William MacLeod Raine

“ You murdered Tim Kelly treacherously. You planned to spoil an innocent girl's life by driving her to worse than death. You shot your partner in the back after he did his best to help you escape. You tortured Onistah and would have killed him if we hadn't come in time. You assaulted my friend here and he'll probably die from his wounds. It's the end of the long trail for you, Bully West. Inside of half an hour you will be dead. If you've anything to say—if you can make your peace with heaven—don't waste a moment. ”

“ That floating film told of a camp-fire of buffalo chips. There was a little knitted frown of worry on her forehead, for imagination could fill in details of what the coulée held: the white canvas tops of prairie schooners, some spans of oxen grazing near, a group of blatant, profane whiskey-smugglers from Montana, and in the wagons a cargo of liquor to debauch the Bloods and Piegans near Fort Whoop-Up.
Sleeping Dawn was a child of impulse. She had all youth's capacity for passionate indignation and none of the wisdom of age which tempers the eager desire of the hour. ”

“ Already they were deep in the Hudson's Bay Company trapping-grounds. Ahead of them lay the Barrens, stretching to the inlets of the Arctic Ocean.
The days were drawing out and the nights getting shorter. The untempered sun of the Northland beat down on the cold snow crystals and reflected a million sparks of light. In that white field the glare was almost unbearable. Both of them wore smoked glasses, but even with these their eyes continually smarted. They grew red and swollen. If time had not been so great an element in their journey, they would have tried to travel only after sunset. ”

“ When feeding-time came the dogs made pandemonium. They were half-famished, as teams in the Lone Lands usually are, and the smell of the frozen fish thawing before the fire set them frantic. West and Whaley protected Jessie while she turned the fish. This was not easy. The plunging animals almost rushed the men off their feet. They had to be beaten back cruelly with the whip-stocks, for they were wild as wolves and only the sharpest pain would restrain them.
The half-thawed fish were flung to them in turn. There was a snarl, a snap of the jaws, a gulp, and the fish was gone. ”

“ She belonged to the ruling race and not to the métis, just as much as Win Beresford and Tom Morse did.
She tried to hide her joy, was indeed ashamed of it. For any expression of it seemed like a reproach to Matapi-Koma and Onistah and Stokimatis, to her brother Fergus and in a sense even to her father. None the less her blood beat fast. What she had just found out meant that she could aspire to the civilization of the whites, that she had before her an outlook, was not to be hampered by the limitations imposed upon her by race. ”

“ West turned to meet them. A third flash of red dived for his knees. He went down as though hit by a battering-ram.
But not to stay down. The huge gorilla-shaped figure struggled to its feet, fighting desperately to throw off the three red-coats long enough to drag out a revolver. He was like a bear surrounded by leaping dogs. No sooner had he buffeted one away than the others were dragging him down. Try as he would, he could not get set. The attackers always staggered him before he could quite free himself for action. ”

“ The only way to escape arrest was to commit murder. Most men would not go that far, and of those who would the great majority would be deterred because eventually punishment was sure. The slightest hesitation, the least apparent doubt, a flicker of fear on the officer's face, would be fatal to success. He won because he serenely expected to win, and because there was back of him a silent, impalpable force as irresistible as the movement of a glacier.
Beresford must have known that the men who lived at Whoop-Up were unfriendly to the North-West Mounted. ”

“ Jessie's one hope was that Onistah would hasten to the rescue. Yet she dreaded the moment of his coming. He was a gentle soul, one of Father Giguère's converts. It was altogether likely that he would walk into the camp of the escaped convict openly and become a victim of the murderer's guile. Onistah did not lack courage. He would fight if he had to do so. Indeed, she knew that he would go through fire to save her. But bravery was not enough. She could almost have wished that her foster-brother was as full of devilish treachery as the huge ape-man slouching at her heels. ”

“ It is fortunate that desire and opportunity do not always march together. The constable and Morse had both been dead men if Bully West could have killed with a wish. Sleeping Dawn would have been on the road to an existence worse than death. Instead, they sat in front of the coals of buffalo chips while the big smuggler and his companions rode away from an ignominious field of battle. ”

“ They knew the difficulties of sub-Arctic travel and how to cope with them. But the storm had blown up with unusual swiftness.
Even if the party had reached safety, the girl's troubles were not ended. With the coming of darkness her peril would increase. As long as Whaley was with West there was hope. The gambler was cold-blooded as a fish, but he had the saving sense of sanity. If he meant to return to Faraway—and there was no reason why he should not—he dared not let any harm befall the girl. But West was a ruffian unmitigated. His ruthless passion might drive him to any evil. ”

“ Morse and Beresford were tough as hickory withes. None in the North woods had more iron in the blood than they. Emergencies had tested them time and again. But neither of them was ashamed to kneel with the big rugged Scotchman while he poured his heart out in a petition for his lass. The security of the girl whom all four loved each in his own way was out of the hands of her friends. To know that McRae had found a sure rock upon which to lean brought the younger men too some measure of peace. ”

“ The children and the sound of their laughter gave the camp a domestic touch. Some of the brown, half-naked youngsters, their skins glistening in the warm sun, were at work doing odd jobs. Others, too young to fetch and carry, played with a litter of puppies or with a wolf cub that had been caught and tamed.
The whole bustling scene was characteristic of time and place. A score of such outfits, each with its Red River carts and its oxen, its dogs, its women and children, traveled to the plains each spring to hunt the bison. ”

“ The plains Indians would sell their souls for fire-water. When the craze was on them, they would exchange furs, buffalo robes, ponies, even their wives and daughters for a bottle of the poison.
In the sunset glow she stood rigid and resentful, one small fist clenched, the other fast to the barrel of the rifle she carried. The evils of the trade came close to her. Fergus McRae still carried the gash from a knife thrust earned in a drunken brawl. It was likely that to-morrow he would cut the trail of the wagon wheels and again make a bee-line for liquor and trouble. ”

“ From unfriendly frozen deserts they passed, through eternal stillness, into the snow wilderness that seemed to stretch forever. When they came to forests, now thinner, smaller, and less frequent, they welcomed them as they would an old friend.
"He's headin' for Great Bear, looks like," Morse suggested one morning after an hour in which neither of them had spoken.
"I was wondering when you'd chirp up, Tom," Beresford grinned cheerfully. "Sometimes I think I'm fed up for life on the hissing of snowshoe runners. The human voice sure sounds good up here. Yes, Great Bear Lake. ”

“ Beresford was breaking trail. His hand shot straight out. In the distance there was a tiny black speck in the waste of white. It moved.
Even yet the men who had come to bring the law into the Lone Lands did not relax their vigilance. They knew West's crafty, cunning mind. This might be a ruse to trap them. When they left the sled and moved forward, it was with rules ready. The hunters stalked their prey as they would have done a musk ox. Slowly, noiselessly, they approached.
The figure was that of a huge man. He sat huddled in the snow, his back to them. ”

“ It was not reasonable to suppose that any sane human beings would have left a comfortable house to face such a storm. But this was just what they must have done. The state of the fire, which was dying down to hot coals, told them it had not been replenished for hours. West and Whaley clearly had decided they were not safe here and had set out for another hiding-place.
The men looked at each other in blank silence. The same thought was in the mind of all. For the present they must give up the pursuit. It would not be possible to try to carry on any farther in such a blizzard. ”

“ Again the blaze and roar of the revolver filled the room. Morse plunged head down at his enemy, still carrying the log he had used as a battering-ram. It caught the gambler at that point of the stomach known as the solar plexus. Whaley went down and out of consciousness like an ox that has been pole-axed.
Tom picked up the revolver and dropped it into the pocket of his fur coat. He stooped to make sure that his foe was beyond the power of doing damage. Then he lifted Jessie from the corner where she lay huddled. ”

“ Jessie McRae was graceful as a fawn. Every turn of the dark head, every lift of the hand, expressed spirit and verve. She must, he thought, have inherited almost wholly from her father, though in her lissom youth he could find little of McRae's heavy solidity of mind and body.
"Your brother is of the métis [2] . He's not a tribesman. And he's no child. He can look out for himself," Morse said at last. ”

“ One glance of troubled curiosity she flashed at Morse. What sort of man was this quiet, brown-faced American who smuggled whiskey in to ruin the tribes, who could ruthlessly hold a girl to a bargain that included horsewhipping for her, who for some reason of his own fought beside the man taking him to imprisonment, and who had flung defiance at the terrible Bully West on her behalf? ”

“ As Morse looked at him, patient as an animal of prey, steady, fearless, an undramatic Anglo-Saxon who meant to go through with the day's work, he began to understand the power that was to make the North-West Mounted Police such a force in the land. The only way he could prevent this man from arresting him was to kill the constable; and if he killed him, other jaunty red-coated youths would come to kill or be killed. ”

“ She nodded.
"Good," he went on. "Your father pray the Great Spirit keep you safe."
"Where is Father?"
He looked in the direction from which he had come. "We go Jasper's cabin—your father, red soldier, American trader, Onistah. You gone. Big storm—snow—sleet. No can go farther. Then your father he pray. We wait till Great Spirit he say, 'No more wind, snow,' Then we move camp. All search—go out find you." He pointed north, south, east, and west. "The Great Spirit tell me to come here. I say, 'Sleeping Dawn she with God, for Jesus' sake, Amen.'"
"You dear, dear boy," she sobbed. ”

“ CHAPTER XXXVIII OVER A ROTTING TRAIL Tom believed that Beresford's delirious words had condemned them both to death. He could not nurse his friend, watch West night and day, keep the camp supplied with food, and cover the hundreds of miles of bleak snow fields which stretched between them and the nearest settlement. He did not think that any one man lived who was capable of succeeding in such a task. ”

“ With a flirt of the arm he sent the lash of the dog-whip snaking out toward Jessie.
She shrank back against the wall, needlessly. It was a threat, not an attack; a promise of what was to come.
"Let her alone." They were the first words Whaley had spoken. In his soft, purring voice they carried out the suggestion of his crouched tenseness. If West was the grizzly bear, the other was the forest panther, more feline, but just as dangerous. ”

“ Pierre Poulette was no such dangerous wild beast as Bully West. Win did not have with him a companion wounded almost to death who had to be nursed back to health, one struck down by the prisoner treacherously. There was just a fighting chance for the officers to get back to Desolation if West was eliminated from the equation. Tom knew he would have a man's work cut out for him to win through—without the handicap of the prisoner. ”

“ Oot o' my camp, the pair o' you!"
West, strangling, gasped for air, as does a catfish on the bank. He leaned on the cart wheel until he was able to stand. The help of Morse he brushed aside with a sputtered oath. His eyes never left the man who had beaten him. He snarled hike a whipped wolf. The hunter's metaphor had been an apt one. The horrible lust to kill was stamped on his distorted, grinning face, but for the present the will alone was not enough.
McRae's foot was on the revolver. His son Fergus, a swarthy, good-looking youngster, had come up and was standing quietly behind his father. ”

“ But power harnessed and controlled expressed itself in every motion of the body. Moreover, the blue eyes that looked straight and hard out of the ruddy face told of coordination between mind and matter.
Angus McRae was that rare product, an honest, outspoken man. He sought to do justice to all with whom he had dealings. Part of West's demand was fair, he reflected. The trader had a right to know all the facts in the case. But the old Hudson's Bay trapper had a great reluctance to tell them. His instinct to protect Jessie was strong. ”

“ CHAPTER XXVIII "IS A' WELL WI' YOU, LASS?" Jessie's shoes crunched on the snow-crust. She traveled fast. In spite of Onistah's assurance her heart was troubled for him. West and Whaley would study the tracks and come to at least an approximation of the truth. She did not dare think of what the gorilla-man would do to her friend if they captured him. ”

“ Beresford murmured to his companion one day. "Thought he was game, anyhow, but he's a yellow quitter. Acts as though we were to blame for his blindness and for what's waiting for him at the end of the journey. I like a man to stand the gaff when it's prodding him."
Morse nodded. "Look out for him. I've got a notion in the back o' my head that he's beginning to see again. He'd kill us in a holy minute if he dared. Only his blindness keeps him from it. What do you say? Shall we handcuff him nights?"
"Not necessary," the constable said. "He can't see a thing. ”