For Sinclair it was a wonderful moment of triumph. At last the whole game was in his hands.
An hour later Ernest Sinclair was alone. Annette had passed out again into the silent deluge of snow.
The girl’s going left him unconcerned. It meant nothing to him that she must make her way alone across the township in a blinding snowstorm. He had obtained from her all he wanted, and that was all that mattered. She had served her purpose. She was a half-breed. Just a half-breed. A mere chattel to be discarded when his end was achieved.
He sought his bed, and pulled the blankets up about his neck and ears. His stove was well banked for the night. And now he had a pleasant stock of thoughts which would occupy him till sleep overtook him.
Oh, yes—there was going to be no mistake. He was winning all along the line. It would be strange indeed if his efficiency failed him in the moment of success. At eight o’clock to-morrow night there would be no shipment of five hundred gallons of “homebrew.” No—but there would be two prisoners who had long been “wanted” to his credit. And then—and then——
CHAPTER VI
THE CACHE
THE moon was at its full. Its cold brilliance was a perfect match for the temperature prevailing. It was a clear, bitter night, without a breath of wind out of the western hills sufficient to lift it, however slightly, from the depths below zero into which it had plunged.
The frigid melancholy was broken only by odd nature sounds. They came from afar. They echoed near at hand. There was the rarer boom of frost-bitten forest trees. There was the occasional moan from the hungry bowels of some lonesome creature of the wilderness. There were other sounds, too. Mysterious, unaccountable sounds that only served to express more surely something of life’s last hope lost in the cold heart of a merciless winter.
East and west a frozen watercourse wound its way. It lay at the foot of a shouldering of sharp, rough-hewn cliffs, which represented the last barrier where the world of western hills gave on to the undulations of virgin prairie.