Well enough was she aware of the danger in which she stood, and further the danger in which her required course placed her.
Had she known all that lay in the man's ruthless heart, had she been present at her mother's bedside, and listened to those talks which Lu-cana had told her of, had she had less youth and courage and a deeper understanding of the realities of life, it is likely that panic would have sent her fleeing headlong from a presence that filled her with nothing but loathing. But she had been spared all this knowledge, and Nicol saw to it that nothing should startle her, nothing should excite her distrust until, in the fulness of time, his purposes had fully ripened.
As it was he accepted the position which Keeko had created. He played his part as she played hers. And right up to the very last moment before the girl's departure for Seal Bay nothing was permitted to disturb the harmony between them.
The man gave her farewell and received the girl's calm response. He watched her Indians break out the two sleds on the bitterly frosted trail. He heard her sharp tones echoing through the still air as she gave the order to "mush." And all the while he stood smiling, while his eyes followed every movement of the girl's graceful, fur-clad body with the insensate lust of an animal.
Robbed of all suspicion Keeko went forth with a heart high with hope. Away out lay her cache of priceless furs to be picked up within the next few hours. All the great plan which she and her mother had so carefully prepared looked to be reaching fulfilment. She had only to sell her furs and return and pay over her step-father's due. It would be springtime then.
All her mind and heart turned to Marcel. Yes. He would be there. Far away up the river where the old grey skull of the moose was watching for her coming. And then—and then—But imagination carried her no further. She was left longing only for that moment to come.
Nicol remained only long enough to see the runners of the hindmost sled vanish in a flurry of powdered snow round the limits of a woodland bluff. Then he turned back to the dark old fort, and the mask under which he had so carefully concealed himself fell away. Straightway he returned to his store to flood his senses with the raw spirit which alone made his degenerate life tolerable.
Winter was howling about the old fort. Drifts were piled feet deep against every obstruction that stood in the way of the driving snow. The fort was closed up. Every habitation was made fast against the onslaught of the elements Life was unstirring.
Far out in the woods bayed the fierce, famished timber wolf. The lighter but more doleful howl of coyote seemed to reply from every point of the compass. And amidst the rack of savage chorus came the harsh human voice that had little the better of the animal world in the pleasing quality of its note.
A train of three dogs hauling a light sled broke from the shadows of the forest. A single human figure on snow-shoes laboured along beside it. It was a figure entirely unrecognizable, except that it was human.
There was no pause, no uncertainty. The train came on and halted at a word of command at the doorway of the fort. In a moment the human figure was beating with its fur-mitted fists upon the door that had weathered the ages of storm.
The door was flung wide from within, and the blear eyes of Nicol peered out into the night-light. In a moment an exclamation of recognition broke from him.
"Alroy!" he cried. "'Tough' Alroy!" Then something of gladness at the prospect of companionship lit his eyes with a happier light. "Say, come right in," he invited, almost boisterously. "I'll send along some neches to see to your darn train."
Tough needed no second invitation. He smelt warmth, rest, and there was the promise in his mind of a good "souse." For the time he had had enough of Unaga. He had had enough of his employer, Lorson Harris. He had had enough of snow and ice, and the merciless cold of the twilit trail. God! but he was glad to leave it all behind him for the warmth of Nicol's store, and the raw spirit he knew was to be found there in generous quantities.
Half an hour later, divested of his furs, clad only in rough buckskin and pea-jacket, with feet encased in thick reindeer moccasins, Tough sat over the trader's stove with a pannikin of evil smelling rye whisky in his hand.
"Guess I've driven through hell an' damnation to git your darn report," he said, his wicked eyes beaming across the stove at his host on the far side of it.
"Lorson's blasted orders?"
"You mean blasted Lorson's orders!"
"Amen—or any other old chorus—to that," returned Nicol, with a gleam of brooding hate in his dark eyes. "Say, that swine has got all us fellers by the back o' the neck, and he twists us this way and that as he darn pleases, till we're well-nigh crazy. I'd give half a life to cut it—to make a break that would quit me of it all. But——"
"You're scared," Tough laughed, as he gulped at his spirit. "Guess we all are." Then he added as an after-thought: "I wonder. I don't know I would if—I dared. He's tough. He'd beat a dead man to pieces if he felt that way. He's plumb to the neck in work that 'ud shame a black, but he pays good for the doin' of it. And he reckons to pay you mighty well, if you put this thing through right. Best hand me your news. He don't want it wrote out."
Nicol leant back in his chair, and thrust his feet on the rail of the stove.
"No, he don't fancy a thing wrote out," he said. "And anyway I'm writin' out nothing for Lorson Harris. He's got one piece of my paper, and I guess that's mostly why I'm here."
"And your summer trip?"
Tough recalled his host to the business in hand. He did it amiably, almost pleasantly, but such things were entirely upon the surface. Tough Alroy was Lorson's most trusted agent.
Nicol shook his head.
"Guess I didn't do all I figured to," he said. "You see, my fool woman took on and died. It cut the season short. But I located ther's a fort way out more than three hundred miles north-east of this lousy hole. Yes, it's more than three hundred miles north-east. Might be even four hundred. And there are folks running it. White folks. Three of my Shaunekuk boys got it dead pat. They ran into an outfit of queer sort of Eskimo pelt hunters. They were hunting the territory away north, up along this darn river. And they came from that post to the north-east. They said they were part of an outfit run by a feller named Brand. He was one of the white men running that post. They said these folk traded with Seal Bay. It was a big piece of luck. You see, the Shaunekuk never go into Unaga proper. They're scared to death of it. They make the forests along this river, that's all. Well, this outfit of queer Eskimo haven't ever been seen along this territory before. So you see I might have saved myself one hell of a rush trip that only took me to a place where I got a sight of a mighty tough looking hill, all smoke and fire. The three neches were out on their own and had their yarn waiting on me when I got back. That's my yarn, and all there is to it. Guess it's what Lorson Harris needs—until we make that fort, itself, for him."
Tough nodded. His wicked black eyes were serious, and, in their seriousness, were never more wicked.
"It'll do," he said. "Sure, it'll do. Guess it's a rough map of the trail we're chasing. But it's only the beginning. See, and listen close. Lorson Harris don't care a curse for the trade you make here with these fool neches. You ain't here for that, whatever you happen to think. You're here to make that trail. You're here to make that fort. And when you've made it, it's up to you to get possession of it. See? Lorson Harris means to bring that post right into his grip. There's a reason. A hell of a reason. It's so big he's ready to dope out a hundred thousand dollars to the man who can blot out the fellers trading there, and grab their trade. He reckons you're the man to do it. Well?"
Tough was leaning forward. His manner was deadly earnest and intended to impress. His keen black eyes stared hard into the bloated features of the man beyond the stove. He waited, watchful, alert.
"A hundred thousand dollars!"
Nicol's astonishment was without feigning. Suddenly he bestirred himself. He felt there must be some trick in it all.
"Would I need to—remain buried alive there?" he demanded.
Tough shook his head.
"Get possession of that place, that trade. Out those folks running the trade, and Lorson'll hand you one hundred thousand dollars in cash, and you'll be quit of the North if it suits you that way. You'll be quit of Lorson Harris, too. Well?"
"Gee!" Nicol passed a moist palm across his forehead.
"It's a swell proposition!"
"It's a hell of a proposition!"
"Well? You need to say right now. I don't need to remind you of Lorson Harris."
"God curse Lorson Harris!"
"Just so."
Tough was unrelenting in his pressure upon his victim. Lorson Harris chose his agents well.
Suddenly Nicol flung out his hands in a furious gesture.
"God's hell light on him! Yes," he cried, with eyes aflame, and his ungovernable temper surging. "I'll put his filthy work through. But when I've done it he'll need to hand me that hundred thousand dollars in cash right here before he learns a darn thing of the place he's yearning to grab. Get me? He reckons that he's got the drop on me. Well, maybe he has. But he don't get my tongue wagging till I get the cash pappy. Savee that, and savee it good!"
"But you'll do it?"
"That's what I've been shouting at you."
"Good. Now listen, and I'll pass you the rest of Lorson's message."
Tough emptied his pannikin to the dregs, and, leaning back in his chair, beamed across at the man he knew to be at the mercy of Lorson Harris. There was no feeling, no sympathy in him. He cared not one jot for anyone in the world but himself, and his standing with the man who paid for his services.
The men crouched for warmth and the shadow of comfort over a miserable fire. The dogs were beyond, herded far within the shelter, their fierce eyes agleam with a reflection of the feeble firelight as they gazed out hungrily in its direction. It was a cavernous break in the rock-bound confines of a nameless Northern river.
Steve passed a hand down his face. He brushed away the moisture of melting ice. It was a significant gesture, accompanied as it was by a deep breath of weariness. Two hundred miles and more of Arctic terror lay behind him. As yet he had no reckoning of how much more lay ahead.
The world outside was lost in a chaos of warring elements. So it had lain for a week. In the fury of the blizzard the Arctic night was reduced to a pitchy blackness worse than the sightlessness of the blind.
How long? It was the question haunting Steve's mind, and the minds of those others with him. But the shrieking elements refused to enlighten him. It was their joy to mock, and taunt, and, if possible, to slay.
Steve rose from his seat over the fire. He turned and moved towards the mouth of the shelter. Beyond the light of the fire he had to grope his way. At the opening the snow was piled high, driven in by the storm. There was left only the narrowest aperture leading to the black darkness beyond.
He paused at the opening. He was half buried in the drift, and the lash of the storm whipped his face mercilessly. For some moments he endured the assault, then his voice came back to the figures of his companions squatting moveless over the fire.
"Ho, you, Julyman!" he called sharply.
Moments later the Indian stood beside the white man, peering out into the desolation beyond.
"She's not going to last a deal longer."
Steve was wiping his face with abarehand.
Julyman missed the movement in the darkness.
"She mak' him break bimeby—soon. Oh, yes."
There was something almost heroic in the attempt Julyman made to throw confidence into his tone. But Steve needed no such support. He was preoccupied with his own discoveries. His bare hand was still wiping away the curiously moist snow that beat upon his face.
"Yes," he said conclusively. "She'll break soon." Then after a moment: "She's breakingnow."
An interruption came from the distant dogs. It was the snarling yap of a quarrel. Then came the echo of Oolak's harsh voice and the thud of his club as he silenced them in the only manner they understood.
Steve's announcement failed to startle his companion. Nothing stirred Julyman but the fear of "devil-men," and his queer native superstitions.
"Him soften. Oh, yes," he said. "Wind him all go west. Him soft. Yes."
The wind had been carrying "forty below zero" on its relentless bosom. Its ferocity still remained, but now it was tempered by a warmth wholly unaccounted for by the change in its direction. A western wind in these latitudes was little less terrible than when it blew from the north. It had over three thousand miles of snow and ice to reduce its temperature.
Steve's voice again came in the howl of the wind.
"Guess we'll get back to the fire," he said decisively.
Julyman needed no second bidding; he turned and moved away.
Back at the fire Oolak watched his companions retake their places. He had no questions to ask. He simply waited. That was his way. He seemed to live at all times with a mind absorbed.
Steve pointed at the diminished pile of scrub wood.
"Best make up the fire," he said, addressing Julyman.
The Indian eyed him doubtfully. Their store of fuel was perilously low.
"Sure," Steve nodded. And the Indian obeyed without further demur.
Steve re-lit his pipe and sucked at it comfortably. Then he spoke with an assurance he could not have displayed earlier.
"Say," he exclaimed, without looking up from the fire. "You get the meaning of it? Maybe you don't get the meaning I do."
He laughed. It was a curious laugh. It had no mirth. But it was an expression of feelings which required outlet.
"No. Maybe you don't," he went on. "You see, I got a—notion. The wind's west—now. It should be a hell of a cold wind. It isn't. No. It should be hellish cold," he reflected. "Why isn't it? The hills lie west. The big hills. Maybethebig hill. Well? I kind of wonder. Maybe it's that. It's a guess. A hell of a guess. Does the west wind hereabouts blow across the big fire hill? And are those fires so almighty hot they set the snow melting where all the world's freezing at 60° below? Is it a sort of chinook in the dead of winter?"
He raised his eyes to the faces of his companions. The dusky figures were half hidden behind the smoke of the fire, which rose between them. He nodded at the steady gazing black eyes.
"Yes," he said. "Guess that break's come. We'll be out on the trail right away. And we'll beat up against a breeze that's warming. It'll lead us to—the Heart of Unaga."
The splendour of the Arctic night was shining over the world. There was scarcely a breath of wind. The air currents were still from the west, but the wind had died out. For the moment the amazing warmth which had stirred the imagination of Steve and his companions had passed.
A silver sheen played upon the limitless fields of snow. It was like a world of alabaster. The light came from every corner of the heavens. It came from the glory of a full moon, hard-driven to retain supremacy over its satellites. It came from the myriads of burnished stars, gleaming with a clarity, a penetrating sparkle, unknown to their brethren of lower latitudes. It came from the supreme magnificence of an aurora of moving light, dancing and curtseying with ghostly grace, as though stepping the measure of a heavenly minuet. Its radiance filled half the dome of night. It was a glory of frigid colour to ravish the artist eye.
The men on the trail had lost all sense of degrees of cold. It was simply cold. Always cold. A thermometer would have frozen solid. They knew that. Cold? So long as a strong, warm life burned in their bodies, and their stores of food remained, it was the best they could hope for.
And the dogs. They were bred to the Arctic cold. So is the bear of the Pole. They needed no better than to follow their labours with a couch burrowed beneath the snows, and hours for the dream feast which their ravening appetites yearned and never tasted.
The outfit had broken trail as Steve had promised, and it was moving through the ghostly world like insects a-crawl over the folds of an ill-spread carpet.
The course had been deflected in response to the change of wind. Steve had left the shelter of the river where it had definitely turned northward. He had left it without regret. He had no regret for anything which did not further his purpose. Adresol! The quest of the Adresol pastures was the whole aim and object of his life. Somewhere out there over the desolate wastes he believed the great secret of it all lay awaiting his discovery. Nothing else, then, was of any significance.
For the moment Nature seemed bent on favouring him. For over two hundred miles she had beaten him well-nigh breathless. She had hurled her storms at him without mercy, and, at the end of her transcendent fury, she had found him undismayed, undefeated. Perhaps his tenacity excited her admiration. Perhaps she was nursing her wrath for a more terrible onslaught. Whatever her mood he was ready to face it.
At the beginning of the third week since leaving the shelter on the river Steve trod the first of the western hills under foot, and awaited the coming of the train upon its summit. His dark, fur-clad figure stood out in relief against the world about him. It looked squat, it was utterly dwarfed in the twilit vastness. But there was something tremendous in the meaning of that living presence in the voiceless solitudes which the ages have failed to stir.
The sleds were still. The dogs lay sprawled for rest awaiting the will of their masters. Julyman stood abreast of Steve, tall, lean, but bulky in his frosted furs. Oolak stood over his dogs, which were his first care.
"You can feel it now," Steve said, thrusting a hand under his fur helmet. A moment later he withdrew fingers that were moist with sweat. "If the wind came down at us out of the hills now we'd need to quit our furs. Do you get that? Quit our furs here in the dead of winter. It's getting warmer every mile."
"It warm. Much warm. Oh, yes."
Julyman's resources of imagination were being sorely taxed.
Steve nodded.
"Yes," he said. "It isn't wind now. There's no wind. It's the air. It's warm. It's getting warmer. Later it'll get hot as hell."
He drew a profound breath. He felt that victory was very near. It only needed——
"We got to beat on all we know," he said, examining the brilliant heavens. "We need to grab every moment of this weather. We don't know. We can't guess the things waiting on us. Yes. We'll 'mush' on."
His tones were deep. The restraint of years which the Northland had bred into him was giving way before the surge of a hope that was almost certainty. And his order was obeyed by men who knew no law but his will.
But for all the urgency of his mandate, for all his efforts, progress slackened from the moment the first hill was passed. From the seemingly limitless plains of snow, rolling maddeningly in a succession of low hills and shallow hollows, now it seemed that Nature spurned the milk and water fashioning of her handiwork, and had hurled the rest of the world into a wreckage of broken, barren hills.
Into the midst of this chaos Steve plunged.
For awhile the confusion robbed him of all certainty. It not infrequently left decision floundering. The mountains leapt at him with a rush from every side, confusing direction and reducing even instinct to something like impotence. With familiarity, however, his trained mind adapted itself. Then the rush went on with the old irresistible confidence.
But human endurance was sorely tested. The tasks often became well-nigh insuperable. There were moments when dogs and Indians lay beaten in the midst of their labours, without will, without energy to stir another yard. It was at such times that despair knocked at the strong heart of the man who had never learned to yield, and who had never quite known defeat.
But even in the worst moments the steadily warming air never failed to lure. It breathed its soft message of promise into Steve's ready ears, supporting a heart powerless to resist the appeal.
The change to warmth, however, had another and less pleasing aspect. The snow lost its icy case-hardening. A rot set in. On the hill-tops the ice was not always reliable. In the valleys men sank up to their knees in slushy depths. Even the broad tread of snow-shoes failed to save them. Then, too, the dogs floundered belly-deep, and the broad bottoms of the sleds alone saved the outfit from complete disaster. The increasing hardships left Steve without respite. It was only on the hill-tops, when the veer of the wind carried it to the northward, and, for a brief spell, Arctic conditions returned, that any measure of ease was ironically vouchsafed.
The effort was tremendous. It went on for days whose number it was difficult to estimate in the grope of the unchanging twilight. A day's work might be a single hill conquered. It might be a moist, clammy valley crossed. Perhaps two miles, three, or even five. Distance remained unconsidered. For always was the next effort no less than the last, till mind, and heart, and body were worn well-nigh threadbare. There was no pause, no hesitation. It must be on, on to the end, or—disaster.
Steve knew. Only the barest necessity of rest could be permitted both for himself, his men, his dogs. The faith of his men still burned strongly in hearts which he had never known to fail, but he dared not risk the chance of a prolonged inactivity with its opportunity for contemplation of the hell through which they were all passing. He knew. Oh yes. He knew from his understanding of his own feelings and emotions.
He lived in the daily hope of discovering something with which to dazzle imagination already dulling. His faith was pinned to the summit of a great, grey headland towering amongst its fellows ahead. He had discovered its presence long since, and, from the moment of discovery, he had sought its elusive slopes. Instinct, that had no great reason to support it, warned him that the view from its summit would tell them the things they desired to know. And they were the things they all must learn quickly if failure were not to rob them of the fruits of their great adventure.
Yes. He desired that dull grey summit just now as he desired nothing else in the world.
Every emotion was stirring when, at length, Steve found himself climbing the last of the upward slopes of the "Hill of Promise," as he had named it. He had laughed as he coined the name. But there had been no laughter in his heart. If the promise were not fulfilled——?
But it would be fulfilled. It must be fulfilled. These were the things Steve told himself in that fever of straining which only mental extremity knows.
He topped the last rugged lift to the summit. His men were somewhere below, floundering in his wake. He had no heed for them just now. Hope, a fever of hope alone sustained his weary limbs over the inhospitable ice.
A great shout echoed down the slope. It came with all the power of a strong man's lungs.
"Ho, you! Quick!"
Steve had reached the rugged crest. A second shout came back to the floundering Indians.
"God! It's a—wonder!"
The moment was profound. Eyes that were prepared for well-nigh anything monstrous gazed out spellbound. Tongues had no words, and hearts were stirred to their depths. The whole world ahead was afire. It was a conflagration of incalculable immensity.
The horizon was one blaze of transcendent light. It was rendered a hundred-fold more amazing by its contrast against the grey of the Arctic night. At a given point, in the centre of all, a well of fire was belching skywards. It was churning the overhanging clouds of smoke, and lighting them with the myriad hues that belong to the tumbled glory of a stormy summer sunset. Then, too, rumblings and dull thunders came up to the watching men like the groanings of a world in travail.
For miles the hill-tops seemed to have been swept clear of ice and snow. They were shorn of their winter shroud. They stood up like black, unsightly, broken teeth, against a cavernous background of fire burning in the maw of some Moloch colossus. They stood out bared to the bone of the world's foundations.
Julyman shaded his eyes with hands that sought to shut out a vision his savage superstition could no longer support. Oolak had no such emotion. He turned from it to something which, to his mind, was of greater interest. Steve alone remained absorbed in that radiant beyond.
The Arctic night no longer reigned supreme. It seemed to have been devoured at a gulp. The heavenly lights had lost all power in face of this earthly glory. A mist of smoke had switched off the gleam of starlight, and the moon and mock-moons wore the tarnished hue of silver that has lost its burnish. The ghosts of the aurora no longer trod their measure of stately minuet. They had passed into the world of shadow to which they rightly belonged.
The heart of Unaga was bared for all to see, that fierce heart which drives the bravest Indian tongue to the hush of dread.
"We not mak' him—that! Oh, no!"
Julyman's tone was hushed and fearful. He moved close to the white man in urgent appeal.
"Boss Steve not mak' him. No. Julyman all come dead. Julyman not mush on. Oh, no."
"Julyman'll do just as 'Boss' Steve says."
Steve had dragged his gaze from the wonder that held it. He was coldly regarding the haunted eyes of a man he knew to be fearless enough as men understand fearlessness.
This was no time for sympathy or weakness. It was his purpose to penetrate to that blazing heart, as nearly as the object of his journey demanded. He was in no mood to listen patiently to words inspired by benighted superstition.
"Him—Unaga!" Julyman protested, his outstretched arm shaking. "No—mak' him? Yes?"
"We mak' this!"
It was Oolak who answered him. He spoke with a preliminary, contemptuous grunt. He, too, was pointing. But he was pointing at that which lay near at hand. He stood leaning his crippled body on his gee-pole, and gazing down at that which lay immediately in front of them, groaning and grumbling like some suffering living creature.
Steve followed the direction of the outstretched arm. He had been absorbed in the distance. All else had been forgotten. He found himself gazing down upon what appeared to be a cascading sea of phosphorescent light. He recognized it instantly, and the fiery heart of Unaga was forgotten.
A mighty glacier barred the way, and the peak on which they stood was its highest point. It stretched out far ahead. It reached beyond such range of vision as the Arctic night permitted. It sloped away down, down, so gradually, yet so deeply, so widely that it warned him of the opening of the jaws of a mighty valley, through the heart of which there probably flowed the broad bosom of a very great river. The play of the phosphorescent light was the reflection of Unaga's lights caught by the myriad facets of broken ice upon its tumbled surface.
Steve nodded.
"Yes. We make this," he cried, in a fashion to forbid all discussion. Then after a pause that gave his decision due effect: "There's a valley away out there. And I guess it'll likely hand us the things we got to know. We've beaten those darn hills. We've beaten the snow and ice—and the cold. The things we're going to find down there need beating, too."
He turned from the barrier which left him undismayed. A great light was shining in his eyes as he passed Julyman by. They rested eagerly, questioningly, upon the unemotional face of Oolak whose keen understanding he knew to be profound.
"Well?" he demanded in the fashion of a man aware that his question is not in vain.
Oolak turned. He raised his face, and his sensitive nostrils distended with a deep intake of breath. A moment later he made a swift gesture with the gee-pole on which he had been supporting himself.
"I mak' him smell. So!"
He spoke with unusual animation.
Steve had been seeking and waiting for just such words.
"You smell—what?" he demanded.
"Oolak smell him all sweet—lak'—lak'——"
Steve interrupted with a nod.
"I know," he cried. "Like—like——"
But that which he would have said remained unspoken. There was no need for words. The rest was in his eyes, in his voice. Oolak's corroboration of the evidence of his own senses meant the final triumph he was seeking.
Steve's dream of triumph was brief. Born at the moment of his first sight of the burning heart of Unaga it lived to provide a stimulant for jaded mind and body at a time of need. Then he awoke to realities such as he had never contemplated.
For once experience and imagination failed him. He was entering a land of wonder in the belief that he was prepared for everything monstrous in Nature. He believed that with the stupendous vision of Unaga he had witnessed Nature's most sublime effort. So, out of his confidence he was trapped as easily as a man of no experience at all.
At his bidding dogs and men moved to the assault of the glacial barrier. The thing that they contemplated was by no means new. A hundred times had the broken surface of glacier formed some part of their long winter trail. It was never without danger, but it was never a sufficient barrier to give them pause.
The surface of the glacier appeared to be that which they all knew. The only feature for disquiet were the thunderous detonations, the deep rumbling groans that rose up out of its far-off heart, and found a hundred echoes amongst the surrounding hills. For the rest, it was a broken surface, bearing every feature of a summer thaw frozen down again by the icy breath of winter, and adorned with a patchwork of drift snow.
Half a mile from the grey headland which was their starting point, confidence received its first check. It was Oolak who made discovery. The watchful, silent creature was unerring in his instincts, unerring in his scent of a treachery he always anticipated. He had halted his dogs, and stood in the half light, peering out this way and that at the legions of ice spectres surrounding them. Then, quite suddenly, he hailed the white man to his side, and indicated the ice on which they were standing.
"It all him move," he said, with his peculiarly significant brevity.
Steve stood for a moment without reply. He was less sensitive to indications than the Indian. In fact he failed to realize the thing the other had discovered. He shook his head.
"Guess you're——"
But his denial remained uncompleted. It was interrupted by a sharp cry from Julyman some distance away with the rear sled. The two men turned in his direction. They beheld his lean figure busy amongst his dogs, plying his club impartially, as though in an effort to quell some canine dispute.
But that was not all. As they gazed they saw the iron-shod tail of the sled rise up. It seemed to be flung up with great force. For a moment it remained poised. Then it crashed over on its side to the accompaniment of a cracking, splitting roar, like the bombardment of massed artillery.
Steve waited for nothing. Even with the roar of sub-glacial thunders hammering on his ear drums, he rushed to the man's assistance. Oolak turned to his own dogs.
The din subsided almost in a moment. Steve reached the sled where Julyman had beaten the dogs to the required condition. In a moment they were at work setting things to rights. After that the dogs were strung out afresh, and Julyman "mushed" them on, and brought them abreast of the train of the waiting Oolak.
The dogs crouched down on the rough surface of the inhospitable ice. Their great limbs were shaking under heavy coats of fur, and they whimpered plaintively, stirred by some unspeakable apprehension. The men were standing by, gazing back over the ghostly field of ice, with wonder and disquiet in their eyes.
Again it was Oolak who spoke. He pointed at the headland from which they had started. It was dim, shadowy, half lost in the grey twilight.
"Him all go back," he said, as though he were making the most ordinary announcement.
Then he pointed at something nearer. It was just beyond where the sled had been overturned.
"Him all break up. So."
His tone had changed. There was that in his harsh voice which was utterly new to it.
It was the moment of Steve's awakening from the dream of triumph he had dreamed. It was the moment of the shattering of the confidence of years. A wide fissure, of the proportions of a chasm, had opened up just beyond where the mishap had occurred. It was as Oolak said. The grey headland looked to be moving backwards, vanishing in the shadows of the Arctic night.
The approach to the heart of Unaga was yielding a reality that had been entirely uncalculated.
The widening chasm, stretching far as the eye could see on either hand, had completely cut off all retreat. Steve and his men were standing on a belt of ice that was moving. It was slipping away from the parent body, gliding ponderously almost without tangible motion, down the great glacial slope. They were trapped on the bosom of a glacial field in the titanic throes of its death agony; a melting, groaning mass riding monstrously to its own destruction in those far-off, mist-laden depths of the valley below.
It must have been unbelievable but for the definite evidence of it all. Here, in the depths of an Arctic winter, with the whole earth shadowed under a grey of frigid night, a glacial field, which a thousand years could not have built up, was melting under a heat no less than the summer of lower latitudes.
It was a moment for panic. But Steve resisted with all his might.
The position was supremely critical. There were no means of retreat in face of that amazing fissure. There could be no standing still. They must go on with the dread tide of grinding ice, on and on to the end. And for the end their trust must be in the gods of fortune for such mercies as they chose to vouchsafe.
Steve's order rang out amidst the booming of the ice. It was urgent. It was fierce in the need of the moment. The Indians knew. He had no need to explain. Before them lay the hideous downward slope with possible hell at the bottom. And the demon of avalanche was hard upon their heels.
In a frenzy the dogs leapt at their work. There was no need for club or urging. They were only too eager to quit the quaking ice and lose their consciousness of the thunders of the under-world in a rush of vital movement.
Steve warned himself there remained a fighting chance. It was the man's courage which inspired the thought. The dogs took the only chance they knew. They at least understood the soullessness of Nature's might when arrayed for destruction.
Steve drove for the fringe of it all, where the ice lapped against the rising walls of the valley to which they were dropping. It was his only course. He felt it to be his only chance. He had no real hope. It was instinctive decision unsupported by reason. He knew that ahead lay the great valley obscured under a fog of mist, and he could only guess at the perils that lay hidden there.
No, he did not know. He had no desire to question. Instinct alone could serve him now, and instinct urged him to flee from the middle course of the glacier as he would flee from the breath of pestilence.
From the first moments of blind rush for safety all sense of time became utterly lost. So, too, with fatigue. So, too, with the matter of distance. Labour became well-nigh superhuman amidst the moving ice hummocks. And the speed, and the jolting, and pitching of the sleds transformed the chaotic world about them into still more utter confusion.
The sweaty mist came up from below seeking to enshroud them in long, gauzy tentacles.
How long the struggle endured it would have been impossible to tell. There was thought only for the fissures that opened with a roar at their feet, for the ice driving down upon their heels, for the melting streams coursing amongst the hummocks. And—the threat of the enveloping mists.
The dogs ran with the recklessness of a stampede, and the precious burden of the sleds was a treasure upon the salving of which mind and body were concentrated to the exclusion of all else. Even the security of life and limb was a matter of far less concern.
The mist closed down. The terror of sightlessness was added to the rest.
Utter helplessness supervened. It was the final disaster. The closing down of the fog meant the last of intelligent effort. The whole outfit was left groping, blind, and conscious only of the terror of the downward rush they could no longer check. Ghostly ice hummocks rose up at them out of the darkness and buffeted like frigid legions advancing to the attack. Fissures yawned agape. The booming ice roared on, deafening, maddening. It was the struggle of brave men doomed. It was sublimely pitiful. It was a moment for the tears of angels.
Out of the west the breeze had freshened. It came in little hasty gusts, like the breath of invisible giants. The inky night seemed to lighten, and, here and there, the flash of a star shone out, while a faint, silvery sheen struggled for mastery in the stirring fog which fought so desperately to deny the eyes of the Arctic night.
A distant booming came up out of the fog. It was the softened sound of far-off thunder. There was another sound, too. It was less awesome, but no less significant. It was the steady droning of cascading waters falling in a mighty tide. It suggested the plunge into the darkness of an abyss, or even the lesser immensity of surging rapids in the course of a mountain river.
Steadily the western breeze increased. It lost its patchiness and settled to a pleasant, warming drift. Slowly the inky darkness rolled away. The peeping stars remained, or only lost their radiance in the gossamer lightness of passing mist. The silver of the aurora shone down triumphantly upon thesnowless earth, and the glory of the moon lit the remoteness with its frigid smile.
On the dark monotony of an earth robbed of its winter clothing a cluster of moving figures stood out in faint relief, and presently a light flashed out like the infinitesimal blaze of a firefly in the night. It passed, and then it came again. Again it passed. And again it came. This time it lived and grew. A fire had lit, and the group of figures were crouching over it as though to protect it against the dark immensity of the world surrounding them.
The distant thunders had died away. No longer was there the ominous droning of falling waters. The utter stillness of the Arctic night was supreme.
The steady play of the western breeze came down the highway of the valley whose far-off slopes rose to unmeasured heights. To the westward the dull reflections of earthly fire lit the sky with deep, sanguinary hues, and the starlight seemed to have lost its power behind a haze of cloud. For the rest the night was lit by the aurora.
Steve and his Indians were standing on the moist banks of a broad, flowing river, the surface of whose waters served as a mirror to the splendid lights above. Away behind them, where the ground rose up towards the higher slopes, was the glimmer of the fire which marked their camp. They were all three gazing out at the western reflection of earthly fires.
For the moment there was silence. For the moment each was absorbed in his own thought. None gave a sign of the nature of that thought, but it was an easy thing to guess since their faces were turned towards the reflection of Unaga's fires.
It was Steve who first withdrew his gaze. He seemed reluctant. He turned and surveyed the snowless territory about them.
It was an extraordinary display of Nature's mood. They were treading underfoot a growth of lank grass, and the slopes of the valley were clad with bluffs of bare-poled woodlands. The air was warm. It was warmer than the breath of a temperate winter, and the low-growing scrub marking the course of the river was breaking into new growth of a whitish hue.
The amazement of the discovery of these things had long since passed. Steve and his Indians had returned again to the reality of things.
Steve drew a deep breath.
"We can't make another yard with the dogs," he said. "The snow's gone. It's gone for keeps."
It was a simple statement of the facts. And Oolak and Julyman were equally alive to them.
"Then him all mak' back?"
There was eagerness in Julyman's question. The terror of that through which they had passed was still in his mind. So, too, with the fiery heart of Unaga that lay ahead. Oolak had nothing to add, so he kept to his customary silence.
Steve shook his head.
"There's no quitting," he said simply. "Guess we've come nigh three hundred miles. We've got through a territory to break the heart of a stone image. God's mercy helped us back on that darn glacier when we were beat like dead men. It's a sort of dream I just can't remember, and don't want to anyway. Say, do you guess a miracle was sent down to us, which kept us clear of going over that darn precipice with the ice? Was it a miracle that carried us where there wasn't worse than a flow banking on the slope of this valley? Was the mercy of it all sent to have us quit now, with the end of things coming right to our hand? I just guess not. It's there ahead. Somewhere down this valley. We can smell it so plain we'll need the poison masks in a day's journey. There's going to be no quitting. The sleds'll have to stop right here. And the dogs. You boys, too. Guess I'm going on afoot. When I've located the stuff," he went on, his eyes lighting, and his words coming sharply, "when I locate the stuff in full growth, the harvest we're yearning to cut, why, then I'll get right back here, and we'll go afoot, all three of us, and we'll cut it, and bale it, and portage it right here to the sleds. And when we've got all we can haul we'll cast for that trail the Sleepers make in summer, and just cut out all that hell of ice we came over. That's how I see it. And we're going to put it right through if it breaks us, and beats us to death."
Steve spoke with his eyes fixed upon the far-off lights of Unaga. His words were the words of a man obsessed. But there was nothing in his manner to suggest a mind weakening under its burden. It was simple, sane determination that looked out of his eyes.
Julyman answered him, and a world of relief was in his tone.
"Him dog. Him sled. All him Indian man him stop by camp. Oh, yes."
Steve nodded. Then he pointed out down the river.
"It's a crazy territory anyway," he said. "Those darn fires have turned it summer when winter's freezing up the marrow of things. When summer gets around I guess it's likely the next thing to hell. But the thing we're yearning for is lying there, somewhere ahead. And I'm after it if I never make the fort again, and the folks we've left behind. Come on. We'll get right back to camp. I need to fix things for the big chance I'm going to take, and you boys'll wait around till I get back. If things go wrong, and this thing beats me, why, just hang on till you figger the food trucks liable to leave you short, then hit a trail over the southern hills and work around back to the fort with word to Marcel and An-ina. Guess there won't be any message."
Alone in the great silence. Without even the cry of desolation wrung from starving wolf, or the howl of depression which ever seems to haunt the heart of the coyote world. Alone with groping thought, with burning hope, and the undermining of doubt which the strongest cannot always shake off. Steve had taken the plunge which robbed him of human companionship.
It was the prompting of that spirit which borders so closely the line where earthly sanity passes. It was the spirit which finds its inspiration in the Great Purpose which drives on for the achievement of the human task on earth. The dreamer of dreams is born to translate his visions into reality, or to lie broken before the task. Steve was no visionary. He was something more, something greater. His was the stern heart of purpose selected for the translation of the dream of the dreamer who had fallen by the way.
Steve permitted himself no reflection upon the spiritual appeal of his purpose. These things might concern those of a wider, deeper intelligence. Or, perhaps, those whose weakness unfitted them for the battle of the strong. It was for him to claim issue in the battle he sought. And come life and victory, or death and defeat, he was prepared to accept the verdict without complaint.
The twinkling eyes of the heavens searched down upon the infinitesimal moving figure. Their cold smile was steely, perhaps with the irony the sight inspired. Their world was so coldly indifferent to human survival.
The snowless breasts of the valley rose up miles away to the north and south. And between their swelling contours lay a country of lesser hills and valleys, equally snowless, and whose heart was the flood of a great river.
Sterility had passed. Here were no barren hill-crests with a hundred weatherworn facets. Here were no fields of snow, driven by the fierce gales of the polar seas. Here were no glacial fields bound in an iron grip throughout the ages. The fires in the heart of Unaga were burning. Their warming was in the breath of the breeze. It was in the very earth, yielding its fruit with the freedom of the temperate world.
A wood-clad country of almost luxurious vegetation, there was in it a suggestion of the sub-tropical. But under the twilight of Arctic winter it had lost the happy hues of a sunlit season. True, the conifers retained their dull, dark foliage, but, for the rest, the bare branches were alive with a new-born cloak that possessed the whiteness of fresh-fallen snow. Even the lank grass under foot was similarly awakening.
The wonder of it all must have been amazing had Steve not been prepared for some such phenomenon. Was not this crazy valley the reality of that vision he had set before Marcel? It was the melting spring of temperate latitudes transposed to the confines of the Arctic Circle. It was a land of still, wonderful, voiceless life, whose air was sweet, and heavy laden with a subtle perfume.
He wondered, as he paced on under the burden of the pack his broad shoulders were supporting. His mind was a riot with questioning. What of the rest? Would the whole dream become reality? Why not? What of the day when the sun rose again from its long winter sleep?
For answer he gazed out ahead where a pillar of fire looked to be supporting the clouded heavens. The logic of it all was plain. There was no real question in his mind. With the returning light of the sun, and the steadily rising temperature, the ghostly foliage would promptly assume Nature's happy green and the world would ripen with the rapidity of a forcing house. Then——
Steve's eyes were suddenly raised to the dark vault of the skies. The lights of the night had been largely obscured. Only the heart of Unaga still remained shining with unabated splendour. It wasraining!
Rain had ceased. The dripping figure of Steve was at rest on the low, white-clad summit of a hill. He had no care for his condition as he steamed under the dank heat of the valley. His eyes were steadily regarding the wonder world of the west.
For a long time he stood almost without movement. He was seeking, seeking in every direction. But the rosy twilight baffled him. Unaga buried her secrets deeply, and only was there the perfume in the air which she could not conceal. This was the key with which Steve meant to open the door of her treasure house.
He raised his face and drew a deep breath through sensitive nostrils. Then he exhaled slowly, deliberately, and his lips moved. Now there was taste in the air as well as perfume. The change had come with the rainfall.
He stooped and deposited his pack on the moist ground. Then he unfastened it. A few moments later he was standing erect again, and his face was half hidden under a curiously constructed mask. Again he turned to the west. Again he inhaled deeply. And as he did so satisfaction lit his steady eyes. The scent of the air, its sickly sweetness, had entirely passed as he breathed under the mask.
He returned to his pack and fastened it up. Then he reslung it upon his shoulders. When he passed from the summit of the hill the mask that was to serve him when the danger line was reached had been removed.
Steve laboured on sweatily. He had halved the weight of his pack. He had even removed his buckskin shirt. The heat was amazing. It nearly stifled him.
With each mile gained the spectacle of Unaga's fires grew in intensity and sublime fury. The whole of the western world looked to be engulfed in a caldron of fire; while the belching source of it all flamed at the summit of its earthly column, amidst a churning, rose-tinted froth of cloud banks.
Changes came in swift succession. Perhaps the most significant of all was the complete change in the aspect of the heavens, and in the sulphurous grit with which the air was laden. The stars had vanished. The flood of northern light had lost its clearness; now only a ghostly shadow of its glory remained. There was only one moon. Its manifold reflections were lost in the mist, and the shining silver of its own light was painfully tarnished.
For all this, however, the light in the valley was no less. Its character had changed. That was all. The rosy twilight was growing to an angry gleaming.
Steve knew his journey's end was near. How near he could not tell. He reminded himself that there must be a barrier, a dividing line, beyond which no life could endure. But he also knew that the field of Adresol must lie on the hither side of it. If that were not so, what of the Indians to whom it yielded supplies for the pleasant calm of their winter's sleep?
Steve knew he was by no means witnessing a simple volcanic eruption. It was something far greater. The suggestion of it all was so colossal that he could find no concrete form in which to express his belief. In his mind there had formed an idea that here was a whole wide territory forming one great vent to the subterranean fires demanding outlet. It seemed to him that those fires had been lit just where they now burned. Maybe they had been lit on the day that dry land was first born upon the earth, and throughout the ages had never been permitted to die out.
Fascination held him enthralled as he laboured over the weary miles of the valley. Every swamp became a potential objective for examination. Every broken hill might conceal some secret valley where subterranean heat produced a growth foreign to the more open regions. He could afford to miss no canyon however small, lest the secret he sought lay hidden there. And all the time with the hot breath of the westerly breeze in his nostrils, the lure of the sickly perfume beckoned him on.
It was sheer mental and bodily weariness that brought Steve to a prolonged halt. The heat was overpowering him at last. This strange land with its ruddy twilight had become a labour beyond endurance. It was as if the waters of the river were being evaporated into a steam which left the air unbreathable.
Halfway to the summit of a great wood-clad hill, that jettied across from the southern slopes of the valley to the northern limits beyond, he had flung himself to rest in a wide clearing surrounded by the cold delicacy of white-hued foliage. In his moment of helplessness there seemed to be no end to his journey. He felt that the great summit he was reaching towards meant only a descent beyond, and then again another, and still another steep ascent.
Only for a few moments had he sprawled, seeking rest. He was thinking and gazing back over his long solitary trail, peering into the reverse of that upon which he had looked so long. It was intensely restful thus to turn his gaze from the belching fires. Once his heavy eyelids closed. But he bestirred himself. Later he would sleep, but not now. His day's work was—Again his eyes closed heavily, and his hand fell from the support of his head.
It was that which wakened him. And in a moment a thrill of panic flashed through his nerves. With all his will flung into the effort, he forced himself to complete wakefulness. He sat up. He groped in his loosened pack. He pulled out of it the mask he had tested once before, and, with desperate haste, adjusted it over mouth and nostrils.
It had been near, so near. He knew now how nearly disaster had clutched at him. Furthermore he knew that even now the danger was by no means passed. The heavy fumes of Adresol were creeping through the woods about him. They were stealing their ghostly, paralyzing way low down upon the ground, drifting heavily along until the open below brought them to the stronger air currents which would disperse them on their eastward journey, robbing them of their deadly toxin, and reducing them to a simple sickly perfume.
He had leapt to his feet. He stood swaying like a drunken man, while a strange bemusing attacked his brain and left a singing in his ears. Staggering under the influence of the deadly drug, he fled from the clearing up towards the hill-top.
It was victory! Complete, overwhelming.
Steve was gazing out upon a wide, seemingly limitless table-land. In every direction it spread itself out, far as the eye could see. To the west it looked to launch itself into the very heart of the land of fire which was shedding its ruddy light from miles and miles away. To the north it went on till it lost itself against the slopes of the lofty, containing hills of the valley. Southward, its spread was swallowed up under a rolling fog of smoke, which settled upon the world like a pall. It was a great, white, limitless field of dead white lily bloom, unbroken, unsullied, like the perfect damask of napery, purer in tone than virgin snow.
The great cup-like blooms stood up nearly to the height of his shoulders. They were superb in their gracious form, and suggested nothing so much as a mask of innocence and purity concealing a heart of unimaginable evil.
Steve gazed at those nearest him with mixed feelings of repulsion and delight. Nor could he wholly rid himself of the fear his knowledge inspired. His mask was closely adjusted over mouth and nostrils, and he knew that it was only that product of the dead chemist's genius that stood between him and a dreamless sleep from which there would be no awakening.
And as he gazed he became aware of a strange phenomenon. Each lily was slightly inclining its gaping mouth towards the distant heart of Unaga, which inspired its life. To him it suggested an attitude of the devoutest worship. It seemed to his mind that these strange plants, containing all that was most beneficent, and all that was most deadly in their composition, were yielding a silent expression of thankful worship to the tremendous power which saved them from the frigid death to which the dead of Arctic winter would otherwise have condemned them.
His feelings yielded to the profound wonder of it all. For all his fear his soul was stirred to its depths. And his thankfulness was no less than his wonder.
Yes, it was victory at last, after years of ceaseless effort. It was a victory surpassing even his wildest hopes. Here was the wonderful field of growing Adresol in all the glory of full bloom. Here was an inexhaustible supply of the drug the world of healing science was crying out for. It was here, in its deadliest form, awaiting the reapers. A harvest such as would accomplish everything he had ever hoped to achieve.
And as the moments passed, and his confidence in the protecting mask grew, so a wonderful spirit buoyed him. It was a condition he had parted from many years ago. A happy, joyous smile lit his eyes. It grew, and broke into a laugh. He reached out and daringly plucked a great stem supporting a perfect bloom. He stood gazing into the deep, cup-like heart for prolonged moments. He was thinking of Ian Ross and the days so far back in his mind. Fifteen years? Yes. More. And now——
He contemplated with joy the labours ahead. The return to Oolak and Julyman. The work of the harvest. The portaging of it. The packing of the sleds. Then the long, last homeward trail with a success achieved beyond his dreams. It was something indeed to have lived for and laboured for. Marcel!
It was all so drab, so cheerless. Outside the snow was still piled to the depth of many feet, the ice still held the river in its chill embrace. But the temperature was rising. The open season was advancing.
Keeko was aware of it. There were weeks of melting to pass yet. But soon——
Inside, the vault-like store was warm enough. But it was dark, and squalid, and it reeked with the taint which only the centuries can impart. These things impressed themselves never so much upon Keeko as now, while she sat over the warming stove.
She had just returned from Seal Bay. She had passed most of the winter on the trail with her Indians. She preferred their company in desperate circumstances to the associations of Fort Duggan. During those long months she had planned the future for herself, a future which had nothing to do with Nicol, but which took him into her calculations. She possessed a wonderful faculty for clear thinking. And her decision had been irrevocably taken.
Nicol was leaning on the heavy oaken bench that served him for a counter, and about him, and behind him, were the piled stocks of his trade. He was preoccupied. Keeko was glad enough. She had returned only in the execution of her plans, and to prepare for the moment when she intended to steal her freedom, and shut this man's companionship for ever out of her life.
Just now her thoughts were far away as she basked in the warmth of the stove. They were upon the coming spring, the opening river, upon the old moose head set up to watch for her coming, and—upon Marcel.
Once she turned her head, and into her pretty eyes there crept a look which was almost of disquiet. The man's dark head and bearded face were bent over the sheet of paper upon which he was scratching with a stub of pencil. There was a small heap of paper money beside him. There was also a largish glass of raw rye whisky, from which he frequently drank. It was the sight of this latter that caused the girl's look of disquiet. It was the second drink in less than half an hour. She turned away with an added feeling of repugnance, and she reckoned again the number of weeks that must pass before her freedom came.
It was at the moment of her turning back to the stove that the scratching of the pencil ceased. The man looked up, and his bold smiling eyes were turned upon the girl. He drained his glass noisily while his eyes remained upon the pretty buckskin-clad figure that so lewdly attracted him. There was nothing pleasant in the smile. And the glazing of his eyes was that of excessive alcoholism, and primitive, animal passion. He was unobserved, and he knew there was no need to disguise his feelings.
After a while he crushed the pile of paper money into a hip pocket, and helped himself liberally to more of the spirit.
"It's pretty darn good," he said abruptly, with an appreciative smack of the lips under his curtain of whiskers.
"You mean—?" Keeko did not look round.
"Why, the price." Nicol laughed harshly.
Keeko heard him drink. She heard him gasp with the scorch of the liquor passing down his throat. She waited.
The man moved round and came across to the stove. His gait was unsteady and Keeko was aware of it. She hated, and well-nigh feared the proximity of a man who drugged himself with alcohol on every pretext and at every opportunity.
"Say, you've done well, kid," Nicol exclaimed, with coarse familiarity, and with the intention of conciliation. "Sixteen hundred dollars for those pelts? Gee! You surely must have set Lorson hating you bad."
Keeko was torn by emotions she was powerless to check as she desired. She knew this man for all he was. She knew that he was little better than a savage animal, and, at moments, when alcohol had completed its work, was something even more to be feared.
Of the sober savage in him she had no fear. She had the means to deal with that always to her hand. But influenced by drink it was a different matter. That was his condition now. It was a condition to disturb any young, lonely woman.
She knew she had a difficult part to play. But her mind was made up. She would play it so long as it would serve. After that——
She shook her head.
"No," she said coldly, without looking up. "Guess he didn't know his dollars were going to Fort Duggan. If he had, maybe it would have been different. He doesn't figger to pay big money to the folks he—owns. I'm just a free trader to him. He doesn't even know my name. Maybe he hates free traders. But he's ready to pay if the pelts are fine quality. He didn't worry a thing."
The man's amiability beamed.
"You're a smart kid," he said, with his bold eyes on the pretty figure which the girl's mannish buckskin had no power to conceal.
Again she shook her head.
"The North teaches a mighty tough lesson. If you don't learn it good you're beat right away." Keeko suddenly looked up, and her eyes were gazing directly into the man's. "I've learned a heap. I'm not yearning to learn more. Still—Say, there's times I feel I'd like to get back to the sheltered days when the school-ma'm sat around over a girl till she hated herself. If I'm smart I'm no smarter than I need to be."
"No."
Nicol's eyes were almost devouring as Keeko turned back to the stove.
"We've all got to be smart if we're going to lay hold of the things held out to us," he said. He laughed cynically. "That's how I always figger. Guess I haven't a notion to miss a thing now. The days of foolishness are over."
Keeko was well enough aware of the thoughts which lay at the back of her own words. Now she strove to penetrate his.
"Yes," she said with a quiet confidence which she by no means felt.
Ease, confidence could never be hers in this man's presence, for all she had been brought up to look on him as a step-father. The thoughts of the weeks lying ahead were in her mind. They were always there now. Time. She was playing for time. So she adopted the tone and attitude best suited to help her.
After a moment's silence the man suddenly flung out his hands. It was a movement expressive of his volcanic temper. That which had for its inspiration cynical disregard for anything and everything which interfered with the fulfilment of his own selfish desire.
"Hell!" he cried. "What's the use talking? We got to fix things right here and now. It's for you, as it's for me. We've got to play the game together. There's no other way. Say, I got to make a trip when the ice breaks. It's a hell of a trip. It's going to hand us one of the things held out to us." He laughed harshly. "I've got to grab it for both of us. I need you to stop around while I'm away. You can run this layout just as you fancy to. It don't matter a curse to me, so you stop around."
"What's the trip?" There was a sharpness in the girl's question which had not been in her tone before. "What's the thing held out that's for—both of us?"
"Money. Big money."
"Big money?"
In a moment the girl's every faculty became alert.
Nicol realized the change. His temper resented it. But his cunning robbed him of the retort that leapt to his lips. And all the while the girl's cold, pretty eyes provoked those passions in him which the dead mother had dreaded. Keeko could have no understanding of the unbridled licence rampant in his besotted body.
He nodded.
"It's so big I just can't get all it means—yet. You and me—we're going to be partners in it."
"Partners?"
"Sure."
"What's needed from me?"
Keeko's suspicions were stirring When Nicol talked of "big money" and snatching that held out to him, it was not easy to believe in the honesty of it all.
"Just stop around till I get back."
The girl withdrew her gaze and sat with hands spread out to the warmth of the stove.
"You best tell me," she said quietly but firmly.
She looked for an explosion and she was not disappointed. The hot blood rushed to the man's bloated cheeks. His eyes lit furiously. He had looked for prompt acquiescence. It had been his habit to browbeat the woman who had followed him throughout a long career of crime, and it drove him half crazy to find opposition in her daughter. There could be no doubt of Keeko's determination. She was tacitly demanding her place in the proposed partnership.
"I'm telling nothing—not a darn thing. It's up to me, and no concern of anyone else. Get that. We're either partners or crosswise. And I guess it's not healthy getting crosswise with me. You'll share in the result. Ain't that good enough? All I need from you is to sit around till I get back."
Keeko choked back the angry retort she longed to hurl at him. Those nightmare weeks that lay ahead were uppermost in her mind. They must be bridged at any cost. So she smiled in a fashion that stirred the man's pulses and melted his swift wrath instantly.
"Say, you're asking me to partner in this thing whatever it is," Keeko said in a disarming fashion. "You're asking me to act the grown woman, and treating me like a foolish kid. You guessed just now I was smart. Well? Let's be reasonable folk. Here, listen. You're talking of big money. I guess I know all about big money in this country. The only feller north of 60° who can handle and pay big money is Lorson Harris. And he only reckons to pay big money for something he's looking for bad. The thing he needs bad generally has a deal of dirt in it. Well, how much dirt is there to this trip while I sit around? Guess I'm either a woman or a kid. If I'm a kid I can't run the layout with you away. If I'm a woman I'll be treated that way. There's nothing in the North to scare me, not even your bluff, any more than Lorson Harris. But tell it all. We'll stand even then. Anyway it's not good betting blind, and I don't feel like acting that way."
The girl's smile robbed her determination of its offence. And Nicol fell for it. The bully in him was struggling with those purposes, that passion which was his greatest weakness. The struggle was brief enough as such a struggle is bound to be. In a moment he capitulated.
"Say," he cried, "you'd break up the patience of Satan. Here, the thing's worth a hundred thousand dollars."
"A hundred thousand dollars?"
The startled tone, the amazement in Keeko's eyes, were genuine enough, and the man grinned his enjoyment.
"Sure," Nicol laughed in the delight of his success. "Do you know what it means? How'd you fancy living like a swell woman on the world's best, and with folks around you to act the way you say? How'd you feel with pockets stuffed with dollars, and wearing swell gowns instead of the darn buckskin that hides up half the woman in you? How'd you like living where you've as much chance of snow as eating ice cream in hell, and supping your tea without needing to blow aside the dead flies floating on top to make a place for your dandy lips? It means that—all that—and more, and it's for you and me."
The girl had recovered from her surprise. Her worst suspicions were confirmed. Her wits were alert, sharpened by the hideous necessity of placating this amazing creature she dared not openly flout.