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By RIDGWELL CULLUM

THE HEART OF UNAGA THE MAN IN THE TWILIGHT \/ THE LUCK OF THE KID THE DEVIL’S KEG THE HOUND FROM THE NORTH THE BROODING WILD THE NIGHT RIDERS THE WATCHERS OF THE PLAINS THE COMPACT THE TRAIL OF THE AXE THE ONE WAY TRAIL THE SHERIFF OF DYKE HOLE THE TWINS OF SUFFERING CREEK THE GOLDEN WOMAN THE WAY OF THE STRONG THE LAW BREAKERS THE SON OF HIS FATHER THE MEN WHO WROUGHT THE PURCHASE PRICE THE TRIUMPH OF JOHN KARS THE LAW OF THE GUN

V

The

Luck of the Kid

By

Ridgwell Cullum

/

Author of

“ The Heart of Unaga,” “The Man in the Twilight,” etc.

>

G.P. Putnam’s Sons

I^tewYork & London Knickerbocker pres % 1923

Copyright, 1923

by

Ridgwell Cullura

V

Made in the United States of America

jUH 30 ! :?3

v' ■ U /*■

r \ 4

©C1A711076

In Happy Recollection

OF

OUR EARLY BOYHOOD

THIS, MY TWENTY-FIRST BOOK, IS DEDICATED IN DEEPEST AFFECTION TO

MY BROTHERS

CONTENTS

PART I

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — North of “Sixty”					3
II. — The Holocaust		•			9
III. — The Planning of Le Gros		•			19
IV. — Two Men of the North		•			30
V. — The Luck of the Kid . •		£			39
VI. — The Euralians		&			46
VII. — The Vengeance of Usak		'4			59
VIII. — The Valley of the Fire Hills	0			72
PART II
I. — Placer City . . .	•	•	•	A	9i
II. — The Cheechakos .	•	•	•	0	no
III. — Reindeer Farm	•	•	•	0	130
IV. — Within the Circle	•	•	•	•	148

V. — The House in the Valley of the Fire

Hills . 162

VI. — The Eyes in the Night .... 174

VII. — The Dream Hill . 196

vii

CONTENTS

• • •

Vlll

CHAPTER

VIII. — Bill Wilder Re-appears

IX. — The Great Savage

X. — Days of Promise .

XI. — Children of the North

XII. — Youth Supreme ..

XIII. — A Whiteman’s Purpose

XIV. — A Whiteman’s Word XV. — The Irony of Fate

XVI. — The End of the Long Trail

PAGE . 212

. 229

• 249

. 268 . 28l

. 306

• 326

• 338

• 350

THE LUCK OF THE KID

PARTI

\

CHAPTER I

NORTH OF “SIXTY”

The sub-Arctic summer was at its height. The swelter of heat was of almost tropical intensity. No wisp of cloud marred the perfect purity of the steely blue sky, and no breath of wind relieved the intemperate scorch of the blazing sun.

The two men on the river bank gave no heed to the oppressive heat. For the moment they seemed concerned with nothing but their ease, and the swarming flies, and the voracious attacks of the mosquitoes from which the smoke of their camp fire did its best to protect them. Down below them, a few yards away, their walrus-hide kyak lay moored to the bank of the river, whose sluggish, oily-moving waters flowed gently northward towards the far-off fields of eternal ice. It was noon, and a rough midday meal had been prepared and disposed of. Now they were smoking away a leisurely hour before resum¬ ing their journey.

The younger of the two flung away the end of a cigar¬ ette with a movement that was almost violent in its im¬ patience. He turned a pair of narrow black eyes upon his companion, and their sparkle of resentment shone fiercely in sharp contrast against the dusky skin of their setting.

“It’s no use blinding ourselves, sir,” he said, speaking

3

4

THE LUCK OF THE KID

rapidly in the tongue of the whiteman, with only the faintest suspicion of native halting. “It’s here. But we’ve missed it. And another’s found it.”

He was a youthful creature something short of the completion of his second decade. But that which he lacked in years he made up for in the alertness of pur¬ pose that looked out of his keen eyes. He was dark- skinned, its hue something between yellow and olive. He had prominent, broad cheek bones like those of all the na¬ tives of Canada’s extreme north. Yet his face differed from the general low type of the Eskimo. There was refinement in every detail of it. There was something that suggested a race quite foreign, but curiously akin.

“Marty Le Gros? Yes?”

The older man stirred. He had been lounging full length on the ground so that the smoke of the camp fire rolled heavily across him, and kept him safe from the tor¬ ment of winged insects. Now he sat up like the other, and crossing his legs tucked his booted feet under him.

He was older than his companion by more than twenty years. But the likeness between them was profound. He, too, was dusky. He, too, had the broad, high cheek bones. He was of similar stature, short and broad. Then, too, his hair was black and cut short like the other’s, so short, indeed, that it bristled crisply over the crown of his bare head with the effect of a wire brush. He, too, was clad in the rough buckskin of the trail with no detail that could have distinguished him from the native. The only difference between the two was in age, and the colour of their eyes. The older man’s eyes were a sheer anachron¬ ism. They were a curious gleaming yellow, whose tawny depths shone with a subtle reflection of the bril¬ liant sunshine.

Tell me of it again, Sate,’ he went on, knocking out

NORTH OF “SIXTY” 5

the red clay pipe he had been smoking, and re-filling it from a beaded buckskin pouch.

But the youth was impatient, and the quick flash of his black eyes was full of scorn for the unruffled composure of the other.

“He’s beaten us, father,” he cried. “He has it. I have seen.” He spread out his hands in an expressive gesture. And they were lean, delicate hands that were almost womanish. “This priest-man with his say-so of religion. He search all the time. It is the only thing he think of. Gold! Well, he get it.”

He finished up with a laugh that only expressed fierce chagrin.

“And he get it here on this Loon Creek, that you make us waste three months’ search on, son?”

The father shook his head. And his eyes were cold, and the whole expression of his set features mask-like. The youth flung out his hands.

“I go down for trade to Fort Cupar. This missionary, Marty Le Gros, is there. He show this thing. Two great nuggets, clear yellow gold. Big? They must be one hundred ounces each. No. Much more. And he tell the story to McLeod, who drinks so much, that he find them on Loon Creek. I hear him tell. I listen all the time. They don’t know me. They think I am a fool Eskimo. I let them think. Well? Where is it on Loon Creek? We go up. We come down. There is no sign anywhere. No work. The man lies, for all his religion. Or we are the fools we do not think we are.”

Sate turned his searching eyes on the northern distance, where the broad stream merged itself into the purple of low, far-off hills.

It was a scene common enough to the lower lands of Canada’s extreme north. There was nothing of barren

6

THE LUCK OF THE KID

desolation. There were no great hills, no great primor¬ dial forests along the broad valley of Loon Creek. But it was a widespread park land of woodland bluffs of hardy conifers dotting a brilliant-hued carpet of myriads of Arctic flowers, and long sun-forced grasses, and lichens of every shade of green. It was Nature’s own secret flower garden, far out of the common human track, where, throughout the ages, she had spent her efforts in enriching the soil, till, under an almost tropical summer heat, it yielded a display of vivid colour such as could never have been matched in any wilderness under southern skies.

The older man observed him keenly.

“Sate, my son,” he said at last, “you are discontented. Why ? This man has a secret. He has gold. Gold is the thing we look for. Not all the time, but between our trade which makes us rich, and our people rich. We are masters of the north country. It is ours by right of the thing we do. It must be ours. And all its secrets. This man’s secret. We must have it, too.”

The man spoke quietly. He spoke without a smile, without emotion. His tawny eyes were expressionless, for all the blaze of light the sun reflected in them.

“You are right to be discontented,” he went on, after the briefest pause. “But I look no longer on Loon Creek or any other jcreek. We get this secret from Marty Le Gros. I promise that.”

“How?”

The youth’s quick eyes were searching his father’s face. He had listened to the thing he had hoped to hear. And now he was stirred to a keen expectancy that was without impatience.

The other shrugged his powerful shoulders.

“He will tell it to us — himself.”

NORTH OF “SIXTY”

7

The black eyes of the youth abruptly shifted their gaze. Something in the curious eyes of his parent communi¬ cated the purpose lying behind his words. But it was in¬ sufficient to satisfy his headlong impulse.

“He? He tell his secret to — us?”

There was derision in the challenge.

“Yes. He will tell — when I ask him.”

“But it is far south and west. It is beyond — our terri¬ tory. It is within the reach of the northern police. There is big risk for you to ask him the — question.”

Again the man with the yellow eyes shook his head.

“Your mother looked for you to be a girl. Maybe her wish had certain effect. Risk? There is no risk. I see none. It is simple. I bend this man to my will. If he will not bend I break him. Yes. He is white. That is as it should be. Someday — sometime the whites of this country will bend, or break before us. They know that. They fear that. The thing they do not yet know is that they bend now. This man, Le Gros, we will see to him without delay.”

He rose from his cross-legged position almost without an effort. He stood up erect, a short, broad-shouldered, virile specimen of manhood in his hard trail clothing. Then he moved swiftly down towards the light canoe at the water’s edge.

The youth, Sate, was slow to follow him. He watched the sturdy figure with unsmiling eyes. He resented the imputation upon his courage. He resented the taunt his father had flung. But his feelings carried nothing deeper than the natural resentment of a war-like, high-strung spirit.

He understood his father. He knew him for a creature of iron nerve, and a will that drove him without mercy. More than that he admitted the man’s right to say the

8

THE LUCK OF THE KID

thing he chose to his son. His attitude was one of curi¬ ous filial submission whatever the hurt he suffered. He may have been inspired by affection, or it may simply have been an expression of the filial obedience and subservience native to the race from which he sprang. But the taunt hurt him sorely. And he jumped to a decision as violent as it was impulsive.

He leapt to his feet, slight, active as a panther, and hastily descended to the water’s edge and joined his parent.

“You think me like a woman, father? You think that?” he demanded hotly.

The other turned eyes that gained nothing of gentleness from their smile.

“No,” he said, and bent again to his work of hauling the little craft clear of the drift-wood that had accumu¬ lated about it.

The youth breathed a deep sigh. It was an expression of relief.

“We put that question to this Le Gros soon? Yes?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Sate nodded, and a great light shone in his black eyes. They were fierce with exultation.

“Then we must waste no time. The way is long. There are many miles to Fox Bluff.” He laughed. “Le Gros,” he went on. “It is a French name, and it means — Tcha ! he exclaimed with all the impetuous feeling which drove him like a whirlwind. “We show him what it means.”

The man with the tawny eyes looked up from his work. For one moment he gazed searchingly into the dark face

of his son. Then he returned again to his work without a word.

CHAPTER II

THE HOLOCAUST

“Man, Fd sooner they’d put out my eyes, or cut out my tongue. I’d sooner they’d set my body to everlasting torture. Look ! Look there ! Yes, and there ! Oh, God ! It’s everywhere the same.” A shaking hand was out- thrust. “Dead ! Mutilated ! Old men ! Old women ! And poor little bits of life that had only just begun. The barbarity ! The monstrousness !”

Marty Le Gros, the missionary of the Hekor River, spoke in a tone that was almost choking with grief. His eyes, so dark and wide, were full of the horror upon which they gazed. His Gallic temperament was stirred to its depths. The heart of the man was overflowing with pity and grief, and outraged parental affection.

Usak, the Indian, his servant, stood beside him. He offered no verbal comment. Llis only reply to the white- man was a low, fierce, inarticulate grunt, which was like the growl of some savage beast.

The men were standing at the entrance to a wide clear¬ ing. The great Hekor River flowed behind them, where the canoe they had just left swung to the stream, moored at the crude landing stage of native manufacture. They were gazing upon the setting of a little Eskimo encamp¬ ment. It was one of the far flung Missions which claimed the spiritual service of Le Gros. He had only just arrived from his headquarters at Fox Bluff, on the

9

10

THE LUCK OF THE KID

river, near by to Fort Cupar the trading post, on his monthly visit, and the hideous destruction he had dis¬ covered left him completely staggered and helpless.

The devastation of the settlement was complete. Dotted about the clearing, grimly silhouetted against a background of dull green woods, stood the charred re¬ mains of a dozen and more log shanties. Broken and burnt timbers littered the open ground, and filled the room spaces where the roofs had fallen. Every habita¬ tion was burnt out stark. Not even the crude household gods had been spared.

But this was the least of the horror the two men gazed upon. The human aspect of the destruction was a thou¬ sand-fold more appalling. The ground was littered with mutilated dead. As the missionary had said, there were old men, old women, and babes torn from their mothers’ arms. Silent and still, death reigned everywhere. The young men ? The young women ? There was no sign of these. And therein lay a further horror which the on¬ lookers were swift to appreciate.

The hideous fascination of the scene held them. But at last it was Usak who broke from under its spell.

“Euralians !” he cried fiercely. And again in his voice rang that note which sounded like the goaded fury of some creature of the forest.

The Euralians!

To the mind of every far northwestern man, in that territory which lies hundreds of miles beyond the effi¬ cient protection of the northern police, the name of this people was sufficient to set stirring a chill of unvoiced terror that was something superstitious. Who they were ? It was almost impossible to say. It was still a problem in the minds of even the farthest travelled trail men and fur hunters. But they were known to all as a scourge of

THE HOLOCAUST

ii

the far flung border which divides Alaska from the ex¬ treme north of Yukon Territory.

The threat they imposed on the region was constantly growing. It had grown lately from the marauding of mere seal ground and fur poachers, who came down out of the iron fastnesses beyond the Arctic fringes of Alaska, where they lived hidden in security beyond the reach of the strong arm of the United States law, into a murder scourge threatening all human life and property within reach of their ruthless operations.

Hitherto. Le Gros had only known them from the tales told by the native pelt hunters, the men who came down to trade at Fort Cupar. He knew no more and no less than the rest of the handful of white folks who peopled the region. The stories he had had to listen to, for all their corroborative nature, were, he knew, for the most part founded upon hearsay. He had listened to them. He always listened to these adventurers. But somehow his gentle, philosophic mind had left him missing something of the awe and dread which beset the hearts of the men whose lurid stories took vivid colour from the stirring emotions which inspired them.

But now, now he was wide awake to the reality of the terror he had so largely attributed to superstitious exag¬ geration. Now he knew that no story he had ever lis¬ tened to could compare with the reality. He was gazing upon a scene of hideous murder and wanton, savage de¬ struction that utterly beggared description.

His feelings were torn to shreds, and his heart cried out in agony of helpless pity.

These poor benighted folk, these simple, peaceful Eskimo, amiable, industrious, yearning only for the bet¬ terment he was able by his simple ministrations to bring into their lives. What were they to claim such barbarity

12

THE LUCK OF THE KID

from a savage horde ? What had they ? What had they done? Nothing. Simply nothing. They were fisher- folk who spent their lives in the hunt, asking only to be left in peace to work out the years of their desperately hard-lived lives. Now — now they were utterly wiped out, a pitiful sacrifice to the insensate lust of this mysteri¬ ous scourge.

Le Gros thrust his cap from his broad forehead. It was a gesture of impotent despair.

“God in Heaven!” he cried, and the words seemed to be literally wrung from him.

“It no use to call Him.”

The Indian’s retort came on the instant. And his tone was harshly ironical.

“What I tell you plenty time,” he went on sharply. “The great God. He look down. He see this thing. He do nothing. No. It this way. Man do this. Yes. Man do this. Man must punish this dam Euralian. I know.”

The missionary turned from the slaughter ground. He searched the Indian’s broad, dusky face. It was a strik¬ ing face, high-boned and full of the eagle keenness of the man’s Sioux Indian forbears. He was a creature of enor¬ mous stature, lean, spare and of tremendous muscle. For all he was civilized, for all he was educated, this devoted servant lacked nothing of the savage which belonged to his red-skinned ancestors.

Servant and master these two comrades in a common Cause stood in sharp contrast. Usak was a savage and nothing could make him otherwise. Usak was a man of fierce, hot passions. The other, the whiteman, except for his great stature, was in direct antithesis. The mission¬ ary was moulded in the gentlest form. He was no priest. He represented no set denomination of religion. He was a simple man of compassionate heart who had devoted his

THE HOLOCAUST

13

life to the service of his less fortunate fellow creatures where such service might help them towards enlighten¬ ment and bodily and spiritual comfort.

He had been five years on his present mission at Fox Bluff. He had come there of his own choice supported by the staunch devotion of a young wife who was no less prepared to sacrifice herself. But now he stood almost alone, but not quite. For though death had swiftly robbed him of a wife’s devotion, it had left him with the price¬ less possession they had both so ardently yearned. The motherless Felice was at home now in the care of Pri-loo, the childless wife of Usak, who had gladly mothered the motherless babe.

Even as he gazed into the Indian’s furious eyes Le Gros’ mind had leaped back to his home at Fox Bluff. A sudden fear was clutching at his heart. Oh, he knew that Fox Bluff was far away to the east and south. He knew that the journey thither from the spot where they stood was a full seven days’ of hard paddling on the great river behind them. But Pri-loo and his infant child were alone in his home. They were utterly without protection ex¬ cept for the folk at the near-by Fort. And these Eura- lians, if they so desired, what was to stop them with the broad highway of the river which was open to all?

He shook his head endeavouring to stifle the fears that had suddenly beset him.

“You’re wrong, Usak,” he said quietly. “God sees all. He will punish — in his own good time.”

Usak’s fierce eyes snapped.

“You say that? Oh, yes. You say that all the time, boss,” he cried. “I tell you — no. You my good boss. You mak me man to know everything so as a whiteman knows. You show me all thing. You teach me. You mak me build big reindeer farm so I live good, an’ Pri-loo

14

THE LUCK OF THE KID

eat plenty all time. Oh yes. I read. I write. I mak figgers. You mak me do this thing. You, my good boss. I mak for you all the time. I big heart for you. That so. But no. I tell you — No! The great God not know this thing. He not know this Euralian wher’ he come from. No. Not no more as you he know this thing. But I know. I — Usak. I know ’em all, everything.”

At another time the missionary would have listened to the man’s quaint egoism with partly shocked amusement. His final statement, however, startled him out of every other feeling.

“You know the hiding-place of these — fiends?” he de¬ manded sharply.

Usak nodded. A curious vanity was shining in the dark eyes which looked straight into the whiteman’s.

“I know him — yes,” he said.

“You’ve never told a thing of this before?”

There was doubt in the missionary’s tone, and in the re¬ gard of his brown eyes.

“I know him,” Usak returned shortly. Then, in a moment, he flung out his great hands in a vehement ges¬ ture. “I say I know him — an’ we go kill ’em all up.”

All doubt was swept from the missionary’s mind. He understood the passionate savagery underlying the Indian’s veneer of civilization. The man was in des¬ perate earnest.

“No.” Le Gros’ denial came sharply. Then his gaze drifted back to the scene of destruction, and a deep sigh escaped him. “No,” he reiterated simply. “This is not

for us. It is for the police. If you know the hiding-place of these - ”

“No good, boss. No,” Usak cried, in fierce disappoint¬ ment. “The p’lice? No. They so far.” He held up one hand with two fingers thrusting upwards. “One _

THE HOLOCAUST

15

two p’lice by Placer. An’ Placer many days far off. No good.” He shrugged his great shoulders. “Us mans all dead. Yes. Pri-loo all dead. Felice dead, too. All mans dead when p’lice come. I know. You not know. You good man. You not think this thing. Usak bad man Indian. He think this thing all time. Listen. I tell you, boss, my good boss. I say the thing in my mind. The thing I know.”

He broke off and glanced in the direction of the river, and his eyes dwelt on the gently rocking canoe. He turned again, and his thoughtful eyes came once more to the scene of horror that infuriated his savage heart. He was like a man preparing to face something of desperate consequence. Something that might grievously disturb the relations in which he stood to the man to whom he believed himself to owe everything he now treasured in life. At last his hands stirred. They were raised, and moved automatically under emotions which no words of his were adequate to express.

“I big trail man,” he began. “I travel far. I go by the big ice, by the big hills, by the big water. I mak trade with all mans Eskimo. I mak big reindeer trade with him Eskimo, same as you show me, boss. So I go far, far all time. So I know this Euralian better as ’em all. I not say. Oh, no. It not good. Now I say. This mans Euralian look all time for all thing. Furs? Yes. They steal ’em furs, an’ kill ’em up all Eskimo. So Eskimo all big scare. Gold? Yes. They look for him all same, too. Oil? Yes. Coal? Yes. All this thing they look, look for all time. Him mans not Eskimo. They not Indian. They not whiteman. No. They damn foreign devil so as I not know. Him all mans live in whiteman house all time. Big house. I know. I find him house.”

The man’s unease had passed. He was absorbed in the

16

THE LUCK OF THE KID

thing he had to tell. Suddenly after a moment’s pause, he raised a hand pointing so that his wondering com¬ panion turned again to the spectacle he would gladly have avoided.

“Boss, you mak ’em this thing! You mak ’em kill all up! You!”

“I?”

Le Gros’ horrified gaze swept back to the face of the accusing man. The Indian was fiercely smiling. He nodded.

“You mak ’em this, but you not know. You not know nothing,” he said in a tone that was almost gentle. “Oh, I say ’em this way, but I not mean you kill ’em all up. You? No. Listen, boss,” he went on, coming close up and lowering his harsh tones. “You kill ’em all up be¬ cause you tell all the mans you mak big find gold on Loon Creek. Boss, you tell the mans. You think all mans good like so as you. So you not hide this thing. You tell ’em, an’ you show big piece gold — two. Now you know how you kill ’em all up.”

Usak waited. The amazement in the eyes of the mis¬ sionary gave place to a grave look of understanding.

“You mean that my story of the discovery of gold I made has caused — this?” He shook his head, and the question in his mild eyes was urgent. “How ? Tell me, Usak, and tell it quick.”

The Indian nodded.

“Oh, it easy. Yes. You tell the story. It go far. It go quick. All mans know it. Gold ! The good boss, Le Gros, find gold ! Him Euralian. Ears, eyes, they all time everywhere. Him hear, too. Maybe him see, too. I not say. Him mak big think. Him say: ‘This man, this good boss, him find gold! How we get it? How we rob him, an’ steal ’em all up gold! Euralian think. It

THE HOLOCAUST

1 7

easy. Le Gros good man. Us go. Us kill ’em all up him Mission. One Mission. Two Mission. All Mis¬ sion. Then us go kill up all mans at Fort Cupar. Kill up Marty Le Gros an’ Usak. Then we get ’em all this gold.’”

There was fierce conviction in every word the man said. For all the crudeness of his argument, if argument it could be called, the force of his convictions carried weight even with a man who was normally devoid of suspicion. Then, too, there was still the horror of the spectacle in the clearing to yield its effect. But greater than all the other’s ^conviction or argument, greater than all else, was the missionary’s surge of terror for the safety of his little baby daughter with her nurse back there in his home.

Le Gros breathed deeply. His dark eyes were full of the gravest anxiety. For the moment he had forgotten everything but the personal danger he had suddenly realised to be threatening.

Usak was watching him. He understood the thing that was stirring behind the whiteman’s troubled eyes. He had driven home his conviction and he was satisfied. Now he awaited agreement with his desire that they should themselves go and deal with these fierce marauders. He saw no reason for hesitation. He saw nothing in his de¬ sire that could make it impossible, hopeless. But then he was a savage and only applied calm reason when passion left him undisturbed. The only thing to satisfy his pres¬ ent mood was to go, even singlehanded if necessary, and retaliate slaughter for slaughter.

Finally it was he again who broke the silence. The spirit driving him would not permit of long restraint.

“Us go, boss?” he urged.

Marty Le Gros suddenly bestirred himself. He shook his head.

1 8 THE LUCK OF THE KID

“No,” he said. Then he pointed at the scene in front of them.

“We do this thing. The poor dead things must be hidden up. They were Christians, and we must give them Christian burial. After that we go. We go back home. There is my little Felice. There is your Pri-loo. They must be made safe.”

The man’s decision was irrevocable. The Indian recognised the tone and understood. But his disappoint¬ ment was intense.

“Us not go?” he cried. His words were accompanied by a sound that was like a laugh, a harsh, derisive laugh. “So,” he said. “We bury ’em all these people. Yes. The good boss say so. Then we go home, an’ mak safe Felice. We mak safe Pri-loo. Then us all get kill up — sure.”

CHAPTER III

THE PLANNING OF LE GROS

It was still broad daylight for all the lateness of the hour. At this time of year darkness was unknown on the Hekor River. The sky was brilliant, with its cloudless summer blue shining with midday splendour.

Marty Le Gros was standing in the doorway of his log- built home, a home of considerable dimensions and com¬ fort for his own hands, and those gentle hands of his dead wife, had erected every carefully trimmed log of it. He had only that day returned, sick at heart with the hideous recollection of the tragedy of his far-off Mission.

He was gazing out over the bosom of the sluggish river, so broad, so peacefully smiling as it stole gently away on its never-ending task of feeding the distant lake whose demands upon it seemed quite insatiable. His mind was gravely troubled, and it was planning the thing which had so suddenly become imperative. In a moment it seemed all the peace, all the quiet delight of his years of ardent labour amongst the Eskimo had been utterly rent and dispelled. He had been caught up in the tide of Usak’s savage understanding of the position of imminent danger in which he and all his belongings were standing. The thing he contemplated must be done, and done at once.

The evening hour, for all its midday brilliance, was no less peaceful than the hours of sundown in lower lati-

19

20

THE LUCK OF THE KID

tudes. He had learned to love every mood of this far northern world from its bitter storms of winter to the tropical heat of its fly and mosquito-ridden summer. It was the appeal of the remote silence of it all; it was the breadth of that wide northern world so far beyond the sheer pretences of civilization; it was the freedom, the sense of manhood it inspired. Its appeal had never once failed him even though it had robbed him of that tender companionship of the woman whose only thought in the world had been for him and his self-sacrificing labours.

At another time, with the perfect content of a mind at ease, he would have stood there smoking his well-charred pipe contemplating the beauty of this world he had made his own. But all that was changed now. The beauty, the calm of it all, only aggravated his moody unease.

Beyond the mile-wide river the western hills rose up to dizzy, snow-capped heights. Their far off slopes were buried under the torn beds of ages-old glacial fields, or lay hidden behind the dark forest-belts of primordial growth. The sight of them urged him with added alarm. He was facing the west, searching beyond the Alaskan border, and somewhere out there, hidden within those scarce trodden fastnesses lay the pulsing heart of the thing he had suddenly come to fear. Usak had warned him. Usak had convinced him on the seven day paddle down the river. So it was that those far-off ramparts, with their towering serrated crowns lost in the heavy mists enshrouding them, no longer appealed in their beauty. Their appeal had changed to one of serious dread.

He avoided them deliberately. His gaze came back to the nearer distance of the river, and just beyond it where the old fur-trading post, which gave its name to the region, stood out dark and staunch as it had stood for

THE PLANNING OF LE GROS

21

more than a century. A heavy stockade of logs, which the storms of the years had failed to destroy, encom¬ passed it. The sight of the stockade filled him with a satisfaction it had never inspired before. He drew a deep breath. Yes, he was glad because of it. He felt that those old pelt hunters had built well and with great wisdom.

Then the wide river slipping away so gently south¬ ward. It was the road highway of man in these remote¬ nesses, passing along just here between low foreshores of attenuated grasses and lichen-covered boulders, lit by the blaze of colour from myriads of tiny Arctic flowers. It was very, very beautiful. But its beauty was of less con¬ cern now than another thought. Just as it was a possible approach for the danger he knew to be threatening, so it was the broad highway of escape should necessity de¬ mand.

For the time Le Gros was no longer the missionary. He was no less a simple adventurer than those others who peopled the region. Spiritual things had no longer place in his thought. Temporal matters held him. His motherless child was there behind him in his home in the care of the faithful Pri-loo.

Gold ! He wondered. What was the curse that clung to the dull yellow creation of those fierce terrestrial fires ? A painful trepidation took possession of him as he thought of the tremendous richness of the discovery which the merest chance had flung into his hands. It had seemed absurd, curiously absurd, even at the time. He had had no desire for any of it. He had not yielded him¬ self to the hardship and self-sacrifice of the life of a sub- Arctic missionary and retained any desire for the things which gold would yield him. Perhaps for this very rea¬ son an ironical fate had forced her favours upon him.

22

THE LUCK OF THE KID

He had been well-nigh staggered at the wealth of his dis¬ covery, and he had laughed in sheer amazed amusement that of all people such should fall to his lot. The dis¬ covery had been his alone. Not even Usak had shared in it. There had been no reason for secrecy, so he had been prepared to give the story of it broadcast to the world.

He had shown his specimens, and he had enjoyed the mystery with which he had enshrouded his discovery when he displayed them to Jim McLeod, the factor at Fort Cupar, and a small gathering of trailmen. This had been at first. And chance alone had saved him from re¬ vealing the locality of his discovery. It came in a flash when he had witnessed the staggering effect which the two great nuggets he offered for inspection had had upon his audience. In that moment he had realised something of the potentiality of the thing that was his.

Instantly re-action set in. Instantly he was himself transformed. The missionary fell from him. He re¬ membered his baby girl, and became at once a plain ad¬ venturer and — father. Someday Felice would grow to womanhood. Someday he would no longer be there to tend and care for her. What could he give her that she might be freed from the hardships waiting upon a lonely girl in a world that had so little of comfort and sympathy to bestow upon the weak? Nothing. So, when they pressed him for the locality whence came his discovery, he — deliberately lied.

More than ever now was he concerned for his secret. More than ever was he concerned for the thing which the savage understanding of Usak had instilled into his simple mind. His secret must be safeguarded at once. What¬ ever the future might have in store for him personally he must make safe this thing for — little Felice.

A sound came to him from within the house. It was

THE PLANNING OF LE GROS

23

the movement of the moccasined feet of Usak’s woman, Pri-loo. He spoke over his shoulder without leaving the doorway.

“Does she sleep, Pri-loo?” he inquired in a low voice. The answer came in the woman's deep, velvet tones.

“She sleep, boss.”

The man bestirred himself. He turned about, and the woman’s dusky beauty came under his urgent gaze.

“Then I go,” he said. “Pm going right over to see Jim McLeod, at the Fort. You just sit around till Usak comes back from the farm. You won’t quit this door¬ way till he comes along. That so? I’ll be back in a while, anyway. Felice’ll be all right? You’ll see to it?”

“Oh, yes. Sure. Felice all right. Pri-loo not quit. No.”

There was smiling confidence and assurance in the woman’s wide eyes, so dark and gentle, yet so full of the savage she really was.

“Good.” Marty Le Gros reached out his hand and patted the woman’s rounded shoulder under the elabor¬ ately beaded buckskin tunic she had never abandoned for the less serviceable raiment of the whitewoman. “Then

1 ga”

The missionary nodded and passed out. And the squaw stood in his place in the doorway gazing after him as he hurried down to the canoe which lay moored at the river bank.

The scene about the Fort was one of leisurely activity. The day’s work was nearly completed for all the sun was high in the heavens. The smoke of camp fires was lolling upon the still evening air, and the smell of cooking food pervaded the entire neighbourhood.

24

THE LUCK OF THE KID

Now the store had emptied of its human, bartering freight, and with the close of the day’s trading, Jim Mc¬ Leod and his young wife, like all the rest, were about to retire to their evening meal.

The man was leaning on the long counter contemplat¬ ing the narrow day book in which he recorded his transac¬ tions with the Eskimo, and those other trailmen who were regular customers. His wife, Hesther, young, slight and almost pretty, was standing in the open door¬ way regarding the simple camp scenes going on within the walls of the great stockade which surrounded their home. She was simply clad in a waist and skirt of some rough plaid material. Her soft brown eyes were alight and smiling, and their colour closely matched the wealth of brown hair coiled neatly about her head.

“Nearly through, Jim?” she inquired after awhile.

The man at the counter looked up.

“It ain’t so bad as it’s been,” he said. “But it’s short. A hell of a piece short of what it should be.” He moved out from behind his counter and came to the woman’s side. “You know, Hes, I went into things last night. We’re three hundred seals down on the year and I’d hate to tell you the number of foxes we’re short. We’re gettin’ the left-overs. That’s it. Those darn Euralians skin the pore fools of Eskimo out of the best, an’ we get the stuff they ain’t no use for. It’s a God’s shame, gal. If it goes on ther’s jest one thing in sight. We’ll be beatin’ it back to civilization, an’ chasing up a grub stake. The company’ll shut this post right down — sure.”

The man glanced uneasily about him. His pale blue eyes were troubled as he surveyed the shelves laden with gaudy trading truck, and finally came to rest on the small pile of furs baled behind the counter ready for the store¬ room. He understood his position well enough. He

THE PLANNING OF LE GROS

25

held it by results. The Fur Valley Trading Company was no philanthropic institution. If Fort Cupar showed no profit then Fort Cupar, so far as their enterprise was concerned, would be closed down.

He was worried. He knew that a time was coming in the comparatively near future when Hesther would need all the comfort and ease that he could afford her. If the Company closed down as it had been threatening him, it would, he felt, be something in the nature of a tragedy to them.

The woman smiled round into his somewhat fat face.

“Don’t you feel sore, Jim,” she said in her cheerful inspiriting way. “Maybe the Good God hands us folk out our trials, but I guess He’s mighty good in passing us compensations. Our compensation’s coming along, boy. An’ I’m looking forward to that time so I don’t hardly know how to wait for it.”

Jim’s blue eyes wavered before the steadfast encourage¬ ment in his wife’s confident, slightly self-conscious smile.

“Yes,” he said, and turned away again to the inadequate pile of furs that troubled him.

Nature had been less than kind to Jim McLeod. His body was ungainly with fat for all his youth. His face was puffy and almost gross, which the habit of clean shaving left painfully evident. In reality the man was keen and purposeful. He was kindly and intensely honest. His one serious weakness, the thing that had driven him to join up with the hard life of the northern adventurers was an unfortunate and wholly irresistible addiction to alcohol. I11 civilization he had failed utterly for that reason alone, and so, with his young wife, he had fled from temptation whither he hoped and believed his curse would be unable to follow him.

“You see, Jim,” Hesther went on reassuringly, “if they

26

THE LUCK OF THE KID

close us down, what then? I guess we’ll be only little worse off. They’ve got to see us down to our home town,

and we can try again. We — ”

The man interrupted her with a quick shake of the

head.

“I don’t quit this north country,” he said definitely. “Ther’s things here if we can only hit ’em. And besides it’s my only chance. An’, Hes, it’s your only chance — with me. You know what I mean, dear.” He nodded. “Sure you do, gal. It means drink an’ hell — down there. It means — ”

The girl laughed happily.

“Have you escaped it here, Jim?” She shook her head. “But I don’t worry so I have you. You’re mine. You’re my husband,” she went on softly. “God gave you to me, an’ whatever you are, or do, why I guess I’d rather have you than any good angel man who lived on tea and pie- talk. Please God you’ll quit the drink someday. You can’t go on trying like you do without making good in the end. But even if you didn’t — well, you’re just mine anyway.”

Jim smiled tenderly into his wife’s up-turned face. And he stooped and kissed the pretty, ready lips. And somehow half his trouble seemed to vanish with the thought of the beautiful mother heart that would so soon be called upon to exercise its natural functions. This frail, warm-hearted, courageous creature was his staunch rock of support. And her simple inspiriting philosophy was the hope which always urged him on.

“That’s fine, my dear,” he said. “You’re the best in the world, but you can’t conjure furs so we can keep this darn old ship afloat. But it don’t do to think that way. We’ll jest think of that baby of ours that’s cornin’ an’ do our best, an’ — Say !” He broke off pointing through

THE PLANNING OF LE GROS

27

the doorway and beyond the gateway of the great stock¬ ade in the direction of the river. “Ther’s Marty cornin' along up from the river — and — he’s in one hell of a hurry.”

The girl turned at once, her gaze following the pointing finger. The great figure of the missionary was hastily approaching. The sight of his hurry was sufficiently unusual to impress them both.

“I didn’t know he’d got back.” Hesther’s tone was thoughtful.

Jim shook his head.

“He wasn’t due back for two weeks.”

“Is there — ? Do you think — ?”

“I guess ther’s something worrying sure. He don’t—”

The man broke off and placed an arm about the woman’s shoulder.

“Say best run along, Hes, an’ see about food. I’ll ask him to eat with us.”

The wife needed no second bidding. She understood. She nodded smilingly and hurried away.

The two men were standing beside the counter. Jim McLeod had his broad back turned to it, and his fat hands, stretched out on either side of him, were gripping the over-hanging edge of it. His pale eyes were gazing abstractedly out through the doorway searching the bril¬ liant distance beyond the river, while a surge of vivid thought was speeding through his brain.

Marty Le Gros was intent upon his friend. His dark eyes were riveted upon the fleshy features of the man upon whom he knew he must depend.

There was a silence between them now. It was the

28

THE LUCK OF THE KID

silence which falls and endures only under the pro- foundest pre-occupation. The store in which they stood, the simple frame structure set up on the ruins of the old-time Fort, which it had displaced, was forgotten. The lavish stock of trading truck, the diminished pile of furs. Neither had cognizance of the things about them. They were concerned only with the thing which Marty had told of. The desperate slaughter, the destruction of his Mission, seven days higher up the river.

After awhile Jim stirred. His gaze came back to the surroundings in which they stood. He glanced over the big room with its boarded walls, adorned here and there with fierce, highly-coloured showcards which he had fastened up to entertain his simple customers. His waver¬ ing eyes paused at the great iron stove which in winter made life possible. They passed on and finally rested on the simple modern doorway through which his young wife had not long passed on her way to prepare food. Here they remained, for he was thinking of her and of their baby so soon to be born. Finally he yielded his hold on the counter and turned on the man who had told of the horror he had so recently witnessed.

“It's bad, Marty,” he said in a low tone. “It’s so bad it’s got me scared. Why ? Why ? Say, it don’t leave me guessing. Does it you?”

He looked searchingly into the steady, dark eyes of the man he had come to regard above all others.

“No,” he went on emphatically. “You’re not guessing. They’ve heard of your gold — these cursed Euralians. This is their way of doin’ things sure. They’ll be along down on us — next.”

The door opened at the far end of the store. Hesther stood for a moment framed in the opening. She gazed quickly at the two men, and realised something of the

THE PLANNING OF LE GROS

29

urgency under which they were labouring. In a mo¬ ment she forced a smile to her eyes.

“Supper’s fixed, Jim,” she said quietly. “Marty’ll join us — sure. Will you both come right along?”

CHAPTER IV

TWO MEN OF THE NORTH

“Guess we got an hour to talk, Marty. Hesther won’t be through her chores in an hour.”

Le Gros nodded.

“Your Hesther’s a good soul, and Pd hate to scare her.”

“Sure. That’s how I feel. I make it you’ve a heap of trouble back of your head.”

“Yes.”

The missionary settled himself more comfortably in the hard chair he had turned from the supper table. He had set it in the shade of the printed cotton curtain that adorned the parlor window.

Jim McLeod was less concerned for the glaring even¬ ing sunlight. He sat facing it, bulking clumsily on a chair a size too small for him. His pale blue eyes gazed out of the window which was closely barred with mosquito-netting.

The last of the supper things had been cleared from the table, and the sounds penetrating the thin, boarded walls of the room told of the labours of the busy housewife going on in the lean-to kitchen beyond. There was no need for these added labours which Hesther inflicted upon herself. There were native women who worked about the store quite capable of relieving her. But Hesther understood that the men wanted to talk in private.

30

TWO MEN OF THE NORTH

3i

Besides, it was her happy philosophy that God made woman to care for the creature comforts of her man, and to relegate that duty, all those duties connected there¬ with, would be an offence which nothing could condone.

Le Gros removed his pipe from his mouth. His eyes were full of reflective unease.

“Yes/’ he reiterated, “and I guess it’s trouble enough to scare more than a woman.”

He thrust a hand into a pocket of his coat. He pulled out a little canvas bag and unfastened the string about its top. He peered at the yellow fragmentary contents. It was of several ounces of gold dust, that wonderful alluvial dust ranging in size from sheer dust to nuggets the size of a schoolboy’s marbles.

He passed the bag across to the trader.

“Get a look at that,” he said. “It’s the wash-up of a single panning. Just one. I only showed you the two big nuggets before — when I — lied to you where I made the ‘strike.’ ”

“Lied? You didn’t get it on Loon Creek?”

“No.”

Jim took possession of the bag of dust. He peered into its golden depths. And the man observing him noted the keen lighting of his eyes, and the instant, absorbed in¬ terest that took possession of him. After a moment the trader looked up.

“One panning?” he demanded incredulously.

“One panning.”

Jim drew a deep breath. It was an expression of that curious covetous thrill at the sight of unmeasured wealth which is so human. He weighed the bag in his hand.

“Ther’s more than three ounces of stuff here,” he said, gazing into the dark eyes opposite him. “Guess it’s nearer four.” Again he breathed deeply. “One pan-

32

THE LUCK OF THE KID

ning!” he exclaimed. Then followed an ejaculation which said far more than any words.

Marty Le Gros nodded.

“You reckon it’s this bringing them down — our way,” he said. “That’s what Usak reckons, too. Maybe I feel you’re both right — now. I was a fool to give my yarn out. I should have held it tight, and just let you know quietly. Yes, I see it now. You see, I didn’t think. I guess I didn’t understand the temptation of it. When I lit on that ‘strike’ it scarcely interested me a thing, and I didn’t see why it should worry anybody else. I forgot human nature. No, it wasn’t till the gold spirit suddenly hit me that I realised anything. And when it did it made me lie — even to you.”

Jim twisted up the neck of the bag and re-set the lash¬ ings about it. Then, with a regretful sigh, he passed the coveted treasure back to its owner.

“Let’s see. How long is it since you handed out your yarn? It’s more’n two months. Two months,” he re¬ peated thoughtfully. “They’ve had two months on Loon Creek, an’ they’ve drawn blank. There — Yes, I see. They’re coming back on you. They started by way of your Mission, an’ they mean you to git a grip on their way of handlin’ the thing. Man, it sets my blood red hot. They’ve cleaned this region out of furs, an’ every other old trade, so I’m sittin’ around waitin’ for my people to close us down, and now — this. Is there no help? Ain’t ther’ a thing we can do? God! It makes me hot.”

The blue eyes were fiercely alight. There was no wavering in them now. Passionate desire to fight was stirring in the trader. And somehow his emotion seemed to rob his body of its appearance of physical ungainliness.

The missionary seemed less disturbed as he set the bag

TWO MEN OF THE NORTH

33

back in his pocket. He had passed through his bad time. Now his decision was taken. Now he was no longer the missionary but a simple man of single purpose which he intended to put through in such way as lay within his power, aided by the friendship of Jim McLeod.

A shadowy smile lit his eyes.

“Yes. It’s the gold now,” he said, with an expressive gesture. “But,” he went on, with a shake of the head, “for the life of me I can’t get behind the minds of these mysterious northern — devils. Why, why in the name of all that’s sane and human should these Euralians descend on a pitiful bunch of poor, simple fisher-folk, and butcher and burn them off the face of the earth? It’s senseless, inhuman barbarity. Nothing else. If they want my secret, if they want the truth I denied to you as well as the rest, it’s here, in my head,” he said, tapping his broad forehead with a forefinger. “Not out there with those poor dead creatures who never harmed a soul on God's earth. If they want it they must come to me. And when they Come they — won’t get it.”

The man was transformed. Not for a moment had he raised his voice to any tone of bravado or defiance. Cold decision was shining in his eyes and displayed itself in the clip of his jaws as he returned his pipe to his mouth. Jim waited. His moment of passionate protest had passed. He was absorbed in that which he felt was yet to come.

“Here, listen, Jim,” Le Gros went on, after the briefest pause, with a sharp intake of breath which revealed some¬ thing of the reality of the emotions he was labouring under. “You’re my good friend, and I want to tell you things right here and now, to-night. That’s why I came over in a hurry. You’ve always known me as a mis¬ sionary. The man in me was kind of lost. That’s so.

3

34

THE LUCK OF THE KID

But now you’ve got to know me as a man. You were the first I told of my ‘strike.’ You were the first I showed those nuggets to. And you guessed they were worth five thousand dollars between ’em.”

“All o’ that. Maybe ten thousand dollars.”

Jim’s fleshy lips fondled the words.

“When I showed you that stuff I was the missionary. The thing began to fall off when I watched you looking at them. But it wasn’t till some of the trailmen, and even the Indians, heard the story, and showed their amazing lust for the thing I’d discovered, that I got a full grip on all that yellow stuff meant. Then I forgot to be a mis¬ sionary and was just a man the same as they were. I was startled, shocked. I was half scared. I saw at a glance I’d made a bad break in telling my story, and so, when you all asked me the whereabouts of the strike, I— lied.”

He paused, passing a hand over his forehead, and smoothed back his ample black hair.

“An’ it wasn’t Loon Creek?”

Jim smiled as he put his question.

“I’m glad,” he added as the other shook his head.

“You’re glad?”

“I surely am.” Jim spread out his hands. “Here, Marty,” he cried, “I was sick to death hearing you hand out your yarn to the boys. I kind of saw a rush for Loon Creek cornin’ along and beating you — an’ me — right out of everything. Knowing you I thought it was truth. But I’m mighty glad you — lied.”

Le Gros sat back in his chair. His eyes turned from the man before him.

“Knowing me?” he said, with a gentle smile of irony. “I wonder.” He shook his head. “I didn’t know myself. No, you didn’t know me. I’m different now. Quite

TWO MEN OF THE NORTH

35

different. And it’s that gold changed me. Do you know how — why? No.” He shook his head. “I guess you don’t. I’ll tell you. It’s Felice. My little Felice. And that’s why I came right over to see you, and tell you the things in my mind.”

Jim shifted his chair as the other paused. He leant forward with his forearms resting on his knees. The thought of the gold was deep in his mind. There was personal, selfish interest in him as well as interest for that which the other had to tell him about his baby, Felice.

Marty drew a deep breath. His eyes turned from the man before him. The intensity of Jim’s regard left him with an added realisation of the power that gold exercises over the simplest, the best of humanity.

“If I live, Jim, I’m going to let you into this ‘strike/ Maybe it’ll help you, and leave you free of your Com¬ pany,” he said gently. “You shall be in it what you folk call ‘fifty-fifty.’ If I die you shall be in it the same way, only it’ll be with my baby girl. And for that I want to set an obligation on you. Can you stand for an obliga¬ tion?”

“Anything for you, Marty,” Jim replied at once, and earnestly. “Anything for you,” he repeated. “And I’ll put it through with the last breath of life.”

“Good.” The missionary’s gaze came back to the trader’s face, and a smiling relief shone in his eyes. He nodded. “You see, with these wretched Euralians on the war path, and with me standing around in their path, you can never tell. Maybe I’ll live. Maybe I won’t. If I live you’ll be up to your neck in this ‘strike’ auyway. If I die you’ll work it for Felice, and hand her her ‘fifty’ of it when the time comes. Is it good?”

“It’s so good I can’t tell you.”

36

THE LUCK OF THE KID

“Will you swear to do this, Jim ? Will you swear on — on the thing you hold most sacred ?”

“I’ll swear it on the little life that’s just goin’ to be born to Hesther an’ me. If a thing happens to you, Marty, so you lose the daylight, your little Felice shall be seen right, and all you can wish for her shall be done, though you never tell me a thing of this ‘strike.’ ”

The simple honesty looking out of Jim’s eyes eased the troubled heart of the older man. He nodded.

“I knew it would be that way. I’m glad,” he said. “I’m not passing you thanks. No thanks could tell you the thing you’ve made me feel, Jim.” He laughed shortly. “Thanks? I guess it would be an insult when a boy like you is ready to set himself to carrying the whole of another feller’s burden.”

Again he passed a hand over his hair.

“This is how I’ve planned, Jim,” he went on, after a moment. “I’m going right back home now, and I’m going to pass some hours drawing out the plan and general map of the ‘strike.’ I’ll write it out in the last detail. Then I’ll set it in a sealed packet and hand it to you. You’ll have it, and keep it, and you won’t open it while I’m alive. It’s just so the thing shan’t be lost if they kill me up. See? If I live we’ll work this thing together at ‘fifty-fifty.’ That way there won’t be need for you to open up those plans. Do you get it? The whole thing is just a precaution for you and my little Felice. You see, if I pass over I’ve nothing else to hand that poor little kiddie. It’s her bit of luck.”

Jim sat back in his chair and began to refill his pipe which had gone out. For some moments his stirring emotions prevented speech, while the smiling eyes of the missionary watched his busy, clumsy fingers. At last, however, he looked up. And as he did so he thrust the

TWO MEN OF THE NORTH

37

tobacco hard into the bowl of his pipe, and the force of his action was no less than the headlong rush of words that surged to his lips.

‘'Oh, it’s Hell ! Simple Hell !” he cried passionately. “What have we done that we should be cursed by these murdering Euralians. They’re not going to get you, Marty. We’ve got to fix that. Come right over here. Quit your shanty, an’ bring Felice, an’ Pri-loo, an’ Usak right over here. It’s no sort of swell place, this old frame house the Company’s set up for me. But the stockade outside it stands firm twelve feet high right around. And I’ve guns an’ things plenty to defend it. I can corral plenty trailmen who’d be glad enough to scrap these folk, and we could fight ’em an’ beat ’em, till we get help from Placer where the p’lice can collect a posse of ‘specials.’ We’re not goin’ to sit down under this thing. It’s not my way. An’ it’s not goin’ to be your way. We’ll fight. Come right over to-morrow, Marty. We’ll just be crazy for you to come, and - ”

Le Gros interrupted him with a gesture.

“That’s all right boy,” he said. “I know just how you feel and I’m glad. But you don’t know the thing you’re trying to bring on your Hesther, and your unborn baby. You haven’t seen the thing I’ve seen. You haven’t seen old men and women* butchered and mutilated, lying stark on the ground. You haven’t seen babes scattered around legless, armless, headless. And the young men and young women — gone.” He shook his head, and the horror of recollection was in his eyes. “No. You haven’t seen those things, and you haven’t remembered that I carry this curse about with me. Sheltering here I bring it to your door. To you, and your Hesther, and your babe. With me across the river there you’re free and safe. No. I stand or fall by my wits,

38

THE LUCK OF THE KID

my luck, my own efforts. You are doing for me the only thing I ask in safeguarding my secret and caring for little Felice. That’s what I ask. And you’ve promised me. That’s all, Jim, my friend, and now I’ll get along back and fix those plans.”

He rose from his chair, tall, strong and completely calm. And the trader rose, too, and gazed up into the other’s face.

“I’ll take all those chances, Marty,” he said deliberately.

“And Hesther?”

“And my unborn baby. Yes.”

Marty Le Gros thrust out his hand and the two men gripped.

“You’re a good friend, Jim. But my mind’s made up. While I’ve life I’ll fight my own fight. When I’m dead please God you’ll do — what I can’t. So long Jim,” he added wringing the fleshy hand he was still gripping. “Til be along over with those plans before you eat your breakfast.”

CHAPTER V

THE LUCK OF THE KID

The brilliant June night was like a midsummer day. The deathless sun knew no rest for all the Arctic world was wrapt in slumber. The stillness of it all, the perfect quiet; it was a world of serene solitude, with only the sounds which came from unseen creatures, and the rusts : of stirred vegetation caught on a gentle zephyr, t j whisper of the life prevailing.

Marty Le Gros was back in his own home. He was at the little table which served him for such writing as his work as missionary entailed. It was a simple apart¬ ment characteristic of the habitation he had set up. The walls were plastered with a dun-coloured mud smoothed down but retaining all its crudeness which nothing could disguise. The room was of considerable extent. Its furnishing was no less primitive than its walls, but also no less robust. Every article was of his own design and manufacture, and that which it lacked in refinement it made up in substance. Chairs were rawhide-strung, square and solid. The table had legs of saplings, and a top that was made from packing cases obtained from Jim McLeod. The ceiling above his head was of cotton. So were the two windows which were flung open to admit air through the mosquito netting beyond them.

Yes, it was all very crude. Nevertheless it lost nothing of its sense of home. The floor was strewn with sun-

39

40

THE LUCK OF THE KID

dried furs, and there were shelves of well-read books. The man’s simple sleeping bunk was curtained off in one comer near by to the doorway which communicated with a lesser room where slept his motherless child. And there was still another doorway which led to a third room. It was the kitchen place where Usak and Pri-loo slept, and where the latter prepared such food as was needed.

There was no sound in the place but that of the man’s occasional movements and the scratching of the pen with which he was working. Felice was asleep in the next room in the cot which he and his dead wife had long since fashioned and adorned. Pri-loo, awaiting the return of her man from the reindeer farm, which was his work, had finally yielded her vigil and retired to her blankets in the kitchen. It was the calving season down at the farm, and as likely as not Usak would not return to her for many hours.

The missionary had applied himself to his task with that close concentration which betokened the urgency of his desire. He had been at work for over an hour. Now he sat with his great body hunched over the table, and, with poised pen, was at last regarding his completed work. The large sheet of paper stared back at his darkly brooding eyes, and the careful tracery on its surface spread from one end of it to the other. It was the draw¬ ing of a wide, winding river. And along its entire course was dotted every detail of natural formation which his keen memory supplied him with. Hills were carefully drawn. Woodland bluffs were marked with due regard to their extent. Everything that could serve to guide the explorer was there set out. Every title for each natural feature was inscribed, and one wide stretch of river fore¬ shore was outlined in red ink and inscribed with the words “mouth of creek.”

THE LUCK OF THE KID

4i

It was complete. It was complete with that care and consideration which spoke of the tremendous anxiety- lying behind the man’s purpose.

At last he abandoned his scrutiny and a deep sigh escaped him. Then he leisurely picked up his tobacco bag and began to fill his pipe. Leaning back in his chair his gaze sought the daylight beyond the window, and in a moment he became absorbed in profound, wakeful dreaming and his pipe remained forgotten.

He had reached another great crisis in his simple life. He knew it. He understood to the last detail the ominous significance of the thing he had just completed. His thought began by searching ahead, but swiftly it was caught and flung back into the deep channels of memory such as never fail to claim when the heart of man is deeply stirred.

A wide panorama of the past swept into his view. It began, as everything seemed to begin with him now, at that time when he and his young wife had taken their final decision to move northwards where their spiritual desires could find expression in the wilderness of untamed Nature. He remembered, how keenly he remembered, the surge of thrilling anticipation with which they had embarked on their mission. The bitter hardships they had had to endure, and the merciless labours that had been theirs to make even their simple lives possible here on the Hekor River, which followed so nearly the course of the Arctic Circle. He remembered the selfless kindness of Jim McLeod and his gentle wife. How they had helped him with everything that lay in their power. Yes, it was a happy memory which eased the strain of the thing besetting him now.

Then had come that first great happiness and finally disaster. Jim was looking forward now to just the same

42

THE LUCK OF THE KID

moment in his life. That first-born child. It was an ineffaceable landmark in the life of any man.

He sighed. He was contemplating again the tragedy which had followed hard in the wake of his overwhelm¬ ing happiness. Poor little Jean. Poor, poor little woman.

Her happiness was short enough lived, and his - In

his simple, earnest fashion he prayed God that Jim and Hesther should never know a similar disaster. He wondered if little Jean knew of the thing he was doing now. And if she would have approved had she been there to witness it. Yes. Somehow he felt that her full approval would have been his. It was for Felice. He desired nothing for himself but to be permitted to carry on the labours of his Mission. But for Felice -

He stirred uneasily. The scene of his devastated Mission lit again before his mental gaze and tortured him. And suddenly he sat up and carefully folded the annotated map he had prepared. He finally enclosed it in a piece of American cloth, tied it up securely, and sealed it with the fragment of wax he had discovered for that purpose. Then he stood up and gazed about him. His dark eyes took in every happy detail of the home which had served him so long. And presently the man of peace found himself contemplating the cartridge belt, with its two great revolvers protruding from their holsters, which was hanging from its nail on the log wall.

For some moments he regarded it without any change of expression. Then of a sudden he stirred and moved quickly over to it. He removed first one gun from its holster, then the other. He examined them. They were old-fashioned, and their chambers were empty. Very deliberately, almost reluctantly, he loaded them in each chamber. Then with another sigh he returned them to the holsters where they belonged.

THE LUCK OF THE KID

43

He turned away quickly. It was as though he detested the thing he had just done and was anxious to rid himself of the memory of it. So he passed into the room which he had always shared with his wife, but which now was given up to the atom of humanity which was the priceless treasure of his life.

•••••••

The man was sitting on the stool set beside the simple bedcot. It was the stool which Pri-loo was wont to occupy when watching over the slumbers of the child she had taken to her mother heart. He was gazing down upon the sleeping babe as she lay there under the coloured blankets and patch-work quilt which was the daintiest covering with which he had been able to provide her.

Fair-haired and sweetly cherubic the child lay breath¬ ing in that calm, almost imperceptible fashion so sure an indication of perfect health. Her colouring was exquisite. A subtle tracery of blue veins was plainly visible beneath the delicate, fair skin. She was sweetly pretty, and her brief four years of life had afforded her a generous development sufficient to satisfy the most exacting parent.

The man’s dark eyes were infinitely tender as he re¬ garded the sleeping child. Gold ? There was no treasure in the world comparable with that, which, with her dying effort, his well-loved wife had presented him. Felice — little Felice. The smiling, prattling creature, the thought of whose wide blue eyes was unfailing in lightening even the darkest shadows which the cares of her father’s life imposed upon him.

He feasted himself now on the beauty which was so like to that of the mother who had given up her life for his desire. And as he gazed a surge of deep, tender feeling recalled a hundred happy memories. And so for awhile he was filled with smiling thought.

44

THE LUCK OF THE KID

But it passed. It passed with a suddenness that left a cold dew of fear upon his brow for all the warmth of the Arctic summer night. For even as memory had transported him to the days wherein his life had known no shadow, so it had brought him again to the recollection of the scene of mutilation he had witnessed at his Mis¬ sion. There he had seen children, younger even than Felice, lying upon the ground limbless, headless, almost unrecognisable trunks.

An unconscious movement stirred him, and he shook his head as though in denial of his thought. Then he gazed down upon the sealed packet he was carrying in his hand. For long moments he looked at it, and then, of a sudden, his eyes came back to the face of the sleeping babe, and words came in a low, tender whisper.

“No, kiddie,” he murmured, “not while I have life. My poor Jean gave you to me, little bit. And you’re just mine. All I am in the world will defend you from harm such — such as — God! No. Not that. Psha! No, it couldn’t be.” He wiped his forehead with a hand that was unsteady. Then he forced a smile to his eyes just as he forced his fears back and strove to think of the thing he had spent so many hours preparing. He held up the packet in his hand before the child’s closed eyes. “This wasn’t sent my way for nothing,” he whispered. “It’s your luck, little kid. Yours. It’s for you, half of it. And — and if I should fail — well, there’s others’ll see you get it. My little kiddie. My little - ■”

He broke off. The man’s tender admonition died on his lips which closed almost with a snap. His whole attitude underwent a change. He sat rigid and listening, and his dark eyes were turned as though seeking to peer over his shoulder.

. It was a sound. A sound that came from beyond the

THE LUCK OF THE KID

45

outer room. It was not from the direction of the kitchen place where Usak might be returning home. No. It came from beyond the front door of the shanty which was not the way Usak would come.

The missionary made no movement. Every sense was straining, every faculty was alert. Sounds came in the night. It was a common enough thing. But he had that in his mind now which gave to any sound in the night the possibility of a new interpretation.

The moments passed. The tension eased. And again the father’s eyes came back to the face of the sleeping child. But it was only for an instant. Of a sudden he dropped the sealed packet into the child’s cot and leapt to his feet.

Headlong he ran for the open doorway, and the purpose in his mind was obvious. He passed it, and ran for the loaded guns hanging upon the wall of his room. But he failed to reach them. A shot rang out and he stumbled. Putting forth a superhuman effort he sought to recover himself. But his legs gave under him and he crashed to the floor with the first tearful cry of his wakened child ringing in his ears.

CHAPTER VI

THE EURALIANS

Marty Le Gros lay sprawled on the ground. He had scarcely moved from the position in which he had fallen. Pri-loo, her handsome eyes aflame with fierce anger, was standing just within the doorway leading to the kitchen place. A man stood guard over her, a small dark-skinned creature whose eyes slanted with a suggestion of Mongol obliqueness. It was obvious that she was only held silent under threat of the gun that her guard held ready. Two other dark-skinned strangers moved about the living room clearly searching, and a third stood looking on, propped against the table which served the missionary for writing. Beyond the movements of the searching men, and such disturbance as the process of their work entailed, and the insistent cries of the child Felice in the adjoining room, an ominous silence prevailed.

The expression of the almost yellow eyes of the man at the table was intense with cold, deliberate purpose. It was without one gleam of pity for the fallen missionary. It was without concern for the angry woman held silent in the doorway. He was regarding only the movements of the men acting under his orders. He, like the man in charge of Pri-loo, was clad in the ordinary garb customary to whitemen of the northern trail. But the others, the searchers, had no such pretensions. They

46

THE EURALIANS 47

were in the rough clothing native to the Eskimo when Arctic summer prevails.

After awhile the terrified cries of the suddenly awakened Felice died down to the intermittent sobs which so surely claim the sympathies of the mother-heart. Even Pri-loo’s fierce native anger yielded before their appeal. Distress stirred her, and only the threatening gun held her from rushing to comfort the helpless babe who was her treasured charge.

The great prone figure of the missionary on the ground stirred. It was the preliminary to returning conscious¬ ness. Quite abruptly his head was raised. Then, by a great effort, he propped himself on to his elbow and gazed about him. Finally his dark, troubled eyes came to rest on the face of the still figure of the man who stood regarding him.

There was a searching pause while eye met eye. Then the missionary sought to moisten his lips with a tongue little less parched.

“Well ?” he demanded in the low, husky voice of a man whose strength is rapidly waning.

The man at the table turned to the searchers whose task seemed complete.

“Nothing?” he said. And his tone was almost with¬ out question.

One of the searchers offered a negative gesture. There was no verbal reply.

“So.”

The man at the table inclined his dark, close-cropped head and turned again to the man on the ground.

“You’re going to tell us of that gold ‘strike,’ Le Gros,” he said simply, without the slightest sign of foreign or native accent. “You’re going to tell us right away. Because if you don’t we’ve a way of making you. Do

48

THE LUCK OF THE KID

you get that? You’d better get it. It’ll be easier for you and for those belonging to you. We’ve come many miles to hear about that ‘strike,’ and we aren’t returning empty- handed. Do you fancy handing your story? Or - ”

“You’ll get nothing from me.”

Marty Le Gros’ voice had suddenly become harsh and furious. All his ebbing strength was flung into his retort.

The man with the cold eyes shook his head.

“I shall,” he said, with calm decision. “I’m not here to ask twice. You’ve seen the — remains — of your Mis¬ sion, ’way up the river. Doesn’t' that tell you about things? It should — if you have sense.”

The man’s threat was the more deeply sinister for the . frigidity of his tone.

The missionary’s eyes lit. For all his growing weak¬ ness, for all the suffering the wound in his side was causing him, a tinge of hot colour mounted to his pallid cheeks.

“I tell you you’ll get nothing from me,” he said, and the strength of his voice had ominously lessened. He raised his body till he was supporting himself on one hand which rested in the pool of his own life-blood stain¬ ing the earthen floor. His dark eyes were fiercely de¬ fiant as they gazed up at the other.

The Euralian leader nodded.

“We’ll see.” Then he pointed at Pri-loo standing in the doorway watching the pitiful duel, hardly realising the full meaning of what she beheld. “You see her? Watch !”

There was a sign. It was given on the instant. And the dying man gasped in horror.

“Your woman, eh?” The Euralian went on. “Well, she won’t be any longer. Are you going to — speak?”

THE EURALIANS

49

"‘She’s not my woman. She’s the wife of Usak. If — if you harm her it’s — it’s sheer, wanton - ”

The words died on the missionary’s lips. There was a sharp report. It was the gun of the man guarding Pri- loo fired at close range. It rang out tremendously in the narrow confines of the room. The foster-mother of Felice was shot through the head, which was completely shattered. The poor dead creature dropped where she stood, without a sound, without a cry. To the last mo¬ ment of her staunch life her angry eyes had defied her captors.

The dying missionary reeled. He would have fallen again to the ground. But the searchers were beside him, and they seized and held him lest he should miss a single detail of that which was intended for his infliction.

“Are you going to — say about it?”

The Euralian’s eyes lit as he made his taunting demand. The tearful cries of the terrified Felice were again raised in response to the deafening report of the gun that had slain her foster-mother.

But Marty Le Gros’ strength was oozing through the wound that had laid him low. The shock of the hideous massacre of the helpless Pri-loo was overwhelming. Con¬ sciousness was nearing its extremity.

“Not a word.”

The retort was whispered. The missionary had no strength for more.

The man at the table bestirred himself. Perhaps he realised that opportunity was slipping away from him. A swift, imperative sign to the youth who had slain Pri-loo, and the next moment he had passed into the room whence came the redoubled cries of the distracted Felice.

The closing eyes of the dying man widened on the

4

50

THE LUCK OF THE KID

instant. A surge of hopeless terror stared out of their dark depths. His lolling head was lifted erect and it turned in the direction of the door through which the Euralian had vanished. In supreme anguish he realised the thing contemplated. His child! Felice! In a spasm of recollection he saw again the headless trunks of the children of his Mission. The man at the table was forgotten. His own sufferings. Even he had forgotten the thing he was trying to safeguard. Felice ! His babe ! They -

“If the woman wasn’t yours, Le Gros, the child is,” the man at the table taunted. “Well? Will you — talk?”

The terrible yellow eyes were irresistible. There was no escape from them. And Marty Le Gros forgot every¬ thing but the anguish which the taunt inspired.

“Not her! Not that!” he cried. “Yes,” he went on

urgently. “You can have it. For God’s sake spare - ”

He gasped and his head lolled helplessly. But again he rallied.

“The plans? The plans you made to-night? Where are they? Quick!”

The man at the table had moved. He had approached his victim. His voice was fiercely urgent for he realised the thing that was happening.

“They’re — there,” Marty Le Gros gasped. “They’re — in — her — ”

It was his supreme effort, and it remained uncom¬ pleted. His words died away in a gasping jumble of sounds that rattled in his throat. For one brief spasm his arms struggled with the men supporting him. Then his head lolled forward again, and his body limpened. A moment later the supporting hands were removed and Marty Le Gros fell back on the ground — dead.

THE EURALIANS

5i

The yellow eyes of the leader were turned on the young man who had just re-entered the room bearing in his arms the screaming Felice.

“Too late,” he said coldly. “You’ve blundered, Sate. It was that clumsy shot of yours. Maybe you’ll learn someday. Tcha!”

Sate dropped the screaming child roughly to the ground. His black eyes sparkled. There was triumph as well as resentment in them.

“That so? Oh, yes. Well, here are the plans. He sealed them when they were finished. We saw that. Eh?”

He held out the packet he had found in Felice’s cot, and the older man accepted it without a sign. In a mo¬ ment he withdrew a sheath knife and severed the fasten¬ ings. Flinging off the outer cover he unfolded the contents. A glance was sufficient and he looked up with¬ out a smile.

“Set fire to the place,” he ordered coldly.

Then he glanced down at the dead man. Felice had crawled up close to the body of her father. Her baby arms were thrust about his neck as though clinging to him for protection. Or maybe it was only in that fond baby fashion she had long since learned. Her cries had wholly ceased. Even in death the comfort of her father’s presence and proximity were all sufficient to banish her every terror.

“Take her out,” he ordered, without a shadow of softening. “Set her somewhere near by in the bluff. Maybe the folk across the river will come along and find her when they see the fire. If they don’t, well, maybe the — wolves will.”

52

THE LUCK OF THE KID

Usak gazed about him in a hopeless amazement. He was standing before the smoking remains of Marty Le Gros’ Mission. He had hastened home from the farm which lay several miles away to the east. In the midst of his work amongst his herd of reindeer he had suddenly observed the smoke cloud lolling heavily upon the near horizon, and without a moment’s hesitation he had abandoned the new-born fawn he was attending to ascertain its cause.

He had been filled with alarm at the sight. There was nothing he knew of in the neighbourhood to fire but the bluff that sheltered the Mission and the house itself. So he had come at once at a speed that only he could have achieved.

His worst fears were realised. It was not the shelter¬ ing bluff. That was still standing. It was the house itself, that home which had been his shelter as well as that of those others.

For some moments he contemplated the scene without any attempt at active investigation. It almost seemed as if his keen wit had somehow become dulled under the shock of his discovery. Just at first it was the fire itself that pre-occupied. Somehow he did not associate it with disaster to the occupants. That did not occur to him. Doubtless at the back of his mind lay the conviction that the missionary, and Pri-loo, and little Felice had crossed the river and gone to McLeod’s store for shelter. That was at first.

A light breeze drifted the smoke down upon him. For a moment he was enveloped in it. Then it passed. A fresh current of wind — a cross current — drifted it back whence it came, and the man which the passing of the smoke revealed had somehow been transformed.

Amazement was no longer in his black eyes. They

THE EURALIANS

53

were alight and burning with a passion of anxiety. That cloud of smoke had borne upon his sensitive nostrils the smell of burning flesh.

Usak moved up to the charred walls. They were hot and smoking. Most of them were in a state of wreckage, for the roof had fallen and many of the logs had crashed from the tops of the walls. He passed round them, a swift-moving, silent figure seeking access where the smouldering fire would permit. The back door of the kitchen-place was impossible. Flames were still devour¬ ing that which remained. The windows were surrounded with hot, fiery timbers. The front door giving on to the sitting room alone seemed possible. But here again was fire, though it had almost burnt out.

But the man’s mood was not such as to leave him standing before obstacles. In his half savage heart was a native terror of fire. But just now all that was com¬ pletely overborne by emotions that were irresistible. The smell of burning flesh was strong in his nostrils, he even fancied he could taste something of it on his lips.

Just for one instant he paused before the doorway measuring the chances of it all. Then he leapt forward and vanished into the smoking ruin.

• • • • • • •

Jim McLeod was standing in the doorway of his store. He had been roused from sleep by a furious hammering on the door. He had flung on a heavy skin coat over his night clothes and hastily thrust a gun in each pocket of it. Then he had cautiously proceeded to investigate, for the memory of his long talk with Marty Le Gros was still with him.

But his apprehensions had been swiftly allayed, or at least changed, for the harsh deep tones of Usak had replied to his challenge through the barred door.

54

THE LUCK OF THE KID

Now he was listening to the thing the Indian had to say and the horror of the story he listened to found re¬ flection in his pale blue eyes.

“They’ve killed ’em an’ burnt ’em out?” he cried in¬ credulously as the furious man broke off the torrent of the first rush of his story.

Usak’s black eyes were aflame with a light that was bordering on frenzy. The infant Felice, wrapped in a blanket, was in his arms and clinging to him with her tiny arms about the man’s trunk-like neck, silent, wide- eyed, but content with a presence understood and loved.

“Here I tell you. I tell you quick so no time is lost. I work by the farm all night. So. It is the season when I work that way. The young deer need me. Oh, yes. So I work. Then I mak look up in the corral. There is smoke to the west. Smoke. I look some more, an’ I think quick. Smoke? Fire? What burns that way? Two things, maybe. The bluff. The house of Marty Le Gros. So I mak quick getaway. Oh, yes. Very quick. Then I come by the house. It all burn. Yes. No house. Only burning logs all break up. So I stand an’ think. An’ while I stand I smell. So. I smell the cooking of meat. Meat. First I have think Marty an’ Pri-loo mak big getaway to here. Then, when I smell this thing, I think — no. Not getaway.”

“They were — burnt?”

Jim’s horror added fuel to the fire of Usak’s surging frenzy. He nodded.

“Yes. They burn. They bum all up. But not so they die. Oh, no.” The Indian shook his head, and the brooding light in his black eyes suddenly blazed up afresh. “Listen,” he cried, in his fierce way. “I tell you. I — Usak. I see him all. I go mad. Oh, yes. I think of Pri-loo. I think of little Felice. I think of the good

THE EURALIANS

55

Marty. So I go into the house just wher’ I can, I go by the door which him burn right out. Then I find ’em. Then I find ’em all dead. An’ the fire cook ’em lak — meat.”

The great rough creature thrust the greasy fur cap back from his forehead. There was sweat on his low brow. But it was the sweat inspired by his fierce emotions.

He turned away in desperation, and so his black eyes were hidden from the search of the trader’s. A curious feeling of helplessness in the midst of the storm of rage besetting him threatened overwhelming. There was a moment even when the soft arms about his neck seemed to be stifling him. But his weakness passed in a flash. The next moment the furious onslaught of the savage in him held sway.

“But the fire not kill him,” he cried, his tone lowered to something like a snarl of savagery. “I look. I find ’em, Pri-loo. My woman. I find her, yes, an5 I think I go crazy sure. They kill her — my woman. My good woman. They shoot her by the head. It all break up. Oh, yes. My woman. They kill her — dead.” His voice died out and his black eyes were turned away again to hide that which looked out of them. But in a moment he went on. “Then I find him. The good boss, Marty. Him belly all shoot to pieces. Oh, yes. They kill him all up dead, too. Then I look for Felice. Little Felice.” His arms tightened about the child nestling against his shoulder. “No Felice. She all gone. I think maybe they eat her. I think. I look. No. No Felice. So I go out an’ think some more. I stand by bluff. Then I find ’em. She mak big cry out. She by the bluff. So I find her. They throw her in the bush in the blanket of my woman, Pri-loo.”

56

THE LUCK OF THE KID

The man paused again and a deep breath said far more of the thing he was enduring than his words told. After a moment he nodded his head, and his lank, black hair brushed the fair face of the child in his arms.

“So I bring her, an’ you tak her. You, an’ your good whitewoman tak her like your own. I go. I find this Euralian mans. I know ’em wher’ they camp. Oh, yes. Usak big hunter. Shoot plenty much good. I kill ’em all up dead. They kill ’em my woman, Pri-loo. My good woman. They kill ’em my good boss, Marty. So I kill ’em, too. Now I go. You tak Felice. Bimeby I come back when all Euralian kill dead. Then I tak Felice. I raise her like the good boss, by the farm. It for her. Yes. That farm. Marty love little Felice all the time. He mak all good thing for Felice. So I mak same all good thing, too. That so.”

Jim McLeod made no attempt to reply. Somehow it seemed impossible even to offer comment in face of the terrible story the man had brought to him, and the simple irrevocable purpose in his spoken determination. He held out his arms to receive the murdered man’s child, and Usak, with infinite gentleness, released himself from the clinging arms so reluctant to part from him.

“You tak ’em. Yes,” he said as he passed the babe over. “Bimeby I come back. Sure.”

Jim folded the child to his broad bosom in clumsy, un¬ accustomed fashion. He was hardly conscious of the thing he did. His horrified imagination was absorbed by the terrible scene he was witnessing through the eyes of the Indian. Quite suddenly his mind leapt back to the thing Marty had intended and had been at such pains to discuss with him, and his question came on the instant.

“Everything? Everything was burnt out? There was nothing left? Books? Papers?”

THE EURALIANS

57

“Him all burn up. Oh yes.”

Felice began to cry. In a moment her little chubby hands were beating her protest against the broad bosom of the trader. The sight of her rebellion somehow had a softening effect on the coloured man, and he spoke in a manner and in a tone of gentleness which must have seemed impossible in him a moment before.

But even his encouragement was without effect. The child’s cries rose to a fierce, healthly pitch of screaming which promptly called forth protest from the trail dogs about the camps within the stockade. For some moments pandemonium reigned, and in the midst of it the voice of Hesther, who had hurried from her bed, brought comfort to her helpless husband.

“For goodness’ sake!” she cried at the sight of the terrified child in her husband’s arms. “Are you crazy, Jim, havin’ that pore baby gal — Felice? Little Felice? Say, what — ? Here, pass her to me.”

The trader made no demur. In a moment the dis¬ tracted child was exchanged into his wife’s outstretched arms which tenderly embraced and snuggled her close to her soft motherly bosom.

The men looked on held silent by Hesther’s presence.

The child’s cries were quickly hushed, and the dogs abandoned their savage, responsive chorus. Flesther looked searchingly up into Jim’s troubled face. Then her gentle, inquiring eyes passed on to scrutinize the face of the Indian.

“Tell me,” she demanded. And her words were addressed to Usak, as she rocked the child to and fro in her arms.

But Usak was reluctant. He averted his gaze while the whiteman became pre-occupied with the broad ex¬ panse of the river beyond the gateway of the stockade.

58

THE LUCK OF THE KID

“Something's happened," she went on urgently. “What is it? I've got to know. I shall know it later, anyhow, Jim!”

The trader shook his head. But it was different with the Indian. His eyes came back to the woman’s face and he nodded.

“Sure. You know him bimeby," he said quietly. “Maybe your man tell him all now. I tell him. He know this thing. Yes. Now I go. I go hunt all him Euralian mans. I find ’em. I kill ’em all up dead, same lak him kill up Pri-loo, an’ my good boss, Marty. I go now. Bimeby I come back, an’ I mak all good thing for little Felice. I not come back, then you mak raise ’em Felice lak your child. That so."

CHAPTER VII

THE VENGEANCE OF USAK

The towering Alaskan hills overshadowed the broad waterway of the Hekor River. From the level of the water the shores rose up monstrously. There were precipi¬ tate, sterile, encompassing walls of granite that rose hundreds of feet without a break. And back of them, mounting by dizzy slopes, the great hills raised their snow- crowned crests till the misty cloud line enveloped them. The world was grey, and dark, and something overwhelm¬ ing towards the headwaters of the great river. It was a territory barren of everything but the tattered clothing of scattered primordial forest bluffs clinging to sheer slopes, or safely engulfed in the shelter of deep, shadowed ravines. It was a scene of crude grandeur in which Nature had designed no place for man.

Yet man refused Her denial. Man with his simple skill and profound daring. No rampart set up by Nature was sufficient to bar the way.

A small kyak was driving against the stream of waters surging at its prow. It was driven with irresistible skill and power, for the man at the paddle was consuming with passionate desire and purpose. For days and days he had driven on up against a stream that was growing in speed with every passing mile. He knew the thing confronting him. He knew every inch of the great waterway’s rugged course. Every shoal, every rapid

59

6o

THE LUCK OF THE KID

was an open book to him. So, too, were the shelters and easements where the stream yielded its strength. The man behind the paddle faced his task with the supreme confidence of knowledge and conscious power. And so he neared the canyon of the Grand Falls without the smallest perturbation.

A mere speck in the immensity of its surrounding the kyak glided on. Here it rocked on a ruffled surface, there it passed, perfectly poised, a ghostly shadow upon a smooth mirror-like surface. The dip of the man’s paddle was precise and rhythmic. Every ounce of strength was in every stroke, and every stroke yielded its full of propulsion. For Usak was a master of river craft, and understood the needs of the journey that still lay ahead of him.

His goal was still far off. It was less than a day since he had crossed the unmarked border which opened the gates of Alaska to him. He knew there must be more than another nightless day pass before he reached the toilsome portage where stood the mighty Falls which emptied themselves from the summit of the barrier which he had yet to scale. The goal he sought lay hidden away up amidst those high lands where the drainings of the snow-clad hills foregathered before hurling themselves to feed the river below. But time mattered nothing to his Indian mind. He asked nothing of the great world about him. He sought no favours or clemency. The spur of his savage heart drove him, and death alone could deny him. As he had already driven throughout the endless Arctic days so he would continue to drive until his task was accomplished.

The man’s dark face was hard bitten by his mood. Fierce resolve looked out of eyes that brooded as he gazed alertly over the waters. The soul of the man was afire

THE VENGEANCE OF USAK

6l

with the instincts and desires of centuries of savage for¬ bears, just as his mental faculties were similarly keyed for their achievement.

Not a detail of the world about him that might affect his labours escaped the eagle vision of his wide eyes, and his swift understanding taught him how to avail himself of every clemency which the scheme of Nature vouch¬ safed.

So the kyak progressed seemingly with inadequate speed, but in reality little less swiftly than the speed of the avenging creature’s desire. It gained incredible way against the surge of water that split upon its prow. And as the shadows of the mighty walls enveloped it, and grew ever more and more threatening, the man at the paddle laboured on without pause or hesitation, certain of the course, certain of his powers, certain that no earthly barrier was staunch enough to seriously obstruct him.

The kyak was hauled out of the water. It lay there on a shelving foreshore strewn with grey, broken granite, a graceful thing, so small and light as to look utterly inade¬ quate in face of the terrific race of troubled waters that was speeding by. It was set ready for the portage. The man’s simple outfit was securely lashed amidships, and his precious rifle, long old-fashioned, but well cared for, was made fast to the struts that held the frail craft to its shape.

The Indian was standing at the water’s edge. He was gazing up-river where its course was a dead straight can¬ yon several miles in length. It was wide, tremendously wide. But so high were its sides that its breadth became dwarfed. It was a gloomy, threatening passage of black, broken water, whose rushing torrent no canoe could face.

62

THE LUCK OF THE KID

But the awe of the scene left Usak untouched. It was not the sheer cliffs that concerned him. It was not the swirling race of water blackened by the shadows. It was neither the might of the great river, nor the vastness of the hill country about it that pre-occupied him. It was the far-off white wall of mist and spray at the head of the passage, and the dull distant thunder of the Falls, the Grand Falls, the picture of whose might had lain hidden from the eyes of man throughout the centuries.

He stood for long contemplating the mysterious far-off. His object was uncertain. Perhaps the wonder of it had power to stir him. Perhaps he was not insensible to the might of the things about him for all the absorbing pas¬ sion that filled him. Perhaps he was contemplating with a sense of triumph this last barrier which still remained to be surmounted.

At last he turned away. He came back to the burden which he knew he had to shoulder. He measured the little vessel, and the stowage of his outfit, with a keen eye for the necessity of his work. And that which had been done left him completely satisfied.

He bent down. He gripped the gunwale of the little craft and tilted it. Then with a swift, twisting move¬ ment he lifted, and, rearing his great body erect again, the vessel was safely set where his muscular neck checked it to a perfect balance.

© o • « • «. 9

It was the wide smooth waters of a high perched moun¬ tain lake. Its expanse was dwarfed by the great hills on every hand. Its surface shone like a mirror in the bril¬ liant sunshine, yet it was without one single grace to temper the fierce austerity of its tremendous setting. On the hillsides there were dark veins which suggested the tattered remnants of Nature’s effort to clothe their naked

THE VENGEANCE OF USAK

63

sides. There were low fringes of attenuated vegetation marking the line where land and water met. But the main aspect was one of barren hills crowned about their lofty summits with eternal snow, and the grey fields of glacial ice that never entirely yielded up possession of the earth they held prisoned.

Usak’s kyak was hugging the southern shore. Now his paddle dipped leisurely, for he had no stream with which to battle and his eyes were searching every yard of the dishevelled scrub which screened the shore.

Slowly the little craft crept on. There was no uncer¬ tainty in its progress. It was simply that the man sought for the thing he knew he would find and had no desire to waste a single moment of precious time through careless oversight.

He was rounding a headland. The fringe of scrub had faded out, leaving only the grey rock that sank sheer into the depths of the water. In a moment he flung power into the dip of his paddle and the kyak shot ahead. There was current here. Swift, crossing current that strove to head his craft put for the bosom of the lake. The man counted with prompt skill, and a savage satis¬ faction shone in his eyes.

Passing the headland he gazed upon the thing he had been searching. It was a narrow inlet debouching from a wide rift in the rampart of hills.

In a moment his vessel shot head on to the current. Then, swiftly, it passed from view of the open lake be¬ tween the sheltered banks which were heavily overgrown by unbroken stretches of dense pine-wood blufifs.

• e • • • • o

An amazing transformation left the sterile setting of the mountain lake forgotten. Farther and farther, deeper and deeper into the hills the country seemed to change as

64

THE LUCK OF THE KID

by magic. East and west of the valley the hills rose up sheltering the gracious vegetation that looked to belong to latitudes hundreds of miles to the south, and a heat prevailed that was even greater than the intemperate Arctic summer.

Usak needed no explanation of the phenomenon. He knew that he was in the region of the great Fire Hills of the North. Hills that were always burning, whether in the depths of winter or the height of summer. And the heat of the earthly fires transformed the countryside into an oasis of verdant charm, a jewel of Nature set in the cold iron of the North.

A large habitation stood in the heart of a wide clearing in the forest. It was deep hidden from the waterway which split up the length of the valley. Nearly a mile of narrow roadway cut through the forest alone gave access to the river. And the course of the roadway was winding, and its debouchment on the river was left screened with trees. The object of the latter must have been clear to the simplest mind. A perfect secrecy had been achieved, and the great house lay hidden within the forest.

It was a remarkable building whose only relation to the country in which it stood was the material of its con¬ struction. Its two lofty stories were built of lateral, rough-hewn green logs. It was of logs carefully dove¬ tailed, from the ground to the summit of a central tower which rose to the height of the forest trees about it. Its walls rambled over a wide extent of ground, and dotted about its main building were a number of lesser buildings, both habitations and accommodation for material. It was rather like a log-built feudal fortress surrounded by, and protecting, the homes of its workers and dependents.

A figure was moving cautiously through the woods be-

THE VENGEANCE OF USAK

65

yond the clearing. The moccasined feet gave out no sound as it passed from tree to tree or sought the shelter of such dense clumps of undergrowth as presented them¬ selves. The buckskin-clad creature crouched low as he moved, and the colour of his garments seemed to merge itself into the general hue about him. Now and again he paused for long contemplative moments. And in these he searched closely with keen, purposeful black eyes that nothing escaped.

He was seeking every sign of life the place might afford. And so far he had discovered none. There were one or two prowling dogs, great husky, trail dogs, search¬ ing leisurely for that offal which seems to be the sole pur¬ pose of their resting moments, but that was all.

He was gazing upon the main frontage of the building which faced the south with a long, deep, heavily con¬ structed verandah running its entire length. The several windows which gave on to it, covered with mosquito netting, were wide open to admit such cooling breeze as might chance in the heat of the day. But the rich curtains hung limply over them undisturbed by the slightest move¬ ment. It was the same with the windows of the upper story. They, too, were wide open, but again the curtains were unmoving. The searcher’s eyes passed over the lounging chairs on the verandah. None were occupied, yet each and all looked to be standing ready.

He passed on. Making a wide detour within the shel¬ ter of the woods he passed round to the western side of the building. Here there were other habitations. Many were mere log shanties, cabins such as the searcher knew by heart. The cabin of whiteman or coloured in a coun¬ try where makeshift ruled.

Again there was no sign of life. There was not even a dog prowling loose in this direction. Maybe those who

5

66

THE LUCK OF THE KID

peopled these cabins were resting in the heat. Maybe — but the searching man was concerned with no such specu¬ lation. The thing was largely as he had expected to find it, but he desired to re-assure himself. He moved on rapidly. From every point of the compass his searching eyes surveyed the scene, and finally he came back to the spot where his prolonged search had started. He was satisfied.

He stood for a moment while he made his final prepara¬ tions. They were simple, savagely simple. He moved the belt about his waist, and the two long hunting knives thrusting from their sheaths were brought to the front where they remained ready to each hand. Then he thrust one hand into a voluminous pocket in his buckskin and withdrew a heavy pistol. It was a modern pistol, such as one would hardly expect to find in the dark-skinned hands of the native bred. This he examined with care and de¬ liberation. Then he thrust it back whence it came, and moved swiftly out into the open.

The quick eyes of a scavenging dog discovered him and a low snarl accompanied the canine discovery. In¬ stantly a well-aimed stone silenced the creature and sent it slinking to cover.

The point the man had selected for his approach had been deliberately chosen. It was a door that stood ajar on the north side of the house. It obviously admitted to the kitchen place of the building.

With the vanishing of the man through the doorway the lifelessness of the place which had been momentarily broken descended upon it again. The still air hummed with the somnolent drone of myriads of winged insects. The hush of the surrounding forest seemed to crowd down upon it. The very breathlessness of the day seemed to suggest the utter impossibility of stirring life.

THE VENGEANCE OF USAK

6 7

After a moment, the deathly silence was broken. A sound came hard in the wake of the passing man. It was a curious, half-stifled cry, and it came from the direction of the open doorway. It was low, inarticulate, but it was human. It suggested much and betrayed nothing. Then as it died out the engulfing silence descended once more and it remained unbroken.

The wide central hall was unlit by any visible window, yet the light was perfectly distributed and ample. Fur¬ thermore it was the light of day without one gleam of the dazzling sunshine.

It was a spacious apartment, lofty and square. Its walls were covered with rich hangings of simple eastern design. They were unusually tasteful and delicate, and obviously the handiwork of home manufacture. The floor of the room was of polished yellow pine littered with a wealth of natural furs without any mountings. Every skin was native to the north of Alaska, and the variety was extensive. In the centre of the room stood a large, open, log fire set up on a built hearth, above which rose a chimney passing straight up through the timbered ceiling in the fashion of an inverted funnel. For all the summer heat the fire was alight, smouldering pleasantly, a heap of white wood ash yielding a delightful aroma as the thin spiral of smoke drifted leisurely up into the mouth of the funnel above it.

About the walls stood several low couches. They were loaded with silken cushions adorned in a fashion similar to the hangings upon the wall with a lavish dis¬ play of the representations of brilliant-hued flowers, and birds, amongst which chrysanthemum, wistaria, and long¬ billed, long-legged storks were very prominent.

68

THE LUCK OF THE KID

The only other furnishings in the place were a magnifL cent pair of oriental vases standing on carved wood plinths, a large bookcase, that was also a desk with an armchair before it, and two great, manifold wooden screens with elaborate, incised designs decorating their panels.

In the shelter of one of the latter a small woman was seated on a couch surrounded by the materials of the deli¬ cate embroidery she was engaged upon. She was seated with her feet tucked under her, and a book lay in her lap. But she was neither reading nor sewing now. Her dark eyes were raised alertly. They were gazing steadily at an angle of the room where a curtain hung in heavy folds over what was clearly a doorway.

The solitary occupant of the room was not young. She was nearing middle life, yet she bore small enough traces of her years. She was pretty for all the large tortoise-shell rimmed glasses she was wearing. Her jet black hair, dressed closely to her shapely head, bore not a trace of greying, and the small mouth and softly tinted cheeks were as fresh and delicate as a young girl’s.

At the moment a keen look of enquiry was revealed through her large glasses as she regarded the covered doorway. Nor was her look without a suggestion of un¬ ease. For a sound had reached her a moment before, which, in the silence of the house about her, had suggested a cry — a cry of pain. Even a call for help.

Apparently, however, she dismissed the idea. For she presently bent over the work she had laid aside in the interest of the book she had been reading.

She was not easily disturbed. She was accustomed to long periods of almost complete solitude. There were two servants in the house. She knew that. Men who were fully capable of safeguarding the place, even though

THE VENGEANCE OF USAK

69

the rest of the folk were abroad on their labours. No. A long life in the remote fastnesses of the northern Alaskan hills had taught her many things, and amongst the things she had learnt was that perfect immunity from intrusion was vouchsafed to the home which had been provided for her. There were times, even, when she felt that her lot resembled that of a closely guarded prisoner.

She plied her needle with the skill and rapidity of long practice. The chrysanthemum she was working was rapidly developing its full beauty under her delicate hands. Then suddenly she dropped her hands into her lap and raised her eyes again to the doorway.

There was no mistaking her expression now. A voice¬ less alarm gazed out through her glasses. There was a sound of hurried approach. Someone was running be¬ yond the doorway. They were approaching -

The curtain was abruptly dragged aside. A man lurched into the room. He was a smallish, elderly man, dark-skinned and eastern-looking. He was clad in the ordinary garments of civilization, and wore a short apron about his waist. He stood for a moment clinging to the curtain for support. Agony looked out of his black eyes, and his lined face was distorted. He sought to make a gesture with one hand and nearly fell. Then a sound broke from his lips. It was one word. Only one. And that barely articulate.

“Es — cape !” he cried.

With a last gasping effort his hand released its hold on the curtain and he crashed to the floor. And as he fell a stream of blood trickled on to the immaculate wood¬ work from somewhere in the region of his neck.

The woman was on her feet. A wild panic shone in the eyes behind her glasses. She stood there a pretty, pathetic, helpless little figure.

7o

THE LUCK OF THE KID

Escape !

The word was ringing in her ears as she gazed in horror upon the still, fallen figure of the man who had brought her warning as the last faithful act of his life.

Escape ! What did it mean ? What could it mean ?

She abruptly turned away. She bent down and gathered up her sewing and her book. Then she passed rapidly behind the screen which sheltered her couch. Only for one instant did she pause before passing out of view. It was to regard again, with a gaze that was filled with horror and terror, the poor thing that had brought her warning.

o O • • o • •

Usak was standing in the middle of the great room* He was gazing about him. His dark eyes were aflame with furious desire. His great body bulked enormously and his rough clothing left him a sinister figure in a place of such lavish refinement.

He took in every detail of the place, and at last his fierce eyes came to rest on the dead creature lying just within the doorway. He stared at it without pity or re¬ morse. Without a sign of added emotion. His thin lips were shut tight and the muscles of his jaws stood out with the intensity of their grip. That was all.

After awhile he moved away. He passed over to the couch sheltered by the screen. He bent over it searching closely, and from among the cushions drew some frag¬ ments of sewing silk and cuttings of material. He gazed at them. But he was not thinking of them. He was thinking of another woman, a woman whose hands had been accustomed to ply a needle, and to cut out material. But the material was different. It was less refined, rougher. In Usak’s mind Pri-loo’s sewing was mostly to

THE VENGEANCE OF USAK 71

do with the buckskin and beads so dear to the Indian heart.

He flung the things aside. Then he hurried from the room, passing again the doorway through which he had followed the man he had slain.

CHAPTER VIII

THE VALLEY OF THE FIRE HILLS

The sun blazed down on a silent world. The glare was merciless, and the heat, by reason of the weight of mois¬ ture saturating the atmosphere of the valley, was almost a torture.

The stillness of the world was awesome. The hum of insect life accentuated it, and so, too, with the murmur of summer waters, which is the real music of the silent places. The breathlessness of it all suggested suspense, threat. So it is always in the great hill countries. The sense of threat is ever present to the human mind, driv¬ ing men to seek companionship, even if it be only associa¬ tion with the creatures who are there to bear his burdens.

Threat was stirring acutely now. It was in the pro¬ found quiet, in the saturating heat ; it was in the porten¬ tous silence wrapt about the hidden habitation which the man at the water’s edge had just left behind him.

Leaning on his old-fashioned rifle the Indian, Usak, was gazing out northwards over the winding course of the river. His dark eyes were alert, fiercely alert. No detail of the scene escaped his searching gaze as he fol¬ lowed the little water-course on its way to the mountain lake beyond. He searched it closely right up to the great bend where stood the three isolated fire hills. His Indian mind was calculating; it was seeking answers to doubts

72

THE VALLEY OF THE FIRE HILLS 73

and questions besetting him. For he knew that on the result of his right thinking now depended the achieve¬ ment he had marked out for himself.

Quite motionless he stood for many minutes. Yet for all his great height and the physical strength of his muscular body his presence was without effect upon the immense solitude of the world about him. It had no more impression than had one single creature amongst the myriads of flies and mosquitoes swarming hungrily about his dark head.

The house in the woods behind him was no longer of any concern. There, as he had set out to do, he had al¬ ready worked his fierce will. It was sufficient. That which was yet to be accomplished he knew to lie on the waterway approach, and his mind was focussed upon the three black, smoking hills which he had passed on his way from the distant lake.

He stirred out of his deep contemplation. He raised his rifle and slung it upon his buckskin-clad shoulder. Then he turned about, and raised one lean, brown hand. It was an expressive gesture. There was something in it similar to the shoulder-shrug of callous indifference. He passed on down the river.

The canoe was making its leisurely way up the river. The dip of the paddles was easy; it was rhythmic and full of the music so perfectly in tune with Nature in her gentler mood. The vessel was long and low, and built for rapid, heavy transport where the waters were not always at rest, and the battle with the elements was fierce and unrelenting. It was the hide-built craft native to the Eskimo, whose life is spent in the Polar hunt.

74

THE LUCK OF THE KID

The vessel was served by eight paddles. But there were two other occupants lounging amidships against the rolls of blankets and furs which were part of their camp outfit. These two were talking in low voices while the men at the paddles, stripped to the waist, squat, power¬ ful, yellow-skinned creatures whose muscles rippled in response to their efforts under a skin that shone like satin, remained concerned only for their labours.

“There will be a big noise — later.’’

The snapping eyes of the younger man were half smil¬ ing as he contemplated the shimmering waters of the river ahead. The man beside him stirred. His curious eyes lit with a gleam of irony as he withdrew his gaze from the distant smoke cloud which lolled ponderously on the still air.

“Oh, yes. There will be a big noise,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. Maybe p’lice will come.” He laughed coldly. “An’ when they come — what? Later they go away. Later it is forgotten. Winter comes and every¬ thing is forgotten. It is the way of this far-north coun¬ try. Only is this country for the man who lives in it. Not for those who mark it on a map, and say — ‘it is mine.’ No. It is for us, Sate. It is ours. We make the law which says the thing we desire must be ours. Le Gros was a big fool. But it would have been useless to have his secret and leave him living. One word, and they would have flooded the country with white trash from every corner of the earth. It will not be that way now. We wait for the p’lice to come. We wait for them to go. Then this thing is ours, the same as all the rest.”

Sate turned his dark eyes upon the strong profile of his father.

“Yes,” he agreed, while his eyes questioned.

There was usually a question in his eyes when regard-

THE VALLEY OF THE FIRE HILLS 75

ing his parent ; a question in his hot impulsive mind when he listened to the cold tone of authority that was always addressed to him. The filial attitude of the youth was no more than skin deep.

“You have the plans safe?” he inquired presently, while he watched the brown fingers of the other filling the familiar red-clay pipe. “You have not passed them for me to read?”

The tone was a complaint, and it brought the curious regard of the tawny eyes to the discontented face. For a moment Sate confronted them boldly. Then he yielded, and his gaze was turned upon the scenes of the river.

“You will see them when — it is necessary.”

A dark fire was burning behind the boy’s pre-occupied gaze. Nor was it likely that the father failed to under¬ stand the mood his denial had aroused. He watched the lowering of the black brows, the savage setting of the youthful jaws, and a shadowy smile that had nothing pleasant in it made its way to his cold eyes.

For all his surge of feeling Sate continued to regard the surrounding mountains through which they were passing. There was not a detail of the course of this little, hidden river that held even a passing interest for the youth. His whole life had been lived within the Valley of the Fire Hills and its beauty, the mystery of it affected him no more congenially than might a prisoner be affected by the bare walls and iron bars of his cell. His heart and mind were in fierce rebellion. He was chafing impotently. But he was held silent, for he dared not pit himself against the iron will, the inhuman cruelty which he knew to lie behind the cold eyes which, in his brief twenty years of life, he had only learned to obey through fear.

The man beside him had lit his pipe without a shadow of concern, and now he sat smoking it like any native,

7 6

THE LUCK OF THE KID

with its stem supported by his strong jaws thrust in the centre of his hard mouth. He held the little bowl in both hands.

The vessel passed out of the shadow of the canyon, and the welcome shade gave place to the blazing heat of full sunlight. The sky was without a cloud except for the overhanging smoke patch. The great hills had sud¬ denly leapt back and the world had become radiant with a hundred verdant hues, and the soft purple of the dis¬ tance.

It was the arena of the Fire Hills. They stood up in the heart of it, three of them. Three comparatively low, expansive hummocks dwarfed by the tremendous alti¬ tude of the surrounding mountain ring. Standing widely separated on the low flat, about which the shrunken sum¬ mer river skirted, they stood ominous, black and smoking. They were bare to the basaltic rock which was their whole structure, burnt black by the centuries of fire con¬ tained within their troubled hearts. They were stark, hideous, like malevolent dwarfs, monstrous and threaten¬ ing, frowning down upon a world made gracious the year round by reason of their own involuntary beneficence.

The man removed his pipe from between his lips and inclined his head in the direction of the smoking hills.

“An hour more,” he said.

Sate’s reply came without glancing round.

“Yes,” he said.

His eyes, too, were on the three hills. It would have been impossible for it to have been otherwise. Their great ugly shoulders rose high above the belt of forest trees which lined the left bank of the river, and the smoke cloud hung heavily over the summits, till their appearance was like that of giant mushrooms. The smoke was mo¬ tionless, dense, threatening.

THE VALLEY OF THE FIRE HILLS 77

“It’s thick,” the father observed reflectively. “We need a wind to carry it away. If the weather changes it’ll come down in a fog. They’re queer — those hills. Some¬ day they’ll — ”

The sharp crack of a rifle rang out. The man in the prow of the vessel jerked forward in the act of dipping his paddle, and sprawled with his body lolling over the vessel’s side.

The man with the yellow eyes scrambled to his feet and Sate sat up. For one tense moment every eye was turned upon the belt of trees that lined the shore masking the base of the Fire Hills. The shot had come from that direction, but there was nothing, no sign of any sort to give a clue to the whereabouts of the man who had fired with such murderous accuracy.

The man standing amidships gave a sharp order. His crew had quit paddling in the complete confusion into which the attack had flung them. And, in a moment, the paddles dipped again, but only seven of them.

Sate passed forward to the wounded man, and his father waited, still standing, for the result of his investi¬ gations. It was some time before the youth gave a sign. But at last he dragged the fallen body into the boat and laid it out in the bottom of it.

“Well?”

The demand came sharply. But the tawny eyes were still steadily searching the wood-clad bank of the river.

“Dead.”

Sate’s reply was no less sharp.

“Drop him overboard. We’ve no room for dead men. Take the paddle yourself, Sate.” After delivering his order the man amidships turned about and spoke in a foreign tongue to the man in the stern. Instantly the prow of the vessel swung towards the shore.

78

THE LUCK OP THE KID

Again a shot rang out. This time it was the man whose paddle had changed the vessel’s course who was the victim. He lolled forward like a tired man at the finish of the stroke of his paddle. Then he crumpled, col¬ lapsing against the man in front of him, shot throught the heart.

The dusky figure was moving rapidly down the shadowed aisles of leafless tree-trunks. Its movements were almost without sound. They were the stealthy, swift movements of the Indian in pursuit of a wary quarry.

Every now and again Usak paused in the shelter of a great forest bole, and his fierce eyes searched for opening in the barrier of undergrowth that hid the waters of the river beyond. His patience seemed inexhaustible. Effort was unrelaxing. He was spurred by a lust that was all- consuming.

So he kept pace with the moving vessel that was be¬ hind him on the river. His object was to keep ever ahead of it, not remaining a second longer at any given point than his purpose demanded. On, and on, with the swift, silent gait of the hunter, he passed from tree to tree but never did he permit himself to pass out of gunshot of his quarry.

He paused at a fallen tree. To the right of him, look¬ ing down the river, was a narrow break in the tangle of undergrowth. He rested his queer, long rifle and searched over the sights, holding a definite spot on the shining waters covered. The man was deadly in his de¬ liberation. Twice he re-adjusted his sights. Then at last, apparently satisfied, stretched prone on the ground under cover of the protecting tree trunk, he waited with

THE VALLEY OF THE FIRE HILLS 79

the weapon pressed hard into his shoulder, his lean tena¬ cious finger on the trigger, and an eye, that displayed no shadow of mercy, glancing over his sights.

The moments passed in deathly silence. The trees above him creaked in the super-heated twilight. But none of the forest sounds distracted him. His keen ears were listening for one familiar sound. His searching eyes were waiting for one vision in the narrow opening of the undergrowth.

The sound came. And into the open flashed the prow of the approaching canoe. It was more than two hundred yards from the man’s place of concealment, but the dis¬ tance had been calculated to a fraction with the skill of a great hunter. The finger pressed the trigger.

The hidden man leaped to his feet, a grim look of satis¬ faction shining in his eyes. He had witnessed the thing he desired. He had seen the man at the vessel’s prow fall forward. And he knew it was the man who had taken the place of an earlier victim.

He was off on the run as an answering shot rang out, and he heard the spat of a bullet strike one of the tree trunks somewhere behind him. There was another shot, and another. But each shot found its home in the up¬ standing tree-trunks far in the rear of him, and left him grimly unconcerned. It was a battle to the death in a fashion of which he was absolutely master. It mattered not to him if the canoe continued on its course, or re¬ treated, or if the enemy abandoned the river and sought to continue the fight in the twilight of the forests. He knew he held him at his mercy on this great bend of the river. For the far bank was walled by the granite of the great hills which closed in the arena of the Fire Hills. There was no escape.

After awhile he paused again at the foot of a tree that

8o

THE LUCK OF THE KID

had been rudely storm-blasted. Its crown was shorn and lay a vast tangle on the ground beside it. In a moment, with rifle slung, he had swarmed the broken trunk and lodged himself in the lower branches which still remained. He gazed out over the top of the undergrowth, and a great length of the sweep of the river was spread out before his hungry eyes. The canoe was just entering his field of vision. He settled himself with his back to the tree-trunk, and his knees were bent in a squatting posture with his feet supported on a projecting limb which also helped to screen him from those on the river. He ad¬ justed his sights and prepared to hurl death from his hiding-place.

Slowly he pressed the trigger and his ancient weapon faithfully responded. The ivory sights were unfailing to an eye behind which burned so fierce a desire. He saw the result even with the rifle still pressed to his shoulder, and unconsciously he pronounced the triumphant thought in his mind.

“Four!”

He re-loaded. The canoe was in full view now, and the temptation was irresistible. Again he pressed the trigger, and another life had passed.

He lowered his weapon and watched. The short man amidships was about to answer. He saw a rifle raised. The shot echoed against the granite walls behind it. And something like a smile lit the hunter’s eyes, for the man had fired into the forest far below where he was securely seated. Instantly he re-loaded, and, a moment later, a sixth victim fell to his lethal weapon.

He dropped from his “crow’s nest” and ran on through the dark aisles that hid him so well. Every foot of the way was mapped in his mind. He had laid his trail with the skill of a man who, knowing his craft, will not

THE VALLEY OF THE FIRE HILLS 81

yield one fraction of his advantage. So he passed on to where the forest narrowed down by reason of the Fire Hill, whose ponderous slopes came down almost to the river bank.

He passed from the forest and began the ascent of the hill. Here there was no cover but the rough, protruding boulders on the blackened slopes. But he had reached a point of calculated recklessness when he knew he must court greater chances for the success he desired. There had been ten men in the canoe when first he had welcomed the sight of it upon the river. Ten men, all of whom had participated in the wanton destruction of everything in the world that had meant life, and hope, and home to him. Now there were only four.

The canoe was within a mile of its destination, and he had decided before that destination was reached only one single man of its complement must remain alive. His purpose was implacable. Vengeance consumed the man. And it was the vengeance that only the savage heart of a creature of his ancestry could have contemplated.

He passed on up the slope with the speed of some swift¬ footed forest creature. And the smoke haze rising from the summit partially obscured the drab of his clothing against the blackened ground. Up towards the belching crown he moved, but ever with a glance flung backward lest the increasing density of the smoke cloud should mar his view of the things below.

At last he came to a halt. The point had been reached when he dared proceed no farther. The haze, in the bril¬ liant air, was sufficient to screen him without obscuring his vision of the river. So he took up a position behind a boulder, and leant upon it with his rifle supported for steadiness on its clean-cut surface. For some moments he watched the fierce efforts of the remainder of the crew

6

82

THE LUCK OF THE KID

of the canoe to make the shelter of the house something less than a mile away to his left.

Yes, there were four of them only. And all four were paddling literally for their lives. He watched them closely, a devilish smile lighting his satisfied eyes. And he saw that the rhythm of their stroke had been lost, and the speed of the vessel was infinitely slow. Oh, yes, he understood. Panic had done its work. The panic inspired by complete impotence. They were there a target for just so long as they were in the open of the river. There was no shelter for them anywhere. The granite of the far wall of the river cut off escape, and the forest on the hither side contained the deadly, unseen danger. So there was nothing left them but to race on, zigzagging a course down the river in the hope of escape from the deadly fire.

He re-adjusted the sights of his rifle and judged his distance. Slowly and very deliberately he pressed the trigger. The shot passed over the canoe. He re-loaded without concern, and his second shot left only three paddles dipping. The man in the bow of the boat squatted drooping and clutching for support.

He waited for the final result of his shot, and it came as the man yielded his hold and dropped helplessly into the bottom of the boat. Again he laid his weapon. Two more shots rang out from the smoke shroud of the burn¬ ing hill. Then, after a brief interval, two more carried their deadly burden. The man re-loaded again and again till a pile of empty shells lay close beside him. Then, at last, he rose from his crouching position and stretched his cramping limbs. He slung his hot rifle upon his shoulder, and stood gazing down upon the slowly moving boat as it laboured over the water. He was completely satisfied. Now there was left but one man

THE VALLEY OF THE FIRE HILLS 83

to drive the heavy vessel to the haven which should mean shelter from his murderous sniping.

The man with the yellow eyes drove hard with his paddle and the nose of the vessel thrust deep into the mud of the landing. For a moment he remained kneeling, supported against the strut where he had laboured. He made no attempt to leave his post. Only he gazed along down the river bank at the screen of bush which lined it. There was no emotion visible in his mask-like face. There was nothing in his eyes to tell of the swift, urgent thought behind them.

After awhile his gaze was withdrawn to the grim freight of his vessel. Then he stood up quickly and moved forward. Four bodies were lying huddled in the bottom of the canoe. With three of them he was com¬ pletely unconcerned. But with the fourth it was different. He stood for a moment gazing down unemotionally at the dead body of the youthful Sate. Then he stooped, and, gathering it in his powerful arms, carried it quickly ashore. He laid it gently down on a vivid bed of Arctic wild flowers and stood over it in silent con¬ templation.

His pre-occupation was intense. But he gave no sign. Such emotions as were his were his alone. They were stirring in a heart deep hidden. And his tawny eyes masked no less surely now than was always their habit.

A sound disturbed him at last, and he turned like a panther ready for anything it might portend. But the flash of alertness died out of his eyes at the sight of a woman’s small figure as it broke its way through the bush in the direction of the house which was his home.

The pretty face the man was looking into was drawn

84

THE LUCK OF THE KID

and haggard. The slanting eyes were full of a terror that even the long awaited return of her man could not banish. The woman had run to him with little, hurried strides and hands outstretched in piteous appeal.

“Hela!” she cried. And into the pronunciation of the man’s name, and in the pitch of her voice she contrived to fling a world of woman’s terrified despair.

For once the man’s eyes revealed something of that which was passing behind them.

“Tell me, Crysa,” he demanded urgently. “Tell me quick.”

The distraught woman stood clinging to the arm which made no effort to yield her support. She broke at once into hysterical speech in a foreign tongue.

“They have killed them all. Even the dogs. There is not one left. All — all are killed. Myso, Oto, Lalman. Oh, they murder them with the knife. I hid in the secret place. It was Oto who gave me warning with his dying words. He was dead — all dead in a moment. I can see the blood on the floor now. Devils came to the house. An army of them. They — Oh !” she cried breaking off the torrent of her disjointed story in a spasm of new horror.

Her gaze had fallen on the still, prone figure at her man’s feet. Her hands dropped from his arm. She moved a step from him, and bending forward, peered down.

“Dead, too,” she said, in a low hushed voice. “Dead!”

Then she recognized the dark features of the boy who was her son. Suddenly a piercing cry broke the silence of the woods about them, and echoed against the far walls that shut in the river.

“Sate!” she cried. “Our Sate!” And in a moment she had flung her frail body upon the still figure stretched upon its bed of wild flowers.

THE VALLEY OF THE FIRE HILLS 85

The man looked on. He watched the delicate hands as they beat the ground in his wife’s paroxysm of grief. He listened to her demented shrieks of lamentation. But he gave no sign; he offered no comfort. Maybe he found himself simply helpless. Maybe in his hard, unyielding mood he felt it best that the woman’s storm of grief should spend itself. Perhaps, even, the disaster of his journey home had left him indifferent to everything else. Certainly his cruel eyes were without any softening, with¬ out any expression but that which was usual to them.

The woman’s lamentations died down to heart-racked sobs, and the man turned away. He passed slowly down to the boat, so deeply nosed into the mud, and the lessen¬ ing cries of the distracted mother pursued him. But he no longer gave heed to them.

He laid hold of the canoe and set to hauling it clear of the water. Once, twice, thrice he heaved with all the strength of his powerful body. The boat was half way up the bank. Then, as he lay to the work again, a cry that was something like a snarl broke from him. Some great body had leapt on him from behind. His hold was torn loose from his task, and he was flung bodily, with terrific force, sprawling amidst the radiant flowers that littered the river bank. The dark, avenging figure of the Indian, Usak, stood over him.

For one brief instant eye searched eye. No word passed the lips of either. It was a moment of furious challenge, a moment of murderous purpose. It passed. And its passing came with the lunging of the Indian as he precipitated himself upon his victim.

They lay writhing, and twisting, and struggling on the ground. No vocal sound, no sound but the sound of furious movement came in the struggle. The Indian was uppermost, as he had intended to be from the moment

86 THE LUCK OF THE KID

and the method of his attack. He had one object, and one object only.

The Indian’s great size and strength were overwhelm¬ ing with the other caught at a disadvantage. Then the man with the yellow eyes was fully two decades older. Usak was lithe, active as a wild cat, with all the bulk of a greater forest beast. Then there was his simple, terrible purpose.

It was done, finished in a few awful moments. A sound broke from the man underneath the Indian’s body. It was a half-stifled choking cry. It was inarticulate ex¬ cept that it was a cry of pain and suffering for which there could be no other expression. And instantly all strug¬ gling ceased.

The arms of the man underneath fell away. Usak leapt to his feet and his savage eyes glowered down on the writhing body on the ground. For a moment he watched the tortured creature, effortless except for the physical contortions of unspeakable suffering. And pres¬ ently he heard the thing he had awaited. It was a faint, low moaning forced at last from between the blinded man’s stubbornly pressed lips.

Fierce, harsh words leapt in answer to the sound, and the Indian spoke out of the original savagery that was his.

“So! Euralian Chief!” he cried exultantly. “You not know all this you mak, or you not mak it so. No. I tell you this — I, Usak. You come kill my woman, Pri-loo. You kill my good boss, Marty Le Gros. You come to steal. But you not steal. Only you kill my woman, Pri- loo, an’ my good boss. So I, Usak, come. I kill up all the mans, everything. But not so I kill your woman. Not so I kill you. Oh, no. That for bimeby. Now I tak out your eyes. If I kill up your woman you die. No good.

THE VALLEY OF THE FIRE HILLS 87

No. So I leave you your woman. She lie there by your son. She look this way now to see the thing I do. Bimeby she come. She forget the son I shoot all up. She re¬ member only her man who will live in darkness. It good. It just how I think. Bimeby she come. She mak you live. She, your woman. She lead you by the hand. She feed you. She mak you see through her eyes. So you know the hell you show to me. Oh, yes. It black hell for you. No light no more. Your folk come. They find you. You not see them. Nothing. Then they go leave you. An’ so you live — in hell. Bimeby I come. Big long time I come. An’ when I come I kill you. I kill you an’ your woman all up dead, same as you kill my woman, Pri-loo. Now I go. I go an’ think, think, how I mak kill you — sometime.”

PART II

FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

89

CHAPTER I

PLACER CITY

Bill Wilder smiled in an abstracted, wry sort of fashion as he strode down the boarded sidewalk, which was no more than sufficient for its original purpose of saving pedestrians from wallowing in the mire and stagnant water of the unmade main throughfare of Placer City.

He was on his way to his office from his house. His house was built well beyond the tattered city’s limits with a view to escape from the sordid atmosphere of the north¬ ern gold city, which in the long years of acquaintance he had learned to detest.

Bill Wilder was the wealthiest gold man in a city of extreme wealth. Ten years of abounding success had transformed a youth of barely eighteen, lean, large, angular, yearning with every wholesome human desire, into a man of twenty-eight, glutted and overburdened with a fortune and mining interests the extent of which even he found it well nigh impossible to estimate. In ten years, under the driving force of inflexible resolve, backed by amazing good fortune, he had achieved at an age when the generality of men are only approaching the threshold of affairs that really matter.

But somehow his success had brought him little enough joy. It had brought him labour that was incessant. It had made it possible that every whim of his could be satis¬ fied by the stroke of the pen. But instead of satisfaction, he reminded himself that somehow his life had become completely and utterly empty, and he yearned to set the

91

92

THE LUCK OF THE KID

clock back to those long, arduous, struggling days, when hope and resolve had been able to drive him to greater and greater exertions, with a pocket-book that was almost as lean and hungry as his stomach.

His smile now was inspired by the memory of a brief interview he had just had on his way down, in the hall of the McKinley Hotel, with a Hebrew acquaintance, a wealthy and influential saloon-proprietor. A. Feldman had spent half-an-hour in endeavouring to get him to join forces in the erection of a new dance hall that was in¬ tended to eclipse anything of the kind in the country in size, splendour, and profits. His reply had been curt. It had been harsh in its bitter condemnation. And the memory of the Jew’s hopeless stare of amazement was with him now.

“Not on your life, Feldman,” he had said in conclusion. “I’m a gold man. No better and no worse. I’m not a brothel keeper.”

His smile passed, and he gazed about him at the moving traffic surging along the miserable highway under the dazzling sunlight of a perfect spring day. He had no particular claim to good looks. His face was strong, and his expression open. There was a certain angularity about his clean-shaven features, and a simple directness in his clear-gazing grey eyes. He looked a typical gold man without pretence or display, and from the careless rough¬ ness of his tweed clothing no one would have taken him for a man who counted his wealth in millions of dollars.

But that was the man. Achievement was the sole pur¬ pose of his life. And it must be the achievement of a great body and muscles rather than the subtle scheming of the acute commercial mind which he by no means lacked.

The life of this mushroom northern city only stirred him to repugnance. He was no prude. He had tasted of

PLACER CITY

93

the life in the fevered moments of youth. But he knew, he had strong reason to know, there was nothing in it that money could not buy, from the governing corporation to the women and gunmen who haunted the dance halls, except the Mounted Police detachment. And somehow the knowledge had become completely hateful to him.

He had migrated to the place during one of its early “rushes/’ when it was only a few degrees removed from a mining camp. A whirlwind rush of humanity had swept down upon it bearing him on its tide. And he had re¬ mained to witness its leaping development into an estab¬ lished city of wealth and wanton freedom. Later he had participated in an attempt at real government by the saner element of its people, and the making safe of life and property. With them he had hoped. He had looked on at the mushroom growth of great hotels and offices, and greater and more elaborate halls of public entertainment. Then, with those others, he had watched the wreckage of the new authority under pressure of vested interests, and witnessed the passing of the moment or moral uplift. The falling back into a mire of corruption had been literally headlong.

The city had grown up in the wide valley of the Hekor River at the point where the first alluvial strike had been made. It was at a point where the river widened out be¬ fore dispersing its northern waters into a great lake sur¬ rounded by the lofty range of hills which had created it. It followed the usual lines of all these improvised northern places of habitation. It was designed in a rectangular fashion based on one interminable main thoroughfare, which was the centre of haphazard development. The road had sidewalks, but for the rest it remained uncon¬ structed. Vehicular traffic wallowed in mire during the spring, jolted and bumped over a broken, dusty surface

94

THE LUCK OF THE KID

in summer, and, in winter, enjoyed a foundation of snow on which to travel that frequently stood five and six feet in depth.

The whole place was hopelessly straggling and unkempt. Lofty seven- and eight-storied buildings looked down on the log shanties and frame hutments grovelling at their feet in that incongruous fashion which never seems to disturb the human sense of fitness. There were even men amongst its cosmopolitan people who found joy in the disparity. But these were mainly the folk who owned or had designed the greater structures.

Throughout the long winter night the place was ablaze with electric light, a never-ending source of joy to the crude pioneering mind. Arc lamps lit the main thorough¬ fare, while a multitude of winking signs served to guide the unwary to those accommodating dens waiting to un¬ loose inflated bank rolls. During the six months of sum¬ mer daylight this service was unnecessary. And only the cold light standards, and the hideous framing of the signs, and the tawdry decorations of the places of entertainment were left to replace the winter splendour.

Bill Wilder knew it all by heart, from the elaborate Ely see, down to the meanest cabaret from which a drunken miner would be fortunate to escape with nothing worse than a vanished store of “dust.” He hated it. The knowledge of the life that went on every hour of the twenty-four sickened and bored him. He longed for the free, wholesome, hard-living life of the outworld beyond the sordid prison bars which his fortune had set up about him.

It was always the same now. Month in, month out, there was nothing but the solitude of his home and the work of the office in the great commercial block he had built, or the pastimes of the dance hall and gambling hell.

PLACER CITY

95

He wanted none of it. His great body was rusting with disuse, while the mental effort of the administration of his affairs was fast robbing his sober senses of all joy of life. He yearned for the open with all its privations. He wanted the canoe nosing into the secret places of the far world. The burden of the battle against Nature in her fiercest mood was something to be desired. And so, too, with the howl of the deadly blizzard beyond the flap door of a flimsy tent. At this moment Placer City and all its alleged attractions were anathema to the man on the sidewalk.

He came to an abrupt halt. His grey eyes were turned on the elaborate entrance doors of the Elysee on the opposite side of the road. It was disgorging its freight into the smiling spring sunlight, a throng of men and painted women who had spent the daylit night drinking, and dancing, and gambling. He watched them out of sheer disgust. Here at something like ten in the morning, when the sidewalks were thronged with business traffic, they were just about to seek their homes for that brief sufficiency of rest which would enable them to return to another night of loose pleasure. For all he was on the youthful side of thirty, for all he was inured to the life of the city, for all his blood was no less warm, and rich, and swift flowing, the sight mingled pity with disgust and left him depressed and even saddened. The terrible false¬ ness of it; the price that must be ultimately paid. The bill of interest that would be presented by an outraged Nature later on would mean overwhelming bankruptcy for the majority. He turned away and collided with an officer of the police.

Superintendent Raymes stepped clear and laughed.

“Bill Wilder gawking at the Elysee’s throw-outs? Guess you aren’t yearning to join that bunch?”

96

THE LUCK OF THE KID

“No.”

Bill replied without any responsive laugh.

Superintendent Raymes was his oldest friend in Placer City. A brisk, dapper man of medium height he was al¬ most dwarfed by Wilder’s great size. He was approach¬ ing middle life, and already a slight greying tinged the dark hair below his smart forage cap. He was wearing a black-braided patrol jacket, and the yellow-striped breeches and top-boots so familiar in the regions under the control of the Mounted Police.

Raymes shook his head.

“No. That’s only for the sharks and darn fools that life seems to set around like the sands on the sea shore. Can you beat it? Look at ’em piling into the rigs. They’re sick and mighty weary, and they’ll be at it again in a few hours. It beats me the way those poor women keep going. As for the boys — God help ’em when those vultures have wrung them dry. Where are you making?”

“Just the office.”

Again Raymes laughed.

“Sounds like the cemetery.”

A smile returned to the eyes of the gold man.

“That’s how it seems to me,” he said, as they walked on together. “The cemetery of all that’s worth while. It’s tough, Raymes. I’m sick to death counting dollars and looking at that sort of stuff.” He jerked his head in the direction of the Ely see. “I tell you I’m going to make a break. I’ve just got to. It’s that or go crazy. I guess I love this Northland to death for all the flies, and skitters, and the other things, but I can’t face its cities any longer without qualifying for the bughouse.”

The policeman remained silent in face of the man’s desperate, half-laughing earnestness. He knew Wilder’s

PLACER CITY

97

moods. He understood that tremendous fighting spirit which was consuming all his peace of mind. They passed on down the sidewalk.

It was not a little curious how these two men had come together in intimate friendship. It had begun when Raymes was only an Inspector and Wilder was only be¬ ginning to realise the burden of a wealth that grew like a snowball. They had found themselves in deadly opposi¬ tion as a result of a desperate outbreak of lawlessness on a big new “strike” for which the gold man had been re¬ sponsible. The position had been gravely threatening. There had been murder, and claim jumping, and the whole camp was on edge and threatening something like civil warfare. In the absence of police there was no authority to control the camp. Realising the seriousness of the position Wilder had jumped in. Organizing his men, and collecting others who could be relied on, he armed them for the task, and forthwith launched his forces against the marauding gunmen who had established a reign of terror. There was no mercy and only summary justice. Every offender was dealt with on the spot, and, in the end, the camp was swept clean.

When it was all over the gold man found the conse¬ quences of his action were far more serious than his logic had suggested. He had to face the tribunal of Placer City and render a complete accounting, with Inspector Raymes, keenly jealous of the law of which he was guardian, in deadly opposition. It had been a bitter fight. But Wilder’s downright honesty, his frank sincerity had finally broken down the police officer’s case and left him victor in a battle that had been fought out mainly on technicalities. And in the end, in place of the bitter antagonism which might well have arisen between them, a bond of great friendship was founded, based on a deep.

7

98 THE LUCK OF THE KID

mutual admiration for the purpose by which both were inspired.

All this had taken place about five years earlier. And since that time their regard for each other had ripened to an intimacy that had never known set-back.

Raymes was deeply concerned for his friend’s outburst.

“Yes, Bill,” he said presently. “It’s tough on a boy like you. You collected your dust too quick. You haven’t the temper of a millionaire. You aren’t the man to sit around spinning every darn dollar into two, and grousing because you can’t make three of it.” He laughed. “You’re the kind of hoss built for the race track of life. You weren’t made to stand around in the barn waiting to haul a swell buggy by way of exercise. That break away is the thing for you, only I’ll hate to lose you out of this darn sink.”

Bill nodded and smiled, and the whole of his boyish face lighted up.

“That’s the best I’ve listened to in months,” he said. “I guessed you’d say I was all sorts of a darn fool not fancying stopping round and counting my dollars. But this ‘sink’ as you rightly call it. I’m a bit of a kid to you. Maybe I’m a long-headed kid in a way. But a sink don’t count much on that. If you live in a sink at my age there’s a mighty big chance you’ll sooner or later join up with the sort of muck you mostly find in a sink. And the thought scares me.”

The policeman glanced round with twinkling eyes.

“You can always sit around on top. You can breathe good air that way and enjoy the sunlight.”

The other shrugged.

“An’ risk falling in when it gets you — well asleep. No, George. You were right first time. I’ll make the break an’ get out of the way of any chance of — mishap.”

PLACER CITY

99

They had reached the square frame building of the police post and paused at the door.

“There mustn’t be any mishap,” Raymes said smiling up into the earnest face of the man for whom he felt some sort of responsibility. “Are you yearning for that office of yours? Or do you feel like wasting an hour while I talk.”

Bill looked keenly down into the other’s twinkling eyes.

“What’s the game?” he asked with a directness that was almost brusque. Then he laughed. “But there, I guess I’m mostly ready to listen when George Raymes fancies talking. It isn’t every oyster that’s full of pearls. Sure. I’ll be glad of the excuse to dodge the office.”

The superintendent shook his head and his smile passed, leaving his face set and purposeful.

“Typhoid’s a deal more prevalent in oysters than pearls,” he said grimly. “Come right in.”

• • • 9 • • O

It was a bare, comfortless office, clean scrubbed and dusted but quite without anything in its furnishing to indicate the superior rank of the man who used it. It was characteristic, however, of the men whose ceaseless activi¬ ties alone contrive that the northern outlands shall escape the worst riot of human temper. The boarded walls were hung with files. A small iron safe stood in one corner of the room, and a large woodstove occupied another. There was a roll-top desk near by the one window that lit the room, and a plain wooden cupboard stood against the wall directly behind the chair which Superintendent Raymes occupied. There were two or three Windsor chairs about the walls, and the only luxury the room af¬ forded was a large rocker-chair into which Bill Wilder had sprawled his great body.

On the desk in front of the officer was a musty-looking

100

THE LUCK OF THE KID

file of papers. It was unopened at the moment for the man was contemplating one of several letters that lay beside it. He was leaning back in his revolving chair, and a curious, thoughtful look was in his reflective eyes. Bill Wilder was removing the paper band from the cigar the other had forced upon him.

Raymes looked up after awhile and sat regarding the man with the cigar.

“So you’re going to sell out, Bill,” he said quietly. “You’re going to sell out everything, all your interests, and — quit?”

“And make some sort of use of a life that’s creaking with rust in every blamed joint.”

Bill thrust the cigar into his mouth and prepared to light it.

The other shook his head.

“We mustn't lose you, Bill. You’re the only feller in this muck hole we can’t do without. I’m not thinking of Placer City only. I’m thinking of this great old north country to which — you belong.”

The policeman watched the cloud of smoke which the gold man’s powerful lungs exhaled. He saw the match extinguish, and followed its flight as it was flung into the cuspidor which stood beside the stove. He was thinking hard and wondering. He was not quite sure how best to deal with the thing he had in his mind.

Bill smiled.

“That’s like you, George,” he said. “If I listened to you, and took you seriously, I’d guess I’m some feller — with dollars or without. But you're right when you say I belong to this old north country. I’d hate quitting it. I’d hate it bad. If I could locate a real use for myself in it I’d sooner serve it than any other. And the tougher the service the better it would make me feel. Gee ! I’m soft

PLACER CITY ioi

and flabby like some darn fish that’s been stewing in the sun.”

“I know.” The policeman forced a laugh. He had made up his mind. “Here, I’ve a mighty interesting letter come along. It’s from the Fur Valley Corporation. Do you know ’em? They’ve a big range of trading posts up an’ down the country. They’ve got one on the Hekor, away up north on the edge of the Arctic. It’s mainly been a seal trading post, and they collect sable and fox up that way. This letter says they’re closing it down. There’s a reason. And they fancied handing it on to me. Do you feel like taking a read of it? It’s quite short. These folk are business people without a big imagination so they keep to plain facts.”

Bill reached out and took the proffered letter. It was dated Seattle, and was clearly from the head office of the company. He glanced at the signature to it and noted the paper heading. Then he read slowly and carefully, for he knew that George Raymes had serious reason for handing it to him.

Dear Sir,

In the ordinary course of business we should not think of troubling you, a distinguished officer of the incomparable force to which you belong, with the contents of this letter. Although it is merely to notify our intention of closing down our trading post, Fort Cupar, at Fox Bluff, on the Hekor River, which is within one hundred miles of the Alaskan boundary, there are reasons lying behind the simple fact such as we feel you, in your official capacity, will be interested to hear.

Put as briefly as possible these are the reasons.

Fort Cupar at Fox Bluff has been one of our fur-trading posts, yielding us a very fair harvest of Beaver, Fox, Sable, Seal. Up to some eighteen years ago we had reason to con¬ sider it our most profitable post. Then came a slump. This

102

THE LUCK OF THE KID

came suddenly. And, according to our factor's interpreta¬ tion, it was simply, and solely due to the appearance of a large band of foreign poachers, who, without scruple for humanity, or international honesty, terrorized the Eskimo into passing them their trade at starvation values, or, if they refused, robbed them with the utmost violence.

These reports at the time were duly passed on to the head¬ quarters of the police, and were, I believe, carefully looked into. But for reasons of which we have no cognizance, possibly the far inaccessibility of the country, possibly be¬ cause these poachers were located on the United States side of the Alaskan border, possibly under pressure of work in the various gold regions, which is the primary duty of your officers, these poachers were permitted to continue their depredations, which, as far as we can ascertain, involved amongst other crimes that of almost wholesale murder.

Our concern now is to tell you that for the last fifteen to eighteen years we have struggled to carry on our post in this region in the hope that things would ultimately straighten themselves out, and our trade return to its normal prosperity. But this has not been the case. Apparently, from our factor’s reports, the methods of these poachers, who seem to be a race of Alaskan Eskimo, who are known as the Euralians, have changed only in process but not in effect. Now they seem to be divided up into lone bands of marauders, fre¬ quently at war with each other. There seems to be no controlling chief as there was in years gone by. They operate within the Arctic Circle, and only amongst the Eskimo of that region. And the one time descents upon the more south¬ ern communities of whites and natives no longer take place. Meanwhile, however, all trade in the furs we desire is at an end. Therefore we are reluctantly forced to close down, and thus another serious blow to the Canadian fur trade is involved.

I am, Sir,

Yours truly,

For The Fur Valley Corporation,

James Steely, General Manager,

PLACER CITY

103

Bill looked up from his reading and encountered the searching gaze of his friend.

“There’s a nasty bite in that ‘brief/ ” the policeman smiled.

The gold man nodded seriously.

“Not more than I’d have put in it if I’d been general manager of that corporation.”

“No. And you’d have been right. That letter’s mighty reasonable, and I’m with the feller who wrote it.”

Superintendent Raymes turned to his desk and opened the rusty-looking file that was lying in front of him.

“You know, Bill, that letter got me right away. But I was a bit helpless. Here, now, you sit right there and smoke that cheap cigar I pushed at you while I do a talk. I’ve got a yarn to hand you that’ll maybe set you thinking hard.”

He sat back tilting his chair, and the rusty file lay open on his lap. The papers it held had lost their pristine whiteness. There were distinct signs of age in their hues.

“You know I’ve only had charge of Placer City for something like seven years, and things have been so darned busy since I first got around I haven’t had a great chance of looking into the remoter things my predecessor left behind him. Eighteen years of police life is liable to accumulate a bunch of stories it would take a lifetime reading.

“However,” he went, glancing down at the file, “when I received that letter I got tremendously busy hunting up old records, and, after nearly a day’s work I came to the conclusion that I’d opened up one of the worst stories, and one of the most important, that I’d found in years. I found story after story of these Euralians. They mostly came from Fort Cupar at Fox Bluff, but they also came from simple, uneducated trappers, and from whitemen

104

THE LUCK OF THE KID

who adventured northward of here after gold. They came from all sorts of folk, and one and all corroborated all that that letter contains besides presenting many lurid pictures of the doings of these toughs which that letter only hints at.”

He removed several sheets of discoloured foolscap from the file. They were pinned together.

‘Tve selected this report which is dated fifteen years ago. It comes from a man named Jim McLeod, and he was factor for the Fur Valley Corporation at Fort Cupar at that time. It’s one of several reports he sent down from time to time pointing the conditions of his district, and giving pretty red-hot accounts of the terror which these Euralians had created there. But I’m not going to worry you with all that stuff. I’ll simply tell you that the terror of these folk was very real. That these marauders were undoubtedly at that time a large well-organised outfit who had completely succeeded in cleaning up the furs of that region and were passing them over the Alaskan border into foreign hands.

'This is a long report and I’m not going to read it to you. I’m just going to hand it you in my own words. It’s a bad story, but it’s full of an interest that’ll appeal to you. Fifteen years ago there was a swell sort of mis¬ sionary feller up at Fox Bluff, a great friend of the man who wrote this report. His name was Marty Le Gros. He wasn’t a real churchman, but just a good sort of boy who was yearning to hand help to the Eskimo and Indians. I gather, at the time this story occurred, he was a widower with a baby girl of about four years. He also had an Indian called Usak, and his squaw, working for him about his house. The squaw was kind of foster- mother to the kid. Well, this report tells how in chasing over the country visiting his Missions this Le Gros hap-

PLACER CITY

105

pened on a most amazing gold ‘strike.’ It doesn’t say how or just where. But it says that the missionary showed this factor man two chunks of pure gold, and a bunch of dust that well nigh paralysed him. Le Gros being a simple sort of feller didn’t worry to keep his news to himself, but blurted his story broadcast, and I gather the only thing he didn’t tell about it was the actual whereabouts of the ‘strike.’ Apparently he let it be understood that Loon Creek was the locality without giving any exact particu¬ lars. This man gives such a brief sketch of this gold business I sort of feel he wasn’t anxious to say too much. The reason’s a bit obvious. And anyway I haven’t ever heard of a rush in that direction. So the news never got around down here. But it seems to have got to the ears of these Euralian poachers and set them crazy to jump in on him with both feet.

“Now this is what happened,” Raymes went on, after a brief reflective pause, while Bill sat still, absorbed in the interest which the magic of a gold discovery had for him. His cigar had gone out. “Up to that time the Euralians and their doings were well enough known to these people, but only by hearsay. These ruffians had never operated as far south-east as Fox Bluff and Fort Cupar. Well, the missionary was out on the trail on a visit to some of his Missions with his man, Usak. He arrived at one of them on the Hekor. It was a settlement of fishing Indians. The whole camp was burned out, and the old men, and women, and infants had been butchered to death. Further, from their complete absence, it is supposed the young men and women had been carried off into captivity for slavery and harlotry. There was no doubt of its being the work of these Euralians. The whole thing was characteristic of every known story of them. Le Gros returned home in a panic.

106 THE LUCK OF THE KID

“He came to McLeod and told him the story of it, and together they realised that it was merely prelude to some¬ thing further. They got it into their heads that it was the Euralian method of embarking on a campaign to get the secret of Le Gros’ gold discovery. You see? Terror. They meant to terrorize Le Gros, and I gather they suc¬ ceeded. But he meant to fight. You see, he reckoned this 'strike’ was for his child. He wanted it for her. Well, these two made it up between them to outwit these folk. The missionary crossed the river to his home to prepare a map of his discovery which he was to place in McLeod’s hands for the benefit of his child and McLeod, in half shares, should anything happen to him, Le Gros. Something did happen. It happened the same night. Apparently before the map could be drawn. Sure enough the Euralians descended on the missionary’s house. They killed Le Gros, and they killed the squaw foster-mother. The Indian, Usak, was away from home and so escaped. The child was left alive, flung into an adjacent bluff, and the whole place was burned to the ground. That’s the story in brief. I daresay there’s a heap more to it, but it’s not in that report, and it’s not in subsequent reports, or in other records of my predecessor.

“It would seem that this boy, McLeod, died about eight years after all this happened and was succeeded by another factor for his company. In the meantime my predecessor had sent a patrol up to investigate. The only result of this investigation was a complete corroboration of McLeod’s report, with practically nothing added to it beyond an urgent report on the necessity for definite international action on the subject of these Euralians who came in from Alaska. After that the thing seems to have passed out of my predecessor’s hands. It seems it was taken up by Ottawa with the usual result — pigeon-holed. Does it get

PLACER CITY

107

you? There it is, a great gold discovery, somewhere up there on the Hekor, I suppose, and the mystery of this people filching our trade through a process of outrageous crime. Somewhere up there there’s a girl-child, white — she’d be about nineteen or twenty now — lost to the white world to which she belongs. But above all, from my point of view, there’s a problem. Who are these Euralians, and what becomes of the wealth of furs they steal? Remem¬ ber they were at one time at least an organised outfit.’’

The policeman replaced the file on his desk and returned the report to its place. And the pre-occupation he displayed was a plain index of the depth of interest he had in the problem which had presented itself to his searching mind.

Bill Wilder struck a match and re-lit his cigar.

“That’s a story of the country I know and love,” he said quietly. “It’s a story of the real Northland. Not the story of one of these muck-holes which are like boils in the face of civilization. I guess you haven’t passed me the whole thing you’ve got in your mind, George.”

“No.”

The policeman swung round in his chair and faced the clear gazing grey eyes of the man whose enormous wealth had still left him the youthful enthusiasm for the battle of the strong which had first driven him to the outlands of the North.

“Will you pass me the — rest?”

Bill smiled.

“Sure I will, if you’ve nothing to ask, nothing to com¬ ment on that story.”

“It’ll keep. Maybe I’ll have a whole big heap to talk when you’re through with your — proposition.”

Raymes nodded. He, too, was smiling. He spread out his hands.

“You want to quit. You want to sell out and pass on

io8

THE LUCK OF THE KID

where you can make some use of the life that’s creaking with rust in every joint. Well, it’s easy. Don’t quit. Don’t sell out. Take a trip north where there’s a big ‘strike’ waiting on a feller with a nose for gold. Where there’s a mighty big mystery to be cleaned up, and the hard justice of this iron country to be handed out to a crowd of devils who’ve battened on its wealth and are sucking the life out of its vitals. Is it good enough? You’ll be able to forget the dollars you’re forced to count daily in this city. You’ll lose sight of the Feldman crowd and the brothels they set going to hand them a stake. It’s the open, where God’s pure air’s blowing. Where there’s room for you to move, and breathe, and live, and where you can hit mighty hard when the mood takes you, and you can feel good all over that you’re doing something for the country you like best. This thing’s my job, but I haven’t the troops or time to fix it the way I should. I’m so crowded to the square inch I don’t know how to breathe right. I haven’t any sort of right offering you this thing. I know that, and I guess you’re wise it’s so. But it don’t matter. I do offer it to you, Bill, and it’s because I know you. I offer it you because you’re the feller to put it through, and because you’re a feller we can’t afford to lose out of our territory. Well?”

The police officer’s manner had become seriously earnest, and the other remained silent for some moments buried in deep thought. George Raymes waited. He watched for the passing of the gold man’s deep consideration. He understood that the thing he required of him was no light task and looked like involving a tremendous sacrifice.

At last Bill’s cigar stump was flung into the cuspidor, and the policeman realised that a decision had been arrived at. The gold man looked up, and a whimsical smile lit his clear eyes.

PLACER CITY

109

“If I was crazy enough to take a holt on this thing I don’t just see — I’ve no authority. I’m no policeman. I’m just a bum civilian without police training. You boys are red-hot on the trail of crime. It’s your job, and I guess there’s no folk in the world better at it. But - ”

“You’ve forgotten,” Raymes broke in. “There’s the trail of a gold ‘strike’ in this. And Bill Wilder’s got the whole country beaten a mile on a trail of that nature. Make that ‘strike’ an’ I guess you’ll locate the rest in the process. I’m asking for that from you.”

Wilder laughed. It was the clear, ringing laugh of the youth he really was. It was a laugh of appreciation at the simple tactics of his friend. It was a laugh of rising enthusiasm.

“But the authority,” he protested.

Raymes took him up on the instant.

“I have power to enrol ‘specials.’ ”

The other’s grey eyes lit. Again his laugh rang out.

“Yes. I forgot. Of course you can enrol ‘specials.’ ” Suddenly he sprang from the depths of the rocker, and left it violently disturbed. He stood erect, bulking largely, and a flush of excitement dyed his weather-stained cheeks. “Of course you can,” he cried. “Yes. I’ll get after it. A gold trail! A bunch of toughs! A girl — a white girl! Ye Gods! I’m after it. You can swear me in on any old thing from a Bible to a harvester. That’s all I need. I’ll find my own outfit, and I’ll get busy right away and collect up my old partner Chilcoot Massy. I’ll get right off now down to my office and start fixing things, and I’ll be back again after supper to-night. But I warn you you’ll need to answer a hundred mighty tiresome ques¬ tions, and pass me all the literature you’ve collected on this subject when I come back. Say, the gold trail again! I’m just tickled to death.”

CHAPTER II

THE CHEECHAKOS

The man was standing at the edge of the river landing gazing out across the broad waters as they drifted slowly by, a calm, gentle flood undisturbed by the rushing freshet of spring, which had already spent its turbulent life leav¬ ing the sedate Hekor embraced in the gentler arms of advancing summer.

The landing was little better than a wreck. The green log piles were awry. There were rifts where last sum¬ mer’s timbers had been carried bodily away by the crash of ice at winter’s break up. For the annual rebuilding necessitated by the tremendous labour at the birth of the Arctic spring had been dispensed with. There was no longer any need for it.

The man’s gaze was far-searching. It was seriously ruminating. Perhaps, even, it was regretful. For he knew that in a few hours all that he had looked out upon for the past seven years would lay behind him, possibly never to be looked upon again.

The mile-wide river lay open to the caressing sunlight. It was unshaded anywhere. The far bank rose in a gentle slope, a perfect carpet of wild flowers, and beyond, as the valley rose upwards, the shimmer of summer heat bathed the purpling distance in an almost dazzling haze. Away to his left, beyond the waters, stood the dark spread of Fox Bluff, which gave the place its name, a wide stretch of tattered forest, isolated on an undulating plain many

no

THE CHEECHAKOS

in

miles in extent. And the ruins of the old Mission House, long since burned out by the Euralian marauders, still stood gaunt and bare, a monument to the tragedy that was now some fifteen years old.

Behind him, well above the highest water level of the river, the staunch walls of the stockade of old Fort Cupar still sheltered the frame building which was about to be abandoned. But already the place had assumed something of the lifelessness which human desertion leaves in its wake. There were no Eskimo encampments gathered about its timbers. There were no columns of smoke arising from camp fires. The familiar yelp of trail dogs, and the shrill voices of native children were silent. There was no life anywhere but in the presence of the man on the landing, and in that of the girl clad in native buckskin standing beside him, and in the slow movements of five Indians and half-breeds who, under the guidance of the factor, were completing the stowage of cargo in the three canoes moored to the derelict landing.

It was the day of the great retreat. It was the final yielding after years of struggle. It was the giving up of that last thread of hope which is the most difficult thing in human psychology.

Old Ben Needham was more than reluctant. He was a hard-bitten fur-trader of the older school. A man of force and wide experience. A man bred to the work, acute, rough, and not too scrupulous. He had been born in the Arctic, schooled in the