Soberly, the mounted policeman pondered his problem. If “Rat” MacGregor was the murderer, as the cards seemed to indicate, why, with so much money in his possession, had he set out on a trail which led farther into the wilderness? By all the rules of common sense, a person of MacGregor’s caliber would have lost no time in getting back to the gay “outside.”[1] It was inevitable. The desire within him would have been stronger than the will to resist. A powerful influence indeed, that would pull a man north when wealth was burning his pockets.
Ten days later, Rand found MacGregor in a small cabin below the Finley River. First he had seen a man and woman together, then two scrambling forms, a door closed hastily, and presently a gray puff of smoke from a window near the front of the house. The bullet whistled over his head, struck harmlessly in the brush behind him. A second cut into a drift to his right. A third, lilting of death, grazed his shoulder, causing him to sit down very suddenly.
Thereafter, Rand moved slowly and painfully. This time he advanced toward the cabin more cautiously. Fifty feet from his objective, he threw himself down behind a snow-covered log, lit his pipe and dully pondered what he ought to do next. For several hours MacGregor continued to blaze away intermittently from the window. After that darkness came and an interval of silence. The cold had grown more intense, more bitter. By degrees, a peculiar numbness had settled over the policeman’s shoulders and along his wounded side.
A moment later, he struggled to his knees, then rose deliberately and walked ahead in the direction of the cabin. In front of the door he paused, every sense alert. No sound issued from within; nor could he see even a faint glimmer of light. Somewhere inside, Rat MacGregor—true to his name—skulked in the dark—and his wife with him.
The faint outline of a block of wood, lying in the snow at his feet, drew his attention. Acting upon a sudden angry impulse, he stooped forward, picked it up, and raised it high above his head. It catapulted from his powerful arms, striking the window with a resounding crash. A woman screamed. Her terrified cry rang out through the deep hush that ensued and, accompanying its last wailing note, MacGregor’s guns spoke—two fiery flashes, not unlike the red tongue of a serpent—darting out into the gloom.
Shoulders hunched, Rand struck the door with a furious impact, and the bolts gave way. As he fell forward into the room, one hand clutched his gun. Again MacGregor fired; this time wildly, foolishly, for the flash of his revolver indicated only too well his position, and Rand had him almost before the sound of the other’s weapon had become smothered in the deep stillness of the room.
CHAPTER II
THE PRICE OF FOLLY
MacGregor’s resistance had cost him his life. Ten minutes later, in the flickering glow of a wax candle, the mounted policeman looked down at the prone and lifeless form.
“Well,” he said, turning suddenly upon the girl, a rather pretty French half-breed, “where is the money?”
The half-breed grunted and looked sarcastically, indignantly at Rand.