The Indian offered no objection to this, and knocking the ashes from his pipe the policeman left the camp. Even in the darkness he had no difficulty in following the trail up the creek, and presently the smell of burning wood informed him that he was in the neighbourhood of the cabin. He looked round carefully and descried it in the shadow of the trees on the right bank, and began to ascend towards it. When he reached it there was no clamour of dogs such as might have been expected had there been a team there, and as he rapped upon the door, he reflected that his conjecture about the gold prospector overtaken by the winter was probably the correct one.
The door was flung open, and a tall man whose face he could not discern stood revealed. Inside in front of a makeshift stove was another man, who was taken suddenly by a paroxysm of coughing. For half a minute the corporal stood there, and the man at the door did not move or speak; but at the end of that time, between two spasms of coughing, the other man cried querulously, “Oh, come in and shut that confounded door!”
The man at the door moved aside, and as Bracknell entered, he closed the door behind him, and stood with his back to it, staring at the new-comer with eyes that had in them a savage gleam of hate. The man by the fire was still coughing, and at the end of some three minutes, as the cough left him, he sat there, gasping and wheezing and utterly exhausted. Roger Bracknell watched him, with compassionate eyes. As he recognized, the man was in sore straits, and that cough probably meant that the coming of the Spring was for him the coming of death. As his breath came back the sick man half turned.
“Sit down, can’t——” The remark was broken off half way, and the man started from his seat. “Great Christopher! A Daniel come to judgment! How do you do, Cousin Roger?”
As the voice quivering with excitement rang through the cabin, a startled look came on Roger Bracknell’s face, and he bent forward, and stared at the wasted features of the unkempt man before him. The other laughed harshly.
“Oh, you needn’t stare so hard, Roger; it is I right enough.”
It was Dick Bracknell, and as the corporal realized the fact, the compassion he had felt for a stranger was trebled when he found that the sick man was of his own blood. For a moment he did not reply, but with a shocked look on his face gazed at the ravaged features before him. The “coughing sickness” which Sibou had mentioned had plainly gripped Dick Bracknell and marked him for death. Some of his teeth were gone and the colour of his gums appeared like yellow ochre in the firelight. As he noted these signs of scurvy, the corporal was moved to speak his pity.
“Dick, old man, I am mortal sorry——”
“Then keep your infernal pity for yourself!” cried the other savagely. “You’ll need it all in a minute, for Joe has the drop on you, you—— murderer.”
The corporal started, and swung round. The Indian, Joe, was standing with his back to the door, and the glow of the fire was reflected from the pistol in his hand. He noted the fact quite calmly, and turned to his cousin again.