Seymour stood and stared at the young woman, marveling at her complete transformation. A right good make-up, she had called it. He could truthfully make the statement stronger. When her eyes were hidden and her voice stilled, all trace of his beloved was gone. She looked as Siwash as though she had been born on the trail of a squaw mother and had passed her babyhood strapped to a board.
The fine lines of her slim young figure were swathed in rags after the fashion of the North Coast native women. Waist line was nil, her makeshift skirt seemed to drop from her shoulders. For a one-piece garment, it certainly was of pieces, patched and pinned and tied together. He doubted if she could step out of it without taking it apart.
To her complexion she had done something to give it a rich copper tinge. The hands were stained to match. Her lips had been thickened with paint lines and over her patrician nose ran a series of blue lines, a counterfeit of the tattooing with which the Argonaut native women disfigure themselves. A finger tied up in a soiled rag added the last touch of verisimilitude.
Recovering from his first shock, Seymour reminded himself of their situation. "Didn't I make it plain yesterday that your coming here was beyond all reason?" he demanded almost petulantly.
"Not so far beyond as myself," she murmured rebelliously. "I'm here, am I not? And you'll find me more reasonable for having had my own way."
She intended following him from the first, she admitted, and for that reason she had watched his descent from the top of the cliff, marking the difficulties he had overcome. After helping her father back to the mission, she had given her evening to make-up and costume. She left home before daybreak.
"Do you mean to say you tip-toed that ledge and made the jump into the fir tree?" he asked incredulously.
She shook her head, flashing him a smile. "I profited by watching you. I came all the way down by rope, bringing an extra coil, ready knotted, from the mission and tying it to the end of yours."
"But you won't be able to fool the squaws!" he observed, again looking troubled.
"Haven't tried. They think I slipped in to see how they are faring and togged out as one of them that the whites would not suspect my visit. They seem pleased—perhaps flattered—and will keep my secret."
Seymour did not relish the situation created by her persistence. The girl's presence was a grave complication. It handicapped him just when his investigation was advancing with unexpected smoothness. But now that she was in, his duty was to get her out safely.
"And how are your Indian wards faring?" he asked, by way of gaining time to figure out the safest, most expeditious exit for her.
"They puzzle me for they have no complaint," she answered. "Either conditions have changed or that imposter was sadly misled in his observations. Actually, the Indians seem to look upon Bonnemort and Kluger as benefactors. 'Hiyu skookumBoston men,' they call the rascals."
"B. & K. are taking the bulk of the clean-up," Seymour told her. "I watched the divvy when they stripped the sluices out front this morning."
"But that doesn't seem possible," Moira protested. "I hear from two of my most trusted klootchmen that the Indians are givenallthe gold."
Seymour seemed not to have heard. He was. crossing to the front of the wall tent where, beneath the table, he had sighted a sack exactly like the treasure-weighted one he had seen the partners carry from the creek. But if this was the same, it had been emptied.
"All the gold, I said," repeated the girl, impatient at his seeming lack of attention to her astonishing report. "What do you make of that, Sergeant Scarlet?"
"I'll say that is right kind and unbelievably generous of B. & K. and that a right lively surprise is awaiting my Irisher when I get her out of jeopardy."
The sergeant had upturned the sack and was shaking it. A single jagged lump, evidently held in the fabric when the sack had been dumped, thudded to the ground. Both leaned over to examine it. The girl straightened first.
"More of that old frog-gold," she said with another low, aggravating laugh.
Seymour picked up the specimen. It was of the same grayish, metallic substance as the hand-shaped piece which Moira had given him at the mission. This one, however, held no yellow offering.
"Richer than gold!" In thought, Seymour murmured Bart's exclamation of promise to Mrs. Caswell.
He believed that at last he knew the answer to one part of the Glacier Creek riddle. But he said nothing to the girl about his hopes as he pocketed the fragment.
"You said the Siwashes would tell you which of the two men rode away from the gulch, the morning of the murder," he reminded her. "Did they?"
"That's another peculiar thing," she replied, lines of perplexity wrinkling her stained brow. "Myklootchmenfriends insist that both Kluger and Bonnemort were here as usual all that morning. They madehiyuclean-up—gathered much gold—that Thursday morning and are positive they are not mistaken about the kind white men. The Indians haven't heard that Bart was murdered; they still are chuckling at the way he was run out of the gulch."
"That would seem to leave us cold—as cold as we are on the trail of that scoundrel Karmack, wouldn't it?"
Not a flicker did the girl show to indicate that she had hope of hearing something in that particular get-your-man direction.
But within the tent Seymour saw something else to convince him that the search for Bart's slayer was exceedingly "warm." In the presence of this second inanimate witness, he was more anxious than ever to get the girl safely out of the gulch—before the fireworks.
"I'm nearly through in here," he went on. "Have you planned how you will get yourself out?"
"I can go back the way I came, I suppose," she answered with a pout that was not as effective as it would have been had she been naturally clad. "But I thought you were going to open the cañon gate—from the inside out?"
"Even so, I can't have you within range when I—when I pick the lock."
"You mean—you mean there may be some shooting?" she demanded with suppressed excitement.
He did not like the gleam of hope that seemed to shine in her eyes. "You've done your part, Moira—more than any other woman would have dared to do. I wonder if I can trust you to wait for me in that graveyard down the creek?"
"To sit and idly wait when I might have a hand in the excitement!" she moaned. "Being a woman is an awful handicap, Sergeant Scarlet."
"That will be the helping part in this crime clean-up," he assured her, "to sit and wait. And if I do not come for you, you are to make your own way back to the mission and wait some more until other Mounties arrive to settle the score. You've done enough; leave the rest to me."
Moira protested that she had accomplished nothing but the ruin of their theories. Couldn't she do something constructive?
"We are done with theories and it's time I demonstrate some facts," said the sergeant in a convincing tone. "I feel certain I can promise you the arrest of Bart's slayer if you'll go at once to the hide-out I suggested."
"But theklootchmensaid——"
"Squaw talk—forget it." He was growing impatient. "Likely they don't know one day from another. Any moment Bonnemort may return. Don't risk his seeing you. Please go while there is time!" He turned to the tent front and held back one of its flaps.
"Moira unwelcome—a new sensation!" she murmured disappointedly, then shuffled out of the tent with the flat-footed walk of an Argonaut squaw.
The sergeant watched her a moment. How brave, how resourceful she was! Then he turned and focused his gaze on an overturned boot that lay near the improvised clothes horse.
This was a right boot, according to the sole of it. Staring at him from the outer edge of that sole was a peculiar plate, presumably to counteract the wear of some foot lameness or a peculiarity of gait. As plainly as if it had been articulate, this told him; "The man who wears me killed Bart Caswell!"
Making her way down Glacier Creek, giving no attention to the working Siwashes and receiving none from them, Moira O'Malley wondered what discovery this enigma of the Mounted had held back from her. She did not resent particularly his lack of confidence, feeling that she had not earned it. That he seemed to disbelieve what theklootchmenhad told her of the continued presence of the white and near-white spoilers at once troubled and gratified her. She hated to think that the Indian women would mislead her; but she did want the slayer of her cousin's sweetheart captured and punished. Hope of that seemed built on the Thursday morning absence of either Kluger or his partner.
At the start of this requested exit, the girl did not hurry, but ambled along squaw fashion. Once across the creek and out of sight of the upper diggings, she meant to take to the brush. The Glacier natives would see her no more until Seymour came for her. That he would come for her—that he would be able to come for her, she did not doubt. From the moment she had seen him stride into the tent of Bonnemort as if he owned it, she had felt certain of his ultimate success.
She reached the creek and was about to climb to the foot log when she heard some one start across it from the other side. Raising the eyes which she had held downcast throughout the walk from the tent, she saw, with a tremor of alarm, that Bonnemort had beaten her to the improvised bridge. She sidled away from the log's end and seemed intent on watching the stream. Of course, the up-risen breed would be above noticing a squaw drudge, but she preferred to take no unnecessary chances.
With eyes steadily averted, she waited. The heavy steps drew nearer as the big man set his feet on the flattened surface. Then suddenly, they ceased. He had halted at the end of the log.
"Look up here, youklootch!"
The tone was that of a request, but it brought to the girl a sudden chill of terror. She dared not look up, yet scarcely dared she refuse.
Evidently patience with a squaw was not held a virtue by the master. "Sulky, eh?" he grumbled and sprang down from the log to stand directly in front of her. Reaching out, he took her chin between thumb and forefinger and tilted it until her stained face looked up into his.
"A new one, ain't you?" he asked. "Thought I hadn't seen you before, princess."
A look came into his dark eyes that frightened her more. Not daring to utter protest for fear her Chinook would betray her, she cuffed at the hand which held her and broke his hold. Bonnemort's chuckle sounded more ominous to her than an imprecation.
"A Siwashklootchwith spirit—and a beauty to boot!" he exclaimed. "There is something new under the sun. Your light's been hidden long enough, young wildcat. Take a stroll up to my tent and we'll talk it over."
His huge hand closed upon her shoulder with a firm grasp, but without undue violence. When he started back to camp, she stepped, perforce, at his side. Although tall for a woman, the red-haired breed was head and shoulders above her, and she recognized a captor that could only be circumvented by guile.
He tried her out with several impertinent questions. Was she married? What would she take for a kiss? Did she like white men, the big bear kind?
He seemed to disown the Indian blood that was reputed to flow in his veins. Evidently he spoke little Chinook, for he complained at her refusal to understand English.
As they strolled slowly along, Moira wasted no thought on self-censure. Seymour had been right—her exploit was absolutely wild. Escape she must, but if humanly possible by her own wit, without involving the Mountie or even disturbing him in his investigation. A plan flashed into her mind and she hastened to perfect it.
With just the reluctance she thought her role required, she accompanied him to the placers. The Siwash men who looked up from their mining grinned at her or turned stolidly away. It was nothing to them that this skookum Boston chief saw fit to pay attention to one of their women. No hope of help lay in that quarter.
When she reached that section of the placer where the two squaws to whom she had disclosed herself earlier in the morning were working a sluice, she began to struggle, hoping they would come to her rescue without disclosing her identity. But with her first jerk, Bonnemort's fingers tightened like a vise, as though he had been expecting some such move. She continued to struggle.
Fear that Seymour had gone into ambush within the tent and would come to her aid, to the upsetting of all his plans, kept her from crying out for help. One of the squaws did throw down her shovel and start toward her, but the other called her back. They whispered a moment, then turned their backs and resumed their toil.
Even the realization that her Indian friends, hardened by the sorcery of too much gold, had failed her, did not lift her voice. At the head of the creek, she glimpsed the glacier imbedded in the mountainside like a gigantic prism, its innumerable facets reflecting the sunlight in all the colors of the rainbow. On either side lay a fringe of brush and timber. All these invited her, offering sanctuary from a fate that promised to be worse than death. But first, before she could flee to the hope of escape they held out, she must break the clutch of Bonnemort, the half-breed.
As she twisted and squirmed, her nails marked his face with furrowing scratches; but the smart of these seemed only to inflame him the more. As penalty, he demanded a kiss then and there where all her tribe could see. In the struggle to enforce his low-voiced decree, the bandanna that bound Moira's head fell to the ground. Her marvelous hair was revealed.
Both hands seized her and held her off, as helpless in his clutch as though she had been a child. For a moment his eyes enjoyed the oddly masked beauty of her. But soon, with comprehension, there entered a new light—that of recognition.
"So!" he muttered, baring his teeth as an angry beast bares its fangs. Transferring his hold to her streaming hair, Bonnemort flung the girl from her feet and started to drag her toward the tent.
At last, all other hope gone, Moira O'Malley screamed for help—-the help of her Mountie. The green old glacier broadcasted her distress, reverberating her shrieks until the gulch rang with them.
Within Bonnemort's tent "Scarlet" Seymour knelt before a chest, the lock of which he had just succeeded in breaking. He was staring with dilated eyes upon the real wealth of the Glacier Creek placers—truly richer than gold.
As he reached out his fingers to run them through the heaping gray wealth, a scream sounded. It might have been the cry of a buzzard soaring in the blue above the camp.
But the next moment the shriek took definite form as a human's cry for help. Then came the shrill of his name—a long-drawn "Russell!"
In a flash he comprehended. Moira had been discovered and had fallen into the hands of the despoilers. Without closing the lid of the treasure chest, he sprang to his feet and lunged out of the tent. A hundred yards down the path, he saw the breed and the girl in desperate struggle. Toward the scene of the unequal combat hastened a score of Argonaut natives.
Seymour charged down the incline. "Coming, Moira!" he shouted.
The breed heard and flung his intended victim from him to the rocks. One glance at the oncoming figure enlightened him. "Wolves run in pairs!" he exclaimed. "And die together!"
Moira saw him draw a revolver. Had he fired from the hip, her opportunity never would have come. But Bonnemort, confident in the distance that still separated him from the unknown rescuer, paused to take aim. The girl's fingers had closed around a rock. With all her might she hurled it at his head.
Her aim was poor, but its faultiness proved fortunate. The missile struck Bonnemort's wrist as his finger pressed the trigger. The bullet went wild. The gun was knocked from his hand and was thrown, by some muscular freak, within Moira's reach.
For a second, Bonnemort stood nursing his injured wrist; then, with a snarled curse, he sprang to recover his weapon. But Seymour, at the end of his rush, crowded him off; the girl seized the gun and scrambled to her feet.
She could not understand why the sergeant did not draw and declare himself. As the enemy already had fired, he was no longer under restraint of that Quixotic slogan.
Bonnemort, too, looked puzzled, but evidently took heart from his foe's restraint, for he advanced threateningly. Fearing that Seymour would be no match in a rough-and-tumble, Moira tried to press the miner's gun upon him, but the sergeant waved her back.
"Hold off the Siwashes," he demanded. "This brute has a beating coming to him."
Bonnemort advanced with a chortle of joy, delighted that luck favored him with the respite of physical combat. So many things could happen in a battle of fists. The man-to-man struggle was on.
After his initial rush, which the sergeant cleverly side-stepped, the breed's main idea seemed to be to throw his powerful arms about his opponent. Except for occasional swings, which would have knocked Seymour out had they found their mark, his efforts were directed to this end.
The sergeant had his Armistice detail to thank for his ability to evade. The Eskimo of the Arctic foreshore is above average height, large muscled and trained by occasional necessity to battle with Polar bears. When boxing matches were put on at the detachment, in lieu of other diversion, Seymour had acted as instructor. His greatest difficulty had been to break his pupils of "hugging" and to teach them that a punch was more effective than a clinch any day or where. As a result, he was not only trained to the minute, but highly practiced in slipping out of clinches.
From the first, Bonnemort fought like the Eskimo, trying again and again for a crushing embrace. With each vain effort, Seymour exacted punishment with jabs and cuts to the face. Never was he caught by the other's powerful arms.
For the alleged half-breed, the contest was soon sanguinary. His eyes and lips suffered and his nose became grotesque. On the other hand, Seymour was practically unmarked except for a lump on his forehead and a splotch on his cheek where Bonnemort's fist had touched him.
Klootchmenand braves had come from all parts of the diggings and stood in an irregular circle, staring in open-eyed wonder at the battle. Moira was having an easy task keeping them back, although she still held the gun ready. No partisan spirit developed. If anything, their grunts at clinches evaded and blows sent home favored the strange, more compact fighter. The sergeant was unknown to them, but the fact that the mission girl sponsored him with gun point was enough for them.
Bonnemort's wind was first to fail him and for an untimed round or two, Seymour played for him with hard punches to the body at every opportunity. It became clear that the spoiler's bulk was more "beef" than muscle. He was becoming a spectacle. His rushes lost their force; his swings grew hopelessly wild; his guard, never effective, broke down entirely.
"Punishment enough for manhandling you?" Seymour asked Moira, as the whirligig of battle brought him facing her.
"Yes—yes, he's paid!" she cried.
The sergeant waded in then, regardless of the embrace he no longer feared. He beat Bonnemort to his knees. Nocoup de grâcewas necessary, as the overgrown miner was blubbering for mercy. The Siwash gallery was beginning to grumble that none was delivered when they saw the victor produce a pair of handcuffs and snap them on the defeated one's wrists. Bonnemort seemed too dazed to notice the official trend in the situation, until—
"I arrest you, Harry Karmack, in the name of the King for the murder of Oliver O'Malley, at Armistice, Northwest Territories."
Stunned by the surprise of his capture, turned white by the shock of the unexpected charge, the former factor stared about him wildly.
As for Moira O'Malley, the double surprise was almost too much. Fright had prevented her recognition of the familiar features of her Northern suitor now that his hair was turned to red; and all through the hunt, no hint had come to her from the close-lipped sleuth of the open places that the man he had sworn to "get" had raised his hand against her brother.
"You'd best behave, Karmack." Seymour accented the name of surprise that the girl might become convinced that their hunt was really done. "Your dyed pate don't fool me and I'm no longer bound by our slogan of 'never fire first.' You took a couple of first shots up in the Arctic, remember, and have just tried another here. One false move and you get yours."
Karmack stood very still. "What do you mean by that murder talk, Seymour?" he asked after a moment in which, evidently, he realized the folly of further denial of identity. "I may have squeezed a little from the grasping old Arctic to give me a start in British Columbia, but I swear I had nothing to do with the strangling of young O'Malley."
Moira still seemed puzzled. "I thought— Didn't the jury say that Avic, the Eskimo—" She could not finish for emotion.
"It takes two men to use the Ugiuk-line effectively," Seymour explained to the girl. "I know, for I've had one around my own neck and barely broke out of the clutch. This fiend hired Avic to help him put your brother away—hired him with promise of a trip Outside to be tried for murder. Can you imagine! Now it will be ex-Factor Karmack who takes the trip—Inside."
Karmack moved restlessly, with the result of tightening the sergeant's grip. "But man, what motive could I possibly have had?" he begged nervously. "What motive?"
"From some outside source you learned that O'Malley had been sent to Armistice to investigate you and you knew that, despite your best efforts, he had succeeded in getting the goods. What you didn't know was that already he had sent out his report. I've been almost sure of your guilt ever since I learned that those black and silver fox pelts came from your old company's store room, two of the lot you held out on your employers."
Seymour turned to Moira. "Would you mind, dear, telling those Siwashes to get back to work? Please convince them who I am and that I've taken charge in the king's name. That always goes strong with Indians. Make them understand that none of them is to leave the diggings."
Moira seemed to shake herself together from this blow he had delivered with all possible mercy. "I don't exactly understand, friend, but I thank you." She stepped into the circle of wondering natives and repeated his orders in Chinook.
"But he wears no uniform," objected one in English.
"He needs no scarlet tunic," the girl replied. "He is the law." This also she repeated in their jargon of gutturals.
On order, Karmack led the way to the tent. Seymour followed close behind with his arm supporting Moira, who seemed a bit unsteady.
There was a groan from the pretended half-breed when he saw that the lid of the treasure chest was thrown back.
"Since when did the Force take to breaking the locks of honest men?" he snarled.
Instead of answering, Seymour slammed down the lid and motioned his old enemy to seat himself upon the chest. Then he crossed the tent and picked up the tell-tale boot. Returning with it, he made a comparison.
"Thought so," he murmured.
There was no need for further measuring and he tossed the gear under the table. Karmack had the biggest feet he had ever seen. By no possibility could one of them have been forced into the boot which he had just flung down.
Knowing nothing of the footprints Seymour had found near the scene of Caswell's killing, Moira O'Malley looked on at the comparison of boots in mystified silence. Karmack seemed to have a better grasp of the reason behind the test.
"I'm no murderer," he muttered, glowering at his captor.
"Wait until I get your latest partner, Kluger," said the sergeant.
Seymour seemed on the verge of enlightening Moira when she raised a hand of caution. "Listen," she whispered.
They heard hoof beats hammering into camp. Some one on horseback was coming at speed. The sergeant crossed to the tent front and peered out between the flaps.
"Guess we won't have to go for Kluger, after all," he said, still peering.
Karmack muttered an oath, his petulance directed against old lady Luck, who gets the credit for the best and blame for the worst that happens to illogical humans.
"Bonnie—Bonnemort! Where are you?" The deep-throated call came from outside.
"Where d'you suppose?" Seymour called back in a voice that he hoped would pass for the pretended half-breed's.
He turned to Moira, quietly directing her to crouch behind the treasure chest and keep her gun on the ex-factor.
"No more fighting with fists,—please!" she begged.
"There's no woman in this man's case," he whispered, and motioned for silence.
Phil Brewster walked into the tent a moment later, and Seymour realized it was the first time he had seen him on foot. The affable freighter stepped with a limp.
"What you sitting there for, you big boob?" Brewster put his question to Karmack before glancing about the tent.
"Thinking it over, perhaps." From a point back of Brewster, where he had stood unnoticed, Seymour broke in before the pretender could speak for himself.
Brewster whirled, and with the move his gun appeared from handy concealment. But the sergeant had expected some such desperate act and was ready. His left hand caught the freighter's right at the wrist and swung it upward. Brewster's bullet let a look of blue sky through the canvas roof, while the muzzle of the Mountie's revolver prodded the ribs of his suspect. The freighter saw fit to obey a command to drop his weapon.
"Sorry I haven't more bracelets with me," Seymour said. "Moira, if you'll look under the clothes rack, where I found that boot just now, you'll find a length of rope."
"What's all this about, you high-binder?" Brewster demanded.
"You remind me—I neglected to introduce myself when we met yesterday and the day before. Karmack, there, might tell you that I call myself Seymour, sergeant of the Royal Mounted."
"But he's dead!" blurted out Brewster.
"Not that he knows of," Seymour assured him quietly; "but you have a very good reason for thinking so. Now, if you'll oblige by putting your hands behind you—"
When Brewster obeyed, perforce, the sergeant directed Moira to tie the wrists. After he had inspected the knots and recovered the fallen gun, he suggested that Brewster sit down on one of the cots until they were ready to start back to Gold. The freighter, in doing so, swung his right leg over his left knee. From his seat on the opposite cot, Seymour saw on the exposed sole one of the peculiar leather-saving metal plates in which he was so interested—the one that had made its impression in the soil near the scene of the murder. Reaching under the table, he retrieved the spare boot he had thrown there and saw that they matched in every particular.
"Just to make everything according to Hoyle, Brewster," the sergeant said, "I now place you under arrest for the murder of Bart Caswell, alias Sergeant Seymour."
Brewster seemed stunned at the charge. His eyes, as if by instinct, avoided Seymour's steady gaze. He looked at the scowling Karmack, starting slightly at his first glimpse of the nickeled wristlets the man wore.
"Who's the boob now?" snarled Karmack. "Leaving tracks with your bad foot for any fool Mountie to read!"
"Shut up, you fool!" A look of fright crossed Brewster's handsome face. For a second he seemed about to spring upon Karmack. Then, as quickly as it had come, the spasm passed. He turned his eyes on Seymour. "If you ever press this ridiculous charge," he said, "I'll prove it false to the jury. I've done some freighting for the B. & K. outfit, nothing more. Rode in here to-day to collect a bill. Down at the cañon, Kluger passed me on to Bonnemort. I ran into you—and trouble."
After a moment's pause, Brewster continued: "Say, if you really are Sergeant Seymour, who was the uniformed bird that came to Gold as Bart Caswell?"
"Bart Caswell's widow is ready to tell the court why he killed Ben Tabor in robbing the B.C.X. stage of my uniform and papers," the sergeant answered somewhat cryptically.
"Poor Ruth," murmured Moira. "She really believed."
"Well, I'll be——" Brewster began.
"Told you Caswell was a crook," whined Karmack. "No yellow legs would have let himself be caught the way I got him that day up here on the creek."
Seymour waited for Moira to speak. When she came toward him her face wore the bravest smile he had ever seen on a woman.
"What next, pardner?" she asked whimsically.
"The first step," he told her, "is to rig up some sort of an M.P. seal for that treasure chest I broke open."
Without ceremony, the sergeant lifted Karmack to his feet and ushered him to the left-hand cot. From that seat, the disfigured ne'er-do-well might glare more conveniently at Brewster.
"But that chest holds only frog-gold," Moira reminded Seymour. "The Siwashes have all the real gold, and it belongs to them."
"You don't really think that a close and crooked corporation like Brewster, Kluger and Karmack would supply food, dynamite and expert management for a bunch of Indians only to take their pay in pretty specimens, do you, Moira?"
She studied the proposition from the new angle which his question presented. "It doesn't seem reasonable, but——"
"It isn't reasonable," he interposed, raising the lid of the chest that she might feast her eyes upon its heaping gray store. "This frog-gold, as your father calls it, happens to be platinum—worth six times its weight in gold."
With his astonishing declaration of the real richer-than-gold wealth of the Glacier Greek placers, Seymour turned to Brewster for confirmation. "What is the current quotation on platinum?" he asked.
But the freighter no longer was affable. "I'm no bureau of information," he growled.
"Try me," offered Karmack with a return of his old-time effrontery. "Dear eyes, at the present time that platinum is worth a hundred and fifteen simoleons an ounce—was up to a hundred and seventy during the war!"
"And the purest gold brings a trifle over twenty dollars," the sergeant reminded the girl. "You see I was nearly exact."
With a quick glance, as if the presence of such a store of wealth frightened her, Moira lowered the lid.
"Then the Glacier Mission Indians are——" she hesitated.
"Rich—for them," he supplied. "What's more the O'Malley claims between the cañon mouth and the Cheena are heavier with frog-gold than those up the creek, or I don't know my mineralogy. You and your father and Miss Ruth will be near-millionaires."
Seymour would not have cared to explain the worried look that came unbidden into his eyes, had he been taxed with it. Complications foreseen were responsible.
He improvised a flimsy fastening to replace the lock he had broken, and pinned over the chest crack a sheet of paper on which he had written "Officially Sealed, R. Seymour, Sergeant, R.C.M.P." Then he made a young Siwash, picked by Moira, vain for life by swearing him in as a special constable and placing him on guard at the tent door. His instructions were to permit no one to pass until Seymour returned, and he was entrusted with Brewster's gun to support his authority.
Inspection showed that the Siwashes had gone back to work under "king's orders." Seymour had no thought of telling them how rich they were making themselves, until their status was fixed by the proper court. Meantime they'd be best off, continuing their labor, for "all the gold" allotted them by the spoilers.
With Brewster tied to his saddle and Karmack, still handcuffed, on foot, the prisoners were started down creek under the guns of the sergeant and his volunteer aid. Beneath the non-com.'s arm was a worn boot for a lame right foot, his prize "Exhibit B." First honors in the evidence line were in the commissioner's vault back in Ottawa—"Exhibit A," a pair of fox pelts, one silver and one black. Of the three murders he had solved, that of poor Oliver O'Malley would always have first place in his personal record book.
On the down creek tramp, Seymour told Moira what he knew of the wonder story of platinum. Her missionary father had not been the first to call this occasional associate of gold a nuisance and to throw it away, not knowing what else to do with it. In less than a generation the gray metal had emerged from the lesser metals, crept past silver and then raced beyond gold into the limelight of popularity. Whatever the ultimate fate of the ore it was certain to remain a treasure-metal until long after Glacier Creek had been mined out.
For his own satisfaction, as well as hers, he outlined the plot against the Indians as he now saw it. Phil Brewster, he believed, had recognized platinum in the frog-gold which the Siwashes were discarding. The freighter had sent back to Montreal for Kluger to direct the harvest. Knowing at least something of Karmack's plight, Kluger had brought the Armistice murderer with him as an assistant and had posed him as a half-breed as part of the disguise. Whether or not the latter knew that the father of the youth he had caused to be slain in the Arctic lived in the immediate vicinity of the platinum bed was a question. At any rate, the criminal probably figured that he would be safer in a sealed British Columbia cañon than in the cafés of the city that lately has become the gayest in North America. Brewster undoubtedly had been riding guard outside under cover of his established freighting business.
The trio had corralled the Indians on their own claims in the easiest possible way—by giving them all the gold that was sluiced, while they took the six-times richer platinum. Their discovery that Bart Caswell had recognized their precious metal had sealed his death warrant. Its execution had been prompt, as she knew. He could only hope that the official executions which seemed called for would not be too long delayed.
After some persuasion and the reminder that Moira was a persistent young person, he sketched the steps by which he had walked through the local mystery. His conviction that Bart had robbed the stage, based on recognition of the uniform, had given him a "head start" and had proved a lever with the widow Caswell. She had started him on a "richer than gold" search. Moira herself, with her tip about the frog-gold, had spurred him, for he suspected it to be platinum. The squaw tale that the Siwashes were getting all the gold had helped, and the shaking of a platinum nugget from the ore sack had completed his enlightenment. As for the black-hearted Karmack, whose hair had turned red—well, that was an excellent piece of dyer's art, but one Scarlet Seymour would be long forgiving himself for not having recognized it as such that memorable night at the Venetian Gardens.
"Do you suppose my being there had anything to do——" began Moira.
"Why, most wonderful girl alive, I particularly wanted to get him to close the books with——" He interrupted himself at thought of the platinum wealth at the mouth of the creek.
They passed the graveyard diggings without disturbing the Siwashes at their labors. At the tent camp in the cañon, Seymour surprised Kluger, sacking platinum for the get-away which Brewster had warned him was imminent. The little man was so preoccupied with his delightful task, and in such fancied security, that the sergeant had a gun to his back before he looked up from the booty. Two additional saddle horses were annexed here, which Moira and Seymour mounted.
At the "gate" they surprised one of the two hired guards in controversy with O'Malley. Anxious about his daughter, the old missionary was trying to talk his way into the gulch. At seeing his employers under arrest, the guard resigned on the spot and could not hand over his rifle soon enough. On the ride into Gold, the other guard was encountered, headed back to his "work." Single-handed, Shan O'Malley made the last necessary capture, adding another prospective witness for the king's case.
Not until Seymour had gone through the formality of borrowing the town jail from Deputy Hardley, and the prisoners were safely immured, with the ice-box door really locked, did Moira seem to remember her costume. A signal sent from her seat in the saddle brought the sergeant out of the curious crowd about the log calaboose.
"I can't stay to celebrate your victory, Russell," she informed him. "I've got to get back to my tribe—my scrubbing brush. I've just realized that I must look a—a scandal in this rig. Even in Gold, B.C., I have a social standing to maintain."
Her threatened departure surprised him, left him suddenly confused. "Your standing as a heroine in Gold couldn't be disturbed by a blast of dynamite after what you've done to-day," he assured her. "And have you forgotten—don't you realize what it means that at last I've got my man? I've got to go back to Glacier to-night, you know. I'd thought of dinner and an official escort home."
For a moment she considered, then the eyes which he once had likened as being "smudged in by a sooty finger," flashed him all the love in their world.
"Sorry I can't wait in this rig, Sergeant Scarlet," she teased, "but there's nothing to hinder your coming to the mission on Glacier as soon as you're ready." She started her horse. "But be sure," she called back to him, "be sure not to forget to bring my father with you. He's the only parson in these diggings."
She had gone before he could thank her; but all the platinum on Glacier couldn't buy from him the memory of those recent crowded hours.
The crowd remembered that he was a member of the Force, even if he had momentarily forgotten that fact. They clamored about him for details of the crime clean-up, few of which they would hear from him. There was Deputy Hardley to be put straight about the B.C.X. holdup; and Mrs. Caswell to thank for her "richer than gold" help, and special constables to be selected and sworn for service at the borrowed jail and on the creek. Indeed there was much for Staff-Sergeant Seymour to do in his new domain, but when at last he was free he saw to it that the Rev. Shan O'Malley brushed stirrups with him all the way to Glacier.
THE END.