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Title: The long patrol

Author: Albert M. Treynor

Release date: January 11, 2023 [eBook #69773]
                Most recently updated: January 28, 2023

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Grosset & Dunlap

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG PATROL ***







  THE LONG
  PATROL


  BY

  ALBERT M. TREYNOR


  AUTHOR OF
  THE TRAIL FROM DEVIL'S COUNTRY.



  GROSSET & DUNLAP
  PUBLISHERS NEW YORK




  COPYRIGHT, 1924, 1926,
  BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY. INC.

  PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.




  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  I  The Ambushed Trail
  II  Knights of the Law
  III  Without Mercy
  IV  Find the Woman
  V  Shadows of Silence
  VI  The Doorway of Dread
  VII  The Hunted Woman
  VIII  The Runaway Girl
  IX  Go Get 'Em!
  X  No-Man's Country
  XI  The Voice of Warning
  XII  The Rendezvous
  XIII  Blind-Man's Chase
  XIV  Paths of Peril
  XV  The Brink of Death
  XVI  Unseen Enemies
  XVII  At Five Hundred Yards
  XVIII  Lodging for Two
  XIX  The Honor of the Service
  XX  When Spring Came Back
  XXI  Path of the Avalanche
  XXII  The Man-Trap
  XXIII  Fair Warning
  XXIV  A Hard-Won Promise
  XXV  A Voluntary Prisoner
  XXVI  Man and Woman
  XXVII  The Faltering Faith
  XXVIII  The Escape
  XXIX  The Blazed Road
  XXX  Dangerous Waters
  XXXI  Ill-Favored Company
  XXXII  Copperhead
  XXXIII  High Stakes
  XXXIV  Gamblers' Oaths
  XXXV  Hazard of the Game
  XXXVI  The Grim Accounting
  XXXVII  News from Outside
  XXXVIII  The Greatest Gift
  XXXIX  You Never Can Tell




THE LONG PATROL



CHAPTER I

THE AMBUSHED TRAIL

Near the foot of the valley slope lay an inanimate, drab-colored
object of some sort, barely defined against the smooth sweep of the
snowy mountainside.  From the wooded ridge above, it appeared as a
faint speck upon the panorama of wintry landscape.  Ninety-nine
travelers in a hundred might have passed that direction and never
noticed any break in the monotonous waste of white.  But on that
evening, a little before the fall of dusk, there rode by chance, from
out of the pass and over the trail, the one man of a hundred.  There
were few things worth seeing in the wilderness that escaped the
restless scrutiny of Corporal David Dexter of the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police.

A glance ranging across space, as the eagle gazes, and the horseman
tightened rein and checked his pony on the brow of the slide.  He sat
immobile, looking downward.  The dun-tinted shape could have been
mistaken at the distance for a hillside bowlder or a rotted stump or
a tussock of dried grass.  But Corporal Dexter was not deceived.
October's first snow had swirled over the ranges that day, and the
three inch fall spread its covering impartially over mountain and
forest and open park.  The brownish object below should have been
sheeted white, like everything else in view.  Whatever it was it must
have fallen there in the new snow, some time after the last flurry
had passed, not more than a couple of hours before.

The place was a lonely, isolated spot, deep-shut among the remoter
fastnesses of the northern Rockies: a haunt of big horn sheep and
wandering grizzly bears.  Probably there were not five white men
alive who had ever sighted the line of unnamed mountain peaks that
jutted like broken saw teeth against the eastward sky.  The evidence
of any recent visitation was of interest to the police.

The rider paused only to reconnoiter the ground below him, and then
thrust his knee into his horse's withers, and urged the animal over
the shoulder of the declivity.  The slope was steep and slippery, but
the wise little mountain pony was used to hazardous going.  She
settled back almost upon her shaggy haunches, and with forelegs
reaching stiffly before her, she went scrambling and sliding to the
bottom.  A quick jog carried the horseman across the snow-smoothed
level beyond, and then he knew what it was he had come out of his way
to find.

At his pony's feet lay the drab-colored object that had caught his
attention on the heights.  It was a stiff-brimmed hat--a banded
uniform Stetson, such as he himself wore tilted to the crease of his
straight drawn brows.  The hat had fallen crown up in the snow, and
near by, half buried in the white drift, was sprawled a motionless
human figure, clad in the familiar summer tunic of the Northwest
police.

Corporal Dexter slid out of his saddle, and a second later was
kneeling on the ground.  He raised the body to a sitting posture,
with one of his arms supporting the lolling head, and it needed no
further scrutiny to apprise him of the fact of death.  His hand
pressed against the wet, still-warm face, and he looked at the closed
eyelids and tight-locked lips of a man he knew.  It was Constable
Tommy Graves, R.C.M.P., from the inspection post at Fort Dauntless,
two hundred miles to the south.

Corporal Dexter was attached to the barracks at Crooked Forks on the
old Dawson road, far across the ranges.  But he had met young Graves
now and then on long patrol, and remembered him as a gay and gallant
comrade.  Skirting the edge of a juniper clump there approached from
the southward a line of nearly effaced footprints.  Thus, after
devious wandering, Constable Graves had come to the appointed hour
and place, and here his life's trail ended.

The hair at the base of the boy's skull was matted red, and Dexter's
probing finger discovered an ugly opening where a bullet had entered
from behind.  The skin over the forehead was bunched and broken, and
the corporal, using a delicately wielded penknife blade, a moment
later came into possession of a flattened chunk of lead, .30 caliber
size.

The words "vengeance" and "reprisal" are never spoken by a mounted
officer.  Nevertheless, there is no place on earth where the murderer
of a policeman may feel safe from the menace of the reaching hand.
Dexter at present was on long patrol in the wilderness, seeking two
fugitives who were wanted in the settlements for a brutal case of
assault and battery.  But now his plans must change.  New and more
urgent business called him.

Crouching on his heels beside his fallen comrade, he took off one of
his gloves, and blew his breath to warm his finger tips.  From his
pocket he brought forth pencil and notebook, and, with calm, steady
hand he wrote his brief report.  He himself might be summoned at any
time to meet a similar fate, and as a member of a methodical
organization it was his duty to leave the written record behind.  The
bullet was sealed in an envelope with the scribbled page, and the
packet then buttoned securely in his tunic pocket.

His own terse statement tucked away for safe keeping, he bent over to
learn if Tommy Graves' journal sheets were inscribed to date.  The
young constable's notebook held the usual daily report, beginning
three weeks back, when he had set out on his last journey from Fort
Dauntless; but the record told only of trivial matters, of miles
traveled and landmarks sighted, and did not mention the errand that
fetched him to this far, lonesome valley of the British Columbian
mountains.  Possibly it was a secret mission that he dared not
particularize by written words.

A single clew was afforded by a photograph found in the constable's
inside pocket.  It was a double Bertillon card, carrying the stamp of
detective headquarters of Chicago, Illinois, and showing full-face
and profile portraits of a man whose name was written down as "Roy
('Pink') Crill."  The subject of the police photograph was a
gross-featured man with no eyebrows and very little hair.  It was a
repellent physiognomy: thick, pendulous jowl, puffy cheeks, eyes sunk
in deep sockets.  The cranium was flat on top, with a peculiar
indentation behind the temples that somehow made Dexter think of the
pits in a copperhead's skull.

Whoever this "Pink" Crill might be, the existence of a Bertillon
picture at least proved a criminal record.  It was not an unnatural
assumption to suppose that he was in flight from the other side of
the border, and that young Graves had been assigned to the fatal
business of stalking him down.

Crill's body and facial measurements had been jotted down in the
columns allotted for the purpose of identification, and after running
his glance over the card the Corporal was able to form a vivid mental
picture of the man.  He would know him if he met him.

Pocketing the Bertillon card for future reference, Dexter stood up,
his hands balanced on his hips.  With his underlip thrust slightly
forward, he moodily scanned the ground where the tragedy had taken
place.

The re-staging of the crime presented few difficulties for the
experienced observer.  Behind the fallen body was a snow-shrouded
log.  Fifty paces beyond the course of a frozen creek ran past.  The
banks of the stream were thickly fringed with junipers, but at this
one point there was a break in the cover.  Winding up from a distant
notch in the mountains, the creek afforded the logical trail for any
voyageur making in that direction from the southeast.  The log
commanded the opening in the juniper bushes, and Constable Graves had
been sitting on the log.

Even under the covering of fresh snow, the marks were legible.  The
policeman's rifle lay buried as it had fallen in the cold drift near
the log.  Graves evidently had sat there for a long while, with his
rifle across his knees.  Like a deer hunter he had chosen his place
in the open and allowed the falling flakes to cover him, while he
waited, motionless.  The still hunt needs patience, but usually it is
the surest way.

In this instance, however, something had gone wrong with the hunter's
plans.  No one had come along the course of the brook.  The snowy
stream surface was as smooth and level as placer sand.  Dexter
contemplated the lower stretch of ground, and then turned with
meditative eyes to search the slope behind him.

A stand of densely growing cedars climbed upward along the
mountainside.  Obeying the trailer's instinct, he walked straight
across the open ground and entered the nearest point of cover.  And
there he found, as he was sure he must find, the imprints of booted
feet.

Somebody who wore a criss-cross pattern of hob nails had stood
concealed in a fairy bower of frost-rimed branches.  The furrowed
snow in a breast-high crotch indicated the place where a rifle barrel
had been rested for steady sighting.  And from the powdery drift at
his feet the corporal picked up an empty cartridge case, .30 caliber,
that smelled of freshly burned powder.  The story was complete.

The trail of the departing hob nails went northward through the
cedars, and thence Corporal Dexter's future pathway lay, inevitable,
unswerving, relentless as the summons of fate.

A policeman does not desert a policeman, in life or death.  Dexter
returned to his fallen comrade, and as gently as though he feared the
hurting of sensate flesh, he gathered the pitiful human shape into
his arms.  He was not a big nor powerful man, but there was a lithe,
cougar-like adequacy hidden in the muscles of a lean and hard-trained
body, and he made little effort of his task.

Susy, the pony, objected to her new burden, but Dexter had no time to
parley.  He crowded into the horse with his shoulder, and before she
could really think of acting skittish, the limp weight was deposited
across her saddle.  Dexter bent a few turns of a lashing thong under
the cinches, and after that she could do nothing but submit to the
arrangement.

As coolly as a workman taking a needed tool from his kit, the
corporal pulled his carbine out of the saddle holster.  Then, with
the reins twisted in his fingers, and the pony shambling at his
heels, he turned back afoot into the cedars and started northward,
following the hobnail boots.




CHAPTER II

KNIGHTS OF THE LAW

In the wild mountain district where Corporal Dexter and a few
knightly comrades rode in the service of the King's Law, there was
not more than one officer available to patrol each two hundred square
miles of territory.  In the back hills were certain inaccessible
regions never visited by civilized beings.  A crime committed in such
an out-of-the-way valley as this might remain unsuspected for years.

The murderer of Constable Graves could have no inkling that a second
officer had just ridden down through the passes.  It probably did not
occur to him that there was any danger of pursuit, and he did not try
to mask his trail.

The tracks led for a distance through the thick timber, and then
slanted down to the brook and continued northward along the
unobstructed course of the stream.  The killer walked with a free,
unhurried stride, without pausing anywhere by the way to listen or
glance behind.  Particles of feathery snow still held loosely around
the edges of the prints, and Corporal Dexter knew that the maker of
the tracks was traveling not more than twenty minutes ahead of him.

For a distance of two miles or so the trail followed the meanderings
of the winter-bound brook.  But at last, near the banks of a forking
stream, the hob nails turned aside and entered a dismal spruce forest
that extended upward over the valley slope in an unbroken area of
overweighted tree tops.  The failing twilight scarcely filtered
through the interlaced branches overhead, and Dexter found himself
groping among the shadowy tree shapes in a purple-tinged dusk that
thickened and deepened as he advanced.

He quickened his pace, hoping to run down his quarry before night
overtook him.  But he had traveled scarcely five hundred yards among
the spruces, when he discovered open ground ahead, and stopped short
at the edge of a stumpy clearing, cut in the midst of the standing
timber.

Before him in the darkness, vague and unreal as the apparition of a
wood troll's dwelling, there loomed the dingy outline of a low-roofed
log cabin.

The horseman instinctively reached behind to grab his pony's muzzle.
But the precaution was needless.  Susy stood with drooping head, and
apparently lacked interest to announce her arrival.  Dexter eyed her
sharply, with a passing glance at the burden she carried, and then
turned back to reconnoiter the shadows.

He had not heard of any settlers living on this side of the range.
Apparently the builder of this cabin was a newcomer.  The logs showed
recent ax marks, and the second growth of seedlings had not yet found
time to spring up among the stumps.

The silence was like a weight upon the senses.  Dexter heard no sound
except the faint creak of saddle leather as Susy breathed.  He might
easily imagine himself alone in all that vast stretch of forest.  But
as he peered forth from behind his shelter of brush, a vagrant puff
of air brought to him an odor of chimney smoke.  And as he strained
his vision to see in the gathering darkness, he was aware that the
hobnail prints ran directly across the open ground to the cabin door.

He left the pony to drowse in the thicket, with the reins dangling
from the bit, and strode forward alone into the clearing.  Placing
his own feet in the marks left by the other boots, he followed his
man to the cabin entrance.  For ten seconds he held motionless, his
foot touching the outer sill.  Still he heard no sound.  But the line
of tracks ended here, and he knew that Constable Graves' murderer was
inside the cabin.

Between two men who had not yet seen each other, the door of spruce
slabs held shut like the closed book of doom.  Once it was opened,
the warrant of death for one or the other must be read.  If Corporal
Dexter crossed the threshold, he would walk forth again to escort a
manacled prisoner to the hangman's gibbet at Fort Dauntless; or else
he would not walk forth again.  It was the custom of the mounted to
play for all or nothing, and ask no odds of fortune.  The corporal's
thin lips harbored a half cynical smile as he accepted the terms.  He
prayed only that the drawbar was not fastened.

The click of his carbine sounded fearfully loud in his ears as he
thumbed back the hammer.  He did not wait after that, but reached
with his left hand to knock open the wooden latch.  The door swung
ajar, and he kicked it wide on its squeaking hinges.

Even in that moment one corner of Dexter's restless mind was absurdly
detached from the rest of himself, engaged in trivial speculation.
The cabin builder must have come there after the grizzlies holed-up
for the winter, he reasoned in lightning flashes of thought.
Otherwise he would have got a silver tip, and so had bear grease on
hand to lubricate hinges.  Dexter's orderly soul hated annoyances
that could be prevented, such as squeaking doors.

He had crossed the snow-buried sill with crunching feet, and halted
on the threshold, his glance sweeping the square, murky space before
him.  Details impressed themselves instantaneously: walls of peeled
logs; tiny, four-paned windows; bare puncheon floor; a disorderly
grouping of ax-hewn furniture; a smoldering fire in a clay-daubed
fireplace; the pent-in odors of camp stew and wood smoke and steaming
garments.  A man with a shaggy beard knelt by the fire stirring a
cooking pot.  He whirled at the rush of cold air from the doorway,
and then his stirring spoon rattled on the hearth as he stumbled to
his feet.

Corporal Dexter had counted on the chance of there being more than
one person in the cabin.  And it was well for him that he was on his
guard.  Some intuitive faculty of the brain served the warning, and
without seeing or hearing, he was aware of a gliding movement along
the wall at his right.  He caught the edge of the door and swung it
back towards him as a buckler of defense.  As he jerked his head
aside a spurt of flame scorched his face, an explosive report slammed
in his ears, a bullet plowed the door slab and deflected in
spattering pieces.

His face stung from the flying splinters, and there was a trickle of
blood at the corner of his eye.  Choked by powder fumes, half
blinded, he flung the door against the wall.  A crouching shape and
the oval of a white face loomed in the smoke.  He caught the blurred
outline of a hand, and a pistol poked almost into his face.  Lacking
time to shorten the reach of his carbine, he did not try to fire, but
struck, instead, with the heavy barrel.

The rap of the steel on knuckle bones gave a crisp, nut-cracking
sound.  He laughed aloud.  There was a thump at his feet, and he saw
the pistol on the floor.  He could reach the weapon with the toe of
his boot, and he worked it towards him and kicked it through the
doorway.  Then he backed away a pace, with carbine leveled.  He spoke
with restraint, keeping the excitement from his voice.  "Take
warning," he said.  "I arrest you in the name of His Majesty, the
King."

The light from the fireplace reflected upon the shadowy figure of his
assailant.  The man had clutched at his right hand with his left, and
was glaring at the officer with the tense, sullen ferocity of a
trapped animal.  The position of the hands, partly extended, gripped
together in pain, gave unwitting invitation.  In a trice Dexter had
brought a pair of handcuffs from his pocket.  With incredible
swiftness he reached forward, and there was a double snick as he
linked the steel circlets about the man's wrists and sprang fast the
locking wards.

The prisoner shuddered at the cold touch of metal, and shrank
backward, an instant too late.  He was an under-sized man, sallow of
face, with short-cropped black hair, sharp, hawklike features, and
dark, wide-spaced eyes that glittered with unnatural brightness in
the firelight.  The corporal's glance went down to the heavy mountain
boots, which his prisoner wore tightly laced over the tucked-in
bottoms of his trousers.  The boots were wet with melting snow.

He nodded grimly.  "Why did you kill Constable Graves?" he asked.

The man turned his head in surly defiance, and refused to answer.

"Who are you?"

The stranger breathed harshly through his open mouth, but still
maintained his stubborn silence.

"Very well," said Dexter.  "It's your privilege not to commit
yourself.  But I warn you of the facts to be submitted to the
Minister of Justice.  Young Graves murdered--thirty caliber bullet
through the back of his head.  Thirty caliber case in the snow.
Queer pattern hobnails leading here--tracks that match those wet
boots you're wearing."  He glanced sharply about him, and stepped
suddenly into the corner and picked up a rifle that was leaning
against the wall.  "Thirty caliber," he observed, and then threw down
the lever to sniff at the breach.  "Fired recently, and not yet
cleaned," he added, and thrust the weapon behind the door, out of
harm's way.  "All complete!  Not to mention the personal fact that
you fired at sight, with murderous intent, when Corporal Dexter
strolled into your doorway."

From the moment he had entered the cabin, Dexter had kept the corner
of a wary eye on the shaggy-haired individual by the fireplace.  The
man had scrambled up from his cooking pot when the door banged open,
but after that he had remained standing uncertainly on his stumpy
legs without venturing to join in the hostilities.  Now for the first
time the corporal turned to look squarely upon his unkempt bearded
countenance.  And with the meeting glance the officer's eyelids
flickered suddenly in pleased surprise.

Here, at least, was some one he knew without asking introductions.
In the travel-stained man with the untidy whiskers, he recognized one
of the fugitives whom he had been following across the ranges from
Crooked Forks.  "Well now!" he ejaculated.  "Jess Mudgett!"

"Yes, sir," muttered the other, with a furtive, hangdog lowering of
the head.

"Warn you also," asserted the corporal crisply.  "You and 'Phonse
Doucet assaulted and almost killed the trader at Crooked Forks.  He
foolishly tried to make you pay the last year's account, I
understand.  We needn't go into that now.  This new matter is more
important.  Accessory in murder, perhaps.  At any rate, you'll go
with us to Fort Dauntless.  I arrest you in the name of His Majesty,
the King."

"I don't know what you're talking about," faltered Mudgett, his
forehead paling under the grime.  "That storekeeper--I can explain
about that.  And as for--anything else: I ain't had nothing to do
with--anything wrong.  I swear my Bible oath."

Dexter surveyed the man curiously.  He knew him of old--a trapper in
season, general ne'er-do-well at all times, sneak thief on occasion,
notorious coward--he never would have assaulted anybody unaided.
'Phonse Doucet, of course, was the instigator in that affair--Doucet,
the half-breed, braggadocio and bully, a giant of a man, with a
dangerous habit of going amuck when liquor was to be had.

"Where is 'Phonse now?" asked the corporal.  "I trailed you two as
far as Wild Swan Creek, and then I lost you."

"'Phonse went north," asserted Mudgett.  "He'll be far from here by
now."

"Who's your new friend?" the officer inquired.

Mudgett started to speak, but at that instant he happened to meet the
beady glance of the shackled man across the room; and he received a
look of baleful warning that made his teeth click over the half
uttered word.  He rubbed his nose nervously to hide his confusion.
"Never saw him before," he stammered.  "Just came here a little while
ago for shelter.  Didn't tell me his name."

Dexter himself had felt the threat pass, like an electric discharge,
and he knew that he could get nothing out of Mudgett while he
remained under the malevolent eye of the murderer.  He did not
attempt to pursue the subject.  "Whose cabin is this?" he asked after
an interval.  "It's new."

"I built it this fall," said Mudgett uneasily.  "Figured to trap
marten and lynx over the winter."

"All alone?" asked Dexter, who knew that mountain trappers usually
worked in pairs.

"No," said Mudgett after a moment's hesitation.

"Is this man here your partner?"

Mudgett shot a furtive glance at the other prisoner, and shook his
head.  "No," he replied, "I'm working with another man."

"Who?" asked Dexter, eyeing him sharply.

"A fellow named Stark."

"Who's Stark?" the corporal inquired.  "Never heard of him."

"Trapper mostly.  That's about all I can tell you.  I met up with him
last summer and we decided to throw in together."

"Where is he now?" asked Dexter with a quizzical stare.

"Somewhere up the valley scoutin' out lines for the traps.  Don't
know just where."

Acting on impulse the corporal brought out the Bertillon card he had
taken from the pocket of Constable Graves.  He exhibited the
photographic likeness of the man known to the Chicago police as
"Pink" Crill.  "Is this your Stark, by any chance?"

Mudgett leaned forward to see the print.  But if he recognized the
ill favored physiognomy, he gave no sign.  "Never saw him before," he
declared in his whining voice.

The inquiry was leading nowhere, and Dexter decided he might better
save his breath until some later moment when he had Mudgett alone.
He buttoned the photograph into his tunic, and smiled acidly.

"I'm going out to look after my horse," he observed, "and meanwhile
I'll truss you for safekeeping."

He had only the one pair of manacles, but a brief search of the cabin
discovered a length of elkhide thong.  Approaching Mudgett, he
twisted the rawhide about his wrists, and knotted the loop tight.
The cringing trapper protested his innocence almost with sobs, but
his pleading went unheeded.  Dexter glanced about with a speculative
frown, and then motioned the man towards the double-decked bunk,
built against the wall at the right of the fireplace.

"I'll feel more comfortable about you two if you're in bed," he said.
"We all might as well sleep a few hours before we start south.  So
climb in, please."

There was something in the quality of the corporal's voice that
schooled Mudgett to instant obedience.  Without a word, the trapper
shambled across the floor and hoisted himself into the bunk.

Dexter turned next to the handcuffed man.  "You in the upper berth,"
he commanded.

The stranger stood backed against the logs of the opposite wall, with
his shoulders drooping, his arms hanging limply.  But as the officer
addressed him he looked up with his somber stare.  He must have
appreciated the futility of resistance however, and after a second's
hesitation he lurched forward, and moved towards the bunk on heavy,
dragging feet.

"You still prefer to remain nameless?" inquired the corporal.

The prisoner made no answer, but as he stumbled past Dexter he shot
him a glance so charged with venom that even the seasoned man-hunter
was startled.

The officer refrained from further remarks, and stood by with
compressed lips until the man had climbed into the upper berth.
Then, in silence, he fastened the booted feet together with
unbreakable rawhide.  This done, he pushed the end of the thong
between a crack of the foot logs, drew it taut, and secured it to the
outer bunk post, where the knot could not possibly be reached by
manacled hands.  Mudgett's feet then were similarly bound, and lashed
flat against the end of the bunk.

"I'll ease 'em up a bit when I come back," Dexter promised.
"Meanwhile you'll have to make the best of it."

Serene in the knowledge that his prisoners would not escape during
his absence, he walked out of the cabin and slammed the door behind
him.

It was pitch dark outside, and growing colder.  The corporal felt his
way across the clearing to the thicket where he had left Susy, and
was not greatly astonished to find that the pony had disappeared.
His pocket lamp revealed her hoof prints leading through the timber,
and he followed her for a half mile or so across the slope, and
finally overtook her in an open ravine where she had smelled out a
patch of elk hay that could be pawed up from under the snow.

She came back a few steps to meet him, and meekly nudged him with her
forehead while she was receiving her deserved scolding.  Dexter
relieved her of the grim burden she carried.  He made a hammock sling
of his bed tarp and picket rope; and as the Indians protect their
dead, so he hoisted among scented tree branches the muffled figure of
his one-time comrade; and left him for the night.  This melancholy
service rendered, he took off Susy's saddle, removed the bit from her
mouth, and permitted her to remain in the gulley where she had found
shelter and pasturage for herself.

Then, with his thoughts on the savory pot that Mudgett had so
opportunely set stewing in the fireplace, he turned back on the trail
and retraced his steps to the clearing among the spruces.

He had been absent nearly an hour, and the unattended grate fire must
have burned itself out.  Not the faintest flicker of light showed
from the cabin windows, and it was impossible to discern even the
outline of the building in the all-engulfing darkness.  He groped his
path among the stumps, and finally reached the door.

Stamping the snow from his feet, he was fumbling for the door latch,
when the deathlike silence was suddenly broken by a shrill, whirring
sound, as though a bell were ringing.

He stood stock-still, with lips fallen apart, listening in blank
astonishment.  The bell stopped ringing; there followed a momentary
hush; and then he heard a voice speaking.  The tones carried to him
from the darkness within, clear and distinct.  His eyes opened wider,
and for seconds he stood motionless on the outer threshold, tense and
wondering.  Incredulous at first, he knew at once that he could not
be mistaken.  It was a woman's voice he heard.




CHAPTER III

WITHOUT MERCY

For a breathless interval Dexter held his position before the closed
door, listening to the amazing voice within.  A woman!  Her words
came to him, decisive and sharp, in high-keyed inflection.  It was
too dark to look for new footprints, but whoever she was, she must
have arrived there during his absence.  But whence had she come?
What was a woman doing in this far-off, snow-buried forest?  Even a
vivid imagination failed to answer.

Had he acted on first impulses, Dexter would have thrust his way into
the room to demand explanations.  But reflection stayed him.  He
probably would learn more about her if he kept out of sight.

She was talking excitedly, in quick, broken sentences.  "Betrayed!"
he heard her say to some one invisible.  "The police are in the
valley."

There ensued a brief pause.  Then she spoke again.  "Yes!  Both
arrested!  Murder--a constable from Fort Dauntless!"

Another silence followed, and the listener outside waited in acutest
suspense.  "That's what I was afraid of," said the speaker finally,
as though in response to a question.  "They quizz them until their
nerve breaks, and they tell all they know.  But don't worry.  I'll
take care of that danger.  Nobody's going to talk this time."

There was a hushed interval once more, and then the woman laughed.
It was a strange, mirthless laugh, with a wild, inhuman note that
sent a shiver through the hearer's veins.  "Lifeless tongues never
talk!" she asserted in a reckless tone.  "You lie low for a while,
and you're in no danger.  I give you my word!  There's one thing left
to do, and I'm doing it now!"  A breathless interlude passed, and the
woman spoke with sharp finality.  "I'm going through with it!" she
declared in rising accents.  "That's settled!  Good-by!"

The voice broke off with a hysterical catch at the end.  For five
seconds no sound came from the cabin.  From the spruces somewhere a
little timber owl sent forth a hollow, long-drawn trill, that floated
in the air, lonesome and remote, and died like an expiring breath.
The veering wind eddied around the north wall of the cabin, cutting
with razor sharpness through protecting woolens, flinging snow
particles.  Corporal Dexter shivered, and again his hand reached for
the door latch.

But before he found the handle, the silence was rent by a man's
scream--a hoarse voice, straining to unnatural falsetto, that carried
terror and craven pleading in a single frenzied outcry, "Don't!  Oh,
no!  Merc--!"

The appeal broke in the middle of the word, and the door of the cabin
trembled before the jarring concussion of an exploding firearm.

There was an appalling hush; and then the horrid thump of another
gunshot jarred the door of the cabin.

The corporal's chilled fingers had found the latch at last, and as he
lifted it up, he flung his weight forward to throw open the door.
But the latch seemed to have jammed, and his shoulder bumped forcibly
against solid planks that failed to give.  He hammered at the catch,
and heaved himself recklessly against the barrier, in an effort to
break his way in.  But he only bruised his shoulder, and the door
would not yield.  Instead of wasting his further efforts, he stooped
to discover what was wrong.  And then he understood.  The bar was
down.  The door had been locked from the inside.

From the darkened cabin there came a vague jumble of sounds: a soft
thud of a weight falling, a stifled groan of mortal anguish, a
fluttering movement of something on the creaking floor boards.  But
the wind was also in Dexter's ears, and he could not have sworn
definitely just what it was he heard.

He remembered a split of log on the ground, that he had stumbled over
when he crossed the clearing a while before.  Now he retraced his
steps, and dug the heavy billet out of the snow.  The quartered
section of tree trunk was as much as his strength could manage, but
he lugged it back to the cabin and contrived to swing it as a ram.
The first and second blows seemed to have little effect on the
stoutly barred door, but the continued battering began to tell.
Finally he heard a splintering crack within, and at last something
gave way entirely, and the door broke from its frame and sprang open
with a crash.  He dropped his log and stepped across the threshold,
his narrowed eyes searching the gloom of the smoke-filled room.

The hearth fire had dwindled down to a few smoldering coals that
threw a dull red shimmer to the opposite wall.  But beyond the faint
streak of light, the darkness was impenetrable.  An ominous silence
surcharged the oppressive, tainted atmosphere.

Baxter's finger was on the trigger of his carbine as he held
impassive, listening for some rustle of sound to locate an intruding
presence.  He knew that his figure loomed in silhouette against the
dim glowing hearth, and he was keenly alive to the imminence of
danger.  At any instant he might see the flash, hear the crash of a
shot fired treacherously from the darkness; and he steeled himself
unconsciously to the shock of sudden hurt.

His weapon was balanced lightly at his hip, and with his free hand he
drew out his pocket lamp.  The shaft of light struck across the room,
throwing its brilliant white bull's-eye upon the bunks.  He looked,
and his eyes dilated at the ugly sight before him.

Fallen backwards, half in and half out of the bunk, Mudgett hung
feet uppermost, his head and shoulders resting on the floor, his
ankles still tied to the foot logs, as the corporal had left him.
His long, matted hair had tumbled back from his temples, and he gazed
up at the ceiling with unmoving eyes that shone with the luster of
opaque glass.  His hands were still bound together by the elkskin
thong.  From under his shoulders a dark tinged stain trickled and
spread upon the floor.

Automatically, as a man acting in a daze, Dexter shifted his light
upward.  The higher bunk was still occupied by the man without a
name.  He was lying on his side, still and lifeless, his manacled
arms dangling limply over the edge of the bunk.  His feet were
securely tied to the end post, and so, like Mudgett, he had met his
fate while helplessly fettered, tethered like a sheep for slaughter,
without a chance of fighting back.

The fierce dark eyes were closed, and the bitter lines of malice
somehow had been erased from his pallid face.  His temple was black
with powder burn, and just behind his eye there showed the red
drilled mark of an entering bullet.  Dexter observed certain other
details of fact, and it needed no closer examination to tell him that
both prisoners had been delivered from his hands by death.




CHAPTER IV

FIND THE WOMAN

The corporal had faced horrors before.  It was not the hideous
envisioning of tragedy that froze his blood: it was the haunting
memory of the voice that he had heard--the voice of a woman.
"Lifeless tongues never talk!" she had said in dreadful resolve.  And
the sound of that voice still echoed in his brain.  The fatal shots
were fired by a woman.

Somewhere among the shadows this woman must be hiding now, backed in
one of the dark corners, probably, crouching cat-like with weapon in
hand, watching every move that Dexter made.

The policeman stood in a situation of peril, and for once in an
adventurous career he was at a loss to know how to meet an emergency.
He never before had been called upon to deal with an armed and
desperate woman, and there came over him suddenly a strange feeling
of inefficiency as he realized that, no matter who she was or what
she had done or might do, he could not make himself draw the trigger
of his gun.  Masculine pride, the honor of the mounted, every
deep-rooted instinct--heritage of a warrior race and breed--cried out
against such an unnatural encounter.  He would have to take this
woman alive and unharmed, or else she must go free, and leave him
dead with his two prisoners in the cabin among the spruces.

He still clung to his carbine, on the off-chance of bluffing through
a most disagreeable business.  But in the show-down he knew he would
have to trust to luck and his quickness of movement.

With nerves strung taut as wires he faced about and flashed the
bull's-eye of his lamp around the walls of the room.  And the bright
searching light discovered no resemblance of human shape.

Incredulous, he winked his eyes two or three times, and turned for
his second survey of the cabin interior.  Slow and deliberate now, he
moved the lamp from left to right, dipping the shaft of light from
rafters to floor, and upward again; and so wove luminous orbits
around the four walls of the room.  He scrutinized the underside of
the clapboard roof, looked under the bunk, poked behind a row of
garments hanging on pegs, and finally even peered up the fireplace
chimney.  And he saw neither substance nor shadow to betray the
existence of any lurking intruder.

There was a quantity of cut brush and fagots piled by the hearth.
The policeman stooped for an armful of the kindling, tossed the fuel
into the fireplace, and applied a match.  The dry, pitchy material
took flame instantly, and crackled into a furious blaze.  The yellow
flare reflected to the farthest corner, searching out every black
nook where a person could hide.  And there was no one visible.

For a moment he stood irresolute, with puzzled lines drawn between
his brows.  A woman had been in the cabin a little while before.  She
must have entered shortly after he went to search for Susy.  And she
had barred the door behind her.  Apparently she had locked him out
with deliberate intention, while she did the work she had hardened
herself to do.

On his return he had heard the mysterious ringing of a bell.  He had
heard her quick, overwrought speech; the shots that were fired.  His
hearing was trustworthy.  But if by chance he were tempted to doubt
the testimony of his own ears, there remained the two lifeless,
huddled objects in the bunks to bear mute witness to the remorseless
visitation.

It seemed unlikely that she could have found her chance to escape in
the short time it had taken him to pick up the log and batter his way
into the cabin.  The possibility of some secret cubbyhole, behind the
logs or under the floor, suggested itself.  As his glance strayed
about him, his eye was caught by a metallic glint of something that
had been dropped near the wall across the room from the bunks.
Crossing the floor, he reached down and picked up a small
pearl-handled revolver.

The gun he had knocked from the hand of his first prisoner was a big,
heavy-framed weapon.  This was a small caliber revolver, light in
weight, delicately made--the sort of firearm a woman might choose to
carry in her handbag.  With a grim tightening of his lips he tilted
up the breach and snapped the cartridges from the cylinder.  Two were
empty cases that had just been fired.

He nodded to himself.  This, of course, was the weapon of death.
Either it had fallen accidentally from a trembling, guilty hand, or
else the owner had flung it away as a hateful possession.  Dexter
pocketed the revolver, and set about his distasteful task.  The woman
must be hiding somewhere, and he would find her, he promised himself,
if he had to turn the cabin inside out.

He was standing near the doorway, and he started to work
systematically around the walls.  The structure, which contained the
single, barren, four-square room, was built of six inch logs,
saddle-notched at the corners and chinked with moss and clay.  An
inspection of the cubical interior quickly convinced him that the
walls could hold no closet or compartment large enough for the
concealment of a human being.  From the floor to the slanting roof
overhead, all space was easily accounted for.  He searched high and
low, in the fireplace, behind the bunks, back of the door, under the
window sills.  Every log and chinked crevice between the logs was
subjected to minutest scrutiny.  He even climbed up on the bunk poles
to assure himself that there was no false work between rafters and
the outside roof.  Nothing of interest was discovered.

There still was the floor to be looked under.  The floor was made of
adze-hewn puncheons, uneven and loosely laid, without being spiked to
the beams.  With an old spade he had found, Dexter got a purchase
under one of the rude planks, and pried it up.  He had eliminated all
other possible places of retreat, and as he snapped on the button of
his pocket-lamp and dropped to his knees, he felt with a certain
sense of disquiet that something at last was due to happen.

A dank odor of forest mold came up from the hole he had made, and
from the under darkness he heard the squeak and sudden scampering of
a family of pack rats.  But there was no other sound or movement of
life.

He raised a second strip of flooring, and then, with a quick-drawn
breath, he squeezed his lean body through the opening.  There was no
knowing what he might find under here, and as he flattened upon his
chest to avoid the beams, he could not help reminding himself that
quarters were a bit cramped for active maneuvering.  The ground under
him was littered with decaying forest stuff, and evidently had never
been disturbed by rake or spade.  There was barely enough space under
the floor for him to move, but by wriggling along at full length, he
made his way to the end of the cabin and back again.  And he found
nothing whatever.  The mystery of the voice remained unsolved.

Emerging from the opening in the floor, he brushed the leaves and
dirt from his uniform, and stood motionless for a space, a look of
perplexity clouding his keen, weather-bronzed face.  He had heard a
sound like a whirring bell that, amazingly, had made him think of a
telephone.  But a telephone in service must have wires leading
somewhere.  He had examined every square foot of ground and walls and
roof, and had found no connected instrument, nor any vestige of
electric wiring in the cabin.  There was no way to account for the
bell.  It was bewildering.

For the time being, however, he was most concerned about the woman.
She was not in the cabin--that much was settled.  She must have
managed to get away somehow.

His glance strayed to the door, hanging partly open on its broken
hinges.  There remained this one possibility.  She might have been
standing by the wall when he battered his way into the cabin.
Waiting her chance, she could have slipped behind him in the darkness
as he stumbled over the threshold, and then passed out unseen through
the open doorway.  In which event her departing footsteps would
betray her.  Dexter crossed the cabin, and stepped outside.

His flash-lamp served him once more.  The light scintillated upon the
fresh fallen snow, awakening a sparkle of diamonds.  From the
darkness beyond the clearing came the trail of hobnail boots that had
led him in the first place to this dismal habitation in the forest.
Also the marks of his own making were clearly defined.  But there
were no other prints.

He rubbed his wet sleeve across his eyes, and gazed searchingly about
him.  And there was nothing to be seen but whited stumps, and the
soft, unscuffled surface of snowy ground.  The woman had not come out
that direction.

There were windows in the cabin--one on each side and two in the
rear--which were large enough, perhaps, to allow a small and
frightened fugitive to squeeze her body through.  He walked around
the building, throwing the light rays back and forth as he advanced,
examining the ground underfoot and each window sill as well.  So he
made the circuit of the cabin, and came back, hopelessly perplexed,
to his starting place at the front door.  The snow lay as it had
fallen on the sills and under the windows, without any imprints of
human making.  The slayer of the two men in the cabin bunks had
vanished without leaving any trace behind.

Dexter was ready to confess his utter mystification.  A queer feeling
of unreality gripped him, as though he suddenly discovered himself in
contention with some strange, unnatural denizen of the forest, who
flitted about on darksome errands without touching foot to the earth.
Some one was there a few minutes ago; murder had been done; and now
this some one was gone--disappeared like a shadow in a dream.

The ringing sound he had heard only added to his bewilderment.  It
really was absurd to suspect the existence of a telephone circuit in
the wilderness, nevertheless in his tour of the outer premises the
corporal had looked for telephone wires.  Had there been a line of
any sort leading to the cabin, the snow-covered strands would have
revealed themselves in the bright glare of his flashlight.  He had
found no wires.

The idea of a radio set occurred to him, and was immediately
abandoned.  Such a means of communication would require aerials and a
connecting wire running to the cabin; or, if not that, at least an
inside loop.  Also there would have to be batteries, not to mention
the bulky receiving and transmitting instruments.  There was no such
equipment on the premises; and an escaping fugitive could not have
had time to dismantle and lug away a radio outfit.  Of this he was
positive: the voice he heard was not talking by wireless.

He checked up his facts, and considered the last remaining
possibility--a chance so remote that it was scarcely worth thinking
about.  Could there be a tunnel or conduit leading underground to the
cabin?  He could conceive of no motive that would induce men to
undertake the enormous labor of digging a trench through the forest.
The notion was preposterous.  But he had his report to write, and he
was trained to thoroughness in all matters of investigation.  It
would be easy enough to determine if the ground had ever been broken.

Equipping himself with the spade he had used to pry up the floor
boards, he proceeded to shovel a narrow pathway around the cabin,
tossing aside the light covering of snow, and inspecting the bare
soil underneath.  He worked assiduously, and it did not take him a
great while to complete the full circuit of the building.  The ground
was strewn naturally with the season's carpet of leaves and fallen
twigs, and the topsoil below was the rich forest loam that requires
ages in making.  The experienced woodsman needed only a glance around
the circular pathway to assure himself that the ground hereabouts had
never been disturbed since the beginning of time.  He was convinced
finally, beyond all doubt.  There was no tunnel.

Dexter tossed his shovel aside, and stood for a while by the open
door of the cabin.  His lips had fallen apart, and his head was
thrown up to listen.  But he heard only the familiar sounds of the
forest, the moaning of the north wind in the trees, the crack and
snap of sap-frozen branches.  All else was silence.  The eerie plaint
of the owl came wavering from the darkness, but the empty, ghostly
note seemed only a part of the great hush that brooded over the
wilderness.  The last man left on earth could not feel a sense of
lonesomeness more poignant than Dexter felt at that moment, as he
stood before the doorway of death, vainly waiting for some sound or
movement to break the stillness about him.  But for the discharged
revolver in his pocket, and his knowledge of what lay in the two
sleeping bunks, he might almost have persuaded himself that the
events of the last two hours were the illusions of a strangely
disordered brain.

He had investigated the cabin inside and outside, had left nothing
undone that a searcher could possibly do.  The mystery of it all
seemed to lie beyond human power of solving.  As he remained there,
sentinel-like in the darkness, his hand strayed to his pocket and
brought out a pipe and tobacco pouch.  He carefully stuffed the bowl
with fine cut leaf, and then absent-mindedly returned both pouch and
pipe to his pocket.  For a while longer he lingered by the doorway,
his unseeing glance roving slowly about him.  Then, with an ironic
shrug, he suddenly stirred and stepped out into the clearing.

Inasmuch as he had seen everything there was to be seen about the
cabin and its immediate premises, it occurred to him that he might as
well extend his circle.  The intuitive sense that belongs to all
ramblers of the silent places seemed to tell him during the last few
minutes that he was alone in the valley.  The "feel," the woodsmen
and mountaineers say, has nothing to do with the consciousness of
smell or hearing or sight.  Dexter merely felt that now there was no
one else in the neighborhood.  He did not expect to make any
momentous discoveries, but a restive will demanded action of some
sort.  Flashing his light before him, he chose his direction at
random and strode across the clearing.

At the edge of the open ground he found a runway that wild animals
had trod out through the thicket during seasons past.  He glanced
among the trailing branches and checked himself abruptly, his eyes
blankly staring.  In the snow he saw the freshly made outline of a
narrow, high-arched foot--a woman's shoeprint.




CHAPTER V

SHADOWS OF SILENCE

In a moment Dexter was on his knees, with his face close to the
ground, and he studied the marks in the snow with the peering
concentration of a man trying to read a page of fine-lettered type.
A light dusting of wind-blown drift had begun to form in the trampled
depression, and instead of crumbling there now was a slight banking
up around the edges.  As near as he could reckon by the faint clews
vouchsafed him, the print was less than an hour and more than a half
hour old.  So this woman, whoever she was, had evidently been there
when the murders were committed.

The officer's mouth was set in a harsh line as he scrambled to his
feet.  He had found a trail at last, and the fact that the prints
were narrow and small and gracefully arched, in nowise softened his
recollection of the ugly affair in the cabin.  It was not so easy to
forget the faces of the two men left behind in the bunks.

With the tense, quick movements of a hunting dog, the policeman cast
back a distance along the runway.  There were other tracks, clean-cut
and plain to read.  It was a double trail, with some of the prints
pointing towards the cabin, and others turned the opposite direction.
The woman had approached from the north, and departed over her same
pathway, and the deeper toe marks of the retreating prints indicated
the fact she had fled from the scene, almost running.

Dexter followed for a short distance through the underbrush, and then
retraced his steps to the clearing.  There was no hurry.  A few faint
stars were beginning to prick through the darkness of the sky.  The
weather was clearing, and he knew there was little likelihood of
further snowfall for thirty hours at least.  When he was ready to
follow, the trail would still lie in the forest.  The fugitive was in
the situation of a fish firmly hooked at the end of a fisherman's
line.  Wherever she went, the line of her footprints tethered her
relentlessly to the place of tragedy.  Dexter could overtake her, and
pick her up, whenever he was ready.

Meanwhile he lingered for a final scrutiny of the marks at the edge
of the cabin clearing.  And singularly, the high-arched tracks
stopped short on the margin of the thicket, at the spot where he had
first picked up the trail.  Unbelieving, he searched about with his
light, and finally made out the entire outer circuit of the stumpy
ground.  And he was much puzzled when he failed to find any small
footprints within a radius of ten yards of the cabin.

Here was mystery piling upon mystery.  He had heard a woman's voice
in the cabin, and he knew as positively as any one may be positive in
matters of evidence, that it was a woman who had shot and killed the
two helpless victims in the locked room.  And here was a trail,
obviously feminine, in an almost unexplored region of the snowy
wilderness, where he was quite certain that a white woman had never
set foot before.

These facts were left behind, within the cabin and without, in the
grim record of events.  But there was a startling discrepancy to be
explained.  Between the thicket, where the footprints halted, and the
cabin, where the two prisoners lay dead, a thirty-foot area of
smooth-fallen snow intervened.  If the maker of the tracks had been
in the cabin, how had she crossed the open stretch?  In what manner
had she escaped, without leaving shoe marks in the clearing?  There
was no way she could have swung across above the ground, and there
was no underground passage.  Dexter's stern mouth relaxed for a
moment in a grin of self-depreciation.  He did not know the answer.
There was nothing he could do but follow the trail, and try to wring
the truth from the woman when he caught her.

Still he felt no great need for haste.  He returned to the cabin, and
paused for a final survey of the scene of crime.  Again he bent over
the lifeless forms in the bunks, and this time ascertained the
caliber of the bullets that had carried sudden death.  Mudgett had
been shot through the heart; a brain shot had flicked out the life of
his dark-faced comrade.  The muzzle of the weapon had been thrust
close in each instance.  The bullets were short .32 caliber, but the
killer evidently had aimed with deliberate care, and at such nearness
of range, the small bits of lead were instantly effective.

The weapon with the two fired chambers, which Dexter had picked up
from the floor was a .32 caliber revolver.  As in the tragic case of
Constable Graves, cause and consequence were logically brought
together.  The fouled firearms and the bullets were left in his hands
as grewsome relics; but the murderers had escaped him--one by death,
the other by inexplicably vanishing.

In the bushwhacking of the constable, followed by the killing of his
assassin, Dexter sensed the working out of some strange, vaguely
revealed drama that apparently involved the fate of several actors.
He had pushed his way into an uninhabited country, expecting
eventually to encounter a single individual who was fleeing from the
penalty attached to a lesser offense; and he had walked unexpectedly
upon the stage of wholesale crime.

The motive underlying the attack upon the constable was
understandable.  The young policeman had traveled across the range on
official business, and his slayer no doubt had reason to put him out
of the way.  But the man who shot Graves, in his turn was shot and
killed.  And Mudgett also!  It was not so easy to fathom the motive
of this double affair in the cabin.

Dexter recalled every word spoken by the mysterious voice, before the
gun reports sounded behind the closed door.  The woman had mentioned
the prisoners under arrest, and expressed the fear that they might be
forced to talk.  What could they talk about--what dangerous secret
did they know?  It must be something dreadful, if such a desperate
method were needed to enforce their silence.

From the scanty facts in his possession the corporal tried to pick
out some logical thread of connection between the people thus far
enmeshed in the threefold tragedy of the wilderness: Mudgett, the
stranger in the upper bunk, the woman from nowhere.  Besides these
there was the trapper, Stark, who, Mudgett declared, had built
himself a winter shack farther up the valley.  'Phonse Doucet, the
assailant of the Crooked Forks store keeper, had escaped somewhere on
this side of the mountains.  So there were five, at least, who had
suddenly pushed across into this lonesome, isolated territory where
even the marks of squaw-hatchets were seldom found.

Nor had Dexter forgotten the face of the man in the Bertillon
photograph, which Constable Graves carried in his pocket.  And for
some reason the name of "Pink" Crill stuck insistently in his mind.
Was this outlander also sojourning in the wilderness?  And if so, was
he in any way involved in the affairs of the others?  There was no
saying.  Yet the corporal could not escape the feeling that he had
touched the sinister web of some large criminal business--of plot and
counterplot--that entangled the members of some unidentified outlaw
band.  What hope of profit might draw traffickers in organized crime
to such infertile, out-of-the-way fields, he was unable to guess.  He
only knew that the country had been suddenly invaded by a mysterious
and dangerous company of intruders.

His glance returned grimly to the silent figures in the bunks.  No
doubt these two held the secret, of which he himself had failed to
find the key.  But he could scarcely believe that murder had been
committed just to prevent their telling what they might know.  If
this were the only motive, why was not the policeman shot instead of
his prisoners?  Dexter had not dreamed of the presence of a third
person in the cabin, and the woman might have left the door unbarred
and ambushed him with perfect safety as he entered.

He shook his head grimly.  There must have been other reasons for the
wanton shooting.  Vengeance?  The voice had said something about
being betrayed.  Had Mudgett or his companion sent the word that
summoned Constable Graves into the woods?  Such a supposition was
improbable.  If the constable's murderer had betrayed any one to the
police, why had he himself shot the policeman?  Dexter sighed as he
realized that his speculations were leading nowhere.  Until he knew a
great deal more than he knew now, he was groping vainly, without one
enlightening clew to suggest the meaning of this strange and dark
affair.  It was wiser to leave off theorizing, and go after the woman.

There was nothing further to detain him.  He paused only to prop the
broken door in place, to prevent the intrusion of forest creatures,
and then quit the cabin and struck off across the clearing.

Where his new quest would take him, he could not foresee.  In all
probability he would have to travel for some distance through the
dense forest.  Susy, the pony, was sure to prove more or less of a
hindrance on such an expedition, and moreover she was tired after her
long journey that day across the pass.  He had previously unsaddled
her, and she would do well enough by herself in the sheltered gully
by the brook.  So he mercifully left her behind, and set forth on
foot.

The trail of the small shoes was easily followed.  For a distance the
woman had continued her headlong course, but the underbrush was too
thick for heedless going, and it was soon evident that she had been
forced to moderate her pace.  Still she had kept on as fast as
darkness and difficult ground permitted.

By the accumulated signs along the way the policeman knew that she
traveled without a light, groping her path as best she might.
Frequently she had stumbled over some unseen obstruction and now and
then walked blindly into a tree trunk or windfall.  And in the denser
thickets spatterings of snow told how invisible branches had swished
back in her face.

Dexter continued to use his pocket lamp, and he had eyes for
everything.  By the promptness with which she had recovered from each
misstep, he gathered that she was an agile, quick-witted woman,
probably young.  It must have been a painful ordeal to go plunging
through the thickets, but she had taken the punishment with apparent
stoicism, scarcely pausing at any time in her hurried, free-swinging
stride.

At one place, where she had touched the edge of a briary clump,
Dexter found a wisp of hair caught on a thorn--three soft, wavy
silken threads of a deep bronze shade.  He pulled off his glove to
twist the gossamer strand about his forefinger, and almost imagined a
sensation of human warmth.  And somehow he felt a sudden dislike for
the work he had to do.  There are times when police business calls
for sterner qualities than simple courage and loyalty.  The corporal
was confronted by a duty that revolted every knightly instinct;
nevertheless he pushed onward at a faster pace.  He could not shirk a
disagreeable task, and was resolved to have it over with as soon as
possible.

The woman did not turn down towards the more open ground along the
course of the valley stream, but continued to travel through the
deeper forest.  She had soon wandered away from the vaguely defined
runway, and was forced to seek out her own pathway.  Through
occasional openings in the tree-tops Dexter caught glimpses of the
north-bearing star Capella, which the Indians call the "little white
goat."  For a while the fugitive had kept on in a northerly
direction, but presently the trail began to bend to the left, turning
towards the back hills.  And as the corporal followed, he began to
realize that he was swinging on a wide arc towards the west.  The
line of prints meandered back and forth in a rather aimless way, but
the trend of divergence was always to the left.  By the signs he
inferred that the woman had missed her bearings, and, as usually is
the case with lost people, was circling gradually around the compass.

Experienced wayfarers of the wilderness learn to "average" their
windings, always bearing towards an imaginary fixed point ahead, like
a ship tacking at sea.  The star Capella served to-night as an
infallible guiding beacon for travelers in the trackless country.
But the woman, whoever she was, continued to wander farther and
farther off her original course.  By the time he had followed a half
hour on her trail Dexter was certain that she was a newcomer in the
northland.

In spite of darkness and the denseness of the timber, she still kept
up her rapid pace.  It seemed to her pursuer that she was in
panic-stricken flight.  Surely she must tire very soon.  But her
circling path led Dexter on and on through the dismal forest and
still there was no evidence of lagging on the trail.  He was
beginning to marvel at the story of brave endurance that he read in
the trail of the little footprints.  The fugitive might not be versed
in woodcraft, but nevertheless she seemed to have the pluck and
physical stamina of a seasoned voyageur.

The corporal had his lamp to light the way before him, and he plowed
through the snow with enormous energy.  He was certain that he gained
steadily, yet at the end of an hour he had not overtaken the woman.

By almost imperceptible degrees the line of tracks kept on curving in
a left hand arc, and after winding his way for another twenty or
thirty minutes through the hushed labyrinths of the woods, he became
aware that he was now heading more southerly than west.  He trudged
onward until a rift in the drooping branches overhead gave him a
momentary glimpse of the sky, and he found the beacon star twinkling
above his left shoulder.  The trail he followed had swung around the
compass, and he was traveling back to the east.  He half smiled to
himself as he reckoned distance and direction.  The hunted woman had
wandered by tortuous paths through miles of darkness, only to turn
back at last towards the tragic spot from which she had fearfully
fled.

By the freshly trod prints, the skilled tracker knew that he was
running down the fugitive.  In places, fluffy bits of snow were still
breaking at the edges of the new-made tracks.  He should overtake her
any minute now.  As he lengthened his stride he listened for sounds
of lightly crunching feet, and peered sharply ahead, expecting with
every step to catch sight of a hurrying figure among the spruces.

He was advancing through a tangle of snow-sheeted brush, his arm
thrusting aside the trailing branches, when suddenly he caught a red
glint of light in the darkness beyond.  At the same instant a stray
breath of wind brought to him a resinous smell of wood smoke.  A fire
of some sort apparently had been kindled in the forest ahead.

Wondering, he broke his way out of the thicket, and paused for a
moment to stare before him.  A flaming glow flickered among the
trees, throwing ruddy reflections upon the wintry landscape.  A
glance told him it was too big a blaze to be a camp fire.  He knew
that a forest conflagration seldom starts and never gains much
headway when the trees are laden with snow, but for the instant he
felt the sharp sense of alarm that communicates itself to all
woodland dwellers at the sight and scent of burning timber.  He left
the trail he was following, and plunged straight through the
underbrush towards the crimson flaring light.

Crashing forward, heedless of the lash of branches, he forced his
path through the densest thicket.  As he advanced he caught glimpses
of fire and saw sparks leaping among the trees.  He passed through
the intervening stretch of forest, and stumbled to the edge of an
ax-hewn clearing.  In the middle of the snowy ground stood a log
building, with smoke and flames spouting upward from the walls and
roof.  The surrounding area was illuminated with the brightness of
day, and at a glance Dexter identified the place.  He had circled
back to the scene of murder.  The cabin had been fired, and was
blazing in the forest like a lighted torch.




CHAPTER VI

THE DOORWAY OF DREAD

With the hot glare beating back in his face, Dexter stood with
blinking eyes, hearing the hiss of falling sparks and the fierce
crackle of the mounting flames.  Tongues of fire lapped around the
windows and darted angrily from the crevices between the logs.  As he
peered through the pitchy black smoke, a gust of flame lashed out at
the corner of the cabin, and he saw that the door was open.

He remembered closing and wedging the door fast when he left the
place a while before.  It would seem that a visitor had been there
some time during his absence.  His glance ranged swiftly around the
clearing, and came back to the doorway.  For a second longer he
hesitated, and then suddenly left the concealment of the trees and
strode forward across the open ground.

The snow near the cabin had melted and formed pools of muddy water.
He drew a handkerchief from his pocket, wetted the fabric, and tied a
protecting mask over his nose and mouth.  Then he pushed across the
threshold into the suffocation of smoke and heat and showering embers.

He was groping his way towards the center of the room, feeling for
the table which stood near the fireplace, when he collided blindly in
the hazy dark with a soft substance of flesh--something that moved,
and breathed, and was alive.

His hands closed instinctively, and he found himself gripping a
slight, lithe, human figure that gasped and struggled for release
with the fluttering fright of a captured bird.  A curl of flame
darted out through the smoke, and in the flash of light Dexter had a
momentary vision of a youthful, grime-streaked face, a waving tangle
of hair, and a pair of luminous dark eyes that stared wildly under
the shadowed curve of thickly fringing lashes.  It was a woman--a
girl--and his startled intuition told him she was the fugitive who
had led him the long chase in the forest.

He saw her full lips tremble apart as the smoke cloud rolled about
them, heard her stifled cry of fear.  Her breath came quick upon his
cheek, and he could feel the rapid pulse throb in her straining
wrists.  She writhed in his grasp, fighting to free herself.  He had
not counted on the supple strength of softly rounded muscles that
desperation called suddenly and fiercely to use.

Before he could overcome his normal reluctance to hurt a weaker
being, she had thrust her elbow under his chin; and as his head
snapped back before the unexpected attack, she broke the grip of his
fingers, wriggled out from the crook of his arm, stumbled beyond his
reach, and ran for the doorway.

Dexter recovered himself a second too late.  The girl evaded his
outstretched hand, brushed lightly past him, and he turned only in
time to see her rush out of the burning cabin.

"Stop!" he shouted.

She cast an anxious glance behind her, but did not heed him.  In the
haze of smoke he vaguely made out her slender shape as she darted
across the clearing.  She reached the edge of the forest and vanished
among the spruces, leaving him with the tingling remembrance of a
warm and vivid presence that had touched and eluded him, like an
ephemeral fragrance.  For the present he did not attempt to hinder
her flight.

The fire had broken through the roof, and was swirling up from the
interior walls with hot, roaring sounds.  With his arm doubled across
his face, he turned again towards the bunks where he had left Mudgett
and his comrade lying.  Either in life or death he always felt a
responsibility for the prisoners he arrested.  He tried to reach the
bunks, but with his first step a gust of flame swept across the room
and drove him back.

For a few seconds he lingered, his head bowed under the falling
embers, hoping for a momentary lull in the rush of the fire.  But as
he stood irresolute, trying not to breathe, one of the roof beams
cracked overhead and swung crashing to the floor.  At the same
instant a wreath of flame circled the doorway behind him.  It was
time to go.

Shielding his face, he turned and plunged for the opening.  A searing
wind eddied about him, and the next instant he stumbled across the
threshold, and found himself choking and panting as his almost
bursting lungs took in great draughts of the heated air outside the
cabin.  He beat out the sparks that smoldered upon his jacket,
briskly rubbed his aching eyes, and then drew back farther across the
clearing, beyond the scorching waves of heat.

The cabin was enveloped in high leaping flames that threw a blood-red
glare above the snowy tree tops.  Overhead he could hear the
affrighted cries of birds that had awakened in the night to fly in
darting confusion among the spruces.  As he watched he saw a corner
of the cabin roof curl upward like paper, and cave in the middle.
The structure was doomed.  There was nothing he could accomplish by
waiting.

He remained a couple of minutes longer, observing the falling sparks.
The flaming embers were snuffed out, he observed, almost as soon as
they struck the soft snow.  There was no actual danger of fire
communicating through the forest.  He cast a last regretful glance
towards the cabin, but accepted the inevitable with fatalistic calm.
What must be had already happened.  He listened momentarily to the
direful crackling of flames, and then with grimly set lips he turned
to seek the departing footprints of the mysterious girl.

The fresh trail was picked up at the edge of the clearing.  He
scrutinized the familiar impression of the high-arched instep, and
knew beyond question that she was the woman who had led him around a
wide-drawn circle, from the cabin of death, back to the cabin.

Until this moment he had supposed that her fateful return was brought
about haphazard by a changing sense of direction, that nearly always
befuddles people who lose themselves in the woods.  Now he had reason
to wonder whether he had misinterpreted the signs.  Had she
deliberately drawn him away from the spot so that she might swing
back alone, ahead of him?  Had the cabin been fired purposely, to
destroy the evidence of crime?

The fire might be of incendiary origin, or it might have started from
the smoldering coals he himself had carelessly left in the hearth.
Of one fact only was he certain.  He had found the girl in the cabin.
What stress of circumstance had induced her to enter the place, or
had kept her there with the walls blazing about her?  He could not
guess.  But if she actually found her way back intentionally, after
traveling miles of dark, unblazed forest, her skill in woodcraft
surpassed the skill of every woman and almost any man he had ever met.

With troubled and gloomy face, he once more took up the trail of the
small footprints.  The girl had struck off towards the brook this
time, but whether she really knew where she was going, or was fleeing
aimlessly, he could not say.  As he pushed after her he discovered
that continuous use had nearly exhausted his flash-lamp battery.
There was still some current left, but from now on he would have to
use his light sparingly.  He hastened on, determined to end the
pursuit as quickly as possible.

He was weaving his way through the icy wattles of a juniper clump,
when, in the stillness of the night, shrill and plaintive, he heard
the whinnying cry of a horse.  For an instant his heart seemed to
check a beat, and then he remembered Susy.  He had left the pony in
the gully, a few hundred yards south of the clearing.  The tracks of
the girl ran that direction, and the breeze was from the north.  Susy
must have discovered that somebody was approaching.  She was a
friendly little beast, and no doubt she had begun to feel lonesome
and neglected in the dismal forest.  It must have been Susy.

Dexter had halted for a moment to listen.  But the cry was not
repeated.  A faint glow of distant fire still shimmered before him,
seeping through the woods like twilight, mottling the coverts with
strange, ghostly shadows.  His straining senses caught no sound or
stir of life.  He was starting forward again, but as he bent to pass
under a drooping bough, some alert faculty within him prompted him
with sharp warning to look behind.

He was conscious of no actual noise; not even the tiny crack of a
twig: but like most men who live in constant danger his nerves were
as sensitive as a seismograph to any slight movement near him.
Turning, he was aware of a muffled shape that had stepped softly from
the dark thicket behind him.  At the same instant a living weight
pressed against his back, he felt the swift, circling contact of arms
closing about his waist, and a pair of steely cold hands gripped upon
his wrists.  As Dexter lurched about to face his unknown antagonist,
the night silence was broken sharply by the cry of a woman's voice, a
crashing in the underbrush, and then the muffled beat of a horse's
hoofs galloping along the winterbound brook.




CHAPTER VII

THE HUNTED WOMAN

From the sudden, startling sounds in the direction of the brook, the
corporal guessed that the hunted woman had stolen and mounted his
horse, and the spirited Susy was bolting through the woods with her
unacquainted rider.  The intelligence reached him subconsciously; he
had no time for actual speculation.  The active part of his mind was
fully preoccupied just then, as he found himself struggling in the
dark with an unidentified someone who had crept upon him from behind
and seized him in a crushing embrace.

A second before he was confidently ranging on the trail of the
fleeing woman, believing himself the only man existent in that vast
area of desolate forest.  And without forewarning, he suddenly
discovered himself in the grip of a powerful assailant.  He did not
stop to ask questions.

His arms were pinioned at his sides, and iron muscles were closing
tight about his ribs.  Instinctively he knew he was no match for the
burly strength that held him, but he had wicked recourse in a trick
that it behooves all light men to learn.  With a deep breath he
filled his lungs full, and then as suddenly let go and shrank to his
least possible dimension.  For an instant he gained the needed
laxness, and his arms slipped free.

Before his heavier and slower acting opponent could anticipate the
movement Dexter's left hand reached across and gripped the other
man's right elbow at the precise spot where a tender nerve runs near
the socket bone. Simultaneously his right hand shot over his head and
clasped the tendons of a short and stocky neck.  Then, with catlike
quickness, he dropped crouching almost to his knees.  The suddenness
of the shift overbalanced the other man, and the wiry corporal took
the weight across his left hip.  A wrench and a heave, and he might
send his victim sprawling with a badly twisted back.  But as he
gathered himself for the final effort, he noticed something strangely
familiar in the texture of the sleeve his fingers were grasping.  His
hand slipped downward, and touched the metal buttons of a uniform
jacket.

With a wondering exclamation he relaxed his body, and straightened
erect.  Then he squirmed about to confront the panting bulk behind
him.  He stared in the semi-darkness, and made out in blurred outline
a square-shaped face and bristling mustache, shadowed under the brim
of a regulation Stetson.  For an instant longer he peered in tense
questioning, and then he laughed a low, short laugh that wavered
between relief and chagrin.

"Hello, colonel," he said.

The other man gazed uncertainly, but slightly let up on the pressure
of his grip.

"Superintendent Devreaux of Fort Dauntless," remarked the corporal,
grinning.  "If you'll give me two more inches space I'll be proud to
salute my officer."

The mustached man worked his heavy brows, and blinked in an owlish,
nearsighted way.  "It's--it's Corporal--" he muttered--"why, bless
me, it's Corporal Dexter of Crooked Forks!"

He released his bearlike clutch, and stepped back a pace, gingerly
rubbing the indented place in his elbow joint.  "I'm just as well
pleased that you didn't finish the last movement of the Nipponese
spine cracker.  I'm not quite as spry as I remember being once, and I
suspect--I rather fear you would have had me."  He cast a curious
glance in the direction of the flaming cabin.  "What's the trouble
here?" he asked.

Dexter regarded his superior officer with the respect an eaglet might
well feel towards a war-scarred eagle.  Colonel Devreaux was a
grizzled veteran of the R.C.M.P., with a record of two generations of
police work behind him, and an ex-army officer of the World War.  The
commander of a great wilderness superintendency, he was known as a
mighty criminal catcher wherever word of the law has traveled, from
tide water to the plains beyond the mountains, from the big sticks of
the middle country to the little sticks of the frozen Arctic.

Theoretically the superintendent belonged in his office at Fort
Dauntless.  But in actual fact, he was seldom seen at his desk.  He
wandered at large, in the thick of all troubles.  Lonely constables
by remote bivouac fires could never feel quite sure that the next
moment might not bring the old man stalking casually into camp to
demand pot luck and ask to know how business fared.

"Constable Graves is dead," said Dexter, watching his officer's face.
"Ambushed and shot from behind.  I found him lying in the snow a
short distance down the valley."

Devreaux drew breath with an audible sound.  "Young Graves!" he
muttered.  "Another added to the long score."  He shook his head
glumly.  "I've seen so many go out--fine, strong, valiant boys!  And
the old man goes on year after year, just getting older.  Fate's a
queer thing, Dexter, and so unfair!

"Who shot him?" he asked, suddenly curt and business-like.

"A stranger.  Never saw him before, and he wouldn't tell his name.
Trailed him to a cabin yonder, where you see the fire blazing.
Arrested him and a trapper named Mudgett."

"Well?" asked the superintendent, staring sharply.

The corporal gave a hurried account of recent events, telling of the
murder of his helpless prisoners, of the woman's voice in the cabin
where no woman was found, of the trail of small feet discovered near
the clearing and followed in a circle back to the cabin, and finally
of the fire, his unexpected encounter with the maker of the
footprints, and her subsequent escape and flight.

Devreaux listened without interruption to the singular recital.  And,
characteristically, he showed no sign of wonderment.  "You say this
disembodied voice--seemed to be talking over a telephone?" he
inquired.

"So I thought, until I had searched for the instrument But I didn't
overlook a cubic inch of space anywhere inside or outside the cabin.
And I found neither wires nor telephone.  And no trace of any
intruder, for that matter."

"Radio?"

"No.  Impossible.  The equipment couldn't have been spirited away so
quickly."

"Most people would advise you to consult an ear specialist," remarked
the superintendent.  "But I'm credulous about--well, anything at all.
I've observed so many strange happenings in my time that I've learned
to believe the wildest and weirdest things are possible, and I've
lost all sense of amazement.  What do you think about it all?"

"I honestly don't know what to think."

"It wouldn't surprise me if this business hitches up somehow with the
errand that brought me into the mountains," remarked Devreaux
musingly.  "Poor Graves and I came up here together from the fort.
We separated this morning, he to beat along the course of the brook,
and I to swing across through the timber.  We had planned to meet
to-night farther up the valley.  Coming through a while ago, I caught
the glint of fire, and of course turned aside to investigate.  I
heard some one coming this direction, and effaced myself.  A man came
along, and I grabbed him to make him account for himself, and he was
you.

"What was the man like whom you arrested?" he asked abruptly--"not
Mudgett, the other?"

"Undersize, swarthy, hawk-beaked, glittering black eyes."

"No," interrupted Devreaux.  "The one I'm thinking of has light red
hair."

"'Pink' Crill?" asked Dexter, mentioning a name that for some reason
had stuck disagreeably in his thoughts.

"Where have you heard of Crill?" demanded the officer.

"I found a Bertillon photograph in Graves' jacket."

"I see.  Yes--'Pink' Crill!  I shouldn't have been sorry if he were
the one.  Saved us future trouble."

"Yes?" said the corporal expectantly.

"A Chicago safe expert.  Killed an officer on his way to jail, and
got away.  Was traced into Canada, and we were asked to pick him up.
We heard later that he was on a Grand Trunk Pacific train, traveling
for the coast.  But when a constable jumped the train he learned that
the red-haired passenger had dropped off between stations and taken
to the woods.

"Later we got word that our man had plunged into the uninhabited
wilderness, and was making this direction.  I decided to make a long
patrol myself, and took young Graves along.  This Crill is no
woodsman, mind you, yet he's outdistanced and outwitted me.  And
until now I've rather prided myself on being a voyageur."

Devreaux spoke with a peculiar grimness of voice.  "Crill of course
has had help," he went on.  "Oddly, there seems to be quite a crowd
of people at large on this side of the ranges.  Who they are, what
their business, I don't know.  But I've touched their trails, seen
their ax-blazes on the trees, found their dead camp fires.  In this
country where nobody ever comes!

"People who always managed to keep out of sight!" added the
superintendent moodily.  "With all the ranging and stalking we've
done, Graves and I haven't clapped eyes on a single human face.  Yet
I know positively that there are men in this valley--six or eight or
ten of them."

"All men?" asked the corporal with a sidewise glance.

"I have seen only the tracks of men's boots.  Crill's,
undoubtedly--and others."  Devreaux cast a quick glance about him.
"This unknown woman you speak of--she came this direction?"

"I heard a galloping horse at about the time you jumped me.  I have
an idea she's taken my pony."

"It sounded that way," observed the officer quietly.  "I guess it's
up to you, Dexter.  How long will it take you to catch her?"

Devreaux spoke with serene assurance, and the corporal nodded coolly
in acceptance of what amounted to a command.  Both had learned by
experience that a man afoot can walk down any horse in a prolonged
chase.  And Susy was jaded from days of hard travel.

"Can't say," answered Dexter.  "That pony doesn't like strangers, and
she'll shake her rider off if she can.  But in any event, if it
doesn't storm again, I should catch her to-morrow afternoon, or by
evening at the latest."

"I'll camp here and wait for you," volunteered Devreaux.  "Bring the
woman with you."  The superintendent shot an approving glance at the
upright figure before him.  "Give you anything I've got," he said.

"Trade flashlights with me, please.  My last battery's burned out."

The exchange was made, the two nodded briefly in farewell and Dexter
once more set forward on his trail.

Tracks of small shoes led him to the gulley where he had left his
horse for the night.  The girl must have heard the neighing and
turned over that way in hope of picking up a mount.  The scuffled
snow indicated that there had been a struggle before she succeeded in
climbing on the pony's back.  Afterwards she had ridden away without
a saddle, using a halter rope instead of a bridle.

By the hoof marks Dexter saw that he had correctly interpreted the
sounds he heard a few minutes before.  Susy had broken into a run the
moment she felt the weight on her back.  With features unnaturally
grave, the trailer followed through the underbrush.  In a couple of
minutes he reached the bank of the brook and found that the filly had
not checked her stride here, but had plunged downward and crossed the
ice at full gallop.

The shod tracks swerved abruptly on reaching the opposite embankment,
traveling southward along the brook course over a stretch of stony
and pitted ground.  Dexter walked onward at a fast pace, swinging the
shaft of his light, his intent gaze searching before him with ominous
expectancy.

And a quarter of a mile farther down the stream the trail ended, as
he had known that sooner or later it surely must end.  In a hollow of
ground, beyond an outcropping shale of rock, he found his pony
stretched flat and motionless among the stones, with her head flung
backward and her forelegs doubled limply under her body.  And a few
paces farther on a slim-built, girlish figure was lying prone upon
the snow.




CHAPTER VIII

THE RUNAWAY GIRL

With teeth fastened in his lips the corporal stepped forward to bend
above the tumbled figure of the woman.  She was so quiet he thought
she was dead.  But her fingers were warm, he found when he pulled off
her mitten, and the tide of life still flowed vigorously through the
slender, flexible wrist.

His light gleamed upon the curve of a soft cheek, pallid as marble
against the faint blue shadow line of the vein throbbing in her
temple.  Her hair, trimmed in a boyish bob, straggled over eyes and
forehead in fine-spun tendrils of golden bronze.  The delicate skin
of her face was grimed and scratched, and in the palm of her bared
hand he found the crimson trickle of a deep, jagged cut.  Gingerly he
raised her from the snow, and the man, accustomed to dealing with
men, marveled at the trifle of weight in his arms.

He was unbuttoning the pocket where he carried his first-aid kit,
when he heard a low sigh and felt a quick, stirring movement against
his shoulder.  Crouched on one foot, he supported the limp figure,
and waited breathlessly.  He watched the droop of her red nether lip
under slowly parting teeth, observed a twitching of her eyelids, and
then saw the long lashes suddenly lift.  And with the pocket-lamp
still shining in her face, he found himself at very close quarters
with a pair of velvet eyes, dark blue as violets that looked straight
into his.

"Yes--I'll try," he heard her say in a straggling, far-off whisper.

Her eyes were fixed upon him, but there was something in the quality
of her gaze to tell him that she was not yet aware of his being
there.  Awkwardly her hand crept upward and clutched tightly upon his
shoulder, as though a reviving consciousness needed some tangible
support to cling to.  He waited unmoving, and all at once the light
of intelligence flickered from the depths of suddenly distending
pupils.

A rose bloom of color dyed her cheeks, and her breath came quick and
sharp.  She stared intently, with wonderment mounting swiftly to
confusion and alarm.  "It's--who--where am I?" she stammered.  Her
hand dropped from his shoulder, and she pushed away from him with a
gasping cry.

Somehow she got upon her feet, and turned blindly as though to flee
into the forest.  With her first step, however, she stumbled, and
would have fallen.  But Dexter sprang after her, and caught her
firmly in his arms.  She relaxed with a weary, hopeless gesture, and
this time did not try to break his grasp.

"The horse," she faltered--"ran away--and we went down in the stones."

"Knocked you out for a couple of minutes."  Dexter surveyed her with
the impersonal curiosity of a surgeon.  "You're able to stand--after
a fashion," he remarked.  He lifted up her hands, one and then the
other, and nodded judicially.  "No broken arms or legs.  Ribs?  See
if you feel any twinges?"

She wriggled obediently, and shook her head.  "No.  I think I'll be
all right in a minute."

"Don't try to run again," he advised her.  "It would be silly."

She glanced furtively about her, but did not reply.  His lips drew
straight, in a stern, uncompromising Line.  "In case you hadn't
noticed the uniform," he said, "I'm Corporal Dexter, R.C.M.P.  If you
tried to get away, it would be my business to bring you back again,
even if it meant a journey of months and thousands of miles.  Your
hand's badly cut.  Sit down while I dress it."

He released her, stepping back a pace, and she managed to keep her
feet without his support.  Swinging the beam of light towards her, he
regarded her with swiftly appraising eyes.  His previous impression
of fresh and vivid youth was instantly corroborated.  She could not
have been twenty years old.  Under happier circumstances, in any
other place, he would have supposed her to be some boarding school
Miss who had ventured out of doors for winter sports--tobogganing,
perhaps.

Her costume carried out the fiction: fine, shapely boots of soft
glove leather, with thick, ribbed arctic hose rolled half way from
the knee over the cuffs of laced Mackinaw breeches; gauntlet mittens
of white, fluffy lamb's wool, and heavy, white, snug-fitting sweater,
"V"-cut at the neck, leaving her rounded throat bare to the weather.
She seemed pathetically small and defenseless as she faced him alone
in the midst of a great, savage wilderness; but as he recalled the
recent encounter in the burning cabin, he smiled with inward
cynicism.  She had taught him that she was competent to take care of
herself.

She stirred uneasily under his cool scrutiny, and finally with short,
careful steps, she moved to a snow-covered bowlder by the brook side,
and sat down.  From the ground at her feet she picked up a white
knitted cap and pulled it tightly over her unruly hair.  She remained
silent, watching Dexter from under lowered lashes.

With a packet of surgical tape in hand, he advanced and dropped on
one knee beside her.  Indifferently, she allowed him to examine her
injured hand.

"What's your name?" he asked, his deft fingers busy with the
dressings.

"Alison Rayne," she told him after a second's hesitation.

He touched her wounded palm, and the texture of skin was smooth and
soft.  Whoever she might be, she certainly did not belong in this
harsh country where life is supported by disfiguring toil.  "Where
are you from?" he inquired.

"From the south," she answered evasively.

He knotted his bandage neatly and was rising to his feet, when from
the darkness behind him he heard a dull thumping sound, followed by a
snort of heavy breathing.  Turning in surprise, he crossed back to
the hollow of ground where his pony lay fallen in the snow.

Until this moment he had taken it for granted that Susy had killed
herself.  But he saw now that she was still alive, trying feebly to
lift up her head.  He crouched beside her, and at once ascertained
that both forelegs were broken.

Momentarily his hand strayed forward to touch the warm muzzle in the
snow, and then, with features drawn and set, he stood up to fumble at
his holster flap.  He and Susy had traveled the ranges together for
two years, sharing hardship and peril and the glory of sunny days.
But time passes, and weather changes, and companions must sometime
separate.  Like the men, the horses of the police were employed in an
extra-hazardous service.  Dexter was used to swift leave-takings; had
long since learned to accept death with fatalistic fortitude.  He was
drawing his pistol from its holster, when a foot crunched behind him,
and Alison Rayne stepped forward to gaze over his shoulder.

"It was my fault," the girl whispered.  "The horse ran away with me,
but I didn't need to--I could have walked.  The poor thing--is
suffering!  And I--it was my--"  She choked, unable to finish, and
began to cry.

The corporal shouldered her aside, and advanced in the darkness.
There was a brief silence, broken by a heavy report, and Dexter
stalked back again, thrusting a pistol into his holster.  His
searchlight discovered the girl standing with her hands over her ears
to shut out the sound, sobbing piteously, with great tears welling
from her eyes.  "I'm sorry--sorry!" she whimpered.

"It was Susy's fault--mostly," he told her gruffly.  "She should have
known better than to gallop on this ground."  He faced the girl in
curiosity, marveling at the strange complexity and inconsistencies
that make up the nature of womankind.  Here was one who cried in
remorse and pity because a horse had to be shot.  He had observed no
tears shed over two men, who had been wantonly and ruthlessly killed.
As he studied her sensitive features he found it increasingly
difficult to believe that she could be the woman whose footprints led
from the scene of tragedy.  Yet her boots matched the prints he had
followed, and there was no other departing trail.

"Did you set fire to that cabin?" he asked abruptly.

"I?" she exclaimed.

"You were inside the place when I got there."

"Yes.  I saw the flames and feared some one might be in there asleep.
So I broke the door to give warning.  And a man came inside after
me--"

"I guess you know I was that man," he said.  "Why did you run after I
called to you?"

"I didn't know who you were," was her explanation.

"You don't know how the place happened to take fire?"

"I do not."

"How did you happen to return there?"

"Return?"  She seemed genuinely puzzled.  "I was never there before."

"You're mistaken," he informed her.  "You visited the place a couple
of hours before the fire broke out.  There's no sense in denying it,
because there are marks of your feet in the snow, indicating the
direction of your arrival, and proving the suddenness of your
departure.  When you left you roved over a six- or seven-mile circle,
and then came straight back to the cabin.  I know because I made the
same journey, never more than thirty minutes behind you."

The exactness of his information seemed to disconcert her.  "I--if
this is true--it's the first I knew it," she asserted at length.
"But now that you speak of it, I didn't--I wasn't quite sure of my
directions.  It would be a funny thing to happen, and yet I may have
wandered around as you say, and struck the same cabin twice, without
recognizing the spot."

"What were you doing there in the first place?" he asked.

"Nothing.  I was walking along the brook, and thought I smelled
chimney smoke, and turned aside to see what it meant.  That was all."

"At that very time two men were killed in the cabin bunks," he told
her--"two men, helplessly bound, who could do nothing but scream for
mercy."

"I heard!" she blurted out with a shuddering breath.  "It was--"  She
stopped short, and from the frightened look she gave him he fancied
she had said more than she meant to say.

"You admit you were there then, when this killing took place?"

"Admit it?" she asked sharply.  "Why, what is there to admit?  That I
happened to be in the neighborhood--that I heard--"

"That you know more than you're telling me about a very strange
affair," he soberly interrupted.

The girl's head lifted with a jerk, and Dexter could almost feel the
sudden hostility of her eyes staring at him in the dark.  She drew a
slow breath, and when she spoke her tones were brittle and cold,
lacking all inflection.  "As long as we've gone so far, let's get
this straight," she said in deliberative accents, as though she might
be reciting something learned by rote.  "Chance brought me to that
cabin.  I heard a shot, I heard some one cry out in seeming anguish,
I heard another shot.  I was alone in a strange place at night,
and--and I heard that horror.  I was terrified--and I did what any
other frightened woman would do.  I ran--anywhere to get away."

He watched her for a moment with narrowed eyes, but did not openly
question her story.  "Do you know the men who were killed?" he asked
after a pause.

"Know them?" she gasped.  "I hadn't seen them!  How should I know
them?"

"A woman was in the cabin when the shots were fired," he stated
darkly.

She drew backward, breathing audibly, and he could see the nervous
gripping of her hands.  "If there was a woman there, it wasn't I,"
she declared.  "That's easily proven.  You found my foot tracks, you
say.  Where were they?"

"At the edge of the clearing."

"Did they go to the cabin?"

"No," he was forced to confess.  "The last print stopped a dozen
yards away."

"Then what do you expect to show?" She faced him tensely.  "What are
you trying to make out?"

He did not answer, but regarded her searchingly, his brow furrowed in
thought.  The mystery of the double murder apparently was no nearer
solution than it had been before he caught the fugitive.  The few
facts he had gathered summed up in a most contradictory fashion.

As he positively knew, there was a woman in the cabin when the crimes
were committed.  But in some unaccountable manner she had vanished.
In the snow outside he had found a woman's footprints, and the girl
was forced to admit that they were hers.  But she denied she had
entered the cabin, or even crossed the clearing, and the evidence of
her tracks apparently bore out her assertion.  Nevertheless, by the
testimony trampled in the snow, he had learned with certainty that
she was the only woman who had approached anywhere near the scene of
tragedy.

She had told her story glibly enough, but at the same time her recent
actions were not above suspicion.  She had tried desperately hard to
get away, and now that he had caught her it was clear enough that she
was afraid of him--a representative of the law.  Even at this moment
there was something in her nervous, half-defiant manner to warn him
that she would escape at the very first opportunity.

While she was talking he had listened for some tone or inflection
that might remind him of the voice he had heard a while back in the
cabin.  The other voice, however, had carried to him muffled and
distorted by thick walls, and he could not really say whether he had
detected any resemblance.

"What are you doing here in the wilderness?" he asked the girl after
a lengthy interval.

For several seconds she stood silent, and he had a feeling that she
was thinking fast, trying to invent a plausible answer.  "Are the
police in the habit of cross-examining everybody?" she inquired at
length.  "Isn't this government land, and aren't people allowed to
come and go as they please in the forests?"

He regarded her with steady eyes, showing no sign of impatience.
"Who brought you here?" he asked.  "You never could have come across
these mountains alone."

She made a gesture with her hands, almost impudent, altogether
evasive.  "You see me," she said.  "Am I not alone?"

With a slight shrug Dexter gave up his efforts to extract information
from her.  Whoever she might be, she was a resolute, quick-witted
young woman, and apparently she was ready to go to any lengths to
prevent his finding out more about her than she wanted him to know.
He bore her no malice.  She had a right to preserve her secrets if
she could.  It was the business of the Minister of Justice to coerce
unwilling witnesses, and the corporal, for his part, had no intention
of browbeating any girl.

"I should have warned you," he said presently.

"Warned me?" she asked, her head held high.  "What about?"

"The police are supposed to caution prospective prisoners against too
much talking."  He smiled dryly, and reached into his pocket for pipe
and tobacco pouch.  "I must advise you not to say anything
incriminating."

"What--what do you mean?" she gasped.

Dexter looked absent-mindedly at his pipe, seemed to have forgotten
what he meant to do with it, and returned it to his pocket.  "You
will come with me," he said mildly.  "In the name of His Majesty the
King, I arrest you."




CHAPTER IX

GO GET 'EM!

The north wind rattled among the dry branches of the brookside
junipers, but for a space of ten seconds no other sound broke the
straining silence that had fallen upon them.  The girl stood
motionless, gazing vacantly at Dexter, finding nothing whatever to
say.

"I'm not making an accusation," he told her.  "But we have to hold
you for the time being as a witness.  Perhaps it won't amount to more
than that."

She swayed a little, as he had sometimes seen a man reel at the first
numbing shock of a pistol bullet.  But as he watched with troubled
eyes, he saw the slender figure straighten with the quick resiliency
of a birch sapling in a wind.  Her firm chin suddenly lifted, and she
spoke slowly, in a voice strongly controlled.

"What have I done?" she asked.  "What right have you to detain me?"

Dexter did not reply.  The right or wrong of the law's might was a
question policemen wisely would not discuss.  "We'll start whenever
you're ready," he said.

"But--but--" she protested, fighting to keep back her tears, "you
wouldn't dare!  It would be too high-handed!  Why, even the mounted
can't go about arresting people right and left, for no reason at all."

"Colonel Devreaux is waiting for us," he remarked with official
politeness.  "It isn't far, not more than a quarter of a mile from
here."

"Oh, no!" she cried, and for just a moment she could not help showing
him how badly scared she was.  "Don't you understand?  I can't go.
You mustn't make me!  You mustn't!  You don't know what you're doing!"

"If you could convince Colonel Devreaux that we have no reason to
take you to Fort Dauntless," he said with a trifle less austerity,
"why, of course, that would end the matter."

"Convince him of what?" she demanded.  "What must I prove that I
haven't done?"

"You've refused to answer almost every question I've asked you," he
reminded her.

"I've told you--"  She checked herself, biting her lips.  They had
again struck the stumbling block.  He knew that she dared not tell
the truth about herself.

"We might as well go," he said.

Her glance swept wildly about the dark thickets, as though she were
reckoning her chances of escape.  But she could not help but realize
the madness of attempted flight.  Her lips parted in tremulous
breathing, but she did not move.

"You're still a bit shaken by your fall," he said, shrewdly watching
her.  "But we'll travel as slowly as you like, and you can hang on to
me."

Her figure stiffened, and she scornfully refused his offered arm.
"If we must go, let's go," she said in a chilly voice.

She started forward with tottering steps to retrace the pathway along
the brook.  Dexter cast a last lingering glance towards the huddled
dark bulk in the hollow where Susy had tumbled, and then in silence
he turned to follow.

For the present, at least, the girl was forced to resign herself to
the bitterness of fate.  She walked ahead with shoulders erect,
trying to keep her steps from faltering, proudly ignoring the man who
stalked behind her.

They crossed the brook, and thence followed the trail northward in
the direction of the burning cabin.  Presently Dexter caught a tiny
point of light flickering in a nearby thicket.  He turned aside with
a word to his companion, and a moment later they stumbled into the
circle of a new-built camp fire, where Colonel Devreaux sat
cross-legged on a tarpaulin, contentedly sipping coffee.

"This is Alison Rayne," said the corporal.

"Humph!" grunted Devreaux.  He set down his cup and fixed the girl
with the stony, unwinking stare that usually frightened evildoers.
But Alison Rayne met his eyes, and did not flinch.

"Sit down, Alison," he invited at length.  "Do you want some coffee?"

"No, thank you," she answered coldly.  Nevertheless, she accepted a
corner of the tarpaulin, and sank to the ground with a tired sigh.

"What did you have to do with the killings in that cabin yonder?" he
inquired bluntly.

The girl's face went deathly white for an instant, and then an angry
scarlet suddenly flamed in her cheeks.  "Nothing!" she said in a
choking voice.  "I don't know a thing about that--what happened.
You--you're very--you shan't say such abominable things to me."

"I want to talk to you," remarked the superintendent placidly, "and I
thought we'd get the hardest part over first."  He hitched his weight
around so he could observe the reflecting firelight upon her face,
and proceeded with his ruthless catechism.

Under the fire of questions the girl sat inert, scarcely breathing,
her tormented eyes veiled by heavy drooping lashes.  Sometimes she
answered Devreaux's sharp interrogations in seeming frankness,
sometimes she only pretended to answer, sometimes her lips closed,
trembling, as she stubbornly shook her head.  Now and then her glance
strayed surreptitiously towards the corporal, as though seeking some
hope of mercy from the younger man.

But Dexter did not once look her direction.  He sat a little apart,
and his face was revealed to her only in profile, its firm, rugged
lines showing almost gaunt in the firelight, changeless and
unreadable as sculptured bronze.  His straight lips were mutely
compressed, and his eyes, darkened by night to murky gray, never once
left off their brooding contemplation of the fire.  The girl watched
him at first in faintly hopeful appeal, then with a baffled knitting
of arched brows, and finally she turned from him altogether to bow
her head drearily before Devreaux's volley of questions.

Her ordeal lasted for some time, but finally the superintendent
decided that he was wasting his breath.  His method of attack was
direct and forceful, like bludgeon work, but when he finished he knew
no more about the mysterious young woman than Dexter could have told
him.  "All right, Alison," he observed with a ponderous shrug.
"Without a rack and thumbscrews, I guess we've gone as far as we're
going to go."

He scrutinized her for a moment with puckered eyes.  "You know, of
course, that you're putting yourself in the worst possible light.
That's up to you.  I give you credit for this much, though: you
haven't tried to make us swallow any lies."  He relaxed for a moment
in an iron-visaged smile.  "All tired out, aren't you, Alison?"

"Dead tired," she murmured.

Devreaux nodded towards a sheltercloth that he had staked up,
forester fashion, in front of the fire.  He was a fastidious
campaigner, and during Dexter's absence had taken the trouble to
shingle a foot-deep couch of feathery balsam tips.  "You'd better
turn in and try to sleep."

The girl accepted the invitation with a slight nod, took the blanket
the colonel gave her, and crept underneath the shelter cloth.
Devreaux glanced after her, and then turned ruefully to the corporal.
"It's the snow for you and me to-night, both tugging on your
blanket," he remarked in an undertone.

"What do you make of her?" asked Dexter, as they stepped beyond
earshot of the tent.

"Pretty, sweet-looking girl," muttered the superintendent.  "It goes
hard to think evil things about her.  But I've had some beautiful
illusions smashed in my time, and I learned long ago that you never
can tell by appearances.  You can bank on one thing: she never found
her way alone into this back-of-beyond country.  She's got friends
hereabouts, and whoever they are, I've a feeling it'll be a good job
when we put hands on 'em."

Dexter looked dubiously at his chief, but made no comment.  "What are
you going to do with her?" he asked after a moment.

"Hang on to her.  Lodge some kind of a complaint, and wait until we
get the real facts.  One of us had better take her down to Fort
Dauntless, where we'll have her safe."

Devreaux eyed the corporal for a moment with a peculiar slanting of
his heavy brows.  "On the other hand, we want this 'Pink' Crill, and
whoever's with him--and we want 'em badly.  One of us has got to stay
behind and tackle that business."  He cast a squinting glance
skyward, and shook his head.  "The difficulty is that big snow is due
to fly almost any day.  Once the pass is choked this country will be
shut off from the outside world.  Whichever one of us stays behind is
almost certain to be stuck here until spring.  Which job do you
choose--Fort Dauntless or Crill?"

Dexter grinned.  It was a tradition in the mounted that an officer
never assigned a subordinate to any task, dangerous or disagreeable,
that the officer was not perfectly willing to undertake himself.  He
knew that the superintendent was sincere in his offer, and that the
decision rested with him.

"You're needed at the post," said the corporal at once.  "I'll go
after Crill, of course."

The older man nodded curtly.  "Graves and I picketed our horses by
the forks in the lower valley.  I'll cache all my extra grub there
where you can find it, and you'll weather the winter all right, even
if the snow catches you."

He measured the corporal with his deep-searching gaze.  "There were
two of us hunting Crill up to this afternoon.  You know what happened
to poor Graves.  Crill and his friends are out to get the police
before the police get them.  And after I'm gone you'll be playing a
lone hand.  You'll be careful, Dexter."

"Sure," said the corporal lightly.

"I'll send you reinforcements," the colonel pursued, "but I doubt if
anybody can get in here in time to beat the snows.  You may have to
hold out by yourself until spring.  But rest assured that the first
thaw will bring men to your help."

"Thanks, chief," said Dexter.  "And don't worry about me.  I'll
manage."

He left camp for a few minutes to saunter down into the gulley where
he had dropped his saddle packs, and when he returned he brought a
blanket to spread on the ground across the fire from the tent.  For a
while longer he and the colonel sat together arranging their final
plans, but at length they kicked off their boots, donned their night
woolens, and rolled up together in the common blanket.

Both were light sleepers, accustomed to arousing at the least
disturbing sound.  There was a little of downwood scattered about
under the snow, and they had no fear of an enemy approaching
unannounced, or of their prisoner's escaping.

Twice during the night Dexter got up automatically to replenish the
fire, and on another occasion he awakened sharply to find the girl
tiptoeing out of her tent.  He was on his feet, almost before his
eyes had opened, and smiled grimly at the sight of her startled face.
"It's too early to get up now," he remarked pleasantly.  "We'll call
you when it's time."

She gave him a disconcerted glance, and then turned slowly, without a
word, and crept back under the shelter-cloth.  Dexter tossed a couple
of billets of wood on the fire, and calmly returned to his blanket.
After that he got in two hours of unbroken rest before the approach
of dawn finally banished sleep.

He and Devreaux awakened at about the same moment and bestirred
themselves in the lingering darkness.  While the superintendent was
poking up the embers of the fire, Dexter went to the brook to chop a
wash basin in the ice.  He came back, bearing a filled bucket, his
hands and face tingling after a heroic soaping in the chilly water.

When breakfast was ready they called the girl, and she came forth,
drowsy and shivering, to sit by the tiny fire.  There was a little
droop of dejection about her shoulders, but the courage of her blue
eyes was not yet dimmed.  As Dexter observed her covertly in the
steel gray dawn, some vagrant stirring of memory brought back to him
for an instant the lovely image of a nameless blue and white flower
he had one day discovered, blooming valiantly and unaccountably
beside a mountain snow drift.  To him this woman seemed as much out
of place in a bleak camp of the police, as the pretty, stray blossom
that had got lost above timberline.

She greeted the two men with a distant nod, but had nothing to say to
them; and they respected her mood, and did not try to draw her into
conversation.

When breakfast was finished and the back packs had been made up, the
three strolled through the spruces to the neighboring clearing.  The
fire had burned out during the night, and all that was left of the
cabin was the fireplace and chimney, scorched and blackened, standing
solitary over a heap of smoldering ruins.

Devreaux viewed the desolate scene with down-drawn brows, and
presently moved forward in the smoke to prowl among the debris.  For
several minutes his squat figure was seen moving and stooping in the
dingy haze; and when he returned his boots and gloves were sooted
black.

"I've been poking around where you said the bunks stood," he
remarked, shouldering the corporal beyond their companion's hearing.
"Found your manacles, and--not much else.  Those pitch logs burn with
a frightful heat."

"I tried to get in there when I discovered the fire," Dexter told
him.  "But it was too late.  I couldn't make it."

"No fault of yours.  You did all you could, of course."

The superintendent surveyed the smoking wreckage.  "The center of
fire seems to have been in the timbers near the chimney.  It must
have started there."

"We can put the cause down to accident," remarked Dexter.  "The girl
couldn't have started an incendiary blaze.  I was right at her heels
when she circled back here last night, and I realize now she wouldn't
have had time to touch it off.  And there were no tracks to indicate
that any one else visited the clearing during our absence."

"Caught from the fireplace, then," observed Devreaux.

"Undoubtedly.  There was a hot fire in the grate, and as you
remarked, those pitch floor timbers would easily catch ablaze.  A
chance ember popping out would set it going."

The superintendent gave Dexter a sidewise glance and regretfully
shook his head.  "Sorry, just the same.  I should like to have
identified the man who killed Constable Graves.  Now we may never
know.

"Young Graves!" he echoed gently.  "He'll have to do for the present
as you left him.  We'll send in for him when we can."

The colonel lapsed into silence for a moment, while his glance roved
about him in the ghostly twilight.  But presently he turned aside to
move through the fringes of the clearing.  He was absent for some
time, and when he came back he said he had circled the area of timber
surrounding the cabin.

"Just to make sure that you overlooked nothing when you searched last
night in the dark," he remarked to the corporal.  "I'm satisfied.
There are no wires strung to the cabin."  He faced his companion with
a quizzical expression.  "It couldn't have been a telephone you
heard."

"I heard the whirr of a bell, and I heard a voice give forewarning,"
Dexter reiterated.  "I can tell you no more than that.  As for the
rest, it all seems as bizarre and unreal this morning as the memory
of a nightmare."

"The rest is real enough," said Devreaux somberly.  "Graves and your
two prisoners murdered, the cabin burned, this strange young woman
left on our hands, and 'Pink' Crill and other unknown skulkers at
large in the woods.  Hard, ugly facts, Dexter!"  He looked at the
younger man in gloomy foreboding, and sighed, and shook his head.  "I
hate like thunder to leave you here alone," he ended.

"Pshaw!" said the corporal, with his quick, bright smile.

"Yes, I know.  You boys always say that.  And that's why I'm able to
run this territory with no more than a dozen of you standing by me."
The colonel stooped abruptly for his pack, and then straightened with
a brusque movement and stuck out his hand.  "We'll foot it down the
valley to the horses, and ride on out," he said as his iron grip
closed for an instant in a farewell handshake.  "So-long, David."

Without further speech he beckoned to Alison Rayne.  "Ready!" he
announced.

The girl hesitated for only a second, and then with a helpless
gesture she turned to follow.  Devreaux motioned her to go in
advance, and she passed by with shut lips and high-poised head,
without a single backward glance.  The colonel paused to wave his
hand, and then the black forest closed upon the retreating figures,
and Dexter was left alone in the clearing.




CHAPTER X

NO-MAN'S COUNTRY

The corporal lingered by the smoking embers, gazing with a queer,
ruminative look in his eyes towards the spot where quaking branches
cut off his last sight of the departing travelers.  Behind him he
could hear the faint sputter and hiss of live fire still gnawing
under the cabin timbers.  A chorus of shrill, thin pipings sounded
from the dimness of the woods, and a band of chickadees wheeled forth
in elfin flight, whisked past his face, and vanished across the
clearing.  He stirred abruptly at the breaking of his thoughts, and
turned for a final scrutiny of the ground about him.

For more than an hour he ranged back and forth in the misty dawn,
searching for any small clew or minutiæ of fact that might in some
way throw light upon last night's grewsome mysteries.  What had
actually happened in those few intense moments before the prisoners
were killed?  What was the bell that rang?  Who had barred the door
and fired the shots, and dropped a discharged pistol on the floor,
and departed afterwards, noiseless and unseen, with no human
footprint left outside?  How was it all accomplished?  He did not
know.  And an exhaustive researching in the daylight still left him
at his wit's end, without one tangible hint to suggest the
explanation of an inexplicable business.  He prowled with nervous
energy about the clearing and through the neighboring strip of
forest, and his sharp vision missed nothing that mortal eyes could
see.  But the riddle of the tragic visitation remained inviolate.  It
was as though he dealt with factors and forces that hovered beyond
the scope of human sight and comprehension.

Finishing his profitless investigations at last, he stood irresolute
for a space, frowning, not quite decided what he ought to do next.
His future plans were as yet indefinite.  He was assigned on roving
patrol, cast upon his own resources, dependent in all matters upon
his own judgment.  Before he looked upon civilized places again he
must hold some sort of accounting with the elusive outlaw, Crill.
But in this thousand-mile stretch of mountain wilderness, the game
of hide-and-seek might drag along through weeks and months.
Meanwhile, he knew he would find no peace of mind until he had gained
some inkling of truth concerning Alison Rayne.

Who was she?  What possible errand could have brought her alone into
this shut-in region of silence?  What concern had she in the affairs
of Mudgett and the dark-visaged stranger, or of the other intruders
who prowled somewhere behind the range?  Was it her voice he had
heard last night in the cabin?  He drew a sharp breath, and slowly
shook his head.  The questions clamored unanswered.  He knew no more
about the girl than she had allowed him to read in her level-gazing
eyes.

There remained one possibility: if the fresh snow lasted long enough
he at least could find the place she came from.  The sought-for
information might possibly be picked up at the end of the back trail.
In a moment he made his decision.  Other matters might wait;
meanwhile he would try to settle definitely, one way or another, the
disturbing enigma that had haunted his thoughts since his first
meeting with Alison Rayne.

No longer hesitating, he shouldered his pack and picked up his
carbine.  He cast a final glance towards the pile of blackened litter
where the cabin had stood, and then, with the relieved breath of one
who quits a place of evil, he swung on his heel and started northward
through the silent forest.

He struck the line of familiar little footprints in the runway where
he had first discovered them the evening before.  This time, however,
he took the trail that approached the cabin clearing, and let the
heel marks point his direction of travel.  Treading the reversed
pathway, he found himself branching to the right, and in a few
moments had reached the edge of the brook.

The girl had followed the stream down from the north, walking in the
middle of the frozen watercourse.  But at this point she had struck
off at a right angle through the timber, making straight for the
clearing.  Across the way an old, lightning-blasted sugar pine
towered high above the spruces.  This tree would serve as an
unmistakable landmark, even in the darkness.  By the abruptness of
the trail's turning, it looked very much as though the girl knew
where she was going when she left the stream here to shape a direct
course for the cabin.  Dexter paused for a moment to examine the
ground, and then, with a half nod of conviction, he continued on his
way.

The footprints kept to the ice, leading him back towards the
headwaters of the brook.  Dexter followed the windings of the stream,
but for reasons of his own, he did not stay in the open course, as
the girl had done.  There was no knowing what peril might be lurking
at each new bending of the densely wooded shore line.  It was an
ideal country for bushwhacking.  Remembering what had happened to
Constable Graves, he refrained from exposing himself unwarily.  He
clung to the shelter of the bank, treading cautiously, gliding like a
shadow through the fringes of alder and willow.

His progress was necessarily slow.  All morning he traveled, keeping
along with the tortuous meanderings of the brook, and when he finally
halted for noonday tea, he estimated that he had advanced no more
than five or six miles as a bird might fly.  The backward trail of
small shoe prints continued with the stream.

The girl evidently had come down that way from some deeper fastness
of the forest-clad mountains.  As the corporal recalled, the country
above here had never been officially mapped or explored.  His own
farthest wanderings had never taken him into the valley of this
nameless stream, and he had no notion what was hidden beyond.

He resumed his journey, moving always among the concealing thickets,
pausing at every sharp bend of the brook to reconnoiter the ground
ahead.  The afternoon advanced, and he trudged onward in the white
stillness, finding no sign of human intrusion other than the trail
unraveling from the north, seemingly without any place of beginning.
No wonder the girl was in a state of physical exhaustion last night
when he escorted her to Devreaux's camp.  She had walked many miles
to reach the cabin clearing.

All day the corporal kept on the move, back-tracking her yesterday's
footsteps up the valley of silence.  Sometimes he paused to listen,
and once he imagined that he caught a far-off sound of chopping.  He
turned aside to investigate, and lost more than an hour ranging
through the forest tangle.  But he did not hear the sound again, and
no sign of any axman was found.  A while later his alert eyes
discovered a shifting patch of brown that appeared and instantly
vanished in a distant hillside covert.  Again he made a cautious
detour, only to come at last upon the fresh tracks of a mule deer.

When he returned to the brook after this last excursion, he left the
shielding thickets, where travel was slow and difficult, and strode
on with quickened step along the open course.  The sun was sinking
over the snow-capped peaks that stood in serried outline against the
westward sky, and he realized that unless he made haste darkness was
likely to overtake him before the riddle of the trail was solved.

For half an hour longer he pushed ahead through the endless stretches
of forest, and then, most unexpectedly, as he rounded a sharp bend of
the brook, he found himself at the edge of an open glade where there
stood a log cabin, half hidden among the bordering trees.  He stopped
with up jerked head, staring through the tracery of branches, and saw
that he had reached his journey's end.  The line of the girl's
footprints descended to the brook from the cabin door.  It was from
this place that she had set forth on her fateful errand.




CHAPTER XI

THE VOICE OF WARNING

Dusk was falling, and a hush of emptiness and desolation brooded over
the clearing.  The cabin door was closed, and no smoke came from the
mud-daubed chimney.  Dexter's eyes searched over the ground, and he
saw only the single track of footprints.  Evidently the girl was the
only one who had crossed here, either departing or arriving, since
the fall of yesterday's snow.

Quite certain that the dwelling had no present tenant, the corporal
nevertheless was taking no chances.  Slinging his carbine at his
back, he drew his heavy service pistol.  Then, without further ado,
he stepped forward to investigate.

The cabin was constructed of freshly peeled logs, saddle-notched, and
in size and method of building, it was a practical duplication of the
other mysterious habitation which he had stumbled upon last night in
this same lonesome valley.  He recalled the story told him by
Mudgett--of a so-called settler and trapper named Stark who had put
up a shack somewhere in this direction.  Possibly this was the cabin
mentioned.

The latchstring dangled invitingly on the outside, and, without
pausing to reconnoiter, the corporal pulled up the fastening bar and
shoved the door open.  He crossed the threshold, and found himself in
a large, square room, dimly revealed in the failing daylight.  In the
gloom he made out a stone fireplace, and a pole bunk built against
the opposite wall.

As he stood blinking, trying to accustom his vision to the
semi-darkness, he heard a quick rustling sound, and was suddenly
aware of a white face and a pair of gleaming eyes staring at him from
the bunk.

"Hello!" he ejaculated, taken aback for an instant by the unexpected
apparition.  "If I'd imagined any one was here I'd have knocked."

He crossed the floor and saw a man's blanketed shape, propped half
erect in the bunk.  A glance told the corporal that the other was a
stranger.  He was a smooth-faced youth, nineteen or twenty years old
probably, with drawn, haggard features, dank, uncut hair, and
wide-spaced, staring eyes that glowed with feverish brightness in the
gathering dusk.  His weight was rigidly supported on one elbow, and a
look of seeming consternation flitted across his face as he caught
sight of the police uniform.

"What--what do you want here?" he faltered in a straining undertone.

Dexter did not answer.  "Who are you?" he countered.  "What's your
name?"

"Why, it's--Smith," said the boy with a noticeable stumbling.  "Tom
Smith."

The corporal's mouth twisted skeptically.  "Seems to me I've heard
that name somewhere else.  Smith, eh?  Well, Smith, what's the matter
with you?  Sick?"

The boy stirred and brought his bare arm from under the blanket.  "Ax
slipped and cut me, and the thing's got infected," he said.  "I've
been in agony for two days."

"I should think so!" exclaimed Dexter.  The forearm was darkly
inflamed, swollen to twice its normal dimensions, and reddish purple
streaks had begun to creep upward to the shoulder joint.  "You've
neglected this for two days?"

"I didn't know what to do with it."

"Then you've no business in this country."  Dexter regarded the young
man curiously.  "These little accidents are always apt to occur, and
unless you've got the nerve and sense to do your own surgery, you'd
better stay where hospitals are handy."

He turned his back for a moment and put away his pistol.  Then,
unobserved, he drew a small, thin bladed knife from his pocket.
"Here!" he said.  "Let's see that."

Gripping the injured arm firmly, he leaned forward and found the seat
of the wound.  Then, with merciful swiftness, before the other could
guess his purpose, he slashed with his sharp blade, cutting deep into
the throbbing flesh.  The boy jerked away, screaming in sudden
anguish.

"Oh, you--what have you done?" he moaned.

"In town they'd have given you an anæsthetic," remarked the officer.
"Here we've got to take what comes, and bear it.  You should have
done that for yourself yesterday."

The stranger groaned feebly, and hugged his wrist, and for the
moment, evidently, speech was beyond him.

"All we need now is hot water, and plenty of antiseptics," said
Dexter.  "We can do."

He crossed to the hearth, laid kindling, and ignited a fire.  This
done, he went outside, and returned a moment later with a snow-filled
kettle to hang over the flame.

"How do you feel now?" he asked, going back to the bunk.

"I think--a little better," came a weak answer from the pillow.
"It's a different kind of hurt."

"If I hadn't come along you would have died--about four days from
now," said the policeman lightly.  "As it is, you should be able to
handle an ax again in about four days."

"I suppose I ought to thank you," said Smith after a little silence.

"I expect you ought to.  You'll sleep to-night."  Dexter grinned
encouragingly.  "Hungry?"

"Not very."

"I am."  The corporal unslung his pack, and turned to investigate the
culinary resources of the shack.  His search discovered a well
stocked larder, and he calmly helped himself to such things as he
required.  He kneaded dough for bannock bread and set the loaf
baking, started coffee, and sliced a liberal quantity of bacon.  By
the time these preparations were made, the kettle of snow water was
boiling.

He dissolved tablets from his emergency kit in a strong solution, and
then swathed the arm of his wincing patient in steaming bandages.
"We'll keep that about ten degrees hotter than you think you can
stand it," he asserted.  "And the first thing you know you'll be off
the casualty list."

Dexter returned to his cooking, and when the simple meal was finally
ready, he heaped a plate for Smith, and then set a place for himself
at a slab table near the bunk.

"Whose cabin is this?" he asked abruptly as he pulled up a stool.

The boy hesitated for a second, and then apparently decided that
there was no harm in telling the truth.  "It belongs to Owen Stark,"
he said.

"Stark!" the corporal nodded.  So this was the shack that Mudgett had
mentioned.  "Who's Owen Stark?  I don't know him."

"A trapper," was the reply.  "He intends to live here this winter."

"What about you?  You're not a woodsman."

"No," admitted the other after a pause.  "Stark invited me to visit
him--for the fall hunting.  I don't expect to stay much longer."

"Where's Stark now?" the policeman asked as he applied himself to his
plate.

"He went up the valley somewhere--probably twenty miles or so north
of here.  Left two days ago, and I wouldn't expect him back much
before to-morrow.  Looking for places to run his trap line."

Dexter offered no comment.  It was a plausible enough story--if Stark
were really a trapper.  Yet there was something anxious and
overstrained in the boy's speech, as though he might be inventing his
answers.  Or again, perhaps it was only his arm that troubled him.

"Stark went off and left you here alone?" the corporal asked with a
slantwise glance.

"Yes.  I wasn't so bad at the time."

During his inspection of the cabin interior, Dexter had noticed a
woman's cloak and hat hanging on one of the wall pegs.  Now he
suddenly turned, and pointed with his thumb.  "Whom do those belong
to?" he demanded.

The patient moved gingerly under his blanket, rolling his head so he
might see.  "Those are Mrs. Stark's," he said.

"What?"  The exclamation came sharply, before Dexter could control
his voice, and his knife and fork dropped on the table.  "You mean to
say--she's married?"  He stared for a moment with puckered brows, and
then almost instantly recalled himself.  "I mean--Stark has a wife?"

"Yes."

"She left here yesterday?" asked the corporal in low, curiously
restrained accents.

"No," returned the other unhesitatingly.  "She left a couple of weeks
ago for a visit in the settlements.  She hasn't come back yet."

"Let's get this straight," said Dexter after a tense interlude,
"She's been away for a couple of weeks, you say.  What's she like?
Rather pretty girl, copper-tinted hair, large blue eyes--wearing--"

"No," interrupted Smith.  "Not at all."

Dexter drew a short breath.  "Well?" he demanded.

"Vera Stark's not a girl, but a woman about thirty-five," stated the
boy.  "Thin--dark complexion--jet black hair and eyes."

"Oh, I see."  Dexter picked up his knife and fork, and started to eat
once more with a healthy man's appetite.  For the moment his
attention was fixed upon his plate, but he was somehow aware that
furtive eyes were watching him from the shadow of the bunk.

"You seem to have got her mixed up with some one else," his companion
presently ventured to remark.

"Yes, it would seem so."  The corporal looked up with a retrospective
smile.  "The one I was thinking of, I happened to meet yesterday in
the lower valley.  Her shoe tracks would indicate that she came from
this cabin.  Know her?"

"There was a girl such as you describe--here--yesterday," said Smith.
He turned on his pillow and yawned, with every sign of indifference.

"Who was she?" asked the policeman crisply.

"She didn't say.  Didn't tell me a thing about herself.  And I was
too sick to be very curious."  The boy stretched himself and buried
his head deeper in the pillow.  "Gee--I feel better," he murmured.
"This is the first comfortable minute I've had--"

"Where'd she come from?" interrupted the officer.

"I didn't ask her," replied the other in a drowsy voice.

"Just dropped in from nowhere?"

"Yes.  Wanted to rest a while, and get out of the snow.  When it
stopped snowing she went on her way."  The young man sighed, and
pulled the blanket higher, as though to keep the firelight out of his
eyes.  "I would have thought it funny," he pursued in a dreamy,
far-away tone--"a girl like that--alone--but as I told you I was so
miserable, I didn't think--I didn't ask her anything about herself."
The voice trailed off to a whisper, and speech momentarily failed.

"That's all you can tell me about her?"

"'S all."

"Where are you from yourself?" asked the officer.

"Montreal," was the sleepy reply.

"How long you been here?"

No answer came from the bunk.

Dexter stood up and crossed the room, to look down at the face on the
pillow.  The boy's eyes were shut, and his breathing was deep and
regular, as though he had fallen into a doze.  Perhaps he was
shamming to avoid further questioning.  Perhaps not.  It was quite
likely that he had not slept for nights, and was on the verge of
complete exhaustion.  Now--soothed by the hot bandages, relieved from
his long protracted pain--he might easily drop off like this in the
middle of a word.

Upon reflection the officer decided not to disturb him.  Possibly he
knew more than he was willing to tell about the mysterious girl.  But
he could go on with sweeping denials of ever having seen her before,
and Dexter knew from experience how impossible it is to pin down a
witness who persists in answering in general negatives.  Besides, if
the boy were really suffering from lack of sleep, it would be cruelty
to force him to stay awake.

The policeman himself was beginning to feel the effect of long,
jading hours.  He sat for a while, musing over the fire, but after
darkness had fallen it occurred to him that he might as well call it
a day.  A last reconnaissance out-of-doors convinced him that, for
the time being at least, he and his chance-found cabin mate were the
only mortal beings existent in that particular section of the forest.
It was a breathless night, deathly silent.  A bank of low-hanging
clouds scudded over the tree tops, and the weighted air held the
promise of snow.  He went back into the cabin, discreetly barred the
door and withdrew the latch cord, and then spread his blanket by the
fireplace and rolled up for the night.  In two minutes he was sunk in
profoundest slumber.

Hours passed, and the silence endured.  From time to time Dexter was
vaguely aware of a fretful stirring and moaning in the darkness where
the bunk stood, but such sounds were self-explanatory and gave him no
reason to awaken.  The fire burned to dead ashes, and the early
morning chill crept through the room, but he only drew his blanket
tighter.  But sometime near the approach of dawn, at the darkest,
stillest hour of ebbing night-tide, a queer, faint buzzing noise
broke suddenly upon his inner consciousness.

In a flash he roused himself, trying to see through the gloom,
listening for some repetition of the sound.  He had almost persuaded
himself that imagination had tricked him, and was on the point of
reaching again for the blanket flap, when, all at once, a muffled
voice began to speak from the bunk.  The tones were repressed and
rather unsteady, but the words were intelligible.

"I'm all right.  Lots better.  Policeman fixed me up."  It was the
boy, apparently talking to himself in the darkness.

The tenseness of Dexter's attitude promptly relaxed.  His patient no
doubt was feverish, a little delirious--maundering in his sleep.
Nevertheless the corporal waited, mildly curious to know what else
might be said.

He was not kept long in suspense.  "You were?" exclaimed the voice,
as though questioning a fanciful person.  "And got away?  That's
good, anyhow."

There followed another short silence, and then the speaker in the
bunk was heard again.  "No!"  This time the tone seemed to carry a
sharp warning.  "Don't come here.  Go to the Saddle Notch.
Somebody'll meet you there.  Understand?"

As he listened Dexter stiffened to keen alertness.  This was not like
the raving of a dreaming man.  The words were beginning to make
sense.  And there were definite pauses between sentences, as though
the speaker were waiting for some one else to reply.  As the corporal
leaned forward, trying to see in the darkness, he was grimly reminded
of last night's strange events--of another lonely cabin, of another
voice heard in seeming conversation with an unidentified some one who
answered mysteriously from somewhere else.

He waited, breathless, and the boy spoke once more.  "See you later,"
he declared.  "Good luck."  And then he ended with a farewell
utterance that brought Dexter to his feet in gasping wonderment.
"Good-by, Alison!" he said.




CHAPTER XII

THE RENDEZVOUS

The spoken name had all the effect of a galvanic shock.  "Alison!"
Dexter kicked the blanket from his legs, and in the darkness
blundered across the room.  He reached the bunk, drew a match from
his pocket, and struck a light.  As the flame flared in the darkness
he stared downward and saw the boy's motionless form stretched at
full length on the mattress.  From all appearances, the patient had
not changed position since the evening before.  He was lying in his
blankets, facing the wall, with eyes closed, temples slightly
flushed, and breathing evenly through half open mouth.  Seemingly, he
was sound asleep.

But unquestionably it was his voice that had been heard; furthermore,
Dexter could have sworn that he was talking over a telephone.

However, there was no telephone here: none, at least, that the
corporal was able to find.  And such an instrument scarcely could
have been hidden in the second it took him to spring across the room.
Nevertheless, he settled his doubts by looking.  He searched under
the bunk and behind the bunk, and then leaned over to assure himself
that there were no lumpy objects stuffed in the mattress.  He was
prodding at the pillow, when he felt a sudden movement, and was aware
that Smith was looking up at him with a dull vacuous stare.

"What is it?" the young man drowsily mumbled.

"Whom were you talking to just now?" demanded the corporal.

"I?"  Smith blinked his lids, and gazed about him with an expression
of utter blankness.  "What do you mean?"

"I heard something like a click, and a minute later you spoke:
warning somebody not to come here--to go somewhere else."

"You heard me?"  The boy started to raise himself in the bunk, and
then fell back with a groan, grasping his injured arm.  "Oh!" he
sighed, "I--I nearly forgot.  Must have had a good night.  What time
is it?"

"You were speaking to some one named Alison," persisted the policeman.

"Alison?"  Smith shook his head slowly, regarded his inquisitor with
heavy, sleep-dulled eyes.  "You must have been dreaming--or else I
was.  If I was talking, I must have been having a nightmare.  I don't
remember--"

"Who's Alison?" cut in the officer sharply.

"Why, I don't know," said the other with a suppressed yawn.  "Never
heard of him."

Dexter lighted another match and peered searchingly at the face
before him, and the boy's blue eyes returned his gaze with a look of
blandest innocence.  "Do you know a woman named Alison?"

"No," was the unequivocal answer.

"You didn't speak that name a moment ago?"

"Not that I know of."

"Where's Saddle Notch?"

"Is it a place--or what?  Did I say that too?"  Smith's mouth
quivered in the faintest suggestion of a grin.  "Gee, I must have
been having a whale of a dream--thinking up all those things!"

Dexter stood for a moment in baffled silence, and then turned away
with an impatient shrug.  What was the use?  The boy had all the best
of it.  The inquisition might be kept up for hours, and always he
could cling to his one irrefutable assertion--that his talk was the
meaningless jargon of dreams.  The officer had no vestige of proof to
establish the truth or the untruth of any statement that was made.

Nevertheless, Dexter was convinced that Smith had not been asleep,
and he could not believe that the boy was talking to himself.  He had
said good-by to "Alison."  Had he contrived in some unaccountable
manner to get into communication with Alison Rayne?  Impossible!  The
girl was Colonel Devreaux's prisoner, and by this time they would be
camping thirty or forty miles farther down the valley.  How to reach
her by voice, except through radio or telephone?  There was no other
conceivable way.

So mystery again resolved itself into the bogy of a telephone line
that did not seem to exist.  Dexter had ransacked one cabin in futile
search of a communicating circuit, and now his perplexity gave him no
choice but to go through the same performance at this place.  With a
sigh and a shake of his head, he lighted a candle, and set about an
irksome task.

He went out of doors first, and inspected the ground.  The snow held
no intruding footprints.  Smith could not have been talking to any
one who stood within earshot.  No wires went out from the cabin, so
it seemed equally certain that his voice had not been transmitted
over a telephone line.  Wireless?  That last remaining possibility
was easily settled.  He searched the interior cabin from end to end,
floor, walls, roof, fireplace, prying into every imaginable nook and
cranny; and found not one piece or part of radio equipment.  Nor was
there anything about the place to suggest that the owner might be
engaged in any business other than fur trapping.  The first streaks
of daylight were beginning to filter through the windows when Dexter
finally gave it up as a hopeless puzzle.

The boy had been watching from the bunk, without comment, his artless
face betraying nothing more than mild curiosity.  The corporal
scrutinized him with narrow eyes.  His pose of innocence was well put
on, but Dexter could not help but feel that it was assumed for the
occasion.  From the beginning he had refused to believe that the
young man had told his right name, and the suspicion persisted that
he was in some way involved in the affairs of the incomprehensible
girl who had quitted this cabin two days before.  Whether awake or
asleep, he certainly had spoken the name "Alison," and it all sounded
strangely like a warning.

Dexter darkly pondered the significance of the words he had
overheard.  Assuming that the impossible might have happened--that a
message could carry by some queer, occult agency through the
intervening leagues of forest--then its purport was unmistakable.
"Don't come here.  Go to Saddle Notch."  The boy's speech carried
definite instructions.  Were the words, by miraculous chance,
intended to reach the girl?  If she could come and go at will, as the
mysterious conversation might seem to indicate, there was but one
inference to be drawn: she had escaped from Devreaux.

Following his startling line of conjecture thus far, the rest was
only simple logic.  If the girl actually had fled from the hands of
one policeman, naturally her friends would attempt to warn her away
from a cabin where a second policeman had established himself.  She
would be advised to strike for a safer retreat.  Saddle Notch!  In a
sudden flash of intuition, the corporal persuaded himself that he
knew the place.  Riding across the west range two days ago he had
been struck by the appearance of a peculiarly shaped mountain with
two outstanding peaks, and a cleft or notch between, that bore an
amazing resemblance to a gigantic saddle.  The mountain stood amid a
cluster of other high peaks in a wild and lonely region, about twenty
miles southwest of this spot.  Such country offered ideal refuge to
any fugitive who might be hard pressed, seeking to hide.

For a moment the corporal considered the strangely suggested
possibilities.  No doubt it would prove a futile chase to go ranging
through the forests on a flimsy hint of this sort; yet a blind
instinct urged him to go.  He hesitated for an instant, and then,
with a nod and a fleeting smile, he made his decision.  If by any
millionth chance Alison Rayne had broken away from Devreaux and was
traveling to a meeting at the Saddle Notch with some unidentified
friend, then he, the policeman, would also be there to keep the
rendezvous.




CHAPTER X

BLIND-MAN'S CHASE

With face cold and inscrutable, Dexter crossed the cabin to stand by
the bunk.  For a moment he regarded the boy in silent speculation.
Whatever the young man's hidden thoughts, he was taking good care to
keep them to himself.  And there was no way to force him to betray
secrets.  An officer has no right to employ extreme methods in
dealing with a law-abiding citizen; and there was no evidence to
accuse Smith of any illegal act.  Grounds for his arrest or detention
were lacking.  Even the time-worn pretext of holding a suspected
offender as a "witness" wouldn't stand in his case.  He had witnessed
nothing he could be called to the box for--unless, indeed, he
testified to the fact that he had watched a policeman rummaging
vainly, and without written warrant, through another man's dwelling.
Apparently there was nothing to be done except to grant him the best
of the encounter.

Dexter suppressed a rueful laugh, and reached forward abruptly to
touch the boy's bandaged arm.  "Let's see how you're doing this
morning," he suggested lightly.

The patient's condition appeared to be much improved since last
night.  Dexter heated water and applied new dressings, and gave the
sufferer detailed instruction for self-treatment.  He lingered long
enough to cook breakfast, and then picked up his pack and carbine and
turned towards the door.

"Where are you going?" asked Smith, with a sudden display of interest.

The corporal looked back with a faint quirk of his mouth.  "If I
should walk in my sleep, we'll be quits," he remarked.  "So long,
Smith."

"So long, officer," a pleasant voice called after him; and he opened
the door and stepped out into the snow.

It was a dull, gray morning, with a sodden chill in the air.  The
dense, leaden atmosphere was like an oppressive stillness upon the
earth, and the dingy sky of the northwest held the threat of dark
forces gathering.  Colonel Devreaux apparently was wise in his
prognostication.  Winter's first deadly storm was brewing behind the
ranges, and before nightfall the big snow was surely due.

Dexter observed the weather signs with a brooding glance, and then,
with a fatalistic shrug, he buttoned his collar tight, and strode
across the brook.  By the fringe of the streamside alders he paused
for a moment to consult his pocket compass.  As he remembered his
direction points, the saddle mountain lay behind two intervening
ridges, almost on a south by west line.  The easier route would be to
follow the brook back past the burned cabin, and then turn north
along a branch stream that cut through dense timber on the farther
side of the valley.  But this course would take him miles out of his
way.  The shorter path lay through a difficult country of forest and
hills, but, without horse or baggage, he ought to be able to make his
way across.  For a second he hesitated, and then decided on the
straightaway route.  Hitching his pack higher on his shoulders, he
left the brook and struck off through the woods.

Anxious to reach his destination before the storm descended, he set
himself a pace that might have killed a man unused to wilderness
travel.  Head bent forward, body relaxed at the hips, feet balancing
on a straight line, as a moccasined Indian walks, he swung forward
with a long, flexible stride, dodging under branches, weaving back
and forth among windfalls and thickets, leaping over down-trunks,
moving onward without halt or hesitation, like a shadow gliding
through the white mazes of the forest.

It was still early morning when he climbed up through a tangle of
hillside brush, and passed over the watershed of the brook he had
left behind.  By noon he had crossed the jungle hollow beyond and
ascended to the top of the next parallel ridge; and through an open
vista on the higher ground he caught his first glimpse of the distant
mountain peaks, towering ghostly white against the reaches of the
sullen sky.

He paused only to make sure of his bearings, and then plunged forward
once more into the thick forest.  For nearly two hours he worked out
his tortuous trail, descending a long slope, broken by gulleys and
ravines, through a wilderness of ancient spruces, where smothering
undergrowths contested his pathway and shut him in on all sides as a
swimmer is surrounded by the waves of the sea.  But he struggled on
doggedly, and passed in time through the worst of it.  Eventually the
smaller growths began to thin out, and the spruces gradually made way
for the jack pines.  He had more frequent glimpses of the sky, and
presently, through a rift in the branches, he once more discovered
the smoky outlines of mountain caps.

Pushing rapidly forward, he soon left the forest behind, and came at
last to the border of an open field of snow, whence he viewed the
full majestic sweep of the country before him.

For a mile or more straight ahead, and right and left as far as he
could see the ground stretched away, level and treeless, to the foot
of a cliff-like palisade--an appalling hundred foot terrace, rising
sheer from the flat below.  From the top of this first high point a
sort of broad shelf, or plateau, dipped back for another couple of
miles into the dark, ringing circle of a twin-peaked mountain.  And
farther still, like a faint smoke haze upon the middle sky, stood the
towering saw edge of the coastal divide, the final great barrier that
forbade the crossing from valley to valley of all things that did not
follow the soaring eagle's route.

A dank wind drew down through the flue of the mountains, bringing a
first warning flutter of snowflakes.  In the immediate foreground the
double peaks loomed in bold outline, and it would have needed a dull
imagination, indeed, that lacked a name for this individual mountain.
It was like a saddle sculptured on colossal proportions--pommel,
cantle, even the stirrup--chiseled realistically in sweeping,
thousand-foot strokes.  A dip of the ridge formed a horse's back and
withers; pointed ears and grotesquely shaped head were blocked out in
strong relief by an up-jutting pinnacle beyond; and in order that
nothing should be lacking, a broad, snow-filled crevice twisted down
the mountainside to give the appearance of a long, flowing tail.

Dexter viewed the stupendous statue with critical appreciation, but
as he looked, for some reason, he began to feel a trifle foolish.
The Saddle Mountain was a sight worth observing, but he had not come
on a wearying journey to awe himself with scenery.  He found himself
wondering why he really had come.  Whom did he expect to find here?
Alison Rayne?  He shook his head incredulously.  After traveling all
this distance it suddenly struck him that he had blundered off
through the forest on a vain and brainless errand--chasing the
chimera of another man's dream.

With a flat feeling of disillusionment, he stood for a moment gazing
vacantly at the lonesome, barren peaks.  Gradually his glance shifted
downward to the plateau that formed the base of the mountain.  He was
scanning the top of the nearest palisade, without expecting to make
any discovery of interest, when his body suddenly stiffened and his
pupils contracted sharply.  Something was moving along the rim of the
precipice.

It was a grayish-white object, diminished by distance to a pin-head
speck, and barely discernible against the snowy background.  Whatever
it was, it was walking, and while Dexter watched, the tiny shape
moved to the edge of the palisade, passed over the brink, and then
started to climb down the steep side of the cliff.

He nodded to himself when he saw what had happened.  Only a sheep or
mountain goat would be apt to attempt the perilous descent of a sheer
wall of rock.  Probably it was a bighorn sheep, driven from the
summits by the approaching storm, and taking the shortest route down
to the valley pastures.  To make certain, however, he uncased his
binoculars to observe the creature in magnified view.

He trained the lenses upon the distant cliff-side, and once more
picked up the climbing shape.  For an instant he gazed dubiously, and
then his wrist tendons drew taut as wires as he tried to steady the
leveled glasses.  It was not a sheep he saw, but a human
shape--clinging against the precipitous height.

Amazed--unbelieving--he gingerly readjusted the focus of his
binoculars, and in a moment the distant cliff-side seemed to draw
towards him in sharper perspective.  The diminutive shape suddenly
enlarged to doll-size, and he made out a straight, slender figure,
clad in white sweater and knickers.  He stared with straining vision,
and recognition came like a blow between the eyes.  The mountain
climber was Alison Rayne.




CHAPTER XIV

PATHS OF PERIL

Overcome by astonishment, Dexter stood motionless and breathless,
peering at the far-off figure with swimming senses, exerting all his
will force to keep the binoculars from wabbling in his tightly
gripped hands.  He had come there looking for Alison Rayne--on a
fool's chase, he persuaded himself a moment before--and now, when he
actually saw her he found himself staring across space with the awed
wonderment of a man who beholds a miraculous apparition.

So the boy in the cabin yonder had reached her with his message of
warning.  Speaking in low-pitched, half-muttered accents, under
pretense of sleep talking, his voice must have carried by some
strange sorcery through the leagues of forest, to be heard by
listening ears.  He had called to Alison, and the girl had answered.
He advised her to flee to the Saddle Mountain, and she had come to
the appointed place.  All of which seemed to establish positive proof
that the two were in communication during that dark morning hour when
Dexter had aroused at the sound of the voice in the cabin bunk.

The incredible staggering facts defied all reason.  Without radio
equipment or the strung wires of a telephone line, there was no
imaginable way in which two people might hold long distance
conversations.  Yet it was manifest that these two had done something
of the sort.

By what hidden medium the word had passed Dexter was utterly unable
to guess.  He did not know what to think.  He only knew that young
Smith had attempted to deceive him.  Not only was it certain now that
the boy knew Alison Rayne, but it was apparent that there was some
secret, sympathetic understanding between them.  And by inference it
must also seem that both were implicated in the affairs at the other
cabin, where a woman's voice had been transmitted in the same
mysterious way.

With his features set in an eloquent scowl, Dexter surveyed the
distant heights.  As far as he could make out, the girl was alone.
So it was evident that in some manner she had outwitted the vigilant
Devreaux: must have escaped some time during the previous night.  If
the colonel were alive and able to travel, he would be following her.
It was the logical supposition that he was on her trail now,
following, probably, not far behind.  The fact that she was taking a
short cut to the lower valley, over the brink of a dangerous cliff,
would indicate desperate haste.

No pursuer was visible at that moment, but from his position the
corporal was unable to see what might be happening behind the brow of
the high terrace.  It was quite possible that a second moving speck
would soon heave in sight.

Meanwhile, Dexter turned his glasses back towards the girl, and his
lips twisted at the corners into a grim, inexorable smile.  Thanks to
the hunter's instinct he had traveled to this place on blind impulse,
disregarding logic and reason; and now he held the strategic ground,
waiting to cut off the girl's escape.

At the distance the cliff had the appearance of a smooth-faced,
perpendicular wall.  But presumably the surface was not as steep as
the observer first imagined, or else there were cracks and projecting
points to afford a foothold.  At any rate, the tiny figure seemed to
cling securely to the dizzy pitch, as a swift hangs against the side
of a chimney; and slowly, by almost imperceptible degrees, crept
downward from the brink.

As Dexter watched with bated breath he could not help but marvel at
the resolution and cool-headed nerve that dared attempt such a
hazardous descent.  To gain the valley by a safer path, however,
would mean a four- or five-mile tramp by way of the cañon-like notch
that broke into the northern shoulder of the mountain.  In all
probability the fugitive was closely pursued, and as Dexter had found
out by previous experience Alison Rayne was not the sort to weigh
difficulties and dangers when freedom was at stake.  Apparently she
had reason to accept a life or death chance at the threat of
recapture.  And not knowing Devreaux, as the men of his command knew
him, she might too readily assume that the bulky, middle-aged
policeman would think twice before clambering after her over the top
of a precipice.

Dexter looked out fearfully, with his tongue between his teeth.  Even
through his binoculars, the form on the cliff was limned in
miniature, like an animated toy.  The small figure crept downward
with agonizing slowness, feeling cautiously for each new foothold,
groping with clinging fingers, counting the distance gained by
niggard inches.  Realizing the danger of startling the girl by
showing himself at such a moment, the corporal restrained his
anxieties, and held his position, waiting.

He was peering tensely through the glasses, scarcely breathing, when
all at once his heart gave a spasmodic jump.  The climbing shape
seemed to lose contact with the wall--slipping; and as he stared with
horrified eyes, the little figure swayed sidewise, flung up vainly
reaching arms, and suddenly dropped from view.

Dexter felt a sharp muscular shrinking in his body, and for an
instant his senses swirled with a queer physical sickness.
Instinctively his eyes shut, dreading the anguish of seeing.  But in
a moment he shook off the first feeling of giddiness, and by a strong
mental effort, forced himself to look again.  Breathing audibly
through tight clenched teeth, he steadied himself and held the
glasses firm.  Gradually he lowered the lenses, and then suddenly a
great gasping sigh heaved up from the depths of his chest, and his
sagging shoulders lifted, as though relieved of a crushing weight.
At a point midway down the cliff, he once more had caught sight of
the small, clinging figure.

His eyes aglow with thanksgiving, he stared intently, and at once
understood what had happened.  The girl must have lost her footing
somehow, falling down the face of the cliff; but instead of plunging
to her death among the rocks at the bottom, she landed providentially
upon some sort of shelf or ledge, only a few feet below, and with
quick wit had caught a handgrip and anchored herself to the
projecting stone.

For the time being she had saved herself, but as Dexter gazed towards
the far-off heights, fresh misgivings smote him.  The girl was
huddled against the flat wall, resting partly on one knee, her hands
spread out before her.  He watched dubiously for a space, and she did
not attempt to move.  He could not make out her face, nor was he able
to see how she managed to hold on; but there was a drooping limpness
in the posture of the tiny figure, and he realized that she was in
distress.  Either she was hurt, or else she had lost confidence and
was afraid to stir from an insecure resting place.  In either case
she needed help.  Dexter promptly left the shelter of the trees, and
started forward, running, across the snowy meadow.

The ground underfoot was broken by pits and furrows, but he plunged
on recklessly, measuring his stride by instinct, keeping his anxious
glances for the heights above.  Before he had traversed half the
distance the girl discovered his approach.  He saw her look over her
shoulder, and then raise herself abruptly, as though actuated by some
rash purpose.  Alarmed, he waved his arm, motioning her furiously to
hold her position.  She gazed upward at the towering rocks above, but
after an interval she sank down motionless once more, hugging the
cliff in seeming helplessness, apparently unable or unwilling to risk
the return trip.

Fast as he ran, it took Dexter several minutes to cross the strip of
open ground.  But finally he neared the foot of the acclivity, and
could appraise the difficulties that confronted him.  The cliff,
rising with vertical face to a height of a hundred feet or more, was
formed of stratified rock--great slabs, lying one upon another, like
a pile of unevenly stacked books.  Edges of stone jutted out at
frequent intervals to make narrow ledges, and there were interstices
between the slabs that would enable a climber to mount from one
broader resting place to the next, all the way to the top.

During occasional hunts for mountain sheep and goats, Dexter had
clambered up more dangerous steeps than this.  It was as though steps
had been chiseled here in readiness for use.  His only fear was of
rotting rock.  Stratification is caused by weathering and the
crumbling away of stone in scales and veins; and in the process of
erosion the projecting rocks are gradually pitted and undermined, and
may break off at the lightest pressure.  A great heap of these fallen
fragments was banked against the foot of the precipice, but the
corporal scrambled up over the pile, and presently stood under the
shelf where the girl was crouching.  He could see her white face
peering over a ledge, seventy feet above.

"What's the matter?" he shouted.

"A step gave way and let me drop," she called down in a shaken voice.
"I caught on here--just barely--and now I can't get up or down."

"Stay quiet, then," he commanded sharply.  "I'll be with you in a
minute."

"You can't," she faltered--"nobody could get here.  If you had a
rope--from above--"

"I have no rope and I'm not above," he said shortly.  He unstrapped
his heavy pack and dropped it at his feet.  His carbine he buckled
tightly across his back by its carrying sling.  It was to be
remembered that the girl expected to meet a companion somewhere in
this vicinity, and while no third person had put in an appearance as
yet, the officer had no way of knowing whom he might encounter on the
other side of the terrace, and he had no intention of going anywhere
unarmed.

As he stood silent for a moment, studying the precipitous slope above
him, he heard a splintering sound, and detached fragments of stone
bounced down from the cliff and struck the ground behind him.
Craning his neck backwards, he saw that the girl had shifted her
position and was gazing over the dizzy brink, as though her glance
were held in dreadful fascination by the ugly rocks below.

"Don't move, and don't look down!" he shouted angrily.  And then he
spoke in attempted reassurance.  "I'll get you off somehow.  Don't
worry, and hang on tight!"

"I can't--much longer," she informed him in a small, frightened voice.

"You can until I get there!" he asserted gruffly, and picking a first
toehold, he started to ascend the cliff.

For the first thirty or forty feet the cliff sloped slightly back,
and he mounted swiftly and almost as easily as though he were
stepping up the rungs of a ladder.  But as he climbed higher the
pitch became steeper, and presently he found himself hanging on a
sheer wall, depending for support on the muscular grip of toes and
fingers.  The way seemed feasible, however, and after a hasty
inspection of the frowning elevation, he continued to pull himself
upward.

But from now on he moved slowly, with infinite caution.  The least
miscalculation would mean a sickening fall, probably death.  The
crannies between the layers of rock ran in horizontal lines, at
frequent, almost regular intervals, like mortar cracks in a crumbling
stone building.  By alternating with hands and feet, he was able to
hoist himself without great effort.  But unfortunately snow had
drifted into the crevices, and it was not always possible to judge
the condition of the rock underneath.  Nevertheless he inched his way
upward, digging in firmly to keep from slipping, and testing each new
stepping place before he trusted his full weight to settle.  By
degrees he lifted himself towards the ledge where Alison Rayne was
crouching, and at length he gained a narrow niche directly beneath
her.

Wedging himself in brief security, he glanced overhead, and at once
understood why the girl had not dared the rest of the descent.  She
was lodged on a sloping rock, not more than six feet above him; but
between them the cliffside bulged out in an overhanging cornice,
smooth as glass and utterly unscalable.  By leaning outward Dexter
could see her livid features as she gazed over the edge.

She shuddered as she encountered his anxious glance.  "You can't come
any farther!" she gasped.  "And I--I'll be here until I have
to--let--go."

"You'll stick till I come!" he told her sharply.  "No nonsense!"

Abandoning the hope of reaching her from below, he turned hurriedly
to scan the cliffside right and left.  And in an instant the
practiced mountaineer's eye had devised a path where no path existed.
The fissure in which he stood slanted off at an acute angle away from
the girl's ledge, but from a higher point an open crack sloped back
across the face of the precipice and crossed over the cornice rock
directly above her.  He calculated the chances, and nodded with
sudden confidence.

"Can do!" he said coolly.  "How's the footing up there?"

"Narrow," she answered faintly.  "I've got to hold on, and my fingers
are getting cold."

"Be with you in two minutes," he promised.

The fissure was like an open chute gouged down the side of the cliff,
and just wide enough to admit his body.  To crawl up that narrow draw
with a carbine strapped to his back, however, was out of the
question.  His teeth clicked suddenly together.  He had forgotten
about the rifle.  It was an impossible encumbrance if he expected to
reach the girl.  But the only way to get rid of the weapon was to
unfasten the sling and let it drop: a sacrifice almost suicidal to a
man on winter police patrol.  As he hesitated he caught a momentary
glimpse of the soft blue eyes that gazed beseechingly towards him.
He drew a sharp breath.  This was no time to count personal cost.
With a decisive movement, his hand reached towards the shoulder
strap, but as he touched the buckle some vaguely stirring sense of
alarm checked him, and drew his glance towards the height above.

He looked upward, and his jaw fell, and he stared in wide-eyed
astonishment.  From the brink of the cliff, not thirty feet overhead,
a human face was peering down at him.

It was an unwholesome countenance, pinkish in color, evil-smirking,
with loose, flabby jowls, flat, broad nostrils, and a pair of
elongated slits for eyes.  Dexter remembered the rogues' gallery
photograph buttoned in his jacket pocket, but he did not need any
print to identify the physiognomy he saw now in the flesh.  That
leering face was unforgettable.  The man on the cliff could be none
other than the fugitive murderer, "Pink" Crill.




CHAPTER XV

THE BRINK OF DEATH

In the shocking moment of discovery Dexter found no time to wonder
what malignant fate had brought the outlaw here at this unwelcome
juncture.  He merely grasped the fact that "Pink" Crill was kneeling
on the cliff above, looking down at him.  Instinctively he crowded
himself into his niche, shrinking inwardly.  It was a seventy-foot
drop to the rocks below, and he knew at sight that this Crill was a
man without scruple or mercy.  The crevice offered some protection,
but after crouching motionless for tense seconds, the corporal craned
his head back and ventured another glance upward.  The face had
disappeared.

Dexter was positive that he had been seen, and was not misled by
false hope.  Crill had withdrawn, but he certainly would come back.
Probably he was only hunting bowlders to roll over the cliff.
Meanwhile, however, the victim had a slender chance of saving
himself.  It would be the part of sanity to scramble down with all
haste from his unsafe roosting place.  He might possibly reach the
bottom before the murderer returned.

In the fractional second of his indecision, Dexter's thoughts were
sharply recalled by a sob of distress, low and piteous, heard
suddenly behind him.  Casting a glance over his shoulder, he looked
into Alison Rayne's horror-stricken eyes.  She was staring full at
Dexter, and apparently was unaware of the ominous presence above.

"I'm slipping!" she whispered with choking breath.  "If you're
coming--please--help--"

"Coming!" he said, curt and incisive.  "Hold on, I tell you!"

His hand went up again and found the carbine sling.  The buckle came
open with a snap, the strap jerked apart and slipped over his
shoulder; and the next second, as he jammed his body into the crevice
and started to work his way upward, he heard the crash of his rifle
striking on broken stones far below.

If by unforeseen good luck he ever reached the cliff top he still
would have his pistol.  But at present the holstered weapon was a
useless appendage, much in the way.  With an impatient yank and a
twist, he drew his belt around so the pistol might bump against the
small of his back, and not interfere with his movements.  Then, with
thighs and shoulders braced against the sides of the fissure,
clinging mostly by force of adhesion, he wriggled and hitched himself
up the slanting chute, as a chimney sweep goes up a flue.

In a moment he had gained an elevation level with the shelf where
Alison Rayne still held on with the clutch of despair.  Six feet more
of the elbow-bruising ascent, and he was able to reach the lateral
crack that led back across the sheer face of the precipice to the
girl's ledge.

To his joy he found that the underlip of the crack sloped inward,
affording a slight ridge for his finger grip.  But fortune granted
him no other concession.  Beyond him stretched a bare rock wall, a
smooth, ten-foot reach, without any cranny or projecting point that
his toe might touch.

He paused only to measure his distance, and then securing his hold in
the crack, he swung out against the cliff.  For a moment he hung
swaying, dangling over space, supporting his weight by his hands and
upstretched arms.  The brim of his Stetson pushed against the cliff,
and he tossed his head with a movement of annoyance, and the hat
sailed away behind him.

"With you right away!" he assured the girl between clenched teeth,
and started to work out across the wall.

Still he had hear nothing from Crill.  But the lines of acute anxiety
were deep drawn at the corners of his eyes and lips.  At any instant
he might hear the direful sound of a rock toppling from the brink
overhead, and every nerve and fiber of his body seemed to flinch
before the imminence of the moment.  He dared not look up; could only
look at the wall before him.  And every seam and chink of that
remorseless surface of rock was etched in detail, to be seared upon
his memory forever.

With toes scraping and thumping, he edged his way along the crack,
inch by inch, hand against hand.  He had only a short distance to go,
but it seemed to his overstrained faculties that he must have
traversed half the width of the mountainside, when at last he put
down his foot and found solid rock beneath him.  For the first time
he ventured to look aside, and he saw that he had reached the girl's
shelf.

Breathing quickly, he let his weight down and relaxed his aching
arms.  His resting place was the top of an outcropping rock, about
two feet wide, that tilted with a decided downward cant.  He dug with
his hobnail boots into the rotted stone, but for further safety his
hand still clung to the crack in the wall.  It was no wonder that the
girl had feared she would loose her precarious hold.  She wore
smooth-soled boots; and the slim fingers, still grasping the ledge,
were blue with the cold, and bleeding at the tips.  Dexter reached
towards her, passed his hand beneath her armpit, and drew her against
his supporting shoulder.

She swayed closer, trembling, her face hidden in the curve of his
arm.  "Oh, thanks--thanks!" she whispered in broken, breathless
accents.  "You came!"

"Steady!" he said, his voice low and soothing.  "Take it easy,
Alison.  All right now."  He slid his arm about her waist, and
managed to get both her icy hands in his.  "Why, they must be numb!"
he exclaimed.  "Here--let's get 'em warm.  We've got to start
circulation."

"I don't know how I lasted," she said with a shudder, clinging
tighter to him.  "I was afraid--I never thought--"

"Don't think about it," he advised.  "It's over with."

He leaned outward as he spoke to gaze nervously towards the cliff
top.  It struck him that there was something ominous in the silence
overhead.  Crill had not yet returned, and the corporal could not
imagine what stealthy game he was playing.  He dreaded seeing the man
again; but also the prolonged absence was disquieting.

"If by any chance the chap up there's a friend of yours," Dexter said
suddenly, a note of harshness striking through his voice, "I'd advise
you to have him call a truce--at least until I can get you safely out
of this."

"Chap up there?" she echoed vacantly.  "My friend?"

"Pudgy, pink-faced man," he informed her--"Crill."

She lifted her head with trepidation to gaze towards the top of the
palisade.  "I don't know any such person," she asserted after a
slight pause.

He scrutinized her searchingly for a moment.  "All right," he
declared.  "If he's not your friend we'd better get out of this
quick.  Unluckily the trip down's impossible.  We've got to go on up."

As he spoke he leaned backward to scan the cliff face above; and in a
second his plan was formed.  On the left side of the girl, and only a
couple of feet above her head, a broad-topped, solid-looking rock
jutted out from the precipice wall.  Thence, for the rest of the
distance upward, the masses of stratified stone sloped slightly back,
and offered secure stepping places that reached by easy stages all
the way to the top.  If they could gain the first shelf, the
remaining ascent should not prove difficult.

"Feel equal to staying here alone--just for a minute?" Dexter
inquired, his warm hand pressing the girl's fingers.

He felt her shoulders grow tense as she tried to steady herself.
"Why, I--if I must--yes," she replied with faint assurance.

"Good girl!" he commented briskly, before she could change her mind.
"Here!  We'll plant you like an anchor."  He showed her a tiny
indentation where she could brace her foot, and then helped her fix
her fingers in the chink that served him for support.

Without further ado he leaned outward, crowded his body around her
cowering figure, and a second later had flattened himself against the
cliff at her left side.  He stretched his arm overhead, and touched
the ledge above.

Groping, he found a small weather-gouged groove that afforded him a
gripping surface.  He caught his hold with both hands and drew his
weight up bodily, as a gymnast chins himself.  With a quick, violent
effort he hooked one knee over the rim, and the next moment had
hoisted himself onto a wide, level shelf of stone.

As soon as he was settled in security he bent down over the edge,
intending to reach the girl's hands.  But he realized at once that he
would be in danger of overbalancing if he attempted to lift her in
such a manner.  For an instant he hesitated; and then unfastened his
heavy belt, laid the pistol on the rock beside him, and let down the
buckle end of the strap.

"You'll have to take it," he asserted.

"Oh, no!" she faltered as she understood his purpose, "I--I haven't
the strength left."

He regarded her fixedly for a moment, and when he spoke his tone was
cold and cutting.  "I somehow hadn't thought you were a coward," he
said.

She threw up her head with a gasp, and a tinge of crimson suddenly
showed in her cheeks.  As Dexter peered down at her he saw a gleam of
recklessness flaunting in her eyes.  With swift decision she released
her hold on the rocks, and her hands grasped the end of the dangling
belt.  "Go ahead!" she said.  "I'll hang on if I can."

Dexter braced his feet firmly, leaned forward as far as he dared, and
exerting all the strength of his shoulders and arms, he raised her
from the rock beneath and drew her up towards him.  Almost before she
could have realized what had happened, she was clinging on the brink.
The corporal caught her about the waist, and lifted her to solid
footing beside him.

She turned unsteadily, her lips quivering.  "I--anybody's likely to
be a coward--sometimes," she stated.

The corporal faced her with a grin.  "You didn't honestly think I
meant that, did you?"  He slowly shook his head.  "That's one thing,
at least, that I'll never accuse you--"

He caught himself with a start, breaking off in the midst of speech.
From somewhere overhead he heard a quick, crunching sound, like heavy
feet running in the snow.  As he stiffened into alertness, staring
upward, a man's voice was raised suddenly in hoarse, angry shouting.
And then, almost simultaneously it seemed, the cliff top reverberated
with the heavy report of a pistol shot.




CHAPTER XVI

UNSEEN ENEMIES

The amazing uproar lasted only for seconds, and then intense silence
once more settled over the palisade.  There was no one in sight, and
Dexter could not imagine what calamitous events were taking place on
the other side of the cliff.  But as his glance swept back and forth
along the brink of the precipice, the momentary quiet was suddenly
shattered by a second shot.

In a flash he stooped to grasp his pistol.  "I'm going up," he
announced, and hurriedly belted his holster about his waist.  "You
stay here, Alison, and I'll come back for you when I can."

Without waiting for her reply, he set his foot in the nearest cranny
and started to clamber onward.  The remaining distance was not far,
and he went up in a rush and scrambled over the final escarpment.  He
reached the top, and crouched warily on the brink of the cliff to
survey the open ground beyond.

The plateau dipped back for a mile or more to the base of the ringing
mountain peaks, and on the snow-sheeted meadow were outlined the
figures of two men.  One was a couple of hundred yards away, running
as fast as legs would fly, heading for a distant cedar thicket and
the notch that gave exit towards the northern end of the valley
below.  Nearer the cliff top another man was standing, with pistol in
hand.  The second intruder, short and stocky in build, was clad in
the tunic of the mounted police.  Dexter observed the silhouette of
his broad back, and laughed aloud.

"Hello, colonel!" he called.

The thick-set figure swung around to stare dumbly at the man on the
crest behind him.  "Dexter!" he blurted out in astonishment.

"By the way the other fellow keeps on going, I should judge that
you're not shooting as well as you used to," remarked the corporal
blandly.

"I just pitched a couple across his bows, as they say, hoping he'd
halt," explained Devreaux.  "Rather take him back alive if I can.  If
I know a pink complexion, that man's Crill."

"Unquestionably," agreed the corporal, his glance following the
fleeing outlaw.  The man was out of pistol range, still plowing up
the snow as he sprinted for the shelter of the timber.  "A person
with a double chin should know better than to overexert himself,"
Dexter resumed calmly.  "He'll drop in his track by the time he
reaches the notch."

"Sure he will," assented Devreaux.  "No sense winding ourselves in
hundred-yard dashes.  We can trail comfortably behind, sure to land
him before night."  He nodded with satisfaction.  "Bit of luck--what?
Funny thing how I walked into him like this, after all these days of
futile hunting.  I was coming up the draw from the south, and as I
stepped into the open, there was Crill staggering towards the cliff
with a big rock in his arms.  When he saw me he dropped it and ran--

"The rock was to be bounced off my head," interrupted Dexter.  "You
appeared at exactly the right second."

"Eh?" exclaimed the colonel.

"We've taken Crill's full measure," observed Dexter.  "Runs from a
man in the open, but is willing to do casual, cold-blooded murder
when his victim is unable to defend himself.  I was climbing up the
cliffside, you know."

"It'll be a pleasure to lay hands on him," grunted the
superintendent.  "Luckily, we've got him."

"Unless his friends cut in ahead of us."  The corporal gazed across
the plateau, and saw the fugitive dart into the cover of a distant
patch of trees.  "I have a strong suspicion that he's not traveling
alone."

Devreaux thrust his pistol back in the holster, and turned abruptly
upon the departing trail.  "Let's go," he said.  He started to move
forward, but with his first step he halted and whirled to look behind
him.

An avalanche of stones rattled down the slope of the cliff, and as he
faced the direction of the sound, a small, white-clad figure came
suddenly into view above the brink of the precipice.  His mouth
dropped open, and stood motionless with peering, blinking eyes, his
face ludicrous with amazement.  "Alison!" he exploded at last.
"Where did you come from?"

The girl did not answer.  She lifted herself to her feet, crossed the
top of the cliff, and stopped in front of Dexter.  "Whatever you may
do to me later," she said in a tremulous voice, "at least I owe my
life to you."

"Miss Rayne and I happened to meet down below here," the corporal
explained uncomfortably, turning to Devreaux.  And then as he
observed the superintendent's expression of bewilderment, he found
his lips twitching at the corners.  "She seemed to be lost from you,
colonel."

"Lost!" muttered the officer.  "Yes.  We were crossing a steep slope
down by the lower pass, and I stepped on a slide of glacier ice that
was hidden by snow.  Went down on the glare, and rolled and coasted
about a half mile to the bottom.  Smashed my carbine so it wasn't
even worth salvage, and nearly cracked my neck in the bargain.  And
when I had gathered myself up and labored back to the top, the girl
was gone.  It happened last evening, mind you, and I was all night
and most of the day working back the trail.  I'll say this much for
the young lady: when she's in a hurry she can cruise with the best of
us."

Devreaux turned to glower at the girl.  "And I warn you now," he said
with asperity, "I'm going to forget to be polite and use the wrist
irons if you get 'lost' this way another time."

She flushed darkly, and averted her head, as though to hide the glint
of tears upon her lashes.  "What would be the use?" she replied in a
tired, hopeless voice.  "You're men--hard and ruthless--and I--I
haven't a chance.  You can order me to come and go as you please and
threaten me with handcuffs, and I have nobody--there's nothing I can
do about it--nothing."

"Exactly!" asserted the colonel.  "And now we must go."  He turned on
his heel and set off across the meadow; and Alison Rayne sighed
despondently, and followed him in mute resignation.

Dexter looked after her for a moment with a pensive frown and then,
gloomily shaking his head, he hastened forward and caught step with
her.

"How did you get the message that brought you to this place?" he
asked suddenly, watching her face with slantwise curiosity.

"What message?" interrupted Devreaux brusquely.

The corporal gave a hurried account of his adventures in the cabin on
the further side of the valley, telling of the boy he had found
there, and of the voice that aroused him from sleep.  "Reminded me of
the queer business at the other cabin," he remarked.  "Sounded like
telephone talk--only there was no telephone."  He faced the girl with
searching gaze.  "The young man informed me that he didn't know you,
and pretended to be asleep and dreaming; but he said 'Alison' as
distinctly as I say your name now.  And he advised you to make your
way to this mountain, where a friend would be waiting."

"What have you to say to that, Alison?" demanded Devreaux.

The girl cast a fleeting glance towards Dexter, and he fancied for a
second that he saw a sardonic gleam in her velvet eyes.  "I should
say that Corporal Dexter is a little mixed up about who was
dreaming," she observed in a quiet tone.

"Whoever was dreaming," returned the policeman, "it came true.  You
were advised not to return to the cabin, but to strike across country
for Saddle Mountain.  And here you are."

Devreaux swung around abruptly, his weather-seamed countenance grown
stern and forbidding.  "You're going beyond the limits of patience,"
he declared in a crusty voice.  "I want to know how you people
communicate with each other."

She met his formidable stare without the slightest show of alarm.
"We people?" she echoed.  "Really, Colonel Devreaux, I don't see what
reason you have for trying to make out that I belong to a gang, or
something."  She sighed and shook her head, and smiled forlornly as
she encountered the officer's scowling stare.  "But I admit," she
added, "that there are times when I almost wish I did.  It's
discouraging not to have anybody."

"I insist on knowing how that message was relayed to you," the
superintendent persisted, unmoved by the gentle appeal of her half
veiled eyes.

"You followed my tracks all the way up the valley to this place," she
reminded him.  "Wherever I went, you must have gone also.  So if I'd
met any one, or stopped anywhere to telephone, or held any
conversation of any sort with anybody, why you couldn't have helped
knowing about it, could you?"

The colonel regarded her tensely, with anger and something like
reluctant admiration mingling in his baffled glance.  "You say you
came to this particular place only by accident?" he asked after an
interval.

"I don't want to make a long trip to Fort Dauntless," she coolly
replied, "and as you seem so determined to take me there, why
I--naturally I wandered as far as I could--anywhere to get away."

"Humph!" grunted Devreaux.  "That's frank enough, anyhow.  Just
wanted to escape from the clutches of the police?  Weren't expecting
to meet a friend here?"

"You keep forcing me to repeat that I have no friends," she
complained.  "I--"

She stopped with a startled gasp, and gazed blankly overhead, as
suddenly, without warning, the stillness of the misty afternoon was
punctured by a shrill shining sound--the crackling hum of a bullet in
flight.




CHAPTER XVII

AT FIVE HUNDRED YARDS

The two officers halted to scan the heights, towering shadowy above
them.  They stood in the middle of the broad plateau, with the
horseshoe curve of the mountains hemming them in like the rising
tiers of a vast amphitheater.  The lower slopes were circled by a
belt of dense-growing evergreens, but the open, snow-covered level
stretched between, and the nearest sheltering thicket was at least a
quarter mile distant.  Any object moving against the white background
of the snow-field must present a conspicuous target, but when
Devreaux broke the momentary silence, he spoke without concern, and
seemed in no haste to make for cover.

"Crill?" he inquired, with a ruminative glance towards the lower
notch.  "He had a rifle."

Dexter observed the line of long, narrow footprints that marked the
direction of the outlaw's flight, and casually shook his head.  "No.
I don't think so.  The shot came from higher up, I should say, and
from the western slope--"

The spiteful _pi-n-g_ of a second bullet whipped the air behind him,
and he briefly nodded.  "Right!" he remarked.  "From the timber
somewhere on our left.  That wouldn't be Crill.  There are others
about."

The colonel quizzed Alison Rayne with his chilly glance.

"If they're friends of yours," he remarked, "they haven't much regard
for you.  At such a distance they can only pitch 'em in for general
results, and they're as apt to get you as they are a policeman."

The girl's delicate brows were bent in an expression that betokened
curiosity rather than alarm.  "We're really being shot at?" she
asked.  "I didn't hear any report."

"High power rifle, and six hundred yards' range at least," said the
corporal.  "Too far off to hear the crack."  He lifted his head
interestedly as another steel-jacketed missile shrieked across the
meadow.  "They aren't allowing enough windage," he added in expert
criticism of another man's marksmanship.  "And long shots from an
elevation are always likely to overcarry."

"I don't agree with you," interrupted the colonel.  "Not if you don't
forget your table of trajectories."  He wrinkled his forehead
reminiscently as he warmed to a cherished hobby.  "I remember last
year when I got me an old ram.  Conditions similar to this.  Five
hundred yards if an inch, and I was shooting down off a ridge.  I
fixed my leaf sight at five hundred, and held plumb in the vital
circle.  The point I'm making--"

"You're in danger of having your point proven for you, if we stick
around here," Dexter respectfully submitted.  He saw the girl looking
from one to the other with anxious eyes.  "If you don't mind," he
finished, "Alison and I think we'd better be striking for cover."

"Come on," agreed the superintendent, and set forward once more
towards the nearest strip of timber.  He moved at his usual brisk
stride, but without undue haste; a calm and dignified man who refuses
to be pestered by small annoyances.

As they pushed onward across the plateau, a freezing gust of wind
swept down suddenly through the mountain notch, bringing a momentary
flutter of snowflakes.  "At last!" Devreaux flung back over his
shoulder.  "The storm will spoil good shooting, but also it'll bury
footprints.  We'll have to get Crill quickly, before the slate's
wiped clean."

"And before he takes on reinforcements," echoed Dexter.

The snow flurry lasted for seconds, and then there followed a brief
lull, while the skin of the face seemed to draw tighter with the
tension of heavy barometric pressures.  The lower atmosphere had
grown very still, but higher up Dexter could see the rush and scud of
dark clouds breaking around the mountain peaks.  His glance traveled
aimlessly from one outstanding pinnacle to another, and then wandered
down towards the edge of timberline, and reached the top of a
knife-edged ridge stretching away to the left.  He blinked his eyes,
and gazed again, and made out a grouping of elongated objects, like
little fingers poked against the skyline.  There was no discernible
movement.  He counted--one--two--three--but at the distance was
unable to decide whether the small dots were rocks, or beasts of some
sort, or men.

Reaching behind him, he was fumbling at his binocular case, when his
ears caught the far-off hum of another bullet.  The sound broke
through the air in wailing crescendo, reached its highest pitch, and
then stopped short with a tearing thump.

Dexter saw Colonel Devreaux halt in mid-stride and look waveringly
about him, like a man who had suddenly changed his mind about the
direction he wanted to go.  For a moment the square-built figure held
erect, motionless, and then the sturdy legs bowed weakly and without
a word the old man pitched forward and fell upon his face.

Simultaneously, the storm came howling down upon them.  Dexter felt
the lash of the fiercely driven wind, and as he bowed his head to the
blast, the world about him was blotted out in swirling snow.

He plunged forward and dropped upon his knees beside his officer.
Devreaux lay on his side, with head and face almost buried in the
white drift.  The corporal passed his arm under the fallen body, and
his fingers were stained by a warm seepage of blood.

The stricken man tried to sit up as his comrade raised his head from
the ground; but the effort was too much for him, and he sank back
limply in the corporal's arms.  "Back and lungs!" he choked with a
sound of leaking breath.  His white mustache lifted, and he showed
his teeth for an instant in a dauntless smile.  "Like that old
bighorn ram, David.  He weathered a lot of hard years--but somebody
got him at last--fine cleanshot--at five hundred--"  He broke off in
a painful coughing fit, and the light of consciousness faded from his
steely eyes, and he slumped forward, a limp, insensate weight in
Dexter's arms.

The corporal hastily examined the sagging body.  A bullet, he found,
had drilled its course through the dorsal muscles; had broken a rib
and plowed deeper into the cavity of the lungs.  As he pillowed the
grizzled head against his shoulder he heard a soft crunching step
beside him and was aware that Alison Rayne was bending above.

"Is it bad?" she asked.

He nodded without speaking.

"I'm very sorry," she said.

Dexter crouched silent for a moment, gazing vacantly towards the
invisible heights, his face beaten by the driving snow.  For the
present, nothing further was to be feared from the distant
sharpshooter.  The rush of snow filled the air, blinding the vision.
It was impossible to see a dozen feet beyond him.  The dry, hissing
flakes battered his eyes and obliterated the landscape.  An army
might have marched past him unobserved.  He sighed thankfully,
scarcely feeling the sting of the blizzard.  At least he was
vouchsafed the privilege of caring for his fallen comrade.

But what was he to do, where could he go?  He must make his decision
instantly.  The wounded man could not be left exposed in the open.
Prompt surgical attention was needed, but even more pressing was the
need of shelter--a place to hide, to huddle protected from the white
death that rode with the storm.  His questing glance wandered off
towards his right, where, he recalled, the nearest stretch of timber
grew.  It would be in that direction somewhere that he must search
for his nook of safety.

He was bending down to gather the wounded body in his arms, when
Alison Rayne spoke in a quick, low voice behind him.  "If I could do
anything to help, I'd stay," she said.  "But I'd only add to your
responsibilities now, and so--good-by."

"One moment!" he commanded sharply.  "I hadn't heard any one tell you
to go."

"It's an ugly thing to do--taking advantage of your misfortune," she
returned.  "But you leave me no choice.  You and Colonel Devreaux
intended to drag me to the fort with you, to accuse me of I don't
know what, to put me through your legal tortures, as though I were
some criminal.  You had no mercy.  And now I--the tables have turned
through no act of mine.  You think I'm going to wait until you're
ready to work your will with me?"  Her eyes gleamed, and she shook
her head rebelliously.  "I'd kill myself before I'd let you do what
you mean to do with me.  I'd rather die."

"You will die if you go blundering off in this blizzard," he assured
her.

"So be it then!"  She took a step away, but the next instant turned
back impulsively to face him.  "I know what you think," she declared
with a shudder.  "You think I shot those two men in that cabin back
there.  I didn't--I swear I had nothing to do with that horror.  But
I can't prove that I didn't do it, and you--you want to prove that I
did."  She measured him with a tragic glance.  "You won't leave
Colonel Devreaux to try to hold me.  You'll save your officer if you
can."

"Stop!" he thundered as she started to turn away into the storm.

She looked back and saw that he was supporting Devreaux with his left
arm, while his right hand had dropped to touch the butt of his
pistol.  "Yes," she said.  "You'll have to shoot me to stop me.
Rather that than go to the fort with you."  She gave a short,
mirthless laugh.  "But I've heard that the men of the mounted never
fire first.  I'll find out if it's true."

His hand left his holster, and he fixed her with a stony gaze.
"You're right," he said.  "We're not like your people up there who
crawl and slink and pot their victims from behind.  Go!  Go find your
friends."  He smiled contemptuously, and his words fell with the
sharpness of whip strokes.  "Tell 'em Corporal Dexter's still alive,
and advise 'em when they see him again to shoot on sight, to kill.
There's no truce after this.  I'm more than ever set on getting
them--and you too, Alison!"  He pointed with his thumb towards the
mountain slope, hidden behind the welter of snow.  "Meanwhile there's
nothing to keep you.  Why don't you go?"

A dull flush suffused her cheeks and temples, and as he spoke her
lips fell tremulously apart and her open hand moved towards him in a
faint gesture of appeal.  "I--" she began, and stopped.  She drew a
harsh breath that was almost a sob, and her lashes drooped for an
instant to touch her snow-wet cheeks.  "Good-by!" she cried suddenly
in a breaking voice.  Then she walked away and the next moment had
vanished in the white swirl of the storm.




CHAPTER XVIII

LODGING FOR TWO

The roar of the gale drowned all sound of departing footsteps.  Two
seconds after the girl had bade him farewell, Dexter had lost sight
and knowledge of her.  He did not call after her, or attempt to stay
her flight.  His first concern was for Devreaux; and with a muscular
strength surprising in a man of his slender frame, he lifted the
wounded officer's weighty bulk in his arms, and trudged forward in
search of shelter.

With his head bowed before the freezing blast, his shoulders stooped
under the burden he carried, he labored across the open ground and
eventually found himself at the edge of the standing timber.  The
snow swept about him in flying vortices, pelting his face like bird
shot, blinding his eyes and robbing him of breath.  The trees on the
mountain slope swayed and writhed like living things before the fury
of the blizzard, and he could hear the splinter and crash of rotted
limbs wrested from their trunks.  Heedless of the danger of falling
boughs, he stumbled, panting, into the dense timber, and started to
climb the gullied slope, seeking with storm-blurred sight for any
barricaded nook that could serve as a temporary haven of refuge.

At the best he hoped for no more than the lee side of a windfall, or
else a fissure among the rocks that could be roofed over with a
thatching of branches.  He did not dream that the fates might deal
more kindly with him.  But as he struggled up the steep slope,
through a thick fir coppice, he chanced to notice a peculiar,
smooth-sided hole in the snow crust above him.  It was a small
opening, scarcely large enough to admit a man's hand, but with his
first glance he halted, stared incredulously for an instant, and
then, with a grim tightening of his lips, he lowered Devreaux's body
to the ground, and climbed upward to investigate.

Pressing his face to the aperture, he was conscious of a rank, furry
scent that a bear hunter could never fail to identify.  He laughed
softly under his breath.  For once fortune had dealt munificently
with him.  Chance had led him to the winter den of a hibernating
bear, and in his desperate extremity he was ready to contest
possession with its owner.

The popular belief that bears lie torpid in winter is a fallacy, as
Dexter knew only too well.  A grizzly will hole-up with the first
frosts, living on his own fat during the famine time of cold, dozing
and sleeping through the short days and long freezing nights.  If
left undisturbed in his chosen nook, he will nap in sluggish
contentment until spring comes around; but there is nothing
trancelike about his sleep.  His nose and ears are always cocked
towards the entrance of his snug retreat, and at the sound or scent
of intrusion he will arouse instantly, with every savage instinct
alert and primed for battle.  A man who intrudes on a hibernating
silver-tip takes his life in his hands.  The corporal was aware of
the penalty he might have to pay for rashness, but the thought of
holding back now did not occur to him.  He must get Devreaux under
cover, and for the sake of a stricken comrade he would not scruple to
fight for a den with a grizzly bear.

From a fallen tree near by he broke off a pitch knot to use as a
torch.  Then, without giving himself time for reflection, he climbed
the embankment again and started deliberately to enlarge the
breathing hole that had been thawed through the snow.

As quietly as possible, he broke out chunks of the frozen crust, and
in a couple of minutes had uncovered a low, tunneled opening that ran
back in darkness, somewhere among the rocks.  Before him lay a cavern
of some sort that time and weather had hollowed under the pitch of
the mountainside.  How far it extended he could not guess, but the
entrance would admit his body if he stooped low, and he knew that
where a grizzly had gone, a man could follow.

He knelt for a space, listening, and fancied that he felt the rhythm
of slow, heavy breathing in fetid gloom beyond.  With hand steadied
by enforced calmness, he struck a match and ignited his torch.  The
resinous wood took fire almost at once, burning with a sputtering,
smoky flame.  He whipped the brand about his head to assure himself
that it was not likely to flicker out, and then drew his heavy
service pistol and started forward into the tunnel.

Crouching, he advanced in the cramped passageway, but he had taken no
more than three steps, when he was aware of a sudden heaving movement
in front of him.  The next instant the silence was broken by a loud
snorting _whoof_, and as he peered into the warm, rancid darkness, he
caught sight of two greenish sparks--lambent points of flame, that he
knew were a pair of glaring eyes.

His first shot might be his last, and he leveled his pistol
point-blank at one of the glittering marks, aiming with great care
and pulling the trigger with slow, even pressure.

With the battering explosion in his ears, he was conscious of a
shadowy bulk heaving up before him, and then the walls of the cave
seemed to tremble before a terrible, hot-breathed roar that
reverberated in his brain like a thunder clap.  He felt a surging
movement in the darkness, and jerked his head back just in time to
save his face from the mangling stroke of a steel-hooked paw that
batted the air with a ton-weight of fury behind it.

Through the reek of smoke he still saw the flaming eyes, and he poked
forward the pistol at full stretch and once more fired.  Again and
again the red streak of flame spouted from the muzzle of his weapon,
and the rapid concussions crashed back and forth in his head,
buffeting his senses as a swimmer is buffeted by the surf.  The noise
and confusion, the suffocating powder fumes filling his nostrils and
lungs began after a moment to overcloud his faculties, leaving him
only the subconscious will and determination to keep on shooting.
His finger was working automatically on the trigger, sending bullet
after bullet into the looming bulk before him.

But after wild and tumultuous moments, his mind suddenly awakened to
the knowledge of a great stillness that had fallen about him, and all
at once he realized that he was pulling the trigger vainly on an
empty magazine.  The pistol dropped from his nerveless fingers, and
he peered vacuously into obscurity, expecting each instant to feel
the lightning shock of death.

He waited for a second in benumbed resignation, but nothing happened.
As he blinked his eyes, trying to see, he heard a moaning sound, like
an uncanny human voice, and then his ears caught a faint trickle and
gurgle that might have come from a hidden rivulet of water.

An unaccountable fit of trembling seized him, and for seconds he
found it difficult to keep the torch in his hand.  But he managed to
swing forward his smoldering light, and in the dim illumination he
made out a huge, shapeless mass of fur sprawled on the red-stained
rocks.

With extreme caution he crept forward and looked down upon the matted
head of an enormous silvertip bear.  The lips of the beast were drawn
back in a snarl over the ugly yellow teeth, but the eyes had both
disappeared, and a stream of blood ran out from the piglike snout.
Dexter thrust the end of his torch against the wet muzzle, and not a
tremor of life passed through the tumbled carcass.

For seconds the man crouched motionless, staring at the grotesque
heap before him.  And with his feeling of relief there came also a
certain sense of regret and shame.  The bear had found the den first,
and by every law of right and justice he was entitled to sleep there
unmolested.  But for the intruders life had been stripped to
primitive necessity.  To live meant to kill.

The corporal held his torch aloft and saw that the cavern opened
farther back into the mountain, forming a roomy and sheltered
retreat.  If need be, a man might safely spend the winter there.  He
nodded in grim satisfaction.  By killing the bear he had obtained at
a stroke the very essentials of existence--meat, blankets, a
lodging-place.

Dexter stripped off his jacket and fanned the powder smoke out of the
cabin entrance; and as soon as the air was fit to breathe he went
outside for Devreaux.

He picked up the wounded man, lugging him into the cave, and pillowed
his head on the warm, shaggy body of the dead bear.  Then he made his
preparations for a dreaded undertaking.

Building a fire in the cavern entrance, he set snow to melt in the
colonel's camp kettle.  From his own emergency case he brought forth
a tourniquet, forceps and a small, whetted knife.  He boiled the
instruments in a strong bichloride solution, scrubbed his hands and
forearms in the same steaming fluid, pared his nails to the quick,
and then stripped off the wounded man's jacket and undergarments, and
set silently to work.

Men who dwell in the wilderness are forced to do all things for
themselves, without expert help or advice.  The troopers of the royal
police are expected to acquire a rough and ready knowledge of
surgery, but Dexter was not at all confident that his skill was equal
to the present emergency.  But his comrade did not have a chance of
surviving with a bullet in his lungs, and so he steeled himself to
the ordeal and went ahead with a task that had to be done.

For nearly a half hour Dexter labored over the stricken man under the
ghastly flicker of a pitch torch, stuck in a crack of the cave wall.
Devreaux regained consciousness, and fainted, and revived again; but
never once during those dreadful moments did he move or flinch, and
not one cry was wrung from his ashen, stern-set lips.  Dexter was
cool and self-contained when he began his work; when he finally
finished his features were contracted in drawn and haggard lines, his
forehead was dank and wet, and every nerve was aquiver.  But he stood
up with a red bullet clutched in his fingers, persuaded that Devreaux
at least had a fighting chance for life.

The wounded man mercifully had fallen into a stupor at the last.
Dexter looked questioningly for a moment at the twisted, pain-racked
body on the rock floor; then he unstrapped a blanket roll and laid a
covering over the unconscious figure.  The colonel's discarded jacket
was lying near by, and he picked it up as an afterthought to spread
over the blanket.  By accident he held the garment upside down, and a
bundle of loose papers fell from one of the pockets and scattered
over the ground.

As soon as he had placed the tunic over the sleeping man's shoulders,
he stooped to gather up the papers.  They were official reports, he
noticed, with a few stray newspaper cuttings among them.  He was
shuffling the bundle together, when his attention was caught by a
half tone newspaper photograph that accompanied the printed matter of
one of the clippings.

The photograph was of a boy, a pleasant-faced, dreamy-eyed youth of
eighteen or nineteen years; and as the corporal examined the likeness
under the flaring torch, his lips puckered suddenly in a soundless
whistle of astonishment.  There was no mistaking the features: it was
the face of the boy he had left that morning in the lonely cabin on
the farther side of the valley.  As he stared at the print the
headlines that went with the photograph seemed to leap forward to
meet his startled gaze.  Inked across the top of the clipping in
remorseless black type, the caption read:

  BROTHER AND SISTER
        WANTED FOR MURDER
                OF WEALTHY UNCLE


With brows bent in almost painful concentration Dexter perused the
appended account, and as he read his lips pressed hard against his
teeth and a look of sadness crept into his somber eyes.  The story
told of a rich retired merchant of Detroit, Michigan, Oscar Preston,
who adopted and brought up a nephew and niece as his own children.
In a recent slight illness the uncle had unaccountably died, and on
investigation it was discovered that a slow poison had been
administered in the medicines he had taken.  The physician in
attendance had filed charges of a capital crime against the nephew,
claiming to have proof that the young man had deliberately killed his
uncle for the sake of the inheritance.  But when the police showed up
with a warrant of arrest, the nephew had vanished, and his pretty
twenty-year-old sister apparently had fled with him.  The boy's name
was Archibald Smith Preston; the girl's, Anne Alison Rayne Preston.

Dexter sighed deeply as he finished reading the story.  For a space
he stood motionless, his brow darkened in brooding thought, his
listless fingers folding and refolding the edge of the clipped
newspaper.  Alison!  He need wonder no longer over the incongruous
circumstances of fate that had forced this attractive, delicately
nurtured girl to rove as a forest vagabond in the terrible northland.
The boy in the cabin yonder, who denied knowing her, was her brother.
And like "Pink" Crill, they were hunted fugitives, wanted by the law
for a capital offense.

Dexter found it hard indeed to think evil of the clear blue eyes that
had met his eyes a while before with such seeming honesty and
frankness.  But he could not question the fact that Alison must be
the girl referred to in the newspaper, as likewise he could not deny
or explain away her presence at the cabin of murder in the lower
valley.  The news story did not actually accuse her of complicity in
her brother's crime, but to the reasoning mind of the policeman her
flight under such circumstances amounted virtually to a confession of
guilt.  And knowing what he now knew, his remorseless duty imposed
upon him a double obligation to find her again and force her to
answer the law's solemn accounting.

As he listened to the shrieking of the wind outside, there came to
him a mental vision of her, struggling and fighting her way against
the storm; and the thought occurred to him that perhaps it might be
for the best if the clean, white death of the snows should overtake
her--better for her and for him.  To stumble on the little huddled
figure, frozen in the drift, would be a tragic finding; but then, at
least, he would not be called upon to go through with a business that
it would take all of his stoic resolution to face.

He folded the newspaper clipping, and, without realizing what he was
doing, thrust it into the pocket of his own tunic.  Then, with heavy
steps, he moved back to the mouth of the cave to look out into the
gathering twilight.  The temperature was falling rapidly, and the
wind had risen to a gale.  Driving gusts of snow obscured the
landscape.  He gazed through a seething haze towards the mountain
slopes above, and shivered as though with a sudden chill.  Somewhere
off there were Alison and Crill, and the men who had shot Devreaux:
wandering through the snow in search of shelter.  Their situation was
unenviable; but as he bowed his head before an icy gust that swept
the mouth of the cave, he reminded himself that his own lot was not
much better.

The new fallen snow was beginning to bank up in great drifts.  A few
more hours would see the passes blocked, and all communication would
be shut off from the outside world.  He was trapped for the
winter--snowbound in a lonely valley of the mountains with a band of
criminals whom he was hunting, and who in turn had taken to hunting
him.  His rifle and pack were lost, he lacked supplies and adequate
clothing; his comrade was wounded, probably dying.  And he knew that
if his enemies survived the blizzard they would seek out his hiding
place, to finish him too, if they could.




CHAPTER XIX

THE HONOR OF THE SERVICE

While the storm raged over the mountains Dexter was confined in his
cave for three days and nights, watching over a man who slumbered on
the shadowy borderline of death.  He performed the herculean task of
skinning and dismembering his bear, and hanging out great haunches of
meat to refrigerate in the below-zero cold.  Also he contrived to
gather enough downwood to keep a small fire going in the entrance of
the cavern.  Otherwise he could do nothing but sit in brooding
loneliness, listening to the faint, irregular breathing of his
companion, waiting for the blizzard to abate.

On the morning of the fourth day he tumbled out through the drift
that choked his front passage, to find the sun shining down on a
frozen world of dazzling whiteness.  The wind had died during the
night, and a silence of utter desolation had fallen upon the earth.
The trees of the forest stood motionless, with drooping,
over-weighted branches.  A vast blanket of white smoothed and soothed
the rugged landscape.  He listened, and gazed about him, and nowhere
was there sound or stir of life.  Yesterday's slate had been wiped
clean: all trails were buried deep under the winter's snow.

Dexter stared off across the dreary wastes, blinking owlishly under
the scintillating sun, feeling an awed sense of lonesomeness and
littleness, such as the last survivor of the world's final cataclysm
may some day feel.  What had become of the men who crossed that
direction he did not know.  He could not guess where Alison was.
Perhaps all had perished in the storm.  He shook his head in gentle
melancholy.  At present there was no way of finding out what had
happened, and it was futile to speculate.

As far as he himself was concerned, he tried to think that he ought
to be grateful.  He was alive and in health, and his own trail had
been erased by the storm.  He was housed for the winter, and so long
as he did not wander far abroad, nobody could track him to his place
of concealment.  If his enemies were still alive, they too were
imprisoned in the mountain-walled valley, and there would be no
escape for any one before the spring thaws set in.  Outnumbered and
outgunned as he was, he still nursed a dogged determination to hunt
these men down.  He would have to take them one by one, and in cool
self-assurance he believed somehow that he might manage.  But there
was no hurry.  He would not know what to do with prisoners now, if he
caught them; and he could not leave Devreaux.  He would keep out of
sight for the present, biding his time, waiting for spring and the
opening of the trails.

Meanwhile Dexter faced months of appalling hardship.  The ordinary
backwoods settler, owning his cabin and tools and provision store,
nevertheless must toil and struggle heroically to exist through the
cruel northland winters.  But the most destitute of settlers had an
easy job compared to the labors that Dexter was called upon to
undertake.  Knowing that two lives were dependent upon his efforts,
however, he went about his work with cheerful energy.

First of all, wood had to be cut--enormous stacks of it--to meet the
hungry demands of a fire that must not be allowed to go out.  While
the weather hardened and the new snows piled up, he went into the
nearby timber, day after day and week after week, chopping great logs
with an absurd little pocket ax--chopping for hours at a stretch,
until somehow he would get to thinking of the ax handle as just
another numb, half-frozen member of his body.  Between his wood
gathering forays he found time somehow to make and set traps and
snares for hare, ptarmigan, lynx and a gluttonous wolverine that
raided his larder nights; to cure pelts, and manufacture moccasins
and clothing and blankets and snowshoes; to cook and sweep, to render
bear fat for lard and candles, and leach lye for soap; to bathe and
shave and keep up at any cost the pretext that he was still a
respectable member of society.  And Devreaux needed constant, devoted
care.

For more than three weeks the wounded man lay in the coma of
darkness, an inert, senseless human bulk, whom death had claimed, and
who did not die.  And day and night the corporal kept his untiring
vigil, and fought the powers of fate for his comrade's life.

The days grew shorter and shorter, and November's cold gripped the
earth tighter and tighter, like locking fetters of steel.  And still
the spark smoldered in the stricken man's body.  There came a night
at last when Dexter, stooping to force a spoonful of broth between
his patient's teeth, was suddenly aware that the sunken eyes had
opened to look at him with a feeble light of intelligence.

"Hello, colonel!" he ejaculated.

"Not yet, David?"  A whimsical smile flickered upon Devreaux's lips.
"Tough on you.  Old ram too stubborn to quit.  How long now?"

"About a month."

"You looking after me all that time.  Thanks."  Devreaux surveyed his
companion with misty gaze.  "You all right?"

"Fine."

"Pull me through if you can," said the colonel with failing breath.
"I'd like to last now to--to meet the man who--shot--" his voice
faltered, faded away, his eyelids closed, and he slipped back gently
into oblivion.  But this time his unconsciousness was not like a
stupor.  He was asleep.

November passed, and December came in with snow and more snow, with a
frigid breath that froze the surface crust as hard and solid as
stone.  Devreaux slumbered on with only brief and fitful awakenings,
day after day, and night after night: his body and spirit wearied to
utter exhaustion, needing the recuperating balm of sleep.  And while
he slept the beat of his pulse slowly strengthened, and his breathing
gradually lost its wheezing sound.  He had weathered the crisis, and
by almost imperceptible degrees the throb of life was renewing.
Dexter hovered over him constantly, watching and hoping, with the
grateful, awed feeling of a man who has been permitted to help work a
miracle.

The colonel was on the road of convalescence, but otherwise life was
not pleasant for the tenants of the bear den under Saddle Mountain.
The fearful storms of the holiday season swept down upon them in
howling fury.  Dexter had kept track of the days with charcoal marks
on the cavern wall.  Christmas was only a week away.  His gaunt,
frost-bitten features twisted into a grin as he thought of Christmas.
Their salt, pepper, baking powder and tea had been used up weeks ago;
the flour was out long since, likewise the bacon and sugar; his stock
of matches was running low.  Hares were becoming scarce, and wary,
and there hadn't been a ptarmigan around that direction in a month.
As for bear meat, he felt certain that the very next rich, black,
savory bear steak he tried to eat surely would choke him.

Thanks to a habit of absent-mindedness, he still had plenty of
tobacco.  Usually when it occurred to him that it was time to smoke,
he would find his pipe bowl filled with the tobacco that he had
forgotten to light the last time; and when he started to reach for an
ember from the fire, as likely as not he would get to thinking about
something else and shove the pipe heedlessly back into his pocket
again.  It was a satisfaction to know that his pouch still held a
winter's supply of tobacco; but his craving for a change from bear
diet was becoming an obsession that gave him no rest.  Finally, one
day, he left Devreaux asleep and snowshoed several miles farther up
the valley looking for anything he could find, except grizzlies.  And
to his intense joy he stumbled upon a winter deer yard.

There are only two varieties of meat that the human digestion can
tolerate for breakfast, dinner and supper, day after day and week
after week: beef and venison.  Dexter trimmed the branches from a
springy sapling, devised a rude block and tackle to bend the tough
stem to the ground, and whittled a trigger and made a hangman's noose
of rawhide.  He baited his evil contraption with lily bulbs, chopped
with great labor from under the ice of a near-by pond; and the next
morning he owned the strangled carcass of a mule deer buck, which he
skinned and quartered, and lugged by sections to the cave.

That night there was something like contentment in the stuffy hole
where two members of the royal mounted dwelt.  The unusual odors from
the cooking fire aroused the colonel to one of his short spells of
wakefulness, and he watched the supper preparations with famishing
eyes.

"Any sign of our neighbors?" he asked as Dexter filled him a plate of
steaming venison soup.

Dexter shook his head.  "Since that afternoon I have not seen or
heard of--of anybody."

"I seem to remember your telling me that the girl--Alison, wasn't
it?--walked out on you."

"To bring you here--I had to let her go."

"You don't know where she went?"

"She--perhaps she didn't get through that night."  Dexter had found a
seat on a log, and as he spoke he settled his chin in the palm of his
hand and stared vacantly into the fire.  "I've been wondering--a
lot--lately."

Devreaux eyed him for a moment with a curious, sidewise glance.  "She
reminds me of a girl I once knew," he said after a pause of
constraint.

"Yes?" said the corporal in a dreamy voice.

"I was a constable in those days," went on the superintendent--"a
swaggering youngster in a proud uniform.  The girl was so pretty you
felt breathless just from looking at her.  I can see her even now,
without half trying, as she used to sit near me at camp fires that
have been cold for forty years.

"Her father was wanted for a border robbery," the colonel resumed as
Dexter sat silent, watching the flames, "and she was supposed to have
helped him.  My inspector sent me after them, and I rounded them up
in a corner of Northern Ontario.

"During the weeks of the back trip," Devreaux pursued, "that girl
worked on me with those innocent eyes of hers, and I soon found
myself trying to think that we had made a dreadful mistake.  And
because I wanted to, I soon was thinking so.  I got so I would have
staked my life on that girl.  She told me she was guiltless, and
begged me to let her go."  The old officer's jaw muscles hardened as
he smiled his granite smile, "Now you're the only man besides myself
who knows how near a police constable once came to betraying his
trust.

"Do you know what saved me, corporal?  My uniform was too tight in
the back."  Devreaux nodded soberly.  "Nothing but that.  I couldn't
move or breathe without remembering the tunic I wore.  In my moments
of weakening that tunic somehow would tug at my back.  I believed in
that girl, but also I passionately believed in the Royal North-West
Mounted Police.  And so I escorted my prisoners to the fort, and my
heart was breaking when the inspector returned my salute and told me
that some day I might make a good policeman.

"As it turned out," Devreaux added, and deliberately refrained from
looking at his companion, "this girl was all wrong--thoroughly no
account--not worth wasting a thought on.  Yet I think about her
sometimes, because it was through her that I lost a lot of fine
boyish illusions.  And there was another thing I almost lost, but
didn't quite: the thing that generations of us will go on to the last
man and the last breath fighting for: the honor of the service."

A deep silence settled in the cavern as the superintendent broke off
his low, monotones of speech.  Dexter sat quietly, his spare body
hunched over the fire, gazing into vacancy.  But at length he stirred
on his log, and abruptly turned, and squarely met his officer's eyes.
"You didn't need to tell me this," he said.

"The one romance of my life," remarked the colonel, his voice tinged
with something akin to embarrassment.  "I just happened to be
reminded of it."

"A homily for young policemen."  Dexter laughed harshly, and then
suddenly stood up, and from his pocket he produced a dog-eared
newspaper clipping.  "This fell from among your papers," he said.
"Have you ever read it?"

"I have a scrapbook at the fort in which I file away items of general
police interest," observed Devreaux.  "I must have clipped this
before I left the fort, and lacked the time to paste it up."

While Dexter held the candle near, he ran his glance through the
paragraph of type.

"Alison Rayne," said the corporal, as Devreaux finished reading.

"Hum!" mused the superintendent, handing back the clipping.  "I
thought I remembered that name from somewhere, but didn't quite place
it."  He suddenly shrugged his shoulders.  "Well!  There we are!"
His gnarled fingers strayed forward to rest lightly for an instant on
his companion's sleeve.  "You never can tell about 'em, David."

Dexter started to reply, but checked himself with tight-shutting
teeth.  He turned, and with precise care, arranged a couple of logs
on the fire.  Then, without a word, he stepped outside the cave, to
stand bareheaded in the night, watching the play of auroral lights
upon the frigid reaches of the northern horizon.




CHAPTER XX

WHEN SPRING CAME BACK

Through January and February the temperature fell lower and lower,
and winter, like a white, constricting monster, bound the forest
country in tighter embrace.  The gray specter of famine walked
through the wilderness, reaching here and there and everywhere with a
blighting touch of death, threatening at the last to take off the
surviving creatures of the coverts and runways, that still tried so
hard to live.  March came with high winds, with clear sunny days and
nights that crackled under the frosty stars.  The two policemen
continued to live in their cave, and while Dexter grew thin and gaunt
with the privations of the passing months, the convalescent Devreaux,
astonishingly, began to pick up in weight and strength.

The sun swung gradually northward, and the silvery pale rays changed
to gold; for a few minutes at noon-day a faint warmth might be felt,
and water dripped from the snow-laden trees.  In a short while the
thick ground crust would drop in, and after that release from the
frozen bonds of winter would come swiftly.

It was the season of avalanches.  The snow piled on the higher
mountain peaks was beginning to soften and settle; and sometimes the
overweighted masses would slip loose and start for the lower valleys,
picking up more snow and ice chunks and bowlders, gaining in momentum
and size until great trees were snapped off like match sticks; and
all was carried to the bottom in a rush of sound that shook the
mountainsides.  Dexter was often awakened nights by the dreaded
thunder of a timber wreck, and knew that somewhere a forested slope
had been suddenly razed as bare as his own clean-shaven jaw.

By every sign and sound the inmates of the Saddle Mountain cave knew
that spring was at hand.  "The travelways will be open in a few more
weeks," Devreaux remarked one morning as he peered out from the
cavern mouth.  "If our fellow sojourners are still alive they'll soon
be hitting for the outlet--north."

"I've been puzzling over the singular events of last fall," said
Dexter, "and I can think of but one explanation.  There are at least
three fugitives from the country below--as far as we know there may
be more--desperate groups who suddenly bob up in a far-off valley of
the wilderness.  It isn't likely that they all just happened to drop
in like that; it's too much like deliberate planning.  I shouldn't be
at all surprised to discover that we've stumbled upon a sort of
'underground railroad'--a chain of settlers and trappers reaching
clear through the woods, banded together in a scheme to help people
who, for one reason or another, must flee from the States."

"Passing 'em from hand to hand," Devreaux cut in with quickening
interest.  "Run 'em across country to one of the lonely fiords along
the northwest coast, where a yacht or tramp steamer could put in
undetected, and cruise off for the Orient, say, with a passenger list
of folks who have said ta-ta to the police back home."  He nodded
with growing conviction.  "It wouldn't astonish me if that is exactly
what is being done."

"Profitable scheme for a man who organized the business properly,"
observed Dexter.  "All he would have to do would be to establish his
chain of way stations--cabins and shacks of so-called trappers.
Agents in the states to dicker with people who needed such help, and
were willing to pay.  And they'd pay heavy.  Take Crill: he probably
couldn't find his way two miles through the forest without a guide.
He'll be hanged in the Cook County jail, if he's caught.  You can
imagine what he'd give to an organization that promised to escort him
to safety: ten, fifty thousand dollars--any sum he could scrape
together!"

"Assuming that you may have guessed the truth," mused the
superintendent, "we accidentally derailed the train.  To settle with
us they were delayed a few precious days, and the snows came and hung
'em up here for the winter."

"If I've anything to say about it," said Dexter with outthrust jaw,
"the train's going into another ditch this spring."

The colonel glanced sharply at his companion.  "What are you planning
to do?"

"Going after them."

"They're too many for you, corporal, and you haven't even a rifle."
Devreaux studied the fire for a moment with scowling face.  "I'll
tell you," he said at length.  "There's only one thing to do.  It'll
be hot weather before this lung of mine is equal to heavy breathing.
You'll have to work alone, I'm afraid.  If I were you, the minute
mountain travel is possible, I'd make for the north pass, and hide in
the neighborhood.  When the gang comes along, as they undoubtedly
will, pick up the trail, but don't show yourself.  Our men from the
fort are bound to come to hunt for me as soon as they can get through
the mountains.  I'll make my way by easy stages to the lower pass,
and meet them.  Meanwhile, you blaze your path behind you, and it
shouldn't be long before you have a squad of Mounties trailing by
forced marches to your help."

Dexter considered for a moment, and nodded a tentative agreement.
"We'll put it over somehow--when the time comes," he said.

By the middle of March the colonel was able to shed his bearskin
robes and sit up by the fire, and he even essayed a few tottering
steps about the cave.  He could attend the fire now, or defend
himself in case of an unexpected attack, and Dexter one morning
decided that he might safely leave his patient alone for a day or
two, while he made the trip to the lower valley to recover the packs
of provisions that Devreaux and Constable Graves had cached there the
previous fall.

The colonel, who had grown very weary of a diet of meat straight,
readily assented to the plan; so the corporal lashed on his snowshoes
and set forth on a long and difficult journey.

The surface crust had fallen through on the exposed hillsides, and
wet sticky snow clogged the racket webs, making each footstep a
dragging effort; but the corporal broke out his toilsome trail down
the length of the valley, and by nightfall had sighted the landmarks
that led him to the place where the packs were buried.  He tied up a
bundle of the priceless luxuries he found--evaporated fruits, tea,
coffee, sugar, flour--as much as he could carry on his back.  That
night he fed himself to repletion, and bivouacked until morning in
the lee of a thicket that hid the glow of his tiny camp fire.  Before
daylight he was on his feet again, tramping north in the frosty dawn.

His course led him up along the banks of a small ice-bound brook that
twisted through gulley and gorge, in the shadow of towering
mountains.  He swung along with a steady crunching of snowshoes,
feeling a tingle of spring in the air, breathing deeply, almost with
elation, his keen gray eyes busy everywhere, taking in the
multifarious signs of life awakening.  Wherever he looked he saw the
tracks of feet--pads and claws; and birds were darting among the
thickets.  All the forest creatures that had weathered the winter,
were out that morning looking for a meal.  As Dexter strode onward,
curiously watching the runways, he came to the mouth of a dry gulley
that sloped up the steep mountainside; and in snow underfoot he saw a
mark that halted him as abruptly as a battery shock.  It was the
print of a man's boot.

The track was freshly made.  It was a peculiarly shaped pattern of
sole--long and narrow--and as the corporal stooped, staring, he
recalled the afternoon on the Saddle Mountain plateau, when Devreaux
was shot.  The trail he failed to follow that day!  Those old prints
were identical in outline with this mark, newly tramped in the snow;
and he knew that the man who had just passed this place could be none
other than "Pink" Crill.

Strange metallic lights gleamed in Dexter's eyes as he surveyed the
ground about him.  The man had been there only a few minutes before,
apparently.  He had sat on a fallen log and taken off his
snowshoes--probably to rest a pair of sore feet.  And then he had
tied on his rackets again, and had gone scuffling off up the gulley.

So Crill was alive, prowling through the forest once more.  Dexter
drew a full breath, and had any one been present to observe the look
of satisfaction in his face, it might almost have been supposed that
he had stumbled on the tracks of a long-lost friend.  He inspected
the mechanism of a pistol that had not left its holster in months,
and then, with the buoyant step of a man who returns to business
after fretting confinement, he started to follow.

The trail led through a clump of giant spruces that choked the mouth
of the gulley.  Dexter pushed upward through the timber, and
presently the heavier growths thinned out, and he gained an
unobstructed view of the steep slopes above him.  He was standing in
a chasm-like fissure, deep, rockwalled, thirty or forty feet in
width, which extended on upward in a jagged, crooked course, halfway
to the frowning crest of the mountain.

As he gazed towards the heights he caught a movement at the farther
end of the crevice, and saw a man climb out of the draw to the bare
snow-field that pitched downward sharply from the lofty ridge above.
The distance was too great for actual identification, but Dexter was
certain that the climber must be Crill.

The man had started to mount the slope, but after his first balancing
step or two he stopped, and for some reason decided to look down
behind him.  And by the sudden tensing attitude of his body, Dexter
knew that he had seen his pursuer.

For a second or two the figure remained motionless, gazing down the
long fissure.  Then, abruptly, the man straightened and turned to
wave his arm frantically, as though he were trying to attract the
attention of some one on the upper ridge.

Dexter cast a wary glance towards the distant heights.  Several
hundred yards above him the ridge of the mountain loomed in stark
white outline against the glaring sky; and at the topmost point a
faint bluish shadow marked the position of an overhanging drift--a
formation known as a "snow cornice"--dreaded by mountaineers.

With a sudden feeling of disquiet, Dexter shaded his eyes to survey
the upper ridge; and all at once he made out a tiny figure standing
erect and sentinel-like, clearly outlined against the limpid horizon.
As he looked, a second figure hove into view--a third: three human
shapes--men!

The climber on the middle slope was waving one hand, and pointing
down the gulley with the other.  Dexter had the unpleasant knowledge
that the group on the ridge had caught sight of him.  In the moment
of his hesitation he saw one of the small figures leave the others
and move cautiously towards the edge of the snow cornice.  And then,
as he peered upward, his eyes widened in horrified comprehension.
The man had a stick or a rifle in his hands, and he was bending
forward, apparently prying at the overhanging drift.  The mass of
snow, almost loosened by its own soggy weight, was ready to break off
at the slightest touch.

Dexter saw the shadow disappear as the cornice gave way; saw a flash
of white, a spurting cloud of snow.  And as he turned ignominiously
to flee for his life, he heard a crash from the ridge top, and then
the gathering roar of an avalanche that descended the slope behind
him.




CHAPTER XXI

PATH OF THE AVALANCHE

The walls of the gulley hemmed Dexter in on two sides, and he saw at
a glance that it would be foolish to try to climb out of the trap
into which he had blundered.  Either he must gain the lower exit in
time to fling himself from the path of onrushing death, or else go
down, crushed and buried, under hurtling tons of ice and snow and
shattered tree trunks.  A single misstep, a fraction of a second
lost, and his one slender chance was forfeit.  He went down the steep
pitch of the gulley with snowshoes creaking, fairly hissing in the
snow, gliding when he could, taking obstacles with flying leaps, as a
ski jumper covers the ground, throwing himself bodily towards the
mouth of the chasm.  But fast as he traveled, the avalanche came
faster behind him.

From the first rumbling crash the sound grew thunderous, and then
rapidly gained volume beyond all sense of hearing.  The mountainsides
reverberated and he could feel the earth shake and tremble underfoot.
Once he dared to glance over his shoulder, and from the tail of his
eye he saw a mass of snow and rocks and gyrating trees, all mixed up
in a white cloud and pouring down upon him like foam in a waterfall.
And he ran faster than he ever thought he could run.

He was among the spruces, with the brook in sight, and he plunged on
between the trunks like a dodging rabbit.  Twelve yards--six--three
long strides needed to reach the mouth of the gulley: he strained
onward in his final spurt.  But the snowslide was almost upon him.
The clump of sturdy spruces might have been so much wheat straw
standing in the way of the scythe.  The impact was like a hundred
freight trains in head-on collision.  Branches swayed and tossed
overhead; great trunks splintered, snapped, and went down in
scrambled wreckage.

Dexter took a last leap, passed the mouth of the fissure, whirling
out beyond a jutting corner of rock.  But as his foot touched ground,
irresistible forces caught him from behind.  He felt himself lifted,
hurled through the air, flung aside.  And masses of rock and snow and
trees poured past him, out of the gulley, across the creek--and hit
the slope on the other side.  For seconds afterwards the earth
quivered as an organ pipe vibrates with the undernotes of a deep bass
chord.  Then an unbelievable silence closed over the valley.

And from out of the silence Dexter's mind returned to troubled
wakefulness, and struggled slowly to think about things.  It gave him
a queer sensation to find himself alive and able to see about him
with his dim, distorted vision.  But he could look, and move his head
a little, and try to puzzle it all out.

A ship's cargo of debris had been dumped across the creek and all
about were the butts of uprooted trees, sticking out funny
directions, like things in a pin cushion.  He was partly buried under
a drift, and there was snow beneath his shirt collar.  His shoulders
were flat on the ground and the lower part of his body was twisted
around in an uncomfortable posture, but somehow he felt no
inclination to get up.

For a while he lay quiet, blinking up at the serene, cloudless sky.
Gradually his senses began to clear.  He was aware now of a dull,
aching feeling in his right shoulder.  The fog was lifting from his
brain; he remembered what had happened to him.  And all at once the
pain in his shoulder became a hot, excruciating torment.  He shifted
his position slightly, and heard a harsh grating sound.  Bones were
broken somewhere, he realized.

Curiously he tried to lift his arm, and the muscles would not
respond.  Arm or shoulder broken, he decided.  He strained forward to
sit up, and was surprised to discover he could not raise himself.  A
weight seemed to hold him down.  He experimented with his left arm,
and found he could use it.  He groped across his chest, and his
fingers scuffed on the rough bark of a tree trunk.  Then he knew what
was wrong.  A falling tree had caught him on the edge of the timber
wreck, throwing him to one side, and then dropping across him.  And
the tree now lay upon his shoulder--a crushing weight that he could
not budge or squirm from under.  He strained in desperation for a
moment, but it was no use, and he relaxed with a gasp.  The tree
pinned him to the ground, and he resigned himself to the fatal
knowledge that no effort of his own could free him.  He lay helpless,
at the mercy of men who had sent an avalanche upon him.

As long as he remained quiet the pain in his shoulder was endurable,
and there was nothing to be done but take it easy and wait.  And he
was not long kept in suspense.  In a few minutes he heard voices
talking, a squeak and crunch of snowshoes, and presently a file of
men hove into view on the mountain slope.  He twisted his head back
and surveyed the approaching group with something of the detached
curiosity a man on a gallows might feel concerning the physiognomy of
his executioner.

There were four men in the party, and he was not greatly surprised to
discover that he knew three of them by sight.  First came Crill,
sleek and fat as ever, his face glowing pink from his exertions,
shuffling awkwardly on his snowshoes, his thick lips sagging in
evil-grinning triumph as he advanced.  Next in the file appeared
'Phonse Doucet, Jess Mudgett's accomplice in the assault on the
Crooked Forks storekeeper, whose warrant of arrest the corporal still
carried; a morose and murderous half-breed, given to drunkenness and
ugly bluster; a Hercules of a man, capable of breaking an ax-helve
between his hands; a brawler and maimer, who held an unsavory
reputation for jumping his victims from behind.  The third member of
the party, an undersized, wizened, beetle-browed man, Dexter
identified as a forest skulker and petty scamp, Norbert Croix by
name.  Croix would sometimes show himself furtively at Crooked Forks,
only to slink mysteriously back into the woods again.  He was known
to be a hanger-on around Indian encampments, and was suspected of
whiskey peddling, and of trap line thieving.  But his misdemeanors
were cautiously undertaken, and it was not generally believed that he
held an ounce of real danger in his shrunken make-up.

Dexter surveyed the trio, and his lips drew downward contemptuously.
A well chosen and congenial crew they were indeed, conscienceless,
treacherous, lawless, with almost every crime of the calendar chalked
to their account; there was not a scrap of genuine courage in the
lot.  He was convinced that the three of them together would never
have faced him in clean, open combat, with weapons in their hands.
They found him helpless now, and he knew why they were trailing down
the mountainside towards him.  But as a life of constant danger had
robbed death of its strangeness, so he no longer feared death; and he
could assure himself honestly and thankfully that men such as these
did not have it in their power to make him afraid.

As he watched the approaching party the corporal's glance strayed
towards the fourth member, the man who sauntered in the rear.  This
one he had never seen before.  The stranger was short in stature and
slight in build, a clean-shaven, dark-visaged man, who, even in his
heavy, ill-fitting suit of Mackinaws, bore himself with an air of
distinction and grace.  There was something adequate and
self-possessed in his easy stride, and Dexter guessed instinctively
that he was the only one of the four who would have dared to creep to
the brink of a snow cornice and set off an avalanche.  The corporal
was certain that the stranger was the man with whom he must hold the
final reckoning.  But it was Crill who first reached the bottom of
the mountain slope.

The Chicago outlaw slouched forward to stand over the defenseless
policeman, his leering eyes hard and lusterless as frosted glass.  He
stared gloatingly for a second, and then launched into a stream of
abuse that poured with horrid fluency from his full red lips.  His
fat chin was drawn back in his collar, and he had a trick of swaying
his head slowly as he spat the venom of his remarks.  Dexter observed
the man's pinkish, flat-topped skull, with the queer sunken hollows
above the cheek bones, and was reminded more forcibly than ever of a
copperhead in the act of striking.

"I bounced out a United States cop not long ago," Crill asserted as
he moistened his lips in hideous anticipation, "and now I'm gonna
croak one in Canada."

With a throaty laugh, he lifted his rifle.  He deliberately snapped
off the safety, and then, slowly aiming, he thrust the muzzle almost
into Dexter's face, and started to pull the trigger.




CHAPTER XXII

THE MAN-TRAP

Held to the ground by the fallen tree trunk, Dexter could make no
move in self-defense.  His own pistol was buttoned in its holster,
strapped to the right side of his body.  His right arm was broken,
and it was impossible to reach far enough over the trunk with his
left hand to touch the butt of his weapon.  He waited, quiet and
relaxed, his eyes clear and unwavering as he gazed into the bore of a
blue steel barrel, pointed exactly at the center of his forehead.

There being no help for it, he could resign himself to fate, even to
the indignity of death at a murderer's hands.  After all, it did not
matter much how, or by whom, the act was accomplished.  He at least
might dignify the last moment of life by meeting it unflinchingly.
Singularly, the habits of an inquisitive mind persisted even now.  He
found himself wondering, almost with tranquillity, what this final
adventure would be like.  Would he have time to see the flash of fire
and to feel the shock before the great darkness engulfed him?  He
would know in a second or two, and he waited with a shadow of a smile
on his lips, watching with wide open eyes.

Crill's finger was tightening very slowly on the trigger, as though
he was purposely prolonging a moment of cruel enjoyment.  But as
Dexter stared upward, observing the gradual muscular contraction of
the plump hand that gripped the rifle, an expert knowledge of
firearms told him that another pound of pressure must discharge the
weapon.  The last instant had come; but as he instinctively stopped
breathing, he heard a shout behind him, a commotion of rushing feet,
and a human figure flung itself upon the outlaw, and struck violently
at his outstretched arm.

A shattering explosion echoed across the brookside, a bullet
spattered bark along the tree trunk, and the rifle spun through the
air and fell into the snow near Dexter's head.  Gazing upward in
astonishment, the corporal saw the dark-faced stranger standing
between him and his intended murderer.

Utter silence held for two or three seconds after the reverberation
of the report had died.  Then, with a sudden snarling sound in his
throat, Crill stooped to recover his gun, and swung back savagely to
confront the man who had interfered.

"You--you--" he raged in a voice that nearly choked him.  "I'll lay
you alongside him, you--you--"  He broke off for lack of breath, and
glowered hot and menacing at the small man who dared to face him.

The newcomer measured the gross bulk before him, and quietly shook
his head.  "Every time I look at you, Crill, you come within a hair's
breadth of dying," he remarked in a mild, drawling voice.  "I can't
stand you.  If you didn't mean ready money to me, delivered on the
hoof, I'd have put a bullet through you months ago.  Stand aside!"

Without pausing to note the effect of his speech, he turned to look
down at Dexter.  But before he found anything to say, an interruption
came in the form of the giant Doucet.

The half-breed strode to the foot of the slope, and pushed forward to
take part in the argument.  "I teenk lak Peenk, we keel 'im.  Mebby
we don' shoot 'em, eh?  Dan we keek an' tromp 'im, w'at?"  His
saturnine face wrinkled for a moment in a sinister grin, and he
glanced significantly at his heavy, nail-studded boots--weapons he
had used before now with frightful effect, when his victims were
sprawled helplessly before him.

The slight-built stranger surveyed the huge Doucet scornfully.  "My,
you're brave--you and Crill!" he observed with cutting irony.  "You
don't fear any policeman when you've got him crushed under a tree.
One wants to shoot him, and the other's going to kick him to death."
He turned suavely towards his third companion.  "What method do you
prefer, Croix?" he asked.

"Whatever way you say's right, Mr. Stark," answered Croix with a
furtive glance from one of his comrades to another.

Dexter caught the name, and looked up curiously at the mild-spoken
stranger.  The man was Stark--presumably the Owen Stark whom Mudgett
had mentioned--who owned the trapper's cabin farther up the valley,
where Alison Rayne's brother was found last fall.  And it needed no
more than a glance at his confident black eyes and lean resolute jaw
to mark him as the controlling mind and spirit among the scamps with
whom he kept company.

Stark looked at each of his companions in turn, and his mouth curved
faintly in a coldly whimsical smile that somehow was more formidable
in quality than Crill's venomous scowl, or Doucet's swaggering
ferocity, or the evil, hangdog demeanor of Norbert Croix.

"You're a pack of rats!" said Stark.  "Get away from me!"  Then,
indicating that the incident was closed, he turned his back on his
comrades, and bent forward to face Corporal Dexter.

"You're the last of your outfit, I take it," he remarked blandly.
"There were three of you.  One was a young constable who got his
several months ago.  Then there was the old man--Colonel Devreaux,
wasn't he?  I'm afraid he went out too, didn't he--one stormy day
last October?"

In spite of the agony of the pain that throbbed and flamed through
his body, Dexter's mind was still functioning.  He had not forgotten
that his own back trail led to the cave where Devreaux was hiding.
If he could convince these men that the colonel was dead, they
probably would not bother to follow his footsteps to Saddle Mountain.
"A thirty caliber bullet through the lungs will finish almost any
man," he stated.  "I put Devreaux away under the ground that same
evening."

"Lung shot, eh?" Stark nodded with the pleased air of a man who has
been paid a compliment.  "Not bad marksmanship at that distance.  And
in that hazy atmosphere, just before the snow struck us.  But I was
certain I had--I knew at the time that the final shot rang the bell."

He took off his mittens, brought paper and tobacco from his pocket,
and casually rolled himself a cigarette.  "You chaps annoyed us a bit
last fall," he pursued in a voice of gentleness.  "But we forgive
you."  He struck a match and puffed deeply for a moment, filling his
lungs with smoke.  "Policemen are something that can't be helped, I
suppose.  But it doesn't matter."  He blew a lazy stream of smoke
from his nostrils.  "We can go our way as though you'd never
happened, now that all three of you are dead."

Again Stark smiled his faint, quizzical smile, and for the first time
Dexter felt a chill of horror seeping through his veins.  Of his four
enemies, this was the man to be feared: and as he looked into the
cool, mocking eyes above him he realized that fate would have been
more merciful if Crill or Doucet had been allowed to have his way.

Still refusing to show dismay, however, the corporal met Stark's
glance with seeming unconcern.  "You four traveling for the north
pass?" he asked after a little pause.

"Looking for information?"  Stark regarded him curiously for a
moment, and silently laughed.  "Yes.  We're working along northward.
Ought to be able to break our way through the snows two or three
weeks from now.  As long as I'm talking to a dead man there's no harm
telling."  He nodded amiably, apparently amused.  "If you were still
a policeman, it would have interested you to know more about me.  I
run what you might call a touring agency for murderers, and others
who have to depart fast to save their necks.  This Crill here, for
instance--I've guaranteed to run him out of the country." He nodded
towards the pink-cheeked outlaw.  "I'll put him through safely, and
then I'll collect the belt of gold he wears around his fat waist."

Crill stirred uneasily, and shot a lowering glance of suspicion at
his smaller companion.  Stark showed his teeth in a twisted grin.
"It would give me pleasure to see this one hanging," he remarked
genially, "but business before pleasure is my motto.  Crill is scared
all the time that I'm going to knock him off and take his money ahead
of time.  But I don't really think I shall.  Never kill a waddling
goose for his belt of gold.  If I let Crill live, he'll probably
write to his friends from his hiding place abroad, and tell them that
I played fair.  I'm counting on him to recommend me to new clients.
Honesty always pays when you're building up business."

As Dexter listened to the man's cynical remarks, it occurred to him
that while the mood of frankness was on he might receive a truthful
answer to the question that had dwelt uppermost in his thoughts
through the long winter months.  "What became of the girl--Miss
Rayne?" he asked.

Stark eyed him slantwise for a space, and his face was furrowed for
an instant with lines of mocking humor.  "Oh, yes," he said, "the
only one the three of you succeeded in catching.  A girl!  And even
she got away from you."

"What happened to her?" Dexter persisted in a faint voice.

"We haven't seen her all winter," answered Stark with a shrug of
unconcern.  "Maybe she got through the storm, and found shelter
somewhere.  Maybe she didn't.  Perhaps she is dead."  He laughed
unpleasantly.  "Crill saw her that afternoon, and like you he's been
worrying about her.  Wanted to go hunt for her.  Rut I wouldn't let
him out of my sight.  I'm keeping my eyes on that belt of money."

Dexter's stoical mask had left him for a moment, and the intensity of
his mental torment was revealed in his drawn features.  Stark grinned
at him tauntingly.  "If she's dead you'll meet her shortly," he
remarked; and then he turned abruptly to face his companions.

"As for the three of you," he observed, "you're a bunch of half-wits.
Not one of you has brains enough to think ahead of the moment.
Suppose this man were left here with a bullet in him or the marks of
hobnails on him?  Other policemen will be in here as soon as the way
is open, and if they found him like that, they'd go after us like a
pack of wolves.

"As it stands now," he pursued quietly, "nobody's had a chance to
find out much about us.  Of the three policemen who came into this
country last fall, two are out of sight under the ground, and they'll
probably never be found.  As for the third, we're going to make
certain that he doesn't bear evidence against us."

"Yeh!" interrupted Crill with a surly stare.  "But what's to stop us
planting this one too?"

"Nothing," returned Stark in his genial drawl.  "Only in my opinion
it's better to leave one of them to be found, apparently the victim
of a timber wreck.  Such accidents often happen in these mountains.
If the police discover one of their three men laid out like this,
they're apt to think that the hazards of winter travel took off the
other two as well.  They'll search around a while, and then give it
up, figuring probably that all three have perished by accident.  And
nobody can blame us."  He glanced down coolly at the stricken
officer.  "What's your opinion?" he inquired.

Dexter lay with eyes half closed, listening to the cold-blooded
discussion.  His enemies seemed to be agreed on the question of his
death; they differed only as to the manner of execution.  But somehow
he was not greatly interested in the argument.  As long as the end
was foredoomed, it did not matter much how the final act was done.
He met Stark's gaze, and smiled wanly.  "I agree with you," he said.
"Your chances of life are much better if my comrades are kept from
guessing the truth."

"But wan leetle knock on de head!" cut in Doucet eagerly.  He
illustrated with an imaginary club wielded in his great sinewy hands.
"_Wham!  Voila tout!_"  He nodded vigorously.  "Dey fin' him wid
skull smash.  Den dey t'ink de tree she hit 'im so.  De snow all melt
before anybody come.  No foot track lef' from us.  Nobody suspec'.
An' nobody bodder us ever any more.  Is it not so?"

"No!" said Stark decisively.  "I owe this man a private accounting,
and it's for me to decide the form of payment.  And he's not going to
die quick and easy."

Stark's air of careless indifference was suddenly cast aside, and as
he bent over the policeman, malevolence and hatred gleamed openly in
his deep-sunk eyes.  "I've been waiting, hoping for a chance like
this for months and months," he declared, his voice as frigid and
brittle as tinkling ice in a glass.  "My only fear was that I
wouldn't get you alive.  But I have!  And for what you've done to me,
I'm going to make you pay to your last ounce of endurance, to the
last breath you've got!"

Dexter gazed at the man in speechless wonder, unable to account for
the venomous outburst.  As far as he recalled, he and Stark had never
met before, and he could not imagine what he had ever done to call
upon himself the malice and detestation so unexpectedly revealed in
the bloodless face above him.  As he looked up in mute questioning
the notion struck him that the man had gone suddenly insane.  Stark
apparently read the thought in his mind.

"No!" said Stark, tense and hoarse, his affected urbanity of a moment
before lost in a demoniacal scowl.  "I'm not crazy.  You're Corporal
David Dexter--and you're the one I've wanted.  If you don't know why,
I won't give you the satisfaction of being told.  Think back--maybe
you'll remember!"  His lips drew back from his white teeth, and his
laugh echoed hideously.  "You'll have time to do plenty of thinking
before you finish."

With a stiff movement, as though he found it difficult to hold
himself in hand, he dropped on one knee and extracted the corporal's
pistol from his holster.  "You might manage to reach it after we're
gone and put a bullet through your head," he grated.  "Nothing so
nice as that for you!"

With swift, nervous hands Stark searched through the policeman's
pockets, and possessed himself of all spare cartridges, hunting
knife, match safe, and notebook and pencils.  "Just to make sure you
don't scribble any farewell messages," he remarked.

The pipe and tobacco pouch, he did not bother to take, and in his
haste he accidentally overlooked the small revolver Dexter had kept
as evidence from the murder cabin, and which he carried buttoned in
the right hand pocket of his stag shirt.  With the fallen tree
pressing upon his chest and right shoulder, Dexter could not have
reached the weapon if he tried; nevertheless he took a strange
satisfaction in the knowledge that he had not been stripped entirely
of firearms.

Stark finished his rummaging, and stood up; and his eyes glittered as
he looked upon his helpless enemy.  "Unless somebody takes that tree
off you, you're pinned there forever," he declared.  "It'll be three
weeks anyhow before any of your people can get into this valley, and
you'll pass out before that.  But you'll go slow.  Hunger may do it,
or exposure, or blood poisoning from broken bones, or maybe the
beasts will get you."  He sucked in his lips with morbid
anticipation.  "I heard a pack of timber wolves howling a couple of
nights ago.  We don't know how the end will come, but for you there's
no escape.  And you can lie there with the nerve oozing out and the
fear creeping on--hours and days of it, perhaps--and all that time
you can be telling yourself that Owen Stark did this thing to you."

The man stooped to unfasten the policeman's pack, and slung the
weight over his own shoulder.  He regarded Dexter for a moment with a
smile that lacked all human semblance.  Then he shouldered Dexter's
provision pack, beckoned his companions, and turned away.  "Come on!"
he commanded.  He moved off at a brisk pace along the course of the
thawing brooklet, and Crill and Doucet trailed silently after him.




CHAPTER XXIII

FAIR WARNING

With his head bent backwards, Dexter watched the file of men make
their way up the banks of the stream.  Stark walked ahead, his eyes
on the ground before him, never once deigning to glance behind.  The
others paused now and then to look covertly over their shoulders, as
though still reluctant about obeying orders.  But it would seem that
none of them dared to interfere with their leader's plans while the
black mood oppressed him, and they trudged, hushed and subdued, at
his heels.  Stark reached a bend of the brook and passed behind a
flanking clump of alders, and his companions followed like straggling
sheep, and, one by one, vanished from sight.  Dexter was left alone
by the silent brook.

He lay frowning, puzzled by the mystery of Stark's behavior.  The man
said he owed him a private grudge, but think back as he would, the
corporal was unable to account for the bitter malice that could take
satisfaction in his suffering and lingering death.  As far as he
recalled, he had never crossed Stark's trail before.  He could not
imagine what he had done to arouse such enmity.  The riddle was
beyond his power of guessing, and he had to give it up.  It didn't
matter a great deal anyhow.  If he could not lift the tree trunk from
his shoulder, earthly affairs would soon cease to vex him.

But while a spark of life remained he was not ready to abandon hope.
There was no chance of help coming to him.  By to-morrow morning his
absence would begin to alarm Devreaux.  But the colonel was incapable
of travel.  If he started out to search it would take him days to
drag himself this distance from the cave, and long before he could
possibly make such a trip, the trail would be washed away in the
thawing snows.  As Stark had said, it would be another fortnight
before officers could break their way through from the outside.  Yet
Dexter would not let himself despair.  It was up to him somehow to
free himself.

Two men could not have raised the tree butt.  But Dexter thought of
an alternative possibility.  He might be able to burrow out from
under.  The chance of accomplishment was slight.  But any effort was
better than lying supine, awaiting death.  He gave his enemies time
to pass out of sight and hearing, and then experimented to see what
might be done.

By twisting his body he could force his left arm under his back far
enough to touch his right shoulder blade.  He pulled out handfuls of
snow, and at length touched the bare ground.  The frost was still in
the earth, but warming suns of the last week had somewhat softened
the surface soil, and he found he could scratch out small particles
with his fingernails.  He kept it up, digging and clawing, until his
fingers grew numb and his nails had broken down to the quick.  The
hole he had scooped out was no more than the span of his thumb, but
he took encouragement from the knowledge that he had made even such
slight impression upon the frozen earth.  He searched the pockets he
could reach for some tool to use in place of fingernails, and found
his watch had been left with him.  It would have to serve.  Breaking
the hinges, he removed the lid from the case, and set to work again.

All that morning he scraped and chiseled at the soil under his body.
Progress was infinitely slow, but each excavated grain of earth meant
just that much advance towards freedom, and he began to believe that
if his strength held out he might in time liberate himself.  The
weight of the tree gradually crushed the feeling from his broken
shoulder, and the twinges of pain were endurable.

The sun climbed high, beating upon him with blazing warmth.
Everywhere about him he could hear the drip and trickle of melting
snows.  From the creek an occasional crackling sound told him that
the softening ice was preparing to release the stream from its winter
toils.  Birds twittered restlessly above him, without finding time to
look his direction.  A pika, the little chief hare of the mountains,
shambled forth from a hole in a nearby drift to bask on a rock.  A
brilliant harlequin duck whistled past overhead, searching for open
water.  The air was sweet and balmy, redolent of the scent of
approaching spring.  He wondered if spring would ever come again for
him, and the thought always seemed to revive his flagging strength.

The afternoon wore on by dragging, aching minutes, and still he
chipped and scratched at the ground below the tree.  At long
intervals he paused briefly to rest, and then went doggedly back to
work.  From time to time he quenched his thirst with melted snow.  He
felt no hunger.  But as the sun disappeared and the blue shadows of
early twilight began to creep up the mountain slopes, a growing
weakness threatened at last to overcome his bravest resolution.  He
had cut out a six inch hollow beneath his shoulder blade, but the
tree still pinned his upper arm and shoulder to the ground.  He
clenched his teeth and tried to wriggle clear, but the effort was
useless, and he fell back gasping as the old pain stabbed again
through his tormented body.  The hole must be scooped twice as large
before he could hope to release himself.

He had the will to keep on digging, but physical endurance failed
him.  Queer, mottled shadows had begun to swim before his eyes, and a
gray fog seemed to be stealing upon his brain.  He tried desperately
to stay awake, but his eyelids kept closing as though weighted with
lead.  At last he gave up the effort.  Perhaps a few hours' rest
would recruit his energies, and he could return afresh to his
digging.  Meanwhile he was overpowered by the drowsiness of utter
exhaustion.  He relaxed with a sigh, pillowed his head against the
rough bark of the tree, and without actual knowledge of what was
happening he slipped away into the stupor of sleep.

The sense of time was lost to him.  It might have been minutes, or
many hours later, when his slumbering faculties aroused to a vague
perception of some sound that tried to reach his ears.  The
impression came like something heard in the depths of a dream: a
faint, far-off voice--a voice calling him by name.  By a tremendous
effort he struggled back to dim wakefulness, forced his eyelids apart.

Still dazed by sleep, he attempted to sit up; but a sharp spasm of
pain reminded him of his hapless plight.  He was still lying in the
snow, held down by the weight of the fallen tree.  His lips set with
a groan, as he blinked vacantly before him.  It was night, and the
rim of a new moon had pushed up through a notch in the mountains,
flooding the white landscape with a soft, silvery glow.  As he
listened in the breathless silence, he again caught the sound that
had aroused him, heard his own name called in the night.

"Corporal Dexter!"  The cry carried to him from the other side of the
brook, clear, anxious, insistent.  It was a woman's voice, and the
tone was strangely familiar.

With a wondering breath he bent his head backward to stare towards
the dismal thicket across the way.  He told himself that he must be
asleep, dreaming.  But as he waited with bated breath he heard the
voice again.  "David!" cried the unseen speaker.  "Where are you?
Answer me.  Oh, please!"

An unaccountable trembling seized him.  The call came to him in
beseeching accents.  It was the voice that he had kept alive in
memory through the dreary months of winter, and now he was certain
that his imagination was cruelly tantalizing him.  He could not
believe his hearing.  Nevertheless he would have answered if he
could.  He tried to call out, but his tongue refused to move, and
speech choked back into his throat.  It was as though he feared the
spell would break at the slightest sound from his own lips.

But as he peered across the brook in an agony of suspense he was
aware of a soft rustling movement in the brush, and his incredulous
eyes made out a slim, straight figure that had pushed forward to
stand on the snowy embankment beyond.  He stared for a moment in the
dazed wonderment of a man who suddenly looks upon a miraculous
apparition.  And then, unable to endure the anguish of uncertainty,
he forced himself to speak.

"I'm over here under a tree," he said, striving to hold his voice in
control.  "If you're real, won't you please come across?"

He thought he heard a sobbing breath on the other side of the brook,
and as he gazed with straining vision, the figure started forward,
crossed like a shadow on the ice, and halted, to bend silently above
him.  The moonlight searched out the contours of a pale, bewitching
face, revealing a pair of luminous eyes that gazed softly upon him.

He raised his head, watching with something of fear in his glance, as
though half expecting an illusion of his dreams to melt away before
him.  "Alison!" he whispered unsteadily.  "Alison Rayne!  They said
you were dead.  It's you--?"

"It's I," a thrilling voice replied in his ear, and then, as though
to dispel all further doubt, warm hands touched him, and he felt the
vital contact of fingers closing over his.  "You're hurt!" she
faltered.  "How badly?"

"Cracked shoulder, I think," he said.  "If this tree were off me I
could tell better."

The girl withdrew her hand from his lingering clasp, and knelt down
to investigate.  "It's crushing you," she said, with a catch of pity
in her throat, "and you--you've had the courage to--you've nearly dug
yourself loose.  You must have been working for hours."

"I kept it up as long as I could stay awake," he answered with a
faint laugh.  "I was going to have a nap, and then try again."

She had been examining the underside of the trunk, and now she nodded
with quick decision.  "I can finish it by cutting through from the
other direction," she asserted.  "Only a few minutes!"  She brought a
clasp knife from her pocket, and moving around the tree, she crouched
in the snow and began feverishly digging.

For a moment Dexter remained silent, but as he observed her tense,
anxious face his eyelids drew together and the muscles of his jaw set
with sudden resolution.  "Wait!" he commanded.  "Have you thought
what you're doing?"

She paused for a space to look at him in the moonlight.  "What do you
mean?" she asked.

"Feel in the pocket of my tunic," he said somberly.  "You'll find a
folded slip of newspaper cutting.  Read it."

For the length of a breath she hesitated, and then, wonderingly, she
complied with his request.  Fumbling, she drew forth the clipping.
From her sweater pocket she produced a match safe, and struck a
light.  She glanced at the headlines, read the first paragraph of
print; then the paper fluttered from her fingers, and she sighed
bitterly.

"You know!" she said in a harsh undertone.  "We--my brother and
I--that's why we're here.  There's no use trying to pretend anything
else."

"Not a bit of use," he asserted.  He regarded her steadily, his eyes
murky in the pallid light.  "You are wanted in the states for a
capital crime.  I'm an officer of the law.  If you're wise you'll go
back where you came from, and leave me here as I am."

"Leave you," she stammered--"I--what do you mean?"

"Simply that I'd rather not accept freedom at your hands," he
returned.  "If you pull me out of this mess, I'll repay you by
arresting you again, and this time I'll make sure that you don't
escape.  It's a cruel position to be placed in, and in fairness to
both of us--you'd better go."

"And leave you like this?" she cried.

"Possibly I can dig myself out," he answered.  "I'm going to keep
trying.  If I succeed, you'll know about it some day, because it'll
be my business to hunt until I find you.  If I fail, we won't meet
again."  His features relaxed for an instant in a smile of gentle
melancholy.  "I guess that would be the kindest way out for both of
us."  He reached forward with his free arm, and his hand pressed
softly over her closed fist.  "Do you want to say good-by,
Alison--before you go?"

She was bending above him, looking into his face with tear-wet eyes.
But suddenly he felt her wrist grow tense, and with a quick movement
she drew away her hand and stumbled to her feet.  "You must think
very badly of me," she said, "to believe that I would--that I
could--"  She stopped with a gulp, unable to go on.  And then,
without further speech, she stepped back around the tree trunk, and
returned in moody silence to her digging.

Dexter lay quiet, hearing the scraping and chipping of the knife
blade hacking the icy ground, feeling the movements of her hands as
she pulled the earth from under his shoulder.  He had forewarned her,
and if she still saw fit to play the Samaritan, he would make no
further attempt to stop her.  So he waited, grim and alert, ready to
extricate himself the instant the hole was sufficiently enlarged.

The girl worked with breathless energy at her self-imposed task, and
in a few minutes she had burrowed through to meet Dexter's
excavation.  There seemed to be no sense of feeling in his shoulder,
yet somehow he knew when the pressure was taken away.  He flexed his
cramped muscles, and found he could still move his body.  Slowly he
wriggled free, and then, concentrating his will force into the
effort, he gripped at the rough tree trunk and weakly hoisted himself
to his feet.

The corporal's face was immutable as a death mask as he bent forward
to confront the crouching girl.  "I'm sorry you didn't go when you
could," he said.  "Now it's too late.  You're my prisoner."

Alison got to her feet and stood erect, her breast heaving.  "I had
to do that much," she returned.  "You did more than that for me one
time.  But now--now I've got to think of myself, and of my brother.
Neither of us is going to let anybody arrest us, if we can help
it--and so--"  She stopped with a gulp and started to back away.

But Dexter had foreseen what she meant to do.  The fallen tree lay
between them, and the girl had counted on her ability to slip beyond
reach before the officer could stumble after her.  She failed to
realize, however, that with some indomitable men, the physical body
may be held subservient to the power of mind.  Dexter was watching,
and anticipated her intention a second before she started to leave
him.  Weak and giddy as he felt, he nevertheless held a last reserve
of strength to answer the mental summons.  As a runner spurs himself
onward with the final gasp of breath, so he sprang forward and
somehow managed to clear the log.  Alison was taken by surprise, and
before she could turn to flee, he had planted himself before her.  "I
warned you!" he muttered; and then his left hand shot out and closed
tightly about her wrist.




CHAPTER XXIV

A HARD-WON PROMISE

For two or three seconds the girl and the policeman faced each other
tensely in the soft moonlight; and then, as she met his steely gaze,
her eyes narrowed, her lips drew apart, her breathing quickened.
"Let go!" she panted.

With a twist and a wrench she tried to withdraw her slender wrist
from his grasp.  He shook his head with a slight movement, and his
grip tightened.  The restraining clutch seemed to madden her, and she
fought wildly, furiously, to free herself.  But disabled as he was,
shaken by many hours of suffering, he still was stronger than she.
Back and forth they struggled over the snowy ground, relentless
antagonists, the girl desperately determined to escape, the man
coldly resolved that she should not break away from him.

Neither spoke, and the soft night silence was disturbed only by the
crunch of boots scuffling in the snow.  In groping for a securer
foothold, Dexter slipped and lurched forward, stumbling.  The girl
found her chance.  Quick as a flash she doubled her arm and thrust
her elbow into the corporal's shoulder; at the same time she tried
with all her might to force him backwards, and wrest herself free
from his grasp.

Dexter was conscious of a sharp, gritting sound, and a spasm of pain
surged through his body and lapped about him like fire.  He reeled
for an instant on his feet, and an involuntary cry of anguish was
wrung from his lips.  A red haze filled his brain, while stars and
moon and the white-gleaming mountainsides all seemed to swirl about
him in inexplicable tangles.  There came to him a horrible conviction
that he was about to faint.  He fought hard to keep his feet, to
throw off the feeling of dizziness.  As he stared into vacancy,
trying to hold his wavering faculties, he was dimly aware that the
girl still stood before him.

"I hurt you!" she was sobbing.  "I didn't mean--I forgot!"

He looked at her wonderingly, and saw that her cheeks were wet with
tears.  "'S nothing," he said thickly.  "'S all right!"

"It isn't!" Alison gasped.  "To think that we--that you and I--  Oh,
we mustn't--we mustn't!"

"You didn't think I wanted to, did you?"  Dexter gazed at her with
gradually clearing vision.  "I told you what to expect," he went on
in a husky voice, "and it's something that I've got to do.  You know
that, don't you?"

"You can be so hard," she said--"you who have been so gentle."

"It isn't I."  The corporal drew a slow breath as his shoulders
sagged hopelessly.  "I want to let you go; but I haven't anything to
do with it.  I'd let you go if I could.  Don't you understand?"

"You don't need to," she returned in a hushed voice.  "You've won.  I
give you my word of honor not to--not to try to get away."

Dexter raised his head sharply, his glance searching into the depths
of her misty eyes.  "Why?" he asked.

"Because I could never endure going through a thing like this again,"
she faltered.  "Let anything happen rather than that."  She buried
her face in her hands, and her shoulders shook with sobbing.  "You
and I hurting each other!" she finished incoherently.  "Oh, no!

"Please!" she went on faintly, after a little silence.  "I've
promised, and you--you're hurting me still."  She moved her wrist
with a gentle tug, and he realized all at once that he was still
holding her with a merciless, unbreakable grip.

"Alison!" he cried, his fingers instantly unlocking.  "I'm sorry!"
He looked at her in the moonlight, with eyes grown moist: seeing the
forlorn, trembling little figure waiting submissively, feeling the
soft appeal of the grave, wistful face that lifted slowly to meet his
gaze.  A wave of pitying tenderness swept upon him, and there came to
him also a feeling of self-contempt, and for a minute he was almost
ashamed of his service and the coat he wore.  The knowledge that he
had been forced to deal ruthlessly, cruelly, with such a woman as
Alison Rayne, would always remain a galling remembrance.

He breathed unsteadily as he faced her, and, scarcely knowing what he
was doing, he reached about her and circled her yielding shoulders
with his arm.  "Alison!" he whispered.

With a throbbing gasp the girl swayed towards him and pressed her
flushed cheek against his jacket.  "I'm tired," she said--"so tired."

For a long space the corporal stood without speech, holding her
close, feeling her heart beating, intoxicated by the warmth and
nearness of her presence, touching her fragrant hair with his cheek,
thrilled to his innermost being by the sweetness of an ineffable
moment, dreaming a dream that his reason told him could never come
true.

But as he gazed yearningly over the girl's bowed head, he caught a
glimpse of a rising star--the Dog Star--creeping up over the southern
horizon.  It was the star of spring, and it promised the opening of
the passes, the speedy coming of comrades from the distant barracks
of the police.  And as his glance ranged down the shimmering sky,
somehow the magical spell was broken, and sanity returned.  He caught
himself with a shivering movement, and his arm dropped swiftly to his
side.

"I think we'd better be going," he said abruptly, with a strange
gruffness in his voice.  "If you're ready--?"

She averted her face with a quivering sigh, and her eyelids drooped
and closed; but after an instant she flung up her head, as though to
toss the straying tendrils of hair from her eyes; her shoulders and
back straightened, and she turned to Dexter with a cool, inscrutable
glance.  "Whenever you say," she agreed.

The corporal appreciated the impossibility of going back to Saddle
Mountain that night, but he bent his steps northward, with no
definite place in view, feeling only the urge to leave this spot, to
be on the move, to go somewhere else.  He led the way through a
scented growth of cedars, along the mountain slope, the girl
following meekly at his heels.  They had not gone far, however,
before he realized how foolish it was to attempt to travel.  He was
exhausted, almost ready to collapse.  Two or three times he slipped
in the snow and swayed on his uncertain legs, and each time he
managed somehow to recover himself and push onward.  Alison pleaded
with him to use the support of her shoulder, but he smiled and shook
his head.  "I'm all right," he insisted.

It was foolish talk, and he knew it.  And at last he was forced to
give in.  They had climbed to a level shelf of ground, screened on
all sides by dense brush, and after a wavering glance about him,
Dexter decided to call a halt.

"We'll have to stop here," he said.  "I can't go farther."

"Is there any need?" Alison asked.

"I don't know.  I guess not.  Anyhow, here we are."  His legs seemed
to double under him, and he sank down slowly, and sat in the snow.
"The thickets would hide our fire if we wanted to build one," he
observed.

Without a word she left him to hunt through the timber, and returned
presently with her arms full of down wood.  She built up a little
teepee of dry sticks, lighted a match, and almost at once had a
cheerful fire blazing in the sheltered covert.  Then she unstrapped
the pack she had brought with her, brought out a pair of blankets,
and spread them on the ground.

"Now," she said with a troubled glance--"what are we going to do
about your shoulder?"

"It seems to be the upper arm, near the shoulder socket," he
observed, feeling with tentative fingers.  "Do you suppose you could
help me off with my jacket?"

She gave him the needed assistance, and afterwards slit his shirt
sleeve with her knife, to expose the bruised, swollen flesh of his
arm.  "I don't see how you stood it," she murmured.

Dexter was examining the broken member with critical concern.
"Simple fracture," was his diagnosis.  "Splints and bandages, and
we'll make out."  He picked up three or four tough hardwood sticks
that were left over from the fire kindling.  "These'll do nicely."
He regarded her questioningly.  "Do you think you could hang on to my
elbow while I pull?  Or, if you'd rather, we'll strap my hand to a
sapling, and I can do my stretching for myself."

"I think I can--help," she said.  "We'll try."

The corporal made his few simple arrangements, instructed his
companion in the part she was to play, and then nodded to indicate
that he was ready.  She took hold of his arm, closing her eyes, and
holding tightly.

"Now!" he said.  Gritting his teeth, he leaned backward and tugged
with a strong, steady pull, and presently the fingers of his left
hand told him that the fractured ends of bone were drawn back
together.  "The sticks!" he said faintly, sliding his hand forward to
support his arm in its rigid position.

Under his directions the girl fixed the splints, and bound them
securely in place with strips torn from the hem of a blanket.  The
job was finally accomplished to Dexter's satisfaction.  For safety's
sake the arm was swathed in outer wrappings and fastened securely
against his chest.

"Ought to knit straight," he managed to say.  He noticed the
woe-begone expression of his companion's face, and attempted to laugh
at her; but the effort was rather feeble, and his voice sounded
strange in his own ears.

"Anything I can do to make you more comfortable?" she asked after a
pause.

"No," he said.  "You've been very fine about it all.  Thank you."
His glance strayed to the edge of the shadowy thicket.  "I'll have to
take it easy for a while--stay here.  Those men--Crill and Stark and
the rest--they might change their minds and come back.  Find our
trail, and come up here.  Can't be helped if they do."  His good hand
made a fatalistic gesture.  "Well, we'll have to take the chance."

Alison was watching from across the fire with shadowed eyes, and she
suddenly noticed the stem of his pipe sticking from his jacket
pocket.  "You can't have smoked all day," she abruptly remarked.
"Maybe you'd like to."

"Don't know but that I would," he said unsteadily.

She found his pouch, stuffed the pipe bowl with tobacco, and thrust
the stem between his teeth.  Dexter smiled gratefully, his eyes
following her movements as she bent over the fire and picked up a
lighted brand.  But as he watched her come back to him, a glowing
ember in her hand, something all at once seemed to go wrong with his
eyesight.  The girl, the firelight, the ragged line of the thickets,
all became hazy and unreal, fading before him.  He tried to hold his
head erect, but the effort was too great.  His eyelids closed like
leaden weights, the pipe dropped from his mouth, blackness flooded
upon him, and he toppled with a sigh and fell forward upon his face.




CHAPTER XXV

A VOLUNTARY PRISONER

The vertical rays of a blazing hot sun aroused Dexter from his
lethargy.  He felt light and warmth beating upon his face, and with
the first faint stirring of consciousness his ears were aware of
sounds of dripping water.  A crisp smell of wood smoke drifted to his
nostrils, and there came to him also stray wisps of odor that moved
him to a pleased, drowsy recollection of an appetizing stew he had
eaten some time or other from a camp kettle.  He lay with his eyes
closed, a little puzzled by his reviving sensations, trying to think
where he was and what it all meant.

And then, all at once, he recalled.  He had been sitting by a fire,
waiting for Alison Rayne to give him a light for his pipe when
suddenly he had lost consciousness.  Presumably he had fainted, and
from his stupor he must have passed into a deep, natural sleep.  And
he evidently had been sleeping for a long time.  He opened his eyes,
and hastily closed them again before the dazzling brightness of the
sun.  It was about noon, he decided.  For a while longer he remained
motionless, but presently he lifted his hand to shade his face, and
again looked about him.

He was lying in the confines of a thick juniper clump, his body
wrapped in a blanket, his head resting on a sweater that had been
wadded up for a pillow.  Near his feet a small fire crackled
cheerfully.  Over the fire hung a blackened bucket, with a savory
steam issuing from beneath its dancing cover.  Cross-legged on the
ground, bending like an officiating priestess over the smoking
embers, sat Alison Rayne.

The girl had discarded her white sweater, and wore a faded khaki
shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, with sleeves rolled up over her
smooth forearms.  She held a forked stick in her small, somewhat
grimy hand, and as the corporal watched, she took the lid from the
bucket, poked at its contents, and then drew up her head to sniff
with an air of complete satisfaction at the cloud of ascending steam.
Her face was turned in profile, and Dexter could see only the soft
curve of her cheek and the tip of her pert nose, as she bent in
absorption over her cookery.  A lock of her thick, bronze hair had
fallen over her eyes, and she had not yet discovered that he was
awake; but something in the corporal's searching regard must have
acted with telepathic force, for she turned suddenly with a startled
movement to meet his gaze.

"Oh!" she exclaimed.  Her red lips parted in the suggestion of a
smile.  "Hello!"

"Hello!" said Dexter with a whimsical lift of one eyebrow.  "Have I
been sleeping for hours or for days?"

"Only since last night."  She got to her feet and stood over him, a
faint embarrassment in her manner.  "You were a little feverish this
morning, but I noticed a few minutes ago that the temperature's gone
down."

"You've been looking after me all this time!" he said uncomfortably.
"Have you had any sleep?"

"Oh, yes," she hastened to assure him.  "I've got another blanket
here, and I did pretty well during the night.  Only bothered once in
a while to see how you were doing."

"It makes me feel mighty mean, knowing you've done all this for me,"
Dexter remarked, and shook his head glumly.  "The way things stand,
it makes me feel sort of low-down and ungrateful.  Even my thanks
wouldn't seem to have much meaning."

"I don't want your thanks," she returned quickly.  "Were you looking
for thanks last fall for taking care of my brother?  He thinks you
saved his life."

Dexter glanced up sharply as she admitted her relationship with the
boy in the cabin across the valley.  But he made no comment.  "It's
the business of the police to render services when needed," he said
lightly.

Alison had turned aside to stoop over her cooking fire.  She lifted
the lid from the simmering bucket, dipped in a tin cup, and offered
her companion a steaming drink.  "Rabbit broth," she said.  "I went
down to the brook this morning to see what I could find, and a little
rabbit got frightened of me and jumped into a deep, mushy drift, and
I caught him and skinned him and cooked him--hating myself."  She
faced him with a strange shyness in her eyes.  "Anyhow, you needn't
go hungry."

The corporal hoisted himself to a sitting posture, suppressing a
groan as he stretched his stiff, sore muscles.  He reached forward to
take the cup, but found himself weaker than he had imagined.

"Here!" said the girl as the hot fluid slopped over his unsteady
fingers.  She knelt down before him, a faint rose leaf color tinging
her cheeks as she did so; and she held the cup for him while he
drank.  In such manner he contrived to finish a second and third
cupful of broth.  And the rich, scalding liquid seemed to act as a
magic potion.  His feeling of lassitude and incompetency departed
with the warming of his blood, and all at once it occurred to him
that there was no sense in sitting idle, making an invalid of himself.

"We may as well be going," he announced abruptly, the old brisk note
of decision returning to his voice.

"Do you think you ought to?" she said with a dubious glance.

"Got to!"  Steadying himself with his hand, he cast aside the blanket
and stood erect.

"Where do we go?" she asked faintly.

"Up the valley where you left us last fall," he told her, staring off
with feigned interest towards the distant mountain ridges.  "Colonel
Devreaux is waiting for me."

"Oh, the colonel!" she exclaimed.  "He--lived?"

Dexter nodded without speaking.  The girl eyed him for a moment from
under drooping lashes, and then quietly set about the preparations
for breaking camp.  No word was spoken of her promise of the night
before, but it was tacitly understood between them that where he
went, she had pledged herself to go.

They gathered up their scanty belongings, and the corporal forced
himself to do his share of the work.  He insisted on shouldering the
larger pack, and after stamping out the fire, he led the way through
the thicket and started on his northward journey.

In his present physical condition Dexter knew he could not hope to
make the return trip in one, or even two, days; but he struck forward
resolutely, intending to travel as far as he could while his strength
lasted.  It was a warm, almost sultry afternoon, and the snow was
turning to water under the burning sun and running off the mountain
slopes in thousands of trickling rivulets.  The corporal's
back-leading trail along the creek was waist-deep in slush and he was
forced to search out new paths, across the higher shoulders of the
mountain.

It was slippery, dangerous going at times, requiring the corporal's
strictest attention in seeking the pathway ahead.  For the most part
they picked their way forward in silence, but now and then they would
strike an easier stretch, and he was able to exchange a word or two
with his companion as she trudged at his heels.

"What became of you that day last fall?" he asked her, while they
were pushing across a level strip of ground.  "I had misgivings about
you all winter--fearing you might not have come through the storm."

"I went down through the valley, and crossed eastward into a
frightful tangle of wilderness," she said.  "I don't know how I lived
through that night and the next.  But I found a nook of shelter under
the roots of a great tree, and in some way or another I built a fire
and huddled over it.  I stayed there, half frozen, with very little
to eat, until the storm stopped.  After that I started out, trying to
find my brother.  I was lost--didn't know which direction to go.  I
just had to guess, and, well--some guiding power must have helped me.
There was not one chance in a thousand of my reaching any place, and
yet, after a two days' struggle, I crossed over a wooded ridge,
dragged myself up a snow-buried stream, and walked right into the
cabin I was searching for--the place where you had left my brother
the first day of the storm.  I was about dead--fell on the doorsill.
But Archie was there, and he heard me and carried me in.  He was
nearly frantic, not knowing what had become of me.  He was unable to
travel; could only wait, hoping for news."

"I don't mind admitting that I was a bit worried about you myself,"
remarked Dexter, glancing at her across his shoulder.  "I wonder that
you weren't frozen to death."

"I almost was," she said, and smiled vaguely as she met his eyes.
"But I guess I'm about as hard to kill as you are."

"You and your brother spent the winter in that cabin?" he asked.

"Yes.  We had enough food and fuel.  It was hard, but we got through."

"Was Stark with you?" the corporal inquired casually.

She faced him squarely, and shook her head.  "There was nobody with
us.  We saw no one else during the entire winter."

"You met Stark some time yesterday though," he observed.

"Why, no."  She spoke in seeming frankness.  "I told you--I've seen
nobody but my brother, since I left you last fall."

"How did you know where to find me yesterday--under that tree trunk?"
Dexter asked, fixing her with searching scrutiny.

"I was--I was just walking along the brook," she said after a
moment's hesitation.  "And there you were--"

"You were calling my name," the corporal interrupted.  "That was
before you could have seen me, or known that I was anywhere in the
neighborhood."  He shook his head with skepticism.  "I supposed that
you came deliberately out of the kindness of your heart--knowing that
I was in trouble."  He watched her tensely.  "Somebody must have told
you."

Alison averted her face for a moment, and apparently found nothing to
say.  When at length she turned back to meet Dexter's questioning
gaze, the curve of her mouth had straightened into a stubborn line,
the violet softness of her eyes seemingly changed to a chilly blue.

"I have told you that I saw nobody," she said in a voice that seemed
to take her a thousand miles away from him.  "It'll have to be enough
for you to know merely that I found you.  And I couldn't let you--or
any living thing, for that matter--die in a trap.  We'll have to let
it go at that.  Meanwhile you ought to be satisfied to remember that
I'm your prisoner.  I've given you my parole, and I won't try to
escape again."

There was something in her straightforward gaze that forced Dexter to
believe she told the truth--that she had not met Stark or his
companions.  Yet he knew equally well that she had not blundered by
accident upon that remote spot where the tree had fallen upon him.
She had learned of his plight somehow; but he could not guess by what
strange, occult medium the knowledge had reached her.  As he studied
her inscrutable features, he recalled the mystifying events of the
previous fall: how news had traveled unaccountably through the forest
silences, how voices seemed to carry between distant places, without
any visible means of transmission.  As he had been hopelessly puzzled
before, so now he found no answer or explanation; and with the fever
throbbing in his brain, he scarcely felt capable of thinking.

Alison gave back his glance with fearless, unyielding eyes, and he
knew how useless it was to question her.  He gave it up for the
present, and, beckoning with a curt nod, he turned in silence and
started forward again on the trail.




CHAPTER XXVI

MAN AND WOMAN

A voyageur in the best physical trim would have found it fatiguing to
travel along the rough mountain slopes, breaking a path over fallen
snow crust, wallowing through deep, soggy drifts.  Before he had
traveled a mile of his journey, Dexter found himself growing short of
breath, slipping and floundering more than a trained mountaineer
should.  It took determination to push onward, but he kept going as
long as he could; until his head was reeling and his legs tottered
under him.  The heavy pounding of his heart warned him at last, and
he had sense enough to quit.  He was anxious to reach Devreaux, but
he must take his time about it.

It was an hour or more before sundown when he finally admitted that
he could go no farther.  They made camp in the lee of a warm rock
ledge, the corporal helping to gather sticks to build the night fire.
The remains of the rabbit stew were heated, and as soon as he had
eaten his supper, Dexter rolled up in a blanket and almost instantly
dropped off into profound slumber.  He slept all night like a dead
man, and did not awaken until the morning sun flooded upon him over
the eastern mountain peaks.

Every bone and muscle of his body was an aching torment, but he
forced himself to his feet, and as soon as possible he and Alison
resumed their northward journey.  They moved by easy stages up the
valley that day, stopping at intervals for rest, and then pushing on
again a little farther.  And some time during mid-afternoon they
crossed the flank of a forested hillslope, and caught a distant view
of Saddle Mountain, looming in pale white outline against the limpid
sky.

Complete exhaustion forced the corporal to call a halt at a point
five or six miles south of the double peaks, but he went to sleep
that evening with the assurance that he would be able to reach his
destination by noon of the following day.

Alison, for some reason, was in a subdued and quiet mood when they
set forth next morning to finish the last stage of their journey.
She answered the corporal's occasional remarks in the barest
monosyllables, but she kept closer at his side than usual; and
frequently, when she thought he was not looking, she would glance
stealthily towards him, from under veiling lashes, as though she had
grown curious to know what thoughts lurked behind the stern
immobility of his weather-bronzed face.  Several times Dexter caught
her unawares, before she could turn her eyes away, and he gathered,
from her troubled expression, that there was something on her mind
that needed saying.  It was not until they were climbing the last
slope across the base of Saddle Mountain, however, that she finally
broke the silence that had lasted between them all that morning.

"I wonder what you think of me?" she blurted out unexpectedly.

The suddenness of the question startled him.  "Why--what do you mean?"

"You know what I mean!" She spoke in a voice tremulous with repressed
feeling.  "But there's no need of asking.  It's horrible--what I
realize you do think.  And I can't--it's almost more than I can bear."

"Why, Alison," he began wonderingly, "you must know--"

She interrupted with a passionate gesture.  "I do know.  That
newspaper clipping you showed me--it's about me and my brother.  We
ran away--yes.  That much is true, but the rest of it is a lie--a
shameless lie.  Neither Archie nor I had anything to do with my
uncle's--with the dreadful thing they charged.  I'm telling you the
truth.  I swear it's the truth!"

Dexter looked down grimly at the girl, steeling his heart against the
appeal of beseeching blue eyes.  "It's been my experience," he
observed, "that innocent people as a rule do not run from the law."

"I know--I know!" she cried brokenly.  "It looks bad not to stay, and
I wanted to stay and face it out.  We never would have left home if
I'd had my way!"

"Well?" he asked mildly.

"As you read in the clipping," she went on in quick, overwrought
speech, "my uncle, our guardian, died, and it was found that a poison
had been given him.  Archie and I were his heirs.  We were--the
police discovered that we were the only ones in the household who had
easy access to his medicine.  Archie had been foolishly playing the
market, had lost heavily, was in desperate financial straits.  That
all came out, and--well, we got word that a murder indictment had
been brought by the grand jury.  And Archie lost his head--saw no
hope of escape if he stayed--decided there was nothing to do but run
while he had the chance."

"He got together all the money he could," she added in a choking
voice; "he packed a bag, and left secretly in the night.  But I had
been watching."  She shook her head sadly.  "Archie is younger than
I, the baby--I've got to say it--the weakling of the family.  I knew
he would do the wrong thing.  And I followed him and overtook him at
the station as he was about to board a west-bound train.  I argued,
pleaded, begged him to stay and see it through.  He was
afraid--desperately.  I could do nothing with him, and so at the
end--there was nothing for me to do but get on the train and go with
him.  He's always needed looking after, and at the last--well, I had
to stand by him.  I couldn't let him go alone."

"Believing him innocent, of course," Dexter remarked dryly.

Alison threw up her head and confronted her companion with flashing
eyes.  "I know he is innocent!" she declared passionately.  "I didn't
even ask him to swear to me.  I've known him all his life, and I know
he's utterly incapable of that crime--of any crime.  I've never
blinded myself to his weaknesses, but I know also that he could never
have done this thing."

"In any event," observed the corporal, walking onward with a slow,
deliberate stride, "he lacked the courage of innocence, and cleared
out.  I suppose he had already bargained with one of Stark's agents
to help him escape through the Canadian wilderness."

"With--what do you mean?" asked the girl sharply.

"I know all about Stark and his organization for fugitive criminals,"
Dexter said.  "I'd already suspected the existence of an underground
railroad, running through this country."  His lips twisted into a
fleeting smile.  "And Stark himself did me the honor to tell me the
details of his business--when he thought I was doomed to certain
death."

"In that case," said Alison after a little pause, "I'm not
betraying--Yes: one of Stark's men came to Archie in his trouble.  He
offered the chance of escape, took all the money Archie had left and
Stark has helped us this far on our way.

"It's--I can't ask you to have my faith in Archie," the girl resumed
after a momentary pause.  "It isn't about him that I really want to
talk, but--"  She glanced towards Dexter with a timidity that he had
never before seen in her eyes.  "It's about the night you found me at
that cabin where--where the men were killed."

"Yes?" he urged as she hesitated.

Alison's rounded chin set resolutely.  It was apparent that there was
something she had decided to say, and she did not propose to mince
matters.  "You told me that you heard a woman's voice in that cabin
over yonder, just before the two men were shot in their bunks.  You
say there were no footprints near the place beside my own.  So by
police logic you arrive at the only deduction that fits the case.  I
must have fired the shots."

They had climbed the southward slope leading across the foot of
Saddle Mountain, and were now making their way over a stretch of
rough, furrowed ground along the edge of the open plateau.  Dexter
absently offered his hand to steady the girl's steps across a
slippery outcropping of rock.  "You came to that cabin that night
from the cabin farther up the valley, where I afterwards found your
brother," he stated with thoughtfully knitting brows.  "Why did you
make that journey alone at such an hour?"

"To find help for Archie," she answered.  "You saw him yourself next
day, and know how badly he needed it.  I didn't know what to do for
him, and so I went down the valley to the lower cabin, looking for
some one who might know more about such matters than I."

"Who in particular?" the corporal persisted.

"Anybody who might have been there.  What difference did it make who,
as long as he could do something to relieve Archie of his pain?"

Dexter eyed the girl covertly for a space as she walked at his elbow.
"Did you know a man named Mudgett?" he inquired.

"I don't remember seeing such a person, but I think I'd heard the
name."

"One of Stark's gang, wasn't he?"

"Why, possibly he and Mr. Stark were associated in some way.  I'm not
positive though."

"Who was Mudgett's companion that night--small, swarthy, hook-beaked
chap with sullen black eyes?"

"I don't recall seeing any man who answers that description," Alison
asserted.

"He and Mudgett were the two who were shot," Dexter said, as he
keenly scrutinized her sensitive features.

The girl nodded slowly, without speaking.

"You had no feelings against either of these men?  They didn't know
anything you were afraid they might tell?"

Alison's face blanched under her companion's merciless gaze, and he
saw it was all she could do to keep back her tears.  "Oh, what
could--I swear to you--I didn't know either of them, even by sight.
So why would I--what motive could there be?"

"I've been asking myself that question for months," Dexter observed.
"The motive?  All I know is that the woman's voice I heard talking in
that dark cabin said something about dead tongues never talking.  The
few fragments of speech suggested the idea that either fear or
vengeance had much to do with the tragedy.  You have no notion of
what it all meant?"

"No!" she moaned.  "How could I?  I don't know anything more than you
yourself have told me."

The corporal strode along for a distance in meditative silence,
soberly watching the ground underfoot.  Alison looked up at him, and
shook her head, and sighed.  "It isn't that I'm hoping to influence
you in your duty," she said at last in a small, stifled voice.  "I
don't think I---I'd want you to yield an inch from the straight line
as you see it, even if I could persuade you.  And I know I couldn't.
I'm not asking anything, only--"

"Only what?" he asked as she failed to finish.

"I want you to believe that I have done nothing wrong," she said in
stumbling accents.  "I know what I've got to go through later with
others, but if you didn't think evil of me, then I--it would make it
a little easier."

"You were the only woman in that section of the forest that night,"
Dexter stated dully, and deep lines of unhappiness were graven at the
corners of his mouth.  "Can I deny the testimony of my own eyes and
ears?  I was there, and saw and heard."

"Try to believe in me," she sobbed.  "I--I'm not bad.  Won't you try
to think that I'm not?  Please!"

"As a man, I want to believe: you know that!  But as a policeman--"
He turned his head aside for a moment to hide the anguish in his
face.  "As a policeman," he went on somberly, "I've got to believe in
the evidence that I gather--in facts."

"Don't think of evidence now," she begged in a piteous voice.
"Think--try to think--just of me."

"I've done little else but that, Alison, since the first night I saw
you," he told her with a faint, sad smile.

"Then--"  She caught her breath with a quivering sound.  "Look at me,
David!" Her hand fluttered towards him and touched his wrist.  "Look!"

Slowly he turned, and found himself gazing deep into her
eyes--straight-seeing eyes, clear and soft blue as violets--eyes
overflowing with womanly sweetness, giving back his glance, unafraid
and unashamed.

"Do you believe?" she whispered.

He gazed long and searchingly, and somehow all sense of doubting left
him.  "I do!" he declared suddenly, in a straining voice.  "I've got
to.  What else can I do?  It's impossible not to believe the truth
when you see it.  I believe in you."

"Oh!" she said with a full-drawn sigh, and Dexter saw the sparkle of
tears in her eyes as her lashes slowly closed.  "That's all I
wanted," she breathed.

"Alison!" he cried.  He swayed towards her, impelled by an
overwhelming desire to touch her, to feel her nearness, to draw her
into the comforting circle of his arm.  "Alison!"

The girl lifted her head to face him, seeing the look he gave her,
and she did not move away.  "Yes," she said, so low he barely heard.

He stood for an instant in wavering silence, and then all at once he
caught himself with a startled movement.  The muscles of his body
stiffened, and the inflexible line of his jaw reasserted itself.
"There's nothing we can do about it," he said.

They had halted for a moment on the open plateau, standing in knee
deep snow; but now Dexter turned with heavy steps and started to
break his way forward once more through the drift.  Alison at once
caught pace with him.

"I hadn't asked you to do anything about it," she reminded him
quietly.

Dexter gave no sign of hearing her, but went on in a ruminative
voice, following the train of his own thoughts.  "I must take you to
the fort with me, and lay all our data before the commissioner.  What
I may feel in my heart, and what the logic of the law decides, are
two different matters.  I'm still a policeman, Alison, whatever else
I may be, and I'm going through straight--clean."

"Listen!" the girl interrupted sharply.  She threw up her chin, and
there was a compelling quality in her tone that forced him to meet
her eyes.  "I have asked for only one thing--just blind, honest
faith.  You have given it to me.  Don't spoil it, David, please!
I've asked for nothing else."

"I didn't exactly mean it that way," Dexter said unsteadily.

"I hope you didn't," she returned, "because--I know as well as you
know that you could never do anything that wasn't absolutely right in
your own mind.  If you ever failed in a trust you wouldn't be you."
She smiled wanly.  "And then--things wouldn't matter much one way or
another--would they?"

"Don't!" he protested.  "Please!  Let's not talk like this.  Let's
try and find the way out somehow."

They were not more than fifty yards from the coppice where the
entrance of the bear cave was hidden.  If Devreaux were at home a
shout would have reached him, but the corporal for the time being had
forgotten the existence of his commanding officer, and did not think
to announce himself.  He trudged along with bent head, weighed in
profoundest thought.  But at last the scowl cleared from his face,
and he looked up intense and eager.

"I'll tell you!" he exclaimed.  "Here's what we can do!"

"What?" The girl stared at him, apparently a little frightened by his
sudden vehemence.

"My enlistment expires this spring," he declared.  "I won't reenlist."

"Then what?" she asked, a strange limpness sounding in her voice.

"Why, then, I'll be my own man, of course."

"You won't be your own man until you've discharged your present
duties," Alison said with a quick, sidewise glance.

"Of course not," he agreed.  "I'll have to take you to the fort and
turn you over.  They're decent chaps down there.  They'll make it as
easy as possible for you--"

"Oh, I see," Alison interrupted.  "I didn't quite understand what you
meant."

"Just this," he plunged on--"I come back here as a free agent.
There's a mystery in all this business that we haven't even begun to
fathom.  The facts as they stand make things look very black for you,
but we'll get at the bottom of the affair somehow.  I'll work day and
night.  I'll never rest until I dig out the truth.  You've forced me
against my reason to believe in you absolutely, and with such faith
to back me, I know that I cannot fail!"

Dexter had entered the thicket beyond the treeless plateau, and was
picking his way absentmindedly over the broken ground.  The entrance
of the cave was only a few paces distant, concealed behind a clump of
bushes.  As he skirted the fringe of underbrush, he discovered a
trail of freshly made boot prints.  The sight of the footmarks
recalled him sharply to himself, and for the first time in the last
half hour he thought of Devreaux.  The colonel evidently was
somewhere about, still waiting for his return.

Forcing his way through the screening branches, he reached the foot
of the mountain slope and stood before the dark mouth of the cave.
The line of footprints went inside.  "Colonel Devreaux!" he called.
"Oh, colonel!"

Nobody replied.  But as he bent forward to look into the opening, he
caught a sudden movement in the gloom, and the next instant a human
figure loomed into view, and Dexter found himself staring full in the
muzzle of a leveled rifle.

"Hands up!" commanded a sharp, high-pitched voice.

The corporal stood stock-still, gazing in blank amazement at the face
that peered at him from behind the rifle sights.  And all at once he
recognized the unexpected intruder, and he caught his breath in
wonderment.  The man was Alison's brother, Archie.




CHAPTER XXVII

THE FALTERING FAITH

It was disconcerting to meet an armed and hostile man at the place
where he supposed his friend was waiting, yet Dexter did not for an
instant lose his self-possession.  He noticed that the rifle barrel
did not hold quite steady, and he was aware that the inexperienced
youth might fire in nervous excitement at any second, without giving
him a chance.  Before he could make up his mind what to do, however,
a voice screamed out behind him, and Alison stumbled forward,
apparently with some wild notion of intervening.

"Archie!" the girl cried in an agonized tone.

The corporal flung out his arm as a barrier, and thrust her back.  He
was watching young Preston's face, observing the line of the tensely
compressed lips, staring into the blue eyes that squinted at him
along the gun barrel.  And it struck him all at once that the boy
lacked the hardihood to pull the trigger.

They faced each other in silence for a moment, and Dexter smiled in
icy contempt, "I can't obey your order about the hands," he said,
"because I have only one to put up.  So I won't bother at all."

With a slow, deliberate movement he unbuttoned his tunic and thrust
his hand into his inside pocket.  Quite casually, as though he might
have reached only for a handkerchief or a match, he drew forth the
small, pearl-handled revolver that he had picked up months before
from the floor of the murder cabin.  He knew that any instant might
be his last, but he was banking on the irresolution he had read in
the other's face, and was ready to accept a gambler's hazard.  Gazing
with cool fixity into the boy's eyes, he cocked his weapon and
leveled the barrel.

"Drop that gun!" he commanded.

There was a quality in the corporal's tone to warn Preston that this
was not a moment for trifling.  The boy shrank backward half a pace,
and his bolstered-up attitude of recklessness seemed suddenly to slip
away from him.  The muzzle of the rifle wavered downward; and the
next instant his hands unclosed, and the weapon fell in the snow at
his feet.

Dexter laughed aloud in relief.  "I think I told you last fall when
we met," he remarked pleasantly--"it's foolish to play with things
that we don't understand."

The boy drew a short breath, and reached up unsteadily to wipe his
sleeve over his moist forehead.  "The rifle--it isn't loaded," he
managed to gulp out.  "I was just--trying to bluff."

"Eh?"  Dexter regarded him sharply for an instant, and then stooped
to the ground and picked up the fallen firearm.

"I ran out of cartridges several weeks ago, and--well, that's all
there is to it."

"It doesn't pay to bluff in this country, unless you're ready to back
it up," observed the corporal.  "It's so easy to get hurt."  He
thrust the rifle muzzle in the snow, and with his left hand he jerked
open the magazine lever, and assured himself that the weapon really
held no cartridge.  "I don't believe you'd have shot me anyhow,
Archie," he remarked.  "I honestly don't think so.  Anyhow, we'll let
bygones be bygones, and just forget that it happened."

During the few seconds of the swift encounter Alison had stood by, a
hushed and terrified spectator.  But now she moved forward suddenly
to her brother's side.  "Archie!" she gasped.  "How did you get here?
What does it mean?"

"I was looking for you," was the answer.  "Just happened over this
direction.  Looked through the brush, and saw you coming--with the
officer."  The boy shook his head dejectedly.  "I thought--I had
hoped that I might be able to get you away from him."

"Where's Colonel Devreaux?" interrupted the corporal.

"I don't know him," said Preston.  "I haven't seen anybody."

Dexter raised his head and called the superintendent's name, shouting
with all the power of his lungs.  He repeated the cry several times,
but only echoes answered him from the mountainsides.

"Can anything have happened?" he muttered after a lengthy pause.  He
turned abruptly to Preston.  "I want to look inside the cave," he
said.  "Go in ahead of me, please."

With the boy accompanying him, Dexter searched the cavern from one
end to the other.  But the place was empty, and he found no clew to
tell him what had happened to his missing officer.

"How long have you been here?" he asked, when they finally emerged
into the sunlight.

"I don't know," replied Preston.  "About a half hour, I guess."

"There was no one here then?"

"Nobody."

"How'd you find the place?"

"Just accident."  The boy glanced up in seeming frankness.  "I was
looking for--for--"

"For your sister," supplemented the corporal as the other hesitated.
"You needn't be afraid of betraying any secrets.  I know all about
you."

"Well, yes," admitted Archie, with a sidewise glance at the girl.
"We were stopping over yonder at a cabin--"

"Where I found you last fall."

"Yes.  And anyhow--Alison left the other day, saying she was restless
and was going for a walk."  The boy shot a furtive look towards his
sister.  "She didn't come back, as she had promised, and so I started
out that same night to hunt for her."

"Over this direction?" asked Dexter.

"It was dark," was the answer, "and I somehow lost the trail, and
I've been just wandering the last couple of days--lost, I guess.

"Anyhow," Archie went on, wriggling a little under the corporal's
iron scrutiny, "I happened into this neighborhood to-day, and
discovered some tracks leading up the slope.  I followed, just to see
what there was to find out, and I came on this cave.  I was looking
around, trying to decide who had been here, and I caught sight of you
two coming towards me.  I saw you would pass this place, and I hid,
and--" He smiled ruefully.  "Well, you know the rest."

The boy faced about to survey his sister.  "What became of you,
Alison?" he asked somewhat pettishly.  "If you hadn't gone running
off that way we wouldn't have gotten into this mess."

"I'm sorry, Archie," she returned gently.  "It was my fault, and
yet--I couldn't foresee that this would happen."

"But how did it come about?" he persisted.  "Where did you go?"

"Down the valley a distance," she answered evasively, and Dexter
gathered from her manner that she did not wish her brother to know
all that had taken place.

"And let a policeman pick you up!"  The boy glanced at the corporal's
empty holster, and shook his head in mystification.  "I don't see how
you ever let him do it.  He hasn't any gun of his own, and yet he got
the best of you--took your revolver from you?"

"My revolver?" she echoed.

"Yes--yours--the one he just stuck on me.  How'd you ever allow him
to get his hands on it?"

Dexter threw up his head with a start.  "Is this your sister's
revolver?" he asked after a trenchant interval.  He reached into his
pocket again and exhibited the weapon on the palm of his hand.

"Certainly," Preston replied without hesitation.  "There's that
scratch in the silver plate on the barrel.  It's hers."

A look of infinite sadness passed over Dexter's face as he turned to
confront the girl.  "You admit this is yours?" he asked somberly.

"Admit it?" she faltered.  "Why, what--?"

"Do you know where I found it?" he cut in before she could finish.

She faced him with widening eyes, but did not reply.

"On the floor of the cabin where the two murders were done--that
night, when I found you there," he stated in low, incisive tones.
"Here is the revolver, exactly as I picked it up, with the cases of
two discharged cartridges still left in the chamber.  The bullets
from those cartridges were the bullets that killed the two men in the
bunks."

"The revolver--I don't know how it got here," Alison said with a dry
sob.  "It--I carried it in the bottom of a knapsack I had, and,
having no occasion to use it, I hadn't looked for it since early last
fall.  I may have lost it, or it may have been stolen.  I--I don't
know."

"That's your explanation?" Dexter asked.

"I can tell you no more than that," she said, and her face was
colorless as she bowed her head before him.

"You want me to believe, then, that this revolver was stolen without
your knowing: stolen by an unidentified woman who went to a lonely
cabin in the wilderness at the same moment you appeared there; who
shot two men, threw the smoking weapon behind the front door, and
vanished without leaving a trace behind."  Dexter stared at her from
under lowering brows.  "Is that what you want me to believe?"

"Oh, I don't know--I don't know what to think about it all," she
answered tonelessly.

"I do," said Dexter.  "I'm thinking of a story the colonel told me
recently about--well, it was about himself when he was a younger man.
And I'm thinking how foolish we are not to profit by the experiences
of the men who have gone before us--to save ourselves the bitterness
of learning for ourselves."  He looked at the girl for a moment with
eyes that had grown jaded and hard.  Then, with a careless movement,
he tossed the revolver in his hand, and thrust it back into his
pocket.

"Come on!" he commanded harshly, and turned on his heel.  "I've got
to find Devreaux."




CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ESCAPE

Inspection of the ground in the neighborhood of the cave discovered
only one line of fresh bootmarks, and these, it was self evident, had
been made by Archie Preston.  But there were older tracks, still
visible in the thawing snow, and after investigation, Dexter decided
that the stale prints corresponded in size and pattern to the soles
of Devreaux's service boots.  In places where the sun's rays reached
the ground the impressions had almost disappeared, and the corporal
estimated that the trail must be at least two days old.  It would
seem that the colonel, for some reason, had permanently abandoned his
safe quarters under Saddle Mountain.  The presumption might be that
he had grown uneasy after long waiting, and had ventured into the
wilderness to seek his missing comrade.

Dexter lingered only to make up a pack of the scanty provisions that
still were left in the cave; and then, with a terse movement of his
head, he beckoned Archie and Alison to accompany him and set out to
look for his officer.  The faint trail led him back across the
plateau, over the flank of the mountain and down into the brook
valley below.  Unfortunately the thawing snows of the last couple of
days had flooded into the lower levels, flowing over the mush-ice of
the stream; and the embankment where Devreaux had walked was now
submerged under a foot of running water.  The trail had long since
washed away.

The corporal, however, was not greatly disconcerted.  If Devreaux had
gone to search for him, he naturally would follow the brook course to
the notch in the lower valley, where the police packs were cached.
They must have passed each other unknowingly on the road.  He had
only to retrace the steps of his weary journey, and undoubtedly he
would somewhere pick up the trail again.

Dexter was worried chiefly about the colonel's physical condition.
He was not yet in fit shape to travel.  Also there was a disquieting
possibility that he might have encountered Stark and his gang at some
point along the route.  At the last thought an unpleasant glitter
came into the corporal's eyes, and his jaw set with granite hardness.
There was nothing to do but push onward as fast as he could.

He had supposed that he had reached the end of his endurance when he
arrived at the cavern that afternoon, but for a comrade's sake he
spurred his flagging energies to carry on a little longer.  Until
darkness set in he made his way southward along the banks of the
creek, struggling through slush and mud, and forcing his lagging
companions to keep up the pace.  It was impossible to see the ground
before him when he finally consented to halt for the night.

The three travelers ate their meal in dejected silence, and
immediately afterwards stretched themselves on the wet ground by the
embers of a dying fire.  Dexter shared his blanket with Archie
Preston, and he served a last warning before he allowed himself to
drop off to sleep.

"You understand, of course, that you're my prisoner," he said.  "I'll
wake up at the least stir, and if you're wise you'll keep very quiet,
and try to get a good night's rest."

Dexter aroused himself next morning before daylight, and, leaving his
blanket mate in fretful, tossing sleep, he built a fire and started
breakfast cooking.  When the modest meal was ready, he awakened his
fellow voyageurs to the new day of hardship and wet discomfort.
Alison was the first to answer his call, and she shook off her
blanket to stand yawning and shivering in the chilly dawn.  She and
the corporal pointedly avoided each other's glances, and such
conversation as they were forced to exchange was brief and formal.

To Dexter's surprise when he took the trail once more, he found
himself walking with some measure of his old free-swinging stride.  A
body and physique tempered by clean, active living, had begun to
recuperate from the shock of injury and the exhausting effects of
overexertion.  His broken arm still pained him at intervals but
mental alertness had returned, and the fever was gone from his blood.
Save for the inconvenience of a useless right hand, he assured
himself that within a few days he would be quite himself again.

They made a long march that day, and their evening camp was not far
from the ravine where the corporal had nearly met death in the timber
wreck.  As he had worked down the long valley, Dexter had kept
vigilant watch for signs that might tell him what had become of his
lost comrade.  At each bending of the stream, in every new opening
among the trees, he gazed about him with a recurring sense of dread,
always half expecting to see the dun shape of a khaki-clad figure
sprawled motionless in the snow.  But the glistening world of slush
and trickling water stretched endlessly before him, and nowhere was
there any clew to show that human beings had lately passed that way.

The little party of travelers was afoot early next day, trudging
downstream along the margin of the rising brook.  Before noon they
reached the spot where Dexter had attempted to leap from the path of
the snow slide.  Broken, splintered tree trunks were piled like jack
straws across the course of the creek, forming a dam that backed the
water along the bordering banks.  All trace of recent footprints had
vanished with the melting snows.  There was nothing to be learned
here, and after a grim survey of his changed surroundings, the
corporal gave the word to push forward again.

By midafternoon they found themselves approaching the snow-choked
defile that led out through the lower valley, and the corporal
sighted the landmarks that located the colonel's buried store of
supplies.  The cache had not been disturbed since Dexter's recent
visit, and there was no evidence to show that any other person had
set foot in that part of the valley.  Devreaux either must have
fallen somewhere by the wayside, or else, for some reason unguessed,
he had wandered off another direction, to lose himself in the deeper
wilderness.

The corporal was too tired to seek farther that afternoon so he
contented himself with rifling the provision bags and cooking the
first square meal he had eaten in days.  The wayfarers passed the
night on a dry ledge of rock, warm and comfortably fed, sleeping like
three weary children.

But by daylight Dexter was on the move again, continuing his hunt for
the missing police officer.  For nearly a week he kept up his
fruitless searching; ranging through miles of the dense wilderness,
penetrating the tangled depths of gulch and ravine, scrambling across
steep mountain slopes and climbing onward to the higher ridges,
whence he could scan the desolate stretches of country below him.
And wherever he went, Archie and Alison were always forced to go with
him.

Days passed, and day by day the sun marched north and poured warmth
and brightness upon a reawakened world.  Bare patches of earth began
to appear where deep winter snows had lain; and then, almost over
night, it seemed, the meadows and exposed hill slopes were carpeted
with green.  The claw marks of wandering grizzlies were sometimes
found, scuffling beside deep pools, where cut-throat trout were
leaping; and sheep and goats showed themselves once more, posing
against the blue sky on far, dizzy pinnacles of the mountains.  Along
the brooksides the willows and alders were tipped with bursting life,
and the ice had broken out at last and rode downstream with the
brawling waters.  Dexter realized that within a few more days the
mountain passes would be accessible to travel.

What had become of the colonel, he could not imagine.  Perhaps the
old man had fallen somewhere along the route; perhaps he was still
alive, hidden in some wilderness fastness, waiting until he was
strong enough to take the trail again.  Dead or alive, however, he
had already issued his command; and the law of the mounted permits no
deviation from the stern line of duty, even for the sake of a
comrade.  It might take months to find a lost man in that vast,
trackless forest.  Meanwhile a grim and urgent business awaited, and
it was time to act.  So one morning Dexter abandoned his futile
search, and turned his face resolutely to the northward.

Alison and her brother had tramped the forests with him for days.
The girl had given him her promise not to escape, and he somehow had
the feeling that she would keep her word.  But he knew by the
furtive, restless look in the boy's eyes that he would make a break
for liberty the first chance he was given.  So Dexter always kept
Archie close beside him, never for an instant relaxing his vigilance.
He did not tell his companions of his intentions, but when he left
off his wandering and turned abruptly on a straight line north, no
doubt they guessed that he was once more following the outlaws' trail.

He had crossed over the ridge into the eastern part of the valley,
and made his way up the brook where Constable Graves had met death.
If he hoped to get in touch with Stark's crowd, he knew he must find
the upper pass without delay, so he forced as fast a pace as he
could.  He was confident that men from Fort Dauntless would soon put
in an appearance, and he kept a pocket ax in hand, blazing his path
behind him, leaving marks that any policeman would read and follow.

They reached the spruce forest of tragic memory, and the corporal
made a detour that brought him past the burned cabin.  There remained
only an ugly, blackened heap of debris to tell where the structure
had stood, and an inspection of the clearing convinced Dexter that no
one had set foot there since his own departure on the morning after
the double murder.  There was a haunted look in Alison's eyes as she
stared at the sodden pile of wreckage, and she gasped in audible
relief when he finally beckoned her to come away.

The next noonday was spent at Stark's cabin, ten miles farther
upstream, where Alison and her brother had lived during the winter
months.  There were no fresh trails in the neighborhood, and Dexter
lingered only for a short rest, and then resumed his journey.

His route beyond this point carried him into an unfamiliar country--a
country that grew wilder and more forbidding with every mile he
advanced.  Somewhere beyond, he knew, there must be an opening
through the walls of the mountains.  His problem was to find it; but
as he pushed onward into the northern reaches of the long valley he
began to appreciate the enormous difficulties he faced.

He was surrounded by great mountains; ridges and cliffs and misty
snow caps; unscalable barriers, towering above and beyond him as far
as the eyes could see.  The land between was broken by cañons and
deep ravines, running this way and that; overgrown by dark forests
and tangles of underbrush, forming hidden labyrinths in which an army
might have lost itself.

His natural course was to follow the brook to its source, hoping that
the stream might lead him through a breach in the barricading
mountains, but after nearly a day lost, he discovered that the flow
of water originated in a nest of springs, bubbling out from the base
of an unsurmountable precipice.  Next day he tried another direction,
crawling around the escarpment of a steep pitched ridge, over what
appeared to be a faint goat path; but again he brought up in a blind
pocket from which his only escape meant to retrace his steps.

When he finally gave it up and started back over the tortuous trail,
he happened to catch Alison and Archie exchanging glances of furtive
significance; and it struck him in a flash that they knew the route
to the pass.  He watched them surreptitiously thereafter, and on two
or three occasions, when they thought he was not looking, he detected
them in the act of whispering together and sizing up distantly
looming landmarks.  There was something in their manner to tell him
that they were secretly elated at his failure to find the way, and he
was thoroughly convinced that they might set him on the right path if
they chose.

He had no comment to make, however, and he dropped to sleep that
night like a man whose mind is free from trouble.  But when he
awakened next morning he found himself alone under the blanket he had
shared with Archie Preston.  The boy had slipped away some time in
the night.

Dexter flung off his blanket and strode forward to touch the small,
still figure on the other side of the dead fire.  "Where's your
brother?" he demanded.

Alison stirred under her cover, and her eyes opened to regard him
sleepily in the gray dawn.  "What?" she asked.

"Archie's gone," the corporal informed her.  "Cleared out while I was
asleep.  Where is he?"

She sat up and gazed drowsily about her.  "You were the one who was
watching him," she remarked after a pause.  "Don't you know what's
become of him?"

"You two planned it out last night," Dexter declared.  "You knew he
meant to escape.  It isn't worth while pretending otherwise."

Alison turned squarely to meet his gaze.  "Yes," she admitted without
further evasion.  "I knew he was going.  I told him to go if he could
get away.  I didn't want him to leave home in the first place, but as
long as he did leave, matters will be a hundred times worse if he's
taken back now.  He's got to get away.  That's the only thing left
for him to do now--to get out of the country and start his life over
again some place else."  She threw up her head defiantly.  "I not
only urged him to escape, but I guess you know I'll do everything I
can to keep you from finding him again."

The corporal had gathered a handful of sticks together, and he now
stooped quietly to rekindle their fire.  "So Archie was willing to
beat it, and leave you behind to face it out alone," he remarked.

She turned on him with flashing eyes.  "He could have done nothing
for me by staying," she asserted.  "But it was his chance and I
persuaded him against his will--to go."

Dexter had taken a slab of bacon from the provision pack, and,
wielding a knife in his left hand, he began cutting slices for
breakfast.  He was unhurried, seemingly unperturbed, and did not act
in the least like a policeman who had just discovered that a prisoner
was missing.

"You and Archie evidently know the way out of this maze of
mountains," he declared casually.  "I suppose Stark furnished you
with the key to the puzzle, in case you chanced to be thrown upon
your own resources.  You were studying landmarks last night, and I
assume that when Archie stole away, he knew just which course to take
to hit the pass.  No doubt he'll be with Stark and Crill and the
others within a day or two."

"All I can say is, I hope he finds the way," she replied.

"So do I," said Dexter.  He speared his bacon strips with a sharpened
stick, and as he bent towards the fire, he turned a quizzical glance
towards his companion.  "I was certain yesterday that Archie knew how
to locate the pass.  It might take me days to work out the problem.
And I can't afford to lose time.  So I figured that I might let your
brother show me the way.  His trail shouldn't be hard to follow."

He smiled thoughtfully as he held his broiling stick over the flame.
"I allowed myself to sleep soundly last night, feeling sure that
Archie would accept the chance to escape."




CHAPTER XXIX

THE BLAZED ROAD

As Dexter had expected, the boy's departing foot tracks were clearly
defined in the wet earth, and after breakfast he packed up and
started to follow.  Alison seemed rather disquieted by his cool
assurance, but she was ready to leave when he gave the word, and for
the present, at least, she made no effort to delay him or to
interfere with his plans.

The trail ran off in a generally northwest direction, leading through
a scraggly patch of jack pines, across a grassy meadow, and thence
through a winding defile that crawled upward at a sharp slant and
came out at length on a barren slope of rock.  The snow had almost
disappeared during the last week, the few remaining white areas being
found only in deep-wooded hollows and on the shady north hillsides.
Where there was topsoil of loam, however, a forest-trained eye found
little difficulty in tracing the imprints of feet that had gone
ahead.  But when he reached the granite outcrop, Dexter was brought
suddenly to a halt.

The fugitive's boot soles were studded with hobnails, and there
should have been a few faint scratches left here and there to
indicate his direction of travel; but after a minute inspection of
the ground about him, the corporal shook his head, and turned with a
baffled frown to meet Alison's questioning gaze.

"I hardly gave Archie credit for being so smart," he remarked acidly.
"I'll bet it was you who thought this out for him, and advised him to
take off his boots if he struck rocks."

She faced him with her head slightly tilted, and there was mockery in
the fleeting smile she gave him.  But she kept discreetly silent, and
neither admitted nor denied his accusation.

The corporal scrutinized her thoughtfully, with one eyebrow elevated;
and then, lightly shrugging his shoulders, he moved onward to seek
for the lost trail.

The bare surface of rock reached upward to the snow crests, and
extended in a northerly direction around the curve of the steep
mountainside.  Archie might have climbed still higher, or circled
across the pitch of the slope, or gradually worked his way downward
to the forested valley below.  Whichever course he had taken he must
eventually pass beyond the rocks, and even if he kept on traveling in
his stocking feet, he was certain to leave some trace of himself when
he finally touched soft earth again.  Dexter had only to swing around
the circumference of the rock slope, and somewhere in moist soil or
snow patch he was confident of picking up the broken line of foot
tracks.

It meant a loss of time and effort to cast around an interrupted
trail, but there was nothing else to be done, and the corporal gave
no hint of annoyance as he pushed ahead.

A survey of the country told him that the easiest course of travel
would be found along the valley bottoms.  The fugitive would be
anxious to make the fastest possible progress, and also he would
instinctively dread the thought of exposing himself conspicuously on
the barren mountain slopes.  As soon as he imagined he had left a
sufficient gap in his trail, he probably had quit the rock slope and
struck downward into the concealing forest.  This at least was the
most probable supposition, so Dexter bent his steps down the
hillside, and presently found himself in a deep, moist hollow,
threading his way through dense timber.

He was striding along silently, his restless glance searching the
ground before him, when all at once he stopped under a giant white
fir that towered in solitary majesty above the tops of the
neighboring spruce and pine.  On the dark, seamy trunk of the ancient
tree there showed a faint, weathered mark, like a wrinkle in the
bark.  Any other than a trained woodsman would have passed by
unobserving.  Alison apparently did not know why her companion had
halted, even when she saw him bend forward to look at the old tree.

"What is it?" she asked as she read the eager curiosity in Dexter's
face.

"Ancient trail blaze," he said.  "All this is unmapped wilderness,
yet somebody found the way through here before us--many years ago."

"Who?  When?"

"I don't know.  Some old-time explorer, perhaps.  The tree probably
has added many inches to its girth since that mark was entrusted to
its keeping."

The girl moved forward to inspect the tiny line that was no more than
a slight puckering of the bark.  "You mean--that's a blaze--left
there by somebody?"

Dexter nodded.  "A fresh ax cut first glazes itself over with a film
of pitch," he said.  "Then the bark begins to draw itself together,
and finally covers the wound.  The annual rings of growth add their
covering year by year, until the original scar is buried deep in the
wood.  In the end nothing is left to show what had happened, save a
tiny wrinkle in the bark.  But the mark itself is never lost, even if
the tree should live for hundreds of years.  Let's see."

He unbelted his keen bladed ax, and yielding the tool with his left
hand, he began to chop into the sapwood, first above and then below
the time-healed scar.  In a few moments he was able to split out a
long, thick slab; and with tense interest he leaned forward to see
what might lie underneath.

"Look!" he exclaimed.

On the surface of white wood exposed, faint characters were
discernible.  He made out the carved tracery of a letter "W," and
there were other lines that he could not quite decipher.  For a
moment he peered at the section of scribed wood, and then quietly
nodded his head.

"I never heard of surveyors going through this part of the
wilderness," he observed musingly, "yet this looks like a surveyor's
line tree."  He counted the growth rings, and looked with thoughtful
eyes into the shadowy stillness beyond.  "More than half a century
ago some man passed through here and cut his blaze and left direction
marks behind him," he said in a hushed voice.  "The man probably is
dead, and I don't suppose he ever knew that he had rendered a service
to a later generation of the Canadian mounted."

"What do you mean?" asked the girl wonderingly.

"Let's look farther, and find out," Dexter temporized.

He moved forward again, walking slowly, and keeping sharp lookout
about him: and two hundred yards farther on he halted with a
smothered laugh to indicate a tall, thick-trunked spruce that stood
amid a clump of smaller trees.  "The blaze," he said, and pointed to
an indented line in the rough bark.

Again he chopped out a block of wood, and presently reached an inner
ring that bore dimly scratched characters similar to those found
under the bark of the fir.

"Another 'W,'" Alison said with pursed lips, as she bent closer to
look.  "There's something else--I can't quite make out.  What does it
mean?"

"Some private mark, no doubt.  It probably has no especial meaning
now--after fifty years.  But the important fact--these are line
trees--undoubtedly."

"Yes?" she asked with a puzzled frown.

The corporal strode forward without answering, and presently showed
his companion a third tree, the bark of which showed the seamed mark
of an ancient blaze.  His smile widened with satisfaction, and this
time he did not halt.  "The open road," he remarked: "I wish I could
thank the old timer who stuck up the street signs."

"Where will they take us?" Alison asked with a dubious glance.

"To the lost pass, I hope.  Nobody would have bothered to blaze a
permanent trail, unless he knew where he was going.  And the only
place worth going from here would be the pass."

He walked a distance farther, and then suddenly checked himself and
pointed to the ground.  In the dark mold by a tiny rivulet of snow
water, he showed her the clearly defined imprint of a nail-studded
foot.  "Your brother!" he remarked.  "He came down from the rock
slope, as I thought he might, and has put his boots back on.  And now
he's ahead of us, traveling our direction."

The girl looked askance at the tell-tale track.  "It--you can't be
sure it is his," was all she could think to say.

Dexter laughed.  "I ought to know his boot marks after all the miles
I've tramped with him.  It's Archie."

He led the way forward again, walking as fast as he could through the
dense timber.  The rediscovered footprints soon turned away from the
line of blazed trees, and he gathered that the fugitive had crossed
the ancient trail by accident and was guiding his course by other
landmarks.  Dexter considered possibilities, and decided to place his
trust in the old-time ax scars.  He was confident that sooner or
later he would be led to the mountain pass, and as he felt equally
certain that Archie was making towards the same destination, it
struck him as being foolish to stray from the clearly marked path to
chase a faint foot-trail that might at any time leave him groping in
the air.

All that day he and Alison labored onward through the silent
wilderness, breaking their way through matted thickets, passing up
long, dark glens that twisted aimlessly among the lower mountains,
ascending steep hill slopes, climbing along the brink of cliffs where
a misstep would have landed them into yawning gulfs below, crossing
the scarp of saw-backed ridges, and finally attaining the edge of
timberline under a thawing snow-field, whence they gazed afar through
an open gap between the surrounding snow caps.

Dusk was approaching, but there was still light enough left to make
out the dim, gray line of the northern horizon, distantly framed by
the shadow of flanking mountain peaks.  Dexter looked off from the
heights, feeling the stir of the free north breeze, and nodded
soberly to himself.

"The outlet!" he said at length.  "The road is open from here, and
the new country's beyond."

He moved forward again, across the slope of the look-out mountain,
and presently struck descending ground, which he knew went down into
the forested valley on the other side of the range.  And before he
had gone any distance he again discovered fresh marks in the earth to
tell of hobnailed boots that had passed that way before him.  Quietly
he called Alison's attention.  "Archie!" he said.  "He used his own
method, and evidently came around from a different direction; but
he's also found the pass.  He can't be so many hours ahead of us."

The girl cast an apprehensive glance into the twilight shadows, but
her lips were closed, and when the corporal went on she followed
mutely at his heels.  He increased his stride, intending to travel as
far as possible before darkness halted him, failing to remember that
his companion's frailer strength might not be able to keep the pace
he set.  But he was aware presently that she was breathing quickly,
stumbling along behind him.  He turned questioningly.

"Tired?" he asked.

"We've been on our feet since early dawn," she reminded him.

Dexter regarded her in momentary suspicion.  She would do anything to
delay him, of course.  On the other hand, there were drooping,
pathetic lines about her mouth and eyes to tell him that she actually
was on the verge of physical exhaustion.  After reflection he decided
that he might as well call a halt.  It would soon be too dark to
follow a trail, and besides, he felt rather done up himself.  Morning
would be soon enough to continue his journey.

In their path stood a great, dead spruce, rearing its barkless white
column stark and ghostly in the gathering twilight.  The corporal
built his evening fire in the shelter of the giant tree, and after he
and his companion had eaten supper, the blankets were spread on
either side of the mighty trunk; and Dexter, for his part, sank
instantly to sleep.

He was even more wearied than he had imagined, and he lay in quiet
slumber, his ears deaf to the familiar forest sounds: the stirring of
the north breeze in the pines, the far-flung screech of a snowy owl,
the scurry of tiny feet in the brush, the babble of rivulets
trickling down the mountainsides.  A wolf howled somewhere in the
distance, but there was nothing in the long-drawn note to alarm his
senses, and he slept on as serenely as though he were bunking in the
guarded barracks at Crooked Forks.  The hours of darkness slipped by
without his knowledge; but at length, some time before approaching
dawn, he turned under his blanket with a startled movement, and
opened his eyes, instantly wakeful, to stare about him.

There was no disturbing sound, and as he gazed up blankly at the
starlit sky, he could not help wondering why the alarm clock of his
mind had aroused him at this particular instant.  Far down on the
south-western horizon he made out the bright star Spica in the
constellation of Virgo.  By the position of the star he knew it was
nearly seven in the morning.

For some unaccountable reason, a feeling of uneasiness took
possession of him, and he turned on his side to glance across the
hollow where the fire had been burning.  And then he sat bolt
upright, to stare in the darkness.  Alison was gone.

Dexter scrambled to his feet, and crossed over to pick up the girl's
discarded blanket.  The woolen covering had been cast aside in a
heap, and was wet with the morning dew.  He inferred that she had
left some while before.  It had not occurred to him that she might
break her pledged word, and he had not thought it necessary to keep
an eye on her.  But now he could not escape the fact that his
confidence had been misplaced.  She had stolen away in the night,
just as her brother had done.

The corporal stood motionless, peering grimly into the all-shrouding
darkness.  The breeze had died, and the night-prowling creatures no
longer stirred abroad in the forest.  Utter silence had shut down
upon the earth.  Dexter looked towards the north, knowing it must be
that direction that the girl had fled.  By this time, no doubt she
was hurrying through the lower pass, miles away.

He was on the point of gathering up his pack, intending to strike
down the slope in pursuit, when all at once he stopped breathing and
threw up his head with a jerk to listen.  A whisper of sound reached
him through the hush of darkness, and his startled ears identified
the faint tones of a human voice.

It was a queer, disembodied voice, a tiny fluttering in the air, like
ventriloquial speech, coming seemingly from infinite distances,
without any point of direction.  Small and unreal as it sounded,
actual words came floating to him.

"Help!" said the ghostly cry.  "David!  Help!"




CHAPTER XXX

DANGEROUS WATERS

Dexter searched about him with wide bewildered eyes.  A deep,
lifeless hush brooded once more over the forest, and he saw nothing
anywhere but the still shadows of trees.  His woodsman's instinct
assured him that no human being lurked within hailing distance.  Yet
he could not doubt the testimony of his own senses.  He had heard the
thin, far call; a muffled, impalpable voice, that was the voice of
Alison Rayne.

As he waited with bated breath, the murmur of sound again flickered
through space--microscopic syllables of speech, apparently sent from
nowhere.  "Cabin--lower pass--help!"  He made out the words
distinctly, and in spite of reason, he knew that he could not be
mistaken.  Alison Rayne was calling him from somewhere, needing him
for some reason, and as though his mind were attuned telepathically
to hers, he heard.

He did not stop to wonder what it all might mean.  On occasions
before this he had observed the effects of strange phenomena at work
in the wilderness, and by now he would not allow himself to be
surprised at anything that might happen.  He knew only that he had
received a mysterious appeal for help, and if Alison wanted him, he
would go the world over to find her.

Luckily the directions were clear.  The voice had mentioned a cabin
in the lower pass.  How far it might be, he did not know, but he had
already puzzled his way through the mountains, and was confident that
he would have no difficulty in locating the mouth of the valley
beyond.  And if there were a cabin along the route, he could not miss
it.  He did not linger even to pack his traveling equipment, but
started forward as fast as darkness and difficult ground permitted.

The mountain slope tumbled downward at a sharp slant, and he pushed
blindly on through obscurity, feeling his way among the trees,
crashing recklessly through briary patches, stumbling and sometimes
falling over unseen obstacles in his path.  How he traversed that
length of dangerous hillside, without broken bones, he could not have
said.  But the luck of the mounted was with him, and when dawn
finally overtook him, he had gained the bottom levels and found safer
ground opening before him.

He found himself in a wild, steep-walled gulley, where a mountain
torrent rushed and swirled among ugly bowlders.  Fed from the distant
heights by melting snows, the stream had already flooded level with
the high spring marks, and the water still appeared to be rising.
The upper embankment shelved above the surface of the rapids and he
struck a slippery pathway that enabled him to follow along with the
current.

For four or five miles he descended through the cut, and then the
walls of the ravine began to widen, and at length he reached an open
stretch of valley land, where a second stream came plunging out of a
forking gulch to join the creek that had led him from the heights.
He halted briefly to peer ahead through the morning mist.

Before him lay a strip of rising ground--a wooded hummock that, in
ordinary stages of the water, would have been accessible from the
embankment on which he stood.  But the branching creeks had overflown
their banks and the flood washed around the spit of land forming a
small, triangular-shaped island.  As he gazed across the swollen
current, he discerned the dim outline of a log cabin, half hidden
among the trees.

Dexter stared across the stream with narrowing eyes.  This was the
lower pass, and before him stood the cabin that the voice had told
him he would find.  No sound reached him above the noise of the
rapids, and no movement was visible through the smoky haze of the
dawn.  Nevertheless, it must be here that he had been summoned by the
cry for help, and there was nothing to do but investigate.

He glanced dubiously at the swift-running stream that cut him off
from the isolated shore.  It was fifty feet or more across the main
channel, and the water boiled and eddied dangerously among sharp,
slippery rocks.  Swimming in such water was out of the question.  In
places the stream appeared to be almost shallow enough for fording
but if a man happened to be swept off his feet nothing could save him
from the rapids, and death among the rocks.  Realizing the chance he
was taking, the corporal hesitated only long enough to settle upon
the safest place of crossing.  He chose the spot where the current
ran whitest, knowing that there he would find the shoalest water; and
without removing his boots, or making any sort of preparation, he
stepped into the water and started to wade out from shore.

The bank dropped away at a steep slant, and almost before he knew it
he had plunged waist-deep in the icy stream.  The current pulled and
tugged at his legs and body, but he dug in his toes, leaned his full
weight against the seething tide, and slowly and laboriously made his
way forward.  The gravel bottom sloped gradually downward, and by the
time he had fought his way to the middle channel the water was
gurgling above his armpits.  At this stage of his journey,
fortunately, a series of bowlders offered him a precarious anchorage,
and he managed to work his way from one to another, until at last he
could plant his feet once more.  The rest of the trip across was only
a question of holding his balance between each cautious step, and he
soon stumbled into shallow water and clambered out on the shore of
the island.

For a moment he stood in the lee of a hazel thicket, shivering with
the cold, peering towards the cabin that loomed in the shadows not
twenty paces beyond him.  He had come up on the rear of the place,
and the door, presumably, opened on the farther side.  There were two
windows in the wall that fronted his direction, but both were
barricaded tight with heavy shutters.  No sign of smoke came from the
clay-daubed chimney.  Judging by appearances, there was nobody about
the premises.  Nevertheless, he moved with caution when he finally
went forward.

Circling the clearing on tiptoe, he passed around the corner of the
cabin, and halted suddenly with a quick-drawn breath.  Before the
shut door, almost within arm's reach, crouched a bulky human figure.

Instinctively the corporal's hand slid into his pocket, and came out
again, gripping the small pistol that had served him on another
occasion.  The sound of the rapids had smothered his footfalls, and
his presence so far was undiscovered.  The intruder's back was turned
to him, and he saw only a bulging pink neck and a fat, gross body
belted in a Mackinaw coat.  For several seconds Dexter held his
position, looking on with keenest interest.  The thick-waisted
stranger held a hunting knife gripped in his hands, and was hacking
and sawing away at the planks of the battened front door.  He had
chipped a hole through the heavy slabs, and was now engaged in
enlarging the aperture.  It would appear that he was trying to cut an
opening big enough to reach the inner latch-bar.

Dexter watched in silence for a space, and then quietly interrupted
the work.  "My hand isn't quite as pudgy as yours," he remarked.
"Maybe mine'll go through."

The man's fingers opened with a jerk, his knife fell to the ground,
and he whirled with a choking gasp to stare behind him.

Dexter smiled as he observed the reddish, flabby face that had turned
his direction.  The man was the outlaw, "Pink" Crill.




CHAPTER XXXI

ILL-FAVORED COMPANY

For an interval of ten seconds Crill stood like a man turned to
putty, his mouth sagging as though it had suddenly lost muscular
support, his babyish complexion changing to a sickly grayish hue.
"Where--what the--?" he started to mutter, and then somehow failed to
find the words to finish.

"You're wondering how I got here?" inquired the corporal politely.
"I merely followed down through the pass.  I didn't die under that
fallen tree, as you probably supposed."

"What are you doing here?" the officer pursued as Crill continued
speechless.  "Locked yourself out, or something?  What's inside that
makes it worth so much trouble to reach the bar?

"Find out for myself if you're tongue-tied," he added after a moment
of straining silence.  With revolver in hand he moved forward and
kicked the door panel with his heavy boot.  "Hello!" he called out.
"Anybody in there?"

As he paused to listen he caught a creaking sound within, light
footsteps approached the threshold, and a faint, frightened voice
spoke through the door.  "Oh--who is it?" some one asked breathlessly.

It was a woman--Alison Rayne: and his eyes grew thoughtful as he
recognized her voice.  She had called to him, and the far cry in some
wondrous manner had reached him when he stood at the head of the
pass, miles away.  A miracle had been wrought, and he could not guess
its manner of accomplishment.  He did not try, but turned to Crill
with a direful glance.

"So--you were trying to cut your way through the door!" he said
harshly.  His fingers unconsciously tightened upon the butt of his
gun, but after measuring the man up and down, he swung around to the
cabin entrance.  "Alison!" he called.  "It's I--Dexter."

"Oh, thanks--thanks!" he heard the girl say in a half sobbing voice;
then the bar was thrown up, the door opened, and Alison stumbled
forward to meet him.

He looked searchingly into the blue eyes that lifted to his.  "What
happened?" he asked.

"This man!" she said with a shudder.  "I barred myself inside, and
he--he's been trying to cut his way through the door--working for
hours with his knife blade.  He--he's a beast!"

The corporal favored Crill with a saturnine stare.  "Well, he'll have
something else to think about from now on," he remarked grimly.
"There's a beam and a rope and a trap waiting for him in the Cook
County jail yard."

"I ain't there yet," said the outlaw, with a throaty effort of speech.

Dexter ignored the man, and glanced again at Alison.  "Why did you
leave me?" he asked.  "I trusted your word, you know."

She faced him with level gaze.  "My word is good," she said quietly.
"I had every intention of coming back."

"Then what--"

"My brother, of course," she interrupted.  "I didn't think he could
be far ahead of us, and I knew he'd have to stop for the night.  I
was afraid he might not get started early enough this morning, so I
came on ahead, hoping that I might find him at this cabin.  I meant
to warn him to hurry on before you could overtake him."

"So it was only pretense last night--you're being too tired to
travel."

"I was very tired," she said, "but--well, I admit I was able to go a
little farther--after you were asleep."

Dexter could not help smiling at her frankness.  "And you found your
brother here at this cabin?"

"No.  I thought he'd be here, but I guess he didn't stop.  He must
have hurried on in the night."

"To catch up with Stark, I suppose?"

She shook her head.  "I don't know anything about Stark," she told
him.

The corporal turned to Crill.  "Where are your friends?" he asked.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" said the other with a sullen leer.

"I imagine that I do know," replied the officer placidly.  "Probably
not far ahead.  You came back over the trail, I presume--after
something you'd forgotten.  And found Miss Rayne here.  However it
doesn't matter why you came.  You're here.  That's all I'm interested
in knowing."

He eyed the outlaw somberly, wondering at the fact that he had risked
a night abroad without a weapon.  "What became of your rifle?" he
inquired.

"Lost it in that cursed creek," was the reply.  "Had to grab a rock
when I was wading across, and the gun slipped from my hand.  If it
hadn't been for that, you wouldn't be standing there now asking me
questions."

Dexter shrugged his shoulders lightly.  "Let's go inside and cook
bacon and coffee," he suggested.  "I don't imagine any of us has had
breakfast."

He stood warily aside and motioned towards the doorway, and after an
instant's hesitation, the outlaw stepped forward and passed into the
cabin.  Dexter followed at his heels, and shut the door behind him.

There was but one room in the place--a solid walled chamber with a
fireplace and built-in bunk, and three or four pieces of rude
furniture scattered about.  A packing box in the center of the floor
apparently served as a table.  Above it, from a ceiling beam, hung a
lighted lantern.  The corporal glanced swiftly about him and saw that
the structure did not differ in any essential from the two cabins in
the valley on the southern side of the pass.  There were cooking
utensils, a shelf full of provisions, and plenty of cut firewood.
Evidently the place was one of a line of way stations intended for
the accommodation of Stark's transient guests.

Dexter indicated a slab stool in the corner, and told Crill to sit
down.  He dropped the revolver into the side pocket of his jacket
where it might be easily reached.  "I won't hesitate to kill you," he
said quietly.  He eyed the outlaw's huge shoulders and big, ham-like
hands, and knew that without the use of his right arm he could not
hope to last two seconds in a physical encounter.  "You stay your
distance, always," he pursued.  "The dead line is five feet and if
you come nearer than that to me at any time, I'm going to let you
have it."

Having delivered himself of his warning, he turned casually aside,
laid kindling in the hearth, and built a fire.  He ransacked a
cupboard, helped himself to such provisions as he found there, and
started breakfast for three people.  Then, while the coffee pot was
simmering, he stood as close as he dared to the fire, drying his
dripping clothes.

Alison had come forward to toast the bacon, and he found a chance to
talk to her, without being overheard by Crill.

"I heard your call for help," he told her.  "The place was seven or
eight miles from here.  How was it done?"

"I may have cried out," she said.  "I--I was terribly frightened when
I realized that this man was cutting through the door to reach the
latch."

"I heard your voice--recognized it," he persisted.  "It was as though
it had carried to me on the breeze from a great distance.  And you
spoke my name."  He eyed her keenly.  "How did you make me hear?"

Her glance shifted, and she refused to meet his gaze.  "It could have
been just your imagination," she said after a little pause.  "I--I
was in great trouble, and it could be that by a--some strange occult
way my thoughts and fears were carried to you.  Queer things like
that have happened--things that none of us can understand."  Her eyes
softened as she lifted them fleetingly to his face.  "But whatever it
was you heard or fancied you heard, you came to me.  I shall never
forget that."

He regarded her tensely for a moment, and shook his head.  Whatever
the mystery of the far-off voice, she had no intention of confiding
the truth to him.  After all, he was her enemy, and he could expect
no help from her in solving riddles.  And from previous experience he
knew how futile it was to cross-question her when she had made up her
mind to keep silent.  He smiled lightly.  "All right," he said.
"It's evident that Stark and his guests have some uncanny method of
projecting voices through the wilderness.  And you're wise not to tip
yourselves off to the police.  But whatever the system is, I'm glad
at least that I heard, and got here in time."

The breakfast preparations were finished in silence, and while the
girl put plates on the packing box table, he poured the coffee and
served the grilled bacon strips, Crill was motioned to a place at the
table opposite Dexter, and he sat down sullenly to eat.

"How did you reach this island?" the corporal was reminded to ask
Alison as she pulled up a chair at his left hand.

"Why, I waded across," she said in apparent surprise.  "It wasn't
deep."

Dexter looked up from his plate with a start.  "How deep?" he
demanded.

"Not up to my knees."

"When did you reach here?" he asked sharply.

"Early in the morning.  Several hours before you came."

The corporal suddenly pushed his stool back from the table and stood
up.  "Come with me, Crill," he commanded.  "I want you where I can
keep an eye on you."  He pointed towards the doorway.  The outlaw
stared at him from under lowering brows, but after a sharp exchange
of glances, the man got up reluctantly and moved across the room.

Dexter forced his prisoner to precede him outside the cabin, and
together they walked down through the timber to the edge of the
rapids.  The corporal looked across the rushing, tumbling surface of
the stream, and his worst fear was realized.  The water had risen at
least half a foot since he had crossed.  Presumably an ice jam had
broken somewhere in the mountains, and the flood was released.  Some
of the bowlders he had clung to now had disappeared from sight.  He
had barely managed to force the passage when he came from the
opposite bank, and the few added inches of depth made the return
impossible.  He and Alison and Crill were marooned on the island, and
it might be many days before the stream subsided sufficiently for
them to dare the return trip.  Meanwhile, it was a certainty that
Stark and the others of his gang would soon be returning to look for
the missing Crill.




CHAPTER XXXII

COPPERHEAD

Before the disconcerting discovery that he was trapped on the island,
Dexter had already framed his tentative plans for the future.  The
capture of the Chicago outlaw at such a time had left him in a rather
embarrassing situation.  The man was too important a prisoner to take
any chance on his escape.  But to keep him in custody meant constant
danger.  Stark was not a person to let a belt full of gold slip
through his fingers, and he undoubtedly would scour the woods to find
its wearer.

Dexter had decided to play safe.  It would be suicidal to push on
northward where he was almost certain to encounter members of Stark's
crowd; so he had made up his mind to turn back through the valley he
had just quitted, make his way out through the southern gateway, and
escort his two prisoners to Fort Dauntless.  It was entirely possible
that he might meet a party of re-enforcing police somewhere on the
way.  In any event he had discovered the route through the north
pass, and after he had delivered Alison and Crill into safekeeping he
could have returned with comrades to renew the hunt.  Stark probably
would continue his operations, and in some way or another the old
trail could have been picked up.

But it was too late now to adopt the wiser course.  There was nothing
to be done but to sit still to wait until the stream might be forded
again.  And if Crill's companions put in their expected appearance,
the corporal must fight them single-handed, with a thousand to one
chance against his winning.

Dexter's face was an unreadable mask as he surveyed the turbulent
waters, but Crill evidently understood the situation as well as he
did.  The outlaw exhibited his yellow teeth in a grin of saturnine
gloating.

"Got yourself in a hole that you won't get out of alive," he
remarked.  "My gang'll be here after me, you bet, and when they come
there'll be one less cop on the royal police force."

"The cops of the mounted do drop out at intervals," admitted the
corporal calmly.  "But there's always a new one to fill up the ranks.
So that's all right."  He smiled almost genially.  "Meanwhile I
advise you to step very carefully.  Come on.  We'll go back."

The three island castaways spent a long and tedious day in the cabin
between the thundering rapids.  Dexter found a few old dog-eared
magazines that helped him beguile the dragging hours, but he was
forced to do his reading in broken snatches, with one eye watching
Crill or shifting restlessly towards the open door, through which he
could see along the farther bank of the water-course.

The outlaw for his part did everything he could to keep his captor's
nerves on edge.  He had opened a window shutter, and found himself a
seat on a bench under the sill.  Part of the time he stared off
downstream with an air of grim expectancy, as though he were
confident that his friends would soon appear.  At other moments he
would swing around to fix Dexter with venomous, unwinking eyes.  At
intervals he would spring up from his stool and peer out the window,
pretending that he had caught sight of some one approaching through
the forest; only to sit down again with a mocking, throaty laugh when
the corporal also lifted his head to look.  Twice he lurched to his
feet and started truculently across the room, moved apparently by a
sudden savage impulse to hurl himself upon his captor.  On one such
occasion he advanced so near that the officer dropped the magazine he
was reading and reached for his revolver.  Whereupon Crill's face
relaxed in an evil smirk, and he swaggered back to the bench to renew
his vigil at the window.

Dexter would have liked to put an end to the man's antics by tying
him hand and foot; but he could not hope to accomplish the job with
only one serviceable arm.  If Crill once laid hands on him he
unquestionably would be crushed and beaten down by sheer bulk and
weight of flesh.  His only dependence were the three cartridges left
in Alison Rayne's revolver, and the outlaw well knew that he would
not fire, except in an extreme emergency.

The officer could have called on Alison to help him, and because of
her fear of the murderer she probably would have consented; but the
girl was also his prisoner, and it was a matter of pride and honor
with him not to seek favors where duty forbade him to grant favors in
return.  So he made the best of matters by keeping his temper and
patience, and maintaining unceasing vigilance.

For Alison the day passed with less monotony.  The mere fact of being
under a roof again served to awaken feminine instincts of
orderliness, and she spent the entire afternoon cleaning the dirty
and untidy cabin.  She swept the floor, dusted the larder shelves,
and scrubbed and scoured all the cooking utensils she could find
about the place.  Later she baked a pan of biscuits, and contrived an
amazingly appetizing pudding, made of corn meal and dried apples and
molasses, with bear fat for shortening.

That evening Dexter sat down to the first civilized dinner he had
tasted in months; and when he finally finished, he got up with a
guilty knowledge of having over-eaten.  He was a bit alarmed to
discover that he had grown very drowsy.  To sleep soundly with Crill
in the cabin meant to invite death, so he took the precaution of
brewing an extra pot of strong coffee to drink before he turned in
for the night.

There was only one bunk in the cabin, and this was allotted to
Alison.  Crill was ordered to spread his blankets before the
fireplace, while Dexter made his bed by the opposite wall, where he
could guard the front door.  Before he retired he took a charred
stick from the hearth and drew a half circle around the section of
floor assigned to the outlaw.

"Your deadline," he remarked with somber emphasis.  "If you stir
beyond that mark I'll shoot you down without asking a question.  Good
night."

Through the long hours of darkness Dexter was permitted but little
rest.  At times he dozed off, but with every faint creak of sound
about the cabin his hand reached automatically towards his revolver
and he sat up, wide awake and staring, expecting any moment to see a
crouching bulk stealing upon him from the shadow of the hearth.
Three times during the night he left the cabin to circle the little
island and to gaze up and down the moonlit shore across the way.  On
each of these occasions he forced Crill to get up and accompany him,
and while the man muttered and grumbled over the indignity of being
kept awake, he obeyed.  Morning arrived at last, and although the
outlaw had not yet ventured to make any hostile move, Dexter was
fagged by his long vigil, and he knew that flesh and blood could not
endure many more such nights.

Except for the fact that time seemed to drag more slowly, the second
day was a repetition of the first.  The corporal grew heavy-eyed as
the hours passed, and by mid-afternoon he would have sold the tunic
off his back for a thirty minutes' nap.  He drank enormous quantities
of coffee, and with Crill as his companion, went outdoors at frequent
intervals to tramp doggedly up and down the banks of the rising
stream, forcing himself to stay awake.

Alison alone had obtained her full night's rest, and she awakened
fresh and clear-eyed, to resume her self-imposed duties about the
cabin.  She prepared the meals and washed the dishes, and smilingly,
but stubbornly, refused to let any one help.  When dinner was ready
that evening she insisted on her companions sitting down ahead of
her, while she waited on table.

"You make me feel like a scoundrel," Dexter protested as she forcibly
pushed him to his stool and placed a steaming plate before him.  "I
don't just see why you're called upon to be the maid of all work."

She laughed pleasantly, and leaned lightly against his shoulder to
put his coffee cup on the table.  "It saves one from going crazy,"
she explained--"having something to keep the hands and mind occupied.
I'm really glad to do it, and I don't want anybody bothering me."

Before the officer could say anything further, she moved away and
bent in seeming absorption over a kettle she had left bubbling in the
fireplace.  A look of gentleness stole momentarily into Dexter's gray
eyes, and without thinking what he was doing, he half turned on his
stool to watch the slim, boyish figure bending before the hearth.
For the instant he forgot that Crill was seated on the other side of
the table, almost within arm's reach.  His glance was tracing the
graceful curve of the girl's throat and chin, shadowed in the ruddy
glow of the fire, when some guarding sentinel of the brain gave him
warning.

With a startled breath he whirled about, just in time to see Crill
rise from his seat and fling himself across the table.

Dexter caught a glimpse of an evil, bloated face and two slits of
eyes, glaring with ugly purpose.  The table was overturned with a
crash, and Crill lunged forward, reaching with his ponderous hands.

The corporal felt murderous fingers at his throat, but in the
fraction of an instant vouchsafed him he twisted away, threw himself
backwards and fell from his stool.  He caught his weight on his left
hand, and then, before his heavier assailant could drop upon him, he
sprang to his feet, and a cat-like leap carried him back to the cabin
wall.

Even as he dodged across the room, Dexter's hand had gone to his
jacket pocket.  If the man still came on, he must shoot him down.
His fingers started to close upon the butt of his revolver, and found
nothing to take hold of.  A limp, helpless feeling came over him as
he waited at bay, with his shoulders backed against the wall.  His
weapon was not in his pocket.




CHAPTER XXXIII

HIGH STAKES

At times before this the corporal had faced death without a tremor of
fear.  Now, as he looked into the malignant face, hideous and
bestial, looming before him in the shadow of the fireplace, he felt
loathing and disgust, but he was not afraid.  Crill outweighed him by
nearly a hundred pounds; he was crippled, unarmed, defenseless.  Yet
as he felt the logs behind him, and knew there was no further
retreat, the beat of his pulse grew slow and regular and an icy
calmness gripped him.

His hand was still in his pocket, and he kept it there.  "Stop!" he
said in a low, chilling voice.

The outlaw checked himself in mid-stride, and as though drawn by
hypnotic force, his glance wavered and focussed itself upon the
pocket of the corporal's jacket.  He balanced on his feet for an
instant with tensely drawn muscles, torn between the madness to kill
and the craven dread of taking a chance.

"Back!" commanded Dexter, his hand gripped rigidly in his lifted
pocket.

For the length of a breath the murderer hesitated; a shifty, furtive
look crept into his squinting eyes; his hands closed and opened
again, and his arms fell slowly against his sides; and then, with a
hoarse sound in his throat, his gross body relaxed, and he half
stumbled backwards on his heel.

A hot thrill of exultance surged through Dexter's veins as he
realized that he had won; but his voice remained frigid and the
expression of his face did not change.  "Pick up that table!" he
ordered.

A sullen red color surged up over Crill's neck and ears, and his lips
drew apart in a wolfish snarl; but something in Dexter's glance
schooled him to silence.  Without a word he turned on his heel,
slouched back across the room, stooped over the table, and turned it
back on its four legs.

"All right!" said Dexter, the note of triumph erased from his speech.
"Also the dishes, if you don't mind!"

Knowing now that the man would obey him, he turned aside and
sauntered across the floor to confront Alison.  And it needed but a
glance at her frightened, guilty face to tell him what had become of
his revolver.  He recalled now how she had leaned against him when
she gave him his cup of coffee.  As he remembered, he had the gun a
few minutes before when he sat down at the table.  She must have made
the opportunity deliberately, and extracted the revolver from his
pocket without his knowledge.

He scrutinized her for a moment in grim questioning, wondering what
her purpose might have been.  Was it her intention to strip him of
his only means of defense, and leave him at the mercy of his enemies?
The supposition was unthinkable, and with his first glimpse of
Alison's eyes he dismissed it as an unworthy and horrible thought.
There were two other possibilities: either she wanted the revolver
for her own protection, or else she had taken it to get rid of
evidence that might some day be used against her.

He knew that she must have the gun concealed about her person, but he
dared not try to get it back again, or ask her why she had taken it.
His life was an insurable risk only as long as Crill might be kept in
ignorance of the truth.

"Your boarders owe you an apology," he remarked with a sardonic
smile.  "It isn't polite to be jumping up and down from the dinner
table.  But we'll both try to behave ourselves in the future."
Alison was crouching by the fireplace with a smoking skillet in her
hand, staring at the corporal with wide, awe-stricken eyes.  She had
seen him coerce a madman by sheer force of nerve, and the swift
frustration of tragedy had left her breathless and trembling.

"If you don't mind," resumed Dexter in faint mockery, "we'll go on
with the next course.  The loss of the first is irreparable, but
we'll try to forget it."

"I--there's enough left in the pot--I can fill your plates again,"
the girl stammered, and he knew that she had no sense of what she was
saying.

The corporal nodded quietly, crossed the room and took his place at
the table, opposite the glowering Crill.  Alison came forward in
trepidation to remove the empty plates; and for the present at least,
the incident was closed.

Dexter returned to his dinner with unaffected appetite, quite as
though nothing had happened; and when he had finished he pushed back
his stool and invited his sulky companion to go outside with him for
a walk.

The branching creek still rushed in swollen torrents around the
little island, boiling and roaring among the rocks, carrying masses
of ice and gyrating tree trunks along with the currents.  The flood
ran level with the high-water mark of the afternoon, and apparently
the spring rise had reached its highest stage.  From now on the water
probably would gradually recede, but Dexter knew by previous
experience with wilderness freshets, it might take two or three days
longer before he could expect to recross the ford.  He scanned the
length of turbulent rapids, and shook his head.  If Stark's party
failed to show up in the meanwhile, and if he could force himself to
stay awake for two more days and nights, he might escape from the
island.  But at that moment the prospects were not cheering.

When he went back to the cabin, he ordered Crill to retire into his
marked circle before the fireplace.  "I'm not going to stand for any
more foolishness," he remarked with an assurance he was far from
feeling.  "That's your spot, and I advise you to stay in it."

Alison had already crept into her bunk.  Her soft hair was tumbled
over her face, and her head lay pillowed on her extended arm.  She
seemed to be asleep.  Dexter looked down at her, and his lips
quivered into a wistful, tender smile.  For a moment he stood
motionless in the concealing shadow by the bunk, and then, with a
slow-drawn breath he tiptoed across the floor to dim the light of the
lantern.  A brief inspection of the inner premises assured him that
the door and window shutters were fastened, and he retreated to his
own corner of the room to take up his second night's vigil.

The fear that he might go to sleep had grown like a haunting specter
in his mind.  He knew that if he once allowed himself to drop off, he
would sink into a deep slumber, from which there would be no
awakening.  Afraid to lie down, he planted himself on a stool, leaned
his head and shoulders against the wall, and made himself as
comfortable as he dared.

So he spent the night, listening as in an evil dream to the mutter of
the rapids outside, nodding and dozing, but arousing himself each
time he felt the muscles of his body begin to sag; conning over all
the fragments of verse he could remember, doing sums in mental
arithmetic; somehow forcing his reluctant brain to keep on
functioning.  He managed to watch out the night, but dawn found him
slumping on his stool, haggard and hollow-eyed, knowing that he could
not stick it out for many hours more.

By the exertion of all his will power, he managed to hold his leaden
eyes open through the interminable hours of daylight.  The forking
waters had begun to fall, inch by inch.  The channel, however, was
still too deep for wading.  By morning, perhaps, he might venture the
crossing.  He had not quite decided what he would do if he succeeded
in reaching the open shore opposite, but his common sense advised him
to let Crill escape.  At least he could then creep off in hiding and
sleep.  Even if he lost a day or two it would not be too late to take
up the trail again.  But for the present he was in the situation of
the trapper who caught the grizzly by the tail.  He had his prisoner
captive, and he couldn't let go.

The prospect of fighting off sleep through another night appalled
him.  Coffee had lost the power to stimulate his nerves, and he found
himself moving about in a sort of daze, obsessed by the fear that he
might doze off, even while he stood on his feet.  He had read and
re-read all the magazines in the cabin, and out of desperation that
evening he sought about him for something to occupy his mind.  On the
back of one of the shelves he discovered a greasy pack of playing
cards.  He riffled the deck under his thumb, and cast a speculative
glance towards Crill.

"Ever play any cards?" he inquired.

The outlaw looked over his shoulder with a twisted grin.  "Sure," he
said--"when they make it interesting.  But no piker stuff!"

"What do you call piker stuff?"

"Slipping 'em off for dimes."  Crill fixed the officer with his beady
glance.  "How much you got on you?"

Dexter shook his head depreciatingly.  Money was of no use to a man
in the wilderness, and when he had ridden out from Crooked Forks on
long patrol, nearly a year ago, he carried in his pocket only a few
dollars in cash that had been left from his last August's pay.

He produced two small bills, and at sight of the numerals Crill
laughed raucously.  "You don't think I'm going to fool around any
with crockery marbles, do you?" he jeered.  He started to turn away,
but checked himself instantly, and faced the corporal with a sobered
expression.  "At that," he added, "you've got something I could use,"
he added.  "If you want to get away from the little boy stuff, maybe
we can talk."

"Yes?" said the corporal, a little puzzled.  "What have I got?"

"Me!"

"What?"

"You get me."  Crill's thick lips parted in a crafty smile.  "I got
three thousand in gold in my belt, and ten coarse notes that bring
the total to fifteen grand.  That's something for you to shoot at.
And all you got to put up is something that don't cost you anything."

"Let's get this straight," said Dexter, his eyes narrowing.  "You
wish to play cards with me, you putting up money, I staking--your
freedom?"

"You said it," replied the other tensely.  "You got it quick."

"Just how would such a game be played?" asked Dexter in a smooth,
milky tone.

"Poker--Jacks--the draw to fill--and a show-down."  The outlaw drew a
breath of kindling excitement.  "Five hundred bucks at a smash--you
swearing to let me go if you lose.  If you win you've got some velvet
to go on.  And we keep going until you break me or I break you.
Simple?"

"Quite!"  Dexter stood for a moment in meditative silence.  He had
already decided to let his prisoner go, if he ever got the chance.
So whether he should win or lose in this game of strangely matched
stakes, the police were out nothing.  There was no point of honor
involved.  The main consideration was the game itself.  There ought
to be enough interest in such an encounter to keep him awake, and no
matter what the cost, he must not sleep to-night.

"If I should agree to release you," he said after a pause, "the
promise goes only that far.  I would give you only a day's start, and
then I go after you again."

"A day's start is enough for me to shake any cop," returned Crill
with a sneer.

"Another thing," pursued the corporal quietly: "If we play, we play
fair.  I want you to be entirely satisfied--as I know you wish me to
be--that fortune alone governs the turn.  An impartial third person
deals the cards."

"Eh?"  The outlaw looked up with an ugly scowl.  "Who, for instance?"

"Miss Rayne, I'm sure, wouldn't mind dealing for each of us in turn."

Crill shifted his lowering glance from Dexter to the girl and his
scowl changed gradually to an oily smirk.  "All right, lady, you do
it," he said.  He snapped his fingers, devil-may-care.  "Let's go!"
he invited.




CHAPTER XXXIV

GAMBLERS' OATHS

While the two men were settling the business at hand, Alison had
stood by in silence, looking curiously from one to the other, a
little bewildered, and also a little frightened by the singular turn
of events.  But as Dexter faced her, her head went up resolutely, and
she mutely questioned him with her eyes.

"If you don't mind?" he asked with a smile.

"Why, no, not if you wish it," she replied.

"Please," he said.  He placed a third stool at the table and laid the
pack of cards before her.  Then he coolly turned up the wick of the
hanging lantern, so that the full light fell on the center of the
board.  Crill settled his bulk on a stool facing the fireplace, and
Dexter slipped casually into the seat opposite.

The girl picked up the deck, and her slim hands were not quite steady
as she started to shuffle the cards.  "Ready?" she asked in a stifled
voice.

"Let 'em go, lady," said the outlaw, and Dexter's fist clenched as he
caught the leering glance across the table.

"Five apiece, isn't it?" Alison inquired without looking up.

"Five," the corporal said--"and one at a time."

Awkwardly she dealt from the pack, and waited with parted lips while
the two men reached for their cards.  Crill left his cards face down
on the table, and warily bent up the corners to examine the pips.
Dexter raked his hand towards him, gazed openly at the spots, and
nodded.

"I have them," he remarked, and dropped two cards in front of him.
"Draw three, please."

"One!" muttered Crill.  "Throw 'em face up."

The overweighted silence was broken only by the soft, silky sound of
cards slipping off the pack.  A three of spades, a ten of clubs and a
queen of hearts fell to the corporal's allotment, and with a quiet
movement he turned over a pair of queens.  "Threes," he announced.

Crill stared at a nine of spades that Alison had dropped in front of
him, and sucked in his lips with an audible sound.  "Just missed a
flush," he said, and laughed disagreeably.  "They're all pink but
that one.  First blood for you."

"Pay me," said Dexter.

"You get yours, all right," returned the outlaw between set teeth.
He stirred heavily on his stool, opened his coat, and unbuckled a
sagging chamois belt, which he deposited with a thump on the table.
He unbuttoned one of the belt pockets and brought out a fistful of
twenty-dollar gold pieces.  Twenty-five of these were counted out in
a stack and ungraciously shoved at the officer.  "There!" he growled.
"Let's see how long you hang on to 'em!"

Alison's flexible fingers again shuffled the deck, and with more
self-possession now, she again distributed the cards.  This time
Crill announced openers, and after discarding and filling his hand,
he sat back with an expression of smug contentment.  "Three bullets!"
he declared, and his huge hand started across the table towards the
pile of gold he had just lost.

"One moment," interrupted the corporal pleasantly, as he exhibited
his hand.  "The queens are standing by me for some reason.  There are
three of them again, and a pair of deuces to back them up."

Crill's pink complexion turned a mottled red, and he snorted angrily
through his nostrils; but there was no gainsaying the evidence of
defeat.  In ominous silence he reached into his belt and counted up
another glinting pile of double eagles.  "Go to it!" he said morosely.

For six hands running Dexter won, and the chamois belt was beginning
to take on a limp and depleted appearance when his luck finally
turned against him.  He lost three pots, gained one, forfeited four
more, and at length was reduced to his original stake.

"Let 'em go!" said the outlaw in unlovely gloating as he leaned his
broad elbows over the heap of gold he had raked back to his side of
the table.

Alison glanced sidewise at the corporal, and he thought he saw a
tinge of anxiety in her glowing eyes.  "If you please," he invited
serenely.

She riffled the pack, and slowly and deliberately passed out the
cards.  Then she straightened on her stool and waited without
breathing while the two players consulted fortune's sending.

"Jacks up," asserted the officer after the draw, as he spread his
cards fan-shape under the flickering lantern rays.

"Beats tens and sixes," admitted Crill, gulping in his fleshy throat.

Dexter took the next pot and the next, was beaten twice, and then
started on a winning streak that eventually stripped the outlaw of
his last gold piece.  But when the yellow treasury notes were forced
out on the table, the break came, and the corporal's three thousand
of winnings dribbled gradually away until he had nothing left to
stake but his pledged word to free his prisoner if the next turn of
the game fell against him.

But the hazard of the last chance switched in his favor.  He piled up
his winnings to formidable proportions once more, again dropped back
to nothing but a promise, and again started accumulating gold pieces.
So the game went on through the hushed hours of the night, see-sawing
first one direction and then the other, with neither player gaining a
final advantage, until along towards the approach of daylight, when
the luck of the game swung definitely to Dexter's side of the table,
and thereafter remained with him.

The first glimmering of dawn found the three strangely assembled
companions still seated in a tense circle under a dim, sputtering
lantern, watching the fall of cards on the greasy table top.  The
corporal had unbuttoned his tunic at the throat, and he had slumped
down on his stool, his legs stretched at full length, and his lean
jaw resting on his hand.  His face looked gaunt and haggard in the
yellow light, but his wide-open eyes were keen and watchful, glinting
with feverish brightness.  All desire to sleep had left him.  On the
table at his elbow was stacked three thousand dollars in gold coin,
and a bundle of crisp treasury notes representing thirteen thousand
more.  Crill was down to his last bill.

The murderer's face was not pleasant to look upon.  His thick,
bloodless lips had drawn apart, baring his teeth in a poisonous
misshapen smile.  The flat nostrils were pinched in at the corners by
muscular constriction, forcing him to breathe through his mouth, and
the skin seemed to have stretched tighter across his bloated face,
accentuating the white, bony hollows of the temples.  The eyes that
looked out between puckered rolls of flesh gleamed with ominous
fixity, like hard black beads, never winking, never losing the
malevolence and hatred that dwelt in their frozen depths.

Dexter, by accident, thrust out his leg too far and touched the
murderer's ankle, and he jerked back his foot with shuddering haste.
"I'm five hundred in that note," he said after a chilling silence.
"If I win this time, it's the end."

The outlaw's tongue licked across his sagging lips, but he had no
voice to reply.

"Any time you're ready, Miss Rayne," said the corporal.

A spot of bright color tinged the girl's cheeks, but otherwise she
gave no sign of excitement.  She twisted up the sleeve of her frayed
white sweater, and then her slim hands manipulated the deck.
Carefully and precisely, she slipped off the cards, until five lay on
the table before each player.  Then, laying the remaining pack beside
her, she sat back to watch.

Dexter scooped up his cards with his left hand, thumbed them apart,
and dropped one from among its companions.  "Open," he said mildly.
"I'm filling with the top one."

The outlaw gingerly bent the corners of his cards, and leaned forward
with a stealthy movement to peer under his wrist.  "Three!" he said
at length in a thickly muffled voice.

Alison dealt the cards, one to Dexter, three to Crill, and dropped
the deck with a gesture of finality.  For a fleeting instant her
glance shifted to the corporal's face, and a ghost of a smile hovered
about her lips.

Dexter's stern features relaxed slightly in response, and he flopped
his cards over on their backs.  "I had 'em to start," he
drawled--"nothing except treys and deuces."

Without a word Crill peeled up the edges of the three grimy
pasteboards before him, and then, in an ungovernable fit of rage, he
swept his arm across the table and sent the deck flying.  For a
moment he sat scowling in silence, and then he dropped his fat hands
before him and stumbled drunkenly to his feet.

"I suppose you think you've broken me!" he rasped out, with a
horrible effort to control his speech.

Dexter likewise stood up.  He stacked the yellow backs in a neat
pile, folded them lengthwise, and slipped the packet into the inside
pocket of his tunic.  Then he began thrusting chinking handfuls of
gold into the receptacle of the chamois belt.

"You have the same chance of keeping that stuff as I have of turning
into a preacher," said Crill, his face distorted in a hideous sneer.

The corporal looked up from under one lifted eyebrow.  "I beg your
pardon?" he inquired.

"Do you think Stark and his gang are going to let you get away with
that?  It's mine, but it also belongs to them."  The murderer showed
his teeth in a venomous grin.  "Stark and his bunch are going to be
here before you can get away.  Or if they should happen to miss you,
they'll hound you down through the woods until you croak on the
trail.  You didn't think Stark was going to let anybody cop fifteen
thousand out of his fingers, did you?"

Dexter finished stowing away the gold pieces, and deliberately
fastened the pocket flaps.  "I can't manage with one hand," he said
casually to Alison.  "Will you help me buckle this belt around my
waist?"

As the girl moved forward to give assistance, he turned abruptly to
Crill.  "You had some such mental reservation when you sat down to
play?" he asked.  "You knew if I won I wouldn't be allowed to keep my
winnings?  In other words, you were counting on Stark from the
beginning?"

"I hope to tell you I was!  Do I look crazy to you?  I wasn't playing
to lose anything."

"I only wanted to know," said the corporal.  "I had a notion that I
might return your money to you--in good season.  I don't want
it--wouldn't touch it.  Wouldn't soil my hands.  I'd about made up my
mind to give it back to you, but that speech of yours has changed
things."  His teeth fastened in his lip as he fixed the outlaw with
scornful regard.  "I'll tell you what I've decided to do with it
now--having won it fairly," he ended.  "I'm going down to the rapids
and dump it overboard."

Crill started as though he had received a blow in the face.  "What?"
he gasped.  "Fifteen thousand--your money--fifteen thousand dollars?
Why, you wouldn't--"

"To thwart Stark," returned the corporal serenely, "of course I
would."

"But--"  Crill drew a sobbing breath, and the madness of terror
suddenly flared into his eyes.  "It's the money--Stark--I'd never get
out of these woods alive without the money to pay.  He'd leave me to
die, or kill me."

"Of course," agreed Dexter, nodding his head.

Crill stared at him for a single, incredulous instant, and wilted
like a punctured balloon.  "Oh, no!" he faltered, choking.  He groped
his way back to the table and his hands reached out in fawning
appeal.  "Please, Corporal Dexter!  You don't--you don't know Stark--"

His voice broke in an agonized whisper, but before he could go on
with his pleading, another voice interrupted from the farther side of
the room.

"My ears are burning.  I must have heard my own name."  The words cut
sharp and incisive, like rifle shots, from the front of the cabin.

Dexter and Crill and Alison swung around as though they had been
jerked by a string, and they remained like three statues, staring
towards the open doorway.

Framed in the early morning twilight, suave and smiling, stood Owen
Stark.




CHAPTER XXXV

HAZARD OF THE GAME

The newcomer had arrived without a sound.  Evidently he had just
forded his way across the rapids.  Water trickled in rivulets from
his legs and his clothing clung to his spare frame; but in spite of
wetness he still retained his well-groomed, debonnaire appearance.
He smiled appreciatively at the scene before him as he absently
thumbed the hammer of the rifle he held gripped in his hands.

"Is the party still on," he inquired, "or am I too late?"

He waited for a second or two, but as nobody had any reply to make,
he tilted up his weapon, and sauntered into the room.  A trampling of
other feet sounded outside, and four other men drifted into view
through the morning mist and crowded across the threshold at their
leader's heels.

From Stark's dripping figure, Dexter's glance wandered to the
silhouetted shapes beyond, and he recognized Norbert Croix and
'Phonse Doucet, and Alison's brother, Archie.  There was a fifth man
in the group, a thick-set individual with a scraggly red beard, whose
acquaintance he had not yet made.  The clothing of the newcomers was
water-soaked.  It was evident that they had just waded the rapids.
While the game was on in the cabin, the forking streams must have
fallen low enough to permit a crossing.

The intruders filed into the room, and the last one closed the door
behind him.  Stark moved forward and laughed softly to himself.

"So you got out from under that tree," he remarked as he surveyed
Dexter.  "I didn't think you had a chance on earth, but you fooled me
that trip.  Anybody help you?"

Dexter faced the man with level eyes.  "You left me my watch, and I
made a scoop of the lid and dug the ground from under my shoulder,"
he said.  "I was able to get loose before morning."

"And afterwards met this girl here--Miss Rayne?"

"Met her in the woods, and arrested her," returned the corporal.

"Where'd you pick up Crill?" asked the other.

"Here on the island."

Stark grew silent for a space as he thoughtfully surveyed the group
before him.  "Hum!" he mused at length: "it doesn't matter much how
it happened.  We've returned to the status quo, as it were.  I didn't
do a very good job of it the last time, but that's something easily
corrected."

The smile faded from the man's face, and he stood with feet apart,
fingering the lock of his rifle, measuring the officer with merciless
glance.  "It would have been better for you if you'd let well enough
alone," he said.  "You wouldn't have it to go through with again."

His head turned slightly as he spoke, and he nodded politely to
Alison.  "Will you please stand aside, Miss Rayne?" he invited.

"Do as he says," counseled Dexter as the girl hesitated.  He looked
at her for a moment with a gentle glance, and drew a faint, quivering
breath.  "Go over by the bunk, please."

"Now!" said Stark crisply, as the girl moved away on stumbling feet.

"You're lucky this time," he pursued.  "I'm in a hurry, and I'll make
it quick."  His lips pressed together in a hard, narrow line, and he
cocked the hammer of his rifle, and started slowly and deliberately
to raise the muzzle.

Dexter's heels came instinctively together, and he drew up his spare
body, straight and unmoving, like a soldier at salute.  He faced his
enemy quietly, his fine-drawn features set in unchanging, stoic lines.

Nobody in the room spoke or stirred, and the hush of death fell about
them.  Stark leveled his rifle and lined his sights upon the erect
figure standing under the light of the guttering lantern.  Grimly he
began to count: "One--two--"

He got no farther.  A streak of red flame lashed past the corporal's
shoulder, and the stuffy silence of the room was jarred by a sharp,
cracking explosion.  The barrel of Stark's rifle wavered in his
grasp, and a crimson bullet welt showed suddenly across the tanned
flesh above his cheek bone.

Shocked, wondering, Dexter whirled to stare behind him, and he saw
Alison Rayne crouching by the bunk, with a smoking revolver clenched
in her fist.




CHAPTER XXXVI

THE GRIM ACCOUNTING

The bullet only grazed Stark's face, and he recovered himself in a
flash, knowing that he was not hurt.  With a muttered exclamation he
swung to confront the small, slim figure kneeling before him in the
shadow.

Dexter saw the man shift the aim of his rifle, realized that Alison's
life was forfeit.  He gathered his muscles, and a long leap carried
him across the floor to her side.  The weight of his body forced the
girl to the floor as he flung himself upon her; and he held her so,
shielding her, while he wrested the revolver from her fingers.

Even as his left hand closed over the butt of the weapon the pent-up
atmosphere of the room was jolted by the concussion of a heavy
report, a burst of flame flared in his face, and a bullet fanned his
top hair and tore splinters from the bunk post behind him.  He saw
Stark's eye staring at him down the rifle barrel as he jerked down
the lever to inject a second cartridge.

Dexter was vouchsafed his instant of life, and he grasped its full
measure.  Alison's revolver was held comfortably in his left hand.
There sounded a faint double snick as he drew back the hammer, and
then he threw up the muzzle, and without seeming to aim, he fired.

Stark tossed up his head with the shot, and a queer look of
bewilderment passed over his face.  For a moment he held rigid on his
feet, his eyes blankly gazing through the curling wreaths of smoke;
then, his hands opened, as though they found the weight of the rifle
too much for his strength; his legs bowed and caved beneath him and
he doubled over backwards and fell heavily upon the floor.

In a second Dexter was on his feet, the light of battle flaming in
his eyes.  There was but one bullet left in the revolver, but the
other men did not know, and he felt a thrilling confidence in himself
as he stepped forward into the room.

There were five men left, but Crill was unarmed, and he held no fear
of Archie Preston.  Doucet, Croix and the red-bearded stranger were
ranged in a compact group by the doorway.  All three held rifles, but
the dramatic suddenness of events seemed for the moment to have
paralyzed their mental faculties.  In the two seconds that might have
enabled them to recover their wits, the corporal was upon them.

"Drop your guns!" he commanded, furious and menacing.  His revolver
somehow seemed to threaten all three at once.  "Quick!" he jerked out
savagely--"or you get it too!"

There followed a short, sharp interval of uncertainty, in which the
tide of affairs quivered on a hair.  But Dexter was still advancing,
determined, formidable.

The little, ferret-eyed Croix stood nearest to him, and Croix was the
first to weaken.  His glance fell before the officer's eyes, his hand
opened, and his rifle clattered to the floor.

"You, 'Phonse!" thundered Dexter.  Doucet hesitated, wavered, and
then he too dropped his weapon.

There remained the red-bearded man, and he was left alone facing the
officer.  He, perhaps, was made of sterner stuff than his two
companions, but he could not help knowing that to fight back now
spelled certain death, and after a short conflict of glances, he too
threw down his gun.

"Into the corner behind the fireplace--all of you!" Dexter ordered.
"Crill and Preston, you also!"  He sidled over towards the front
wall, and herded the men away from the door.  Slowly they backed
before the leveled revolver, and in two or three seconds he had
driven them into the corner, where they huddled together like sheep.

The corporal ducked his head to his shoulder with a quick, nervous
movement to wipe the moisture from his forehead.  Then he looked up
again, and laughed with a queer catch in his voice.  "You're to stay
where you are with your hands up," he announced.  "I'll call you
forward by name, one at a time, and feel your clothes for side arms--"

He was interrupted by a sobbing sound from the direction of the bunk,
and as he half turned to look, he saw Alison lift herself to her feet
and stumble forward into the lantern light.  "Archie!" she cried in a
piteous voice.  "Forgive me--oh, Archie--I did it for--I couldn't
help it!"

She swung around to face Dexter, her tearful gaze meeting his.  "I
have given my brother's life for yours, David," she said in a
stricken whisper.  Then she tottered across to the table, buried her
head in her arms, and broke down in convulsive sobbing.

Dexter took a step forward and stood over her for a moment with awed
and wondering eyes.  His hand strayed towards her shoulder but he
checked the movement, shook his head, and turned slowly away.  Once
more he faced the men in the corner of the room.

"You first, Doucet!" he commanded brusquely.  "Come forward!"  He
beckoned with the muzzle of his revolver, but before the man had a
chance to obey, the front door flung open with a crash and booted
feet clumped into the cabin entrance.

Dexter whirled with a gasp of dismay.  He stared wildly--blinked his
eyes incredulously--and stared again.  In the open doorway stood
Colonel Devreaux.

"Colonel!" cried Dexter.

The superintendent held motionless for a space, his keen, searching
glance taking in the strange scene before him.  "We heard shots," he
remarked after a hushed interval.  "What's happened here?"

Relief, thankfulness, and also a great weariness, might have been
read in the relaxing lines of the corporal's face.  He had held up
for hours by the strength of will, but at sight of his officer the
buoying sense of responsibility left him, and he found himself
slipping.  He seemed all at once to lose inches of stature, to settle
within himself, as a sword shoved back in its scabbard.  For once in
his life he failed to answer his commander's question.

"You--I believed you were dead," he said in a queer, far-off voice.

"Not yet."  Devreaux peered at the corporal from under his grizzled
brows.  "I wandered down the valley to find you, after you had left
that cave; but the sun thawed out your trail.  Kept on going, and
after days managed to reach the lower pass.  And I chanced to meet
Sergeant Brunswick and Constables Devlin and Jones coming in from the
south to hunt me."

"You--you're all right?" asked Dexter weakly.

"Able to travel, at any rate."  The old man thrust out his
barrel-like chest, and the old dauntless smile for an instant crossed
his deep-lined face.

"But how did you find me?" persisted the corporal in his unsteady
voice.

"You left police blazes behind to mark your trail."  The colonel
squinted curiously as he surveyed the man before him.  "Forgotten?"

Dexter's glance traveled past the superintendent's stalky figure and
he saw three men in the familiar uniforms of the police lurking
outside in the misty dawn.  And something within him recalled him to
himself, reminded him that he was still on duty.

With a sudden stiffening of his muscles he drew his body straight
and, thrusting his revolver into his pocket, he brought his hand up
in salute.

"I have finished long patrol," he said, "and can make my completed
report, sir.  I was forced to shoot and kill one Owen Stark, and I
hold myself at your disposal for the inquiries of the court.  I have
placed under arrest, and now yield to police custody, the following
prisoners: Alphonse Doucet, Norbert Croix, Roy 'Pink' Crill, one man
whose name I have not yet learned, Archibald Preston, and--and Alison
Rayne Preston.

"And--with your permission, sir," he added in a failing voice, "I
should like to report off duty.  I want to go to sleep."




CHAPTER XXXVII

NEWS FROM OUTSIDE

What happened after Dexter had delivered his prisoners into the
keeping of his opportunely arrived comrades, Dexter never afterwards
remembered.  He may have suffered a sudden physical collapse, or
perhaps he simply fell asleep while standing at attention before his
officer.  But when his eyes opened in reviving consciousness, he
found himself stretched comfortably in a warm bunk with a blanket
tucked about his chin.  He might have been lying there for hours or
for days.  There was no way of guessing.

Stirring drowsily, he lifted himself on his elbow to gaze about him.
He recognized the interior of the cabin where--ages ago, it seemed to
him now--he and the outlaw Crill had sat up through the night playing
cards together.  The lantern was not burning, but the rays of a dying
sun entered the open windows, breaking the gloom with ruddy streaks
of light.

As his heavy-lidded eyes gradually began to function again, he made
out the shapes of men, either seated or sprawled about grotesquely in
the shadows.  In the far corner, sitting with legs crossed and
shoulders propped against the wall, he identified the giant figure of
'Phonse Doucet.  The wizened, hangdog face of Norbert Croix was
recognizable in the slanting glow of light beneath the west window.
The red-bearded man was lying on the floor close by, with his bushy
head on his arm.  Next in line was Crill, his stout body slumped
dejectedly against the logs of the wall, his head bowed to his chest,
a picture of cowering abjectness.  As Dexter surveyed the silent
group before him, one of the men shifted his position, and he heard
the clink of a chain.  He perceived then that the four prisoners were
shackled in pairs with handcuffs.

His glance ranged towards the farther end of the room, and he saw
Archie Preston.  The boy was seated on a stool under the north
window, and he was bending over a newspaper spread on his knees
reading by the failing light.  Unlike the others, he was not manacled.

With mind still hazy from sleep, the corporal lay quiet for a while,
gazing vacantly about the cabin.  But presently it occurred to him
that Devreaux and the other policemen were missing.  And suddenly he
found himself wondering what had happened to Alison.  With an abrupt
movement he cast off his blanket and sat up in the bunk.  Some one
had taken off his boots, he discovered; otherwise he was fully clad.
The boots were lying by the bunk, and he pulled them on and fastened
the laces.  Then he stood up, buttoned his collar, and tried absently
to smooth the wrinkles out of his tunic.  He was running his fingers
through his tousled hair, when he was aware that a shadow had
darkened the open doorway.  Looking around, he saw Colonel Devreaux
entering the cabin.

The superintendent caught sight of Dexter, and he knitted his brows
questioningly as he strode forward.  "Waked up, have you?" he
demanded.  "How d'you feel?"

"All right, I guess."  Dexter stretched himself and yawned, and his
glance strayed towards the door.  "Where's Alison?"

"Outside.  She went for a walk with Brunswick and Devlin."

"How long have I been asleep?"

"More than thirty-six hours.  You flopped while you were talking to
me, and we got you into the bunk."  The colonel reached forward and
his stubby fingers touched his comrade's wrist.  "You seem to have
come around.  But for a while yesterday we thought you were in for a
long spell of it.  We decided to camp here until you waked up
naturally."

"I was done in, I guess.  Hadn't slept much lately."

"Alison has told us all about you.  You seem to have seen your job
through.  You haven't done half badly, Corporal--"  Devreaux checked
himself, stared the younger man up and down, and then for an instant
his hard features yielded to a smile that was like sunshine breaking
against the face of a weather-scarred cliff.  "After to-day," he
added quietly, "I think I can safely say--Sergeant Dexter."

A dark flush mounted to Dexter's temples, and a warm glow filled his
eyes.  To the men who served under Colonel Devreaux, his smallest
word of commendation was like an accolade of knighthood.

"I--thank you, sir," the policeman managed to stammer.

"You finished off Owen Stark," remarked Devreaux, gruffly changing
the subject.  "Got him through the heart, and I don't imagine that he
knew what hit him.  I've a notion it was he who shot me last fall."

"Yes--he was the one.  He boasted to me of his long-range
marksmanship."

"In any event, Alison has told me the circumstances of his death,"
returned the superintendent.  "She's willing to testify that you
acted solely in self-defense.  There'll be no difficulties for you in
this affair."

"Alison saved my life twice," observed Dexter irrelevantly.  "She's--"

He broke off speech abruptly as a light footstep sounded in the cabin
entrance.  Turning, he caught sight of a slender figure in knickers
and frayed white sweater.  "Good evening, Alison," he said with
softening glance.  "I was just telling the colonel how you jumped
into that mess with Stark, just as he was about to let me have it.
Nobody ever did a braver thing than that."

She faced him with a melancholy smile.  "What else could I do?" she
asked.  "You were unarmed, and that man meant to shoot you without
giving you a chance.  I--I didn't stop to think.  It all happened
like something in a dream.  Before I realized what I was doing the
pistol was in my hand, and I had aimed and fired."

Dexter eyed her curiously for a moment.  "Why did you take the
revolver from my pocket?" he asked after a pause.

"Because your right arm was broken, and I didn't know whether you
could shoot straight with your left hand," she answered without
hesitation.  "There was always danger of your falling asleep or of
being caught off your guard, and I knew you were afraid of Crill."
Alison cast a fleeting glance towards the opposite wall, where the
handcuffed outlaw sat hunched in the shadow.  "I'm not a bad shot,"
she added in a quiet voice, "and I thought that if anything
happened--well, I'd be armed.  And in a case of that sort I was ready
to stand by the police."

Dexter searched her candid blue eyes, and gently nodded.  "I only
wondered--" he started to say, but before he could finish a sudden
interruption came from the far corner of the room.  A wild cry rang
through the cabin, a stool was overturned clattering on the floor,
and they faced about in amazement to see Archie Preston fling himself
to his feet and stumble forward with a newspaper gripped in his
shaking hands.

"Alison!" he burst out in unrestrained excitement.  "This old paper
that Sergeant Brunswick had in his pocket--it's--there's a story in
it about _me_!  Oh, it's too good--I can't believe that I've read it
straight."

"What?" asked the girl, gazing in wonderment.  "What do you mean,
Archie?"

"This!  Uncle Oscar!  The doctor!"

"Yes!" she urged tensely, the color slowly draining from her cheeks.
"What is it?  What are you trying to tell me?"

"Why, this!" returned the boy with a hysterical catch in his throat.
"Don't you understand?  Dr. Borden, who attended Uncle Oscar when he
died--he's been caught and sent to an asylum--insanity--homicidal
mania.  It's here--telegraphed from Duluth--it's here in this paper.
He killed another man, and they've caught him!"

"Archie!" gasped the girl, her eyes grown wide and staring.  "Tell me
quick!  You mean Dr. Borden--?"

"Here!  Read it for yourself!"  The boy thrust the newspaper in his
sister's trembling hands.  "Dr. Borden himself put the poison in our
uncle's medicines.  And now he's killed another patient the same way.
He's crazy--has been crazy for months.  And they've found him out and
arrested him and sent him to an asylum."

Archie threw both hands above his head, and his chest heaved with a
great sobbing breath.  "I'm innocent, and it is proven," he exulted.
"I can go back home.  They can't hold me for a crime that another man
committed."




CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE GREATEST GIFT

The boy stood with uplifted head, breathing heavily through parted
lips, a mad joy burning in his eyes.  But the two officers ignored
him to observe the effect of the news on his sister.  Alison had
given a single broken cry as her brother handed her the newspaper.
She moved on tottering feet to the window, but her hands were so
unsteady that she could not possibly have read the wavering print of
the eagerly gripped news sheet.

By a mutual impulse Devreaux and Dexter crossed behind her.  The
colonel passed both arms about her, caught her wrists, and stopped
the paper from rustling.  Then he and the corporal leaned over the
girl's shoulder to peruse the story for themselves.

It was a short telegraphic item, tucked away on an inside page, and
they saw at a glance that Archie had not misread the account.  The
item told of a practicing physician who had been suddenly afflicted
with a criminal dementia.  He had destroyed two of his patients by
slyly switching the medicines he had prescribed.  His mental state
was not discovered until after he had wantonly committed a second
murder.  Under cross-questioning he had broken down in confession,
and the authorities then were able to establish proof positive of his
guilt in the two separate crimes.  His first victim was a wealthy
bachelor, Oscar Preston.  The dead man's nephew, Archie, the account
went on to say, was falsely accused of the murder and indicted on a
first degree charge.  With his sister Alison, his co-heir in the
Preston estate, the boy had fled.  At the time of writing the
whereabouts of the fugitives was unknown.  Every effort had been made
to find them, but so far the search had proven unsuccessful.  The
authorities were still hoping to get into communication with the
missing brother and sister, not to arrest them now, but to restore
their rights under the law.

Alison somehow managed to read through the blurred paragraph of type,
and as she finished her fingers unlocked and the paper fluttered from
her hands.  With a sudden movement she turned to face her brother.

"Archie!"  She looked at the boy for a moment with tears brimming her
eyes, and then she went to him, and her arms reached out and clasped
tightly about his shoulders.  "It's over--it's over!" she sobbed.
"You can go back home--everything's all right!  I'm so glad, I--I
don't know what to say."

Colonel Devreaux scrutinized the pair for a moment from under
frowning brows, and then he too walked forward.  "Well, I suppose
you're open to congratulations, Archie," he remarked brusquely.

The boy gently disengaged himself from Alison's embrace.  "It's
fine--it's wonderful!" he asserted jubilantly.  "I can hardly believe
it!"

"I wonder if you really appreciate your good fortune?" inquired the
officer as he stared grimly at the young man.

"I do!" exclaimed the other.  "I can go back.  No more suffering and
hardship!  I can face my friends.  I can take my old place again!"

The lines of Devreaux's face seemed to grow deeper and more
inflexible as he listened.  "You don't even begin to understand," he
rasped out.  "You've got the finest thing that was ever given to a
man, and you haven't given it a thought.  I'm talking about the
loyalty that has stood by in your time of need--that would have gone
with you through the blazing pit.  You're thinking how nice it will
be to get back to town, a free man--and I'm thinking about your
sister."

The boy's eyes opened with a startled expression, and a slow flush
darkened his face.  "I--you're wrong," he returned unsteadily.  "I'm
thinking of her too.  Alison!  She's been magnificent!"

"I only thought I'd remind you," said the colonel, glowering.  "That
story in the paper is probably authentic.  I've got to take you to
the fort with me, but when I telegraph your local police they'll
undoubtedly order your release.  You'll be at liberty to go where you
please.  But it'll be different with Alison."

"What?" gasped the boy, his brows sharply contracting.

"That little affair in the cabin south of here, where the two men
were shot in their bunks, Alison was there that night, and nobody
else, as far as we can make out."  A touch of sadness crept into the
old officer's voice as he shook his grizzled head.  "Your sister has
those same qualities of loyalty and courage that--well, that make my
policemen--my boys--stand by me: and I'm sincerely sorry that she
can't go home with you."  Devreaux turned soberly to the girl.
"There's too much evidence stacked up, and we have no alternative,"
he said.  "Until you're able to explain away that business in the
burned cabin, there can be no hope of your release.  The most we can
promise you is fair treatment and an impartial hearing."

While the colonel was delivering himself of this speech, the door
opened, and one of the constables entered the room.  The newcomer
walked to the fireplace, where a row of camp kettles were simmering
over coals.  He raised the lid of one of the pots, prodded inside,
and faced about to announce that dinner was ready.

Devreaux nodded.  "Good!  Let's eat."

Plates were filled from the kettles, and food was given to the four
manacled prisoners.  Then Sergeant Brunswick and Constable Devlin
were summoned into the cabin.  Two packing boxes were shoved together
to serve as a table, and Archie and Alison and the five policemen sat
down to their evening meal.

This was the first opportunity Dexter's comrades had found to draw
out the story of his recent adventures, and until their curiosity was
satisfied, he was scarcely allowed the time to eat.  He answered a
multitude of questions, and finally pushed away his plate and settled
back with a sigh to recount in detail the events that had taken place
since the morning he had left the colonel at the bear cave.

Devreaux had lighted up an old blackened pipe, and he sat in silence,
grim and immobile, peering at the young policeman through a cloud of
tobacco smoke.  When Dexter finished his story the old man vouchsafed
the briefest nod.  "For a single-handed job," he conceded, "you have
accomplished all that the service could expect."

"I still don't understand how you ever found the pass," put in
Sergeant Brunswick.  "We came through a regular puzzle box to reach
this place, and if we hadn't had your trail marks to follow, it might
have taken us weeks to grope our way to the outlet."

"Pure piece of luck that brought me to the pass," said Dexter.  "I
was feeling around blindly, without any notion which direction to go,
when I happened to discover an ancient blaze wrinkle in the bark of a
great white fir.  I chopped into the sapwood and found a deep buried
ax mark, and some time-glazed scribbling that gave me my direction
points.  After that I had only to pick out the biggest trees in the
line, and invariably there was an old ax scar to lead me on my way.
So I was guided straight to the pass."

Brunswick wrinkled his forehead in growing interest.  "What sort of
scribbling was it?" he asked.

"Letter that looked like a 'W,' and something else that wasn't quite
legible.  I estimated that the marks were at least a half century
old."

"Funny!" remarked the sergeant.  "It sounds as though some surveyors
had traveled through here some time or other, and I always had an
idea that the nest of mountains on this side of the water shed was
practically unexplored country."

"Which proves that you don't know your district history," cut in
Devreaux quietly.  The colonel glanced across at Dexter.  "You say
there was a letter 'W.'  Letter 'U' also, wasn't there?"

"I couldn't quite make out the rest," was the reply.  "It might have
been a 'U.'"

"Certainly it was!  'W.U.'--'Western Union'!"

Devreaux put down his empty coffee cup, and scanned the circle of
faces about the table.  "This isn't terra incognita, as some of you
seem to think," he resumed.  "It's a lost country now, but it was
thoroughly explored at one time--about sixty years ago.  The trail
Dexter found was blazed by the pioneers of the old Western Union
company.

"I wasn't much more than a kid at the time," the colonel resumed as
the others waited, silent.  "The date was somewhere around 1865.  A
long time ago, but I remember hearing the story--how an attempt was
made to lay an all-land telegraph across America and Asia and Europe.

"The idea," continued Devreaux, "was to string a cable from the
United States through the northwest wilderness, across Behring Strait
to Siberia, and thence to Russia and the capitals of Europe."

"It was never accomplished," interrupted Dexter.

"No.  But a lot of the work was actually done.  Parties of men were
sent through these mountains to hunt out the easiest passes and
defiles, and blaze the straightest route to the Behring shore.
Later, construction crews came in and unreeled miles of cable through
the wilderness, ready to string.  But before the job was finished the
first successful trans-Atlantic cable was laid by another company.
Europe was connected with America by a shorter route, and the need
for the longer, all-land line was ended over night.  The promoters of
the great project were forced to pocket their loss.  They stopped
operations, abandoned materials and equipment and cleared out of the
forest, leaving hundreds of miles of cable wire on the ground behind
them."

It was a curious tale of failure--of a magnificent dream gone
wrong--and a meditative silence fell upon the group about the table
as the colonel broke off speech and sat with a gloomy, retrospective
frown and slowly puffed his pipe.

"You mean--they came up through these valleys--" Brunswick started to
ask, but he was interrupted by a sharp exclamation from Dexter's side
of the table.

"Wait!  Just a minute!"  The corporal half raised himself from his
stool, gripping the table with his hand.  "You said they left this
wire--strung out through the wilderness?"

"Thousands of dollars' worth of copper wire--wasted," said Devreaux.
"Just left out to--"

"Copper is not affected by weather," remarked Dexter before the
colonel could finish.  "The wire might remain just as it was for
years--for centuries.  Only it would be buried under an accumulation
of forest trash, turning to mold and earth--buried deeper and
deeper--"

He stopped, drew a short breath and got up from his stool.  For a
moment his glance searched about the room, and then without a word of
apology he left the table, and picked up a rusted spade he found
standing in the corner.  There was a scraping of stool legs behind
him, and as he turned towards the doorway he was aware that his
companions were on their feet, trooping after him.

Passing out of doors, Dexter stopped in front of the cabin, and with
his one useful hand he thrust his spade into the soft ground and
started to dig.  Before he had taken out a shovelful of earth,
however, Colonel Devreaux came up to him and laid a detaining hand on
his shoulder.

"Funny I didn't think of this myself," the old officer remarked
depreciatingly.  "But it didn't occur to me until you jumped up from
the table.  And--by jinks!--I'll bet you've struck the answer to
everything!  You'd better let a two-armed man do the labor."
Devreaux glanced over his shoulder.  "Here, Devlin," he
commanded--"dig a trench across here."

The constable moved forward, took the spade, and set industriously to
work.  While the others stood by in tense curiosity he spaded up the
yielding loam, and presently had excavated a narrow hole that went
down two or three feet in the ground.  Under the colonel's directions
the digger started to carry his trench forward along the front of the
cabin, but he had advanced only a pace or two, when the edge of his
shovel caught against some hidden object under the loosened dirt, and
refused to come up.

"Wait!" exclaimed the superintendent.  He and Dexter dropped to their
knees, and with eager hands began scooping away the musty-smelling
earth.  And in a moment they unburied an unyielding something that
ran underground like a tenuous root.

"What?" demanded the colonel, peering near-sightedly into the trench.

Dexter had flattened himself on his chest to investigate.  "Insulated
wire!" he said in a suppressed voice.  "A buried cable: The outer
covering seems to have hardened--sort of petrified; but there's no
doubt--"

"Let's see!"  The colonel produced a knife from his pocket, thrust
Dexter aside, stooped, and began to hack away at the moldy,
taut-drawn strand.  He cut through the outer surface, and the reddish
glint of copper was revealed underneath.

He stood up with a sharp breath.  "The old Western Union cable!" he
muttered.  "Trailed through the forest, and abandoned--more than a
half century ago!  Falling leaves drifting over it, decaying, forming
new soil, burying it deeper and deeper, year by year!  It must come
all the way through the lower valleys, miles and miles of it."

"The line undoubtedly passes the cabin on the other side of the pass,
where I first met young Preston, and the burned cabin, still farther
south," put in Dexter in sober musing.  "I dug around the one cabin
the night Mudgett and the other chap were killed.  But I didn't go
deep enough.  At the time I only thought it necessary to see if the
ground had been recently disturbed.  But of course it hadn't been.
The cable was buried, not by the hand of man, but by the gradual work
of the forest."

"Let's see where it goes!" said the colonel abruptly.  He turned to
Devlin.  "Follow it up, please."

The constable resumed his digging, this time running his excavation
along the line of the cable.  The concealed wire led him straight to
the cabin, and in a few minutes he had driven his trench to the base
of the mud-daubed chimney.

Dexter had lingered in the background, an absorbed spectator, but
when he saw where the cable led, he turned abruptly on his heel and
almost ran back into the cabin.  The four shackled prisoners watched
his movements in furtive silence, but he paid no attention to them.
The single bunk was built flush with the end of the fireplace, and he
climbed up on the mattress and began to tap on the side of the
plastered chimney.  One of the stones moved before the pressure of
his fingers, and he managed to pry it loose and draw it from place.
And in the rudely built chimney was disclosed a dark, cubicle
opening--a secret cubby hole in the masonry.  He thrust his arm into
the foot square space behind the stone, and drew forth a nickeled
telephone instrument.

As he caught a breath of triumph, he heard a footstep behind him, and
turned to see Colonel Devreaux staring over his shoulder.  "Well,
that seems to settle everything," remarked the old officer with a
rueful expression.  "The mysterious messages that passed back and
forth through the wilderness!  They had us guessing for a while,
didn't they?  But you've got it now."

Dexter continued his investigations, and at the bottom of the chimney
he jarred loose two other stones, revealing a second and larger
opening.  From the compartment within he pulled forth a strand of new
wire and a group of six heavy jars, which proved to be electric
batteries.

"A simple form of telephone set, such as they use for private rural
lines," he remarked after an examination of the apparatus he had
brought to light.  "Not good for a range of much more than ten miles,
I imagine.  But the terminals are connected and the batteries seem to
be alive."  He touched the colonel's elbow.  "You can see where the
wires run down to meet the old telegraph cable under the ground."

"The signal system of Stark's underground railway!" he remarked as
Devreaux bent forward to look.  "He found out in some way where the
old cable ran, and put up a chain of trappers' shacks along the line
of the wire.  The telephones are hooked on in sections, I suppose, at
about ten-mile intervals.  A series of local circuits, with each set
of batteries providing current for its own short stretch of line.
But a message might be relayed from station to station, through the
wilderness.  So Stark was able to provide himself with means of long
distance communication, with practically no labor and at very little
expense."

Devreaux was impressed in spite of himself.  "A stroke of genius," he
mused.  "But for a bit of luck on our side this Stark might have kept
us guessing for years.  We would have been groping around blindly,
while Stark's innocent-appearing trappers could keep tabs on our
movements, sending the word ahead, blocking us at every turn,
laughing at us.  It would have been like a deaf and sightless man
chasing shadows."  The colonel grinned in uncomfortable recollection.
"In fact, for a while last fall it seemed that that was just what we
were doing."

Devreaux was reaching forward to examine the arrangement of telephone
wires, when Alison and Sergeant Brunswick appeared in the doorway.
The girl advanced with a wan little smile.  "You wondered how I
happened to know about things that were taking place miles away in
the forest," she said, glancing up at Dexter.  "You tried to make me
tell, and I wouldn't.  It was a secret on which my brother's safety
might have depended, and I had to keep it.  But you've found out for
yourself, and now it doesn't matter."

"I suppose all the cabins along the route are equipped with phones
such as this one, concealed in the chimneys," Dexter remarked.  "The
cabin on the other side of the pass, for instance--where I spent a
night with your brother, heard him call your name in the darkness,
warning you to flee to Saddle Mountain: he was talking to you over
one of these phones."

"There's no need to keep anything back now."  Alison nodded quietly,
and cast a quick glance towards the colonel.  "That was the night I
escaped from Colonel Devreaux.  I had made my way back to the burned
cabin.  The chimney was still intact, the phone in it.  I rang up my
brother, and he answered.  He told me you were with him, warned me of
the danger of returning.  He had heard that Mr. Stark was on his way
across Saddle Mountain, and advised me to meet him there.  And--well,
you went too, and saved my life on the cliff--and afterwards--"

"And the time you found me pinned under the tree in the lower
valley?" interrupted Dexter.  "How did you get the news?"

The girl looked across the room towards the group of prisoners seated
in the shadow.  She indicated the red-bearded man, who shifted
uneasily as the officers turned his direction.  "He told me," she
said.  "He happened that day to come to the cabin where my brother
and I were spending the winter.  Mr. Stark had telephoned him at one
of the other stations--about how a policeman was caught under an
avalanche.  I guessed it might be you, and I got the facts from him,
and learned where you were to be found.  So I waited my chance, and
as soon as I could leave unobserved, I hurried from the cabin to go
to you."

Dexter regarded her for a moment with eyes half closed.  "It was a
brave and generous thing to do," he said, but even as he spoke the
inflexible line of his jaw reasserted itself, and he fixed her once
more with a keenly inquiring gaze.  "What about the night we were
camping at the head of the pass, and you ran away from me?" he asked.
"You came to this cabin--six or seven miles from the place you had
left me--and you called to me for help, and I heard you."

She laughed a quick, fluttering laugh as she raised her head candidly
to face him.  "You remember the old dead tree at the top of the
slope," she said, "when I found myself growing suddenly tired?  I was
tired, but I could have gone on a little farther--only I wanted to
stop there."

"It was a gaunt old shell of a tree--hollow--"  Dexter stopped to
stare at her.  "I know now!" he exclaimed.  "It was one of Stark's
stations.  There's a telephone in the trunk of that tree."

Alison nodded.  "As I told you before, I figured my brother'd spend
the night at this cabin.  And not knowing you were so close behind
him, there was a danger of his oversleeping and being there next
morning when you arrived.  I thought I could warn him by telephone.
I started to ring the cabin that night while you were gathering
sticks for the fire, but you came back too soon for me.  I had the
receiver off, but didn't dare finish the call.  You didn't give me
another chance.  But I must get word to Archie.  So that night when
you were asleep I slipped away to come here, intending to return to
your camp before daylight.

"When I reached here," she pursued, "there was no Archie.  You know
what did happen--how I was forced to barricade myself in the cabin.
In my fright I remembered the phone in the old hollow tree.  The
receiver was down and you had spread your blankets against the trunk.
It was my only hope--to make you hear--and I screamed into the
transmitter at this end, calling your help."

He looked at her soberly for an instant, and then laughed under his
breath.  "As simple as that!  It was like a ghost voice whispering to
me from the darkness, small and unreal, yet your voice."

"And knowing no more than that," she said softly, "you came."

He did not answer, but had turned with an absent-minded air, as
though for no particular reason his attention was caught again by the
hole in the chimney where the telephone instrument had been secreted.
For a moment he stood silent, with thoughtfully puckered brows, and
then, with a quick movement, he faced about once more to look at
Alison.

"In the three cabins I have visited," he asserted, "the bunks were
built like this one, placed against the side of the fireplace.  Were
the phones all concealed in the chimneys by the bunks, like this one?"

"Yes," she replied.

He nodded, and then as though he had forgotten her presence, he
strode to the open window to stare into the twilight, with a pensive,
far-off look in his eyes.  But after a minute or two he turned to
pace back across the floor, his head bowed abstractedly as he
whistled a meaningless little tune between his teeth.  Suddenly he
halted before the girl.  "I was thinking--" he began, and stopped.

She shot him a puzzled glance.  "Yes?" she asked uncertainly.

"I was thinking of the night last fall when the two men were killed
in their bunks.  I heard a woman's voice inside that cabin--a woman
talking over a telephone--"  He threw up his head sharply.  "You were
there, Alison."

"I never went beyond the edge of the clearing," she declared, her
lips setting defiantly.  "You saw my tracks--"

"Yes," he interrupted with an impatient gesture.  "That's what I'm
getting at.  Your tracks stopped twenty feet away from the cabin.
Yet there was a woman inside, and if, as you insist, she wasn't you,
then she had to be--"

Dexter caught his breath and swung around with kindling eyes to
confront Colonel Devreaux.  "It's a funny notion," he declared
wonderingly, "and I can't quite make out why it never struck me
before but--it's the only possible answer.  This woman, whoever she
was, never left the cabin.

"When I went out to look after my pony," he rushed on, "there were
two people alive in the cabin.  And when I reëntered the place there
were two people dead.  And there was no one else there at any time.
The mysterious third person we've been looking for never existed."

"What are you driving at?" gasped the bewildered officer.

Dexter shook his head and turned again to Alison.  "Did you know Mrs.
Stark?" he asked tensely.  "She's the only other woman I've heard of
in this section of the forest.  What was she like?

"Small woman, about thirty-five?" he inquired, as Alison stared
blankly and failed to answer.  "Thin, high-bridged nose, short black
hair, black eyes, sallow complexion.  Have I got her?"

The girl nodded without speaking.

"Did she ever wear men's clothes?"

"Yes," said the girl.  "The last time I saw her she had on Mackinaws,
felt hat, heavy lace boots--"

Dexter's eyes gleamed in excitement.  "She's the one!"  He spoke with
utter conviction, as one who knows the truth at last.

"It was Mrs. Stark's voice I heard that night, talking on a
telephone.  It was she who masqueraded as a man and ambushed
Constable Graves.  She was the one I trailed to the cabin and
arrested there, with Mudgett.  It was she whom I found dead in the
upper bunk!"




CHAPTER XXXIX

YOU NEVER CAN TELL

For a moment Devreaux and Alison stared at Dexter as though they were
not quite sure whether he had taken leave of his senses.  There was a
suggestion of a smile on his lips as he faced them in the failing
twilight.

"All of which explains why Stark hated me so," he remarked after an
interval of silence.  "He knew it was I who had arrested his wife,
and he could not help blaming me for the tragic circumstances that
came afterwards."

"Wait!" expostulated the colonel.  "You say that the one who was shot
in the upper bunk was a woman in man's clothes--Mrs. Stark--and that
there was nobody in the cabin when the shooting took place but her
and Mudgett?"

"Yes," insisted Dexter serenely.  "The record in the snow outside the
cabin showed that no one entered or left the place during my short
absence.  No one else could have been there."  He shook his head in
self-depreciation.  "The explanation has struck me all in a heap with
the discovery of this hidden telephone system.  I should have seen it
long ago.  The facts were all there before me the night of the double
killing.  But Alison's appearance on the scene confused the facts,
and I was led away from the simple and obvious solution of the
affair--the only possible solution."

"I still don't see what you're getting at," said the puzzled Devreaux.

Dexter faced the colonel, confident and clear-eyed, as a man who at
last finds solid ground underfoot.  "This:" he asserted.  "Before I
left the cabin I forced my two prisoners to get into the bunks, and
bound their feet to the posts.  The one I'm now certain was Mrs.
Stark was tied in the upper bunk.  The head of the bunk touched the
chimney, and as Alison tells us, there was a secret cubby hole there,
with a telephone in it.  The woman was handcuffed, but the chain gave
her five or six inches' play.  She could have used her hands.  She
could take out the telephone, call one of Stark's stations, and
return the instrument without my being the wiser."

"I follow you so far," admitted the colonel, "but--"

"When I came back to the cabin I heard a woman's voice in the
darkness behind the door.  She said something about there being
police in the valley, of being betrayed.  I recall her words:
'Lifeless tongues never talk.'  'There's one thing left to do,' she
said, 'and I'm going to do it.'  After that the voice stopped; there
was a silence, broken by a cry for mercy--Mudgett crying in fear and
horror; then a shot, followed quickly by another shot.  The door was
barred, but I broke in, found my prisoners dead, the windows
shut--nobody there."

"Well?" urged Devreaux in a sharp undertone.

"What are the usual emotions of a prisoner arrested for a capital
crime?" inquired the corporal with seeming irrelevance.  "Anger," he
answered for himself, before Devreaux could reply--"bitterness,
hopelessness, despair, blackness crushing upon him from all
directions.  You've arrested plenty of them.  You know.  And such
were the reactions of my prisoner in the upper bunk.

"I had taken a big pistol from her when she tried to shoot me in the
doorway.  But I hadn't searched her for other weapons.  Careless!
She must have had another gun concealed about her person."  Dexter
thrust his hand into his pocket, and brought forth Alison's little
pearl-handled revolver.  "This one!

"You said you carried this in your bag," he remarked in an aside,
glancing at the girl.  "Could Mrs. Stark have taken it without your
knowing?"

"Yes, she had opportunities," Alison answered unsteadily.  "She might
have done so."

"She did," answered Dexter coolly.  "She must have."

"You're trying to tell me--" blurted out Devreaux, aghast.

"I'm telling you what happened, the only thing that could have
happened.  Mrs. Stark may have thought that Mudgett had betrayed her
people to the police.  At any rate she mistrusted him.  He was a
weakling, and he was our prisoner.  She could be certain that we
could force him to turn state's evidence against her husband.  But
she saw her chance to stop that danger.  Handcuffed as she was, she
could use a revolver.

"There can be no other explanation," Dexter went on grimly.  "She
leaned over the edge of the bunk and shot Mudgett, and a moment later
turned the weapon on herself and pulled the trigger."

Devreaux gazed at the younger man in somber fascination.  "You mean
to say it was--"

"Murder and suicide!" said the corporal.

"But," protested the superintendent, "the revolver--you told me you
found it on the opposite side of the room, by the door."

"With two chambers empty."  Dexter nodded.  "The dead prisoner was
lying across the upper bunk, with the arms hanging out over the side.
There must have been a sharp reflex after death, and the revolver was
flung across the room from the unclasping fingers."

"But the front door was barred on the inside," objected Devreaux.

The corporal shrugged his shoulders.  "Yes.  That was one of the
things that started me off on a false trail.  I was too quick in
jumping at conclusions--taking it for granted that a third person had
barred the door."

"Your prisoners were tied to the bunks.  Neither of them could have--"

"Of course not," agreed Dexter.  "The answer's much simpler than
that."  He smothered a faint laugh.  "I recall now that I slammed the
door behind me when I left the cabin.  It was a lift bar, like the
one here, swinging on a pivot.  The jolt must have thrown it down,
and it dropped back into place and fastened itself."

"De corpor'l he fin' out effryt'ing," broke in a deep voice from the
other side of the room.

The two officers turned with a start to stare across the gloomy
chamber.  In their deep absorption they had forgotten that the four
prisoners could hear all that was said.  They now perceived that they
had an interested group of listeners.  One of the men was on his
knees, and as they peered into the shadow they made out the swarthy
features of the giant half-breed, Doucet.

"What's that you said?" asked Devreaux gruffly.

"Mees Stark she keel Mudgett, and den shoot herself, lak de corpor'l
tell.  _Oui_!  I talk to 'er dat night on tel'phone."

"You!" exclaimed Dexter.

"_Oui_.  But, yes.  She call up, say she been arrest' for shootin'
dat constable."

"Where were you?" demanded the corporal.

"In a cabin farder down de valley.  She call to talk wid Stark, 'er
'osband, but he away somew'eres.  I dunno w'ere to fin' 'eem.  Nobody
in de cabin but me."

"And she told you what she had decided to do?"

"For sure.  She say police have come.  Nobody to help her but only
me, an' wan man no good.  She afraid dis Mudgett, he spill dose
beans.  So she say, 'I fix 'im--I shoot him.  An' den I shoot myself.
Dose police ain't gon' take me and hang me.'  An' den she say
good-by, an' say no more.  _Voila tout_!"

Dexter and the colonel exchanged a glance of keen significance.  "I
guess that settles it," said Devreaux soberly.

"No question!"  The corporal looked out the window with ruminative
eyes.  "It's queer how people's minds work under stress," he mused.
"This woman had a weapon concealed--she might have waited and taken a
chance on getting me.  But she must have gone temporarily out of her
head.  I've seen it hit other prisoners like that--crazed and
desperate, like trapped animals.  The voice I heard had that sound.
She was the nervous, high-strung sort that seem to be able to face
anything, and then suddenly go all to pieces.  She must have acted on
the first mad impulse, without allowing herself time for second
thought."

"Mental blow-up!" said the colonel.  "Yes, I've seen them that way.
In any event we know now what happened.  There really was no mystery
at all, if we'd had sense enough to put two and two together."  He
turned to Alison and his iron features relaxed for a moment in a
kindly smile.  "And I guess that lets you out, my dear," he said.

The girl drew a quivering breath, and blinked hard to keep back the
tears.  She tried to speak, but her voice seemed to fail her.

"We'll have to make our report," resumed Devreaux, "but you've
nothing to fear.  When a hard boiled old mounted man like me is ready
to accept a chain of facts such as this, you may be sure others will
be easily convinced.  You'll come off with flying colors.  And I
don't mind telling you that I'm very glad indeed."

Dexter likewise turned, and for a moment he held the girl under his
grave scrutiny.  "I don't need to tell you that I too am glad," he
said.  He faced her in silence for a moment, and his mouth drooped in
a smile of weariness and sadness.  "I should have known it all from
the beginning," he went on in a low voice.  "Knowing you, I should
have gone on believing in you with blind, unquestioning faith.  I did
for a while, and then--something happened to remind me that I was a
policeman--and I forced myself to look at what I thought was
evidence, instead of looking at you.  I'm sorry, Alison."

He lingered for a space with yearning glance, and then he drew a
harsh breath, turned abruptly and strode out of the cabin.

Leaving the doorway, he moved with heavy, dragging steps, down
through the fringe of timber to the edge of the rapids.  He found a
flat-topped bowlder on the beach where the water ran awash, and sat
down to gaze off across the tumbling stream.  For a while he sat with
his arm on his knee, motionless and listless, listening to the rush
of the rapids, his head bent to the soft evening breeze.  But
presently he stirred, and his hand reached into his tunic pocket.  He
brought out his pipe, fumbled for a match and struck a light.  But as
he started to apply the flame to the tobacco, he caught the sound of
a quick, light step in the gravel behind him.  He glanced over his
shoulder and saw a slight figure standing in the shadow.  The pipe
dropped unheeded to the ground as he stumbled to his feet.  "Alison!"
he breathed.

"Yes."  The figure came forward and sat down on the bowlder.

"You believed in me all the while," said a quiet voice.

He leaned forward, trying to see the girl's face in the gathering
dusk.

"I knew," she went on quietly, "even if you didn't.  You thought it
your duty to weigh the evidence you had found, and to be cold and
stern and unyielding.  But in your heart you knew that everything was
all right.  You may have deceived yourself, David, but you never
deceived me."

"You don't hold it against me?" he asked unsteadily.  "Really,
Alison, I must have believed.  I couldn't have doubted--"

"Of course not," she returned.  She got up from the bowlder and stood
beside him.  They faced each other for a moment, two shadows, dimly
outlined in the purple twilight.  Then, naturally and inevitably as
clouds drifting together, the shadows merged, and without quite
knowing how it all came about, Dexter found Alison in the circle of
his one useful arm, warm and trembling and clinging, found himself
holding her in a breathless, stunning embrace.

"Oh, my dear," he gasped.  "Whatever I may have thought, I loved
you--in spite of everything."

"I knew!" she whispered.  "And I know now why it all happened as it
did--why I was forced to run away to this terrible wilderness.  I
thought it was tragedy, and it was for this!"

She spoke incoherently, between tears and laughter, her face against
his shoulder.

His hand went up, and his fingers strayed through her soft, tumbled
hair.  "Alison!  Look at me!"

Slowly she lifted her head, but as their glances met they were
startled by a loud coughing sound behind them, "I feared as much,"
said a gruff voice.

In confusion they drew apart, and turned to see a short, stocky shape
standing on the edge of the beach.

"Oh--Colonel Devreaux!" said Dexter awkwardly.

"Yes."  The old man advanced and fixed them with his grim scrutiny.
"It looks to me as though I'd lost one of my best boys.  I dislike to
say it, but I'm afraid you're dropped from the rolls of the mounted."

"Just a moment," he went on as the corporal tried to speak.  "Unless
my eyes have gone bad, I take it that you two have a sort of an
understanding between you.  And the service is no place for a man's
wife."  He was silent for a moment as he measured Dexter up and down
with his eyes.  "You would have gone high in the ranks of the
police," he said in a musing voice.  "Now that you're leaving us I
don't mind telling you that you've got the stuff.  And that's why I
know you'll go higher still outside the police--in civilian life.
Your job from this time on is to make this girl happy."

The colonel turned on his heel, but before he could move away Alison
stepped impulsively forward, caught him by both shoulders and kissed
his stern-drawn lips.

"I wanted to," she said with a fluttering laugh.  "I've wanted to do
it for a long time."

Devreaux chuckled to himself, and his glance shifted back to the
corporal.  "I told you long ago," he remarked--"women--you never can
tell about 'em.  You're luckier than most of us.  You've found the
one in a billion.  Hold on to her, David."  The colonel drew a breath
that sounded very much like a sigh, faced about abruptly, and strode
off into the darkness.

"Like this!" said Alison.  She found Dexter's hand, and drew his arm
about her shoulders.  "Your officer told you what to do.
Tight--tighter!"  She looked up at him with a tremulous smile, and
her eyes slowly closed.  "Still your prisoner," she whispered
softly--"just like this--always."



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