V. THE MAN ON THE OTHER BANK.
It was before Smoke Bellew staked the farcical town-site of Tra-Lee,made the historic corner of eggs that nearly broke Swiftwater Bill'sbank account, or won the dog-team race down the Yukon for an evenmillion dollars, that he and Shorty parted company on the UpperKlondike. Shorty's task was to return down the Klondike to Dawson torecord some claims they had staked.
Smoke, with the dog-team, turned south. His quest was Surprise Lake andthe mythical Two Cabins. His traverse was to cut the headwaters of theIndian River and cross the unknown region over the mountains to theStewart River. Here, somewhere, rumour persisted, was Surprise Lake,surrounded by jagged mountains and glaciers, its bottom paved with rawgold. Old-timers, it was said, whose very names were forgotten in thefrosts of earlier years, had dived into the icy waters of Surprise Lakeand fetched lump-gold to the surface in both hands. At different times,parties of old-timers had penetrated the forbidding fastness and sampledthe lake's golden bottom. But the water was too cold. Some died in thewater, being pulled up dead. Others died later of consumption. And onewho had gone down never did come up. All survivors had planned to returnand drain the lake, yet none had ever gone back. Disaster always smotethem. One man fell into an air-hole below Forty Mile; another was killedand eaten by his dogs; a third was crushed by a falling tree. And so thetale ran. Surprise Lake was a hoodoo; its location was unremembered; andthe gold still paved its undrained bottom.
Two Cabins, no less mythical, was more definitely located. "Fivesleeps," up the McQuestion River from the Stewart, stood two ancientcabins. So ancient were they that they must have been built beforeever the first known gold-hunter had entered the Yukon Basin. Wanderingmoose-hunters, whom even Smoke had met and talked with, claimed to havefound the two cabins in the old days, but to have sought vainly for themine which those early adventurers must have worked.
"I wish you was goin' with me," Shorty said wistfully, at parting. "Justbecause you got the Indian bug ain't no reason for to go pokin' intotrouble. They's no gettin' away from it, that's loco country you'rebound for. The hoodoo's sure on it, from the first flip to the lastcall, judgin' from all you an' me has hearn tell about it."
"It's all right, Shorty," replied Smoke. "I'll make the round trip andbe back in Dawson in six weeks. The Yukon trail is packed, and the firsthundred miles or so of the Stewart ought to be packed. Old-timers fromHenderson have told me a number of outfits went up last fall after thefreeze-up. When I strike their trail I ought to hit her up forty orfifty miles a day. I'm likely to be back inside a month, once I getacross."
"Yep, once you get acrost. But it's the gettin' acrost that worries me.Well, so long, Smoke. Keep your eyes open for that hoodoo, that's all.An' don't be ashamed to turn back if you don't kill any meat."
A week later, Smoke found himself among the jumbled ranges south ofIndian River. On the divide from the Klondike he had abandoned the sledand packed his wolf-dogs. The six big huskies each carried fifty pounds,and on his own back was an equal burden. Through the soft snow he ledthe way, packing it down under his snow-shoes, and behind, in singlefile, toiled the dogs.
He loved the life, the deep arctic winter, the silent wilderness,the unending snow-surface unpressed by the foot of any man. About himtowered icy peaks unnamed and uncharted. No hunter's camp-smoke, risingin the still air of the valleys, ever caught his eye. He, alone,moved through the brooding quiet of the untravelled wastes; nor washe oppressed by the solitude. He loved it all, the day's toil, thebickering wolf-dogs, the making of the camp in the long twilight, theleaping stars overhead, and the flaming pageant of the aurora borealis.
Especially he loved his camp at the end of the day, and in it he saw apicture which he ever yearned to paint and which he knew he would neverforget--a beaten place in the snow, where burned his fire; his bed, acouple of rabbit-skin robes spread on fresh-chopped spruce-boughs; hisshelter, a stretched strip of canvas that caught and threw back the heatof the fire; the blackened coffee-pot and pail resting on a length oflog, the moccasins propped on sticks to dry, the snow-shoes up-endedin the snow; and across the fire the wolf-dogs snuggling to it forthe warmth, wistful and eager, furry and frost-rimed, with bushy tailscurled protectingly over their feet; and all about, pressed backward buta space, the wall of encircling darkness.
At such times San Francisco, The Billow, and O'Hara seemed very faraway, lost in a remote past, shadows of dreams that had never happened.He found it hard to believe that he had known any other life than thisof the wild, and harder still was it for him to reconcile himself to thefact that he had once dabbled and dawdled in the Bohemian drift of citylife. Alone, with no one to talk to, he thought much, and deeply,and simply. He was appalled by the wastage of his city years, by thecheapness, now, of the philosophies of the schools and books, of theclever cynicism of the studio and editorial room, of the cant of thebusiness men in their clubs. They knew neither food, nor sleep, norhealth; nor could they ever possibly know the sting of real appetite,the goodly ache of fatigue, nor the rush of mad strong blood that bitlike wine through all one's body as work was done.
And all the time this fine, wise, Spartan Northland had been here, andhe had never known. What puzzled him was, that, with such intrinsicfitness, he had never heard the slightest calling whisper, had nothimself gone forth to seek. But this, too, he solved in time.
"Look here, Yellow Face, I've got it clear!"
The dog addressed lifted first one forefoot and then the other withquick, appeasing movements, curled his bush of a tail about them again,and laughed across the fire.
"Herbert Spencer was nearly forty before he caught the vision of hisgreatest efficiency and desire. I'm none so slow. I didn't have to waittill I was thirty to catch mine. Right here is my efficiency and desire.Almost, Yellow Face, do I wish I had been born a wolf-boy and beenbrother all my days to you and yours."
For days he wandered through a chaos of canyons and divides which didnot yield themselves to any rational topographical plan. It was as ifthey had been flung there by some cosmic joker. In vain he sought fora creek or feeder that flowed truly south toward the McQuestion andthe Stewart. Then came a mountain storm that blew a blizzard across theriff-raff of high and shallow divides. Above timber-line, fireless, fortwo days, he struggled blindly to find lower levels. On the second dayhe came out upon the rim of an enormous palisade. So thickly drove thesnow that he could not see the base of the wall, nor dared he attemptthe descent. He rolled himself in his robes and huddled the dogs abouthim in the depths of a snow-drift, but did not permit himself to sleep.
In the morning, the storm spent, he crawled out to investigate. Aquarter of a mile beneath him, beyond all mistake, lay a frozen,snow-covered lake. About it, on every side, rose jagged peaks. Itanswered the description. Blindly, he had found Surprise Lake.
"Well named," he muttered, an hour later, as he came out upon itsmargin. A clump of aged spruce was the only woods. On his way to it,he stumbled upon three graves, snow-buried, but marked by hand-hewnhead-posts and undecipherable writing. On the edge of the woods was asmall ramshackle cabin. He pulled the latch and entered. In a corner, onwhat had once been a bed of spruce-boughs, still wrapped in mangyfurs that had rotted to fragments, lay a skeleton. The last visitor toSurprise Lake, was Smoke's conclusion, as he picked up a lump of gold aslarge as his doubled fist. Beside the lump was a pepper-can filled withnuggets of the size of walnuts, rough-surfaced, showing no signs ofwash.
So true had the tale run that Smoke accepted without question that thesource of the gold was the lake's bottom. Under many feet of ice andinaccessible, there was nothing to be done, and at midday, from the rimof the palisade, he took a farewell look back and down at his find.
"It's all right, Mr. Lake," he said. "You just keep right on stayingthere. I'm coming back to drain you--if that hoodoo doesn't catch me. Idon't know how I got here, but I'll know by the way I go out."
In a little valley, beside a frozen stream and under beneficent sprucetrees, he built a f
ire four days later. Somewhere in that white anarchyhe had left behind him was Surprise Lake--somewhere, he knew not where;for a hundred hours of driftage and struggle through blinding, drivingsnow had concealed his course from him, and he knew not in whatdirection lay BEHIND. It was as if he had just emerged from a nightmare.He was not sure whether four days or a week had passed. He had sleptwith the dogs, fought across a forgotten number of shallow divides,followed the windings of weird canyons that ended in pockets, and twicehad managed to make a fire and thaw out frozen moose-meat. And here hewas, well-fed and well-camped. The storm had passed, and it had turnedclear and cold. The lay of the land had again become rational. The creekhe was on was natural in appearance, and tended as it should toward thesouthwest. But Surprise Lake was as lost to him as it had been to allits seekers in the past.
Half a day's journey down the creek brought him to the valley of alarger stream which he decided was the McQuestion. Here he shot a moose,and once again each wolf-dog carried a full fifty-pound pack of meat. Ashe turned down the McQuestion, he came upon a sled-trail. The late snowshad drifted over, but underneath, it was well packed by travel. Hisconclusion was that two camps had been established on the McQuestion,and that this was the connecting trail. Evidently, Two Cabins had beenfound, and it was the lower camp, so he headed down the stream.
It was forty below zero when he camped that night, and he fell asleepwondering who were the men who had rediscovered the Two Cabins, and ifhe would fetch it next day. At the first hint of dawn he was under way,easily following the half-obliterated trail and packing the recent snowwith his webbed shoes so that the dogs should not wallow.
And then it came, the unexpected, leaping out upon him on a bend of theriver. It seemed to him that he heard and felt simultaneously. The crackof the rifle came from the right, and the bullet, tearing through andacross the shoulders of his drill parka and woollen coat, pivoted himhalf around with the shock of its impact. He staggered on his twistedsnow-shoes to recover balance, and heard a second crack of the rifle.This time it was a clean miss. He did not wait for more, but plungedacross the snow for the sheltering trees of the bank a hundred feetaway. Again and again the rifle cracked, and he was unpleasantly awareof a trickle of warm moisture down his back.
He climbed the bank, the dogs floundering behind, and dodged in amongthe trees and brush. Slipping out of his snow-shoes, he wallowed forwardat full length and peered cautiously out. Nothing was to be seen.Whoever had shot at him was lying quiet among the trees of the oppositebank.
"If something doesn't happen pretty soon," he muttered at the end ofhalf an hour, "I'll have to sneak away and build a fire or freeze myfeet. Yellow Face, what'd you do, lying in the frost with circulationgetting slack and a man trying to plug you?"
He crawled back a few yards, packed down the snow, danced a jig thatsent the blood back into his feet, and managed to endure another halfhour. Then, from down the river, he heard the unmistakable jingle ofdog-bells. Peering out, he saw a sled round the bend. Only one man waswith it, straining at the gee-pole and urging the dogs along. The effecton Smoke was one of shock, for it was the first human he had seen sincehe parted from Shorty three weeks before. His next thought was of thepotential murderer concealed on the opposite bank.
Without exposing himself, Smoke whistled warningly. The man did nothear, and came on rapidly. Again, and more sharply, Smoke whistled. Theman whoa'd his dogs, stopped, and had turned and faced Smoke when therifle cracked. The instant afterwards, Smoke fired into the wood inthe direction of the sound. The man on the river had been struck bythe first shot. The shock of the high velocity bullet staggered him.He stumbled awkwardly to the sled, half-falling, and pulled a rifle outfrom under the lashings. As he strove to raise it to his shoulder, hecrumpled at the waist and sank down slowly to a sitting posture on thesled. Then, abruptly, as the gun went off aimlessly, he pitched backwardand across a corner of the sled-load, so that Smoke could see only hislegs and stomach.
From below came more jingling bells. The man did not move. Around thebend swung three sleds, accompanied by half a dozen men. Smoke criedwarningly, but they had seen the condition of the first sled, and theydashed on to it. No shots came from the other bank, and Smoke, callinghis dogs to follow, emerged into the open. There were exclamations fromthe men, and two of them, flinging off the mittens of their right hands,levelled their rifles at him.
"Come on, you red-handed murderer, you," one of them, a black-beardedman, commanded. "An' jest pitch that gun of yourn in the snow."
Smoke hesitated, then dropped his rifle and came up to them.
"Go through him, Louis, an' take his weapons," the black-bearded manordered.
Louis was a French-Canadian voyageur, Smoke decided, as were four ofthe others. His search revealed only Smoke's hunting knife, which wasappropriated.
"Now, what have you got to say for yourself, stranger, before I shootyou dead?" the black-bearded man demanded.
"That you're making a mistake if you think I killed that man," Smokeanswered.
A cry came from one of the voyageurs. He had quested along the trail andfound Smoke's tracks where he had left it to take refuge on the bank.The man explained the nature of his find.
"What'd you kill Joe Kinade for?" he of the black beard asked.
"I tell you I didn't--" Smoke began.
"Aw, what's the good of talkin'? We got you red-handed. Right up there'swhere you left the trail when you heard him comin'. You laid amongthe trees an' bushwhacked him. A short shot. You couldn't 'a' missed.Pierre, go an' get that gun he dropped."
"You might let me tell what happened," Smoke objected.
"You shut up," the man snarled at him. "I reckon your gun'll tell thestory."
All the men examined Smoke's rifle, ejecting and counting thecartridges, and examining the barrel at muzzle and breech.
"One shot," Blackbeard concluded.
Pierre, with nostrils that quivered and distended like a deer's, sniffedat the breech.
"Him one fresh shot," he said.
"The bullet entered his back," Smoke said. "He was facing me when he wasshot. You see, it came from the other bank."
Blackbeard considered this proposition for a scant second, and shook hishead. "Nope. It won't do. Turn him around to face the other bank--that'show you whopped him in the back. Some of you boys run up an' down thetrail, and see if you can see any tracks making for the other bank."
Their report was that on that side the snow was unbroken. Not even asnow-shoe rabbit had crossed it. Blackbeard, bending over the dead man,straightened up, with a woolly, furry wad in his hand. Shredding this,he found imbedded in the center the bullet which had perforated thebody. Its nose was spread to the size of a half dollar, its butt-end,steel-jacketed, was undamaged. He compared it with a cartridge fromSmoke's belt.
"That's plain enough evidence, stranger, to satisfy a blind man. It'ssoft-nosed an' steel-jacketed; yourn is soft-nosed and steel-jacketed.It's thirty-thirty; yourn is thirty-thirty. It's manufactured by theJ. and T. Arms Company; yourn is manufactured by the J. and T. ArmsCompany. Now you come along, an' we'll go over to the bank an' see jesthow you done it."
"I was bushwhacked myself," Smoke said. "Look at the hole in my parka."
While Blackbeard examined it, one of the voyageurs threw open the breechof the dead man's gun. It was patent to all that it had been fired once.The empty cartridge was still in the chamber.
"A damn shame poor Joe didn't get you," Blackbeard said bitterly. "Buthe did pretty well with a hole like that in him. Come on, you."
"Search the other bank first," Smoke urged.
"You shut up an' come on, an' let the facts do the talkin'."
They left the trail at the same spot he had, and followed it on up thebank and then in among the trees.
"Him dance that place keep him feet warm," Louis pointed out. "Thatplace him crawl on belly. That place him put one elbow w'en him shoot."
"And by God there's the empty cartridge he done it with!" wasBlack
beard's discovery. "Boys, there's only one thing to do--"
"You might ask me how I came to fire that shot," Smoke interrupted.
"An' I might knock your teeth into your gullet if you butt in again.You can answer them questions later on. Now, boys, we're decent an'law-abidin', an' we got to handle this right an' regular. How far do youreckon we've come, Pierre?"
"Twenty mile, I t'ink for sure."
"All right. We'll cache the outfit an' run him an' poor Joe back toTwo Cabins. I reckon we've seen an' can testify to what'll stretch hisneck."
It was three hours after dark when the dead man, Smoke, and his captorsarrived at Two Cabins. By the starlight, Smoke could make out a dozen ormore recently built cabins snuggling about a larger and older cabin ona flat by the river bank. Thrust inside this older cabin, he found ittenanted by a young giant of a man, his wife, and an old blind man. Thewoman, whom her husband called "Lucy," was herself a strapping creatureof the frontier type. The old man, as Smoke learned afterwards, hadbeen a trapper on the Stewart for years, and had gone finally blind thewinter before. The camp of Two Cabins, he was also to learn, had beenmade the previous fall by a dozen men who arrived in half as manypoling-boats loaded with provisions. Here they had found the blindtrapper, on the site of Two Cabins, and about his cabin they had builttheir own. Later arrivals, mushing up the ice with dog teams, hadtripled the population. There was plenty of meat in camp, and goodlow-pay dirt had been discovered and was being worked.
In five minutes, all the men of Two Cabins were jammed into the room.Smoke, shoved off into a corner, ignored and scowled at, his hands andfeet tied with thongs of moose-hide, looked on. Thirty-eight men hecounted, a wild and husky crew, all frontiersmen of the States orvoyageurs from Upper Canada. His captors told the tale over and over,each the center of an excited and wrathful group. There were mutteringsof: "Lynch him now! Why wait?" And, once, a big Irishman was restrainedonly by force from rushing upon the helpless prisoner and giving him abeating.
It was while counting the men that Smoke caught sight of a familiarface. It was Breck, the man whose boat Smoke had run through the rapids.He wondered why the other did not come and speak to him, but himselfgave no sign of recognition. Later, when with shielded face Breck passedhim a significant wink, Smoke understood.
Blackbeard, whom Smoke heard called Eli Harding, ended the discussion asto whether or not the prisoner should be immediately lynched.
"Hold on," Harding roared. "Keep your shirts on. That man belongs to me.I caught him an' I brought him here. D'ye think I brought him all theway here to be lynched? Not on your life. I could 'a' done that myselfwhen I found him. I brought him here for a fair an' impartial trial, an'by God, a fair an' impartial trial he's goin' to get. He's tied up safean' sound. Chuck him in a bunk till morning, an' we'll hold the trialright here."
Smoke woke up. A draught that possessed all the rigidity of an iciclewas boring into the front of his shoulders as he lay on his side facingthe wall. When he had been tied into the bunk there had been no suchdraught, and now the outside air, driving into the heated atmosphereof the cabin with the pressure of fifty below zero, was sufficientadvertizement that some one from without had pulled away themoss-chinking between the logs. He squirmed as far as his bonds wouldpermit, then craned his neck forward until his lips just managed toreach the crack.
"Who is it?" he whispered.
"Breck," came the almost inaudible answer. "Be careful you don't make anoise. I'm going to pass a knife in to you."
"No good," Smoke said. "I couldn't use it. My hands are tied behind meand made fast to the leg of the bunk. Besides, you couldn't get a knifethrough that crack. But something must be done. Those fellows are of atemper to hang me, and, of course, you know I didn't kill that man."
"It wasn't necessary to mention it, Smoke. And if you did you had yourreasons. Which isn't the point at all. I want to get you out of this.It's a tough bunch of men here. You've seen them. They're shut off fromthe world, and they make and enforce their own law--by miner's meeting,you know. They handled two men already--both grub-thieves. One theyhiked from camp without an ounce of grub and no matches. He made aboutforty miles and lasted a couple of days before he froze stiff. Two weeksago they hiked the second man. They gave him his choice: no grub, orten lashes for each day's ration. He stood for forty lashes before hefainted. And now they've got you, and every last one is convinced youkilled Kinade."
"The man who killed Kinade shot at me, too. His bullet broke the skinon my shoulder. Get them to delay the trial till some one goes up andsearches the bank where the murderer hid."
"No use. They take the evidence of Harding and the five Frenchmen withhim. Besides, they haven't had a hanging yet, and they're keen forit. You see, things have been pretty monotonous. They haven't locatedanything big, and they got tired of hunting for Surprise Lake. They didsome stampeding the first part of the winter, but they've got over thatnow. Scurvy is beginning to show up amongst them, too, and they're justripe for excitement."
"And it looks like I'll furnish it," was Smoke's comment. "Say, Breck,how did you ever fall in with such a God-forsaken bunch?"
"After I got the claims at Squaw Creek opened up and some men toworking, I came up here by way of the Stewart, hunting for Two Cabins.They'd beaten me to it, so I've been higher up the Stewart. Just gotback yesterday out of grub."
"Find anything?"
"Nothing much. But I think I've got a hydraulic proposition that'll workbig when the country's opened up. It's that, or a gold-dredger."
"Hold on," Smoke interrupted. "Wait a minute. Let me think."
He was very much aware of the snores of the sleepers as he pursued theidea that had flashed into his mind.
"Say, Breck, have they opened up the meat-packs my dogs carried?" heasked.
"A couple. I was watching. They put them in Harding's cache."
"Did they find anything?"
"Meat."
"Good. You've got to get into the brown-canvas pack that's patched withmoose-hide. You'll find a few pounds of lumpy gold. You've never seengold like it in the country, nor has anybody else. Here's what you'vegot to do. Listen."
A quarter of an hour later, fully instructed and complaining that histoes were freezing, Breck went away. Smoke, his own nose and one cheekfrosted by proximity to the chink, rubbed them against the blankets forhalf an hour before the blaze and bite of the returning blood assuredhim of the safety of his flesh.
"My mind's made up right now. There ain't no doubt but what he killedKinade. We heard the whole thing last night. What's the good of goin'over it again? I vote guilty."
In such fashion, Smoke's trial began. The speaker, a loose-jointed,hard-rock man from Colorado, manifested irritation and disgust whenHarding set his suggestion aside, demanded the proceedings should beregular, and nominated one Shunk Wilson for judge and chairman of themeeting. The population of Two Cabins constituted the jury, though,after some discussion, the woman, Lucy, was denied the right to vote onSmoke's guilt or innocence.
While this was going on, Smoke, jammed into a corner on a bunk,overheard a whispered conversation between Breck and a miner.
"You haven't fifty pounds of flour you'll sell?" Breck queried.
"You ain't got the dust to pay the price I'm askin'," was the reply.
"I'll give you two hundred."
The man shook his head.
"Three hundred. Three-fifty."
At four hundred, the man nodded, and said, "Come on over to my cabin an'weigh out the dust."
The two squeezed their way to the door, and slipped out. After a fewminutes Breck returned alone.
Harding was testifying, when Smoke saw the door shoved open slightly,and in the crack appear the face of the man who had sold the flour. Hewas grimacing and beckoning emphatically to some one inside, who arosefrom near the stove and started to work toward the door.
"Where are you goin', Sam?" Shunk Wilson demanded.
"I'll be back in a jiffy," Sam explained. "I jes' got t
o go."
Smoke was permitted to question the witnesses, and he was in the middleof the cross-examination of Harding when from without came the whiningof dogs in harness, and the grind and churn of sled-runners. Somebodynear the door peeped out.
"It's Sam an' his pardner an' a dog-team hell-bent down the trail forStewart River," the man reported.
Nobody spoke for a long half-minute, but men glanced significantly atone another, and a general restlessness pervaded the packed room. Outof the corner of his eye, Smoke caught a glimpse of Breck, Lucy, and herhusband whispering together.
"Come on, you," Shunk Wilson said gruffly to Smoke. "Cut thisquestionin' short. We know what you're tryin' to prove--that the otherbank wa'n't searched. The witness admits it. We admit it. It wa'n'tnecessary. No tracks led to that bank. The snow wa'n't broke."
"There was a man on the other bank just the same," Smoke insisted.
"That's too thin for skatin', young man. There ain't many of us on theMcQuestion, an' we got every man accounted for."
"Who was the man you hiked out of camp two weeks ago?" Smoke asked.
"Alonzo Miramar. He was a Mexican. What's that grub-thief got to do withit?"
"Nothing, except that you haven't accounted for HIM, Mr. Judge."
"He went down the river, not up."
"How do you know where he went?"
"Saw him start."
"And that's all you know of what became of him?"
"No, it ain't, young man. I know, we all know, he had four days' gruban' no gun to shoot meat with. If he didn't make the settlement on theYukon he'd croaked long before this."
"I suppose you've got all the guns in this part of the country accountedfor, too," Smoke observed pointedly.
Shunk Wilson was angry. "You'd think I was the prisoner the way youslam questions into me. Now then, come on with the next witness. Where'sFrench Louis?"
While French Louis was shoving forward, Lucy opened the door.
"Where you goin'?" Shunk Wilson shouted.
"I reckon I don't have to stay," she answered defiantly. "I ain't got novote, an' besides, my cabin's so jammed up I can't breathe."
In a few minutes her husband followed. The closing of the door was thefirst warning the judge received of it.
"Who was that?" he interrupted Pierre's narrative to ask.
"Bill Peabody," somebody spoke up. "Said he wanted to ask his wifesomething and was coming right back."
Instead of Bill, it was Lucy who re-entered, took off her furs, andresumed her place by the stove.
"I reckon we don't need to hear the rest of the witnesses," was ShunkWilson's decision, when Pierre had finished. "We already know they onlycan testify to the same facts we've already heard. Say, Sorensen, yougo an' bring Bill Peabody back. We'll be votin' a verdict pretty short.Now, stranger, you can get up an' say your say concernin' what happened.In the meantime, we'll just be savin' delay by passin' around the tworifles, the ammunition, an' the bullet that done the killin'."
Midway in his story of how he had arrived in that part of the country,and at the point in his narrative where he described his own ambushand how he had fled to the bank, Smoke was interrupted by the indignantShunk Wilson.
"Young man, what sense is there in you testifyin' that way? You're justtakin' up valuable time. Of course you got the right to lie to save yourneck, but we ain't goin' to stand for such foolishness. The rifle, theammunition, an' the bullet that killed Joe Kinade is against you. What'sthat? Open the door, somebody!"
The frost rushed in, taking form and substance in the heat of the room,while through the open door came the whining of dogs that decreasedrapidly with distance.
"It's Sorensen an' Peabody," some one cried, "a-throwin' the whip intothe dawgs an' headin' down river!"
"Now, what the hell--!" Shunk Wilson paused, with dropped jaw, andglared at Lucy. "I reckon you can explain, Mrs. Peabody."
She tossed her head and compressed her lips, and Shunk Wilson's wrathfuland suspicious gaze passed on and rested on Breck.
"An' I reckon that newcomer you've been chinning with could explain ifHE had a mind to."
Breck, now very uncomfortable, found all eyes centered on him.
"Sam was chewing the rag with him, too, before he hit out," some onesaid.
"Look here, Mr. Breck," Shunk Wilson continued. "You've beeninterruptin' proceedings, and you got to explain the meanin' of it. Whatwas you chinnin' about?"
Breck cleared his throat timidly and replied. "I was just trying to buysome grub."
"What with?"
"Dust, of course."
"Where'd you get it?"
Breck did not answer.
"He's been snoopin' around up the Stewart," a man volunteered. "I runacross his camp a week ago when I was huntin'. An' I want to tell you hewas almighty secretious about it."
"The dust didn't come from there," Breck said. "That's only a low-gradehydraulic proposition."
"Bring your poke here an' let's see your dust," Wilson commanded.
"I tell you it didn't come from there."
"Let's see it, just the same."
Breck made as if to refuse, but all about him were menacing faces.Reluctantly, he fumbled in his coat pocket. In the act of drawing fortha pepper-can, it rattled against what was evidently a hard object.
"Fetch it all out!" Shunk Wilson thundered.
And out came the big nugget, fist-size, yellow as no gold any onlookerhad ever seen. Shunk Wilson gasped. Half a dozen, catching one glimpse,made a break for the door. They reached it at the same moment, and, withcursing and scuffling, jammed and pivoted through. The judge emptiedthe contents of the pepper-can on the table, and the sight of the roughlump-gold sent half a dozen more toward the door.
"Where are you goin'?" Eli Harding asked, as Shunk started to follow.
"For my dogs, of course."
"Ain't you goin' to hang him?"
"It'd take too much time right now. He'll keep till we get back, so Ireckon this court is adjourned. This ain't no place for lingerin'."
Harding hesitated. He glanced savagely at Smoke, saw Pierre beckoningto Louis from the doorway, took one last look at the lump-gold on thetable, and decided.
"No use you tryin' to get away," he flung back over his shoulder."Besides, I'm goin' to borrow your dogs."
"What is it?--another one of them blamed stampedes?" the old blindtrapper asked in a queer and petulant falsetto, as the cries of men anddogs and the grind of the sleds swept the silence of the room.
"It sure is," Lucy answered. "An' I never seen gold like it. Feel that,old man."
She put the big nugget in his hand. He was but slightly interested.
"It was a good fur-country," he complained, "before them danged minerscome in an' scared back the game."
The door opened, and Breck entered. "Well," he said, "we four are allthat are left in camp. It's forty miles to the Stewart by the cut-offI broke, and the fastest of them can't make the round trip in less thanfive or six days. But it's time you pulled out, Smoke, just the same."
Breck drew his hunting-knife across the other's bonds, and glancedat the woman. "I hope you don't object?" he said, with significantpoliteness.
"If there's goin' to be any shootin'," the blind man broke out, "I wishsomebody'd take me to another cabin first."
"Go on, an' don't mind me," Lucy answered. "If I ain't good enough tohang a man, I ain't good enough to hold him."
Smoke stood up, rubbing his wrists where the thongs had impeded thecirculation.
"I've got a pack all ready for you," Breck said. "Ten days' grub,blankets, matches, tobacco, an axe, and a rifle."
"Go to it," Lucy encouraged. "Hit the high places, stranger. Beat it asfast as God'll let you."
"I'm going to have a square meal before I start," Smoke said. "And whenI start it will be up the McQuestion, not down. I want you to go alongwith me, Breck. We're going to search that other bank for the man thatreally did the killing."
"If you'll listen to me,
you'll head down for the Stewart and theYukon," Breck objected. "When this gang gets back from my low-gradehydraulic proposition, it will be seeing red."
Smoke laughed and shook his head.
"I can't jump this country, Breck. I've got interests here. I've got tostay and make good. I don't care whether you believe me or not, but I'vefound Surprise Lake. That's where that gold came from. Besides, theytook my dogs, and I've got to wait to get them back. Also, I know whatI'm about. There was a man hidden on that bank. He came pretty close toemptying his magazine at me."
Half an hour afterward, with a big plate of moose-steak before him anda big mug of coffee at his lips, Smoke half-started up from his seat. Hehad heard the sounds first. Lucy threw open the door.
"Hello, Spike; hello, Methody," she greeted the two frost-rimed men whowere bending over the burden on their sled.
"We just come down from Upper Camp," one said, as the pair staggeredinto the room with a fur-wrapped object which they handled withexceeding gentleness. "An' this is what we found by the way. He's allin, I guess."
"Put him in the near bunk there," Lucy said. She bent over and pulledback the furs, disclosing a face composed principally of large, staring,black eyes, and of skin, dark and scabbed by repeated frost-bite,tightly stretched across the bones.
"If it ain't Alonzo!" she cried. "You pore, starved devil!"
"That's the man on the other bank," Smoke said in an undertone to Breck.
"We found it raidin' a cache that Harding must 'a' made," one of the menwas explaining. "He was eatin' raw flour an' frozen bacon, an' when wegot 'm he was cryin' an' squealin' like a hawg. Look at him! He's allstarved, an' most of him frozen. He'll kick at any moment."
Half an hour later, when the furs had been drawn over the face of thestill form in the bunk, Smoke turned to Lucy. "If you don't mind, Mrs.Peabody, I'll have another whack at that steak. Make it thick and not sowell done. I'm a meat-eater, I am."