The Challenge of the North Part 16

Hedin rose to his feet and held the handkerchief to his bleeding nose.

McNabb's hand gripped his shoulder. "Ye done fine, lad! Ye done fine!" he exclaimed.

Dropping to his knees, Hedin slipped his hand into the unconscious man's pocket and withdrew a key which he tossed to one of the Company Indians who had come running in at the sound of battle. "Here, Joe Irish," he said, "go to the cabin and unlock the trunk that is there and bring back the coat of fur."

A few moments later Hedin handed the garment to McNabb. "Here is your missing coat," he said, as Jean threw her arm about his shoulder.

"Oskar, dear--" she whispered, and the next moment Hedin's arms were about her and she could feel the wild pounding of his heart against her breast.

There was a movement on the floor near their feet, and releasing the girl Hedin reached swiftly down. McNabb's hand stayed him before he could seize hold of Wentworth, who was crawling toward the door.

"Let him go, lad," advised the old man. "We've got the coat.

An'--an'--we're all happy!"

"But the money? He's got the three hundred and fifty thousand!" cried Hedin.

McNabb grinned. "Suppose we just let Orcutt worry about that," he said.

"I told you Oskar was innocent!" cried Jean triumphantly, as the door closed behind the slinking form of Wentworth. "I told you so from the first! I just knew he never took that coat!"

McNabb's eyes were twinkling. "I knew it, too, la.s.s," he answered.

"That's why I bailed him out an' sent him up here with two hundred an'

fifty thousand dollars in negotiable paper in his pocket to close this deal for me."

"And you knew all the time," cried the girl, staring at her father in amazement, "when Orcutt was gloating over you back there, that you, and not he, owned the timber? And you let him go on and humiliate you to your face!"

"Sure I did," grinned McNabb. "He was havin' the time of his life, an'

I hated to spoil it. An' besides, while he was talkin', truck after truck was rollin' off down the tote-road haulin' material to my mill site that I'll buy in at ten cents on the dollar. Orcutt'll pay for his fun!"

"But--your face--when he told you that you had lost the timber! It positively went gray!"

"Poker face," laughed McNabb. "But run along now--the two of ye. It's many a long day since Dugald an' I have had a powwow with our feet c.o.c.ked up on bales of Injun goods." As the two walked arm in arm toward the door, McNabb called to the girl, "Here, la.s.s, take your coat!" He tossed the Russian sable which the girl caught with a glad cry. "Ye'll be needin' it up here agin winter comes."

"Winter! Up here! What do you mean?"

"Oskar says he isn't goin' back to Terrace City," he explained.

"Except maybe for the weddin'. The North has got into his blood, an'

the McNabb Paper Company needs a competent manager."

XXV

When Wentworth left the trading room he went straight to his cabin, and disregarding his open trunk, he lifted a pack-sack from the floor and swung it to his shoulders. It was the pack he had deposited there scarcely an hour before when he had trailed in from the mill site, and he knew that it contained three or four days' supply of rations.

On the Shamattawa he had heard from a truck driver that an old man and a girl had started for G.o.ds Lake post, and he instantly recognized McNabb and Jean from the man's description. Thereupon he made up a pack and headed for the post for the sole purpose of baiting the two, and of flaunting his prowess as a financier in their faces.

An angry flush flooded his face as he realized how completely the tables had turned. Then the flush gave place to a crafty smile, as he remembered the bills in his pocket. "McNabb's money, or Orcutt's," he muttered under his breath, "it's all the same to me. Three hundred and fifty thousand is more money than I ever expected to handle. And now for the get-away."

Closing the door behind him he struck across the clearing toward the northeast. At the end of the bush he paused. "h.e.l.l!" he growled. "I can't hit for the railway. Cameron said he had wired Orcutt at the bank, and I might meet him coming in." For some time he stood irresolute. "There's a way out straight south," he speculated, "about three hundred miles, and a good share of it water trail. I'll be all right if I can pick up a canoe, and I can get grub of the Indians."

Skirting the clearing, he entered the bush and came out on the sh.o.r.e of the lake at some distance below the landing, where several canoes had been beached for the night. Stooping, he righted one, and as he straightened up he found himself face to face with Corporal Downey of the Mounted. For a moment the two stood regarding each other in silence, while through Wentworth's brain flashed a mighty fear. Had McNabb changed his mind and sent Downey to arrest him for the theft of the coat? He thought of Orcutt's big bills in his pocket, and his blood seemed to turn to water within him. Then suddenly he remembered that for the present, at least, he held those bills under color of authority. In the deep twilight that is the summer midnight of the North he searched the officer's face. d.a.m.n the man! Why didn't he say something? Why did he always force another to open a conversation?

Wentworth cleared his throat.

"h.e.l.lo, _Corporal_," he said sourly. "Aren't you out pretty late?"

"Not any later than you are, _Captain_. An' I'm headed in. Put over any more big deals lately?"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, I run onto Cameron about a week back. He was huntin' you or Orcutt. He told me how you beat old John McNabb out of his pulp-wood--almost. You ought to be ashamed--a couple of up-to-date financiers like you two, pickin' on an' old man that's just dodderin'

around in his second childhood."

Wentworth flushed hot at the grin that accompanied the words.

"To h.e.l.l with McNabb--and you, too!" he cried angrily, and carrying the canoe into the water, he placed his pack in it. When he returned for a paddle, Downey was gone, and stepping into the canoe, he pushed it out into the lake. "Of course, he'd have to show up, d.a.m.n him!" he muttered as he propelled the light craft southward with swift strokes of the paddle. "And now if Orcutt should show up within the next day or two, Downey will know just where to follow, and even with a two days' start, I doubt if I could keep ahead of him. They say he's a devil on the trail. But I'll fool him. I'll leave the canoe at the end of the lake, and instead of striking on down the river I'll hit out overland. Once I get to the railway, they can all go to h.e.l.l!"

The mistake Wentworth made on the trail when he first came into the North was not so much the insisting upon bringing in his trunk, nor his refusal to carry a pack; it was in striking Alex Thumb with the dog-whip when he refused to pull the outfit in the face of a blizzard.

Thumb's reputation as a "bad Injun" was well founded. The son of a hot-tempered French trader and a Cree mother, his early life had been a succession of merciless beatings. At the age of fourteen he killed his father with a blow from an ice chisel, and thereafter served ten years of an indeterminate sentence, during the course of which the unmerciful beatings were administered for each infraction of reformatory rules, until in his heart was born a sullen hatred of all white men and an abysmal hatred of the lash. When Wentworth struck, his doom was sealed, but as Murchison said, Alex Thumb was canny. He had no mind to serve another term in prison.

All through the spring and summer he trailed the engineer, waiting with the patience that is the heritage of the wilderness dweller for the time and the place to strike and avoid suspicion. And as time drew on the half-breed's hatred against all white men seemed to concentrate into a mighty rage against this one white man. There had been times when he could have killed him from afar. More than once on the trail Wentworth unconsciously stood with the sights of Alex Thumb's rifle trained upon his head, or his heart. But such was his hatred that Thumb always stayed the finger that crooked upon the trigger--and bided his time.

Thus it was that half an hour after Wentworth pushed out into the lake another canoe shot out from the sh.o.r.e and fell in behind, its lone occupant, paddling noiselessly, easily kept just within sight of the fleeing man. When daylight broadened Wentworth landed upon a sandy point and ate breakfast. Upon another point, a mile to the rear, Alex Thumb lay on his belly and chewed jerked meat as his smouldering black eyes regarded gloatingly the man in the distance.

G.o.ds Lake is nearly fifty miles in its north and south reach, and all day Wentworth paddled southward, holding well to the western sh.o.r.e.

At noon he rested for an hour and ate luncheon, his eyes now and then scanning the back reach of the lake. But he saw nothing, and from an aspen thicket scarce half a mile away Alex Thumb watched in silence.

As the afternoon wore to a closer the half-breed drew nearer. The shadows of the bordering balsams were long on the water when Wentworth first caught sight of the pursuing canoe. His first thought was that Orcutt had arrived at the post and that Downey had taken the trail. He ceased paddling for a moment and his light canoe swung into the trough of the waves and rocked crankily.

The other canoe was only a half mile behind, and Wentworth saw with relief that its occupant was not Downey. Some Indian fishing, he thought, and resumed his paddling. The south sh.o.r.e was only an hour away now, and tired as he was, he redoubled his efforts.

Farther on he looked back again. The canoe still followed. Surely no Indian would set his nets so far from his camp. Yet the man was an Indian. He had drawn closer and Wentworth could distinguish the short, jabbing strokes of the paddle.

Another quarter of an hour and Wentworth looked again--and as he looked, the blood seemed to freeze in his veins. The pursuing canoe was close now, and he was staring straight into the eyes of Alex Thumb.

The half-breed was smiling--a curious, twisted smile that was the very embodiment of savage hate. Wentworth's muscles felt weak, and it was with difficulty that he drove them to the task of forcing the canoe out of the trough of the waves. Mechanically he paddled with his eyes fixed on the ever nearing south sh.o.r.e. He was very tired. He would soon make land now. But when he did make land--what then? He cursed himself for going unarmed. He could hear the slop of the waves on Thumb's canoe. He turned his head and saw that the man was only two lengths behind him. What would he do? With the mechanical swing of his arms the words of Murchison and Downey repeated themselves in his brain. "Serving with the devils in h.e.l.l; serving with the devils in h.e.l.l," with a certain monotonous rhythm the words kept repeating themselves through his brain. Why had he ever come North? Why hadn't he told McNabb that he would have nothing to do with his pulp-wood?

The half-breed's canoe was alongside, but its occupant did not speak.

He merely jabbed at the waves with his paddle and looked with that devilish twisted smile.

Wentworth hardly knew when his canoe grated upon the gravel. Stiffly he half walked, half crawled to the bow and lifted out his pack. Alex Thumb stood upon the gravel and smiled.

"What do you want?" faltered Wentworth, his voice breaking nervously.

The half-breed shrugged. "You no lak no pardner on de trail?" he asked.

"Where are you going?"

Thumb pointed vaguely toward the south. "Me--I'm lak de pardner on de trail."

"Look here," cried Wentworth suddenly. "Do you want money? More money than you ever saw before?"