"Surely, he will come soon," she would mutter, when the inspection showed only the lifeless cabin, or, "He will come tomorrow." When the seventeenth and the eighteenth days had passed, with no sign of him, the girl, woman like, began to conjure up all sort and manner of dire accident that could have befallen him. He might have been drowned upon a thinly crusted rapid. He might have become lost. Or frozen. Or, ventured upon a snow cornice and been dashed to pieces upon the rocks below. Every violent death known to the North she pictured for him, and as each picture formed in her brain, she dismissed it, laughed at her fears, and immediately pictured another.
On the nineteenth day she chopped wood until the early darkness drove her from her tasks, then she returned to the cabin and, fastening on her snowshoes, struck off down the river. "Surely, he will be here today," she murmured, "If he is not here today I will know something has happened, and tomorrow I shall start out to find him. But, no—I am foolish! Did he not say it would be two weeks—a month—maybe longer—those were his very words. And it is only nineteen days, and that is not a month. But, he will come sooner!" She flushed deeply, "He will come to me—for he does love me, even as I love him. In his eyes I have seen it—and in his voice—and in the touch of his hand."
The last bend was almost in sight and she quick
ened her pace. She knew to an inch, the exact spot from which the first glimpse of the cabin was to be had. She reached the spot and stared eagerly toward the spruce thicket. The next instant a glad cry rang out upon the still Arctic air. "Oh, he has come! He has come! The light is in his window! Oh, my darling! My own, own man!"
Half laughing, half sobbing, she ran forward, urging her tired muscles to their utmost, stumbling, recovering, hurrying on. Only a minute more now! Up the bank from the river! And, not even pausing to remove her snowshoes, she burst into the room with Brent's name upon her lips.
The next instant the blood rushed from her face leaving it deathly white. She drew herself swiftly erect, and with a wild cry of terror turned to fly from the room. But her snowshoes fouled, and she fell heavily to the floor, just as Johnnie Claw, with a triumphant leer upon his bearded face leaped to the door, banged it shut, and stood with his back against it, leering and smirking down at her, while the Captain of the Belva Lou knelt over her and stared into her eyes with burning, bestial gaze.
CHAPTER XX
"YOU ARE WHITE!"
"So! my beauty!" grinned the Captain, "Fer once in his life Claw didn't lie. An' ye didn't wait fer us to go an' git ye—jest come right to us nice as ye please—an' saved me a keg o' rum." He rose with an evil leer. "An' now git up an' make yerself to home—an' long as ye do as I say, an' don't git yer back up, you an' me'll git along fine."
Frantic with terror the girl essayed to rise, but her snowshoes impeded her movements, so with trembling fingers she loosened the thongs and, leaping to her feet, backed into a corner, and stared in wide-eyed horror first at the Captain, then at Claw, the sight of whom caused her to shrink still further against the wall.