Before his heavier and slower acting opponent could anticipate the movement Dexter's left hand reached across and gripped the other man's right elbow at the precise spot where a tender nerve runs near the socket bone. Simultaneously his right hand shot over his head and clasped the tendons of a short and stocky neck. Then, with catlike quickness, he dropped crouching almost to his knees. The suddenness of the shift overbalanced the other man, and the wiry corporal took the weight across his left hip. A wrench and a heave, and he might send his victim sprawling with a badly twisted back. But as he gathered himself for the final effort, he noticed something strangely familiar in the texture of the sleeve his fingers were grasping. His hand slipped downward, and touched the metal buttons of a uniform jacket.
With a wondering exclamation he relaxed his body, and straightened erect. Then he squirmed about to confront the panting bulk behind him. He stared in the semi-darkness, and made out in blurred outline a square-shaped face and bristling mustache, shadowed under the brim of a regulation Stetson. For an instant longer he peered in tense questioning, and then he laughed a low, short laugh that wavered between relief and chagrin.
"Hello, colonel," he said.
The other man gazed uncertainly, but slightly let up on the pressure of his grip.
"Superintendent Devreaux of Fort Dauntless," remarked the corporal, grinning. "If you'll give me two more inches space I'll be proud to salute my officer."
The mustached man worked his heavy brows, and blinked in an owlish, nearsighted way. "It's—it's Corporal—" he muttered—"why, bless me, it's Corporal Dexter of Crooked Forks!"
He released his bearlike clutch, and stepped back a pace, gingerly rubbing the indented place in his elbow joint. "I'm just as well pleased that you didn't finish the last movement of the Nipponese spine cracker. I'm not quite as spry as I remember being once, and I suspect—I rather fear you would have had me." He cast a curious glance in the direction of the flaming cabin. "What's the trouble here?" he asked.
Dexter regarded his superior officer with the respect an eaglet might well feel towards a war-scarred eagle. Colonel Devreaux was a grizzled veteran of the R.C.M.P., with a record of two generations of police work behind him, and an ex-army officer of the World War. The commander of a great wilderness superintendency, he was known as a mighty criminal catcher wherever word of the law has traveled, from tide water to the plains beyond the mountains, from the big sticks of the middle country to the little sticks of the frozen Arctic.
Theoretically the superintendent belonged in his office at Fort Dauntless. But in actual fact, he was seldom seen at his desk. He wandered at large, in the thick of all troubles. Lonely constables by remote bivouac fires could never feel quite sure that the next moment might not bring the old man stalking casually into camp to demand pot luck and ask to know how business fared.
"Constable Graves is dead," said Dexter, watching his officer's face. "Ambushed and shot from behind. I found him lying in the snow a short distance down the valley."