“I can’t make it out,” Sandy scratched his head. “Can you, Dick?”
“Yes,” Dick whispered through white lips. “I understand now. God help the man that did it. Don’t ask, Sandy—don’t ask. It’s too unutterably horrible. For your own peace of mind, it is better that you should never know.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
FRAZER’S CONFESSION.
Donald Frazer’s confession, made on the day following his capture, corroborated the statements which had been made by Corporal Rand. The actual murder, according to Frazer, had been committed by Pierre and Henri Mekewai in the trading room at Half Way House on the night of April 18th, just ten days after the prospector had been seen at Lynx Lake by the Indian, Henri Karek, and within two hours after his, Miller’s, arrival at the post.
“He drove in at ten o’clock or very shortly after,” Frazer told them. “Since morning it had snowed heavily and the wind had risen almost to a gale. There were five of us in the trading room at the time, Wolf Brennan, Toby McCallum, the two Mekewai brothers and myself. We had all been drinking for several hours. The first intimation we had of Miller’s arrival was when we heard the sound of a sledge outside, then a voice calling through the door. Brennan and McCallum went out and assisted Miller to unharness and feed his team and later helped him carry in his grub-box, blankets and the two pokes containing gold. Miller was chilled to the bone and had not eaten for twelve hours. He asked me if I could get supper for him. He especially wanted a hot cup of tea. He was very tired, he said, and wished to get to bed as quickly as possible.
“I went to the door of the loft to summon my native boy, Meschel, who, like Mr. Scott, had already retired, when Wolf Brennan called me to one side, suggesting in an undertone that he would do the work himself. Immediately afterward Wolf started for the kitchen, winking at me covertly as he went past. On some pretext or other, I followed him a few minutes later, and there in the kitchen, while Wolf brewed the tea and prepared the lunch, he told me about the two pokes.
“‘They’re worth thousands’, he informed me. ‘Gold enough there to buy our way into Kingdom Come’.”
“At first I was appalled at the thought.
“‘You mean to murder him’?” I asked.
“Wolf told me that that was exactly what he meant. For a few hundred dollars and a bottle of rum, he said, the Mekewai boys would be willing to slip up behind Miller while he ate and knife him in the back.