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

face with the Indians and the dog-teams that MacNair had despatched for provisions.

She bounded among them like a flash, singled out Wee Johnnie Tamarack, and proceeded to deluge the old man with an avalanche of words. When finally she paused for sheer lack of breath, the old Indian, who had understood but the smallest fragment of what she had said, remained obviously unimpressed. Whereupon the girl produced the letter, which she waved before his face, accompanying the act with another tirade of words of which the Indian understood less than he had of the previous outburst.

Wee Johnnie Tamarack took his orders only from MacNair. MacNair had said, "Go to the school for provisions," and to the school he must go. Nevertheless, the sight of the letter impressed him. For in the Northland His Majesty's mail is held sacred and must be carried to its destination, though the heavens fall.

To the mind of Wee Johnnie Tamarack a letter was "mail," and the fact that its status might be altered by the absence of His Majesty's stamp upon its corner was an affair beyond the old man's comprehension.

Therefore he ordered the other Indians to continue their journey, and, motioning the girl to a place on the sled, headed his dogs northward and sent them skimming over the back-trail.

Wee Johnnie Tamarack was counted one of the best dog-mushers in the North, and as the girl had succeeded in implanting in the old man's mind an urgent need of haste, he exerted his talent to the utmost. Mile after mile, behind the flying feet of the tireless malamutes, the sled-runners slipped smoothly over the crust of the ice-hard snow.

And at midnight of the second day they dashed across the smooth surface of the lake and brought up with a rush before the door of MacNair's own cabin, which luckily had been spared by the flames.

It was a record drive, for a "two-man" load—that drive of Wee Johnnie Tamarack's, having clipped twelve hours from a thirty-six-hour trail.

MacNair's door flew open to their frantic pounding. The girl thrust the letter into his hand, and with a supreme effort told what she knew of the disappearance of Chloe and Big Lena. Whereupon, she threw herself at full length upon the floor and immediately sank into a profound sleep.

MacNair fumbled upon the shelf for a candle and, lighting it, seated himself beside the table, and tore the envelope from the letter. Never in his life had the man read words penned by the hand of a woman. The fingers that held the letter trembled, and he wondered at the wild beating of his heart.

The story of the Louchoux girl had aroused in him a sudden fear. He wondered vaguely that the disappearance of Chloe Elliston could have caused the dull hurt in his breast. The pages in his hand were like no letter he had ever received. There was something personal—intimate—about them. His huge fingers gripped them lightly, and he turned them over and over in his hand, gazing almost in awe upon the bold, angular writing. Then, very slowly, he began to read the words.

Unconsciously, he read them aloud, and as he read a strange lump arose in his throat so that his voice became husky and the words faltered. He read the letter through to the end. He leaped to his feet and strode rapidly up and down the room, his fists clenched and his breath coming in great gasps.

Bob MacNair was fighting. Fighting against an irresistible impulse—an impulse as new and strange to him as though born of another world—an impulse to find Chloe Elliston, to take her in his arms, and to crush her close against his wildly pounding heart.

Minutes passed as the man strode up and down the length of the little room, and then once more he seated himself at the table and read the letter through.

"DEAR MR. MACNAIR:

"I cannot leave the North without this little word to you. I have learned many things since I last saw you—things I should have learned long ago. You were right about the Indians, about Lapierre, about me. I know now that I have been a fool. Lapierre always removed his hat in my presence, therefore he was a gentleman! Oh, what a fool I was!

"I will not attempt to apologize. I have been too nasty, and hateful, and mean for any apology. You said once that some day we should be friends. I am reminding you of this because I want you to think of me as a friend. Wherever I may be, I will think of you—always. Of the splendid courage of the man who, surrounded by treachery and intrigue and the vicious attacks of the powers that prey, dares to stand upon his convictions and to fight alone for the good of the North—for the cause of those who will never be able to fight for themselves.

"It will not be necessary to tell you that I shall go straight to the headquarters of the Mounted and withdraw my charge against you. I have heard of your lawless raids into the far North; I think they are splendid! Keep the good work up! Shoot as straight as you can—as straight as you shot that night on Snare Lake. I should love to stand at your side and shoot, too. But that can never be.

"Just a word more. Lena is going to marry LeFroy; and, knowing Lena as I do, I think his reformation is assured. I am leaving everything to them. The contents of the storehouse will set them up as independent traders.

"And now farewell. I want you to have my most valued possession, the portrait of my grandfather, Tiger Elliston, the man I have always admired more than any other until——"

Until what? wondered MacNair. The word had been crossed out, and he finished the letter still wondering.

"When you look at the picture in its splintered frame, think sometimes of the 'fool moose-calf,' who, having succeeded by the narrowest margin in eluding the fangs of 'the wolf' is returning, wiser, to its mountains.

"Yours very truly—and very, very repentantly,

"CHLOE ELLISTON."

Bob MacNair lost his fight. He arose once more, his great frame trembling in the grip of a new thrill. He stretched his great arms to the southward in a silent sign of surrender. He sought not to dodge the issue, strange and wonderful as it seemed to him. He loved this woman—loved her as he knew he could love no other—as he had never dreamed it was in the heart of man to love.

And then, with the force of a blow, came the realization that this woman—his woman—was at that very instant, in all probability, at the mercy of a fiend who would stop at nothing to gain his own ends.

He leaped to the door.

"By God, I'll tear his heart out!" he roared as he wrenched at the latch. And the next instant the shores of Snare Lake echoed to the wild weird sound of the wolf-cry—the call of MacNair to his clan! Other calls and other summons might be ignored upon provocation, but when the terrible wolf-cry shattered the silence of the forest MacNair's Indians rushed to his side.

Only death itself could deter them from fore-gathering at the sound of the wolf-cry. Before the echoes of MacNair's voice had died away dark forms were speeding through the moonlight. From all directions they came; from the cabins that yet remained standing, from the tents pitched close against the unburned walls of the stockade, from rude wickiups of skins and of brushwood.

Old men and young men they answered the call, and each in his hand bore a rifle. MacNair snapped a few quick orders. Men rushed to harness the dog-teams while others provisioned the sleds for the trail.

With one arm MacNair swung the Louchoux girl from the floor, and, picking up his rifle, dashed out into the night.

Wee Johnnie Tamarack, just in from a twenty-four-hour trail, stood at the head of MacNair's own dogs—the seven great Athabasca River dogs that had carried him into the North. With a cry to his Indians to follow and to bring the Louchoux girl, MacNair threw himself belly-wise onto his sled, gave voice to a weird cry as his dogs shot out across the white snow-level of Snare Lake, and headed south-ward toward the Yellow Knife.

He laughed aloud as he glanced over the back-trail and noted that half of his Indians were already following. He had chosen that last cry well. Never before had the Indians heard it from the white man's lips, and they thrilled at the sound to the marrow. The blood surged through the veins of the wild men as it had not surged in long decades. It was the war-cry of the Yellow Knives!

CHAPTER XXIV THE BATTLE

Bob MacNair's sled seemed scarcely to touch the hard surface of the snow. The great malemutes ran low and true over the well-defined trail. He had selected the dogs with an eye to speed and endurance at the time he had headed northward with Corporal Ripley after his release from the Fort Saskatchewan jail.

The shouts of the following Indians died away. Familiar landmarks leaped past, and save for an occasional word of encouragement MacNair let the dogs set their own pace. For, consumed as he was by anxiety for what might lie at the end of the trail, he knew that the homing instinct of the wolf-dogs would carry them more miles and in better heart than the sting of his long gut-lash.

At daylight the man halted for a half-hour, fed his dogs, and boiled tea, which he drank in great gulps, hot and black, from the rim of the pot. At noon one of the dogs showed signs of distress, and MacNair cut him loose, leaving him to follow as best as he could. When darkness fell only three dogs remained in harness, and these showed plainly the effects of the long trail-strain. While behind, somewhere upon the wide stretch of the Yellow Knife, the other four limped painfully in the wake of their stronger team-mates.

An hour passed, during which the pace slackened perceptibly, and then with only ten miles to go, two more dogs laid down. Pausing only to cut them free from the harness, MacNair continued the trail on foot. The hard-packed surface of the snow made the rackets unnecessary, and the man struck into a long, swinging trot—the stride of an Indian runner.

Mile after mile slipped by as the huge muscles of him, tireless as bands of steel, flexed and sprung with the regularity of clockworks. The rising moon was just topping the eastern pines as he dashed up the steep bank of the clearing. For a moment he halted as his glance swept the familiar outlines of the log buildings, standing black and clean-cut and sombre in the light of the rising moon.

MacNair drew a deep breath, and the next moment the long wolf-cry boomed out over the silent snow. As if by magic, the clearing sprang into life. Lights shone from the barrack windows and from the windows of the cabins beyond; doors banged. The white snow of the clearing was dotted with swift-moving forms as men, women, and children answered the clan-call of MacNair, shouting to one another as they ran, in hoarse, deep gutturals.

In an instant MacNair singled out Old Elk from among the crowding forms.

"What's happened here?" he cried. "Where is the white kloochman?"

Old Elk had taken charge of the thirty Indians MacNair had despatched for provisions, and immediately upon learning from the lips of the Indian women of Chloe's disappearance he had left the loading of the sleds to the others while he worked out the signs in the snow. Thus at MacNair's question the old Indian motioned him to follow, and, starting at the door of the cottage, he traced Chloe's trail to the banskian, and there in a few words and much silent pantomime he explained without doubt or hesitation exactly