The next day Corporal Bracknell, with his own team ready harnessed, watched Joy Gargrave and her escort take their departure. Four full teams of dogs drew their equipment, and snow having fallen during the night, Joy and her foster-sister wore the great webbed snowshoes of the North. They stood making their good-byes, then the half-breed driver gave the word.
“Mooch! Mooch! Linka!”
The leading dog gave a yelp, and strained at his collar, and a moment later all the teams were moving southward. Joy Gargrave waved her hand as she moved on, and he waved back and stood watching till the cavalcade was out of sight, then turning to his own dogs, he gave the word to move and set his face towards the snowy solitudes of the North.
CHAPTER VIII
KOONA DICK
AS HE TRAVELLED, Roger Bracknell’s mind was busy with the events of the past two days, and with the information he had gathered. That his cousin Dick should have turned out to be the man whose trail he had followed had occasioned no wonder after the first shock of surprise; but the mystery of the attack upon him, and of his subsequent disappearance, afforded him much food for thought. Some one had determined that Dick Bracknell should die, and some one had shot him. The question was—who was it? He had dismissed from his mind any idea that Joy herself had any complicity in that business, her frankness having quite killed the suspicions he had at first been inclined to entertain.
His thoughts swung round to Rayner. Did he know anything of the matter? He could find no satisfactory answer. It was true that immediately after the crime he had seen him entering the Lodge with a rifle, and he had certainly shown a keen interest about the sled which had waited in the wood, but from the first he had casually offered a sufficient explanation, and the instinct which turns every man into an amateur detective on the occasion of a mysterious crime would easily account for the second.
Besides—Rayner could have had nothing to do with the disappearance of Dick Bracknell’s body, for the corporal was quite sure that he had never left the house until he had done so with himself. True, he had betrayed a certain knowledge as to the place where the crime had been committed, but he himself might easily have communicated that knowledge to Rayner, though he could not recollect having done so, whilst on the other hand, the motive for such a serious crime as murder was not immediately apparent. It was true that Rayner designed to marry Joy Gargrave, but that of itself was not a sufficient motive unless he knew of the previous marriage.