The Gun-Brand Part 22

"Just a moment, please," he said quietly; "I'm not sure I can make myself plain to you, but you see in the North we know something of MacNair's work. Of what he has done in spite of the odds. We know the North needs men like MacNair. You claim to be a friend of the Indians.

Do you realize that up on Snare Lake, right now, are a bunch of Indians who depend on MacNair for their existence? MacNair's absence will cause suffering among them and even death. If his storehouse has been burned, what are they going to eat? On your statements I've got to enter charges against MacNair. First and foremost the charge of murder. He will also be charged with importing liquor, having liquor in prohibited territory, smuggling whiskey, and supplying liquor to the Indians.

"Now, Miss Elliston, for the good of those Indians on Snare Lake I want you to withdraw the charge of murder. The other offences are bailable ones, and in my judgment he should be allowed to return to his Indians.

Then, when his trial comes up at the spring a.s.sizes, the charge of murder can be placed against him. I'll bet a year's pay, MacNair isn't to blame. In the meantime we will get busy and comb the barrens for the real criminals. I've got a hunch. And you can take my word that justice shall be done, no matter where the blow falls."

Suddenly, through Chloe's mind flashed the memory of what Lapierre had told her of the Mounted. She arose to her feet and, drawing herself up haughtily, glared into the face of the officer. When she spoke, her voice rang hard with scorn.

"It is very evident that you don't want to arrest MacNair. I have heard that he is a law unto himself--that he would defy arrest--that he has the Mounted subsidized. I did not believe it at the time. I regarded it merely as the exaggerated statement of a man who justly hates him. But it seems this man was right. You need not trouble yourself about MacNair's Indians. I will stand sponsor for their welfare. They are my Indians now. I warn you that the day of MacNair is past. I refuse to withdraw a single word of my charges against him, and you will either arrest him, or I shall go straight to Ottawa. And I shall never rest until I have blazoned before the world the whole truth about your rotten system! What will Canada say, when she learns that the Mounted--the men who have been held up before all the world as models of bravery, efficiency, and honour--are as crooked and grafting as--as the police of New York?"

Corporal Ripley's face showed red through the tan, and he started to his feet with an exclamation of anger. "Hold on, Corporal." The voice of MacNair was the quiet voice with which one sooths a petulant child.

He remained seated and pushed the Stetson toward the back of his head.

"She really believes it. Don't hold it against her. It is not her fault. When the smoke has cleared away and she gets her bearings, we're all going to like her. In fact, I'm thinking that the time is coming when the only one who will hate her will be herself. I like her now; though she is not what you'd call my friend. I mean--not yet."

Corporal Ripley gazed in astonishment at MacNair and then very frigidly he turned to Chloe. "Then the charge of murder stands?"

"Yes, it does," answered the girl. "If he were allowed to go free now there would be three murders instead of two by the time of the spring a.s.sizes or whatever you call them, for he is even now upon the trail of a man he has threatened to kill. I can give you his exact words. He said: 'I have taken the man-trail . . . and at the end of that trail will lie a dead man--myself or Pierre Lapierre!'"

"Lapierre!" exclaimed the officer. "What has he got to do with it?"

He turned to MacNair as if expecting an answer. But MacNair remained silent. "Why don't you charge Lapierre with the crimes you told me he was guilty of?" taunted the girl. Again she saw that baffling twinkle in the grey eyes of the man. Then the eyes hardened.

"The last thing I desire is the arrest of Lapierre," he answered.

"Lapierre must answer to me." The words, p.r.o.nounced slowly and distinctly, rasped hard. In spite of herself, Chloe shuddered.

Corporal Ripley s.h.i.+fted uneasily. "We'd better be going, MacNair," he said. "There's something queer about this whole business--something I don't quite understand. It's up to me to take you up the river; but, believe me, I'm coming back! I'll get at the bottom of this thing if it takes me five years. Are you ready?"

MacNair nodded.

"I can let you have some Indians," suggested the girl.

"What for?"

"Why, for a guard, of course; to help you with your prisoner."

Ripley drew himself up and answered abruptly: "The Mounted is quite capable of managing its own affairs, Miss Elliston. I don't need your Indians, thank you."

Chloe glanced wrathfully into the boyish face of the officer. "Suit yourself," she answered sweetly. "But if I were you, I'd want a whole regiment of Indians. Because if MacNair wants to, he'll eat you up."

"He won't want to," snapped Ripley. "I don't taste good."

As they pa.s.sed out of the door, MacNair turned. "Good-by, Miss Elliston," he said gravely. "Beware of Pierre Lapierre." Chloe made no reply and as MacNair turned to go, he chanced to glance into the wide, expressionless face of Big Lena, who had stood throughout the interview leaning heavily against the jamb of the kitchen door.

Something inscrutable in the stare of the fishlike, china-blue eyes clung in his memory, and try as he would in the days that followed, MacNair could not fathom the meaning of that stare, if indeed it had any meaning. MacNair did not know why, but in some inexplainable manner the memory of that look eased many a weary mile.

CHAPTER XVII

A FRAME-UP

News, of a kind, travels on the wings of the wind across wastes of the farther land. Princ.i.p.alities may fall, nations crash, and kingdoms sink into oblivion, and the North will neither know nor care. For the North has its own problems--vital problems, human problems--and therefore big. Elemental, portentous problems, having to do with life and the eating of meat.

In the crash and s.h.i.+ft of man-made governments; in the redistribution of man-const.i.tuted authority, and man-gathered surplus of increment, the North has no part. On the cold side of sixty there is no surplus, and men think in terms of meat, and their possessions are meat-getting possessions. Guns, nets, and traps, even of the best, insure but a bare existence. And in the lean years, which are the seventh years--the years of the rabbit plague--starvation stalks in the teepees, and gaunt, sunken-eyed forms, dry-lipped, and with the skin drawn tightly over protruding ribs, stiffen between shoddy blankets.

For even the philosophers of the land of G.o.d and the H.B.C. must eat to live--if not this week, at least once next week.

The H.B.C., taking wise cognizance of the seventh year, extends it credit--"debt" it is called in the outlands--but it puts no more wool in its blankets, and for lack of food the body-fires burn low. But the cold remains inexorable. And with the thermometer at seventy degrees below zero, even in the years of plenty, when the philosophers eat almost daily, there is little of comfort. With the thermometer at seventy in the lean years, the suffering is diminished by the pa.s.sing of many philosophers.

The arrest of Bob MacNair was a matter of sovereign import to the dwellers of the frozen places, and word of it swept like wildfire through the land of the lakes and rivers. Yet in all the North those upon whom it made the least impression were those most vitally concerned--MacNair's own Indians. So quietly had the incident pa.s.sed that not one of them realized its importance.

With them MacNair was _G.o.d_. He was the _law_. He had taught them to work, so that even in the lean years they and their wives and their babies ate twice each day. He had said that they should continue to eat twice each day, and therefore his departure was a matter of no moment. They knew only that he had gone southward with the man of the soldier-police. This was doubtless as he had commanded. They could conceive of MacNair only as commanding. Therefore the soldier-policeman had obeyed and accompanied him to the southward.

With no such complacency, however, was the arrest of MacNair regarded by the henchmen of Lapierre. To them MacNair was not G.o.d, nor was he the law. For these men knew well the long arm of the Mounted and what lay at the end of the trail. Lean forms sped through the woods, and the word pa.s.sed from lip to lip in far places. It was whispered upon the Slave, the Mackenzie, and the Athabasca, and it was told in the provinces before MacNair and Ripley reached Fort Chippewayan. Along the river, men talked excitedly, and impatiently awaited word from Lapierre, while their eyes snapped with greed and their thoughts flew to the gold in the sands of the barren grounds.

In the Bastile du Mort, a hundred miles to the eastward, Lapierre heard the news from the lips of a breathless runner, but a scant ten hours after Corporal Ripley and MacNair stepped from the door of the cottage.

And within the hour the quarter-breed was upon the trail, travelling light, in company with LeFroy, who, fearing swift vengeance, had also sought safety in the stronghold of the outlaws.

Chloe Elliston stood in the doorway and watched the broad form of Bob MacNair swing across the clearing in company with Corporal Ripley. As the men disappeared in the timber, a fierce joy of victory surged through her veins. She had bared the mailed fist! Had wrested a people from the hand of their oppressor! The Snare Lake Indians were henceforth to be _her_ Indians! She had ridded the North of MacNair!

Every fibre of her sang with the exultation of it as she turned into the room and encountered the fishlike stare of Big Lena.

The woman leaned, ponderous and silent, against the jamb of the door giving into the kitchen. Her huge arms were folded tightly across her breast, and, for some inexplicable reason, Chloe found the stare disconcerting. The enthusiasm of her victory damped perceptibly. For if the fish-eyed stare held nothing of reproach, it certainly held nothing of approbation. Almost the girl read a condescending pity in the stare of the china-blue eyes. The thought stung, and she faced the other wrathfully.

"Well, for Heaven's sake say something! Don't stand there and stare like a--a billikin! Can't you talk?"

"Yah, Ay tank Ay kin; but Ay von't--not yat."

"What do you mean?" cried the exasperated girl, as she flung herself into a chair. But without deigning to answer, Big Lena turned heavily into the kitchen, and closed the door with a bang that impoverished invective--for volumes may be spoken--in the banging of a door. The moment was inauspicious for the entrance of Harriet Penny. At best, Chloe merely endured the little spinster, with her whining, hysterical outbursts, and abject, unreasoning fear of G.o.d, man, the devil, and everything else. "Oh, my dear, I am so glad!" piped the little woman, rus.h.i.+ng to the girl's side: "we need never fear him again, need we?"

"n.o.body ever did fear him but you," retorted Chloe.

"But, Mr. Lapierre said----"

The girl arose with a gesture of impatience, and Miss Penny returned to MacNair. "He is so big, and coa.r.s.e, and horrible! I am sure even his looks are enough to frighten a person to death."

Chloe sniffed. "I think he is handsome, and he is big and strong. I like big people."

"But, my dear!" cried the horrified Miss Penny. "He--he kills Indians!"

"So do I!" snapped the girl, and stamped angrily into her own room, where she threw herself upon the bed and gave way to bitter reflections. She hated everyone. She hated MacNair, and Big Lena, and Harriet Penny, and the officer of the Mounted. She hated Lapierre and the Indians, too. And then, realizing the folly of her blind hatred, she hated herself for hating. With an effort she regained her poise.

"MacNair is out of the way; and that's the main thing," she murmured.

She remembered his last words: "Beware of Pierre Lapierre," and her eyes sought the man's hastily scribbled note that lay upon the table where he had left it. She reread the note, and crumpling it in her hand threw it to the floor. "He always manages to be some place else when anything happens!" she exclaimed. "Oh, why couldn't it have been the other way around? Why couldn't MacNair have been the one to have the interest of the Indians at heart? And why couldn't Lapierre have been the one to browbeat and bully them?"

She paced angrily up and down the room, and kicked viciously at the little ball of paper that was Lapierre's note. "He couldn't browbeat anything!" she exclaimed. "He's--he's--sometimes, I think, he's almost _sneaking_, with his bland, courtly manners, and his suave tongue. Oh, how I could hate that man! And how I--" she stopped suddenly, and with clenched fists fixed her gaze upon the portrait of Tiger Elliston, and as she looked the thin features that returned her stare seemed to resolve into the rugged outlines of the face of Bob MacNair.

"He's big and strong, and he's not afraid," she murmured, and started nervously at the knock with which Big Lena announced supper.

When Chloe appeared at the table five minutes later she was quite her usual self. She even laughed at Harriet Penny's horrified narrative of the fact that she had discovered several Indians in the act of affixing runners to the collapsible bathtubs in antic.i.p.ation of the coming snow.