THE LA CHANCE MINE MYSTERY

BY

S. CARLETON

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY

GEORGE W. GAGE

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

1920

_Copyright, 1920_, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 

_All rights reserved_

Published March, 1920

[Illustration: "I STOOD UP AND DROVE FOR ALL I WAS WORTH, AND THE GIRLBESIDE ME SHOT, --AND HIT!" FRONTISPIECE. _See page 76. _]

THE LA CHANCE MINE MYSTERY

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. I COME HOME: AND THE WOLVES HOWL 1

II. MY DREAM: AND DUDLEY'S GIRL 16

III. DUDLEY'S MINE: AND DUDLEY'S GOLD 30

IV. THE MAN IN THE DARK 46

V. THE CARAQUET ROAD: AND THE WOLVES HOWL ONCE MORE 56

VI. MOSTLY WOLVES: AND A GIRL 71

VII. I FIND LITTLE ENOUGH ON THE CORDUROY ROAD, AND LESS AT SKUNK'S MISERY 86

VIII. THOMPSON! 100

IX. TATIANA PAULINA VALENKA! 116

X. I INTERFERE FOR THE LAST TIME 134

XI. MACARTNEY HEARS A NOISE: AND I FIND FOUR DEAD MEN 148

XII. THOMPSON'S CARDS: AND SKUNK'S MISERY 164

XIII. A DEAD MAN'S MESSENGER 182

XIV. WOLVES--AND DUDLEY 199

XV. THE PLACE OF DEPARTED SPIRITS 218

XVI. IN COLLINS'S CARE 231

XVII. HIGH EXPLOSIVE 247

XVIII. LAC TREMBLANT 265

XIX. SKUNK'S MISERY 283

XX. THE END 293

THE LA CHANCE MINE MYSTERY

CHAPTER I

I COME HOME: AND THE WOLVES HOWL

 I am sick of the bitter wood-smoke, And sick of the wind and rain: I will leave the bush behind me, And look for my love again. 

Little as I guessed it, this story really began at Skunk's Misery. ButSkunk's Misery was the last thing in my head, though I had just comefrom the place. 

Hungry, dog-tired, cross with the crossness of a man in authority whoseorders have been forgotten or disregarded, I drove Billy Jones's oldcanoe across Lac Tremblant on my way home to Dudley Wilbraham's goldmine at La Chance, after an absence of months. It was halfway to dark, and the bitter November wind blew dead in my teeth. Slaps of spray fromflying wave-crests blinded me with gouts of lake water, that was oddlywarm till the cutting wind froze it to a coating of solid ice on mybare hands and stinging face, that I had to keep dabbing on my paddlingshoulder to get my eyes clear in order that I might stare in front of myleaky, borrowed canoe. 

To a stranger there might have seemed to be nothing particular to stareat, out on a lake where the world was all wind and lumpy seas andgrowing November twilight; but any one who had lived at La Chance knewbetter. By the map Lac Tremblant should have been our nearest gold routeto civilization, but it was a lake that was no lake, as far as transportwas concerned, and we never used it. The five-mile crossing I was makingwas just a fair sample of the forty miles of length Lac Tremblantstretched mockingly past the La Chance mine toward the main road fromCaraquet--our nearest settlement--to railhead: and that was forty milesof queer water, sown with rocks that were sometimes visible astombstones in a cemetery and sometimes hidden like rattlesnakes in ablanket. For the depth of Lac Tremblant, or its fairway, were two thingsno man might ever count on. It would fall in a night to shallows a childcould wade through, among bristling needles of rocks no one had everguessed at; and rise in a morning to the tops of the spruce scrub on itsbanks, --a sweet spread of water with not a rock to be seen. What hiddenspring fed it was a mystery. But in the bitterest winter it was nevercold enough to freeze, further than to form surging masses of frazil icethat would neither let a canoe push through them, nor yet support theweight of a man. Winter or summer, it was no thoroughfare--and neitherwas the ungodly jumble of swamp and mountains that stopped me fromtapping the lower end of it--or I should not have spent the last threemonths in making fifty miles of road through untrodden bush to Caraquet, over which to transport the La Chance gold to a post-road and a railway:and it was no chosen return route of mine to La Chance now, either. 

If I could draw you a map I should not have to explain the country. Butfailing that I will be as clear as I can. 

The line of Lac Tremblant, and that of the road I had just made fromCaraquet to La Chance, ran away from each other in two sides of atriangle, --except that the La Chance mine was five miles down the farside of the lake from Caraquet, and my road had to half-moon round thehead of Lac Tremblant to get home--a lavish curve, too, by reason ofswamps. 

But it was on that half-moon road that I should have been now, if myorder to have a horse meet me at the Halfway stables I had built at thebeginning of it had not been forgotten or disregarded by some one at LaChance. 

Getting drenched to the skin with lake water was no rattling goodexchange for riding home on a fresh horse that felt like a warm stoveunder me, but a five-mile short cut across the apex of the road and laketriangle was better than walking twenty-two miles along the side of iton my own legs--which was the only choice I had had in the matter. 

I was obliged to get home, for reasons of my own; but when I walked inon Billy Jones, the foreman at the Halfway stables, that afternoon, after months of absence and road-making, there was not even a team horsein his stables, let alone my own saddle mare. There was not a soul aboutthe place, either, but Billy himself, blandly idle and sprawling over agrubby old newspaper in front of the stove in his shack. 

His welcome was heartening, but his intelligence was not. No one hadtold him a word about me or my mare, he informed me profanely; also thatit was quite impossible for me to ride over to La Chance that night. There were not any work horses at the Halfway, because he had doubled upthe teams for some heavy hauling from Caraquet, according to my orderssent over from Caraquet the week before, and no horses had been sentback from La Chance since. He guessed affably that some one might bedriving over from the mine in the morning, and that after tramping fromCaraquet I had better stay where I was for the night. 

I hesitated. I was dog-tired for once in my life, but I had not done anytramp from Caraquet that day, if I had told the bald truth. Only I hadno idea of telling it, nor any wish to explain to Billy Jones that I hadbeen making a fool of myself elsewhere, doing a solid week of hospitalnursing over a filthy boy I had found on my just-finished road themorning I had really left Caraquet. From the look of him I guessed hehad got hurt cutting down a tree and not getting out of the way in time, though he was past telling me that or anything else. But I had alsoguessed where he lived, by the dirt on him, and was ass enough to carryhim home to the squalid, half-French, half-Indian village the Caraquetpeople called Skunk's Misery. 

It lay in the bush, in a slanting line between Caraquet and LacTremblant: a nest of thriftless evil stuck in a hollow you might passwithin twenty yards of, and never guess held a house. Once there I hadno choice but to stay and nurse the boy's sickening pain, till hismother came home from some place where she was fishing eels for thewinter; for none of the rest of the population of fat-faced, indifferent women--I never saw a man, whether they were away in thelumber woods or not--would lay a hand on him. I will say plainly that Iwas more than thankful to hand him over to his mother. I had spilt overmyself a bottle of some nameless and abominable brew that I'd mistakenfor liniment, and my clothes smelt like carrion; also the lean-to I hadlived in was so dirty that I scratched from suspicion all day long, except when I was yawning from a week of hardly closing my eyes. Altogether, as I said, I was dog-tired, if it were not from walking, andI might have stayed at Billy Jones's if I had not been crazy to get ridof my dirt-infected clothes. The worst reek had gone from them, but evenout in the open air they smelt. I saw Billy Jones wrinkle up his nose tosniff innocently while he talked to me, and that settled me. 

"I have to get home, " I observed hastily. "Wilbraham expected me a weekago. But I don't walk any twenty-two miles! I'll take your old canoe anda short cut across the lake. "

I was the only man who ever used Lac Tremblant, and the foreman of theHalfway stables cast a glance on me. "If it was me, I'd walk, " heremarked drily. "But take your choice. The lake's a short cut rightenough, only I wouldn't say where _to_--in my crazy old birchbark thiskind of a blowing-up evening!"

That, and a few more things he said as he squinted a weather-wise eye onthe lake, came back to me as I fought his old canoe through the water. And fighting it was, mind you, for the spray hid the rocks I knew, andthe wind shoved me back on the ones I didn't know. Also the canoe wasleaking till she was dead logy, and the gusts were so fierce I could notstop paddling to bail her. The short, vicious seas that snapped at mefive ways at once were the color of lead and felt as heavy as coldmolasses. But, for all that, crossing Lac Tremblant was saving metwenty-two miles on my feet, and I was not wasting any dissatisfactionon the traverse. Only, as I shoved the canoe forward, I was nearer tobeing played out, from one thing on top of another, than ever I was inmy life. I pretended the paddle that began to hang in spite of me wasonly heavy with freezing spray and that the dead ache in my back was akink. But I had to put every ounce there was in my six feet of wearybones into lightning-change wrenches to hold the old canoe head on tothe splattering seas and keep her from swamping. I was very near tothinking I had been a fool not to have stayed with Billy Jones, --when Iwas suddenly aware of absolute, utter calm in the air that felt as warmon my face as if I'd gone into a house; of tranquil water under theforefoot of the canoe that had jumped forward under me as the resistanceof the wind ceased; and of the lake shore--dark, featureless, silent--within twenty feet of me. I was across Lac Tremblant and in theshelter of the La Chance shore!

There is no good in denying that for five minutes all I did was to sitback and breathe. Then I lit my pipe, that was dry because it was insidemy shirt; bailed the unnecessary water out of the canoe and theimmediate neighborhood of my legs; and, without meaning to, turned acasual eye on the shore at my right hand. 

It might have been because I was tired, but that shore struck me as if Ihad never seen it before; and on a November evening it was not aninviting prospect. Bush and bush, and more bush, grew down to the veryverge of the water in a mass that spoke of heavy swamp and no landing. Behind that, I knew, was rising land, country rock, and again swamp andmore swamp, --and all of it harsh, ugly, and inhospitable. But the queerthought that came over me was that it was more than inhospitable: it wasforbidding. High over my head poured the bitter wind in a river of soundthrough the bare tree tops; close at hand it rustled with a flurry ofdead leaves that was uncannily like the bustle of inimical businessespursued insolently in the dark, at my very elbow; and suddenly, throughand over all other sounds, there rose in the harsh gloom the long, ravening cry of a wolf. 

Heaven knows I was used to the bush, and no howling was much to me; butyou know how things come over you sometimes. It came over me then that Iwas sick of my life at La Chance; sick of working with Wilbraham andsicker still of washing myself in brooks and sleeping on theground, --for I had not been in a house since August. Before I knew it Iwas speaking out loud as men do in books, only it was something I hadthought before, which in books it generally isn't: "Scott, I'm a fool tostay here. I'd sooner go and work on day's wages somewhere and have aplace _to go home to!_" And then I felt my face get red in the dark, forI knew what I meant, if you do not. 

There was nothing to go home to at Wilbraham's, except a roof over myhead, till circumstances sent me out into the bush again. In the daytimethere were the mine and the mill. At night there was the bare livingroom of Wilbraham's shack, without a book, or a paper, or a decentchair; Wilbraham himself, fat, pig-headed, truculent, stumping thedevil's sentry-go up and down the bare floor, talking eternally abouthimself and the mine, till a saint must have loathed the two of them;Thompson, the mine superintendent, silent, slow and stupid, playingghastly solitaire games in a corner with a pack of dirty cards; and me, Nick Stretton, hunching myself irritably on a hard chair till I coulddecently go to bed. Even the bush was better than night after night ofthat, --and suddenly I felt my thoughts bursting out, even if I had senseenough to keep my mouth shut. 

I was as sick of the bush as I was of the shack. I wanted a place of myown and a life of my own: and I was going to have it. There was nothingbut old friendship to tie me to Wilbraham's; I could do as well anywhereelse, and I was going there--to-morrow; going somewhere, anyhow, so thatwhen my day's work was over I could go home to a blazing fire on a widehearth, instead of Wilbraham's smelly stove where no one ever cleanedthe creosote out of the pipe, --and where the girl I had had in my headfor ten years would be waiting for me. 

Don't imagine it was any girl I knew that I was thinking of; it was justa dream girl I meant to marry, when I found her. I'd never met such agirl anywhere, and it sounds like a fool to say I knew I was going tomeet her: that she was waiting somewhere in the world for me, just as Iwas looking for her. I knew exactly what she must be like. She wouldhave that waving bronze-gold hair that stands out in little separate, shining tendrils; eyes that startled you with their clear blue underdark, level eyebrows--I never look twice at a girl with archedbrows--the rose-white, satin-smooth skin that goes with all of them, andshe would move like----Well, you've seen Pavlova move! Hervoice--somehow one of the most important things I knew about her seemedto be her voice--would be the clear, carrying kind that always soundsgay. I was certain I should know my dream girl--first--by that. And thatwas the girl--I forgot it was all made-up child's play--who somewhere inthe world was waiting for me, Nick Stretton; a fool with nothing onearth but six feet of a passably good body, and a dark, high-nosed facelike an Indian's, who was working in the bush for Wilbraham instead ofsieving creation for her. Well, I would start to-morrow; and, where theclean heavens meant me to, I should find her!

And with the words I came alive to the dark lake, and the leaky canoe Isat in, and the knowledge that all I had been thinking about abronze-haired girl was just the cracked dream of a lonely man. Even ifit had not been, and I could have started to look for a real girlto-morrow, I had to get back to Wilbraham's to-night. My drenchedclothes were freezing on me, and I was hungrier than the wolf who hadjust howled again, as I picked up my slippery paddle and started for theLa Chance landing. 

There was no light there, naturally, since no one ever used the lakeexcept myself, and I had been away for months; but as I rounded thepoint between the canoe and the landing, and slipped into the dark ofits shadow, the lamplight from Wilbraham's living room shone out on mein a narrow beam, like a moon path on the water. As I crossed it andbeached the canoe I must have been in plain sight to any one on theshore, though all I saw was the dark shingle I stepped upon. I stoopedto lift the canoe out of water, --and I did what you mean when you sayyou nearly jumped out of your skin. 

Touching my shoulder, her hand fiercely imperative in the dark, was agirl--at La Chance, where no girl had ever set foot!--and she wasspeaking to me with just that golden, carrying voice I knew would belongto my own dream girl, if she were keeping it down to a whisper. 

"So you're here, " was what she said; and it would have fitted in withthe fool's thoughts I had just come out of, if it had not been for hertone. That startled me, till all I could do was to nod in the dark Icould just see her in. I could not discern what she looked like, for herhead was muffled in a shawl; and I never realized that all she could seeof me was my height and general make-up, since my face must have beeninvisible where I stood in the shadow. 

"You!" her golden voice stabbed like a dagger. "I won't have you stayinghere--where I am! I told you I'd speak to you when I could, and I'mspeaking. You kept your word and disgraced me once, if I don't know howyou did it; but I won't run the chance of _that_ again! I'm safe here, except for you; and you've got to let me alone. If you don't, I--I----"she stammered till I knew she was shaking, but she got hold of herselfin the second. "You won't find it safe to play any tricks with the goldhere--or me--if that's what you came for, " she said superbly, "andyou've given me a way to stop it. _That's_ why I've sneaked out to meetyou: not because I care for you. You must go away, or--I'll tell thatyou're here! Do you hear? I don't care what promises you make me--theyalways came easily to you. If you want me to hold my tongue about you, you've got to go. Go and betray me, if you like--but _go_!"

There was dead, cold hatred in it, the kind a woman has for a man sheonce cared for, and it staggered what wits I had left. I nodded like afool, just as if I had known what she was talking about, and went onlifting the canoe ashore. Whether I really heard her give a terrifiedgasp I don't know; perhaps I only thought so. But as I put the canoe onthe bank I heard a rustle, and when I looked up she was gone. There wasnothing to tell me she had really even been there. It was just asprobable that I was crazy, or walking in my sleep, as that a girl whotalked like that--or even any kind of a girl--should be at La Chance. The cold, collected hatred in her voice still jarred me, since it was noway for even a dream girl to speak. But what jarred me worse was thatthe whole thing had been so quick I could not have sworn she had beenthere at all. I was honestly dazed as I walked up the rough path toWilbraham's and my shack. I must have stood in front of it a good fiveminutes, with my wet clothes freezing as hard as a board, and the noiseof the men in the bunk house down by the mine coming up to me on thenight wind. 

"'If I be I, as I should be, I've a little dog at home, and he'll knowme, '" I said to myself at last like the old woman in the storybook, onlywith a grin. For when I went into the house there would be the neglectedliving room with the smelly stove, and Wilbraham walking up and downthere as usual; and Dudley Wilbraham's conversation would bring any manback to his senses, even if he needed it worse than I did. I opened theshack door and went in, --and in the bare passage I jerked up taut. 

The living room faced me, --and there was no stove in it. And noWilbraham, walking up and down and talking to himself. There was aglowing, blazing log fire in a stone fireplace that must have been builtwhile I was away; and, sitting alone before it, exactly as I had alwaysthought of her, was my dream girl, --that I had meant to hunt the worldfor to welcome me home!

CHAPTER II

MY DREAM: AND DUDLEY'S GIRL

All I could do was to stand in the living room doorway and stare at her. 

There she sat by the fire, in a short blue skirt that showed her littlefeet in blue stockings and buckled shoes, and a blue sweater whoserolling collar fell away from the column of her soft throat. And she wasjust exactly what I had known she would be! There was a gold crest toevery exquisite, warm wave of her bronze hair; her level eyebrows wereabout five shades darker, and her curled-up eye-lashes darker still, where she sat with her head bent over some sort of sewing. And evenbefore she looked up and I saw her eyes, the beauty of her caught me atmy heart. I had never thought even my dream girl could be as lovely asshe was. But there was more to her face than beauty. It was so young andsweet and gay, and--when you looked hard at her--so sad, that I forgot Iought either to speak up or go away. Of who she was or how she came tobe at La Chance, I had no earthly clue. I knew, of course, that it wasshe who had met me at the landing, and common sense told me she hadtaken me for some one else: but I had no desire to say so, or to go awayeither. And suddenly she looked up and saw me. 

Whoever she was she had good nerves, for she never even stared as womendo at a strange man. I could have been no reassuring vision either, standing there in moccasined feet that had come in on her as silently asa wolf or an Indian; with dirty, frozen clothes; and a face that theLord knows is dark and hard at its best, and must have been forbiddingenough that night between dirt and fatigue. But that girl only glancedat me as quietly as if she had known I was there. 

"Did you----Were you looking for any one?" she asked. And the second Iheard her voice I knew she guessed she had spoken to me a quarter of anhour ago in words she would probably have given all she possessed toprevent a stranger from knowing she had need to speak to any one. 

Only that was not the reason I half stammered, "Not exactly. " It wasbecause I could see her eyes, --and they were like sapphires, and thesea, and the night sky with the first stars in it. I snatched off my capthat I had forgotten, and bits of melting ice fell off it and tinkledon the floor. The sharp little sound brought my wits back to me. PerhapsI had never really thought my dream girl would come true, but once I hadfound her I never meant to lose her. And I knew, if I cared a straw formy life and the love that was to be in it, that I must meet her now _forthe first time_; that nothing, not even if she told me so herself, mustmake me admit she had come to me at the lake by mistake, or that I hadever heard her voice before. 

I said, easily enough, "I'm afraid I startled you. I'm Stretton, Wilbraham's partner"--which I was to the extent of a thousanddollars--"I've just come home. "

And crazy as it sounds, I felt as if I had come home, for the first timein my life. For the girl of my dreams came to her feet with just thatlovely, controlled ease you see in Pavlova, and with the prettiestlittle gesture of welcome. 

"Oh, you're frozen stiff, " she said with a kind of dismayed sympathy. "And I heard Mr. Wilbraham say some one had forgotten to send out yourhorse for you, and that you'd probably walk--the whole way fromCaraquet! You must be tired to death. Please come to the fire and getwarm--now you've come home!"

I thought of the queer smell that clung to my stained old coat and thecompany I had kept at Skunk's Misery--though if I had guessed what thatwretched boy was going to mean to me I might have grudged my contactwith him less--and I would not have gone near my dream girl for afortune. "I think I'll get clean first, " I began, and found myselflaughing for the first time in a week. But as I turned away I glancedback from the dark passage where Charliet, the French-Canadian cook, wassupposed to keep a lamp and never did, and saw the girl in the livingroom look after me, --with a look I had never seen in any girl's eyes, ifI'd seen a hunted man have it. 

"Gad, she knows I know she met me--and she doesn't mean to say so, " Ithought vividly. What the reason was I couldn't see, or whom there couldbe at La Chance that such a girl should find it necessary to tell thatshe would not have him disgrace her, and that he must go away. It mademe wrathy to think there could be any one she needed to hit out at likethat. But we had a queer lot at the mine, including Dunn and Collins, acouple of educated boys who had not been educated enough to pass asmining engineers, and had been kicked out into the world by theirfamilies. It might have been either of those two star failures in thebunk house. The only person it could not have been was DudleyWilbraham; since aside from the fact that she could easily speak to himin the shack she could not have told him he must go away from his ownmine. Which reminded me I'd never even asked where Dudley was or onething about the mine I'd been away from so long. 

But my dream girl, where no girl had ever been, was the only thing Icould think of. I had meant to get some food and go to bed, but insteadI threw my Skunk's Misery clothes out of the window, and got ready to goout to supper and see that girl again. Who under heaven she could be waspast me, as well as how she came to be at La Chance. I would have beenscared green lest she was the wife of some man at the mine, only she hadno wedding ring on the slim left hand that had beckoned me to the fire. Yet, "She can't just be here alone, either, and I'm blessed if I see whoshe can have come with, " I thought blankly. And I opened my room doorstraight on Marcia Wilbraham, --Wilbraham's sister!

"_Well_, " I said. It was the only thing that came to me. I knewimmediately, of course, that the girl in the living room must have comeout with Marcia; but it knocked me silly to see Marcia herself at LaChance. I had known Marcia Wilbraham, as I had known Dudley, ever sinceI wore blue serge knickerbockers trimmed with white braid. She neverwent anywhere with Dudley. She had money of her own, and she spent iton Horse Show horses, and traveling around to show them. But here shestood in front of me, in a forsaken backwoods mine that I should nothave expected even Dudley himself to stay at if I had not known hisreasons. 

"I don't wonder you say 'well, '" Marcia returned crisply. She wasgood-looking in a big way, if you did not mind brown eyes that were toosmall for her face and a smile that showed her gums. I had never likedor disliked her especially, any more than you do any girl about your ownage whom you've always known. "I've been here for three months! I wasvery near going home a month ago--but I don't think I'll go now. Ibelieve I'll try a winter here. "

"A winter!" I thought of Marcia "trying a winter, " and I laughed. 

"Oh, you needn't throw back your handsome Indian head to grin at me, Nicky Stretton, " said she crossly. "I'm tired of always doing the samething. And anyhow, the stable lost money, and I had to sell out!"

"But why stay here--with Dudley?" I let out. The two of them had alwaysfought like cats. 

"I'm going to do some shooting--and wolf hunting, " Marcia smiled theugly smile I never could stand. "I'm going to stay, anyhow; so you'llhave to bear it, Nicky!"

"I'm--charmed!" I thought like lightning that my dream girl would dowhatever Marcia did, and I blessed my stars she was staying; though Iknew she would be all kinds of a nuisance if she insisted on turning outto hunt wolves. She was all but dressed for it even then, in a horridgreen divided skirt that made her look like a fat old gentleman. But itwas not Marcia I meant to talk about. 

"Have you brought the--other girl--to hunt wolves, too?" I inquired, aswe moved on down the passage; there was no upstairs to the shack. 

"No, " said Marcia quite carelessly, if I had not caught the snap in hereyes. "She's come to hunt Dudley! She's going to marry him. "

"She's _what_?" I was suddenly thankful we had left the light from myopen door and that Charliet despised keeping a lamp in the passage. Thebland idea that I had found my dream girl split to bits as if a half-tonrock had landed on it. For her to be going to marry any one was badenough; but _Dudley_, with his temper, and his drink, and the drugs Iwas pretty sure he took! The thing was so unspeakable that I stoppedshort in the passage. 

Marcia Wilbraham stopped short too. "I don't wonder you're knockedsilly, " she said. "Here, come out of this; I want to speak to you, andI may as well do it now!" She pushed me into the office where Dudley didhis accounts--which was his name for sitting drinking all day, and neverspeaking to any one--and shut the door. "Look here, Nicky, if you'rethinking that girl is a friend of mine, she isn't! I don't know onething about her. Except that this summer I had reason to oblige Dudley, and one day he came to me--you know he was in New York for nearly twomonths----"

I nodded. I had not cared where he was, so that he was away from LaChance, where he and old Thompson would drive a tunnel just where I knewit was useless. 

"Well, he came to me in the first of August, and said he was going tomarry a girl called Paulette Brown, --and he wanted me to bring her outhere! Why he didn't marry her straight off and bring her out herehimself, I don't know; he only hummed and hawed when I asked him. Butanyhow, I met Paulette Brown, _for the first time_, at the station, whenwe started up here--she and I and Dudley. And she puzzled me from thesecond we got into the Pullman, and I saw her pull off the two veilsshe'd worn around her head in the station! And she puzzles me worsenow. "

"Why?" I might have been puzzled myself, remembering Paulette Brown'sspeech to me in the dark, but it was none of Marcia's business. 

"Because I know I've seen her before, " Marcia returned calmly, "onlywith no 'Paulette Brown' tacked on to her. I've seen her dancesomewhere, but I can't think _where_--and that's the first thing thatpuzzles me. "

"I don't see why, " I said disagreeably, "considering that every onedances somewhere all day long just now. "

"It wasn't that kind of dancing. It was rather--wonderful! And there wassome story tacked on to it, " Marcia frowned, "only I can't think what!And the second thing that puzzles me about Paulette Brown--I tell you, Nicky, I believe she can't _bear_ Dudley, and that she doesn't want tomarry him!"

It was the first decent thing I had heard from her, and I could haveopened my mouth and cheered. But I said, "Then why's she here?"

"Just because it suits her for some reason of her own, " Marcia wasearnest as I had never seen her. "Nicky, I don't think she's anything inthe world but some sort of an adventuress--only what I can't understandabout her is what she wants of Dudley! It isn't money, for I know he'stried to make her take it, and she wouldn't. Yet I know, too, that shehadn't a cent coming up here, and she hasn't now--or even any clothesbut summer things, and a blue sweater she wears all the time. She neverspeaks about herself, or where she comes from----"

"I don't see why there should be any mystery about that!" It was a lie, but I might not have seen, if she had not spoken to me incomprehensiblyin the dark. "Dudley probably knows all about her people. "

"A girl called Paulette Brown doesn't have any people, " scornfully. "Besides, her name isn't Brown, or Paulette--she used to forget toanswer to either of them at first; and if Dudley knows what it reallyis, I'm going to know too--before I'm a month older! I tell you I'veseen her before, and I know there was some kind of an ugly story tackedon to her and her dancing. That, and her real name, are up in the atticof my brain somewhere, and some day they'll come down!"

"Well, they won't concern me, " I cut in stolidly. Whoever Paulette Brownwas, if she were going to marry Dudley Wilbraham ten times over, she wasthe one girl in the world who belonged to me, --and I was not going tohave her discussed by Marcia behind a shut door. 

But Marcia's retort was too quick for me. "They may interest you, allthe same, if that girl's what I think she is! Don't make any mistake, Nicky; she's no chorus girl out of work. She's a lady. Only--she's beensomething else, too! You watch how she uses a perfectly trained body. "

I all but started. I had seen it already, when I thought she moved likePavlova. "Anything else?" I inquired disagreeably. 

"Yes, " said Marcia quietly. "She's afraid for her life, or Dudley's--Ican't make out which. Wait, and you'll see. Come on; we'll be late forsupper. It would have been over hours ago if Dudley and I hadn't beenout shooting this afternoon. We've only just come in. "

But I was not thinking about supper. The Wilbrahams had been out, andPaulette Brown, left alone, had taken her chance to speak to some one. That she had happened to mistake her man and spoken to me made nodifference in the fact, and it came too aptly on Marcia's suspicionsabout her. But "My good heavens, I won't care what she did, " I thoughtfiercely. My dream girl's eyes were honest, if they were deep blue lakesa man might drown his soul in, too. If she were Dudley's twice over Iwas going to stand by her, because by all my dreams of her she was moremine. "I haven't time, or chances, to be watching pretty ladies, " I saiddrily, "and I wouldn't bother over it myself if I were you. I'd let itgo at plain Paulette Brown!"

"If you could, " said Marcia, just as drily. And over her words, closeoutside the window, a wolf howled. 

It startled me, as it had startled me once before that evening, onlythis time I knew the reason. "Scott, I never knew the wolves to becoming out so early in the season!" I was thankful to be back to thingsI could exclaim about. "And down here, beside the house, I never sawany!"

"No; so Dudley said, " Marcia returned almost absently. She opened thedoor for herself, because I had forgotten it, and stood looking at thelighted living room at the end of the passage by the front door. "Butthe wolves have been round for a week--that was what I meant when I saidI was going to have some wolf hunts! The mine superintendent's going totake me. "

"Thompson!" I let out. Then I chuckled. Marcia was likely to have agreat wolf hunt with Thompson, who knew no difference between a shotgunand a rifle, and would have legged it from a fox if he had met it alone. "Marcia Wilbraham, I'll pay you five dollars if you ever get out wolfhunting with Thompson. Why, the only thing he _can_ do for diversion isto play solitaire!"

"Oh, him--yes, " said Marcia carelessly and without grammar. "But Ididn't mean old Thompson. He's been gone for a month, and we've a newman. His name's Macartney, and he's been here two weeks. "

It was news to me, if it was also an example of the way Dudley Wilbrahamran his mine. But before I could speak Marcia nodded significantly downthe passage to the living room door. I had been looking into the roommyself, as you do at the lighted stage in a theatre, and I had seen onlyone thing in it: my dream girl--whose name might or might not bePaulette Brown, whom Dudley Wilbraham had more right to than Ihad--sitting by the fire as I had left her, that fire I had dreamed Ishould come home to, just myself alone, and talking to Dudley. ButMarcia had been looking at something else, and now my gaze followedhers. 

A tall, lean, hard, capable-looking man stood on the other side of thefire. He was taking no share in the conversation between Dudley and thegirl who had only lived in my dreams till to-night. He was watching theliving room door, quite palpably, and it struck me abruptly that I hadnot far to seek for Marcia Wilbraham's reason for staying the winter atLa Chance. But I might have taken more interest in that and inMacartney, the new mine superintendent, too, if the girl sitting by thefire had not seen Marcia in the doorway and risen to her feet. 

For she floated up, effortlessly, unconsciously, to the very tips of hertoes, and stood so--like Pavlova!

CHAPTER III

DUDLEY'S MINE: AND DUDLEY'S GOLD

 I have stared my eyes blind for her, Bridled my body alive for her, Starved my soul to the rind for her-- Do I lose all?

 _The Lost Lover. _

I could feel Marcia's satisfied, significant smile through the back ofmy neck as I shook hands with Dudley, and was introduced in turn to MissBrown--the last name for her, even without the affected Paulette, thoughI might not have thought of it but for Marcia--and to Macartney, the newincumbent of Thompson's shoes. Dudley, little and fat, in the dirtyboots he had worn all day, and just a little loaded, told me to waittill the morning or go to the devil, when I asked about the mine. Charliet banged the food on the table for supper--Marcia despisedhousekeeping, and if the living room had been reformed nothing elsehad--and I sat down in silence and ate. At least I shovelled food intomy famished stomach. My attention was elsewhere. 

Paulette Brown sat beside Dudley. She was just twice as pretty as I hadrealized, even when the first sight of her struck me dumb. Her eyes wereas dark as indigo, in the lamplight, and a marvellous rose color flittedin her cheeks as she spoke or was silent. She had wonderful hands, too, slim and white, without a sign of a bone at the wrists; but I had acurious feeling that they were the very strongest hands I had ever seenon a girl. Remembering Dudley, it hurt me to look at her; and suddenlysomething else hurt me worse, that I had been a fool not to have thoughtof before. Macartney, the mine superintendent, was new there; I knew nomore of him than I did of Paulette Brown--not so much, perhaps, thanksto Marcia--and it came over me that he might have been the man for whomshe had taken me to-night, and that it was he she had crept out into thedark to speak to in secret. I looked at him over my coffee cup, andthere was something about him I did not like. 

He was a tall man, very capable-looking, as I said; extremely fair andrather handsome, with hard, grayish eyes that looked straight at youwhen he spoke. He had a charming laugh--yet when he laughed I sawsuddenly what it was that I did not like about him; and it was nothingmore nor less than a certain set look about his eye muscles. Somegamblers have it, and it did not strike my fancy in the new minesuperintendent at La Chance. But watch as I might, I saw no sign of anunderstanding between him and my dream girl. It was impossible to besure, of course, but I was nearly sure. She spoke to him as she spoke toMarcia and Dudley--she never addressed one word to me--just easily andsimply, as people do who live in the same house. Macartney himselftalked mostly to Marcia, which was no business of mine. Only I wassomehow curiously thankful that it had not been Macartney whom Paulettehad meant to meet in the dark. There was something about his eyes thatsaid he was no safe customer for any girl to speak to withhatred, --especially a girl whom another girl was watching, as Marcia waswatching Paulette Brown. I decided it must have been either Dunn orCollins--our two worthless Yale boys at the mine--whom she had wanted toget rid of, and I felt better; for it would be easy enough to save hertrouble by doing that myself. They might just have come back to LaChance like me, for all I knew, because Dudley had a trick of sendingthe men heaven knew where to prospect. 

It was rot, anyhow, to be taking a girl's affairs so seriously. I lookedat my dream girl's clear eyes, and thought that if she knew what Marciaand I were thinking about her she might have good reason to be angry. Also that Dudley probably knew all about her evening stroll and what shewas doing at La Chance, if Marcia did not. And Dudley's self-importantvoice cut through my thoughts like a knife:

"Where on earth were you this evening, Paulette?" he was demandingirritably. "I couldn't see a sign of you when Marcia and I went out, andyou weren't anywhere when we came in!"

"I don't know"--the girl began--and I saw the color go out of her face, and it made me angry. 

"I can tell you where Miss Brown was, " I said deliberately, "if she'sashamed to own it. She was good and settled by this fire. "

Why I lied for her I could not say. But the glance she turned on me gaveme a flat sort of feeling, as if Marcia might be right and she was therefor reasons of her own that I had all but stumbled on by accident. I wasa fool to care; but then I had been a fool all day with my sillythoughts of leaving La Chance to chase the world for an imaginary girl, and more fool still to think I had found her there waiting for me. Isaid something about being tired and went off to bed. I was tired, rightenough, but I was something else too. All that business about the girl Imeant to find and marry may sound like a child's silly game to you, butit had been more than a game to me. It had been a solid prop to hold toin ugly places where a man might slip if he had not clean love and agirl in his head. And now, at seven-and-twenty, I wanted my child's gameto come true: just my own fire, and my own girl, and a life that heldmore than mere slaving for money. And it had come true, as far as thefire and the welcome home; only the girl was another man's. 

I knew what I ought to do was to get out of La Chance, but I could notscrew myself up to the acceptance of the obvious fact that there wereother girls in the world than Paulette Brown. I told myself I was toodead tired to care. I stumbled to my window to open it--Charliet's lamphad burned out while I was at supper and the room was stifling--and asudden queer sense that some one or something was under my window mademe stand there without raising it. And there was some _thing_, anyway. The windows in the shack were about a yard above the ground. There was aglimpse of the moon through the wind-tortured clouds, now on the roughclearing, now on the thick spruces round the edge of it, --for my windowlooked on the bush, not toward the bunk house and the mine. And as themoonlight flickered back on the clearing I saw my clothes I had worn atSkunk's Misery and tossed out for Charliet to burn because theysmelled, --and something else that made me stare in pure surprise. 

There was a wolf--gaunt, gray, fantastic in the moonlight--rolling on myclothes; regardless of the human eyes on him and within ten feet of thehouse. It was so crazy that I almost forgot the girl Marcia had said wasonly "called" Paulette Brown. I jerked up the window and stood waitingfor the wolf to run. And it did not take the least notice of me. I couldhave shot it ten times over, but the thing was so incredible that I onlystood staring; and suddenly my chance was gone. The beast picked up mycoat, as a dog does a bone, and disappeared with it like a streak intothe black bush. 

"Scott, I never saw a wolf behave like that!" I thought. But one moreimpossibility in an impossible day did not matter. I left the windowopen and tumbled into bed. 

I would have forgotten the thing in the morning, only that when I got up_all_ my Skunk's Misery clothes had disappeared, and Charliet had nottaken them, because I asked him. I did not mention last night's wolf tohim, because I was in a hurry to catch Dudley and tell him I meant toleave La Chance. But I did not tell him, for when I thought of leavingmy dream girl to him it would not come to my tongue. An obstinate, matter-of-fact devil got up in my heart instead and prompted me to stayjust where I was. I looked at Dudley--little, fat, pompous, and soself-opinionated that it fairly stuck out of him--and thought that if Ihad a fair chance I could take my dream girl from him. I might be darkas an Indian and without a cent to my name except the few dollars I hadsunk in the mine, but I did not drink or eat drugs; and I knew Dudleydid one and guessed he did the other. Interfering with him was out ofthe question, of course; it was not a thing any man could do to hisfriend, deliberately. I supposed he would be good to the girl, accordingto his lights. But, all the same, I decided to stay at La Chance. I sawDudley was brimming over with something secret, and I hoped to heaven itwas not his engagement, and that I should not have to stand my ownthoughts of a girl translated into Dudley's. But he did not mention her. He hooked his fat wrist into my elbow and trotted me down to the mine. 

It was an amateur sort of mine, as you may have gathered. Dudley had nouse for expert assistance or for advice. And it was a simple lookingplace. The shore of Lac Tremblant there ran back flat to a hill, aquarter of a mile from the water, with a solid rock face like a cliff. Along that cliff face came first Dudley's shack, then Thompson's tunnel, then--a good way farther down--the bunk house, the mill, and a shantyDudley called the assay office. But I stared at a new hole in the cliff, farther down even than the assay office. 

"Why, you've driven a new tunnel, " I exclaimed. 

"Yes, my young son, " said Dudley; and then he burst out with things. Macartney had run that new tunnel as soon as he came and struck quartzthat was solid for heaven knew how far, and carrying thick, free goldthat assayed incredibly to the ton. The La Chance mine, whose name hadbeen more truth than poetry--for when I made fifty miles of road thatcost like the devil, to haul in machinery and a mill it was pitch andtoss if we should ever need it--had turned out a certainty while I wasaway. 

I stood silent. It meant plenty to me, who had only a trifle in thething, but I was the only soul in the world who knew what it meant toDudley. Stocks, carelessness, but chiefly bull-headed extravagance, hadrun through every cent he had, and La Chance had saved him from havingto live on Marcia's charity, --if she had any. There was no fear, either, of his being interfered with in the bonanza he had struck; for leavingout my infinitesimal share, Dudley was sole owner, --and he had bought athousand acres mining concession from the Government for ten dollars anacre, which is the law when a potential mining district in unsurveyedterritory is more than twenty miles by a wagon road from a railway. Allhe had to do with would-be prospectors was to chuck them out. He had gotin ten stamps for his mill over the road I had built from Caraquet, and--since Macartney arrived--was milling stuff whose net result made mestare, after the miserable, two-dollar ore old Thompson had broken myheart with. 

"So you see, we're made, " Dudley finished simply. "Macartney struck hisvein first go off, and we'll be able to work it all winter. You'd betterstart in to-day and get some snowsheds built along the face of theworkings--they ought to have been started a week ago. Why in thedevil"--drink and drugs do not make a man easy to work with, and younever knew when Dudley might turn on you with a face like afiend--"didn't you get back from Caraquet before? You'd nothing to keepyou away this last week!"

"I'd plenty, " I returned drily. "And I may remind you that I didn'tpropose to have to walk back!" It was the first time I had mentioned mymissing horse. I did not mention my stay in Skunk's Misery: it was aside show of my own, to my mind, and unconnected with Dudley, --though Iought to have known that nothing in life is ever a side show, even ifyou can't see the door from the big tent. 

"Oh, your horse, " said Dudley more civilly. "I didn't think I'dforgotten about it, but I suppose I must have. I was a good deal put outgetting Thompson off. "

"What happened about him?" I had had no chance to ask before. 

"Oh, I never could stand him, " and I knew it was true. "Sitting all theevening playing cards like a performing dog! And he wasn't fit for hiswork, either. I told him so, and he said he'd go. He went out toCaraquet nearly a month ago--I thought you knew. D'ye mean you didn'tsee him going through?"

I shook my head. It was a wonder I had not, for I had spent most of lastmonth fussing over some bad places on the road, by the turn where I hadfound my boy from Skunk's Misery, and I ought to have seen Thompson goby. But the solution was simple. There was one Monday and Tuesday I hadmy road gang off in the bush, on the opposite side from the Skunk'sMisery valley, getting stuff to finish a bit of corduroy. In those twodays I could have missed seeing Thompson, and I said so. 

"You didn't miss much, " Dudley returned carelessly. "This Macartney's along sight better man. "

"Where'd you get him?" I was pretty sure it was not Macartney for whommy dream girl had mistaken me in the dark, but there was no harm inknowing all I could about him. 

Dudley knocked the wind straight out of my half suspicion. 

"Thompson sent him, " he returned with a grin. "I told him to getsomebody. Oh, we parted friends all right, old Thompson and I! He saw, just as I did, that he wasn't the man for the place. Macartney struckthat vein first go off, and that was recommendation enough for me. Buthere's Thompson's, if you want to see it!" He extracted a folded letterfrom a case. 

It was written in Thompson's careful, back-number copperplate, perhapsnot so careful as usual, but his unmistakably. And once and for all Idismissed all idea that it could have been Macartney who was tangled upwith Paulette Brown. Old Thompson's friends were not that sort, and hevouched for knowing Macartney all his life. He was a well-known man, according to Thompson, with a long string of letters after his name. Thompson had come on him by accident, and sent him up at once, before hewas snapped up elsewhere. 

"Thompson seems to have got a move on in sending up his successor, "said I idly. "When did he write this?" For there was no envelope, andonly Montreal, with no date, on the letter. 

"Dunno--first day he got to Montreal, it says, " carelessly. "Come alongand have a look at the workings. I want you to get log shelters built asquick as you can build them--we don't want to have to dig out the newtunnel mouth every time it snows. After that you can go to Caraquet withwhat gold we've got out and be gone as long as you please. Now, we mayhave snow any day. "

I nodded. The winter arrives for good at La Chance in November, andbesides the exposed tunnel mouth, there was no shelter over the oreplatform at the mill. This year the snow was late, but there was nocounting on that. And I blinked as I went out of the white Novembersunshine into Macartney's new tunnel, and the candlelight of his hummingstope. One glance around told me Dudley was right, and the man knew hisbusiness; and it was the same over at the mill. It seemed to mesuperintendent was a mild name for Macartney, and general manager wouldhave fitted better. But I said nothing, for Dudley considered he wasgeneral manager himself. Another thing that pleased me about the new manwas that he seemed to be doing nothing, till you saw how his men jumpedfor him, while Thompson had never been able to keep his hands off themen's work. There was none of that in Macartney; and if he had struck meas capable the night before he looked ten times more so now, as heplacidly ran four jobs at once. 

He was a good-looking figure of a man, too, in his brown duck workingclothes, and I did not wonder Marcia Wilbraham had taken a fancy to him. Dudley would probably be blazing if he caught her philandering with hissuperintendent, but it was no business of mine. And anyhow, Macartneyhad my blessing since it could not be he to whom Paulette Brown hadmeant to speak the night before. That ought to have been none of mybusiness either, and to get it out of my head I turned to Dudley, fussing round and talking about tailings. And one omission in all he andMacartney had shown me hopped up in my head. "Where's your gold?" Idemanded. 

"That's one thing we don't keep loose on the doorsteps, " Macartneyreturned drily, and I rather liked him for it, since he knew nothing ofmy share in the mine. 

But Dudley snapped at him: "Why can't you say it's in the house--in myoffice? Stretton's going to take it into Caraquet; there's no sense inmaking a mystery to him. Come on, Stretton, and have a look at it now!"He stuck his fat little arm through mine, and we went back to the houseby the back door and Charliet's untidy kitchen. It was the shortest way, and it was not till afterwards that I remembered it was not commanded bythe window in his office, like the front way. I was not keen on going;later I had a sickly feeling that it was because I had a presentiment ofseeing something I did not want to see. Then all I thought was that Ihad a hundred other things to do, and though I went unwillingly, I went. 

"The gold's in my safe, in boxes, " Dudley said on the way, "and that I'mnot going to undo. But I've a lump or two in my desk I can show you. "

"Lying round loose?" I shrugged my shoulders. 

"No, it's locked up. But no one ever comes in here but me, and"--he gavea shove at the office door that seemed to have stuck, --"and Miss Brown!"

But I was speechless where I stood behind him. There was the bareoffice; Dudley's locked desk; Dudley's safe against the wall. Andturning away from the safe, in her blue sweater and blue skirt andstockings and little buckled shoes, was my dream girl!

Something in my heart turned over as I looked at her. It was not thatshe had started, for she had not. She just stood in front of us, poisedand serene, and some sort of a letter she had been writing lay halffinished on Dudley's desk. But something totally outside me told me shehad been writing no letter while we were out; that she knew thecombination of the safe; had opened it; had but just shut it; and--_thatshe had been doing something to the boxes of gold inside it_. 

There was nothing in her face to say so, though, and my thought neverstruck Dudley. He gave her a nod and a patronizing: "Well, nice girl, "without the least surprise at seeing her there. But I had seen a pin dotof blue sealing wax on the glimpse of white blouse that showed throughthe open front of her sweater, and something else. I stooped, whileDudley was fussing with the lock of his desk, and picked up a curiouslittle gold seal that lay on the floor by the safe. 

Whether I meant to speak of it or not I don't know; for quick as light, the girl held out her hand for it. I said nothing as I gave it to her. Dudley did not see me do it; and, of course, it might have been a sealof his own. But, if it were, why did not Paulette Brown say so, --or saysomething--instead of standing dead white and silent till I turned away?

I knew--as I said "Oh" over Dudley's gold, and my dream girl slipped outof the room--that I had helped her to keep some kind of a secret forthe second time. And that if she had any mysterious business at LaChance it was something fishy about Dudley's gold!

CHAPTER IV

THE MAN IN THE DARK

It sounded crazy, for what could a girl like that do to gold that wassecurely packed? But women had been mixed up in ugly work about goldbefore, and somehow the vision of my dream girl standing by the safestuck to me all that day. Suppose I had helped her to cover up a theftfrom Dudley! It was funny; but the ludicrous side of it did not strikeme. What did was that I must see her alone and get rid of the poisonousdistrust of her that she, or Marcia, had put into my head. But that daywent by, and two more on top of it, and I had no chance to speak toPaulette Brown. 

Part of the reason was that I had not a second to call my own. La Chancehad been an amateur mine when we began it, and it was one still. Therewas only Dudley--who did nothing, and was celebrating himself stupidwith drugs, or I was much mistaken--Macartney, and myself to run it;with not enough men even to get out the ore, without working the milland the amalgam plates. It had been no particular matter while the wholemine was only a tentative business, and I had been having half a fit atDudley's mad extravagance in putting up a ten-stamp mill when we hadnothing particular to crush in it. But now, with ore that ran over ahundred to the ton being fed into the mill, and Macartney and I doingthe work of six men instead of two, I agreed with Dudley when heannounced in a sober interval that we required a double shift of men andthe mill to crush day and night, instead of stopping at dark, --besides acyanide plant and a man to run it. 

But Macartney unexpectedly jibbed at the idea. He returned bluntly thathe could attend to the cyanide business himself, when it was reallyneeded; while as to extra men he could not watch a night shift at theplates as well as a day one, and he would have to be pretty sure of thehonesty of his new amalgam man before he started in to get one. Also--and it struck me as a sentiment I had never heard from a minesuperintendent before--that if we sent out for men half of those we gotmight be riffraff and make trouble for us, without so much as a sheriffwithin a hundred miles. "I'd sooner pick up new men one at a time, " heconcluded, "even if it takes a month. We've ladies here, and if we gotin a gang of tramps----" he gave a shrug and a significant glance atDudley. 

"Why, we've some devils out of purgatory now, " I began scornfully, andstopped, --because Dudley suddenly agreed with Macartney. But the wasteof time in making the mine pay for itself and the stopping of the millat night galled me; and so did the work I had to do from dawn to dark, because any two-dollar-a-day man could have done it instead. 

Macartney seemed to be made of iron, for he took longer hours than Idid. But he could talk to Marcia Wilbraham in the evenings, while Dudleystood between me and the dream girl I thought had come true for me whenfirst I came to La Chance. 

I watched her, though; I couldn't help it. There were times when I couldhave sworn her soul matched her body and she was honest all through; andtimes when a devil rose up in me and bade me doubt her; till betweenwork and worry I was no nearer finding out the kind she really was thanto discovering the man she had meant to speak to in the dark the nightshe blundered on me. Yet I had some sort of a clue there, if it were notmuch of one. Dunn and Collins, our two slackers who had been kicked outof Yale to land in our bunk house, evidently had some game on. Dunn Iwas not much bothered about: he was just a plain good-for-nothing, witha perennial chuckle. But Collins was a different story. Tall, pale, long-eyelashed, his _blasé_ young face barely veiled a mind that was anencyclopædia of sin, --or I was much mistaken. And he and Dunn hadsuddenly ceased to raise Hades in the bunk house every night anddeveloped a taste for going to bed with the hens. At least, the snoringbunk house thought so. If they went abroad instead on whatever they wereup to, I never caught them at it; but I did catch them watching _me_, like lynxes, whenever they were off shift. I never saw either of themspeak to Miss Brown, but I got a good growing idea it was just Collinsshe had meant to interview the night she spoke to me: and it fitted inwell enough with my doubts about her and Dudley's gold, for I would haveput no gold stealing past Collins. As for Paulette Brown herself, Icould see no earthly sense in Marcia's silly statement that "she wasafraid for her life--or Dudley's. " She was afraid _of_ Dudley, I couldsee that; for she shrank from him quite often. But on the other hand, Isaw her follow him into his office one night, when he was fit for nogirl to tackle, and try to get him to listen to something. From outsideI heard her beg him to "please listen and try to understand"--and I madeher a sign from the doorway to come away before he flew at her. I askedher if there were anything I could do, and she said no; it was onlysomething she wanted to tell Dudley. But suddenly she looked at me withthose clear eyes of hers. "You're very--good to me, " she said ratherpiteously. 

I shook my head, and that minute I believed in her utterly. But the nextnight I had a jar. I was starting for Caraquet the morning after, withthe gold Dudley had in his office, so I was late in the stable, puttingwashers on my light wagon, and came home by a short cut through thebush, long after dark. If I moved Indian-silent in my moccasins it wasbecause I always did. But--halfway to the shack clearing--I stoppedshort, wolf-silent; which is different. Close by, invisible in the darkspruces, I heard Paulette Brown speaking; and knew that once more shewas meeting a man in the dark, and, this time, the right one! I couldnot see him any more than I could hear him, for he did not speak; but Iknew he was there. I crouched to make a blind jump for him--and my dreamgirl's voice held me still. 

"I don't care how you threaten me: you've got to _go_, " she saiddoggedly. "I know I've my own safety to look after, but I'll chancethat. I'll give you one week more. Then, if you dare to stay on here, and interfere with me or the gold or anything else, I'll confesseverything to Dudley Wilbraham. I nearly did it last night. I _won't_trust you--even if it means your giving away my hiding place to thepolice!"

Whoever she spoke to moved infinitesimally in the dark. He must havemuttered something I could not hear, for the girl answered sharply: "Asfor that, I'm done with you! Whether you go or don't go, this is thelast time I'll ever sneak out to meet you. When you dare to say you loveme"--and once more the collected hatred in her voice staggered me, onlythis time I was thankful for it--"I could die! I won't hear of what yousay, remember, but I'll give you one week's chance. Then--or if you tryanything on with me and the gold--I'll tell!"

There was no answer. But my blood jumped in me with sheer fury, foranswer or no answer, I knew who the man beside her was. Close by me Iheard Dunn's unmistakable chuckle: and where Dunn was Collins was too. Ibehaved like a fool. I should have bounced through the bush and grabbedDunn at least, which might have stopped some of the awful work that wasto come. But I stood still, till a sixth sense told me Collins was gone, just as I could have gone myself, without sound or warning. Yet eventhen I paused instead of going after him. First, because I had nodesire to give my reason for dismissing him next morning; second, because I had a startling, ghastly thought that I'd heard Macartney'squiet, characteristic footstep moving away, --and if a hard, set-eyed manlike our capable superintendent had been out listening to what a girlsaid to Collins, as I had, I didn't know how in the devil I was to makehim hold his tongue about it. And in the middle of that pleasant thoughtmy dream girl spoke again, to herself this time: "Oh, I can't trust him!I'll have to get hold of the gold myself--at least all I've marked. "

On the top of her words a wolf howled startlingly, close by. It wasevidently the last touch on what must have been a cheerful evening, forPaulette Brown gave one appalled spring and was gone, fleeing for thekitchen door. I am not slow on my feet. I was in the front way beforeshe struck the back one. From the front door I observed the living room, and what I saw inside it before I strolled in there made me catch mybreath with relief and comforting security for the first time thatnight. Macartney could not have been out listening in the dark, if Ihad. He sat lazily in the living room, talking to Marcia, with his feetin old patent leather shoes he could never have run in, even if it hadnot been plain he had not been out-of-doors at all. Marcia hadevidently not been spying either, which was a comfort; and Dudley wasout of the question, for he dozed by the fire, palpably half asleep. Butsuddenly I had a fright. The girl who entered the living room fiveminutes behind me had very plainly been out; and I was terrified thatMarcia would notice her wind-blown hair. I spoke to her as she passedme. "You're losing a hairpin on the left side of your head, " was all Isaid. And much I got for it. My dream girl tucked in her wildly flyingcurl with that sleight of hand women use and never even looked at me. But the thing was done, and I had covered up her tracks for the thirdtime. 

I decided to fire Collins before breakfast the next morning and get offto Caraquet straight after. But I didn't; and I did not fire Collins, either. When I went to the bunk house and then to the mine, where he wasa rock man, he had apparently fired himself, as Paulette had told himto. He was nowhere to be found, anyhow, or Dunn either. I wasted an hourhunting for him, and after that Macartney wanted me, so that it was lateafternoon before I could load up my gold and get off. And as I openedthe safe in Dudley's office I swore. 

There were four boxes of the stuff; small, for easy handling; and if Ihad had time I would have opened every hanged one of them. Even as itwas, I determined to do no forwarding from Caraquet till I knew whatsomething on them meant. For on each box, just as I had expected evenbefore I heard Paulette Brown say she had marked them, was a tiny sealin blue wax!

The reason for any seal knocked me utterly, but I couldn't wait to worryover it. No one else saw it, for I loaded the boxes into my wagonmyself, and there was nobody about to see me off. Dudley was dead to theworld, as I'd known he was getting ready to be for a week past; Marcia, to her fury, had had to retire to bed with a swelled face; and Macartneywas the only other person who knew my light wagon and pair of horses wastaking our clean-up into Caraquet, --except Paulette Brown!

And there was no sign of her anywhere. I had not expected there wouldbe, but I was sore all the same. I had helped her out of difficultiesthree times, and all I'd got for it was--nothing! I saw Macartney comingup from the mill, and yelled to him to come and hold my horses, while Iwent back to my room for a revolver. This was from sheer habit. The snowstill held off, and before me was nothing more exciting than a colddrive over a bad road that was frozen hard as a board, a halt at theHalfway stables to change horses, and perhaps the society of BillyJones as far as Caraquet, --if he wanted to go there. The only otherhuman being I could possibly meet might be some one from Skunk's Misery, though that was unlikely; the denizens of Skunk's Misery had few errandsthat took them out on roads. So I pocketed my gun mechanically. But as Iwent out again I stopped short in the shack door. 

My dream girl, whom I'd never been alone with for ten minutes, sat in mywagon, with my reins in her hands. "My soul, " I thought, galvanized, "she can't be--she must be--coming with me to Caraquet!"

CHAPTER V

THE CARAQUET ROAD: AND THE WOLVES HOWL ONCE MORE

 Why comest thou to ride with me? "The road, this night, is dark. " Dost thou and thine then side with me? "Ride on, ride on and hark!"

 _The Night Ride. _

There she sat, anyhow, alone except for Macartney, who stood at thehorses' heads. Wherever she was going, I had an idea he was as surprisedabout it as I was, and that he had been expostulating with her about herexpedition. But, if he had, he shut up as I appeared. I could onlystammer as I stared at Paulette, "You--you're not coming!"

"I seem to be, " she returned placidly. And Macartney gave me thedespairing glance of a sensible man who had tried his best to head off agirl's silly whim, and failed. 

"It's as you like, " he said--to her, not to me. "But you understand youcan't get back to-night, if you go to Caraquet. And--Good heavens--youought _not_ to go, if you want the truth of it! There's nothing tosee--and you'll get half frozen--and you mayn't get back for days, if itsnows!"

Paulette Brown looked at him as if he were not there. Then she laughed. "I didn't say I was going to Caraquet! If you want to know all about mytaking a chance for a drive behind a pair of good horses, Miss Wilbrahamwants Billy Jones's wife to come over for a week and work for her. I'mgoing to stay all night with Mrs. Jones and bring her back in themorning. She'll never leave Billy unless she's fetched. So I reallythink you needn't worry, Mr. Macartney, " she paused, and I thought I sawhim wince. "I'm not going to be a nuisance either to you or Mr. Stretton, " and before he had a chance to answer she started up thehorses. I had just time to take a flying jump and land in the wagonbeside her as she drove off. 

Macartney exclaimed sharply, and I didn't wonder. If he had not jumpedclear the near wheels must have struck him. I lost the angry, startledsentence he snapped out. But it could have been nothing in particular, for my dream girl only turned in her seat and smiled at him. 

I had no smile as I took the reins from her. I had wanted a chance to bealone with her, and I had it: but I knew better than to think she wasgoing to Billy Jones's for the sake of a drive with me. The only realthought I had was that behind me, in the back of the wagon, were theboxes of gold she had marked inexplicably with her blue seal, and that Ihad heard her say the night before that she "would have to get thatgold!"

How she meant to do it was beyond me; and it was folly to think she ever_could_ do it, with six feet of a man's strength beside her. Butnevertheless, when you loved a girl for no other earthly reason thanthat she was your dream of a girl come true, and even though shebelonged to another man, it was no thought with which to start on alonely drive with her. I set my teeth on it and never opened them for asolid mile over the hummocky road through the endless spruce bush, behind which the sun had already sunk. I could feel my dream girl'sshoulder where she sat beside me, muffled in a sable-lined coat ofDudley's: and the sweet warmth of her, the faint scent of hergold-bronze hair, made me afraid to speak, even if I had known what Iwanted to say. 

But suddenly she spoke to me. "Mr. Stretton, you're not angry with mefor coming with you?"

"You know I'm not. " But I did not know what I was. Any one who has readas far as this will know that if ever a plain, stupid fool walked thisworld, it was I, --Nicholas Dane Stretton. Put me in the bush, or withhorses, and I'm useful enough, --but with men and women I seem to goblind and dumb. I know I never could read a detective story; the cluesand complications always made me feel dizzy. I was pretty well dazedwhere I sat beside that girl I knew I ought to find out about, and hernearness did not help me to ask her ugly questions. If she had not beenDudley's, --but I broke the thought short off. I said to myselfimpersonally that it was impossible for a girl to do any monkey tricksabout the La Chance gold with a man like me. Yet I wondered if she meantto try!

But she showed no sign of it. "I had to come, " she said gently. "Marciareally wants Billy Jones's wife: she won't let me wait on her, and ofcourse Charliet can't do it. You believe me, don't you? I didn't comejust for a drive with you!"

I believed that well enough, and I nodded. 

"Then, " said my dream girl quietly, "will you please stop the horses?"

I looked round. We were miles from the mine, around a turn where thespruce bush ceased for a long stretch of swamp, --bare, featureless, andfrozen. Then, for the first time, I looked at Dudley's girl that I wasfool enough to love. 

"What for?" I demanded. "I mean, of course, if you like, " for I saw shewas white to the lips, though her eyes met mine steadily, like a man's. "Do you mean you want to go back?"

She shook her head almost absently. "No: I think there's somethingbumping around in the back of the wagon. I"--there was a sharp, nervouscatch in her voice--"want to find out what it is. "

I had packed the wagon, and I knew there was nothing in it to bump. ButI stopped the horses. I wondered if the girl beside me had some sort ofbaby revolver and thought she could hold me up with it, if I let her getout; and I knew just what I would do if she tried it. I smiled as Iwaited. But she did not get out. She turned in her seat and reachedbackwards into the back of the wagon, as if she had neither bones norjoints in her lovely body. Marcia was right when she said it wasperfectly educated and trained. For a moment I could think of nothingbut the marvellous grace of her movement as she slid her hand under thetarpaulin that covered the gold; then I thought I heard her catch herbreath with surprise. But she turned back with an exquisite lithe gracethat made me catch mine, and slid down in her seat as if she had neverslid out of it. 

"It's a bottle, " she said lightly. But it was with a kind of startledpuzzle too, as if she had sooner expected dynamite. "I can't think why;I mean, I wonder what's in it!"

"A bottle!" I jerked around to stare at a whisky bottle in her hands. Itwas tightly sealed and full of something colorless that looked like gin. I was just going to say I could not see where it had come from, seeing Ihad packed the wagon myself, and I would have gone bail there was nobottle in it. But it came over me that she might be pretendingastonishment and have put the thing there herself while I was in my roomgetting my revolver; since there had been no one else near my wagon butMacartney, and he could not have left the horses' heads. It flashed onme that the baby beside me, being used to Dudley, might have drugged alittle gin, thinking I would take various drinks on the way; and Inearly laughed out. But I said: "Back there was no place for a bottle. It's a wonder it didn't smash on the first bump!"

"Yes, " said Paulette slowly. "Only I wonder--I mean I can't see----" andshe paused, staring at the bottle with a thoughtful sort of frown. "Ibelieve I'll hold it on my lap. "

I was looking at the bottle too, where she held it with both fur-glovedhands; and I forgot to wonder if she were lying about it or not. Forthe gloves she wore were Dudley Wilbraham's, as well as the coat, --andthat any of Dudley's things should be on my dream girl put me in ablack, senseless fury. I wanted to take them straight off her and wrapher up in my own belongings. I grabbed at anything to say that wouldkeep my tongue from telling her to change coats with me that instant, and the bottle in her hand was the only thing that occurred to me. Itbrought a sudden recollection back to me anyhow, and I opened my lipsquite easily. 

"Scott, that looks like some of the brew I spilled over my clothes atSkunk's Misery!"

"Skunk's Misery!" Paulette exclaimed sharply. "What on earth is Skunk'sMisery?"

"A village--at least, a den--of dirt, chiefly; off this road, betweenCaraquet and Lac Tremblant. " I was thankful to have something to thinkabout that was neither her, or me, or Dudley. I made as long a story asI could of my stay in Skunk's Misery when I took home the half-killedboy; of the filthy stuff I had spilled on my clothes, and how I had seena wolf carry them off. "By George, I believe he _liked_ thesmell--though I never thought of that till now!"

"What?" Paulette gave a curious start that might have been wonder, orenlightenment. "And you got the stuff at Skunk's Misery, out of abottle like this? Oh, I ought to have guessed"--but she either checkedherself, or her pause was absolutely natural--"I should have guessedyou'd had some sort of a horrible time that night you came home. Youlooked so tired. But what I meant to say was I don't see how such poorpeople would have a bottle of _anything_. Didn't they say what it was?"

"Didn't ask! It looked like gin, and it smelt like a sulphide factorywhen it got on my clothes. They certainly had that bottle. "

"Well, Skunk's Misery hasn't got _this_ bottle, anyhow!" I could see noreason for the look on her face. It was not gay any more; it was stern, if a girl's face can be stern, and it was white with angry suspicion. Suddenly she laughed, rather fiercely. "I'm glad I thought of it beforethe jolting broke it in the wagon! I want to get it safely to BillyJones's. "

The reason why beat me, since she had pretended to know nothing of it, so I said nothing. After a long silence Paulette sighed. 

"You've been very kind to me, Mr. Stretton, " she said, as if she hadbeen thinking. "I wish you could see your way to--trusting me!"

"I don't know how I've been kind, " I left out the trusting part. "Ihave hardly seen you to speak to till to-night, except, " and I said itdeliberately, "the first time I ever saw you, sitting by the fire at LaChance. You did speak to me then. "

"Was that--the first time you saw me?" It might have been forgetfulness, or a challenge to repeat what she had said to me by the lake in thedark. But I was not going to repeat that. Something told me, as it hadtold me when I came on her by Dudley's fire--though it was for adifferent reason, now that I knew she was his and not mine--that I wouldbe a fool to fight my own thoughts of her with explanations, even if shechose to make any. I looked directly into her face instead. All I couldsee was her eyes, that were just dark pools in the dusk, and her mouth, oddly grave and unsmiling. But then and there--and any one who thinks mea fool is welcome to--my ugly suspicions of her died. And I could havedied of shame myself to think I had ever harbored them. If she had donethings I could not understand--and she had--I knew there must be a goodreason for them. For the rest, in spite of Marcia and her sillymysteries, and even though she belonged to Dudley, she was my dreamgirl, and I meant to stand by her. 

"That was the first time I spoke to you, " I said, as if there had beenno pause. "After that, I picked up a seal for you, and I told you yourhair was untidy before Marcia could. I think those are all theenormously kind things I've ever done for you. But, if you wantkindness, you know where to come!"

"Without telling you things--and when you don't trust me!"

"Telling things never made a man trust any one, " said I. "And besides, "it was so dark now, as we crawled along the side of the long rocky hillthat followed the swamp, that I had to look hard to see her face, "Inever said I didn't trust you. And there isn't anything you could tellme that I want to know!"

"Oh, " Paulette cried as sharply as if I had struck her, "do you meanyou're taking me on trust--in spite of everything?"

"In spite of nothing. " I laughed. I was not going to have her think Iknew about Collins, much more all the stuff Marcia had said. But sheturned her head and looked at me with a curious intentness. 

"I'll try, " she began in a smothered sort of voice, "I mean I'm not allyou've been thinking I was, Mr. Stretton! Only, " passionately, and itwas the last thing I had expected her to say, "I wish we were at BillyJones's with all this gold!"

I did not, whether she had astonished me or not. I could have driven allnight with her beside me, and her arm touching mine when the wagonbumped over the rocks. 

"We're halfway, " I returned rather cheerlessly. "Why? You're not afraidwe'll be held up, are you? No human being ever uses this road. "

"I wasn't thinking of human beings, " she returned simply. "I wasthinking of wolves. "

"Wolves?" I honestly gasped it. Then I laughed straight out. "I can'tfeel particularly agitated about wolves. I know we had some at LaChance, but we probably left them there, nosing round the bunk-houserubbish heap. And anyhow, a wolf or two wouldn't trouble us. They'recowardly things, unless they're in packs. " I felt exactly as if I werecomforting Red Riding Hood or some one in a fairy tale, for the Lordknows it had never occurred to me to be afraid of wolves. "What on earthput wolves in your head?"

"I--don't know! They seemed to be about, lately. "

"Well, I never saw any on this road! I've a revolver, anyhow. "

"I'm g-glad, " said Paulette; and the word jerked out of her, and my armsjerked nearly out of me. In the dark the wagon had hit something thatfelt like nothing but a boulder in the middle of my decent road. Thewagon stopped dead, with an up-ending lurch, and nothing holding it tothe horses but the reins. Why on earth they held I don't know. For withone almighty bound my two young horses tried to get away from me, --andthey would have, if the reins had not been new ones. As it was I had aminute's hard fighting before I got them under. When they stood stillthe girl beside me peered over the front of the wagon into the dark. "It's the whiffletree, I think, " she said, as if she were used towagons. 

I peered over myself and hoped so. "Mercy if it is, " said I. "If it's awheel we're stuck here. Scott, I wonder if I've a bit of rope!"

Paulette Brown pulled out ten feet of spun yarn from under her coat; andif you come to think of it, it was a funny thing for a girl to have. Itstruck me, rather oddly, that she must have come prepared for accidents. "There, " she said, "I expect you can patch us up if I hold the horses. Here's a knife, too, and"--I turned hot all over, for she was puttingsomething else into my hand, just as if she knew I had been wonderingabout it since first we started; but she went on without abreak--"here's my revolver. Put it in your pocket. I'd sooner you keptit. "

I was thankful I had had the decency to trust her before she gave theweapon to me. But I was blazingly angry with myself when I got out ofthe wagon and saw just what had happened. Fair in the middle of my newroad was a boulder that the frost must have loosened from the steephillside that towered over us; and the front of the wagon had hit itsquare, --which it would not have done if I had been looking at the roadinstead of talking to a girl who was no business of mine, now or ever. Igot the horses out of the traces and the pole straps, and let Paulettehold them while I levered the boulder out of the way, down the hillside. I was scared to do it, too, for fear they would get away from her, butshe was evidently as used to horses as to wagons: Bob and Danny stoodfor her like lambs, while I set to work to repair damages. The pole wassnapped, and the whiffletree smashed, so that the traces were useless. Idid some fair jury work with a lucky bit of spruce wood, thewhiffletree, and the axle, and got the pole spliced. It struck me thateven so we should have to do the rest of the way to Billy Jones's at awalk, but I saw no sense in saying so. I got the horses back on thepole, and Paulette in the wagon holding the reins, still talking to thehorses quietly and by name. But as I jumped up beside her the quiet flewout of her voice. 

"The _bottle_, " she all but shrieked at me. "_Mind the bottle!_"

But I had not noticed she had put it on my seat when she got out tohold the horses. I knocked it flying across her, and it smashed toflinders on the near fore wheel, drenching it and splashing over Danny'shind legs. I grabbed the reins from Paulette, and I thought of skunks, and a sulphide factory, --and dead skunks and rotten sulphide at that. Even in the freezing evening air the smell that came from that smashedbottle was beyond anything on earth or purgatory, excepting the stuff Ihad spilt over myself at Skunk's Misery. "What on earth, " I beganstupidly. "Why, that's that Skunk's Misery filth again!"

Paulette's hand came down on my arm with a grip that could not have beenwilder if she had thought the awful smell meant our deaths. "Drive on, will you?" she said in a voice that matched it. "Let the horses _go_, Itell you! If there's anything left in that bottle it may save us fora--I mean, " she caught herself up furiously, "it may save me from beingsick. I don't know how you feel. But for heaven's sake get me out ofthat smell! Oh, why didn't I throw the thing away into the woods, longago?"

I wished she had. The stuff was on Danny as well as on the wheel, and wesmelt like a procession of dead whales. For after the first chokingexplosion of the thing it reeked of nothing but corruption. It was theSkunk's Misery brew all right, only a thousand times stronger. 

"How on earth did Skunk's Misery filth get in my wagon?" I gasped. Andif I had been alone I would have spat. 

"I--can't tell you, " said Paulette shortly. "Mr. Stretton, can't youhurry the horses? I----Oh, hurry them, please!"

I saw no particular reason why; we could not get away from the smell ofthe wheel, or of Danny. But I did wind them up as much as I dared withour kind of a pole, --and suddenly both of them wound themselves up, witha jerk to try any pole. I had all I could do to keep them from a deadrun, and if I knew the reason I trusted the girl beside me did not. Ithad hardly been a sound, more the ghost of a sound. But as I thought itshe flung up her head. 

"What's that?" she said sharply. "Mr. Stretton, what's that?"

"Nothing, " I began; and changed it. "Just a wolf or two somewhere. "

For behind us, in two, three, four quarters at once rose a long wailinghowl. 

CHAPTER VI

MOSTLY WOLVES: AND A GIRL

 Oh, what was that drew screaming breath? "A wolf that slashed at me!" Oh, who was that cried out in death? "A man who struck at thee!"

 _The Night Ride. _

The sound might have come from a country hound or two baying for sheermelancholy, or after a cat: only there were neither hounds nor cats onthe Caraquet road. I felt Paulette stiffen through all her supple body. She whispered to herself sharply, as if she were swearing--onlyafterwards I knew better, and put the word she used where it belonged:"The devil! Oh, the devil!"

I made no answer. I had enough business holding in the horses, remembering that spliced pole. Paulette remembered it too, for she spokeabruptly. "How fast do you dare go?"

"Oh, not too fast, " my thoughts were still on the pole. "They're notafter us, if you're worrying about those wolves. "

But she took no notice. "How far are we from Billy Jones's?"

We were a good way. But I said, "Oh, a few miles!"

"Well, we've got to make it!" I could still feel her queerly rigidagainst my arm; perhaps it was only because she was listening. But--quick, like life, or death, or anything else sudden aslightning--she had no need to listen; nor had I. A burst of raveningyells, gathering up from all sides of us except in front, came from thedark bush. And I yelled myself, at Bob and Danny, to keep them off thedead run. 

It was rot, of course, but I had a queer feeling that wolves _were_after us, and that it was just that Skunk's Misery stuff that hadstarted them, as it had drawn the wolf that had taken my clothes. Icould hear the yelping of one after another grow into the full-throatedchorus of a pack. The woods were full of them. 

"I didn't think he'd dare, " Paulette exclaimed, as if she came out ofher secret thoughts. 

But it did not bring me out of mine, even to remember that young devilCollins. I had pulled out my gun to scare the wolves with a shot ortwo, --and there were no cartridges in it! I could not honestly visualizemyself filling it up the night before, but I was sure I had filled it, just as I was sure I had never troubled to look at it since. But ofcourse I could not have, or it would not have been empty now. I inquiredabsently, because I was rummaging my pockets for cartridges, "Who'ddare? _Whoa_, Bob! What he?"

"They, " Paulette corrected sharply. "I meant the wolves. I thought theywere cowards, but--they don't sound cowardly! I--Mr. Stretton, I believeI'm worried!"

So was I, with a girl to take care of, a tied-on pole and whiffletree, and practically no gun; for there was not a single loose cartridge in mypockets. I had been so mighty secure about the Caraquet road I had neverthought of them. I cursed inside while I said disjointedly, "Quiet, Bob, will you?--There's nothing to be afraid of; you'll laugh over thisto-night!" Because I suddenly hoped so--if the pole held to theHalfway--for the infernal clamor behind us had dropped abruptly to whatmight have been a distant dog fight. But at a sudden note in it thesweat jumped to my upper lip. 

"Dunn and Collins!" I thought. They had been missing when we left. Paulette had said she did not trust Collins, and since he had had the_nous_ to get hold of the Skunk's Misery wolf dope, he or Dunn couldeasily have stowed it in my wagon in the night, and been caught by itthemselves where they had started out to waylay us by the boulder theyput in my road. But all I said was, "The wolves have stopped!"

"Not they, " Paulette retorted, and suddenly knocked me silly withsurprise. "Oh, I haven't done you a bit of good by coming, Mr. Stretton!I thought if I were with you I might be some use, and I'm not. "

I stared stupidly. "D'ye mean you came to fight wolves?"

"No! I came----" but she stopped. "I was afraid--I mean I hated yourgoing alone with all that gold, and Marcia really wanted Mrs. Jones. "

Any other time I would have rounded on her and found out what she waskeeping back, but I was too busy thinking. The horses had calmed to aflying trot up the long hill along whose side we had been crawling whenthe pole went. Once over the crest of it we should have done two milessince we heard the first wolf howl; which meant we were nearer to BillyJones's than I had remembered. If the pole held to get us down the otherside of the long hill there was nothing before us but a mile of corduroyroad through a jungle-thick swamp of hemlock, and then the one bit ofreally excellent going my road could boast, --three clear miles, level asa die, straight to the Halfway stables. 

"We haven't far now, " said I shortly. "And it doesn't matter why youcame; you've been useful enough! I couldn't have held the horses andpatched the wagon too. " I omitted to say I could have tied them to awheel. "But if you're nervous now, there's one thing we could do. Canyou ride?"

"_Ride?_" I thought she laughed. "Yes! Why?"

"We could cut the horses loose and ride them in to the Halfway. "

"What? And leave the gold out here, as we were m----" I knew she cut off"meant to. " "I won't do it!"

"Wolves wouldn't eat it--and there's no one to steal it, " I returnedmatter-of-factly--because if Collins had meant to, the sinister flurrybehind us had decided me his career was closed. "However, it would bewasting trouble to leave the stuff; there's no sign of any pack after usnow. " And a ravening yell cut the words off my tongue. 

The brutes must have scoured after us in silence, hunting us in the darkfor the last mile. For as we stood out, a black blot on the hilltopagainst the night sky, they broke out in chorus just behind us, for allthe world like a pack of hounds who had treed a wildcat; and too closefor any fool lying to occur to me. 

"Paulette, " I blurted, "there's not a cartridge in my gun! Yours is solittle I'm afraid of it. But it may scare them. Take these reins!"

But she turned in her seat and knelt there, looking behind us. If Icould have got her on Danny's back and let her run clear five minutesago it was impossible now. No human being could have pulled up Bob orhim. 

"See them?" I snapped. "By heaven, I wish the brutes would stop thatyelling; they're driving the horses crazy! See them?"

"No. But--yes, yes, " her voice flashed out sharp as a knife. "They're onus! Give me the revolver, quick! I can shoot; and I've cartridges. Youcouldn't do any good with it: it throws low--and it's too small for yourhand. And I wouldn't dare drive. I might get off the road, and we'd bedone. "

It was so true that I did not even turn my head as I shoved over herlittle gun. I had no particular faith in her shooting; my trust was inthe horses' speed. We were getting down the hill like a Niagara ofgalloping hoofs and wheels over a road I had all I could do to see; withthat crazy pole I dared not check the horses to put an ounce on. I stoodup and drove for all I was worth, and the girl beside me shot, --and hit!For a yell and a screaming flurry rose with every report of herrevolver. It was a beastly noise, but it rejoiced me; till suddenly Iheard her pant out a sickened sentence that made me gasp, because it wassuch a funny thing to say. 

"My heavens, I never thought I could be cruel to animals--like this. ButI've got to do it. I"--her voice rose in sudden disjointed triumph--"Mr. Stretton, I believe I've stopped them!"

"I believe you have, " I swore blankly, --and one leapt out of the dark bythe fore wheel as I spoke, and she shot it. 

But it was the last; she _had_ stopped them. And if I had not known thatto have turned even one eye from my horses as we tore down that hillwould have meant we were smashed up on one side of it, I would have beenmore ashamed than I was of being fought for by a girl. "You're awonder--just a marvellous wonder, " I got out thickly. "We're clear--andit's thanks to you!" And ahead of us, in the jungle-thick hemlock thatcrowded the sides of the narrow road I had corduroyed through the swampfor a ricketty mile, a single wolf howled. 

It had a different, curious note, a dying note, if I had known it; but Idid not realize it then. I thought, "We're done! They've headed us!" Isaid, "Look out ahead for all you're worth. If we can keep going, we'llbe through this thicket in a minute. "

But Paulette cut out my thought. "We _are_ done, if they throw thehorses!" And instantly, amazingly, she stood up in the bumping, swayingwagon as if she were on a dancing floor and shed Dudley Wilbraham'scoat. She leaned toward me, and I felt rather than saw that she was inshirt and knickerbockers like a boy. "Keep the horses going as steady asyou can, and whatever you do, don't try to stop them. I'm going to dosomething. Mind, keep them _galloping_!"

I would have grabbed her; only before I knew what she was going to doshe was past me, out over the dashboard, and running along the smashedpole between Bob and Danny in the dark. 

It was nothing to do in daylight. I've done it myself before now, and sohave most men. But for a girl, in the dark and on a broken pole, withwolves heading the horses, --I was so furiously afraid for her that theblood stopped running in my legs, and it was a minute before I saw whatshe was after. She had not slipped; she was astride Danny--ducking underhis rein neatly, for I had not felt the sign of a jerk--but only Godknew what might happen to her if he fell. And suddenly I knew what shehad run out there to do. She was shooting ahead of the horses, down theroad; then to one side and the other of it impartially, covering them. Only what knocked me was that there was no sign of a wolf either beforeor beside us on the narrow, black-dark highway, --and that she wasshooting into the jungle-thick swamp hemlocks on each side of it at thebreast height of a man!

And at a single ghastly, smothered cry I burst out, "By gad, it _is_men!" For I knew she had shot one. I listened, over the rattling roll ofthe wheels on the corduroy, but there was no second cry. There was onlywhat seemed dead silence after the thunder of the wheels on the unevenlogs, as we swept out on the level road that led straight to the Halfwaystable. It was light, too, after the dead blackness of the narrow swamproad. I saw the girl turn on Danny carelessly, as if she were in asaddle, and wave her hand forward for me to keep going. But the onlythought I had was to get her back into the wagon. Not because I wasafraid of a smash, for if the mended pole had held in that crazy, tearing gallop from the top of the hill it would hold till the Halfway. I just wanted her safe beside me. I had had enough of seeing a girl dostunts that stopped my blood. "Come back out of that, " I shouted at her;"I'm going to stop the horses--and you come _here_!"

She motioned forward, crying out something unintelligible. But before Icould pull up the horses, before I even guessed what she meant to do, Isaw her stand up on Danny's back, spring from his rump, and, --landlightly in the wagon!

It may be true that I damned her up in heaps from sheer fright; I know Iasked fiercely if she wanted to kill herself. She said no, quite coolly. Only that that pole would not bear any more running on it, or the jerkof a sudden stop either: it was that she had called out to me. 

"Neither can I bear any more--of tricks that might lose your life tosave me and my miserable gold, " I said angrily. "Sit down this minuteand wrap that coat round you. " I had ceased to care that it wasDudley's. "It's bitter cold. And there's the light at the Halfway!"

"What I did wasn't anything--for me, " my dream girl retorted oddly. "AndI don't know that it was altogether to save you, Mr. Stretton, or yourgold either, that you thought I meant to steal. I was pretty afraid formyself, with those wolves!"

I was too raging with myself to answer. Of course it had not been shewho had meant to steal my gold; and no matter how she had known some onemeant to get at me, with wolves or anything else. It had been justCollins--and the sheer gall of it jammed my teeth--Collins and Dunn, two ne'er-do-well brats in our own mine. I had realized already thatthey had been missing from La Chance quite early enough for me to thankthem for the boulder on my good road, and Collins----But I hastilyrevised my conviction that it was Collins I had heard the wolves chop inthe bush as hounds chop a fox: Collins had too much sense. It had morelikely been Dunn; he was the kind to get eaten! Collins must have leggedit early for my corduroy road, where Paulette had expected him enough toshoot at him; while Dunn stayed round La Chance to put the wolf bait inmy wagon and got caught by it himself on his way to join Collins. 

As for the genesis of the wolf dope, its history came to me coherentlyas letters spelling a word, beginning with the bottle of mixed filth Ihad spilt on myself at Skunk's Misery. The second I and my smellyclothes reached shore the night I returned to La Chance, a wolf hadscented me and howled; had followed me to the shack and howled againwhile I was talking to Marcia about Paulette Brown; and another hadcarried off those very clothes under my own eyes where I stood by mywindow, as if the smell on them had been some kind of bait it could notresist. Wherever Dunn and Collins had got it, the smell from the brokenbottle had been exactly the same, only twenty times stronger: and ithad been meant to smash at the boulder on my road and turn me into aliving bait for wolves!

The theory may sound crazy, but it happens to be sane. There is a wolfdope, made of heaven knows what, except that it contains certainingredients that have to be put in bottles and ripened in the sun for amonth. Two Frenchmen were jailed this last June in Quebec province forusing it around a fish and game club, and endangering people's lives. That same wolf bait had been put in my wagon by somebody, --and the humancry out of the swamp at Paulette's shot suddenly repeated itself in myears. I was biting my lip, or I would have grinned. Paulette had hit theman who was to have put me out of business, if the wolves failed whenthat bottle smashed and the boulder crippled my wagon. Collins, who, laid up in the swamp, was to have reaped my gold and me if I gotthrough! The cheek of him made me blaze again, and I turned on Pauletteabruptly. 

"Look here, do you know you shot a man in the swamp?"

"I hope I killed him, " returned that same girl who had disliked beingcruel to wolves, --and instantly saw what I was after. "That's nonsense, though! There couldn't have been any man there, Mr. Stretton. Thewolves would have eaten him!"

"Only one wolf got by you, " I suggested drily. 

She shrugged her shoulders. "They'd have shot at us--men, I mean!"

I made no answer. It struck me forcibly that Collins certainly wouldhave; unless he was not out for shooting, but merely waiting to removethe gold from my wagon as soon as the wolves had disposed of my horsesand me. Even then I did not see why he had held his fire, unless he hadno gun. But the whole thing was a snarl it was no good thinking abouttill the girl beside me owned how much she knew about it. I wonderedsharply if it had been just that knowledge she was trying to give Dudleythe night I stopped her. The lights at the Halfway were very close as Iturned to her. 

"If I've helped you at all, why can't you tell me all the trouble, instead of Dudley?" I asked, very low. 

"I don't know anything, " but I thought she checked a sob, "that I--cantell. I just thought there might be trouble to-night, but I imagined itwould happen before you started. That was why I marked that gold. Don'ttake any, _ever_, out of the safe, if it hasn't my seal on it. "

"You can't prevent Collins from changing the boxes--forever, " I saiddeliberately; because, unless he were dead, as I hoped, she couldn't. But Paulette stared at me, open-lipped, as we drove into the Halfwayyard, and Billy Jones ran out with a lantern. 

"Collins?" she repeated, as if she had never heard his name, much lessmet him secretly in the dark. "I don't know anything about any Collins, nor any one I could--put a name to! I tell you I don't know who was inthe swamp!"

She had not said she did not know who was responsible for the bottle inmy wagon. But if I am Indian-dark I can be Indian-silent too. I saidnothing about that. "Well, it doesn't matter who did anything, " Iexclaimed suddenly, "so long as there's trust between you and me!"Because I forgot Dudley and everything but my dream girl who had foughtfor me, and I suddenly wondered if she had not forgotten Dudley, too. For Bob and Danny stood still, played out and sweating, and PauletteBrown sat staring at me with great eyes, instead of moving. 

But she had forgotten nothing. "You're very kind--to me, and Dudley, "she said quietly, and slipped out of the wagon before I could lift herdown. A sudden voice kept me from jumping after her. 

"By golly, " said Billy Jones, sniffing at my fore wheel. "Have you runover a hundred skunks?"

CHAPTER VII

I FIND LITTLE ENOUGH ON THE CORDUROY ROAD, AND LESS AT SKUNK'S MISERY

I told Billy Jones as much as I thought fit of the evening'swork, --which included no mention of wolf dope, or shooting on thecorduroy road. 

If he listened incredulously to my tale of a wolf pack one look at Boband Danny told him it was true. They had had all they wanted, and wespent an hour working over them. The wagon was a wreck; why the splicedpole had hung together to the Halfway I don't know, but it had; and Ilet the smell on it go as a skunk. I lifted the gold into the lockedcupboard where Billy kept his stores. It had to be put in another wagonfor Caraquet, anyhow; and besides, I was not going on to Caraquet in themorning. The gold was safe with Billy, and there were other places thatneeded visiting first. There was no hope of getting at the ugly businessthat had brewed up at La Chance through Paulette Brown, or Collinseither; since one would never tell how much or how little she knew, andthe other would lie, if he ever reappeared. But the wolf bait end Icould get at, and I meant to. Which was the reason I sat on one of thehorses I had sent over to the Halfway--after my one experience when itheld none--when my dream girl and Mrs. Jones came out of Billy's shackin the cold of a November dawn. 

"I'm riding some of the way back with you, " I observed casually. 

Paulette stopped short. She was lovelier than I had ever seen her, withher gold-bronze hair shining over the sable collar of Dudley's coat. Ifancied her eyes shone, too, for one second, at seeing me. But there Iwas wrong. 

"I thought you'd started for Caraquet, " she exclaimed hastily. "Youneedn't come with us. There won't be any wolves in the daytime, and--youknow there's no need for you to come!"

There was not. Even if her voice had not so significantly conveyed thefact that there was no bottle in her wagon this time, Mrs. BillyJones--to put a hard fact politely--was about the most capable lady Ihad ever met. She was big-boned, hard-faced and profane; and usuallyleft Billy to look after the house while she attended to a line oftraps, or hunted bears for their skins. No wolves would worry theintrepid and thoroughly armed Mrs. Jones. But all the same I was ridingsome of the way back to La Chance. 

There was not a thing to be seen on the corduroy road through the swamp, or on the hill we had come down at the dead run; and I had not expectedthere would be. But on the top of the hill I bade good-by to my dreamgirl, --who was not mine, and was going back to Dudley. It was all Icould manage to do it, too. I did not know I was biting my lip until ithurt; then I stopped watching her out of sight and turned back on thebusiness that had brought me. 

You could ride a horse down the hill into the swamp if you knew how; andI did. I tied him to a tree and went over each side of the corduroy roadon my feet. It was silent as death there in the cold gray morning, withthe frost-fog clinging in the somber hemlocks, and the swamp frozen sosolid that my moccasins never left a mark. No one else's feet had left amark there, either, and I would have given up the idea that a man hadbeen cached by the road the night before, if it had not been for twothings. 

One was a dead wolf, with a gash in his throat in which the knife hadbeen left till he was cold; you could tell by the blood clots round thewound: the other I did not find at once. But wolves do not stabthemselves, and I remembered that the lone wolf cry ahead of us on thatroad had been a dying cry, not a hunting one. If Collins had killed thebeast he had waited there long enough to let an hour pass before he tookhis knife out of its throat: so he had been there when we racedby, --which was all I wanted to know, except where he had gone since. Asfor the other thing I found, it was behind the hemlocks when I quarteredthe sides of the road in the silence and the frost-fog: and it wasnothing but a patch of shell ice. But the flimsy, crackling stuff wascrushed into two cup-like marks, as plainly telltale as if I had seen aman fall on his knees in them. And by them, frozen there, were a dozendrops of blood. 

I knew angrily that if it were Collins's blood he had not missed itparticularly, for he had moved away without leaving a sign of a trail. Where to I had no means of knowing, till five minutes later I foundanother spatter of blood on my corduroy road, --and as I looked at it myown blood boiled. There was not only no one but that young devil Collinswho could have lain in wait for me; but he had had the nerve to walkaway on my own road! Where to, beat me; but considering what I knew ofhis easy deviltry it was probably back to La Chance and a girl who wasdaring to fight him. 

If I were worried for that girl I could not go back to her. I had to getmy gold to Caraquet. Besides, I had a feeling it might be useful to do alittle still hunting round Skunk's Misery. If Collins had had thatbottle of devil's brew at La Chance he had got it from Skunk's Misery:probably out of the very hut where I had once nursed a filthy boy. And Ihad a feeling that the first thing I needed to do was to prove it. 

As I rode back to Billy Jones's I would have given a deal for any kindof a motor car that would have reduced the twenty-seven miles toCaraquet into nothing, instead of an all-day job, --which it proved tobe. 

Not that I met a soul on the road. I didn't. But it took my wagon fourhours to reach Caraquet over the frozen ruts of that same road; andanother hour to hand over Dudley's gold to Randall, a man of my own whowas to carry it on the mail coach to the distant railway. 

I had no worry about the gold, once Randall had charge of it: no one waslikely to trouble him or the coach on the open post road, even if theyhad guessed what he convoyed. I was turning away, whistling at being ridof the stuff, when he called me back to hand over a bundle of lettersfor La Chance. There were three for Marcia, and one--in old Thompson'sback-number copperplate--for Dudley. There were no letters for PauletteBrown or myself, but perhaps neither of us had expected any. I know Ihadn't. I gave the Wilbraham family's correspondence the careless glanceyou always bestow on other people's letters and shoved it into my insidepocket. After which I left my horses and wagon safe in Randall's stableand started to walk back to Skunk's Misery and the Halfway stables. 

It seemed a fool thing to do, and I had no particular use for walkingall that way; but there was no other means of accomplishing the twentymiles through the bush from Caraquet to Skunk's Misery. Aside from thefact that I had no desire to advertise my arrival, there was no wagonroad to Skunk's Misery. Its inhabitants did not possess wagons, --orhorses to put in them. 

It was black dark when I reached the place, and for a moment I stood andconsidered it. I had never really visualized it before, any more thanyou do any place that you take for granted as outside your scheme ofexistence. I was not so sure that it was, now. Anyhow, I stood in thegap of a desolate hill and looked into the hollow before me that--addedto the dirt no skunk could stand--had earned the place its name. It wasall stones: gravel stones, little stones, stones as big as cabs and asbig as houses; and, hunched up among them like lean-tos, hidden awayamong the rocks and the pine trees growing up from among the rockswherever they could find root-hold, were the houses of the Skunk'sMisery people. There was no pretense of a street or a village: therewere just houses, --if they deserved even that name. How many there wereI could not tell. I had never had the curiosity to explore the place. But if it sounds as though a narrow, stone-choked valley were no citadelfor a man or men to have hidden themselves, or for any one to conduct anindustry like making a secret scent to attract wolves, the person whosaid so would be mistaken. There was never in the world a better placefor secret dwelling and villainy and all the rest than Skunk's Misery. 

In the first place, you could not see the houses among the rocks. Thevalley was just like a porcupine warren. No rock stood out alone: theywere all jumbled up together, big and little, with pine trees growing onthe tops of them and in between them, up from the earth that was twelve, twenty, or sometimes forty feet below. The whole hollow was a maze ofnarrow, winding tracks, between rocks and under them, sometimes a footwide and sometimes six, that Skunk's Misery used for roads. What itscitizens lived on, I had never been able to guess. Caraquet said it wason wolf bounties, --which was another thing that had set me thinkingabout the bottle I had spilt on my clothes. If Collins or Dunn had got asimilar bottle there I meant to find out about it: and I had the moreheart for doing it since Paulette Brown knew nothing of Skunk's Misery. You can tell when a girl has never heard of a place, and I knew she hadnever heard of that one. I settled down the revolver I had filled up atBilly Jones's, and trod softly down the nearest of the winding alleys, over the worn pine needles, in the dark. 

There were just twenty houses, when I had counted all I could find. There might have been twenty more, under rocks and behind rocks I couldnot make my way around; but I was no porcupine, and in the dark I couldnot stumble on them. There was not a sign of a stranger in the place, ora soul about. And judging from the darkness and the quiet, all thefat-faced, indifferent women were in bed and asleep, and the shiftlessrats of men were still away. There were no dogs to bark at me: I hadlearned that in my previous sojourn there. Dogs required food, andSkunk's Misery had none to spare. I went back through the one windingalley that was familiar to me, found the hut where I had nursed the boy, and walked in. 

There was not any Collins there, anyhow. The boy and his mother were inbed, or what went for being in bed. But at the sound of my voice thewoman fairly flung herself at me, saying that her son was recoveredagain, and it was I who had saved him for her. She piled wood on thefire that was built up against the face of the rock that formed twosides of her house, and jabbered gratitude as I had never thought anySkunk's Misery woman could jabber. And she did not look like one, either; she was handsome, in a haggard, vicious way, and she was notold. I did not think myself that her son looked particularly recovered. He lay like a log on his spruce-bough bed, awake and conscious butwholly speechless, though his mother seemed satisfied. But I had notcome to talk about any sick boys. I asked casually where I could findthe stranger who had been in Skunk's Misery lately. But the woman onlystared at me, as if the idea would not filter into her head. Presentlyshe said dully that there had been no stranger there; I was the only oneshe had ever seen. 

It was likely enough; a Skunk's Misery messenger had more probably takenthe wolf dope to Collins. I asked casually if she had any more of thestuff I had spilt on my clothes, and where she had got it, --and oncemore I ran bang up against a stone wall. The woman explainedmatter-of-factly that she had not got it from any one. She had found itstanding in the sun beside one of the rocks, and stolen it, supposing itwas gin. When she found it was not she took it for some sort ofliniment; and put it where I had knocked it over on myself. She hadnever seen nor heard of any more of it. But of course it might havebelonged to any one in the place, only I could understand she could notask about it: which I did, knowing how precious a whole bottle ofanything was in those surroundings. As to where she had found it, shecould not be sure. She thought it was by the new house the Frenchwoman'sson had built that autumn and never lived in!

I pricked up my ears. The Frenchwoman's son was one of the men arrestedin Quebec province for using wolf dope: a handsome, elusive devil whosometimes haunted the lumber woods at the lower end of Lac Tremblant, trapping or robbing traps as seemed good to him, and paying backinterruptions with such interest that no one was keen to interfere withhim. If the Frenchwoman's son were in with Collins in trying to hold upthe La Chance gold, and was at Skunk's Misery now, I sawdaylight, --anyhow about the wolf dope. 

But the woman by the fire knocked that idea out of me, half-made. TheFrenchwoman's son had not been there for two months past and had onlycome there at all to build a house. It was empty now, but no one haddared to go into it. She could show it to me, but she was sure he hadhad nothing to do with that liniment, if I wanted any more. After whichshe relapsed into indifference, or I thought so, till I showed her whatlittle money I had in my pocket. She rose then, abruptly, and led theway out of her hut to the deserted house the Frenchwoman's son had builtfor caprice and never lived in. 

It was deserted enough, in all conscience. The door was open, and theNovember wind free to play through the place as it liked. I stood on thethreshold, thinking. I had found out nothing about any wolf-bait, excepting the one bottle the Frenchwoman's son might or might not haveleft there; certainly nothing about Collins ever having got hold of any;and if I had meant to spend the rest of the night in Skunk's Misery Isaw no particular sense in doing it. I had a solid conviction that theboy's mother would not mention I had ever been there, for fear she mighthave to share what little I had given her--which, as it fell out, wastrue--and turned to go. 

But when the woman had left me to creep home in the dark, while I mademy own way out of the village, I altered my mind about going. I cutdown enough pine boughs to make a bed under me, shut the door of thedeserted house--that I knew enough of the Frenchwoman's son to knowwould have no visitors--had a drink from my flask, and slept the sleepof the hunting dog till it should be daylight. 

And, like the hunting dog, I went on with my business in my dreams; tillmy legs jerked and woke me, to see a waning moon peering in from thewest, through the hole that served the hut for a chimney, and I rose togo back to Billy Jones. For I dreamed there was a gang of men in acellar under the very hut I slept in, with a business-like row ofwolf-bait bottles at their feet, where they sat squabbling over a pokergame. But as I said, it was the waning morning moon that woke me, andthe hut was silent as the grave. I picked up the pine-bough bed I hadslept on and carried it into the bush with me far enough to throw itdown where it would tell no tales--I did not know why I did it, but Iwas to be glad--tightened up my belt, and took a short cut through thethick bush to Billy Jones's stables, with nothing to show for my day'sand night's work but a dead wolf, a stained bit of shell ice, and a fewdrops of blood on the logs of my corduroy road. I was starving, and itwas noonday, when I came out of the bush and tramped into the Halfway, much as I had done that first time I came from Skunk's Misery and wenthome to La Chance. Only to-day Billy Jones was not sitting by his stovereading his ancient newspaper. He was standing in the kitchen with twoteamsters from La Chance, looking down at a dead man. 

As I opened the door and stood staring, the teamsters jumped as if theyhad been shot. But Billy only turned a stolid white face on me. 

"My God, Mr. Stretton, " he said, stolidly too, "what do you make ofthis?"

All I could see from where I stood was a rigid hand, that had said deathto me the second I opened the door. I gave a sort of spring forward. What I thought was that here was the man who had left the blood in theswamp when Paulette's bullet hit him, and that I had got Collins. I hadnearly burst out that he had what he deserved. But instead I stopped, paralyzed, where my spring had left me. 

"My God, " I said in my turn, "I don't know!"

For the man who lay in front of me, stone dead in water-soaked clothesthat were frozen to his stark body, was Thompson, our oldsuperintendent, who only six weeks ago had left the La Chance mine;whose letter to Dudley, with its careful, back-number copperplateaddress, lay in my pocket now. 

"It's Thompson!" was the only thing I could say. 

CHAPTER VIII

THOMPSON!

Thompson it was, if it seemed incredible. And Billy Jones exclaimed, ashe pointed to him, "He can't have been dead longer than since lastnight! And I can't understand this thing, Mr. Stretton! It's but sixweeks since Thompson _left_ here; and from what he said he didn't meanto come back. He told me he was in a hurry to get away, because he wastaking a position in a copper mine in the West. I remember I warned himyou hadn't got all your swamps corduroyed, and likely he couldn't driveclear into Caraquet; so he left his wagon here and borrowed a saddlefrom me to ride over. And a boy brought his horse back next day, or dayafter, --I forget which. I remember Thompson forgot to send me a tin oftobacco he promised to get me off Randall, at Caraquet!"

"D'ye mean you think he never went to Caraquet?" It was a stupidquestion, for, of course, I knew he had gone there, and farther, or hecould not have sent Macartney to La Chance, or a letter to Dudley now. But what I was really thinking of was that I had been right about thedate old Thompson left the mine, and that he had gone over my road onone of the two days I was away with all my road men, getting logs out ofthe bush. 

Billy Jones scattered my thoughts impatiently: "Oh, he went there allright. It's his--coming back--that beats me!"

It beat me too, for reasons Billy knew nothing about. Why Thompson hadcome back was his own business; but it was plain he had been dead ascant twenty-four hours, and the only place I could think of where hewas likely to have been killed was on my corduroy road the night before. Only I did not see how Thompson's clothes could have got water-soaked ina frozen swamp; and I did not see, either, what a decent man likeThompson could have been doing out there like a wolf, with wolves. I hadmore sense than to think he could have had any truck with Collins aboutour gold. I nodded back at the teamsters: "Where did they find him?"

"They didn't find him, " returned Billy simply, "it was my hound dog. Hewas yelling down at the lake shore this morning, like he'd treed awildcat, and when I went down it was Thompson he'd found, --lying righton shore in the daylight! You know how that fool Lac Tremblant behaves;the water in it had gone down to nothing this morning, and on the barestones it had left was Thompson. Only I don't see how he ever _got_there unless he was coming back, from wherever he'd been outside, by LacTremblant instead of your road!"

"Where was his canoe?"

"He didn't have any! But you know that lake--it might have smashed hiscanoe on him like an egg, and then--just by chance--put him ashore!" Idid know: I had had all I wanted to keep from being smashed myself thenight I crossed to La Chance. I nodded, and Billy choked. "It--it kindof sickened me this morning; I _liked_ Thompson, Mr. Stretton!"

So had I, if I had laughed at his eternal solitaire. Billy and I laidhim on the bed, decently, after we had done what we could for him. And Iwas ashamed to have even wondered if he had been the man Paulette hadshot at on the La Chance road; for there was not a mark on him, and afool could have told he had just been drowned in Lac Tremblant. Therewas nothing in his pockets to tell how he had got there: only a singletwo-dollar bill and a damp pack of cards in a wet leather case. Thompson's solitaire cards! Somehow the things gave me a lump in mythroat; I wished I had talked more to Thompson in the long evenings. The letter in my pocket from him was Dudley's, and I did not mention itto Billy. I said I would try to find out where the dead man had comefrom, and anything else I could, before he buried him. And with that Ileft old Thompson lying on Billy's bed with his face covered, and rodehome to La Chance. 

When I got in, Dudley and Macartney were in the living room, talking. Any other time I might have wondered why Dudley looked so jumpy andbad-tempered, but all I was thinking of then was my ugly news. Butbefore I could tell it, Dudley flew at me. "Where the devil have youbeen all day? And what's happened to my gold?"

I don't know why, but I had a furious, cold qualm that either Dudley orMacartney had _found out_, --I don't mean about Collins so much as aboutPaulette having been mixed up with him. Till I knew I was damned if I'dmention him. 

"I don't understand, " I said shortly. "The gold's in Caraquet. But thereason I didn't get home this morning is that Thompson's back!"

"What?" Macartney never spoke loud, yet it cracked out. 

I nodded. "I mean he's dead, poor chap! They found his body in LacTremblant this morning. " And suddenly I knew I was staring atMacartney. His capable face was always pale, but in one second it hadgone ghastly. It came over me that he had known old Thompson all hislife, and I blurted involuntarily, "I'm sorry, Macartney!"

But he took no notice. 

"They found Thompson's body, " he said heavily, as a man does when he issick with shock. "Who found it? Why, --he wasn't _here_! What in hell doyou mean?"

I told him. Dudley sat and goggled at the two of us, but Macartneystared at the floor, his face still ghastly. "I beg your pardon, Stretton, " he muttered as if he were dizzy. "Only Thompson was about theoldest friend I had. I thought----" But he checked himself and exclaimedwith a sudden sharp doubt, "It can't be old Thompson, Stretton; you mustbe mistaken! He couldn't be here--he was going out West. I was expectinga letter from him any day, to say he'd started. "

"It's here. At least, I mean there's _a_ letter from him, that I got inCaraquet, only it's for Mr. Wilbraham. And I wasn't mistaken, Macartney. I wish I were!"

Macartney could not speak. I was surprised; I had not suspected him ofmuch of a heart. I pulled out the letter, and Dudley opened it. 

"Down and out--the poor old devil, " said he slowly, staring at it, "andcame back. Well, poor Thompson!" He read the thing again and handed itto Macartney. But Macartney only gave one silent, comprehensive stare atit, in the set-eyed way that was the only thing I had never liked abouthim, and pushed the letter across the table to me. 

It was dated and postmarked Montreal. There was no street address, whichwas not like Thompson. But its precise phrases, which _were_ like him, sounded down and out all right. 

 "DEAR MR. WILBRAHAM: I write to inquire if you will take me back at La Chance. There is no work here, or anywhere, and the British Columbia copper mine, where I intended to go, has shut down. I have nothing else in view, and I am stranded. If by to-morrow I cannot obtain work here I see nothing between me and starvation but to return to La Chance. I trust you can see your way to taking me back, in no matter how subordinate a position, at least till I can hear of something else. If I am obliged to chance coming to you I will take the shortest route, avoiding Caraquet, and coming by Lac Tremblant. 

 "Yours truly, "WILLIAM D. THOMPSON. "

"That's funny, " I let out involuntarily. And Dudley snapped at me thatit wasn't; it was ghastly. 

"I don't mean the letter, " I said absently. "It's that about LacTremblant. Thompson was scared blue of that lake; he used to beg me notto go out on it. And by gad, Dudley, I don't see how he could have comethat way! He couldn't paddle a canoe!"

"What?" Macartney started, staring at me. "You're right: he couldn't, "he said slowly. "That does make it queer--except that we don't know hemeant to paddle up the lake. He might have intended to walk here alongits shore, and strayed or slipped in or something, in the dark. But whattroubles me is--can't you see he'd gone crazy? This letter"--he put afinger on it, eloquently--"isn't sane, from a self-contained man likeThompson! He must have been off his head with worry before he wrote it, or started back to a place he'd left for----"

"Incompetency, if you want the brutal truth, " Dudley broke in notunkindly. "He was too old-fashioned to make good elsewhere, I expect;and if he found it out, I don't wonder if he did go off his head. "

I glanced over Dudley's shoulder at the letter he and Macartney werestudying. It did not look crazy, with its Gaskell's Compendiumcopperplate and its careful signature. I don't know why I picked up theenvelope from where it lay unnoticed on the table by Dudley and fiddledwith it scrutinizingly, but I did. The outside of it looked all right, with its address in Thompson's neat copperplate. But it wasn't wellglued or something, for as I shoved my fingers inside, the whole thingopened out flat, like a lily. I looked down mechanically as I felt itgo, and--by gad, the inside of it _didn't_ look right! There was nothingon the glued-down top flap, but the inside back of the envelope wasn'tblank, as it should have been. It wasn't written on in Thompson's neatcopperplate or in his neat phrases, either. A pencil scrawl stared atme, upside down, as I gripped the lower flap of the envelopeunconsciously, under the ball of my big thumb. "Why, here's some more, "I exclaimed like an ass, glaring at the envelope's inside back. "'Takecare--something----' What's this? What on earth did the old man mean?"

Macartney caught the splayed-out envelope from my hand, so sharply thatthe flap I didn't know I held tore away, and stayed in my fist as hegazed on the rest of the reversed envelope with his set-eyed stare. "'Take care, Macartney! Gold, life, everything--in danger!'" he read outblankly. "Why, it's some kind of a crazy warning to _me_! Only--nobodywants my life, and I've no gold--if that's what he means! I----" but hebroke down completely. "Old Thompson must have gone stark mad, " hemuttered. "I--it makes me heartsick!"

"I don't know, " Dudley snapped unexpectedly. "It fits about the gold, perhaps. Thompson might have suspected something before he left here!"

He looked at Macartney significantly, and I remembered the question hehad rapped at me when I came in. Something inside me told me to hold mytongue concerning my adventures on the Caraquet road till I knew whatPaulette had said about them, --which I was pretty certain was mightylittle. But once again I had that cold fear that Macartney might havefound out something about the seal she had put on all our gold, or hertalking to Collins in the dark, for the question Dudley flung at me wasjust what I had been expecting:

"You didn't see anything of Dunn or Collins between here andCaraquet--or hear from Billy Jones that they'd gone by the Halfway?"

"No, " I fenced with a bland, lying truth. "I saw two of our teamsters atthe Halfway!"

Dudley shook his head. "Not them--I knew about them! But Dunn andCollins cleared out the day you left, and I thought----" he broke offirrelevantly. "What the dickens possessed you to take Paulette with youthat night? She might have been killed--I heard you'd the dog's owntrouble on the road!"

That something inside me stiffened up. Whatever he'd heard, I was prettycertain was not all; and I was hanged if I were coming out with the fullstory of that crazy drive till I knew whether Paulette came into it. Ihad no desire to talk before Macartney either, in spite of what he mighthave found out, or guessed; no matter what Paulette might have beenmixed up in I was not going to have a stern-faced, set-eyed Macartneyput her through a catechism about it. Or Dudley either, for that matter. I had no real voucher for the terms he and Paulette were on, exceptMarcia's word; and Dudley was no man to trust not to turn on a girl. 

"We shot a few wolves, if that's what you mean, " I said roughly. "Idon't see why that should have worried you about Miss Paulette--or whatit has to do with Dunn and Collins!"--which was a plain lie. 

"Few wolves! I know all about them!" Dudley retorted viciously. "BillyJones's wife came out with the plain truth--that you'd been chased by apack! And as for what Dunn and Collins had to do with my worrying aboutthe gold you carried, it's simple enough. They----" but he stopped, chewing two fingers with a disgusting trick he had. "By gad, " he lookedup suddenly, "I believe it was them the wolves were after to begin with, Stretton--before they got started on you! And it wasn't what they leftLa Chance for!"

"What d'ye mean?"

Dudley was chewing his fingers again, but Macartney answered with hisusual set-eyed openness. "The gold, " he supplied. "I got an idea thosetwo deserters might have laid up beside the Caraquet road somewhere, towait for you and get it. I had trouble with them over some drilling themorning you left; and when I went back to the stope after seeing you andMiss Paulette off, they'd cleared out. They must have gone a couple ofhours before you did. They let out something about hold-ups while I washaving the trouble with them, and Wilbraham and I got worried they mighthave managed to get over the road before you, and be lying up for yousomewhere. "

"They only left--two hours before I did, " said I, with flat irrelevance. I must have stared at Macartney like a fool, but he had knocked the windclean out of me as to Collins having been the man in the swamp. Withonly two hours' start neither he nor Dunn, nor any man, for matter ofthat, could have legged it over my road in time to lie up in the onlyplace I knew some one had laid up, --on the corduroy road. 

"Well, they didn't get me, and I never saw them, " I began, --and suddenlyremembered that ghastly noise, like the last flurry of a dog fight, thathad halted the wolves on my track. My first thought of it, and of Dunnand Collins, had been right. "By gad, I believe I heard them though, " Iexclaimed, "and if they were on that road they're killed and eaten! ButI didn't have any trouble about the gold. "

It was true to the letter, for my side had attended to all the trouble, if my side was only a girl who would not have shot without need. Butwhen I explained the noise that might have accounted for Dunn andCollins, Dudley shook his head. 

"They didn't get eaten; not they! And your having no trouble with thegold isn't saying you won't have any. If no one saw Dunn and Collinsgoing out to Caraquet I bet they're laid up somewhere on your road yet, waiting for your next trip! And as if that wasn't worry enough, poor oldThompson has to go out of his mind and come back here to be founddead--and I mean to find out how!" He was working himself up into one ofhis senseless rages, and he turned on Macartney furiously. "You knewhim before I did! Write to his people and find out how he got here, anyhow. I'm not going to have any man come back, and just be found deadlike a dog, if it is only old Thompson! I'm going to have him tracedfrom the time he left Montreal. "

"He had no people, " said Macartney blankly. "As far as I know, he wasjust a bit of driftwood. And as for finding out anything about hisjourney here, I don't suppose we ever can! All we'll get at was that hecame back--and was found dead. " And something made me look past him andDudley, sitting with their backs to the living-room door, and the bloodjumped into my face. 

Paulette Brown stood in the doorway, motionless, as if she had beenthere some time. I didn't know if she were merely knocked flat about thewolves and Collins, or scared Macartney might have found out somethingabout her. But she was staring at Macartney's unconscious back as youlook at a chair or anything, without seeing it, and if he were pale shewas dead white, --except her mouth that was arched to a piteous crimsonbow, and her eyes that looked dark as pools of blue ink. But she did notspeak of Dunn or Collins. 

"Do you mean Thompson's been found dead?--the quiet man who was herewhen I came?" she stammered, as if it choked her. And I had an ungodlyfright she was going to say she must have shot him on the corduroy road!

"Billy Jones found him drowned in Lac Tremblant; it was an accident, " Iexclaimed sharply, before she could come out with more about shootingand wolf bait, and perhaps herself, than I chose any one to know, --tillI knew it first. And I saw the blood flash into her face as it hadflashed into mine at the sight of her. 

"Oh, I thought Mr. Macartney meant he'd been--murdered, " she returnedfaintly. "I'm glad--he wasn't. But if he had been, I suppose it would besure to come out!"

"Crime doesn't always come out, Miss Paulette, " said Macartney. 

But Paulette only answered listlessly that she was not sure, one nevercould tell; and moved to her usual seat by the fire. 

I was knocked endways about Collins; for who could have been on thecorduroy road if he had not. I would have given most of the world forten minutes alone with my dream girl and explanations. But Dudley beganthe whole story of Thompson over again, and Macartney stood there, andMarcia--whom I had not seen since she went to bed with a swollenface--came in, dressed in her hideous green tweed, and stood on tiptoeto chuck me under the chin, with a "Hullo, Nicky, you're back again!"

There was no earthly hope of speaking to my dream girl alone. I shovedthe mystery of Collins into the back of my head and went off to my roombefore I remembered I was still unconsciously holding that torn-off flapof poor old Thompson's envelope in my shut fist. I dropped it on myfloor, --and grabbed it up again, to stare at it for a full minute. Because there was writing on _it_, too. 

"For God's sake, search my cards--my cards--my cards, " Thompson hadscrawled across the three-cornered envelope flap Macartney's grab hadleft in my hand: and, knowing Thompson, it was pitiful. He was the sortwho must have been crazy indeed before he spoke of the Almighty andcards in the same breath. 

I remembered taking his measly solitaire pack out of his pocket at theHalfway, and wished I had brought them along with me. But it was simpleenough to go and get them from Billy Jones. Meantime I had no desire tospeak to Macartney of them or the scrawled, torn-off flap fromThompson's envelope: he was sick enough already about old Thompson'saberration, without any more proofs of it. It hurt even me to remember Ihad always laughed at the poor devil and his forlorn cards. I had noheart to burn the scrap of his envelope either, while old Thompson layunburied. I put it away in my letter case, and locked it up. 

Which seemed a tame ending; I had not sense enough to know it was nottame at all!

CHAPTER IX

TATIANA PAULINA VALENKA!

Poor old Thompson seemed a closed incident. There was nothing to befound out about him, even regarding his departure from La Chance. Nobodyremembered his going through Caraquet, or even the last time he had beenthere. He was not a man any one would remember, anyhow, or one who hadmade friends. We put a notice of his death and the circumstances in aMontreal paper, and I thought that was the end of it all, till Dudley, to my surprise, stuck obstinately to his idea of tracing Thompson fromMontreal. He told Macartney and me that he had written to a detectiveabout it, and I think we both thought it was silly. I know I did; and Isaw Macartney close his lips as though he kept back the same thought. But we gave old Thompson the best funeral we could, over at the Halfway, with a good grave and a wooden cross. All of us went except Marcia. Shesaid she had never cared about the poor old thing, and she wasn't goingto pretend it. 

It was a bitter day, with no snow come yet. Macartney looked sick anddrawn about the mouth as he stood by the grave, while Dudley read theprayers out of Paulette's prayer book. I saw her notice Macartney when Idid, and I think neither of us had guessed he had so much feeling. Istayed a minute or two behind the others, because I'd ridden over, instead of driving with them; and just before I started for La Chance Iremembered that torn scrap of paper in my room there. I turned hastilyto Billy Jones. 

"Those solitaire cards of Thompson's, " said I, from no reason on earthbut that to find them had been the last request of the dead man, even ifit did sound crazy. "I'd like them!"

Billy nodded and went into his shack. Presently he came out and said thecards were gone. He thought he'd put them away somewhere, but theyweren't to be found. It was queer, too, because he remembered replacingthem in their prayer-book sort of case after he'd spread them by thestove to dry with Thompson's clothes. But his wife said she would findthem and send them over. Which she never did, and I forgot them. Goodness knows I had reason to. 

I did an errand instead of going straight home from Thompson's funeralthat took me into the bush not far from where the boulder had beenplaced on my road. It was there or near by I had heard wolves pull downa man or men; and after I'd tied my horse and done a little lookingaround, I found the spot. It was not the scattered bones of two men thatsickened me, or even that the long thighs and shanks of one of them werethe measure of Collins. It was the top of a skull, with the hair stillon it. I did not need the face that was missing. Dunn, with his eternalchuckle, had had stubbly fair hair without a part in it, clipped closetill it stood on end, --and the same fair hair was on the top of theskull that lay like a round stone in the frozen bush. Whether the twohad set out to rob me I didn't know. I did know they had not done it, and that the man Paulette had shot at in the swamp was more of a mysterythan ever. 

The ground was too hard to do any burying. I made the bones into adecent heap and piled rocks into a cairn over them. If I said a kind ofa prayer, too, it was no one's business but that of the God who heardme; the boys had been young, and they were dead while I lived, which wasenough to make a man pray. I felt better when I had done it. 

But when I got home to La Chance the bald story I told Dudley waswasted. He swore I was a fool, first, for burying two skulls with nofaces and imagining they belonged to Dunn and Collins; and next thatthey were still alive and meaning to run a hold-up on us. From where, orhow, he couldn't say. But he kept on at the thing; and the minute he hadhalf a drink in him--which was usually the first thing in themorning--he began to worry me to go out and find where they were cachedand hike them out of it; and he kept at it all day. That would not haveworried me much since it was only Dudley, and Macartney and the othersbelieved my story; but everything else at La Chance began to go crooked, and every one's nerves got edgy. Marcia was unpleasantly silent, exceptwhen Macartney was there, when she sat in his pocket and they talked lowlike lovers, --only that I was always idiotically nervous they might betalking about Paulette Brown. That was seldom enough though, for halfthe time Macartney never showed up, even for meals. He was working liketen men over the mine, and good, solid, capable work at that. Whateverhad made poor Thompson send him to us he was worth his weight in thegold he was getting out of La Chance in----Well, in chunks! Which wasone of the reasons he had to work so hard, and brings me to the nakedtrouble at La Chance. 

We were deadly short of men. Not only were Dunn and Collins dead, buttheir grisly end seemed to have scared the others. Not a day went bythat three or four of them did not come for their time, chiefly rockmenand teamsters, --for we had no ore chute at La Chance. Macartney thoughtit was Dudley's fault, for nagging around all the time, and was soreover it. Dudley said it was Macartney's, though when I pressed him hesaid, too, that he did not know why. The men I spoke to before they leftjust said they'd had enough of La Chance, but I could feel a sulkyunderhand rebellion in the bunk house. I ran the ore hauling as best Icould, and Macartney doubled up the work in the mill. The ore-feederacted as crusher-man, too, the engineer was his own fireman, which, withthe battery man and the amalgamator, brought the mill staff down tofour, --but they were the best of our men. The others Macartney turned towith the rockmen, and in the course of a fortnight he got a few more menfrom somewhere he wrote to outside. They were a rough lot; nottroublesome, but the kind of rough that saves itself backache and elbowgrease. Personally, I think they would not have worked at all, ifMacartney had not put the fear of death in them. I caught him at it, andthough I did not hear what he said in that competent low voice of his, there was no more lounging around and grinning from our new men. But thetrouble among the old men kept on till we had none of them left exceptthe four in the mill. It did not concern me particularly, except that Ihad to work on odd jobs that should not have concerned me either, and Idid not think much about it. What I really did think about--and it putme out of gear more than anything else at La Chance--was Paulette Brown!

It had been all very well to call her my dream girl and to think I'd gotto heaven because she'd taken the trouble to drive to the Halfway withme and fight wolves. But she had hardly spoken to me since. And--well, not only the bones and skull I'd buried had smashed up my theory that itwas only Collins who'd meant to hold up my gold, but I'd smashed it up, for myself, for a reason that made me wild: Paulette Brown, whose realname Marcia swore was something else, was still meeting a man in thedark! Where, I couldn't tell, but I knew she did meet him; and naturallyI knew the man was not Collins, or ever had been. I did my best to get atalk with her, but she ran from me like a rabbit. I was worried good andhard. For from what I'd picked up, I knew the man she met could benobody at La Chance, --and any outsider who followed a girl there likelyhad a gang with him and meant business, not child's play like Collins. 

The thing was serious, and I had no right to be trusting my dream girland keeping silence to Dudley, but I went on doing it. There is no sensein keeping things back. I was mad with love for her, and if she hadgiven me a chance I would have brushed Dudley out of my way like astraw. I had to grip all the decency I had not to do it, anyway. But ifyou think I just made an easy resignation of her and sat back meekly, you're wrong. I sat back because I was helpless and too stupid toformulate any way to deal with the situation. I don't know that I wasany more silent than I always am, though Marcia said so. I did get intothe way of pretending to write letters in the evenings, while Marcia andMacartney talked low, and Dudley went up and down the room in hiseternal trudge of nervousness, throwing a word now and then to Pauletteseated sewing by the fire, --that I kept my back to so that the otherscould not see my face. 

But one night, nearly a month after Thompson was buried, I came in aftersupper, and Paulette was in my usual place. She was writing a letter orsomething, and Dudley was preaching to Macartney about the shortage ofmen in the bunk house. Marcia, cross as two sticks because she was onlythere to talk to Macartney herself, had Paulette's seat by the fire. Isat down by the table where Paulette was writing, more sideways thanbehind her. 

If I had chosen to look I could have read every word she was writing. But naturally I was not choosing to, for one thing, and for another myeyes were glued to her face. Something in the look of her gave me a sickshock. She was deadly pale, and under the light of Charliet'shalf-trimmed lamp I saw the blue marks under her eyes, and the tightlook round the nostrils that only come to a woman's face when she isfighting something that is pretty nearly past her, and is next door todespair. She looked hunted; that was the only word there was for it. Itstruck me that look must stop. If I had to march her out into the bushwith me by force next morning, I meant to get a solitary talk with her;find out what her mysterious business was at La Chance with a man whohad laid up for our gold; and, with any luck, transfer the hunted lookto the face of the man who was hounding her, --for I felt certain he wasstill hanging around La Chance. 

After that--but there could be no after that to matter to me, with adream girl who scooted to Dudley every time I tried to speak to her! Itook a half-glance at him, and it was plain enough he would be no goodto her in the kind of trouble that was on now. If I couldn't haveher--since she didn't want me--I was the only person who could helpher. She was angel-sweet to Dudley, heaven knows, and he was charming toher when he was himself. When he was not, he had a patronizing, half-threatening way of speaking to her, as if he knew something uglyabout her, as Marcia had insinuated, that made me boil. She neverresented it either, and that made me boil too. If I had ever seen hereven shrink from him, I don't know that the curb bit I had on myselfwould have held. I wished to heaven she _would_ shrink and give me achance to step in between her and a man who might love her, as Marciasaid, but who loved drink and drugs better, or he would not have beentalking between silliness and sobriety, as he was that night. And I wasso busy wishing it that Marcia spoke to me three times before I heardher. 

"Nicky, do make Dudley shut up, " she repeated, "he won't let any oneelse speak! He's been preaching the whole evening that Collins and Dunnaren't dead, only laid up somewhere round and making the other mendesert, and you ought to go and find them--and now he's worrying usabout that old idiot Thompson, who got himself drowned! For heaven'ssake tell him no one would have bothered to murder the old wretch!"

"Nobody ever thought he was murdered, and I buried Dunn and Collinsright enough, " said I absently, with my thoughts still on Paulette. ButDudley whisked around on me. 

"Marcia's talking rot, " he exclaimed, his little pig's eyes soberer thanI expected. "I don't mean about those two boys, for I bet they're nomore dead than I am, and it would be just like them to lie low and setup a smothered strike among the men as soon as you were ass enough to betaken in by some stray bones! But I do mean it about Thompson. There'sno sense in saying there was nothing queer about the way he came backand was found dead--because there was! It was natural enough that thepolice couldn't trace him in Montreal, for I hadn't a sign of data togive them: but it's darned unnatural that _I_ can't trace him inCaraquet. I've sieved the whole place upside down, and nobody ever sawThompson after he left Billy Jones's that morning on his way toCaraquet!"

Macartney stared at him for a minute; then he put down the pipe he wassmoking. "If I thought that, I'd sieve the whole place upside down, too, " he said so quietly that I remembered Thompson had been his bestfriend, and that he had looked deadly sick beside his grave. "But Idon't. What it comes to with me is that no one remembers seeing Thompsonin Caraquet that particular time, but no one says he wasn't there!"

"Then where's the----" But Dudley checked himself quick as light. If Ihad been quite sure he was himself I should have been curious about whathe had meant to say. But all he substituted was: "Well, nobody remembersseeing him that day, anyway, except Billy Jones!"

"Seems to me that narrows poor Thompson's potential murderers down toBilly Jones, " said Macartney ironically, since Billy Jones would nothave murdered the meanest yellow pup that ever walked, and Macartneyknew it as well as I did. But Dudley made the two of us sit up. 

"Who's to say he didn't?" he demanded. "What darned thing do we knowabout him to say that he mightn't have waylaid poor old Thompson forwhat money he had on him, and kept him shut up till he had a chance tosay he found him drowned?"

Macartney and I stared at each other. The very thought was so monstrousthat it must have struck him, as it did me, that it was born of Dudley'sdrugs and not his intelligence. But it had to be stopped, or heaven knewwhom Dudley would be accusing next. 

"For God's sake, Wilbraham, shut up, " said Macartney curtly. "You makeme sick. Isn't it enough to have the old man dead, without sayinginnocent people killed him!"

"Yes, if they are innocent, " Dudley returned so quietly that itsurprised both of us. "But I tell you this, Macartney, and Strettontoo--if any one within a hundred miles of this mine did murder Thompson, Billy Jones or any one else, it'll come out!" and he jerked his headaround. "Don't you think so, Paulette?"

"I? I never thought of poor old Thompson having been murdered!" Sheanswered as if she were startled, but she did not turn. "If he wasmurdered I pray God it will be found out, " she added unexpectedly. Shehad made two false starts at her letter and torn them up, but she hadevidently finished it to her liking now, for she sat with the pen poisedover the blank end of the sheet to sign her name. Yet she did not signit. She only sat there abstractedly, with her hand lifted from thewrist. 

"There, you see, " Dudley crowed triumphantly. "Paulette's no fool: it'sfacts she and I are after, Macartney. Why, you take the history ofcrimes generally--murders--jewel robberies--kidnapping for money--halfof them with not nearly so much to them as this thing aboutThompson--they're always found out!"

"If you're going to talk this rubbish, I'm going to bed, " Marcia burstout wrathfully. I saw her pause to catch Macartney's eye, but for oncehis set gaze was on the floor. She got up, which I don't think she hadmeant to do, and flounced out of the room. I had no idea I was going tobe deadly thankful. 

Macartney answered Dudley as the door shut behind her. "I don't knowthat crimes are always found out, in spite of your faith--and MissPaulette's, " he argued half crossly. "I could remind you of one or twothat weren't. What about the Mappin murder, way back in nineteen-five?And that emerald business at the Houstons' country house this spring, with that dancing and circus-riding girl who used to be at theHippodrome--the Russian, who did Russian dancing on her horse's back?What was her name? I ought to remember. I knew a poor devil of a cousinof hers out in British Columbia who was engaged to her when it happened, and he talked about her enough. Oh, yes, Valenka! She had a funnyChristian name too, sort of half Russian, only I forget it. But whenthat Valenka girl got away with an emerald necklace from the Houstons'house no one ever found out how it was done! You must have heard abouther, Stretton?"

I had. Every one had: Macartney need not have troubled to hunt hismemory for her Christian name, though it had only reached me in thewilderness through a stray New York paper. But before I could say soDudley burst out with the same truculence he had used about Billy Jones:

"What d'ye mean Stretton must have heard?"

"Only that Mrs. Houston took a fancy to Valenka and had her down to rideand dance at a week-end party at her house in Long Island; that onSunday morning, Jimmy Van Ruyne, one of the guests, was found inValenka's room, soaked with morphine and robbed--not only of the cash inhis pocket in the good old way, but of an emerald necklace he had justbought at Tiffany's; and that, to this day, no one has ever laid eyes onthat necklace nor on Valenka. She's free and red-handed somewhere, if noone ever found out who railroaded her and Van Ruyne's emeralds out ofthe United States!"

What sent Dudley into a blazing rage was beyond me. But he fairly yelledat Macartney. 

"Free she may be, but when you say 'red-handed' you say a lie! If JimmyVan Ruyne was fool enough to think so, it was because no Van Ruyne evercould see a. B. Spelled ab. D'ye know him? Well, " as Macartney shook hishead, "he's a rotter, if ever there was one! Got more money than heknows what to do with and always chasing after women. As for Valenka, if you think she came out of a circus and was fair game, that's a lie, too! She was a lady, born and bred. Her mother was American, a MissBocqueraz; and her father was one of the best known men in Petrograd, and _persona grata_ with one of the Grand Dukes till he got into somesort of political disgrace and died of it. His daughter came to Americaand danced and rode for her living. First because she was beggared; andsecond because she'd been taught dancing in the Imperial School atPetrograd and riding in the Grand Duchess Tatiana's private ring for_haute manége_; and was a corker at both. She called herself plainValenka, and Jimmy Van Ruyne went crazy about her--though Mrs. Houstondidn't know it, or she never would have asked the nasty little cad to aspring week-end party. "

"To lose an emerald necklace and be stabbed and drugged, " commentedMacartney drily. "Oh, I'm not saying the Valenka girl wasn't amarvellous sight on a horse! But what Van Ruyne told the police was thathe gave his string of emeralds to her on the Saturday afternoon, and gota note from her just after dinner saying that she returned them; onlythe case--in the time-honored method this time--was empty when he openedit! He was blazing. He went straight up to Valenka's room when he foundit out, which was at two in the morning, and said he wanted hisemeralds; and she flew at him with a dagger. After which he knew nothingat all till a servant came in at eight and found him lying unconsciousin her empty room that she'd just walked out of with his emeralds in herpocket. And no one's ever laid eyes on her, or on Van Ruyne's emeraldsever since. "

"That's what Van Ruyne says, " Dudley began hotly--and went on in adifferent voice. "The Valenka girl never stole his emeralds! She mayhave cut him across the wrist with one of those knife-things women willuse for paper cutters; I don't say she didn't. Any girl would have beenjustified when a man forced his way into her bedroom--for I bet VanRuyne didn't let out the whole story of that, if he did let out that hebullied her when he found her alone! And he didn't lay any stress, either, on the fact that he was found with the cut artery in hiswrist--that was all the stabbing that ailed him--bound up as a surgeonwould have done it; or that he'd been given just enough morphine to keephim from wriggling off his bandage and bleeding to death before anybodycame: not Van Ruyne!"

"All that doesn't explain how Valenka got away--or what became of her, "said Macartney obstinately. "That's the mystery I began on. "

I was bored stiff with the whole thing. And whether she had Van Ruyne'semeralds or not I saw no particular mystery in the Valenka girl'sdisappearance: she had probably had some one outside who had taken herclear away in a motor car. I said so, more because Dudley was glaring atMacartney like a maniac than anything else. And Dudley caught me upshort. "I won't have either of you say one more word about Valenka in myhouse. She was as good as she was pretty; and if some one helped heraway she--deserved it!"

There was something so like honest passion in the break in his voicethat involuntarily I glanced at Paulette, to see if by any chance shewas startled at Dudley's evidently intimate knowledge of a girl none ofus had even heard him speak of--and it took every bit of Indian quiet Iowned not to stare at her so hard that Dudley and Macartney must havenoticed. She was listening, as motionless as if she were a statue. Herlifted hand still held her pen poised over her unfinished letter; but itwas rigid, as the rest of her was rigid. Whether it was from anger, surprise, or jealousy of Dudley, I had no idea, but she sat as if shehad been struck dumb. And suddenly I was not sure if she were perfectlycollected, --or absolutely abstracted. For--without even a glance toshow she felt my eyes on her--the carved lines of her poised hand fellto the level of her wrist that lay flat on the table, and she began towrite the signature to her unfinished letter. I could see every separatecharacter as she shaped it; and with the blazing enlightenment of whatshe set down on paper only a merciful heaven kept my wits in my skulland my tongue quiet in my head. 

For the signature she wrote as plainly as I write it now was notPaulette Brown. It was Tatiana Paulina--that "queer Christian name, halfRussian too, " of the dancing circus-rider, that no one had evermentioned, --_Tatiana Paulina Valenka_!

CHAPTER X

I INTERFERE FOR THE LAST TIME

 "Must I go now--in the moonlight clear? Would God that it were dark, That I might pass like a homeless hound Men neither miss nor mark. "

 _The Ransom. _

TATIANA PAULINA VALENKA!

I sat as still as if I had been stabbed. It was no wonder she hadlaughed when I asked her if she could ride, no wonder I had thought shemoved like Pavlova. Paulette Brown, whom Dudley had brought to LaChance, was Tatiana Paulina Valenka, who had or had not stolen VanRuyne's emeralds! But the blood sprang into my face at the knowledge, for--by all the holy souls and my dead mother's name--she was my dreamgirl too! And I believed in her. 

All the same, I was thankful Marcia had flounced out of the room beforeDudley let loose. It was no wonder she had thought she had seen PauletteBrown before. The wonder was that she had ever forgotten how she hadseen her--dancing at the Hippodrome on her four horses as no girl everhad danced--or forgotten the story about her that she had said was"queer"! If Marcia's eyes had fallen on the signature mine were on now, I knew her first act would have been to write to Jimmy Van Ruyne; thateven if she had only heard Dudley defending an ostensibly absent Valenkashe would have written--for Marcia was no fool. Then and there I made upmy mind that Marcia should never guess the whole of what she alreadyhalf-guessed about Paulette Brown; there were ways I could stop _that_. 

As for Dudley----But a sudden tide of respect for Dudley, in spite ofhis drink and all his queerness, rose flood-high in me. It had beenDudley, of course, who had got Paulette away, --for I could not think ofher as Tatiana Paulina. How, I did not know; I knew he had not been oneof the Houstons' week-end party; but he had done it somehow, andspirited Paulette out to La Chance. As for the rest, a fool could havetold that he respected and believed in her. If it had been riskybringing Marcia out into the wilderness with her, it had been clevertoo, because it was so bold that Marcia had never suspected it. Even Inever would have, if Macartney had not brought up Miss Valenka's name. Iknew he had done it merely to get Dudley off his cracked idea thatBilly Jones might have murdered Thompson, but I was suddenly nervousthat Dudley's fool vehemence over a missing girl might have setMacartney on the track of things, --and heaven knows that, except he wasa competent mine superintendent, I knew little enough how far it wouldbe safe to trust Macartney. But suddenly one thing I did know flashedover me. Macartney and Marcia were a firm, or going to be; and I wasinstantly scared blue that he might turn around and see that namePaulette Brown had signed to her letter, lying plain under theliving-room lamp! I knew I had to wake Paulette up to what she had doneand shut up Dudley before he let out any more intimate details thepublic had never known, like Van Ruyne's bandaged wrist. I yawned andgot up, with one hand on the table, and my forefinger pointing straightto that black signature of Tatiana Paulina Valenka that ought to havebeen Paulette Brown. 

"I'm like Marcia, Miss Paulette; I'm going to bed unless you can turnoff Dudley's eloquence. Oh, I'm so sorry--I'm afraid I've blotted yourletter, " I said. I tapped my finger on it soundlessly--and she lookeddown, --and saw!

I said once before that my dream girl had good nerves; she had ironones. I need not have been afraid she would exclaim. She said quitenaturally: "No, it's all right. And it wasn't a letter, anyhow. It wasonly something I wanted to make clear. " She picked it up, folded itsmall, gathered up the bits of paper she had written on and torn up, andturned round to Dudley. "What are you talking about all this time?"

But if her glance warned him to hold his tongue, as heaven knows hermere presence would have warned me, Dudley was too roused to care. "Iwas talking about that liar, Van Ruyne, " he said, glaring at Macartney. 

"He may be a liar, all right, " said Macartney rather unpleasantly. "Only, if that Valenka girl didn't steal his emeralds, Mr. Wilbraham, who did?"

"That cousin of hers you said you knew; Hutton, or whatever you said hisname was, " Dudley retorted, like a fool, for Macartney had nevermentioned the man's name. "How, I don't know, but I'm certain of it. Hewas more in love with her than Van Ruyne, and more dangerous, for allyou say he was a good sort. Why, he was the kind to stick at nothing. Miss Valenka had had the sense to turn him down hard; and I believe hestole that necklace of Van Ruyne's from her during the short time shehad it--either just to get her into trouble and be revenged on her, orto get her into his power. Whichever it was--to blackmail her--for he'dcadged on her for money before her father died--or to scare her intogoing to him for help--I'd like to hunt the worthless hound down for it. And I'd never stop till I got him!"

"Like poor old Thompson's murderer, " Macartney commented rather drily, "and with no more foundation. " But the thought of Thompson seemed tohave brought his self-command back to him; he tried to smooth Dudleydown. "I don't honestly believe old Thompson could have been murdered, "he said gently, "or that Miss Valenka's cousin could have stolen thosejewels, for any reason. He seemed a pretty good sort when I knew him inBritish Columbia. He was a clever mining engineer, too. "

"He might have been the devil for all I care! Only if ever I come acrosshim I'll get those emeralds out of his skin, " Dudley exploded. Paulettegave one glance at him. It would have killed me; but even Dudley saw howhe was giving himself away to a stranger. 

"Why under heaven do you work me up about abstract justice, Macartney?"he growled. "You know how I lose my temper. Talk about something else, for goodness sake!"

"Not I--I'm going to bed, " Macartney returned casually. Dudley alwaysdid work himself up over things that were none of his business, and theValenka argument evidently had not struck his superintendent as anythingout of the ordinary. He nodded and went out. Paulette strayed to thefireplace, and I saw her handful of papers blaze up before she movedaway. I was thankful when that signature of Tatiana Paulina Valenka wasoff the earth, even if Macartney had gone out of the room. Paulette saidgood night, and went out on his heels. 

I heard Macartney ask her something as she passed him where he stood inthe passage, getting on his coat to go over to the assay office, wherehe slept. I thought it was about Marcia, from the tone of his voice, andfrom Paulette's answer, cursory and indistinct through the closed door:"I know. I'm going to. " She added something I could not hear at all, butI heard Macartney say sharply that to-morrow would be too late. 

Paulette said "yes, " and then "yes" again, as though he gave her amessage. Then she spoke out clearly: "There's nothing else to say. I'lldo it now. " I heard her move away, I thought to Marcia's door. Macartneywent out the front door, banging it. 

I had no desire to go to bed. I felt as if I had walked from Dan toBeersheba and been knocked down and robbed on the way. I knew my dreamgirl was not mine, now or ever, because she was Dudley's, but I hadnever thought of her being anything like Tatiana Paulina Valenka. It wasnot the jewel story that hit me: I knew she had not stolen Van Ruyne'sold necklace, no matter how things looked. It was that she must care forDudley, or she would never have let him bring her out here. And anotherthing hit me harder still, and that was Hutton, --the cousin Macartneysaid was engaged to her, and Dudley said cadged on her, till he ended bybranding her as a thief and getting away with the spoils. And the crazythought that jumped into my head, without any earthly reason, was thatit was just Hutton who had been hounding her at La Chance; that, while Ihad been addling my brains with suspecting Collins, it was Hutton thatPaulette Brown--whose real name was Valenka--had stolen out to meet inthe dark!

Once I thought of it, I was dead sure Hutton had followed her to LaChance. I knew from my own ears that she hated and distrusted the manfor whom she had once mistaken me, that it was he from whom she hadtried to protect my gold; and I wondered with a horror that made me toosick to swear, if it were Hutton himself, and not Dunn nor Collins, whohad cached that wolf dope in my wagon! If it were, he had not caredabout wolves killing the girl who drove with me, so long as he got mygold. But there I saw I was making a fool of myself, for he could nothave known she was going. I steadied my mind on the thing, like yousteady a machine. 

If Hutton had been hanging around La Chance, either from so-called love, or to get Paulette into a mess with our gold, as Dudley swore he hadwith Van Ruyne's emeralds, he could not have been seen about themine, --for Macartney would have recognized him and given him away. Hemust be cached in the bush somewhere, waiting his chance to grab ourgold and incriminate Paulette, as common sense told me she expected. Iwas sure as death he had a gang somewhere, for no outsider would try torun that business alone; Collins and Dunn might have been on their wayto join it the night they got scuppered, very likely: they were justdevils enough. But if they had started out to meet Hutton at my corduroyroad they had never got there, and I was pretty sure the rest of thegang hadn't either, and Hutton--alone--had been scared to shoot at usand give himself away. 

That thought assured me of two things. It was Dunn and Collins who hadhidden the wolf bait in my wagon, for Hutton could never have done itand reached the corduroy road before us; and Paulette must really hateHutton savagely, for she must have known whom she was shooting at on myswamp road! That made me feel better--a little--but there was somethingI wanted to know. I turned on Dudley for it. 

"Look here, I never heard anything about Valenka but newspapers'stories, till to-night. But, if you know the inside of the business, howdid that cousin Macartney was talking of ever get hold of that emeraldnecklace? Didn't Macartney imply he was in British Columbia?"

"He was more likely anywhere than where he'd have to work--if he couldget money out of a girl, " Dudley snapped. "What I think is that he wasmasquerading as a servant in the Houstons' house--a chauffeur, perhaps--anything, that would let him hang round and drive a girl halfwild. He was a plain skunk. I don't know how he managed the thing, but Iknow he was there in the Houstons' house, somehow, if Paulette doesn'tthink so"--he forgot all about the Valenka--"and that he took thoseemeralds; left the girl powerless even to think so; and disappeared. Inever saw him; don't even know what he looks like. But if ever I get achance I'll hand him over to the law as I'd hand a man I caught throwinga bomb at a child!"

I said involuntarily: "Shut up!" I knew it was silly, but I felt as ifwalls might have ears in a house that sheltered Paulette Brown, --thoughI knew Marcia was in bed and asleep, and there was no one else who couldhear. "You're never likely to see him here, anyhow, " I added, since Imeant to see him myself first, somehow; after which I trusted he was notlikely to matter. And I thought of something to change the subject. "What were you going to say to-night about no one having seen poor oldThompson--when you cut yourself off?"

"Oh, that, " Dudley replied almost carelessly. "It mayn't amount toanything, and I only shut up because I didn't want Macartney to take thewind out of my sails by saying so. It was just that if Thompson everwent to Caraquet it ought to be simple enough to find the boy who tookhis horse back to Billy Jones, and--there's apparently no such boy inCaraquet! What set me on Billy Jones first was that he stammered andstuttered about not knowing him, till I don't believe there ever was anysuch boy. He's never been heard of since, any more than if he'd goneinto the ground. And what I want to know is _why_?--if it's all straightabout Thompson and Billy Jones!"

I was silent, remembering--I don't know why--the half-dead boy I hadcarried home to Skunk's Misery. There was no cause to connect him withthe return of Thompson's horse to the Halfway, yet somehow my mind didconnect him with it, obstinately. I had never really discovered how hehad been hurt by a falling tree, and without reason some animal instincttold me the two things belonged together and that they were queer. Butbefore I could say so, Dudley burst into unexpected speech, his littlepig's eyes as fierce as a tiger's: "Look here, Stretton! I'm going tofind out who drowned Thompson, and who took Van Ruyne's emeralds--andhand them both over to the law, if I die for it. And when I say that youknow I mean it!"

I did. But once more I made no answer, for I thought I heard Marcia inthe passage. I am quick on my feet, and I was outside the door before Ifinished thinking it. But it was not Marcia outside; it was onlyMacartney. Yet I stopped short and stared at him, for it was a MacartneyI had never seen. He was close to the living-room door, just as if hehad been listening to Dudley, and his face was the face of a devil. Inever want to see set eyes like his again. But all the effect they hadon me was to make me furiously angry, and I swore at him. 

"What the devil's the matter with you, Macartney? What do you want?"

"My keys, " roughly. "I left them somewhere around this passage and I hadto come back for them; I couldn't get into my office. As for what's thematter"--he lowered his voice and motioned me some feet away, out of thelight from the living-room door--"I heard all Wilbraham said just now, and by gad, the man's crazy! We've got to get him off all that rot aboutBilly Jones, or any one else, murdering Thompson; it's stark madness. Both of us know Billy wouldn't murder a cat! And there's another thing, too! I heard all Wilbraham said about that Valenka girl's cousin, and Iwish you'd tell him to go slow on it. I was in too much of a rage, orI'd have gone in and told him myself. Dick Hutton was a friend of mine;no matter how much he was in love with a girl who'd got sick of him forVan Ruyne, he wasn't the kind to sneak round the Houstons' house as aservant. I won't let any one say that with impunity. It's no use mytelling Wilbraham so in the state he's in to-night, but you might gentlyhint it when you've a chance. I wish to heaven he'd give up drink anddrugs and being an amateur detective!" He shrugged his shoulders with acomplete return to his ordinary manner. "I'm sorry I startled you justnow, but I was too cursed angry to say I was here. Oh, there are mykeys!" He stooped, picked them up off the floor, and went out with acareless good night. 

"Was that Macartney?" Dudley inquired as I went back to him. "I thoughthe'd gone!"

"Forgot the office key and came back for it. " I felt no call to enter onMacartney's embassy regarding Hutton. "Going to bed?"

Dudley gulped down a horn of whisky that would have settled any two menin the bunk house, nodded, and shut the door behind him. I put out thelight and sat on in the living room alone, how long I don't know. I hadnothing pleasant to think of, either. It was no use my trying to imaginethat Tatiana Paulina Valenka was not going to marry Dudley, whatever Ihad hoped about Paulette Brown. As far as any chance of her loving mewas concerned, I had lost my dream girl forever. She was none of mybusiness any more, except that--"By gad, she _is_ my business, " Ithought in a sudden bitter fury, "as far as Hutton and our gold! If I'mright, and he's hiding round here, I'll put a stopper on any morehold-ups. And I'll make good and sure she never goes out to meet himagain, too!"

As I swore it I turned away from the dead fire and the dark room, thatlooked as if we'd all deserted it hours ago, and went Indian-silentinto the hallway. And my heart contracted in a hard, tight lump. 

The passage was light as day, with the moon full on the window at theend of it. And wrapped in a shawl, with her back to me, stood my dreamgirl, undoing the front door as noiselessly as I had come into thepassage. 

I let her do it. The hallway on which Marcia's bedroom door opened, letalone Dudley's, was no place for Paulette Brown and myself to talk. ButI was just three feet behind her as she slid around the corner of theshack, toward the bush that lay dark against the cold winter moon. And Irustled with my feet on purpose, so that she turned and saw me, with themoon full on my face. 

"You sha'n't do it, " I said. I did not know I had made a stride to hertill I felt her arm under my hand. "You sha'n't go!"

My dream girl, who had two names and belonged to Dudley anyhow, saidnothing at all. She and I, who had really nothing to do with oneanother, if I would have laid my soul under her little feet, stood stillin the cold moonlight, looking inimically into one another's eyes. 

CHAPTER XI

MACARTNEY HEARS A NOISE: AND I FIND FOUR DEAD MEN

We must have stood silent for a good three minutes. I think I wasfurious because Paulette did not speak to me. I said, "You're not togo--you're _never_ to go and meet Hutton again, as long as you live!"And for the first time I saw my dream girl flinch from me. 

"What?" she gasped so low I could hardly hear. "You know that? What am Igoing to do? My God, what am I going to do?"

"You're coming back into the shack with me!" We were on the blind sideof the house for Marcia and Dudley, but we were in plain view fromCharliet's window, and I was not going to have even a cook look out andsee Paulette talking to a man in the middle of the night. Her despaircut me; I had never seen her anything but valiant before, and I had alump in my throat. But I spoke roughly enough. "I didn't know the wholeof things till to-night, but now I do, you'll have to trust me. Can'tyou see I mean to do all I can to help you--and Dudley?" If it weretough to have to add Dudley I did it. But I felt her start furiously. 

"Dudley?" she repeated almost scornfully. "Nobody can help Dudley butme--and there's only one way! Mr. Stretton, I promise you I'll never askagain, but--for God's sake let me go to meet Dick Hutton to-night!"

"Not blindly, " said I brutally. "If you tell me why, perhaps--but wecan't talk here. If you'll come into the house and trust me about whatyou want to do, I may let you go--just this once--if I think it's theright way!"

"I've only half an hour before it's too late--for any way!" But sheturned under the hand I had never lifted from her arm. 

I led her noiselessly into the office. I was afraid of the living room. Marcia might come back to it for a book or something. No one but Dudleyever went near the office, and he was safely dead to the world, judgingfrom the horn of whisky he had gone to bed on. The place was freezing, for the inside sash was up, leaving only the double window between usand the night; and it was black-dark too, with the moon on the otherside of the house. But there were more things than love to talk about inthe dark, --to a dream girl you would give your soul to call your own, and know you never will. And I began bluntly, "You've never had anyreason to distrust me. I've helped you----"

"Three times, " sharply. "I know. I've been--grateful. "

It was four, counting to-night when I had warned her to hide hersignature from Macartney; but I was not picking at trifles. I said:"Well, I've trusted you, too! I knew the first night I came back herethat you were meeting some man secretly, in the dark. But it was none ofmy business and I held my tongue about it; then, and when you met himagain--when it was my business. "

"Again?" I heard the little start she gave, if I could not see it. 

"The night before you and I took the gold out, " I answered practically, "when I told you your hair was untidy. I suppose you only thought I knewyou had been out of doors, but I heard the man you met leave you andheard you say to yourself that you'd have to get hold of the gold. Ididn't know whether you were honest or not then, or when I gave you backyour little seal; and not even when you started for Billy Jones's withme. I knew by the time I got there, if I was fool enough to believe itwas Collins you were fighting instead of helping. But any fool must seenow that Hutton was the only man likely to have followed you out here! Isuppose he told you some lie about giving you up for Van Ruyne'snecklace, unless you made silence worth while with Dudley's gold?" andher assent made me angry clear through. 

"My soul, girl, " I burst out, "you balked him about that, even when youknew he'd put that wolf dope in my wagon, and you were risking yourlife--you put a bullet in him in the swamp--I can't see why you shouldbe worrying to conciliate him by meeting him to-night!"

But she caught me up almost stupidly. "Put a bullet in him? Ididn't--you must know I didn't!"

"There was blood in the swamp and on the road!"

I felt her staring at me in the dark. "It wasn't Dick's, " she saidalmost inaudibly. "It must have been some one else's. And--he doesn'tknow it was he I shot at that night!"

"It might do him good if he did!" I felt like shaking her, if I had notwanted to take her in my arms more. "Can't you see you've no reason toworry about Hutton? If Dudley told the truth to-night, and he stolethose emeralds and shifted the crime on to you, it's you who have thewhip hand of him!"

"But he didn't, " Paulette exclaimed wildly. "He wasn't near theHoustons' house! It's mad of Dudley to think so. I know he believes it, but--oh, it's mad all the same! And even if Dick did take thoseemeralds--though I can't see how it was possible--it wouldn't clear me!It would only mean he was able to drag me into it, somehow. "

"But you never touched the necklace!" For I knew that. 

"No, " simply, "but I'm afraid of Dick all the more. If he did take it, to get me into his power"--she caught my arm in her slim hands I hadalways known were so strong--"can't you see he's _got_ me?" she saidbetween her teeth, "and that, next thing, he'll get the La Chance gold?If you don't let me meet him to-night I'll be helpless. I----Oh, can'tyou see I'll be like a rat in a trap?--not able to do anything? I canmake him go away, if I meet him! Otherwise"--the passion in her voicekept it down to a whisper--"it's not only that I'm afraid he can makethings look as if I stole from Dudley as well as from Van Ruyne: I'mafraid--_for Dudley_!"

The two last words gave me a jar. I would have given most of the worldto ask if she loved Dudley, but I didn't dare: I suppose a girl couldlove a man with a face like an egg, if she owed him enough. But whethershe cared for him or not, "By gad, you've got to tell Dudley thatHutton's here, " I said roughly, because I was sick with the knowledgethat anyhow she did not love me. 

"Tell him?" Paulette gasped through the dark that was like a curtainbetween us. "I've told him twenty times--all I dared. And he wouldn'tlisten to a word I said. Ask him: he'll tell you that's true!"

I had no doubt it was. Even on business Dudley's brain ran on lines ofits own; you might tell him a thing till you were black in the face, andhe would never believe it. Lately, between drugs and drink, he was pastassimilating any impersonal ideas at all. Macartney was so worried abouthim that he'd told off Baker, one of his new men, to go wherever Dudleywent. I had no use for the man: he was a black and white looking deviland slim as they make them, in my opinion, though Dudley took to him asthough he were a long-lost brother luckily, --how luckily I couldn'tknow. But I wasn't thinking about Baker that night. 

"We can't worry over Dudley, " I said shortly, "he'll have to take careof himself. But you won't be helpless with Hutton, if I meet himto-night--in your place!"

"You? I couldn't bear you to be in it!" so sharply that I winced. 

"It won't hurt you to take that much from me!" It wasn't till longafterwards that I knew I'd been a fool not to have said it with my armsround her, while I told her why--but since I didn't do it there's nosense in talking about it. I went on baldly: "I've got to be in it! I'mnot concerned with post-mortems and your past. All I know, personally, is that Hutton's hiding somewhere round this mine to hold up our goldshipments and get even with Dudley; and if you'll tell me where to meethim to-night I can stop both--and be saved the trouble of looking forhim from here to Caraquet, let alone getting you some peace of mindinstead of the hell you're living in. "

"Oh, my God, " said Paulette, exactly as if she were in church. "I can'ttake peace of mind like blood-money--I can't tell you where to findDick, if you don't know now, " and I should have known why if I had hadany sense, but I had none. "It's no use, Mr. Stretton, I must go toDick, alone. I----" But suddenly she blazed out at me: "I won't let yousee him! And I'm going to him--now. Take your hand off me!"

I tightened it. "You'll stay here! _Please!_ And you can't go onpreventing me from meeting Hutton, either. What about the first time Itake any gold out over the Caraquet road--and he and his gang try ahold-up on me?"

I said gang without thinking, for I was naturally dead sure he had one. But I was not prepared to have the cork come straight out of the bottle. Paulette clutched me till I bit my lip to keep steady. 

"His gang's what I'm afraid of--for Dudley, " she gasped, which certainlysteadied me--like a bucket of ice. "Look here, when first I met Dick, hetold me things, to frighten me--that he'd eighteen or twenty men laid upbetween here and Caraquet--enough to raid us here, even, if he chose. Itwas because I knew they were waiting somewhere on the road that nightthat I drove to Billy Jones's with you. It was one of them I shot whenwe tore through the swamp. But something went wrong with them; eitherthey'd no guns, or they didn't want to give themselves away by shootingwhen they saw we were ready--I don't know. But anyhow, something wentwrong. And Dick was black angry. He--the last time I spoke to him--hewouldn't even tell me what he'd done with his gang; just said he hadthem somewhere safe, in the last place you or Dudley would ever look forthem. Oh, you needn't hold me any more; I've given in; I'm not going tomeet Dick to-night. But I had to tell you about his gang, if I can'tabout him. And listen, Mr. Stretton. I've tried every possible way toget it out of him, but Dick won't even answer when I taunt him for acoward who has to be backed up. I know he has men somewhere, but hewon't tell me where they are, or who they are--now. I believe----" buther voice changed sharply. "Those two boys, Dunn and Collins! You don'tthink Dudley can be right and they _are_ still alive--and have joinedDick's gang?"

"They're dead!" I was about sick of Dunn and Collins, and anyhow I waswondering where the devil Hutton's gang could have gone after theirfiasco in the swamp. "They may have meant to join Hutton. But I foundwhat the wolves left--and that was dead, right enough!"

"I don't believe they're dead, " said Paulette quietly. 

I shrugged my shoulders. But I never even asked her why. Forsuddenly--with that flat knowledge you get when you realize you shouldhave put two and two together long ago--I knew where Hutton's gang wasnow and always had been. "Skunk's Misery, " I thought dumbfounded. "Bygad, Skunk's Misery!" For the thing I should have added to the Skunk'sMisery wolf dope was my dream of men talking and playing cards under thevery floor where I slept in the new hut the Frenchwoman's son had builtand gone away from, --because it had been no dream at all. I had actuallyheard real men under the bare lean-to where I lay; and knowing theburrows and runways under the Skunk's Misery houses, I knew where--andthat was just in some hidden den under the rocks the new house had beenbuilt on--that house left with the door open, ostentatiously, for allthe world to see!

I was blazing, as you always are blazing when you have been a fool. ButI could start for Skunk's Misery the first thing in the morning andstart alone, with my mouth shut. None of our four old men could bespared from the mill, and I had no use for any of Macartney's new ones;or for Macartney either, for he was no good in the bush. As for Dudley, nerves and a loose tongue would do him less harm at home. Besides, anyticklish job is a one-man job and I was best alone: once I got hold ofHutton there would be no trouble with his followers. But I had nointention of mentioning Skunk's Misery to the girl beside me; she was ascapable of following me there as of fighting wolves for me, and with nomore reason. 

"It's late, and neither you nor I are going to meet Hutton to-night, " Isaid rather cheerlessly. "You'd better go to bed. "

"I want to say something first, " slowly, as if she had been thinking. "What Macartney said to-night--that I was engaged to Dick Hutton whenMr. Van Ruyne said I took those emeralds--wasn't true! I never wasengaged to Dick. I was sorry for him once, because I knew he did--carefor me. But I always hated him--I can't tell you how I hated him! Ididn't think I could ever love any man till--just lately. "

It made me sick to know she meant Dudley. I would have blurted out thatshrinking from the mere touch of his hand was a queer way to show it;only I was afraid to speak at all, for fear I begged her for God's sakenot to speak of love and Dudley to me! And suddenly something bangedeven that out of my head. "Listen, " I heard my own whisper. "Somebody'sawake--walking round!"

It was only the faintest noise, more like a rustle than a footstep, butit sounded like Gabriel's trumpet to a man alone in the middle of thenight with a girl he had no shadow of right to. If it were Marcia, --butI knew that second it was not Marcia, or even Dudley; though I wouldrather have had his just fury than Marcia's evil thoughts and tongue. 

"By gad, it's outside, " I breathed. "Look out!" But suddenly I changedmy mind on it. There was only one person who could be outside, and thatwas Hutton, sick of waiting for Paulette and come to look for her. I hadno desire for her to see how I met him instead, and my hands found hershoulders in the dark. "Get back, in the corner--and don't stir!" Asshe moved under my hands the faint sweet scent of her hair made me catchmy breath with a sort of fierce elation. The gold and silk of it werenot for me, I knew well enough, but at least I could keep Hutton's handsoff it. I slipped to the side of the window and stared out into the darkshadow of the house, that lay black and square in the white moonlight. On the edge of it was a man--and the silly elation left my heart as thegas leaves a toy balloon when you stick a pin in it. It was not Huttonoutside. It was--for the second time that night--only Macartney!

I stood and stared at him like a fool. It was a good half minute beforeI even wondered what had brought Macartney out of his bed in the assayoffice. I watched him stupidly, and he moved; hesitated; and then turnedto the house door. My heart gave a jump Hutton never could have broughtthere. Macartney in the house with a light, coming into the office forsomething, for all I knew, and finding Paulette and me, would be merelya living telephone to Marcia! I tapped at the office window. 

Macartney had good ears, I praised the Lord. He turned, not startled, but looking round him searchingly, and I stuck my head out of the hingedpane of the double window, thanking the Lord again that I had not toshove up a squeaking inside sash. "What's brought you back again?" Ikept my voice down, remembering Marcia. "Anything gone wrong?"

"What?" said Macartney rather sharply. He came close and stared at me. "Oh, it's you, Stretton? I thought it was Wilbraham, and he wouldn't beany good. It was you I wanted. I've got a feeling there's some onehanging round outside here. "

I hoped to heaven he had not seen Hutton, waiting for an appointment agirl was not going to keep, and I half lied: "I haven't seen any one. D'ye mean you thought you did?"

Macartney nodded. "Couldn't swear to it, but I thought so. And I'd toomuch gold in my safe to go to bed; I cleaned up this afternoon. I wascertain I glimpsed a strange man slipping behind the bunk house when Iwent down an hour ago, and I've been hunting him ever since. I halfthought I saw him again just now. But, if I did, he's gone!"

"I'll come out!"

But Macartney shook his head sententiously. "I'm enough. I've guns forthe four mill men who sleep in the shack off the assay office, andyou've a whack of gold in that room you're standing in; you'd better notleave it. Though I don't believe there's any real need for either of usto worry: if there was any one around I've scared him. I only thoughtI'd better come up and warn you I'd seen some one. 'Night, " and he wasgone. 

I had a sudden idea that he might be a better man in the woods than Ihad thought he was, for he slid out of the house shadow into the bushwithout ever showing up in the moonlight. And as I thought it I feltPaulette clutch me, shivering from head to foot. It shocked me, somehow. I put my arm straight around her, like you do around a child, and spokedeliberately, "Steady, sweet, steady! It's all right. Hutton's gone bynow. Anyhow, Macartney and I'll take care of you!"

"Oh, my heavens, " said Paulette: it sounded half as if she were sickwith despair, and half as if I were hopelessly stupid. "Take care ofme--you can't take care of me! You should have let me go. It's too latenow. " She pushed my arm from her as if she hated me and was gone downthe passage to her room before I could speak. 

I shut the office window, with the inside sash down this time, and tooka scout around outside. But Macartney was right; if any one had beenwaiting about he was gone. I could not find hide or hoof of himanywhere, and the moon went down, and I went in and went to bed. In twominutes I must have been asleep like a log, --and the first way I knew itwas that I found myself out of bed, dragging on my clothes and grabbingup my gun. 

Whatever the row was about it was in the assay office. I heard Macartneyyell my name through a volley of shots and knew we had both been madefools of. I had stopped Paulette meeting Hutton, and Hutton had droppedon Macartney and the assay office gold! I shook Dudley till he sat up, sober as I never could have been in his shoes, saw him light out in hispyjamas to keep guard in his own office that Paulette and I had onlyjust left, and legged it for the assay office and Macartney. 

I didn't see a soul on the way, except the men who were piling out ofthe bunk house at the sound of a row, as I had piled out of bed; and Ithought Macartney had raised a false alarm. But inside his office door Iknew better. The four mill men who slept in the shack just off it wereall on the office floor, dead, or next door to it. Their guns were onthe floor too, and Macartney stood towering over the mess. 

"Get those staring bunk-house fools out of here, " he howled, as the mencrowded in after me. "I haven't lost any gold, only somebody tried toraid me. Why didn't you come and cut them off when I yelled for you?They--they got away!"

And suddenly, before I even saw he was swaying, he keeled over on thefloor. 

CHAPTER XII

THOMPSON'S CARDS: AND SKUNK'S MISERY

For that second I thought Macartney was dead. But as I jumped to him Isaw he had only fainted, and that nothing ailed him but a bullet thathad glanced off his upper arm and left more of a gouge than a wound. Whyit made him faint I couldn't see, but it had. I left him where he haddropped and turned to the four men he had been standing over. But theywere past helping. They were decent men too, for they were the last ofour own lot, --and it smote me like a hammer that they might have beenalive still if I had not interfered with Paulette that night and kepther from meeting Hutton. 

I knew as I knew there was a roof over my head that it was he who hadfallen on Macartney, and I would have chased straight after him ifcommon sense had not told me he would be lying up in the bush for justthat, and all I should get for my pains would be a bullet out of thedark that would end all chance of me personally ever catching Hutton. Itook stock of things where I stood, instead. Whether he had a gang ornot, I knew he had been alone in the thing to-night, and he had done acapable job. Our four men had been surprised, for they were all shot inthe back, as if they had been caught coming in the office door. 

Whether Macartney had been surprised or not I could not tell. Therevolver he had dropped as he fainted lay beside him empty, and therewere slivers out of the doorpost behind the dead men. None of themseemed to have been much help to him. Three had not fired a shot; thefourth had just one cartridge missing from his revolver, where he laywith his face to the door--and I saw it accounted for by a tearing slashin a blue print stuck on the wall to the left of the doorway. I turnedto the inside wall to see where the bullet that had glanced offMacartney had landed, and as I swung round he sat up. 

"You may well look--it was one of our own men got me, " he said thickly, and his curse turned my stomach; I never knew any good come of cursingthe dead. I told him to shut up and tell how the thing had happened. Andhe grinned with sheer rage. 

"It was plain damn foolery! I told you I believed I'd seen some onespying around the mine, and after I'd left you I didn't feel so surethat I'd cleared him out. I woke those fools up, " his glance at the deadmatched his curse at them, "and said if they heard any one prowlinground my door they were to lie low in their own shack, let him get in atme here, and then bundle out and cut him off from behind. And what theydid was to lose their heads. They heard some one or they didn't--I don'tknow. But the crazy fools piled out of their shack and ran in to me; anda man behind them--_behind_ them, mind you--came on their heels andplugged every son of them before they were more than inside my door! Itwas then I yelled for you. "

"D'ye mean you saw him--when he shot them?"

"I didn't see what he _looked_ like, " scornfully, "with four yelling, tumbling men between him and me. But I guess he was the man I'd beenlooking for. I fired and missed him, and when I lit for him over the menhe'd killed he was gone. I emptied my gun into the dark on chance andyelled some more for you, and it was then I got it myself. As I turnedaround in the doorway, Sullivan, " he pointed to the only man whose gunhad been fired, "that I thought was _dead_, sat up and let me have it inthe arm. " He pointed to the ripped blue print. "You see what I'd havegot if it had caught me straight! And that's all there was to it. "

"D'ye mean"--I bit back Hutton's name. I had no time to hatch up a lieabout him, and I was not going to drag in Paulette--"that--whoever wasthere, never even fired at you?"

"How do I know who he fired at?--I couldn't see inside of his head! Iknow he _hit_ those chumps who could have got him if they had obeyedorders--let alone that if they'd stayed out I'd have got him cleanmyself when he came in. As it was, he cleared out before I could do it, "said Macartney blackly, but the excitement had gone from his voice. "Call a couple of the bunk-house men to carry these four back to theirshack and clean up this mess, will you? And come into my room while Itie up this cut. It's no good going after whoever was here now. "

I knew that: also that I could get after him better single-handed atSkunk's Misery, where he would not expect me; or I would have been gonealready. But I didn't air that to Macartney as I followed him into thepartitioned-off corner he called his room. He had the last two clean-upsin his safe there, and he nodded to it as he hauled off his shirt for meto bind up his arm. 

"With what's there, and what you and Wilbraham have in his office, we'vetoo much around to be healthy, " he observed succinctly, "and I guesssome one's got wind of it. I don't know that it'll be any healthier foryou to try running it out to Caraquet and get held up on the road! But Isuppose it's got to go. "

I nodded. I knew it was hand to mouth with Dudley: he had no cash tocall on but the mine output, and immediate payments had to be made onthe machinery we were using. But I was not excited about being held upon the Caraquet road, --after I'd once been to Skunk's Misery. I was notred-hot about hurrying there, either; I wanted to give Hutton time toget back to his lair and feel easy about pursuit after his abortiveraid. "I expect we'll worry along, " I said idly. "Gimme that clean ragfor your arm!"

But Macartney cast down the handkerchief in his hand. "This fool thing'stoo short! Open that box, will you? There's a roll of bandage justinside. "

There was. But there was something else just inside, too. I stared at aworn leather case, that pretended to be a prayer-book with a brass claspand tarnished gilt edges, a case I had seen too often to make anymistake about. "By gad, " I cried blankly. "Why, you've got oldThompson's cards!"

Macartney was poking at his wounded arm, and he winced. "Hurry up, willyou? I can't stop this silly blood. Of course I have Thompson's cards;I can't help it if you think I'm an ass. I liked the old man, and Ididn't fancy the Billy Joneses playing cribbage with the only thing inthe world he cared for. I took the cards the day we buried him--saw themlying in the kitchen. "

"I expect you needn't have worried about Billy, " I commented absently. "He was going to give those cards to me, only he and I couldn't findthem. "

"Do come on, " snapped Macartney. He was set-eyed as usual, but I guessedhe was ashamed to have had me find him out in a sentimental weakness. "I'd have told you I had them if I'd known you cared. You can take thethings now, if you want them. "

It was not till that minute that I remembered Macartney could not knowwhy I wanted them, nor anything about the sort of codicil I'd torn offthe envelope of Thompson's letter to Dudley: for there had been nothingabout cards in what he'd read in it, or in the letter itself. But as theremembrance of both things shot up in me, I didn't confide them toMacartney, any more than I had to Dudley himself. I had a queer sort ofidea that if Thompson's pencilled scrawl had meant anything more thanthe wanderings of a distressed mind, I'd better get hold of it myselffirst. I said: "All right, " and pocketed Thompson's cards. Then I didup Macartney's arm, and the two of us went up the road to Dudley. He andhis dry nurse, Baker, who'd promptly arrived from the bunk house, stumped straight back to the assay office with Macartney to fuss overthe men who'd been killed. I was making for my own room, to see ifThompson's resurrected cards would shed any light on his crazy scrawls, when I heard a poker drop in the living room. Somebody was in there, raking up the fire. 

Charliet had gone after Macartney, with Dudley and Baker. I guessedPaulette had got up and was trying to start the fire, --for she wasalways working to keep things comfortable--if I haven't mentionedit--even for me. I once caught her darning my rags of socks and cryingover them--the Lord knew why! I went in to stop her now--and it was Iwho stopped dead in the doorway. It was not Paulette inside: it wasMarcia! Marcia in a velvet dressing gown, poking the ashes all over thehearth. I could have sworn I had seen Paulette burn the letter she hadsigned with Tatiana Paulina Valenka's name, but all the same the look ofMarcia's back turned me sick. And her face turned me sicker as she flungaround on me, with her fingers all ashes, --and Paulette's letter in herhand!

I kept back a curse at the raw fool that was me. I might have seen itwas not a tightly folded wad of stiff paper I had watched burn up, butjust the light torn scraps Paulette had thrown in with it. What wasmore, I had been alone with the thing under my very nose in the lightashes into which it must have sunk and never had the sense to burrow forit. It was too late even to snatch for it: Marcia had read it! She heldit up to me now, --and Tatiana Paulina Valenka, black on the yellow ofthe scorched paper, hit me on the eyes. 

"Who was right, Nicky Stretton?" she demanded triumphantly. "I told youI'd seen _Paulette Brown_ before! Only I never thought of the Houstonbusiness. I could kill Dudley; how dare he bring me out here with athief! I won't have her here another day. "

"What thief?" I snapped. "I don't know what you mean! Why on earth areyou poking in the ashes? What are you up for?"

"Only a Paulette Brown could stay asleep, with Dudley yelling at you andMacartney, " scornfully. "But if you want to know what I was poking inthe ashes for, I had no matches, and my fire was out, so I came in herefor a log to light it up. And I found this!"

"Well, burn it, " said I furiously. But she had begun to read it out, andI would have been a fool to stop her, for what Marcia knew I had toknow. But it knocked me silly. The something Paulette had "wanted tomake clear" was just a letter to Hutton! And the Lord knows it made memore set than ever on getting to Skunk's Misery before Hutton could knowthat Tatiana Paulina Valenka had given in! Because she had. She was notonly going to meet him; she was going away with him, Marcia's hard voiceread out baldly, if only he would give up the plan in his head. But itwas the last sentence that bit into me:

"Oh, Dick, have some mercy! I know you hate me now, but have somemercy; don't do what I'm afraid of. I'll give you all youwant--myself--everything--if only you'll let that be. Go away, as Ibegged you, and I'll leave Dudley for you, and go too. " And it wassigned, as I knew Paulette Brown had not meant to sign anything, "Tatiana Paulina Valenka. "

I never even wondered how she had meant to get it to Hutton, if she hadnot supposed she burned it. Every drop of my blood boiled in me with thedetermination that she should never pay Hutton's price with her lipsagainst his that she hated, and his cheek on her soft hair I had nevertouched; all the gold Dudley Wilbraham could ever mine was not worththat. But I kept a cold eye on Marcia. "A half-burnt letter--thatwasn't going to be sent--isn't anything but girl's nonsense, " I sworecontemptuously. 

"Isn't it? We'll see--when Dudley reads it!" Marcia looked like a devilhunched up in her dressing gown, with her gums showing as she grinned. "I told you she never meant to marry him. Now we'll see if he marriesher--when she writes letters like this!"

"I won't let you show it to Dudley!"

"You are like--everybody: cracked about a Paulette Brown!" Marciaretorted; and if I had only known what the "everybody" was going to meanI think I could have managed her, even then, by coming out with it. ButI didn't know, and I did the best I could. 

"Marcia Wilbraham, if you dare to show that thing to Dudley, or so muchas speak of it, I'll pay you out, --so help me, " I said; and if it was ina voice no decent woman knows a man can use, I meant it to be. It scaredMarcia, anyhow, though heaven knew I didn't see how I could ever pay herout, no matter what she did. She let go of the letter, which she had to, for I had her by the wrist. I would have burnt it up, only I had nomatch. Marcia leaned forward suddenly, electrically, and tapped the "Oh, Dick" in the last sentence, that was the only name in the letter. 

"Well, I'm damned, " said she coolly. "Why, the thing's to you! Do youmean you're going to run away with that--that girl?"

"No, " I said furiously and then saw I was an ass, "I mean, not now!"

"Since I know about you, " Marcia cut me off sweetly. But she stared atme calculatingly. "H--m, " said she, "I beg your pardon for mistakingyour N for a big, big D, Nicky darling, but you see I never heard anyone call you plain, short Nick! I don't exactly see why she had to writewith you in the house, either, but you needn't be nervous. I'm not goingto use my cinch on you--not now, anyway! I've changed my mind abouttelling Dudley. It won't do me any harm to keep something up my sleeveagainst you, if ever I want to do anything you don't admire. It wasn'tthe least bit of use for you to snatch that letter; I learned it off byheart before you came in on me. And I can always threaten Dudley nowthat I'll tell who Paulette Brown really is, if he tries to bully meabout any one I have a fancy for!"

Of course I knew she was thinking of Macartney. I didn't believe Dudleywould have cared if she had married him ten times over. But he mighthave been making some unreasonable objection to Macartney, at that, forall I knew. 

"I don't care one straw about your knowing I was going to take PauletteBrown out of this. But if you don't hold your tongue on it, I'll knowit, so you mind that, " I observed with some heat. Yet I was easier. Shecould not talk that night, anyhow, and she was welcome to come out withher crazy lie about Paulette and myself, once Hutton was dead, --becausehe and a snake would be all one to me, once I got my hands on him. Afterthat I had no qualms about being able to make Dudley see the truthconcerning that letter, and that it had been written to save hisgold, --and his life, likely enough! I let Marcia believe the name in theletter was mine, and that Paulette had been going off with me. All Iwished was that she had been. I went off to my room and left Marciasitting over the dead fire, --not so triumphant as she'd meant to be, forall the good face she put on it. 

Paulette's letter had pretty well knocked out all the interest I had inold Thompson's cards, but I got out the torn scrap of paper I'd putaway. There was nothing on it but what I'd read before: "For God's sakesearch my cards--_my cards!_"--and it looked crazier than ever with thethings in my hand. The cards had been water-soaked and were bumpy andblistery where Billy Jones had dried them, even though they wereflattened out again by the pressure of their tight case; but there wasnothing _to_ them, except that they were old Thompson's beyond a doubt. If I had thought there might be writing on them there was not so much asthe scratch of a pencil. There seemed to be a card missing. I thought itwas the deuce of hearts; but I was too sick over Marcia's discoveryabout Paulette to really examine the things and make sure. I shoved theminto my coat pocket beside what was there already, just as Dudley cameinto my room. 

He had enough to worry him without hearing that Marcia had found outabout Paulette. He sat on my bed, biting his nails; and said--whatMacartney had said--that we had too much gold at La Chance to run therisk of losing it by a better organized raid on it: and--what I hadknown for myself--that the mine output represented his only ready moneyfor notes that were past renewing, and that it had to go out toCaraquet. When I said why not, he bit his nails some more, and said hewas afraid of a hold-up: what he wanted me to do was to ride over to theHalfway and scout around from there to clear the Caraquet road, before Istarted out from La Chance with an ounce of gold. 

The idea suited me well enough. It would cover my expedition to Skunk'sMisery. But I did not mention that, or Hutton, to Dudley; and neverguessed I was a criminal fool! I did not mean to waste any time inscouting around the road, either, when I knew just where my man would besitting, with the half dozen wastrels he had probably scraped up. Butfirst I wanted five minutes, even two minutes, with Paulette, to warnher of what Marcia knew. So I said the afternoon would be time enough tostart. 

But Dudley would not hear of it and blazed out till I had to give up allidea of warning Paulette, and get out. And as I rode away from La Chancethe last person I saw was Macartney, though I might not have rememberedit, if I had not turned my head after I passed and caught the same grinon his face he had worn there the night his own man shot him. I rodeback and asked him what the mischief he was grinning at. 

"Grinning--because I'm angry, " Macartney returned with his usual setstare. "I'd sooner go with you than stay here, burying men and talkingto Wilbraham. I'm sick of La Chance, if you'd like to know. I came hereto mine, not to play in moving pictures. But I guess I've got to stick, unless I can hurry up my job here. So long--but I don't expect you'llsee anything of last night's man on the Caraquet road!"

Neither did I, nor of any one else. But I was not prepared to find theHalfway stable empty, when I rode in there just at dark. The house wasas deserted as the stable, though the fire was alive in the stove, andtaking both things together, I decided Billy and his wife had taken afour-horse team into Caraquet for a load. I had meant to borrow one ofhis horses to go on to Skunk's Misery, --for this time I intended to ridethere. But with no horse to borrow, there was nothing to do but to ridemy own, and it was toward ten that night when I left him to wait for mein a spruce thicket, within half a mile of the porcupine burrows thatSkunk's Misery called houses. 

As I turned away, the cold bit a hundred times worse for the lack ofsnow in the woods, and the bare ground made the pat of my moccasinssound louder than I liked; but on the other hand I should leave no trackback to my waiting horse, if I had to clear out without getting Hutton. The thought made me grin, for I had no fear of it. 

Hutton would be asleep, judging from the look of things; for as I gotfairly into Skunk's Misery, it lay still as the dead. The winding tracksthrough it were deserted; silent between and under the great rocks andboulders; slippery in the open with droppings from the pine trees thatgrew in and on the masses of huddled rocks. The wind rose a little, too, and soughed in the pine branches, to die wailing among the stones. It did not strike me as a cheerful wind for a man in Hutton's shoes, forit covered the light sound of my feet as I went past the hut of the boyI had nursed and through the maze of tracks his mother had shown me, tothe new log lean-to the Frenchwoman's son had built and never used. But, as I reached it, I was suddenly not so sure Hutton was there!

The lean-to looked all right. The door was open, just as I had left it. But, as I crossed the threshold, I knew I was too late, and there wasnobody inside, or in the cave underneath it where men had been when Islept there. The place had that empty feeling of desertion, or lateoccupancy and a cold lair, that even a worse fool than I could notmistake now. I shut the door on myself without sound, all the same;snapped my pocket lantern; and stared, --at just what I had known I wasgoing to find. 

There was nothing in the place now but the bare lean-to walls and therock they backed on; but twenty men had been living there since I leftit. The black mark of their fire was plain against the rock face; thelog floor was splintered by heavy boots with nails in them--which didnot speak of the moccasined return of the Frenchwoman's son--and in theplace where I had once made a bed of pine boughs and carried it awaywith me there lay a flurry of litter that spoke volumes: for among itwas a corned-beef can that was no product of Skunk's Misery, where meatmeant squirrels and rabbits, and--a corked bottle of wolf dope! That Ilaid gingerly aside till I had poked around in the rest of the mess, butthere was not much else there besides kindling. I got up to leg it forthe underground cave, blazing that I had missed Hutton and half hopinghe might be there, --but I dropped flump on my knees again, dumbfounded. 

Underneath the displaced litter, stuck sideways in a crack of the logfloor, was a shiny, dirty white playing card. I pulled it out. And inthe narrow white beam of my electric lantern I saw the missing two ofhearts out of Thompson's pack!

I saw more, too, before I even wondered how one of Thompson's cards hadever got to Skunk's Misery. The deuce of hearts was written on--closely, finely and legibly--with indelible pencil. And as I read the shortsentences, word by word, I knew Thompson had never got to Caraquet, never got anywhere but to the cave under the very lean-to I kneltin--till he had been brought up from it, here--to be taken away anddrowned in Lac Tremblant, as a decent man would not drown a dog! And Iknew--at last--where Hutton and his gang were, and who Hutton was!

But I made no move to go underground to the cave to look for them. Andthe only word that came to my tongue was: "_Macartney!_"

CHAPTER XIII

A DEAD MAN'S MESSENGER

For the written message on Thompson's lost card was plain. Macartneywas--Hutton! And Hutton's gang were just the new, rough men Macartneyhad dribbled in to the La Chance mine!

It was Macartney--our capable, hard-working superintendent--for whomPaulette had mistaken me in the dark, that first night I came home to LaChance and the dream girl, who was no nearer me now than she was then;Macartney from whom she had sealed the boxes of gold, to prevent himsubstituting others and sending me off to Caraquet with worthlessdummies; Macartney I had heard her tell herself she could not trust;Macartney who had put that wolf dope--that there was no longer any doubthe had brought from Skunk's Misery--in my wagon; Macartney who had hadthat boulder stuck in the road to smash my pole, by the same men whowere posted by the corduroy road through the swamp to cut me off thereif the wolves and the broken wagon failed; and Macartney who had beenbalked by a girl I had left at La Chance to fight him alone now!

The thing seemed to jump at me from six places at once, now that I knewenough to see it was there at all. But what sickened me at my own utterblindness was not the nerve of the man, but just the risk he had letPaulette run on the Caraquet road, and--old Thompson! For Thompson hadnever sent Macartney to La Chance, and Macartney had had him murdered incold blood!

If my eyes fogged as I stared at the dead man's two of hearts, it wasonly half with fury. Old Thompson had been decent, harmless, happy withhis unintelligent work and his sad solitaire, --and he had been throughseven hells before he wrote what I read now:

 "Wilbraham--Stretton--pray God one of you saw all I could put inside envelope of last letter Macartney forced me to write. I never sent him to La Chance. I never saw the man till he waylaid me between Halfway and Caraquet, and brought me here. Do not know where it is, am prisoner underground. Wrote you two letters to save my miserable life; know now I have not saved it. Your lives--gold--everything--in danger too. For any sake get Macartney before he gets you. No use to look for me. Tried to warn you inside envelope, but suppose was no use. Good-by. _Take care, take care!_ There was a boy Macartney sent off with my horse; was kind; said he would come back. When he does, takes this to you----He has not come. Been brought up into lean-to, am gagged, feel death near. Forgive treachery--life was dear--get Macar----"

But the scrawl broke off in a long pencil line, where death had jerkedThompson's elbow, and his card had fallen from his hand. 

I sat on the floor and saw the thing. Macartney, hidden in Skunk'sMisery, making plans to get openly and with decent excuse to La Chance, had fallen on Thompson and used him. And for Thompson, writing lyingletters in Skunk's Misery in fear of the death that had come to him inthe end, there had been no rescue. His scribbled envelope, even ifDudley or I had understood it, had come too late. The boy who took hishorse to Billy--whoever he was--had never come back. Thompson had noteven had time, in the end, to slip his written-over card into the casedpack I had found in his almost empty pockets, before Macartney'smen--for of course Macartney himself had never been near the place sincehe got his wolf dope there and left it for good--had taken him off andmade away with him. Once his last letter was written and posted undercover from Caraquet to be reposted to Dudley from Montreal by someunknown hand, Macartney had no more use for Thompson, and a screenagainst betrayal on two sides: either by his own men, or that chancefinding of Thompson's body that had actually happened; for Thompson'sown letter would clear his murderer. 

As for Thompson's envelope! It's an easy enough thing to do if you justslip your pencil inside an envelope and write blindly, but it made mesick to think of poor old Thompson scrawling in the inside of hisenvelope, furiously, furtively, while the ink of his neat copperplatedried on the outside, and Macartney likely stood by poring over theactual letter, wondering if there was any flaw in it that could show outand damn him. And the desperate scrawl in the envelope had been _nogood_, thanks to the fool brain and tongue of myself, Nicky Stretton! Ithad done more to warn Macartney than either Dudley or me, since ifThompson had written in the reverse of the envelope he was also likelyto have written on anything that would take a pencil. 

It was no wonder Macartney had stood stunned over that envelope, tillDudley and I believed him heartsick for his friend, for it must havebeen then that he remembered Thompson's cards, --that I guessed the oldman had just sat and played with, day in and day out, while he was aprisoner and about to die. Thompson could have written on them; andMacartney must have feared it, or he never would have stolen them fromBilly Jones. I hoped grimly that he had been good and worried before hegot his chance to do it and set his mind at ease. And at ease it musthave been, for he had actually known nothing about the cards; he couldonly have taken them on chance, from sheer terror, and found themharmless. He had probably never even noticed one was missing--andwhatever Thompson had not been wise about he had been wise when he tookout a deuce, and not one of the four aces the most casual eye mustmiss--or he would never have let me have them, contemptuously, as onelets a child play with a knife without a blade. 

Only I was not so sure this particular knife had no blade, --forMacartney!

He knew nothing of the desperate scrawl on the bottom flap of thatenvelope that his own hasty grab had jerked off and left in my fist;nothing of the deuce of hearts that made its crazy inscription pitifullysane to me now; and nothing in particular about me, Nicky Stretton. Butwhen I came to think of all I knew about Macartney, that was noremarkable consolation; for--except his never noticing that the bottomflap of Thompson's envelope was missing, and taking it for granted ithad been blank like the top one--he had made a fool of me all along theline!

I had stopped Paulette from going away with him the night before, aftershe thought she had burned the note she had meant to slip into his hand;but he must have told her, outside in the passage, when I thought he wassending a message to Marcia, that if she did not go with him then--inthe next hour--he would begin trouble that very night for Dudley and LaChance. 

And he had! It was Paulette he was waiting for, when he lied to me abouta strange man. And he had gone straight down to the assay office, donehis own alarm of a robber, and killed four men to give it artistictruth. It was no wonder he had said he was sick of playing in movingpictures and grinned at me when I left La Chance to search the Caraquetroad for nobody else but himself. 

As for his gang, the very bunk-house men he had told me to order out ofthe assay office, were just Macartney's own gang from Skunk's Misery, come over when they had silenced Thompson forever; at Macartney's elbowwhenever he chose to murder the lot of us and commandeer the La Chancemine. I wished, irrelevantly, that Dunn and Collins _had_ got toMacartney, instead of being killed on the way; they might have beenchancy young devils about stealing gold, but they would never have stoodfor murdering old Thompson! It was no good thinking of that, though. 

I stowed away Thompson's deuce of hearts, that no boy had ever come for, in the case with those other pitiful cards he had told me to search, andgot on my feet with only one thought in my head, --to get back to LaChance and my dream girl that Macartney was alone with, except forDudley, --Dudley whom he hated, who had threatened him for PauletteValenka, for Thompson, till it was no wonder I had found him with theface of a devil where he lurked eavesdropping in the shack hall. Andthere something else hit me whack. Baker, Dudley's jackal, was one ofMacartney's gang: told off, for all I knew, to put him out of the way! Iwheeled to get out of that damn lean-to quicker than I had got in; andinstead I stood rooted to the floor. _Below me, somewhere underground, somebody was moving!_

Naturally, I knew it could not be Macartney, because he could not havegot there, even if he had not had other fish to fry at home. But one ofhis gang might have been left at Skunk's Misery and could have the lifechoked out of him. There was no way leading underground directly fromthe lean-to, or I would have been caught the night I slept there andbelieved real voices were a dream. I slid out of the door, around theboulder that backed the place, and was afraid of my lantern. I went downon my hands and knees to feel for a track and found one, down a gullythat ran in under a blind rock. I crawled down it, all but flat, as Iburrowed like a rabbit, with my back scraping against the living rockbetween me and the sky, and my head turned to the place where I knew thelean-to stood. I was under it with no warning whatever; in a natural, man-high cellar I could stand up in, with half a dozen bolt holesrunning off it: and I had no need to flash up my lantern to see them. There was a light in the place already from a candle-end Macartney's menmust have left behind; and beside it, not looking at me, not evenhearing my step, because he was sobbing his heart out, lay the boy I hadcarried home from the Caraquet road!

"Thompson's boy, who took his horse to Billy--who never came back!" Isaid to myself. God knows I touched him gently, but he screamed like ashot rabbit till he saw my face. 

"You?" said I. "What's the matter with you? Brace up; it's only me!"

Brace up was just what he did not do. He sank back with every muscle ofhim relaxed. "Bon Dieu, I thought you was him come back, " he gasped inhis bastard French Indian, "that man that half killed me on the Caraquetroad! But it wasn't him I was crying about. It was the other man--thatpromised me two dollars for something. "

"To come back and take a letter--where you had taken his horse?"

The boy--I did not even know his name--nodded, with a torrent of sullenpatois. He had never come for his two dollars, and now the man was goneand he would never get it. But it was not his fault. The first man--theone who had sent him to the Halfway with the horse--had caught himcrawling back for the letter, had told him the man who was going to payhim had gone away long ago, and had taken him out to chop firewood andlet a tree fall on him. How the lad had ever crawled out to the Caraquetroad I did not ask. I think the thing that stabbed me was that I hadbeen within five hundred yards of Thompson all the time I was nursingthis very boy, that the knowledge of it had lain behind unconscious lipswithin a hand's breadth of me, that I had gone away ignorant, leavingThompson robbed of the only help he could ever have had. 

"Why didn't you tell me all that--the night I came over to yourmother's?" I groaned. 

The boy said shortly that his mother would have gone straight off andtold I'd been there, if he had come out with the truth. It was all liesshe had told me about the Frenchwoman's son; he had never been near theplace. It was the man who had half killed him who had built the lean-to, and his mother had said she would finish the business if ever he openedhis mouth about it, or let out the truth about the same man sending himto the Halfway with a horse, or the smelling stuff she had helped himmake. 

"You're sure she didn't go and tell that man about me, anyway?" Iremembered Macartney's grin. 

But the boy shook his head. "She didn't worry; she said you were too biga fool to matter!" After which wholesome truth he announced listlesslythat he was done with his mother. She had turned him out of her housenow, anyway. She said he was no good to her, now that he could onlycrawl, and could not even trap enough rabbits to live on, and she hadanother man living in her house who would do it for her. So he had comehere to find the man who had promised him two dollars--that solitarybill that had been all the money in Thompson's pockets--and when hefound him gone and the place empty he had stayed there to hide, andbecause he had nowhere else to go. 

I thought of his mother's haggard, handsome face and hard mouth. Macartney had certainly found a good ally while he was laid up inSkunk's Misery waiting for his chance to fall on Paulette. But all thatdid not matter now. What did matter was that I had found the missinglink between Thompson's cards and Macartney in the boy who had takenThompson's horse back to the Halfway. I had no mind to produce him nowthough; for there were other things to be looked to than showing up oldThompson's murder. And the boy was safe where he was, for one glance athim had told me he could not walk half a mile. 

"Are you safe from your mother here--and can you get food for yourself?"I demanded abruptly, and the boy nodded the head I knew would never beother than a cripple's. "Well, you stay here, " I told him, because ifever I needed the poor little devil for a witness against Macartney hewould be no good lying dead somewhere in the bush, "and I'll come backand pay you ten times two dollars for just waiting here till I come. Butyou'll have to hide if that man comes back who sent you out with thehorse!" I knew Macartney would kill him in good earnest, if he came backand found him with a living tongue in his head. "Don't you trust any onebut me--or some one who comes and gives you twenty dollars, " I addedemphatically, just because that was the only absolutely unlikely event Icould think of. "And even then, you stay here till you see me!Understand?"

He said he did; it was easy enough to creep out after dark and robrabbit traps; he was doing it now. And from the greed a fortune oftwenty dollars had lit in his wretched eyes, I knew he would go on doingit till I came back. Of what wildly unexpected use he was to be to me inhis waiting, heaven knows I had no thought. I crept out of his burrow asI had crept in, got back to my half-frozen horse, and rode hell forleather back to the Halfway. And just there was where I slumped. 

My horse had to be fed and rested; he was dead beat when I led him intothe unlocked stable, and when I had seen to him I meant to rouse upBilly Jones and tell him all the ugly stuff I had unearthed--and seentoo--for the killing of four innocent men was hot in my mind. But I didnot, for the excellent reason that Billy was not back. His house wasdark, and his four horses still away from their vacant stalls. I satdown on a heap of clean straw to wait for him, and I said I slumped. Iwent sound, dead asleep. If I was hunting for excuses I might say it wastwo in the morning, and I had been up most of the night before. Butanyhow, I did it. And I sat up, dazed, to see a lantern held in frontof my eyes and one of Macartney's men from La Chance staring at me. 

It struck me even then that it was not he who was surprised; and thesleep jerked out of me like wine out of a glass. "What are you doinghere? And where the devil's Billy?" I snapped, without thinking. 

I saw the man grin. "Billy's fired, " he returned coolly. "Him and hiswife got it in a note from Wilbraham, day before yesterday, when yourteamsters stopped here on their way to Caraquet. They doubled up theirteams with Billy's and took him and his wife along, and all their stuff. And I guess they'd been fired too, for they ain't come back. Mr. Macartney sent me over to see. Anything I can do for you?"

"Take that lantern out of my eyes, and hustle me up some breakfast. I--I'm sorry about Billy!" I was not; I was startled, --and worse. It hadnot been Dudley who had dismissed him, asinine as he had been aboutBilly and old Thompson, or he would have told me. It had been Macartney, getting rid of him and my teamsters under my very nose; and--asMacartney's parting grin recurred to me--if his man had any one with himin Billy's vacant shack they had been put there to get rid of _me_. 

"Get me a bucket of water and make coffee, if you haven't done it, " Isaid, yawning. "I'll come in--as soon as I've fed my horse. "

But I did neither. I stopped yawning, too. Through the frosty window, asthe man disappeared for the shack, I saw a light in its doorway and twomore of Macartney's men standing in it, black between the lamp and thegray morning glimmer. I stirred some meal into the water Macartney's manhad brought, drank a mouthful before I let my horse have just enough torinse his throat with, and threw on his saddle. It was flat on his neckthat I came out the stable door, and what Macartney's men meant to havedone I don't know, for I was down the road toward La Chance like arocket. And before I had made a mile I knew I had got off none too soon, for we were going to have snow at last, and have it hard. 

Before I cleared the corduroy road it cut my face in fine stingingflakes, and by the time I was halfway to La Chance it was blinding me. It came on a wind, too, and I cursed it as I faced it, with my horsetoiling through the heavy, sandy stuff that was too cold and dry topack. The twenty-two miles home took me most of the day. It was close ondusk when I fumbled through drifting, hissing snow and choking wind, tothe door of the La Chance stable. And the second I got inside I knewMacartney's man had told the truth, and Macartney had fired myteamsters with Billy Jones. There was not a soul about the place, andten hungry horses yelled at me at once as I stamped my half-frozen feeton the floor. I would have shouted for Charliet if it had not seemedquicker to feed them myself. I yanked down a forkful of hay for each ofthem, after I saw to my own horse. And if you think I was a fool toworry over dumb beasts, just that small delay made a difference in myimmediate future that likely saved my life. If I had raced off for thehouse at once I might have met with----Well, an accident! But that comesin later. 

As it was I was a good twenty minutes in that stable. When I waded outinto the swirling white dusk of snow and wind between me and the shack Iwas just cautious enough, after the Halfway business, to stare hardthrough the blinding storm at the house I was making for, though I didnot think Macartney was ripe to dare anything open against me at LaChance. But with that stare I knew abruptly that he was! Massed justinside the open door of Dudley's shack, that was black dark but for onelight in the living-room window, were a crowd of men that looked likenothing in the world but our own miners, that I knew now forHutton's--or Macartney's--gang! How he dared have them there, instead ofin the bunk house, beat me, --but it was them, all right. The wind wasclear of snow for one second, and I saw them plainly. And they saw me. Without one sound the whole gang jumped for me. I had my gun out, and Icould have stopped the leaders before I had to get back against thestable door; but there was no need. 

There was a shout behind me. The men checked, sprawling over each otherin the snow--ludicrously, if I had been seeing much humor in things--andit was then it struck me that I should have had an accident if I hadbolted straight into a dark house, instead of delaying in the stabletill Macartney's gang got tired of waiting for me and bundled outthemselves to see where I was. But I only wheeled, with my gun in myfist, to Macartney's voice. 

What I had expected to see I don't know. What I did see, stumblingthrough the drifts to me, was an indistinguishable figure that turnedout to be two. For it was Macartney, carrying Marcia Wilbraham. Andbehind him, short-skirted to her knees, and with no coat but hermiserable little blue sweater, came my dream girl. 

I forgot Macartney could not know I knew he was Hutton, or all the restthat I did know. I said, "What hell's trick are you up to now?"

But Macartney only turned a played-out face to me. "Take her from me, will you?" he snapped. "I'm done. " He let Marcia slip down into thesnow. "Wilbraham's killed!"

CHAPTER XIV

WOLVES--AND DUDLEY

It was cleverly done. So was the desperate gesture of Macartney's handacross his blood-shot, congested eyes. If I had not had Thompson's deuceof hearts in my pocket I might have doubted if Macartney really wereHutton, or had had any hand in the long tale of tragedy at La Chance. But as it was I knew, in my inside soul, bleakly, that if Dudley weredead Macartney had killed him, --as only luck had kept him from killingme. 

I saw him give a quick, flicking sign to his men with the fingers of thehand that still covered his eyes, and I knew I was right in the lastthing, anyhow, for the men straggled back from us, as to an order. Theywere to do nothing now, before Paulette and Marcia, if their firstinstructions had been to ambush inside the shack to dispose of me when Igot back from the Halfway, --which I had not been meant to do. I did notdrop my gun hand, or fling the truth at Macartney. But I made no moveto pick up Marcia. I said, "How d'ye mean Dudley's killed? Who killedhim?"

"Wolves!" If Macartney meant me to think he was too sick to answerproperly he was not, for he spoke suddenly to the bunk-house men. "Thereis no good in your waiting round, or looking any more. They've got Mr. Wilbraham, and"--he turned his head to me again--"they damn nearly gotme!"

Later, I wished sincerely that they had, for it would have saved me sometrouble. At that minute all I wanted was to get even with Macartneymyself. I said, "Pick up Marcia and get into the house. You can talkthere!"

Macartney glanced at me. Secretly, perhaps, neither of us wanted to givethe other a chance by stooping for a heavy girl; I knew I was not goingto do it. But Paulette must have feared I was. She sprang past me andlifted Marcia with smooth, effortless strength, as if she were nothing. 

Macartney started, as though he realized he had been a fool not to havedone it himself, and wheeled to walk into the house before us, where hecould have slipped cartridges into his gun; I knew afterwards that itwas empty. But Paulette had moved off with Marcia and a peremptorygesture of her back-flung head that kept Macartney behind her. I camebehind him. And because he had no idea of all I knew about him, he tookthings as they looked on the surface. With Paulette leading, and me onMacartney's heels, we filed into the living room. There was a lightthere, but the fire was out. I guessed Charliet was hiding under hisbed, --in which I wronged him. But I was not worrying about Charliet orcold rooms then. Paulette laid Marcia down on the floor, and I stood inthe doorway. I did not believe the bunk-house men would come back tillan open row suited Macartney's book, but there was no harm in commandingthe outside doors of the shack, all the same. And the sudden thoughtthat we were all in the living room but Dudley, and that he would nevercome back to it, gripped my soul between fury and anguish. "Get itout--about Dudley, " I said; and I did not care if my voice were thick. 

Macartney looked over at me just as an honest, capable superintendentought to have looked. "I can't; because I don't know it. All I do know'sthis. After you went off yesterday Wilbraham got to drinking; the wolvesbegan to howl round the place after dark, and he said they drove himmad. He got a gun and went out after them--and he never came back. Ididn't even know he was gone till midnight. I thought he'd shut himselfin his office as he often does, till I heard shots outside, and foundhe wasn't in the house. I turned out the bunk-house men to look for himthat instant, and when the lot you saw waiting in the shack for me camehome toward morning, and said they couldn't find a sign of Wilbraham, and the bush was so full of wolves they were scared to go on looking, Iwent myself----"

"And took _girls_"--I remembered the reek of my wolf-doped clothes tillI fancied I could smell the stuff there in the room, thought of a halfdrunk man walking out on a like baited track, and two girls taken overit to look for him--"into bush like that!"

"They followed me, " curtly. "I didn't know it till it was too late toturn them back! I couldn't have sent Miss Wilbraham back, anyhow; shewas nearly crazy. And if you're thinking of wolves, it was gettingdaylight, and----" he hesitated, and I could have filled in the pausefor myself, remembering how that wolf dope acted: two lambs could havemoved in the bush with safety, so long as they kept away from where itwas smeared on the ground. But Macartney filled it in differently. "And, anyhow, it was well they did come. It was Marcia--found Wilbraham!"

I don't think I had really believed Dudley was dead till then. I staredat Marcia, lying on the floor as purple in the face from over-exertionand fright as if she had had an apoplectic fit, and at Paulette stoopingover her, silent, and white around the mouth. She looked up at me, andher eyes gave me fierce warning, if I had needed it. 

"Marcia got afraid and bolted for home--the wrong way, " she spoke upsharply. "When I ran after her she was standing in some spruces, screaming and pointing in front of her. I saw the blood on the ground, and----Here's Dudley's cap! I found it, all chewed, close by. " Shepulled out a rag of fur from under her snow-caked sweater; and as thestale reek of the Skunk's Misery wolf dope rose from the thing, I knewthe smell in the room had been no fancy, and how Dudley Wilbraham haddied. I wheeled and saw Macartney's face, --the face of a man who took mefor a fool whose nose would tell him nothing. 

"D'ye mean _that_ was all you found?" I got out. 

"No! The rest was there. But it was--unrecognizable! Even I couldn'tlook at it. It was--pretty tough, for girls. I shot one wolf we scaredoff it, but I couldn't do anything more. I couldn't lift--it;but--Dudley's coat was on it. " He had turned so white that I rememberedhis faint in the assay office, like you do remember things that don'tmatter. I would have thought him chicken-hearted for a wholesalemurderer, if it had not been for the cold hate in his eyes. 

"D'ye mean you left Dudley--out there in the bush? Where the devil wasBaker, that black and white weasel you set to look after him? I'll bethe saved _his_ skin! Where is he?"

"Baker's missing, too, " simply; and I did not believe it. "And I don'tsee what else I could have done but leave Dudley. None of the men werewith me to carry him in; it had begun to snow; and in another hour Icouldn't have kept the track back to La Chance. As it was, Miss Marciaplayed out; I had to carry her most of the way. And that's all there isto it, " with sudden impatience, "except that Wilbraham's dead andBaker's missing. If he wasn't, he would have brought Dudley in. "

"Yes, " I said. I saw Charliet's head poke around the corner of thekitchen door and called to him to carry Marcia to her room, and to getfires going and something to eat; for the queer part of it was thatthere seemed to be two of me, and one of them was thinking it wasstarving. It saw Charliet and my dream girl take Marcia out, and theother me turned on Macartney. 

"By gad, there's one thing more, " I said slowly. "You don't have to goon playing moving pictures, Dick Hutton, or using an alias either!You've killed Dudley and Thompson, and for a good guess Dunn andCollins, if I can't be sure--and you'd have had me first of all, if yourboulder and your wolf dope hadn't failed you on the Caraquet road!"

Macartney's furious, surprised oath was real. "I don't know what youmean! Who on earth"--but he stammered on it--"Who d'ye mean by Hutton?"

"You, " said I. "And if you're not he, I don't know why! There's no oneelse who would have followed Paulette Valenka out here. I don't believewhat you've done's been all revenge on the girl you tried to get intotrouble about Van Ruyne's emeralds, or scare that Dudley would worm outthe truth about that, either: but if it was to jump the La Chance minetoo, you're busted! Your accident serial story won't go down. I knewabout your wolf dope business long ago, and do you suppose _this_, " Ishoved Dudley's cap under his nose, "doesn't tell me how you limed thetrap you set for Dudley last night, or what you smeared on his clotheswhen he was too drunk to smell it? I know what brought the wolves tohowl around this house, if I don't know how you shoved Dudley out tothem. I know it was a home-made raid you had down at the assay office, and--I've been to Skunk's Misery!"

"Well?" said Macartney thickly. 

"Well enough! I have Thompson's deuce of hearts you didn't see wasmissing, when you gave me back his pack! With any luck I'll pay you outfor that, and our four mill men, _and_ Dudley; not here, where you canfight and die quick, but outside--where they've things like gallows! Oh, you would, would you?"

For his empty gun just missed me as he made a lightning jump to bring itdown on my head, and my left hand stopped him up just under the ear. Iought to have shot him. I don't know why I held back. I was so mad withrage when he dropped that I could have jumped on him like a lumbermanand tramped the heart out of him. But I only lit for the kitchen, andCharliet's clothesline. As I got back and knelt down by the man who hadcalled himself Macartney, Thompson rose up before me, as he had sat inthat very room, playing his lonely solitaire; and the four dead men inthe assay office; and Dudley--only I had no grief for Dudley, because itwas drowned in rage. I bound Macartney round and round with theclothesline, whether he was really Hutton or not, --and I meant to havethe truth out of him about that and everything else before I was done. But when I had him gagged with kitchen towels while he was still knockedout, I sat back on my heels to think; and I damned myself up and downbecause I had not shot Macartney out of hand. 

I had Macartney all right; but I had next door to nothing else, unless Icould find a safe place to jail him while I disposed of his men. Now, ifthey chose to rush me, I could not hold the eight shack windows againstthem, if Paulette and I might each hold a door. If I took to the bushwith Paulette and Marcia, _and_ Macartney, I had nowhere on earth to go. There could be no piling that ill-assorted company on horses and puttingout for Caraquet, with the road choked with snow, even if I could havegot by Macartney's garrison at the Halfway. Crossing Lac Tremblant, thatby to-morrow would be lying sweetly level under a treacherous scum oflolly and drifted snow, ready to drown us all like Thompson, --I cursedand put that out of the question. That lake that was no lake offeredabout as good a thoroughfare as rats get in a rain-barrel. Whereas, tohold Macartney at La Chance till I downed his gang----

"By gad, " I flashed out, "I can do it--in Thompson's abandoned stope!"It was not so crazy as it sounds. Thompson's measly entrance tunnelwould only admit one man at a time, and I could hold it alone tilldoomsday. Macartney could be safely jailed inside the stope till I hadwiped out his men; Paulette would be safe; and there remained nodoubtful quantities but Marcia and Charliet the cook. I guessed I couldscare Marcia and that Charliet would probably be on my side, anyway. Ifhe were and sneaked down now to provision the stope, the thing would bedead easy, even to firewood, for Thompson had yanked in a couple ofloads of mine props and left them there. I lit out into the passage tohunt Charliet and find out where the bunk-house men had gone to. Butthere was no sign of either in the wind and snow outside the shack. Ibolted the door on the storm, turned for the kitchen, and saw my dreamgirl standing outside Marcia's room. 

She was dead white in the dim candlelight that shone through Marcia'shalf-open door. I thought of that as I jumped to her, and I would havedone better to have thought of Marcia. I could see her from the passage, lying on her bed, purple-faced still, and with her eyes shut. But oneglance was all I gave to Marcia. I said:

"For heaven's sake, Paulette, don't look like that! I'm top-sides withMacartney now. Got him tied up. Come into the kitchen till I speak toyou. I want Charliet----" But as I pushed Paulette before me, into thekitchen just across the passage from Marcia's room, I stopped speaking. She was holding out Thompson's case of cards, --open, with that scrawledtwo of hearts on the top!

"Charliet's gone--run away somewhere. " Her chest labored as if she weremaking herself go on breathing, "and you dropped--this! I ran out fromMarcia to see what you were doing with Macartney, " she hesitated on thename, "and you'd dropped this. I----You know Macartney killed Dudley, really. Does this mean he killed _Thompson_, too?"

"You can say Macartney's real name, " I snapped bitterly. "I've known hewas Dick Hutton ever since last night. "

But Paulette only gasped, as if she did not care whether I knew it ornot, "Where--how--did you get these cards?"

I told her, and she gave a queer low moan. "Dudley's dead, and I'm pastcrying. " Her voice never rose when she was moved; it went down, to Dbelow the line on a violin. "I'm past everything, but wishing I wasdead, too, for I'm the reason that brought Dick Hutton here asMacartney. Oh, you should have let me meet him that night! I wasn't onlygoing to meet him; I meant to go away with him before morning. It wouldhave been too late for poor, innocent old Thompson, but it would havesaved the four mill men--and Dudley!" She had said she was past crying, but her voice thrilled through me worse than tears; and it might havethrilled Marcia in her room across the passage, if I'd rememberedMarcia. "God knows Dudley was good to me--but it's no use talking ofthat now. What have you done with Macart--with Dick Hutton--that yousaid you had him safe for now?"

"Knocked him out; and tied him up with the clothesline, in the livingroom--till I can take him out to Caraquet to be hanged!"

"You ought to have killed him, " Paulette answered very slowly. "I wouldhave, when we found Dudley, only he'd taken my gun. At least, I believehe had: he said I'd lost it. And I'm afraid, without it--while DickHutton's alive!"

I looked at her ghastly face and behaved like a fool for the hundredthtime in this history; for I shoved my own gun into her hand and told herto keep it, that I'd get another. I would have caught her in my arms ifit had not been for remembering Dudley, who was dead because the two ofus had held our tongues to him. "Look here, " I said irrelevantly. "D'yeknow Marcia thinks Macartney wants to marry her?"

"He doesn't want to marry any one--except me, " Paulette retortedscornfully; and once more I should have remembered Marcia across thepassage, only I didn't. "He's made love to Marcia, of course, for ablind, like he did everything else. If we could make her realize thatand that he killed Dudley as surely as if he'd lifted his own hand tohim----"

But I cut her off. "By gad, Paulette, what sticks me is what Macartneydid all this _for_!"

"Me, " said Paulette very bitterly. "At least, at first; I'm not so sureabout it now. When I first met Dick we were in Russia. He'd got intotrouble over a copper mine--you've heard Macartney talk of theUrals?"--if we both spoke of him as though he were two different menneither of us noticed. "He came to me in Petrograd, penniless, and Ihelped him. But when I came to America, alone, I turned him out of myflat. He may have loved me, I don't know; but when I wouldn't marry him, he said he'd make me; that he'd hound me wherever I went and disgraceme, till I had to give in and come to him. And he _must_ have done it atthe Houstons', if I don't know how; for the police would take me now forthose emeralds I never stole, if they knew where I was. I can't seewhere Dick could have been or how he managed the thing, but all the restDudley told you and him about that night at the Houstons' was true. Idid give Van Ruyne sleeping stuff to keep him quiet while I got away, but it was because it came over me--the second I knew those emeraldswere gone--that Dick must be in that house!--that if I didn't run away, he'd come in and threaten me till I had to go with him. And I'd havedied first. I slipped out of the house unseen; and it was just theBlessed Virgin, " simply, "who made me find Dudley's car stalled outsidethe Houstons' gate!"

"D'ye mean you'd known Dudley before?"

She nodded. "I'd met him: and I liked him, because he never made love tome. He hadn't been at the Houstons' that night; he was only coming backfrom Southampton alone, without any chauffeur. I knew no one would everthink he'd helped me, so I just got into his car. But I never shouldhave let him bring me here, " bitterly; "I should have known Dick wouldfind me, and play gold robberies here to pay Dudley out. He told me hewould, unless I'd go away with him--that first night you heard metalking to him--but I didn't see how he could work it. I thought I couldtire him out by always balking him--till that night I didn't meet him, and he killed those four men. Then I knew I couldn't fight him; and thereason was that Dick's a finished mining engineer who never ran straightin his life!"

"What?" I knew both things, only I saw no connection with Paulette. 

But she nodded. "He could get good work anywhere, but he won't workhonestly. All he cares for is the excitement of big things he can getat crookedly. That was why he tried a _coup_ with that copper mine inthe Urals and had to clear out of Russia. And the La Chance mine that hecame to contemptuously, and just to get hold of me, is a big thing too. No--listen! You don't know how big, for you've been kept in the dark. But Dick knows; and that's how I first knew I couldn't manage him anymore, and why I don't think it is I he has done all he has for, nor thatit was even to pay out Dudley. I believe it was to _get the mine_!"

"Then why, in heaven's name, didn't you tell Dudley who he was?"

"I couldn't make Dudley listen, at first. Then, " very low, "I didn'tdare; I knew it would mean that Dudley would get killed. I never thoughtthat--would happen, anyway. "

"There was me. " I was stung unbearably. "You must have known ever sincethe night I first came here that there was always me!"

"Y-you, " she stumbled oddly on it. "I couldn't tell _you_! Can't you seeI was afraid, Nicky, that you might--get killed for me, too?"

For the first time that night she looked at me as if she saw me--me, Nicky Stretton, dark, fierce and dirty--and not Dudley Wilbraham and thedead. My name in that voice of hers would have caught me at my heart, if I had dared to be thinking of her. But I was not. It had flashedthrough me that Marcia's door had been half open when we went into thekitchen, --and that now it was shut!

It was a trifling thing to make my heart turn over; but it did. Icovered the passage in two jumps to the living-room door. But as I flungit open, all I had time to see was that the window was open too; withMarcia standing by it in her horrible green shooting clothes, just asshe had lain on her bed, and a crowd of bunk-house men swarming throughthe open sash behind her and Macartney, --Macartney, standing on his feetwithout any clothesline, with his gun in his hand!

I saw, like you do see things, how it had all happened. I had misjudgedMacartney's intellect about the bunk-house men; he had had them withincall. But it was no one but Marcia who had let them in, and she hadfreed Macartney. She had overheard Paulette and me in the kitchen, hadshut her door, slipped out of her own window and into the living room, and cut Macartney's rope. She had no earthly reason to connect him withDudley's death, except the scraps of conversation she had overheard fromPaulette and me; she knew nothing of the bottle of wolf dope that hadbeen meant to smash in my wagon, or that Dudley--so full up with drinkand drugs that he could not have smelled even that mixture of skunks andsulphide--could easily have been sent out reeking with it, into bushthat reeked of it too. And that second she screamed at me: "You lie, Nicky Stretton; you, and that girl! He's not Hutton--he's Macartney!"

But Macartney fired full in my face. 

It was Marcia's flying jump that made him miss me. Even though his verycartridge was one of hers that she always carried in her pockets, andmust have been given to him the first thing, I don't think she had beenprepared to see me killed. I didn't wait to see. I was down the passageto Paulette before Macartney could get in a second shot. As he, and someof the bunk-house men tore out of the living room after me, I fired intothe brown mass of them with my own gun, that I snatched from Paulette. Ithought it checked them, and lit out of the kitchen door, into the windand the dark and the raving, swirling snow, with my dream girl's handgripped in mine. We plunged knee-deep, waist-deep through the drifts, for our lives, --for mine, anyhow. 

"Thompson's stope, " I gasped; and she said yes. I couldn't see an inchbefore me, but I think we would have made it, since Macartney could notsee, either. I knew we were far ahead of him, but that was all I didknow, till I heard myself shout to Paulette, "_Run!_"--and felt my legsdouble under me. If something hit me on the head like a ton of brick Ihad no sense of what had happened, as people have in books. I onlyrealized I had been knocked out when I felt myself coming to. Somehow itfelt quite natural to be deadly faint and sick, and lying flat, like alog, --till I put out my hand and touched hard rock. 

"I don't see how it's rock, " I thought dully; "it ought to be snow!Something hit me--out in the snow with Paulette!" And with that sensecame back to me, like a red-hot iron in my brain. I _had_ been out inthe snow with Paulette; one of Macartney's men must have hit me a swipeon the head and got her from me. But--where in heaven's name wasPaulette now? The awful, sickening thought made me so wild that Iscrambled to my knees to find out in what ungodly hole I had been putmyself. I had been carried somewhere, and the rock under me felt likethe mine. But somehow the darkness round me did not smell like a mine, where men worked every day. It smelt cold, desolate, abandoned, like----

And suddenly I knew where Macartney's men had carried me when I wasknocked out! It was no comfort to me that it was to the very place whereI had meant to jail Macartney and hide Paulette, where Charliet and Iwere to have stood off Macartney's men. 

"Thompson's stope, " I gasped. "It's there Macartney's put me!" Icrawled, sick and dizzy, to what ought to have been the tunnel and thetunnel entrance, opening on the storm out of doors. The tunnel wasthere, all right. But as I fumbled to what ought to have been the openentrance, stillness met me, instead of a rush of wind; piled rock met mygroping hands, instead of piled snow. I was in Thompson's abandonedstope all right, --only Macartney had sealed up the only way I could everget out! I shoved, and dug, and battered, as uselessly as a rat in atrap, and suddenly knew that was just what I was! Macartney had not eventaken the trouble to kill me, --not to avoid visible murder at this stageof the game, when only the enemy was left, if you did not count a dupedwoman and a captured one; but for the sheer pleasure of realizing thelong, slow death that must get me in the end. 

"Die here--I've got to die here, " I heard my own voice in my ears. "While----My God, Paulette! Macartney's got Paulette!"

And in the darkness behind me somebody slipped on a stone. 

I had not thought I could ever feel light and fierce again. I was both, as I swung round. 

CHAPTER XV

THE PLACE OF DEPARTED SPIRITS

 Every man carries his skull under his face, but God alone knows the marks on it. 

 _Indian Proverb. _

For a man moved, silent and furtive, in the tunnel between me and thestope!

At the knowledge something flared up in me that had been pretty wellburnt out: and that was Hope. That any one was in the place showedMacartney had either put a guard on me--which meant Thompson's abandonedstope was not sealed so mighty securely as I thought--or else it was hehimself facing me in the dark, and I might get even with him yet. I letout a string of curses at him on the chance. There was not one singlething he had done--to me, Paulette, or any one else--that I did not puta name to. And I trusted Macartney, or any man he had left in theink-dark stope, would be fool enough to jump at me for what I said. 

But no one jumped. And out of the graveyard blackness in front of mecame a muffled chuckle!

It rooted me stone still, and I dare swear it would have you. For thechuckle was Dunn's: Dunn's, --who was dead and buried, and Collins withhim! But suddenly I was blazing angry, for the chuckle came again, and--dead man's or not--it was mocking! I jumped to it and caught a livethroat, hard. But before I could choke the breath out of it a voice thatwas not Dunn's shouted at me: "Hold your horses, for any sake, Stretton!It's us. "

A match rasped, flared in my eyes, and I saw Dunn and Collins! SawDunn's stubbly fair hair, clipped close till it stood on end, as it hadon the skull I'd said a prayer over and buried; saw Collins standing onthe long shank bones I knew I had buried in the bush!

I stared, dazed, facing the two boys I could have sworn were dead andburied. And instead Dunn gasped wheezingly from the rock where I had lethim drop, and Collins drawled as if we had met yesterday:

"We heard we were dead! But it wasn't us you buried, or any of Hutton'smen either, for he'd have missed 'em. I expect you'd better put yourfuneral down to two stray prospectors, and let it go at that!" He lookedcuriously into my face. "You don't seem to have got much yourself byplaying the giddy goat with Hutton!"

In the dying flicker of his match I saw his young, sneering eyes, as hecalled Macartney "Hutton, " and realized furiously that Paulette had beenright, not only that Dunn and Collins were alive, but that they were onMacartney's side. I blazed out at the two of them:

"So you've been in with Hutton all along, you young swine! I've been ablank fool; I ought to have guessed Hutton had bought you!"

Dunn let out a sharp oath, but Collins only threw down the glowing endof his match. "I wouldn't say we were on Hutton's pay roll exactly, since you seem to have found out Macartney's real name at last, " heretorted scornfully. "We've been on our own, ever since we saw fit todisappear and bunk in here. Though by luck Hutton hasn't guessed it, orwe wouldn't be here now!"

"I don't know that it's any too clear why you are here, " I flung outhotly. "D'ye mean to say you've been living here, _hiding_, ever sinceyou cleared out, and I thought the wolves ate you? That you knew allalong who Macartney was--and never told me?"

"Not exactly here, if you mean Thompson's old stope you're corked up in;but of course we knew Macartney was Hutton, " Collins returnedcategorically. "As for telling you about him--well, we weren't any toosure you weren't Hutton's man yourself--till to-night!"

"_What?_" said I. 

But Collins apologized calmly. "We were asses, of course; but wecouldn't tell we'd made a mistake. We didn't have as much fun as a bagof monkeys while we were making it, either, especially when there wasthat--trouble--in the assay office. We came in on the tail-end of that, only we'd no guns, and it was too late to help our poor chaps, anyway. Besides, we thought you----" but he checked abruptly. "It's too long toexplain in this freezing hole. Let's get out! You're not corked up hereso dead tight as Hutton-Macartney thinks, " and in the dark I knew hegrinned. "Only I imagine we'd better decide what we're going to dobefore he discovers that!"

"Do? I've got to get Paulette!" But I lurched as I turned back to theblocked tunnel entrance, and Collins caught me by the shoulder. 

"You can't get her, " said he succinctly, "unless we help you! Going totrust us?"

It didn't seem to me that I had any choice; so I said yes. Then I gapedlike a fool. Dunn and Collins had me by the arms and were marching methrough the dark, not toward the tunnel where I'd been slung in, butback through Thompson's black, abandoned stope, as if it had beenBroadway, till the side wall of it brought us up. "Over you go, " saidCollins gruffly. He gave me a boost against the smooth wall of thestope, and my clawing fingers caught on the edge of a sharp shelf ofstone. I swung myself up on it, mechanically, and felt my feet gothrough the solid stope wall, into space. There was an opening in theliving rock, and as Collins lit another match where he stood below me, Isaw it: a practicable manhole, slanting down behind my shelf so sharplythat it must have been invisible from Thompson's stope, even incandlelight. Collins and Dunn swarmed up beside me, and the next secondwe all three slid through the black slit behind our ledge, andout--somewhere else. Collins lit a candle-end, and I saw we were in asecond tunnel, a remarkably amateur, unsafe tunnel, too, if I'd beenworrying about trifles, but not Thompson's!

The thing made me start, and Collins grinned. "More convenient exit thanold Thompson's, only we don't live here! If you'll come on you'll see. "He and his candle disappeared round a loose looking boulder into a darkhole in the tunnel side, and his voice continued blandly as I stumbledafter. "Natural cave, this tunnel was, when we found it; this secondcave leading out of it; and a passage from here to--outside!" He wavedhis hand around as I stood dumb. "Our little country home!"

What I saw was a small round cave, the glow of a fire under a shaft thatled all betraying smoke heaven knew where into the side of the hill, andtwo spruce beds with blankets. The permanent look of the place was thelast straw on my own blind idiocy of never suspecting Macartney, and Iburst out, "Why the deuce, with all you knew, couldn't you have broughtPaulette here and hidden her?"

"Charliet said we should have. " Collins nodded when I stared. "Oh, yes, there's more to that French Canadian than just cook! He's been in theknow about us here all this time, or we'd have been in a nice hole forgrub. Mind, I don't say he's brave----"

"He was under his bed when I wanted him to-night, " I agreed with somebitterness. 

"Was he?" Collins exclaimed electrically. "He was here, giving us theoffice about you! He tore down and told us you'd got Hutton, and we'dbetter light out and help you: but when we turned out it looked more asif Hutton had got _you_! When you and Miss Paulette rushed out of thekitchen door you must have run straight into an ambush of his men, andI guess one of them landed you a swipe on the head. Anyhow, Dunn and Imet a procession with you frog-marched in the middle of it, that wasmore than we could manage without guns. So we kind of retired and letthe men cork you into Thompson's stope to die. And you bet they did it. Not six of us could have got you out, ever, if we hadn't known a privateway. "

I cursed him. "My God, stop _talking_! It's not me I want to hear about. Where was Paulette? D'ye mean you followed me and left her--left agirl--to Macartney? I--I've got to go for her!"

But Collins caught me as I turned. "Macartney hadn't got her--she wasn'tthere! We hoofed Charliet off to find her, first thing; he'll bring herhere, as soon as it's safe to make a get-away. We'd have brought herourselves, only the show would have been spoiled if Hutton had spottedus. And we had to hustle, too, to get back here and waltz you out ofThompson's mausoleum. It'll be time enough for you to go for MissPaulette when she doesn't turn up. You're not fit now, anyway. " I felthim staring into my face. "Had anything to eat all day, except a hardride and a fight?" he demanded irrelevantly, in a voice that soundedoddly far off. 

I shook my head; and the smell of coffee smote my famished nostrils ashe took a tin pot off the fire. I knew how nearly I had been done whenthe scalding stuff picked me up like brandy. But--"You're sure aboutPaulette?" I gasped. "Remember, Macartney was bound to get her!"

"Well, he didn't, " Collins returned composedly. "I bet he's looking forher right now, and I'm dead sure he won't find her. Charliet wasn't bornyesterday: he'll bring her here all right. "

"I'll wait ten minutes, " I gave in abruptly, and because I knew Icouldn't do anything else till I had filled my empty stomach. But therewas something I wanted to know. "What did you mean, just now, about notbeing sure of me--with Hutton?"

Dunn spoke up for the first time. "It was Miss Paulette; we thought itwas you we heard her talking to, two nights in the dark. So when shedrove off to Caraquet with you and the gold, after we'd heard her sayshe couldn't trust you--at least, the man we thought was you--we didn'tknow whether you were in with Hutton or not, or what kind of a game youwere playing. "

"Me?" I swore blankly. "I suppose it never struck you that _I_ believedthe man playing the game was Collins--till you both disappeared, and Idecided it must be some one who never was employed around this mine!"

"Well, I'm hanged, " said Collins, and suddenly knocked the wits out ofme by muttering that at least we'd both had sense enough to know thatMiss Valenka was square. 

"Valenka? D'ye mean you knew who she was, too?" I stuttered. 

"Dunn did, " Collins nodded. "I only knew Hutton. But I knew more than myprayers about him, and Dunn told me about the girl. So we sort of keptguard for her and watched you and Hutton--till the day we had the rowwith him. "

"In the mine! He told me. " Only half of me heard him. The rest waslistening for the sound of footsteps. But the place was still. 

"In Thompson's stope, " Collins corrected drily. "You see, we thought youand Macartney-Hutton were working together, and we didn't see our way totackling the two of you at once. So when you went off to Caraquet withMiss Paulette, we thought we'd get Hutton cleared out of this before yougot back again. We kind of let him see us leave work in the mine andsneak into the old stope. When he came after us, we dropped on him withwhat we knew about him; and between us we knew a deal. We gave him hischoice about leaving the neighborhood that minute, or our goingstraight to Wilbraham and telling who he was and what he was therefor--which was where we slipped up! He'd the gall to tell us to ourfaces that we'd no pull over him, because we were doing private work inThompson's stope and stealing Wilbraham's gold out of it. And--thatrather gave us the check. "

"But--why? There wasn't six cents' worth of gold there to steal!"

Collins smiled with shameless simplicity. "I know. But stealing gold wasexactly what we were doing, only it wasn't in Thompson's old stope. We'dhave been caught with the goods on us though, if any one had fussedround there to investigate. We found our way in here, " he jerked hishead toward his amateur tunnel, "by accident, in Thompson's time, oneday when the stope happened to be empty; and we burrowed on to whatlooked like the anticlinal, before we heard the stope shift coming andhad to slide out. But we'd seen enough to keep us burrowing. We couldn'tdo much, even after Hutton ran the other tunnel half a mile down thecliff and caught gold there; but we kind of slipped in, evenings, whenyou missed us out of the bunk house"--he grinned again--"and got thebearings of that vein. And you bet we had to find a way to stay with it;it was too good to leave! We weren't going to work in Wilbraham's minejust for our health and days' wages, when we'd struck our own gold. Sowe reckoned we'd just--disappear. But we didn't get out as sharp as wedid simply on account of our own private affairs. Macartney-Hutton drewa gun the day we had the row he lied to you about, and I guess we justlegged it out of Thompson's stope--by the front way!--in time to makethe bush with our lives on us. Macartney thought he'd scared us, andwe'd lit for Caraquet; but we lit back again after dark. We crawled inhere by our back entrance you haven't seen yet, and here we've been eversince! We didn't confide in you, because you seemed pretty thick withMacartney, if you come to think of it; and it seemed a hefty kind of alie, too, when you told Charliet you'd buried us. I rather think that'sall, till to-night----" his indifferent drawl stopped as if it were cutoff with a knife. "My God, Stretton, " he jerked, "I'd forgotten! Was ittrue--what Charliet told us to-night--about Dudley Wilbraham?"

I was eating stuff the silent Dunn had supplied, but I put the meatdown. "Wilbraham's killed, " I heard my own voice say; and then told therest of it. How Paulette had found Dudley's chewed, wolf-doped cap, andMarcia had found Dudley, silent in the silent bush, where the last wolfwas sneaking away. I would not have known Collins's face as he askedwhat I meant about wolf dope now and when I thought I was swearing atMacartney in Thompson's stope. 

I told him, with my ears straining for Charliet and a girl creeping tous, through Collins's back way out. But all I heard was silence, --thatthick, underground silence that fills the ears like wool. I had said Iwould wait ten minutes, and nine of them were gone. I don't think Ispoke. Dunn muttered suddenly, "They're not coming!"

Collins shook his head and coldly cursed himself and me for two foolswho had lain low, when out in the open together we could have stoppedMacartney from getting Dudley, if we couldn't have helped old Thompson. He never mentioned Paulette, or his trusted cook. But he rose, lit asecond candle, and led the way out of his warm burrow by a dark holeopposite the one we had entered by, and into a cramped alley where wehad to walk bent double. It felt as if it ran a mile before it turned ina sharp right angle. Collins pinched out his light and turned on me. "Just what--are you going to do?"

"Get Paulette, " said I. 

"M-m, " said Collins. "Well, here's where we start. Get hold of my heelswhen I lie down and don't crowd me. " And that was every word that cameout of either of us as we dropped flat, and wormed head-first down aslope of smooth stone till cold, fresh air abruptly smote my face. Infront of us was an opening, out of the bowels of the hill, into thenight and the snow. Rooted juniper hung down over it in an imperviouscurtain, as it hung everywhere from the rocks at La Chance. Collinspushed it aside, and the two of us were out--out of Thompson's stope, where Macartney had meant me to lie till I died!

CHAPTER XVI

IN COLLINS'S CARE

For two breaths I did not know where I was. It was still snowing, andthe night was wild, such a night as we might not have again for weeks. Any one could move in it as securely as behind a curtain, for I couldnot see a yard before my face, and not a track could lie five minutes. But suddenly the familiarity of the place hit me, till I could havelaughed out, if I had been there on any other business. Collins's longpassage had wormed behind Thompson's stope, behind the La Chancestables; and it was no wonder he had found it easy enough to getsupplies from Charliet. All he had to do was to cross the clearing fromthe jutting rock that shielded his private entrance and walk intoCharliet's kitchen door. I moved toward it, and Collins grabbed at methrough the smothering snow. 

"Hang on--you don't know who's there! Wait till I ring up Charliet, number one Wolf!" He stood back from me, and far, far off, with aperfect illusion of distance broken by the wind, I heard a wolf howl, once, and then twice again. If he had not stood beside me, I could nothave believed the cry came from Collins's throat. But, rememberingDudley, it had an ill-omened sound to me. 

"Shut up!" I breathed sharply. 

Collins might have remembered Dudley too. "I wasn't going to do itagain, " he muttered, "but I've had to use it for a signal. It's been afashionable kind of a sound around here, if I hadn't sense enough toknow Macartney brought the beasts that made it. But Charliet knows myhowl. He'll come out, if he's----Drop, _quick_!"

But both of us had dropped already. Some one had flung open the kitchendoor and fired a charge of buckshot out into the night. I heard itscatter over my head, and a burst of uproar on its heels told meCharliet's kitchen was crowded with Macartney's men. Somebody--notCharliet--shouted over the noise, "What the devil's that for?" Andanother voice yelled something about wolves and firing to scare them. 

"The boss'll scare you--if you get to firing guns this night, " the firstvoice swore; and a man laughed, insolently. Then the kitchen doorbanged, and Collins sprang up electrically. 

"I don't like this one bit, " he muttered. "Macartney's not in thehouse, or his men wouldn't dare be yelling like that; and Charliet's notthere, either, or he'd have been out. That devil must have got himsomewhere--him and Miss Paulette! Can't you see there's not a light inthe shack, bar the kitchen one? Come on!"

But I was gone already, around the corner of the shack to Paulette'sside of it, and I knew better. There was a light--in Paulette'sroom--shining through a hole in the heavy wooden shutters she had hadmade for her window, long before I guessed why she wanted them and theirbars. It ran through me like fire that Macartney was in that room, deafto any kind of yells from the kitchen, to everything but Paulette'svoice; and nobody but a man who has had to think it can guess what thatthought was like to me, out there in the snow. I made for my own window, but it was locked; and God knew who might be watching me out of it, as Ihad watched Macartney one night, before I knew he was Hutton. I thought:"By gad, Nick Stretton, you'll go in the front door!" For that--with meshut up to die in Thompson's stope, and not one other soul alive tointerfere with him--was the last thing Macartney would think to lock!Nor had he. The latch lifted just as usual, and I walked in. 

The long passage through the shack was dark; and, after the stormoutside, dead silent. It was empty, too, as the living room was empty;but what I thought of was my dream girl's door. That was open afoot-wide space, and somebody inside it sobbed sickeningly. But ifMacartney were there he was not speaking. I daresay I forgot I had nogun to kill him with. I crept forward in the soundless moccasins I hadreason to thank heaven were my only wear and suddenly felt Collinsbeside me, in his stocking feet. 

"Hang on, " he breathed; "I tell you he isn't there! If he were, youcouldn't get him. One shout, and he'd have the whole gang out on us!"

I knew afterwards that he'd stubbed his toe on Marcia Wilbraham's littlerevolver she'd dropped on the passage floor, and was ready to keep myback if the gang did come; but then I hardly heard him. I stood rootedat Paulette's door, staring in; for Paulette was not there--Macartneywas not there! What I saw was Marcia Wilbraham with her back to me, crying hysterically, as I might have known Paulette would never cry, andflinging out of a trunk, as if Paulette were dead or gone, every poorlittle bit of clothes and oddments that were my dream girl's own!

I can't write what that made me feel. Ribbons, bits of laces, littleblue stockings, shoes, grew into a heap. And I would have been foolenough to jump in on Marcia and shake out of her how she dared to touchthem, whether Paulette were dead or alive, if Collins had not gripped mehard. 

"The emeralds, " he muttered. "She's rooting for them!"

I had pretty well forgotten there ever were any emeralds, and I staredat him like a fool. 

"Van Ruyne's emeralds--she thinks Miss Paulette has 'em, " Collins's lipsexplained soundlessly. "And they're round Macartney's own neck--I sawthem! Dunn and I were going to swipe them, only we couldn't. "

I damned the emeralds. What I wanted of Marcia was to find out what hadbecome of Paulette. But Collins gripped me harder. "Let her see you, andyou'll never know, " he breathed fiercely. "She'd give one yell, and we'dbe done. Macartney's either got the girl and Charliet, or they're lostin the snow and he's hunting for them. Let's get some guns and go seewhich; we're crazy to stay here!"

I nodded mechanically. I knew what it meant for a girl to be lost in thesnow on such a night as I had just closed the shack door on, even withCharliet beside her; how Collins and I might tramp, search--yes, andcall, too--uselessly, beside the very drift where she lay smothered. And then I realized I was a fool. Macartney would not give Paulette achance to get lost. He had her somewhere, her and Charliet, and Collinsand I had to take her from him. But something inexplicable stopped medead as I turned for the shack door. Macartney had never been a winterat La Chance; he had no snowshoes. Charliet had some, I didn't knowwhere. But I had two pairs in my own room. That inexplicable suggestiontold me I needed them badly, though I knew it was silly; if Macartneyhad Paulette he would not be marching her through the snow. All theplaces I had to search for her were the stable and the assay office. Andyet----I backed Collins noiselessly past the room where Marcia was stillpulling round Paulette's trunk, with a noise that covered any we couldmake, and the two of us ended up in my room in the black dark. I stoodCollins at the door while I felt for my snowshoes. I knew it was crazy, and I was just obsessed, but I got them. I didn't get much else. Icouldn't find my rifle I had hoped for, and only a couple of boxes ofrevolver cartridges were in my open trunk, --that I guessed Marcia hadgone through too. I would have felt like wringing her neck, if it hadnot been for Paulette and Macartney. I had no room for outside emotionstill I knew about those two. I slid back to my doorway to get Collins, and he was gone. Where to, I had no earthly idea. I looked to see if hehad been cracked enough to tackle Marcia, and Marcia was alone on herknees, chucking all Paulette's things back into her trunk again. Theplace suddenly felt dead quiet. Marcia had stopped sobbing, and Ibelieve she would have heard a mouse move, --there was that kind of alistening look about her. And it was that minute--that unsuitable, inimical minute--that _I_ heard some one move! Outside, on the doorstep, somebody stumbled. The latch lifted, the door swung in, --and I jumped tomeet Macartney with not one thing on me but some fool snowshoes and apocketful of useless cartridges. But I brought up dead still, and rigid. 

"Charliet--oh, Charliet, come _quick_, " whispered Paulette. She was snowfrom head to foot where she stood in the shack door. "I couldn'tfind----" But she recoiled as she saw me, against the light Marcia hadburning inside her own half-open door. "Oh, my God, _Nicky_!" she criedin a voice that brought my soul alive, that fool's soul that had losther. She caught at me like a child, incredulously, wildly. "Oh, Nicky!"

There was no time to ask where she'd been, nor even of Macartney. Ithink the unsuitable thing I said was "Marcia!" For I heard Marcia jumpand fall over Paulette's open trunk, before she was out of her door likeone of the wolves Macartney was so fond of. I didn't think she saw us, but she did see Collins. The thing that cut her off was his rush out ofsomewhere. I heard her scream with furious terror; heard Paulette's doorbang on her; and Collins was beside me with a rifle and some dunnage Iscarcely saw in the sudden dark of the passage after that banged door. 

"Run, " said he, through his teeth. "Gimme that stuff! Run!" he stuffedmy snowshoes under the arm that held the rifle. "No, not that way! Thisway. " He cut across the clearing in the opposite direction from the holethat led to his underground den, and it was time. Half of Macartney'smen were tearing through the passage toward Marcia's screams, and therest were pouring out of the kitchen door. In the storm we could onlyhear them. I was carrying Paulette like a baby, and with her headagainst me I could not see her face. All I could see was swirling, stinging snow in my eyes, and the sudden dark of the bush we brought upin. I kept along the edge of it, circling the clearing, and all but fellover the end of Collins's jutting rock. And this time I thanked God forthe furious snow; in ten minutes there would be no sign of our tracksfrom the front door to the hold the rock shielded, and there was noearthly chance of Macartney's men picking them up before we were safe. 

It felt like years before the three of us were inside the curtain ofjuniper, swarming up the smooth rock face, but Collins observedcontrarily that he'd never done it so quickly. He led the way up to thepassage angle where he had pinched out his light, put down the snowshoesand the rifle, laid something else on the ground with remarkablecaution, and walked on some feet before he lit his candle. 

"Better travel light and get home. Dunn and I'll come back presently andbring up the dunnage, " he observed as blandly as if the three of us hadbeen for an evening stroll, and suddenly laughed as he saw me glance athis stockinged feet. "By golly, I've left my boots in the shack, and Ihaven't any others--but it was worth a pair of boots! I stubbed my toeon Miss Wilbraham's little revolver she must have dropped on the passagefloor, and I've got it. Also, let alone her lost toy-dog gun, I got allher ammunition and her rifle, while she was grabbing in Miss Paulette'strunk. 

 "'Taffy went to my house, Thought I was asleep. I went to Taffy's house, And stole a side of beef'

--as I learned when I was young. Come on, Stretton; I bet we'll betop-sides with Macartney-Hutton yet!"

"He's out, looking for me----" but Paulette's sentence broke in a gasp. "Why, it's Collins!" She stared incredulously in the candlelight. 

"Just that, " imperturbably. "Stretton can tell you all about mepresently, Miss Paulette. For now I imagine you'd sooner see a fire andsomething to eat. Put her in between us, Stretton, Indian file, andwe'll take her down. "

Women are queer things. Tatiana Paulina Valenka had tramped the bushmost of the day before looking for a dead man, had found him--a sight nogirl should have looked on; had run for more than her life with me, andbeen through God knew what since; and she walked down that unknown, darkpassage with Collins and me as if nothing had ever happened to her. Shegreeted Dunn, too; and then, as he and Collins disappeared to fetch downour snowshoes and rifle, went straight to pieces where she and I stoodsafe by their fire. "Oh, oh, oh, I thought you were dead! I saw them getyou. I can't believe--can't believe----" she gasped out in jerks, as ifshe fought for her very breath, and suddenly dropped flat on Dunn's oldblanket. "Oh, Nicky, " she moaned, "don't let me faint--now. _Nicky!_"

There was something in her voice--I don't know--but it made me dizzywith sheer, clear joy. She had said my name as if I were the one man inthe world for her, as if I had risen from the dead. But I dared not sayso. I knew better than even to lift her head where she lay with closedeyes on Dunn's blanket, but I got Collins's old tin cup to her lipssomehow and made her drink his strong coffee till it set her bloodrunning, as it had set mine. After a minute she sat up dizzily, but shepushed away my bread and meat. "Presently--I'd be sick now, " shewhispered. "How did you get--out of Thompson's stope? And where--I meanI can't understand, about Collins and Dunn!"

"They got me out, " said I, and explained about them. But there was noparticular surprise on Paulette's face. She never made an earthlycomment, either, when I told her they'd always known all about her andHutton, except, "I never thought they were dead; I told you that. I'd anidea, too, that Charliet didn't think so either. "

I had one arm round her by that time, feeding her with my other handlike a child, with bits of bread soaked in black coffee. If I had anythoughts they were only fear that she might move from me as soon as shereally came to herself. But Charliet's name brought me back from whatwas next door to heaven. "Charliet, " said I blankly; "where in theworld is he? D'ye mean he hadn't told you about Collins and Dunn? Why, he was to bring you to them--here--hours ago!"

"Charliet was? But----" Suddenly, beyond belief, my dream girl turnedand clung to me. God knows I knelt like a statue. I was afraid to stir. It was Dudley she loved: I was only a man who was trusted and a friend. "Oh, Nicky, you don't know, " she cried, "you don't know! You and I ranstraight _into_ some of Dick Hutton's men when we raced out of theshack. And you threw me--just picked me up like a puppy and threwme--out of their way, into the deep snow. I heard them get you, but Iwas half smothered; I couldn't either see or speak. But I heard Dickshout from somewhere to 'chuck Stretton into Thompson's old stope!' Ithought it meant they'd killed you; that it was another man I'd let--bemurdered!"

She caught her breath as if something stabbed her, and I know it stabbedme to think I was just "another man" to her. But I knelt steady. I hadbeen a fool to think it was I she cared for, personally, and whether shedid or not she needed my arm. "Well?" I asked. "Next?"

"I was scrambling out of the snow, " I felt her shiver against me, "onlybefore I could stand up Charliet raced up from somewhere and shoved mestraight down in the drift again. He said Dick was looking for me, andto lie still, while he got him away; then to race for the shack and hidejust outside the front door, till he came for me--but before he couldfinish Dick ran down on the two of us, with a lantern. He'd have fallenover me, if Charliet hadn't stopped him by yelling that I'd run for thebush. I think he grabbed the lantern--but anyhow, they both tore off. Igot to the shack, but----Oh, Nicky, I couldn't wait there. I----"

"Well?" It seemed to be the only word in my brain. 

"I went down to Thompson's stope. But I was too late. The men had walledyou in with rocks, and I couldn't move them. I tried!" (I thought shemust hear the leap my heart gave. I know I shut my jaws to keep mytongue between my teeth at the thought of her trying to dig her way into me, the only friend she had in the world except a French-Canadiancook. ) "I----Oh, I thought if I could find Charliet we might dosomething! I went back to look for him, and I found _you_----Oh, I foundyou!" Her arms were still on my shoulders as I knelt by her, andsuddenly her voice turned low and anxious. "What do you suppose becameof Charliet? He's so faithful. We can't leave him for Dick to turn onwhen he can't find me!"

I was not thinking of Charliet. I couldn't honestly care what had becomeof him, with my dream girl in my arms. I may as well tell the truth; Iforgot Dudley, too. I don't know what mad words would have come out ofmy mouth if Paulette had not pushed me away violently. What was left ofher coffee upset; I got to my feet with the empty cup in my hand, justas Collins and Dunn and their candle emerged round the boulder. Iremembered long afterwards that it was before I had answered Pauletteone word about myself, Thompson's stope, anything. But then all I didwas to stare at something Collins was carrying carefully in his twohands. "What's that?" I said--just to say something. 

"Some new kind of high explosive Wilbraham got to try and never did, "Collins returned casually. "Saw it in his office to-night and thought itwas better with us than with Macartney. Don't know just how it works, soI'm treating it gingerly. " He moved on into the darkness of his owntunnel and came back empty-handed. "What are we going to do--first?" heinquired calmly. 

I took a look at Paulette. Whether it was from Collins's casual mentionof Dudley's name or not, she was ghastly. Who she was looking at Idon't know; but it wasn't at me. 

"Sleep, " said I grimly. "Two of us need it, if you and Dunn don't. Macartney can't get us to-night. " Though of that I was none too sure. Charliet might get rattled any moment and give us away. But there was nogood in sticking at trifles. 

But Collins was an astute devil. "He won't, " he rejoined as calmly as ifI had spoken of Charliet out loud. "He won't get hurt, either; you canbank on that. Make up that fire, Dunn, and we'll give Miss Paulette theblankets. "

We did, where she lay at one side. We three men dropped like dogs in arow in front of the fire. I was next Paulette, with the space of a footor so between us. I had not known how dead weary I was till I stretchedout flat. Collins and Dunn may have slept; I don't know; but Paulettecertainly did, as soon as she got her head down. I thought I lay andwatched the fire, but I must have slept, too. For I woke--with my heartdrumming as if I'd heard the trump for the Last Judgment, and Paulette'shand in mine. I must have flung out my arm till I touched her, and herlittle fingers were tight round my hard, dirty hand, clinging to it. Ilay in heaven, in the dark of a frowsy cave we might be hunted out ofany minute, with the dying glow of the fire in my eyes and my dreamgirl's hand in mine. And suddenly, like a blow, I heard her whisper inher sleep, "Dudley! Oh, dear Dudley!"

I was only Nicky Stretton, and a fool. I lay in the dark with a heartlike a stone and a girl's warm, clinging hand in mine. 

CHAPTER XVII

HIGH EXPLOSIVE

There was nothing to tell of any handclasp when I woke in the morning. Paulette lay in her blankets with her back to me, as if she had lain soall night; Dunn was making up the fire; Collins was absent, till heappeared out of his tunnel where he had put Dudley's high explosive thenight before and nodded to me. None of us spoke: we all had that chillysort of stiffness you get after sleeping with your clothes on. As we ateour breakfast I took one glance at Paulette and looked away again. Shewas absolutely white, almost stunned looking, and her eyes would notmeet mine. I had an intuition she had waked in the night after I sleptand discovered what she had been doing; but if she were ashamed therewas no need. God knows I would not have reminded her of the thing. Iknew the dark hollows and the tear marks under her eyes were for Dudley, not for me. But I had to take care of her now, and Collins glanced at meas I thought it. 

"I suppose you realize Charliet's our only line of communication, andthat he and all the La Chance guns are in the hands of the enemy, " heobserved drily. "What do you think of doing about it?"

"Get Charliet; all the guns and ammunition he can steal; hold this placeand harry Macartney, " I supposed. "What do _you_ think?"

I had turned to Paulette, but she only shook her head with an, "I don'tknow, Mr. Stretton!" I had time to decide she had only called me Nickyby mistake six hours ago, before Collins disagreed with me flatly. 

"Stay here? Not much! Won't work--Macartney'd drop on us! Oh, I know hewon't be able to find our real entrance to this place unless Charlietgives us away, and I'm not worrying about that! But, after he realizesMiss Valenka has vanished"--he said her real name perfectlycasually--"and when Charliet and most of his guns vanish too, and hismen begin to get picked off one by one, how long do you suppose it willbe before Macartney connects the three things--and smells a rat? He'llsense Charliet and a girl can't be fighting him alone. For all we knowhe'll guess you must have got out of Thompson's stope somehow, and digaway his rock fence to see! And I imagine we'd look well in here if hedid!"

"It's just what we would look, " said I. "You ass, Collins, withMacartney ignorant of the real way in on us, and he and his gang diggingopen Thompson's tunnel against the daylight, with you and me and Dunn inthe dark on that shelf in Thompson's stope we came in here by, we'd havethe drop on the lot. Except--Marcia!" Her name jerked out of me. Wewould have to count Marcia in with Macartney's gang; and, rememberingshe had known me all her life, it made me smart. 

"Oh, Miss Wilbraham--I should let _her_ rip!" Collins returnedcallously. "Listen, Stretton; what you say's all very well, only wecan't count on holding this place when we're discovered, while it's amatter of _if_ Charliet can get guns! Miss Marcia's rifle and her toypopgun aren't going to save us, and I doubt if Charliet can swipe anymore. What I say is let's cut some horses out of the stable after dark, all four of us clear out on them to Caraquet, and set the sheriff andhis men after Macartney. Unless, " he turned boldly to her, "you don'twant that, Miss Valenka?"

But if she had been going to answer, which I don't think she was, I cuther off. "We can't let Marcia rip--don't talk nonsense, Collins! She'sDudley's sister, if she and Macartney are a firm. We can't clear out andleave her with a man like that!"

"We can't take her to Caraquet, " Collins argued with some point. "Youown she doesn't know anything about Macartney's wolf dope; you haven'tany witnesses to prove he tried it on your wagon, or to set the wolveson Dudley. Miss Marcia would just up and swear your whole story was alie--and all Caraquet would believe her! Nobody alive ever heard of sucha thing as wolf dope!"

"That's just where you're wrong!" I remembered the boy I'd left cachedin Skunk's Misery--and something else, that had been in my head eversince wolves and the smell of a Skunk's Misery bottle seemed to gotogether. "Two Frenchmen were run in for using wolf dope in Quebecprovince last winter, for I've an account of their trial somewhere thatI cut out of an Ottawa paper. And as for a witness, I've a boy cached atSkunk's Misery who can prove Macartney made the same stuff there. Theonly thing we might get stuck on in Caraquet is the _reason_ for all themurders he's done--with, and without it!"

"I guess Miss Valenka knows the reason all right, " Collins spoke ascoolly as if she were not there, which may have been the wisest thing todo, for though she flushed sharply she said nothing. He went on withexactly what she had said herself. "But after Hutton came here to gether, he saw he'd be a fool not to grab the La Chance mine, too; andunless we can stop him you bet he and his gang have grabbed it! They'vedisposed of Thompson, of all our own men who might have stood by us, ofWilbraham, " categorically; "they think they've disposed of Dunnand me and buried you alive, and--except for having lost MissValenka--Macartney's made his game! Nobody'll know there's anythingwrong at the mine till the spring, because there's no one interestedenough to ask questions till Wilbraham's bank payments have stopped longenough to look queer. And by that time Macartney and his gang will begone, and the cream of Wilbraham's gold with them. As for us, we can'tfight him by sitting in this burrow _with_ Miss Paulette, and withoutany guns, even if he doesn't end by nosing out Dunn's and my gold aswell as Wilbraham's. Why, we depend on Charliet for our food, let aloneanything else; and for all we know, Charliet may have squeaked on us bythis time. I say again, let's get a sheriff and posse at Caraquet, andcome back here and get Macartney! We could do it, if we took MissPaulette and hit the trail to-night. "

"And Macartney'd get us, if we tried it!" I had thrashed all that out inmy head before, while I was tying up Macartney with Charliet'sclothesline. "We'd be stopped by his picket at the Halfway, if ever wegot to the Halfway, for the Caraquet road's likely drifted solid andyou don't make time digging out smothering horses. No; we'll fightMacartney where we are! And the way to do it is with Charliet and guns. "

"If you'll tell me how we're to connect with either!" Collins was grim. "It's a mighty dangerous thing calling up Charliet on number one Wolf, with the whole of La Chance crawling with Macartney and his gang, hunting for Miss Paulette. But we can go up to the back door and tryit!"

"Oh, no, " Paulette burst out wildly, "I'm afraid! I mean I know we mustfind out first if Charliet's all right, but you mayn't get him--andyou'll give yourselves away!"

It was almost the first time she had spoken, and it was more to Collinsthan to me, but I answered. "We'll get Charliet all right, " I began--andCollins gripped me. 

"I dunno, " he drawled. "Strikes me some one's going to get us--first!"

He snapped out our candle, which was senseless, since Dunn's red-hotfire showed us up as plain as day, and all four of us stood paralyzed. Somebody--running, slipping, with a hideous clatter of stones--wascoming down the long passage Collins called his back door. 

"Macartney, " said I, "and Charliet's given us away!" And with the wordsin my mouth I had Paulette around the waist and shoved out of sightbehind the boulder that separated Collins's cave from his tunnel and thepierced wall of Thompson's stope. Macartney might be a devil, but therewas no doubt the man was brave to come like that for a girl, through thedark bowels of the earth where Charliet must have warned him Dunn andCollins would be lurking. Only he had not got Paulette yet, and he wouldfind three men to face before he even saw her. I stooped over her in thedark of Collins's tunnel, where just a knife-edge of the cave firelightcut over the boulder's top. "Keep still, Paulette--and for any sakedon't move and kick Collins's devilish explosive he's got stuck in heresomewhere, " I said, exactly as if I were steady. Which I was not, because it was my unlooked for, heaven-sent chance to get square withMacartney. I sprang around the boulder to do it and saw Collins strikeup the barrel of Marcia's rifle in Dunn's stretched left arm. 

"Don't shoot, " he yelled. "You fool, it's Charliet!"

I stood dead still. It was Charliet, but a Charliet I had never seen. His French-Canadian face was tallow white, as he tore into the cave, grinning like a dog with rage and excitement. He brushed Dunn andCollins aside like flies and grabbed my arm. "Come out, " he panted. "Sacré damn, bring Mademoiselle Paulette and _come out_! It is thatMarcia! She sees you in the shack last night; sees you--alive and out ofThompson's stope where they buried you--carrying Mademoiselle away! Shetells Macartney so this morning, when he and I get in after hunting forMademoiselle all night--praying, me, that I might not make a mistake andfind her, and that you might. Oh, I tell you I was crazy--dog crazy! Icannot get away from Macartney, I think she may be dead in the snow, looking for me who was not there, till first thing this morning we comein--and that she-devil tells Macartney Stretton takes Mademoiselle away!Not till now, till all are out of the house, do I have the chance tocome and warn you what is coming! They--that Marcia, Macartney, all ofthe men--start now to dig you out of Thompson's stope they put you in. They think they left some hole you crawl out of in the snow and dark, that you come for Mademoiselle and take her back into. I could not getyou even one small cartridge to hold this place, and--Macartney isclever! He will be in here, with all his guns, all his men. And then, _quoi faire_? Come now, all of you, while there is the one chance tocome unseen, and get on horses and go away. Ah, " the man's fierce voicebroke, ran up imploringly, "I beg you, Mademoiselle, like I would begthe Blessed Virgin, to make them come! Before Macartney, or that Marcia, finds--you!"

I jumped around and saw Paulette, in the cave. I had left her safe inCollins's tunnel; and there she stood, come out into plain view at thesound of Charliet's voice. But she was not looking at him, or me, or anyof us. Her eyes stared, sword-blue, at the hole where Charliet hadrushed in from Collins's secret passage: I think all I realized of herface was her eyes. I turned, galvanized, to what she stared at, --andsaw. Marcia Wilbraham was standing in the entrance from the longpassage, behind us all, except Paulette; meeting Paulette's eyes withher small, bright brown ones, her lips wide in her ugly, gum-showingsmile. I knew, of course, that she had picked up Charliet's track in thesnow from his kitchen door to Collins's juniper-covered back door, hadfollowed fair on his heels down the dark passage, instead of going withMacartney to dig me out of Thompson's stope; that in one second shewould turn and run back again, to show Macartney Collins's back door. 

My jump was late. It was Dunn who saved us. He sprang matter-of-factly, like a blood-hound, and pulled Marcia down. She was as strong as a man, pretty nearly; she fought fiercely, till she heard the boy laugh. Thatcowed her, in some queer way. I heard Dunn say: "You'd better stay herea while, Miss Wilbraham. It's safer--than with Macartney;" saw Charlietrun to help him, and the two of them placidly tie and gag MarciaWilbraham with anything they could take off themselves. It was with avivid impression of Charliet's none too clean neck-handkerchief playinga large part in Marcia's toilette that Collins and I jumped, with oneaccord, to Paulette. I don't know what he said to her. I saw her nod. 

I said, "We're done for if Macartney gets in on us through Thompson'sstope and finds this place. He'll just send half his men to scout forthe other entrance; they'll find it from Charliet's and Marcia's tracksand get at us both ways. You stay here with Charliet, while Collins andI meet Macartney in Thompson's stope. When--if--you hear we can't besthim, run--with Charliet! Dunn'll look after Marcia. "

She gave me a stunned sort of look, as if I were deserting her, as if Ididn't--care! I would have snatched her in my arms and kissed her, Dudley or no Dudley lying dead in the bush, but I had no time. Collinshad me by the elbow, his fierce drawl close to my half-comprehendingear. We'd no guns but Marcia's popgun and her rifle; two of us, even onthe shelf in Thompson's stope, would do little good with those againstall Macartney's men crowding into the stope and giving us a volley thesecond our fire from the shelf drew theirs. We might pick off half adozen of them before our cartridges gave out. But there was no sense inthat business. We would have to try----But here I came alive to whatCollins was really talking about. 

"That high explosive, " he was saying. "It's a filthy trick, but Godknows they deserve it! If we blow them back far enough at the veryentrance of the tunnel, they may never come on again to get in. "

I daresay I'd have recoiled in cold blood. But my blood ran hot thatmorning. I did think, though; hard. I said, "Can't do it! No fuse. "

"Heaps. Dunn's and mine!" I heard Collins grabbling for it, somewhere inthe dark of the tunnel. 

Behind me somebody lit a candle; who, I never looked to see. In thelight of it I saw Collins pick up his bundle of blasting powder andwarned him sharply. 

"Look out with that stuff! We don't know it; it may work anyway. If itbursts up in the air the stope roof'll be down on us. It may fire back, too--and we'd be hit behind the point of burst!"

"We won't be, " said Collins, between his teeth. "I'll burst it _out_ thetunnel, and blow Macartney's gang to rags!"

But that lighted candle at my back had shown me other than explosives:the silly, pointless snowshoes I had lugged from my own room in theshack. My conscious mind knew now what my subconscious mind had wantedthem for, like a mill where some one had turned on the current. I sworeout loud. "By gad, Collins, listen! If we don't smash Macartney, and hegets in on us, he'll get Paulette! I've got to stop that, somehow. Macartney doesn't _know_ she's here yet; Marcia only guessed it. Supposing he were to see only me, alone in Thompson's stope, he mightnever know she was here too!"

"Dunno what you mean, " Collins snapped. And I snapped back:

"I mean that if we blow a clean hole at the tunnel entrance, and I burstout of it and run, I can get the whole gang after me--and make time foryou and Charliet to get Paulette away somewhere, by the back door. "

"But"--Collins halted where he swarmed up into Thompson'sstope--"where'll you go? You can't, Stretton. It's death!"

"It's sense, " said I. "As for where I'll go, Lac Tremblant'll do forme; and I bet it will finish any man of Macartney's who tries to comeafter me! Get through into that stope with your fuse, man; I'll hand youthe blasting stuff. Got it? All right. Here you, gimme that candle!" Iturned and took it--out of Paulette's hand!

I gasped, taken aback all standing, before I lied, "It's all right, Paulette. I'll be back in a minute. " And though I knew she must haveheard what I was going to do, I had no better sense than to stoop beforethe girl's blank eyes and snatch up my two pairs of snowshoes, that hadbeen lying beside the explosive I had just passed up to Collins, beforeI clambered up through the hole into Thompson's stope, on to the shelffrom whence I had first dropped into Collins's cave. 

Collins was down in Thompson's tunnel already, laying his fuse withdeadly skill. Already, too, we could hear Macartney's men outside, leveraging away the boulders that had plugged up the tunnel entrancewhere I was to starve and die. Collins placed the stuff I carried downto him. I said, "My God, you can't use all that; the whole stope'll bedown on us!" And he answered, "No; I've done it right. " That was everyword we uttered till we were back on our high shelf, with a lit fuseleft behind us in the stope. The fuse burned smooth as a dream, andCollins nudged me with fierce satisfaction. But I was suddenly sick withhorror. Not at the thing we were doing--if it were devil's work we hadbeen driven to be devils--but at the knowledge that Paulette wasstanding within reach of my feet, that were through the stope wall andwere hanging down into Collins's tunnel, --that tunnel every bone in meknew was amateur, unsafe, a death trap. The shock of a big explosion inThompson's stope might well bring its roof down on Paulette, standingalone in it, waiting, --trusting to me for safety. I turned my head andyelled at her as a man yells at a dog--or his dearest--when he is sickwith fear for her: "Get back out of that into the cave! _Run!_"

I heard her jump. Heard her----But thought stopped in me, with oneunwritable, life-checking shock. The whole earth, the very globe, seemedto have blown to pieces around me. The flash and roar were like athousand howitzers in my very face; the solid rock shelf I was on leaptunder me; and behind me the whole of Collins's tunnel collapsed, with agrinding roar. I heard Collins gasp, "Good glory"; heard the rocks andgravel in the stope before me settling, with an indescribable, threatening noise, between thunder and breaking china--and all I thoughtof was that I'd warned my dream girl in time, that she'd answered me, that she was back in Collins's cave, and safe. Till, suddenly to eyesthat had been too dazzled and seared to see it clearing, the smokebefore me cleared, the choking fumes lessened, and I saw. Saw, straightin front of me, where a tunnel had been and was no longer, a clean holelike a barn door where Thompson's tunnel entrance had been but two-menwide; saw out, into furious, crimson color that turned slowly, as mysight grew normal, into the golden, dazzling glory of winter sun onsnow. 

There was silence outside in the sun, all but some yells and moaning. How much damage we'd done I couldn't see; or where Macartney's men were, dead or alive. But now, while they were paralyzed with shock andsurprise, now was my time to get through them. I lowered myself gingerlyto the rubbish heap that had been the smooth floor of Thompson's stope;edged to the tunnel entrance; slipped my feet into the toe and heelstraps of the snowshoes I had held tightly against me through all theunspeakable, hellish uproar of rending rock, and sprang, --sprang outinto the sunlight, out on the clear snow, past wounded men, reeling men, dying men, and raced as I never put foot to ground before or since, forLac Tremblant, glittering clear and free in front of me, --that LacTremblant I had thought of subconsciously when I carried snowshoes intoCollins's cave. 

In the beginning of this story I said what Lac Tremblant was like. Itwas a lake that was no lake; that should have been our water-way out ofthe bush instead of miles of expensive road; and was no more practicablethan a rope ladder to the stars. For the depth of Lac Tremblant, or itsfairway, were two things no man might count on. It would fall in a nightto shallows a child might wade through, among bristling rocks no one hadever guessed at; and rise in a morning to the tops of the spruce scrubon its banks, --a sweet spread of water, with never a rock to be seen. What hidden spring fed it was a mystery. But in the bitterest winter itwas never frozen further than to form surging masses of frazil ice thatwould neither let a canoe push through them, nor yet support the weightof a man. It was on that frazil ice, that some people called lolly, thatI meant to run for my life now, trusting to the resistance of the twofeet of snow that lay on the lake in the mysterious way snow does lie onlolly, and to the snowshoes on my feet. And as I slithered on to thesoft snow of the lake, from the crackling, breaking shell ice on the LaChance shore, I knew I had done well. Some--a good many--of Macartney'smen were killed or half-killed by our deadly blast, but not all. He hadbeen more cautious than I guessed. I saw the rest of his men bunchedsome hundred feet from the smashed-out tunnel; saw Macartney, too, standing with them. But all I cared for was that he should see me andcome out after me on the crust of snow and lolly over LacTremblant, --that would never carry him without the snowshoes he did nothave--and give Paulette her chance to get away. I yelled at him andskimmed out over the trembling ice like a bird. 

Neither Macartney nor his men had stirred in that one flying glance Ihad dared take at them. But sheer tumult came out of them now. Thenshots--shots that missed me, and a sudden howled order from Macartney Idared not turn my head or break my stride to understand. The givingsurface under me was bearing, but a quarter-second's pause would havelet me through. There was no sense in zigzagging. Once I was clear, Iran as straight as I dared for the other shore, five miles away;but--suddenly I realized I was not clear! I was followed. 

Somebody else on snowshoes had shot out of Thompson's tunnel, over thecrackling shore ice on to the snow and frazil; was up to me, closebehind me. 

"Run, Nicky, " shrieked Paulette's voice. "_Run!_"

I slewed my head around and saw her, running behind me!

CHAPTER XVIII

LAC TREMBLANT

 "Across the ice that never froze The snow that never bore, My love ran out to follow me-- To follow to the shore. "

 _The Day the World Went Mad. _

It may be true that I swore aloud; but what I meant by it was more likepraying. Over me was the blue winter sky and the gold sun; under me thetreacherous spread of the lake that was no lake, that one misstep mightsend me through, to God knew what hideous depth of unfrozen water, orbare, bone-shattering stone; behind me were Macartney and Macartney'smen; and close up to me, nearer every second, my Paulette, my dream girlwho had never been mine. There was nothing to do for both of us but tokeep on crossing Lac Tremblant. Missteps might be death, but turningback was worse--for her, anyway. 

I yelled, "Keep wide! Get abreast of me--don't take any direction youdon't see me take. But _keep wide_!" Because what held one of us wouldnever hold two, and behind me, running in my tracks----Well, even alight girl would not run long!

Paulette only screamed, "Yes. Keep on! They're coming!" She may haveneeded her breath, I don't know; but she didn't run like it. She ranlike a deer, with my own flat, heel-dragging stride on the snowshoes Ihad not thought she knew how to use. One more shot came after us. Iyelled again to her to keep wide and heard her sheer off a little toobey me; but she still ran behind me. God knows I didn't realize, tillafterwards, that it was to keep Macartney from shooting me. I didn'teven wonder why Collins and Dunn weren't firing into the brown ofMacartney's men with Marcia's rifle and popgun. I was too busy watchingthe snow surfaces before me. 

There was a difference in them. I can't explain what, but a differencebetween where there was water to buoy the snow, and where it lay onshell ice. The open black holes where there was nothing at all any onecould see, and I didn't worry over them. I only knew we must run overwater, or the light stuff under us would let us through. I kept movingmy hand in infinitesimal signals to Paulette, and God knows she wasquick at understanding. My heart was in my mouth for her, but she nevermade a mistake, or a stumble where a stumble would have meant the end. She called to me suddenly; something that sounded like, "They'recoming!"

I turned my head and saw out of the tail of my eye, as a man sees whenhe's riding a race. They _were_ coming! Macartney's men, and--Ithought--Macartney; but I knew better than to look long enough to makesure. His men, anyhow, had raced out on the lake as we had raced, andthere was no need to watch what became of them. Their dying screams cameto us, as they floundered and sank in their heavy boots through snow andfrazil ice, to depths they would never get out of. I might have beensick anywhere else. I was fierce with joy out there in Lac Tremblant, running with a girl over the thin crust under which death lurked tosnatch at us, as it had snatched at Macartney's men. Neither of usspoke. I was thinking too hard. I could have run indefinitely as we wererunning, but Paulette was just a girl. What of Paulette if she slackenedwith weariness, if I led her wrong by six inches, or missed a singlethreatening sign on the stuff we fled over?

If I had been sure Macartney was drowned with his men, I might havetaken her back to La Chance; but I was not sure. And, Macartney or noMacartney, the track I had led her out on the lake by was the only one Iwould have dared trust to return on, --and it was all lumps of snowylolly and blue water, where Macartney's men had broken through. I lookedahead of me with my mind running like a mill. We had done about half thefive-mile crossing; we might do the rest if we could stop and breathefor ten minutes, for five, even for two. Only, in all the width of thelake that lay like cake icing in front of us, there was not one placewhere we could dare to stand. The water under us was higher than I hadever known it. Not one single dagger-toothed rock showed as they hadshowed when I crossed it in a canoe the night before it froze to thethick slush that was all it ever froze to. There was not one singleplace to----But violently, out of the back of my memory, something cameto me. There was one place in Lac Tremblant where, high water or low, aman might always stand--if I could hit it in the smothering, featurelesssnow. 

"The island!" I gasped out loud. Because there was one--a high, narrowisland without even a bush on it--rising gradually, not precipitatelylike the rest of the rocks in Lac Tremblant, out of the uncertain water. But for half an hour I thought it might as well be non-existent. Stareas I might I could see no sign of it--and suddenly I all but fell withblessed shock. I was on it; on the highest end of it, with solid groundunder my feet; solid ground and safety, breath and rest. I yelled toPaulette, "Jump to me!" and she jumped. That was all there was to it, except a man and a girl, panting, staggering, clinging together, tillsense came to them, and they dropped flat in the snow. 

I said sense, but I don't know that I had any. I lay there staring atPaulette and her long bronze hair that had come down as she ran, till itwas like a mantle over her and the snow round her. I had never thoughtwomen had hair like that. I cried out, "My God, Paulette, why did youcome?"

I may have sounded angry. I was, as a man always is angry when he hasdragged a woman into his danger. Paulette panted without looking at me. "I--had to! The tunnel--caved in!"

"I told you to get out of it!" I sat up where I had flung myself downand stared at her. She sat up, too, both of us crimson-faced anddishevelled. But neither of us thought of that. I stormed like a fool. "What possessed you to stay in the tunnel--or to follow me? I told youto jump for the cave!"

"Well, I didn't!" Paulette stiffened as if she froze. "I hadn't time. Iwould have had to cross the tunnel. And I hadn't _time_ to do anythingbut jump to you and Collins before your stuff blew up. I'd just got onyour shelf when it went off, and it stunned me till I had just senseenough left to lie still and hold on. But afterwards, when I saw whatyou were going to do, I put on the snowshoes you'd left by the tunnelentrance and came after you. I'm sorry I did, now!"

"But Collins----" I looked blankly across the two miles of quiveringdeath trap we still had to cross before we gained what safety theremight be in the Halfway shore and the neighborhood of Macartney'spicket, and my thoughts were not of Collins--"Why, in heaven's name, didn't Collins have sense enough to lug you back into his cave with himand Charliet, instead of letting you take a chance like this?"

"Collins couldn't get back himself, " Paulette retorted, as if I wereunbearably stupid. "Nobody could get back! I told you the tunnel _cavedin_, till it was solid between us and the others. Collins saw I had tofollow you. In two more minutes Dick would have come to hunt Thompson'sstope for me, and we had no guns to stave him off. You and Collins leftthem in the tunnel!" It was just what we had done, and I wasted goodtime in remembering it, guiltily. Paulette stood up and twisted back herstreaming cloud of hair. "So, as I had to come with you, " she resumedwithout looking at me, "don't you think we'd better get on? If you'rewaiting for me to rest, you needn't. "

I wasn't, altogether. I stared back over the perilous way we had come. There was no black speck of any one following us on its treacherousface; no sound of shots; no anything from the shore we had left. Yet, "Where do you suppose Macartney is?" I asked involuntarily. 

"Dead. " Her voice was almost indifferent, but she shivered. "Or he'dhave gone on shooting at us. "

I nodded, but I would have felt easier if I had thought so. Somehow Ididn't, I don't know why. I know nothing would have induced me to takePaulette back to La Chance, even if the trodden lolly would have borneus again. I had a pang about Collins, left alone there; but Collinscould take care of himself, and Paulette's shiver had reminded me weshould freeze to death if we loitered where we were. I pointed to thesnowy lake between us and the Halfway shore. "Can you do two more milesof running, over that?"

"Yes, " she glanced down at her slim, trained body, rather superbly. "Only--there's no one following us! Have we got to be quite so quick?"

"Quicker! We don't know about Macartney. If he's alive he has a stablefull of horses, and he knows where we're running to. He may try to cutus off. " I half lied; he could not cut us off, since horses would be ofno use to him in the heavy snow, and on foot it would take him two daysto go round Lac Tremblant to the Halfway, where crossing the lolly couldbring us in two hours. But I had no mind to air my real reason forhaste. 

I should have known Paulette was too shrewd for me. "I'm a fool--LacTremblant never bears, of course, " she said quite quietly. "Go on, Mr. Stretton. Only--don't stop, if anything goes wrong with me!"

"Nothing will go wrong, " said I, just as if I believed it. If she hadcalled me Nicky, as she had done by mistake the night before, when sheslept with her hand clasping mine, if she'd even looked at me, I musthave burst out that I loved her, past life and death, and out to theworld to come. But it was no time to force love-making on a girl who hadseen the man she meant to marry lie dead before her eyes. If she turnedshaky, or cried, I could never save her. For the bit of lake in front ofus was ten times worse than what we'd crossed. I knew that when Itightened up the snowshoes silently and led my dream girl out on it. Iwould have given half my life for a rope, such as people have onglaciers. But I had no rope, and each of us would have to run, or sink, alone. 

I meant, of course----But that's no matter. I got Paulette off theisland and, inch by inch, feeling my way, back to the channel wherebuoyant water, at least, lay under us. I twisted and turned like acorkscrew, but I dared not leave it. Once I cautioned Paulette never totry a short cut, just to keep abreast of me; and twice my heart was inmy mouth at a hollow, instant-long clatter under our shoes. But we goton over the stuff somehow, leaving holes of blue water in our tracks, with great gobbets of snow floating in them. The shore lay close infront of us, with a hard distinct edge of shell ice showing where thewater stopped. I was just going to call out that in ten feet more we'dbe safe over the lolly, when--smash--both of us went through! I thoughtI fell a mile before I hit the water that was going to drown us; hit itknees first, just as I'd gone through, and--I sprawled in icy slush thatrose no higher than my waist. I was in a sort of pocket between tworocks that were holding up the lolly. There was an avalanche of cavingsnow and ice all round me, but I was not drowned or likely to be, --onlyI barely thought of it. For I could not see Paulette. Suddenly, pastbelief, I heard her scream: "Nicky!"

I fought blindly to the sound of her voice, wormed between my screeningrocks, and shouted as I stood up. She was not even in slush! She hadgone through shell ice to bare ground, a long strip of bare ground thatled straight to the Halfway shore; roofed, high above my head, withshell ice and lolly that filtered a silver-green light. My dream girllay there in her little blue sweater with the wind knocked out ofher--and that was all. I kicked off my snowshoes that were not evenbroken and carried her under the ice roof to the Halfway shore. I mayhave thanked God aloud; I don't know. Only I carried her, with my faceclose to hers, and the slush and snow from her falling over me as Istumbled under the ice roof to the blessed shore. I had just senseenough to drop her in the blinding daylight, and drop myself beside her. I couldn't speak, from dead cold fear, now that I had saved her, of whatit would have been if I had not. For two gasping minutes we just laythere. 

Then Paulette said pantingly, "I'm so dreadfully sorry--I've been such atrouble! But I couldn't do anything but come, and--I forgot you couldn'twant me!"

I sat up and saw her, sitting on a cold, bare, wind-swept rock that wasall the refuge I had to offer her. Half a mile farther on were food andshelter in the Halfway shack--and it might as well have been in Heaven, for with Macartney's men cached in it I naturally could not take herthere. Behind that, twenty-seven miles off, was Caraquet; but even agirl with a trained body like Paulette's could never make twenty-sevenmiles on top of all we'd done. 

"It's no question of wanting you, " I exclaimed angrily. "It is that Idon't know what to do. But want you--when do you suppose I haven'twanted you, ever since the night I first saw you by Dudley's fire? Whatdo you suppose I'd ever have been in this game _for_, if I hadn't wantedjust you in all this world? My heart of hearts, don't you know I loveyou?" I lost my head, or I never would have said it, for I saw herflinch. That brought me back to myself in the snow and desolation roundus that stood for God's world as nothing else would have done. I burstout in shame, "Oh, forgive me! I never meant to let that out. I know younever cared a hang for me; that you were going to marry Dudley, if hehadn't been killed!"

For one solid minute Paulette never opened her mouth. She sat like acolored statue, with rose-crimson cheeks and gold-bronze hair, under thewhite January sun. Her eyes were so dark in her face that they lookedlike blue-black ink. "I--I never was engaged to Dudley, " she gasped atlast, more as if it were jerked out of her than voluntarily. "I didn'tthink it was any business of yours, but I never was. We--Dudley andI--only said so, because it seemed the simplest way to manage Marcia, when Dudley brought me here to get me out of that emerald business. Hewas good to me, if ever a man was good to a girl he was only sorry for;I can't forget that brought him to his death. I'm sick with sorrow forhim, --but I never was going to marry Dudley! He didn't even want me to. He----Oh, _Nicky_!"

Because I couldn't stand it; I'd seen her eyes. I had both her hands inmine, I think I was telling her over and over how I had always lovedher, how I had stood out of Dudley's way, that I didn't expect, ofcourse, that she could care about an Indian-faced fool like me, when--suddenly--I knew! Like roses and silver trumpets and shelter outthere in the homeless snow, _I knew_! All Paulette said was, "Oh, Nicky, " again. But the two of us were in each other's arms. 

I don't know how long we clung or what we said. But at last I lifted myIndian-dark head from her gold one and spoke abruptly out of Paradise. "By gad, I have it!"

"Have what?" Paulette gasped. "Oh, you certainly have most of my hair;it's all wound up in your coat buttons--if you mean that!"

I didn't. "I meant I knew where we could go, and that's to Skunk'sMisery, " I harked back soberly, remembering the boy I had left therewith a fire and shelter anyhow, if not food. 

"But you said it was a horrible place!"

"So it is, when you have anywhere else to go. But we can't try theHalfway with Macartney's men in it, and neither of us could makeCaraquet to-night. We've got to have shelter, darling. "

Paulette stopped plaiting her hair in a thick rope. "Say that again, "she ordered curiously. 

"What--Skunk's Misery?" But suddenly I understood, and used that word Ihad never said aloud before:

"_Darling_ darling, Skunk's Misery is our only chance. Get up and comeon!"

But she answered without moving. 

"Want to tell you something first. The tunnel falling in wasn't all thereason I ran after you. I thought--thought Dick might not dare to shootat you if I were between you and him, so----Oh, Nicky, _don't_ kiss myhorrid, chapped hands!"

But I was glad to hide my humbled face on them, remembering how I hadstormed at her. I muttered, "Why didn't you tell me--out there on thelake?"

"Well, you were pretty unpleasant, and"--as I kissed her, my dear love Ihad never thought to touch--"oh, Nicky, how could I tell you? I saideverything to you last night but '_Nicholas Dane Stretton, I loveyou!_'--and all the notice you took was to kneel perfectly silent, witha face as long as your arm. You never even answered me, when I calledyou Nicky by mistake!"

I hadn't dared. But it was no time to be talking of those things. Letalone that my wet breeches had frozen till I felt as if my legs didn'tbelong to me, we had landed exactly where old Thompson had been drowned. I wanted to get away from there, quickly; leaving no more trail than wasnecessary. I looked round me and saw how to do it. 

In front of us was the hole in the shore ice and all the smash andflurry where we had gone through. Where we had crawled on shore, fromunder the intact ice roof, was bare rock, wind-swept clean. It struck methat with a little management, and to a cursory inspector, it could lookas though Paulette and I were drowned like Thompson. The snow had notpiled on this side the lake as it had on ours. Detached rocks, few butpracticable stepping-stones, lifted their bare bulk out of it, betweenus and the spruce bush we had to strike through to avoid the Halfway andMacartney's picket. Some kind of a trail we must leave to Skunk'sMisery, but it need not begin here, in the first place Macartney wouldlook, if he were alive to look anywhere. Paulette's eyes followed mineas I thought it, and she nodded. It was without a track of any sort, after the lake trail ended, that she and I stopped in the thick sprucesand put on our snowshoes for the last lap of the way to Skunk's Misery. 

My dream girl's trained young body served her well. As she stepped outafter me, I would never have guessed she had run a yard. It was easyenough to avoid the Halfway, and unlikely that Macartney's men wouldever discover our devious track in the thick bush. Crossing the Caraquetroad was the only place where we had to leave a track in the open. I didthe best I could with it by picking up Paulette, and carrying her andher shoes into thick bush again; but I could not honestly feel muchpleasure in the result. Any one with any sense would know my sunken shoemarks had carried double, but it was the best I could do. It was nopleasure to me either to hear Paulette exclaim sharply, as I set herdown:

"Nicky, I _forgot_! Dick can snowshoe after us, if he's alive. Charlietmade a lot of snowshoes at odd times, to sell in Quebec if he ever wentback there. They were piled up in the shed behind the kinty, and Ibelieve Dick knew--though he didn't remember it in time to save his men. If he follows us I"--her lip curled in fear and hatred--"Oh, I hope he'sdead!"

So did I. Yet somehow I had never felt it. "Well, if he isn't, " I saidroughly, "he'll have to do twenty-two miles to catch up to our five, andthen some to Skunk's Misery. He couldn't make good enough time round thelake to catch us to-night, supposing he knew where we were going; evenon the chance of him, we've got to have one night's rest. And our onlyplace to find it is Skunk's Misery!"

Paulette nodded and stepped out after me once more. It was dead toil inthe soft snow, and it was slow; for Macartney or no Macartney, there wasno making time in the untrodden bush. I cut our way as short as I dared, but do the best I could it was dark when we came to that forlorn, evilhollow in the gap of desolate hills that Caraquet folk called Skunk'sMisery. That had its points though, considering we needed to reachMacartney's old lean-to unseen, for the Skunk's Misery population was inbed, and as I said before, they had no dogs to bark at us. In deadsilence, with Paulette holding to my coat and our snowshoes under ourarms, we went Indian file through the maze of winding tracks Skunk'sMisery used for roads, under rocks and around them; and on thehard-trodden paths our feet left no trace. At least, I thought so: andit was just where I slipped up! If I had looked behind me, when Paulettewould not let me carry her snowshoes, I would have seen the tails ofthem dragging a telltale cut in the snow behind her, as they sagged fromher tired arm. But my eyes were straight before me, on the door ofMacartney's lean-to. It hung open, as it had always hung, but I onlyglanced in to make sure it was empty. It was elsewhere I was going, around the huge boulder that backed the place, and down a gully thatapparently brought up against blind rock--only I knew better. I foundthe opening of the rocky passage I had wormed down once before with myback scraping the living rock between me and the sky, and on my handsand knees, with Paulette after me, I went down it again. It endedwithout warning, just as I had known it would end, in an open cave. Aglow of fire was ahead of me; and, stooping over it--what I had neverimagined I should see with joy and gratitude--the boy I had left there, toasting a raw rabbit on a stick. That was all I saw. And what possessedme I don't know, but as I stood up I turned on Paulette with a suddenwave of stale jealousy overwhelming me, and a question I had kept backall the afternoon:

"Paulette, you're sure--_sure_--it's me, and not Dudley? That you didn'tlove the poor chap best?"

Paulette scrambled to her feet beside me. "It's you, " she said clearly. "I told you Dudley never loved me, or I him. I'll mourn for him always, for he met his death through me. But he never wanted to marry me, and ifhe were alive, he'd be the first person to tell you so!"

There was a pause, definite, distinct, while you could count five. Theboy at the fire started to frozen attention at sight of us, as sharplyas his distorted body could start. But before he could speak, or I did, another voice answered Paulette's from the dark of the cave behind thefire, --an unexpected, mind-shattering voice, that took me toward it withone bound. "By gad, " it said, "he would, would he? Two things have to goto that!"

I stood paralyzed where I had jumped. Paulette's snowshoes droppedclattering on the cave floor. Dudley Wilbraham, whom the wolves hadeaten--little, fat, with a face more like an egg than ever, but wholeand _alive_--stood in the dimness of the cave behind the fire and mySkunk's Misery boy!

CHAPTER XIX

SKUNK'S MISERY

Paulette said, "Oh my heavens, Dudley!" and went straight to pieces. 

I don't know that I made much of a job of being calm myself. All I couldget out was, "The wolves! We thought they'd eaten you--Paulette foundyour cap out by the Caraquet road. "

Dudley, for whom the whole of La Chance had beaten the bush all onelivelong night, whom his own sister had sworn was killed and eaten, Dudley made the best show of the three. He had a flask, of course, --whenhad he not? He dosed Paulette and me with what was left in it, but evenwith the whisky limbering my parched throat I hadn't sense to ask acoherent question. Dudley looked from Paulette to me and spoke prettycollectedly to both of us. 

"I wasn't eaten, if that's what brought you two here--though judgingfrom your conversation I imagine it wasn't. Thank the Lord you are herethough, anyway. I've been pretty wild, tied up here with this snow. But"--sharply--"where the devil's Marcia?"

"Hidden away from Macartney, with Charliet to look after her. " It wasall I could bring myself to say, except that she thought Dudley wasdead. 

"Does Macartney think so too?" the corpse demanded. 

"He worked hard enough to feel safe in thinking it, " I returnedbitterly, and came out with the whole story. How Macartney said thewolves had howled around the shack till their noise drove Dudleydistracted, and he had slipped out after them unnoticed, with a gun;that Macartney, the two girls and half the men had gone to look for him, when he never returned, till Paulette found his wolf-doped cap torn upby the Caraquet road, and Marcia found him, in the bush--unrecognizablebut for what rags of his sable-lined coat were left on his body. AndDudley's hard-boiled egg face never changed with one word of it. 

"So that was how it was worked, " he reflected quite composedly. "AndMacartney thinks it was I Marcia found! Well, it wasn't--though Idaresay it was my coat, all right, just as it was my cap Paulette pickedup by the road. But it damn well would have been me, if it hadn't beenfor"--he paused casually, and pointed behind him--"Baker. "

"Baker! That good-for-nothing devil who was always trailing after you?Why, Macartney said----" but I remembered Macartney had only said Bakerwas missing, too. I wheeled on the dimness of the inside cave and sawwhat I had missed in my flurry over Dudley. A second man--white-faced, black-eyebrowed, slim looking--was standing just where the fire glow didnot reach him, staring at Paulette and me. I said, "Land of love, _Baker_!" And I may be forgiven if I swore. 

Baker nodded as undramatically as Dudley. "Yes, it was me. I had senseenough all along to guess Macartney was going to finish Mr. Wilbrahamwith the wolf dope he'd tried out on you, if the rest of the ganghadn't. And I wouldn't stand for sculduddery like that, for one thing;and for another I thought I'd come out better in the end by sticking tothe boss, like you seen me doing often enough! So I just told him he wasbeing lain for and brought him out here. I knew this cave was safe, forI lived here two months before me and the rest of us dribbled into LaChance. And I knew the Halfway wasn't--for the two men who turned BillyJones out of it, with a sham letter from the boss, were the two whodrowned old Thompson! I've played honest in my way, Mr. Stretton, ifyou never thought so. "

"Shut up, " Dudley interrupted him indignantly. "I'd be where Marciathought she found me, if it hadn't been for you. Listen, Stretton! I gotfussy after you left for Billy Jones's that afternoon; I'd been hittingit up the day before, and you know how that leaves me! I didn't see whyin blazes I hadn't gone with you to Billy's instead of sitting aroundthe house, and a couple of hours after you left I started out to get ahorse and follow you. But it's a lie that I heard wolves, or thought ofthem: there wasn't one around the place. Macartney wasn't around, either. I guess he was out in the bush fixing up the wolf-baited groundthat was to get me, for he'd fixed up my coat and cap with it before hestarted. I thought something smelt like the devil when I put them on, but I never guessed it was my own things. I went out to the stable justas I might on any other day, only nobody happened to see me go, andright there I ran on Baker. I told him to come for a ride with me, buthe didn't seem to think much of the horse racket; said he knew a shortcut to Billy's, and it would be better for my head if we just walked. Itwas Baker told me the devilish reek I smelled was coming from my owncoat, and I chucked it down by the stable door. God knows which ofMacartney's men picked it up and wore it after I left it, for Marcia tofind, " even Dudley looked sick, "but it wasn't me! I smelt my cap, too, after I'd walked some of the muzziness out of me, and I threw thataway--where Paulette found it. We didn't leave a sign of a track, ofcourse; it was long before there was any snow. If I'd known why Bakerhad me out there, walking away from La Chance, I'd have turned back anddefied Macartney, or I'd never have started. But it wasn't till it wasblack dark, and I'd walked enough sense into myself to ask why we werenot getting to Billy Jones's, that Baker took his life in his hands--foryou may bet I was fighting mad at having seemed to run away--and told methat you and I and all of us were in a trap that was going to spring andget us, and give Macartney our mine. He let out about Thompson's murder, and you and the wolf dope; and that Macartney'd kicked Billy Jones outof the Halfway with a forged dismissal from me, and had his own menwaiting there to get you while he limed the bush and my cap and coat, for the wolves to get _me_. And you know I'd have been dead sure to goout after them with a gun, just as he said I did, if I'd heard them comeyowling around the shack while I was in it! I'd have gone back to faceMacartney, even then, only----Well, you've had experience ofMacartney's wolves, and you'd know I couldn't! We could hear the rowthey were making even where we stood, miles away. We set off on the deadrun for Caraquet and help, but we had to break the journey somewhere. Wecouldn't face Macartney's men at Billy's, for neither of us had agun--and that's another lie to Macartney--and it was no good leaving thedevil to run into hell. So Baker brought me here. "

"But, " I gasped, "I don't see how you missed me! I was here, too, thatnight!"

"Well, we weren't--till the morning, " Dudley snapped in his old way. "Itwas just beginning to snow when we crawled down the burrow you'd crawledout of and found this place--and your boy. "

"But I told him----D'ye mean he just _let_ you find him?"

"He did not, " grimly. "He was hidden away somewhere, and I don't supposehe'd ever have come out, if I hadn't happened to use what seems to havebeen your password! I said out loud that I'd give twenty dollars to anyone who'd get me some food; and out comes your friend, and says you toldhim to trust any one who said that, and where was the twenty? So, afterthat, we settled down!"

"But----" Dudley's selfishness had always been colossal, yet this timeit beat even me. "What did you suppose was going to become of yoursister and Paulette--left with Macartney when you'd disappeared, and theHalfway picket had got _me_?" I burst out. 

"My acquaintance with you made me hopeful they wouldn't get you, " Dudleybegan drily, "and as for the girls----" but his sham indifference brokedown. "Don't talk of it, will you?" he bellowed. "I did think you'd beall right, but I was in hell for those girls till I could get toCaraquet and take back help for them! Only this cursed snow stopped me. We had to wait till it was packed enough for Baker to sneak down to theHalfway and steal a couple of my own horses, for us to ride to Caraquet. But that's how I'm here--and how Marcia found a half-eaten man in mytop-coat, that she thought was me!"

I was speechless. It was all so simple, even to Dudley's twenty dollarsand my boy. But before I could say so, Dudley turned on me with his oldvicious pounce. "Why in blazes don't you tell me what you left Marciafor, after bullying me because I did? And why are you and Paulette here, if you thought I was killed?"

"We left her because we had to, with a thousand tons of earth between usand the only way we could have got back to her alive, " said Iwrathfully. "And as for why we're here, "--I poured out the whole storyof my return to La Chance, from Dudley's own funeral procession that metme and my bootless fight with Macartney, to the resurrection of Collinsand Dunn, and Paulette's and my race across Lac Tremblant. I left outMarcia's share in my defeat, but Dudley gave a comprehending sniff. 

"Marcia always was a fool about Macartney! But it's no matter, since sheisn't with him--whether he's alive or dead. Only you were a worse fool, Stretton, to cross that lake with a girl in tow. I don't know why youweren't both drowned, like Thompson----" but his voice broke. He was agood little man, under his bad habits, or he never would have done whathe had for Paulette. He muttered something about all the decent menwho'd met their death because he wouldn't listen to Paulette when shetried to tell him the truth about Macartney, damned him up and down, andturned to Paulette with a sweet sort of roughness:

"You look done up, my girl! Here, get down by the fire and eat what ourchef's got ready!" For the crippled boy had gone on with his cooking, regardless of the talk round him, and his rabbit was done. 

But Paulette never looked at the food Dudley held out to her. "You'renot angry, Dudley?" she asked very low. "I mean--for what I said toNicky as we came in?"

"I was, " but Dudley grinned in the half dark. "It was true enough, onlynobody likes to hear their own obituary. But I knew about Stretton longago, if you hadn't the sense to! You take him, my child, and myblessing. God knows I never asked you to marry an old soak like me!"

He shoved Paulette's hand into mine and stared at the two of us for asecond. Then--"By gad, " he added, in a different voice, "I hopeMacartney's got drowned, or he may walk in on the lot of us!"

"How?" I demanded scornfully. "He couldn't do thirty-two miles in thetime Paulette and I did fifteen, even if he knew where to do it to!"

"He doesn't have to, my young son, " Dudley stood musing on it. "Bakerand I didn't do any twenty, coming here; and it was Macartney's own pathwe came by. That doesn't go round by any Halfway! If he takes a fancy tocome here by it, and strikes your tracks as you two came into Skunk'sMisery, the rest wouldn't take him long! I believe--hang on a minute, while I speak to Baker!" He wheeled suddenly and disappeared into thedark of the cave where Baker stood aloof. 

"You needn't worry about Macartney, " I said to Paulette. "We didn'tleave any tracks, once we got into broken snow!"

I turned at a rustle behind me and looked straight into the muzzle ofMacartney's revolver and into Macartney's eyes!

CHAPTER XX

THE END

The boy at the fire let out a yelp and dropped flat. Dudley and Baker, invisible somewhere, neither spoke nor stirred. And I stood like a fool, as near the death of Nicholas Dane Stretton as ever I wish to get. 

But Macartney only stood there, looking so much as usual that I guessedhe must have rested outside the mouth of our burrow before he wormeddown to tackle me. 

"You wouldn't have left any tracks, " he said, picking up what I'd justsaid in his everyday manner, if it had not been for the dog's grin healways wore when he was angry, "if I hadn't run on single snowshoetracks carrying double, where you crossed the Caraquet road. And if oneof you hadn't trailed your shoe tails through Skunk's Misery--thatdoesn't wear them!"

"How did you get here?" said I slowly, because I was calculating myspring to Macartney's gun hand. 

"I walked, " and I thought he had not noticed I was half a step nearerhim. "If you meant me to drown myself following you over your lake, Ididn't--thanks to the kind warning you made of my men. But I didn'timagine you'd drowned yourselves either--after I looked through a fieldglass! Charliet had plenty of snowshoes cached away; I was alwaysquick on my feet; and after I struck your track the rest wassimple--especially as you were fool enough to bring a girl here. I----"but his level voice was suddenly thick with passion. "_Get back!_ If youtry to grab my gun I'll shoot you, and your boy too, like dogs! You'llstay still and listen--to what I've to say. I've an account to settlewith you, Stretton; now that I've cleaned up Dudley's, and he's dead!"

You could have heard a pin drop on the dead silence of that undergroundhole. Neither Dudley nor Baker stirred, and it hit me like a hammer thatMacartney didn't know they were alive; _he didn't know!_

I stood as though I had been struck dumb; so did Paulette. Neither of useven flickered an eyelash toward the shadows behind us, where Dudleymust be crouching, anything but dead, with Baker beside him. Perhaps itstruck both of us, simultaneously, that Dudley had heard Macartneycoming before we did and disappeared on purpose, thinking Macartneymight speak naked truth to Paulette and myself, where he would havevarnished it up to a mysteriously resurrected employer whom he might yetbamboozle as he always had bamboozled him. Anyhow, neither of us saw fitto give Dudley away. Macartney sneered into our silent faces. 

"There's not much fight in you, " he commented contemptuously. "Though itwas never any good to try to fight me! If you like to have it inblack and white, _I've_ been all the brains of the businesshere--single-handed! It was I got the secret of the wolf bait from themother of your lame friend here, " he pointed with his unoccupied hand tomy grovelling boy, "when first I followed Paulette out from New York andlaid up in Skunk's Misery to wait till I had a clear way to get to LaChance. That old ass Thompson gave me that, when I scooped him up on theroad. After I'd used him, two of my men drowned him in LacTremblant--and you'd never have guessed a word about it, if it hadn'tbeen for his cursed card they overlooked in the shack here, where youfound it. It was I put that bottle in your wagon the day it broke there. I did it before I knew Paulette was going to drive with you; that wasthe only thing in the whole business that ever gave me a scare! It was Igot rid of Collins and Dunn"--I saw that he believed it, just as hebelieved he was rid of Dudley--"and the most of your men who might havestuck by you if it came to a fight for the mine. I had to shoot the lastfour of them, as you _didn't_ find out that night in the assay office! Ibaited the bush that rid me of Dudley Wilbraham, with his yells aboutemeralds and hunting down Thompson's murderer; and I've got your and hismine, in spite of your blowing up and drowning all the men I meant tohold it with. But you found out most of that, even if it was a littlelate. What you didn't find out, or Dudley either, was that he was rightabout Van Ruyne's emeralds!"

Paulette leapt up like a wildcat. "You mean you took them?"

"I took them, " he nodded sneeringly, and I saw her eyes blaze. "I tookthem--to get you into a hole you'd have to come to me to get out of!"

"But I didn't have to come to you! I----" but she spoke with suddencutting deliberation. "I don't believe you. You were never in theHoustons' house that night. I should have seen you. "

"Oh, seen me!" Macartney grinned. I think the two of them forgot me, forgot everything but that they were facing each other at last with themasks off. I know neither of them heard a slow, creeping, nearing soundin the long burrow behind Macartney, a sound that swung my blood upwith the wild, furious hope that Collins and Dunn--anyhow Collins--washot on Macartney's trail, as Macartney had been on Paulette's and mine, and was creeping down the burrow behind him now, ready to take him inthe rear when I jumped at him from the front. I waited till whoever itwas came close up; waited for the moment to grab Macartney, watching histriumphant, passionate eyes as he stared victoriously at Paulette. 

"Seen me?" he repeated, and I hoped the sound of his own voice woulddeafen him to that other sound, that was so loud to me. "You saw theHoustons' guests, and their servants! You never thought of seeing theexpert who was down from New York about the heating of Mrs. Houston'snew orchid houses! I left the real man dead drunk in New York, in aplace he wouldn't leave in a hurry; and the week-end you spent at theHoustons' I, and my plans, had the run of Mrs. Houston's library, thatneither she nor any one else ever goes into. And, " he laughed outright, "it was next _your_ sitting room, opening on the same upstairs balcony!I had only to put my hand through an open window to scoop Van Ruyne'semeralds out of their case while you had your back turned, writing thenote you sent _outside_ the case, instead of inside! Remember?" But thistime he did not laugh. "I missed fire about getting you that night, thanks to that fool Wilbraham happening round with his car. But now I'lltake all I did this whole business for--and that's you, --PauletteValenka!"

Paulette never took her eyes from him. "That's a lie, " she said quiteevenly. "Oh, not that you took the emeralds; I believe that. But it wasnot only to get me into trouble. It was for themselves! You had to stealsomething. You hadn't one penny. "

"Not then!" Even in the gloom I saw two scarlet spots flare out likesealing-wax on the always dead blondeness of Macartney's cheeks. Ithought I could hear his heart beat where I stood. "But I have now! Withthe emeralds, your late friend Dudley's mine, and _you_, "--his voice wasunspeakably, insultingly significant, but that unheard rustle behindhim, growing nearer, more unmistakable, kept me motionless. "By heaven, a man might call himself rich! Did you suppose Stretton here could fightme? Why, I've been the secret wolf he never had the _nous_ to guess at!I----" he swung around on me like light, his revolver six inches from myear. "Stand there, " he shouted at me, "and die like Wilbraham, you----"

His hand dropped, his jaw fell with the half-spoken words in it; hiseyes, all pupils, stared over my shoulder. I turned and sawDudley, --Dudley, silent, watching us both; saw him even before I grabbedthe gun out of Macartney's hanging, lax hand. But Macartney never somuch as felt me do it. He stared paralyzed at Dudley--little, fat, witha face like a hard-boiled egg--standing silent against the dark of theinner cave. 

Dudley had a nerve when you came through to it. "I've not died, yet, " hesnarled out suddenly. 

I had the only gun in the place and the drop on Macartney; but I neverstirred. That long-heard rustle in the burrow was close on me: was--

"My God, Marcia!" said I. I never even wondered about Collins and Dunnletting her get away. Marcia stood up in the entrance from the burrow, panting, purple-faced, exhausted. Marcia sprang to Macartney--notDudley, I doubt if she even saw Dudley--with a cry out of her very soul. 

"Mack, you're not Hutton--you never took those emeralds--and for thatgirl! Say it's a lie, and it's _I_ you love! Mack, say you love mestill!"

Macartney flung back a mechanical hand and swept her away from him likea fly. She fell and lay there. None of us had said a word since Dudleycame out and faced Macartney. None of us said a word now. I saw, almostindifferently, Collins burst out of the burrow behind Macartney, asMarcia had burst out, and grab me. "Stretton, " he gasped, "thankGod--found your tracks. But that she-devil Marcia got away from me, and----" But in his turn he jerked taut where he stood, at sight ofDudley, and stood speechless. 

But I never looked at him. I looked at nothing but Macartney's face. 

It was rigid, as if it were a mask that had frozen on him. Thesealing-wax scarlet on his cheeks had gone out like a turned-out lamp. His eyes went from Dudley to Collins and back again, as if they were theonly living part of his deathly face. 

"Ah, " said Macartney, "A-ah!" He dropped on the floor all in one piece, like a cut-down tree. 

Collins made a plunge for him. I sent Collins reeling. 

"Let him alone, you young fool, " I swore. "We've got him, and he'sfainted. I've seen him like this before--the night he shot our own menin the assay office. It's only his old fainting fits. "

"It's his new death, " said Dudley, quite quietly. He came forward andbent over Macartney, laid a hand on his breast. "Can't you see the man'sgone, Stretton? It killed him: the run here--the shock of seeing me. Hemust have had a heart like rotten quartz!"

Paulette, Collins, Baker, all of us, stood there blankly. We had notstruck a blow, or raised a voice among the whole lot of us; Macartney'sgun was still warm from his grasp whence I had snatched it; andMacartney--the secret wolf at La Chance, masquerader, thief, murderer--lay dead at our feet. I heard myself say out loud: "His heartwas rotten: that was why he fainted in the assay office. But----Oh, theman was mad besides! He must have been. " And over my words came anothervoice. It was Marcia's, and it made me sick. 

"Macartney, " she was screaming, "Macartney!" She ran round and roundlike a hen in a road, before me, Dudley, all of us; then flung herselfon her brother as if she had only just realized him. "You'realive--you're not dead! Can't you see he never stole any emeralds norloved that girl, any more than he killed you? You made up lies abouthim, all of you! And you stand here doing nothing for him. He----Oh, Mack, speak to me! _Mack!_"

She sprang to Macartney; dropped on her knees by the dead, handsomelength of him; tore open his coat and shirt. But she knelt there, rigid, with her hand on his quiet heart. 

Macartney had never stolen Van Ruyne's emeralds: she had just said it. There, around Macartney's bared throat, lying on the white skin of hischest, green lights in the dull fire-glow of the cave, were Van Ruyne'semeralds, that Paulette Brown--whose real name was Tatiana PaulinaValenka--had never seen or touched since she put them back into VanRuyne's velvet case!

I will say Marcia Wilbraham knew when she was beaten. She cowered backto Dudley and began to cry; but it was with her arms round his neck. Andthe fat little man held her to his queer, kind heart. I turned my backsharply on the pair of them, and----My eyes met Paulette's!

There would be all sorts of fuss and unpleasantness to go through withthe sheriff from Caraquet, over what was left of Macartney; there wasold Thompson's death to be accounted for; Van Ruyne's emeralds to bereturned to him, so that Tatiana Paulina Valenka, and not PauletteBrown, could marry that lucky, Indian-dark fool who was Nicky Stretton. There was Dudley's mine, too, all safe again, and such an incrediblemine that even I would be passably rich out of it, --but I barely, justbarely, thought of all those things. My dream girl's blue eyes were likestars in mine, under the burnt gold of her silk-soft hair. The clearcarnation rose in her cheeks as I looked at her, where she stood closeto me, all mine, as I had always dreamed she would be, --till I met herand was sick with doubt of it. She was mine! As far as I was concerned, this story had ended at Skunk's Misery, --where it had begun, if I hadonly guessed it. I gave an honest start as Collins jogged my elbow. 

"We can't stay here, with _that_, " he whispered, nodding at Macartney. "What do you think about getting out of this? We could leave--him--here, with Baker and the boy for a guard, till we can get the Caraquet peopleto come and see him. We've our snowshoes, and mine and the girls', besides Macartney's, that I guess he's done with. I think we couldmanage along as far as the Halfway in the morning, if we made a travoisof boughs for Wilbraham!"

"But, " I stared at him, "Macartney's picket's there!"

"Oh, Charliet and Dunn were going to clear them out with MissWilbraham's rifle, while I got after her, when she broke away on toMacartney's track here, " Collins returned calmly. "I expect that's allright, and they've run. Anyhow, you've got Macartney's gun! You can goahead and see. "

But I had no need to. An abandoned picket has a way of knowing when thegame is up, and Macartney's men had cleared out on the double, evenbefore Charliet's first rifle bullet missed them. We caught themafterwards, half dead in the bush, --but that doesn't come in here. Iwalked into the Halfway with my dream girl beside me, and both of usjumped as Dudley suddenly poked his pig-eyed face between us. 

"You needn't hop, you two, " he commented irritably; "you can have yourOld Nick, Paulette, for all me! What I'm thinking of's that boy--andBaker! I guess they saved my life all right between them, and I'm goingto set them up for what's left of theirs. Got anything to say againstthat, hey?" with his old snarl. 

"Not much, " I returned soberly. But Paulette clasped both Dudley's podgyhands in hers. 

"Oh, _dear_ Dudley, " she said softly. But there were tears in her eyes. 

I know; for I kissed them away afterwards, when we were alone. 

THE END