IV
Hammond awoke to find the little shack flooded with daylight. That meant that it was late—much too late to catch the morning tug. He had neglected to tell Sandy Macdougal to call him, and he was not by nature an early riser.
Nevertheless, if he acknowledged the truth to himself, he was not as disappointed about it as he should have been under the circumstances. There would surely be another tug in to-day, he reflected—and the delay would give him an opportunity to slip over to Amethyst Island before he left.
After breakfast, he set out along the lakeshore trail in high spirits. At the bridge over the Nannabijou River he was brought up short by a mountie. “Let me see your pass,” requested the young man in uniform.
Hammond had to acknowledge that he hadn’t any, that he hadn’t known one was necessary.
“Sorry then,” politely informed the policeman, “but the waterfront beyond here is out of bounds for any one not holding a pass signed by Inspector Little and the camp superintendent. That’s orders.”
Considerably abashed, Hammond struck back for the camp. He would try Acey Smith for a waterfront pass. Likely, in view of the superintendent’s previous anxiety to have him leave on the early boat, he would be refused point-blank, but it was worth finding out.
He turned at a shrill tooting out beyond the field of boomed pulpwood. A tug was just coming in the gap. They must be running wild to-day—and perhaps this would be the last one in before the strike was called. He had better take it over to Kam City, he reflected.
The tug had docked when Hammond reached the camp’s “main street,” and he noted that along with a number of questionable-looking men in city garb the dark-eyed girl in the sable furs, known as Yvonne, descended the gang-plank. Acey Smith was not in his office nor anywhere about the docks.
Two members of the mounted force examined the passes of the passengers as they came off the dock. The men dispersed into the upper reaches of the camp, while the girl paused to talk to a tall, black-whiskered man in an over-long rusty black coat who went down to meet her.