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Title: The Stampeder

Creator: Samuel Alexander White

Release date: June 17, 2012 [eBook #40017]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STAMPEDER ***




Produced by Al Haines.




[Illustration: Cover]



[Illustration: "Rex gazed into the rolling eyes, the wild, distorted
visage of the Corsican, and felt himself shoved to the very brink of the
crevasse."  _Page 173._]]




                                  THE

                               STAMPEDER


                                   BY

                              S. A. WHITE



                              ILLUSTRATED




                                TORONTO
                             WILLIAM BRIGGS
                                  1910




                        Copyright, Canada, 1910
                           by William Briggs




                             ILLUSTRATIONS


"Rex gazed into the rolling eyes, the wild, distorted visage of the
Corsican, and felt himself shoved to the very brink of the crevasse" . .
. . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

"The two teams raced side by side, the leaders snapping at each other"

"From the Indian’s extended palm the yellow flash of native gold filled
Britton’s startled eyes"




                             THE STAMPEDER



                               CHAPTER I.


Britton’s steam-yacht tore out its lungs in protest at the black smudge
of a coasting vessel reeling straight across its bows.

The siren bellowed thrice in a choking fury of warning and denunciation
till the echoes boomed over the Algerian harbor and floated high up to
the Mustapha Supérieure, where English lords slept at peace in luxurious
hotels.

Disconcerted by this tremendous volume of sound, the coaster vacillated,
veered and yawed as if under some drunken steering-hand, to leap forward
unwarily and bury her weather-beaten prow in the white side of the
_Mottisfont_.

The terrific impact swept the yacht’s forecastle clear of snoring
sailors, and, after shooting the temporary owner headlong from his
berth, commenced to polish the companionway passage with his features,
an operation which he instinctively though not wholly wakefully resented
by a frantic grasping for something substantial.

The effort was rewarded when his fingers clutched the lower stairs, and
Rex Britton staggered to his feet.  Every light below was out, and the
man so roughly aroused stood dazedly wondering if a horribly real
nightmare held him in its grip.

Then, like a flash, intelligence permeated his shaken brain, and all the
faculties stirred again. He remembered the grinding crash and clambered
on deck in his pyjamas!

Upon the bridge loomed the figure of the captain, frantically banging at
the engine-room signals, but the bell refused to sound.  A medley of
curses vibrated in the humid night air, emanating partly from the lower
deck, and partly from the bows of the coaster as the Berber sailors gave
free vent to their displeasure.

"Daniels–Captain Daniels!" roared Britton, "what the deuce is this
turmoil?"

"An accident, sir," was the reply.  "A coasting vessel has rammed us.
I’m afraid we’re badly hit; and the signals are out of business. We’ll
reverse in a moment if the engines are not disabled."

He waved a sailor down with the order to the engine-room.  The big yacht
trembled under the mighty strain and began to creep backward, inches at
a time, since the nose of the other craft was tightly wedged in its
vitals.

Britton was beside the captain in a moment, with a perfect stream of
questions as to details and responsibility.

"The coasting steamer was entirely at fault, sir."  Daniels gravely
assured him.  "She cut across our bow in spite of three warnings.
Judging by her careening, the wheelsman was very drunk!"

An increased throbbing of the _Mottisfont’s_ engines made the whole hull
shiver, and the yacht scuttled backward from the coaster like an immense
crab.

"She sinks! she sinks!" rose the cry from the sailors on the poop.

"What is sinking?" cried Britton, excitedly; "not the yacht!"

"No, the coaster," said Captain Daniels. "She has no water-tight
compartments."

The terrified wail of the Arab crew proclaimed the inrush of the water
as the steamer listed at an alarming rate to starboard.  The officers
shouted orders which were smothered in the tumult, for an uncontrollable
panic seized passengers and sailors.  Pandemonium in its wild, selfish
authority ruled on the coaster’s decks, and Britton, from the bridge of
the _Mottisfont_, could view the mad, strenuous struggle for safety.  A
feminine cry startled him in its piercing shrillness.

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed, "there are women there, and those brutes
of Berbers will trample them to death.  Quick, man!  Drive the yacht in
close and throw out the ropes."

Daniels instantly obeyed, observing: "It’s dangerous work, sir, and
she’s liable to drag us down when she founders, which may be any moment
now!"

"Doesn’t matter," said Britton, curtly. "We’re bound to help them even
if this was their own doing.  Have you lowered the launch?"

"Mr. Ainsworth and Mr. Trascott have it, sir."

"The smaller boats?"

"They’re out, sir, trying to take some of the passengers off.  Why in
the name of Neptune don’t they lower their own?"

The _Mottisfont_ was larger than the steamer, and overtopped it as they
drew in again. Britton leaned forward and listened to the tumult on the
smaller vessel.

"I’m afraid they’re fighting for their own boats," he said, quickly.
"The panic’s getting worse."

The hubbub was redoubled.  A woman’s scream, sharp and piteous, was cast
despairingly on the night.  Britton muttered something like an oath, and
swinging down from the bridge he ran forward with all speed.

"Anyone in the turret?" he yelled to the group of sailors straining on
the ropes.

"No, sir," answered the first mate.  "The lookout was thrown to the deck
when we struck. His shoulder is broken."

"Go up yourself," ordered Britton.  "See if the searchlight works, and
turn it on the coaster. We are only groping like blind men in the dark."

Turning to the second mate, he added: "Fire that brass cannon at
intervals to call out the harbor boats.  I see the usefulness of it
after all!"

Leaving the mates to execute his orders, Britton sprang to the taffrail
and vaulted at hazard down into the struggling mass of humanity that
surged over the steamer’s forehold.  He landed squarely upon an Arab’s
back, knocking that swarthy individual into the lee scuppers, but
without pausing to unravel the puzzling Algerian profanity which was
thus elicited, Britton pushed his way aft.

He could feel the vessel rock to the roll of the water in the hold as
the weight above was continually and suddenly shifted, and he knew that
with one of those evolutions she would roll a little too far.  There
would be no recovery, and the steamer would turn turtle.

About the stern-davits a struggle raged.  The forward boats were stove
in with the force of the collision, and only four were left intact.  The
brown-skinned Berber sailors endeavored to lower them, and blue-coated
officers vainly attempted to keep them back and to preserve order among
the demented people.

One boat got away as Britton came up.  The yacht’s searchlight, pricking
out of the gloom, showed the craft to be full of Arabs, while women and
children were wailing in supreme terror upon the foundering vessel.

The crowd swayed to the rail as another boat was slung from the davits.
Rex grasped the arm of a man in marine uniform.

"Where’s your captain?" he demanded, harshly.

"I am the captain," said the man, helplessly; "but what can I do?  The
passengers have gone mad!  The Berbers are beasts!"

Britton flung aside the arm he had seized with a gesture of repulsion.

"Do?" he cried, in fine scorn.  "You might at least try!  You act like a
baby.  This rush must be stopped–"

Boom! rang the _Mottisfont’s_ cannon.  Its message reverberated like
hollow thunder over the great bay.  Two score whistles rose in answer
from the inner reaches of the harbor.

Boom!  The whistles shrieked anew, and the riding lights of the vessels
plunged into activity.

"You hear!" exclaimed Britton.  "If that rush isn’t stopped half of
those on board will be drowned by the swamping of the boats, with a
hundred harbor craft coming to the rescue. Come on, sir–be a man!"

Rex took hold of a heavy piece of broken stanchion and made a flying
leap into the knot of Berbers stamping about the stern davits.

"Back, men!" he shouted in a voice that soared above every other noise.
"Be calm! There’ll be a hundred boats here in a minute, with room for
all of you.  Let the women forward at once!"

A female figure sprang to the davits at his words, but the Arabs roared
their dissent and charged in a body.  Britton had a vision of a girlish
form with an ethereal face and pale-gold hair, tossed rudely in the rush
of men.  She lost her footing suddenly and went down with a suppressed
scream.

Snarling like an enraged animal, Rex leaped in front of them.

Crack! sounded his stanchion on the foremost head.  Crack! crack!  He
pierced their ranks and dragged out the luckless woman.  Shielding her
with one arm, he was carried back against the ship’s side by the
pressure of the frantic throng.

"Are you hurt?" he found time to whisper.

"No–only frightened," she sobbed.  The nervous strain was too much for
her.

Britton made her kneel down under the rail behind him, and, with his
legs protecting her from the trampling, he faced the angry Arabs again.

They had hesitated a little, daunted by the impetuosity of his attack.
The Englishman’s blood was now thoroughly aroused.  Away back in his
line of ancestors there had been knights of the old regime; there were
soldiers of the empire among the later generations; and his grandfather
had fallen at Waterloo.  The fighting, bulldog strain was in him, and
only sufficient baiting was required to bring it into evidence!

Boom! sounded the _Mottisfont’s_ cannon for the third time.  Across the
mysterious stretch of bay the shout of rowers answered.

"They’re coming!" exclaimed Britton, triumphantly.  "You pack of fools,
have you no sense?"

A growl was the reply.  Whether fear had driven out their understanding,
or whether the rough fellows were actuated by a desire of revenge for
the blows inflicted by the Englishman, they rushed upon him once more.

"Ah! you will have it, will you?" he cried, exulting in the mere thrill
of battle.  "Then lay on, you rabble!"

He stood in the central focus of the steam-yacht’s searchlight, with
muscle action unhampered and with bare feet gripping the deck firmly,
while his enemies strove to reach him. His stanchion rose and fell like
a flash as he circled in and out, avoiding the blows of his adversaries,
and every time he struck a man went down.  Once a sinewed Moroccan
locked with him, and he felt the sting of steel in his shoulder, but a
jolt on the fellow’s neck from Britton’s other arm stretched him
senseless, while the knife clattered over the rail into the sea.

Crack! crack!  The sound of his club grew monotonous; the soft, warm
trickle of something down his left shoulder filled him with a strange
disgust for the combat; he felt ashamed of himself standing in pyjamas
on the lighted deck of another ship and striking down Berbers with a
stanchion.

Since it was wholly necessary, the Englishman wondered at the sense of
shame.  Perhaps it was an odd trick which the wounded nerves in his arm
were playing him.

Only three or four Arabs opposed Britton now. He ran at them with hands
placed wide on his stanchion, like a wand, and swept them aside. The
captain of the steamer stepped through into the cleared space on the
after-deck.

"Give your orders," said Britton, with a sigh of relief.

He turned to the woman by the rail and raised her up as the feminine
contingent was passed to the side and lowered into the harbor boats
which were already alongside.

"You may enter one of them now," he said, marvelling vaguely at her
perfect face.  She touched his arm with a movement of gratitude, but her
fingers came away wet and sticky.

"Someone slashed you!" she exclaimed in concern.  "Let me see.  Oh, let
me bandage it. And I was the cause of your wound!"

"It is only a flesh wound–" began Britton.

"Madam, the boat!" interrupted the anxious captain.

"I’ll wait," answered the woman.  "This man is wounded–the man who saved
all of us.  Can’t you do something?  See! he’s weak!"

She gave an alarmed cry as the Englishman staggered.  He saved himself
by clutching the rail.

"It must–have been those–those circles I cut among the rascals," he
laughed unsteadily. "They make me dizzy."

"You’re evading," she said quickly; "it’s the Berber’s knife."

With a strong effort Britton summoned his will-power to control his
weakened nerves, and roughly dashed a hand across his eyes.  It was with
a great sensation of relief that he felt his returning steadiness of
muscle, and he glanced at the rope ladders which filled the waiting
boats with fleeing people.

"We had better be getting down," he advised. "The steamer will not float
long."

Even as he spoke, the coaster lurched alarmingly.  Rex grasped the
woman’s arm and drew her quickly to the rail.

A thrown rope whipped his cheek, and he caught it skilfully, peering
below at a small boat which swayed to the roll of the steamer.

"For God’s sake, Britton, come off that old hulk," shouted someone.
"She’s sinking fast!"

Rex looked downward with the pleased expression on his own face
contrasting strangely with the anxious countenances of the two occupants
of the launch.

"It’s my friends, Ainsworth and Trascott, from the yacht," he explained
to the woman at his side.

"I was beginning to wonder why they hadn’t showed up.  You see they must
have been out before I awakened, for they had taken the launch to the
rescue."

"Come off!" commanded Ainsworth, peremptorily. "Can’t you see you’re
last, you two mooning fools?  The old coffin will drop in a minute."

They could hear Trascott’s mild protest at Ainsworth’s trenchant
phrasing of the situation, and Britton laughed.

"Trascott’s a curate," he said, disengaging a rope ladder for their own
use, "a very orthodox, English curate!  Sometimes he doesn’t approve of
his friend’s strenuous speech.  You’ll have to overlook it, though.
Ainsworth is a lawyer, and he thinks he has us in the witness-box."

They were descending the rope-ladder as he spoke, the lady going first,
and Cyril Ainsworth heard the last part of his host’s comment.

"It’s no witness-box you’re in, Britton," he growled.  "It’s a bally old
tub, and you needn’t think because you’re dressed in beautiful, silk
pyjamas that you must stay there till you have to swim.  If I were the
lady, I would vigorously object to getting wet."

Ainsworth emphasized his tirade with a swift revolution of the
engine-crank.  The curate cast off the rope, and they puffed away from
the water-logged vessel.  Gleaming white against the inky color of her
side was the nameplate–_Constantine_.

Britton pulled an overcoat and a pair of sea-boots from a locker and put
them on.

"That’s better," grunted the lawyer.  "You don’t look so much like a
posing matinee idol in crimson jersey and biceps!"

Britton apparently did not hear him, being intent upon the dénouement of
this harbor tragedy.  Under the _Mottisfont’s_ powerful search-light
everything stood out nakedly clear for rods around.  The stricken vessel
rolled in a last, pitiful struggle, listed too far for the recovery of
her equilibrium, turned turtle and sank like a stone.

"There’s the end of incompetence," rasped Ainsworth, while the lady
beside Britton gave a sympathetic cry, and the fleet of boats flying
from the vortex peril with their human cargoes echoed in choruses of
dismay.

"Had you friends?" Britton asked of the woman.

"No,–only my maid and baggage," she answered.  "My name is Morris, Maud
Morris–and I was travelling alone."

"To Algiers?"

"Yes, to Algiers–at least temporarily."

"Then the inconvenience is not considerable," Britton said.  "We will go
on board the yacht, and I can find your maid in the morning."

"Ah! you are too generous," murmured the lady.  "You have already done
more than a woman can repay, and I have not even attended to your wound.
Does it pain much?"

"Very little," replied Britton, lightly.  "I believe I shall hold you to
your promise to bandage it, and I believe it will get well very soon."

She laughed a low, sweet laugh which harmonized with her pale beauty,
and Britton felt some unexplained fascination as her green-blue eyes
held his.

The launch bumped the _Mottisfont’s_ side abaft of the great hole which
the _Constantine’s_ prow had torn.  The occupants surveyed the black,
yawning break somewhat ruefully before they stepped on deck.

"What the deuce will the Honorable Oliver Britton say when he finds his
nephew has smashed up his floating palace?" asked Ainsworth,
meditatively.

"My honorable uncle will never see it till it is restored to its
original state," Rex answered. "And the Moroccan Steamship Company,
owners of the _Constantine_, will pay for the restoration."

"What a legal beacon you might have been!" sighed Cyril, generously.
"But this pin-scratch they gave you in the arm!––who pays the
doctor-bill?"

"That is my affair," said the lady of the adventure, very sweetly, "and
it is time it was given attention."  She took Britton’s sleeve and drew
him to the companionway.  There Rex paused and hailed the bridge.

"Daniels, get us in close to the eastern jetty at once and anchor there.
We don’t know how badly we’re damaged, so moor right under it."

"Aye, aye, sir," the captain answered.

"And send me the steward," Britton added.

"Here he is, sir!  Bannon, go forward."

The portly form of the steward joined the two by the stairs.

"Bannon, have your wife prepare a stateroom for Miss Morris at once,"
said Britton, "and bring us some linen strips for bandages."

"You’re hurt, sir?" said the steward.

"Only scratched!  Water and linen is all I want."

Bannon brought it as directed, and having given the simple necessaries
to the lady, Britton dived below to reappear some minutes later in
yachting trousers, shirt and shoes, with his left sleeve rolled up to
the shoulder and his duck coat on his other arm.  He had washed the
knife-wound while in his bath-room, but it bled afresh, and the lady
hastened to staunch it.

Trascott assisted her by the use of much cold water.  When the flow of
blood was stopped, she called into requisition some healing ointment
which Bannon had brought on his own authority and then bound the limb
neatly with linen.  There was something exquisite in the sensation for
Britton.  The soft touch of her fingers, the near fragrance of her
person and the electric glow of awakened sympathy combined to influence
him and awake strange thrills to which he was not at all subject.

She felt the throb of his pulse as she held his wrist down to straighten
the bandage, and the knowledge of its origin flushed her cheek.  An
instant she looked up at him inquiringly, almost with the spirit of
challenge, but her lashes drooped under the tensity of his glance.

Virility was Britton’s most salient attribute. When the man in him was
stirred, it moved strongly, and the proximity of so fair a vision would
have excited a less impressionable person, one with less of Britton’s
youthful and unbounded faith in women!

The steward disappeared about his business. Trascott and Ainsworth
loitered away.  Britton and the woman were left alone with that magnetic
bond of touch binding them.  With the man, the impression lasted for
many a day!  A new, uncurbed power was loosed within him, and the woman
felt the trend of its might.  It thrilled and awed at the same time.
She shifted her hands to a final arrangement of the bandage.

"I think it will do," she murmured in a confused way.

Britton shook himself out of a wild dream, slowly fastened his
shirt-sleeve and donned his coat.

"We will go below," he said, taking her arm and guiding her down the
companionway.  The stewardess met them in the passage and led the way to
the stateroom she had prepared, disappearing therein.

"Good-night," she said, extending both hands. "I haven’t found much
opportunity to thank you.  To-morrow I shall tell you more."

Britton took her fingers, and the mad blood leaped in his veins again.

"To-morrow," he cried gladly.  "Ah! yes, there are many to-morrows, for
you stay at Algiers."

"Many to-morrows!" she exclaimed with a happy laugh, as she turned into
the stateroom. "That is a sweet way of putting it.  Many to-morrows!–I
like that idea."




                              CHAPTER II.


"It’s hell,–isn’t it, Trascott?" asked Ainsworth, dismally.

"My dear fellow," protested the shocked curate, "such liberty of
expression, to put it mildly–"

"Fudge!" interrupted his friend.  "You divines all agree as to the
existence of an infernal region.  Why shouldn’t I introduce a comparison
if I choose?  If you don’t like its rugged exterior you can at least
appreciate the sentiment.  It’s hell–isn’t it?"

"Well, well, it’s decidedly unpleasant," grumbled Trascott.

"It’s a bally shame!" said the lawyer, tritely. "Britton takes us away
on his uncle’s yacht for a cruise of the African shore of the
Mediterranean. Witness our cruise!  We get as far as Algiers and there
his two long-suffering comrades have to stagnate while he plays the
gallant to a blonde will-o’-the-wisp whom he made a show of rescuing.
He found her maid, installed her at the Hotel de ––, attended to her
remittances from England in her stranded position and played the modern
hero role to a triple curtain call–which he is certainly getting!"

"Of course the yacht had to be repaired," put in Trascott, as if it was
his kindly duty to find some extenuation.

"Of course!" echoed Ainsworth sarcastically, waving a hand to where the
_Mottisfont_, quite intact, rode proudly at anchor.

The two men were standing on the harbor piers above the landing-stages,
and they had a good view of the vessel.  Behind them the capital of
Algeria rose precipitously up the sides of an immense hill a mile in
length at the base by five hundred feet in height.  The foot of the
picturesque city was the sprawling sea; the head was the Casbah, the
ancient fortress of the Deys.  Up on the hill reposed the old or high
town with its quaint Moorish edifices, while sloping below to the rim of
the port lay the lower, new, or French town filled with government
buildings, squares and streets, together with lines of warehouses and
wharves, dotted here and there by mosques that looked strangely out of
place amid the European architecture.

Blocked out against the harbor water from their conspicuous stand, the
two friends were very dissimilar in appearance.  Ainsworth’s was the
short, squat figure, Trascott’s the tall, lanky one.  The lawyer, in
spite of the disadvantage of height, probably weighed more than the
curate. His stockily-built body filled out his gray tweeds, while the
black garments of Trascott hung loosely on his hollow frame.  A gray cap
of the same material as his suit was jauntily perched on the lawyer’s
head, but his companion wore the familiar and inevitable round, dark
hat.

Still, if Trascott’s form lost dignity beside Ainsworth’s, that dignity
was more than regained when it came to a comparison of faces.  The
lawyer had a gray-eyed, regular countenance, smooth and unmarked by any
dissipation, but it lacked the shading that beautified his friend’s. The
curate’s features, though more rugged in casting, had the high lights of
earnestness glowing in his brown eyes, the deeper tones of endeavor
blending in the moulding of the chin, while the shadows of
responsibility rested in the firm curve of his lips.

Cyril Ainsworth, with his unchanging mask of precision, was the keen,
well-oiled machine which cut straight to the core of things in the
performance of its work.  Bertrand Trascott was the living actor of a
great belief, the exponent of a mighty drama calculated to uplift and
regenerate his fellow-beings.  Each had his part in the work of the
present-day world, and, strange to say, men loved the machine-like
precision of Ainsworth almost as well as the generous heart of Trascott.

The lawyer again called the curate’s attention to the yacht with another
motion of his hand.

"The yacht had to be repaired," he snapped. "It took three days to
splice the timbers and rivet the plates.  We should then have proceeded
with our cruise.  There was no impediment, for the steamship company
settled the damages in full.  Yet here we have been for two weeks–and so
has the woman!  At this rate we may be here for two months–and so may
the woman!"

They sat down upon the piers for their after-supper smoke, having fared
sumptuously on board the _Mottisfont_, in an effort to reconcile
themselves to the inertia under which they chafed. The soft dusk began
to glide in from the sea and enfold the dark wharves in misty wreaths.
One by one the riding lanterns of the harbor vessels shone out like
stars in a fog, and the rhythm of an Arab sailor song came swelling over
the broad bay.

The two friends smoked in silence as the dusk grew deeper.  Presently
the beacon light flashed up on Matifou ten miles away, sending out its
nightly warning to the ships at sea.  A thousand lamps flared in the
lower town, and far up the hill the boulevard lanterns starred the gloom
with their fiery eyes.

"Can you tell me the space of time an Algerian romance requires?" asked
Ainsworth, finally.

Trascott’s cheery laugh was the only answer.

"In England," the lawyer mused, "I would give them six weeks.  In this
southern climate, where the blood runs hot, the climax must come in less
time, but just how long only Britton knows."

Trascott tapped his pipe upon the pier, refilled it and settled back
with a sigh.

"Do you think this affair is really serious?" he asked, with a certain
earnestness and anxiety.

"Serious!" Ainsworth snorted, "it’s the most serious thing that ever
happened him.  Do you understand Britton’s disposition?  He’s a
whole-hearted fellow full of generous and chivalric impulses, with a
belief in the goodness of all the feminine sex.  He has run against
nothing to knock those notions into chaos.  Do you think he can view
that fine-looking woman unmoved? Do you think that she is going to pass
by Reginald Britton, the heir to Britton Hall and old Oliver’s estates?
Not if I know anything, Trascott!  And mark me, I don’t like the woman.
She’s fair enough for a lord–but I don’t like her.  Please remember
that, Trascott."

The curate started, for he had earlier confessed to himself a similar
dislike of the blonde beauty who had taken the yacht and Britton and the
port itself, as well as the great English hotels, by storm.  However, he
was too fair-minded not to combat such an antipathy so far unwarranted.

"Why do you not like her?" he asked, seeking perhaps in Ainsworth’s
attitude a solution of his own state of mind.

"Intuition, I suppose," the lawyer answered gruffly.  "When I see a lady
travelling alone, except for her maid, coming apparently from nowhere
and heading for a destination wholly indefinite, I always regard her
with suspicion. What has Britton learned about this woman? He knows her
name is Maud Morris.  He knows she can madden him with those eyes and
lips. That is the extent of his knowledge.  Does he know her home, her
county, her family, her support?  No!  I have questioned Britton, not to
mention warning him–"

"You have!" exclaimed the curate, "and what did he say?"

"Told me to go to that infernal region I mentioned.  He can’t listen to
sound reason.  They never can!"

"Ah, well," sighed Trascott, "I intended dropping a hint, but since
you’ve anticipated me without result–"

"Might as well talk to a log!" Ainsworth cut in.  "I shall be glad when
the thing has run its course and we get out of here.  This Algerian
scenery palls on me!  If something would only happen to hasten the
climax, it might cheer my heart.  I believe I shall hire some dogs of
Arabs to abduct the fair princess and let Britton play the rescuer
somewhere out on the Djujuras."

"It may not be necessary," said Trascott. "He’s going to that dance
to-night."

"Yes," muttered the lawyer, "he’s been dressing and fussing ever since
supper.  There’s the launch now!"

The gasoline craft spluttered and danced over the waves to the pier
where Ainsworth and the curate were smoking.

"You lazy duffers," Britton cried, "aren’t you going up?"

He stepped out of the launch, a tall, handsome figure in his evening
clothes and top-hat.  His paletot hung on his left arm, which was now
entirely well, and as he faced his friends they both thought how
singularly powerful he looked. Broad of shoulder and deep of chest, it
seemed as if the frames of the other two men together would have been
required to equal his bulk.  His straight, finely-cut features and blue
eyes held an expression unmistakably aristocratic.

"Aren’t you going up?" he repeated.

"We’ll look into the reading-room later on," replied Ainsworth.  "I
don’t care to dance, and it disagrees with Trascott’s digestion."

"See you there, then," was his farewell. "Don’t forget you can get all
you want to eat in the dining-room for the sum of six francs."

A _fiacre_ pulled up near the wharf at his hail.

"Hotel de ––," he said, jumping in with an object-lesson of alacrity.

The driver accepted the hint and dashed away at a swift pace through the
lower town till the long ascent which led up to Mustapha Supérieure
compelled him to walk his animal.

The last two weeks had passed for Rex Britton as a single day.  Not a
minute of the whole time dragged, for the reason that he had spent every
available minute with Maud Morris.  He considered the sojourn, which he
had lengthened day by day, as Paradise–the direct antithesis, in fact,
of Ainsworth’s view!  He had pursued the wild dream of that first night
on the harbor with all his passionate persistence till it suddenly
ensnared him in its tangible and compelling reality.

The lawyer back on the pier was wishing for something to hasten the
climax.  In spite of his faculty of shrewd observation, Ainsworth did
not dream of how deeply Britton was already involved with the woman whom
he, Ainsworth, mistrusted.

It would take a wise man indeed to time and trace the development of a
romance when the setting lies between the pagan Djujuras and the
legend-steeped Mediterranean.  Britton would have been filled with
dismay had he stopped to inspect, analyze and adjudge his actions during
those two weeks.  His impulses were at riot under the sway of a heavenly
elixir which the woman held to his lips; he never looked back; his mind
was centred on the days ahead, planning a wonderful permanency for the
exotic, filmy atmosphere of present experiences.

As the _fiacre_ climbed the Mustapha Supérieure Britton could possess in
vision the whole expanse of the port, the wharves dimly lighted and busy
with the night-labor that the volume of trade enforced, the illuminated
vessels in the wide anchorage and the mingling gleams that marked the
Mustapha Inférieure.

Britton knew every nook of the climbing city, old, by almost a thousand
years, in story and conflict.  With the lady of pale-gold beauty he had
explored all the charming retreats of both towns.  They had loitered in
the Place Royale amid the orange and lime trees, finding pleasure in
watching the cosmopolitan crowds which thronged that oblong space in the
centre of the city.  The traits of character disclosed by
representatives of so many different nations–Moors, Jews and Arabs,
Germans, Spaniards, French, Corsicans, Italians and Maltese, and scores
of other races–proved very interesting to the English observers.

The mild, balmy Algerian evenings seemed temptations to roam abroad, and
the two had grown accustomed to promenade the Bab-el-Ouad and the
Bab-azoun, which ran north and south in a parallel direction for half a
mile.  Those walks down the dim vista of flanking colonnades beneath an
ivory moon, the same that lighted the Sahara caravans through the desert
tracts, intoxicated senses and blood alike.

They had delved into the _djamas_, or superior mosques, the _mesjids_,
or inferior ones, and the _marabouts_, which were the tombs or
sanctuaries of the ancient Moorish saints; they had plunged into the
market rabbles on the Squares de Chartres, d’Isly and Mahon, lolled in
the Parisian-like boulevards and arcades of the new town, sat upon the
flat-roofed, prison-windowed houses at sunset to catch the tang of the
sweeping sea-wind on their faces, journeyed in the yacht as far as the
lighthouse on Cape Matifou and the forbidding brow of Cape Caxine, or
stretched their land-legs in the ascent of the narrow, jagged street
called the Casbah that led up to the old Moorish fortress of the same
name perched high on the steep, and commanding all Algiers.

Standing on the height of the Mustapha Supérieure where the _fiacre_ had
left him in front of the hotel piazza, Britton felt as if under some
binding spell which the land of the sheik had cast upon him, a spell
from which he would not willingly escape, for the delicious, cobwebby
fetters only thrilled instead of chafing.

Dismissing his driver with a liberal fee, Britton ran lightly up the
steps of the magnificent hostelry, resplendent with blazing lights and
ornate structural patterns designed to rival the architectural beauties
of the other fashionable resorts that contested for the patronage of the
most select people who came to stay at Algiers.

The obsequious concierge, stationed in the hall to look after
new-comers, directed a servant to appropriate Britton’s coat and hat and
bowed the Englishman toward the reception-room with a flood of welcoming
French.

The reception-room–which some took the liberty of calling the
morning-room–was a cosy, oak-panelled, damask-hung chamber where hotel
inmates and visitors could meet or wait for friends.  It gave one the
impression of being very well appointed with rugs, round tables,
leather-covered chairs, cushioned divans, pictures, mantels and
window-seats.

At Britton’s entrance the solitary occupant of the reception-room rose
from a divan.  She came forward with a glad, excited light beautifying
her face, the filmy, silver-colored gown she wore sweeping gracefully
about her slim, exquisite figure.

Quite close to Britton she paused and took hold of the lapels of his
coat, smoothing them with her soft white fingers.

Had the lawyer been there to see, this action would have settled once
for all the question of Britton’s relation to Maud Morris.  In her
movement was the suggestion of intimate possession never to be mistaken
for anything else.  It told more than could be expressed in whole
chapters of explanation.

"The dance has begun," she murmured, looking up, her eyes soft and
shining beneath the burnished gold of her hair, "and everybody has gone
either to take part or to watch.  You are somewhat late, aren’t you?"

"Yes, I am late," Britton said softly–"later than I thought, but I am
glad, for my tardiness lets me meet you like this!"  He nodded around
the empty room.

She smiled into Britton’s dancing eyes.  He laid his hands gently upon
hers, and the touch brought the delicate rose to her cheek, but the
concierge’s rapid French jabber warned them. Someone was approaching the
reception-room. She slipped a hand in Britton’s arm and turned to the
door.

"Let us go to the concert-room," she said simply.

Britton bowed courteously as an attaché from the British Consulate
entered with a party of ladies, and they went out amid the customary
admiring stares.

They passed the rooms whence came the rattle of ping-pong, the whirr of
billiards or the almost noiseless shuffle of bridge, and finally came to
the ballroom.  A ravishing Hungarian waltz swelled up from the palm
screens which hid the orchestra; a hundred couples tripped the glassy
floor-space, the conventional black-and-white attire of the gentlemen
lending an effective contrast to the wonderful, daring toilettes of the
ladies.

Everybody portrayed supreme happiness as well as a nice consciousness of
what was correct, and everybody seemed to be trying to outdo everyone
else in the ardor of enjoyment.

Not least by any means among the joy-seekers was Rex Britton.

His arm encircled his companion’s waist and they stepped out, the
handsomest couple in the room, swaying a second to the time of the
orchestra.  Then they glided away, captivated by the pulsating strains
of the waltz, and lost themselves in the maze.




                              CHAPTER III.


Ainsworth shook his billiard-cue with unmistakable emphasis in the
stranger’s face.

"Get out," he cried irascibly.  "You’re drunk, and I don’t want to talk
to you!"  He pushed his annoyer rudely away, but the latter returned to
the attack, whereupon Bertrand Trascott intervened.

"Have patience, Cyril," he begged.  "The man evidently has a reason for
his persistence.  Now, sir, what is it?  We would like to go on with our
game."

The stranger who had circled in to the corner-table in the billiard-room
of the great hotel and stopped their play presented an uninviting and
ludicrous appearance.

His head and shoulders reminded Trascott of those of a dissipated
Austrian virtuoso whom he knew well and whose brilliance had become very
spasmodic on account of relapses to the same vice which apparently ruled
the stranger.  The resemblance was quite close, embodying the
uncontrolled, tremulous chin and lips surmounted by a fiercely-curled
wisp of moustache, the hawked nose, narrowed eyes and prominent, bony
cheeks, with a pair of puttied ears sprouting from his hair like old
mushrooms in the grass, while a pinched, sunken neck failed to fill his
peaked shoulders.

Trascott thought that if both the Austrian virtuoso and the portly
butler who had come to be looked on as an institution at Britton Hall
were cut in two, and the upper half of the virtuoso pieced to the lower,
corpulent section of the Honorable Oliver’s servant the result would be
the prototype of the stranger who had undertaken to tack among the
billiard-tables.

"What do you want?" he asked the man, with more severity.

The questioned one surveyed Trascott for a space, recognized his
curate’s cloth and decided he had no business with him, for his eyes
flashed aggressively upon the lawyer, who was again preparing for the
execution of the stroke that the man had spoiled.

Ainsworth’s back was turned, so the intruder jogged his right elbow for
attention with the result that the lawyer’s ball, deflected at right
angles, leaped across the next table and spread confusion among a group
of Frenchmen playing there.

This second interruption of the stringing of a long break and the titter
of idle observers, combined with the French stares of contempt, was not
at all conducive to the regaining of Ainsworth’s equanimity.

"By gad, sir, get out of here," he admonished, "or I’ll very soon have
the concierge throw you out!"

"You?" asked the stranger, with a belligerent glare.

"Exactly!" Ainsworth answered emphatically. He looked as if he would
quite gladly exempt the concierge from consideration and perform the
operation himself.

Trascott had been roaming the room in search of an hotel servant who
could lead this obstinate fellow away; there being none about, however,
he compromised on a marker and returned to the intruder.

He still concentrated his attention on the lawyer with that same
belligerent glare, though in his eyes a rising flicker of apprehension
betrayed the inward reflection that he had somehow caught a Tartar in
this smooth-faced, perfectly-fed man with coat off and billiard-cue in
hand.

"You’re Britton?" he inquired in a thick, heavy voice.

"I’m nothing of the sort," the irate lawyer returned.

The stranger took a step nearer and leaned his hip against the
billiard-table.

"You deny it?" he snarled vindictively.  "The assistant concierge
informed me that you were Britton."

Ainsworth flourished the cue in his hand suggestively.

"Then the assistant concierge is an ass, like yourself," he said.
"There are two of you, and this hotel is no place for such a team."

Trascott pushed forward the marker he had procured.

"Come, monsieur," said the marker.  "I think there are better places
than this for you."

The stranger whirled and savagely struck away the persuading fingers
with which the polite Frenchman had grasped his arm.

"Look out for yourself," he stormed, "or I’ll have the manager pack you
off to-morrow, my fine fellow.  Let me tell you that you can’t turn men
of my standing into the street.  I have engaged rooms and paid for them
in advance, and I’ll go where I d–d please in this hotel–and do what I
please also!"

"No, you won’t, my friend," warned Ainsworth, tapping him on the
shoulder with quiet determination.  "You won’t come in here twice to
insult me and interrupt my play.  Just keep that in your muddled mind!"

"I was informed that you were a certain Britton I was searching for,"
said the other bluntly, in the spirit of rude apology.

"Do I look like Britton?" cried the lawyer, testily.  "I stand five feet
six, while Britton stands six feet one.  I weigh one hundred and fifty
pounds; Britton weighs two hundred and ten.  Britton dances in the
ballroom with the ladies and brings them ices, but I play billiards with
a curate.  I ask you again, do I resemble him?  No, you say.  And I’ll
tell you something else, too!  Britton wouldn’t have suffered your
impudence for this length of time.  He’s a quick-blooded beggar, and
he’d have jolly well twisted your neck by now."

"Will you come out, sir?" begged the marker, making a second attempt, at
the importunations of Trascott.

The stranger eyed him and raised a hand as if to strike, then diverted
the hand to his waistcoat pocket and threw his card on the table.

"Take that card to the manager as my complaint, and tell him to dismiss
you," he said, somewhat haughtily.  "I’m Christopher Morris, promoter of
the Yukon Dredging Company."

The servant took the pasteboard, a little awed. Ainsworth had not caught
the stranger’s surname, but he snapped at the mention of his especial
enterprise.

"The Yukon Dredging Company!" he exclaimed suspiciously.  "If you are
the promoter of that scheme, I warn you to watch out for me. I’m
Ainsworth, the law-machine, and I’m convinced that the Dredging Company
is a mere swindle.  Be careful!  I’ll put the Crown after you at the
very first opportunity."

The object of his censure sniffed in scorn, but Ainsworth continued:

"You invited my antagonism.  Now perhaps you’ll regret it.  If anything
angers me, it is the loss of my self-respect, and those Frenchmen took
me for an idiot.  But you sound decidedly out of place next the Sahara,
my friend.  You should be at the Arctic end of a different continent.
What are you hunting in Algiers–floating capital?"

"No," was the answer.  "I am hunting my wife.  I arrived but an hour ago
from Tangier, where the cursed doctors quarantined me for a chill which
they insisted on calling fever.  When after twenty days’ hammering at
their thick heads I convinced them of their mistake, they let me out,
and I found my wife had hurried away to escape infection."  He laughed,
and with a cold, indignant significance intensifying his words,
repeated: "Hurried away to escape infection!"

"Your wife," echoed the puzzled lawyer. "What has that to do with your
offensive attitude?  What has that to do with Rex Britton?"

"They tell me that in finding Britton I shall find my wife!"

Understanding rushed upon Ainsworth, and he, as well as Trascott, was
stirred to fiery excitement.  He shook the man roughly by the shoulder.
"Your name?" he breathlessly demanded. "What did you say was your name?"

"Morris–Christopher Morris," was the answer.  "My wife’s name is Maud,
and the devil gave her the prettiest face in England."

Ainsworth passed his hand across his forehead. His face held the first
expression of dismay that the curate had ever seen there.  To Trascott
it was evident that the lawyer’s unconcealed mistrust of the woman
concerned had not extended to such an unforeseen contingency as now
existed upon the statement of Morris.

The barrister was not looking at the curate and could not see the
accompanying signs of extreme agitation in the latter’s countenance.
The former seemed to be weighing a doubtful point in his mind, and when
he spoke it was as to himself in a musing, philosophical manner.

"This is either a drunken hallucination, insanity, or the truth," he
said, softly.  "Let us have a test!"  He dropped a vesta match upon the
green baize of the table.

"Pick that up," he said to Morris.

The man stared an instant and obeyed.  Ainsworth watched him closely.
His fingers went down with disconcerting steadiness, closed unerringly
over the match and returned it to the barrister.  The latter raised
appealing eyes to his friend and said:

"He drinks, but he is not overly drunk now. I’m afraid it is the truth."

Trascott, his earnest face all troubled and his lips compressed in a
grim line, shook his head.

"This is something like what I feared," he groaned.




                              CHAPTER IV.


Morris mumbled something of repeated apology and made a movement to
leave the room.

Ainsworth stopped him.

"I’ll find Britton," he said.  "This mess has to be straightened out,
and it wouldn’t do for you to wander round till you meet him and raise
Cain before a lot of women.  I’ll bring him here in a minute."

"You’re kind," grunted the other, sarcastically, "but I’ll wait for
you."

The lawyer hastened out, peering into the different rooms in search of
the man he wanted. He suspected that he would find the woman with
Britton, and as he sought, unheeding acquaintances or greetings, he came
upon the couple in the dining-room.

They were standing at the buffet, chatting and laughing and partaking of
the six-franc supper which Britton had mentioned to his friends.  The
dining-hall was full, and Ainsworth hesitated at the door.  He had a
peculiar and intense hatred of scenes, and he knew that this company,
consisting partly of bored aristocracy and partly of different gradings
of the vulgar rich, was ready to stare and laugh at an unconventional
act, as, for instance, the interruption of someone’s luncheon.

Britton espied him at the door, and cut short his vacillation by
beckoning him over, making room for him at the same time.  Ainsworth
approached them grimly.

"Have you not had lunch?" Britton inquired cheerily.  "Come, there’s
room here.  We’ll wait for you."

"I couldn’t eat a bite," said the lawyer, truthfully.  "I wanted to
speak to you for a moment, if you’re through.  That’s all."

He avoided the eyes of Maud Morris and did not attempt to address her
directly.

"There’s the after-lunch dance, you know," objected Britton.  "It’s a
matter of etiquette with these people."

"Can’t you let it go?" asked the lawyer, sharply.

His tone awakened his friend’s scrutiny. "What’s the matter?" he asked.
"How long do you want me?"

"It may be some time," answered Ainsworth. "I wish you would come
immediately."

Maud Morris smiled full upon the lawyer and forced him to meet her
glorious eyes.

"Just one round," she pleaded prettily, with a nod towards the ballroom.

At that moment Ainsworth was transformed, in his own mind, into the grim
master of life. The other two were the trifling, wayward children to
whom chastisement would presently come.  It did not matter if, in their
ignorance, they coveted those few turns together; they could have their
gambols just on the eve of disillusionment!  It might help the cure of
Britton’s malady when Ainsworth would afterwards remind him of the
incident.

"By all means," he said sarcastically.  "It will satisfy these
sticklers."

They swept merrily into the adjacent ballroom, and Ainsworth followed as
far as the entrance.  The occasion struck him with a certain grim humor,
and he chuckled silently as he stood in the alcove watching the couple
circling to the orchestra’s music.

They floated slowly, as in a delightful dream, round the immense and
gorgeously-decorated salon, the woman looking upward ecstatically, with
her face aquiver with light, and whispering with both lips and eyes.
Britton, oblivious to the irony of the situation, had forgotten even
Ainsworth.  He was plunged in the joy of the moment, and the watching
lawyer could imagine what words he was murmuring in the meshes of her
hair.

Then, in the midst of his ironical judgment, a pang of something nearly
akin to pity moved Ainsworth.  For an instant he debated with himself
the issue if this amour should prove genuine on both sides, but the
thought was immediately dismissed by his cynical reasoning as
improbable. The man was in earnest, but the woman was a siren, in
Ainsworth’s critical view.

One round of the ballroom floor was all the enjoyment they allowed
themselves, for the lawyer significantly stepped out when they reached
the entrance curtains.  Britton looked at him vaguely and contracted his
brows in a half-frown when he remembered.

He led the lady to a settee and bent over her for a moment.

"You will come back soon?" she whispered with a shade of wistfulness.

Britton pressed her fingers on her fan under pretence of examining it.

"Yes," he promised, glorying in the depths of her eyes, "I’ll come back,
not soon, but at once. Our dance isn’t finished, you know."

He strode across the room, tall and elegant, and smiling over his
shoulder so that the woman’s heart leaped oddly as she watched him.

"Now, Ainsworth," he said, laying a hand on his comrade’s arm, "what do
you want with me? You’ll please hurry, won’t you?"

The lawyer drew Britton’s arm tightly through his own and turned across
the main promenade.

"That woman’s married," he said with brutal directness, "and I’m taking
you to her husband."

Britton whipped out his arm from Ainsworth’s grasp and held it upraised,
as if to deliver a blow, while a red wave of denunciation flamed over
his fine features.

"You–" he began, and halted, for the grim, set look in his companion’s
eyes carried undeniable conviction.

"Strike me if you like," Ainsworth observed harshly, "but come this way
with me."

Britton’s fist fell to his side, and he drew his whole frame rigidly
erect in a sort of convulsive movement.  In spite of his great strength
he staggered a little, and his face was ashy-white.

He turned irresolutely back towards the entrance of the dancing salon,
but Ainsworth took his arm again.

"No, this way," he urged, and led him as he would a boy.

People marked his rigid muscles and pallid skin, and murmured
compassionately at the apparent stroke of illness.

"Hello, old chap!" cried one of his numerous acquaintances, shouldering
up, "what’s wrong? Heat too much for you?  By Jove, you’re in a beastly
funk, and I don’t wonder, for it’s deuced close in here."

The lawyer waved him aside, and they went on, while all the guests began
to complain of heat, and the assiduous concierge ran to open wider the
French casements on the lawns.

Once or twice Ainsworth looked up at his companion.  Britton’s pallor
and tremendous calm, so suggestive of the latent volcanic powers,
alarmed the lawyer.

"How do you feel?" he whispered sympathetically.

"I feel nothing–absolutely nothing," responded Britton, in a dull,
passionless tone, and Ainsworth did not doubt him for a moment.

"Where is your man?" he asked after a second, in the same listless and
unimpassioned voice.

"Here, in this room," Ainsworth answered, entering the billiard parlors.
They skirted the tables and came where Morris stood with Trascott.

"Here is the man Morris," he announced in a measured manner.  "Morris,
this is Britton."

As Ainsworth spoke, he braced himself to guard against a hundred ugly
possibilities which this meeting presented.  He scanned the lineaments
of the two men, alert to catch the nerve purpose dependent upon each
one’s expression, and in thus studying the features of Morris he lost
sight of the latter’s hands, which were thrust loosely in the pockets of
his coat.

The husband’s narrow eyes glittered; his lips were drawn back over his
teeth in a wolfish snarl; all his capability for extreme hate seemed to
be given free scope as he centred ferocious glances on the stony
countenance of Rex Britton.

The other occupants of the room instinctively felt that the atmosphere
held some vital and dramatic portent.  They stopped their play and gazed
wonderingly on the group over by the corner table.

There the two principal figures glared at each other without uttering a
word, the one standing upright with set face and folded arms, the other
crouching like a beast ready to spring in rage.

Ainsworth had never felt such a tense moment, even in his pleadings
before tightly-packed courts of law.  He was involuntarily forced to
hold his breath in suspense, and a band of steel seemed to rim his
chest.  Trascott, with his habitual, comforting sanity, offered no
speech.  He recognized arbitration to be as futile as it was
inconceivable.  Things must run their course.  Only he was ready, like
Ainsworth, to guard against deadly violence following the outbreak.

For some moments Morris crouched and glared, a malicious quiver running
through him.  Then if any of the men had watched where his right hand
was hidden they might have seen the cloth of the pocket poked forward by
something cylindrical inside.

A stunning report, coming apparently from nowhere, shook the windows.
Britton reeled, as a tuft of hair floated off from above his temple, and
jumped like the recoil of a spring upon his would-be murderer.  He dealt
two sharp, quick blows before the weapon could be pulled again, and the
thing was all over.

Morris lay in a quiet heap, with threads of white smoke drifting up from
the powder-blackened hole in his pocket.

Britton rubbed the red welt along his scalp and nodded gravely to
Ainsworth.

"You’re my counsel in this matter, of course," he said.  "Attend to
whatever explanations are needed!  Trascott, will you come with me?"

They elbowed out through the motley, clamorous, ever-increasing crowd
that the pistol-shot had gathered.

"What do you mean to do?" asked the curate, anxiously.

"The hardest thing I ever did," Britton answered pitifully.  "I want
you, because I doubt if I can do it alone.  I’m afraid of myself,
Trascott!"




                               CHAPTER V.


They sought the concierge and met him, all flustered, coming out of the
office by the side entrance on his way to the room of tumult which they
had just quitted.  Britton added to his cares by despatching him with a
message to Maud Morris in the ballroom.

"Tell Mrs. Morris that I am waiting in her drawing-room," he said.  "Ask
her if she will take the elevator at once and see me on an important
matter."

The concierge made expressive gestures with his hands.

"Not Madame Morris," he suggested, somewhat puzzled.  "Monsieur means
Mademoiselle!"

"Ah! yes, of course," returned the Englishman, quickly, "A mere slip of
the tongue!  My message is for Mademoiselle, for Miss Morris. You will
find her on that large settee just at the entrance of the salon."

He smiled grimly at the precise classification which to-morrow would be
of a different value. The ghost of the smile lingered on his lips, as,
disdaining the lift, he pulled Trascott towards the stairs.

"Let us walk up," he begged.  "It will give me time to think."

Trascott moved beside him automatically and left Britton to his own
reflections.  That, he thought, was undoubtedly the surest way to
victory.

Their ascent was slow and silent, their footfalls deadening to an odd,
mysterious void on the thickly-padded steps.  The mounting sensation,
the absence of noise from his movements, seemed to lift Britton away
from himself.  His personality was effaced, in the physical sense, and
the basic impulses which influenced his course of existence lay bared
before an inner tribunal.

The vaster issue remained with him; the moral measure applied to his
strength alone; the portentous effects of the next few minutes would be
essentially moulded at the dictum of his emotional tendencies.  The
present exigency could be neither flouted nor shunned.  This difficulty
of another’s evolving, augmented in no small measure by his own unseeing
folly, demanded immediate and decisive solution.  Apology was cowardice
and parley an affront to Britton’s frank fibre, and both of them smacked
of guilt.

The suite of rooms taken by Maud Morris was situated on the first floor
just to the right of the public hall, near the landing.  She had at her
disposal a luxurious drawing-room, a more luxurious boudoir, and bath
and sleeping apartments.

Trascott stopped at the stair-head and folded his arms, signifying his
exclusion from the approaching developments.

"I don’t think you will have any need of me," he ventured reassuringly.

Britton vouchsafed no reply.  The swift momentary reaction he
experienced did not disturb the hard, emotionless mask of his features,
and the sudden, peculiarly human revolt stirred by his unsatisfied
heart-hunger was crushed with a tremendous summoning of will-power.

He swiftly traversed the corridor and entered the drawing-room.

It was empty, and a poignant chagrin struck Britton, inflicting pain
scarcely definable from that of humiliation and disgrace, as he realized
that perhaps Maud Morris, detecting impending exposure, had suddenly
clutched seclusion as a safeguard with that wanton spirit and careless
indifference of the time-hardened trifler.

But Britton was wrong in this thought!

While he paced a few steps in indecision, the boudoir curtains parted,
and through the soft, shaded illumination of the room Maud Morris looked
out at him.

"I am waiting for you," she called, with a tremulous smile which
indicated the fluttering state of her feelings, yet left the origin of
that uncertainty in doubt.

If it was a bait, Britton snapped like a deluded fish.  The sudden
presentation of the less disagreeable side of the situation weakened his
guard.  He acted before he reflected, and stepped forward into the
boudoir.

The tapestry fell in place behind him, and with its silken swish Britton
felt the error he had unthinkingly committed.  This boudoir, which
enthralled with its essentially feminine appointments, was the worst
place in the world for rallying stern resolutions and formulating
all-embracing decisions such as Britton proposed to make.  The place
could only shake his sincere purpose.  The drawing-room, in graver
setting, would have been far safer for him!

He put a rigid curb upon his impulses, and attempted to shut out the
powerful charm of low-burning rose lights, Bohemian color, and lavish
decoration, but a stronger influence than these laid its hold upon him,
that delicate, indefinable, alluring fragrance which is found only
within woman’s precincts, and which attracts mightily, like woman’s
love, because of its tender, subtle elusiveness.

Then, more compelling than the sense-conquering color-effect, more
entrancing than the pervading perfume, was the magic of Maud Morris
herself.  To Britton’s mind, in moments wholly calm and lucid, he
thought he had never seen perfections of face and form which approached
hers.  Such beauty as she possessed was technically matchless, but, in
general, there are intervals when fascination flags and any existing
flaws in the object of admiration force attention.

When Britton was cursed with these critical flashes, as he was
accustomed to inwardly express it, he could detect a lack of
something–it might have been soul–behind the level splendor of her blue
eyes, but if he tried to fathom these depths and define this missing
attribute, the mere outward splendor, like the crystal sheen of deep,
clear water, was dazzling enough to make him dizzy and engulf him, and
the effort at introspection went unrewarded.

So Britton stood wrestling with the spell of environment, hurling mental
refusals upon the suggestive enticement of the boudoir atmosphere and
battling against the magical allurement of the woman who was the climax
in the dainty sphere of exotic loveliness.

She seemed framed in the shell of the room as if it had been especially
designed to harmonize with her charms.  Her pale, silver-colored gown
swept about her feet, leaving her figure in a contour of marvellous
grace; the arms and bosom, full and rounded, came out from it, white as
ivory; her face, beautiful as a rare orchid, with the crowning glory of
her hair above, was one to weaken a strong man.

Harassed by a flood of doubts and regrets, Britton gazed at her with
wide, darkened eyes, the shame of his position vying in torture with the
pang of his loss.  He had come to judge, to condemn and to scorn, but
his capacity for this was submerged in painful realization of the black
void of the future through which he must walk.

Maud Morris recognized the facing of a crisis in his attitude, and she
nervously clasped her slim fingers as she read something of what was
passing in his mind.

"Rex, you know!" she cried, with a sort of of awed inspiration tinged by
an inflection of fear.

"Yes, I know," he answered despairingly.  "I know everything!  God help
me–and you!"

There was no reproach in his words, rather a prayer.  The thing before
him was too beautiful to curse.  He had plainly misjudged his strength
and underrated his task.  The animated presence of her he loved filled
both his physical and mental vision with impressionistic power.  The
passion which he thought had died at the instant of Ainsworth’s
announcement grew in magnitude as a spring torrent grows with a rush of
sorrowful rain.  It mastered him, crushed his scorn and turned
condemnation upon his own head.  To the great credit of Britton’s
manlier qualities a phase of unconscious heroism ruled as the foremost
factor in his new solution of the problem.

"Good-bye," he said with a near approach to kindness, "and forgive me if
you can.  I think I am the one to blame."

He held out his hand before turning to leave the boudoir.  Maud Morris
snatched it rather than took it, apprehension in her eyes.

"Good-bye, Rex?" she whispered.  "You can’t go from me.  Think of how
we’ve cared.  Think of the invisible ties."

Britton’s mouth hardened, showing his disgust. Her speech came nearer
rousing him to voluble contempt than any inherent feeling.

"Ties!" he exclaimed severely.  "Ignominy upon a marriage bond is no
tie.  It is rather a matter of expiation!"

His words had the intonation of farewell, and he laid one hand on the
portières, but Maud Morris rushed forward with a cry, holding him with a
passionate caress which was either the height of consummate acting or
the essence of mad desire.

Her touch thrilled Britton for one vivid, insane moment, and he stood
like a man in a dream listening to her vociferous pleading.

"Take me with you!" she cried.  "Biskra is two days by rail, Sidi Okba
two hours more by carriage–then the desert!  The Sahara, Rex, do you
hear?  No one shall ever find us!"

Britton’s brain swung slowly back through bewilderment at the mention of
detail, and he stared at her with a gradual horror growing in his eyes
as his idol ground itself to dust.

"The desert, dear,–and oblivion," she murmured again.

A hundred scenes flashed before his sight.  One stood out–the picture of
Trascott waiting for him, his fine face plunged in anxiety and a strong
prayer in his generous heart.  This psychic vision completed Britton’s
revulsion, and he violently pushed the woman away.

"The desert–and hell for us both!" he fiercely cried.  "Let me get out
of this!"

In that moment of repulse Maud Morris assumed her true character, and
Britton read behind her eyes for the first time.  She did not lack a
soul; the soul leaped out at him, but it was as the advance of a
serpent, malignant and revengeful.  Her beauty lost itself in a hard,
bright mask of undistinctive flesh and eyes.

"If you go, I’ll ruin you!" she warned, in a voice hoarse with jealous
fury.  "I’ll spoil you for the dear eligibles from one end of England to
the other!"

Britton gazed at her transformation before answering, and wondered why
he had loved her.

"Your husband will do that," he said at last. "I hardly expect to keep
out of court."

"Reflect!" she said harshly.  "He cannot do it as I can."

The knots of the portière cords would not yield to Britton’s pull, and
he tore the silken curtains down in a heap upon the floor.  Their
clinging folds seemed symbolic of their siren-like owner, and the man
shuddered as he dropped them from his fingers.

"You will not reflect?"

"The enormity of your proposal precludes reflection," said Britton,
witheringly.

"It’s war then?" Her tone was steely.

"It’s war, if you put it that way," he wearily responded; "but hadn’t
you better spare your own name?"

She laughed shortly.

"Mine will not count," she said mockingly. "The public will sympathize
with the deluded wife.  While holding me blameless, English society will
haul your reputation over the cobblestones till there isn’t a shred of
it left."

Britton regarded her silently for a long, comprehensive minute, and went
swiftly out of the boudoir.  She followed, still reluctant to give up
the battle.

"There is another consideration–the attitude of the Honorable Oliver
Britton in this disgrace," she said, using the last and most cruel
weapon of all.  "Do you know what your uncle will do? If you don’t, I
can tell you!"

Britton paled perceptibly, as he met the battery of her eyes, upon the
drawing-room threshold. He made a denunciatory wave of his hand and
closed the door sharply.

Trascott had no words.  He gave Britton a fervent finger-clasp and a
bright smile of relief and thankfulness.  No elation he had ever felt at
the rescuing of some poor wretch from the English slums compared with
his joy at Britton’s personal victory.

They used the elevator.  At the bottom of the lift, Ainsworth waited
beside a servant who held their coats and hats.

"Well, what is it?" questioned Britton, earnestly.

"He says it’s law, as soon as they reach home," replied Ainsworth,
grimly.  "Have you any thought of cruising in other parts?"

Retreat was repugnant to a strong man like Britton.  He shook his head
decidedly.

In fifteen minutes they had reached the wharf and boarded the
_Mottisfont_.  She rode at a single anchor chain, and twin coils of
grayish smoke issued from her double funnels.

It was the second watch, and the mate held the bridge.  Britton called
to him.

"Have you a head of steam?"

"Plenty, sir," the mate replied.

"Then weigh your anchor!"

"Aye, aye, sir.  Where away?"

"Home to New Shoreham!"




                              CHAPTER VI.


The case of Morris _versus_ Britton, as developed in the judicial
courts, was one of those neurotic society flurries that never fail to
arouse interest and promote discussion from highland to sea-down.

Complete details of all legal proceedings, together with copious comment
on the demeanor of complainant and defendant, as well as irrelevant
addenda concerning such things as dress and facial expression, can be
found in the back files of a certain aristocratic journal, but nothing
edifying is to be gained by perusal of this voluminous report.  The
circulation of the sheet in question was given sudden and tremendous
impetus, yet this proved merely temporary, for the revengeful note
obtruded, the personal animosity broke forth, overstepping all limits of
honor and fair play, so that those who had not heretofore followed
public topics over-closely wondered what was the editor’s quarrel with
the defendant. But his quarrel was not with the nephew; although through
the nephew he hoped to reach the uncle, the Honorable Oliver Britton,
who was abroad, representing England in a consular capacity.

The name of Britton, of Britton Hall, was high enough and proud enough
and old enough to afford a splendid target for the batteries of ignominy
which were masked within the publishing offices of the warring journal,
and the fact that the Honorable Oliver Britton had once humbled by
personal opposition the political aspirations of the editor was what
made the reputation-shelling process so destructive.  Still, in spite of
the deliberate use of his heaviest artillery, the man behind the fire of
words did not foresee the startling result of such drastic measures.

When, after months of fighting through successive law-courts, the
celebrated action came to an end, the journal’s editor had to announce,
much to his chagrin, that the final verdict was dismissal with a
division of costs.  This decision, the report intimated, was due
entirely to that matchless legal machine, Ainsworth.

However, the enemy of the Britton name enjoyed the satisfaction of
knowing that his vitriolic pen had done more than he dared to hope, for
he soon had the supreme delight of stating that, owing to the disgrace
involving the family name, the Honorable Oliver Britton had resigned his
post as Consul at a foreign court. Furthermore, the powers that appoint
had placed another in the post in the diplomatic service which, it was
understood, was being reserved for Rex Britton till his return from the
holiday cruise that his honor-graduation at Oxford had earned.

And, later, the journal announced what it had not foreseen, the news
that the Honorable Oliver Britton had returned from the Continent,
violently quarrelled with his nephew and disinherited him.  It gloated
over the cruel truth that of all the Brittons, who had for generations
counted thousands of pounds upon their rent-rolls, a Britton now stood
penniless, except for a paltry three hundred guineas left out of his
patrimony, nearly exhausted by the long legal battle; gloated over him
because the gentleman’s hand must turn to labor, the ambitious trusts of
educational and diplomatic posts being denied him on account of the
name-smudge.

There the journal’s report and comment ends, except for an item telling
that Christopher Morris and his wife had gone to America.

The night Rex Britton quarrelled with his uncle, he went out from
Britton Hall, down white gravel walks between clipped hedges, under the
massed oaks in the familiar grove, and along green Sussex lanes to the
depot.  There he telegraphed Ainsworth to get Trascott to meet him at
the former’s rooms, as new developments had arisen which occasioned his
departure from what he had considered home since his boyhood days.  The
night express took him up and whirled him away to London.

Trascott was with a dying woman in the slums, so it was evening of the
next day before the three friends could get together in Cyril
Ainsworth’s rooms.  The curate came in, weary and depressed, and with a
gravity of bearing caused by association with the near presence of
death.

"The uncle has cut the nephew out of the will and kicked him off the
estate," Ainsworth plunged, giving Trascott a terse summing-up of Rex
Britton’s explanations.  "He has left three hundred pounds of money,
three mountains of pride, and the strength of three bulls.  He’s off to
Canada and the Yukon!"

Trascott stilled his surprise and bent earnestly over the table.

"I’d stay," he advised pointedly.  "You can live down the disinheritment
and open the barricaded doors of position.  I’d stay in England and live
it down."

Britton was sullen and decided.  "No," he returned, "I’m out of England
till I can buy back everything I’ve lost.  Understand?  I’m disappearing
from the dearly beloved public which takes such an interest in my
misfortune and in my future.  Isn’t that what victims of circumstance
try?  I’ll be welcomed as the prodigal nephew when I return–if I ever
do!"

"Don’t be cynical," Trascott warned.  "It’s dangerous in your case."

"What would you have me do?" Rex exclaimed warmly.  "Shall I turn
gamekeeper or valet? And don’t think I’m priggish!  I dare be menial,
but, by Jove, I won’t be a slave!  Independency is my obsession.  That’s
why I’m for this new gold-trail."

And the gold-trail held its persistent lure in spite of any arguments.

Two weeks later he sighted Newfoundland from the decks of an Allan
Liner, passed through the waters of Belle Isle, chafing on Labrador’s
iron coast, caught up Heath Point on bleak Anticosti, and won the
river-stretch of four hundred and thirty-eight miles to Quebec.  Twelve
hours more and the liner anchored in the port of Montreal.

Rex Britton had hunted for three seasons in the Laurentians, and at
Montreal he hastened to find two comrades of the chase who had always
been members of his party.  One was the voyageur, Pierre Giraud, and the
other a plainsman, Jim Laurance, who had drifted up from some place in
the Southern States.  Britton inquired for them in their old haunts.

"Pierre?" cried a French riverman, at his question; "Pierre an’ Jim
Laurance?  Dey bot’ gon’ on de Yukon.  Beeg strik’ dere–ver’ beeg
strik’."

Further enquiry elicited the information that Jim Laurance was keeping a
road-house at Indian River, on the Dawson Trail, while Pierre Giraud was
some place in the land of gold without his whereabouts being definitely
known.

On hearing this news Britton dallied no further, but crossed the
continent alone, caught a Puget Sound boat and steamed north.  All the
way up people talked insane things of a new strike east of Juneau, and,
like a fool, he listened. Like a fool, also, he rushed in hot haste with
the van of the stampede which followed the boat’s touching at Juneau.
The lure of gold faded somewhat for him when they reached the
much-touted valley and found that not a hundredth part of what had been
reported was true.

Though hope was lessened in immense proportion, still Britton staked
with his fellows, only to have his ardor dampened still more.  The
bedrock of his claim was as clean of yellow grains as a well-swept
floor, and while his neighbors struck pay-gravel of moderate richness, a
curse of bad luck blanked his own efforts.

Twice more he did the same thing, once on Admiralty Island and again at
Glacier Bay below Mount Crillon.  Each time he reported his ill-success
to Jim Laurance by letters which he sent with in-going steamers to Dyea,
whence they were borne onward over Chilcoot by the Dawson mail-carriers.
And Laurance, deprived of the satisfaction of replying on account of
Britton’s itinerancy, sat in his road-house at Indian River and waited
for the Englishman to come to him. He held as a truism his own saying
that the Dawson Trail knew every leg in the Yukon at some time or other,
and he did not doubt for an instant that Britton’s legs would presently
appear, straining through the weary miles like the countless pairs of
limbs he had seen stamping over the route which led to the Mecca of the
gold-lands.

Having wasted the summer months and a great part of his money in three
futile stampedes, Britton found himself upon the Dyea beach at the
approach of winter, with another _ignis fatuus_ luring him on the inward
trail.  A tremendous rush was on to Forty Forks, east of Lake Marsh,
where, it was said, a prospector had kicked over glistening nuggets with
the soles of his hobnailed cruisers.  The wildest reports of wealth were
circulating, as usual, and men went forward in mad haste to locate on
the creek before the white breath of winter should blot out the face of
the land.

Britton, grown wary through bitter experience, cut the reports down to a
sounder basis of common sense, sifted out apparent exaggerations and
discrepancies, and decided that Forty Forks was at least worth trying
for, although, when he remembered three successive defeats, he
misdoubted the issue.

Dyea was in a ferment.  Boat-loads of passengers and baggage crowded the
beach and camp, and this tangled rabble resolved itself into a perpetual
stream of in-going Klondikers heading over the pass to take advantage of
the yet open waterway from Linderman.

The tang of first frost was in the gray morning air as Britton pushed
along the rough, bouldered wagon-road which runs up the Dyea Valley.
Hundreds went, like him, on foot, while those blessed with a full
money-belt procured what teamsters’ wagons were to be had and lashed
ahead in frantic haste that soon brought Canyon City in sight.  From
there to Sheep Camp the travel was more congested; the weaker men
already began to lag; the first strain of the race told on the
physically unfit.

All the way on to the Scales Britton passed faltering fellows, singly or
in groups of twos and threes.  They cursed him in a despairing way for
his stalwart legs and sturdy back, and he came to recognize that here at
last was a country where they measured a man according to his manliness,
uninfluenced by extraneous attributes.

Where the trail ascended Chilcoot, the footing grew worse, and a mighty
climb confronted those who would cross the pass.  Britton’s strength
here stood him in good stead, for in addition to the arduous toil of the
ascent there arose the handicap of a bitterly cold wind which began to
filter through the mountains, carrying ominous snow-flurries.  The icy
blast numbed the climbers’ muscles and sapped their energies, and as if
conscious of its power, the northland loosed its lungs and blew a
brawling storm down from the higher plateaus.

Minute by minute the shrieking wind increased in velocity, whirling
sleet and snow in the faces of the toiling men, till their persons were
encrusted, and the mountain path grew white and obscure.  A gold-seeker
slipped upon a rock ahead of Britton and rolled back against his legs.
Rex pulled him up and turned him round. "Say, old friend, what do you
call this?" he gasped.

"Holy road to Nome!" blasphemed the other, rubbing his bruised limbs.
"Don’t you know a blizzard when you meet one?  Keep your mouth shut in
this cold, or you won’t make the pass."

It was indeed a blizzard of the roaring, ramping type that only the
Yukon knows, and it increased to diabolical fury as the toilers reached
the steepest pitch of the mountain.  Men went down beside the trail in
sheer exhaustion, and the agony of their position appealed more strongly
to Britton on account of his inability to render any lasting aid.  This,
of all the northern trails, was the Iron Trail where none but the strong
could survive.

Seeing old-timers and hardened sourdoughs fall behind filled Britton
with a glow of pride in his own capabilities.  He understood that he was
one of the fit to whom reward must finally come, and the thought
instilled new hope.

Over towering Chilcoot he climbed, in the teeth of that memorable
blizzard which froze a score of gold-seekers between the Scales and the
divide from Crater Lake.  Nothing but his magnificent physique and
indomitable purpose carried him on, and when he staggered across the
little glacier which sloped to Crater Lake he had won his way to the
front, and was once more in the van of a stampede.  As Britton thawed
himself in the camp there beside a grizzled Alaskan who had followed
every strike from Nome to Klondike City, the old-timer regarded him
admiringly.

"You’re the hot stuff, mate," he averred, "when you can heel old Larry
Marsh over Chilcoot in that there hell-warmer.  You’re some stampeder,
too!  Wasn’t you in the front ’long of me at Juneau and Glacier Bay?"

"I believe I remember you," Britton said, "although it did us precious
little good to be in the front."

The old man warmed his hairy paws for the tenth time and shook his gray
locks.

"Don’t whine!  Never whine, friend," he remarked.  "You get experience,
grantin’ nothin’ else.  You’re sure some stampeder, and I reckon they’ll
be namin’ you ’long of Larry Marsh–him that named Marsh Lake!"

And forthwith Britton’s name travelled widely in fulfilment of the
old-timer’s prophecy; they began to designate him as one of their
stampeders, that much-respected minority of men who have the grit and
the power to stay in the lead of the maddest of all mad races–the
gold-rush.

The halt at Crater Lake Camp was, of necessity, very short.  The
stragglers were limping in, frost-bitten and exhausted, telling of some
who would never come in, when Marsh and Britton again hit the trail.
Dead men nor mountains, frosts nor blizzards, sufficed to stay the
stampede.

The lower levels were strangely quiet after the bellowings of the windy
pass, and the cold did not bite so keenly.

The rush passed on by Deep Lake and Long Lake, where fat purses could
buy the assistance of pack-trains of mules as far as Linderman. When
they reached the shore of this lake, they were twenty-eight miles from
Dyea, with the giant bulk of Chilcoot looming between, its rugged head
still wrapped in the swirling white blizzard.

From the head of Lake Linderman the boats, bought or built for different
individuals, plied on the water-route which led by Lake Marsh and the
Forty Forks onward to Dawson.  There were small barges, but their
sailings were very uncertain and could not be depended on in a rush.
Each man who dared the waterway before the very maw of winter had to buy
or make his craft at Linderman.

Here on the shore a motley throng congregated, with Marsh and Britton in
the front ranks. Some Nevada capitalists who had lost their horses along
the trail and hired Indian packers to carry their goods over the pass at
sixty cents a pound, clamored for boats to a stocky Dane, who appeared
to be a perfect genius at turning out freshly sawn planks as the
finished product, ready seamed and caulked, with mast stepped, and
altogether seaworthy.  However, something else beside clamor and a
profligate show of money was necessary for the securing of the vessels,
and that was time.  Work as they might, the boat-builders could not
supply the demand, and any with skill in carpentering fell to toiling of
their own will in order to get boat after boat away and thus hasten
their own turn.  They were pitting human celerity and skill against the
unceasing advance of winter.  The freeze-up was approaching with chill,
unpitying certainty to snuff out delayed hopes by the close of
navigation, and through superhuman effort the gold-seekers thought to
forestall the frost’s advent.

Every day the march of Arctic feet could be defined more clearly; every
night the snow-line slid a little farther down the hills; north-east
squalls blew up at unexpected hours; and the rivers strained their
waters through arrays of icy teeth stuck along the margins.

Amidst the turmoil of Linderman, when others had done with exhortations,
expostulations, and entreaties, through the universal desire for speed,
Larry Marsh drew one Danish boat-builder aside and conferred with him.

Whatever magic he used or whatever service of old needed repayment,
Britton did not know, but he saw the Dane hand over a newly launched
skiff to the gray Alaskan.

"Hey! you," the latter called to him, "come and steer this boat.  You’re
the man for me!"

Britton threw in his outfit with glad promptitude, and they shoved off
through the seething shore ice, which was ground to fragments as quickly
as it formed.

"Keep her head straight," warned Larry Marsh.  "I’ll ’tend to this here
sail."

He busied himself with the squaresail, a large sheet that caught the
sweeping wind and whirled them down Lake Linderman like a flash.

A mile portage connected Linderman with the next lake, Bennett.  The
swift water was not navigable for large boats in the ordinary way, so
Britton brought the skiff to in a manner which showed he was a skilful
sailor and which Marsh did not fail to note.

"You’ve held a tiller before now, I’ll warrant," he said.  "Most
greenies would have piled the boat up on them boulders in the rapid.
Let’s pack the outfits across and line her down to Bennett!"

Accordingly, having first portaged their goods, they lined the skiff
carefully through foaming white-water down to Lake Bennett, where they
again embarked.  From the Police post at the head of the lake the
sergeant was watching a Government courier struggling in with a
Peterborough through the gale that raged.  Britton and Marsh saw him
also as they staggered under their press of sail.

"He’s in trouble," Rex cried.  "Hadn’t I better run closer?"

The courier was paddling mightily, but the squall which had caught him
half way up Bennett proved too strong.  It was gradually defeating him
in spite of his desperate efforts.

"It’ll swamp him in a minute," Marsh declared, eyeing the helpless man.
"I guess you’d better run past."

The skiff bore in toward the canoe just as a huge, white-capped wave
threatened to bury it. The stout fellow met it bravely with a sweeping
stroke.  The spray hid the Peterborough’s nose for an instant, and it
seemed as if the craft would never rise.

"She’s under!" shouted Britton.

"No, she lifts," cried his companion.  "See, on the wave-top!  By
heavens, it’s mountain-high! Snap!–there goes his paddle."

The blade had broken clean in two under the tremendous strain.  The
Peterborough spun round like a cork on the crest of the surf; the
courier grasped for his spare paddle, knotted to the thwarts, but
another wave capsized him before he could dip it.

Britton brought the boat’s head round, and the skiff drifted past the
spot.  The drenched man clung desperately to the careening, upturned
Peterborough.  Britton jammed the tiller hard to windward, and Marsh
cast a rope.  It missed.

"Here," said Rex, "keep the helm down, and I’ll catch him as we drift."

Old Larry took his place.  Britton stretched himself on the gunwale,
like a cat, and grabbed the drowning courier’s collar as they rocked
alongside.  A powerful jerk, and the soaked fellow lay shivering in the
bottom of the skiff!

He was a Corsican and spoke bad English. While they reeled down the
thirty miles of Bennett before the screaming gale, he patted Britton’s
shoulder in gratitude.

"I must ask thanks–much thanks for you," he kept reiterating.

They beached the courier at an Indian camp by Cariboo Crossing and drove
on through Tagish Lake.  The wind veered and baffled them, and the seas
gave them hours of icy baling. Britton did not count the tacks they
made, but it must have been a hundred before they reached Tagish Post,
where the boat was put in for good. The Englishman was not at all sorry
to see it permanently tied up and to be free of its cramped quarters,
although the skiff had served them such a good turn.

He stretched his toil-stiffened muscles and stamped about on the
ice-piled beach, the Alaskan following suit.  Rex thought the latter’s
face had a wan, tired look, and he realized how wearing were these
desperate drives in the teeth of overwhelming hardships.

"I reckon we’ve got the rest beat by a long shot," Marsh observed.
"Nevada coin-slingers ain’t in it with us!  I know a short trail to
Forty Forks by skirtin’ Lake Marsh, so we can snooze at the Post
to-night and hit it in the mornin’."

They slept in comfort for once, sheltered at Mounted Police
headquarters, but before sunrise they were afoot and circling the first
headland of Lake Marsh.  Some hours after, the other boats began to
arrive, and the land-rush was renewed with fresh vigor.

"What do you think of my namesake?" asked the Alaskan, as they turned
east from Lake Marsh’s shore.

Britton looked at the sullen sweep of white-crested water with the
rubble of ice rattling on every wave, at the thickening films over the
inlets, and at the ever-descending snow-line on the bleak ridges.

"I think it will be closed before thirty-six hours," he said.

It was a tyro’s guess, and for the only time within the knowledge of
Larry Marsh the tyro’s guess came true.  The next evening he saw the
freeze-up and the death of many a man’s hopes. The death of their own
hopes crept round in a different way.

A mile below Forty Forks they met Jack McDonald, or "Scotty," as he was
generally termed, a famous dog-musher of the Yukon, a skilled
prospector, and a friend of Marsh.

"Headin’ for the strike?" he asked in his broad Scotch accent.  "Then ye
maun turn aroun’.  ’Tisna worth a dang."

Britton’s eager look faded.  Larry Marsh glanced up with sharp disgust.

"’Scotty’," he said, "you’re not joking?"

"Joke, mon!" exclaimed McDonald.  "I cam’ frae Le Barge tae look ower
the groun’, an’ yon dinna seem like a joke.  I tell ye ’tisna worth a
dang."

Marsh believed the announcement because it was uttered by the Scotchman.
He relied on McDonald’s judgment as he would on his own, and he turned
about on the trail.

"That’s gospel if ’Scotty’ says so," he observed to Rex.  "It’s no use
of us wastin’ time. Back-trail’s the word!"

Britton was loath to give up so near the goal when his expectations were
so summarily scattered.

"It’s only a mile to the new camp," he said. "I think I’ll go on and
have a look.  One never can tell what may turn up."

Larry Marsh shouldered his pack-sack again.

"All right," he grunted.  "Where you goin’, McDonald?"

"South o’ Le Barge," the Scotchman answered. "I had a trace there before
I cam’ awa’ on this fool trip."

"I’m with you," cried Marsh, "and we’ll follow it to the end."  To
Britton he added: "Come with us, and we’ll put you in right if anything
goes!"

The idea seemed vague and forlorn, and Rex shook his head.

"I’ll glance over the Forks anyway," he decided.

They took the back-trail, and he tramped on. A week at Forty Forks was
convincing enough! He returned to Tagish Post, a very downhearted man,
and the first person he saw was the Government courier, Franco Lessari,
whom he had pulled out of Lake Bennett.

"I ask much thanks–for you, much thanks," the Corsican greeted with a
new show of gratitude.  "For your kind heart I repay–so little. Listen!
Far up Samson Creek, I tell you for go on the north branch.  Look there
for gold!"

Britton smiled indulgently.  It was only another of the five hundred
kindly hints which had been given him by well-disposed people; for
well-disposed people never think that these vague pieces of information,
very often acquired simply by hearsay, waste a man’s time, by sending
him off on false and useless scents.  Britton had had plenty of such
news, and he thought no more of it till he heard it whispered about the
Post that there was something big on Samson Creek.

He learned, too, that Franco Lessari had quitted the Government service
to go prospecting, and that lent more significance to what the Corsican
had told him.  When he went to bed that night, he counted the contents
of his slack money-belt.  There remained about enough to purchase a team
of dogs, with some dollars left over for supplies.  With his present
means he could go on one more stampede.  If he failed to strike
anything, he would be stranded.  Success or failure depended upon which
direction he took.  There was another rumor in the air, the tale of
riches in the Logan Valley, and he did not know which way to turn.  In
his strait he remembered the fatalistic beliefs of the Arabs in Algiers,
and flipped a coin to decide whether he should go on or turn back.

It fell heads–to go on–and Britton accepted the decision.  Larry Marsh
and McDonald had gone south of Lake Le Barge, so he purchased his dogs
from another musher and set forth next day.  The frost held lakes and
rivers with two-foot ice, and the snow had fallen heavily for a week.

He worked across the frozen lakes; ranged the jammed curves of Thirty
Mile River; and reached the ice bridges of the White Horse. The
travelling was tedious, and he saved his dogs, going into camp every
night at six.

At the Mounted Police post on the Big Salmon, Britton rested half a day,
and then mushed along, undeterred by a filled trail, to the Little
Salmon, Pelly, and Selkirk, making halts where he must.

Between Selkirk and Stewart River, when Britton pulled out at dawn, he
could discern another team travelling behind him at a considerable
distance.  He watched it with interest because it was the first company
he had seen on the trail since leaving Big Salmon, but the sled did not
appear to come any nearer no matter how slowly he himself mushed.

"Who’s behind?" asked the keeper of the roadhouse at Stewart River, when
Britton passed through.

"Don’t know," Rex answered.  "He will not come close enough for
examination."

"A shirker!" was the man’s judgment on the laggard team, as he watched
the Englishman’s sturdy figure breaking the way to Sixty Mile.




                              CHAPTER VII.


Where the heavy trail from Sixty Mile forged toward Indian River, Rex
Britton halted his dog-train and eyed with an odd glance, half relief,
half reproach, the dog-sled which was now rapidly approaching from the
rear.

"Humph!" he growled through his fur hood, "the gentleman of the
rear-guard has a conscience after all.  He apparently knows the
unwritten law of the Yukon that travellers take turns in breaking the
trail."

A fresh fall of snow had buried the Dawson route, and, unlucky as usual,
Britton had found it his task to pack the loose stuff all the way from
the Big Salmon.  The other dog-train that had mushed behind him since
morning had not offered to do its duty till now.  The four o’clock gray
was showing in the sky.  Night lurked in the river shadows.  Britton
breathed his dogs a little longer and waited.

The sled behind was drawn by a five-dog team like his own, but the
huskies appeared far fresher.

"Been nursing them while I’ve done the work!" was his
exclamation–"mighty good driver, too.  By George, it’s a woman!"

Britton’s wide eyes strained to catch the detail of the figure.  As the
distance lessened, his supposition was proven true.  He saw the novel
sight of a five-dog team being urged at full speed over that lonely
trail by a mere slip of a girl.

"Gaucho, you lean beggar!" he cried to his leader.  With a jump the
animal tautened the traces to the shrill menace of the lash.  The
runners coughed a little in the sagging snow, and Britton was off down
the slope.

"You see it’s a girl, you old wolf," he whimsically explained.  "We
can’t let her break a trail. No–not if we were dropping!"

Nevertheless his team travelled in a surly fashion.  The skin on the
backs of their necks crinkled at the shriek of his whip.  They snarled
and fought in their harness despite the punishment which followed.  The
rear sled gained steadily.  Soon a voice like a clear silver bell hailed
Britton.

"Wait!" she commanded.  "I’ll take my turn. Your dogs are weakening.  I
should have come to the front sooner, only I must travel all night and
need to spare my team."

"I’m all right," Britton shouted back.  "Laurance’s cabin is my stop.
The huskies will last."

"I insist," the girl cried, urging her animals so that they nosed the
packs on Britton’s sleigh.

"And I refuse," he called over his shoulder. "You shouldn’t be on this
trail anyway.  It’s not safe to travel alone.  You’re surely not mad
enough to attempt a night trip?"

The girl straightened her shoulders haughtily, and the face, framed in a
white-furred hood, took on a dignity which would have been lost on the
man had not the physical beauty of the countenance forced its
impression.

"Let me pass!" she tersely commanded, pulling her dogs into the powdery
snow at one side of Britton’s packed trail.

"Pass me, then," he said, a little nettled, and forced his team to
topmost speed.

Invited into a race, the girl soon showed the mettle of herself and of
her animals.  Before Britton reached the river-arm, she drew abreast.
The trail sloped downward, and the dogs had but little to stay their
lope.  The two teams raced side by side, the leaders snapping at each
other.

[Illustration: "The two teams raced side by side, the leaders snapping
at each other."]

"They’ll fight in a minute and pile us both up," the girl cried
excitedly.

Britton, gazing on her face, was struck with an old, poignant pain.  For
a second, he thought it was Maud Morris.  The features were there; the
same teeth, the same rose-hued cheeks, the same sunny hair about the
temples!  The resemblance was remarkable, and, forgetting the swift
descent, Britton stared.

Gaucho, over-zealous to maim the rival leader, stumbled, and a spill
seemed imminent, but Britton’s skilful lash sorted him out, thereby
increasing the momentum of the train till the teams rushed neck and neck
again.

"It’s a dead heat," he said grimly.  "We had better slacken speed before
we cross the ice or neither sleigh will go any farther."

"Agreed," smiled the hooded beauty, reining in.  Her color was
heightened by the ride, and, as she pushed the furry fringes from her
mouth to admit of freer breathing, Britton could have sworn it was the
face of Maud Morris.  Only, the eyes had a serene depth of expression
which bespoke soul and purity.  Therein lay the difference!

"Say," he began, confusedly, "you’re like–you’re the perfect mould of
someone I know. Her name is Morris.  Ah!  I have it now!  Such likeness
can’t exist without sisterhood.  You’re a sister of Maud Morris!"  His
voice was intense in its eagerness.

"I am not!" came the decidedly staccato answer, tinged with contempt.
"Be careful," she added warningly.  "There’s a jam on this arm."  They
were sweeping the frozen river-bed, bumping over the jutting
ice-boulders piled chaotically in a bend of the stream.

Britton took the lead, swinging briskly across the jam.  The girl
shouted a warning at his evident carelessness.

"Do be cautious," she begged.  "The fresh snow masks the water-holes in
treacherous bridges, and the current here is very swift."

Britton loped on without heed.  The girl screamed, a second later.
Without warning one runner of the foremost sled cut across a snow-arched
slush-hole.  Britton pitched backwards, splashing through the sloppy
mask as a stone drops through scummy ooze.

The girl was at the place in three dog-leaps. A dull blotch of open
water showed where the man had disappeared.  She jerked her sled
sidewise, as an anchor for her weight, grasped a runner with one hand,
and lowered her body as far as possible, searching with despairing
glances for a reappearing head.  She gave a low cry of agony when
nothing showed, and began probing wildly with her whip.  Its butt-end
fell across the taut ropes of Britten’s sled, and, looking up, the girl
saw the dogs in a heap, well-nigh strangled with the tension on the
collars. There was something on the other end!

She grasped the ropes and pulled with all the strength of one arm.
After what seemed an age of straining, Britton’s black gauntlet pierced
the slush.  The lines were twisted tightly round his wrist, and the girl
frantically seized it. However, the effort was useless.  By the
passiveness of the limb she knew him to be either stunned or drowned,
and past helping himself, while her strength could not stir him.

Relaxing her grip, she pulled herself up the side of the hole, ran to
Britton’s team, and lashed it into activity in spite of the cramping
collars. In terror the huskies responded with their supreme efforts, but
they could not draw out their master.

In hysterical sobbing now the girl brought her own dogs, hitched them
ahead, and slashed the double team till the cruel whip flayed their
hides. To her blows she added prayers breathed between terrified sobs.

At last the string of tortured dogs broke out the sagging, anchoring
thing, and Britton’s senseless body rolled into view with startling
suddenness.  The animals, at the quick release, dragged it clear of the
river before the girl could stop them.

Laurance’s cabin showed just around the bend. In a new lease of strength
the feminine rescuer rolled the man’s body on his sleigh.  Calling to
her own team to follow, she made a dash for the shelter of the cabin.

The headland reeled away; the ice-gaps ran past till she drew up with a
swirl in front of Laurance’s.  A group of suspicious huskies, guarding
the door, howled dubiously and charged on the strange teams.  The girl
cracked skulls here and there in a frantic fashion.  The fear that they
might spring on the inert man possessed her, but in a second the clamor
reached Laurance by his fire.

The door clanged back.  Several oaths, puncturing the icy air like
pistol-cracks, were swallowed in a ridiculous gurgle when the old
Klondiker recognized the strange form as that of a woman.

"He’s drowned!" she screamed.  "Help him, for God’s sake!"

"Who?" bellowed Laurance, rushing out and kicking dogs right and left.
"By me oath, it’s Britton, Rex Britton!  Where’d you come on him, eh?"

"He fell in the river-jam!" she cried in unsuppressed irritation.
"Don’t talk–don’t question!  Do something!  It’s time that counts.
You’re losing time, man!"  Her voice filed off in an upper break which
told of racked nerves.

Laurance gripped Britton in his arms and made the house with some little
difficulty.  Rex was a heavy man, and a bulky fellow seems twice his own
weight when the muscles are so lax.

"I don’t think he’s drowned near so much as stunned," Laurance observed,
as he laid the body in a bunk behind the stove.  "Something’s hit him a
hefty blow there."  He touched Britton’s forehead where a dark bruise
showed.

"Nary a drown," he continued triumphantly, as he ran a hand under thick
Arctic clothing to feel the breast.  "His heart’s a-beatin’.  His ribs
heave some, too.  Nary a drown, I tell you. The crack on the coco done
the job, miss.  I’ll bring him round all up-to-date in a minnit or two."

The girl’s convulsive sobbing made Laurance look up in surprise.

"Don’t you go for to take on so," he begged. "You go quiet your nerves
and make summat hot in the kitchen room, for the cook’s away.  I’ll
dry-fix Britton, and he’ll drink pints of scaldin’ tea when he wakes."

The girl obeyed, eager to do anything that would help.  She busied
herself over the tea-making, and warmed some soup, made from moose
shoulder, which she found in the rough cupboard.  At intervals, however,
her anxiety overcame her, and she called to Laurance in the next room
with questions as to Britton’s condition.  Reassuring replies came back
in the Klondiker’s quaint vocabulary, replies that made her smile when
she could take her mind off Britton’s danger, since Laurance declared
there was no need to fear.

By the time she had the tea and soup ready, Laurance came into the
kitchen.

"He’s come to–sort of dazed, though," was his announcement.  "Got them
things hot?"

"Steaming!" she answered, turning from the stove.  The action brought
her face in close range of Laurance’s eyes.  The tears were dried,
disfiguring sobs gone.  The sparkle of the eye and the fire-tinged cheek
made a rare sight.  The old Klondiker gazed for a speechless minute,
while the girl’s color deepened.

"Say, now," he stammered at last, "if I’d never set eyes on the Rose of
the Yukon, I’d take me oath as you was her.  Blast me if you don’t
resemble her like a twin.  Where’re you from?"

"Dawson!–don’t bother me," the girl replied quickly.  "You are sure he
will be perfectly safe?  I wouldn’t like to think–you see, I believe it
was my fault.  I tempted him to race. He will take no harm?"

"Nary a bit," said Laurance, promptly. "He’ll be as right as a trivet
when he gets outside a good hot meal."

"Then give him these as soon as you like!"  She indicated the tea and
soup, and added: "I’ll thank you to tell him I’m sorry I was the cause
of his accident.  Just tell him I’m sorry."

Laurance caught up the boiling liquids in their respective vessels and
darted into the next room. Rex Britton’s senses were gradually steadying
themselves.  The hollow, rocky feeling was passing away.  In a dry suit
of Laurance’s he half reclined on the Alaska bunk, while the Klondiker
proceeded to administer to his needs by dipping out the necessary
nourishment.

"Where’s the girl?" asked Britton, awkwardly.

"Out in the kitchen!  Say, isn’t she a Jim-Cracker from
Jim-Crackerville, eh?  What’s her name?"

"Don’t know!" said Rex.  "Why didn’t you ask her?"

"Bless me,–I–forgot," admitted Laurance. "However, son, seein’ as you’re
summat interested, I’ll attend to this here enquiry–"

A jingle of bells and the movement of a dog-train outside clattered an
interruption.

"Hello!" exclaimed Laurance, jumping up. "Someone else blew in, eh?
Must be me day at home."  He crossed quickly to the door and flung it
open.

"Who’s arrived?" demanded Britton.

"H–l!" cried Laurance, in a non-committal fashion, and dashed into the
yard.

Vociferous shouting drifted in to Britton, and when the Klondiker
reappeared, he asked with a shade of anxiety: "Anything wrong out
there?"

"She’s gone," spluttered Laurance.  "She’s hiked with that bloody fast
team of hers."

Britton leaped from the bunk to the doorway. Around the bend of the
trail the girl’s outfit was disappearing.  Full of a strange thrill of
disappointment and sense of indignity, he turned the blame on Laurance.

"You blasted fool!" he roared, angrily.

"’Tain’t my fault," the Klondiker threw back.  "How’d I know she was
goin’ to vamoose?  Must ha’ thought we wasn’t respectable inhabitants."

"She said she intended to travel by night," explained Britton.  "I told
her it wasn’t safe, but she laughed.  I’m going after her!"

Jim Laurance put his back to the door with a certain grim determination.

"No, you ain’t," he said, quietly.  "Sift some sense into your cracked
head.  Them dogs are gee-whiners.  Yours wouldn’t catch ’em in a year.
No, siree!  That girl knows what she’s a-doin’.  She’s been on trails
afore this, and don’t you forgit it."

Britton sat down upon his bunk again, convinced of the futility of
trying to overtake the splendid team of the unknown beauty.  Laurance
came back from the door and replenished the fire.  His friend drank the
rest of the soup and tea in an absent manner.

"How do you shape?" asked Jim.

"Better," Rex grunted.

"Feel like a square meal?  It’ll skeer off the cold better’n slops.
They’re all right to prick your blood up, but they don’t last like a
stomachful of bull moose.  Heh?"

"Hardly," Britton agreed.  "Bring out your solid grub."

Laurance dived into the kitchen, returning with a big platter of
moosemeat and a tremendous slab of pilot bread.  He put on a fresh pot
of tea, and they fell to, munching in silence while dark crept under the
door and into the cabin corners.




                             CHAPTER VIII.


When the meal was finished, the cabin was wrapped in gloom.  Laurance
opened the stove door in order to save the expense of lighting a candle.
In the Yukon smaller things than candles count for much.  The firelight
blocked out the two men’s figures in a ruddy smudge of color.  Britton’s
massive frame showed larger by a half than the wiry figure of Jim
Laurance. But though not bulky, the latter’s muscles were of steel.  His
grizzled face was surmounted by stubby, iron-gray hair which met the
up-creep of a disreputable beard in front of his rat ears. The stolid
monochrome of a countenance was relieved only by the flash of two
piercing blue eyes and the cherry-red hue of a snub nose.  His lips were
seldom seen; they clung incessantly to his pipe-stem under cover of the
ragged whisker-growth.

Britton’s face, on the other hand, was a finely moulded one; the
harrying conditions and bitter routines of the North appeared to have
only conserved and augmented its strength.  A broad forehead, dark, fine
hair above, regular features, with chin and cheeks clean-shaven, and
white, even teeth showing when he smiled, made a pleasant picture in the
flame reflection.  His muscle-corded shoulders, sturdy neck, and square
chin gave evidence of combined physical and mental strength.

For a time the men smoked in silence, staring into the coals, each busy
with his own thoughts. Presently Britton spoke.

"Perhaps she’ll stay at Ainslie’s camp for the night," he said, more to
himself than to his companion.

"Got the girl on your brain yet?" chirped Laurance, mockingly.  "Kind of
heroine of a fair romance, ain’t she?  Sort of angelic saviour sent for
your special benefit, heh?  ’Spose you’d a-dropped into that hole if she
hadn’t been around?  Own up, now–honest Injun!"

"Can’t say," evaded Britton.  "I was thinking only of her safety.  We’re
all pretty rough characters up here, but there are some d–d rough ones
on this trail.  At Stewart River they told me that someone was robbing
caches by night between there and Dawson."

"The bloody cache-thief, or thieves," Laurance broke out–"they’ll swing
if we catch them!  Anderson’s cache, near Ainslie’s camp, was
sandpapered clean two nights ago–not a speck of anything left.  It’s
jumping-off time for the man who did that–when they spot him!"

"Suppose now–well, I’d hate to think of the girl meeting one of that
breed," Britton ventured.

"Don’t you fear," laughed Laurance.  "The man as puts hand on her will
catch a whole-fledged, fire-spittin’ Tartar.  What did I see in her neat
little belt when she loosed her coat in front of me fire?  An
ivory-heeled shootin’-iron, if you ast me.  Don’t worry, son.  Wimmen as
carries them things can use ’em.  If you met her on the trail and was on
evil bent she’d plug you quicker’n scat.  You’re d–d right.  She can go
through–if she wants to."

Something like a sigh heaved from Britton’s wide chest.  Laurance
thought there was relief in it.

"On course," he bantered, "you was thinkin’ of her safety.  You certain
had nary a thought of them red cheeks, them eyes, them lips–whoo!"

"Drop that!" Britton curtly ordered.  "You know women aren’t in my
line."

"Where’ve you been these last weeks?" Laurance asked, suddenly changing
the subject.

"Following a fool stampede up Forty Forks, beyond Lake Marsh."

"Hard luck again?"

"The worst."  Britton’s disconsolate tone told more than his brief
answer.

"What’s your latest idea?" his friend asked after a doubtful pause.

"I’ve word of something on Samson Creek. I’ll outfit at Dawson and try
for it.  The Government courier gave me the hint at Tagish Post. I
pulled him out of a cold bath he was taking in Lake Bennett once.  He
didn’t forget it."

"Humph!" Laurance growled, reaching for more wood and stoking up after
the old-timer’s fashion.

"It’s my last stampede," Britton continued in an odd, tense voice.  "I’m
nearly down and out, and I’m staking all.  If I fail this time, it’s
back over this cursed trail to Dyea on beans and horsehide.  I’ll wash
dishes in the scullery of a Puget Sound boat or do something of the
like. If I fail, Laurance, I’ll have seen the last of the Yukon."

"What brought you here, son?" asked Laurance, kindly.  He leaned forward
and put a hand on the younger man’s shoulder.  "What brought you to this
God-forsaken Yukon?" he repeated.  "I’ve heard of you playin’ a
hard-luck game on four stampedes.  You’ve took the bumps right along
like a vet’ran, but summat’s agin you.  You wasn’t bred to this here.
Your hands is too fine-shaped.  Your head’s too keen. Your speech is
high-flown.  Rex Britton, you turned your back on a better place in
England than you’ll light on here.  I’m certainly certain of that.  Tell
me why you come, son?"

A new light gleamed in Britton’s eyes.  His stern countenance softened
as under the influence of some far-away dream.  He got up and paced the
floor for a little.  Finally, he flung himself back in the chair with an
air of resignation.

"I’ve never told anyone here," he said, "but I’ll tell you, Jim.
Perhaps I don’t need to say it; of course, it was a woman.  The old, old
story!  I’m a strong man, Laurance, and I’d scorn to hold the feminine
sex responsible for my vicissitudes.  Still, as the philosophers have
it, ’In the beginning it was a woman.’  We’ll go to the starting line.
Listen!

"My family was one of the best in the old land.  It consisted of three
members, parents and myself.  Both parents are dead–as you know.  After
graduating from college, I commenced a tour of the Orient, for
recreation mostly.  The patrimony left me was small, but I was heir to
my uncle, who owns Britton Hall, the Sussex estate, and a post in the
foreign diplomatic service was waiting for me when I should come back.

"Getting quickly to the point, I rescued a wonderfully attractive woman
on a sinking vessel in the harbor of Algiers.  I believe I cracked some
Berber skulls in the process, and got a knife-thrust through the
shoulder muscles in return.

"She bound the wound, Laurance, and nursed it, lingering in Algiers for
that purpose.  Our meetings were hourly, you might say!  I had my
uncle’s yacht at my disposal, and all the delights of the capital
invited our participation, so you may judge that the days and nights
passed very pleasantly.

"I had friends there whom I should have considered, but I neglected them
in the other fascination; for it was fascination, Jim–the kind of
beautiful web that the spider spins."  Britton paused with a snappy
intake of breath while Laurance, unwilling to interrupt, swung the stove
door to and fro with a moccasined foot.

"You know the atmosphere of romance surrounding any such happening,"
Britton finally went on.  "The lady was beautiful, marvellously so, in
fact, and well versed in worldly artifice. I was still young enough to
have the rainbow focus on life.  The days went quickly in the
picturesque port.  The girl–she told me she was twenty-four and
unmarried–remained in the place, recuperating from the shock of her
accident.  What’s the use of elaborating, though! You know how a love
dream grows, Jim Laurance.  You must have had one somewhere in your own
old, grizzled existence.  Algiers is sunny.  The flowers are fragrant
there.  Love feeds on sun and flowers, moon and mountains, starry
nights, and all that.  I was young, Laurance, and she was old in the
craft.  Could you blame me for being such a fool?  Sometimes I hardly
blame myself.

"For nearly a mouth things developed.  We were engaged.  That city by
the Mediterranean became a Paradise for me.  Then–then–"  Britton’s
voice broke away in bitterness.

"Then what?" his friend prompted.

"Her husband came hunting for her!"

"H–l!" Laurance gritted.  His feet fell to the floor with a bang.  "She
duped you!" he added, softly.

"Sheared the lamb," Britton, said, with severe, self-directed irony.
"The whole affair came out.  Her husband tried to shoot me. Instead, I
laid him up for weeks.  Then they came at me for damages, and the
she-devil framed a charge of seduction.  I was the sensation of courts
and yellow journals for half a year. When I got clear at last, the
attendant circumstances worked their effect.  The thing smirched my name
and killed my diplomatic chances.  It ruined my life when it was
brightest with promise.  It caused my uncle to disinherit and wash his
hands of me.  That’s why I cut the Isles, Laurance.  That’s why I’m
here."

Britton rose to his towering height, with clenched hands, as if he were
beginning the fight with the North, as if he were storming the Yukon’s
iron fastness for the first time. Laurance could picture him thus,
setting foot on bleak Dyea beach.  The old Klondiker took his pipe out
of his mouth and forgot to replace it. In lieu of that he reached a
knotted fist to Britton’s palm.

"Son, I’m sorry," he said.  This from a hardened Alaskan was much, for
in that country, as a rule, no one is sorry for any person but himself.
There, in a running fight, it is every man for his own interests, and
the devil take the laggards and the weak!

"Do you love her?" Laurance ventured, a second later.

"I’m cured," Britton laughed, bitterly. "Hasn’t the draught been strong
enough?"

The old man returned his pipe-stem to his lips.  "Better a good
burn-out," he mumbled, "the rubbish won’t catch sparks agin.  What was
her name?"

"Maud Morris, wife of Christopher Morris," his friend answered.  "I saw
a man who knew them when I came through Winnipeg.  He told me that
Morris had gone all to pieces through drink and fast living.  At that
time they had come direct to Seattle.  I don’t know where they are
now–and don’t care to know!"

Britton settled back in his seat and refilled his pipe.  The recounting
of his story had been in some measure a relief, although the old taste
of rancid memory remained.

"You’re well out of it, son," Laurance observed, after another vigorous
stoking of the stove.  "You’re bloody well clear, though you’ve stumped
through such a hard-luck siege.  I hope your last deal pans out some
better.  I’d hate to see you fall down.  You’re too good a man."

"Have you met Pierre Giraud lately?" Britton inquired.  "I wonder if
he’d join me.  We’ve tramped many a trail together."

"Pierre’s due here to-night," Laurance said quickly.  "He won’t join
you, though.  He has a fine thing toting the goods of some Dawson big
gun out to Thirty Mile River.  His royal nibs is going out–bound for the
States–and he has Giraud under contract to pack him along."

"Too bad," Britton mused.  "Pierre’s worth three ordinary men en route.
Many’s the mile we’ve paddled, and many’s the moose we’ve missed.  _Bon
camarade_ is Giraud, if there was ever one."

"I saw him beat two blaggards on the stampede into Nome," Laurance began
reminiscently. "The guys started in to argue the right of way with
Pierre.  Weighty beggars they was, too, but Giraud put ’em both out of
action in ten seconds.  Shiftiest man on the route, less it’s yourself,
Britton."

Rex shook his head as disclaiming the honor. Outside a shrill howl broke
the night silence and started a hundred echoes.  Rex lifted his head
sharply.

"What’s the matter with the husky?" he asked.  "The moon’s not up."

"Someone’s coming," Laurance answered, listening intently to a musical
sound.

The faint tinkle of bells grew clearer.  The rushing sound of a laden
dog-train made the cabin walls vibrate.

"_Arrêtes!_" commanded a leonine voice in the yard, and the noise died
suddenly.

"It’s Pierre," cried Laurance, jumping to his feet.




                              CHAPTER IX.


The door was kicked open without ceremony, and Pierre’s head popped in.

"Hello, you young cheechako!" yelled Britton, gaily.

"_Holá! mon camarade_, you tam ole stampeder!" cried Giraud, rushing in
with outstretched hands.  "By de gar, Ah nevaire t’ink Ah find you here.
Ah s’pose you seex hondred mile back–_saprie_, yes."  He pulled off his
Arctic hood, disclosing a veritable voyageur’s head, handsome, debonair,
crowned with coal-black curls and lightened by the ever-changing play of
his fine eyes, sombre-hued as his hair. Pierre’s face was full of a
certain reckless beauty, and riveted attention by his daring,
wilderness-bred fascination.  Camaraderie spilled out of his infectious
laugh and his habitant speech.

Thus the two friends remained, the one sitting, the other standing,
raking each other with volleys of cross-questions.  They talked like a
pair of chattering jays, trying to gather in the threads of the more
recent incidents that had befallen each, till Laurance interrupted them.

"Sit down and eat," he said to Pierre, "I’ll unhitch your team."

It was then the current of excitement, which Giraud appeared to have
difficulty in suppressing, burst to the surface.  He sprang to
Laurance’s side and caught his arm.

"_Non, non!_" he exclaimed.  "Wait wan leetle w’ile.  Ah breeng news.
We want dat sled sure t’ing.  De cache-thief–you hear of heem?"

Laurance’s keen blue eyes flashed.  "Is he pinched?" he cried, eagerly.
"Have you seen him?"

Britton rose from his chair in vague alarm. He was thinking of the girl
travelling alone over the trail.  "Speak, Pierre," was his tart order,
"you know something.  Out with it!"

"You leesten den," Giraud began, excitedly. "Ah come by de cache on
Silver Hollow _après_ de dark she fall.  Wat t’ink Ah find?  De cache
broken open.  De stuff all gone to _diable_.  Dat thief not ver’ far
away–Ah know dat for sure t’ing by de tracks.  Ah t’ink we get fresh
dogs here an’ catch heem–catch heem!"  Pierre jumped about and
flourished his brawny arms in emphasis.

"Anderson he geeve reward," he continued.

"How much?" Britton broke in, a new incentive gripping him.

"Wan t’ousand tollars to de mans w’at catch dis _canaille_–"

"Come on," roared his friend, jumping into his travelling-gear.  "Come
on, Pierre; we’ll pull down that thousand."

He was at the door in a second, calling to his huskies.  Giraud ran
after, boiling with impatience.

"Hold on!" called Laurance.  "Though I’d like to be in on this job, I
can’t leave my cabin–not with Mister Feather-Fingers dabbling about, and
the cook’s over at Stewart for grub."

"Jove!  I forgot that," said Britton, hooking up his team.  "It’s rather
a shame, Jim.  We’d like to have you come."

"Can’t," Laurance grunted, dismally.  "Still, you can have my dogs.
Snap ’em on ahead.  If it comes to speedin’, you’ll catch a runaway
easier."  He ordered the big animals out, and Rex prepared to harness
them ahead of his own.

"It’s a long string," he said, dubiously. "They’ll take some managing."

"Wait," commanded Pierre.  "Ah feex dat. Ah have de double yoke."

He pulled a double pack outfit from his sled and selected the harness,
tracing the dogs up in pairs.  Three minutes more and they were gliding
over the trail, leaving Laurance watching from the mellow blur of his
firelit doorway.

"Did you meet a sled drawn by five dogs?" Britton asked, as they sped
over the smooth plateau beyond Laurauce’s.

"_Oui_," answered Pierre.  "Ah meet wan an’ pass heem on de Grand
Reedge."

"Stop?"

"_Non_.  De mans nevaire speak.  He hurry, mebbe."

"It was a girl!" said Britton, abruptly.

"_Ciel!_" gasped Pierre, in surprise.  "Wat tell _moi_?  She drive lak
_diable_."

"Yes," Britton assented, "the dogs were very fast.  She had mine beaten
before we came to Laurance’s.  Of course, that was my stop."

Giraud’s elbow gave a warning prod to his companion’s ribs as they slid
down Silver Hollow to the place which the voyageur had mentioned.

It was a cache built after the manner of the North for storing purposes
or for preserving baggage for future freighting.  Anderson had used it
for years and had never before experienced any trouble with pillagers.
Indeed, the inexorable law of Yukon miners was sufficient to make any of
the light-handed gentry think twice before opening a cache.  This was
one of the crimes for which swift justice was meted.

Britton and the voyageur examined the snow-bound hummock carefully,
lighting a torch to scrutinize the tell-tale tracks in the wind-screened
valley.  The imprints were very fresh, and had evidently been made by
one man with a dog-train.

During the momentary investigation Britton’s thoughts revolved swiftly.
From the amount of goods stolen, he judged that the robber did not
intend travelling far.  Probably he had in view some secret cache where
he could hide the plunder till an opportunity of getting rid of portions
of it should be presented.

"Did you notice the little cache by the stream when you came over Grand
Ridge?" Britton asked.

"_Certainement!_" Pierre answered.  "She be not touched.  Ah look for
dat."

"Then the fellow must be working on the in-trail.  He never passed
Laurance’s.  He never passed you.  You’re sure the fast five-dog team
was the only one you met?"

"Tam sure," Pierre vigorously asserted.  "Ah have de sharp eyes!"

"In that case he must have left the route somewhere between Laurance’s
and Grand Ridge.  He wouldn’t go far with such a bulk of stuff.  We have
to find his track where he left the main trail.  The moon’s just up.  In
ten minutes it will be as clear as day.  This is our chance for five
hundred apiece.  We earn it between here and Grand Ridge.  Whip up those
dogs!"

Britton’s tone was exultant.  To the spice of adventure in running down
a contemptible thief was added the lure of the reward which Anderson had
offered.  He needed that five hundred! In fact, it would be like money
from home just at the critical juncture of his last stampede. His funds
were barely sufficient to provide a proper outfit for the arduous trip
up Samson Creek.  This wind-fall–if the breeze held his way–would remedy
the deficit in the budget.

Pierre, with all the craft of the old musher, had his dogs well in hand,
and the long walrus-hide whip sang out with a final snap at the ears of
the leaders that sent them loping like a whirlwind.  The voyageur
scanned one side of their route for any signs of a dog-train having
turned off the beaten path.  Britton watched the other side closely.
The brilliance of the moon turned the whole frozen expanse of country
into a white blanket, with here and there a soiled spot, which was the
dark-green of scrubby thickets.

The rush of frosty air bit the men’s cheeks. Odd little cadences, torn
out of fleeting space, whined shrilly in their ears.  White smoke of
dog-breath blew back in cloud patches to mingle with the hoar of their
own lungs.  The exhilarating, electrifying flight through the Arctic
atmosphere made the blood rush with all its virility through their lusty
veins.

"We must be nearing Grand Ridge," Britton said at last, in a low tone.
"Nothing has left the trail on my side so far."

"_Non_," muttered Giraud, "she be de same on dis side."

Britton was lying out as far as possible, watching past the dogs as they
swung down by the little cache near the Ridge.  Suddenly he uttered a
half-suppressed exclamation.

"The rascal’s left the trail here," he confided to Pierre.  "Hold on;
we’re past it.  Rein in your dogs.  There, off to the left!  That’s his
track.  It leads down to the little cache.  I can see something moving.
Maybe the beggar’s looting it, too."  He stood up, balancing himself
deftly in order to see the better.  Acting on a swift impulse, he threw
his hands up to his mouth in trumpet-fashion and gave a loud hail.

"Hello!–the cache," he bawled.  "Who’s down there?"

An oath came back in answer.  There was a scuttering through the snow,
the frantic cracking of a whip, whining of punished dogs, and the
desperate rush of a loaded sled.

"Caught red-handed!" roared Britton.  "Cut him off, Pierre.  He’s trying
to make the beaten trail."

Giraud whipped his dogs up, running at an angle to the fugitive
dog-train.  The plunderer had reckoned badly in trying this mode of
escape.  His one team and laden sleigh struck only a snail’s pace
compared with the speed of Pierre’s double team and empty sled.  The
voyageur’s mad driving caught him before he reached the main trail.
Whooping aloud, Pierre drove his galloping animals right on top of the
other’s dogs, anchoring them there in the loose side-snow to snarl and
battle in the traces.

Britton and the voyageur leaped off and made for the piled-up packs on
which the strange driver was seated.  Realizing that he was thus
suddenly brought to bay, the fellow rose to his feet and whirled the
butt-end of his whip aloft. "Stay back, curse you!" he cried.

"Better give in," Britton warned him.  "It’s best for you."  He jumped
upon the rear bundles of the sled.

A vicious blow of the whip was the answer, but Rex was watchful.  He
caught the descending wrist, back-tripped the ruffian with a swift leg
movement, and choked resistance out of him.

"I think he’ll be quiet now," he said to Pierre.  "Strap his limbs.
That will do.  Let’s have a look at him."  The moonlight failed to
reveal much of the man’s appearance except that his face looked more
like that of a beaten dog than anything else.

"Smells like a distillery," Rex commented, turning his nose away.  "He’s
been well primed for this job."

"Were we tak’ heem?" asked Pierre, more material in thought.

Britton considered the matter for a short moment.

"We’ll have to take him back to Laurance’s and watch him by turns," he
finally said.  "I can pack the rascal on to Ainslie’s Camp to-morrow and
collect my half of the reward from Charlie Anderson.  He can pay you a
like amount on your return trip from Thirty Mile. How does that suit?"

"_Bon_, for sure t’ing," Pierre returned.  "Ah t’ink dat suit me bully.
Mak’ de five hondred ver’ easy."

"Anderson will think it’s well worth it for the return of his goods with
the gentleman on top," observed Britton.  "Turn your outfit, and I’ll
load this Whiskey-John into the empty sleigh.  Whoa!  Easy–that’s
correct, _bon camarade_!  Go ahead now.  I’ll follow with the
contraband."

There was no jingle of bells, nothing but the sober plunging of the
sleds as the two dog-trains filed back to Laurance’s cabin on Indian
River.




                               CHAPTER X.


"So you’ve captured the condemned parasite!" cried Jim Laurance, as the
returning ones reached his yard.

"_Certainement_! tam sure t’ing," Pierre assured him, with a burst of
good humor.  "Wat Ah tell you?–we catch heem!  _Saprie_, yes–on de
leetle cache _par le_ Grand Reedge–_n’est-ce-pas_, Rex, _mon camarade_?"

"That’s correct," laughed Britton, "we hit it just right!  A little
later and we should have had a stern chase.  Make a jail, Laurance, to
hold the rascal."

"Roll him in by the stove," ordered Jim.  "He won’t give us any ha-ha.
I’ll bet me best mukluks on that."  Presently, as the man was taken
inside and the bonds loosed, he added: "Don’t calculate for a minnit you
can vamoose–for you truly can’t.  Me Winchester’ll stop such tom-fool
notions."  Laurance pointed to the sinister-outlined rifle above the
door.

When the light fell upon the captive’s features, the two men who had
brought him in recoiled involuntarily.

"_Le diable_!" hissed Giraud, as if some hideously unpleasant truth were
forcing its utterance in spite of him.

"The devil!" echoed Britton; "that’s it, Pierre.  No more fitting
description could be given.  Look at the high cheekbones, vulture-shaped
features, and hellish eyes.  Good Lord, Jim, did you ever see such an
ugly man?"

Rex backed to a seat and began to divest himself of his outer garments,
all the while regarding the cache-thief with critical eyes in which a
light of discovery was dawning.

"Looks like a cross ’tween a ’Frisco wharf-rat and a Nome claim-jumper,"
Laurance averred. "Say, mister, was you ever forty-second cook round a
scullery?–’cause you smells it!"

The captive vouchsafed no reply.  He sat with his Satanic-shaped head
buried between narrow shoulders.  The firelight licked his face at
intervals, strengthening its horrible grotesqueness.

"W’iskey mak’ heem talk," Pierre declared. "Got de fire-wataire, M’sieu
Laurance?"

"Yes," said Jim, "but it’s too blasted dear to waste on that trash.  I
wouldn’t give him Seattle sas’priller.  Don’t matter a crow-bait whether
he talks or not.  He’ll get his own at Ainslie’s to-morrer."

Britton came to the stove and gazed earnestly at the huddled heap on the
floor.

"Look up, man," he said roughly, but the bloodshot eyes refused to meet
his own.

"It’s no use," Rex continued, with a cynical laugh.  "I know
you–Morris!"

The sudden revelation had its effect.  The man sprang up with a snarl of
rage.  His eyes glittered malevolently–-straight into Britton’s now. He
appeared about to fly at his captor’s throat.

Pierre, ignorant of the cause of the thief’s sudden activity, likened
him to a gaunt wolf at bay before a big bull moose.  So the pair seemed.

"I think he will talk," Britton said slowly. "He knows who I am now.
Yes–I think he will talk."

"D–d if I do," came from the thief.  The first words he had spoken
sounded like a husky’s gurgle when the collar nearly chokes him.

"Don’t be so fast with denial," urged Britton, smoothly.  "When you have
heard the option, perhaps your opinion will suddenly change."  He looked
at Laurance for an instant, debating with himself.  The Klondiker was in
a deep and apparently uninterested silence.

"It’s Morris, Jim!  Christopher Morris–the man I spoke of, you remember?
His attitude just now is suspicious.  I don’t know how long he has been
in the Yukon, or what he is doing here, but I cannot understand his
present escapade.  There’s something behind it."  Britton paused and
allowed his keen, searching glance to wander back to the repulsive
figure of Morris.

"I was about to give you an option," he resumed.  "I think Laurance will
second my guarantee of a lightening of the punishment the miners will
hand out.  My proposition, in brief, is this: Tell us what you know,
what your game is, who is behind you, and what is their object–tell us
this, I say, and you’ll only be flogged instead of hanged."

Britton’s meaning came out clear and sharp to the victim of drink.  He
shivered a little and pulled himself to his knees.  There was a hint of
supplication in the position, but this his captor ignored.

Laurance coughed apologetically, in expiation of his silence.

"You want to make sure of that?" he questioned.

"Yes," answered Rex.  "I know Morris through and through.  In my long
battle in the courts I came to read the man like a book.  I can sense
his subtleties and under-purposes.  I learned to do that, Jim, in the
hardest school of the world–the law-courts.  I am almost certain that he
is in league, or worse–in bondage. Shall we guarantee him this?"

Laurance consulted his pipe for a long minute. Then he flashed up his
eyes in acquiescence.

"Go ahead!" he grunted.  "I guess we can make it even with Anderson."

Britton confronted Morris once more, and drove his words home with
sledgehammer effect.

"Take your choice!" he said.  "Keep silent and hang–you know they’ll do
it at Ainslie’s–or speak and get off with a flogging.  Which? And be
quick!  We want to sleep here.  Half the night has already gone."

Morris, the derelict, instinctively felt himself on the edge of things.
His wits were not yet so liquor-dulled but that he could see the fate
awaiting him at the camp.  He knew the stern code of the North–rough but
effective.  Fortune had played him a miserable turn, and, if he did not
catch at the proffered hope, she would sing his death-knell, rollicking
heartlessly.

He collapsed suddenly from his kneeling posture and half lay on the
rough floor within the stove’s circle of warmth.

"What do you want to know?" he asked doggedly.

"Are you prepared to speak plainly and truthfully?  No lies, remember!"

"Yes, that is–"

"No parleying," roared Britton.  "I want some sleep for the trail
to-morrow.  You have to tell all I want to know in five minutes or not
at all.  Ready?"  His words dropped bullet-like.

"Go on," Morris cried, with an assumption of recklessness; "d–d if I
care.  And hell take the other fellow.  It’s a case of life or death.
Open up, Britton!"

"When’d you come?"

"By boat last summer to Dyea and thence to Dawson."

"Wife with you?"  Britton’s teeth ground over the sentence.

"Yes," was the sneering answer.

"For what did you come?"

"Gold!"

Rex Britton laughed harshly.  "To be picked up anywhere, anyhow!" was
his comment.  "By man and wife–mostly by the wife!"

His tone, however, changed to a cold, metallic timbre when he asked:

"Who planned this cache game?"

"Simpson."

"Good heavens!–he’s here, eh?  Still," with another harsh laugh, "I
might have known that when your wife was in the vicinity."

Turning to Laurance, he explained: "Simpson is a lawyer–counsel for
Morris in the case against me–and an especial friend of Mrs. Morris."

"What does Simpson want?" was his next question to the tool.

"Money," said Morris.

"That’s a lie," cried Britton, advancing fiercely.  "He wanted the goods
and supplies for a purpose.  Money’s procured by him in an easier way.
But stampeders’ supplies have no pecuniary equivalent in Dawson now.
You see there hasn’t been a steamer up-river for long enough.  They tell
me Dawson has been lately iron-bound.  Now let us know what Simpson was
going to do with the goods.  You’ll swing if you don’t."

"He’s going to prospect."

"Where?"

"On–on Samson Creek, where the rest are going."

"Big outfit for one man, isn’t it?  The contents of three caches!"
Britton’s casual remark held a taunt and a hidden meaning.

"He’s taking men with him–to stake other claims for him.  That’s why–"

"Ah!  I see," Britton interrupted.  "When does he leave?"

"Right away."

"Funny act, that," put in Laurance, with a smile and wink.

"Yes," Rex agreed, the smile reflecting itself on his wholesome face.
"Morris, you’re only a fool in this country, and you can’t see much
significance in your statements.  I take the liberty of telling you that
there is a great significance in those few words.  Old-timers have no
difficulty in seeing far.  Simpson, by the way, must have become more
rapidly acclimatized–or else he has been at the game in other mining
territories. Pierre, what motive has the man who organizes a toughs’
stampede ahead of the spring rush to ground which is partially staked?"

"He t’ink he joomp de claims," asserted Pierre, promptly.  "Dat tam sure
t’ing!"

Laurance laughed at the sudden start and guilty shrinking of Morris.

"Why, a kid could spot that," the old Klondiker assured him.  "Simpson,
this law-juggler as Britton speaks of, gets the nerve to jump likely
claims on Samson Creek.  It’s just as well he’s found out.  If he had
per-sum-veered he’d surely got jumped hisself–at the jumpin’-off
station.  I’m certainly certain of that! How-sum-do-ever, as me friend
here goes vamoosin’ into Dawson shortly, he’ll put a handspike in Mr.
Simpson’s choo-choo gear."

Britton got up and shook himself as a great, shaggy bear stretches its
muscles.

"That’s all for to-night," he yawned.  "The saggy trail made me sleepy.
But take my advice, Morris, and cut away from Simpson.  You’re not bound
by ties unbreakable–yet you soon will be. And that’s saying a good deal
if you stop to analyze it.  Let’s roll up, Pierre!"

"_Oui_," cried Giraud, slinging out the blankets. "Ah dream w’at Ah get
wit’ dat five hondred."  In the height of his buoyancy he broke forth in
song, and, while Britton dropped to sleep, Pierre’s voice rang up to the
ceiling in the tune:

    "En roulant ma boule roulante,
    En roulant ma boule–
    Derrièr’ chez-nous y-a-t-un ’ètang
    En roulant ma boule!"




                              CHAPTER XI.


A great commotion stirred Ainslie’s camp on the following afternoon.
The narrow passages, called streets, between ugly log and canvas
buildings were thronged with heterogeneous concourses of miners and
others.  They moved back and forth along the pounded trail from
restaurants and stores to the bunk-houses, from bunk-houses to
dance-halls or riotous saloons, and an air of expectancy pervaded the
movements of everyone within the camp’s confines.

Outside Anderson’s cabin the crowd began to concentrate, talking in
incessant murmurs, while all eyes were fixed upon the closed door.  A
trial was going on inside.  The news had spread through Ainslie’s that
the cache-thief had been taken and was now up before a miners’ meeting.
Word passed from man to man, and the throng continually grew in volume.

Presently Anderson’s door swung open.  Those who had sat in tribunal
poured out with the prisoner in their midst.

Jim Laurance inhaled a deep breath and drew the fur cap down over his
damp brow as he slouched along beside Rex Britton.

"That was a close thing," he growled.  "Don’t ast me no more to stick in
me chin for a slim-finger!  I don’t much fancy these free-for-all
fights."

It was evident that the discussion inside had waxed hot and that only a
slender margin saved the neck of Chris Morris.

The latter walked, with bent head, inside the solid phalanx of grim
miners, among whom burly Charlie Anderson was chief.  The face of Morris
showed ashy gray in fear, and his eyes rolled back like a negro’s as he
shambled along, gazing at the ground, because the thought of looking for
an avenue of escape was worse than futile.

The waiting mass of people gave vent to long-suppressed expectancy when
Morris appeared. A loud shout rose up, and everybody rushed after the
cordon which surrounded the cache-thief.  It moved to the centre of the
camp, where a large hitching-post, bearing a red cloth sign advertising
Laggan’s dance-hall, stood up at the side of the winding trail that
served for Main Street.

The impatient spectators ranged themselves in lines that broke and
shifted as they strove for better vantage-ground.  Some, to obtain a
clearer view, ran and climbed upon the low roofs of the log cabins, upon
the verandah of the dance-hall, and the porch of a store just opposite.
Women were mixed in with the male gathering, some with knee-length
skirts and fringed leggings, and others dressed outright in men’s
garments.

On every hand was unpitying condemnation for the thief.  He was scowled
at and spat upon, for pillaging is considered the most contemptible
thing in the North.

When the cordon halted at the hitching-post, Morris received a rude
jostling from the crowd till Charlie Anderson forced the encroachers
aside.

"Lynch him!  Lynch him!" was the cry, vociferated in a deep, guttural
roar which made Morris tremble.

Anderson shook his head and bellowed at the bystanders.

"No, boys," he shouted, "we’re going to do as Laurance says and give him
a chance.  Make room, there!"

The sullen onlookers obeyed, leaving an open spot at the post which held
Morris and another man, a thick-set fellow with a walrus-hide whip in
his hand.  Tense silence oppressed the spectators, contrasting
strikingly with their former growls of impatience.

"Strip!" commanded the hard voice of Anderson.

Morris removed his outer coat, or parka, and a woolen vest.

"Go on," was the curt order.

The buckskin shirt came off, and the thick Arctic undergarment.  He
stood, bare to the middle against the cutting breeze, shaking from both
cold and fright.

"Now," said Anderson, nodding to the stout man with the whip, before he
stepped back among the gaping people.

The man tied Morris to the post by his wrists, took up a position four
feet from the prisoner, and applied the whining lash.

Half a dozen times it descended, flaying the flesh, while not a sound
arose from the crowd. At the seventh stroke, Morris groaned, pitched
forward, and hung limply in his fetters.

"That’s enough," cried Britton, vehemently. "Can’t you see he has
fainted?"

A team of horses pulled up with a jangle of bells in the trail.  Some
woman’s gauntlet, flying through the frosty air, struck Rex a stinging
blow upon the cheek.

"Ho! ho!" laughed a coarse fellow at his elbow, "so the Rose of the
Yukon’s down on you, eh?  Or maybe it’s a love-tap."

Rex looked between the disordered ranks of roughly-clad miners straight
into the flaming eyes of Maud Morris, where she sat behind Simpson’s
spanking grays, in Simpson’s luxuriously robed sleigh, beside the
fur-coated, well-groomed Simpson himself.

Her furious glance transfixed Britton and then darted off, tangent-like,
to the clamorous group on his left, where three miners had revived
Morris with a stimulant and assisted him to an erect posture.

The bare back of Chris Morris was a raw, red patch, and he quivered
convulsively as the sifting hill-wind bit into the bleeding stripes,
while his custodians replaced shirts, vest, and parka upon his body.

Maud Morris’s second glove followed the first, striking Britton rudely
in the mouth.

"You beast!" she screamed impotently.  "This is your doing, I hear!"

Rex ground the gauntlets into the beaten, tobacco-stained snow under his
feet.

"Be thankful that Morris lives," was his heated answer.  "They swore he
must swing and fought against the commuting of his sentence. It was a
tight pinch, but Laurance and I managed to pull it off at last."

The miners led Morris past and bade him take the trail.

"Hit it fur the high places," they said, "an’ don’t never show yer mug
in this camp agin, or, s’help us, we’ll shoot ye like a dawg!"

It was justice, the stern, unsmoothed judgment of the North, and Morris,
the derelict who had reached the lowest limit of his downward
tendencies, stumbled along the trail in the direction of Dawson, a
marked man in the eyes of all.

His wife by law looked to Britton as he had last seen her in her boudoir
at the big English hotel on the Mustapha Supérieure in Algiers. Her face
was the same bright, hard mask of hatred, and her soulless eyes burned.
He noted that she was looking older, her stamp becoming more brazen, her
beauty lessening, because the dust of fascination no longer blinded his
vision. The presence of the girl he had met by Indian River dwelt in
Britton’s mind, a presence moulded in a confusingly exact counterpart of
Maud Morris.  He remembered her fresh, childish innocence and pretty
modesty, and he knew that in outward perfections alone the counterpart
equalled the original.  While he surveyed the woman before him, he was
certain that the straightforward character of his unknown was as
different from Maud Morris’s deceptive disposition as chastity is
different from shame.

The knowledge was very consoling to a heart still void, and Britton
wondered, with an involuntary throb, if he would ever find the nameless
girl who had saved his life on the Indian River ice-bridge.

"You look as if I were someone else with whom you are genuinely
pleased," Maud Morris said savagely, shrewdly reading his expression.

Britton’s whole countenance lighted as he smiled.

"Do I?" he asked pleasantly.  "That is because I have found your
superior!"

She bit her lip to check an unwomanly expletive, and the mantling red in
her cheeks gave Britton full satisfaction.  He strode to Grant Simpson’s
side of the sleigh and tapped the sleeve of his rich, fur-lined
overcoat.

"By the way, Simpson," he warned, "don’t try that game on Samson Creek.
It was quite a frame-up you planned for those who have already staked
in, but Morris gave it all away."

Grant Simpson squirmed among the bear robes in a startled fashion, and
his thin, effeminate face lost color.

"What do you mean?" he demanded, scanning Britton narrowly.

"Only this–if you dare show your nose on the Creek for any reason
whatever, I’ll tell the miners things that will make them swing you
higher than Moosehide Mountain.  Of course, Morris can’t go in on any
strike now.  They wouldn’t countenance it for a moment!"

Simpson’s awe gave way to blind anger.  He struck at Britton with his
silver-mounted whip, to find it promptly torn from his grasp.  Rex
touched the grays on the flanks with it, and the team dashed down the
Dawson trail with Simpson sawing on their heads.  Britton laughed
harshly as they went, and slowly broke the whip to bits.

"Simpson and Miss Vanderhart have given the chump a lift," said a miner,
watching in the roadway.

Rex saw that the occupants of the sleigh had taken up Morris and
concealed him among the fur robes.

"Who did you say?" he asked the miner.

"Simpson and Miss Vanderhart," the man repeated.  "They’re big guns at
Dawson.  Know them?"

Britton laughed again at the alias, as he scattered the whip fragments
with his toe.

"Yes," he said meditatively, "I know something of them."

Just then Laurance swung out with his dog-train, starting back to Indian
River.

"I’m off, son," he cried to Britton.  "Are you goin’ to bolt for Dawson?
It’s five hours from here!"

Rex nodded at the sleigh, gliding leisurely along the trail in the
distance, and observed:

"I’ll wait!  I’m not anxious for their company on the route, and morning
will suit me as well. So she’s the Rose of the Yukon!"

"Sure!" said Laurance, putting his dog-whip in his armpit in order to
light the inevitable pipe. "Kind of romantic fiction, ain’t it, to find
she’s your angelic ideal?  Haw, haw!"

"She’s not, for there’s no bandage over my eyes now," Britton declared,
with conviction. "But, by heaven, there is an ideal," he continued in
strange triumph evoked without volition, "and I feel in my bones as if
I’ll meet that ideal some time again."

"Um!" puffed Jim Laurance.  "Again?  Yes, I may say again!  But take an
old-timer’s advice, son, and see that you stick to one search at a time.
You understand?"

"I couldn’t forget that if I wished to," Britton replied, smiling rather
bitterly.  "I’m going up Samson Creek at once.  If that search doesn’t
prove worth while, there won’t be any necessity for the other."

Laurance gripped Britton’s palm tightly, saying: "You know where to come
if stranded, son."

The negative motion of Britton’s head showed the pride that prompted his
refusal; and Laurance shook out his leader.

"Best luck!" he cried cheerily.

"For what?" Britton whimsically asked.

"For the gold and for–the–the other," Jim Laurance called over his
shoulder.  "Why, d–n me, you deserve ’em both."




                              CHAPTER XII.


Loping out of Ainslie’s through the cold Arctic dawn, Britton made
Dawson under five hours. Thanks to the recommendation of Charlie
Anderson, he was able to secure from an outfitter a portion of the
provisions that were being so scrupulously reserved because famine
threatened in the distance with empty claws closing over the golden
city.

He did not run across Morris, his wife, or Simpson, but he had the
pleasure of eating dinner in a restaurant run by Pierre Giraud’s wife,
Aline.  The place was a neat, clean eating-house, called the Half Moon,
situated near the North American Transportation & Trading Company’s
store, and Pierre’s wife proved to be a bright-eyed, buxom woman, young
and attractive after the type of the French-Canadian maids.  Rex thought
it was the best meal he had had in a long time, with the additional
virtue of having a dainty server, and he told Aline Giraud so.

"_Vraiment_," she cried, laughing gaily at his praise, "M’sieu’ ees
reech in w’at you call–compleement!"

"Yes, but that is about the extent of my riches," Rex chuckled, as he
took his departure.

News of the Samson Creek find was freely circulating in Dawson City.
Some claims had been staked in the fall, and hazy descriptions of the
valley’s wealth were in the air.  The Arctic temperature of the Yukon
winter kept many from going out to locate, but a mysterious rumor arose
that there was a claim-jumping scheme afoot, and Britton found that it
had already travelled ahead of him.  The rumor, quite indefinite in
itself, startled the people of Dawson from their apathetic state.
Miners who had, at the approach of frost, forsaken the valuable
auriferous workings for the city’s beer-saloons drew on their meagre
stores of supplies and stampeded to their holdings, ready to prove, even
in gun-fights as a last resort, that possession was not nine points but
the whole of the law.

Learning that so many prospectors had rushed out the night before,
Britton loaded his camp stove, sleeping-bag, and tent upon his sled,
securely lashed on the provisions, consisting mainly of bacon, beans,
flour, and dried apples, and made all haste away.

Samson Creek was a tributary of the famous Eldorado, and on account of
its proximity to fully exploited fields offered great promise of pay
dirt.

Britton took the ice-trail up the frozen Klondike, veered off to the
right, and rounded the great, cone-shaped, snow-laden mountain in whose
chasms the most noted gold streams, including the Bonanza, have their
origin.  He travelled fast, unimpeded by snow-crust on the white,
glistening surface of the river, and on nearing the south branch of the
Samson, overtook many who had started out before him.

"Got anything staked?" panted a miner, as Britton went by.

"Not yet," Rex answered.

"Then you can’t get in," the man said.

"Why?" Britton cried impatiently.

"Why?" echoed his informant.  "Ge-mima!–why? Look there!"

They had topped the glacial slope of the watershed and paused for breath
upon the crest, overlooking the creek’s bed.  Britton beheld the valley,
freshly staked as far as his eye could reach, with endless processions
of men moving upstream.

"Get in?" said the miner.  "Not much!  I must hike down and see nobody
squats on the claims I took last fall."

The man moved off, and Britton, angry disappointment raging within him,
stood and watched the burden-bearing lines below.

Over on the west where the mountains bulked up so huge and taciturn, the
ruby sunset was coloring the summits.  Dull, spotless snow-cornices and
shining ice-fields gleamed with rosy hues that gradually deepened to
rich crimson, as if some Titan hand had poured over them a flood of
ancient wine.  The glacier tips scintillated like the steel sabre-wall
of a cavalry column, and the scraggy hemlocks on the peaks quickened
with sapphire glints against their sober green.

Britton watched the magnificent panorama hold its glory for some
moments; then all turned shaded and blue in a trice as a sheer rock
precipice capped the lens of the sun.

He turned away, dejectedly, toward the north branch, remembering the
hint of Franco Lessari, the courier.  He crossed South Samson,
intercepting scores of men who mushed dog-teams, dragged Yukon sleighs,
or bore great loads on their wet backs.  They strained in single file up
the beaten river-path–low-browed, cruel-looking fellows who might have
been thugs and who cursed those that delayed them; eager-faced, unbroken
fools who had come in by steamer in the heat of summer, housed
themselves warmly in Dawson when the frost fell, and had yet to learn
the smiting wrath of a Klondike blizzard; luckless gamesters whom a
winning turn never blessed; and shrewd old pioneers, suspicious of
everyone, noting everything with keen, wilderness-trained eyes, and
pushing on indefatigably to conserve their fall stakings.  Along the
sinuous river course heaps of boxes and sacks and caches of food marked
the journey; overweighting baggage, thrown down to await more convenient
handling, blotched the ice with unsightly disorder; discarded trifles,
pack rubbish, and the snarl of sleigh and tent ropes littered all the
route.

By dark Britton camped on North Samson, four miles away.  There, for
three days, he burned holes in doubtful-looking gravel, enduring
uncomplainingly the manifold discomforts of tent life with the mercury
fifty below.

Meanwhile, the influx to the south continued, and, all the explored
stream being taken, the overflow reached the northerly branch.  Rex
watched them come, more motley and dishevelled than ever, unwilling to
back-trail to Dawson and yet with a secret dread gnawing at their
hearts, the fear of winter’s lash whose torment the ache of hunger might
assist.  He saw them arrive, as bitter and despairing as himself, and
with them staggered Franco Lessari, dragging the most meagre of meagre
outfits.

Lessari had no sleeping-bag, only blankets. and thin ones at that; he
did not carry a tent, depending upon the snow hut dug in the river
drifts, and his food was a bag of coarse beans and dried salmon.

"Ah," he cried delightedly, on seeing Britton, sitting between his tent
flaps, "you listened at me?  But come to-morrow after me.  Where I say,
you dig!"

He was moving farther up-stream, but Rex called him back.

"Look here," he began, full of commiseration for the pathetic figure
plainly in worse circumstances than himself, "you might as well bunk in
beside me.  There’s plenty of room in the tent, and we’ll prospect
together wherever you say.  If you’re going to share a good thing with
me, I must make some return.  Come along! Throw in your packs."

Gratitude showed in the Corsican’s brown, harrowed face as he wrestled
with his limited English vocabulary in the attempt to thank Britton for
the generous offer, of which he reluctantly took advantage.

"You are so much kindness," he sighed repeatedly.

In the morning they shifted their camp another mile up North Samson to a
certain bend near an icy ravine, called Grizzly Gulch, where, Lessari
said, a trapper had declared he had found good gold-signs.  For three
days more they burned out the beach and excavated the frozen gravel
without success.  The trapper must have been mistaken, or they had
struck the wrong spot.  They branched out with their operations and
covered the dip of the ravine in all directions, but their ill success
proved unvarying.

The bed of the gulley lay pock-marked with burned holes, and the dump
outside the tent grew large.  It was after weeks of this trying toil
that Rex Britton discovered Lessari’s one vice.

Rex came in one night from a late probing in Grizzly Gulch to find an
Indian of the Thron-Diucks keeping company with the Corsican by his camp
stove.  Both men were joyously drunk, and they hailed Britton as a
welcome returned prodigal.

The Thron-Diuck held up an empty bottle which had, no doubt, been dearly
bought from some trafficking miner, and lamented the absence of whiskey
in woeful Indian jargon.  Lessari jumped to his unsteady feet,
attempting to embrace Britton and dinning in his ears a hopelessly mixed
tale of gold.

"Gold, gold, gold!" he would cry, dancing aside to pat the Indian on the
back.  "Him tell where gold for give him whiskey."

"Yes, Mis’r," the Thron-Diuck volunteered, ingratiatingly.  "Give
whiskey!  Me tell where big gold come from–heap much gold."

Britton laughed mockingly.

"That tale’s too old," he said.  "I’ve heard of the combination of the
drunken Indian, the bottle of whiskey, and the golden valley ever since
I started on these cursed northern trails.  Now, if you want to sleep by
our fire, you’ll have to stop shouting.  I wouldn’t turn a dog out upon
a night like this, but you must be quiet.  Understand?"

He made Lessari sit down, and kicked the Indian’s emptied bottle out of
the tent.

"You’d sell your big gold pretty cheap," he commented drily.

"Think me lie?" the vagrant cried aggressively.

Rex could see that he was at that stage peculiar to red men’s
intoxication when they will sell their bodies or souls to satisfy the
abnormal craving of their unbridled natures.  The whiskey’s flame licked
through his veins, and there was no checking the thirst for fire-water
which only drunken insensibility could satiate.

"I think you are imagining things," Rex replied, "and I have no whiskey
to spare in barter. A mouthful of what you two wasted might have been
useful some time in saving a life in this deadly cold."

"Me no lie," the muddled Indian persisted.

"You do," said Britton, with pointed sternness.

The Thron-Diuck’s fingers fumbled in his rags for an instant and came
forth closed.

"Think me lie!" he shouted dramatically. "Heap big gold–like that!"

From the Indian’s extended palm, the yellow flash of native gold filled
Britton’s startled eyes.

[Illustration: "From the Indian’s extended palm the yellow flash of
native gold filled Britton’s startled eyes."]




                             CHAPTER XIII.


"Gold!  Gold!  Gold!" screamed the excitable and drunken Corsican, as he
danced about the tent.

At the bright gleam of the yellow metal, Rex had sprung forward and
grasped the precious specimen from the Thron-Diuck’s hand.

"Where did you get this?" he demanded, breathlessly.

A look of cunning overspread the Indian’s coppery features, and
discolored teeth were displayed in his gaping grin.

"Give fire-water," he said, fawningly, "then me tell."

Britton examined the piece of ore from every angle in the candle-light
and recognized a wonderful sample of alluvial gold.  It weighed probably
eight ounces, and Rex trembled in excitement not to be repressed.  There
was no doubt of its origin, and he knew that the carousing rascal must
be speaking the truth.  The glacier-worn edges of the specimen told that
it had come from a heavy deposit, a place of "big gold."

"Where did you get this?" Rex hoarsely repeated, his hands shaking as if
weighted down with golden pounds instead of ounces.

"Bring whiskey, then me tell where heap much gold come from," was the
Indian’s laconic response.

"No, you won’t," said Britton.  "You’ll tell first, and then you may
have the fire-water."

He dived into a small kitty-bag wherein he kept some few medicinal
mixtures, whipped out the solitary flask, which he was accustomed to
carry against a possible dire emergency of the rigorous trails, and held
it enticingly before the candle flame.

The liquor sparkled in the light, and the poor red wretch smacked his
lips and clawed at it. Rex held him off.

"Afterwards–afterwards," he said with decision.

"Ha!" exclaimed the tantalized Indian, "go heap long way up the White
River–"

"The Klondike?" interrupted Rex.

"Yes, as you call, Mis’r," answered the Thron-Diuck, gesticulating
frantically with lean, bony fingers like talons.  "Go heap way up
Klondike; find ice-hills with much frozen springs; there big gold where
him be!"  His claws pointed at the sample in Britton’s fist.

"You mean the headwaters of the Klondike–its source?" questioned Rex,
earnestly.  "You’re sure of that?  For heaven’s sake don’t make any
mistake!"

The Indian shook his whole body and stamped in anger.

"Me no mistake," he declared.  "Me no lie. Go heap way up where you say,
Mis’r, to–to–"

"To the headwaters," prompted Britton.

"Yes, to big chief waters!  There five hills like heap big beaver houses
all by one dam. White River run through.  There place of heap big gold!"

Rex wiped the beads of perspiration from his forehead.

"This is the way I understand you," he said. "Listen and tell me if I’m
right!  The place lies straight up the Klondike at its headwaters, right
in the middle of five beaver-house hills which the stream cuts through.
Is that correct?"

"Right, heap right," replied the Thron-Diuck, overjoyed at being
properly understood.  He reached for the whiskey again, but Britton was
not yet done.

"Wait till I draw a sketch," he said quickly, "and you shall mark these
hills in the exact spot."

Rex found his map of the Klondike River in his breast pocket and drew
the stream on a larger scale upon a sheet from a notebook.  At the
river’s mouth was a deserted Indian village, lately occupied by
Thron-Diucks who had moved back into the fastnesses of the snowy
mountains, and no other trace of habitation marked the frozen waterway,
which lost itself in bleak heights away to the north, unexplored except
by Indians and a few venturesome white trappers.

"Now," said Britton, when he had outlined the sketch, "show me exactly
where these hills stand from the source or headwaters of the river."

The Indian touched his talons to the drawing just below a group of low
mountains, named on the map the Klondike Hills.

"How far below?" Rex questioned very earnestly.

"Half day, as you call, Mis’r," the Thron-Diuck answered.  "Half day
with heap good dogs!"

"So?" cried Britton, warming to the scent of the treasure.  "How many
hills on this side of the stream?"

The Indian located three with as many dabs of his skinny forefinger and
showed where the other two hills lay across the river.  Rex marked them
with small circles, mentally calculating by the scale their distance
from the source and thus knowing their position at least approximately.

The Thron-Diuck regarded his handiwork with satisfaction.

"Heap right," he said triumphantly, "Mis’r heap smart man!  Give
fire-water, Mis’r; you got much big gold!"

Rex passed over the flask without further parley.

"Yes, it’s yours," was his final word, "but heaven help you if you have
deceived me as to the position of this stuff!"

Lessari lurched forward to share the Indian’s draught, but Britton
pushed him rudely back upon his bed.

"You go right to sleep," he ordered, "and get fit for the trail in the
morning."

Rex sat beside him to enforce the obeyance of the order till the
Corsican dropped into slumber, while over beside the camp stove the
Thron-Diuck lay in stupefaction.

The thermometer registered forty-eight below when Britton and Lessari
mushed out of the North Samson valley at sunrise.  The Indian, now
partly sobered and conscious that he had sold a well-guarded secret of
his tribe, promptly proceeded to efface himself despite the inducements
Britton offered him to act in the capacity of guide, so that the two
travelled alone.

As they advanced upon the lonely trail which snaked northward to where
the Klondike’s source was somewhere hidden in unknown hills, the
atmosphere grew keener with intense cold. A merciless, cutting frost
fell in fine showers till the two men were covered with a hoary coating
which scintillated like glaring tinsel.  The icy powder stopped their
ears and choked their nostrils, chilling every breath they took.

Lessari unfitted by his natural temperament for such a climate as the
Yukon, had always found his respiration labored in winter, and, since he
had contracted a severe cold from his soaking in Lake Bennett, his
plight was now worse than ever.

Owing to the pressure on his chest he was forced to breathe through the
open mouth. Britton pleaded with him not to do this, but the finer
fibred Corsican could not endure the strain on his nasal passages and
relapsed into breathing between parted lips.  As a result, he soon
chilled his lungs and began to cough with a dry, hacking sound which Rex
heard with foreboding dread.

The mercury dropped lower with every mile they mushed.  Icicles formed
on their eyebrows, noses and chins, while thin films of ice encased
their cheeks, prohibiting any speech.

A thickness of hoar-frost decorated the loaded sled, and the hairy backs
of the five dogs were white with it.  At intervals they shook themselves
roughly in the harness, sending ice particles flying in all directions.

Mingled with this rattle and the grinding song of the sleigh was the
leader’s "gruff! gruff!" as he blew the congealed snow from his nose.

Camp was made at noon outside an immense ravine which Rex knew by
hearsay to be the great cañon of the Klondike.  After an hour’s rest and
a good meal they entered it, finding a precipitous-sided gorge of
stupendous size and beauty.

The gigantic gray walls, seamed and full of wide cracks, sloped upward,
forming an almost complete arch overhead that admitted a dull glow of
light to mingle with the white sheen of the ice below.  Great icicles
hung by thousands from the rock-crevices, while eternal drippings
through the cavern-like roof had formed immense ice columns resembling
unsmoothed marble pillars.

The scene before Britton and Lessari looked like a weird, uncanny ice
forest full of frozen trunks and clammy, oozy nooks where underworld
spirits and grotesque goblins might be expected to reside.  The hollow
booming of the mighty river, straining in its imprisonment, filled the
whole place with a resounding roar, and the force of the fettered
torrent shook the coated cave walls till the icicles fell and scattered
their rainbow hues upon the floor.

Rex thought this cañon was the most potent symbol of a potent land that
could be imagined. It impressed him vividly with the awesome magnitude,
the salient ruggedness, the terrible power of the country of which it
was an emblem.

His dog-train swayed with shrieking runners among the massed ice-pillars
and emerged from the gorge into a wider valley where the hills rose
naturally bright in the sunshine with the welcome blue sky resting upon
their peaks.

Britton could see that the Klondike River was the main recipient of the
long trains of ice which slid with snail-like motion from the crests of
the glaciers.  Frozen gullies full of these moving, mile-long torrents
broke in upon the larger river and piled the junction points full of
massive, chaotic ice-bridges which were painfully difficult to cross.

Lessari stumbled upon one huge jam and went down among the sharp,
crystal fragments.  He gasped when he regained his feet, and the dry,
hacking cough became more convulsive.  Seeing that he was nearly spent,
Rex beckoned for a few minutes’ halt, though having hopes of reaching
mountainous shelter before nightfall, he did not wish to delay very
long.

While they rested on a high ice-bridge quite a distance above the
Klondike Cañon, they heard a thin, hissing wail far back in its depths.

"Sled!" exclaimed the listening Corsican, breaking into speech without
thinking of the consequence.

At his effort the icy casing which covered his cheeks snapped in
showering splinters, gashing the skin in a dozen places.  He groaned in
pain while the blood trickled down his face.

Britton thawed his mouth free by the warm pressure of his fur gauntlets.

"You’re right, Lessari," he said.  "It sounds like a dog-train coming
through the cañon. Surely that cursed Indian hasn’t been spreading the
news!  Or perhaps someone has trailed us from Samson because they think
we know of a find up this way."

Britton’s tone was angry as well as disappointed. He had not undertaken
the dangerous and arduous trip up the Klondike for the purpose of
showing the way to some trailers who might contest the ground with him.
If any rough characters were following because they suspected he had
knowledge of a gold deposit, Rex knew he would have to fight for what he
found, and fight, no doubt, with the odds against him.

"We’ll wait and see who is tracking us," he grimly observed to Lessari.

The whining sound of a dog-train continued, borne through the cold void
with clear persistence. Rex strained his eyes on the distant mouth of
the cañon to mark who came out, but he watched in vain.  The noise
ceased as suddenly as it arose, and though they dallied another fifteen
minutes, nothing could be seen.

"That’s odd," commented Britton.  "Wasn’t it a dog-sled, Lessari?"

"Sound like him much!" answered the Corsican, in an awed voice.  He was
somewhat superstitious, and he nursed his cut face apprehensively, as if
it were responsible for the strange incident.

"I could have sworn to that as the shriek of runners," Rex declared,
"but it may have been ice.  In any event we can’t stop longer. Ho!
there–mush, mush!"

They forged on, climbing to a still higher altitude and meeting with a
frigid air that reached to the very marrow of their bones.  Lessari
weakened, and Britton made him take to the sled for the rest of the
afternoon while he himself continued his heart-breaking tramp beside the
dogs, surmounting all obstacles, no matter how formidable, with that
intrepid grit and unbroken muscle-strength which was his heritage.

The short, sub-Arctic day closed in swiftly, shrouding everything with a
heavy fog, and night caught the two travellers among the black river
boulders.

It was a desolate place of incomparable bleakness in which they were
forced to camp, but when the stove was set going inside the pitched tent
and they had infused some heat into their frost-tried bodies, the
outlook seemed more cheerful.

The next day saw a repetition of their hardships and trials.  Lessari
declared himself strong enough to keep his feet, but Britton forced him
to ride behind the dogs.  The Corsican lay wrapped in robes, and the
spasms of coughing that wrenched his frame told about how fit he was to
travel the trail afoot.  There were places so rough and so hard to scale
that he could not stay upon the loaded sled while the dogs dragged it
over.  At such points he was compelled to walk, and Rex had to assist
him.

They had penetrated into the timbered regions which flanked the
Klondike, and the way grew wilder although there was some solace of
shelter. According to Britton’s estimate of the Thron-Diuck’s directions
the place of the five mountains could not be many miles distant, and,
even in that soul-chilling waste, his blood warmed every inch of his
body when he thought success might soon reward his strenuous stampedes.

With the reaching of the forested stretches, grizzly tracks were seen in
profusion, indicating that these hungry prowlers were finding the severe
weather very hard, for they had covered vast distances in search of
food.

As they traversed mile after mile, making rapid progress without
hindrance of blistered ice, Britton began to think that his hopes of
camping that night among the five beaver-house hills would be realized.
Every time they rested for a moment to give the dogs a breathing spell,
he eagerly scanned the sketch which he had made. From the contour of the
river and the position of the mountains he tried to judge exactly how
far he had advanced.  Each scrutiny, thus indulged in, gave fresh hope
and assurance, and he would dash on with greater speed than was
generally attained on the Fields.

The steep granite headlands gave place to more sloping bluffs, and when
Britton’s dog-train swept round the river’s curve past the first long
belt of pine forest, there loomed at a probable distance of six miles
the tops of five hills set in a circle.

"It’s the place," he shouted joyfully.  "By heaven, it’s the
place–Lessari!"

But Lessari, his endurance worn out by the continual jolting, had rolled
from the sled in a dead faint.  He could not be revived easily, so
Britton had to pitch the tent, light a fire, and attend to him.

The Corsican came to, weak and trembling, and when Rex had given some
nourishment, Lessari looked at him with dazed, troubled eyes.

"I am much sorrow," he said confusedly. "Your journey I spoil!  Put me
on the sled, and it somehow we can reach."

Britton felt a twinge of conscience for a selfish wish as he heard these
words from a man who was courageous to the core though obviously unable
to continue.

"No," he gravely replied, "you haven’t spoiled the journey.  We can well
rest here and go on to-morrow.  Make your mind easy, Lessari!"

The Corsican, still lamenting the check to their advance, fell into an
exhausted sleep, while Britton, the selfish desire recurring
involuntarily within him, chafed silently as he watched from a distance
the peaks of his far-sought gold Mecca.




                              CHAPTER XIV.


Five dead dogs, their stark bodies clearly outlined on the snow by a
sparkling aurora, met Britton’s startled gaze when he stumbled sleepily
out of the cramped quarters of the tent. A cry of something like despair
escaped him as he ran to examine them, turning the gaunt carcasses over
and over.

Lessari heard the shout of perturbation and shuffled forth from under
the flaps.

"What wrong have you?" he asked anxiously.

Rex stood aside and showed the corpses of their faithful animals.

"They’re killed," he said briefly, "and you know what that means for
us!"

White horror grew in the Corsican’s brown face till it was blanched to a
sickly hue.  He fully realized that the loss of the dog-team had buried
them alive in a frozen wilderness whose relentless cruelty would slowly
crush their lives.  In a dazed way, he fingered the bodies.

"Not any marks–not any marks," was his vacant observation.

"No," agreed Britton, who controlled himself with difficulty, "they have
been neither knifed nor shot, yet some man’s hand has done it. Gaucho
and the rest of the huskies appeared as well last night as they ever
did.  No, Lessari, it wasn’t an epidemic or even the bitter frost."

"How they are killed, then?" the Corsican inquired petulantly.

"That’s the mystery," Rex woefully ruminated, aloud.  "I wonder if that
snake of a Thron-Diuck followed us and perpetrated this deed!  You
remember we heard what we thought was a dog-train coming behind us
through the Klondike Cañon?"

"Ah! yes," responded his companion, "that I recall–curse him!"
Lessari’s eyes were vindictive and full of a strange wildness as he
stared at Britton.

"Of course that is only a supposition," said Rex, judicially, "but I
know how jealous the Indian tribes are of gold-laden creeks.  The
Thron-Diucks know a good many secrets, but they will not divulge them,
and fearing the wrath of his fellows if we located on this deposit, the
red wretch may have repented his bargain and taken steps to prevent our
profiting by it."

"Look for tracks!" exclaimed the Corsican, on sudden inspiration, but
Britton shook his head.

"No use," he lamented, pointing to the pine-banked curve of the river,
shining like glass, "the ice is too clean!"

"Curse him!  Curse him!" exploded Lessari, again, growing more violent
of speech.

"There’s no use in cursing, either," Britton said seriously.  "We’re
facing death, Lessari, but we must keep alive as long as possible.  We
have a tent and some food, and we’ll make a strong fight."

The Corsican studied his dubious expression. "Go back?" he asked.

"It can’t be done," said Rex.  "Our provisions will not last half the
time required to make the journey on foot, and there is nothing to shoot
over those barren stretches."

"Go on where gold is, then?" Lessari inquired dismally.

"Yes," Britton answered, "our path lies over those five hills.  We have
only two chances, Lessari, and they are mighty slim!  There is the
chance of stumbling on the encampment of these Thron-Diuck Indians–they
have retired somewhere in these mountains–and the possibility of finding
game in the pine forests.  The way lies yonder, and, if we find gold
there, we’ll stake it in case a miracle should bring us out of this
trap."

Rex stirred the nose of his dead leader with the toe of his shoepack as
he finished speaking, and Lessari saw him bend quickly.

"See that!" Britton exclaimed in quivering anger.  He held out something
between his fingers, and the Corsican recognized a piece of frozen
whitefish covered with reddish powder.

"Poisoned!" he ejaculated with renewed horror.

"Yes, someone has fed them poisoned whitefish," said Rex, vehemently.
"Gaucho had this in his teeth!"

Lessari broke out in a flood of denunciation. Britton quelled his own
indignation and began untying the tent-ropes.

They thawed their canvas shelter from the banked ice and snow by means
of several brush fires and loaded the sled.  Any articles which could be
dispensed with and which unnecessarily impeded them were cast away.  The
outfit was reduced to a minimum, and Rex packed all the remaining
provisions carefully in one large sack. He preserved, too, the food
intended for the dogs, for he thought they might easily find themselves
in such straits as to be glad of it.

When all was securely lashed on the heavy Yukon sleigh, the two men
harnessed themselves in the traces and started laboriously toward the
circle of hills six miles away.  For Lessari, they were six long and
excruciating miles.  He was weak and unfit, and though Britton took the
heavier portion of the toil, the tramp told rapidly on his companion.

The river curved with such a sweep that they struck overland to shorten
the distance.  They bridged wide gullies full of blistered ice and
swerved erratically with the loaded sled among rugged rocks and slippery
hummocks that barred their path.  Lessari continued to mutter and
complain during the whole six miles, his mumblings toward the end
becoming somewhat incoherent.

When they slipped down a long ravine which opened on the river right in
the middle of the circling hills, the Corsican was staggering along with
protruding tongue.

"You’re fagged!" Rex exclaimed, noticing his plight.  "Better rest here
a minute!"

Lessari’s answer was a vicious pull on the sleigh rope that nearly took
Britton off his feet. They moved on because the Corsican would accept no
delay, and Rex saw that the other’s motive power was a sort of delirium
which instilled unlimited feverish energy.

The pair of toilers emerged at last from the black rift and climbed an
ice-capped ridge which fell like a sloping watershed in a southward
direction.  Around them the five beaver-house mountains rose strangely
dome-like, the great river apparently losing itself in the bowels of the
thousand ice chasms which furrowed the base of the valley-beds.

"This is the Klondike’s source," Rex murmured as he contemplated the
scene, "and it looks cold enough to kill you."

"Yes," sighed Lessari, "you have it right. But the gold–the gold is
warm.  Here I feel it!"  He put his hand to his breast, and smiled
contentedly.

"It’s all that’s keeping you warm," Rex gruffly commented.  The
observation quickly altered Lessari’s expression, and he glared with a
wild impenetrable look as they proceeded to skirt the fringing line of
gravelled granite which was the shore of the now glacier-like stream.

Here the detached ice lay scattered about in huge blocks, an impediment
to their feet, where it had glided with the shining rubble from the
farther plateaus.  In the shallow cup that the five hills formed, they
met with a long, treacherous crevasse whose yawning depth of three
hundred feet effectually cut off any further progress in a direct line.
The great abyss seemed to possess a fascination for Lessari, and he trod
dangerously near the edge to peer over.

"Don’t do that!" Britton sharply cautioned, pulling him back.  "A slip
of your moccasin would put you at the bottom.  We’ll have to leave the
sled here and see if there is any way round!"

The immense crevasse dipped from an overhanging glacier on one of the
five mountains and slanted across the granite ridge they had been
skirting.  The two men left the Yukon sleigh standing, blocked, above
the deep split and followed along the edge, searching for a place to
cross.  The slant of the ravine became more, acute, and, where the sides
were jagged and shelved, they clambered down lower and lower till the
whole formation suddenly broke upon a vast cavern that nosed into the
river-bed and opened on the other side where the way was passable though
extremely hard.

"It’s rough going, but we must get across," Rex said, turning round to
Lessari.

The latter was handling some rusty-looking pebbles which he had kicked
out of the black cavern floorway.

"Ironstone!" he grunted scornfully, gazing at the cave side where
similar fragments with glacier-worn edges stuck out.

"Let me see," cried Britton, hastily jumping forward.  Lessari dropped
the stones in his hand, and Britton’s heart leaped at the weight of
them.

"Ironstone!" he exclaimed, his voice all trembling.  "My God, Lessari,
it’s gold!"

"Santa Virgin!" the Corsican screamed–"Gold!"  He snatched frantically
at the precious pebbles, chattering madly.

"I’m positive it is," Rex said excitedly, "but the flame-test will soon
tell."

He produced a bit of candle from his coat and lit it with unsteady
fingers.  While Lessari held the specimens, he applied the flame to
them.  The heat singed the Corsican’s hands, but he did not seem to feel
any pain.  Presently the rusty red covering of the pebbles disappeared
as fine dust in the blaze, and Lessari gripped pure alluvial gold.

"Santa Virgin!" he screamed again.  "We’re rich!  We’re rich!"

Rex was off immediately, running about the cavern walls, making a hasty
survey with his candle end.  The walls, like the floor, were studded
here and there with peeping corners of the precious ore for which he had
endured two thousand miles of pitiless Yukon trails. Unbounded wealth
lay within his grasp, and, with the triumph of the moment, he forgot
that he was a millionaire in a death-trap.

"Go up for a spade, Lessari," he cried.  "It is a mighty deposit–’big
gold,’ as the Thron-Diuck said."

The Corsican started up as a faint, rushing noise sounded above, like
ice sliding upon ice.

"What’s that?" asked Britton anxiously.

They listened, but heard no further echo.  Rex appeared ill at ease.

"We’re among glaciers, Lessari," he said, "and we must be careful.  An
avalanche might easily bury us in a hole like this.  Get that shovel
quickly!"

Lessari climbed up the lip of the ravine and disappeared, while Britton
pottered about, speculating, as well as exulting, over the magnificent
find.  It was a showing that gave promise of surpassing such far-famed
creeks as the Eldorado and Bonanza, and Rex gloated over his prospects.
Standing in that deep cavern under the Klondike’s bed, his thoughts went
back to the green Sussex lands, Hyde Park in the London season, and the
foaming Channel swells under the _Mottisfont’s_ bows.  He thought of the
estates this buried gold would buy, the power it would bring, the
restoration to public favor it would effect, and he laughed mirthlessly
at the idea of purchasing his way into quarters of society and diplomacy
which had closed their doors to him after his Algerian escapade.

A shrill cry from Lessari above interrupted his cogitations.  He
scrambled out of the cavern and clawed his way up the slippery side of
the rift.

The Corsican was staring down into the abyss where they had left the
sled.  On his face there rested a look of terrified bewilderment, and he
pointed into the gloomy depths.

"Gone!" he wailed–"gone down!"

Britton looked around for the sleigh, but it had vanished.  A sharp fear
assailed him as he dashed to Lessari’s side and saw the mark of the
runners on the powdered edge of the ravine where the laden sled had
taken the leap.

"That’s what we heard slide," Rex groaned, "and it has all our food!"

He went mechanically to the exact spot where the Yukon sleigh had stood.
There lay the piece of granite which had blocked the runners, with the
print of a husky’s foot-pad in a minute snow-pocket at its side.  Rex
showed it to the Corsican, a swift, ominous wrath mantling his
countenance.

"By heaven, Lessari, this is too much!" he cried.  "It has been done
purposely like–like the poison!  There’s a hand in the dark somewhere,
and it means murder!"

The Corsican’s harrowed senses appeared incapable of comprehending the
statement.

"Starving–and rich!" he muttered wildly. "Rich–and starving!"  He walked
without fear to the brink of the chasm and began to lower himself over
the rock with his hands.

"Here!" Rex roared in terror, rushing up. "What do you mean?"

"Stay back!" snarled the Corsican.  "I go down to eat."

"The gold has turned your head!" Britton exclaimed.  "You couldn’t get
down there for all the food on earth.  Why, man, it’s three hundred
feet!"  He sprang with a lithe movement and dragged the Corsican from
his perilous position.

Lessari gave an inhuman cry and closed with Britton.  Rex saw his eyes
as they struggled and knew, with a feeling of chill horror, that they
were the eyes of a madman.

"Ha!" gasped the demented fellow.  "This time you go!"

He strove to throw Britton into the gulf, for resistance had resulted in
giving his mania a different trend.  The delirium gave him the strength
of six men, and Rex found himself being gradually pushed into the
crevasse.  He strained and tugged with all the mighty power of his
shoulders and corded arms, but it was of no avail against the frenzied
Lessari.  He tried another tack!

"Cool yourself, Lessari," he said soothingly, "and we’ll get this sled."
They could never get it, but he hoped the artifice might serve!  Even
that attempt at reason proved useless, for the Corsican redoubled his
efforts.  The eternal cold, his illness, the death of the dogs, the
fever of the gold-finding, and the loss of their provisions had all
combined to drive him mad.

"Devil!" he screamed, "you threw the food down!"  And Rex knew he was
indeed demented.

Fighting every inch of the way, Britton was forced toward the abyss.
Three feet from it, he felt the necessity for desperate action. Watching
his opportunity, he tripped Lessari on the iced rock, and they both fell
heavily.  Rex wound his arms about the Corsican, putting forth the last
ounce of strength; that grip of steel would have held a giant, but it
could not hold a madman.  Lessari tore himself free and gained the
uppermost position, with hands on Britton’s throat.

Rex gazed into the rolling eyes, the wild, distorted visage of the
Corsican, and felt himself shoved to the very brink of the crevasse.  He
wrenched violently at Lessari’s wrists and arms, but they were as iron
rods, and the movement brought his head out over the rim of the rock.

In one fleeting vision he saw the white, rising ice-fields cutting into
the blue sky, with glacier-capped peaks banking up behind; he saw three
of the five circling hills, their frozen gorges shining emerald in the
sun; then, as Lessari’s wolfish face came closer to his own and his arms
were pressed down, the fingers felt the revolver butt in his belt.

In sheer despair he grasped it as a drowning man snatches at an oar.
Its report cracked out and rattled in a hundred blatant echoes down the
gorge.  Lessari uttered a gasping groan and lurched to one side, his
fingers lax and weak.

Britton wormed his shoulders back from the edge of the abyss, shifting
the Corsican’s weight with his legs, and arose in safety.  His lungs
were heaving with the tremendous strain like those of a spent
Channel-swimmer, and the cords of his throat were taut.

When he turned over the limp form at his feet, he looked into Lessari’s
dead face.




                              CHAPTER XV.


Back in Dawson, on the evening of the same day when Britton stood alone
with the awful Klondike solitude at the edge of Five Mountain Gulch–as
it came to be named afterwards–when he faced at once the icy phantom
Cold, the grisly skeleton Starvation, and the devil-faced thing Remorse,
when he halted with death at his feet and its dread power pervading the
desolate snows about him, there occurred, in the golden city, a
strikingly different scene, a scene palpitating with warmth and life.

A group of men, present at Grant Simpson’s invitation, occupied one of
the ground-floor rooms of the Half Moon restaurant, engaged ostensibly
in doing justice to a very elegant and costly supper, but really killing
time in a luxurious way and waiting anxiously for the bell-note of
business which they knew their host intended to ring in on them.

Simpson, with his accustomed lavish expenditure, had engaged the room to
the utter exclusion of other guests who might have dined at two of the
three tables which the chamber held; he had ordered that the trio of
tables be lined up and converted into one long feasting board which
could be covered with fine viands and drinks–principally drinks!  The
catering was let to the hostess of the Half Moon, Aline Giraud, who was
a genius of management, all the more so since Pierre’s absence on the
trails left every responsibility in her hands.  That night she expected
him back from the completion of his baggage-freighting contract with
Laverdale, the big American mine-owner who was bound for Dyea and the
States, and Aline wished to have everything right.  She wished the
supper that this well-dressed, money-burning lawyer was giving to be a
thing beyond criticism, and her every effort was devoted to making it
so.

And the bill!  She told herself the bill would be the best of it all.
It would be a thing to cheer Pierre’s heart and cause him to dance, with
his cap thrown among the ceiling festoons.

Simpson’s was the dominating figure of the company present in the room
of the Half Moon where Aline Giraud served so assiduously with her
alert, graceful movements and her full, white arms.  He seemed to hold
the key to some enterprise which claimed the attention of all under
their masks of good fellowship, but Simpson did not yet consider the
moment propitious for the unfolding of hidden plans.

He sat at the head of his table, with his guests ranged in two lines on
either side, men well known in Dawson, the chief characteristic of whom
was money.  That was why they were present!  If they had not had money
to invest, they could have entered into no proposition with Simpson.

Jarmand, the fat, wealthy broker with the currant-roll neck and the oily
insolence, was there; Fripps, the sour, thin, anæmic promoter,
maintained his usual unobtrusive but nevertheless certain presence; a
trio of capitalists of a somewhat similar stamp, keen-visaged but
rotund-bodied, quelled their impatience successfully, while they
secretly chafed at Simpson’s dalliance, and awaited his proposition.
These men were inseparable in any business prospect; they worked
together, invested together, and stood or fell by a triumvirate
judgment; and since their names began with the same letter–Cranwell,
Crowdon, and Carr–they had been dubbed the three C’s.

Where the three C’s went in, the financial project need not be strictly
legitimate.  They had few scruples or qualms, and when they took hold of
a mining scheme or a real estate deal, wise men kept out.

There were others present, probably a dozen in all, and among them Jim
Laurance, who had come with a great deal of misgiving and scepticism on
receipt of a letter from Simpson advising him of an opportunity of
getting in on the ground floor right under the scoops of a dredging
proposition.

And in preparation for his demonstration of ideas and plans, Grant
Simpson bade them all enjoy themselves, setting the example himself with
a free hand on the ladle of the punch bowl. Many followed his example
from appetite; the three C’s imitated, thinking of a relished business
dessert as a sort of solace.

Famine might be threatening in the land of gold, but she had certainly
no embargo on liquors and cigars.  Both were indulged in without stint.

Blue, acrid wreaths of smoke filled the room, and the atmosphere became
very warm.  No one would have guessed it was forty below in the street,
The two lines of guests at the table and the host at its head emptied
glasses and refilled, tossed them off and ladled up again.  Small talk
hummed, and jests cracked out, more or less coarse in the intervals when
pretty Aline Giraud was absent from the room during the different
courses of the meal.

Jim Laurance, the only temperate one in the company, sipped his simple
glass of punch sparingly, refusing the bottled stuff and the heavy
wines.  He felt disgusted and sorry that he had come, but he had money
to invest if Simpson’s thing suited him, and he settled himself to sit
out the revel.

The roadhouse at Indian River had proved a good thing for Laurance.  He
had struck his Klondike right on that creek, and he was sane enough to
know it.  Instead of frittering away his coin on fool stampedes in hopes
of a mighty strike, he was satisfied to invest it in sound mining
securities and watch the dividends slowly grow.  Such an enterprise, he
hoped, was in Simpson’s mind.

Simpson’s wine, however, was more in Simpson’s thoughts than the
enterprise.  He had unwisely glutted his taste for beverages with a
tang, and he lost control of his manners as well as his senses, laughing
boisterously and telling unsavory tales.

"Hi, there!" he would yell, skidding the empty punch-bowl down the table
to Jarmand.  "Fill her up, Fatty.  You’re the doctor.  Put in something
stiff–stiff enough to make your moustache stand!  Something d–d stiff,
Fatty!"

"That’s it, Jarmand," gurgled Bonneaves, a young profligate and an
especial chum of Simpson’s.  "Mix us a regular old hair-raiser.  We’re
out for fun!  Who’s holding us down?"

"No one!  No one!" shouted three or four of the muddled men, stamping on
the floor and breaking into confused singing, which set up rumbling
echoes through the other parts of the restaurant and went far to
disturbing its customers.

"Tell us a story, Simp," said Jarmand.  "Old Simp’s the boy for spicy
ones.  Eh, men?  You bet your liver-colored notes he is.  Rip one off,
Simp, there’s a good fellow!"

Accordingly Simp ripped one off, a story that convulsed the drinkers but
which made Laurance’s blood boil.  The one-time plainsman, now an
Alaskan sourdough, sat very still, without the shadow of a smile upon
his face.

Aline Giraud, accompanied by a waitress, an ugly, angular Danish woman,
brought in the meats.  These were bear steaks, slices of moose flank,
and grouse in pairs, a veritable feast which would have fed a hundred
poverty-pinched wretches in the outlying camps.  The thought came to
Laurance as he poised his knife and fork over the breast of a fat grouse
dressed with sage dressing in a wonderful brown gravy.

"Seems hard to waste this here," he said simply, "when there’s so many
poor cusses starvin’ round the Fields."

"To h–l with them!" cried Simpson, roughly. "What we have, we got.  Eh?
We pay for it, and when you pay your way, the rest can go and be d–d to
’em.  How’s that?"

"Right," nodded Bonneaves.  "You’re always right, Simp.  You’re a wise
old buck.  Glad I’ve known you.  You can show a fellow things. Here’s to
you, Simp!"

The talk grew louder and looser.  As the gravies were being served,
Simpson and Jarmand, exchanging winks, attempted a double surprise. The
lawyer made a bungling effort to kiss Aline Giraud on the cheek, while
at the same time the fat broker leaned forward and pecked at the
waitress.  The result was a startling surprise for Jarmand.  The
ham-like hand of the Danish woman descended with a resounding smack on
the currant-roll neck of the broker.

The seated company roared at Jarmand.  Jim Laurance frowned at Simpson
and half rose from his chair, but Aline had succeeded in eluding the
lawyer and fled through the doorway, the angry red showing in her
cheeks.

"That’s one on you, Fatty," tittered his friends. "Beautiful throw-down,
that!  Right place, too! Like another, Fatty?  Better try again.  Ho!
ho!"

"Cheer up, old man," laughed Simpson, accepting the joke.  "Better luck
next time. Walk into the punch there, Fatty; you have a weak heart."

They walked into the punch till the third bowl failed to withstand the
charges, and a fourth had to be mixed.  Some of the men, unable to
restrain their vivacity, arose and capered about the laden table,
singing and playing the fool perfectly, and stopping only to refill
empty tumblers.

The Danish waitress, now secure in the triumph of her first quick
victory, held her ground undaunted, completing the serving of the
banquet in spite of the noise.  Aline, no longer entering the room,
watched the progress of things through the doorway from the farther
chamber.  Somehow, this fine supper over which she had spent so much
effort had not turned out as she had contemplated; things were getting
beyond her grasp; her eyes grew anxious wide, and startled.

After all, she thought, it might not please Pierre.  Even the bill would
never compensate for the disgusting clamor and the humiliation.

Laurance had finished his single glass of punch and was drawing on his
short, black pipe.  He disdained the long, fat cigars of Jarmand and the
three C’s, and cursed the ill-smelling, coronet-banded cigarettes of
Simpson and Bonneaves.  The oddest figure in the group himself, he felt
nothing but contempt for the others.  The only thing about them he
respected was the business instinct of their sober moments, and there
seemed but little chance for a display of that now.

The Alaskan waited till the fourth bowl of punch ran low, hoping that
Simpson would open his mouth to speak sound sense, instead of salacious
nonsense, and tell them why he had invited them to supper, but when the
concoction of a fifth bowl was begun, amid most uproarious hilarity,
Laurance inwardly fumed, making up his mind that he would not sit there
much longer.

Unconsciously, he was frowning through the drifting haze of smoke at his
companions.  There was no stern decorum present, nor any nicety of
attire.  To be sure, Simpson, as host, and Bonneaves, to imitate his
model, wore dinner clothes, but the rest were dressed in the ordinary
dress which occupation demanded.  The three C’s were in black
broadcloth; Jarmand sported a suit of loud check pattern; Fripps favored
grey, as wrinkled and faded as his skin.  The others of the company were
mostly mining men who had come in corduroys, with trousers stuffed in
knee-high cruisers, and had hung fur coats and caps on the pegs behind
their chairs.  Laurance, travelling by dog-train to Dawson, wore the
musher’s outfit of the trails.

He looked rough and uncouth, but very much a man.  His beard was
disreputable as ever; the iron-gray hair stood up stiffer and stubbier,
allowing his rat ears to be seen; his nose peeped out, cherry-red and
snub.  He was lowering on the foolish antics of the rest of the men, and
his keen blue eyes were narrowed so much that they did not flash.

"What’s the matter with you, Laurance, old sport?" cried Bonneaves,
joyously.  "Look as if you’d buried your best friend in the punch-bowl!"

"Why," shouted Simpson, "if that’s so, we’ll resurrect him!  Resurrect’s
the word, boys. Eh?  How’s that?"  He seized the bowl in both arms and
emptied it to the last drop in the array of glasses.  Then he turned the
dish upside down on the table and hammered upon its bottom, while the
company roared as if he had done some extremely witty thing.

"What say, Laurance?" asked young Bonneaves. "Feel any better?"

"I feel like twistin’ your cussed neck, young man," answered Laurance,
wrathfully.  "What did I come here for?  To eat a decent meal an’ talk
business!  I didn’t come to swill meself–I’m certainly certain of that!
We’re men anyhow, an’ there’s no call for us to act like a lot of calf
youngsters as can’t pull the draw-string on their gullets.  I say we’re
here to talk business!"

"H–l, yes," grunted Bonneaves, with the air of sudden recollection.
"You’re right, sport, now I come to remember.  Simp did bring us here
for a purpose, and that’s no lie.  Give us your scheme, Simp.  Hot and
heavy and fast–that’s the way!"

Because their tastes palled a little, the others added their clamorous
entreaties.  Their exhortations made a confused babel:

"Hit it up, Simp!  Uncork your oracle. Spread yourself quick, old boy.
What’s the tune now?  Time we talked, by gad!"  And Bonneaves nodded
sagely at Laurance, muttering: "You’re all right, sport.  Simp’s a wise
buck, but you’re a wiser!  See?  Attention, you duffers!"  He secured
order by pounding the board with the thick bottom of his tumbler.

"Simp’s going to spout," he announced authoritatively.  Noticing that
the lawyer had engrossed himself with the opening of a champagne bottle,
Bonneaves hastily added: "Why, no! Rat me if he isn’t going to swallow!
Here, Simp, that won’t do.  Put it away.  Can’t you see your friends are
waiting?"

"I’m busy," protested Simpson, struggling with the cork.  "It’s all
about that Yukon dredging business anyhow.  I’ve taken it off Morris’s
hands since he’s played the fool and disappeared, d–n him!  I need
backing.  That’s what I need.  I can’t go it alone!"

"What’s the lay-out?" prompted Jarmand. "Put aside the bottle and get
down to business."

Simpson flung away the opener as a useless thing and grasped a fresh
one.

"Curse the bottle and curse the business," he fumed.  "I’m busy, I tell
you.  Here, I have the prospectus.  Read it yourselves, and you’ll save
my wind!"  He drew some typewritten sheets from his breast-pocket and
flung them upon the cloth.

What he had called the prospectus passed down the line at one side of
the table, up again, and down the other side, greeted with grunts of
approval by those still clear-brained enough to understand and with much
head-wagging from such as were incapable of comprehension.

"Bully!"

"Standard bred!"

"Up to snuff!"

"Neat as garters!"

These were some of the comments from the appreciative assembly.

Last of all, the prospectus came to Jim Laurance. At the top of the
sheet, in large typing, was the name, "Yukon Dredging Company."
Underneath that reposed the list of directors, picked, apparently, from
the group invited to supper.  Jarmand’s name appeared, and Fripps’s,
Bonneaves’s, and the names of the three C’s.

Laurance quietly read the sheets through, with their significance
vitally impressing itself on him, and when he finished, he saw that he
held the kind of thing which is circulated by thousands through the
mails for the catching of suckers. It was the universally familiar,
folded sheet that expounded the virtues of the greatest dredging
proposition in the world.

"By gad," he cried, angrily shaking the prospectus in the air, "so this
is what you’ve hauled me over here to back up, eh?  A cussed, dirty,
widow-an’-orphan robbin’ swindle, if you ast me! An’, gents, I give it
to you straight: you’re a pack of low faro dealers, a bunch of
thimbleriggers, a handful of flimflammers if you put through that there
deal.  You’re a ring of thieves and d–d blacklegs, gents!"

"Hold on there, sport!" yelled Bonneaves. "You go it too strong.  We
won’t stand for all that."

"I can go lots stronger yet, young cocky-neck," warned Lawrence.  "Why,
I ain’t half goin’.  You should see me fizz some time, me son, an’ you’d
run your feet off for fear of bein’ blowed up."  He regarded the
youthful profligate grimly, shaking his stubby scalp and gray beard
aggressively, but in the corners of his eyes there lurked a humorous
expression.

"Aren’t you in on this?" asked Jarmand, rolling a wave of his oily
insolence down the table to Laurance.  "Aren’t you taking hold?  There’s
money in it!"

The Alaskan eyed him squarely.

"Not the kind of money I want," he said severely.  "Not me own kind, by
a thousand yard shot!  I don’t want no widow’s mites or orphan’s
pennies; I don’t steal no wimmen’s savin’s nor the hard-earned dollars
of some poor laborin’ cuss as thinks the Yukon is one whoppin’ lump of
gold an’ all we got to do here is to file up our finger-nails and claw
it off in pieces.  No, sir, count me out!  An’ I’ll see some law-sharp
an’ have you gents counted out, too.  You don’t work this here game so
easy.  I’m certainly certain of that!  You can’t rob people so d–d
bare-faced.  No, sir, you truly can’t.  Why, this here would be wors’n
jumpin’ all the claims on Samson Creek!"

Laurance’s glance rested full on Grant Simpson as he uttered his bold
words, and the lawyer looked up with suspicious, drink-steeped eyes.

"What the devil’s wrong with this thing?" he demanded angrily.  "What
puts your back up?"

"Look here," snapped Laurance, pointing to the typewritten sheet.  "You
claim to have one hundred miles river frontage, or ’bout ten thousand
acres, on Indian Creek.  You bought it from the Government!  Pretty lie,
if you ast me! Clear title from them, and all the rest of the
high-falutin’s!  Pah!–it turns me sick.  For you haven’t a yard–not one
d–d yard.  I’m there, an’ I know!"

The Alaskan’s vehemence drew the attention of everyone, drunk or sober.

"An’ you have two dredges at work, expectin’ a third," he went on,
continuing to read from the prospectus.  "That’s a crackin’ good Sunday
paper joke.  What does it mean?"

"Well," growled Simpson, "we will have.  We intend to."

"The devil you do," said Laurance.  "You’ll put the money in your pocket
an’ keep it there. To h–l with your prospectus!"  He tore the sheets in
half and threw the fragments on the floor.

Simpson laughed.  He viewed the whole affair with colossal unconcern.
In its time he could proceed with the venture at immense gain to himself
and the others.  It must be postponed, in spite of it being the reason
for the assembly, because, just now, wine was a much more important
thing.

"You don’t have to plunge," he commented. "Stay out if you can’t like
it."

"Yes, but he doesn’t need to give us extra work," interposed Jarmand,
expostulating about the torn prospectus.

"Have an ice, Laurance."  advised young Bonneaves.  "It’ll cool you
down."

"I’ll have nothin’," Laurance growled, reaching for his coat.  "I don’t
hanker after suppin’ with them as I now know is thieves."

At the host’s call, the Danish waitress brought in the ices on a tray,
while Jim Laurance muffled himself in his coat.

"Where’s Aline?" Simpson asked, assuming the privilege of familiarity.

"My mistress?" said the waitress.  "She will serve no more.  She will
not enter."

"But she’ll have to," cried Simpson, flushing with anger and obstinacy.
"Tell her to run in and serve immediately or I shall come after her and
kiss both her cheeks instead of one."

The Danish woman flounced out, and Jarmand involuntarily put his fingers
to his fat neck.

"You see," explained Simpson, "it isn’t like as if I hadn’t paid her for
the supper and for occupying her room.  And, by the way, this isn’t the
only room!"  He nodded and laughed evilly, adding: "The hubby’s on the
trails."

Laurance’s coat went off his back with a reverse of the motion which was
putting it on. The garment flew into one corner, and the owner’s voice
rang out across the room like the clank of good steel.

"By heaven, Simpson," he roared, "you can’t throw one speck of mud on
Pierre’s wife.  You’ll eat dirt for it.  You’re a d–d dago-hearted
liar!"

Laurance sprang along behind the row of chairs to reach Simpson at the
table’s head, but a hand caught his elbow as he passed the side door and
whirled him about.  With the suddenness of an apparition, he saw Pierre,
in musher’s dress, fresh from the trails, filling the entrance with his
bulk, so that the white face of Aline had to peer under the arm which
held Laurance back.

"Dis for me, _camarade_," murmured Pierre, pushing the Alaskan behind
him.

Giraud then walked quickly past the astonished men till he stood in
front of Simpson.  Very deliberately he gazed at him.

"M’sieu’," he said, "you wan coward.  You wan dam coward!"  And his open
palms gave Simpson a stinging blow on either cheek.

The lawyer lashed out with both hands and feet, but Pierre grasped him
by the throat and shook him like a long rag.  Bedlam broke loose! Chairs
and tables were overturned as the half-dazed revellers jumped up.
Aline’s screams were mingled with the crash of glass and chinaware.
Jarmand, Bonneaves, and two or three more of Simpson’s friends rushed to
his assistance, bent on violence toward Pierre, but Jim Laurance swung
on them sharply, with eight inches of blued, cylindrical steel
glittering in either hand.

"Back there," he yelled, "every man-jack of you, or I’ll plug you with
these gas-pipes!"

The glinting light on the dull, ugly Colts daunted them no more than the
determined gleam in the eyes of the man behind.  The rescuers fell aside
like gale-blown gravel and remained glued to the wall.

Pierre Giraud set the lawyer on his feet.  The voyageur’s face was pale
and rigid.

"M’sieu’," he said, "you lak wan feather in my hand.  Ah no be go fight
wit’ you dat way, ’cause dat not be fair.  _Mais_ you geeve Aline wan
insult–de wors’ insult dat man could geeve! An’ Aline, she lak wan
leetle w’ite saint. M’sieu’," and he tapped Simpson’s shoulder, "wan of
us be keel here.  Ah keel you, fair, or you keel me.  Tak’ de choice of
dose!"  He indicated Laurance’s pistols.

It was no orthodox duel.  There occurred no pacing, no arrangement, no
seconding, no counting!  Laurance put one weapon in Simpson’s hand,
whipped the other over to Giraud, and stepped between the door-jambs,
screening the thing from Aline.

Abruptly the shooting began, the revolvers spurting jets of flame
through the blue haze of the room, whose atmosphere thickened into
swirling wreaths with every report.

It was a scene of the wildest disorder, with the overturned tables and
chairs and shattered glass below; lights above, swaying to the
explosions of the pistols; at the sides the lines of awed yet excited
men flattened against the walls; the anxious Laurance and the frantic,
white-faced wife in the side entrance; guests fleeing from the other
parts of the establishment with shrieks and clamor; and in the centre of
it all the two combatants manoeuvring in the mist of smoke to avoid
being hit, advancing and firing swiftly as they advanced.

Simpson shot the faster, with wild, deadly, malevolent hatred; Giraud
directed his weapon with slower deliberateness, ruled by one earnest,
avenging impulse.  The room rocked to the deafening reverberations of
the pistols; the bullets went pang-panging on the wainscoting; the jets
of flame turned to crossed spears stabbing through the smoke.

In ten seconds the men were within gun-reach in the centre of the floor.
Simpson’s sixth ball broke the skin on his opponent’s neck, but Giraud’s
fifth went hurtling through the lawyer’s brain.

Simpson sagged in a little heap of black tuxedo and white starch, his
brow stained with spurting red.  Aline Giraud was sobbing on Pierre’s
breast, but Laurance roused him roughly to an acceptance of realities.

"Hit it, an’ hit it quick!" Jim urged vociferously.  "The Mounted will
be here on the run in a minnit.  Gad, that firin’ must wake up the whole
town.  Where’s the dog-train?  Is it unhitched?"

"_Non_," answered Pierre, speaking like a man in a dream, "she be in de
yard lak Ah left her."

"Come on, then," whispered Laurance, pulling him out.

Aline clung to him piteously, and Pierre embraced her with a swift,
despairing, passionate gesture.  Then he put her from him with an effort
that was agony.

"He’ll come back," consoled Laurance, "as soon as this blows over.  Come
on, Pierre.  I hear runnin’."

They were gone on the instant, leaving Aline Giraud with her sweet,
white face upturned in prayer and her hands clasped in an attitude of
fear, parting, and renunciation.

When the uniformed men of the Mounted Police filled the room where
Simpson lay dead, Pierre was galloping his dog-team at full speed up the
ice-trail of the Klondike.

"Hit it for the Thron-Diuck camps," Laurance had advised.  "They’re
somewhere in them mountains.  An’ lie low till I send you word by an
Indian."

That was how Pierre, heading for the Thron-Diuck encampments near the
Klondike’s source, found Rex Britton four days later, half dead from
starvation and exposure, with his last burned match in his pocket,
ravings on his tongue and delirium in his brain, about fifteen miles
from Five Mountain Gulch.




                              CHAPTER XVI.


"Sergeant, this is the devil’s own country!" exclaimed Cyril Ainsworth,
as he stood outside the Mounted Police post at the head of Lake Bennett.

Sergeant Church laughed heartily.  It was late spring and just about the
worst time for mosquitoes and black-flies.

"Your introduction to the country hasn’t been an exactly pleasant one,"
he replied, "but it is better than the winter."

"I can’t see why men will bury themselves here," the lawyer complained,
"especially a man like Britton!"

"He struck it rich," Church said.  "He’s worth two millions.  Yes,
Britton’s one of Dawson’s big guns now!"

"That’s no reason for remaining coffined," Ainsworth snapped.  "Why
doesn’t he come back to England and live a civilized life?  Then we
would know where to find him when he is wanted, without crossing an
ocean and a continent and traversing a God-forsaken wilderness as big as
the motherland!"

A constable of the post came up from the lake.

"The canoe’s ready, sir," he reported, with a salute.

Ainsworth and Sergeant Church moved toward the shore.  The lawyer had
come in over the summer trail from Dyea, the White Pass Railway from
Skagway to Lake Bennett being as yet only a talked-of project, and his
many experiences had been not altogether comforting ones.

"It is a pity you cannot wait for the steamer," Church observed.  "Canoe
travelling is very hard when one is not accustomed to it."

"D–n the steamer!" exploded Ainsworth.  "I am told that these boats run
weeks behind their schedules.  What use is that to a man on urgent
business?  You inhabit a devil of a country, sir."

Sergeant Church laughed again, wondering silently how Ainsworth’s system
and precision would avail against the numerous unforeseen contingencies
of that broad Northland.

They reached the landing, where a thirty-foot Peterborough waited in
care of two brawny Chilcoot men, named Dave and Pete, who had lost the
other sections of their respective cognomens, along with their former
identities, somewhere in the place of long trails.

The canoe was a roomy one, moderately fast, and fairly light on the
portage, a necessity for the Dawson trip.  Pete trimmed the packs in it
very carefully so as to give fine balance when he should take the stern,
with Dave in the bow and their passenger between them.

"We put in the canned stuff an’ the fly grease," volunteered Dave, with
a sly wink at Sergeant Church.

The sergeant pulled furiously at his moustache to hide a smile, and
mumbled some comment on the adverse wind over Lake Bennett.

The grizzled Pete, meanwhile, was scrutinizing Ainsworth’s legs with an
unappreciative eye. The lawyer had thought that English riding breeches
would be a very suitable thing for roughing it on the canoe trip, and
had donned a tightly-cut pair, together with the accompanying leggings.

"They’ll git down the leggin’ an’ clean through them pants," Pete sagely
observed.

"What?" asked Ainsworth.

"The flies," answered Pete, "they’ll make mosquito-nettin’ of them
leg-o’-muttons.  Git some overalls an’ cruisers if you don’t want to be
drilled like a honeycomb."

Ainsworth recognized the wisdom of this advice, even if he resented its
criticism, and went back to the post with Church.  When he appeared
again, he was attired in eighteen-inch cruisers, tough duck overalls,
and flannel shirt with vest, to keep the bloodthirsty black-flies from
stabbing through.

"You look some Christian-like," commented Pete, in a low tone.  Then
aloud he added: "You’re fit to fight them black divils now!  Let’s hit
her up!"

They did hit it up over Bennett, with Sergeant Church waving them
farewell from the post.

Ainsworth had never been in a canoe, having ridden a ten-ton barge down
from Linderman, and the apparent unstability of the craft appalled him,
though he took particular pains to conceal his concern.  It required
considerable effort to preserve an unruffled mien, and Pete noticed that
the lawyer’s white fingers gripped the gunwale like a vise.  Lake
Bennett offered a thirty-mile pull, and with every mile the blustering
headwind increased till it blew a smothering gale.

"This ain’t no tug-boat," Pete growled, at last. "Git out yon extra
paddle."

Ainsworth gasped.  He had not expected that he would be ordered to help
with the locomotion when he was paying his men ten dollars each a day
and a bonus if they landed him in Dawson by the date upon which it was
necessary for him to be there in Britton’s interests.  He began to wish
he had waited for the steamer, and he made a mild protest to the
grizzled stern paddler.

"This isn’t in the bargain," he said confidently.

"No, nor this sea ain’t in the bargain," returned Pete.  "Paddle, durn
you!  Do you want to git swamped?"

The big, swinging waves drenched them, and Ainsworth fell to work with
the extra paddle. They made some headway thus, though the lawyer had to
alternately paddle and bail, but the gale grew worse and forced them to
creep along the shore.

There the three men fought the squall, wading in the shallow water and
pulling and shoving their canoe through the pounding surf.  It was
Ainsworth’s first baptism, and the gods of the north had conspired to
make it thorough enough.

That night they camped on Cariboo Crossing amid the black-flies and
mosquitoes.  These made a specialty of dining upon Ainsworth.  He was a
tender, fresh cheechako, much more inviting than the leathern-skinned,
calloused sourdoughs, Dave and Pete.

While the Chilcoot men pitched the tent, Ainsworth batted the flies.
They came in ravenous swarms, bent upon participating in a treat, and
Ainsworth wrapped Cariboo Crossing and its environment in a haze of
sulphurous expressions. Because he was in shelter where the wind could
not reach them, the black pests covered his face and neck; they drifted
from the thickets like mist wracks and made the camping hour unbearable
for the lawyer.

Presently, however, Pete had the stringing of the tent all finished; had
anchored the ends, ballasted the sides, and banked it about with moss to
keep out the pests at night.  Then, as Dave made a couch of pulled
boughs for their passenger, he built a smoky fire.

"Git in that," he said to the lawyer.  "It’ll fix ’em."

Ainsworth found to his satisfaction that the dense smudge relieved him
of his winged assailants. He stood in it so long that Pete, smiling to
himself, built another fire, upon which he cooked bannocks and fried
fish caught in the lake.

They ate their evening meal, protected by the smoke, and Ainsworth,
lying back with lighted pipe, watching Pete bake flapjacks for the next
day, experienced a comfortable, soothing sensation.  The long twilight
of the Northland died, and the dark marched over Bennett.  Upon the
clean rock they had picked as a camping place their twin fires shone
with a ruddy glow against the dark green of the shrubbery and blocked
out their canvas like some giant white moth among the bushes.

Northern insects and lizards sang and crooned in voices strange to
Ainsworth; strange noises of the darkness echoed and ceased; the stars
wheeled slowly, and the crimson camp blaze faded to amber coals.

"Put your head under the blanket an’ keep her there," was Pete’s
warning, as they turned in.

Ainsworth tried to obey, but decided that the observance of such a
decree would result in suffocation.  He preferred to endure agony and
live, for though the tent had been well prepared, it was impossible to
keep out all the mosquitoes.

They sang in falsetto choruses above the sleepers’ heads.  Dave and Pete
could hear the lawyer’s stifled imprecations and vicious slappings till
slumber overpowered them.

By morning Ainsworth was pretty well chewed, and stupid with loss of
sleep.  He bathed in the lake water while the others got breakfast, but
the experiment was painful.  The flies feasted on him while he
undressed, whenever his head and shoulders rose above the surface, and
when he dressed again.  It seemed that they recognized no intermissions
and countenanced no union hours.

On Tagish Lake an exasperating headwind baffled the canoeists as on the
preceding day.  Ainsworth soon caught the swing of the paddle, and his
blade flickered and dipped in time with those of the steerer and the
bowman.

Striking the sweep of the rolling waves, he had to bail until they could
no longer make any advance.  Along the shoreline they went overboard,
Dave hauling ahead with the towline, while the lawyer and Pete pushed on
the canoe through the nasty breakers.  Hour by hour they struggled
strenuously and unceasingly, the surf soaking them to their necks.
Ainsworth did not like it, but the wet was better than flies.

A halt was made at Tagish Post for rest and recuperation, after which
they pushed on with more favorable weather through Lake Marsh and
reached the head of Box Cañon.  The strip of water between it and the
foot of White Horse Rapids is treacherously bad, so they portaged where
they could not line, and skirted the famous chutes.

Five Finger Rapids gave them a tough struggle, and snags capsized them
twice, but they accomplished the descent on the third attempt and
entered deep river water.  Here the current ran tremendously strong, and
only where they could not tow did they use the paddles.  Towing was
heart-breaking work, the ragged undergrowth, splintered rocks, and bays,
necessitating ugly wading, proving drains on their strength. They fought
the racing currents with the short, snappy Indian stroke and drove
through swirling whirlpools, called eddies, at the expense of all their
reserve power.  At the Police post on the Big Salmon they slept like
dead men, and started late the next day.

The rest of the canoe route into Dawson was not so trying.  They made up
some lost time and reached Dawson City on the date Ainsworth had set as
the limit within which he had promised the bonus.

"You win, men," Ainsworth said, as their trim craft rocked in the swell
of a steamer which had just cast off her shore-lines when they neared
the wharf.

"We do, sure," grunted Pete, with a complacent smile.  "When we
calculate on doin’ somethin’ by a set time, it’s generally done, ain’t
it, Dave?"

"It is, sure," Dave agreed, his interest being more attracted by the
bustle on the landing than the discussion of what they had done.

The bank was lined with Dawson’s inhabitants, for the boat service was
the most vital part of their existence, and their attention hung on the
arrival or departure of every steamer.  A mixed assemblage covered the
small dock, and in it were Indians, traders, capitalists, prospectors,
dog-mushers, and women.  The boat itself carried a number of passengers,
and a great cargo of outgoing baggage and freight littered its decks.
The big paddle-wheels churned fiercely in the stream, and a dinning
clamor of farewell rose up from those on the shore as the Yukon boat
swung with the middle current.

The Peterborough took the place alongside the wharf which the steamer
had vacated, and the three occupants at once became objects of
inspection.

"Hullo, Dave!  Hullo, Pete!" their friends among the crowd greeted.

"Where ye bin?" asked Old Jim Parsons, a famous and ancient musher.
"Bin sort o’ travellin’ some, hain’t ye?"

"Runnin’ against time," Pete grinned, "an’ we win!  Where’s that big gun
you call Britton?"

"Gone down the river just afore ye come," answered a voice in the
throng.  "Seen him take his canoe!  He ain’t gone more’n five minutes."

"Ah!" mused Ainsworth, "so he doesn’t ride in a launch now!"

Old Jim Parsons shuffled his feet irritably on the landing.

"Launch!" he ejaculated in high scorn. "Don’t ye know he’s the best
blade on the river? No dod-blasted sputter-boat fur him!"

The old musher’s snort of indignation followed them down the stream, and
Ainsworth chuckled in a satisfied manner.  After all, a man who
preferred his canoe to a launch was man enough to listen to sound
reason.

They ran upon him suddenly in a little bay some distance down stream.
He had paddled easily, being out for an evening hour, and beached his
canoe on the shingle of a half-submerged river bar.  He sat upon a rock
at the water’s edge, smoking and looking into the depths.

As they approached, Ainsworth discerned another figure near Britton.

"He’s not alone," he commented.  "Do you know the person who is with
him?"

Pete stared under his hand, for the evening sun slanted over the wooded
ridge with a dazzling glare which prevented easy vision.

"No, by gad," he said in a loud whisper, "fur it wears skirts!"

The bowman was startled, and his brown palm also shaded his dark eyes.

"It does, sure," Dave gasped.  His serenity was so disturbed that, he
thumped the gunwale with the paddle grip.

"Blast you," snarled the outraged Pete, "do you want him to think we’re
a pair of bloomin’ skiff-rowers?"  Dave subsided in discomfiture at the
deserved reprimand.

Britton had caught the thump, and looked up.

"Ye gods," he cried, "a miracle!  A miracle has come to pass!"  Beneath
his flippancy there ran a vibrant tone of delight.

"Yes, a miracle of exertion!" Ainsworth asserted.  "I’ve undertaken a
cursed journey for your sake, Britton; I have been pounded, devoured,
and drowned in the effort to get here by the thirtieth of July.  Take my
word for it that I don’t want another similar trip.  It has been a
devilish task.  Ask the men!"

"It has, sure," the Chilcoot men said in one voice, without waiting to
be questioned.

The Peterborough had drawn in close to the perpendicular rock upon which
Rex Britton sat, and they could not then see the woman who was sitting
on the lower beach near the other canoe where it rested on the bar.

"And why this haste, O prophet?" Britton laughed.  "And why this trip,
at all?"

"When a man buries himself alive and his resurrection becomes necessary,
someone has to attend to that rising," Ainsworth said.  "The someone is
very often his legal adviser!"

Britton smiled with a touch of tenderness. He loved Ainsworth for his
odd, swift manners of action and speech and for his unalterable
fidelity. An inkling of the trend of events had come to him, but he
could not show it, and Ainsworth’s solicitude was comforting.

"Still, I am completely in the dark," he persisted.

"Then you haven’t much perception," the lawyer growled.  "The Honorable
Oliver Britton is dead, and he has left you Britton Hall!"

Rex sprang upright on the rock in his astonishment; then laughed
shortly, as he resumed his seat, stuffing nervously at his pipe.

"That won’t go down," he observed sardonically. "I remember what my
uncle said to me that last night in Sussex."

Ainsworth leaned out of the packs in the middle of the canoe, speaking
in an eager, intense voice.

"Can I read testaments?" he asked.  "Do I know law?"

"As none other in England," Rex replied softly.

"Then believe what I have told you," the lawyer said.  "I play with no
one, and I wish no one to play with me.  Your uncle died last month of
pneumonia.  Britton Hall is willed to you!"

Rex thrust a muscle-wrapped arm over the rock.  "Come up," he said, "and
tell me all about it.  Tell me what they are doing at home. How’s
Trascott and–and the old place?"  His eyes were alight because the
sea-girt downs of Sussex still had a spell for him.

Ainsworth stood up carefully in the centre of the Peterborough while his
men balanced it against the granite with flattened paddles.  He put the
toe of one scarred cruiser in a crack of the perpendicular wall, and
grasping the outstretched hand, he was lifted to a seat beside Britton.

"Trascott’s fine," the lawyer said, "and the old place is as green as
ever.  We both had a grand run over it with the hounds just before your
uncle was stricken.  The fox was started in that bit of furze by Bowley
Creek, where we used to snare rabbits when you were a kid and I was
proud of my ’teens,’ and went away with the pack in full cry over
Cranston Ridge.

"A good many of the hunters came croppers at that marshy brook and high
hedge fence, but Trascott and I stuck on with the best of them. We were
first in at the finish beyond Bramfell Heath, and we got the brush."

"It must have been a good run," Rex breathed. "I can see every stick and
stone of it now.  Yes, I could ride it blindfold if I were back there."

The lawyer put his hand on Britton’s thick, brown arm.

"You’re going back with me," he said calmly. "It’s not a matter of
desire but a case of responsibility; yet if you would rather follow
desire, there are enough attractions over home.

"Who wouldn’t want to be lord of the finest estate in the county?  Then
there is the yacht–it goes to you–and the stables of hunters and polo
ponies; there is the London mansion which is part of the property; the
pheasants are a prime lot, and the trout streams have been lately
stocked."

Ainsworth paused to let stirring memories work their effect.

"And the responsibility?" Britton asked after a moment’s silence.

"That clinches things," Ainsworth declared. "It is incumbent upon you to
fitly fill your uncle’s place.  They want you back home!  The servants
are awaiting their young master; the cricketers and polo players have
you already on the teams; the sailors rejoice because you will command
them; hostesses all over the county have sent me social invitations in
view of your return to England.  You must go back, Britton, for the sake
of the Britton name.  You must perpetuate the name and the lineage!"

The lawyer became so earnest that he gestured with his arms in an
unaccustomed fashion, while Rex gazed thoughtfully at the broad river
swirls laving the white shore-line and spraying overhanging bushes.  The
sun showed a half disc of crimson above a distant bluff, sending a last
flood of ruddy light over the spot where the two friends reclined; below
them the tired Chilcoot paddlers nodded in their motionless craft lying
close against the seamed wall of ironstone; the curve of the rock
shoulder still hid the woman, who had not moved from the beach.

"Suppose I don’t go back," ventured Britton, dreamingly.

"If you don’t, it all goes to the auctioneer’s block.  Your uncle put a
condition and a date in his will.  You either take possession within two
months or they sell the estate for charity."

Rex sprang up a second time, spurred by Ainsworth’s announcement.

"Sell Britton Hall!" he cried.  "By my soul, they had better not think
of it.  I would come from the grave to prevent that!"

"Thank the Lord," breathed Ainsworth, in immense relief.  "I haven’t
labored in vain!"

He arose also and seized Britton’s hand. "Swear on this handshake!" he
ordered, and Rex took the vow.

"Now that you have promised, I can tell you something else," the lawyer
observed.  "I am glad that I did not have to use it as a means of
influencing you.  Boy, listen!  They want you to represent New
Shoreham."

Ainsworth made the declaration with a tinge of paternal pride.

"They want me!" Britton exclaimed.  "I couldn’t do it.  I–why–"

"Never mind," interrupted his friend, "I know your objections by heart,
the depreciation of your abilities and all the rest of it.  Let that
pass, and give ear to common sense!  The community of New Shoreham has
gone from bad to worse since Oliver Britton chucked its representation
for the diplomatic service.  The name of Britton was a power there with
the lower classes and the aristocracy alike, but during the last few
years, its want has been felt.  The place has been torn by political
strife, rival factions, and unscrupulous candidates.

"They want a Britton to lead them again. After your uncle’s retirement,
the big men pleaded with him to enter the arena once more, and I believe
he would have yielded to their entreaties had death spared him.

"Now they clamor for you in his stead.  Only a Britton will satisfy
them.  Commercial interest as well as political prosperity hangs on that
name.  Don’t offer refusal!  I won’t hear of it; Trascott will not
listen to it; and no member of the place can bear its mention."

Ainsworth’s vehemence wakened the paddlers, and they slapped the water
idly with their blades. The crimson disc of the sun had vanished.  The
river surface changed to a perfect violet hue.

"It’s a big thing," said Britton, slowly–"tremendously big, and it has
come like a Bennett wind!"

"The day of nomination is the same date that your uncle fixed for the
condition of taking possession," Ainsworth remarked.  "Thus there was a
double reason for my haste, and the reasons still hold.  We must make a
start for home immediately.  Delays may arise, and we can’t run the
thing too fine."

Rex knocked the dead tobacco from his pipe on the heel of his
prospecting boot.

"Yes," he mused, "we’ll go back to the downs, but my comprehension is
still slow."

"If you serve well, they’ll put the word ’Honorable’ before your name,"
his friend commenced in a lighter vein.  "Then you know there’s the
daughter of the Duchess!  You used to be sweet on her when you were
attending Oxford."

Britton started suddenly at a recollection, though not at the one
Ainsworth had prompted, and looked toward the river bar.

"Yes, tell me what the woman is doing there," the lawyer begged,
following his glance.  "I have refrained from asking any questions."

"She is painting a sunset scene," Rex replied in a hard, overstrained
tone.  "She likes to be quite alone when sketching."

Then he called out: "Mercia!  Have you finished?"

"One moment, Rex," a bell-like voice answered from the shingle.  "I am
nearly through."

"Let us go down," Britton suggested, offering no explanation as to who
the lady was.

They crunched down upon the gravel, and mental association of an
unconscious variety brought Ainsworth the remembrance of another woman,
the woman who had come across their course at Algiers.

"Where are Maud Morris, her husband, and Simpson?" he asked.

"Maud Morris is in Dawson," Britton replied. "The other two are dead."

"Dead!" echoed the lawyer, in genuine amazement.

"Yes," said Rex, "Morris succumbed from drink and exposure at Samson
Creek two days ago.  He had taken some winter side-trip which was too
much for his constitution.  They said his wife had the decency to go to
him on his death-bed."

"And Simpson?" eagerly inquired Ainsworth.

"Pierre Giraud shot him for insulting Giraud’s wife, last winter."

"Jove!" exclaimed the lawyer.  "Your North believes in swift justice.
What was done with the voyageur?"

"He escaped to the wilds," Rex said, "but returned later, and was
arrested by the Mounted Police."

Ainsworth indulged in no comment because they had reached the woman
painter.  She turned, smiling, at their footsteps, and the lawyer stared
dazedly at the image of Maud Morris.

"Mercia," said Britton, "this is Ainsworth, the friend of whom I have so
often spoken. Ainsworth, let me present my wife!"

The beautiful, girlish figure held out her hand, but the lawyer
recoiled, glancing angrily at Rex.

"What trick is this?" he cried, but when he studied the sweet face
before him again, his senses received a shock.

He bent forward, using his keen eyes more searchingly, and surveyed her
with a scrutiny well nigh rude.  It gradually dawned on him that this
was not Maud Morris but someone moulded in her likeness with a purer,
intensified beauty.

"Forgive me, forgive me!" he burst out impetuously.  "I mistook you for
a woman who is–who is not fit to be any man’s wife."  He seized her both
hands now and pressed them respectfully and penitentially.

Britton took his wife’s arm with an air of jealous ownership while she
gazed up at him, a tremulous expression of wonder in her eyes as if the
action were new to her and unexplainable.

"No," said Rex, somewhat passionately, "this isn’t the other woman whom
you know, Ainsworth. Mercia is the soul which the other never had!"




                             CHAPTER XVII.


Lady Rossland’s reception for the New Shoreham candidate on the evening
preceding the nomination day was a thing of note.

For the space of ten hours, Britton had been out among his constituents
with Lord Rossland, Ainsworth, and Trascott, who had come down from his
London work to witness the honors bestowed upon his friend.  At seven
o’clock, Rex returned alone to Britton Hall, the curate and the lawyer
having gone on with Rossland to his country-seat, where the function was
to be held.

The strain of canvassing had been more wearisome than a day of Yukon
mushing, but dinner and a bath refreshed him.  Upstairs, he called his
wife’s maid.

"At what time has your mistress ordered the carriage?" he asked.

"Nine o’clock, sir,–if that will suit you."  The maid spoke almost
timidly, as if she recognized some gulf between husband and wife, and
feared that their plans for the evening might conflict.

"That will do very well," Britton decided. "Tell her I will await her at
nine."

He crossed to his own suite and entered the bedroom, where Bassing, his
man, had laid out his clothes.  He knew the room of old, and a glow of
possession thrilled him.  The magnificence of its appointing was a
delight.  The heavy furniture, the lofty fretted ceiling, the ponderous
chandelier, and thick Oriental curtains, unaltered in setting for three
generations, gave an impression of stability which had a far-reaching
effect. His grandfather had slept, as he himself slept, in the high
canopied bed with its massive carved corner posts, and ancestral pride
buoyed up Britton to the heights of egotism.

He dressed slowly and carefully, with a due consciousness of the
relation between appearance and personality, and descended the stairs at
five minutes to nine.  The carriage had not yet drawn up in the
driveway, nor had Mercia come from her apartments.  By the door stood
Crandell, the footman who had served his uncle, and who regarded the
advent of the young master with satisfaction.

For five minutes Rex waited, and the carriage wheels shrieked on the
gravel as the driver wheeled his horses sharply in front of the great
arched entrance.  A silver-chimed clock pealed nine in the drawing-room,
and the soft rustle of Mercia’s garments sounded on the stairway.

Britton looked up involuntarily, his face flushing slightly.  His wife’s
beauty was a revelation to which no man could deny homage; she carried
herself with distinction enhanced by a peculiar, free rhythm of movement
which is a heritage of the life in the open.  Her individuality seemed a
blending of youthful bloom with a certain mature, womanly power born of
the true conception of existence.

And marring her sweet winsomeness, was a scarcely observable flaw, a
cold reserve maintained, apparently, not of inward intention but by the
outward pressure of circumstance.  This unbidden attribute matched
Britton’s unemotional, respectful attitude, presenting, as it were, foil
to foil in the guarding of a common neutrality.

"Let me hold your cloak," he said deferentially.

She suffered his help with a distant, though polite, acknowledgment, and
Crandell opened the door.  The horses pranced impatiently upon the white
sand before the portico, and Mercia hurried out.  Her husband followed
quickly, handed her in, and they dashed away.

The drive to Rossland House was made practically in silence.  Britton
spoke once, remarking on the hot night and predicting rain.

Outside Lord Rossland’s grand country-seat their equipage fell in line,
stopped at the steps, and let them down.  They found themselves
traversing the length of the front hall, which opened on the splendid
reception-rooms.

It was nearly twelve months since Britton had mingled with society of
this class, that is, of his own county, and he experienced the feeling
of an actor who plays an unfamiliar part.  The sensation stamped his
bearing and augmented that chill reserve which had never been present
before he left England.  He attempted to shake it off in the exchange of
greetings with Lord and Lady Rossland and others.  In this he succeeded
to a certain degree, and when he had made the round of presentation as
the coming member, the contact with his fellows wore away the shyness.

He was separated from his wife, and, flattered by Rossland’s patronage
and amused by Ainsworth’s ironic comment on everything they saw,
Britton’s affability grew more marked.

Toward the supper-hour he found Mercia again in the rooms, in company
with Lady Rossland.

"Here is the truant," cried her ladyship, laughing.  "We searched
everywhere for you, sir."

"No truant, my dear," put in Lord Rossland. "I have been heaping his
responsibilities upon him."

"But here is a responsibility he has forgotten–his wife," objected Lady
Rossland, in feigned reproach.  "Reginald, take her in to supper. A
score of men have begged the honor, but I have been obdurate for your
sake!"

Britton bowed ostentatiously, catching her ladyship’s bantering spirit,
yet a shade of that cloudy reserve dampened his manner as he took his
wife’s arm.  They passed on to the supper-rooms, with the Rosslands
leading and his lordship’s sister behind with Kinmair, editor and owner
of _The Daily Challenge_, one of the most powerful organs in London.
Kinmair, next to Lord Rossland, was Britton’s staunchest supporter.

They made a merry group at the profusely decorated tables, and because
the evening grew so warm in spite of wide open doors and swinging
casements, the quarter-hour’s refreshment proved grateful.

"Now," announced her ladyship, when they emerged from the roses and
palms, "you are thrown upon your own resources.  There are the
galleries, the gardens, billiards, and cigars! You may play bridge
up-stairs, dance in the drawing-rooms, row upon the river, or interview
the spirit reader in the conservatory."

Britton raised his eyebrows.

"Ah!" he smiled, "–a new departure?"

"It is all the rage in London now," explained Lord Rossland’s sister,
Dora.  "Everyone has a theosophist at their evening functions to give a
séance or read futures."

Rex laughed a little, thinking of the great, tight-locked Yukon where
the issues of life and death prohibited any such toys or trifling.

"I–I am afraid I am somewhat behind the times," he ventured, looking at
Mercia for a brief instant.

"Then you shall be initiated into the mysteries at once," cried Lady
Rossland, "and I must conduct you to Madame Spiritualist.  A politician
should know his future.  Should he not, Mrs. Britton?"

"If I were a politician, I should hardly dare to gaze on it," Mercia
smiled.  "Disappointment might be lying somewhere in wait."

"Men have no such fears," Lord Rossland blustered in his kindly way.
"If they had, they would never reach the top, and Britton has, I
believe, a brilliant career waiting for him.  But, my dear, if you are
going to act as his guide, I shall take Mrs. Britton through the
galleries. She wished to see the paintings."

"Thank you, yes," said Mercia.  "I have heard of your famous pictures,
and I adore the art."

"She has the great gift, Rossland," observed Rex, turning aside with her
ladyship, "and she may tell you things even about your own canvases."

Kinmair and Lord Rossland’s sister went into the garden among the
fountains, while Lady Rossland took her recruit to the conservatory.  On
the way they passed the billiard-rooms and saw Ainsworth engaged in his
customary game with the redoubtable Trascott.  Her ladyship smiled at
their earnest devotion to the stroke.

"Your friends are fine men," she remarked appreciatively.  "I doubt if
there are in England two grander representatives of their respective
professions."

"I believe you," agreed Britton, with a sudden gravity approaching
severity, "but here we are."

They had reached the conservatory, and Lady Rossland’s nephew came out
with a slip of paper in his hand.  Her ladyship bad commissioned him to
act as the theosophist’s assistant and play the part of scout.  He was a
slim, light-haired youth, and his aunt had insisted at his christening
that he should be named Guy.

"Hello," said Guy, "your palmist has given me a list of guests for whom
she wants to gaze. Here it is!  You’re first on the paper, Britton. See?
Now go along and get through while I bring your successor."

He pushed Rex inside and closed the door, taking his aunt away with him.

"Now was that name on the list coincidence or design?" Britton asked
himself before he came to the end of the conservatory’s corridor.

One corner of the cool place had been curtained off with blue silk
hangings as a retreat for the spiritualist.  Her tiny tent was closed
and lighted from within by a red-globed lamp which gave a subdued
effect.  The pavilion was arranged thus to give the palmist the
advantage of illumination while her subject stood outside in partial
darkness.

Rex felt awkward and ill at ease at the weighty sense of desolation
which filled the long, empty conservatory.  His footsteps paused
uncertainly, but the waiting priestess heard them.

"Come closer please," she said in a muffled tone that sounded disguised.

Britton obeyed the summons with an increasing sensation of awkwardness
for which he was at a loss to account.  He stood so near the soft
curtains that they brushed his body without weight, like fine cobwebs,
and he could perceive a small horizontal slit in the pavilion’s side
which was not noticeable before.  Set back of it, so as to block the
vision and prevent an inspection of the interior, was a Japanese screen
in weird colors.

His mind was filled with an irritation aroused by the feminine whim that
had sent him to this place.  The whole environment jarred on him as
possessing an illusion disproportionate to his mental vision.

"Well?" he demanded in a voice which set the responsibility for his
coming on the head of the person within the gaudy pavilion.

There was a noise inside that seemed like a smothered exclamation of
surprise together with a vague rustle of woman’s garments, and the same
muffled tone as before became audible, though it seemed shaken and
difficult to control.

"Extend your palms through the opening," was the subdued order of the
spirit reader.

Rex hesitated.  The incongruity of this dallying imbued a sort of
rankling disgust for its exponent and an ashamed opinion of himself.

"You are a doubter?" the unseen spiritualist asked.  Her inflection was
one of sarcasm.

Britton laughed scornfully.  "It is hardly worth while," he replied.

"But still you belong to the sceptic class," the voice insisted.
"Please extend your hands.  I promise you that you will be surprised at
my methods."

Rex stirred his feet, the motion making an inordinately loud noise in
the deserted place.  He listened when the echoes ceased, but young Guy
Rossland had not returned.  He was doubtless having some trouble in
finding Britten’s successor.

"I promise to surprise you," repeated the palmist.

"Surprise!–yes," Rex assented.  "Convincing is a different matter.  You
know I have not followed the fad."

"Nevertheless, I think conviction is hard upon you," came the
declaration from the tent.  "Will you give me a trial?"  There was a
defiant note in the question.

"That is but fair, now you speak of it," said Britton, mockingly.  He
thrust his arms through the slit with a total lack of ceremony.

A pair of soft, electric palms took his, and the current of the hidden
woman’s presence flowed through every vein in his body.

Rex stood immovable as if a secret shock had fixed his feet.  He cried
out with an inarticulate exclamation because he knew the touch, but his
paralyzed vocal organs would frame no speech. A short, dramatic silence
succeeded his outcry. The drone of a clumsy, waking fly beat distinctly
on the panes; the creak of oar-locks on the river rose insistently
through the open conservatory windows; beneath the sills the gentle
plashing of the fountain water changed to a gurgle of wicked glee.

In the silence, Britton was beginning to find his self-possession, when
the sorceress spoke, her voice now undisguised.

"It’s centuries and ages since we were so close, Rex," she said–and the
magnetic hands were glued to his in a melting, appealing touch. "Isn’t
it ages and ages?" she continued passionately.

Britten’s answer was a cry like that of a trapped bear.  He wrenched his
hands loose, swept away the intervening curtains, as he once swept the
silken portières from an old-time boudoir, and stood face to face with
the siren it had held. She had taken off her veiled turban, and her eyes
shone like stars, with a former potent lure.




                             CHAPTER XVIII.


Everything whizzed about Britton for a few seconds.  In the red glow of
light from the demolished pavilion, the floor throbbed and rocked like
the deck of a yacht, and the glass walls of the conservatory tilted up
sharply.  Rex put a hand on the wire which had held the curtains and
steadied himself.

"So it was design," he said harshly, accusingly.

One glance at his face told Maud Morris that honeyed words could not
subjugate him.  Appeal was rendered useless for her purpose; there
remained compulsion.  She stepped back a little at his grim anger till
she leaned against some flowering vine in the corner window-box. Between
them stood a small table on which rested the adjuncts of her pretended
art.

"Yes," she corroborated, with a flicker of satire, "it was design.  You
know, Rex, that I have no faith whatever in coincidence.  You believed
me to be thousands of miles away in Dawson City?"

"Why have you dogged me?" demanded Britton, bluntly.  "To impersonate
Mrs. Grundy as you did last winter in that same place?"

"Was it so illy done?" she questioned in turn, with a cruel intonation.
Her fingers broke a bloom from the vine, and she caressed it with her
lips.

"It was art–fine art," Rex bitterly declared, "and it accomplished the
intended purpose of involving me in an intricacy of despair.  Your
appearance here hints at a repetition of that trouble.  Is that your
object?  Have you trailed me in order to work fresh mischief?"  He spoke
with the air of a man driven to bay, one whose impulse is to face and
have done with a difficulty once for all.

"The question of mischief-making rests with yourself," Maud Morris
temporized.  "I admit that I followed you, faked connections with the
Mahatma Institute in order to be present to-night––"

"Why to-night?" Britton interrupted, regarding the soulless thing
searchingly.

"I wished to see you before tomorrow," the woman answered, "before you
accept that nomination."  She turned away a little to the open window
and looked indifferently out upon the long, shadowed gardens, as if
placing no weight upon her observation.

The action vindicated a former power of command, and a momentary triumph
was obtained. Rex dropped his uplifted hand from the wire so swiftly
that the tautened metal sang in a high-pitched crescendo, and he took
two quick steps to her side.

"You are deeper than any Mahatma witch," he said tersely, "and there is
something behind your words.  Why did you wish to see me before the
Convention tomorrow?"

There was a short pause while she picked reflectively at the sleeve of
the loose Oriental gown which enveloped her supple body.  Then she faced
Britton squarely, her blue-green eyes glowing into his.

"Because you will never accept that nomination," she answered
dramatically.

The unexpected shot told.  Rex started, but the necessity of the moment
recalled his sang-froid, and he showed no sign of inward perturbation.

"I surprise you?"  She was feeling for the effect with both voice and
eye.

"Surprise?" Rex parleyed.  "Why should I be surprised at anything you do
or say?  My experience with and observation of you has been infinitely
varied and valuably instructive.  No, I am not at all astonished, only
mystified.  You will, of course, explain!"

She bit her lip in obvious displeasure at her failure to move him and at
his cool criticism of her fickle, spiteful disposition, which had been
revealed all too fully in times that were dead to Britton.  She made a
slight, almost imperceptible motion that brought her nearer to him.

"You will, of course, explain," Rex repeated, coldly attentive.

"Willingly!" she abruptly exclaimed.  "The man who came alone out of
Five Mountain Gulch can never represent New Shoreham when New Shoreham
knows the facts connected with that great Five Mountain strike!"  She
met Britton’s intense gaze with a level glance full of a subtle
confidence and waited for his utter confusion, the anticipated result of
her significant explanation.

But the anticipated result was not realized in that way!  The perturbing
effect she expected did not follow her pointed words.  That they had any
influence on Britton was shown only by the stiffening of his shoulders
and the squaring of his stern jaw.  The absence of fear, the presence of
which had been exultingly foreseen by Maud Morris, tended to vaguely
disconcert her.

"Your impression does not coincide with mine?" she asked at last,
indecision being noticeable in her tone.

Britton reached out both arms, resting his palms heavily on the
window-sill, and looked at her with head turned sidewise.  His profile
in the subdued red light was grim and powerful as granite sculpturing.

"Suppose," he began brusquely, "that New Shoreham knows.  What is left
for the man?"

Maud Morris smiled.  "Your intuition is almost womanly," she said with
returning assurance.  "For the man?  I should surely suggest some
far-away, far-away part where no one knows or cares.  There the man
would easily find respite, especially if he had the companionship of,
say, a very old friend, a–a friend whom perhaps he once regarded
highly."  Her meaning was flagrantly vivid.  The night breeze stirred
her garments, wafting a faint, enervating perfume to Britten’s nostrils.
The fountain water plashed timidly now, and the spectral shadows
crouched on the clipped lawns.  Over the thick woodland copse the angry
lightning clawed the black horizon into a million red-edged fragments.
Rex found himself in a position singularly difficult and unpleasant.  It
bordered even on the dangerous.  Mingled irresolution and indignation
handicapped him in a measure, but he decided to persevere in sounding
this woman’s intentions to the very bottom.

"Granted that the oblivion you speak of and the escape from consequence
could be so found," Britton said, "there is a thing which you persist in
overlooking, the possibility of the man having a wife."

A warning note of wrath accompanied Britton’s last word.  Any keen ear
might have recognized it, but Maud Morris was so engrossed with the
working out of the systematic project upon which she had embarked that
she missed the voiced danger signal.

"I do not overlook that," she remarked with an inconsequent shrug.  "I
ignore it!"

All Britton’s suppressed anger broke bounds and flamed to the surface.
He whirled suddenly and struck his clenched right hand in the open palm
of his left.

"Look here," he cried, coming to the point with a graphic directness
which was a most creditable trait of his character, "I think I have
grasped your meaning and your proposition. I must refuse this
nomination, desert my wife, and disappear in a foreign country or you
will tell what you know of Five Mountain Gulch.  Am I right?"

"On the whole, yes," she replied, maintaining her brazen serenity in the
face of his wrath. "I swore I would separate you from that little saint,
and, before heaven, I will!"

"Why did you not act before, in Dawson?"

"I learned what I know at Samson Creek when Morris died," she said
impetuously.  "You had started for England when I got back to Dawson.  I
came on your heels, and I am to have my revenge."

"So your informant was Morris," Rex commented with a certain relief.
"Do you expect to intimidate me by the use of a dying man’s delirium, by
means of some irrational tale?  Let me tell you, Maud Morris, that I
have walked too close to real danger to be frightened by a phantom!"

"Morris knew everything," she cried vehemently. "He followed you all the
way up the Klondike to Five Mountain Gulch and saw you shoot Lessari."

Britton reeled, self-control shocked out of him.

"Morris did?" he stammered–"but it was self-defence–"

"Was it?" she interrupted, leering into his face with supercilious
smiles.  "Would the public believe it?  Have you an atom of proof?  You
may say that the lack of proof, of substantiation, works both ways.
That may be, but proof is not necessary for my purpose.  The simple
statement, the all-pervading rumor, the unpreventable scandal, will do
far better.  Do you see where you are now, Rex,–the old, proud Rex?  Do
you know where you are?  Yes, you do–in my hand!"  She slowly closed her
outstretched fingers.

Egotistical triumph gleamed in her every lineament. Britton, wrestling
with his deep problem, did not mark her expression, for he had made a
vital discovery which filled him with mental disgust.

"I know now the mysteries of the poisoned dogs and the sled plunging
into the abyss," he announced in a horrified way, "and I can tell you
where your husband is at this moment.  Morris is in hell, suffering
torment for a double murder! Twice in that frozen wilderness he
apparently compassed our destruction with the most diabolical intent.
He is as guilty as if Lessari and myself had both died at his hand."

Britton’s awful earnestness embarrassed her, but she made a pretence of
laughing sceptically. Distant thunder echoed with her laugh in low
growlings and mutterings, and the far-off rising downs were nakedly
etched by vivid, incessant streaks of lightning as if the mountain
spirits were working themselves up to a climax of passion that must
culminate in a ruthless and pathetic tragedy.

The strains of the orchestra in the drawing-rooms were drowned by the
threatenings of the storm, and Rex could hear people hurrying in from
the gardens and lawns and from the river to reach cover and escape the
expected deluge. An unconscious wonderment as to whether young Guy
Rossland had lost himself in searching for the next man whose name was
on the theosophist’s list passed through Britton’s mind.  The false
theosophist herself interrupted his pondering.

"If Morris is guilty through intent," she said, "what of your own deed?"
The shallow mockery of her glance belied the sense of judicious
importance she tried to attach to her utterance. Rex commenced to see at
last that the woman was but playing for a stake and holding all the
trumps.

"I feel no guilt, nothing but remorse," he replied, "for I stand clear
of any deliberate act."

"But you cannot prove it," she cautioned. "Picture public condemnation
and horror when they know!"

"Go and tell them," Rex fiercely returned, accepting with his accustomed
thrill the combat which could not be averted.

"Ah!" she exclaimed.  "Then with such permission I shall tell your wife
first."

Britton winced visibly, and his face was bereft of its ruddy color.  He
caught the woman’s wrists with the motion of crushing a venomous thing.

"Good God, you vampire!" he cried.

She had used some weapon known only to themselves, and, judging by its
effect on the two standing thus, the weapon was one of incalculable
cruelty.




                              CHAPTER XIX.


The conservatory door flew open with a rattle of shattered glass,
admitting Lady Rossland and Mercia fleeing from the gardens amid the
spattering raindrops.

"Oh!" they exclaimed simultaneously, on catching sight of the tableau
where the silken tent had stood.  "Oh!"  Mercia’s voice was low and
hurt.  Lady Rossland’s rose up, pitched higher in an outraged tone.

Britton dropped the wrists he had grasped and turned toward the two
women, humiliation written on his grave face, but the pride of Mercia
would not allow her to wait for a forthcoming apology.

"I fancy we intrude," she said coldly.  "Come, Lady Rossland, we can
probably reach the house."  Her ladyship wheeled across the doorstep,
flashing back scornful eyes, and took Mercia’s arm as they hurried out.

Rex gave an eager, pleading cry and darted forward.

"Wait," he cried entreatingly.  "You are misjudging–"

But they were gone in the darkness, having raced up the gravel walk to
the great illuminated house!  The big, round drops wetted Britton’s
cheeks and dashed on his head.  A moment he stood on the flags at the
door, yearning to follow and explain, but a more vital and immediate
necessity lay behind him in the conservatory.

He turned back, keeping himself forcibly in hand, determined on a
summary and decisive dealing with the pregnant issue thrust upon him by
Maud Morris.

"That," he said to her, "was the most humiliating thing any wife could
see, yet it meant nothing at all!"

A change had come over her since the sudden apparition of the two women
in the doorway. The fear of failure, inspired by the sweet, pure beauty
of Mercia, seemed to hold her in its grip, and she called to her aid the
old resource of alluring appeal.

"Don’t say that, Rex," she pleaded, with a touch of pathos.  "Have you
altogether forgotten the old days?  There must be memories sometimes!"

"No," said Britton, doggedly, "I could not remember them if I would."

"You are very trying," she murmured, petulant as a crossed child.  "Can
you not listen to reason?"

"There is only one way of reasoning soundly and in accordance with
universal law," Rex answered with conviction.  "That reasoning is along
the line of right.  I am prepared to follow it to the bitter end."

She looked up in amazement during a short interval.

"Do you realize all that your words imply?" she questioned
incredulously.  "I cannot think you do!"

"Yes, everything they imply," he answered, filled with the weary languor
attendant upon nervous strain.

She was not left to surmise.  Britton’s meaning was plain.  Her
confidence began to shake.

"The alternative!" she began plaintively, "–surely you have understood
me!"

"Too well," laughed Britton, harshly, "and I would rather go to
prison–which I shall certainly not do, since, as you say, there is no
proof!"

The woman’s cheeks and brow went crimson with annoyance coupled with
shame; she felt the demoralizing force of man’s scorn.

"Rather than take that alternative, you will suffer me to tell Mercia?"
she asked uncertainly.

"No," Rex answered in a ringing voice, "for I am going to tell her!"

She gasped.  "You!" she exclaimed precipitately. "It is suicide!  Are
you entirely mad?"

There was in the woman’s manner the recognition of an impending
catastrophe, the knowledge of immeasurable possibilities.  Britton
instinctively felt her disappointment, and it helped to bring back to
him, in a fair degree, his original assurance, confidence, and reliance.

"It will be the sanest thing I ever did," he declared.

Then the mask of the woman’s plotting and machination fell, and she
stood revealed in her uncertain status of life, fighting for what she
loved in her own contemptible way.

"Rex, Rex," she cried incoherently, "I can’t let you do that.  My God,
you know what it would mean!"

She grasped his hands in her intolerable fear, but he rescued them with
a calm gesture.  The action saved them from a second surprise.

The greenhouse door burst open more violently than before, and Guy
Rossland stamped up and down in a pair of rain-soaked pumps, sending the
wet flying in all directions.

"Ruined," he said woefully, regarding his pulpy patent leathers.  "By
Jove, but it’s a beastly night.  Hello! tent blown down?"

"A gust through that open window," explained the theosophist, who had
resumed her veil. "Please close it and help me with the curtain. I am
afraid the rain has frightened all my subjects."

"Couldn’t find Kinmair," lamented Guy, climbing on the sill to fasten
the casement.  "The bally idiot!  He’s next after Britton.  Hunted him
through all the gardens, and then they told me he’d gone punting.  Went
on the river and got caught–worse luck!  Jove, my feet feel as if I were
barefoot in the marsh."

"Kinmair can postpone his visit," Rex said. "Indeed, the storm will
cause a general postponement.  No one can come through this rain. I
think I’ll make a run for it!"

But he walked, seeming not to notice the violence and the downpour.  The
coolness was pleasing on his face, and the damp lowered the feverish
temperature of his heated blood, though it proved disastrous to his
immaculate dress clothes.

He could see neither Mercia nor Lady Rossland when he entered, but he
encountered Trascott elaborating on philanthropies to a penniless
dowager.  The curate did not note Britton’s personal appearance, so deep
was he in a cherished plan of building orphan homes and reading rooms
for the poor of London, a plan involving the expenditure of something
like two millions of money.

"It’s admirable," murmured the dowager, who herself had to scrape to
keep up appearances. "It’s a most beautiful scheme, Mr. Trascott. You
have every technicality well within your grasp.  What is to prevent the
carrying out of those details?"

"The money," Britton heard Trascott answer sadly.  "It exists as yet
only in my dreams.  I have advanced my theories and worked for their
realization, but the unthinking rich have not responded.  Sometimes I
feel as if I shall never live long enough to see my project undertaken
either by my own hand or by that of a more competent man."

"Still, it is ideal," the dowager returned, as Rex moved on past them.
"And it is something to cherish an ideal to the end of one’s life, even
if one never enjoys its realization."

Britton took the thought as applied to his own existence, especially in
its present crisis, and turned it over and over in his mind while he
searched the different rooms for Ainsworth.

Within Rossland’s great country mansion the gaiety of the occasion was
undiminished.  The games, the talk, the dancing, all went on as merrily
as if no tempest raged outside.  The decorated chambers were illuminated
with such a blaze of light that the flashes of the sky’s electric
current were scarcely in evidence through drawn blinds.  Only the
spaced, resounding roll of thunder and the crash of giant trees in the
woodland groves told that a terrific storm was in progress.

In the centre of the music salon he saw the Rosslands with a crowd of
guests, lamenting the disagreeable night that had driven them from the
river.  Mercia was not with them, and Rex felt that after the incident
of the conservatory he must avoid Lady Rossland for the moment.

He crossed the hall and ran into young Guy, who, looking very flushed
and disturbed, appeared to have emerged from some more or less
inglorious conflict.  Guy had on dry shoes, but they had not sufficed to
smooth his apparently ruffled feelings.

"What’s wrong?" asked Britton, remembering the youth’s capacity for
getting into trouble. "Been quarreling with someone in the house?"

"Quarreling?  Not much–worse luck!" the boy blurted out ingenuously.
"But, by Jove, aunt has the beastliest temper in Sussex!  She’s down on
the theosophist she hired about something or other.  Packed her off in
the rain!"

"What?" Rex asked, interestedly.  "Lady Rossland packed off the hired
Mahatma woman?"

"Just that," Guy answered.  "In a cab with James, through all the
beastly rain–to the Crystal Hotel.  That’s the best in New Shoreham, and
aunt told James to pay the bill."

Rex was thinking retrospectively.  If his own concerns had not compelled
the deepest gravity, he would have been inclined to laugh.  As it was,
he gave Guy a speculative look.

"Beastly temper aunt has," the youth continued.  "Jove, didn’t she rate
me!  Gave me fits for not holding down my position–guess it must have
been on account of the tent.  How’d I know the stuffy thing would blow?
And Kinmair, the bally idiot, on the river with Dora! drat him!"

The nephew rattled on with the frank tongue of youth, and a smile grew
by degrees around Britton’s mouth and eyes.  It was like the smile of a
soldier in the firing line when he gets an unexpected respite and
forgets for a brief moment the lurking danger and the strain.

"I wouldn’t take it to heart," Rex said while the smile lasted.  "It
wasn’t your fault, Guy, and, now I come to think of it, perhaps–I–I
should have closed that conservatory window."

In the smoking-room Britton found Ainsworth whom he had been seeking.

"Stay with the pole instead of the punt?" asked Ainsworth, lightly,
surveying his friend’s wet clothes.

"Never in my life," replied Britton, very seriously.

"Jump into the river or one of the fountains to rescue somebody?" the
lawyer continued in the same bantering way, but Rex had not the heart to
match his flippancy.

"Can you get Trascott away and follow us home?" he asked instead,
speaking what was on his mind.  "I would like you both to give me an
hour after we reach the Hall.  I want to get some advice and some
opinions."

Ainsworth looked at him with awakened interest.

"Something on the political side, eh?" he questioned smilingly.

"Yes, partly," Rex responded.  "This convention affair is involved."

"Ah!" laughed Ainsworth, "I recognize in you the true politician’s
trait, namely the utter inability to draw a hard and fast line between
business and pleasure.  But go on with your wife!  Trascott and I will
not be far behind if Rossland will send us in one of his carriages, and
of course he will.  I am indefatigable in your interests, my dear
fellow, and we can talk for three hours if you like."

The lawyer went out to break Trascott’s conversation with the stout
dowager.  Britton remained in the smoking-room a moment, writing two
short letters, one to Lord Rossland and one to Kinmair.  It seemed a
very odd proceeding when he was inside one man’s house and within reach
of the other man, but it was in keeping with Britton’s secret resolve.

Crossing the drawing-room in search of Mercia, he met her alone.  She
greeted him with the same cold, reserved smile that she habitually gave
him.  Her beauty forced its way to his heart and left an aching pang.

"Your view of that incident to-night was entirely wrong," he said
gravely.  "In an hour or two you will have the right of it.  This is
hardly the place for explanations."

She inclined her head with a regal air which became her well, but which
few women could assume because they had not the royal cast of loveliness
to support it.

"Explanations are quite unnecessary," she quietly returned.  "I do not
ask for any."

"Yet I proffer them–at the right time," Britton said.  "Please do not
misunderstand me."  There was courteous pleading in his voice, and it
did not escape Mercia.

When they bade Lady Rossland good-night, with their own carriage and
that supplied the other men standing in wait, Britton spoke to the
hostess of the same thing.

"Lady Rossland," he said, "there is an explanation due you.  My wife
will ease your mind when I have explained to her.  You will have no
cause for resentment."

"I am glad of that," her ladyship observed with a bright smile, pressing
his hand more warmly.  "Indeed, I am very pleased to hear it. I was sure
there must be some mistake."

Britton gave her the two letters.  "Another favor!" he begged.  "Kindly
hand these to Lord Rossland and Kinmair in the morning.  My request is a
little strange, but I would like to have these delivered as I say."

"Certainly," laughed her ladyship.  "You do not amaze me.  You
politicians are always involved in some intricate or uncommon scheme.
These shall be handed to my husband and to Kinmair in the morning as you
have requested. Good-night to you all.  Take good care of your wife,
sir!"

The rain thrummed on the canopy covering the walk like a hundred small
drums beating tattoos as they hastened to the carriages.

Britton’s stood first, the horses frantic with the roar of the sky’s
heavy artillery.  Rex took advantage of a lull in their plunging and
handed Mercia in.

They dashed away into the oppressive darkness, thick as a North Sea fog,
seeing but little beyond the pale circle cast by their carriage lamps.
Intermittent wicked blue flashes revealed the surrounding country at
intervals of a second’s duration, and a fleeting, dreary panorama was
unrolled.  These momentary glimpses showed the winding black road
running in murky rivulets; they uncovered copses and groves with foliage
bedraggled and rent, with branches torn from the trunks, so that their
white scars flickered ghost-like beneath the lightning’s glare; they
photographed a flooded stretch of down lashed by the descending
cloud-torrents and vanishing mysteriously into the ungauged distance.

Mercia leaned back upon the carriage cushions without speaking.  Her
diamonds quivered when the lightning came, and Britton could mark her
wonderful profile.

A startling sense of the unreality of his married life lay upon him; the
impassableness of the secret gulf separating him from his wife was most
poignantly impressed.

"Mercia," he began, "I–I wonder–" and paused hesitatingly.

"What?" she asked, gravely meeting his eyes in a spasmodic flash of
electricity.

"I wonder if you remember that evening we came over the trail by Indian
River," Britton continued, "the night you saved my life!"

"Yes, I remember," she answered, studiously calm.  "That was the
beginning."  Her voice showed that she did not wish to continue in that
train of thought.  Rex sighed and pressed as close to his side of the
vehicle as he could till they swept through the curved drive of Britton
Hall.

Rossland’s borrowed carriage bowled up behind, bearing the lawyer and
the curate.

Ainsworth bounced upon the lighted porch beside the husband and wife.

"Awful night!" he shivered.  "Must be a pack of fiends abroad!  Say–what
was in those letters, Britton?  Anything new turned up?"

"Yes," Rex answered, "they contained my refusal of the candidature."

"The devil!" said Ainsworth.




                              CHAPTER XX.


The gun-room adjoined the library in Britton Hall.  Ainsworth and
Trascott sat in the former chamber, awaiting the advent of their host.

The red-eyed butler, who had been sleeping in a chair, appeared with a
tray containing cognac and cigars to drive away the chill of the
dismally wet night, but the lawyer was in such a state of anger and
suspense that he wished neither brandy nor the weed.

"Put them down," he snapped.  "Where’s your master now?"

"Upstairs, sir, if you please," the butler stammered, confused by
Ainsworth’s penetrating eyes. "I presume, sir, he’s changing his
things–getting on dry, so to speak!  He ordered me to bring you these."

Ainsworth stabbed a finger in the direction of a shell table strewn with
paper cases and long brass cartridges.

"Leave them there," the irritated lawyer directed, "and get out!"  The
abashed butler obeyed.

"D–n him!" Ainsworth fumed, anathematizing the master when the servant
was out of hearing. "The infernal nerve of him to refuse that
candidature!  And to refuse it in that way! Good Lord!"  He gave vent to
his feelings by stamping about the gun-room, while Trascott pondered in
silence, filled with a vague mistrust that some drastic coercion was
responsible for Britton’s action.

The furnishings of the gun-room were the usual cabinets and appliances
for the chase and kindred sports.  One wall, however, was hung with
objects not commonly seen in an English country-seat. These were two
complete Klondike outfits, a woman’s and a man’s.

In making the round of the chamber, Ainsworth came to them.  He stopped
and scrutinized the peculiar accoutrements attentively.

There were guns, rifles, revolvers, and sheath-knives strung up, all
showing the scar and stain of hard service.  Woolen Arctic garments,
oilskins, gauntlets, and parkas, with two buckskin skirts and sweaters,
hung in rows from the pegs.  A duffle of moccasins, leggings,
pack-straps, tump-lines, dunnage-bags and dog-whips filled a large, deep
shelf, while two pairs of snowshoes, taller than a man, stood in the
corner.

The lawyer examined each article in turn and suddenly faced round to
Trascott.

"Can the Klondike have cracked his brain?" he asked seriously.  "They
say it drives scores of strong men mad!"

The curate shook his head as his glance also travelled to the equipments
of the trails.

"Britton’s as sane as yourself," was his answer, "but I know he is in
dire anxiety.  His face showed that when we came in."

Steps sounded in the library, seeming like unnecessarily loud ones
calculated to give warning or to hide some other noise.  The curtains,
screening the doorway of the two rooms, parted very slightly, and
Britton entered, throwing the hangings in place behind him.

"Ah!" grunted Ainsworth, "here you are with your insolence–"

"Don’t!" interrupted Britton, putting out a hand.  "Don’t talk in that
strain.  Let me tell you a story which will explain this attitude of
mine and a good many other things besides."  He sat down at the
cartridge table and placed his elbows on it.  An expression of
bitterness and renunciation rested on his face.

"Go on," said the lawyer, backing against the wall, "and speak loudly.
This thunder is deafening."

A long, fierce detonation rolled and crashed in justification of his
words before he had finished speaking them.

"Though I made the famous strike at Five Mountain Gulch, a strike that
is now history," Britton began in the queer silence which ensued, "I had
months of a hard-luck siege in the Yukon before making my pile.  In
fact, when I went out of Dawson on the Samson Creek stampede, I was at
the limit of my means.  My last dollar was invested in my dog-team,
outfit, and supplies.

"Well, the south branch of the creek, according to rumor, showed the
richest, and I made a break for it.  Ill luck seemed determined on
dogging me, for I found South Samson staked from one end to the other.
You have no idea of the complete disheartenment such a thing gives!"  He
paused a second, reflecting on that by-gone disappointment.

"Yes, yes," assented the lawyer, somewhat impatiently; "stream all
staked and not a cent with which to buy anyone out!  Go on."

"I had received a hint at Tagish Post from Franco Lessari, a Corsican
and a former Government courier, whom I had pulled out of Lake Bennett,
that there was gold on North Samson, so I crossed to the other branch.
The overflow of the stampede filed in on it, too, but lots of ground
could be had.  On North Samson I burned holes in the gravel and
prospected in the freezing weather for some days without result. It
happened that Lessari came along with the rest to this fork of the creek
one night.  He wanted to show me a place where a trapper had told him he
had found good gold-signs, so I took him into my camp, and we moved to
the locality in the morning.  His outfit was very meagre; he had no tent
and a minimum of poor food; my offer was a blessing to him, but I wanted
to give him something in exchange for the information, even if it proved
valueless."

Britton paused a second time, as if seeking to condense the massed
details ahead of him. Ainsworth turned his face towards the curtained
doorway.

"I feel a draft," he complained, "and that tapestry is swaying.  Is
there a window open?"  He made a movement to investigate, but Britton
stopped him with a gesture, observing:

"It’s probably Gubbins, the butler, seeing if the outer buildings are
safe.  He’s very nervous about lightning.  Be patient, Ainsworth!  I am
coming to the end.  The North Samson project didn’t pan out, but we hung
on there till a drunken Thron-Diuck Indian came into the camp one night.
He was one of a tribe who had discovered the Five Mountain deposit, and
he sold us the information, together with an eight-ounce alluvial sample
which proved the truth of his assertions, for my solitary flask of
whiskey.

"That bottle of firewater brought me two million dollars!  It was, you
say, a good bargain. But you are wrong.  It was the worst barter I ever
made.  I wish to God I had never seen that Indian!"  Britton’s voice
sounded with a passionate, piteous vehemence.

"Why?" cried Trascott, in wonder and sympathy.  "Why?"

"Lessari and I went up the Klondike River," continued Britton, without
answering the curate, "toward the region of the five hills as I had
mapped out the way.  Never mind the details or the hardships, but listen
to some points which are essential parts of what I am trying to tell.
When we passed through the Klondike Cañon, we heard a dog-train coming
after us, but it never appeared to our sight.  Lessari fainted from
fatigue and exposure within six miles of our destination.  I made camp
and nursed him that night.  In the morning our dogs were poisoned."

"Poisoned?" echoed Ainsworth.  "Great heaven!–how?"

"It was a mystery which has since been explained to me," Rex said.  "Let
it stand a moment!"

"But if a human hand did that it was murder," interposed the shocked
Trascott.  "It was deliberate, diabolical murder–the easiest method of
killing you by cutting off your means of egress from that frozen
wilderness!"

Rex nodded, fingering a sheathed hunting-knife that lay with the
cartridges upon the table.

"Exactly so," he observed.  "You have hit the truth.  Lessari and I
tramped on next day in the hope of finding game or discovering an Indian
encampment.  We kept to the river as a guide, dragging our precious food
and outfit on the sled, and entered the cup of the five hills.

"There a three hundred foot chasm blocked our way.  We searched for a
path round it, leaving our sleigh at the top, after having first placed
a slab of granite before the runners so that there was no chance of it
slipping into the abyss.

"The means of circumventing the precipice we found by following along
the edge till we descended into a cavern which ran through the bed-rock
of the river–"

"The cavern where you made the strike?" Trascott asked, in interruption.

"Yes," Britton said.  "In the midst of that excitement I heard a sound
like the commencement of an avalanche.  It startled me, but the noise
ceased, and my assurance returned.

"I sent Lessari up for a spade, and his cry of consternation made me
join him in haste.  Our sled was down the crevasse!"

Ainsworth swore.  The curate half started from his seat.

"I saw the mark of a dog-pad on a bit of snow," Rex said.  "The granite
had been removed from the front of the runners and the sled pushed into
the three hundred foot abyss.  The rushing noise of its descent had
reached us in the cavern.  It was a second, surer attempt at my murder.
The destruction of food meant death.  You see there was a hand in the
dark all the way!"

Britton broke off, breathing heavily.  It was apparent that he lived
again through the things he recounted.

"Whose was that hand in the dark?" cried Ainsworth, savagely.  "I
believe you have found it out."

"The hand of Morris," said Rex.  "I captured him stealing from caches,
and he was flogged.  I heard afterwards he had sworn to kill me.  He
thought he ran no risk in operating that way, but the hardship of that
revengeful journey was fatal. He died in the spring, as I told you,
Ainsworth, two days before you came to Dawson."

"But you and Lessari!" exclaimed Trascott, excitedly, "How did you
manage to survive?"

"Only one of us survived," Britton answered steadily.  "Lessari had been
acting queerly for two days.  I think cold, vicissitude, and fear was
gradually driving him mad.  The loss of our food completed his
upsetting, and he started to jump down the three hundred feet after the
provisions, which were dust by that time.

"I pulled him back, and he turned on me with a savage wildness.  I say
without conceit that very few men can handle me, but I was only a child
in that delirious, demoniacal strength."  An extraordinarily loud crash
of thunder made Britton pause.  The lightning zigzagged across the room
as he continued:

"In three seconds he had me on the edge of the cliff, forcing me over.
It was then by chance that my hand touched the revolver in my belt. I
drew it and shot!"

Trascott looked at his friend with fearful apprehension.  "You shot?" he
whispered, quaveringly.

Something rustled like wind or rain.  Ainsworth glanced again at the
sombre tapestry.

"What’s that?" he asked, a slight superstitious inflection in his smooth
tone.  "The storm?" No one offered a different opinion, and he looked
back to the rude cartridge table with the light on it and the tense
faces of Trascott and Britton at either end.

"For God’s sake, Britton," Trascott was tremulously saying, "let us
understand this thing aright.  You fired?"

"I shot Lessari dead, in self-defence," Britton replied, his countenance
drawn and haggard.




                              CHAPTER XXI.


Trascott arose suddenly from his chair and leaned upon the table.

"My God, my God," he groaned in intense commiseration, "this is
terrible–to have such a thing thrust upon you!"

The lawyer had sprung from his position of attentiveness against the
wall to the curate’s side, and he, too, leaned toward Britton, who sat
motionless like a carven statue.

"Self-defence!" he exclaimed forcibly.  "Was there any trouble?  If
there will be any–"

But Rex checked him with an eloquent glance, reproving the professional
instinct.

"There will be no trouble in that way," he quietly observed.  "Morris
witnessed the struggle and the outcome from an upper peak, but he died
on his return to Samson Creek without informing anyone but his wife.
Maud Morris followed me from Dawson, and to-night threatened to expose
me."

"How to-night?" Trascott wonderingly asked.

"She was the Mahatma woman–the theosophist, at Lord Rowland’s!"

The curate and the lawyer uttered simultaneous exclamations of helpless
astonishment. Revelations were coming with such amazing rapidity and
dramatic unexpectedness that speech failed the two men.

"She did not succeed in her intended intimidation," Rex said, "but she
unwittingly taught me the true course to pursue in regard to this case."

"I trust that you had already recognized the true course," burst out
Trascott, in an excess of eagerness.

"I too trust that same thing," Ainsworth hastened to add.

"Contrition!" said the curate.

"Indemnification!" the lawyer said.

Britton held a hand to each of them across the table.

"Thank you," he said in a choking voice, "thank you for that
confidence."

"Your own survival," Ainsworth inquired, "–how was it accomplished?"

"I told you Pierre Giraud killed Simpson for insulting his wife,"
observed Britton.  "He escaped the police and made for the mountain
fastnesses, near the Klondike’s head waters, with his dog-train.  He
found me half dead from starvation on one of the high plateaus–"

"Providence," Trascott broke in, "God’s divine providence!"

"It could be nothing else," Rex agreed, "but Giraud’s sacrifice was as
beautiful as any act of Providence.  He put me on his sled and drove
straight for Dawson City and the surgeon, nourishing me all the way.

"To certain arrest?" cried Ainsworth, in profound astonishment.  "He
gave up his freedom for your sake?"

"Yes," was the answer.  "The Mounted Police took him on sight.  Giraud’s
doing three years for manslaughter–beastslaughter were truer–but he’ll
be rich when he comes out.  I have taken good care of that."

"It was beautiful, beautiful!" murmured the curate, in rapture.

"That’s the sort of men the great Northland breeds," said Britton.
"They are men to the very marrow!  But in the matter of contrition and
indemnification–"

"Indemnification only," objected Ainsworth, stolidly.  "I fail to
recognize any guilt."

"But still he must feel contrition," argued Trascott, kindly.  "And I
know what remorseful penance has been yours," he added, to Britton.

"Half the gold of that Five Mountain strike should have been Lessari’s,"
Rex declared.

"Failing that, it belonged to his heirs," the lawyer supplemented.

"I took that view," said Britton.  "I am glad you uphold it.  Is that
your opinion also, Trascott?  I asked you both here for the purpose of
obtaining advice, faultless and impersonal judgment."

"It is my opinion," the curate answered.  "It was undoubtedly your duty
to effect any reparation within your power."

"That I did," Rex assured him.  "In Dawson I made enquiries and found
that Lessari had a daughter.  People told me he had no other relation in
the world.  Of course, my plan was one difficult of execution.  I
couldn’t give the girl a fortune without courting investigation and
suspicion.  Happily, however, I had seen her before, without knowing her
name, and I soon became acquainted with her.

"Lessari’s daughter was something of an artist, and I soon saw that she
had inherited the great gift, that she was a veritable genius with the
brush.  That gave me my cue.  I simulated eager interest in her work,
hired instructors for her, paid for her board at a minister’s house, and
gave her every comfort she could have.  She accepted my aid on the proud
condition that she should repay me on attaining sufficient eminence to
sell her work.

"Of course I agreed.  The thing went on that way for a little while, but
not for long.  People began to talk about my relations with the girl–"

Ainsworth’s fist banged an interruption on the table.

"As they will, d–n them," he cried.

"I am positive that the tongue of Maud Morris started the gossip," Rex
said.  "It got to the ears of the girl at last.  She confronted me with
the scandal they were heaping on her pure name. There was but one course
left for me then."

"Ah!" gasped Trascott, in a kind of dread.

"I offered her marriage!"

"Good God!" shouted Ainsworth, losing all his control.

"And the girl?" stammered the unstrung curate.

"She accepted!"

An oppressive silence followed.  Trascott’s trembling tones were the
first to break it.

"You married her?" was his horrified question. "With the red gulf of her
father’s blood between you?"

"I did," said Britton, "but the marriage I proposed was not the ordinary
one.  I offered her my name and money, without stain, to shield her from
scandalous gossips.  We are joined by law, but we live separate lives,
exist in divided courses, and occupy different apartments.  The marriage
has never been consummated, and it never will be!"

"But it is wrong–entirely wrong!" cried the curate.  "There is a divine
purpose of marriage, and it cannot be ignored.  The arrangement you have
effected is a sham and a monstrosity!  You did what you conceived right,
but what of this virgin’s due?  What of her inexpressibly lonely life?
What of her ice-cold domestic existence? What of the vital need of
motherhood?"

"Yes," said Ainsworth, in addition, "have you fulfilled your own scope
of life, reached the far vision of your own ideal?  You cannot do it
this way!  You have paid a heavy forfeit, Britton, but you are in the
wrong."

There ensued a deep pause.  Rex stared at his friends with unseeing eyes
and did not answer.

"Your judgment was faulty," Trascott summed up.  "Did any influence
pervert it?"

"Possibly," Britton replied in a clear voice. "I loved her!  And loving
her, I have had to live with her, keeping up the impassable barrier
which separates us."

"Heaven pity you," sympathized Ainsworth. "No man has done a more heroic
thing."

"I asked you for this interview to-night in order to hear and abide by
your decision," Rex said constrainedly.  "What is that decision? If your
opinions coincide, I want the verdict."

"You must tell your wife all you have told us," Trascott solemnly
adjured.  "Full confession is the only remedy."

Britton glanced at Ainsworth.  The latter nodded his agreement.

"That is the inevitable course," the lawyer said.  "With this confession
will come the separation.  No other way lies open."

Rex swept all the cartridges on the table before him into one heap.  The
movement seemed to indicate that he had gathered all the tangled threads
of this tragedy and bound them into a single strong rope which would
extract him from the difficulty.

"You agreed that my search for Lessari’s heirs was laudable," he
observed quietly. "Together you condemned my method of reparation. You
both decide on confession and divorce. Your minds work wonderfully well
together, and because your judgment is infallible I accept your
verdict."

"You will tell your wife?" questioned Ainsworth, with relief.

"Remember that Corsican blood runs in her veins," Britton said, partly
in after-thought. "She may possibly kill me.  The story of her father’s
death by an unknown hand was brought down by stampeders who followed me
into Five Mountain Gulch on my second journey there after I had had my
claims filed and had recovered from my starvation experience."

Trascott sat back in his chair again.  "You can protect yourself," he
declared earnestly. "You will not shirk.  You must tell her."

Britton smiled with a very strange expression. "I have told her," he
said.

"When?" cried both his friends.

"A few minutes ago," Rex answered.  "I told her the truth for the first
time, and I imparted the secret of my love for the first time!"

They regarded him incredulously.

"Where?" they asked, speaking again in chorus.

"Here, in this room!"

Trascott stared, but the lawyer, keener in perception, swiftly swept the
room with his eyes, looking for a place of concealment.  His glance
reached the tapestry and he understood.

He stepped across the floor to the curtains and seized them with both
hands.

"Is this the place of eavesdropping?" he cried in vexation, tossing the
thick hangings apart.

Standing in the space of the double doorway, was Britton’s wife.

"My friends," said Britton, "I thank you for letting her hear your just,
impartial decision."

Mercia advanced to the centre of the room, while two of the three
occupants regarded her astoundedly.  Her cheeks were pale as whitest
marble, and the pallor was accentuated by the pearly fairness of her
arms and neck revealed by the evening dress which she still wore.  She
said nothing, but her eyes were fixed on those of her husband.

"This was prearrangement," snapped Ainsworth, his indignation
overwhelming his astonishment.

"It was," Rex said.  "I deemed it the only perfect way, and I ask your
pardon for the advantage I took."

Trascott raised his palms helplessly, not knowing what to make of the
trickery.

"He designed it for my benefit," Mercia said at last, in a measured
tone, motioning to her husband.  "I have heard everything!"

"Then it probably simplifies matters," the lawyer observed, cooling
somewhat.  "You will remember that your husband acted for what he
thought was the best.  The situation is an intolerable complexity.  Be
congratulated that its fibres are now laid bare!  This marriage was a
cruel error for both of you, and the error can be rectified to your
mutual advantage."

"Not to my own," cried Britton, pained beyond measure.  "I cherish the
present, but I accept the future at your dictation."

"Whose dictation?" Mercia asked quickly.

"Trascott’s and Ainsworth’s," her husband answered.  "Two of the finest
minds in England.  They are in the very front rank of their professions,
and they have held the scales for many unbalanced lives.  Ours have been
weighed with wisdom by their hands.  Mercia, do you understand their
judgment–what their verdict means?"

She clasped her hands in a pitiful gesture, and her composure seemed
about to break in a storm of tears, but she quelled the emotion with
royal courage.

"I understand," Mercia said in a strained whisper, "but–but I heard you
say that you cherished the present!"

Britton’s eyes lighted and then grew sad again.

"It is sweet," he declared, "compared with what the future void will be.
But the true balance must be adjusted, Mercia.  There are maelstroms in
our social lives more dangerous than the whirlpools on Thirty Mile.
Here we must travel with keenest care; we must guard our strength
longer.  No men know the routes better than Ainsworth and Trascott, and
they have traced out our paths."

"In the separation, the–the divorce," interposed the lawyer, "you may of
course command my services."

"Of course," murmured Britton, "it must be given into no other hands.
You can accomplish an immediate, quiet dissolution without any scandal."

"My services are bound up with Ainsworth’s," Trascott put in.  "My
assistance may be needed afterwards, in the matter of home or occupation
for your wife, though a settlement could provide for her fully."

"Thank you, Trascott," said Rex.  "Just transfer the comradeship I have
loved to my–to Mercia, and I shall always be grateful!"

Britton looked at Mercia with the pangs of renunciation rending and
torturing him.

"Are you prepared for what they say is inevitable?" he asked.

"Are you, yourself?" she questioned in turn.

"I–I think so," Rex said, with the feeling of a man pronouncing his own
death-knell.  "We cannot be mistaken in going by the two guiding
institutions of the land."

"What ones?" Mercia asked.

"The Church and the Law!  Their voices are immutable."

"Yet there is present another voice still more immutable, still more
unerring," Mercia cried in the clear, bell-like tone Rex had first heard
when she hailed him at Indian River in the far-away Yukon.

"And that?"  His tone was intensely eager. He leaned from his seat.

"Is the voice of the human heart," she answered with eyes agleam.  "Have
they considered it?"

"I do not know," said Britton, brokenly. Agonizing uncertainty choked
him and muffled the beating of his heart.

"Should it not be included in the balancing?" Mercia persisted.  She
advanced another step and let her husband gaze into her great eyes as he
would gaze into some holy sanctum.  The two seemed drawn together, to
the complete exclusion of Ainsworth and Trascott, the representative
judges.

Causing a general start, the telephone bell whirred loudly in the
library.  Gubbins was in another part of the house.  The bell buzzed
frantically a second time, telling that the message must be insistent.

"Answer it, Trascott," Britton begged. "People do not speak at such an
hour and in such a storm for a mere triviality."

"Certainly–by all means," said the curate, hurrying into the adjoining
room.

Ainsworth, feeling his debarment from the physical presence of husband
and wife, followed Trascott through the portières.  Britton was quite
alone with the daughter of the man whose violent end he had unwillingly
compassed.

Mercia moved to the side of the table and Rex arose.  Her fingers played
with the long hunting-knife till they idly unsheathed it.  Then her
lithe figure straightened back like the return of a bow, and the great
blade flashed above her head.  The bright eyes were veiled.

Britton’s face went rigid.  He folded his arms over his breast.

"Strike!" he said.  "I forgot that you are a Corsican."

One moment Mercia held her position, then dashed the weapon down so that
it quivered with its point in the floor.

"Ah, no, Rex!" she cried proudly, "for I love you!  It was but a supreme
test.  I have always loved you!"

Her husband staggered as from a forcible shock.

"You?" he cried.  "Oh, this is too incredible!"

"Trascott spoke of a red gulf between us," said Mercia.  "My heart has
crossed it, and it is no more.  Forgiveness follows penance!"

"You forgive?  You love?" sobbed Britton. "Just God!  The mighty
strike!"

He caught her hands passionately and retained them, while the curate’s
re-entrance interrupted the climax of their lives.

"Leave us, Trascott," Britton begged.  "Come back here in an hour."

"In an hour, yes," Trascott assented.  "But do you believe in
retribution?  That message came from Rossland House.  The carriage which
James was driving to the town was struck by lightning.  He was only
stunned, but the Mahatma woman was killed.  Do you believe in
retribution?"  Trascott vanished through the doorway, leaving the
question with them.

"The circle is completed," Mercia whispered.

"Yes," said Britton, extending his arms, "and we belong to each other!"

An hour later, Ainsworth and the curate entered the gun-room.  It
presented a singularly deserted appearance, and the light burned dimly.
An envelope directed to Trascott was pinned to the table with the
sheath-knife.

"Hallo!" exclaimed the lawyer.  "That’s odd! What’s in it?"

The curate hurriedly tore open the letter with trembling fingers.  He
drew forth a draft on Britton’s bank; the figure two followed by six
ciphers, sprawling across its face, made Trascott’s eyes bulge out and
forced his breath in a shrill hiss between his teeth.

"God bless my soul!" he cried, and dropped the draft in extreme
agitation.

Ainsworth picked it up smartly and, turning it over, read aloud a line
pencilled on the back.

It ran: "For your London Homes!  Mercia and I are seeking another
fortune, clean and untainted!"

The lawyer whirled on his heel and looked at the wall behind him.  It
was clean as a new sheet.  The Klondike outfits and trappings were gone!

"By heaven, there’s a man," he vehemently asserted.  "A man, Trascott!
I’ll drink a toast to him."

Ainsworth seized the decanter and poured himself a glass, holding it
aloft.

"To the Stampeder!" he cried.

"Amen!" said Trascott




                                THE END.








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