THE LONG
PATROL
BY
ALBERT M. TREYNOR
AUTHOR OF
THE TRAIL FROM DEVIL'S COUNTRY.
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1924, 1926,
BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY. INC.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I The Ambushed Trail
II Knights of the Law
III Without Mercy
IV Find the Woman
V Shadows of Silence
VI The Doorway of Dread
VII The Hunted Woman
VIII The Runaway Girl
IX Go Get 'Em!
X No-Man's Country
XI The Voice of Warning
XII The Rendezvous
XIII Blind-Man's Chase
XIV Paths of Peril
XV The Brink of Death
XVI Unseen Enemies
XVII At Five Hundred Yards
XVIII Lodging for Two
XIX The Honor of the Service
XX When Spring Came Back
XXI Path of the Avalanche
XXII The Man-Trap
XXIII Fair Warning
XXIV A Hard-Won Promise
XXV A Voluntary Prisoner
XXVI Man and Woman
XXVII The Faltering Faith
XXVIII The Escape
XXIX The Blazed Road
XXX Dangerous Waters
XXXI Ill-Favored Company
XXXII Copperhead
XXXIII High Stakes
XXXIV Gamblers' Oaths
XXXV Hazard of the Game
XXXVI The Grim Accounting
XXXVII News from Outside
XXXVIII The Greatest Gift
XXXIX You Never Can Tell
THE LONG PATROL
CHAPTER I
THE AMBUSHED TRAIL
Near the foot of the valley slope lay an inanimate, drab-colored
object of some sort, barely defined against the smooth sweep of the
snowy mountainside. From the wooded ridge above, it appeared as a
faint speck upon the panorama of wintry landscape. Ninety-nine
travelers in a hundred might have passed that direction and never
noticed any break in the monotonous waste of white. But on that
evening, a little before the fall of dusk, there rode by chance, from
out of the pass and over the trail, the one man of a hundred. There
were few things worth seeing in the wilderness that escaped the
restless scrutiny of Corporal David Dexter of the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police.
A glance ranging across space, as the eagle gazes, and the horseman
tightened rein and checked his pony on the brow of the slide. He sat
immobile, looking downward. The dun-tinted shape could have been
mistaken at the distance for a hillside bowlder or a rotted stump or
a tussock of dried grass. But Corporal Dexter was not deceived.
October's first snow had swirled over the ranges that day, and the
three inch fall spread its covering impartially over mountain and
forest and open park. The brownish object below should have been
sheeted white, like everything else in view. Whatever it was it must
have fallen there in the new snow, some time after the last flurry
had passed, not more than a couple of hours before.
The place was a lonely, isolated spot, deep-shut among the remoter
fastnesses of the northern Rockies: a haunt of big horn sheep and
wandering grizzly bears. Probably there were not five white men
alive who had ever sighted the line of unnamed mountain peaks that
jutted like broken saw teeth against the eastward sky. The evidence
of any recent visitation was of interest to the police.
The rider paused only to reconnoiter the ground below him, and then
thrust his knee into his horse's withers, and urged the animal over
the shoulder of the declivity. The slope was steep and slippery, but
the wise little mountain pony was used to hazardous going. She
settled back almost upon her shaggy haunches, and with forelegs
reaching stiffly before her, she went scrambling and sliding to the
bottom. A quick jog carried the horseman across the snow-smoothed
level beyond, and then he knew what it was he had come out of his way
to find.
At his pony's feet lay the drab-colored object that had caught his
attention on the heights. It was a stiff-brimmed hat--a banded
uniform Stetson, such as he himself wore tilted to the crease of his
straight drawn brows. The hat had fallen crown up in the snow, and
near by, half buried in the white drift, was sprawled a motionless
human figure, clad in the familiar summer tunic of the Northwest
police.
Corporal Dexter slid out of his saddle, and a second later was
kneeling on the ground. He raised the body to a sitting posture,
with one of his arms supporting the lolling head, and it needed no
further scrutiny to apprise him of the fact of death. His hand
pressed against the wet, still-warm face, and he looked at the closed
eyelids and tight-locked lips of a man he knew. It was Constable
Tommy Graves, R.C.M.P., from the inspection post at Fort Dauntless,
two hundred miles to the south.
Corporal Dexter was attached to the barracks at Crooked Forks on the
old Dawson road, far across the ranges. But he had met young Graves
now and then on long patrol, and remembered him as a gay and gallant
comrade. Skirting the edge of a juniper clump there approached from
the southward a line of nearly effaced footprints. Thus, after
devious wandering, Constable Graves had come to the appointed hour
and place, and here his life's trail ended.
The hair at the base of the boy's skull was matted red, and Dexter's
probing finger discovered an ugly opening where a bullet had entered
from behind. The skin over the forehead was bunched and broken, and
the corporal, using a delicately wielded penknife blade, a moment
later came into possession of a flattened chunk of lead, .30 caliber
size.
The words "vengeance" and "reprisal" are never spoken by a mounted
officer. Nevertheless, there is no place on earth where the murderer
of a policeman may feel safe from the menace of the reaching hand.
Dexter at present was on long patrol in the wilderness, seeking two
fugitives who were wanted in the settlements for a brutal case of
assault and battery. But now his plans must change. New and more
urgent business called him.
Crouching on his heels beside his fallen comrade, he took off one of
his gloves, and blew his breath to warm his finger tips. From his
pocket he brought forth pencil and notebook, and, with calm, steady
hand he wrote his brief report. He himself might be summoned at any
time to meet a similar fate, and as a member of a methodical
organization it was his duty to leave the written record behind. The
bullet was sealed in an envelope with the scribbled page, and the
packet then buttoned securely in his tunic pocket.
His own terse statement tucked away for safe keeping, he bent over to
learn if Tommy Graves' journal sheets were inscribed to date. The
young constable's notebook held the usual daily report, beginning
three weeks back, when he had set out on his last journey from Fort
Dauntless; but the record told only of trivial matters, of miles
traveled and landmarks sighted, and did not mention the errand that
fetched him to this far, lonesome valley of the British Columbian
mountains. Possibly it was a secret mission that he dared not
particularize by written words.
A single clew was afforded by a photograph found in the constable's
inside pocket. It was a double Bertillon card, carrying the stamp of
detective headquarters of Chicago, Illinois, and showing full-face
and profile portraits of a man whose name was written down as "Roy
('Pink') Crill." The subject of the police photograph was a
gross-featured man with no eyebrows and very little hair. It was a
repellent physiognomy: thick, pendulous jowl, puffy cheeks, eyes sunk
in deep sockets. The cranium was flat on top, with a peculiar
indentation behind the temples that somehow made Dexter think of the
pits in a copperhead's skull.
Whoever this "Pink" Crill might be, the existence of a Bertillon
picture at least proved a criminal record. It was not an unnatural
assumption to suppose that he was in flight from the other side of
the border, and that young Graves had been assigned to the fatal
business of stalking him down.
Crill's body and facial measurements had been jotted down in the
columns allotted for the purpose of identification, and after running
his glance over the card the Corporal was able to form a vivid mental
picture of the man. He would know him if he met him.
Pocketing the Bertillon card for future reference, Dexter stood up,
his hands balanced on his hips. With his underlip thrust slightly
forward, he moodily scanned the ground where the tragedy had taken
place.
The re-staging of the crime presented few difficulties for the
experienced observer. Behind the fallen body was a snow-shrouded
log. Fifty paces beyond the course of a frozen creek ran past. The
banks of the stream were thickly fringed with junipers, but at this
one point there was a break in the cover. Winding up from a distant
notch in the mountains, the creek afforded the logical trail for any
voyageur making in that direction from the southeast. The log
commanded the opening in the juniper bushes, and Constable Graves had
been sitting on the log.
Even under the covering of fresh snow, the marks were legible. The
policeman's rifle lay buried as it had fallen in the cold drift near
the log. Graves evidently had sat there for a long while, with his
rifle across his knees. Like a deer hunter he had chosen his place
in the open and allowed the falling flakes to cover him, while he
waited, motionless. The still hunt needs patience, but usually it is
the surest way.
In this instance, however, something had gone wrong with the hunter's
plans. No one had come along the course of the brook. The snowy
stream surface was as smooth and level as placer sand. Dexter
contemplated the lower stretch of ground, and then turned with
meditative eyes to search the slope behind him.
A stand of densely growing cedars climbed upward along the
mountainside. Obeying the trailer's instinct, he walked straight
across the open ground and entered the nearest point of cover. And
there he found, as he was sure he must find, the imprints of booted
feet.
Somebody who wore a criss-cross pattern of hob nails had stood
concealed in a fairy bower of frost-rimed branches. The furrowed
snow in a breast-high crotch indicated the place where a rifle barrel
had been rested for steady sighting. And from the powdery drift at
his feet the corporal picked up an empty cartridge case, .30 caliber,
that smelled of freshly burned powder. The story was complete.
The trail of the departing hob nails went northward through the
cedars, and thence Corporal Dexter's future pathway lay, inevitable,
unswerving, relentless as the summons of fate.
A policeman does not desert a policeman, in life or death. Dexter
returned to his fallen comrade, and as gently as though he feared the
hurting of sensate flesh, he gathered the pitiful human shape into
his arms. He was not a big nor powerful man, but there was a lithe,
cougar-like adequacy hidden in the muscles of a lean and hard-trained
body, and he made little effort of his task.
Susy, the pony, objected to her new burden, but Dexter had no time to
parley. He crowded into the horse with his shoulder, and before she
could really think of acting skittish, the limp weight was deposited
across her saddle. Dexter bent a few turns of a lashing thong under
the cinches, and after that she could do nothing but submit to the
arrangement.
As coolly as a workman taking a needed tool from his kit, the
corporal pulled his carbine out of the saddle holster. Then, with
the reins twisted in his fingers, and the pony shambling at his
heels, he turned back afoot into the cedars and started northward,
following the hobnail boots.
CHAPTER II
KNIGHTS OF THE LAW
In the wild mountain district where Corporal Dexter and a few
knightly comrades rode in the service of the King's Law, there was
not more than one officer available to patrol each two hundred square
miles of territory. In the back hills were certain inaccessible
regions never visited by civilized beings. A crime committed in such
an out-of-the-way valley as this might remain unsuspected for years.
The murderer of Constable Graves could have no inkling that a second
officer had just ridden down through the passes. It probably did not
occur to him that there was any danger of pursuit, and he did not try
to mask his trail.
The tracks led for a distance through the thick timber, and then
slanted down to the brook and continued northward along the
unobstructed course of the stream. The killer walked with a free,
unhurried stride, without pausing anywhere by the way to listen or
glance behind. Particles of feathery snow still held loosely around
the edges of the prints, and Corporal Dexter knew that the maker of
the tracks was traveling not more than twenty minutes ahead of him.
For a distance of two miles or so the trail followed the meanderings
of the winter-bound brook. But at last, near the banks of a forking
stream, the hob nails turned aside and entered a dismal spruce forest
that extended upward over the valley slope in an unbroken area of
overweighted tree tops. The failing twilight scarcely filtered
through the interlaced branches overhead, and Dexter found himself
groping among the shadowy tree shapes in a purple-tinged dusk that
thickened and deepened as he advanced.
He quickened his pace, hoping to run down his quarry before night
overtook him. But he had traveled scarcely five hundred yards among
the spruces, when he discovered open ground ahead, and stopped short
at the edge of a stumpy clearing, cut in the midst of the standing
timber.
Before him in the darkness, vague and unreal as the apparition of a
wood troll's dwelling, there loomed the dingy outline of a low-roofed
log cabin.
The horseman instinctively reached behind to grab his pony's muzzle.
But the precaution was needless. Susy stood with drooping head, and
apparently lacked interest to announce her arrival. Dexter eyed her
sharply, with a passing glance at the burden she carried, and then
turned back to reconnoiter the shadows.
He had not heard of any settlers living on this side of the range.
Apparently the builder of this cabin was a newcomer. The logs showed
recent ax marks, and the second growth of seedlings had not yet found
time to spring up among the stumps.
The silence was like a weight upon the senses. Dexter heard no sound
except the faint creak of saddle leather as Susy breathed. He might
easily imagine himself alone in all that vast stretch of forest. But
as he peered forth from behind his shelter of brush, a vagrant puff
of air brought to him an odor of chimney smoke. And as he strained
his vision to see in the gathering darkness, he was aware that the
hobnail prints ran directly across the open ground to the cabin door.
He left the pony to drowse in the thicket, with the reins dangling
from the bit, and strode forward alone into the clearing. Placing
his own feet in the marks left by the other boots, he followed his
man to the cabin entrance. For ten seconds he held motionless, his
foot touching the outer sill. Still he heard no sound. But the line
of tracks ended here, and he knew that Constable Graves' murderer was
inside the cabin.
Between two men who had not yet seen each other, the door of spruce
slabs held shut like the closed book of doom. Once it was opened,
the warrant of death for one or the other must be read. If Corporal
Dexter crossed the threshold, he would walk forth again to escort a
manacled prisoner to the hangman's gibbet at Fort Dauntless; or else
he would not walk forth again. It was the custom of the mounted to
play for all or nothing, and ask no odds of fortune. The corporal's
thin lips harbored a half cynical smile as he accepted the terms. He
prayed only that the drawbar was not fastened.
The click of his carbine sounded fearfully loud in his ears as he
thumbed back the hammer. He did not wait after that, but reached
with his left hand to knock open the wooden latch. The door swung
ajar, and he kicked it wide on its squeaking hinges.
Even in that moment one corner of Dexter's restless mind was absurdly
detached from the rest of himself, engaged in trivial speculation.
The cabin builder must have come there after the grizzlies holed-up
for the winter, he reasoned in lightning flashes of thought.
Otherwise he would have got a silver tip, and so had bear grease on
hand to lubricate hinges. Dexter's orderly soul hated annoyances
that could be prevented, such as squeaking doors.
He had crossed the snow-buried sill with crunching feet, and halted
on the threshold, his glance sweeping the square, murky space before
him. Details impressed themselves instantaneously: walls of peeled
logs; tiny, four-paned windows; bare puncheon floor; a disorderly
grouping of ax-hewn furniture; a smoldering fire in a clay-daubed
fireplace; the pent-in odors of camp stew and wood smoke and steaming
garments. A man with a shaggy beard knelt by the fire stirring a
cooking pot. He whirled at the rush of cold air from the doorway,
and then his stirring spoon rattled on the hearth as he stumbled to
his feet.
Corporal Dexter had counted on the chance of there being more than
one person in the cabin. And it was well for him that he was on his
guard. Some intuitive faculty of the brain served the warning, and
without seeing or hearing, he was aware of a gliding movement along
the wall at his right. He caught the edge of the door and swung it
back towards him as a buckler of defense. As he jerked his head
aside a spurt of flame scorched his face, an explosive report slammed
in his ears, a bullet plowed the door slab and deflected in
spattering pieces.
His face stung from the flying splinters, and there was a trickle of
blood at the corner of his eye. Choked by powder fumes, half
blinded, he flung the door against the wall. A crouching shape and
the oval of a white face loomed in the smoke. He caught the blurred
outline of a hand, and a pistol poked almost into his face. Lacking
time to shorten the reach of his carbine, he did not try to fire, but
struck, instead, with the heavy barrel.
The rap of the steel on knuckle bones gave a crisp, nut-cracking
sound. He laughed aloud. There was a thump at his feet, and he saw
the pistol on the floor. He could reach the weapon with the toe of
his boot, and he worked it towards him and kicked it through the
doorway. Then he backed away a pace, with carbine leveled. He spoke
with restraint, keeping the excitement from his voice. "Take
warning," he said. "I arrest you in the name of His Majesty, the
King."
The light from the fireplace reflected upon the shadowy figure of his
assailant. The man had clutched at his right hand with his left, and
was glaring at the officer with the tense, sullen ferocity of a
trapped animal. The position of the hands, partly extended, gripped
together in pain, gave unwitting invitation. In a trice Dexter had
brought a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. With incredible
swiftness he reached forward, and there was a double snick as he
linked the steel circlets about the man's wrists and sprang fast the
locking wards.
The prisoner shuddered at the cold touch of metal, and shrank
backward, an instant too late. He was an under-sized man, sallow of
face, with short-cropped black hair, sharp, hawklike features, and
dark, wide-spaced eyes that glittered with unnatural brightness in
the firelight. The corporal's glance went down to the heavy mountain
boots, which his prisoner wore tightly laced over the tucked-in
bottoms of his trousers. The boots were wet with melting snow.
He nodded grimly. "Why did you kill Constable Graves?" he asked.
The man turned his head in surly defiance, and refused to answer.
"Who are you?"
The stranger breathed harshly through his open mouth, but still
maintained his stubborn silence.
"Very well," said Dexter. "It's your privilege not to commit
yourself. But I warn you of the facts to be submitted to the
Minister of Justice. Young Graves murdered--thirty caliber bullet
through the back of his head. Thirty caliber case in the snow.
Queer pattern hobnails leading here--tracks that match those wet
boots you're wearing." He glanced sharply about him, and stepped
suddenly into the corner and picked up a rifle that was leaning
against the wall. "Thirty caliber," he observed, and then threw down
the lever to sniff at the breach. "Fired recently, and not yet
cleaned," he added, and thrust the weapon behind the door, out of
harm's way. "All complete! Not to mention the personal fact that
you fired at sight, with murderous intent, when Corporal Dexter
strolled into your doorway."
From the moment he had entered the cabin, Dexter had kept the corner
of a wary eye on the shaggy-haired individual by the fireplace. The
man had scrambled up from his cooking pot when the door banged open,
but after that he had remained standing uncertainly on his stumpy
legs without venturing to join in the hostilities. Now for the first
time the corporal turned to look squarely upon his unkempt bearded
countenance. And with the meeting glance the officer's eyelids
flickered suddenly in pleased surprise.
Here, at least, was some one he knew without asking introductions.
In the travel-stained man with the untidy whiskers, he recognized one
of the fugitives whom he had been following across the ranges from
Crooked Forks. "Well now!" he ejaculated. "Jess Mudgett!"
"Yes, sir," muttered the other, with a furtive, hangdog lowering of
the head.
"Warn you also," asserted the corporal crisply. "You and 'Phonse
Doucet assaulted and almost killed the trader at Crooked Forks. He
foolishly tried to make you pay the last year's account, I
understand. We needn't go into that now. This new matter is more
important. Accessory in murder, perhaps. At any rate, you'll go
with us to Fort Dauntless. I arrest you in the name of His Majesty,
the King."
"I don't know what you're talking about," faltered Mudgett, his
forehead paling under the grime. "That storekeeper--I can explain
about that. And as for--anything else: I ain't had nothing to do
with--anything wrong. I swear my Bible oath."
Dexter surveyed the man curiously. He knew him of old--a trapper in
season, general ne'er-do-well at all times, sneak thief on occasion,
notorious coward--he never would have assaulted anybody unaided.
'Phonse Doucet, of course, was the instigator in that affair--Doucet,
the half-breed, braggadocio and bully, a giant of a man, with a
dangerous habit of going amuck when liquor was to be had.
"Where is 'Phonse now?" asked the corporal. "I trailed you two as
far as Wild Swan Creek, and then I lost you."
"'Phonse went north," asserted Mudgett. "He'll be far from here by
now."
"Who's your new friend?" the officer inquired.
Mudgett started to speak, but at that instant he happened to meet the
beady glance of the shackled man across the room; and he received a
look of baleful warning that made his teeth click over the half
uttered word. He rubbed his nose nervously to hide his confusion.
"Never saw him before," he stammered. "Just came here a little while
ago for shelter. Didn't tell me his name."
Dexter himself had felt the threat pass, like an electric discharge,
and he knew that he could get nothing out of Mudgett while he
remained under the malevolent eye of the murderer. He did not
attempt to pursue the subject. "Whose cabin is this?" he asked after
an interval. "It's new."
"I built it this fall," said Mudgett uneasily. "Figured to trap
marten and lynx over the winter."
"All alone?" asked Dexter, who knew that mountain trappers usually
worked in pairs.
"No," said Mudgett after a moment's hesitation.
"Is this man here your partner?"
Mudgett shot a furtive glance at the other prisoner, and shook his
head. "No," he replied, "I'm working with another man."
"Who?" asked Dexter, eyeing him sharply.
"A fellow named Stark."
"Who's Stark?" the corporal inquired. "Never heard of him."
"Trapper mostly. That's about all I can tell you. I met up with him
last summer and we decided to throw in together."
"Where is he now?" asked Dexter with a quizzical stare.
"Somewhere up the valley scoutin' out lines for the traps. Don't
know just where."
Acting on impulse the corporal brought out the Bertillon card he had
taken from the pocket of Constable Graves. He exhibited the
photographic likeness of the man known to the Chicago police as
"Pink" Crill. "Is this your Stark, by any chance?"
Mudgett leaned forward to see the print. But if he recognized the
ill favored physiognomy, he gave no sign. "Never saw him before," he
declared in his whining voice.
The inquiry was leading nowhere, and Dexter decided he might better
save his breath until some later moment when he had Mudgett alone.
He buttoned the photograph into his tunic, and smiled acidly.
"I'm going out to look after my horse," he observed, "and meanwhile
I'll truss you for safekeeping."
He had only the one pair of manacles, but a brief search of the cabin
discovered a length of elkhide thong. Approaching Mudgett, he
twisted the rawhide about his wrists, and knotted the loop tight.
The cringing trapper protested his innocence almost with sobs, but
his pleading went unheeded. Dexter glanced about with a speculative
frown, and then motioned the man towards the double-decked bunk,
built against the wall at the right of the fireplace.
"I'll feel more comfortable about you two if you're in bed," he said.
"We all might as well sleep a few hours before we start south. So
climb in, please."
There was something in the quality of the corporal's voice that
schooled Mudgett to instant obedience. Without a word, the trapper
shambled across the floor and hoisted himself into the bunk.
Dexter turned next to the handcuffed man. "You in the upper berth,"
he commanded.
The stranger stood backed against the logs of the opposite wall, with
his shoulders drooping, his arms hanging limply. But as the officer
addressed him he looked up with his somber stare. He must have
appreciated the futility of resistance however, and after a second's
hesitation he lurched forward, and moved towards the bunk on heavy,
dragging feet.
"You still prefer to remain nameless?" inquired the corporal.
The prisoner made no answer, but as he stumbled past Dexter he shot
him a glance so charged with venom that even the seasoned man-hunter
was startled.
The officer refrained from further remarks, and stood by with
compressed lips until the man had climbed into the upper berth.
Then, in silence, he fastened the booted feet together with
unbreakable rawhide. This done, he pushed the end of the thong
between a crack of the foot logs, drew it taut, and secured it to the
outer bunk post, where the knot could not possibly be reached by
manacled hands. Mudgett's feet then were similarly bound, and lashed
flat against the end of the bunk.
"I'll ease 'em up a bit when I come back," Dexter promised.
"Meanwhile you'll have to make the best of it."
Serene in the knowledge that his prisoners would not escape during
his absence, he walked out of the cabin and slammed the door behind
him.
It was pitch dark outside, and growing colder. The corporal felt his
way across the clearing to the thicket where he had left Susy, and
was not greatly astonished to find that the pony had disappeared.
His pocket lamp revealed her hoof prints leading through the timber,
and he followed her for a half mile or so across the slope, and
finally overtook her in an open ravine where she had smelled out a
patch of elk hay that could be pawed up from under the snow.
She came back a few steps to meet him, and meekly nudged him with her
forehead while she was receiving her deserved scolding. Dexter
relieved her of the grim burden she carried. He made a hammock sling
of his bed tarp and picket rope; and as the Indians protect their
dead, so he hoisted among scented tree branches the muffled figure of
his one-time comrade; and left him for the night. This melancholy
service rendered, he took off Susy's saddle, removed the bit from her
mouth, and permitted her to remain in the gulley where she had found
shelter and pasturage for herself.
Then, with his thoughts on the savory pot that Mudgett had so
opportunely set stewing in the fireplace, he turned back on the trail
and retraced his steps to the clearing among the spruces.
He had been absent nearly an hour, and the unattended grate fire must
have burned itself out. Not the faintest flicker of light showed
from the cabin windows, and it was impossible to discern even the
outline of the building in the all-engulfing darkness. He groped his
path among the stumps, and finally reached the door.
Stamping the snow from his feet, he was fumbling for the door latch,
when the deathlike silence was suddenly broken by a shrill, whirring
sound, as though a bell were ringing.
He stood stock-still, with lips fallen apart, listening in blank
astonishment. The bell stopped ringing; there followed a momentary
hush; and then he heard a voice speaking. The tones carried to him
from the darkness within, clear and distinct. His eyes opened wider,
and for seconds he stood motionless on the outer threshold, tense and
wondering. Incredulous at first, he knew at once that he could not
be mistaken. It was a woman's voice he heard.
CHAPTER III
WITHOUT MERCY
For a breathless interval Dexter held his position before the closed
door, listening to the amazing voice within. A woman! Her words
came to him, decisive and sharp, in high-keyed inflection. It was
too dark to look for new footprints, but whoever she was, she must
have arrived there during his absence. But whence had she come?
What was a woman doing in this far-off, snow-buried forest? Even a
vivid imagination failed to answer.
Had he acted on first impulses, Dexter would have thrust his way into
the room to demand explanations. But reflection stayed him. He
probably would learn more about her if he kept out of sight.
She was talking excitedly, in quick, broken sentences. "Betrayed!"
he heard her say to some one invisible. "The police are in the
valley."
There ensued a brief pause. Then she spoke again. "Yes! Both
arrested! Murder--a constable from Fort Dauntless!"
Another silence followed, and the listener outside waited in acutest
suspense. "That's what I was afraid of," said the speaker finally,
as though in response to a question. "They quizz them until their
nerve breaks, and they tell all they know. But don't worry. I'll
take care of that danger. Nobody's going to talk this time."
There was a hushed interval once more, and then the woman laughed.
It was a strange, mirthless laugh, with a wild, inhuman note that
sent a shiver through the hearer's veins. "Lifeless tongues never
talk!" she asserted in a reckless tone. "You lie low for a while,
and you're in no danger. I give you my word! There's one thing left
to do, and I'm doing it now!" A breathless interlude passed, and the
woman spoke with sharp finality. "I'm going through with it!" she
declared in rising accents. "That's settled! Good-by!"
The voice broke off with a hysterical catch at the end. For five
seconds no sound came from the cabin. From the spruces somewhere a
little timber owl sent forth a hollow, long-drawn trill, that floated
in the air, lonesome and remote, and died like an expiring breath.
The veering wind eddied around the north wall of the cabin, cutting
with razor sharpness through protecting woolens, flinging snow
particles. Corporal Dexter shivered, and again his hand reached for
the door latch.
But before he found the handle, the silence was rent by a man's
scream--a hoarse voice, straining to unnatural falsetto, that carried
terror and craven pleading in a single frenzied outcry, "Don't! Oh,
no! Merc--!"
The appeal broke in the middle of the word, and the door of the cabin
trembled before the jarring concussion of an exploding firearm.
There was an appalling hush; and then the horrid thump of another
gunshot jarred the door of the cabin.
The corporal's chilled fingers had found the latch at last, and as he
lifted it up, he flung his weight forward to throw open the door.
But the latch seemed to have jammed, and his shoulder bumped forcibly
against solid planks that failed to give. He hammered at the catch,
and heaved himself recklessly against the barrier, in an effort to
break his way in. But he only bruised his shoulder, and the door
would not yield. Instead of wasting his further efforts, he stooped
to discover what was wrong. And then he understood. The bar was
down. The door had been locked from the inside.
From the darkened cabin there came a vague jumble of sounds: a soft
thud of a weight falling, a stifled groan of mortal anguish, a
fluttering movement of something on the creaking floor boards. But
the wind was also in Dexter's ears, and he could not have sworn
definitely just what it was he heard.
He remembered a split of log on the ground, that he had stumbled over
when he crossed the clearing a while before. Now he retraced his
steps, and dug the heavy billet out of the snow. The quartered
section of tree trunk was as much as his strength could manage, but
he lugged it back to the cabin and contrived to swing it as a ram.
The first and second blows seemed to have little effect on the
stoutly barred door, but the continued battering began to tell.
Finally he heard a splintering crack within, and at last something
gave way entirely, and the door broke from its frame and sprang open
with a crash. He dropped his log and stepped across the threshold,
his narrowed eyes searching the gloom of the smoke-filled room.
The hearth fire had dwindled down to a few smoldering coals that
threw a dull red shimmer to the opposite wall. But beyond the faint
streak of light, the darkness was impenetrable. An ominous silence
surcharged the oppressive, tainted atmosphere.
Baxter's finger was on the trigger of his carbine as he held
impassive, listening for some rustle of sound to locate an intruding
presence. He knew that his figure loomed in silhouette against the
dim glowing hearth, and he was keenly alive to the imminence of
danger. At any instant he might see the flash, hear the crash of a
shot fired treacherously from the darkness; and he steeled himself
unconsciously to the shock of sudden hurt.
His weapon was balanced lightly at his hip, and with his free hand he
drew out his pocket lamp. The shaft of light struck across the room,
throwing its brilliant white bull's-eye upon the bunks. He looked,
and his eyes dilated at the ugly sight before him.
Fallen backwards, half in and half out of the bunk, Mudgett hung
feet uppermost, his head and shoulders resting on the floor, his
ankles still tied to the foot logs, as the corporal had left him.
His long, matted hair had tumbled back from his temples, and he gazed
up at the ceiling with unmoving eyes that shone with the luster of
opaque glass. His hands were still bound together by the elkskin
thong. From under his shoulders a dark tinged stain trickled and
spread upon the floor.
Automatically, as a man acting in a daze, Dexter shifted his light
upward. The higher bunk was still occupied by the man without a
name. He was lying on his side, still and lifeless, his manacled
arms dangling limply over the edge of the bunk. His feet were
securely tied to the end post, and so, like Mudgett, he had met his
fate while helplessly fettered, tethered like a sheep for slaughter,
without a chance of fighting back.
The fierce dark eyes were closed, and the bitter lines of malice
somehow had been erased from his pallid face. His temple was black
with powder burn, and just behind his eye there showed the red
drilled mark of an entering bullet. Dexter observed certain other
details of fact, and it needed no closer examination to tell him that
both prisoners had been delivered from his hands by death.
CHAPTER IV
FIND THE WOMAN
The corporal had faced horrors before. It was not the hideous
envisioning of tragedy that froze his blood: it was the haunting
memory of the voice that he had heard--the voice of a woman.
"Lifeless tongues never talk!" she had said in dreadful resolve. And
the sound of that voice still echoed in his brain. The fatal shots
were fired by a woman.
Somewhere among the shadows this woman must be hiding now, backed in
one of the dark corners, probably, crouching cat-like with weapon in
hand, watching every move that Dexter made.
The policeman stood in a situation of peril, and for once in an
adventurous career he was at a loss to know how to meet an emergency.
He never before had been called upon to deal with an armed and
desperate woman, and there came over him suddenly a strange feeling
of inefficiency as he realized that, no matter who she was or what
she had done or might do, he could not make himself draw the trigger
of his gun. Masculine pride, the honor of the mounted, every
deep-rooted instinct--heritage of a warrior race and breed--cried out
against such an unnatural encounter. He would have to take this
woman alive and unharmed, or else she must go free, and leave him
dead with his two prisoners in the cabin among the spruces.
He still clung to his carbine, on the off-chance of bluffing through
a most disagreeable business. But in the show-down he knew he would
have to trust to luck and his quickness of movement.
With nerves strung taut as wires he faced about and flashed the
bull's-eye of his lamp around the walls of the room. And the bright
searching light discovered no resemblance of human shape.
Incredulous, he winked his eyes two or three times, and turned for
his second survey of the cabin interior. Slow and deliberate now, he
moved the lamp from left to right, dipping the shaft of light from
rafters to floor, and upward again; and so wove luminous orbits
around the four walls of the room. He scrutinized the underside of
the clapboard roof, looked under the bunk, poked behind a row of
garments hanging on pegs, and finally even peered up the fireplace
chimney. And he saw neither substance nor shadow to betray the
existence of any lurking intruder.
There was a quantity of cut brush and fagots piled by the hearth.
The policeman stooped for an armful of the kindling, tossed the fuel
into the fireplace, and applied a match. The dry, pitchy material
took flame instantly, and crackled into a furious blaze. The yellow
flare reflected to the farthest corner, searching out every black
nook where a person could hide. And there was no one visible.
For a moment he stood irresolute, with puzzled lines drawn between
his brows. A woman had been in the cabin a little while before. She
must have entered shortly after he went to search for Susy. And she
had barred the door behind her. Apparently she had locked him out
with deliberate intention, while she did the work she had hardened
herself to do.
On his return he had heard the mysterious ringing of a bell. He had
heard her quick, overwrought speech; the shots that were fired. His
hearing was trustworthy. But if by chance he were tempted to doubt
the testimony of his own ears, there remained the two lifeless,
huddled objects in the bunks to bear mute witness to the remorseless
visitation.
It seemed unlikely that she could have found her chance to escape in
the short time it had taken him to pick up the log and batter his way
into the cabin. The possibility of some secret cubbyhole, behind the
logs or under the floor, suggested itself. As his glance strayed
about him, his eye was caught by a metallic glint of something that
had been dropped near the wall across the room from the bunks.
Crossing the floor, he reached down and picked up a small
pearl-handled revolver.
The gun he had knocked from the hand of his first prisoner was a big,
heavy-framed weapon. This was a small caliber revolver, light in
weight, delicately made--the sort of firearm a woman might choose to
carry in her handbag. With a grim tightening of his lips he tilted
up the breach and snapped the cartridges from the cylinder. Two were
empty cases that had just been fired.
He nodded to himself. This, of course, was the weapon of death.
Either it had fallen accidentally from a trembling, guilty hand, or
else the owner had flung it away as a hateful possession. Dexter
pocketed the revolver, and set about his distasteful task. The woman
must be hiding somewhere, and he would find her, he promised himself,
if he had to turn the cabin inside out.
He was standing near the doorway, and he started to work
systematically around the walls. The structure, which contained the
single, barren, four-square room, was built of six inch logs,
saddle-notched at the corners and chinked with moss and clay. An
inspection of the cubical interior quickly convinced him that the
walls could hold no closet or compartment large enough for the
concealment of a human being. From the floor to the slanting roof
overhead, all space was easily accounted for. He searched high and
low, in the fireplace, behind the bunks, back of the door, under the
window sills. Every log and chinked crevice between the logs was
subjected to minutest scrutiny. He even climbed up on the bunk poles
to assure himself that there was no false work between rafters and
the outside roof. Nothing of interest was discovered.
There still was the floor to be looked under. The floor was made of
adze-hewn puncheons, uneven and loosely laid, without being spiked to
the beams. With an old spade he had found, Dexter got a purchase
under one of the rude planks, and pried it up. He had eliminated all
other possible places of retreat, and as he snapped on the button of
his pocket-lamp and dropped to his knees, he felt with a certain
sense of disquiet that something at last was due to happen.
A dank odor of forest mold came up from the hole he had made, and
from the under darkness he heard the squeak and sudden scampering of
a family of pack rats. But there was no other sound or movement of
life.
He raised a second strip of flooring, and then, with a quick-drawn
breath, he squeezed his lean body through the opening. There was no
knowing what he might find under here, and as he flattened upon his
chest to avoid the beams, he could not help reminding himself that
quarters were a bit cramped for active maneuvering. The ground under
him was littered with decaying forest stuff, and evidently had never
been disturbed by rake or spade. There was barely enough space under
the floor for him to move, but by wriggling along at full length, he
made his way to the end of the cabin and back again. And he found
nothing whatever. The mystery of the voice remained unsolved.
Emerging from the opening in the floor, he brushed the leaves and
dirt from his uniform, and stood motionless for a space, a look of
perplexity clouding his keen, weather-bronzed face. He had heard a
sound like a whirring bell that, amazingly, had made him think of a
telephone. But a telephone in service must have wires leading
somewhere. He had examined every square foot of ground and walls and
roof, and had found no connected instrument, nor any vestige of
electric wiring in the cabin. There was no way to account for the
bell. It was bewildering.
For the time being, however, he was most concerned about the woman.
She was not in the cabin--that much was settled. She must have
managed to get away somehow.
His glance strayed to the door, hanging partly open on its broken
hinges. There remained this one possibility. She might have been
standing by the wall when he battered his way into the cabin.
Waiting her chance, she could have slipped behind him in the darkness
as he stumbled over the threshold, and then passed out unseen through
the open doorway. In which event her departing footsteps would
betray her. Dexter crossed the cabin, and stepped outside.
His flash-lamp served him once more. The light scintillated upon the
fresh fallen snow, awakening a sparkle of diamonds. From the
darkness beyond the clearing came the trail of hobnail boots that had
led him in the first place to this dismal habitation in the forest.
Also the marks of his own making were clearly defined. But there
were no other prints.
He rubbed his wet sleeve across his eyes, and gazed searchingly about
him. And there was nothing to be seen but whited stumps, and the
soft, unscuffled surface of snowy ground. The woman had not come out
that direction.
There were windows in the cabin--one on each side and two in the
rear--which were large enough, perhaps, to allow a small and
frightened fugitive to squeeze her body through. He walked around
the building, throwing the light rays back and forth as he advanced,
examining the ground underfoot and each window sill as well. So he
made the circuit of the cabin, and came back, hopelessly perplexed,
to his starting place at the front door. The snow lay as it had
fallen on the sills and under the windows, without any imprints of
human making. The slayer of the two men in the cabin bunks had
vanished without leaving any trace behind.
Dexter was ready to confess his utter mystification. A queer feeling
of unreality gripped him, as though he suddenly discovered himself in
contention with some strange, unnatural denizen of the forest, who
flitted about on darksome errands without touching foot to the earth.
Some one was there a few minutes ago; murder had been done; and now
this some one was gone--disappeared like a shadow in a dream.
The ringing sound he had heard only added to his bewilderment. It
really was absurd to suspect the existence of a telephone circuit in
the wilderness, nevertheless in his tour of the outer premises the
corporal had looked for telephone wires. Had there been a line of
any sort leading to the cabin, the snow-covered strands would have
revealed themselves in the bright glare of his flashlight. He had
found no wires.
The idea of a radio set occurred to him, and was immediately
abandoned. Such a means of communication would require aerials and a
connecting wire running to the cabin; or, if not that, at least an
inside loop. Also there would have to be batteries, not to mention
the bulky receiving and transmitting instruments. There was no such
equipment on the premises; and an escaping fugitive could not have
had time to dismantle and lug away a radio outfit. Of this he was
positive: the voice he heard was not talking by wireless.
He checked up his facts, and considered the last remaining
possibility--a chance so remote that it was scarcely worth thinking
about. Could there be a tunnel or conduit leading underground to the
cabin? He could conceive of no motive that would induce men to
undertake the enormous labor of digging a trench through the forest.
The notion was preposterous. But he had his report to write, and he
was trained to thoroughness in all matters of investigation. It
would be easy enough to determine if the ground had ever been broken.
Equipping himself with the spade he had used to pry up the floor
boards, he proceeded to shovel a narrow pathway around the cabin,
tossing aside the light covering of snow, and inspecting the bare
soil underneath. He worked assiduously, and it did not take him a
great while to complete the full circuit of the building. The ground
was strewn naturally with the season's carpet of leaves and fallen
twigs, and the topsoil below was the rich forest loam that requires
ages in making. The experienced woodsman needed only a glance around
the circular pathway to assure himself that the ground hereabouts had
never been disturbed since the beginning of time. He was convinced
finally, beyond all doubt. There was no tunnel.
Dexter tossed his shovel aside, and stood for a while by the open
door of the cabin. His lips had fallen apart, and his head was
thrown up to listen. But he heard only the familiar sounds of the
forest, the moaning of the north wind in the trees, the crack and
snap of sap-frozen branches. All else was silence. The eerie plaint
of the owl came wavering from the darkness, but the empty, ghostly
note seemed only a part of the great hush that brooded over the
wilderness. The last man left on earth could not feel a sense of
lonesomeness more poignant than Dexter felt at that moment, as he
stood before the doorway of death, vainly waiting for some sound or
movement to break the stillness about him. But for the discharged
revolver in his pocket, and his knowledge of what lay in the two
sleeping bunks, he might almost have persuaded himself that the
events of the last two hours were the illusions of a strangely
disordered brain.
He had investigated the cabin inside and outside, had left nothing
undone that a searcher could possibly do. The mystery of it all
seemed to lie beyond human power of solving. As he remained there,
sentinel-like in the darkness, his hand strayed to his pocket and
brought out a pipe and tobacco pouch. He carefully stuffed the bowl
with fine cut leaf, and then absent-mindedly returned both pouch and
pipe to his pocket. For a while longer he lingered by the doorway,
his unseeing glance roving slowly about him. Then, with an ironic
shrug, he suddenly stirred and stepped out into the clearing.
Inasmuch as he had seen everything there was to be seen about the
cabin and its immediate premises, it occurred to him that he might as
well extend his circle. The intuitive sense that belongs to all
ramblers of the silent places seemed to tell him during the last few
minutes that he was alone in the valley. The "feel," the woodsmen
and mountaineers say, has nothing to do with the consciousness of
smell or hearing or sight. Dexter merely felt that now there was no
one else in the neighborhood. He did not expect to make any
momentous discoveries, but a restive will demanded action of some
sort. Flashing his light before him, he chose his direction at
random and strode across the clearing.
At the edge of the open ground he found a runway that wild animals
had trod out through the thicket during seasons past. He glanced
among the trailing branches and checked himself abruptly, his eyes
blankly staring. In the snow he saw the freshly made outline of a
narrow, high-arched foot--a woman's shoeprint.
CHAPTER V
SHADOWS OF SILENCE
In a moment Dexter was on his knees, with his face close to the
ground, and he studied the marks in the snow with the peering
concentration of a man trying to read a page of fine-lettered type.
A light dusting of wind-blown drift had begun to form in the trampled
depression, and instead of crumbling there now was a slight banking
up around the edges. As near as he could reckon by the faint clews
vouchsafed him, the print was less than an hour and more than a half
hour old. So this woman, whoever she was, had evidently been there
when the murders were committed.
The officer's mouth was set in a harsh line as he scrambled to his
feet. He had found a trail at last, and the fact that the prints
were narrow and small and gracefully arched, in nowise softened his
recollection of the ugly affair in the cabin. It was not so easy to
forget the faces of the two men left behind in the bunks.
With the tense, quick movements of a hunting dog, the policeman cast
back a distance along the runway. There were other tracks, clean-cut
and plain to read. It was a double trail, with some of the prints
pointing towards the cabin, and others turned the opposite direction.
The woman had approached from the north, and departed over her same
pathway, and the deeper toe marks of the retreating prints indicated
the fact she had fled from the scene, almost running.
Dexter followed for a short distance through the underbrush, and then
retraced his steps to the clearing. There was no hurry. A few faint
stars were beginning to prick through the darkness of the sky. The
weather was clearing, and he knew there was little likelihood of
further snowfall for thirty hours at least. When he was ready to
follow, the trail would still lie in the forest. The fugitive was in
the situation of a fish firmly hooked at the end of a fisherman's
line. Wherever she went, the line of her footprints tethered her
relentlessly to the place of tragedy. Dexter could overtake her, and
pick her up, whenever he was ready.
Meanwhile he lingered for a final scrutiny of the marks at the edge
of the cabin clearing. And singularly, the high-arched tracks
stopped short on the margin of the thicket, at the spot where he had
first picked up the trail. Unbelieving, he searched about with his
light, and finally made out the entire outer circuit of the stumpy
ground. And he was much puzzled when he failed to find any small
footprints within a radius of ten yards of the cabin.
Here was mystery piling upon mystery. He had heard a woman's voice
in the cabin, and he knew as positively as any one may be positive in
matters of evidence, that it was a woman who had shot and killed the
two helpless victims in the locked room. And here was a trail,
obviously feminine, in an almost unexplored region of the snowy
wilderness, where he was quite certain that a white woman had never
set foot before.
These facts were left behind, within the cabin and without, in the
grim record of events. But there was a startling discrepancy to be
explained. Between the thicket, where the footprints halted, and the
cabin, where the two prisoners lay dead, a thirty-foot area of
smooth-fallen snow intervened. If the maker of the tracks had been
in the cabin, how had she crossed the open stretch? In what manner
had she escaped, without leaving shoe marks in the clearing? There
was no way she could have swung across above the ground, and there
was no underground passage. Dexter's stern mouth relaxed for a
moment in a grin of self-depreciation. He did not know the answer.
There was nothing he could do but follow the trail, and try to wring
the truth from the woman when he caught her.
Still he felt no great need for haste. He returned to the cabin, and
paused for a final survey of the scene of crime. Again he bent over
the lifeless forms in the bunks, and this time ascertained the
caliber of the bullets that had carried sudden death. Mudgett had
been shot through the heart; a brain shot had flicked out the life of
his dark-faced comrade. The muzzle of the weapon had been thrust
close in each instance. The bullets were short .32 caliber, but the
killer evidently had aimed with deliberate care, and at such nearness
of range, the small bits of lead were instantly effective.
The weapon with the two fired chambers, which Dexter had picked up
from the floor was a .32 caliber revolver. As in the tragic case of
Constable Graves, cause and consequence were logically brought
together. The fouled firearms and the bullets were left in his hands
as grewsome relics; but the murderers had escaped him--one by death,
the other by inexplicably vanishing.
In the bushwhacking of the constable, followed by the killing of his
assassin, Dexter sensed the working out of some strange, vaguely
revealed drama that apparently involved the fate of several actors.
He had pushed his way into an uninhabited country, expecting
eventually to encounter a single individual who was fleeing from the
penalty attached to a lesser offense; and he had walked unexpectedly
upon the stage of wholesale crime.
The motive underlying the attack upon the constable was
understandable. The young policeman had traveled across the range on
official business, and his slayer no doubt had reason to put him out
of the way. But the man who shot Graves, in his turn was shot and
killed. And Mudgett also! It was not so easy to fathom the motive
of this double affair in the cabin.
Dexter recalled every word spoken by the mysterious voice, before the
gun reports sounded behind the closed door. The woman had mentioned
the prisoners under arrest, and expressed the fear that they might be
forced to talk. What could they talk about--what dangerous secret
did they know? It must be something dreadful, if such a desperate
method were needed to enforce their silence.
From the scanty facts in his possession the corporal tried to pick
out some logical thread of connection between the people thus far
enmeshed in the threefold tragedy of the wilderness: Mudgett, the
stranger in the upper bunk, the woman from nowhere. Besides these
there was the trapper, Stark, who, Mudgett declared, had built
himself a winter shack farther up the valley. 'Phonse Doucet, the
assailant of the Crooked Forks store keeper, had escaped somewhere on
this side of the mountains. So there were five, at least, who had
suddenly pushed across into this lonesome, isolated territory where
even the marks of squaw-hatchets were seldom found.
Nor had Dexter forgotten the face of the man in the Bertillon
photograph, which Constable Graves carried in his pocket. And for
some reason the name of "Pink" Crill stuck insistently in his mind.
Was this outlander also sojourning in the wilderness? And if so, was
he in any way involved in the affairs of the others? There was no
saying. Yet the corporal could not escape the feeling that he had
touched the sinister web of some large criminal business--of plot and
counterplot--that entangled the members of some unidentified outlaw
band. What hope of profit might draw traffickers in organized crime
to such infertile, out-of-the-way fields, he was unable to guess. He
only knew that the country had been suddenly invaded by a mysterious
and dangerous company of intruders.
His glance returned grimly to the silent figures in the bunks. No
doubt these two held the secret, of which he himself had failed to
find the key. But he could scarcely believe that murder had been
committed just to prevent their telling what they might know. If
this were the only motive, why was not the policeman shot instead of
his prisoners? Dexter had not dreamed of the presence of a third
person in the cabin, and the woman might have left the door unbarred
and ambushed him with perfect safety as he entered.
He shook his head grimly. There must have been other reasons for the
wanton shooting. Vengeance? The voice had said something about
being betrayed. Had Mudgett or his companion sent the word that
summoned Constable Graves into the woods? Such a supposition was
improbable. If the constable's murderer had betrayed any one to the
police, why had he himself shot the policeman? Dexter sighed as he
realized that his speculations were leading nowhere. Until he knew a
great deal more than he knew now, he was groping vainly, without one
enlightening clew to suggest the meaning of this strange and dark
affair. It was wiser to leave off theorizing, and go after the woman.
There was nothing further to detain him. He paused only to prop the
broken door in place, to prevent the intrusion of forest creatures,
and then quit the cabin and struck off across the clearing.
Where his new quest would take him, he could not foresee. In all
probability he would have to travel for some distance through the
dense forest. Susy, the pony, was sure to prove more or less of a
hindrance on such an expedition, and moreover she was tired after her
long journey that day across the pass. He had previously unsaddled
her, and she would do well enough by herself in the sheltered gully
by the brook. So he mercifully left her behind, and set forth on
foot.
The trail of the small shoes was easily followed. For a distance the
woman had continued her headlong course, but the underbrush was too
thick for heedless going, and it was soon evident that she had been
forced to moderate her pace. Still she had kept on as fast as
darkness and difficult ground permitted.
By the accumulated signs along the way the policeman knew that she
traveled without a light, groping her path as best she might.
Frequently she had stumbled over some unseen obstruction and now and
then walked blindly into a tree trunk or windfall. And in the denser
thickets spatterings of snow told how invisible branches had swished
back in her face.
Dexter continued to use his pocket lamp, and he had eyes for
everything. By the promptness with which she had recovered from each
misstep, he gathered that she was an agile, quick-witted woman,
probably young. It must have been a painful ordeal to go plunging
through the thickets, but she had taken the punishment with apparent
stoicism, scarcely pausing at any time in her hurried, free-swinging
stride.
At one place, where she had touched the edge of a briary clump,
Dexter found a wisp of hair caught on a thorn--three soft, wavy
silken threads of a deep bronze shade. He pulled off his glove to
twist the gossamer strand about his forefinger, and almost imagined a
sensation of human warmth. And somehow he felt a sudden dislike for
the work he had to do. There are times when police business calls
for sterner qualities than simple courage and loyalty. The corporal
was confronted by a duty that revolted every knightly instinct;
nevertheless he pushed onward at a faster pace. He could not shirk a
disagreeable task, and was resolved to have it over with as soon as
possible.
The woman did not turn down towards the more open ground along the
course of the valley stream, but continued to travel through the
deeper forest. She had soon wandered away from the vaguely defined
runway, and was forced to seek out her own pathway. Through
occasional openings in the tree-tops Dexter caught glimpses of the
north-bearing star Capella, which the Indians call the "little white
goat." For a while the fugitive had kept on in a northerly
direction, but presently the trail began to bend to the left, turning
towards the back hills. And as the corporal followed, he began to
realize that he was swinging on a wide arc towards the west. The
line of prints meandered back and forth in a rather aimless way, but
the trend of divergence was always to the left. By the signs he
inferred that the woman had missed her bearings, and, as usually is
the case with lost people, was circling gradually around the compass.
Experienced wayfarers of the wilderness learn to "average" their
windings, always bearing towards an imaginary fixed point ahead, like
a ship tacking at sea. The star Capella served to-night as an
infallible guiding beacon for travelers in the trackless country.
But the woman, whoever she was, continued to wander farther and
farther off her original course. By the time he had followed a half
hour on her trail Dexter was certain that she was a newcomer in the
northland.
In spite of darkness and the denseness of the timber, she still kept
up her rapid pace. It seemed to her pursuer that she was in
panic-stricken flight. Surely she must tire very soon. But her
circling path led Dexter on and on through the dismal forest and
still there was no evidence of lagging on the trail. He was
beginning to marvel at the story of brave endurance that he read in
the trail of the little footprints. The fugitive might not be versed
in woodcraft, but nevertheless she seemed to have the pluck and
physical stamina of a seasoned voyageur.
The corporal had his lamp to light the way before him, and he plowed
through the snow with enormous energy. He was certain that he gained
steadily, yet at the end of an hour he had not overtaken the woman.
By almost imperceptible degrees the line of tracks kept on curving in
a left hand arc, and after winding his way for another twenty or
thirty minutes through the hushed labyrinths of the woods, he became
aware that he was now heading more southerly than west. He trudged
onward until a rift in the drooping branches overhead gave him a
momentary glimpse of the sky, and he found the beacon star twinkling
above his left shoulder. The trail he followed had swung around the
compass, and he was traveling back to the east. He half smiled to
himself as he reckoned distance and direction. The hunted woman had
wandered by tortuous paths through miles of darkness, only to turn
back at last towards the tragic spot from which she had fearfully
fled.
By the freshly trod prints, the skilled tracker knew that he was
running down the fugitive. In places, fluffy bits of snow were still
breaking at the edges of the new-made tracks. He should overtake her
any minute now. As he lengthened his stride he listened for sounds
of lightly crunching feet, and peered sharply ahead, expecting with
every step to catch sight of a hurrying figure among the spruces.
He was advancing through a tangle of snow-sheeted brush, his arm
thrusting aside the trailing branches, when suddenly he caught a red
glint of light in the darkness beyond. At the same instant a stray
breath of wind brought to him a resinous smell of wood smoke. A fire
of some sort apparently had been kindled in the forest ahead.
Wondering, he broke his way out of the thicket, and paused for a
moment to stare before him. A flaming glow flickered among the
trees, throwing ruddy reflections upon the wintry landscape. A
glance told him it was too big a blaze to be a camp fire. He knew
that a forest conflagration seldom starts and never gains much
headway when the trees are laden with snow, but for the instant he
felt the sharp sense of alarm that communicates itself to all
woodland dwellers at the sight and scent of burning timber. He left
the trail he was following, and plunged straight through the
underbrush towards the crimson flaring light.
Crashing forward, heedless of the lash of branches, he forced his
path through the densest thicket. As he advanced he caught glimpses
of fire and saw sparks leaping among the trees. He passed through
the intervening stretch of forest, and stumbled to the edge of an
ax-hewn clearing. In the middle of the snowy ground stood a log
building, with smoke and flames spouting upward from the walls and
roof. The surrounding area was illuminated with the brightness of
day, and at a glance Dexter identified the place. He had circled
back to the scene of murder. The cabin had been fired, and was
blazing in the forest like a lighted torch.
CHAPTER VI
THE DOORWAY OF DREAD
With the hot glare beating back in his face, Dexter stood with
blinking eyes, hearing the hiss of falling sparks and the fierce
crackle of the mounting flames. Tongues of fire lapped around the
windows and darted angrily from the crevices between the logs. As he
peered through the pitchy black smoke, a gust of flame lashed out at
the corner of the cabin, and he saw that the door was open.
He remembered closing and wedging the door fast when he left the
place a while before. It would seem that a visitor had been there
some time during his absence. His glance ranged swiftly around the
clearing, and came back to the doorway. For a second longer he
hesitated, and then suddenly left the concealment of the trees and
strode forward across the open ground.
The snow near the cabin had melted and formed pools of muddy water.
He drew a handkerchief from his pocket, wetted the fabric, and tied a
protecting mask over his nose and mouth. Then he pushed across the
threshold into the suffocation of smoke and heat and showering embers.
He was groping his way towards the center of the room, feeling for
the table which stood near the fireplace, when he collided blindly in
the hazy dark with a soft substance of flesh--something that moved,
and breathed, and was alive.
His hands closed instinctively, and he found himself gripping a
slight, lithe, human figure that gasped and struggled for release
with the fluttering fright of a captured bird. A curl of flame
darted out through the smoke, and in the flash of light Dexter had a
momentary vision of a youthful, grime-streaked face, a waving tangle
of hair, and a pair of luminous dark eyes that stared wildly under
the shadowed curve of thickly fringing lashes. It was a woman--a
girl--and his startled intuition told him she was the fugitive who
had led him the long chase in the forest.
He saw her full lips tremble apart as the smoke cloud rolled about
them, heard her stifled cry of fear. Her breath came quick upon his
cheek, and he could feel the rapid pulse throb in her straining
wrists. She writhed in his grasp, fighting to free herself. He had
not counted on the supple strength of softly rounded muscles that
desperation called suddenly and fiercely to use.
Before he could overcome his normal reluctance to hurt a weaker
being, she had thrust her elbow under his chin; and as his head
snapped back before the unexpected attack, she broke the grip of his
fingers, wriggled out from the crook of his arm, stumbled beyond his
reach, and ran for the doorway.
Dexter recovered himself a second too late. The girl evaded his
outstretched hand, brushed lightly past him, and he turned only in
time to see her rush out of the burning cabin.
"Stop!" he shouted.
She cast an anxious glance behind her, but did not heed him. In the
haze of smoke he vaguely made out her slender shape as she darted
across the clearing. She reached the edge of the forest and vanished
among the spruces, leaving him with the tingling remembrance of a
warm and vivid presence that had touched and eluded him, like an
ephemeral fragrance. For the present he did not attempt to hinder
her flight.
The fire had broken through the roof, and was swirling up from the
interior walls with hot, roaring sounds. With his arm doubled across
his face, he turned again towards the bunks where he had left Mudgett
and his comrade lying. Either in life or death he always felt a
responsibility for the prisoners he arrested. He tried to reach the
bunks, but with his first step a gust of flame swept across the room
and drove him back.
For a few seconds he lingered, his head bowed under the falling
embers, hoping for a momentary lull in the rush of the fire. But as
he stood irresolute, trying not to breathe, one of the roof beams
cracked overhead and swung crashing to the floor. At the same
instant a wreath of flame circled the doorway behind him. It was
time to go.
Shielding his face, he turned and plunged for the opening. A searing
wind eddied about him, and the next instant he stumbled across the
threshold, and found himself choking and panting as his almost
bursting lungs took in great draughts of the heated air outside the
cabin. He beat out the sparks that smoldered upon his jacket,
briskly rubbed his aching eyes, and then drew back farther across the
clearing, beyond the scorching waves of heat.
The cabin was enveloped in high leaping flames that threw a blood-red
glare above the snowy tree tops. Overhead he could hear the
affrighted cries of birds that had awakened in the night to fly in
darting confusion among the spruces. As he watched he saw a corner
of the cabin roof curl upward like paper, and cave in the middle.
The structure was doomed. There was nothing he could accomplish by
waiting.
He remained a couple of minutes longer, observing the falling sparks.
The flaming embers were snuffed out, he observed, almost as soon as
they struck the soft snow. There was no actual danger of fire
communicating through the forest. He cast a last regretful glance
towards the cabin, but accepted the inevitable with fatalistic calm.
What must be had already happened. He listened momentarily to the
direful crackling of flames, and then with grimly set lips he turned
to seek the departing footprints of the mysterious girl.
The fresh trail was picked up at the edge of the clearing. He
scrutinized the familiar impression of the high-arched instep, and
knew beyond question that she was the woman who had led him around a
wide-drawn circle, from the cabin of death, back to the cabin.
Until this moment he had supposed that her fateful return was brought
about haphazard by a changing sense of direction, that nearly always
befuddles people who lose themselves in the woods. Now he had reason
to wonder whether he had misinterpreted the signs. Had she
deliberately drawn him away from the spot so that she might swing
back alone, ahead of him? Had the cabin been fired purposely, to
destroy the evidence of crime?
The fire might be of incendiary origin, or it might have started from
the smoldering coals he himself had carelessly left in the hearth.
Of one fact only was he certain. He had found the girl in the cabin.
What stress of circumstance had induced her to enter the place, or
had kept her there with the walls blazing about her? He could not
guess. But if she actually found her way back intentionally, after
traveling miles of dark, unblazed forest, her skill in woodcraft
surpassed the skill of every woman and almost any man he had ever met.
With troubled and gloomy face, he once more took up the trail of the
small footprints. The girl had struck off towards the brook this
time, but whether she really knew where she was going, or was fleeing
aimlessly, he could not say. As he pushed after her he discovered
that continuous use had nearly exhausted his flash-lamp battery.
There was still some current left, but from now on he would have to
use his light sparingly. He hastened on, determined to end the
pursuit as quickly as possible.
He was weaving his way through the icy wattles of a juniper clump,
when, in the stillness of the night, shrill and plaintive, he heard
the whinnying cry of a horse. For an instant his heart seemed to
check a beat, and then he remembered Susy. He had left the pony in
the gully, a few hundred yards south of the clearing. The tracks of
the girl ran that direction, and the breeze was from the north. Susy
must have discovered that somebody was approaching. She was a
friendly little beast, and no doubt she had begun to feel lonesome
and neglected in the dismal forest. It must have been Susy.
Dexter had halted for a moment to listen. But the cry was not
repeated. A faint glow of distant fire still shimmered before him,
seeping through the woods like twilight, mottling the coverts with
strange, ghostly shadows. His straining senses caught no sound or
stir of life. He was starting forward again, but as he bent to pass
under a drooping bough, some alert faculty within him prompted him
with sharp warning to look behind.
He was conscious of no actual noise; not even the tiny crack of a
twig: but like most men who live in constant danger his nerves were
as sensitive as a seismograph to any slight movement near him.
Turning, he was aware of a muffled shape that had stepped softly from
the dark thicket behind him. At the same instant a living weight
pressed against his back, he felt the swift, circling contact of arms
closing about his waist, and a pair of steely cold hands gripped upon
his wrists. As Dexter lurched about to face his unknown antagonist,
the night silence was broken sharply by the cry of a woman's voice, a
crashing in the underbrush, and then the muffled beat of a horse's
hoofs galloping along the winterbound brook.
CHAPTER VII
THE HUNTED WOMAN
From the sudden, startling sounds in the direction of the brook, the
corporal guessed that the hunted woman had stolen and mounted his
horse, and the spirited Susy was bolting through the woods with her
unacquainted rider. The intelligence reached him subconsciously; he
had no time for actual speculation. The active part of his mind was
fully preoccupied just then, as he found himself struggling in the
dark with an unidentified someone who had crept upon him from behind
and seized him in a crushing embrace.
A second before he was confidently ranging on the trail of the
fleeing woman, believing himself the only man existent in that vast
area of desolate forest. And without forewarning, he suddenly
discovered himself in the grip of a powerful assailant. He did not
stop to ask questions.
His arms were pinioned at his sides, and iron muscles were closing
tight about his ribs. Instinctively he knew he was no match for the
burly strength that held him, but he had wicked recourse in a trick
that it behooves all light men to learn. With a deep breath he
filled his lungs full, and then as suddenly let go and shrank to his
least possible dimension. For an instant he gained the needed
laxness, and his arms slipped free.
Before his heavier and slower acting opponent could anticipate the
movement Dexter's left hand reached across and gripped the other
man's right elbow at the precise spot where a tender nerve runs near
the socket bone. Simultaneously his right hand shot over his head and
clasped the tendons of a short and stocky neck. Then, with catlike
quickness, he dropped crouching almost to his knees. The suddenness
of the shift overbalanced the other man, and the wiry corporal took
the weight across his left hip. A wrench and a heave, and he might
send his victim sprawling with a badly twisted back. But as he
gathered himself for the final effort, he noticed something strangely
familiar in the texture of the sleeve his fingers were grasping. His
hand slipped downward, and touched the metal buttons of a uniform
jacket.
With a wondering exclamation he relaxed his body, and straightened
erect. Then he squirmed about to confront the panting bulk behind
him. He stared in the semi-darkness, and made out in blurred outline
a square-shaped face and bristling mustache, shadowed under the brim
of a regulation Stetson. For an instant longer he peered in tense
questioning, and then he laughed a low, short laugh that wavered
between relief and chagrin.
"Hello, colonel," he said.
The other man gazed uncertainly, but slightly let up on the pressure
of his grip.
"Superintendent Devreaux of Fort Dauntless," remarked the corporal,
grinning. "If you'll give me two more inches space I'll be proud to
salute my officer."
The mustached man worked his heavy brows, and blinked in an owlish,
nearsighted way. "It's--it's Corporal--" he muttered--"why, bless
me, it's Corporal Dexter of Crooked Forks!"
He released his bearlike clutch, and stepped back a pace, gingerly
rubbing the indented place in his elbow joint. "I'm just as well
pleased that you didn't finish the last movement of the Nipponese
spine cracker. I'm not quite as spry as I remember being once, and I
suspect--I rather fear you would have had me." He cast a curious
glance in the direction of the flaming cabin. "What's the trouble
here?" he asked.
Dexter regarded his superior officer with the respect an eaglet might
well feel towards a war-scarred eagle. Colonel Devreaux was a
grizzled veteran of the R.C.M.P., with a record of two generations of
police work behind him, and an ex-army officer of the World War. The
commander of a great wilderness superintendency, he was known as a
mighty criminal catcher wherever word of the law has traveled, from
tide water to the plains beyond the mountains, from the big sticks of
the middle country to the little sticks of the frozen Arctic.
Theoretically the superintendent belonged in his office at Fort
Dauntless. But in actual fact, he was seldom seen at his desk. He
wandered at large, in the thick of all troubles. Lonely constables
by remote bivouac fires could never feel quite sure that the next
moment might not bring the old man stalking casually into camp to
demand pot luck and ask to know how business fared.
"Constable Graves is dead," said Dexter, watching his officer's face.
"Ambushed and shot from behind. I found him lying in the snow a
short distance down the valley."
Devreaux drew breath with an audible sound. "Young Graves!" he
muttered. "Another added to the long score." He shook his head
glumly. "I've seen so many go out--fine, strong, valiant boys! And
the old man goes on year after year, just getting older. Fate's a
queer thing, Dexter, and so unfair!
"Who shot him?" he asked, suddenly curt and business-like.
"A stranger. Never saw him before, and he wouldn't tell his name.
Trailed him to a cabin yonder, where you see the fire blazing.
Arrested him and a trapper named Mudgett."
"Well?" asked the superintendent, staring sharply.
The corporal gave a hurried account of recent events, telling of the
murder of his helpless prisoners, of the woman's voice in the cabin
where no woman was found, of the trail of small feet discovered near
the clearing and followed in a circle back to the cabin, and finally
of the fire, his unexpected encounter with the maker of the
footprints, and her subsequent escape and flight.
Devreaux listened without interruption to the singular recital. And,
characteristically, he showed no sign of wonderment. "You say this
disembodied voice--seemed to be talking over a telephone?" he
inquired.
"So I thought, until I had searched for the instrument But I didn't
overlook a cubic inch of space anywhere inside or outside the cabin.
And I found neither wires nor telephone. And no trace of any
intruder, for that matter."
"Radio?"
"No. Impossible. The equipment couldn't have been spirited away so
quickly."
"Most people would advise you to consult an ear specialist," remarked
the superintendent. "But I'm credulous about--well, anything at all.
I've observed so many strange happenings in my time that I've learned
to believe the wildest and weirdest things are possible, and I've
lost all sense of amazement. What do you think about it all?"
"I honestly don't know what to think."
"It wouldn't surprise me if this business hitches up somehow with the
errand that brought me into the mountains," remarked Devreaux
musingly. "Poor Graves and I came up here together from the fort.
We separated this morning, he to beat along the course of the brook,
and I to swing across through the timber. We had planned to meet
to-night farther up the valley. Coming through a while ago, I caught
the glint of fire, and of course turned aside to investigate. I
heard some one coming this direction, and effaced myself. A man came
along, and I grabbed him to make him account for himself, and he was
you.
"What was the man like whom you arrested?" he asked abruptly--"not
Mudgett, the other?"
"Undersize, swarthy, hawk-beaked, glittering black eyes."
"No," interrupted Devreaux. "The one I'm thinking of has light red
hair."
"'Pink' Crill?" asked Dexter, mentioning a name that for some reason
had stuck disagreeably in his thoughts.
"Where have you heard of Crill?" demanded the officer.
"I found a Bertillon photograph in Graves' jacket."
"I see. Yes--'Pink' Crill! I shouldn't have been sorry if he were
the one. Saved us future trouble."
"Yes?" said the corporal expectantly.
"A Chicago safe expert. Killed an officer on his way to jail, and
got away. Was traced into Canada, and we were asked to pick him up.
We heard later that he was on a Grand Trunk Pacific train, traveling
for the coast. But when a constable jumped the train he learned that
the red-haired passenger had dropped off between stations and taken
to the woods.
"Later we got word that our man had plunged into the uninhabited
wilderness, and was making this direction. I decided to make a long
patrol myself, and took young Graves along. This Crill is no
woodsman, mind you, yet he's outdistanced and outwitted me. And
until now I've rather prided myself on being a voyageur."
Devreaux spoke with a peculiar grimness of voice. "Crill of course
has had help," he went on. "Oddly, there seems to be quite a crowd
of people at large on this side of the ranges. Who they are, what
their business, I don't know. But I've touched their trails, seen
their ax-blazes on the trees, found their dead camp fires. In this
country where nobody ever comes!
"People who always managed to keep out of sight!" added the
superintendent moodily. "With all the ranging and stalking we've
done, Graves and I haven't clapped eyes on a single human face. Yet
I know positively that there are men in this valley--six or eight or
ten of them."
"All men?" asked the corporal with a sidewise glance.
"I have seen only the tracks of men's boots. Crill's,
undoubtedly--and others." Devreaux cast a quick glance about him.
"This unknown woman you speak of--she came this direction?"
"I heard a galloping horse at about the time you jumped me. I have
an idea she's taken my pony."
"It sounded that way," observed the officer quietly. "I guess it's
up to you, Dexter. How long will it take you to catch her?"
Devreaux spoke with serene assurance, and the corporal nodded coolly
in acceptance of what amounted to a command. Both had learned by
experience that a man afoot can walk down any horse in a prolonged
chase. And Susy was jaded from days of hard travel.
"Can't say," answered Dexter. "That pony doesn't like strangers, and
she'll shake her rider off if she can. But in any event, if it
doesn't storm again, I should catch her to-morrow afternoon, or by
evening at the latest."
"I'll camp here and wait for you," volunteered Devreaux. "Bring the
woman with you." The superintendent shot an approving glance at the
upright figure before him. "Give you anything I've got," he said.
"Trade flashlights with me, please. My last battery's burned out."
The exchange was made, the two nodded briefly in farewell and Dexter
once more set forward on his trail.
Tracks of small shoes led him to the gulley where he had left his
horse for the night. The girl must have heard the neighing and
turned over that way in hope of picking up a mount. The scuffled
snow indicated that there had been a struggle before she succeeded in
climbing on the pony's back. Afterwards she had ridden away without
a saddle, using a halter rope instead of a bridle.
By the hoof marks Dexter saw that he had correctly interpreted the
sounds he heard a few minutes before. Susy had broken into a run the
moment she felt the weight on her back. With features unnaturally
grave, the trailer followed through the underbrush. In a couple of
minutes he reached the bank of the brook and found that the filly had
not checked her stride here, but had plunged downward and crossed the
ice at full gallop.
The shod tracks swerved abruptly on reaching the opposite embankment,
traveling southward along the brook course over a stretch of stony
and pitted ground. Dexter walked onward at a fast pace, swinging the
shaft of his light, his intent gaze searching before him with ominous
expectancy.
And a quarter of a mile farther down the stream the trail ended, as
he had known that sooner or later it surely must end. In a hollow of
ground, beyond an outcropping shale of rock, he found his pony
stretched flat and motionless among the stones, with her head flung
backward and her forelegs doubled limply under her body. And a few
paces farther on a slim-built, girlish figure was lying prone upon
the snow.
CHAPTER VIII
THE RUNAWAY GIRL
With teeth fastened in his lips the corporal stepped forward to bend
above the tumbled figure of the woman. She was so quiet he thought
she was dead. But her fingers were warm, he found when he pulled off
her mitten, and the tide of life still flowed vigorously through the
slender, flexible wrist.
His light gleamed upon the curve of a soft cheek, pallid as marble
against the faint blue shadow line of the vein throbbing in her
temple. Her hair, trimmed in a boyish bob, straggled over eyes and
forehead in fine-spun tendrils of golden bronze. The delicate skin
of her face was grimed and scratched, and in the palm of her bared
hand he found the crimson trickle of a deep, jagged cut. Gingerly he
raised her from the snow, and the man, accustomed to dealing with
men, marveled at the trifle of weight in his arms.
He was unbuttoning the pocket where he carried his first-aid kit,
when he heard a low sigh and felt a quick, stirring movement against
his shoulder. Crouched on one foot, he supported the limp figure,
and waited breathlessly. He watched the droop of her red nether lip
under slowly parting teeth, observed a twitching of her eyelids, and
then saw the long lashes suddenly lift. And with the pocket-lamp
still shining in her face, he found himself at very close quarters
with a pair of velvet eyes, dark blue as violets that looked straight
into his.
"Yes--I'll try," he heard her say in a straggling, far-off whisper.
Her eyes were fixed upon him, but there was something in the quality
of her gaze to tell him that she was not yet aware of his being
there. Awkwardly her hand crept upward and clutched tightly upon his
shoulder, as though a reviving consciousness needed some tangible
support to cling to. He waited unmoving, and all at once the light
of intelligence flickered from the depths of suddenly distending
pupils.
A rose bloom of color dyed her cheeks, and her breath came quick and
sharp. She stared intently, with wonderment mounting swiftly to
confusion and alarm. "It's--who--where am I?" she stammered. Her
hand dropped from his shoulder, and she pushed away from him with a
gasping cry.
Somehow she got upon her feet, and turned blindly as though to flee
into the forest. With her first step, however, she stumbled, and
would have fallen. But Dexter sprang after her, and caught her
firmly in his arms. She relaxed with a weary, hopeless gesture, and
this time did not try to break his grasp.
"The horse," she faltered--"ran away--and we went down in the stones."
"Knocked you out for a couple of minutes." Dexter surveyed her with
the impersonal curiosity of a surgeon. "You're able to stand--after
a fashion," he remarked. He lifted up her hands, one and then the
other, and nodded judicially. "No broken arms or legs. Ribs? See
if you feel any twinges?"
She wriggled obediently, and shook her head. "No. I think I'll be
all right in a minute."
"Don't try to run again," he advised her. "It would be silly."
She glanced furtively about her, but did not reply. His lips drew
straight, in a stern, uncompromising Line. "In case you hadn't
noticed the uniform," he said, "I'm Corporal Dexter, R.C.M.P. If you
tried to get away, it would be my business to bring you back again,
even if it meant a journey of months and thousands of miles. Your
hand's badly cut. Sit down while I dress it."
He released her, stepping back a pace, and she managed to keep her
feet without his support. Swinging the beam of light towards her, he
regarded her with swiftly appraising eyes. His previous impression
of fresh and vivid youth was instantly corroborated. She could not
have been twenty years old. Under happier circumstances, in any
other place, he would have supposed her to be some boarding school
Miss who had ventured out of doors for winter sports--tobogganing,
perhaps.
Her costume carried out the fiction: fine, shapely boots of soft
glove leather, with thick, ribbed arctic hose rolled half way from
the knee over the cuffs of laced Mackinaw breeches; gauntlet mittens
of white, fluffy lamb's wool, and heavy, white, snug-fitting sweater,
"V"-cut at the neck, leaving her rounded throat bare to the weather.
She seemed pathetically small and defenseless as she faced him alone
in the midst of a great, savage wilderness; but as he recalled the
recent encounter in the burning cabin, he smiled with inward
cynicism. She had taught him that she was competent to take care of
herself.
She stirred uneasily under his cool scrutiny, and finally with short,
careful steps, she moved to a snow-covered bowlder by the brook side,
and sat down. From the ground at her feet she picked up a white
knitted cap and pulled it tightly over her unruly hair. She remained
silent, watching Dexter from under lowered lashes.
With a packet of surgical tape in hand, he advanced and dropped on
one knee beside her. Indifferently, she allowed him to examine her
injured hand.
"What's your name?" he asked, his deft fingers busy with the
dressings.
"Alison Rayne," she told him after a second's hesitation.
He touched her wounded palm, and the texture of skin was smooth and
soft. Whoever she might be, she certainly did not belong in this
harsh country where life is supported by disfiguring toil. "Where
are you from?" he inquired.
"From the south," she answered evasively.
He knotted his bandage neatly and was rising to his feet, when from
the darkness behind him he heard a dull thumping sound, followed by a
snort of heavy breathing. Turning in surprise, he crossed back to
the hollow of ground where his pony lay fallen in the snow.
Until this moment he had taken it for granted that Susy had killed
herself. But he saw now that she was still alive, trying feebly to
lift up her head. He crouched beside her, and at once ascertained
that both forelegs were broken.
Momentarily his hand strayed forward to touch the warm muzzle in the
snow, and then, with features drawn and set, he stood up to fumble at
his holster flap. He and Susy had traveled the ranges together for
two years, sharing hardship and peril and the glory of sunny days.
But time passes, and weather changes, and companions must sometime
separate. Like the men, the horses of the police were employed in an
extra-hazardous service. Dexter was used to swift leave-takings; had
long since learned to accept death with fatalistic fortitude. He was
drawing his pistol from its holster, when a foot crunched behind him,
and Alison Rayne stepped forward to gaze over his shoulder.
"It was my fault," the girl whispered. "The horse ran away with me,
but I didn't need to--I could have walked. The poor thing--is
suffering! And I--it was my--" She choked, unable to finish, and
began to cry.
The corporal shouldered her aside, and advanced in the darkness.
There was a brief silence, broken by a heavy report, and Dexter
stalked back again, thrusting a pistol into his holster. His
searchlight discovered the girl standing with her hands over her ears
to shut out the sound, sobbing piteously, with great tears welling
from her eyes. "I'm sorry--sorry!" she whimpered.
"It was Susy's fault--mostly," he told her gruffly. "She should have
known better than to gallop on this ground." He faced the girl in
curiosity, marveling at the strange complexity and inconsistencies
that make up the nature of womankind. Here was one who cried in
remorse and pity because a horse had to be shot. He had observed no
tears shed over two men, who had been wantonly and ruthlessly killed.
As he studied her sensitive features he found it increasingly
difficult to believe that she could be the woman whose footprints led
from the scene of tragedy. Yet her boots matched the prints he had
followed, and there was no other departing trail.
"Did you set fire to that cabin?" he asked abruptly.
"I?" she exclaimed.
"You were inside the place when I got there."
"Yes. I saw the flames and feared some one might be in there asleep.
So I broke the door to give warning. And a man came inside after
me--"
"I guess you know I was that man," he said. "Why did you run after I
called to you?"
"I didn't know who you were," was her explanation.
"You don't know how the place happened to take fire?"
"I do not."
"How did you happen to return there?"
"Return?" She seemed genuinely puzzled. "I was never there before."
"You're mistaken," he informed her. "You visited the place a couple
of hours before the fire broke out. There's no sense in denying it,
because there are marks of your feet in the snow, indicating the
direction of your arrival, and proving the suddenness of your
departure. When you left you roved over a six- or seven-mile circle,
and then came straight back to the cabin. I know because I made the
same journey, never more than thirty minutes behind you."
The exactness of his information seemed to disconcert her. "I--if
this is true--it's the first I knew it," she asserted at length.
"But now that you speak of it, I didn't--I wasn't quite sure of my
directions. It would be a funny thing to happen, and yet I may have
wandered around as you say, and struck the same cabin twice, without
recognizing the spot."
"What were you doing there in the first place?" he asked.
"Nothing. I was walking along the brook, and thought I smelled
chimney smoke, and turned aside to see what it meant. That was all."
"At that very time two men were killed in the cabin bunks," he told
her--"two men, helplessly bound, who could do nothing but scream for
mercy."
"I heard!" she blurted out with a shuddering breath. "It was--" She
stopped short, and from the frightened look she gave him he fancied
she had said more than she meant to say.
"You admit you were there then, when this killing took place?"
"Admit it?" she asked sharply. "Why, what is there to admit? That I
happened to be in the neighborhood--that I heard--"
"That you know more than you're telling me about a very strange
affair," he soberly interrupted.
The girl's head lifted with a jerk, and Dexter could almost feel the
sudden hostility of her eyes staring at him in the dark. She drew a
slow breath, and when she spoke her tones were brittle and cold,
lacking all inflection. "As long as we've gone so far, let's get
this straight," she said in deliberative accents, as though she might
be reciting something learned by rote. "Chance brought me to that
cabin. I heard a shot, I heard some one cry out in seeming anguish,
I heard another shot. I was alone in a strange place at night,
and--and I heard that horror. I was terrified--and I did what any
other frightened woman would do. I ran--anywhere to get away."
He watched her for a moment with narrowed eyes, but did not openly
question her story. "Do you know the men who were killed?" he asked
after a pause.
"Know them?" she gasped. "I hadn't seen them! How should I know
them?"
"A woman was in the cabin when the shots were fired," he stated
darkly.
She drew backward, breathing audibly, and he could see the nervous
gripping of her hands. "If there was a woman there, it wasn't I,"
she declared. "That's easily proven. You found my foot tracks, you
say. Where were they?"
"At the edge of the clearing."
"Did they go to the cabin?"
"No," he was forced to confess. "The last print stopped a dozen
yards away."
"Then what do you expect to show?" She faced him tensely. "What are
you trying to make out?"
He did not answer, but regarded her searchingly, his brow furrowed in
thought. The mystery of the double murder apparently was no nearer
solution than it had been before he caught the fugitive. The few
facts he had gathered summed up in a most contradictory fashion.
As he positively knew, there was a woman in the cabin when the crimes
were committed. But in some unaccountable manner she had vanished.
In the snow outside he had found a woman's footprints, and the girl
was forced to admit that they were hers. But she denied she had
entered the cabin, or even crossed the clearing, and the evidence of
her tracks apparently bore out her assertion. Nevertheless, by the
testimony trampled in the snow, he had learned with certainty that
she was the only woman who had approached anywhere near the scene of
tragedy.
She had told her story glibly enough, but at the same time her recent
actions were not above suspicion. She had tried desperately hard to
get away, and now that he had caught her it was clear enough that she
was afraid of him--a representative of the law. Even at this moment
there was something in her nervous, half-defiant manner to warn him
that she would escape at the very first opportunity.
While she was talking he had listened for some tone or inflection
that might remind him of the voice he had heard a while back in the
cabin. The other voice, however, had carried to him muffled and
distorted by thick walls, and he could not really say whether he had
detected any resemblance.
"What are you doing here in the wilderness?" he asked the girl after
a lengthy interval.
For several seconds she stood silent, and he had a feeling that she
was thinking fast, trying to invent a plausible answer. "Are the
police in the habit of cross-examining everybody?" she inquired at
length. "Isn't this government land, and aren't people allowed to
come and go as they please in the forests?"
He regarded her with steady eyes, showing no sign of impatience.
"Who brought you here?" he asked. "You never could have come across
these mountains alone."
She made a gesture with her hands, almost impudent, altogether
evasive. "You see me," she said. "Am I not alone?"
With a slight shrug Dexter gave up his efforts to extract information
from her. Whoever she might be, she was a resolute, quick-witted
young woman, and apparently she was ready to go to any lengths to
prevent his finding out more about her than she wanted him to know.
He bore her no malice. She had a right to preserve her secrets if
she could. It was the business of the Minister of Justice to coerce
unwilling witnesses, and the corporal, for his part, had no intention
of browbeating any girl.
"I should have warned you," he said presently.
"Warned me?" she asked, her head held high. "What about?"
"The police are supposed to caution prospective prisoners against too
much talking." He smiled dryly, and reached into his pocket for pipe
and tobacco pouch. "I must advise you not to say anything
incriminating."
"What--what do you mean?" she gasped.
Dexter looked absent-mindedly at his pipe, seemed to have forgotten
what he meant to do with it, and returned it to his pocket. "You
will come with me," he said mildly. "In the name of His Majesty the
King, I arrest you."
CHAPTER IX
GO GET 'EM!
The north wind rattled among the dry branches of the brookside
junipers, but for a space of ten seconds no other sound broke the
straining silence that had fallen upon them. The girl stood
motionless, gazing vacantly at Dexter, finding nothing whatever to
say.
"I'm not making an accusation," he told her. "But we have to hold
you for the time being as a witness. Perhaps it won't amount to more
than that."
She swayed a little, as he had sometimes seen a man reel at the first
numbing shock of a pistol bullet. But as he watched with troubled
eyes, he saw the slender figure straighten with the quick resiliency
of a birch sapling in a wind. Her firm chin suddenly lifted, and she
spoke slowly, in a voice strongly controlled.
"What have I done?" she asked. "What right have you to detain me?"
Dexter did not reply. The right or wrong of the law's might was a
question policemen wisely would not discuss. "We'll start whenever
you're ready," he said.
"But--but--" she protested, fighting to keep back her tears, "you
wouldn't dare! It would be too high-handed! Why, even the mounted
can't go about arresting people right and left, for no reason at all."
"Colonel Devreaux is waiting for us," he remarked with official
politeness. "It isn't far, not more than a quarter of a mile from
here."
"Oh, no!" she cried, and for just a moment she could not help showing
him how badly scared she was. "Don't you understand? I can't go.
You mustn't make me! You mustn't! You don't know what you're doing!"
"If you could convince Colonel Devreaux that we have no reason to
take you to Fort Dauntless," he said with a trifle less austerity,
"why, of course, that would end the matter."
"Convince him of what?" she demanded. "What must I prove that I
haven't done?"
"You've refused to answer almost every question I've asked you," he
reminded her.
"I've told you--" She checked herself, biting her lips. They had
again struck the stumbling block. He knew that she dared not tell
the truth about herself.
"We might as well go," he said.
Her glance swept wildly about the dark thickets, as though she were
reckoning her chances of escape. But she could not help but realize
the madness of attempted flight. Her lips parted in tremulous
breathing, but she did not move.
"You're still a bit shaken by your fall," he said, shrewdly watching
her. "But we'll travel as slowly as you like, and you can hang on to
me."
Her figure stiffened, and she scornfully refused his offered arm.
"If we must go, let's go," she said in a chilly voice.
She started forward with tottering steps to retrace the pathway along
the brook. Dexter cast a last lingering glance towards the huddled
dark bulk in the hollow where Susy had tumbled, and then in silence
he turned to follow.
For the present, at least, the girl was forced to resign herself to
the bitterness of fate. She walked ahead with shoulders erect,
trying to keep her steps from faltering, proudly ignoring the man who
stalked behind her.
They crossed the brook, and thence followed the trail northward in
the direction of the burning cabin. Presently Dexter caught a tiny
point of light flickering in a nearby thicket. He turned aside with
a word to his companion, and a moment later they stumbled into the
circle of a new-built camp fire, where Colonel Devreaux sat
cross-legged on a tarpaulin, contentedly sipping coffee.
"This is Alison Rayne," said the corporal.
"Humph!" grunted Devreaux. He set down his cup and fixed the girl
with the stony, unwinking stare that usually frightened evildoers.
But Alison Rayne met his eyes, and did not flinch.
"Sit down, Alison," he invited at length. "Do you want some coffee?"
"No, thank you," she answered coldly. Nevertheless, she accepted a
corner of the tarpaulin, and sank to the ground with a tired sigh.
"What did you have to do with the killings in that cabin yonder?" he
inquired bluntly.
The girl's face went deathly white for an instant, and then an angry
scarlet suddenly flamed in her cheeks. "Nothing!" she said in a
choking voice. "I don't know a thing about that--what happened.
You--you're very--you shan't say such abominable things to me."
"I want to talk to you," remarked the superintendent placidly, "and I
thought we'd get the hardest part over first." He hitched his weight
around so he could observe the reflecting firelight upon her face,
and proceeded with his ruthless catechism.
Under the fire of questions the girl sat inert, scarcely breathing,
her tormented eyes veiled by heavy drooping lashes. Sometimes she
answered Devreaux's sharp interrogations in seeming frankness,
sometimes she only pretended to answer, sometimes her lips closed,
trembling, as she stubbornly shook her head. Now and then her glance
strayed surreptitiously towards the corporal, as though seeking some
hope of mercy from the younger man.
But Dexter did not once look her direction. He sat a little apart,
and his face was revealed to her only in profile, its firm, rugged
lines showing almost gaunt in the firelight, changeless and
unreadable as sculptured bronze. His straight lips were mutely
compressed, and his eyes, darkened by night to murky gray, never once
left off their brooding contemplation of the fire. The girl watched
him at first in faintly hopeful appeal, then with a baffled knitting
of arched brows, and finally she turned from him altogether to bow
her head drearily before Devreaux's volley of questions.
Her ordeal lasted for some time, but finally the superintendent
decided that he was wasting his breath. His method of attack was
direct and forceful, like bludgeon work, but when he finished he knew
no more about the mysterious young woman than Dexter could have told
him. "All right, Alison," he observed with a ponderous shrug.
"Without a rack and thumbscrews, I guess we've gone as far as we're
going to go."
He scrutinized her for a moment with puckered eyes. "You know, of
course, that you're putting yourself in the worst possible light.
That's up to you. I give you credit for this much, though: you
haven't tried to make us swallow any lies." He relaxed for a moment
in an iron-visaged smile. "All tired out, aren't you, Alison?"
"Dead tired," she murmured.
Devreaux nodded towards a sheltercloth that he had staked up,
forester fashion, in front of the fire. He was a fastidious
campaigner, and during Dexter's absence had taken the trouble to
shingle a foot-deep couch of feathery balsam tips. "You'd better
turn in and try to sleep."
The girl accepted the invitation with a slight nod, took the blanket
the colonel gave her, and crept underneath the shelter cloth.
Devreaux glanced after her, and then turned ruefully to the corporal.
"It's the snow for you and me to-night, both tugging on your
blanket," he remarked in an undertone.
"What do you make of her?" asked Dexter, as they stepped beyond
earshot of the tent.
"Pretty, sweet-looking girl," muttered the superintendent. "It goes
hard to think evil things about her. But I've had some beautiful
illusions smashed in my time, and I learned long ago that you never
can tell by appearances. You can bank on one thing: she never found
her way alone into this back-of-beyond country. She's got friends
hereabouts, and whoever they are, I've a feeling it'll be a good job
when we put hands on 'em."
Dexter looked dubiously at his chief, but made no comment. "What are
you going to do with her?" he asked after a moment.
"Hang on to her. Lodge some kind of a complaint, and wait until we
get the real facts. One of us had better take her down to Fort
Dauntless, where we'll have her safe."
Devreaux eyed the corporal for a moment with a peculiar slanting of
his heavy brows. "On the other hand, we want this 'Pink' Crill, and
whoever's with him--and we want 'em badly. One of us has got to stay
behind and tackle that business." He cast a squinting glance
skyward, and shook his head. "The difficulty is that big snow is due
to fly almost any day. Once the pass is choked this country will be
shut off from the outside world. Whichever one of us stays behind is
almost certain to be stuck here until spring. Which job do you
choose--Fort Dauntless or Crill?"
Dexter grinned. It was a tradition in the mounted that an officer
never assigned a subordinate to any task, dangerous or disagreeable,
that the officer was not perfectly willing to undertake himself. He
knew that the superintendent was sincere in his offer, and that the
decision rested with him.
"You're needed at the post," said the corporal at once. "I'll go
after Crill, of course."
The older man nodded curtly. "Graves and I picketed our horses by
the forks in the lower valley. I'll cache all my extra grub there
where you can find it, and you'll weather the winter all right, even
if the snow catches you."
He measured the corporal with his deep-searching gaze. "There were
two of us hunting Crill up to this afternoon. You know what happened
to poor Graves. Crill and his friends are out to get the police
before the police get them. And after I'm gone you'll be playing a
lone hand. You'll be careful, Dexter."
"Sure," said the corporal lightly.
"I'll send you reinforcements," the colonel pursued, "but I doubt if
anybody can get in here in time to beat the snows. You may have to
hold out by yourself until spring. But rest assured that the first
thaw will bring men to your help."
"Thanks, chief," said Dexter. "And don't worry about me. I'll
manage."
He left camp for a few minutes to saunter down into the gulley where
he had dropped his saddle packs, and when he returned he brought a
blanket to spread on the ground across the fire from the tent. For a
while longer he and the colonel sat together arranging their final
plans, but at length they kicked off their boots, donned their night
woolens, and rolled up together in the common blanket.
Both were light sleepers, accustomed to arousing at the least
disturbing sound. There was a little of downwood scattered about
under the snow, and they had no fear of an enemy approaching
unannounced, or of their prisoner's escaping.
Twice during the night Dexter got up automatically to replenish the
fire, and on another occasion he awakened sharply to find the girl
tiptoeing out of her tent. He was on his feet, almost before his
eyes had opened, and smiled grimly at the sight of her startled face.
"It's too early to get up now," he remarked pleasantly. "We'll call
you when it's time."
She gave him a disconcerted glance, and then turned slowly, without a
word, and crept back under the shelter-cloth. Dexter tossed a couple
of billets of wood on the fire, and calmly returned to his blanket.
After that he got in two hours of unbroken rest before the approach
of dawn finally banished sleep.
He and Devreaux awakened at about the same moment and bestirred
themselves in the lingering darkness. While the superintendent was
poking up the embers of the fire, Dexter went to the brook to chop a
wash basin in the ice. He came back, bearing a filled bucket, his
hands and face tingling after a heroic soaping in the chilly water.
When breakfast was ready they called the girl, and she came forth,
drowsy and shivering, to sit by the tiny fire. There was a little
droop of dejection about her shoulders, but the courage of her blue
eyes was not yet dimmed. As Dexter observed her covertly in the
steel gray dawn, some vagrant stirring of memory brought back to him
for an instant the lovely image of a nameless blue and white flower
he had one day discovered, blooming valiantly and unaccountably
beside a mountain snow drift. To him this woman seemed as much out
of place in a bleak camp of the police, as the pretty, stray blossom
that had got lost above timberline.
She greeted the two men with a distant nod, but had nothing to say to
them; and they respected her mood, and did not try to draw her into
conversation.
When breakfast was finished and the back packs had been made up, the
three strolled through the spruces to the neighboring clearing. The
fire had burned out during the night, and all that was left of the
cabin was the fireplace and chimney, scorched and blackened, standing
solitary over a heap of smoldering ruins.
Devreaux viewed the desolate scene with down-drawn brows, and
presently moved forward in the smoke to prowl among the debris. For
several minutes his squat figure was seen moving and stooping in the
dingy haze; and when he returned his boots and gloves were sooted
black.
"I've been poking around where you said the bunks stood," he
remarked, shouldering the corporal beyond their companion's hearing.
"Found your manacles, and--not much else. Those pitch logs burn with
a frightful heat."
"I tried to get in there when I discovered the fire," Dexter told
him. "But it was too late. I couldn't make it."
"No fault of yours. You did all you could, of course."
The superintendent surveyed the smoking wreckage. "The center of
fire seems to have been in the timbers near the chimney. It must
have started there."
"We can put the cause down to accident," remarked Dexter. "The girl
couldn't have started an incendiary blaze. I was right at her heels
when she circled back here last night, and I realize now she wouldn't
have had time to touch it off. And there were no tracks to indicate
that any one else visited the clearing during our absence."
"Caught from the fireplace, then," observed Devreaux.
"Undoubtedly. There was a hot fire in the grate, and as you
remarked, those pitch floor timbers would easily catch ablaze. A
chance ember popping out would set it going."
The superintendent gave Dexter a sidewise glance and regretfully
shook his head. "Sorry, just the same. I should like to have
identified the man who killed Constable Graves. Now we may never
know.
"Young Graves!" he echoed gently. "He'll have to do for the present
as you left him. We'll send in for him when we can."
The colonel lapsed into silence for a moment, while his glance roved
about him in the ghostly twilight. But presently he turned aside to
move through the fringes of the clearing. He was absent for some
time, and when he came back he said he had circled the area of timber
surrounding the cabin.
"Just to make sure that you overlooked nothing when you searched last
night in the dark," he remarked to the corporal. "I'm satisfied.
There are no wires strung to the cabin." He faced his companion with
a quizzical expression. "It couldn't have been a telephone you
heard."
"I heard the whirr of a bell, and I heard a voice give forewarning,"
Dexter reiterated. "I can tell you no more than that. As for the
rest, it all seems as bizarre and unreal this morning as the memory
of a nightmare."
"The rest is real enough," said Devreaux somberly. "Graves and your
two prisoners murdered, the cabin burned, this strange young woman
left on our hands, and 'Pink' Crill and other unknown skulkers at
large in the woods. Hard, ugly facts, Dexter!" He looked at the
younger man in gloomy foreboding, and sighed, and shook his head. "I
hate like thunder to leave you here alone," he ended.
"Pshaw!" said the corporal, with his quick, bright smile.
"Yes, I know. You boys always say that. And that's why I'm able to
run this territory with no more than a dozen of you standing by me."
The colonel stooped abruptly for his pack, and then straightened with
a brusque movement and stuck out his hand. "We'll foot it down the
valley to the horses, and ride on out," he said as his iron grip
closed for an instant in a farewell handshake. "So-long, David."
Without further speech he beckoned to Alison Rayne. "Ready!" he
announced.
The girl hesitated for only a second, and then with a helpless
gesture she turned to follow. Devreaux motioned her to go in
advance, and she passed by with shut lips and high-poised head,
without a single backward glance. The colonel paused to wave his
hand, and then the black forest closed upon the retreating figures,
and Dexter was left alone in the clearing.
CHAPTER X
NO-MAN'S COUNTRY
The corporal lingered by the smoking embers, gazing with a queer,
ruminative look in his eyes towards the spot where quaking branches
cut off his last sight of the departing travelers. Behind him he
could hear the faint sputter and hiss of live fire still gnawing
under the cabin timbers. A chorus of shrill, thin pipings sounded
from the dimness of the woods, and a band of chickadees wheeled forth
in elfin flight, whisked past his face, and vanished across the
clearing. He stirred abruptly at the breaking of his thoughts, and
turned for a final scrutiny of the ground about him.
For more than an hour he ranged back and forth in the misty dawn,
searching for any small clew or minutiæ of fact that might in some
way throw light upon last night's grewsome mysteries. What had
actually happened in those few intense moments before the prisoners
were killed? What was the bell that rang? Who had barred the door
and fired the shots, and dropped a discharged pistol on the floor,
and departed afterwards, noiseless and unseen, with no human
footprint left outside? How was it all accomplished? He did not
know. And an exhaustive researching in the daylight still left him
at his wit's end, without one tangible hint to suggest the
explanation of an inexplicable business. He prowled with nervous
energy about the clearing and through the neighboring strip of
forest, and his sharp vision missed nothing that mortal eyes could
see. But the riddle of the tragic visitation remained inviolate. It
was as though he dealt with factors and forces that hovered beyond
the scope of human sight and comprehension.
Finishing his profitless investigations at last, he stood irresolute
for a space, frowning, not quite decided what he ought to do next.
His future plans were as yet indefinite. He was assigned on roving
patrol, cast upon his own resources, dependent in all matters upon
his own judgment. Before he looked upon civilized places again he
must hold some sort of accounting with the elusive outlaw, Crill.
But in this thousand-mile stretch of mountain wilderness, the game
of hide-and-seek might drag along through weeks and months.
Meanwhile, he knew he would find no peace of mind until he had gained
some inkling of truth concerning Alison Rayne.
Who was she? What possible errand could have brought her alone into
this shut-in region of silence? What concern had she in the affairs
of Mudgett and the dark-visaged stranger, or of the other intruders
who prowled somewhere behind the range? Was it her voice he had
heard last night in the cabin? He drew a sharp breath, and slowly
shook his head. The questions clamored unanswered. He knew no more
about the girl than she had allowed him to read in her level-gazing
eyes.
There remained one possibility: if the fresh snow lasted long enough
he at least could find the place she came from. The sought-for
information might possibly be picked up at the end of the back trail.
In a moment he made his decision. Other matters might wait;
meanwhile he would try to settle definitely, one way or another, the
disturbing enigma that had haunted his thoughts since his first
meeting with Alison Rayne.
No longer hesitating, he shouldered his pack and picked up his
carbine. He cast a final glance towards the pile of blackened litter
where the cabin had stood, and then, with the relieved breath of one
who quits a place of evil, he swung on his heel and started northward
through the silent forest.
He struck the line of familiar little footprints in the runway where
he had first discovered them the evening before. This time, however,
he took the trail that approached the cabin clearing, and let the
heel marks point his direction of travel. Treading the reversed
pathway, he found himself branching to the right, and in a few
moments had reached the edge of the brook.
The girl had followed the stream down from the north, walking in the
middle of the frozen watercourse. But at this point she had struck
off at a right angle through the timber, making straight for the
clearing. Across the way an old, lightning-blasted sugar pine
towered high above the spruces. This tree would serve as an
unmistakable landmark, even in the darkness. By the abruptness of
the trail's turning, it looked very much as though the girl knew
where she was going when she left the stream here to shape a direct
course for the cabin. Dexter paused for a moment to examine the
ground, and then, with a half nod of conviction, he continued on his
way.
The footprints kept to the ice, leading him back towards the
headwaters of the brook. Dexter followed the windings of the stream,
but for reasons of his own, he did not stay in the open course, as
the girl had done. There was no knowing what peril might be lurking
at each new bending of the densely wooded shore line. It was an
ideal country for bushwhacking. Remembering what had happened to
Constable Graves, he refrained from exposing himself unwarily. He
clung to the shelter of the bank, treading cautiously, gliding like a
shadow through the fringes of alder and willow.
His progress was necessarily slow. All morning he traveled, keeping
along with the tortuous meanderings of the brook, and when he finally
halted for noonday tea, he estimated that he had advanced no more
than five or six miles as a bird might fly. The backward trail of
small shoe prints continued with the stream.
The girl evidently had come down that way from some deeper fastness
of the forest-clad mountains. As the corporal recalled, the country
above here had never been officially mapped or explored. His own
farthest wanderings had never taken him into the valley of this
nameless stream, and he had no notion what was hidden beyond.
He resumed his journey, moving always among the concealing thickets,
pausing at every sharp bend of the brook to reconnoiter the ground
ahead. The afternoon advanced, and he trudged onward in the white
stillness, finding no sign of human intrusion other than the trail
unraveling from the north, seemingly without any place of beginning.
No wonder the girl was in a state of physical exhaustion last night
when he escorted her to Devreaux's camp. She had walked many miles
to reach the cabin clearing.
All day the corporal kept on the move, back-tracking her yesterday's
footsteps up the valley of silence. Sometimes he paused to listen,
and once he imagined that he caught a far-off sound of chopping. He
turned aside to investigate, and lost more than an hour ranging
through the forest tangle. But he did not hear the sound again, and
no sign of any axman was found. A while later his alert eyes
discovered a shifting patch of brown that appeared and instantly
vanished in a distant hillside covert. Again he made a cautious
detour, only to come at last upon the fresh tracks of a mule deer.
When he returned to the brook after this last excursion, he left the
shielding thickets, where travel was slow and difficult, and strode
on with quickened step along the open course. The sun was sinking
over the snow-capped peaks that stood in serried outline against the
westward sky, and he realized that unless he made haste darkness was
likely to overtake him before the riddle of the trail was solved.
For half an hour longer he pushed ahead through the endless stretches
of forest, and then, most unexpectedly, as he rounded a sharp bend of
the brook, he found himself at the edge of an open glade where there
stood a log cabin, half hidden among the bordering trees. He stopped
with up jerked head, staring through the tracery of branches, and saw
that he had reached his journey's end. The line of the girl's
footprints descended to the brook from the cabin door. It was from
this place that she had set forth on her fateful errand.
CHAPTER XI
THE VOICE OF WARNING
Dusk was falling, and a hush of emptiness and desolation brooded over
the clearing. The cabin door was closed, and no smoke came from the
mud-daubed chimney. Dexter's eyes searched over the ground, and he
saw only the single track of footprints. Evidently the girl was the
only one who had crossed here, either departing or arriving, since
the fall of yesterday's snow.
Quite certain that the dwelling had no present tenant, the corporal
nevertheless was taking no chances. Slinging his carbine at his
back, he drew his heavy service pistol. Then, without further ado,
he stepped forward to investigate.
The cabin was constructed of freshly peeled logs, saddle-notched, and
in size and method of building, it was a practical duplication of the
other mysterious habitation which he had stumbled upon last night in
this same lonesome valley. He recalled the story told him by
Mudgett--of a so-called settler and trapper named Stark who had put
up a shack somewhere in this direction. Possibly this was the cabin
mentioned.
The latchstring dangled invitingly on the outside, and, without
pausing to reconnoiter, the corporal pulled up the fastening bar and
shoved the door open. He crossed the threshold, and found himself in
a large, square room, dimly revealed in the failing daylight. In the
gloom he made out a stone fireplace, and a pole bunk built against
the opposite wall.
As he stood blinking, trying to accustom his vision to the
semi-darkness, he heard a quick rustling sound, and was suddenly
aware of a white face and a pair of gleaming eyes staring at him from
the bunk.
"Hello!" he ejaculated, taken aback for an instant by the unexpected
apparition. "If I'd imagined any one was here I'd have knocked."
He crossed the floor and saw a man's blanketed shape, propped half
erect in the bunk. A glance told the corporal that the other was a
stranger. He was a smooth-faced youth, nineteen or twenty years old
probably, with drawn, haggard features, dank, uncut hair, and
wide-spaced, staring eyes that glowed with feverish brightness in the
gathering dusk. His weight was rigidly supported on one elbow, and a
look of seeming consternation flitted across his face as he caught
sight of the police uniform.
"What--what do you want here?" he faltered in a straining undertone.
Dexter did not answer. "Who are you?" he countered. "What's your
name?"
"Why, it's--Smith," said the boy with a noticeable stumbling. "Tom
Smith."
The corporal's mouth twisted skeptically. "Seems to me I've heard
that name somewhere else. Smith, eh? Well, Smith, what's the matter
with you? Sick?"
The boy stirred and brought his bare arm from under the blanket. "Ax
slipped and cut me, and the thing's got infected," he said. "I've
been in agony for two days."
"I should think so!" exclaimed Dexter. The forearm was darkly
inflamed, swollen to twice its normal dimensions, and reddish purple
streaks had begun to creep upward to the shoulder joint. "You've
neglected this for two days?"
"I didn't know what to do with it."
"Then you've no business in this country." Dexter regarded the young
man curiously. "These little accidents are always apt to occur, and
unless you've got the nerve and sense to do your own surgery, you'd
better stay where hospitals are handy."
He turned his back for a moment and put away his pistol. Then,
unobserved, he drew a small, thin bladed knife from his pocket.
"Here!" he said. "Let's see that."
Gripping the injured arm firmly, he leaned forward and found the seat
of the wound. Then, with merciful swiftness, before the other could
guess his purpose, he slashed with his sharp blade, cutting deep into
the throbbing flesh. The boy jerked away, screaming in sudden
anguish.
"Oh, you--what have you done?" he moaned.
"In town they'd have given you an anæsthetic," remarked the officer.
"Here we've got to take what comes, and bear it. You should have
done that for yourself yesterday."
The stranger groaned feebly, and hugged his wrist, and for the
moment, evidently, speech was beyond him.
"All we need now is hot water, and plenty of antiseptics," said
Dexter. "We can do."
He crossed to the hearth, laid kindling, and ignited a fire. This
done, he went outside, and returned a moment later with a snow-filled
kettle to hang over the flame.
"How do you feel now?" he asked, going back to the bunk.
"I think--a little better," came a weak answer from the pillow.
"It's a different kind of hurt."
"If I hadn't come along you would have died--about four days from
now," said the policeman lightly. "As it is, you should be able to
handle an ax again in about four days."
"I suppose I ought to thank you," said Smith after a little silence.
"I expect you ought to. You'll sleep to-night." Dexter grinned
encouragingly. "Hungry?"
"Not very."
"I am." The corporal unslung his pack, and turned to investigate the
culinary resources of the shack. His search discovered a well
stocked larder, and he calmly helped himself to such things as he
required. He kneaded dough for bannock bread and set the loaf
baking, started coffee, and sliced a liberal quantity of bacon. By
the time these preparations were made, the kettle of snow water was
boiling.
He dissolved tablets from his emergency kit in a strong solution, and
then swathed the arm of his wincing patient in steaming bandages.
"We'll keep that about ten degrees hotter than you think you can
stand it," he asserted. "And the first thing you know you'll be off
the casualty list."
Dexter returned to his cooking, and when the simple meal was finally
ready, he heaped a plate for Smith, and then set a place for himself
at a slab table near the bunk.
"Whose cabin is this?" he asked abruptly as he pulled up a stool.
The boy hesitated for a second, and then apparently decided that
there was no harm in telling the truth. "It belongs to Owen Stark,"
he said.
"Stark!" the corporal nodded. So this was the shack that Mudgett had
mentioned. "Who's Owen Stark? I don't know him."
"A trapper," was the reply. "He intends to live here this winter."
"What about you? You're not a woodsman."
"No," admitted the other after a pause. "Stark invited me to visit
him--for the fall hunting. I don't expect to stay much longer."
"Where's Stark now?" the policeman asked as he applied himself to his
plate.
"He went up the valley somewhere--probably twenty miles or so north
of here. Left two days ago, and I wouldn't expect him back much
before to-morrow. Looking for places to run his trap line."
Dexter offered no comment. It was a plausible enough story--if Stark
were really a trapper. Yet there was something anxious and
overstrained in the boy's speech, as though he might be inventing his
answers. Or again, perhaps it was only his arm that troubled him.
"Stark went off and left you here alone?" the corporal asked with a
slantwise glance.
"Yes. I wasn't so bad at the time."
During his inspection of the cabin interior, Dexter had noticed a
woman's cloak and hat hanging on one of the wall pegs. Now he
suddenly turned, and pointed with his thumb. "Whom do those belong
to?" he demanded.
The patient moved gingerly under his blanket, rolling his head so he
might see. "Those are Mrs. Stark's," he said.
"What?" The exclamation came sharply, before Dexter could control
his voice, and his knife and fork dropped on the table. "You mean to
say--she's married?" He stared for a moment with puckered brows, and
then almost instantly recalled himself. "I mean--Stark has a wife?"
"Yes."
"She left here yesterday?" asked the corporal in low, curiously
restrained accents.
"No," returned the other unhesitatingly. "She left a couple of weeks
ago for a visit in the settlements. She hasn't come back yet."
"Let's get this straight," said Dexter after a tense interlude,
"She's been away for a couple of weeks, you say. What's she like?
Rather pretty girl, copper-tinted hair, large blue eyes--wearing--"
"No," interrupted Smith. "Not at all."
Dexter drew a short breath. "Well?" he demanded.
"Vera Stark's not a girl, but a woman about thirty-five," stated the
boy. "Thin--dark complexion--jet black hair and eyes."
"Oh, I see." Dexter picked up his knife and fork, and started to eat
once more with a healthy man's appetite. For the moment his
attention was fixed upon his plate, but he was somehow aware that
furtive eyes were watching him from the shadow of the bunk.
"You seem to have got her mixed up with some one else," his companion
presently ventured to remark.
"Yes, it would seem so." The corporal looked up with a retrospective
smile. "The one I was thinking of, I happened to meet yesterday in
the lower valley. Her shoe tracks would indicate that she came from
this cabin. Know her?"
"There was a girl such as you describe--here--yesterday," said Smith.
He turned on his pillow and yawned, with every sign of indifference.
"Who was she?" asked the policeman crisply.
"She didn't say. Didn't tell me a thing about herself. And I was
too sick to be very curious." The boy stretched himself and buried
his head deeper in the pillow. "Gee--I feel better," he murmured.
"This is the first comfortable minute I've had--"
"Where'd she come from?" interrupted the officer.
"I didn't ask her," replied the other in a drowsy voice.
"Just dropped in from nowhere?"
"Yes. Wanted to rest a while, and get out of the snow. When it
stopped snowing she went on her way." The young man sighed, and
pulled the blanket higher, as though to keep the firelight out of his
eyes. "I would have thought it funny," he pursued in a dreamy,
far-away tone--"a girl like that--alone--but as I told you I was so
miserable, I didn't think--I didn't ask her anything about herself."
The voice trailed off to a whisper, and speech momentarily failed.
"That's all you can tell me about her?"
"'S all."
"Where are you from yourself?" asked the officer.
"Montreal," was the sleepy reply.
"How long you been here?"
No answer came from the bunk.
Dexter stood up and crossed the room, to look down at the face on the
pillow. The boy's eyes were shut, and his breathing was deep and
regular, as though he had fallen into a doze. Perhaps he was
shamming to avoid further questioning. Perhaps not. It was quite
likely that he had not slept for nights, and was on the verge of
complete exhaustion. Now--soothed by the hot bandages, relieved from
his long protracted pain--he might easily drop off like this in the
middle of a word.
Upon reflection the officer decided not to disturb him. Possibly he
knew more than he was willing to tell about the mysterious girl. But
he could go on with sweeping denials of ever having seen her before,
and Dexter knew from experience how impossible it is to pin down a
witness who persists in answering in general negatives. Besides, if
the boy were really suffering from lack of sleep, it would be cruelty
to force him to stay awake.
The policeman himself was beginning to feel the effect of long,
jading hours. He sat for a while, musing over the fire, but after
darkness had fallen it occurred to him that he might as well call it
a day. A last reconnaissance out-of-doors convinced him that, for
the time being at least, he and his chance-found cabin mate were the
only mortal beings existent in that particular section of the forest.
It was a breathless night, deathly silent. A bank of low-hanging
clouds scudded over the tree tops, and the weighted air held the
promise of snow. He went back into the cabin, discreetly barred the
door and withdrew the latch cord, and then spread his blanket by the
fireplace and rolled up for the night. In two minutes he was sunk in
profoundest slumber.
Hours passed, and the silence endured. From time to time Dexter was
vaguely aware of a fretful stirring and moaning in the darkness where
the bunk stood, but such sounds were self-explanatory and gave him no
reason to awaken. The fire burned to dead ashes, and the early
morning chill crept through the room, but he only drew his blanket
tighter. But sometime near the approach of dawn, at the darkest,
stillest hour of ebbing night-tide, a queer, faint buzzing noise
broke suddenly upon his inner consciousness.
In a flash he roused himself, trying to see through the gloom,
listening for some repetition of the sound. He had almost persuaded
himself that imagination had tricked him, and was on the point of
reaching again for the blanket flap, when, all at once, a muffled
voice began to speak from the bunk. The tones were repressed and
rather unsteady, but the words were intelligible.
"I'm all right. Lots better. Policeman fixed me up." It was the
boy, apparently talking to himself in the darkness.
The tenseness of Dexter's attitude promptly relaxed. His patient no
doubt was feverish, a little delirious--maundering in his sleep.
Nevertheless the corporal waited, mildly curious to know what else
might be said.
He was not kept long in suspense. "You were?" exclaimed the voice,
as though questioning a fanciful person. "And got away? That's
good, anyhow."
There followed another short silence, and then the speaker in the
bunk was heard again. "No!" This time the tone seemed to carry a
sharp warning. "Don't come here. Go to the Saddle Notch.
Somebody'll meet you there. Understand?"
As he listened Dexter stiffened to keen alertness. This was not like
the raving of a dreaming man. The words were beginning to make
sense. And there were definite pauses between sentences, as though
the speaker were waiting for some one else to reply. As the corporal
leaned forward, trying to see in the darkness, he was grimly reminded
of last night's strange events--of another lonely cabin, of another
voice heard in seeming conversation with an unidentified some one who
answered mysteriously from somewhere else.
He waited, breathless, and the boy spoke once more. "See you later,"
he declared. "Good luck." And then he ended with a farewell
utterance that brought Dexter to his feet in gasping wonderment.
"Good-by, Alison!" he said.
CHAPTER XII
THE RENDEZVOUS
The spoken name had all the effect of a galvanic shock. "Alison!"
Dexter kicked the blanket from his legs, and in the darkness
blundered across the room. He reached the bunk, drew a match from
his pocket, and struck a light. As the flame flared in the darkness
he stared downward and saw the boy's motionless form stretched at
full length on the mattress. From all appearances, the patient had
not changed position since the evening before. He was lying in his
blankets, facing the wall, with eyes closed, temples slightly
flushed, and breathing evenly through half open mouth. Seemingly, he
was sound asleep.
But unquestionably it was his voice that had been heard; furthermore,
Dexter could have sworn that he was talking over a telephone.
However, there was no telephone here: none, at least, that the
corporal was able to find. And such an instrument scarcely could
have been hidden in the second it took him to spring across the room.
Nevertheless, he settled his doubts by looking. He searched under
the bunk and behind the bunk, and then leaned over to assure himself
that there were no lumpy objects stuffed in the mattress. He was
prodding at the pillow, when he felt a sudden movement, and was aware
that Smith was looking up at him with a dull vacuous stare.
"What is it?" the young man drowsily mumbled.
"Whom were you talking to just now?" demanded the corporal.
"I?" Smith blinked his lids, and gazed about him with an expression
of utter blankness. "What do you mean?"
"I heard something like a click, and a minute later you spoke:
warning somebody not to come here--to go somewhere else."
"You heard me?" The boy started to raise himself in the bunk, and
then fell back with a groan, grasping his injured arm. "Oh!" he
sighed, "I--I nearly forgot. Must have had a good night. What time
is it?"
"You were speaking to some one named Alison," persisted the policeman.
"Alison?" Smith shook his head slowly, regarded his inquisitor with
heavy, sleep-dulled eyes. "You must have been dreaming--or else I
was. If I was talking, I must have been having a nightmare. I don't
remember--"
"Who's Alison?" cut in the officer sharply.
"Why, I don't know," said the other with a suppressed yawn. "Never
heard of him."
Dexter lighted another match and peered searchingly at the face
before him, and the boy's blue eyes returned his gaze with a look of
blandest innocence. "Do you know a woman named Alison?"
"No," was the unequivocal answer.
"You didn't speak that name a moment ago?"
"Not that I know of."
"Where's Saddle Notch?"
"Is it a place--or what? Did I say that too?" Smith's mouth
quivered in the faintest suggestion of a grin. "Gee, I must have
been having a whale of a dream--thinking up all those things!"
Dexter stood for a moment in baffled silence, and then turned away
with an impatient shrug. What was the use? The boy had all the best
of it. The inquisition might be kept up for hours, and always he
could cling to his one irrefutable assertion--that his talk was the
meaningless jargon of dreams. The officer had no vestige of proof to
establish the truth or the untruth of any statement that was made.
Nevertheless, Dexter was convinced that Smith had not been asleep,
and he could not believe that the boy was talking to himself. He had
said good-by to "Alison." Had he contrived in some unaccountable
manner to get into communication with Alison Rayne? Impossible! The
girl was Colonel Devreaux's prisoner, and by this time they would be
camping thirty or forty miles farther down the valley. How to reach
her by voice, except through radio or telephone? There was no other
conceivable way.
So mystery again resolved itself into the bogy of a telephone line
that did not seem to exist. Dexter had ransacked one cabin in futile
search of a communicating circuit, and now his perplexity gave him no
choice but to go through the same performance at this place. With a
sigh and a shake of his head, he lighted a candle, and set about an
irksome task.
He went out of doors first, and inspected the ground. The snow held
no intruding footprints. Smith could not have been talking to any
one who stood within earshot. No wires went out from the cabin, so
it seemed equally certain that his voice had not been transmitted
over a telephone line. Wireless? That last remaining possibility
was easily settled. He searched the interior cabin from end to end,
floor, walls, roof, fireplace, prying into every imaginable nook and
cranny; and found not one piece or part of radio equipment. Nor was
there anything about the place to suggest that the owner might be
engaged in any business other than fur trapping. The first streaks
of daylight were beginning to filter through the windows when Dexter
finally gave it up as a hopeless puzzle.
The boy had been watching from the bunk, without comment, his artless
face betraying nothing more than mild curiosity. The corporal
scrutinized him with narrow eyes. His pose of innocence was well put
on, but Dexter could not help but feel that it was assumed for the
occasion. From the beginning he had refused to believe that the
young man had told his right name, and the suspicion persisted that
he was in some way involved in the affairs of the incomprehensible
girl who had quitted this cabin two days before. Whether awake or
asleep, he certainly had spoken the name "Alison," and it all sounded
strangely like a warning.
Dexter darkly pondered the significance of the words he had
overheard. Assuming that the impossible might have happened--that a
message could carry by some queer, occult agency through the
intervening leagues of forest--then its purport was unmistakable.
"Don't come here. Go to Saddle Notch." The boy's speech carried
definite instructions. Were the words, by miraculous chance,
intended to reach the girl? If she could come and go at will, as the
mysterious conversation might seem to indicate, there was but one
inference to be drawn: she had escaped from Devreaux.
Following his startling line of conjecture thus far, the rest was
only simple logic. If the girl actually had fled from the hands of
one policeman, naturally her friends would attempt to warn her away
from a cabin where a second policeman had established himself. She
would be advised to strike for a safer retreat. Saddle Notch! In a
sudden flash of intuition, the corporal persuaded himself that he
knew the place. Riding across the west range two days ago he had
been struck by the appearance of a peculiarly shaped mountain with
two outstanding peaks, and a cleft or notch between, that bore an
amazing resemblance to a gigantic saddle. The mountain stood amid a
cluster of other high peaks in a wild and lonely region, about twenty
miles southwest of this spot. Such country offered ideal refuge to
any fugitive who might be hard pressed, seeking to hide.
For a moment the corporal considered the strangely suggested
possibilities. No doubt it would prove a futile chase to go ranging
through the forests on a flimsy hint of this sort; yet a blind
instinct urged him to go. He hesitated for an instant, and then,
with a nod and a fleeting smile, he made his decision. If by any
millionth chance Alison Rayne had broken away from Devreaux and was
traveling to a meeting at the Saddle Notch with some unidentified
friend, then he, the policeman, would also be there to keep the
rendezvous.
CHAPTER X
BLIND-MAN'S CHASE
With face cold and inscrutable, Dexter crossed the cabin to stand by
the bunk. For a moment he regarded the boy in silent speculation.
Whatever the young man's hidden thoughts, he was taking good care to
keep them to himself. And there was no way to force him to betray
secrets. An officer has no right to employ extreme methods in
dealing with a law-abiding citizen; and there was no evidence to
accuse Smith of any illegal act. Grounds for his arrest or detention
were lacking. Even the time-worn pretext of holding a suspected
offender as a "witness" wouldn't stand in his case. He had witnessed
nothing he could be called to the box for--unless, indeed, he
testified to the fact that he had watched a policeman rummaging
vainly, and without written warrant, through another man's dwelling.
Apparently there was nothing to be done except to grant him the best
of the encounter.
Dexter suppressed a rueful laugh, and reached forward abruptly to
touch the boy's bandaged arm. "Let's see how you're doing this
morning," he suggested lightly.
The patient's condition appeared to be much improved since last
night. Dexter heated water and applied new dressings, and gave the
sufferer detailed instruction for self-treatment. He lingered long
enough to cook breakfast, and then picked up his pack and carbine and
turned towards the door.
"Where are you going?" asked Smith, with a sudden display of interest.
The corporal looked back with a faint quirk of his mouth. "If I
should walk in my sleep, we'll be quits," he remarked. "So long,
Smith."
"So long, officer," a pleasant voice called after him; and he opened
the door and stepped out into the snow.
It was a dull, gray morning, with a sodden chill in the air. The
dense, leaden atmosphere was like an oppressive stillness upon the
earth, and the dingy sky of the northwest held the threat of dark
forces gathering. Colonel Devreaux apparently was wise in his
prognostication. Winter's first deadly storm was brewing behind the
ranges, and before nightfall the big snow was surely due.
Dexter observed the weather signs with a brooding glance, and then,
with a fatalistic shrug, he buttoned his collar tight, and strode
across the brook. By the fringe of the streamside alders he paused
for a moment to consult his pocket compass. As he remembered his
direction points, the saddle mountain lay behind two intervening
ridges, almost on a south by west line. The easier route would be to
follow the brook back past the burned cabin, and then turn north
along a branch stream that cut through dense timber on the farther
side of the valley. But this course would take him miles out of his
way. The shorter path lay through a difficult country of forest and
hills, but, without horse or baggage, he ought to be able to make his
way across. For a second he hesitated, and then decided on the
straightaway route. Hitching his pack higher on his shoulders, he
left the brook and struck off through the woods.
Anxious to reach his destination before the storm descended, he set
himself a pace that might have killed a man unused to wilderness
travel. Head bent forward, body relaxed at the hips, feet balancing
on a straight line, as a moccasined Indian walks, he swung forward
with a long, flexible stride, dodging under branches, weaving back
and forth among windfalls and thickets, leaping over down-trunks,
moving onward without halt or hesitation, like a shadow gliding
through the white mazes of the forest.
It was still early morning when he climbed up through a tangle of
hillside brush, and passed over the watershed of the brook he had
left behind. By noon he had crossed the jungle hollow beyond and
ascended to the top of the next parallel ridge; and through an open
vista on the higher ground he caught his first glimpse of the distant
mountain peaks, towering ghostly white against the reaches of the
sullen sky.
He paused only to make sure of his bearings, and then plunged forward
once more into the thick forest. For nearly two hours he worked out
his tortuous trail, descending a long slope, broken by gulleys and
ravines, through a wilderness of ancient spruces, where smothering
undergrowths contested his pathway and shut him in on all sides as a
swimmer is surrounded by the waves of the sea. But he struggled on
doggedly, and passed in time through the worst of it. Eventually the
smaller growths began to thin out, and the spruces gradually made way
for the jack pines. He had more frequent glimpses of the sky, and
presently, through a rift in the branches, he once more discovered
the smoky outlines of mountain caps.
Pushing rapidly forward, he soon left the forest behind, and came at
last to the border of an open field of snow, whence he viewed the
full majestic sweep of the country before him.
For a mile or more straight ahead, and right and left as far as he
could see the ground stretched away, level and treeless, to the foot
of a cliff-like palisade--an appalling hundred foot terrace, rising
sheer from the flat below. From the top of this first high point a
sort of broad shelf, or plateau, dipped back for another couple of
miles into the dark, ringing circle of a twin-peaked mountain. And
farther still, like a faint smoke haze upon the middle sky, stood the
towering saw edge of the coastal divide, the final great barrier that
forbade the crossing from valley to valley of all things that did not
follow the soaring eagle's route.
A dank wind drew down through the flue of the mountains, bringing a
first warning flutter of snowflakes. In the immediate foreground the
double peaks loomed in bold outline, and it would have needed a dull
imagination, indeed, that lacked a name for this individual mountain.
It was like a saddle sculptured on colossal proportions--pommel,
cantle, even the stirrup--chiseled realistically in sweeping,
thousand-foot strokes. A dip of the ridge formed a horse's back and
withers; pointed ears and grotesquely shaped head were blocked out in
strong relief by an up-jutting pinnacle beyond; and in order that
nothing should be lacking, a broad, snow-filled crevice twisted down
the mountainside to give the appearance of a long, flowing tail.
Dexter viewed the stupendous statue with critical appreciation, but
as he looked, for some reason, he began to feel a trifle foolish.
The Saddle Mountain was a sight worth observing, but he had not come
on a wearying journey to awe himself with scenery. He found himself
wondering why he really had come. Whom did he expect to find here?
Alison Rayne? He shook his head incredulously. After traveling all
this distance it suddenly struck him that he had blundered off
through the forest on a vain and brainless errand--chasing the
chimera of another man's dream.
With a flat feeling of disillusionment, he stood for a moment gazing
vacantly at the lonesome, barren peaks. Gradually his glance shifted
downward to the plateau that formed the base of the mountain. He was
scanning the top of the nearest palisade, without expecting to make
any discovery of interest, when his body suddenly stiffened and his
pupils contracted sharply. Something was moving along the rim of the
precipice.
It was a grayish-white object, diminished by distance to a pin-head
speck, and barely discernible against the snowy background. Whatever
it was, it was walking, and while Dexter watched, the tiny shape
moved to the edge of the palisade, passed over the brink, and then
started to climb down the steep side of the cliff.
He nodded to himself when he saw what had happened. Only a sheep or
mountain goat would be apt to attempt the perilous descent of a sheer
wall of rock. Probably it was a bighorn sheep, driven from the
summits by the approaching storm, and taking the shortest route down
to the valley pastures. To make certain, however, he uncased his
binoculars to observe the creature in magnified view.
He trained the lenses upon the distant cliff-side, and once more
picked up the climbing shape. For an instant he gazed dubiously, and
then his wrist tendons drew taut as wires as he tried to steady the
leveled glasses. It was not a sheep he saw, but a human
shape--clinging against the precipitous height.
Amazed--unbelieving--he gingerly readjusted the focus of his
binoculars, and in a moment the distant cliff-side seemed to draw
towards him in sharper perspective. The diminutive shape suddenly
enlarged to doll-size, and he made out a straight, slender figure,
clad in white sweater and knickers. He stared with straining vision,
and recognition came like a blow between the eyes. The mountain
climber was Alison Rayne.