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  CHAPTER XXXVI

  THE WILD BEAST LEAPS

  Tom Morse was chopping wood. He knew how to handle an axe. His strokesfell sure and strong, with the full circling sweep of the expert.

  The young tree crashed down and he began to lop off its branches.Halfway up the trunk he stopped and raised his head to listen.

  No sound had come to him. None came now. But dear as a bell he heardthe voice of Win Beresford calling.

  "_Help! Help!_"

  It was not a cry that had issued from his friend's throat. Tom knewthat. But it was real. It had sprung out of his dire need from theheart, perhaps in the one instant of time left him, and it had leapedsilently across space straight to the heart of his friend.

  Tom kicked into his snowshoes and began to run. He held the axe in hishand, gripped near the haft. A couple of hundred yards, perhaps, laybetween him and camp, which was just over the brow of a small hill.The bushes flew past as he swung to his stride. Never had he skimmedthe crust faster, but his feet seemed to be weighted with lead. Then,as he topped the rise, he saw the disaster he had dreaded.

  The constable was crumpling to the ground, his body slack and inert,while the giant slashed at him with a dub of firewood he had snatchedfrom the ground. The upraised arm of the soldier broke the force ofthe blow, but Morse guessed by the way the arm fell that the bone hadsnapped.

  At the sound of the scraping runners, West whirled. He lungedsavagely. Even as Tom ducked, a sharp pain shot through his leg fromthe force of the glancing blow. The axe-head swung like a circle ofsteel. It struck the convict's fur cap. The fellow went down like anox in a slaughter-house.

  Tom took one look at him and ran to his friend. Beresford was a sorrysight. He lay unconscious, head and face battered, the blood from hiswounds staining the snow.

  The man-hunters had come into the wilderness prepared for emergencies.Jessie McRae had prepared a small medicine case as a present for theconstable. Morse ran to the sled and found this. He unrolled bandagesand after he had washed the wounds bound them. As he was about toexamine the arm, he glanced up.

  For a fraction of a second West's wolfish eyes glared at him beforethey took on again the stare of blindness. The man had moved. He hadhitched himself several yards nearer a rifle which stood proppedagainst a balsam.

  The revolver of the deputy constable came to light. "Stop right whereyou're at. Don't take another step."

  The convict snarled rage, but he did not move. Some sure instinctwarned him what the cold light in the eyes of his captor meant, thatif he crept one inch farther toward the weapon he would die in histracks.

  "He--he jumped me," the murderer said hoarsely.

  "Liar! You've been shammin' for a week to get a chance at us. I'd liketo gun you now and be done with it."

  "Don't." West moistened dry lips. "Honest to God he jumped me. Got madat somethin' I said. I wouldn't lie to you, Tom."

  Morse kept him covered, circled round him to the rifle, and from thereto the sled. One eye still on the desperado, he searched for the steelhandcuffs. They were gone. He knew instantly that some time within thepast day or two West had got a chance to drop them in the snow.

  He found rawhide thongs.

  "Lie in the snow, face down," he ordered. "Hands behind you andcrossed at the wrists."

  Presently the prisoner was securely tied. Morse fastened him to thesled and returned to Beresford.

  The arm was broken above the wrist, just as he had feared. He set itas best he could, binding it with splints.

  The young officer groaned and opened his eyes. He made a motion torise.

  "Don't get up," said Morse. "You've been hurt."

  "Hurt?" Beresford's puzzled gaze wandered to the prisoner. A flashof understanding lit it. "He asked me--to light--his pipe--and whenI--turned--he hit--me--with a club," the battered man whispered.

  "About how I figured it."

  "Afraid--I'm--done--in."

  "Not yet, old pal. We'll make a fight for it," the Montanan answered.

  "I'm sick." The soldier's head sank down. His eyes closed.

  All the splendid, lithe strength of his athletic youth had been beatenout of him. To Morse it looked as though he were done for. Was itpossible for one to take such a terrific mauling and not succumb? Ifhe were at a hospital, under the care of expert surgeons and nurses,with proper food and attention, he might have a chance in a hundred.But in this Arctic waste, many hundred miles from the nearest doctor,no food but the coarsest to eat, it would be a miracle if he survived.

  The bitter night was drawing in. Morse drove West in front of him tobring back the wood he had been cutting. He made the man prepare therubaboo for their supper. After the convict had eaten, he bound hishands again and let him lie down in his blankets beside the fire.

  Morse did not sleep. He sat beside his friend and watched the fevermount in him till he was wildly delirious. Such nursing as waspossible he gave.

  The prisoner, like a chained wild beast, glowered at him hungrily. Tomknew that if West found a chance to kill, he would strike. No scruplewould deter him. The fellow was without conscience, driven by the fearof the fate that drew nearer with every step southward. His safety andthe desire of revenge marched together. Beresford was out of the way.It would be his companion's turn next.

  After a time the great hulk of a man fell asleep and snoredstertorously. But Tom did not sleep. He dared not. He had to keepvigilant guard to save both his friend's life and his own. For thoughWest's hands were tied, it would be the work of only a minute to burnaway with a live coal the thongs that bound them.

  The night wore away. There was no question of travel. Beresford wasin the grip of a raging fever and could not be moved. Morse made Westchop wood while he stood over him, rifle in hand. They were short offood and had expected to go hunting next day. The supplies might lastat best six or seven more meals. What was to be done then? Morse couldnot go and leave West where he could get at the man who had put him inprison and with a dog-train to carry him north. Nor could he let Westhave a rifle with which to go in search of game.

  There were other problems that made the situation impossible. Anothernight was at hand, and again Tom must keep awake to save himself andhis friend from the gorilla-man who watched him, gloated over him,waited for the moment to come when he could safely strike. And afterthat there would be other nights--many of them.

  What should he do? What could he do? While he sat beside the deliriousofficer, Tom pondered that question. On the other side of the fire laythe prisoner. Triumph--a horrible, cruel, menacing triumph--rode inhis eye and strutted in his straddling walk when he got up. His hourwas coming. It was coming fast.

  Once Tom fell asleep for a cat-nap. He caught himself nodding, andwith a jerk flung back his head and himself to wakefulness. In the airwas a burning odor.

  Instinct told him what it was. West had been tampering with therawhide thongs round his wrists, had been trying to burn them away.

  He made sure that the fellow was still fast, then drank a tin cup ofstrong tea. After he had fed the sick man a little caribou broth,persuading him with infinite patience to take it, a spoonful at atime, Morse sat down again to wear out the hours of darkness.

  The problem that pressed on him could no longer be evaded. A starkdecision lay before him. To postpone it was to choose one of thealternatives. He knew now, almost beyond any possibility of doubt,that either West must die or else he and his friend. If he had notsnatched himself awake so promptly an hour ago, Win and he wouldalready be dead men. It might be that the constable was going to die,anyhow, but he had a right to his chance of life.

  On the other hand there was one rigid rule of the North-West Mounted.The Force prided itself on living up to it literally. When a manwas sent out to get a prisoner, _he brought him in alive_. It wasa tradition. The Mounted did not choose the easy way of killinglawbreakers because of the difficulty of capturing them. They walkedthrough danger, usually with aplomb, got their man, and brought himin.

  T
hat was what Beresford had done with Pierre Poulette after theFrenchman had killed Buckskin Jerry. He had followed the man formonths, captured him, lived with him alone for a fourth of a year inthe deep snows, and brought him back to punishment. It was easy enoughto plead that this situation was a wholly different one. PierrePoulette was no such dangerous wild beast as Bully West. Win did nothave with him a companion wounded almost to death who had to be nursedback to health, one struck down by the prisoner treacherously. Therewas just a fighting chance for the officers to get back to Desolationif West was eliminated from the equation. Tom knew he would have aman's work cut out for him to win through--without the handicap of theprisoner.

  Deep in his heart he believed that it was West's life or theirs. Itwasn't humanly possible, in addition to all the other difficultiesthat pressed on him, to guard this murderer and bring him back forpunishment. There was no alternative, it seemed to Tom. Thinking couldnot change the conditions. It might be sooner, it might be later, butunder existing circumstances the desperado would find his chance toattack, _if he were alive to take it_.

  The fellow's life was forfeit. As soon as he was turned over to theState, it would be exacted of him. Since his assault on Beresford,surely he had lost all claim to consideration as a human being.

  Just now there were only three men in the world so far as they wereconcerned. These three constituted society. Beresford, his mind stillwandering with incoherent mutterings, was a non-voting member. He,Tom Morse, must be judge and jury. He must, if the prisoner wereconvicted, play a much more horrible role. In the silence of the coldsub-Arctic night he fought the battle out while automatically hewaited on his friend.

  West snored on the other side of the fire.