The newcomer had arrived without a sound. Evidently he had just forded his way across the rapids. Water trickled in rivulets from his legs and his clothing clung to his spare frame; but in spite of wetness he still retained his well-groomed, debonnaire appearance. He smiled appreciatively at the scene before him as he absently thumbed the hammer of the rifle he held gripped in his hands.
"Is the party still on," he inquired, "or am I too late?"
He waited for a second or two, but as nobody had any reply to make, he tilted up his weapon, and sauntered into the room. A trampling of other feet sounded outside, and four other men drifted into view through the morning mist and crowded across the threshold at their leader's heels.
From Stark's dripping figure, Dexter's glance wandered to the silhouetted shapes beyond, and he recognized Norbert Croix and 'Phonse Doucet, and Alison's brother, Archie. There was a fifth man in the group, a thick-set individual with a scraggly red beard, whose acquaintance he had not yet made. The clothing of the newcomers was water-soaked. It was evident that they had just waded the rapids. While the game was on in the cabin, the forking streams must have fallen low enough to permit a crossing.
The intruders filed into the room, and the last one closed the door behind him. Stark moved forward and laughed softly to himself.
"So you got out from under that tree," he remarked as he surveyed Dexter. "I didn't think you had a chance on earth, but you fooled me that trip. Anybody help you?"
Dexter faced the man with level eyes. "You left me my watch, and I made a scoop of the lid and dug the ground from under my shoulder," he said. "I was able to get loose before morning."
"And afterwards met this girl here—Miss Rayne?"
"Met her in the woods, and arrested her," returned the corporal.
"Where'd you pick up Crill?" asked the other.
"Here on the island."
Stark grew silent for a space as he thoughtfully surveyed the group before him. "Hum!" he mused at length: "it doesn't matter much how it happened. We've returned to the status quo, as it were. I didn't do a very good job of it the last time, but that's something easily corrected."
The smile faded from the man's face, and he stood with feet apart, fingering the lock of his rifle, measuring the officer with merciless glance. "It would have been better for you if you'd let well enough alone," he said. "You wouldn't have it to go through with again."
His head turned slightly as he spoke, and he nodded politely to Alison. "Will you please stand aside, Miss Rayne?" he invited.
"Do as he says," counseled Dexter as the girl hesitated. He looked at her for a moment with a gentle glance, and drew a faint, quivering breath. "Go over by the bunk, please."
"Now!" said Stark crisply, as the girl moved away on stumbling feet.
"You're lucky this time," he pursued. "I'm in a hurry, and I'll make it quick." His lips pressed together in a hard, narrow line, and he cocked the hammer of his rifle, and started slowly and deliberately to raise the muzzle.
Dexter's heels came instinctively together, and he drew up his spare body, straight and unmoving, like a soldier at salute. He faced his enemy quietly, his fine-drawn features set in unchanging, stoic lines.
Nobody in the room spoke or stirred, and the hush of death fell about them. Stark leveled his rifle and lined his sights upon the erect figure standing under the light of the guttering lantern. Grimly he began to count: "One—two—"
He got no farther. A streak of red flame lashed past the corporal's shoulder, and the stuffy silence of the room was jarred by a sharp, cracking explosion. The barrel of Stark's rifle wavered in his grasp, and a crimson bullet welt showed suddenly across the tanned flesh above his cheek bone.
Shocked, wondering, Dexter whirled to stare behind him, and he saw Alison Rayne crouching by the bunk, with a smoking revolver clenched in her fist.
The bullet only grazed Stark's face, and he recovered himself in a flash, knowing that he was not hurt. With a muttered exclamation he swung to confront the small, slim figure kneeling before him in the shadow.
Dexter saw the man shift the aim of his rifle, realized that Alison's life was forfeit. He gathered his muscles, and a long leap carried him across the floor to her side. The weight of his body forced the girl to the floor as he flung himself upon her; and he held her so, shielding her, while he wrested the revolver from her fingers.
Even as his left hand closed over the butt of the weapon the pent-up atmosphere of the room was jolted by the concussion of a heavy report, a burst of flame flared in his face, and a bullet fanned his top hair and tore splinters from the bunk post behind him. He saw Stark's eye staring at him down the rifle barrel as he jerked down the lever to inject a second cartridge.
Dexter was vouchsafed his instant of life, and he grasped its full measure. Alison's revolver was held comfortably in his left hand. There sounded a faint double snick as he drew back the hammer, and then he threw up the muzzle, and without seeming to aim, he fired.
Stark tossed up his head with the shot, and a queer look of bewilderment passed over his face. For a moment he held rigid on his feet, his eyes blankly gazing through the curling wreaths of smoke; then, his hands opened, as though they found the weight of the rifle too much for his strength; his legs bowed and caved beneath him and he doubled over backwards and fell heavily upon the floor.
In a second Dexter was on his feet, the light of battle flaming in his eyes. There was but one bullet left in the revolver, but the other men did not know, and he felt a thrilling confidence in himself as he stepped forward into the room.
There were five men left, but Crill was unarmed, and he held no fear of Archie Preston. Doucet, Croix and the red-bearded stranger were ranged in a compact group by the doorway. All three held rifles, but the dramatic suddenness of events seemed for the moment to have paralyzed their mental faculties. In the two seconds that might have enabled them to recover their wits, the corporal was upon them.
"Drop your guns!" he commanded, furious and menacing. His revolver somehow seemed to threaten all three at once. "Quick!" he jerked out savagely—"or you get it too!"
There followed a short, sharp interval of uncertainty, in which the tide of affairs quivered on a hair. But Dexter was still advancing, determined, formidable.
The little, ferret-eyed Croix stood nearest to him, and Croix was the first to weaken. His glance fell before the officer's eyes, his hand opened, and his rifle clattered to the floor.
"You, 'Phonse!" thundered Dexter. Doucet hesitated, wavered, and then he too dropped his weapon.
There remained the red-bearded man, and he was left alone facing the officer. He, perhaps, was made of sterner stuff than his two companions, but he could not help knowing that to fight back now spelled certain death, and after a short conflict of glances, he too threw down his gun.
"Into the corner behind the fireplace—all of you!" Dexter ordered. "Crill and Preston, you also!" He sidled over towards the front wall, and herded the men away from the door. Slowly they backed before the leveled revolver, and in two or three seconds he had driven them into the corner, where they huddled together like sheep.
The corporal ducked his head to his shoulder with a quick, nervous movement to wipe the moisture from his forehead. Then he looked up again, and laughed with a queer catch in his voice. "You're to stay where you are with your hands up," he announced. "I'll call you forward by name, one at a time, and feel your clothes for side arms—"
He was interrupted by a sobbing sound from the direction of the bunk, and as he half turned to look, he saw Alison lift herself to her feet and stumble forward into the lantern light. "Archie!" she cried in a piteous voice. "Forgive me—oh, Archie—I did it for—I couldn't help it!"
She swung around to face Dexter, her tearful gaze meeting his. "I have given my brother's life for yours, David," she said in a stricken whisper. Then she tottered across to the table, buried her head in her arms, and broke down in convulsive sobbing.
Dexter took a step forward and stood over her for a moment with awed and wondering eyes. His hand strayed towards her shoulder but he checked the movement, shook his head, and turned slowly away. Once more he faced the men in the corner of the room.
"You first, Doucet!" he commanded brusquely. "Come forward!" He beckoned with the muzzle of his revolver, but before the man had a chance to obey, the front door flung open with a crash and booted feet clumped into the cabin entrance.
Dexter whirled with a gasp of dismay. He stared wildly—blinked his eyes incredulously—and stared again. In the open doorway stood Colonel Devreaux.
"Colonel!" cried Dexter.
The superintendent held motionless for a space, his keen, searching glance taking in the strange scene before him. "We heard shots," he remarked after a hushed interval. "What's happened here?"
Relief, thankfulness, and also a great weariness, might have been read in the relaxing lines of the corporal's face. He had held up for hours by the strength of will, but at sight of his officer the buoying sense of responsibility left him, and he found himself slipping. He seemed all at once to lose inches of stature, to settle within himself, as a sword shoved back in its scabbard. For once in his life he failed to answer his commander's question.
"You—I believed you were dead," he said in a queer, far-off voice.
"Not yet." Devreaux peered at the corporal from under his grizzled brows. "I wandered down the valley to find you, after you had left that cave; but the sun thawed out your trail. Kept on going, and after days managed to reach the lower pass. And I chanced to meet Sergeant Brunswick and Constables Devlin and Jones coming in from the south to hunt me."
"You—you're all right?" asked Dexter weakly.
"Able to travel, at any rate." The old man thrust out his barrel-like chest, and the old dauntless smile for an instant crossed his deep-lined face.
"But how did you find me?" persisted the corporal in his unsteady voice.
"You left police blazes behind to mark your trail." The colonel squinted curiously as he surveyed the man before him. "Forgotten?"
Dexter's glance traveled past the superintendent's stalky figure and he saw three men in the familiar uniforms of the police lurking outside in the misty dawn. And something within him recalled him to himself, reminded him that he was still on duty.
With a sudden stiffening of his muscles he drew his body straight and, thrusting his revolver into his pocket, he brought his hand up in salute.
"I have finished long patrol," he said, "and can make my completed report, sir. I was forced to shoot and kill one Owen Stark, and I hold myself at your disposal for the inquiries of the court. I have placed under arrest, and now yield to police custody, the following prisoners: Alphonse Doucet, Norbert Croix, Roy 'Pink' Crill, one man whose name I have not yet learned, Archibald Preston, and—and Alison Rayne Preston.
"And—with your permission, sir," he added in a failing voice, "I should like to report off duty. I want to go to sleep."
What happened after Dexter had delivered his prisoners into the keeping of his opportunely arrived comrades, Dexter never afterwards remembered. He may have suffered a sudden physical collapse, or perhaps he simply fell asleep while standing at attention before his officer. But when his eyes opened in reviving consciousness, he found himself stretched comfortably in a warm bunk with a blanket tucked about his chin. He might have been lying there for hours or for days. There was no way of guessing.
Stirring drowsily, he lifted himself on his elbow to gaze about him. He recognized the interior of the cabin where—ages ago, it seemed to him now—he and the outlaw Crill had sat up through the night playing cards together. The lantern was not burning, but the rays of a dying sun entered the open windows, breaking the gloom with ruddy streaks of light.
As his heavy-lidded eyes gradually began to function again, he made out the shapes of men, either seated or sprawled about grotesquely in the shadows. In the far corner, sitting with legs crossed and shoulders propped against the wall, he identified the giant figure of 'Phonse Doucet. The wizened, hangdog face of Norbert Croix was recognizable in the slanting glow of light beneath the west window. The red-bearded man was lying on the floor close by, with his bushy head on his arm. Next in line was Crill, his stout body slumped dejectedly against the logs of the wall, his head bowed to his chest, a picture of cowering abjectness. As Dexter surveyed the silent group before him, one of the men shifted his position, and he heard the clink of a chain. He perceived then that the four prisoners were shackled in pairs with handcuffs.
His glance ranged towards the farther end of the room, and he saw Archie Preston. The boy was seated on a stool under the north window, and he was bending over a newspaper spread on his knees reading by the failing light. Unlike the others, he was not manacled.
With mind still hazy from sleep, the corporal lay quiet for a while, gazing vacantly about the cabin. But presently it occurred to him that Devreaux and the other policemen were missing. And suddenly he found himself wondering what had happened to Alison. With an abrupt movement he cast off his blanket and sat up in the bunk. Some one had taken off his boots, he discovered; otherwise he was fully clad. The boots were lying by the bunk, and he pulled them on and fastened the laces. Then he stood up, buttoned his collar, and tried absently to smooth the wrinkles out of his tunic. He was running his fingers through his tousled hair, when he was aware that a shadow had darkened the open doorway. Looking around, he saw Colonel Devreaux entering the cabin.
The superintendent caught sight of Dexter, and he knitted his brows questioningly as he strode forward. "Waked up, have you?" he demanded. "How d'you feel?"
"All right, I guess." Dexter stretched himself and yawned, and his glance strayed towards the door. "Where's Alison?"
"Outside. She went for a walk with Brunswick and Devlin."
"How long have I been asleep?"
"More than thirty-six hours. You flopped while you were talking to me, and we got you into the bunk." The colonel reached forward and his stubby fingers touched his comrade's wrist. "You seem to have come around. But for a while yesterday we thought you were in for a long spell of it. We decided to camp here until you waked up naturally."
"I was done in, I guess. Hadn't slept much lately."
"Alison has told us all about you. You seem to have seen your job through. You haven't done half badly, Corporal—" Devreaux checked himself, stared the younger man up and down, and then for an instant his hard features yielded to a smile that was like sunshine breaking against the face of a weather-scarred cliff. "After to-day," he added quietly, "I think I can safely say—Sergeant Dexter."
A dark flush mounted to Dexter's temples, and a warm glow filled his eyes. To the men who served under Colonel Devreaux, his smallest word of commendation was like an accolade of knighthood.
"I—thank you, sir," the policeman managed to stammer.
"You finished off Owen Stark," remarked Devreaux, gruffly changing the subject. "Got him through the heart, and I don't imagine that he knew what hit him. I've a notion it was he who shot me last fall."
"Yes—he was the one. He boasted to me of his long-range marksmanship."
"In any event, Alison has told me the circumstances of his death," returned the superintendent. "She's willing to testify that you acted solely in self-defense. There'll be no difficulties for you in this affair."
"Alison saved my life twice," observed Dexter irrelevantly. "She's—"
He broke off speech abruptly as a light footstep sounded in the cabin entrance. Turning, he caught sight of a slender figure in knickers and frayed white sweater. "Good evening, Alison," he said with softening glance. "I was just telling the colonel how you jumped into that mess with Stark, just as he was about to let me have it. Nobody ever did a braver thing than that."
She faced him with a melancholy smile. "What else could I do?" she asked. "You were unarmed, and that man meant to shoot you without giving you a chance. I—I didn't stop to think. It all happened like something in a dream. Before I realized what I was doing the pistol was in my hand, and I had aimed and fired."
Dexter eyed her curiously for a moment. "Why did you take the revolver from my pocket?" he asked after a pause.
"Because your right arm was broken, and I didn't know whether you could shoot straight with your left hand," she answered without hesitation. "There was always danger of your falling asleep or of being caught off your guard, and I knew you were afraid of Crill." Alison cast a fleeting glance towards the opposite wall, where the handcuffed outlaw sat hunched in the shadow. "I'm not a bad shot," she added in a quiet voice, "and I thought that if anything happened—well, I'd be armed. And in a case of that sort I was ready to stand by the police."
Dexter searched her candid blue eyes, and gently nodded. "I only wondered—" he started to say, but before he could finish a sudden interruption came from the far corner of the room. A wild cry rang through the cabin, a stool was overturned clattering on the floor, and they faced about in amazement to see Archie Preston fling himself to his feet and stumble forward with a newspaper gripped in his shaking hands.
"Alison!" he burst out in unrestrained excitement. "This old paper that Sergeant Brunswick had in his pocket—it's—there's a story in it aboutme! Oh, it's too good—I can't believe that I've read it straight."
"What?" asked the girl, gazing in wonderment. "What do you mean, Archie?"
"This! Uncle Oscar! The doctor!"
"Yes!" she urged tensely, the color slowly draining from her cheeks. "What is it? What are you trying to tell me?"
"Why, this!" returned the boy with a hysterical catch in his throat. "Don't you understand? Dr. Borden, who attended Uncle Oscar when he died—he's been caught and sent to an asylum—insanity—homicidal mania. It's here—telegraphed from Duluth—it's here in this paper. He killed another man, and they've caught him!"
"Archie!" gasped the girl, her eyes grown wide and staring. "Tell me quick! You mean Dr. Borden—?"
"Here! Read it for yourself!" The boy thrust the newspaper in his sister's trembling hands. "Dr. Borden himself put the poison in our uncle's medicines. And now he's killed another patient the same way. He's crazy—has been crazy for months. And they've found him out and arrested him and sent him to an asylum."
Archie threw both hands above his head, and his chest heaved with a great sobbing breath. "I'm innocent, and it is proven," he exulted. "I can go back home. They can't hold me for a crime that another man committed."
The boy stood with uplifted head, breathing heavily through parted lips, a mad joy burning in his eyes. But the two officers ignored him to observe the effect of the news on his sister. Alison had given a single broken cry as her brother handed her the newspaper. She moved on tottering feet to the window, but her hands were so unsteady that she could not possibly have read the wavering print of the eagerly gripped news sheet.
By a mutual impulse Devreaux and Dexter crossed behind her. The colonel passed both arms about her, caught her wrists, and stopped the paper from rustling. Then he and the corporal leaned over the girl's shoulder to peruse the story for themselves.
It was a short telegraphic item, tucked away on an inside page, and they saw at a glance that Archie had not misread the account. The item told of a practicing physician who had been suddenly afflicted with a criminal dementia. He had destroyed two of his patients by slyly switching the medicines he had prescribed. His mental state was not discovered until after he had wantonly committed a second murder. Under cross-questioning he had broken down in confession, and the authorities then were able to establish proof positive of his guilt in the two separate crimes. His first victim was a wealthy bachelor, Oscar Preston. The dead man's nephew, Archie, the account went on to say, was falsely accused of the murder and indicted on a first degree charge. With his sister Alison, his co-heir in the Preston estate, the boy had fled. At the time of writing the whereabouts of the fugitives was unknown. Every effort had been made to find them, but so far the search had proven unsuccessful. The authorities were still hoping to get into communication with the missing brother and sister, not to arrest them now, but to restore their rights under the law.
Alison somehow managed to read through the blurred paragraph of type, and as she finished her fingers unlocked and the paper fluttered from her hands. With a sudden movement she turned to face her brother.
"Archie!" She looked at the boy for a moment with tears brimming her eyes, and then she went to him, and her arms reached out and clasped tightly about his shoulders. "It's over—it's over!" she sobbed. "You can go back home—everything's all right! I'm so glad, I—I don't know what to say."
Colonel Devreaux scrutinized the pair for a moment from under frowning brows, and then he too walked forward. "Well, I suppose you're open to congratulations, Archie," he remarked brusquely.
The boy gently disengaged himself from Alison's embrace. "It's fine—it's wonderful!" he asserted jubilantly. "I can hardly believe it!"
"I wonder if you really appreciate your good fortune?" inquired the officer as he stared grimly at the young man.
"I do!" exclaimed the other. "I can go back. No more suffering and hardship! I can face my friends. I can take my old place again!"
The lines of Devreaux's face seemed to grow deeper and more inflexible as he listened. "You don't even begin to understand," he rasped out. "You've got the finest thing that was ever given to a man, and you haven't given it a thought. I'm talking about the loyalty that has stood by in your time of need—that would have gone with you through the blazing pit. You're thinking how nice it will be to get back to town, a free man—and I'm thinking about your sister."
The boy's eyes opened with a startled expression, and a slow flush darkened his face. "I—you're wrong," he returned unsteadily. "I'm thinking of her too. Alison! She's been magnificent!"
"I only thought I'd remind you," said the colonel, glowering. "That story in the paper is probably authentic. I've got to take you to the fort with me, but when I telegraph your local police they'll undoubtedly order your release. You'll be at liberty to go where you please. But it'll be different with Alison."
"What?" gasped the boy, his brows sharply contracting.
"That little affair in the cabin south of here, where the two men were shot in their bunks, Alison was there that night, and nobody else, as far as we can make out." A touch of sadness crept into the old officer's voice as he shook his grizzled head. "Your sister has those same qualities of loyalty and courage that—well, that make my policemen—my boys—stand by me: and I'm sincerely sorry that she can't go home with you." Devreaux turned soberly to the girl. "There's too much evidence stacked up, and we have no alternative," he said. "Until you're able to explain away that business in the burned cabin, there can be no hope of your release. The most we can promise you is fair treatment and an impartial hearing."
While the colonel was delivering himself of this speech, the door opened, and one of the constables entered the room. The newcomer walked to the fireplace, where a row of camp kettles were simmering over coals. He raised the lid of one of the pots, prodded inside, and faced about to announce that dinner was ready.
Devreaux nodded. "Good! Let's eat."
Plates were filled from the kettles, and food was given to the four manacled prisoners. Then Sergeant Brunswick and Constable Devlin were summoned into the cabin. Two packing boxes were shoved together to serve as a table, and Archie and Alison and the five policemen sat down to their evening meal.
This was the first opportunity Dexter's comrades had found to draw out the story of his recent adventures, and until their curiosity was satisfied, he was scarcely allowed the time to eat. He answered a multitude of questions, and finally pushed away his plate and settled back with a sigh to recount in detail the events that had taken place since the morning he had left the colonel at the bear cave.
Devreaux had lighted up an old blackened pipe, and he sat in silence, grim and immobile, peering at the young policeman through a cloud of tobacco smoke. When Dexter finished his story the old man vouchsafed the briefest nod. "For a single-handed job," he conceded, "you have accomplished all that the service could expect."
"I still don't understand how you ever found the pass," put in Sergeant Brunswick. "We came through a regular puzzle box to reach this place, and if we hadn't had your trail marks to follow, it might have taken us weeks to grope our way to the outlet."
"Pure piece of luck that brought me to the pass," said Dexter. "I was feeling around blindly, without any notion which direction to go, when I happened to discover an ancient blaze wrinkle in the bark of a great white fir. I chopped into the sapwood and found a deep buried ax mark, and some time-glazed scribbling that gave me my direction points. After that I had only to pick out the biggest trees in the line, and invariably there was an old ax scar to lead me on my way. So I was guided straight to the pass."
Brunswick wrinkled his forehead in growing interest. "What sort of scribbling was it?" he asked.
"Letter that looked like a 'W,' and something else that wasn't quite legible. I estimated that the marks were at least a half century old."
"Funny!" remarked the sergeant. "It sounds as though some surveyors had traveled through here some time or other, and I always had an idea that the nest of mountains on this side of the water shed was practically unexplored country."
"Which proves that you don't know your district history," cut in Devreaux quietly. The colonel glanced across at Dexter. "You say there was a letter 'W.' Letter 'U' also, wasn't there?"
"I couldn't quite make out the rest," was the reply. "It might have been a 'U.'"
"Certainly it was! 'W.U.'—'Western Union'!"
Devreaux put down his empty coffee cup, and scanned the circle of faces about the table. "This isn't terra incognita, as some of you seem to think," he resumed. "It's a lost country now, but it was thoroughly explored at one time—about sixty years ago. The trail Dexter found was blazed by the pioneers of the old Western Union company.
"I wasn't much more than a kid at the time," the colonel resumed as the others waited, silent. "The date was somewhere around 1865. A long time ago, but I remember hearing the story—how an attempt was made to lay an all-land telegraph across America and Asia and Europe.
"The idea," continued Devreaux, "was to string a cable from the United States through the northwest wilderness, across Behring Strait to Siberia, and thence to Russia and the capitals of Europe."
"It was never accomplished," interrupted Dexter.
"No. But a lot of the work was actually done. Parties of men were sent through these mountains to hunt out the easiest passes and defiles, and blaze the straightest route to the Behring shore. Later, construction crews came in and unreeled miles of cable through the wilderness, ready to string. But before the job was finished the first successful trans-Atlantic cable was laid by another company. Europe was connected with America by a shorter route, and the need for the longer, all-land line was ended over night. The promoters of the great project were forced to pocket their loss. They stopped operations, abandoned materials and equipment and cleared out of the forest, leaving hundreds of miles of cable wire on the ground behind them."
It was a curious tale of failure—of a magnificent dream gone wrong—and a meditative silence fell upon the group about the table as the colonel broke off speech and sat with a gloomy, retrospective frown and slowly puffed his pipe.
"You mean—they came up through these valleys—" Brunswick started to ask, but he was interrupted by a sharp exclamation from Dexter's side of the table.
"Wait! Just a minute!" The corporal half raised himself from his stool, gripping the table with his hand. "You said they left this wire—strung out through the wilderness?"
"Thousands of dollars' worth of copper wire—wasted," said Devreaux. "Just left out to—"
"Copper is not affected by weather," remarked Dexter before the colonel could finish. "The wire might remain just as it was for years—for centuries. Only it would be buried under an accumulation of forest trash, turning to mold and earth—buried deeper and deeper—"
He stopped, drew a short breath and got up from his stool. For a moment his glance searched about the room, and then without a word of apology he left the table, and picked up a rusted spade he found standing in the corner. There was a scraping of stool legs behind him, and as he turned towards the doorway he was aware that his companions were on their feet, trooping after him.
Passing out of doors, Dexter stopped in front of the cabin, and with his one useful hand he thrust his spade into the soft ground and started to dig. Before he had taken out a shovelful of earth, however, Colonel Devreaux came up to him and laid a detaining hand on his shoulder.
"Funny I didn't think of this myself," the old officer remarked depreciatingly. "But it didn't occur to me until you jumped up from the table. And—by jinks!—I'll bet you've struck the answer to everything! You'd better let a two-armed man do the labor." Devreaux glanced over his shoulder. "Here, Devlin," he commanded—"dig a trench across here."
The constable moved forward, took the spade, and set industriously to work. While the others stood by in tense curiosity he spaded up the yielding loam, and presently had excavated a narrow hole that went down two or three feet in the ground. Under the colonel's directions the digger started to carry his trench forward along the front of the cabin, but he had advanced only a pace or two, when the edge of his shovel caught against some hidden object under the loosened dirt, and refused to come up.
"Wait!" exclaimed the superintendent. He and Dexter dropped to their knees, and with eager hands began scooping away the musty-smelling earth. And in a moment they unburied an unyielding something that ran underground like a tenuous root.
"What?" demanded the colonel, peering near-sightedly into the trench.
Dexter had flattened himself on his chest to investigate. "Insulated wire!" he said in a suppressed voice. "A buried cable: The outer covering seems to have hardened—sort of petrified; but there's no doubt—"
"Let's see!" The colonel produced a knife from his pocket, thrust Dexter aside, stooped, and began to hack away at the moldy, taut-drawn strand. He cut through the outer surface, and the reddish glint of copper was revealed underneath.
He stood up with a sharp breath. "The old Western Union cable!" he muttered. "Trailed through the forest, and abandoned—more than a half century ago! Falling leaves drifting over it, decaying, forming new soil, burying it deeper and deeper, year by year! It must come all the way through the lower valleys, miles and miles of it."
"The line undoubtedly passes the cabin on the other side of the pass, where I first met young Preston, and the burned cabin, still farther south," put in Dexter in sober musing. "I dug around the one cabin the night Mudgett and the other chap were killed. But I didn't go deep enough. At the time I only thought it necessary to see if the ground had been recently disturbed. But of course it hadn't been. The cable was buried, not by the hand of man, but by the gradual work of the forest."
"Let's see where it goes!" said the colonel abruptly. He turned to Devlin. "Follow it up, please."
The constable resumed his digging, this time running his excavation along the line of the cable. The concealed wire led him straight to the cabin, and in a few minutes he had driven his trench to the base of the mud-daubed chimney.
Dexter had lingered in the background, an absorbed spectator, but when he saw where the cable led, he turned abruptly on his heel and almost ran back into the cabin. The four shackled prisoners watched his movements in furtive silence, but he paid no attention to them. The single bunk was built flush with the end of the fireplace, and he climbed up on the mattress and began to tap on the side of the plastered chimney. One of the stones moved before the pressure of his fingers, and he managed to pry it loose and draw it from place. And in the rudely built chimney was disclosed a dark, cubicle opening—a secret cubby hole in the masonry. He thrust his arm into the foot square space behind the stone, and drew forth a nickeled telephone instrument.
As he caught a breath of triumph, he heard a footstep behind him, and turned to see Colonel Devreaux staring over his shoulder. "Well, that seems to settle everything," remarked the old officer with a rueful expression. "The mysterious messages that passed back and forth through the wilderness! They had us guessing for a while, didn't they? But you've got it now."
Dexter continued his investigations, and at the bottom of the chimney he jarred loose two other stones, revealing a second and larger opening. From the compartment within he pulled forth a strand of new wire and a group of six heavy jars, which proved to be electric batteries.
"A simple form of telephone set, such as they use for private rural lines," he remarked after an examination of the apparatus he had brought to light. "Not good for a range of much more than ten miles, I imagine. But the terminals are connected and the batteries seem to be alive." He touched the colonel's elbow. "You can see where the wires run down to meet the old telegraph cable under the ground."
"The signal system of Stark's underground railway!" he remarked as Devreaux bent forward to look. "He found out in some way where the old cable ran, and put up a chain of trappers' shacks along the line of the wire. The telephones are hooked on in sections, I suppose, at about ten-mile intervals. A series of local circuits, with each set of batteries providing current for its own short stretch of line. But a message might be relayed from station to station, through the wilderness. So Stark was able to provide himself with means of long distance communication, with practically no labor and at very little expense."
Devreaux was impressed in spite of himself. "A stroke of genius," he mused. "But for a bit of luck on our side this Stark might have kept us guessing for years. We would have been groping around blindly, while Stark's innocent-appearing trappers could keep tabs on our movements, sending the word ahead, blocking us at every turn, laughing at us. It would have been like a deaf and sightless man chasing shadows." The colonel grinned in uncomfortable recollection. "In fact, for a while last fall it seemed that that was just what we were doing."
Devreaux was reaching forward to examine the arrangement of telephone wires, when Alison and Sergeant Brunswick appeared in the doorway. The girl advanced with a wan little smile. "You wondered how I happened to know about things that were taking place miles away in the forest," she said, glancing up at Dexter. "You tried to make me tell, and I wouldn't. It was a secret on which my brother's safety might have depended, and I had to keep it. But you've found out for yourself, and now it doesn't matter."
"I suppose all the cabins along the route are equipped with phones such as this one, concealed in the chimneys," Dexter remarked. "The cabin on the other side of the pass, for instance—where I spent a night with your brother, heard him call your name in the darkness, warning you to flee to Saddle Mountain: he was talking to you over one of these phones."
"There's no need to keep anything back now." Alison nodded quietly, and cast a quick glance towards the colonel. "That was the night I escaped from Colonel Devreaux. I had made my way back to the burned cabin. The chimney was still intact, the phone in it. I rang up my brother, and he answered. He told me you were with him, warned me of the danger of returning. He had heard that Mr. Stark was on his way across Saddle Mountain, and advised me to meet him there. And—well, you went too, and saved my life on the cliff—and afterwards—"
"And the time you found me pinned under the tree in the lower valley?" interrupted Dexter. "How did you get the news?"
The girl looked across the room towards the group of prisoners seated in the shadow. She indicated the red-bearded man, who shifted uneasily as the officers turned his direction. "He told me," she said. "He happened that day to come to the cabin where my brother and I were spending the winter. Mr. Stark had telephoned him at one of the other stations—about how a policeman was caught under an avalanche. I guessed it might be you, and I got the facts from him, and learned where you were to be found. So I waited my chance, and as soon as I could leave unobserved, I hurried from the cabin to go to you."
Dexter regarded her for a moment with eyes half closed. "It was a brave and generous thing to do," he said, but even as he spoke the inflexible line of his jaw reasserted itself, and he fixed her once more with a keenly inquiring gaze. "What about the night we were camping at the head of the pass, and you ran away from me?" he asked. "You came to this cabin—six or seven miles from the place you had left me—and you called to me for help, and I heard you."
She laughed a quick, fluttering laugh as she raised her head candidly to face him. "You remember the old dead tree at the top of the slope," she said, "when I found myself growing suddenly tired? I was tired, but I could have gone on a little farther—only I wanted to stop there."
"It was a gaunt old shell of a tree—hollow—" Dexter stopped to stare at her. "I know now!" he exclaimed. "It was one of Stark's stations. There's a telephone in the trunk of that tree."
Alison nodded. "As I told you before, I figured my brother'd spend the night at this cabin. And not knowing you were so close behind him, there was a danger of his oversleeping and being there next morning when you arrived. I thought I could warn him by telephone. I started to ring the cabin that night while you were gathering sticks for the fire, but you came back too soon for me. I had the receiver off, but didn't dare finish the call. You didn't give me another chance. But I must get word to Archie. So that night when you were asleep I slipped away to come here, intending to return to your camp before daylight.
"When I reached here," she pursued, "there was no Archie. You know what did happen—how I was forced to barricade myself in the cabin. In my fright I remembered the phone in the old hollow tree. The receiver was down and you had spread your blankets against the trunk. It was my only hope—to make you hear—and I screamed into the transmitter at this end, calling your help."
He looked at her soberly for an instant, and then laughed under his breath. "As simple as that! It was like a ghost voice whispering to me from the darkness, small and unreal, yet your voice."
"And knowing no more than that," she said softly, "you came."
He did not answer, but had turned with an absent-minded air, as though for no particular reason his attention was caught again by the hole in the chimney where the telephone instrument had been secreted. For a moment he stood silent, with thoughtfully puckered brows, and then, with a quick movement, he faced about once more to look at Alison.
"In the three cabins I have visited," he asserted, "the bunks were built like this one, placed against the side of the fireplace. Were the phones all concealed in the chimneys by the bunks, like this one?"
"Yes," she replied.
He nodded, and then as though he had forgotten her presence, he strode to the open window to stare into the twilight, with a pensive, far-off look in his eyes. But after a minute or two he turned to pace back across the floor, his head bowed abstractedly as he whistled a meaningless little tune between his teeth. Suddenly he halted before the girl. "I was thinking—" he began, and stopped.
She shot him a puzzled glance. "Yes?" she asked uncertainly.
"I was thinking of the night last fall when the two men were killed in their bunks. I heard a woman's voice inside that cabin—a woman talking over a telephone—" He threw up his head sharply. "You were there, Alison."
"I never went beyond the edge of the clearing," she declared, her lips setting defiantly. "You saw my tracks—"
"Yes," he interrupted with an impatient gesture. "That's what I'm getting at. Your tracks stopped twenty feet away from the cabin. Yet there was a woman inside, and if, as you insist, she wasn't you, then she had to be—"
Dexter caught his breath and swung around with kindling eyes to confront Colonel Devreaux. "It's a funny notion," he declared wonderingly, "and I can't quite make out why it never struck me before but—it's the only possible answer. This woman, whoever she was, never left the cabin.
"When I went out to look after my pony," he rushed on, "there were two people alive in the cabin. And when I reëntered the place there were two people dead. And there was no one else there at any time. The mysterious third person we've been looking for never existed."
"What are you driving at?" gasped the bewildered officer.
Dexter shook his head and turned again to Alison. "Did you know Mrs. Stark?" he asked tensely. "She's the only other woman I've heard of in this section of the forest. What was she like?
"Small woman, about thirty-five?" he inquired, as Alison stared blankly and failed to answer. "Thin, high-bridged nose, short black hair, black eyes, sallow complexion. Have I got her?"
The girl nodded without speaking.
"Did she ever wear men's clothes?"
"Yes," said the girl. "The last time I saw her she had on Mackinaws, felt hat, heavy lace boots—"
Dexter's eyes gleamed in excitement. "She's the one!" He spoke with utter conviction, as one who knows the truth at last.
"It was Mrs. Stark's voice I heard that night, talking on a telephone. It was she who masqueraded as a man and ambushed Constable Graves. She was the one I trailed to the cabin and arrested there, with Mudgett. It was she whom I found dead in the upper bunk!"
For a moment Devreaux and Alison stared at Dexter as though they were not quite sure whether he had taken leave of his senses. There was a suggestion of a smile on his lips as he faced them in the failing twilight.
"All of which explains why Stark hated me so," he remarked after an interval of silence. "He knew it was I who had arrested his wife, and he could not help blaming me for the tragic circumstances that came afterwards."
"Wait!" expostulated the colonel. "You say that the one who was shot in the upper bunk was a woman in man's clothes—Mrs. Stark—and that there was nobody in the cabin when the shooting took place but her and Mudgett?"
"Yes," insisted Dexter serenely. "The record in the snow outside the cabin showed that no one entered or left the place during my short absence. No one else could have been there." He shook his head in self-depreciation. "The explanation has struck me all in a heap with the discovery of this hidden telephone system. I should have seen it long ago. The facts were all there before me the night of the double killing. But Alison's appearance on the scene confused the facts, and I was led away from the simple and obvious solution of the affair—the only possible solution."
"I still don't see what you're getting at," said the puzzled Devreaux.
Dexter faced the colonel, confident and clear-eyed, as a man who at last finds solid ground underfoot. "This:" he asserted. "Before I left the cabin I forced my two prisoners to get into the bunks, and bound their feet to the posts. The one I'm now certain was Mrs. Stark was tied in the upper bunk. The head of the bunk touched the chimney, and as Alison tells us, there was a secret cubby hole there, with a telephone in it. The woman was handcuffed, but the chain gave her five or six inches' play. She could have used her hands. She could take out the telephone, call one of Stark's stations, and return the instrument without my being the wiser."
"I follow you so far," admitted the colonel, "but—"
"When I came back to the cabin I heard a woman's voice in the darkness behind the door. She said something about there being police in the valley, of being betrayed. I recall her words: 'Lifeless tongues never talk.' 'There's one thing left to do,' she said, 'and I'm going to do it.' After that the voice stopped; there was a silence, broken by a cry for mercy—Mudgett crying in fear and horror; then a shot, followed quickly by another shot. The door was barred, but I broke in, found my prisoners dead, the windows shut—nobody there."
"Well?" urged Devreaux in a sharp undertone.
"What are the usual emotions of a prisoner arrested for a capital crime?" inquired the corporal with seeming irrelevance. "Anger," he answered for himself, before Devreaux could reply—"bitterness, hopelessness, despair, blackness crushing upon him from all directions. You've arrested plenty of them. You know. And such were the reactions of my prisoner in the upper bunk.
"I had taken a big pistol from her when she tried to shoot me in the doorway. But I hadn't searched her for other weapons. Careless! She must have had another gun concealed about her person." Dexter thrust his hand into his pocket, and brought forth Alison's little pearl-handled revolver. "This one!
"You said you carried this in your bag," he remarked in an aside, glancing at the girl. "Could Mrs. Stark have taken it without your knowing?"
"Yes, she had opportunities," Alison answered unsteadily. "She might have done so."
"She did," answered Dexter coolly. "She must have."
"You're trying to tell me—" blurted out Devreaux, aghast.
"I'm telling you what happened, the only thing that could have happened. Mrs. Stark may have thought that Mudgett had betrayed her people to the police. At any rate she mistrusted him. He was a weakling, and he was our prisoner. She could be certain that we could force him to turn state's evidence against her husband. But she saw her chance to stop that danger. Handcuffed as she was, she could use a revolver.
"There can be no other explanation," Dexter went on grimly. "She leaned over the edge of the bunk and shot Mudgett, and a moment later turned the weapon on herself and pulled the trigger."
Devreaux gazed at the younger man in somber fascination. "You mean to say it was—"
"Murder and suicide!" said the corporal.
"But," protested the superintendent, "the revolver—you told me you found it on the opposite side of the room, by the door."
"With two chambers empty." Dexter nodded. "The dead prisoner was lying across the upper bunk, with the arms hanging out over the side. There must have been a sharp reflex after death, and the revolver was flung across the room from the unclasping fingers."
"But the front door was barred on the inside," objected Devreaux.
The corporal shrugged his shoulders. "Yes. That was one of the things that started me off on a false trail. I was too quick in jumping at conclusions—taking it for granted that a third person had barred the door."
"Your prisoners were tied to the bunks. Neither of them could have—"
"Of course not," agreed Dexter. "The answer's much simpler than that." He smothered a faint laugh. "I recall now that I slammed the door behind me when I left the cabin. It was a lift bar, like the one here, swinging on a pivot. The jolt must have thrown it down, and it dropped back into place and fastened itself."
"De corpor'l he fin' out effryt'ing," broke in a deep voice from the other side of the room.
The two officers turned with a start to stare across the gloomy chamber. In their deep absorption they had forgotten that the four prisoners could hear all that was said. They now perceived that they had an interested group of listeners. One of the men was on his knees, and as they peered into the shadow they made out the swarthy features of the giant half-breed, Doucet.
"What's that you said?" asked Devreaux gruffly.
"Mees Stark she keel Mudgett, and den shoot herself, lak de corpor'l tell.Oui! I talk to 'er dat night on tel'phone."
"You!" exclaimed Dexter.
"Oui. But, yes. She call up, say she been arrest' for shootin' dat constable."
"Where were you?" demanded the corporal.
"In a cabin farder down de valley. She call to talk wid Stark, 'er 'osband, but he away somew'eres. I dunno w'ere to fin' 'eem. Nobody in de cabin but me."
"And she told you what she had decided to do?"
"For sure. She say police have come. Nobody to help her but only me, an' wan man no good. She afraid dis Mudgett, he spill dose beans. So she say, 'I fix 'im—I shoot him. An' den I shoot myself. Dose police ain't gon' take me and hang me.' An' den she say good-by, an' say no more.Voila tout!"
Dexter and the colonel exchanged a glance of keen significance. "I guess that settles it," said Devreaux soberly.
"No question!" The corporal looked out the window with ruminative eyes. "It's queer how people's minds work under stress," he mused. "This woman had a weapon concealed—she might have waited and taken a chance on getting me. But she must have gone temporarily out of her head. I've seen it hit other prisoners like that—crazed and desperate, like trapped animals. The voice I heard had that sound. She was the nervous, high-strung sort that seem to be able to face anything, and then suddenly go all to pieces. She must have acted on the first mad impulse, without allowing herself time for second thought."
"Mental blow-up!" said the colonel. "Yes, I've seen them that way. In any event we know now what happened. There really was no mystery at all, if we'd had sense enough to put two and two together." He turned to Alison and his iron features relaxed for a moment in a kindly smile. "And I guess that lets you out, my dear," he said.
The girl drew a quivering breath, and blinked hard to keep back the tears. She tried to speak, but her voice seemed to fail her.
"We'll have to make our report," resumed Devreaux, "but you've nothing to fear. When a hard boiled old mounted man like me is ready to accept a chain of facts such as this, you may be sure others will be easily convinced. You'll come off with flying colors. And I don't mind telling you that I'm very glad indeed."
Dexter likewise turned, and for a moment he held the girl under his grave scrutiny. "I don't need to tell you that I too am glad," he said. He faced her in silence for a moment, and his mouth drooped in a smile of weariness and sadness. "I should have known it all from the beginning," he went on in a low voice. "Knowing you, I should have gone on believing in you with blind, unquestioning faith. I did for a while, and then—something happened to remind me that I was a policeman—and I forced myself to look at what I thought was evidence, instead of looking at you. I'm sorry, Alison."
He lingered for a space with yearning glance, and then he drew a harsh breath, turned abruptly and strode out of the cabin.
Leaving the doorway, he moved with heavy, dragging steps, down through the fringe of timber to the edge of the rapids. He found a flat-topped bowlder on the beach where the water ran awash, and sat down to gaze off across the tumbling stream. For a while he sat with his arm on his knee, motionless and listless, listening to the rush of the rapids, his head bent to the soft evening breeze. But presently he stirred, and his hand reached into his tunic pocket. He brought out his pipe, fumbled for a match and struck a light. But as he started to apply the flame to the tobacco, he caught the sound of a quick, light step in the gravel behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a slight figure standing in the shadow. The pipe dropped unheeded to the ground as he stumbled to his feet. "Alison!" he breathed.
"Yes." The figure came forward and sat down on the bowlder.
"You believed in me all the while," said a quiet voice.
He leaned forward, trying to see the girl's face in the gathering dusk.
"I knew," she went on quietly, "even if you didn't. You thought it your duty to weigh the evidence you had found, and to be cold and stern and unyielding. But in your heart you knew that everything was all right. You may have deceived yourself, David, but you never deceived me."
"You don't hold it against me?" he asked unsteadily. "Really, Alison, I must have believed. I couldn't have doubted—"
"Of course not," she returned. She got up from the bowlder and stood beside him. They faced each other for a moment, two shadows, dimly outlined in the purple twilight. Then, naturally and inevitably as clouds drifting together, the shadows merged, and without quite knowing how it all came about, Dexter found Alison in the circle of his one useful arm, warm and trembling and clinging, found himself holding her in a breathless, stunning embrace.
"Oh, my dear," he gasped. "Whatever I may have thought, I loved you—in spite of everything."
"I knew!" she whispered. "And I know now why it all happened as it did—why I was forced to run away to this terrible wilderness. I thought it was tragedy, and it was for this!"
She spoke incoherently, between tears and laughter, her face against his shoulder.
His hand went up, and his fingers strayed through her soft, tumbled hair. "Alison! Look at me!"
Slowly she lifted her head, but as their glances met they were startled by a loud coughing sound behind them, "I feared as much," said a gruff voice.
In confusion they drew apart, and turned to see a short, stocky shape standing on the edge of the beach.
"Oh—Colonel Devreaux!" said Dexter awkwardly.
"Yes." The old man advanced and fixed them with his grim scrutiny. "It looks to me as though I'd lost one of my best boys. I dislike to say it, but I'm afraid you're dropped from the rolls of the mounted."
"Just a moment," he went on as the corporal tried to speak. "Unless my eyes have gone bad, I take it that you two have a sort of an understanding between you. And the service is no place for a man's wife." He was silent for a moment as he measured Dexter up and down with his eyes. "You would have gone high in the ranks of the police," he said in a musing voice. "Now that you're leaving us I don't mind telling you that you've got the stuff. And that's why I know you'll go higher still outside the police—in civilian life. Your job from this time on is to make this girl happy."
The colonel turned on his heel, but before he could move away Alison stepped impulsively forward, caught him by both shoulders and kissed his stern-drawn lips.
"I wanted to," she said with a fluttering laugh. "I've wanted to do it for a long time."
Devreaux chuckled to himself, and his glance shifted back to the corporal. "I told you long ago," he remarked—"women—you never can tell about 'em. You're luckier than most of us. You've found the one in a billion. Hold on to her, David." The colonel drew a breath that sounded very much like a sigh, faced about abruptly, and strode off into the darkness.
"Like this!" said Alison. She found Dexter's hand, and drew his arm about her shoulders. "Your officer told you what to do. Tight—tighter!" She looked up at him with a tremulous smile, and her eyes slowly closed. "Still your prisoner," she whispered softly—"just like this—always."
THE END