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Title: The Valley Of Silent Men
       A Story of the Three River Company

Author: James Oliver Curwood

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THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN

A STORY OF THE THREE RIVER COUNTRY

BY JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD

AUTHOR OF "THE RIVER'S END," ETC.





THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN


Before the railroad's thin lines of steel bit their way up through
the wilderness, Athabasca Landing was the picturesque threshold
over which one must step who would enter into the mystery and
adventure of the great white North. It is still Iskwatam--the
"door" which opens to the lower reaches of the Athabasca, the
Slave, and the Mackenzie. It is somewhat difficult to find on the
map, yet it is there, because its history is written in more than
a hundred and forty years of romance and tragedy and adventure in
the lives of men, and is not easily forgotten. Over the old trail
it was about a hundred and fifty miles north of Edmonton. The
railroad has brought it nearer to that base of civilization, but
beyond it the wilderness still howls as it has howled for a
thousand years, and the waters of a continent flow north and into
the Arctic Ocean. It is possible that the beautiful dream of the
real-estate dealers may come true, for the most avid of all the
sportsmen of the earth, the money-hunters, have come up on the
bumpy railroad that sometimes lights its sleeping cars with
lanterns, and with them have come typewriters, and stenographers,
and the art of printing advertisements, and the Golden Rule of
those who sell handfuls of earth to hopeful purchasers thousands
of miles away--"Do others as they would do you." And with it, too,
has come the legitimate business of barter and trade, with eyes on
all that treasure of the North which lies between the Grand Rapids
of the Athabasca and the edge of the polar sea. But still more
beautiful than the dream of fortunes quickly made is the deep-
forest superstition that the spirits of the wilderness dead move
onward as steam and steel advance, and if this is so, the ghosts
of a thousand Pierres and Jacquelines have risen uneasily from
their graves at Athabasca Landing, hunting a new quiet farther
north.

For it was Pierre and Jacqueline, Henri and Marie, Jacques and his
Jeanne, whose brown hands for a hundred and forty years opened and
closed this door. And those hands still master a savage world for
two thousand miles north of that threshold of Athabasca Landing.
South of it a wheezy engine drags up the freight that came not so
many months ago by boat.

It is over this threshold that the dark eyes of Pierre and
Jacqueline, Henri and Marie, Jacques and his Jeanne, look into the
blue and the gray and the sometimes watery ones of a destroying
civilization. And there it is that the shriek of a mad locomotive
mingles with their age-old river chants; the smut of coal drifts
over their forests; the phonograph screeches its reply to le
violon; and Pierre and Henri and Jacques no longer find themselves
the kings of the earth when they come in from far countries with
their precious cargoes of furs. And they no longer swagger and
tell loud-voiced adventure, or sing their wild river songs in the
same old abandon, for there are streets at Athabasca Landing now,
and hotels, and schools, and rules and regulations of a kind new
and terrifying to the bold of the old voyageurs.

It seems only yesterday that the railroad was not there, and a
great world of wilderness lay between the Landing and the upper
rim of civilization. And when word first came that a steam thing
was eating its way up foot by foot through forest and swamp and
impassable muskeg, that word passed up and down the water-ways for
two thousand miles, a colossal joke, a stupendous bit of drollery,
the funniest thing that Pierre and Henri and Jacques had heard in
all their lives. And when Jacques wanted to impress upon Pierre
his utter disbelief of a thing, he would say:

"It will happen, m'sieu, when the steam thing comes to the
Landing, when cow-beasts eat with the moose, and when our bread is
found for us in yonder swamps!"

And the steam thing came, and cows grazed where moose had fed, and
bread WAS gathered close to the edge of the great swamps. Thus did
civilization break into Athabasca Landing.

Northward from the Landing, for two thousand miles, reached the
domain of the rivermen. And the Landing, with its two hundred and
twenty-seven souls before the railroad came, was the wilderness
clearing-house which sat at the beginning of things. To it came
from the south all the freight which must go into the north; on
its flat river front were built the great scows which carried this
freight to the end of the earth. It was from the Landing that the
greatest of all river brigades set forth upon their long
adventures, and it was back to the Landing, perhaps a year or more
later, that still smaller scows and huge canoes brought as the
price of exchange their cargoes of furs.

Thus for nearly a century and a half the larger craft, with their
great sweeps and their wild-throated crews, had gone DOWN the
river toward the Arctic Ocean, and the smaller craft, with their
still wilder crews, had come UP the river toward civilization. The
River, as the Landing speaks of it, is the Athabasca, with its
headwaters away off in the British Columbian mountains, where
Baptiste and McLeod, explorers of old, gave up their lives to find
where the cradle of it lay. And it sweeps past the Landing, a slow
and mighty giant, unswervingly on its way to the northern sea.
With it the river brigades set forth. For Pierre and Henri and
Jacques it is going from one end to the other of the earth. The
Athabasca ends and is replaced by the Slave, and the Slave empties
into Great Slave Lake, and from the narrow tip of that Lake the
Mackenzie carries on for more than a thousand miles to the sea.

In this distance of the long water trail one sees and hears many
things. It is life. It is adventure. It is mystery and romance and
hazard. Its tales are so many that books could not hold them. In
the faces of men and women they are written. They lie buried in
graves so old that the forest trees grow over them. Epics of
tragedy, of love, of the fight to live! And as one goes farther
north, and still farther, just so do the stories of things that
have happened change.

For the world is changing, the sun is changing, and the breeds of
men are changing. At the Landing in July there are seventeen hours
of sunlight; at Fort Chippewyan there are eighteen; at Fort
Resolution, Fort Simpson, and Fort Providence there are nineteen;
at the Great Bear twenty-one, and at Fort McPherson, close to the
polar sea, from twenty-two to twenty-three. And in December there
are also these hours of darkness. With light and darkness men
change, women change, and life changes. And Pierre and Henri and
Jacques meet them all, but always THEY are the same, chanting the
old songs, enshrining the old loves, dreaming the same dreams, and
worshiping always the same gods. They meet a thousand perils with
eyes that glisten with the love of adventure.

The thunder of rapids and the howlings of storm do not frighten
them. Death has no fear for them. They grapple with it, wrestle
joyously with it, and are glorious when they win. Their blood is
red and strong. Their hearts are big. Their souls chant themselves
up to the skies. Yet they are simple as children, and when they
are afraid, it is of things which children fear. For in those
hearts of theirs is superstition--and also, perhaps, royal blood.
For princes and the sons of princes and the noblest aristocracy of
France were the first of the gentlemen adventurers who came with
ruffles on their sleeves and rapiers at their sides to seek furs
worth many times their weight in gold two hundred and fifty years
ago, and of these ancient forebears Pierre and Henri and Jacques,
with their Maries and Jeannes and Jacquelines, are the living
voices of today.

And these voices tell many stories. Sometimes they whisper them,
as the wind would whisper, for there are stories weird and strange
that must be spoken softly. They darken no printed pages. The
trees listen to them beside red camp-fires at night. Lovers tell
them in the glad sunshine of day. Some of them are chanted in
song. Some of them come down through the generations, epics of the
wilderness, remembered from father to son. And each year there are
the new things to pass from mouth to mouth, from cabin to cabin,
from the lower reaches of the Mackenzie to the far end of the
world at Athabasca Landing. For the three rivers are always makers
of romance, of tragedy, of adventure. The story will never be
forgotten of how Follette and Ladouceur swam their mad race
through the Death Chute for love of the girl who waited at the
other end, or of how Campbell O'Doone, the red-headed giant at
Fort Resolution, fought the whole of a great brigade in his effort
to run away with a scow captain's daughter.

And the brigade loved O'Doone, though it beat him, for these men
of the strong north love courage and daring. The epic of the lost
scow--how there were men who saw it disappear from under their
very eyes, floating upward and afterward riding swiftly away in
the skies--is told and retold by strong-faced men, deep in whose
eyes are the smoldering flames of an undying superstition, and
these same men thrill as they tell over again the strange and
unbelievable story of Hartshope, the aristocratic Englishman who
set off into the North in all the glory of monocle and
unprecedented luggage, and how he joined in a tribal war, became a
chief of the Dog Ribs, and married a dark-eyed, sleek-haired,
little Indian beauty, who is now the mother of his children.

But deepest and most thrilling of all the stories they tell are
the stories of the long arm of the Law--that arm which reaches for
two thousand miles from Athabasca Landing to the polar sea, the
arm Of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police.

And of these it is the story of Jim Kent we are going to tell, of
Jim Kent and of Marette, that wonderful little goddess of the
Valley of Silent Men, in whose veins there must have run the blood
of fighting men--and of ancient queens. A story of the days before
the railroad came.





CHAPTER I


In the mind of James Grenfell Kent, sergeant in the Royal
Northwest Mounted Police, there remained no shadow of a doubt. He
knew that he was dying. He had implicit faith in Cardigan, his
surgeon friend, and Cardigan had told him that what was left of
his life would be measured out in hours--perhaps in minutes or
seconds. It was an unusual case. There was one chance in fifty
that he might live two or three days, but there was no chance at
all that he would live more than three. The end might come with
any breath he drew into his lungs. That was the pathological
history of the thing, as far as medical and surgical science knew
of cases similar to his own.

Personally, Kent did not feel like a dying man. His vision and his
brain were clear. He felt no pain, and only at infrequent
intervals was his temperature above normal. His voice was
particularly calm and natural.

At first he had smiled incredulously when Cardigan broke the news.
That the bullet which a drunken half-breed had sent into his chest
two weeks before had nicked the arch of the aorta, thus forming an
aneurism, was a statement by Cardigan which did not sound
especially wicked or convincing to him. "Aorta" and "aneurism"
held about as much significance for him as his perichondrium or
the process of his stylomastoid. But Kent possessed an unswerving
passion to grip at facts in detail, a characteristic that had
largely helped him to earn the reputation of being the best man-
hunter in all the northland service. So he had insisted, and his
surgeon friend had explained.

The aorta, he found, was the main blood-vessel arching over and
leading from the heart, and in nicking it the bullet had so
weakened its outer wall that it bulged out in the form of a sack,
just as the inner tube of an automobile tire bulges through the
outer casing when there is a blowout.

"And when that sack gives way inside you," Cardigan had explained,
"you'll go like that!" He snapped a forefinger and thumb to drive
the fact home.

After that it was merely a matter of common sense to believe, and
now, sure that he was about to die. Kent had acted. He was acting
in the full health of his mind and in extreme cognizance of the
paralyzing shock he was contributing as a final legacy to the
world at large, or at least to that part of it which knew him or
was interested. The tragedy of the thing did not oppress him. A
thousand times in his life he had discovered that humor and
tragedy were very closely related, and that there were times when
only the breadth of a hair separated the two. Many times he had
seen a laugh change suddenly to tears, and tears to laughter.

The tableau, as it presented itself about his bedside now, amused
him. Its humor was grim, but even in these last hours of his life
he appreciated it. He had always more or less regarded life as a
joke--a very serious joke, but a joke for all that--a whimsical
and trickful sort of thing played by the Great Arbiter on humanity
at large; and this last count in his own life, as it was solemnly
and tragically ticking itself off, was the greatest joke of all.
The amazed faces that stared at him, their passing moments of
disbelief, their repressed but at times visible betrayals of
horror, the steadiness of their eyes, the tenseness of their lips
--all added to what he might have called, at another time, the
dramatic artistry of his last great adventure.

That he was dying did not chill him, or make him afraid, or put a
tremble into his voice. The contemplation of throwing off the mere
habit of breathing had never at any stage of his thirty-six years
of life appalled him. Those years, because he had spent a
sufficient number of them in the raw places of the earth, had
given him a philosophy and viewpoint of his own, both of which he
kept unto himself without effort to impress them on other people.
He believed that life itself was the cheapest thing on the face of
all the earth. All other things had their limitations.

There was so much water and so much land, so many mountains and so
many plains, so many square feet to live on and so many square
feet to be buried in. All things could be measured, and stood up,
and catalogued--except life itself. "Given time," he would say, "a
single pair of humans can populate all creation." Therefore, being
the cheapest of all things, it was true philosophy that life
should be the easiest of all things to give up when the necessity
came.

Which is only another way of emphasizing that Kent was not, and
never had been, afraid to die. But it does not say that he
treasured life a whit less than the man in another room, who, a
day or so before, had fought like a lunatic before going under an
anesthetic for the amputation of a bad finger. No man had loved
life more than he. No man had lived nearer it.

It had been a passion with him. Full of dreams, and always with
anticipations ahead, no matter how far short realizations fell, he
was an optimist, a lover of the sun and the moon and the stars, a
worshiper of the forests and of the mountains, a man who loved his
life, and who had fought for it, and yet who was ready--at the
last--to yield it up without a whimper when the fates asked for
it.

Bolstered up against his pillows, he did not look the part of the
fiend he was confessing himself to be to the people about him.
Sickness had not emaciated him. The bronze of his lean, clean-cut
face had faded a little, but the tanning of wind and sun and
campfire was still there. His blue eyes were perhaps dulled
somewhat by the nearness of death. One would not have judged him
to be thirty-six, even though over one temple there was a streak
of gray in his blond hair--a heritage from his mother, who was
dead. Looking at him, as his lips quietly and calmly confessed
himself beyond the pale of men's sympathy or forgiveness, one
would have said that his crime was impossible.

Through his window, as he sat bolstered up in his cot, Kent could
see the slow-moving shimmer of the great Athabasca River as it
moved on its way toward the Arctic Ocean. The sun was shining, and
he saw the cool, thick masses of the spruce and cedar forests
beyond, the rising undulations of wilderness ridges and hills, and
through that open window he caught the sweet scents that came with
a soft wind from out of the forests he had loved for so many
years.

"They've been my best friends," he had said to Cardigan, "and when
this nice little thing you're promising happens to me, old man, I
want to go with my eyes on them."

So his cot was close to the window.

Nearest to him sat Cardigan. In his face, more than in any of the
others, was disbelief. Kedsty, Inspector of the Royal Northwest
Mounted Police, in charge of N Division during an indefinite leave
of absence of the superintendent, was paler even than the girl
whose nervous fingers were swiftly putting upon paper every word
that was spoken by those in the room. O'Connor, staff-sergeant,
was like one struck dumb. The little, smooth-faced Catholic
missioner whose presence as a witness Kent had requested, sat with
his thin fingers tightly interlaced, silently placing this among
all the other strange tragedies that the wilderness had given up
to him. They had all been Kent's friends, his intimate friends,
with the exception of the girl, whom Inspector Kedsty had borrowed
for the occasion. With the little missioner he had spent many an
evening, exchanging in mutual confidence the strange and
mysterious happenings of the deep forests, and of the great north
beyond the forests. O'Connor's friendship was a friendship bred of
the brotherhood of the trails. It was Kent and O'Connor who had
brought down the two Eskimo murderers from the mouth of the
Mackenzie, and the adventure had taken them fourteen months. Kent
loved O'Connor, with his red face, his red hair, and his big
heart, and to him the most tragic part of it all was that he was
breaking this friendship now.

But it was Inspector Kedsty, commanding N Division, the biggest
and wildest division in all the Northland, that roused in Kent an
unusual emotion, even as he waited for that explosion just over
his heart which the surgeon had told him might occur at any
moment. On his death-bed his mind still worked analytically. And
Kedsty, since the moment he had entered the room, had puzzled
Kent. The commander of N Division was an unusual man. He was
sixty, with iron-gray hair, cold, almost colorless eyes in which
one would search long for a gleam of either mercy or fear, and a
nerve that Kent had never seen even slightly disturbed. It took
such a man, an iron man, to run N Division according to law, for N
Division covered an area of six hundred and twenty thousand square
miles of wildest North America, extending more than two thousand
miles north of the 70th parallel of latitude, with its farthest
limit three and one-half degrees within the Arctic Circle. To
police this area meant upholding the law in a country fourteen
times the size of the state of Ohio. And Kedsty was the man who
had performed this duty as only one other man had ever succeeded
in doing it.

Yet Kedsty, of the five about Kent, was most disturbed. His face
was ash-gray. A number of times Kent had detected a broken note in
his voice. He had seen his hands grip at the arms of the chair he
sat in until the cords stood out on them as if about to burst. He
had never seen Kedsty sweat until now.

Twice the Inspector had wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. He
was no longer Minisak--"The Rock"--a name given to him by the
Crees. The armor that no shaft had ever penetrated seemed to have
dropped from him. He had ceased to be Kedsty, the most dreaded
inquisitor in the service. He was nervous, and Kent could see that
he was fighting to repossess himself.

"Of course you know what this means to the Service," he said in a
hard, low voice. "It means--"

"Disgrace," nodded Kent. "I know. It means a black spot on the
otherwise bright escutcheon of N Division. But it can't be helped.
I killed John Barkley. The man you've got in the guard-house,
condemned to be hanged by the neck until he is dead, is innocent.
I understand. It won't be nice for the Service to let it be known
that a sergeant in His Majesty's Royal Mounted is an ordinary
murderer, but--"

"Not an ORDINARY murderer," interrupted Kedsty. "As you have
described it, the crime was deliberate--horrible and inexcusable
to its last detail. You were not moved by a sudden passion. You
tortured your victim. It is inconceivable!"

"And yet true," said Kent.

He was looking at the stenographer's slim fingers as they put down
his words and Kedsty's. A bit of sunshine touched her bowed head,
and he observed the red lights in her hair. His eyes swept to
O'Connor, and in that moment the commander of N Division bent over
him, so close that his face almost touched Kent's, and he
whispered, in a voice so low that no one of the other four could
hear,

"KENT--YOU LIE!"

"No, it is true," replied Kent.

Kedsty drew back, again wiping the moisture from his forehead.

"I killed Barkley, and I killed him as I planned that he should
die," Kent went on. "It was my desire that he should suffer. The
one thing which I shall not tell you is WHY I killed him. But it
was a sufficient reason."

He saw the shuddering tremor that swept through the shoulders of
the girl who was putting down the condemning notes.

"And you refuse to confess your motive?"

"Absolutely--except that he had wronged me in a way that deserved
death."

"And you make this confession knowing that you are about to die?"

The flicker of a smile passed over Kent's lips. He looked at
O'Connor and for an instant saw in O'Connor's eyes a flash of
their old comradeship.

"Yes. Dr. Cardigan has told me. Otherwise I should have let the
man in the guard-house hang. It's simply that this accursed bullet
has spoiled my luck--and saved him!"

Kedsty spoke to the girl. For half an hour she read her notes, and
after that Kent wrote his name on the last page. Then Kedsty rose
from his chair.

"We have finished, gentlemen," he said.

They trailed out, the girl hurrying through the door first in her
desire to free herself of an ordeal that had strained every nerve
in her body. The commander of N Division was last to go. Cardigan
hesitated, as if to remain, but Kedsty motioned him on. It was
Kedsty who closed the door, and as he closed it he looked back,
and for a flash Kent met his eyes squarely. In that moment he
received an impression which he had not caught while the Inspector
was in the room. It was like an electrical shock in its
unexpectedness, and Kedsty must have seen the effect of it in his
face, for he moved back quickly and closed the door. In that
instant Kent had seen in Kedsty's eyes and face a look that was
not only of horror, but what in the face and eyes of another man
he would have sworn was fear.

It was a gruesome moment in which to smile, but Kent smiled. The
shock was over. By the rules of the Criminal Code he knew that
Kedsty even now was instructing Staff-Sergeant O'Connor to detail
an officer to guard his door. The fact that he was ready to pop
off at any moment would make no difference in the regulations of
the law. And Kedsty was a stickler for the law as it was written.
Through the closed door he heard voices indistinctly. Then there
were footsteps, dying away. He could hear the heavy thump, thump
of O'Connor's big feet. O'Connor had always walked like that, even
on the trail.

Softly then the door reopened, and Father Layonne, the little
missioner, came in. Kent knew that this would be so, for Father
Layonne knew neither code nor creed that did not reach all the
hearts of the wilderness. He came back, and sat down close to
Kent, and took one of his hands and held it closely in both of his
own. They were not the soft, smooth hands of the priestly
hierarchy, but were hard with the callosity of toil, yet gentle
with the gentleness of a great sympathy. He had loved Kent
yesterday, when Kent had stood clean in the eyes of both God and
men, and he still loved him today, when his soul was stained with
a thing that must be washed away with his own life.

"I'm sorry, lad," he said. "I'm sorry."

Something rose up in Kent's throat that was not the blood he had
been wiping away since morning. His fingers returned the pressure
of the little missioner's hands. Then he pointed out through the
window to the panorama of shimmering river and green forests.

"It is hard to say good-by to all that, Father," he said. "But, if
you don't mind, I'd rather not talk about it. I'm not afraid of
it. And why be unhappy because one has only a little while to
live? Looking back over your life, does it seem so very long ago
that you were a boy, a small boy?"

"The time has gone swiftly, very swiftly."

"It seems only yesterday--or so?"

"Yes, only yesterday--or so."

Kent's face lit up with the whimsical smile that long ago had
reached the little missioner's heart. "Well, that's the way I'm
looking at it, Father. There is only a yesterday, a today, and a
tomorrow in the longest of our lives. Looking back from seventy
years isn't much different from looking back from thirty-six WHEN
you're looking back and not ahead. Do you think what I have just
said will free Sandy McTrigger?"

"There is no doubt. Your statements have been accepted as a death-
bed confession."

The little missioner, instead of Kent, was betraying a bit of
nervousness.

"There are matters, my son--some few matters--which you will want
attended to. Shall we not talk about them?"

"You mean--"

"Your people, first. I remember that once you told me there was no
one. But surely there is some one somewhere."

Kent shook his head. "There is no one now. For ten years those
forests out there have been father, mother, and home to me."

"But there must be personal affairs, affairs which you would like
to entrust, perhaps, to me?"

Kent's face brightened, and for an instant a flash of humor leaped
into his eyes. "It is funny," he chuckled. "Since you remind me of
it, Father, it is quite in form to make my will. I've bought a few
little pieces of land here. Now that the railroad has almost
reached us from Edmonton, they've jumped up from the seven or
eight hundred dollars I gave for them to about ten thousand. I
want you to sell the lots and use the money in your work. Put as
much of it on the Indians as you can. They've always been good
brothers to me. And I wouldn't waste much time in getting my
signature on some sort of paper to that effect."

Father Layonne's eyes shone softly. "God will bless you for that,
Jimmy," he said, using the intimate name by which he had known
him. "And I think He is going to pardon you for something else, if
you have the courage to ask Him."

"I am pardoned," replied Kent, looking out through the window. "I
feel it. I know it, Father."

In his soul the little missioner was praying. He knew that Kent's
religion was not his religion, and he did not press the service
which he would otherwise have rendered. After a moment he rose to
his feet, and it was the old Kent who looked up into his face, the
clean-faced, gray-eyed, unafraid Kent, smiling in the old way.

"I have one big favor to ask of you, Father," he said. "If I've
got a day to live, I don't want every one forcing the fact on me
that I'm dying. If I've any friends left, I want them to come in
and see me, and talk, and crack jokes. I want to smoke my pipe.
I'll appreciate a box of cigars if you'll send 'em up. Cardigan
can't object now. Will you arrange these things for me? They'll
listen to you--and please shove my cot a little nearer the window
before you go."

Father Layonne performed the service in silence. Then at last the
yearning overcame him to have the soul speak out, that his God
might be more merciful, and he said: "My boy, you are sorry? You
repent that you killed John Barkley?"

"No, I'm not sorry. It had to be done. And please don't forget the
cigars, will you, Father?"

"No, I won't forget," said the little missioner, and turned away.

As the door opened and closed behind him, the flash of humor
leaped into Kent's eyes again, and he chuckled even as he wiped
another of the telltale stains of blood from his lips. He had
played the game. And the funny part about it was that no one in
all the world would ever know, except himself--and perhaps one
other.





CHAPTER II


Outside Kent's window was Spring, the glorious Spring of the
Northland, and in spite of the death-grip that was tightening in
his chest he drank it in deeply and leaned over so that his eyes
traveled over wide spaces of the world that had been his only a
short time before.

It occurred to him that he had suggested this knoll that
overlooked both settlement and river as the site for the building
which Dr. Cardigan called his hospital. It was a structure rough
and unadorned, unpainted, and sweetly smelling with the aroma of
the spruce trees from the heart of which its unplaned lumber was
cut. The breath of it was a thing to bring cheer and hope. Its
silvery walls, in places golden and brown with pitch and freckled
with knots, spoke joyously of life that would not die, and the
woodpeckers came and hammered on it as though it were still a part
of the forest, and red squirrels chattered on the roof and
scampered about in play with a soft patter of feet.

"It's a pretty poor specimen of man that would die up here with
all that under his eyes," Kent had said a year before, when he and
Cardigan had picked out the site. "If he died looking at that,
why, he just simply ought to die, Cardigan," he had laughed.

And now he was that poor specimen, looking out on the glory of the
world!

His vision took in the South and a part of the East and West, and
in all those directions there was no end of the forest. It was
like a vast, many-colored sea with uneven billows rising and
falling until the blue sky came down to meet them many miles away.
More than once his heart ached at the thought of the two thin ribs
of steel creeping up foot by foot and mile by mile from Edmonton,
a hundred and fifty miles away. It was, to him, a desecration, a
crime against Nature, the murder of his beloved wilderness. For in
his soul that wilderness had grown to be more than a thing of
spruce and cedar and balsam, of poplar and birch; more than a
great, unused world of river and lake and swamp. It was an
individual, a thing. His love for it was greater than his love for
man. It was his inarticulate God. It held him as no religion in
the world could have held him, and deeper and deeper it had drawn
him into the soul of itself, delivering up to him one by one its
guarded secrets and its mysteries, opening for him page by page
the book that was the greatest of all books. And it was the wonder
of it now, the fact that it was near him, about him, embracing
him, glowing for him in the sunshine, whispering to him in the
soft breath of the air, nodding and talking to him from the crest
of every ridge, that gave to him a strange happiness even in these
hours when he knew that he was dying.

And then his eyes fell nearer to the settlement which nestled
along the edge of the shining river a quarter of a mile away.
That, too, had been the wilderness, in the days before the
railroad came. The poison of speculation was stirring, but it had
not yet destroyed. Athabasca Landing was still the door that
opened and closed on the great North. Its buildings were scattered
and few, and built of logs and rough lumber. Even now he could
hear the drowsy hum of the distant sawmill that was lazily turning
out its grist. Not far away the wind-worn flag of the British
Empire was floating over a Hudson Bay Company's post that had
bartered in the trades of the North for more than a hundred years.
Through that hundred years Athabasca Landing had pulsed with the
heart-beats of strong men bred to the wilderness. Through it,
working its way by river and dog sledge from the South, had gone
the precious freight for which the farther North gave in exchange
its still more precious furs. And today, as Kent looked down upon
it, he saw that same activity as it had existed through the years
of a century. A brigade of scows, laden to their gunwales, was
just sweeping out into the river and into its current. Kent had
watched the loading of them; now he saw them drifting lazily out
from the shore, their long sweeps glinting in the sun, their crews
singing wildly and fiercely their beloved Chanson des Voyageurs as
their faces turned to the adventure of the North.

In Kent's throat rose a thing which he tried to choke back, but
which broke from his lips in a low cry, almost a sob. He heard the
distant singing, wild and free as the forests themselves, and he
wanted to lean out of his window and shout a last good-by. For the
brigade--a Company brigade, the brigade that had chanted its songs
up and down the water reaches of the land for more than two
hundred and fifty years--was starting north. And he knew where it
was going--north, and still farther north; a hundred miles, five
hundred, a thousand--and then another thousand before the last of
the scows unburdened itself of its precious freight. For the lean
and brown-visaged men who went with them there would be many
months of clean living and joyous thrill under the open skies.
Overwhelmed by the yearning that swept over him, Kent leaned back
against his pillows and covered his eyes.

In those moments his brain painted for him swiftly and vividly the
things he was losing. Tomorrow or next day he would be dead, and
the river brigade would still be sweeping on--on into the Grand
Rapids of the Athabasca, fighting the Death Chute, hazarding
valiantly the rocks and rapids of the Grand Cascade, the
whirlpools of the Devil's Mouth, the thundering roar and boiling
dragon teeth of the Black Run--on to the end of the Athabasca, to
the Slave, and into the Mackenzie, until the last rock-blunted
nose of the outfit drank the tide-water of the Arctic Ocean. And
he, James Kent, would be DEAD!

He uncovered his eyes, and there was a wan smile on his lips as he
looked forth once more. There were sixteen scows in the brigade,
and the biggest, he knew, was captained by Pierre Rossand. He
could fancy Pierre's big red throat swelling in mighty song, for
Pierre's wife was waiting for him a thousand miles away. The scows
were caught steadily now in the grip of the river, and it seemed
to Kent, as he watched them go, that they were the last fugitives
fleeing from the encroaching monsters of steel. Unconscious of the
act, he reached out his arms, and his soul cried out its farewell,
even though his lips were silent.

He was glad when they were gone and when the voices of the
chanting oarsmen were lost in the distance. Again he listened to
the lazy hum of the sawmill, and over his head he heard the
velvety run of a red squirrel and then its reckless chattering.
The forests came back to him. Across his cot fell a patch of
golden sunlight. A stronger breath of air came laden with the
perfume of balsam and cedar through his window, and when the door
opened and Cardigan entered, he found the old Kent facing him.

There was no change in Cardigan's voice or manner as he greeted
him. But there was a tenseness in his face which he could not
conceal. He had brought in Kent's pipe and tobacco. These he laid
on a table until he had placed his head close to Kent's hearty
listening to what he called the bruit--the rushing of blood
through the aneurismal sac.

"Seems to me that I can hear it myself now and then," said Kent.
"Worse, isn't it?"

Cardigan nodded. "Smoking may hurry it up a bit," he said. "Still,
if you want to--"

Kent held out his hand for the pipe and tobacco. "It's worth it.
Thanks, old man."

Kent loaded the pipe, and Cardigan lighted a match. For the first
time in two weeks a cloud of smoke issued from between Kent's
lips.

"The brigade is starting north," he said.

"Mostly Mackenzie River freight," replied Cardigan. "A long run."

"The finest in all the North. Three years ago O'Connor and I made
it with the Follette outfit. Remember Follette--and Ladouceur?
They both loved the same girl, and being good friends they decided
to settle the matter by a swim through the Death Chute. The man
who came through first was to have her. Gawd, Cardigan, what funny
things happen! Follette came out first, but he was dead. He'd
brained himself on a rock. And to this day Ladouceur hasn't
married the girl, because he says Follette beat him; and that
Follette's something-or-other would haunt him if he didn't play
fair. It's a queer--"

He stopped and listened. In the hall was the approaching tread of
unmistakable feet.

"O'Connor," he said.

Cardigan went to the door and opened it as O'Connor was about to
knock. When the door closed again, the staff-sergeant was in the
room alone with Kent. In one of his big hands he clutched a box of
cigars, and in the other he held a bunch of vividly red fire-
flowers.

"Father Layonne shoved these into my hands as I was coming up," he
explained, dropping them on the table. "And I--well--I'm breaking
regulations to come up an' tell you something, Jimmy. I never
called you a liar in my life, but I'm calling you one now!"

He was gripping Kent's hands in the fierce clasp of a friendship
that nothing could kill. Kent winced, but the pain of it was joy.
He had feared that O'Connor, like Kedsty, must of necessity turn
against him. Then he noticed something unusual in O'Connor's face
and eyes. The staff-sergeant was not easily excited, yet he was
visibly disturbed now.

"I don't know what the others saw, when you were making that
confession, Kent. Mebby my eyesight was better because I spent a
year and a half with you on the trail. You were lying. What's your
game, old man?"

Kent groaned. "Have I got to go all over it again?" he appealed.

O'Connor began thumping back and forth over the floor. Kent had
seen him that way sometimes in camp when there were perplexing
problems ahead of them.

"You didn't kill John Barkley," he insisted. "I don't believe you
did, and Inspector Kedsty doesn't believe it--yet the mighty queer
part of it is--"

"What?"

"That Kedsty is acting on your confession in a big hurry. I don't
believe it's according to Hoyle, as the regulations are written.
But he's doing it. And I want to know--it's the biggest thing I
EVER wanted to know--did you kill Barkley?"

"O'Connor, if you don't believe a dying man's word--you haven't
much respect for death, have you?"

"That's the theory on which the law works, but sometimes it ain't
human. Confound it, man, DID YOU?"

"Yes."

O'Connor sat down and with his finger-nails pried open the box of
cigars. "Mind if I smoke with you?" he asked. "I need it. I'm shot
up with unexpected things this morning. Do you care if I ask you
about the girl?"

"The girl!" exclaimed Kent. He sat up straighter, staring at
O'Connor.

The staff-sergeant's eyes were on him with questioning steadiness.
"I see--you don't know her," he said, lighting his cigar. "Neither
do I. Never saw her before. That's why I am wondering about
Inspector Kedsty. I tell you, it's queer. He didn't believe you
this morning, yet he was all shot up. He wanted me to go with him
to his house. The cords stood out on his neck like that--like my
little finger.

"Then suddenly he changed his mind and said we'd go to the office.
That took us along the road that runs through the poplar grove. It
happened there. I'm not much of a girl's man, Kent, and I'd be a
fool to try to tell you what she looked like. But there she was,
standing in the path not ten feet ahead of us, and she stopped me
in my tracks as quick as though she'd sent a shot into me. And she
stopped Kedsty, too. I heard him give a sort of grunt--a funny
sound, as though some one had hit him. I don't believe I could
tell whether she had a dress on or not, for I never saw anything
like her face, and her eyes, and her hair, and I stared at them
like a thunder-struck fool. She didn't seem to notice me any more
than if I'd been thin air, a ghost she couldn't see.

"She looked straight at Kedsty, and she kept looking at him--and
then she passed us. Never said a word, mind you. She came so near
I could have touched her with my hand, and not until she was that
close did she take her eyes from Kedsty and look at me. And when
she'd passed I thought what a couple of cursed idiots we were,
standing there paralyzed, as if we'd never seen a beautiful girl
before in our lives. I went to remark that much to the Old Man
when--"

O'Connor bit his cigar half in two as he leaned nearer to the cot.

"Kent, I swear that Kedsty was as white as chalk when I looked at
him! There wasn't a drop of blood left in his face, and he was
staring straight ahead, as though the girl still stood there, and
he gave another of those grunts--it wasn't a laugh--as if
something was choking him. And then he said:

"'Sergeant, I've forgotten something important. I must go back to
see Dr. Cardigan. You have my authority to give McTrigger his
liberty at once!'"

O'Connor paused, as if expecting some expression of disbelief from
Kent. When none came, he demanded,

"Was that according to the Criminal Code? Was it, Kent?"

"Not exactly. But, coming from the S.O.D., it was law."

"And I obeyed it," grunted the staff-sergeant. "And if you could
have seen McTrigger! When I told him he was free, and unlocked his
cell, he came out of it gropingly, like a blind man. And he would
go no farther than the Inspector's office. He said he would wait
there for him."

"And Kedsty?"

O'Connor jumped from his chair and began thumping back and forth
across the room again. "Followed the girl," he exploded. "He
couldn't have done anything else. He lied to me about Cardigan.
There wouldn't be anything mysterious about it if he wasn't sixty
and she less than twenty. She was pretty enough! But it wasn't her
beauty that made him turn white there in the path. Not on your
life it wasn't! I tell you he aged ten years in as many seconds.
There was something in that girl's eyes more terrifying to him
than a leveled gun, and after he'd looked into them, his first
thought was of McTrigger, the man you're saving from the hangman.
It's queer, Kent. The whole business is queer. And the queerest of
it all is your confession."

"Yes, it's all very funny," agreed Kent. "That's what I've been
telling myself right along, old man. You see, a little thing like
a bullet changed it all. For if the bullet hadn't got me, I assure
you I wouldn't have given Kedsty that confession, and an innocent
man would have been hanged. As it is, Kedsty is shocked,
demoralized. I'm the first man to soil the honor of the finest
Service on the face of the earth, and I'm in Kedsty's division.
Quite natural that he should be upset. And as for the girl--"

He shrugged his shoulders and tried to laugh. "Perhaps she came in
this morning with one of the up-river scows and was merely taking
a little constitutional," he suggested. "Didn't you ever notice,
O'Connor, that in a certain light under poplar trees one's face is
sometimes ghastly?"

"Yes, I've noticed it, when the trees are in full leaf, but not
when they're just opening, Jimmy. It was the girl. Her eyes
shattered every nerve in him. And his first words were an order
for me to free McTrigger, coupled with the lie that he was coming
back to see Cardigan. And if you could have seen her eyes when she
turned them on me! They were blue--blue as violets--but shooting
fire. I could imagine black eyes like that, but not blue ones.
Kedsty simply wilted in their blaze. And there was a reason--I
know it--a reason that sent his mind like lightning to the man in
the cell!"

"Now, that you leave me out of it, the thing begins to get
interesting," said Kent. "It's a matter of the relationship of
this blonde girl and--"

"She isn't blonde--and I'm not leaving you out of it," interrupted
O'Connor. "I never saw anything so black in my life as her hair.
It was magnificent. If you saw that girl once, you would never
forget her again as long as you lived. She has never been in
Athabasca Landing before, or anywhere near here. If she had, we
surely would have heard about her. She came for a purpose, and I
believe that purpose was accomplished when Kedsty gave me the
order to free McTrigger."

"That's possible, and probable," agreed Kent. "I always said you
were the best clue-analyst in the force, Bucky. But I don't see
where I come in."

O'Connor smiled grimly. "You don't? Well, I may be both blind and
a fool, and perhaps a little excited. But it seemed to me that
from the moment Inspector Kedsty laid his eyes on that girl he was
a little too anxious to let McTrigger go and hang you in his
place. A little too anxious, Kent."

The irony of the thing brought a hard smile to Kent's lips as he
nodded for the cigars. "I'll try one of these on top of the pipe,"
he said, nipping off the end of the cigar with his teeth. "And you
forget that I'm not going to hang, Bucky. Cardigan has given me
until tomorrow night. Perhaps until the next day. Did you see
Rossand's fleet leaving for up north? It made me think of three
years ago!"

O'Connor was gripping his hand again. The coldness of it sent a
chill into the staff-sergeant's heart. He rose and looked through
the upper part of the window, so that the twitching in his throat
was hidden from Kent. Then he went to the door.

"I'll see you again tomorrow," he said. "And if I find out
anything more about the girl, I'll report."

He tried to laugh, but there was a tremble in his voice, a break
in the humor he attempted to force.

Kent listened to the tramp of his heavy feet as they went down the
hall.





CHAPTER III


Again the world came back to Kent, the world that lay just beyond
his open window. But scarcely had O'Connor gone when it began to
change, and in spite of his determination to keep hold of his
nerve Kent felt creeping up with that change a thing that was
oppressive and smothering. Swiftly the distant billowings of the
forests were changing their tones and colors under the darkening
approach of storm. The laughter of the hills and ridges went out.
The shimmer of spruce and cedar and balsam turned to a somber
black. The flashing gold and silver of birch and poplar dissolved
into a ghostly and unanimated gray that was almost invisible. A
deepening and somber gloom spread itself like a veil over the
river that only a short time before had reflected the glory of the
sun in the faces of dark-visaged men of the Company brigade. And
with the gloom came steadily nearer a low rumbling of thunder.

For the first time since the mental excitement of his confession
Kent felt upon him an appalling loneliness. He still was not
afraid of death, but a part of his philosophy was gone. It was,
after all, a difficult thing to die alone. He felt that the
pressure in his chest was perceptible greater than it had been an
hour or two before, and the thought grew upon him that it would be
a terrible thing for the "explosion" to come when the sun was not
shining. He wanted O'Connor back again. He had the desire to call
out for Cardigan. He would have welcomed Father Layonne with a
glad cry. Yet more than all else would he have had at his side in
these moments of distress a woman. For the storm, as it massed
heavier and nearer, filling the earth with its desolation, bridged
vast spaces for him, and he found himself suddenly face to face
with the might-have-beens of yesterday.

He saw, as he had never guessed before, the immeasurable gulf
between helplessness and the wild, brute freedom of man, and his
soul cried out--not for adventure, not for the savage strength of
life--but for the presence of a creature frailer than himself, yet
in the gentle touch of whose hand lay the might of all humanity.

He struggled with himself. He remembered that Dr. Cardigan had
told him there would be moments of deep depression, and he tried
to fight himself out of the grip of this that was on him. There
was a bell at hand, but he refused to use it, for he sensed his
own cowardice. His cigar had gone out, and he relighted it. He
made an effort to bring his mind back to O'Connor, and the mystery
girl, and Kedsty. He tried to visualize McTrigger, the man he had
saved from the hangman, waiting for Kedsty in the office at
barracks. He pictured the girl, as O'Connor had described her,
with her black hair and blue eyes--and then the storm broke.

The rain came down in a deluge, and scarcely had it struck when
the door opened and Cardigan hurried in to close the window. He
remained for half an hour, and after that young Mercer, one of his
two assistants, came in at intervals. Late in the afternoon it
began to clear up, and Father Layonne returned with papers
properly made out for Kent's signature. He was with Kent until
sundown, when Mercer came in with supper.

Between that hour and ten o'clock Kent observed a vigilance on the
part of Dr. Cardigan which struck him as being unusual. Four times
he listened with the stethoscope at his chest, but when Kent asked
the question which was in his mind, Cardigan shook his head.

"It's no worse, Kent. I don't think it will happen tonight."

In spite of this assurance Kent was positive there was in
Cardigan's manner an anxiety of a different quality than he had
perceived earlier in the day. The thought was a definite and
convincing one. He believed that Cardigan was smoothing the way
with a professional lie.

He had no desire to sleep. His light was turned low, and his
window was open again, for the night had cleared. Never had air
tasted sweeter to him than that which came in through his window.
The little bell in his watch tinkled the hour of eleven, when he
heard Cardigan's door close for a last time across the hall. After
that everything was quiet. He drew himself nearer to the window,
so that by leaning forward he could rest himself partly on the
sill. He loved the night. The mystery and lure of those still
hours of darkness when the world slept had never ceased to hold
their fascination for him. Night and he were friends. He had
discovered many of its secrets. A thousand times he had walked
hand in hand with the spirit of it, approaching each time a little
nearer to the heart of it, mastering its life, its sound, the
whispering languages of that "other side of life" which rises
quietly and as if in fear to live and breathe long after the sun
has gone out. To him it was more wonderful than day.

And this night that lay outside his window now was magnificent.
Storm had washed the atmosphere between earth and sky, and it
seemed as though the stars had descended nearer to his forests,
shining in golden constellations. The moon was coming up late, and
he watched the ruddy glow of it as it rode up over the wilderness,
a splendid queen entering upon a stage already prepared by the
lesser satellites for her coming. No longer was Kent oppressed or
afraid. In still deeper inhalations he drank the night air into
his lungs, and in him there seemed to grow slowly a new strength.
His eyes and ears were wide open and attentive. The town was
asleep, but a few lights burned dimly here and there along the
river's edge, and occasionally a lazy sound came up to him--the
clink of a scow chain, the bark of a dog, the rooster crowing. In
spite of himself he smiled at that. Old Duperow's rooster was a
foolish bird and always crowed himself hoarse when the moon was
bright. And in front of him, not far away, were two white,
lightning-shriven spruce stubs standing like ghosts in the night.
In one of these a pair of owls had nested, and Kent listened to
the queer, chuckling notes of their honeymooning and the flutter
of their wings as they darted out now and then in play close to
his window. And then suddenly he heard the sharp snap of their
beaks. An enemy was prowling near, and the owls were giving
warning. He thought he heard a step. In another moment or two the
step was unmistakable. Some one was approaching his window from
the end of the building. He leaned over the sill and found himself
staring into O'Connor's face.

"These confounded feet of mine!" grunted the staff-sergeant. "Were
you asleep, Kent?"

"Wide-awake as those owls," assured Kent.

O'Connor drew up to the window. "I saw your light and thought you
were awake," he said. "I wanted to make sure Cardigan wasn't with
you. I don't want him to know I am here. And--if you don't mind--
will you turn off the light? Kedsty is awake, too--as wide-awake
as the owls."

Kent reached out a hand, and his room was in darkness except for
the glow of moon and stars. O'Connor's bulk at the window shut out
a part of this. His face was half in gloom.

"It's a crime to come to you like this, Kent," he said, keeping
his big voice down to a whisper. "But I had to. It's my last
chance. And I know there's something wrong. Kedsty is getting me
out of the way--because I was with him when he met the girl over
in the poplar bush. I'm detailed on special duty up at Fort
Simpson, two thousand miles by water if it's a foot! It means six
months or a year. We leave in the motor boat at dawn to overtake
Rossand and his outfit, so I had to take this chance of seeing
you. I hesitated until I knew that some one was awake in your
room."

"I'm glad you came," said Kent warmly. "And--good God, how I would
like to go with you, Bucky! If it wasn't for this thing in my
chest, ballooning up for an explosion--"

"I wouldn't be going," interrupted O'Connor in a low voice. "If
you were on your feet, Kent, there are a number of things that
wouldn't be happening. Something mighty queer has come over Kedsty
since this morning. He isn't the Kedsty you knew yesterday or for
the last ten years. He's nervous, and I miss my guess if he isn't
constantly on the watch for some one. And he's afraid of me. I
know it. He's afraid of me because I saw him go to pieces when he
met that girl. Fort Simpson is simply a frame-up to get me away
for a time. He tried to smooth the edge off the thing by promising
me an inspectorship within the year. That was this afternoon, just
before the storm. Since then--"

O'Connor turned and faced the moonlight for a moment.

"Since then I've been on a still-hunt for the girl and Sandy
McTrigger," he added. "And they've disappeared, Kent. I guess
McTrigger just melted away into the woods. But it's the girl that
puzzles me. I've questioned every scow cheman at the Landing. I've
investigated every place where she might have got food or lodging,
and I bribed Mooie, the old trailer, to search the near-by timber.
The unbelievable part of it isn't her disappearance. It's the fact
that not a soul in Athabasca Landing has seen her! Sounds
incredible, doesn't it? And then, Kent, the big hunch came to me.
Remember how we've always played up to the big hunch? And this one
struck me strong. I think I know where the girl is."

Kent, forgetful of his own impending doom, was deeply interested
in the thrill of O'Connor's mystery. He had begun to visualize the
situation. More than once they had worked out enigmas of this kind
together, and the staff-sergeant saw the old, eager glow in his
eyes. And Kent chuckled joyously in that thrill of the game of
man-hunting, and said:

"Kedsty is a bachelor and doesn't even so much as look at a woman.
But he likes home life--"

"And has built himself a log bungalow somewhat removed from the
town," added O'Connor.

"And his Chinaman cook and housekeeper is away."

"And the bungalow is closed, or supposed to be."

"Except at night, when Kedsty goes there to sleep."

O'Connor's hand gripped Kent's. "Jimmy, there never was a team in
N Division that could beat us, The girl is hiding at Kedsty's
place!"

"But why HIDING?" insisted Kent. "She hasn't committed a crime."

O'Connor sat silent for a moment. Kent could hear him stuffing the
bowl of his pipe.

"It's simply the big hunch," he grunted. "It's got hold of me,
Kent, and I can't throw it off. Why, man--"

He lighted a match in the cup of his hands, and Kent saw his face.
There was more than uncertainty in the hard, set lines of it.

"You see, I went back to the poplars again after I left you
today," O'Connor went on. "I found her footprints. She had turned
off the trail, and in places they were very clear.

"She had on high-heeled shoes, Kent--those Frenchy things--and I
swear her feet can't be much bigger than a baby's! I found where
Kedsty caught up with her, and the moss was pretty well beaten
down. He returned through the poplars, but the girl went on and
into the edge of the spruce. I lost her trail there. By traveling
in that timber it was possible for her to reach Kedsty's bungalow
without being seen. It must have been difficult going, with shoes
half as big as my hand and heels two inches high! And I've been
wondering, why didn't she wear bush-country shoes or moccasins?"

"Because she came from the South and not the North," suggested
Kent. "Probably up from Edmonton."

"Exactly. And Kedsty wasn't expecting her, was he? If he had been,
that first sight of her wouldn't have shattered every nerve in his
body. That's why the big hunch won't let loose of me, Kent. From
the moment he saw her, he was a different man. His attitude toward
you changed instantly. If he could save you now by raising his
little finger, he wouldn't do it, simply because it's absolutely
necessary for him to have an excuse for freeing McTrigger. Your
confession came at just the psychological moment. The girl's
unspoken demand there in the poplars was that he free McTrigger,
and it was backed up by a threat which Kedsty understood and which
terrified him to his marrow. McTrigger must have seen him
afterward, for he waited at the office until Kedsty came. I don't
know what passed between them. Constable Doyle says they were
together for half an hour. Then McTrigger walked out of barracks,
and no one has seen him since. It's mighty queer. The whole thing
is queer. And the queerest part of the whole business is this
sudden commission of mine at Fort Simpson."

Kent leaned back against his pillows. His breath came in a series
of short, hacking coughs. In the star glow O'Connor saw his face
grow suddenly haggard and tired-looking, and he leaned far in so
that in both his own hands he held one of Kent's.

"I'm tiring you, Jimmy," he said huskily. "Good-by, old pal! I--I--"
He hesitated and then lied steadily. "I'm going up to take a
look around Kedsty's place. I won't be gone more than half an hour
and will stop on my way back. If you're asleep--"

"I won't be asleep," said Kent.

O'Connor's hands gripped closer. "Good-by, Jimmy."

"Good-by." And then, as O'Connor stepped back into the night,
Kent's voice called after him softly: "I'll be with you on the
long trip, Bucky. Take care of yourself--always."

O'Connor's answer was a sob, a sob that rose in his throat like a
great fist, and choked him, and filled his eyes with scalding
tears that shut out the glow of moon and stars. And he did not go
toward Kedsty's, but trudged heavily in the direction of the
river, for he knew that Kent had called his lie, and that they had
said their last farewell.





CHAPTER IV


It was a long time after O'Connor had gone before Kent at last
fell asleep. It was a slumber weighted with the restlessness of a
brain fighting to the last against exhaustion and the inevitable
end. A strange spirit seemed whirling Kent back through the years
he had lived, even to the days of his boyhood, leaping from crest
to crest, giving to him swift and passing visions of valleys
almost forgotten, of happenings and things long ago faded and
indistinct in his memory. Vividly his dreams were filled with
ghosts--ghosts that were transformed, as his spirit went back to
them, until they were riotous with life and pulsating with the red
blood of reality. He was a boy again, playing three-old-cat in
front of the little old red brick schoolhouse half a mile from the
farm where he was born, and where his mother had died.

And Skinny Hill, dead many years ago, was his partner at the bat--
lovable Skinny, with his smirking grin and his breath that always
smelled of the most delicious onions ever raised in Ohio. And
then, at dinner hour, he was trading some of his mother's cucumber
pickles for some of Skinny's onions--two onions for a pickle, and
never a change in the price. And he played old-fashioned casino
with his mother, and they were picking blackberries together in
the woods, and he killed over again a snake that he had clubbed to
death more than twenty years ago, while his mother ran away and
screamed and then sat down and cried.

He had worshiped that mother, and the spirit of his dreams did not
let him look down into the valley where she lay dead, under a
little white stone in the country cemetery a thousand miles away,
with his father close beside her. But it gave him a passing thrill
of the days in which he had fought his way through college--and
then it brought him into the North, his beloved North.

For hours the wilderness was heavy about Kent. He moved
restlessly, at times he seemed about to awaken, but always he
slipped back into the slumberous arms of his forests. He was on
the trail in the cold, gray beginning of Winter, and the glow of
his campfire made a radiant patch of red glory in the heart of the
night, and close to him in that glow sat O'Connor. He was behind
dogs and sledge, fighting storm; dark and mysterious streams
rippled under his canoe; he was on the Big River, O'Connor with
him again--and then, suddenly, he was holding a blazing gun in his
hand, and he and O'Connor stood with their backs to a rack, facing
the bloodthirsty rage of McCaw and his free-traders. The roar of
the guns half roused him, and after that came pleasanter things--
the droning of wind in the spruce tops, the singing of swollen
streams in Springtime, the songs of birds, the sweet smells of
life, the glory of life as he had lived it, he and O'Connor. In
the end, half between sleep and wakefulness, he was fighting a
smothering pressure on his chest. It was an oppressive and
torturing thing, like the tree that had fallen on him over in the
Jackfish country, and he felt himself slipping off into darkness.
Suddenly there was a gleam of light. He opened his eyes. The sun
was flooding in at his window, and the weight on his chest was the
gentle pressure of Cardigan's stethoscope.

In spite of the physical stress of the phantoms which his mind has
conceived, Kent awakened so quietly that Cardigan was not
conscious of the fact until he raised his head. There was
something in his face which he tried to conceal, but Kent caught
it before it was gone. There were dark hollows under his eyes. He
was a bit haggard, as though he had spent a sleepless night. Kent
pulled himself up, squinting at the sun and grinning
apologetically. He had slept well along into the day, and--

He caught himself with a sudden grimace of pain. A flash of
something hot and burning swept through his chest. It was like a
knife. He opened his mouth to breathe in the air. The pressure
inside him was no longer the pressure of a stethoscope. It was
real.

Cardigan, standing over him, was trying to look cheerful. "Too
much of the night air, Kent," he explained. "That will pass away--
soon."

It seemed to Kent that Cardigan gave an almost imperceptible
emphasis to the word "soon," but he asked no question. He was
quite sure that he understood, and he knew how unpleasant for
Cardigan the answer to it would be. He fumbled under his pillow
for his watch. It was nine o'clock. Cardigan was moving about
uneasily, arranging the things on the table and adjusting the
shade at the window. For a few moments, with his back to Kent, he
stood without moving. Then he turned, and said:

"Which will you have, Kent--a wash-up and breakfast, or a
visitor?"

"I am not hungry, and I don't feel like soap and water just now.
Who's the visitor? Father Layonne or--Kedsty?"

"Neither. It's a lady."

"Then I'd better have the soap and water! Do you mind telling me
who it is?"

Cardigan shook his head. "I don't know. I've never seen her
before. She came this morning while I was still in pajamas, and
has been waiting ever since. I told her to come back again, but
she insisted that she would remain until you were awake. She has
been very patient for two hours."

A thrill which he made no effort to conceal leaped through Kent.
"Is she a young woman?" he demanded eagerly. "Wonderful black
hair, blue eyes, wears high-heeled shoes just about half as big as
your hand--and very beautiful?"

"All of that," nodded Cardigan. "I even noticed the shoes, Jimmy.
A very beautiful young woman!"

"Please let her come in," said Kent. "Mercer scrubbed me last
night, and I feel fairly fit. She'll forgive this beard, and I'll
apologize for your sake. What is her name?"

"I asked her, and she didn't seem to hear. A little later Mercer
asked her, and he said she just looked at him for a moment and he
froze. She is reading a volume of my Plutarch's 'Lives'--actually
reading it. I know it by the way she turns the pages!"

Kent drew himself up higher against his pillows and faced the door
when Cardigan went out. In a flash all that O'Connor had said
swept back upon him--this girl, Kedsty, the mystery of it all. Why
had she come to see him? What could be the motive of her visit--
unless it was to thank him for the confession that had given Sandy
McTrigger his freedom? O'Connor was right. She was deeply
concerned in McTrigger and had come to express her gratitude. He
listened. Distant footsteps sounded in the hall. They approached
quickly and paused outside his door. A hand moved the latch, but
for a moment the door did not open. He heard Cardigan's voice,
then Cardigan's footsteps retreating down the hall. His heart
thumped. He could not remember when he had been so upset over an
unimportant thing.





CHAPTER V


The latch moved slowly, and with its movement came a gentle tap on
the panel.

"Come in," he said.

The next instant he was staring. The girl had entered and closed
the door behind her. O'Connor's picture stood in flesh and blood
before him. The girl's eyes met his own. They were like glorious
violets, as O'Connor had said, but they were not the eyes he had
expected to see. They were the wide-open, curious eyes of a child.
He had visualized them as pools of slumbering flame--the idea
O'Connor had given him--and they were the opposite of that. Their
one emotion seemed to be the emotion roused by an overwhelming,
questioning curiosity. They were apparently not regarding him as a
dying human being, but as a creature immensely interesting to look
upon. In place of the gratitude he had anticipated, they were
filled with a great, wondering interrogation, and there was not
the slightest hint of embarrassment in their gaze. For a space it
seemed to Kent that he saw nothing but those wonderful,
dispassionate eyes looking at him. Then he saw the rest of her--
her amazing hair, her pale, exquisite face, the slimness and
beauty of her as she stood with her back to the door, one hand
still resting on the latch. He had never seen anything quite like
her. He might have guessed that she was eighteen, or twenty, or
twenty-two. Her hair, wreathed in shimmering, velvety coils from
the back to the crown of her head, struck him as it had struck
O'Connor, as unbelievable. The glory of it gave to her an
appearance of height which she did not possess, for she was not
tall, and her slimness added to the illusion.

And then, greatly to his embarrassment in the next instant, his
eyes went to her feet. Again O'Connor was right--tiny feet, high-
heeled pumps, ravishingly turned ankles showing under a skirt of
some fluffy brown stuff or other--

Correcting himself, his face flushed red. The faintest tremble of
a smile was on the girl's lips. She looked down, and for the first
time he saw what O'Connor had seen, the sunlight kindling
slumberous fires in her hair.

Kent tried to say something, but before he succeeded she had taken
possession of the chair near his bedside.

"I have been waiting a long time to see you," she said. "You are
James Kent, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm Jim Kent. I'm sorry Dr. Cardigan kept you waiting. If I
had known--"

He was getting a grip on himself again, and smiled at her. He
noticed the amazing length of her dark lashes, but the violet eyes
behind them did not smile back at him. The tranquillity of their
gaze was disconcerting. It was as if she had not quite made up her
mind about him yet and was still trying to classify him in the
museum of things she had known.

"He should have awakened me," Kent went on, trying to keep himself
from slipping once more. "It isn't polite to keep a young lady
waiting two hours!"

This time the blue eyes made him feel that his smile was a maudlin
grin.

"Yes--you are different." She spoke softly, as if expressing the
thought to herself. "That is what I came to find out, if you were
different. You are dying?"

"My God--yes--I'm dying!" gasped Kent. "According to Dr. Cardigan
I'm due to pop off this minute. Aren't you a little nervous,
sitting so near to a man who's ready to explode while you're
looking at him?"

For the first time the eyes changed. She was not facing the
window, yet a glow like the glow of sunlight flashed into them,
soft, luminous, almost laughing.

"No, it doesn't frighten me," she assured him. "I have always
thought I should like to see a man die--not quickly, like drowning
or being shot, but slowly, an inch at a time. But I shouldn't like
to see YOU die."

"I'm glad," breathed Kent. "It's a great satisfaction to me."

"Yet I shouldn't be frightened if you did."

"Oh!"

Kent drew himself up straighter against his pillows. He had been a
man of many adventures. He had faced almost every conceivable kind
of shock. But this was a new one. He stared into the blue eyes,
tongueless and mentally dazed. They were cool and sweet and not at
all excited. And he knew that she spoke the truth. Not by a quiver
of those lovely lashes would she betray either fear or horror if
he popped off right there. It was astonishing.

Something like resentment shot for an instant into his bewildered
brain. Then it was gone, and in a flash it came upon him that she
was but uttering his own philosophy of life, showing him life's
cheapness, life's littleness, the absurdity of being distressed by
looking upon the light as it flickered out. And she was doing it,
not as a philosopher, but with the beautiful unconcern of a child.

Suddenly, as if impelled by an emotion in direct contradiction to
her apparent lack of sympathy, she reached out a hand and placed
it on Kent's forehead. It was another shock. It was not a
professional touch, but a soft, cool little pressure that sent a
comforting thrill through him. The hand was there for only a
moment, and she withdrew it to entwine the slim fingers with those
of the others in her lap.

"You have no fever," she said. "What makes you think you are
dying?"

Kent explained what was happening inside him. He was completely
shunted off his original track of thought and anticipation. He had
expected to ask for at least a mutual introduction when his
visitor came into his room, and had anticipated taking upon
himself the position of a polite inquisitor. In spite of O'Connor,
he had not thought she would be quite so pretty. He had not
believed her eyes would be so beautiful, or their lashes so long,
or the touch of her hand so pleasantly unnerving. And now, in
place of asking for her name and the reason for her visit, he
became an irrational idiot, explaining to her certain matters of
physiology that had to do with aortas and aneurismal sacs. He had
finished before the absurdity of the situation dawned upon him,
and with absurdity came the humor of it. Even dying, Kent could
not fail to see the funny side of a thing It struck him as
suddenly as had the girl's beauty and her bewildering and
unaffected ingenuousness.

Looking at him, that same glow of mysterious questioning in her
eyes, the girl found him suddenly laughing straight into her face.

"This is funny. It's very funny, Miss--Miss--"

"Marette," she supplied, answering his hesitation.

"It's funny, Miss Marette."

"Not Miss Marette. Just Marette," she corrected.

"I say, it's funny," he tried again. "You see, it's not so
terribly pleasant as you might think to--er--be here, where I am,
dying. And last night I thought about the finest thing in the
world would be to have a woman beside me, a woman who'd be sort of
sympathetic, you know, ease the thing off a little, maybe say she
was sorry. And then the Lord answers my prayer, and YOU come--and
you sort of give me the impression that you made the appointment
with yourself to see how a fellow looks when he pops off."

The shimmer of light came into the blue eyes again. She seemed to
have done with her mental analysis of him, and he saw that a bit
of color was creeping into her cheeks, pale when she had entered
the room.

"You wouldn't be the first I've seen pop off," she assured him.
"There have been a number, and I've never cried very much. I'd
rather see a man die than some animals. But I shouldn't like to
see YOU do it. Does that comfort you--like the woman you prayed
the Lord for?"

"It does," gasped Kent. "But why the devil, Miss Marette--"

"Marette," she corrected again.

"Yes, Marette--why the devil have you come to see me at just the
moment I'm due to explode? And what's your other name, and how old
are you, and what do you want of me?"

"I haven't any other name, I'm twenty, and I came to get
acquainted with you and see what you are like."

"Bully!" exclaimed Kent. "We're getting there fast! And now, why?"

The girl drew her chair a few inches nearer, and for a moment Kent
thought that her lovely mouth was trembling on the edge of a
smile.

"Because you have lied so splendidly to save another man who was
about to die."

"Et tu, Brute!" sighed Kent, leaning back against his pillows.
"Isn't it possible for a decent man to kill another man and not be
called a liar when he tells about it? Why do so many believe that
I lie?"

"They don't," said the girl. "They believe you--now. You have gone
so completely into the details of the murder in your confession
that they are quite convinced. It would be too bad if you lived,
for you surely would be hanged. Your lie sounds and reads like the
truth. But I know it is a lie. You did not kill John Barkley."

"And the reason for your suspicion?"

For fully half a minute the girl's eyes rested on, his own. Again
they seemed to be looking through him and into him. "Because I
know the man who DID kill him," she said quietly, "and it was not
you."

Kent made a mighty effort to appear calm. He reached for a cigar
from the box that Cardigan had placed on his bed, and nibbled the
end of it. "Has some one else been confessing?" he asked.

She shook her head the slightest bit.

"Did you--er--see this other gentleman kill John Barkley?" he
insisted.

"No."

"Then I must answer you as I have answered at least one other. I
killed John Barkley. If you suspect some other person, your
suspicion is wrong."

"What a splendid liar!" she breathed softly. "Don't you believe in
God?"

Kent winced. "In a large, embracing sense, yes," he said. "I
believe in Him, for instance, as revealed to our senses in all
that living, growing glory you see out there through the window
Nature and I have become pretty good pals, and you see I've sort
of built up a mother goddess to worship instead of a he-god.
Sacrilege, maybe, but it's a great comfort at times. But you
didn't come to talk religion?"

The lovely head bent still nearer him. He felt an impelling desire
to put up his hand and touch her shining hair, as she laid her
hand on his forehead.

"I know who killed John Barkley," she insisted. "I know how and
when and why he was killed. Please tell me the truth. I want to
know. Why did you confess to a crime which you did not commit?"

Kent took time to light his cigar. The girl watched him closely,
almost eagerly.

"I may be mad," he said. "It is possible for any human being to be
mad and not know it. That's the funny part about insanity. But if
I'm not insane, I killed Barkley; if I didn't kill him, I must be
insane, for I'm very well convinced that I did. Either that, or
you are insane. I have my suspicions that you. are. Would a sane
person wear pumps with heels like those up here?" He pointed
accusingly to the floor.

For the first time the girl smiled, openly, frankly, gloriously.
It was as if her heart had leaped forth for an instant and had
greeted him. And then, like sunlight shadowed by cloud, the smile
was gone. "You are a brave man," she said. "You are splendid. I
hate men. But I think if you lived very long, I should love you. I
will believe that you killed Barkley. You compel me to believe it.
You confessed, when you found you were going to die, that an
innocent man might be saved. Wasn't that it?"

Kent nodded weakly. "That's it. I hate to think of it that way,
but I guess it's true. I confessed because I knew I was going to
die. Otherwise I am quite sure that I should have let the other
fellow take my medicine for me. You must think I am a beast."

"All men are beasts," she agreed quickly. "But you are--a
different kind of beast. I like you. If there were a chance, I
might fight for you. I can fight." She held up her two small
hands, half smiling at him again.

"But not with those," he exclaimed. "I think you would fight with
your eyes. O'Connor told me they half killed Kedsty when you met
them in the poplar grove yesterday."

He had expected that the mention of Inspector Kedsty's name would
disturb her. It had no effect that he could perceive.

"O'Connor was the big, red-faced man with Mr. Kedsty?"

"Yes, my trail partner. He came to me yesterday and raved about
your eyes. They ARE beautiful; I've never seen eyes half so
lovely. But that wasn't what struck Bucky so hard. It was the
effect they had on Kedsty. He said they shattered every nerve in
Kedsty's body, and Kedsty isn't the sort to get easily frightened.
And the queer part of it was that the instant you had gone, he
gave O'Connor an order to free McTrigger--and then turned and
followed you. All the rest of that day O'Connor tried to discover
something about you at the Landing. He couldn't find hide nor
hair--I beg pardon!--I mean he couldn't find out anything about
you at all. We made up our minds that for some reason or other you
were hiding up at Kedsty's bungalow. You don't mind a fellow
saying all this--when he is going to pop off soon--do you?"

He was half frightened at the directness with which he had
expressed the thing. He would gladly have buried his own curiosity
and all of O'Connor's suspicions for another moment of her hand on
his forehead. But it was out, and he waited.

She was looking down, her fingers twisting some sort of tasseled
dress ornament in her lap, and Kent mentally measured the length
of her lashes with a foot rule in mind. They were superb, and in
the thrill of his admiration he would have sworn they were an inch
long. She looked up suddenly and caught the glow in his eyes and
the flush that lay under the tan of his cheeks. Her own color had
deepened a little.

"What if you shouldn't die?" she asked him bluntly, as if she had
not heard a word of all he had said about Kedsty. "What would you
do?"

"I'm going to."

"But if you shouldn't?"

Kent shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose I'd have to take my
medicine. You're not going?"

She had straightened up and was sitting on the edge of her chair.
"Yes, I'm going. I'm afraid of my eyes. I may look at you as I
looked at Mr. Kedsty, and then--pop you'd go, quick! And I don't
want to be here when you die!"

He heard a soft little note of laughter in her throat. It sent a
chill through him. What an adorable, blood-thirsty little wretch
she was! He stared at her bent head, at the shining coils of her
wonderful hair. Undone, he could see it completely hiding her. And
it was so soft and warm that again he was tempted to reach out and
touch it. She was wonderful, and yet it was not possible that she
had a heart. Her apparent disregard of the fact that he was a
dying man was almost diabolic. There was no sympathy in the
expression of her violet eyes as she looked at him. She was even
making fun of the fact that he was about to die!

She stood up, surveying for the first time the room in which she
had been sitting. Then she turned to the window and looked out.
She reminded Kent of a beautiful young willow that had grown at
the edge of a stream, exquisite, slender, strong. He could have
picked her up in his arms as easily as a child, yet he sensed in
the lithe beauty of her body forces that could endure
magnificently. The careless poise of her head fascinated him. For
that head and the hair that crowned it he knew that half the women
of the earth would have traded precious years of their lives.

And then, without turning toward him, she said, "Some day, when I
die, I wish I might have as pleasant a room as this."

"I hope you never die," he replied devoutly.

She came back and stood for a moment beside him.

"I have had a very pleasant time," she said, as though he had
given her a special sort of entertainment. "It's too bad you are
going to die. I'm sure we should have been good friends. Aren't
you?"

"Yes, very sure. If you had only arrived sooner--"

"And I shall always think of you as a different kind of man-
beast," she interrupted him. "It is really true that I shouldn't
like to see you die. I want to get away before it happens. Would
you care to have me kiss you?"

For an instant Kent felt that his aorta was about to give away.
"I--I would," he gasped huskily.

"Then--close your eyes, please."

He obeyed. She bent over him. He felt the soft touch of her hands
and caught for an instant the perfume of her face and hair, and
then the thrill of her lips pressed warm and soft upon his.

She was not flushed or embarrassed when he looked at her again. It
was as if she had kissed a baby and was wondering at its red face.
"I've only kissed three men before you," she avowed. "It is
strange. I never thought I should do it again. And now, good-by!"
She moved quickly to the door.

"Wait," he cried plaintively. "Please wait. I want to know your
name. It is Marette--"

"Radisson," she finished for him. "Marette Radisson, and I come
from away off there, from a place we call the Valley of Silent
Men." She was pointing into the north.

"The North!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, it is far north. Very far."

Her hand was on the latch. The door opened slowly.

"Wait," he pleaded again. "You must not go."

"Yes, I must go. I have remained too long. I am sorry I kissed
you. I shouldn't have done that. But I had to because you are such
a splendid liar!"

The door opened quickly and closed behind her. He heard her steps
almost running down the hall, where not long ago he had listened
to the last of O'Connor's.

And then there was silence, and in that silence he heard her words
again, drumming like little hammers in his head, "BECAUSE YOU ARE
SUCH A SPLENDID LIAR!"





CHAPTER VI


James Kent, among his other qualities good and bad, possessed a
merciless opinion of his own shortcomings, but never, in that
opinion, had he fallen so low as in the interval which immediately
followed the closing of his door behind the mysterious girl who
had told him that her name was Marette Radisson. No sooner was she
gone than the overwhelming superiority of her childlike cleverness
smote him until, ashamed of himself, he burned red in his
aloneness.

He, Sergeant Kent, the coolest man on the force next to Inspector
Kedsty, the most dreaded of catechists when questioning criminals,
the man who had won the reputation of facing quietly and with
deadly sureness the most menacing of dangers, had been beaten--
horribly beaten--by a girl! And yet, in defeat, an irrepressible
and at times distorted sense of humor made him give credit to the
victor. The shame of the thing was his acknowledgment that a bit
of feminine beauty had done the trick. He had made fun of O'Connor
when the big staff-sergeant had described the effect of the girl's
eyes on Inspector Kedsty. And, now, if O'Connor could know of what
had happened here--

And then, like a rubber ball, that saving sense of humor bounced
up out of the mess, and Kent found himself chuckling as his face
grew cooler. His visitor had come, and she had gone, and he knew
no more about her than when she had entered his room, except that
her very pretty name was Marette Radisson. He was just beginning
to think of the questions he had wanted to ask, a dozen, half a
hundred of them--more definitely who she was; how and why she had
come to Athabasca Landing; her interest in Sandy McTrigger; the
mysterious relationship that must surely exist between her and
Inspector Kedsty; and, chiefly, her real motive in coming to him
when she knew that he was dying. He comforted himself by the
assurance that he would have learned these things had she not left
him so suddenly. He had not expected that.

The question which seated itself most insistently in his mind was,
why had she come? Was it, after all, merely a matter of curiosity?
Was her relationship to Sandy McTrigger such that inquisitiveness
alone had brought her to see the man who had saved him? Surely she
had not been urged by a sense of gratitude, for in no way had she
given expression to that. On his death-bed she had almost made fun
of him. And she could not have come as a messenger from McTrigger,
or she would have left her message. For the first time he began to
doubt that she knew the man at all, in spite of the strange thing
that had happened under O'Connor's eyes. But she must know Kedsty.
She had made no answer to his half-accusation that she was hiding
up at the Inspector's bungalow. He had used that word--"hiding."
It should have had an effect. And she was as beautifully
unconscious of it as though she had not heard him, and he knew
that she had heard him very distinctly. It was then that she had
given him that splendid view of her amazingly long lashes and had
countered softly,

"What if you shouldn't die?"

Kent felt himself suddenly aglow with an irresistible appreciation
of the genius of her subtlety, and with that appreciation came a
thrill of deeper understanding. He believed that he knew why she
had left him so suddenly. It was because she had seen herself
close to the danger-line. There were things which she did not want
him to know or question her about, and his daring intimation that
she was hiding in Kedsty's bungalow had warned her. Was it
possible that Kedsty himself had sent her for some reason which he
could not even guess at? Positively it was not because of
McTrigger, the man he had saved. At least she would have thanked
him in some way. She would not have appeared quite so adorably
cold-blooded, quite so sweetly unconscious of the fact that he was
dying. If McTrigger's freedom had meant anything to her, she could
not have done less than reveal to him a bit of sympathy. And her
greatest compliment, if he excepted the kiss, was that she had
called him a splendid liar!

Kent grimaced and drew in a deep breath because of the tightness
in his chest. Why was it that every one seemed to disbelieve him?
Why was it that even this mysterious girl, whom he had never seen
before in his life, politely called him a liar when he insisted
that he had killed John Barkley? Was the fact of murder
necessarily branded in one's face? If so, he had never observed
it. Some of the hardest criminals he had brought in from the down-
river country were likable-looking men. There was Horrigan, for
instance, who for seven long weeks kept him in good humor with his
drollery, though he was bringing him in to be hanged. And there
were McTab, and le Bete Noir--the Black Beast--a lovable vagabond
in spite of his record, and Le Beau, the gentlemanly robber of the
wilderness mail, and half a dozen others he could recall without
any effort at all. No one called them liars when, like real men,
they confessed their crimes when they saw their game was up. To a
man they had given up the ghost with their boots on, and Kent
respected their memory because of it. And he was dying--and even
this stranger girl called him a liar? And no case had ever been
more complete than his own. He had gone mercilessly into the
condemning detail of it all. It was down in black and white. He
had signed it. And still he was disbelieved. It was funny, deuced
funny, thought Kent.

Until young Mercer opened the door and came in with his late
breakfast, he had forgotten that he had really been hungry when he
awakened with Cardigan's stethoscope at his chest. Mercer had
amused him from the first. The pink-faced young Englishman, fresh
from the old country, could not conceal in his face and attitude
the fact that he was walking in the presence of the gallows
whenever he entered the room. He was, as he had confided in
Cardigan, "beastly hit up" over the thing. To feed and wash a man
who would undoubtedly die, but who would be hanged by the neck
until he was dead if he lived, filled him with peculiar and at
times conspicuous emotions. It was like attending to a living
corpse, if such a thing could be conceived. And Mercer had
conceived it. Kent had come to regard him as more or less of a
barometer giving away Cardigan's secrets. He had not told
Cardigan, but had kept the discovery for his own amusement.

This morning Mercer's face was less pink, and his pale eyes were
paler, Kent thought. Also he started to sprinkle sugar on his eggs
in place of salt.

Kent laughed and stopped his hand. "You may sugar my eggs when I'm
dead, Mercer," he said, "but while I'm alive I want salt on 'em!
Do you know, old man, you look bad this morning. Is it because
this is my last breakfast?"

"I hope not, sir, I hope not," replied Mercer quickly. "Indeed, I
hope you are going to live, sir."

"Thanks!" said Kent dryly. "Where is Cardigan?"

"The Inspector sent a messenger for him, sir. I think he has gone
to see him. Are your eggs properly done, sir?"

"Mercer, if you ever worked in a butler's pantry, for the love of
heaven forget it now!" exploded Kent, "I want you to tell me
something straight out. How long have I got?"

Mercer fidgeted for a moment, and a shade or two more of the red
went out of his face. "I can't say, sir. Doctor Cardigan hasn't
told me. But I think not very long, sir. Doctor Cardigan is cut up
all in rags this morning. And Father Layonne is coming to see you
at any moment."


"Much obliged," nodded Kent, calmly beginning his second egg.
"And, by the way, what did you think of the young lady?"

"Ripping, positively ripping!" exclaimed Mercer.

"That's the word," agreed Kent. "Ripping. It sounds like the
calico counter in a dry-goods store, but means a lot. Don't happen
to know where she is staying or why she is at the Landing, do
you?"

He knew that he was asking a foolish question and scarcely
expected an answer from Mercer. He was astonished when the other
said:

"I heard Doctor Cardigan ask her if we might expect her to honor
us with another visit, and she told him it would be impossible,
because she was leaving on a down-river scow tonight. Fort
Simpson, I think she said she was going to, sir."

"The deuce you say!" cried Kent, spilling a bit of his coffee in
the thrill of the moment. "Why, that's where Staff-Sergeant
O'Connor is bound for!"

"So I heard Doctor Cardigan tell her. But she didn't reply to
that. She just--went. If you don't mind a little joke in your
present condition, sir, I might say that Doctor Cardigan was
considerably flayed up over her. A deuced pretty girl, sir, deuced
pretty! And I think he was shot through!"

"Now you're human, Mercer. She was pretty, wasn't she?"

"Er--yes--stunningly so, Mr. Kent," agreed Mercer, reddening
suddenly to the roots of his pasty, blond hair. "I don't mind
confessing that in this unusual place her appearance was quite
upsetting."

"I agree with you, friend Mercer," nodded Kent. "She upset me.
And--see here, old man!--will you do a dying man the biggest favor
he ever asked in his life?"

"I should be most happy, sir, most happy."

"It's this," said Kent. "I want to know if that girl actually
leaves on the down-river scow tonight. If I'm alive tomorrow
morning, will you tell me?"

"I shall do my best, sir."

"Good. It's simply the silly whim of a dying man, Mercer. But I
want to be humored in it. And I'm sensitive--like yourself. I
don't want Cardigan to know. There's an old Indian named Mooie,
who lives in a shack just beyond the sawmill. Give him ten dollars
and tell him there is another ten in it if he sees the business
through, and reports properly to you, and keeps his mouth shut
afterward. Here--the money is under my pillow."

Kent pulled out a wallet and put fifty dollars in Mercer's hands.

"Buy cigars with the rest of it, old man. It's of no more use to
me. And this little trick you are going to pull off is worth it.
It's my last fling on earth, you might say."

"Thank you, sir. It is very kind of you."

Mercer belonged to a class of wandering Englishmen typical of the
Canadian West, the sort that sometimes made real Canadians wonder
why a big and glorious country like their own should cling to the
mother country. Ingratiating and obsequiously polite at all times,
he gave one the impression of having had splendid training as a
servant, yet had this intimation been made to him, he would have
become highly indignant. Kent had learned their ways pretty well.
He had met them in all sorts of places, for one of their
inexplicable characteristics was the recklessness and apparent
lack of judgment with which they located themselves. Mercer, for
instance, should have held a petty clerical job of some kind in a
city, and here he was acting as nurse in the heart of a
wilderness!

After Mercer had gone with the breakfast things and the money,
Kent recalled a number of his species. And he knew that under
their veneer of apparent servility was a thing of courage and
daring which needed only the right kind of incentive to rouse it.
And when roused, it was peculiarly efficient in a secretive,
artful-dodger sort of way. It would not stand up before a gun. But
it would creep under the mouths of guns on a black night. And Kent
was positive his fifty dollars would bring him results--if he
lived.

Just why he wanted the information he was after, he could not have
told himself. It was a pet aphorism between O'Connor and him that
they had often traveled to success on the backs of their hunches.
And his proposition to Mercer was made on the spur of one of those
moments when the spirit of a hunch possessed him. His morning had
been one of unexpected excitement, and now he leaned back in an
effort to review it and to forget, if he could, the distressing
thing that was bound to happen to him within the next few hours.
But he could not get away from the thickening in his chest. It
seemed growing on him. Now and then he was compelled to make quite
an effort to get sufficient air into his lungs.

He found himself wondering if there was a possibility that the
girl might return. For a long time he lay thinking about her, and
it struck him as incongruous and in bad taste that fate should
have left this adventure for his last. If he had met her six
months ago--or even three--it was probable that she would so have
changed the events of life for him that he would not have got the
half-breed's bullet in his chest. He confessed the thing
unblushingly. The wilderness had taken the place of woman for him.
It had claimed him, body and soul. He had desired nothing beyond
its wild freedom and its never-ending games of chance. He had
dreamed, as every man dreams, but realities and not the dreams had
been the red pulse of his life. And yet, if this girl had come
sooner--

He revisioned for himself over and over again her hair and eyes,
the slimness of her as she had stood at the window, the freedom
and strength of that slender body, the poise of her exquisite
head, and he felt again the thrill of her hand and the still more
wonderful thrill of her lips as she had pressed them warmly upon
his.

AND SHE WAS OF THE NORTH! That was the thought that overwhelmed
him. He did not permit himself to believe that she might have told
him an untruth. He was confident, if he lived until tomorrow, that
Mercer would corroborate his faith in her. He had never heard of a
place called the Valley of Silent Men, but it was a big country,
and Fort Simpson with its Hudson Bay Company's post and its half-
dozen shacks was a thousand miles away. He was not sure that such
a place as that valley really existed. It was easier to believe
that the girl's home was at Fort Providence, Fort Simpson, Fort
Good Hope, or even at Fort McPherson. It was not difficult for him
to picture her as the daughter of one of the factor lords of the
North. Yet this, upon closer consideration, he gave up as
unreasonable. The word "Fort" did not stand for population, and
there were probably not more than fifty white people at all the
posts between the Great Slave and the Arctic. She was not one of
these, or the fact would have been known at the Landing.

Neither could she be a riverman's daughter, for it was
inconceivable that either a riverman or a trapper would have sent
this girl down into civilization, where this girl had undoubtedly
been. It was that point chiefly which puzzled Kent. She was not
only beautiful. She had been tutored in schools that were not
taught by wilderness missioners. In her, it seemed to him, he had
seen the beauty and the wild freedom of the forests as they had
come to him straight out of the heart of an ancient aristocracy
that was born nearly two hundred years ago in the old cities of
Quebec and Montreal.

His mind flashed back at that thought: he remembered the time when
he had sought out every nook and cranny of that ancient town of
Quebec, and had stood over graves two centuries old, and deep in
his soul had envied the dead the lives they had lived. He had
always thought of Quebec as a rare old bit of time-yellowed lace
among cities--the heart of the New World as it had once been,
still beating, still whispering of its one-time power, still
living in the memory of its mellowed romance, its almost forgotten
tragedies--a ghost that lived, that still beat back defiantly the
destroying modernism that would desecrate its sacred things. And
it pleased him to think of Marette Radisson as the spirit of it,
wandering north, and still farther north--even as the spirits of
the profaned dead had risen from the Landing to go farther on.

And feeling that the way had at last been made easy for him, Kent
smiled out into the glorious day and whispered softly, as if she
were standing there, listening to him:

"If I had lived--I would have called you--my Quebec. It's pretty,
that name. It stands for a lot. And so do you."

And out in the hall, as Kent whispered those words, stood Father
Layonne, with a face that was whiter than the mere presence of
death had ever made it before. At his side stood Cardigan, aged
ten years since he had placed his stethoscope at Kent's chest that
morning. And behind these two were Kedsty, with a face like gray
rock, and young Mercer, in whose staring eyes was the horror of a
thing he could not yet quite comprehend. Cardigan made an effort
to speak and failed. Kedsty wiped his forehead, as he had wiped it
the morning of Kent's confession. And Father Layonne, as he went
to Kent's door, was breathing softly to himself a prayer.





CHAPTER VII


From the window, the glorious day outside, and the vision he had
made for himself of Marette Radisson, Kent turned at the sound of
a hand at his door and saw it slowly open. He was expecting it. He
had read young Mercer like a book. Mercer's nervousness and the
increased tightening of the thing in his chest had given him
warning. The thing was going to happen soon, and Father Layonne
had come. He tried to smile, that he might greet his wilderness
friend cheerfully and unafraid. But the smile froze when the door
opened and he saw the missioner standing there.

More than once he had accompanied Father Layonne over the
threshold of life into the presence of death, but he had never
before seen in his face what he saw there now. He stared. The
missioner remained in the doorway, hesitating, as if at the last
moment a great fear held him back. For an interval the eyes of the
two men rested upon each other in a silence that was like the grip
of a living thing. Then Father Layonne came quietly into the room
and closed the door behind him.

Kent drew a deep breath and tried to grin. "You woke me out of a
dream," he said, "a day-dream. I've had a very pleasant experience
this morning, mon pere."

"So some one was trying to tell me, Jimmy," replied the little
missioner with an effort to smile back.

"Mercer?"

"Yes. He told me about it confidentially. The poor boy must have
fallen in love with the young lady."

"So have I, mon pere. I don't mind confessing it to you. I'm
rather glad. And if Cardigan hadn't scheduled me to die--"

"Jimmy," interrupted the missioner quickly, but a bit huskily,
"has it ever occurred to you that Doctor Cardigan may be
mistaken?"

He had taken one of Kent's hands. His grip tightened. It began to
hurt. And Kent, looking into his eyes, found his brain all at once
like a black room suddenly illuminated by a flash of fire. Drop by
drop the blood went out of his face until it was whiter than
Father Layonne's.

"You--you don't--mean--"

"Yes, yes, boy, I mean just that," said the missioner, in a voice
so strange that it did not seem to be his own. "You are not going
to die, Jimmy. You are going to live!"

"Live!" Kent dropped back against his pillows. "LIVE!" His lips
gasped the one word.

He closed his eyes for an instant, and it seemed to him that the
world was aflame. And he repeated the word again, but only his
lips formed it, and there came no sound. His senses, strained to
the breaking-point to meet the ordeal of death, gave way slowly to
the mighty reaction. He felt in those moments like a reeling man.
He opened his eyes, and there was a meaningless green haze through
the window where the world should have been. But he heard Father
Layonne's voice. It seemed a great distance off, but it was very
clear. Doctor Cardigan had made an error, it was saying. And
Doctor Cardigan, because of that error, was like a man whose heart
had been taken out of him. But it was an excusable error.

If there had been an X-ray--But there had been none. And Doctor
Cardigan had made the diagnosis that nine out of ten good surgeons
would probably have made. What he had taken to be the aneurismal
blood-rush was an exaggerated heart murmur, and the increased
thickening in his chest was a simple complication brought about by
too much night air. It was too bad the error had happened. But he
must not blame Cardigan!

HE MUST NOT BLAME CARDIGAN! Those last words pounded like an
endless series of little waves in Kent's brain. He must not blame
Cardigan! He laughed, laughed before his dazed senses readjusted
themselves, before the world through the window pieced itself into
shape again. At least he thought he was laughing. He must--not--
blame--Cardigan! What an amazingly stupid thing for Father Layonne
to say! Blame Cardigan for giving him back his life? Blame him for
the glorious knowledge that he was not going to die? Blame him
for--

Things were coming clearer. Like a bolt slipping into its groove
his brain found itself. He saw Father Layonne again, with his
white, tense face and eyes in which were still seated the fear and
the horror he had seen in the doorway. It was not until then that
he gripped fully at the truth.

"I--I see," he said. "You and Cardigan think it would have been
better if I had died!"

The missioner was still holding his hand. "I don't know, Jimmy, I
don't know. What has happened is terrible."

"But not so terrible as death," cried Kent, suddenly growing rigid
against his pillows. "Great God, mon pere, I want to live! Oh--"

He snatched his hand free and stretched forth both arms to the
open window. "Look at it out there! My world again! MY WORLD! I
want to go back to it. It's ten times more precious to me now than
it was. Why should I blame Cardigan? Mon pere--mon pere--listen to
me. I can say it now, because I've got a right to say it. I LIED.
I didn't kill John Barkley!"

A strange cry fell from Father Layonne's lips. It was a choking
cry, a cry, not of rejoicing, but of a grief-stung thing. "Jimmy!"

"I swear it! Great heaven, mon pere, don't you believe me?"

The missioner had risen. In his eyes and face was another look. It
was as if in all his life he had never seen James Kent before. It
was a look born suddenly of shock, the shock of amazement, of
incredulity, of a new kind of horror. Then swiftly again his
countenance changed, and he put a hand on Kent's head.

"God forgive you, Jimmy," he said. "And God help you, too!"

Where a moment before Kent had felt the hot throb of an inundating
joy, his heart was chilled now by the thing he sensed in Father
Layonne's voice and saw in his face and eyes. It was not entirely
disbelief. It was a more hopeless thing than that.

"You do not believe me!" he said.

"It is my religion to believe, Jimmy," replied Father Layonne in a
gentle voice into which the old calmness had returned. "I must
believe, for your sake. But it is not a matter of human sentiment
now, lad. It is the Law! Whatever my heart feels toward you can do
you no good. You are--" He hesitated to speak the words.

Then it was that Kent saw fully and clearly the whole monstrous
situation. It had taken time for it to fasten itself upon him. In
a general way it had been clear to him a few moments before; now,
detail by detail, it closed in upon him, and his muscles
tightened, and Father Layonne saw his jaw set hard and his hands
clench. Death was gone. But the mockery of it, the grim exultation
of the thing over the colossal trick it had played, seemed to din
an infernal laughter in his ears. But--he was going to live! That
was the one fact that rose above all others. No matter what
happened to him a month or six months from now, he was not going
to die today. He would live to receive Mercer's report. He would
live to stand on his feet again and to fight for the life which he
had thrown away. He was, above everything else, a fighting man. It
was born in him to fight, not so much against his fellow men as
against the overwhelming odds of adventure as they came to him.
And now he was up against the deadliest game of all. He saw it. He
felt it. The thing gripped him. In the eyes of that Law of which
he had so recently been a part he was a murderer. And in the
province of Alberta the penalty for killing a man was hanging.
Because horror and fear did not seize upon him, he wondered if he
still realized the situation. He believed that he did. It was
merely a matter of human nature. Death, he had supposed, was a
fixed and foregone thing. He had believed that only a few hours of
life were left for him. And now it was given back to him, for
months at least. It was a glorious reprieve, and--

Suddenly his heart stood still in the thrill of the thought that
came to him. Marette Radisson had known that he was not going to
die! She had hinted the fact, and he, like a blundering idiot, had
failed to catch the significance of it. She had given him no
sympathy, had laughed at him, had almost made fun of him, simply
because she knew that he was going to live!

He turned suddenly on Father Layonne.

"They shall believe me!" he cried. "I shall make them believe me!
Mon pere, I lied! I lied to save Sandy McTrigger, and I shall tell
them why. If Doctor Cardigan has not made another mistake, I want
them all here again. Will you arrange it?"

"Inspector Kedsty is waiting outside," said Father Layonne
quietly, "but I should not act in haste, Jimmy. I should wait. I
should think--think."

"You mean take time to think up a story that will hold water, mon
pere? I have that. I have the story. And yet--" He smiled a bit
dismally. "I did make one pretty thorough confession, didn't I,
Father?"

"It was very convincing, Jimmy. It went so particularly into the
details, and those details, coupled with the facts that you were
seen at John Barkley's earlier in the evening, and that it was you
who found him dead a number of hours later--"

"All make a strong case against me," agreed Kent. "As a matter of
fact, I was up at Barkley's to look over an old map he had made of
the Porcupine country twenty years ago. He couldn't find it. Later
he sent word he had run across it. I returned and found him dead."

The little missioner nodded, but did not speak.

"It is embarrassing," Kent went on. "It almost seems as though I
ought to go through with it, like a sport. When a man loses, it
isn't good taste to set up a howl. It makes him sort of yellow-
backed, you know. To play the game according to rules, I suppose I
ought to keep quiet and allow myself to be hung without making any
disturbance. Die game, and all that, you know. Then there is the
other way of looking at it. This poor neck of mine depends on me.
It has given me a lot of good service. It has been mighty loyal.
It has even swallowed eggs on the day it thought it was going to
die. And I'd be a poor specimen of humanity to go back on it now.
I want to do that neck a good turn. I want to save it. And I'm
going to--if I can!"

In spite of the unpleasant tension of the moment, it cheered
Father Layonne to see this old humor returning into the heart of
his friend. With him love was an enduring thing. He might grieve
for James Kent, he might pray for the salvation of his soul, he
might believe him guilty, yet he still bore for him the affection
which was too deeply rooted in his heart to be uptorn by physical
things or the happenings of chance. So the old cheer of his smile
came back, and he said:

"To fight for his life is a privilege which God gives to every
man, Jimmy. I was terrified when I came to you. I believed it
would have been better if you had died. I can see my error. It
will be a terrible fight. If you win, I shall be glad. If you
lose, I know that you will lose bravely. Perhaps you are right. It
may be best to see Inspector Kedsty before you have had time to
think. That point will have its psychological effect. Shall I tell
him you are prepared to see him?"

Kent nodded. "Yes. Now."

Father Layonne went to the door. Even there he seemed to hesitate
an instant, as if again to call upon Kent to reconsider. Then he
opened it and went out.

Kent waited impatiently. His hand, fumbling at his bedclothes,
seized upon the cloth with which he had wiped his lips, and it
suddenly occurred to him that it had been a long time since it had
shown a fresh stain of blood. Now that he knew it was not a deadly
thing, the tightening in his chest was less uncomfortable. He felt
like getting up and meeting his visitors on his feet. Every nerve
in his body wanted action, and the minutes of silence which
followed the closing of the door after the missioner were drawn
out and tedious to him. A quarter of an hour passed before he
heard returning footsteps, and by the sound of them he knew Kedsty
was not coming alone. Probably le pere would return with him. And
possibly Cardigan.

What happened in the next few seconds was somewhat of a shock to
him. Father Layonne entered first, and then came Inspector Kedsty.
Kent's eyes shot to the face of the commander of N Division. There
was scarcely recognition in it. A mere inclination of the head,
not enough to call a greeting, was the reply to Kent's nod and
salute. Never had he seen Kedsty's face more like the face of an
emotionless sphinx. But what disturbed him most was the presence
of people he had not expected. Close behind Kedsty was McDougal,
the magistrate, and behind McDougal entered Constables Felly and
Brant, stiffly erect and clearly under orders. Cardigan, pale and
uneasy, came in last, with the stenographer. Scarcely had they
entered the room when Constable Pelly pronounced the formal
warning of the Criminal Code of the Royal Northwest Mounted
Police, and Kent was legally under arrest.

He had not looked for this. He knew, of course, that the process
of the Law would take its course, but he had not anticipated this
bloodthirsty suddenness. He had expected, first of all, to talk
with Kedsty as man to man. And yet--it was the Law. He realized
this as his eyes traveled from Kedsty's rock-like face to the

expressionless immobility of his old friends, Constables Pelly and
Brant. If there was sympathy, it was hidden except in the faces of
Cardigan and Father Layonne. And Kent, exultantly hopeful a little
while before, felt his heart grow heavy within him as he waited
for the moment when he would begin the fight to repossess himself
of the life and freed which he had lost.





CHAPTER VIII


For some time after the door to Kent's room had closed upon the
ominous visitation of the Law, young Mercer remained standing in
the hall, debating with himself whether his own moment had not
arrived. In the end he decided that it had, and with Kent's fifty
dollars in his pocket he made for the shack of the old Indian
trailer, Mooie. It was an hour later when he returned, just in
time to see Kent's door open again. Doctor Cardigan and Father
Layonne reappeared first, followed in turn by the blonde
stenographer, the magistrate, and Constables Pelly and Brant. Then
the door closed.

Within the room, sweating from the ordeal through which he had
passed, Kent sat bolstered against his pillows, facing Inspector
Kedsty with blazing eyes.

"I've asked for these few moments alone with you, Kedsty, because
I wanted to talk to you as a man, and not as my superior officer.
I am, I take it, no longer a member of the force. That being the
case, I owe you no more respect than I owe to any other man. And I
am pleased to have the very great privilege of calling you a
cursed scoundrel!"

Kedsty's face was hot, but as his hands clenched slowly, it turned
redder. Before he could speak, Kent went on.

"You have not shown me the courtesy or the sympathy you have had
for the worst criminals that ever faced you. You amazed every man
that was in this room, because at one time--if not now--they were
my friends. It wasn't what you said. It was how you said it.
Whenever there was an inclination on their part to believe, you
killed it--not honestly and squarely, by giving me a chance.
Whenever you saw a chance for me to win a point, you fell back
upon the law. And you don't believe that I killed John Barkley. I
know it. You called me a liar the day I made that fool confession.
You still believe that I lied. And I have waited until we were
alone to ask you certain things, for I still have something of
courtesy left in me, if you haven't. What is your game? What has
brought about the change in you? Is it--"

His right hand clenched hard as a rock as he leaned toward Kedsty.

"Is it because of the girl hiding up at your bungalow, Kedsty?"

Even in that moment, when he had the desire to strike the man
before him, it was impossible for him not to admire the stone-like
invulnerability of Kedsty. He had never heard of another man
calling Kedsty a scoundrel or dishonest. And yet, except that his
faced burned more dully red, the Inspector was as impassively calm
as ever. Even Kent's intimation that he was playing a game, and
his direct accusation that he was keeping Marette Radisson in
hiding at his bungalow, seemed to have no disturbing effect on
him. For a space he looked at Kent, as if measuring the poise of
the other's mind. When he spoke, it was in a voice so quiet and
calm that Kent stared at him in amazement.

"I don't blame you, Kent," he said. "I don't blame you for calling
me a scoundrel, or anything else you want to. I think I should do
the same if I were in your place. You think it is incredible,
because of our previous association, that I should not make every
effort to save you. I would, if I thought you were innocent. But I
don't. I believe you are guilty. I cannot see where there is a
loophole in the evidence against you, as given in your own
confession. Why, man, even if I could help to prove you innocent
of killing John Barkley--"

He paused and twisted one of his gray mustaches, half facing the
window for a moment. "Even if I did that," he went on, "you would
still have twenty years of prison ahead of you for the worst kind
of perjury on the face of the earth, perjury committed at a time
when you thought you were dying! You are guilty, Kent. If not of
one thing, then of the other. I am not playing a game. And as for
the girl--there is no girl at my bungalow."

He turned to the door; and Kent made no effort to stop him. Words
came to his lips and died there, and for a space after Kedsty had
gone he stared out into the green forest world beyond his window,
seeing nothing. Inspector Kedsty, quietly and calmly, had spoken
words that sent his hopes crashing in ruin about him. For even if
he escaped the hangman, he was still a criminal--a criminal of the
worst sort, perhaps, next to the man who kills another. If he
proved that he had not killed John Barkley, he would convict
himself, at the same time, of having made solemn oath to a lie on
what he supposed was his death-bed. And for that, a possible
twenty years in the Edmonton penitentiary! At best he could not
expect less than ten. Ten years--twenty years--in prison! That, or
hang.

The sweat broke out on his face. He did not curse Kedsty now. His
anger was gone. Kedsty had seen all the time what he, like a fool,
had not thought of. No matter how the Inspector might feel in that
deeply buried heart of his, he could not do otherwise than he was
doing. He, James Kent, who hated a lie above all the things on the
earth, was kin-as-kisew--the blackest liar of all, a man who lied
when he was dying.

And for that lie there was a great punishment. The Law saw with
its own eyes. It was a single-track affair, narrow-visioned,
caring nothing for what was to the right or the left. It would
tolerate no excuse which he might find for himself. He had lied to
save a human life, but that life the Law itself had wanted. So he
had both robbed and outraged the Law, even though a miracle saved
him the greatest penalty of all.

The weight of the thing crushed him. It was as if for the first
time a window had opened for him, and he saw what Kedsty had seen.
And then, as the minutes passed, the fighting spirit in him rose
again. He was not of the sort to go under easily. Personal danger
had always stirred him to his greatest depths, and he had never
confronted a danger greater than this he was facing now. It was
not a matter of leaping quickly and on the spur of the moment. For
ten years his training had been that of a hunter of men, and the
psychology of the man hunt had been his strong point. Always, in
seeking his quarry, he had tried first to bring himself into a
mental sympathy and understanding with that quarry. To analyze
what an outlaw would do under certain conditions and with certain
environments and racial inheritances behind him was to Kent the
premier move in the thrilling game. He had evolved rules of great
importance for himself, but always he had worked them out from the
vantage point of the huntsman. Now he began to turn them around.
He, James Kent, was no longer the hunter, but the hunted, and all
the tricks which he had mastered must now be worked the other way.
His woodcraft, his cunning, the fine points he had learned of the
game of one-against-one would avail him but little when it came to
the witness chair and a trial.

The open window was his first inspiration. Adventure had been the
blood of his life. And out there, behind the green forests rolling
away like the billows of an ocean, lay the greatest adventure of
all. Once in those beloved forests covering almost the half of a
continent, he would be willing to die if the world beat him. He
could see himself playing the game of the hunted as no other man
had ever played it before. Let him once have his guns and his
freedom, with all that world waiting for him--

Eagerness gleamed in his eyes, and then, slowly, it died out. The
open window, after all, was but a mockery. He rolled sideways from
h
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