"It's I," a thrilling voice replied in his ear, and then, as though to dispel all further doubt, warm hands touched him, and he felt the vital contact of fingers closing over his. "You're hurt!" she faltered. "How badly?"
"Cracked shoulder, I think," he said. "If this tree were off me I could tell better."
The girl withdrew her hand from his lingering clasp, and knelt down to investigate. "It's crushing you," she said, with a catch of pity in her throat, "and you—you've had the courage to—you've nearly dug yourself loose. You must have been working for hours."
"I kept it up as long as I could stay awake," he answered with a faint laugh. "I was going to have a nap, and then try again."
She had been examining the underside of the trunk, and now she nodded with quick decision. "I can finish it by cutting through from the other direction," she asserted. "Only a few minutes!" She brought a clasp knife from her pocket, and moving around the tree, she crouched in the snow and began feverishly digging.
For a moment Dexter remained silent, but as he observed her tense, anxious face his eyelids drew together and the muscles of his jaw set with sudden resolution. "Wait!" he commanded. "Have you thought what you're doing?"
She paused for a space to look at him in the moonlight. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"Feel in the pocket of my tunic," he said somberly. "You'll find a folded slip of newspaper cutting. Read it."
For the length of a breath she hesitated, and then, wonderingly, she complied with his request. Fumbling, she drew forth the clipping. From her sweater pocket she produced a match safe, and struck a light. She glanced at the headlines, read the first paragraph of print; then the paper fluttered from her fingers, and she sighed bitterly.
"You know!" she said in a harsh undertone. "We—my brother and I—that's why we're here. There's no use trying to pretend anything else."
"Not a bit of use," he asserted. He regarded her steadily, his eyes murky in the pallid light. "You are wanted in the states for a capital crime. I'm an officer of the law. If you're wise you'll go back where you came from, and leave me here as I am."
"Leave you," she stammered—"I—what do you mean?"
"Simply that I'd rather not accept freedom at your hands," he returned. "If you pull me out of this mess, I'll repay you by arresting you again, and this time I'll make sure that you don't escape. It's a cruel position to be placed in, and in fairness to both of us—you'd better go."
"And leave you like this?" she cried.
"Possibly I can dig myself out," he answered. "I'm going to keep trying. If I succeed, you'll know about it some day, because it'll be my business to hunt until I find you. If I fail, we won't meet again." His features relaxed for an instant in a smile of gentle melancholy. "I guess that would be the kindest way out for both of us." He reached forward with his free arm, and his hand pressed softly over her closed fist. "Do you want to say good-by, Alison—before you go?"
She was bending above him, looking into his face with tear-wet eyes. But suddenly he felt her wrist grow tense, and with a quick movement she drew away her hand and stumbled to her feet. "You must think very badly of me," she said, "to believe that I would—that I could—" She stopped with a gulp, unable to go on. And then, without further speech, she stepped back around the tree trunk, and returned in moody silence to her digging.
Dexter lay quiet, hearing the scraping and chipping of the knife blade hacking the icy ground, feeling the movements of her hands as she pulled the earth from under his shoulder. He had forewarned her, and if she still saw fit to play the Samaritan, he would make no further attempt to stop her. So he waited, grim and alert, ready to extricate himself the instant the hole was sufficiently enlarged.
The girl worked with breathless energy at her self-imposed task, and in a few minutes she had burrowed through to meet Dexter's excavation. There seemed to be no sense of feeling in his shoulder, yet somehow he knew when the pressure was taken away. He flexed his cramped muscles, and found he could still move his body. Slowly he wriggled free, and then, concentrating his will force into the effort, he gripped at the rough tree trunk and weakly hoisted himself to his feet.
The corporal's face was immutable as a death mask as he bent forward to confront the crouching girl. "I'm sorry you didn't go when you could," he said. "Now it's too late. You're my prisoner."
Alison got to her feet and stood erect, her breast heaving. "I had to do that much," she returned. "You did more than that for me one time. But now—now I've got to think of myself, and of my brother. Neither of us is going to let anybody arrest us, if we can help it—and so—" She stopped with a gulp and started to back away.
But Dexter had foreseen what she meant to do. The fallen tree lay between them, and the girl had counted on her ability to slip beyond reach before the officer could stumble after her. She failed to realize, however, that with some indomitable men, the physical body may be held subservient to the power of mind. Dexter was watching, and anticipated her intention a second before she started to leave him. Weak and giddy as he felt, he nevertheless held a last reserve of strength to answer the mental summons. As a runner spurs himself onward with the final gasp of breath, so he sprang forward and somehow managed to clear the log. Alison was taken by surprise, and before she could turn to flee, he had planted himself before her. "I warned you!" he muttered; and then his left hand shot out and closed tightly about her wrist.
For two or three seconds the girl and the policeman faced each other tensely in the soft moonlight; and then, as she met his steely gaze, her eyes narrowed, her lips drew apart, her breathing quickened. "Let go!" she panted.
With a twist and a wrench she tried to withdraw her slender wrist from his grasp. He shook his head with a slight movement, and his grip tightened. The restraining clutch seemed to madden her, and she fought wildly, furiously, to free herself. But disabled as he was, shaken by many hours of suffering, he still was stronger than she. Back and forth they struggled over the snowy ground, relentless antagonists, the girl desperately determined to escape, the man coldly resolved that she should not break away from him.
Neither spoke, and the soft night silence was disturbed only by the crunch of boots scuffling in the snow. In groping for a securer foothold, Dexter slipped and lurched forward, stumbling. The girl found her chance. Quick as a flash she doubled her arm and thrust her elbow into the corporal's shoulder; at the same time she tried with all her might to force him backwards, and wrest herself free from his grasp.
Dexter was conscious of a sharp, gritting sound, and a spasm of pain surged through his body and lapped about him like fire. He reeled for an instant on his feet, and an involuntary cry of anguish was wrung from his lips. A red haze filled his brain, while stars and moon and the white-gleaming mountainsides all seemed to swirl about him in inexplicable tangles. There came to him a horrible conviction that he was about to faint. He fought hard to keep his feet, to throw off the feeling of dizziness. As he stared into vacancy, trying to hold his wavering faculties, he was dimly aware that the girl still stood before him.
"I hurt you!" she was sobbing. "I didn't mean—I forgot!"
He looked at her wonderingly, and saw that her cheeks were wet with tears. "'S nothing," he said thickly. "'S all right!"
"It isn't!" Alison gasped. "To think that we—that you and I— Oh, we mustn't—we mustn't!"
"You didn't think I wanted to, did you?" Dexter gazed at her with gradually clearing vision. "I told you what to expect," he went on in a husky voice, "and it's something that I've got to do. You know that, don't you?"
"You can be so hard," she said—"you who have been so gentle."
"It isn't I." The corporal drew a slow breath as his shoulders sagged hopelessly. "I want to let you go; but I haven't anything to do with it. I'd let you go if I could. Don't you understand?"
"You don't need to," she returned in a hushed voice. "You've won. I give you my word of honor not to—not to try to get away."
Dexter raised his head sharply, his glance searching into the depths of her misty eyes. "Why?" he asked.
"Because I could never endure going through a thing like this again," she faltered. "Let anything happen rather than that." She buried her face in her hands, and her shoulders shook with sobbing. "You and I hurting each other!" she finished incoherently. "Oh, no!
"Please!" she went on faintly, after a little silence. "I've promised, and you—you're hurting me still." She moved her wrist with a gentle tug, and he realized all at once that he was still holding her with a merciless, unbreakable grip.
"Alison!" he cried, his fingers instantly unlocking. "I'm sorry!" He looked at her in the moonlight, with eyes grown moist: seeing the forlorn, trembling little figure waiting submissively, feeling the soft appeal of the grave, wistful face that lifted slowly to meet his gaze. A wave of pitying tenderness swept upon him, and there came to him also a feeling of self-contempt, and for a minute he was almost ashamed of his service and the coat he wore. The knowledge that he had been forced to deal ruthlessly, cruelly, with such a woman as Alison Rayne, would always remain a galling remembrance.
He breathed unsteadily as he faced her, and, scarcely knowing what he was doing, he reached about her and circled her yielding shoulders with his arm. "Alison!" he whispered.
With a throbbing gasp the girl swayed towards him and pressed her flushed cheek against his jacket. "I'm tired," she said—"so tired."
For a long space the corporal stood without speech, holding her close, feeling her heart beating, intoxicated by the warmth and nearness of her presence, touching her fragrant hair with his cheek, thrilled to his innermost being by the sweetness of an ineffable moment, dreaming a dream that his reason told him could never come true.
But as he gazed yearningly over the girl's bowed head, he caught a glimpse of a rising star—the Dog Star—creeping up over the southern horizon. It was the star of spring, and it promised the opening of the passes, the speedy coming of comrades from the distant barracks of the police. And as his glance ranged down the shimmering sky, somehow the magical spell was broken, and sanity returned. He caught himself with a shivering movement, and his arm dropped swiftly to his side.
"I think we'd better be going," he said abruptly, with a strange gruffness in his voice. "If you're ready—?"
She averted her face with a quivering sigh, and her eyelids drooped and closed; but after an instant she flung up her head, as though to toss the straying tendrils of hair from her eyes; her shoulders and back straightened, and she turned to Dexter with a cool, inscrutable glance. "Whenever you say," she agreed.
The corporal appreciated the impossibility of going back to Saddle Mountain that night, but he bent his steps northward, with no definite place in view, feeling only the urge to leave this spot, to be on the move, to go somewhere else. He led the way through a scented growth of cedars, along the mountain slope, the girl following meekly at his heels. They had not gone far, however, before he realized how foolish it was to attempt to travel. He was exhausted, almost ready to collapse. Two or three times he slipped in the snow and swayed on his uncertain legs, and each time he managed somehow to recover himself and push onward. Alison pleaded with him to use the support of her shoulder, but he smiled and shook his head. "I'm all right," he insisted.
It was foolish talk, and he knew it. And at last he was forced to give in. They had climbed to a level shelf of ground, screened on all sides by dense brush, and after a wavering glance about him, Dexter decided to call a halt.
"We'll have to stop here," he said. "I can't go farther."
"Is there any need?" Alison asked.
"I don't know. I guess not. Anyhow, here we are." His legs seemed to double under him, and he sank down slowly, and sat in the snow. "The thickets would hide our fire if we wanted to build one," he observed.
Without a word she left him to hunt through the timber, and returned presently with her arms full of down wood. She built up a little teepee of dry sticks, lighted a match, and almost at once had a cheerful fire blazing in the sheltered covert. Then she unstrapped the pack she had brought with her, brought out a pair of blankets, and spread them on the ground.
"Now," she said with a troubled glance—"what are we going to do about your shoulder?"
"It seems to be the upper arm, near the shoulder socket," he observed, feeling with tentative fingers. "Do you suppose you could help me off with my jacket?"
She gave him the needed assistance, and afterwards slit his shirt sleeve with her knife, to expose the bruised, swollen flesh of his arm. "I don't see how you stood it," she murmured.
Dexter was examining the broken member with critical concern. "Simple fracture," was his diagnosis. "Splints and bandages, and we'll make out." He picked up three or four tough hardwood sticks that were left over from the fire kindling. "These'll do nicely." He regarded her questioningly. "Do you think you could hang on to my elbow while I pull? Or, if you'd rather, we'll strap my hand to a sapling, and I can do my stretching for myself."
"I think I can—help," she said. "We'll try."
The corporal made his few simple arrangements, instructed his companion in the part she was to play, and then nodded to indicate that he was ready. She took hold of his arm, closing her eyes, and holding tightly.
"Now!" he said. Gritting his teeth, he leaned backward and tugged with a strong, steady pull, and presently the fingers of his left hand told him that the fractured ends of bone were drawn back together. "The sticks!" he said faintly, sliding his hand forward to support his arm in its rigid position.
Under his directions the girl fixed the splints, and bound them securely in place with strips torn from the hem of a blanket. The job was finally accomplished to Dexter's satisfaction. For safety's sake the arm was swathed in outer wrappings and fastened securely against his chest.
"Ought to knit straight," he managed to say. He noticed the woe-begone expression of his companion's face, and attempted to laugh at her; but the effort was rather feeble, and his voice sounded strange in his own ears.
"Anything I can do to make you more comfortable?" she asked after a pause.
"No," he said. "You've been very fine about it all. Thank you." His glance strayed to the edge of the shadowy thicket. "I'll have to take it easy for a while—stay here. Those men—Crill and Stark and the rest—they might change their minds and come back. Find our trail, and come up here. Can't be helped if they do." His good hand made a fatalistic gesture. "Well, we'll have to take the chance."
Alison was watching from across the fire with shadowed eyes, and she suddenly noticed the stem of his pipe sticking from his jacket pocket. "You can't have smoked all day," she abruptly remarked. "Maybe you'd like to."
"Don't know but that I would," he said unsteadily.
She found his pouch, stuffed the pipe bowl with tobacco, and thrust the stem between his teeth. Dexter smiled gratefully, his eyes following her movements as she bent over the fire and picked up a lighted brand. But as he watched her come back to him, a glowing ember in her hand, something all at once seemed to go wrong with his eyesight. The girl, the firelight, the ragged line of the thickets, all became hazy and unreal, fading before him. He tried to hold his head erect, but the effort was too great. His eyelids closed like leaden weights, the pipe dropped from his mouth, blackness flooded upon him, and he toppled with a sigh and fell forward upon his face.
The vertical rays of a blazing hot sun aroused Dexter from his lethargy. He felt light and warmth beating upon his face, and with the first faint stirring of consciousness his ears were aware of sounds of dripping water. A crisp smell of wood smoke drifted to his nostrils, and there came to him also stray wisps of odor that moved him to a pleased, drowsy recollection of an appetizing stew he had eaten some time or other from a camp kettle. He lay with his eyes closed, a little puzzled by his reviving sensations, trying to think where he was and what it all meant.
And then, all at once, he recalled. He had been sitting by a fire, waiting for Alison Rayne to give him a light for his pipe when suddenly he had lost consciousness. Presumably he had fainted, and from his stupor he must have passed into a deep, natural sleep. And he evidently had been sleeping for a long time. He opened his eyes, and hastily closed them again before the dazzling brightness of the sun. It was about noon, he decided. For a while longer he remained motionless, but presently he lifted his hand to shade his face, and again looked about him.
He was lying in the confines of a thick juniper clump, his body wrapped in a blanket, his head resting on a sweater that had been wadded up for a pillow. Near his feet a small fire crackled cheerfully. Over the fire hung a blackened bucket, with a savory steam issuing from beneath its dancing cover. Cross-legged on the ground, bending like an officiating priestess over the smoking embers, sat Alison Rayne.
The girl had discarded her white sweater, and wore a faded khaki shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, with sleeves rolled up over her smooth forearms. She held a forked stick in her small, somewhat grimy hand, and as the corporal watched, she took the lid from the bucket, poked at its contents, and then drew up her head to sniff with an air of complete satisfaction at the cloud of ascending steam. Her face was turned in profile, and Dexter could see only the soft curve of her cheek and the tip of her pert nose, as she bent in absorption over her cookery. A lock of her thick, bronze hair had fallen over her eyes, and she had not yet discovered that he was awake; but something in the corporal's searching regard must have acted with telepathic force, for she turned suddenly with a startled movement to meet his gaze.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. Her red lips parted in the suggestion of a smile. "Hello!"
"Hello!" said Dexter with a whimsical lift of one eyebrow. "Have I been sleeping for hours or for days?"
"Only since last night." She got to her feet and stood over him, a faint embarrassment in her manner. "You were a little feverish this morning, but I noticed a few minutes ago that the temperature's gone down."
"You've been looking after me all this time!" he said uncomfortably. "Have you had any sleep?"
"Oh, yes," she hastened to assure him. "I've got another blanket here, and I did pretty well during the night. Only bothered once in a while to see how you were doing."
"It makes me feel mighty mean, knowing you've done all this for me," Dexter remarked, and shook his head glumly. "The way things stand, it makes me feel sort of low-down and ungrateful. Even my thanks wouldn't seem to have much meaning."
"I don't want your thanks," she returned quickly. "Were you looking for thanks last fall for taking care of my brother? He thinks you saved his life."
Dexter glanced up sharply as she admitted her relationship with the boy in the cabin across the valley. But he made no comment. "It's the business of the police to render services when needed," he said lightly.
Alison had turned aside to stoop over her cooking fire. She lifted the lid from the simmering bucket, dipped in a tin cup, and offered her companion a steaming drink. "Rabbit broth," she said. "I went down to the brook this morning to see what I could find, and a little rabbit got frightened of me and jumped into a deep, mushy drift, and I caught him and skinned him and cooked him—hating myself." She faced him with a strange shyness in her eyes. "Anyhow, you needn't go hungry."
The corporal hoisted himself to a sitting posture, suppressing a groan as he stretched his stiff, sore muscles. He reached forward to take the cup, but found himself weaker than he had imagined.
"Here!" said the girl as the hot fluid slopped over his unsteady fingers. She knelt down before him, a faint rose leaf color tinging her cheeks as she did so; and she held the cup for him while he drank. In such manner he contrived to finish a second and third cupful of broth. And the rich, scalding liquid seemed to act as a magic potion. His feeling of lassitude and incompetency departed with the warming of his blood, and all at once it occurred to him that there was no sense in sitting idle, making an invalid of himself.
"We may as well be going," he announced abruptly, the old brisk note of decision returning to his voice.
"Do you think you ought to?" she said with a dubious glance.
"Got to!" Steadying himself with his hand, he cast aside the blanket and stood erect.
"Where do we go?" she asked faintly.
"Up the valley where you left us last fall," he told her, staring off with feigned interest towards the distant mountain ridges. "Colonel Devreaux is waiting for me."
"Oh, the colonel!" she exclaimed. "He—lived?"
Dexter nodded without speaking. The girl eyed him for a moment from under drooping lashes, and then quietly set about the preparations for breaking camp. No word was spoken of her promise of the night before, but it was tacitly understood between them that where he went, she had pledged herself to go.
They gathered up their scanty belongings, and the corporal forced himself to do his share of the work. He insisted on shouldering the larger pack, and after stamping out the fire, he led the way through the thicket and started on his northward journey.
In his present physical condition Dexter knew he could not hope to make the return trip in one, or even two, days; but he struck forward resolutely, intending to travel as far as he could while his strength lasted. It was a warm, almost sultry afternoon, and the snow was turning to water under the burning sun and running off the mountain slopes in thousands of trickling rivulets. The corporal's back-leading trail along the creek was waist-deep in slush and he was forced to search out new paths, across the higher shoulders of the mountain.
It was slippery, dangerous going at times, requiring the corporal's strictest attention in seeking the pathway ahead. For the most part they picked their way forward in silence, but now and then they would strike an easier stretch, and he was able to exchange a word or two with his companion as she trudged at his heels.
"What became of you that day last fall?" he asked her, while they were pushing across a level strip of ground. "I had misgivings about you all winter—fearing you might not have come through the storm."
"I went down through the valley, and crossed eastward into a frightful tangle of wilderness," she said. "I don't know how I lived through that night and the next. But I found a nook of shelter under the roots of a great tree, and in some way or another I built a fire and huddled over it. I stayed there, half frozen, with very little to eat, until the storm stopped. After that I started out, trying to find my brother. I was lost—didn't know which direction to go. I just had to guess, and, well—some guiding power must have helped me. There was not one chance in a thousand of my reaching any place, and yet, after a two days' struggle, I crossed over a wooded ridge, dragged myself up a snow-buried stream, and walked right into the cabin I was searching for—the place where you had left my brother the first day of the storm. I was about dead—fell on the doorsill. But Archie was there, and he heard me and carried me in. He was nearly frantic, not knowing what had become of me. He was unable to travel; could only wait, hoping for news."
"I don't mind admitting that I was a bit worried about you myself," remarked Dexter, glancing at her across his shoulder. "I wonder that you weren't frozen to death."
"I almost was," she said, and smiled vaguely as she met his eyes. "But I guess I'm about as hard to kill as you are."
"You and your brother spent the winter in that cabin?" he asked.
"Yes. We had enough food and fuel. It was hard, but we got through."
"Was Stark with you?" the corporal inquired casually.
She faced him squarely, and shook her head. "There was nobody with us. We saw no one else during the entire winter."
"You met Stark some time yesterday though," he observed.
"Why, no." She spoke in seeming frankness. "I told you—I've seen nobody but my brother, since I left you last fall."
"How did you know where to find me yesterday—under that tree trunk?" Dexter asked, fixing her with searching scrutiny.
"I was—I was just walking along the brook," she said after a moment's hesitation. "And there you were—"
"You were calling my name," the corporal interrupted. "That was before you could have seen me, or known that I was anywhere in the neighborhood." He shook his head with skepticism. "I supposed that you came deliberately out of the kindness of your heart—knowing that I was in trouble." He watched her tensely. "Somebody must have told you."
Alison averted her face for a moment, and apparently found nothing to say. When at length she turned back to meet Dexter's questioning gaze, the curve of her mouth had straightened into a stubborn line, the violet softness of her eyes seemingly changed to a chilly blue.
"I have told you that I saw nobody," she said in a voice that seemed to take her a thousand miles away from him. "It'll have to be enough for you to know merely that I found you. And I couldn't let you—or any living thing, for that matter—die in a trap. We'll have to let it go at that. Meanwhile you ought to be satisfied to remember that I'm your prisoner. I've given you my parole, and I won't try to escape again."
There was something in her straightforward gaze that forced Dexter to believe she told the truth—that she had not met Stark or his companions. Yet he knew equally well that she had not blundered by accident upon that remote spot where the tree had fallen upon him. She had learned of his plight somehow; but he could not guess by what strange, occult medium the knowledge had reached her. As he studied her inscrutable features, he recalled the mystifying events of the previous fall: how news had traveled unaccountably through the forest silences, how voices seemed to carry between distant places, without any visible means of transmission. As he had been hopelessly puzzled before, so now he found no answer or explanation; and with the fever throbbing in his brain, he scarcely felt capable of thinking.
Alison gave back his glance with fearless, unyielding eyes, and he knew how useless it was to question her. He gave it up for the present, and, beckoning with a curt nod, he turned in silence and started forward again on the trail.
A voyageur in the best physical trim would have found it fatiguing to travel along the rough mountain slopes, breaking a path over fallen snow crust, wallowing through deep, soggy drifts. Before he had traveled a mile of his journey, Dexter found himself growing short of breath, slipping and floundering more than a trained mountaineer should. It took determination to push onward, but he kept going as long as he could; until his head was reeling and his legs tottered under him. The heavy pounding of his heart warned him at last, and he had sense enough to quit. He was anxious to reach Devreaux, but he must take his time about it.
It was an hour or more before sundown when he finally admitted that he could go no farther. They made camp in the lee of a warm rock ledge, the corporal helping to gather sticks to build the night fire. The remains of the rabbit stew were heated, and as soon as he had eaten his supper, Dexter rolled up in a blanket and almost instantly dropped off into profound slumber. He slept all night like a dead man, and did not awaken until the morning sun flooded upon him over the eastern mountain peaks.
Every bone and muscle of his body was an aching torment, but he forced himself to his feet, and as soon as possible he and Alison resumed their northward journey. They moved by easy stages up the valley that day, stopping at intervals for rest, and then pushing on again a little farther. And some time during mid-afternoon they crossed the flank of a forested hillslope, and caught a distant view of Saddle Mountain, looming in pale white outline against the limpid sky.
Complete exhaustion forced the corporal to call a halt at a point five or six miles south of the double peaks, but he went to sleep that evening with the assurance that he would be able to reach his destination by noon of the following day.
Alison, for some reason, was in a subdued and quiet mood when they set forth next morning to finish the last stage of their journey. She answered the corporal's occasional remarks in the barest monosyllables, but she kept closer at his side than usual; and frequently, when she thought he was not looking, she would glance stealthily towards him, from under veiling lashes, as though she had grown curious to know what thoughts lurked behind the stern immobility of his weather-bronzed face. Several times Dexter caught her unawares, before she could turn her eyes away, and he gathered, from her troubled expression, that there was something on her mind that needed saying. It was not until they were climbing the last slope across the base of Saddle Mountain, however, that she finally broke the silence that had lasted between them all that morning.
"I wonder what you think of me?" she blurted out unexpectedly.
The suddenness of the question startled him. "Why—what do you mean?"
"You know what I mean!" She spoke in a voice tremulous with repressed feeling. "But there's no need of asking. It's horrible—what I realize you do think. And I can't—it's almost more than I can bear."
"Why, Alison," he began wonderingly, "you must know—"
She interrupted with a passionate gesture. "I do know. That newspaper clipping you showed me—it's about me and my brother. We ran away—yes. That much is true, but the rest of it is a lie—a shameless lie. Neither Archie nor I had anything to do with my uncle's—with the dreadful thing they charged. I'm telling you the truth. I swear it's the truth!"
Dexter looked down grimly at the girl, steeling his heart against the appeal of beseeching blue eyes. "It's been my experience," he observed, "that innocent people as a rule do not run from the law."
"I know—I know!" she cried brokenly. "It looks bad not to stay, and I wanted to stay and face it out. We never would have left home if I'd had my way!"
"Well?" he asked mildly.
"As you read in the clipping," she went on in quick, overwrought speech, "my uncle, our guardian, died, and it was found that a poison had been given him. Archie and I were his heirs. We were—the police discovered that we were the only ones in the household who had easy access to his medicine. Archie had been foolishly playing the market, had lost heavily, was in desperate financial straits. That all came out, and—well, we got word that a murder indictment had been brought by the grand jury. And Archie lost his head—saw no hope of escape if he stayed—decided there was nothing to do but run while he had the chance."
"He got together all the money he could," she added in a choking voice; "he packed a bag, and left secretly in the night. But I had been watching." She shook her head sadly. "Archie is younger than I, the baby—I've got to say it—the weakling of the family. I knew he would do the wrong thing. And I followed him and overtook him at the station as he was about to board a west-bound train. I argued, pleaded, begged him to stay and see it through. He was afraid—desperately. I could do nothing with him, and so at the end—there was nothing for me to do but get on the train and go with him. He's always needed looking after, and at the last—well, I had to stand by him. I couldn't let him go alone."
"Believing him innocent, of course," Dexter remarked dryly.
Alison threw up her head and confronted her companion with flashing eyes. "I know he is innocent!" she declared passionately. "I didn't even ask him to swear to me. I've known him all his life, and I know he's utterly incapable of that crime—of any crime. I've never blinded myself to his weaknesses, but I know also that he could never have done this thing."
"In any event," observed the corporal, walking onward with a slow, deliberate stride, "he lacked the courage of innocence, and cleared out. I suppose he had already bargained with one of Stark's agents to help him escape through the Canadian wilderness."
"With—what do you mean?" asked the girl sharply.
"I know all about Stark and his organization for fugitive criminals," Dexter said. "I'd already suspected the existence of an underground railroad, running through this country." His lips twisted into a fleeting smile. "And Stark himself did me the honor to tell me the details of his business—when he thought I was doomed to certain death."
"In that case," said Alison after a little pause, "I'm not betraying—Yes: one of Stark's men came to Archie in his trouble. He offered the chance of escape, took all the money Archie had left and Stark has helped us this far on our way.
"It's—I can't ask you to have my faith in Archie," the girl resumed after a momentary pause. "It isn't about him that I really want to talk, but—" She glanced towards Dexter with a timidity that he had never before seen in her eyes. "It's about the night you found me at that cabin where—where the men were killed."
"Yes?" he urged as she hesitated.
Alison's rounded chin set resolutely. It was apparent that there was something she had decided to say, and she did not propose to mince matters. "You told me that you heard a woman's voice in that cabin over yonder, just before the two men were shot in their bunks. You say there were no footprints near the place beside my own. So by police logic you arrive at the only deduction that fits the case. I must have fired the shots."
They had climbed the southward slope leading across the foot of Saddle Mountain, and were now making their way over a stretch of rough, furrowed ground along the edge of the open plateau. Dexter absently offered his hand to steady the girl's steps across a slippery outcropping of rock. "You came to that cabin that night from the cabin farther up the valley, where I afterwards found your brother," he stated with thoughtfully knitting brows. "Why did you make that journey alone at such an hour?"
"To find help for Archie," she answered. "You saw him yourself next day, and know how badly he needed it. I didn't know what to do for him, and so I went down the valley to the lower cabin, looking for some one who might know more about such matters than I."
"Who in particular?" the corporal persisted.
"Anybody who might have been there. What difference did it make who, as long as he could do something to relieve Archie of his pain?"
Dexter eyed the girl covertly for a space as she walked at his elbow. "Did you know a man named Mudgett?" he inquired.
"I don't remember seeing such a person, but I think I'd heard the name."
"One of Stark's gang, wasn't he?"
"Why, possibly he and Mr. Stark were associated in some way. I'm not positive though."
"Who was Mudgett's companion that night—small, swarthy, hook-beaked chap with sullen black eyes?"
"I don't recall seeing any man who answers that description," Alison asserted.
"He and Mudgett were the two who were shot," Dexter said, as he keenly scrutinized her sensitive features.
The girl nodded slowly, without speaking.
"You had no feelings against either of these men? They didn't know anything you were afraid they might tell?"
Alison's face blanched under her companion's merciless gaze, and he saw it was all she could do to keep back her tears. "Oh, what could—I swear to you—I didn't know either of them, even by sight. So why would I—what motive could there be?"
"I've been asking myself that question for months," Dexter observed. "The motive? All I know is that the woman's voice I heard talking in that dark cabin said something about dead tongues never talking. The few fragments of speech suggested the idea that either fear or vengeance had much to do with the tragedy. You have no notion of what it all meant?"
"No!" she moaned. "How could I? I don't know anything more than you yourself have told me."
The corporal strode along for a distance in meditative silence, soberly watching the ground underfoot. Alison looked up at him, and shook her head, and sighed. "It isn't that I'm hoping to influence you in your duty," she said at last in a small, stifled voice. "I don't think I—-I'd want you to yield an inch from the straight line as you see it, even if I could persuade you. And I know I couldn't. I'm not asking anything, only—"
"Only what?" he asked as she failed to finish.
"I want you to believe that I have done nothing wrong," she said in stumbling accents. "I know what I've got to go through later with others, but if you didn't think evil of me, then I—it would make it a little easier."
"You were the only woman in that section of the forest that night," Dexter stated dully, and deep lines of unhappiness were graven at the corners of his mouth. "Can I deny the testimony of my own eyes and ears? I was there, and saw and heard."
"Try to believe in me," she sobbed. "I—I'm not bad. Won't you try to think that I'm not? Please!"
"As a man, I want to believe: you know that! But as a policeman—" He turned his head aside for a moment to hide the anguish in his face. "As a policeman," he went on somberly, "I've got to believe in the evidence that I gather—in facts."
"Don't think of evidence now," she begged in a piteous voice. "Think—try to think—just of me."
"I've done little else but that, Alison, since the first night I saw you," he told her with a faint, sad smile.
"Then—" She caught her breath with a quivering sound. "Look at me, David!" Her hand fluttered towards him and touched his wrist. "Look!"
Slowly he turned, and found himself gazing deep into her eyes—straight-seeing eyes, clear and soft blue as violets—eyes overflowing with womanly sweetness, giving back his glance, unafraid and unashamed.
"Do you believe?" she whispered.
He gazed long and searchingly, and somehow all sense of doubting left him. "I do!" he declared suddenly, in a straining voice. "I've got to. What else can I do? It's impossible not to believe the truth when you see it. I believe in you."
"Oh!" she said with a full-drawn sigh, and Dexter saw the sparkle of tears in her eyes as her lashes slowly closed. "That's all I wanted," she breathed.
"Alison!" he cried. He swayed towards her, impelled by an overwhelming desire to touch her, to feel her nearness, to draw her into the comforting circle of his arm. "Alison!"
The girl lifted her head to face him, seeing the look he gave her, and she did not move away. "Yes," she said, so low he barely heard.
He stood for an instant in wavering silence, and then all at once he caught himself with a startled movement. The muscles of his body stiffened, and the inflexible line of his jaw reasserted itself. "There's nothing we can do about it," he said.
They had halted for a moment on the open plateau, standing in knee deep snow; but now Dexter turned with heavy steps and started to break his way forward once more through the drift. Alison at once caught pace with him.
"I hadn't asked you to do anything about it," she reminded him quietly.
Dexter gave no sign of hearing her, but went on in a ruminative voice, following the train of his own thoughts. "I must take you to the fort with me, and lay all our data before the commissioner. What I may feel in my heart, and what the logic of the law decides, are two different matters. I'm still a policeman, Alison, whatever else I may be, and I'm going through straight—clean."
"Listen!" the girl interrupted sharply. She threw up her chin, and there was a compelling quality in her tone that forced him to meet her eyes. "I have asked for only one thing—just blind, honest faith. You have given it to me. Don't spoil it, David, please! I've asked for nothing else."
"I didn't exactly mean it that way," Dexter said unsteadily.
"I hope you didn't," she returned, "because—I know as well as you know that you could never do anything that wasn't absolutely right in your own mind. If you ever failed in a trust you wouldn't be you." She smiled wanly. "And then—things wouldn't matter much one way or another—would they?"
"Don't!" he protested. "Please! Let's not talk like this. Let's try and find the way out somehow."
They were not more than fifty yards from the coppice where the entrance of the bear cave was hidden. If Devreaux were at home a shout would have reached him, but the corporal for the time being had forgotten the existence of his commanding officer, and did not think to announce himself. He trudged along with bent head, weighed in profoundest thought. But at last the scowl cleared from his face, and he looked up intense and eager.
"I'll tell you!" he exclaimed. "Here's what we can do!"
"What?" The girl stared at him, apparently a little frightened by his sudden vehemence.
"My enlistment expires this spring," he declared. "I won't reenlist."
"Then what?" she asked, a strange limpness sounding in her voice.
"Why, then, I'll be my own man, of course."
"You won't be your own man until you've discharged your present duties," Alison said with a quick, sidewise glance.
"Of course not," he agreed. "I'll have to take you to the fort and turn you over. They're decent chaps down there. They'll make it as easy as possible for you—"
"Oh, I see," Alison interrupted. "I didn't quite understand what you meant."
"Just this," he plunged on—"I come back here as a free agent. There's a mystery in all this business that we haven't even begun to fathom. The facts as they stand make things look very black for you, but we'll get at the bottom of the affair somehow. I'll work day and night. I'll never rest until I dig out the truth. You've forced me against my reason to believe in you absolutely, and with such faith to back me, I know that I cannot fail!"
Dexter had entered the thicket beyond the treeless plateau, and was picking his way absentmindedly over the broken ground. The entrance of the cave was only a few paces distant, concealed behind a clump of bushes. As he skirted the fringe of underbrush, he discovered a trail of freshly made boot prints. The sight of the footmarks recalled him sharply to himself, and for the first time in the last half hour he thought of Devreaux. The colonel evidently was somewhere about, still waiting for his return.
Forcing his way through the screening branches, he reached the foot of the mountain slope and stood before the dark mouth of the cave. The line of footprints went inside. "Colonel Devreaux!" he called. "Oh, colonel!"
Nobody replied. But as he bent forward to look into the opening, he caught a sudden movement in the gloom, and the next instant a human figure loomed into view, and Dexter found himself staring full in the muzzle of a leveled rifle.
"Hands up!" commanded a sharp, high-pitched voice.
The corporal stood stock-still, gazing in blank amazement at the face that peered at him from behind the rifle sights. And all at once he recognized the unexpected intruder, and he caught his breath in wonderment. The man was Alison's brother, Archie.
It was disconcerting to meet an armed and hostile man at the place where he supposed his friend was waiting, yet Dexter did not for an instant lose his self-possession. He noticed that the rifle barrel did not hold quite steady, and he was aware that the inexperienced youth might fire in nervous excitement at any second, without giving him a chance. Before he could make up his mind what to do, however, a voice screamed out behind him, and Alison stumbled forward, apparently with some wild notion of intervening.
"Archie!" the girl cried in an agonized tone.
The corporal flung out his arm as a barrier, and thrust her back. He was watching young Preston's face, observing the line of the tensely compressed lips, staring into the blue eyes that squinted at him along the gun barrel. And it struck him all at once that the boy lacked the hardihood to pull the trigger.
They faced each other in silence for a moment, and Dexter smiled in icy contempt, "I can't obey your order about the hands," he said, "because I have only one to put up. So I won't bother at all."
With a slow, deliberate movement he unbuttoned his tunic and thrust his hand into his inside pocket. Quite casually, as though he might have reached only for a handkerchief or a match, he drew forth the small, pearl-handled revolver that he had picked up months before from the floor of the murder cabin. He knew that any instant might be his last, but he was banking on the irresolution he had read in the other's face, and was ready to accept a gambler's hazard. Gazing with cool fixity into the boy's eyes, he cocked his weapon and leveled the barrel.
"Drop that gun!" he commanded.
There was a quality in the corporal's tone to warn Preston that this was not a moment for trifling. The boy shrank backward half a pace, and his bolstered-up attitude of recklessness seemed suddenly to slip away from him. The muzzle of the rifle wavered downward; and the next instant his hands unclosed, and the weapon fell in the snow at his feet.
Dexter laughed aloud in relief. "I think I told you last fall when we met," he remarked pleasantly—"it's foolish to play with things that we don't understand."
The boy drew a short breath, and reached up unsteadily to wipe his sleeve over his moist forehead. "The rifle—it isn't loaded," he managed to gulp out. "I was just—trying to bluff."
"Eh?" Dexter regarded him sharply for an instant, and then stooped to the ground and picked up the fallen firearm.
"I ran out of cartridges several weeks ago, and—well, that's all there is to it."
"It doesn't pay to bluff in this country, unless you're ready to back it up," observed the corporal. "It's so easy to get hurt." He thrust the rifle muzzle in the snow, and with his left hand he jerked open the magazine lever, and assured himself that the weapon really held no cartridge. "I don't believe you'd have shot me anyhow, Archie," he remarked. "I honestly don't think so. Anyhow, we'll let bygones be bygones, and just forget that it happened."
During the few seconds of the swift encounter Alison had stood by, a hushed and terrified spectator. But now she moved forward suddenly to her brother's side. "Archie!" she gasped. "How did you get here? What does it mean?"
"I was looking for you," was the answer. "Just happened over this direction. Looked through the brush, and saw you coming—with the officer." The boy shook his head dejectedly. "I thought—I had hoped that I might be able to get you away from him."
"Where's Colonel Devreaux?" interrupted the corporal.
"I don't know him," said Preston. "I haven't seen anybody."
Dexter raised his head and called the superintendent's name, shouting with all the power of his lungs. He repeated the cry several times, but only echoes answered him from the mountainsides.
"Can anything have happened?" he muttered after a lengthy pause. He turned abruptly to Preston. "I want to look inside the cave," he said. "Go in ahead of me, please."
With the boy accompanying him, Dexter searched the cavern from one end to the other. But the place was empty, and he found no clew to tell him what had happened to his missing officer.
"How long have you been here?" he asked, when they finally emerged into the sunlight.
"I don't know," replied Preston. "About a half hour, I guess."
"There was no one here then?"
"Nobody."
"How'd you find the place?"
"Just accident." The boy glanced up in seeming frankness. "I was looking for—for—"
"For your sister," supplemented the corporal as the other hesitated. "You needn't be afraid of betraying any secrets. I know all about you."
"Well, yes," admitted Archie, with a sidewise glance at the girl. "We were stopping over yonder at a cabin—"
"Where I found you last fall."
"Yes. And anyhow—Alison left the other day, saying she was restless and was going for a walk." The boy shot a furtive look towards his sister. "She didn't come back, as she had promised, and so I started out that same night to hunt for her."
"Over this direction?" asked Dexter.
"It was dark," was the answer, "and I somehow lost the trail, and I've been just wandering the last couple of days—lost, I guess.
"Anyhow," Archie went on, wriggling a little under the corporal's iron scrutiny, "I happened into this neighborhood to-day, and discovered some tracks leading up the slope. I followed, just to see what there was to find out, and I came on this cave. I was looking around, trying to decide who had been here, and I caught sight of you two coming towards me. I saw you would pass this place, and I hid, and—" He smiled ruefully. "Well, you know the rest."
The boy faced about to survey his sister. "What became of you, Alison?" he asked somewhat pettishly. "If you hadn't gone running off that way we wouldn't have gotten into this mess."
"I'm sorry, Archie," she returned gently. "It was my fault, and yet—I couldn't foresee that this would happen."
"But how did it come about?" he persisted. "Where did you go?"
"Down the valley a distance," she answered evasively, and Dexter gathered from her manner that she did not wish her brother to know all that had taken place.
"And let a policeman pick you up!" The boy glanced at the corporal's empty holster, and shook his head in mystification. "I don't see how you ever let him do it. He hasn't any gun of his own, and yet he got the best of you—took your revolver from you?"
"My revolver?" she echoed.
"Yes—yours—the one he just stuck on me. How'd you ever allow him to get his hands on it?"
Dexter threw up his head with a start. "Is this your sister's revolver?" he asked after a trenchant interval. He reached into his pocket again and exhibited the weapon on the palm of his hand.
"Certainly," Preston replied without hesitation. "There's that scratch in the silver plate on the barrel. It's hers."
A look of infinite sadness passed over Dexter's face as he turned to confront the girl. "You admit this is yours?" he asked somberly.
"Admit it?" she faltered. "Why, what—?"
"Do you know where I found it?" he cut in before she could finish.
She faced him with widening eyes, but did not reply.
"On the floor of the cabin where the two murders were done—that night, when I found you there," he stated in low, incisive tones. "Here is the revolver, exactly as I picked it up, with the cases of two discharged cartridges still left in the chamber. The bullets from those cartridges were the bullets that killed the two men in the bunks."
"The revolver—I don't know how it got here," Alison said with a dry sob. "It—I carried it in the bottom of a knapsack I had, and, having no occasion to use it, I hadn't looked for it since early last fall. I may have lost it, or it may have been stolen. I—I don't know."
"That's your explanation?" Dexter asked.
"I can tell you no more than that," she said, and her face was colorless as she bowed her head before him.
"You want me to believe, then, that this revolver was stolen without your knowing: stolen by an unidentified woman who went to a lonely cabin in the wilderness at the same moment you appeared there; who shot two men, threw the smoking weapon behind the front door, and vanished without leaving a trace behind." Dexter stared at her from under lowering brows. "Is that what you want me to believe?"
"Oh, I don't know—I don't know what to think about it all," she answered tonelessly.
"I do," said Dexter. "I'm thinking of a story the colonel told me recently about—well, it was about himself when he was a younger man. And I'm thinking how foolish we are not to profit by the experiences of the men who have gone before us—to save ourselves the bitterness of learning for ourselves." He looked at the girl for a moment with eyes that had grown jaded and hard. Then, with a careless movement, he tossed the revolver in his hand, and thrust it back into his pocket.
"Come on!" he commanded harshly, and turned on his heel. "I've got to find Devreaux."
Inspection of the ground in the neighborhood of the cave discovered only one line of fresh bootmarks, and these, it was self evident, had been made by Archie Preston. But there were older tracks, still visible in the thawing snow, and after investigation, Dexter decided that the stale prints corresponded in size and pattern to the soles of Devreaux's service boots. In places where the sun's rays reached the ground the impressions had almost disappeared, and the corporal estimated that the trail must be at least two days old. It would seem that the colonel, for some reason, had permanently abandoned his safe quarters under Saddle Mountain. The presumption might be that he had grown uneasy after long waiting, and had ventured into the wilderness to seek his missing comrade.
Dexter lingered only to make up a pack of the scanty provisions that still were left in the cave; and then, with a terse movement of his head, he beckoned Archie and Alison to accompany him and set out to look for his officer. The faint trail led him back across the plateau, over the flank of the mountain and down into the brook valley below. Unfortunately the thawing snows of the last couple of days had flooded into the lower levels, flowing over the mush-ice of the stream; and the embankment where Devreaux had walked was now submerged under a foot of running water. The trail had long since washed away.
The corporal, however, was not greatly disconcerted. If Devreaux had gone to search for him, he naturally would follow the brook course to the notch in the lower valley, where the police packs were cached. They must have passed each other unknowingly on the road. He had only to retrace the steps of his weary journey, and undoubtedly he would somewhere pick up the trail again.
Dexter was worried chiefly about the colonel's physical condition. He was not yet in fit shape to travel. Also there was a disquieting possibility that he might have encountered Stark and his gang at some point along the route. At the last thought an unpleasant glitter came into the corporal's eyes, and his jaw set with granite hardness. There was nothing to do but push onward as fast as he could.
He had supposed that he had reached the end of his endurance when he arrived at the cavern that afternoon, but for a comrade's sake he spurred his flagging energies to carry on a little longer. Until darkness set in he made his way southward along the banks of the creek, struggling through slush and mud, and forcing his lagging companions to keep up the pace. It was impossible to see the ground before him when he finally consented to halt for the night.
The three travelers ate their meal in dejected silence, and immediately afterwards stretched themselves on the wet ground by the embers of a dying fire. Dexter shared his blanket with Archie Preston, and he served a last warning before he allowed himself to drop off to sleep.
"You understand, of course, that you're my prisoner," he said. "I'll wake up at the least stir, and if you're wise you'll keep very quiet, and try to get a good night's rest."
Dexter aroused himself next morning before daylight, and, leaving his blanket mate in fretful, tossing sleep, he built a fire and started breakfast cooking. When the modest meal was ready, he awakened his fellow voyageurs to the new day of hardship and wet discomfort. Alison was the first to answer his call, and she shook off her blanket to stand yawning and shivering in the chilly dawn. She and the corporal pointedly avoided each other's glances, and such conversation as they were forced to exchange was brief and formal.
To Dexter's surprise when he took the trail once more, he found himself walking with some measure of his old free-swinging stride. A body and physique tempered by clean, active living, had begun to recuperate from the shock of injury and the exhausting effects of overexertion. His broken arm still pained him at intervals but mental alertness had returned, and the fever was gone from his blood. Save for the inconvenience of a useless right hand, he assured himself that within a few days he would be quite himself again.
They made a long march that day, and their evening camp was not far from the ravine where the corporal had nearly met death in the timber wreck. As he had worked down the long valley, Dexter had kept vigilant watch for signs that might tell him what had become of his lost comrade. At each bending of the stream, in every new opening among the trees, he gazed about him with a recurring sense of dread, always half expecting to see the dun shape of a khaki-clad figure sprawled motionless in the snow. But the glistening world of slush and trickling water stretched endlessly before him, and nowhere was there any clew to show that human beings had lately passed that way.
The little party of travelers was afoot early next day, trudging downstream along the margin of the rising brook. Before noon they reached the spot where Dexter had attempted to leap from the path of the snow slide. Broken, splintered tree trunks were piled like jack straws across the course of the creek, forming a dam that backed the water along the bordering banks. All trace of recent footprints had vanished with the melting snows. There was nothing to be learned here, and after a grim survey of his changed surroundings, the corporal gave the word to push forward again.
By midafternoon they found themselves approaching the snow-choked defile that led out through the lower valley, and the corporal sighted the landmarks that located the colonel's buried store of supplies. The cache had not been disturbed since Dexter's recent visit, and there was no evidence to show that any other person had set foot in that part of the valley. Devreaux either must have fallen somewhere by the wayside, or else, for some reason unguessed, he had wandered off another direction, to lose himself in the deeper wilderness.
The corporal was too tired to seek farther that afternoon so he contented himself with rifling the provision bags and cooking the first square meal he had eaten in days. The wayfarers passed the night on a dry ledge of rock, warm and comfortably fed, sleeping like three weary children.
But by daylight Dexter was on the move again, continuing his hunt for the missing police officer. For nearly a week he kept up his fruitless searching; ranging through miles of the dense wilderness, penetrating the tangled depths of gulch and ravine, scrambling across steep mountain slopes and climbing onward to the higher ridges, whence he could scan the desolate stretches of country below him. And wherever he went, Archie and Alison were always forced to go with him.
Days passed, and day by day the sun marched north and poured warmth and brightness upon a reawakened world. Bare patches of earth began to appear where deep winter snows had lain; and then, almost over night, it seemed, the meadows and exposed hill slopes were carpeted with green. The claw marks of wandering grizzlies were sometimes found, scuffling beside deep pools, where cut-throat trout were leaping; and sheep and goats showed themselves once more, posing against the blue sky on far, dizzy pinnacles of the mountains. Along the brooksides the willows and alders were tipped with bursting life, and the ice had broken out at last and rode downstream with the brawling waters. Dexter realized that within a few more days the mountain passes would be accessible to travel.
What had become of the colonel, he could not imagine. Perhaps the old man had fallen somewhere along the route; perhaps he was still alive, hidden in some wilderness fastness, waiting until he was strong enough to take the trail again. Dead or alive, however, he had already issued his command; and the law of the mounted permits no deviation from the stern line of duty, even for the sake of a comrade. It might take months to find a lost man in that vast, trackless forest. Meanwhile a grim and urgent business awaited, and it was time to act. So one morning Dexter abandoned his futile search, and turned his face resolutely to the northward.
Alison and her brother had tramped the forests with him for days. The girl had given him her promise not to escape, and he somehow had the feeling that she would keep her word. But he knew by the furtive, restless look in the boy's eyes that he would make a break for liberty the first chance he was given. So Dexter always kept Archie close beside him, never for an instant relaxing his vigilance. He did not tell his companions of his intentions, but when he left off his wandering and turned abruptly on a straight line north, no doubt they guessed that he was once more following the outlaws' trail.
He had crossed over the ridge into the eastern part of the valley, and made his way up the brook where Constable Graves had met death. If he hoped to get in touch with Stark's crowd, he knew he must find the upper pass without delay, so he forced as fast a pace as he could. He was confident that men from Fort Dauntless would soon put in an appearance, and he kept a pocket ax in hand, blazing his path behind him, leaving marks that any policeman would read and follow.
They reached the spruce forest of tragic memory, and the corporal made a detour that brought him past the burned cabin. There remained only an ugly, blackened heap of debris to tell where the structure had stood, and an inspection of the clearing convinced Dexter that no one had set foot there since his own departure on the morning after the double murder. There was a haunted look in Alison's eyes as she stared at the sodden pile of wreckage, and she gasped in audible relief when he finally beckoned her to come away.
The next noonday was spent at Stark's cabin, ten miles farther upstream, where Alison and her brother had lived during the winter months. There were no fresh trails in the neighborhood, and Dexter lingered only for a short rest, and then resumed his journey.
His route beyond this point carried him into an unfamiliar country—a country that grew wilder and more forbidding with every mile he advanced. Somewhere beyond, he knew, there must be an opening through the walls of the mountains. His problem was to find it; but as he pushed onward into the northern reaches of the long valley he began to appreciate the enormous difficulties he faced.
He was surrounded by great mountains; ridges and cliffs and misty snow caps; unscalable barriers, towering above and beyond him as far as the eyes could see. The land between was broken by cañons and deep ravines, running this way and that; overgrown by dark forests and tangles of underbrush, forming hidden labyrinths in which an army might have lost itself.
His natural course was to follow the brook to its source, hoping that the stream might lead him through a breach in the barricading mountains, but after nearly a day lost, he discovered that the flow of water originated in a nest of springs, bubbling out from the base of an unsurmountable precipice. Next day he tried another direction, crawling around the escarpment of a steep pitched ridge, over what appeared to be a faint goat path; but again he brought up in a blind pocket from which his only escape meant to retrace his steps.
When he finally gave it up and started back over the tortuous trail, he happened to catch Alison and Archie exchanging glances of furtive significance; and it struck him in a flash that they knew the route to the pass. He watched them surreptitiously thereafter, and on two or three occasions, when they thought he was not looking, he detected them in the act of whispering together and sizing up distantly looming landmarks. There was something in their manner to tell him that they were secretly elated at his failure to find the way, and he was thoroughly convinced that they might set him on the right path if they chose.
He had no comment to make, however, and he dropped to sleep that night like a man whose mind is free from trouble. But when he awakened next morning he found himself alone under the blanket he had shared with Archie Preston. The boy had slipped away some time in the night.
Dexter flung off his blanket and strode forward to touch the small, still figure on the other side of the dead fire. "Where's your brother?" he demanded.
Alison stirred under her cover, and her eyes opened to regard him sleepily in the gray dawn. "What?" she asked.
"Archie's gone," the corporal informed her. "Cleared out while I was asleep. Where is he?"
She sat up and gazed drowsily about her. "You were the one who was watching him," she remarked after a pause. "Don't you know what's become of him?"
"You two planned it out last night," Dexter declared. "You knew he meant to escape. It isn't worth while pretending otherwise."
Alison turned squarely to meet his gaze. "Yes," she admitted without further evasion. "I knew he was going. I told him to go if he could get away. I didn't want him to leave home in the first place, but as long as he did leave, matters will be a hundred times worse if he's taken back now. He's got to get away. That's the only thing left for him to do now—to get out of the country and start his life over again some place else." She threw up her head defiantly. "I not only urged him to escape, but I guess you know I'll do everything I can to keep you from finding him again."
The corporal had gathered a handful of sticks together, and he now stooped quietly to rekindle their fire. "So Archie was willing to beat it, and leave you behind to face it out alone," he remarked.
She turned on him with flashing eyes. "He could have done nothing for me by staying," she asserted. "But it was his chance and I persuaded him against his will—to go."
Dexter had taken a slab of bacon from the provision pack, and, wielding a knife in his left hand, he began cutting slices for breakfast. He was unhurried, seemingly unperturbed, and did not act in the least like a policeman who had just discovered that a prisoner was missing.
"You and Archie evidently know the way out of this maze of mountains," he declared casually. "I suppose Stark furnished you with the key to the puzzle, in case you chanced to be thrown upon your own resources. You were studying landmarks last night, and I assume that when Archie stole away, he knew just which course to take to hit the pass. No doubt he'll be with Stark and Crill and the others within a day or two."
"All I can say is, I hope he finds the way," she replied.
"So do I," said Dexter. He speared his bacon strips with a sharpened stick, and as he bent towards the fire, he turned a quizzical glance towards his companion. "I was certain yesterday that Archie knew how to locate the pass. It might take me days to work out the problem. And I can't afford to lose time. So I figured that I might let your brother show me the way. His trail shouldn't be hard to follow."