CHAPTER II. Lips That Speak Not
CHAPTER III. The Mysterious Attack
CHAPTER IV. The Warning
CHAPTER V. Howland's Midnight Visitor
CHAPTER VI. The Love of a Man
CHAPTER VII. The Blowing of the Coyote
CHAPTER VIII. The Hour of Death
CHAPTER IX. The Tryst
CHAPTER X. A Race Into the North
CHAPTER XI. The House of the Red Death
CHAPTER XII. The Fight
CHAPTER XIII. The Pursuit
CHAPTER XIV. The Gleam of the Light
CHAPTER XV. In the Bedroom Chamber
CHAPTER XVI. Jean's Story
CHAPTER XVII. Meleese
THE DANGER TRAIL
CHAPTER I
THE GIRL OF THE SNOWS
For perhaps the first time in his life Howland felt the spirit of
romance, of adventure, of sympathy for the picturesque and the unknown
surging through his veins. A billion stars glowed like yellow,
passionless eyes in the polar cold of the skies. Behind him, white in
its sinuous twisting through the snow-smothered wilderness, lay the icy
Saskatchewan, with a few scattered lights visible where Prince Albert,
the last outpost of civilization, came down to the river half a
mile away.
But it was into the North that Howland looked. From the top of the great
ridge which he had climbed he gazed steadily into the white gloom which
reached for a thousand miles from where he stood to the Arctic Sea.
Faintly in the grim silence of the winter night there came to his ears
the soft hissing sound of the aurora borealis as it played in its
age-old song over the dome of the earth, and as he watched the cold
flashes shooting like pale arrows through the distant sky and listened
to its whispering music of unending loneliness and mystery, there came
on him a strange feeling that it was beckoning to him and calling to
him--telling him that up there very near to the end of the earth lay all
that he had dreamed of and hoped for since he had grown old enough to
begin the shaping of a destiny of his own.
He shivered as the cold nipped at his blood, and lighted a fresh cigar,
half-turning to shield himself from a wind that was growing out of the
east. As the match flared in the cup of his hands for an instant there
came from the black gloom of the balsam and spruce at his feet a
wailing, hungerful cry that brought a startled breath from his lips. It
was a cry such as Indian dogs make about the tepees of masters who are
newly dead. He had never heard such a cry before, and yet he knew that
it was a wolf's. It impressed him with an awe which was new to him and
he stood as motionless as the trees about him until, from out the gray
night-gloom to the west, there came an answering cry, and then, from far
to the north, still another.
"Sounds as though I'd better go back to town," he said to himself,
speaking aloud. "By George, but it's lonely!"
He descended the ridge, walked rapidly over the hard crust of the snow
across the Saskatchewan, and assured himself that he felt considerably
easier when the lights of Prince Albert gleamed a few hundred yards
ahead of him.
Jack Howland was a Chicago man, which means that he was a hustler, and
not overburdened with sentiment. For fifteen of his thirty-one years he
had been hustling. Since he could easily remember, he had possessed to
a large measure but one ambition and one hope. With a persistence which
had left him peculiarly a stranger to the more frivolous and human sides
of life he had worked toward the achievement of this ambition, and
to-night, because that achievement was very near at hand, he was happy.
He had never been happier. There flashed across his mental vision a
swiftly moving picture of the fight he had made for success. It had been
a magnificent fight. Without vanity he was proud of it, for fate had
handicapped him at the beginning, and still he had won out. He saw
himself again the homeless little farmer boy setting out from his
Illinois village to take up life in a great city; as though it had all
happened but yesterday he remembered how for days and weeks he had
nearly starved, how he had sold papers at first, and then, by lucky
chance, became errand boy in a big drafting establishment. It was there
that the ambition was born in him. He saw great engineers come and
go--men who were greater than presidents to him, and who sought out the
ends of the earth in the following of their vocation. He made a slave of
himself in the nurturing and strengthening of his ambition to become one
of them--to be a builder of railroads and bridges, a tunneler of
mountains, a creator of new things in new lands. His slavery had not
lessened as his years increased. Voluntarily he had kept himself in
bondage, fighting ceaselessly the obstacles in his way, triumphing over
his handicaps as few other men had triumphed, rising, slowly, steadily,
resistlessly, until now--. He flung back his head and the pulse of his
heart quickened as he heard again the words of Van Horn, president of
the greatest engineering company on the continent.
"Howland, we've decided to put you in charge Of the building of the
Hudson Bay Railroad. It's one of the wildest jobs we've ever had, and
Gregson and Thorne don't seem to catch on. They're bridge builders and
not wilderness men. We've got to lay a single line of steel through
three hundred miles of the wildest country in North America, and from
this hour your motto is 'Do it or bust!' You can report at Le Pas as
soon as you get your traps together."
Those words had broken the slavedom for Howland. He had been fighting
for an opportunity, and now that the opportunity had come he was sure
that he would succeed. Swiftly, with his hands thrust deep in his
pockets, he walked down the one main street of Prince Albert, puffing
out odorous clouds of smoke from his cigar, every fiber in him tingling
with the new joy that had come into his life. Another night would see
him in Le Pas, the little outpost sixty miles farther east on the
Saskatchewan. Then a hundred miles by dog-sledge and he would be in the
big wilderness camp where three hundred men were already at work
clearing a way to the great bay to the north. What a glorious
achievement that road would be! It would remain for all time as a
cenotaph to his ability, his courage and indomitable persistence.
It was past nine o'clock when Howland entered the little old Windsor
Hotel. The big room, through the windows of which he could look out on
the street and across the frozen Saskatchewan, was almost empty. The
clerk had locked his cigar-case and had gone to bed. In one corner,
partly shrouded in gloom, sat a half-breed trapper who had come in that
day from the Lac la Ronge country, and at his feet crouched one of his
wolfish sledge-dogs. Both were wide-awake and stared curiously at
Howland as he came in. In front of the two large windows sat half a
dozen men, as silent as the half-breed, clad in moccasins and thick
caribou skin coats. One of them was the factor from a Hudson Bay post at
Lac Bain who had not been down to the edge of civilization for three
years; the others, including two Crees and a Chippewayan, were hunters
and Post men who had driven in their furs from a hundred miles to
the north.
For a moment Howland paused in the middle of the room and looked about
him. Ordinarily he would have liked this quiet, and would have gone to
one of the two rude tables to write a letter or work out a problem of
some sort, for he always carried a pocketful of problems about with him.
His fifteen years of study and unceasing slavery to his ambition had
made him naturally as taciturn as these grim men of the North, who were
born to silence. But to-night there had come a change over him. He
wanted to talk. He wanted to ask questions. He longed for human
companionship, for some kind of mental exhilaration beyond that
furnished by his own thoughts. Feeling in his pocket for a cigar he
seated himself before one of the windows and proffered it to the factor
from Lac Bain.
"You smoke?" he asked companionably.
"I was born in a wigwam," said the factor slowly, taking the cigar.
"Thank you."
"Deuced polite for a man who hasn't seen civilization for three years,"
thought Howland, seating himself comfortably, with his feet on the
window-sill. Aloud he said, "The clerk tells me you are from Lac Bain.
That's a good distance north, isn't it?"
"Four hundred miles," replied the factor with quiet terseness. "We're on
the edge of the Barren Lands."
"Whew!" Howland shrugged his shoulders. Then he volunteered, "I'm going
north myself to-morrow."
"Post man?"
"No; engineer. I'm putting through the Hudson Bay Railroad."
He spoke the words quite clearly and as they fell from his lips the
half-breed, partly concealed in the gloom behind him, straightened with
the alert quickness of a cat. He leaned forward eagerly, his black eyes
gleaming, and then rose softly from his seat. His moccasined feet made
no sound as he came up behind Howland. It was the big huskie who first
gave a sign of his presence. For a moment the upturned eyes of the young
engineer met those of the half-breed. That look gave Howland a glimpse
of a face which he could never forget--a thin, dark, sensitive face
framed in shining, jet-black hair, and a pair of eyes that were the most
beautiful he had ever seen in a man. Sometimes a look decides great
friendship or bitter hatred between men. And something, nameless,
unaccountable, passed between these two. Not until the half-breed had
turned and was walking swiftly away did Howland realize that he wanted
to speak to him, to grip him by the hand, to know him by name. He
watched the slender form of the Northerner, as lithe and as graceful in
its movement as a wild thing of the forests, until it passed from the
door out into the night.
"Who was that?" he asked, turning to the factor.
"His name is Croisset. He comes from the Wholdaia country, beyond Lac la
Ronge."
"French?"
"Half French, half Cree."
The factor resumed his steady gaze out into the white distance of the
night, and Howland gave up his effort at conversation. After a little
his companion shoved back his chair and bade him good night. The Crees
and Chippewayan followed him, and a few minutes later the two white
hunters left the engineer alone before the windows.
"Mighty funny people," he said half aloud. "Wonder if they ever talk!"
He leaned forward, elbows on knees, his face resting in his hands, and
stared to catch a sign of moving life outside. In him there was no
desire for sleep. Often he had called himself a night-bird, but seldom
had he been more wakeful than on this night. The elation of his triumph,
of his success, had not yet worn itself down to a normal and reasoning
satisfaction, and his chief longing was for the day, and the day after
that, and the next day, when he would take the place of Gregson and
Thorne. Every muscle in his body was vibrant in its desire for action.
He looked at his watch. It was only ten o'clock. Since supper he had
smoked almost ceaselessly. Now he lighted another cigar and stood up
close to one of the windows.
Faintly he caught the sound of a step on the board walk outside. It was
a light, quick step, and for an instant it hesitated, just out of his
vision. Then it approached, and suddenly the figure of a woman stopped
in front of the window. How she was dressed Howland could not have told
a moment later. All that he saw was the face, white in the white
night--a face on which the shimmering starlight fell as it was lifted to
his gaze, beautiful, as clear-cut as a cameo, with eyes that looked up
at him half-pleadingly, half-luringly, and lips parted, as if about to
speak to him. He stared, moveless in his astonishment, and in another
breath the face was gone.
With a hurried exclamation he ran across the empty room to the door and
looked down the starlit street. To go from the window to the door took
him but a few seconds, yet he found the street deserted--deserted except
for a solitary figure three blocks away and a dog that growled at him
as he thrust out his head and shoulders. He heard no sound of footsteps,
no opening or closing of a door. Only there came to him that faint,
hissing music of the northern skies, and once more, from the black
forest beyond the Saskatchewan, the infinite sadness of the wolf-howl.