Snow-blind
language. But when he pulled into the Chippewyan encampment he was
amazed to discover his tongue twisting into strange clicking and
grunting sounds of speech. He understood the talk of the sooty-skinned
men who emerged from the huts and teepees, and it was evident that they
understood him.
Yes, the tribe had a few very good, excellent sledge dogs for sale.
After long dickering Kit purchased a couple of undersized, slinking
starvelings, which he had to accept because his sharp-dealing hosts
would not part with any others. But when he tried to obtain a guide for
his northward trip, business relations promptly ceased.
The tribesmen could think up a hundred reasons why nobody wanted a job.
The whitefishing at this moment was too good to be neglected. One man
had promised his squaw not to leave Port-o’-Prayer, another’s moccasins
hurt his feet if he walked too far, a third felt his rheumatism coming
on, a fourth would have to go down to church on Christmas. Besides, the
proposed journey would reach the country of the Dog-Ribs and
Yellow-Knife Indians. Nobody was afraid of these bad men, the
Chippewyans wanted it to be known: they simply weren’t going, that was
all.
While Kitchener was engaged in his most persuasive efforts the flap of
one of the teepees was jerked back and a voice spoke to him in English.
He turned to face a white man who had come out to join the group by the
sledge.
The newcomer fixed Kitchener with a long, measuring stare. He was a
gaunt, big-boned man, slouchy and loose-knit of body, with lengthy,
dangling arms hinged powerfully to the knotted muscles of his stooping
shoulders. The temperature was approaching zero, but he stood
unshivering in a sleeveless athletic undershirt and without any hat.
There was a swipe of lather across the bulge of his hard, bluish jaw.
Evidently he had been interrupted in the act of shaving. His lean, dark
face was marked here and there with glaring white lines that might have
been scars of knife cuts, and his close-cropped scalp likewise showed
the seams of old wounds. Although Kitchener himself stood an even six
feet without his pacs and snowshoes, this stranger overtopped him by a
full two inches.
“North myself,” said the man. “Shoving off two hours before to-morrow’s
daylight. You can come with me.”
He spoke with a sharp-clipt brevity and without any trace of accent.
Kitchener should have been glad to find a man of his own language and
race for a companion. But somehow he was taken aback by the abruptness
of the proposal. The stranger’s deep-set eyes looked cold and
calculating in the winter twilight.
Kitchener had a feeling that he would have preferred an Indian. “Where
are you going?” he temporized.
“Not as far as _Saut Sauvage_. But I can put you on the track when you
turn off.”
“What’s your name?” asked Tearl.
“Jim,” said the other. “What’s yours?”
“Kit,” answered Kitchener, and checked a smile. He could be reserved too
if there was any reason for it.
“All right. You have your muts fed and ready to leave by six.”
Kitchener nodded. There was nothing further to be said. The man had
overheard him appealing to the Chippewyans for a guide. He could think
up no excuse for refusing the services that perhaps were offered with
honest intent.
He swept the man with a speculating glance, wondering who he might be.
If he were an ordinary bushman he would have been out on his trapping
grounds before now, circling his lines. His high boot-pacs and his
Mackinaw trousers were new and obviously of city manufacture.
Nevertheless he must be a forest man or he would not be pushing off with
such quiet confidence into a country that was barely known to the outer
world.
Although he had removed his upper garments to shave, he had kept on a
cartridge belt and a holster, from which frankly jutted the ivory handle
of a heavy revolver. Outside of the police, men of the wilderness
carried rifles habitually, but seldom burdened themselves with pistols.
It was a very fine weapon this stranger carried. Kitchener’s eyelashes
blinked as there came to him from out of the obscurity of memory or
imagination one of those dim and tantalizing flashes that try to bring
back a sound or a sight or an experience, once familiar, and afterwards
faded to dreamy inconsequence. The butt of the revolver was made of two
pieces of old, yellow ivory, handsomely carved and scribed. Kitchener
had a queer, startled feeling that he had seen it somewhere before.
He found the stranger’s formidable eyes upon him, and he looked up and
said anything to cover his momentary lapse of mind. “I’ll be glad to
make a deal with you.”
“Deal?” echoed the other coldly. “What do you think I am--a professional
guide? I’ve asked you to go with me. Come or not, it’s all the same.”
“Thank you,” said Kitchener. “I’ll come.”
The Chippewyans gave the two white men a sleeping space in one of their
skin teepees, and after taking potluck at the camp kettle, Kit rolled up
in his grandfather’s red blankets and went to bed. He tried to sleep,
but his thoughts kept going back to the ivory-handled revolver. It
belonged somewhere in the past, either this or a gun exactly like it.
Time after time the recollection almost came to him, and then escaped
behind the curtains of the mind.
Four or five Indians were soddenly asleep on the farther side of the
airy teepee. Jim, the stranger, was stretched out in the open space
between, a relaxed and quiet shape, breathing slowly and regularly. The
faint radiance of the northern night reached through the smoke hole of
the lodge poles to outline his sleeping form. He had unstrapped his
cartridge belt, and the ivory-handled revolver lay within reach of his
right hand.
Kitchener tried to make himself comfortable, first on one side and then
on the other. But he remained awake, hearing the cracking of branches
and the whisper of snow on the caribou skins. After a long while he
flung off his blankets and sat up. He might as well settle this thing
that was destroying his night’s rest.
The stranger was obviously asleep. Kit moved forward on his knees, and
the man did not budge. He reached the cartridge belt, extracted the
revolver from its holster and crept across the teepee to the flapping
doorway. None of the sleepers spoke or stirred.
From his shirt pocket Kitchener produced a match. He waited for a
moment, and then struck a light, cupping his hands carefully to break
the reflection behind him. Peering tensely, he turned the weapon in
front of the match. The blued steel of the barrel bore the
manufacturer’s trademark, with the patent-rights dates, and on the frame
was a small, silver shield, carrying a line of fine engraving. He bent
closer and read the inscription:
“W. T., insp., R. N.-W. M. P., ’16.”
Kitchener went back on his hands and knees and replaced the gun in the
holster. Then he drew his blankets about his shoulders and sat huddled
and shivering--staring into vacancy--
He saw far back through space and time. He remembered a twelve-year-old
boy seated on the steps of the barracks of the police. It was a sweet,
green afternoon with the spring sun flecking the parade ground between
rustling branches, while robins and red-polls and pipits flashed singing
among the trees. There was a tall, soldierly figure in a scarlet coat,
standing before a group of uniformed men. He recalled that one of these
men--a grizzled sergeant of police--had made a sort of awkward, halting
speech. In a presentation case of mahogany and velvet lay an
ivory-butted revolver.
These men had assembled to say good-by to their commanding officer, who
had been assigned to a far-distant post. They wished him to accept this
beautiful six-shooter as a memento of their affection and esteem. The
sergeant had said: “May it never fire first; may it never fire too
late.” And the twelve-year-old boy had listened and swelled with the
glory of the moment.
The tall officer was Kit’s father, and on that occasion they had seen
each other for almost the last time. Inspector Bill Tearl had buckled on
his big, new gun and voyaged away to the north.
To-night, after the long lapse of years, Kitchener had looked again at
his father’s revolver, and another man was wearing it.
CHAPTER III
DISMAL TRAIL
At the coldest and dreariest hour of the morning, in darkness and
silence so intense that an early riser must feel the snow stinging his
face to know that it was still snowing, Kit Tearl was out of his
blankets, poking the night fire and thawing out the coffee pot.
The Indians would lie sluggishly until daybreak, but the other white man
aroused himself a few minutes behind his traveling companion. Before he
donned his fur parka and mittens he stood half naked outside the teepee,
revolving his body in the weather, and stretching his sinewy arms, as
though he took relish in the snow beating upon his skin.
The two men barely exchanged greetings, and they ate breakfast without a
syllable of speech. The stranger fed and harnessed his dogs and waited
in dour silence while Tearl was putting his sorry team into the traces.
When the Chippewyan curs and the huskies from Port-o’-Prayer found
themselves in harness together for the first time the inevitable
dog-fight took place, and ended in as many seconds as there were dogs.
The leader, a red-furred Chinook cross called Buzz-saw, walked back
through his team-mates and left them on their backs, howling.
The tall man stood aloof until the trouble was settled. “Men could learn
something from the dogs,” he remarked. “When two or more start some
place together they ought to fight it out before they take the trail.
Then there’d be no future arguments.”
“As long as you know the trail, and I don’t,” said Kit, smoothly, “we
don’t have to prove which is the king-pin. You lead, I’ll follow.”
Until the dull, leaden daylight seeped through the forest Kit drove his
team and followed in the crunching furrow left by the vaguely seen
figure that stalked ahead.
He had said nothing about the ivory-handled revolver and was careful to
give no hint of last night’s discovery. Since their first meeting the
stranger had inspired him with distrust and an unaccountable feeling of
apprehension. To mention the fact that the gun he carried belonged to a
mysteriously “lost” police officer might precipitate a show-down such as
Kit was not yet prepared to meet. Common sense advised him to wait and
keep his eyes open, to find out who this man was and whence he came. If
he had any part in the tragedy of Inspector Tearl’s disappearance, it
would be insanity to question him or put him on his guard. He could
vanish permanently into the storm if he chose, or simply turn with a
single shot and let the ivory-handled revolver preserve its own ancient
secret.
Kit was carried along by a grim excitement as he dogged the footsteps of
his laconic companion. It was an odd whimsey of fate that had brought
them both on the same day into this out-of-the-way part of the
wilderness. For twelve years a great force of relentless, sharp-eyed
man-hunters, with every resource of experience and organization at their
command, had searched ceaselessly for news of a lost comrade. The
scarlet-clad brigade does not lightly abandon its own. Countless patrols
had turned up, time after time, with “nothing to report.” But where a
thousand seasoned bushmen had sought fruitlessly, young Kit Tearl, on
his first night in the big timber, had stumbled upon a clew that perhaps
might lead to the knowledge of what had happened to the missing
inspector of police. His errand had suddenly changed to such grave
import that he was almost afraid to look into the future. A huge
responsibility had fallen upon his shoulders. Of secondary concern now