Snow-blind
up with a pair of handcuffs, riding on a policeman’s sledge. I’ve got
those same handcuffs, and I’ve got a sledge.”
“Oh you--you rotter!” she said with a vitriolic intensity.
“So was the other bird. And you had to travel with him. Ready?”
Diane stood stock-still, her great eyes searching his face with a
helpless, hunted look. Her impassioned resolution seemed to waver. Two
tears trickled from her lashes and glistened on her cheeks. “What can I
do,” she moaned, “when a bully and a brute--so much bigger and
stronger--and I’m just a girl--”
“Certainly you are,” said Kit.
He turned away to spare her his smile. He should have done this before,
he was thinking. She had worried and hampered him more than he would
have admitted. But now he soon would have her off his hands, out of his
sight and, he hoped, out of his mind. She knew where he had sunk the
gold. But that no longer mattered. It would be months before she could
see her uncle again. Long before that time Kit should have settled up
his score with Hell Bent.
With Diane sitting by in sullen hostility, the other three soon gathered
up their belongings and loaded up the dog sledge. They closed the cabin
and started eastward in a swirling storm, Oogly breaking trail, the baby
riding in a nest behind the dogs, Mayauk handling the “gee” pole, and
Kit and Diane trudging speechless in the rear.
Through the long, blustering night they held their steady pace, and
shortly after the crack of dawn they arrived at the police outpost of
_Saut Sauvage_.
Constables Devon and Cross were at home. The two officers tried
valiantly to hide their astonishment and welcomed their unexpected
visitors with a hospitality that was warmer than the bleak quarters in
which they lived.
Kit explained affairs in a few words. “This is the girl I told you
about. Looking for her uncle and hasn’t found him yet. And this
wilderness is no place for a child.”
He was short and brusque in his speech--a commanding officer telling a
subordinate what to do. “I want you, Constable Cross, to make a patrol
south and take her with you. She says she doesn’t want to go, but that’s
just too bad. Technical charge of vagrancy. You can let the inspector
decide what to do about it.”
Cross looked furtively at the girl, and blushed. His simple face
reflected the pride he felt in being chosen for a responsibility, the
joyous anticipation of a visit to civilization, and also a painful,
gawking shyness at the thought of the company he would have on his way
out.
“It isn’t really right for a young girl to be roamin’ about alone in
this country,” he stammered. “You’ll find it’s better, miss, to be away
from here.”
Diane studied the constable coolly, and then, for just an instant, a
gleam of malicious amusement tinged her eyes. Kit intercepted that
glance, with its sly and tantalizing humor for mischief-making, and
somehow he did not envy the doughty constable his journey out of the
forests.
After their night’s trip the wayfarers were glad to accept the comforts
of the police shack. The rear storeroom, with its cots for guests, was
turned over to Diane and Mayauk. Kit and Oogly stayed awake only long
enough for breakfast. Then they crawled into the constables’ bunks and
throughout the snowy daylight slept the sleep of the righteously weary.
Subdued voices, the scuffle of feet, a poker rattling in the fire-box of
the stove, the faint rasp of snow falling aslant on the log walls and
tar-paper roof, the savor of meat cooking--Kit awakened amid lazy sounds
and pleasant smells. The frosted window square opposite him loomed
opaque against the outer blackness of the night.
Constable Cross was bending over the bake oven on the stove. Devon sat
in low-voiced conversation with a man whom Kit had not seen before, a
broad-backed man with a bullet head, hatrack ears and a round-necked
hair-cut. Diane, Mayauk and Oogly were nowhere visible.
Kit hitched himself into his clothes while lying in the bunk, and then
opened the skin curtains and slid out onto the floor.
In a far corner of the room, beyond the angle of the bunk, he discovered
Diane. The girl was seated on a camp stool, a lock of auburn hair tipped
over one straight eyebrow, her pert nose in the pages of a big book
which she held balanced on one crossed knee. She evidently had spent the
snowy afternoon ransacking the outpost’s supply of literature. Old books
and lop-eared magazines and tattered newspapers littered the table and
the floor about her chair. She appeared as aloof from the rest of the
company as if she had retired to a private apartment with a “no
admittance” sign on the door.
As Kit stretched himself and sauntered across the room the stranger
turned to stare at him. The man’s face, which was close shaven and
unwholesomely pale, had the battered, hard-used appearance of a
third-rate prize-fighter’s mug. His eyes were as protuberant and held
the same metallic coldness as a frog’s eyes.
“Oh, good-evening, sergeant,” said Devon, standing up. “This man came in
on us out of the storm this afternoon. His name is--_um_--”
“Pettijohn,” supplied the stranger. “How-da-do, sergeant.”
“Where’re you from?” inquired Kit without much interest.
“The States.”
“Yeah? You must enjoy chilly weather to be coming up here now.”
“Oh, any time’s good enough for my business,” said the man. “I’m a
missioner. Our people sent me to look after the welfare of the Indians.”
Kit surveyed the stranger ironically. He wondered what sort of welfare
the Yellow Knives might acquire from this ornery-looking plug-ugly. Then
he turned away indifferently. What the intruder did to the Yellow
Knives, or what they did to him, didn’t really seem to matter.
The kettle was humming on the stove, and Kit poured out a basinful of
the first hot water he had reveled in for weeks. He scrubbed his face
and neck and hands, and then paused before a wall mirror with its
chained comb. He was plastering back his wet, sleek-black hair, when he
heard a chair scrape on the floor. Feet stumbled across the room. A
voice cried out:
“I knew it. I knew it!”
The comb dropped to swing on its chain. Kit looked around. He saw Diane
under the lamp. In her hands she clutched an open book--a volume bound
brightly in scarlet and gold. There was not a vestige of color left in
her face. She breathed fitfully and heavily. A ruddy light glinted in
her wide spaced eyes.
Every man in the room gaped at her.
“Look at this!” she said to Constable Devon. “Your police year book. The
_Scarlet and Gold_!”
“Yes,” said Devon, puzzling his eyebrows. “Yes, it is!”
Diane’s laugh was harsh and cramped, utterly different from her real
laughter. “He says he is Sergeant Buck Tearl.” For a moment her glance
fixed Kit rigidly, and then she softly laid the book on the table. She
tapped the open page with her finger, and stepped back.
“Here,” she said, “is a photograph of Sergeant Buck Tearl.”
CHAPTER XX
SCARLET AND GOLD
In the moment of his betrayal Kit had the ghastly sensation of a man
whose lungs had been suddenly pumped empty. His heart stopped, his brain
went numb, the sense of living stopped for those few shocking seconds.
He felt as though he had been stripped bare and pilloried in a public
place. Faces surrounded him and eyes looked at him, and the silence grew
almost too acute to be endured.
The page of the open book was glossy in the lamplight. He saw the
half-tone photo in the upper corner, the strong-jawed, bold-eyed
likeness of his brother Jerry. Sergeant Buck Tearl, stalwart in any such
crisis as this. But Jerry was gone, out of it. Kitchener and his brother
looked nothing alike. Anybody could see the photo and know with
certainty that Kit was not the man whose name and the record of whose
deeds was printed here in the blackest of ink. And he was alone now,
with no Jerry to turn to, standing at bay in the sacred scarlet.
Devon and Cross were hanging over the table looking at the book. Then
both raised their heads to look at Kit. All trace of expression was
wiped from their faces. The ruthless police visage--their faces might
have been chopped out of the same slab of marble.
“Well?” said Devon.
Kit said nothing. What could he say? They had him. Impersonating an
officer! A black crime in the police books. These men were terribly
jealous of their own. Looming, hard years--a long stretch--the least
punishment he could expect. Well--
There was nothing to do but face it out. His back stiffened as though he
were to meet an assault. One eyebrow cocked upward. He had known that
this might happen. Only it was strange the way it had been brought
about. He would have gotten away with the masquerade if Jerry’s funny
old picture hadn’t bobbed up to ruin him--
“What about it?” demanded Devon.
As though a command had been given, the pair of constables circled the
table, one from one side, one the other. A hard, round muzzle jammed
itself into Kit’s ribs. Somebody ripped open the flap of his holster,
and his gun was gone. Searching hands passed skillfully up and down his
person. A chain clinked, something glinted in the lamplight, steel cuffs
bent themselves around his wrists and snapped fast.
Sergeant Cross pulled up a chair. “Sit down!”
Kit sat. He hadn’t tried to resist. They would have had every excuse to
kill him. His self-control had come back to him. He was thinking clearly
and rapidly.
“Why’d you do it?” asked Devon.
“Warn you!” put in Cross.
Kit’s head turned instinctively, seeking Diane. But the girl had
withdrawn into the background, keeping out of his sight. Oogly had
climbed down from the upper bunk, fully clad, and was standing with
Mayauk, looking on. From the dismayed expression of his face it might
have seemed that the Esquimau’s whole world had fallen apart.
Oogly’s gaze reached Kit. For just an instant his narrow eyes held a
gleam that might have been mistaken for intelligence, and then his dull
and stolid look returned.
“Too much hot here,” he announced abruptly. “Me an’ Uttaktuak. Going for
walking.” He took the baby from Mayauk’s arms and moved across the
cabin. “Nobody cares?”
Nobody did, apparently. The constables didn’t look around. Oogly opened
the door and went out into the snowy night.
“You don’t have to talk--if you don’t want to,” Cross said to his
handcuffed prisoner.
Kit acknowledged that remark with a rasping smile, and held his tongue.
He had decided what he had to do. There had been enough scandal in the
Tearl family. The ugly talk about his father; Jerry leaving home under a
cloud. And now Kit. He’d be the first Tearl jail-bird.
Well, nobody had to know it. He’d keep the name out of this. Spare
little Jane that shame anyhow. Nobody could make him tell who he was. It
wouldn’t do a particle of good to identify himself. Even if he proved to
them he was the sergeant’s brother, what of it? His offense was not
lessened. If he could make them believe that he had donned the uniform
at Jerry’s suggestion, it wouldn’t help him. And Jerry’s memory would be
blackened....
“Where is the sergeant?” Devon suddenly shot at him.
Kit saw no reason to withhold all of the facts. “He’s dead.”
“Huh?” The muscles around the corners of Devon’s mouth stiffened
visibly. “Where? How?”
“In the old cabin down at Great Owl Run. Six or seven weeks ago. You
lose track of time. He was killed and dumped out of the window into the
creek.”
The constable’s lips formed a soundless exclamation. “Who the hell
killed him?” he snarled.
“This girl’s uncle,” said Kit quietly.
A hurried step across the room, and Diane confronted them. “It’s a lie!”
she said.
“Wait a minute now. Hold on!” Devon’s steely glance shifted from Diane
to settle upon Kit. He sat significantly silent for a moment, his