Macdonald kept his word to Sheba. He used his influence to get Elliot released, and with a touch of cynicism quite characteristic went on the bond of his rival. An information was filed against the field agent of the Land Department for highway robbery and attempted murder, but Gordon went about his business just as if he were not under a cloud.
None the less, he walked the streets a marked man. Women and children looked at him curiously and whispered as he passed. The sullen, hostile eyes of miners measured him silently. He was aware that feeling had focused against him with surprising intensity of resentment, and he suspected that the whispers of Wally Selfridge were largely responsible for this.
For Wally saw to it that in the minds of the miners Elliot in his own person stood for the enemies of the open-Alaska policy. He scattered broadcast garbled extracts from the first preliminary report of the field agent, and in the coal camps he spread the impression that the whole mining activities of the Territory would be curtailed if Elliot had his way.
In the States the fight between the coal claimants and their foes was growing more bitter. The muckrakers were busy, and the sentiment outside had settled so definitely against granting the patents that the National Administration might at any time jettison Macdonald and his backers as a sop to public opinion.
It was not hard for Gordon to guess how unpopular he was, but he did not let this interfere with his activities. He moved to and fro among the mining camps with absolute disregard of the growing hatred against him.
Paget came to him at last with a warning.
"What's this I hear about you being almost killed up on Bonanza?" Peter wanted to know.
"Down in the None Such Mine, you mean? It did seem to be raining hammers as I went down the shaft," admitted his friend.
"Were the hammers dropped on purpose?"
Gordon looked at him with a grim smile. "Your guess is just as good as mine, Peter. What do you think?"
Peter answered seriously. "I think it isn't safe for you to take the chances you do, Gordon. I find a wrong impression about you prevalent among the men. They are blaming you for stirring up all this trouble on the outside, and they are worried for fear the mines may closeand they will lose their jobs. I tell you that they are in a dangerous mood."
"Sorry, but I can't help that."
"You can stay around town and not go out alone nights, can't you?"
"I dare say I can, but I'm not going to."
"Some of these men are violent. They don't think straight about you—"
"Kindness of Mr. Selfridge," contributed Gordon.
"Perhaps. Anyhow, there's a lot of sullen hate brewing against you. Don't invite an explosion. That would be just kid foolhardiness."
"You think I'd better buy another automatic gat," said Elliot with a grin.
"I think you had better use a little sense, Gordon. I dare say I am exaggerating the danger. But when you go around with that jaunty, devil-may-care way of yours, the men think you are looking for trouble—and you're likely to get it."
"Am I?"
"I know what I'm talking about. Nine out of ten of the men think you tried to murder Macdonald after you had robbed him and that your nerve weakened on the job. This seems to some of the most lawless to give them a moral right to put you out of the way. Anyhow, it is a kind of justification, according to their point ofview. I'm not defending it, of course. I'm telling you so that you can appreciate your danger."
"You have done your duty, then, Peter."
"But you don't intend to take my advice?"
"I'll tell you what I told you last time when you warned me. I'm going through with the job I've been hired to do, just as you would stick it out in my place. I don't think I'm in much danger. Men in general are law-abiding. They growl, but they don't go as far as murder."
Peter gave him up. After all, the chances were that Gordon was right. Alaska was not a lawless country. And it might be that the best way to escape peril was to walk through it with a grin as if it did not exist.
The next issue of the Kusiak "Sun" contained a bitter editorial attack upon Elliot. The occasion for it was a press dispatch from Washington to the effect that the pressure of public opinion had become so strong that Winton, Commissioner of the General Land Office, might be forced to resign his place. This was a blow to the coal claimants, and the "Sun" charged in vitriolic language that the reports of Elliot were to blame. He was, the newspaper claimed, an enemy to all those who had come to Alaska to earn an honest living there. Under indictment for attempted murder and for highway robbery, this man was not satisfied with having tried tokill from ambush the best friend Alaska had ever known. In every report that he sent to Washington he was dealing underhanded blows at the prosperity of Alaska. He was a snake in the grass, and as such every decent man ought to hold him in scorn.
Elliot read this just as he was leaving for the Willow Creek Camp. He thrust the paper impatiently into his coat pocket and swung to the saddle. Why did they persecute him? He had told nothing but the truth, nothing not required of him by the simplest, elemental honesty. Yet he was treated as an outcast and a criminal. The injustice of it was beginning to rankle.
He was temperamentally an optimist, but depression rode with him to the gold camp and did not lift from his spirits till he started back next day for Kusiak. The news had been flashed by wire all over the United States that he was a crook. His friends and relatives could give no adequate answer to the fact that an indictment hung over his head. In Alaska he was already convicted by public opinion. Even the Pagets were lined up as to their interests with Macdonald. Sheba liked him and believed in him. Her loyal heart acquitted him of all blame. But it was to the wooing of his enemy that she had listened rather than to his. The big Scotchman had run against a barrier, but his rival expectedhim to trample it down. He would wear away the scruples of Sheba by the pressure of his masterful will.
In the late afternoon, while Gordon was still fifteen miles from Kusiak, his horse fell lame. He led it limping to the cabin of some miners.
There were three of them, and they had been drinking heavily from a jug of whiskey left earlier in the day by the stage-driver. Gordon was in two minds whether to accept their surly permission to stay for the night, but the lameness of his horse decided him.
Not caring to invite their hostility, he gave his name as Gordon instead of Elliot. He was to learn within the hour that this was mistake number two.
From a pocket of the coat he had thrown on a bed protruded the newspaper Gordon had brought from Kusiak. One of the men, a big red-headed fellow, pulled it out and began sulkily to read.
While he read the other two bickered and drank and snarled at each other. All three of the men were in that stage of drunkenness when a quarrel is likely to flare up at a moment's notice.
"Listen here," demanded the man with the newspaper. "Tell you what, boys, I'm going to wring the neck of that pussyfooting spy Elliot if I ever get a chanct."
He read aloud the editorial in the "Sun." After he had finished, the others joined him in a chorus of curses.
"I always did hate a spy—and this one's a murderer too. Why don't some one fill his hide with lead?" one of the men wanted to know.
Redhead was sitting at the table. He thumped a heavy fist down so hard that the tin cups jumped. "Gimme a crack at him and I'll show you, by God."
A shadow fell across the room. In the doorway stood a newcomer. Gordon had a sensation as if a lump of ice had been drawn down his spine. For the man who had just come in was Big Bill Macy, and he was looking at the field agent with eyes in which amazement, anger, and triumph blazed.
"I'm glad to death to meet up with you again, Mr. Elliot," he jeered. "Seems like old times on Wild-Goose."
"Whad you say his name is?" cut in the man with the newspaper.
"Hasn't he introduced himself, boys?" Macy answered with a cruel grin. "Now, ain't that modest of him? You lads are entertaining that well-known deteckative and spy Gordon Elliot, that renowned king of hold-ups—"
The red-headed man interrupted with a howlof rage. "If you're telling it straight, Bill Macy, I'll learn him to spy on me."
Elliot was sitting on one of the beds. He had not moved an inch since Macy had appeared, but the brain behind his live eyes was taking stock of the situation. Big Bill blocked the doorway. The table was in front of the window. Unless he could fight his way out, there was no escape for him. He was trapped.
Quietly Gordon looked from one to another. He read no hope in the eyes of any.
"I'm not spying on you. My horse is lame. You can see that for yourself. All I asked was a night's lodging."
"Under another name than your own, you damned sneak."
The field agent did not understand the fury of the man, because he did not know that these miners were working the claim under a defective title and that they had jumped to the conclusion that he had come to get evidence against them. But he knew that never in his life had he been in a tighter hole. In another minute they would attack him. Whether it would run to murder he could not tell. At the best he would be hammered helpless.
But no evidence of this knowledge appeared in his manner.
"I didn't give my last name because there isa prejudice against me in this country," he explained in an even voice.
He wondered as he spoke if he had better try to fling himself through the window sash. There might be a remote chance that he could make it.
The miner at the table killed this possibility by rising and standing squarely in the road.
"Look out! He's got a gat," warned Macy.
Gordon fervently wished he had. But he was unarmed. While his eyes quested for a weapon he played for time.
"You can't get away with this, you know. The United States Government is back of me. It's known I left the Willow Creek Camp. I'll be traced here."
Through Gordon's mind there flashed a word of advice once given him by a professional prize-fighter: "If you get in a rough house, don't wait for the other fellow to hit first."
They were crouching for the attack. In another moment they would be upon him. Almost with one motion he stooped, snatched up by the leg a heavy stool, and sprang to the bed upon which he had been sitting.
The four men closed with him in a rush. They came at him low, their heads protected by uplifted arms. His memory brought to him a picture of the whitewashed gridiron of a football field, and in it he saw a vision of safety.
The stool crashed down upon Big Bill Macy's head. Gordon hurdled the crumpling figure, plunged between hands outstretched to seize him, and over the table went through the window, taking the flimsy sash with him.
The surge of disgust with which Sheba had broken her engagement to marry Macdonald ebbed away as the weeks passed. It was impossible for her to wait upon him in his illness and hold any repugnance toward this big, elemental man. The thing he had done might be wrong, but the very openness and frankness of his relation to Meteetse redeemed it from shame. He was neither a profligate nor a squawman.
This was Diane's point of view, and in time it became to a certain extent that of Sheba. One takes on the color of one's environment, and the girl from Drogheda knew in her heart that Meteetse and Colmac were no longer the real barriers that stood between her and the Alaskan. She had been disillusioned, saw him more clearly; and though she still recognized the quality of bigness that set him apart, her spirit did not now do such complete homage to it. More and more her thoughts contrasted him with another man.
Macdonald did not need to be told that he had lost ground, but with the dogged determination that had carried him to success he refused to accept the verdict. She was a woman, thereforeto be won. The habit of victory was so strong in him that he could see no alternative.
He embarrassed her with his downright attentions, hemmed her in with courtesies she could not evade. If she appealed to her cousin, Diane only laughed.
"My dear, you might as well make up your mind to him. He is going to marry you, willy-nilly."
Sheba herself began to be afraid he would. There was something dominant and masterful about the man that swept opposition aside. He had a way of getting what he wanted.
The motor-car picnic to the Willow Creek Camp was a case in point. Sheba did not want to go, but she went. She would much rather have sat in the rear seat with Diane,—at least, she persuaded herself that she would,—yet she occupied the place beside Macdonald in front. The girl was a rebel. Still, in her heart, she was not wholly reluctant. He made a strong appeal to her imagination. She felt that it would have been impossible for any girl to be indifferent to the wooing of such a man.
The picnic was a success. Macdonald was an outdoor man rather than a parlor one. He took charge of the luncheon, lit the fire, and cooked the coffee without the least waste of effort. In his shirt-sleeves, the neck open at the throat, helooked the embodiment of masculine vigor. Diane could not help mentioning it to her cousin.
"Isn't he a splendid human animal?"
Sheba nodded. "He's wonderful."
"If I were a little Irish colleen and he had done me the honor to care for me, I'd have fallen fathoms deep in love with him."
The Irish colleen's eyes grew reflective. "Not if you had seen Peter first, Di. There's nothing reasonable about a girl, I do believe. She loves—or else she just doesn't."
Diane fired a question at her point-blank. "Have you metyourPeter? Is that why you hang back?"
The color flamed into Sheba's face. "Of course not. You do say the most outrageous things, Di."
They had driven to Willow Creek over the river road. They returned by way of the hills. Macdonald drew up in front of a cabin to fill the radiator.
He stood listening beside the car, the water bucket in his hand. Something unusual was going on inside the house. There came the sound of a thud, of a groan, and then the crash of breaking glass. The whole window frame seemed to leap from the side of the house. The head and shoulders of a man projected through the broken glass.
The man swept himself free of the débris and started to run. Instantly he pulled up in hisstride, as amazed to see those in the car as they were to see him.
"Gordon!" cried Diane.
Out of the house poured a rush of men. They too pulled up abruptly at sight of Macdonald and his guests.
A sardonic mirth gleamed in the eyes of the Scotchman. "Do you always come out of a house through the wall, Mr. Elliot?" he asked.
"Only when I'm in a hurry." Gordon pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at some glass-cuts on his face.
"Don't let us detain you," said the Alaskan satirically. "We'll excuse you, since you must go."
"I'm not in such a hurry now. In fact, if you're going to Kusiak, I think I'll ask you for a lift," returned the field agent coolly.
"And your friends-in-a-hurry—do they want a lift too?"
Big Bill Macy came swaying forward, both hands to his bleeding head. "He's a spy, curse him. And he tried to kill me."
"Did he?" commented Macdonald evenly. "What were you doing to him?"
"He can't sneak around our claim under a false name," growled one of the miners. "We'll beat his damn head off."
"I've had notions like that myself sometimes,"assented the big Scotchman. "But I think we had all better leave Mr. Elliot to the law. He has Uncle Sam back of him in his spying, and none of us are big enough to buck the Government." Crisply Macdonald spoke to Gordon, turning upon him cold, hostile eyes. "Get in if you're going to."
Elliot met him eye to eye. "I've changed my mind. I'm going to walk."
"That's up to you."
Gordon shook hands with Diane and Sheba, went into the house for his coat, and walked to the stable. He brought out his horse and turned it loose, then took the road himself for Kusiak.
A couple of miles out the car passed him trudging townward. As they flashed down the road he waved a cheerful and nonchalant greeting.
Sheba had been full of gayety and life, but her mood was changed. All the way home she was strangely silent.
The days grew short. In sporting circles the talk was no longer of the midnight Fourth of July baseball game, but of preparation for the Alaska Sweepstakes, since the shadow of the cold Arctic winter had crept down to the Yukon and touched its waters to stillness. Men, gathered around warm stoves, spoke of the merits of huskies and Siberian wolf-hounds, of the heavy fall of snow in the hills, of the overhauling of outfits and the transportation of supplies to distant camps.
The last river boat before the freeze-up had long since gone. A month earlier the same steamer had taken down in a mail sack the preliminary report of Elliot to his department chief. One of the passengers on that trip had been Selfridge, sent out to counteract the influence of the evidence against the claimants submitted by the field agent. An information had been filed against Gordon for highway robbery and attempted murder. Wally was to see that the damning facts against him were brought to the attention of officials in high places where the charges would do most good. The details ofthe story were to be held in reserve for publicity in case the muckrake magazines should try to make capital of the report of Elliot.
Kusiak found much time for gossip during the long nights. It knew that Macdonald had gone on the bond of Elliot in spite of the scornful protest of the younger man. The two gave each other chilly nods of greeting when they met, but friends were careful not to invite them to the same social affairs. The case against the field agent was pending. Pursuit of the miners who had robbed the big mine-owner had long ago been dropped. Somewhere in the North the outlaws lay hidden, swallowed up by the great white waste of snow.
The general opinion was that Mac was playing politics about the trial of his rival. He would not let the case come to a jury until the time when a conviction would have most effect in the States, the gossips predicted. They did not know that he was waiting for the return of Wally Selfridge.
The whispers touched closely the personal affairs of Macdonald. The report of his engagement to Sheba O'Neill had been denied, but it was noticed that he was a constant guest at the home of the Pagets. Young Elliot called there too. Almost any day one or other of the two men could be seen with Sheba on the street. Those who wanted to take a sporting chance on theissue knew that odds were offeredsub rosaat the Pay Streak saloon of three to one on Mac.
As for Sheba, she rebelled impotently at the situation. The mine-owner would not take "No" for an answer. He wooed her with a steady, dominant persistence that shook even her strong, young will. There was something resistless in the way he took her for granted. Gordon Elliot had not mentioned love to her, though there were times when her heart fluttered for fear he would. She did not want any more complications. She wanted to be let alone. So when an invitation came from her little friends the Husteds, signed by all three of the children, asking her to come and visit them at the camp back of Katma, the Irish girl jumped at the chance to escape for a time from the decision being forced upon her.
Sheba pledged her cousin to secrecy until after she had gone, so that Miss O'Neill was able to slip away on the stage unnoticed either by Macdonald or Elliot. The only other passenger was an elderly woman going up to the Katma camp to take a place as cook.
Later on the same day Wally Selfridge, coming in over the ice, reached Kusiak with important news for his chief. He brought with him an order from Winton, Commissioner of the General Land Office, suspending Elliot pending an investigationof the charges against him. The field agent was to forward by mail all documents in his possession and for the time, at least, drop the matter of the coal claims.
Oddly enough, it was to Genevieve Mallory that Macdonald went for consolation when he learned that Sheba had left town. He had always found it very pleasant to drop in for a chat with her, and she saw to it that he met the same friendly welcome now that a rival had annexed his scalp to her slender waist. For Mrs. Mallory did not concede defeat. If the Irish girl could be eliminated, she believed she would yet win.
His hostess laced her fingers behind her beautiful, tawny head, quite well aware that the attitude set off the perfect modeling of the soft, supple body. She looked up at him with a mocking little smile.
"Rumor says that she has run away, my lord. Is it true?"
"Yes. Slipped away on the stage this morning."
"That's a good sign. She was afraid to stay."
It was a part of the fiction between them that Mrs. Mallory was to give him the benefit of her advice in his wooing of her rival. She seemed to take it for granted that he would at last marry Sheba after wearing away the rigid Puritanism of her resentment.
Macdonald had never liked her so well as now.Her point of view was so sane, so reasonable. It asked for no impossible virtues in a man. There was something restful in her genial, derisive understanding of him. She had a silent divination of his moods and ministered indolently to them.
"Do you think so? Ought I to follow her?" he asked.
She showed a row of perfect teeth in a low ripple of amusement. The situation at least was piquant, even though it was at her expense.
"No. Give the girl time. Catch her impulse on the rebound. She'll be bored to death at Katma and she will come back docile."
Her scarlet lips, the long, unbroken lines of the sinuous, opulent body, the challenge of the smouldering eyes, the warmth of her laughter, all invited him to forget the charms of other women. The faint feminine perfume of her was wafted to his brain. He felt a besieging of the blood.
Stepping behind the chair in which she sat, he tilted back the head of lustrous bronze, and very deliberately kissed her on the lips.
For a moment she gave herself to his embrace, then pushed him back, rose, and walked across the room to a little table. With fingers that trembled slightly she lit a cigarette. Sheathed in her close-fitting gown, she made a strong carnal appeal to him, but there was between them, too,a close bond of the spirit. He made no apologies, no explanation.
Presently she turned and looked at him. Only the deeper color beneath her eyes betrayed any excitement.
"Unless I'm a bad prophet you'll get the answer you want when she comes back, Colby."
He thought her reply to his indiscretion superb. It admitted complicity, reproached, warned, and at the same time ignored. Never before had she called him by his given name. He took it as a token of forgiveness and renunciation.
Why was it not Genevieve Mallory that he wanted to marry? It would be the wise thing to do. She would ask nothing of him that he could not give, and she would bring to him many things that he wanted. But he was under the spell of Sheba's innocence, of the mystery of her youth, of the charm she had brought with her from the land of fairies and banshees. The reasonable course made just now not enough appeal to him. He craved the rapture of an impossible adventure into a world wonderful.
The mine-owner carried with him back to his office a sense of the futile irony of life. A score of men would have liked to marry Mrs. Mallory. She had all the sophisticated graces of life and much of the natural charm of an unusually attractive personality. He had only to speak the wordto win her, and his fancy had flown in pursuit of a little Puritan with no knowledge of the world.
In front of the Seattle & Kusiak Emporium the Scotchman stopped. A little man who had his back to him was bargaining for a team of huskies. The man turned, and Macdonald recognized him.
"Hello, Gid. Aren't you off your usual beat a bit?" he asked.
The little miner looked him over impudently. "Well—well! If it ain't the Big Mogul himself—and wantin' to know if I've got permission to travel off the reservation."
Macdonald laughed tolerantly. He had that large poise which is not disturbed by the sand stings of life.
"I reckon you travel where you want to, Gid,—same as I do."
"Maybeso. I shouldn't wonder if you'd find out quite soon enough what I'm doing here. You never can tell," the old man retorted with a manner that concealed volumes.
Those who were present remembered the words and in the light of what took place later thought them significant.
"Anyhow, it is quite a social event for Kusiak," Macdonald suggested with a smile of irony.
THE SITUATION AT LEAST WAS PIQUANT, EVEN THOUGH IT WAS AT HER EXPENSETHE SITUATION AT LEAST WAS PIQUANT, EVEN THOUGH IT WAS AT HER EXPENSE
Without more words Holt turned back to his bargaining. The big Scotchman went on hisway, remembered that he wanted to see the cashier of the bank which he controlled, and promptly forgot that old Gid existed.
The old man concluded his purchase and drove up to the hotel behind one of the best dog teams in Alaska. He had paid one hundred dollars down and was to settle the balance next day.
Gideon asked a question of the porter.
"Second floor. That's his room up there," the man answered, pointing to a window.
"Oh, you, seven—eighteen—ninety-nine," the little miner shouted up.
Elliot appeared at the window. "Well, I'll be hanged! What are you doing here, Old-Timer?"
"Onct I knew a man lived to be a grandpa minding his own business," grinned the little man. "Come down and I'll tell you all about it, boy."
In half a minute Gordon was beside him. After the first greetings the young man nodded toward the dog team.
"How did you persuade Tim Ryan to lend you his huskies?"
"Why don't you take a paper and keep up with the news, son? These huskies don't belong to Tim."
"Meaning that Mr. Gideon Holt is the owner?"
"You've done guessed it," admitted the miner complacently.
He had a right to be proud of the team. It was a famous one even in the North. It had run second for two years in the Alaska Sweepstakes to Macdonald's great Siberian wolf-hounds. The leader Butch was the hero of a dozen races and a hundred savage fights.
"What in Halifax do you want with the team?" asked Elliot, surprised. "The whole outfit must have cost a small fortune."
"Some dust," admitted Gideon proudly. He winked mysteriously at Gordon. "I got a use for this team, if any one was to ask you."
"Haven't taken the Government mail contract, have you?"
"Not so you could notice it. I'll tell you what I want with this team, as the old sayin' is." Holt lowered his voice and narrowed slyly his little beadlike eyes. "I'm going to put a crimp in Colby Macdonald. That's what I aim to do with it."
"How?"
The miner beckoned Elliot closer and whispered in his ear.
While Kusiak slept that night the wind shifted. It came roaring across the range and drove before it great scudding clouds heavily laden with sleety snow. The howling storm snuffed out the moonlight as if it had been a tallow dip and fought and screamed around the peaks, whirling down the gulches with the fury of a blizzard.
From dark till dawn the roar of the wind filled the night. Before morning heavy drifts had wiped out the roads and sheeted the town in virgin white unbroken by trails or furrows.
With the coming of daylight the tempest abated. Kusiak got into its working clothes and dug itself out from the heavy blanket of white that had tucked it in. By noon the business of the town was under way again. That which would have demoralized the activities of a Southern city made little difference to these Arctic Circle dwellers. Roads were cleared, paths shoveled, stores opened. Children in parkas and fur coats trooped to school and studied through the short afternoon by the aid of electric light.
Dusk fell early and with it came a scatter ofmore snow. Mrs. Selfridge gave a dinner-dance at the club that night and her guests came in furs of great variety and much value. The hostess outdid herself to make the affair the most elaborate of the season. Wally had brought the favors in from Seattle and also the wines. Nobody in Kusiak of any social importance was omitted from the list of invited except Gordon Elliot. Even the grumpy old cashier of Macdonald's bank—an old bachelor who lived by himself in rooms behind those in which the banking was done—was persuaded to break his custom and appear in a rusty old dress suit of the vintage of '95.
The grizzled cashier—his name was Robert Milton—left the clubhouse early for his rooms. It was snowing, but the wind had died down. Contrary to his custom, he had taken two or three glasses of wine. His brain was excited so that he knew he could not sleep. He decided to read "Don Quixote" by the stove for an hour or two. The heat and the reading together would make him drowsy.
Arrived at the bank, he let himself into his rooms and locked the door. He stooped to open the draft of the stove when a sound stopped him halfway. The cashier stood rigid, still crouched, waiting for a repetition of the noise. It came once more—the low, dull rasping of a file.
Shivers ran down the spine of Milton and up the back of his head to the roots of his hair. Somebody was in the bank—at two o'clock in the morning—with tools for burglary. He was a scholarly old fellow, brought up in New England and cast out to the uttermost frontier by the malign tragedy of poverty. Adventure offered no appeal to him. His soul quaked as he waited with slack, feeble muscles upon the discovery that only a locked door stood between him and violent ruffians.
But though his knees trembled beneath him and the sickness of fear was gripping his heart, Robert Milton had in him the dynamic spark that makes a man. He tiptoed to his desk and with shaking fingers gripped the revolver that lay in a drawer.
The cashier stood there for a moment, moistening his dry lips with his tongue and trying to swallow the lump that rose to his throat and threatened to stop his breathing. He braced himself for the plunge, then slowly trod across the room to the inner, locked door. The palsied fingers of his left hand could scarce turn the key.
It seemed to him that the night was alive with the noise he made in turning the lock and opening the door. The hinges grated and the floor squeaked beneath the fall of his foot as he stood at the threshold.
Two men were in front of the wire grating which protected the big safe that filled the alcove to the right. One held a file and the other a candle. Their blank, masked faces were turned toward Milton, and each of them covered him with a weapon.
"W-what are you doing here?" quavered the cashier.
"Drop that gun," came the low, sharp command from one of them.
Under the menace of their revolvers the heart of Milton pumped water instead of blood. The strength oozed out of him. His body swayed and he shut his eyes. A hand groped for the casement of the door to steady him.
"Drop it—quick."
Some old ancestral instinct in the bank cashier rose out of his panic to destroy him. He wanted to lie down quietly in a faint. But his mind asserted its mastery over the weakling body. In spite of his terror, of his flaccid will, he had to keep the faith. He was guardian of the bank funds. At all costs he must protect them.
His forearm came up with a jerk. Two shots rang out almost together. The cashier sagged back against the wall and slowly slid to the floor.
The guests of Mrs. Selfridge danced well into the small hours. The California champagne thatWally had brought in stimulated a gayety that was balm to his wife's soul. She wanted her dinner-dance to be smart, to have the atmosphere she had found in the New York cabarets. If everybody talked at once, she felt they were having a good time. If nobody listened to anybody else, it proved that the affair was a screaming success.
Mrs. Wally was satisfied as she bade her guests good-bye and saw them pass into the heavy snow that was again falling. They all assured her that there had not been so hilarious a party in Kusiak. One old-timer, a trifle lit up by reason of too much hospitality, phrased his enjoyment a little awkwardly.
"It's been great, Mrs. Selfridge. Nothing like it since the days of the open dance hall."
Mrs. Mallory hastily suppressed an internal smile and stepped into the breach. "Howdo you do it?" she asked her hostess enviously.
"My dear, ifyousay it was a success—"
"What else could one say?"
Genevieve Mallory always preferred to tell the truth when it would do just as well. Now it did better, since it contributed to her own ironic sense of amusement. Macdonald had once told her that Mrs. Selfridge made him think of the saying, "Monkey sees, monkey does." The effervescent little woman had never had an original idea in her life.
Most of those who had been at the dance slept late. They were oblivious of the fact that the storm had quickened again into a howling gale. Nor did they know the two bits of news that were passing up and down the main street and being telephoned from house to house. One of the items was that the stage for Katma had failed to reach the roadhouse at Smith's Crossing. The message had come over the long-distance telephone early in the morning. The keeper of the roadhouse added his private fears that the stage, crawling up the divide as the blizzard swept down, must have gone astray and its occupants perished. The second bit of news was local. For the first time since Robert Milton had been cashier the bank had failed to open on the dot. The snow had not been cleared from the walk in front and no smoke was pouring from the chimney of the building.
Macdonald was no sluggard. It was his habit not to let the pleasure of the night before interfere with the business of the morning after. But in the darkness he overslept and let the town waken before him. He was roused by the sound of knocking on his door.
"Who is it?" he asked.
"It's me—Jones—Gopher Jones. Say, Mac, the bank ain't open and we can't rouse Milton. Thought I'd come to you, seeing as you're president of the shebang."
The mine-owner got up and began to dress. "Probably overslept, same as I did."
"That's the point. We looked through the window of his bedroom and his bed ain't been slept in."
In three minutes Macdonald joined the marshal and walked down with him to the bank. He unlocked the front door and turned to the little crowd that had gathered.
"Better wait here, boys. Gopher and I will go in. I expect everything is all right, but we'll let you know about that as soon as we find out."
The bank president opened the door, let the officer enter, and followed himself.
The sun had not yet risen and the blinds were down. Macdonald struck a match and held it up. The wood burned and the flame flickered out.
"Bank's been robbed," he announced quietly.
"Looks like," agreed Jones. His voice was uneven with excitement.
The Scotch-Canadian lit another match. In the flare of it they saw that the steel grill cutting off the alcove was open and that the door had been blown from the safe. It lay on the floor among a litter of papers, silver, fragments of steel, and bits of candle.
The marshal clutched at the arm of the banker. "Did you see—that?" he whispered.
His finger pointed through the darkness to the other end of the room. In the faint gray light of coming day Macdonald could see a huddled mass on the floor.
"There has been murder done. I'll get a light. Don't move from here, Jones. I want to look at things before we disturb them. There's no danger. The robbers have been gone for hours."
Gopher had as much nerve as the next man—when the sun was shining and he could see what danger he was facing. But there was something sinister and nerve-racking here. He wanted tothrow open the door and shout the news to those outside.
By the light of another match the mine-owner crossed the room into the sitting-room of the cashier. Presently he returned with a lamp and let its light fall upon the figure lying slumped against the wall. A revolver lay close to the inert fingers. The head hung forward grotesquely upon the breast.
The dead man was Milton. His employer saw nothing ridiculous in the twisted neck and sprawling limbs. The cashier had died to save the money entrusted to his care.
Macdonald handed the lamp to the marshal and picked up the revolver. Every chamber was loaded.
"They beat him to it. They were probably here when he reached home. My guess is he heard them right away, got his gun, and came in. He's still wearing his dress suit. That gives us the time, for he left the club about midnight. Soon as they saw him they dropped him. Likely they heard him and were ready. I wouldn't have had this happen for all the money in the safe."
"How much was there in it?"
"I don't know exactly. The books will show. I'll send Wally down to look them over."
"Shot right spang through the heart, lookslike," commented Jones, following with his eye the course of the wound.
"Wish I'd been here instead of him," Macdonald said grimly. His eyes softened as he continued to look down at the employee who had paid with his life for his faithfulness. "It wasn't an even break. Poor old fellow! You weren't built for a job like this, Robert Milton, but you played your hand out to a finish. That's all any man can do."
He turned abruptly away and began examining the safe. The silver still stood sacked in one large compartment. The bank-notes had escaped the hurried search of the robbers, but the gold was practically all gone. One sack had been torn by the explosion and single pieces of gold could be found all over the safe.
Macdonald glanced over the papers rapidly. The officer picked up one of dozens scattered over the floor. It was a mortgage note made out to the bank by a miner. He collected the others. Evidently the bandits had torn off the rubber, glanced over one or two to see if they had any cash value, and tossed the package into the air as a disgusted gambler does a pack of cards.
The bank president stepped to the door and threw it open. He explained the situation in three sentences.
"I can't let you in now, boys, until the coronerhas been here," he went on to tell the crowd. "But there is one way you can all help. Keep your eyes open. If you have seen any suspicious characters around, let me know. Or if any one has left town in a hurry—or been seen doing anything during the night that you did not understand at the time. Men can't do a thing like this without leaving some clue behind them even though the snow has wiped away their trail."
A man named Fred Tague pushed to the front. He kept a feed corral near the edge of town. "I can tell you one man who mushed out before five o'clock this morning—and that's Gid Holt."
The eyes of Macdonald, cold and hard as jade, fastened to the man. "How do you know?"
"That dog team he bought from Tim Ryan—Well, he's been keeping it in my corral. When I got there this morning it was gone. The snow hadn't wiped out the tracks of the runners yet, so he couldn't have left more than fifteen minutes before."
"What time was it when you reached the corral?"
"Might have been six—maybe a little later."
"You don't know that Holt took the team himself?"
"Come to that, I don't. But he had a key to the barn where the sled was. Holt has been puttingup at the hotel. I reckon it is easy to find out if he's still there."
Macdonald's keen brain followed the facts as the nose of a bloodhound does a trail. Holt, an open enemy of his, had reached town only two days before. He had bought one of the best and swiftest dog teams in the North and had let slip before witnesses the remark that Macdonald would soon find out what he wanted with the outfit. The bank had been robbed after midnight. To file open the grill and to blow up the safe must have taken several hours. Before morning the dogs of Holt had taken the trail. If their owner were with them, it was a safe bet that the sled carried forty thousand dollars in Alaska gold dust.
So far the mind of the Scotchman followed the probabilities logically, but at this point it made a jump. There were at least two robbers. He was morally sure of that, for this was not a one-man job. Now, if Holt had with him a companion, who of all those in Kusiak was the most likely man? He was a friendless, crabbed old fellow. Since coming to Kusiak old Gideon had been seen constantly with one man. Together they had driven out the day before and tried his new team. They had been with each other at dinner and had later left the hotel together. The name of the man who had been so friendly withold Holt was Gordon Elliot—and Elliot not only was another enemy of Macdonald, but had very good reasons for getting out of the country just now.
The strong jaw of the mine-owner stood out saliently as he gave short, sharp orders to men in the crowd. One was to get the coroner, a second Wally Selfridge, another the United States District Attorney. He divided the rest into squads to guard the roads leading out of town and to see that nobody passed for the present.
As soon as the men he had sent for arrived, Macdonald went over the scene of the crime with them. It was plain that the dynamiting had been done by an old-time miner who knew his business, but there had been brains in the planning of the robbery.
"There is no ivory above the ears of the man who bossed this job," Macdonald told the others. "He picks a night when we're all at the club, more than half a mile from here, a stormy night when folks are not wandering the streets. He knows that the wind will deaden the sound of the dynamite and that the snow will wipe out any tracks that might help to identify him and his pal or show which way they have gone."
The coroner took charge of the body and Wally of the bank. The mine-owner and the district attorney walked up to the hotel together. Assoon as they had explained what they wanted, the landlord got a passkey and took them to the room Holt had used.
Apparently the bed had been slept in. In the waste-paper basket the district attorney found something which he held up in a significant silence. Macdonald stepped forward and took from him a small cloth sack.
"One of those we keep our gold in at the bank," said the Scotchman after a close examination. "This definitely ties up Holt with the robbery. Now for Elliot."
"He left the hotel with Holt about five this morning the porter says." This was the contribution of the landlord.
The room of Gordon Elliot was in great disorder. Garments had been tossed on the bed and on every chair and had been left to lie wherever they had chanced to fall. Plainly their owner had been in great haste.
Macdonald looked through the closet where clothes hung. "His new fur coat is not here—nor his trail boots. Looks to me as though Mr. Gordon had hit the trail with his friend Holt."
This opinion was strengthened when it was learned from a store-owner in town that Holt and Elliot had routed him out of bed in the early morning to sell them two weeks' supplies. These they had packed upon the sled outside the store.
"It's a cinch bet that Elliot took the trail with him," the lawyer conceded.
All doubt of this was removed when a prospector reached town with the news that he had met Holt and Elliot traveling toward the divide as fast as they could drive the dogs.
The big Scotchman ordered his team of Siberian wolf-hounds made ready for the trail. As he donned his heavy furs, Colby Macdonald smiled with deep satisfaction. He had Elliot on the run at last.
Just as he closed the door of his room, Macdonald heard the telephone bell ring. He hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders and strode out into the storm. If he had answered the call he would have learned from Diane, who was at the other end of the line, that the stage upon which Sheba had started for Katma had not reached the roadhouse at Smith's Crossing.
Five minutes later the winners of the great Alaska Sweepstakes were flying down the street in the teeth of the storm. Armed with a rifle and a revolver, their owner was mushing into the hills to bring back the men who had robbed his bank and killed the cashier. He traveled alone because he could go faster without a companion. It never occurred to him that he was not a match for any two men he might face.