Macartney's furious, surprised oath was real. "I don't know what you mean! Who on earth"—but he stammered on it—"Who d'ye mean by Hutton?"
"You," said I. "And if you're not he, I don't know why! There's no one else who would have followed Paulette Valenka out here. I don't believe what you've done's been all revenge on the girl you tried to get into trouble about Van Ruyne's emeralds, or scare that Dudley would worm out the truth about that, either: but if it was to jump the La Chance mine too, you're busted! Your accident serial story won't go down. I knew about your wolf dope business long ago, and do you suppose this," I shoved Dudley's cap under his nose, "doesn't tell me how you limed the trap you set for Dudley last night, or what you smeared on his clothes when he was too drunk to smell it? I know what brought the wolves to howl around this house, if I don't know how you shoved Dudley out to them. I know it was a home-made raid you had down at the assay office, and—I've been to Skunk's Misery!"
"Well?" said Macartney thickly.
"Well enough! I have Thompson's deuce of hearts you didn't see was missing, when you gave me back his pack! With any luck I'll pay you out for that, and our four mill men, and Dudley; not here, where you can fight and die quick, but outside—where they've things like gallows! Oh, you would, would you?"
For his empty gun just missed me as he made a lightning jump to bring it down on my head, and my left hand stopped him up just under the ear. I ought to have shot him. I don't know why I held back. I was so mad with rage when he dropped that I could have jumped on him like a lumberman and tramped the heart out of him. But I only lit for the kitchen, and Charliet's clothesline. As I got back and knelt down by the man who had called himself Macartney, Thompson rose up before me, as he had sat in that very room, playing his lonely solitaire; and the four dead men in the assay office; and Dudley—only I had no grief for Dudley, because it was drowned in rage. I bound Macartney round and round with the clothesline, whether he was really Hutton or not,—and I meant to have the truth out of him about that and everything else before I was done. But when I had him gagged with kitchen towels while he was still knocked out, I sat back on my heels to think; and I damned myself up and down because I had not shot Macartney out of hand.
I had Macartney all right; but I had next door to nothing else, unless I could find a safe place to jail him while I disposed of his men. Now, if they chose to rush me, I could not hold the eight shack windows against them, if Paulette and I might each hold a door. If I took to the bush with Paulette and Marcia, and Macartney, I had nowhere on earth to go. There could be no piling that ill-assorted company on horses and putting out for Caraquet, with the road choked with snow, even if I could have got by Macartney's garrison at the Halfway. Crossing Lac Tremblant, that by to-morrow would be lying sweetly level under a treacherous scum of lolly and drifted snow, ready to drown us all like Thompson,—I cursed and put that out of the question. That lake that was no lake offered about as good a thoroughfare as rats get in a rain-barrel. Whereas, to hold Macartney at La Chance till I downed his gang——
"By gad," I flashed out, "I can do it—in Thompson's abandoned stope!" It was not so crazy as it sounds. Thompson's measly entrance tunnel would only admit one man at a time, and I could hold it alone till doomsday. Macartney could be safely jailed inside the stope till I had wiped out his men; Paulette would be safe; and there remained no doubtful quantities but Marcia and Charliet the cook. I guessed I could scare Marcia and that Charliet would probably be on my side, anyway. If he were and sneaked down now to provision the stope, the thing would be dead easy, even to firewood, for Thompson had yanked in a couple of loads of mine props and left them there. I lit out into the passage to hunt Charliet and find out where the bunk-house men had gone to. But there was no sign of either in the wind and snow outside the shack. I bolted the door on the storm, turned for the kitchen, and saw my dream girl standing outside Marcia's room.
She was dead white in the dim candlelight that shone through Marcia's half-open door. I thought of that as I jumped to her, and I would have done better to have thought of Marcia. I could see her from the passage, lying on her bed, purple-faced still, and with her eyes shut. But one glance was all I gave to Marcia. I said:
"For heaven's sake, Paulette, don't look like that! I'm top-sides with Macartney now. Got him tied up. Come into the kitchen till I speak to you. I want Charliet——" But as I pushed Paulette before me, into the kitchen just across the passage from Marcia's room, I stopped speaking. She was holding out Thompson's case of cards,—open, with that scrawled two of hearts on the top!
"Charliet's gone—run away somewhere." Her chest labored as if she were making herself go on breathing, "and you dropped—this! I ran out from Marcia to see what you were doing with Macartney," she hesitated on the name, "and you'd dropped this. I——You know Macartney killed Dudley, really. Does this mean he killed Thompson, too?"