Snow-blind
fighting for her own. That was the sort of blind, unreasoning loyalty
that he himself understood only too well. He turned on his lamp again
and switched the light around until he found the slight figure standing
lonely in the middle of the room. She faced him unflinchingly, and
apparently was trying to check her labored breathing.
As he looked at her he felt a queer catch in his breath. Her shirt was
torn at the collar, her ruddy hair was flying at wild ends, a bruised,
bare arm emerged from a sleeve ripped to the shoulder. But her pert nose
was the worst. It looked a couple of sizes larger than he remembered it,
and was frankly bloodied.
“Ah, gee!” he exclaimed contritely. “I’m sorry. Honestly, I didn’t mean
to do that.”
“Is it bad?” she asked, and crooked her arm across her face.
Kit hastily dug a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and gave it to
her. “Gosh!” he muttered. “I never hurt a girl before in my life.”
“I don’t think it’s broken,” she assured him through the crumpled
handkerchief. “What did I do to you?”
“You skinned my wrist and half ripped off my lip, that’s all.”
“Well, that’s something, anyhow!” Her dark eyes brightened with
satisfaction. “That makes us quits, doesn’t it?”
Kit drew a deep breath of relief. It was wonderful of her to take it
that way. “You’re a good sport!” he ejaculated. “Darned if you aren’t!
The Dianes! Hellcats, maybe. But that’s all right. I hope I always have
a Diane for an enemy.”
“You will,” she returned evenly.
He cast a sharp glance at her, started to say something, but changed his
mind and turned away. From his pocket he produced a match and ignited
the litter in the fireplace. “Might as well make it comfortable here,”
he said as a cheerful blaze crackled up in the darkness. “I hate to
leave you alone, but there’s no way out of it.”
“You--where are you going?” she faltered.
Kit did not answer. His thoughts were out in the dark forest, pursuing
the trail of the waffle-webbed snowshoes. In a few minutes he would be
on the march again. The other man would be very tired too. Wherever he
went fresh his trail would be easily followed. He couldn’t stay on his
feet forever. Kit could keep going as long as the other man did, and he
had no intention of being shaken off now.
“I’m going with you,” the girl announced.
“You!” he countered. “What chance would you stand? I’m traveling
to-night. I’d leave you miles behind.”
She started towards him, tottered uncertainly, and caught at the table.
“I’m all in!” she said piteously.
“Of course you are,” he assured her. “You stay here and get some sleep
and rest. I’ll come back for you when I can.”
Kit went outside, unharnessed and fed the dogs and turned them loose to
find their own sleeping places. An ax, two blankets, matches and a few
packages of provisions were strapped together into a small back-pack.
The remainder of his equipment he carried into the cabin. He dragged in
several armloads of down-wood and stacked it in a pile by the fireplace.
Then he drew the old ax out of the cabin sill, spiked the door back on
its hinges and refastened the shutters over the broken windows.
The girl had watched him in gloomy silence, knowing it would be useless
to try to dissuade him from his plans.
“I’ve fixed you up as well as I can,” he said. He shouldered his
pack-sack and picked up his rifle. “Good night, Diane.”
The girl was standing by the fireplace, dejectedly. “I hope--” she
began, and stopped.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said drearily. “Good-by.”
Without a backward glance Kit passed out of the cabin and strode off
alone into the blustering night.
CHAPTER XI
_SAUT SAUVAGE_
The police shack at _Saut Sauvage_ was buried in the snows of the remote
wilderness. A fitful storm of sleet was lashing southward from the
arctic barrens. It was December 24, a squally, gusty evening, bitterly
cold. The wind was many things that night: a child sniffing and sobbing
outside the batten door; a scolding old woman; frightened puppies
whimpering in the darkness; a pack of wolves raging howling around the
ice-banked walls; a gang of bad boys, laughing and throwing missiles
against the rattling windows.
Inside the plank and tar-paper building the confined air was close and
oppressively hot. The sheet iron stove, big enough to take a pine stump
at a gulp, was stoked until its round sides looked like a red apple and
its tin chimney shot a column of sparks above the drooping, stunted
trees without.
Constable Joe Cross was at home, spending Christmas Eve in his most
civilized manner. He had combed his sandy hair and trimmed his stiff,
blond beard and put on his best necktie and the clean flannel shirt that
he had washed and mended for this occasion. At the present moment he sat
astraddle a slab stool before a packing-box table, which held three
dry-batteries and a small radio receiver. He held a pencil in his huge
fist and a pair of ear-phones were clipped over his crimson,
frost-bitten ears. A lantern, hanging overhead, helped the glowing stove
to furnish the light for his writing.
The great radio stations at Springfield, Massachusetts, and Lincoln,
Nebraska, both were ranging the continent to-night with Christmas
messages for the boys of the Arctic Patrol. Constable Cross was
switching the dials first from one wave length to the other, waiting
breathless and expectant for his own name to come out of the stormy
night.
Meanwhile he was picking off the greetings intended for luckier men.
Sometimes he would jot down a line or two to be read over again
to-morrow, sighing with vicarious satisfaction in the knowledge that
Corporal Somebody’s sweetheart still loved him or that Constable Some
One-else’s family was thinking of him somewhere at this very instant.
A couple of trappers, Jean Bruyas and Giffard the Runt, who kept hunting
shacks somewhere in the neighborhood, had wound up their circles at the
police post where they knew the radio would be working and a Christmas
Eve mulligan would be stewing on the stove.
Bruyas was a great tree of a man, black and hairy, slow and thick of
body and wits, unsmiling, unfriendly, utterly fearless, with remorseless
slits for eyes and a loose-lipped mouth from which half the front teeth
were missing. In contrast Giffard was small and wizened and active as a
sparrow. At times he was overly talkative and too ready with his
laughter, and again he went into long spells of sulky, touchy silences.
The Chippewyans called him Giffard _Noondea_, which in their language
meant “the weasel,” and was not a complimentary nickname. It was
suspected that he would sometimes lift a fur from another man’s trap if
he were absolutely certain that the other man was nowhere about.
Giffard and Bruyas had been running their trap line along separate
branches of Great Owl Creek for a decade or more. They were well
acquainted and kept out of each other’s way as much as possible.
Earlier in the evening three Yellow-Knife Indians had walked into the
post. The Indians, as a rule, avoided the police when they could. But
these three were civilized and Christianized, and wore neckties. They
were known severally as Tom Salmonfish, Athu, which was short for
_Athulejeray_, the musk-ox, and Pete Tomorrow. Salmonfish and Athu had
been converted to two religions apiece, besides still keeping their
faith in the old tribal gods. All of which, Constable Cross had
remarked, should make them good enough to die young, and he hoped they
would.
The three of them squatted together on a corner of the floor, uneasy and
furtive in the presence of the law, muttering mysteriously to one
another, while they waited for a hand-out.
At eight o’clock in the evening Constable Mark Devon returned from a
short patrol he had undertaken during the last few days into the Slavey
hunting grounds. Devon blew in with the storm, enveloped in a gust of
snow that battered its way into the room as he opened the door and
hastily shut it behind him.
It was impossible to see anything of Devon because of the sleety snow
that clothed him from head to foot. He looked more like an icicle than a
man.
“Well, boys, we’re going to have a white Christmas!” he announced as he
limped to a stool in the corner and sat down to tug off his frozen
boot-pacs. “Ain’t it nice for the kiddies?”
Constable Cross turned momentarily from his radio. “‘It snows!’ cried
the schoolboy,” he sang out boisterously. “‘Hooray!’”
“Froze my foot again this morning,” remarked Devon as he tenderly peeled
down his thick-ribbed sock. “Same as a year ago. I always lose a couple
of toes for Christmas.”
“Are you maybe hangin’ your stockin’ to-night for Santa Claus?” inquired
Jean Bruyas with his twisted, broken-toothed grin.
“Nope,” answered Devon. “I’m through. I hung it last Christmas and all I
found in it next morning was the two toes that had come off with the
sock.”
Cross started to make some remark, and then checked himself, raising his
head and listening intently in the ear phones. Slowly his startled,
incredulous expression yielded to a look of utter beatitude.
“It’s for me!” the others heard him gasp.
His pencil was feverishly writing on the paper. Presently he stopped,
swept off his head clamps and stood up to flourish the scribbled sheet.
“From my sister!” he announced breathlessly.
“Yeah?” said Devon.
“Two or three thousand miles through sleet and darkness,” the first
constable declared proudly. “Can you beat it? And think of all the
people who must have heard my name mentioned!”
“After that one big experience,” remarked Devon, “anything else that
comes over the radio to all those people will just be a lot of
applesauce.” The tall policeman was very cutting about his comrade’s
Christmas message, but he could not quite hide his envious look as he
eyed the slip of paper. “Well,” he asked grudgingly, “what’d your sister
say?”
Constable Cross threw out his chest and moved closer to the lantern.
Wrinkling his forehead over his own scribbling, he read in a loud voice:
Constable Joseph C. Cross,
Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
Saut Sauvage, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Dear Joe:
We are all well and hope your health is good too. Wish
you were to be with us at our big turkey dinner to-morrow.
Your affectionate sister,
Eleanor.
“Humph!” said Devon. “Is that all?”
“That’s enough, ain’t it?” said Cross contentedly. “It’s just supposed
to be a greeting.”
“Seems to me like they’re sort of ritzing us with their turkey.” Devon
sniffed the savory atmosphere of the police shack. “What are we having?”
he demanded.
“Ptarmigan and moosemeat all mix’ togedder,” said Bruyas.
“No rabbits?” asked Devon with a suspicious glance towards the singing
pot.
“On Christmas Eve!” exclaimed Cross. “Rabbits?”
Constable Devon pulled off his steaming parka, and then turned back
expansively to face the other men. “Turkey!” he snorted contemptuously.
“Can you imagine anybody wasting radio juice to blow about a turkey, and
here we got moose and ptarmigan and no rabbits!”
Giffard the Runt had sidled over to the packing-box seat the moment
Cross vacated it, and was listening in the ear phones. Suddenly he
looked around with a wry expression. “I don’t hear no voices,” he
declared. “It sounds more like mosquitoes in a muskeg.”
“Mosquitoes?” Constable Cross turned questioningly.
“Maybe somebody’s cut in with a key,” suggested Devon. “It might be C.W.
stuff from Edmonton.”
Cross pushed Giffard off the box and resumed his place at the receiver.
“It is!” he said after a moment, and turned his dial knobs. “Edmonton
official calling for somebody. From Inspector Bowman.” He cocked his