"Yes, it would seem so." The corporal looked up with a retrospective smile. "The one I was thinking of, I happened to meet yesterday in the lower valley. Her shoe tracks would indicate that she came from this cabin. Know her?"
"There was a girl such as you describe—here—yesterday," said Smith. He turned on his pillow and yawned, with every sign of indifference.
"Who was she?" asked the policeman crisply.
"She didn't say. Didn't tell me a thing about herself. And I was too sick to be very curious." The boy stretched himself and buried his head deeper in the pillow. "Gee—I feel better," he murmured. "This is the first comfortable minute I've had—"
"Where'd she come from?" interrupted the officer.
"I didn't ask her," replied the other in a drowsy voice.
"Just dropped in from nowhere?"
"Yes. Wanted to rest a while, and get out of the snow. When it stopped snowing she went on her way." The young man sighed, and pulled the blanket higher, as though to keep the firelight out of his eyes. "I would have thought it funny," he pursued in a dreamy, far-away tone—"a girl like that—alone—but as I told you I was so miserable, I didn't think—I didn't ask her anything about herself." The voice trailed off to a whisper, and speech momentarily failed.
"That's all you can tell me about her?"
"'S all."
"Where are you from yourself?" asked the officer.
"Montreal," was the sleepy reply.
"How long you been here?"
No answer came from the bunk.
Dexter stood up and crossed the room, to look down at the face on the pillow. The boy's eyes were shut, and his breathing was deep and regular, as though he had fallen into a doze. Perhaps he was shamming to avoid further questioning. Perhaps not. It was quite likely that he had not slept for nights, and was on the verge of complete exhaustion. Now—soothed by the hot bandages, relieved from his long protracted pain—he might easily drop off like this in the middle of a word.
Upon reflection the officer decided not to disturb him. Possibly he knew more than he was willing to tell about the mysterious girl. But he could go on with sweeping denials of ever having seen her before, and Dexter knew from experience how impossible it is to pin down a witness who persists in answering in general negatives. Besides, if the boy were really suffering from lack of sleep, it would be cruelty to force him to stay awake.
The policeman himself was beginning to feel the effect of long, jading hours. He sat for a while, musing over the fire, but after darkness had fallen it occurred to him that he might as well call it a day. A last reconnaissance out-of-doors convinced him that, for the time being at least, he and his chance-found cabin mate were the only mortal beings existent in that particular section of the forest. It was a breathless night, deathly silent. A bank of low-hanging clouds scudded over the tree tops, and the weighted air held the promise of snow. He went back into the cabin, discreetly barred the door and withdrew the latch cord, and then spread his blanket by the fireplace and rolled up for the night. In two minutes he was sunk in profoundest slumber.
Hours passed, and the silence endured. From time to time Dexter was vaguely aware of a fretful stirring and moaning in the darkness where the bunk stood, but such sounds were self-explanatory and gave him no reason to awaken. The fire burned to dead ashes, and the early morning chill crept through the room, but he only drew his blanket tighter. But sometime near the approach of dawn, at the darkest, stillest hour of ebbing night-tide, a queer, faint buzzing noise broke suddenly upon his inner consciousness.
In a flash he roused himself, trying to see through the gloom, listening for some repetition of the sound. He had almost persuaded himself that imagination had tricked him, and was on the point of reaching again for the blanket flap, when, all at once, a muffled voice began to speak from the bunk. The tones were repressed and rather unsteady, but the words were intelligible.
"I'm all right. Lots better. Policeman fixed me up." It was the boy, apparently talking to himself in the darkness.
The tenseness of Dexter's attitude promptly relaxed. His patient no doubt was feverish, a little delirious—maundering in his sleep. Nevertheless the corporal waited, mildly curious to know what else might be said.
He was not kept long in suspense. "You were?" exclaimed the voice, as though questioning a fanciful person. "And got away? That's good, anyhow."
There followed another short silence, and then the speaker in the bunk was heard again. "No!" This time the tone seemed to carry a sharp warning. "Don't come here. Go to the Saddle Notch. Somebody'll meet you there. Understand?"
As he listened Dexter stiffened to keen alertness. This was not like the raving of a dreaming man. The words were beginning to make sense. And there were definite pauses between sentences, as though the speaker were waiting for some one else to reply. As the corporal leaned forward, trying to see in the darkness, he was grimly reminded of last night's strange events—of another lonely cabin, of another voice heard in seeming conversation with an unidentified some one who answered mysteriously from somewhere else.
He waited, breathless, and the boy spoke once more. "See you later," he declared. "Good luck." And then he ended with a farewell utterance that brought Dexter to his feet in gasping wonderment. "Good-by, Alison!" he said.
The spoken name had all the effect of a galvanic shock. "Alison!" Dexter kicked the blanket from his legs, and in the darkness blundered across the room. He reached the bunk, drew a match from his pocket, and struck a light. As the flame flared in the darkness he stared downward and saw the boy's motionless form stretched at full length on the mattress. From all appearances, the patient had not changed position since the evening before. He was lying in his blankets, facing the wall, with eyes closed, temples slightly flushed, and breathing evenly through half open mouth. Seemingly, he was sound asleep.
But unquestionably it was his voice that had been heard; furthermore, Dexter could have sworn that he was talking over a telephone.
However, there was no telephone here: none, at least, that the corporal was able to find. And such an instrument scarcely could have been hidden in the second it took him to spring across the room. Nevertheless, he settled his doubts by looking. He searched under the bunk and behind the bunk, and then leaned over to assure himself that there were no lumpy objects stuffed in the mattress. He was prodding at the pillow, when he felt a sudden movement, and was aware that Smith was looking up at him with a dull vacuous stare.
"What is it?" the young man drowsily mumbled.
"Whom were you talking to just now?" demanded the corporal.
"I?" Smith blinked his lids, and gazed about him with an expression of utter blankness. "What do you mean?"
"I heard something like a click, and a minute later you spoke: warning somebody not to come here—to go somewhere else."
"You heard me?" The boy started to raise himself in the bunk, and then fell back with a groan, grasping his injured arm. "Oh!" he sighed, "I—I nearly forgot. Must have had a good night. What time is it?"
"You were speaking to some one named Alison," persisted the policeman.
"Alison?" Smith shook his head slowly, regarded his inquisitor with heavy, sleep-dulled eyes. "You must have been dreaming—or else I was. If I was talking, I must have been having a nightmare. I don't remember—"
"Who's Alison?" cut in the officer sharply.
"Why, I don't know," said the other with a suppressed yawn. "Never heard of him."
Dexter lighted another match and peered searchingly at the face before him, and the boy's blue eyes returned his gaze with a look of blandest innocence. "Do you know a woman named Alison?"
"No," was the unequivocal answer.
"You didn't speak that name a moment ago?"
"Not that I know of."
"Where's Saddle Notch?"
"Is it a place—or what? Did I say that too?" Smith's mouth quivered in the faintest suggestion of a grin. "Gee, I must have been having a whale of a dream—thinking up all those things!"
Dexter stood for a moment in baffled silence, and then turned away with an impatient shrug. What was the use? The boy had all the best of it. The inquisition might be kept up for hours, and always he could cling to his one irrefutable assertion—that his talk was the meaningless jargon of dreams. The officer had no vestige of proof to establish the truth or the untruth of any statement that was made.
Nevertheless, Dexter was convinced that Smith had not been asleep, and he could not believe that the boy was talking to himself. He had said good-by to "Alison." Had he contrived in some unaccountable manner to get into communication with Alison Rayne? Impossible! The girl was Colonel Devreaux's prisoner, and by this time they would be camping thirty or forty miles farther down the valley. How to reach her by voice, except through radio or telephone? There was no other conceivable way.
So mystery again resolved itself into the bogy of a telephone line that did not seem to exist. Dexter had ransacked one cabin in futile search of a communicating circuit, and now his perplexity gave him no choice but to go through the same performance at this place. With a sigh and a shake of his head, he lighted a candle, and set about an irksome task.
He went out of doors first, and inspected the ground. The snow held no intruding footprints. Smith could not have been talking to any one who stood within earshot. No wires went out from the cabin, so it seemed equally certain that his voice had not been transmitted over a telephone line. Wireless? That last remaining possibility was easily settled. He searched the interior cabin from end to end, floor, walls, roof, fireplace, prying into every imaginable nook and cranny; and found not one piece or part of radio equipment. Nor was there anything about the place to suggest that the owner might be engaged in any business other than fur trapping. The first streaks of daylight were beginning to filter through the windows when Dexter finally gave it up as a hopeless puzzle.
The boy had been watching from the bunk, without comment, his artless face betraying nothing more than mild curiosity. The corporal scrutinized him with narrow eyes. His pose of innocence was well put on, but Dexter could not help but feel that it was assumed for the occasion. From the beginning he had refused to believe that the young man had told his right name, and the suspicion persisted that he was in some way involved in the affairs of the incomprehensible girl who had quitted this cabin two days before. Whether awake or asleep, he certainly had spoken the name "Alison," and it all sounded strangely like a warning.
Dexter darkly pondered the significance of the words he had overheard. Assuming that the impossible might have happened—that a message could carry by some queer, occult agency through the intervening leagues of forest—then its purport was unmistakable. "Don't come here. Go to Saddle Notch." The boy's speech carried definite instructions. Were the words, by miraculous chance, intended to reach the girl? If she could come and go at will, as the mysterious conversation might seem to indicate, there was but one inference to be drawn: she had escaped from Devreaux.
Following his startling line of conjecture thus far, the rest was only simple logic. If the girl actually had fled from the hands of one policeman, naturally her friends would attempt to warn her away from a cabin where a second policeman had established himself. She would be advised to strike for a safer retreat. Saddle Notch! In a sudden flash of intuition, the corporal persuaded himself that he knew the place. Riding across the west range two days ago he had been struck by the appearance of a peculiarly shaped mountain with two outstanding peaks, and a cleft or notch between, that bore an amazing resemblance to a gigantic saddle. The mountain stood amid a cluster of other high peaks in a wild and lonely region, about twenty miles southwest of this spot. Such country offered ideal refuge to any fugitive who might be hard pressed, seeking to hide.
For a moment the corporal considered the strangely suggested possibilities. No doubt it would prove a futile chase to go ranging through the forests on a flimsy hint of this sort; yet a blind instinct urged him to go. He hesitated for an instant, and then, with a nod and a fleeting smile, he made his decision. If by any millionth chance Alison Rayne had broken away from Devreaux and was traveling to a meeting at the Saddle Notch with some unidentified friend, then he, the policeman, would also be there to keep the rendezvous.
With face cold and inscrutable, Dexter crossed the cabin to stand by the bunk. For a moment he regarded the boy in silent speculation. Whatever the young man's hidden thoughts, he was taking good care to keep them to himself. And there was no way to force him to betray secrets. An officer has no right to employ extreme methods in dealing with a law-abiding citizen; and there was no evidence to accuse Smith of any illegal act. Grounds for his arrest or detention were lacking. Even the time-worn pretext of holding a suspected offender as a "witness" wouldn't stand in his case. He had witnessed nothing he could be called to the box for—unless, indeed, he testified to the fact that he had watched a policeman rummaging vainly, and without written warrant, through another man's dwelling. Apparently there was nothing to be done except to grant him the best of the encounter.
Dexter suppressed a rueful laugh, and reached forward abruptly to touch the boy's bandaged arm. "Let's see how you're doing this morning," he suggested lightly.
The patient's condition appeared to be much improved since last night. Dexter heated water and applied new dressings, and gave the sufferer detailed instruction for self-treatment. He lingered long enough to cook breakfast, and then picked up his pack and carbine and turned towards the door.
"Where are you going?" asked Smith, with a sudden display of interest.
The corporal looked back with a faint quirk of his mouth. "If I should walk in my sleep, we'll be quits," he remarked. "So long, Smith."
"So long, officer," a pleasant voice called after him; and he opened the door and stepped out into the snow.
It was a dull, gray morning, with a sodden chill in the air. The dense, leaden atmosphere was like an oppressive stillness upon the earth, and the dingy sky of the northwest held the threat of dark forces gathering. Colonel Devreaux apparently was wise in his prognostication. Winter's first deadly storm was brewing behind the ranges, and before nightfall the big snow was surely due.
Dexter observed the weather signs with a brooding glance, and then, with a fatalistic shrug, he buttoned his collar tight, and strode across the brook. By the fringe of the streamside alders he paused for a moment to consult his pocket compass. As he remembered his direction points, the saddle mountain lay behind two intervening ridges, almost on a south by west line. The easier route would be to follow the brook back past the burned cabin, and then turn north along a branch stream that cut through dense timber on the farther side of the valley. But this course would take him miles out of his way. The shorter path lay through a difficult country of forest and hills, but, without horse or baggage, he ought to be able to make his way across. For a second he hesitated, and then decided on the straightaway route. Hitching his pack higher on his shoulders, he left the brook and struck off through the woods.
Anxious to reach his destination before the storm descended, he set himself a pace that might have killed a man unused to wilderness travel. Head bent forward, body relaxed at the hips, feet balancing on a straight line, as a moccasined Indian walks, he swung forward with a long, flexible stride, dodging under branches, weaving back and forth among windfalls and thickets, leaping over down-trunks, moving onward without halt or hesitation, like a shadow gliding through the white mazes of the forest.
It was still early morning when he climbed up through a tangle of hillside brush, and passed over the watershed of the brook he had left behind. By noon he had crossed the jungle hollow beyond and ascended to the top of the next parallel ridge; and through an open vista on the higher ground he caught his first glimpse of the distant mountain peaks, towering ghostly white against the reaches of the sullen sky.
He paused only to make sure of his bearings, and then plunged forward once more into the thick forest. For nearly two hours he worked out his tortuous trail, descending a long slope, broken by gulleys and ravines, through a wilderness of ancient spruces, where smothering undergrowths contested his pathway and shut him in on all sides as a swimmer is surrounded by the waves of the sea. But he struggled on doggedly, and passed in time through the worst of it. Eventually the smaller growths began to thin out, and the spruces gradually made way for the jack pines. He had more frequent glimpses of the sky, and presently, through a rift in the branches, he once more discovered the smoky outlines of mountain caps.
Pushing rapidly forward, he soon left the forest behind, and came at last to the border of an open field of snow, whence he viewed the full majestic sweep of the country before him.
For a mile or more straight ahead, and right and left as far as he could see the ground stretched away, level and treeless, to the foot of a cliff-like palisade—an appalling hundred foot terrace, rising sheer from the flat below. From the top of this first high point a sort of broad shelf, or plateau, dipped back for another couple of miles into the dark, ringing circle of a twin-peaked mountain. And farther still, like a faint smoke haze upon the middle sky, stood the towering saw edge of the coastal divide, the final great barrier that forbade the crossing from valley to valley of all things that did not follow the soaring eagle's route.
A dank wind drew down through the flue of the mountains, bringing a first warning flutter of snowflakes. In the immediate foreground the double peaks loomed in bold outline, and it would have needed a dull imagination, indeed, that lacked a name for this individual mountain. It was like a saddle sculptured on colossal proportions—pommel, cantle, even the stirrup—chiseled realistically in sweeping, thousand-foot strokes. A dip of the ridge formed a horse's back and withers; pointed ears and grotesquely shaped head were blocked out in strong relief by an up-jutting pinnacle beyond; and in order that nothing should be lacking, a broad, snow-filled crevice twisted down the mountainside to give the appearance of a long, flowing tail.
Dexter viewed the stupendous statue with critical appreciation, but as he looked, for some reason, he began to feel a trifle foolish. The Saddle Mountain was a sight worth observing, but he had not come on a wearying journey to awe himself with scenery. He found himself wondering why he really had come. Whom did he expect to find here? Alison Rayne? He shook his head incredulously. After traveling all this distance it suddenly struck him that he had blundered off through the forest on a vain and brainless errand—chasing the chimera of another man's dream.
With a flat feeling of disillusionment, he stood for a moment gazing vacantly at the lonesome, barren peaks. Gradually his glance shifted downward to the plateau that formed the base of the mountain. He was scanning the top of the nearest palisade, without expecting to make any discovery of interest, when his body suddenly stiffened and his pupils contracted sharply. Something was moving along the rim of the precipice.
It was a grayish-white object, diminished by distance to a pin-head speck, and barely discernible against the snowy background. Whatever it was, it was walking, and while Dexter watched, the tiny shape moved to the edge of the palisade, passed over the brink, and then started to climb down the steep side of the cliff.
He nodded to himself when he saw what had happened. Only a sheep or mountain goat would be apt to attempt the perilous descent of a sheer wall of rock. Probably it was a bighorn sheep, driven from the summits by the approaching storm, and taking the shortest route down to the valley pastures. To make certain, however, he uncased his binoculars to observe the creature in magnified view.
He trained the lenses upon the distant cliff-side, and once more picked up the climbing shape. For an instant he gazed dubiously, and then his wrist tendons drew taut as wires as he tried to steady the leveled glasses. It was not a sheep he saw, but a human shape—clinging against the precipitous height.
Amazed—unbelieving—he gingerly readjusted the focus of his binoculars, and in a moment the distant cliff-side seemed to draw towards him in sharper perspective. The diminutive shape suddenly enlarged to doll-size, and he made out a straight, slender figure, clad in white sweater and knickers. He stared with straining vision, and recognition came like a blow between the eyes. The mountain climber was Alison Rayne.
Overcome by astonishment, Dexter stood motionless and breathless, peering at the far-off figure with swimming senses, exerting all his will force to keep the binoculars from wabbling in his tightly gripped hands. He had come there looking for Alison Rayne—on a fool's chase, he persuaded himself a moment before—and now, when he actually saw her he found himself staring across space with the awed wonderment of a man who beholds a miraculous apparition.
So the boy in the cabin yonder had reached her with his message of warning. Speaking in low-pitched, half-muttered accents, under pretense of sleep talking, his voice must have carried by some strange sorcery through the leagues of forest, to be heard by listening ears. He had called to Alison, and the girl had answered. He advised her to flee to the Saddle Mountain, and she had come to the appointed place. All of which seemed to establish positive proof that the two were in communication during that dark morning hour when Dexter had aroused at the sound of the voice in the cabin bunk.
The incredible staggering facts defied all reason. Without radio equipment or the strung wires of a telephone line, there was no imaginable way in which two people might hold long distance conversations. Yet it was manifest that these two had done something of the sort.
By what hidden medium the word had passed Dexter was utterly unable to guess. He did not know what to think. He only knew that young Smith had attempted to deceive him. Not only was it certain now that the boy knew Alison Rayne, but it was apparent that there was some secret, sympathetic understanding between them. And by inference it must also seem that both were implicated in the affairs at the other cabin, where a woman's voice had been transmitted in the same mysterious way.
With his features set in an eloquent scowl, Dexter surveyed the distant heights. As far as he could make out, the girl was alone. So it was evident that in some manner she had outwitted the vigilant Devreaux: must have escaped some time during the previous night. If the colonel were alive and able to travel, he would be following her. It was the logical supposition that he was on her trail now, following, probably, not far behind. The fact that she was taking a short cut to the lower valley, over the brink of a dangerous cliff, would indicate desperate haste.
No pursuer was visible at that moment, but from his position the corporal was unable to see what might be happening behind the brow of the high terrace. It was quite possible that a second moving speck would soon heave in sight.
Meanwhile, Dexter turned his glasses back towards the girl, and his lips twisted at the corners into a grim, inexorable smile. Thanks to the hunter's instinct he had traveled to this place on blind impulse, disregarding logic and reason; and now he held the strategic ground, waiting to cut off the girl's escape.
At the distance the cliff had the appearance of a smooth-faced, perpendicular wall. But presumably the surface was not as steep as the observer first imagined, or else there were cracks and projecting points to afford a foothold. At any rate, the tiny figure seemed to cling securely to the dizzy pitch, as a swift hangs against the side of a chimney; and slowly, by almost imperceptible degrees, crept downward from the brink.
As Dexter watched with bated breath he could not help but marvel at the resolution and cool-headed nerve that dared attempt such a hazardous descent. To gain the valley by a safer path, however, would mean a four- or five-mile tramp by way of the cañon-like notch that broke into the northern shoulder of the mountain. In all probability the fugitive was closely pursued, and as Dexter had found out by previous experience Alison Rayne was not the sort to weigh difficulties and dangers when freedom was at stake. Apparently she had reason to accept a life or death chance at the threat of recapture. And not knowing Devreaux, as the men of his command knew him, she might too readily assume that the bulky, middle-aged policeman would think twice before clambering after her over the top of a precipice.
Dexter looked out fearfully, with his tongue between his teeth. Even through his binoculars, the form on the cliff was limned in miniature, like an animated toy. The small figure crept downward with agonizing slowness, feeling cautiously for each new foothold, groping with clinging fingers, counting the distance gained by niggard inches. Realizing the danger of startling the girl by showing himself at such a moment, the corporal restrained his anxieties, and held his position, waiting.
He was peering tensely through the glasses, scarcely breathing, when all at once his heart gave a spasmodic jump. The climbing shape seemed to lose contact with the wall—slipping; and as he stared with horrified eyes, the little figure swayed sidewise, flung up vainly reaching arms, and suddenly dropped from view.
Dexter felt a sharp muscular shrinking in his body, and for an instant his senses swirled with a queer physical sickness. Instinctively his eyes shut, dreading the anguish of seeing. But in a moment he shook off the first feeling of giddiness, and by a strong mental effort, forced himself to look again. Breathing audibly through tight clenched teeth, he steadied himself and held the glasses firm. Gradually he lowered the lenses, and then suddenly a great gasping sigh heaved up from the depths of his chest, and his sagging shoulders lifted, as though relieved of a crushing weight. At a point midway down the cliff, he once more had caught sight of the small, clinging figure.
His eyes aglow with thanksgiving, he stared intently, and at once understood what had happened. The girl must have lost her footing somehow, falling down the face of the cliff; but instead of plunging to her death among the rocks at the bottom, she landed providentially upon some sort of shelf or ledge, only a few feet below, and with quick wit had caught a handgrip and anchored herself to the projecting stone.
For the time being she had saved herself, but as Dexter gazed towards the far-off heights, fresh misgivings smote him. The girl was huddled against the flat wall, resting partly on one knee, her hands spread out before her. He watched dubiously for a space, and she did not attempt to move. He could not make out her face, nor was he able to see how she managed to hold on; but there was a drooping limpness in the posture of the tiny figure, and he realized that she was in distress. Either she was hurt, or else she had lost confidence and was afraid to stir from an insecure resting place. In either case she needed help. Dexter promptly left the shelter of the trees, and started forward, running, across the snowy meadow.
The ground underfoot was broken by pits and furrows, but he plunged on recklessly, measuring his stride by instinct, keeping his anxious glances for the heights above. Before he had traversed half the distance the girl discovered his approach. He saw her look over her shoulder, and then raise herself abruptly, as though actuated by some rash purpose. Alarmed, he waved his arm, motioning her furiously to hold her position. She gazed upward at the towering rocks above, but after an interval she sank down motionless once more, hugging the cliff in seeming helplessness, apparently unable or unwilling to risk the return trip.
Fast as he ran, it took Dexter several minutes to cross the strip of open ground. But finally he neared the foot of the acclivity, and could appraise the difficulties that confronted him. The cliff, rising with vertical face to a height of a hundred feet or more, was formed of stratified rock—great slabs, lying one upon another, like a pile of unevenly stacked books. Edges of stone jutted out at frequent intervals to make narrow ledges, and there were interstices between the slabs that would enable a climber to mount from one broader resting place to the next, all the way to the top.
During occasional hunts for mountain sheep and goats, Dexter had clambered up more dangerous steeps than this. It was as though steps had been chiseled here in readiness for use. His only fear was of rotting rock. Stratification is caused by weathering and the crumbling away of stone in scales and veins; and in the process of erosion the projecting rocks are gradually pitted and undermined, and may break off at the lightest pressure. A great heap of these fallen fragments was banked against the foot of the precipice, but the corporal scrambled up over the pile, and presently stood under the shelf where the girl was crouching. He could see her white face peering over a ledge, seventy feet above.
"What's the matter?" he shouted.
"A step gave way and let me drop," she called down in a shaken voice. "I caught on here—just barely—and now I can't get up or down."
"Stay quiet, then," he commanded sharply. "I'll be with you in a minute."
"You can't," she faltered—"nobody could get here. If you had a rope—from above—"
"I have no rope and I'm not above," he said shortly. He unstrapped his heavy pack and dropped it at his feet. His carbine he buckled tightly across his back by its carrying sling. It was to be remembered that the girl expected to meet a companion somewhere in this vicinity, and while no third person had put in an appearance as yet, the officer had no way of knowing whom he might encounter on the other side of the terrace, and he had no intention of going anywhere unarmed.
As he stood silent for a moment, studying the precipitous slope above him, he heard a splintering sound, and detached fragments of stone bounced down from the cliff and struck the ground behind him. Craning his neck backwards, he saw that the girl had shifted her position and was gazing over the dizzy brink, as though her glance were held in dreadful fascination by the ugly rocks below.
"Don't move, and don't look down!" he shouted angrily. And then he spoke in attempted reassurance. "I'll get you off somehow. Don't worry, and hang on tight!"
"I can't—much longer," she informed him in a small, frightened voice.
"You can until I get there!" he asserted gruffly, and picking a first toehold, he started to ascend the cliff.
For the first thirty or forty feet the cliff sloped slightly back, and he mounted swiftly and almost as easily as though he were stepping up the rungs of a ladder. But as he climbed higher the pitch became steeper, and presently he found himself hanging on a sheer wall, depending for support on the muscular grip of toes and fingers. The way seemed feasible, however, and after a hasty inspection of the frowning elevation, he continued to pull himself upward.
But from now on he moved slowly, with infinite caution. The least miscalculation would mean a sickening fall, probably death. The crannies between the layers of rock ran in horizontal lines, at frequent, almost regular intervals, like mortar cracks in a crumbling stone building. By alternating with hands and feet, he was able to hoist himself without great effort. But unfortunately snow had drifted into the crevices, and it was not always possible to judge the condition of the rock underneath. Nevertheless he inched his way upward, digging in firmly to keep from slipping, and testing each new stepping place before he trusted his full weight to settle. By degrees he lifted himself towards the ledge where Alison Rayne was crouching, and at length he gained a narrow niche directly beneath her.
Wedging himself in brief security, he glanced overhead, and at once understood why the girl had not dared the rest of the descent. She was lodged on a sloping rock, not more than six feet above him; but between them the cliffside bulged out in an overhanging cornice, smooth as glass and utterly unscalable. By leaning outward Dexter could see her livid features as she gazed over the edge.
She shuddered as she encountered his anxious glance. "You can't come any farther!" she gasped. "And I—I'll be here until I have to—let—go."
"You'll stick till I come!" he told her sharply. "No nonsense!"
Abandoning the hope of reaching her from below, he turned hurriedly to scan the cliffside right and left. And in an instant the practiced mountaineer's eye had devised a path where no path existed. The fissure in which he stood slanted off at an acute angle away from the girl's ledge, but from a higher point an open crack sloped back across the face of the precipice and crossed over the cornice rock directly above her. He calculated the chances, and nodded with sudden confidence.
"Can do!" he said coolly. "How's the footing up there?"
"Narrow," she answered faintly. "I've got to hold on, and my fingers are getting cold."
"Be with you in two minutes," he promised.
The fissure was like an open chute gouged down the side of the cliff, and just wide enough to admit his body. To crawl up that narrow draw with a carbine strapped to his back, however, was out of the question. His teeth clicked suddenly together. He had forgotten about the rifle. It was an impossible encumbrance if he expected to reach the girl. But the only way to get rid of the weapon was to unfasten the sling and let it drop: a sacrifice almost suicidal to a man on winter police patrol. As he hesitated he caught a momentary glimpse of the soft blue eyes that gazed beseechingly towards him. He drew a sharp breath. This was no time to count personal cost. With a decisive movement, his hand reached towards the shoulder strap, but as he touched the buckle some vaguely stirring sense of alarm checked him, and drew his glance towards the height above.
He looked upward, and his jaw fell, and he stared in wide-eyed astonishment. From the brink of the cliff, not thirty feet overhead, a human face was peering down at him.
It was an unwholesome countenance, pinkish in color, evil-smirking, with loose, flabby jowls, flat, broad nostrils, and a pair of elongated slits for eyes. Dexter remembered the rogues' gallery photograph buttoned in his jacket pocket, but he did not need any print to identify the physiognomy he saw now in the flesh. That leering face was unforgettable. The man on the cliff could be none other than the fugitive murderer, "Pink" Crill.
In the shocking moment of discovery Dexter found no time to wonder what malignant fate had brought the outlaw here at this unwelcome juncture. He merely grasped the fact that "Pink" Crill was kneeling on the cliff above, looking down at him. Instinctively he crowded himself into his niche, shrinking inwardly. It was a seventy-foot drop to the rocks below, and he knew at sight that this Crill was a man without scruple or mercy. The crevice offered some protection, but after crouching motionless for tense seconds, the corporal craned his head back and ventured another glance upward. The face had disappeared.
Dexter was positive that he had been seen, and was not misled by false hope. Crill had withdrawn, but he certainly would come back. Probably he was only hunting bowlders to roll over the cliff. Meanwhile, however, the victim had a slender chance of saving himself. It would be the part of sanity to scramble down with all haste from his unsafe roosting place. He might possibly reach the bottom before the murderer returned.
In the fractional second of his indecision, Dexter's thoughts were sharply recalled by a sob of distress, low and piteous, heard suddenly behind him. Casting a glance over his shoulder, he looked into Alison Rayne's horror-stricken eyes. She was staring full at Dexter, and apparently was unaware of the ominous presence above.
"I'm slipping!" she whispered with choking breath. "If you're coming—please—help—"
"Coming!" he said, curt and incisive. "Hold on, I tell you!"
His hand went up again and found the carbine sling. The buckle came open with a snap, the strap jerked apart and slipped over his shoulder; and the next second, as he jammed his body into the crevice and started to work his way upward, he heard the crash of his rifle striking on broken stones far below.
If by unforeseen good luck he ever reached the cliff top he still would have his pistol. But at present the holstered weapon was a useless appendage, much in the way. With an impatient yank and a twist, he drew his belt around so the pistol might bump against the small of his back, and not interfere with his movements. Then, with thighs and shoulders braced against the sides of the fissure, clinging mostly by force of adhesion, he wriggled and hitched himself up the slanting chute, as a chimney sweep goes up a flue.
In a moment he had gained an elevation level with the shelf where Alison Rayne still held on with the clutch of despair. Six feet more of the elbow-bruising ascent, and he was able to reach the lateral crack that led back across the sheer face of the precipice to the girl's ledge.
To his joy he found that the underlip of the crack sloped inward, affording a slight ridge for his finger grip. But fortune granted him no other concession. Beyond him stretched a bare rock wall, a smooth, ten-foot reach, without any cranny or projecting point that his toe might touch.
He paused only to measure his distance, and then securing his hold in the crack, he swung out against the cliff. For a moment he hung swaying, dangling over space, supporting his weight by his hands and upstretched arms. The brim of his Stetson pushed against the cliff, and he tossed his head with a movement of annoyance, and the hat sailed away behind him.
"With you right away!" he assured the girl between clenched teeth, and started to work out across the wall.
Still he had hear nothing from Crill. But the lines of acute anxiety were deep drawn at the corners of his eyes and lips. At any instant he might hear the direful sound of a rock toppling from the brink overhead, and every nerve and fiber of his body seemed to flinch before the imminence of the moment. He dared not look up; could only look at the wall before him. And every seam and chink of that remorseless surface of rock was etched in detail, to be seared upon his memory forever.
With toes scraping and thumping, he edged his way along the crack, inch by inch, hand against hand. He had only a short distance to go, but it seemed to his overstrained faculties that he must have traversed half the width of the mountainside, when at last he put down his foot and found solid rock beneath him. For the first time he ventured to look aside, and he saw that he had reached the girl's shelf.
Breathing quickly, he let his weight down and relaxed his aching arms. His resting place was the top of an outcropping rock, about two feet wide, that tilted with a decided downward cant. He dug with his hobnail boots into the rotted stone, but for further safety his hand still clung to the crack in the wall. It was no wonder that the girl had feared she would loose her precarious hold. She wore smooth-soled boots; and the slim fingers, still grasping the ledge, were blue with the cold, and bleeding at the tips. Dexter reached towards her, passed his hand beneath her armpit, and drew her against his supporting shoulder.
She swayed closer, trembling, her face hidden in the curve of his arm. "Oh, thanks—thanks!" she whispered in broken, breathless accents. "You came!"
"Steady!" he said, his voice low and soothing. "Take it easy, Alison. All right now." He slid his arm about her waist, and managed to get both her icy hands in his. "Why, they must be numb!" he exclaimed. "Here—let's get 'em warm. We've got to start circulation."
"I don't know how I lasted," she said with a shudder, clinging tighter to him. "I was afraid—I never thought—"
"Don't think about it," he advised. "It's over with."
He leaned outward as he spoke to gaze nervously towards the cliff top. It struck him that there was something ominous in the silence overhead. Crill had not yet returned, and the corporal could not imagine what stealthy game he was playing. He dreaded seeing the man again; but also the prolonged absence was disquieting.
"If by any chance the chap up there's a friend of yours," Dexter said suddenly, a note of harshness striking through his voice, "I'd advise you to have him call a truce—at least until I can get you safely out of this."
"Chap up there?" she echoed vacantly. "My friend?"
"Pudgy, pink-faced man," he informed her—"Crill."
She lifted her head with trepidation to gaze towards the top of the palisade. "I don't know any such person," she asserted after a slight pause.
He scrutinized her searchingly for a moment. "All right," he declared. "If he's not your friend we'd better get out of this quick. Unluckily the trip down's impossible. We've got to go on up."
As he spoke he leaned backward to scan the cliff face above; and in a second his plan was formed. On the left side of the girl, and only a couple of feet above her head, a broad-topped, solid-looking rock jutted out from the precipice wall. Thence, for the rest of the distance upward, the masses of stratified stone sloped slightly back, and offered secure stepping places that reached by easy stages all the way to the top. If they could gain the first shelf, the remaining ascent should not prove difficult.
"Feel equal to staying here alone—just for a minute?" Dexter inquired, his warm hand pressing the girl's fingers.
He felt her shoulders grow tense as she tried to steady herself. "Why, I—if I must—yes," she replied with faint assurance.
"Good girl!" he commented briskly, before she could change her mind. "Here! We'll plant you like an anchor." He showed her a tiny indentation where she could brace her foot, and then helped her fix her fingers in the chink that served him for support.
Without further ado he leaned outward, crowded his body around her cowering figure, and a second later had flattened himself against the cliff at her left side. He stretched his arm overhead, and touched the ledge above.
Groping, he found a small weather-gouged groove that afforded him a gripping surface. He caught his hold with both hands and drew his weight up bodily, as a gymnast chins himself. With a quick, violent effort he hooked one knee over the rim, and the next moment had hoisted himself onto a wide, level shelf of stone.
As soon as he was settled in security he bent down over the edge, intending to reach the girl's hands. But he realized at once that he would be in danger of overbalancing if he attempted to lift her in such a manner. For an instant he hesitated; and then unfastened his heavy belt, laid the pistol on the rock beside him, and let down the buckle end of the strap.
"You'll have to take it," he asserted.
"Oh, no!" she faltered as she understood his purpose, "I—I haven't the strength left."
He regarded her fixedly for a moment, and when he spoke his tone was cold and cutting. "I somehow hadn't thought you were a coward," he said.
She threw up her head with a gasp, and a tinge of crimson suddenly showed in her cheeks. As Dexter peered down at her he saw a gleam of recklessness flaunting in her eyes. With swift decision she released her hold on the rocks, and her hands grasped the end of the dangling belt. "Go ahead!" she said. "I'll hang on if I can."
Dexter braced his feet firmly, leaned forward as far as he dared, and exerting all the strength of his shoulders and arms, he raised her from the rock beneath and drew her up towards him. Almost before she could have realized what had happened, she was clinging on the brink. The corporal caught her about the waist, and lifted her to solid footing beside him.
She turned unsteadily, her lips quivering. "I—anybody's likely to be a coward—sometimes," she stated.
The corporal faced her with a grin. "You didn't honestly think I meant that, did you?" He slowly shook his head. "That's one thing, at least, that I'll never accuse you—"
He caught himself with a start, breaking off in the midst of speech. From somewhere overhead he heard a quick, crunching sound, like heavy feet running in the snow. As he stiffened into alertness, staring upward, a man's voice was raised suddenly in hoarse, angry shouting. And then, almost simultaneously it seemed, the cliff top reverberated with the heavy report of a pistol shot.
The amazing uproar lasted only for seconds, and then intense silence once more settled over the palisade. There was no one in sight, and Dexter could not imagine what calamitous events were taking place on the other side of the cliff. But as his glance swept back and forth along the brink of the precipice, the momentary quiet was suddenly shattered by a second shot.
In a flash he stooped to grasp his pistol. "I'm going up," he announced, and hurriedly belted his holster about his waist. "You stay here, Alison, and I'll come back for you when I can."
Without waiting for her reply, he set his foot in the nearest cranny and started to clamber onward. The remaining distance was not far, and he went up in a rush and scrambled over the final escarpment. He reached the top, and crouched warily on the brink of the cliff to survey the open ground beyond.
The plateau dipped back for a mile or more to the base of the ringing mountain peaks, and on the snow-sheeted meadow were outlined the figures of two men. One was a couple of hundred yards away, running as fast as legs would fly, heading for a distant cedar thicket and the notch that gave exit towards the northern end of the valley below. Nearer the cliff top another man was standing, with pistol in hand. The second intruder, short and stocky in build, was clad in the tunic of the mounted police. Dexter observed the silhouette of his broad back, and laughed aloud.
"Hello, colonel!" he called.
The thick-set figure swung around to stare dumbly at the man on the crest behind him. "Dexter!" he blurted out in astonishment.
"By the way the other fellow keeps on going, I should judge that you're not shooting as well as you used to," remarked the corporal blandly.
"I just pitched a couple across his bows, as they say, hoping he'd halt," explained Devreaux. "Rather take him back alive if I can. If I know a pink complexion, that man's Crill."
"Unquestionably," agreed the corporal, his glance following the fleeing outlaw. The man was out of pistol range, still plowing up the snow as he sprinted for the shelter of the timber. "A person with a double chin should know better than to overexert himself," Dexter resumed calmly. "He'll drop in his track by the time he reaches the notch."
"Sure he will," assented Devreaux. "No sense winding ourselves in hundred-yard dashes. We can trail comfortably behind, sure to land him before night." He nodded with satisfaction. "Bit of luck—what? Funny thing how I walked into him like this, after all these days of futile hunting. I was coming up the draw from the south, and as I stepped into the open, there was Crill staggering towards the cliff with a big rock in his arms. When he saw me he dropped it and ran—
"The rock was to be bounced off my head," interrupted Dexter. "You appeared at exactly the right second."
"Eh?" exclaimed the colonel.
"We've taken Crill's full measure," observed Dexter. "Runs from a man in the open, but is willing to do casual, cold-blooded murder when his victim is unable to defend himself. I was climbing up the cliffside, you know."
"It'll be a pleasure to lay hands on him," grunted the superintendent. "Luckily, we've got him."
"Unless his friends cut in ahead of us." The corporal gazed across the plateau, and saw the fugitive dart into the cover of a distant patch of trees. "I have a strong suspicion that he's not traveling alone."
Devreaux thrust his pistol back in the holster, and turned abruptly upon the departing trail. "Let's go," he said. He started to move forward, but with his first step he halted and whirled to look behind him.
An avalanche of stones rattled down the slope of the cliff, and as he faced the direction of the sound, a small, white-clad figure came suddenly into view above the brink of the precipice. His mouth dropped open, and stood motionless with peering, blinking eyes, his face ludicrous with amazement. "Alison!" he exploded at last. "Where did you come from?"
The girl did not answer. She lifted herself to her feet, crossed the top of the cliff, and stopped in front of Dexter. "Whatever you may do to me later," she said in a tremulous voice, "at least I owe my life to you."
"Miss Rayne and I happened to meet down below here," the corporal explained uncomfortably, turning to Devreaux. And then as he observed the superintendent's expression of bewilderment, he found his lips twitching at the corners. "She seemed to be lost from you, colonel."
"Lost!" muttered the officer. "Yes. We were crossing a steep slope down by the lower pass, and I stepped on a slide of glacier ice that was hidden by snow. Went down on the glare, and rolled and coasted about a half mile to the bottom. Smashed my carbine so it wasn't even worth salvage, and nearly cracked my neck in the bargain. And when I had gathered myself up and labored back to the top, the girl was gone. It happened last evening, mind you, and I was all night and most of the day working back the trail. I'll say this much for the young lady: when she's in a hurry she can cruise with the best of us."
Devreaux turned to glower at the girl. "And I warn you now," he said with asperity, "I'm going to forget to be polite and use the wrist irons if you get 'lost' this way another time."
She flushed darkly, and averted her head, as though to hide the glint of tears upon her lashes. "What would be the use?" she replied in a tired, hopeless voice. "You're men—hard and ruthless—and I—I haven't a chance. You can order me to come and go as you please and threaten me with handcuffs, and I have nobody—there's nothing I can do about it—nothing."
"Exactly!" asserted the colonel. "And now we must go." He turned on his heel and set off across the meadow; and Alison Rayne sighed despondently, and followed him in mute resignation.
Dexter looked after her for a moment with a pensive frown and then, gloomily shaking his head, he hastened forward and caught step with her.
"How did you get the message that brought you to this place?" he asked suddenly, watching her face with slantwise curiosity.
"What message?" interrupted Devreaux brusquely.
The corporal gave a hurried account of his adventures in the cabin on the further side of the valley, telling of the boy he had found there, and of the voice that aroused him from sleep. "Reminded me of the queer business at the other cabin," he remarked. "Sounded like telephone talk—only there was no telephone." He faced the girl with searching gaze. "The young man informed me that he didn't know you, and pretended to be asleep and dreaming; but he said 'Alison' as distinctly as I say your name now. And he advised you to make your way to this mountain, where a friend would be waiting."
"What have you to say to that, Alison?" demanded Devreaux.
The girl cast a fleeting glance towards Dexter, and he fancied for a second that he saw a sardonic gleam in her velvet eyes. "I should say that Corporal Dexter is a little mixed up about who was dreaming," she observed in a quiet tone.
"Whoever was dreaming," returned the policeman, "it came true. You were advised not to return to the cabin, but to strike across country for Saddle Mountain. And here you are."
Devreaux swung around abruptly, his weather-seamed countenance grown stern and forbidding. "You're going beyond the limits of patience," he declared in a crusty voice. "I want to know how you people communicate with each other."
She met his formidable stare without the slightest show of alarm. "We people?" she echoed. "Really, Colonel Devreaux, I don't see what reason you have for trying to make out that I belong to a gang, or something." She sighed and shook her head, and smiled forlornly as she encountered the officer's scowling stare. "But I admit," she added, "that there are times when I almost wish I did. It's discouraging not to have anybody."
"I insist on knowing how that message was relayed to you," the superintendent persisted, unmoved by the gentle appeal of her half veiled eyes.
"You followed my tracks all the way up the valley to this place," she reminded him. "Wherever I went, you must have gone also. So if I'd met any one, or stopped anywhere to telephone, or held any conversation of any sort with anybody, why you couldn't have helped knowing about it, could you?"
The colonel regarded her tensely, with anger and something like reluctant admiration mingling in his baffled glance. "You say you came to this particular place only by accident?" he asked after an interval.
"I don't want to make a long trip to Fort Dauntless," she coolly replied, "and as you seem so determined to take me there, why I—naturally I wandered as far as I could—anywhere to get away."
"Humph!" grunted Devreaux. "That's frank enough, anyhow. Just wanted to escape from the clutches of the police? Weren't expecting to meet a friend here?"
"You keep forcing me to repeat that I have no friends," she complained. "I—"
She stopped with a startled gasp, and gazed blankly overhead, as suddenly, without warning, the stillness of the misty afternoon was punctured by a shrill shining sound—the crackling hum of a bullet in flight.
The two officers halted to scan the heights, towering shadowy above them. They stood in the middle of the broad plateau, with the horseshoe curve of the mountains hemming them in like the rising tiers of a vast amphitheater. The lower slopes were circled by a belt of dense-growing evergreens, but the open, snow-covered level stretched between, and the nearest sheltering thicket was at least a quarter mile distant. Any object moving against the white background of the snow-field must present a conspicuous target, but when Devreaux broke the momentary silence, he spoke without concern, and seemed in no haste to make for cover.
"Crill?" he inquired, with a ruminative glance towards the lower notch. "He had a rifle."
Dexter observed the line of long, narrow footprints that marked the direction of the outlaw's flight, and casually shook his head. "No. I don't think so. The shot came from higher up, I should say, and from the western slope—"
The spitefulpi-n-gof a second bullet whipped the air behind him, and he briefly nodded. "Right!" he remarked. "From the timber somewhere on our left. That wouldn't be Crill. There are others about."
The colonel quizzed Alison Rayne with his chilly glance.
"If they're friends of yours," he remarked, "they haven't much regard for you. At such a distance they can only pitch 'em in for general results, and they're as apt to get you as they are a policeman."
The girl's delicate brows were bent in an expression that betokened curiosity rather than alarm. "We're really being shot at?" she asked. "I didn't hear any report."
"High power rifle, and six hundred yards' range at least," said the corporal. "Too far off to hear the crack." He lifted his head interestedly as another steel-jacketed missile shrieked across the meadow. "They aren't allowing enough windage," he added in expert criticism of another man's marksmanship. "And long shots from an elevation are always likely to overcarry."
"I don't agree with you," interrupted the colonel. "Not if you don't forget your table of trajectories." He wrinkled his forehead reminiscently as he warmed to a cherished hobby. "I remember last year when I got me an old ram. Conditions similar to this. Five hundred yards if an inch, and I was shooting down off a ridge. I fixed my leaf sight at five hundred, and held plumb in the vital circle. The point I'm making—"
"You're in danger of having your point proven for you, if we stick around here," Dexter respectfully submitted. He saw the girl looking from one to the other with anxious eyes. "If you don't mind," he finished, "Alison and I think we'd better be striking for cover."
"Come on," agreed the superintendent, and set forward once more towards the nearest strip of timber. He moved at his usual brisk stride, but without undue haste; a calm and dignified man who refuses to be pestered by small annoyances.
As they pushed onward across the plateau, a freezing gust of wind swept down suddenly through the mountain notch, bringing a momentary flutter of snowflakes. "At last!" Devreaux flung back over his shoulder. "The storm will spoil good shooting, but also it'll bury footprints. We'll have to get Crill quickly, before the slate's wiped clean."
"And before he takes on reinforcements," echoed Dexter.
The snow flurry lasted for seconds, and then there followed a brief lull, while the skin of the face seemed to draw tighter with the tension of heavy barometric pressures. The lower atmosphere had grown very still, but higher up Dexter could see the rush and scud of dark clouds breaking around the mountain peaks. His glance traveled aimlessly from one outstanding pinnacle to another, and then wandered down towards the edge of timberline, and reached the top of a knife-edged ridge stretching away to the left. He blinked his eyes, and gazed again, and made out a grouping of elongated objects, like little fingers poked against the skyline. There was no discernible movement. He counted—one—two—three—but at the distance was unable to decide whether the small dots were rocks, or beasts of some sort, or men.
Reaching behind him, he was fumbling at his binocular case, when his ears caught the far-off hum of another bullet. The sound broke through the air in wailing crescendo, reached its highest pitch, and then stopped short with a tearing thump.
Dexter saw Colonel Devreaux halt in mid-stride and look waveringly about him, like a man who had suddenly changed his mind about the direction he wanted to go. For a moment the square-built figure held erect, motionless, and then the sturdy legs bowed weakly and without a word the old man pitched forward and fell upon his face.
Simultaneously, the storm came howling down upon them. Dexter felt the lash of the fiercely driven wind, and as he bowed his head to the blast, the world about him was blotted out in swirling snow.
He plunged forward and dropped upon his knees beside his officer. Devreaux lay on his side, with head and face almost buried in the white drift. The corporal passed his arm under the fallen body, and his fingers were stained by a warm seepage of blood.
The stricken man tried to sit up as his comrade raised his head from the ground; but the effort was too much for him, and he sank back limply in the corporal's arms. "Back and lungs!" he choked with a sound of leaking breath. His white mustache lifted, and he showed his teeth for an instant in a dauntless smile. "Like that old bighorn ram, David. He weathered a lot of hard years—but somebody got him at last—fine cleanshot—at five hundred—" He broke off in a painful coughing fit, and the light of consciousness faded from his steely eyes, and he slumped forward, a limp, insensate weight in Dexter's arms.
The corporal hastily examined the sagging body. A bullet, he found, had drilled its course through the dorsal muscles; had broken a rib and plowed deeper into the cavity of the lungs. As he pillowed the grizzled head against his shoulder he heard a soft crunching step beside him and was aware that Alison Rayne was bending above.
"Is it bad?" she asked.
He nodded without speaking.
"I'm very sorry," she said.
Dexter crouched silent for a moment, gazing vacantly towards the invisible heights, his face beaten by the driving snow. For the present, nothing further was to be feared from the distant sharpshooter. The rush of snow filled the air, blinding the vision. It was impossible to see a dozen feet beyond him. The dry, hissing flakes battered his eyes and obliterated the landscape. An army might have marched past him unobserved. He sighed thankfully, scarcely feeling the sting of the blizzard. At least he was vouchsafed the privilege of caring for his fallen comrade.
But what was he to do, where could he go? He must make his decision instantly. The wounded man could not be left exposed in the open. Prompt surgical attention was needed, but even more pressing was the need of shelter—a place to hide, to huddle protected from the white death that rode with the storm. His questing glance wandered off towards his right, where, he recalled, the nearest stretch of timber grew. It would be in that direction somewhere that he must search for his nook of safety.
He was bending down to gather the wounded body in his arms, when Alison Rayne spoke in a quick, low voice behind him. "If I could do anything to help, I'd stay," she said. "But I'd only add to your responsibilities now, and so—good-by."
"One moment!" he commanded sharply. "I hadn't heard any one tell you to go."
"It's an ugly thing to do—taking advantage of your misfortune," she returned. "But you leave me no choice. You and Colonel Devreaux intended to drag me to the fort with you, to accuse me of I don't know what, to put me through your legal tortures, as though I were some criminal. You had no mercy. And now I—the tables have turned through no act of mine. You think I'm going to wait until you're ready to work your will with me?" Her eyes gleamed, and she shook her head rebelliously. "I'd kill myself before I'd let you do what you mean to do with me. I'd rather die."
"You will die if you go blundering off in this blizzard," he assured her.
"So be it then!" She took a step away, but the next instant turned back impulsively to face him. "I know what you think," she declared with a shudder. "You think I shot those two men in that cabin back there. I didn't—I swear I had nothing to do with that horror. But I can't prove that I didn't do it, and you—you want to prove that I did." She measured him with a tragic glance. "You won't leave Colonel Devreaux to try to hold me. You'll save your officer if you can."
"Stop!" he thundered as she started to turn away into the storm.
She looked back and saw that he was supporting Devreaux with his left arm, while his right hand had dropped to touch the butt of his pistol. "Yes," she said. "You'll have to shoot me to stop me. Rather that than go to the fort with you." She gave a short, mirthless laugh. "But I've heard that the men of the mounted never fire first. I'll find out if it's true."
His hand left his holster, and he fixed her with a stony gaze. "You're right," he said. "We're not like your people up there who crawl and slink and pot their victims from behind. Go! Go find your friends." He smiled contemptuously, and his words fell with the sharpness of whip strokes. "Tell 'em Corporal Dexter's still alive, and advise 'em when they see him again to shoot on sight, to kill. There's no truce after this. I'm more than ever set on getting them—and you too, Alison!" He pointed with his thumb towards the mountain slope, hidden behind the welter of snow. "Meanwhile there's nothing to keep you. Why don't you go?"
A dull flush suffused her cheeks and temples, and as he spoke her lips fell tremulously apart and her open hand moved towards him in a faint gesture of appeal. "I—" she began, and stopped. She drew a harsh breath that was almost a sob, and her lashes drooped for an instant to touch her snow-wet cheeks. "Good-by!" she cried suddenly in a breaking voice. Then she walked away and the next moment had vanished in the white swirl of the storm.