The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gun-Brand, by James B. Hendryx

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Title: The Gun-Brand

Author: James B. Hendryx

Release Date: July 1, 2005 [EBook #16174]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GUN-BRAND ***




Produced by Al Haines










[Frontispiece: "The next instant his arms were pinioned
to his sides."]






The Gun-Brand


By JAMES B. HENDRYX





AUTHOR OF

"The Promise" Etc.




With Frontispiece in Colors

By CLYDE FORSYTHE




A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers                New York


published by arrangement with G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS




COPYRIGHT, 1917

By

JAMES B. HENDRYX



Second Impression






The Knickerbocker Press, New York




CONTENTS

CHAPTER

     I  THE CALL OF THE RAW
    II  VERMILION SHOWS HIS HAND
   III  PIERRE LAPIERRE
    IV  CHLOE SECURES AN ALLY
     V  PLANS AND SPECIFICATIONS
    VI  BRUTE MACNAIR
   VII  THE MASTER MIND
  VIII  A SHOT IN THE NIGHT
    IX  ON SNARE LAKE
     X  AN INTERVIEW
    XI  BACK ON THE YELLOW KNIFE
   XII  A FIGHT IN THE NIGHT
  XIII  LAPIERRE RETURNS FROM THE SOUTH
   XIV  THE WHISKEY RUNNERS
    XV  "ARREST THAT MAN!"
   XVI  MACNAIR GOES TO JAIL
  XVII  A FRAME-UP
 XVIII  WHAT HAPPENED AT BROWN'S
   XIX  THE LOUCHOUX GIRL
    XX  ON THE TRAIL OF PIERRE LAPIERRE
   XXI  LAPIERRE PAYS A VISIT
  XXII  CHLOE WRITES A LETTER
 XXIII  THE WOLF-CRY!
  XXIV  THE BATTLE
   XXV  THE GUN-BRAND




THE GUN-BRAND


CHAPTER I

THE CALL OF THE RAW

Seated upon a thick, burlap-covered bale of freight--a "piece," in the
parlance of the North--Chloe Elliston idly watched the loading of the
scows.  The operation was not new to her; a dozen times within the
month since the outfit had swung out from Athabasca Landing she had
watched from the muddy bank while the half-breeds and Indians unloaded
the big scows, ran them light through whirling rock-ribbed rapids,
carried the innumerable pieces of freight upon their shoulders across
portages made all but impassable by scrub timber, oozy muskeg, and low
sand-mountains, loaded the scows again at the foot of the rapid and
steered them through devious and dangerous miles of swift-moving
white-water, to the head of the next rapid.

They are patient men--these water freighters of the far North.  For
more than two centuries and a quarter they have sweated the wilderness
freight across these same portages.  And they are sober men--when
civilization is behind them--far behind.

Close beside Chloe Elliston, upon the same piece, Harriet Penny, of
vague age, and vaguer purpose, also watched the loading of the scows.
Harriet Penny was Chloe Elliston's one concession to convention--excess
baggage, beyond the outposts, being a creature of fear.  Upon another
piece, Big Lena, the gigantic Swedish Amazon who, in the capacity of
general factotum, had accompanied Chloe Elliston over half the world,
stared stolidly at the river.

Having arrived at Athabasca Landing four days after the departure of
the Hudson Bay Company's annual brigade, Chloe had engaged
transportation into the North in the scows of an independent.  And,
when he heard of this, the old factor at the post shook his head
dubiously, but when the girl pressed him for the reason, he shrugged
and remained silent.  Only when the outfit was loaded did the old man
whisper one sentence:

"Beware o' Pierre Lapierre."

Again Chloe questioned him, and again he remained silent.  So, as the
days passed upon the river trail, the name of Pierre Lapierre was all
but forgotten in the menace of rapids and the monotony of portages.
And now the last of the great rapids had been run--the rapid of the
Slave--and the scows were almost loaded.

Vermilion, the boss scowman, stood upon the running-board of the
leading scow and directed the stowing of the freight.  He was a
picturesque figure--Vermilion.  A squat, thick half-breed, with eyes
set wide apart beneath a low forehead bound tightly around with a
handkerchief of flaming silk.

A heavy-eyed Indian, moving ponderously up the rough plank with a piece
balanced upon his shoulders, missed his footing and fell with a loud
splash into the water.  The Indian scrambled clumsily ashore, and the
piece was rescued, but not before a perfect torrent of
French-English-Indian profanity had poured from the lips of the
ever-versatile Vermilion.  Harriet Penny shrank against the younger
woman and shuddered.

"Oh!" she gasped, "he's swearing!"

"No!" exclaimed Chloe, in feigned surprise.  "Why, I believe he is!"

Miss Penny flushed.  "But, it is terrible!  Just listen!"

"For Heaven's sake, Hat!  If you don't like it, why do you listen?"

"But he ought to be stopped.  I am sure the poor Indian did not _try_
to fall in the river."

Chloe made a gesture of impatience.  "Very well, Hat; just look up the
ordinance against swearing on Slave River, and report him to Ottawa."

"But I'm afraid!  He--the Hudson Bay Company's man--told us not to
come."

Chloe straightened up with a jerk.  "See here, Hat Penny!  Stop your
snivelling!  What do you expect from rivermen?  Haven't the seven
hundred miles of water trail taught you _anything_?  And, as for being
afraid--I don't care _who_ told us not to come!  I'm an Elliston, and
I'll go whereever I want to go!  This isn't a pleasure trip.  I came up
here for a purpose.  Do you think I'm going to be scared out by the
first old man that wags his head and shrugs his shoulders?  Or by any
other man!  Or by any swearing that I can't understand, or any that I
can, either, for that matter!  Come on, they're waiting for this bale."

Chloe Elliston's presence in the far outlands was the culmination of an
ideal, spurred by dissuasion and antagonism into a determination, and
developed by longing into an obsession.  Since infancy the girl had
been left much to her own devices.  Environment, and the prescribed
course at an expensive school, should have made her pretty much what
other girls are, and an able satellite to her mother, who managed to
remain one of the busiest women of the Western metropolis--doing
absolutely nothing--but, doing it with _eclat_.

The girl's father, Blair Elliston, from his desk in a luxurious office
suite, presided over the destiny of the Elliston fleet of yellow-stack
tramps that poked their noses into queer ports and put to sea with
queer cargoes--cargoes that smelled sweet and spicy, with the spice of
the far South Seas.  Office sailor though he was, Blair Elliston
commanded the respect of even the roughest of his polyglot crews--a
respect not wholly uncommingled with fear.

For this man was the son of old "Tiger" Elliston, founder of the fleet.
The man who, shoulder to shoulder with Brooke, the elder, put the fear
of God in the hearts of the pirates, and swept wide trade-lanes among
the islands of terror-infested Malaysia.  And through Chloe Elliston's
veins coursed the blood of her world-roving ancestor.  Her most
treasured possession was a blackened and scarred oil portrait of the
old sea-trader and adventurer, which always lay swathed in many
wrappings in the bottom of her favourite trunk.

In her heart she loved and admired this grandfather, with a love and
admiration that bordered upon idolatry.  She loved the lean, hard
features, and the cold, rapier-blade eyes.  She loved the name men
called him; Tiger Elliston, an earned name--that.  The name of a man
who, by his might and the strength and mastery of him, had won his
place in the world of the men who dare.

Since babyhood she had listened with awe to tales of him; and the
red-letter days of her childhood's calendar were the days upon which
her father would take her down to the docks, past great windowless
warehouses of concrete and sheet-iron, where big glossy horses stood
harnessed to high-piled trucks--past great tiers of bales and boxes
between which trotted hurrying, sweating men--past the clang and clash
of iron truck wheels, the rattle of chains, the shriek of pulleys, and
the loud-bawled orders in strange tongues.  Until, at last, they would
come to the great dingy hulk of the ship and walk up the gangway and
onto the deck, where funny yellow and brown men, with their hair
braided into curious pigtails, worked with ropes and tackles and called
to other funny men with bright-coloured ribbons braided into their
beards.

Almost as she learned to walk she learned to pick out the yellow stacks
of "papa's boats," learned their names, and the names of their
captains, the bronzed, bearded men who would take her in their laps,
holding her very awkwardly and very, very carefully, as if she were
something that would break, and tell her stories in deep, rumbly
voices.  And nearly always they were stories of the Tiger--"yer
gran'pap, leetle missey," they would say.  And then, by palms, and
pearls, and the fires of blazing mountains, they would swear "He wor a
man!"

To the helpless horror of her mother, the genuine wonder of her many
friends, and the ill-veiled amusement and approval of her father, a
month after the doors of her _alma mater_ closed behind her, she took
passage on the _Cora Blair_, the oldest and most disreputable-looking
yellow stack of them all, and hied her for a year's sojourn among the
spicy lotus-ports of the dreamy Southern Ocean--there to hear at first
hand from the men who knew him, further deeds of Tiger Elliston.

To her, on board the battered tramp, came gladly the men of power--the
men whose spoken word in their polyglot domains was more feared and
heeded than decrees of emperors or edicts of kings.  And there, in the
time-blackened cabin that had once been _his_ cabin, these men talked
and the girl listened while her eyes glowed with pride as they
recounted the exploits of Tiger Elliston.  And, as they talked, the
hearts of these men warmed, and the years rolled backward, and they
swore weird oaths, and hammered the thick planks of the chart-table
with bangs of approving fists, and invoked the blessings of strange
gods upon the soul of the Tiger--and their curses upon the souls of his
enemies.

Nor were these men slow to return hospitality, and Chloe Elliston was
entertained royally in halls of lavish splendour, and plied with costly
gifts and rare.  And honoured by the men, and the sons and daughters of
men who had fought side by side with the Tiger in the days when the
yellow sands ran red, and tall masts and white sails rose like clouds
from the blue fog of the cannon-crashing powder-smoke.

So, from the lips of governors and potentates, native princes and
rajahs, the girl learned of the deeds of her grandsire, and in their
eyes she read approval, and respect, and reverence even greater than
her own--for these were the men who knew him.  But, not alone from the
mighty did she learn.  For, over rice-cakes and _poi_, in the thatched
hovels of Malays, Kayans, and savage Dyaks, she heard the tale from the
lips of the vanquished men--men who still hated, yet always respected,
the reddened sword of the Tiger.

The year Chloe Elliston spent among the copra-ports of the South Seas
was the shaping year of her destiny.  Never again were the standards of
her compeers to be her standards--never again the measure of the world
of convention to be her measure.  For, in her heart the awakened spirit
of Tiger Elliston burned and seared like a living flame, calling for
other wilds to conquer, other savages to subdue--to crush down, if need
be, that it might build up into the very civilization of which the
unconquerable spirit is the forerunner, yet which, in realization,
palls and deadens it to extinction.

For social triumphs the girl cared nothing.  The heart of her felt the
irresistible call of the raw.  She returned to the land of her birth
and deliberately, determinedly, in the face of opposition, ridicule,
advice, and command--as Tiger Elliston, himself, would have done--she
cast about until she found the raw, upon the rim of the Arctic.  And,
with the avowed purpose of carrying education and civilization to the
Indians of the far North, turned her back upon the world-fashionable,
and without fanfare or trumpetry, headed into the land of primal things.

When the three women had taken their places in the head scow, Vermilion
gave the order to shove off, and with the swarthy crew straining at the
rude sweeps, the heavy scows threaded their way into the North.

Once through the swift water at the tail of Slave Rapids, the four
scows drifted lazily down the river.  The scowmen distributed
themselves among the pieces in more or less comfortable attitudes and
slept.  In the head scow only the boss and the three women remained
awake.

"Who is Pierre Lapierre?" Chloe asked suddenly.

The man darted her a searching glance and shrugged.  "Pierre Lapierre,
she free-trader," he answered.  "Dees scow, she Pierre Lapierre scow."

If Chloe was surprised at this bit of information, she succeeded
admirably in disguising her feelings.  Not so Harriet Penny, who sank
back among the freight pieces to stare fearfully into the face of the
younger woman.

"Then you are Pierre Lapierre's man?  You work for him?"

The man nodded.  "On de reevaire I'm run de scow--me--Vermilion!  I'm
tak' de reesk.  Lapierre, she tak' de money."  The man's eyes glinted
wickedly.

"Risk?  What risk?" asked the girl.

Again the man eyed her shrewdly and laughed.  "Das plent' reesk--on de
reevaire.  De scow--me'be so, she heet de rock in de rapids--bre'k all
to hell--_Voila_!"  Somehow the words did not ring true.

"You hate Lapierre!"  The words flashed swift, taking the man by
surprise.

"_Non_!  _Non_!" he cried, and Chloe noticed that his glance flashed
swiftly over the sprawling forms of the five sleeping scowmen.

"And you are afraid of him," the girl added before he could frame a
reply.

A sudden gleam of anger leaped into the eyes of the half-breed.  He
seemed on the point of speaking, but with an unintelligible muttered
imprecation he relapsed into sullen silence.  Chloe had purposely
baited the man, hoping in his anger he would blurt out some bit of
information concerning the mysterious Pierre Lapierre.  Instead, the
man crouched silent, scowling, with his gaze fixed upon the forms of
the scowmen.

Had the girl been more familiar with the French half-breeds of the
outlands she would have been suspicious of the man's sudden taciturnity
under stress of anger--suspicious, also, of the gradual shifting that
had been going on for days among the crews of the scows.  A shifting
that indicated Vermilion was selecting the crew of his own scow with an
eye to a purpose--a purpose that had not altogether to do with the
scow's safe conduct through white-water.  But Chloe had taken no note
of the personnel of the scowmen, nor of the fact that the freight of
the head scow consisted only of pieces that obviously contained
provisions, together with her own tent and sleeping outfit, and several
burlapped pieces marked with the name "MacNair."  Idly she wondered who
MacNair was, but refrained from asking.

The long-gathering twilight deepened as the scows floated northward.
Vermilion's face lost its scowl, and he smoked in silence--a sinister
figure, thought the girl, as he crouched in the bow, his dark features
set off to advantage by his flaming head-band.

Into the stillness crept a sound--the far-off roar of a rapid.  Sullen,
and dull, it scarce broke the monotony of the silence--low, yet ever
increasing in volume.

"Another portage?" wearily asked the girl.

Vermilion shook his head.  "_Non_, eet ees de Chute.  Ten miles of de
wild, fast wataire, but safe--eef you know de way.  Me--Vermilion--I'm
tak' de scow t'rough a hondre tam--_bien_!"

"But, you can't make it in the dark!"

Vermilion laughed.  "We mak' de camp to-night.  To-mor', we run de
Chute."  He reached for the light pole with which he indicated the
channel to the steersman, and beat sharply upon the running-board that
formed the gunwale of the scow.  Sleepily the five sprawling forms
stirred, and awoke to consciousness.  Vermilion spoke a guttural jargon
of words and the men fumbled the rude sweeps against the tholes.  The
other three scows drifted lazily in the rear and, standing upon the
running-board, Vermilion roared his orders.  Figures in the scows
stirred, and sweeps thudded against thole-pins.  The roar of the Chute
was loud, now--hoarse, and portentous of evil.

The high banks on either side of the river drew closer together, the
speed of the drifting scows increased, and upon the dark surface of the
water tiny whirlpools appeared.  Vermilion raised the pole above his
head and pointed toward a narrow strip of beach that showed dimly at
the foot of the high bank, at a point only a few hundred yards above
the dark gap where the river plunged between the upstanding rocks of
the Chute.

Looking backward, Chloe watched the three scows with their swarthy
crews straining at the great sweeps.  Here was action--life!  Primitive
man battling against the unbending forces of an iron wilderness.  The
red blood leaped through the girl's veins as she realized that this
life was to be her life--this wilderness to be her wilderness.  Hers to
bring under the book, and its primitive children, hers--to govern by a
rule of thumb!

Suddenly she noticed that the following scows were much nearer shore
than her own, and also, that they were being rapidly out-distanced.
She glanced quickly toward shore.  The scow was opposite the strip of
beach toward which the others were slowly but surely drawing.  The scow
seemed motionless, as upon the surface of a mill-pond, but the beach,
and the high bank beyond, raced past to disappear in the deepening
gloom.  The figures in the following scows--the scows
themselves--blurred into the shore-line.  The beach was gone.  Rocks
appeared, jagged, and high--close upon either hand.

In a sudden panic, Chloe glanced wildly toward Vermilion, who crouched
in the bow, pole in hand, and with set face, stared into the gloom
ahead.  Swiftly her glance travelled over the crew--their faces, also,
were set, and they stood at the sweeps, motionless, but with their eyes
fixed upon the pole of the pilot.  Beyond Vermilion, in the forefront,
appeared wave after wave of wildly tossing water.  For just an instant
the scow hesitated, trembled through its length, and with the leaping
waves battering against its bottom and sides, plunged straight into the
maw of the Chute!




CHAPTER II

VERMILION SHOWS HIS HAND

Down, down through the Chute raced the heavily loaded scow, seeming
fairly to leap from wave to wave in a series of tremendous shocks, as
the flat bottom rose high in the fore and crashed onto the crest of the
next wave, sending a spume of stinging spray high into the air.
White-water curled over the gunwale and sloshed about in the bottom.
The air was chill, and wet--like the dead air of a rock-cavern.

Chloe Elliston knew one moment of swift fear.  And then, the mighty
roar of the waters; the mad plunging of the scow between the towering
walls of rock; the set, tense face of Vermilion as he stared into the
gloom; the laboured breathing of the scowmen as they strained at the
sweeps, veering the scow to the right, or to the left, as the rod of
the pilot indicated; the splendid battle of it; the wild exhilaration
of fighting death on death's own stamping ground flung all thought of
fear aside, and in the girl's heart surged the wild, fierce joy of
living, with life itself at stake.

For just an instant Chloe's glance rested upon her companions; Big Lena
sat scowling murderously at Vermilion's broad back.  Harriet Penny had
fainted and lay with the back of her head awash in the shallow bilge
water.  A strange _alter ego_--elemental--primordial--had taken
possession of Chloe.  Her eyes glowed, and her heart thrilled at the
sight of the tense, vigilant figure of Vermilion, and the sweating,
straining scowmen.  For the helpless form of Harriet Penny she felt
only contempt--the savage, intolerant contempt of the strong for the
weak among firstlings.

The intoxication of a new existence was upon her, or, better, a
world-old existence--an existence that was new when the world was new.
In that moment, she was a throw-back of a million years, and through
her veins fumed the ferine blood of her paleolithic forebears.  What is
life but proof of the fitness to live?  Death, but defeat.

On rushed the scow, leaping, crashing from wave to wave, into the
Northern night.  And, as it rushed and leaped and crashed, it bore two
women, their garments touching, but between whom interposed a whole
world of creeds and fabrics.

Suddenly, Chloe sensed a change.  The scow no longer leaped and
crashed, and the roar of the rapids grew faint.  No longer the form of
Vermilion appeared couchant, tense; and, among the scowmen, one
laughed.  Chloe drew a deep breath, and a slight shudder shook her
frame.  She glanced about her in bewilderment, and, reaching swiftly
down, raised the inert form of Harriet Penny and rested it gently
against her knees.

The darkness of night had settled upon the river.  Stars twinkled
overhead.  The high, scrub-timbered shore loomed formless and black,
and the flat bottom of the scow rasped harshly on gravel.  Vermilion
leaped ashore, followed by the scowmen, and Chloe assisted Big Lena
with the still unconscious form of Harriet Penny.  As if by magic,
fires flared out upon the shingle, and in an incredibly short time the
girl found herself seated upon her bed-roll inside her mosquito-barred
tent of balloon silk.  The older woman had revived and lay, a dejected
heap, upon her blankets, and out in front Big Lena was stooping over a
fire.  Beyond, upon the gravel, the fires of the scowmen flamed red,
and threw wavering reflections upon the black water of the river.

Chloe was seized with a strange unrest.  The sight of Harriet Penny
irritated her.  She stepped from the tent and filled her lungs with
great drafts of the spruce-laden night-breeze that wafted gently out of
the mysterious dark, and rippled the surface of the river until little
waves slapped softly against the shore in tiny whisperings of the
unknown--whisperings that called, and were understood by the new
awakened self within her.

She glanced toward the fires of the rivermen where the dark-skinned,
long-haired sons of the wild squatted close about the flames over which
pots boiled, grease fried, and chunks of red meat browned upon the ends
of long toasting-sticks.  The girl's heart leaped with the wild freedom
of it.  A sense of might and of power surged through her veins.  These
men were her men--hers to command.  Savages and half-savages whose work
it was to do her bidding--and who performed their work well.  The night
was calling her--the vague, portentous night of the land beyond
outposts.  Slowly she passed the fires, and on along the margin of the
river whose waters, black and forbidding, reached into the North.

"The unconquered North," she breathed, as she stood upon a water-lapped
boulder and gazed into the impenetrable dark.  And, as she gazed,
before her mind's eye rose a vision.  The scattered teepees of the
Northland, smoke-blackened, filthy, stinking with the reek of
ill-tanned skins, resolved themselves into a village beside a broad,
smooth-flowing river.

The teepees faded, and in their place appeared rows of substantial log
cabins, each with its door-yard of neatly trimmed grass, and its beds
of gay flowers.  Broad streets separated the rows.  The white spire of
a church loomed proudly at the end of a street.  From the doorways
dark, full-bodied women smiled happily--their faces clean, and their
long, black hair caught back with artistic bands of quill embroidery,
as they called to the clean brown children who played light-heartedly
in the grassed dooryards.  Tall, lean-shouldered men, whose swarthy
faces glowed with the love of their labour, toiled gladly in fields of
yellow grain, or sang and called to one another in the forest where the
ring of their axes was drowned in the crash of falling trees.

Her vision of the North--the conquered North--her North!

As Sir James Brooke and Tiger Elliston overthrew barbarism and
established in its place an island empire of civilization, so would she
supersede savagery with culture.  But, her empire of the North should
be an empire founded not upon blood, but upon humanity and brotherly
love.

The girl started nervously.  Her brain-picture resolved into the
formless dark.  From the black waters, almost at her feet, sounded,
raucous and loud, the voice of the great loon.  Frenzied, maniacal,
hideous, rang the night-shattering laughter.  The uncouth mockery of
the raw--the defiance of the unconquerable North!

With a shudder, Chloe turned and fled toward the red-flaring fires.  In
that moment a feeling of defeat surged over her--of heart-sickening
hopelessness.  The figures at the fires were unkempt, dirty, revolting,
as they gouged and tore at the half-cooked meat into which their yellow
fangs drove deep, as the red blood squirted and trickled from the
corners of their mouths to drip unheeded upon the sweat-stiffened
cotton of their shirts.  Savages!  And she, Chloe Elliston, at the very
gateway of her empire, fled incontinently to the protection of their
fires!

Wide awake upon her blankets, in the smudge-pungent tent where her two
companions slept heavily, Chloe sat late into the night staring through
the mosquito-barred entrance toward the narrow strip of beach where the
dying fires of the scowmen glowed sullenly in the darkness, pierced now
and again by the fitful flare of a wind-whipped brand.  Two still forms
wrapped in ragged blankets, lay like logs where sleep had overcome them.

A short distance removed from the others, the fire of Vermilion burned
brightly.  Between this fire and a heavily smoking smudge, four men
played cards upon a blanket spread upon the ground.  Silently, save for
an occasional grunt or mumbled word, they played--dealing, tossing into
the centre the amount of their bets, leaning forward to rake in a pot,
or throwing down their cards in disgust, to await the next deal.

The scene was intrinsically savage.  At the end of the day's work,
primitive man followed primitive instinct.  Gorged to repletion, they
slept, or wasted their substance with the improvidence of
jungle-beasts.  And these were the men Chloe Elliston had pictured
labouring joyously in the upbuilding of homes!  Once more the feeling
of hopelessness came over her--seemed smothering, stifling her.  And a
great wave of longing carried her back to the land of her own
people--the land of convention and sophistry.

Could it be that they were right?  They who had scoffed, and ridiculed,
and forbade her?  What could _she_ do in the refashioning of a
world-old wild--one woman against the established creeds of an iron
wilderness?  Where, now, were her dreams of empire, her ideals, and her
castles in Spain?  Was she to return, broken on the wheel?  Crushed
between the adamantine millstones of things as they ought not to be?

The resolute lips drooped, a hot salt tear blurred Vermilion's
camp-fire and distorted the figures of the gambling scowmen.  She
closed her eyes tightly.  The writhing green shadow-shapes lost form,
dimmed, and resolved themselves into an image--a lean, lined face with
rapier-blade eyes gazed upon her from the blackness--the face of Tiger
Elliston!

Instantly, the full force and determination of her surged through the
girl's veins anew.  The drooping lips stiffened.  Her heart sang with
the joy of conquest.  The tight-pressed lids flew open, and for a long
time she watched the shadow-dance of the flames on her tent wall.  Dim,
and elusive, and far away faded the dancing shadow-shapes--and she
slept.

Not so Vermilion, who, when his companions tired of their game and
sought their blankets, sat and stared into the embers of his dying
fire.  The half-breed was troubled.  As boss of Pierre Lapierre's
scowmen, a tool of a master mind, a unit of a system, he had prospered.
But, no longer was he a unit of a system.  From the moment Chloe
Elliston had bargained with him for the transportation of her outfit
into the wilderness, the man's brain had been active in formulating a
plan.

This woman was rich.  One who is not rich cannot afford to transport
thirty-odd tons of outfit into the heart of the wilderness, at the
tariff of fifteen cents the pound.  So, throughout the days of the
journey, the man gazed with avarice upon the piles of burlapped pieces,
while his brain devised the scheme.  Thereafter, in the dead of night
occurred many whispered consultations, as Vermilion won over his men.
He chose shrewdly, for these men knew Pierre Lapierre, and well they
knew what portion would be theirs should the scheme of Vermilion
miscarry.

At last, the selection had been made, and five of the most desperate
and daring of all the rivermen had, by the lure of much gold, consented
to cast loose from the system and "go it alone."  The first daring move
in the undertaking had succeeded--a move that, in itself, bespoke the
desperate character of its perpetrators, for it was no accident that
sent the head scow plunging down through the Chute in the darkness.

But, in the breast of Vermilion, as he sat alone beside his camp-fire,
was no sense of elation--and in the heart of him was a great fear.
For, despite the utmost secrecy among the conspirators, the half-breed
knew that even at that moment, somewhere to the northward, Pierre
Lapierre had learned of his plot.

Eight days had elapsed since the mysterious disappearance of
Chenoine--and Chenoine, it was whispered, was half-brother to Pierre
Lapierre.  Therefore, Vermilion crouched beside his camp-fire and
cursed the slowness of the coming of the day.  For well he knew that
when a man double-crossed Pierre Lapierre, he must get away with it--or
die.  Many had died.  The black eyes flashed dangerously.
He--Vermilion--would get away with it!  He glanced toward the sleeping
forms of the five scowmen and shuddered.  He, Vermilion, knew that he
was afraid to sleep!

For an instant he thought of abandoning the plan.  It was not too late.
The other scows could be run through in the morning, and, if Pierre
Lapierre came, would it not be plain that Chenoine had lied?  But, even
with the thought, the avaricious gleam leaped into the man's eyes, and
with a muttered imprecation, he greeted the first faint light of dawn.

Chloe Elliston opened her eyes sleepily in answer to a gruff call from
without her tent.  A few minutes later she stepped out into the grey of
the morning, followed by her two companions.  Vermilion was waiting for
her as he watched the scowmen breaking open the freight pieces and
making up hurried trail-packs of provisions.

"Tam to mush!" sad the man tersely.

"But where are the other scows?" asked Chloe, glancing toward the bank
where the scow was being rapidly unloaded.  "And what is the meaning of
this?  Here, you!" she cried, as a half-breed ripped the burlap from a
bale.  "Stop that!  That's mine!"  By her side, Vermilion laughed, a
short, harsh laugh, and the girl turned.

"De scow, she not com'.  We leave de rivaire.  We tak' 'long de grub,
eh?"  The man's tone was truculent--insulting.

Chloe flushed with anger.  "I am not going to leave the river!  Why
should I leave the river?"

Again the man laughed; there was no need for concealment now.  "Me,
Vermilion, I'm know de good plac' back in de hills.  We go for stay
dere till you pay de money."

"Money?  What money?"

"Un hondre t'ousan' dollaire--cash!  You pay, Vermilion--he tak' you
back.  You no pay--"  The man shrugged significantly.

The girl stared, dumbfounded.  "What do you mean?  One hundred thousand
dollars!  Are you crazy?"

The man stepped close, his eyes gleaming wickedly.  "You reech.  You
pay un hondre t'ousan' dollaire, or, ba gar, you nevaire com' out de
bush!"

Chloe laughed in derision.  "Oh!  I am kidnapped!  Is that it?  How
romantic!"  The man scowled.  "Don't be a fool, Vermilion!  Do you
suppose I came into this country with a hundred thousand dollars in
cash--or even a tenth of that amount?"

The man shrugged indifferently.  "_Non_, but you mak' de write on de
papaire, an' Menard, he tak' heem to de bank--Edmonton--Preence Albert.
He git de money.  By-m-by, two mont', me'be, he com' back.  Den,
Vermilion, he tak' you close to de H.B. post--_bien_!  You kin go hom',
an' Vermilion, he go ver' far away."

Chloe suddenly realized that the man was in earnest.  Her eyes flashed
over the swarthy, villainous faces of the scowmen, and the seriousness
of the situation dawned upon her.  She knew, now, that the separating
of the scows was the first move in a deep-laid scheme.  Her brain
worked rapidly.  It was evident that the men on the other scows were
not party to the plot, or Vermilion would not have risked running the
Chute in the darkness.  She glanced up the river.  Would the other
scows come on?  It was her one hope.  She must play for time.  Harriet
Penny sobbed aloud, and Big Lena glowered.  Again Chloe laughed into
the scowling face of the half-breed.  "What about the Mounted?  When
they find I am missing there will be an investigation."

For answer, Vermilion pointed toward the river-bank, where the men were
working with long poles in the overturning of the scow.  "We shove heem
out in de rivaire.  Wen dey fin', dey t'ink she mak' for teep ovaire in
de Chute.  _Voila_!  Dey say: 'Een de dark she run on de
rock'--_pouf_!" he signified eloquently the instantaneous snuffing out
of lives.  Even as he spoke the scow overturned with a splash, and the
scowmen pushed it out into the river, where it floated bottom upward,
turning lazily in the grip of an eddy.  The girl's heart sank as her
eyes rested upon the overturned scow.  Vermilion had plotted cunningly.
He drew closer now--leering horribly.

"You mak' write on de papaire--_non_?"

A swift anger surged in the girl's heart.  "No!" she cried.  "I will
not write!  I have no such amount in any bank this side of San
Francisco!  But if I had a million dollars, you would not get a cent!
You can't bluff me!"

Vermilion sprang toward her with a snarl; but before he could lay hands
upon her Big Lena, with a roar of rage, leaped past the girl and drove
a heavy stick of firewood straight at the half-breed's head.  The man
ducked swiftly, and the billet thudded against his shoulder, staggering
him.  Instantly two of the scowmen threw themselves upon the woman and
bore her to the ground, where she fought, tooth and nail, while they
pinioned her arms.  Vermilion, his face livid, seized Chloe roughly.
The girl shrank in terror from the grip of the thick, grimy fingers and
the glare of the envenomed eyes that blazed from the distorted, brutish
features.

"Stand back!"

The command came sharp and quick in a low, hard voice--the voice of
authority.  Vermilion whirled with a snarl.  Uttering a loud cry of
fear, one of the scowmen dashed into the bush, closely followed by two
of his companions.  Two men advanced swiftly and noiselessly from the
cover of the scrub.  Like a flash, the half-breed jerked a revolver
from his belt and fired.  Chenoine fell dead.  Before Vermilion could
fire again the other man, with the slightest perceptible movement of
his right hand, fired from the hip.  The revolver dropped from the
half-breed's hand.  He swayed unsteadily for a few seconds, his eyes
widening into a foolish, surprised stare.  He half-turned and opened
his lips to speak.  Pink foam reddened the corners of his mouth and
spattered in tiny drops upon his chin.  He gasped for breath with a
spasmodic heave of the shoulders.  A wheezing, gurgling sound issued
from his throat, and a torrent of blood burst from his lips and
splashed upon the ground.  With eyes wildly rolling, he clutched
frantically at the breast of his cotton shirt and pitched heavily into
the smouldering ashes of the fire at the feet of the stranger.

But few seconds had elapsed since Chloe felt the hand of Vermilion
close about her wrist--tense, frenzied seconds, to the mind of the
girl, who gazed in bewilderment upon the bodies of the two dead men
which lay almost touching each other.

The man who had ordered Vermilion to release her, and who had fired the
shot that had killed him, stood calmly watching four lithe-bodied
canoemen securely bind the arms of the two scowmen who had attacked Big
Lena.

So sudden had been the transition from terror to relief in her heart
that the scene held nothing of repugnance to the girl, who was
conscious only of a feeling of peace and security.  She even smiled
into the eyes of her deliverer, who had turned his attention from his
canoemen and stood before her, his soft-brimmed Stetson in his hand.

"Oh!  I--I thank you!" exclaimed the girl, at a loss for words.

The man bowed low.  "It is nothing.  I am glad to have been of some
slight service."  Something in the tone of the well-modulated voice,
the correct speech, the courtly manner, thrilled the girl strangely.
It was all so unexpected--so out of place, here in the wild.  She felt
the warm colour mount to her face.

"Who are you?" she asked abruptly.

"I am Pierre Lapierre," answered the man in the same low voice.

In spite of herself, Chloe started slightly, and instantly she knew
that the man had noticed.  He smiled, with just an appreciable
tightening at the corners of the mouth, and his eyes narrowed almost
imperceptibly.  He continued:

"And now, Miss Elliston, if you will retire to your tent for a few
moments, I will have these removed."  He indicated the bodies.  "You
see, I know your name.  The good Chenoine told me.  He it was who
warned me of Vermilion's plot in time for me to frustrate it.  Of
course, I should have rescued you later.  I hold myself responsible for
the safe conduct of all who travel in my scows.  But it would have been
at the expense of much time and labour, and, very possibly, of human
life as well--an incident regrettable always, but not always avoidable."

Chloe nodded, and, with her thoughts in a whirl of confusion, turned
and entered her tent, where Harriet Penny lay sobbing hysterically,
with her blankets drawn over her head.




CHAPTER III

PIERRE LAPIERRE

A half-hour later, when Chloe again ventured from the tent, all
evidence of the struggle had disappeared.  The bodies of the two dead
men had been removed, and the canoemen were busily engaged in gathering
together and restoring the freight pieces that had been ripped open by
the scowmen.

Lapierre advanced to meet her, his carefully creased Stetson in hand.

"I have sent word for the other scows to come on at once, and in the
meantime, while my men attend to the freight, may we not talk?"

Chloe assented, and the two seated themselves upon a log.  It was then,
for the first time that the girl noticed that one side of Lapierre's
face--the side he had managed to keep turned from her--was battered and
disfigured by some recent misadventure.  Noticed, too, the really fine
features of him--the dark, deep-set eyes that seemed to smoulder in
their depths, the thin, aquiline nose, the shapely lips, the clean-cut
lines of cheek and jaw.

"You have been hurt!" she cried.  "You have met with an accident!"

The man smiled, a smile in which cynicism blended with amusement.

"Hardly an accident, I think, Miss Elliston, and, in any event, of
small consequence."  He shrugged a dismissal of the subject, and his
voice assumed a light gaiety of tone.

"May we not become better acquainted, we two, who meet in this far
place, where travellers are few and worth the knowing?"  There was no
cynicism in his smile now, and without waiting for a reply he
continued: "My name you already know.  I have only to add that I am an
adventurer in the wilds--explorer of _hinterlands_, free-trader,
freighter, sometime prospector--casual cavalier."  He rose, swept the
Stetson from his head, and bowed with mock solemnity.

"And now, fair lady, may I presume to inquire your mission in this land
of magnificent wastes?"  Chloe's laughter was genuine as it was
spontaneous.

Lapierre's light banter acted as a tonic to the girl's nerves, harassed
as they were by a month's travel through the fly-bitten wilderness.
More--he interested her.  He was different.  As different from the
half-breeds and Indian canoemen with whom she had been thrown as his
speech was from the throaty guttural by means of which they exchanged
their primitive ideas.

"Pray pause, Sir Cavalier," she smiled, falling easily into the gaiety
of the man's mood.  "I have ventured into your wilderness upon a most
unpoetic mission.  Merely the establishment of a school for the
education and betterment of the Indians of the North."

A moment of silence followed the girl's words--a moment in which she
was sure a hard, hostile gleam leaped into the man's eyes.  A trick of
fancy doubtless, she thought, for the next instant it had vanished.
When he spoke, his air of light raillery was gone, but his lips
smiled--a smile that seemed to the girl a trifle forced.

"Ah, yes, Miss Elliston.  May I ask at whose instigation this school is
to be established--and where?"  He was not looking at her now, his eyes
sought the river, and his face showed only a rather finely moulded
chin, smooth-shaven--and the lips, with their smile that almost sneered.

Instantly Chloe felt that a barrier had sprung up between herself and
this mysterious stranger who had appeared so opportunely out of the
Northern bush.  Who was he?  What was the meaning of the old factor's
whispered warning?  And why should the mention of her school awake
disapproval, or arouse his antagonism?  Vaguely she realized that the
sudden change in this man's attitude hurt.  The displeasure, and
opposition, and ridicule of her own people, and the surly indifference
of the rivermen, she had overridden or ignored.  This man she could not
ignore.  Like herself, he was an adventurer of untrodden ways.  A man
of fancy, of education and light-hearted raillery, and yet, a strong
man, withal--a man of moment, evidently.

She remembered the sharp, quick words of authority--the words that
caused the villainous Vermilion to whirl with a snarl of fear.
Remembered also, the swift sure shot that had ended Vermilion's career,
his absolute mastery of the situation, his lack of excitement or
braggadocio, and the expressed regret over the necessity for killing
the man.  Remembered the abject terror in the eyes of those who fled
into the bush at his appearance, and the servility of the canoemen.

As she glanced into the half-turned face of the man, Chloe saw that the
sneering smile had faded from the thin lips as he waited her answer.

"At _my own_ instigation."  There was an underlying hardness of
defiance in her words, and the firm, sun-reddened chin unconsciously
thrust forward beneath the encircling mosquito net.  She paused, but
the man, expressionless, continued to gaze out over the surface of the
river.

"I do not know exactly _where_," she continued, "but it will be
_somewhere_.  Wherever it will do the most good.  Upon the bank of some
river, or lake, perhaps, where the people of the wilderness may come
and receive that which is theirs of right----"

"Theirs of right?" The man looked into her face, and Chloe saw that the
thin lips again smiled--this time with a quizzical smile that hinted at
tolerant amusement.  The smile stung.

"Yes, theirs of right!" she flashed.  "The education that was freely
offered to me, and to you--and of which we availed ourselves."

For a long time the man continued to gaze in silence, and, when at
length he spoke, it was to ask an entirely irrelevant question.

"Miss Elliston, you have heard my name before?"

The question came as a surprise, and for a moment Chloe hesitated.
Then frankly, and looking straight into his eyes she answered:

"Yes, I have."

The man nodded, "I knew you had."  He turned his injured eye quickly
from the dazzle of the sunlight that flashed from the surface of the
river, and Chloe saw that it was discoloured and bloodshot.  She arose,
and stepping to his side laid her hand upon his arm.

"You _are_ hurt," she said earnestly, "your eye gives you pain."

Beneath her fingers the girl felt the play of strong muscles as the arm
pressed against her hand.  Their eyes met, and her heart quickened with
a strange new thrill.  Hastily she averted her glance and then----  The
man's arm suddenly was withdrawn and Chloe saw that his fist had
clinched.  With a rush the words brought back to him the scene in the
trading-room of the post at Fort Rae.  The low, log-room, piled high
with the goods of barter.  The great cannon stove.  The two groups of
dark-visaged Indians--his own Chippewayans, and MacNair's Yellow
Knives, who stared in stolid indifference.  The trembling, excited
clerk.  The grim chief trader, and the stern-faced factor who watched
with approving eyes while two men fought in the wide cleared space
between the rough counter and the high-piled bales of woollens and
strouds.

Chloe Elliston drew back aghast.  The thin lips of the man had twisted
into a snarl of rage, and a living, bestial hate seemed fairly to blaze
from the smouldering eyes, as Lapierre's thoughts dwelt upon the
closing moments of that fight, when he felt himself giving ground
before the hammering, smashing blows of Bob MacNair's big fists.  Felt
the tightening of the huge arms like steel bands about his body when he
rushed to a clinch--bands that crushed and burned so that each sobbing
breath seemed a blade, white-hot from the furnace, stabbing and searing
into his tortured lungs.  Felt the vital force and strength of him ebb
and weaken so that the lean, slender fingers that groped for MacNair's
throat closed feebly and dropped limp to dangle impotently from his
nerveless arms.  Felt the sudden release of the torturing bands of
steel, the life-giving inrush of cool air, the dull pain as his dizzy
body rocked to the shock of a crashing blow upon the jaw, the blazing
flash of the blow that closed his eye, and, then--more soul-searing,
and of deeper hurt than the blows that battered and marred--the feel of
thick fingers twisted into the collar of his soft shirt.  Felt himself
shaken with an incredible ferocity that whipped his ankles against
floor and counter edge.  And, the crowning indignity of all--felt
himself dragged like a flayed carcass the full length of the room, out
of the door, and jerked to his feet upon the verge of the steep descent
to the lake.  Felt the propelling impact of the heavy boot that sent
him crashing headlong into the underbrush through which he rolled and
tumbled like a mealbag, to bring up suddenly in the cold water.

The whole scene passed through his brain as dreams flash--almost within
the batting of an eye.  Half-consciously, he saw the girl's sudden
start, and the look of alarm upon her face as she drew back from the
glare of his hate-flashing eyes and the bestial snarl of his lips.
With an effort he composed himself:

"Pardon, Miss Elliston, I have frightened you with an uncouth show of
savagery.  It is a rough, hard country--this land of the wolf and the
caribou.  Primal instincts and brutish passions here are
unrestrained--a fact responsible for my present battered appearance.
For, as I said, it was no accident that marred me thus, unless,
perchance, the prowling of the brute across my path may be attributed
to accident--rather, I believe it was timed."

"The brute!  Who, or what is the brute?  And why should he harm you?"

"MacNair is his name--Bob MacNair."  There was a certain tense hardness
in the man's tone, and Chloe was conscious that the smouldering eyes
were regarding her searchingly.

"MacNair," said the girl, "why, that is the name on those bales!"

"What bales?"

"The bales in the scow--they are on the river-bank now."

"My scows carrying MacNair's freight!" cried the man, and motioning her
to accompany him he walked rapidly to the bank where lay the four or
five pieces, upon which Chloe had read the name.  Lapierre dropped to
his knees and regarded the pieces intently, suddenly he leaped to his
feet with a laugh and called in the Indian tongue to one of his
canoemen.  The man brought him an ax, and raising it high, Lapierre
brought it crashing upon the innocent-looking freight piece.  There was
a sound of smashing staves, a gurgle of liquid, and the strong odour of
whiskey assailed their nostrils.

The piece was a keg, cunningly disguised as to shape, and covered with
burlap.  One by one the man attacked the other pieces marked with the
name of MacNair, and as each cask was smashed, the whiskey gurgled and
splashed and seeped into the ground.  Chloe watched breathlessly until
Lapierre finished, and with a smile of grim satisfaction, tossed the ax
upon the ground.

"There is one consignment of firewater that will never be delivered,"
he said.

"What does it mean?" asked Chloe, and Lapierre noticed that her eyes
were alight with interest.  "Who is this MacNair, and----"

For answer Lapierre took her gently by the arm and led her back to the
log.

"MacNair," he began, "is the most atrocious tyrant that ever breathed.
Like myself, he is a free-trader--that is, he is not in the employ of
the Hudson Bay Company.  He is rich, and owns a permanent post of his
own, to the northward, on Snare Lake, while I vend my wares under God's
own canopy, here and there upon the banks of lakes and rivers."

"But why should he attack you?"

The man shrugged.  "Why?  Because he hates me.  He hates any one who
deals fairly with the Indians.  His own Indians, a band of the Yellow
Knives, together with an onscouring of Tantsawhoots, Beavers, Dog-ribs,
Strongbows, Hares, Brushwoods, Sheep, and Huskies, he holds in abject
peonage.  Year in and year out he forces them to dig in his mines for
their bare existence.  Over on the Athabasca they call him Brute
MacNair, and among the Loucheaux and Huskies he is known as
The-Bad-Man-of-the-North.

"He pays no cash for labour, nor for fur, and he sees to it that his
Indians are always hopelessly in his debt.  He trades them whiskey.
They are his.  His to work, and to cheat, and to debauch, and to vent
his rage upon--for his passions are the wild, unbridled passions of the
fighting wolf.  He kills!  He maims!  Or he allows to live!  The
Indians are his, body and soul.  Their wives and their children are
his.  He owns them.  _He_ is the law!

"He warned me out of the North.  I ignored that warning.  The land is
broad and free.  There is room for all, therefore I brought in my goods
and traded.  And, because I refused to grind the poor savages under the
iron heel of oppression, because I offer a meagre trifle over and above
what is necessary for their bare existence, the brute hates me.  He
came upon me at Fort Rae, and there, in the presence of the factor, his
clerk, and his chief trader, he fell upon me and beat me so that for
three days I lay unable to travel."

"But the others!" interrupted the girl, "the factor and his men!  Why
did they allow it?"

Again the gleam of hate flashed in the man's eyes.  "They allowed it
because they are in league with him.  They fear him.  They fear his
hold upon the Indians.  So long as he maintains a permanent post a
hundred and seventy-five miles to the northward--more than two hundred
and fifty by the water trail--they know that he will not seriously
injure the trade at Fort Rae.  With me it is different.  I trade here,
and there, wherever the children of the wilderness are to be found.
Therefore I am hated by the men of the Hudson Bay Company who would
have been only too glad had MacNair killed me."

Chloe, who had listened eagerly to every word, leaped to her feet and
looked at Lapierre with shining eyes.  "Oh!  I think it is splendid!
You are brave, and you stand for the right of things!  For the welfare
of the Indians!  I see now why the factor warned me against you!  He
wanted to discredit you."

Lapierre smiled.  "The factor?  What factor?  And what did he tell you?"

"The factor at the Landing.  'Beware of Pierre Lapierre,' he said; and
when I asked him who Pierre Lapierre was, and why I should beware of
him, he shrugged his shoulders and would say nothing."

Lapierre nodded.  "Ah yes--the company men--the factors and traders
have no love for the free-trader.  We cannot blame them.  It is
tradition.  For nearly two and one-half centuries the company has stood
for power and authority in the outlands--and has reaped the profits of
the wild places.  Let us be generous.  It is an old and respectable
institution.  It deals fairly enough with the Indians--by its own
measure of fairness, it is true--but fairly enough.  With the company I
have no quarrel.

"But with MacNair--" he stopped abruptly and shrugged.  The gleam of
hate that flashed in his eyes always at the mention of the name faded.
"But why speak of him--surely there are more pleasant subjects," he
smiled, "for instance your school--it interests me greatly."

"Interests you!  I thought it displeased you!  Surely a look of
annoyance or suspicion leaped from your eyes when I mentioned my
mission."

The man laughed lightly.  "Yes?  And can you blame me--when I thought
you were in league with Brute MacNair?  For, since his post was
established, no independent save myself has dared to encroach upon even
the borders of his empire."

Chloe Elliston flushed deeply.  "And you thought I would league myself
with a man like _that_?"

"Only for a moment.  Stop and think.  All my life I have lived in the
North, and, except for a few scattered priests and missionaries, no one
has pushed beyond the outposts for any purpose other than for gain.
And the trader's gain is the Indian's loss--for, few deal fairly.
Therefore, when I came upon your big outfit upon the very threshold of
MacNair's domain, I thought, of course, this was some new machination
of the brute.  Even now I do not understand--the expense, and all.  The
Indians cannot afford to pay for education."

It was the girl's turn to laugh.  A rippling, light-hearted laugh--the
laughter of courage and youth.  The barrier that had suddenly loomed
between herself and this man of the North vanished in a breath.  He had
shown her her work, had pointed out to her a foeman worthy of her
steel.  She darted a swift glance toward Lapierre who sat staring into
the fire.  Would not this man prove an invaluable ally in her war of
deliverance?

"Do not trouble yourself about the expense," she smiled.  "I have
money--'oodles of it,' as we used to say in school--millions, if I need
them!  And I'm going to fight this Brute MacNair until I drive him out
of the North!  And you?  Will you help me to rid the country of this
scourge and free the people from his tyranny?  Together we could work
wonders.  For your heart is with the Indians, as mine is."

Again the girl glanced into the man's face and saw that the deep-set
black eyes fairly glittered with enthusiasm and eagerness--an eagerness
and enthusiasm that a keener observer than Chloe Elliston might have
noticed, sprang into being suspiciously coincident with her mention of
the millions.  Lapierre did not answer at once, but deftly rolled a
cigarette.  The end of the cigarette glowed brightly as he filled his
lungs and blew a plume of grey smoke into the air.

"Allow me a little time to think.  For this is a move of importance,
and to be undertaken not lightly.  It is no easy task you have set
yourself.  It is possible you will not win--highly probable, in fact,
for----"

"But I _shall_ win!  I am _right_--and upon my winning depends the
future of a people!  Think it over until tomorrow, if you will, but--"
She paused abruptly, and her soft, hazel eyes peered searchingly into
the depths of the restless black ones.  "Your sympathies _are_ with the
Indians, aren't they?"

Lapierre tossed the half-smoked cigarette onto the ground.  "Can you
doubt it?"  The man's eyes were not gleaming now, and into their depths
had crept a look of ineffable sadness.

"They are my people," he said softly.  "Miss Elliston, _I am an
Indian_!"




CHAPTER IV

CHLOE SECURES AN ALLY

A shout from the bank heralded the appearance of the first scow, which
was closely followed by the two others.  When they had landed, Lapierre
issued a few terse orders, and the scowmen leaped to his bidding.  The
overturned scow was righted and loaded, and the remains of the
demolished whiskey-kegs burned.  Lapierre himself assisted the three
women to their places, and as Chloe seated herself near the bow, he
smiled into her eyes.

"Vermilion was a good riverman, but so am I.  Do you think you can
trust your new pilot?"

Somehow, the words seemed to imply more than the mere steering of a
scow.  Chloe flushed slightly, hesitated a moment, and then returned
the man's smile frankly.

"Yes," she answered gravely, "I know I can."

Their eyes met in a long look.  Lapierre gave the command to shove off,
and when the scows were well in the grip of the current, he turned
again to the girl at his side.  Their hands touched, and again Chloe
was conscious of the strange, new thrill that quickened her
heart-beats.  She did not withdraw her hand, and the fingers of
Lapierre closed about her palm.  He leaned toward her.  "Only quarter
Indian," he said softly.  "My grandmother was the daughter of a great
chief."

The girl felt the hot blood mount to her face and gently withdrew her
hand.  Somehow, she could not tell why, the words seemed good to hear.
She smiled, and Lapierre, who was watching her intently, smiled in
return.

"We are approaching quick water; we will cover many miles today, and
tonight beside the camp-fire we will talk further."

Chloe's eyes searched the scows.  "Where are the two who attacked Lena?
Your men captured them."

Lapierre's smile hardened.  "Those who deserted me for Vermilion?  Oh,
I--dismissed them from my service."

Hour after hour, as the scows rushed northward, Chloe watched the
shores glide past; watched the swirling, boiling water of the river;
watched the solemn-faced scowmen, and the silent, vigilant pilot; but
most of all she watched the pilot, whose quick eye picked out the
devious channel, and whose clear, alert brain directed, with a movement
of the lancelike pole, the labours of the men at the sweeps.

She contrasted his manner--quiet, graceful, sure--with that of
Vermilion, the very swing of whose pole proclaimed the vaunting,
arrogant braggart.  And she noted the difference in the attitude of the
scowmen toward these two leaders.  Their obedience to Vermilion's
orders had been a surly, protesting obedience; while their obedience to
Lapierre's slightest motion was the quiet, alert obedience that
proclaimed him master of men, as his own silent vigilance proclaimed
him master of the roaring waters.

When the sun finally dipped behind the barren scrub-topped hills, the
scows were beached at the mouth of a deep ravine, from whose depths
sounded the trickle of a tiny cascade.  Lapierre assisted the women
from the scow, issued a few short commands, and, as if by magic, a
dozen fires flashed upon the beach, and in an incredibly short space of
time Chloe found herself seated upon her blankets inside her
mosquito-barred tent.

Supper over, Harriet Penny immediately sought her bed, and Lapierre led
Chloe to a brightly burning camp-fire.

Nearby other fires burned, surrounded by dark, savage figures that
showed indistinct in the half-light.  The girl's eyes rested for a
moment upon Lapierre, whose thin, handsome features, richly tanned by
long exposure to the Northern winds and sun, presented a pleasing
contrast to the swart flat faces of the rivermen, who sat in groups
about their fires, or lay wrapped in their blankets upon the gravel.

"You have decided?" abruptly asked Chloe, in a voice of ill-concealed
eagerness.  Lapierre's face became at once grave, and he gazed sombrely
into the fire.

"I have pondered deeply.  Through the long hours, while the scow rushed
into the North, there came to me a vision of my people.  In the rocks,
in the bush, and the ragged hills I saw it; and in the swirl of the
mighty river.  And the vision was good!"

The voice of the man's Indian grandmother spoke from his lips, and the
soul of her glowed in his deep-set eyes.

"Even now _Sakhalee Tyee_ speaks from the stars of the night sky.  My
people shall learn the wisdom of the white man.  The power of the
oppressor shall be broken, and the children of the far places shall
come into their own."

The man's voice had dropped into the rhythmic intonation of the Indian
orator, and his eyes were fixed upon the names that curled, lean and
red, among the dry sticks of the camp-fire.  Chloe gazed in fascination
into the rapt face of this man of many moods.  The soul of the girl
caught the enthusiasm of his words, and she, too, saw the vision--saw
it as she had seen it upon the wave-lapped rock of the river-bank.

"You will help me?" she cried; "will join forces with me in a war
against the ruthless exploitation of a people who should be as free and
unfettered as the air they breathe?"

Lapierre bent his gaze upon her face slowly, like one emerging from a
trance.

"Yes," he answered deliberately; "it is of that I wish to speak.  Let
us consider the obstacles in our path--the matter of official
interference.  The government will soon learn of your activities, and
the government is prone to look askance at any tampering with the
Indians by an institution not connected with the Church or the State."

"I have my permit," Chloe answered, "and many commendatory letters from
Ottawa.  The men who rule were inclined to think I would accomplish
nothing; but they were willing to let me try."

"That, then, disposes of our most serious difficulty.  Will you tell me
now where you intended to locate?"

"There is too much traffic upon the river," answered the girl.  "The
scow brigades pass and repass; and, at least until my little colony is
fairly established, it must be located in some place uncontaminated by
the presence of so rough, lawless, and drunken an element.  As I told
you before, I do not know where my ideal site is to be found.  I had
intended to talk the matter over with the factor at Fort Rae."

"What!  That devil of a Haldane?  The man who is hand-in-glove with
Brute MacNair!"

"You forget," smiled the girl, "that until this day I never even heard
of Brute MacNair."

The man smiled.  "Very true.  I had forgotten.  But it is fortunate
indeed that chance threw us together.  I tremble to think what would
have been your fate should you have acted upon the advice of Colin
Haldane."

"But surely you know the country.  You will advise me."

"Yes, I will advise you.  I am with you in this venture; with you to
the last gasp; with you heart and soul, until that devil MacNair is
dead or driven out of the North, and his Indians scattered to the four
winds."

"Scattered!  Why scattered?  Why not held together for their education
and betterment?  And you say you will be with me until MacNair is
either dead or driven out of the North.  What then--will you desert me
then?  This MacNair is only an obstacle in our path--an obstacle to be
brushed aside that the real work may begin.  Yet you spoke as though he
were the main issue."

Lapierre interrupted her, speaking rapidly: "Yes, of course.  Bear with
me, I pray you.  I spoke hastily, and without thinking.  My feelings
for the moment carried me away.  As you see, the marks of the Brute's
hands are still too fresh upon me to regard him impersonally--an
obstacle, as it were.  To me he is a brute!  A fiend!  A demon!  I
_hate_ him!"

Lapierre shook a clenched fist toward the North, and the words fairly
snarled between his lips.  With an effort he controlled himself.  "I
have in mind the very place for your school, a spot accessible from all
directions--the mouth of the Yellow Knife River, upon the north arm of
Great Slave Lake.  There you will be unmolested by the debauching
rivermen, and yet within easy reach of any who may desire to take
advantage of your school.  The very place above all places!  In the
whole North you could not have chosen a better!  And I shall accompany
you, and direct the building of your houses and stockade.

"MacNair will learn shortly of your fort--everything is a 'fort' up
here--and he will descend upon you like a ramping lion.  When he finds
you are a woman, he will do you no violence.  He will scent at once a
rival trading-post and will hurt your cause in every way possible; will
use every means to discredit you among the Indians, and to discourage
you.  But even he will do a woman no physical harm.

"And right here let me caution you--do not temporize with him.  He
stands in the North for oppression; gain at any cost; for
debauchery--everything that you do not.  Between you and Brute MacNair
there can be no truce.  He is powerful.  Do not for a moment underrate
either his strength or his sagacity.  He is a man of wealth, and his
hold upon the Indians is absolute.  I cannot remain with you, but
through my Indians I shall keep in touch with you, work with you; and
together we will accomplish the downfall of this brute of the North."

For a long time the two figures sat by the fire while the camp slept,
and talked of many things.  And when, well toward midnight, Chloe
Elliston retired to her tent, she felt that she had known this man
always.  For it is the way of life that stress of events, and not
duration of time, marks the measure of acquaintance and intimacy.
Pierre Lapierre, Chloe Elliston had known but one day, and yet she
believed that among all her acquaintances this man she knew best.

By the fire Lapierre's eyes followed the girl until she disappeared
within the tent, and as he looked a huge figure arose from the deep
shadows of the scrub, and with a hand grasping the flap of the tent,
turned and stared, silent and grim and forbidding, straight into
Lapierre's eyes.

The man turned away with a frown.  The figure was Big Lena.




CHAPTER V

PLANS AND SPECIFICATIONS

At the mouth of the Slave River the outfit was transferred to twelve
large freight canoes, each carrying three tons, and manned by six
lean-shouldered canoemen, in charge of one Louis LeFroy, Lapierre's boss
canoeman.  Straight across the vast expanse of Great Slave Lake they
headed, and skirting the shore of the north arm, upon the evening of the
second day, entered the Yellow Knife River.

The site selected by Pierre Lapierre for Chloe Elliston's school was, in
point of location, as the quarter-breed had said, an excellent one.  Upon
a level plateau at the top of the high bank that slants steeply to the
water of the Yellow Knife River, a short distance above its mouth,
Lapierre set the canoemen to cutting the timber and brush from a wide
area.  The girl had come into the North fully prepared for a long
sojourn, and in her thirty-odd tons of outfit were found all tools
necessary for the clearing of land and the erection of buildings.
Brushwood and trees fell before the axes of the half-breeds and Indians,
who worked in a sort of frenzy under the lashing drive of Lapierre's
tongue; and the night skies glowed red in the flare of the flames where
the brush and tree-tops burned in the clearing.

Two days later a rectangular clearing, three hundred by five hundred
feet, was completed, and early in the morning of the third day Chloe
stood beside Lapierre and looked over the cleared oblong with its piles
of smoking grey ashes, and its groups of logs that lay ready to be rolled
into place to form the walls of her buildings.

Lapierre seemed ill at ease.  Immediately upon the arrival of the outfit
he had dispatched two of his own Indians northward to spy upon the
movements of MacNair, for the man made no secret of his desire to be well
upon his way before the trader should learn of the building of the fort
on the river.

It had been Chloe's idea to lay out her "village," as she called it, upon
a rather elaborate scheme, the plans for which had been drawn by an
architect whose clients' tastes ran to million-dollar "summer cottages"
at Seashore-by-the-Sea.

First, there was to be the school itself, an ornate building of crossed
rafters and overhanging eaves.  Then the dormitories, two long, parallel
buildings with halls, individual rooms, and baths--one for the women and
one for men--the two to be connected by a common dining-hall in such a
manner as to form three sides of a hollow square.  Connected to the
dining-hall was to be a commodious kitchen, and back of that a fully
equipped carpenter-shop and a laundry.

There were also to be a trading-post, where the Indians could purchase
supplies at cost; a six-room cottage for the accommodation of Big Lena,
Miss Penny, and Chloe; and numerous three-room cabins for the housing of
whole families of Indians, which the girl fondly pictured as flocking in
from the wilderness to have the errors of their heathenish religion
pointed out to them upon a brand-new blackboard, and the discomforts of
their nomadic lives assuaged by an introduction to collapsible bath-tubs
and the multiplication table.  For hers was to be a mission as well as a
school.  Truly the souls north of sixty were destined to owe her much.
For they borrow cheerfully, and repay--never.

So much for Chloe Elliston's plan.  Lapierre, however, had his own
eminently more practical, if less Utopian, ideas concerning the erection
of a trading-post; for in the quarter-breed's mind the planting of an
independent trading-post upon the very threshold of MacNair's wilderness
empire was of far greater importance than the establishment of a school,
or mission, or any other institution--especially when the post was one
which he himself had set about to control.  The man's eyes gleamed and
the thin lips smiled as his glance rested momentarily upon the figure of
the girl--the unwitting, and therefore the more powerful, weapon that
chance had placed in his hands in his battle against MacNair.

His idea of a post was simplicity itself:  One long, log trading-room
with an ell for a storehouse, and a room--two at the most--in the rear
for the accommodation of the three women.  The whole to be erected in the
centre of the clearing, and surrounded by a fifteen-foot log stockade.

Boldly he broached his plan.

"But this is _not_ a trading-post!" objected the girl.  "The store is a
side issue and is to be conducted merely to permit those who take
advantage of my school to obtain the necessities of life at a fair and
reasonable price."

"Your words were well chosen, Miss Elliston.  For if you begin to
undersell the H.B.C., and more especially the independents, every Indian
in the North will proceed to 'take advantage' of your school and of you
also."

"But they are being robbed!"

Lapierre smiled.  "They do not know it; they are used to it.  Let me warn
you that to tamper with existing trade schedules, except by one
experienced in the commerce of the North, is to invite disaster.  You
will lose money!"

"But you told me that you yourself gave the Indians better bargains than
either the Hudson Bay Company or MacNair."

"I know the North!  And you may be assured the concessions are more
nominal than real."

"Very well, then," flashed the girl.  "My concessions will be more real
than nominal, and of that you may be assured.  If my store pays expenses,
well and good!"  And by the tone of the girl's voice, and the slight,
unconscious out-thrust of her chin, Pierre Lapierre knew that the time
was unpropitious for a further discussion of trade principles.

Chloe was speaking again: "But to return to the buildings----"

Lapierre interrupted her, speaking earnestly: "My dear Miss Elliston,
consider the circumstances, the limitations."  He tapped lightly the roll
of blue-prints the girl held in her hand.  "Those plans were made by a
man who had not the slightest knowledge of conditions as they exist here."

"The buildings are to be very simple."

"Undoubtedly.  But simplicity is relative.  A building that would be
considered simplicity itself in the States, might well be intricate
beyond the possibility of construction here in the wilderness.  Do you
realize that among our men is not one who can read a blue-print, or has
ever seen one?  Do you realize that to erect buildings in accordance with
these plans would require a force of skilled mechanics under the
supervision of a master builder?  And do you realize that time is a most
important factor in our present undertaking?  Who can tell at what moment
Brute MacNair may swoop down, upon us like Attila of old, and strike a
fatal blow to our little outpost of civilization?  And if he finds _me_
here--"  His voice trailed into silence and his eyes swept gloomily the
northern reach of the river.

Chloe appeared unimpressed.  "I hardly think he will resort to violence.
There is the law--even here in the wilderness.  Slow to act, perhaps,
because of the inaccessibility of the wild country; but once its
machinery is in motion, as unbending and as indomitable as justice
itself.  You see, I have read of your Mounted Police."

"The Mounted!" Lapierre laughed.  "Yes--I see you have _read_ of them!
Had you derived your information in a more direct manner--had you lived
among them--if you _knew_ them--your childlike trust in them would seem
as absurd, perhaps, as it does to me!"

"What do you mean?" cried the girl, regarding the quarter-breed with a
searching glance.  "That the men of the Mounted are--that they may
be--influenced?"

Again Lapierre laughed--harshly.  "Just that, Miss Elliston!  They
are--crooked.  They may be influenced!"

"I cannot believe that!"

"You will--later."

"You mean that MacNair has----"

The man interrupted with a wave of his hand.  "What I have told you of
MacNair is the truth.  I shall prove this to your own satisfaction, at
the proper time.  Until then, I ask you to believe me.  Admitting, then,
that I have spoken the truth, do you suppose for an instant that these
facts are not known to the Mounted?  If not, then the officers are
inefficient fools.  If they are known, why don't the Mounted remedy
matters?  Because MacNair is rich!  Because he buys them, body and soul!
Because he owns them, like he owns the Indians!  That's why!

"Just stop and consider what is ahead of a dollar-a-day policeman.  When
his five-year term of enlistment has expired, he has his choice of
enlisting for another term, or making his living some other way.  At the
end of the five years he has learned to hate the service with a hatred
that is soul-searing.  It is the hardest, strictest, most exacting, and
most ill-paid service in the world; and the five years of the man's
enlistment have practically rendered him unfit for earning a living.

"He has lived in the wild country.  He knows the wild country.  And
civilization, with its rapid advance, has left him five years behind the
times.  Our ex-man of the Mounted is fit for only the commonest labour.
And, because there are almost no employers in the North, he cannot turn
his knowledge of the wilds to profitable account, unless he turns
smuggler, whiskey-runner, or fur-poisoner.  The men know this.
Therefore, when an officer whose patrol takes him into the far 'back
blocks' is approached by a man like MacNair, with his pockets bulging
with gold, what report goes down to Regina, and on to Ottawa?

"Yes, Miss Elliston, in the Northland there is law.  But the law is a
fundamental law--the primitive law of savage might.  The strong devour
the weak.  Only the fit survive--survive to be ruled, to be trampled, to
be _owned_ by the strongest.  And the law is the measure of might!
Primal instincts--pristine passions--primordial brutishness permeate the
whole North--rule it.

"The wolf and savage _carcajo_ drag down the hunger-weakened caribou and
the deer, and rip the warm, red flesh from their bones before their eyes
have glazed.  And, in turn, the wolf and the _carcajo_, the unoffending
beaver and musquash, the mink, the fisher, the fox, and the otter are
trapped by savage man and the pelts ripped from their twitching bodies
while life and sensibility remain.  They are harder to skin when cold.
And with the thermometer at forty or sixty below zero, the little bodies
chill almost instantly if mercifully killed--therefore, they are not
killed, but flayed alive and their bleeding bodies tossed upon the snow.
They die quickly--then.  But--they have lived through the skinning!  And
that is the North!"

Chloe Elliston shuddered and drew away in horror.  "Is--is this
possible?" she faltered.  "Do they----"

"They do.  The fur business is not a pretty business, Miss Elliston.  But
neither is the North pretty--nor are its inhabitants.  But the traffic in
fur is inherently the business of the North--and its history is written
in blood--the blood and the suffering of thousands of men and millions of
animals.  But the profits are great.  Fashion has decreed that My Lady
shall be swathed in fur--therefore, men go mad and die in the barrens,
and the quivering red bodies of small animals bleed, and curl up, and
stiffen upon the hard crust of the snow!  No, the North is not gentle,
Miss Elliston----"

"Don't!  Don't!" faltered the girl.  "It is all too--too horrible--too
sickeningly brutal--too--too unbelievable!"  She covered her eyes with
her hand.

Lapierre answered, dryly.  "Yes.  The North is that way.  It has always
been so--and it always will----"

Chloe's hand dropped from her eyes and, she faced him in a sudden burst
of passion.  Her sensitive lips quivered and her eyes narrowed to the
rapier-blade eyes that were the eyes of Tiger Elliston.  She tore the
roll of blue-prints to bits and ground them into the mould with the heel
of her boot.

"_It will not!_"  Her voice cut sharply, and hard.  "What do you know of
what the North _will_ be?  You know it only as it has been--as it is,
perhaps.  But, of its future you know nothing.  I tell you the North will
change!  It is a hard land--cruel--elemental--raw!  But it is _big_!
And, when it awakens, its very bigness, the virile force and strength of
it, will turn against its savagery, its cruelty, its brutishness; and
above all other lands it will stand for the protection of the weak and
for the right of things to live!"

The quarter-breed gazed into her face with a look of undisguised
admiration.  "Ah, Miss Elliston, you are beautiful, now--beautiful
always--but, at this moment--radiant--divine--"  Chloe seemed not to hear
him.

"And that is to be _my_ work--to awaken the North!  To bring to its
people the comforts--the advantages of civilization!"

"The North is too big for you, Miss Elliston.  It is too big for _men_.
Pardon, but it is not a woman's land."

The girl's eyes flashed.  "Suppose we leave sex out of it, Mr. Lapierre.
They said of my grandfather that 'the harder they fought him, the better
he liked 'em,' and that 'he never knew when he was licked.'  Maybe that
is the reason he never was licked, but lived to carry civilization into a
land that was a thousand years deeper in savagery than this land is.  And
today civilization--education--Christianity exist where seventy-five
years ago the chance visitor was tortured first and eaten afterward."

Lapierre shrugged.  "It is useless to argue.  I am in sympathy with your
undertaking.  I admire your courage, and the high ideals of your mission.
But, permit me to remind you that your grandfather, whoever he was, was
_not_ a woman.  Also, that here, in the North, Christianity and education
have failed to civilize--the educated ones and the converts are worse
than the others."

The girl's eyes darkened and the man noticed the peculiar out-thrust of
the chin.  He hastened to change the subject.

"I am glad you have abandoned those plans.  They were useless.  May I now
proceed with the building?"

Chloe smiled.  "Yes," she answered, "by all means.  But, as this is to be
_my_ undertaking, I think I shall have it _my_ way.  Build the store
first, if you please----"

"And the stockade?"

"There will be no stockade."

"No stockade!  Are you crazy?  If MacNair----"

"I will attend to MacNair, Mr. Lapierre."

"Do you imagine MacNair will stand quietly by and allow you to build a
trading-post here on the Yellow Knife?  Do you think he will listen to
our explanation that this is a school and that the store is merely a
plaything?  I tell you he will countenance neither the school nor the
post.  Education for the natives is the last thing MacNair will stand
for."

"As I told you, I will attend to MacNair.  My people will not be armed.
The stockade would be silly."

Lapierre smiled; drew closer, and dropped his voice to a confidential
whisper.  "I can put one hundred rifles and ten thousand cartridges in
the hands of your people in ten days' time."

"Thank you, Mr. Lapierre.  I don't need your guns."

The man made a gesture of impatience.  "If you choose to ignore MacNair,
you must, at least, be prepared to handle the Indians who will crowd your
counter like wolves when they hear you are underselling the H.B.C.  When
you explain that only those who are members of your school may trade at
your post, you will be swamped with enrolments.  You cannot teach the
whole North.

"Those that you will be forced to turn away--what will they do?  They
will not understand.  Instead of returning to their teepees, their nets,
and their traplines, they will hang about your post, growing gaunter and
hungrier with the passing of the days.  And the hunger that gnaws at
their bellies will arouse the latent lawlessness of their hearts, and
then--if MacNair has not already struck, he will strike then.  For
MacNair knows Indians and the workings of the Indian mind.  He knows how
the sullen hatred of their souls may be fanned into a mighty flame.  His
Indians will circulate among the hungry horde, and the banks of the
Yellow Knife will be swept bare.  MacNair will have struck.  And with
such consummate skill will his hand be disguised, that not the faintest
breath of suspicion will point toward himself."

"I shall sell to all alike, while my goods last, whether they are members
of my school or not----"

"That will be even worse than----"

"It seems you always think of the worst thing that could possibly
happen," smiled the girl.

"'To fear the worst, oft cures the worst,'" quoted Lapierre.

"'Don't cross a bridge 'til you get to it' is not so classic, perhaps,
but it saves a lot of needless worry."

"'Foresight is better than hindsight' is equally unclassic, and
infinitely better generalship.  Bridges crossed at the last moment are
generally crossed from the wrong end, I have noticed."  The man leaned
toward her and looked straight into her eyes.  "Oh, Miss Elliston--can't
you see--I am thinking of your welfare--of your safety; I have known you
but a short time, as acquaintance is reckoned, but already you have
become more to me than----"

Chloe interrupted him with a gesture.

"Don't--please--I----"

Lapierre ignored the protest, and, seizing her hand in both his own,
spoke rapidly.  "I will say it!  I have known it from the moment of our
first meeting.  I love you!  And I shall win you--and together we
will----"

"Oh, don't--don't--not--now--please!"

The man bowed and released the hand.  "I can wait," he said gravely.
"But please--for your own good--take my advice.  I know the North.  I was
born in the North, and am of the North.  I have sought only to help you.
Why do you refuse to profit by my experience?  Must you endure what I
have endured to learn what I offer freely to tell you?  I shudder to
think of It.  The knowledge gleaned by experience may be the most
lasting, but it is dearly purchased, and at a great loss--always." The
man's voice was very earnest, and Chloe detected a note of mild reproach.
She hastened to reply.

"I _have_ profited by your advice--have learned much from what you have
told me.  I am under obligation to you.  I appreciate your interest
in--in my work, and am indeed grateful for what you have done to further
it.  But there are some things, I suppose, one _must_ learn by
experience.  I may be silly and headstrong.  I may be wrong.  But I stand
ready to pay the price.  The loss will be mine.  See!" she cried
excitedly, "they are rolling up the logs for the store."

"Yes," answered the man gravely, "I bow to your wishes in the matter of
your buildings.  If you refuse to build a stockade we may erect a few
more buildings--but as few as you can possibly manage with, Miss
Elliston.  I must hasten southward."

Chloe studied for some moments.  "The store"--she checked them off upon
her fingers--"the schoolhouse, two bunkhouses, we can leave off the
bathrooms, the river and the lake will serve until winter."

Lapierre nodded, and the girl continued.  "We can do without the laundry
and the carpenter-shop, and the individual cabins.  The Indians can set
up their teepees in the clearing, and build the cabins and the other
buildings later.  But I _would_ like a little cottage for myself, and
Miss Penny, and Lena.  We _could_ make three rooms do.  Can we have three
rooms?"

Lapierre bowed low.  "It shall be as you say," he replied.  "And now, if
you will excuse me, I shall see to it that these _canaille_ work.  LeFroy
they do not fear."

He turned to go, and at that moment Chloe Elliston saw a look of terror
flash into his eyes.  Saw his fingers clutch and grope uncertainly at the
gay scarf at his throat.  Saw the muscles of his face work painfully.
Saw his colour fade from rich tan to sickly yellow.  An inarticulate,
gurgling sound escaped his lips, and his eyes stared in horror toward a
point beyond and behind her.

She turned swiftly and gazed into the face of a man who had approached
unnoticed from the direction of the river, and stood a few paces distant
with his eyes fixed upon her.  As their glances met the man's gaze
continued unflinching, and the soft-brimmed Stetson remained on his head.
Her slender fingers clenched into her palms and, unconsciously, her chin
thrust forward--for she knew intuitively that the man was "Brute" MacNair.




CHAPTER VI

BRUTE MACNAIR

Estimates are formed, in a far greater measure than most of us care to
admit, upon first impressions.  Manifestly shallow and embryonic though
we admit them to be, our first impressions crystallize, in nine cases
out of ten, into our fixed or permanent opinions.  And, after all, the
reason for this absurdity is simple--egotism.

Our opinions, based upon first impressions--and we rarely pause to
analyse first impressions--have become _our opinions_, the result, as
we fondly imagine, of our judgment.  Our judgment must be
right--because it is our judgment.  Therefore, unconsciously or
consciously, every subsequent impression is bent to bolster up and
sustain that judgment.  We hate to be wrong.  We hate to admit, even to
ourselves, that we are wrong.

Strange, isn't it?  How often we are right (permit the smile) in our
estimate of people?

When Chloe Elliston turned to face MacNair among the stumps of the
sunlit clearing, her opinion of the man had already been formed.  He
was Brute MacNair, one to be hated, despised.  To be fought, conquered,
and driven out of the North--for the good of the North.  His influence
was a malignant ulcer--a cancerous plague-spot, whose evil tentacles,
reaching hidden and unseen, would slowly but surely fasten themselves
upon the civilization of the North--sap its vitality--poison its blood.

In the flash of her first glance the girl's eyes took in every
particular and detail of him.  She noted the huge frame, broad, yet
lean with the gaunt leanness of health, and endurance, and physical
strength.  The sinew-corded, bronzed hands that clenched slowly as his
glance rested for a moment upon the face of Lapierre.  The
weather-tanned neck that rose, columnlike, from the open shirt-throat.
The well-poised head.  The prominent, high-bridged nose.  The lantern
jaw, whose rugged outline was but half-concealed by the roughly trimmed
beard of inky blackness.  And, the most dominant feature of all, the
compelling magnetism of the steel-grey eyes of him--eyes, deep-set
beneath heavy black brows that curved and met--eyes that stabbed, and
bored, and probed, as if to penetrate to the ultimate motive.  Hard
eyes they were, whose directness of gaze spoke at once fearlessness and
intolerance of opposition; spoke, also, of combat, rather than
diplomacy; of the honest smashing of foes, rather than dissimulation.

Ail this the girl saw in the first moments of their meeting.  She saw,
too, that the eyes held a hostile gleam, and that she need expect from
their owner no sympathy--no deference of sex.  If war were to be
between them, it would be a man's war, waged upon man's terms, in a
man's country.  No quarter would be given--Chloe's lips pressed
tight--nor would any be asked.

The moments lengthened into an appreciable space of time and the man
remained motionless, regarding her with that probing, searching stare.
Lapierre he ignored after the first swift glance.  Instinctively the
girl knew that the man had no intention of being deliberately or
studiously rude in standing thus in her presence with head covered, and
eyeing her with those steel-grey, steel-hard eyes.  Nevertheless, his
attitude angered her, the more because she knew he did not intend to.
And in this she was right--MacNair stared because he was silently
taking her measure, and his hat remained upon his head because he knew
of no reason why it should not remain upon his head.

Chloe was the first to speak, and in her voice was more than a trace of
annoyance.

"Well, Mr. Mind-Reader, have you figured me out--why I am here, and----"

"No."  The word boomed deeply from the man's throat, smashing the
question that was intended to carry the sting of sarcasm.  "Except that
it is for no good--though you doubtless think it is for great good."

"Indeed!" The girl laughed a trifle sharply.  "And who, then, is the
judge?"

"I am."  The calm assurance of the man fanned her rising anger, and,
when she answered, her voice was low and steady, with the tonelessness
of forced control.

"And your name, you Oligarch of the Far Outland?  May I presume to ask
your name?"

"Why ask?  My name you already know.  And upon the word of yon scum,
you have judged.  By the glint o' hate, as you looked into my eyes, I
know--for one does not so welcome a stranger beyond the outposts.  But,
since you have asked, I will tell you; my name is MacNair--Robert
MacNair, by my christening--Bob MacNair, in the speech of the
country----"

"And, _Brute_ MacNair, upon the Athabasca?"

"Yes.  Brute MacNair--upon the Athabasca--and the Slave, and
Mackenzie--and in the haunts of the whiskey-runners, and 'Fool'
MacNair--in Winnipeg."

"And among the oppressed and the down-trodden?  Among those whose
heritage of freedom you have torn from them?  What do they call
you--those whom you have forced into serfdom?"  For a fleeting instant
the girl caught the faintest flicker, a tiny twinkle of amusement, in
the steely eyes.  But, when the man answered, his eyes were steady.

"_They_ call me friend."

"Is their ignorance so abysmal?"

"They have scant time to learn from books--my Indians.  They work."

"But, a year from now, when they have begun to learn, what will they
call you then--_your_ Indians?"

"A year from now--two years---ten years--my Indians will call
me--friend."

Chloe was about to speak, but MacNair interrupted her.  "I have scant
time for parley.  I was starting for Mackay Lake, but when Old Elk
reported two of yon scum's satellites hanging about, I dropped down the
river.  By your words it's a school you will be building.  If it were a
post I would have to take you more seriously----"

"There will be a--"  Chloe felt the warning touch of Lapierre's finger
at her back and ceased abruptly.  MacNair continued, as if unmindful of
the interruption.

"Build your school, by all means.  'Tis a spot well chosen by yon
devil's spawn, and for his own ends.  By your eyes you are honest in
purpose--a fool's purpose--and a hare-brained carrying out of it.  You
are being used as a tool by Lapierre.  You will not believe this--not
yet.  Later--perhaps, when it is too late--but, that is your
affair--not mine.  At the proper time I will crush Lapierre, and if you
go down in the crash you will have yourself to thank.  I have warned
you.  Yon snake has poisoned your mind against me.  In your eyes I am
foredamned--and well damned--which causes me no concern, and you, no
doubt, much satisfaction.

"Build your school, but heed well my words.  You'll not tamper, one way
or another, with my Indians.  One hundred and seventy miles north of
here, upon Snare Lake, is my post.  My Indians pass up and down the
Yellow Knife.  They are to pass unquestioned, unmolested, unproselyted.
Confine your foolishness to the southward and I shall not
interfere--carry it northward, and you shall hear from me.

"Should you find yourself in danger from your enemies--or, your
_friends_"--he shot a swift glance toward Lapierre, who had remained a
pace behind the girl--"send for me.  Good day."

Chloe Elliston was furious.  She had listened in a sort of dumb rage as
the man's words stung, and stung again.  MacNair's uncouth manner, his
blunt brutality of speech, his scornful, even contemptuous reference to
her work, and, most of all, his utter disregard of her, struck her to
the very depths.  As MacNair turned to go, she stayed him with a voice
trembling with fury.

"Do you imagine, for an instant, I would stoop to seek _your_
protection?  I would die first!  You have had things your own way too
long, Mr. Brute MacNair!  You think yourself secure, in your smug
egotism.  But the end is in sight.  Your petty despotism is doomed.
You have hoodwinked the authorities, bribed the police, connived with
the Hudson Bay Company, bullied and browbeaten the Indians, cheated
them out of their birthright of land and liberty, and have forced them
into a peonage that has filled your pockets with gold."

She paused in her vehement outburst and glared defiantly at MacNair, as
if to challenge a denial.  But the man remained silent, and Chloe felt
her face flush as the shadow of a twinkle played for a fleeting instant
in the depths of the hard eyes.  She fancied, even, that the lips
behind the black beard smiled--ever so slightly,

"Oh, you needn't laugh!  You think because I'm a woman you will be able
to do as you please with me----"

"I did not laugh," answered the man gravely.  "Why should I laugh?  You
take yourself seriously.  You believe, even, that the things you have
just spoken are true.  They _must_ be true.  Has not Pierre Lapierre
_told_ you they are true?  And, why should the fact that you are a
woman cause me to believe I could influence you?  If an issue is at
stake, as you believe, what has sex to do with it?  I have known no
women, except the squaws and the _kloochmen_ of the natives.

"You said, 'you think, because I am a woman, you will be able to do as
you please with me.' Are women, then, less honest than men?  I do not
believe that.  In my life I have known no women, but I have read of
them in books.  I have not been to any school, but was taught by my
father, who, I think, was a very wise man.  I learned from him, and
from the books, of which he left a great number.  I have always
believed women to be uncommonly like men--very good, or very bad, or
very commonplace because they were afraid to be either.  But, I have
not read that they are less honest than men."

"Thank you!  Being a woman, I suppose I should consider myself
flattered.  A year from this time you will know more about women---at
least, about _me_.  You will have learned that I will not be
hoodwinked.  I cannot be bribed.  Nor can my silence, or acquiescence
in your villainy be bought.  I will not connive with you.  And you
cannot browbeat, nor bully, nor cheat me."

"Yes?"

"Yes.  And of one thing I am glad.  I shall expect no consideration at
your hands because I am a woman.  You will fight me as you would fight
a man."

"Fight you?  Why should I fight you?  I have no quarrel with you.  If
you choose to build a school here, or even a trading-post, I have no
disposition--no right to gainsay you.  You will soon tire of your
experiment, and no harm will be done--the North will be unchanged.  You
are nothing to me.  I care nothing for your opinion of me--considering
its source, I am surprised it is not even worse."

"Impossible!  And do not think that I have not had corroborative
evidence.  Ocular evidence of your brutal treatment of Mr.
Lapierre--and did I not see with my own eyes the destruction of your
whiskey?"

"What nonsense are you speaking now?  My whiskey!  Woman--never yet
have I owned any whiskey."

Chloe sneered--"And the Indians--do they not hate you?"

"Yes, those Indians do--and well they may.  Most of them have crossed
my path at some time or other.  And most of them will cross it
again--at Lapierre's instigation.  Some of them I shall have to kill."

"You speak lightly of murder."

"Murder?"

"Yes, murder!  The murder of poor, ignorant savages.  It is an ugly
word, isn't it?  But why dissimulate?  At least, we can call a spade a
spade.  These men are human beings.  Their right to life and happiness
is as good as yours or mine, and their souls are as----"

"Black as hell!  Woman, from LeFroy down, you have collected about you
as pretty a gang of cut-throats and outlaws as could have been found in
all the North.  Lapierre has seen to that.  I do not envy you your
school.  But as long as you can be turned to their profit your personal
safety will be assured.  They are too cunning, by far, to kill the
goose that lays the golden egg."

"What a pretty speech!  Your polish--your _savoir vivre_, does you
credit, I am sure."

"I do not understand what you are saying, but----"

"There are many things you do not understand now that perhaps you will
later.  For instance, in the matter of the Indians--_your_ Indians, I
believe you call them--you have warned, or commanded, possibly, would
be the better word----"

"Yes," interrupted the man, "that is the better word----"

"Have commanded me not to--what was it you said--molest, question, or
proselyte them."

MacNair nodded.  "I said that."

"And I say _this_!" flashed the girl.  "I shall use every means in my
power to induce your Indians to attend my school.  I shall teach them
that they are free.  That they owe allegiance and servitude to no man.
That the land they inhabit is their land.  That they are their own
masters.  I shall offer them education, that they may be able to
compete on equal terms with the white men when this land ceases to lie
beyond the outposts.  I shall show them that they are being robbed and
cheated and forced into ignominious serfdom.  And mark you this: if I
can't reach them upon the river, I shall go to your village, or post,
or fort, or whatever you call your Snare Lake rendezvous, and I shall
point out to them their wrongs.  I shall appeal to their better
natures--to their manhood, and womanhood.  That's what I think of your
command!  I do not fear you!  I _despise_ you!"

MacNair nodded, gravely.

"I have already learned that women are as honest as men--more so, even,
than most men.  You are honest, and you are earnest.  You believe in
yourself, too.  But you are more of a fool than I thought--more of a
fool than I thought any one could be.  Lapierre is a great fool--but he
is neither honest nor earnest.  He is just a fool--a wise fool, with
the cunning and vices of the wolf, but with none of the wolf's lean
virtues.  You are an honest fool.  You are like a young moose-calf,
who, because he happens to be born into the world, thinks the world was
made for him to be born into.

"Let us say the moose-calf was born upon a great mountain--a mountain
whose sides are crossed and recrossed by moose-trails--paths that wind
in and out among the trees, stamped by the hoofs of older and wiser
moose.  Upon these paths the moose-calf tries his wobbly legs, and one
day finds himself gazing out upon a plain where grass is.  He has no
use for grass--does not even know what grass is for.  Only he sees no
paths out there.  The grass covers a quagmire, but of quagmires the
moose-calf knows nothing, having been born upon a mountain.

"Being a fool, the moose-calf soon tires of the beaten paths.  He
ventures downward toward the plain.  A wolf, skulking through the scrub
at the foot of the mountain, encounters, by chance, the moose-calf.
The calf is fat.  But, the wolf is cunning.  He dares not harm the
moose-calf hard by the trails of the mountain.  He becomes friendly,
and the fool moose-calf tells the wolf where he is bound.  The wolf
offers to accompany him, and the moose-calf is glad--here is a
friend--one who is wiser than the moose-kind, for he fears not to
venture into the country of no trails.

"Between the mountain and the plain stands a tree.  This tree the wolf
hates.  Many squirrels work about its roots, and these squirrels are
fatter than the squirrels of the scrub, for the tree feeds them.  But,
when the wolf would pounce upon them, they seek safety in the tree.
The moose-calf--the poor fool moose-calf--comes to this tree, and,
finding no paths curving around its base, becomes enraged because the
tree does not step aside and yield the right of way.  He will charge
the tree!  He does not know that the tree has been growing for many
years, and has become deeply rooted--immovable.  The wolf looks on and
smiles.  If the moose-calf butts the tree down, the wolf will get the
squirrels--and the calf.  If the calf does not, the wolf will get the
calf."

MacNair ceased speaking and turned abruptly toward the river.

"My!" Chloe Elliston exclaimed.  "Really, you are delightful, Mr. Brute
MacNair.  During the half-hour or more of our acquaintance you have
called me, among other things, a fool, a goose, and a moose-calf.  I
repeat that you are delightful, and honest, shall I say?  No;
candid--for I know that you are not honest.  But do tell me the rest of
the story.  Don't leave it like The Lady or the Tiger.  How will it
end?  Are you a prophet, or merely an allegorist?"

MacNair, who was again facing her, answered without a smile.  "I do not
know about the lady or the tiger, nor of what happened to either.  If
they were pitted against each other, my bet would be laid on the tiger,
though my sympathy might be with the lady.  I am not a prophet.  I
cannot tell you the end of the story.  Maybe the fool moose-calf will
butt its brains out against the trunk of the tree.  That would be no
fault of the tree.  The tree was there first, and was minding its own
business.  Maybe the calf will butt and get hurt, and scamper for home.
Maybe it will succeed in eluding the fangs of the wolf, and reach its
mountain in safety.  In such case it will have learned something.

"Maybe it will butt and butt against the tree until it dislodges a limb
from high among the branches, and the limb will fall to the ground and
crush, shall we say--the waiting wolf?  And, maybe the calf will butt,
learn that the tree is immovable, swallow its hurt, and pass on, giving
the tree a wide berth--pass on into the quagmire, with the wolf licking
his chops, as grinning, he points out the way."

Chloe, in spite of herself, was intensely interested.

"But," she asked, "you are quite sure the tree is immovable?"

"Quite sure."

"Suppose, however, that this particular tree is rotten--rotten to the
heart?  That the very roots that hold it in place are rotten?  And that
the moose-calf butts 'til he butts it down--what then?"

There was a gleam of admiration in MacNair's eyes as he answered:

"If the tree is rotten it will fall.  But it will fall to the mighty
push o' the winds o' God--and not to the puny butt of a moose-calf!"
Chloe Elliston was silent.  The man was speaking again.  "Good day to
you, madam, or miss, or whatever one respectfully calls a woman.  As I
told you, I have known no women.  I have lived always in the North.
Death robbed me of my mother before I was old enough to remember her.
The North, you see, is hard and relentless, even with those who know
her--and love her."

The girl felt a sudden surge of sympathy for this strange, outspoken
man of the Northland.  She knew that the man had spoken, with no
thought of arousing sympathy, of the dead mother he had never known.
And in his voice was a note, not merely of deep regret, but of sadness.

"I am sorry," she managed to murmur.

"What?"

"About your mother, I mean."

The man nodded.  "Yes.  She was a good woman.  My father told me of her
often.  He loved her."

The simplicity of the man puzzled Chloe.  She was at a loss to reply.

"I think--I believe--a moment ago, you asked my name."

"No."

"Oh!"  The lines about the girl's mouth tightened.  "Then I'll tell
you.  I am Chloe Elliston--_Miss_ Chloe Elliston.  The name means
nothing to you--now.  A year hence it will mean much."

"Aye, maybe.  I'll not say it won't.  More like, though, it will be
forgot in half the time.  The North has scant use for the passing whims
o' women!"




CHAPTER VII

THE MASTER MIND

After the visit of MacNair, Chloe noticed a marked diminution in the
anxiety of Lapierre to resume his interrupted journey.  True, he drove
the Indians mercilessly from daylight till dark in the erection of the
buildings, but his air of tense expectancy was gone, and he ceased to
dart short, quick glances into the North, and to scan the upper reach
of the river.

The Indians, too, had changed.  They toiled more stolidly now with
apathetic ears for Lapierre's urging, where before they had worked in
feverish haste, with their eyes upon the edges of the clearing.  It was
obviously patent that the canoemen shared Lapierre's fear and hatred of
MacNair.

In the late afternoon of the twelfth day after the rolling of the first
log into place, Chloe accompanied Lapierre upon a tour of inspection of
the completed buildings.  The man had done his work well.  The
school-house and the barracks with the dining-room and kitchen were
comfortably and solidly built; entirely sufficient for present needs
and requirements.  But the girl wondered at the trading-post and its
appendant store-house they were fully twice the size she would have
considered necessary, and constructed as to withstand a siege.
Lapierre had built a fort.

"Excellent buildings; and solid as the Rock of Gibraltar, Miss
Elliston," smiled the quarter-breed, as with a wave of his hand he
indicated the interior of the trading-room.

"But, they are so big!" exclaimed the girl, as her glance swept the
spacious fur lofts, and the ample areas for the storing of supplies.
She was concerned only with the size of the buildings.  But her wonder
would have increased could she have seen the rows of loopholes that
pierced the thick walls--loopholes crammed with moss against the cold,
and with their openings concealed by cleverly fitted pieces of bark.
Lapierre's smile deepened.

"Remember, you told me you intend to sell to all alike, while your
goods last.  I know what that will mean.  It will mean that you will
find yourself called upon to furnish the supplies for the inhabitants
of several thousand square miles of territory.  Indians will travel far
to obtain a bargain.  They look only at the price--never at the quality
of the goods.  That fact enables us free-traders to live.  We sell
cheaper than the H.B.C.; but, frankly, our goods are cheaper.  The
bargains are much more apparent than real.  But, if I understand your
position, you intend to sell goods that are up to H.B.C. standard at
actual cost?"

Chloe nodded: "Certainly."

"Very well, then you will find that these buildings which look so large
and commodious to you now, must be crowded to the ceiling with your
goods, while the walls of your fur lofts will fairly bulge with their
weight of riches.  Fur is the 'cash' of the North, and the trader must
make ample provision for its storage.  There are no banks in the
wilderness; and the fur lofts are the vaults of the traders."

"But, I don't want to deal in fur!" objected the girl.  "I--since you
have told me of the terrible cruelty of the trappers, I _hate fur_!  I
want nothing to do with it.  In fact, I shall do everything in my power
to discountenance and discourage the trapping."  Lapierre cleared his
throat sharply--coughed--cleared it again.  Discourage trapping--north
of sixty!  Had he heard aright?  He swallowed hard, mumbled an apology
anent the inhalation of a gnat, and answered in all seriousness.

"A worthy object, Miss Elliston--a very worthy object; but one that
will require time to consummate.  At present the taking of fur is the
business of the North.  I may say, the only business of thousands of
savages whose very existence depends upon their skill with the traps.
Fur is their one source of livelihood.  Therefore, you must accept the
condition as it exists.  Think, if you refused to accept fur in
exchange for your goods, what it would mean--the certain and absolute
failure of your school from the moment of its inception.  The Indians
could not grasp your point of view.  You would be shunned for one
demented.  Your goods would rot upon your shelves; for the simple
reason that the natives would have no means of buying them.  No, Miss
Elliston, you must take their fur until such time as you succeed in
devising some other means by which these people may earn their living."

"You are right," agreed Chloe.  "Of course, I must deal in fur--for the
present.  Reform is the result of years of labour.  I must be patient.
I was thinking only of the cruelty of it."

"They have never been taught," said Lapierre with a touch of sadness in
his tone.  "And, while we are on the subject, allow me to advise you to
retain LeFroy as your chief trader.  He is an excellent man, is Louis
LeFroy, and has had no little experience."

"Do you think he will stay?" eagerly asked the girl.  "I should like to
retain, not only LeFroy but a half-dozen others."

"It shall be as you wish.  I shall speak to LeFroy and select also the
pick of the crew.  They will be glad of a steady job.  The others I
shall take with me.  I must gather my fur from its various _caches_ and
freight it to the railway."

"You are going to the railway!  To civilization?"

"Yes, but it will take me three weeks to make ready my outfit.  And in
this connection I may be of further service to you.  I must depart from
here tonight.  Instruct LeFroy to make out his list of supplies for the
winter.  Give him a free hand and tell him to fill the store-rooms.
The goods you have brought with you are by no means sufficient.  Three
weeks from today, if I do not visit you in the meantime, have him meet
me at Fort Resolution, and I shall be glad to make your purchases for
you, at Athabasca Landing and Edmonton."

"You have been very good to me.  How can I ever thank you?" cried the
girl, impulsively extending her hand.  Lapierre took the hand, bowed
over it, and--was it fancy, or did his lips brush her finger-tips?
Chloe withdrew the hand, laughing in slight confusion.  To her surprise
she realized she was not in the least annoyed.  "How can I thank you,"
she repeated, "for--for throwing aside your own work to attend to mine?"

"Do not speak of thanking me."  Once more the man's eyes seemed to burn
into her soul, "I love you!  And one day my work will be your work and
your work will be mine.  It is I who am indebted to you for bringing a
touch of heaven into this drab hell of Northern brutishness.  For
bringing to me a breath of the bright world I have not known since
Montreal--and the student days, long past.  And--ah--more than
that--something I have never known--love.  And, it is you who are
bringing a ray of pure light to lighten the darkness of my people."

Chloe was deeply touched.  "But I--I thought," she faltered, "when we
were discussing the buildings that day, you spoke as if you did not
really care for the Indians.  And--and you made them work so hard----"

"To learn to work would be their salvation!" exclaimed the man.  "And I
beg you to forget what I said then.  I feared for your safety.  When
you refused to allow me to build the stockade, I could think only of
your being at the mercy of Brute MacNair.  I tried to frighten you into
allowing me to build it.  Even now, if you say the word----"

Chloe interrupted him with a laugh.  "No, I am not afraid of
MacNair--really I am not.  And you have already neglected your own
affairs too long."

The man assented.  "If I am to get my furs to the railway, do my own
trading, and yours, and return before the lake freezes, I must, indeed,
be on my way."

"You will wait while I write some letters?  And you will post them for
me?"

Lapierre bowed.  "As many as you wish," he said, and together they
walked to the girl's cabin whose quaint, rustic veranda overlooked the
river.  The veranda was an addition of Lapierre's, and the cabin had
five rooms, instead of three.

The quarter-breed waited, whistling softly a light French air, while
Chloe wrote her letters.  He breathed deeply of the warm spruce-laden
breeze, slapped lazily at mosquitoes, and gazed at the setting sun
between half-closed lids.  Pierre Lapierre was happy.

"Things are coming my way," he muttered.  "With a year's stock in that
warehouse--and LeFroy to handle it--I guess the Indians won't pick up
many bargains--my people!--damn them!  How I hate them.  And as for
MacNair--lucky Vermilion thought of painting _his_ name on that
booze--I hated to smash it--but it paid.  It was the one thing needed
to make me solid with _her_.  And I've got time to run in another batch
if I hurry--got to get those rifles into the loft, too.  When MacNair
hits, he hits hard."

Chloe appeared at the door with her letters.  Lapierre took them, and
again bowed low over her hand.  This time the girl was sure his lips
touched her finger-tips.  He released the hand and stepped to the
ground.

"Good-bye," he said, "I shall try my utmost to pay you a visit before I
depart for the southward, but if I fail, remember to send LeFroy to me
at Fort Resolution."

"I will remember.  Good-bye--_bon voyage_----"

"_Et prompt retour?_"  The man's lips smiled, and his eyes flashed the
question.

"_Et prompt retour--certainement!_" answered the girl as, with a wide
sweep of his hat, the quarter-breed turned and made his way toward the
camp of the Indians, which was located in a spruce thicket a short
distance above the clearing.  As he disappeared in the timber, Chloe
felt a sudden sinking of the heart; a strange sense of desertion, of
loneliness possessed her as she gazed into the deepening shadows of the
wall of the clearing.  She fumed impatiently.

"Why should I care?" she muttered, "I never laid eyes on him until two
weeks ago, and besides, he's--he's an _Indian_!  And yet--he's a
gentleman.  He has been very kind to me--very considerate.  He is only
a quarter-Indian.  Many of the very best families have Indian blood in
their veins--even boast of it.  I--I'm a _fool_!" she exclaimed, and
passed quickly into the house.


Pierre Lapierre was a man, able, shrewd, unscrupulous.  The son of a
French factor of the Hudson Bay Company and his half-breed wife, he was
sent early to school, where he remained to complete his college course;
for it was the desire of his father that the son should engage in some
profession for which his education fitted him.

But the blood of the North was in his veins.  The call of the North
lured him into the North, and he returned to the trading-post of his
father, where he was given a position as clerk and later appointed
trader and assigned to a post of his own far to the northward.

While the wilderness captivated and entranced him, the humdrum life of
a trader wearied him.  He longed for excitement--action.

During the several years of his service with the great fur company he
assiduously studied conditions, storing up in his mind a fund of
information that later was to stand him in good stead.  He studied the
trade, the Indians, the country.  He studied the men of the Mounted,
and smugglers, and whiskey-runners, and free-traders.  And it was in a
brush with these latter that he overstepped the bounds which, under the
changed conditions, even the agents of the great Company might not go.

Chafing under the loss of trade by reason of an independent post that
had been built upon the shore of his lake some ten miles to the
southward, his wild Metis blood called for action and, hastily
summoning a small band of Indians, he attacked the independents.
Incidentally, the free-traders' post was burned, one of the traders
killed, and the other captured and sent upon the _longue traverse_.  In
some unaccountable manner, after suffering untold hardships, the man
won through to civilization and promptly had Pierre Lapierre brought to
book.

The Company stood loyally between its trader and the prison bars; but
the old order had changed in the Northland.  Young Lapierre's action
was condemned and he was dismissed from the Company's service with a
payment of three years' unearned salary whereupon, he promptly turned
free-trader, and his knowledge of the methods of the H.B.C., the
Indians, and the country, made largely for success.

The life of the free-trader satisfied his longing for travel and
adventure, which his life as a post-trader had not.  But it did not
satisfy his innate craving for excitement.  Therefore, he cast about to
enlarge his field of activity.  He became a whiskey-runner.  His
profits increased enormously, and he gradually included smuggling in
his _repertoire_, and even timber thieving, and cattle-rustling upon
the ranges along the international boundary.

At the time of his meeting with Chloe Elliston he was at the head of an
organized band of criminals whose range of endeavour extended over
hundreds of thousands of square miles, and the diversity of whose
crimes was limited only by the index of the penal code.

Pierre Lapierre was a Napoleon of organization--a born leader of men.
He chose his liegemen shrewdly--outlaws, renegades, Indians, breeds,
trappers, canoemen, scowmen, packers, claim-jumpers, gamblers,
smugglers, cattle-rustlers, timber thieves--and these he dominated and
ruled absolutely.

Without exception, these men feared him--his authority over them was
unquestioned.  Because they had confidence in his judgment and cunning,
and because under his direction they made more money, and made it
easier, and at infinitely less risk, than they ever made by playing a
lone hand, they accepted his domination cheerfully.  And such was his
disposition of the men who were the component parts of his system of
criminal efficiency, that few, if any, were there among them who could,
even if he so desired, have furnished evidence that would have
seriously incriminated the leader.

The men who ran whiskey across the line, _cached_ it.  Other men,
unknown to them, disguised it as innocent freight and delivered it to
the scowmen.  The scowmen turned it over to others who, for all they
knew, were bona fide settlers or free-traders; and from their _cache_,
the canoemen carried it far into the wilderness and either stored it in
some inaccessible rendezvous or _cached_ it where still others would
come and distribute it among the Indians.

Each division undoubtedly suspected the others, but none but the leader
_knew_.  And, as it was with the whiskey-running, so was it with each
of his various undertakings.  Religiously, Pierre Lapierre followed the
scriptural injunction; "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand
doeth."  He confided in no man.  And few, indeed, were the defections
among his retainers.  A few had rebelled, as Vermilion had
rebelled--and with like result.  The man dismissed from Lapierre's
service entered no other.

Moreover, he invariably contrived to implicate one whom he intended to
use, in some crime of a graver nature than he would be called upon to
commit in the general run of his duties.  This crime he would stage in
some fastness where its detection by an officer of the Mounted was
exceedingly unlikely; and most commonly consisted in the murder of an
Indian, whose weighted body would be lowered to the bottom of a
convenient lake or river.  Lapierre witnesses would appear and the man
was irrevocably within the toil.  Had he chosen, Pierre Lapierre could
have lowered a grappling hook unerringly upon a dozen weighted
skeletons.

Over the head of the recruit now hung an easily proven charge of
murder.  If during his future activities as whiskey-runner, smuggler,
or in whatever particular field of endeavour he was assigned, plans
should miscarry--an arrest be made--this man would take his prison
sentence in silence rather than seek to implicate Lapierre, who with a
word could summon the witnesses that would swear the hemp about his
neck.

The system worked.  Now and again plans did miscarry--arrests were made
by the Mounted, men were caught "with the goods," or arrested upon
evidence that even Lapierre's intricate alibi scheme could not refute.
But, upon conviction, the unlucky prisoner always accepted his
sentence--for at his shoulder stalked a spectre, and in his heart was
the fear lest the thin lips of Pierre Lapierre would speak.

With such consummate skill and finesse _did_ Lapierre plot, however,
and with such Machiavelian cunning and _eclat_ were his plans carried
out, that few failed.  And those that did were credited by the
authorities to individual or sporadic acts, rather than to the work of
an intricate organization presided over by a master mind.

The gang numbered, all told, upward of two hundred of the hardest
characters upon the frontier.  Only Lapierre knew its exact strength,
but each member knew that if he did not "run straight"--if he, by word
or act or deed, sought to implicate an accomplice--his life would be
worth just exactly the price of "the powder to blow him to hell."

A few there were outside the organization who suspected Pierre
Lapierre--but only a few: an officer or two of the Mounted and a few
factors of the H.B.C.  But these could prove nothing.  They bided their
time.  One man _knew_ him for what he was.  One, in all the North, as
powerful in his way as Lapierre was in his.  The one man who had spies
in Lapierre's employ, and who did not fear him.  The one man Pierre
Lapierre feared--Bob MacNair.  And he, too, bided his time.




CHAPTER VIII

A SHOT IN THE NIGHT

As Lapierre made his way to the camp of the Indians he pondered deeply.
For Lapierre was troubled.  The fact that MacNair had twice come upon
him unexpectedly within the space of a month caused him grave concern.
He did not know that it was entirely by chance that MacNair had found
him, an unwelcome sojourner at Fort Rae.  Accusations and
recriminations had passed between them, with the result that MacNair,
rough, bluff, and ready to fight at any time, had pounded the
quarter-breed to within an inch of his life, and then, to the
undisguised delight of the men of the H.B.C., had dragged him out and
pitched him ignominiously into the lake.

Either could have killed the other then and there.  But each knew that
to have done so, as the result of a personal quarrel, would have been
the worst move he could possibly have made.  And the forebearance with
which MacNair fought and Lapierre suffered was each man's measure of
greatness.  MacNair went about his business, and to Lapierre came
Chenoine with his story of the girl and the plot of Vermilion, and
Lapierre, forgetting MacNair for the moment, made a dash for the Slave
River.

For years Lapierre and MacNair had been at loggerheads.  Each
recognized in the other a foe of no mean ability.  Each had sworn to
drive the other out of the North.  And each stood at the head of a
powerful organization which could be depended upon to fight to the last
gasp when the time came to "lock horns" in the final issue.  Both
leaders realized that the show-down could not be long delayed--a year,
perhaps--two years--it would make no difference.  The clash was
inevitable.  Neither sought to dodge the crisis, nor did either seek to
hasten it.  But each knew that events were shaping themselves, the
stage was set, and the drama of the wilds was wearing to its final
scene.

From the moment of his meeting with Chloe Elliston, Lapierre had
realized the value of an alliance with her against MacNair.  And being
a man whose creed it was to turn every possible circumstance to his own
account, he set about to win her co-operation.  When, during the course
of their first conversation, she casually mentioned that she could
command millions if she wanted them, his immediate interest in MacNair
cooled appreciably--not that MacNair was to be forgotten--merely that
his undoing was to be deferred for a season, while he, the Pierre
Lapierre once more of student days, played an old game--a game long
forgot in the press of sterner life, but one at which he once excelled.

"A game of hearts," the man had smiled to himself--"a game in which the
risk is nothing and the stakes----  With millions one may accomplish
much in the wilderness, or retire into smug respectability--who knows?
Or, losing, if worse comes to worst, a lady who can command millions,
held prisoner, should be worth dickering for.  Ah, yes, dear lady!  By
all means, you shall be helped to Christianize the North!  To educate
the Indians--how did she say it?  'So that they may come and receive
that which is theirs of right'--fah!  These women!"

While the scows rushed northward his plans had been laid--plans that
included a masterstroke against MacNair and the placing of the girl
absolutely within his power in one move.  And so Pierre Lapierre had
accompanied Chloe to the mouth of the Yellow Knife, selected the site
for her school, and generously remained upon the ground to direct the
erection of her buildings.

Up to that point his plans had carried with but two minor frustrations:
he was disappointed in not having been allowed to build a stockade, and
he had been forced prematurely to show his hand to MacNair.  The first
was the mere accident of a woman's whim, and had been offset to a great
extent in the construction of the trading-post and store-house.

The second, however, was of graver importance and deeper significance.
While the girl's faith in him had, apparently, remained unshaken by her
interview with MacNair, MacNair himself would be on his guard.
Lapierre ground his teeth with rage at the Scotchman's accurate
comprehension of the situation, and he feared that the man's words
might raise a suspicion in Chloe's mind; a fear that was in a great
measure allayed by her eager acceptance of his offer of assistance in
the matter of supplies, and--had he not already sown the seeds of a
deeper regard?  Once she had become his wife!  The black eyes glittered
as the man threaded the trail toward the camp, where his own tent
showed white amid the smoke-blackened teepees of the Indians.

The thing, however, that caused him the greatest uneasiness was the
suspicion that there was a leak in his system.  How had MacNair known
that he would be at Fort Rae?  Why had he come down the Yellow Knife?
And why had the two Indian scouts failed to report the man's coming?
Only one of the Indians had returned at all, and his report that the
other had been killed by one of MacNair's retainers had seemed
unconvincing.  However, Lapierre had accepted the story, but all
through the days of the building he had secretly watched him.  The man
was one of his trusted Indians--so was the one he reported killed.

Upon the outskirts of the camp Lapierre halted--thinking.  LeFroy had
also watched--he must see LeFroy.  Picking his way among the teepees,
he advanced to his own tent.  Groups of Indians and half-breeds,
hunched about their fires, were eating supper.  They eyed him
res