The surface of the wide, empty river rang with it like a sounding-board, and the undisturbed hills gave it back, the gay song of a deep-chested man. The musical execution was not remarkable, but the sound was as well suited to the big spaces of the sunny river as the call of a moose to the October woods, or the ululation of a wolf to a breathless winter's night. The zest of youth and of singing was in it; to that the breasts of any singer's hearers cannot help but answer.

"Oh! pretty Polly Oliver, the pri-ide of her sex;
The love of a grenadier he-er poor heart did vex.
He courted her so faithfu-ul in the good town of Bow,
But marched off to foreign lands a-fi-ighting the foe."

The singer was luxuriously reclining on a tiny raft made of a single dry trunk cut into four lengths laced together with rope. His back was supported by two canvas bags containing his grub and all his worldly goods, and a banjo lay against his raised thighs. From afar on the bosom of the great stream he looked like a doll afloat on a shingle. The current carried him down, and the eddies waltzed him slowly around and back, providing him agreeable views up and down river and athwart the noble hills that hemmed it in.

"I cannot live si-ingle, and fa-alse I'll not prove,
So I'll 'list for a drummer-boy and follow my love.
Peaked ca-ap, looped jacke-et, whi-ite gaiters and drum,
And marching so manfully to my tru-ue love I'll come."

Between each verse the banjo supplied a rollicking obbligato.

His head was bare, and the waves of his thick, sunburnt hair showed half a dozen shades ranging between sienna and ochre. As to his face, it was proper enough to twenty-five years old; an abounding vitality was its distinguishing character. He was not too good-looking; he had something rarer than mere good looks, an individuality of line and colouring. It was his own face, suggesting none of the recognized types of faces. He had bright blue eyes under beautifully modelled brows, darker than his hair. One eyebrow was cocked a little higher than the other, giving him a mocking air. In repose his lips came together in a thin, resolute line that suggested a hard streak under his gay youthfulness.

He was wearing a blue flannel shirt open at the throat, with a blue and white handkerchief knotted loosely away from it, and he had on faded blue overalls tucked into the tops of his mocassins. These mocassins provided the only touch of coxcombry to his costume; they were of the finest white doeskin elaborately worked with silk flowers. Such footwear is not for sale in the North, but may be surely construed as a badge of the worker's favour.

Such was Jack Chanty, sprawling on his little raft, and abandoning himself to the delicious sunshine and the delights of song. It was July on the Spirit River; he was twenty-five years old, and the blood was coursing through his veins; inside his shirt he felt the weight of a little canvas bag of yellow gold, and he knew where there was plenty more to be had. Is it any wonder he was filled with a sense of well-being so keen it was almost a pain? Expanding his chest, he threw back his head and relieved himself of a roaring fortissimo that made the hills ring again:

"'Twas the battle of Ble-enheim, in a ho-ot fusillade,
A poor little drummer-boy was a prisoner made.
But a bra-ave grenadier fou-ought hi-is way through the foe,
And fifteen fierce Frenchmen toge-ether laid low.

"He took the boy tenderly in his a-arms as he swooned,
He opened his ja-acket for to search for a wound.
Oh! pretty Polly Olive-er, my-y bravest, my bride!
Your true love shall nevermore be to-orn from your side!"

By and by the raft was carried around a wide bend, and the whitewashed buildings of Fort Cheever stole into view down the river. Jack's eyes gleamed, and he put away the banjo. It was many a day since he had hobnobbed with his own kind, and what is the use of gold if there is no chance to squander it?

Sitting up, he applied himself to his paddle. Edging the raft toward the left-hand bank, he left the main current at the head of an island, and, shooting over a bar, paddled through the sluggish backwater on the shore of which the little settlement lay. As he came close the buildings were hidden from him by the high bank; only the top of the "company's" flagpole showed. The first human sound that struck on his ears was the vociferous, angry crying of a boy-child.

Rounding a little point of the bank, the cause of the commotion was revealed. Jack grinned, and held his paddle. The sluggish current carried him toward the actors in the scene, and they were too intent to observe him. A half-submerged, flat-bottomed barge was moored to the shore. On the decked end of it a young girl in a blue print dress was seated on a box, vigorously soaping an infant of four. Two other ivory-skinned cupids, one older, one younger, were playing in the warm water that partly filled the barge. Their clothes lay in a heap behind the girl.

She was a very pretty girl; the mere sight of her caused Jack's breast to lift and his heart to set up a slightly increased beating. It was so long since he had seen one! Her soft lips were determinedly pressed together; in one hand she gripped the thin arm of her captive, while with the other she applied the soap until his writhing little body flashed in the sun as if burnished. Struggles and yells were in vain. The other two children played in the water, callously indifferent to the sufferings of their brother. It was clear they had been through their ordeal.

The girl, warned of an approaching presence, raised a pair of startled eyes. Her captive, feeling the vise relax, plunged into the water of the barge with incredible swiftness, and, rapturously splashing off the hated soap, joined his brothers at the other end, safely out of her reach. The girl blushed for their nakedness. They themselves stared open-mouthed at the stranger without any embarrassment at all. The fat baby was sitting in the water, turned into stone with astonishment, like a statue of Buddha in a flood.

Something in the young man's frank laugh reassured the girl, and she laughed a little too, though blushing still. She glowed with youth and health, deep-bosomed as Ceres, and all ivory and old rose. Her delicious, soft, roundness was a tantalizing sight to a hungry youth. But there was something more than mere provoking loveliness—her large brown eyes conveyed it, a disquieting wistfulness even while she laughed.

He brought his raft alongside the barge, and, rising, extended his hand according to the custom of the country. Hastily wiping her own soapy hand on her apron, she laid it in his. Both thrilled to the touch, and their eyes quailed from each other. Jack quickly recovered himself. Lovely as she might be, she was none the less a "native," and therefore to a white man fair game. Naturally he took the world as he found it.

"You are Mary Cranston," he said. "I should have known if there was another like you in the country," his bold eyes added.

The girl lowered her eyes. "Yes," she murmured.

Her voice astonished him, and filled him with the desire to make her speak again. "You don't know who I am," he said.

She glanced at the banjo case. "Jack Chanty," she said softly.

"Good!" he cried. "That's what it is to be famous!" Their eyes met, and they laughed as at a rich joke. Her laugh was as sweet as the sound of falling water in the ears of thirst, and the name he went by as spoken by her rang in his ears with rare tenderness.

"How did you know?" he asked curiously.

"Everybody knows about everybody up here," she said. "There are so few! You came from across the mountains, and have been prospecting under Mount Tetrahedron since the winter. The Indians who came in to trade told us about the banjo, and about the many songs you sang, which were strange to them."

The ardour of his gaze confused her. She broke off, and, to hide her confusion, turned abruptly to the staring ivory cupids. "Andy, come here!" she commanded in the voice of sisterly authority. "Colin! Gibbie! Come and get dressed!"

Andy and Colin grinned sheepishly, and stayed where they were. The smile of Andy, the elder, was toothless and exasperating. As for the infant Buddha, he continued to sit unmoved, to suck his thumb, and to stare.

She stamped her foot. "Andy! Come here this minute! Colin! Gibbie!" she repeated in a voice of helpless vexation.

They did not move.

"Look sharp, young 'uns!" Jack suddenly roared.

Of one accord, as if galvanized into life, they scrambled toward their sister, making a detour around the far side of the barge to avoid Jack.

Mary rewarded him with a smile, and dealt out the clothes with a practised hand. Andy, clasping his garments to his breast, set off over the plank to the shore, and was hauled back just in time.

"He has to have his hair cut, because the steamboat is coming," his sister explained; "and I don't see how I can hold on to him while I am dressing the others."

"Pass him over here," said Jack.

Andy, struck with terror, was deposited on the raft, whence escape was impossible without passing the big man, and commanded to dress himself without more ado.

Mary regarded the other two anxiously. "They're beginning to shiver," she said, "and I can't dress both at once."

Jack sat on the edge of the barge with his feet on the raft. "Give me the baby," he said.

"You couldn't dress a baby," she said, with a provoking dimple in either cheek.

"Yes, I can, if he wears pants," said Jack serenely. "There's no mystery about pants."

"Besides, he'd yell," she objected.

"No, he won't," said Jack. "Try him and see."

And in sooth he did not yell, but sat on Jack's knee while his little shirt was pulled over his head and buttoned, sucking his thumb, and staring at Jack with a piercing, unflinching stare.

"You have a way with babies," the girl said in the sweet, hushed voice that continually astonished him.

He looked at her with his mocking smile. "And with girls?" his eyes asked boldly.

She blushed, and attended strictly to Colin's buttons.

Colin, fully attired in shirt, trousers, and moccasins, was presently dismissed over the plank. He lingered on the shore, shouting opprobrious epithets to his elder, still in captivity. At the same time the baby was dressed in the smallest pair of long pants ever made. He was as bow-legged as a bulldog. Jack leaned back, roaring with laughter at the figure of gravity he made. Gibbie didn't mind. He could walk, but he preferred to sit. He continued to sit cross-legged on the end of the barge, and to stare.

Next, Andy was seated on the box, while Mary, kneeling behind him, produced her scissors.

"If you don't sit still you'll get the top of your cars cut off!" she said severely.

But sitting still was difficult under the taunts from ashore.

"Jutht you wait till I git aholt of you," lisped the toothless one, proving that the language of unregenerate youth is much the same on the far-off Spirit River as it is on the Bowery.

Jack returned to the raft and unstrapped the banjo case. "Be a good boy and I'll sing you a song," he said, presumably to Andy, but looking at Mary meanwhile.

At the sound of the tuning-up the infant Buddha in long pants gravely arose stern foremost, and reseated himself at the edge of the barge, where he could get a better view of the player.

Jack chose another rollicking air, but a new tone had crept into his deep voice. He sang softly, for he had no desire to bring others down the bank to interrupt his further talk with Mary.

"Oh, the pretty, pretty creature!
When I next do meet her
No more like a clown will I face her frown,
But gallantly will I treat her,
But gallantly will I treat her,
Oh, the pretty, pretty creature!"

The infant Buddha condescended to smile, and to bounce once or twice on his fundament by way of applause. Andy sat as still as a surprised chipmunk. Colin was sorry now that he had cut himself off from the barge. As for the boy's big sister, she kept her eyes veiled, and plied the scissors with slightly languorous motions of the hands. Even a merry song may work a deal of sentimental damage under certain conditions. And the sun shone, and the bright river moved down.

"Thank you," she said, when he had come to the end. "We never have music here."

Jack wondered where she had learned her pretty manners.

The hair-cutting was concluded. Andy sprang up looking like a little zebra with alternate dark and light stripes running around his head, and a narrow bang like a forelock in the middle of his forehead. Jack put away the banjo, and Andy, seeing that there was to be no more music, set off in chase of Colin. The two of them disappeared over the bank. Mary gathered up towels, soap, comb, and scissors preparatory to following them.

"Don't go yet," said Jack eagerly.

"I must," she said, but lingering. "There is much to be done before the steamboat comes."

"She's only expected," said Jack of the knowledge born of experience. "It'll be a week before she comes."

Mary displayed no great eagerness to be gone.

A bold idea had been making a covert shine in Jack's eyes during the last minute or two. It suddenly found expression. "Cut my hair," he blurted out.

She started and blushed. "Oh, I—I couldn't cut a man's hair," she stammered.

"What's the difference?" demanded Jack with a great parade of innocence. "Hair is just hair, isn't it?"

"I couldn't," she repeated naïvely. "It would confuse me so!"

The thought of her confusion was delicious to him. He was standing below her on the raft. "Look," he said, lowering his head. "It needs it. I'm a sight!"

Since in this position he could not see her face, she allowed her eyes to dwell for a moment on the tawny silken sheaves that he exhibited. Such bright hair was wonderful to her. It seemed to her as if the sun itself was netted in its folds.

"I—I couldn't," she repeated, but weakly.

He swung about and sat on the edge of the barge. "Make out I am your other little brother," he said insinuatingly. "I can't see you, so it's all right. Just one little snip to see how it goes!"

The temptation was too great to be resisted. She bent over, and the blades of the scissors met. In her agitation she cut a wider swath than she intended and a whole handful of hair fell to the deck.

"Oh!" she cried remorsefully.

"Now you'll have to do the whole thing," said Jack quickly. "You can't leave me looking like a half-clipped poodle."

With a guilty look over her shoulder she drew up the box and sat down behind him. Gibbie, the youngest of the Cranstons, was a solemn and interested spectator. Jack thrilled a little and smiled at the touch of her trembling fingers in his hair. At the same time he was not unaware of the decorative value of his luxuriant thatch, and it occurred to him he was running a considerable risk of disfigurement at her hands.

"Not so short as Andy's," he suggested anxiously.

"I will be careful," she said.

The scissors snipped busily, and the rich yellow-brown hair fell all around the deck. Mary eyed it covetously. One shining twist of it dropped in her lap. He could not see her. In a twinkling it was stuffed inside her belt.

Meanwhile Jack continued to smile with softened eyes. "Hair-cutting was never like this," he murmured. He was tantalized by the recollection of her voice, and he cast about in his mind for something to lead her to talk more freely. "You were not here when I came through two years ago," he said.

"I was away at school," she said.

"Where?"

"The mission at Caribou Lake."

"Did you like it there?"

He felt the shrug in her finger-tips. "It is the best there is," she said quietly.

"It's a shame!" said Jack. There was a good deal unspoken here. "A shame you should be obliged to associate with those savages," he implied, and she understood.

"Have you ever been outside?" he asked.

"No," she said.

"Would you like to go?"

"Yes, with somebody I liked," she said in her simple way.

"With me?" he asked in the off-hand tone that may be taken any way the hearer pleases.

Her simplicity was not dullness. "No," she said quickly. "You would tell me funny lies about everything."

"But you would laugh, and you would like it," he said.

She had nothing to say to this.

"Outside they have regular shops for shaving and cutting hair," he went on. "Barber-shops they are called."

"I know," she said offended. "I read."

"I'll bet you didn't know there was a lady barber in Prince George."

"Nice kind of lady!" she said.

The obvious retort slipped thoughtlessly off his tongue. "I like that! What are you doing?"

Her eyes filled with tears, and the scissors faltered. "Well, I wouldn't do it for—I—I wouldn't do it all the time," she murmured deeply hurt.

He twisted his head at the imminent risk of impaling an eye on the scissors. The tears astonished him. Everything about her astonished him. In no respect did she coincide with his experience of "native" girls. He was vain enough for a good-looking young man of twenty-five, but he did not suspect that to a lonely and imaginative girl his coming down the river might have had all the effect of the advent of the yellow-haired prince in a fairy-tale. Jack was not imaginative.

He reached for her free hand. "Say, I'm sorry," he said clumsily. "It was only a joke! It's mighty decent of you to do it for me."

She snatched her hand away, but smiled at him briefly and dazzlingly. She was glad to be hurt if he would let that tone come into his mocking voice.

"I was just silly," she said shortly.

The hair-cutting went on.

"What do you read?" asked Jack curiously.

"We get newspapers and magazines three times a year by the steamboat," she said. "And I have a few books. I like 'Lalla Rookh' and 'Marmion' best."

Jack, who was not acquainted with either, preserved a discreet silence.

"Father has sent out for a set of Shakespeare for me," she went on. "I am looking forward to it."

"It's better on the stage," said Jack. "What fun to take you to the theatre!"

She made no comment on this. Presently the scissors gave a concluding snip.

"Lean over and look at yourself in the water," she commanded.

Obeying, he found to his secret relief that his looks had not suffered appreciably. "That's out of sight!" he said heartily, turning to her. "I say, I'm ever so much obliged to you."

An awkward silence fell between them. Jack's growing intention was clearly evident in his eye, but she did not look at him.

"I—I must pay you," he said at last, a little breathlessly.

She understood that very well, and sprang up, the scissors ringing on the hollow deck. They were both pale. She turned to run, but the box was in her way. Leaping from the raft to the barge, he caught her in his arms, and as she strained away he kissed her round firm cheek and her fragrant neck beneath the ear. He roughly pressed her averted head around, and crushed her soft lips under his own.

Then she got an arm free, and he received a short-arm box on the ear that made his head ring. She tore herself out of his arms, and faced him from the other side of the barge, panting and livid with anger.

"How dare you! How dare you!" she cried.

Jack leaned toward her, breathing no less quickly than she. "You're lovely! You're lovely," he murmured swiftly. "I never saw anybody like you before. I'll camp quarter of a mile down river, out of the way. Come down to-night, and I'll sing to you."

"I won't!" she cried. "I'll never speak to you again! I hate you!" She indicated the unmoved infant Buddha with a tragic gesture. "And before the baby, too!" she cried. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

Jack laughed a little sheepishly. "Well, he's too young to tell," he said.

"But what will he think of me?" she cried despairingly. Stooping, she swept the little god into her arms, and, running over the plank, disappeared up the bank.

"I'll be waiting for you," Jack softly called after her. She gave no sign of hearing.

Jack sad down on the edge of the barge again. He brushed the cut hair into the water, and watched it float away with an abstract air. As he stared ahead of him a slight line appeared between his eyebrows which may have been due to compunction. Whatever the uncomfortable thought was, he presently whistled it away after the manner of youth, and, drawing his raft up on the stones, set to work to take stock of his grub.

II
THE COMPANY FROM "OUTSIDE."

The Hudson Bay Company's buildings at Fort Cheever were built, as is customary, in the form of a hollow square, with one side open to the river. The store occupied one side of the square, the warehouse was opposite, and at the top stood the trader's house in the midst of its vegetable garden fenced with palings. The old palisade about the place had long ago disappeared, and nothing military remained except the flagpole and an ancient little brass cannon at its foot, blackened with years of verdigris and dirt. The humbler store of the "French outfit" and the two or three native shacks that completed the settlement lay at a little distance behind the company buildings, and the whole was cropped down on a wide, flat esplanade of grass between the steep bare hills and the river.

To-day at the fort every one was going about his business with an eye cocked downstream. Every five minutes David Cranston came to the door of the store for a look, and old Michel Whitebear, hoeing the trader's garden, rested between every hill of potatoes, to squint his aged eyes in the same direction. Usually this state of suspense endured for days, sometimes weeks, but upon this trip the river-gods were propitious, and at five o'clock the eagerly listened for whistle was actually heard.

Every soul in the place gathered at the edge of the bank to witness the arrival. At one side, slightly apart, stood the trader and his family. David Cranston was a lean, up-standing Scotchman, an imposing physical specimen with hair and beard beginning to grizzle, and a level, grim, sad gaze. His wife was a handsome, sullen, dark-browed, half-breed woman, who, unlike the majority of her sisters, carried her age well. In his grim sadness and her sullenness was written a domestic tragedy of long-standing. After all these years she was still a stranger in her own house, and an alien to her husband and children. Their children were with them, Mary and six boys ranging from Davy, who was sixteen, down to the infant Buddha.

A small crowd of natives in ragged store clothes, standing and squatting on the bank, and spilling over on the beach below, filled the centre of the picture, and beyond them sat Jack Chanty by himself, on a box that he had carried to the edge of the bank. Between him and Mary the bank made in, so that they were fully visible to each other, and both tinglingly self-conscious. In Jack this took the form of an elaborately negligent air. He whittled a paddle with nice care, glancing at Mary from under his lashes. She could not bring herself to look at him.

While the steamboat was still quarter of a mile downstream, the people began to sense that there was something more than usual in the wind, and a great excitement mounted. We of the outside world, with our telegrams and newspapers and hourly posts, have forgotten what it is to be dramatically surprised. Where can we get a thrill like to that which animated these people as the magic word was passed around: "Passengers!" Presently it could be made out that these were no ordinary passengers, but a group of well-dressed gentlemen, and finally, wonder of wonders! what had never been seen at Fort Cheever before, a white lady—no, two of them!

Mary saw them first, two ladies, corseted, tailored, and marvellously hatted like the very pictures in the magazines that she had secretly disbelieved in. In another minute she made out that one of them, leaning on the upper rail, smiling and chatting vivaciously with her companions, was as young as Mary herself, and as slender and pretty as a mundane fairy.

Mary glanced swiftly at Jack. He, too, was looking at the deck of the steamboat and he had stopped whittling his paddle. A dreadful pang transfixed Mary's breast. Her hands and feet suddenly became enormous to her, and her body seemed like a coarse and shapeless lump. She looked down at her clean, faded print dress; she could have torn it into ribbons. She looked at her dark-browed mother with eyes full of a strange, angry despair. The elder woman had by this time seen what was coming, and her lip curled scornfully. Mary's eyes filled with tears. She slipped out of the group unseen, and, running back to the house, cast herself on her bed and wept as she had never wept.

The steamboat was moored alongside the half-submerged barge. She came to a stop with the group on the upper deck immediately in front of Jack and a little below him. True to the character of indifference he was fond of assuming, he went on whittling his paddle. At the same time he was taking it all in. The sight of people such as his own people, that he thought he had put behind him forever, raised a queer confusion of feelings in him. As he covertly watched the dashing, expensive, imperious little beauty and three men hanging obsequiously on her words, a certain hard brightness showed briefly in his eyes, and his lips thinned.

It was as if he said: "Aha! my young lady, I know your kind! None of you will ever play that game again with me!"

Consequently when her casual glance presently fell on the handsome, young, rough character (as she would no doubt have called him) it was met by a glance even more casual. The young man was clearly more interested in the paddle he was making than in her. Her colour heightened a little and she turned with an added vivacity to her companions. After a long time she looked again. The young man was still intent upon his paddle.

The first to come off the boat was the young purser, who hurried with the mail and the manifests to David Cranston. He was pale under the weight of the announcement he bore.

"We have his honour the lieutenant-governor and party on board," he said breathlessly.

Cranston, because he saw that he was expected to be overcome, remained grimly unconcerned. "So!" he said coolly.

The youngster stared. "The lieutenant-governor," he repeated uncertainly. "He's landing here to make some explorations in the mountains. He joined us without warning at the Crossing. There was no way to let you know."

"We'll do the best we can for his lordship," said Cranston with an ironic curl to his grim lips. "I will speak to my wife."

To her he said under his breath, grimly but not unkindly, "Get to the house, my girl."

She flared up with true savage suddenness. "So, I'm not good enough to be seen with you," she snarled, taking no pains to lower her voice. "I'm your lawful wife. These are my children. Are you ashamed of my colour? You chose me!"

Cranston drew the long breath that calls on patience. "'Tis not your colour that puts me to shame, but your manners," he said sternly. "And if they're bad," he added, "it's not for the lack of teaching. Get to the house!"

She went.

The captain of the steamboat now appeared on the gangplank, ushering an immaculate little gentleman whose salient features were a Panama hat above price, a pointed white beard, neat, agile limbs, and a trim little paunch under a miraculously fitting white waistcoat. Two other men followed, one elderly, one young.

Cranston waited for them at the top of the path.

The captain was a little flustered too. "Mr. Cranston, gentlemen, the company's trader here," he said. "His Honour Sir Bryson Trangmar, the lieutenant-governor of Athabasca," he went on. "Captain Vassall"—the younger man bowed; "Mr. Baldwin Ferrie"—the other nodded.

There was the suspicion of a twinkle in Cranston's eye. Taking off his hat he extended an enormous hand. "How do you do, sir," he said politely. "Welcome to Fort Cheever."

"Charmed! Charmed!" bubbled the neat little gentleman. "Charming situation you have here. Charming river! Charming hills!"

"I regret that I cannot offer you suitable hospitality," Cranston continued in his great, quiet voice. "My house is small, as you see, and very ill-furnished. There are nine of us. But the warehouse shall be emptied before dark and made ready for you. It is the best building here."

"Very kind, I'm sure," said Sir Bryson with off-hand condescension—perhaps he sensed the twinkle, perhaps it was the mere size of the trader that annoyed him; "but we have brought everything needful. We will camp here on the grass between the buildings and the river. Captain Vassall, my aide-de-camp, will see to it. I will talk to you later Mr.—er?"

"Cranston," murmured the aide-de-camp.

Cranston understood by this that he was dismissed. He sauntered back to the store with a peculiar smile on his grim lips. In the free North country they have never become habituated to the insolence of office, and the display of it strikes them as a very humorous thing, particularly in a little man.

Sir Bryson and the others reconnoitred the grassy esplanade, and chose a spot for the camp. It was decided that the party should remain on the steamboat all night, and go into residence under canvas next day. They then returned on board for supper, and nothing more was seen of the strangers for a couple of hours.

At the end of that time Miss Trangmar and her companion, Mrs. Worsley, arm in arm and hatless, came strolling over the gangplank to enjoy a walk in the lingering evening. At this season it does not become dark at Fort Cheever until eleven.

Jack's raft was drawn up on the beach at the steamboat's bow, and as the ladies came ashore he was disposing his late purchases at the store upon it, preparatory to dropping downstream to the spot where he meant to camp. In order to climb the bank the two had to pass close behind him.

At sight of him the girl's eyes brightened, and, with a mischievous look she said something to her companion.

"Linda!" the older woman remonstrated.

"Everybody speaks to everybody up here," said the girl. "It was understood that the conventions were to be left at home."

Thus Jack was presently startled to hear a clear high voice behind him say: "Are you going to travel on the river with that little thing?"

Hastily straightening his back and turning, he raised his hat. Her look took him unawares. There was nothing of the insolent queenliness in it now. She was smiling at him like a fearless, well-bred little girl. Nevertheless, he reflected, the sex is not confined to the use of a single weapon, and he stiffened.

"I came down the river on it this morning," he said politely and non-committal. "To-night I'm going just a little way to camp."

She was very like a little girl, he thought, being so small and slender, and having such large blue eyes, and such a charming, childlike smile. Her bright brown hair was rolled back over her ears. Her lips were very red, and her teeth perfect. She was wearing a silk waist cunningly contrived with lace, and fitting in severe, straight lines, ever so faintly suggesting the curves beneath. In spite of himself everything about her struck subtle chords in Jack's memory. It was years since he had been so close to a lady.

She was displeased with the manner of his answer. He had shown no trace either of the self-consciousness or the eager complaisance she had expected from a local character. Indeed, his gaze returned to the raft as if he were only restrained by politeness from going on with his preparations. He reminded her of a popular actor in a Western play that she had been to see more times than her father knew of. But the rich colour in Jack's cheek and neck had the advantage of being under the skin instead of plastered on top. Her own cheeks were a thought pale.

"How do you go back upstream?" she asked with an absent air that was intended to punish him.

"You travel as you can," said Jack calmly. "On horseback or afoot."

She pointedly did not wait for the answer, but strayed on up the path as if he had already passed from her mind. Yet as she turned at the top her eyes came back to him as if by accident. She had a view of a broad back, and a bent head intent upon the lashings of the raft. She bit her lip. It was a disconcerting young man.

A few minutes later Frank Garrod, the governor's secretary, who until now had been at work in his cabin upon the correspondence the steamboat was to take back next day, came over the gangplank in pursuit of the ladies. He was a slim and well-favoured young man, of about Jack's age, but with something odd and uncontrolled about him, a young man of whom it was customary to say he was "queer," without any one's knowing exactly what constituted his queerness. He had black hair and eyes that made a striking contrast with his extreme pallor. The eyes were very bright and restless; all his movements were a little jerky and uneven.

Hearing more steps behind him, Jack looked around abstractedly without really seeing what he looked at. Garrod, however, obtained a fair look into Jack's face, and the sight of it operated on him with a terrible, dramatic suddenness. A doctor would have recognized the symptoms of what he calls shock. Garrod's arms dropped limply, his breath failed him, his eyes were distended with a wild and inhuman fear. For an instant he seemed about to collapse on the stones, but he gathered some rags of self-control about him, and, turning without a sound, went back over the gangplank, swaying a little, and walking with wide-open, sightless eyes like a man in his sleep.

Presently Vassall, the amiable young A.D.C., descending the after stairway, came upon him leaning against the rail on the river-side of the boat, apparently deathly sick.

"Good heavens, Garrod! What's the matter?" he cried.

The other man made a pitiable attempt to carry it off lightly. "Nothing serious," he stammered. "A sudden turn. I have them sometimes. If you have any whiskey——"

Vassall sprang up the stairway, and presently returned with a flask. Upon gulping down part of the contents, a little colour returned to Garrod's face, and he was able to stand straighter.

"All right now," he said in a stronger voice. "You run along and join the others. Please don't say anything about this."

"I can't leave you like this," said Vassall. "You ought to be in bed."

"I tell you I'm all right," said Garrod in his jerky, irritable way. "Run along. There isn't anything you can do."

Vassall went his way with a wondering air; real tragedy is such a strange thing to be intruding upon our everyday lives. Garrod, left alone, stared at the sluggishly flowing water under the ship's counter with the kind of sick, desirous eyes that so often look over the parapets of bridges in the cities at night. But there were too many people about on the boat; the splash would instantly have betrayed him.

He gathered himself together as with an immense effort, and, climbing the stairway, went to his stateroom. There he unlocked his valise, and drawing out his revolver, a modern hammerless affair, made sure that it was loaded, and slipped it in his pocket. He caught sight of his face in the mirror and shuddered. "As soon as it's dark," he muttered.

He sat down on his bunk to wait. By and by he became conscious of a torturing thirst, and he went out into the main cabin for water. Jack, meanwhile, having loaded his craft, had boarded the steamboat to see if he could beg or steal a newspaper less than two months old, and the two men came face to face in the saloon.

Garrod made a move to turn back, but it was too late; Jack had recognized him now. Seeing the look of amazement in the other's face, Garrod's hand stole to his hip-pocket, but it was arrested by the sound of Jack's voice.

"Frank!" he cried, and there was nothing but gladness in the sound. "Frank Garrod, by all that's holy!" He sprang forward with outstretched hands. "Old Frank! To think of finding you here!"

Garrod stared in stupid amazement at the smile and the hearty tone. For a moment he was quite unnerved; his hands and his lips trembled. "Is it—is it Malcolm Piers?" he stammered.

"Sure thing!" cried Jack, wringing his hand. "What's the matter with you? You look completely knocked up at the sight of me. I'm no ghost, man! What are you doing up here."

"I'm Sir Bryson's secretary," murmured Garrod, feeling for his words with difficulty.

Jack's delight was as transparent as it was unrestrained. The saloon continued to ring with his exclamations. In the face of it a little steadiness returned to Garrod, but he could not rid his eyes of their amazement and incredulity at every fresh display of Jack's gladness.

"You're looking pretty seedy," Jack broke off to say. "Going the pace, I expect. Now that we've got you up here, you'll have to lead a more godly and regular life, my boy."

"What are you doing up here, Malcolm?" asked Garrod dully.

"Easy with that name around here, old fel'," said Jack carelessly. "I left it off long ago. I'm just Jack Chanty now. It's the name the fellows gave me themselves because I sing by the campfires."

"I understand," said Garrod, with a jerk of eagerness. "Good plan to drop your own name, knocking around up here."

"I had no reason to be ashamed of it," said Jack quickly. "But it's too well known a name in the East. I didn't want to be explaining myself all the time. It was nobody's business, anyway, why I came out here. So I let them call me what they liked."

"Of course," said Garrod.

"Knock around," cried Jack. "That's just what I do! A little river work, a little prospecting, a little hunting and trapping, and one hell of a good time! It beats me how young fellows of blood and muscle can stew their lives away in cities when this is open to them! New country to explore, and game to bring down, and gold to look for. The fun of it, whether you find any or not! This is freedom, Frank, working with your own hands for all you get, and beholden to no man! By Gad! I'm glad I found you," he went on enthusiastically. "What talks we'll have about people and the places back home! I never could live there now, but I'm often sick to hear about it all. You shall tell me!"

A tremor passed over Garrod's face. "Sure," he said nervously. "I can't stop just this minute, because they're waiting for me up on the bank. But I'll see you later."

"To-morrow, then," said Jack easily; but his eyes followed the disappearing Garrod with a surprised and chilled look. "What's the matter with him?" they asked.

Garrod as he hurried ashore, his hands trembling, and his face working in an ecstasy of relief, murmured over and over to himself. "He doesn't know! He doesn't know!"

III
TALK BY THE FIRE

Jack was sitting by his own fire idly strumming on the banjo. Behind him was his canvas "lean-to," open to the fire in front, and with a mosquito bar hanging within. All around his little clearing pressed a thick growth of young poplar, except in front, where the view was open to the river, moving smoothly down, and presenting a burnished silver reflection to the evening sky. The choice of a situation, the proper fire, and the tidy arrangements all bespoke the experienced campaigner. Jack took this sort of thing for granted, as men outside ride back and forth on trolley cars, and snatch hasty meals at lunch counters.

The supper dishes being washed, it was the easeful hour of life in camp, but Jack was not at ease. He played a few bars, and put the banjo down. He tinkered with the fire, and swore when he only succeeded in deadening it. He lit his pipe, and immediately allowed it to go out again. A little demon had his limbs twitching on wires. He continually looked and listened in the direction of the fort, and whenever he fancied he heard a sound his heart rose and beat thickly in his throat. At one moment he thought: "She'll come," and confidently smiled; the next, for no reason: "She will not come," and frowned, and bit his lip.

Finally he did hear a rustle among the trees. He sprang up with surprised and delighted eyes, and immediately sat down again, picking up the banjo with an off-hand air. Under the circumstances one's pet affectation of unconcern is difficult to maintain.

It was indeed Mary. She broke into the clearing, pale and breathless, and looked at Jack as if she was all ready to turn and fly back again. Jack smiled and nodded as if this were the most ordinary of visits. The smile stiffened in his face, for another followed her into the clearing—Davy, the oldest of her brothers. For an instant Jack was nonplussed, but he had laid it down as a rule that in his dealings with the sex, whatever betide, a man must smile and keep his temper. So, swallowing his disappointment as best he could, he greeted Davy as if he had expected him too.

What Mary had been through during the last few hours may be imagined: how many times she had sworn she would not go, only to have her desires open the question all over again. Perhaps she would not have come if the maddeningly attractive young lady had not appeared on the scene; perhaps she would have found an excuse to come anyway. Be that as it may, she had brought Davy. In this she had not Mrs. Grundy's elaborate code to guide her; it was an idea out of her own head—or an instinct of her heart, rather. Watching Jack eagerly and covertly to see how he took it, she decided that she had done right. "He will think more of me," she thought with a breath of relief.

She had done wisely of course. Jack, after his first disappointment, was compelled to doff his cap to her. He had never met a girl of the country like this. He bestirred himself to put his visitors at their ease.

"I will make tea," he said, reaching for the copper pot according to the ritual of politeness in the North.

"We have just had tea," Mary said. "Davy will smoke with you."

Mary was now wearing a shawl over the print dress, but instead of clutching it around her in the clumsy native way, she had crossed it on her bosom like a fichu, wound it about her waist, and tucked the ends in. Jack glanced at her approvingly.

Davy was young for his sixteen years, and as slender as a sapling. He had thin, finely drawn features, and eyes that expressed something of the same quality of wistfulness as his sister's. At present he was very ill at ease, but his face showed a certain resoluteness that engaged Jack's liking. The boy shyly produced a pipe that was evidently a recent acquisition, and filled it inexpertly.

Jack's instinct led him to ignore Mary for the present while he made friends with the boy. He knew how. They were presently engaged in a discussion about prairie chicken, in an off-hand, manly tone.

"Never saw 'em so plenty," said Davy. "You only have to climb the hill to bring back as many as you want."

"What gun do you use?" asked Jack.

The boy's eyes gleamed. "My father has a Lefever gun," he said proudly. "He lets me use it."

"So!" said Jack, suitably impressed. "There are not many in the country."

"She's a very good gun," said Davy patronizingly. "I like to take her apart and clean her," he added boyishly.

"I'd like to go up on the prairie with you while I'm here," said Jack. "But I have no shotgun. I'll have to try and put their eyes out with my twenty-two."

This sort of talk was potent to draw them together. They puffed away, ringing all the changes on it. Mary listened apart as became a mere woman, and the hint of a dimple showed in either cheek. When she raised her eyes they fairly beamed on Jack.

Jack knew that the way to win the hearts of the children of the North is to tell them tales of the wonderful world outside that they all dream about. He led the talk in this direction.

"I suppose you've finished school," he said to Davy, as man to man. "Do you ever think of taking a trip outside?"

The boy hesitated before replying. "I think of it all the time," he said in a low, moved voice. "I feel bad every time the steamboat goes back without me. There is nothing for me here."

"You'll make it some day soon," said Jack heartily.

"I suppose you know Prince George well?" the boy said wistfully.

"Yes," said Jack, "but why stop at Prince George? That's not much of a town. You should see Montreal. That's where I was raised. There's a city for you! All built of stone. Magnificent banks and stores and office buildings ten, twelve, fourteen stories high, and more. You've seen a two-story house at the lake; imagine seven of them piled up one on top of another, with people working on every floor!"

"You're fooling us," said the boy. His and his sister's eyes were shining.

"No, I have seen pictures of them in the magazines," put in Mary quickly.

"There is Notre Dame Street," said Jack dreamily, "and Great St. James, and St. Catherine's, and St. Lawrence Main; I can see them now! Imagine miles of big show-windows lighted at night as bright as sunshine. Imagine thousands of moons hung right down in the street for the people to see by, and you have it!"

"How wonderful!" murmured Mary.

"There is an electric light at Fort Ochre," said the boy, "but I have not seen it working. They say when the trader claps his hands it shines, and when he claps them again it goes out."

Mary blushed for her brother's ignorance. "That's only to fool the Indians," she said quickly. "Of course there's some one behind the counter to turn it off and on."

Jack told them of railway trains and trolley cars; of mills that wove thousands of yards of cloth in a day, and machines that spit out pairs of boots all ready to put on. The old-fashioned fairy-tales are puerile beside such wonders as these—think of eating your dinner in a carriage that is being carried over the ground faster than the wild duck flies!—moreover, he assured them on his honour that it was all true.

"Tell us about theatres," said Mary. "The magazines have many stories about theatres, but they do not explain what they are."

"Well, a theatre's a son-of-a-gun of a big house with a high ceiling and the floor all full of chairs," said Jack. "Around the back there are galleries with more chairs. In the front there is a platform called the stage, and in front of the stage hangs a big curtain that is let down while the people are coming in, so you can't see what is behind it. It is all brightly lighted, and there's an orchestra, many fiddles and other kinds of music playing together in front of the stage. When the proper time comes the curtain is pulled up," he continued, "and you see the stage all arranged like a picture with beautifully painted scenery. Then the actors and actresses come out on the stage and tell a story to each other. They dance and sing, and make love, and have a deuce of a time generally. That's called a play."

"Is it nothing but making love?" asked Davy. "Don't they have anything about hunting, or having sport?"

"Sure!" said Jack. "War and soldiers and shooting, and everything you can think of."

"Are the actresses all as pretty as they say?" asked Mary diffidently.

"Not too close," said Jack. "But you see the lights, and the paint and powder, and the fine clothes show them up pretty fine."

"It gives them a great advantage," she commented.

Mary had other questions to ask about actresses. Davy was not especially interested in this subject, and soon as he got an opening therefor he said, looking sidewise at the leather case by the fire:

"I never heard the banjo played."

Jack instantly produced the instrument, and, tuning it, gave them song after song. Brother and sister listened entranced. Never in their lives had they met anybody like Jack Chanty. He was master of an insinuating tone not usually associated with the blatant banjo. Without looking at her, he sang love-songs to Mary that shook her breast. In her wonder and pleasure she unconsciously let fall the guard over her eyes, and Jack's heart beat fast at what he read there.

Warned at last by the darkness, Mary sprang up. "We must go," she said breathlessly.

Davy, who had come unwillingly, was more unwilling to go. But the hint of "father's" anger was sufficient to start him.

Jack detained Mary for an instant at the edge of the clearing. He dropped the air of the genial host. "I shall not be able to sleep to-night," he said swiftly.

"Nor I," she murmured. "Th—thinking of the theatre," she added lamely.

"When everybody is asleep," he pleaded, "come outside your house. I'll be waiting for you. I want to talk to you alone."

She made no answer, but raised her eyes for a moment to his, two deep, deep pools of wistfulness. "Ah, be good to me! Be good to me," they seemed to plead with him. Then she darted after her brother.

The look sobered Jack, but not for very long. "She'll come," he thought exultingly.

Left alone, he worked like a beaver, chopping and carrying wood for his fire. Under stress of emotion he turned instinctively to violent physical exertion for an outlet. He was more moved than he knew. In an hour, being then as dark as it would get, he exchanged the axe for the banjo, and, slinging it over his back, set forth.

The growth of young poplar stretched between his camp and the esplanade of grass surrounding the buildings of the fort. When he came to the edge of the trees the warehouse was the building nearest to him. Running across the intervening space, he took up his station in the shadow of the corner of it, where he could watch the trader's house. A path bordered by young cabbages and turnips led from the front door down to the gate in the palings. The three visible windows of the house were dark. At a little distance behind the house the sledge dogs of the company were tethered in a long row of kennels, but there was little danger of their giving an alarm, for they often broke into a frantic barking and howling for no reason except the intolerable ennui of their lives in the summer.

There is no moment of the day in lower latitudes that exactly corresponds to the fairylike night-long summer twilight of the North. The sunset glow does not fade entirely, but hour by hour moves around the Northern horizon to the east, where presently it heralds the sun's return. It is not dark, and it is not light. The world is a ghostly place. It is most like nights at home when the full moon is shining behind light clouds, but with this difference, that here it is the dimness of a great light that embraces the world, instead of the partial obscurity of a lesser.

Jack waited with his eyes glued to the door of the trader's house. There was not a breath stirring. There were no crickets, no katydids, no tree-toads to make the night companionable; only the hoot of an owl, and the far-off wail of a coyote to put an edge on the silence. It was cold, and for the time being the mosquitoes were discouraged. The stars twinkled sedulously like busy things.

Jack waited as a young man waits for a woman at night, with his ears strained to catch the whisper of her dress, a tremor in his muscles, and his heart beating thickly in his throat. The minutes passed heavily. Once the dogs raised an infernal clamour, and subsided again. A score of times he thought he saw her, but it was only a trick of his desirous eyes. He became cold to the bones, and his heart sunk. As a last resort he played the refrain of the last song he had sung her, played it so softly none but one who listened would be likely to hear. The windows of the house were open.

Then suddenly he sensed a figure appearing from behind the house, and his heart leapt. He lost it in the shadow of the house. He waited breathlessly, then played a note or two. The figure reappeared, running toward him, still in the shadow. It loomed big in the darkness. It started across the open space. Too late Jack saw his mistake. He had only time to fling the banjo behind him, before the man was upon him with a whispered oath.

Jack thought of a rival, and his breast burned. He defended himself as best as he could, but his blows went wide in the darkness. The other man was bigger than he, and nerved by a terrible, quiet passion. To save himself from the other's blows Jack clinched. The man flung him off. Jack heard the sharp impact of a blow he did not feel. The earth leapt up, and he drifted away on the swirling current of unconsciousness.

What happened after that was like the awakening from a vague, bad dream. He had first the impression of descending a long and tempestuous series of rapids on his flimsily hung raft, to which he clung desperately. Then the scene changed and he seemed to be floating in a ghastly void. He thought he was blind. He put out his hand to feel, and his palm came in contact with the cool, moist earth, overlaid with bits of twig and dead leaves, and sprouts of elastic grass. The earth at least was real, and he felt of it gratefully, while the rest of him still teetered in emptiness.

Then he became conscious of a comfortable emanation, as from a fire; sight returned, and he saw that there was a fire. It had a familiar look; it was the fire he himself had built some hours before. He felt himself, and found that he was covered by his own blanket. "I have had a nightmare," he thought mistily. Then a voice broke rudely on his vague fancies, bringing the shock of complete recollection in its train.

"So, you're coming 'round all right," it said grimly.

At his feet, Jack saw David Cranston sitting on a log.

"I've put the pot on," he continued. "I'll have a sup of tea for you in a minute. I didn't mean to hit you so hard, my lad, but I was mad."

Jack turned his head, and hid it in his arm. Dizzy, nauseated, and shamed, he was as near blubbering at that moment as a self-respecting young man could let himself get in the presence of another man.

"Clean hit, point of the jaw," Cranston went on. "Nothing broke. You'll be as right as ever with the tea."

He made it, and forced Jack to drink of the scalding infusion. In spite of himself, it revived the young man, but it did not comfort his spirit any.

"I'm all right now," he muttered, meaning: "You can go!"

"I'll smoke a pipe wi' you," said Cranston imperturbably. "I want a bit of a crack wi' you." Seeing Jack's scowl, he added quickly: "Lord! I'm not going to preach over you, lying there. You tried to do me an injury, a devilish injury, but the mad went out wi' the blow that stretched ye. I wish to do you justice. I mind as how I was once a young sprig myself, and hung around outside the tepees at night, and tried to whistle the girls out. But I never held by such a tingle-pingle contraption as that," he said scornfully, pushing the banjo with his foot. "To my mind it's for niggers and Eyetalians. 'Tis unmanly."

Jack raised his head. "Did you break it?" he demanded scowling.

"Nay," said Cranston coolly. "I brought it along wi' you. It's property, and I spoil nothing that is not my own."

There was a silence. Cranston with the greatest deliberation, took out his pipe and stuck it in his mouth; produced his plug of tobacco, shaved it nicely, and put it away again; rolled the tobacco thoroughly between his palms, and pressed it into the bowl with a careful forefinger. A glowing ember from the fire completed the operation. For five minutes he smoked in silence, occasionally glancing at Jack from under heavy brows.

"Have ye anything to say?" he asked at last.

"No," muttered Jack.

There was another silence. Cranston sat as if he meant to spend the night.

"I don't get too many chances to talk to a white man," he finally said with a kind of gruff diffidence. "Yon pretty fellows sleeping on the steamboat, they are not men, but clothespins. Sir Bryson Trangmar, Lord love ye! he will be calling me 'my good man' to-morrow. And him a grocer once, they say—like myself." There was a cavernous chuckle here.

Jack sensed that the grim old trader was actually making friendly advances, but the young man was to sore, too hopelessly in the wrong, to respond right away.

Cranston continued to smoke and to gaze at the fire.

"Well, I have something to say," he blurted out at last, in a changed voice. "And it's none too easy!" There was something inexpressibly moving in the tremor that shook his grim voice as he blundered on. "You made a mistake, young fellow. She's too good for this 'whistle and I'll come to ye, my lad,' business. If you had any sense you would have seen it for yourself—my little girl with her wise ways! But no offence. You are young. I wouldn't bother wi' ye at all, but I feel that I am responsible. It was I who gave them a dark-skinned mother. I handicapped my girl and my boys, and now I have to be their father and their mother too."

A good deal less than this would have reached Jack's sense of generosity. He hid his face again, and hated himself, but pride still maintained the ascendency. He could not let the other man see.

"It is that that makes you hold her so lightly," Cranston went on. "If she had a white mother, my girl, aye, wi' half her beauty and her goodness, would have put the fear of God into ye. Well, the consequences of my mistake shall not be visited on her head if I can prevent it. What does an idle lad like you know of the worth of women? You measure them by their beauty, which is nothing. She has a mind like an opening flower. She is my companion. All these years I have been silenced and dumb, and now I have one to talk to that understands what a white man feels!

"She is a white woman. Some of the best blood of Scotland runs in her veins. She's a Cranston. Match her wi' his lordship's daughter there, the daughter of the grocer. Match her wi' the whitest lilies of them all, and my girl will outshine them in beauty, aye, and outwear them in courage and steadfastness! And she's worthy to bear sons and daughters in turn that any man might be proud to father!"

He came to a full stop. Jack sat up, scowling fiercely, and looking five years younger by reason of his sheepishness. What he had to say came out in jerks. "It's damn hard to get it out," he stuttered. "I'm sorry. I'm ashamed of myself. What else can I say? I swear to you I'll never lay a finger of disrespect on her. For heaven's sake go, and let me be by myself!"

Cranston promptly rose. "Spoken like a man, my lad," he said laconically. "I'll say no more. Good-night to ye." He strode away.

IV
THE CONJUROR

Morning breaks, one awakes refreshed and quiescent, and, wondering a little at the heats and disturbances of the day before, makes a fresh start. Mary was not to be seen about the fort, and Jack presently learned that she and Davy had departed on horseback at daybreak for the Indian camp at Swan Lake. He was relieved, for, after what had happened, the thought of having to meet Mary and adjust himself to a new footing made him uncomfortable.

Jack's self-love had received a serious blow, and he secretly longed for something to rehabilitate himself in his own eyes. At the same time he was not moved by any animosity toward Cranston, the instrument of his downfall; on the contrary, though he could not have explained it, he felt decidedly drawn toward the grim trader, and after a while he sheepishly entered the store in search of him. He found Cranston quite as diffident as himself, quite as anxious to let bygones be bygones. There was genuine warmth in his handclasp.

They made common cause in deriding the gubernatorial party.

"Lord love ye!" said Cranston. "Never was an outfit like to that! Card-tables, mind ye, and folding chairs, and hanging lamps, and a son-of-a-gun of a big oil-stove that burns blue blazes! Fancy accommodating that to a horse's back! I've sent out to round up all the company horses. They'll need half a regiment to carry that stuff."

"What's the governor's game up here?" asked Jack.

"You've got me," said Cranston. "Coal lands in the canyon, he says."

"That's pretty thin," said Jack. "It doesn't need a blooming governor and his train to look at a a bit of coal. There's plenty of coal nearer home."

"There's a piece about it in one of the papers the steamboat brought," said Cranston.

He found the place, and exhibited it to Jack, who read a fulsome account of how his honour Sir Bryson Trangmar had decided to spend the summer vacation of the legislature in touring the North of the province, with a view of looking into its natural resources; that the journey had been hastily determined upon, and was to be of a strictly non-official character, hence there were to be no ceremonies en route beyond the civilities extended to any private traveller; that this was only one more example of the democratic tendencies of our popular governor, etc.

"Natural resources," quoted Jack. "That's the ring in the cake!"

"You think the coal they're after has a yellow shine?" suggested Cranston.

Jack nodded. "Even a governor may catch that fever," he said. "By Gad!" he cried suddenly, "do you remember those two claim-salters—Beckford and Rowe their names were—who went out after the ice last May?"

"They stopped here," said Cranston. "I remember them."

"What if those two——" suggested Jack.

"Good Lord!" cried Cranston, "the governor himself!"

"If it's true," cried Jack, "it's the richest thing that ever happened! A hundred years from now they'll still be telling the story around the fires and splitting their sides over it. It's like Beckford, too; he was a humourist in his way. This is too good to miss. I believe I'll go back with them."

From discussing Sir Bryson's object they passed to Jack's own work in the Spirit River Pass. No better evidence of the progress these two had made in friendship could be had than Jack's willingness to tell Cranston of his "strike," the secret that a man guards closer than his crimes.

"I don't mind telling you that I have three good claims staked out," said Jack. "In case I should be stopped from filing them, I'll leave you a full description before I go. I'll leave you my little bag of dust too, to keep for me."

"You're serious about going back with them, then?" said Cranston.

Jack nodded. "I ought to go, anyway, to make sure they don't blanket anything of mine."

In due course Jack produced his little canvas bag, which the trader sealed, weighed, and receipted for.

"There's another thing I wanted to talk to you about," said Jack diffidently. "I can't hold these three claims myself. I want you to take one."

"Me?" exclaimed Cranston in great astonishment.

"Yes," stammered Jack, still more embarrassed. "For—for her, you know—Mary. I feel that I owe it to her. I want her to have it, anyway. She needn't know it came from me. It's a good claim."

Cranston would not hear of it, and they argued hotly.

"You're standing in your own daughter's light," said Jack at last. "I'm not giving you anything. It's for her. You haven't any right to deprive her of a good thing."

Cranston was silenced by this line; they finally shook hands on it, and turned with mutual relief to less embarrassing subjects. Jack had the comfortable sensation that in a measure he had squared himself with himself.

"Who's running the governor's camp?" asked Jack.

"They brought up Jean Paul Ascota from the Crossing."

"So!" said Jack, considerably interested. "The conjuror and medicine man, eh? I hear great tales of him from all the tribes. What is he?"

Cranston exhibited no love for the man under discussion. "His father and mother were half-breed Crees," he said. "He has a little place at the Crossing where he lives alone—he never married—but most of the time he is tripping; long hikes from Abittibi to the Skeena, and from the edge of the farming country clear to Herschel Island in the Arctic, generally alone. Too much business, and too mysterious for an Indian, I say. He's a strong man in his way, he has a certain power, you wouldn't overlook him in a crowd; but I doubt if he's up to any good. He's one of those natives that plays double, you know them, a white man wi' white men, and a red wi' the reds. Much too smooth and plausible for my taste. Lately he has got religion, and he goes around wi' a Bible in his pocket, which is plumb ridiculous, knowing what you and I know about his conjuring practices among the tribes."

"I've heard he's a good tripper," said Jack.

"Oh, none better," said Cranston. "I'll say that for him; there's no man knows the whole country like he does, or a better hand in a canoe, or with horses, or around the camp. But, look you, after all he's only an Indian. Here he's been with these people a week, and already his head is turned. They don't know what they're doing, so they defer to him in everything, and consequently the Indian's head is that swelled wi' giving orders to white men his feet can hardly keep the ground. Their camp is at a standstill."

"Hm!" said Jack; "it's a childish outfit, isn't it? It would be a kind of charity to take them in hand."

A little later Jack ran into the redoubtable Jean Paul Ascota himself, whom he immediately recognized from Cranston's description. As the trader had intimated, there was something strongly individual and peculiar in the aspect of the half-breed. He was a handsome man of forty-odd years, not above the average in height, but very broad and strong, and with regular, aquiline features. Though Cranston had said he was half-bred, there was no sign of the admixture of any white blood in his coppery skin, his straight black hair, and his savage, inscrutable eyes. He was dressed in a neatly fitting suit of black, and he wore "outside" shoes instead of the invariable moccasins. This ministerial habit was relieved by a fine blue shirt with a rolling collar and a red tie, and the whole was completed by the usual expensive felt hat with flaring, stiff brim. A Testament peeped out of one side-pocket.

But it was the strange look of his eyes that set the man apart, a still, rapt look, a shine as from close-hidden fires. They were savage, ecstatic, contemptuous eyes. When he looked at you, you had the feeling that there was a veil dropped between you, invisible to you, but engrossed with cabalistic symbols that he was studying while he appeared to be looking at you. In all this there was a certain amount of affectation. You could not deny the man's force, but there was something childish too in the egregious vanity which was perfectly evident.

He was sitting on a box in the midst of the camp disarray, smoking calmly, the only idle figure in sight. Tents, poles, and miscellaneous camp impedimenta were strewn on one side of the trail; on the other the deck-hands were piling the stores of the party. Sidney Vassall, with his inventory, assisted by Baldwin Ferrie, both in a state approaching distraction, were pawing over the boxes and bundles, searching for innumerable lost articles, that were lost again as soon as they were found.

Vassall was not a particularly sympathetic figure to Jack, but the sight of the white men stewing while the Indian loafed was too much for his Anglo-Saxon sense of the fitness of things. His choler promptly rose, and, drawing Vassall aside, he said:

"Look here, why do you let that beggar impose on you like this? You'll never be able to manage him if you knuckle down now."

Vassall was a typical A.D.C. from the provinces, much better fitted to a waxed floor than the field. The hero of a hundred drawing-rooms made rather a pathetic figure in his shapeless, many-pocketed "sporting" suit. His much-admired manner of indiscriminate, enthusiastic amiability seemed to have lost its potency up here.

"What can I do?" he said helplessly. "He says he can't work himself, or he won't be able to boss the Indians that are coming."

"Rubbish!" said Jack. "Everybody has to work on the trail. I'll put him to work for you. Show me how the tents go."

Vassall gratefully explained the arrangement. There was a square tent in the centre, with three smaller A-tents opening off. Jack measured the ground and drove the stakes. Then spreading the canvas on the ground, preparatory to raising it, he called cheerfully:

"Lend a hand here, Jean Paul. You hold up the poles while I pull the ropes."

The half-breed looked at him with cool, slow insolence, and dropping his eyes to his pipe, pressed the tobacco in the bowl with a delicate finger. He caught his hands around his knee, and leaned back with the expression of one enjoying a recondite joke.

Jack's face reddened. Promptly dropping the canvas, he strode toward the half-breed, his hands clenching as he went.

"Look here, you damned redskin!" he said, not too loud. "If you can't hear a civil request, I've a fist to back it up, understand? You get to work, quick, or I'll knock your head off!"

The native deck hands stopped dead to see what would happen. Out of the blue sky the thunderbolt of a crisis had fallen. Jean Paul, the object of their unbounded fear and respect, they invested with supernatural powers, and they looked to see the white man annihilated.

The breed slowly raised his eyes again, but this time they could not quite meet the blazing blue ones. There was a pregnant pause. Finally Jean Paul got up with a shrug of bravado, and followed Jack back to the tents. He was beaten without a blow on either side. A breath of astonishment escaped the other natives. Jean Paul heard it, and the iron entered his soul. The glance he bent on Jack's back glittered with the cold malignancy of a poisonous snake. It was all over in a few seconds and the course of the events for weeks to come was decided, a course involving, at the last, madness, murder, and suicide.

On the face of it the work proceeded smartly, and by lunch time the tents were raised, the furniture and the baggage stowed within, and Vassall's vexatious inventory checked complete. His effusive gratitude made Jack uncomfortable. Jack cut him short, and nonchalantly returned to his own camp, where he cooked his dinner and ate it alone.

Afterward, cleaning his gun by the fire, he reviewed the crowded events of the past twenty-four hours in the ever-delightful, off-hand, cocksure fashion of youth that the oldsters envy, while they smile at it. His glancing thoughts ran something like this:

"To be put to sleep like that! Damn! But I couldn't see what I was doing. If it hadn't been dark! ... At any rate, nobody knows. It's good he didn't black my eye. Cranston'll never tell. He's a square old head all right. I suppose it was coming to me. Damn! ... I like Cranston, though. He's making up to me now. He'd like me to marry the girl. She'd take me quick enough. Nice little thing, too. Fine eyes! But marriage! Not on your cartridge-belt! Not for Jack Chanty! The world is too full of sport. I haven't nearly had my fill! ... The governor's daughter! Rather a little strawberry, too. Professional angler. I know 'em. Got a whole bookful of fancy flies for men. Casts them prettily one after another till you rise, then plop! into her basket with the other dead fish. You'll never get me on your hook, little sister... I can play a little myself. If you let on you don't care, with that kind, it drives 'em wild.... Shouldn't wonder if she had old Frank going.... Rum start, meeting him up here. What a scared look he gave me. I wonder! ... He's changed.... Very likely it's politics, and graft, and getting on in the world. Doesn't want to associate too closely with a tough like me, now.... Oh, very well! These big-bugs can't put me out of face. I can show them a thing or two.... I put that Indian down in good shape. I have the trick of it. He's a queer one. They'll have trouble with him later. Women with them, too. Hell of an outfit to come up here, anyway."

Jack's meditations were interrupted by Frank Garrod, who came threading his way through the poplar saplings. Jack sprang up with a gladness only a little less hearty than upon their first meeting the night before.

"Hello, old fel'!" he cried. "Glad you looked me up! We can talk off here by ourselves."

But it appeared that Frank had come only for the purpose of carrying Jack back with him. Sir Bryson had expressed a wish to thank him for his assistance that morning. Jack frowned, and promptly declined the honour, but upon second thought he changed his mind. There was a plan growing in his head which necessitated a talk with Sir Bryson.

They made their way back together, Frank making an unhappy attempt to appear at his ease. He had something on his mind. He started to speak, faltered, and fell silent. But it troubled him still. Finally it came out.

"I say," he said in his jerky way, "as long as you want to keep your real name quiet, we had better not let on that we are old friends, eh?"

Jack looked at him quickly, all his enthusiasm of friendliness dying down.

"We can seem to become good friends by degrees," Garrod went on lamely. "It need only be a matter of a few days."

"Just as you like," said Jack coolly.

"But it's you I'm thinking of."

"You needn't," said Jack. "I don't care what people call me. You needn't be afraid that I'll trouble you with my society."

"You don't understand," Garrod murmured miserably.

However, in merely bringing the matter up he had accomplished his purpose, for Jack never acted quite the same to him afterward.

A little to one side of the tents they came upon a group of finished worldliness such as had never before been seen about Fort Cheever. From afar, the younger Cranston boys stared at it awestruck. Miss Trangmar and her companion sat in two of the folding chairs, basking in the sun, while Vassall and Baldwin Ferrie reclined on the grass at their feet, the former, his day's work behind him, now clad in impeccable flannels. The centre of the picture was naturally the little beauty, looking in her purple summer dress as desirable, as fragile, and as expensive as an orchid. At the sight of her Jack's nostrils expanded a little in spite of himself. Lovely ladies who metamorphosed themselves every day, not to speak of several times a day, were novel to him.

As the two men made to enter the main tent she called in her sweet, high voice: "Present our benefactor, Mr. Garrod."

Garrod brought Jack to her. Garrod was very much confused. "I——I"—he stammered, looking imploringly at Jack.

"They call me Jack Chanty," Jack said quietly, with his air of "take it or leave it."

"Miss Trangmar, Mrs. Worsley," Garrod murmured looking relieved.

Jack bowed stiffly.

"We are tremendously obliged," the little lady said, making her eyes big with gratitude. "Captain Vassall says he would never have got through without you."

A murmur of assent went round the circle. Jack would not out of sheer obstinacy make the polite and obvious reply. He looked at the elder lady. He liked her looks. She reminded him of an outspoken cousin of his boyhood. She was plain of feature and humorous-looking, very well dressed, and with an air of high tolerance for human failings.

"In pleasing Miss Trangmar you put us all under heavy obligations," said Baldwin Ferrie with a simper. He was a well-meaning little man.

"By Jove! yes," added Vassall; "when she's overcast we're all in shadow."

Everybody laughed agreeably.

"Mercy!" exclaimed Linda Trangmar, "one would think I had a fearful temper, and kept you all in fear of your lives!"

There was a chorus of disclaimers. Jack felt slightly nauseated. He looked away. The girl stole a wistful glance at his scornful profile, the plume of fair hair, the cold blue eyes, the resolute mouth. All of a sudden she had become conscious of the fulsome atmosphere, too. She wondered what secrets the proud youthful mask concealed. She wondered if there was a woman for whom the mask was dropped, and if she were prettier than herself.

Meanwhile Jack felt as if he were acting like a booby, standing there. He was impelled to say something, anything, to show them he was not overcome by their assured worldliness. He addressed himself to Vassall.

"You have had no trouble with the Indian, since?"

"None whatever," Vassall said. "He's gone off now with some of the people here."

Garrod took advantage of the next lull to say: "Sir Bryson is waiting for us."

Jack bowed again, and made a good retreat.

"I told you he was a gentleman," said Linda to Mrs. Worsley.

That lady had been impressed with the same fact, but she said cautiously, as became a chaperon: "His manner is rather brusque."

"But he has manner," remarked Linda slyly.

"We know nothing about him, my dear."

"That's just it," said Linda. "Fancy meeting a real mystery in these matter-of-fact days. I shall find out his right name."

"They say it's not polite to ask questions about a man's past in this country," suggested Vassall with a playful air.

"Nor safe," put in Mrs. Worsley.

"Who cares for safety?" cried Linda. "I came North for adventures, and I mean to have them! Isn't he handsome?" she added wickedly.

The two men assented without enthusiasm.

Within the main tent Sir Bryson was seated at a table, looking the very pink of official propriety. There were several piles of legal documents and miscellaneous papers before him, with which he appeared to be busily occupied. It was noticeable that his chief concern was to have the piles arranged with mathematical precision. He never finished shaking and patting them straight. At first he ignored Jack. Handing some papers to Garrod, he said:

"These are now ready to be sent, Mr. Garrod. Please bear in mind my various instructions concerning them."

Garrod retired to another table. He proceeded to fold and enclose the various documents, but from the tense poise of his head it was clear that he followed all that was said.

Sir Bryson now affected to become aware of Jack's presence with a little start. He looked him up and down as one might regard a fine horse he was called on to admire. "So this is the young man who was of so much assistance to us this morning?" he said with a smile of heavy benignity.

Jack suppressed an inclination to laugh in his face.

"We are very much obliged to you, young sir—very," said Sir Bryson grandly.

"It was nothing, sir," said Jack, smiling suddenly. He knew if he caught Garrod's eye he would burst out laughing.

"I now desire to ask you some questions relative to the big canyon," continued Sir Bryson. "I am told you know it."

"I have just come from there," said Jack.

"Is there a good trail?"

"I came by water. But I know the trail. It is well-travelled. There are no muskegs, and the crossings are easy."

"You know the canyon well?"

"I have been working above it for three months."

Sir Bryson favoured Jack with a beady glance. "Um!" he said. And then suddenly: "Are you free for the next month or so?"

Garrod raised his eyes with a terrified look.

"That depends," said Jack.

"Are you prepared to consider an offer to guide our party?"

Garrod bit his lips to keep back the protest that sprang to them.

"If it is sufficiently attractive," said Jack coolly.

Sir Bryson opened his eyes. "Three dollars a day, and everything found," he said sharply.

Jack smiled, and shook his head. "That is the ordinary pay of a white man in this country," he said. "This is a responsible job. I'd expect five at least."

Sir Bryson made a face of horror. "Out of the question!" he exclaimed.

"I'm not at all anxious for it at any price," said Jack. "It will be difficult. You are very badly provided——"

"We have everything!" cried Sir Bryson.

"Except necessities," said Jack. "Moreover, men should have been engaged in advance, good packers, boatmen, axemen. We can't get good material on the spur of the moment, and I have no wish to be blamed for what goes wrong by others' doing."

Sir Bryson puffed out his cheeks. "You take a good deal on yourself, young man," he said heatedly. "Let me ask you a few questions now if you please. What is your name?"

"I am known throughout the country as Jack Chanty."

"But your real name."

"I do not care to give it."

A long breath escaped slowly from between Garrod's clenched teeth, and he wiped his face.

The little governor swelled like a pouter pigeon. "Tut!" he exclaimed. "This is preposterous. Do you think I would entrust myself and my party to a nameless nobody from nowhere?"

Sir Bryson, pleased with the sound of this phrase, glanced over at Garrod for approval.

"I'm not after the job, Sir Bryson," said Jack coolly. "You opened the matter. I am known throughout the country. Ask Cranston."

Garrod, seeing his chief about to weaken, could no longer hold his peace. "Wouldn't it be as well to let the matter go over?" he suggested casually.

Sir Bryson turned on him very much annoyed. "Mr. Garrod, by your leave," he said crushingly. "I was about to make the suggestion myself. That will be all just now," he added to Jack.

Jack sauntered away to talk the matter over with Cranston.

Sir Bryson spoke his mind warmly to his secretary concerning the latter's interference. Garrod, however, relieved of Jack's presence, recovered a measure of sang-froid.

"I'm sorry," he said smoothly, "but I couldn't stand by and listen to the young ruffian browbeat you."

"Browbeat nothing," said the irate little governor. "Bargaining is bargaining! He stands out for as much as he can."

Garrod turned pale. "You're surely not thinking of engaging him!" he said.

"There's no one else," said Sir Bryson.

"But he's more insolent than the Indian," said Garrod nervously. "And who is he? what is he? Some nameless fugitive from justice!"

"You overlook the fact that he doesn't care whether I engage him or not," said Sir Bryson. "Our assurance lies in that."

"A shallow pretence," cried Garrod.

Sir Bryson turned squarely in his chair. "You seem to be strangely set against hiring this fellow," he said curiously.

Garrod was effectually silenced. With a gesture, he went on with his work.

Later he sought out Jack again. They sat on a bench at the edge of the bank, and Garrod suffered himself to answer some painful questions first, in order that he might not appear to be too eager to broach the subject that agitated his mind.

At last he said with an assumed heartiness in which there was something very painful to see: "I tell you it did me good to hear you giving the old man what for this afternoon. He leads me a dog's life!"

"Oh, that was only in the way of a dicker," said Jack carelessly. "He expected it. Any one could see he loves a bargain."

"Don't let yourself in for this one," said Garrod earnestly. "You'll repent it if you do. He'll interfere all the time, and insist on his own way, then blame you when things go wrong."

"The trouble with you is you're in awe of him because he's the Big Chief outside," said Jack. "That doesn't go up here."

"Then you mean to come?" faltered Garrod.

"If he accepts my terms," said Jack. "I don't mean to let myself go too cheap."

Garrod's head drooped. "Well—don't say I didn't warn you," he said in an odd, flat tone.

V
JACK HEARS ABOUT HIMSELF

Jack was subsequently engaged as chief guide to Sir Bryson's party. Days of strenuous preparation succeeded. For one thing the stores of the expedition had to undergo a rigid weeding-out process; the oil-stove, the bedsteads, the white flannels, and the parasols, etc., were left behind. There was a shortage of flour and bacon, which the store at Fort Cheever was in poor shape to supply. Last winter's grub was almost exhausted, and this winter's supply had not arrived. The Indians, who are the store's only customers, live off the land during the summer. Cranston stripped himself of what he had, and sent a messenger down the river with an urgent order for more to be sent up by the next boat.

Jack was hampered by a lack of support from his own party. Vassall and Baldwin Ferrie were willing enough but incapable. Garrod blew hot and cold, and altogether acted in a manner inexplicable to Jack. Only the man's obvious suffering prevented the two from coming to an open quarrel. Jack dismissed him with a contemptuous shrug. The little governor issued and countermanded his orders bewilderingly and any malcontent was always sure of a hearing from him. But Jean Paul Ascota, from whom Jack had most reason to expect mischief-making, gave him no trouble at all. This in itself might have warned him of danger, but he had too many other things to think about.

It cannot be said that Jack bore all his hindrances with exemplary patience. However, he had an effective weapon in his unconcern. When matters came to a deadlock he laughed, and, retiring to his own little camp, occupied himself with his banjo until some one came after him with an olive branch. They were absolutely dependent on him.

On the eighth day they finally got away. Mounting his horse, Jack took up a position on a little mound by the trail, and watched his company file past. For himself he had neglected none of the stage-trappings dear to the artistic sense of a young man. His horse was the best in the company and the best accoutred.

He had secured a pair of shaggy bearskin chaps and from his belt hung a gigantic .44 in a holster. He wore a dashing broad-brimmed "Stetson," and a gay silk handkerchief knotted loosely around his throat. The sight of him sitting there, hand on hip, with his scornful air, affected little Linda Trangmar like a slight stab. She bit her lip, called herself a fool, and spurred ahead.

Jean Paul Ascota rode at the head of the procession. Jack had seen the wisdom of propitiating him with this empty honour. The Indian had likewise seen to it that he obtained a good horse, and he rode like a careless Centaur. Passing Jack, his face was as blank as paper, but out of Jack's range of vision the black eyes narrowed balefully, the wide nostrils dilated, and the lips were tightly compressed.

Sir Bryson's party followed: the spruce little governor, an incongruous figure on his sorry cayuse; the two ladies, Garrod, Vassall, and Baldwin Ferrie. At the very start Sir Bryson objected to riding at the tail of Jean Paul's horse, and Jack was obliged to explain to him that there are certain rules of the trail which even a lieutenant-governor may not override. The place at the head belongs to him who can best follow or make a trail.

The two ladies wore khaki divided skirts that they had been obliged to contrive for themselves, since side-saddles are unknown in the country. In regard to Miss Trangmar and Mrs. Worsley, Jack had strongly urged that they be left at Fort Cheever, and in this matter Garrod had almost desperately supported him, volunteering to stay behind to look after them. His activity booted him nothing with his little mistress. When she heard of the suggestion she merely smiled and waited until she got her father alone. As a result here they were.

There was one more white member of the expedition of whom some explanation must be given: this was Thomas Jull, lately cook on the steamboat, and now transferred to the position of camp cook. The whole design of the journey had been threatened with extinction at Fort Cheever by the discovery that a cook had been forgotten. There was of course nothing of that kind to be obtained at the fort. Jull's cooking had all been done on stoves, but Jack, promising to initiate him into the mysteries of campfires, had tempted him to forsake his snug berth.

He was a fat, pale, and puffy creature of indeterminate age, who looked as if his growth had been forced in a cellar, but he was of a simple, willing nature, and he had conceived an enormous admiration for Jack, who was so different from himself. He had already acquired a nickname in the country from his habit of carrying his big head as if in momentary expectation of a blow. Humpy Jull he was to be henceforth.

Four Indian lads completed the party. This was barely sufficient to pack the horses and make camp, but as Jack had explained to Sir Bryson the best he could get were a poor lot, totally unaccustomed to any discipline, and a larger number of them would only have invited trouble. They must be worked hard, and kept under close subjection to the whites, he said. There were twenty laden horses, and five spare animals.

They climbed the steep high hill behind Fort Cheever and Jack, watching the train wind up before him, thrilled a little with satisfaction under his mask of careless hardihood. Notwithstanding all his preliminary difficulties, it was a businesslike-looking outfit. Besides, it is not given to many young men in their twenties to command a lieutenant-governor.

This was not really a hill, but the river-bank proper. From the top of it the prairie stretched back as far as the eye could reach, green as an emerald sea at this season, and starred with flowers. Here and there in the broad expanse grew coverts of poplar saplings and wolf-willow, making a parklike effect. The well-beaten trail mounted the smooth billows, and dipped into the troughs of the grassy sea like an endless brown ribbon spreading before them.

The progress of such a party is very slow. The laden pack-horses cannot be induced to travel above a slow, slow walk. Twice a day they must be unladen and turned out to forage; then caught and carefully packed again. On the first day a good deal of confusion attended these operations. Little by little Jack brought order out of chaos.

As the pack-train got under way after the first "spell" on the prairie, Jack, not generally so observant of such things, was struck by the look of weariness and pain in Garrod's white face. It was the face of a man whose nerves have reached the point of snapping. Jack did not see as far as that, but: "The old boy's in a bad way," he thought, with a return of his old kindness. After all, as youths, these two had been inseparable.

"I say, wait behind and ride with me," he said to Garrod. "We've scarcely had a chance to say anything to each other."

Garrod's start and the wild roll of his black eyes suggested nothing but terror at the idea, but there was no reasonable excuse he could offer. They rode side by side in the grass at some distance behind the last Indian.

"Do you know," said Jack, "I've never heard a word from home since the night I cleared out five years ago. Tell me everything that's happened."

"That's a large—a large order," stammered Garrod. "So many little things. I forget them. Nothing important. I left Montreal myself soon after you did."

"Why did you never answer my letter?" asked Jack. "You know I had no one to write to but you."

"I never got a letter," said Garrod quickly.

"That's funny," said Jack. "Letters don't often go astray."

"Don't you believe me?" demanded Garrod sharply.

Jack stared. "Why, sure!" he said. "What's biting you? You're in a rotten state of nerves," he went on. "Better chuck the life you're leading, and stay up here for a year or two. What's the matter with you?"

Garrod passed the back of his hand across his weary eyes. "Can't sleep," he muttered.

"Never heard of a man up here that couldn't do his eight hours a night," said Jack. "You'd better stay."

Garrod made no answer.

"You're not still hitting the old pace?" asked Jack.

Garrod shook his head.

"Gad! what a pair of young fools we were! Trying to cut a dash on bank-clerks' salaries! That girl did me a mighty good turn without meaning it when she chucked me for the millionaire. What's become of her, Frank?"

"She married him," Garrod said; "ruined him, divorced him, and married another millionaire."

Jack laughed carelessly. "Logical, eh? And that was what I broke my young heart over! Remember the night I said good-bye to you in the Bonaventure station, and blubbered like a kid? I said my life was over, 'member?—and I wasn't twenty-one yet. You were damn decent to me, Frank. You didn't laugh."

Garrod kept his head averted. His lips were very white.

"We went through quite a lot for a pair of kids," Jack went on. "We always stood by each other, though we were such idiots in other respects. What we needed was a good birching. It takes a year or two of working up here to put an only son straight with himself. Life is simple and natural up here; you're bound to see the right of things. Better stay, and get your health back, old man."

Garrod merely shook his head again.

"My uncle is dead," Jack went on. "I saw it in a paper."

"Yes," said Garrod.

"And left his pile to a blooming hospital! That's what I lost for clearing out, I suppose. Well, I don't regret it—much. That is, not the money. But I'm sorry the old boy passed out with a grouch against me. I thought he would understand. He had a square head. I've often thought there must have been something else. You were quite a favourite of his, Frank. Was there anything else?"

All this time Garrod had not looked at Jack. At the last question a wild and impatient look flashed in his sick eyes as if some power of endurance had snapped within him. He jerked his head toward the other man with desperate speech on his lips. It was never uttered, for at the same moment an exclamation broke from Jack, and clapping heels to his horse, he sprang ahead. One of the packs had slipped, and the animal that bore it was sitting in the trail like a dog.

After the pack had been readjusted, other things intervened, Garrod regained his own place in the procession, and Jack for the time being forgot that his question had not been answered.

Jack's dignity as the commander of the party often sat heavily upon him, and he was fond of dropping far behind in the trail, where he could loll in the saddle, and sing and whistle to his heart's ease. His spirits always rose when he was on the move, and the sun was shining.

Jack had a great store of old English ballads. On one such occasion he was informing high heaven of the merits of "Fair Hebe," when upon coming around a poplar bluff he was astonished to see Linda Trangmar standing beside her horse, listening with a smile of pretty malice. She had a bunch of pink flowers that she had gathered. Jack sharply called in the song, and blushed to his ears.

"Don't stop," she said. "What did Reason tell you about Fair Hebe?"

Jack made believe not to hear. Our hero hated to be made fun of. "It's dangerous to be left behind by the outfit," he said stiffly.

"I knew you were coming," she said coolly. "Besides, I got off to pick these flowers, and I couldn't get on again without being helped." She thrust the flowers in her belt. "Aren't they lovely? Like crushed strawberries. What are they called?"

"Painter's brush," said Jack laconically.

He lifted her on her horse. She was very light. It was difficult to believe that this pale and pretty little thing was a woman grown. She had a directness of speech that was only saved from downright impudence by her pretty childishness.

"Now we can talk," she said as they started their horses. "The truth is, I stayed behind on purpose to talk to you. I wish to make friends."

Jack, not knowing exactly what to say, said nothing.

She darted an appraising look at him. "Mr. Vassall says it's dangerous to ask a man questions about himself up here," she went on. "But I want to ask you some questions. May I? Do you mind?"

This was accompanied by a dazzling smile. Jack slowly grew red again. He hated himself for being put out of countenance by her impudence, nevertheless it cast him up high and dry.

She took his assent for granted. "In the first place, about your name," she chattered; "what am I to call you? Mr. Chanty would be ridiculous, and without the Mister it's too familiar."

"You don't have to bother about a handle to my name," he said. "Call me Jack, just as you speak to Jean Paul or Charlbogin, or any of the men about camp."

"That's different," she said. "I do not call Mr. Garrod, Frank, nor Captain Vassall, Sidney. You can make believe what you choose, but I know you are my kind of person. If you are a Canadian, I'm sure we know heaps and heaps of the same people."

Jack began to find himself. "If you insist on a respectable name call me Mr. 'Awkins," he said lightly.

"Pshaw! Is that the best you can invent?" she said.

It was a long time since Jack had played conversational battledore and shuttlecock. He found he liked it rather. "'Awkins is an honorable name," he said. "There's Sir 'Awkeye 'Awkins of 'Awkwood 'All, not to speak of 'Enery 'Awkins and Liza that everybody knows about. And over on this side there's Happy Hawkins. All relatives of mine."

The girl approved him because he played the foolish game without grinning foolishly, like most men. Indeed his lip still curled. "You do not resemble the 'Awkinses I have known," she said.

It appeared from this that the little lady could flatter men as well as queen it over them. Jack was sensible that he was being flattered, and being human, he found it not unpleasant. At the same time he was determined not to satisfy her curiosity.

"Sorry," he said. "For your sake I wish I would lay claim to Montmorenci or Featherstonehaugh. But 'Awkins is my name and 'umble is my station. I don't know any of the Vere de Veres, the Cholmondeleys or the Silligers here in Canada, only the toughs."

She did not laugh. Abandoning the direct line, she asked: "What do you do up here regularly?"

"Nothing regularly," he said with a smile. "A little of everything irregularly. I have horses across the mountains, and I make my living by packing freight to the trading posts, or for surveyors or private parties, wherever horses are needed. When I get a little ahead of the game like everybody else, I do a bit of prospecting. I have an eye on one or two things——"

"Gold?" she said with shining eyes. "Where?"

"That would be telling," said Jack, flicking his pony.

"Do you know anybody in Toronto?" she asked suddenly.

He smiled at her abrupt return to the main issue, and shook his head.

"In Montreal?"

His face changed a little. After a moment he said slyly: "I met a fellow across the mountains who was from Montreal."

"A gentleman?"

"More or less."

"What was his name?" she demanded.

"Malcolm Piers."

She looked at him with round eyes. "How exciting!" she cried.

"Exciting?" said Jack, very much taken aback.

"Why, yes," she said. "There can't be more than one by that name. It must have been Malcolm Piers the absconder."

Her last word had much the effect of a bomb explosion under Jack's horse. The animal reared violently, almost falling back on his rider. Linda was not sufficiently experienced on horseback to see that Jack's hand had spasmodically given the cruel Western bit a tremendous tug. The horse plunged and violently shook his head to free himself of the pain. When he finally came back to earth, the actions of the horse seemed sufficient to account for the sudden grimness of Jack's expression. His upper lip had disappeared, leaving only a thin, hard line.

"Goodness!" said Linda nervously. "These horses are unexpected."

"What did you call him?" asked Jack quietly.

"Absconder," she said innocently. "Malcolm Piers was the boy who stole five thousand dollars from the Bank of Canada, and was never heard of afterward. He was only twenty."

He looked at her stupidly. "Five thousand dollars!" he repeated more than once. "Why that's ridiculous!"

"Oh, no," she said eagerly. "Everybody knows the story. He disappeared, and so did the money. I heard all the particulars at the time, because my room-mate at Havergal was the sister of the girl they said he did it for. She wasn't to blame, poor thing. She proved that she had sent him about his business before it happened. She married a millionaire afterward. She's had heaps of trouble."

Jack's horse fretted and danced, and no answer was required of him.

"Fancy your meeting him," she said excitingly. "Do tell me about him. They said he was terribly good-looking. Was he?"

"Don't ask me," said Jack gruffly. "I'm no judge of a man's looks." He scarcely knew what he was saying. The terrible word rang in his head with a clangour as of blows on naked iron. "Absconder!"

"Do tell me about him," she repeated. "Criminals are so deadly interesting! When they're gentlemen. I mean. And he was so young!"

"You said everybody knows what he did," said Jack dully. "I never heard of it."

"I meant everybody in our world," she said. "It never got in the newspapers of course. Malcolm Piers's uncle was a director in the bank, and he made the shortage good. He died a year or so afterward, leaving everything to a hospital. If Malcolm Piers had only waited a little while he wouldn't have had to steal the money."

"Then he would have been a millionaire, too," said Jack, with a start of harsh laughter.

She didn't understand the allusion. She favoured him with a sharp glance. "Funny he should have told you his real name."

"Why not?" said Jack abstractedly. "He didn't consider that he had done any wrong!"

How ardently Jack wished her away so that he could think it out by himself. Little by little it was becoming clear to him, as if revealed by the baleful light of a flame. So that was why his uncle had cut him off? And Garrod had not answered his question. Garrod knew all about it. Garrod was the only person in the world who knew in advance that he had been going to clear out, never to return. Garrod was deep in debt at the time. Garrod had access to the bank's vault. This explained his strange, wild agitation at the time of their first meeting, and his actions ever since.

"What's become of him now?" Linda desired to know. She had to ask twice.

Jack heard her as from a great distance. He shrugged. "You can't keep track of men up here."

"Did he tell you his story?"

He nodded. "It was different from yours," he said grimly.

"Tell me."

"It is true that he was infatuated with a certain girl——"

"Yes, Amy——"

"Oh, never mind her name! It was difficult for him to keep up the pace she and her friends set, but she led him on. Finally she made up her mind that an old man with money was a better gamble than a young one with prospects only, and she coolly threw him over. It broke him all up. He was fool enough to love her. Everything he had known up to that time became hateful to him. So he lit out. But he took nothing with him. Indeed, he stripped himself of every cent, sold even his clothes to pay his debts around town before he went. He came West on an emigrant car. Out here he rode for his grub, he sold goods behind a counter, he even polished glasses behind a bar, until he got his head above water."

This was a long speech for Jack, and in delivering it he was betrayed into a dangerous heat. The girl watched him with a sparkle of mischievous excitement.

"A likely story," she said, tossing her head. "I know that old Mr. McInnes had to put up the money, and that he altered his will." She smiled provokingly. "Besides, it's much more interesting to think that Malcolm Piers took the money. Don't rob me of my favourite criminal."

Jack looked at her with his handsome brows drawn close together. Her flippancy sounded incredible to him. He hated her at that moment.

A horseman dropped out of his place in the train ahead and came trotting back toward them. It was Garrod. Seeing him, a deep, ugly red suffused Jack's neck and face, and a vein on his forehead stood out. But he screwed down the clamps of his self-control. Pride would not allow him to betray the secrets of his heart to the light-headed little girl who was angling for them. They were riding around another little poplar wood.

"Look!" he said in as near his natural voice as he could contrive. "In the shade the painter's brush grows yellow. Shall I get you some of those?"

"No, thank you," she said inattentively. "I like the others best. Tell me about Malcolm Piers——"

Garrod was now upon them. His harassed eye showed a new pain. He looked at Linda Trangmar with a dog's anxiety, and from her to Jack. Jack looked abroad over the prairie with his lips pursed up. His face was very red.

"Oh, Mr. Garrod, what do you think!" cried the girl. "This man met Malcolm Piers across the mountains. The boy who absconded from the Bank of Canada, you know. You used to know him, didn't you?"

There was a pause, dreadful to the two men.

"Oh, the little fool! The little fool!" thought Jack. Out of sheer mercifulness he kept his head averted from Garrod.

"What's the matter?" he heard her say sharply. "Help him!" she said to Jack.

This was too much. Making sure only that Garrod was able to keep his saddle, Jack muttered something about having to speak to Jean Paul, and rode away. His anger was swallowed up a pitying disgust. His passing glance into Garrod's face had revealed a depth of despair that it seemed unfair, shameful, he—the man's enemy—should be allowed to see.

VI
THE PRICE OF SLEEP

They camped for the night on a grassy terrace at the edge of a deep coulee in the prairie, through which a wasted stream made its way over a bed of round stones toward the big river. The only full-sized trees they had seen all day grew in the bottom of the coulee, which was so deep that nothing of the branches showed over the edge.

The horses were herded together, and unpacked in a wide circle. Each pack and saddle under its own cover was left in its place in the circle, against loading in the morning. As fast as unpacked the horses were turned out to fill themselves with the rich buffalo grass. The old mares who had mothered most of the bunch were hobbled and belled to keep the band together.

Jack, Jean Paul, and the Indian lads saw to the horses. Jack also directed Vassall's and Baldwin Ferrie's inexpert efforts with the tents, and between times he showed Humpy Jull how to make a fire.

Sir Bryson, Linda, and Mrs. Worsley, in three of the folding chairs which were the object of so much comment in the country, looked on at all this.

"I feel so useless," said Linda, following Jack's diverse activities, without appearing to. "Don't you suppose there is something we could do, Kate?"

"It all seems like such heavy work, dear," said Mrs. Worsley.

Sir Bryson, folding his hands upon his comfortable centre, beamed indulgently on the busy scene. "Nonsense, Linda," he said. "They are all paid for their exertions. You do not concern yourself with household matters at home."

"This is different," said Linda, a little sulkily. She was sorry she had spoken, but Sir Bryson would not let the matter drop so easily.

"How different?" he inquired.

"Oh! up here things seem to fall away from you," said Linda vaguely. "You get down to rock bottom."

"Your metaphors are mixed, my dear," said Sir Bryson pleasantly. "I don't understand you."

"It doesn't matter," she said indifferently.

"Now, for my part, I think this the most agreeable sight in the world," Sir Bryson went on. "All these people working to make us comfortable, and dinner coming on presently. It rests me. Fancy seeing one's dinner cooked before one's eyes. I hope Jull has washed his hands. I didn't see him do it."

Sir Bryson had no intention of making a joke, but Mrs. Worsley laughed.

"Speaking of dinner," continued Sir Bryson, "I hope there won't be any awkwardness about our guide."

"Jack Chanty?" said Linda quickly. "What about him?"

"My dear! I wish you wouldn't be so free with his vulgar name! Do you suppose he will expect to sit down with us?"

"Why not?" said Linda warmly. "It's the custom of the country. The whites eat together, and the Indians. Can't you see that things are different up here? There are no social distinctions."

"Then it is high time we introduced them," said Sir Bryson with the indulgent smile of one who closes the matter. "I shall ask Mr. Garrod to drop him a hint."

"You'll only make yourself ridiculous if you do," said Linda.

Mrs. Worsley spoke but seldom, and then to some purpose. She said now: "Do you know, I think the matter will probably adjust itself if we leave it alone."

And she was right. Nothing was further from Jack's desires than to sit down with the party in the big tent. Apart from other considerations he knew which side his bread was buttered on, and he chummed with the cook. Jack and Humpy slung their little tents side by side behind the fire, and Jack waited to eat with Humpy after the others were through.

It was Humpy Jull's debut as a waiter, and Sir Bryson was thereby likewise provided with a new experience. Humpy was very willing and good-natured. He was naturally a little flustered on this occasion, and with him it took the form of an increased flow of speech. To his simplicity, waiting on the table obligated him to play the host.

"Walk in, people," he said genially. "Sit down anywheres. You'll have to excuse me if I don't do things proper. I ain't had no experience at the table with ladies. I never did have no face, anyway. A child could put me out."

Sir Bryson became turkey red, and looked at his aide-de-camp. Vassall made believe not to see.

"I'll just set everything on the table," Humpy went on innocently, "and you dip right in for yourselves. The bannock ain't quite what it ought to be. I didn't have the time. When we get a settled camp I'll show you something better."

"How far have we made to-day?" Sir Bryson asked pointedly of Vassall to create a diversion.

Humpy took the answer upon himself. "Eighteen miles, Governor," he said. "We would have stopped at Mooseberry Spring two miles back, but Jack said there was no firewood thereabout. So we're late to-night."

"We have everything, thank you," said Sir Bryson icily. "You needn't wait."

"I don't mind, Governor," said Humpy heartily. "Jack and me ain't going to eat till you are through. I want to make sure you folks gets your fill."

"I think the bannock is very good, Mr. Jull," said Linda wickedly. "The raisins are so nice."

"I had 'em and I thought I might as well put 'em in," said Humpy, highly pleased. "Some finds it hard to make good baking-powder bannock, but it come natural to me. Jack, he baked it for me."

Sir Bryson ceased eating. It was Jack who prevented an explosion. Possibly suspecting what was going on within the tent, he called Humpy. Linda pricked up her ears at the sound.

Humpy ducked for the door. "If there's anything you want don't be afraid to sing out, Governor," he said.

Sir Bryson slowly resumed his normal colour. He made no reference to what had happened except to say severely: "Belinda, I'm surprised at you!"

"Oh! don't be stuffy, father," returned his daughter, inelegantly.

The members of Sir Bryson's suite were accustomed to these little passages.

When they issued from the tent Jack Chanty and Humpy were to be seen supping cheek by jowl beside the fire, and Linda said with a flash of intuition:

"I'll be bound, they're having a better supper than we had!"

She was only guessing, but as a matter of fact, in the case of a party as large as this, there are bound to be tidbits, such as a prairie-chicken, a fish or a rabbit, not sufficient to furnish the general table, and these naturally fall to the share of the cook and his chum.

Afterward, while the Indians washed the dishes, Jack smoked and Humpy talked. Humpy was the kind of innocent braggart that tells tall tales about nothing at all. He was grateful to Jack for even the appearance of listening, and Jack in turn was glad of the prattle that enabled him to keep his face while he thought his own thoughts.

"Last winter when the steamboat was laid up," said Humpy Jull, "I was teaming for the company down to Fort Ochre. Say, it's wild country around there. The fellers advised me not to leave my gun behind when I druv into the bush for poles. One day I was eatin' my lunch on a log in the bush when I hear a grizzily bear growl, right behind me. Yes, sir, a ding-gasted grizzily. I didn't see him. I didn't wait. I knew it was a grizzily bear because the fellers say them's the on'y kind that growls-like. Say, my skin crawled on me like insec's walkin' on my bare bones. I never stop runnin' till I get back to the fort. The hosses come in by themselves. Oh, I let 'em laugh. I tell you I wa'n't takin' no chances with a grizzily!"

Meanwhile Jack, for the first time in his life, was obliged to face a moral crisis. Other threatening crises hitherto he had managed to evade with youth's characteristic ingenuity in side-stepping the disagreeable. The first time that a young brain is held up in its happy-go-lucky career, and forced to think, is bound to be a painful experience.

Up to now Jack had taken his good name for granted. He had run away when he felt like it, meaning to go back when he was ready. Now, when he found it smirched he realized what an important thing a good name was. He raged in his mind, and justly at the man who had destroyed it; nevertheless a small voice whispered to him that it was partly his own fault. For the first time, too, he realized that his name was not his exclusive property; his father and mother had a share in it, though they were no longer of the world. He thought too of the streets of the city that was so dear to him, now filled with people who believed that Malcolm Piers was a thief.

The simplest thing was not to think about it at all, but go direct to Frank Garrod, and "have it out" with him. But Jack was obliged to recognize that this was no solution. Every time he had drawn near to Frank since the afternoon, Frank had cringed and shown his fangs like a sick animal, disgusting Jack, and making it impossible for him to speak to Frank in any connection. A look in Frank's desperate eyes was enough to show the futility of an appeal to his better feelings. "Besides, I couldn't beg him to set me right," Jack thought, his hands clenching, and the vein on his forehead swelling.

Force then suggested itself as the only recourse, and the natural one to Jack's direct nature. This was no good either. "He's a sick man," Jack thought. "He couldn't stand up to me. If I struck him——" A cold fear touched his heart at the thought that he had no way in the world of proving himself honest, except by means of a free and voluntary statement from a man who was obviously breaking, and even now scarcely sane.

The problem was too difficult for Jack to solve. He found himself wishing for an older head to put it to. More than once his thoughts turned to the wiser and older lady in Sir Bryson's party, to whom he had not yet spoken. "I wish I could make friends with her," he thought.

The second day on the trail was largely a repetition of the first. The routine of making and breaking camp proceeded more smoothly, that was all. On this day as they rose over and descended the endless shallow hills of the prairie, the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies rose into view off to the west.

Jack and Frank Garrod held no communication throughout the day. Garrod showed an increased disorder in his dress, and a more furtive manner. On the trail there were no secretarial duties to perform, and he kept out of the way of the other white members of the party. He had always been considered queer, and his increased queerness passed unnoticed except by Jack, who held the clue, and by Jean Paul Ascota. The half-breed watched Jack, watched Garrod, and drew his own conclusions.

Jean Paul on the face of things was turning out an admirable servant, capable, industrious, and respectful. The white men, including Jack, would have been greatly astonished could they have heard the substance of his low-voiced talk to the Indian lads around their own fire.

"I held my hand," he said in Cree, "because the time is not come to strike. One must suffer much and be patient for the cause. But I have not forgotten. Before I am through with him, Jack shall be kicked out of camp, and then he shall die. My medicine works slowly, but it is very sure.

"Jack is only one white man," he went on. With an ignorant, easily swayed, savage audience Jean Paul was superb in his effect of quiet intensity. "I will not let him spoil my plans against the race. The time is almost ripe now. I have visited the great tribe of the Blackfeet in the south. They are as many as the round stones in the bars when the big river is low. I have talked with the head men. They are ready. I have visited the Sarcees, the Stonies, the Bloods, and the Piegans; all are ready when I give the word. And are we not ready in the North, too? the Crees, the Beavers, the Sapis, the Kakisas, and all the peoples across the mountain. When Ascota sends out his messengers a fire shall sweep across the country that will consume every white man to soft ashes!"

Thus it went night after night. The four lads listened scowling, a hot sense of the wrongs of the red race burning in each breast. But it was like a fire in the grass, blazing up only to expire. They fell asleep and forgot all about it until Jean Paul talked again. Perhaps they sensed somehow that Jean Paul talked to them largely for the satisfaction he got out of his own eloquence.

To-night Jean Paul was watching Garrod. By and by Garrod wandered away from the campfires, and Jean Paul followed. Garrod mooned aimlessly around the tents with his head sunk on his breast, zigzagging to and fro in the grass, flinging himself down, only to get up and walk again. For a long time Jean Paul watched and followed him, crouching in the grass in the semi-darkness. Finally Garrod sat down at the edge of the coulee, and Jean Paul approached him openly.

"Fine night," he said with an off-hand air.

Garrod murmured an indistinguishable reply.

"Me, I lak' to walk in the night the same as you," Jean Paul went on in a voice indescribably smooth and insinuating. He sat beside the other man. "I lak' sit by one black hole lak' this and look. It is so deep! You feel bad?" he added.

"My head," murmured Garrod. "It gives me no rest."

"Um!" said Jean Paul. "I cure you. With my people I what you call doctor."

"Doctors can't do me any good," Garrod muttered.

"Me, I not the same lak' other doctors," said Jean Paul calmly. "First, I tell you what's the matter. Your body not sick; it's your, what you call, your soul."

Garrod looked at him with a start.

Jean Paul lowered his voice. "You hate!" he hissed.

"What damn nonsense is this?" said Garrod tremblingly.

"What's the use to make believe?" said Jean Paul with a shrug. "I doctor—conjuror they call me. I know. You know what I know."

Garrod weakened. "Know what?" he said. "How do you know?"

"I know because same way I hate," said Jean Paul softly.

Garrod breathed fast.

"Shall we put our hates together?" murmured Jean Paul.

But there was still life in Garrod's pride of race. "This is foolishness," he said contemptuously. "You're talking wild."

Jean Paul shrugged. "Ver' good," he said. "You know to-morrow or some day. There is plentee time."

"Keep out of my way," said Garrod. "I don't want to have anything to say to you."

The darkness swallowed Jean Paul's smile. He murmured velvetly: "Me, I t'ink you lak' ver' moch sleep to-night. Sleep all night."

Garrod partly broke down. "Oh, my God!" he murmured, dropping his head on his knees.

"You got your pipe?" asked Jean Paul. "Give me, and I fill it."

"What with?" demanded Garrod.

"A little weed I pick," said Jean Paul. "No hurt anybody."

"Here," said Garrod handing over his pipe with a jerk of bitter laughter; "if it does for me, so much the better!"

Jean Paul drew a little buckskin bag from an inner pocket, and filled the pipe with herb leaves that crackled as he pressed them into the bowl. Handing it back, he struck a match. Garrod puffed with an air of bravado, and a subtle, pungent odour spread around.

"It has a rotten taste," said Garrod.

"You do not smoke that for taste," said Jean Paul.

For several minutes nothing was said. Garrod nursed the pipe, taking the smoke with deeper, slower inhalations.

"That's good," he murmured at length. There was unspeakable relief, relaxation, ease, in his voice.

Jean Paul watched him narrowly. Garrod's figure slowly drooped, and the hand that carried the pipe to his mouth became uncertain.

"You got enough," said Jean Paul suddenly. "Come along. You can't sleep here."

Garrod protested sleepily, but the half-breed jerked him to his feet, and supporting him under one arm, directed his wavering, spastic footsteps back to the tents. Garrod shared a small tent with Vassall and Baldwin Ferrie. One end opened to the general tent, the other was accessible from outdoors. Jean Paul looked in; it was empty, and the flap on the inner side was down. In the big tent they were playing cards.

Garrod collapsed in a heap. Jean Paul deftly undressed him, and, rolling him in his blanket, left him dead to the world. Before leaving the tent he carefully knocked the ashes out of the pipe, and dropped it in the pocket of Garrod's coat. Immediately afterward Jean Paul in his neat black habit showed himself in the light of the fire. Sitting, he was seen to gravely adjust a pair of rimmed spectacles (his eyes were like a lynx's!) and apply himself to his daily chapter of the Testament before turning in.

In the morning Garrod awoke with a splitting head and a bad taste in his mouth. However, that seemed a small price to pay for nine hours of blessed forgetfulness.

There followed another day of prairie travel. Sir Bryson, when he wished to communicate with Jack, made Garrod his emissary, so that the two were obliged to meet and talk. On the approach of Garrod, Jack merely sucked in his lip, and stuck closely to the business of the day. These meetings were dreadful to Garrod. Only an indication of what he went through can be given. In the condition he was in he had to avoid the sharp-eyed Linda, and he was obliged to stand aside and see her ride off with Jack out of sight of the rest of the train. By nightfall his nerves were in strings again.

On this night after supper Jean Paul took pains to avoid him. Garrod was finally obliged to go to the Indians' fire after him.

"Look here, Jean Paul, I want to speak to you," he said sullenly.

Jean Paul, closing the book and taking off the spectacles with great deliberation, followed Garrod out of earshot of the others.

"I say give me another pipeful of that dope, Jean Paul," Garrod said in a conciliatory tone.

The half-breed had dropped his smooth air. "Ha! You come after it to-night," he sneered.

"Hang it! I'll pay you for it," snarled Garrod.

"My medicine not for sale," replied Jean Paul.

"Medicine?" sneered Garrod. "I'll give you five dollars for the little bagful."

Jean Paul shook his head.

"Ten! Twenty, then!"

Jean Paul merely smiled.

A white man could not possibly humble himself any further to a redskin. Garrod, with a miserable attempt at bravado, shrugged and turned away. Jean Paul stood looking after him, smiling. Garrod had not taken five paces before a fresh realization of the horrors of the night to come turned his pride to water. He came swiftly back.

"You said you were a doctor," he said in a breaking voice. "Good God! can't you see what it means to me! I've got to have it! I've got to have it! I can't live through another night without sleep!"

"Las' night you tol' me to kip away from you," drawled Jean Paul.

"Forget it, Jean Paul," begged Garrod. "I'll give you all the money I have for it. A pipeful for God's sake!"

Jean Paul continued to smile, and, turning, went back to the fire, and took out his Testament.

Garrod did live through the night, and the day that followed, but at the approach of another night, white man as he was, he delivered himself over to Jean Paul Ascota, the half-breed, body and soul.

VII
AN EMOTIONAL CRISIS

Toward the end of the fourth day the pack-train wound down a hill to Fort Geikie, and they saw the great river again, that they had been following all the way, but at some distance from the bank. Fort Geikie was no more than a couple of log shacks maintained during the winters as an outpost for trading with the Indians. At present the shacks were boarded up, and the Indians ranging away to the north and the west.

The prairie came to an abrupt end here, and immediately before them rose the steep foothills, with the mountains proper looking over their heads behind. Around a point off to the left the river issued foaming from between grim, hewn walls of rock. Up and down river it was called significantly, "Hell's Back door." "Hell's Opening," it followed, was at the other end of the canyon. For upward of twenty miles between the river roared down in unchecked fury, grinding the drift-logs to shreds.

The log shacks stood in the middle of another grassy esplanade, but here elevated high above the river. The party camped on the edge of the steep bank, with a lovely prospect visible from the tent openings. The river was swifter and much narrower here; far below them lay a thin island, and beyond, the river stretched away like a broad silver ribbon among its hills, the whole mellowed and glowing in the late sunshine.

As soon as the horses were turned out Jack made his way to Sir Bryson.

The governor led him into the tent. "Well?" he said, seating himself, and carefully matching his finger-tips.

"My instructions were to take you to the big canyon," said Jack. "Here we are at the lower end of it. Do you want to make a permanent camp here, or to push farther on?"

"Let me see," said Sir Bryson. Producing a paper from his pocket, he spread it on the table. Jack saw that it was a handmade map. "The lower end of the canyon," he repeated to himself. "That will be here," and he put his finger on a spot.

Jack's natural impulse was to walk around the table, and look at the map over Sir Bryson's shoulder. As he did so, Sir Bryson snatched it up, and held it against his breast like a child whose toy is threatened by another child.

Jack, with a reddening face, retired around the table again. "I beg your pardon," he said stiffly. "I didn't know it was private."

Sir Bryson reddened too, and murmured something indistinguishable.

Suddenly it came to Jack that he had seen the map before, and a smile twitched the corners of his lips. Since Sir Bryson wished to make a great secret of it, all right—he, Jack, was not obliged to tell all he knew.

Sir Bryson did not see the smile. He was studying the map again. "How far is it to the top of the canyon?" he asked.

"Twelve miles," said Jack. "The trail, as you see, cuts across a bend."

"Is there a good place to camp?"

"Better than here. First-rate water, grass, and wood."

"Can we cross the river if we wish to?"

"There are any number of boats cached along the shore. Everybody bound downstream has to leave his boat there."

"Very well," said Sir Bryson. "Let's move on to-morrow."

When Jack joined Humpy Jull he said briefly: "I was right. The old boy is travelling by Beckford and Rowe's map."

"Did you tell him what they were?" asked Humpy, all agog.

"No," said Jack coolly. "He wouldn't have thanked me. He'll find it out himself in a couple of days."

"The nerve of it," said Humpy, tremendously impressed, "to play the governor himself for a sucker! There'll be the deuce to pay when it all comes out!"

It was impossible for Jack's spirits to remain permanently depressed. To-night, after a long silence, the banjo and the insinuating baritone were heard for a while by the fire. At the sound, Linda, in the big tent, changed colour. The ladies still dressed for dinner as far as they could, and Linda, with her elaborate hair arrangement, the pearls in her ears, and the rings on her fingers, made an odd urban figure to be here on the lonely plains.

Her attention wandered, and finally she committed the capital crime of bridge.

"You've revoked!" cried Sir Bryson aghast, "when the game and the rubber were ours!"

She was not much cast down by her parent's reproaches. "Kate, take my hand," she said cajolingly. "I've no head for the game to-night."

They changed places, and Linda carried her chair outside the door of the tent. The cook-fire was only some twenty paces distant, and she saw Jack in his favourite attitude, the small of his back supported against a log, and the banjo across his thighs. The admiring Humpy Jull sat on the other and of the log, whittling a stick.

Jack saw her come out, and he felt the call that she sent him. He drew in his upper lip a little, and stayed where he was. He would have been glad enough to go of his own volition, but the hint of coercion made him stubborn. Linda was finally obliged to retire beaten.

Next morning the pack-train climbed the steep hill that barred the way, traversed the ancient portage around the canyon, and finally camped beside the river again in a little clearing that has been a camping-place since before the white men found America. Looking across to the left, a smooth wall of rock seemed to bar the river's progress; an ominous hoarse roar issued from its foot. All around them rose moderate mountain heights green to their summits; farther upstream were the first-class peaks.

After lunch a riding-party to High Rock, down the canyon, was talked about. Long afterward Jack remembered that it had first been suggested by Jean Paul, who volunteered to put the camp in order while they were away. All the whites set out except Humpy Jull. Garrod accompanied the others.

A change had come over Garrod, a comfortable daze taking the place of the wild, harassed look in his eyes. He rode apparently without seeing or caring where. He and Jean Paul had ridden together all morning, and it was observable that the white's man eyes followed all the movements of the Indian in a mechanical way. The two were rapidly becoming inseparable. No thought of danger to himself from this connection occurred to Jack. By this time he had forgotten the scene at Fort Cheever.

They first visited "Hell's Opening" on foot, having to climb over a tangle of great trunks cast high on the rocks by the freshets. One of the great sights of earth rewarded them. The mighty river, a thousand feet wide above, plunged through a cleft in the rock that a child could have tossed a stone across, and, pent within its close, dark walls, swept down with a deep, throaty roar.

The beholders remarked upon it according to their several natures.

"Very pretty," said Sir Bryson. "Let's get on."

"By Jove!" said Sidney Vassall.

"Tertiary rocks of the Cambrian period," said Baldwin Ferrie, or whatever they were.

Garrod looked with lack-lustre eyes, and said nothing.

Linda looked at Jack. Seeing that he was genuinely moved by the sight, familiar as it was to him, she began to enthuse. It sounded overdone to Jack, and he turned on his heel.

Mrs. Worsley looked at it with shining eyes, and said nothing.

As they rode on it commenced to rain softly, and Sir Bryson was for returning. His daughter opposed him, and all the others rallied to her support. Garrod in particular, though he seemed to have no interest by the way, was dead set against giving up the expedition. They rode through a magnificent, untouched forest. The cool gloom, the slow drip of the leaves, and the delicious fragrance of the wet greenery created an effect the impressionable ones in the party were not soon to forget. Sir Bryson grumbled.

In one of the various rearrangements of the party Jack found that Mrs. Worsley was riding next behind him. Swinging around, he talked to her, hanging sideways over his saddle.

"No one has passed this way this year," he said, glancing at the trail.

"I don't see how you know the path at all," she returned. "I can see nothing."

Jack explained the blazes on the trees. "Beyond the next creek I blazed a trail myself last year," he said. "The old trail was too steep for white men's horses."

"You know the country well."

"I feel as if this bit was my own," he said, with a look around.

Crossing a little stream he pointed out the remains of a sluice and cradle, and explained their uses to her. "Joe Casey had his camp on that little hill two years ago," he said.

"What luck did he have?" she asked.

Jack shook his head. "But we all know the stuff's somewhere about," he said.

Kate Worsley was able in turn to tell Jack something about the showy plants they passed, and a bird or two. Jack's knowledge of the flora and fauna was limited strictly to what would serve a man for fuel or food.

"I believe this life would suit you, too," he said, approving her strongly.

"I believe it would," she said with a smile, "if there was any place for such as I."

"You would soon make a place," he said.

Linda, following Mrs. Worsley in the trail, wondered jealously why Jack never unbent with her like that.

Though they were never out of hearing of its thunderous voice, they had no sight of the canyon again until they suddenly issued out on the High Rock, five miles from camp. A superb view arrested them. The trail came out on a flat, overhanging table rock two hundred feet above the water. The spot was in the middle of a wide bend in the walls of the canyon, and they could therefore see both up and down, over the ragged white torrent in the bottom.

This was their destination. To dismount they had to cross the rock to a stretch of grass beyond. They instinctively lingered first for a look. Jack, Mrs. Worsley, Linda, Vassall, Sir Bryson, and Baldwin Ferrie lined up in that order, taking care to hold their horses in a safe eight or ten feet back from the naked edge. Looking down river afforded the finest prospect; here the steep, brown walls fell back a little, and in the middle of the torrent rose a tall rock island, like a tower, crowned with noble spruce trees.

Garrod, who had dropped behind the others, now came out from among the trees on to the flat rock. His horse appeared to be fretting.

"Better dismount and lead him across," Jack flung over his shoulder.

If Jack had looked squarely at Garrod the look in the man's eyes would surely have caused him to draw back himself and dismount. But he was intent at the moment in pointing out a seam of coal in the face of the rock opposite.

None of them could ever tell exactly what happened after that. Garrod did not dismount, but attempted to ride across behind the others through the narrow space between their horses and the thickly growing trees. Jack was sitting loose in his saddle with an arm extended. Suddenly his horse shrank and quivered beneath him. With a snort of pain and terror the animal sprang forward, reared on the edge of the rock, attempted desperately to turn on his hind legs—and, with his rider, disappeared.

They heard breaking branches below, and a moment later a dull crash on the rocks far beneath. No sound escaped from any member of the party. The awful silhouette of the rearing horse on the edge of nothing had frozen them into grotesque attitudes of horror, and they looked at the empty place as if they saw it still. Finally Vassall swore in a strange, soft voice, and Sir Bryson began to babble. Their horses, infected by the terror of their riders, suddenly turned of one accord, and shouldered each other off the rock to the grassy terrace at one side. Garrod slipped out of his saddle and lay inert. The horses that followed jumped over his body.

One by one the others half-rolled, half-slipped out of their saddles. Linda Trangmar was the first to reach the ground, and it was she who crawled back over the rock like a lithe little animal, and looked over the hideous edge. She saw that several spruce trees grew out obliquely from a ledge beneath the rock, and that horse and rider had fallen through the tops of these. Far below she saw the lump of dead horseflesh on the rocks. It had struck, and rolled down a steep incline to the water's edge.

The three men watched her, trembling and helpless. Sir Bryson's legs failed him, and he sat abruptly in the grass. Kate Worsley crawled toward Linda on her hands and knees, and attempted to draw her back.

"Come away, come away," she whispered. "It's too horrible!"

"Let me be!" said Linda sharply. "I haven't found him yet!"

Suddenly a piercing scream broke from Linda. Kate, by main force, snatched her back from the edge of the rock.

"He's safe!" cried Linda. She clung to Kate, weeping and laughing together.

They thought it was merely hysteria. Vassall, extending his body on the rock, looked over. He got up again, and shook his head.

High Rock was the highest point of the cliff on the side where they stood. The stretch of grass where the horses were now quietly feeding inclined gently down from the flat table.

"There he is!" screamed Linda, pointing.

Following the direction of her finger, they saw Jack's head and shoulders rise above the edge of the grass. Pulling himself up, he came toward them. He sat in the grass and wiped his face. He was terribly shaken, but he would never confess it. His pallor he could not control. All this had occurred in less than a minute.

The men gathered around him, their questions tumbling out on each other.

"I am not hurt," said Jack, steadying his speech word by word. "I slipped out of the saddle as we went over, and I caught a spruce tree. I had only to climb down the trunk and walk along the ledge to the grass."

Their questions disconcerted him. He got up, and coolly throwing himself down at the edge of the rock, looked over.

"Come back! Come back!" moaned Linda.

"Poor brute!" Jack said, turning away.

As he came back, Linda, straining away from Kate's encircling arms, bent imploring eyes on him. Jack looked at her and stopped. Instead of the worldly little coquette he had thought her up to now, he saw a woman offering him her soul through her eyes. The sight disturbed and thrilled him. It came at a moment of high emotional tension. He gave her his eyes back again, and for moments their glances embraced, careless of the others around. Had it not been for Kate's tight clasp, Linda would have cast herself into his arms on the spot.

"What could have startled your horse?" Sir Bryson asked for the dozenth time, breaking the spell.

Jack shrugged. "Where's Garrod?" he said suddenly.

Garrod had completely passed out of their minds. They found him lying in the grass a little to one side. He had fainted. It provided a distraction to their shaken nerves, and gradually a measure of calmness returned to them all. Kate Worsley and Vassall worked over Garrod. Jack, who felt a strong repugnance to touching him, rode back for water to the last stream they had crossed.

When Garrod returned to consciousness the shock to his confused faculties of seeing Jack standing in front of him, and his mingled remorse and relief, were all very painful to see. He babbled explanations, apologies, self-accusations; none of them could make out what it all amounted to.

"Don't," said Jack turning away. "I don't blame you. I should have made everybody dismount at once. It was my own fault."

At the time he honestly believed it.

It was a very much sobered procession that wound back to camp. As they climbed the side of one of the steep gullies, leading their horses, Jack and Linda found themselves together.

"I tell you, it gives you a queer start to fall through space," said Jack with a grim smile. "I never lived so fast in my life. Down below I saw every separate stone that was waiting to smash me. And in that one second before I grabbed the tree I remembered everything that had happened to me since I was a baby."

"Don't talk about it," she murmured, turning away her head. At the same time a little spring of gladness welled in her breast, for it was the first time that he had ever dropped his guard with her.

"Do you care?" he said, off-hand. "I thought you were the kind that didn't."

She flashed a look at him. "Would you have me the same to everybody?" she said.

He lifted her on her horse in the way that had suggested itself to him as most natural. It was not according to the fashionable conventions of riding, but Linda liked it. Her hand fell on his round, hard shoulder under the flannel shirt, and she bore upon it heavier than she need. They rode on with beating hearts, avoiding each other's eyes.

It signified only that their combined ages made something less than fifty, and that each was highly pleasing in the eyes of the other sex. His scornful air had piqued her from the first, and he had seen her hard eyes soften for him at a high-pitched moment. Young people would be saved a deal of trouble if the romantic idea were not so assiduously inculcated that these feelings are irrevocable.

In camp after supper they found each other again.

"Too bad about the mosquitoes," said Jack a little sheepishly.

"Why?" she asked, making the big eyes of innocence.

"There's no place we can go."

"Let's sit under your mosquito bar."

Jack gasped a little, and looked at her with sidelong eyes. True, his tent had no front to it and the firelight illumined every corner, still it was a man's abode. Linda herself conceived a lively picture of the consternation of Sir Bryson and his suite if they knew, but they were good for an hour or more at the card-table, and, anyway, this was the kind of young lady that opposition, even in prospect, drives headlong.

"Humpy Jull will chaperon us," she said demurely. "You can sing to me."

"All right," he said.

Linda sat in the middle of the tent, with a man on either hand, and the fire glowing before them. Jack reclined on the end of his spine as usual, with the banjo in his lap. The spirit of at least one of his hearers was lifted up on the simple airs he sung. An instinct prompted him to avoid the obviously sentimental.

"Exact to appointment I went to the grove
To meet my fair Phillis and tell tales of love;
But judge of my anguish, my rage and despair,
When I found on arrival no Phillis was there."

Between songs Linda, in the immemorial way of women, made conversation with the man of the two present in which she was not interested.

"Don't you like to look for pictures in the fire, Mr. Jull?"

"Sure, I like to look at pitchers," returned Humpy innocently. "But there ain't never no pitchers in camp. I like the move-'em pitchers best. When I was out to the Landing last year I used to go ev'y night."

Jack was partly hidden from Humpy by Linda. Tempted by the hand that lay on the ground beside him, he caught it up and pressed it to his lips. When he sang again, the same hand, while its owner looked innocently ahead of her, groped for and found his curly head. At the touch of it Jack's voice trembled richly in his throat.

"Tempted by the hand that lay on the ground beside him,
he caught it up and pressed it to his lips"

When she thought the rubber of rubbers would be nearing its end Linda made Jack take her back. Walking across the narrow space their shoulders pressed warmly together. They walked very slowly.

"I ought to have told you my name," murmured Jack uncomfortably.

"I know it, Malcolm, dear," she breathed.

"Who told you?" he demanded, greatly astonished.

She twined her fingers inside his. "I guessed, silly."

"Well, I didn't take the money," he said.

"I don't care if you did," she murmured.

"But I didn't," he said frowning.

"All right," she said, unconvinced and uncaring.

"What are we going to do?" he said.

"Oh, don't begin that," she said swiftly. "This is to-night, and we're together. Isn't that enough?"

They had reached the tents. Of one accord they turned aside, and in the shadow of the canvas she came naturally into his arms, and he kissed her, thrilling deliciously. The delicate fragrance of her enraptured his senses. It was light love, lightly sealed.

"Kiss me again," she murmured on her deepest note. "Kiss me often, and don't bother about the future!"

VIII
THE FEMININE EQUATION

Jack turned in filled with a nagging sense of discomfort. He felt dimly that he ought to have been happy, but it was very clear that he was not. It was all very well for her to say: "Don't bother about the future," but his stubborn mind was not to be so easily satisfied. It was true he had not committed himself in so many words, but with girls of Linda's kind he supposed a kiss was final. So the future had to be considered. It was now more than ever imperative that his name be cleared. She didn't seem to care much whether he were honest or not. There was the rub. He scowled, and rolled over to woo sleep on the other side.

In the end he fell asleep, and dreamed a fantastic dream. He was King David, wearing a long gray beard and a white gown. He was at sea in a motor-sailboat of extraordinary construction, having a high, ornate cabin, over which the boom had to be lifted whenever they came about. There was a beturbaned lascar at the tiller, whom he, King David, treated with great contumely. Linda was along, too, also clad in biblical costume with a silver band around her brow. She was strangely meek, and she plucked continually at his sleeve.

A great storm came up; the waves tossed, the boat was knocked about, and he couldn't get a spark in his engine. He suspected that the lascar knew much better than he what to do, but out of sheer, kingly wilfulness he went contrary to everything the brown man suggested. Nor would he heed the insistent plucking at his sleeve.

Then suddenly a mermaid uprose beside the boat, and the sea was miraculously stilled. Her long, black, silky hair hung before her face, and streamed over her deep bosom and her lovely arms. All would be well if he could but distinguish her face, he felt. He leaned farther and farther over the rail, while the fretful plucking at his sleeve continued. He implored the mermaid to push back her hair.

Then he awoke. Some one was pulling at his sleeve, and a voice was whispering: "Jack, wake up!"

He sprang to a sitting position, throwing out his arms. They closed around a bony little frame encased in a rough coat. He recoiled.

"It's only me," said the small voice.

The fire had burned down to dull embers, and Jack at first could see nothing. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"Davy Cranston."

"Davy Cranston?" repeated Jack. It was a moment or two before his dream-muddled brain conceived the identity that went under this name. "What does this mean? What do you want? How did you get here?" he demanded in great surprise.

"It was Mary said we had to come," the boy replied abashed.

The girl's name had the effect of ringing a bell in Jack's understanding. "Mary? Where is she?" he asked quickly.

"We're camped up on the bench," the boy replied. "She's waiting for us. Come to our camp, and we can talk."

Jack was ready in a moment, and they set off. The afterglow was under the north star, and by that Jack knew it was midnight. The camp was wrapped in perfect stillness. When they got clear, and began to climb the trail, a little fiery eye beckoned them ahead.

In answer to Jack's further questions the boy could only reply that "Mary had a warning," which only heightened the questioner's wonder and curiosity.

The camp was pitched on the edge of the low bench above the river-flat, and they saw her, from a little distance, crouching by the fire that made a little crimson glory under the branches. She was listening with bent head to hear if there was one pair of footsteps approaching or two. Behind her the two little A-tents were pitched side by side, their open doors like mouths yawning in the firelight.

As they came within radius of the light she lifted her face, and Jack without knowing why he should be, was staggered by the look in her deep eyes, an indescribable look, suggesting pain proudly borne, and present gladness.

"You're all right?" she murmured, searching for what she might read in his face.

"Surely!" said Jack wonderingly. Further speech failed him. The sight of her threw him into a great uneasiness that he was at a loss to account for. She was nothing to him, he told himself a little angrily. But he could not keep his eyes off her. She had changed. She looked as if her spirit had travelled a long way these few days and learned many difficult lessons on the road. She had an effect on him as of something he had never seen before, yet something he had been waiting for without knowing it. And this was only Mary Cranston that he thought he knew!

"There was a danger," she said quietly. "I did not know if we would be in time to save—to help you."

"Danger? Save me?" Jack repeated, looking at her stupidly. "Good God! How did you know that?" he presently added.

Mary's agitation broke through her self-contained air. To hide it she hastily busied herself picking up the dishes, and packing them in the grub-box. Fastening the box with its leather hasp, she carried it into her tent. She did not immediately reappear.

"Where have you come from?" Jack demanded of Davy.

"Swan Lake."

"Have you been there ever since you left the fort?"

The boy nodded. "Tom Moosehorn's three children got the measles," he explained. "They are pitching at Swan Lake. Tom came to the fort to ask my father for medicine, and when Mary heard that his children were sick, she said she would go and nurse them, because Tom's wife is a foolish squaw, and don't know what to do for sickness. And I went to take care of Mary."

"Where is Swan Lake?" asked Jack.

"Northwest of the fort, two days' journey," said Davy. "We were there a week, and then the kids got well. On the way back home Mary had a warning, She said she felt a danger threatening you." Shyness overcame the boy here. "You—you were friendly to us," he stammered. "So we wanted to come to you. We didn't know where you were, but Mary said the warning came from the south, so we left the trail, and hit straight across the prairie till we came to the river trail. There we found your tracks, and followed them here."

"A warning!" said Jack, amazed. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know," the boy said simply. "Mary has them."

Mary returned to the fire with a composed face. All three of the youngsters were embarrassed for speech. How could they find words to fit the strange feelings that agitated them.

Jack, gazing at Mary's graceful pose, on her knees by the fire, suddenly exclaimed: "Why, it was you, all the time!"

"What was?" asked Mary.

"The mermaid."

"What's a mermaid?" Davy wanted to know.

Mary answered before Jack could. "An imaginary creature, half woman, half fish."

"Why, how did you know?" asked Jack unthinkingly.

"Do you think I know nothing?" she said, with the ghost of a smile.

He had the grace to redden.

They made Jack tell them his dream. They laughed, and the tension was relieved. They were all grateful for something else to talk about. There was one thing in the dream that Jack left out.

"Who was the woman who kept pulling at your sleeve?" asked Mary.

Jack lied. "Nobody I know," he said lightly. "One of King David's five hundred wives, I suppose."

Davy laughed, but Mary looked affronted. "You're confusing David with Solomon," she said coldly.

Jack looked at her uneasily. This was she whom he had dismissed merely as one of the girls of the country!

"And he sat up and hugged me as if I was a girl," Davy put in with relish.

Jack and Mary looked away from each other and blushed, but for different reasons.

They could not long keep away from the subject that filled their minds. "Blest if I can understand it," murmured Jack.

They knew to what he referred. "Nobody can," said Mary.

"You must have had this warning several days ago."

"Three days," said Mary.

"Nothing happened to me three days ago. Nothing until to-day——"

"Ah!" she said sharply.

"That was an accident," said Jack. "My horse shied on High Rock, and jumped over the ledge. I caught on a tree."

Mary's eyes brooded over him, and her hands went to still her breast. "Was there any one behind you?" she asked quickly.

"Yes, Garrod."

"Perhaps it was no accident."

Jack stared at the fire. "Perhaps not," he said slowly. After a while he added. "Still I don't understand."

"Many of the people have such warnings," Mary said quietly.

Jack frowned. "You are not a savage," he said.

"We are one fourth Indian," Mary said with a kind of relentless pride. "It is silly to make-believe that we're not."

Jack went on to tell them in detail what had happened during the day, suppressing, however, all that related to Linda. One thing led to another; he could hardly have explained how it came about, but Mary's eyes drew out what he had believed was locked deep in his heart, the story of his early days, and of Garrod's treachery that he had just found out. Sister and brother had little to say to the story, but their shining eyes conveyed unquestioning loyal assurance to him. It needed no words to tell him they knew he was no thief. Jack experienced a sense of relief such as he had not felt since the moment of his making the ugly discovery. When he considered the net of circumstance that bound him round sometimes he was almost ready himself to doubt his honesty.

"I knew there was something behind," Mary murmured. "It was the day you found him out that I had my warning. I'm glad we came. Maybe we can help you"—she looked at him questioningly—"if you will let us stay."

"As long as you like," said Jack. "It's my idea we'll all be turning back in a couple of days. In the meantime Davy can help with the horses. We're short-handed."

"Couldn't we camp here by ourselves?" asked Mary quickly.

Jack shook his head. "It would look queer," he said. "You had better ride into our camp in the morning as if you'd just come."

Mary presently sent him home. The fire had paled, and the trees began to rise out of the graves of darkness at the touch of the ghostly wand of dawn. The youngsters' pale and slightly haggard faces had a strange look to each other like things that had been left over from yesterday by mistake, and were hopelessly out of place this morning.

Jack lingered awkwardly. "Look here," he blurted out, "I haven't thanked you for coming. I don't know how. But you know what I feel!"

Sister and brother looked exquisitely uncomfortable, and absurdly alike. "There's nothing to be thanked for," murmured Mary. "Of course we came! That's what I had the warning for."

They shook hands. Mary's hand lay for an instant in Jack's passive and cold. But later she pillowed her cheek on that hand because he had touched it.

The permanent camp, that Sir Bryson had graciously permitted to be called Camp Trangmar, had been laid out with considerably more care than their nightly stopping-places. The main tent, with its three little wings, was erected at the top of the clearing, facing the river. A canvas had been stretched in front to make a veranda. On the right-hand side of the open square was Humpy's cooking outfit under another awning, with Humpy's tent and Jack's lean-to beyond. Across the square was Jean Paul's little tent and the ragged brown canvas that sheltered the Indians. The camp was ditched and drained according to the best usage, and around the whole was stretched a rope on poplar posts, to keep the straying horses from nosing around the tents in their perpetual search for salt.

After breakfast next morning Sir Bryson issued a command for Jack to wait upon him. As Jack approached, Linda and Mrs. Worsley were sitting under the awning, each busy with a bit of embroidery. Jack, who had been for a swim in the river, looked as fresh as a daisy. As he passed inside Linda smiled at him with a frankness that disconcerted him greatly. If she was going to give the whole thing away to everybody like this! However, Mrs. Worsley gave no sign of having seen anything out of the ordinary.

It transpired that Sir Bryson wished to make a little exploration up the river. He inquired about a boat, and Jack offered him his own dugout that he had cached at this point on his way down the river. Sir Bryson was very much concerned about the speed of the current, but Jack assured him the Indians were accustomed to making way against it.

Sir Bryson cast a good deal of mystery about his little trip, and made it clear that he had no intention of taking Jack with him. Jack, who had a shrewd idea of his object, had no desire to be mixed up in it. He swallowed a grin and maintained a respectful air. He had discovered that there was more fun to be had in playing up to the little governor's grand airs than in flouting him. Afterward he would enact the scene by the fire, sure of an appreciative audience in Humpy Jull.

It was arranged that Sir Bryson should start in an hour, and that his party should take a lunch against an all-day trip.

As Jack came out Linda rose to meet him. "We will have the whole day to ourselves," she said softly.

Jack was nonplussed. Somehow, such a frank avowal dampened his own ardour. He glanced at Mrs. Worsley to see if she had heard, and his face stiffened. At this moment a diversion was created by the sound of horses' hoofs on the trail.

They looked around the tent to see Mary and Davy trotting down the little rise that ended at the camp, followed by two pack-ponies. Linda had not seen Mary before. Her eyes widened at the sight of another girl, and a very pretty one, riding into camp, and quickly sought Jack's face. A subtle and unbeautiful change passed over her at what she fancied she read there.

Sir Bryson, attracted by the sound, came out of the tent. "Who are they?" he asked Jack.

"The son and the daughter of the trader at Fort Cheever."

"Very pretty girl," said Sir Bryson condescendingly. "Pray bring them to me that I may make them welcome," he said as he went back.

Jack vaulted over the fence, and the three youngsters shook hands again with beaming smiles. Jack forgot that in order to keep up their little fiction he should have appeared more surprised to see them. Linda looked on with darkening eyes. Jack led the horses around the square to the place next his own tent, where they were unpacked, unsaddled, and turned out. He then brought Mary and Davy back. Linda was not in evidence.

Within the tent Sir Bryson welcomed them as graciously as a king. "Very glad to see you," he said. "Which way are you travelling?"

Davy's adolescence was painfully embarrassed in the presence of the great man, but as the man of his party he blushed and faced him out. "We are going home," he said. "My sister has been nursing some sick Indians at Swan Lake."

Sir Bryson did not know of course that Camp Trangmar was not on the direct road between Swan Lake and Fort Cheever. "Ah!" he said, "most worthy of her, I'm sure. I trust you will remain with us a few days before you go on."

"If I can help around," said Davy. "Jack Chanty said you were short-handed."

"Excellent! Excellent!" said Sir Bryson.

Jack made a move toward the door, and Davy and Mary promptly followed. Sir Bryson fussed among his papers with an annoyed expression. As much as anything pertaining to his official position he enjoyed dismissing people. Consequently when they left before they were sent he felt a little aggrieved.

Outside, Sidney Vassall and Baldwin Ferrie were now with the two ladies. Linda was reclining languorously in the folding chair, with her little feet crossed in front of her. She was pale and full of fine lady airs. Any one but Jack would have known that there was trouble brewing.

"Introduce your friends," she said to Jack in a clear, high voice.

Jack was only conscious of an extreme discomfort. He was oppressed by a sense of guilt that he resented. The air seemed full of electricity ready to discharge on some one's head. He looked very stiff and boyish as he spoke the names all round: "Miss Cranston, Davy Cranston; Miss Trangmar, Mrs. Worsley, Captain Vassall, Mr. Ferrie!"

They all smiled on the embarrassed newcomers, and made them welcome. In particular Linda's smile was overpoweringly sweet. Without changing her position she extended a languid little hand to Mary.

"So nice of you to come and see us," she drawled. "I hope you will remain with us until we go back."

To Jack this sounded all right. He felt relieved. Even yet he did not see what was coming. Mary's perceptions were keener. With a slightly heightened colour she stepped forward, took the hand with dignity, and let it fall.

"Thank you," she said quietly. "Not more than a day or two."

"But we need you," Linda insisted, "both of you. Your brother can help the men who are nearly worked to death, and if you would only help Mrs. Worsley and me with our things, you know, and other ways——"

Mrs. Worsley looked quickly at Linda, astonished and indignant, but Linda affected not to see. As Jack realized the sense of what she was saying, a slow, dark red crept under his skin, and his face became as hard as stone.

Mary took it smilingly. Her chin went up a little, and she drew a slow breath before she answered. "I'm sorry," she said quietly, "but I have no experience with ladies' things."

There was a faint ring of irony in the last two words, and excepting Jack, who was too angry to see anything, it was evident to the others that Mary had returned just a little better than she got. Linda evidently felt so, for naked malice peeped out of her next speech.

"We would be so glad to teach you, wouldn't we, Kate? And it would be so useful for you to know!"

Mrs. Worsley bent over her work, blushing for her young friend.

Mary continued to look at Linda steadily, and it was finally Linda's eyes that were obliged to stray away. "Thank you," said Mary, "but we will be expected at home in a few days."

"Oh, sorry," said Linda casually. She nodded at Mary, and smiled the inattentive smile that women mean to stab with. "Kate, do show me this next stitch," she said, affecting a sudden absorption in her work.

Mrs. Worsley ignored the question. Her face was now almost as red as Jack's. What passed between these two ladies when they presently found themselves alone may be guessed.

Jack, Mary, and Davy crossed the little square. There was a commotion going on inside Jack that he could not in the least analyze. He was furiously angry, but his sidelong glances at Mary dashed his anger, and made him fall to wondering if he had rightly understood what had happened. For Mary, instead of being humiliated and indignant as one might suppose, was actually smiling. She carried her head high, and the shine of triumph was in her eye. What was a man to make of this? Jack could only long in vain for a head to knock about.

The explanation was simple. "How silly I was to be so afraid of her," Mary was thinking. "To give herself away like that! She's a poor thing! I'm a better woman than she, and she knows it now. She can be jealous of me after this." Behind these thoughts another peeped like an elf through a leafy screen, but since the maiden herself refused to see it in its hiding-place it is not fair to discover it to the world.

Mary refused to refer in any way to what had happened, and Jack was therefore tongue-tied. All he could do was to show his sympathy in the ardour of his muscular efforts on her behalf. He put up their two tents, and stowed their baggage; he cut a wholly unnecessary amount of balsam for Mary's bed, and chopped and carried wood for their fire, until she stopped him. All this was observable to Linda watching from afar under her lashes, and in the meantime Kate was not sparing her.

Jack forgot all about Sir Bryson's order until a peremptory message recalled it. After he had embarked the governor, Baldwin Ferrie, and three Indians in the dugout, he swung an axe over his shoulder, and set off up the trail to chop down a tree or two, and "think things out," as he would have said. The operations of the human consciousness that go under the name of thinking differ widely in the individual. Meanwhile it should be mentioned that Jean Paul and Garrod had started on horseback with the object of finding a camp of Sapi Indians that was said to be not far away. They were gone all day. Jack hardly thought of them.

In a grove of pines beside the trail Jack swung his axe, and the blows rang. His design was to make a flagstaff for the centre of the camp. There was an immense satisfaction in stretching his muscles and planting the blade true. The blood coursed through his veins, and he tingled to his finger-tips. He felt so much better that he thought he had solved his problems. This was what Jack called "thinking things out."

He was engaged in chopping the limbs from a trunk with the stern air of concentration that was characteristic of him, when something caused him to look up, and he saw Linda standing near with an appealing aspect. He frowned and went on chopping. Linda sat down on a stump and looked away with an unsuccessful attempt at unconcern. How astonished Vassall or Baldwin Ferrie would have been could they have seen their imperious little mistress then.

There was a long silence except for the light strokes of Jack's axe as he worked his way up the stem. Jack enjoyed a great advantage because he was busy. It was Linda who was finally obliged to speak.

"Haven't you anything to say?" she murmured.

"No," said Jack promptly. The light branches did not offer him a sufficient outlet for his pent-up feelings, and he wantonly attacked the bole of the biggest tree in sight. Linda watched the swing of his lithe body with a sort of stricken look. There was another silence between them.

"Jack, I'm sorry," she said at last in a small voice.

Jack was not so easily to be appeased. "You shouldn't come away from camp alone with me like this," he said. "Followed me," was what he had in mind, but he spared her pride that.

"I don't care what anybody thinks," she said quickly.

"I do," said Jack.

"Afraid of being compromised?" she asked with a little sneer.

"That's a silly thing to say," he answered coolly. "You know what I mean. I don't intend to give your father and the other men a chance to throw 'thief' in my teeth. When I've cleared myself I'll walk with you openly."

"I was sorry," she said like a child. "I couldn't rest until I had told you."

Jack was silent and uncomfortable. Whenever she sounded the pathetic and childlike note, the male in him must needs feel the pull of compassion and he resented it.

"Don't you care for me any more?" she murmured.

Jack frowned, and aimed a tremendous blow at the tree.

Real terror crept into her voice. "Jack," she faltered.

"I don't take anything back," he said stubbornly. "I'll tell you when I feel like telling you, but I won't have it dragged out of me."

He returned to his tree, and she prodded the pine needles with the toe of her boot. After a while she returned to the charge.

More like a child than ever, she said: "Jack, I acted like a little beast. But I said I was sorry."

"That's all very well," said Jack, "but you can't expect to make me so mad I can't see straight, and then have it all right again just for the asking."

"You're ungenerous," she said, pouting.

"I don't know what you mean," he said obstinately. "I have to be what I am."

There was another silence. They were just where they had started. Indeed no progress was possible without an explosion and a general flare-up. It was Jack who brought it on by saying:

"It's not to me you should be saying you're sorry."

Linda sprang up pale and trembling, and the flood gates of invective were opened. It is no advantage to a jealous woman to be a governor's daughter. Linda in a passion lacked dignity. Her small face worked like a child's preparing to bawl, and her gestures were febrile. What is said at such moments is seldom worth repeating. Jack did not hear the words; it was her tone that stung him beyond endurance. But at last a sentence reached his understanding.

"How dare you bring her here, and install her under my eyes?"

"Bring her here? What do you mean?" he demanded in a voice that forced her to attend.

"Oh, you know very well what I mean!" she cried. "You knew she was coming this morning. I saw it in your face. You didn't even pretend that you were surprised. And you took her part against me all the way through."

There was enough truth in this to make Jack furiously angry in turn. His voice silenced hers.

"I did take her part!" he cried. "And I'd do it again. What have you got to complain of? Just like a girl to fly into a rage and blame everybody all around, just to cover her own tracks! What did you mean by offering to engage her as your maid? You don't want a maid. You only did it to insult her! I was ashamed of you. Everybody was ashamed of you. If you're suffering for it now, it's no more than you ought."

Under all this and more she sat with an odd, still look from which one would almost have said she enjoyed having him abuse her.

And so they both emptied themselves of angry speech, and the inevitable moment of reaction followed. Both Linda and Jack began to feel that they had said too much.

"I'm sorry," she said humbly. "It's true, I was only jealous of her, because you seemed so glad to see her."

"If it's any good to you to hear it," said Jack sheepishly, "she's nothing to me—that way." Even as he said it his heart accused him.

"Besides," said Linda irrelevantly, "she's mad about you."

"That's nonsense!" said Jack. Nevertheless he quickly turned to pick up his axe in order to hide the telltale red that crept into his face.

"It's all right now, isn't it?" said Linda coaxingly. "Come and kiss me."

He obediently went, and, stooping, kissed her upturned lips. But for both of them the delicious sweetness had flown. Jack could not forget how ugly her face had looked in a passion, and Linda remembered how he had worked for Mary.

"You didn't do it like that last night," she said, pouting.

"I felt differently last night," said Jack doggedly. "How can I get up any enthusiasm when you make me do it?"

Her breast began to heave again. "You said you had forgiven me," she said.

"Oh, don't let's begin that again," said Jack with a dismayed look. "I haven't anything to forgive you. If you want to make things really all right, you can do it in a minute!"

She sprang up again. "I won't! I won't!" she cried passionately. "It's her coming that has made the difference since last night! How dare you suggest that I apologize to her! I'd die rather! I hate you! Don't ever speak to me again!"

Of a sudden she was gone like a little tempest among the trees. Jack sat down on the trunk he had cut, and rested his chin in his palms, terribly troubled in his mind. This sort of thing was new to him, and it seemed of much greater moment than it was.

Pretty soon she came flying back again, and casting herself in his arms, clung to him like a baby, weeping and whimpering.

"Take care of me, Jack! I don't know what I'm doing or saying!"

His arms closed about her, and he patted her shoulder with an absurd, sheepish, paternal air of concern. What else could he do? "There, it's all right!" he said clumsily. "Don't distress yourself. It'll be all right!"

"And you won't make me apologize to her?" she implored.

"No," he said with a shrug. "I don't suppose it would do any good if you did."

Linda lay perfectly still. A sense of sweet satisfaction stole into her breast. It had been a hard fight, but she had made him do what she wanted.

"Hanged if I know what's going to become of us," thought Jack gloomily.

IX
YELLOW METAL

The fiction that coal was the objective of Sir Bryson Trangmar's expedition was scarcely maintained; indeed, once they got away from Fort Cheever the word was never heard again. On the other hand, a little word that resembled it circulated continually with a thrilling intonation. Stories of gold and gold-hunters were told over the fires in English and Cree. Baldwin Ferrie, the geologist, kept the subject agitated by cracking every likely looking stone he came to with his little hammer, and by studying the composition of the mountain tops all day with his powerful glasses.

We are told that the essence of comedy lies in the exposure of pretentiousness. That being so, the comic spirit is highly developed up North. In town pretentiousness is largely a matter of give and take; we are all pretending to something, and we are obliged to seem to allow the pretences of our neighbours in order to get them to allow ours. But up North they are beholden to no man, and, sardonic jesters that they are, they lie in wait for pretentiousness. Woe to the man who goes up North and "puts on side."

One like Sir Bryson was therefore bound to be considered fair game. His official position was no protection to him. There is a story current about a governor-general, and another about an actual prince of the blood, who did not escape. All of which is to say that Jack, notwithstanding his perplexities in other directions, was looking forward with keen relish to the return of Sir Bryson's "exploring-party." He only regretted that there was none at hand but Humpy Jull with whom to share the joke.

They landed toward the end of the day, Sir Bryson and Baldwin Ferrie looking very glum. Jack was sent for. He found Sir Bryson alone at his table, looking more than usually important and puffy.

"Do you know two men called Beckford and Rowe?" he asked.

Jack adopted an innocent-respectful line. "Yes, sir," he said. "They were working in the pass here at the same time I was."

"Are you, or have you ever been, associated with them?"

Jack shook his head. "I'm on my own," he said. "Always."

"What kind of a reputation do these men bear?" asked Sir Bryson.

"Bad," said Jack.

Sir Bryson frowned, and squeezed his pointed beard. "How, bad?" he wanted to know.

"Confidence men. They were square enough up here. They had to be. They saved their game to work outside."

"How do you know all this?" demanded Sir Bryson.

"It's no secret," said Jack. "Beckford bragged about what he'd do."

"And did no one take any steps to stop them?"

"It was none of our business," said Jack. "And if it had been we couldn't very well follow them all over, and warn people off, could we?"

Sir Bryson snorted. "Where have they staked out claims?" he demanded.

"Oh, all over," said Jack. "Anything good they keep dark, of course."

"Did you ever hear of Dexter's Creek?"

Jack bit his lip. "Oh, yes," he said with an innocent stare. "Those were what they called their sucker claims."

Sir Bryson swelled like a turkey-cock, and turned an alarming colour, but he said nothing. What could he say?

Your Northern humourist is merciless. Jack was not nearly through with him. He went on full of solicitude: "I hope you didn't fall for anything on Dexter Creek, Sir Bryson. If you'd only mentioned it before, I could have warned you, and saved all this trip!"

"I have nothing to do with Dexter's Creek," said Sir Bryson quickly. "I have other objects. I merely promised the attorney-general of the province to do a little detective work for him."

Jack could appreciate quick wits in a victim. "Well turned," he thought, and waited for Sir Bryson's next lead.

"Well, well," said the little man testily. "Explain what you mean by—by this vulgar expression."

"Sucker claims?" said Jack wickedly. It really pained him that there was no one by to benefit by this.

"You needn't repeat the word," snapped Sir Bryson. "It is offensive to me."

"It's this way," said Jack: "Most of the prospectors in the country are staked by bankers and business men outside. And when they at last make a strike, after years of failure, maybe, their backers generally step in and grab the lion's share. Consequently the men up here are sore on the city fellows; they have none of the hardships or the work they say; they just sit back comfortably and wait for the profits.

"Beckford said that he and his partner had been done a couple of times in this way, and they were out to get square with the bankers. When they found anything good they kept it dark, and went outside and sold some fake claims to raise the coin to work the good ones. Beckford said it was just as easy to sell fake claims as good ones, if you went about it right.

"I said," Jack went on, "they'll set the police after you. Beckford said: 'They can't. We don't make any misrepresentations. We're too smart. We make a mystery of it, and the sucker gets excited, and swallows it whole. We do the innocent game,' he said; 'we're the simple, horny-handed sons of soil from the North that ain't on to city ways. We make 'em think they're putting it all over us, and we sell out cheap. Two of us can work it fine!"

"I said," Jack continued, "'I don't see how you can get anybody to shell out real money unless you offer to come back and show them the place.' 'We always do offer to come back,' Beckford said, 'and we get all ready to come. But at the last moment one of us is took real sick, and the other refuses to leave his dyin' pardner. By that time the come-on is so worked up he comes across anyway!'"

During this recital Sir Bryson's face was a study. A kind of shamed chagrin restrained him from a violent explosion. Jack "had" him, as Jack would have said. The little beard was in danger of being plucked out bodily.

"You can go now," he said in an apoplectic voice.

"There was one thing more," Jack said at the door. "Beckford said that if you picked your man right there was no danger of a prosecution. 'Choose one of these guys that sets an awful store on his respectability,' he said, 'and he'll never blow on himself.'"

A deeper tinge of purple crept into Sir Bryson's puffing cheeks.

Jack lingered for a parting shot. "Any man who did get let in for such a game," he said with a great air of innocence, "hardly deserves any sympathy, does he, Sir Bryson?"

Sir Bryson was now beyond speech. He got to his feet; he pulled at his collar for more air, and he pointed mutely to the door.

Jack embraced Humpy Jull by the fire, and moaned incoherently. No amount of laughter could ease his breast of the weight of mirth that oppressed it. Never was such a joke known in the North.

During the rest of the evening Jack was in momentary expectation of an order to break camp and turn back, but none came. On the contrary, Humpy reported, from the scraps of conversation he had overheard at the dinner-table, that Sir Bryson, being convinced there was gold somewhere in the pass, was determined, with Baldwin Ferrie's assistance to do a little hunting on his own account. Jack smiled indulgently at the news. It was not long, however, before he had to change his superior attitude.

Early on the following morning he was fishing in the backwater below camp, while Baldwin Ferrie sat on a projecting point of the bank above, patiently searching the mountainsides with his glasses.

"I say," Ferrie suddenly called out, "how far is that peak over there, the pointed one?'

"About nine miles in a line from here," said Jack. "Fifteen, up the river and in."

"What's it called?"

"Tetrahedron," said Jack. "A surveyor named it."

"Do you know it at all?" asked Ferrie.

"Pretty well," said Jack, off-hand.

"The slope on this side," asked the geologist, "I suppose there is a stream that drains it? Could you take us to it?"

Jack Chanty: A Story of Athabasca

JACKCHANTY

JACK CHANTY

ITHE HAIR-CUT

IITHE COMPANY FROM "OUTSIDE."

IIITALK BY THE FIRE

IVTHE CONJUROR

VJACK HEARS ABOUT HIMSELF

VITHE PRICE OF SLEEP

VIIAN EMOTIONAL CRISIS

VIIITHE FEMININE EQUATION

IXYELLOW METAL

JACK
CHANTY

I
THE HAIR-CUT