McLagan shook up his ponies.
“Well, we could do with some of it around this territory in winter, Len. But it’s a queer sort of ‘come-back’ for you. Maybe it’s tough. I don’t know how you’re fixed. We haven’t had a deal of time to talk that sort of stuff. But I fetched you along, and I want to say right here, if it makes things better for you, you’re my guest all the way from Perth to here and back again, if you want to go. I want to tell you I’ve hit a trail that’s likely going to set your eyes wide, and make you guess you’re dreaming. But you won’t be dreaming. No. You’ll be wide awake looking on some of the worst dirt lying back of human nature. I’m taking you right out now to get a look at the Imperial, the ship your poor dead partner sailed for home in, and never reached. She blew in on this coast without a soul on board, and with her name changed. And with—— But we’ll leave it that way till you’ve set your two eyes on to her. And meanwhile you can hand me some stuff I’m yearning to hear about. After we’re through with this trip there’ll be some more for us to do. But that can wait. Then I’ll run you right into Beacon where maybe you’ll be glad to hand the story of things to a lone mother, and the sister who’s still mourning a dead brother.”
The dark face of the man from Australia was turned on his companion. McLagan had always been a dominant personality to him in the old days. It was the same still. His eyes were questioning, but he remained silent. Now that he knew this old friend was at the other end of the thing that had called him back to Alaska he was content to await developments. And McLagan went on in that direct fashion which was so characteristic of him.
“Before I get your yarn I fancy handing you mine. You see, the obligation’s all on me. I’m marrying Jim’s sister this fall, and maybe that’s partly where I come in on your play. But it isn’t all. No. This thing had got me before I knew about that. Jim was always a friend of mine, as you know, and when I learned his ship had gone down, and he’d been drowned it hit me for myself as well as for Claire and his mother. Then when this ship blew in, and I located that it was the Imperial, and she hadn’t gone down in mid-ocean, it took me guessing hard. Now the thing I want of you is identification. It was you who chartered the vessel, I guess, and you’ll know it again. And maybe you’ll know the skipper again—if you were to see him. That’s what I want of you. I’m reckoning Jim was aboard that ship with a big wad of dust. I’m reckoning the skipper feller knew about the dust and yearned for it so that murder looked good to him.”
Len Stern’s eyes were on the sturdy backs of the ponies. They were hard, relentless, as they contemplated the sweating brown coats where the trail dust lay caked upon them.
“He sailed with more that haf a million dollars of dust,” he said quickly. “And the plan was he’d trade it where he could, touching in at ports where best it could be done, without too many questions. Julian Caspar was the shipmaster and owner, and he stood on a swell commission. He surely knew of the stuff.”
McLagan nodded, and drew his team down to a walk as they mounted a sharp incline towards a wide, windswept plateau.
“So, feeling that way, murder might well look good to him?” he said.
“Yes. Feeling that way. And Jim not guessing.”
“What like was this boy, Caspar?”