A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD
Macdonald drove his team into the teeth of the storm. The wind came
in gusts. Sometimes the gale was so stiff that the dogs could scarcely
crawl forward against it; again there were moments of comparative
stillness, followed by squalls that slapped the driver in the face like
the whipping of a loose sail on a catboat.
High drifts made the trail difficult. Not once but fifty times Macdonald
left the gee-pole to break a way through snow-waves for the sled. The
best he could get out of his dogs was three miles an hour, and he knew
that there was not another team or driver in the North could have done
so well.
It was close to noon when he reached a division of the road known as the
Fork. One trail ran down to the river and up it to the distant creeks.
The other led across the divide, struck the Yukon, and pointed a way to
the coast. White drifts had long since blotted out the track of the sled
that had preceded him. Had the fugitives gone up the river to the creeks
with intent to hole themselves up for the winter? Or was it their
purpose to cross the divide and go out over the ice to the coast?
The pursuer knew that Gid Holt was wise as a weasel. He could follow
blindfolded the paths that led to every creek in the gold-fields.
It might be taken as a certainty that he had not plunged into such a
desperate venture without having a plan well worked out beforehand.
Elliot had a high grade of intelligence. Would they try to reach the
coast and make their get-away to Seattle? Or would they dig themselves
in till the heavy snows were past and come back to civilization with the
story of a lucky strike to account for the gold they brought with them?
Neither gold-dust nor nuggets could be identified. There would be no way
of proving the story false. The only evidence against them would be that
they had left at Kusiak and this was merely of a corroborative kind.
There would be no chance of convicting them upon it.
But to strike for Seattle was to throw away all pretense of innocence.
Fugitives from justice, they would have to disappear from sight in order
to escape. The hunt for them would continue until at last they were
unearthed.
One fork of the road led to comparative safety; the other went by
devious windings to the penitentiary and perhaps the gallows. The
Scotchman put himself in the place of the men he was trailing. Given
the same conditions, he knew which path he would follow.
Macdonald took the trail that led down to the river, to the distant
gold-creeks which offered a refuge from man-hunters in many a deserted
cabin marooned by the deep snows.
Even the iron frame and steel muscles of the Scotch-Canadian protested
against the task he had set them that day. It was a time to sit snugly
inside by a stove and listen to the howling of the wind as it hurled
itself down from the divide. But from daylight till dark Colby Macdonald
fought with drifts and breasted the storm. He got into the harness with
the dogs. He broke trail for them, cheered them, soothed, comforted,
punished. Long after night had fallen he staggered into the hut of two
prospectors, his parka so stiff with frozen snow that it had to be
beaten with a hammer before the coat could be removed.
"How long since a dog team passed--seven huskies and two men?" was his
first question.
"No dog team has passed for four days," one of the men answered.
"You mean you haven't seen one," Macdonald corrected.
"I mean none has passed--unless it went by in the night while we slept.
And even then our dogs would have warned us."
Macdonald flung his ice-coated gloves to a table and stooped to take off
his mukluks. His face was blue with the cold, but the bleak look in the
eyes came from within. He said nothing more until he was free of his wet
clothes. Then he sat down heavily and passed a hand over his frozen
eyebrows.
"Get me something to eat and take care of my dogs. There is food for
them on the sled," he said.
While he ate he told them of the bank robbery and the murder. Their
resentment against the men who had done it was quite genuine. There
could be no doubt they told the truth when they said no sled had
preceded his. They were honest, reliable prospectors. He knew them
both well.
The weary man slept like a log. He opened his eyes next morning to find
one of his hosts shaking him.
"Six o'clock, Mr. Macdonald. Your breakfast is ready. Jim is looking out
for the huskies."
Half an hour later the Scotchman gave the order, "Mush!" He was off
again, this time on the back trail as far as the Narrows, from which
point he meant to strike across to intersect the fork of the road
leading to the divide.
The storm had passed and when the late sun rose it was in a blue sky.
Fine enough the day was overhead, but the slushy snow, where it was worn
thin on the river by the sweep of the wind, made heavy travel for the
dogs. Macdonald was glad enough to reach the Narrows, where he could
turn from the river and cut across to hit the trail of the men he was
following. He had about five miles to go before he would reach the Smith
Crossing road and every foot of it he would have to break trail for the
dogs. This was slow business, since he had no partner at the gee-pole.
Back and forth, back and forth he trudged, beating down the loose snow
for the runners. It was a hill trail, and the drifts were in most places
not very deep. But the Scotchman was doing the work of two, and at a
killing pace.
Over a ridge the team plunged down into a little park where the snow was
deeper. Macdonald, breaking trail across the mountain valley, found his
feet weighted with packed ice slush so that he could hardly move them.
When at last he had beaten down a path for his dogs he stood breathing
deep at the summit of the slope. Before him lay the main road to Smith's
Crossing, scarce fifty yards away. He gave a deep whoop of triumph, for
along it ran the wavering tracks left by a sled. He was on the heels of
his enemy at last.
As he turned back to his Siberian hounds, the eyes of Macdonald came to
abrupt attention. On the hillside, not ten yards from him, something
stuck out of the snow like a signpost. It was the foot of a man.
Slowly Macdonald moved toward it. He knew well enough what he had
stumbled across--one of the tragedies that in the North are likely
to be found in the wake of every widespread blizzard. Some unfortunate
traveler, blinded by the white swirl, had wandered from the trail and
had staggered up a draw to his death.
With a little digging the Alaskan uncovered a leg. The man had died
where he had fallen, face down. Macdonald scooped away the snow and
found a pack strapped to the back of the buried man. He cut the thongs
and tried to ease it away. But the gunnysack had frozen to the parka.
When he pulled, the rotten sacking gave way under the strain. The
contents of the pack spilled out.
The eyes in the grim face of Macdonald grew hard and steely. He had
found, by some strange freak of chance, much more than he had expected,
to find. Using his snowshoe as a shovel, he dug the body free and turned
it over. At sight of the face he gave a cry of astonishment.