A flash of exultant humor filled his eyes. “Begin, Alan. I’m waiting. Go the limit.”
“For what?”
“For letting her ride over me, of course. For bringing her up. For not shufflin’ her in the bush. You can’t take it out of her hide, can you?”
He twisted his red whiskers, waiting for an answer. Alan was silent. Mary Standish was leading the way up out of a dip in the tundra a quarter of a mile away, with Nawadlook and Keok close behind her. They trotted up a low ridge and disappeared.
“It’s none of my business,” persisted Stampede, “but you didn’t seem to expect her—”
“You’re right,” interrupted Alan, turning toward his pack. “I didn’t expect her. I thought she was dead.”
A low whistle escaped Stampede’s lips. He opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. Alan observed him as he slipped the pack over his shoulders. Evidently his companion did not know Mary Standish was the girl who had jumped overboard from the Nome, and if she had kept her secret, it was not his business just now to explain, even though he guessed that Stampede’s quick wits would readily jump at the truth. A light was beginning to dispel the little man’s bewilderment as they started toward the Range. He had seen Mary Standish frequently aboard the Nome; a number of times he had observed her in Alan’s company, and he knew of the hours they had spent together in Skagway. Therefore, if Alan had believed her dead when they went ashore at Cordova, a few hours after the supposed tragedy, it must have been she who jumped into the sea. He shrugged his shoulders in deprecation of his failure to discover this amazing fact in his association with Mary Standish.
“It beats the devil!” he exclaimed suddenly.
“It does,” agreed Alan.
Cold, hard reason began to shoulder itself inevitably against the happiness that possessed him, and questions which he had found no interest in asking when aboard ship leaped upon him with compelling force. Why was it so tragically important to Mary Standish that the world should believe her dead? What was it that had driven her to appeal to him and afterward to jump into the sea? What was her mysterious association with Rossland, an agent of Alaska’s deadliest enemy, John Graham—the one man upon whom he had sworn vengeance if opportunity ever came his way? Over him, clubbing other emotions with its insistence, rode a demand for explanations which it was impossible for him to make. Stampede saw the tense lines in his face and remained silent in the lengthening twilight, while Alan’s mind struggled to bring coherence and reason out of a tidal wave of mystery and doubt. Why had she come to his cabin aboard the Nome? Why had she played him with such conspicuous intent against Rossland, and why—in the end—had she preceded him to his home in the tundras? It was this question which persisted, never for an instant swept aside by the others. She had not come because of love for him. In a brutal sort of way he had proved that, for when he had taken her in his arms, he had seen distress and fear and a flash of horror in her face. Another and more mysterious force had driven her.