XVI

THE TEPEES OF THE SAPIS

The breed betrayed no surprise, and Jack reflected that he must have seen the smoke of their fire from up the valley. He was riding one of the missing horses, and the other followed with a light pack. He smiled blandly, and, bringing his horse close to Jack's, held out his hand.

"I glad you come back," he said. "I need help, me."

Jack ignored the hand. "We're not friends, Jean Paul," he said grimly, "and we won't make believe."

Jean Paul shrugged like an injured and forgiving person.

"You've got to give an account of yourself," Jack went on.

A spark shot sidewise out of Jean Paul's black eyes. "To you?" he asked.

"To me," said Jack coolly, and the blue eyes faced the black ones down.

Jean Paul thought better of his threatened defiance. "You all time think bad of me," he said deprecatingly. "I work for you. I get the horses back."

Jack laughed in his face. "You're not dealing with Sir Bryson now. You know as well as I do that the Indians are not stealing company horses. They might be persuaded to drive them away, but they'd be glad enough to drive them back when they thought it over. The horses are nothing to me. Where's Garrod?"

Jean Paul shrugged again. "I don't know," he said. "I no can find!"

"That's a lie," said Jack. "You can find anything that you wish to find in this country."

"Maybe you tell me 'ow?" Jean Paul returned with an ill-concealed sneer.

"We'll find him, with or without you," Jack said.

The horses whinnied again, and presently Jack's little train was heard approaching along the trail.

Jean Paul started. Apparently he had supposed that Jack was alone. "Who you got?" he asked sharply.

Jack ignored the question. Jean Paul watched the bend in the trail, lynx-eyed. When Mary and Davy rode into view his angry chagrin peeped out. He immediately put on the ordinary redskin mask, but Jack had had a look beneath.

"A boy and girl!" sneered Jean Paul.

"Exactly," said Jack. "The boy and the girl speak the native talk as well as you do. They will interpret for me."

As Mary and Davy joined them, Jean Paul greeted them politely, shaking hands with each, according to custom. Mary's face was as bland and polite as Jean Paul's own. Jack frowned to see her put her hand into the breed's, but he said nothing.

"What we do now?" asked Jean Paul of all and sundry. Thus he gracefully adopted himself into their party.

"Where is the Sapi camp?" asked Jack.

The breed pointed west. "One day," he said, "thirty mile."

"We'll sleep there to-night."

Jean Paul shrugged. "My horses tire'."

"Change 'em," said Jack. "We'll wait for you."

Jean Paul rode after the horses, and Jack sent Davy back to the cache for the half-breed's tent.

"Wouldn't it be better if we didn't let him see we were suspicious," Mary suggested.

"He'll give us the slip again, if I don't watch him."

She shook her head decisively. "Not now. He'll never let us talk to the Sapis without his being there."

Jack frowned. "My stomach rises against him! I can't hide it!"

"It would be better," she said gently.

"You're always right," he grumbled. "I'll try."

Jean Paul and Davy came back and they proceeded. Their pack-animals were but lightly laden, and they rode hard all afternoon with very little speech. Twelve miles from Camp Trangmar they came on the site of the abandoned Indian camp. At this point the Fort Erskine trail, leaving the Spirit River valley, turned northwestward to ascend beside a small tributary, the Darwin River. This stream came down a flat and gently ascending valley, heavily timbered for the most part, and hemmed in by mountains wooded almost to their summits. It was a gloomy way, for they could see but little through the trees. Now and then from a point of vantage they had a glimpse of the magnificent bulk of Mount Darwin blocking the valley at the top.

They spelled once to eat and to rest the horses. Riding on, Mary kept asking Jean Paul how far it was. At length he said: "Two miles."

They rode a little farther, and came to a brook. "Let's us camp here," said Mary suddenly. "I'm tired."

Jack stared and frowned. Mary tired! "It's less than a mile," he began. "We have plenty of time to ride in and see this thing through before dark——" He was stopped by a look from Mary. He was learning to answer quickly to suggestions from that quarter.

"Oh, well, if you're tired," he said hastily.

When he had a chance apart with her he asked: "What's the game?"

"Don't let's be seen talking together," she said swiftly. "It's nothing much, only I think maybe he will steal away to the tepees to-night to tell them what to say to us. If he does I'll follow and listen."

Jack looked his admiration. "Good for you!" he said.

The invariable routine of camping was gone through with, the horses unpacked and turned out, the little tents pitched, the supper cooked and eaten. Jack pitched his own little lean-to, because lying within it he could still see all that passed outside. After eating they sat around the fire for a while, and Jack sang some songs, that Jean Paul might not get the idea they were unduly on the alert. The half-breed complimented Jack on his singing.

Afterward Jack lay within his shelter, one arm over his face, while he watched from beneath it. When it became dark he saw Jean Paul issue boldly out of his tent and move around as if inviting a challenge. None being forthcoming, he went back. A moment later Jack saw a shadow issue from behind the little A-tent, and steal away into the bushes.

He waited a minute or two, and got up. He met Mary outside. "I'm going too," he announced.

"It will double the risk," she objected. "There's no need. Nothing can happen to me."

"You're wasting time," he said. "I'm going."

Arousing Davy, and putting him on watch, they set off on the trail. Crossing the stream, they plunged anew into the fragrant forest of old pines. It was a close, still night; the sky was heavily overcast, and it became very dark for that latitude. The trail stretched ahead like a pale ribbon vanishing into the murk at half a dozen paces. In the thicker places they had literally to feel for it with their feet. They had not very far to go. After about fifteen minutes' walking the stillness was suddenly shattered by a chorus of barking from a few hundred yards ahead.

"That will be Jean Paul getting into camp," Mary said.

The forest ended abruptly, and they found themselves at the edge of a natural meadow reaching down to the Darwin River. Below them was a quadrangle of tepees, faintly luminous from the little fires within, as if rubbed with phosphorous. The dogs were still barking fitfully.

"Wait for me here," Mary commanded.

He unconsciously put out his hand toward her. "Mary——"

She lingered. "Well—Jack?"

"Let me go instead. I can't stay quiet here."

"You must. You don't know their talk as well as I do. Nothing can happen to me. If they do find me out, they are my friends."

"But the dogs——"

"They bark at nothing. No one minds them."

Her eyes beamed on him softly, like stars through the night; her soft voice was of the night too; and so brave and tender! She was adorable to him. He abruptly flung himself down in the grass to keep from seizing her in his arms.

"Go on," he said a little thickly. "Hurry back."

Hours passed, it seemed to him; it was perhaps half of one hour. The dogs barked and howled, and finally fell silent. A partridge drummed in the depths of the forest, and an owl flew out from among the trees with a moan that rose to a shriek of agony. Down the valley a fox uttered his sharp, challenging bark, and the dogs returned with a renewed infernal clamour. A band of horses stampeded aimlessly up and down between the tepees. It was a heavy, ominous night, and every creature was uneasy.

At last quite suddenly he saw her crouching and running up the grassy slope toward him. His heart bounded with relief.

"Be quick," she whispered. "Jean Paul has started back."

They set off at a run through the black forest, with warding hands outstretched in front of them. Their flying feet gave little sound on the thick carpet of needles. In a few minutes she slowed down, and caught Jack's arm.

"All right now," she said. "He'll take his time. He suspects nothing yet."

"What did you learn?" Jack asked.

Following him in the trail, she put her hand on his shoulder to keep in touch with him in the dark. The light contact warmed Jack through and through. "Jean Paul came to Etzeeah, the head man, to tell him what to say to us to-morrow. I listened outside with my ear at the bottom of the tepee. They spoke softly. I couldn't hear everything. It seems Jean Paul's talk is always for the people to stand together and drive the white men out of their country."

"The old story," said Jack.

"He is clever and they are simple. He tells them my father cheats them, and gets their furs for nothing. He says all the redmen are ready to rise when he gives the word. He makes them think he is not a man like themselves, but a kind of spirit. They are completely under his influence. They are excited and ugly, like bad children."

"What about Garrod?"

"Nothing," she said sadly. "I think they know, but I heard nothing."

"One thing is certain," said Jack; "if we wish to get anything out of them to-morrow, we'll have to leave Jean Paul behind."

"How can we prevent him from coming with us?"

"I'll have to think about that," Jack said grimly.

Next morning Jean Paul issued out of his tent as demure and smooth-faced as a copper-coloured saint. Looking at him they were almost ready to believe that he had never left it. He did his full share of the work about camp, did it cheerfully and well. He even had the delicacy—or whatever the feeling was—to retire with his breakfast to a little distance from the others, that they might be relieved of the constraint of his company.

"He's a wonder," Jack said to Mary with a kind of admiration.

When they had finished eating, Jack spoke a word to Davy, and the two of them got a tracking line out of the baggage, a light, strong cord that Jack had included because of the thousand uses to which it lends itself. He gave the coil to Davy to carry, and they returned to Jean Paul. Jack covertly made sure that his six-shooter was loose in its case. The half-breed, having finished eating, was sitting on the ground, lighting his pipe. Jack stood grimly waiting until he got it going well. Jean Paul flipped the match away with an air of bravado, and a sidelong sneer.

"Put your hands behind you!" Jack suddenly commanded.

Jean Paul sprang up astonished. Jack drew his gun.

"Don't move again," he harshly warned him. "Put your hands behind you."

Jean Paul slowly obeyed, and Davy twisted the cord around his wrists.

"Wat you do?" Jean Paul protested, with an eye on the gun and an admirable air of astonished innocence. "I your man, me. I all time work for you. You always moch bad to me. No believe no'ting."

"Next time you leave camp at night tell us where you're going," said Jack with a hard smile.

It did not feaze Jean Paul. "Mus' I tell w'en I go to see a girl?" he demanded, highly injured.

Jack laughed. "Very clever! But the girl was Etzeeah, and I know all you said."

Jean Paul fell suddenly silent.

"Kneel down," commanded Jack. "Tie his ankles together, Davy, with his wrists between."

Jack finished the job himself, going over all the knots, and taking half a dozen turns around Jean Paul's body, with a final knot on his chest, out of reach of both hands and teeth. He and Davy then picked him up and laid him inside his own tent. His pipe dropped out of his mouth in transit. Jack, with grim good-nature, picked it up and thrust it between his teeth again. Jean Paul puffed at it defiantly. Jack fastened the tent flaps back, affording a clear view of the interior.

"I'll have to leave him to you while we're gone, Davy. Keep away from him. Don't listen to anything he says. Above all, don't touch him. I don't see how he can work loose, but if he should"—Jack raised his voice so it would carry into the tent—"shoot him like a coyote. I order you to do it. I take the consequences."

Jean Paul lay without stirring. His face was hidden.

"God knows what poisonous mess is stewing inside his skull," Jack said to Mary, as they rode away.

When the two of them cantered into the quadrangle of the tepees, with its uproar of screaming children, yelping curs, and loose horses, it needed no second glance to confirm the report that the redskins were in an ugly temper. An angry murmur went hissing down the line like the sputtering of a fuse. Every one dropped what he was doing; heads stuck out of all the tepee openings; the little children scuttled inside. Men scowled and fingered their guns; women laughed derisively, and spat on the ground.

Jack and Mary pulled up their horses at the top of the quadrangle, and coolly looked about them. Filth and confusion were the keynotes of the scene. This was the home-camp of this little tribe, and the offal of many seasons was disintegrating within sight. All their winter gear, furs, snowshoes and sledges, was slung from vertical poles out of harm's way. Between the tepees, on high racks out of reach of the dogs, meat was slowly curing.

As for the people, they were miserably degenerate. Their fathers, the old freebooters of the plains, would have disowned such offspring. The mark of ugliness was upon them; pinched gray cheeks and sunken chests were pitifully common; their ragged store clothes hung loosely on their meagre limbs. A consciousness of their weakness lurked in their angry eyes; in spite of themselves the quiet pose and the cold, commanding eyes of the whites struck awe into their breasts. They saw that the man and the girl had guns, but they hung in buckskin cases from the saddles, and they made no move to reach for them. They saw the two speak to each other quietly. Once they smiled.

It was upon Jack's calling Mary's attention to the absurdity of it, this little company of tatterdemalions seeking to defy the white race. There were eighteen tepees, small and large, containing perhaps ninety souls. It was absurd and it was tragic. Remote and cut-off even from the other tribes of their own people, they had never seen any white men except the traders at Fort Cheever and Fort Erskine, and the rare travellers who passed up and down their river in the summer.

"I'm sorry for them," Mary murmured. "They don't know what they're doing."

"Don't look sorry for them," Jack warned. "They wouldn't understand it."

An old man issued from the largest tepee, and approached them, not without dignity. He was of good stature, but beginning to stoop. He wore a dingy capote, or overcoat made out of a blanket, and to keep his long, uncombed gray hair out of his face, he had a dirty cotton band around his forehead. Not an imposing figure, but there was a remnant of fire and pride in his old eyes.

"Etzeeah, the head man," Mary whispered to Jack.

Etzeeah concealed his feelings. Approaching Jack's horses he silently held up his hand.

Jack's eyes impaled the old man. He ignored the hand. Jack had enough of their talk for his purpose. "I do not shake hands with horse thieves," he said.

Etzeeah fell back with an angry gesture. "I am no horse thief," he said. "All the horses you see are mine, and my people's!"

"You drove away the governor's horses," said Jack. "And drove them back after he had gone. They are company horses. It was a foolish thing to do."

"It is Ascota who speaks me ill," cried Etzeeah with a great display of anger. "He comes here, and he makes trouble. He calls us thieves and bad men. What do I know of white men, and white men's horses?"

"This is what Jean Paul told him to say," Mary murmured in English. "They were going to make believe to quarrel before us."

"Since when has the chief of the Sapis learned to lie?" demanded Jack coldly.

"I, no liar!" cried Etzeeah, taken aback.

"You told a different tale when Ascota came to your lodge last night."

Etzeeah was silenced. His jaw dropped, and his black eyes looked old and furtive.

"I have come for the sick white man, Garrod," said Jack. "Where is he?"

"I have seen no sick white man," muttered Etzeeah. "Ascota ask me already."

"Your women hear you lie," said Jack scornfully. "They are laughing behind you. I have had enough lies. Call everybody out of the tepees!"

Etzeeah stood motionless and scowling.

"Call them out!" repeated Jack, "or I will pull them out by the hair."

Etzeeah raised his voice in sullen command, and the rest of the women and the children issued out of the tepees, the little children scurrying madly to hide behind their mothers, and clinging to their skirts.

Jack pointed to the bottom of the square. "All stand close together!" he ordered.

The men scowled and muttered, but obeyed. There was no reason why any one of them should not have put a bullet through Jack's breast, sitting on his horse before them empty-handed—no reason, that is, except the terrible blue eyes, travelling among them like scorching fires. Many a little man's soul was sick with rage, and his fingers itching for the trigger, but before he could raise his gun the eyes would fall on him, withering his breast. It was the white man's scorn that emasculated them. How could one fire at a being who held himself so high?

"Go through the tepees as quickly as you can," Jack said to Mary. "I will hold your horse and watch them."

Dismounting, she made her way to Etzeeah's lodge.

A hundred pairs of black eyes watched their every movement. Etzeeah made to edge back toward the crowd.

"Stand where you are!" Jack commanded. "I am not through with you."

Etzeeah lowered his eyes, and stood still.

"Etzeeah, you are a fool," said Jack, loud enough for all to hear. "Ascota feeds you lies, and you swallow them without chewing. Do you think you can fight all the white men with your eighteen lodges? To the south there are more white men than cranes in the flocks that fly overhead in the spring. When your few shells are spent, where will you get more bullets to shoot the white men?"

"Ascota will give us plenty shells!" cried a voice in the crowd.

"Why isn't Ascota here now to help you?" asked Jack quickly. "He said he would be here to show you how to fool me? Why? Because I tied him like a dog in his tent, with a boy to watch him."

They looked at each other and murmured.

"If you did drive the white men away," Jack went on, "how would you kill the moose for food without their powder? Who would buy your furs? Where would you get flour and tea and tobacco, and matches to light your fires? Wah! You are like children who throw their food down and tread on it, and cry for it again!"

What effect this had, if any, could not be read in the dark, walled faces that fronted him.

Mary returned to Jack, bringing a gun, which she handed him without comment. He recognized it. It was a weapon that had lately been aimed at him.

"This is the sick man's gun," he said, looking hard at Etzeeah.

The chief threw up his hands. "A Winchester thirty-thirty, like all our guns," he protested. "There are twenty here the same."

Other men held up their weapons to show. Jack merely turned the gun around, and pointed to initials neatly scratched on the stock.

"F. G.," he said grimly; "Francis Garrod."

"How do I know?" said Etzeeah excitedly. "I have no letters. If it is the white man's gun, Ascota left it."

"Ascota does not leave a gun," said Jack. "Where is Garrod?"

"I don't know," muttered Etzeeah. "I have not seen him."

"You are lying," Jack said coldly. "For the last time I ask you, where is Garrod?"

Etzeeah fell back on a sullen, walled silence.

Jack turned to Mary. "Is there a woman or a child that he sets great store by?" he asked swiftly in English.

"Etzoogah, his son, the pretty boy yonder," she answered.

Following her glance, Jack had no difficulty in picking out the one she meant. He was a handsome, slender boy, a year or so younger than Davy. Where the other children were in rags, he was wearing an expensive wide-brimmed hat from the store, a clean blue gingham shirt, new trousers, and around his waist a gay red sash. Moreover, he had the wilful, petulant look of the spoiled child; plainly the apple of the old man's eye.

"Get me a horse and a rope bridle," Jack whispered to Mary.

There were several horses picketed within the square, handy to their owners' uses, and Mary made for the nearest.

"You take my horse?" Etzeeah demanded, scowling.

"It is for your son to ride," Jack said with a grim smile. "Etzoogah, come here!" he commanded.

The boy approached with an awed, scared air. Etzeeah started to his side, but Jack coolly separated them by moving his horse between. Mary returned with the other horse, and the boy fell into her hands. She smiled at him reassuringly.

"Get on," she said. "Nobody's going to hurt you. Come with us to our camp. Davy is there."

All the children knew Mary and Davy. Moreover, there were always good things to eat in a white man's camp. The boy was well pleased to obey. Etzeeah shrilly commanded him to dismount, but the apple of his eye merely laughed at him. The old man began to break. His eyes dulled with anxiety; his hands trembled.

"What you do with my boy?" he demanded. "We shoot if you take him."

Jack laughed. "A red man can't shoot a white man," he said. "His hand shakes too much. We will take the boy to our camp. We will keep him until you bring the sick white man to us. If you don't bring him back, well, maybe we will send the boy outside and make a white man of him."

Jack gave him a moment. There was no sign from Etzeeah, except his trembling.

"Ride on," Jack said to Mary.

They wheeled their horses, and Etzeeah broke down.

His hand went to his throat. "Stop!" he muttered thickly. He did not cry out or protest. He merely shrugged. "So be it," he said stoically. "I will find Garrod if I can. Ascota took him away from camp two days ago, and came back without him."

"Killed him?" cried Jack.

Etzeeah shook his head. "He was mad. Madmen are not harmed. He took him into the bush and left him."

"Left him to starve?" cried Jack. "Good God!"

"He was mad," repeated Etzeeah. "The beasts and the birds will bring him food."

Jack shrugged impatiently. "Very well," he said. "I'll have no more lies. You come back and show me the place now, or I take the boy."

"I come," he said. "Etzoogah, get down. Get my blanket!"

The boy obeyed, none too willingly, and Etzeeah mounted in his place. "You feed me?" he asked.

"There is plenty," said Jack. To Mary he said in English. "Make him ride ahead of you out of camp. I'll stay and hold the crowd. Sing out when you reach the trees, and I'll come."

In spite of herself, fear for him transfixed her eyes. "Jack," she murmured.

He frowned. "No weakness. You must do as I say."

Etzeeah got his blanket, and he and Alary rode out of the square. The Indians stirred and muttered angrily, but the blue eyes still held them chained. When Mary's "All right!" reached his ears, Jack turned his horse, and, swinging himself sidewise with a thigh over the saddle, walked out of the square, watching them still. The theatrical instinct of a young man suggested rolling a cigarette to him. Slipping his arm through the bridle rein, he got out the bag of tobacco and the papers.

At a hundred yards distance the spell that held the Indians began to break, and they moved forward between the tepees, cursing Jack, and brandishing their arms. Jack's horse started forward; pulling him in, he moistened the cigarette, watching them still. Guns were raised at last—and fired. Still Jack walked his horse. He could see that as yet the gun-play was merely to save themselves in the eyes of their women. No bullets came in his direction. But he could not tell how long—— He lit his cigarette.

A bullet whined overhead. Another ploughed up a little cascade of earth alongside, and his horse sheered off. A chorus of maniacal yells was raised behind him. It was only fifteen yards to the trees. Jack threw away the cigarette, and gave the horse his head. They gained the forest, with the bullets thudding deep into the trunks on either side.

XVII

ASCOTA ESCAPES.

When Etzeeah caught sight of the little tents through the trees, he pulled up his horse. Extending a trembling forefinger, he asked hoarsely:

"Ascota, is he there?"

"Yes," said Jack. "He can't hurt you. He's tied up."

Etzeeah slipped from his horse. "I wait here," he said. "I not go where he is."

"Are you afraid?" asked Jack with curling lip.

Etzeeah had turned pale; his eyes darted from side to side, and he moistened his lips. "I am afraid," he muttered doggedly. "He is more than a man. He has made the beasts speak to me; the porcupine, the bear, the beaver, each after his own nature. He has made men mad before my eyes, and brought their senses back when it pleased him. He mastered the white man, and made him kneel before him, and bring him his food. This I saw. The like was never known before. Who would not be afraid? What if he is tied? He will wither me with his eyes!"

Jack and Mary looked at each other in perplexity.

"Blindfold Jean Paul," Mary suggested.

"Good," said Jack with clearing brow. "Watch him," he added in English, "and come over when I wave my hand."

Jack led his horse across the brook. Here another evidence of Jean Paul Ascota's evil power awaited him. Davy at sight of Jack sprang up with an odd, low cry, and came running to meet him, running waveringly as if his knees were sinking under him. He cast himself on Jack, trembling like aspen leaves.

"Oh, Jack!" he gasped. "I'm glad—oh, Jack! Jean Paul—"

"He's safe?" demanded Jack.

"He's safe. Oh, Jack!—he said—he's a devil, Jack. He made me want to let him go! He said—oh! it's horrible! He said—oh! I can't tell you! Jack!——"

The boy's agonized voice trailed off; he sighed, and, his slender frame relaxing, hung limply over Jack's arm. Jack let his horse go, and waving to Mary to keep back, he bent, and dashed the cold brook water in Davy's face.

He revived in a moment or two, and clung to Jack. "Oh, Jack!" he murmured, "I thought you'd never come! I was near crazy. He said—oh! I can't tell you!"

"Never you mind, old boy," said Jack gruffly. "Forget it! Mary and I are both here. It's all right now."

He carried him up the bank, and put him down by the fire. A sip from Jack's flask further restored him. Then Jack turned with grim eyes and clenched fists toward Jean Paul's tent.

"You devil!" he muttered. It was the word they all used.

"I want to smoke," Jean Paul said impudently.

"Lie there and want it, damn you!" said Jack. He had much ado to restrain himself from kicking the beast. As it was he flung him over none too tenderly, and taking the handkerchief from the breed's neck, tied it tight round his eyes.

"There's somet'ing you don't want me to see, huh?" sneered Jean Paul.

Jack was a little staggered by his perspicacity.

He waved his hand to Mary. She brought Etzeeah across, and flew to comfort and restore Davy. They never did learn exactly what Jean Paul had said to him. At any mention of the subject the boy's agitation became painful to see.

Etzeeah after coming into camp never once opened his mouth. He regarded Jean Paul's tent as nervously as if its flimsy walls confined a man-eating grizzly. He sat down at some distance, and at the side of the tent where Jean Paul could not have seen him even had his eyes not been blindfolded.

Jack brought wood, and Mary started to prepare a meal for them all, before taking to the trail again. At a moment when there was comparative silence a loud voice suddenly issued from the tent, speaking the Sapi tongue.

"Etzeeah is there!"

They all started violently. It was uncanny. Etzeeah paled, and sprang up. Jack laid a heavy hand on his shoulder.

"I smell him!" the voice of Jean Paul went on, full of mocking triumph. "Nothing can be hidden from me! Etzeeah has betrayed me! Bound and helpless though I am, don't think you can escape me, old Etzeeah! My medicine travels far! Your son, your fine boy Etzoogah, shall pay. He's paying now! He falls and twists on the ground with the frothing sickness—the fine boy! He curses his father!"

Jack was struggling with the frantic father. "For God's sake, stop his mouth!" he cried to Mary. "A gag!"

She flew to the tent, and presently the voice was stilled. The last sound it uttered was a laugh, a studied, slow, devilish laugh, frightful to untutored ears. We are accustomed to such tricks on our stage.

Etzeeah lay moaning and wailing, clawing up handfuls of earth to put on his matted gray head. Jack arose from him white and grim, and with a new light in his eyes.

"We've had about enough of this," he muttered between his teeth.

Mary, divining what was in his mind, flew to him.

"Jack! Not that! Not that!" she gasped, breathless with horror.

"I'm not going to do it here," Jack said harshly. "I'll take him away. What else can I do? Look at Davy! Look at the Indian! This breed is like a pestilence among us! He'll have us all stark mad if I don't—"

"No! No!" she implored, clinging to him. "You and I are strong enough to stand it, Jack. We'll come through all right. But we never could forget"—her voice sunk low—"not his blood, Jack!"

His purpose failed him. He caught up her hand and pressed it hard to his cheek with an abrupt, odd motion. Dropping it, he turned away. "All right," he said shortly. His eyes fell on Etzeeah. "Get up!" he cried scornfully. "This is old woman's talk! If he can send sickness through the air, why doesn't he strike me down, who bound him, and blinded, and gagged him?"

Etzeeah, struck by the reasonableness of this, ceased his frantic lamentations.

In an hour they were ready for the trail again. Jack sent Mary and Davy on ahead with Etzeeah and the pack-horses. It was arranged that as soon as they reached the site of the former Indian camp, where Etzeeah said Jean Paul had turned Garrod adrift, they were to drop the baggage and go in search of the missing man.

As soon as the others had ridden out of sight, Jack removed the blind and the gag from Jean Paul and cut the cord that bound his ankles and his wrists together. He freed his wrists; his ankles he left bound. The half-breed stretched out, and rolled on the ground in an ecstacy of relief. Finally he sat up, and Jack put the food that had been left for him where he could reach it. Jack stood back, watching him grimly, a hand on the butt of his revolver.

"Are you goin' to shoot me?" Jean Paul demanded coolly.

"I wouldn't waste good food on you if I were," returned Jack. "Hurry up and put it away."

"You not got the nerve to shoot me," sneered Jean Paul.

"Try to hypnotize me and you'll see," Jack said with a hard smile. "I'd be glad of an excuse."

"Why don' you shoot me now?" Jean Paul persisted, with a look like a vain and wilful child, experimenting to see how far he can go against a stronger force.

"I'd rather see you hang," said Jack.

"The police can't touch me. I do not'ing against the law, me."

"There's a thing called treason in this country," said Jack. "You can hang for that."

Jean Paul laughed. "Fort Cheever long way," he said. "You not bring me there, never."

"Then I'll bury you on the way," said Jack with his grim start of laughter.

When Jean Paul had eaten, Jack bound his hands in front of him this time, and liberated his feet.

"Get on," he said, pointing to the horse.

"You can't make me," Jean Paul said with his sidelong look.

"Shan't try," said Jack coolly. "You can run along at my horse's tail if you'd rather."

Jean Paul scowled at the suggested indignity, and climbed on without more ado. Jack tied his hands to the saddle horn.

It was seventeen miles down the forested valley back to the site of the former Indian camp. This, the ancient route between Forts Cheever and Erskine, was a good trail, and they covered the distance without stopping. Jean Paul rode ahead, Jack following with his revolver loose in its holster. It may be said that he almost hoped the breed would try to escape, to give him a chance to use it, but perhaps Jean Paul guessed what was in his mind. At any rate he rode quietly.

Issuing out of the forest at last, the Spirit River valley was spread before them, with the big stream winding among its wide, naked bars. The abandoned camp lay below them, a village of bare tepee poles in a rich meadow surrounded by an open park of white-stemmed poplars. As they approached it a fresh anxiety struck at Jack's breast, for he saw the three pack-horses picketed to the trees with their packs on their backs. He knew that only an emergency would have taken Mary and Davy away without unloading them. The animals had been rolling, to the no small detriment of their baggage. Jean Paul laughed at the sight.

Jack had no recourse but to possess his soul in patience until they came back. Meanwhile he unpacked the horses, and pitched their four little tents, two on each side of the fire. He bound Jean Paul securely as before, and put him in his own tent. He hung the gag from the ridge-pole with significant action. Jean Paul's lips were already bruised and blue as a result of the previous application.

Not until late afternoon was Jack's anxious breast relieved by the sight of the three horses single-footing it across the meadow. Davy rode first, then Etzeeah, looking crestfallen and sullen, and Mary bringing up the rear, her rifle across her arm, and determination making her girl's face grim. Evidently there had been trouble; but the three of them, and uninjured! Jack could have shouted with relief.

"He ran away," Mary explained briefly. "Davy and I had hobbled two of the riding horses, when he suddenly jumped on the third and headed north. He got a couple of minutes' start before we could get the hobbles off and after him. When he got in the timber, he turned the horse adrift, and we lost more time following its tracks. But I guessed he would make back to the trail as soon as you had passed, so we patrolled it, and we nabbed him at last."

"Good work!" said Jack briefly. It did not occur to him that there was something rather extraordinary in a mere girl and boy bringing in the headman of the Sapi Indians by themselves. He expected it of their white blood.

There seemed to be nothing for it now but to bind Etzeeah hand and foot also, and to convert Jack's tent into a cell for him. The two prisoners lay in their separate shelters on one side of the fire, while their captors watched them from the other. Jack was to sleep with Davy, and except for Mary's rifle, all the weapons in camp were stowed in that tent. The long-threatened rain set in steady and cold, and the night threatened to be as dark as winter.

They ate their supper inside Davy's tent, while the fire sputtered and sulked in the rain. A heavy silence prevailed; for one thing, they were dead weary, and their difficulties were pressing thick upon them. The rain did not lighten them. Jack, looking at Mary and Davy, thought with softening eyes:

"They're clear grit! But if I only had another man!"

The instant they had finished eating he ordered the two youngsters to bed. "I'll feed the two of them," he said, nodding across the fire, "and clean up. It will help keep me awake."

"You need sleep more than either of us," Mary objected.

"If I once let myself go I'd never wake," he said with a laugh. "I'll call you at midnight." It was tacitly understood between them that Davy was not to keep watch.

His work done, Jack sat down inside the door of Davy's tent to smoke, and if he could, to keep the fire going in spite of the rain. He found that it required too great a blaze to be proof against the downpour. He had not nearly enough wood to last throughout the night, so he let it out in order that Mary might enjoy what remained of the fuel. When the fire went out he could no longer see into Jean Paul's tent, so he crossed over and sat down beside him. Throughout the weary hours he sat smoking to keep himself awake, until his mouth was raw. From the adjoining tent issued the reassuring sound of Etzeeah's snores; Jean Paul, too, never stirred, and his breathing was deep and slow.

Midnight had passed before Jack had the heart to waken Mary. He first took advantage of a lull in the rain to start the fire again. As he threw back the curtain of her little tent, the firelight shone in her face, rosy and serene in sleep, her cheek pillowed on her round arm. The sight stirred him to the very core of his being. He knelt, gazing at her breathlessly. He forgot everything, except that she was lovely. He suddenly bent over her with a guilty air, and lightly kissed her lips.

She opened her eyes. He sprang away in a panic at the thought of her scorn. But she awoke with an enchanting smile. "Jack I dreamed——" she began, as if it were the sweetest and the most natural thing in the world for her to find him bending over her at night—and caught herself up with a burning blush. Jack hastily retreated outside. Neither of them referred to it again.

Jack was asleep as soon as he stretched himself beside Davy. The next thing he knew, something had happened, what it was he could not tell. He staggered to his feet, and out into the open, drunken, paralyzed with sleep, and fighting for consciousness.

"Jack, he's gone!" cried Mary.

That awakened him. He saw her on her knees before Jean Paul's tent, and ran to her. The tent was empty. The rain poured down on their heads unheeded. The fire was out.

Mary was in great distress. "My fault," she said. "It rained harder than ever, and the fire went out. I could not bear to sit beside him as you did. It made me sick to be so near him! I thought I could watch from my tent. The wind came up and it was hard to see. He fixed the blanket to look as if he was still under it. He must have slipped out of the back!"

"But tied hand and foot!" cried Jack.

"The cords are here," she said, displaying them.

"But how?" demanded Jack.

Mary's searching hand found two small stones in the blanket that she showed Jack; one had a sharp, jagged edge, and the explanation was clear. Throughout the hours when Jack sat beside him, and he seemed to be so sound asleep, the wily breed had been patiently rubbing at the cords until they frayed apart.

"No more your fault than mine," said Jack grimly.

Simultaneously the thought of Etzeeah occurred to them, and they sprang to look under the adjoining shelter. At first glance in the darkness, the Indian seemed to be safely there, but when Jack put out his hand the puffed-up blanket collapsed, and there was nothing under it. At that, for the first, their strong young breasts were shaken by awe.

"Good God!" Jack gasped. "He's got him, too! How could he? With you not twenty feet away. And not a sound. Is it a man or a devil?"

The pegs that held down the back of Jack's lean-to were drawn, showing how Jean Paul had entered, and how he had removed his prey.

"Etzeeah—" said Mary tremblingly, "do you suppose Jean Paul has—

"He would hardly take him alive," said Jack grimly, "without a sound."

"But he had no weapon, we know that."

"His hands!"

They were silent.

"But if he did," faltered Mary, "why would he take—take the body away?"

Jack shook his head. "They are always mysterious," he said.

"He may be near," whispered Mary. "What's to be done?"

"He's not dangerous to us until he gets a weapon," said Jack. "Wake Davy, and you two watch our guns. I'll bring in the horses."

It was near four, and beginning to be light. The rain ceased, and a thick white mist clung to the river-meadows. It was not easy to find the horses. Jack satisfied himself that two of them were missing. Why two? he thought. He did not find the body of Etzeeah, as he half expected.

He had to wait for better light before he could look for tracks. He found them at last, leading back up the Darwin valley, the fresh hoof-prints of two horses superimposed on the confusion of tracks they had made coming and going. The horses had been ridden at a gallop. Jack returned to tell Mary.

"He's gone all right," he said. "And alive or dead, he's taken Etzeeah with him. The second horse carried a load too. He's gone back to the Sapis for grub and a gun."

Mary searched Jack's face with a poignant anxiety to see what he intended to do. "Let him go," she suggested. "We know that Garrod is near here somewhere."

Jack stood considering with bent brows and clenched hands. He finally shook his head. "He could come back to-night, and pick us off one by one around our fire. We'll have no peace or security until I get him, Mary. I'll have to leave Garrod to you and Davy. You know how much finding him means to me!"

"But you," she faltered, her eyes wide with terror for him, "you can't go back alone to the Sapis. They shot at you!"

Jack's uncertainty was gone. He raised a face, transfigured.

"Pshaw! That mongrel crew!" he cried. "They're the least of my difficulties. I'll drop on them before Jean Paul can work them up to mischief. I've got to get that breed! No murder can be done in my camp, and the murderer get away! No redskin shall ever live to brag of how he bested me! I'll get him if I have to ride to hell and drag him out!"

XVIII

THE END OF ASCOTA

Two hours later Jack rode into the Sapi village for the second time, and flung himself off his tired and dripping mount. The horse stood with hanging head, and feet planted wide apart, fighting for breath. This time Jack's arrival created little visible sensation. The people were otherwise and terribly preoccupied. A strange silence prevailed, extending even to the children and the dogs. Many of the people were gathered around the entrance to Etzeeah's lodge. They merely turned their heads with a scowl, and the men drew on the walled look they affect in the presence of whites. In the faces of the women and children awe and terror were painted.

"Ascota, where is he?" Jack demanded.

Hands were silently pointed up the valley.

"How long?"

"Half an hour," one said.

Outside the square Jack saw two more dead weary horses still wet from their punishing ride.

"Where is Etzeeah?" he asked.

There was no answer. All the heads turned as one toward the tepee.

Jack threw back the blind that hangs over the entrance, and, stooping, entered. He was prepared for what he saw. The body of the old man sprawled on its back beside the fire. All around the tepee squatted his wives and his sons in attitudes of sullen mourning. Etzoogah, the best-beloved, eyed the body askance with scared eyes, and chewed the tassel of his red sash. Etzeeah was not a comely sight. Death was in his face, but none of the majesty of death. His grimy, wrinkled skin was livid and blackened. The marks on his scrawny throat showed how he had met his end.

Stooping, Jack picked up his hand, and let it fall. It was significantly cold and stiff. He decently composed the dead man's limbs, and signed to one of the women to cover the body with her shawl.

Rising, he looked grimly around the circle. "This is murder!" he said.

None showed in any way that they heard.

"Who will ride with me to catch the murderer?" he demanded.

None moved. The faces of the women showed a start of terror.

Jack went outside again, and looked over the silent crowd. Seeing Charlbogin, one of the deserters, among them, he went to him.

"Did Ascota speak?" he demanded.

The sulky boy could not resist the command. "Ascota throw Etzeeah on the ground, so!" he said with a striking gesture. "He say: 'This is a man who betrayed me! Bury him!'"

A shudder passed through the crowd. Children wailed and whimpered.

"Then what?" asked Jack.

"He take a gun and a blanket, and moose meat from the fire; he catch a horse and ride west."

"And you let him go!" exclaimed Jack.

"Ascota is not a man like us," the young man muttered. "He does what he likes."

"More woman's talk!" cried Jack. "Are there any men among you? Come with me, and I'll show you stronger magic than Ascota's."

Some of the men affected to smile contemptuously as at an idle boaster. None moved to follow him. The obstinacy of their terror faced Jack like a wall, and he saw the futility of trying to move it.

He cursed them roundly. "I'll go alone then," he cried. "Bring me the best horse there is. I'll pay."

They shrugged as much as to say: "Let him, as long as he pays." One went to get the horse. In five minutes Jack was pounding the trail again.

Beyond the village the valley narrowed, and the roar of the plunging stream rose from the bottom of it. The bordering hills rapidly became steeper and higher. The trail did not follow the course of the river, but found an easier route along the face of the hills a hundred feet or so above. The sides of the hills had been burned over, here, and the forest was only a wilderness of naked, charred sticks. Many of these had fallen in the trail, making slow going for the horse. Occasionally the little river paused for a while in its headlong descent to wander back and forth through a green meadow. The trail came down to cross these easy places, and it was only here that Jack could extend his horse.

The plain tracks of Jean Paul's horse led him on. Jack could read that the breed was riding recklessly and distancing him steadily mile by mile, but he would not on that account risk his own horse's legs through the down timber. "I'll get him," he said to himself coolly, with the terrible singleness of purpose of which he was capable. In such a mood he was no longer a man, but an engine.

Jack had come across the mountains from Fort Erskine by this trail, and he knew it well. It was evidently for Fort Erskine, where he was not well known, that Jean Paul was making. Ahead, through the forest of bare sticks that hemmed him in, Jack could see the gateway to the mountains, the magnificent limestone pile of Mount Darwin on the right. He had worked around the base of Darwin, and all this was familiar ground.

It was about noon when Jack and his horse, rounding a spur of the hill, were brought up all standing by the sight of a dark body lying in the trail ahead. Dismounting, and tying his trembling animal to a tree, Jack went forward to investigate. It was a horse, Jean Paul's horse, with a broken foreleg, and abandoned to its fate. Jack's heart beat high with hope; the end of this thing was in sight now. The poor brute raised agonized eyes to him. Jack could not put a bullet through its head without betraying his whereabouts, but he mercifully cut its throat.

He proceeded warily. He was covered from above by the very steepness of the hill and the impenetrable barriers of the fallen timber. The prints of Jean Paul's moccasins led him ahead. The trail dropped steeply to a little stream that he knew well; it drained the easterly slope of Mount Darwin. It marked the edge of the burned-over tract, and on the other side the trail plunged into virgin forest again.

Jack went forward as cautiously as an Indian, taking advantage of every scrap of cover. At the brook he lost Jean Paul's tracks. It was clear the breed had waded either up or down. Jack was pretty sure he would not be far away, for the redskin of Jean Paul's type has no love for long journeys afoot. But it promised to be a somewhat extended stalk and his horse was no use to him. He therefore went back, cached his saddle, and turned the beast out hobbled, trusting that it would find its way back to the last river-meadow they had passed. Blanket and grub Jack strapped on his back, and his gun he carried under his arm.

He spent an hour searching up and down the shores of the creek for tracks, without success. Neither was there any evidence of Jean Paul's having returned to the trail farther along. If Jack was well skilled in reading tracks, the breed was adept in hiding them. Jack's only recourse was to climb. There is a little eminence abutting on the base of Mount Darwin and on the top of it a knoll of naked rock that overlooks the valley for miles up and down. Knowing the natives' deep-rooted aversion to drinking cold water, Jack guessed that Jean Paul would have to build a fire, and from this point of vantage a fire, however small, would almost surely betray his whereabouts.

Taking his bearings, he made a beeline up the steep slope through the heavy, old timber that reached up from the valley, and through a dense light growth of poplar above. This part of the mountain offered no special difficulties in climbing, and in half an hour he threw himself down on the flat top of the knoll, with the valley spread before him.

Mount Darwin reaches a long promontory down the valley it has given its name to. The promontory consists of seven little peaks in a row, each one rising over the head of the one in front, and the seventh is the actual summit of the mountain. It was on number one of these little summits that Jack now lay, looking down the valley up which he had ridden that morning. A mile or so away was a patch of green with a black dot upon it, that he guessed was his horse.

Off to his left, hidden in the forest, the creek came tumbling down from the snows above; on his right hand the river washed the rocky base of the monarch. The easiest way to the summit is right on up over the succeeding peaks; indeed on this side there is a mountain goat trail direct to the top. Darwin can also be climbed, but not so easily, by ascending the creek for a couple of miles, thence up a steep slide to a long hogback that leads back to the sixth peak. On the river side the rocky cliffs tower six thousand feet into the air, sheer and unscalable. Such was the theatre of the pursuit of Jean Paul Ascota.

In all the wide space opened to Jack's eye there was not a sign of life, except the black pin-point that he supposed was his horse, and a pair of eagles, sailing and screaming high above the forest. Nowhere in the brilliantly clear air was there the least sign of smoke. He ate some of his bread and meat while he watched, and smoked his pipe. He marked a place around to the right below where the trail passed over a rocky spur. On the other side it was open to him through the down timber; so that Jean Paul could not pass either way on the trail without his seeing him.

It was hard on the engine of retribution to be obliged to sit and wait. When his pipe went out he moved restlessly up and down his little plateau or shelf of rock. Behind him, the forest grew close and high, hiding the rest of the mountain. He never knew quite how it happened, but at one end of the rock, near the place where he had come up, he suddenly found himself staring at the perfect print of a moccasined foot in a patch of moss! His breast swelled with satisfaction at the sight; at the same time he frowned with chagrin to think of the valuable time he had wasted sitting within twenty feet of Jean Paul's trail.

Jean Paul's path up through the thickly springing poplar saplings was not more than two yards from Jack's own. Such are the caprices of the Goddess of Chance! He had crossed the rock, and continued on up the mountain by the mountain goat trail, which first became visible here. Evidently believing that he had shaken off pursuit, and that no one would dream of looking for him on the mountain, he was no longer taking any care to cover his tracks.

Jack hastened after, as keen and determined as a high-bred hound whom nothing short of a cataclysm could divert from his purpose. The rough track followed the top of a stony ridge, which dropped steeply to the river on one side, and sloped more gradually into a forested hollow on the other. A thick growth of pines afforded him perfect cover. Like all animal paths, the trail wound like a tangled string among the trees. The growth ended abruptly on the edge of a shallow rocky cut athwart the ridge. On the other side of the cut rose the steep face of the second little peak in the series.

Jack paused within the shelter of the trees to reconnoitre. The great slope of rock opposite, with its wide, bare ditch, made a well-nigh perfect natural fortification. He watched the top of it lynx-eyed, and presently he was rewarded by the sight of a wisp of smoke floating over the edge. Jack drew a long breath and grimly smiled. So that was where he was!

He had chosen admirably. The growing timber ended at the spot where Jack was, but up above there was enough down timber to keep the breed in fire until the judgment day, if he wished to stay, and his fire would be invisible from any point in the valley. For water, all the ledges and hollows on the northerly side were heaped with snow; for food there were mountain goats and ptarmigan; for defence he had only to roll a stone down on the head of any one who tried to climb to his aerie.

While Jack watched, carefully concealed, Jean Paul suddenly showed himself boldly on the edge of the cliff. The distance was about three hundred yards, a possible shot, but at a difficult angle. Jack held his hand. It was all important not to put the half-breed on his guard just yet. Jean Paul carelessly surveyed the approaches to his position, and went back out of sight.

Any attack from in front was out of the question. Only one thing suggested itself to Jack: to climb the mountain by the other possible route, and come down on Jean Paul from above. As soon as it occurred to him he started to retrace his steps, without giving a thought to the enormous physical exertion involved. This way was beset with difficulties; the bed of the creek was heaped with the tangled trunks brought down by the freshets. But Jack set his teeth doggedly, and attacking these obstacles, put them behind him one after another.

The sun was three hours lower before he stood at the edge of the timber line on the other great spur of the mountain. He hesitated here. Above him extended a smooth, steep slide of earth and stones at least two thousand feet across, and without so much as a bush or a boulder for cover. At the top of this slide was the hogback that led back to the sixth peak. If Jean Paul was watchful he could scarcely fail to see Jack mounting the naked slope. True, nearly half a mile separated them, but a moving black spot, however small, would arrest his attention if he saw it. He would not mistake it for an animal, for the only animal on the upper slopes is the snowy mountain goat.

However, Jack had to chance it. His principal fear was that Jean Paul, seeing him, might climb down from his rock and gain a long start of him to the valley. But he reassured himself with the thought that the Indian could not guess but that there were others waiting below. It would require a stout heart to climb down that rock in the face of possible fire from the trees.

Jack started his climb. Occasionally he could see Jean Paul moving around on his distant rock. Sometimes he thought the black spot seemed to stand and watch him, but this was his fancy. However, when he was halfway up, he saw him without doubt begin to climb the face of the third peak, and Jack knew that he had been discovered. Jean Paul was going up instead of down. "I'll get him now," Jack told himself.

Thus began a strange and desperate race for the summit of the mountain. Until near the end it was anybody's race; Jean Paul was the nearer, but he had the steeper way to go; he was also the fresher of the two, but Jack was insensible of fatigue. The Indian kept himself out of sight for the most part, but occasionally the configuration of the rocks obliged him to show himself, and Jack marked his progress keenly. Meanwhile his own climb was nearly breaking his heart. He found that it was only a heart after all, and not a steam-chest. One cannot run up a mountain with impunity.