THE HEART OF UNAGA

PART I

CHAPTER I

JULYMAN TELLS OF THE "SLEEPER" INDIANS

Steve Allenwood raked the fire together. A shower of sparks flew up and cascaded in the still air of the summer night. A moment later his smiling eyes were peering through the thin veil of smoke at the two dusky figures beyond the fire. They were Indian figures, huddled down on their haunches, with their moccasined feet in dangerous proximity to the live cinders strewn upon the ground.

"Oh, yes?" he said. "And you guess they sleep all the time?"

The tone of his voice was incredulous.

"Sure, boss," one of the Indians returned, quite unaffected by the tone. The other Indian remained silent. He was in that happy condition between sleep and waking which is the very essence of enjoyment to his kind.

Inspector Allenwood picked up a live coal in his bare fingers. He dropped it into the bowl of his pipe. Then, after a deep inhalation or two, he knocked it out again.

"'Hibernate'—eh? That's how we call it," he said presently. Then he shook his head. The smile had passed out of his eyes. "No. It's a dandy notion. But—it's not true. They'd starve plumb to death. You see, Julyman, they're human folks—the same as we are."

The flat denial of his "boss" was quite without effect upon Julyman. Oolak, beside him, roused himself sufficiently to turn his head and blink enquiry at him. He was a silent creature whose admiration for those who could sustain prolonged talk was profound.

"All same, boss, that so," Julyman protested without emotion. "Him same like all men. Him just man, squaw, pappoose. All same him sleep—sleep—sleep, when snow comes," Julyman sucked deeply at his pipe and spoke through a cloud of tobacco smoke. "Julyman not lie. Oh, no. Him all true. When Julyman young man—very young—him father tell him of Land of Big Fire. Him say all Indian man sleeping—so." He leant over sideways, with his hands pressed together against his cheek to illustrate his meaning. "Him father say this. Him say when snow come All Indian sleep. One week—two week. Then him wake—so." He stretched himself, giving a great display of a weary half-waking condition. "Him sit up. The food there by him, an' he eat—eat plenty much. Then him drink. An' bimeby him drink the spirit stuff again. Bimeby, too, him roll up in blanket. Then him sleep some more. One week—two week. So. An' bimeby winter him all gone. Oh, him very wise man. Him no work lak hell same lak white man. No. Him sleep—sleep all him winter. An' when him wake it all sun, an' snow all gone. All very much good. Indian man him go out. Him hunt the caribou. Him fish plenty good. Him kill much seal. Make big trade. Oh, yes. Plenty big trade. So him come plenty old man. No him die young. Only very old. Him much wise man."

The white man smiled tolerantly. He shrugged.

"Guess you got a nightmare, Julyman," he said. "Best turn over."

Steve had nothing to add. He knew his scouts as he knew all other Indians in the wide wilderness of the extreme Canadian north. These creatures were submerged under a mental cloud of superstition and mystery. He had no more reason to believe the story of "hibernating" Indians than he had for believing the hundred and one stories of Indian folklore he had listened to in his time.

Julyman, too, considered the subject closed. He had said all he had to say. So the spasm of talk was swallowed up by the silence of the summer night.

The fire burned low, and was replenished from the wood pile which stood between the two teepees standing a few yards away in the shadow of the bush which lined the trail. These men, both white and coloured, had the habit of the trail deeply ingrained in them. But then, was it not their life, practically the whole of it? Stephen Allenwood was a police officer who represented the white man's law in a district as wide as a good-sized European country, and these scouts were his only assistants.

They were at headquarters now enjoying a brief respite from the endless trail which claimed all their life and energies. And such was the nature of their work, and so absorbing the endless struggle of it, that their focus of holiday-making was little better than sitting over a camp-fire at night smoking, and occasionally talking, and waiting for the call of nature summoning them to their blankets.

It was a wonderful night, still and calm, and with a radiance of starlight overhead. There was the busy hum of insect life from the adjacent woods, a deep murmur from the sluggish tide of the great Caribou River which drained the country for miles around. The occasional sigh that floated upon the air spoke of lofty pine crests bending under a light top breeze which refrained from disturbing the lower air. The night left the impression of unbreakable peace, of human content, and a world where elemental storms were unknown.

But the impression was misleading, as are all such impressions in nature's wild, and where the human heart beats strongly. There was no content in the grey eyes of the white man as he sat gazing into the heart of the fire. Then, too, not one of them but knew the cruel moods of the great Northland.

A wonderful companionship existed between these men. It was something more than the companionship of the long trail. They had fought the battle of life together for eight long years, enduring perils and hardships which had brought them an understanding and mutual regard which no difference in colour, or education could lessen. For all the distinction of the police officer's rank and his white man's learning, for all the Indians were dark-skinned, uncultured products of the great white outlands, they were three friends held by bonds which only the hearts of real men could weld.

The territory over which Steve Allenwood exercised his police control was well-nigh limitless from a "one-man" point of view. From his headquarters, which lay within the confines of the Allowa Indian Reserve on the Caribou River, it reached away to the north as far as the Arctic Circle. To the west, only the barrier of the great McKenzie River marked its limits. To the south, there was nothing beyond the Reserve claiming his official capacity, except the newly grown township of Deadwater, two miles away. Eastwards? Well, East was East. So far as Inspector Allenwood knew his district had no limits in that direction, unless it were the rugged coast line of the Hudson's Bay itself.

His task left Steve Allenwood without complaint. It was never his way to complain. Doubtless there were moments in his life when he realized the overwhelming nature of it all. But he no more yielded to it than he would yield to the overwhelming nature of a winter storm. That was the man. Patient; alive with invincible courage and dispassionate determination. Square, calm, strong, like the professional gambler he always seemed to have a winning card to play at the right moment. And none knew better than his scouts how often that card had meant the difference between a pipe over the warm camp-fire and the cold comfort of an icy grave.

Julyman was troubled at the unease he observed in the white man's eyes. It had been there on and off for some days now. It had been there more markedly earlier in the evening when the white man had helped his girl wife into the rig in which Hervey Garstaing, the Indian Agent, was driving Dr. and Mrs. Ross, and their two daughters, to the dance which was being given down at the township by the bachelors of Deadwater. Since then the look had deepened, and Julyman, in spite of his best efforts, had failed to dispel it. Even his story of a race of "hibernating" Indians had been without effect.

But Julyman did not accept defeat easily. And presently he removed the foul pipe from his thin lips, and spat with great accuracy into the heart of the fire.

"Bimeby she come," he said, in his low, even tones, while his black, luminous eyes were definitely raised to the white man's face. "Oh, yes. Bimeby she come. An' boss then him laff lak hell. Julyman know. Julyman have much squaw. Plenty."

Steve started. For a moment he stared. Then his easy smile crept into his steady eyes again and he nodded.

"Sure," he said. "Bimeby she come. Then I laff—like hell."

Julyman's sympathy warmed. He felt he had struck the right note. His wide Indian face lit with an unusual smile.

"Missis, him young. Very much young," he observed profoundly. "Him lak dance plenty—heap. It good. Very good. Bimeby winter him come. Cold lak hell. Missis no laff. Missis not go out. Boss him by the long trail. So. Missis him sit. Oh yes. Him sit with little pappoose. No dance. No nothin'. Only snow an' cold—lak hell."

This time the man's effort elicited a different response. Perhaps he had over-reached. Certainly the white man's eyes had lost the look that had inspired the Indian. They were frowning. It was the cold frown of displeasure. Julyman knew the look. He understood it well. So he went no further. Instead he spat again into the fire and gave himself up to a luxurious hate of Hervey Garstaing, the Indian Agent, whom all Indians hated.

Julyman was only a shade removed from his original savagery. There were times when he was not removed from savagery at all. This was such a moment. For he abandoned himself to the silent contemplation of a vision of the heart of the Indian Agent roasting over the fire before him. It was stuck on the cleaning-rod of his own rifle like a piece of bread to be toasted. Furthermore his was the hand holding the cleaning-rod. He would willingly throw the foul heart to the camp dogs—when it was properly cooked.

His vision was suddenly swept away by a sound which came from somewhere along the trail in the direction of Deadwater. There was a faint, indistinct blur of voices. There was also the rattle of wheels, and the sharp clip of horses' hoofs upon the hard-beaten road. He instinctively turned his head in the direction. And as he did so Steve Allenwood stood up. Just for a moment the white man stood gazing down the shadowed trail. Then he moved off in the direction of his four-roomed log house.

Left alone the Indians remained at the fireside; Oolak—the silent—indifferent to everything about him except the pleasant warmth of the fire; Julyman, on the contrary, angrily alert. He was listening to the sounds which grew momentarily louder and more distinct. And with vicious relish he had already distinguished Hervey Garstaing's voice amongst the rest. It was loud and harsh. How he hated it. How its tones set the dark blood in his veins surging to his head.

"Why sure," he heard him say, "the boys did it good. They're bright boys."

In his crude fashion the scout understood that the Agent was referring to the evening's entertainment. It was the soft voice of Mrs. Ross which replied, and Julyman welcomed the sound. All Indians loved the "med'cine woman," as they affectionately called the doctor's wife.

"It was the best party we've had in a year," she cried enthusiastically. "You wouldn't have known old Abe's saloon from a city hall at Christmas time, with its decorations and its "cuddle-corners" all picked out with Turkey red and evergreens. And you girls! My! you had a real swell time. There were boys enough and to spare for you all. And they weren't the sort to lose much time either. The lunch was real elegant, too, with the oysters and the claret cup. My! it certainly was a swell party."

The wagon had drawn considerably nearer. The quick ears of the Indian had no difficulty with the language of the white folk. His main source of interest was the identity of those who were speaking. And, in particular, he was listening for one voice which he had not as yet been able to distinguish. Hervey Garstaing seemed to do most of the talking. And how he hated the sound of that voice.

"Why, say, Dora," he heard him exclaim in good-natured protest, as the outline of the team loomed up out of the distance. "I don't guess Mrs. Allenwood and I sat out but two dances. Ain't that so, Nita?"

Julyman's ears suddenly pricked. He may have been an uncultured savage, but he was a man, and very human. And the subtle inflection, as the Agent addressed himself to Steve Allenwood's wife, was by no means lost upon him.

"Three!"

The answer came in chorus from the two daughters of the doctor. And it came with a giggle.

"Oh, if you're going to count a supper 'extra,' why—Anyway what's three out of twenty-seven. There's no kick coming to that. Guess a feller would be all sorts of a fool——"

"If he didn't take all that's coming his way at a dance," broke in the doctor's genial voice, with a laugh.

The wagon was abreast of him, and Julyman's eyes were studiously concerned with the glowing heart of the fire. But nothing escaped them. Nothing ever did escape them. He closely scanned the occupants of the wagon. Dr. and Mrs. Ross were in the back seat, and their two daughters were facing them. Hervey Garstaing was driving, and Nita Allenwood was sitting beside him. It was all just as it had been earlier in the evening when he had seen them set out for Deadwater.

Oh, yes. It was all the same—with just a shade of difference. Nita was sitting close—very close to the teamster. She was sitting much closer than when Steve, earlier in the evening had tucked the rug about her to keep the chill summer evening air from penetrating the light dancing frock she was wearing. They were both tucked under one great buffalo robe now. It was a robe he knew to be Hervey Garstaing's.

As the vehicle passed the fire Dr. Ross flung a genial greeting at the two Indians. Julyman responded with a swift raising of his eyes, and one of his broad, unfrequent smiles. Then, as the wagon passed, his eyes dropped again to the fire.

He knew. Oh, yes, he knew. Had he not sat with many squaws who seemed desirable in his eyes? Yes, he had sat just so. Close. Oh, very close. Yes, he was glad his boss had taken himself off. Maybe he was looking down into the depths of the basket which held the little white pappoose back there in his home. It was good to look at the little pappoose when there was trouble at the back of a father's eyes. It made the trouble much better. How he hated the white man, Hervey Garstaing.

For once Julyman's instincts were at fault. He had read the meaning of Steve Allenwood's sudden departure in the light of his own interpretation of the trouble he had seen in the man's grey eyes. He was entirely wrong.

Steve had heard the approaching wagon, and he knew that his wife and the other folk were returning from the dance. But almost at the same instant he had detected the sound of horses' hoofs in an opposite direction. It was in the direction of his home. Julyman had missed the latter in his absorbed interest in the return of these folk from Deadwater.

Steve reached the log home in the bluff at the same moment as a horseman reined up at his door. The man in the saddle leant over, peering into the face of the Inspector. The darkness left him uncertain.

"Deadwater post?" he demanded abruptly.

Steve had recognized the man's outfit. The brown tunic and side-arms, the prairie hat, and the glimpse of a broad yellow stripe on the side of the riding breeches just where the man's leather chapps terminated on his hips. These things were all sufficient.

"Sure."

"Inspector Allenwood, sir?"

The man's abrupt tone had changed to respectful inquiry.

"I'm your man, Corporal."

The Corporal flung out of the saddle.

"Sorry I didn't rec'nize you, sir," he said saluting quickly. "It's pretty dark. It's a letter from the Superintendent—urgent." He drew a long, blue envelope from his saddle wallets and passed it to his superior. "Maybe you can direct me to the Indian Agent, Major Garstaing, sir. I got a letter for him."

Steve Allenwood glanced up from the envelope he had just received.

"Sure. Best cut through the bluff. There's a trail straight through brings you to his house. It's mostly a mile and a half. Say, you'll need supper. Get right along back when you've finished with him. When did you start out?"

"Yesterday morning, sir."

The Inspector whistled.

"Fifty miles a day. You travelled some."

The Corporal patted his steaming horse's neck.

"He's pretty tough, is old Nigger, sir," he said, with quiet pride. "Mr. McDowell wanted me to pick up a horse at Beaufort last night, but I wouldn't have done any better. Nigger can play the game a week without a worry. Guess I'll get on, sir, and make back after awhile. That the barn, sir?" he went on, pointing at a second log building a few yards from the house, as he swung himself into the saddle again. "I won't need supper. I had that ten miles back on the trail. I off-saddled at an Indian lodge where they lent me fire to boil my tea."

Steve nodded.

"Very well, Corporal. There's blankets here in the office when you come back. This room, here," he added, throwing open the door. "I'll set a lamp for you. There's feed and litter for your plug at the barn. Rub him down good."

"Thank you, sir."

The man turned his horse and headed away for the trail through the bluff, and Steve watched him go. Nor could he help a feeling of admiration for the easy, debonair disregard of difficulties and hardship which these men of his own force displayed in the execution of their work. In his utter unself-consciousness he was quite unaware that wherever the police were known his own name was a household word for these very things which he admired in another.

He passed into his office and lit the lamp. Then he seated himself at the simple desk where his official reports were made out. It was a plain, whitewood table, and his office chair was of the hard Windsor type.

He tore open his letter and glanced at its contents. It was from his own immediate superior, Superintendent McDowell, and dated at Fort Reindeer. It was quite brief and unilluminating. It was a simple official order to place himself entirely at the disposal of Major Hervey Garstaing, the Indian Agent of the Allowa Indian Reserve—who was receiving full instructions from the Indian Commissioner at Ottawa—on a matter which came under his department.

He read the letter through twice. He was about to read it for a third time, but laid it aside. Instead he rose from the table and moved towards the door as the wagon from Deadwater drew up outside.

CHAPTER II

THE PASSING OF A DREAM

Steve and his wife were in the parlour of their little home. It was the home which Steve had had built to replace his bachelor shanty, and which together they had watched grow, and over the furnishing of which they had spent hours of profound thought and happy discussions.

The office was entirely separate, that is, it had its own entrance door and no communication with the rest. The private quarters consisted of three rooms. The parlour, a bedroom for Steve and Nita, and, leading out of the latter, a small apartment sacred to the tiny atom of humanity which they had christened Coqueline, and whom the man, from the moment his eyes had been permitted to gaze upon her, some fifteen months earlier, regarded as the most perfect, wonderful, priceless treasure in the world. Beyond this, a simple lean-to kitchen provided all they needed for their creature comfort.

It was all characteristic of the Northern world. The walls were of lateral logs, and the roof was of a similar material, while the entire interior was lined with red pine match-boarding. It was strong, and square, and proof against the fiercest storm that ever blew off the Arctic ice, which was all sufficient in a country where endurance was man's chief concern.

Nita was seated in the rocking-chair which Steve had set ready for her beside the stove, whose warmth was welcome enough even on a summer night. She was sipping a cup of steaming coffee which he had also prepared. But there was nothing of the smiling delight in her eyes which the memory of her evening's entertainment should have left there.

The man himself was standing. He was propped against the square table under the window. He was smoking, and watching the girl wife he idolized as she silently munched the slice of layer cake which he had passed her. He was wondering if the long-expected, and long-feared moment of crisis in their brief married life had arrived. He had watched its approach for weeks. And he knew that sooner or later it must be faced. He was even inclined to force it now, for such was his way. Trouble was in her eyes, and he felt certain of its nature. Nita was not made of the stuff that could withstand the grind of the dour life of the Northland which he loved.

They had been married about three years and Nita had as yet spoken no actual word of complaint. But the complaint was there at the back of her pretty eyes. It had been there for months now. Steve had watched it grow. And its growth had been rapid enough with the passing of the first months of the delirious happiness which had been theirs, and which had culminated in the precious arrival of their little daughter Coqueline.

"Guess you must have had a real good time," Steve said, by way of breaking the prolonged silence.

For reply the girl only nodded.

The contrast between them was strongly marked. Nita was pretty—extremely pretty, and looked as out of place in this land she was native to as Steve looked surely a part of it. But her charm was of that purely physical type which gains nothing from within. Her eyes were wide, child-like, and of a deep violet. Her hair was fair and softly wavy. Her colouring had all the delicacy which suggested the laying on by an artist's brush, and which no storm or sun seemed to have power to destroy. Her slight figure possessed all those perfect contours which are completely irresistible in early youth. Furthermore these things were supported to the utmost by the party frock she was wearing, and over which she had spent weeks of precious thought and labour.

Steve was of the trail. Face and body were beaten hard with the endless struggle of it all. His rough clothing, which had no relation to the smart Inspector's uniform he was entitled to wear, bore witness to the life that claimed him. His only claim to distinction was the sanity and strength that looked out of his steady grey eyes, the firmness and decision of his clean-shaven lips, and his broad, sturdy body with its muscles of iron.

"You'll be tired, too," he went on kindly. "You'd best get to bed when you've had a warm. I'll fix the chores."

He moved from his position at the table, and, passing out into the lean-to kitchen, returned a moment later with a small saucepan which he placed on the shining top of the stove.

"Mrs. Ross seems to figure it was all sorts of a swell party," he went on. "She guesses the boys must have worried themselves to death fixing Abe's saloon so it didn't look like—Abe's saloon."

The man's smile was gently humorous. For once he had not the courage to pursue the downright course which his nature prompted. Little Coqueline was foremost in his thoughts. Then there was the memory of all the happiness his home meant to him, and he feared that which undue precipitancy might bring about.

The girl looked up from the stove. Her eyes abandoned their intense regard with seeming reluctance.

"It was all—wonderful. Just wonderful," she said in the tone of one roused from a beautiful dream.

"Abe's saloon?"

Steve's incautious satire suddenly precipitated the crisis he feared. The girl's eyes flashed a hot look of resentment. He was laughing at her. She was in no mood to be made sport of, or to have her words made sport of. She sat up with a start and leant forward in her chair in an attitude that gave force to her sharp enquiry.

"And why not?" she demanded, her violet eyes darkening under the frown of swift anger which drew her pretty brows together. "Why not Abe's saloon, or—or any other place?" She set her coffee cup on the floor with a clatter, and her hands clasped the arms of her chair as though she were about to spring to her feet. "Yes," she continued, with increasing heat, "why not Abe's saloon? It's not the place. It's not the folk, even. Those things don't matter. It's the thing itself. The whole thing. The glimpse of life when you're condemned to existence on this fierce outworld. It's the meaning of it. A dance. It doesn't sound much. Maybe it doesn't mean a thing to you but something to laugh at, or to sneer at. It's different to me, and to other folks, who—who aren't crazy for the long trail and the terrible country we're buried in. The decorations. The flags. Yes, the cheap Turkey red, and the fiddler's music—a half-breed fiddler—and the music of a pianist who spends most of his time getting sober. The folks who are all different from what we see them every day. Tough, hard-living, hard-swearing men all hidden up in their Sunday suits, and handing you ceremony as if you were some queen. Then the sense of pleasure in every heart, with all the cares and troubles of life pushed into the background—at least for a while. These things are a glimpse of life to us poor folk who spend all our years in the endless chores of an inhospitable country. You can smile, Steve. You can sneer at Abe's saloon. But I tell you you haven't a right to just because these things don't mean a thing to you. There's nothing means anything to you but your work——"

"And my wife, and my kiddie, and my—home."

The man's deep voice broke in sharply upon the light, strident tones of the angry girl. He spoke while he stirred the contents of the saucepan he had placed on the stove. But the interruption only seemed to add fuel to the girl's volcanic flood of bitter feeling. A laugh was the prompt retort he received.

"Your wife. Oh, yes, I know. You'd have her around all the time in her home, slaving at the chores that would break the spirit of a galley slave. Oh, it's no use pretending. It's got to come out. It's here," she rushed on, pressing her hands hysterically against her softly rounded bosom. "The dream is past. All dreams are past. I'm awake now—to this," she indicated the room about her, simple almost to bareness in its furnishing, with a gesture of indescribable feeling. "It's all I've got to waken to. All I've got to look forward to. I've tried to tell myself there's a good time coming, when I can peer into the great light world, and snatch something of the joy of it all. I've tried, I've tried. But there isn't. It's the cold drear of this northland. It's chores from daylight to dark, and all the best years of life hurrying behind me as if they were yearning to make me old before I can get a chance to—live. I'm sick thinking. Show me. What is there? You're an Inspector, and we get a thousand dollars a year, and the rations we draw from the Indian Agency. You'll never get a Superintendent. You've no political pull, shut off up here well nigh in sight of the Arctic ice. I'm twenty-two with years and years of it before me, and all the time I'll need to go on counting up my cents how I can get through till next pay-day comes around. Don't talk to me of your wife."

The injustice of the girl's unreasoning complaint was staggering. But it smote the heart of the man no less for that. Whatever his inward feelings, however, outwardly he gave no sign. He did not even raise his eyes from the saucepan he was stirring with so much deliberation and care.

"You're wrong, little girl," he said with quiet emphasis, and without one shadow of the emotion that was stirring behind the words. "You're dead wrong. You've got all those things before you. The things you're crazy for. And when they come along I guess they'll be all the sweeter for the waiting, all the better for the round of chores you're hating now, all the more welcome for the figgering you need to do now with the cents we get each month. You don't know how I stand with Ottawa. I do. There's just two years between me and the promotion you reckon I can't get. That's not a long time. Then we move to a big post where you can get all the dancing you need, and that won't be in Abe's saloon. You know that when my old father goes—and I'm not yearning for him to go—he'll pass me all he has, which is fifty thousand dollars and his swell farm in Ontario."

He paused and dipped out some of the contents of the saucepan in the spoon he was stirring it with. He tested its temperature. Then he went on with his preparations.

"Is there a reasonable kick coming to any woman in those things?" he demanded. "You knew most of what I'm telling you now when you guessed you loved me enough to marry me, and to help me along the road I'd marked out. Have I done a thing less than I promised?" he went on passing back to the table and picking up the glass bottle lying there, and removing its top. "If I have just tell me, and I'll do all I know—" He shook his head. "It's all unreasonable. Maybe you're tired. Maybe——"

"It isn't unreasonable," Nita cried sharply. "That's how men always say to a woman when they can't understand. I tell you I'm sick with the hopelessness of it all. You aren't sure of your promotion. You haven't got it yet. And maybe your father will live another twenty years. Oh, God, to think of another twenty years of this. Do you know you're away from home nine months out of twelve? Do you know that more than half my time I spend guessing if you're alive or dead? And all the time the grind of the work. The same thing day after day without relief." She watched the man as he poured the contents of the saucepan into the bottle, and her eyes were hot with the state of hysterical anger she had worked herself into. "Oh," she cried with a helpless, despairing gesture, as Steve returned the saucepan to the table. "I'm sick of it all. I hate it all, when I think of what life could be. The thought of it drives me mad. I hate everything. I hate myself. I hate——"

"Stop it!"

Steve thrust the stopper into the neck of the bottle. He had turned. His steady eyes were sternly compelling. They were shining with a light Nita had never witnessed in them before. She suddenly became afraid. And her silence was instant and complete. She sat breathlessly waiting.

"I've done with this fool talk," Steve cried almost roughly. "I've listened to too much already. I'm not figgering to let you break things between us. There's more than you and me in it. There's that poor little kiddie in the other room. Say, I've seen this coming. I've seen it coming—weeks. I've seen a whole heap that hurts a man that loves his wife, and guesses he wants to see her happy. I've seen what isn't good for a father to see, either. You've told me the things you guess you feel, and now I'm going to tell you the things I feel. You reckon the things I say about your good time coming are hot air. They're not. But you've got to get fool notions out of your head, and work for the things you want, the same as I reckon to. I'm out to make good—for you. Understand, for you, and for little Coqueline. I'm out to make good with all that's in me. And it don't matter a curse to me if all hell freezes over, I'm going to make good. Get that, and get it good. It's a sort of life-line that ought to make things easy for you. There's just one thing that can break my play, Nita. Only one. It's your weakening. It's up to me to see you don't weaken. You need to take hold of the notion we're partners in this thing. And don't forget I'm senior partner, and my word goes. Just now my word is kind of simple. If you don't feel like carrying on for me, you need to remember there's our little Coqueline. She's part of you. She's part of me. And she's got a claim on you that no human law can ever rob her of. Well, the proposition between us has two sides. My side means the trail, and the job that's mine. I need to face it with a clear head, and an easy mind. My side means I got to get busy with every nerve in my body to get you an ultimate good time, and see you get all you need to make you good an' happy. That's the one purpose I dream about. Maybe your side's different. But I don't guess it's any easier. You've got to wait around till those things come along. But you've got more to do than that. You've got to play this old game right. Your work's by this home. It don't matter if it's winter or summer, if it's storming or sunshine. You've got to do the chores you're guessing you hate, and you need to do them right, and willingly. We're man and wife. And these chores are yours by all the laws of God, and the Nature that made you the mother of our little Coqueline. You've got to cut this crazy notion for fool pleasures right out, till the pleasure time comes around. That time isn't yet. The woman who lets her child and her home suffer for joy notions isn't worth the room she'll take in hell later. Well, see and get busy, and let's have no more fool talk and crazy notions. Here, take this," he went on, in his deliberate, forceful way, thrusting the baby's feeding bottle into the girl's hands. "That's the kiddie's feed. Guess I fixed it because—well, maybe because you're tired. Take it to her. Give it to her. And, as long as you live don't you ever forget she's the right to your love, and to my love, and every darn thing we know to make things right for her."

The force of the man was irresistible. It was something the girl had never witnessed before. She had only known the husband, devoted, gentle, almost yielding in his great love. The man that had finished talking now was the man Julyman regarded above all others.

Nita took the bottle thrust into her hands, and, without a word, she rose from her chair and passed into the bedroom which the baby's room adjoined.

Steve watched her go. His hungry eyes followed her every movement. His heart was torn by conflicting emotions. His love told him that he had been harsh almost to brutality, but his sense warned him he had taken the only course which could hope to achieve the peace and happiness which was Nita's right as well as his own.

He had meant to fight for these things as he would fight on the trail against the forces of Nature seeking to overwhelm him. He would yield nothing. For all his words had cost him he was conscious of the rightness of the course he had taken. But he was fighting a battle in which forces were arrayed against him of which he was wholly unaware.

As Nita passed into the bedroom the sound of footsteps outside broke the silence of the room. A moment later he turned in response to a knock on his door.

Ten minutes later Steve was seated at the desk in his office. He was in the company of Major Hervey Garstaing, the Indian Agent. The Corporal, from Reindeer, was already rolled up in the blankets which were spread out in the corner of the room. His work had been accomplished. He was physically weary. And, judging by the sound of his regular breathing, Nature had claimed her own the moment his head had touched the carefully folded overcoat which served him for a pillow.

The bare severity of the room was uninviting. There was little display in the work of the police. Utility and purpose was the keynote of their lives and at the year's end the tally of work accomplished was the thing that mattered.

Steve preferred to receive the Indian Agent in his office. Garstaing had never been an intimate of his. Their relations were official, and just sufficiently neighbourly for men who lived within two miles of each other in a country where human companionship was at a premium.

The office table stood between them. The spare chair beyond the desk always stood ready for a visitor, and Garstaing had accepted it. Steve had moved the oil lamp on one side, that their view of each other might be uninterrupted.

They were both smoking, and Garstaing was doing the talking. At all times Steve preferred that his visitors should do most of the talking.

"I guessed I best come right along," he said, regarding the other closely. "You see, I'll be handin' out Treaty Money to the darn neches to-morrow morning. It'll take me best part of the day." He removed the pipe from his rather wide mouth, and held it poised significantly. "This thing won't stand keeping. It's—murder. There's two of 'em, I guess. Traders. Marcel Brand and his partner, Cyrus Allshore. Those are the names. Can't say I've heard of 'em before. Both of 'em dead—murdered—up there somewhere around the Unaga country. It's the Indians or Eskimo, whatever they are, who've done it."

"Yes."

Steve's gaze was directed searchingly at his visitor's good-looking face. At the moment it almost seemed as if he were regarding the man rather than his mission. And Garstaing was a somewhat interesting personality. It should have been a pleasant personality, if looks were any real indication. Garstaing was distinctly handsome. He was dark, and his swift-moving dark eyes looked always to be ready to smile. Then he possessed a superbly powerful body. But the threatened smile rarely matured, and when it did it added nothing of a pleasant nature for the student of psychology.

In age the two men were well matched, but they had little else in common. Garstaing's reputation, at least amongst men, was not a happy one. He was known to be a hard drinker. He was hot-headed and pleasure-loving. Furthermore he was given to an overbearing intolerance, in the indulgence of which his position as Indian Agent yielded him wide scope.

He ruled the Indians with an iron hand, and for all the stories of his cruelty and complete unscrupulousness which reached beyond the confines of the reserve and the bitter hatred of the Indians he remained complete master of the situation.

There was little enough which Steve had not heard of the unsavouriness of this man's administration. He by no means gave credence to all of it, but it was not without effect upon his personal attitude towards him.

"I'm not wise to your instructions," Garstaing went on as Steve offered no further comment, "but mine are pretty clear, and they are straight from my Commissioner."

"I've to place myself entirely at your disposal."

Steve's reply came without any hesitation. His tone suggested unconcern. Garstaing's dark eyes snapped. Then they smiled their approval. It was that smile which added nothing pleasant to his personality.

"I guessed it was that way from the instructions they handed me," he said. Then he withdrew a bunch of papers from an inner pocket, and opened them, and selected a particular sheet. "Here it is," he said, and promptly read out an extract from the letter. "'You will at once place yourself in touch with the police in your district, and see that the whole matter is investigated—forthwith.'"

He glanced up as he uttered the final word.

"You know what that means?" he enquired, searching the eyes that were so profoundly observing him across the table.

Steve nodded.

"Sure."

"It means you'll have to make the Unaga country right away."

"Sure."

Again came Steve's monosyllabic agreement.

"It means one hell of a long trip," the Agent went on.

"Two years."

The simple finality of the police officer's reply left the other speechless for the moment. The tone of it amazed him. He had hastened across from the Agency directly he had received the Corporal's dispatch, not because he had to pay out Treaty Money in the morning, not because the whole matter would not keep even a week if necessary. Instantly on reading his instructions from the Indian Commissioner all thought of the crime to be investigated had passed out of his mind. His thoughts had flown to Steve Allenwood, and from him they had passed on to another. A vision of a sweet face with deep, violet eyes, and softly waving fair hair had leapt to his mind. Furthermore he still retained the sensation of a soft, warm hand which had been clasped within his under cover of the friendly fur robe as he drove the wagon back from the dance at Deadwater.

Two years. The man had spoken with as much indifference as if he had been contemplating a trip of two days. Garstaing drew a deep breath, and, returning his pipe to his capacious mouth ignited a match over the lamp chimney and re-lit it. Then, with a quick, nervous movement he picked up a separate bunch of the papers on the table before him and flung them across to his host.

"There you are," he cried, "that's the whole darn official story. You best keep it awhile, and read it. I got orders to hand you all you need. Indians, dog-team, rations. Any old thing you fancy. But—" he paused. His quick-moving eyes became suddenly still. They were gazing directly into those of the husband beyond the table. "You'll need to start out—right away."

Steve rose from his seat with a nod.

"I shall know when to start," he replied shortly.

Then he raised his arms above his head and stretched himself luxuriously while Garstaing sat watching him, endeavouring to penetrate the man's tremendous barrier of reserve. But it remained impenetrable, and there was nothing left for him but to comply with his host's tacit invitation. He, too, rose from his seat.

"You best take a copy of the story," he said, as Steve moved towards the door. "Anyway I'll need the original later."

He was talking because the other compelled him to talk. And because he had that in his mind which made it impossible for him to remain silent.

Steve opened the door and peered out. The night was brilliantly star-lit. Garstaing was close behind him.

"It's tough on you, Allenwood," he said in a tone intended to express sympathy. "Two years. Gee!"

Steve's only reply was to move aside to let him pass out. It was as though Garstaing's expression of sympathy had at last found a weakness in his armour of reserve. His movement had been abrupt—startlingly abrupt.

"So long," he said coldly.

Just for one moment their eyes met. Steve's were frigidly non-committal. There was neither friendliness nor dislike in them. There was no emotion whatsoever. Garstaing's were questioning, searching, and full of an impulse that might have meant anything. But it was the police officer who controlled the situation, and the headstrong, intolerant Indian Agent who was obeying. He passed out, and his "So long" came back to the man in the doorway as the night swallowed him up.

Steve moved back to the table. In his deliberate fashion he leant over the lamp chimney and blew the light out. Then he passed out of the room and closed the door gently. He paused for a moment outside, and stood gazing in the direction which he knew Garstaing had taken. Presently he raised one hand and passed it across his broad forehead. It remained for a moment pressed against the skin, which had suddenly become coldly moist. His fingers searched their way up through his abundant dark hair. It was a movement that expressed something like helpless bewilderment.

"Two years!" he muttered. "Two years!"

Then his arm dropped almost nervelessly to his side.

CHAPTER III

THE GOING OF STEVE

There are some personalities which never fail to permeate their neighbourhood with their presence. Of such was Dr. Ian Ross. His presence never failed to impress itself. The moment he crossed the threshold of his home the household became aware of it. There was his big voice, his deep-throated husky laugh. There was that strong-hearted kindly humanity always shining in his deep-set, blue eyes.

He had returned from his surgery at the agency for his midday meal, and his abundant toned hail reached his wife in a remote bedroom in the almost luxurious home which he had had set up amidst the spruce woods lining the Deadwater trail.

"Ho, Millie!" he cried. "Ho you, Mill!" he called again, without waiting for any response.

"I'll be right along, Mac," came back the cheerful reply.

"Fine. But don't stop to change your gown, there's a good soul. Guess it's feed time, anyway. And not so much 'Mac.' Guess I'm Ross of the Ross of Ardairlie, which is in the Highlands of Scotland, which is part of a small group of islands, which are dumped down in the Atlantic off the west coast of Europe. Maybe—you've heard tell."

The man flung his wide-brimmed hat on a side table in the hall with a comfortable laugh. Then seating himself in a big chair, he ran his fingers through his crisp iron-grey hair.

He was a raw-boned, powerfully built man who seemed by nature the beau ideal for the healing of a race of savages who regard disease as inevitable, a visitation by the powers of evil, and something which must be submitted to in patience lest worse befall. Almost brusque of manner, forceful, he was as strong and kindly of heart as he was skilful. He was a product of the best Scottish school of medicine, and one of those rare souls whose whole desire in life is the relief of human suffering. Fortune had favoured him very practically. He had ample private means which enabled him to accept the paltry salary the Government offered him to take charge of a herd of its coloured children up on the Caribou River. Furthermore he had had the good fortune to marry a Canadian woman whose whole heart was wrapped up in him and his life's purpose.

So these two, with their two young children, had made their way north. The man had set up an ample, even luxurious home on the confines of the reserve, and they had settled down to battle with the exterminating diseases, which, since the civilizing process set in, the Indian seems to have become heir to. So far the battle had raged, for ten years, and it looked likely to last far beyond Ian Ross's lifetime.

Whatever other successes and failures he had had during that time he had achieved an affection from his patients quite as great as the hatred achieved by Hervey Garstaing in less than half that number of years.

The plump round figure of Millie Ross rustled into the hall.

"Where's Dora?"

The man's question came without turning from the sunlit view beyond the doorway. A wonderful stretch of undulating wood-clad country lay spread out before him. It was a waste of virgin territory chequered with woodland bluffs, with here and there the rigid Indian teepee poles supporting their rawhide dwellings, peeping out from all sorts of natural shelters.

"Dora? Why, Dora's over with Nita Allenwood. That child spends most of her time there now."

Millie's cheerful, easy manner was perhaps the greatest blessing of Ian Ross's life. Her happy good temper spoke of a perfectly healthy body, and a mind full of a pleasant humour.

Dr. Ross withdrew a timepiece from his pocket.

"Now?" he cried. "Oh, you mean because of Steve's going off on the long trail. Five days isn't it before he goes?" He chuckled in his pleasant, tolerant fashion. "Sort of sympathetic butting in, isn't it? Guess heart and sense never were a good team. I'd say Dora's chock full of heart."

"And it's just as well for someone around this house to have a bunch of heart that can feel for other folks," Millie retorted promptly. "Say, you, Mac, there's two days past since word went round of Steve's going, and you haven't done a thing. Not a thing but continue to make life miserable for those poor neches who can't help themselves, and have to spend their play time in swallowing the dope you can't make filthy enough to please your notions of humanity."

The man laughed up into the smiling, admonishing eyes of the woman who meant so much to him.

"Hell!" he cried. "What would you have me do? Isn't it my job to see those poor devils right? Why, they'd lap up dope till you couldn't tell 'em from a New York drug store. The fouler it tastes the more surely they come back for more. I'd say I've lengthened the sick list of this reserve till you'd think it was a Free Hospital, and there wasn't a healthy neche, squaw, or pappoose north of 60°."

Millie picked up the hat he had flung on the side table and hung it on a peg of the coat rack.

"What would I have you do?" she said, ignoring the rest of his remarks for the thought in her mind, and coming back to his chair and resting her plump hand on his crisp hair. "Why something else besides think of these scalliwag Indians. I'm all worried to death about Nita Allenwood and Steve."

The man stirred uneasily under the caressing fingers.

"So am I," he cried brusquely. "Well?"

"That's just what it isn't," Millie had withdrawn her hand. She moved to the doorway and gazed out into the sunlight. "I want to do something and just don't know how to do it. I know you hate folks who 'slop over.' But just think of the position. Steve's going to be away for two years, according to his reckoning. They've sent Corporal Munday to take over his post in his absence. What—what on earth is Nita to do in his absence? She'll get her rations, and her pay, and all that. But—she can't live around the post sort of keeping house for this boy—Munday. She can't live there by herself anyway. Think of her by that shack with her kiddie. Two years, here in a country——Besides—"

"'Besides' nothing," exclaimed the man with that curious irritation of a troubled mind. "Is there need of 'besides' when you think of a good-looker girl who's barely twenty-two, with as dandy a baby as I've ever set eyes on, and who I helped into daylight, sitting around without her husband in a country that's peopled with white men whose morals would disgrace a dog-wolf? Two years! Why, it makes me sweat thinking. If that feller Steve don't see my way of looking at things I'm going to tell him just what his parents ought to've been."

"And what's your way of thinking, Mac?" enquired his wife with the confidence of certain knowledge.

"My way? My way?" the man exploded, his blue eyes widening with incredulity. "Why, the way he's got to look. The way sense lies. That girl and her kiddie have got to come right along here and camp with us till the boy gets back. There's going to be no darn nonsense," he added threateningly, as though Millie were protesting. "She's going to come right here, where you can keep your dandy eye on her till——"

"Eyes—plural, Mac." Millie's smile was a goodly match for the summer day.

The doctor flung his head back in a deep-throated guffaw.

"Have it your own way," he cried. "One or two, they don't miss much. Anyway, I guessed I'd put it to you before I went over to fix things up."

"Sure," laughed Millie comfortably. "You most generally ask my consent before you get busy." Then, in a moment, she became serious. "But you're right, Mac," she said. "Dora and I have been talking that way ever since we heard. And Mabel swears she's going to write the Commissioner of Police all she thinks about it, and that's 'some.' It's cruel sending off a married man on a trip like that without fixing things for his wife. You see and fix things, Mac. Nita's just as welcome as a ray of sunshine right here with us. It's a shame! It's a wicked downright shame! And Steve ought to know better than to stand for it. He ought to——"

"He can't kick." The man shook his head. "He's looking to get a superintendentship. A kick would fix that for good. No, he's got no kick coming. You need to understand the Police force right. It's no use talking that way. It's the work of the force first, last, and all the time. Everything else is nowhere, and the womenfolk, whom they discourage, last of all. And mind you, they're right. You can't run a family, and this hellish country at the same time. If the Police weren't what they were it would need seventy thousand of them instead of seven hundred to make this territory better than a sink of crime for every low down skunk who can't keep out of penitentiary anywhere else. This thing has me so worried I haven't appetite enough to care it's gone my feed time by a quarter hour. Isn't Miss Prue through with the darn potatoes, or—something?"

Millie laughed indulgently.

"I'll get along and see. You see, Miss Prue's a good and God-fearing squaw, when she isn't smoking her pipe or sitting asleep over the cook-stove. Anyway, I'll chase her up," and she bustled off in the direction of the kitchen.

Left to himself Ian Ross forgot entirely that he was awaiting his dinner. His deep-set eyes were turned to the view beyond the door, and his thoughts were still further afield. He was thinking of the pretty, eager face he had watched at the bachelors' dance at Deadwater. He was thinking of the men who had approached Nita with the ceremony which had so delighted her. He was old enough and wise enough to appreciate fully the dangers she would be confronted with in Steve's absence, dangers which it was more than likely Steve could not realize.

He liked Steve. For all their disparity of years a great friendship existed between them. Steve was a man who would succeed in anything he undertook. The doctor was sure of that. But—and this was the matter that troubled him most—Steve had utter and complete faith in his wife, the same as he had in all those who possessed his regard. Steve was a man of single, simple purpose. Strong as a lion in the open battle where the danger was apparent, but in the more subtle dangers of life he was a child.

Well, there were men in their world who constituted just one of those grave subtle dangers to Steve in Steve's absence. Ian Ross shared with everybody else the hatred of Hervey Garstaing. He had seen Garstaing and Nita together at the dance. He had seen them together at other times. Oh,—he had never seen anything that was not perhaps perfectly legitimate. But he knew Hervey Garstaing better than most people at Deadwater. He saw far more of him than he desired. And Hervey was a good-looking man. Nita was young and full of a youthful desire for a good time. And then Hervey was also an unscrupulous hound whom it would have given the doctor the greatest pleasure in life to shoot.

Ian Ross laughed out loud as he strode through the woods on his way to the police post. A thought had occurred to him which pleased his simple mind mightily. It was not a very profound thought. And the humour of it was difficult to detect. But it pleased him, and he had to laugh, and when he laughed the echoes rang. It had occurred to him that it took a man of real brain to be a perfect "damn fool."

The inspiration of his thought was undoubtedly Steve Allenwood. Steve Allenwood and his affairs had occupied his thoughts all the morning, and had interfered with a due appreciation of the dinner he had just eaten. He was perturbed, and Millie had set the match to the powder train of his emotions and energies. His admiration for Steve was as unstinted as his sympathy for the call that had been suddenly made on him. But he knew Steve, and realized the difficulties that lay before him in carrying out the programme of kindly purpose Millie and he had worked out over their midday meal. It was this which had brought him to the conclusion which had inspired his laugh.

In that brief instant the complete silence of the woods about him had been broken up in startling fashion. No shot from a rifle, no mournful cry of timber-wolf could disturb the spell of nature like the jarring note of the human voice.

But it had another effect. It elicited a response no less startling to the man who had laughed.

"Ho you, Mac!"

Ian Ross halted. He had recognized the voice instantly.

"That you, Steve?"

"Sure," came back the reply.

Instantly the Scotsman's lack of self-consciousness became apparent.

"How in hell did you know it was me?"

It was the turn of the invisible police officer to laugh.

"Guess there's only one laugh like yours north of 60°—less a bull moose can act that way." Then he went on. "Sharp to your left. I'm down here on the creek. I was making your place and this way cuts off quite a piece."

Ross turned off at once and his burly figure crashed its way through the barrier of delicate-hued spruce. A moment later he was confronting the officer on the bank of the creek.

Steve's smile was one of cordial welcome.

"I was figgering to get you before you went back to the agency," he said in explanation.

The doctor's eyes twinkled.

"And I was guessing to get you—before I went."

Steve nodded.

"We were chasing each other."

"Which is mostly a fool stunt."

"Mostly."

They stood smiling into each other's eyes for a moment.

"You were needing me—particular?" Steve enquired after a pause.

Ross glanced down at the gurgling water of the shallow stream as it passed over its rough gravel bed.

"I was needing a yarn. Nothing amiss at the post? You wanted me—particular?"

The smile in Steve's eyes deepened.

"No. I was needing a—yarn."

The doctor's twinkling eyes searched the clearing. A fallen tree was sprawling near by, with its upper boughs helping to cascade the waters of the stream. He pointed at it.

"Guess we don't need to wear our legs out."

Steve laughed shortly.

"That's where the neches beat us every time. You need to sit at a pow-wow."

"Sure. Their wise men sit most all the time."

They moved over to the tree trunk, and Ross accepted the extreme base of it and sat with his back against the up-torn roots. Steve sat astride the trunk facing him. Then by a common impulse the men produced their pipes. Steve's was alight first and he held a match for the other.

"You were chasing me up?" he said. "Nothing on the Reserve?"

"No." The doctor's pipe was glowing under the efforts of his powerful lungs. "Most of the neches are sleeping off the dope. It's queer how they're crazy for physic. How's Nita and the kiddie? I haven't seen Nita since the dance."

Steve's smile died out quite suddenly. The doctor's observant eyes lost nothing of the change, although the sunshine on the dancing waters seemed to absorb his whole attention.

"Guess little Coqueline absorbs more bottles to the twenty-four hours than you'd ever guess she was made to fit," Steve replied with a half laugh. "She kind of reminds you of one of those African sand rivers in the rainy season. Nita's the same as usual. She had a good time at the dance."

"Yes." The doctor bestirred himself and withdrew his gaze from the tumbling waters. "You had something to say to me," he demanded abruptly, his blue eyes squarely challenging.

Steve nodded. A half smile lit his steady eyes.

"Sure. And—it isn't easy."

The Scotsman returned the half smile with interest.

"I haven't noticed it hard for folks to talk, unless it is to tell of their own shortcomings. Guess you aren't figgering that way. Maybe I can help you. I'd hate to be setting out on a two years' trip and leaving Millie to scratch around without me."

Steve's eyes lit.

"That's it, Doc," he said with a nod which told the other of the emotions stirring under his calm exterior. "Two years!" He laughed without any amusement. "It may be more, a hell of a sight. Maybe even I won't get back. You see, you never can figger what this north country's got waiting on you. It's up in the Unaga country. And I guess it's new to me. I'd say it's new to anyone. It's mostly a thousand miles I've got to make, right up somewhere on the north-west shores of Hudson's Bay."

"A—thousand miles! It's tough." Dr. Ross shook his head.

"An' it comes at a bad time for me," Steve went on thoughtfully. "Still, I guess it can't be helped. You see, it's murder! Or they reckon it is. A letter got through from Seal Bay. That's on the Hudson coast. The Indian Department don't know where it comes from. It seems to have been handed in by an Indian named Lupite. The folks tried to get out of him where he came from, but I guess he didn't seem to know. Anyway he didn't tell them. He said Unaga, and kind of indicated the north. Just the north. Well, it isn't a heap to go on. Still, that's the way of these things. I've got to locate the things the folks at Seal Bay couldn't locate. It seems there's a biggish trading post way up hidden somewhere on the plateau of Unaga. It was run by two partners, and they had a sort of secret trade. The man at Seal Bay—Lorson Harris—reckons it's a hell of an important trade. The names of these traders were Marcel Brand—a chemist—and Cy Allshore, a pretty tough northern man. These fellers used to come down and trade at Seal Bay. Well, I don't know much more except this letter came into Seal Bay—it's written in a woman's hand and in English—to say her husband, Marcel Brand, and this, Cy Allshore, have been murdered. And she guesses by Indians. She don't seem dead sure. But they've been missing over a year. I'm just handing you this so you'll know the sort of thing I'm up against. And I've got to leave Nita, and my little baby girl, for two years—sure."

The kindly doctor nodded. He removed his pipe, and cleared his throat. His eyes were alight with a ready smile that was full of sympathy.

"Say, you haven't got to worry a thing for them that way," he said. "It's tough leaving them. Mighty tough. I get all that. And it sort of makes me wonder. But—Say, it's queer," he went on. "I was coming right along over to help fix things for you. And I was scared to death wondering how to do it without butting in. You were coming along over to me to set the same sort of proposition, and were scared to death I'd feel like turning you down. One of these days some bright darn fool'll fix up mental telepathy to suit all pocket-books. It'll save us all a deal of worry when that comes along. Now if that mental telepathy were working right now it would be handing the things passing in your head something like this: 'Why in hell can't that damned dope merchant, and that dandy woman who don't know better than to waste her time being his wife, come right along and fix something so Nita and the kiddie ain't left lonesome and unprotected while I'm away.' That's the kind of message I'd be getting from you. And you'd be getting one from me something in this way: 'If I don't screw up the two measly cents' worth of courage I've got, and go right across to Steve, and put the proposition Millie and I are crazy to make, why—why, Millie'll beat my brains out with a flat iron, and generally make things eternally unpleasant.' Having got these messages satisfactorily you and I would have set out—on the same path, mind. We'd have met right here: I should have said, 'Steve, my boy, your little gal Nita and that bright little bit of a bottle worrier you call your baby are coming right over to make their homes with Millie, and the gals, and me, till you get back. We're going to do just the best we know for them—same as we would for our own. It's going to be a real comfort for us to have them, and something more than a pleasure, and if you don't let 'em come—well, we'll be most damnably disappointed!' And you, being a straight, sound-thinking man in the main, but with a heap of notions that aren't always sound, but which you can't just help, would say: 'See, right here, Doc, I don't approve boosting my burdens on other folks' shoulders. That's not my way, but anyway I'll be mighty thankful not to disappoint you, and to go away feeling my bits of property aren't lying around at the mercy of a country, and a race of folk that'll always remain a blot on any Creator's escutcheon!' Having said all this we'd likely go on talking for awhile about the folks and things we know, such as the men of our acquaintance who reckon they're white, and the rotten acts they do because rye whisky and the climate of the Northland's killed the only shreds of conscience they ever had. And then—why, maybe then we just part, and go back to our work feeling what darn fine fellers we are, and how almighty glad we are we aren't as—the other folk."

The smile which the doctor's whimsical manner had provoked in Steve's eyes was good to see. An overwhelming gratitude urged him to verbal thanks, but somehow a great feeling deep down on his heart forbade such expression.

"You mean—all that, Doc?" he said almost incredulously at last.

The other raised his broad loose shoulders expressively.

"I wish it was more."

Steve breathed a deep sigh. He shook his head. Then, with an impulsive movement, he thrust out one powerful hand.

Just for one moment the two men gripped in silence.

"I'll fix it with Nita," Steve said, as their hands fell apart.

"Yep. And Millie and the gals will go along over. She can't refuse them."

Steve flashed a sharply enquiring look into the other's eyes.

"Why should she want to?" he demanded.

The doctor suddenly realized the doubt he had implied. His own train of thought had found unconscious expression.

"There isn't a reason in the world," he protested, "except—she's a woman."

But his reply, for all its promptness, entirely missed its purpose. It failed completely to banish the trouble which had displaced the smile in Steve's eyes.

When Steve spoke his voice was low, and he seemed to be speaking to himself rather than to his companion.

"That's so," he said at last. And Ian Ross knew there was more in Steve's mind than the fear of the common dangers to which his wife and child would be exposed in his absence. How much he did not know. Perhaps he had no desire to know. Anyway, being a man of some wisdom, being possessed of a home, and a wife, and family of his own, he applied himself assiduously to the pipe which never failed to soothe his feelings, however much they might be disturbed.

It was exactly a week from the time he had received his instructions that Steve's preparations were completed and the hour of his departure came round.

The afternoon was well advanced. Already the brilliant sun was drooping towards the misty range of lofty hills which cut the western skyline in the region of the Peace River country. Steve's horse was saddled and bridled, and tethered to the post outside the office door, where Corporal Munday was seated upon the sill awaiting the departure.

The "outfit" was already on the trail. That had left at sunrise. Its preparations had been simple, and even spare. But it was adequate. Steve and his Indians knew to the last fraction the requirements of a journey such as lay before them. Year in, year out, they were accustomed to preparations for the long trail. This was longer than usual. That was all.

The officer's plans were considered to the last detail. Nothing that could be foreseen was neglected. Every stage of the journey to the Unaga country was measured in his mind, both for time and distance. Only the elements were perforce omitted from his calculations. This was in the nature of things. The elemental side of his undertaking was incalculable.

His way lay due north for a while along the course of the great Caribou River. This would bring him to the half-breed settlement at the Landing on the great lakes. It would also take him through the country of the Hiada Indians. Arrived at Ruge's trading post at the Landing, his horses and police, half-spring wagons would be left to the trader's care, for beyond this point their services would be dispensed with.

The second stage of the journey would be by water and portage. In this neighbourhood, where the wilderness of sparsely travelled country opened out, he would make for the headwaters of the beautiful Theton River. The river of a hundred lakes draining a wide tract of wooded country. It was a trail which was not unfamiliar; for his work not infrequently carried him into the territory of peaceful Caribou-Eater Indians, who so often became the victims of the warlike, hot-headed Yellow-Knives.

The river journey he calculated should bring him to Fort Duggan at the height of summer, and it was without any feeling of enthusiasm that he contemplated that fly-and-mosquito-ridden country at such a time of year. But it was necessary, and so he was left without alternative. Fort Duggan was the deserted ruin of an old-time trading post, it was the home of the Shaunekuk Indians who were half Eskimo. It was also the gate of the mystery land of Unaga.

Unaga! The riddle of the wide northern-world. The land from which weird, incredible stories percolated through to the outside. They were stories of wealth. They were stories of savage romance. They were stories of the weird, terrible, and even monstrous. It was a land so unexplored as to be reputed something little better than a sealed book even to the intrepid Arctic explorer, who, at so great an expenditure of physical effort and courage, rarely accomplishes more than the blazing of a trail which seals up again behind him, and adds his toll to the graveyard which claims so many of the world's dauntless souls.

Unaga! The land unknown to the white man. And yet—news had come of the murder of two white men within its secret heart. Therefore the machinery of white man's law was set in motion, and the long, lean arm was reaching out.

Not less than a thousand miles of weary toil and infinite peril lay before Steve and his two Indian helpers. And a second thousand miles before the little home at Deadwater could hope to see him again. It was an overwhelming thought. Small blame to the heart that quailed before such an undertaking.

Steve had no thought for the immensity of the labour confronting him. He had no thought for anything but the purpose of his life. He knew that successful completion of the work before him would set the seal to his ambitions. He would then be able to lay at the feet of the girl who was the mother of his child the promotion to Superintendentship which should take her away from the dreary life of hardship which he knew to be so rapidly undermining that moral strength which was not abundantly hers.

These were the moments of the man's farewell to all that made up the spiritual side of his earthly life. It might be a final farewell. He could not tell. He knew the perils that lay ahead of him. But a great, passionate optimism burned deep down in his heart and refused him thought of disaster.

He was in the partially dismantled parlour with Nita and his baby girl. The last detail for the future of these two had been considered and prepared. At the moment of his going, Nita, too, would bid farewell to the post. And the precious home, the work of months of happy labour, would be passed on to the service of Steve's successor.

It was a moment that would surely live in the hearts of both. It was a moment when tearful eyes would leave to memory a picture perhaps to lighten the dreary months to come, a sign, a beacon, a consolation and support, a living hope for the painful months of separation when no word or sign could pass between them. They were moments sacred to husband and wife, upon which no earthly eyes have right to gaze.

The door opened and Steve passed out into the smiling sunshine. His steady eyes were dull and lustreless. His firm lips were a shade more tightly compressed. For the rest his limbs moved vigorously, his step lacked nothing of its wonted Spring.

As he left the doorway his place was taken by Nita, who bore the waking infant Coqueline in her arms. Both were dressed ready to pass on to their new home.

Steve was clad for the summer trail, and his leather chapps creaked, and his spurs clanked as he passed round to the tying post at which his horse was tethered. Force of habit made him test the cinchas of his saddle before mounting.

He spoke over his shoulder to the man who had risen to his feet at his coming.

"Guess you got everything right, Corporal?" he said.

"Everything, sir."

"Good. My diary's right up to date," Steve went on. "Things are quiet just now. They'll get busy later."

He swung into the saddle and held out a hand.

"So long," he said, as the Corporal promptly gripped it.

"So long, sir. And—good luck."

"Thanks."

The horse moved away and Steve passed round to Nita. He drew rein opposite the door but did not dismount.

"Let's—get another peck at her, Nita," he said, and it almost seemed as if the words were jerked from under the restraint he was putting on himself.

The girl had no words with which to answer him. Her eyes were wide and dry. But from her pallor it was obvious deep emotion was stirring. She came to his side, and held the baby up to him, a movement that had something of the tragic in it.

The father swept his hat from his head and bent down in the saddle, and gazed yearningly into the sleeping child's cherubic face. Then he reached lower and kissed the pretty forehead tenderly.

"She'll be getting big when I see her again," he said, in a voice that was not quite steady.

Then a passionate light flooded his eyes as he looked into the face of his girl wife.

"For God's sake care for her, Nita," he cried. "She's ours—and she's all we've got. Here, kiss me, dear. I can't stop another moment, or—or I'll make a fool of myself."

The girl turned her face up and the man's passionate kisses were given across the small atom which was the pledge of their early love. Then Steve straightened up in the saddle and replaced his hat. A moment later he had vanished within the woods through which he must pass on his way to Ian Ross and his wife, to whom he desired to convey his final word of thanks.

Nita stood silent, dry-eyed gazing after him. He was gone, and she knew she would not see him again for two years.

The woodland shadows were lengthening. The delicate green of the trees had lost something of its brightness. Already the distance was taking on that softened hue which denotes the dying efforts of daylight.

Nita was passing rapidly over the footpath which would take her to her new home. She was alone with her child in her arms, and carrying a small bundle. Her violet eyes were widely serious, the pallor of her pretty cheeks was unchanged. But whatever the emotions that inspired these things she lacked all those outward signs of feeling which few women, under similar circumstances, could have resisted. There were no tears. Yet her brows were puckered threateningly. She was absorbed, deeply absorbed, but it was hardly with the absorption of blind grief.

She paused abruptly. The startled look in her eyes displayed real apprehension. The sound of someone or something moving in the low-growing scrub beside her had stirred her to a physical fear of woodland solitudes she had never been able to conquer.

She stood glancing in apprehension this way and that. She was utterly powerless. Flight never entered her head. Panic completely prevailed.

A moment later a man thrust his way into the clearing of the path.

"Hervey!"

His name broke from Nita in a world of relief. Then reaction set in.

"You—you scared me to death. Why didn't you speak, or—or something?"

Hervey Garstaing stood smilingly before her. His dark eyes hungrily devouring her flushed face and half-angry eyes.

"You wouldn't have me hollering your dandy name, with him only just clear of Ross's house? I'm not chasing trouble."

"Has Steve only just gone?"

"Sure. I waited for that before I came along."

The man moistened his lips. It was a curiously unpleasant operation. Then he came a step nearer.

"Well, Nita," he said, with a world of meaning in eyes and tone. "We're rid of him for two years—anyway."

The girl started. The flush in her cheeks deepened, and the angry light again leapt into her eyes.

"What d'you mean?" she cried.

The man laughed.

"Mean? Do you need to ask? Ain't you glad?"

"Glad? I—" Suddenly pallor had replaced the flush in the girl's cheeks, and a curious light shone in eyes which a moment before had been alight with swift resentment. "—I—don't know."

The man nodded confidently, and drew still closer.

"That's all right," he said. "I do."

CHAPTER IV

UNAGA

It was the last of the night watch. The depths of the primeval forest were alive with sound, those sounds which are calculated to set the human pulse athrob. Steve Allenwood crouched over the fire. He was still, silent, and he squatted with his hands locked about his knees.

The fitful firelight only served to emphasize the intensity of surrounding darkness. It yielded little more than a point of attraction for the prowling, unseen creatures haunting the wild. The snow outside was falling silently, heavily, for it was late in the year, and October was near its close! Here there was shelter under the wide canopy which the centuries had grown.

As yet the falling temperature was still above zero. Later it would be different. The cap on the man's head was pressed low over his ears, and his summer buckskin shirt had been replaced by the furs which would stand between him and the fierce breath of winter during the long months to come. His eyes were wide. Every sense was alert. For all he was gazing into the fire, he was listening, always listening to those sounds which he dared not ignore for one single moment.

The sounds were many. And each had a meaning which he read with a sureness that was almost instinctive. The deep unease of the myriads of bare tree-trunks about him, supporting their snow-laden canopy, told him of the burden which the pitiless northern heavens were thrusting upon them. It also told him of the strength of the breeze which was driving the banking snow outside. The not infrequent booming crash of a falling tree spoke of a burden already too great to bear. So with the splitting of an age-rotted limb torn from the parent trunk.

Of deeper significance, and more deadly, is the sound which never dies out completely. It is a sound as of falling leaves, pattering softly upon the underlay of rotting cones and dead pine needles. Its insistence is peculiar. There are moments when it is distant. And moments, again, when it is near, desperately near.

It is at times such as the latter that the man at the fire unlocks his hands. With a swift movement, he reaches down to the fire and seizes a blazing brand. For a moment a trail of fire arcs against the black depths of the forest and falls to the ground. Then, with a hasty scuttling, the sounds die away in the distance, and a fierce snarling challenge is flung from the safer depths.

The challenge is without effect. The man rises swiftly to his feet, and, a moment later, the smouldering firebrand is gathered up, and all signs of fire where it has fallen are stamped out. Again he returns to the comforting warmth to continue his watch, whilst his companions sleep on securely in their arctic, fur-lined bags.

But the threat is real and deadly. Woe betide the foolish human soul who ignores it, or fails to read it aright. The eyes of the forest are wide awake. They are everywhere watching. They are there, in pairs, merciless, savage eyes, only awaiting opportunity. It is the primeval forest world where man is no more than those other creatures who seek to support the life that is thrust upon them.

These things were only a few of the voiceless hauntings which never ceased. Steve and his companions knew them all by heart. Every sound, every cadence told its tale. Every danger, with which they were surrounded, was calculated to a fraction and left them undisturbed.

Slowly the power of the firelight lessened. For all the stirring and replenishing, the flickering blaze yielded before the steadily growing twilight, and presently it sulkily abandoned the unequal contest. The dawn had come.

It was sufficient. Steve rose from his seat and stretched himself. Then, moving over to the wood pile he replenished the fire and set the camp kettle to boil. After that he passed on to the two figures still sleeping under their furs.

Oolak was the first to reach full wakefulness, and he promptly crawled from his sleeping-bag. Steve's instructions were brief and to the point.

"Fix the dogs," he ordered. And Oolak grunted his simple acquiescence.

As Julyman broke from his spell of dreaming Steve indicated the camp kettle.

"I've set it to boil. I'll take a look outside," he said.

He passed on without waiting for reply and his way followed the track which the sled had left in the rotting underlay, where over night it had been laboriously hauled into the shelter of the woods.

His movements were vigorous. The bulk of his outer clothing robbed him of much of such height as he possessed, but it added to the natural appearance of muscular sturdiness which was always his. His mission was important, for on his accurate reading of the elemental conditions depended immediate movements, and safety or disaster for his expedition.

As he neared the break in the forest, through which their course lay, the twilight gave before the light of day, and through the aisles of bare tree-trunks ahead he beheld the white carpet which night had laid. Nearly a foot of snow had fallen, and everywhere under its burden the foliage drooped dismally in the perfect morning light.

These things, however, were without serious concern. Steve knew that for the next seven months the earth would lie deep buried under its winter pall. That was the condition under which most of his work was carried on. It was the sunrise, and the wind, which must tell him the things he desired to know.

Passing beyond the shadowed aisles he moved out over the soft snow, where the crisp breeze swept down through the break. He was a few hundred yards from the summit of the high ridge over which, for miles, to the north and south, the primeval forest spread its mantle. It was a barrier set up and shutting off the view of the final stage of his journey; that final stage towards which he had laboured for so many weeks. He had reached so nearly the heart of Unaga, and beyond, somewhere towards the shores of Hudson's Bay lay that winter goal where he hoped to find the friendly shelter of the home of the seal-hunting Eskimo who peopled the regions.

He ploughed his way through the snow towards the summit of the ridge.

For all his outward calm Steve Allenwood was deeply stirred. For all he knew the wide Northland, with its mystery, its harshnesses, the sight that met his gaze from the summit of the ridge was one that left him wondering, and amazed, and not a little overwhelmed.

The immensity of it all! The harsh, unyielding magnificence! The bitter breath from the north-east stung his cheeks with its fierce caresses. He felt like a man who has stolen into the studio of a great artist and finds himself confronted with a canvas upon which is roughly outlined the masterly impression of a creation yet to be completed. It seemed to him as if he were gazing upon the bold, rough draft of the Almighty Creator's uncompleted work.

The blazing arc of the rising sun was lifting over the tattered skyline, and its light burnished the snow-crowned glacial beds to an almost blinding whiteness. As yet it only caught the hill tops within its range. The hollows, the shadowed woodlands, remained lost beneath the early morning mists. It gave the impression of gazing down upon one vast steaming lake, out of which was slowly emerging ridges of white-crested land chequered with masses of primeval forest.

In all directions it was the same; a hidden world having laboriously to free itself from the bondage of the mists.

The churning mists rolled on. They cleared for a moment at a point to let the sunlight shafts illuminate some sweep of glacial ice. Then they closed down again, swiftly, as though to hide once more those secrets inadvertently revealed. The sun rose higher. The movement of the mists became more rapid. They thinned. They deepened once more. And with every change the sense of urgent movement grew. It was like the panic movement of a beaten force. The all-powerful light of day was absorbing, draining the moisture-laden shadows, and reducing them to gossamer.

It was with the final passing of the mists that a sharp ejaculation broke from the watching man. It verily seemed to have been wrung from him. His gaze was fixed at a point of the broken skyline. A great cloud lay banked above the rising crest of the snowy barrier. It was stirring. It was lifting. Slowly. Reluctantly.

The moments passed. It was like the rising of the curtain upon a wonderful stage picture. Unlike the mists the cloud did not disperse. It lifted up, up before the man's amazed eyes, and settled a dense dark mass to crown that which it had revealed.

"Gee!"

The startled monosyllable was thrilling with every emotion of wonder.

A spire towered over the serrated skyline. Its height was utterly beyond Steve's calculation. Its final peak was lost amidst the heavy cloud. Sheer up it rose. Sheer above its monstrous surroundings. It rose like the spire of some cathedral of Nature's moulding, and dwarfed the world about it. It was dark, dark, in contrast to the crystal splendour outspread, and frowned with the unyielding hue of the barren rock.

"Boss—look!"

It was the first intimation of Julyman's presence. Steve accepted it without question. He was wholly absorbed in what he beheld. The Indian was at his side pointing at the monstrous tower.

"Him Unaga—Unaga Spire. Julyman know. Him Father wise man. Him tell of Unaga Spire. Him hot. Him hot lak hell. Him all burn up snow—ice. Him burn up all thing. Come. It not good. Him Unaga Spire!"

A wide declining expanse stretched out before them as Steve and Julyman swung along over the snow. They were following the track of a dog train, leaving behind them the added tracks of their own snow-shoes to mark the way. Ahead of them lay another short rise whose crest was dotted with timber bluffs. It was beyond this they hoped to discover the winter shelter they were seeking. Somewhere behind them the indomitable Oolak, silent, enduring, was shepherding their own dog train over their tracks.

The end of the month had come and their fortunes were at a crisis. A thousand miles of territory had been covered since the early summer day when Steve had bade farewell to his wife and child.

The effort had been tremendous. Far more tremendous than these men knew. And the story of the journey, the endurance, the hardship of it, would have made an epic of man's silent heroism. With Steve each hardship, each difficulty encountered had been a matter of course. Accident was a thing simply to be avoided, and when avoidance was impossible then to be accepted without complaint. And these things had been so many.

Now the wide Northland had been traversed from west to east and they had crossed the fierce bosom of Unaga's plateau. The reality of it was no better and only little worse than had been anticipated. It had been a journey of hills, everlasting hills, and interminable primordial forests, with dreary breaks of open plains. Each season had brought its own troubles, with always lying ahead the deadly anticipation of the winter yet to come.

It was the thought of this, and the indications everywhere about them, that had spurred Steve to hunt down the sled track upon which they had miraculously fallen.

They moved on in silence for a long time. Such was the way of these men. The great silences had eaten into their bones. The life and labours of the trail would have been intolerable amidst the chatter of useless talk.

The rolling swing of their gait carried them swiftly to their vantage ground, and hope stirred Steve to give expression to his thoughts.

"It would be queer to find those fancy 'Sleeper Indians' of yours," he said.

Julyman cast a glance over his left shoulder in the direction of the steely north. Somewhere back there far beyond his view stood the great Spire of Unaga, and the black cloud hovering about its crest. It had been left far, far behind them, but it still remained a memory.

"No Sleeper Indian man," he said decidedly. Then he added with a final shake of his head: "Oh no."

Steve laughed. It was not often these men laughed on the trail. Just now, however, the excitement of hope had robbed the white man of something of his habit.

"Guess your yarn didn't just locate them. Where d'you reckon they are?"

Julyman slackened his gait as they breasted the final rise where the sled track vanished over the brow of the hill. His dark, questioning eyes were turned enquiringly upon his boss, and he searched the smiling face that looked back at him out of its framing of heavy fur. He feared to be laughed at. He pointed at the northern horizon.

"Him—Unaga," was all he said.

Steve followed the direction of the mitted hand pointing northward, and the smile died out of his eyes. That strange Spire filled his memory still in spite of himself. Something of the Indian's awe communicated itself to him.

But he thrust it from him and gazed out ahead again, searching the tracks they were following.

"We'll find something, anyway," he said presently. "This track's not half a day old. There's folks beyond the rise. Say, maybe we can winter hereabouts, and work along the coast. The coast line's warmer. It never hits zero on the coast till you make inside the Arctic Circle. We'll get back to home next winter. It'll be good getting back to your squaws on Caribou, eh?"

There was a note in Steve's voice which did not fail to impress itself on the Indian's keen understanding. He knew his boss was thinking of his own white squaw and the pretty blue eyes of the pappoose which made the father forget every trouble and concern when he gazed down into them. Oh, yes, Julyman understood. He understood pretty well every mood of his boss. And who should understand them if he did not? Men on the trail together learn to read each other like a book.

"Squaws him trash!" exclaimed the Indian. And he spat to emphasize his cynical opinion.

"Some squaws," corrected Steve.

Julyman glanced at him from the corners of eyes which had become mere slits before the biting drift of the wind.

"All squaw," he said doggedly. Then he went on. "Squaw him all smile. Him soft. Him mak dam fool of Indian man. Squaw no good—only mak pappoose, feed pappoose. Raise him. All the time squaw mak pappoose. Him not think nothin' more. Just pappoose. Indian man think all things. Him squaw only mak pappoose an'—trouble."

"Trouble?" Steve's smile was alight with humour.

The Indian nodded.

"All time," he said decidedly. "No man, no pappoose, then squaw him mak trouble all time. It all same. Him find man sure. All man dam fool. Squaw mak him dam fool. Julyman stand by teepee. Him tak rawhide. Him say, 'do so!' Squaw him do. Julyman mak long trail. Him not care. Him come back him find plenty much other squaw. So!"

The Indian's watchful eyes had turned again to the tracks ahead. But he had seen. The humour had completely vanished out of Steve's eyes. So had his smile. Julyman's purpose was not quite clear. He loved and revered his chief. He had no desire to hurt him. But Steve knew that the man had been saying what he had said for his benefit.

"You're a damn scoundrel, Julyman," he said, and there was less than the usual tolerance in his tone.

The Indian shrugged under his furs.

"Julyman wise man," he protested. "All the time white man say, 'one squaw.' It good! So! It fine! Indian man say one—two—five—ten squaw. Then him not care little dam!"

Steve made no reply. The man's cynicism was sufficiently brutal to make it impossible to reply without heat. And Steve had no desire to quarrel with his chief lieutenant. Besides, he was deeply attached to the rascal. So they swung up the last sharp incline in the voiceless manner in which so much of their work was done.

It was Steve who reached the brow first, and it was his arm, and his voice that indicated the discoveries beyond.

"Right!" he exclaimed. "Look, Julyman," he went on pointing. "A lodge. A lodge of neches. And—see! What's that?" There was excitement in the tone of his question. "It's—a fort!" he cried, his eyes reflecting the excitement he could no longer restrain. "A—post! A white man's trading post! What in hell! Come on!"

He moved on impetuously, and in a moment the two men were speeding down the last incline.

The last recollection of the Indian's deplorable philosophy had passed from Steve's mind. His eyes were on the distant encampment. He had been prepared for some discovery. But never, in his wildest dreaming, had he anticipated a white man's trading post.

It was something amazing. As far as Steve could reckon they were somewhere within a hundred miles of the great inland sea. It might be thirty miles. It might be sixty. He could not tell. Far as the eye could see there was little change from what they had been travelling over for weeks. Appalling wastes of snow, and hill, and forest, with every here and there a loftier rise supporting a glacial bed. There were watercourses. Oh, yes, rivers abounded in that wide, unknown land. But they were frozen deeply, and later would, freeze doubtless to their very beds.

But here was a wide shallow valley with a high range of hill country densely forest clad forming its northeastern boundary. The hither side was formed by the low rising ground over which they had just passed. The hollow passed away, narrowing more deeply to the southeast, and lost itself in the dark depths of a forest. To the north-west the valley seemed to wander on amidst a labyrinth of sharp hills, which, in the distance, seemed to grow loftier and more broken as they merged themselves into the range Steve believed supported the mysterious Spire of Unaga.

The point of deepest interest and wonder was that which lay in the heart of the valley less than three miles further on. Numberless small bluffs chequered the open and suggested the parentage of one which stood out amongst them, wide, and dark, and lofty. Here there was a long wavering line of low bush reaching out down the heart of the valley indicating the course of a river. It was on this river bank, snuggled against the fringe of the great pine bluff that a cluster of dome-roofed habitations were plainly visible.

But the wonder of all stood a short distance away to the right where the woods came down towards the river. It was a wide group of buildings of lateral logs, with log roofs, and surrounded by a stockade of similar material. The touch of the white man's hand was unmistakable. No race of northern Indians or Eskimo could have built such a place.

They sped on over the snow unconscious of the increase of their speed. And as they approached each man realized the same thought. There was no sign of life anywhere. There was not even a prowling dog to be seen searching amongst the refuse of the encampment.

As they drew nearer they failed to discover any addition to the solitary track they were following. It was curious. It was almost ominous. But its significance was lost in the thought that here at least was shelter for themselves against the real winter yet to come.

They reached the banks of the river. It was a good-sized creek frozen solid, and already deep buried under snow. Without a pause they crossed to the other side and broke their way through the scrubby snow-laden bush on the opposite bank.

"Hello!"

The two men came to an abrupt halt. They were confronting a small child of perhaps five or six years. He was clad in furs from head to foot. A pretty, robust, white-skinned child, wide-eyed, and smiling his frankly cordial greeting.

CHAPTER V

MARCEL BRAND

For a moment astonishment robbed Steve of speech. Julyman was, perhaps, less affected. He stood beside his boss grinning down at the apparition till his eyes were almost entirely hidden by their closing lids, and his copper skin was wrinkled into a maze of creases.

Steve's ultimate effort was a responsive, "Hello!"

It seemed to meet with the child's approval, for he came trustfully towards the strangers.

"Mummy's sick," he informed them, gazing smilingly up into the white man's face. "The Injuns is all asleep. Pop's all gone away. So's Uncle Cy. Gone long time. There's An-ina and me. That's all. I likes An-ina—only hers always wash me."

The whole story of the post was told. The direct childish mind had taken the short cut which maturity would probably have missed.

Steve had recovered himself, and he smiled down into the pretty, eager, up-turned face.

"What's your name, little man?" he asked kindly.

"Marcel," the boy returned, without the least shyness.

Steve stooped down into a squatting position, and held out his hands invitingly. There could be no mistaking his attitude. There could be no mistaking the appeal this lonely little creature made to his generous manhood.

"That all? Any other?"

The boy came confidently within reach of the outstretched arms, and, as the man's mitted hands closed about him, he held up his face for the expected caress. Steve bent his head and kissed the ready lips.

"'Es, Brand. Marcel Brand," the boy said in that slightly halting fashion of pronouncing unaccustomed words.

Steve looked up with a start. His eyes encountered the still grinning face of the scout.

"Do you hear that?" he demanded. "Marcel Brand. It's—it's the place we're chasing for. Gee! it's well nigh a miracle!"

Quite suddenly he released the child and stood up. Then he picked the little fellow up in his strong arms.

"Come on, old fellow," he said quickly. "We'll go right along up and see your Mummy."

And forthwith he started for the frowning stockade under its mantle of snow.

Once in Steve's arms the child allowed an arm to encircle the stranger's neck. It was an action of complete abandonment to the new friendship, and it thrilled the man. It carried him back over a thousand miles of territory and weary toil to a memory of other infant arms and other infant caresses.

"'Es. I likes you," the boy observed as they moved on. "Who's you?"

Half confidences were evidently not in his calculation. He had readily given his, and now he looked for the natural return.

Steve laughed delightedly.

"Who's I? Why, my name's Steve. Steve Allenwood. 'Uncle' Steve. And this is Julyman. He's an Indian, and very good man. And we like little boys. Don't we, Julyman?"

The grin on the scout's face was still distorting his unaccustomed features as he moved along beside his boss.

"Oh, yes. Julyman, him likes 'em—plenty, much."

"Why ain't you asleep?" demanded the boy abruptly addressing the scout and in quite a changed tone. His smile, too, had gone.

Steve noted the change. He understood it. White and colour. This child had been bred amongst Indians, and his parents were white. It was always so. Even in so small a child the distinction was definite. He replied for Julyman, while the Indian only continued to grin.

"Julyman only sleeps at night," he said.

But Marcel pointed at the domed huts which looked so like a collection of white ant heaps.

"All Indians sleeps. All winter. My Pop says so. So does Uncle Cy. They sleeps all the time. Only An-ina don't sleep. 'Cep' at night. I doesn't sleep 'cep' at night. Indians does."

The white man and Indian exchanged glances. Julyman's was triumphant. Steve's was negatively smiling. He looked up into the child's face which was just above his level.

"These Indians sleep all winter?" he questioned.

"'Es, them sleeps. My Pop says they eats so much they has to sleep. An'," he went on eagerly, stumbling over his words, "they's so funny when they's sleep. They makes drefful noises, an' my Pop says they's snores. He says they's dreaming all funny things 'bout fairies, an' seals, an' hunting, an' all the things thems do's. They's wakes up sometimes. But sleeps again. Why does they sleep? Why does them eat so much? It's wolves eats till they bursts, isn't it, Uncle Steve?"

Steve pressed the little man closer to him. That "Uncle Steve" so naturally said warmed his heart to a passionate degree. The little fellow's mother was sick and he knew that his father and Uncle Cy were dead; murdered somewhere out in that cold vastness. What had this bright happy little life to look forward to on the desolate plateau of the Sleeper Indians.

"Wolves are great greedy creatures," he said. "They eat up everything they can get. They're real wicked."

"So's Injuns then."

Steve laughed at the childish logic, as the little man rattled on.

"I's hunt wolves when I grows big. I hunts 'em like Uncle Cy, an' seals, too. I kills 'em. I kills everything wicked. That's what my Pop says. He says, good boys kills everything bad, then God smile, an' all the people's happy."

They reached the stockade which the practised eye of Steve saw to be wonderfully constructed. Not only was its strength superlative, but it was loopholed for defence and he knew that such defences were not against the great grey wolves of the forest or any other creatures of the wild. They were defences against attack by human marauders, and he read into them the story of hostile Indians, and all those scenes which had doubtless been kept carefully hidden from little Marcel's eyes.

Furthermore he realized that the post was of comparatively recent construction. Perhaps it was five or ten years old. It could not have been more. It entirely lacked that appearance of age which green timbers acquire so readily under the fierce Northern storms. And it set him wondering at the nature of the lure which had brought men of obvious means, with wife and child, to the inhospitable plateau of Unaga.

He set the boy on the ground while he removed his snow-shoes. Then, hand in hand, the little fellow led him round to the gateway which opened out in full view of the valley.

It was a wide enclosure, and its ordering and construction appealed to the man of the trail. There was thought and experience in every detail of it. There was, too, the obvious expenditure of money and infinite labour. The great central building stood clear of everything else. It was long and low, with good windows of glass, and doors as powerful as human hands could make them. To the practical eyes of the Northern man it was clearly half store and half dwelling house, built always with an eye to a final defence.

Beyond this there were a number of outbuildings. Some were of simple Indian construction. But three of them, a large barn, and two buildings that suggested store-houses, were like the house, heavily built of logs.

But he was given little time for deep investigation, for little Marcel eagerly dragged him towards the door of the store. To the man there was something almost pathetic in the child's excitement and joy in his new discovery. His childish treble silenced the bristling dogs that leapt out at them in fierce welcome. And his imperious command promptly reduced them to snuffing suspiciously at the furs of the scout and the white man whom they seemed to regard with considerable doubt. He chattered the whole time, stumbling over his words in his eager excitement. He was endeavouring to impart everything he knew to this newly found friend, and, in the course of the brief interval of their approach to the house Steve learned all the dogs' names, their achievements, what little Marcel liked most to eat, and how he disliked being washed by An-ina, and how ugly his nurse was, and how his father was the cleverest man in the world, and how he made long journeys every winter to look for something he couldn't find.

It was all told without regard for continuity or purpose. It seemed to Steve as if the little fellow was loosing a long pent tide held up from lack of companionship till the bursting point had been reached.

As they came to the house, however, a sudden change came over the scene. The door abruptly opened, and a tall, handsome squaw, dressed in the clothes of rougher civilization, stood regarding them unsmilingly. To his surprise she was not only beautiful but quite young.

The boy's chatter ceased instantly and his face fell. One small mitted hand approached the corner of his pretty mouth, and he regarded the woman with quaint, childish reproach. It was only for a moment, however. With a sudden brightening of hope he turned and gazed up appealingly at his new friend.

"Don't let hers wash us, Uncle Steve," he implored.

Deep distress looked out of Steve's steady eyes. He was gazing at a wreck of beautiful womanhood lying on the bed. There was no doubt of the beauty of this mother of little Marcel. It was there in every line of the pale, hollow cheeks, in her clear, broad brow. In the great, soft grey eyes which were hot with fever as they gazed at him out of their hollow settings. Then the abundant dark hair, parted now in the centre, Indian fashion, and flooding the pillow with its masses. It was dull and lustreless, but all its beauty of texture remained.

She had summoned him at once to her sick room through An-ina. And in her greeting had briefly told him of the trouble which had befallen her.

"Maybe you'll think it queer my receiving you this way," she said, in a tired voice, "but I can't just help myself. You see, I can't move hand or foot." Then a pitiful smile crept into the wistful eyes. "It happened two weeks ago. Oh, those two weeks. I was felling saplings with An-ina in the woods out back. Maybe a woman can't do those things right. Anyway, one fell on me, and it just crushed me to the ground, and held me pinned there. I thought I was dead. But I wasn't. I was only broken. Maybe I'll die here—soon. An-ina got me clear and carried me home. And now—why, if it wasn't for my little Marcel I'd be glad—so glad to be rid of all the pain."

The note of despair, the tragedy in the brief recital were overwhelming. The full force of them smote Steve to the heart, and left him incapable of expression, beyond that which looked out of his eyes. Words would have been impossible. He realized she was on her deathbed. It required only the poor creature's obvious intense sufferings to tell him that. It was a matter of perhaps hours before little Marcel would be robbed of his second parent.

The brief daylight was pouring in through the double glass window of the room. It lit an interior which had only filled him with added wonder at these folks, and the guiding hand which inspired everything he beheld. The furnishing of the room was simple enough. But it was of the manufacture of civilization, and he could only guess at the haulage it had required to bring it to the heart of Unaga. Then there was distinct taste in the arrangement of the room. It was the taste of a woman of education and refinement, and one who must have been heart and soul with her husband, and the enterprise he was embarked upon.

An-ina had left him there to talk with the mother of those things which it was her care should not reach the ears of little Marcel.

Steve told her at once that he was a police officer, and that he was on a mission of investigation into the—he said "disappearance"—of Marcel Brand, who, he explained, was supposed to be a trader, with his partner Cyrus Allshore, somewhere in the direction north of Seal Bay in the Unaga country. He told her that he had travelled one thousand miles overland to carry out the work, and that something little short of a miracle had brought him direct to her door.

And the woman had listened to him with the eagerness of one who has suddenly realized a ray of hope in the blackness of her despair.

After his brief introduction she breathed a deep sigh and her eyes closed under the pain that racked her broken body.

"Then my message got through," she said, almost to herself. "Lupite must have reached Seal Bay." Then her eyes opened and she spoke with added effort. "I didn't dare to hope. It was all I could do," she explained. "Lupite said he'd get through or die. He was a good and faithful neche. I—I wonder what's happened him since. He's not got back, and—the others have all deserted me. There's no one here now but An-ina, and my little boy, and," she added bitterly, "What's left of me. Oh, God, will it never end! This pain. This dreadful, dreadful pain."

After a moment of troubled regard, while he watched the cold dew of agony break upon her brow, Steve ventured his reply.

"Yes. It must have got through, I guess," he said. "It must have reached the Indian Department at Ottawa. They sent it right along to the man at the Allowa Reserve where I'm stationed, and communicated with the police. That's how I received my instructions. They said your husband was supposed to be—murdered. And his partner, too."

"I put that in my letter," the woman said quickly. "I just had to. You see—" she broke off. But after a brief hesitation she went on. "But I don't know. I don't know anything that's happened really. He went away on a trip eighteen months ago, with Cy. It was to Seal Bay, with trade. He ought to have been back that fall. I haven't had a word since. I've been eighteen months here alone with An-ina, and—these Sleepers. He might have met with accident. But it's more likely murder. These Sleepers suspected. They were frightened he'd found out. You see, this stuff—this Adresol—is sacred to them. They would kill anyone who found out where they get it from."

A spasm of pain contorted her drawn face and again her eyes closed under the agony. She re-opened them at the sound of Steve's voice.

"Will you tell me, ma'm?" he said.

Steve's manner was gentle. His sympathy for this stricken creature was real and deep. She was a woman, suffering and alone in a God-forsaken land. The thought appalled him.

For some moments his invitation remained without response. The woman lay there unmoving, inert. Only was life in her hot eyes, and the trifling rise and fall of the bed covering as she breathed. Obviously she was considering. Perhaps she was wondering how much she had a right to tell this officer. She was completely without guidance. If her husband had been alive doubtless her lips would have remained sealed. But he was not there, and she knew not what had become of him. Then there was little Marcel, and she knew that when she left that bed it would be only for a cold grave on this bleak plateau of Unaga.

Steve waited with infinite patience. He felt it to be a moment for patience. Suddenly she began to talk in a rapid, feverish way.

"Yes, yes," she cried. "I must tell you now, and quickly. Maybe when you've heard it all you'll help me. There's no one else can help me. You see, it's my boy—my little boy. He's all I have in the world—now. He's the sun and light of my life. It's the thought of him alone, with only An-ina, in this terrible land that sets me well-nigh crazy. The police. I wonder. Would they look after him? Could you take him back with you when I'm dead? Do they look after poor orphans, poor little bits of life like him? Or is he too small a thing in the work they have to do? I pray God you'll take him out of this when I'm dead."

Steve strove to keep a steady tone. The appeal was heartrending.

"Don't you fret that way, ma'm," he cried earnestly. "If those things happen you reckon are going to, I'll see that no harm, I can help, comes to him. He's just a bright little ray of light, and I guess God didn't set him on this earth to leave him helpless in such a country as this."

A world of relief in the mother's eyes thanked him.

"I—I—" she began, and the man promptly broke in.

"You needn't try to thank me ..." Steve's manner was gravely kind. "Maybe when you've told me things I'll be able to locate your husband. And maybe he isn't dead."

The woman's eyes denied him hopelessly.

"He's dead—sure," she said. "Whatever's happened he's—dead. Say, listen, I'd best try and tell you all from the start," she went on, with renewed energy. "It's the only way. And it's a straight story without much shame in it. My husband, Marcel Brand, is a Dane, with French blood in his veins. He's a great chemist, who learned everything the Germans could teach him. He absorbed their knowledge, but not their ways. He was a good and great man, whose whole idea of life was to care for his wife and child, and expend all his knowledge to help the world of suffering humanity. It was for that reason that seven years ago he realized all he possessed, and, taking Cy Allshore as a partner, came up here."

"To help suffering humanity?"

Incredulity found expression almost before Steve was aware of it.

"Yes, I know. It sounds crazy," the sick woman went on. "But it isn't. Nothing Marcel ever did was crazy. All his life he has been studying drugs, and his studies have taken him into all sorts of crazy corners of the world. Thibet, Siberia, Brazil, Tropical Africa, India, and now—Unaga. It was he who discovered Adresol, that wonderful, priceless drug, which if it could only be obtained in sufficient quantities would be the greatest boon to humanity for—as he used to say himself—all time. Oh, I can't tell you about that," she exclaimed wearily, "guess it would need someone cleverer than I. But it's that brought us here, and kept us here for seven years. And maybe we'd have spent years more. You see, Marcel was years hunting over the world for the stuff growing in quantities. It was a chance story about these Indians he'd listened to that brought him here first, and when he discovered they were using the stuff, he believed it was the hand of Providence guiding him. With the use of it he found the Indians hibernated each winter, and yet remained healthy, robust creatures, retaining their faculties unimpaired, and living to an extreme old age."

"I'd heard of the 'Sleepers,' ma'm," Steve admitted. "But," he added, with a half smile, "I couldn't just believe the yarn."

"Oh, it's surely real," the woman returned promptly. "You can see for yourself. We call them the Ant Indians, because of their queer huts. They're all around the fort, and they're sleeping now, with their food and their dope near by for each time they wake. Yes, you can see it all for yourself. They look like dead things."

After another agonized spasm she took up her story more rapidly, as though fearing lest her strength should fail and she would be left without sufficient time to finish it.

"When Marcel came here he found himself up against tremendous difficulties. Oh, it wasn't the climate. It wasn't a thing to do with the country. It was the Indians themselves. He found they held the drug sacred, and the secret of their supply something more precious than life itself. It's the whole key to his death. Oh, I know it. I am sure, sure. He found that these mostly peaceful creatures were ready to defend their secret to the uttermost. No money could buy it from them, and they violently resented Marcel's attempts in that direction. For awhile the position was deadly, as maybe the defences we had to set up outside have told you. Marcel had blundered, and it was only after months of trouble he remedied it, and came to an understanding with these folk. They were won over by the prospect of trade, and agreed to trade small quantities of weed provided we would make no attempt to look for the source of their supply."

"Maybe we're to be blamed," she hurried on, "I don't know. Anyway, Marcel reckoned he was working for the good of humanity. He saw his opportunity in that agreement. The Indians were satisfied. Their good nature re-asserted itself, and all went smoothly with our trade in seals and the weed. But our opportunity lay in the winter. In the sleep-time of this folk. Maybe the Indians reckoned their secret was safe in winter. The storming, the cruel terror of winter which they dared not face would surely be too much for any white man. Maybe they thought that way, but if they did they were wrong. Marcel determined to use their sleep time to discover the secret he needed. He and Cy were ready for any chances. They would stand for nothing. That was their way. So, with our own boys, they made the long trail every winter.

"But they failed. Oh, yes, they failed." The woman sighed. "Sometimes it was climate beat them. Sometimes it wasn't. Anyway they never found the growing stuff. They never got a clue to its whereabouts. Maybe it was all buried up in snow. We always reckoned on that. The winter passed, and with each year that slipped away the chances seemed to recede farther and farther. Then all of a sudden the Indians got suspicious again. That was three years ago. I just don't know how it happened. Maybe one of our boys gave it away. Anyhow they turned sulky. That was the first sign. Then they refused to trade their weed. Then we knew the trouble had come. But Marcel was ready for them. He was ready for most things. He refused to trade their seals if they refused their weed. It was a bad time, but we finally got through. You see they needed our trade, once having begun it, and in the end Marcel managed to patch things up. But they frankly told us they knew of our winter expeditions to rob them, and, if they were continued, they would kill us all, and burn up the post. Well, things settled down after that and trade went on. But it wasn't the same. The Indians became desperately watchful, and for one whole winter half of them didn't sleep. I knew trouble was coming.

"Then came the time when Marcel had to make a trip to Seal Bay. He'd postponed it as long as he could. But our stuff had accumulated, and we had to get rid of it, and so, at last, he was forced to go. The post was well fortified, as you've seen, and we were liberally supplied with means of defence. Lupite was faithful, and I could rely on my other fighting neches. So Marcel and Cy set out, and—well, there's nothing more to tell," she said wearily. "They've both disappeared, vanished. And they should have been back more than a year ago. In desperation I sent the message by Lupite. He's not returned either, and, one by one, all our own Indians have deserted me. Oh," she went on passionately, "it's no accident that's happened. Marcel has been killed, murdered by these miserable folk, and all his years of work have gone for nothing. Why they haven't killed me and little Marcel, I can't think. Maybe they think we're of no account without Marcel. Maybe they find our store useful. For I've carried on the trade ever since Marcel went. But now my supplies are running out and when the Indians wake up and find that is so—but I shall be already dead. Poor little Marcel. But—but you won't let that happen, will you? It—it is surely God's hand that has sent you here now."

The woman's voice died out in a sob, and her eyes closed upon the tears gathered in them. It was the final weakening of her courage. For all its brevity, for all it was told in such desperate haste, the story lost nothing of its appeal, nothing of its pathos.

It left Steve feeling more helpless than he had ever felt in his life. At that moment he would have given all he possessed for the sound of the deep, cheerful voice of Ian Ross in that room of death.

Mrs. Brand's eyes remained closed, and her breathing laboured under her failing strength. She had put forth a tremendous effort, and the reaction was terrible. The ghastly hue of her cheeks and lips terrified Steve. He dreaded lest at that moment the final struggle was actually taking place.

He waited breathlessly. He had risen from his seat. The feeble throb of the pulse was visibly beating at the woman's temples. He knew he could do nothing, and, presently, as the eyes showed no sign of re-opening, he turned, and stole out to summon An-ina.

CHAPTER VI

AN-INA

The brief daylight had nearly passed. Accompanied by its fiery Satellites the sun was lolling moodily to its rest. Steve was searching the near distance for a sight of Oolak and the dog train, which should shortly arrive at the post. There was deep reflection in his whole attitude, in the keen lines of his strong face, in the far-off look in his steady eyes. Beside him little Marcel, in his warmth-giving bundle of furs, was emulating the attitude of his new "uncle." He, too, was searching the distance. He, too, was still and silent. Perhaps, even, in his childish way, he was striving to read the pages of the mystery book, which the bleak, snowbound prospect represented.

Beyond the low ridge of crystal whiteness, less than three miles distant, the land rose steadily, ridge on ridge. It looked like a series of giant steps blotched and chequered with dark patches of forest which contained so many secrets hidden from the eyes of man. As the distance gained the crystal of it all mellowed softly till a deep purple dominated the whole prospect.

The wintering sun had almost completed its course. At this season of the year it simply passed low above the horizon towards the west, like a rolling ball of fire, until, weary of its effort, it submerged again beyond the broken line of the hills. And each day that passed, its course dropped lower and lower.

It was a stern enough picture for all winter had not yet finally closed its doors upon the dying season. And none could know better the meaning of its frowning than Steve.

"Wot's us looking at, Uncle Steve?"

The childish treble piped its demand without the boy withdrawing his gaze from the grim picture of winter's approach.

In a moment Steve's pre-occupation vanished. He smiled down on the fascinating little bundle of furs as he replied.

"Oolak, old fellow, Oolak, and Uncle Steve's outfit. Guess he's got uncle's bed, and all his food."

"Wot food?"

Interest in such a subject superceded all interest in the sunset. Little Marcel's eyes were eagerly enquiring as they gazed up into those of his new found friend.

"Why, there's some frozen black-tail deer. Maybe there's a jack rabbit or so. Then I guess there's biscuit, and coffee, and tea, and maybe even sugar."

The boy nodded appreciatively.

"I likes 'em," he said. Then after a moment. "I likes plenty sugar. There's sugar at the store. My Mummy, hers keep it for me cos I likes 'em."

Steve understood. He interpreted the announcement in his own fashion. He knew that stores were running short, and that those others, those two devoted women, were hoarding the last remains of their sugar for the little life that needed it.

He turned abruptly towards the horizon again. Perhaps he did not desire the eyes of the child to witness the feeling he had stirred.

He need have had no fear. At that moment the boy's treble shrilled with excitement.

"Look, Uncle Steve!" he cried pointing. "Him's Oolak. Wiv dogs, an' sled, an' food, an' everything. Him's coming down—"

But he waited for no more. He waited for no reply. He waited for no guiding mandate. He raced off across the frozen surface of the snow as fast as his jolly little legs could carry him. It seemed as if he considered anything or anyone belonging to "Uncle Steve" to be also part of his small life, and was entitled to all the welcome he could give.

Steve watched the little fellow with a tender smile. He was so small, so full of happy life and engaging simplicity. Then he had such a wonderful picture face, with its fringe of curling hair which thrust its way out from under the thick, arctic helmet of fur which was part of his outer clothing. For a moment, as he bundled over the snow like a brown woolly ball, Steve wondered how he managed it, so encased was his small figure in seal-skin. But he did, and his high-pitched greeting to the man with the dog train floated back upon the still, cold air as he floundered farther and farther away.

"Hello!—hello!—hello!"

The greeting came back at intervals. And Steve wondered at the feelings of the silent Oolak when he heard that voice, and saw that baby figure sprinting and wobbling over the snow towards him.

"Missis gone—dead."

"Gone—dead!"

Steve turned with a start. He was looking into the handsome face of the squaw, An-ina, whose words he had echoed.

"Missis all gone—dead!" the squaw repeated with a solemn inclination of the head.

But the re-affirmation was unneeded. Full confirmation was in her wide dark eyes, which were full of every grievous emotion short of tears. Tears were something of which her stoic Indian nature was incapable. But Steve knew well enough the weight of grief which lay behind the stricken expression which looked out of the enveloping hood of the woman's tunic of seal.

For a moment he gazed into An-ina's face in helpless silence. For the moment the tragedy of the whole thing left him groping. He knew this woman had come to him seeking guidance. In that moment of disaster he felt that the destiny of little Marcel and his devoted nurse had been flung into his hands.

"Come," he said with swift decision. "We'll get right back—to her."

Steve was at the bedside. He was bending low over the still, calm figure, so straight, so rigid under the blanket covering. He was reading for himself, and in his own way, the brief account of those last moments when her spirit had yielded before those other overwhelming powers it had been impossible to resist.

Every disfiguring line of suffering had passed out of the beautiful, youthful face. For all the marble coldness which had taken possession of it Steve realized something of the splendid, smiling, courageous womanhood which had struggled so recklessly in support of the man for whom she had given up her life. And the full force of the tragedy of it all found a deep echo of pitying admiration in his heart. It seemed to him that the hand of Providence had fallen hard, and, in his human understanding, with more than questionable justice.

His examination completed he turned to the dusky creature at his side.

"I guess her sufferings are over—sure. Her poor soul's gone to join her man, and the boy's just—alone."

The squaw's dark eyes were soft with that velvet look so peculiar to the Indian woman in moments of deep emotion.

"Maybe it best so," she said, in a manner which bespoke long association with white folk. "Him good woman. Him suffer much—so much. Poor—poor Missis. It not him fault. Oh, no. Him think all the time for her man, an' little Marcel. Oh, yes. Not think nothing else all time. This devil man come. Him kill her man. She not know. Poor Missis. She not think. Only so she please her man. So this devil man kill her man. So."

"What d'you mean?"

The man's gaze was compelling. Its steady light searched the soft eyes of the squaw. The woman withstood his gaze unflinchingly. Then she suddenly bent across, and drew the coverlet up, and tenderly hid the face of the dead. Then she looked up again into Steve's face.

"Come," she said quietly. "I tell you."

Without waiting for reply she led the way out of the room into the store beyond, with its bare counter, and shelves, and bins so meagrely supplied. Steve followed without a word. He had suddenly realized that as yet he knew only a part of the story of these people. There was more to be told.

The store displayed much the same purpose and care which everything else about the work of Marcel Brand revealed. The completeness of it all must have been surprising, had not Steve understood that the chemist had come here to carry his life's work to its logical completion. There were signs everywhere of capacity, and unstinted expenditure of money. But the haulage of it all. The thought was always in Steve's mind. The great stove in the corner of the long, low room. The carpentered shelvings, and drawers, and cupboards. The counter, too, no makeshift barrier set up for the purposes of traffic, but with every sign of skilled workmanship about it. He felt certain that all these things must have been borne up the slopes of the great table-land, hauled overland, or by water, from the workshops of civilization.

Habit was strong and An-ina moved at once to the great stove radiating its pleasant warmth. Steve took up his position opposite her.

The squaw began at once. She had nothing to conceal from this man who represented the law of the white men. Besides, was she not thinking of the boy who had stolen so closely into her mother heart?

"An-ina not say to Missis all," she said, in her simple way. "Oh, no. Missis much afraid. Much suffer. Him sick—much sick. No man—then all gone. She 'fraid. She all break up her heart. Marcel not come. Why? Why? An-ina know. She hear from Indian man. All Indian man know. Marcel him all killed dead. Indian man not kill him. Oh, no. Cy Allshore him kill him. Marcel him kill Cy too. Both kill each one. Oh, yes. Cy devil man. Cy think him kill up Marcel. Then him have Missis—have all things. Oh, yes. Indian man know. Indian man find both, all killed dead. Indian man tell An-ina. An-ina say no tell Missis. Maybe she all kill dead—too. Yes? An-ina love Missis. Love her much. She no hurt Missis. So she not say. Oh, no."

The searching eyes of Steve never left the woman's dusky face for a moment. They were boring their way to pierce the unemotional exterior for the truth that lay behind.

"Say, just stop right there," he commanded. "I need to get this right. You reckon this feller Cy—Cy Allshore was out for plunder—murder. You guess he kind of loved your Missis, and she didn't know. He reckoned to kill Marcel, and steal all this, and—his wife. That so?"

"Sure. That so."

"How d'you know?"

"An-ina see. An-ina have two eyes. She see all thing. Oh, yes."

"Tell me."

"How An-ina tell? She not know. She woman. She see. That all. Cy him hard. Him have bad eye for woman. Him think money all time. Him say, 'An-ina you good squaw.' Him say, 'Cy have no squaw. Cy like squaw.' An-ina say, no! She know. Then him hate An-ina. Him hate An-ina plenty, big. An-ina say nothing. She not 'fraid. Cy know she maybe kill him. Then him talk much with Missis. An-ina watch. Yes. Missis not know. Him good woman. An-ina know. Cy bad. An-ina think her mak big talk with Marcel. Her say much. No. Her not mak big talk. Marcel him kill Cy. Then all thing here—no good. Oh, yes. So An-ina say nothing. So him Cy an' Marcel go long trail. Marcel him not think nothin'. Him dream—dream. All time dream. Cy think bad all time.

"So." An-ina shrugged expressively. "Much long time. No Cy. No Marcel. Then Indian man mak big talk. Him say Indian man come by the big water. What you call him?"

"Hudson's Bay?"

"No, no. Not so big water."

"Chesterfield Inlet?"

The woman's eyes cleared of their perplexity.

"So. Chest-fiel' Inlet. Him big water. Indian man come with much seal. Him mak camp. Bimeby him mak big trail for Unaga. Then him find him trail. Cy an' Marcel. Him follow him trail, an' bimeby him come big, deep place. Cy an' Marcel, all gone—dead. Him dogs all gone—dead. An' wolves eat up all flesh. Oh yes."

"How did they recognize the bones?"

"Him sled, him outfit. All 'Sleeper.' Indian man know."

"And you reckon Cy Allshore killed Marcel—murdered him?"

There was a sharpness in Steve's demand that suggested doubt. He did not doubt the woman's story. It was her assertion that Cy had murdered his partner. He saw no evidence for her assumption. He felt that she had given run to her own personal feelings against the man.

"That so. I tell you," An-ina returned composedly. She read his doubt and understood. "I not lie. Oh, no. Indian man wise. Sleeper man wise. Not bad. No. They find him bones. All eat clean. They see big place. They look an' look. No fall. Oh, no. No break 'em all up. No. Him say Marcel wise man. Cy wise man. Not care for wolf. Oh, no. So him look much. Him take him bone an' look. Him find him head—two. Maybe Marcel—maybe Cy. Him find him hole. Little hole—big hole. Same like each. Then him find gun. Two much little gun. Two big gun. Little gun him both shoot. Two time—three time. Him say big fight—plenty. So. It easy. Oh, yes. Marcel him no fight plenty. Oh, no. Him so as brother with Cy. Cy him not so. An-ina know. Cy him steal, steal, so," An-ina bent her lithe body in an attitude of stealing upon a victim. "Then him little gun go—one I Marcel know. Him quick like lightning. Him brave—much brave. Then him little gun go—one. So. Both all kill up—dead."

For all the broken way of her talk, An-ina carried conviction. She knew both men. And her woman's heart and mind had read Cy Allshore to the dregs of what she believed was an infamous heart. Steve knew the danger of accepting her story without reserve. He was convinced of her sincerity. It would have been impossible to doubt. But——

The sound of little Marcel's piping voice reached them from the outside. Steve turned and glanced out of the window. Oolak was bringing in his train, with its five powerful dogs. Julyman with a club was busy, with little Marcel's assistance, beating off the ferocious welcome of dogs of the post.

For a moment he watched the boy's amazing efforts. Then as the tumult subsided he turned again to the patient woman awaiting his verdict.

"You're a good woman, An-ina," he said simply. "You've told me the whole thing as you see it. Well, I guess I can't ask more. Anyway I'm camping here for the winter, an' during that time I'll need to wake some of these 'sleepers.' I've got to get out and see what happened at that 'big place.' Later on, when the snow goes, why—Say, I guess there isn't a thing to keep you and little Marcel around here—now."

CHAPTER VII

THE HARVEST OF WINTER

Steve was confronted with six months of desperate winter on the plateau of Unaga. It was an outlook that demanded all the strength of his simple faith. He was equal to the tasks lying before him, but not for one moment did he underestimate them.

For all the harshness of the life which claimed him Steve's whole nature was imbued with a saneness of sympathy, a deep kindliness of spirit that left him master of himself under every emotion. The great governing factor in his life was a strength of honest purpose. A purpose, in its turn, prompted by his sense of right and justice, and those things which have their inspiration in a broad generosity of spirit. So it was that under all conditions his conscience remained at peace.

It was supported by such feelings that he faced the tasks which the desperate heart of Unaga imposed upon him. He had the care of an orphaned child, he had the care of that child's Indian nurse, and the lives and well-being of his own two men charged up against him. He also had the investigations which he had been sent to make, and furthermore, there was his own life to be preserved for the woman he loved, and the infant child of their love, waiting for his return a thousand miles away. The work was the work of a giant rather than a man; but never for one moment did his confidence fail him.

The days following the arrival at the post were urgent. They were days of swift thought and prompt action. The open season was gone, and the struggle for existence might begin without a moment's warning. Steve knew. Everyone knew. That is, everyone except little Marcel.

The boy accepted every changing condition without thought, and busied himself with the preparations of his new friends. It had no significance for him that all day long the forest rang with the clip of the felling axe. Neither did the unceasing work of the buck-saw, as it ploughed its way through an endless stream of sapling trunks, afford him anything beyond the joy of lending his assistance. Then, too, the morning survey of the elemental prospect, when his elders searched the skies, fearing and hoping, and grimly accepting that which the fates decreed, was only one amongst his many joys. It was all a great and fascinating game, full of interest and excitement for a budding capacity which Steve was quick to recognize.

But the child's greatest delight was the moment when "Uncle Steve" invited him to assist him in discovering the economic resources of his own home. As the examination proceeded Steve learned many things which could never have reached him through any other source. He obtained a peep into the lives of these people through the intimate eyes of the child, and his keen perception read through the tumbling, eager words to the great truths of which the child was wholly unaware. And it was a story which left him with the profoundest admiration and pity for the dead man who was the genius of it all.

Not for one moment did Steve permit a shadow to cross the child's sunny, smiling face. From the first moment when the responsibility for Marcel's little life had fallen into his hands his mind was made up. By every artifice the boy must be kept from all knowledge of the tragedy that had befallen him. When he asked for his mother he was told that she was so sick that she could not be worried. This was during the first two days. After that he was told that she had gone away. She had gone away to meet his father, and that when she came back she would bring his "pop" with her. A few added details of a fictitious nature completely satisfied, and the child accepted without question that which his hero told him.

He was permitted to see nothing of the little silent cortège that left the post late on the second night. He saw nothing of the grief-laden eyes of An-ina as she followed the three men bearing their burden of the dead mother, enclosed in a coffin made out of the packing cases with which the fort was so abundantly supplied. He had seen the men digging in the forest earlier in the day, and had been more than satisfied when "Uncle Steve" assured him they were digging a well. Later on he would discover the great beacon of stones which marked the "well." But, for the moment, while the curtain was being rung down on the tragedy of his life, he was sleeping calmly, and dreaming those happy things which only child slumbers may know.

Good fortune smiled on the early efforts at the fort For ten days the arch-enemy withheld his hand. For ten days the weary sun was dragged from its rest by the evil "dogs" which seemed to dominate its movements completely. But each day their evil eyes grew more and more portentious and threatening as they watched the human labourers they seemed to regard with so much contempt.

Then came the change. It was the morning of the eleventh day. The "dogs" had hidden their faces and the weary sun remained obscured behind a mass of grey cloud. The crisp breeze which had swept the valley with its invigorating breath had died out, and the world had suddenly become threateningly silent.

A few great snowflakes fluttered silently to the ground. Steve was at the gateway of the stockade, and his constant attendant was beside him in his bundle of furs. The man's eyes were measuring as they gazed up at the grey sky. Little Marcel was wisely studying, too.

"Maybe us has snow," he observed sapiently at last, as he watched the falling flakes.

"Yes. I guess we'll get snow."

Steve smiled down at the little figure beside him.

"Wot makes snow, Uncle Steve?" the boy demanded.

"Why, the cold, I guess. It just freezes the rain in the clouds. And when they get so heavy they can't stay up any longer, why—they just come tumbling down and makes folk sit around the stove and wish they wouldn't."

"Does us wish they wouldn't?"

"Most all the time."

The child considered deeply. Then his face brightened hopefully.

"Bimeby us digs, Uncle Steve," he said. "Boy likes digging."

Steve held out a hand and Marcel yielded his.

"Boy'll help 'Uncle Steve,' eh?"

"I's always help Uncle Steve."

The spontaneity of the assurance remained unanswerable.

Steve glanced back into the enclosure. Then his hand tightened upon the boy's with gentle pressure.

"Come on, old fellow. We'll get along in, and make that stove, and—wish it wouldn't."

He led the way back to the house.

The snowfall grew in weight and density. Silent, still, the world of Unaga seemed to have lost all semblance of life. White, white, eternal white, and above the heavy grey of an overburdened sky. Solitude, loneliness, desperately complete. It was the silence which well nigh drives the human brain to madness. From minutes to hours; from inches to feet. Day and night. Day and night. Snow, snow all the time, till the tally of days grew, and the weeks slowly passed. It almost seemed as if Nature, in her shame, were seeking to hide up the sight of her own creation.

For three silent weeks the snow continued to fall without a break. Then it ceased as abruptly as it had begun, leaving the fort buried well nigh to the eaves. The herald of change was a wild rush of wind sweeping down the valley from the broken hills which formed its northern limits. And, within half an hour, the silence was torn, and ripped, and tattered, and the world transformed, and given up to complete and utter chaos. A hurricane descended on the post, and its timbers groaned under the added burden. The forest giants laboured and protested at the merciless onslaught, while the crashing of trees boomed out its deep note amidst the shriek of the storm. As the fury of it all rose, so rose up the snowfall of weeks into a blinding fog which shut out every sight of the desolate plateau as though it had never been.

Five weeks saw the extent of winter's first onslaught. And after that for awhile, the battle resolved itself into a test of human endurance, with the temperature hovering somewhere below 60° below zero. For a few short hours the sun would deign to appear above the horizon, prosecute its weary journey across the skyline, and ultimately die its daily death with almost pitiful indifference. Then some twenty hours, when the world was abandoned to the starry magnificence of the Arctic night, supported by the brilliant light of a splendid aurora.

It was during this time that Steve pursued his researches into the lives of these people. He was sitting now in the laboratory, which was a building apart from all the rest. It was the home of the chemist's research. It was equipped with wonderful completeness. Besides the shelves containing all the paraphernalia of a chemist's profession, and the counter which supported a distilling apparatus, and which was clearly intended for other experiment as well, there was a desk, and a small wood stove, which was alight, and radiating a pleasant heat.

It was the desk which held most interest for Steve. It was here he looked to find, in the dead man's papers, in his letters, in his records and books, the answer to every question in his mind.

For some hours he had been reading from one of the volumes of the man's exhaustive diary. It was a living document containing a fascinating story of the chemist's hopes and fears for the great objects which had led to his abandonment of the civilized world for the bitter heights of Unaga. And in every line of it Steve realized it could only have been written by a man of strong, deep conviction and enthusiasm, a man whose purpose soared far above the mere desire for gain. He felt, in the reading, he was listening to the words of a man who was all and more, far more, than his wife had claimed for him.

At last the fire in the stove shook down and he became aware of the work of busy shovels going on just outside. He pulled out his watch, and the yellow light of the oil lamp told him that he had been reading for nearly three hours. Setting a marker in the book he closed it reluctantly, and prepared to return the litter of documents to the drawers which stood open beside him.

At that moment the door opened, and the tall figure of the squaw An-ina stood in the framing.

"Him supper all fixed," she announced, in her quietly assured fashion.

Steve looked up, and his eyes gazed squarely into the woman's handsome face. He was thinking rapidly.

"Say An-ina," he began at last. "I've been reading a whole heap. It's what the man, Brand, wrote. He seems to have been a pretty great feller."

The woman nodded as he paused.

"Heap good man," she commented.

Her eyes lit with an emotion there could be no misunderstanding. For all the savage stock from which she sprang the dead white man had claimed a great loyalty and devotion.

"You see, An-ina," Steve went on, "I came along up here to chase up the murder of two men. My work's to locate all the facts, arrest the murderers, take them back to where I come from, and make my report."

"Sure. That how An-ina mak it so."

The woman's eyes were questioning. She was wondering at the meaning of all this preliminary. And she was not without disquiet. She had come to realize that, with the death of her mistress, only this man and his scouts stood between her and disaster. She could not rid herself of the dread which pursued her now. Little Marcel was a white child. This man was white. She—she was just a squaw. She was of the colour of these "Sleeper" Indians. Would they take the child of her mother heart from her, and leave her to her fate amongst these folk who slept the whole winter through?

"Yes," Steve was gazing thoughtfully at the light which came from under the rough cardboard shade of the lamp. "Well, the whole look of things has kind of changed since I've—" he indicated the papers on the desk—"taken a look into all these."

"Him read—much. Him look—always look. So."

Steve nodded.

"That's so. Well, I've got to get busy now, and do the things I was sent up to do. But it seems likely there's going to be no murderer to take back with me. It looks like a report of two men dead, by each other's hand, a woman dead through accident, and you, and little Marcel left alive. That being so I guess I can't leave you two up here. Do you get that?" He set his elbows on the desk and rested his chin on his hands. "There's the boy, he's white," he said, watching the squaw's troubled face. "He's got to go right back with me, when my work's done. And you—why, you'd best come, too. I'd hate to rob you of the boy. You'll both need to come right along. And the big folk will say what's to be done with you when we get back. How do you say?"

The trouble had completely vanished from the woman's eyes. It was like the passing of a great shadow. Their velvet softness radiated her thankfulness, her gratitude.

"It good. Much good," she cried, with a sudden abandonment of that stoic unemotional manner which was native to her. "An-ina love white boy. She love him much. Boy go? Then An-ina all go dead. An-ina wait. So storm devil him come. Then An-ina go out, and sleep, sleep, and not wake never no more. An-ina keep boy? Then An-ina much happy. An-ina help white man officer. An-ina strong. Mak long trail. An-ina no sick. No mak tire. Work all time. An' help—much help white man officer. So."

Steve's smiling eyes indicated his acceptance of the woman's protestations.

"That's all right," he said. Then he went on after a moment's thought: "Now, you know these folk. These 'Sleepers.' Do you know their lingo—their language? I've got to make a big pow-wow with their head man. I guess that can't be done till they wake. You figger they wake at intervals, and they dope themselves again. If that's so, I've got to get their big chief right at that time. D' you guess you could take me right along to get a look at these folk, and, after that, fix things so I can grab their big man first time he wakes?"

The woman nodded at once, and her eyes wore a contented smile.

"Sure. An-ina know. Show him white man officer. Oh, yes. Show him all this folk. Oh, yes. When? Now? Oh, yes. Him not snow. It good. Then sometime An-ina watch. She watch, watch, all time, and when him wake, an' eat, then him white man come an' mak pow-wow. Good?"

"Fine." Steve returned all the papers to the drawers in the desk and stood up. "Guess I'll eat right away, and after that we'll get along an' take a peek at these folks. The boys got the snow clear outside?"

"Him dig much. Snow plenty gone."

"Good. And little Marcel?" Steve enquired, with a tender smile. "Has he been digging?"

The squaw's eyes lit.

"Oh, yes, him boy dig. An' Julyman, an' him Oolak all laff. Boy dig all time, everywhere." An-ina laughed in her silent way. Then she sobered, and a great warmth shone in her eyes. "Boss white man officer love him boy? Yes?"

Steve nodded in his friendly way.

"Oh, I guess so," he admitted. "You see, I've got a little girl baby of my own way back—where I come from."

"So."

There was no mistaking the understanding in the woman's significant ejaculation.

Steve and An-ina passed out into the wonderful glowing twilight. There was no need for the sun in the steely glittering heavens. The full moonlight of the lower latitudes was incomparable with the Arctic night. From end to end in a great arc the aurora lit the world, and left the stars blazing impotently. The cold was at its lowest depths, and not a breath of wind stirred the air. Up to the eyes in furs the two figures moved out beyond the stockade into the shadowed world.

The squaw led the way, floundering over the frozen snow-drifts with the gentle padding sound of her moccasined feet. Steve kept hard behind her yielding himself entirely to her guidance.

Out in the open no sign remained of the dome-roofed settlement of the Sleepers. The huts had served to buttress the snow for the blizzard. They were buried deep under the great white ridges which the storm had left.

It was something upon which Steve had not calculated. And he swiftly drew the squaw's attention.

"Say," he cried, pointing at the place where the huts had been visible, "I kind of forgot the snow."

The squaw's eyes were just visible under her fur hood. Their brightness suggested a smile.

"No 'Sleeper' man by this hut. Oh, no," she exclaimed decidedly. "No winter, then him 'Sleeper' man live by this hut. Winter come, then him sleep by woods. Much hut. Plenty. All cover, hid-up. Come, I show."

Steve was more than relieved. The snow had looked like upsetting all his calculation.

Once clear of the banked snow-drifts, which rose to the height of the stockade, they moved rapidly over the crusted surface towards the dark wall of woods which frowned down upon them in the twilight, and, in a few moments, the light of the splendid aurora was shut out, and the myriad of night lights were suddenly extinguished.

"Keep him much close," An-ina cried, her mitted hand grasping Steve by the arm. "Bimeby him bush go all thick. An-ina know."

They trudged on, and as they proceeded deeper and deeper into the darkness of the forest, Steve's eyes became accustomed. The snow broke into patches, and soon they found themselves more often walking over the underlay of rotting pine cones than the winter carpet of the Northern world. The temperature, too, rose, and Steve, at least, was glad to loosen the furs from about his cheeks and nose.

Half an hour of rapid walking proved the squaw's words. The lank tree-trunks, down aisles of which they had been passing, became lost in a wealth of dense undergrowth. It was here that the woman paused for her bearings. But her fault was brief, and in a few moments she picked up the opening of a distinct but winding pathway. The windings, the entanglement of the growth which lined it, made the path seem interminable. But the confidence and decision of his guide left Steve without the slightest doubt. Presently his confidence was justified.

The path led directly to the entrance of a stoutly constructed habitation. Even in the darkness Steve saw that the hut exactly occupied a cleared space. The surrounding bush, in its wild entanglement, completely overgrew it. The result was an extraordinarily effective hiding. Only precise knowledge could ever have hoped to discover it.

An-ina paused at the low door and pointed beyond.

"Track him go long way. More hut. Much, plenty. Oh, yes. Much hut. This, big man chief. All him fam'ly. Come."

She bent low, and passed into the tunnel-like entrance, built of closely interlaced Arctic willow. A dozen paces or more brought them to a hanging curtain of skins. The woman raised this, and held it while Steve passed beyond. A few paces farther on was a second curtain, and An-ina paused before she raised it.

"So," she said, pointing at it. "All him Sleepers."

Steve understood. And with a queer feeling, almost of excitement, he waited while the woman cautiously raised the last barrier. He scarcely knew what to expect. Perhaps complete darkness, and the sound of stertorous, drugged slumber. That which was revealed, however, came as a complete surprise.

The first thing he became aware of was light, and a reeking atmosphere of burning oil. The next was the warmth and flicker of two wood fires. And after that a general odour which he recognized at once. It was the same heavy, pungent aroma that pervaded the fort where the dead chemist stored the small but precious quantities of the strange weed he traded.

They stepped cautiously within, and stood in silent contemplation of the fantastic picture revealed by the three primitive lights. They emanated from what looked like earthenware bowls of oil, upon which some sort of worsted wicks were floating. These were augmented by the ruddy flicker of two considerable wood fires, which burned within circular embankments constructed on the hard earthen floor.

The lights and fires were a revelation to the man, and he wondered at them, and the means by which they were tended. But his speculations were quickly swallowed up by the greater interest of the rest of the scene.

The hut was large. Far larger than might have been supposed; and Steve estimated it at something like thirty feet long by twenty wide. The roof was thatched with reedy grass, bound down with thongs of rawhide to the sapling rafters. The ridge of the pitched roof was supported by two tree-trunks, which had been cut to the desired height, and left rooted in the ground, while the two ends of it rested upon the end walls. The walls themselves were constructed of thick mud plaster, overlaying a foundation of laced willow branches. The whole construction was of unusual solidity, and the smoke-blackened thatch yielded two holes, Indian fashion, through which the fire smoke was permitted exit.

But Steve's main interest lay in the drug-suspended life which the place contained. It was there, still, silent. It lay in two rows down the length of either side of the great interior. In the dim light he counted it. There were forty-two distinct piles of furs, each yielding the rough outline of a prone human figure beneath it. Each figure was deathly still. And the whole suggested some primitive mortuary, with its freight, awaiting identification.

For many moments Steve remained powerless to withdraw his fascinated gaze. And all the while he was thinking of Julyman, and the story he had been told so long ago. He remembered how he had derided it as beyond belief.

At last the fascination passed, and he turned his gaze in search of those things which made this extraordinary scene possible. They were there. Oh, yes. Julyman had not lied. No one had lied about these creatures of hibernation. Piles of food were set out in earthenware bowls, similar to the bowls which contained the floating lights. Then there were other vessels, set ready to hand beside the food, and he conjectured their contents to be the necessary brew of the famous drug.

An-ina's voice broke in upon his reflections.

"Him all much sleep," she said. "No wake now. Bimeby. Oh, yes."

She spoke in her ordinary tone. She had no fear of waking these "dead" creatures.

"Tell me," Steve said after a pause, "who keeps these fires going? Who watches them? And those oil lights. Do they burn by themselves?"

An-ina made a little sound. It was almost a laugh.

"Him light burn all time. Him seal oil," she explained. "Indian man much 'fraid for devil-man come. Him light keep him devil-man 'way all time. Winter, yes. Summer, yes. Plenty oil. Only wind mak him blow out. Fire, oh yes. When him wakes bimeby him mak plenty fire. Each man. Him sit by fire all time eat. Then him sleep once more plenty. Each man wake, each man mak fire. So fire all time. No freeze dead."

"None awake now," demurred Steve lowering his voice unconsciously.

"Oh, no," returned the squaw. "No man wake now. Bimeby yes. H'st!"

The woman's sudden, low-voiced warning startled Steve. Her Indian eyes had been quicker than his. There was a movement under the fur robes of one of the curious heaps in the distance, to the left, and she pointed at it.

Steve followed the direction indicated. Sure enough there was movement. One of the men had turned over on his back.

"Him wake—bimeby," whispered the squaw. "Come!"

She moved towards the doorway, and Steve followed closely. In a moment they had passed the curtained barriers out into the fresh night air.

Steve paused.

"Would that be the headman?" he demanded.

An-ina shook her head.

"Him headman by door. Him sleep where we stand. Him sleep by door. Him brave. Keep devil-man away. So."

"I see," Steve moved on down the path. "Well, we'll get right back. I'm going to reckon on you, An-ina. Each day you go. When the headman wakes you speak with him. You tell him white man officer of the Great White Chief come. He looks for dead white men. You must tell him to keep awake while you bring white man officer. See?"

"Sure. An-ina know. An-ina mak him fix all so."

CHAPTER VIII

BIG CHIEF WANAK-AHA

The enclosure of the fort was at last cleared of snow. It was now ready, waiting for the elements to render abortive in a few short hours the labour of many days. Julyman and Steve had spent the brief daylight in setting up a snow-break before the open sheds which housed the sleds and canoes. Oolak was at the quarters of the train dogs at the back of the store. These were his charge. He drove them, he fed them, and cared for them. And his art lay in his nimble manipulation of the club, at once the key to discipline, and his only means of opening up a way to their savage intelligence. Steve shared in every labour and none knew better than he the value of work and discipline under the conditions of their long imprisonment upon the bitter plateau.

Daylight had merged into twilight, and the cold blaze of the Northern night had again enthroned itself. It was on the abandonment of his own labours that Steve's attention was at once drawn to others going on beyond the wall of the stockade. And forthwith he passed out of the gates to investigate.

That which he discovered brought a smile to his eyes. From the summit of a drift, which stood the height of the timbered walls, he found himself gazing down upon the quaintly associated figures of little Marcel and his nurse. They were busy, particularly the boy. Amidst a confusion of coiled, rawhide ropes An-ina, hammer in hand, was securing a rope end to the angle of the wall, while Marcel, with tireless vocal energy, was encouraging and instructing her to his own complete satisfaction.

The sturdy, busy little figure, so overburdened with its bulk of furs, was always a sight that delighted Steve. The childish enthusiasm was so inspiriting, so heedless, so lost to everything but the sheer delight of existence.

While he stood there the rope was made secure and the squaw's efforts ceased. Instantly the scene changed. The high spirits of the boy sought to forestall the next move. With unthinking abandon he flung himself upon the pile of ropes, and manfully struggled to gather them into his baby arms. The result was inevitable. In a moment hopeless confusion reigned and An-ina was to the rescue disentangling him. It was in the midst of this that Marcel became aware of Steve's presence. The moment he was successfully freed he abandoned his nurse for the object of his new worship.

"Us makes life-line," he panted, scrambling up the snow-drift. "Boy fix it all a way through the forest to 'Sleeper' men."

Steve reached out a helping hand, and hauled the little fellow up to his side.

"Ah. I was guessing that way," he said. "And An-ina was helping boy, eh?"

"Oh, 'ess. An-ina help. An-ina always help boy. And boy help Uncle Steve."

Steve led the way down. An-ina was waiting with smiling patience.

"Setting out a line to the Sleepers' camp?" he said, as they reached the woman's side.

An-ina nodded and began to coil the ropes afresh.

"It much good," she said. "Bimeby it storm plenty. So. Each day An-ina mak headman hut. When him wake then white man officer go mak big talk. Storm, it not matter nothin'. No."

"Fine," Steve agreed warmly. "You're a good squaw, An-ina."

His approval had instant effect.

"Him good? An-ina glad," she observed contentedly.

An-ina moved on towards the forest bearing her burden of ropes, paying out the line as she went.

Steve watched her, his steady eyes full of profound thought.

"Us helps An-ina, Uncle Steve?" enquired the boy doubtfully.

The man had almost forgotten the mitted hand he was still clasping. Now he looked down into the up-turned, enquiring eyes.

"I don't guess An-ina needs us for awhile," he said. Then, after a pause: "No," he added. "Boy's worked hard—very hard. Maybe we'll go back to the fort. And—Uncle tell boy a story? Eh?"

Steve had no need to wait for the torrent of verbal appreciation that came. The boy's delight at the prospect was instant. So they forthwith abandoned the snow-drifts for the warm interior of the store.

Their furs removed, Steve settled himself on the bench which stood before the stove. The room was shadowed by the twilight outside, but he did not light a lamp. There was oil enough for their needs in the stores, but eventualities had to be considered, and rigid economy in all things was necessary.

The picture was complete. The dimly lit store, with its traffic counter deserted, and its shelves sadly depleted of trade. The staunch, plastered and lime-washed walls, which revealed the stress of climate in the gaping cracks that were by no means infrequent. The hard-beaten earth floor swept clean. The glowing stove that knew no attention from the cleaner's brush. Then the two figures on the rough bench, which was worn and polished by long years of use.

The completion of the picture, however, lay in the personalities for which the rest was only a setting. Steve, in his buckskin shirt and moleskin trousers, which divested him of the last sign of his relationship to the force which administered the white man's law. His young face so set and weather-tanned, so full of decision and strength, and his eyes, far gazing, like those of the men of the deep seas. And the boy upon his knee, his little hands clasping each other in his lap. With his curling, fair hair, and his wide, questioning eyes gazing up into the man's face. With his small body clad from head to foot in the beaded buckskin, which it was his nurse's joy to fashion for him. There was a wonderfully intimate touch in it all. It was a touch that powerfully illustrated the lives of those who are far removed from the luxury of civilization, and who depend for every comfort, even for their very existence, upon those personal physical efforts, the failure of which, at any moment, must mean final and complete disaster.

"Tell boy of bears, an' wolves, an' Injuns, an' debble-men, wot An-ina hers scairt of."

The demand was prompt and decided.

"An-ina scared of devil-men?" Steve smilingly shook his head. "It's only stupid 'Sleeper' men scared of devil-men. Anyway there's no devil-men. Just wolves, and bears, that boy'll hunt and kill when he grows up."

"But hers says ther's debble-men," the boy protested, his eyes wide with awe.

Steve shook his head.

"No," he said firmly. "Uncle Steve knows. He knows better than Indians. Better than An-ina. Boy always remember that."

"Oh, 'ess, boy 'members."

The child impulsively thrust an arm about the man's neck and Steve's arm tightened unconsciously about the little body.

"Tell us 'tory," the child urged.

Steve's contemplative eyes were upon the glowing stove.

"What'll it be about?" he said at last. Then, as though suddenly inspired, "Why, I know, sure. It's about a little boy. A real bright little boy. Oh, I guess he was all sorts of a boy—like—like Marcel."

"Wot's 'all sorts'?" the child demanded.

"Why, just a sample of all the good things a boy can be. Same as you."

The explanation seemed sufficient, and Marcel's eyes were turned dreamily upon the red patch on the side of the stove.

"'Ess," he agreed.

"Well, Uncle Steve travelled a great, long way. It was dreadful hard. There were bears, and wolves, I guess, and queer Indian folk, and rivers, and lakes, and forests; forests much bigger and darker than boy's ever seen."

"Wos thems bigger than the Sleepers' forest?" The challenge was instantly taken up.

"Oh, yes."

"An' darker, an' fuller of debble-men?"

"Much darker, and there were no devil-men, because there just aren't any."

"No. Course not," the boy agreed readily.

"That's so. Well, Uncle Steve came a long, long way, and his dogs were tired, and his Indians were tired——"

"Wos thems like Julyman an' Oolak?"

"Yes. That's who the Indians were. Uncle always has Julyman and Oolak. Well, he came to a valley where he found a little boy. All sorts of a boy. And he liked the little boy, and the little boy liked him. Didn't he?"

"'Ess."

"Well, the little chap was alone."

"Didn't hims have no An-ina?"

"Oh, yes. He had his nurse. But his Pop had gone away, and so had his Mummy. So he was kind of alone. Well, the little boy and Uncle Steve became great friends. Oh, big friends. Ever so big. And Uncle Steve didn't want ever to leave the little boy. And I don't guess the little boy ever wanted to leave Uncle Steve. But then you see there was the Pop and Mummy, who'd gone away, and of course the boy liked them ever so much. So Uncle Steve was in a dilemma."

"Wot's 'd'lemma'?"

"Why just a 'fix.' Like boy was in when he got all mussed up with the ropes just now."

"Wos you mussed up with ropes?"

"Oh, no. Only in a 'fix.'"

"'Ess." The briefest explanations seemed to satisfy.

"Well, Uncle Steve guessed the Pop an' Mummy wouldn't come back for ever so long, maybe not till the boy was grown up. So he guessed he'd take the little boy—such a jolly little chap—with him, back to his home, where there was a nice Auntie, and a little baby cousin. A little girl, such a pretty little dear, all eyes, and fat cheeks, that sort of tell you life's the bulliest thing ever. Well, he took him to his home, such a long, long way, over snow, and over rivers and lakes, where there's fishes, and through forests where there's wolves, an' bears——"

"Does hims see any debble-mens?"

"No. Because Uncle Steve says there just aren't any."

"But An-ina sezes ther' is."

"An-ina's a squaw."

"'Ess."

"Well, after long time this funny little fellow finds his new Auntie, and he loves his little cousin right away, and he has such a bully time with her. They play together. Such games. She pulls his hair and laughs, and the boy, who's such a bright little kid, likes it because she's a little girl, and they grow, and grow up together, and then—and then——"

"Does hims marry her, an' live happy ever after?"

The question was disconcerting. But Steve did his best.

"Well, I can't just say, old fellow," he demurred. "You see, I hadn't fixed that."

"But they allus does in my Mummy's 'tories," came the instant protest.

"Do they? Well, then I guess these'll have to," the man agreed. "We'll fix it that way."

"'Ess. An' then——"

But the prompting failed in its purpose.

"An' then? Why—I guess that's just all. You see, when folks get married, and live happy ever after, there's most generally no more story to tell. Is there?"

"No." Then the child sat up. His appetite had been whetted. "Tell boy 'nother 'tory. Great big, long one. Ever so long."

Steve shook his head.

"Guess Uncle Steve's not great on yarns," he admitted. "You see, I was kind of thinking. Say, how'd boy like to go with Uncle Steve, and see the nice Auntie, and the little dear, with lovely, lovely curly hair and blue eyes, and cheeks like—like——"

"'Ess. Us goes," the child cried, with a sudden enthusiasm. "Us finds all the lakes, an' rivers, an' forests, an' wolves, an' bears, an' the little dear. Boy likes 'em. Us goes now?"

The headlong nature of the demand set Steve smiling.

"Well, I guess we can't go till winter quits," he said. "We'll need to wait awhile till it's not dark any more. Then we'll take An-ina. And Julyman. And Oolak. And the dogs. How's that? Then, after awhile, when boy's Pop and his Mummy come back, then maybe we'll come right back, too. Eh?"

The anticipation of it all was ravishing to the child mind, and the boy resettled himself.

"'Ess," he agreed, with a great sigh. "An' the little dear, an' the nice Auntie. Us all come back." Then with infantile persistence he returned to his old love. "More 'tory," he demanded. "'Bout debble-mens." Then, as an after-thought: "Wot isn't, cos Uncle says they doesn't, an' An-ina says him is when he wasn't, cos he can't be."

Steve sprang to his feet with a great laugh, bearing the little fellow in his strong arms. He had accomplished his task and all was well.

"No more 'tory," he cried setting him on the ground. "All us men have work to do. We need to help An-ina. Come on, old fellow."

And with a great feeling of relief and contentment he began the re-adjustment of the furs which protected the little life which had become so precious to him.

For all the nights were almost interminable, and the days so desperately short time passed rapidly. It was nearly three weeks later that the patient, indefatigable An-ina brought the word Steve awaited.

The daylight had passed, engulfed by the Arctic night which had added a dull, misty moon to its splendid illumination. The temperature had risen. Steve knew a change was coming. The signs were all too plain. He knew that the period of peace had nearly run its course, and the elements were swiftly mobilizing for a fresh attack.

He was standing in the great gateway considering these things when An-ina came to him. She appeared abruptly over the top of the great snow-drift, which had been driven against the angle of the stockade. The soft "pad" of her moccasined feet first drew his attention, and immediately all thought of the coming storm passed from his mind.

"Him big chief wake all up," she announced urgently, as she reached his side.

"Did you speak to him?"

The man's enquiry was sharpened by responsive eagerness. The squaw nodded.

"An-ina say, 'Boss white man officer come mak big talk with big chief, Wanak-aha. Him look for dead white man by the big water. Yes.' Him big chief say, 'White man officer? Him not know this man. Who?' An-ina say much—plenty. Big chief all go mad. Oh, much angry. Then An-ina mak big talk plenty. She say, 'Big Chief not mak big talk, then boss white man officer of Great White Chief come kill up all Indian man.' Big chief very old. Him all 'fraid. Him shake all over like so as seal fat. Much scare. Oh, yes." She laughed in her silent fashion. "So him say, 'Boss white man officer come, then Big Chief Wanak-aha mak plenty big talk.' Then him sleep. Oh, yes."

The woman's amusement at the chief's panic was infectious. Steve smiled.

"I guess we'll go right along," he said. Then he indicated the moon with its misty halo. "Storm."

Again An-ina nodded.

"Him storm plenty—sure," she agreed. "Boss come quick?"

"Right away."

A moment later An-ina was leading the way up the long slope of the snow-drift, returning over the tracks which her own moccasins had left.

The atmosphere of the hut was oppressive. It reeked with the smoke of wood fire. It was nauseating with a dreadful human foulness. But over all hung the sickly sweet odour of the Adresol drug, which oppressed the brain and weighted down the eyelids of those who had just left the pure cold air beyond the curtained doorway.

Steve was not without a feeling of apprehension. He was in the presence of the active operation of the subtle drug. He had read the dead chemist's papers. He knew the deadly exhalations of the weed when growing, or when in an undried state. He also knew that distillation robbed it of its poisonous effect, but for all that, the sickly atmosphere left him with a feeling of nausea.

He and An-ina were sitting beyond one of the two wood fires that had been replenished. The old chief, Wanak-aha, was squatting on his haunches amongst his frowsy fur robes at the opposite side. He was a shrivelled, age-weazened creature whose buckskin garments looked never to have been removed from his aged body. His years would have been impossible to guess at. All that was certain about him was that his mahogany face was like creased parchment, that his eyes peered out in the dim light of the hut through the narrowest of slits, that he was alert, vital to an astounding degree, and that he suggested a foulness such as humanity rarely sinks to.

An-ina was speaking in the tongue native to the old man, who was replying in his monosyllabic fashion while he kept all his regard for the stern-eyed white man, who, the squaw was explaining, represented all the unlimited power of the white peoples.

Steve waited in patience for the completion of these necessary preliminaries, and acted his part with the confidence of wide experience. And presently An-ina turned to him. Her eyes were serious, but there was a smile behind her words.

"Him say him much big friend for white man," she said, in her broken way. "Him love all white man so as a brother. White man mak plenty good trade with Indian man. It much good. So him big chief plenty friend. Oh, yes."

Steve inclined his head seriously.

"Tell him that's all right," he said. "Tell him white man good friend, too. White man love all Indian man. Tell him all white man children of Great White Chief. When they die Great White Chief know. If Indian man kill white man then Great White Chief send all thunder and lightning and kill up all Indian man. Tell him Great White Chief know that two white men all killed dead by great waters. He know Chief Wanak-aha's young men find them. Great White Chief knows Indian man didn't kill them, but, as he knows where they are, he must show the Great White Chief's Officer where they are, so he can take their bones back to their own country, or bury them as he sees fit. If Chief Wanak-aha does not tell White Officer, and his young men don't show him this place, then the thunders and lightning will come and kill up all Indian 'Sleeper' men."

An-ina interpreted rapidly. And by the length of her harangue, and by the attitude of the old man, Steve shrewdly suspected she was adding liberal embellishments such as her own savage mind suggested as being salutory. It was always so. An Indian on the side of the police was merciless to his own people.

The old man replied with surprising energy, and it was obvious to Steve that panic had achieved all he desired. So he was content to watch silently while the soft-voiced woman, with unsmiling eyes, spurred the little, old, great man to decisions which it is more than probable only real fear could have hastened.

At last An-ina ceased speaking. She turned to Steve who received the net results she had achieved in concrete form.

"It much good," she said, without permitting the smallest display of feeling before the watchful eyes of the old chief. "Him say all as An-ina tell boss white man officer. Young men find dead white men all kill up. In great, deep place by big waters. So. Him say when winter him all go then young men take boss white man officer, show him all. Help him much plenty. All him dog-train, all him young man for boss white man officer. Yes. Not so as snow him not go. Not find. All kill dead, sure. 'Sleeper' man sleep plenty. Then him all wake. Boss white man say 'go.' Yes."

The purpose of the visit was achieved. Steve desired nothing more. These Indians would take him to the place where the two white men had fought out the old, old battle for a woman. Yes, he was convinced now that An-ina's original story was the true one. His visit to these squalid creatures had served a double purpose. The old man's willingness to comply with his demands amply convinced him that the wife's belief had no foundation in the facts. Had the Indians murdered Marcel Brand and his partner, the whole attitude of the chief must have been very different.

It was some moments before he replied. It was necessary that he should play his part to the end. So he appeared to consider deeply before he accepted the chief's offer.

At length he raised his eyes from the flickering blaze of the fire. He gazed round the dimly lit room where the Indians lay about in their deathlike slumber. There was a stirring as of waking in a far corner, and for awhile he contemplated the direction. Then, at last, his eyes came back to the crumpled face of the old man awaiting anxiously his reply.

"Tell him," he said, addressing the squaw without withdrawing his gaze from the face of the old man, "that the officer of the Great White Chief will wait till the snow goes. Tell him he'll need to have his young men ready then to make the trail. And when they've shown the officer all they've found, and told him all they know, then the officer will tell the Great White Chief that the 'Sleeper' men are good men, who deserve all that is good. Tell him, there will be no thunder or lightning. And if white men come again to the fort and find it as it has been left, nothing taken, nothing destroyed, then maybe they'll bring good trade for the Indian men, and presents for the big chief. But if they come and find that one little thing has been destroyed or stolen, then the thunder and lightning will speak, and there'll be no more Indians."

When Steve and An-ina emerged from the woods utter and complete darkness reigned. The world had been swallowed up under an inky pall. The moon, the brilliant stars, the blazing northern lights—all were extinguished, and not a ray of light was left to guide them the last few hundred yards to safety. Furthermore snow was falling. It was falling in great flakes half as big as a man's hand.

The life-line which the woman had set up was all that stood between them and complete disaster.

CHAPTER IX

THE VISION OF THE SPIRE

Winter with all its deadly perils had become a memory. Life was supreme again on the plateau of Unaga. It was in the air, in the breezes sweeping down from the Northern hills, where the crystal snow caps no longer had power to inspire distrust. It was in the flowing waters of the river. It was in the flights of swarming wildfowl, winging to fresh pastures of melting snows. It was in the new-born grass blades, thrusting up their delicate heads to rid the world of winter's unsightliness. The animal world, too, was seeking to alleviate the pangs of semi-starvation to which it had so long been condemned. The sense of gladness was stirring, lifting the world upon a glorious pinacle of youthful hope.

Gladness was in An-ina's heart as she moved over the dripping grass, bearing the water fresh dipped from the river whose banks were a-flood in every direction. Was not the darkness of winter swallowed up by the brilliant sunlight? Was not the child of her heart trudging manfully at her side, firmly grasping the bucket handle in a vain belief in the measure of his help? Was not the moment rapidly approaching, when the white man officer would return with the young men of the Sleepers from the "deep place" by the "big waters?" Would not the day soon come when the trail to the southlands would again be broken? And would she not gaze once more upon the pleasant lands that gave her birth? Oh, yes. She knew. It was a great rush to the promised home, far from the desperate life on the plateau of Unaga, with the child, whose dancing eyes and happy smile were like a ray of sunshine amidst the shadows of her life.

Morning and night, now, An-ina looked for the return of those who had set out before the break of the winter. A month had passed since Steve's going. She was quite alone with her boy, with the wakened Indians preparing for their labours of the open season. The "white man officer" would return. An-ina had no fear for him even on the winter trail of Unaga. He would return, and then—and then—And so she watched and waited, and worked with all the will of her simple, savage heart.

It was no easy task that lay ahead. An-ina knew that. Steve had told her much during those dark days of winter. He had spoken of a thousand miles. What was a mile? She did not know. A sun. A moon. These things she knew. But his tone she understood. And she knew what he meant when he declared his intention of beating schedule, and his determination not to spend another winter on Unaga if it were the last trail he ever made. She was ready. And, in her simple woman's way she beguiled the days of waiting with speculation as to the white woman who had inspired in this white man's heart so great a desire.

Life was more than good to An-ina just now. She was young. She was thrilling with the wild emotions of her untamed blood. She was an Indian of the finest ancestry, but more than all she was a devoted woman. She had lost a mistress whom she had loved, and a master whom she had been glad to serve. She had found one to take their places, one whose first act had been his re-assurance that she should not be robbed of the child who was her all. There was no one greater in all the world to her than the "white man officer" whose courage and will she counted as powers greater than the storms of Unaga.

All day she laboured at her many tasks. And the boy, faithful to his doctrine of helpfulness, found a world of recreation in his idea. Thus, with the passing of the sun, they stood together at the gateway of the fort with eyes searching, as many times they had searched before, for a sign of the return of the trail men.

"Us wants Uncle Steve."

There was a plaintive appeal in the boy's tone which found an echo in the woman's heart. She sighed, but her voice was steady as she replied:

"Bimeby him come," she said.

"'Ess. Bimeby him come."

But the boy's agreement lacked conviction. A moment later, with his big eyes turned to the southeast, the way he had seen the expedition set out, he went on:

"Boy's Pop didn't come. An-ina said him's do. Boy's Mummy go 'way 'cos Uncle Steve said her does. Uncle Steve hims all goes, too. Boy want Uncle Steve."

"Him come bimeby."

The woman had no words with which to comfort. It was not lack of desire. Though her conviction was unwavering, she, too, in her heart, echoed the plaint.

For some moments they continued their evening vigil. The eyes of both searched the growing shadows. And, as was always the case, it was the child who finally broke the silence.

"Us cries," he said half tearfully.

It was then the Indian in the woman asserted itself.

"Squaw-men him weeps. 'Brave' him fight. No cry. Oh, no. Only fight. Boy great white 'brave.' Him not cry. No."

Marcel nodded, but his eyes were turned to the hills.

"'Ess. Boy great white 'brave,'" he agreed, in a choking voice. "Boy not cry—never. What's hims little things all dancing in the fog, An-ina?" he enquired, his mind suddenly distracted, pointing at a gap between two low hills, where a thin vapour of fog was slowly rising. "Is them's debble-mens?"

The keen eyes of the squaw followed the pointing finger. In a moment there leapt into them a light which required no words to interpret. But even in her excited joy the Indian calm remained uppermost. She drew nearer the child, and one of her soft brown hands rested caressingly on his shoulder.

"Him not devil-men," she said, in a deep tone of exaltation. "Him Uncle Steve an' all fool 'Sleeper' men. They all come so as An-ina say."

Then the smile in her eyes suddenly transformed her, and her joy could no longer be denied. She stooped over the small figure and pressed her lips upon the soft white forehead.

"Us go by river. An-ina hide. Boy hide. Then Uncle Steve come. Boy jump out. Him say 'Boo!' Uncle Steve all scairt. Much frightened all dead. So?"

The appeal was irresistible. The boy's excitement leapt. In a moment he was transformed from a tearful "brave" to a happy, laughing child. He set off at a run for the river, with An-ina close upon his heels, utterly regardless of the fact that they were within full view of the on-coming trail men. This was a detail. The child's enthusiasm permitted no second thought, and his breathless orders to his nurse were flung back as he ran. The cover of the bush-lined river was reached, and the hiding-place was selected just short of the flood water.

The child crouched down trembling with excitement. And the sound of Uncle Steve's voice giving orders as he came up on the far side of the water made the suspense almost unendurable. He talked to An-ina, who crouched at his side. He chattered incessantly. The splash of a canoe, dropped into the water, was exquisite torture. The dip of paddles set him well-nigh beside himself. Then, a few moments later, when the light craft slithered on the mud of the shallows, just beyond the hiding-place, he felt the psychological moment had come. Out he sprang at his victim, who was still ankle deep in the water.

"Boo-o-o!" he shrieked, with all the power of his little lungs, and, a moment later, he was gathered into the caressing arms of a terrified "uncle."

The work was accomplished. The police officer had fulfilled his mission, a mission detailed to him coldly, officially, without a shadow of regard for the tremendous trials entailed, and with only an eye for the capacity of the officer selected.

So far he had beaten his own schedule. He had calculated his work would occupy two years from the moment of his going to his return to Deadwater, but he meant to cut this down by something like six months. The resolve to do so had been taken during the drear of winter. He had been haunted by the appealing eyes of the woman he loved, and by the memory of the soft clutch of baby hands. And his desire had become irresistible.

Under his new resolve it had become necessary to speed the waking of the Indians. He had had no scruple. Again he had bearded the chief and forced his will upon him. For all the old man's fears of the white man's threats it had been no easy task. But at last he had convinced him of the hopeless recklessness of denying him. So twenty of the young men were found who reluctantly enough gave up the last month of their winter's sleep. And now he had returned with his work accomplished.

Steve had no illusions upon the desperate nature of the rush for home. He knew the chances he was taking. A week's preparation. He could spare no more time. A journey on foot of some hundreds of miles. An Indian carry-all hauled by reindeer for the boy and the camp outfit, the dogs to be herded without burden till their usefulness could serve. For each man, and An-ina, the burden of a heavy pack. Such preparations were wholly inadequate. He knew that. He was staking the courage and endurance of those he was responsible for against a ruthless, inhospitable world.

Oh, yes, his eyes were wide to the dangers that lay ahead. He knew them all. He had visions of a dripping, melting land. He knew the spring rains with their awesome powers of washout and flood. The blinding, steaming fogs of the high altitudes. So with the glacial avalanches, and the terror of thawing tundra, shaking, treacherous, bottomless.

The week passed rapidly and the moment for the "pull-out" came. The Indians were awake, and their winter quarters in the woods had been abandoned for the domed igloos of the open season. The fort was alive with their comings and goings. They were alert for the promised spoils.

Peaceable, kindly, the sturdy undersized people of the outlands were driven to a supreme selfishness by reason of the conditions under which they lived. They cared little for anything but that which the white folk could provide. Without interest or ambitions, beyond such comfort as they could snatch from life, they desired only to be left in peace. But with real amiability they wished the stranger well in his going.

The post presented a curious enough scene on the morning of departure. And to Steve, at least, thought of it was to recur many times in the great struggle that lay before him. The poles of the carry-all, their ends trailing upon the ground, loaded with camp outfit and ready for the boy, stood just within the stockade. The dogs were ready and waiting under Oolak's charge. Inside the store, Steve supported by Julyman and An-ina, and the child Marcel, occupied the well-worn bench beside the stove.

He was receiving the farewell words of the old chief, Wanak-aha, who was thankful enough to see the last of the disturber of his winter sleep. The old man was surrounded by his equally aged counsellors, and the whole deputation squatted ceremonially upon their haunches about him. The store had been stripped of all supplies. The shelves were bare and only a litter of packings remained to mark the end of the chemist's great enterprise.

Steve addressed the chief through An-ina without relaxing his authority. He told the old man that everything that was good in the store had been handed over a present to his people for their valuable services to the Great White Chief. The store was now empty of everything that was good. He told him that this was the way the Great White Chief always acted towards those who served him. The things that remained in the store were only evil things that were full of evil magic. The Great White Chief had hidden these things deeply, and he had set a spell upon them. This had been done so that no harm should come to the Indian. In this he was referring to the contents of the dead man's laboratory. He told him that the Great White Chief had ordered him to place the store and fort in the chief's safe keeping. No Indian man was to enter it to destroy it. If he did the evil spirits would break loose, and death and disaster for the whole tribe would undoubtedly follow. Therefore he had summoned the council that Wanak-aha might give his pledge for the safety of the property of the Great White Chief.

He told them he was going now because he wanted the Indians to live in peace, with their slumbers undisturbed. He might never come again. He could not say. But if the Great White Chief sent anybody, it would only be for the purpose of giving great benefit to the Indians, whom he undoubtedly regarded as a very wise and good people.

It was a masterly exhibition of Steve's understanding of the savage it was his work to deal with, and the happy effect was promptly evidenced. Ten minutes of monosyllabic discussion between the chief and his counsellors produced the pledge Steve desired, and he knew from the manner of it that the pledge would be kept to the letter. But it brought forth something more. An-ina was called upon to interpret an expression of the friendly spirit in which the Indians parted from the disturber of their slumbers.

The old man in a long peroration explained all he and his people felt. They were in no way behind the Great White Chief in their regard, he assured Steve. They loved the white man, whose ways were not always Indian ways. He re-affirmed his solemn promise that the fort should be safe in Indian hands. Furthermore he told him they had no desire to anger the evil spirits it contained. In conclusion he produced a beaded seal-skin bag which he asked the white man to accept. It contained, he explained, the bones of the right hand of one of his ancestors who had been a great hunter and warrior, and withal a lucky and mighty chief who was only murdered by his people after a long and fierce reign. This bag, with its contents, was a sure talisman and guard against the evil spirits of Unaga, and they were very, very many, and very cruel.

With due solemnity Steve accepted this priceless gift, and, to add to his display of gratification, he drew little Marcel to him and secured it about his neck. Then, turning to the chief, he explained. He pointed at the child, and assured him that the white man regarded his children before all things—even before his own life. Therefore, to display his gratitude to the great chief, he bestowed the gift upon the child whose safety he desired above all things in the world. Approval was unanimous. To every one of these simple creatures the white man's act was one of the greatest self-sacrifice. And even in the more enlightened minds of An-ina and Julyman there was a deep appreciation of the act.

When the council broke up, and the fur-clad Indians moved out, Steve might well have been forgiven had he felt that his work had been well and truly done.

With the going of the last Indian he promptly shouldered his pack, and Julyman and An-ina did the same. A moment later he took the child in his arms.

"Come," he said, and led the way out of the building.

Ten minutes later the outfit was on the move, and the great adventure, with the new-born mosquitoes and flies swarming, began in a blaze of spring sunshine.

Out on a snow-clad ridge, a saddle between two forest-clad hills, a meagre camp was set. The shelter of woods against the keen north wind made the resting-place possible. Two weeks of struggle, two weeks of tremendous effort left the choice of daylight camping ground a matter of small moment, but just now the bleak ridge had been selected for a definite reason.

Steve and An-ina were standing out in the gap, with little Marcel between them. Oolak was somewhere within the woods, tending his savage dogs. Julyman was hugging the fire, with complete disregard for all but its precious warmth.

Those in the gap were staring out at the north-east with eyes held fascinated by the wonder of it all. It was the Spire, the amazing Spire of Unaga rearing its mighty crest out of the far-off distance. Even the child was awed to silence by the spell of the inspiring vision.

They were gazing upon a world of fire and smoke. And the fire was belching out of the bowels of the earth and lighting up the whole skyline far and wide. It was a scene no words could adequately describe. It was a scene to awe the stoutest heart. The whole country in the distant north seemed to lie prostrate at the mercy of a world of devouring flame.

CHAPTER X

THE RUSH OUTFIT

"Curse 'em!"

Ian Ross raised a hand and swept it across the back of his muscular neck. Then he wiped his palm on his cord breeches leaving there the stain of his own blood, and the crushed remains of hundreds of mosquitoes.

"Get a look at that," he cried, in genial disgust.

The man riding at his side turned and laughed without mirth. His eyes remained serious.

"Sure," he said indifferently. "We've got to get 'em, this time of year, Doc. We need a head breeze."

"Got to get? What we're getting is hell—plumb hell," exploded the Scotsman.

The other nodded.

"Sure. But there's worse hell on the trail, and it isn't us who's got it."

The rebuke was without offence. But it was sufficient. In a moment Ross was flung headlong back to the haunting thoughts of the great effort he and his companion were engaged upon.

"Another day—and no sign," he said.

"No."

There was no great display, yet the doctor's words, and the monosyllabic reply, were deeply significant.

Jack Belton—Inspector Jack Belton—and the doctor were on a "rush outfit" of rescue. They were riding back to camp after a long day of search along the banks of the Theton River. Their search was systematic. Each day they rode out and followed the intricate course of the smiling river with its endless chain of lakes. Each day their camp broke up and followed a similar course, but taking the direct and shortest route down the river. Then, at nightfall, the two men rejoined their outfit, only to follow a similar procedure next day. Thus they had left the headwaters far behind, and were steadily working their way down the river. Somewhere along that river was Steve Allenwood, alive or dead. They could not guess which. They could not estimate where. It was their purpose to leave no creek, or lake, or yard of the great river unexplored, until the secret was yielded up.

"And when we find him, what then?" the doctor exclaimed in a desperate fashion. "Maybe he's sick. Maybe—whatever it is we've got to heal him, and break him at the same time. God!"

"Yes." Jack Belton turned his dark eyes on his companion. They were hot with feeling. "Say, Doc, I'm crazy to find that boy, and find him cursing the skitters with a wholesome vocabulary, same as you and me. But I'd hand over my Commission in the force with pleasure to my biggest enemy rather than pass him the dope you and me need to."

The Scotsman nodded, and the kindly face reflected the bitterness of his feelings.

"And I handed him my promise, and Millie's," he aid. "He was crazy about them both—God help him."

"Poor devil!"

The great valley was lit from end to end by the last flaming rays of the setting summer sun. The green carpet was dotted by a thousand wooded bluffs, and a wonderful tracery of watercourses caught and reflected the dying light. Not a breath of air stirred. And the warm, cloudless evening was alive with the hum of insects, and the incessant chorus of the frogs at the water's edge. Now and again the far-off cry of coyote or wolf came dolefully across the trackless grass. For the rest a wonderful peace reigned—that peace which belongs to the wilderness where human habitation has not yet been set up.

It had been a tremendous time for both these men, and for those under the Inspector's command. The whole thing had been an exhibition of human energy, rarely to be witnessed. It had all been the result of an episode on a similar, calm summer afternoon, which would remain for all time a landmark in the doctor's life.

He had been reading in his shanty surgery on the Allowa Reserve. The stream of his medicine-loving patients had ceased to flow. The little room was heavy with the reek of his pipe. So he had risen from his chair and passed to the door for a breath of air. It was then that he was confronted by a gaudy coloured apparition. An Indian, whose race was foreign to him, was patiently sitting on the back of a mean-looking skewbald pony, clad in a parti-coloured blanket of flaming hues. The moment Ross appeared in the doorway the Indian produced a crumpled, folded paper from the folds of his blanket and offered it to him without a word.

He accepted it with a keen curiosity. He unfolded it and glanced at the handwriting. It was unrecognizable. But that which stirred him to the depths of his soul, and flooded his heart with something like panic, was the signature at the bottom of it. It was Steve's—Steve Allenwood.

The perusal of that letter was the work of a few moments. And throughout the reading Ross was aware—painfully aware—of the aggravating calm of the man who had written it. But under its unemotional words urgency, deep, terrible urgency, was revealed. Accident and sickness had hit the writer hard. His position was desperate. And the final paragraph epitomized his extremity in no uncertain fashion.

I mean to do all a man can to make the headwaters of the Theton River. Maybe I'll succeed. I can't say. If I don't you'll understand. Maybe you'll break it to Nita as easy as you can. If you can help her, and the kiddie, I'll be mighty thankful. Thank God the little one won't understand. I'm sending this by a Yellow-Knife. He reckons he knows Deadwater, and can get through quick. Please pay him well. I can't get farther than the headwater—if that. After that—well, it depends on the help that can reach us.

Optimism and energy were amongst Ian Ross's strongest characteristics. His decision was taken on the instant. With the aid of an interpreter he questioned the Yellow-Knife, who knew no language but his own and that of the Caribou-Eaters.

The man's story was broken but lurid.

The white man, he said, had arrived at Fort Duggan on foot, pursued by the evil spirits of Unaga. He assured the doctor that these devils had torn the clothes from him, and left him well-nigh naked. So with all the party. There was blood on his feet and hands, where the spirits had sought to devour him. Yes, they had even devoured his shoes. The white man had a small white pappoose tied on to his back. The child was sleeping, or sick, or dead. There was a squaw and an Indian with him, whose bones looked out of their skins, and whose eyes were fierce and wild like those who have looked the evil spirits in the face. These two living-dead were hauling a sort of sled. And on the sled was another Indian who was broken, and maybe dead. No, there were no dogs, no outfit. It was just as he said. The Shaunekuks were good Indians, and they gave the strangers food, and milk, and clothes to replace those the evil spirits had devoured. They also had the canoes which the white man had left with them a year ago. He, the messenger, was on a visit to the Shaunekuks at the time, for a caribou hunt. But he abandoned the hunt at the white man's request, who said he, the doctor, would pay him well.

The man was paid under promise of guiding an outfit back to the Theton River country, and then began a hustle of a cyclonic nature.

Corporal Munday set out for Reindeer forthwith, and made headquarters in record time. Within half an hour of his arrival Superintendent McDowell had issued his orders for a "rush outfit." And three hours later saw it on the trail. There was no hesitation. There was no question. There was a comrade in peril, and with him others. There was a woman—although only a squaw—and a white child. No greater incentive was needed, and young Jack Belton was selected to lead the "rush" for his known speed and capacity on the trail.

Something of the feelings stirring found expression in McDowell's final instructions to his subordinate at the moment of departure.

"I don't care a curse if you kill every darn horse between here and the Landing," he said. "Commandeer all you need—and plenty. I don't care what you do. You've got to bring Allenwood back alive, or—or break your darn neck."

And Belton had needed no urging. He had cut down the month's journey to the Theton River to something like twenty days. He had foundered six teams of horses and worn his two men and his scouts well-nigh threadbare with night and day travel. But the doctor had proved invincible, as had the Yellow-Knife scout on his skewbald pony, which, for all its meanness of shape and size, had stood up to it all.

They had already been pursuing the river course for four days, and, so far, it had withheld its secret. Somewhere out there on those wide shining waters a man was struggling in a great final effort to defeat once more the ruthless forces of Nature against which he had battled so long and so successfully.

And what would victory mean for him? Ross knew. Jack Belton knew. And their knowledge of that which was awaiting him, should a final triumph be his, added a deep depression to the silence which had fallen between them.

The great sun went to its death in a blaze of splendour, and the long Northern twilight softened the scene with misty, velvet shadows which crept down from distant hills to the north and south. The woodland bluffs, too, promptly lost their sharpness of outline, and the green of the trackless grass mellowed to a delicate softness which seemed to round off the peace of the airless evening.

Now they picked up the spiral of smoke from the camp-fire, and direction was promptly changed towards it.

"I sort of feel he'll make it," the Scotsman said abruptly, as though in simple continuation of his unspoken thought.

"You can't kill—him," replied the other emphatically. "I haven't a doubt. He guessed he could make the headwaters. He'll make them. I'm only scared to miss him in the night."

The doctor shook his head.

"I don't fancy that's going to happen. Our camp's always on the main water, in the open. There's our watch. No. I'm a deal more scared of him making a day camp, resting. Even then we haven't missed anything large enough to hide up a skitter."

"No."

Now the spot light of the camp-fire shone out of the soft twilight, and the sound of voices came back from the water's edge.

"I'm wondering about what he needs to be told," Ross said presently. "It's for me I guess."

"How's that?"

The younger man turned quickly. The thought of this thing had weighed heavily with him. He was a police officer who was ready to face any hardship, any of the hundred and one risks and dangers his calling demanded. But from the moment he was detailed for his present duty he had been oppressed by the thought of the story which would have to be told Steve, and which duty, as leader of the rescue party, he calculated must certainly fall to his lot. He had known Steve from the moment of his joining the force. He had worked with him on the trail. He had been present at his senior's wedding, and he remembered his comrade's happiness at the consummation of a real love match. And now? The doctor's words had lifted a great load from his mind.

"There's two sides to be told," Ross said, with a sigh. "There's the police side, which deals mostly with the Treaty Money, I guess, and there's that other which should be mine. You see, he left them in my care. And so there's a big account to be squared between him and me. Best let me handle the whole rotten thing." Then with a sound that was a laugh without the least mirth: "It's a doctor's job to hand out unpleasant dope to a patient. It's a policeman's job to act unpleasant. Guess the act isn't needed, but the dope is. Yes, it's mine, Belton. Will you leave it that?"

"I'll be so glad to," the other replied with a sigh of relief, "I don't know how to tell you about it. It had me scared to death. That's so. Even McDowell shirked it. He told me Steve had to get the whole yarn before he got into Reindeer. That's the sort of folk we are. And it's not a thing to brag about."

The other shook his head.

"It needs good men to hate hurting another," he said. "Guess it's a scare you don't need to be ashamed of. I'll tell him because I've got to. I hate it worse than hell. But I owe the hurt to myself for the way I've—failed his trust."

"I don't see you need to blame yourself, Doc," the youngster returned, becoming judicial under his relief. "Steve won't, if I know him. This sort of thing happens right along under a husband's nose. Just as long as woman's what she is, and there's low down skunks of men around, why—But, say, there's something doing at the camp!"

He lifted his reins and urged his weary horse into a rapid canter, and the doctor's horse clung close to its flank. The eager eyes of both were searching for the meaning of the stir which the youthful Inspector had detected. And instinctively they gazed out down the broad waters of the placid river as far as the rapidly deepening twilight would permit.

Simultaneously their eyes rested on two objects, a little indistinct, floating upon the water. They looked so small in the immensity of the spread of the river. But even so their outline was familiar enough.

"Canoes!" cried Belton.

"It's him!" came in the deep tones of the doctor.

Five minutes later they were out of the saddle and standing with others on the grassy river bank watching the steady approach of two canoes, paddling their way up against the easy, sluggish stream.

Near by were the two four-horsed wagons, and the camp-fire with the forgotten supper still wafting its pleasant odours upon the breathless air. Flies, too, and mosquitoes were in abundance. But these, like the rest, were forgotten. The men of the police outfit had eyes and thoughts for the canoes only. Each and all were wondering at that which they were to reveal.

Suddenly a shout broke the profound stillness. It came from the young officer who could restrain himself no longer.

"Ho, you, Steve!"

The shout carried away over the water. Those on the bank could almost hear it travel. Then followed what seemed an interminable interval. But it was seconds only before a faint call came back.

"Hoo-y!"

The policeman was given no opportunity for reply. The doctor's great husky voice anticipated him.

"Ho, Steve! It's Doc Ross!"

He had recognized the answering voice and flung his excited greeting in a tumult of feeling.

The canoes drove head on for the river bank.

As Belton and Ross sought to discover the nature of their freight the coursing blood of excited hope stagnated. There was only the quickening of apprehension.

A grim, strange figure was confronting them. It was kneeling up in the prow of the nearest vessel. A wild, straining, desperate light shone feverishly in eyes looking out of a face lost in a tangle of beard and whisker. The brows were fiercely depressed, suggesting a bitter defensive spirit. The eyes were lost in cavernous sockets, and the cheeks were sunken and scored with lines of ravening hunger. The whole was clad in the discoloured buckskin of a Northern Indian, with a mat of untended hair reaching to its shoulders.

The waiting men understood. This was their comrade, the man to whose succour they had rushed. A tragic story of suffering was in that single figure, which, paddle in hand, was battling with a burden too great for any one man to bear. Only he, and the squat figures of Shaunekuk paddlers were to be seen. For the rest nothing was visible to the onlookers.

As the canoe grounded on the reed-grown mud the doctor's deep-voiced "Thank God!" met with no response. The wild-looking figure scrambled off the boat, and plunged nearly knee-deep into the mud. Those on the bank seemed to concern him not at all, for he turned, as was perhaps his long habit, to haul the vessel inshore himself.

But the rescue party forestalled him. The men from the bank, policemen and Indian scouts, seized the boat, while Ross's friendly hand was laid on the man's shoulder.

"The boys'll fix things," he said, in a voice deep with intense feeling. "Best come right up to camp, Steve."

The sound of the husky voice, whose words were not quite steady, brought a swift turn from Steve. For a moment he stared at the speaker. He seemed to be striving to restore the broken threads of memory. Finally he shook his head.

"No," he said. And turned again to the boat.

Ian Ross made no further attempt. He understood. He turned and flung all his energies into the work of unloading the tragic freight. The wild figure of Steve had prepared him. And, in a few moments, his professional mind was absorbed to the exclusion of everything else.

Starvation had nearly defeated the otherwise invincible spirit of Steve. It was there in the bottom of the light vessels, in the drawn faces and attenuated bodies of the paddler crew of Shaunekuks. It was in the display of Steve's side-arms strapped to a strut of the canoe ready to his hand, with holsters agape, and his loaded guns protruding threateningly. It was in a similar display in the second boat, which the well-nigh demented Julyman had commanded. Oh, yes. No words were needed to tell the story. It was there for all to read.

The rescuers understood the uselessness of questions. Help was needed, and it was freely given. The urgency of it all held them utterly silent, except for sharp, brief orders.

Ross and the two teamsters dealt with Steve's boat. Jack Belton and the camp scouts devoted themselves to the second.

In Steve's boat were the fever-ridden body of An-ina, and the scarcely living shadow of the child, Marcel. Ross lifted the half-dead woman and carried her up the bank to the tent which had been set up. Then he returned in haste for the child. On his way he paused for a moment to glance at the broken body of Oolak, who was being removed from the second boat by Jack Belton.

"Guess it's not starvation here," he said significantly.

"No," Belton admitted. "It's a bad smash, I guess. Say——"

The Scotsman glanced back at the river, following the horrified gaze of his companion. His big heart thrilled with instant pity, and he set off on the run.

Steve, wild, unkempt, was labouring up from the water's edge, hobbling painfully on feet that were bound up in great pads of blanket. He was bearing in his arms the emaciated, unconscious body of the child, and his whole attitude was one of infinite tenderness, and care, and disregard for his own sufferings.

The doctor reached the struggling man and held out his arms.

"Give me the little chap," he demanded in his brusque fashion.

Steve turned his head. He stared at him in the fashion of a blind man.

"No!" he said sharply. Then he added with almost insane passion, "Not on your life!"

CHAPTER XI

STEVE LISTENS

"We've got 'em beat."

The man of healing recovered the sick man's feet with the blanket, and rolled the old dressings he had just removed into a bundle ready for the camp-fire outside.

"You mean——"

Steve was lying in his blankets propped into a half-sitting position. A candle, stuck in the neck of a bottle, lit the tent sufficiently for Ian Ross to complete his work.

"Why, the evil spirits of Unaga, I guess," he replied, with a forced lightness. Then he shook his head. "They did their best—sure. Another week or so and you'd have moved about on stumps the rest of your life. And I'm reckoning that would have been the best you could have hoped. It's been a darned near thing."

Steve nodded. His manner was curiously indifferent.

"How's the boy?" he demanded abruptly.

Ross put his instruments away and set the water bowl aside. Then he set the stoppered bottles back into his case.

"He'll be 'whooping' it up with the boys in a couple of days," he said.

"An-ina?"

"Beating the 'reaper' out of sight."

Steve drew a deep breath.

"Oolak was all to pieces," he said doubtfully.

"He was about as broken as he could be and still hang together. He's been a tough case." It was the doctor's turn to take a deep breath. "He'll be a man again. But I wouldn't gamble on his shape. Say, Steve, it's the biggest bluff I've seen put up against death. Those darn niggers who toted your boats, they're tickled to death with the food the boys hand out to them. And as for Julyman he's as near cast iron as—as—you."

"Yes, it was pretty tough."

"Tough? Gee!"

The doctor's final exclamation was one of genuine amazement.

"It's near three weeks since we hauled the remains of you from that skitter-ridden river," he went on, "and a deal's happened in that time. Jack Belton's gone in for stores, and to report. We've shifted camp where the flies, and bugs, and things'll let you folks forget the darn river, and the nightmare I guess you dreamt on it. You're all beating the game, some of you by yards, and others by inches. But you're beating it. And I'm still guessing at those things you all know like you were born to 'em. When are you going to hand me the yarn, Steve? When are you going to feel like thinking about the things that two weeks ago looked like leaving you plumb crazed?"

Steve knitted his brows. To the man watching him it seemed as if the sudden recalling of the past was still a thing to be avoided. But his diagnosis was in error. Steve became impatient.

"Oh hell!" he exclaimed. "Do you need me to hand it you? Do you need me to tell you the fool stunt I played to beat schedule, and get back to Nita and the kiddie? Do you need to know about a darn territory that every Indian north of 60° is scared to death of? A territory only fit for devils and such folk, like the neches reckon it's peopled with? Do you want to hear about an outfit that found everything Nature ever set for the world's biggest fools? Do you want to know about storms that leave the worst Northern trails a summer picnic, and muskegs and tundra that leave you searching for something bigger than miles to measure with, and barren, fly-ridden territory without a leaf or blade of grass and scored every way at once with rifts and water canyons so you can't tell the north from the Desert of Sahara? If you do, read the old report I've been writing. I'll hand you a story that won't shout credit for the feller who designed it. But it'll tell you of the guts of the folk who stood behind him every darn step of the way, and made him crazy to get them through alive. If you'd asked me that two weeks ago I'd have cried like a babe. Now it's different. You've got a sick woman under your hands now, Doc, and two copper coloured neches. And when I say they're the world's best, why—I just mean it."

A deep flush of emotion underlaid the toughened skin of Steve's face. He was deeply stirred by the thoughts and feelings which the other's demand had conjured.

The doctor glanced down at the sheets of paper on which Steve had written his report. But he made no attempt to accept the invitation to read it. The moment had come to tell this man of that disaster which yet awaited him. So he had sought to test him in the only fashion that lay to his hand. The break which had so sorely threatened in the reaction following upon Steve's rescue had been completely averted, and the Scotsman felt that now, at last, he was strong enough to bear the truth which he had denied him on his first enquiry after his wife and child.

The flush died out of Steve's cheeks. The steady eyes were never more steady as they looked into the strong face before them. He ran his fingers through his long dark hair, and resettled his shoulders against the pile of blankets supporting them.

"It kind of startles you to find guts in folks when you're up against it. You can't help it. Maybe it's conceit makes you feel that way," he went on quietly. "Those two boys of mine, and An-ina. You couldn't beat 'em. Nothing could. When Oolak dropped over the side of a canyon, with most of the outfit the reindeer went with him. You see, we'd rid ourselves of the dogs. We couldn't feed 'em. Well, I guessed the end had come. But it hadn't. Julyman and An-ina took up the work of hauling, while I carried Marcel. Only they hauled Oolak instead of the outfit. They hauled him for nigh on a month, and we lived on dog meat till it got putrid, and even then didn't feel like giving it up. I didn't have to worry a thing except for their sanity. You see, they were Indian for all their grit, and—I just didn't know. It was tough, Doc! Oh, gee! it was tough! And when you've read the stuff I've doped out for headquarters you won't need me to talk if you've two cents of imagination about you. If you'd asked me awhile back, when I asked you about Nita, and my little girl, and you told me they were good and happy, and crazy to have me back, as I said, I'd have cried like a kid. Yes, and I guess you'd have needed a gun to hold me here while you hacked those slabs off my feet. But it's right now. My head was never clearer, and there's just one thought in it. It's to get back to Deadwater."

The doctor listened with a surge of feeling driving through his heart. His own words, the words he had told to the man whom he knew at the time to be floundering on the edge of a complete mental breakdown, were ringing through his brain. He had lied. He had had to lie. And now——

He took refuge in his pipe. He knew he would need it. He filled it from the pouch which had become common between them and urged Steve to do the same. In a few moments both men were smoking in an atmosphere of perfect calm.

"You were pretty bad that time," Ross said steadily. "Yes, I don't guess you know how bad you were."

"I think I do—now."

The doctor seemed to be absorbed in pressing down the tobacco in his pipe. He struck another match.

"The strain had been so big the break must have come if you'd had to go on," he said, blowing smoke till it partly obscured his patient's unflinching eyes. "You were weak—physically. There was nothing to support your nerve and brain. It was in your eyes. You scarcely recognized us. You hardly knew what our presence meant to you. And, later, the reaction made things even worse for you. A shock, and the balance would have gone hopelessly. So—I lied to you!"

"You—lied to me?"

The pipe had been suddenly jerked from Steve's lips. He was sitting up. A sudden fierce light had leapt to his eyes.

The Scotsman, too, had removed his pipe. His eyes were squarely confronting the other. All his mental force and bodily energy were summoned to his aid.

"Yes. I had to lie," he said firmly. "It was that or carry you back to Deadwater a crazy man. I was the doctor then. Guess I'm a man now. Maybe you won't reckon there's a difference. But there surely is. You see, I'm not going to lie. I don't need to. Nita isn't at my shanty. She isn't at Deadwater. Neither is Garstaing. And they've taken your little girl with them."

"They?"

The man on the blankets had moved again. His knees were drawn up as though he were about to spring from the sick bed he was still condemned to.

Ross nodded.

"Yes." Then he pointed at the attitude of the other. "Say, straighten out, Steve. Push those feet down under the blankets. You're a big man up against disaster most times. Well, don't forget it. You're up against disaster now. Sit back, boy, and get a grip on yourself. It's the only way. I've got to tell you the whole rotten story, and when I've done I'll ask you to forget the way I had to lie to you. If you can't, why—it's up to you. My duty was to heal you first, and I don't guess there's any rules in the game."

Ross was talking for time. He had to be sure. He was ready at a sign to launch into his story, but he was looking for that sign.

And Steve gave it. It was the only sign the other would accept. Ross was a powerful man, and Steve was still sick and weak. These things are as well when a man knows that his purpose means the breaking of a strong heart. Steve slid his injured feet down under the blankets. His legs straightened out, and he leant his back against the pillow. But his pipe was laid aside, and a quickening of his breathing warned the other of the immense effort for restraint he was putting forth.

"Tell me," he said. Then he added with a sudden note of sharpness, "Quick!"

The Scotsman nodded.

"It's best that way. Garstaing and Nita bolted. They took your little girl with them. It's six months ago. When the Indian Treaty Money came up. Hervey Garstaing waited for that. The Indians never saw it. He pouched it, and beat the trail, as I said, with Nita and the kiddie. Say, I needn't tell you more than that. I don't know any more except the police have been chasing his trail since."

He fumbled in a pocket, and drew out a sealed envelope addressed in a woman's handwriting, and another that was opened. The sealed envelope he passed across to Steve. The other he retained.

"She left these two letters in her room," he went on. "That's for you, and this one was for Millie. Maybe you'll read yours later. This one you'd best read now. It's just a line as you'll see."

He held the letter out and Steve accepted it. And Ross watched him all the time as he drew the note from its cover and perused it. The moment of shock had passed, and the fierce light in Steve's eyes had died out, leaving in its place a stony frigidity which gave the other a feeling of unutterable regret. He would have been thankful for some passionate outburst, some violent display. He felt it would have been more natural, and he would have known better how to deal with it. But there was none. Steve returned the letter to its envelope and remained silently regarding the superscription.

"It's a bad letter," Ross went on. "If I thought Nita had written it herself I'd say you're well rid of something that would have cursed the rest of your life. But the stuff that's written there is the stuff that comes out of Garstaing's rotten head. I'd bet my soul on it. She says her marriage with you was a mistake. She didn't know. She had no experience when she married you. She needs the things the world can show her. The North is driving her crazy. All that muck. It's the sort of stuff that hasn't a gasp of truth in it. If there was you need to thank God you're quit of her. No. That hound of hell told her what to say. Poor little fool. He's got her where he wants her, and she's as much chance as an angel in hell. She went in the night, and they took a storming night for it. There was two feet of snow on the ground, and more falling. How she went we can't guess. There wasn't a track or a sign in the morning, and it went on storming for days, so even the police couldn't follow them up. The whole thing was well planned, and Garstaing took no sort of chances. He got away with nearly fifty thousand dollars of Indian money, and, so far, hasn't left a trace. We don't know to this day if he made north, south, east, or west. All we know are these two letters, that they got away in a 'jumper' and team, and that Nita and the kiddie were with him."

"Say, Steve," Ross went on after a moment's pause, his voice deepening with an emotion he could no longer deny. "I handed you a big talk of seeing your Nita and the little kid safe till you got back. We did all we knew. Millie and the gals did all they knew. Nita wanted for nothing. The things that were good enough for my two we didn't reckon good enough for her, and we saw she had one better all the time. Happy? Gee, she seemed happy all the time, right up to the night she went. And as for Coqueline she was the greatest ever. But he'd got her, that skunk had her, and the thing must have been going on all the time. Still, we never saw a sign. Not a sign. Millie never liked Garstaing, and he wasn't ever encouraged to get around our shanty. And we had him there less after Nita came. There's times I'm guessing it didn't begin after you went. There's times I think there was a beginning earlier. Millie feels that way, too. I know it don't make things better talking this way. But it's what I feel, and think, and it's best to say it right out. I can't tell you how I feel about it. And anyway it wouldn't make things easier for you. I promised you, and all I said is not just hot air. I'm sick to death—just sick to death."

Ross's voice died away, and the silence it left was heavy with disaster. Steve had no reply. No questions. He seemed utterly and completely beyond words. His strong eyes were expressionless. He lay there still, quite still, with his unopened letter lying on the blankets before him.

Ross was no longer observing. His distress was pitiful. It was there in his kindly eyes, in the purposeless fashion in which he fingered his pipe. He was torn between two desires. One was to continue talking at all costs. The other was precipitate, ignominious flight from the sight of the other's voiceless despair. He knew Steve, and well enough he realized what the strong wall the man had set up in defence concealed. But he was held there silent by a force he had no power to deny, so he sat and lit, and re-lit a pipe in which the tobacco was entirely consumed.

How long it was before the silence was finally broken he never knew. It seemed ages. Ages of intolerable suspense and waiting before Steve displayed any sign beyond the deep rise and fall of his broad chest. Then, quite suddenly, he reached out for the collected sheets of his official report. These he laid on the blankets beside the unopened letter his erring wife had addressed to him. Then he looked into the face of the man whose blow had crushed the very soul of him. Their eyes met, and, to the doctor, it seemed that mind had triumphed over the havoc wrought. Steve's voice came harshly.

"When'll I be fit to move?" he demanded.

"A week—if Belton gets back."

THE HEART OF UNAGA

By RIDGWELL CULLUM

Author of "The Triumph of John Kars," "The Law Breakers," "The Way of the Strong," etc.

A. L. BURT COMPANYPublishers New York

Published by arrangement with G. P. Putnam's Sons

Copyright, 1920BY RIDGWELL CULLUM

Made in the United States of America

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

CONTENTS