The Bull Moose E-Book

Ridgwell Cullum

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The story of the difficulties faced by residents in northern Canada. Everybody had a mad desire to get more gold, so the gold rush came. Mysterious guy robbed gold miners. All people are in a panic, all their gold disappears sharply.

Leseprobe

Contents

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVII

Chapter XXVIII

Chapter XXIX

Chapter XXX

Chapter XXXI

Chapter XXXII

Chapter XXXIII

Chapter XXXIV

Chapter I

The Border Patrol

“A sergeant and four men, eh?”

“Yes, sir. I think that’s the minimum–for the present.”

Superintendent Richard Ferrers was standing at the window. It was double-glassed and streaming with melting frost-rime. His lean, straight back was turned upon the barely furnished room, and upon the youthful officer seated at the big, whitewood table which was the official desk.

It was police headquarters at Fort Glenach, which was a high-sounding title for a very small cluster of frame buildings and log dugouts dotted about promiscuously on the precipitous cliff banks of the Alikine River. It was at that point on the international boundary where the swiftest river in the whole of the Canadian north rushed headlong on its way to the sea through the southernmost coastal region of Alaska.

Inspector Jack Danvers waited; and the while his chief’s back, in its smartly tailored patrol jacket, became a complete preoccupation for his steady but anxious eyes. He waited silently for that decision, which one way or the other, would mean so much in the many-sided work of his detachment.

But the man at the window seemed in no hurry to respond to his subordinate’s request. He just remained staring out through the moisture on the window.

It was a grim scene in spite of the glory of blazing spring sunshine. Far as the eye could see it was a world of forest and deep-shadowed valleys; it was tumbled and tattered; it was mistily steaming; and it went on miles and miles into the far distance, to the glacial rampart of mountains set up by nature against the wild fury of northern seas.

The rush of spring was in full season. Life had returned to a moribund world; it was there in a glorious sun that was high in the heavens; it was in the streaming hillsides pouring a liquid flood into the valleys below; it was in the already lightening hues of the dark pine forests. But more than all it was in the legions of waterfowl winging at speed for their remote northern feeding and breeding grounds.

At last there came a negative movement of the dark head. “You know, Danvers, I’d be glad to say ‘yes,’” Superintendent Ferrers said quietly. “Very glad. If you’d asked me the loan of a month’s pay it wouldn’t have given me more worry than to tell you not to get feeble. But a sergeant! And four men! Why, Athaba couldn’t produce an available boy scout.”

The superintendent turned back from the window. He crossed to the unpretentious table, and smilingly flung himself into a chair opposite his subordinate.

“You don’t realize the character of the control of our department down at Ottawa,” he proceeded. “It’s not police; it’s politician. Police and politicians don’t add up together in the same column of figures in a country’s ledger. Police are assets. The only thing that really stirs a politician’s gray matter to more than talk is the weighty club the press is just now wielding on the subject of official squandermania. Its bludgeoning is served up at every political breakfast table till its wretched victim doesn’t know if he’s eating ham and eggs, or the ashes of his own particular political career. Now Fort Reliance has jumped into life. It’s full of placer gold, and–other things. It’s three hundred miles north of you, here. It’s not in your area, nor in your work. Yet you want Ottawa to spend money on reinforcements. Tell me about it.”

Danvers held out his open cigarette case.

“That’s all right, sir,” he said cheerfully. “I know you’re tied hand and foot by Ottawa. But I’ve got to get those reinforcements. So long as I’m just a border patrol my detachment’s sufficient. I can hold the game down. But with a dead world resurrected away behind me into ugly life, it’s–different.”

Ferrers took a cigarette from the case and lit it. And as Danvers did the same he flashed a swift glance out of narrowed eyes at his subordinate.

“And why should a specially detailed border patrol find it–different?” he questioned.

“A police officer can possess a conscience.”

The superintendent inhaled luxuriously. Then he nodded.

“I s’pose he can,” he agreed.

“That’s the hell of it, chief!” Danvers exploded, with a laugh that did not contain much mirth. “The territory back of me has come alive. There’s Reliance, with a hundred souls and a bunch of four thousand of the world’s meannest neches. It’s full up with a welter of human muck that’s always boiling over. And there’s not a soul to clean up the mess, unless it’s me.”

Ferrers liked the forthrightness of this man who was his junior officer.

He stood up from his chair and passed across to the woodstove radiating pleasant heat that was wholly welcome in spite of the spring thaw.

“Reliance is going to be a big placer field?” he observed casually.

Danvers’ eyes became thoughtful.

“It’s that already, sir. It’s–it’s saturated with pay stuff all the way along the river right from Reliance up to the Valley of the Moose, another hundred miles farther north. You can sluice or pan it anywhere where there’s foreshore on the river. It’s–it’s just alive with gold. It’s over five years now, sir, since color was first struck. And in a way it’s queer the rush hasn’t come before. It would have, only there hasn’t been a front door to Reliance all that time. Only the back door over-land from Leaping Horse.”

“Why?”

Danvers smiled.

“It’s the Alikine River. That’s Reliance’s front door. And it’s been shut tight–till last summer. You see, sir, the Alikine isn’t just a river; it’s a liquid avalanche. The deepest, swiftest, roughest waters anywhere north of 60°. It’s never been navigable from the coast up to Reliance till Noah Bartlet, the sternwheel king of Alaska, heard about it. Some lunatic must have dared him. Anyway, last summer he came along down to Port Curtis with a big blare of trumpets and one of his oil-fuel, sternwheel kettles, and handed Port Curtis a big laugh. He told the folks he was opening a two months service on the Alikine from Curtis to Reliance. And he put it over.”

Danvers flung his cigarette stub into a cuspidor.

“He’s opened that front door all right, sir,” he added. “And he figures to keep it wide open. Master Noah’s some boy on the swift waters.”

“He should be.”

“Sure, sir.” Danvers smiled. “It would be humorous if I didn’t know Reliance, and just what opening that front door means. I’ve been up there on three trips. Each one was a police call–for a killing. I’ve reported them to you, sir, one time and another. And they were all pretty ugly. Those three trips to Reliance told me I’d found the real hell. The other’s just imitation.”

Danvers gestured while his chief helped himself to another cigarette, and retired again to the pleasant warmth of his stove.

“That doesn’t say a thing, chief,” he cried. “Oh, I know. I haven’t your experience. I don’t know the north like you. But I know a sink when I see it. And I found one at Reliance. Just think of a derelict old fur post hundreds of miles from any living soul with a spot of civilization in them. Then think of a bunch of folk who don’t care a curse, and all of them sluicing gold they can almost shovel on to their riffles. Think of hard men, the sort of jetsam Leaping Horse was mighty glad to see the backs of, with more gold than they can spend. What’s to happen?

“That old fur post has been rebuilt into a great store,” he went on. “And all around it is a dump of shacks and dugouts they call a town. Jim McBarr, a tough prospector, rebuilt that place. He founded it out of his recollection of other similar places he’d known. And he stocked it with all the things that plentiful yellow dust can buy at extortionate prices. Goods? Oh, yes. All sorts of goods to fill the belly and clothe the body, and to help out the gathering of placer gold. Hooch? The world’s worst. Gambling? Every known form from craps to roulette. They can amuse themselves there from daylight to daylight with the lowest down sweepings of the red light sisterhood. And Jim McBarr’s handed control of that sump to his granite-hard Scottish dame he calls Marthe, while he and his boy sluice away up the river.

“Can you see a woman who hasn’t a thought, or feeling, or sense that isn’t yellow dust? That’s Marthe. She’s as soulless as a bank without its honesty. I’ve watched her there, standing behind her counter, weighing in the boys’ dust in scales a newborn kid wouldn’t stand for, and passing them a credit at outrageous prices. There isn’t a day or night that shanty isn’t crazy drunk. There’s no sort of law or order other than they hand out to themselves. There’s no bank or gold control. There’s not a doc nor a missioner to see after bodily or spiritual welfare. It’s just a dump in the heart of the Kaska Indian territory, who are a fighting, murdering, thieving bunch of some four thousand neches. There’s all those things. And the–Bull Moose.”

“The Bull Moose?”

The eyes of the man at the stove were sharply questioning. But Danvers paid no heed.

“Maybe it’s just a living sore that’s only itching a fool inspector of police now. But don’t make any mistake. It’s malignant. And there’s coming a stampede over this river that’ll make the old rush of ’98 over the Skagway look like a kid’s tea-party. I tell you, sir, it’s bad now. And when that stampede gets into full flood what’s it going to be then?”

“Cleaned up–quick!”

The reply snapped back, and Danvers stared.

“But why–why wait?” he stammered.

Ferrers came back to the desk and sat.

“You know, there’s a whole heap we folks blame our department for,” he said coolly. “Maybe it’s the human nature of it. We’re always right. And the department’s always wrong. You see, we’re executive and they’re political. Your anxiety for Reliance, your view of the muck there, I’m dead sure is quite right and without exaggeration. I saw just the same in the early days of Leaping Horse. But it’s got to be. The thing’s historical of this old world of ours. I haven’t a doubt those folk up there are all crooks, gunmen, harlots, gamblers. And that being so Ottawa could dump them into penitentiaries and detention homes without a worry. But the world would lose on balance. And lose badly. We’d gain plaudits. But no plaudits could compensate for the loss of the work these poor folk are doing.

“These reckless-living souls are the he-men, and she-women of life,” he went on thoughtfully. “They may be uneducated or super-educated. It doesn’t matter. But they’re creatures of mentality and courage. They’re creatures of imagination and personality. They’re unquestionably of hell-fire passions, and energy, or they’d never quit the sidewalks of civilization for the dog’s lot of the outland pioneer. You’ve got to look wide, boy; think wide. I know these folk. I’ve lived with them and watched them. I’ve laughed with them, and–cried–with them. And, yes, I guess I’ve loved them. You can believe me it’s the iron courage, the reckless impulse, the physical, moral, mental sacrifice of just these that has always prepared the foundations of all the good that has grown up in the world’s great countries and civilizations.

“Oh, you’re not going to get your moralists, your Pharisees, your cranks to admit that. But it’s everlastingly true. Morality, decency, even religion itself, have all been built up on foundations which have been set by the agony and bloody sweat of those whose monumental courage, energy and unquenchable wanderlust have driven them forth into the world’s far places to seek their lives and lusts. Muck? Yes; if you like. But there’s always litter and muck in the laying of foundations. Up there at Reliance foundations are being built. I’ve watched it all through your reports, and haven’t needed to go see for myself. You see, I know it all so well. I’ve passed those reports to Ottawa; and when the political moment arrives Ottawa will clean up. But that won’t be till the foundations which those poor souls are well and truly laying are dry, and ready to be built upon. Now, this–Bull Moose?”

It was all said with a pleasant humor which did not for a moment disguise the man’s earnestness. Danvers smiled.

“That’s the real business of all this talk, sir,” he said.

“Surely. That’s how I thought.”

“The Bull Moose is a killer,” Danvers said at once. “If you went up to Reliance and asked them you’d hear of a bogey they regard as something almost super-human. You’d hear of a queer figure looking something like the whole fore-quarters of a real bull moose. They’d tell you of a big man whose garments are a parka of moose fur reaching to his thighs. And of a pair of fur chaps reaching to his heels. Then they’d tell you of a headpiece that’s joined to the neck of the parka, and which is no less than the great drooping tines of a fine bull moose, with the original fur mask entirely concealing the human face beneath it. That’s the description you’d hear.”

Danvers paused to offer another cigarette which was promptly refused.

“But you’d hear more than that.” Danvers leant over the table with his elbows resting on it. “You’d hear it all in tones that would make you wonder. You know, sir, the sort of tone kids use when they’re telling fairy stories. These toughs. Men and women who think no more of gunplay than you or I would of passing time of day. That make-up has got ’em cold. The Bull Moose! They talk of him as if he’d got clean out of the pages of a fairy story and come to life.”

“Shall I make a guess at the rest of it?” Ferrers asked with a lift of his even brows.

“You don’t need to, sir. It’s just sheer ‘hold-up’; and ‘killing,’ when killing seems good. The Bull Moose, up there in the country above the Valley of the Moose, has got the whole four thousand murdering Kaska Indians right in the palms of his two hands. He’s got them hypnotized to do his bidding in just the way he’s hypnotized the folk of Reliance into a sort of superstitious fear of him.

“His methods are theatrical,” he went on bitterly. “Just get the position of those crazy gold men. They’re all up and down a hundred miles of that river, and away out on Lake Clare. They’re isolated; ones and twos. On claims of foreshore with their home-made sluice boxes. And sometimes only panning a prospect. They go on day after day, week after week, all summer. And their dust piles up. Then comes the moment. They’re just beginning to think of making down river to trade with old Marthe and hit some high spots. But before the getaway the Bull Moose suddenly appears out of–nowhere. He’s in full view of the claim, but at a point that’s safe from gunplay. He just stands there and looks through his mask with its crazy drooping horns. When his victim’s seen him there comes a deep imitation of a moose’s bellow at the rutting season, or a laugh. Then he goes. And if you listened to those half-wits you’d guess he just fades away. But the signal’s been given. And the next the poor fool knows is a horde of neches armed with an arsenal of store rifles. And, to save his fool hide he’s got to pay over his stock of dust. If he shows fight–!”

Danvers gestured and sat back in his chair.

“A white hold-up, who’s–‘taken the blanket.’” Ferrers nodded.

“Sure, sir.”

“Some tough from–Leaping Horse?”

“Maybe, sir. But I don’t think so.”

“Who?”

“It’s only a guess. And maybe it’s all wrong. Yet–I’d like you to cast your mind back, sir. I’ve been on this border patrol four years. They’ve been mining placer up there a lot longer. You remember how you came to have me detailed up here. Sergeant Sam Peele was in charge here with four men. He skipped. But his men are here still.”

“Yes. I remember. Deserted over the border. It was the time of an oil stampede in the Irkuk River district. He’d been an oil man, or something, before he joined up. That’s what the inquiry told us.”

“That’s what the inquiry–concluded, sir. You remember. I was on that inquiry.”

“And signed the report.”

“Yes.” Danvers smiled. “That’s so, sir. I signed it. But I was very careful to state that our evidence was meager. And our verdict was more or less an ‘intelligent surmise.’ Well, Steve Dickson, one of my men, is convinced that Sam Peele never made the Irkuk district. He declared Peele had his eyes always turned on Reliance from the moment color was first struck. He talked of it all the time; thought of it; dreamed of it. And he was a big man, like this Bull Moose. And he’d had years of Indian territory down south. There was a time when he was interpreter to the Indian department in the Blackfeet Reservation. He could interpret half a dozen Indian lingos. He knew Piegan, Cree, Sioux, and Blackfeet. It looks to me as though we shall find the face of Sam Peele under that moose mask–when we get him.”

For some thoughtful moments Superintendent Ferrers offered no comment. But at last he nodded at the man across the table with a friendly smile.

“You win, boy,” he said amiably. “Four years is long enough for building those foundations. They should be dry by now. We’ll have to stir Ottawa into activity. You can write me a very full report and I’ll forward it with a strong covering letter. Then you’ll have to be ready to go down East yourself. You’ve convinced me it’s time to get after things. And I think you’ll be able to convince Ottawa. Anyway it’s up to you. The best I can do for you is to give you the opportunity.”

“Thanks, sir.” Danvers’ smile was beaming. “You must have another cigarette,” he added, holding out his depleted case. “They’re quite good.”

Chapter II

Stark Nature

“Maybe there’s no real call to tell you–to tell anybody. It’s my life and hers. But, you see, you’re my father, Jim. And you and Marthe have always been pretty good to me. Besides–I–I wanted to know you feel good about it. Shamus Hoogan’s a great feller–her father. And Roskana’s–”

“A Dogrib squaw!”

Jim McBarr’s interruption came with all the contempt his cold, uncompromising temper could fling into it.

The youth stared. He was lying sprawled on the ground beside the noon campfire, with the chattels of the noon meal they had just eaten littered about him. There was a flush on his bronzed cheeks, a glint of hot resentment in the blue, frank-gazing eyes, as he searched his father’s face. But his stirring of anger found no verbal expression. He just stared, breathing hard. And his big body propped itself on a massive elbow pressed deeply into the loose alluvial soil.

But Jim McBarr never for a moment deflected the stare of his far-gazing eyes. They remained peering into the remoteness of the gloomy gorge. He sat there on his upturned bucket looking many sizes too big for it, and blew smoke heavily from his well-charred pipe. There was something frigidly unemotional about him. Something utterly unyielding. His big face was without any softening, and his eyes were granite hard. But that was the man. It is doubtful if life could contain for him any thrill, any emotion, any alarm, that could disturb his outward seeming.

The bore of water was surging down the river. The spring freshet was in full spate. The swollen Alikine was streaming southward, heavily, irresistibly, gloomily. It was pouring between massive, rugged walls of gray granite whose dizzy heights had power to sadden even the happy smile of a cloudless spring day. It was an oily-flowing avalanche of water that was brown with silt. And a low, thunderous murmur echoed dully from wall to wall as it swirled on its way. The flood of it was a-litter with the washout of upper reaches. Whole trees were afloat. They came and passed in almost unbroken succession. And their up-reaching skeleton arms were lifted as though in prayerful appeal against the destruction for which they were riding.

Ten Mile Gorge was an expression of nature in her superlative grim. The vast containing walls, often overhanging by reason of ages of erosion, made for a sense of personal insignificance. The avalanche of its waters spurned the littleness of all animate life. It was without grace. But starkly magnificent.

And in the very heart of it lay the stretch of alluvial which was the gold claim Jim McBarr and his son, Sandy, were working. It was a wide spit of foreshore, some half mile in length, where the walls of the gorge recessed to admit the mouth of a lateral ravine. The latter was a great, broken drainway from the heights above, and the foreshore was the rich silt washed down through the ages.

Jim McBarr’s workings were as crudely makeshift, as were all the gold washings up and down the Alikine, from Reliance to the Valley of the Moose. There was the inevitable trestle conduit, fed by the flow of the river; there was a vast dump of tailings, which indicated years of labor; there were implements and two stout wheeling trolleys. It was all very primitive. But it was all that was necessary where the soil was grossly rich and loosely surfaced. Later, when the surface had been all washed out it might be different. But Jim McBarr was not concerned for later. The surface was rich with a color that was beyond his dreams. It would be all sufficient.

Then there was a hut. It was no better than a rough log fronting to a small natural cavern. It had a doorway, and a smoke hole in its roof. It was just a shelter for sleep. Nothing more. For, in the uncertainties in the deeps of Ten Mile Gorge, there could be no telling. There were the devastating ravages of nature. And there were other things.

Jim McBarr, like all the rest of the gold fraternity on the Alikine, was a creature of fortune and opportunity. And his twenty-year-old son had been raised to the same life. Out on their claim they lived from day to day. They slept, and ate, and worked. And withal they watched. And such gold as remained in the riffles of their sluice was carefully harvested and safely cached.

Jim had the wisdom of forty odd years. He had the experience of years of buffeting in the northern wilderness. He had no trust in man or nature. But he had infinite, cold courage. Sandy had courage, too. But he also had youth in its fullest tide.

The physical likeness between father and son was almost too complete. Both were massively big. They were big of bone, big of muscle, and lean as herrings where superfluous flesh was concerned. The father’s thick hair curled crisply close to a well-shaped head, and his thrusting chin was hidden by a short brown beard. The son’s hair was of a similar brown and similar curl. The shape of his head was almost identical. And like his father’s, his strong face was ungiven to unnecessary smiling. But whereas Jim’s eyes were granite hard in their cold gray, Sandy’s were blue, and eager, and shining with the unspoilt youth behind them.

At last the dangerous silence which had fallen looked to have reached its full limit. It was the father. It was a wordless negative movement of his bare head. A movement which admitted of no misapprehension. He removed the charred pipe from the grip of his strong jaws, and spoke with harsh finality.

“It’s got to quit, son,” he said, his eyes boring coldly. “It’s got to quit here and now. Else you can pull up stakes, and beat your own trail without your family. Your mother’s a Scot from Aberdeen. I’m from Glasgow. And that’s wher’ you were born. You’re a Scot to your backbone, and–white. Your blood’s–red. Wanita’s isn’t. She’s the half of an Irishman, who’s white all through. Maybe he hasn’t the balance belonging to our folk, but he’s a man I’m glad for. The other half of her’s a–Dogrib squaw. Get that, and all it means. A Dogrib. That low-grade bunch that belongs to the world’s throw-outs. If it was just philandering with a half-breed I wouldn’t stand for it and call you ‘son.’ But if I know your fool honesty it’s–marrying. And that’s a hell-sight worse.”

The gesture of spurning accompanying the final words was devastating. And there was the swiftest glance of the hard eyes as the boy stirred convulsively under the lash. Jim McBarr went on at once. It almost seemed as if he had no understanding of the goad he was inflicting, or was eager to drive it right home.

“If you marry Wanita you can forget Marthe and me ever bred you and raised you,” he said, deliberately raising a restraining hand as Sandy jolted up sitting. “You’ve put it up to me. Now get this. You can’t mix color in the human body without producing the sort of stuff that belongs to a red hot hell. It’s against nature; it’s against life. A bitch wolf and a dog father can’t sport better than a cur malemute. And a cur malemute needs a club over him from the day he’s pupped. I don’t care a curse for any angel face and body. That’s your kid’s foolishness when your blood’s hot. It’s hell’s mask to fool half-wits. It’s your head, not your belly, you need to think with. Wanita! That kid’s a picture. She’s the kind of wench to set any boy dizzy. I know. I’d say she’s pure, too. And, seein’ she’s Shamus Hoogan’s kid I’d guess she don’t know a thing to make her ashamed. But it’s in her. Bred in her. The breed. And it’s hell!”

The cold tones ceased and the hard eyes remained on the far distance. Then the man’s great shoulders stirred as the silence remained unbroken.

“Well, it’s right up to you,” he went on. “You’re a Scot’s twenty, which is another boy’s twenty-five. Your blood’s rich and hot. And you’ve a share of our dust to make you forget. If you’re wise you won’t forget. There’s a white world ahead of you. It’s waiting. You can buy some of it. You don’t need to breed malemutes.”

Jim’s pipe went back to the grip of his jaws with a gesture. It told of his finish. And Sandy’s pent feeling broke out on the instant.

“It’s not right, Jim!” He flung hotly. “It’s not fair! It’s darned lies! Ther’ isn’t a breath of hell in the whole of Wanita’s body. She’s as pure as snow–”

“But not as white.”

Sandy leapt to his feet. It was the final straw. He was driven beyond all filial restraint.

“And what of it?” he shouted, his voice echoing down the gorge. “Did she do it? Is a kid to be blamed for the lusts of her parents? It’s you folk that should get blamed. It’s not a thing to me you’re a Scot and Marthe’s a Scot. I’d still have to be me if you were a black from Africa and Marthe was a yellow Chink. You’re crazy talking white and color when it’s you folk who do it. Black, red, yellow, or white, nature stands for it. And if nature stands for it who the hell are you to kick? Half-breed! What of your Scots and British. What of your Russians and your Yanks. Every mother’s son of us are mixed breeds. You can’t put that stuff over on me, Jim. A Scot’s a half-breed if ever there was one.”

“But he’s white.”

“Chri–! Tcha!”

Sandy passed a great hand back over his curling brown hair. He was beating back the impulse driving him. He was striving with all his big might to remember that the other was his father. He abruptly gestured, and his tone moderated.

“You’ve bred me and raised me, Jim,” he said, almost gently. “You’ve had me taught, and I’ve learned good. You’ve–you’ve been pretty good to me. But a feller can’t think those things all the time. I stand pat for Wanita if you talk half-breed from now to Eternity. And I’m not thinking with my belly. It’s Wanita, if it costs me father, mother, or anything else in the world. That kid’s got no hell in her. She’s just good from her dark head to her toes. Courage! Truth! Love! I want her. I’ll always want her. And it’s not just for her body. When it comes to you and Marthe against Wanita there’s nothing for me but Wanita. I’ll beat my own trail with Wanita wherever it heads me. You’ve said it. And it goes.”

The boy’s restraint held. But the cost of it was evident in the eyes that gazed yearningly for a glimpse of any softening in the face that never turned in his direction.

The man on the bucket inclined his head.

“We’ll clean up, and make a break back to Marthe,” he said, in an even tone that betrayed no feeling. “We’ll strike your share of our dust, and Marthe’ll weigh it right and hand it over. And we’ll do it right away before the Bull Moose and his bunch cuts in on us. You’ll get a square deal. You’ve turned your trick.” Jim McBarr drew a deep breath and blew smoke afresh. Then: “I’ll stand for no low-grade neche blood in a Scot’s grandchildren.”

Sandy leapt. His six feet of body stood towering. It was a moment of wild exasperation that was beyond his control; his upraised fist was clenched; it looked about to strike.

But even so the man on the bucket gave not the smallest heed. Gazing afar up the gorge his pipe left his mouth. And it was held out pointing over the water.

“What’ll that be?” he asked coldly.

What might have happened in another moment of the boy’s headlong rage it would be impossible to say. Sandy’s furious impulse was at the border-line of sanity. He was as big and strong as the man who had goaded him. And he was years younger.

But that cold question, that deliberate pointing, that urgent leaning. They were irresistible to a mind haunted by the untold dangers, natural and human, with which it was encompassed. Sandy’s fist fell to his side. Its passionate grip relaxed. The flame of his fury snuffed out, smothered by something which stirred all his sanity. It was the urge of that question. He, too, searched the distance.

It was away up where the gloomy walls carried the torrent round a bend to the westward. It was small, infinitely small, in the dim distance. Then it looked to be perilously mixed up in the litter of forest débris washing down on the bosom of the river. It was a goodly speck of vivid color; red and white. And it seemed to dodge in and out amongst the tree trunks and branches as though it were playing hide and seek and enjoying it. It was alive and moving of its own volition. That was evident. A great ruffle of water was preceding its down-stream rush, indicating the outstripping of the great speed of the river.

The two men watched that tortuous dodging amidst the deadly tangle of forest flotsam. And it was an interest that was almost breathless. What was it? Who? No waterfowl would risk that torrential stream when the spring bore was in full flood. Not even the river-loving, powerful loon. It was something human. It must be. But what human would be mad enough, reckless enough, to face almost certain death amongst those speeding, rolling trees. Accident. Yes, that must be the answer. And yet–

“Will it be Shamus?”

Jim McBarr’s question came without much confidence. Shamus Hoogan’s claim was four miles up river. And so far as he knew not another living soul had place in the whole extent of the gorge.

“Not Shamus, Jim,” Sandy replied at once. “Not at that gait. Not at that stroke. That’s a boy swimming all right. Shamus can’t swim that way. See the stroke of it. Watch it. You see? They’re trudging the water same as if hell was hard behind ’em. It’s neche! Kaska! Do you guess it’s one of the–Say!”

Sandy ran to the water’s edge. He stood leaning and peering. And Jim McBarr watched his son’s movements. There was something grim in the hard gray eyes. It might have been a smile in any other. The father’s urgent interest in the mad swimmer was gone. He simply watched the son who had called his parental hand and defeated it.

Sandy had no thought for anything but that rapidly oncoming swimmer whose skill, or luck, seemed to defeat every danger with which it was threatened. Now the reaching arms were plainly visible, swinging like flails driven at speed. They were beating the water on either side of the raised bundle of color. And they were white arms!

The swimmer shot out of the heavy main stream. Sandy understood. Every chance had been taken for speed. The swirling main stream had assured that greater speed. So it had been adopted regardless of all consequences. The nerve of it. The madness. The urgency. Now the swimmer was heading shorewards. The hither shore. Precisely heading for where Sandy was standing. The boy’s big voice came back, echoing down the gorge to the watching father.

“Wanita!” he shouted.

Jim McBarr stood up. Sandy flung a swift glance back at him.

“It’s the kid! Wanita, Jim! In that!” he cried pointing. “And their camp’s four miles up. Why?”

“Trouble, boy, I guess,” was the instant retort. “The Bull Moose!”

She stood up in the shallows and ran up the shore. She was a little breathless but unshivering. A young creature of ravishing beauty, white and glistening with water streaming from a perfect body. She was stark with the nakedness of the day she was born.

The two men were standing together. And the only emotion was in the wide eyes of Sandy. He just stared. And mind and senses were a riot behind his eyes. Jim was staring, too. But without emotion.

There was just one moment of it while the vision of virgin loveliness rose from the silted waters. Slim, tall, straight, with the perfect smooth muscles of young womanhood, and the ravishing contours of feminine loveliness that set the pulses of youth hammering. Then, completely unconscious of the thing she had done, was doing, Wanita cried out the passionate woe driving her.

“It’s the Bull Moose!” she wailed. “They murdered Roskana an’ cut her to pieces! They looted our dust. And Shamus is way back there facing a bunch of sixty Kaskas at the door of our burnt-out shack!”

There were no tears in the big, dark eyes. But agony of mind looked out of them. Agony, and rage, and a great courage. And even as she spoke the girl’s slim hands went up to the long strands of dark hair which secured the bundle of her colored clothing to her head. She deftly released them, and the wet strands fell far below her waist. The next moment, it seemed, the slim body was hidden beneath a single sleeveless scarlet cotton garment that reached just below her knees.

Then it happened. One of Jim McBarr’s great hands fell on his son’s arm and gripped.

“Don’t stand around gawkin’ at things that ain’t fer a boy’s eyesight! The hooch for the kid! Back there in the shack. She’s needing a bunch to warm her vitals. Beat it!”

And he almost threw the other as he swung him back in the direction of the hut at the cliff-foot.

Chapter III

Concerning the Bull Moose

Sandy was gone for the precious bottle of Scotch whisky which was his dour parent’s remedy for every ailment of the human body. And as he went the youthful optimism in him stirred a feeling of gladness at the concern which his father had shown for Wanita.

His father’s temper was strong in Sandy. The youth was headstrong, and no less intolerant of interference. But Jim, for all the hard words which had just passed between them, was his father, and had been good to him. And without any yielding, Sandy hated the thought of their quarrel. He went on his errand with a feeling that, perhaps after all, that quarrel was not all it seemed.

Then Wanita. They had been her instant thought in her trouble. The poor little kid was distraught, and she had come to them–him. And with that thought came a passionate yearning to succor her. In that moment Sandy felt he was ready to face every Kaska devil in the world for her. And the Bull Moose.

And the amazing thing Wanita had done. Her courage! The grit of it! The fierce endurance! He thrilled with marvel, and a lover’s intemperate admiration. A great love surged with the fierce pity that filled his young and simple heart. Four miles! Four miles of that hellish gorge! A four mile race with death! And in a torrent whose speeding waters were little short of freezing in the flood of the spring freshet! He hurried laboriously in the ankle-deep loose alluvial of the foreshore.

The father waited while the sound of Sandy’s progress came back to him. And the while he just gazed down at the slim beauty before him, clad in its poor garment of flaming wet cotton.

There was no softening in the grim set of his face. There was no approval in his cold eyes; no pity; no sympathy. If there was a single thought of admiration in him he gave no sign of it. He just looked and missed nothing. But the boring of his narrowed eyes suggested intense activity of mind.

He noted the slim young body with its bare, graceful arms; then the shapely legs and ankles; the beautifully molded neck and chest with its suggestion of the soft youthful bosom just below it. All were possessed of the silken beauty of the tainted white flesh of the half-breed, which was anathema to his dour puritanism.

The tint of it nauseated him. Yet he knew it was beautiful. To him it was the work of the devil. So, too, with the appeal of the girl’s great dark eyes that were so full of despair as they gazed up into his. They were smoldering with the hated savagery of the Indian.

Then there was her glory of raven-black hair. It was streaming water as it fell far below her waist from a natural center parting. It framed the downy oval of slightly dusky cheeks, the broad, intelligent forehead with perfectly-penciled even black brows; and the ripe full lips, the perfect aquilinity of a sensitive nose, the strength of a well-molded chin. These things had but one appeal for him. They were the make-up of the mischievous whole that was to rob him of a son, who, for some twenty years, had been the whole of everything in his life. A half-breed!

As the sound of Sandy’s footsteps died away Jim’s voice rasped harshly.

“You quit Shamus!” he accused. “You quit him cold! You left him sixty to one. And with no better than an old Winchester to pull the game.”

There was a staggered pause at the brutality of it while the blood flamed into Wanita’s pale cheeks. The girl flushed almost to the hue of her cotton frock. And the Indian smolder of her eyes flared as she flung her denial, with her slim strong hands outheld and clenched.

“I didn’t quit him!” she cried, something distractedly. “I didn’t! I didn’t! Quit him? He’s my good father. I’d go through hell to save him one second of life.”

“Yet you left him to face the Bull Moose–alone.”

The goad of it was without mercy. Yet the man’s intent was different. He was not seeking to hurt for hurt’s sake. The girl’s weary body was shaking with the cold of the river. She was swaying on the verge of physical collapse. He must keep her fighting till the story was told.

And he had his way. It was a face of a fury that shrilled back at him.

“I tell you I didn’t quit,” she cried. “I–I couldn’t do but what I’ve done. We were up there at our home shack on the cliff. Roskana an’ me. They rushed us. They dragged us out. They fired the shack. Then they killed Roskana where I could see. They knifed her. They hacked up her little, helpless, brown body till it wasn’t human any longer. Oh, they murdered my little–little mother!”

The clenched hands relaxed and wrung, and the outheld arms dropped helplessly to the girl’s sides. Her head drooped, and the tearless eyes half closed.

“Go on!”

The cold compulsion of it drove as it was intended it should. Wanita stiffened.

“Why? Why will I go on?” she flung back fiercely. “You don’t believe. You guess I’m lying. That I quit, scared, an’ made a getaway. Sandy won’t believe that. And I came to Sandy. Not you. You hate me because I’m a half-breed. I know. I don’t want help from you. Only Sandy. I want him to come right back, so–”

“Tcha!”

Jim McBarr’s ejaculation broke with fierce impatience. But the girl’s indictment had found its mark. His bronzed cheeks flushed a deeper hue. Then his eyes. They were lit with swift anger.

“Quit that stuff,” he snarled. “Ther’s not time. Keep talking of the other. Hand it me. All of it. It’s four miles beat of hell’s own stream to Shamus. And I need to make him quick.”

The girl stared. Then in a rush she poured out her story. There was no longer antagonism in her; only lament. Even in her extremity she had glimpsed beneath the man’s dour exterior.

“Oh, they’ve murdered her,” she cried. “My little mother, who never lived to hurt a soul. Her poor brown body. They ripped her, and slashed her so her warm blood flooded the ground around my feet. Four of them held me, so I must see it all. Four of them. And I fought them with all I had. Just fool bare hands and teeth. I meant to make them kill me, too. I tried. Oh, God, why didn’t they? I’ll see it all to the day I die? Why didn’t they kill me, too? Why? Why?”

Just for an instant two hands went up to the beautiful face, and the girl’s eyes were hidden. Then they flung away and she went on.

“But they didn’t,” she rushed on. “And now I know they never meant to. I saw her drop in a bloody heap of mangled flesh. Then he came. The Bull Moose. He came right through the belching smoke of our burning shack like a devil stepping out of the heart of a blazing hell. He stood there while I bit and tore at the men holding me. And there wasn’t a moment my eyes left him. He was moosehide from head to foot. And his great moose horns drooped either side of his completely masked head, same as if they grew out of it. He didn’t speak; he didn’t move. An’ I could see his eyes gleaming through holes in his moose mask. He was big. Big as you an’ Sandy. And even his hands were mitted so you couldn’t see the color of his flesh.

“Then he lifted a hand,” she went on, spurring herself to her task. “It was a sign. An order. And he made it just as the sound of shots came up from the river where Shamus was working. Maybe he’d waited for that. I don’t know. Maybe he’d just meant torture. Well, he’d made it. God! He’d made it. It sounded like hundreds of shots. And I guessed Shamus was dead, too, riddled by his murdering Kaskas. But he wasn’t. I heard other shots. Single shots. I knew ’em right away. I knew their zip! It was his Winchester. And I knew Shamus was fighting back.

“Oh, it gave me heart to fight some more,” she went on. “But there wasn’t need. The Bull Moose signed again. His hand moved and I was free. Why?” Her head moved slowly from side to side. “I don’t know. And I didn’t want a thing. I ran for the cliff, and no one stopped me. But as I ran the Bull Moose laffed. It was that laff they all tell about. The same as if he was calling you a crazy, helpless darn fool who don’t matter anyway. But I didn’t stop. I made the cliff, and looked down for Shamus. Oh, I saw him. He was there right inside our work shack. And it was afire. He was at the window fighting behind a barricade with his old Winchester pulling like doom on a great bunch of Kaskas scattered under any cover they could find. He was fighting every inch of the way, and I know he’d have thousands of rounds before he was through. And the smoke was helping him. Then I knew what I had to do. I stripped. I fixed my clothes with my hair. And I dived for the river where they couldn’t get me.”

It was the last of the girl’s resources. With her final words her remains of strength gave out. She drooped a moment with her arms trailing at the sides of her shaking body; then her knees refused. There was just an instant while her glorious eyes closed; then her body began to crumple. In a moment she was caught, and held, and borne in a pair of arms that held her like some babe.

Sandy had just reappeared in the shack doorway with the whisky bottle and pannikin as his father reached it with his unconscious burden.

“She’s dead!”

It came with hoarse intensity. Sandy stared up at his father accusingly.

“Not on your life!” Jim retorted roughly. “Here, take her, curse you! She’s yours, I guess. Pump a dram of that hooch into her. And see she gets it good.”

Sandy took the precious burden. And he hugged the lovely body to him as if he would impart some of his own strong life to it. He stared up at the other’s unsmiling face for further guidance.

“Don’t be easy with that stuff,” his father went on harshly. “See she gets it if you have to open her jaws and pour it into her darn throat. That’s your job, I guess. You can set her in my bunk an’ wrap her in my blankets. I’ll go fix the double kyak for you, and set our cache of dust into it. An’ I’ll bring it along and make it fast here, so you can get the kid to it easy. You got to get her down home to Marthe just as quick as you can beat it if you figure to keep her living. If you want her the way you say. It’s pneumony, I guess. Pretty dead sure. That darn river would pump pneumony into a tin image. If you get her to Marthe she can fix her. Marthe knows about things. And she’ll weigh up your share of dust. You’ll need to get the bunch right out on the river after this Bull Moose, quick. See? An’ when you’ve done that, and you’ve got your half-breed fixed right, why, you can hit that trail we guessed about to–hell!”

The two men stood eye to eye across the inanimate body in the boy’s arms. There was not a sign of relenting in either. The granite hard eyes of the father told only of implacable resolve. And the boy’s were frowning with the passionate resentment of hot youth.

And then they seemed to move by common impulse. Jim turned away without a word. And, passing down the foreshore, headed down river where their boats were hauled up clear of the water. Sandy turned back into the hut with his burden.

Sandy laid the unconscious girl on his father’s bunk. And he set to his task as though every thought of the man who had just departed had been thrust out of his mind. He was young enough, headstrong enough to follow the sex instinct in him to the ends of the earth. Wanita, in those moments, was his whole world. His father? Marthe? Even his promised share of their gold dust? They meant nothing comparable with the dark beauty of the girl who had dared all to reach him.

It was the work of moments only to remove the girl’s wet frock, and wrap her naked, helpless body in the rich furs that served them for blankets. Then he knelt at her side, and, with purposeful hands, poured out the treasured whisky into the pannikin. He held it to the unresisting lips that had sagged apart, and poured it into her mouth. Only the tiniest drops at a time lest it should choke her. And he watched with frantic concern for reaction.

There was none. He repeated the operation and still there was none. Then he sat back on his heavily booted heels, and turned to glance at the sunlit doorway where his father had stood. It was a moment of weakness. And he knew it. He was mechanically looking for the help which for twenty years had never failed him. And the realization of it angered him.

He turned again to the beautiful face that now looked so like death. He continued his watch for the smallest sign that life was returning. There was none. At least none that he could recognize. So again he resorted to the potent spirit.

After that he just waited. He could think of nothing else to do. The poor unconscious body was swathed to the neck in a wealth of furs. What else was there he could do? Then it came to him, and he reached his big arms out. He thrust them about that still figure, and laid his head upon the soft bosom in a passion of love and anguish. He hugged her to him for helpless, almost tearful moments.

Then he lifted his head; he leant over her and kissed the lips which were still moist with the raw spirit. And it was contact with their coldness that stirred him to vital activity. He leapt to his feet and passed to the doorway.

He was looking for Jim. But Jim was nowhere in view. He knew well enough Jim was down at the cache preparing his boat. But, nevertheless, disappointment weighed heavily. He knew now he wanted Jim. He wanted the man who spurned Wanita for a “half-breed.” Yes, he wanted his hard sense, and the encouragement of his presence. Jim had said Wanita was alive. But was she?

He passed a hand back over his bare head, running his work-worn fingers through his curling brown hair. His fears were paralyzing. Jim! He must get Jim! He remembered that for all his hatred of the half-breed Jim had been concerned that Wanita should be given his beloved spirit to help her. He had given her the use of his own bunk and furs. It was he who had borne her in his arms to their shelter that she might be cared for. Yes. He wanted Jim now.

And at that instant Jim appeared. He was driving the big kyak up against the torrent of the river at a speed that made little enough trouble of the water-race. He nosed the craft on shore opposite the hut door, leapt out of it and moored it fast. Sandy went down to him on the instant.

“She hasn’t waked, Jim,” he cried. “You guess you’re sure she isn’t–dead?”

Jim looked into the wide troubled eyes.

“You doped her good with spirit?”

“She’s had a big dope.”

“You got it–down?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

Jim nodded. And there was something comforting in the confidence of his movement.

“She’s alive,” he said, in his hard, matter-of-fact way. “Maybe she hasn’t waked. She will. Get right back and dope her more. Scotch’ll beat the chill in her. An’ then pack her right down into this craft, and beat it the best you know. That’s all. So long.”