"Good Lord, forgive us for our sins of omission," Seymour heard him murmur. "We are but mortal and the flesh of all mortals is weak. How were we to know——"
"Here, here!" interrupted the sergeant impatiently, although he had respect enough for prayer. "It's not your fault that Karmack got away or that you let him use Mission House in his courtship. You good folks couldn't have known he had done anything wrong. Send for Miss O'Malley at once. I've no time to lose."
Luke Morrow forgot his supplications for pardon and sprang to his feet. "No time to lose. You're right. That scoundrel was persuasive and we were weak. Karmack took Moira with him, offering her safe conduct to her friends and home in British Columbia. We'll never forgive ourselves for——"
But Sergeant Scarlet was gone in too great a hurry to close the door behind him.
CHAPTER XII
LIVING TARGETS
Like a Windigo hoodie of the sub-Arctic on the trail of a craven Cree, Sergeant Seymour pushed through the white silence in pursuit of his fugitive. If the capture of Harry Karmack, embezzler, spurred him officially, the saving of Moira O'Malley from the fate that seemed in store for her lent wings to his snow-shoes. To himself he did not deny the fact that the personal interest was the most potent. There would be weeks and weeks, if required, to run down the dishonest trader. Didn't the Royal Mounted always get their man? But there were only hours, he sincerely believed, in which to spare the most beautiful feminine creature he had ever seen a lifetime of humiliation and grief.
This was no night for travel. All the rules of Northern trails forbade it. With the spirit thermometer down to sixty-five below, he should have been snugly in camp in some snow bank, wrapped in rabbit-skin robes or encased in a sleeping bag, with his malamutes snuggled around him. The spirit within that enabled him to defy the inexorable grip of the frost was the same that had not permitted him to delay pursuit's start an hour.
Frankly, he would not have gone out that night after Karmack had the rascal been escaping alone. Considering the factor's passenger, however, nothing could have kept him at the Armistice detachment post.
There action had been swift once he had the fell news from Luke Morrow. At quarters, he had turned over the post to Corporal Le Blanc. He was to keep the Arctic company's trade-room and furs under seal; to do no trading except that which the welfare of visiting Indians and Eskimos demanded. Hardship might be worked if the trusting natives came in to exchange their furs for supplies and found no mart. The two Eskimo murderers were to remain under open arrest unless they displayed signs of wanderlust after his departure. La Marr was to take no chances with his injured leg, the corporal to make such patrols as were absolutely necessary. Thus, like a good commander, he prepared for the all-too-many eventualities of winter travel.