Philip, instead of following the doctor, laid a detaining hand upon his
arm.
“Wait!” he said.
Something in the seriousness of his manner drew a quick look of
apprehension over the other's face.
“I want to talk with you,” continued Philip. “Let us walk a little way
down the trail.”
The doctor eyed him suspiciously as they turned away from the cabin.
“See here, Phil Steele,” he said, and there was a hard ring in his
voice, “I've had all sorts of confidence in you, and I've told you more,
perhaps, than I ought. I don't suppose you have a suspicion that you
ought to break it?”
“No, it isn't that,” replied Philip, laughing a little uneasily. “I'm
glad you got away with Falkner, and so far as I am concerned no one
will ever know what has happened. It's I who want to place a little
confidence in you now. I am positively at my wits' end, and all over a
situation which seems to place you and me in a class by ourselves--sort
of brothers in trouble, you know,” and he told McGill, briefly, of
Isobel, and his search for her.
“I lost them between Lac Bain and Fort Churchill,” he finished. “The two
sledges separated, one continuing to Churchill, and the other turning
into the South. I followed the Churchill sledge--and was wrong. When I
came back the snow had covered the other trail.”
The little professor stopped suddenly, and squared himself directly in
Philip's path.
“You don't say!” he gasped. There was a look of amazement on his face.
“What a wonderfully little world this is, Phil,” he added, smiling in a
curious way. “What a wonderfully, wonderfully little world it is! It's
only a playground, after all, and the funny part of it is that it is not
even large enough to play a game of hide-and-seek in, successfully. I've
proved that beyond question. And here--you--”
“What?” demanded Philip, puzzled by the other's attitude.
“Well, you see, I went first to Nelson House,” said McGill, “and from
there up to the Hudson's Bay Company's post in the Cochrane River,
hunting for Falkner and this girl--a man and a woman. And at the
Cochrane Post a Frenchman told me that there was a strange man and woman
up at Lac Bain, and I set off for there. That must have been just about
the time you were starting for Churchill, for on the third day up I met
a sledge that turned me off the Lac Bain trail to take up the nearer
trail to Chippewayan. With this sledge were the two who had been at Lac
Bain, Colonel Becker and his daughter.”
For a moment Philip could not speak. He caught the other's hand
excitedly.
“You--you found where they were going?” he asked, when McGill did not
continue.
“Yes. We ate dinner together, and the colonel said they were bound for
Nelson House, and that they would probably go from there to Winnipeg. I
didn't ask which way they would go.”
“From Nelson House it would be by the Saskatchewan and Le Pas trail,”
cried Philip. He was looking straight over the little doctor's head. “If
it wasn't for this damnable DeBar--whom I ought to go after again--”
“Drop DeBar,” interrupted McGill quietly. “He's got too big a start of
you anyway--so what's the use? Drop 'im. I dropped a whole lot of things
when I came up here.”
“But the law--”
“Damn the law!” exploded the doctor with unexpected vehemence.
“Sometimes I think the world would be just as happy without it.”
Their eyes met, sharp and understanding.
“You're a professor in a college,” chuckled Philip, his voice trembling
again with hope and eagerness. “You ought to know more than I do. What
would you do if you were in my place?”
“I'd hustle for a pair of wings and fly,” replied the little professor
promptly. “Good Lord, Phil--if it was my wife--and I hadn't got her
yet--I wouldn't let up until I'd chased her from one end of the earth to
the other. What's a little matter of duty compared to that girl hustling
toward Winnipeg? Next to my own little girl at home she's the prettiest
thing I ever laid my eyes on.”
Philip laughed aloud.
“Thanks, McGill. By Heaven, I'll go! When do you start?”
“The dogs are ready, and so is Mrs. William Falkner.”
Philip turned about quickly.
“I'll go over and say good-by to the detachment, and get my pack,” he
said over his shoulder. “I'll be back inside of half an hour.”
It was a slow trip down. The snow was beginning to soften in the warmth
of the first spring suns by the time they arrived at Lac la Crosse. Two
days before they reached the post at Montreal Lake, Philip began to feel
the first discomfort of a strange sickness, of which he said nothing.
But the sharp eyes of the doctor detected that something was wrong,
and before they came to Montreal House he recognized the fever that had
begun to burn in Philip's body.
“You've set too fast a pace,” he told him. “It's that--and the blow you
got when DeBar threw you against the rock. You'll have to lay up for a
spell.”
In spite of his protestations, the doctor compelled him to go to bed
when they arrived at the post. He grew rapidly worse, and for five weeks
the doctor and Falkner's wife nursed him through the fever. When they
left for the South, late in May, he was still too weak to travel, and it
was a month later before he presented himself, pale and haggard, before
Inspector MacGregor at Prince Albert. Again disappointment was awaiting
him. There had been delay in purchasing his discharge, and he found that
he would have to wait until August. MacGregor gave him a three weeks'
furlough, and his first move was to go up to Etomami and Le Pas. Colonel
Becker and Isobel had been at those places six weeks before. He could
find no trace of their having stopped at Prince Albert. He ran down to
Winnipeg and spent several days in making inquiries which proved the
hopelessness of any longer expecting to find Isobel in Canada. He
assured himself that by this time they were probably in London and he
made his plans accordingly. His discharge would come to him by the tenth
of August, and he would immediately set off for England.
Upon his return to Prince Albert he was detailed to a big prairie
stretch of country where there was little to do but wait. On the
first day of August he was at Hymers when the Limited plunged down the
embankment into Blind Indian River. The first word of it came over the
wire from Bleak House Station a little before midnight, while he and the
agent were playing cribbage. Pink-cheeked little Gunn, agent, operator,
and one-third of the total population of Hymers, had lifted a peg to
make a count when his hand stopped in mid-air, and with a gasping break
in his voice he sprang to his feet.
The instrument on the little table near the window was clicking
frantically. It was Billinger, at Bleak House, crying out for
headquarters, clear lines, the right of way. The Transcontinental--
engine, tender, baggage car, two coaches and a sleeper, had gone to the
devil. Those, in his excitement, where his first words. From fifty to a
hundred were dead. Gunn almost swore Billinger's next words to the line.
It was not an accident! Human hands had torn up three sections of rail.
The same human hands had rolled a two-ton boulder in the right of way.
He did not know whether the express car--or what little remained of it--
had been robbed or not.
From midnight until two o'clock the lines were hot. A wrecking train
was on its way from the east, another from division headquarters to the
west. Ceaselessly headquarters demanded new information, and bit by bit
the terrible tragedy was told even as the men and women in it died and
the few souls from the prairies around Bleak House Station fought to
save lives. Then a new word crept in on the wires. It called for Philip
Steele at Hymers.
It commanded him in the name of Inspector MacGregor of the Royal Mounted
to reach Bleak House Station without delay. What he was to do when he
arrived at the scene of the wreck was left to his own judgment. The wire
from MacGregor aroused Philip from the stupor of horror into which he
had fallen. Gunn's girlish face was as white as a sheet.
“I've got a jigger,” he said, “and you can take it. It's forty miles to
Bleak House and you can make it in three hours. There won't be a train
for six.”
Philip scribbled a few words for MacGregor and shoved them into Gunn's
nervous hand. While the operator was sending them off he rolled a
cigarette, lighted it, and buckled on his revolver belt. Then Gunn
hurried him through the door and they lifted the velocipede on the
track.
“Wire Billinger I'm coming,” called back Philip as Gunn started him off
with a running shove.