William Byron Mowery

“ If it had been any other man who held her, Scott would have cherished some hope that her own sweet girlishness and the Strong-Woods chivalry which many a time had amazed him in rough, shaggy-barked men, would have been protection enough for her.
But he knew Le Busard too well to hope that. He had traced the man back two or three years before the time he became leader of the bandits. He knew of several deeds at lonely cabins, vivid commentaries on the man's evil abandon, deeds that no métis or woods-born Canuck would ever perpetrate. ”

“ But when daylight came and he would be watching her, and the river began forking into its dozen headwater branches, how under heaven would even this quick-witted little bush-loper be able to leave sure, plain clews to guide the man following? Scott knew that he himself could never do a thing like that!
Racing back to his canoe, he loped with it over the tote-path, splashed knee-deep into the water, gave the boat a shove, and leaped in.
As he darted upstream, swiftly as a Chippewyan woods-runner in the frailest birch-rind craft, he took stock of his chances. One lone thing was in his favor ”

“ Sergeant Scott! Sergeant Brian Scott!"
"Hello!" he called, because he could think of nothing else. "I'm guiding in right now."
With a powerful back-stroke he stopped the canoe, and skirled it in toward the bank. Beneath the fringe of shadows he saw a jutting rock, a canoe tied there, and very dimly a path leading back into the forest.
As his own craft touched, and he stepped out, a slender, girlish figure appeared out of the blackness and glided toward him.
"Good Heavens!" he stammered. "What are you doing here, girl? Do you live here?" ”

“ Her reason was something more than a mere desire to see him capture the bandits.
What was so terribly vital a thing with him could be only of mild interest to her. She would never have staked herself on so wild a gamble unless some powerful reason of her own had driven her to it.
Whatever that reason was, it was bound up with the mystery of what stood between her and Le Busard. The more he thought of it, the more incredible it seemed to Scott that her life could ever have touched that of such a man, even remotely. ”

“ Outside the door he picked up Beatrice's tiny, ivory-mounted gun where it had fallen from her hands. Twenty steps beyond in the blackness he saw a half circle of gleaming eyes that were creeping closer and closer toward the blood odor on the threshold.
They sent a shiver through Scott. He stooped and lifted Le Busard's body into the safety of the hut.
"Get a rifle, Jim," he bade. "You maybe aren't able to take her across to the other hut; so I will. These men can't stir hand or foot, but we'll make doubly sure. ”

“ Half carrying her, he went out the door, and carefully drew it shut behind him to keep out those hungry gleams, and fought his way through the blind, swirling, savage night toward the hut which had been Le Busard's.
The platte already was covered with three inches of snow that seethed and crawled. The blizzard at last had loosed all its pent-up fury. Its clubbing blasts beat at them and nearly swept them off their feet.
It lapped them, engulfed them in blankets of swirling, smothering spindrift. It stung them with icy shot that rode level on the furious gale. ”

“ The prisoner lay back on the blanket packs, sullen and silent for a few moments. Then:
"Damn' accident!" he burst out savagely, his brute voice husky with thwarted anger. Damn' accident you got me, Yellow-Stripes! Splaa—you could not have taken me otherwise in a thousand years. I give you ten thousand to get my comrades!"
"My capturing you might have been accident," Scott agreed, "but there's going to be no accident between here and the post. Make up your mind you're going in peacefully—and you'll go in alive." ”

“ Landing on the north side, and lifting the canoe ashore, Scott crouched there in the darkness, waiting, listening. There was a purpose in his landing on that windward side.
Presently he heard a blood curdling, wolfish snarl twenty steps inland; then another, then half a dozen. Dimly he saw a semicircle of gaunt big forms creeping upon him, almost within springing distance. The wolfish howling of half an hour ago had forewarned him. He knew they were dogs with so much of the wolf in them that they never barked; dogs that would tear him to pieces. ”

“ The two métis whose hands Haydon had bound jumped in. They kicked Scott savagely, kicked him in the head, tried to break him loose. He could not shield himself from that murderous punishment. He had to take it.
With short, smashing blows he hammered at the 'breed's face, trying to batter him unconscious. His lungs were bursting, and a paralyzing numbness was spreading over his body. He beat at Lacroix's blood-smeared face; hammered him with the maddened frenzy of a doomed man. But the death grip clung. ”

“ Not to head south without Beatrice, leaving her in the hands of Le Busard. But north! North to Le Gros Marais.
He had been absent from duty for two weeks now; he would be absent all winter. Through the Moons of Hardening Ice and Hoar Frost and Big Snows, till the Moon of the Brown Eagle came again in the spring, he would comb that huge muskeg country in blizzard and still cold like a stalking vengeance; and if Arctic storm or the white wolf pack got him, at least it would never be known at the post that he had lost his prisoner. ”

“ As the watershed loomed up closer and closer, the creek finally dwindled to nothing, ending abruptly in a tiny lake.
With the black canoe on his shoulder, Scott raced up the mile-long slope, over the crest, and down to the next paddle water, following the tracks of Le Busard and Beatrice.
He had reached the edge of the Barren Grounds; the Great Marsh lay twenty miles north. Night was less than five hours away, and the blizzard—only the Keechee Keewatin knew when that would swoop. ”

“ Dreams do not materialize in flesh and blood before a man!
He ransacked his memory for a clew to that haunting familiarity. He tried to make himself believe it was just a crazy, senseless notion. But it persisted; he could not shake it off.
"You haven't changed, Brian," she broke into his puzzled thoughts. *Your eyes are a little sterner, from all you've seen and done since then, and there are tiny crowfeet of worry underneath them. But you have not changed much."
It sounded to Scott as though she had finished her study of him and was saying: "He will do!" ”

“ You could not have helped us kill our enemy. We did not want it. We did not want it so. I thank God," she added passionately, with a fighting sparkle again in her eyes. "I thank God it was Haydon bullets that killed him."
"I can see that, I can understand," Scott said softly. "But down in the cabin, why didn't you tell me everything then? When we stood outside there together, you knew, surely you knew there was nothing in the world I wouldn't have done for you."
"Oh, but there was, Brian! You would not have released your man-never Le Busard! ”

“ Perhaps she had been talking to him when she made that track; smiling her bewitching smile at him; fanning the man's passion till he forgot caution and suspicion! However she managed it, there was her footprint pointing the way!
Half a dozen times that afternoon at forks where the trail would have been hopelessly lost otherwise, Scott came across the signs she had left to guide him, a footprint on the mud, freshly broken sticks, juniper boughs twined together, and once a portion of her handkerchief in the cleft of a tree. ”

“ While Le Busard had been reloading the canoe, she had managed that! But they were an hour and a half in the lead again, and the early twilight was shutting swiftly down. In another hour Scott was forced to stop at a place where the river branched in three directions.
He felt reasonably sure that Le Busard would stop too. Except for the blizzard, the bandit had no particular cause to hurry; he did not know he was being followed. Besides, the canoes had covered two full days' travel in that one day; and flesh and blood has its limit of endurance. ”

“ Ptarmigan and snowshoe rabbit had changed to their white winter garb; the early migrants already had winged south. It was a question of days, now, and perhaps of hours until the first blizzard, yelping down from the Barren Grounds, would freeze the waterways and blanket the country in snow.
Handicapped with a dangerous prisoner in his canoe, two hundred miles from his patrol district and three hundred from the Mounted Police post; buried in a wilderness of woods and rivers that he knew only from crude maps of the Chippewyans, Scott should have been somewhat concerned about his predicament. ”

“ They each knew that the first man to make a move would be sure to die, and none of them wanted to be that man. They were waiting for a break in their favor.
Scott knew that the trick was not his, not till he had them hog-tied and piled on the floor, and Jim Haydon was guarding them with a rifle. He was conscious of the door standing open behind him, throwing its great rectangular glare out into the night.
Le Busard might see it. If he did, he would surely investigate, for a door standing open to that blizzard meant something was wrong. ”

“ Then, setting the lightened canoe to water again, he paddled silently away up the middle channel.
If Le Busard had camped near the river, the taint of his camp fire smoke would be hanging on the taut, crisp air, and could be detected. Or a fox might be barking at the human intruders, or their voices might be audible.
He worked ten miles up the middle channel without finding a trace of their camp; and while the moon climbed to zenith and started slipping down the western sky, he worked the other two branches for miles above the forks, all to no purpose. ”

“ If all the stories of you and le canot noir are true, Brian—"
"You've never seen the Great Marsh, girl! I'm only human, in spite of those tall tales. I can't track a canoe on a river, and men of their kidney are wise enough not to leave signs on the tote-paths." ”

“ It was always like that, he thought; the great, significant things, as if preparing hidden and unseen, burst upon us in a moment—not like the long ordinary days. and seasons and years when a person's life runs along on a prosaic level, but in high-pitched moments, in sudden revelations Scott's thoughts wandered so badly that the sentence was never completed. He was sleepy, terrifically sleepy. It was because of those endless, toiling portages of the last twelve hours, he believed. ”

“ A wise little bush-loper like her surely must have realized all along what a superhuman task it was for a man to follow the slight signs she had left. She could not possibly know he was only a few dozen strokes behind. He ached to communicate with her, but there was no way.
While the chase led north through a four-mile channel, across a wind-tossed lake, and into another waterway, he gradually closed up till he was less than fifty yards in the rear. At the distance the other canoe was barely visible through the murky owl-dusk, and he knew that his own craft was a part of the night itself. ”

“ With lynxlike quickness for all his bulk, Lacroix ducked down, seized Haydon, and held him as a shield in front of his body.
In that same instant, while Scott was trying to get in a shot without killing his partner, the white man bent and grabbed the gun he had dropped. Scott shot at him, shot to kill him; but the bullet struck the man's elbow, shattering it, knocking the gun out of his hand.
The big breed was backing toward a rifle, sheltering himself with Haydon's body. The white man, cursing and writhing in pain, was fumbling on the floor with his left hand, trying to find the gun. ”

“ Scott went on. "You—and the man—aren't chechahcos; you've seen the ice go out. You're both thoroughly at home in the Strong-Woods, and know how to take care of yourself.
"But you at least have been Outside. You've shuffled off the thick burr of the north. Your voice is soft, but your accent is crisp as a Yank's. Am I right in all this?"
"But—but why should I tell you anything, Brian Scott, when you can use your eyes like that?"
"Because I stop there. The big questions are all dark mysteries. You promised to tell me everything. Won't you tell me now—outside where that carcajou can't listen?" ”

“ In summer time they escaped through the network of waterways to their retreat in the swamp land. They left no survivors to follow or to describe them; a human life to them meant less than an otter's skin. Only a few stray glints of information had Scott found out about them.
In those two whole years Le Busard had made but one false step. That was in coming down the river alone by daylight. It was a puzzle to Scott; he could not begin to figure out what the man's purpose had been. ”

“ Keechee Keewatin, Chippewyan god of the North Wind, was untying his bag of caribou leather and letting loose his first storm.
During those long dark hours while he sat waiting for the dawn, Scott's mind went back to the time, two years ago, when the fur bandits first started their depredations down in the Strong-Woods near Fort Resolution. That was before Le Busard came.
They were crafty bush sneaks and skillful water doggers, those three métis and the white man with them; far shrewder than the average bush-loping criminals. ”

“ Swiftly balancing the packs, he stepped in, took up the paddle and skirled the canoe upstream toward the north.
At the first portage three miles above the cabin Scott drove his canoe ashore and sprang out to examine the tote-path. It was a game trail worn by hoof and pad, and leading close along the water edge. He walked the length of it, bent over, looking for signs.
A band of caribou had passed there during the early night, and trampled the path into mud. If a human had used that trail, the tracks would have been as plain to him as if laid down in new-fallen snow. ”

“ He remembered her anxious questions about his ability to trail the bandits, remembered how insistent she had been about telltale tracks, and her anxiety about the blizzard swooping.
He could fill in the outlines of her plan now. She was trying to lead him to the hidden rendezvous. She was going to leave signs on the portages.
For that superbly cunning reason she had "played up" to Le Busard and given herself into his power, and pitched off with him. If her plan worked, for the first and only time in his two years' futile chase Scott would have signs to guide him! ”

“ At the marsh edge all signs would cease. By to-morrow afternoon Le Busard would be entering the huge swampland.
Before the trail was lost in the thousand channels and creeks of the Great Marsh, he had to catch sight of that canoe. Now and then he glanced at the sky, noting the ominous signs, praying for the storm to hold off. Grayish clouds were scudding down from the Barren Grounds. In the northeast sky hung a brick-dust sheen, sure herald of a savage woolly- whipper roaring down from higher latitudes. Overhead his ears heard the shrill, incessant whining of angry winds preparing ”