“However,” he went, glancing down at the file, “when I received that letter I got tremendously busy hunting up old records, and, after nearly a day’s work I came to the conclusion that I’d opened up one of the worst stories, and one of the most important, that I’d found in years. I found story after story of these Euralians. They mostly came from Fort Cupar at Fox Bluff, but they also came from simple, uneducated trappers, and from whitemen who adventured northward of here after gold. They came from all sorts of folk, and one and all corroborated all that that letter contains besides presenting many lurid pictures of the doings of these toughs which that letter only hints at.”
He removed several sheets of discoloured foolscap from the file. They were pinned together.
“I’ve selected this report which is dated fifteen years ago. It comes from a man named Jim McLeod, and he was factor for the Fur Valley Corporation at Fort Cupar at that time. It’s one of several reports he sent down from time to time pointing the conditions of his district, and giving pretty red-hot accounts of the terror which these Euralians had created there. But I’m not going to worry you with all that stuff. I’ll simply tell you that the terror of these folk was very real. That these marauders were undoubtedly at that time a large well-organised outfit who had completely succeeded in cleaning up the furs of that region and were passing them over the Alaskan border into foreign hands.
“This is a long report and I’m not going to read it to you. I’m just going to hand it you in my own words. It’s a bad story, but it’s full of an interest that’ll appeal to you. Fifteen years ago there was a swell sort of missionary feller up at Fox Bluff, a great friend of the man who wrote this report. His name was Marty Le Gros. He wasn’t a real churchman, but just a good sort of boy who was yearning to hand help to the Eskimo and Indians. I gather, at the time this story occurred, he was a widower with a baby girl of about four years. He also had an Indian called Usak, and his squaw, working for him about his house. The squaw was kind of foster-mother to the kid. Well, this report tells how in chasing over the country visiting his Missions this Le Gros happened on a most amazing gold ‘strike.’ It doesn’t say how or just where. But it says that the missionary showed this factor man two chunks of pure gold, and a bunch of dust that well nigh paralysed him. Le Gros being a simple sort of feller didn’t worry to keep his news to himself, but blurted his story broadcast, and I gather the only thing he didn’t tell about it was the actual whereabouts of the ‘strike.’ Apparently he let it be understood that Loon Creek was the locality without giving any exact particulars. This man gives such a brief sketch of this gold business I sort of feel he wasn’t anxious to say too much. The reason’s a bit obvious. And anyway I haven’t ever heard of a rush in that direction. So the news never got around down here. But it seems to have got to the ears of these Euralian poachers and set them crazy to jump in on him with both feet.
“Now this is what happened,” Raymes went on, after a brief reflective pause, while Bill sat still, absorbed in the interest which the magic of a gold discovery had for him. His cigar had gone out. “Up to that time the Euralians and their doings were well enough known to these people, but only by hearsay. These ruffians had never operated as far south-east as Fox Bluff and Fort Cupar. Well, the missionary was out on the trail on a visit to some of his Missions with his man, Usak. He arrived at one of them on the Hekor. It was a settlement of fishing Indians. The whole camp was burned out, and the old men, and women, and infants had been butchered to death. Further, from their complete absence, it is supposed the young men and women had been carried off into captivity for slavery and harlotry. There was no doubt of its being the work of these Euralians. The whole thing was characteristic of every known story of them. Le Gros returned home in a panic.
“He came to McLeod and told him the story of it, and together they realised that it was merely prelude to something further. They got it into their heads that it was the Euralian method of embarking on a campaign to get the secret of Le Gros’ gold discovery. You see? Terror. They meant to terrorize Le Gros, and I gather they succeeded. But he meant to fight. You see, he reckoned this ‘strike’ was for his child. He wanted it for her. Well, these two made it up between them to outwit these folk. The missionary crossed the river to his home to prepare a map of his discovery which he was to place in McLeod’s hands for the benefit of his child and McLeod, in half shares, should anything happen to him, Le Gros. Something did happen. It happened the same night. Apparently before the map could be drawn. Sure enough the Euralians descended on the missionary’s house. They killed Le Gros, and they killed the squaw foster-mother. The Indian, Usak, was away from home and so escaped. The child was left alive, flung into an adjacent bluff, and the whole place was burned to the ground. That’s the story in brief. I daresay there’s a heap more to it, but it’s not in that report, and it’s not in subsequent reports, or in other records of my predecessor.
“It would seem that this boy, McLeod, died about eight years after all this happened and was succeeded by another factor for his company. In the meantime my predecessor had sent a patrol up to investigate. The only result of this investigation was a complete corroboration of McLeod’s report, with practically nothing added to it beyond an urgent report on the necessity for definite international action on the subject of these Euralians who came in from Alaska. After that the thing seems to have passed out of my predecessor’s hands. It seems it was taken up by Ottawa with the usual result—pigeon-holed. Does it get you? There it is, a great gold discovery, somewhere up there on the Hekor, I suppose, and the mystery of this people filching our trade through a process of outrageous crime. Somewhere up there there’s a girl-child, white—she’d be about nineteen or twenty now—lost to the white world to which she belongs. But above all, from my point of view, there’s a problem. Who are these Euralians, and what becomes of the wealth of furs they steal? Remember they were at one time at least an organised outfit.” The policeman replaced the file on his desk and returned the report to its place. And the pre-occupation he displayed was a plain index of the depth of interest he had in the problem which had presented itself to his searching mind. Bill Wilder struck a match and re-lit his cigar. “That’s a story of the country I know and love,” he said quietly. “It’s a story of the real Northland. Not the story of one of these muck-holes which are like boils in the face of civilization. I guess you haven’t passed me the whole thing you’ve got in your mind, George.”
“No.”
The policeman swung round in his chair and faced the clear gazing grey eyes of the man whose enormous wealth had still left him the youthful enthusiasm for the battle of the strong which had first driven him to the outlands of the North.
“Will you pass me the—rest?”