied the Indian. “There was no need. I saw his face as he came
to the cabin door. It is not the man.”
Corporal Bracknell bent over the fire. He was disappointed, but he did
not show it. He turned the bacon in the pan then he looked up.
“We will have supper first, then I will walk up the creek as far as the
cabin, and have a talk with this white man. He may know something of
the man we follow.”
Sibou made no reply, and when the meal was ready they ate it in
silence, and smoked whilst they drank the coffee. Then Bracknell arose.
“I go now, Sibou. I shall return before sleeping time.”
The Indian offered no objection to this, and knocking the ashes from
his pipe the policeman left the camp. Even in the darkness he had no
difficulty in following the trail up the creek, and presently the
smell of burning wood informed him that he was in the neighbourhood
of the cabin. He looked round carefully and descried it in the shadow
of the trees on the right bank, and began to ascend towards it. When
he reached it there was no clamour of dogs such as might have been
expected had there been a team there, and as he rapped upon the door,
he reflected that his conjecture about the gold prospector overtaken by
the winter was probably the correct one.
The door was flung open, and a tall man whose face he could not discern
stood revealed. Inside in front of a makeshift stove was another man,
who was taken suddenly by a paroxysm of coughing. For half a minute the
corporal stood there, and the man at the door did not move or speak;
but at the end of that time, between two spasms of coughing, the other
man cried querulously, “Oh, come in and shut that confounded door!”
The man at the door moved aside, and as Bracknell entered, he closed
the door behind him, and stood with his back to it, staring at the
new-comer with eyes that had in them a savage gleam of hate. The man
by the fire was still coughing, and at the end of some three minutes,
as the cough left him, he sat there, gasping and wheezing and utterly
exhausted. Roger Bracknell watched him, with compassionate eyes. As he
recognized, the man was in sore straits, and that cough probably meant
that the coming of the Spring was for him the coming of death. As his
breath came back the sick man half turned.
“Sit down, can’t----” The remark was broken off half way, and the man
started from his seat. “Great Christopher! A Daniel come to judgment!
How do you do, Cousin Roger?”
As the voice quivering with excitement rang through the cabin, a
startled look came on Roger Bracknell’s face, and he bent forward, and
stared at the wasted features of the unkempt man before him. The other
laughed harshly.
“Oh, you needn’t stare so hard, Roger; it is I right enough.”
It was Dick Bracknell, and as the corporal realized the fact, the
compassion he had felt for a stranger was trebled when he found that
the sick man was of his own blood. For a moment he did not reply, but
with a shocked look on his face gazed at the ravaged features before
him. The “coughing sickness” which Sibou had mentioned had plainly
gripped Dick Bracknell and marked him for death. Some of his teeth
were gone and the colour of his gums appeared like yellow ochre in the
firelight. As he noted these signs of scurvy, the corporal was moved to
speak his pity.
“Dick, old man, I am mortal sorry----”
“Then keep your infernal pity for yourself!” cried the other savagely.
“You’ll need it all in a minute, for Joe has the drop on you, you----
murderer.”
The corporal started, and swung round. The Indian, Joe, was standing
with his back to the door, and the glow of the fire was reflected from
the pistol in his hand. He noted the fact quite calmly, and turned to
his cousin again.
“Murderer?” he said slowly. “I do not understand. What do you mean?”
“No?” snarled his cousin. “Well, look at me! Would you say that I was a
good case for a Life Insurance Society?”
The corporal looked at him, and out of pity was silent.
“Oh, you needn’t be so particular,” continued the other sneeringly.
“I’ve seen other fellows whose lungs have been chilled, and I know
I am booked, unless I can get to a sanatorium in double quick time.
And I know you have a soft heart, but you should have let it speak
sooner--before you put this upon me.”
“Before I put---- I do not know what you mean?”
“No! But you know that you poisoned that dog food that we took from
you, don’t you? And you can guess----”
“Good God!” ejaculated the corporal, and the astonishment in his face
and voice did more than any protests could have done to convince his
cousin that the charge was groundless.
“You didn’t know? No, I see you didn’t!” cried the sick man.
“Of course I didn’t!” replied the policeman quickly. “The dogs you left
me died of poison at my first camp, after they had been fed. I blamed
your man, because you had told me that he was reluctant to let me go.
Now it seems that I was wrong, as you are wrong. Tell me what happened?”
“I will,” said his cousin, “sit down!” As the corporal seated himself
on a log, Dick Bracknell turned to the Indian. “You can put down that
pistol for the present, Joe. There’s a mystery to be cleared up before
there’s any shooting to be done. Put it down, I tell you!”
The Indian obeyed reluctantly, but still stood against the door, and
Dick Bracknell explained. “Joe there has it saved up against you. He
was sure that you had deliberately poisoned the dog food, so that we
should get stranded, and you, with a new outfit, would be able to find
us at your leisure. I couldn’t believe it of you at first. It was such
a low-down game that I’d have sworn that nobody but a Siwash half-breed
would have played it. But the logic of facts seemed convincing, and
I’d come to believe it.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“That’s easy enough. When I parted from you, I had an idea of working
across to the Behring, where I’d have been off the beat of your
confounded patrols. We travelled a week and made a good pace, then
one night Joe there fed the dogs with the salmon-roe we took off your
sled. They were all dead within two hours; and there we were, stranded
in the shadow of the Arctic circle and nearly a thousand miles from
civilization.” The sick man broke off, shaken by a fit of coughing, and
then as the spasm passed and his breath returned, he said meditatively,
“If you’d walked into our camp then we’d have fed you with that roe,
and watched you twist as those dogs were twisted, for Joe looked at the
food and found strychnine, which he’d used when he was trapping for the
H. B. C.... Lucky thing for you that you didn’t! Did you say your dogs
died of the same thing?”
“Yes,” answered the corporal slowly, “and now I’m wondering who was
responsible.”
“Somebody who was getting at you, and not at us,” answered Dick
Bracknell quickly, “for he couldn’t have known that we should collar
the food. Had you been using the same stuff all along?”
“No.” The word dropped from the corporal reluctantly. “No. I had laid
in a new stock at North Star.”
“Then it was there the thing was done,” replied the sick man with
conviction. “The question is, who did it? Joy wouldn’t even dream of
such a thing!”
“That at any rate is quite certain!” answered the corporal with
conviction.
“But somebody did it; somebody who owed you one, and meant to get
rid of you. That’s shown by the fact that your dogs did all right on
the food at the beginning. That which you used first wasn’t tampered
with, or the dogs would have died at the first camp you made. But they
didn’t, for you camped with us, and I remember that more than once,
whilst we were waiting for my convalescence, you fed your dogs with the
roe. That is positive proof that the top portion of the dog-food was
all right, it was only lower down that it had been tampered with.”
“But why----”
“It’s as plain as a barn-door. You were meant to get well away on the
trail, and one night you would unknowingly feed the dogs with poisoned
roe. They would die, and unless you had wonderful luck you would die
too, long before you got back to civilization. That is the amiable plan
that somebody thought out for you; and as things turned out he nearly
bagged me and Joe instead of you.”
“But he almost got me too,” said the corporal thoughtfully, and gave
his cousin a brief account of his adventures.
“You were lucky,” commented the sick man. “A broken leg can be spliced,
but who is going to splice a set of frozen lungs?” His face grew
suddenly convulsed with passion, and he broke into terrible oaths. “If
I had the murderer here--but who was he anyway?”
“There is only one man of whom I can think, and before I tell you his
name there are two questions I should like to ask.”
“Fire them off!”
“The first is this, do you know anything of Rolf Gargrave’s death?”
“I know that the bottom dropped out of the trail and that he was
drowned--nothing more. What’s that got to do with it anyway?”
The corporal looked at his cousin. The haggard face was clear of guilt,
and in that moment he knew that his earliest suspicions when Chief
Louis had told him the story of Rolf Gargrave’s death had been utterly
wrong. Whatever crimes Dick Bracknell had to his account this was not
one of them.
“I’ll explain why I asked you in a moment,” he answered. “There is the
second question--yet; and it is this, did you ever inform any one of
your marriage with Joy?”
“Yes, one man! When I heard that Rolf Gargrave was dead, I wrote to
England and informed his legal adviser, Sir Joseph Rayner, that Joy
and I were husband and wife. I never had any answer to the let---- But
what’s the matter, man? You look as if you had seen a ghost! What is
it?”
There was a look of startled amazement on the corporal’s face. He was
staring at his cousin as if what the latter had said was a revelation
to him, as indeed it was. A dark suspicion had leapt in his mind, a
suspicion that seemed almost incredible, but which persisted and would
not be thrust aside. If Sir Joseph Rayner knew, then in all probability
his son also knew, and yet having that knowledge he had suggested
that the relation between himself and Joy was such as justified his
confessed aspiration of making her his wife. Had he been responsible
for that second shot at North Star? Or----
Dick Bracknell’s voice broke in again querulously.
“What’s got you, Roger! Spit it out!”
“I can’t at present,” replied the corporal slowly. “You’ve given me
news that I must think over before I talk. But there is one thing that
I can tell you, and that is that Rolf Gargrave did not die by a mere
accident. The trail he was following was sound enough, but the ice was
blown up by dynamite. It froze over again in the night, and as I gather
there was a little snow, he went on to the thin ice without suspicion,
and went through. That’s the story as I’ve recently heard it; and I’m
on the trail of the man who plotted the infernal thing, now.”
The sick man pursed his lips to whistle, but no sound came from them.
Then he remarked, with a little laugh of bitterness, “So that’s why you
asked if I knew anything of my father-in-law’s death, is it?”
“It was just a suspicion that occurred to me,” explained the corporal
apologetically. “When I heard the story I wondered who would benefit by
Gargrave’s death, and as you had just married Joy, and had fled here
from England, it was a natural suspicion----”
“I must have got pretty low down for it to be natural to suspect me of
an infernal crime of that sort,” was the other’s bitter comment. “But
who do you suspect now?”
“I don’t know! As I told you, I’m after the man. The trail’s a week
old, but I’ll find him even if I follow him to the rim of the Polar
sea.”
“I hope to heaven you’ll get him, and that he’ll swing at Regina for
that job. I wonder if the same man had anything to do with poisoning
the dog food.”
“I am wondering that also!” replied the corporal thoughtfully.
“Any idea of the fellow?”
“Just a suspicion, nothing more. Not enough to presume upon--yet!”
“He must have a mind that is diabolic.”
“So it would seem!” replied the corporal, and after a little time his
cousin spoke again.
“Many a time while I have sat here wheezing and coughing, I have cursed
you from my heart, but now I could pray that you come up with that man,
and make him pay for it all. If I were sure you’d get him I could go
cheerfully to my appointed place in the pit.”
“I shall get him,” answered the corporal with conviction. “The Indian
who is with me was with him when he arranged for Gargrave’s death, and
if my suspicions have any bottom in them, then I know him myself.”
“You’ll push on in the morning, of course.”
“Before daylight! And I shall come up with the man, never fear. He’s
travelling fast, but he’s looking for some thing or some one, the
latter, I think, and----”
“Who do you suppose he’s looking for?”
“Well, if he’s the man I suspect, I shouldn’t wonder if he were looking
for you.”
“For me! What in thunder for?”
“To finish what he began that night when you were shot at North Star!”
“Great Scott! Do you mean that he was the man who----”
“It seems to me to be more than likely. He is the man round whom all
these mysteries seem to centre.”
“What is the blighter?” asked the other quickly.
“That I must keep to myself for a little time. I may be mistaken, you
know. But if I am not----”
“You’ll let me know? You’ll give me the satisfaction of knowing that
the fellow will pay for these lungs of mine?” cried the sick man
eagerly.
“Yes,” answered the corporal pityingly. “I will let you know.”
Half an hour later as he left the cabin his face wore a set look that
boded ill for the man on whose trail he followed.