Not one of the men answered a word, and the silence grew impressive by what it didn't say.
Once Wayland had turned the bend of the shaft, the rest of the way up was easy. Daylight was above, and the climb was a gradual slant over uneven ridged rock; and with the grip of the pegs in his mountaineering boots, he ascended almost at a run on all fours.
"Hullo up-there," he called, "what's wrong?"
There was no answer. He ascended the rest of the way winged and came out hoisting himself from his elbows to his knees with a deep breath of pure air above the surface. At first, daylight blinded him. He threw the lantern from his hat and blinked the darkness out of his eyes.
"It's all right fellows," he roared down the shaft, funnelling his hands.
Then he looked.
Sheriff Flood was not to be seen. Neither was MacDonald. There seemed to be no one. The day shift were going back in the tunnels below. The windlass handle hung prone as a disused well. It had not flown back broken. The cable had been cut. Then, he heard a groan. It was Calamity lying on her face at the foot of the windlass, weeping and reaving her hair. Stretched on the grass a few paces back from the windlass with two bloody bullet holes full in the soft of the temple, lay MacDonald, the sheep rancher, beyond recall.
Wayland stooped and felt for the heart.
It was motionless. The body was chilling and stiffening. He looked back at the face. There was almost a smile on the lips; and one hand hung as if fallen from the windlass handle. A suspicion flashed through Wayland's mind. He could hardly give it credence. It was preposterous, unbelievable, like a page from the lawlessness of the frontier a hundred years ago! Yet hadn't this thing happened in California, and happened in Alaska? They would never dare to murder a man conducting an investigation ordered by the great Government of the greatest Nation on earth! Yet had they not tried to assassinate representatives of the great Federal Government down in San Francisco, and shot to death in Colorado a federal officer sent straight from Washington? And these murders had not been committed by the rabble, by the demagogues, by the anarchists. They had been pre-planned and carried out by the vested-righter, in defiance of law, in defiance of the strongest Government on earth and up to the present, in defiance of retribution.
Wayland tore open the coat and felt for the notes. They were gone. He looked at Calamity. A darker suspicion came. Then, he caught the Cree woman by the shoulder and threw her to her feet.