The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Long Patrol, by Albert M. Treynor

Near the foot of the valley slope lay an inanimate, drab-colored object of some sort, barely defined against the smooth sweep of the snowy mountainside. From the wooded ridge above, it appeared as a faint speck upon the panorama of wintry landscape. Ninety-nine travelers in a hundred might have passed that direction and never noticed any break in the monotonous waste of white. But on that evening, a little before the fall of dusk, there rode by chance, from out of the pass and over the trail, the one man of a hundred. There were few things worth seeing in the wilderness that escaped the restless scrutiny of Corporal David Dexter of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

A glance ranging across space, as the eagle gazes, and the horseman tightened rein and checked his pony on the brow of the slide. He sat immobile, looking downward. The dun-tinted shape could have been mistaken at the distance for a hillside bowlder or a rotted stump or a tussock of dried grass. But Corporal Dexter was not deceived. October's first snow had swirled over the ranges that day, and the three inch fall spread its covering impartially over mountain and forest and open park. The brownish object below should have been sheeted white, like everything else in view. Whatever it was it must have fallen there in the new snow, some time after the last flurry had passed, not more than a couple of hours before.

The place was a lonely, isolated spot, deep-shut among the remoter fastnesses of the northern Rockies: a haunt of big horn sheep and wandering grizzly bears. Probably there were not five white men alive who had ever sighted the line of unnamed mountain peaks that jutted like broken saw teeth against the eastward sky. The evidence of any recent visitation was of interest to the police.

The rider paused only to reconnoiter the ground below him, and then thrust his knee into his horse's withers, and urged the animal over the shoulder of the declivity. The slope was steep and slippery, but the wise little mountain pony was used to hazardous going. She settled back almost upon her shaggy haunches, and with forelegs reaching stiffly before her, she went scrambling and sliding to the bottom. A quick jog carried the horseman across the snow-smoothed level beyond, and then he knew what it was he had come out of his way to find.

At his pony's feet lay the drab-colored object that had caught his attention on the heights. It was a stiff-brimmed hat—a banded uniform Stetson, such as he himself wore tilted to the crease of his straight drawn brows. The hat had fallen crown up in the snow, and near by, half buried in the white drift, was sprawled a motionless human figure, clad in the familiar summer tunic of the Northwest police.

Corporal Dexter slid out of his saddle, and a second later was kneeling on the ground. He raised the body to a sitting posture, with one of his arms supporting the lolling head, and it needed no further scrutiny to apprise him of the fact of death. His hand pressed against the wet, still-warm face, and he looked at the closed eyelids and tight-locked lips of a man he knew. It was Constable Tommy Graves, R.C.M.P., from the inspection post at Fort Dauntless, two hundred miles to the south.

Corporal Dexter was attached to the barracks at Crooked Forks on the old Dawson road, far across the ranges. But he had met young Graves now and then on long patrol, and remembered him as a gay and gallant comrade. Skirting the edge of a juniper clump there approached from the southward a line of nearly effaced footprints. Thus, after devious wandering, Constable Graves had come to the appointed hour and place, and here his life's trail ended.

The hair at the base of the boy's skull was matted red, and Dexter's probing finger discovered an ugly opening where a bullet had entered from behind. The skin over the forehead was bunched and broken, and the corporal, using a delicately wielded penknife blade, a moment later came into possession of a flattened chunk of lead, .30 caliber size.

The words "vengeance" and "reprisal" are never spoken by a mounted officer. Nevertheless, there is no place on earth where the murderer of a policeman may feel safe from the menace of the reaching hand. Dexter at present was on long patrol in the wilderness, seeking two fugitives who were wanted in the settlements for a brutal case of assault and battery. But now his plans must change. New and more urgent business called him.

Crouching on his heels beside his fallen comrade, he took off one of his gloves, and blew his breath to warm his finger tips. From his pocket he brought forth pencil and notebook, and, with calm, steady hand he wrote his brief report. He himself might be summoned at any time to meet a similar fate, and as a member of a methodical organization it was his duty to leave the written record behind. The bullet was sealed in an envelope with the scribbled page, and the packet then buttoned securely in his tunic pocket.

His own terse statement tucked away for safe keeping, he bent over to learn if Tommy Graves' journal sheets were inscribed to date. The young constable's notebook held the usual daily report, beginning three weeks back, when he had set out on his last journey from Fort Dauntless; but the record told only of trivial matters, of miles traveled and landmarks sighted, and did not mention the errand that fetched him to this far, lonesome valley of the British Columbian mountains. Possibly it was a secret mission that he dared not particularize by written words.

A single clew was afforded by a photograph found in the constable's inside pocket. It was a double Bertillon card, carrying the stamp of detective headquarters of Chicago, Illinois, and showing full-face and profile portraits of a man whose name was written down as "Roy ('Pink') Crill." The subject of the police photograph was a gross-featured man with no eyebrows and very little hair. It was a repellent physiognomy: thick, pendulous jowl, puffy cheeks, eyes sunk in deep sockets. The cranium was flat on top, with a peculiar indentation behind the temples that somehow made Dexter think of the pits in a copperhead's skull.

Whoever this "Pink" Crill might be, the existence of a Bertillon picture at least proved a criminal record. It was not an unnatural assumption to suppose that he was in flight from the other side of the border, and that young Graves had been assigned to the fatal business of stalking him down.

Crill's body and facial measurements had been jotted down in the columns allotted for the purpose of identification, and after running his glance over the card the Corporal was able to form a vivid mental picture of the man. He would know him if he met him.

Pocketing the Bertillon card for future reference, Dexter stood up, his hands balanced on his hips. With his underlip thrust slightly forward, he moodily scanned the ground where the tragedy had taken place.

The re-staging of the crime presented few difficulties for the experienced observer. Behind the fallen body was a snow-shrouded log. Fifty paces beyond the course of a frozen creek ran past. The banks of the stream were thickly fringed with junipers, but at this one point there was a break in the cover. Winding up from a distant notch in the mountains, the creek afforded the logical trail for any voyageur making in that direction from the southeast. The log commanded the opening in the juniper bushes, and Constable Graves had been sitting on the log.

Even under the covering of fresh snow, the marks were legible. The policeman's rifle lay buried as it had fallen in the cold drift near the log. Graves evidently had sat there for a long while, with his rifle across his knees. Like a deer hunter he had chosen his place in the open and allowed the falling flakes to cover him, while he waited, motionless. The still hunt needs patience, but usually it is the surest way.

In this instance, however, something had gone wrong with the hunter's plans. No one had come along the course of the brook. The snowy stream surface was as smooth and level as placer sand. Dexter contemplated the lower stretch of ground, and then turned with meditative eyes to search the slope behind him.

A stand of densely growing cedars climbed upward along the mountainside. Obeying the trailer's instinct, he walked straight across the open ground and entered the nearest point of cover. And there he found, as he was sure he must find, the imprints of booted feet.

Somebody who wore a criss-cross pattern of hob nails had stood concealed in a fairy bower of frost-rimed branches. The furrowed snow in a breast-high crotch indicated the place where a rifle barrel had been rested for steady sighting. And from the powdery drift at his feet the corporal picked up an empty cartridge case, .30 caliber, that smelled of freshly burned powder. The story was complete.

The trail of the departing hob nails went northward through the cedars, and thence Corporal Dexter's future pathway lay, inevitable, unswerving, relentless as the summons of fate.

A policeman does not desert a policeman, in life or death. Dexter returned to his fallen comrade, and as gently as though he feared the hurting of sensate flesh, he gathered the pitiful human shape into his arms. He was not a big nor powerful man, but there was a lithe, cougar-like adequacy hidden in the muscles of a lean and hard-trained body, and he made little effort of his task.

Susy, the pony, objected to her new burden, but Dexter had no time to parley. He crowded into the horse with his shoulder, and before she could really think of acting skittish, the limp weight was deposited across her saddle. Dexter bent a few turns of a lashing thong under the cinches, and after that she could do nothing but submit to the arrangement.

As coolly as a workman taking a needed tool from his kit, the corporal pulled his carbine out of the saddle holster. Then, with the reins twisted in his fingers, and the pony shambling at his heels, he turned back afoot into the cedars and started northward, following the hobnail boots.

CHAPTER II

KNIGHTS OF THE LAW

In the wild mountain district where Corporal Dexter and a few knightly comrades rode in the service of the King's Law, there was not more than one officer available to patrol each two hundred square miles of territory. In the back hills were certain inaccessible regions never visited by civilized beings. A crime committed in such an out-of-the-way valley as this might remain unsuspected for years.

The murderer of Constable Graves could have no inkling that a second officer had just ridden down through the passes. It probably did not occur to him that there was any danger of pursuit, and he did not try to mask his trail.

The tracks led for a distance through the thick timber, and then slanted down to the brook and continued northward along the unobstructed course of the stream. The killer walked with a free, unhurried stride, without pausing anywhere by the way to listen or glance behind. Particles of feathery snow still held loosely around the edges of the prints, and Corporal Dexter knew that the maker of the tracks was traveling not more than twenty minutes ahead of him.

For a distance of two miles or so the trail followed the meanderings of the winter-bound brook. But at last, near the banks of a forking stream, the hob nails turned aside and entered a dismal spruce forest that extended upward over the valley slope in an unbroken area of overweighted tree tops. The failing twilight scarcely filtered through the interlaced branches overhead, and Dexter found himself groping among the shadowy tree shapes in a purple-tinged dusk that thickened and deepened as he advanced.

He quickened his pace, hoping to run down his quarry before night overtook him. But he had traveled scarcely five hundred yards among the spruces, when he discovered open ground ahead, and stopped short at the edge of a stumpy clearing, cut in the midst of the standing timber.

Before him in the darkness, vague and unreal as the apparition of a wood troll's dwelling, there loomed the dingy outline of a low-roofed log cabin.

The horseman instinctively reached behind to grab his pony's muzzle. But the precaution was needless. Susy stood with drooping head, and apparently lacked interest to announce her arrival. Dexter eyed her sharply, with a passing glance at the burden she carried, and then turned back to reconnoiter the shadows.

He had not heard of any settlers living on this side of the range. Apparently the builder of this cabin was a newcomer. The logs showed recent ax marks, and the second growth of seedlings had not yet found time to spring up among the stumps.

The silence was like a weight upon the senses. Dexter heard no sound except the faint creak of saddle leather as Susy breathed. He might easily imagine himself alone in all that vast stretch of forest. But as he peered forth from behind his shelter of brush, a vagrant puff of air brought to him an odor of chimney smoke. And as he strained his vision to see in the gathering darkness, he was aware that the hobnail prints ran directly across the open ground to the cabin door.

He left the pony to drowse in the thicket, with the reins dangling from the bit, and strode forward alone into the clearing. Placing his own feet in the marks left by the other boots, he followed his man to the cabin entrance. For ten seconds he held motionless, his foot touching the outer sill. Still he heard no sound. But the line of tracks ended here, and he knew that Constable Graves' murderer was inside the cabin.

Between two men who had not yet seen each other, the door of spruce slabs held shut like the closed book of doom. Once it was opened, the warrant of death for one or the other must be read. If Corporal Dexter crossed the threshold, he would walk forth again to escort a manacled prisoner to the hangman's gibbet at Fort Dauntless; or else he would not walk forth again. It was the custom of the mounted to play for all or nothing, and ask no odds of fortune. The corporal's thin lips harbored a half cynical smile as he accepted the terms. He prayed only that the drawbar was not fastened.

The click of his carbine sounded fearfully loud in his ears as he thumbed back the hammer. He did not wait after that, but reached with his left hand to knock open the wooden latch. The door swung ajar, and he kicked it wide on its squeaking hinges.

Even in that moment one corner of Dexter's restless mind was absurdly detached from the rest of himself, engaged in trivial speculation. The cabin builder must have come there after the grizzlies holed-up for the winter, he reasoned in lightning flashes of thought. Otherwise he would have got a silver tip, and so had bear grease on hand to lubricate hinges. Dexter's orderly soul hated annoyances that could be prevented, such as squeaking doors.

He had crossed the snow-buried sill with crunching feet, and halted on the threshold, his glance sweeping the square, murky space before him. Details impressed themselves instantaneously: walls of peeled logs; tiny, four-paned windows; bare puncheon floor; a disorderly grouping of ax-hewn furniture; a smoldering fire in a clay-daubed fireplace; the pent-in odors of camp stew and wood smoke and steaming garments. A man with a shaggy beard knelt by the fire stirring a cooking pot. He whirled at the rush of cold air from the doorway, and then his stirring spoon rattled on the hearth as he stumbled to his feet.

Corporal Dexter had counted on the chance of there being more than one person in the cabin. And it was well for him that he was on his guard. Some intuitive faculty of the brain served the warning, and without seeing or hearing, he was aware of a gliding movement along the wall at his right. He caught the edge of the door and swung it back towards him as a buckler of defense. As he jerked his head aside a spurt of flame scorched his face, an explosive report slammed in his ears, a bullet plowed the door slab and deflected in spattering pieces.

His face stung from the flying splinters, and there was a trickle of blood at the corner of his eye. Choked by powder fumes, half blinded, he flung the door against the wall. A crouching shape and the oval of a white face loomed in the smoke. He caught the blurred outline of a hand, and a pistol poked almost into his face. Lacking time to shorten the reach of his carbine, he did not try to fire, but struck, instead, with the heavy barrel.

The rap of the steel on knuckle bones gave a crisp, nut-cracking sound. He laughed aloud. There was a thump at his feet, and he saw the pistol on the floor. He could reach the weapon with the toe of his boot, and he worked it towards him and kicked it through the doorway. Then he backed away a pace, with carbine leveled. He spoke with restraint, keeping the excitement from his voice. "Take warning," he said. "I arrest you in the name of His Majesty, the King."

The light from the fireplace reflected upon the shadowy figure of his assailant. The man had clutched at his right hand with his left, and was glaring at the officer with the tense, sullen ferocity of a trapped animal. The position of the hands, partly extended, gripped together in pain, gave unwitting invitation. In a trice Dexter had brought a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. With incredible swiftness he reached forward, and there was a double snick as he linked the steel circlets about the man's wrists and sprang fast the locking wards.

The prisoner shuddered at the cold touch of metal, and shrank backward, an instant too late. He was an under-sized man, sallow of face, with short-cropped black hair, sharp, hawklike features, and dark, wide-spaced eyes that glittered with unnatural brightness in the firelight. The corporal's glance went down to the heavy mountain boots, which his prisoner wore tightly laced over the tucked-in bottoms of his trousers. The boots were wet with melting snow.

The stranger breathed harshly through his open mouth, but still maintained his stubborn silence.

"Very well," said Dexter. "It's your privilege not to commit yourself. But I warn you of the facts to be submitted to the Minister of Justice. Young Graves murdered—thirty caliber bullet through the back of his head. Thirty caliber case in the snow. Queer pattern hobnails leading here—tracks that match those wet boots you're wearing." He glanced sharply about him, and stepped suddenly into the corner and picked up a rifle that was leaning against the wall. "Thirty caliber," he observed, and then threw down the lever to sniff at the breach. "Fired recently, and not yet cleaned," he added, and thrust the weapon behind the door, out of harm's way. "All complete! Not to mention the personal fact that you fired at sight, with murderous intent, when Corporal Dexter strolled into your doorway."

From the moment he had entered the cabin, Dexter had kept the corner of a wary eye on the shaggy-haired individual by the fireplace. The man had scrambled up from his cooking pot when the door banged open, but after that he had remained standing uncertainly on his stumpy legs without venturing to join in the hostilities. Now for the first time the corporal turned to look squarely upon his unkempt bearded countenance. And with the meeting glance the officer's eyelids flickered suddenly in pleased surprise.

Here, at least, was some one he knew without asking introductions. In the travel-stained man with the untidy whiskers, he recognized one of the fugitives whom he had been following across the ranges from Crooked Forks. "Well now!" he ejaculated. "Jess Mudgett!"

"Warn you also," asserted the corporal crisply. "You and 'Phonse Doucet assaulted and almost killed the trader at Crooked Forks. He foolishly tried to make you pay the last year's account, I understand. We needn't go into that now. This new matter is more important. Accessory in murder, perhaps. At any rate, you'll go with us to Fort Dauntless. I arrest you in the name of His Majesty, the King."

"I don't know what you're talking about," faltered Mudgett, his forehead paling under the grime. "That storekeeper—I can explain about that. And as for—anything else: I ain't had nothing to do with—anything wrong. I swear my Bible oath."

Dexter surveyed the man curiously. He knew him of old—a trapper in season, general ne'er-do-well at all times, sneak thief on occasion, notorious coward—he never would have assaulted anybody unaided. 'Phonse Doucet, of course, was the instigator in that affair—Doucet, the half-breed, braggadocio and bully, a giant of a man, with a dangerous habit of going amuck when liquor was to be had.

"Where is 'Phonse now?" asked the corporal. "I trailed you two as far as Wild Swan Creek, and then I lost you."

Mudgett started to speak, but at that instant he happened to meet the beady glance of the shackled man across the room; and he received a look of baleful warning that made his teeth click over the half uttered word. He rubbed his nose nervously to hide his confusion. "Never saw him before," he stammered. "Just came here a little while ago for shelter. Didn't tell me his name."

Dexter himself had felt the threat pass, like an electric discharge, and he knew that he could get nothing out of Mudgett while he remained under the malevolent eye of the murderer. He did not attempt to pursue the subject. "Whose cabin is this?" he asked after an interval. "It's new."

"I built it this fall," said Mudgett uneasily. "Figured to trap marten and lynx over the winter."

"All alone?" asked Dexter, who knew that mountain trappers usually worked in pairs.

Mudgett shot a furtive glance at the other prisoner, and shook his head. "No," he replied, "I'm working with another man."

"Trapper mostly. That's about all I can tell you. I met up with him last summer and we decided to throw in together."

"Somewhere up the valley scoutin' out lines for the traps. Don't know just where."

Acting on impulse the corporal brought out the Bertillon card he had taken from the pocket of Constable Graves. He exhibited the photographic likeness of the man known to the Chicago police as "Pink" Crill. "Is this your Stark, by any chance?"

Mudgett leaned forward to see the print. But if he recognized the ill favored physiognomy, he gave no sign. "Never saw him before," he declared in his whining voice.

The inquiry was leading nowhere, and Dexter decided he might better save his breath until some later moment when he had Mudgett alone. He buttoned the photograph into his tunic, and smiled acidly.

"I'm going out to look after my horse," he observed, "and meanwhile I'll truss you for safekeeping."

He had only the one pair of manacles, but a brief search of the cabin discovered a length of elkhide thong. Approaching Mudgett, he twisted the rawhide about his wrists, and knotted the loop tight. The cringing trapper protested his innocence almost with sobs, but his pleading went unheeded. Dexter glanced about with a speculative frown, and then motioned the man towards the double-decked bunk, built against the wall at the right of the fireplace.

"I'll feel more comfortable about you two if you're in bed," he said. "We all might as well sleep a few hours before we start south. So climb in, please."

There was something in the quality of the corporal's voice that schooled Mudgett to instant obedience. Without a word, the trapper shambled across the floor and hoisted himself into the bunk.

Dexter turned next to the handcuffed man. "You in the upper berth," he commanded.

The stranger stood backed against the logs of the opposite wall, with his shoulders drooping, his arms hanging limply. But as the officer addressed him he looked up with his somber stare. He must have appreciated the futility of resistance however, and after a second's hesitation he lurched forward, and moved towards the bunk on heavy, dragging feet.

The prisoner made no answer, but as he stumbled past Dexter he shot him a glance so charged with venom that even the seasoned man-hunter was startled.

The officer refrained from further remarks, and stood by with compressed lips until the man had climbed into the upper berth. Then, in silence, he fastened the booted feet together with unbreakable rawhide. This done, he pushed the end of the thong between a crack of the foot logs, drew it taut, and secured it to the outer bunk post, where the knot could not possibly be reached by manacled hands. Mudgett's feet then were similarly bound, and lashed flat against the end of the bunk.

"I'll ease 'em up a bit when I come back," Dexter promised. "Meanwhile you'll have to make the best of it."

Serene in the knowledge that his prisoners would not escape during his absence, he walked out of the cabin and slammed the door behind him.

It was pitch dark outside, and growing colder. The corporal felt his way across the clearing to the thicket where he had left Susy, and was not greatly astonished to find that the pony had disappeared. His pocket lamp revealed her hoof prints leading through the timber, and he followed her for a half mile or so across the slope, and finally overtook her in an open ravine where she had smelled out a patch of elk hay that could be pawed up from under the snow.

She came back a few steps to meet him, and meekly nudged him with her forehead while she was receiving her deserved scolding. Dexter relieved her of the grim burden she carried. He made a hammock sling of his bed tarp and picket rope; and as the Indians protect their dead, so he hoisted among scented tree branches the muffled figure of his one-time comrade; and left him for the night. This melancholy service rendered, he took off Susy's saddle, removed the bit from her mouth, and permitted her to remain in the gulley where she had found shelter and pasturage for herself.

Then, with his thoughts on the savory pot that Mudgett had so opportunely set stewing in the fireplace, he turned back on the trail and retraced his steps to the clearing among the spruces.

He had been absent nearly an hour, and the unattended grate fire must have burned itself out. Not the faintest flicker of light showed from the cabin windows, and it was impossible to discern even the outline of the building in the all-engulfing darkness. He groped his path among the stumps, and finally reached the door.

Stamping the snow from his feet, he was fumbling for the door latch, when the deathlike silence was suddenly broken by a shrill, whirring sound, as though a bell were ringing.

He stood stock-still, with lips fallen apart, listening in blank astonishment. The bell stopped ringing; there followed a momentary hush; and then he heard a voice speaking. The tones carried to him from the darkness within, clear and distinct. His eyes opened wider, and for seconds he stood motionless on the outer threshold, tense and wondering. Incredulous at first, he knew at once that he could not be mistaken. It was a woman's voice he heard.

CHAPTER III

WITHOUT MERCY

For a breathless interval Dexter held his position before the closed door, listening to the amazing voice within. A woman! Her words came to him, decisive and sharp, in high-keyed inflection. It was too dark to look for new footprints, but whoever she was, she must have arrived there during his absence. But whence had she come? What was a woman doing in this far-off, snow-buried forest? Even a vivid imagination failed to answer.

Had he acted on first impulses, Dexter would have thrust his way into the room to demand explanations. But reflection stayed him. He probably would learn more about her if he kept out of sight.

She was talking excitedly, in quick, broken sentences. "Betrayed!" he heard her say to some one invisible. "The police are in the valley."

There ensued a brief pause. Then she spoke again. "Yes! Both arrested! Murder—a constable from Fort Dauntless!"

Another silence followed, and the listener outside waited in acutest suspense. "That's what I was afraid of," said the speaker finally, as though in response to a question. "They quizz them until their nerve breaks, and they tell all they know. But don't worry. I'll take care of that danger. Nobody's going to talk this time."

There was a hushed interval once more, and then the woman laughed. It was a strange, mirthless laugh, with a wild, inhuman note that sent a shiver through the hearer's veins. "Lifeless tongues never talk!" she asserted in a reckless tone. "You lie low for a while, and you're in no danger. I give you my word! There's one thing left to do, and I'm doing it now!" A breathless interlude passed, and the woman spoke with sharp finality. "I'm going through with it!" she declared in rising accents. "That's settled! Good-by!"

The voice broke off with a hysterical catch at the end. For five seconds no sound came from the cabin. From the spruces somewhere a little timber owl sent forth a hollow, long-drawn trill, that floated in the air, lonesome and remote, and died like an expiring breath. The veering wind eddied around the north wall of the cabin, cutting with razor sharpness through protecting woolens, flinging snow particles. Corporal Dexter shivered, and again his hand reached for the door latch.

But before he found the handle, the silence was rent by a man's scream—a hoarse voice, straining to unnatural falsetto, that carried terror and craven pleading in a single frenzied outcry, "Don't! Oh, no! Merc—!"

The appeal broke in the middle of the word, and the door of the cabin trembled before the jarring concussion of an exploding firearm.

There was an appalling hush; and then the horrid thump of another gunshot jarred the door of the cabin.

The corporal's chilled fingers had found the latch at last, and as he lifted it up, he flung his weight forward to throw open the door. But the latch seemed to have jammed, and his shoulder bumped forcibly against solid planks that failed to give. He hammered at the catch, and heaved himself recklessly against the barrier, in an effort to break his way in. But he only bruised his shoulder, and the door would not yield. Instead of wasting his further efforts, he stooped to discover what was wrong. And then he understood. The bar was down. The door had been locked from the inside.

From the darkened cabin there came a vague jumble of sounds: a soft thud of a weight falling, a stifled groan of mortal anguish, a fluttering movement of something on the creaking floor boards. But the wind was also in Dexter's ears, and he could not have sworn definitely just what it was he heard.

He remembered a split of log on the ground, that he had stumbled over when he crossed the clearing a while before. Now he retraced his steps, and dug the heavy billet out of the snow. The quartered section of tree trunk was as much as his strength could manage, but he lugged it back to the cabin and contrived to swing it as a ram. The first and second blows seemed to have little effect on the stoutly barred door, but the continued battering began to tell. Finally he heard a splintering crack within, and at last something gave way entirely, and the door broke from its frame and sprang open with a crash. He dropped his log and stepped across the threshold, his narrowed eyes searching the gloom of the smoke-filled room.

The hearth fire had dwindled down to a few smoldering coals that threw a dull red shimmer to the opposite wall. But beyond the faint streak of light, the darkness was impenetrable. An ominous silence surcharged the oppressive, tainted atmosphere.

Baxter's finger was on the trigger of his carbine as he held impassive, listening for some rustle of sound to locate an intruding presence. He knew that his figure loomed in silhouette against the dim glowing hearth, and he was keenly alive to the imminence of danger. At any instant he might see the flash, hear the crash of a shot fired treacherously from the darkness; and he steeled himself unconsciously to the shock of sudden hurt.

His weapon was balanced lightly at his hip, and with his free hand he drew out his pocket lamp. The shaft of light struck across the room, throwing its brilliant white bull's-eye upon the bunks. He looked, and his eyes dilated at the ugly sight before him.

Fallen backwards, half in and half out of the bunk, Mudgett hung feet uppermost, his head and shoulders resting on the floor, his ankles still tied to the foot logs, as the corporal had left him. His long, matted hair had tumbled back from his temples, and he gazed up at the ceiling with unmoving eyes that shone with the luster of opaque glass. His hands were still bound together by the elkskin thong. From under his shoulders a dark tinged stain trickled and spread upon the floor.

Automatically, as a man acting in a daze, Dexter shifted his light upward. The higher bunk was still occupied by the man without a name. He was lying on his side, still and lifeless, his manacled arms dangling limply over the edge of the bunk. His feet were securely tied to the end post, and so, like Mudgett, he had met his fate while helplessly fettered, tethered like a sheep for slaughter, without a chance of fighting back.

The fierce dark eyes were closed, and the bitter lines of malice somehow had been erased from his pallid face. His temple was black with powder burn, and just behind his eye there showed the red drilled mark of an entering bullet. Dexter observed certain other details of fact, and it needed no closer examination to tell him that both prisoners had been delivered from his hands by death.

CHAPTER IV

FIND THE WOMAN

The corporal had faced horrors before. It was not the hideous envisioning of tragedy that froze his blood: it was the haunting memory of the voice that he had heard—the voice of a woman. "Lifeless tongues never talk!" she had said in dreadful resolve. And the sound of that voice still echoed in his brain. The fatal shots were fired by a woman.

Somewhere among the shadows this woman must be hiding now, backed in one of the dark corners, probably, crouching cat-like with weapon in hand, watching every move that Dexter made.

The policeman stood in a situation of peril, and for once in an adventurous career he was at a loss to know how to meet an emergency. He never before had been called upon to deal with an armed and desperate woman, and there came over him suddenly a strange feeling of inefficiency as he realized that, no matter who she was or what she had done or might do, he could not make himself draw the trigger of his gun. Masculine pride, the honor of the mounted, every deep-rooted instinct—heritage of a warrior race and breed—cried out against such an unnatural encounter. He would have to take this woman alive and unharmed, or else she must go free, and leave him dead with his two prisoners in the cabin among the spruces.

He still clung to his carbine, on the off-chance of bluffing through a most disagreeable business. But in the show-down he knew he would have to trust to luck and his quickness of movement.

With nerves strung taut as wires he faced about and flashed the bull's-eye of his lamp around the walls of the room. And the bright searching light discovered no resemblance of human shape.

Incredulous, he winked his eyes two or three times, and turned for his second survey of the cabin interior. Slow and deliberate now, he moved the lamp from left to right, dipping the shaft of light from rafters to floor, and upward again; and so wove luminous orbits around the four walls of the room. He scrutinized the underside of the clapboard roof, looked under the bunk, poked behind a row of garments hanging on pegs, and finally even peered up the fireplace chimney. And he saw neither substance nor shadow to betray the existence of any lurking intruder.

There was a quantity of cut brush and fagots piled by the hearth. The policeman stooped for an armful of the kindling, tossed the fuel into the fireplace, and applied a match. The dry, pitchy material took flame instantly, and crackled into a furious blaze. The yellow flare reflected to the farthest corner, searching out every black nook where a person could hide. And there was no one visible.

For a moment he stood irresolute, with puzzled lines drawn between his brows. A woman had been in the cabin a little while before. She must have entered shortly after he went to search for Susy. And she had barred the door behind her. Apparently she had locked him out with deliberate intention, while she did the work she had hardened herself to do.

On his return he had heard the mysterious ringing of a bell. He had heard her quick, overwrought speech; the shots that were fired. His hearing was trustworthy. But if by chance he were tempted to doubt the testimony of his own ears, there remained the two lifeless, huddled objects in the bunks to bear mute witness to the remorseless visitation.

It seemed unlikely that she could have found her chance to escape in the short time it had taken him to pick up the log and batter his way into the cabin. The possibility of some secret cubbyhole, behind the logs or under the floor, suggested itself. As his glance strayed about him, his eye was caught by a metallic glint of something that had been dropped near the wall across the room from the bunks. Crossing the floor, he reached down and picked up a small pearl-handled revolver.

The gun he had knocked from the hand of his first prisoner was a big, heavy-framed weapon. This was a small caliber revolver, light in weight, delicately made—the sort of firearm a woman might choose to carry in her handbag. With a grim tightening of his lips he tilted up the breach and snapped the cartridges from the cylinder. Two were empty cases that had just been fired.

He nodded to himself. This, of course, was the weapon of death. Either it had fallen accidentally from a trembling, guilty hand, or else the owner had flung it away as a hateful possession. Dexter pocketed the revolver, and set about his distasteful task. The woman must be hiding somewhere, and he would find her, he promised himself, if he had to turn the cabin inside out.

He was standing near the doorway, and he started to work systematically around the walls. The structure, which contained the single, barren, four-square room, was built of six inch logs, saddle-notched at the corners and chinked with moss and clay. An inspection of the cubical interior quickly convinced him that the walls could hold no closet or compartment large enough for the concealment of a human being. From the floor to the slanting roof overhead, all space was easily accounted for. He searched high and low, in the fireplace, behind the bunks, back of the door, under the window sills. Every log and chinked crevice between the logs was subjected to minutest scrutiny. He even climbed up on the bunk poles to assure himself that there was no false work between rafters and the outside roof. Nothing of interest was discovered.

There still was the floor to be looked under. The floor was made of adze-hewn puncheons, uneven and loosely laid, without being spiked to the beams. With an old spade he had found, Dexter got a purchase under one of the rude planks, and pried it up. He had eliminated all other possible places of retreat, and as he snapped on the button of his pocket-lamp and dropped to his knees, he felt with a certain sense of disquiet that something at last was due to happen.

A dank odor of forest mold came up from the hole he had made, and from the under darkness he heard the squeak and sudden scampering of a family of pack rats. But there was no other sound or movement of life.

He raised a second strip of flooring, and then, with a quick-drawn breath, he squeezed his lean body through the opening. There was no knowing what he might find under here, and as he flattened upon his chest to avoid the beams, he could not help reminding himself that quarters were a bit cramped for active maneuvering. The ground under him was littered with decaying forest stuff, and evidently had never been disturbed by rake or spade. There was barely enough space under the floor for him to move, but by wriggling along at full length, he made his way to the end of the cabin and back again. And he found nothing whatever. The mystery of the voice remained unsolved.

Emerging from the opening in the floor, he brushed the leaves and dirt from his uniform, and stood motionless for a space, a look of perplexity clouding his keen, weather-bronzed face. He had heard a sound like a whirring bell that, amazingly, had made him think of a telephone. But a telephone in service must have wires leading somewhere. He had examined every square foot of ground and walls and roof, and had found no connected instrument, nor any vestige of electric wiring in the cabin. There was no way to account for the bell. It was bewildering.

For the time being, however, he was most concerned about the woman. She was not in the cabin—that much was settled. She must have managed to get away somehow.

His glance strayed to the door, hanging partly open on its broken hinges. There remained this one possibility. She might have been standing by the wall when he battered his way into the cabin. Waiting her chance, she could have slipped behind him in the darkness as he stumbled over the threshold, and then passed out unseen through the open doorway. In which event her departing footsteps would betray her. Dexter crossed the cabin, and stepped outside.

His flash-lamp served him once more. The light scintillated upon the fresh fallen snow, awakening a sparkle of diamonds. From the darkness beyond the clearing came the trail of hobnail boots that had led him in the first place to this dismal habitation in the forest. Also the marks of his own making were clearly defined. But there were no other prints.

He rubbed his wet sleeve across his eyes, and gazed searchingly about him. And there was nothing to be seen but whited stumps, and the soft, unscuffled surface of snowy ground. The woman had not come out that direction.

There were windows in the cabin—one on each side and two in the rear—which were large enough, perhaps, to allow a small and frightened fugitive to squeeze her body through. He walked around the building, throwing the light rays back and forth as he advanced, examining the ground underfoot and each window sill as well. So he made the circuit of the cabin, and came back, hopelessly perplexed, to his starting place at the front door. The snow lay as it had fallen on the sills and under the windows, without any imprints of human making. The slayer of the two men in the cabin bunks had vanished without leaving any trace behind.

Dexter was ready to confess his utter mystification. A queer feeling of unreality gripped him, as though he suddenly discovered himself in contention with some strange, unnatural denizen of the forest, who flitted about on darksome errands without touching foot to the earth. Some one was there a few minutes ago; murder had been done; and now this some one was gone—disappeared like a shadow in a dream.

The ringing sound he had heard only added to his bewilderment. It really was absurd to suspect the existence of a telephone circuit in the wilderness, nevertheless in his tour of the outer premises the corporal had looked for telephone wires. Had there been a line of any sort leading to the cabin, the snow-covered strands would have revealed themselves in the bright glare of his flashlight. He had found no wires.

The idea of a radio set occurred to him, and was immediately abandoned. Such a means of communication would require aerials and a connecting wire running to the cabin; or, if not that, at least an inside loop. Also there would have to be batteries, not to mention the bulky receiving and transmitting instruments. There was no such equipment on the premises; and an escaping fugitive could not have had time to dismantle and lug away a radio outfit. Of this he was positive: the voice he heard was not talking by wireless.

He checked up his facts, and considered the last remaining possibility—a chance so remote that it was scarcely worth thinking about. Could there be a tunnel or conduit leading underground to the cabin? He could conceive of no motive that would induce men to undertake the enormous labor of digging a trench through the forest. The notion was preposterous. But he had his report to write, and he was trained to thoroughness in all matters of investigation. It would be easy enough to determine if the ground had ever been broken.

Equipping himself with the spade he had used to pry up the floor boards, he proceeded to shovel a narrow pathway around the cabin, tossing aside the light covering of snow, and inspecting the bare soil underneath. He worked assiduously, and it did not take him a great while to complete the full circuit of the building. The ground was strewn naturally with the season's carpet of leaves and fallen twigs, and the topsoil below was the rich forest loam that requires ages in making. The experienced woodsman needed only a glance around the circular pathway to assure himself that the ground hereabouts had never been disturbed since the beginning of time. He was convinced finally, beyond all doubt. There was no tunnel.

Dexter tossed his shovel aside, and stood for a while by the open door of the cabin. His lips had fallen apart, and his head was thrown up to listen. But he heard only the familiar sounds of the forest, the moaning of the north wind in the trees, the crack and snap of sap-frozen branches. All else was silence. The eerie plaint of the owl came wavering from the darkness, but the empty, ghostly note seemed only a part of the great hush that brooded over the wilderness. The last man left on earth could not feel a sense of lonesomeness more poignant than Dexter felt at that moment, as he stood before the doorway of death, vainly waiting for some sound or movement to break the stillness about him. But for the discharged revolver in his pocket, and his knowledge of what lay in the two sleeping bunks, he might almost have persuaded himself that the events of the last two hours were the illusions of a strangely disordered brain.

He had investigated the cabin inside and outside, had left nothing undone that a searcher could possibly do. The mystery of it all seemed to lie beyond human power of solving. As he remained there, sentinel-like in the darkness, his hand strayed to his pocket and brought out a pipe and tobacco pouch. He carefully stuffed the bowl with fine cut leaf, and then absent-mindedly returned both pouch and pipe to his pocket. For a while longer he lingered by the doorway, his unseeing glance roving slowly about him. Then, with an ironic shrug, he suddenly stirred and stepped out into the clearing.

Inasmuch as he had seen everything there was to be seen about the cabin and its immediate premises, it occurred to him that he might as well extend his circle. The intuitive sense that belongs to all ramblers of the silent places seemed to tell him during the last few minutes that he was alone in the valley. The "feel," the woodsmen and mountaineers say, has nothing to do with the consciousness of smell or hearing or sight. Dexter merely felt that now there was no one else in the neighborhood. He did not expect to make any momentous discoveries, but a restive will demanded action of some sort. Flashing his light before him, he chose his direction at random and strode across the clearing.

At the edge of the open ground he found a runway that wild animals had trod out through the thicket during seasons past. He glanced among the trailing branches and checked himself abruptly, his eyes blankly staring. In the snow he saw the freshly made outline of a narrow, high-arched foot—a woman's shoeprint.

CHAPTER V

SHADOWS OF SILENCE

In a moment Dexter was on his knees, with his face close to the ground, and he studied the marks in the snow with the peering concentration of a man trying to read a page of fine-lettered type. A light dusting of wind-blown drift had begun to form in the trampled depression, and instead of crumbling there now was a slight banking up around the edges. As near as he could reckon by the faint clews vouchsafed him, the print was less than an hour and more than a half hour old. So this woman, whoever she was, had evidently been there when the murders were committed.

The officer's mouth was set in a harsh line as he scrambled to his feet. He had found a trail at last, and the fact that the prints were narrow and small and gracefully arched, in nowise softened his recollection of the ugly affair in the cabin. It was not so easy to forget the faces of the two men left behind in the bunks.

With the tense, quick movements of a hunting dog, the policeman cast back a distance along the runway. There were other tracks, clean-cut and plain to read. It was a double trail, with some of the prints pointing towards the cabin, and others turned the opposite direction. The woman had approached from the north, and departed over her same pathway, and the deeper toe marks of the retreating prints indicated the fact she had fled from the scene, almost running.

Dexter followed for a short distance through the underbrush, and then retraced his steps to the clearing. There was no hurry. A few faint stars were beginning to prick through the darkness of the sky. The weather was clearing, and he knew there was little likelihood of further snowfall for thirty hours at least. When he was ready to follow, the trail would still lie in the forest. The fugitive was in the situation of a fish firmly hooked at the end of a fisherman's line. Wherever she went, the line of her footprints tethered her relentlessly to the place of tragedy. Dexter could overtake her, and pick her up, whenever he was ready.

Meanwhile he lingered for a final scrutiny of the marks at the edge of the cabin clearing. And singularly, the high-arched tracks stopped short on the margin of the thicket, at the spot where he had first picked up the trail. Unbelieving, he searched about with his light, and finally made out the entire outer circuit of the stumpy ground. And he was much puzzled when he failed to find any small footprints within a radius of ten yards of the cabin.

Here was mystery piling upon mystery. He had heard a woman's voice in the cabin, and he knew as positively as any one may be positive in matters of evidence, that it was a woman who had shot and killed the two helpless victims in the locked room. And here was a trail, obviously feminine, in an almost unexplored region of the snowy wilderness, where he was quite certain that a white woman had never set foot before.

These facts were left behind, within the cabin and without, in the grim record of events. But there was a startling discrepancy to be explained. Between the thicket, where the footprints halted, and the cabin, where the two prisoners lay dead, a thirty-foot area of smooth-fallen snow intervened. If the maker of the tracks had been in the cabin, how had she crossed the open stretch? In what manner had she escaped, without leaving shoe marks in the clearing? There was no way she could have swung across above the ground, and there was no underground passage. Dexter's stern mouth relaxed for a moment in a grin of self-depreciation. He did not know the answer. There was nothing he could do but follow the trail, and try to wring the truth from the woman when he caught her.

Still he felt no great need for haste. He returned to the cabin, and paused for a final survey of the scene of crime. Again he bent over the lifeless forms in the bunks, and this time ascertained the caliber of the bullets that had carried sudden death. Mudgett had been shot through the heart; a brain shot had flicked out the life of his dark-faced comrade. The muzzle of the weapon had been thrust close in each instance. The bullets were short .32 caliber, but the killer evidently had aimed with deliberate care, and at such nearness of range, the small bits of lead were instantly effective.

The weapon with the two fired chambers, which Dexter had picked up from the floor was a .32 caliber revolver. As in the tragic case of Constable Graves, cause and consequence were logically brought together. The fouled firearms and the bullets were left in his hands as grewsome relics; but the murderers had escaped him—one by death, the other by inexplicably vanishing.

In the bushwhacking of the constable, followed by the killing of his assassin, Dexter sensed the working out of some strange, vaguely revealed drama that apparently involved the fate of several actors. He had pushed his way into an uninhabited country, expecting eventually to encounter a single individual who was fleeing from the penalty attached to a lesser offense; and he had walked unexpectedly upon the stage of wholesale crime.

The motive underlying the attack upon the constable was understandable. The young policeman had traveled across the range on official business, and his slayer no doubt had reason to put him out of the way. But the man who shot Graves, in his turn was shot and killed. And Mudgett also! It was not so easy to fathom the motive of this double affair in the cabin.

Dexter recalled every word spoken by the mysterious voice, before the gun reports sounded behind the closed door. The woman had mentioned the prisoners under arrest, and expressed the fear that they might be forced to talk. What could they talk about—what dangerous secret did they know? It must be something dreadful, if such a desperate method were needed to enforce their silence.

From the scanty facts in his possession the corporal tried to pick out some logical thread of connection between the people thus far enmeshed in the threefold tragedy of the wilderness: Mudgett, the stranger in the upper bunk, the woman from nowhere. Besides these there was the trapper, Stark, who, Mudgett declared, had built himself a winter shack farther up the valley. 'Phonse Doucet, the assailant of the Crooked Forks store keeper, had escaped somewhere on this side of the mountains. So there were five, at least, who had suddenly pushed across into this lonesome, isolated territory where even the marks of squaw-hatchets were seldom found.

Nor had Dexter forgotten the face of the man in the Bertillon photograph, which Constable Graves carried in his pocket. And for some reason the name of "Pink" Crill stuck insistently in his mind. Was this outlander also sojourning in the wilderness? And if so, was he in any way involved in the affairs of the others? There was no saying. Yet the corporal could not escape the feeling that he had touched the sinister web of some large criminal business—of plot and counterplot—that entangled the members of some unidentified outlaw band. What hope of profit might draw traffickers in organized crime to such infertile, out-of-the-way fields, he was unable to guess. He only knew that the country had been suddenly invaded by a mysterious and dangerous company of intruders.

His glance returned grimly to the silent figures in the bunks. No doubt these two held the secret, of which he himself had failed to find the key. But he could scarcely believe that murder had been committed just to prevent their telling what they might know. If this were the only motive, why was not the policeman shot instead of his prisoners? Dexter had not dreamed of the presence of a third person in the cabin, and the woman might have left the door unbarred and ambushed him with perfect safety as he entered.

He shook his head grimly. There must have been other reasons for the wanton shooting. Vengeance? The voice had said something about being betrayed. Had Mudgett or his companion sent the word that summoned Constable Graves into the woods? Such a supposition was improbable. If the constable's murderer had betrayed any one to the police, why had he himself shot the policeman? Dexter sighed as he realized that his speculations were leading nowhere. Until he knew a great deal more than he knew now, he was groping vainly, without one enlightening clew to suggest the meaning of this strange and dark affair. It was wiser to leave off theorizing, and go after the woman.

There was nothing further to detain him. He paused only to prop the broken door in place, to prevent the intrusion of forest creatures, and then quit the cabin and struck off across the clearing.

Where his new quest would take him, he could not foresee. In all probability he would have to travel for some distance through the dense forest. Susy, the pony, was sure to prove more or less of a hindrance on such an expedition, and moreover she was tired after her long journey that day across the pass. He had previously unsaddled her, and she would do well enough by herself in the sheltered gully by the brook. So he mercifully left her behind, and set forth on foot.

The trail of the small shoes was easily followed. For a distance the woman had continued her headlong course, but the underbrush was too thick for heedless going, and it was soon evident that she had been forced to moderate her pace. Still she had kept on as fast as darkness and difficult ground permitted.

By the accumulated signs along the way the policeman knew that she traveled without a light, groping her path as best she might. Frequently she had stumbled over some unseen obstruction and now and then walked blindly into a tree trunk or windfall. And in the denser thickets spatterings of snow told how invisible branches had swished back in her face.

Dexter continued to use his pocket lamp, and he had eyes for everything. By the promptness with which she had recovered from each misstep, he gathered that she was an agile, quick-witted woman, probably young. It must have been a painful ordeal to go plunging through the thickets, but she had taken the punishment with apparent stoicism, scarcely pausing at any time in her hurried, free-swinging stride.

At one place, where she had touched the edge of a briary clump, Dexter found a wisp of hair caught on a thorn—three soft, wavy silken threads of a deep bronze shade. He pulled off his glove to twist the gossamer strand about his forefinger, and almost imagined a sensation of human warmth. And somehow he felt a sudden dislike for the work he had to do. There are times when police business calls for sterner qualities than simple courage and loyalty. The corporal was confronted by a duty that revolted every knightly instinct; nevertheless he pushed onward at a faster pace. He could not shirk a disagreeable task, and was resolved to have it over with as soon as possible.

The woman did not turn down towards the more open ground along the course of the valley stream, but continued to travel through the deeper forest. She had soon wandered away from the vaguely defined runway, and was forced to seek out her own pathway. Through occasional openings in the tree-tops Dexter caught glimpses of the north-bearing star Capella, which the Indians call the "little white goat." For a while the fugitive had kept on in a northerly direction, but presently the trail began to bend to the left, turning towards the back hills. And as the corporal followed, he began to realize that he was swinging on a wide arc towards the west. The line of prints meandered back and forth in a rather aimless way, but the trend of divergence was always to the left. By the signs he inferred that the woman had missed her bearings, and, as usually is the case with lost people, was circling gradually around the compass.

Experienced wayfarers of the wilderness learn to "average" their windings, always bearing towards an imaginary fixed point ahead, like a ship tacking at sea. The star Capella served to-night as an infallible guiding beacon for travelers in the trackless country. But the woman, whoever she was, continued to wander farther and farther off her original course. By the time he had followed a half hour on her trail Dexter was certain that she was a newcomer in the northland.

In spite of darkness and the denseness of the timber, she still kept up her rapid pace. It seemed to her pursuer that she was in panic-stricken flight. Surely she must tire very soon. But her circling path led Dexter on and on through the dismal forest and still there was no evidence of lagging on the trail. He was beginning to marvel at the story of brave endurance that he read in the trail of the little footprints. The fugitive might not be versed in woodcraft, but nevertheless she seemed to have the pluck and physical stamina of a seasoned voyageur.

The corporal had his lamp to light the way before him, and he plowed through the snow with enormous energy. He was certain that he gained steadily, yet at the end of an hour he had not overtaken the woman.

By almost imperceptible degrees the line of tracks kept on curving in a left hand arc, and after winding his way for another twenty or thirty minutes through the hushed labyrinths of the woods, he became aware that he was now heading more southerly than west. He trudged onward until a rift in the drooping branches overhead gave him a momentary glimpse of the sky, and he found the beacon star twinkling above his left shoulder. The trail he followed had swung around the compass, and he was traveling back to the east. He half smiled to himself as he reckoned distance and direction. The hunted woman had wandered by tortuous paths through miles of darkness, only to turn back at last towards the tragic spot from which she had fearfully fled.

By the freshly trod prints, the skilled tracker knew that he was running down the fugitive. In places, fluffy bits of snow were still breaking at the edges of the new-made tracks. He should overtake her any minute now. As he lengthened his stride he listened for sounds of lightly crunching feet, and peered sharply ahead, expecting with every step to catch sight of a hurrying figure among the spruces.

He was advancing through a tangle of snow-sheeted brush, his arm thrusting aside the trailing branches, when suddenly he caught a red glint of light in the darkness beyond. At the same instant a stray breath of wind brought to him a resinous smell of wood smoke. A fire of some sort apparently had been kindled in the forest ahead.

Wondering, he broke his way out of the thicket, and paused for a moment to stare before him. A flaming glow flickered among the trees, throwing ruddy reflections upon the wintry landscape. A glance told him it was too big a blaze to be a camp fire. He knew that a forest conflagration seldom starts and never gains much headway when the trees are laden with snow, but for the instant he felt the sharp sense of alarm that communicates itself to all woodland dwellers at the sight and scent of burning timber. He left the trail he was following, and plunged straight through the underbrush towards the crimson flaring light.

Crashing forward, heedless of the lash of branches, he forced his path through the densest thicket. As he advanced he caught glimpses of fire and saw sparks leaping among the trees. He passed through the intervening stretch of forest, and stumbled to the edge of an ax-hewn clearing. In the middle of the snowy ground stood a log building, with smoke and flames spouting upward from the walls and roof. The surrounding area was illuminated with the brightness of day, and at a glance Dexter identified the place. He had circled back to the scene of murder. The cabin had been fired, and was blazing in the forest like a lighted torch.

CHAPTER VI

THE DOORWAY OF DREAD

With the hot glare beating back in his face, Dexter stood with blinking eyes, hearing the hiss of falling sparks and the fierce crackle of the mounting flames. Tongues of fire lapped around the windows and darted angrily from the crevices between the logs. As he peered through the pitchy black smoke, a gust of flame lashed out at the corner of the cabin, and he saw that the door was open.

He remembered closing and wedging the door fast when he left the place a while before. It would seem that a visitor had been there some time during his absence. His glance ranged swiftly around the clearing, and came back to the doorway. For a second longer he hesitated, and then suddenly left the concealment of the trees and strode forward across the open ground.

The snow near the cabin had melted and formed pools of muddy water. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket, wetted the fabric, and tied a protecting mask over his nose and mouth. Then he pushed across the threshold into the suffocation of smoke and heat and showering embers.

He was groping his way towards the center of the room, feeling for the table which stood near the fireplace, when he collided blindly in the hazy dark with a soft substance of flesh—something that moved, and breathed, and was alive.

His hands closed instinctively, and he found himself gripping a slight, lithe, human figure that gasped and struggled for release with the fluttering fright of a captured bird. A curl of flame darted out through the smoke, and in the flash of light Dexter had a momentary vision of a youthful, grime-streaked face, a waving tangle of hair, and a pair of luminous dark eyes that stared wildly under the shadowed curve of thickly fringing lashes. It was a woman—a girl—and his startled intuition told him she was the fugitive who had led him the long chase in the forest.

He saw her full lips tremble apart as the smoke cloud rolled about them, heard her stifled cry of fear. Her breath came quick upon his cheek, and he could feel the rapid pulse throb in her straining wrists. She writhed in his grasp, fighting to free herself. He had not counted on the supple strength of softly rounded muscles that desperation called suddenly and fiercely to use.

Before he could overcome his normal reluctance to hurt a weaker being, she had thrust her elbow under his chin; and as his head snapped back before the unexpected attack, she broke the grip of his fingers, wriggled out from the crook of his arm, stumbled beyond his reach, and ran for the doorway.

Dexter recovered himself a second too late. The girl evaded his outstretched hand, brushed lightly past him, and he turned only in time to see her rush out of the burning cabin.

She cast an anxious glance behind her, but did not heed him. In the haze of smoke he vaguely made out her slender shape as she darted across the clearing. She reached the edge of the forest and vanished among the spruces, leaving him with the tingling remembrance of a warm and vivid presence that had touched and eluded him, like an ephemeral fragrance. For the present he did not attempt to hinder her flight.

The fire had broken through the roof, and was swirling up from the interior walls with hot, roaring sounds. With his arm doubled across his face, he turned again towards the bunks where he had left Mudgett and his comrade lying. Either in life or death he always felt a responsibility for the prisoners he arrested. He tried to reach the bunks, but with his first step a gust of flame swept across the room and drove him back.

For a few seconds he lingered, his head bowed under the falling embers, hoping for a momentary lull in the rush of the fire. But as he stood irresolute, trying not to breathe, one of the roof beams cracked overhead and swung crashing to the floor. At the same instant a wreath of flame circled the doorway behind him. It was time to go.

Shielding his face, he turned and plunged for the opening. A searing wind eddied about him, and the next instant he stumbled across the threshold, and found himself choking and panting as his almost bursting lungs took in great draughts of the heated air outside the cabin. He beat out the sparks that smoldered upon his jacket, briskly rubbed his aching eyes, and then drew back farther across the clearing, beyond the scorching waves of heat.

The cabin was enveloped in high leaping flames that threw a blood-red glare above the snowy tree tops. Overhead he could hear the affrighted cries of birds that had awakened in the night to fly in darting confusion among the spruces. As he watched he saw a corner of the cabin roof curl upward like paper, and cave in the middle. The structure was doomed. There was nothing he could accomplish by waiting.

He remained a couple of minutes longer, observing the falling sparks. The flaming embers were snuffed out, he observed, almost as soon as they struck the soft snow. There was no actual danger of fire communicating through the forest. He cast a last regretful glance towards the cabin, but accepted the inevitable with fatalistic calm. What must be had already happened. He listened momentarily to the direful crackling of flames, and then with grimly set lips he turned to seek the departing footprints of the mysterious girl.

The fresh trail was picked up at the edge of the clearing. He scrutinized the familiar impression of the high-arched instep, and knew beyond question that she was the woman who had led him around a wide-drawn circle, from the cabin of death, back to the cabin.

Until this moment he had supposed that her fateful return was brought about haphazard by a changing sense of direction, that nearly always befuddles people who lose themselves in the woods. Now he had reason to wonder whether he had misinterpreted the signs. Had she deliberately drawn him away from the spot so that she might swing back alone, ahead of him? Had the cabin been fired purposely, to destroy the evidence of crime?

The fire might be of incendiary origin, or it might have started from the smoldering coals he himself had carelessly left in the hearth. Of one fact only was he certain. He had found the girl in the cabin. What stress of circumstance had induced her to enter the place, or had kept her there with the walls blazing about her? He could not guess. But if she actually found her way back intentionally, after traveling miles of dark, unblazed forest, her skill in woodcraft surpassed the skill of every woman and almost any man he had ever met.

With troubled and gloomy face, he once more took up the trail of the small footprints. The girl had struck off towards the brook this time, but whether she really knew where she was going, or was fleeing aimlessly, he could not say. As he pushed after her he discovered that continuous use had nearly exhausted his flash-lamp battery. There was still some current left, but from now on he would have to use his light sparingly. He hastened on, determined to end the pursuit as quickly as possible.

He was weaving his way through the icy wattles of a juniper clump, when, in the stillness of the night, shrill and plaintive, he heard the whinnying cry of a horse. For an instant his heart seemed to check a beat, and then he remembered Susy. He had left the pony in the gully, a few hundred yards south of the clearing. The tracks of the girl ran that direction, and the breeze was from the north. Susy must have discovered that somebody was approaching. She was a friendly little beast, and no doubt she had begun to feel lonesome and neglected in the dismal forest. It must have been Susy.

Dexter had halted for a moment to listen. But the cry was not repeated. A faint glow of distant fire still shimmered before him, seeping through the woods like twilight, mottling the coverts with strange, ghostly shadows. His straining senses caught no sound or stir of life. He was starting forward again, but as he bent to pass under a drooping bough, some alert faculty within him prompted him with sharp warning to look behind.

He was conscious of no actual noise; not even the tiny crack of a twig: but like most men who live in constant danger his nerves were as sensitive as a seismograph to any slight movement near him. Turning, he was aware of a muffled shape that had stepped softly from the dark thicket behind him. At the same instant a living weight pressed against his back, he felt the swift, circling contact of arms closing about his waist, and a pair of steely cold hands gripped upon his wrists. As Dexter lurched about to face his unknown antagonist, the night silence was broken sharply by the cry of a woman's voice, a crashing in the underbrush, and then the muffled beat of a horse's hoofs galloping along the winterbound brook.

CHAPTER VII

THE HUNTED WOMAN

From the sudden, startling sounds in the direction of the brook, the corporal guessed that the hunted woman had stolen and mounted his horse, and the spirited Susy was bolting through the woods with her unacquainted rider. The intelligence reached him subconsciously; he had no time for actual speculation. The active part of his mind was fully preoccupied just then, as he found himself struggling in the dark with an unidentified someone who had crept upon him from behind and seized him in a crushing embrace.

A second before he was confidently ranging on the trail of the fleeing woman, believing himself the only man existent in that vast area of desolate forest. And without forewarning, he suddenly discovered himself in the grip of a powerful assailant. He did not stop to ask questions.

His arms were pinioned at his sides, and iron muscles were closing tight about his ribs. Instinctively he knew he was no match for the burly strength that held him, but he had wicked recourse in a trick that it behooves all light men to learn. With a deep breath he filled his lungs full, and then as suddenly let go and shrank to his least possible dimension. For an instant he gained the needed laxness, and his arms slipped free.

Before his heavier and slower acting opponent could anticipate the movement Dexter's left hand reached across and gripped the other man's right elbow at the precise spot where a tender nerve runs near the socket bone. Simultaneously his right hand shot over his head and clasped the tendons of a short and stocky neck. Then, with catlike quickness, he dropped crouching almost to his knees. The suddenness of the shift overbalanced the other man, and the wiry corporal took the weight across his left hip. A wrench and a heave, and he might send his victim sprawling with a badly twisted back. But as he gathered himself for the final effort, he noticed something strangely familiar in the texture of the sleeve his fingers were grasping. His hand slipped downward, and touched the metal buttons of a uniform jacket.

With a wondering exclamation he relaxed his body, and straightened erect. Then he squirmed about to confront the panting bulk behind him. He stared in the semi-darkness, and made out in blurred outline a square-shaped face and bristling mustache, shadowed under the brim of a regulation Stetson. For an instant longer he peered in tense questioning, and then he laughed a low, short laugh that wavered between relief and chagrin.

The other man gazed uncertainly, but slightly let up on the pressure of his grip.

"Superintendent Devreaux of Fort Dauntless," remarked the corporal, grinning. "If you'll give me two more inches space I'll be proud to salute my officer."

The mustached man worked his heavy brows, and blinked in an owlish, nearsighted way. "It's—it's Corporal—" he muttered—"why, bless me, it's Corporal Dexter of Crooked Forks!"

He released his bearlike clutch, and stepped back a pace, gingerly rubbing the indented place in his elbow joint. "I'm just as well pleased that you didn't finish the last movement of the Nipponese spine cracker. I'm not quite as spry as I remember being once, and I suspect—I rather fear you would have had me." He cast a curious glance in the direction of the flaming cabin. "What's the trouble here?" he asked.

Dexter regarded his superior officer with the respect an eaglet might well feel towards a war-scarred eagle. Colonel Devreaux was a grizzled veteran of the R.C.M.P., with a record of two generations of police work behind him, and an ex-army officer of the World War. The commander of a great wilderness superintendency, he was known as a mighty criminal catcher wherever word of the law has traveled, from tide water to the plains beyond the mountains, from the big sticks of the middle country to the little sticks of the frozen Arctic.

Theoretically the superintendent belonged in his office at Fort Dauntless. But in actual fact, he was seldom seen at his desk. He wandered at large, in the thick of all troubles. Lonely constables by remote bivouac fires could never feel quite sure that the next moment might not bring the old man stalking casually into camp to demand pot luck and ask to know how business fared.

"Constable Graves is dead," said Dexter, watching his officer's face. "Ambushed and shot from behind. I found him lying in the snow a short distance down the valley."

Devreaux drew breath with an audible sound. "Young Graves!" he muttered. "Another added to the long score." He shook his head glumly. "I've seen so many go out—fine, strong, valiant boys! And the old man goes on year after year, just getting older. Fate's a queer thing, Dexter, and so unfair!

"A stranger. Never saw him before, and he wouldn't tell his name. Trailed him to a cabin yonder, where you see the fire blazing. Arrested him and a trapper named Mudgett."

The corporal gave a hurried account of recent events, telling of the murder of his helpless prisoners, of the woman's voice in the cabin where no woman was found, of the trail of small feet discovered near the clearing and followed in a circle back to the cabin, and finally of the fire, his unexpected encounter with the maker of the footprints, and her subsequent escape and flight.

Devreaux listened without interruption to the singular recital. And, characteristically, he showed no sign of wonderment. "You say this disembodied voice—seemed to be talking over a telephone?" he inquired.

"So I thought, until I had searched for the instrument But I didn't overlook a cubic inch of space anywhere inside or outside the cabin. And I found neither wires nor telephone. And no trace of any intruder, for that matter."

"Most people would advise you to consult an ear specialist," remarked the superintendent. "But I'm credulous about—well, anything at all. I've observed so many strange happenings in my time that I've learned to believe the wildest and weirdest things are possible, and I've lost all sense of amazement. What do you think about it all?"

"It wouldn't surprise me if this business hitches up somehow with the errand that brought me into the mountains," remarked Devreaux musingly. "Poor Graves and I came up here together from the fort. We separated this morning, he to beat along the course of the brook, and I to swing across through the timber. We had planned to meet to-night farther up the valley. Coming through a while ago, I caught the glint of fire, and of course turned aside to investigate. I heard some one coming this direction, and effaced myself. A man came along, and I grabbed him to make him account for himself, and he was you.

"What was the man like whom you arrested?" he asked abruptly—"not Mudgett, the other?"

"'Pink' Crill?" asked Dexter, mentioning a name that for some reason had stuck disagreeably in his thoughts.

"I see. Yes—'Pink' Crill! I shouldn't have been sorry if he were the one. Saved us future trouble."

"A Chicago safe expert. Killed an officer on his way to jail, and got away. Was traced into Canada, and we were asked to pick him up. We heard later that he was on a Grand Trunk Pacific train, traveling for the coast. But when a constable jumped the train he learned that the red-haired passenger had dropped off between stations and taken to the woods.

"Later we got word that our man had plunged into the uninhabited wilderness, and was making this direction. I decided to make a long patrol myself, and took young Graves along. This Crill is no woodsman, mind you, yet he's outdistanced and outwitted me. And until now I've rather prided myself on being a voyageur."

Devreaux spoke with a peculiar grimness of voice. "Crill of course has had help," he went on. "Oddly, there seems to be quite a crowd of people at large on this side of the ranges. Who they are, what their business, I don't know. But I've touched their trails, seen their ax-blazes on the trees, found their dead camp fires. In this country where nobody ever comes!

"People who always managed to keep out of sight!" added the superintendent moodily. "With all the ranging and stalking we've done, Graves and I haven't clapped eyes on a single human face. Yet I know positively that there are men in this valley—six or eight or ten of them."

"I have seen only the tracks of men's boots. Crill's, undoubtedly—and others." Devreaux cast a quick glance about him. "This unknown woman you speak of—she came this direction?"

"I heard a galloping horse at about the time you jumped me. I have an idea she's taken my pony."

"It sounded that way," observed the officer quietly. "I guess it's up to you, Dexter. How long will it take you to catch her?"

Devreaux spoke with serene assurance, and the corporal nodded coolly in acceptance of what amounted to a command. Both had learned by experience that a man afoot can walk down any horse in a prolonged chase. And Susy was jaded from days of hard travel.

"Can't say," answered Dexter. "That pony doesn't like strangers, and she'll shake her rider off if she can. But in any event, if it doesn't storm again, I should catch her to-morrow afternoon, or by evening at the latest."

"I'll camp here and wait for you," volunteered Devreaux. "Bring the woman with you." The superintendent shot an approving glance at the upright figure before him. "Give you anything I've got," he said.

The exchange was made, the two nodded briefly in farewell and Dexter once more set forward on his trail.

Tracks of small shoes led him to the gulley where he had left his horse for the night. The girl must have heard the neighing and turned over that way in hope of picking up a mount. The scuffled snow indicated that there had been a struggle before she succeeded in climbing on the pony's back. Afterwards she had ridden away without a saddle, using a halter rope instead of a bridle.

By the hoof marks Dexter saw that he had correctly interpreted the sounds he heard a few minutes before. Susy had broken into a run the moment she felt the weight on her back. With features unnaturally grave, the trailer followed through the underbrush. In a couple of minutes he reached the bank of the brook and found that the filly had not checked her stride here, but had plunged downward and crossed the ice at full gallop.

The shod tracks swerved abruptly on reaching the opposite embankment, traveling southward along the brook course over a stretch of stony and pitted ground. Dexter walked onward at a fast pace, swinging the shaft of his light, his intent gaze searching before him with ominous expectancy.

And a quarter of a mile farther down the stream the trail ended, as he had known that sooner or later it surely must end. In a hollow of ground, beyond an outcropping shale of rock, he found his pony stretched flat and motionless among the stones, with her head flung backward and her forelegs doubled limply under her body. And a few paces farther on a slim-built, girlish figure was lying prone upon the snow.

CHAPTER VIII

THE RUNAWAY GIRL

With teeth fastened in his lips the corporal stepped forward to bend above the tumbled figure of the woman. She was so quiet he thought she was dead. But her fingers were warm, he found when he pulled off her mitten, and the tide of life still flowed vigorously through the slender, flexible wrist.

His light gleamed upon the curve of a soft cheek, pallid as marble against the faint blue shadow line of the vein throbbing in her temple. Her hair, trimmed in a boyish bob, straggled over eyes and forehead in fine-spun tendrils of golden bronze. The delicate skin of her face was grimed and scratched, and in the palm of her bared hand he found the crimson trickle of a deep, jagged cut. Gingerly he raised her from the snow, and the man, accustomed to dealing with men, marveled at the trifle of weight in his arms.

He was unbuttoning the pocket where he carried his first-aid kit, when he heard a low sigh and felt a quick, stirring movement against his shoulder. Crouched on one foot, he supported the limp figure, and waited breathlessly. He watched the droop of her red nether lip under slowly parting teeth, observed a twitching of her eyelids, and then saw the long lashes suddenly lift. And with the pocket-lamp still shining in her face, he found himself at very close quarters with a pair of velvet eyes, dark blue as violets that looked straight into his.

Her eyes were fixed upon him, but there was something in the quality of her gaze to tell him that she was not yet aware of his being there. Awkwardly her hand crept upward and clutched tightly upon his shoulder, as though a reviving consciousness needed some tangible support to cling to. He waited unmoving, and all at once the light of intelligence flickered from the depths of suddenly distending pupils.

A rose bloom of color dyed her cheeks, and her breath came quick and sharp. She stared intently, with wonderment mounting swiftly to confusion and alarm. "It's—who—where am I?" she stammered. Her hand dropped from his shoulder, and she pushed away from him with a gasping cry.

Somehow she got upon her feet, and turned blindly as though to flee into the forest. With her first step, however, she stumbled, and would have fallen. But Dexter sprang after her, and caught her firmly in his arms. She relaxed with a weary, hopeless gesture, and this time did not try to break his grasp.

"Knocked you out for a couple of minutes." Dexter surveyed her with the impersonal curiosity of a surgeon. "You're able to stand—after a fashion," he remarked. He lifted up her hands, one and then the other, and nodded judicially. "No broken arms or legs. Ribs? See if you feel any twinges?"

She wriggled obediently, and shook her head. "No. I think I'll be all right in a minute."

She glanced furtively about her, but did not reply. His lips drew straight, in a stern, uncompromising Line. "In case you hadn't noticed the uniform," he said, "I'm Corporal Dexter, R.C.M.P. If you tried to get away, it would be my business to bring you back again, even if it meant a journey of months and thousands of miles. Your hand's badly cut. Sit down while I dress it."

He released her, stepping back a pace, and she managed to keep her feet without his support. Swinging the beam of light towards her, he regarded her with swiftly appraising eyes. His previous impression of fresh and vivid youth was instantly corroborated. She could not have been twenty years old. Under happier circumstances, in any other place, he would have supposed her to be some boarding school Miss who had ventured out of doors for winter sports—tobogganing, perhaps.

Her costume carried out the fiction: fine, shapely boots of soft glove leather, with thick, ribbed arctic hose rolled half way from the knee over the cuffs of laced Mackinaw breeches; gauntlet mittens of white, fluffy lamb's wool, and heavy, white, snug-fitting sweater, "V"-cut at the neck, leaving her rounded throat bare to the weather. She seemed pathetically small and defenseless as she faced him alone in the midst of a great, savage wilderness; but as he recalled the recent encounter in the burning cabin, he smiled with inward cynicism. She had taught him that she was competent to take care of herself.

She stirred uneasily under his cool scrutiny, and finally with short, careful steps, she moved to a snow-covered bowlder by the brook side, and sat down. From the ground at her feet she picked up a white knitted cap and pulled it tightly over her unruly hair. She remained silent, watching Dexter from under lowered lashes.

With a packet of surgical tape in hand, he advanced and dropped on one knee beside her. Indifferently, she allowed him to examine her injured hand.

He touched her wounded palm, and the texture of skin was smooth and soft. Whoever she might be, she certainly did not belong in this harsh country where life is supported by disfiguring toil. "Where are you from?" he inquired.

He knotted his bandage neatly and was rising to his feet, when from the darkness behind him he heard a dull thumping sound, followed by a snort of heavy breathing. Turning in surprise, he crossed back to the hollow of ground where his pony lay fallen in the snow.

Until this moment he had taken it for granted that Susy had killed herself. But he saw now that she was still alive, trying feebly to lift up her head. He crouched beside her, and at once ascertained that both forelegs were broken.

Momentarily his hand strayed forward to touch the warm muzzle in the snow, and then, with features drawn and set, he stood up to fumble at his holster flap. He and Susy had traveled the ranges together for two years, sharing hardship and peril and the glory of sunny days. But time passes, and weather changes, and companions must sometime separate. Like the men, the horses of the police were employed in an extra-hazardous service. Dexter was used to swift leave-takings; had long since learned to accept death with fatalistic fortitude. He was drawing his pistol from its holster, when a foot crunched behind him, and Alison Rayne stepped forward to gaze over his shoulder.

"It was my fault," the girl whispered. "The horse ran away with me, but I didn't need to—I could have walked. The poor thing—is suffering! And I—it was my—" She choked, unable to finish, and began to cry.

The corporal shouldered her aside, and advanced in the darkness. There was a brief silence, broken by a heavy report, and Dexter stalked back again, thrusting a pistol into his holster. His searchlight discovered the girl standing with her hands over her ears to shut out the sound, sobbing piteously, with great tears welling from her eyes. "I'm sorry—sorry!" she whimpered.

"It was Susy's fault—mostly," he told her gruffly. "She should have known better than to gallop on this ground." He faced the girl in curiosity, marveling at the strange complexity and inconsistencies that make up the nature of womankind. Here was one who cried in remorse and pity because a horse had to be shot. He had observed no tears shed over two men, who had been wantonly and ruthlessly killed. As he studied her sensitive features he found it increasingly difficult to believe that she could be the woman whose footprints led from the scene of tragedy. Yet her boots matched the prints he had followed, and there was no other departing trail.

"Yes. I saw the flames and feared some one might be in there asleep. So I broke the door to give warning. And a man came inside after me—"

"I guess you know I was that man," he said. "Why did you run after I called to you?"

"You're mistaken," he informed her. "You visited the place a couple of hours before the fire broke out. There's no sense in denying it, because there are marks of your feet in the snow, indicating the direction of your arrival, and proving the suddenness of your departure. When you left you roved over a six- or seven-mile circle, and then came straight back to the cabin. I know because I made the same journey, never more than thirty minutes behind you."

The exactness of his information seemed to disconcert her. "I—if this is true—it's the first I knew it," she asserted at length. "But now that you speak of it, I didn't—I wasn't quite sure of my directions. It would be a funny thing to happen, and yet I may have wandered around as you say, and struck the same cabin twice, without recognizing the spot."

"Nothing. I was walking along the brook, and thought I smelled chimney smoke, and turned aside to see what it meant. That was all."

"At that very time two men were killed in the cabin bunks," he told her—"two men, helplessly bound, who could do nothing but scream for mercy."

"I heard!" she blurted out with a shuddering breath. "It was—" She stopped short, and from the frightened look she gave him he fancied she had said more than she meant to say.

"Admit it?" she asked sharply. "Why, what is there to admit? That I happened to be in the neighborhood—that I heard—"

"That you know more than you're telling me about a very strange affair," he soberly interrupted.

The girl's head lifted with a jerk, and Dexter could almost feel the sudden hostility of her eyes staring at him in the dark. She drew a slow breath, and when she spoke her tones were brittle and cold, lacking all inflection. "As long as we've gone so far, let's get this straight," she said in deliberative accents, as though she might be reciting something learned by rote. "Chance brought me to that cabin. I heard a shot, I heard some one cry out in seeming anguish, I heard another shot. I was alone in a strange place at night, and—and I heard that horror. I was terrified—and I did what any other frightened woman would do. I ran—anywhere to get away."

He watched her for a moment with narrowed eyes, but did not openly question her story. "Do you know the men who were killed?" he asked after a pause.

She drew backward, breathing audibly, and he could see the nervous gripping of her hands. "If there was a woman there, it wasn't I," she declared. "That's easily proven. You found my foot tracks, you say. Where were they?"

"Then what do you expect to show?" She faced him tensely. "What are you trying to make out?"

He did not answer, but regarded her searchingly, his brow furrowed in thought. The mystery of the double murder apparently was no nearer solution than it had been before he caught the fugitive. The few facts he had gathered summed up in a most contradictory fashion.

As he positively knew, there was a woman in the cabin when the crimes were committed. But in some unaccountable manner she had vanished. In the snow outside he had found a woman's footprints, and the girl was forced to admit that they were hers. But she denied she had entered the cabin, or even crossed the clearing, and the evidence of her tracks apparently bore out her assertion. Nevertheless, by the testimony trampled in the snow, he had learned with certainty that she was the only woman who had approached anywhere near the scene of tragedy.

She had told her story glibly enough, but at the same time her recent actions were not above suspicion. She had tried desperately hard to get away, and now that he had caught her it was clear enough that she was afraid of him—a representative of the law. Even at this moment there was something in her nervous, half-defiant manner to warn him that she would escape at the very first opportunity.

While she was talking he had listened for some tone or inflection that might remind him of the voice he had heard a while back in the cabin. The other voice, however, had carried to him muffled and distorted by thick walls, and he could not really say whether he had detected any resemblance.

"What are you doing here in the wilderness?" he asked the girl after a lengthy interval.

For several seconds she stood silent, and he had a feeling that she was thinking fast, trying to invent a plausible answer. "Are the police in the habit of cross-examining everybody?" she inquired at length. "Isn't this government land, and aren't people allowed to come and go as they please in the forests?"

He regarded her with steady eyes, showing no sign of impatience. "Who brought you here?" he asked. "You never could have come across these mountains alone."

She made a gesture with her hands, almost impudent, altogether evasive. "You see me," she said. "Am I not alone?"

With a slight shrug Dexter gave up his efforts to extract information from her. Whoever she might be, she was a resolute, quick-witted young woman, and apparently she was ready to go to any lengths to prevent his finding out more about her than she wanted him to know. He bore her no malice. She had a right to preserve her secrets if she could. It was the business of the Minister of Justice to coerce unwilling witnesses, and the corporal, for his part, had no intention of browbeating any girl.

"The police are supposed to caution prospective prisoners against too much talking." He smiled dryly, and reached into his pocket for pipe and tobacco pouch. "I must advise you not to say anything incriminating."

Dexter looked absent-mindedly at his pipe, seemed to have forgotten what he meant to do with it, and returned it to his pocket. "You will come with me," he said mildly. "In the name of His Majesty the King, I arrest you."

CHAPTER IX

GO GET 'EM!

The north wind rattled among the dry branches of the brookside junipers, but for a space of ten seconds no other sound broke the straining silence that had fallen upon them. The girl stood motionless, gazing vacantly at Dexter, finding nothing whatever to say.

"I'm not making an accusation," he told her. "But we have to hold you for the time being as a witness. Perhaps it won't amount to more than that."

She swayed a little, as he had sometimes seen a man reel at the first numbing shock of a pistol bullet. But as he watched with troubled eyes, he saw the slender figure straighten with the quick resiliency of a birch sapling in a wind. Her firm chin suddenly lifted, and she spoke slowly, in a voice strongly controlled.

Dexter did not reply. The right or wrong of the law's might was a question policemen wisely would not discuss. "We'll start whenever you're ready," he said.

"But—but—" she protested, fighting to keep back her tears, "you wouldn't dare! It would be too high-handed! Why, even the mounted can't go about arresting people right and left, for no reason at all."

"Colonel Devreaux is waiting for us," he remarked with official politeness. "It isn't far, not more than a quarter of a mile from here."

"Oh, no!" she cried, and for just a moment she could not help showing him how badly scared she was. "Don't you understand? I can't go. You mustn't make me! You mustn't! You don't know what you're doing!"

"If you could convince Colonel Devreaux that we have no reason to take you to Fort Dauntless," he said with a trifle less austerity, "why, of course, that would end the matter."

"You've refused to answer almost every question I've asked you," he reminded her.

"I've told you—" She checked herself, biting her lips. They had again struck the stumbling block. He knew that she dared not tell the truth about herself.

Her glance swept wildly about the dark thickets, as though she were reckoning her chances of escape. But she could not help but realize the madness of attempted flight. Her lips parted in tremulous breathing, but she did not move.

"You're still a bit shaken by your fall," he said, shrewdly watching her. "But we'll travel as slowly as you like, and you can hang on to me."

Her figure stiffened, and she scornfully refused his offered arm. "If we must go, let's go," she said in a chilly voice.

She started forward with tottering steps to retrace the pathway along the brook. Dexter cast a last lingering glance towards the huddled dark bulk in the hollow where Susy had tumbled, and then in silence he turned to follow.

For the present, at least, the girl was forced to resign herself to the bitterness of fate. She walked ahead with shoulders erect, trying to keep her steps from faltering, proudly ignoring the man who stalked behind her.

They crossed the brook, and thence followed the trail northward in the direction of the burning cabin. Presently Dexter caught a tiny point of light flickering in a nearby thicket. He turned aside with a word to his companion, and a moment later they stumbled into the circle of a new-built camp fire, where Colonel Devreaux sat cross-legged on a tarpaulin, contentedly sipping coffee.

"Humph!" grunted Devreaux. He set down his cup and fixed the girl with the stony, unwinking stare that usually frightened evildoers. But Alison Rayne met his eyes, and did not flinch.

"No, thank you," she answered coldly. Nevertheless, she accepted a corner of the tarpaulin, and sank to the ground with a tired sigh.

"What did you have to do with the killings in that cabin yonder?" he inquired bluntly.

The girl's face went deathly white for an instant, and then an angry scarlet suddenly flamed in her cheeks. "Nothing!" she said in a choking voice. "I don't know a thing about that—what happened. You—you're very—you shan't say such abominable things to me."

"I want to talk to you," remarked the superintendent placidly, "and I thought we'd get the hardest part over first." He hitched his weight around so he could observe the reflecting firelight upon her face, and proceeded with his ruthless catechism.

Under the fire of questions the girl sat inert, scarcely breathing, her tormented eyes veiled by heavy drooping lashes. Sometimes she answered Devreaux's sharp interrogations in seeming frankness, sometimes she only pretended to answer, sometimes her lips closed, trembling, as she stubbornly shook her head. Now and then her glance strayed surreptitiously towards the corporal, as though seeking some hope of mercy from the younger man.

But Dexter did not once look her direction. He sat a little apart, and his face was revealed to her only in profile, its firm, rugged lines showing almost gaunt in the firelight, changeless and unreadable as sculptured bronze. His straight lips were mutely compressed, and his eyes, darkened by night to murky gray, never once left off their brooding contemplation of the fire. The girl watched him at first in faintly hopeful appeal, then with a baffled knitting of arched brows, and finally she turned from him altogether to bow her head drearily before Devreaux's volley of questions.

Her ordeal lasted for some time, but finally the superintendent decided that he was wasting his breath. His method of attack was direct and forceful, like bludgeon work, but when he finished he knew no more about the mysterious young woman than Dexter could have told him. "All right, Alison," he observed with a ponderous shrug. "Without a rack and thumbscrews, I guess we've gone as far as we're going to go."

He scrutinized her for a moment with puckered eyes. "You know, of course, that you're putting yourself in the worst possible light. That's up to you. I give you credit for this much, though: you haven't tried to make us swallow any lies." He relaxed for a moment in an iron-visaged smile. "All tired out, aren't you, Alison?"

Devreaux nodded towards a sheltercloth that he had staked up, forester fashion, in front of the fire. He was a fastidious campaigner, and during Dexter's absence had taken the trouble to shingle a foot-deep couch of feathery balsam tips. "You'd better turn in and try to sleep."

The girl accepted the invitation with a slight nod, took the blanket the colonel gave her, and crept underneath the shelter cloth. Devreaux glanced after her, and then turned ruefully to the corporal. "It's the snow for you and me to-night, both tugging on your blanket," he remarked in an undertone.

"What do you make of her?" asked Dexter, as they stepped beyond earshot of the tent.

"Pretty, sweet-looking girl," muttered the superintendent. "It goes hard to think evil things about her. But I've had some beautiful illusions smashed in my time, and I learned long ago that you never can tell by appearances. You can bank on one thing: she never found her way alone into this back-of-beyond country. She's got friends hereabouts, and whoever they are, I've a feeling it'll be a good job when we put hands on 'em."

Dexter looked dubiously at his chief, but made no comment. "What are you going to do with her?" he asked after a moment.

"Hang on to her. Lodge some kind of a complaint, and wait until we get the real facts. One of us had better take her down to Fort Dauntless, where we'll have her safe."

Devreaux eyed the corporal for a moment with a peculiar slanting of his heavy brows. "On the other hand, we want this 'Pink' Crill, and whoever's with him—and we want 'em badly. One of us has got to stay behind and tackle that business." He cast a squinting glance skyward, and shook his head. "The difficulty is that big snow is due to fly almost any day. Once the pass is choked this country will be shut off from the outside world. Whichever one of us stays behind is almost certain to be stuck here until spring. Which job do you choose—Fort Dauntless or Crill?"

Dexter grinned. It was a tradition in the mounted that an officer never assigned a subordinate to any task, dangerous or disagreeable, that the officer was not perfectly willing to undertake himself. He knew that the superintendent was sincere in his offer, and that the decision rested with him.

"You're needed at the post," said the corporal at once. "I'll go after Crill, of course."

The older man nodded curtly. "Graves and I picketed our horses by the forks in the lower valley. I'll cache all my extra grub there where you can find it, and you'll weather the winter all right, even if the snow catches you."

He measured the corporal with his deep-searching gaze. "There were two of us hunting Crill up to this afternoon. You know what happened to poor Graves. Crill and his friends are out to get the police before the police get them. And after I'm gone you'll be playing a lone hand. You'll be careful, Dexter."

"I'll send you reinforcements," the colonel pursued, "but I doubt if anybody can get in here in time to beat the snows. You may have to hold out by yourself until spring. But rest assured that the first thaw will bring men to your help."

He left camp for a few minutes to saunter down into the gulley where he had dropped his saddle packs, and when he returned he brought a blanket to spread on the ground across the fire from the tent. For a while longer he and the colonel sat together arranging their final plans, but at length they kicked off their boots, donned their night woolens, and rolled up together in the common blanket.

Both were light sleepers, accustomed to arousing at the least disturbing sound. There was a little of downwood scattered about under the snow, and they had no fear of an enemy approaching unannounced, or of their prisoner's escaping.

Twice during the night Dexter got up automatically to replenish the fire, and on another occasion he awakened sharply to find the girl tiptoeing out of her tent. He was on his feet, almost before his eyes had opened, and smiled grimly at the sight of her startled face. "It's too early to get up now," he remarked pleasantly. "We'll call you when it's time."

She gave him a disconcerted glance, and then turned slowly, without a word, and crept back under the shelter-cloth. Dexter tossed a couple of billets of wood on the fire, and calmly returned to his blanket. After that he got in two hours of unbroken rest before the approach of dawn finally banished sleep.

He and Devreaux awakened at about the same moment and bestirred themselves in the lingering darkness. While the superintendent was poking up the embers of the fire, Dexter went to the brook to chop a wash basin in the ice. He came back, bearing a filled bucket, his hands and face tingling after a heroic soaping in the chilly water.

When breakfast was ready they called the girl, and she came forth, drowsy and shivering, to sit by the tiny fire. There was a little droop of dejection about her shoulders, but the courage of her blue eyes was not yet dimmed. As Dexter observed her covertly in the steel gray dawn, some vagrant stirring of memory brought back to him for an instant the lovely image of a nameless blue and white flower he had one day discovered, blooming valiantly and unaccountably beside a mountain snow drift. To him this woman seemed as much out of place in a bleak camp of the police, as the pretty, stray blossom that had got lost above timberline.

She greeted the two men with a distant nod, but had nothing to say to them; and they respected her mood, and did not try to draw her into conversation.

When breakfast was finished and the back packs had been made up, the three strolled through the spruces to the neighboring clearing. The fire had burned out during the night, and all that was left of the cabin was the fireplace and chimney, scorched and blackened, standing solitary over a heap of smoldering ruins.

Devreaux viewed the desolate scene with down-drawn brows, and presently moved forward in the smoke to prowl among the debris. For several minutes his squat figure was seen moving and stooping in the dingy haze; and when he returned his boots and gloves were sooted black.

"I've been poking around where you said the bunks stood," he remarked, shouldering the corporal beyond their companion's hearing. "Found your manacles, and—not much else. Those pitch logs burn with a frightful heat."

"I tried to get in there when I discovered the fire," Dexter told him. "But it was too late. I couldn't make it."

The superintendent surveyed the smoking wreckage. "The center of fire seems to have been in the timbers near the chimney. It must have started there."

"We can put the cause down to accident," remarked Dexter. "The girl couldn't have started an incendiary blaze. I was right at her heels when she circled back here last night, and I realize now she wouldn't have had time to touch it off. And there were no tracks to indicate that any one else visited the clearing during our absence."

"Undoubtedly. There was a hot fire in the grate, and as you remarked, those pitch floor timbers would easily catch ablaze. A chance ember popping out would set it going."

The superintendent gave Dexter a sidewise glance and regretfully shook his head. "Sorry, just the same. I should like to have identified the man who killed Constable Graves. Now we may never know.

"Young Graves!" he echoed gently. "He'll have to do for the present as you left him. We'll send in for him when we can."

The colonel lapsed into silence for a moment, while his glance roved about him in the ghostly twilight. But presently he turned aside to move through the fringes of the clearing. He was absent for some time, and when he came back he said he had circled the area of timber surrounding the cabin.

"Just to make sure that you overlooked nothing when you searched last night in the dark," he remarked to the corporal. "I'm satisfied. There are no wires strung to the cabin." He faced his companion with a quizzical expression. "It couldn't have been a telephone you heard."

"I heard the whirr of a bell, and I heard a voice give forewarning," Dexter reiterated. "I can tell you no more than that. As for the rest, it all seems as bizarre and unreal this morning as the memory of a nightmare."

"The rest is real enough," said Devreaux somberly. "Graves and your two prisoners murdered, the cabin burned, this strange young woman left on our hands, and 'Pink' Crill and other unknown skulkers at large in the woods. Hard, ugly facts, Dexter!" He looked at the younger man in gloomy foreboding, and sighed, and shook his head. "I hate like thunder to leave you here alone," he ended.

"Yes, I know. You boys always say that. And that's why I'm able to run this territory with no more than a dozen of you standing by me." The colonel stooped abruptly for his pack, and then straightened with a brusque movement and stuck out his hand. "We'll foot it down the valley to the horses, and ride on out," he said as his iron grip closed for an instant in a farewell handshake. "So-long, David."

The girl hesitated for only a second, and then with a helpless gesture she turned to follow. Devreaux motioned her to go in advance, and she passed by with shut lips and high-poised head, without a single backward glance. The colonel paused to wave his hand, and then the black forest closed upon the retreating figures, and Dexter was left alone in the clearing.

CHAPTER X

NO-MAN'S COUNTRY

The corporal lingered by the smoking embers, gazing with a queer, ruminative look in his eyes towards the spot where quaking branches cut off his last sight of the departing travelers. Behind him he could hear the faint sputter and hiss of live fire still gnawing under the cabin timbers. A chorus of shrill, thin pipings sounded from the dimness of the woods, and a band of chickadees wheeled forth in elfin flight, whisked past his face, and vanished across the clearing. He stirred abruptly at the breaking of his thoughts, and turned for a final scrutiny of the ground about him.

For more than an hour he ranged back and forth in the misty dawn, searching for any small clew or minutiæ of fact that might in some way throw light upon last night's grewsome mysteries. What had actually happened in those few intense moments before the prisoners were killed? What was the bell that rang? Who had barred the door and fired the shots, and dropped a discharged pistol on the floor, and departed afterwards, noiseless and unseen, with no human footprint left outside? How was it all accomplished? He did not know. And an exhaustive researching in the daylight still left him at his wit's end, without one tangible hint to suggest the explanation of an inexplicable business. He prowled with nervous energy about the clearing and through the neighboring strip of forest, and his sharp vision missed nothing that mortal eyes could see. But the riddle of the tragic visitation remained inviolate. It was as though he dealt with factors and forces that hovered beyond the scope of human sight and comprehension.

Finishing his profitless investigations at last, he stood irresolute for a space, frowning, not quite decided what he ought to do next. His future plans were as yet indefinite. He was assigned on roving patrol, cast upon his own resources, dependent in all matters upon his own judgment. Before he looked upon civilized places again he must hold some sort of accounting with the elusive outlaw, Crill. But in this thousand-mile stretch of mountain wilderness, the game of hide-and-seek might drag along through weeks and months. Meanwhile, he knew he would find no peace of mind until he had gained some inkling of truth concerning Alison Rayne.

Who was she? What possible errand could have brought her alone into this shut-in region of silence? What concern had she in the affairs of Mudgett and the dark-visaged stranger, or of the other intruders who prowled somewhere behind the range? Was it her voice he had heard last night in the cabin? He drew a sharp breath, and slowly shook his head. The questions clamored unanswered. He knew no more about the girl than she had allowed him to read in her level-gazing eyes.

There remained one possibility: if the fresh snow lasted long enough he at least could find the place she came from. The sought-for information might possibly be picked up at the end of the back trail. In a moment he made his decision. Other matters might wait; meanwhile he would try to settle definitely, one way or another, the disturbing enigma that had haunted his thoughts since his first meeting with Alison Rayne.

No longer hesitating, he shouldered his pack and picked up his carbine. He cast a final glance towards the pile of blackened litter where the cabin had stood, and then, with the relieved breath of one who quits a place of evil, he swung on his heel and started northward through the silent forest.

He struck the line of familiar little footprints in the runway where he had first discovered them the evening before. This time, however, he took the trail that approached the cabin clearing, and let the heel marks point his direction of travel. Treading the reversed pathway, he found himself branching to the right, and in a few moments had reached the edge of the brook.

The girl had followed the stream down from the north, walking in the middle of the frozen watercourse. But at this point she had struck off at a right angle through the timber, making straight for the clearing. Across the way an old, lightning-blasted sugar pine towered high above the spruces. This tree would serve as an unmistakable landmark, even in the darkness. By the abruptness of the trail's turning, it looked very much as though the girl knew where she was going when she left the stream here to shape a direct course for the cabin. Dexter paused for a moment to examine the ground, and then, with a half nod of conviction, he continued on his way.

The footprints kept to the ice, leading him back towards the headwaters of the brook. Dexter followed the windings of the stream, but for reasons of his own, he did not stay in the open course, as the girl had done. There was no knowing what peril might be lurking at each new bending of the densely wooded shore line. It was an ideal country for bushwhacking. Remembering what had happened to Constable Graves, he refrained from exposing himself unwarily. He clung to the shelter of the bank, treading cautiously, gliding like a shadow through the fringes of alder and willow.

His progress was necessarily slow. All morning he traveled, keeping along with the tortuous meanderings of the brook, and when he finally halted for noonday tea, he estimated that he had advanced no more than five or six miles as a bird might fly. The backward trail of small shoe prints continued with the stream.

The girl evidently had come down that way from some deeper fastness of the forest-clad mountains. As the corporal recalled, the country above here had never been officially mapped or explored. His own farthest wanderings had never taken him into the valley of this nameless stream, and he had no notion what was hidden beyond.

He resumed his journey, moving always among the concealing thickets, pausing at every sharp bend of the brook to reconnoiter the ground ahead. The afternoon advanced, and he trudged onward in the white stillness, finding no sign of human intrusion other than the trail unraveling from the north, seemingly without any place of beginning. No wonder the girl was in a state of physical exhaustion last night when he escorted her to Devreaux's camp. She had walked many miles to reach the cabin clearing.

All day the corporal kept on the move, back-tracking her yesterday's footsteps up the valley of silence. Sometimes he paused to listen, and once he imagined that he caught a far-off sound of chopping. He turned aside to investigate, and lost more than an hour ranging through the forest tangle. But he did not hear the sound again, and no sign of any axman was found. A while later his alert eyes discovered a shifting patch of brown that appeared and instantly vanished in a distant hillside covert. Again he made a cautious detour, only to come at last upon the fresh tracks of a mule deer.

When he returned to the brook after this last excursion, he left the shielding thickets, where travel was slow and difficult, and strode on with quickened step along the open course. The sun was sinking over the snow-capped peaks that stood in serried outline against the westward sky, and he realized that unless he made haste darkness was likely to overtake him before the riddle of the trail was solved.

For half an hour longer he pushed ahead through the endless stretches of forest, and then, most unexpectedly, as he rounded a sharp bend of the brook, he found himself at the edge of an open glade where there stood a log cabin, half hidden among the bordering trees. He stopped with up jerked head, staring through the tracery of branches, and saw that he had reached his journey's end. The line of the girl's footprints descended to the brook from the cabin door. It was from this place that she had set forth on her fateful errand.

CHAPTER XI

THE VOICE OF WARNING

Dusk was falling, and a hush of emptiness and desolation brooded over the clearing. The cabin door was closed, and no smoke came from the mud-daubed chimney. Dexter's eyes searched over the ground, and he saw only the single track of footprints. Evidently the girl was the only one who had crossed here, either departing or arriving, since the fall of yesterday's snow.

Quite certain that the dwelling had no present tenant, the corporal nevertheless was taking no chances. Slinging his carbine at his back, he drew his heavy service pistol. Then, without further ado, he stepped forward to investigate.

The cabin was constructed of freshly peeled logs, saddle-notched, and in size and method of building, it was a practical duplication of the other mysterious habitation which he had stumbled upon last night in this same lonesome valley. He recalled the story told him by Mudgett—of a so-called settler and trapper named Stark who had put up a shack somewhere in this direction. Possibly this was the cabin mentioned.

The latchstring dangled invitingly on the outside, and, without pausing to reconnoiter, the corporal pulled up the fastening bar and shoved the door open. He crossed the threshold, and found himself in a large, square room, dimly revealed in the failing daylight. In the gloom he made out a stone fireplace, and a pole bunk built against the opposite wall.

As he stood blinking, trying to accustom his vision to the semi-darkness, he heard a quick rustling sound, and was suddenly aware of a white face and a pair of gleaming eyes staring at him from the bunk.

"Hello!" he ejaculated, taken aback for an instant by the unexpected apparition. "If I'd imagined any one was here I'd have knocked."

He crossed the floor and saw a man's blanketed shape, propped half erect in the bunk. A glance told the corporal that the other was a stranger. He was a smooth-faced youth, nineteen or twenty years old probably, with drawn, haggard features, dank, uncut hair, and wide-spaced, staring eyes that glowed with feverish brightness in the gathering dusk. His weight was rigidly supported on one elbow, and a look of seeming consternation flitted across his face as he caught sight of the police uniform.

The corporal's mouth twisted skeptically. "Seems to me I've heard that name somewhere else. Smith, eh? Well, Smith, what's the matter with you? Sick?"

The boy stirred and brought his bare arm from under the blanket. "Ax slipped and cut me, and the thing's got infected," he said. "I've been in agony for two days."

"I should think so!" exclaimed Dexter. The forearm was darkly inflamed, swollen to twice its normal dimensions, and reddish purple streaks had begun to creep upward to the shoulder joint. "You've neglected this for two days?"

"Then you've no business in this country." Dexter regarded the young man curiously. "These little accidents are always apt to occur, and unless you've got the nerve and sense to do your own surgery, you'd better stay where hospitals are handy."

He turned his back for a moment and put away his pistol. Then, unobserved, he drew a small, thin bladed knife from his pocket. "Here!" he said. "Let's see that."

Gripping the injured arm firmly, he leaned forward and found the seat of the wound. Then, with merciful swiftness, before the other could guess his purpose, he slashed with his sharp blade, cutting deep into the throbbing flesh. The boy jerked away, screaming in sudden anguish.

"In town they'd have given you an anæsthetic," remarked the officer. "Here we've got to take what comes, and bear it. You should have done that for yourself yesterday."

The stranger groaned feebly, and hugged his wrist, and for the moment, evidently, speech was beyond him.

"All we need now is hot water, and plenty of antiseptics," said Dexter. "We can do."

He crossed to the hearth, laid kindling, and ignited a fire. This done, he went outside, and returned a moment later with a snow-filled kettle to hang over the flame.

"I think—a little better," came a weak answer from the pillow. "It's a different kind of hurt."

"If I hadn't come along you would have died—about four days from now," said the policeman lightly. "As it is, you should be able to handle an ax again in about four days."

"I expect you ought to. You'll sleep to-night." Dexter grinned encouragingly. "Hungry?"

"I am." The corporal unslung his pack, and turned to investigate the culinary resources of the shack. His search discovered a well stocked larder, and he calmly helped himself to such things as he required. He kneaded dough for bannock bread and set the loaf baking, started coffee, and sliced a liberal quantity of bacon. By the time these preparations were made, the kettle of snow water was boiling.

He dissolved tablets from his emergency kit in a strong solution, and then swathed the arm of his wincing patient in steaming bandages. "We'll keep that about ten degrees hotter than you think you can stand it," he asserted. "And the first thing you know you'll be off the casualty list."

Dexter returned to his cooking, and when the simple meal was finally ready, he heaped a plate for Smith, and then set a place for himself at a slab table near the bunk.

The boy hesitated for a second, and then apparently decided that there was no harm in telling the truth. "It belongs to Owen Stark," he said.

"Stark!" the corporal nodded. So this was the shack that Mudgett had mentioned. "Who's Owen Stark? I don't know him."

"No," admitted the other after a pause. "Stark invited me to visit him—for the fall hunting. I don't expect to stay much longer."

"He went up the valley somewhere—probably twenty miles or so north of here. Left two days ago, and I wouldn't expect him back much before to-morrow. Looking for places to run his trap line."

Dexter offered no comment. It was a plausible enough story—if Stark were really a trapper. Yet there was something anxious and overstrained in the boy's speech, as though he might be inventing his answers. Or again, perhaps it was only his arm that troubled him.

"Stark went off and left you here alone?" the corporal asked with a slantwise glance.

During his inspection of the cabin interior, Dexter had noticed a woman's cloak and hat hanging on one of the wall pegs. Now he suddenly turned, and pointed with his thumb. "Whom do those belong to?" he demanded.

The patient moved gingerly under his blanket, rolling his head so he might see. "Those are Mrs. Stark's," he said.

"What?" The exclamation came sharply, before Dexter could control his voice, and his knife and fork dropped on the table. "You mean to say—she's married?" He stared for a moment with puckered brows, and then almost instantly recalled himself. "I mean—Stark has a wife?"

"She left here yesterday?" asked the corporal in low, curiously restrained accents.

"No," returned the other unhesitatingly. "She left a couple of weeks ago for a visit in the settlements. She hasn't come back yet."

"Let's get this straight," said Dexter after a tense interlude, "She's been away for a couple of weeks, you say. What's she like? Rather pretty girl, copper-tinted hair, large blue eyes—wearing—"

"Vera Stark's not a girl, but a woman about thirty-five," stated the boy. "Thin—dark complexion—jet black hair and eyes."

"Oh, I see." Dexter picked up his knife and fork, and started to eat once more with a healthy man's appetite. For the moment his attention was fixed upon his plate, but he was somehow aware that furtive eyes were watching him from the shadow of the bunk.

"You seem to have got her mixed up with some one else," his companion presently ventured to remark.

"Yes, it would seem so." The corporal looked up with a retrospective smile. "The one I was thinking of, I happened to meet yesterday in the lower valley. Her shoe tracks would indicate that she came from this cabin. Know her?"

"There was a girl such as you describe—here—yesterday," said Smith. He turned on his pillow and yawned, with every sign of indifference.

"She didn't say. Didn't tell me a thing about herself. And I was too sick to be very curious." The boy stretched himself and buried his head deeper in the pillow. "Gee—I feel better," he murmured. "This is the first comfortable minute I've had—"

"Yes. Wanted to rest a while, and get out of the snow. When it stopped snowing she went on her way." The young man sighed, and pulled the blanket higher, as though to keep the firelight out of his eyes. "I would have thought it funny," he pursued in a dreamy, far-away tone—"a girl like that—alone—but as I told you I was so miserable, I didn't think—I didn't ask her anything about herself." The voice trailed off to a whisper, and speech momentarily failed.

Dexter stood up and crossed the room, to look down at the face on the pillow. The boy's eyes were shut, and his breathing was deep and regular, as though he had fallen into a doze. Perhaps he was shamming to avoid further questioning. Perhaps not. It was quite likely that he had not slept for nights, and was on the verge of complete exhaustion. Now—soothed by the hot bandages, relieved from his long protracted pain—he might easily drop off like this in the middle of a word.

Upon reflection the officer decided not to disturb him. Possibly he knew more than he was willing to tell about the mysterious girl. But he could go on with sweeping denials of ever having seen her before, and Dexter knew from experience how impossible it is to pin down a witness who persists in answering in general negatives. Besides, if the boy were really suffering from lack of sleep, it would be cruelty to force him to stay awake.

The policeman himself was beginning to feel the effect of long, jading hours. He sat for a while, musing over the fire, but after darkness had fallen it occurred to him that he might as well call it a day. A last reconnaissance out-of-doors convinced him that, for the time being at least, he and his chance-found cabin mate were the only mortal beings existent in that particular section of the forest. It was a breathless night, deathly silent. A bank of low-hanging clouds scudded over the tree tops, and the weighted air held the promise of snow. He went back into the cabin, discreetly barred the door and withdrew the latch cord, and then spread his blanket by the fireplace and rolled up for the night. In two minutes he was sunk in profoundest slumber.

Hours passed, and the silence endured. From time to time Dexter was vaguely aware of a fretful stirring and moaning in the darkness where the bunk stood, but such sounds were self-explanatory and gave him no reason to awaken. The fire burned to dead ashes, and the early morning chill crept through the room, but he only drew his blanket tighter. But sometime near the approach of dawn, at the darkest, stillest hour of ebbing night-tide, a queer, faint buzzing noise broke suddenly upon his inner consciousness.

In a flash he roused himself, trying to see through the gloom, listening for some repetition of the sound. He had almost persuaded himself that imagination had tricked him, and was on the point of reaching again for the blanket flap, when, all at once, a muffled voice began to speak from the bunk. The tones were repressed and rather unsteady, but the words were intelligible.

"I'm all right. Lots better. Policeman fixed me up." It was the boy, apparently talking to himself in the darkness.

The tenseness of Dexter's attitude promptly relaxed. His patient no doubt was feverish, a little delirious—maundering in his sleep. Nevertheless the corporal waited, mildly curious to know what else might be said.

He was not kept long in suspense. "You were?" exclaimed the voice, as though questioning a fanciful person. "And got away? That's good, anyhow."

There followed another short silence, and then the speaker in the bunk was heard again. "No!" This time the tone seemed to carry a sharp warning. "Don't come here. Go to the Saddle Notch. Somebody'll meet you there. Understand?"

As he listened Dexter stiffened to keen alertness. This was not like the raving of a dreaming man. The words were beginning to make sense. And there were definite pauses between sentences, as though the speaker were waiting for some one else to reply. As the corporal leaned forward, trying to see in the darkness, he was grimly reminded of last night's strange events—of another lonely cabin, of another voice heard in seeming conversation with an unidentified some one who answered mysteriously from somewhere else.

He waited, breathless, and the boy spoke once more. "See you later," he declared. "Good luck." And then he ended with a farewell utterance that brought Dexter to his feet in gasping wonderment. "Good-by, Alison!" he said.

CHAPTER XII

THE RENDEZVOUS

The spoken name had all the effect of a galvanic shock. "Alison!" Dexter kicked the blanket from his legs, and in the darkness blundered across the room. He reached the bunk, drew a match from his pocket, and struck a light. As the flame flared in the darkness he stared downward and saw the boy's motionless form stretched at full length on the mattress. From all appearances, the patient had not changed position since the evening before. He was lying in his blankets, facing the wall, with eyes closed, temples slightly flushed, and breathing evenly through half open mouth. Seemingly, he was sound asleep.

But unquestionably it was his voice that had been heard; furthermore, Dexter could have sworn that he was talking over a telephone.

However, there was no telephone here: none, at least, that the corporal was able to find. And such an instrument scarcely could have been hidden in the second it took him to spring across the room. Nevertheless, he settled his doubts by looking. He searched under the bunk and behind the bunk, and then leaned over to assure himself that there were no lumpy objects stuffed in the mattress. He was prodding at the pillow, when he felt a sudden movement, and was aware that Smith was looking up at him with a dull vacuous stare.

"I?" Smith blinked his lids, and gazed about him with an expression of utter blankness. "What do you mean?"

"I heard something like a click, and a minute later you spoke: warning somebody not to come here—to go somewhere else."

"You heard me?" The boy started to raise himself in the bunk, and then fell back with a groan, grasping his injured arm. "Oh!" he sighed, "I—I nearly forgot. Must have had a good night. What time is it?"

"Alison?" Smith shook his head slowly, regarded his inquisitor with heavy, sleep-dulled eyes. "You must have been dreaming—or else I was. If I was talking, I must have been having a nightmare. I don't remember—"

"Why, I don't know," said the other with a suppressed yawn. "Never heard of him."

Dexter lighted another match and peered searchingly at the face before him, and the boy's blue eyes returned his gaze with a look of blandest innocence. "Do you know a woman named Alison?"

"Is it a place—or what? Did I say that too?" Smith's mouth quivered in the faintest suggestion of a grin. "Gee, I must have been having a whale of a dream—thinking up all those things!"

Dexter stood for a moment in baffled silence, and then turned away with an impatient shrug. What was the use? The boy had all the best of it. The inquisition might be kept up for hours, and always he could cling to his one irrefutable assertion—that his talk was the meaningless jargon of dreams. The officer had no vestige of proof to establish the truth or the untruth of any statement that was made.

Nevertheless, Dexter was convinced that Smith had not been asleep, and he could not believe that the boy was talking to himself. He had said good-by to "Alison." Had he contrived in some unaccountable manner to get into communication with Alison Rayne? Impossible! The girl was Colonel Devreaux's prisoner, and by this time they would be camping thirty or forty miles farther down the valley. How to reach her by voice, except through radio or telephone? There was no other conceivable way.

So mystery again resolved itself into the bogy of a telephone line that did not seem to exist. Dexter had ransacked one cabin in futile search of a communicating circuit, and now his perplexity gave him no choice but to go through the same performance at this place. With a sigh and a shake of his head, he lighted a candle, and set about an irksome task.

He went out of doors first, and inspected the ground. The snow held no intruding footprints. Smith could not have been talking to any one who stood within earshot. No wires went out from the cabin, so it seemed equally certain that his voice had not been transmitted over a telephone line. Wireless? That last remaining possibility was easily settled. He searched the interior cabin from end to end, floor, walls, roof, fireplace, prying into every imaginable nook and cranny; and found not one piece or part of radio equipment. Nor was there anything about the place to suggest that the owner might be engaged in any business other than fur trapping. The first streaks of daylight were beginning to filter through the windows when Dexter finally gave it up as a hopeless puzzle.

The boy had been watching from the bunk, without comment, his artless face betraying nothing more than mild curiosity. The corporal scrutinized him with narrow eyes. His pose of innocence was well put on, but Dexter could not help but feel that it was assumed for the occasion. From the beginning he had refused to believe that the young man had told his right name, and the suspicion persisted that he was in some way involved in the affairs of the incomprehensible girl who had quitted this cabin two days before. Whether awake or asleep, he certainly had spoken the name "Alison," and it all sounded strangely like a warning.

Dexter darkly pondered the significance of the words he had overheard. Assuming that the impossible might have happened—that a message could carry by some queer, occult agency through the intervening leagues of forest—then its purport was unmistakable. "Don't come here. Go to Saddle Notch." The boy's speech carried definite instructions. Were the words, by miraculous chance, intended to reach the girl? If she could come and go at will, as the mysterious conversation might seem to indicate, there was but one inference to be drawn: she had escaped from Devreaux.

Following his startling line of conjecture thus far, the rest was only simple logic. If the girl actually had fled from the hands of one policeman, naturally her friends would attempt to warn her away from a cabin where a second policeman had established himself. She would be advised to strike for a safer retreat. Saddle Notch! In a sudden flash of intuition, the corporal persuaded himself that he knew the place. Riding across the west range two days ago he had been struck by the appearance of a peculiarly shaped mountain with two outstanding peaks, and a cleft or notch between, that bore an amazing resemblance to a gigantic saddle. The mountain stood amid a cluster of other high peaks in a wild and lonely region, about twenty miles southwest of this spot. Such country offered ideal refuge to any fugitive who might be hard pressed, seeking to hide.

For a moment the corporal considered the strangely suggested possibilities. No doubt it would prove a futile chase to go ranging through the forests on a flimsy hint of this sort; yet a blind instinct urged him to go. He hesitated for an instant, and then, with a nod and a fleeting smile, he made his decision. If by any millionth chance Alison Rayne had broken away from Devreaux and was traveling to a meeting at the Saddle Notch with some unidentified friend, then he, the policeman, would also be there to keep the rendezvous.

CHAPTER X

BLIND-MAN'S CHASE

With face cold and inscrutable, Dexter crossed the cabin to stand by the bunk. For a moment he regarded the boy in silent speculation. Whatever the young man's hidden thoughts, he was taking good care to keep them to himself. And there was no way to force him to betray secrets. An officer has no right to employ extreme methods in dealing with a law-abiding citizen; and there was no evidence to accuse Smith of any illegal act. Grounds for his arrest or detention were lacking. Even the time-worn pretext of holding a suspected offender as a "witness" wouldn't stand in his case. He had witnessed nothing he could be called to the box for—unless, indeed, he testified to the fact that he had watched a policeman rummaging vainly, and without written warrant, through another man's dwelling. Apparently there was nothing to be done except to grant him the best of the encounter.

Dexter suppressed a rueful laugh, and reached forward abruptly to touch the boy's bandaged arm. "Let's see how you're doing this morning," he suggested lightly.

The patient's condition appeared to be much improved since last night. Dexter heated water and applied new dressings, and gave the sufferer detailed instruction for self-treatment. He lingered long enough to cook breakfast, and then picked up his pack and carbine and turned towards the door.

The corporal looked back with a faint quirk of his mouth. "If I should walk in my sleep, we'll be quits," he remarked. "So long, Smith."

"So long, officer," a pleasant voice called after him; and he opened the door and stepped out into the snow.

It was a dull, gray morning, with a sodden chill in the air. The dense, leaden atmosphere was like an oppressive stillness upon the earth, and the dingy sky of the northwest held the threat of dark forces gathering. Colonel Devreaux apparently was wise in his prognostication. Winter's first deadly storm was brewing behind the ranges, and before nightfall the big snow was surely due.

Dexter observed the weather signs with a brooding glance, and then, with a fatalistic shrug, he buttoned his collar tight, and strode across the brook. By the fringe of the streamside alders he paused for a moment to consult his pocket compass. As he remembered his direction points, the saddle mountain lay behind two intervening ridges, almost on a south by west line. The easier route would be to follow the brook back past the burned cabin, and then turn north along a branch stream that cut through dense timber on the farther side of the valley. But this course would take him miles out of his way. The shorter path lay through a difficult country of forest and hills, but, without horse or baggage, he ought to be able to make his way across. For a second he hesitated, and then decided on the straightaway route. Hitching his pack higher on his shoulders, he left the brook and struck off through the woods.

Anxious to reach his destination before the storm descended, he set himself a pace that might have killed a man unused to wilderness travel. Head bent forward, body relaxed at the hips, feet balancing on a straight line, as a moccasined Indian walks, he swung forward with a long, flexible stride, dodging under branches, weaving back and forth among windfalls and thickets, leaping over down-trunks, moving onward without halt or hesitation, like a shadow gliding through the white mazes of the forest.

It was still early morning when he climbed up through a tangle of hillside brush, and passed over the watershed of the brook he had left behind. By noon he had crossed the jungle hollow beyond and ascended to the top of the next parallel ridge; and through an open vista on the higher ground he caught his first glimpse of the distant mountain peaks, towering ghostly white against the reaches of the sullen sky.

He paused only to make sure of his bearings, and then plunged forward once more into the thick forest. For nearly two hours he worked out his tortuous trail, descending a long slope, broken by gulleys and ravines, through a wilderness of ancient spruces, where smothering undergrowths contested his pathway and shut him in on all sides as a swimmer is surrounded by the waves of the sea. But he struggled on doggedly, and passed in time through the worst of it. Eventually the smaller growths began to thin out, and the spruces gradually made way for the jack pines. He had more frequent glimpses of the sky, and presently, through a rift in the branches, he once more discovered the smoky outlines of mountain caps.

Pushing rapidly forward, he soon left the forest behind, and came at last to the border of an open field of snow, whence he viewed the full majestic sweep of the country before him.

For a mile or more straight ahead, and right and left as far as he could see the ground stretched away, level and treeless, to the foot of a cliff-like palisade—an appalling hundred foot terrace, rising sheer from the flat below. From the top of this first high point a sort of broad shelf, or plateau, dipped back for another couple of miles into the dark, ringing circle of a twin-peaked mountain. And farther still, like a faint smoke haze upon the middle sky, stood the towering saw edge of the coastal divide, the final great barrier that forbade the crossing from valley to valley of all things that did not follow the soaring eagle's route.

A dank wind drew down through the flue of the mountains, bringing a first warning flutter of snowflakes. In the immediate foreground the double peaks loomed in bold outline, and it would have needed a dull imagination, indeed, that lacked a name for this individual mountain. It was like a saddle sculptured on colossal proportions—pommel, cantle, even the stirrup—chiseled realistically in sweeping, thousand-foot strokes. A dip of the ridge formed a horse's back and withers; pointed ears and grotesquely shaped head were blocked out in strong relief by an up-jutting pinnacle beyond; and in order that nothing should be lacking, a broad, snow-filled crevice twisted down the mountainside to give the appearance of a long, flowing tail.

Dexter viewed the stupendous statue with critical appreciation, but as he looked, for some reason, he began to feel a trifle foolish. The Saddle Mountain was a sight worth observing, but he had not come on a wearying journey to awe himself with scenery. He found himself wondering why he really had come. Whom did he expect to find here? Alison Rayne? He shook his head incredulously. After traveling all this distance it suddenly struck him that he had blundered off through the forest on a vain and brainless errand—chasing the chimera of another man's dream.

With a flat feeling of disillusionment, he stood for a moment gazing vacantly at the lonesome, barren peaks. Gradually his glance shifted downward to the plateau that formed the base of the mountain. He was scanning the top of the nearest palisade, without expecting to make any discovery of interest, when his body suddenly stiffened and his pupils contracted sharply. Something was moving along the rim of the precipice.

It was a grayish-white object, diminished by distance to a pin-head speck, and barely discernible against the snowy background. Whatever it was, it was walking, and while Dexter watched, the tiny shape moved to the edge of the palisade, passed over the brink, and then started to climb down the steep side of the cliff.

He nodded to himself when he saw what had happened. Only a sheep or mountain goat would be apt to attempt the perilous descent of a sheer wall of rock. Probably it was a bighorn sheep, driven from the summits by the approaching storm, and taking the shortest route down to the valley pastures. To make certain, however, he uncased his binoculars to observe the creature in magnified view.

He trained the lenses upon the distant cliff-side, and once more picked up the climbing shape. For an instant he gazed dubiously, and then his wrist tendons drew taut as wires as he tried to steady the leveled glasses. It was not a sheep he saw, but a human shape—clinging against the precipitous height.

Amazed—unbelieving—he gingerly readjusted the focus of his binoculars, and in a moment the distant cliff-side seemed to draw towards him in sharper perspective. The diminutive shape suddenly enlarged to doll-size, and he made out a straight, slender figure, clad in white sweater and knickers. He stared with straining vision, and recognition came like a blow between the eyes. The mountain climber was Alison Rayne.

CHAPTER XIV

PATHS OF PERIL

Overcome by astonishment, Dexter stood motionless and breathless, peering at the far-off figure with swimming senses, exerting all his will force to keep the binoculars from wabbling in his tightly gripped hands. He had come there looking for Alison Rayne—on a fool's chase, he persuaded himself a moment before—and now, when he actually saw her he found himself staring across space with the awed wonderment of a man who beholds a miraculous apparition.

So the boy in the cabin yonder had reached her with his message of warning. Speaking in low-pitched, half-muttered accents, under pretense of sleep talking, his voice must have carried by some strange sorcery through the leagues of forest, to be heard by listening ears. He had called to Alison, and the girl had answered. He advised her to flee to the Saddle Mountain, and she had come to the appointed place. All of which seemed to establish positive proof that the two were in communication during that dark morning hour when Dexter had aroused at the sound of the voice in the cabin bunk.

The incredible staggering facts defied all reason. Without radio equipment or the strung wires of a telephone line, there was no imaginable way in which two people might hold long distance conversations. Yet it was manifest that these two had done something of the sort.

By what hidden medium the word had passed Dexter was utterly unable to guess. He did not know what to think. He only knew that young Smith had attempted to deceive him. Not only was it certain now that the boy knew Alison Rayne, but it was apparent that there was some secret, sympathetic understanding between them. And by inference it must also seem that both were implicated in the affairs at the other cabin, where a woman's voice had been transmitted in the same mysterious way.

With his features set in an eloquent scowl, Dexter surveyed the distant heights. As far as he could make out, the girl was alone. So it was evident that in some manner she had outwitted the vigilant Devreaux: must have escaped some time during the previous night. If the colonel were alive and able to travel, he would be following her. It was the logical supposition that he was on her trail now, following, probably, not far behind. The fact that she was taking a short cut to the lower valley, over the brink of a dangerous cliff, would indicate desperate haste.

No pursuer was visible at that moment, but from his position the corporal was unable to see what might be happening behind the brow of the high terrace. It was quite possible that a second moving speck would soon heave in sight.

Meanwhile, Dexter turned his glasses back towards the girl, and his lips twisted at the corners into a grim, inexorable smile. Thanks to the hunter's instinct he had traveled to this place on blind impulse, disregarding logic and reason; and now he held the strategic ground, waiting to cut off the girl's escape.

At the distance the cliff had the appearance of a smooth-faced, perpendicular wall. But presumably the surface was not as steep as the observer first imagined, or else there were cracks and projecting points to afford a foothold. At any rate, the tiny figure seemed to cling securely to the dizzy pitch, as a swift hangs against the side of a chimney; and slowly, by almost imperceptible degrees, crept downward from the brink.

As Dexter watched with bated breath he could not help but marvel at the resolution and cool-headed nerve that dared attempt such a hazardous descent. To gain the valley by a safer path, however, would mean a four- or five-mile tramp by way of the cañon-like notch that broke into the northern shoulder of the mountain. In all probability the fugitive was closely pursued, and as Dexter had found out by previous experience Alison Rayne was not the sort to weigh difficulties and dangers when freedom was at stake. Apparently she had reason to accept a life or death chance at the threat of recapture. And not knowing Devreaux, as the men of his command knew him, she might too readily assume that the bulky, middle-aged policeman would think twice before clambering after her over the top of a precipice.

Dexter looked out fearfully, with his tongue between his teeth. Even through his binoculars, the form on the cliff was limned in miniature, like an animated toy. The small figure crept downward with agonizing slowness, feeling cautiously for each new foothold, groping with clinging fingers, counting the distance gained by niggard inches. Realizing the danger of startling the girl by showing himself at such a moment, the corporal restrained his anxieties, and held his position, waiting.

He was peering tensely through the glasses, scarcely breathing, when all at once his heart gave a spasmodic jump. The climbing shape seemed to lose contact with the wall—slipping; and as he stared with horrified eyes, the little figure swayed sidewise, flung up vainly reaching arms, and suddenly dropped from view.

Dexter felt a sharp muscular shrinking in his body, and for an instant his senses swirled with a queer physical sickness. Instinctively his eyes shut, dreading the anguish of seeing. But in a moment he shook off the first feeling of giddiness, and by a strong mental effort, forced himself to look again. Breathing audibly through tight clenched teeth, he steadied himself and held the glasses firm. Gradually he lowered the lenses, and then suddenly a great gasping sigh heaved up from the depths of his chest, and his sagging shoulders lifted, as though relieved of a crushing weight. At a point midway down the cliff, he once more had caught sight of the small, clinging figure.

His eyes aglow with thanksgiving, he stared intently, and at once understood what had happened. The girl must have lost her footing somehow, falling down the face of the cliff; but instead of plunging to her death among the rocks at the bottom, she landed providentially upon some sort of shelf or ledge, only a few feet below, and with quick wit had caught a handgrip and anchored herself to the projecting stone.

For the time being she had saved herself, but as Dexter gazed towards the far-off heights, fresh misgivings smote him. The girl was huddled against the flat wall, resting partly on one knee, her hands spread out before her. He watched dubiously for a space, and she did not attempt to move. He could not make out her face, nor was he able to see how she managed to hold on; but there was a drooping limpness in the posture of the tiny figure, and he realized that she was in distress. Either she was hurt, or else she had lost confidence and was afraid to stir from an insecure resting place. In either case she needed help. Dexter promptly left the shelter of the trees, and started forward, running, across the snowy meadow.

The ground underfoot was broken by pits and furrows, but he plunged on recklessly, measuring his stride by instinct, keeping his anxious glances for the heights above. Before he had traversed half the distance the girl discovered his approach. He saw her look over her shoulder, and then raise herself abruptly, as though actuated by some rash purpose. Alarmed, he waved his arm, motioning her furiously to hold her position. She gazed upward at the towering rocks above, but after an interval she sank down motionless once more, hugging the cliff in seeming helplessness, apparently unable or unwilling to risk the return trip.

Fast as he ran, it took Dexter several minutes to cross the strip of open ground. But finally he neared the foot of the acclivity, and could appraise the difficulties that confronted him. The cliff, rising with vertical face to a height of a hundred feet or more, was formed of stratified rock—great slabs, lying one upon another, like a pile of unevenly stacked books. Edges of stone jutted out at frequent intervals to make narrow ledges, and there were interstices between the slabs that would enable a climber to mount from one broader resting place to the next, all the way to the top.

During occasional hunts for mountain sheep and goats, Dexter had clambered up more dangerous steeps than this. It was as though steps had been chiseled here in readiness for use. His only fear was of rotting rock. Stratification is caused by weathering and the crumbling away of stone in scales and veins; and in the process of erosion the projecting rocks are gradually pitted and undermined, and may break off at the lightest pressure. A great heap of these fallen fragments was banked against the foot of the precipice, but the corporal scrambled up over the pile, and presently stood under the shelf where the girl was crouching. He could see her white face peering over a ledge, seventy feet above.

"A step gave way and let me drop," she called down in a shaken voice. "I caught on here—just barely—and now I can't get up or down."

"You can't," she faltered—"nobody could get here. If you had a rope—from above—"

"I have no rope and I'm not above," he said shortly. He unstrapped his heavy pack and dropped it at his feet. His carbine he buckled tightly across his back by its carrying sling. It was to be remembered that the girl expected to meet a companion somewhere in this vicinity, and while no third person had put in an appearance as yet, the officer had no way of knowing whom he might encounter on the other side of the terrace, and he had no intention of going anywhere unarmed.

As he stood silent for a moment, studying the precipitous slope above him, he heard a splintering sound, and detached fragments of stone bounced down from the cliff and struck the ground behind him. Craning his neck backwards, he saw that the girl had shifted her position and was gazing over the dizzy brink, as though her glance were held in dreadful fascination by the ugly rocks below.

"Don't move, and don't look down!" he shouted angrily. And then he spoke in attempted reassurance. "I'll get you off somehow. Don't worry, and hang on tight!"

"You can until I get there!" he asserted gruffly, and picking a first toehold, he started to ascend the cliff.

For the first thirty or forty feet the cliff sloped slightly back, and he mounted swiftly and almost as easily as though he were stepping up the rungs of a ladder. But as he climbed higher the pitch became steeper, and presently he found himself hanging on a sheer wall, depending for support on the muscular grip of toes and fingers. The way seemed feasible, however, and after a hasty inspection of the frowning elevation, he continued to pull himself upward.

But from now on he moved slowly, with infinite caution. The least miscalculation would mean a sickening fall, probably death. The crannies between the layers of rock ran in horizontal lines, at frequent, almost regular intervals, like mortar cracks in a crumbling stone building. By alternating with hands and feet, he was able to hoist himself without great effort. But unfortunately snow had drifted into the crevices, and it was not always possible to judge the condition of the rock underneath. Nevertheless he inched his way upward, digging in firmly to keep from slipping, and testing each new stepping place before he trusted his full weight to settle. By degrees he lifted himself towards the ledge where Alison Rayne was crouching, and at length he gained a narrow niche directly beneath her.

Wedging himself in brief security, he glanced overhead, and at once understood why the girl had not dared the rest of the descent. She was lodged on a sloping rock, not more than six feet above him; but between them the cliffside bulged out in an overhanging cornice, smooth as glass and utterly unscalable. By leaning outward Dexter could see her livid features as she gazed over the edge.

She shuddered as she encountered his anxious glance. "You can't come any farther!" she gasped. "And I—I'll be here until I have to—let—go."

Abandoning the hope of reaching her from below, he turned hurriedly to scan the cliffside right and left. And in an instant the practiced mountaineer's eye had devised a path where no path existed. The fissure in which he stood slanted off at an acute angle away from the girl's ledge, but from a higher point an open crack sloped back across the face of the precipice and crossed over the cornice rock directly above her. He calculated the chances, and nodded with sudden confidence.

"Narrow," she answered faintly. "I've got to hold on, and my fingers are getting cold."

The fissure was like an open chute gouged down the side of the cliff, and just wide enough to admit his body. To crawl up that narrow draw with a carbine strapped to his back, however, was out of the question. His teeth clicked suddenly together. He had forgotten about the rifle. It was an impossible encumbrance if he expected to reach the girl. But the only way to get rid of the weapon was to unfasten the sling and let it drop: a sacrifice almost suicidal to a man on winter police patrol. As he hesitated he caught a momentary glimpse of the soft blue eyes that gazed beseechingly towards him. He drew a sharp breath. This was no time to count personal cost. With a decisive movement, his hand reached towards the shoulder strap, but as he touched the buckle some vaguely stirring sense of alarm checked him, and drew his glance towards the height above.

He looked upward, and his jaw fell, and he stared in wide-eyed astonishment. From the brink of the cliff, not thirty feet overhead, a human face was peering down at him.

It was an unwholesome countenance, pinkish in color, evil-smirking, with loose, flabby jowls, flat, broad nostrils, and a pair of elongated slits for eyes. Dexter remembered the rogues' gallery photograph buttoned in his jacket pocket, but he did not need any print to identify the physiognomy he saw now in the flesh. That leering face was unforgettable. The man on the cliff could be none other than the fugitive murderer, "Pink" Crill.

CHAPTER XV

THE BRINK OF DEATH

In the shocking moment of discovery Dexter found no time to wonder what malignant fate had brought the outlaw here at this unwelcome juncture. He merely grasped the fact that "Pink" Crill was kneeling on the cliff above, looking down at him. Instinctively he crowded himself into his niche, shrinking inwardly. It was a seventy-foot drop to the rocks below, and he knew at sight that this Crill was a man without scruple or mercy. The crevice offered some protection, but after crouching motionless for tense seconds, the corporal craned his head back and ventured another glance upward. The face had disappeared.

Dexter was positive that he had been seen, and was not misled by false hope. Crill had withdrawn, but he certainly would come back. Probably he was only hunting bowlders to roll over the cliff. Meanwhile, however, the victim had a slender chance of saving himself. It would be the part of sanity to scramble down with all haste from his unsafe roosting place. He might possibly reach the bottom before the murderer returned.

In the fractional second of his indecision, Dexter's thoughts were sharply recalled by a sob of distress, low and piteous, heard suddenly behind him. Casting a glance over his shoulder, he looked into Alison Rayne's horror-stricken eyes. She was staring full at Dexter, and apparently was unaware of the ominous presence above.

"I'm slipping!" she whispered with choking breath. "If you're coming—please—help—"

His hand went up again and found the carbine sling. The buckle came open with a snap, the strap jerked apart and slipped over his shoulder; and the next second, as he jammed his body into the crevice and started to work his way upward, he heard the crash of his rifle striking on broken stones far below.

If by unforeseen good luck he ever reached the cliff top he still would have his pistol. But at present the holstered weapon was a useless appendage, much in the way. With an impatient yank and a twist, he drew his belt around so the pistol might bump against the small of his back, and not interfere with his movements. Then, with thighs and shoulders braced against the sides of the fissure, clinging mostly by force of adhesion, he wriggled and hitched himself up the slanting chute, as a chimney sweep goes up a flue.

In a moment he had gained an elevation level with the shelf where Alison Rayne still held on with the clutch of despair. Six feet more of the elbow-bruising ascent, and he was able to reach the lateral crack that led back across the sheer face of the precipice to the girl's ledge.

To his joy he found that the underlip of the crack sloped inward, affording a slight ridge for his finger grip. But fortune granted him no other concession. Beyond him stretched a bare rock wall, a smooth, ten-foot reach, without any cranny or projecting point that his toe might touch.

He paused only to measure his distance, and then securing his hold in the crack, he swung out against the cliff. For a moment he hung swaying, dangling over space, supporting his weight by his hands and upstretched arms. The brim of his Stetson pushed against the cliff, and he tossed his head with a movement of annoyance, and the hat sailed away behind him.

"With you right away!" he assured the girl between clenched teeth, and started to work out across the wall.

Still he had hear nothing from Crill. But the lines of acute anxiety were deep drawn at the corners of his eyes and lips. At any instant he might hear the direful sound of a rock toppling from the brink overhead, and every nerve and fiber of his body seemed to flinch before the imminence of the moment. He dared not look up; could only look at the wall before him. And every seam and chink of that remorseless surface of rock was etched in detail, to be seared upon his memory forever.

With toes scraping and thumping, he edged his way along the crack, inch by inch, hand against hand. He had only a short distance to go, but it seemed to his overstrained faculties that he must have traversed half the width of the mountainside, when at last he put down his foot and found solid rock beneath him. For the first time he ventured to look aside, and he saw that he had reached the girl's shelf.

Breathing quickly, he let his weight down and relaxed his aching arms. His resting place was the top of an outcropping rock, about two feet wide, that tilted with a decided downward cant. He dug with his hobnail boots into the rotted stone, but for further safety his hand still clung to the crack in the wall. It was no wonder that the girl had feared she would loose her precarious hold. She wore smooth-soled boots; and the slim fingers, still grasping the ledge, were blue with the cold, and bleeding at the tips. Dexter reached towards her, passed his hand beneath her armpit, and drew her against his supporting shoulder.

She swayed closer, trembling, her face hidden in the curve of his arm. "Oh, thanks—thanks!" she whispered in broken, breathless accents. "You came!"

"Steady!" he said, his voice low and soothing. "Take it easy, Alison. All right now." He slid his arm about her waist, and managed to get both her icy hands in his. "Why, they must be numb!" he exclaimed. "Here—let's get 'em warm. We've got to start circulation."

"I don't know how I lasted," she said with a shudder, clinging tighter to him. "I was afraid—I never thought—"

He leaned outward as he spoke to gaze nervously towards the cliff top. It struck him that there was something ominous in the silence overhead. Crill had not yet returned, and the corporal could not imagine what stealthy game he was playing. He dreaded seeing the man again; but also the prolonged absence was disquieting.

"If by any chance the chap up there's a friend of yours," Dexter said suddenly, a note of harshness striking through his voice, "I'd advise you to have him call a truce—at least until I can get you safely out of this."

She lifted her head with trepidation to gaze towards the top of the palisade. "I don't know any such person," she asserted after a slight pause.

He scrutinized her searchingly for a moment. "All right," he declared. "If he's not your friend we'd better get out of this quick. Unluckily the trip down's impossible. We've got to go on up."

As he spoke he leaned backward to scan the cliff face above; and in a second his plan was formed. On the left side of the girl, and only a couple of feet above her head, a broad-topped, solid-looking rock jutted out from the precipice wall. Thence, for the rest of the distance upward, the masses of stratified stone sloped slightly back, and offered secure stepping places that reached by easy stages all the way to the top. If they could gain the first shelf, the remaining ascent should not prove difficult.

"Feel equal to staying here alone—just for a minute?" Dexter inquired, his warm hand pressing the girl's fingers.

He felt her shoulders grow tense as she tried to steady herself. "Why, I—if I must—yes," she replied with faint assurance.

"Good girl!" he commented briskly, before she could change her mind. "Here! We'll plant you like an anchor." He showed her a tiny indentation where she could brace her foot, and then helped her fix her fingers in the chink that served him for support.

Without further ado he leaned outward, crowded his body around her cowering figure, and a second later had flattened himself against the cliff at her left side. He stretched his arm overhead, and touched the ledge above.

Groping, he found a small weather-gouged groove that afforded him a gripping surface. He caught his hold with both hands and drew his weight up bodily, as a gymnast chins himself. With a quick, violent effort he hooked one knee over the rim, and the next moment had hoisted himself onto a wide, level shelf of stone.

As soon as he was settled in security he bent down over the edge, intending to reach the girl's hands. But he realized at once that he would be in danger of overbalancing if he attempted to lift her in such a manner. For an instant he hesitated; and then unfastened his heavy belt, laid the pistol on the rock beside him, and let down the buckle end of the strap.

"Oh, no!" she faltered as she understood his purpose, "I—I haven't the strength left."

He regarded her fixedly for a moment, and when he spoke his tone was cold and cutting. "I somehow hadn't thought you were a coward," he said.

She threw up her head with a gasp, and a tinge of crimson suddenly showed in her cheeks. As Dexter peered down at her he saw a gleam of recklessness flaunting in her eyes. With swift decision she released her hold on the rocks, and her hands grasped the end of the dangling belt. "Go ahead!" she said. "I'll hang on if I can."

Dexter braced his feet firmly, leaned forward as far as he dared, and exerting all the strength of his shoulders and arms, he raised her from the rock beneath and drew her up towards him. Almost before she could have realized what had happened, she was clinging on the brink. The corporal caught her about the waist, and lifted her to solid footing beside him.

She turned unsteadily, her lips quivering. "I—anybody's likely to be a coward—sometimes," she stated.

The corporal faced her with a grin. "You didn't honestly think I meant that, did you?" He slowly shook his head. "That's one thing, at least, that I'll never accuse you—"

He caught himself with a start, breaking off in the midst of speech. From somewhere overhead he heard a quick, crunching sound, like heavy feet running in the snow. As he stiffened into alertness, staring upward, a man's voice was raised suddenly in hoarse, angry shouting. And then, almost simultaneously it seemed, the cliff top reverberated with the heavy report of a pistol shot.

CHAPTER XVI

UNSEEN ENEMIES

The amazing uproar lasted only for seconds, and then intense silence once more settled over the palisade. There was no one in sight, and Dexter could not imagine what calamitous events were taking place on the other side of the cliff. But as his glance swept back and forth along the brink of the precipice, the momentary quiet was suddenly shattered by a second shot.

In a flash he stooped to grasp his pistol. "I'm going up," he announced, and hurriedly belted his holster about his waist. "You stay here, Alison, and I'll come back for you when I can."

Without waiting for her reply, he set his foot in the nearest cranny and started to clamber onward. The remaining distance was not far, and he went up in a rush and scrambled over the final escarpment. He reached the top, and crouched warily on the brink of the cliff to survey the open ground beyond.

The plateau dipped back for a mile or more to the base of the ringing mountain peaks, and on the snow-sheeted meadow were outlined the figures of two men. One was a couple of hundred yards away, running as fast as legs would fly, heading for a distant cedar thicket and the notch that gave exit towards the northern end of the valley below. Nearer the cliff top another man was standing, with pistol in hand. The second intruder, short and stocky in build, was clad in the tunic of the mounted police. Dexter observed the silhouette of his broad back, and laughed aloud.

The thick-set figure swung around to stare dumbly at the man on the crest behind him. "Dexter!" he blurted out in astonishment.

"By the way the other fellow keeps on going, I should judge that you're not shooting as well as you used to," remarked the corporal blandly.

"I just pitched a couple across his bows, as they say, hoping he'd halt," explained Devreaux. "Rather take him back alive if I can. If I know a pink complexion, that man's Crill."

"Unquestionably," agreed the corporal, his glance following the fleeing outlaw. The man was out of pistol range, still plowing up the snow as he sprinted for the shelter of the timber. "A person with a double chin should know better than to overexert himself," Dexter resumed calmly. "He'll drop in his track by the time he reaches the notch."

"Sure he will," assented Devreaux. "No sense winding ourselves in hundred-yard dashes. We can trail comfortably behind, sure to land him before night." He nodded with satisfaction. "Bit of luck—what? Funny thing how I walked into him like this, after all these days of futile hunting. I was coming up the draw from the south, and as I stepped into the open, there was Crill staggering towards the cliff with a big rock in his arms. When he saw me he dropped it and ran—

"The rock was to be bounced off my head," interrupted Dexter. "You appeared at exactly the right second."

"We've taken Crill's full measure," observed Dexter. "Runs from a man in the open, but is willing to do casual, cold-blooded murder when his victim is unable to defend himself. I was climbing up the cliffside, you know."

"It'll be a pleasure to lay hands on him," grunted the superintendent. "Luckily, we've got him."

"Unless his friends cut in ahead of us." The corporal gazed across the plateau, and saw the fugitive dart into the cover of a distant patch of trees. "I have a strong suspicion that he's not traveling alone."

Devreaux thrust his pistol back in the holster, and turned abruptly upon the departing trail. "Let's go," he said. He started to move forward, but with his first step he halted and whirled to look behind him.

An avalanche of stones rattled down the slope of the cliff, and as he faced the direction of the sound, a small, white-clad figure came suddenly into view above the brink of the precipice. His mouth dropped open, and stood motionless with peering, blinking eyes, his face ludicrous with amazement. "Alison!" he exploded at last. "Where did you come from?"

The girl did not answer. She lifted herself to her feet, crossed the top of the cliff, and stopped in front of Dexter. "Whatever you may do to me later," she said in a tremulous voice, "at least I owe my life to you."

"Miss Rayne and I happened to meet down below here," the corporal explained uncomfortably, turning to Devreaux. And then as he observed the superintendent's expression of bewilderment, he found his lips twitching at the corners. "She seemed to be lost from you, colonel."

"Lost!" muttered the officer. "Yes. We were crossing a steep slope down by the lower pass, and I stepped on a slide of glacier ice that was hidden by snow. Went down on the glare, and rolled and coasted about a half mile to the bottom. Smashed my carbine so it wasn't even worth salvage, and nearly cracked my neck in the bargain. And when I had gathered myself up and labored back to the top, the girl was gone. It happened last evening, mind you, and I was all night and most of the day working back the trail. I'll say this much for the young lady: when she's in a hurry she can cruise with the best of us."

Devreaux turned to glower at the girl. "And I warn you now," he said with asperity, "I'm going to forget to be polite and use the wrist irons if you get 'lost' this way another time."

She flushed darkly, and averted her head, as though to hide the glint of tears upon her lashes. "What would be the use?" she replied in a tired, hopeless voice. "You're men—hard and ruthless—and I—I haven't a chance. You can order me to come and go as you please and threaten me with handcuffs, and I have nobody—there's nothing I can do about it—nothing."

"Exactly!" asserted the colonel. "And now we must go." He turned on his heel and set off across the meadow; and Alison Rayne sighed despondently, and followed him in mute resignation.

Dexter looked after her for a moment with a pensive frown and then, gloomily shaking his head, he hastened forward and caught step with her.

"How did you get the message that brought you to this place?" he asked suddenly, watching her face with slantwise curiosity.

The corporal gave a hurried account of his adventures in the cabin on the further side of the valley, telling of the boy he had found there, and of the voice that aroused him from sleep. "Reminded me of the queer business at the other cabin," he remarked. "Sounded like telephone talk—only there was no telephone." He faced the girl with searching gaze. "The young man informed me that he didn't know you, and pretended to be asleep and dreaming; but he said 'Alison' as distinctly as I say your name now. And he advised you to make your way to this mountain, where a friend would be waiting."

The girl cast a fleeting glance towards Dexter, and he fancied for a second that he saw a sardonic gleam in her velvet eyes. "I should say that Corporal Dexter is a little mixed up about who was dreaming," she observed in a quiet tone.

"Whoever was dreaming," returned the policeman, "it came true. You were advised not to return to the cabin, but to strike across country for Saddle Mountain. And here you are."

Devreaux swung around abruptly, his weather-seamed countenance grown stern and forbidding. "You're going beyond the limits of patience," he declared in a crusty voice. "I want to know how you people communicate with each other."

She met his formidable stare without the slightest show of alarm. "We people?" she echoed. "Really, Colonel Devreaux, I don't see what reason you have for trying to make out that I belong to a gang, or something." She sighed and shook her head, and smiled forlornly as she encountered the officer's scowling stare. "But I admit," she added, "that there are times when I almost wish I did. It's discouraging not to have anybody."

"I insist on knowing how that message was relayed to you," the superintendent persisted, unmoved by the gentle appeal of her half veiled eyes.

"You followed my tracks all the way up the valley to this place," she reminded him. "Wherever I went, you must have gone also. So if I'd met any one, or stopped anywhere to telephone, or held any conversation of any sort with anybody, why you couldn't have helped knowing about it, could you?"

The colonel regarded her tensely, with anger and something like reluctant admiration mingling in his baffled glance. "You say you came to this particular place only by accident?" he asked after an interval.

"I don't want to make a long trip to Fort Dauntless," she coolly replied, "and as you seem so determined to take me there, why I—naturally I wandered as far as I could—anywhere to get away."

"Humph!" grunted Devreaux. "That's frank enough, anyhow. Just wanted to escape from the clutches of the police? Weren't expecting to meet a friend here?"

She stopped with a startled gasp, and gazed blankly overhead, as suddenly, without warning, the stillness of the misty afternoon was punctured by a shrill shining sound—the crackling hum of a bullet in flight.

CHAPTER XVII

AT FIVE HUNDRED YARDS

The two officers halted to scan the heights, towering shadowy above them. They stood in the middle of the broad plateau, with the horseshoe curve of the mountains hemming them in like the rising tiers of a vast amphitheater. The lower slopes were circled by a belt of dense-growing evergreens, but the open, snow-covered level stretched between, and the nearest sheltering thicket was at least a quarter mile distant. Any object moving against the white background of the snow-field must present a conspicuous target, but when Devreaux broke the momentary silence, he spoke without concern, and seemed in no haste to make for cover.

"Crill?" he inquired, with a ruminative glance towards the lower notch. "He had a rifle."

Dexter observed the line of long, narrow footprints that marked the direction of the outlaw's flight, and casually shook his head. "No. I don't think so. The shot came from higher up, I should say, and from the western slope—"

The spiteful pi-n-g of a second bullet whipped the air behind him, and he briefly nodded. "Right!" he remarked. "From the timber somewhere on our left. That wouldn't be Crill. There are others about."

"If they're friends of yours," he remarked, "they haven't much regard for you. At such a distance they can only pitch 'em in for general results, and they're as apt to get you as they are a policeman."

The girl's delicate brows were bent in an expression that betokened curiosity rather than alarm. "We're really being shot at?" she asked. "I didn't hear any report."

"High power rifle, and six hundred yards' range at least," said the corporal. "Too far off to hear the crack." He lifted his head interestedly as another steel-jacketed missile shrieked across the meadow. "They aren't allowing enough windage," he added in expert criticism of another man's marksmanship. "And long shots from an elevation are always likely to overcarry."

"I don't agree with you," interrupted the colonel. "Not if you don't forget your table of trajectories." He wrinkled his forehead reminiscently as he warmed to a cherished hobby. "I remember last year when I got me an old ram. Conditions similar to this. Five hundred yards if an inch, and I was shooting down off a ridge. I fixed my leaf sight at five hundred, and held plumb in the vital circle. The point I'm making—"

"You're in danger of having your point proven for you, if we stick around here," Dexter respectfully submitted. He saw the girl looking from one to the other with anxious eyes. "If you don't mind," he finished, "Alison and I think we'd better be striking for cover."

"Come on," agreed the superintendent, and set forward once more towards the nearest strip of timber. He moved at his usual brisk stride, but without undue haste; a calm and dignified man who refuses to be pestered by small annoyances.

As they pushed onward across the plateau, a freezing gust of wind swept down suddenly through the mountain notch, bringing a momentary flutter of snowflakes. "At last!" Devreaux flung back over his shoulder. "The storm will spoil good shooting, but also it'll bury footprints. We'll have to get Crill quickly, before the slate's wiped clean."

The snow flurry lasted for seconds, and then there followed a brief lull, while the skin of the face seemed to draw tighter with the tension of heavy barometric pressures. The lower atmosphere had grown very still, but higher up Dexter could see the rush and scud of dark clouds breaking around the mountain peaks. His glance traveled aimlessly from one outstanding pinnacle to another, and then wandered down towards the edge of timberline, and reached the top of a knife-edged ridge stretching away to the left. He blinked his eyes, and gazed again, and made out a grouping of elongated objects, like little fingers poked against the skyline. There was no discernible movement. He counted—one—two—three—but at the distance was unable to decide whether the small dots were rocks, or beasts of some sort, or men.

Reaching behind him, he was fumbling at his binocular case, when his ears caught the far-off hum of another bullet. The sound broke through the air in wailing crescendo, reached its highest pitch, and then stopped short with a tearing thump.

Dexter saw Colonel Devreaux halt in mid-stride and look waveringly about him, like a man who had suddenly changed his mind about the direction he wanted to go. For a moment the square-built figure held erect, motionless, and then the sturdy legs bowed weakly and without a word the old man pitched forward and fell upon his face.

Simultaneously, the storm came howling down upon them. Dexter felt the lash of the fiercely driven wind, and as he bowed his head to the blast, the world about him was blotted out in swirling snow.

He plunged forward and dropped upon his knees beside his officer. Devreaux lay on his side, with head and face almost buried in the white drift. The corporal passed his arm under the fallen body, and his fingers were stained by a warm seepage of blood.

The stricken man tried to sit up as his comrade raised his head from the ground; but the effort was too much for him, and he sank back limply in the corporal's arms. "Back and lungs!" he choked with a sound of leaking breath. His white mustache lifted, and he showed his teeth for an instant in a dauntless smile. "Like that old bighorn ram, David. He weathered a lot of hard years—but somebody got him at last—fine cleanshot—at five hundred—" He broke off in a painful coughing fit, and the light of consciousness faded from his steely eyes, and he slumped forward, a limp, insensate weight in Dexter's arms.

The corporal hastily examined the sagging body. A bullet, he found, had drilled its course through the dorsal muscles; had broken a rib and plowed deeper into the cavity of the lungs. As he pillowed the grizzled head against his shoulder he heard a soft crunching step beside him and was aware that Alison Rayne was bending above.

Dexter crouched silent for a moment, gazing vacantly towards the invisible heights, his face beaten by the driving snow. For the present, nothing further was to be feared from the distant sharpshooter. The rush of snow filled the air, blinding the vision. It was impossible to see a dozen feet beyond him. The dry, hissing flakes battered his eyes and obliterated the landscape. An army might have marched past him unobserved. He sighed thankfully, scarcely feeling the sting of the blizzard. At least he was vouchsafed the privilege of caring for his fallen comrade.

But what was he to do, where could he go? He must make his decision instantly. The wounded man could not be left exposed in the open. Prompt surgical attention was needed, but even more pressing was the need of shelter—a place to hide, to huddle protected from the white death that rode with the storm. His questing glance wandered off towards his right, where, he recalled, the nearest stretch of timber grew. It would be in that direction somewhere that he must search for his nook of safety.

He was bending down to gather the wounded body in his arms, when Alison Rayne spoke in a quick, low voice behind him. "If I could do anything to help, I'd stay," she said. "But I'd only add to your responsibilities now, and so—good-by."

"It's an ugly thing to do—taking advantage of your misfortune," she returned. "But you leave me no choice. You and Colonel Devreaux intended to drag me to the fort with you, to accuse me of I don't know what, to put me through your legal tortures, as though I were some criminal. You had no mercy. And now I—the tables have turned through no act of mine. You think I'm going to wait until you're ready to work your will with me?" Her eyes gleamed, and she shook her head rebelliously. "I'd kill myself before I'd let you do what you mean to do with me. I'd rather die."

"So be it then!" She took a step away, but the next instant turned back impulsively to face him. "I know what you think," she declared with a shudder. "You think I shot those two men in that cabin back there. I didn't—I swear I had nothing to do with that horror. But I can't prove that I didn't do it, and you—you want to prove that I did." She measured him with a tragic glance. "You won't leave Colonel Devreaux to try to hold me. You'll save your officer if you can."

She looked back and saw that he was supporting Devreaux with his left arm, while his right hand had dropped to touch the butt of his pistol. "Yes," she said. "You'll have to shoot me to stop me. Rather that than go to the fort with you." She gave a short, mirthless laugh. "But I've heard that the men of the mounted never fire first. I'll find out if it's true."

His hand left his holster, and he fixed her with a stony gaze. "You're right," he said. "We're not like your people up there who crawl and slink and pot their victims from behind. Go! Go find your friends." He smiled contemptuously, and his words fell with the sharpness of whip strokes. "Tell 'em Corporal Dexter's still alive, and advise 'em when they see him again to shoot on sight, to kill. There's no truce after this. I'm more than ever set on getting them—and you too, Alison!" He pointed with his thumb towards the mountain slope, hidden behind the welter of snow. "Meanwhile there's nothing to keep you. Why don't you go?"

A dull flush suffused her cheeks and temples, and as he spoke her lips fell tremulously apart and her open hand moved towards him in a faint gesture of appeal. "I—" she began, and stopped. She drew a harsh breath that was almost a sob, and her lashes drooped for an instant to touch her snow-wet cheeks. "Good-by!" she cried suddenly in a breaking voice. Then she walked away and the next moment had vanished in the white swirl of the storm.

CHAPTER XVIII

LODGING FOR TWO

The roar of the gale drowned all sound of departing footsteps. Two seconds after the girl had bade him farewell, Dexter had lost sight and knowledge of her. He did not call after her, or attempt to stay her flight. His first concern was for Devreaux; and with a muscular strength surprising in a man of his slender frame, he lifted the wounded officer's weighty bulk in his arms, and trudged forward in search of shelter.

With his head bowed before the freezing blast, his shoulders stooped under the burden he carried, he labored across the open ground and eventually found himself at the edge of the standing timber. The snow swept about him in flying vortices, pelting his face like bird shot, blinding his eyes and robbing him of breath. The trees on the mountain slope swayed and writhed like living things before the fury of the blizzard, and he could hear the splinter and crash of rotted limbs wrested from their trunks. Heedless of the danger of falling boughs, he stumbled, panting, into the dense timber, and started to climb the gullied slope, seeking with storm-blurred sight for any barricaded nook that could serve as a temporary haven of refuge.

At the best he hoped for no more than the lee side of a windfall, or else a fissure among the rocks that could be roofed over with a thatching of branches. He did not dream that the fates might deal more kindly with him. But as he struggled up the steep slope, through a thick fir coppice, he chanced to notice a peculiar, smooth-sided hole in the snow crust above him. It was a small opening, scarcely large enough to admit a man's hand, but with his first glance he halted, stared incredulously for an instant, and then, with a grim tightening of his lips, he lowered Devreaux's body to the ground, and climbed upward to investigate.

Pressing his face to the aperture, he was conscious of a rank, furry scent that a bear hunter could never fail to identify. He laughed softly under his breath. For once fortune had dealt munificently with him. Chance had led him to the winter den of a hibernating bear, and in his desperate extremity he was ready to contest possession with its owner.

The popular belief that bears lie torpid in winter is a fallacy, as Dexter knew only too well. A grizzly will hole-up with the first frosts, living on his own fat during the famine time of cold, dozing and sleeping through the short days and long freezing nights. If left undisturbed in his chosen nook, he will nap in sluggish contentment until spring comes around; but there is nothing trancelike about his sleep. His nose and ears are always cocked towards the entrance of his snug retreat, and at the sound or scent of intrusion he will arouse instantly, with every savage instinct alert and primed for battle. A man who intrudes on a hibernating silver-tip takes his life in his hands. The corporal was aware of the penalty he might have to pay for rashness, but the thought of holding back now did not occur to him. He must get Devreaux under cover, and for the sake of a stricken comrade he would not scruple to fight for a den with a grizzly bear.

From a fallen tree near by he broke off a pitch knot to use as a torch. Then, without giving himself time for reflection, he climbed the embankment again and started deliberately to enlarge the breathing hole that had been thawed through the snow.

As quietly as possible, he broke out chunks of the frozen crust, and in a couple of minutes had uncovered a low, tunneled opening that ran back in darkness, somewhere among the rocks. Before him lay a cavern of some sort that time and weather had hollowed under the pitch of the mountainside. How far it extended he could not guess, but the entrance would admit his body if he stooped low, and he knew that where a grizzly had gone, a man could follow.

He knelt for a space, listening, and fancied that he felt the rhythm of slow, heavy breathing in fetid gloom beyond. With hand steadied by enforced calmness, he struck a match and ignited his torch. The resinous wood took fire almost at once, burning with a sputtering, smoky flame. He whipped the brand about his head to assure himself that it was not likely to flicker out, and then drew his heavy service pistol and started forward into the tunnel.

Crouching, he advanced in the cramped passageway, but he had taken no more than three steps, when he was aware of a sudden heaving movement in front of him. The next instant the silence was broken by a loud snorting whoof, and as he peered into the warm, rancid darkness, he caught sight of two greenish sparks—lambent points of flame, that he knew were a pair of glaring eyes.

His first shot might be his last, and he leveled his pistol point-blank at one of the glittering marks, aiming with great care and pulling the trigger with slow, even pressure.

With the battering explosion in his ears, he was conscious of a shadowy bulk heaving up before him, and then the walls of the cave seemed to tremble before a terrible, hot-breathed roar that reverberated in his brain like a thunder clap. He felt a surging movement in the darkness, and jerked his head back just in time to save his face from the mangling stroke of a steel-hooked paw that batted the air with a ton-weight of fury behind it.

Through the reek of smoke he still saw the flaming eyes, and he poked forward the pistol at full stretch and once more fired. Again and again the red streak of flame spouted from the muzzle of his weapon, and the rapid concussions crashed back and forth in his head, buffeting his senses as a swimmer is buffeted by the surf. The noise and confusion, the suffocating powder fumes filling his nostrils and lungs began after a moment to overcloud his faculties, leaving him only the subconscious will and determination to keep on shooting. His finger was working automatically on the trigger, sending bullet after bullet into the looming bulk before him.

But after wild and tumultuous moments, his mind suddenly awakened to the knowledge of a great stillness that had fallen about him, and all at once he realized that he was pulling the trigger vainly on an empty magazine. The pistol dropped from his nerveless fingers, and he peered vacuously into obscurity, expecting each instant to feel the lightning shock of death.

He waited for a second in benumbed resignation, but nothing happened. As he blinked his eyes, trying to see, he heard a moaning sound, like an uncanny human voice, and then his ears caught a faint trickle and gurgle that might have come from a hidden rivulet of water.

An unaccountable fit of trembling seized him, and for seconds he found it difficult to keep the torch in his hand. But he managed to swing forward his smoldering light, and in the dim illumination he made out a huge, shapeless mass of fur sprawled on the red-stained rocks.

With extreme caution he crept forward and looked down upon the matted head of an enormous silvertip bear. The lips of the beast were drawn back in a snarl over the ugly yellow teeth, but the eyes had both disappeared, and a stream of blood ran out from the piglike snout. Dexter thrust the end of his torch against the wet muzzle, and not a tremor of life passed through the tumbled carcass.

For seconds the man crouched motionless, staring at the grotesque heap before him. And with his feeling of relief there came also a certain sense of regret and shame. The bear had found the den first, and by every law of right and justice he was entitled to sleep there unmolested. But for the intruders life had been stripped to primitive necessity. To live meant to kill.

The corporal held his torch aloft and saw that the cavern opened farther back into the mountain, forming a roomy and sheltered retreat. If need be, a man might safely spend the winter there. He nodded in grim satisfaction. By killing the bear he had obtained at a stroke the very essentials of existence—meat, blankets, a lodging-place.

Dexter stripped off his jacket and fanned the powder smoke out of the cabin entrance; and as soon as the air was fit to breathe he went outside for Devreaux.

He picked up the wounded man, lugging him into the cave, and pillowed his head on the warm, shaggy body of the dead bear. Then he made his preparations for a dreaded undertaking.

Building a fire in the cavern entrance, he set snow to melt in the colonel's camp kettle. From his own emergency case he brought forth a tourniquet, forceps and a small, whetted knife. He boiled the instruments in a strong bichloride solution, scrubbed his hands and forearms in the same steaming fluid, pared his nails to the quick, and then stripped off the wounded man's jacket and undergarments, and set silently to work.

Men who dwell in the wilderness are forced to do all things for themselves, without expert help or advice. The troopers of the royal police are expected to acquire a rough and ready knowledge of surgery, but Dexter was not at all confident that his skill was equal to the present emergency. But his comrade did not have a chance of surviving with a bullet in his lungs, and so he steeled himself to the ordeal and went ahead with a task that had to be done.

For nearly a half hour Dexter labored over the stricken man under the ghastly flicker of a pitch torch, stuck in a crack of the cave wall. Devreaux regained consciousness, and fainted, and revived again; but never once during those dreadful moments did he move or flinch, and not one cry was wrung from his ashen, stern-set lips. Dexter was cool and self-contained when he began his work; when he finally finished his features were contracted in drawn and haggard lines, his forehead was dank and wet, and every nerve was aquiver. But he stood up with a red bullet clutched in his fingers, persuaded that Devreaux at least had a fighting chance for life.

The wounded man mercifully had fallen into a stupor at the last. Dexter looked questioningly for a moment at the twisted, pain-racked body on the rock floor; then he unstrapped a blanket roll and laid a covering over the unconscious figure. The colonel's discarded jacket was lying near by, and he picked it up as an afterthought to spread over the blanket. By accident he held the garment upside down, and a bundle of loose papers fell from one of the pockets and scattered over the ground.

As soon as he had placed the tunic over the sleeping man's shoulders, he stooped to gather up the papers. They were official reports, he noticed, with a few stray newspaper cuttings among them. He was shuffling the bundle together, when his attention was caught by a half tone newspaper photograph that accompanied the printed matter of one of the clippings.

The photograph was of a boy, a pleasant-faced, dreamy-eyed youth of eighteen or nineteen years; and as the corporal examined the likeness under the flaring torch, his lips puckered suddenly in a soundless whistle of astonishment. There was no mistaking the features: it was the face of the boy he had left that morning in the lonely cabin on the farther side of the valley. As he stared at the print the headlines that went with the photograph seemed to leap forward to meet his startled gaze. Inked across the top of the clipping in remorseless black type, the caption read:

With brows bent in almost painful concentration Dexter perused the appended account, and as he read his lips pressed hard against his teeth and a look of sadness crept into his somber eyes. The story told of a rich retired merchant of Detroit, Michigan, Oscar Preston, who adopted and brought up a nephew and niece as his own children. In a recent slight illness the uncle had unaccountably died, and on investigation it was discovered that a slow poison had been administered in the medicines he had taken. The physician in attendance had filed charges of a capital crime against the nephew, claiming to have proof that the young man had deliberately killed his uncle for the sake of the inheritance. But when the police showed up with a warrant of arrest, the nephew had vanished, and his pretty twenty-year-old sister apparently had fled with him. The boy's name was Archibald Smith Preston; the girl's, Anne Alison Rayne Preston.

Dexter sighed deeply as he finished reading the story. For a space he stood motionless, his brow darkened in brooding thought, his listless fingers folding and refolding the edge of the clipped newspaper. Alison! He need wonder no longer over the incongruous circumstances of fate that had forced this attractive, delicately nurtured girl to rove as a forest vagabond in the terrible northland. The boy in the cabin yonder, who denied knowing her, was her brother. And like "Pink" Crill, they were hunted fugitives, wanted by the law for a capital offense.

Dexter found it hard indeed to think evil of the clear blue eyes that had met his eyes a while before with such seeming honesty and frankness. But he could not question the fact that Alison must be the girl referred to in the newspaper, as likewise he could not deny or explain away her presence at the cabin of murder in the lower valley. The news story did not actually accuse her of complicity in her brother's crime, but to the reasoning mind of the policeman her flight under such circumstances amounted virtually to a confession of guilt. And knowing what he now knew, his remorseless duty imposed upon him a double obligation to find her again and force her to answer the law's solemn accounting.

As he listened to the shrieking of the wind outside, there came to him a mental vision of her, struggling and fighting her way against the storm; and the thought occurred to him that perhaps it might be for the best if the clean, white death of the snows should overtake her—better for her and for him. To stumble on the little huddled figure, frozen in the drift, would be a tragic finding; but then, at least, he would not be called upon to go through with a business that it would take all of his stoic resolution to face.

He folded the newspaper clipping, and, without realizing what he was doing, thrust it into the pocket of his own tunic. Then, with heavy steps, he moved back to the mouth of the cave to look out into the gathering twilight. The temperature was falling rapidly, and the wind had risen to a gale. Driving gusts of snow obscured the landscape. He gazed through a seething haze towards the mountain slopes above, and shivered as though with a sudden chill. Somewhere off there were Alison and Crill, and the men who had shot Devreaux: wandering through the snow in search of shelter. Their situation was unenviable; but as he bowed his head before an icy gust that swept the mouth of the cave, he reminded himself that his own lot was not much better.

The new fallen snow was beginning to bank up in great drifts. A few more hours would see the passes blocked, and all communication would be shut off from the outside world. He was trapped for the winter—snowbound in a lonely valley of the mountains with a band of criminals whom he was hunting, and who in turn had taken to hunting him. His rifle and pack were lost, he lacked supplies and adequate clothing; his comrade was wounded, probably dying. And he knew that if his enemies survived the blizzard they would seek out his hiding place, to finish him too, if they could.

CHAPTER XIX

THE HONOR OF THE SERVICE

While the storm raged over the mountains Dexter was confined in his cave for three days and nights, watching over a man who slumbered on the shadowy borderline of death. He performed the herculean task of skinning and dismembering his bear, and hanging out great haunches of meat to refrigerate in the below-zero cold. Also he contrived to gather enough downwood to keep a small fire going in the entrance of the cavern. Otherwise he could do nothing but sit in brooding loneliness, listening to the faint, irregular breathing of his companion, waiting for the blizzard to abate.

On the morning of the fourth day he tumbled out through the drift that choked his front passage, to find the sun shining down on a frozen world of dazzling whiteness. The wind had died during the night, and a silence of utter desolation had fallen upon the earth. The trees of the forest stood motionless, with drooping, over-weighted branches. A vast blanket of white smoothed and soothed the rugged landscape. He listened, and gazed about him, and nowhere was there sound or stir of life. Yesterday's slate had been wiped clean: all trails were buried deep under the winter's snow.

Dexter stared off across the dreary wastes, blinking owlishly under the scintillating sun, feeling an awed sense of lonesomeness and littleness, such as the last survivor of the world's final cataclysm may some day feel. What had become of the men who crossed that direction he did not know. He could not guess where Alison was. Perhaps all had perished in the storm. He shook his head in gentle melancholy. At present there was no way of finding out what had happened, and it was futile to speculate.

As far as he himself was concerned, he tried to think that he ought to be grateful. He was alive and in health, and his own trail had been erased by the storm. He was housed for the winter, and so long as he did not wander far abroad, nobody could track him to his place of concealment. If his enemies were still alive, they too were imprisoned in the mountain-walled valley, and there would be no escape for any one before the spring thaws set in. Outnumbered and outgunned as he was, he still nursed a dogged determination to hunt these men down. He would have to take them one by one, and in cool self-assurance he believed somehow that he might manage. But there was no hurry. He would not know what to do with prisoners now, if he caught them; and he could not leave Devreaux. He would keep out of sight for the present, biding his time, waiting for spring and the opening of the trails.

Meanwhile Dexter faced months of appalling hardship. The ordinary backwoods settler, owning his cabin and tools and provision store, nevertheless must toil and struggle heroically to exist through the cruel northland winters. But the most destitute of settlers had an easy job compared to the labors that Dexter was called upon to undertake. Knowing that two lives were dependent upon his efforts, however, he went about his work with cheerful energy.

First of all, wood had to be cut—enormous stacks of it—to meet the hungry demands of a fire that must not be allowed to go out. While the weather hardened and the new snows piled up, he went into the nearby timber, day after day and week after week, chopping great logs with an absurd little pocket ax—chopping for hours at a stretch, until somehow he would get to thinking of the ax handle as just another numb, half-frozen member of his body. Between his wood gathering forays he found time somehow to make and set traps and snares for hare, ptarmigan, lynx and a gluttonous wolverine that raided his larder nights; to cure pelts, and manufacture moccasins and clothing and blankets and snowshoes; to cook and sweep, to render bear fat for lard and candles, and leach lye for soap; to bathe and shave and keep up at any cost the pretext that he was still a respectable member of society. And Devreaux needed constant, devoted care.

For more than three weeks the wounded man lay in the coma of darkness, an inert, senseless human bulk, whom death had claimed, and who did not die. And day and night the corporal kept his untiring vigil, and fought the powers of fate for his comrade's life.

The days grew shorter and shorter, and November's cold gripped the earth tighter and tighter, like locking fetters of steel. And still the spark smoldered in the stricken man's body. There came a night at last when Dexter, stooping to force a spoonful of broth between his patient's teeth, was suddenly aware that the sunken eyes had opened to look at him with a feeble light of intelligence.

"Not yet, David?" A whimsical smile flickered upon Devreaux's lips. "Tough on you. Old ram too stubborn to quit. How long now?"

"You looking after me all that time. Thanks." Devreaux surveyed his companion with misty gaze. "You all right?"

"Pull me through if you can," said the colonel with failing breath. "I'd like to last now to—to meet the man who—shot—" his voice faltered, faded away, his eyelids closed, and he slipped back gently into oblivion. But this time his unconsciousness was not like a stupor. He was asleep.

November passed, and December came in with snow and more snow, with a frigid breath that froze the surface crust as hard and solid as stone. Devreaux slumbered on with only brief and fitful awakenings, day after day, and night after night: his body and spirit wearied to utter exhaustion, needing the recuperating balm of sleep. And while he slept the beat of his pulse slowly strengthened, and his breathing gradually lost its wheezing sound. He had weathered the crisis, and by almost imperceptible degrees the throb of life was renewing. Dexter hovered over him constantly, watching and hoping, with the grateful, awed feeling of a man who has been permitted to help work a miracle.

The colonel was on the road of convalescence, but otherwise life was not pleasant for the tenants of the bear den under Saddle Mountain. The fearful storms of the holiday season swept down upon them in howling fury. Dexter had kept track of the days with charcoal marks on the cavern wall. Christmas was only a week away. His gaunt, frost-bitten features twisted into a grin as he thought of Christmas. Their salt, pepper, baking powder and tea had been used up weeks ago; the flour was out long since, likewise the bacon and sugar; his stock of matches was running low. Hares were becoming scarce, and wary, and there hadn't been a ptarmigan around that direction in a month. As for bear meat, he felt certain that the very next rich, black, savory bear steak he tried to eat surely would choke him.

Thanks to a habit of absent-mindedness, he still had plenty of tobacco. Usually when it occurred to him that it was time to smoke, he would find his pipe bowl filled with the tobacco that he had forgotten to light the last time; and when he started to reach for an ember from the fire, as likely as not he would get to thinking about something else and shove the pipe heedlessly back into his pocket again. It was a satisfaction to know that his pouch still held a winter's supply of tobacco; but his craving for a change from bear diet was becoming an obsession that gave him no rest. Finally, one day, he left Devreaux asleep and snowshoed several miles farther up the valley looking for anything he could find, except grizzlies. And to his intense joy he stumbled upon a winter deer yard.

There are only two varieties of meat that the human digestion can tolerate for breakfast, dinner and supper, day after day and week after week: beef and venison. Dexter trimmed the branches from a springy sapling, devised a rude block and tackle to bend the tough stem to the ground, and whittled a trigger and made a hangman's noose of rawhide. He baited his evil contraption with lily bulbs, chopped with great labor from under the ice of a near-by pond; and the next morning he owned the strangled carcass of a mule deer buck, which he skinned and quartered, and lugged by sections to the cave.

That night there was something like contentment in the stuffy hole where two members of the royal mounted dwelt. The unusual odors from the cooking fire aroused the colonel to one of his short spells of wakefulness, and he watched the supper preparations with famishing eyes.

"Any sign of our neighbors?" he asked as Dexter filled him a plate of steaming venison soup.

Dexter shook his head. "Since that afternoon I have not seen or heard of—of anybody."

"I seem to remember your telling me that the girl—Alison, wasn't it?—walked out on you."

"She—perhaps she didn't get through that night." Dexter had found a seat on a log, and as he spoke he settled his chin in the palm of his hand and stared vacantly into the fire. "I've been wondering—a lot—lately."

Devreaux eyed him for a moment with a curious, sidewise glance. "She reminds me of a girl I once knew," he said after a pause of constraint.

"I was a constable in those days," went on the superintendent—"a swaggering youngster in a proud uniform. The girl was so pretty you felt breathless just from looking at her. I can see her even now, without half trying, as she used to sit near me at camp fires that have been cold for forty years.

"Her father was wanted for a border robbery," the colonel resumed as Dexter sat silent, watching the flames, "and she was supposed to have helped him. My inspector sent me after them, and I rounded them up in a corner of Northern Ontario.

"During the weeks of the back trip," Devreaux pursued, "that girl worked on me with those innocent eyes of hers, and I soon found myself trying to think that we had made a dreadful mistake. And because I wanted to, I soon was thinking so. I got so I would have staked my life on that girl. She told me she was guiltless, and begged me to let her go." The old officer's jaw muscles hardened as he smiled his granite smile, "Now you're the only man besides myself who knows how near a police constable once came to betraying his trust.

"Do you know what saved me, corporal? My uniform was too tight in the back." Devreaux nodded soberly. "Nothing but that. I couldn't move or breathe without remembering the tunic I wore. In my moments of weakening that tunic somehow would tug at my back. I believed in that girl, but also I passionately believed in the Royal North-West Mounted Police. And so I escorted my prisoners to the fort, and my heart was breaking when the inspector returned my salute and told me that some day I might make a good policeman.

"As it turned out," Devreaux added, and deliberately refrained from looking at his companion, "this girl was all wrong—thoroughly no account—not worth wasting a thought on. Yet I think about her sometimes, because it was through her that I lost a lot of fine boyish illusions. And there was another thing I almost lost, but didn't quite: the thing that generations of us will go on to the last man and the last breath fighting for: the honor of the service."

A deep silence settled in the cavern as the superintendent broke off his low, monotones of speech. Dexter sat quietly, his spare body hunched over the fire, gazing into vacancy. But at length he stirred on his log, and abruptly turned, and squarely met his officer's eyes. "You didn't need to tell me this," he said.

"The one romance of my life," remarked the colonel, his voice tinged with something akin to embarrassment. "I just happened to be reminded of it."

"A homily for young policemen." Dexter laughed harshly, and then suddenly stood up, and from his pocket he produced a dog-eared newspaper clipping. "This fell from among your papers," he said. "Have you ever read it?"

"I have a scrapbook at the fort in which I file away items of general police interest," observed Devreaux. "I must have clipped this before I left the fort, and lacked the time to paste it up."

While Dexter held the candle near, he ran his glance through the paragraph of type.

"Hum!" mused the superintendent, handing back the clipping. "I thought I remembered that name from somewhere, but didn't quite place it." He suddenly shrugged his shoulders. "Well! There we are!" His gnarled fingers strayed forward to rest lightly for an instant on his companion's sleeve. "You never can tell about 'em, David."

Dexter started to reply, but checked himself with tight-shutting teeth. He turned, and with precise care, arranged a couple of logs on the fire. Then, without a word, he stepped outside the cave, to stand bareheaded in the night, watching the play of auroral lights upon the frigid reaches of the northern horizon.

CHAPTER XX

WHEN SPRING CAME BACK

Through January and February the temperature fell lower and lower, and winter, like a white, constricting monster, bound the forest country in tighter embrace. The gray specter of famine walked through the wilderness, reaching here and there and everywhere with a blighting touch of death, threatening at the last to take off the surviving creatures of the coverts and runways, that still tried so hard to live. March came with high winds, with clear sunny days and nights that crackled under the frosty stars. The two policemen continued to live in their cave, and while Dexter grew thin and gaunt with the privations of the passing months, the convalescent Devreaux, astonishingly, began to pick up in weight and strength.

The sun swung gradually northward, and the silvery pale rays changed to gold; for a few minutes at noon-day a faint warmth might be felt, and water dripped from the snow-laden trees. In a short while the thick ground crust would drop in, and after that release from the frozen bonds of winter would come swiftly.

It was the season of avalanches. The snow piled on the higher mountain peaks was beginning to soften and settle; and sometimes the overweighted masses would slip loose and start for the lower valleys, picking up more snow and ice chunks and bowlders, gaining in momentum and size until great trees were snapped off like match sticks; and all was carried to the bottom in a rush of sound that shook the mountainsides. Dexter was often awakened nights by the dreaded thunder of a timber wreck, and knew that somewhere a forested slope had been suddenly razed as bare as his own clean-shaven jaw.

By every sign and sound the inmates of the Saddle Mountain cave knew that spring was at hand. "The travelways will be open in a few more weeks," Devreaux remarked one morning as he peered out from the cavern mouth. "If our fellow sojourners are still alive they'll soon be hitting for the outlet—north."

"I've been puzzling over the singular events of last fall," said Dexter, "and I can think of but one explanation. There are at least three fugitives from the country below—as far as we know there may be more—desperate groups who suddenly bob up in a far-off valley of the wilderness. It isn't likely that they all just happened to drop in like that; it's too much like deliberate planning. I shouldn't be at all surprised to discover that we've stumbled upon a sort of 'underground railroad'—a chain of settlers and trappers reaching clear through the woods, banded together in a scheme to help people who, for one reason or another, must flee from the States."

"Passing 'em from hand to hand," Devreaux cut in with quickening interest. "Run 'em across country to one of the lonely fiords along the northwest coast, where a yacht or tramp steamer could put in undetected, and cruise off for the Orient, say, with a passenger list of folks who have said ta-ta to the police back home." He nodded with growing conviction. "It wouldn't astonish me if that is exactly what is being done."

"Profitable scheme for a man who organized the business properly," observed Dexter. "All he would have to do would be to establish his chain of way stations—cabins and shacks of so-called trappers. Agents in the states to dicker with people who needed such help, and were willing to pay. And they'd pay heavy. Take Crill: he probably couldn't find his way two miles through the forest without a guide. He'll be hanged in the Cook County jail, if he's caught. You can imagine what he'd give to an organization that promised to escort him to safety: ten, fifty thousand dollars—any sum he could scrape together!"

"Assuming that you may have guessed the truth," mused the superintendent, "we accidentally derailed the train. To settle with us they were delayed a few precious days, and the snows came and hung 'em up here for the winter."

"If I've anything to say about it," said Dexter with outthrust jaw, "the train's going into another ditch this spring."

"They're too many for you, corporal, and you haven't even a rifle." Devreaux studied the fire for a moment with scowling face. "I'll tell you," he said at length. "There's only one thing to do. It'll be hot weather before this lung of mine is equal to heavy breathing. You'll have to work alone, I'm afraid. If I were you, the minute mountain travel is possible, I'd make for the north pass, and hide in the neighborhood. When the gang comes along, as they undoubtedly will, pick up the trail, but don't show yourself. Our men from the fort are bound to come to hunt for me as soon as they can get through the mountains. I'll make my way by easy stages to the lower pass, and meet them. Meanwhile, you blaze your path behind you, and it shouldn't be long before you have a squad of Mounties trailing by forced marches to your help."

Dexter considered for a moment, and nodded a tentative agreement. "We'll put it over somehow—when the time comes," he said.

By the middle of March the colonel was able to shed his bearskin robes and sit up by the fire, and he even essayed a few tottering steps about the cave. He could attend the fire now, or defend himself in case of an unexpected attack, and Dexter one morning decided that he might safely leave his patient alone for a day or two, while he made the trip to the lower valley to recover the packs of provisions that Devreaux and Constable Graves had cached there the previous fall.

The colonel, who had grown very weary of a diet of meat straight, readily assented to the plan; so the corporal lashed on his snowshoes and set forth on a long and difficult journey.

The surface crust had fallen through on the exposed hillsides, and wet sticky snow clogged the racket webs, making each footstep a dragging effort; but the corporal broke out his toilsome trail down the length of the valley, and by nightfall had sighted the landmarks that led him to the place where the packs were buried. He tied up a bundle of the priceless luxuries he found—evaporated fruits, tea, coffee, sugar, flour—as much as he could carry on his back. That night he fed himself to repletion, and bivouacked until morning in the lee of a thicket that hid the glow of his tiny camp fire. Before daylight he was on his feet again, tramping north in the frosty dawn.

His course led him up along the banks of a small ice-bound brook that twisted through gulley and gorge, in the shadow of towering mountains. He swung along with a steady crunching of snowshoes, feeling a tingle of spring in the air, breathing deeply, almost with elation, his keen gray eyes busy everywhere, taking in the multifarious signs of life awakening. Wherever he looked he saw the tracks of feet—pads and claws; and birds were darting among the thickets. All the forest creatures that had weathered the winter, were out that morning looking for a meal. As Dexter strode onward, curiously watching the runways, he came to the mouth of a dry gulley that sloped up the steep mountainside; and in snow underfoot he saw a mark that halted him as abruptly as a battery shock. It was the print of a man's boot.

The track was freshly made. It was a peculiarly shaped pattern of sole—long and narrow—and as the corporal stooped, staring, he recalled the afternoon on the Saddle Mountain plateau, when Devreaux was shot. The trail he failed to follow that day! Those old prints were identical in outline with this mark, newly tramped in the snow; and he knew that the man who had just passed this place could be none other than "Pink" Crill.

Strange metallic lights gleamed in Dexter's eyes as he surveyed the ground about him. The man had been there only a few minutes before, apparently. He had sat on a fallen log and taken off his snowshoes—probably to rest a pair of sore feet. And then he had tied on his rackets again, and had gone scuffling off up the gulley.

So Crill was alive, prowling through the forest once more. Dexter drew a full breath, and had any one been present to observe the look of satisfaction in his face, it might almost have been supposed that he had stumbled on the tracks of a long-lost friend. He inspected the mechanism of a pistol that had not left its holster in months, and then, with the buoyant step of a man who returns to business after fretting confinement, he started to follow.

The trail led through a clump of giant spruces that choked the mouth of the gulley. Dexter pushed upward through the timber, and presently the heavier growths thinned out, and he gained an unobstructed view of the steep slopes above him. He was standing in a chasm-like fissure, deep, rockwalled, thirty or forty feet in width, which extended on upward in a jagged, crooked course, halfway to the frowning crest of the mountain.

As he gazed towards the heights he caught a movement at the farther end of the crevice, and saw a man climb out of the draw to the bare snow-field that pitched downward sharply from the lofty ridge above. The distance was too great for actual identification, but Dexter was certain that the climber must be Crill.

The man had started to mount the slope, but after his first balancing step or two he stopped, and for some reason decided to look down behind him. And by the sudden tensing attitude of his body, Dexter knew that he had seen his pursuer.

For a second or two the figure remained motionless, gazing down the long fissure. Then, abruptly, the man straightened and turned to wave his arm frantically, as though he were trying to attract the attention of some one on the upper ridge.

Dexter cast a wary glance towards the distant heights. Several hundred yards above him the ridge of the mountain loomed in stark white outline against the glaring sky; and at the topmost point a faint bluish shadow marked the position of an overhanging drift—a formation known as a "snow cornice"—dreaded by mountaineers.

With a sudden feeling of disquiet, Dexter shaded his eyes to survey the upper ridge; and all at once he made out a tiny figure standing erect and sentinel-like, clearly outlined against the limpid horizon. As he looked, a second figure hove into view—a third: three human shapes—men!

The climber on the middle slope was waving one hand, and pointing down the gulley with the other. Dexter had the unpleasant knowledge that the group on the ridge had caught sight of him. In the moment of his hesitation he saw one of the small figures leave the others and move cautiously towards the edge of the snow cornice. And then, as he peered upward, his eyes widened in horrified comprehension. The man had a stick or a rifle in his hands, and he was bending forward, apparently prying at the overhanging drift. The mass of snow, almost loosened by its own soggy weight, was ready to break off at the slightest touch.

Dexter saw the shadow disappear as the cornice gave way; saw a flash of white, a spurting cloud of snow. And as he turned ignominiously to flee for his life, he heard a crash from the ridge top, and then the gathering roar of an avalanche that descended the slope behind him.

CHAPTER XXI

PATH OF THE AVALANCHE

The walls of the gulley hemmed Dexter in on two sides, and he saw at a glance that it would be foolish to try to climb out of the trap into which he had blundered. Either he must gain the lower exit in time to fling himself from the path of onrushing death, or else go down, crushed and buried, under hurtling tons of ice and snow and shattered tree trunks. A single misstep, a fraction of a second lost, and his one slender chance was forfeit. He went down the steep pitch of the gulley with snowshoes creaking, fairly hissing in the snow, gliding when he could, taking obstacles with flying leaps, as a ski jumper covers the ground, throwing himself bodily towards the mouth of the chasm. But fast as he traveled, the avalanche came faster behind him.

From the first rumbling crash the sound grew thunderous, and then rapidly gained volume beyond all sense of hearing. The mountainsides reverberated and he could feel the earth shake and tremble underfoot. Once he dared to glance over his shoulder, and from the tail of his eye he saw a mass of snow and rocks and gyrating trees, all mixed up in a white cloud and pouring down upon him like foam in a waterfall. And he ran faster than he ever thought he could run.

He was among the spruces, with the brook in sight, and he plunged on between the trunks like a dodging rabbit. Twelve yards—six—three long strides needed to reach the mouth of the gulley: he strained onward in his final spurt. But the snowslide was almost upon him. The clump of sturdy spruces might have been so much wheat straw standing in the way of the scythe. The impact was like a hundred freight trains in head-on collision. Branches swayed and tossed overhead; great trunks splintered, snapped, and went down in scrambled wreckage.

Dexter took a last leap, passed the mouth of the fissure, whirling out beyond a jutting corner of rock. But as his foot touched ground, irresistible forces caught him from behind. He felt himself lifted, hurled through the air, flung aside. And masses of rock and snow and trees poured past him, out of the gulley, across the creek—and hit the slope on the other side. For seconds afterwards the earth quivered as an organ pipe vibrates with the undernotes of a deep bass chord. Then an unbelievable silence closed over the valley.

And from out of the silence Dexter's mind returned to troubled wakefulness, and struggled slowly to think about things. It gave him a queer sensation to find himself alive and able to see about him with his dim, distorted vision. But he could look, and move his head a little, and try to puzzle it all out.

A ship's cargo of debris had been dumped across the creek and all about were the butts of uprooted trees, sticking out funny directions, like things in a pin cushion. He was partly buried under a drift, and there was snow beneath his shirt collar. His shoulders were flat on the ground and the lower part of his body was twisted around in an uncomfortable posture, but somehow he felt no inclination to get up.

For a while he lay quiet, blinking up at the serene, cloudless sky. Gradually his senses began to clear. He was aware now of a dull, aching feeling in his right shoulder. The fog was lifting from his brain; he remembered what had happened to him. And all at once the pain in his shoulder became a hot, excruciating torment. He shifted his position slightly, and heard a harsh grating sound. Bones were broken somewhere, he realized.

Curiously he tried to lift his arm, and the muscles would not respond. Arm or shoulder broken, he decided. He strained forward to sit up, and was surprised to discover he could not raise himself. A weight seemed to hold him down. He experimented with his left arm, and found he could use it. He groped across his chest, and his fingers scuffed on the rough bark of a tree trunk. Then he knew what was wrong. A falling tree had caught him on the edge of the timber wreck, throwing him to one side, and then dropping across him. And the tree now lay upon his shoulder—a crushing weight that he could not budge or squirm from under. He strained in desperation for a moment, but it was no use, and he relaxed with a gasp. The tree pinned him to the ground, and he resigned himself to the fatal knowledge that no effort of his own could free him. He lay helpless, at the mercy of men who had sent an avalanche upon him.

As long as he remained quiet the pain in his shoulder was endurable, and there was nothing to be done but take it easy and wait. And he was not long kept in suspense. In a few minutes he heard voices talking, a squeak and crunch of snowshoes, and presently a file of men hove into view on the mountain slope. He twisted his head back and surveyed the approaching group with something of the detached curiosity a man on a gallows might feel concerning the physiognomy of his executioner.

There were four men in the party, and he was not greatly surprised to discover that he knew three of them by sight. First came Crill, sleek and fat as ever, his face glowing pink from his exertions, shuffling awkwardly on his snowshoes, his thick lips sagging in evil-grinning triumph as he advanced. Next in the file appeared 'Phonse Doucet, Jess Mudgett's accomplice in the assault on the Crooked Forks storekeeper, whose warrant of arrest the corporal still carried; a morose and murderous half-breed, given to drunkenness and ugly bluster; a Hercules of a man, capable of breaking an ax-helve between his hands; a brawler and maimer, who held an unsavory reputation for jumping his victims from behind. The third member of the party, an undersized, wizened, beetle-browed man, Dexter identified as a forest skulker and petty scamp, Norbert Croix by name. Croix would sometimes show himself furtively at Crooked Forks, only to slink mysteriously back into the woods again. He was known to be a hanger-on around Indian encampments, and was suspected of whiskey peddling, and of trap line thieving. But his misdemeanors were cautiously undertaken, and it was not generally believed that he held an ounce of real danger in his shrunken make-up.

Dexter surveyed the trio, and his lips drew downward contemptuously. A well chosen and congenial crew they were indeed, conscienceless, treacherous, lawless, with almost every crime of the calendar chalked to their account; there was not a scrap of genuine courage in the lot. He was convinced that the three of them together would never have faced him in clean, open combat, with weapons in their hands. They found him helpless now, and he knew why they were trailing down the mountainside towards him. But as a life of constant danger had robbed death of its strangeness, so he no longer feared death; and he could assure himself honestly and thankfully that men such as these did not have it in their power to make him afraid.

As he watched the approaching party the corporal's glance strayed towards the fourth member, the man who sauntered in the rear. This one he had never seen before. The stranger was short in stature and slight in build, a clean-shaven, dark-visaged man, who, even in his heavy, ill-fitting suit of Mackinaws, bore himself with an air of distinction and grace. There was something adequate and self-possessed in his easy stride, and Dexter guessed instinctively that he was the only one of the four who would have dared to creep to the brink of a snow cornice and set off an avalanche. The corporal was certain that the stranger was the man with whom he must hold the final reckoning. But it was Crill who first reached the bottom of the mountain slope.

The Chicago outlaw slouched forward to stand over the defenseless policeman, his leering eyes hard and lusterless as frosted glass. He stared gloatingly for a second, and then launched into a stream of abuse that poured with horrid fluency from his full red lips. His fat chin was drawn back in his collar, and he had a trick of swaying his head slowly as he spat the venom of his remarks. Dexter observed the man's pinkish, flat-topped skull, with the queer sunken hollows above the cheek bones, and was reminded more forcibly than ever of a copperhead in the act of striking.

"I bounced out a United States cop not long ago," Crill asserted as he moistened his lips in hideous anticipation, "and now I'm gonna croak one in Canada."

With a throaty laugh, he lifted his rifle. He deliberately snapped off the safety, and then, slowly aiming, he thrust the muzzle almost into Dexter's face, and started to pull the trigger.

CHAPTER XXII

THE MAN-TRAP

Held to the ground by the fallen tree trunk, Dexter could make no move in self-defense. His own pistol was buttoned in its holster, strapped to the right side of his body. His right arm was broken, and it was impossible to reach far enough over the trunk with his left hand to touch the butt of his weapon. He waited, quiet and relaxed, his eyes clear and unwavering as he gazed into the bore of a blue steel barrel, pointed exactly at the center of his forehead.

There being no help for it, he could resign himself to fate, even to the indignity of death at a murderer's hands. After all, it did not matter much how, or by whom, the act was accomplished. He at least might dignify the last moment of life by meeting it unflinchingly. Singularly, the habits of an inquisitive mind persisted even now. He found himself wondering, almost with tranquillity, what this final adventure would be like. Would he have time to see the flash of fire and to feel the shock before the great darkness engulfed him? He would know in a second or two, and he waited with a shadow of a smile on his lips, watching with wide open eyes.

Crill's finger was tightening very slowly on the trigger, as though he was purposely prolonging a moment of cruel enjoyment. But as Dexter stared upward, observing the gradual muscular contraction of the plump hand that gripped the rifle, an expert knowledge of firearms told him that another pound of pressure must discharge the weapon. The last instant had come; but as he instinctively stopped breathing, he heard a shout behind him, a commotion of rushing feet, and a human figure flung itself upon the outlaw, and struck violently at his outstretched arm.

A shattering explosion echoed across the brookside, a bullet spattered bark along the tree trunk, and the rifle spun through the air and fell into the snow near Dexter's head. Gazing upward in astonishment, the corporal saw the dark-faced stranger standing between him and his intended murderer.

Utter silence held for two or three seconds after the reverberation of the report had died. Then, with a sudden snarling sound in his throat, Crill stooped to recover his gun, and swung back savagely to confront the man who had interfered.

"You—you—" he raged in a voice that nearly choked him. "I'll lay you alongside him, you—you—" He broke off for lack of breath, and glowered hot and menacing at the small man who dared to face him.

The newcomer measured the gross bulk before him, and quietly shook his head. "Every time I look at you, Crill, you come within a hair's breadth of dying," he remarked in a mild, drawling voice. "I can't stand you. If you didn't mean ready money to me, delivered on the hoof, I'd have put a bullet through you months ago. Stand aside!"

Without pausing to note the effect of his speech, he turned to look down at Dexter. But before he found anything to say, an interruption came in the form of the giant Doucet.

The half-breed strode to the foot of the slope, and pushed forward to take part in the argument. "I teenk lak Peenk, we keel 'im. Mebby we don' shoot 'em, eh? Dan we keek an' tromp 'im, w'at?" His saturnine face wrinkled for a moment in a sinister grin, and he glanced significantly at his heavy, nail-studded boots—weapons he had used before now with frightful effect, when his victims were sprawled helplessly before him.

The slight-built stranger surveyed the huge Doucet scornfully. "My, you're brave—you and Crill!" he observed with cutting irony. "You don't fear any policeman when you've got him crushed under a tree. One wants to shoot him, and the other's going to kick him to death." He turned suavely towards his third companion. "What method do you prefer, Croix?" he asked.

"Whatever way you say's right, Mr. Stark," answered Croix with a furtive glance from one of his comrades to another.

Dexter caught the name, and looked up curiously at the mild-spoken stranger. The man was Stark—presumably the Owen Stark whom Mudgett had mentioned—who owned the trapper's cabin farther up the valley, where Alison Rayne's brother was found last fall. And it needed no more than a glance at his confident black eyes and lean resolute jaw to mark him as the controlling mind and spirit among the scamps with whom he kept company.

Stark looked at each of his companions in turn, and his mouth curved faintly in a coldly whimsical smile that somehow was more formidable in quality than Crill's venomous scowl, or Doucet's swaggering ferocity, or the evil, hangdog demeanor of Norbert Croix.

"You're a pack of rats!" said Stark. "Get away from me!" Then, indicating that the incident was closed, he turned his back on his comrades, and bent forward to face Corporal Dexter.

"You're the last of your outfit, I take it," he remarked blandly. "There were three of you. One was a young constable who got his several months ago. Then there was the old man—Colonel Devreaux, wasn't he? I'm afraid he went out too, didn't he—one stormy day last October?"

In spite of the agony of the pain that throbbed and flamed through his body, Dexter's mind was still functioning. He had not forgotten that his own back trail led to the cave where Devreaux was hiding. If he could convince these men that the colonel was dead, they probably would not bother to follow his footsteps to Saddle Mountain. "A thirty caliber bullet through the lungs will finish almost any man," he stated. "I put Devreaux away under the ground that same evening."

"Lung shot, eh?" Stark nodded with the pleased air of a man who has been paid a compliment. "Not bad marksmanship at that distance. And in that hazy atmosphere, just before the snow struck us. But I was certain I had—I knew at the time that the final shot rang the bell."

He took off his mittens, brought paper and tobacco from his pocket, and casually rolled himself a cigarette. "You chaps annoyed us a bit last fall," he pursued in a voice of gentleness. "But we forgive you." He struck a match and puffed deeply for a moment, filling his lungs with smoke. "Policemen are something that can't be helped, I suppose. But it doesn't matter." He blew a lazy stream of smoke from his nostrils. "We can go our way as though you'd never happened, now that all three of you are dead."

Again Stark smiled his faint, quizzical smile, and for the first time Dexter felt a chill of horror seeping through his veins. Of his four enemies, this was the man to be feared: and as he looked into the cool, mocking eyes above him he realized that fate would have been more merciful if Crill or Doucet had been allowed to have his way.

Still refusing to show dismay, however, the corporal met Stark's glance with seeming unconcern. "You four traveling for the north pass?" he asked after a little pause.

"Looking for information?" Stark regarded him curiously for a moment, and silently laughed. "Yes. We're working along northward. Ought to be able to break our way through the snows two or three weeks from now. As long as I'm talking to a dead man there's no harm telling." He nodded amiably, apparently amused. "If you were still a policeman, it would have interested you to know more about me. I run what you might call a touring agency for murderers, and others who have to depart fast to save their necks. This Crill here, for instance—I've guaranteed to run him out of the country." He nodded towards the pink-cheeked outlaw. "I'll put him through safely, and then I'll collect the belt of gold he wears around his fat waist."

Crill stirred uneasily, and shot a lowering glance of suspicion at his smaller companion. Stark showed his teeth in a twisted grin. "It would give me pleasure to see this one hanging," he remarked genially, "but business before pleasure is my motto. Crill is scared all the time that I'm going to knock him off and take his money ahead of time. But I don't really think I shall. Never kill a waddling goose for his belt of gold. If I let Crill live, he'll probably write to his friends from his hiding place abroad, and tell them that I played fair. I'm counting on him to recommend me to new clients. Honesty always pays when you're building up business."

As Dexter listened to the man's cynical remarks, it occurred to him that while the mood of frankness was on he might receive a truthful answer to the question that had dwelt uppermost in his thoughts through the long winter months. "What became of the girl—Miss Rayne?" he asked.

Stark eyed him slantwise for a space, and his face was furrowed for an instant with lines of mocking humor. "Oh, yes," he said, "the only one the three of you succeeded in catching. A girl! And even she got away from you."

"We haven't seen her all winter," answered Stark with a shrug of unconcern. "Maybe she got through the storm, and found shelter somewhere. Maybe she didn't. Perhaps she is dead." He laughed unpleasantly. "Crill saw her that afternoon, and like you he's been worrying about her. Wanted to go hunt for her. Rut I wouldn't let him out of my sight. I'm keeping my eyes on that belt of money."

Dexter's stoical mask had left him for a moment, and the intensity of his mental torment was revealed in his drawn features. Stark grinned at him tauntingly. "If she's dead you'll meet her shortly," he remarked; and then he turned abruptly to face his companions.

"As for the three of you," he observed, "you're a bunch of half-wits. Not one of you has brains enough to think ahead of the moment. Suppose this man were left here with a bullet in him or the marks of hobnails on him? Other policemen will be in here as soon as the way is open, and if they found him like that, they'd go after us like a pack of wolves.

"As it stands now," he pursued quietly, "nobody's had a chance to find out much about us. Of the three policemen who came into this country last fall, two are out of sight under the ground, and they'll probably never be found. As for the third, we're going to make certain that he doesn't bear evidence against us."

"Yeh!" interrupted Crill with a surly stare. "But what's to stop us planting this one too?"

"Nothing," returned Stark in his genial drawl. "Only in my opinion it's better to leave one of them to be found, apparently the victim of a timber wreck. Such accidents often happen in these mountains. If the police discover one of their three men laid out like this, they're apt to think that the hazards of winter travel took off the other two as well. They'll search around a while, and then give it up, figuring probably that all three have perished by accident. And nobody can blame us." He glanced down coolly at the stricken officer. "What's your opinion?" he inquired.

Dexter lay with eyes half closed, listening to the cold-blooded discussion. His enemies seemed to be agreed on the question of his death; they differed only as to the manner of execution. But somehow he was not greatly interested in the argument. As long as the end was foredoomed, it did not matter much how the final act was done. He met Stark's gaze, and smiled wanly. "I agree with you," he said. "Your chances of life are much better if my comrades are kept from guessing the truth."

"But wan leetle knock on de head!" cut in Doucet eagerly. He illustrated with an imaginary club wielded in his great sinewy hands. "Wham! Voila tout!" He nodded vigorously. "Dey fin' him wid skull smash. Den dey t'ink de tree she hit 'im so. De snow all melt before anybody come. No foot track lef' from us. Nobody suspec'. An' nobody bodder us ever any more. Is it not so?"

"No!" said Stark decisively. "I owe this man a private accounting, and it's for me to decide the form of payment. And he's not going to die quick and easy."

Stark's air of careless indifference was suddenly cast aside, and as he bent over the policeman, malevolence and hatred gleamed openly in his deep-sunk eyes. "I've been waiting, hoping for a chance like this for months and months," he declared, his voice as frigid and brittle as tinkling ice in a glass. "My only fear was that I wouldn't get you alive. But I have! And for what you've done to me, I'm going to make you pay to your last ounce of endurance, to the last breath you've got!"

Dexter gazed at the man in speechless wonder, unable to account for the venomous outburst. As far as he recalled, he and Stark had never met before, and he could not imagine what he had ever done to call upon himself the malice and detestation so unexpectedly revealed in the bloodless face above him. As he looked up in mute questioning the notion struck him that the man had gone suddenly insane. Stark apparently read the thought in his mind.

"No!" said Stark, tense and hoarse, his affected urbanity of a moment before lost in a demoniacal scowl. "I'm not crazy. You're Corporal David Dexter—and you're the one I've wanted. If you don't know why, I won't give you the satisfaction of being told. Think back—maybe you'll remember!" His lips drew back from his white teeth, and his laugh echoed hideously. "You'll have time to do plenty of thinking before you finish."

With a stiff movement, as though he found it difficult to hold himself in hand, he dropped on one knee and extracted the corporal's pistol from his holster. "You might manage to reach it after we're gone and put a bullet through your head," he grated. "Nothing so nice as that for you!"

With swift, nervous hands Stark searched through the policeman's pockets, and possessed himself of all spare cartridges, hunting knife, match safe, and notebook and pencils. "Just to make sure you don't scribble any farewell messages," he remarked.

The pipe and tobacco pouch, he did not bother to take, and in his haste he accidentally overlooked the small revolver Dexter had kept as evidence from the murder cabin, and which he carried buttoned in the right hand pocket of his stag shirt. With the fallen tree pressing upon his chest and right shoulder, Dexter could not have reached the weapon if he tried; nevertheless he took a strange satisfaction in the knowledge that he had not been stripped entirely of firearms.

Stark finished his rummaging, and stood up; and his eyes glittered as he looked upon his helpless enemy. "Unless somebody takes that tree off you, you're pinned there forever," he declared. "It'll be three weeks anyhow before any of your people can get into this valley, and you'll pass out before that. But you'll go slow. Hunger may do it, or exposure, or blood poisoning from broken bones, or maybe the beasts will get you." He sucked in his lips with morbid anticipation. "I heard a pack of timber wolves howling a couple of nights ago. We don't know how the end will come, but for you there's no escape. And you can lie there with the nerve oozing out and the fear creeping on—hours and days of it, perhaps—and all that time you can be telling yourself that Owen Stark did this thing to you."

The man stooped to unfasten the policeman's pack, and slung the weight over his own shoulder. He regarded Dexter for a moment with a smile that lacked all human semblance. Then he shouldered Dexter's provision pack, beckoned his companions, and turned away. "Come on!" he commanded. He moved off at a brisk pace along the course of the thawing brooklet, and Crill and Doucet trailed silently after him.

CHAPTER XXIII

FAIR WARNING

With his head bent backwards, Dexter watched the file of men make their way up the banks of the stream. Stark walked ahead, his eyes on the ground before him, never once deigning to glance behind. The others paused now and then to look covertly over their shoulders, as though still reluctant about obeying orders. But it would seem that none of them dared to interfere with their leader's plans while the black mood oppressed him, and they trudged, hushed and subdued, at his heels. Stark reached a bend of the brook and passed behind a flanking clump of alders, and his companions followed like straggling sheep, and, one by one, vanished from sight. Dexter was left alone by the silent brook.

He lay frowning, puzzled by the mystery of Stark's behavior. The man said he owed him a private grudge, but think back as he would, the corporal was unable to account for the bitter malice that could take satisfaction in his suffering and lingering death. As far as he recalled, he had never crossed Stark's trail before. He could not imagine what he had done to arouse such enmity. The riddle was beyond his power of guessing, and he had to give it up. It didn't matter a great deal anyhow. If he could not lift the tree trunk from his shoulder, earthly affairs would soon cease to vex him.

But while a spark of life remained he was not ready to abandon hope. There was no chance of help coming to him. By to-morrow morning his absence would begin to alarm Devreaux. But the colonel was incapable of travel. If he started out to search it would take him days to drag himself this distance from the cave, and long before he could possibly make such a trip, the trail would be washed away in the thawing snows. As Stark had said, it would be another fortnight before officers could break their way through from the outside. Yet Dexter would not let himself despair. It was up to him somehow to free himself.

Two men could not have raised the tree butt. But Dexter thought of an alternative possibility. He might be able to burrow out from under. The chance of accomplishment was slight. But any effort was better than lying supine, awaiting death. He gave his enemies time to pass out of sight and hearing, and then experimented to see what might be done.

By twisting his body he could force his left arm under his back far enough to touch his right shoulder blade. He pulled out handfuls of snow, and at length touched the bare ground. The frost was still in the earth, but warming suns of the last week had somewhat softened the surface soil, and he found he could scratch out small particles with his fingernails. He kept it up, digging and clawing, until his fingers grew numb and his nails had broken down to the quick. The hole he had scooped out was no more than the span of his thumb, but he took encouragement from the knowledge that he had made even such slight impression upon the frozen earth. He searched the pockets he could reach for some tool to use in place of fingernails, and found his watch had been left with him. It would have to serve. Breaking the hinges, he removed the lid from the case, and set to work again.

All that morning he scraped and chiseled at the soil under his body. Progress was infinitely slow, but each excavated grain of earth meant just that much advance towards freedom, and he began to believe that if his strength held out he might in time liberate himself. The weight of the tree gradually crushed the feeling from his broken shoulder, and the twinges of pain were endurable.

The sun climbed high, beating upon him with blazing warmth. Everywhere about him he could hear the drip and trickle of melting snows. From the creek an occasional crackling sound told him that the softening ice was preparing to release the stream from its winter toils. Birds twittered restlessly above him, without finding time to look his direction. A pika, the little chief hare of the mountains, shambled forth from a hole in a nearby drift to bask on a rock. A brilliant harlequin duck whistled past overhead, searching for open water. The air was sweet and balmy, redolent of the scent of approaching spring. He wondered if spring would ever come again for him, and the thought always seemed to revive his flagging strength.

The afternoon wore on by dragging, aching minutes, and still he chipped and scratched at the ground below the tree. At long intervals he paused briefly to rest, and then went doggedly back to work. From time to time he quenched his thirst with melted snow. He felt no hunger. But as the sun disappeared and the blue shadows of early twilight began to creep up the mountain slopes, a growing weakness threatened at last to overcome his bravest resolution. He had cut out a six inch hollow beneath his shoulder blade, but the tree still pinned his upper arm and shoulder to the ground. He clenched his teeth and tried to wriggle clear, but the effort was useless, and he fell back gasping as the old pain stabbed again through his tormented body. The hole must be scooped twice as large before he could hope to release himself.

He had the will to keep on digging, but physical endurance failed him. Queer, mottled shadows had begun to swim before his eyes, and a gray fog seemed to be stealing upon his brain. He tried desperately to stay awake, but his eyelids kept closing as though weighted with lead. At last he gave up the effort. Perhaps a few hours' rest would recruit his energies, and he could return afresh to his digging. Meanwhile he was overpowered by the drowsiness of utter exhaustion. He relaxed with a sigh, pillowed his head against the rough bark of the tree, and without actual knowledge of what was happening he slipped away into the stupor of sleep.

The sense of time was lost to him. It might have been minutes, or many hours later, when his slumbering faculties aroused to a vague perception of some sound that tried to reach his ears. The impression came like something heard in the depths of a dream: a faint, far-off voice—a voice calling him by name. By a tremendous effort he struggled back to dim wakefulness, forced his eyelids apart.

Still dazed by sleep, he attempted to sit up; but a sharp spasm of pain reminded him of his hapless plight. He was still lying in the snow, held down by the weight of the fallen tree. His lips set with a groan, as he blinked vacantly before him. It was night, and the rim of a new moon had pushed up through a notch in the mountains, flooding the white landscape with a soft, silvery glow. As he listened in the breathless silence, he again caught the sound that had aroused him, heard his own name called in the night.

"Corporal Dexter!" The cry carried to him from the other side of the brook, clear, anxious, insistent. It was a woman's voice, and the tone was strangely familiar.

With a wondering breath he bent his head backward to stare towards the dismal thicket across the way. He told himself that he must be asleep, dreaming. But as he waited with bated breath he heard the voice again. "David!" cried the unseen speaker. "Where are you? Answer me. Oh, please!"

An unaccountable trembling seized him. The call came to him in beseeching accents. It was the voice that he had kept alive in memory through the dreary months of winter, and now he was certain that his imagination was cruelly tantalizing him. He could not believe his hearing. Nevertheless he would have answered if he could. He tried to call out, but his tongue refused to move, and speech choked back into his throat. It was as though he feared the spell would break at the slightest sound from his own lips.

But as he peered across the brook in an agony of suspense he was aware of a soft rustling movement in the brush, and his incredulous eyes made out a slim, straight figure that had pushed forward to stand on the snowy embankment beyond. He stared for a moment in the dazed wonderment of a man who suddenly looks upon a miraculous apparition. And then, unable to endure the anguish of uncertainty, he forced himself to speak.

"I'm over here under a tree," he said, striving to hold his voice in control. "If you're real, won't you please come across?"

He thought he heard a sobbing breath on the other side of the brook, and as he gazed with straining vision, the figure started forward, crossed like a shadow on the ice, and halted, to bend silently above him. The moonlight searched out the contours of a pale, bewitching face, revealing a pair of luminous eyes that gazed softly upon him.

He raised his head, watching with something of fear in his glance, as though half expecting an illusion of his dreams to melt away before him. "Alison!" he whispered unsteadily. "Alison Rayne! They said you were dead. It's you—?"

"It's I," a thrilling voice replied in his ear, and then, as though to dispel all further doubt, warm hands touched him, and he felt the vital contact of fingers closing over his. "You're hurt!" she faltered. "How badly?"

"Cracked shoulder, I think," he said. "If this tree were off me I could tell better."

The girl withdrew her hand from his lingering clasp, and knelt down to investigate. "It's crushing you," she said, with a catch of pity in her throat, "and you—you've had the courage to—you've nearly dug yourself loose. You must have been working for hours."

"I kept it up as long as I could stay awake," he answered with a faint laugh. "I was going to have a nap, and then try again."

She had been examining the underside of the trunk, and now she nodded with quick decision. "I can finish it by cutting through from the other direction," she asserted. "Only a few minutes!" She brought a clasp knife from her pocket, and moving around the tree, she crouched in the snow and began feverishly digging.

For a moment Dexter remained silent, but as he observed her tense, anxious face his eyelids drew together and the muscles of his jaw set with sudden resolution. "Wait!" he commanded. "Have you thought what you're doing?"

She paused for a space to look at him in the moonlight. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"Feel in the pocket of my tunic," he said somberly. "You'll find a folded slip of newspaper cutting. Read it."

For the length of a breath she hesitated, and then, wonderingly, she complied with his request. Fumbling, she drew forth the clipping. From her sweater pocket she produced a match safe, and struck a light. She glanced at the headlines, read the first paragraph of print; then the paper fluttered from her fingers, and she sighed bitterly.

"You know!" she said in a harsh undertone. "We—my brother and I—that's why we're here. There's no use trying to pretend anything else."

"Not a bit of use," he asserted. He regarded her steadily, his eyes murky in the pallid light. "You are wanted in the states for a capital crime. I'm an officer of the law. If you're wise you'll go back where you came from, and leave me here as I am."

"Simply that I'd rather not accept freedom at your hands," he returned. "If you pull me out of this mess, I'll repay you by arresting you again, and this time I'll make sure that you don't escape. It's a cruel position to be placed in, and in fairness to both of us—you'd better go."

"Possibly I can dig myself out," he answered. "I'm going to keep trying. If I succeed, you'll know about it some day, because it'll be my business to hunt until I find you. If I fail, we won't meet again." His features relaxed for an instant in a smile of gentle melancholy. "I guess that would be the kindest way out for both of us." He reached forward with his free arm, and his hand pressed softly over her closed fist. "Do you want to say good-by, Alison—before you go?"

She was bending above him, looking into his face with tear-wet eyes. But suddenly he felt her wrist grow tense, and with a quick movement she drew away her hand and stumbled to her feet. "You must think very badly of me," she said, "to believe that I would—that I could—" She stopped with a gulp, unable to go on. And then, without further speech, she stepped back around the tree trunk, and returned in moody silence to her digging.

Dexter lay quiet, hearing the scraping and chipping of the knife blade hacking the icy ground, feeling the movements of her hands as she pulled the earth from under his shoulder. He had forewarned her, and if she still saw fit to play the Samaritan, he would make no further attempt to stop her. So he waited, grim and alert, ready to extricate himself the instant the hole was sufficiently enlarged.

The girl worked with breathless energy at her self-imposed task, and in a few minutes she had burrowed through to meet Dexter's excavation. There seemed to be no sense of feeling in his shoulder, yet somehow he knew when the pressure was taken away. He flexed his cramped muscles, and found he could still move his body. Slowly he wriggled free, and then, concentrating his will force into the effort, he gripped at the rough tree trunk and weakly hoisted himself to his feet.

The corporal's face was immutable as a death mask as he bent forward to confront the crouching girl. "I'm sorry you didn't go when you could," he said. "Now it's too late. You're my prisoner."

Alison got to her feet and stood erect, her breast heaving. "I had to do that much," she returned. "You did more than that for me one time. But now—now I've got to think of myself, and of my brother. Neither of us is going to let anybody arrest us, if we can help it—and so—" She stopped with a gulp and started to back away.

But Dexter had foreseen what she meant to do. The fallen tree lay between them, and the girl had counted on her ability to slip beyond reach before the officer could stumble after her. She failed to realize, however, that with some indomitable men, the physical body may be held subservient to the power of mind. Dexter was watching, and anticipated her intention a second before she started to leave him. Weak and giddy as he felt, he nevertheless held a last reserve of strength to answer the mental summons. As a runner spurs himself onward with the final gasp of breath, so he sprang forward and somehow managed to clear the log. Alison was taken by surprise, and before she could turn to flee, he had planted himself before her. "I warned you!" he muttered; and then his left hand shot out and closed tightly about her wrist.

CHAPTER XXIV

A HARD-WON PROMISE

For two or three seconds the girl and the policeman faced each other tensely in the soft moonlight; and then, as she met his steely gaze, her eyes narrowed, her lips drew apart, her breathing quickened. "Let go!" she panted.

With a twist and a wrench she tried to withdraw her slender wrist from his grasp. He shook his head with a slight movement, and his grip tightened. The restraining clutch seemed to madden her, and she fought wildly, furiously, to free herself. But disabled as he was, shaken by many hours of suffering, he still was stronger than she. Back and forth they struggled over the snowy ground, relentless antagonists, the girl desperately determined to escape, the man coldly resolved that she should not break away from him.

Neither spoke, and the soft night silence was disturbed only by the crunch of boots scuffling in the snow. In groping for a securer foothold, Dexter slipped and lurched forward, stumbling. The girl found her chance. Quick as a flash she doubled her arm and thrust her elbow into the corporal's shoulder; at the same time she tried with all her might to force him backwards, and wrest herself free from his grasp.

Dexter was conscious of a sharp, gritting sound, and a spasm of pain surged through his body and lapped about him like fire. He reeled for an instant on his feet, and an involuntary cry of anguish was wrung from his lips. A red haze filled his brain, while stars and moon and the white-gleaming mountainsides all seemed to swirl about him in inexplicable tangles. There came to him a horrible conviction that he was about to faint. He fought hard to keep his feet, to throw off the feeling of dizziness. As he stared into vacancy, trying to hold his wavering faculties, he was dimly aware that the girl still stood before him.

He looked at her wonderingly, and saw that her cheeks were wet with tears. "'S nothing," he said thickly. "'S all right!"

"It isn't!" Alison gasped. "To think that we—that you and I— Oh, we mustn't—we mustn't!"

"You didn't think I wanted to, did you?" Dexter gazed at her with gradually clearing vision. "I told you what to expect," he went on in a husky voice, "and it's something that I've got to do. You know that, don't you?"

"It isn't I." The corporal drew a slow breath as his shoulders sagged hopelessly. "I want to let you go; but I haven't anything to do with it. I'd let you go if I could. Don't you understand?"

"You don't need to," she returned in a hushed voice. "You've won. I give you my word of honor not to—not to try to get away."

Dexter raised his head sharply, his glance searching into the depths of her misty eyes. "Why?" he asked.

"Because I could never endure going through a thing like this again," she faltered. "Let anything happen rather than that." She buried her face in her hands, and her shoulders shook with sobbing. "You and I hurting each other!" she finished incoherently. "Oh, no!

"Please!" she went on faintly, after a little silence. "I've promised, and you—you're hurting me still." She moved her wrist with a gentle tug, and he realized all at once that he was still holding her with a merciless, unbreakable grip.

"Alison!" he cried, his fingers instantly unlocking. "I'm sorry!" He looked at her in the moonlight, with eyes grown moist: seeing the forlorn, trembling little figure waiting submissively, feeling the soft appeal of the grave, wistful face that lifted slowly to meet his gaze. A wave of pitying tenderness swept upon him, and there came to him also a feeling of self-contempt, and for a minute he was almost ashamed of his service and the coat he wore. The knowledge that he had been forced to deal ruthlessly, cruelly, with such a woman as Alison Rayne, would always remain a galling remembrance.

He breathed unsteadily as he faced her, and, scarcely knowing what he was doing, he reached about her and circled her yielding shoulders with his arm. "Alison!" he whispered.

With a throbbing gasp the girl swayed towards him and pressed her flushed cheek against his jacket. "I'm tired," she said—"so tired."

For a long space the corporal stood without speech, holding her close, feeling her heart beating, intoxicated by the warmth and nearness of her presence, touching her fragrant hair with his cheek, thrilled to his innermost being by the sweetness of an ineffable moment, dreaming a dream that his reason told him could never come true.

But as he gazed yearningly over the girl's bowed head, he caught a glimpse of a rising star—the Dog Star—creeping up over the southern horizon. It was the star of spring, and it promised the opening of the passes, the speedy coming of comrades from the distant barracks of the police. And as his glance ranged down the shimmering sky, somehow the magical spell was broken, and sanity returned. He caught himself with a shivering movement, and his arm dropped swiftly to his side.

"I think we'd better be going," he said abruptly, with a strange gruffness in his voice. "If you're ready—?"

She averted her face with a quivering sigh, and her eyelids drooped and closed; but after an instant she flung up her head, as though to toss the straying tendrils of hair from her eyes; her shoulders and back straightened, and she turned to Dexter with a cool, inscrutable glance. "Whenever you say," she agreed.

The corporal appreciated the impossibility of going back to Saddle Mountain that night, but he bent his steps northward, with no definite place in view, feeling only the urge to leave this spot, to be on the move, to go somewhere else. He led the way through a scented growth of cedars, along the mountain slope, the girl following meekly at his heels. They had not gone far, however, before he realized how foolish it was to attempt to travel. He was exhausted, almost ready to collapse. Two or three times he slipped in the snow and swayed on his uncertain legs, and each time he managed somehow to recover himself and push onward. Alison pleaded with him to use the support of her shoulder, but he smiled and shook his head. "I'm all right," he insisted.

It was foolish talk, and he knew it. And at last he was forced to give in. They had climbed to a level shelf of ground, screened on all sides by dense brush, and after a wavering glance about him, Dexter decided to call a halt.

"I don't know. I guess not. Anyhow, here we are." His legs seemed to double under him, and he sank down slowly, and sat in the snow. "The thickets would hide our fire if we wanted to build one," he observed.

Without a word she left him to hunt through the timber, and returned presently with her arms full of down wood. She built up a little teepee of dry sticks, lighted a match, and almost at once had a cheerful fire blazing in the sheltered covert. Then she unstrapped the pack she had brought with her, brought out a pair of blankets, and spread them on the ground.

"Now," she said with a troubled glance—"what are we going to do about your shoulder?"

"It seems to be the upper arm, near the shoulder socket," he observed, feeling with tentative fingers. "Do you suppose you could help me off with my jacket?"

She gave him the needed assistance, and afterwards slit his shirt sleeve with her knife, to expose the bruised, swollen flesh of his arm. "I don't see how you stood it," she murmured.

Dexter was examining the broken member with critical concern. "Simple fracture," was his diagnosis. "Splints and bandages, and we'll make out." He picked up three or four tough hardwood sticks that were left over from the fire kindling. "These'll do nicely." He regarded her questioningly. "Do you think you could hang on to my elbow while I pull? Or, if you'd rather, we'll strap my hand to a sapling, and I can do my stretching for myself."

The corporal made his few simple arrangements, instructed his companion in the part she was to play, and then nodded to indicate that he was ready. She took hold of his arm, closing her eyes, and holding tightly.

"Now!" he said. Gritting his teeth, he leaned backward and tugged with a strong, steady pull, and presently the fingers of his left hand told him that the fractured ends of bone were drawn back together. "The sticks!" he said faintly, sliding his hand forward to support his arm in its rigid position.

Under his directions the girl fixed the splints, and bound them securely in place with strips torn from the hem of a blanket. The job was finally accomplished to Dexter's satisfaction. For safety's sake the arm was swathed in outer wrappings and fastened securely against his chest.

"Ought to knit straight," he managed to say. He noticed the woe-begone expression of his companion's face, and attempted to laugh at her; but the effort was rather feeble, and his voice sounded strange in his own ears.

"No," he said. "You've been very fine about it all. Thank you." His glance strayed to the edge of the shadowy thicket. "I'll have to take it easy for a while—stay here. Those men—Crill and Stark and the rest—they might change their minds and come back. Find our trail, and come up here. Can't be helped if they do." His good hand made a fatalistic gesture. "Well, we'll have to take the chance."

Alison was watching from across the fire with shadowed eyes, and she suddenly noticed the stem of his pipe sticking from his jacket pocket. "You can't have smoked all day," she abruptly remarked. "Maybe you'd like to."

She found his pouch, stuffed the pipe bowl with tobacco, and thrust the stem between his teeth. Dexter smiled gratefully, his eyes following her movements as she bent over the fire and picked up a lighted brand. But as he watched her come back to him, a glowing ember in her hand, something all at once seemed to go wrong with his eyesight. The girl, the firelight, the ragged line of the thickets, all became hazy and unreal, fading before him. He tried to hold his head erect, but the effort was too great. His eyelids closed like leaden weights, the pipe dropped from his mouth, blackness flooded upon him, and he toppled with a sigh and fell forward upon his face.

CHAPTER XXV

A VOLUNTARY PRISONER

The vertical rays of a blazing hot sun aroused Dexter from his lethargy. He felt light and warmth beating upon his face, and with the first faint stirring of consciousness his ears were aware of sounds of dripping water. A crisp smell of wood smoke drifted to his nostrils, and there came to him also stray wisps of odor that moved him to a pleased, drowsy recollection of an appetizing stew he had eaten some time or other from a camp kettle. He lay with his eyes closed, a little puzzled by his reviving sensations, trying to think where he was and what it all meant.

And then, all at once, he recalled. He had been sitting by a fire, waiting for Alison Rayne to give him a light for his pipe when suddenly he had lost consciousness. Presumably he had fainted, and from his stupor he must have passed into a deep, natural sleep. And he evidently had been sleeping for a long time. He opened his eyes, and hastily closed them again before the dazzling brightness of the sun. It was about noon, he decided. For a while longer he remained motionless, but presently he lifted his hand to shade his face, and again looked about him.

He was lying in the confines of a thick juniper clump, his body wrapped in a blanket, his head resting on a sweater that had been wadded up for a pillow. Near his feet a small fire crackled cheerfully. Over the fire hung a blackened bucket, with a savory steam issuing from beneath its dancing cover. Cross-legged on the ground, bending like an officiating priestess over the smoking embers, sat Alison Rayne.

The girl had discarded her white sweater, and wore a faded khaki shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, with sleeves rolled up over her smooth forearms. She held a forked stick in her small, somewhat grimy hand, and as the corporal watched, she took the lid from the bucket, poked at its contents, and then drew up her head to sniff with an air of complete satisfaction at the cloud of ascending steam. Her face was turned in profile, and Dexter could see only the soft curve of her cheek and the tip of her pert nose, as she bent in absorption over her cookery. A lock of her thick, bronze hair had fallen over her eyes, and she had not yet discovered that he was awake; but something in the corporal's searching regard must have acted with telepathic force, for she turned suddenly with a startled movement to meet his gaze.

"Hello!" said Dexter with a whimsical lift of one eyebrow. "Have I been sleeping for hours or for days?"

"Only since last night." She got to her feet and stood over him, a faint embarrassment in her manner. "You were a little feverish this morning, but I noticed a few minutes ago that the temperature's gone down."

"You've been looking after me all this time!" he said uncomfortably. "Have you had any sleep?"

"Oh, yes," she hastened to assure him. "I've got another blanket here, and I did pretty well during the night. Only bothered once in a while to see how you were doing."

"It makes me feel mighty mean, knowing you've done all this for me," Dexter remarked, and shook his head glumly. "The way things stand, it makes me feel sort of low-down and ungrateful. Even my thanks wouldn't seem to have much meaning."

"I don't want your thanks," she returned quickly. "Were you looking for thanks last fall for taking care of my brother? He thinks you saved his life."

Dexter glanced up sharply as she admitted her relationship with the boy in the cabin across the valley. But he made no comment. "It's the business of the police to render services when needed," he said lightly.

Alison had turned aside to stoop over her cooking fire. She lifted the lid from the simmering bucket, dipped in a tin cup, and offered her companion a steaming drink. "Rabbit broth," she said. "I went down to the brook this morning to see what I could find, and a little rabbit got frightened of me and jumped into a deep, mushy drift, and I caught him and skinned him and cooked him—hating myself." She faced him with a strange shyness in her eyes. "Anyhow, you needn't go hungry."

The corporal hoisted himself to a sitting posture, suppressing a groan as he stretched his stiff, sore muscles. He reached forward to take the cup, but found himself weaker than he had imagined.

"Here!" said the girl as the hot fluid slopped over his unsteady fingers. She knelt down before him, a faint rose leaf color tinging her cheeks as she did so; and she held the cup for him while he drank. In such manner he contrived to finish a second and third cupful of broth. And the rich, scalding liquid seemed to act as a magic potion. His feeling of lassitude and incompetency departed with the warming of his blood, and all at once it occurred to him that there was no sense in sitting idle, making an invalid of himself.

"We may as well be going," he announced abruptly, the old brisk note of decision returning to his voice.

"Got to!" Steadying himself with his hand, he cast aside the blanket and stood erect.

"Up the valley where you left us last fall," he told her, staring off with feigned interest towards the distant mountain ridges. "Colonel Devreaux is waiting for me."

Dexter nodded without speaking. The girl eyed him for a moment from under drooping lashes, and then quietly set about the preparations for breaking camp. No word was spoken of her promise of the night before, but it was tacitly understood between them that where he went, she had pledged herself to go.

They gathered up their scanty belongings, and the corporal forced himself to do his share of the work. He insisted on shouldering the larger pack, and after stamping out the fire, he led the way through the thicket and started on his northward journey.

In his present physical condition Dexter knew he could not hope to make the return trip in one, or even two, days; but he struck forward resolutely, intending to travel as far as he could while his strength lasted. It was a warm, almost sultry afternoon, and the snow was turning to water under the burning sun and running off the mountain slopes in thousands of trickling rivulets. The corporal's back-leading trail along the creek was waist-deep in slush and he was forced to search out new paths, across the higher shoulders of the mountain.

It was slippery, dangerous going at times, requiring the corporal's strictest attention in seeking the pathway ahead. For the most part they picked their way forward in silence, but now and then they would strike an easier stretch, and he was able to exchange a word or two with his companion as she trudged at his heels.

"What became of you that day last fall?" he asked her, while they were pushing across a level strip of ground. "I had misgivings about you all winter—fearing you might not have come through the storm."

"I went down through the valley, and crossed eastward into a frightful tangle of wilderness," she said. "I don't know how I lived through that night and the next. But I found a nook of shelter under the roots of a great tree, and in some way or another I built a fire and huddled over it. I stayed there, half frozen, with very little to eat, until the storm stopped. After that I started out, trying to find my brother. I was lost—didn't know which direction to go. I just had to guess, and, well—some guiding power must have helped me. There was not one chance in a thousand of my reaching any place, and yet, after a two days' struggle, I crossed over a wooded ridge, dragged myself up a snow-buried stream, and walked right into the cabin I was searching for—the place where you had left my brother the first day of the storm. I was about dead—fell on the doorsill. But Archie was there, and he heard me and carried me in. He was nearly frantic, not knowing what had become of me. He was unable to travel; could only wait, hoping for news."

"I don't mind admitting that I was a bit worried about you myself," remarked Dexter, glancing at her across his shoulder. "I wonder that you weren't frozen to death."

"I almost was," she said, and smiled vaguely as she met his eyes. "But I guess I'm about as hard to kill as you are."

She faced him squarely, and shook her head. "There was nobody with us. We saw no one else during the entire winter."

"Why, no." She spoke in seeming frankness. "I told you—I've seen nobody but my brother, since I left you last fall."

"How did you know where to find me yesterday—under that tree trunk?" Dexter asked, fixing her with searching scrutiny.

"I was—I was just walking along the brook," she said after a moment's hesitation. "And there you were—"

"You were calling my name," the corporal interrupted. "That was before you could have seen me, or known that I was anywhere in the neighborhood." He shook his head with skepticism. "I supposed that you came deliberately out of the kindness of your heart—knowing that I was in trouble." He watched her tensely. "Somebody must have told you."

Alison averted her face for a moment, and apparently found nothing to say. When at length she turned back to meet Dexter's questioning gaze, the curve of her mouth had straightened into a stubborn line, the violet softness of her eyes seemingly changed to a chilly blue.

"I have told you that I saw nobody," she said in a voice that seemed to take her a thousand miles away from him. "It'll have to be enough for you to know merely that I found you. And I couldn't let you—or any living thing, for that matter—die in a trap. We'll have to let it go at that. Meanwhile you ought to be satisfied to remember that I'm your prisoner. I've given you my parole, and I won't try to escape again."

There was something in her straightforward gaze that forced Dexter to believe she told the truth—that she had not met Stark or his companions. Yet he knew equally well that she had not blundered by accident upon that remote spot where the tree had fallen upon him. She had learned of his plight somehow; but he could not guess by what strange, occult medium the knowledge had reached her. As he studied her inscrutable features, he recalled the mystifying events of the previous fall: how news had traveled unaccountably through the forest silences, how voices seemed to carry between distant places, without any visible means of transmission. As he had been hopelessly puzzled before, so now he found no answer or explanation; and with the fever throbbing in his brain, he scarcely felt capable of thinking.

Alison gave back his glance with fearless, unyielding eyes, and he knew how useless it was to question her. He gave it up for the present, and, beckoning with a curt nod, he turned in silence and started forward again on the trail.

CHAPTER XXVI

MAN AND WOMAN

A voyageur in the best physical trim would have found it fatiguing to travel along the rough mountain slopes, breaking a path over fallen snow crust, wallowing through deep, soggy drifts. Before he had traveled a mile of his journey, Dexter found himself growing short of breath, slipping and floundering more than a trained mountaineer should. It took determination to push onward, but he kept going as long as he could; until his head was reeling and his legs tottered under him. The heavy pounding of his heart warned him at last, and he had sense enough to quit. He was anxious to reach Devreaux, but he must take his time about it.

It was an hour or more before sundown when he finally admitted that he could go no farther. They made camp in the lee of a warm rock ledge, the corporal helping to gather sticks to build the night fire. The remains of the rabbit stew were heated, and as soon as he had eaten his supper, Dexter rolled up in a blanket and almost instantly dropped off into profound slumber. He slept all night like a dead man, and did not awaken until the morning sun flooded upon him over the eastern mountain peaks.

Every bone and muscle of his body was an aching torment, but he forced himself to his feet, and as soon as possible he and Alison resumed their northward journey. They moved by easy stages up the valley that day, stopping at intervals for rest, and then pushing on again a little farther. And some time during mid-afternoon they crossed the flank of a forested hillslope, and caught a distant view of Saddle Mountain, looming in pale white outline against the limpid sky.

Complete exhaustion forced the corporal to call a halt at a point five or six miles south of the double peaks, but he went to sleep that evening with the assurance that he would be able to reach his destination by noon of the following day.

Alison, for some reason, was in a subdued and quiet mood when they set forth next morning to finish the last stage of their journey. She answered the corporal's occasional remarks in the barest monosyllables, but she kept closer at his side than usual; and frequently, when she thought he was not looking, she would glance stealthily towards him, from under veiling lashes, as though she had grown curious to know what thoughts lurked behind the stern immobility of his weather-bronzed face. Several times Dexter caught her unawares, before she could turn her eyes away, and he gathered, from her troubled expression, that there was something on her mind that needed saying. It was not until they were climbing the last slope across the base of Saddle Mountain, however, that she finally broke the silence that had lasted between them all that morning.

"You know what I mean!" She spoke in a voice tremulous with repressed feeling. "But there's no need of asking. It's horrible—what I realize you do think. And I can't—it's almost more than I can bear."

She interrupted with a passionate gesture. "I do know. That newspaper clipping you showed me—it's about me and my brother. We ran away—yes. That much is true, but the rest of it is a lie—a shameless lie. Neither Archie nor I had anything to do with my uncle's—with the dreadful thing they charged. I'm telling you the truth. I swear it's the truth!"

Dexter looked down grimly at the girl, steeling his heart against the appeal of beseeching blue eyes. "It's been my experience," he observed, "that innocent people as a rule do not run from the law."

"I know—I know!" she cried brokenly. "It looks bad not to stay, and I wanted to stay and face it out. We never would have left home if I'd had my way!"

"As you read in the clipping," she went on in quick, overwrought speech, "my uncle, our guardian, died, and it was found that a poison had been given him. Archie and I were his heirs. We were—the police discovered that we were the only ones in the household who had easy access to his medicine. Archie had been foolishly playing the market, had lost heavily, was in desperate financial straits. That all came out, and—well, we got word that a murder indictment had been brought by the grand jury. And Archie lost his head—saw no hope of escape if he stayed—decided there was nothing to do but run while he had the chance."

"He got together all the money he could," she added in a choking voice; "he packed a bag, and left secretly in the night. But I had been watching." She shook her head sadly. "Archie is younger than I, the baby—I've got to say it—the weakling of the family. I knew he would do the wrong thing. And I followed him and overtook him at the station as he was about to board a west-bound train. I argued, pleaded, begged him to stay and see it through. He was afraid—desperately. I could do nothing with him, and so at the end—there was nothing for me to do but get on the train and go with him. He's always needed looking after, and at the last—well, I had to stand by him. I couldn't let him go alone."

Alison threw up her head and confronted her companion with flashing eyes. "I know he is innocent!" she declared passionately. "I didn't even ask him to swear to me. I've known him all his life, and I know he's utterly incapable of that crime—of any crime. I've never blinded myself to his weaknesses, but I know also that he could never have done this thing."

"In any event," observed the corporal, walking onward with a slow, deliberate stride, "he lacked the courage of innocence, and cleared out. I suppose he had already bargained with one of Stark's agents to help him escape through the Canadian wilderness."

"I know all about Stark and his organization for fugitive criminals," Dexter said. "I'd already suspected the existence of an underground railroad, running through this country." His lips twisted into a fleeting smile. "And Stark himself did me the honor to tell me the details of his business—when he thought I was doomed to certain death."

"In that case," said Alison after a little pause, "I'm not betraying—Yes: one of Stark's men came to Archie in his trouble. He offered the chance of escape, took all the money Archie had left and Stark has helped us this far on our way.

"It's—I can't ask you to have my faith in Archie," the girl resumed after a momentary pause. "It isn't about him that I really want to talk, but—" She glanced towards Dexter with a timidity that he had never before seen in her eyes. "It's about the night you found me at that cabin where—where the men were killed."

Alison's rounded chin set resolutely. It was apparent that there was something she had decided to say, and she did not propose to mince matters. "You told me that you heard a woman's voice in that cabin over yonder, just before the two men were shot in their bunks. You say there were no footprints near the place beside my own. So by police logic you arrive at the only deduction that fits the case. I must have fired the shots."

They had climbed the southward slope leading across the foot of Saddle Mountain, and were now making their way over a stretch of rough, furrowed ground along the edge of the open plateau. Dexter absently offered his hand to steady the girl's steps across a slippery outcropping of rock. "You came to that cabin that night from the cabin farther up the valley, where I afterwards found your brother," he stated with thoughtfully knitting brows. "Why did you make that journey alone at such an hour?"

"To find help for Archie," she answered. "You saw him yourself next day, and know how badly he needed it. I didn't know what to do for him, and so I went down the valley to the lower cabin, looking for some one who might know more about such matters than I."

"Anybody who might have been there. What difference did it make who, as long as he could do something to relieve Archie of his pain?"

Dexter eyed the girl covertly for a space as she walked at his elbow. "Did you know a man named Mudgett?" he inquired.

"Why, possibly he and Mr. Stark were associated in some way. I'm not positive though."

"Who was Mudgett's companion that night—small, swarthy, hook-beaked chap with sullen black eyes?"

"He and Mudgett were the two who were shot," Dexter said, as he keenly scrutinized her sensitive features.

"You had no feelings against either of these men? They didn't know anything you were afraid they might tell?"

Alison's face blanched under her companion's merciless gaze, and he saw it was all she could do to keep back her tears. "Oh, what could—I swear to you—I didn't know either of them, even by sight. So why would I—what motive could there be?"

"I've been asking myself that question for months," Dexter observed. "The motive? All I know is that the woman's voice I heard talking in that dark cabin said something about dead tongues never talking. The few fragments of speech suggested the idea that either fear or vengeance had much to do with the tragedy. You have no notion of what it all meant?"

"No!" she moaned. "How could I? I don't know anything more than you yourself have told me."

The corporal strode along for a distance in meditative silence, soberly watching the ground underfoot. Alison looked up at him, and shook her head, and sighed. "It isn't that I'm hoping to influence you in your duty," she said at last in a small, stifled voice. "I don't think I—-I'd want you to yield an inch from the straight line as you see it, even if I could persuade you. And I know I couldn't. I'm not asking anything, only—"

"I want you to believe that I have done nothing wrong," she said in stumbling accents. "I know what I've got to go through later with others, but if you didn't think evil of me, then I—it would make it a little easier."

"You were the only woman in that section of the forest that night," Dexter stated dully, and deep lines of unhappiness were graven at the corners of his mouth. "Can I deny the testimony of my own eyes and ears? I was there, and saw and heard."

"Try to believe in me," she sobbed. "I—I'm not bad. Won't you try to think that I'm not? Please!"

"As a man, I want to believe: you know that! But as a policeman—" He turned his head aside for a moment to hide the anguish in his face. "As a policeman," he went on somberly, "I've got to believe in the evidence that I gather—in facts."

"Don't think of evidence now," she begged in a piteous voice. "Think—try to think—just of me."

"I've done little else but that, Alison, since the first night I saw you," he told her with a faint, sad smile.

"Then—" She caught her breath with a quivering sound. "Look at me, David!" Her hand fluttered towards him and touched his wrist. "Look!"

Slowly he turned, and found himself gazing deep into her eyes—straight-seeing eyes, clear and soft blue as violets—eyes overflowing with womanly sweetness, giving back his glance, unafraid and unashamed.

He gazed long and searchingly, and somehow all sense of doubting left him. "I do!" he declared suddenly, in a straining voice. "I've got to. What else can I do? It's impossible not to believe the truth when you see it. I believe in you."

"Oh!" she said with a full-drawn sigh, and Dexter saw the sparkle of tears in her eyes as her lashes slowly closed. "That's all I wanted," she breathed.

"Alison!" he cried. He swayed towards her, impelled by an overwhelming desire to touch her, to feel her nearness, to draw her into the comforting circle of his arm. "Alison!"

The girl lifted her head to face him, seeing the look he gave her, and she did not move away. "Yes," she said, so low he barely heard.

He stood for an instant in wavering silence, and then all at once he caught himself with a startled movement. The muscles of his body stiffened, and the inflexible line of his jaw reasserted itself. "There's nothing we can do about it," he said.

They had halted for a moment on the open plateau, standing in knee deep snow; but now Dexter turned with heavy steps and started to break his way forward once more through the drift. Alison at once caught pace with him.

Dexter gave no sign of hearing her, but went on in a ruminative voice, following the train of his own thoughts. "I must take you to the fort with me, and lay all our data before the commissioner. What I may feel in my heart, and what the logic of the law decides, are two different matters. I'm still a policeman, Alison, whatever else I may be, and I'm going through straight—clean."

"Listen!" the girl interrupted sharply. She threw up her chin, and there was a compelling quality in her tone that forced him to meet her eyes. "I have asked for only one thing—just blind, honest faith. You have given it to me. Don't spoil it, David, please! I've asked for nothing else."

"I hope you didn't," she returned, "because—I know as well as you know that you could never do anything that wasn't absolutely right in your own mind. If you ever failed in a trust you wouldn't be you." She smiled wanly. "And then—things wouldn't matter much one way or another—would they?"

"Don't!" he protested. "Please! Let's not talk like this. Let's try and find the way out somehow."

They were not more than fifty yards from the coppice where the entrance of the bear cave was hidden. If Devreaux were at home a shout would have reached him, but the corporal for the time being had forgotten the existence of his commanding officer, and did not think to announce himself. He trudged along with bent head, weighed in profoundest thought. But at last the scowl cleared from his face, and he looked up intense and eager.

"What?" The girl stared at him, apparently a little frightened by his sudden vehemence.

"You won't be your own man until you've discharged your present duties," Alison said with a quick, sidewise glance.

"Of course not," he agreed. "I'll have to take you to the fort and turn you over. They're decent chaps down there. They'll make it as easy as possible for you—"

"Just this," he plunged on—"I come back here as a free agent. There's a mystery in all this business that we haven't even begun to fathom. The facts as they stand make things look very black for you, but we'll get at the bottom of the affair somehow. I'll work day and night. I'll never rest until I dig out the truth. You've forced me against my reason to believe in you absolutely, and with such faith to back me, I know that I cannot fail!"

Dexter had entered the thicket beyond the treeless plateau, and was picking his way absentmindedly over the broken ground. The entrance of the cave was only a few paces distant, concealed behind a clump of bushes. As he skirted the fringe of underbrush, he discovered a trail of freshly made boot prints. The sight of the footmarks recalled him sharply to himself, and for the first time in the last half hour he thought of Devreaux. The colonel evidently was somewhere about, still waiting for his return.

Forcing his way through the screening branches, he reached the foot of the mountain slope and stood before the dark mouth of the cave. The line of footprints went inside. "Colonel Devreaux!" he called. "Oh, colonel!"

Nobody replied. But as he bent forward to look into the opening, he caught a sudden movement in the gloom, and the next instant a human figure loomed into view, and Dexter found himself staring full in the muzzle of a leveled rifle.

The corporal stood stock-still, gazing in blank amazement at the face that peered at him from behind the rifle sights. And all at once he recognized the unexpected intruder, and he caught his breath in wonderment. The man was Alison's brother, Archie.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE FALTERING FAITH

It was disconcerting to meet an armed and hostile man at the place where he supposed his friend was waiting, yet Dexter did not for an instant lose his self-possession. He noticed that the rifle barrel did not hold quite steady, and he was aware that the inexperienced youth might fire in nervous excitement at any second, without giving him a chance. Before he could make up his mind what to do, however, a voice screamed out behind him, and Alison stumbled forward, apparently with some wild notion of intervening.

The corporal flung out his arm as a barrier, and thrust her back. He was watching young Preston's face, observing the line of the tensely compressed lips, staring into the blue eyes that squinted at him along the gun barrel. And it struck him all at once that the boy lacked the hardihood to pull the trigger.

They faced each other in silence for a moment, and Dexter smiled in icy contempt, "I can't obey your order about the hands," he said, "because I have only one to put up. So I won't bother at all."

With a slow, deliberate movement he unbuttoned his tunic and thrust his hand into his inside pocket. Quite casually, as though he might have reached only for a handkerchief or a match, he drew forth the small, pearl-handled revolver that he had picked up months before from the floor of the murder cabin. He knew that any instant might be his last, but he was banking on the irresolution he had read in the other's face, and was ready to accept a gambler's hazard. Gazing with cool fixity into the boy's eyes, he cocked his weapon and leveled the barrel.

There was a quality in the corporal's tone to warn Preston that this was not a moment for trifling. The boy shrank backward half a pace, and his bolstered-up attitude of recklessness seemed suddenly to slip away from him. The muzzle of the rifle wavered downward; and the next instant his hands unclosed, and the weapon fell in the snow at his feet.

Dexter laughed aloud in relief. "I think I told you last fall when we met," he remarked pleasantly—"it's foolish to play with things that we don't understand."

The boy drew a short breath, and reached up unsteadily to wipe his sleeve over his moist forehead. "The rifle—it isn't loaded," he managed to gulp out. "I was just—trying to bluff."

"Eh?" Dexter regarded him sharply for an instant, and then stooped to the ground and picked up the fallen firearm.

"I ran out of cartridges several weeks ago, and—well, that's all there is to it."

"It doesn't pay to bluff in this country, unless you're ready to back it up," observed the corporal. "It's so easy to get hurt." He thrust the rifle muzzle in the snow, and with his left hand he jerked open the magazine lever, and assured himself that the weapon really held no cartridge. "I don't believe you'd have shot me anyhow, Archie," he remarked. "I honestly don't think so. Anyhow, we'll let bygones be bygones, and just forget that it happened."

During the few seconds of the swift encounter Alison had stood by, a hushed and terrified spectator. But now she moved forward suddenly to her brother's side. "Archie!" she gasped. "How did you get here? What does it mean?"

"I was looking for you," was the answer. "Just happened over this direction. Looked through the brush, and saw you coming—with the officer." The boy shook his head dejectedly. "I thought—I had hoped that I might be able to get you away from him."

Dexter raised his head and called the superintendent's name, shouting with all the power of his lungs. He repeated the cry several times, but only echoes answered him from the mountainsides.

"Can anything have happened?" he muttered after a lengthy pause. He turned abruptly to Preston. "I want to look inside the cave," he said. "Go in ahead of me, please."

With the boy accompanying him, Dexter searched the cavern from one end to the other. But the place was empty, and he found no clew to tell him what had happened to his missing officer.

"How long have you been here?" he asked, when they finally emerged into the sunlight.

"Just accident." The boy glanced up in seeming frankness. "I was looking for—for—"

"For your sister," supplemented the corporal as the other hesitated. "You needn't be afraid of betraying any secrets. I know all about you."

"Well, yes," admitted Archie, with a sidewise glance at the girl. "We were stopping over yonder at a cabin—"

"Yes. And anyhow—Alison left the other day, saying she was restless and was going for a walk." The boy shot a furtive look towards his sister. "She didn't come back, as she had promised, and so I started out that same night to hunt for her."

"It was dark," was the answer, "and I somehow lost the trail, and I've been just wandering the last couple of days—lost, I guess.

"Anyhow," Archie went on, wriggling a little under the corporal's iron scrutiny, "I happened into this neighborhood to-day, and discovered some tracks leading up the slope. I followed, just to see what there was to find out, and I came on this cave. I was looking around, trying to decide who had been here, and I caught sight of you two coming towards me. I saw you would pass this place, and I hid, and—" He smiled ruefully. "Well, you know the rest."

The boy faced about to survey his sister. "What became of you, Alison?" he asked somewhat pettishly. "If you hadn't gone running off that way we wouldn't have gotten into this mess."

"I'm sorry, Archie," she returned gently. "It was my fault, and yet—I couldn't foresee that this would happen."

"Down the valley a distance," she answered evasively, and Dexter gathered from her manner that she did not wish her brother to know all that had taken place.

"And let a policeman pick you up!" The boy glanced at the corporal's empty holster, and shook his head in mystification. "I don't see how you ever let him do it. He hasn't any gun of his own, and yet he got the best of you—took your revolver from you?"

"Yes—yours—the one he just stuck on me. How'd you ever allow him to get his hands on it?"

Dexter threw up his head with a start. "Is this your sister's revolver?" he asked after a trenchant interval. He reached into his pocket again and exhibited the weapon on the palm of his hand.

"Certainly," Preston replied without hesitation. "There's that scratch in the silver plate on the barrel. It's hers."

A look of infinite sadness passed over Dexter's face as he turned to confront the girl. "You admit this is yours?" he asked somberly.

"On the floor of the cabin where the two murders were done—that night, when I found you there," he stated in low, incisive tones. "Here is the revolver, exactly as I picked it up, with the cases of two discharged cartridges still left in the chamber. The bullets from those cartridges were the bullets that killed the two men in the bunks."

"The revolver—I don't know how it got here," Alison said with a dry sob. "It—I carried it in the bottom of a knapsack I had, and, having no occasion to use it, I hadn't looked for it since early last fall. I may have lost it, or it may have been stolen. I—I don't know."

"I can tell you no more than that," she said, and her face was colorless as she bowed her head before him.

"You want me to believe, then, that this revolver was stolen without your knowing: stolen by an unidentified woman who went to a lonely cabin in the wilderness at the same moment you appeared there; who shot two men, threw the smoking weapon behind the front door, and vanished without leaving a trace behind." Dexter stared at her from under lowering brows. "Is that what you want me to believe?"

"Oh, I don't know—I don't know what to think about it all," she answered tonelessly.

"I do," said Dexter. "I'm thinking of a story the colonel told me recently about—well, it was about himself when he was a younger man. And I'm thinking how foolish we are not to profit by the experiences of the men who have gone before us—to save ourselves the bitterness of learning for ourselves." He looked at the girl for a moment with eyes that had grown jaded and hard. Then, with a careless movement, he tossed the revolver in his hand, and thrust it back into his pocket.

"Come on!" he commanded harshly, and turned on his heel. "I've got to find Devreaux."

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ESCAPE

Inspection of the ground in the neighborhood of the cave discovered only one line of fresh bootmarks, and these, it was self evident, had been made by Archie Preston. But there were older tracks, still visible in the thawing snow, and after investigation, Dexter decided that the stale prints corresponded in size and pattern to the soles of Devreaux's service boots. In places where the sun's rays reached the ground the impressions had almost disappeared, and the corporal estimated that the trail must be at least two days old. It would seem that the colonel, for some reason, had permanently abandoned his safe quarters under Saddle Mountain. The presumption might be that he had grown uneasy after long waiting, and had ventured into the wilderness to seek his missing comrade.

Dexter lingered only to make up a pack of the scanty provisions that still were left in the cave; and then, with a terse movement of his head, he beckoned Archie and Alison to accompany him and set out to look for his officer. The faint trail led him back across the plateau, over the flank of the mountain and down into the brook valley below. Unfortunately the thawing snows of the last couple of days had flooded into the lower levels, flowing over the mush-ice of the stream; and the embankment where Devreaux had walked was now submerged under a foot of running water. The trail had long since washed away.

The corporal, however, was not greatly disconcerted. If Devreaux had gone to search for him, he naturally would follow the brook course to the notch in the lower valley, where the police packs were cached. They must have passed each other unknowingly on the road. He had only to retrace the steps of his weary journey, and undoubtedly he would somewhere pick up the trail again.

Dexter was worried chiefly about the colonel's physical condition. He was not yet in fit shape to travel. Also there was a disquieting possibility that he might have encountered Stark and his gang at some point along the route. At the last thought an unpleasant glitter came into the corporal's eyes, and his jaw set with granite hardness. There was nothing to do but push onward as fast as he could.

He had supposed that he had reached the end of his endurance when he arrived at the cavern that afternoon, but for a comrade's sake he spurred his flagging energies to carry on a little longer. Until darkness set in he made his way southward along the banks of the creek, struggling through slush and mud, and forcing his lagging companions to keep up the pace. It was impossible to see the ground before him when he finally consented to halt for the night.

The three travelers ate their meal in dejected silence, and immediately afterwards stretched themselves on the wet ground by the embers of a dying fire. Dexter shared his blanket with Archie Preston, and he served a last warning before he allowed himself to drop off to sleep.

"You understand, of course, that you're my prisoner," he said. "I'll wake up at the least stir, and if you're wise you'll keep very quiet, and try to get a good night's rest."

Dexter aroused himself next morning before daylight, and, leaving his blanket mate in fretful, tossing sleep, he built a fire and started breakfast cooking. When the modest meal was ready, he awakened his fellow voyageurs to the new day of hardship and wet discomfort. Alison was the first to answer his call, and she shook off her blanket to stand yawning and shivering in the chilly dawn. She and the corporal pointedly avoided each other's glances, and such conversation as they were forced to exchange was brief and formal.

To Dexter's surprise when he took the trail once more, he found himself walking with some measure of his old free-swinging stride. A body and physique tempered by clean, active living, had begun to recuperate from the shock of injury and the exhausting effects of overexertion. His broken arm still pained him at intervals but mental alertness had returned, and the fever was gone from his blood. Save for the inconvenience of a useless right hand, he assured himself that within a few days he would be quite himself again.

They made a long march that day, and their evening camp was not far from the ravine where the corporal had nearly met death in the timber wreck. As he had worked down the long valley, Dexter had kept vigilant watch for signs that might tell him what had become of his lost comrade. At each bending of the stream, in every new opening among the trees, he gazed about him with a recurring sense of dread, always half expecting to see the dun shape of a khaki-clad figure sprawled motionless in the snow. But the glistening world of slush and trickling water stretched endlessly before him, and nowhere was there any clew to show that human beings had lately passed that way.

The little party of travelers was afoot early next day, trudging downstream along the margin of the rising brook. Before noon they reached the spot where Dexter had attempted to leap from the path of the snow slide. Broken, splintered tree trunks were piled like jack straws across the course of the creek, forming a dam that backed the water along the bordering banks. All trace of recent footprints had vanished with the melting snows. There was nothing to be learned here, and after a grim survey of his changed surroundings, the corporal gave the word to push forward again.

By midafternoon they found themselves approaching the snow-choked defile that led out through the lower valley, and the corporal sighted the landmarks that located the colonel's buried store of supplies. The cache had not been disturbed since Dexter's recent visit, and there was no evidence to show that any other person had set foot in that part of the valley. Devreaux either must have fallen somewhere by the wayside, or else, for some reason unguessed, he had wandered off another direction, to lose himself in the deeper wilderness.

The corporal was too tired to seek farther that afternoon so he contented himself with rifling the provision bags and cooking the first square meal he had eaten in days. The wayfarers passed the night on a dry ledge of rock, warm and comfortably fed, sleeping like three weary children.

But by daylight Dexter was on the move again, continuing his hunt for the missing police officer. For nearly a week he kept up his fruitless searching; ranging through miles of the dense wilderness, penetrating the tangled depths of gulch and ravine, scrambling across steep mountain slopes and climbing onward to the higher ridges, whence he could scan the desolate stretches of country below him. And wherever he went, Archie and Alison were always forced to go with him.

Days passed, and day by day the sun marched north and poured warmth and brightness upon a reawakened world. Bare patches of earth began to appear where deep winter snows had lain; and then, almost over night, it seemed, the meadows and exposed hill slopes were carpeted with green. The claw marks of wandering grizzlies were sometimes found, scuffling beside deep pools, where cut-throat trout were leaping; and sheep and goats showed themselves once more, posing against the blue sky on far, dizzy pinnacles of the mountains. Along the brooksides the willows and alders were tipped with bursting life, and the ice had broken out at last and rode downstream with the brawling waters. Dexter realized that within a few more days the mountain passes would be accessible to travel.

What had become of the colonel, he could not imagine. Perhaps the old man had fallen somewhere along the route; perhaps he was still alive, hidden in some wilderness fastness, waiting until he was strong enough to take the trail again. Dead or alive, however, he had already issued his command; and the law of the mounted permits no deviation from the stern line of duty, even for the sake of a comrade. It might take months to find a lost man in that vast, trackless forest. Meanwhile a grim and urgent business awaited, and it was time to act. So one morning Dexter abandoned his futile search, and turned his face resolutely to the northward.

Alison and her brother had tramped the forests with him for days. The girl had given him her promise not to escape, and he somehow had the feeling that she would keep her word. But he knew by the furtive, restless look in the boy's eyes that he would make a break for liberty the first chance he was given. So Dexter always kept Archie close beside him, never for an instant relaxing his vigilance. He did not tell his companions of his intentions, but when he left off his wandering and turned abruptly on a straight line north, no doubt they guessed that he was once more following the outlaws' trail.

He had crossed over the ridge into the eastern part of the valley, and made his way up the brook where Constable Graves had met death. If he hoped to get in touch with Stark's crowd, he knew he must find the upper pass without delay, so he forced as fast a pace as he could. He was confident that men from Fort Dauntless would soon put in an appearance, and he kept a pocket ax in hand, blazing his path behind him, leaving marks that any policeman would read and follow.

They reached the spruce forest of tragic memory, and the corporal made a detour that brought him past the burned cabin. There remained only an ugly, blackened heap of debris to tell where the structure had stood, and an inspection of the clearing convinced Dexter that no one had set foot there since his own departure on the morning after the double murder. There was a haunted look in Alison's eyes as she stared at the sodden pile of wreckage, and she gasped in audible relief when he finally beckoned her to come away.

The next noonday was spent at Stark's cabin, ten miles farther upstream, where Alison and her brother had lived during the winter months. There were no fresh trails in the neighborhood, and Dexter lingered only for a short rest, and then resumed his journey.

His route beyond this point carried him into an unfamiliar country—a country that grew wilder and more forbidding with every mile he advanced. Somewhere beyond, he knew, there must be an opening through the walls of the mountains. His problem was to find it; but as he pushed onward into the northern reaches of the long valley he began to appreciate the enormous difficulties he faced.

He was surrounded by great mountains; ridges and cliffs and misty snow caps; unscalable barriers, towering above and beyond him as far as the eyes could see. The land between was broken by cañons and deep ravines, running this way and that; overgrown by dark forests and tangles of underbrush, forming hidden labyrinths in which an army might have lost itself.

His natural course was to follow the brook to its source, hoping that the stream might lead him through a breach in the barricading mountains, but after nearly a day lost, he discovered that the flow of water originated in a nest of springs, bubbling out from the base of an unsurmountable precipice. Next day he tried another direction, crawling around the escarpment of a steep pitched ridge, over what appeared to be a faint goat path; but again he brought up in a blind pocket from which his only escape meant to retrace his steps.

When he finally gave it up and started back over the tortuous trail, he happened to catch Alison and Archie exchanging glances of furtive significance; and it struck him in a flash that they knew the route to the pass. He watched them surreptitiously thereafter, and on two or three occasions, when they thought he was not looking, he detected them in the act of whispering together and sizing up distantly looming landmarks. There was something in their manner to tell him that they were secretly elated at his failure to find the way, and he was thoroughly convinced that they might set him on the right path if they chose.

He had no comment to make, however, and he dropped to sleep that night like a man whose mind is free from trouble. But when he awakened next morning he found himself alone under the blanket he had shared with Archie Preston. The boy had slipped away some time in the night.

Dexter flung off his blanket and strode forward to touch the small, still figure on the other side of the dead fire. "Where's your brother?" he demanded.

Alison stirred under her cover, and her eyes opened to regard him sleepily in the gray dawn. "What?" she asked.

"Archie's gone," the corporal informed her. "Cleared out while I was asleep. Where is he?"

She sat up and gazed drowsily about her. "You were the one who was watching him," she remarked after a pause. "Don't you know what's become of him?"

"You two planned it out last night," Dexter declared. "You knew he meant to escape. It isn't worth while pretending otherwise."

Alison turned squarely to meet his gaze. "Yes," she admitted without further evasion. "I knew he was going. I told him to go if he could get away. I didn't want him to leave home in the first place, but as long as he did leave, matters will be a hundred times worse if he's taken back now. He's got to get away. That's the only thing left for him to do now—to get out of the country and start his life over again some place else." She threw up her head defiantly. "I not only urged him to escape, but I guess you know I'll do everything I can to keep you from finding him again."

The corporal had gathered a handful of sticks together, and he now stooped quietly to rekindle their fire. "So Archie was willing to beat it, and leave you behind to face it out alone," he remarked.

She turned on him with flashing eyes. "He could have done nothing for me by staying," she asserted. "But it was his chance and I persuaded him against his will—to go."

Dexter had taken a slab of bacon from the provision pack, and, wielding a knife in his left hand, he began cutting slices for breakfast. He was unhurried, seemingly unperturbed, and did not act in the least like a policeman who had just discovered that a prisoner was missing.

"You and Archie evidently know the way out of this maze of mountains," he declared casually. "I suppose Stark furnished you with the key to the puzzle, in case you chanced to be thrown upon your own resources. You were studying landmarks last night, and I assume that when Archie stole away, he knew just which course to take to hit the pass. No doubt he'll be with Stark and Crill and the others within a day or two."

"So do I," said Dexter. He speared his bacon strips with a sharpened stick, and as he bent towards the fire, he turned a quizzical glance towards his companion. "I was certain yesterday that Archie knew how to locate the pass. It might take me days to work out the problem. And I can't afford to lose time. So I figured that I might let your brother show me the way. His trail shouldn't be hard to follow."

He smiled thoughtfully as he held his broiling stick over the flame. "I allowed myself to sleep soundly last night, feeling sure that Archie would accept the chance to escape."

CHAPTER XXIX

THE BLAZED ROAD

As Dexter had expected, the boy's departing foot tracks were clearly defined in the wet earth, and after breakfast he packed up and started to follow. Alison seemed rather disquieted by his cool assurance, but she was ready to leave when he gave the word, and for the present, at least, she made no effort to delay him or to interfere with his plans.

The trail ran off in a generally northwest direction, leading through a scraggly patch of jack pines, across a grassy meadow, and thence through a winding defile that crawled upward at a sharp slant and came out at length on a barren slope of rock. The snow had almost disappeared during the last week, the few remaining white areas being found only in deep-wooded hollows and on the shady north hillsides. Where there was topsoil of loam, however, a forest-trained eye found little difficulty in tracing the imprints of feet that had gone ahead. But when he reached the granite outcrop, Dexter was brought suddenly to a halt.

The fugitive's boot soles were studded with hobnails, and there should have been a few faint scratches left here and there to indicate his direction of travel; but after a minute inspection of the ground about him, the corporal shook his head, and turned with a baffled frown to meet Alison's questioning gaze.

"I hardly gave Archie credit for being so smart," he remarked acidly. "I'll bet it was you who thought this out for him, and advised him to take off his boots if he struck rocks."

She faced him with her head slightly tilted, and there was mockery in the fleeting smile she gave him. But she kept discreetly silent, and neither admitted nor denied his accusation.

The corporal scrutinized her thoughtfully, with one eyebrow elevated; and then, lightly shrugging his shoulders, he moved onward to seek for the lost trail.

The bare surface of rock reached upward to the snow crests, and extended in a northerly direction around the curve of the steep mountainside. Archie might have climbed still higher, or circled across the pitch of the slope, or gradually worked his way downward to the forested valley below. Whichever course he had taken he must eventually pass beyond the rocks, and even if he kept on traveling in his stocking feet, he was certain to leave some trace of himself when he finally touched soft earth again. Dexter had only to swing around the circumference of the rock slope, and somewhere in moist soil or snow patch he was confident of picking up the broken line of foot tracks.

It meant a loss of time and effort to cast around an interrupted trail, but there was nothing else to be done, and the corporal gave no hint of annoyance as he pushed ahead.

A survey of the country told him that the easiest course of travel would be found along the valley bottoms. The fugitive would be anxious to make the fastest possible progress, and also he would instinctively dread the thought of exposing himself conspicuously on the barren mountain slopes. As soon as he imagined he had left a sufficient gap in his trail, he probably had quit the rock slope and struck downward into the concealing forest. This at least was the most probable supposition, so Dexter bent his steps down the hillside, and presently found himself in a deep, moist hollow, threading his way through dense timber.

He was striding along silently, his restless glance searching the ground before him, when all at once he stopped under a giant white fir that towered in solitary majesty above the tops of the neighboring spruce and pine. On the dark, seamy trunk of the ancient tree there showed a faint, weathered mark, like a wrinkle in the bark. Any other than a trained woodsman would have passed by unobserving. Alison apparently did not know why her companion had halted, even when she saw him bend forward to look at the old tree.

"Ancient trail blaze," he said. "All this is unmapped wilderness, yet somebody found the way through here before us—many years ago."

"I don't know. Some old-time explorer, perhaps. The tree probably has added many inches to its girth since that mark was entrusted to its keeping."

The girl moved forward to inspect the tiny line that was no more than a slight puckering of the bark. "You mean—that's a blaze—left there by somebody?"

Dexter nodded. "A fresh ax cut first glazes itself over with a film of pitch," he said. "Then the bark begins to draw itself together, and finally covers the wound. The annual rings of growth add their covering year by year, until the original scar is buried deep in the wood. In the end nothing is left to show what had happened, save a tiny wrinkle in the bark. But the mark itself is never lost, even if the tree should live for hundreds of years. Let's see."

He unbelted his keen bladed ax, and yielding the tool with his left hand, he began to chop into the sapwood, first above and then below the time-healed scar. In a few moments he was able to split out a long, thick slab; and with tense interest he leaned forward to see what might lie underneath.

On the surface of white wood exposed, faint characters were discernible. He made out the carved tracery of a letter "W," and there were other lines that he could not quite decipher. For a moment he peered at the section of scribed wood, and then quietly nodded his head.

"I never heard of surveyors going through this part of the wilderness," he observed musingly, "yet this looks like a surveyor's line tree." He counted the growth rings, and looked with thoughtful eyes into the shadowy stillness beyond. "More than half a century ago some man passed through here and cut his blaze and left direction marks behind him," he said in a hushed voice. "The man probably is dead, and I don't suppose he ever knew that he had rendered a service to a later generation of the Canadian mounted."

He moved forward again, walking slowly, and keeping sharp lookout about him: and two hundred yards farther on he halted with a smothered laugh to indicate a tall, thick-trunked spruce that stood amid a clump of smaller trees. "The blaze," he said, and pointed to an indented line in the rough bark.

Again he chopped out a block of wood, and presently reached an inner ring that bore dimly scratched characters similar to those found under the bark of the fir.

"Another 'W,'" Alison said with pursed lips, as she bent closer to look. "There's something else—I can't quite make out. What does it mean?"

"Some private mark, no doubt. It probably has no especial meaning now—after fifty years. But the important fact—these are line trees—undoubtedly."

The corporal strode forward without answering, and presently showed his companion a third tree, the bark of which showed the seamed mark of an ancient blaze. His smile widened with satisfaction, and this time he did not halt. "The open road," he remarked: "I wish I could thank the old timer who stuck up the street signs."

"To the lost pass, I hope. Nobody would have bothered to blaze a permanent trail, unless he knew where he was going. And the only place worth going from here would be the pass."

He walked a distance farther, and then suddenly checked himself and pointed to the ground. In the dark mold by a tiny rivulet of snow water, he showed her the clearly defined imprint of a nail-studded foot. "Your brother!" he remarked. "He came down from the rock slope, as I thought he might, and has put his boots back on. And now he's ahead of us, traveling our direction."

The girl looked askance at the tell-tale track. "It—you can't be sure it is his," was all she could think to say.

Dexter laughed. "I ought to know his boot marks after all the miles I've tramped with him. It's Archie."

He led the way forward again, walking as fast as he could through the dense timber. The rediscovered footprints soon turned away from the line of blazed trees, and he gathered that the fugitive had crossed the ancient trail by accident and was guiding his course by other landmarks. Dexter considered possibilities, and decided to place his trust in the old-time ax scars. He was confident that sooner or later he would be led to the mountain pass, and as he felt equally certain that Archie was making towards the same destination, it struck him as being foolish to stray from the clearly marked path to chase a faint foot-trail that might at any time leave him groping in the air.

All that day he and Alison labored onward through the silent wilderness, breaking their way through matted thickets, passing up long, dark glens that twisted aimlessly among the lower mountains, ascending steep hill slopes, climbing along the brink of cliffs where a misstep would have landed them into yawning gulfs below, crossing the scarp of saw-backed ridges, and finally attaining the edge of timberline under a thawing snow-field, whence they gazed afar through an open gap between the surrounding snow caps.

Dusk was approaching, but there was still light enough left to make out the dim, gray line of the northern horizon, distantly framed by the shadow of flanking mountain peaks. Dexter looked off from the heights, feeling the stir of the free north breeze, and nodded soberly to himself.

"The outlet!" he said at length. "The road is open from here, and the new country's beyond."

He moved forward again, across the slope of the look-out mountain, and presently struck descending ground, which he knew went down into the forested valley on the other side of the range. And before he had gone any distance he again discovered fresh marks in the earth to tell of hobnailed boots that had passed that way before him. Quietly he called Alison's attention. "Archie!" he said. "He used his own method, and evidently came around from a different direction; but he's also found the pass. He can't be so many hours ahead of us."

The girl cast an apprehensive glance into the twilight shadows, but her lips were closed, and when the corporal went on she followed mutely at his heels. He increased his stride, intending to travel as far as possible before darkness halted him, failing to remember that his companion's frailer strength might not be able to keep the pace he set. But he was aware presently that she was breathing quickly, stumbling along behind him. He turned questioningly.

Dexter regarded her in momentary suspicion. She would do anything to delay him, of course. On the other hand, there were drooping, pathetic lines about her mouth and eyes to tell him that she actually was on the verge of physical exhaustion. After reflection he decided that he might as well call a halt. It would soon be too dark to follow a trail, and besides, he felt rather done up himself. Morning would be soon enough to continue his journey.

In their path stood a great, dead spruce, rearing its barkless white column stark and ghostly in the gathering twilight. The corporal built his evening fire in the shelter of the giant tree, and after he and his companion had eaten supper, the blankets were spread on either side of the mighty trunk; and Dexter, for his part, sank instantly to sleep.

He was even more wearied than he had imagined, and he lay in quiet slumber, his ears deaf to the familiar forest sounds: the stirring of the north breeze in the pines, the far-flung screech of a snowy owl, the scurry of tiny feet in the brush, the babble of rivulets trickling down the mountainsides. A wolf howled somewhere in the distance, but there was nothing in the long-drawn note to alarm his senses, and he slept on as serenely as though he were bunking in the guarded barracks at Crooked Forks. The hours of darkness slipped by without his knowledge; but at length, some time before approaching dawn, he turned under his blanket with a startled movement, and opened his eyes, instantly wakeful, to stare about him.

There was no disturbing sound, and as he gazed up blankly at the starlit sky, he could not help wondering why the alarm clock of his mind had aroused him at this particular instant. Far down on the south-western horizon he made out the bright star Spica in the constellation of Virgo. By the position of the star he knew it was nearly seven in the morning.

For some unaccountable reason, a feeling of uneasiness took possession of him, and he turned on his side to glance across the hollow where the fire had been burning. And then he sat bolt upright, to stare in the darkness. Alison was gone.

Dexter scrambled to his feet, and crossed over to pick up the girl's discarded blanket. The woolen covering had been cast aside in a heap, and was wet with the morning dew. He inferred that she had left some while before. It had not occurred to him that she might break her pledged word, and he had not thought it necessary to keep an eye on her. But now he could not escape the fact that his confidence had been misplaced. She had stolen away in the night, just as her brother had done.

The corporal stood motionless, peering grimly into the all-shrouding darkness. The breeze had died, and the night-prowling creatures no longer stirred abroad in the forest. Utter silence had shut down upon the earth. Dexter looked towards the north, knowing it must be that direction that the girl had fled. By this time, no doubt she was hurrying through the lower pass, miles away.

He was on the point of gathering up his pack, intending to strike down the slope in pursuit, when all at once he stopped breathing and threw up his head with a jerk to listen. A whisper of sound reached him through the hush of darkness, and his startled ears identified the faint tones of a human voice.

It was a queer, disembodied voice, a tiny fluttering in the air, like ventriloquial speech, coming seemingly from infinite distances, without any point of direction. Small and unreal as it sounded, actual words came floating to him.

CHAPTER XXX

DANGEROUS WATERS

Dexter searched about him with wide bewildered eyes. A deep, lifeless hush brooded once more over the forest, and he saw nothing anywhere but the still shadows of trees. His woodsman's instinct assured him that no human being lurked within hailing distance. Yet he could not doubt the testimony of his own senses. He had heard the thin, far call; a muffled, impalpable voice, that was the voice of Alison Rayne.

As he waited with bated breath, the murmur of sound again flickered through space—microscopic syllables of speech, apparently sent from nowhere. "Cabin—lower pass—help!" He made out the words distinctly, and in spite of reason, he knew that he could not be mistaken. Alison Rayne was calling him from somewhere, needing him for some reason, and as though his mind were attuned telepathically to hers, he heard.

He did not stop to wonder what it all might mean. On occasions before this he had observed the effects of strange phenomena at work in the wilderness, and by now he would not allow himself to be surprised at anything that might happen. He knew only that he had received a mysterious appeal for help, and if Alison wanted him, he would go the world over to find her.

Luckily the directions were clear. The voice had mentioned a cabin in the lower pass. How far it might be, he did not know, but he had already puzzled his way through the mountains, and was confident that he would have no difficulty in locating the mouth of the valley beyond. And if there were a cabin along the route, he could not miss it. He did not linger even to pack his traveling equipment, but started forward as fast as darkness and difficult ground permitted.

The mountain slope tumbled downward at a sharp slant, and he pushed blindly on through obscurity, feeling his way among the trees, crashing recklessly through briary patches, stumbling and sometimes falling over unseen obstacles in his path. How he traversed that length of dangerous hillside, without broken bones, he could not have said. But the luck of the mounted was with him, and when dawn finally overtook him, he had gained the bottom levels and found safer ground opening before him.

He found himself in a wild, steep-walled gulley, where a mountain torrent rushed and swirled among ugly bowlders. Fed from the distant heights by melting snows, the stream had already flooded level with the high spring marks, and the water still appeared to be rising. The upper embankment shelved above the surface of the rapids and he struck a slippery pathway that enabled him to follow along with the current.

For four or five miles he descended through the cut, and then the walls of the ravine began to widen, and at length he reached an open stretch of valley land, where a second stream came plunging out of a forking gulch to join the creek that had led him from the heights. He halted briefly to peer ahead through the morning mist.

Before him lay a strip of rising ground—a wooded hummock that, in ordinary stages of the water, would have been accessible from the embankment on which he stood. But the branching creeks had overflown their banks and the flood washed around the spit of land forming a small, triangular-shaped island. As he gazed across the swollen current, he discerned the dim outline of a log cabin, half hidden among the trees.

Dexter stared across the stream with narrowing eyes. This was the lower pass, and before him stood the cabin that the voice had told him he would find. No sound reached him above the noise of the rapids, and no movement was visible through the smoky haze of the dawn. Nevertheless, it must be here that he had been summoned by the cry for help, and there was nothing to do but investigate.

He glanced dubiously at the swift-running stream that cut him off from the isolated shore. It was fifty feet or more across the main channel, and the water boiled and eddied dangerously among sharp, slippery rocks. Swimming in such water was out of the question. In places the stream appeared to be almost shallow enough for fording but if a man happened to be swept off his feet nothing could save him from the rapids, and death among the rocks. Realizing the chance he was taking, the corporal hesitated only long enough to settle upon the safest place of crossing. He chose the spot where the current ran whitest, knowing that there he would find the shoalest water; and without removing his boots, or making any sort of preparation, he stepped into the water and started to wade out from shore.

The bank dropped away at a steep slant, and almost before he knew it he had plunged waist-deep in the icy stream. The current pulled and tugged at his legs and body, but he dug in his toes, leaned his full weight against the seething tide, and slowly and laboriously made his way forward. The gravel bottom sloped gradually downward, and by the time he had fought his way to the middle channel the water was gurgling above his armpits. At this stage of his journey, fortunately, a series of bowlders offered him a precarious anchorage, and he managed to work his way from one to another, until at last he could plant his feet once more. The rest of the trip across was only a question of holding his balance between each cautious step, and he soon stumbled into shallow water and clambered out on the shore of the island.

For a moment he stood in the lee of a hazel thicket, shivering with the cold, peering towards the cabin that loomed in the shadows not twenty paces beyond him. He had come up on the rear of the place, and the door, presumably, opened on the farther side. There were two windows in the wall that fronted his direction, but both were barricaded tight with heavy shutters. No sign of smoke came from the clay-daubed chimney. Judging by appearances, there was nobody about the premises. Nevertheless, he moved with caution when he finally went forward.

Circling the clearing on tiptoe, he passed around the corner of the cabin, and halted suddenly with a quick-drawn breath. Before the shut door, almost within arm's reach, crouched a bulky human figure.

Instinctively the corporal's hand slid into his pocket, and came out again, gripping the small pistol that had served him on another occasion. The sound of the rapids had smothered his footfalls, and his presence so far was undiscovered. The intruder's back was turned to him, and he saw only a bulging pink neck and a fat, gross body belted in a Mackinaw coat. For several seconds Dexter held his position, looking on with keenest interest. The thick-waisted stranger held a hunting knife gripped in his hands, and was hacking and sawing away at the planks of the battened front door. He had chipped a hole through the heavy slabs, and was now engaged in enlarging the aperture. It would appear that he was trying to cut an opening big enough to reach the inner latch-bar.

Dexter watched in silence for a space, and then quietly interrupted the work. "My hand isn't quite as pudgy as yours," he remarked. "Maybe mine'll go through."

The man's fingers opened with a jerk, his knife fell to the ground, and he whirled with a choking gasp to stare behind him.

Dexter smiled as he observed the reddish, flabby face that had turned his direction. The man was the outlaw, "Pink" Crill.

CHAPTER XXXI

ILL-FAVORED COMPANY

For an interval of ten seconds Crill stood like a man turned to putty, his mouth sagging as though it had suddenly lost muscular support, his babyish complexion changing to a sickly grayish hue. "Where—what the—?" he started to mutter, and then somehow failed to find the words to finish.

"You're wondering how I got here?" inquired the corporal politely. "I merely followed down through the pass. I didn't die under that fallen tree, as you probably supposed."

"What are you doing here?" the officer pursued as Crill continued speechless. "Locked yourself out, or something? What's inside that makes it worth so much trouble to reach the bar?

"Find out for myself if you're tongue-tied," he added after a moment of straining silence. With revolver in hand he moved forward and kicked the door panel with his heavy boot. "Hello!" he called out. "Anybody in there?"

As he paused to listen he caught a creaking sound within, light footsteps approached the threshold, and a faint, frightened voice spoke through the door. "Oh—who is it?" some one asked breathlessly.

It was a woman—Alison Rayne: and his eyes grew thoughtful as he recognized her voice. She had called to him, and the far cry in some wondrous manner had reached him when he stood at the head of the pass, miles away. A miracle had been wrought, and he could not guess its manner of accomplishment. He did not try, but turned to Crill with a direful glance.

"So—you were trying to cut your way through the door!" he said harshly. His fingers unconsciously tightened upon the butt of his gun, but after measuring the man up and down, he swung around to the cabin entrance. "Alison!" he called. "It's I—Dexter."

"Oh, thanks—thanks!" he heard the girl say in a half sobbing voice; then the bar was thrown up, the door opened, and Alison stumbled forward to meet him.

He looked searchingly into the blue eyes that lifted to his. "What happened?" he asked.

"This man!" she said with a shudder. "I barred myself inside, and he—he's been trying to cut his way through the door—working for hours with his knife blade. He—he's a beast!"

The corporal favored Crill with a saturnine stare. "Well, he'll have something else to think about from now on," he remarked grimly. "There's a beam and a rope and a trap waiting for him in the Cook County jail yard."

Dexter ignored the man, and glanced again at Alison. "Why did you leave me?" he asked. "I trusted your word, you know."

She faced him with level gaze. "My word is good," she said quietly. "I had every intention of coming back."

"My brother, of course," she interrupted. "I didn't think he could be far ahead of us, and I knew he'd have to stop for the night. I was afraid he might not get started early enough this morning, so I came on ahead, hoping that I might find him at this cabin. I meant to warn him to hurry on before you could overtake him."

"I was very tired," she said, "but—well, I admit I was able to go a little farther—after you were asleep."

Dexter could not help smiling at her frankness. "And you found your brother here at this cabin?"

"No. I thought he'd be here, but I guess he didn't stop. He must have hurried on in the night."

"I imagine that I do know," replied the officer placidly. "Probably not far ahead. You came back over the trail, I presume—after something you'd forgotten. And found Miss Rayne here. However it doesn't matter why you came. You're here. That's all I'm interested in knowing."

He eyed the outlaw somberly, wondering at the fact that he had risked a night abroad without a weapon. "What became of your rifle?" he inquired.

"Lost it in that cursed creek," was the reply. "Had to grab a rock when I was wading across, and the gun slipped from my hand. If it hadn't been for that, you wouldn't be standing there now asking me questions."

Dexter shrugged his shoulders lightly. "Let's go inside and cook bacon and coffee," he suggested. "I don't imagine any of us has had breakfast."

He stood warily aside and motioned towards the doorway, and after an instant's hesitation, the outlaw stepped forward and passed into the cabin. Dexter followed at his heels, and shut the door behind him.

There was but one room in the place—a solid walled chamber with a fireplace and built-in bunk, and three or four pieces of rude furniture scattered about. A packing box in the center of the floor apparently served as a table. Above it, from a ceiling beam, hung a lighted lantern. The corporal glanced swiftly about him and saw that the structure did not differ in any essential from the two cabins in the valley on the southern side of the pass. There were cooking utensils, a shelf full of provisions, and plenty of cut firewood. Evidently the place was one of a line of way stations intended for the accommodation of Stark's transient guests.

Dexter indicated a slab stool in the corner, and told Crill to sit down. He dropped the revolver into the side pocket of his jacket where it might be easily reached. "I won't hesitate to kill you," he said quietly. He eyed the outlaw's huge shoulders and big, ham-like hands, and knew that without the use of his right arm he could not hope to last two seconds in a physical encounter. "You stay your distance, always," he pursued. "The dead line is five feet and if you come nearer than that to me at any time, I'm going to let you have it."

Having delivered himself of his warning, he turned casually aside, laid kindling in the hearth, and built a fire. He ransacked a cupboard, helped himself to such provisions as he found there, and started breakfast for three people. Then, while the coffee pot was simmering, he stood as close as he dared to the fire, drying his dripping clothes.

Alison had come forward to toast the bacon, and he found a chance to talk to her, without being overheard by Crill.

"I heard your call for help," he told her. "The place was seven or eight miles from here. How was it done?"

"I may have cried out," she said. "I—I was terribly frightened when I realized that this man was cutting through the door to reach the latch."

"I heard your voice—recognized it," he persisted. "It was as though it had carried to me on the breeze from a great distance. And you spoke my name." He eyed her keenly. "How did you make me hear?"

Her glance shifted, and she refused to meet his gaze. "It could have been just your imagination," she said after a little pause. "I—I was in great trouble, and it could be that by a—some strange occult way my thoughts and fears were carried to you. Queer things like that have happened—things that none of us can understand." Her eyes softened as she lifted them fleetingly to his face. "But whatever it was you heard or fancied you heard, you came to me. I shall never forget that."

He regarded her tensely for a moment, and shook his head. Whatever the mystery of the far-off voice, she had no intention of confiding the truth to him. After all, he was her enemy, and he could expect no help from her in solving riddles. And from previous experience he knew how futile it was to cross-question her when she had made up her mind to keep silent. He smiled lightly. "All right," he said. "It's evident that Stark and his guests have some uncanny method of projecting voices through the wilderness. And you're wise not to tip yourselves off to the police. But whatever the system is, I'm glad at least that I heard, and got here in time."

The breakfast preparations were finished in silence, and while the girl put plates on the packing box table, he poured the coffee and served the grilled bacon strips, Crill was motioned to a place at the table opposite Dexter, and he sat down sullenly to eat.

"How did you reach this island?" the corporal was reminded to ask Alison as she pulled up a chair at his left hand.

The corporal suddenly pushed his stool back from the table and stood up. "Come with me, Crill," he commanded. "I want you where I can keep an eye on you." He pointed towards the doorway. The outlaw stared at him from under lowering brows, but after a sharp exchange of glances, the man got up reluctantly and moved across the room.

Dexter forced his prisoner to precede him outside the cabin, and together they walked down through the timber to the edge of the rapids. The corporal looked across the rushing, tumbling surface of the stream, and his worst fear was realized. The water had risen at least half a foot since he had crossed. Presumably an ice jam had broken somewhere in the mountains, and the flood was released. Some of the bowlders he had clung to now had disappeared from sight. He had barely managed to force the passage when he came from the opposite bank, and the few added inches of depth made the return impossible. He and Alison and Crill were marooned on the island, and it might be many days before the stream subsided sufficiently for them to dare the return trip. Meanwhile, it was a certainty that Stark and the others of his gang would soon be returning to look for the missing Crill.

CHAPTER XXXII

COPPERHEAD

Before the disconcerting discovery that he was trapped on the island, Dexter had already framed his tentative plans for the future. The capture of the Chicago outlaw at such a time had left him in a rather embarrassing situation. The man was too important a prisoner to take any chance on his escape. But to keep him in custody meant constant danger. Stark was not a person to let a belt full of gold slip through his fingers, and he undoubtedly would scour the woods to find its wearer.

Dexter had decided to play safe. It would be suicidal to push on northward where he was almost certain to encounter members of Stark's crowd; so he had made up his mind to turn back through the valley he had just quitted, make his way out through the southern gateway, and escort his two prisoners to Fort Dauntless. It was entirely possible that he might meet a party of re-enforcing police somewhere on the way. In any event he had discovered the route through the north pass, and after he had delivered Alison and Crill into safekeeping he could have returned with comrades to renew the hunt. Stark probably would continue his operations, and in some way or another the old trail could have been picked up.

But it was too late now to adopt the wiser course. There was nothing to be done but to sit still to wait until the stream might be forded again. And if Crill's companions put in their expected appearance, the corporal must fight them single-handed, with a thousand to one chance against his winning.

Dexter's face was an unreadable mask as he surveyed the turbulent waters, but Crill evidently understood the situation as well as he did. The outlaw exhibited his yellow teeth in a grin of saturnine gloating.

"Got yourself in a hole that you won't get out of alive," he remarked. "My gang'll be here after me, you bet, and when they come there'll be one less cop on the royal police force."

"The cops of the mounted do drop out at intervals," admitted the corporal calmly. "But there's always a new one to fill up the ranks. So that's all right." He smiled almost genially. "Meanwhile I advise you to step very carefully. Come on. We'll go back."

The three island castaways spent a long and tedious day in the cabin between the thundering rapids. Dexter found a few old dog-eared magazines that helped him beguile the dragging hours, but he was forced to do his reading in broken snatches, with one eye watching Crill or shifting restlessly towards the open door, through which he could see along the farther bank of the water-course.

The outlaw for his part did everything he could to keep his captor's nerves on edge. He had opened a window shutter, and found himself a seat on a bench under the sill. Part of the time he stared off downstream with an air of grim expectancy, as though he were confident that his friends would soon appear. At other moments he would swing around to fix Dexter with venomous, unwinking eyes. At intervals he would spring up from his stool and peer out the window, pretending that he had caught sight of some one approaching through the forest; only to sit down again with a mocking, throaty laugh when the corporal also lifted his head to look. Twice he lurched to his feet and started truculently across the room, moved apparently by a sudden savage impulse to hurl himself upon his captor. On one such occasion he advanced so near that the officer dropped the magazine he was reading and reached for his revolver. Whereupon Crill's face relaxed in an evil smirk, and he swaggered back to the bench to renew his vigil at the window.

Dexter would have liked to put an end to the man's antics by tying him hand and foot; but he could not hope to accomplish the job with only one serviceable arm. If Crill once laid hands on him he unquestionably would be crushed and beaten down by sheer bulk and weight of flesh. His only dependence were the three cartridges left in Alison Rayne's revolver, and the outlaw well knew that he would not fire, except in an extreme emergency.

The officer could have called on Alison to help him, and because of her fear of the murderer she probably would have consented; but the girl was also his prisoner, and it was a matter of pride and honor with him not to seek favors where duty forbade him to grant favors in return. So he made the best of matters by keeping his temper and patience, and maintaining unceasing vigilance.

For Alison the day passed with less monotony. The mere fact of being under a roof again served to awaken feminine instincts of orderliness, and she spent the entire afternoon cleaning the dirty and untidy cabin. She swept the floor, dusted the larder shelves, and scrubbed and scoured all the cooking utensils she could find about the place. Later she baked a pan of biscuits, and contrived an amazingly appetizing pudding, made of corn meal and dried apples and molasses, with bear fat for shortening.

That evening Dexter sat down to the first civilized dinner he had tasted in months; and when he finally finished, he got up with a guilty knowledge of having over-eaten. He was a bit alarmed to discover that he had grown very drowsy. To sleep soundly with Crill in the cabin meant to invite death, so he took the precaution of brewing an extra pot of strong coffee to drink before he turned in for the night.

There was only one bunk in the cabin, and this was allotted to Alison. Crill was ordered to spread his blankets before the fireplace, while Dexter made his bed by the opposite wall, where he could guard the front door. Before he retired he took a charred stick from the hearth and drew a half circle around the section of floor assigned to the outlaw.

"Your deadline," he remarked with somber emphasis. "If you stir beyond that mark I'll shoot you down without asking a question. Good night."

Through the long hours of darkness Dexter was permitted but little rest. At times he dozed off, but with every faint creak of sound about the cabin his hand reached automatically towards his revolver and he sat up, wide awake and staring, expecting any moment to see a crouching bulk stealing upon him from the shadow of the hearth. Three times during the night he left the cabin to circle the little island and to gaze up and down the moonlit shore across the way. On each of these occasions he forced Crill to get up and accompany him, and while the man muttered and grumbled over the indignity of being kept awake, he obeyed. Morning arrived at last, and although the outlaw had not yet ventured to make any hostile move, Dexter was fagged by his long vigil, and he knew that flesh and blood could not endure many more such nights.

Except for the fact that time seemed to drag more slowly, the second day was a repetition of the first. The corporal grew heavy-eyed as the hours passed, and by mid-afternoon he would have sold the tunic off his back for a thirty minutes' nap. He drank enormous quantities of coffee, and with Crill as his companion, went outdoors at frequent intervals to tramp doggedly up and down the banks of the rising stream, forcing himself to stay awake.

Alison alone had obtained her full night's rest, and she awakened fresh and clear-eyed, to resume her self-imposed duties about the cabin. She prepared the meals and washed the dishes, and smilingly, but stubbornly, refused to let any one help. When dinner was ready that evening she insisted on her companions sitting down ahead of her, while she waited on table.

"You make me feel like a scoundrel," Dexter protested as she forcibly pushed him to his stool and placed a steaming plate before him. "I don't just see why you're called upon to be the maid of all work."

She laughed pleasantly, and leaned lightly against his shoulder to put his coffee cup on the table. "It saves one from going crazy," she explained—"having something to keep the hands and mind occupied. I'm really glad to do it, and I don't want anybody bothering me."

Before the officer could say anything further, she moved away and bent in seeming absorption over a kettle she had left bubbling in the fireplace. A look of gentleness stole momentarily into Dexter's gray eyes, and without thinking what he was doing, he half turned on his stool to watch the slim, boyish figure bending before the hearth. For the instant he forgot that Crill was seated on the other side of the table, almost within arm's reach. His glance was tracing the graceful curve of the girl's throat and chin, shadowed in the ruddy glow of the fire, when some guarding sentinel of the brain gave him warning.

With a startled breath he whirled about, just in time to see Crill rise from his seat and fling himself across the table.

Dexter caught a glimpse of an evil, bloated face and two slits of eyes, glaring with ugly purpose. The table was overturned with a crash, and Crill lunged forward, reaching with his ponderous hands.

The corporal felt murderous fingers at his throat, but in the fraction of an instant vouchsafed him he twisted away, threw himself backwards and fell from his stool. He caught his weight on his left hand, and then, before his heavier assailant could drop upon him, he sprang to his feet, and a cat-like leap carried him back to the cabin wall.

Even as he dodged across the room, Dexter's hand had gone to his jacket pocket. If the man still came on, he must shoot him down. His fingers started to close upon the butt of his revolver, and found nothing to take hold of. A limp, helpless feeling came over him as he waited at bay, with his shoulders backed against the wall. His weapon was not in his pocket.

CHAPTER XXXIII

HIGH STAKES

At times before this the corporal had faced death without a tremor of fear. Now, as he looked into the malignant face, hideous and bestial, looming before him in the shadow of the fireplace, he felt loathing and disgust, but he was not afraid. Crill outweighed him by nearly a hundred pounds; he was crippled, unarmed, defenseless. Yet as he felt the logs behind him, and knew there was no further retreat, the beat of his pulse grew slow and regular and an icy calmness gripped him.

His hand was still in his pocket, and he kept it there. "Stop!" he said in a low, chilling voice.

The outlaw checked himself in mid-stride, and as though drawn by hypnotic force, his glance wavered and focussed itself upon the pocket of the corporal's jacket. He balanced on his feet for an instant with tensely drawn muscles, torn between the madness to kill and the craven dread of taking a chance.

For the length of a breath the murderer hesitated; a shifty, furtive look crept into his squinting eyes; his hands closed and opened again, and his arms fell slowly against his sides; and then, with a hoarse sound in his throat, his gross body relaxed, and he half stumbled backwards on his heel.

A hot thrill of exultance surged through Dexter's veins as he realized that he had won; but his voice remained frigid and the expression of his face did not change. "Pick up that table!" he ordered.

A sullen red color surged up over Crill's neck and ears, and his lips drew apart in a wolfish snarl; but something in Dexter's glance schooled him to silence. Without a word he turned on his heel, slouched back across the room, stooped over the table, and turned it back on its four legs.

"All right!" said Dexter, the note of triumph erased from his speech. "Also the dishes, if you don't mind!"

Knowing now that the man would obey him, he turned aside and sauntered across the floor to confront Alison. And it needed but a glance at her frightened, guilty face to tell him what had become of his revolver. He recalled now how she had leaned against him when she gave him his cup of coffee. As he remembered, he had the gun a few minutes before when he sat down at the table. She must have made the opportunity deliberately, and extracted the revolver from his pocket without his knowledge.

He scrutinized her for a moment in grim questioning, wondering what her purpose might have been. Was it her intention to strip him of his only means of defense, and leave him at the mercy of his enemies? The supposition was unthinkable, and with his first glimpse of Alison's eyes he dismissed it as an unworthy and horrible thought. There were two other possibilities: either she wanted the revolver for her own protection, or else she had taken it to get rid of evidence that might some day be used against her.

He knew that she must have the gun concealed about her person, but he dared not try to get it back again, or ask her why she had taken it. His life was an insurable risk only as long as Crill might be kept in ignorance of the truth.

"Your boarders owe you an apology," he remarked with a sardonic smile. "It isn't polite to be jumping up and down from the dinner table. But we'll both try to behave ourselves in the future." Alison was crouching by the fireplace with a smoking skillet in her hand, staring at the corporal with wide, awe-stricken eyes. She had seen him coerce a madman by sheer force of nerve, and the swift frustration of tragedy had left her breathless and trembling.

"If you don't mind," resumed Dexter in faint mockery, "we'll go on with the next course. The loss of the first is irreparable, but we'll try to forget it."

"I—there's enough left in the pot—I can fill your plates again," the girl stammered, and he knew that she had no sense of what she was saying.

The corporal nodded quietly, crossed the room and took his place at the table, opposite the glowering Crill. Alison came forward in trepidation to remove the empty plates; and for the present at least, the incident was closed.

Dexter returned to his dinner with unaffected appetite, quite as though nothing had happened; and when he had finished he pushed back his stool and invited his sulky companion to go outside with him for a walk.

The branching creek still rushed in swollen torrents around the little island, boiling and roaring among the rocks, carrying masses of ice and gyrating tree trunks along with the currents. The flood ran level with the high-water mark of the afternoon, and apparently the spring rise had reached its highest stage. From now on the water probably would gradually recede, but Dexter knew by previous experience with wilderness freshets, it might take two or three days longer before he could expect to recross the ford. He scanned the length of turbulent rapids, and shook his head. If Stark's party failed to show up in the meanwhile, and if he could force himself to stay awake for two more days and nights, he might escape from the island. But at that moment the prospects were not cheering.

When he went back to the cabin, he ordered Crill to retire into his marked circle before the fireplace. "I'm not going to stand for any more foolishness," he remarked with an assurance he was far from feeling. "That's your spot, and I advise you to stay in it."

Alison had already crept into her bunk. Her soft hair was tumbled over her face, and her head lay pillowed on her extended arm. She seemed to be asleep. Dexter looked down at her, and his lips quivered into a wistful, tender smile. For a moment he stood motionless in the concealing shadow by the bunk, and then, with a slow-drawn breath he tiptoed across the floor to dim the light of the lantern. A brief inspection of the inner premises assured him that the door and window shutters were fastened, and he retreated to his own corner of the room to take up his second night's vigil.

The fear that he might go to sleep had grown like a haunting specter in his mind. He knew that if he once allowed himself to drop off, he would sink into a deep slumber, from which there would be no awakening. Afraid to lie down, he planted himself on a stool, leaned his head and shoulders against the wall, and made himself as comfortable as he dared.

So he spent the night, listening as in an evil dream to the mutter of the rapids outside, nodding and dozing, but arousing himself each time he felt the muscles of his body begin to sag; conning over all the fragments of verse he could remember, doing sums in mental arithmetic; somehow forcing his reluctant brain to keep on functioning. He managed to watch out the night, but dawn found him slumping on his stool, haggard and hollow-eyed, knowing that he could not stick it out for many hours more.

By the exertion of all his will power, he managed to hold his leaden eyes open through the interminable hours of daylight. The forking waters had begun to fall, inch by inch. The channel, however, was still too deep for wading. By morning, perhaps, he might venture the crossing. He had not quite decided what he would do if he succeeded in reaching the open shore opposite, but his common sense advised him to let Crill escape. At least he could then creep off in hiding and sleep. Even if he lost a day or two it would not be too late to take up the trail again. But for the present he was in the situation of the trapper who caught the grizzly by the tail. He had his prisoner captive, and he couldn't let go.

The prospect of fighting off sleep through another night appalled him. Coffee had lost the power to stimulate his nerves, and he found himself moving about in a sort of daze, obsessed by the fear that he might doze off, even while he stood on his feet. He had read and re-read all the magazines in the cabin, and out of desperation that evening he sought about him for something to occupy his mind. On the back of one of the shelves he discovered a greasy pack of playing cards. He riffled the deck under his thumb, and cast a speculative glance towards Crill.

The outlaw looked over his shoulder with a twisted grin. "Sure," he said—"when they make it interesting. But no piker stuff!"

"Slipping 'em off for dimes." Crill fixed the officer with his beady glance. "How much you got on you?"

Dexter shook his head depreciatingly. Money was of no use to a man in the wilderness, and when he had ridden out from Crooked Forks on long patrol, nearly a year ago, he carried in his pocket only a few dollars in cash that had been left from his last August's pay.

He produced two small bills, and at sight of the numerals Crill laughed raucously. "You don't think I'm going to fool around any with crockery marbles, do you?" he jeered. He started to turn away, but checked himself instantly, and faced the corporal with a sobered expression. "At that," he added, "you've got something I could use," he added. "If you want to get away from the little boy stuff, maybe we can talk."

"You get me." Crill's thick lips parted in a crafty smile. "I got three thousand in gold in my belt, and ten coarse notes that bring the total to fifteen grand. That's something for you to shoot at. And all you got to put up is something that don't cost you anything."

"Let's get this straight," said Dexter, his eyes narrowing. "You wish to play cards with me, you putting up money, I staking—your freedom?"

"Poker—Jacks—the draw to fill—and a show-down." The outlaw drew a breath of kindling excitement. "Five hundred bucks at a smash—you swearing to let me go if you lose. If you win you've got some velvet to go on. And we keep going until you break me or I break you. Simple?"

"Quite!" Dexter stood for a moment in meditative silence. He had already decided to let his prisoner go, if he ever got the chance. So whether he should win or lose in this game of strangely matched stakes, the police were out nothing. There was no point of honor involved. The main consideration was the game itself. There ought to be enough interest in such an encounter to keep him awake, and no matter what the cost, he must not sleep to-night.

"If I should agree to release you," he said after a pause, "the promise goes only that far. I would give you only a day's start, and then I go after you again."

"Another thing," pursued the corporal quietly: "If we play, we play fair. I want you to be entirely satisfied—as I know you wish me to be—that fortune alone governs the turn. An impartial third person deals the cards."

Crill shifted his lowering glance from Dexter to the girl and his scowl changed gradually to an oily smirk. "All right, lady, you do it," he said. He snapped his fingers, devil-may-care. "Let's go!" he invited.

CHAPTER XXXIV

GAMBLERS' OATHS

While the two men were settling the business at hand, Alison had stood by in silence, looking curiously from one to the other, a little bewildered, and also a little frightened by the singular turn of events. But as Dexter faced her, her head went up resolutely, and she mutely questioned him with her eyes.

"Please," he said. He placed a third stool at the table and laid the pack of cards before her. Then he coolly turned up the wick of the hanging lantern, so that the full light fell on the center of the board. Crill settled his bulk on a stool facing the fireplace, and Dexter slipped casually into the seat opposite.

The girl picked up the deck, and her slim hands were not quite steady as she started to shuffle the cards. "Ready?" she asked in a stifled voice.

"Let 'em go, lady," said the outlaw, and Dexter's fist clenched as he caught the leering glance across the table.

Awkwardly she dealt from the pack, and waited with parted lips while the two men reached for their cards. Crill left his cards face down on the table, and warily bent up the corners to examine the pips. Dexter raked his hand towards him, gazed openly at the spots, and nodded.

"I have them," he remarked, and dropped two cards in front of him. "Draw three, please."

The overweighted silence was broken only by the soft, silky sound of cards slipping off the pack. A three of spades, a ten of clubs and a queen of hearts fell to the corporal's allotment, and with a quiet movement he turned over a pair of queens. "Threes," he announced.

Crill stared at a nine of spades that Alison had dropped in front of him, and sucked in his lips with an audible sound. "Just missed a flush," he said, and laughed disagreeably. "They're all pink but that one. First blood for you."

"You get yours, all right," returned the outlaw between set teeth. He stirred heavily on his stool, opened his coat, and unbuckled a sagging chamois belt, which he deposited with a thump on the table. He unbuttoned one of the belt pockets and brought out a fistful of twenty-dollar gold pieces. Twenty-five of these were counted out in a stack and ungraciously shoved at the officer. "There!" he growled. "Let's see how long you hang on to 'em!"

Alison's flexible fingers again shuffled the deck, and with more self-possession now, she again distributed the cards. This time Crill announced openers, and after discarding and filling his hand, he sat back with an expression of smug contentment. "Three bullets!" he declared, and his huge hand started across the table towards the pile of gold he had just lost.

"One moment," interrupted the corporal pleasantly, as he exhibited his hand. "The queens are standing by me for some reason. There are three of them again, and a pair of deuces to back them up."

Crill's pink complexion turned a mottled red, and he snorted angrily through his nostrils; but there was no gainsaying the evidence of defeat. In ominous silence he reached into his belt and counted up another glinting pile of double eagles. "Go to it!" he said morosely.

For six hands running Dexter won, and the chamois belt was beginning to take on a limp and depleted appearance when his luck finally turned against him. He lost three pots, gained one, forfeited four more, and at length was reduced to his original stake.

"Let 'em go!" said the outlaw in unlovely gloating as he leaned his broad elbows over the heap of gold he had raked back to his side of the table.

Alison glanced sidewise at the corporal, and he thought he saw a tinge of anxiety in her glowing eyes. "If you please," he invited serenely.

She riffled the pack, and slowly and deliberately passed out the cards. Then she straightened on her stool and waited without breathing while the two players consulted fortune's sending.

"Jacks up," asserted the officer after the draw, as he spread his cards fan-shape under the flickering lantern rays.

Dexter took the next pot and the next, was beaten twice, and then started on a winning streak that eventually stripped the outlaw of his last gold piece. But when the yellow treasury notes were forced out on the table, the break came, and the corporal's three thousand of winnings dribbled gradually away until he had nothing left to stake but his pledged word to free his prisoner if the next turn of the game fell against him.

But the hazard of the last chance switched in his favor. He piled up his winnings to formidable proportions once more, again dropped back to nothing but a promise, and again started accumulating gold pieces. So the game went on through the hushed hours of the night, see-sawing first one direction and then the other, with neither player gaining a final advantage, until along towards the approach of daylight, when the luck of the game swung definitely to Dexter's side of the table, and thereafter remained with him.

The first glimmering of dawn found the three strangely assembled companions still seated in a tense circle under a dim, sputtering lantern, watching the fall of cards on the greasy table top. The corporal had unbuttoned his tunic at the throat, and he had slumped down on his stool, his legs stretched at full length, and his lean jaw resting on his hand. His face looked gaunt and haggard in the yellow light, but his wide-open eyes were keen and watchful, glinting with feverish brightness. All desire to sleep had left him. On the table at his elbow was stacked three thousand dollars in gold coin, and a bundle of crisp treasury notes representing thirteen thousand more. Crill was down to his last bill.

The murderer's face was not pleasant to look upon. His thick, bloodless lips had drawn apart, baring his teeth in a poisonous misshapen smile. The flat nostrils were pinched in at the corners by muscular constriction, forcing him to breathe through his mouth, and the skin seemed to have stretched tighter across his bloated face, accentuating the white, bony hollows of the temples. The eyes that looked out between puckered rolls of flesh gleamed with ominous fixity, like hard black beads, never winking, never losing the malevolence and hatred that dwelt in their frozen depths.

Dexter, by accident, thrust out his leg too far and touched the murderer's ankle, and he jerked back his foot with shuddering haste. "I'm five hundred in that note," he said after a chilling silence. "If I win this time, it's the end."

The outlaw's tongue licked across his sagging lips, but he had no voice to reply.

A spot of bright color tinged the girl's cheeks, but otherwise she gave no sign of excitement. She twisted up the sleeve of her frayed white sweater, and then her slim hands manipulated the deck. Carefully and precisely, she slipped off the cards, until five lay on the table before each player. Then, laying the remaining pack beside her, she sat back to watch.

Dexter scooped up his cards with his left hand, thumbed them apart, and dropped one from among its companions. "Open," he said mildly. "I'm filling with the top one."

The outlaw gingerly bent the corners of his cards, and leaned forward with a stealthy movement to peer under his wrist. "Three!" he said at length in a thickly muffled voice.

Alison dealt the cards, one to Dexter, three to Crill, and dropped the deck with a gesture of finality. For a fleeting instant her glance shifted to the corporal's face, and a ghost of a smile hovered about her lips.

Dexter's stern features relaxed slightly in response, and he flopped his cards over on their backs. "I had 'em to start," he drawled—"nothing except treys and deuces."

Without a word Crill peeled up the edges of the three grimy pasteboards before him, and then, in an ungovernable fit of rage, he swept his arm across the table and sent the deck flying. For a moment he sat scowling in silence, and then he dropped his fat hands before him and stumbled drunkenly to his feet.

"I suppose you think you've broken me!" he rasped out, with a horrible effort to control his speech.

Dexter likewise stood up. He stacked the yellow backs in a neat pile, folded them lengthwise, and slipped the packet into the inside pocket of his tunic. Then he began thrusting chinking handfuls of gold into the receptacle of the chamois belt.

"You have the same chance of keeping that stuff as I have of turning into a preacher," said Crill, his face distorted in a hideous sneer.

The corporal looked up from under one lifted eyebrow. "I beg your pardon?" he inquired.

"Do you think Stark and his gang are going to let you get away with that? It's mine, but it also belongs to them." The murderer showed his teeth in a venomous grin. "Stark and his bunch are going to be here before you can get away. Or if they should happen to miss you, they'll hound you down through the woods until you croak on the trail. You didn't think Stark was going to let anybody cop fifteen thousand out of his fingers, did you?"

Dexter finished stowing away the gold pieces, and deliberately fastened the pocket flaps. "I can't manage with one hand," he said casually to Alison. "Will you help me buckle this belt around my waist?"

As the girl moved forward to give assistance, he turned abruptly to Crill. "You had some such mental reservation when you sat down to play?" he asked. "You knew if I won I wouldn't be allowed to keep my winnings? In other words, you were counting on Stark from the beginning?"

"I hope to tell you I was! Do I look crazy to you? I wasn't playing to lose anything."

"I only wanted to know," said the corporal. "I had a notion that I might return your money to you—in good season. I don't want it—wouldn't touch it. Wouldn't soil my hands. I'd about made up my mind to give it back to you, but that speech of yours has changed things." His teeth fastened in his lip as he fixed the outlaw with scornful regard. "I'll tell you what I've decided to do with it now—having won it fairly," he ended. "I'm going down to the rapids and dump it overboard."

Crill started as though he had received a blow in the face. "What?" he gasped. "Fifteen thousand—your money—fifteen thousand dollars? Why, you wouldn't—"

"But—" Crill drew a sobbing breath, and the madness of terror suddenly flared into his eyes. "It's the money—Stark—I'd never get out of these woods alive without the money to pay. He'd leave me to die, or kill me."

Crill stared at him for a single, incredulous instant, and wilted like a punctured balloon. "Oh, no!" he faltered, choking. He groped his way back to the table and his hands reached out in fawning appeal. "Please, Corporal Dexter! You don't—you don't know Stark—"

His voice broke in an agonized whisper, but before he could go on with his pleading, another voice interrupted from the farther side of the room.

"My ears are burning. I must have heard my own name." The words cut sharp and incisive, like rifle shots, from the front of the cabin.

Dexter and Crill and Alison swung around as though they had been jerked by a string, and they remained like three statues, staring towards the open doorway.

CHAPTER XXXV

HAZARD OF THE GAME

The newcomer had arrived without a sound. Evidently he had just forded his way across the rapids. Water trickled in rivulets from his legs and his clothing clung to his spare frame; but in spite of wetness he still retained his well-groomed, debonnaire appearance. He smiled appreciatively at the scene before him as he absently thumbed the hammer of the rifle he held gripped in his hands.

He waited for a second or two, but as nobody had any reply to make, he tilted up his weapon, and sauntered into the room. A trampling of other feet sounded outside, and four other men drifted into view through the morning mist and crowded across the threshold at their leader's heels.

From Stark's dripping figure, Dexter's glance wandered to the silhouetted shapes beyond, and he recognized Norbert Croix and 'Phonse Doucet, and Alison's brother, Archie. There was a fifth man in the group, a thick-set individual with a scraggly red beard, whose acquaintance he had not yet made. The clothing of the newcomers was water-soaked. It was evident that they had just waded the rapids. While the game was on in the cabin, the forking streams must have fallen low enough to permit a crossing.

The intruders filed into the room, and the last one closed the door behind him. Stark moved forward and laughed softly to himself.

"So you got out from under that tree," he remarked as he surveyed Dexter. "I didn't think you had a chance on earth, but you fooled me that trip. Anybody help you?"

Dexter faced the man with level eyes. "You left me my watch, and I made a scoop of the lid and dug the ground from under my shoulder," he said. "I was able to get loose before morning."

Stark grew silent for a space as he thoughtfully surveyed the group before him. "Hum!" he mused at length: "it doesn't matter much how it happened. We've returned to the status quo, as it were. I didn't do a very good job of it the last time, but that's something easily corrected."

The smile faded from the man's face, and he stood with feet apart, fingering the lock of his rifle, measuring the officer with merciless glance. "It would have been better for you if you'd let well enough alone," he said. "You wouldn't have it to go through with again."

His head turned slightly as he spoke, and he nodded politely to Alison. "Will you please stand aside, Miss Rayne?" he invited.

"Do as he says," counseled Dexter as the girl hesitated. He looked at her for a moment with a gentle glance, and drew a faint, quivering breath. "Go over by the bunk, please."

"You're lucky this time," he pursued. "I'm in a hurry, and I'll make it quick." His lips pressed together in a hard, narrow line, and he cocked the hammer of his rifle, and started slowly and deliberately to raise the muzzle.

Dexter's heels came instinctively together, and he drew up his spare body, straight and unmoving, like a soldier at salute. He faced his enemy quietly, his fine-drawn features set in unchanging, stoic lines.

Nobody in the room spoke or stirred, and the hush of death fell about them. Stark leveled his rifle and lined his sights upon the erect figure standing under the light of the guttering lantern. Grimly he began to count: "One—two—"

He got no farther. A streak of red flame lashed past the corporal's shoulder, and the stuffy silence of the room was jarred by a sharp, cracking explosion. The barrel of Stark's rifle wavered in his grasp, and a crimson bullet welt showed suddenly across the tanned flesh above his cheek bone.

Shocked, wondering, Dexter whirled to stare behind him, and he saw Alison Rayne crouching by the bunk, with a smoking revolver clenched in her fist.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE GRIM ACCOUNTING

The bullet only grazed Stark's face, and he recovered himself in a flash, knowing that he was not hurt. With a muttered exclamation he swung to confront the small, slim figure kneeling before him in the shadow.

Dexter saw the man shift the aim of his rifle, realized that Alison's life was forfeit. He gathered his muscles, and a long leap carried him across the floor to her side. The weight of his body forced the girl to the floor as he flung himself upon her; and he held her so, shielding her, while he wrested the revolver from her fingers.

Even as his left hand closed over the butt of the weapon the pent-up atmosphere of the room was jolted by the concussion of a heavy report, a burst of flame flared in his face, and a bullet fanned his top hair and tore splinters from the bunk post behind him. He saw Stark's eye staring at him down the rifle barrel as he jerked down the lever to inject a second cartridge.

Dexter was vouchsafed his instant of life, and he grasped its full measure. Alison's revolver was held comfortably in his left hand. There sounded a faint double snick as he drew back the hammer, and then he threw up the muzzle, and without seeming to aim, he fired.

Stark tossed up his head with the shot, and a queer look of bewilderment passed over his face. For a moment he held rigid on his feet, his eyes blankly gazing through the curling wreaths of smoke; then, his hands opened, as though they found the weight of the rifle too much for his strength; his legs bowed and caved beneath him and he doubled over backwards and fell heavily upon the floor.

In a second Dexter was on his feet, the light of battle flaming in his eyes. There was but one bullet left in the revolver, but the other men did not know, and he felt a thrilling confidence in himself as he stepped forward into the room.

There were five men left, but Crill was unarmed, and he held no fear of Archie Preston. Doucet, Croix and the red-bearded stranger were ranged in a compact group by the doorway. All three held rifles, but the dramatic suddenness of events seemed for the moment to have paralyzed their mental faculties. In the two seconds that might have enabled them to recover their wits, the corporal was upon them.

"Drop your guns!" he commanded, furious and menacing. His revolver somehow seemed to threaten all three at once. "Quick!" he jerked out savagely—"or you get it too!"

There followed a short, sharp interval of uncertainty, in which the tide of affairs quivered on a hair. But Dexter was still advancing, determined, formidable.

The little, ferret-eyed Croix stood nearest to him, and Croix was the first to weaken. His glance fell before the officer's eyes, his hand opened, and his rifle clattered to the floor.

"You, 'Phonse!" thundered Dexter. Doucet hesitated, wavered, and then he too dropped his weapon.

There remained the red-bearded man, and he was left alone facing the officer. He, perhaps, was made of sterner stuff than his two companions, but he could not help knowing that to fight back now spelled certain death, and after a short conflict of glances, he too threw down his gun.

"Into the corner behind the fireplace—all of you!" Dexter ordered. "Crill and Preston, you also!" He sidled over towards the front wall, and herded the men away from the door. Slowly they backed before the leveled revolver, and in two or three seconds he had driven them into the corner, where they huddled together like sheep.

The corporal ducked his head to his shoulder with a quick, nervous movement to wipe the moisture from his forehead. Then he looked up again, and laughed with a queer catch in his voice. "You're to stay where you are with your hands up," he announced. "I'll call you forward by name, one at a time, and feel your clothes for side arms—"

He was interrupted by a sobbing sound from the direction of the bunk, and as he half turned to look, he saw Alison lift herself to her feet and stumble forward into the lantern light. "Archie!" she cried in a piteous voice. "Forgive me—oh, Archie—I did it for—I couldn't help it!"

She swung around to face Dexter, her tearful gaze meeting his. "I have given my brother's life for yours, David," she said in a stricken whisper. Then she tottered across to the table, buried her head in her arms, and broke down in convulsive sobbing.

Dexter took a step forward and stood over her for a moment with awed and wondering eyes. His hand strayed towards her shoulder but he checked the movement, shook his head, and turned slowly away. Once more he faced the men in the corner of the room.

"You first, Doucet!" he commanded brusquely. "Come forward!" He beckoned with the muzzle of his revolver, but before the man had a chance to obey, the front door flung open with a crash and booted feet clumped into the cabin entrance.

Dexter whirled with a gasp of dismay. He stared wildly—blinked his eyes incredulously—and stared again. In the open doorway stood Colonel Devreaux.

The superintendent held motionless for a space, his keen, searching glance taking in the strange scene before him. "We heard shots," he remarked after a hushed interval. "What's happened here?"

Relief, thankfulness, and also a great weariness, might have been read in the relaxing lines of the corporal's face. He had held up for hours by the strength of will, but at sight of his officer the buoying sense of responsibility left him, and he found himself slipping. He seemed all at once to lose inches of stature, to settle within himself, as a sword shoved back in its scabbard. For once in his life he failed to answer his commander's question.

"Not yet." Devreaux peered at the corporal from under his grizzled brows. "I wandered down the valley to find you, after you had left that cave; but the sun thawed out your trail. Kept on going, and after days managed to reach the lower pass. And I chanced to meet Sergeant Brunswick and Constables Devlin and Jones coming in from the south to hunt me."

"Able to travel, at any rate." The old man thrust out his barrel-like chest, and the old dauntless smile for an instant crossed his deep-lined face.

"You left police blazes behind to mark your trail." The colonel squinted curiously as he surveyed the man before him. "Forgotten?"

Dexter's glance traveled past the superintendent's stalky figure and he saw three men in the familiar uniforms of the police lurking outside in the misty dawn. And something within him recalled him to himself, reminded him that he was still on duty.

With a sudden stiffening of his muscles he drew his body straight and, thrusting his revolver into his pocket, he brought his hand up in salute.

"I have finished long patrol," he said, "and can make my completed report, sir. I was forced to shoot and kill one Owen Stark, and I hold myself at your disposal for the inquiries of the court. I have placed under arrest, and now yield to police custody, the following prisoners: Alphonse Doucet, Norbert Croix, Roy 'Pink' Crill, one man whose name I have not yet learned, Archibald Preston, and—and Alison Rayne Preston.

"And—with your permission, sir," he added in a failing voice, "I should like to report off duty. I want to go to sleep."

CHAPTER XXXVII

NEWS FROM OUTSIDE

What happened after Dexter had delivered his prisoners into the keeping of his opportunely arrived comrades, Dexter never afterwards remembered. He may have suffered a sudden physical collapse, or perhaps he simply fell asleep while standing at attention before his officer. But when his eyes opened in reviving consciousness, he found himself stretched comfortably in a warm bunk with a blanket tucked about his chin. He might have been lying there for hours or for days. There was no way of guessing.

Stirring drowsily, he lifted himself on his elbow to gaze about him. He recognized the interior of the cabin where—ages ago, it seemed to him now—he and the outlaw Crill had sat up through the night playing cards together. The lantern was not burning, but the rays of a dying sun entered the open windows, breaking the gloom with ruddy streaks of light.

As his heavy-lidded eyes gradually began to function again, he made out the shapes of men, either seated or sprawled about grotesquely in the shadows. In the far corner, sitting with legs crossed and shoulders propped against the wall, he identified the giant figure of 'Phonse Doucet. The wizened, hangdog face of Norbert Croix was recognizable in the slanting glow of light beneath the west window. The red-bearded man was lying on the floor close by, with his bushy head on his arm. Next in line was Crill, his stout body slumped dejectedly against the logs of the wall, his head bowed to his chest, a picture of cowering abjectness. As Dexter surveyed the silent group before him, one of the men shifted his position, and he heard the clink of a chain. He perceived then that the four prisoners were shackled in pairs with handcuffs.

His glance ranged towards the farther end of the room, and he saw Archie Preston. The boy was seated on a stool under the north window, and he was bending over a newspaper spread on his knees reading by the failing light. Unlike the others, he was not manacled.

With mind still hazy from sleep, the corporal lay quiet for a while, gazing vacantly about the cabin. But presently it occurred to him that Devreaux and the other policemen were missing. And suddenly he found himself wondering what had happened to Alison. With an abrupt movement he cast off his blanket and sat up in the bunk. Some one had taken off his boots, he discovered; otherwise he was fully clad. The boots were lying by the bunk, and he pulled them on and fastened the laces. Then he stood up, buttoned his collar, and tried absently to smooth the wrinkles out of his tunic. He was running his fingers through his tousled hair, when he was aware that a shadow had darkened the open doorway. Looking around, he saw Colonel Devreaux entering the cabin.

The superintendent caught sight of Dexter, and he knitted his brows questioningly as he strode forward. "Waked up, have you?" he demanded. "How d'you feel?"

"All right, I guess." Dexter stretched himself and yawned, and his glance strayed towards the door. "Where's Alison?"

"More than thirty-six hours. You flopped while you were talking to me, and we got you into the bunk." The colonel reached forward and his stubby fingers touched his comrade's wrist. "You seem to have come around. But for a while yesterday we thought you were in for a long spell of it. We decided to camp here until you waked up naturally."

"Alison has told us all about you. You seem to have seen your job through. You haven't done half badly, Corporal—" Devreaux checked himself, stared the younger man up and down, and then for an instant his hard features yielded to a smile that was like sunshine breaking against the face of a weather-scarred cliff. "After to-day," he added quietly, "I think I can safely say—Sergeant Dexter."

A dark flush mounted to Dexter's temples, and a warm glow filled his eyes. To the men who served under Colonel Devreaux, his smallest word of commendation was like an accolade of knighthood.

"You finished off Owen Stark," remarked Devreaux, gruffly changing the subject. "Got him through the heart, and I don't imagine that he knew what hit him. I've a notion it was he who shot me last fall."

"In any event, Alison has told me the circumstances of his death," returned the superintendent. "She's willing to testify that you acted solely in self-defense. There'll be no difficulties for you in this affair."

He broke off speech abruptly as a light footstep sounded in the cabin entrance. Turning, he caught sight of a slender figure in knickers and frayed white sweater. "Good evening, Alison," he said with softening glance. "I was just telling the colonel how you jumped into that mess with Stark, just as he was about to let me have it. Nobody ever did a braver thing than that."

She faced him with a melancholy smile. "What else could I do?" she asked. "You were unarmed, and that man meant to shoot you without giving you a chance. I—I didn't stop to think. It all happened like something in a dream. Before I realized what I was doing the pistol was in my hand, and I had aimed and fired."

Dexter eyed her curiously for a moment. "Why did you take the revolver from my pocket?" he asked after a pause.

"Because your right arm was broken, and I didn't know whether you could shoot straight with your left hand," she answered without hesitation. "There was always danger of your falling asleep or of being caught off your guard, and I knew you were afraid of Crill." Alison cast a fleeting glance towards the opposite wall, where the handcuffed outlaw sat hunched in the shadow. "I'm not a bad shot," she added in a quiet voice, "and I thought that if anything happened—well, I'd be armed. And in a case of that sort I was ready to stand by the police."

Dexter searched her candid blue eyes, and gently nodded. "I only wondered—" he started to say, but before he could finish a sudden interruption came from the far corner of the room. A wild cry rang through the cabin, a stool was overturned clattering on the floor, and they faced about in amazement to see Archie Preston fling himself to his feet and stumble forward with a newspaper gripped in his shaking hands.

"Alison!" he burst out in unrestrained excitement. "This old paper that Sergeant Brunswick had in his pocket—it's—there's a story in it about me! Oh, it's too good—I can't believe that I've read it straight."

"Yes!" she urged tensely, the color slowly draining from her cheeks. "What is it? What are you trying to tell me?"

"Why, this!" returned the boy with a hysterical catch in his throat. "Don't you understand? Dr. Borden, who attended Uncle Oscar when he died—he's been caught and sent to an asylum—insanity—homicidal mania. It's here—telegraphed from Duluth—it's here in this paper. He killed another man, and they've caught him!"

"Archie!" gasped the girl, her eyes grown wide and staring. "Tell me quick! You mean Dr. Borden—?"

"Here! Read it for yourself!" The boy thrust the newspaper in his sister's trembling hands. "Dr. Borden himself put the poison in our uncle's medicines. And now he's killed another patient the same way. He's crazy—has been crazy for months. And they've found him out and arrested him and sent him to an asylum."

Archie threw both hands above his head, and his chest heaved with a great sobbing breath. "I'm innocent, and it is proven," he exulted. "I can go back home. They can't hold me for a crime that another man committed."

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE GREATEST GIFT

The boy stood with uplifted head, breathing heavily through parted lips, a mad joy burning in his eyes. But the two officers ignored him to observe the effect of the news on his sister. Alison had given a single broken cry as her brother handed her the newspaper. She moved on tottering feet to the window, but her hands were so unsteady that she could not possibly have read the wavering print of the eagerly gripped news sheet.

By a mutual impulse Devreaux and Dexter crossed behind her. The colonel passed both arms about her, caught her wrists, and stopped the paper from rustling. Then he and the corporal leaned over the girl's shoulder to peruse the story for themselves.

It was a short telegraphic item, tucked away on an inside page, and they saw at a glance that Archie had not misread the account. The item told of a practicing physician who had been suddenly afflicted with a criminal dementia. He had destroyed two of his patients by slyly switching the medicines he had prescribed. His mental state was not discovered until after he had wantonly committed a second murder. Under cross-questioning he had broken down in confession, and the authorities then were able to establish proof positive of his guilt in the two separate crimes. His first victim was a wealthy bachelor, Oscar Preston. The dead man's nephew, Archie, the account went on to say, was falsely accused of the murder and indicted on a first degree charge. With his sister Alison, his co-heir in the Preston estate, the boy had fled. At the time of writing the whereabouts of the fugitives was unknown. Every effort had been made to find them, but so far the search had proven unsuccessful. The authorities were still hoping to get into communication with the missing brother and sister, not to arrest them now, but to restore their rights under the law.

Alison somehow managed to read through the blurred paragraph of type, and as she finished her fingers unlocked and the paper fluttered from her hands. With a sudden movement she turned to face her brother.

"Archie!" She looked at the boy for a moment with tears brimming her eyes, and then she went to him, and her arms reached out and clasped tightly about his shoulders. "It's over—it's over!" she sobbed. "You can go back home—everything's all right! I'm so glad, I—I don't know what to say."

Colonel Devreaux scrutinized the pair for a moment from under frowning brows, and then he too walked forward. "Well, I suppose you're open to congratulations, Archie," he remarked brusquely.

The boy gently disengaged himself from Alison's embrace. "It's fine—it's wonderful!" he asserted jubilantly. "I can hardly believe it!"

"I wonder if you really appreciate your good fortune?" inquired the officer as he stared grimly at the young man.

"I do!" exclaimed the other. "I can go back. No more suffering and hardship! I can face my friends. I can take my old place again!"

The lines of Devreaux's face seemed to grow deeper and more inflexible as he listened. "You don't even begin to understand," he rasped out. "You've got the finest thing that was ever given to a man, and you haven't given it a thought. I'm talking about the loyalty that has stood by in your time of need—that would have gone with you through the blazing pit. You're thinking how nice it will be to get back to town, a free man—and I'm thinking about your sister."

The boy's eyes opened with a startled expression, and a slow flush darkened his face. "I—you're wrong," he returned unsteadily. "I'm thinking of her too. Alison! She's been magnificent!"

"I only thought I'd remind you," said the colonel, glowering. "That story in the paper is probably authentic. I've got to take you to the fort with me, but when I telegraph your local police they'll undoubtedly order your release. You'll be at liberty to go where you please. But it'll be different with Alison."

"That little affair in the cabin south of here, where the two men were shot in their bunks, Alison was there that night, and nobody else, as far as we can make out." A touch of sadness crept into the old officer's voice as he shook his grizzled head. "Your sister has those same qualities of loyalty and courage that—well, that make my policemen—my boys—stand by me: and I'm sincerely sorry that she can't go home with you." Devreaux turned soberly to the girl. "There's too much evidence stacked up, and we have no alternative," he said. "Until you're able to explain away that business in the burned cabin, there can be no hope of your release. The most we can promise you is fair treatment and an impartial hearing."

While the colonel was delivering himself of this speech, the door opened, and one of the constables entered the room. The newcomer walked to the fireplace, where a row of camp kettles were simmering over coals. He raised the lid of one of the pots, prodded inside, and faced about to announce that dinner was ready.

Plates were filled from the kettles, and food was given to the four manacled prisoners. Then Sergeant Brunswick and Constable Devlin were summoned into the cabin. Two packing boxes were shoved together to serve as a table, and Archie and Alison and the five policemen sat down to their evening meal.

This was the first opportunity Dexter's comrades had found to draw out the story of his recent adventures, and until their curiosity was satisfied, he was scarcely allowed the time to eat. He answered a multitude of questions, and finally pushed away his plate and settled back with a sigh to recount in detail the events that had taken place since the morning he had left the colonel at the bear cave.

Devreaux had lighted up an old blackened pipe, and he sat in silence, grim and immobile, peering at the young policeman through a cloud of tobacco smoke. When Dexter finished his story the old man vouchsafed the briefest nod. "For a single-handed job," he conceded, "you have accomplished all that the service could expect."

"I still don't understand how you ever found the pass," put in Sergeant Brunswick. "We came through a regular puzzle box to reach this place, and if we hadn't had your trail marks to follow, it might have taken us weeks to grope our way to the outlet."

"Pure piece of luck that brought me to the pass," said Dexter. "I was feeling around blindly, without any notion which direction to go, when I happened to discover an ancient blaze wrinkle in the bark of a great white fir. I chopped into the sapwood and found a deep buried ax mark, and some time-glazed scribbling that gave me my direction points. After that I had only to pick out the biggest trees in the line, and invariably there was an old ax scar to lead me on my way. So I was guided straight to the pass."

Brunswick wrinkled his forehead in growing interest. "What sort of scribbling was it?" he asked.

"Letter that looked like a 'W,' and something else that wasn't quite legible. I estimated that the marks were at least a half century old."

"Funny!" remarked the sergeant. "It sounds as though some surveyors had traveled through here some time or other, and I always had an idea that the nest of mountains on this side of the water shed was practically unexplored country."

"Which proves that you don't know your district history," cut in Devreaux quietly. The colonel glanced across at Dexter. "You say there was a letter 'W.' Letter 'U' also, wasn't there?"

"I couldn't quite make out the rest," was the reply. "It might have been a 'U.'"

Devreaux put down his empty coffee cup, and scanned the circle of faces about the table. "This isn't terra incognita, as some of you seem to think," he resumed. "It's a lost country now, but it was thoroughly explored at one time—about sixty years ago. The trail Dexter found was blazed by the pioneers of the old Western Union company.

"I wasn't much more than a kid at the time," the colonel resumed as the others waited, silent. "The date was somewhere around 1865. A long time ago, but I remember hearing the story—how an attempt was made to lay an all-land telegraph across America and Asia and Europe.

"The idea," continued Devreaux, "was to string a cable from the United States through the northwest wilderness, across Behring Strait to Siberia, and thence to Russia and the capitals of Europe."

"No. But a lot of the work was actually done. Parties of men were sent through these mountains to hunt out the easiest passes and defiles, and blaze the straightest route to the Behring shore. Later, construction crews came in and unreeled miles of cable through the wilderness, ready to string. But before the job was finished the first successful trans-Atlantic cable was laid by another company. Europe was connected with America by a shorter route, and the need for the longer, all-land line was ended over night. The promoters of the great project were forced to pocket their loss. They stopped operations, abandoned materials and equipment and cleared out of the forest, leaving hundreds of miles of cable wire on the ground behind them."

It was a curious tale of failure—of a magnificent dream gone wrong—and a meditative silence fell upon the group about the table as the colonel broke off speech and sat with a gloomy, retrospective frown and slowly puffed his pipe.

"You mean—they came up through these valleys—" Brunswick started to ask, but he was interrupted by a sharp exclamation from Dexter's side of the table.

"Wait! Just a minute!" The corporal half raised himself from his stool, gripping the table with his hand. "You said they left this wire—strung out through the wilderness?"

"Thousands of dollars' worth of copper wire—wasted," said Devreaux. "Just left out to—"

"Copper is not affected by weather," remarked Dexter before the colonel could finish. "The wire might remain just as it was for years—for centuries. Only it would be buried under an accumulation of forest trash, turning to mold and earth—buried deeper and deeper—"

He stopped, drew a short breath and got up from his stool. For a moment his glance searched about the room, and then without a word of apology he left the table, and picked up a rusted spade he found standing in the corner. There was a scraping of stool legs behind him, and as he turned towards the doorway he was aware that his companions were on their feet, trooping after him.

Passing out of doors, Dexter stopped in front of the cabin, and with his one useful hand he thrust his spade into the soft ground and started to dig. Before he had taken out a shovelful of earth, however, Colonel Devreaux came up to him and laid a detaining hand on his shoulder.

"Funny I didn't think of this myself," the old officer remarked depreciatingly. "But it didn't occur to me until you jumped up from the table. And—by jinks!—I'll bet you've struck the answer to everything! You'd better let a two-armed man do the labor." Devreaux glanced over his shoulder. "Here, Devlin," he commanded—"dig a trench across here."

The constable moved forward, took the spade, and set industriously to work. While the others stood by in tense curiosity he spaded up the yielding loam, and presently had excavated a narrow hole that went down two or three feet in the ground. Under the colonel's directions the digger started to carry his trench forward along the front of the cabin, but he had advanced only a pace or two, when the edge of his shovel caught against some hidden object under the loosened dirt, and refused to come up.

"Wait!" exclaimed the superintendent. He and Dexter dropped to their knees, and with eager hands began scooping away the musty-smelling earth. And in a moment they unburied an unyielding something that ran underground like a tenuous root.

Dexter had flattened himself on his chest to investigate. "Insulated wire!" he said in a suppressed voice. "A buried cable: The outer covering seems to have hardened—sort of petrified; but there's no doubt—"

"Let's see!" The colonel produced a knife from his pocket, thrust Dexter aside, stooped, and began to hack away at the moldy, taut-drawn strand. He cut through the outer surface, and the reddish glint of copper was revealed underneath.

He stood up with a sharp breath. "The old Western Union cable!" he muttered. "Trailed through the forest, and abandoned—more than a half century ago! Falling leaves drifting over it, decaying, forming new soil, burying it deeper and deeper, year by year! It must come all the way through the lower valleys, miles and miles of it."

"The line undoubtedly passes the cabin on the other side of the pass, where I first met young Preston, and the burned cabin, still farther south," put in Dexter in sober musing. "I dug around the one cabin the night Mudgett and the other chap were killed. But I didn't go deep enough. At the time I only thought it necessary to see if the ground had been recently disturbed. But of course it hadn't been. The cable was buried, not by the hand of man, but by the gradual work of the forest."

"Let's see where it goes!" said the colonel abruptly. He turned to Devlin. "Follow it up, please."

The constable resumed his digging, this time running his excavation along the line of the cable. The concealed wire led him straight to the cabin, and in a few minutes he had driven his trench to the base of the mud-daubed chimney.

Dexter had lingered in the background, an absorbed spectator, but when he saw where the cable led, he turned abruptly on his heel and almost ran back into the cabin. The four shackled prisoners watched his movements in furtive silence, but he paid no attention to them. The single bunk was built flush with the end of the fireplace, and he climbed up on the mattress and began to tap on the side of the plastered chimney. One of the stones moved before the pressure of his fingers, and he managed to pry it loose and draw it from place. And in the rudely built chimney was disclosed a dark, cubicle opening—a secret cubby hole in the masonry. He thrust his arm into the foot square space behind the stone, and drew forth a nickeled telephone instrument.

As he caught a breath of triumph, he heard a footstep behind him, and turned to see Colonel Devreaux staring over his shoulder. "Well, that seems to settle everything," remarked the old officer with a rueful expression. "The mysterious messages that passed back and forth through the wilderness! They had us guessing for a while, didn't they? But you've got it now."

Dexter continued his investigations, and at the bottom of the chimney he jarred loose two other stones, revealing a second and larger opening. From the compartment within he pulled forth a strand of new wire and a group of six heavy jars, which proved to be electric batteries.

"A simple form of telephone set, such as they use for private rural lines," he remarked after an examination of the apparatus he had brought to light. "Not good for a range of much more than ten miles, I imagine. But the terminals are connected and the batteries seem to be alive." He touched the colonel's elbow. "You can see where the wires run down to meet the old telegraph cable under the ground."

"The signal system of Stark's underground railway!" he remarked as Devreaux bent forward to look. "He found out in some way where the old cable ran, and put up a chain of trappers' shacks along the line of the wire. The telephones are hooked on in sections, I suppose, at about ten-mile intervals. A series of local circuits, with each set of batteries providing current for its own short stretch of line. But a message might be relayed from station to station, through the wilderness. So Stark was able to provide himself with means of long distance communication, with practically no labor and at very little expense."

Devreaux was impressed in spite of himself. "A stroke of genius," he mused. "But for a bit of luck on our side this Stark might have kept us guessing for years. We would have been groping around blindly, while Stark's innocent-appearing trappers could keep tabs on our movements, sending the word ahead, blocking us at every turn, laughing at us. It would have been like a deaf and sightless man chasing shadows." The colonel grinned in uncomfortable recollection. "In fact, for a while last fall it seemed that that was just what we were doing."

Devreaux was reaching forward to examine the arrangement of telephone wires, when Alison and Sergeant Brunswick appeared in the doorway. The girl advanced with a wan little smile. "You wondered how I happened to know about things that were taking place miles away in the forest," she said, glancing up at Dexter. "You tried to make me tell, and I wouldn't. It was a secret on which my brother's safety might have depended, and I had to keep it. But you've found out for yourself, and now it doesn't matter."

"I suppose all the cabins along the route are equipped with phones such as this one, concealed in the chimneys," Dexter remarked. "The cabin on the other side of the pass, for instance—where I spent a night with your brother, heard him call your name in the darkness, warning you to flee to Saddle Mountain: he was talking to you over one of these phones."

"There's no need to keep anything back now." Alison nodded quietly, and cast a quick glance towards the colonel. "That was the night I escaped from Colonel Devreaux. I had made my way back to the burned cabin. The chimney was still intact, the phone in it. I rang up my brother, and he answered. He told me you were with him, warned me of the danger of returning. He had heard that Mr. Stark was on his way across Saddle Mountain, and advised me to meet him there. And—well, you went too, and saved my life on the cliff—and afterwards—"

"And the time you found me pinned under the tree in the lower valley?" interrupted Dexter. "How did you get the news?"

The girl looked across the room towards the group of prisoners seated in the shadow. She indicated the red-bearded man, who shifted uneasily as the officers turned his direction. "He told me," she said. "He happened that day to come to the cabin where my brother and I were spending the winter. Mr. Stark had telephoned him at one of the other stations—about how a policeman was caught under an avalanche. I guessed it might be you, and I got the facts from him, and learned where you were to be found. So I waited my chance, and as soon as I could leave unobserved, I hurried from the cabin to go to you."

Dexter regarded her for a moment with eyes half closed. "It was a brave and generous thing to do," he said, but even as he spoke the inflexible line of his jaw reasserted itself, and he fixed her once more with a keenly inquiring gaze. "What about the night we were camping at the head of the pass, and you ran away from me?" he asked. "You came to this cabin—six or seven miles from the place you had left me—and you called to me for help, and I heard you."

She laughed a quick, fluttering laugh as she raised her head candidly to face him. "You remember the old dead tree at the top of the slope," she said, "when I found myself growing suddenly tired? I was tired, but I could have gone on a little farther—only I wanted to stop there."

"It was a gaunt old shell of a tree—hollow—" Dexter stopped to stare at her. "I know now!" he exclaimed. "It was one of Stark's stations. There's a telephone in the trunk of that tree."

Alison nodded. "As I told you before, I figured my brother'd spend the night at this cabin. And not knowing you were so close behind him, there was a danger of his oversleeping and being there next morning when you arrived. I thought I could warn him by telephone. I started to ring the cabin that night while you were gathering sticks for the fire, but you came back too soon for me. I had the receiver off, but didn't dare finish the call. You didn't give me another chance. But I must get word to Archie. So that night when you were asleep I slipped away to come here, intending to return to your camp before daylight.

"When I reached here," she pursued, "there was no Archie. You know what did happen—how I was forced to barricade myself in the cabin. In my fright I remembered the phone in the old hollow tree. The receiver was down and you had spread your blankets against the trunk. It was my only hope—to make you hear—and I screamed into the transmitter at this end, calling your help."

He looked at her soberly for an instant, and then laughed under his breath. "As simple as that! It was like a ghost voice whispering to me from the darkness, small and unreal, yet your voice."

He did not answer, but had turned with an absent-minded air, as though for no particular reason his attention was caught again by the hole in the chimney where the telephone instrument had been secreted. For a moment he stood silent, with thoughtfully puckered brows, and then, with a quick movement, he faced about once more to look at Alison.

"In the three cabins I have visited," he asserted, "the bunks were built like this one, placed against the side of the fireplace. Were the phones all concealed in the chimneys by the bunks, like this one?"

He nodded, and then as though he had forgotten her presence, he strode to the open window to stare into the twilight, with a pensive, far-off look in his eyes. But after a minute or two he turned to pace back across the floor, his head bowed abstractedly as he whistled a meaningless little tune between his teeth. Suddenly he halted before the girl. "I was thinking—" he began, and stopped.

"I was thinking of the night last fall when the two men were killed in their bunks. I heard a woman's voice inside that cabin—a woman talking over a telephone—" He threw up his head sharply. "You were there, Alison."

"I never went beyond the edge of the clearing," she declared, her lips setting defiantly. "You saw my tracks—"

"Yes," he interrupted with an impatient gesture. "That's what I'm getting at. Your tracks stopped twenty feet away from the cabin. Yet there was a woman inside, and if, as you insist, she wasn't you, then she had to be—"

Dexter caught his breath and swung around with kindling eyes to confront Colonel Devreaux. "It's a funny notion," he declared wonderingly, "and I can't quite make out why it never struck me before but—it's the only possible answer. This woman, whoever she was, never left the cabin.

"When I went out to look after my pony," he rushed on, "there were two people alive in the cabin. And when I reëntered the place there were two people dead. And there was no one else there at any time. The mysterious third person we've been looking for never existed."

Dexter shook his head and turned again to Alison. "Did you know Mrs. Stark?" he asked tensely. "She's the only other woman I've heard of in this section of the forest. What was she like?

"Small woman, about thirty-five?" he inquired, as Alison stared blankly and failed to answer. "Thin, high-bridged nose, short black hair, black eyes, sallow complexion. Have I got her?"

"Yes," said the girl. "The last time I saw her she had on Mackinaws, felt hat, heavy lace boots—"

Dexter's eyes gleamed in excitement. "She's the one!" He spoke with utter conviction, as one who knows the truth at last.

"It was Mrs. Stark's voice I heard that night, talking on a telephone. It was she who masqueraded as a man and ambushed Constable Graves. She was the one I trailed to the cabin and arrested there, with Mudgett. It was she whom I found dead in the upper bunk!"

CHAPTER XXXIX

YOU NEVER CAN TELL

For a moment Devreaux and Alison stared at Dexter as though they were not quite sure whether he had taken leave of his senses. There was a suggestion of a smile on his lips as he faced them in the failing twilight.

"All of which explains why Stark hated me so," he remarked after an interval of silence. "He knew it was I who had arrested his wife, and he could not help blaming me for the tragic circumstances that came afterwards."

"Wait!" expostulated the colonel. "You say that the one who was shot in the upper bunk was a woman in man's clothes—Mrs. Stark—and that there was nobody in the cabin when the shooting took place but her and Mudgett?"

"Yes," insisted Dexter serenely. "The record in the snow outside the cabin showed that no one entered or left the place during my short absence. No one else could have been there." He shook his head in self-depreciation. "The explanation has struck me all in a heap with the discovery of this hidden telephone system. I should have seen it long ago. The facts were all there before me the night of the double killing. But Alison's appearance on the scene confused the facts, and I was led away from the simple and obvious solution of the affair—the only possible solution."

Dexter faced the colonel, confident and clear-eyed, as a man who at last finds solid ground underfoot. "This:" he asserted. "Before I left the cabin I forced my two prisoners to get into the bunks, and bound their feet to the posts. The one I'm now certain was Mrs. Stark was tied in the upper bunk. The head of the bunk touched the chimney, and as Alison tells us, there was a secret cubby hole there, with a telephone in it. The woman was handcuffed, but the chain gave her five or six inches' play. She could have used her hands. She could take out the telephone, call one of Stark's stations, and return the instrument without my being the wiser."

"When I came back to the cabin I heard a woman's voice in the darkness behind the door. She said something about there being police in the valley, of being betrayed. I recall her words: 'Lifeless tongues never talk.' 'There's one thing left to do,' she said, 'and I'm going to do it.' After that the voice stopped; there was a silence, broken by a cry for mercy—Mudgett crying in fear and horror; then a shot, followed quickly by another shot. The door was barred, but I broke in, found my prisoners dead, the windows shut—nobody there."

"What are the usual emotions of a prisoner arrested for a capital crime?" inquired the corporal with seeming irrelevance. "Anger," he answered for himself, before Devreaux could reply—"bitterness, hopelessness, despair, blackness crushing upon him from all directions. You've arrested plenty of them. You know. And such were the reactions of my prisoner in the upper bunk.

"I had taken a big pistol from her when she tried to shoot me in the doorway. But I hadn't searched her for other weapons. Careless! She must have had another gun concealed about her person." Dexter thrust his hand into his pocket, and brought forth Alison's little pearl-handled revolver. "This one!

"You said you carried this in your bag," he remarked in an aside, glancing at the girl. "Could Mrs. Stark have taken it without your knowing?"

"Yes, she had opportunities," Alison answered unsteadily. "She might have done so."

"I'm telling you what happened, the only thing that could have happened. Mrs. Stark may have thought that Mudgett had betrayed her people to the police. At any rate she mistrusted him. He was a weakling, and he was our prisoner. She could be certain that we could force him to turn state's evidence against her husband. But she saw her chance to stop that danger. Handcuffed as she was, she could use a revolver.

"There can be no other explanation," Dexter went on grimly. "She leaned over the edge of the bunk and shot Mudgett, and a moment later turned the weapon on herself and pulled the trigger."

Devreaux gazed at the younger man in somber fascination. "You mean to say it was—"

"But," protested the superintendent, "the revolver—you told me you found it on the opposite side of the room, by the door."

"With two chambers empty." Dexter nodded. "The dead prisoner was lying across the upper bunk, with the arms hanging out over the side. There must have been a sharp reflex after death, and the revolver was flung across the room from the unclasping fingers."

The corporal shrugged his shoulders. "Yes. That was one of the things that started me off on a false trail. I was too quick in jumping at conclusions—taking it for granted that a third person had barred the door."

"Of course not," agreed Dexter. "The answer's much simpler than that." He smothered a faint laugh. "I recall now that I slammed the door behind me when I left the cabin. It was a lift bar, like the one here, swinging on a pivot. The jolt must have thrown it down, and it dropped back into place and fastened itself."

"De corpor'l he fin' out effryt'ing," broke in a deep voice from the other side of the room.

The two officers turned with a start to stare across the gloomy chamber. In their deep absorption they had forgotten that the four prisoners could hear all that was said. They now perceived that they had an interested group of listeners. One of the men was on his knees, and as they peered into the shadow they made out the swarthy features of the giant half-breed, Doucet.

"Mees Stark she keel Mudgett, and den shoot herself, lak de corpor'l tell. Oui! I talk to 'er dat night on tel'phone."

"Oui. But, yes. She call up, say she been arrest' for shootin' dat constable."

"In a cabin farder down de valley. She call to talk wid Stark, 'er 'osband, but he away somew'eres. I dunno w'ere to fin' 'eem. Nobody in de cabin but me."

"For sure. She say police have come. Nobody to help her but only me, an' wan man no good. She afraid dis Mudgett, he spill dose beans. So she say, 'I fix 'im—I shoot him. An' den I shoot myself. Dose police ain't gon' take me and hang me.' An' den she say good-by, an' say no more. Voila tout!"

Dexter and the colonel exchanged a glance of keen significance. "I guess that settles it," said Devreaux soberly.

"No question!" The corporal looked out the window with ruminative eyes. "It's queer how people's minds work under stress," he mused. "This woman had a weapon concealed—she might have waited and taken a chance on getting me. But she must have gone temporarily out of her head. I've seen it hit other prisoners like that—crazed and desperate, like trapped animals. The voice I heard had that sound. She was the nervous, high-strung sort that seem to be able to face anything, and then suddenly go all to pieces. She must have acted on the first mad impulse, without allowing herself time for second thought."

"Mental blow-up!" said the colonel. "Yes, I've seen them that way. In any event we know now what happened. There really was no mystery at all, if we'd had sense enough to put two and two together." He turned to Alison and his iron features relaxed for a moment in a kindly smile. "And I guess that lets you out, my dear," he said.

The girl drew a quivering breath, and blinked hard to keep back the tears. She tried to speak, but her voice seemed to fail her.

"We'll have to make our report," resumed Devreaux, "but you've nothing to fear. When a hard boiled old mounted man like me is ready to accept a chain of facts such as this, you may be sure others will be easily convinced. You'll come off with flying colors. And I don't mind telling you that I'm very glad indeed."

Dexter likewise turned, and for a moment he held the girl under his grave scrutiny. "I don't need to tell you that I too am glad," he said. He faced her in silence for a moment, and his mouth drooped in a smile of weariness and sadness. "I should have known it all from the beginning," he went on in a low voice. "Knowing you, I should have gone on believing in you with blind, unquestioning faith. I did for a while, and then—something happened to remind me that I was a policeman—and I forced myself to look at what I thought was evidence, instead of looking at you. I'm sorry, Alison."

He lingered for a space with yearning glance, and then he drew a harsh breath, turned abruptly and strode out of the cabin.

Leaving the doorway, he moved with heavy, dragging steps, down through the fringe of timber to the edge of the rapids. He found a flat-topped bowlder on the beach where the water ran awash, and sat down to gaze off across the tumbling stream. For a while he sat with his arm on his knee, motionless and listless, listening to the rush of the rapids, his head bent to the soft evening breeze. But presently he stirred, and his hand reached into his tunic pocket. He brought out his pipe, fumbled for a match and struck a light. But as he started to apply the flame to the tobacco, he caught the sound of a quick, light step in the gravel behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a slight figure standing in the shadow. The pipe dropped unheeded to the ground as he stumbled to his feet. "Alison!" he breathed.

"I knew," she went on quietly, "even if you didn't. You thought it your duty to weigh the evidence you had found, and to be cold and stern and unyielding. But in your heart you knew that everything was all right. You may have deceived yourself, David, but you never deceived me."

"You don't hold it against me?" he asked unsteadily. "Really, Alison, I must have believed. I couldn't have doubted—"

"Of course not," she returned. She got up from the bowlder and stood beside him. They faced each other for a moment, two shadows, dimly outlined in the purple twilight. Then, naturally and inevitably as clouds drifting together, the shadows merged, and without quite knowing how it all came about, Dexter found Alison in the circle of his one useful arm, warm and trembling and clinging, found himself holding her in a breathless, stunning embrace.

"Oh, my dear," he gasped. "Whatever I may have thought, I loved you—in spite of everything."

"I knew!" she whispered. "And I know now why it all happened as it did—why I was forced to run away to this terrible wilderness. I thought it was tragedy, and it was for this!"

She spoke incoherently, between tears and laughter, her face against his shoulder.

His hand went up, and his fingers strayed through her soft, tumbled hair. "Alison! Look at me!"

Slowly she lifted her head, but as their glances met they were startled by a loud coughing sound behind them, "I feared as much," said a gruff voice.

In confusion they drew apart, and turned to see a short, stocky shape standing on the edge of the beach.

"Yes." The old man advanced and fixed them with his grim scrutiny. "It looks to me as though I'd lost one of my best boys. I dislike to say it, but I'm afraid you're dropped from the rolls of the mounted."

"Just a moment," he went on as the corporal tried to speak. "Unless my eyes have gone bad, I take it that you two have a sort of an understanding between you. And the service is no place for a man's wife." He was silent for a moment as he measured Dexter up and down with his eyes. "You would have gone high in the ranks of the police," he said in a musing voice. "Now that you're leaving us I don't mind telling you that you've got the stuff. And that's why I know you'll go higher still outside the police—in civilian life. Your job from this time on is to make this girl happy."

The colonel turned on his heel, but before he could move away Alison stepped impulsively forward, caught him by both shoulders and kissed his stern-drawn lips.

"I wanted to," she said with a fluttering laugh. "I've wanted to do it for a long time."

Devreaux chuckled to himself, and his glance shifted back to the corporal. "I told you long ago," he remarked—"women—you never can tell about 'em. You're luckier than most of us. You've found the one in a billion. Hold on to her, David." The colonel drew a breath that sounded very much like a sigh, faced about abruptly, and strode off into the darkness.

"Like this!" said Alison. She found Dexter's hand, and drew his arm about her shoulders. "Your officer told you what to do. Tight—tighter!" She looked up at him with a tremulous smile, and her eyes slowly closed. "Still your prisoner," she whispered softly—"just like this—always."

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