Philip Steel of the Royal Northwest mounted Police, James Oliver Curwood [unputdownable books txt] 📗

came back the snow had covered the other trail."
The little professor stopped suddenly, and squared himself directly in Philip's path.
"You don't say!" he gasped. There was a look of amazement on his face.
"What a wonderfully little world this is, Phil," he added, smiling in a curious way. "What a wonderfully, wonderfully little world it is! It's only a playground, after all, and the funny part of it is that it is not even large enough to play a game of hide-and-seek in, successfully. I've proved that beyond question. And here--you--"
"What?" demanded Philip, puzzled by the other's attitude.
"Well, you see, I went first to Nelson House," said McGill, "and from there up to the Hudson's Bay Company's post in the Cochrane River, hunting for Falkner and this girl--a man and a woman. And at the Cochrane Post a Frenchman told me that there was a strange man and woman up at Lac Bain, and I set off for there. That must have been just about the time you were starting for Churchill, for on the third day up I met a sledge that turned me off the Lac Bain trail to take up the nearer trail to Chippewayan. With this sledge were the two who had been at Lac Bain, Colonel Becker and his daughter."
For a moment Philip could not speak. He caught the other's hand excitedly.
"You--you found where they were going?" he asked, when McGill did not continue.
"Yes. We ate dinner together, and the colonel said they were bound for Nelson House, and that they would probably go from there to Winnipeg. I didn't ask which way they would go."
"From Nelson House it would be by the Saskatchewan and Le Pas trail," cried Philip. He was looking straight over the little doctor's head. "If it wasn't for this damnable DeBar--whom I ought to go after again--"
"Drop DeBar," interrupted McGill quietly. "He's got too big a start of you anyway--so what's the use? Drop 'im. I dropped a whole lot of things when I came up here."
"But the law--"
"Damn the law!" exploded the doctor with unexpected vehemence. "Sometimes I think the world would be just as happy without it."
Their eyes met, sharp and understanding.
"You're a professor in a college," chuckled Philip, his voice trembling again with hope and eagerness. "You ought to know more than I do. What would you do if you were in my place?"
"I'd hustle for a pair of wings and fly," replied the little professor promptly. "Good Lord, Phil--if it was my wife--and I hadn't got her yet--I wouldn't let up until I'd chased her from one end of the earth to the other. What's a little matter of duty compared to that girl hustling toward Winnipeg? Next to my own little girl at home she's the prettiest thing I ever laid my eyes on."
Philip laughed aloud.
"Thanks, McGill. By Heaven, I'll go! When do you start?"
"The dogs are ready, and so is Mrs. William Falkner."
Philip turned about quickly.
"I'll go over and say good-by to the detachment, and get my pack," he said over his shoulder. "I'll be back inside of half an hour."
It was a slow trip down. The snow was beginning to soften in the warmth of the first spring suns by the time they arrived at Lac la Crosse. Two days before they reached the post at Montreal Lake, Philip began to feel the first discomfort of a strange sickness, of which he said nothing. But the sharp eyes of the doctor detected that something was wrong, and before they came to Montreal House he recognized the fever that had begun to burn in Philip's body.
"You've set too fast a pace," he told him. "It's that--and the blow you got when DeBar threw you against the rock. You'll have to lay up for a spell."
In spite of his protestations, the doctor compelled him to go to bed when they arrived at the post. He grew rapidly worse, and for five weeks the doctor and Falkner's wife nursed him through the fever. When they left for the South, late in May, he was still too weak to travel, and it was a month later before he presented himself, pale and haggard, before Inspector MacGregor at Prince Albert. Again disappointment was awaiting him. There had been delay in purchasing his discharge, and he found that he would have to wait until August. MacGregor gave him a three weeks' furlough, and his first move was to go up to Etomami and Le Pas. Colonel Becker and Isobel had been at those places six weeks before. He could find no trace of their having stopped at Prince Albert. He ran down to Winnipeg and spent several days in making inquiries which proved the hopelessness of any longer expecting to find Isobel in Canada. He assured himself that by this time they were probably in London and he made his plans accordingly. His discharge would come to him by the tenth of August, and he would immediately set off for England.
Upon his return to Prince Albert he was detailed to a big prairie stretch of country where there was little to do but wait. On the first day of August he was at Hymers when the Limited plunged down the embankment into Blind Indian River. The first word of it came over the wire from Bleak House Station a little before midnight, while he and the agent were playing cribbage. Pink-cheeked little Gunn, agent, operator, and one-third of the total population of Hymers, had lifted a peg to make a count when his hand stopped in mid-air, and with a gasping break in his voice he sprang to his feet.
The instrument on the little table near the window was clicking frantically. It was Billinger, at Bleak House, crying out for headquarters, clear lines, the right of way. The Transcontinental--engine, tender, baggage car, two coaches and a sleeper, had gone to the devil. Those, in his excitement, where his first words. From fifty to a hundred were dead. Gunn almost swore Billinger's next words to the line. It was not an accident! Human hands had torn up three sections of rail. The same human hands had rolled a two-ton boulder in the right of way. He did not know whether the express car--or what little remained of it--had been robbed or not.
From midnight until two o'clock the lines were hot. A wrecking train was on its way from the east, another from division headquarters to the west. Ceaselessly headquarters demanded new information, and bit by bit the terrible tragedy was told even as the men and women in it died and the few souls from the prairies around Bleak House Station fought to save lives. Then a new word crept in on the wires. It called for Philip Steele at Hymers.
It commanded him in the name of Inspector MacGregor of the Royal Mounted to reach Bleak House Station without delay. What he was to do when he arrived at the scene of the wreck was left to his own judgment. The wire from MacGregor aroused Philip from the stupor of horror into which he had fallen. Gunn's girlish face was as white as a sheet.
"I've got a jigger," he said, "and you can take it. It's forty miles to Bleak House and you can make it in three hours. There won't be a train for six."
Philip scribbled a few words for MacGregor and shoved them into Gunn's nervous hand. While the operator was sending them off he rolled a cigarette, lighted it, and buckled on his revolver belt. Then Gunn hurried him through the door and they lifted the velocipede on the track.
"Wire Billinger I'm coming," called back Philip as Gunn started him off with a running shove.


Chapter XVI. A Lock Of Golden Hair
As the sun was rising in a burning August glare over the edge of the parched prairie, Philip saw ahead of him the unpainted board shanty that was called Bleak House Station, and a few moments later he saw a man run out into the middle of the track and stare down at him from under the shade of his hands. It was Billinger, his English-red face as white as he had left Gunn's, his shirt in rags, arms bare, and his tremendous blond mustaches crisped and seared by fire. Close to the station, fastened to posts, were two saddlehorses. A mile beyond these things a thin film of smoke clouded the sky. As the jigger stopped Philip jumped from his seat and held out a blistered hand. "I'm Steele--Philip Steele, of the Northwest Mounted."
"And I'm Billinger--agent," said the other.
Philip noticed that the hand that gripped his own was raw and bleeding. "I got your word, and I've received instructions from the department to place myself at your service. My wife is at the key. I've found the trail, and I've got two horses. But there isn't another man who'll leave up there for love o' God or money. It's horrible! Two hours ago you'd 'ave heard their screams from where you're standing--the hurt, I mean. They won't leave the wreck--not a man, and I don't blame 'em."
A pretty, brown-haired young woman had come to the door and Billinger ran to her.
"Good-by," he cried, taking her for a moment in his big arms. "Take care of the key!" He turned as quickly to the horses, talking as they mounted. "It was robbery," he said--and they set off at a canter, side by side. "There was two hundred thousand in currency in the express car, and it's gone. I found their trail this morning, going into the North. They're hitting for what we call the Bad Lands over beyond the Coyote, twenty miles from here. I don't suppose there's any time to lose--"
"No," said Philip. "How many are there?"
"Four--mebby more."
Billinger started his horse into a gallop and Philip purposely held his mount behind to look at the other man. The first law of MacGregor's teaching was to study men, and to suspect.
It was the first law of the splendid service of which he was a part--and so he looked hard at Billinger. The Englishman was hatless. His sandy hair was cropped short, and his mustaches floated out like flexible horns from the sides of his face. His shirt was in tatters. In one place it was ripped clean of the shoulder and Philip saw a purplish bruise where the flesh was bare. He knew these for the marks of Billinger's presence at the wreck. Now the man was equipped for other business. A huge "forty-four" hung at his waist, a short carbine swung at his saddle-bow; and there was something in the manner of his riding, in the hunch of his shoulders, and in the vicious sweep of his long mustaches, that satisfied Philip he was a man who could use them. He rode up alongside of him with a new confidence. They were coming to the top of a knoll; at the summit Billinger stopped and pointed down into a hollow a quarter of a mile away.
"It will be a loss of time to go down there," he said, "and it will do no good. See that thing that looks like a big log in the river? That's the top of the day coach. It went in right side up, and the conductor--who wasn't hurt--says there were twenty people in it. We watched it settle from the shore, and we couldn't do a thing--while they were dying in there like so many caged rats! The other coach burned, and that heap of stuff you see there is what's left of the Pullman and the baggage car. There's twenty-seven dead stretched out along the track, and a good many hurt. Great Heavens, listen to that!"
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