The Challenge of the North Part 5

Hedin glanced up and down the alley. It was empty. He was free!

Swiftly he proceeded down the alley, pa.s.sed the jail, and turned into the street. Here he slackened his pace, and walking leisurely to his hotel, hastily made up a light pack. Pa.s.sing around to the rear, he took his skis from their place, walking to the edge of town, fastened them on, and was soon swallowed up in the jack-pines. For an hour he glided smoothly over the snow, and upon the edge of a balsam thicket sat down on a log to rest.

There were two courses open. Either he could return to Terrace City and face the charge against him as best he could, or he could keep going. It was only a few miles across country to Pipe Lake, where he could catch the P.M. for Detroit.

His thoughts turned abruptly from the problem of flight, and plunged into the problem of the missing coat. It was not conceivable that the garment had been destroyed; therefore it was still in existence. If in existence, somebody had it. Who? One by one, Hedin considered the personnel of the theatre party, and one by one he eliminated them until only Wentworth was left. Wentworth! If he could only prove it! He remembered that someone had casually remarked that morning at breakfast that Wentworth had gone North for old John McNabb. He had heard McNabb mention some pulp-wood lands in the North. G.o.ds Lake, wasn't it? Why, G.o.ds Lake post was old Dugald Murchison's post! Hedin remembered Murchison well. It was only last year he had spent a week as the guest of his old friend McNabb, and nearly every evening at dinner Hedin had sat at meat with them, and listened in fascination to the talk of the far outlands. He remembered the shrewd gray eyes of Murchison--eyes that bespoke wisdom, and justice tempered with mercy.

He smote his leg with his mittened fist. He would go North, straight to old Dugald Murchison, and he would tell him the whole story.

Murchison would help him, and if Wentworth were innocent, then he, Hedin would return to Terrace City and give himself up. He would not be a fugitive from justice, for justice owed him the chance to prove his innocence.

Once his mind was made up, Hedin rose to his feet and slung the light pack to his back. Then he lowered the pack, and stood thinking. He would hit for Pipe Lake, but Hanson, the storekeeper at Pipe Lake, would recognize him. Tossing his pack aside, he scooped a hole in the snow, built a tiny fire of balsam twigs, and melted some water in his drinking cup. Then, setting a small hand mirror upon the log, he produced his razor and proceeded to shave off his mustache. This done, he grinned at himself in the mirror, as he reflected that Hanson had never seen him except in conventional clothing, and that he would never recognize him in mackinaw and larrigans, with his mustache gone.

Once more he stood up, kicked snow over his fire, swung the pack to his back, and started to skirt the swamp. Then suddenly he halted in his tracks. There was a mighty crackling of dry twigs close at hand, and a voice commanded gruffly, "Hands up!"

Instinctively Hedin elevated his hands as he stared into the muzzle of a revolver. Beyond the revolver he saw the grinning face of Mike Duffy, erstwhile lumberjack, then bootlegger, and now policeman; under the Hicks regime.

"Shaved her off, eh?" taunted the man. "Well, mebbe you'd 'a' fooled most folks, but you hain't fooled me none, special' as I be'n layin' in the brush watchin' you fer half an hour. You'd of got away from the rest of 'em too."

XI

Old John McNabb had not been long at his desk when the telephone bell rang and he picked up the receiver.

"h.e.l.lo--who? Hicks? He--what? Where is he now? Got away! Well, you get him! Get him, or I'll get you! If he ain't back in jail to-day, off comes your b.u.t.tons to-morrow--do you get that?" Old John banged the receiver onto the hook, and launched what would undoubtedly have been a cla.s.sic of denunciatory profanity, had it not been interrupted in its inception by Jean, who had slipped into the office unnoticed at the beginning of the telephone conversation.

"Why, Dad!" exclaimed the girl laughing, as the red-faced man whirled upon her in surprise. "What a beastly temper you are in this morning!

Who got away, and why are you so anxious to have him caught?"

"Oskar got away," he growled, apparently somewhat mollified by his daughter's tone. "Hicks started for jail with him an' Oskar knocked him down in the alley an' got away."

"Oskar! Jail! What do you mean?"

"I mean just what I say," answered McNabb, meeting the girl's startled gaze squarely. "A thirty thousand dollar sable coat is missing from the store, and no one except Oskar and I had access to the fur safe.

He made up a c.o.c.k-an'-bull story about letting you wear it Sat.u.r.day to show up Mrs. Orcutt. He claims he went to the theatre to enjoy the effect on Mrs. Orcutt, when he discovered that you were wearing, not the Russian sable that you had worn from the store, but a baum marten coat. He hurried to the store to find that both the sable and the marten coats were gone----"

Old John noticed that as he talked the color receded slowly from the girl's face, leaving it almost chalk white, and then suddenly the color returned with a rush that flamed red to her hair roots. But he was totally unprepared for the sudden fury with which she faced him.

"And you had him arrested! Oskar arrested like a common thief! Are you crazy? You know as well as I do that he never stole a pin----"

"No, he never stole a pin, but there's some little difference in value between a pin and a thirty thousand dollar coat. They say every man's got his price."

"It's a lie!" cried the girl, stamping her foot. "But even if it were true, his price would be so big that there isn't money enough in this world to even tempt him! You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Think what people will say!"

"I don't care what they say. He's got that coat, an' I'm right here to see that he gets just what's comin' to him."

"Well, what people will say won't hurt Oskar!" cried the girl.

"They'll all know he didn't steal your coat! They'll say you're a fool! That's what they'll say--and they'll be right, too! It won't take him long to prove his innocence, and then what will people think of you?"

"He ain't got a show to prove his innocence," retorted McNabb. "Your own testimony will convict him. Didn't ye tell me right here in this room within the hour that the coat ye brought in was the one ye wore from the store, an' the one ye wore to the theatre?"

"And I thought it was," flared the girl. "But if Oskar says it wasn't then it wasn't. And let me tell you this--if you're depending on my testimony to convict him, you might as well have him turned loose right this minute! Because I won't say a word at their old trial. They can put me in jail, too, but they can't make me talk. The whole thing is an outrage, and I'm going right straight down to the jail and tell them to let him out this minute----"

"He's out all right," retorted McNabb. "He knocked Hicks down and escaped on the way to jail."

"I'm glad of it! I hope he broke that nasty old Hicks's head! And if they catch Oskar you had better see that they let him go at once--unless you want to see your own daughter married to a jailbird!"

XII

It was nine o'clock that evening when, growling and grumbling, Hicks himself moved heavily down the short corridor of the jail, and unlocked the door of the cell that held Oskar Hedin. "Come on out!" he commanded.

Hedin stepped in the corridor, and looked inquiringly into the officer's face. "What's up?" he asked.

"Bailed out," growled Hicks.

"Bailed out! Why, who----?"

"I don't know, an' don't give a d.a.m.n. Someone that's got more money than brains. I wouldn't trust you as far as I could throw a bull by the tail, an' you needn't think I've forgot the poke in the jaw you give me. I'll git you yet."

Hedin paused upon the steps of the police station and glanced across the street where a light burned in the office of Hiram P. Buckner, attorney-at-law. Buckner held the reputation of being by far the most able lawyer in the vicinity, and Hedin's first impulse was to retain him. He crossed the sidewalk and paused abruptly as he remembered that Buckner was McNabb's attorney. Of course, the prosecution of his case would be in the hands of the state, but--why jeopardize his own case by employing a man who stood at the beck and call of the very man who was pushing his prosecution? He turned and proceeded slowly toward his hotel, and as he pa.s.sed down the street a man stepped from the office of the attorney and followed. He was a large man, m.u.f.fled to the ears in a fur coat. He followed unnoticed, into the hotel and up the stairs, and when Hedin entered his room and switched on the light the man stepped across the threshold and closed the door behind him. He turned and faced Hedin, throwing back the collar of his coat. Hedin gasped in amazement. The man was old John McNabb, and to his utter bewilderment, Hedin caught a twinkle in the old Scot's eye.

XIII

"'Tis the truth, I'd never ha' know'd ye, an' ye hadn't told me who ye was," welcomed old Dugald Murchison, as he gripped Hedin's hand in the door of the little trading post on the sh.o.r.e of G.o.ds Lake. "Knock the snow from your clothes an' come in to the stove. You're just in time, for by the signs, the storm that's on us will be a three days'

nor'easter straight off the Bay. Ye'd of had a nasty camp of it if ye'd of been a day later."

"The guide saw it coming, and we did double time yesterday, and to-day we didn't stop to eat."

Murchison nodded. "Ye come in up the chain of lakes from the south.

'Tis a man's job ye've done--this time o' year. Ye come up from Lac Seul, an' by the guide ye've got, I see the hand of John McNabb in your visit. For old Missinabbee won't go into the woods with everyone, though he'd go through h.e.l.l itself for John McNabb. But come on in an'

get thawed out while the Injun 'tends to the dogs, an' then we'll eat."

"Has Wentworth arrived yet?" asked Hedin, as he followed the factor toward the stove at the rear of the trading room.

Murchison shook his head. "Ye're the first this winter. But who's Wentworth? An' what'll he be doin' here? An' what are ye doin' here yourself? I suppose it had to do with John's pulp-wood, but the options don't expire till sometime in the summer. Why didn't he come himself?"

It was a long story Hedin unfolded as he and Murchison sat late over their pipes beside the roaring stove in the long, low trading room.

The factor puffed in silence without once interrupting until the younger man had finished.

"So John is really goin' to build a paper mill up here? But why did John hire this Wentworth if he figured he couldn't trust him, an' why did he have ye under arrest an' bail ye out? Unless----"

The old factor paused and puffed at his pipe the while his eyes were fixed upon the deep shadows at the far corner.