PART II

FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

PLACER CITY

Bill Wilder smiled in an abstracted, wry sort of fashion as he strode down the boarded sidewalk, which was no more than sufficient for its original purpose of saving pedestrians from wallowing in the mire and stagnant water of the unmade main throughfare of Placer City.

He was on his way to his office from his house. His house was built well beyond the tattered city’s limits with a view to escape from the sordid atmosphere of the northern gold city, which in the long years of acquaintance he had learned to detest.

Bill Wilder was the wealthiest gold man in a city of extreme wealth. Ten years of abounding success had transformed a youth of barely eighteen, lean, large, angular, yearning with every wholesome human desire, into a man of twenty-eight, glutted and overburdened with a fortune and mining interests the extent of which even he found it well nigh impossible to estimate. In ten years, under the driving force of inflexible resolve, backed by amazing good fortune, he had achieved at an age when the generality of men are only approaching the threshold of affairs that really matter.

But somehow his success had brought him little enough joy. It had brought him labour that was incessant. It had made it possible that every whim of his could be satisfied by the stroke of the pen. But instead of satisfaction, he reminded himself that somehow his life had become completely and utterly empty, and he yearned to set the clock back to those long, arduous, struggling days, when hope and resolve had been able to drive him to greater and greater exertions, with a pocket-book that was almost as lean and hungry as his stomach.

His smile now was inspired by the memory of a brief interview he had just had on his way down, in the hall of the McKinley Hotel, with a Hebrew acquaintance, a wealthy and influential saloon-proprietor. A. Feldman had spent half-an-hour in endeavouring to get him to join forces in the erection of a new dance hall that was intended to eclipse anything of the kind in the country in size, splendour, and profits. His reply had been curt. It had been harsh in its bitter condemnation. And the memory of the Jew’s hopeless stare of amazement was with him now.

“Not on your life, Feldman,” he had said in conclusion. “I’m a gold man. No better and no worse. I’m not a brothel keeper.”

His smile passed, and he gazed about him at the moving traffic surging along the miserable highway under the dazzling sunlight of a perfect spring day. He had no particular claim to good looks. His face was strong, and his expression open. There was a certain angularity about his clean-shaven features, and a simple directness in his clear-gazing grey eyes. He looked a typical gold man without pretence or display, and from the careless roughness of his tweed clothing no one would have taken him for a man who counted his wealth in millions of dollars.

But that was the man. Achievement was the sole purpose of his life. And it must be the achievement of a great body and muscles rather than the subtle scheming of the acute commercial mind which he by no means lacked.

The life of this mushroom northern city only stirred him to repugnance. He was no prude. He had tasted of the life in the fevered moments of youth. But he knew, he had strong reason to know, there was nothing in it that money could not buy, from the governing corporation to the women and gunmen who haunted the dance halls, except the Mounted Police detachment. And somehow the knowledge had become completely hateful to him.

He had migrated to the place during one of its early “rushes,” when it was only a few degrees removed from a mining camp. A whirlwind rush of humanity had swept down upon it bearing him on its tide. And he had remained to witness its leaping development into an established city of wealth and wanton freedom. Later he had participated in an attempt at real government by the saner element of its people, and the making safe of life and property. With them he had hoped. He had looked on at the mushroom growth of great hotels and offices, and greater and more elaborate halls of public entertainment. Then, with those others, he had watched the wreckage of the new authority under pressure of vested interests, and witnessed the passing of the moment or moral uplift. The falling back into a mire of corruption had been literally headlong.

The city had grown up in the wide valley of the Hekor River at the point where the first alluvial strike had been made. It was at a point where the river widened out before dispersing its northern waters into a great lake surrounded by the lofty range of hills which had created it. It followed the usual lines of all these improvised northern places of habitation. It was designed in a rectangular fashion based on one interminable main thoroughfare, which was the centre of haphazard development. The road had sidewalks, but for the rest it remained unconstructed. Vehicular traffic wallowed in mire during the spring, jolted and bumped over a broken, dusty surface in summer, and, in winter, enjoyed a foundation of snow on which to travel that frequently stood five and six feet in depth.

The whole place was hopelessly straggling and unkempt. Lofty seven- and eight-storied buildings looked down on the log shanties and frame hutments grovelling at their feet in that incongruous fashion which never seems to disturb the human sense of fitness. There were even men amongst its cosmopolitan people who found joy in the disparity. But these were mainly the folk who owned or had designed the greater structures.

Throughout the long winter night the place was ablaze with electric light, a never-ending source of joy to the crude pioneering mind. Arc lamps lit the main thoroughfare, while a multitude of winking signs served to guide the unwary to those accommodating dens waiting to unloose inflated bank rolls. During the six months of summer daylight this service was unnecessary. And only the cold light standards, and the hideous framing of the signs, and the tawdry decorations of the places of entertainment were left to replace the winter splendour.

Bill Wilder knew it all by heart, from the elaborate Elysee, down to the meanest cabaret from which a drunken miner would be fortunate to escape with nothing worse than a vanished store of “dust.” He hated it. The knowledge of the life that went on every hour of the twenty-four sickened and bored him. He longed for the free, wholesome, hard-living life of the outworld beyond the sordid prison bars which his fortune had set up about him.

It was always the same now. Month in, month out, there was nothing but the solitude of his home and the work of the office in the great commercial block he had built, or the pastimes of the dance hall and gambling hell.

He wanted none of it. His great body was rusting with disuse, while the mental effort of the administration of his affairs was fast robbing his sober senses of all joy of life. He yearned for the open with all its privations. He wanted the canoe nosing into the secret places of the far world. The burden of the battle against Nature in her fiercest mood was something to be desired. And so, too, with the howl of the deadly blizzard beyond the flap door of a flimsy tent. At this moment Placer City and all its alleged attractions were anathema to the man on the sidewalk.

He came to an abrupt halt. His grey eyes were turned on the elaborate entrance doors of the Elysee on the opposite side of the road. It was disgorging its freight into the smiling spring sunlight, a throng of men and painted women who had spent the daylit night drinking, and dancing, and gambling. He watched them out of sheer disgust. Here at something like ten in the morning, when the sidewalks were thronged with business traffic, they were just about to seek their homes for that brief sufficiency of rest which would enable them to return to another night of loose pleasure. For all he was on the youthful side of thirty, for all he was inured to the life of the city, for all his blood was no less warm, and rich, and swift flowing, the sight mingled pity with disgust and left him depressed and even saddened. The terrible falseness of it; the price that must be ultimately paid. The bill of interest that would be presented by an outraged Nature later on would mean overwhelming bankruptcy for the majority. He turned away and collided with an officer of the police.

Superintendent Raymes stepped clear and laughed.

“Bill Wilder gawking at the Elysee’s throw-outs? Guess you aren’t yearning to join that bunch?”

“No.”

Bill replied without any responsive laugh. Superintendent Raymes was his oldest friend in Placer City. A brisk, dapper man of medium height he was almost dwarfed by Wilder’s great size. He was approaching middle life, and already a slight greying tinged the dark hair below his smart forage cap. He was wearing a black-braided patrol jacket, and the yellow-striped breeches and top-boots so familiar in the regions under the control of the Mounted Police.

Raymes shook his head.

“No. That’s only for the sharks and darn fools that life seems to set around like the sands on the sea shore. Can you beat it? Look at ’em piling into the rigs. They’re sick and mighty weary, and they’ll be at it again in a few hours. It beats me the way those poor women keep going. As for the boys—God help ’em when those vultures have wrung them dry. Where are you making?”

“Just the office.”

Again Raymes laughed.

“Sounds like the cemetery.”

A smile returned to the eyes of the gold man.

“That’s how it seems to me,” he said, as they walked on together. “The cemetery of all that’s worth while. It’s tough, Raymes. I’m sick to death counting dollars and looking at that sort of stuff.” He jerked his head in the direction of the Elysee. “I tell you I’m going to make a break. I’ve just got to. It’s that or go crazy. I guess I love this Northland to death for all the flies, and skitters, and the other things, but I can’t face its cities any longer without qualifying for the bughouse.”

The policeman remained silent in face of the man’s desperate, half-laughing earnestness. He knew Wilder’s moods. He understood that tremendous fighting spirit which was consuming all his peace of mind. They passed on down the sidewalk.

It was not a little curious how these two men had come together in intimate friendship. It had begun when Raymes was only an Inspector and Wilder was only beginning to realise the burden of a wealth that grew like a snowball. They had found themselves in deadly opposition as a result of a desperate outbreak of lawlessness on a big new “strike” for which the gold man had been responsible. The position had been gravely threatening. There had been murder, and claim jumping, and the whole camp was on edge and threatening something like civil warfare. In the absence of police there was no authority to control the camp. Realising the seriousness of the position Wilder had jumped in. Organizing his men, and collecting others who could be relied on, he armed them for the task, and forthwith launched his forces against the marauding gunmen who had established a reign of terror. There was no mercy and only summary justice. Every offender was dealt with on the spot, and, in the end, the camp was swept clean.

When it was all over the gold man found the consequences of his action were far more serious than his logic had suggested. He had to face the tribunal of Placer City and render a complete accounting, with Inspector Raymes, keenly jealous of the law of which he was guardian, in deadly opposition. It had been a bitter fight. But Wilder’s downright honesty, his frank sincerity had finally broken down the police officer’s case and left him victor in a battle that had been fought out mainly on technicalities. And in the end, in place of the bitter antagonism which might well have arisen between them, a bond of great friendship was founded, based on a deep, mutual admiration for the purpose by which both were inspired.

All this had taken place about five years earlier. And since that time their regard for each other had ripened to an intimacy that had never known set-back.

Raymes was deeply concerned for his friend’s outburst.

“Yes, Bill,” he said presently. “It’s tough on a boy like you. You collected your dust too quick. You haven’t the temper of a millionaire. You aren’t the man to sit around spinning every darn dollar into two, and grousing because you can’t make three of it.” He laughed. “You’re the kind of hoss built for the race track of life. You weren’t made to stand around in the barn waiting to haul a swell buggy by way of exercise. That break away is the thing for you, only I’ll hate to lose you out of this darn sink.”

Bill nodded and smiled, and the whole of his boyish face lighted up.

“That’s the best I’ve listened to in months,” he said. “I guessed you’d say I was all sorts of a darn fool not fancying stopping round and counting my dollars. But this ‘sink’ as you rightly call it. I’m a bit of a kid to you. Maybe I’m a long-headed kid in a way. But a sink don’t count much on that. If you live in a sink at my age there’s a mighty big chance you’ll sooner or later join up with the sort of muck you mostly find in a sink. And the thought scares me.”

The policeman glanced round with twinkling eyes.

“You can always sit around on top. You can breathe good air that way and enjoy the sunlight.”

The other shrugged.

“An’ risk falling in when it gets you—well asleep. No, George. You were right first time. I’ll make the break an’ get out of the way of any chance of—mishap.”

They had reached the square frame building of the police post and paused at the door.

“There mustn’t be any mishap,” Raymes said smiling up into the earnest face of the man for whom he felt some sort of responsibility. “Are you yearning for that office of yours? Or do you feel like wasting an hour while I talk.”

Bill looked keenly down into the other’s twinkling eyes.

“What’s the game?” he asked with a directness that was almost brusque. Then he laughed. “But there, I guess I’m mostly ready to listen when George Raymes fancies talking. It isn’t every oyster that’s full of pearls. Sure. I’ll be glad of the excuse to dodge the office.”

The superintendent shook his head and his smile passed, leaving his face set and purposeful.

“Typhoid’s a deal more prevalent in oysters than pearls,” he said grimly. “Come right in.”

It was a bare, comfortless office, clean scrubbed and dusted but quite without anything in its furnishing to indicate the superior rank of the man who used it. It was characteristic, however, of the men whose ceaseless activities alone contrive that the northern outlands shall escape the worst riot of human temper. The boarded walls were hung with files. A small iron safe stood in one corner of the room, and a large woodstove occupied another. There was a roll-top desk near by the one window that lit the room, and a plain wooden cupboard stood against the wall directly behind the chair which Superintendent Raymes occupied. There were two or three Windsor chairs about the walls, and the only luxury the room afforded was a large rocker-chair into which Bill Wilder had sprawled his great body.

On the desk in front of the officer was a musty-looking file of papers. It was unopened at the moment for the man was contemplating one of several letters that lay beside it. He was leaning back in his revolving chair, and a curious, thoughtful look was in his reflective eyes. Bill Wilder was removing the paper band from the cigar the other had forced upon him.

Raymes looked up after awhile and sat regarding the man with the cigar.

“So you’re going to sell out, Bill,” he said quietly. “You’re going to sell out everything, all your interests, and—quit?”

“And make some sort of use of a life that’s creaking with rust in every blamed joint.”

Bill thrust the cigar into his mouth and prepared to light it.

The other shook his head.

“We mustn’t lose you, Bill. You’re the only feller in this muck hole we can’t do without. I’m not thinking of Placer City only. I’m thinking of this great old north country to which—you belong.”

The policeman watched the cloud of smoke which the gold man’s powerful lungs exhaled. He saw the match extinguish, and followed its flight as it was flung into the cuspidor which stood beside the stove. He was thinking hard and wondering. He was not quite sure how best to deal with the thing he had in his mind.

Bill smiled.

“That’s like you, George,” he said. “If I listened to you, and took you seriously, I’d guess I’m some feller—with dollars or without. But you’re right when you say I belong to this old north country. I’d hate quitting it. I’d hate it bad. If I could locate a real use for myself in it I’d sooner serve it than any other. And the tougher the service the better it would make me feel. Gee! I’m soft and flabby like some darn fish that’s been stewing in the sun.”

“I know.” The policeman forced a laugh. He had made up his mind. “Here, I’ve a mighty interesting letter come along. It’s from the Fur Valley Corporation. Do you know ’em? They’ve a big range of trading posts up an’ down the country. They’ve got one on the Hekor, away up north on the edge of the Arctic. It’s mainly been a seal trading post, and they collect sable and fox up that way. This letter says they’re closing it down. There’s a reason. And they fancied handing it on to me. Do you feel like taking a read of it? It’s quite short. These folk are business people without a big imagination so they keep to plain facts.”

Bill reached out and took the proffered letter. It was dated Seattle, and was clearly from the head office of the company. He glanced at the signature to it and noted the paper heading. Then he read slowly and carefully, for he knew that George Raymes had serious reason for handing it to him.

Dear Sir,

In the ordinary course of business we should not think of troubling you, a distinguished officer of the incomparable force to which you belong, with the contents of this letter. Although it is merely to notify our intention of closing down our trading post, Fort Cupar, at Fox Bluff, on the Hekor River, which is within one hundred miles of the Alaskan boundary, there are reasons lying behind the simple fact such as we feel you, in your official capacity, will be interested to hear.

Put as briefly as possible these are the reasons.

Fort Cupar at Fox Bluff has been one of our fur-trading posts, yielding us a very fair harvest of Beaver, Fox, Sable, Seal. Up to some eighteen years ago we had reason to consider it our most profitable post. Then came a slump. This came suddenly. And, according to our factor’s interpretation, it was simply, and solely due to the appearance of a large band of foreign poachers, who, without scruple for humanity, or international honesty, terrorized the Eskimo into passing them their trade at starvation values, or, if they refused, robbed them with the utmost violence.

These reports at the time were duly passed on to the headquarters of the police, and were, I believe, carefully looked into. But for reasons of which we have no cognizance, possibly the far inaccessibility of the country, possibly because these poachers were located on the United States side of the Alaskan border, possibly under pressure of work in the various gold regions, which is the primary duty of your officers, these poachers were permitted to continue their depredations, which, as far as we can ascertain, involved amongst other crimes that of almost wholesale murder.

Our concern now is to tell you that for the last fifteen to eighteen years we have struggled to carry on our post in this region in the hope that things would ultimately straighten themselves out, and our trade return to its normal prosperity. But this has not been the case. Apparently, from our factor’s reports, the methods of these poachers, who seem to be a race of Alaskan Eskimo, who are known as the Euralians, have changed only in process but not in effect. Now they seem to be divided up into lone bands of marauders, frequently at war with each other. There seems to be no controlling chief as there was in years gone by. They operate within the Arctic Circle, and only amongst the Eskimo of that region. And the one time descents upon the more southern communities of whites and natives no longer take place. Meanwhile, however, all trade in the furs we desire is at an end. Therefore we are reluctantly forced to close down, and thus another serious blow to the Canadian fur trade is involved.

I am, Sir,Yours truly,For The Fur Valley CorporationJames SteelyGeneral Manager.

I am, Sir,

Yours truly,

For The Fur Valley Corporation

James Steely

General Manager.

Bill looked up from his reading and encountered the searching gaze of his friend.

“There’s a nasty bite in that ‘brief’,” the policeman smiled.

The gold man nodded seriously.

“Not more than I’d have put in it if I’d been general manager of that corporation.”

“No. And you’d have been right. That letter’s mighty reasonable, and I’m with the feller who wrote it.”

Superintendent Raymes turned to his desk and opened the rusty-looking file that was lying in front of him.

“You know, Bill, that letter got me right away. But I was a bit helpless. Here, now, you sit right there and smoke that cheap cigar I pushed at you while I do a talk. I’ve got a yarn to hand you that’ll maybe set you thinking hard.”

He sat back tilting his chair, and the rusty file lay open on his lap. The papers it held had lost their pristine whiteness. There were distinct signs of age in their hues.

“You know I’ve only had charge of Placer City for something like seven years, and things have been so darned busy since I first got around I haven’t had a great chance of looking into the remoter things my predecessor left behind him. Eighteen years of police life is liable to accumulate a bunch of stories it would take a lifetime reading.

“However,” he went, glancing down at the file, “when I received that letter I got tremendously busy hunting up old records, and, after nearly a day’s work I came to the conclusion that I’d opened up one of the worst stories, and one of the most important, that I’d found in years. I found story after story of these Euralians. They mostly came from Fort Cupar at Fox Bluff, but they also came from simple, uneducated trappers, and from whitemen who adventured northward of here after gold. They came from all sorts of folk, and one and all corroborated all that that letter contains besides presenting many lurid pictures of the doings of these toughs which that letter only hints at.”

He removed several sheets of discoloured foolscap from the file. They were pinned together.

“I’ve selected this report which is dated fifteen years ago. It comes from a man named Jim McLeod, and he was factor for the Fur Valley Corporation at Fort Cupar at that time. It’s one of several reports he sent down from time to time pointing the conditions of his district, and giving pretty red-hot accounts of the terror which these Euralians had created there. But I’m not going to worry you with all that stuff. I’ll simply tell you that the terror of these folk was very real. That these marauders were undoubtedly at that time a large well-organised outfit who had completely succeeded in cleaning up the furs of that region and were passing them over the Alaskan border into foreign hands.

“This is a long report and I’m not going to read it to you. I’m just going to hand it you in my own words. It’s a bad story, but it’s full of an interest that’ll appeal to you. Fifteen years ago there was a swell sort of missionary feller up at Fox Bluff, a great friend of the man who wrote this report. His name was Marty Le Gros. He wasn’t a real churchman, but just a good sort of boy who was yearning to hand help to the Eskimo and Indians. I gather, at the time this story occurred, he was a widower with a baby girl of about four years. He also had an Indian called Usak, and his squaw, working for him about his house. The squaw was kind of foster-mother to the kid. Well, this report tells how in chasing over the country visiting his Missions this Le Gros happened on a most amazing gold ‘strike.’ It doesn’t say how or just where. But it says that the missionary showed this factor man two chunks of pure gold, and a bunch of dust that well nigh paralysed him. Le Gros being a simple sort of feller didn’t worry to keep his news to himself, but blurted his story broadcast, and I gather the only thing he didn’t tell about it was the actual whereabouts of the ‘strike.’ Apparently he let it be understood that Loon Creek was the locality without giving any exact particulars. This man gives such a brief sketch of this gold business I sort of feel he wasn’t anxious to say too much. The reason’s a bit obvious. And anyway I haven’t ever heard of a rush in that direction. So the news never got around down here. But it seems to have got to the ears of these Euralian poachers and set them crazy to jump in on him with both feet.

“Now this is what happened,” Raymes went on, after a brief reflective pause, while Bill sat still, absorbed in the interest which the magic of a gold discovery had for him. His cigar had gone out. “Up to that time the Euralians and their doings were well enough known to these people, but only by hearsay. These ruffians had never operated as far south-east as Fox Bluff and Fort Cupar. Well, the missionary was out on the trail on a visit to some of his Missions with his man, Usak. He arrived at one of them on the Hekor. It was a settlement of fishing Indians. The whole camp was burned out, and the old men, and women, and infants had been butchered to death. Further, from their complete absence, it is supposed the young men and women had been carried off into captivity for slavery and harlotry. There was no doubt of its being the work of these Euralians. The whole thing was characteristic of every known story of them. Le Gros returned home in a panic.

“He came to McLeod and told him the story of it, and together they realised that it was merely prelude to something further. They got it into their heads that it was the Euralian method of embarking on a campaign to get the secret of Le Gros’ gold discovery. You see? Terror. They meant to terrorize Le Gros, and I gather they succeeded. But he meant to fight. You see, he reckoned this ‘strike’ was for his child. He wanted it for her. Well, these two made it up between them to outwit these folk. The missionary crossed the river to his home to prepare a map of his discovery which he was to place in McLeod’s hands for the benefit of his child and McLeod, in half shares, should anything happen to him, Le Gros. Something did happen. It happened the same night. Apparently before the map could be drawn. Sure enough the Euralians descended on the missionary’s house. They killed Le Gros, and they killed the squaw foster-mother. The Indian, Usak, was away from home and so escaped. The child was left alive, flung into an adjacent bluff, and the whole place was burned to the ground. That’s the story in brief. I daresay there’s a heap more to it, but it’s not in that report, and it’s not in subsequent reports, or in other records of my predecessor.

“It would seem that this boy, McLeod, died about eight years after all this happened and was succeeded by another factor for his company. In the meantime my predecessor had sent a patrol up to investigate. The only result of this investigation was a complete corroboration of McLeod’s report, with practically nothing added to it beyond an urgent report on the necessity for definite international action on the subject of these Euralians who came in from Alaska. After that the thing seems to have passed out of my predecessor’s hands. It seems it was taken up by Ottawa with the usual result—pigeon-holed. Does it get you? There it is, a great gold discovery, somewhere up there on the Hekor, I suppose, and the mystery of this people filching our trade through a process of outrageous crime. Somewhere up there there’s a girl-child, white—she’d be about nineteen or twenty now—lost to the white world to which she belongs. But above all, from my point of view, there’s a problem. Who are these Euralians, and what becomes of the wealth of furs they steal? Remember they were at one time at least anorganisedoutfit.” The policeman replaced the file on his desk and returned the report to its place. And the pre-occupation he displayed was a plain index of the depth of interest he had in the problem which had presented itself to his searching mind. Bill Wilder struck a match and re-lit his cigar. “That’s a story of the country I know and love,” he said quietly. “It’s a story of the real Northland. Not the story of one of these muck-holes which are like boils in the face of civilization. I guess you haven’t passed me the whole thing you’ve got in your mind, George.”

“No.”

The policeman swung round in his chair and faced the clear gazing grey eyes of the man whose enormous wealth had still left him the youthful enthusiasm for the battle of the strong which had first driven him to the outlands of the North.

“Will you pass me the—rest?”

Bill smiled.

“Sure I will, if you’ve nothing to ask, nothing to comment on that story.”

“It’ll keep. Maybe I’ll have a whole big heap to talk when you’re through with your—proposition.”

Raymes nodded. He, too, was smiling. He spread out his hands.

“You want to quit. You want to sell out and pass on where you can make some use of the life that’s creaking with rust in every joint. Well, it’s easy. Don’t quit. Don’t sell out. Take a trip north where there’s a big ‘strike’ waiting on a feller with a nose for gold. Where there’s a mighty big mystery to be cleaned up, and the hard justice of this iron country to be handed out to a crowd of devils who’ve battened on its wealth and are sucking the life out of its vitals. Is it good enough? You’ll be able to forget the dollars you’re forced to count daily in this city. You’ll lose sight of the Feldman crowd and the brothels they set going to hand them a stake. It’s the open, where God’s pure air’s blowing. Where there’s room for you to move, and breathe, and live, and where you can hit mighty hard when the mood takes you, and you can feel good all over that you’re doing something for the country you like best. This thing’s my job, but I haven’t the troops or time to fix it the way I should. I’m so crowded to the square inch I don’t know how to breathe right. I haven’t any sort of right offering you this thing. I know that, and I guess you’re wise it’s so. But it don’t matter. I do offer it to you, Bill, and it’s because I know you. I offer it you because you’re the feller to put it through, and because you’re a feller we can’t afford to lose out of our territory. Well?”

The police officer’s manner had become seriously earnest, and the other remained silent for some moments buried in deep thought. George Raymes waited. He watched for the passing of the gold man’s deep consideration. He understood that the thing he required of him was no light task and looked like involving a tremendous sacrifice.

At last Bill’s cigar stump was flung into the cuspidor, and the policeman realised that a decision had been arrived at. The gold man looked up, and a whimsical smile lit his clear eyes.

“If I was crazy enough to take a holt on this thing I don’t just see—I’ve no authority. I’m no policeman. I’m just a bum civilian without police training. You boys are red-hot on the trail of crime. It’s your job, and I guess there’s no folk in the world better at it. But—”

“You’ve forgotten,” Raymes broke in. “There’s the trail of a gold ‘strike’ in this. And Bill Wilder’s got the whole country beaten a mile on a trail of that nature. Make that ‘strike’ an’ I guess you’ll locate the rest in the process. I’m asking for that from you.”

Wilder laughed. It was the clear, ringing laugh of the youth he really was. It was a laugh of appreciation at the simple tactics of his friend. It was a laugh of rising enthusiasm.

“But the authority,” he protested.

Raymes took him up on the instant.

“I have power to enrol ‘specials.’”

The other’s grey eyes lit. Again his laugh rang out. “Yes. I forgot. Of course you can enrol ‘specials.’” Suddenly he sprang from the depths of the rocker, and left it violently disturbed. He stood erect, bulking largely, and a flush of excitement dyed his weather-stained cheeks. “Of course you can,” he cried. “Yes. I’ll get after it. A gold trail! A bunch of toughs! A girl—a white girl! Ye Gods! I’m after it. You can swear me in on any old thing from a Bible to a harvester. That’s all I need. I’ll find my own outfit, and I’ll get busy right away and collect up my old partner Chilcoot Massy. I’ll get right off now down to my office and start fixing things, and I’ll be back again after supper to-night. But I warn you you’ll need to answer a hundred mighty tiresome questions, and pass me all the literature you’ve collected on this subject when I come back. Say, the gold trail again! I’m just tickled to death.”

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