The Triumph of John Kars: A Story of the Yukon

CHAPTER XII

DR. BILL DISPENSES AID AND ARGUMENT

The fire spluttered just beyond the door of the tent. Its cheerful light supported the efforts of the kerosene lamp within. Peigan Charley squatted over its friendly warmth, his lean hands outheld to its flickering blaze in truly Indian fashion. His position had been taken up with a view to observing his wounded chief, whose condition concerned him more than anything else in the world, except it was, perhaps, his delight in driving the men of his own color under him, and his absolute contempt for his own race.

John Kars was lying on his blankets, yielding to the skilful attention of Dr. Bill. His final journey from the gorge to the camp, ten miles distant, had been perhaps the greatest effort of the night. But with Charley's help, with the dogged resolve of a spirit that did not understand defeat, it had been finally achieved.

His wound was by no means serious. He knew that. Charley believed, in his simple mind, that his boss was practically a dead man. Hence his watchful regard now. Kars' trouble was little more than loss of blood, and though his tremendous physique had helped him, his weakness during the last two miles of the journey had demanded all his resources to overcome.

The dressing was complete. The last stitches had been put in the bandages about the wound. Bill closed his instrument case, and returned the bottles of antiseptic drugs to the miniature chest he carried. He sat down on the blankets which were spread out for his own use, and smiled genially down at his patient.

"That's that," he said cheerfully. "But it was a lucky get out for you, John. Say, a shade to the left, and that Breed would have handed you a jugular in two parts. Just take it easy. You'll travel to-morrow, after a night's sleep. Guess you'll be all whole against we make Fort Mowbray. You best talk now, an' get rid of it all. Maybe you'll sleep a deal easier after."

"Thanks, Bill."

Kars' regard of his friend said far more than his simple words. But then the friendship between these two was of a quality which required little enough of verbal expression. It was the friendship of two men who have shared infinite perils together, of two men whose lives are bound up in loyalty to each other.

For some moments the wounded man made no response to the invitation. A pleasant lassitude was at work upon him. It seemed a pity to disturb it by the effort of talk. But it was necessary to talk, and he knew that this was so. There were thoughts and questions in his mind that must have the well-balanced consideration of his friend's calm mind.

At last he broke the silence with an expletive which expressed something of the enthusiasm he really felt.

"Gee, what a strike!" he said, in a voice much weaker than his usual tone. Then he added as an afterthought, "The gorge is chock full of color. Just git a holt on that handkerchief in my pea-jacket and open it. Say, handle it easy."

He watched the other search the pockets of the coat lying at the foot of his blankets. A great light shone in his gray eyes as Bill produced the handkerchief and began to unfold it. Then, with a raging impatience, he waited while the deposit he had collected from the riffles of the sluice-box was examined under the lamplight.

At last Bill raised his eyes, and Kars read there all he wanted to know.

"It's mostly color. There's biggish stuff amongst it."

"That's how I figgered." Kars' tone was full of contentment.

"Well?"

Bill carefully refolded the handkerchief, and laid it beside his medicine chest.

Kars emitted a sound like a chuckle,

"Oh, it was a bully play," he said. Then, after a moment: "Listen, I'll tell it from the start."

Kars talked, with occasional pauses, for nearly half an hour. He detailed the events of the night in the barest outline, and only dealt closely with the fact of the gold workings. These he explained with the technicalities necessary between experts. He dwelt upon his estimate of the quality of the auriferous deposits as he had been able to make it in the darkness, and from his sense of touch. The final story of his encounter with Louis Creal only seemed to afford him amusement in the telling.

"You see, Bill," he added, "that feller must have been sick to death. I mean finding himself with just the squaws and the fossils left around when we come along. His play was clear as daylight. He tried to scare us like a brace of rabbits to be quit of us. It was our bull-headed luck to hit the place right when we did. I mean finding the neches out on a trail of murder instead of lying around their teepees."

"Yes. But we're going to get them on our trail anyway."

"Sure we are—when he's rounded 'em up."

Bill produced his timepiece and studied it reflectively.

"It's an hour past midnight," he said. "We'll need to be on the move with daylight. We best hand them all the mileage we can make. We've got to act bright."

He sat lost in thought for some minutes, his watch still held in the palm of his hand. He was thinking of the immediate rather than of the significance of his friend's discovery. His cheerful face was grave. He was calculating chances with all the care of a clear-thinking, experienced brain.

John Kars was thinking too. But the direction which absorbed him was quite different. He was regarding his discovery in connection with Fort Mowbray.

At last he stirred restlessly.

"I can't get it right!" he exclaimed. "I just can't."

"How's that?"

Bill's plans were complete. For a day or so he knew that his would be the responsibility. Kars would have to take things easy.

"What can't you get right?" he added.

"Why, the whole darn play of it. That strike has been worked years, I'd say. We've trailed this country with eyes and ears mighty wide. Guess we haven't run into a thing about Bell River but what's darn unpleasant. Years that's been waiting. Shrieking for us to get around and help ourselves. Gee, I want to kick something."

Bill regarded his friend with serious eyes.

"You're going to butt in? You're going to play a hand in that—game?"

Kars' eyes widened in surprise.

"Sure." Then he added, "So are you." He smiled.

Bill shook his head.

"Not willingly—me," he said.

"Why not?"

Bill stretched himself out on his blankets. He was fully dressed. He intended to pass the night that way. He clasped his hands behind his neck, and his gaze was on the firelight beyond the door.

"First, because it's taking a useless chance. You don't need it," he said deliberately. "Second, because that was Allan Mowbray's strike. It was his big secret that he'd worked most of his days for, and, in the end, gave his life for. If we butt in there'll come a rush, and you'll rob a widow and a young girl who've never done you injury. It don't sound to me your way."

"You think Mrs. Mowbray and Jessie know of it?"

Bill glanced round quickly.

"Mrs. Mowbray—sure."

"Ah—not Jessie?"

"Can't say. Maybe not. More than likely—not."

"Alec?"

Bill shook his head decidedly.

"Not that boy."

"Murray McTavish?"

"He knows."

Kars nodded agreement.

"He knew when he was lying to me he didn't understand Allan visiting Bell River," he said.

Kars' eyes had become coldly contemplative. And in the brief silence that followed, for all his intimate understanding of his friend, Bill Brudenell was unable even to guess at the thoughts passing behind the icy reserve which seemed to have settled upon him.

But his questions found an answer much sooner than he expected. The silence was broken by a short, hard laugh of something like self-contempt.

"You an' me, Bill. We're going up there with an outfit that knows all about scrapping, and something about gold. We're going up there, and d'you know why? Oh, not to rob a widow and orphan." He laughed again in the same fashion. "Not a soul's got to know, or be wise to our play," he went on. "The strike they've worked won't be touched by us. We'll make our own. But for once gold isn't all we need. There's something else. I tell you I can't rest till we find it. There's a gal, Bill, on the Snake River, with eyes made to smile most all the time. They did—till Allan Mowbray got done up. Well, I got a notion they'll smile again some day, but it won't be till I've located just how her father came by his end, after years of working with the Bell River neches. I want to see those eyes smile, Bill. I want to see 'em smile bad. Maybe you think me some fool man. I allow I'm wiser than you guess. Maybe, even, I'm wiser than you, who've never yearned to see a gal's eyes smiling into yours in all your forty-three years. That's why we're going to butt in on that strike, and you're coming right along with me if I have to yank you there by your mighty badly fledged scalp."

Bill had turned over on his side. His shrewd eyes were smiling.

"Sounds like fever," he said, in his pleasant way. "I'll need to take the patient's temperature. Say, John, you won't have to haul on my scalp for any play like that. I'm in it—right up to my neck. That I've lived to see the day John Kars talks of marrying makes me feel I've not lived——"

"He's not talking of marriage," came the swift retort with flushed cheeks.

"No. But he's thinking it. Which, in a man like John Kars, comes pretty near meaning the same thing. Did you ask her, boy?"

Just for a moment resentment lit the other's eyes. It was on his tongue to make a sharp retort. But, under the deep, new emotion stirring him, an emotion that made him rather crave for a sympathy which, in all his strong life, he had never felt the necessity before, the desire melted away. In place of it he yielded to a rush of enthusiasm which surprised himself almost as much as it did his old friend.

"No, Bill." He laughed. "I—hadn't the nerve to. I don't know as I'll ever have the nerve to. But I want that little gal bad. I want her so bad I feel I could get right out an' trail around these darnation hills, an' skitter holes, hollering 'help' like some mangy coyote chasing up her young. Oh, I'm going to ask her. I'll have to ask her, if I have to get you to hand me the dope to fix my nerve right. And, say, if she hands me the G. B. for that bladder of taller-fat, Murray, why I'll just pack my traps, and hit the trail for Bell River, and I'll sit around and kill off every darned neche so she can keep right on handing herself all the gold she needs till she's sitting atop of a mountain of it, which is just about where I'd like to set her with these two dirty hands."

His eyes smiled as he held out his hands. But he went on at once.

"Now you've got it all. And I guess we'll let it go at that. You and me, we're going to set right out on this new play. There isn't going to be a word handed to a soul at the Fort, or anywhere else. Not a word. There's things behind Allan Mowbray's death we don't know. But that dirty half-breed knows 'em, if we don't. And the gold on the river has a big stake in the game. That being so, the folk Allan left behind him are to be robbed. Follow it? It kind of seems to me the folk at the Fort are helpless. But—but we aren't. So it's up to me, seeing how I feel about that little gal."

Kars had propped himself up under the effect of his rising excitement. Now, as he finished speaking, he dropped back on his blankets with some display of weariness.

Bill's eyes were watching him closely. He was wondering how much of this he would have heard had Kars been his usual, robust self. He did not think he would have heard so much.

He rose from his blankets.

"I'm all in, boy, on this enterprise," he said, in his amiable way. "Meanwhile I'm dousing this light. You'll sleep then."

He blew out the lamp before the other could protest.

"I'll just get a peek at the boys on watch. I need to fix things with Charley for the start up to-morrow."

He passed out of the tent crawling on his hands and knees. Nor did he return till he felt sure that his patient was well asleep.

Even then he did not seek his own blankets. For a moment he studied his friend's breathing with all his professional skill alert. Then, once more, he withdrew, and took his place at the camp-fire beside Peigan Charley.

The first sign of dawn saw the camp astir. Kars was accommodated with one of the Alaskan ponies under pressure from Bill, as the doctor. The whole outfit was on the move before daylight had matured. Neither the scout, nor the two white men were deceived. Each knew that they were not likely to make the headwaters of Snake River without molestation.

How right they were was abundantly proved on the afternoon of the second day.

They were passing through a wide defile, with the hills on either side of them rising to several hundreds of feet of dense forest. It was a shorter route towards their objective, but more dangerous by reason of the wide stretching tundra it was necessary to skirt.

Half-way through this defile came the first sign. It came with the distant crack of a rifle. Then the whistle of a speeding bullet, and the final "spat" of it as it embedded itself in an adjacent tree-trunk. Everybody understood. But it took Peigan Charley to sum up the situation, and the feeling of, at least, the leaders of the outfit.

"Fool neche!" he exclaimed, with a world of contemptuous regard flung in the direction whence came the sound. "Shoot lak devil. Much shoot. Plenty. Oh, yes."

CHAPTER XIII

THE FALL TRADE

The fall trade of the post was in full swing, and gave to the river, and the approaches of the Fort, an air of activity such as it usually lacked. Murray McTavish seemed to blossom under the pressure of the work entailed. His good humor became intensified, and his smile radiated upon the world about him. These times were the opportunity he found for the display of his abounding energies. They were healthy times, healthy for mind and body. To watch his activities was to marvel that he still retained the grossness of figure he so deplored.

A number of canoes were moored at the Mission landing. Others were secured at piles driven into the banks of the river. These were the boats of the Indians and half-breeds who came to trade their summer harvest at the old post. A few days later and these same craft would be speeding in the direction of distant homes, under the swift strokes of the paddle, bearing a modicum of winter stores as a result of their owner's traffic.

And what a mixed trade it was. Furs. Rough dried pelts, ranging from bear to fox, from seal to Alaskan sable. Furs of thirty or forty descriptions, each with its definite market value, poured into the Fort. The lucky pelt hunters were the men who brought black-fox, and Alaskan sable, or a few odd seals from the uncontrolled hunting grounds within the Arctic circle. These men departed with amply laden canoes, with, amongst their more precious trophies, inferior modern rifles and ammunition.

But these voyageurs did not make up the full tally of the fall trade which gave Murray so much joy. There were the men of the long trail. The long, land trail. Men who came with their whole outfit of belongings, women and children as well. They packed on foot, and on ponies, and in weird vehicles of primitive manufacture, accompanied by the dogs which would be needed for haulage should the winter snows overtake them before they completed their return journey.

These were of the lesser class trade. It was rare enough to obtain a parcel of the more valuable pelts from these folk. But they not infrequently brought small parcels of gold dust, which experience had taught them the curious mind of the white man set such store by.

Gold came in shyly, however, in the general trade. Indian methods were far too primitive in procuring it. Besides which, for all the value of it, traders in these remotenesses were apt to discourage its pursuit. It was difficult to understand the psychology of the trader on the subject. But no doubt he was largely influenced by the fear of a white invasion of his territory, should the news of the gold trade leak out. Maybe he argued that the stability of his legitimate trade was preferable to the risks of competition which an influx of white folk would bring. Anyway, open trade of this nature was certainly comparatively discouraged.

But Murray was not alone in the work of the fall trade. Ailsa Mowbray supported him in a very definite share. She had returned to the work of the store, such as she had undertaken in the days when her husband was alive and Murray had not yet made his appearance upon the river. Then, too, Alec had returned from his summer trail, his first real adventure without the guiding hand of his father to direct him. He had returned disillusioned. He had returned discontented. His summer bag was incomparable with his effort. It was far below that of the average river Indians.

He went back to the store, to the work he disliked, without any willingness, and only under the pressure of his perturbed mother and sister. Furthermore, he quickly began to display signs of rebellion against Murray McTavish's administration of affairs.

Murray was considering this attitude just now. He was standing alone, just within the gates of the Fort, and his meditative gaze was turned upon a wonderful sunset which lit the distant heights of the outspread glacial field with a myriad of varying tints.

There had been words with Alec only a few minutes before. It was on the subject of appraising values. Alec, in a careless, haphazard fashion, had baled some inferior pelts with a number of very beautiful foxes. Murray had discovered it by chance, and his words to the youth had been sharply admonishing.

Alec, tall as his father had been, muscular, bull-necked in his youthful physical strength, bull-headed in his passionate impetuosity, had flared up immoderately.

"Then do it your darn self!" he cried, the hot blood surging to his cheeks, and his handsome eyes aflame. "Maybe you think I'm hired man in this layout, an' you can hand me any old dope you fancy. Well, I tell you right here, you need to quit it. I don't stand for a thing from you that way. You'll bale your own darn buys, or get the boys to do it."

With this parting the work of his day was terminated. He departed for the Mission clearing, leaving Murray to digest his words at leisure.

Murray was digesting them now. They were rankling. Bitterly rankling in a memory which rarely forgot things. But his round, ample face displayed no definite feeling other than that which its tendency towards a smile suggested.

His own work was finished. Though he would not have admitted it he was tired, weary of the chaffer of it all. But his weariness was only the result of a day's labor, mental and physical, from sunrise to sunset.

The scene before him seemed to hold him. His big eyes never wavered for a moment. There was something of the eagle in the manner in which they stared unflinchingly at the radiant brilliancy of the western sky.

He stood thus for a long time. He displayed no sign of wearying of his contemplation. It was only an unusual sound which finally changed the direction of his gaze.

It was the soft shuffle of moccasined feet that reached his quick ears. It was coming up from the wooded slopes below him, a direction which came from the river, but not from the landing. His questioning eyes searched closely the sharp cut, where the pine trees gave way to the bald crown on which the Fort stood. And presently two figures loomed out of the shadow of the woods, and paused at the edge of them.

They were Indians in beaded buckskin, and each was laboring under a burden of pelts which seemed unusually heavy for its size. They were armed, too, with long rifles of a comparatively modern type.

Some moments passed while they surveyed the figure at the gates. Then, after the exchange of a few words between themselves, they came steadily on towards the Fort.

Murray waited. The men approached. Neither spoke until the men halted in front of the trader and relieved themselves of their burdens. Then it was that Murray spoke, and he spoke fluently in an Indian tongue. The men responded in their brief spasmodic fashion. After which the white man led the way into the store.

The incident was one such as might have occurred any time during these days of busy trading. There was certainly nothing peculiar about it in its general outline. And yet there was a subtle suggestion of something peculiar in it. Perhaps it was in the weight of the bales of pelts these men carried. Perhaps it was that Murray had addressed them in a definite Indian tongue first, without waiting to ascertain whence they hailed, or to what small tribe they belonged. Perhaps it was the lateness of the hour, and the chance that Murray should be waiting there after the day's work was completed, when it was his eager custom to seek his evening meal down at Ailsa Mowbray's home, and spend his brief leisure in company of Alec's sister.

It was nearly an hour before the two Indians reappeared. When they did so the last of the splendid sunset had disappeared behind the distant peaks. They left the Fort relieved of their goods, and bearing in their hands certain bundles of trade. They hurried away down the slope and vanished into the woods. And some minutes later the sound of the dipping paddles came faintly up upon the still evening air.

Murray had not yet reappeared. And it was still some time before his bulky form was visible hurrying down the short cut to the Mission clearing.

The evening meal at Ailsa Mowbray's house was more than half over when Murray appeared. He bustled into the little family circle, radiating good humor and friendliness. There could be no doubt of his apparent mood.

The comfort and homeliness of the atmosphere into which he plunged were beyond words. The large room was well lit with good quality oil lamps, whose warmth of light was mellow, and left sufficient shadow in the remoter corners to rob the scene of any garishness. The stove was roaring under its opened damper. The air smelt warm and good, and the pungent odor of hot coffee was not without pleasure to the hungry man.

Mrs. Mowbray and Jessie retained their seats at the amply filled table. But Alec rose from his and departed without a word, or even a glance in Murray's smiling direction. The rudeness, the petulance of his action! These things left his mother and sister in suspense.

But Murray took charge of the situation with a promptness and ease that cleared what looked like the further gathering of storm-clouds.

"Say, ma'am," he cried at once, "I just deserve all you feel like saying, but don't say, anyway. Late? Why, I guess I'm nearly an hour late. But I got hung up with some freight coming in just as I was quitting. I'm real sorry. Maybe Jessie here's going to hand me some words. That so, Jessie?"

His smiling eyes sought the girl's with kindly good nature. But Jessie did not respond. Her eyes were serious, and her mother came to her rescue.

"That doesn't matter a thing, Murray," she said, in her straightforward fashion, as she poured out the man's coffee, while he took his seat opposite Jessie. Then she glanced at the door through which Alec had taken himself off. "But what's this with Alec? You've had words. He's been telling us, and he seems mad about things, and—you. What's the matter with the boy? What's the matter between you, anyway?"

The man shrugged helplessly. Nor would his face mold itself into a display of seriousness to match the two pairs of beautiful eyes regarding him.

"Why, I guess we had a few words," he said easily. "Maybe I was hasty. Maybe he was. It don't figure anyway. And, seeing it's not Alec's way to lie about things, I don't suppose there's need for me to tell you the story of it. Y'see, ma'am, I ought to remember Alec's just a boy full of high spirits, and that sort of thing, but, in the rush of work, why, it isn't always easy. After supper I figger to get a yarn with him and fix things up."

Then he laughed with such a ring of genuineness that Jessie found herself responding to it, and even her mother's eyes smiled.

"I'm not easy when I'm on the jump. I guess nobody is, not even Alec." Murray turned to Jessie. "It's queer folks act the way they do. Ever see two cats play? They're the best of friends. They'll play an hour, clawing and biting. Then in a second it's dead earnest. The fur you could gather after that would stuff a—down pillow."

Jessie's smile had vanished. She sighed.

"But it's not that way with you two folk. The cats will be playing around again in five minutes. Alec's up against you all the time. And you?"

Murray's smile still remained.

"Alec's his father's son, I guess. His father was my best friend. His mother and sister I hope and believe are that way, too." Then quite suddenly his big eyes became almost painfully serious. The deep glow in them shone out at those he was facing. "Say, I'm going to tell you folks just how I feel about this thing. It kind of seems this is the moment to talk clear out. Alec's trouble is the life here. I can see it most every way. He's a good boy. He's got points I'd like to know I possess. He's his father over again, without his father's experience. Say, he's a blood colt that needs the horse-breaker of Life, and, unless he gets it, all the fine points in him are going to get blunted and useless, and there's things in him going to grow up and queer him for life. He needs to think right, and we folks here can't teach him that way. Not even Father José. There's jest one thing to teach him, and that's Life itself—on his own. If I figger right he'll flounder around. He'll hit snags. He'll get bumped, and, maybe, have some nasty falls. But it's the only way for a boy of his spirit, and—weakness."

"Weakness?"

Jessie's echo came sharply. She resented the charge with all a sister's loyalty. But her mother took up her challenge.

"I'm afraid Murray's right—in a way," she admitted, with a sigh. She hated the admission, but she and her dead husband had long since arrived at the same conclusion. "It worries me to think of," she went on. "And it worries me to think of him out on the world—alone. I wish I knew what's best. I've talked to Father José, and he agrees with you, Murray. But——"

For some moments Jessie had been thinking hard. She was angry with Murray. She was almost angry with her mother. Now she looked over at the man, and her pretty eyes had a challenge in them.

"I'll go and ask Alec to come right along here," she said. "You can talk to him here and now, Murray. Let him decide things for himself, and you, mother, abide by them. You both guess he's a boy. He's not. He's a man. And he's going to be a good man. There never was any good in women trying to think for men, any more than men-folk can think for women. And there's no use in Murray handing us these things when Alec's not here."

She started up from her seat. Her mother protested.

"It'll make trouble, Jessie," she said sharply. "The boy's in no mood for talk—with Murray," she added warningly.

But Murray, himself, became the deciding factor.

"Jessie's right, ma'am," he said quickly.

And in those words he came nearer to the good-will he sought in the girl than he had ever been before.

"You'll talk to him as you've—said to us?" the mother demanded.

Murray's smile was warmly affirmative.

"I'll do all I know."

Ailsa Mowbray was left without further protest. But she offered no approval. Just for one second Jessie glanced in her mother's direction. It was the girl in her seeking its final counsel from the source towards which it always looked. But as none was forthcoming she was left to the fact of Murray's acceptance of her challenge.

She turned from the table and passed out of the room.

Ailsa Mowbray raised a pair of handsome, troubled eyes to the factor's face. Her confidence in this man was second only to the confidence she had always had in her husband's judgment.

"Do you think it wise?" she demurred.

"It's the only thing, ma'am," Murray replied seriously. "Jessie's dead right." He held up one fleshy hand and clenched it tightly. "Trouble needs to be crushed like that—firmly. There's a whole heap of trouble lying around in this thing. I've got to do the best for the folks Allan left behind, ma'am, and in this I guess Jessie's shown me the way. Do you feel you best step around while I talk to Alec? There's liable to be awkward moments."

The mother understood. She had no desire to pry into the methods of men in their dealings with each other. She rose from the table and passed into her kitchen beyond.

CHAPTER XIV

ARRIVALS IN THE NIGHT

Murray McTavish was standing before the glowing wood stove when Alec entered the room. The factor was gazing down at the iron box of it with his fat, strong hands outspread to the warmth. He was not cold. He had no desire for the warmth. He was thinking.

He was not a prepossessing figure. His clothing bulged in almost every direction. In age this loses its ugliness. In a young man there is no more painful disadvantage. His dark hair was smoothly brushed, almost to sleekness. His clothing was good, and by no means characteristic of the country. He was the epitome of a business man of civilization, given, perhaps, to indulgence in the luxuries of the table. Nature had acted unkindly by him. He knew it, and resented it with passionate bitterness.

Alec Mowbray displayed no hesitation. He entered the room quickly, and in a truculent way, and closed the door with some sharpness behind him. The action displayed his mood. And something of his character, too.

Murray took him in from head to foot without appearing to observe him. Nor was his regard untinged with envy. The youngster was over six feet in height. In his way he was as handsome as his mother had been. There was much of his dead father about him, too. But his eyes had none of the steadiness of either of his parents. His mouth was soft, and his chin was too pointed, and without the thrust of power. But for all these things his looks were beyond question. His fair, crisply curling hair, his handsome eyes, must have given him an appeal to almost any woman. Murray felt that this was so. He envied him and—— He looked definitely in the boy's direction in response to a rough challenge.

"Well—what is it?"

Murray's shining eyes gazed steadily at him. The smile so usual to him had been carefully set aside. It left his face almost expressionless as he replied.

"I want to tell you I'm sorry for—this afternoon. Darn sorry. I was on the jump with work, and didn't pause to think. I hadn't the right to act the way I did. And—well, I guess I'm real sorry. Will you shake?"

The boy was all impulse, and his impulses were untainted by anything more serious than hot-headed resentment and momentary intolerance. Much of his dislike of Murray was irresponsible instinct. He knew, in his calmer moments, he had neither desire nor reason to dislike Murray. Somehow the dislike had grown up with him, as sometimes a boy's dislike of some one in authority over him grows up—without reason or understanding.

But Murray's amends were too deliberate and definite to fail to appeal to all that was most generous and impulsive in Alec. It was impossible for him to listen to a man like Murray, generously apologizing to him, without going more than half-way to meet him. His face cleared of its shadow. His hot eyes smiled, as many times Murray had seen his mother smile. He came towards the stove with outstretched hand. A hand that could crush like a vice.

"Why, you just don't need to say another word, Murray," he exclaimed. "And, anyway, I guess you were right. I'd slacked on those pelts and knew it, and—and that's what made me mad—you lighting on it."

The two men shook hands, and Alec, as he withdrew his, passed it across his forehead and ran his fingers through his hair.

"But say, Murray," he went on, in a tone of friendliness that rarely existed between them. "I'm sick. Sick to death with it all—and that's about the whole of the trouble. It's no sort of good. I can't even keep my mind on the work, let alone do it right. I hate the old store. Guess I must get out. I need to feel I can breathe. I need to live. Say, I feel like some darn cabbage setting around in the middle of a patch. Jess doesn't understand. Mother doesn't. Sometimes I kind of fancy Father José understands. But you know. You've lived in the world. You've seen it all, and know it. Well, say, am I to be kept around this forgotten land till my whiskers freeze into sloppy icicles? I just can't do it. I've tried. Maybe you'll never know how I've tried—because of mother, and Jess, and the old dad. Well, I've quit now. I've got to get out a while, or—or things are going to bust. Do you know how I feel? Do you get me? I'll be crazy with six months more of this Fort, and these rotten neches. Gee! When I think how John Kars has lived, and where he's lived, it gets me beat seeing him hunting the long trail in these back lands."

Murray's smile had returned. But it was encouraging and friendly, and lacked all fixity.

"Maybe the other life set him crazy, same as this is fixing you," he said, with perfect amiability.

The boy laughed incredulously. He flung himself into his mother's chair, and looked up at Murray's face above the stove.

"I don't believe that life could set folk crazy. There's too much to it," he laughed. He went on a moment later with a warmth of enthusiasm that must have been heart-breaking to those of greater experience. "Think of a city," he cried, almost ecstatically. "A big, live city. All lights at night, and all rushing in daylight. Men eager and striving in competition. Meeting, and doing, and living. Women, beautiful, and dressed like pictures, with never a thought but the joy of life, and the luxury of it all. And these folk without a smell of the dollars we possess. Folk without a difference from us. Think of the houses, the shows, the railroads. The street cars. The sleighs. The automobiles. The hotels. The dance halls. The—the—oh, gee, it makes me sick to think of all I've missed and you've seen. I can't—I just can't stand for it much longer."

Murray nodded.

"Guess I—understand." Then, in a moment, his eyes became serious, as though some feeling stirred them that prompted a warning he was powerless to withhold. "It's an elegant picture, the way you see it. But it's not the only picture. The other picture comes later in life, and if I tried to paint it for you I don't reckon you'd be able to see it—till later in life. Anyway, a man needs to make his own experience. Guess the world's all you see in it, sure. But there's a whole heap in it you don't see—now. Say, and those things you don't see are darn ugly. So ugly the time'll come you can't stand for 'em any more than you can stand for the dozy life around here now. Those folk you see in your dandy picture are wage slaves worshiping the gods of this darned wilderness just as we are right here. Just as are all the folks who come around this country, and I'd say there's many folks hating all the things you fancy, as bad as you hate the life you've been raised to right here. Still, I guess it's up to you."

"I'd give a heap to have mother think that way," Alec responded with a shade of moodiness.

"She does think that way."

The youngster sprang from his chair. His eyes were shining, and a joyous flush mounted to his handsome brow. There was no mistaking the reckless youth in him.

"She does? Then—say, it's you who've persuaded her. There hasn't been a day she hasn't tried to keep me right here, like—like some darn kid. She figgers it's up to me to choose what I'll do?" he cried incredulously.

Murray nodded. His eyes were studying the youth closely.

"Then I'll tell her right away." Alec laughed a whole-hearted, care-free laugh. "I'll ask her for a stake, and then for Leaping Horse. Maybe Seattle, and 'Frisco—New York! Murray, if you've done this for me, I'm your slave for life. Say, I'd come near washing your clothes for you, and I can't think of a thing lower. You'll back me when I put it to her?"

"There's no need. She'll do just as you say."

Murray's moment of serious regard had passed. He was smiling his inscrutable smile again.

"When? When?"

The eagerness of it. It was almost tragic.

"Best go down with me," Murray said. "I'm making Leaping Horse early this fall on the winter trail. I'm needing stocks. I'm needing arms and stuff. How'd that fix you?"

"Bully!" Then the boy laughed out of the joy of his heart. "But fix it early. Fix it good and early."

The exclamation came in such a tone that pity seemed the only emotion for it to inspire.

But Murray had finished. Whatever he felt there was no display of any emotion in him. And pity the least of all. He crossed to the door which opened into the kitchen. He opened it. In response to his call Ailsa Mowbray appeared, followed by Jessie.

Murray indicated Alec with a nod.

"We're good friends again," he said. "We've acted like two school kids, eh, Alec?" he added. "And now we've made it up. Alec figgers he'd like to go down with me this fall to Leaping Horse, Seattle, 'Frisco, and maybe even New York. I told him I guessed you'd stake him."

The widowed mother did not reply at once. The aging face was turned in the direction of the son who meant so much to her. Her eyes, so handsome and steady, were wistful. They gazed into the joy-lit face of her boy. She could not deny him.

"Sure, Alec, dear. Just ask me what you need—if you must go."

Jessie gazed from one to the other of the three people her life seemed bound up with. Alec she loved but feared for, in her girlish wisdom. Murray she did not understand. Her mother she loved with a devotion redoubled since her father's murder. Moreover, she regarded her with perfect trust in her wisdom.

The change wrought by Murray in a few minutes, however, was too startling for her. Their destinies almost seemed to be swayed by him. It seemed to her alarming, and not without a vague suggestion of terror.

Father José was lounging over his own wood stove in the comfort of a pair of felt slippers, his feet propped up on the seat of another chair.

He was a quaint little figure in his black, unclerical suit, and the warm cloth cap of a like hue drawn carefully over a wide expanse of baldness which Nature had imposed upon him. His alert face, with its eyes whose keenness was remarkable and whose color nearly matched the fringe of gray hair still left to him, gave him an interest which gained nothing from his surroundings in the simple life he lived. It was a face of intellect, and gentle-heartedness. It was a face of purpose, too. The purpose which urges the humbler devotee to a charity which takes the form of human rather than mere spiritual help.

Father José loved humanity because it was humanity. Creed and race made no difference to him. It was his way to stand beside the stile of Life ready to help any, and everybody, over it who needed his help. He saw little beyond that. He concerned himself with no doctrine in the process. Help—physical, moral. That was his creed. And every day of his life he lived up to it.

The habits of the white folk at St. Agatha Mission varied little enough from day to day. It was the custom to foregather at Mrs. Mowbray's home in the evening. After which, with unfailing regularity, Murray McTavish was wont to join the little priest in his Mission House for a few minutes before retiring for the night to his sleeping quarters up at the Fort.

It was eleven o'clock, and the two men were together now in the shanty which served the priest as a home.

It was a pathetic parody of all that home usually conveys. The comfort of it was only the comfort radiating from the contentment of the owner in it. Its structure was powerful to resist storm. Its furnishing was that which the priest had been able to manufacture himself. But the stove had been a present from Allan Mowbray. The walls were whitened with a lime wash which disguised the primitive plaster filling in between the lateral logs. There were some photographs pinned up to help disguise other defects. There were odds and ends of bookshelves hung about, all laden to the limit of their capacity with a library which had been laboriously collected during the long life of Mission work. Four rough chairs formed the seating accommodation. A table, made with a great expenditure of labor, and covered with an old blanket, served as a desk. Then, at the far end of the room, under a cotton ceiling, to save them from the dust from the thatch above, stood four trestle beds, each with ample blankets spread over it. Three of these were for wayfarers, and the fourth, in emergency, for the same purpose. Otherwise the fourth was Father José's own bed. Behind this building, and opening out of it, was a kitchen. This was the entire habitation of a man who had dedicated his life to the service of others.

Murray was sitting at the other side of the stove and his bulky figure was only partly visible to the priest from behind the stovepipe. Both men were smoking their final pipe before retiring. The priest was listening to the trader in that watchful manner of one deeply interested. They were talking of Alec, and the prospects of the new decision. Murray's thoughts were finding harsh expression.

"Say, we're all between the devil and the deep sea," he said, with a hard laugh. "The boy's only fit to be tied to a woman's strings. That's how I see it. Just as I see the other side of it. He's got to be allowed to make his own gait. If he doesn't, why—things are just going to break some way."

The priest nodded. He was troubled, and his trouble looked out of his keen eyes.

"Yes," he agreed. "And the devil's mostly in the deep waters, too. It's devil all around."

"Sure it is." Murray bent down to the stove and lit a twist of paper for his pipe. "Do you know the thing that's going to happen? When we get clear away from here, and that boy's pocket is filled with the bills his ma has handed him, I'll have as much hold on him as he's going to have on those dollars. If I butt in he'll send me to hell quick. And if I don't feel like taking his dope lying down there'll be something like murder done. If I'm any judge of boys, or men, that kid's going to find every muck hole in Leaping Horse—and there's some—and he's going to wallow in 'em till some one comes along and hauls him clear of the filth. What he's going to be like after—why, the thought makes me sweat! And Allan—Allan was my friend."

"But—you advised his mother?" The priest's eyes were searching.

Murray crushed his paper tight in his hand.

"How'd you have done?" he demanded shortly.

The priest weighed his words before replying.

"The same as you," he said at last. "Life's full up of pot holes. We can't learn to navigate right if we don't fall into some of them. I've taught that boy from his first days. He's the makings of anything, in a way. He can't be kept here. He's got to get out, and work off his youthful insanity. Whatever comes of it, it won't be so bad as if he stopped around. I think you've done the best." He sighed. "We must hope, and watch, and—be ready to help when the signal comes. God grant he comes to no——"

He broke off and turned towards the heavy closed door of the shanty, in response to a sharp knocking. In a moment he was on his feet as the door was thrust open, and two familiar figures pushed their way in.

"Why, John Kars, this is the best sight I've had in weeks," cried the priest, with cordiality in every tone of his voice, and every feature of his honest face. "And, Dr. Bill, too? This is fine. Come right in."

The Padre's cordiality found full reflection in his visitors' faces as they wrung his hand.

"It's been some hustle getting here," said Kars. "There wasn't a chance sending on word. We made the landing, and came right along up. Ha, Murray. Say, we're in luck."

Both men shook hands with the factor, while the priest drew up the other chairs to the stove, which he replenished with a fresh supply of logs from the corner of the room.

"But I guess we're birds of bad omen," Kars went on, addressing Murray in particular. "The neches are out on Bell River, and they sniped us right along down to within twenty miles of the Fort."

"The Bell River neches within twenty miles of the Fort?"

It was the priest who answered him. His question was full of alarm. He was thinking of the women of the Mission, white as well as colored.

Murray remained silent while Kars and Bill dropped wearily into the chairs set for them. Then, as the great bulk of the man he disliked settled itself, and he held out his chilled hands to the comforting stove, his voice broke the silence which followed on the priest's expression of alarm.

"Best tell us it right away. We'll need to act quick," he said, his eyes shining under the emotion stirring him.

Kars looked across at the gross figure which suggested so little of the man's real energy. His steady eyes were unreadable. His thoughts were his own, masked as emphatically as any Indian chief's at a council.

"They handed me this," he said, with a hard laugh, indicating the bandage which still surrounded his neck, although his wound had almost completely healed under the skilful treatment of Dr. Bill. "We hit their trail nearly two days from Bell River. They'd massacred an outfit of traveling Indians, and burnt their camp out. However, we kept ahead of them, and made the headwaters of the river. But we didn't shake 'em. Not by a sight. They hung on our trail, I guess, for nearly three weeks. We lost 'em twenty miles back. That's all."

Bill and the priest sat with eyes on Murray. The responsibility of the post was his. Kars, too, seemed to be looking to the factor.

Murray gave no outward sign for some moments. His dark eyes were burning with the deep fires which belonged to them. He sat still. Quite still. Then he spoke, and something of the force of the man rang in his words.

"We got the arms for an outfit. But I don't guess we got enough for defence of the post. It can't come to that. We daren't let it. I'm getting a big outfit up this fall. Meanwhile, we'll need to get busy."

He pulled out his timepiece and studied it deliberately. Then he closed its case with a snap and stood up. He looked down into Kars' watchful eyes.

"They're on the river? Twenty miles back?"

His questions came sharply, and Kars nodded.

"They're in big force?"

Again Kars made a sign, but this time in the negative.

"I don't think it," he said.

"Right. I'll be on the trail in an hour."

The factor turned to the Padre.

"Say, just rouse out the boys while I get other things fixed. There isn't a minute to waste."

He waited for no reply, but turned at once to Kars and Bill.

"Maybe you fellers'll keep your outfit right here. There's the women-folk. It's in case of—accident?"

"I'll join you, and leave Bill, here, with the Padre and the outfit." Kars' suggestion came on the instant.

But Murray vetoed it promptly. He shook his head.

"It's up to me," he said curtly. Then he became more expansive. "You've had yours. I'm looking for mine. I'm getting out for the sake of the women-folk. That's why I'm asking you to stop right here. You can't tell. Maybe they'll need all the help we can hand them. I've always figgered on this play. Best act my way."

There was something like a flicker of the eyelid as Kars acquiesced with a nod. Except for that his rugged face was deadly serious. He filled his pipe with a leisureliness which seemed incompatible with the conditions of the moment. Bill seemed to be engrossed in the study of the stove. Murray had turned to the Padre.

"Not a word to the women. We don't need to scare them. This thing's got to be fixed sudden and sharp."

A moment later he was gone.

The Padre was climbing into a heavy overcoat. The night was chill enough, and the little missionary had more warmth in his heart than he had in his blood channels. He moved across to the door to do his part of the work, when Kars' voice arrested him.

"Say, Padre," he cried, "don't feel worried too much. Murray'll fix things."

His eyes were smiling as the priest turned and looked into them. Bill was smiling, too.

"They are twenty miles back—on the river?"

The priest's demand was significant. The smiles of these men had raised a doubt in his mind.

"Sure."

"Then—the position's bad."

Bill Brudenell spoke for the first time.

"The post and Mission's safe—anyway. Murray'll see to that."