"You are straight, Bill," he cried soothingly. "Straight as a die and I know it. The boys came through. But somebody outside got wise. We'll find out and when we do somebody's due to get a blankety unpleasant surprise. The whole thing ran out to dope. We should have that wheat in Hunt's shack. It's Pullar's luck. But it will change. Here's to a lucky break."
He held his flask high. The men caught his spirit and responded with a shout. For an hour the crew caroused, drinking heavily as they debated the fiasco, breaking up before dawn.
Dad Blackford made a full report to Ned. Though no trace of the perpetrators of the offense had been obtained, his mind flew instantly to his two enemies. The Red Knight had been their objective. The incident was big with warning to him. It assured him of two things: of their malicious, untiring hate; of their dangerous resource. Thoughts of Mary pressed heavily upon him. He remembered her words:
"There is no other way. But, Ned, you will have to be right, always, as well as irresistible. I know you will be."
"It's a stiff programme, little girl," he reflected ruefully. "But we'll stay with it."
XVI
THE SPIDER WEAVES
Snow! Snow! In glistening deserts! Ghastly white blankets of it hung to the sky-rim! The hills, frosted bridal cakes, terrace on terrace! The valleys, rolls and folds and gouges of white! Over all the blue yawn of an empty sky! The air stabs with its invisible, minute Damascus daggers. It is a smiting vacuity, frozen, tense. One's breath floats from the lips in a powdered cloud of whitening mist. It is winter—the snapping, crackling, detonating, hoary-headed winter of the North!
The February sun pours down on the plains in a fierce, garish flow, shedding no warmth from its low-slanting shafts. Pellawa is hushed to sepulchral solitude in the grim embrace of "forty below." An occasional sleigh drifts phantom-like along the street, its runners emitting a frosty singing. Only the dozens of smoke columns rising straight and high in the air proclaim the village a haunt of the living.
Wrapped in the comfort of an immense buffalo coat, Reddy Sykes stepped into a waiting cutter.