[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: Constable La Marr wondered if the slogan of the
Mounted applied in case one had to deal with an insane native.]
NEVER FIRE FIRST
_A Canadian Northwest Mounted Story_
BY
JAMES FRENCH DORRANCE
CO-AUTHOR OF "GET YOUR MAN,"
"GLORY RIDES THE RANGE"
_Frontispiece by_
CHARLES DURANT
NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1924,
BY THE MACAULAY COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To
JOHN WOODS DORRANCE
FATHER AND FRIEND
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I Chance of Morpheus
II The Eskimo Way
III Complication Astounding
IV Best of Bad Business
V Silver and Black
VI Regard for the Law
VII Wanted--An Eskimo Fox
VIII The Hero Fugitive
IX The Skein Tangles
X Hard Knuckles
XI The Scarlet Special
XII Living Targets
XIII His Montreal Promise
XIV A Double-Barreled Case
XV Under Suspicion
XVI The "Widdy" in Gray
XVII Richer than Gold
XVIII A Cryptic Messenger
XIX Into the Night
XX Morning's Maze
XXI The Closed Creek
XXII Figure of Speech
XXIII When Morning Came
XXIV Tent-Told Tales
XXV Clutch of the Breed
XXVI Boot and Booty
XXVII Bright with Promise
NEVER FIRE FIRST
CHAPTER I
CHANCE OF MORPHEUS
From the "dig-in" of the snow-bank where he had spent the blizzard
night in comparative comfort, Constable La Marr of the Royal Mounted
looked out upon a full-grown day. The storm that had driven him to
shelter had passed, or at least was taking a rest. For once he had
overslept and where days, even in winter's youth, are but seven hours
long, the fault caused him chagrin.
That a "Mountie" in close pursuit of a murder suspect should have
made such a slip was disconcerting even to one so young as La Marr.
He found little consolation in the fact that when he had enlisted in
the Force he had not dreamed of an Arctic assignment, but had
expected one of those gayly uniformed details in Montreal or Quebec.
His concern, if the news ever leaked out, was of the reaction upon
his immediate superior, Staff-Sergeant Russell Seymour. But small
chance of that leakage unless he himself weakened--or
strengthened--and tested the adage that confession is good for the
soul. Seymour, a grimly handsome wolf of the North in command of the
detachment post at Armistice, was now two months absent on an irksome
detail of snow patrol, one that should have fallen to the rookie
constable, except for his inexperience.
La Marr stamped out of the snow-hole that had sheltered him and
restored circulation by vigorous gymnastics. Light as was his trail
equipment, being without sled or dogs, he had not suffered, having
learned rapidly the first protective measures of the Arctic "cop."
He was about to make a belated breakfast from his emergency pack when
his glance chanced toward the north and focused upon a furred figure
headed down the snow ruff on a course that would bring him within
easy reach.
"Aye, not so bad!" he congratulated audibly. "I get me man by
sleeping on his trail!"
He chuckled as he watched the snow-shoed Eskimo stumble directly
toward the trap that was set for him by chance of Morpheus.
Yet the young constable took no chances.
A murder had been committed two days before at Armistice, almost
within the shadow of the police post. The crime seemed a
particularly atrocious one to him from the fact that a white man, a
trader's clerk, had been the victim. Any Eskimo who would go to such
lengths was either desperate or insane. La Marr felt called upon to
be very much on guard as he waited within the shelter of the
snow-trap.
He had not a doubt that the native approaching was his quarry, any
more than he had of that quarry's guilt. He wondered if the slogan
of the Mounted applied in case one had to deal with an insane native.
It would be easy--and providentially safe--to wing the oncomer,
undoubtedly unaware of the nearness of a Nemesis.
But the training at the Regina school of police that a "Mountie"
never fires first is strict and impressive. Constable La Marr could
not take a pot shot even with the intent only to wound the flounderer.
Next moment surprise caught him--surprise that Avic, the red-handed
culprit, was fighting his way back to camp. But wait, he'd have to
revise that thought for this particular murder had been done in a
peculiar native fashion that shed no blood. Anyhow, why should one
so obviously guilty of killing a white man in a bronze man's country
be headed toward the police post from which he had made a clean
get-away?
No answer came to La Marr. He merely waited.
The Eskimo floundered on.
The constable's concealment was neat enough in a country where all is
white. It was better even than bush or shrub, for they were so rare
as to be open to suspicion. At just the right second he lunged
forward and took the native entirely by surprise. The two went over
in a flurry of snow.
For a moment the Eskimo struggled fiercely, possibly thinking that
his fur-clad assailant was an Arctic wolf. But his resistance ceased
on recognizing he was in human grip.
La Marr yanked his captive to his feet and searched for weapons,
finding none. Then he remembered the rules of the Ottawa "red book"
and pronounced the statutory warning.
"Arrest you, Avic, in the name of the king; warn you that anything
you say may be used against you. D'ye understand?"
As he asked this last, which is not a part of the official warning,
he realized that Avic did not.
"Barking sun-dogs, why didn't the good Lord provide one language for
everybody?" he complained. "Anyway, there ain't much chance of my
understanding anything you may say against yourself. I'll tell it
all over to you when I get you to the post. Now we'll mush!"
"Ugh--yes," grunted the Eskimo, seemingly undisturbed.
The young constable was puzzled by the prisoner's demeanor. He
stared at the man, whose stolid expression was heightened by thick
lips and high cheek-bones. Perhaps the native did not know he was in
the hands of the police and on his way to pay for the dreadful crime.
Raising his _parkee_, La Marr disclosed the scarlet tunic which he
wore underneath. It was the color of authority in the far North; no
Eskimo who ever had seen it before could doubt it.
There was no gleam of intelligence in the dark eyes that stared from
behind narrow, reddened lids. There dawned upon the constable a
possibility. The Eskimo was snow blind under the curse of the
Northland winter which falls alike to native and outlander, at times.
That would explain his back-tracking. Rather than wander in circles
over the white blanketed tundra until a miserable death came to his
rescue, he was hurrying back, while a glimmer of sight yet remained,
to take his chances with the mystery called "Law."
"Not a bad choice," thought La Marr as he stepped out ahead to break
the trail that the night's blizzard had covered.
After locking his prisoner in the tiny guard room, a part of the
one-story frame structure that sheltered the small detachment, the
constable started for the post of the Arctic Trading Company a few
hundred yards away. He was young, La Marr, and pleased with himself
over his first capture of importance. He anticipated satisfaction in
discussing the arrest with Harry Karmack, the only other white man at
Armistice now that Oliver O'Malley had passed out.
But he did not get across the yard.
The report of a rifle from down the frozen river, which flowed north,
halted him. He saw a dog team limping in over the crust,
unmistakably the detachment's own bunch of malamutes. The man at the
gee-pole could be none other than Sergeant Seymour, returned at last
from the long Arctic patrol.
Here was a vastly more important auditor for his triumph. He sprang
forward to offer salute and greetings and to help with the malamutes,
for an Eskimo dog team always arrives with a flourish that is
exciting and troublesome.
Once the animals were off to their kennels and before Seymour fairly
had caught his breath from the last spurt into camp, the young
constable was blurting out the details of Oliver O'Malley's untimely
end.
"But I've captured the murderer!" La Marr exclaimed in triumph.
"I've got Avic, the Eskimo, hard and fast in the guard room. Come
and see."
With interest the sergeant followed the lead of the one and only man
in his command.
The native had been squatted on the floor with his back against the
wall near a stove, the sides of which glowed like a red apple. On
their entry, he rose muttering in gutturals that meant nothing to the
constable. Seymour gave one glance of recognition, then turned.
"You've got a murderer, sure enough, La Marr," he said with that
slowness of speech so seldom accelerated as to be an outstanding
characteristic. "But his name's not Avic and by no possibility could
he have had anything to do with the killing of O'Malley."
"Then who the hell----," the constable began.
"This is Olespe of the Lady Franklin band. For three weeks he's been
my prisoner. On the sled out there are the remains of the wife he
killed in an attack of seal-fed jealousy."
The chagrin of Constable La Marr was written in gloom across a face
so lately aglow.