<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</SPAN></span></p>
<div class="break">
<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XVII</h2>
<p class="pch">A LONELY CABIN</p>
<p class="drop-cap06"><span class="beg">CORPORAL BRACKNELL</span> and Sibou had
left the hunting camp of the tribe two days
and were following the trail of the white
man and the two Indians who had visited it more
than a week before. The trail, though it was old,
was well defined, for there had been no fall of
snow in the interval, and the frozen surface of the
wilderness kept the trail fresh, and made it easy to
follow. It was evident to both of them that their
quarry travelled fast, for the distances between the
camping places were greater than was usual, and it
was clear that those whom they followed had some
need for haste. What it could be the corporal
could only guess, and guessing under the circumstances
was not a very profitable occupation. And
there were other signs which gave room for speculation.
Now and again the party ahead of them
had halted for a little time, and two of the men had
left the dogs and the sled, as their tracks showed.
These halting places, as the corporal was quick to
observe, always occurred when some small stream
fell into the main river, or when some accessible
gully or creek opened from the banks.</p>
<p>“What do you make of it, Sibou?” he asked
when they had reached the fifth halting place of
this sort.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>The Indian who had followed the tracks of two
of the gullies to the point where they reversed
glanced at those which now lay before them.
Then he waved a mittened hand.</p>
<p>“These men be looking for something.”</p>
<p>“Or some one!” commented the corporal
thoughtfully.</p>
<p>The Indian gave a grave inclination of his head.
“It is not good to follow every trail,” he said in
his own tongue. “Sometime perhaps we shall find
a trail that does not return on itself, then we know
they find what they seek and we follow.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” answered the corporal, “that is the best
way, I think. We will push on and not waste time
on these excursions.”</p>
<p>They pressed forward and passed two more of
these deviations from the main track without
troubling to follow them. Just before daylight
faded, when they were hugging the bank looking
for a suitable camping place, the Indian called the
corporal’s attention to a small creek the entrance
to which was masked by low-boughed spruce trees.</p>
<p>“Yes,” said the corporal, “that should do.
Those banks and trees should break this wind.”</p>
<p>They turned the dogs towards it, and negotiating
a snow wreath which the wind was piling up,
they entered the sheltering creek. Sibou was
leading, packing the trail, and the corporal clinging
to the gee-pole of the sled, saw him come to a most
unexpected halt. Bracknell moved forward.</p>
<p>“What is the matter, Sibou?”</p>
<p>The Indian did not speak, but pointed silently
at the snow, and looking down the corporal saw<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</SPAN></span>
the unmistakable trail of snowshoes. The tracks
were quite fresh, and were so unexpected that
Bracknell was himself astonished. He stared at
them as Crusoe must have stared when he found
the footprints on the shore of his island. Who
had left that tell-tale trail? Perhaps a wandering
Indian. Maybe some solitary prospector caught
by winter, or possibly the man whom he was seeking,
the murderer of Rolf Gargrave. His heart
beat quickly at the thought and, still staring at the
trail which came down the bank of the creek and
then turned away from the river, he considered the
matter carefully, and then gave instructions.</p>
<p>“Follow it, Sibou, and find out where it goes
and who made it. I will pitch camp and wait
here for you.”</p>
<p>The Indian nodded gravely and departed and
Bracknell busied himself with pitching camp. He
had already lit the fire and fed the dogs, and was
busy with the beans and bacon when Sibou returned.</p>
<p>“Well?” asked the corporal expectantly. “Did
you find him?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” was the reply. “There is one Indian
and one white man. They are in a cabin at the
head of the creek.”</p>
<p>Bracknell was conscious of a sudden excitement.</p>
<p>“Did you see the white man? Is it——”</p>
<p>Sibou shook his head. “I saw him, but it is not
the man we follow; and he is very sick with the
coughing sickness!”</p>
<p>The corporal’s excitement died as quickly as it
had risen.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>“Did you speak with him, Sibou?”</p>
<p>“No,” replied the Indian. “There was no need.
I saw his face as he came to the cabin door. It is
not the man.”</p>
<p>Corporal Bracknell bent over the fire. He was
disappointed, but he did not show it. He turned
the bacon in the pan then he looked up.</p>
<p>“We will have supper first, then I will walk up
the creek as far as the cabin, and have a talk with
this white man. He may know something of the
man we follow.”</p>
<p>Sibou made no reply, and when the meal was
ready they ate it in silence, and smoked whilst they
drank the coffee. Then Bracknell arose.</p>
<p>“I go now, Sibou. I shall return before sleeping
time.”</p>
<p>The Indian offered no objection to this, and
knocking the ashes from his pipe the policeman
left the camp. Even in the darkness he had no difficulty
in following the trail up the creek, and presently
the smell of burning wood informed him
that he was in the neighbourhood of the cabin.
He looked round carefully and descried it in the
shadow of the trees on the right bank, and began
to ascend towards it. When he reached it there
was no clamour of dogs such as might have been
expected had there been a team there, and as he
rapped upon the door, he reflected that his conjecture
about the gold prospector overtaken by the
winter was probably the correct one.</p>
<p>The door was flung open, and a tall man whose
face he could not discern stood revealed. Inside
in front of a makeshift stove was another man,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</SPAN></span>
who was taken suddenly by a paroxysm of coughing.
For half a minute the corporal stood there,
and the man at the door did not move or speak;
but at the end of that time, between two spasms of
coughing, the other man cried querulously, “Oh,
come in and shut that confounded door!”</p>
<p>The man at the door moved aside, and as Bracknell
entered, he closed the door behind him, and
stood with his back to it, staring at the new-comer
with eyes that had in them a savage gleam of hate.
The man by the fire was still coughing, and at the
end of some three minutes, as the cough left him,
he sat there, gasping and wheezing and utterly exhausted.
Roger Bracknell watched him, with
compassionate eyes. As he recognized, the man
was in sore straits, and that cough probably meant
that the coming of the Spring was for him the
coming of death. As his breath came back the
sick man half turned.</p>
<p>“Sit down, can’t——” The remark was broken
off half way, and the man started from his seat.
“Great Christopher! A Daniel come to judgment!
How do you do, Cousin Roger?”</p>
<p>As the voice quivering with excitement rang
through the cabin, a startled look came on Roger
Bracknell’s face, and he bent forward, and stared
at the wasted features of the unkempt man before
him. The other laughed harshly.</p>
<p>“Oh, you needn’t stare so hard, Roger; it is I
right enough.”</p>
<p>It was Dick Bracknell, and as the corporal realized
the fact, the compassion he had felt for a
stranger was trebled when he found that the sick<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</SPAN></span>
man was of his own blood. For a moment he did
not reply, but with a shocked look on his face gazed
at the ravaged features before him. The “coughing
sickness” which Sibou had mentioned had
plainly gripped Dick Bracknell and marked him for
death. Some of his teeth were gone and the colour
of his gums appeared like yellow ochre in the
firelight. As he noted these signs of scurvy, the
corporal was moved to speak his pity.</p>
<p>“Dick, old man, I am mortal sorry——”</p>
<p>“Then keep your infernal pity for yourself!”
cried the other savagely. “You’ll need it all in a
minute, for Joe has the drop on you, you—— murderer.”</p>
<p>The corporal started, and swung round. The
Indian, Joe, was standing with his back to the door,
and the glow of the fire was reflected from the
pistol in his hand. He noted the fact quite calmly,
and turned to his cousin again.</p>
<p>“Murderer?” he said slowly. “I do not understand.
What do you mean?”</p>
<p>“No?” snarled his cousin. “Well, look at me!
Would you say that I was a good case for a Life
Insurance Society?”</p>
<p>The corporal looked at him, and out of pity was
silent.</p>
<p>“Oh, you needn’t be so particular,” continued
the other sneeringly. “I’ve seen other fellows
whose lungs have been chilled, and I know I am
booked, unless I can get to a sanatorium in double
quick time. And I know you have a soft heart, but
you should have let it speak sooner—before you
put this upon me.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>“Before I put—— I do not know what you
mean?”</p>
<p>“No! But you know that you poisoned that
dog food that we took from you, don’t you? And
you can guess——”</p>
<p>“Good God!” ejaculated the corporal, and the
astonishment in his face and voice did more than
any protests could have done to convince his cousin
that the charge was groundless.</p>
<p>“You didn’t know? No, I see you didn’t!”
cried the sick man.</p>
<p>“Of course I didn’t!” replied the policeman
quickly. “The dogs you left me died of poison at
my first camp, after they had been fed. I blamed
your man, because you had told me that he was
reluctant to let me go. Now it seems that I was
wrong, as you are wrong. Tell me what
happened?”</p>
<p>“I will,” said his cousin, “sit down!” As the
corporal seated himself on a log, Dick Bracknell
turned to the Indian. “You can put down that
pistol for the present, Joe. There’s a mystery to
be cleared up before there’s any shooting to be
done. Put it down, I tell you!”</p>
<p>The Indian obeyed reluctantly, but still stood
against the door, and Dick Bracknell explained.
“Joe there has it saved up against you. He was
sure that you had deliberately poisoned the dog
food, so that we should get stranded, and you, with
a new outfit, would be able to find us at your leisure.
I couldn’t believe it of you at first. It was such a
low-down game that I’d have sworn that nobody
but a Siwash half-breed would have played it.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</SPAN></span>
But the logic of facts seemed convincing, and I’d
come to believe it.”</p>
<p>“Tell me what happened.”</p>
<p>“That’s easy enough. When I parted from
you, I had an idea of working across to the
Behring, where I’d have been off the beat of your
confounded patrols. We travelled a week and
made a good pace, then one night Joe there fed the
dogs with the salmon-roe we took off your sled.
They were all dead within two hours; and there we
were, stranded in the shadow of the Arctic circle
and nearly a thousand miles from civilization.”
The sick man broke off, shaken by a fit of coughing,
and then as the spasm passed and his breath
returned, he said meditatively, “If you’d walked
into our camp then we’d have fed you with that roe,
and watched you twist as those dogs were twisted,
for Joe looked at the food and found strychnine,
which he’d used when he was trapping for the
H. B. C.... Lucky thing for you that you
didn’t! Did you say your dogs died of the same
thing?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” answered the corporal slowly, “and now
I’m wondering who was responsible.”</p>
<p>“Somebody who was getting at you, and not at
us,” answered Dick Bracknell quickly, “for he
couldn’t have known that we should collar the
food. Had you been using the same stuff all
along?”</p>
<p>“No.” The word dropped from the corporal
reluctantly. “No. I had laid in a new stock at
North Star.”</p>
<p>“Then it was there the thing was done,” replied<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</SPAN></span>
the sick man with conviction. “The question is,
who did it? Joy wouldn’t even dream of such a
thing!”</p>
<p>“That at any rate is quite certain!” answered the
corporal with conviction.</p>
<p>“But somebody did it; somebody who owed you
one, and meant to get rid of you. That’s shown
by the fact that your dogs did all right on the food
at the beginning. That which you used first
wasn’t tampered with, or the dogs would have died
at the first camp you made. But they didn’t, for
you camped with us, and I remember that more
than once, whilst we were waiting for my convalescence,
you fed your dogs with the roe. That is
positive proof that the top portion of the dog-food
was all right, it was only lower down that it had
been tampered with.”</p>
<p>“But why——”</p>
<p>“It’s as plain as a barn-door. You were meant
to get well away on the trail, and one night you
would unknowingly feed the dogs with poisoned
roe. They would die, and unless you had wonderful
luck you would die too, long before you got
back to civilization. That is the amiable plan that
somebody thought out for you; and as things
turned out he nearly bagged me and Joe instead of
you.”</p>
<p>“But he almost got me too,” said the corporal
thoughtfully, and gave his cousin a brief account
of his adventures.</p>
<p>“You were lucky,” commented the sick man.
“A broken leg can be spliced, but who is going to
splice a set of frozen lungs?” His face grew<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</SPAN></span>
suddenly convulsed with passion, and he broke into
terrible oaths. “If I had the murderer here—but
who was he anyway?”</p>
<p>“There is only one man of whom I can think,
and before I tell you his name there are two questions
I should like to ask.”</p>
<p>“Fire them off!”</p>
<p>“The first is this, do you know anything of Rolf
Gargrave’s death?”</p>
<p>“I know that the bottom dropped out of the trail
and that he was drowned—nothing more.
What’s that got to do with it anyway?”</p>
<p>The corporal looked at his cousin. The haggard
face was clear of guilt, and in that moment
he knew that his earliest suspicions when Chief
Louis had told him the story of Rolf Gargrave’s
death had been utterly wrong. Whatever crimes
Dick Bracknell had to his account this was not one
of them.</p>
<p>“I’ll explain why I asked you in a moment,” he
answered. “There is the second question—yet;
and it is this, did you ever inform any one of your
marriage with Joy?”</p>
<p>“Yes, one man! When I heard that Rolf Gargrave
was dead, I wrote to England and informed
his legal adviser, Sir Joseph Rayner, that Joy and
I were husband and wife. I never had any answer
to the let—— But what’s the matter, man?
You look as if you had seen a ghost! What is it?”</p>
<p>There was a look of startled amazement on the
corporal’s face. He was staring at his cousin as
if what the latter had said was a revelation to him,
as indeed it was. A dark suspicion had leapt in<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</SPAN></span>
his mind, a suspicion that seemed almost incredible,
but which persisted and would not be thrust aside.
If Sir Joseph Rayner knew, then in all probability
his son also knew, and yet having that knowledge
he had suggested that the relation between himself
and Joy was such as justified his confessed aspiration
of making her his wife. Had he been responsible
for that second shot at North Star? Or——</p>
<p>Dick Bracknell’s voice broke in again querulously.</p>
<p>“What’s got you, Roger! Spit it out!”</p>
<p>“I can’t at present,” replied the corporal slowly.
“You’ve given me news that I must think over before
I talk. But there is one thing that I can tell
you, and that is that Rolf Gargrave did not die by
a mere accident. The trail he was following was
sound enough, but the ice was blown up by dynamite.
It froze over again in the night, and as I
gather there was a little snow, he went on to the
thin ice without suspicion, and went through.
That’s the story as I’ve recently heard it; and I’m
on the trail of the man who plotted the infernal
thing, now.”</p>
<p>The sick man pursed his lips to whistle, but no
sound came from them. Then he remarked, with
a little laugh of bitterness, “So that’s why you
asked if I knew anything of my father-in-law’s
death, is it?”</p>
<p>“It was just a suspicion that occurred to me,”
explained the corporal apologetically. “When I
heard the story I wondered who would benefit by
Gargrave’s death, and as you had just married Joy,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</SPAN></span>
and had fled here from England, it was a natural
suspicion——”</p>
<p>“I must have got pretty low down for it to be
natural to suspect me of an infernal crime of that
sort,” was the other’s bitter comment. “But who
do you suspect now?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know! As I told you, I’m after the
man. The trail’s a week old, but I’ll find him even
if I follow him to the rim of the Polar sea.”</p>
<p>“I hope to heaven you’ll get him, and that he’ll
swing at Regina for that job. I wonder if the
same man had anything to do with poisoning the
dog food.”</p>
<p>“I am wondering that also!” replied the corporal
thoughtfully.</p>
<p>“Any idea of the fellow?”</p>
<p>“Just a suspicion, nothing more. Not enough
to presume upon—yet!”</p>
<p>“He must have a mind that is diabolic.”</p>
<p>“So it would seem!” replied the corporal, and
after a little time his cousin spoke again.</p>
<p>“Many a time while I have sat here wheezing
and coughing, I have cursed you from my heart,
but now I could pray that you come up with that
man, and make him pay for it all. If I were sure
you’d get him I could go cheerfully to my appointed
place in the pit.”</p>
<p>“I shall get him,” answered the corporal with
conviction. “The Indian who is with me was with
him when he arranged for Gargrave’s death, and
if my suspicions have any bottom in them, then I
know him myself.”</p>
<p>“You’ll push on in the morning, of course.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>“Before daylight! And I shall come up with
the man, never fear. He’s travelling fast, but he’s
looking for some thing or some one, the latter, I
think, and——”</p>
<p>“Who do you suppose he’s looking for?”</p>
<p>“Well, if he’s the man I suspect, I shouldn’t
wonder if he were looking for you.”</p>
<p>“For me! What in thunder for?”</p>
<p>“To finish what he began that night when you
were shot at North Star!”</p>
<p>“Great Scott! Do you mean that he was the
man who——”</p>
<p>“It seems to me to be more than likely. He is
the man round whom all these mysteries seem to
centre.”</p>
<p>“What is the blighter?” asked the other quickly.</p>
<p>“That I must keep to myself for a little time.
I may be mistaken, you know. But if I am not——”</p>
<p>“You’ll let me know? You’ll give me the satisfaction
of knowing that the fellow will pay for
these lungs of mine?” cried the sick man eagerly.</p>
<p>“Yes,” answered the corporal pityingly. “I will
let you know.”</p>
<p>Half an hour later as he left the cabin his face
wore a set look that boded ill for the man on
whose trail he followed.</p>
<hr class="chap" /></div>
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