Alison threw up her head and confronted her companion with flashing eyes. "I know he is innocent!" she declared passionately. "I didn't even ask him to swear to me. I've known him all his life, and I know he's utterly incapable of that crime—of any crime. I've never blinded myself to his weaknesses, but I know also that he could never have done this thing."
"In any event," observed the corporal, walking onward with a slow, deliberate stride, "he lacked the courage of innocence, and cleared out. I suppose he had already bargained with one of Stark's agents to help him escape through the Canadian wilderness."
"With—what do you mean?" asked the girl sharply.
"I know all about Stark and his organization for fugitive criminals," Dexter said. "I'd already suspected the existence of an underground railroad, running through this country." His lips twisted into a fleeting smile. "And Stark himself did me the honor to tell me the details of his business—when he thought I was doomed to certain death."
"In that case," said Alison after a little pause, "I'm not betraying—Yes: one of Stark's men came to Archie in his trouble. He offered the chance of escape, took all the money Archie had left and Stark has helped us this far on our way.
"It's—I can't ask you to have my faith in Archie," the girl resumed after a momentary pause. "It isn't about him that I really want to talk, but—" She glanced towards Dexter with a timidity that he had never before seen in her eyes. "It's about the night you found me at that cabin where—where the men were killed."
"Yes?" he urged as she hesitated.
Alison's rounded chin set resolutely. It was apparent that there was something she had decided to say, and she did not propose to mince matters. "You told me that you heard a woman's voice in that cabin over yonder, just before the two men were shot in their bunks. You say there were no footprints near the place beside my own. So by police logic you arrive at the only deduction that fits the case. I must have fired the shots."
They had climbed the southward slope leading across the foot of Saddle Mountain, and were now making their way over a stretch of rough, furrowed ground along the edge of the open plateau. Dexter absently offered his hand to steady the girl's steps across a slippery outcropping of rock. "You came to that cabin that night from the cabin farther up the valley, where I afterwards found your brother," he stated with thoughtfully knitting brows. "Why did you make that journey alone at such an hour?"
"To find help for Archie," she answered. "You saw him yourself next day, and know how badly he needed it. I didn't know what to do for him, and so I went down the valley to the lower cabin, looking for some one who might know more about such matters than I."