The Riddle of
Three-Way Creek

Ridgwell Cullum

The Riddle
of
Three-Way Creek

by
Ridgwell Cullum
Author of “The Saint of the Speedway”

McClelland and Stewart
Publishers : : Toronto

Copyright, 1925,
By George H. Doran Company

The Riddle of Three-Way Creek
—Q—
Printed in the United States of America

Contents

The Riddle of
Three-Way Creek

The Riddle of
Three-Way Creek

CHAPTER I
Loyalty

THE trail fell away to the heart of a valley, which nursed in its bosom a watercourse that was frozen solid to its bed. The hummocks of the foothills rose up in every direction. Many of the hills were sheer slopes of tawny, sun-scorched grass that had lost the last of its summer hue. Some were barren crags; others, again, were covered with woodland bluffs of spruce, and pine, and the generous poplar, whose dead foliage lay thick upon the ground, stripped from parent boughs by the wintry breath of the late season.

It was a grim enough prospect. No snow had as yet fallen, but the air was cold and crisp; the grey sky was heavily charged with snow-clouds; and the stark arms of deciduous trees were sharply outlined against the skyline.

Two horsemen were moving down the frozen trail. They were riding at that distance-devouring lope which is native to the Canadian broncho. Both were clad in sheepskin coats and fur caps. And through the fog of steam that rose from the bodies of the sweating horses, on the head of one of them the yellow flash of a mounted policeman’s cap badge stood out strikingly. Corporal Andrew McFardell was escorting a prisoner to his headquarters at Calford, which lay some fifty odd miles to the south.

The policeman was in a hurry. Ten miles farther on lay Rock Point, a small farming settlement, which was to afford him a camping-ground for the night. There was little more than an hour of daylight left, and the banking snow-clouds left him anxious. It was a bad region in which to get snowbound.

McFardell was taking a chance. He had abandoned the old fur trail which was the highway from Greenwood to Calford for a short cut through the wilderness of the foothills. He knew every inch of the territory through which he was riding, but he also knew the peril of a blinding snowstorm in that confusion of hills.

They reached the depths of the valley in silence. They urged their horses to greater efforts along the level bank of the frozen stream. Then, as they faced the ascent beyond, the animals were permitted to drop back to a walk. McFardell transferred the leading-rein of his prisoner’s horse to the horn of his saddle and began to fill his pipe.

His companion observed him with eyes that smiled good-humouredly, in spite of the frigid bite of the steel shackles set fast upon his wrists. Then, as his custodian struck a match and lit his pipe, he turned his gaze alertly to the frowning sky.

“Here she comes.”

The prisoner spoke without a shadow of apprehension. It was the voice and accent of an educated man. His smiling eyes were regarding the lolling snowflakes with which the air had suddenly filled.

“We’ll get it plenty in a while,” he went on a moment later, with a pleasant, deep-throated chuckle. “You reckon it’s ten miles this way to Rock Point? It’s going to shorten our trail by five and more?” He shook his head. “Well, if this storm is going to be the thing it looks, why, I guess it might just as well be fifty miles to Rock Point. We shan’t make it this night—through these hills.”

The policeman was regarding the skyline. He, too, shook his head, but in denial.

“You think that?” he said sharply, with a quick, scornful flash of his jet-black eyes. “You’re wrong. Guess this is my territory. There’s not a hill, or bush, or creek to it I don’t know better than my prayers. There’s a top stretch up there of a mile and a half,” he went on, indicating the hill they were ascending. “Then we drop right down to Clearwater River, and pass by Joe Lark’s horse ranch. After that we pick up the old fur trail again, which you couldn’t lose in the worst blizzard that ever blew. I’m not worried a thing.”

The prisoner laughed.

“It’s good not to get worried when you’re in the hills, with the snow falling and night getting around. She’s coming thicker, so there’s no need for argument,” he added drily. “You police boys are bright on the trail. I’ve mostly had five years of Alaska, where they know a deal about snow. I claim fifty-fifty with you on that subject.”

The man’s laugh was good to hear. It was a laugh of reckless indifference, of a heart devoid of fear.

Andy McFardell made no reply. He stared straight out into the falling snow. He was a good-looking, black-haired, black-eyed man of about twenty-eight years. But his good looks had nothing of the frank openness and smiling good-nature of his prisoner. The two men were in sharp contrast. The whole cast of Andy McFardell’s face had something of the narrow sleekness of a fox, with a mouth hidden under a carefully trimmed black moustache that was heavy-lipped and ugly. It was a face to inspire confidence in the work that was his. But the best tribute his associates in the Police cared to pay him was an unanimous opinion that he was surely marked out for promotion.

His prisoner was a larger man in every sense. His furs only left visible a strong face, and the light of philosophical good-humour that looked out of his eyes. And this for all he was on his way to Calford to serve five years’ hard labour in the penitentiary.

As they reached the top of the hill, Andy McFardell turned to his companion again.

“You know I can’t get a boy like you, anyway,” he said, in a tone of frank impatience. “What in hell! Five years’ hard pan up in Alaska. Five years’ sweating blood to collect a bunch of dust that’s to hand you all the things you’ve ever dreamed about. Five years of a climate that’s calculated to freeze the vitals of a brass image. Then you pull out. And the first thing you do is to pitch everything to the devil by hitting up against the law. You’ve done worse than five years’ penitentiary up there in Alaska, and collected a big fortune; and now you’ve got five years’ real penitentiary ahead of you while your gold rots. Why? For the fool notion of helping a boy who didn’t need your help. Say, there’s times I reckon human nature’s the darnedest fool thing God A’mighty ever created.”

“Is it?”

Jim Pryse’s reply came with perfect good-temper. He was one of those blessed creatures who can always contrive to find a smile lurking in the worst tragedy with which they are beset.

“Take a hunch man,” he went on amiably. “The only fool thing God ever created is the white-livered coyote that wants to snivel its way through life, instead of getting a grip on the throat of things. I knew just the thing I was doing. You see, that boy was my brother, and the best feller I know. The skunk he’d killed was the feller who’d robbed him of a wife, and done the unholiest thing any low-down bum can do by any woman, married or single. Well, I was with him, just as though my two hands had choked the life out of that skunk instead of his. Was I going to risk seeing that boy the centre of a hanging bee? Not on your life. I held you boys off while that kid feller got away. And I held you good. And I’d have shot to kill rather than you should have laid hands on him. He’s got clear away. And, for all the law doesn’t reckon to let up once it camps on a feller’s trail, you’ll never get him. The gold you reckon is going to rot will see to that. That boy was no murderer. His act was sheer justice. I didn’t butt in. No, boy, it was better than that.”

“Man, you’re plumb crazy!” McFardell urged his horse on under his impatience. “No, no. Life’s a pretty tough proposition, anyway. And it’s only a crazy man sets out to make it tougher, whether it’s for a brother or anybody else. I s’pose there’s folks would call that sort of junk ‘loyalty.’ I guess they need to get a fresh focus. ‘Duty’ I know. Duty’s the thing demanded of us boys in my calling. That’s all right. It’s always within the law, and if you carry on, and keep an eye well skinned, it’s going to help you to the sort of things we all worry for. But the other stuff is a crazy notion, that’s as liable as not to get you hanged. I tell you you were dead wrong. You were butting in like some fool kid. That boy would never have hanged if he could have proved his case. It was the Unwritten Law, and he’d have got clear away with it. And you—you wouldn’t be riding these darned hills in a snowstorm.”

The policeman’s view only had the effect of deepening his prisoner’s smile. And the blue eyes watched the officer tolerantly as he brushed the snow from about his fur collar.

“Maybe he’d have got away with it,” Pryse said quietly, emulating his companion, wiping the snow from about his eyes with his mitted and shackled hands. “I don’t know, and I’m not worried. He’s away now, and I’m feeling good about it. Five years in penitentiary is going to hand me an elegant spell for quiet reflection, and maybe I’ll be able to locate where our viewpoints are wrong. Just now it seems to me that duty’s a sort of human-made notion that mainly has self for its principal calculation. Loyalty, as you choose to call it, seems to me to be something we can’t help. Maybe it’s built in us, the same as the things that set us crazy for the dame that seems good to us. I’m not yearning to worry it out, anyway. The thing I know is, Eddie boy is clear beyond the reach of any Mounted Police Patrol, and, that being so, I feel as good as a skipping lamb in springtime. Alaska handed me a deal better than a million dollars, and, if necessary, the whole of that bunch of dust will go to say you boys are nothing to give that boy a headache. I——Hold up, you!”

Jim Pryse’s final exclamation was flung at his floundering broncho. For one moment the creature seemed to be about to crash headlong. Then the lead-rein securing it to the horn of the policeman’s saddle snapped and released it, and, under the tremendous effort of its rider’s shackled hands, it recovered itself.

The whole catastrophe was wrought on the instant. At one moment both horses were loping leisurely over the virgin carpet of snow, with ears pricked alertly as they peered out into the grey twilight of the storm. The next the policeman’s horse had gone down like a stone, and its rider lay inert, still, a huddled fur-coated heap upon the hard-frozen ground. It was the old story of thawing snow balling in the creature’s hoofs.

The twilight was deepening. It was no longer merely the sombre grey of the snowstorm. It was the gradual passing of the last of the day. The surrounding world was almost blotted out. Here and there were faint outlines, barely perceptible, to mark some woodland bluff in the immediate vicinity; but beyond that there was nothing—nothing but a grey, impenetrable pall of falling snow lolling silently upon the breathless air.

The horses were standing apart. They had no concern for the thing that had happened. They had turned away from the drift of the storm, and stood gently rubbing their frost-rimed muzzles against each other’s sweating sides.

A few yards away Jim Pryse stood with shackled hands, gazing down at the prone figure of the man who had been conveying him to the penitentiary at Calford. There was no sign of life in the fallen man. He lay unmoving, just where he had been hurled from the saddle, and the flakes of falling snow were rapidly obscuring the black outline of his fur-clad body.

For some time the convict’s scrutiny continued. Then, of a sudden, he dropped to his knees and ran his hands over the man’s body. His movements were clumsy by reason of the shackles that held his wrists, but he persisted in his task slowly and deliberately. After a while he stood up. And his hands were grasping the cartridge belt and side-arms he had removed from about the policeman’s body. With much difficulty he bestowed the revolver in the pocket of his fur coat and proceeded to remove the cartridges from the belt. These he stowed away in another pocket. Then he dropped the belt and holster in the snow.

Again he bent over the fallen man. This time it was for the purpose of ascertaining the extent of the latter’s injuries.

But he need not have concerned himself. Corporal McFardell raised his head and looked up at him.

Quick as a flash the convict was on his feet and standing clear.

“It was a bad fall boy,” he said, and for all the twilight hid his expression there was a smile behind his words. “Guess it knocked you out. Maybe it found your head softer than the trail. There’s nothing broken?”

McFardell gazed about him a little dazedly in the failing light. Then his limbs moved. He drew up his legs and straightened them out. Then he sought to raise himself on his elbow. It was his reply to the other’s question.

Jim Pryse nodded quickly.

“That’s all right, boy. You aren’t hurt, and I’m glad. Your head’ll clear in a while, and you’ll be able to get back into the saddle and make Rock Point. But don’t do it now. Don’t move a hand or foot. You see, your gun’s in my hands,” he went on, producing the policeman’s loaded revolver, “and for they’re all shackled tight I can still pull a trigger and see straight over the sight. Maybe you’ve a key to these bracelets. But I’m not going to worry you for it. It might cause argument and a clinch, and, though I’ve your gun, I’m ready to admit you’d have the best of it in the circumstances—in a clinch. No. Just lie there, if you aren’t a fool, while I climb into my saddle. And you’ll lie there just as long as I’m within gun-range. For, sure as God, if you don’t I’ll shoot you like a dog. Do you get it? I’m getting away. Providence has handed me a chance I’m grabbing with both hands. It’s a tough chance all right, but I haven’t a grouch. Now, lie quite still till I quit.”

He backed away to the waiting horses. He paused beside his own animal, and his eyes were steadily observing the policeman who lay watching him. Then, quite suddenly, the discomfited officer was treated to an exhibition of horsemanship he was wholly unprepared for. The convict raised his fettered hands to the horn of his saddle, and, in an instant, vaulted on to his horse’s back without touching a stirrup. The threatening gun, supported in both the man’s hands still, held the prone figure covered.

Jim Pryse chuckled gleefully.

“You’ve got sense, boy,” he cried, as the other made no movement. “You certainly have. You know your duty, sure—when the drop is on you. Well, so long. I can’t wait. Now, get up quick and grab your horse. He won’t stand when mine moves off, and I haven’t a wish to leave you out here in the snow.”

He moved away, and McFardell leapt to his feet and ran to his horse. The threatening gun held him covered.

He stood for a moment holding his horse, while the outline of the moving horseman became more and more indistinct in the twilight of the storm. Then suddenly his voice sounded harshly in the dead silence of the world about him.

“You fool! Do you think you can get away? Not on your life! Take your dog’s chance! Take it! But you’ll serve those five years—and more—if the coyotes don’t feed your carcase when the storm’s through with you.”

CHAPTER II
The Marton Homestead

MOLLY MARTON was standing in the storm doorway of her home. She was gazing out at the magnificence of the winter sunset blazing on the crystal peaks of the far-off mountains. The hour of the evening meal was approaching, and the savoury odours of simple cooking pervaded the warm interior behind her. In less than an hour the glory of the sunset would have passed, and the purpling twilight would reduce the snowbound world to the bleak prospect of the reality of the season.

The girl was awaiting her father’s return from his day’s work in the timber belt. It was the time of the early winter labours, when the haulage of cordwood for the fuel store was the chief consideration. He would be along soon now, and everything was in readiness for his comfort.

Molly’s devotion to her father was almost a passion. Her mother had been dead for many years, and in all her eighteen years the girl had never known a moment when her sturdy father had not been the whole of everything to her.

The Marton homestead was far enough beyond such civilisation as city or township afforded. It was set in the heart of the lesser foothills of the Rockies. Its nearest human neighbour was an Irishman of ill-repute, Dan Quinlan, who boasted some sort of a mixed ranch about twenty-five miles farther up in the hills, and the nearest township was that of Hartspool, some twenty-odd miles to the east, where the hills came down to the prairie lands, and the waters of Whale River flooded its banks every time the spring freshet broke.

Molly loved her home, and the hard, free life of it. She knew every trick and turn of Nature’s whim in the progress of the seasons. She asked nothing better; she knew nothing better. The sturdy life of it was hers. She had been born, and bred, and deeply inured to its hardships, and she would not have changed one moment of it for the narrower delights of city life.

Of hardships there were plenty, of privations none. The fierce winters of the hill country were no easy thing to face. But every coming of the perfect summers saw an increasing yield of the abundant fruitfulness of the earth which the thrifty mind of her French-Canadian father taught him so well how to foster.

The homestead was a whole section of land, with practically unlimited grazing rights. It consisted of a log-built and thatched home, with barns and out-buildings similarly constructed. There were corrals rudely but strongly set up, and nearly one hundred acres lay under the plough. There was a water-front on a nameless mountain creek, and a stretch of prairie feed that was pretty well inexhaustible. In short, there was everything a good farmer could need to make life reasonably prosperous and endurable in a climate that knew little of moderation.

The delight died out of Molly’s grey eyes with the passing of the sunset. And she turned her gaze in the direction where the snow-trail vanished round a bluff of woodland. It was from that direction her father would come, and she looked for him now.

She was pretty and attractive in her neat, home-made clothing, that was more calculated to resist the onslaught of the elements than add charm to the delightful figure it concealed. She was dark, in an essentially French-Canadian fashion, but her eyes were merry, and her strong young body was tall and vigorous, after the manner of the Anglo-Saxon mother she scarcely remembered. She was full of an easy patience that robbed her not one whit of a wholesome joy of life. Animal spirits were always surging in her, and helped her to discover happiness in the unlikeliest moments of the life that was hers.

Movement down at the barn distracted her watch on the distant trail. It was the hired man bearing a bucket of fresh milk, steaming in the wintry air. He was a tall, lean creature of an age he would have been reluctant to admit. He wore a chin-whisker that was almost as white as the snow that overlaid the world. And he came up to the house at a gait the vigor of which suggested a youth he could never hope to see again.

“She’s runnin’ slack,” he said, in a tone that jarred harshly on the still air. “But I ’low she’s a swell beast, and she’s made a good winter feed for herself. There’s a good haf-gallon of juice that’ll be solid cream by morning.”

“Jessie’s surely a good cow, Lightning,” Molly smiled. Then her smile broadened into a laugh. “Say, it’s queer how our feelings bubble over when we get the thing we want. Jessie hands us gallons more milk in the year than any of the others. So she’s a swell beast, and we pat her, and make a fuss of her, and give her an extra dope of feed. If she gave us less, why, she’d just be any ordinary old thing, from a fool cow to something worse. It’s the way of things, eh? When folks hand us all we ask we purr over them like a bunch of cats when you stroke them right.”

The lean face of Lightning Rogers distorted itself into a grin. He loved to hear his young mistress “say things.” Often enough he failed to get the meaning underlying her laughing comments, but his twisted smile was a never-failing response.

Lightning was a derelict of a strenuous past. He had, like many another of his kind, passed through a disreputable life, to settle down to an old age that was completely occupied with the attempt to supply his old body with sufficient fuel to keep burning the smouldering fires of such life as remained to him. Maybe the hot spirit of early days had lost something of its volcanic nature, but there were still flashes of it to be discovered by those who knew him well enough. He still prided himself on his skill with his ancient guns, which, in his early cattle days, had earned him the sobriquet of “Two-gun” Rogers. He still delighted in the thought that he could take his liquor like a man, and not want to shoot up more than one town at a time when the red light of Rye whisky flooded his bemused brain. He still found satisfaction in a flow of anathema that had never yet failed him. For all his sixty years, he was still a creature of extraordinary vigor of mind and body. And nothing on earth could dissuade him from working from sun-up to sun-down, whether in the height of summer or the depth of winter.

Molly had known him as her father’s hired man nearly as long as she could remember. And even now there still remained something of the fascination for his tattered chin-whisker, which, in her early childhood, had made her love to claw it with both hands whenever she could find a position of reasonable security on a lap that somehow never seemed to have been built for the accommodation of any human body.

Lightning went off into a guffaw of laughter.

“Cats! That’s what we are,” he cried. “Full of claw’s an’ meanness if you don’t stroke us right. That’s how it was, Molly gal, when I shot the glass of Rye right out of the hand of Jim Cluer when he said my paw must ha’ bin a Dago ’cos I guessed to the whole saloon I’d a big hunch for a feed of spaghetti. It sure is a mean thing to rob a boy of his liquor. I——”

“That’s enough of your bad old past, Lightning,” Molly cried, with another laugh. “I can stand for your talk of other days till you get inside the saloons. You see,” she added slily, “the saloons are still only twenty-odd miles away, and I haven’t heard that twenty-odd miles worries you a thing with a Rye highball at the other end of it. Are you through with the chores?”

The man’s grin passed, and a look of uncertainty clouded his snapping eyes. He was afraid lest the girl was really offended.

“I’m makin’ the crik for a bar’l of water,” he said. “Then I’m through, I guess.”

Molly nodded and smiled, and the man’s look of doubt passed.

“Good. Food’s mostly ready, and father’s just coming round the bluff. I’ll take that milk right in.”

She took the pail from the man and passed back into the house. And Lightning hurried off to the barn to hook up a team to the water sled.

It was still daylight when the farmer’s team drew up at the cordwood stack. The pile of winter fuel was stored against the log walls of the corral, which was nearly three parts surrounded by a dense bluff of spruce. The intervening barns and sheds cut it off from all view of the house, where Molly was busy with the evening meal.

George Marton climbed down from his seat on the load, and stood beating warmth into his mitted hands. He stood thus for a moment, his gaze upon the tuckered flanks of his steaming team. He was a stocky creature of a year or two over forty, with a keen, dark face that was partly enveloped in a close-cut, pointed black beard that matched his hair and eyes.

After a moment he brushed away the icicles accumulated about his mouth and passed around his team. He examined their fetlocks for abrasures. He knew the damage that was possible on the snow-trail from the sharp calks with which the beasts were “roughed.” He was very careful of his team.

Satisfied with their well-being, he started to unhook the horses. The sled load would remain where it was for the night, but the team must be well and carefully tended. The tugs released, he passed on to the creatures’ heads to lead them to the barn. But he halted half-way, and a curious, startled rigidity seemed to grip his body. He stood there quite unmoving and obviously listening, an alert figure of tense-strung energy in the thick bulk of his heavy clothing.

It was a sound. It was an unusual sound that broke sharply from within the adjacent bluff. It came with the snapping of breaking brush. Then, in a moment, it ceased with the lumping sound of a falling body.

Just for an instant it was in the man’s mind to move out and investigate. But the thought passed. He remained where he was, and turning gave a sharp word of command to his patient team, which promptly moved off in the direction of the barn.

There was no doubt in the farmer’s mind; there was also no undue concern. But as his horses moved off he removed the fur mitt from his right hand, and plunged it deeply into the pocket of his capacious leather coat. It was a movement of instinct. It was a movement that was the outcome of existence in a territory where survival depended upon the capacity of the individual in defence. His muscular hand was gripping the gun that he never failed to carry somewhere secreted about his person.

The silent moments prolonged. Then the sound broke again.

The next instant George Marton found himself gazing upon the unkempt, haggard face of a fellow-creature. The face was peering out, framed by the boughs of snow-laden spruce which had been thrust aside. And a pair of hungry blue eyes were staring at him out of deep, hollow sockets.

“Well? What’s the game?” Marton spoke quietly, but there was an incisive note in his challenge. “You’re covered. Move hand or foot till I say, an’ you’re surely a dead man.”

The stranger’s reply was a laugh. But he obeyed very literally.

“Well? I’m waiting.”

Marton had not moved a muscle. But the understanding behind the stranger’s wild eyes was plain enough. The man in the bluff knew the farmer’s gun was levelled at him in the depths of his pocket.

It was a wofully hoarse voice that replied as the laugh died out.

“I’m lost. I’m starving. Another night in the open without a feed and I’ll be dead.”

Marton’s reply was instant.

“Put your hands right up over your head and come out of that bluff. Your hands up first.”

He was obeyed without demur, and the farmer beheld the steel handcuffs that were set about lacerated wrists.

“Now come right out.”

The farmer’s tone had changed ever so slightly. Maybe the sight of the lacerated wrists had excited his pity. Perhaps there was relief that the man was defenceless. At any rate, the tone had less sharpness and more humanity in it.

They stood face to face, and within two yards of each other. The stranger was the taller. He was clad in the black sheepskin coat of the police. His fur cap was pressed low down over his fairish face. There was a stubble of beard and whisker disfiguring the lower part of his face; and, on his cheekbones, and on the end of his nose, were great blisters of frost-bite. But it was the man’s hungry eyes that held the well-fed farmer.

“What’s your name?” he demanded.

“James Pryse.”

“What are those irons doing there?”

“I made a getaway from the police patrol taking me down to Calford penitentiary for five years.”

“For cattle?” The question came backed by a fierce light in the black eyes.

The stranger shook his head.

“No. My brother killed a man who’d robbed him of a wife and seduced her. I held up the police while he made his getaway.”

“Is that the truth?”

“God’s truth.”

“And the patrol?”

“Guess he’s hunting me right now.”

“He—wasn’t hurt?”

“Not a hair of his head.”

Marton nodded.

“Then come right along. I’ll do what I can.”

CHAPTER III
A Real Samaritan

IT was the dim-lit interior of a lean-to built against the big barn. It was the farmer’s workshop, littered with the tools that served his simple needs. Marton was propped against a sturdy, home-made table that also served the purposes of a bench. He was gazing down in the yellow lamplight at the famished creature squatting beside the small wood-stove on an up-turned box.

It was a painful spectacle. He had realised from his brief catechism that the man was educated. Yet he sat there devouring a great platter of hot stew at a speed and in a fashion such as he had never before witnessed in any human creature. The wolfishness of it was terrible. The man was literally starving.

Marton was a man of swift decision. And his decision had long since been taken. The stranger had spoken truth when he said that another night in the open without food would be his last. He had committed a crime against the law, and had been sentenced for it. And now he had made a getaway. Well, that crime by no means found the farmer on the side of the law. On the contrary, it found him on the side of this poor, starving wreck. And he meant to help him all he knew. That is, if subsequent talk failed to inspire doubt.

So he had brought him to this little workshop, where the stove was still alight, and had released him from the lacerating shackles. He had sought out Lightning and warned him not to intrude. Then he had forthwith passed on to the house, and told Molly just sufficient to account for his demand for the necessary food with which to restore the convict to some semblance of well-being. But in all this he gave no clue to the feelings which the encounter had inspired.

The convict cleared up the last of the gravy by wiping the platter out with bread. He devoured the last crumb of the bread, and took a long drink from the pannikin of steaming tea that was on the ground beside him. Then he looked up with an irresistible smile in his eyes.

“Gee! That’s swell!” he said. “The liquor doesn’t count so much, except it’s hot. Snow-water’s poor sort of stuff, but it’s drink. I’ll never forget you gave me that feed, whoever you are. I hadn’t eaten for seven days and seven nights.”

Then his gaze lowered to the hideous lacerations of his wrists.

“They’ve been frozen again and again,” he said.

“And they’ll rot if you ain’t careful.”

“I s’pose they will.”

Marton bestirred himself. He drew out of a pocket the bandages and ointments he had procured from Molly.

“We best not try to heal ’em,” he said. “You’ll get worse trouble that way. This dope’ll maybe save ’em from gangrene, and the bandages’ll keep the frost out of ’em—and the dirt. It’s the best I know. Here, we’ll wash ’em first.”

For ten minutes or so the farmer worked with the skill of long experience in frost-bites. He worked in silence, and his patient offered neither comment, nor protest, nor expression of pain. Then, when the operation was completed, Marton sent him back to his seat and returned to his position on the bench. He lit his pipe.

“Well?” he said, in that meaning fashion so comprehensive in difficult circumstances.

The convict shook his head.

“What’re you going to do?”

The blue eyes were smiling, but a shadow of anxiety was looking out of them.

“If I hand you feed and loan you a broncho, can you make a clear getaway without involving me with the Police?”

“D’you mean that?”

The smile in the convict’s eyes was radiant.

Marton still gave no sign of any feeling. He smoked on heavily, his eyes coldly expressionless.

“I don’t say things without meaning ’em, I guess,” he said, in the same even tone, which never seemed to vary very much. “Ther’s just two things I can do. One’s hold you right here till the Police get around and relieve me of you. The other’s to help you beat it to a place of safety—that ain’t the penitentiary. Anyway, I’ve a hunch for the man who can kill his wife’s seducer, and for those that helped him.”

The man at the stove drew a deep breath. His condition was utterly forgotten. The thought of all that might still lie ahead of him when he again set out on the winter trail gave him not a tremor of disquiet. He was thinking only of the heavily built creature smoking his pipe against the table, and wondering. The sphinx-like face was impossible to read.

After a few silent moments he stirred.

“Won’t you hand me your name?” he asked almost diffidently.

“Sure. George Marton. Do you feel like talking?”

For some moments Jim Pryse gazed up silently into the face of the stranger who had so unexpectedly become his benefactor. His emotion was such that for awhile the talk he had been bidden to seemed impossible. It was all a miracle—a veritable miracle. A few short hours ago the last shadow of hope had been extinguished. For days he had been wandering about interminable hills, with the thermometer more than ten below zero. His horse had long since been foundered and abandoned, while he essayed to reach some sort of shelter on foot. Oh, he had made his escape from Corporal McFardell surely enough, but the hell he had endured as the price of that escape had been something he had never thought that human body could endure.

The short days, the desperately long nights; no matches to kindle a fire, no blankets, nothing but the merciful sheepskin coat which the police had provided him with; no food of any sort, and only snow-water to drink; nothing, nothing but his will to flounder on through a world of snow and ice and a maddening sea of uninhabited hills. The terror of those last days had been almost insupportable. And only was it a sort of grim philosophy which had kept him going. A hundred times he could have lain down and let the temperature lull his weary, starving body and mind to that final peace which would have saved him from his agony. But he had kept to his weary feet, that, as he had told himself through his clenched teeth, he might go down fighting.

And now, now that was all behind him. The scars of it all were there. Those manacles. The bite of the frost upon his face and hands. Then the dreadful sense of bodily weariness. Even now he felt that the only thing he desired was sleep—just sleep. And yet——

No, there was no sleep yet. This man, this queer, unsmiling creature had offered him help, had given him food and had named no price. God! There was no price adequate that he could pay him. What was it? Where was the sign of this silent creature’s humanity? He passed a bandaged hand over his forehead and thrust his fur cap back.

Then he began to talk, and with talking the desire for sleep passed away. He talked to the man who sucked silently at his pipe and offered never a word of comment. And his talk was of that queer history which had brought him to the gates of the penitentiary. He told everything without any reservation, even to the fact of the great wealth he had accumulated during his five years up in the gold country of Alaska. He felt in his wave of gratitude that he could do no less.

“You see,” he finished up, “I’m handing you all this because I don’t fancy leaving you with a shadow of doubt. I’m a mighty rich man. So rich I don’t fancy you can guess. But I’m not the sort that figures to offer you a thing for what you reckon to do for me. But I want to say this, and I mean it all; there just isn’t a thing I wouldn’t raise hell to do for you or yours any old time, and for just as long as I live. You’ve handed me life and hope. Hope! You don’t know what it means till you’ve lost it. Hope! Think of life without it. No, you couldn’t. No one could. Death a thousand times sooner—without hope. Gee, I’m tired!”

Suddenly he thrust his elbows on his knees and dropped his chin into the palms of his bandaged hands.

The farmer bestirred himself. He knocked out his pipe, and, moving over to a small pile of wood, replenished the stove. Then he stood up, and, for the first time, the convict beheld a twinkle in the keen black eyes.

“I wanted that story, Pryse,” he said, addressing the other by name for the first time. “And you’ve told it good. I’m not left guessing. Well, boy, I’m going right up to the house now. I’ll be back along with blankets in awhile. There’s wood right here that’ll keep the frost out of your bones. You’re welcome to it all. Then you can sleep good. I’ll have my gal, Molly, pack you up a big bunch of food by morning. I’ll hand you dollars to pay your way with, in case that wealth of yours has been left behind. And you can have a broncho that’ll worry the trail a month without let-up, and live on the dead grass it can scrape from under the snow. If you can make your getaway with that outfit you’re welcome to it. If you fancy it, there’s a shot-gun and some shells that’ll maybe help you to pick up some feed. That’s about all I can see to do. And you’ll have to make that getaway after you’ve eaten good in the morning. You won’t see a soul but me till you’ve quit here. I’ll hand you the best trail to make. That’s all. Now I’ll get along to my supper.”

He moved towards the door, but paused at the sound of the voice of the weary creature beside the stove.

“Say, I want—I want——”

Pryse broke off lamentably, and Marton beheld the piteous spectacle of a strong man with hot tears welling up into his eyes.

“Don’t say a word, boy,” the farmer said, in his curious, even tone. “Not a word. I know how it feels. Forget it.”

And a radiant light in the twinkling eyes entirely transformed the unsmiling expression to which the convict had grown accustomed.

George Marton turned again to the door and passed out. And as he went there was a picture in his mind of a pair of fine blue eyes that gazed after him through a veil of hot tears of which the man was unashamed.

CHAPTER IV
A Stroke of Fate

THE hush of the woods was undisturbed by the rhythmic clip of the farmer’s axe. The cloak of winter seemed to muffle the whole world, and transform it into a dour desolation, fit only to harbour the timber wolves and the coyotes which haunted the foothills.

A foot and more of snow lay everywhere in the open. Mounting snowdrifts were driven against every obstruction. The pine bluffs were laden with a roofing of crystal whiteness, and the greater hills had become a world of snow, which would remain unchanging throughout the winter.

But George Marton was without concern for Nature’s desperate moods. He knew she was a simple blusterer, governed by laws she had no power to defy. She might rage or smile. It was only the weakling she could ever hope to bluff. No, he never permitted himself an anxious thought in the life that was his. He moved on with machine-like precision, and his undisturbed methods brought him a slowly but steadily rising measure of success.

For days now he had been labouring in the timber belt, hewing, splitting, without pause for aught but those scheduled moments when the needs of his stout body must be ministered to. And thus the stack of cordwood stored at his homestead had risen to the proportions which experience had taught him were necessary.

The sun had already set, and in something over an hour darkness would have fallen. His day’s tally of cordwood was stacked on his double-bob sleigh, and his team stood ready and eager for the journey that would terminate at their snug barn.

Ordinarily he would have set out forthwith, and left the next day’s work for the day to which it belonged. But for once in his life he had decided to prolong his labours. The reason was that less than a week ago he had lost half a day’s work because of his charity to an escaping convict, and his spirit rebelled against that loss. So he turned again to the standing timber, determined to employ the last hour of daylight, and make the homeward journey in the darkness.

So the gleaming axe, with its razor edge, kept on at its work of destruction. And in that hour twenty more of the youth of the forest lay sprawled in the clearing. With the fall of the twentieth the tireless man glanced up at the western sky. Already the starry sheen of night was looking down at him.

But he turned back at once to a standing trunk that was a good deal larger than those he had already felled. He measured its height with a swift, upward glance, and ran his thumb over the edge of his axe. Then he hunched himself, and flung his weapon at the work.

It was a strange scene in the growing darkness. The swing of the axe was faultless. There was not an ounce of wasted strength in the blows which fell on the rapidly widening cut at the base of the trunk. There was not a single blow that fell other than where it was intended. Each cut told, and each cut came nearer and nearer to the soft heart of precious white timber. Just for an instant there was a pause, to measure again the fall of the tree. Then he spat on his hands and returned to his work.

The axe swung aloft and descended into the heart of the tree. It rose again. Again it fell. Again and again the cutting edge hewed out the flying chips. Then, in a moment, the snowy crest of foliage swung over, and the tearing of uncut wood crashed sharply. The man stepped to move clear. And then—and then——

It was done in less than a flash of the falling axe. The disaster came before the doomed man could utter a sound. That step back, which had been made a thousand times in the work he knew so well, should have carried him to safety. But the darkness robbed him of that certainty of vision that was always his.

His foot struck heavily against a prone log. It struck with sufficient force to upset his balance. He sought to recover himself and jump clear. It was too late. The falling tree crashed to the ground, bearing him with it. And he lay pinned beneath it, face downwards, with the great trunk crushing his shoulders and chest under its enormous weight.

Night had descended upon the farm, and the lamplight of the living-room threw into relief the slight figure of Molly as she stood in the open doorway. She was talking to Lightning, and her tone was anxious. There was no smile in her eyes. She was urgent, and the trouble in her mind was something which, in all her eighteen years, she had never known before.

“It’s no use, Lightning,” she said at last. “Father’s never been late like this. It’s been dark more than two hours, and the bluff isn’t more than a half-hour away. Ther’s not a thing to keep him. Jane and Blue Pete should have hauled him to home nearly two hours ago. I just can’t stand it. That’s all. Beat it and hook up the cutter. Hook up my pinto. She’ll get us out to the bluff quicker than the other beasts. Get a great big move on. I—I—can’t stand waiting around. And his supper’s baking itself to death.”

“Won’t you give him another haf-hour, Molly gal?” Lightning urged. “I can’t ever see reason to jump in till you need. Your father’ll raise hell with us. Guess he’s a hunch for folks keeping tight to their own business, an’ not buttin’ in wher’ they ain’t needed. Won’t——”

Molly’s gaze came back abruptly from the dark direction of the invisible snow-trail. And there was a cold look in her eyes which silenced the man instantly.

“Beat it, Lightning, an’ do as I say,” she cried sharply. “Get your old fur coat on, and a robe. You’ll need to come along. I’ll fix the rest I need.”

The man offered no further protest. He realised something which before he had not rightly understood. This girl was in a complete state of panic. Had he been more imaginative he would perhaps have understood. George Marton should have returned to his supper at the proper hour. Never within his daughter’s memory had he failed to do so before.

Lightning went off in a hurry, and this lean, queer creature’s hurry was something astonishing. He was back at the door of the homestead with the pinto mare and the cutter before Molly had completed her preparations.

She came to the door carrying a small wicker basket. She stood clad in a long beaver coat, with a fur cap pressed low down over her ears. Her storm collar was turned up and secured about her neck by a long woollen scarf, and with her darkly-fringed grey eyes anxiously peering out into the night, she was a vision that warmed the old choreman’s heart under his tattered buffalo coat.

“No sign?” she said a little hopelessly. “Still no sign.” Then she sighed deeply. “Something’s happened, Lightning. I just know it.”

Lightning cleared his throat.

“I’m not worrying, Molly, gal,” he said, with a poor attempt to restore the smile to her anxious eyes. “But I sure am feeling bad about the thing he’s goin’ to hand us when we meet him on the trail.”

The girl climbed into the driving-seat and took the lines from the man.

“We aren’t going to meet him on the trail,” she said, in a low, significant tone, as she eased her hand to the impatient mare.

Out of a cloudless sky a myriad of coldly winking stars peered down upon the snowbound earth. No breath of wind came to stir the snow-laden tree-tops. The cold was intense, and zero had long since been left behind by the sinking mercury.

The clearing in the timber belt was littered with sprawling trunks. They lay still—so still. Near by to them, drawn up in the shelter of standing timber, was the team still hitched to its load of cordwood. The horses stood in their harness quite unmoving, their great heads drooping in sleep. They had waited and waited for the sharp tones of the voice they knew, and then, with equine philosophy, had permitted their dream world to overwhelm them.

Drawn up near by stood the dim outline of a cutter, with its single pinto mare. The mare had been driven hard, but tied fast to a sapling, and wrapped in the comfort of a fur robe, she, too, was resting quietly, with down-drooped head.

In the starlight two darkly-outlined figures crouched about the heavy end of a fallen tree. Near to them lay the shining head of an axe where it had fallen from the grasp of the man who had used it so indefatigably. The two figures uttered no sound as they laboured. Both were prying the log with improvised levers, which were tree-limbs of stout proportions.

It was Lightning who had made the terrible discovery. In the half-light he had literally tripped over the body of the crushed farmer. It was a hideous moment for both. But for Molly it was a time of complete despair. One look at the position of the fallen man had confirmed her worst fears, and, with a cry of agony, she had flung herself upon her knees, embracing the remains of the sturdy parent who had been her all in life.

The loyal Lightning had proved himself the man he was in emergency. With harsh words and rough hands he had forced the girl to abandon her wild demonstration of grief. Then his practical mind had shown her the thing that must be done.

Now his plan was being operated. It was terribly hazardous if life yet remained beneath that log. They worked silently at their levers, and inch by inch the log was lifted, and blocked up with carefully placed tree-limbs. At last the reward they were seeking came to them. The log was sufficiently raised to free the crushed body.

Slowly, and with infinite care, the still form of George Marton was drawn clear of the tree. But no sound escaped the injured man as they moved him. And the omen of it shattered the girl’s last shadow of hope. She crouched on her knees beside him, passing one hand tenderly over the crushed and broken body in a vain endeavour to estimate the damage. And the while Lightning had gone back to the cutter for her basket of remedies.

When the man returned with the basket, Molly had abandoned her examination. She gazed up at the tall, shadowy figure standing over her. The expression of her despairing eyes was hidden in the darkness. But the tone of her voice smote the loyal creature to the depths of his old heart.

“He’s—dead,” she cried. “Oh, Lightning, he’s dead. And he was all I had.”

CHAPTER V
The Sentence

THE cold fabric of discipline at the Police Headquarters at Calford had been shocked into a flutter of excited interest and anticipation. The machine-like routine of police life had, for a moment, reacted to a more human aspect of itself. Interested comment passed from lip to lip, and widely conflicting were the opinions expressed. But, curiously enough, there was pretty general unanimity amongst the lower ranks of the Force in a feeling of quiet satisfaction. Corporal Andrew McFardell had been placed under arrest, and, at “Orderly-Room” that morning, he would be tried and sentenced for permitting the escape of his prisoner while on escort duty from Greenwood to Calford.

Alone in his barrack-room, which had been his charge for so long, Corporal McFardell was more than sick at heart. But over and above everything else he was smarting under a sense of intolerable injustice.

It was four days since he had returned to barracks. And before that he had driven himself and his horse well-nigh to death for ten days, scouring the snowy desolation of the hill country in search of the man who had tricked him so badly in his moment of helplessness. The man had vanished; completely and utterly disappeared. He had made good an escape which McFardell had deemed impossible. The man was a stranger to the country; he was shackled; his horse was none too fresh. How was it possible?

McFardell had expected to discover his frozen body at least. But his ten days of superhuman effort had left him unrewarded. So he had been driven to return to Calford, his horse well-nigh foundered, and himself in little better case, to make his report, and to be promptly placed under arrest for his pains. Then he had been forced to place himself on the sick list, to be attended for the frost which had bitten him almost to the bone. And now, rested and recovered, he was awaiting that brazen summons of the bugle for the thing that was yet to come.

It was curious. As the man lolled upon the brown blankets of his bed his resentment and bitterness were in no way directed against the prisoner who was the cause of his disaster. It was anger, furious anger, against the authority which took practically no cognisance of any circumstance in a case of failure amongst those who acknowledged it.

For years he had laboured and schemed, sacrificing everything to “duty.” Step by step he had gained his advancement by sound, patient work, until now he stood first on the roll of seniority for his sergeant’s stripes. Now he knew that all that record would have to go by the board. It would count for practically nothing. He must face a cold tribunal, governed only by police regulations, which were devoid of all human sentiment. He must accept the last ounce of punishment for the loss of his prisoner for which they happened to call. He would be punished in just the same degree as any other whose record was incomparable with his. The injustice of it maddened him. In his bitterness he claimed the right to treatment in accordance with his record of years of good work.

But that was the Andrew McFardell whom his associates knew. That was the man who, for all his good police work, had failed to inspire any warmth of regard amongst those with whom he worked. That was why there was excitement, and anticipation, and a sense of quiet satisfaction in the thought of the trial that was to take place that morning.

Andrew McFardell took no thought for anything or anybody but himself.

As the last harsh note of the bugle died out on the crisp winter air McFardell sprang alertly from his bunk. He set his fur cap on his head and buttoned the shining buttons of his red jacket. Then, with a swift glance round the deserted room, he passed hurriedly out in response to the summons.

On the wooden side-walk just outside the Superintendent’s office Corporal McFardell sprang to “Attention” in response to the Sergeant-Major’s barking order. He felt that a hundred pairs of eyes were peering out at him, prompted by a curiosity that had little friendliness in it. He was under no illusion. Popularity with his comrades was a thing he had treated with quiet contempt. He had never concerned himself with their opinion. The only good opinion he had sought had been of those in authority over him. And now he knew he was about to learn the true value of the favour of the gods he had set up. He pulled himself together, and thrust every other thought aside, concentrating upon the task of combating regulations whose cold framing left him so little hope.

As the little procession lined up facing Superintendent Leedham Branch’s desk the Sergeant-Major snatched the fur cap from the prisoner’s head. It was a further indignity demanded by regulations.

The Superintendent was contemplating the charge sheet before him. He did not even glance at the prisoner. On either side of him and slightly behind his chair, stood the two Inspectors of his command. They were very definitely regarding the prisoner, but in that cold sphinx-like, unrecognising fashion which the discipline governing them all had taught them.

It was a bare, uninteresting room, with calsomined walls and a flooring of bare boards. There was just sufficient furnishing to meet the needs of administration. The Superintendent’s desk was a simple whitewood table, and the chair he occupied behind it was of bentwood. Immediately behind him stood a fireproof safe, and, distributed about, where necessary, stood other whitewood tables and bentwood chairs for the use of Inspectors and staff. The whole atmosphere of the place epitomised the lives of these men, who spared themselves as little as the criminals it was their work to deal with.

Superintendent Branch seemed in no hurry to deal with the case. Perhaps his attitude was calculated. He continued his reading, while McFardell regarded him with anxiously speculative eyes.

At last the man behind the desk spoke, without looking up. He was a clean-cut, clean-shaven creature, with fair hair and pale blue eyes. He was possibly forty. He was tall, slight, and his whole appearance suggested energy and capacity.

“Corporal McFardell, the charge against you is one of gross neglect of duty,” he said, in a quiet, colourless voice. “On November 8th you permitted the escape of the prisoner, James Pryse, sentenced to five years’ imprisonment with hard labour, while on escort duty from Greenwood to Calford. You are further charged with absenting yourself from duty from November 8th to the 18th, contrary to General Order 9075A2 governing the escort of prisoners by trail. What have you to say? Are you guilty or not guilty?”

“Guilty on both charges, sir.”

McFardell’s reply came on the instant. He knew he had no alternative. There was, however, a sharpness in his tone that gave some indication of the alertness, the readiness to defend, that lay behind his words.

“Sergeant-Major Ironside.”

The man at the desk looked up interrogatively at the first witness. And the Sergeant-Major cleared his throat.

“Sir, on the morning of the 18th Corporal McFardell rode into barracks and reported the loss of the prisoner, James Pryse. He stated that the date of the man’s escape was the 8th. When I questioned him as to the delay of his return to barracks he explained he had been riding the hill country in an attempt to recapture the escaped prisoner, who, he believed, could not have made a clear getaway in the snowstorm that was prevailing at the time of his escape. The Corporal’s horse was in bad shape, and the Veterinary Sergeant reports that he had been pretty well ridden to death. I placed Corporal McFardell under arrest, and reported at once to the Orderly Officer of the day.”

The Sergeant-Major’s evidence was given in the unemotional manner of an automaton. He had given the outline of the facts in the manner his duty demanded. There was no exaggeration; there was no softening. Superintendent Branch turned to the prisoner.

“Have you any question to ask Sergeant-Major Ironside?”

“None, sir.”

Forthwith the Superintendent turned to Inspector Kalton.

“You were Orderly Officer on the 18th, Mr. Kalton?”

The Inspector also gave a slight clearing of the throat. Then, very briefly, he corroborated his subordinate’s evidence. As the prisoner had no questions to put, for a few reflective moments, Superintendent Branch gazed steadily up into his face.

“You have heard the evidence, Corporal,” he said at last, in that cold fashion that was so desperately discouraging. “What have you to say in your defence?”

Not a detail of the manner in which Orderly-Room cases were dealt with was new to Corporal McFardell. He knew the whole ritual by heart. His years of experience had brought him into contact with it often enough. But this was the first time he had occupied the central place as the prisoner. His whole concern at that moment was how far he might hope to escape the full penalty due to him as laid down by General Orders. He pinned his last hope to the extenuating nature of the circumstances of his disaster. He believed that no one would have fared better under his conditions. And, furthermore, he felt he had done all he knew to recover the escaped man. He had striven till the last of his bodily resources were exhausted. He felt that his case was good. Superintendent Branch was a just man.

He knew that the extreme penalty for his crime against regulations was reduction to the ranks, imprisonment, and dismissal from the Force without character. If he could escape with reduction to the ranks he would be happy. If imprisonment were added he would not despair. Dismissal from the Force was the thing he dreaded most of all. It would be the end of all things for him. For he had looked to make the Force the whole of his career. A “bobtail” discharge was the nightmare of the mounted policeman. So he, like those others, cleared his throat before speaking, and hurled himself to his defence.

“Sir,” he began, a little hoarsely as he passed his tongue across his thick lips to moisten them, “I’ve no sort of defence to offer beyond the letter of the report which I addressed to you as my commanding officer on my return to barracks on the 18th. You’ll have read it before this, sir, and I want to say that every word I wrote there is just the God’s truth. I was knocked out cold by my horse falling, through the balling snow in his hoofs. And I guess there was no power in the world to prevent the man getting the drop on me while I was unconscious. When I woke up he’d got me covered, so I couldn’t do a thing. I just had to lie there while he got clear away in the half-light of the snowstorm. The moment I had the chance I was on my horse and after him. And I didn’t let up till my horse was done, and I couldn’t sit a saddle right. I’ve been through hell to recover that prisoner, sir. Give me a chance, sir, to get after that feller again. I don’t ask to escape punishment. I know I’ll lose my stripes, and maybe I’ll go to the guard-room for a spell. But for God’s sake, sir, don’t discharge me from the Force. It’s the only way I can hope to get after that feller right. Hand me the chance to get after him. It’s all I ask. It’s him and me, sir. Whatever happens, it’s that way just as long as I live. If you keep me in the Force I can do it right. It’s my one big chance. That’s all, sir.”

The passionate sincerity of McFardell’s appeal was wholly convincing. His words came hotly, and regardless of the usual formalities. But there was no sign of the relenting he looked for in the eyes observing him so coldly. With his last word there came an ominous shake of the head from the man behind the table.

“I’ve read your report very carefully, Corporal,” he said coldly. “I’m quite convinced that it is the whole truth, and you are to be commended that that is so. But, unfortunately, for you the truth is very damning to your case. Your horse fell and threw you, and you were rendered unconscious. No one can blame you for that. Had the prisoner made his getaway while you were unconscious I should have dismissed the charges laid against you. But he did not do so. He apparently only had time to disarm you before you came to, which suggests you were only momentarily stunned. Then, when he held you covered, you made no resistance. You apparently did nothing. In fear of your life you let him get away. Do you understand my meaning? There is the moral charge of cowardice preferred against you. Your report condemns you so flagrantly that I shall inflict the maximum penalty. You are reduced to the ranks. You will be confined to the guard-room for two months, with hard labour. And—your case will go up to the Commissioner with a recommendation that you be dismissed from the Force.”

“Right turn! Quick march!”

The Sergeant-Major’s commands rang out. It was like the hideous toll of the prison bell after an execution.

Superintendent Branch, his officers, and Sergeant-Major Ironside had been discussing the escape of James Pryse. Orderly-Room was over. Trooper McFardell was already in the charge of the guard, and about to begin his two months of hard labour. His case was already relegated to the orders of the day. And, in so far as he was concerned, the matter was dismissed from the minds of his superiors. They had no thought for the career which their discipline had devastated.

“You know, Sergeant-Major, it’s a far more serious matter than I can say,” Superintendent Branch declared at the conclusion of the discussion, with an emphasis which his associates recognised as his most profound danger-signal. “Were this man, Pryse, an ordinary criminal, it would leave me less disturbed. Through him the Police prestige has suffered a double blow. Think back. What is the position? A murder is committed—a clear, frank, deliberate shooting by a man who, maybe, felt justified. That’s all right. His brother, this Pryse, fresh from Alaska, is staying in his house in Greenwood. The murderer has no thought of a getaway. He knows our people are coming for him, and he reckons to stand his trial. We know all that. Meanwhile this wild man, James Pryse, gets at him. He plans his escape and prepares. When our men come along, the house is transformed into a veritable fortress, and we are forced to storm it. Well, eventually we get in, and what do we find? This man, James Pryse, simply laughing at us. Which means that the whole of the town of Greenwood was laughing with him. It was all a game. Our man had been got away before we came. And the whole pantomime of barricading the house was performed to give him added time, and delay our ultimate pursuit. That all came out at Pryse’s trial. That’s bad enough. But now this later escape of Pryse himself is ten times worse. We’ve lost so much ground I simply daren’t think of it. We shall have the Commissioner here to investigate our discipline and efficiency. And very rightly so. Things have got to be jerked up, and at once. I shall hold myself responsible that this is so. And I shall hold my officers no less responsible, and you, too, Sergeant-Major.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Sergeant-Major’s face reflected the storm which the other’s words had set boiling behind his hard grey eyes. His superiors all knew his swift methods of passing any reprimand he might receive on to the troops under him.

A grim light was shining in the eyes that regarded the rugged face of the harshest Sergeant-Major in the Police Force.

“Now, let there be no mistake, Sergeant-Major. No mistake whatever,” the man at the desk went on, in a carefully calculated tone. “The prisoner, Pryse, has to be recaptured. If there is any further failure, you will have to answer for it. Do you understand me? How many patrols have you got out?”

“Three, Sir.”

“Three? You will treble that number. You will treble it, if you have to return half the staff to duty. You must go through the territory within a hundred and fifty miles of this post with a fine comb, and any failure in efficiency in the work will be dealt with in the most rigorous fashion. See to it. These patrols must be on the trail by noon. That will do.”

CHAPTER VI
The Gateway of Hope

A WORLD of smiling hope looked out of the man’s tired blue eyes. The sky was brilliant, and flecked with fine-weather cloud. The air was full of a warmth that was increasing with each passing day. The whole world about him was bursting with renewed life. He felt that the battle had been fought out. At long last the prospect of ultimate victory was infinitely more than a vain hope.

His face and body were painfully thin. But the full ravages, induced by the privations he had suffered during the desperate months of winter, were largely concealed under a thick growth of grey beard and whisker. His hair was long, with scarcely a streak of its original colour remaining. And its white strands reached to the decayed collar of a coat that would have ill-become the body of a “hoboe.” His nether garments were worn and patched, and painfully soil-stained. But his thin body was unbowed, and the spirit looking out of his eyes was undismayed.

Near by his horse, in little better shape than himself, was hungrily devouring the new-born shoots of sweet grass. Its long winter coat was heavily matted and mud-discoloured. There were the disfiguring scars of saddle-galls about its withers and under its forelegs. And its whole condition was illuminating as to the part the wretched creature had played in the desperate battle for existence which they had fought out together.

Just behind the man, in a shelter of a pinewood bluff, stood a crazy habitation. It was a patched ruin which must have been set up many years ago by some other wanderer seeking hiding within the mountain world. It was log-built and box-like, without windows or smoke-stack. It was just a shelter against the storms of winter, with sufficient space in its hovel-like interior to admit of accommodation for horse as well as man. A small fire was spluttering before the doorway, and a cooking-pot stood steaming over it.

The man had reached that condition of endurance when bodily comfort no longer concerned him. The smiling sun, the warm rains that had swept the snows of winter from the face of an earth that was lusting to produce, the stirring life that was in full evidence about him—these were the things which preoccupied him, to the exclusion of everything, and afforded him an answer to the question that had dogged his every thought for months.

Jim Pryse had christened his hiding-place the Valley of Hope. And, in the weary months he had spent within its shelter, he had buoyed himself by planning a dream world within its bosom—a whimsical, fantastic world that satisfied a quiet sense of humour that never wholly deserted him.

But this had been at a time when he knew not from day to day the fate that was in store for him. This had been when storm and blizzard buried the world about him feet deep in snow, when the depths below zero ate into his bones, and such fire as he possessed was insufficient to thaw the frost rime that whitened the whole interior of his quarters.

Now his dream had become a real, vital purpose to him. Now it was altogether different. Now the great gateway of the valley stood wide open in the brilliant spring sunlight, and revealed the wonder of the world within. It was a glorious, fertile plain of sweet grass, that reached so far out towards the warming south that its confines lay beyond the reach of human eyes.

It was a radiant picture, alive with a busy, fussing, mating, feathered concourse. It was dotted with woodland bluffs of spruce, and pine, and poplar, and tamarack, and a wealth of undergrowth already bursting into full leaf. There were wide pools of snow-water standing in the troughs which lay between the rollers of new-born grass, a happy feeding and playing ground for the swarming geese and mallard. Splitting it down the centre, winding a crazy course over the line of least resistance, a surging mountain torrent tore joyously at its muddied banks in a mad desire to release its flooding waters. East and west the limits of the valley were frowning with dark forest-belts that came down from the mountain slopes. Southward the gateway revealed nothing but a broad, sunlit highway.

The gateway itself was marked by two sheer cliffs, black with the weathering of ages. Standing half a mile apart, and rising to immense heights, they embraced between them a spread of dense forest, which, in turn, concealed the cascading torrent whose source was the world of eternal snow above. The meaning of the gateway was simple of explanation. Beyond a doubt the great cliffs were all that remained of a saddle of hill, linking twin mountains, which had ultimately yielded to the fierce erosion to which the melting snows had subjected it.

Beyond the northern confines of the valley, somewhere behind a barrier of lesser hills, one great snowy head reared itself to the clouds. Similarly, to the south-west another stood up at a height that could not have been less than twelve thousand feet. Then, to the east, there were two others. They were monsters whose purpose was clearly that of cradle posts for the valley they sheltered between them.

It was all far-hidden by the secret approach up Three-Way Creek from the east. It was all even deeper lost to the hill and forest country of British Columbia, to the west. Devoid of any highway approach, it suggested the hiding-place it had become. It was one of Nature’s remotenesses completely disguised at the moment of furious labour when the world was born.

Pryse bestirred himself. Food and drink were aflood in this home that was his. And food and drink summed up his needs at the moment. He moved out into the full sunlight, and the dripping soil oozed under his ill-shod feet.

At his first movement his horse flung up its head. Its ears were pricked with all the alertness of its well-being. Its eyes were full and bright, for all its body was little better than skin and bone. There was inquiry in the soft-gazing depths. To the man it almost seemed as if they contained reproach.

“Don’t worry, old feller,” he said, as though speaking to a well-loved companion whose comprehension was beyond question. “Get right on with your feed. Eat it all. I’d like to see you so pot-bellied I couldn’t get the cinchas around you right.”

He moved on till he stood close up to the animal. Then he laid a caressing hand upon its attenuated neck.

“There’s no saddle to-day,” he went on. “Dan’s coming along, if he doesn’t get held up by a wash-out. He’s bringing tobacco, and matches, and tea, and a bunch of cartridges, so we can shoot up some of those dandy mallards. Maybe he’s bringing us news, too. And if it’s good news it’s liable to lead us to a place where there’s a bunch of oats for you, and something that’ll likely help me to look more like a man. We’ve waited and stuck it out, old feller, you and me. And I sort of feel there’s a good time coming. I’ll just get right along and haul up the lines in the creek, and see what sort of eat I’ll make.”

The horse rubbed its shaggy head against his thread-bare coat. No doubt it meant nothing. Yet it almost seemed as if the creature understood the feelings lying behind the smiling words. Pryse moved away.

He hurried out across the moist grass, and his step was light and vigorous. At that moment the world looked good to him. He was hungry. He was always hungry. And he knew from past experience, ever since the thaw had come, that it would be only a question of how many fish his night-lines had collected.

He reached the undergrowth at the river bank and disappeared within it. And only the sound of breaking bush came back as he thrust his way. He was gone for nearly half an hour. And when he reappeared, it was to be greeted by the hail of a horseman waiting for him at the edge of the woods that contained his winter home.

“Say, thanks be to the Holy Mackinaw this is going to be the last trip I’m makin’ up Three-Way Creek,” the man bellowed across at him, in a tone and accent that was unmistakably Irish. “I’ve beat it through muskeg that had me right up to the cinchas. There’s enough flood water by the way to drown a whole darn world, and the skitters are crazy for good Irish blood. Say, boy, I come along to tell you you’re going to get out right away.”

Jim Pryse hurried across to his visitor with his bunch of strung trout. He looked up into eyes as blue as his own. The man was infinitely bigger than himself. He was a weather-stained creature round about forty, clad in the hard clothing of the prairie. And his big horse was well fed and cared for.

Dan Quinlan swung out of the saddle, and began to unship a pair of bulging saddle-bags.

Pryse watched him.

“Do you mean all that, Dan? About my going, I mean?” he asked, in a voice that was not quite steady.

The Irishman answered him over his shoulder while he tugged at the rawhide lashings.

“Mean it? Faith, I do that, man,” he said, in his big-voiced way. Then, the saddle-bags released, he held them out. “Beat it, and empty that truck right out. Ther’s soap there. But for the love of St. Patrick I can’t get your need of it. There’s a razor, too. Maybe it’s a shade better than a hay mower, which would seem to be just an elegant proposition for that carpet hanging to your face. Ther’s tobac an’ lucifers, a flask of Rye, and all the junk we folks reckon fits our bellies better than hay. Just empty it right out, and bring that flask of the stuff back. We’ll sit around awhile, so you ken roast them measly trout and eat. And we ken yarn. I got things fixed the way you asked and the police boys have quit your trail.”

Jim Pryse made no reply. He offered no word of thanks. But the thing shining in his sunken eyes was all sufficient for the Irishman. He took the saddle-bags from his benefactor and obeyed him implicitly. When he returned with them empty, and bearing a pannikin and the flask of Rye, he indicated a large log beside the spluttering fire.

“Will you sit, Dan?”

Pryse’s invitation was quiet in contrast with the other’s larger manner. And the Irishman turned abruptly from his contemplation of the flood of snow-water teeming with legions of wild-fowl.

“Sure, boy,” he said. Then he indicated the scene with a broad gesture of an out-flung arm. “Can you beat it? Get a look. Ther’s millions of ’em. Gee! This would be one hell of a swell place to fix a homestead.”

“That’s what I’ve decided to do.”

Pryse smiled as the other swung round and stared at him. Then he sat down on the log, and Dan Quinlan took up his position beside him.

Pryse poured out a tot of the Rye and offered it to his benefactor. But the man thrust it aside.

“Get to it yourself, boy,” he said, with a rough laugh. “I take a deal too much of that belly-wash. It’s a curse on me. You’re needing it. I guess you’re needing it bad. Drink up, boy, and set the rest aside. One’s all you need now to set life into your tired grey head. Two would set you crazy. And you don’t need any craziness just now. What d’you mean about that—homestead?”

Pryse drank down the raw Rye, and the scorch of the spirit made him gasp. Then he carefully re-corked the bottle, and set it on the ground beside him, and sat gazing into the fire. Dan Quinlan lit his pipe, and diving into a pocket, produced a second. He held it out.

“It’s a new one,” he said. “I went right into Hartspool for it. Smoke.”

Pryse accepted the thoughtful present, and the warming spirit brightened his eyes.

“Say,” he ejaculated, with sudden urgency, “I’m going to talk a whole long piece, Dan. Will you listen while I roast these trout over the fire? It’s all I’ve got to offer you for feed. There’s a big bunch of them, and they’ve just come out of the creek. Will you share? And I’ll boil up some of the tea you’ve brought me. And there’s the sugar. I haven’t tasted sugar for days. Not since I finished the last you brought me.”

Dan nodded his rough head.

“I ken mostly eat anything. Get on with that talk.”

“Did you hear from my sister?”

“Sure. I got this registered mail when I went into Hartspool.”

The Irishman held out a bulging envelope.

Pryse set his fish to roast on the hot ashes and took the mail. He looked at it. Then he looked into the eyes of the man who had passed it to him.

“You haven’t opened it and—it’s addressed to you.”

Dan laughed.

“It ain’t a way I have looking into other folk’s affairs,” he said. “That’s from your sister in answer to the letter I put through for you. That bunch is for you. It’s not for me.”

“Yes. I know that. But—say, Dan Quinlan, you’re a big feller and a swell friend. Why?” Pryse shook his head. “Because your heart’s mostly as big as your fool body. There are things to life I can’t get a grip on. Here are you, living away up in the hills with no one near you for twenty-five miles. You got a poor sort of ranch homestead, and a bunch of stock that couldn’t hand you more than a bare existence. Why? Are you a hunter? Do you just love the crazy hills, with their storms, and snow, and cold? No. It’s not that. And I’m not going to ask things. I’m just going to say it’s a God’s mercy for me that you do live that way. If it hadn’t been that I fell into your place last fall, by a chance I can’t ever account for, I shouldn’t be alive and talking now. You’ve done for me what no ordinary fellow—but just one other, I know of—would have done for me. You showed me Three-Way Creek and found me this hiding-place when the Police got smelling around. And you’ve handed me feed and things at intervals ever since, like the ravens did for that boy in the Bible. You’ve done that for me I can never repay you for. And you’ve done it on my own story, without ever a question. And now you’ve completed your good work by getting me in touch with my sister.”

“Best get on with it, hadn’t you?”