The Gun-Brand, James B. Hendryx [i read a book TXT] 📗

in safety to your school." And, without waiting for a reply, turned and followed the two canoemen into the brush.

Chloe sat for a long time staring into the flames of the tiny fire before creeping between her damp blankets. Despite the utter body-weariness of her long canoe-trip, the girl slept but fitfully in her cold bed.

In the early grey of the morning she started up nervously. Surely a sound had awakened her. She heard it distinctly now, the sound of approaching footsteps. She strained to locate the sound, and instantly realized it was not the tread of moccasined feet. She threw off the frost-stiffened blankets and leaped to her feet, shivering in the keen air of the biting dawn.

The sounds of the footsteps grew louder, plainer, as though someone had turned suddenly from the shore and approached the thicket with long, heavy strides. With muscles tense and heart bounding wildly the girl waited. Then, scarce ten feet from her side, the thick scrub parted with a vicious swish, and a man, hatless, glaring, and white-faced, stood before her. The man was MacNair.

CHAPTER XV "ARREST THAT MAN!"

Seconds passed—tense, portentous seconds—as the two stood facing each other over the dead ashes of the little fire. Seconds in which the white drawn features of the man engraved themselves indelibly upon Chloe Elliston's brain. She noted the knotted muscles of the clenched hands and the glare of the sunken eyes. Noted, also, the cringing fear-stricken forms of the two Indians, who had awakened and lay cowering upon their blankets. And Big Lena, whose pale-blue, fishlike eyes stared first at one and then the other from out a face absolutely devoid of expression.

Suddenly a fierce, consuming anger welled into the girl's heart, and words fell from her lips in a veritable hiss of scorn: "Have you come to kill me, too?"

"By God, it would be a good thing for the North if I should kill you!"

"A good thing for MacNair, you mean!" taunted the girl. "Yes, I think it would. Well, there is nothing to hinder you. Of course, you would have to kill these, also." She indicated Big Lena and the Indians. "But what are mere lives to you?"

"They are nothing to me when the fate of my people is at stake! And at this very moment their fate—their whole future—the future of their children and their children's children—is at stake, as it has never been at stake before. Many times in my life have I faced crises: but never such a crisis as this. And always I have won, regardless of cost—but the cost only I have ever known."

His eyes glared, and he seemed a madman in his berserk rage. He drove a huge fist into his upturned palm and fairly shouted his words: "I am MacNair! And if there is a God in heaven, I will win! From this moment, it is my life or Lapierre's! Since last night's outrage there can be no truce—no quibbling—no parleying—no half-way measures! My friends are my friends, and his friends are my enemies! The war is on—and it will be a fight to the finish. A fight that may well disrupt the North!" He shook his clenched fist before the face of the girl. "I have taken the man-trail! I am MacNair! And at the end of that trail will lie a dead man—myself or Pierre Lapierre!"

"And at the beginning of the trail lie two dead men," sneered Chloe. "Those who started for the timber——"

"And, by God, if necessary, the trail will be paved with dead men! For Lapierre, the day of reckoning is at hand."

Chloe took a step forward, and with blazing eyes stood trembling with anger before the man. "And how about your own day of reckoning? You have told me that I am a fool; but it is you who are the fool! You killer of helpless men! You debaucher of women and children! You trader in souls! As you say, the day of reckoning is at hand—not for Lapierre, but for you! Until this day you have not taken me seriously. I have been a fool—a blind, trusting fool. You have succeeded, in spite of what I have heard—in spite of my better judgment—in spite even of what I have seen, in making me believe that, possibly you had been misunderstood; had been painted blacker than you really are. At times I almost believed in you; but I have since learned enough from the mouths of your own Indians to convince me of my folly. And after what I saw last night—" She paused in very horror of the thought, and MacNair glared into her outraged eyes.

"You saw that? You stood by and witnessed the ruination of my Indians? Deliberately watched them changed from sober, industrious, simple-hearted children of the wild into a howling, drink-crazed horde of beasts that thirsted for blood—tore at each other's throats—and, in the frenzy of their madness, burned their own homes, and their winter's supplies and provisions? You stood by and saw them glutted with the whiskey from your storehouse—by your own paid creatures——"

"Whiskey from my storehouse!" The girl's voice rose to a scream, and MacNair interrupted her savagely:

"Aye, whiskey from your storehouse! Brought in by Lapierre, and by Lapierre cunningly and freely given out to my Indians."

"You are crazy! You are mad! You do not know what you are saying? But if you do know, you are the most consummate liar on the face of the earth! Of all things absurd! Is it possible that you hope by any such preposterous and flimsy fabrication to escape the punishment which will surely and swiftly be meted out to you? Will, you tell that to the Mounted? And will you tell it to the judge and the jury? What will they say when I have told my story, and have had it corroborated by your own Indians—those Indians who have fled to my school to seek a haven of refuge from your tyranny? I have my manifest. My goods were inspected and passed by the Mounted——"

"Inspected and passed! And why? Because they were your goods, and the men of the Mounted have yet to suspect you. The inspection was perfunctorily made. And as for the manifest—I did not say it was your whiskey. I said, 'whiskey from your storehouse.' It was Lapierre's whiskey. And he succeeded in running it in by the boldest, and at the same time the cleverest and safest method—disguised as your freight. Tell me this: Did you check your pieces upon their arrival at your storehouse?"

"No; Lapierre did that, or LeFroy."

"And Lapierre, having first ascertained that I was far on the caribou trail, succeeded in slipping the whiskey to my Indians, but he——"

"Mr. Lapierre was with me! Accuse him and you accuse me, also. He brought me here because I wished to see for myself the condition of your Indians—the condition of which I had so often heard."

"Was LeFroy, also, with you?"

"LeFroy was away upon a mission, and that mission was to capture two others of your ilk—two whiskey-runners!"

MacNair laughed harshly. "Good LeFroy!" he exclaimed in derision. "Great God, you are a fool! You yourself saw LeFroy and his satellites rushing wildly for the shelter of the timber, when I unexpectedly appeared among them." The light of exultation leaped into his eyes. "I killed two of them, but LeFroy escaped. Lapierre timed his work well. And had it not been that one of my Indians, who was a spy in Lapierre's camp, learned of his plan and followed me across the barrens, Lapierre would have had ample time, after the destruction of my fort, to have scattered my Indians to the four winds. When I learned of his plot, I forced the trail as I never had forced a trail, in the hope of arriving in time to prevent the catastrophe. I reached the fort too late to save my Indians from your human wolf-pack, their homes from the flames, and my buildings and my property from destruction. But, thank God, it is not too late to wreck my vengeance upon the enemies of my people! For the trail is hot, and I will follow it, if need be, to the end of the earth."

"Your love for your Indians is, indeed, touching. I witnessed a demonstration of that love last night, when you battered and kicked and hurled them about in their drunken and helpless condition. But, tell me, what will become of them while you are following your trail of blood—the trail you so fondly imagine will terminate in the death of Lapierre, but which will, as surely and inevitably as justice itself, lead you to a prison cell, if not the gallows?"

MacNair regarded the girl almost fiercely. "I must leave my Indians," he answered, "for the present, to their own devices. For the simple reason that I cannot be in two places at the same time."

"But their supplies were burned! They will starve!" cried the girl. "It would seem that one who really loved his Indians would have his first thought for their welfare. But no; you prefer to take the trail and kill men; men who may at some future time tell their story upon the witness-stand; a story that will not sound pretty in the telling, and that will mark the crash of your reign of tyranny. 'Safety first' is your slogan, and your Indians may starve while you murder men." The girl paused and suddenly became conscious that MacNair was regarding her with a strange look in his eyes. And at his next words she could scarcely believe her ears.

"Will you care for my Indians?"

The question staggered her. "What!" she managed to gasp.

"Just what I said," answered MacNair gruffly. "Will you care for my Indians until such time as I shall return to them—until I have ridded the North of Lapierre?"

"Do you mean," cried the astonished girl, "will I care for your Indians—the same Indians who attacked my school—who only last night fought like fiends among themselves, and burned their own homes?"

"Just that!" answered MacNair. "The Indian who warned me of Lapierre's plot told me, also, of the arrival of your supplies—sufficient, he said, to feed the whole North. You will not lose by it. Name your own price, and I shall pay whatever you ask."

"Price!" flashed the girl. "Do you think I would take your gold—the gold that has been wrung from the hearts' blood of your Indians?"

"On your own terms, then," answered MacNair. "Will you take them? Surely this arrangement should be to your liking. Did you not tell me yourself, upon the occasion of our first meeting, that you intended to use every means in your power to induce my Indians to attend your school? That you would teach them that they are free? That they owe allegiance and servitude to no man? That you would educate and show them they were being robbed and cheated and forced into serfdom? That you intended to appeal to their better natures, to their manhood and womanhood? I think those were your words. Did you not say that? And did you mean it? Or was it the idle boast of an angry woman?"

Chloe interrupted him. "Yes, I said that, and I meant it! And I mean it now!"

"You have your chance," growled MacNair, "I impose no restrictions. I shall command them to obey you; even to attend your school, if you wish! You will hardly have time to do them much harm. As I told you, the North is not ready for your education. But I know that you are honest. You are a fool, and the time is not far distant when you yourself will realize this; when you will learn that you have become the unwitting dupe of one of the shrewdest and most diabolical scoundrels that ever drew breath. Again I tell you that some day you and I shall be friends! At this moment you hate me. But I know