The Gun-Brand Part 27

Fort McMurray, a ten- to fourteen-day trip under good conditions, was reached in seven days. Fort Chippewayan in three days more, and Fort Resolution a week later--seventeen days from Athabasca Landing to Fort Resolution--a record trip for a dog-train!

MacNair was known as a man of few words, but Ripley wondered at the ominous silence with which his every attempt at conversation was met.

During the whole seventeen days of the snow-trail, MacNair scarcely addressed a word to him--seemed almost oblivious to his presence.

Upon the last day, with the log buildings of Fort Resolution in sight, MacNair suddenly halted the dogs and faced Corporal Ripley.

"Well, what's your program?" he asked shortly.

"My program," returned the other, "is to arrest Pierre Lapierre,"

"How are you going to do it?"

"I've got to locate him first, the details will work out later. I've been counting a lot on your help and judgment in the matter."

"Don't do it!" snapped MacNair.

The other gazed at him in astonishment.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I'm not going to help you arrest Lapierre. He's mine! I have sworn to get him, and, by G.o.d, I _will_ get him! From now on we are working against each other."

Ripley flushed, and his eyes narrowed. "You mean," he exclaimed, "that you defy the Mounted! That you refuse to help when you're called on?"

MacNair laughed. "You might put it that way, I suppose, but it don't sound well. You know me, Ripley. You know when my word has pa.s.sed--when I've once started a thing--I'll see it through to the limit. I've sworn to get Lapierre. And I tell you, he's mine! Unless you get him first. You're a good man, Ripley, and you may do it--but if you do, when you get back with him, you'll know you've been somewhere."

The lines of Ripley's face softened; as a sporting proposition the situation appealed to him. He thrust out his hand. "It's a go, MacNair," he said, "and let the best man win!"

MacNair wrung the officer's hand in a mighty grip, and then just as he was on the point of starting his dogs, paused and gazed thoughtfully after the other who was making his way toward the little buildings of Fort Resolution.

"Oh, Ripley," he called. The officer turned and retraced his steps.

"You've heard of Lapierre's fort to the eastward. Have you ever been there?"

Ripley shook his head. "No, but I've heard he has one somewhere around the east end of the lake."

MacNair laughed. "Yes, and if you hunted the east end of the lake for it you could hunt a year without finding it. If you really want to know where it is, come along, I'll show you. I happen to be going there."

"What's the idea?" asked the officer, regarding MacNair quizzically.

"The idea is just this. Lapierre's no fool. He's got as good a chance of getting me as I have of getting him. And if anything happens to me you fellows will lose a lot of valuable time before you can locate that fort. I don't know myself exactly why I'm taking you there, except that--well, if anything should happen to me, Lapierre would--you see, he might--that is---- d.a.m.n it!" he broke out wrathfully. "Can't you see he'll have things his own way with _her_?"

Ripley grinned broadly. "Oh! So that's it, eh? Well, a fellow ought to look out for his friends. She seemed right anxious to have _you_ put where nothing would hurt you."

"Shut up!" growled MacNair shortly. "And before we start there's one little condition you must agree to. If we find Lapierre at the fort, in return for my showing you the place, you've got to promise to make no attempt to arrest him without first returning to Fort Resolution.

If I can't get him in the meantime I ought to lose."

"You're on," grinned Ripley, "I promise. But man, if he's there he won't be alone! What chance will you have single-handed against a whole gang of outlaws?"

MacNair smiled grimly. "That's my lookout. Remember, your word has pa.s.sed, and when we locate Lapierre, you head back for Fort Resolution."

The other nodded regretfully, and when MacNair turned away from the fort and headed eastward along the south sh.o.r.e of the lake, the officer fell silently in behind the dogs.

They camped late in a thicket on the sh.o.r.e of South Bay, and at daylight headed straight across the vast snow-level, that stretched for sixty miles in an unbroken surface of white. That night they camped on the ice, and toward noon of the following day drew into the scrub timber directly north of the extremity of Peththenneh Island.

Long after dark they made a fireless camp directly opposite the stronghold of the outlaws on the sh.o.r.e of Lac du Mort. Circling the lake next morning, they reconnoitred the black spruce swamp, and working their way, inch by inch, pa.s.sed cautiously between the dense evergreens in the direction of the high promontory upon which Lapierre had built his "Bastile du Mort."

Silence enveloped the swamp. An intense, all-pervading stillness, accentuated by the low-hung snow-weighted branches through which the men moved like dark phantoms in the grey half-light of the dawn. They moved not with the stealthy, gliding movement of the Indian, but with the slow caution of trained woodsmen, pausing every few moments to scrutinize their surroundings, and to strain their ears for a sound that would tell them that other lurking forms glided among the silent aisles and vistas of the snow-shrouded swamp. But no sounds came to them through the motionless air, and after an hour of stealthy advance, they drew into the shelter of a huge spruce and peered through the interstices of its snow-laden branches toward the log stockade that Lapierre had thrown across the neck of his lofty peninsula.

Silent and grey and deserted loomed the barrier so cunningly devised as to be almost indistinguishable at a distance of fifty yards. Snow lay upon its top, and vertical ridges of snow clung to the crevices of the upstanding palings.

A half-hour pa.s.sed, while the two men remained motionless, and then, satisfied that the fort was unoccupied, they stepped cautiously from the shelter of their tree. The next instant, loud and clear, shattering the intense silence with one sharp explosion of sound, rang a shot. And Corporal Ripley, who was following close at the heels of MacNair, staggered, clawed wildly for the b.u.t.t of his service revolver which protruded from its holster, and, with an imprecation on his lips that ended in an unintelligible snarl, crashed headlong into the snow.

MacNair whirled as if upon a pivot, and with hardly a glance at the prostrate form, dashed over the back-trail with the curious lumbering strides of the man who would hurry on rackets. He had jerked off his heavy mitten at the sound of the shot, and his bared hand clutched firmly the b.u.t.t of a blue-black automatic. A spruce-branch, suddenly relieved of its snow, sprang upward with a swish, thirty yards away.

MacNair fired three times in rapid succession.

There was no answering shot, and he leaped forward, charging directly toward the tree that concealed the hidden foe before the man could reload; for by the roar of its discharge, MacNair knew that the weapon was an old Hudson Bay muzzle-loading smoothbore--a primitive weapon of the old North, but in the hands of an Indian, a weapon of terrible execution at short range, where a roughly moulded bullet or a slug rudely hammered from the solder melted from old tin cans tears its way through the flesh, driven by three fingers of black powder.

Near the tree MacNair found the gun where its owner had hurled it into the snow--found also the tracks of a pair of snowshoes, which headed into the heart of the black spruce swamp. The tracks showed at a glance that the lurking a.s.sa.s.sin was an Indian, that he was travelling light, and that the chance of running him down was extremely remote.

Whereupon MacNair returned his automatic to its holster and bethought himself of Ripley, who was lying back by the stockade with his face buried in the snow.

Swiftly he retraced his steps, and, kneeling beside the wounded man, raised him from the snow. Blood oozed from the corners of the officer's lips, and, mingling with the snow, formed a red slush which clung to the boyish cheek. With his knife MacNair cut through the clothing and disclosed an ugly hole below the right shoulder-blade. He bound up the wound, plugging the hole with suet chewed from a lump which he carried in his pocket. Leaving Ripley upon his face to prevent strangulation from the blood in his throat, he hastened to the camp on the sh.o.r.e of the lake, harnessed the dogs, and returned to the prostrate man; it was the work of a few moments to bind him securely upon the sled. Skilfully MacNair guided his dogs through the maze of the black spruce swamp, and, throwing caution to the winds, crossed the lake, struck into the timber, and headed straight for Chloe Elliston's school.

In the living-room of the little cottage on the Yellow Knife, Harriet Penny and Mary, the Louchoux girl, sat sewing, while Chloe Elliston, with chair pulled close to the table, read by the light of an oil-lamp from a year-old magazine. If the Louchoux girl failed to follow the intricacies of the plot, an observer would scarcely have known it. Nor would he have guessed that less than two short months before this girl had been a skin-clad native of the North who had mushed for thirty days unattended through the heart of the barren grounds. So marvellously had the girl improved and so desirously had she applied her needle, that save for the beaded moccasins upon her feet, her clothing differed in no essential detail from that of Chloe Elliston or of Harriet Penny.

Chloe paused in her reading, and the three occupants of the little room stared inquiringly into each other's faces as a rough-voiced "Whoa!"

sounded from beyond the door. A moment of silence followed the command, and then came the sounds of a heavy footfall upon the veranda.

The Louchoux girl sprang to the door, and as she wrenched it open the yellow lamplight threw into bold relief the huge figure of a man, who, bearing a blanket-wrapped form in his arms, staggered into the room, and, without a word deposited his burden upon the floor. The man looked up, and Chloe Elliston started back with an exclamation of angry amazement. The man was Bob MacNair! And Chloe noticed that the Louchoux girl, after one terrified glance into his face, fled incontinently to the kitchen.

"You! You!" cried Chloe, groping for words.

The man interrupted her gruffly. "This is no time to talk. Corporal Ripley has been shot. For three days I have burned up the snow getting him here. He's hard hit, but the bleeding has stopped, and a good bed and good nursing will pull him through."

As he snapped out the words, MacNair busied himself in removing the wounded man's blankets and outer garments. Chloe gave some hurried orders to Big Lena, and followed MacNair into her own room, where he laid the wounded man upon her bed--the same he, himself, had once occupied while recovering from the effect of Lapierre's bullet. Then he straightened and faced Chloe, who stood regarding him with flas.h.i.+ng eyes.

"So you did get away from him after all?" she said, "and when he followed you, you shot him! Just a boy--and you shot him in the back!"

The voice trembled with the scorn of her words. MacNair pushed roughly past her.

"Don't be a d.a.m.n fool!" he growled, and called over his shoulder: "Better rest him up for three or four days, and send him down to Fort Resolution. He'll stand the trip all right by that time, and the doctor may want to poke around for that bullet." Suddenly he whirled and faced her. "Where is Lapierre?" The words were a snarl.

"So you want to kill him, too? Do you think I would tell you if I knew? You--you _murderer_! Oh, if I--" But the sentence was cut short by the loud banging of the door. MacNair had returned into the night.

An hour later, when she and Big Lena quitted the bedroom, Corporal Ripley was breathing easily. Her thoughts turned at once to the Louchoux girl. She recalled the look of terror that had crept into the girl's eyes as she gazed into the upturned face of MacNair. With the force of a blow a thought flashed through her brain, and she clutched at the edge of the table for support. What was it the girl had told her about the man who had deceived her into believing she was his wife?

He was a free-trader! MacNair was a free-trader! Could it be----

"No, no!" she gasped--"and yet----"

With an effort she crossed to the door of the girl's room and, pus.h.i.+ng it open, entered to find her cowering, wide-eyed between her blankets.