"I took full responsibility for our not telling her the full details," said Morrow. "You'll remember I first suggested——"
"Then Karmack must have——"
He did not finish, but flung himself out the door. Before the missionary could utter a word of caution or advise moderation, Sergeant Seymour was plowing the trail for the Arctic's establishment.
CHAPTER X
HARD KNUCKLES
If it is true, as Kipling says, that "single men in barracks don't grow into plaster saints," it is doubly true of the same in lonely detachment shacks of the Royal Mounted scattered about the Arctic foreshore. Living week upon week with the thermometer at the breaking point, with the momentary sun blackened out for days in swirling snow, with a sameness of grub that fairly gnaws the appetite, the wonder is that they carry through with even members of their own outfit.
Suddenly mix in with this condition of life an attractive, unattached, unexpected white woman and you have a yeast more potent than dynamite. Let some outsider stir the mixture with the ladle of false witness and surely the dough overflows the pan.
As he descended upon the trading post and the tricky factor, Russell Seymour was scarcely a staff non-com of the Royal Mounted. For the moment he was simply a he-man who happened to be encased in the king's scarlet. Even as he was accustomed to express regard for the rights of others, so was he ready to defend his own. A dangerous man for the time being and one with an initial advantage over Karmack, for Seymour's nerve was backed by morality and right.
He did not trouble to knock on the door of the factor's living quarters, but yanked at the latch-string. Finding no one in the comparatively luxurious living room, he stamped into the store, a low-ceilinged 36 x 24. Along one wall were shelves on which were displayed the "junk" that goes to make an Arctic trader's stock. Protecting these notions, generally more than less unsuited for customer's use, was a counter. From the ceiling along the other wall, depended the furs and pelts that had been taken in barter and not yet baled for shipment to the marts of trade where women would pay whatever price the market exacted that they might adorn themselves.
Harry Karmack was there, gloating over some fox skins just taken at a fraction of their value from one of the Indian hunters who had come up from the South. If he was surprised at the unannounced visit by way of his living quarters, his face did not betray it. It was a perfect mask.