Constable La Marr wondered if the slogan of the Mounted applied in case one had to deal with an insane native.
Constable La Marr wondered if the slogan of the Mounted applied
in case one had to deal with an insane native.
NEVER FIRE FIRST
A Canadian Northwest Mounted Story
BY
JAMES FRENCH DORRANCE
CO-AUTHOR OF "GET YOUR MAN,"
"GLORY RIDES THE RANGE"
Frontispiece by
CHARLES DURANT
NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1924,
BY THE MACAULAY COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To
JOHN WOODS DORRANCE
FATHER AND FRIEND
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I Chance of Morpheus
II The Eskimo Way
III Complication Astounding
IV Best of Bad Business
V Silver and Black
VI Regard for the Law
VII Wanted—An Eskimo Fox
VIII The Hero Fugitive
IX The Skein Tangles
X Hard Knuckles
XI The Scarlet Special
XII Living Targets
XIII His Montreal Promise
XIV A Double-Barreled Case
XV Under Suspicion
XVI The "Widdy" in Gray
XVII Richer than Gold
XVIII A Cryptic Messenger
XIX Into the Night
XX Morning's Maze
XXI The Closed Creek
XXII Figure of Speech
XXIII When Morning Came
XXIV Tent-Told Tales
XXV Clutch of the Breed
XXVI Boot and Booty
XXVII Bright with Promise
NEVER FIRE FIRST
CHAPTER I
CHANCE OF MORPHEUS
From the "dig-in" of the snow-bank where he had spent the blizzard night in comparative comfort, Constable La Marr of the Royal Mounted looked out upon a full-grown day. The storm that had driven him to shelter had passed, or at least was taking a rest. For once he had overslept and where days, even in winter's youth, are but seven hours long, the fault caused him chagrin.
That a "Mountie" in close pursuit of a murder suspect should have made such a slip was disconcerting even to one so young as La Marr. He found little consolation in the fact that when he had enlisted in the Force he had not dreamed of an Arctic assignment, but had expected one of those gayly uniformed details in Montreal or Quebec.
His concern, if the news ever leaked out, was of the reaction upon his immediate superior, Staff-Sergeant Russell Seymour. But small chance of that leakage unless he himself weakened—or strengthened—and tested the adage that confession is good for the soul. Seymour, a grimly handsome wolf of the North in command of the detachment post at Armistice, was now two months absent on an irksome detail of snow patrol, one that should have fallen to the rookie constable, except for his inexperience.
La Marr stamped out of the snow-hole that had sheltered him and restored circulation by vigorous gymnastics. Light as was his trail equipment, being without sled or dogs, he had not suffered, having learned rapidly the first protective measures of the Arctic "cop."
He was about to make a belated breakfast from his emergency pack when his glance chanced toward the north and focused upon a furred figure headed down the snow ruff on a course that would bring him within easy reach.
"Aye, not so bad!" he congratulated audibly. "I get me man by sleeping on his trail!"
He chuckled as he watched the snow-shoed Eskimo stumble directly toward the trap that was set for him by chance of Morpheus.
Yet the young constable took no chances.
A murder had been committed two days before at Armistice, almost within the shadow of the police post. The crime seemed a particularly atrocious one to him from the fact that a white man, a trader's clerk, had been the victim. Any Eskimo who would go to such lengths was either desperate or insane. La Marr felt called upon to be very much on guard as he waited within the shelter of the snow-trap.
He had not a doubt that the native approaching was his quarry, any more than he had of that quarry's guilt. He wondered if the slogan of the Mounted applied in case one had to deal with an insane native. It would be easy—and providentially safe—to wing the oncomer, undoubtedly unaware of the nearness of a Nemesis.
But the training at the Regina school of police that a "Mountie" never fires first is strict and impressive. Constable La Marr could not take a pot shot even with the intent only to wound the flounderer.
Next moment surprise caught him—surprise that Avic, the red-handed culprit, was fighting his way back to camp. But wait, he'd have to revise that thought for this particular murder had been done in a peculiar native fashion that shed no blood. Anyhow, why should one so obviously guilty of killing a white man in a bronze man's country be headed toward the police post from which he had made a clean get-away?
No answer came to La Marr. He merely waited.
The Eskimo floundered on.
The constable's concealment was neat enough in a country where all is white. It was better even than bush or shrub, for they were so rare as to be open to suspicion. At just the right second he lunged forward and took the native entirely by surprise. The two went over in a flurry of snow.
For a moment the Eskimo struggled fiercely, possibly thinking that his fur-clad assailant was an Arctic wolf. But his resistance ceased on recognizing he was in human grip.
La Marr yanked his captive to his feet and searched for weapons, finding none. Then he remembered the rules of the Ottawa "red book" and pronounced the statutory warning.
"Arrest you, Avic, in the name of the king; warn you that anything you say may be used against you. D'ye understand?"
As he asked this last, which is not a part of the official warning, he realized that Avic did not.
"Barking sun-dogs, why didn't the good Lord provide one language for everybody?" he complained. "Anyway, there ain't much chance of my understanding anything you may say against yourself. I'll tell it all over to you when I get you to the post. Now we'll mush!"
"Ugh—yes," grunted the Eskimo, seemingly undisturbed.
The young constable was puzzled by the prisoner's demeanor. He stared at the man, whose stolid expression was heightened by thick lips and high cheek-bones. Perhaps the native did not know he was in the hands of the police and on his way to pay for the dreadful crime.
Raising his parkee, La Marr disclosed the scarlet tunic which he wore underneath. It was the color of authority in the far North; no Eskimo who ever had seen it before could doubt it.
There was no gleam of intelligence in the dark eyes that stared from behind narrow, reddened lids. There dawned upon the constable a possibility. The Eskimo was snow blind under the curse of the Northland winter which falls alike to native and outlander, at times. That would explain his back-tracking. Rather than wander in circles over the white blanketed tundra until a miserable death came to his rescue, he was hurrying back, while a glimmer of sight yet remained, to take his chances with the mystery called "Law."
"Not a bad choice," thought La Marr as he stepped out ahead to break the trail that the night's blizzard had covered.
After locking his prisoner in the tiny guard room, a part of the one-story frame structure that sheltered the small detachment, the constable started for the post of the Arctic Trading Company a few hundred yards away. He was young, La Marr, and pleased with himself over his first capture of importance. He anticipated satisfaction in discussing the arrest with Harry Karmack, the only other white man at Armistice now that Oliver O'Malley had passed out.
But he did not get across the yard.
The report of a rifle from down the frozen river, which flowed north, halted him. He saw a dog team limping in over the crust, unmistakably the detachment's own bunch of malamutes. The man at the gee-pole could be none other than Sergeant Seymour, returned at last from the long Arctic patrol.
Here was a vastly more important auditor for his triumph. He sprang forward to offer salute and greetings and to help with the malamutes, for an Eskimo dog team always arrives with a flourish that is exciting and troublesome.
Once the animals were off to their kennels and before Seymour fairly had caught his breath from the last spurt into camp, the young constable was blurting out the details of Oliver O'Malley's untimely end.
"But I've captured the murderer!" La Marr exclaimed in triumph. "I've got Avic, the Eskimo, hard and fast in the guard room. Come and see."
With interest the sergeant followed the lead of the one and only man in his command.
The native had been squatted on the floor with his back against the wall near a stove, the sides of which glowed like a red apple. On their entry, he rose muttering in gutturals that meant nothing to the constable. Seymour gave one glance of recognition, then turned.
"You've got a murderer, sure enough, La Marr," he said with that slowness of speech so seldom accelerated as to be an outstanding characteristic. "But his name's not Avic and by no possibility could he have had anything to do with the killing of O'Malley."
"Then who the hell——," the constable began.
"This is Olespe of the Lady Franklin band. For three weeks he's been my prisoner. On the sled out there are the remains of the wife he killed in an attack of seal-fed jealousy."
The chagrin of Constable La Marr was written in gloom across a face so lately aglow.
CHAPTER II
THE ESKIMO WAY
Grim, indeed, had been Sergeant Seymour's sledded return to his detachment. For more than two hundred miles across the frozen tundra he had driven his ghastly load—the murdered woman wrapped in deer skins after the native custom, sewed up in a tarp and lashed to a komatik, the Labrador sled that gives such excellent service on cross-country runs. All this, that the inquest which the Dominion requires, regardless of isolation, might be held in form and the case against the uxoricide assured.
And out ahead, unarmed, and under "open" arrest, had mushed the murderer himself, breaking trail toward his own doom. Often in the whirling snow, Olespe had been beyond his captor's sight. But never had he wavered from the most feasible course to Armistice; always had he been busily making camp when the dogs and their official driver caught up at the appointed night-stop. No white man could have been entrusted with such "fatigue duty" under like circumstances. Three weeks of such opportunity for remorse must have been too much.
But Seymour was not thinking now of this recent ordeal.
The case of Olespe, except for the formalities of coroner's inquest, commitment and trial was settled. The plight of his unhappy constable held the pity of the sergeant, always considerate.
"I'm not blaming you, Charley," he assured. "Until you've been up here a few years, all Eskimos look right much alike."
"Can't I start after the real Avic at once," pleaded the constable. "I'll make no second mistake."
La Marr was as eager as a hound held in leash after its nose has rubbed the scent. But he could not, just then, bring himself to confess his over-sleeping.
Seymour did not answer at once, but set about taking off his heavy trail clothes and getting into the uniform of command. He was a large built man, but lean of the last ounce of superfluous flesh owing to the long patrols that he never shirked.
The scarlet tunic became him. Across the breast of it showed lines of vari-colored ribbons, for his service in France had been as valorous as vigorous. He had gone into the war from his Yukon post and, almost directly after the armistice, back into the Northwest Territories to establish one of the new stations of the Mounted in the Eskimo country.
The green constable chafed under the silence, but he did not make the mistake of thinking it due to slow thinking. With Seymour many had erred in that direction to their sorrow. The sergeant certainly was slow in speech, but when he spoke he said something. He might seem tardy in action, but once started he was as active as a polar bear after a seal.
"No hurry about taking after this Avic," he said at last. "Likely he'll not travel far this double-thermometer weather." The reference was to a jocular fable of the region that to get the temperature one had to hitch two thermometers together. "At worst he can't get clear away—no one ever does, except when old man Death catches him first. We'll hold our inquest, then I'll issue a warrant."
"And detail me to serve it?" La Marr's question had that breathless interrogation point of secret self-accusation.
To Seymour's thin lips came that whimsical smile which transformed his whole expression, despite its blanket of beard. To a student of expression, this would have shown the tenderness of a woman to be concealed beneath the life-hardened mask. His grimness melted like snow beneath the caress of a Chinook wind; yet warning remained that this gentleness was not open to imposition.
"Right-o, Charlie," he promised. "I've made mistakes in my day and been thankful for the chance to rectify them. You're nominated to bring in whoever is named in the warrant after the inquest. Let's go."
He put on a pea-jacket, on the sleeves of which the stripes of his rank stood out in deep yellow. On a thatch of towsled, brownish hair he settled the fur cap proscribed in the regulations for winter wear.
Outside they first attended the disposal of the sled. Without telling the post's native hostler the grim nature of their load, they saw it placed in a shed which had the temperature of a morgue.
Adjoining the police buildings on the south was the establishment of the Arctic Trading Company, Ltd. This was a low but substantially built structure of timber and stone, also facing the frozen river. The "Mounties" entered the storm door which gave upon the factor's quarters, with the intention of divorcing Harry Karmack from his book and pipe long enough to accompany them to the scene of the local crime.
"Dear eyes, but it's glad to see you home again, Serg.," was the trader's greeting, as he arose from his chair beside an "airtight burner" and extended his hand for a hearty grip. "Things have come to a pretty pass in the territories when the 'Skims get to biting the hands that are feeding them."
Seymour met this comment with a grave nod. Like others of the Force on Arctic detail, he was surprised at what approached an epidemic of murderous violence among their Eskimo charges, in general a kindly and docile people.
A prepossessing individual was Harry Karmack, not at all the typical trader. He was dark, from a strain of French blood in his Canadian make-up, with laughing eyes and a handsome mouth. As he seldom took the winter trail, he shaved daily "so as not to let the howling North get the better of me," as he liked to put it. His smooth cheeks contrasted sharply with the bearded ones of the officers, their growth cultivated for protection on the snow patrols. Generally Karmack wore tweeds over his powerful frame and a bright tie beneath the collar of his flannel shirt. At that, he was a seasoned sour-dough and a sharp trader, respected and feared by the natives.
"What do you think's got into the blood of the breed all of a sudden?" he asked.
"We've handed them too many rifles, for one thing," offered Seymour slowly. "But don't you worry, the Mounted will get the deluded creatures in hand. Will you come with us for a look at the O'Malley scene?"
Karmack reached for his furs.
"If you don't," he remarked, a severe note in his voice, "you scarlet soldiers won't be any safer than us traders. When I think of young O'Malley, one of the finest chaps I ever knew, struck down here at a police post——"
A catch in his voice stopped him. Taking a battery lantern from a cupboard beside the doorway, he signified he was ready for the said inspection.
La Marr led the way to the scene of the crime—a stone hut half buried in the snow. At the door he broke the R.C.M.P. seal which he placed there before setting out on his futile pursuit of the suspect.
"Nothing was disturbed, sir," said the constable in a hushed voice. "Everything is as Karmack and I found it when we came to investigate why O'Malley did not return to the store."
They stepped out of the gathering dusk into a windowless room. The roof was so low as to cause the shortest of them to stoop. The trader pushed the button on his lantern and raised it.
Across the cave-like room, which was bare of furniture after the Eskimo fashion, Seymour stared. There, in a sitting posture on a sleeping bench, was all that was mortal of the assistant factor.
In life, O'Malley had been a handsome youth of pronounced Irish type. Sudden death had wrought so few changes that the sergeant had difficulty in believing that he looked on other than a sleeping fellow human. A dankness, as of a tomb, served to convince him.
The victim's head rested against the back wall of the hut; his crossed feet upon a deerskin floor covering. Clutched in one hand was a black fox pelt. Upon the sleeping bench beside him lay one of silver. Both looked to be unusually fine skins. Presumably, some dispute over the price of the prizes was the motive of the crime.
Karmack stepped closer with the light; indicated by gesture a knotted line of seal skin around the victim's throat, the end dangling down over his parkee.
"The Eskimo way!" muttered the trader brokenly.
The shudder that passed through Seymour's wiry frame was not observed by the companions of the inspection. No more was it caused by the untimely fate of Oliver O'Malley.
CHAPTER III
COMPLICATION ASTOUNDING
As is the silken kerchief to the Latin garroter, so is the Ugiuk-line to the Eskimo bent upon strangulation. Strong reason had Sergeant Seymour of the Mounted to realize the possibilities in the clutch of the stout cord made from the skin of a bearded seal.
Although he had made no mention of the fact in Karmack's quarters, when the trader pronounced warning that the out-of-hand Eskimos soon would be clutching for the throats of the wearers of the scarlet, already had they clutched at his. The vivid memory of his narrow escape had brought his involuntary shudder at sight of the sinister drape about O'Malley's throat.
On the farthest-North night of his last patrol, he had elected to sleep in a deserted igloo on the skirts of a village rather than suffer the stifle of an occupied one. After midnight he had awakened from a strangling sensation to find himself in the hands of two stalwart assailants. The knot of a similar seal-hide line was gripping his throat. He had thrown off the pair only by an effort so supreme as to leave him too weak to follow them through the snow tunnel into the storm. Probably he never would know their identity or be able more than to guess at their motive as one of fancied revenge.
Seymour did not speak of this now as they stood in the hut of tragedy. No more did he mention the news that slowly was filtering through the North that Corporal Doak, Three River detachment of the Royal Mounted, and Factor Bender of the Hudson's Bay company post had been slain in a brutal and treacherous manner. To spread alarm was no part of his policy. But over at the post was the Ugiuk-line that had been used on him and in his mind was a vivid idea of its practice in Eskimo hands.
From these—the fearsome souvenir and the shuddering memory—he suspected that the O'Malley case was not as open-and-shut as it seemed. For him, mystery stalked the crime, one that would not be solved by the apprehension of Avic, the Eskimo.
Silently, he completed his immediate investigation of the crime. Two points stood out to confirm the suspicion born of his intimate knowledge of the Eskimo garroting methods. Upon the corpus delicti there was absolutely no mark except the sinister purple rim about the throat and a blood spot beneath the skin where the knot in the seal line had taken strangle hold. In the hut there was no sign of a struggle such as he had put forth to save himself in the igloo, not a dent in the earthen floor or a skin rug out of place. Yet, as he well knew, O'Malley was a powerful youth and of fighting stock!
"Let's have the facts—such as you know." The sergeant turned suddenly to Karmack.
"Dear eyes, I should say you shall have them—every one," returned the trader eagerly.
Despite certain mannerisms and his unusual—for the outlands—fastidiousness of dress, Karmack was straightforward and exceedingly matter of fact.
Word from native sources, it seemed, had reached the trading company's store several days before that Avic was in from his trap line with fox pelts "worth a fortune," according to Eskimo standards. He had borrowed this hut in which they now stood in the outskirts of the town from a relative and had sent the native for the makings of a "party," or potlatch. The hunter himself had not appeared in camp or sent any direct word to Karmack that he had fox skins for sale. He had no debit on the books of the Arctic company, so the reasonable supposition of his aloofness was that he meant to drive a hard bargain.
Skilled in barter with the natives, Karmack said he had countered by betraying no interest in the arrival of the aloof hunter. He had felt confident that, given time, Avic would run short of funds for entertaining and market his catch at a reasonable figure. But, at length, had come disturbing rumors over his native "grape-vine." Avic had heard, the rumor went, that the Moravian Mission has established a new trade store at Wolf Lake, near the big river—the mighty Mackenzie. He was excited by tales of high prices paid there and was planning to migrate to that market with his prizes.
"It was then," continued Karmack, "that I told O'Malley to mush over to see this bird and talk him into a good humor. The young chap had developed a knack at sign-language barter, although he knew little Eskimo; I was busy on a bale of furs at the store. He was just to persuade Avic to come into the post where we'd come to some satisfactory agreement as to price for whatever the 'Skim's traps had yielded.
"By gar, sir, two hours passed and Oliver did not come back, nor was there any sign of the hunter. The mission shouldn't have taken him half an hour, for all in the name of reason that the native could have wanted was for us to come to him with an invitation. I began to get anxious and started out to see what was what. Meeting La Marr out front, I asked him to come along with me, still with no apprehension. We found what you yourself have seen—exactly that and nothing more."
He paused for a moment with his emotion, then: "Holy smoke, man, if I had known what would eventuate, I'd never have sent him but gone myself. They're afraid of me, these confounded huskies, and I'd grown to love that boy as a brother!"
"What do you know about O'Malley, Karmack—how he came into the territories—what he'd done in the provinces—all that sort of thing?" Seymour asked the disjointed question seemingly satisfied with the other's preliminary statement.
The trader was silent a moment, thinking.
"Not a great deal, come to think of it," he said, before his hesitation had become pronounced. "A tight-mouthed lad, Oliver, when it came to his own affairs. He hails from Ottawa and was sent out by the president of the Arctic Trading Company. Brought a letter from the big chief telling me to make a trader out of him, if possible. Evidently his people have money or influence. Perhaps there's some politics in it. I don't really know, old bean."
"Hadn't been in any jam down below, had he?"
"Oh, rather not—not that sort at all. May have seen a bit of Montreal or Quebec and perhaps had crossed the home bridge to Hull, where it's a trifle damp, you know, but nothing serious, I'm certain. The big chief never would have sent me a blighter."
The sergeant asked for the victim's next of kin and who should be notified.
"Oliver never spoke of his family," answered the factor. "Had a picture or two on the packing box he used for a bureau, but we never discussed them. Said to notify the head office if anything went wrong with him. Dear eyes, the lad was peculiar in some ways. You'd think——"
The sergeant's interest seemed not to lie in the trader's thoughts. He had two inquests on his hands, to say nothing of the capture of Avic of the foxes. For the moment forgotten was the fact that he had promised Constable La Marr this detail. Moreover, there remained that suspicion, born from his own narrow escape from the Ugiuk-line, that there was more behind the murder than appeared on the surface. He led the way from the hut; waited until La Marr had affixed another police seal on the door, then moved ahead into the main trail, a sled-wide path which camp traffic kept beaten down between the banks of snow.
A shout from down-trail startled them. From out of the increasing dusk, bells jangling, bushed tails waving like banners, dashed a dog team dragging a light sled. Wondering, they flattened against the snow to give gangway. The arrival of a strange team at that time of year was an event.
The sled was braked to a halt a few yards down the trail. A tall driver, slim despite an envelopment of furs, sprang from the basket and waited for them to come up.
"I thought I recognized a uniform in passing—and I need direction."
The voice sounded clear as a bell on the evening frost and unmistakably feminine. Moreover, it carried none of the accent peculiar to the half-breed mission-trained women who spoke English. They looked closer into a face of pure white and eyes that might have been brushed into the pallor with a sooty finger.
A white woman in Armistice—a young and comely girl of their own race! Think how incredible it must seem to three who had settled down to an October-April winter of isolation.
"I'm Sergeant Seymour, of the Mounted, in charge of this detachment," offered the policeman, for once speeding his speech. "Who're you looking for, ma'am?"
"I must find Oliver O'Malley's fur trading store.
"And who might be seeking our young trader?" The sergeant kept from his voice any hint of the dread that had clutched him.
"I'm Moira O'Malley of British Columbia—his sister."
This astounding complication left the three men speechless, glad for the dusk that helped mask the consternation that must be written on their faces.
CHAPTER IV
BEST OF BAD BUSINESS
In his grown-up life, Sergeant Seymour had met a procession of emergencies. Seldom had he failed to do the right and proper thing—the best for all concerned. But never had he faced a more difficult proposition than that presented by the young woman who now faced him on the trail, awaiting news of the brother she had journeyed so far to join.
When he thought of what lay in the hut they had just replaced under Mounted Police seal, he was distressed to the quick. When he pondered the distress and disappointment that must be hers when she learned the truth, that hidden strain of kindness within him promptly interposed barrier against his blurting out the facts, police fashion. He felt that he must temporize.
"You've come to the right camp, Miss O'Malley, but your brother won't be in to-night. In the morning——. But surely you did not mush from the Mackenzie alone?"
A small sigh, doubtless of disappointment at the further delay, passed her lips; but no exclamation came. Evidently she was a self-contained young person.
No, she explained readily, she had not come alone. The Rev. Luke Morrow and his wife were behind with another sled and they had traveled only from Wolf Lake. The Rev. Morrow, it seemed, was a friend and fellow churchman of her father, then stationed at Gold, British Columbia.
"Only mushed from Wolf Lake!" exclaimed Constable La Marr, stressing the only, although after one glance into her wonder face he was hating himself the more for having let the fox hunter get away from him.
The missionaries were having trail trouble, she continued. Being so near journey's end, she had dashed on with her lighter load, hoping to send her brother to help them into camp, as well as being the earlier to the reunion.
"Constable La Marr will go out at once," declared the sergeant. "How far are they?"
"Scarcely a mile. We were in sight of your flag when they spilled."
La Marr at once took the back trail, not waiting to go to the post for the worn police team nor, considering the distance, wishing to experiment with the girl's strange huskies.
At the moment Moira turned to quell an incipient dog fight; the sergeant turned quickly to Karmack.
"Not a word to her until after the inquest—until we've a chance to break it to her gently."
The trader nodded agreement and was introduced when she had straightened out her team.
"Mr. Karmack was—is your brother's chief here at lonely young Armistice."
For a moment he held his breath for fear the verb slip would be noticed and the question of tense raised. The girl, however, was too much interested in her surroundings to heed. The trader helped by bowing in his best manner and seizing one of her mittened hands in both his own for a warm greeting.
"A fine lad, Oliver. Dear eyes, what a fine chap!"
His startling exclamative caused her own eyes to open, but Karmack merely grinned in amiable fashion.
"I hope you and your friends will accept the poor hospitality of the trading post, at least for this night," he concluded heartily. "We'll have plenty of room."
"But isn't there a mission house," began the girl. "I thought the Morrows——"
Seymour interrupted.
"Nothing doing, Karmack, with your commercialized hospitality. They're the first visitors of the winter; I claim them in the name of the king." He turned to the girl. "The mission house hasn't been opened for months. We'll make you comfortable at the detachment barrack—won't have to use the guard room, either. If you'll draw rein at the flag pole——"
Her "mush—mush on!" to the dogs rang clear and gave the policeman further speech with the factor.
"You couldn't have her there to-night, Karmack, in view of what I have to tell her to-morrow. Her brother's things scattered all about——she'd ask too many questions. Have you tangled in no time."
Again Karmack nodded agreement. He hadn't thought of that, but only of being hospitable. It would have been a treat, though, to entertain such a charmer under the chaperonage of the missionary couple. He would send up some butter for their supper. That of the police stores smelled to the heavens.
"That's fine; if ours came from cows, they were athletes," Seymour replied with a grimace. "Come up with yourself for coffee. And I wish you'd send your man for their dogs and kennel them for the night. My malamutes raise Billy-blue when there's any new canine clan in sniffing distance."
The isolation of Armistice, with its difficulties of transportation, combined with its newness as a police post caused even the living room of the detachment to take on a barracks-like austerity.
The scant furniture had been made on the spot and was all too rustic. There were bunks along three walls and a scattering of skins upon the rough boards of the floor. A lithograph of King George, draped with the colors, occupied a position of honor, the only other decoration being a print of the widely popular "Eddie," Prince of Wales. But logs blazed cheerfully in the stone fireplace and Moira O'Malley, divested of her outer trail clothes, looked very much at home as she stood to its warmth.
Not until he returned from the kitchen and the starting of a "company" supper did Russell Seymour realize in full the startling beauty of the Irish girl who had come to them at such an unfortunate moment. She was within an inch of being as tall as himself as she stood there on the hearth. Her lampblack hair, coiled low on her lovely neck, actually was dressed to show her small ears—and almost had he forgotten that white women had pairs of such.
A generous mouth, full and red of lips, sent his eyes hastening on their fleeting inspection when she became aware of his presence in the kitchen doorway. If the even rows of pearls behind those lips had flashed him a smile then, the temptation must have been too great. Her slender figure merely hinted at rounding out in its mould of black blanket-cloth. He glanced shyly at her ankles—always the cover-point in his estimate of feminine pulchritude. She still wore her trail muckluks of fur, clumsy looking as a squaw's sacking, but he knew beyond doubt how silk stockings and pumps would become her.
In the eyes he had remarked on the trail, however, Moira's beauty reached its highest peak, he decided. They were as blue as the heart of an Ungova iceberg and as warm as the fire which glowed behind her. They looked out at him in a friendly, inquiring way from behind lashes as dark as an Arctic winter night.
And on the morrow those lashes would be wet with tears of grief. At the moment he'd gladly have given his hope of heaven to have ushered a laughing young Oliver O'Malley into the room.
"Decorative, to say the least," she remarked, at last flashing him the threatened smile.
"Yes, ma'am—what ma'am?" he stammered.
"The uniform of the Mounted as you wear it in that door frame," she teased him. "At that, I'd rather see it—you on a horse."
He fell back on the only defense he knew—a pretense at seriousness. "Up here we're the Royal Canadian Dis-Mounted Police, Miss O'Malley. We know only two seasons—dog and canoe. There isn't a single 'G' Division mount north of Fort Resolution. By the time I see a horse again, I'll probably have forgotten how to ride. I'll climb aboard Injun style and try to steer him by his tail."
The sergeant was glad to hear the crunch of steps upon the snow. Under the circumstances, he was in no mood for persiflage and more than willing to give up the bluff that seemed required. He stifled a sigh of relief as La Marr ushered in the missionaries.
A quiet couple, plain, both a trifle frail-looking for Arctic rigors, the Morrows proved to be. Serious as they were about "The Work" to which they were prepared to give years of sacrifice, both were "regulars" in the life of the North. Scarcely would they wait to warm up before insisting on helping their hosts prepare supper. Moira, too, insisted on having a hand. The lean-to kitchen refused to hold them all, however, so Seymour cited the "too many cooks" rule and discharged all but Mrs. Morrow.
The meal which soon was on the oilcloth was more substantial than formal. It consisted of warmed-up soup from a great kettle that held a week's supply at a time, then sizzling carabou steaks, sour-dough bread, boiled beans and bacon and, of course, marmalade from distant England. It was the sort of menu that "sticks to the ribs" gratefully after a day in the open. When Karmack came in for his promised coffee, he found the post gayer than ever he had known it to be. Yet, for three of them buoyancy was as forced as jigging at a wake.
With tact increased by the fear that some chance slip would disclose to their lovely guest the news that he felt temporarily should be kept from her, Sergeant Seymour discovered that the ladies were worn by their long run in the biting cold. He threw open the door of "officers' room," disclosing a wood fire crackling in a Yukon stove and two bunks spread with blankets fresh from the post's reserve supply.
"Not much to offer as a guest room, but our one best bet," he apologized. "I'll confess frankly that there isn't a single bunk-sheet in the detachment. But I think I can guarantee a sound sleep for both of you. I'll promise there'll be no breakfast alarm in the morning, but the makings of a meal will be beside the kitchen stove when you're ready."
Protest unexpected came from mild-mannered Mrs. Morrow. "But we're routing you out of house and home, sergeant," she exclaimed. With a nod of her blond head, she indicated an extra uniform which dangled from a hook against the wall, telltale staff stripes upon its crimson sleeve.
"A dreadful thing to do," added Moira. "And on your first night home after your long patrol!"
That portion of Seymour's face that was not bearded took color from the tunic that had betrayed him. "And I thought I'd removed all trace of the former occupant. Must be getting color blind." He carried the jacket into the living room. "Don't worry about your reverend, Mrs. Morrow; he'll bunk as snug as a bug out here with La Marr and me," he called back.
There was a chorus of good-nights; then the men settled to their pipes before the fireplace. After a reasonable wait in silence, Seymour lowered his voice and communicated to Luke Morrow the news of the tragedy. Without reservation, the missionary approved their course of keeping it from Moira until after the necessary legal formalities had been carried out. Then, he said, he would take charge with a religious reverence that might lighten the blow.
"She's a wonderful woman, Moira O'Malley," he said with deep feeling. "She endeared herself to everyone who met her over at Wolf Lake. Utterly wrapped up in her brother, this will be a terrible blow. I wonder if——" He hesitated. "Would it be admissible, do you think, to tell her of the death but not the fearful form?"
Glances exchanged by the three laymen showed that they appreciated the missionary's struggle—kindly thought against strict truthfulness. Long had he taught the "truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." But just now he wavered.
"By gar! It absolutely would!" Karmack vociferated.
Seymour's quick wit worked out a solution.
"An accident of the Arctic prairies. I'll trust having that one marked up against me in the Doomsday Book."
"Blessed are the kindly of heart," murmured the "sky-pilot." "So be it!"
Of course, they all realized that Moira would learn in time the nature of the "accident," but that need not be until Time had its chance to salve the wound. The arrest of Avic need not bring about disclosure, once the whites in Armistice were pledged to keep it from her. She might know him only as another unfortunate, misguided Eskimo slayer, a handcuff brother to Olespe of the Lady Franklin band, then in the guard room.
"But Mrs. Morrow?" The thought came suddenly to Seymour that the woman missionary spoke some Eskimo. "She'll hear of it from the natives."
Luke Morrow smiled; they did not know of the iron which was in the make-up of his little blond wife as he did.
"She is a good woman, so merciful. I will pray this out with her in the morning."
For a time, gloomy silence held the group around the fireplace. Suddenly Karmack leaned over and grasped Morrow almost roughly by the shoulder.
"Parson, do you know why that girl left her father and the comparative comforts of a British Columbia gold camp to share a trader's shack in bleak Armistice with her brother?"
The trader's demand scarcely could have been more vehement had he personally resented Moira's coming. "I know that he did not expect her. What's more, he never even spoke of having a sister."
The missionary's calm was perfect.
"She had no way of letting him know that she was coming to spend the winter with him, once the wireless she sent to Edmonton failed to reach Wolf Lake," he replied. "She came through herself by team in the first storm of winter. We had great difficulty in keeping her with us until we ourselves were ready to make the trip across country. She'd have come through with an Indian dog driver if we had not protested so stoutly."
"All that to see a brother, eh?" snorted Karmack. "Are you certain she is his sister?"
Seymour sprang to his feet, an angry glitter in his gray eyes. "Enough of that, Karmack! Express another such doubt and out you go—for good."
For a moment, a snarling expression strove to master the trader's face. The missionary poured oil.
"I'm sure Mr. Karmack meant nothing wrong. He's just a bit upset by all these happenings."
"Upset? Dear eyes, yes—I'll say I'm upset." The factor made a quick grasp for peace, for the sergeant looked dangerous. "All I meant was that I could understand a wife going to such an effort to join a husband, but not a sister."
"Any reason to believe Oliver O'Malley had a wife?" Seymour remained stern.
"None in the world. But a sister—— To make a trip like that, she must have had some very pressing reason." Again his eyes questioned the parson.
"If there existed any other than sisterly affection," said Morrow evenly, "she did not express it to me." His manner was so final as to make further questioning discourteous.
Clumsily as Karmack had used his probe, he had but echoed a query that had been in Seymour's mind from his first realization of Moira's superlative comeliness. The sergeant had meant to ask about this when he and Morrow were alone, and he would have put his question without giving offense.
Why had one who deserved to be the honored toast of the Dominion rushed into the Arctic wilds, evidently unasked, certainly unexpected, at a time of year when it would be next to impossible to send her back?
Was there any connection between her coming and what had occurred so recently in the Eskimo hut? Had she brought a warning of some sort to this beloved brother and been lulled into thinking she might delay for a missionary escort and still be in time to serve and save him?
Those rapid-fire speculations, unvoiced, seemed to advise only negative answers. Yet why had she come?
Constable La Marr, who had been silent all evening to a point of moodiness, now snapped Seymour from his thoughts with a question of his own.
"And when are you going to turn me loose after that accursed Avic?" he demanded in a tone that was scarcely subordinate.
The missionary looked up at his violence, but had no censure for the speech of it. These men who give their lives to lighten the Arctic native's sorry burden grow accustomed to strong language.
"At daybreak you will take the dogs, mush over to Prospect, and subpoena those three mining engineers wintering there to serve on coroner's jury. Bring them back with you. Miss O'Malley need know of only one inquest." He glanced with thoughtful eyes toward the closed door of the inner room. "After that——"
One look at the young constable's face must have told any who saw it that Avic, the Eskimo, would need to hide like a weasel to escape that arm of the law.
CHAPTER V
SILVER AND BLACK
La Marr was away at dawn with a venire facias for each of the three gold explorers, the only competent jurors within reach. As it was a matter of forty miles' rough sledding to the prospectors' camp and return, the inquests could scarcely be held before the late afternoon. That the girl whose emotions they were conspiring to protect might be too busy for vagrant suspicions, Sergeant Seymour suggested to the Morrows that they open up Mission House while he was at liberty to help them.
"Don't want to seem inhospitable, Mrs. Morrow," he said in his slowest, most deferential manner, "and you know you'll be welcome here as long as you care to stay, but I'm sure you want to get into your own place as soon as possible. Never know when some Arctic hades is going to cut loose and take me out on the trail. I'm off duty this morning—more than ready to help with the heavy work."
This brought an offer from Moira O'Malley that struck the hearts of those who knew.
"Our sergeant of the Dismounted is positively brilliant this morning," she said, confounding him utterly with twin flashes of Irish blue. "Why, all the time I attended school in Ottawa, I saw no one more considerate. You see, when Oliver gets back from this inconsiderate mush of his, I'll become quite useless as your handmaiden, Emma, with all the things a brother will be needing done for him."
Mrs. Morrow had not been advised of the true situation, but she had her own ideas as to the proper habitat in an outland's camp for a girl like Moira.
"Oh, you'll keep right on living at Mission House as long as you're here, my dear," she said. "The shack of a bachelor trader is no place for so dashing a belle."
"But I know Olie's quarters, whatever they are, will need my sisterly attentions," she protested, spreading unconscious agony to the two men. "His room at home always was a sight. A place for everything but nothing in its place seemed to be that Mick's motto."
As the two men went on ahead to the small dwelling that had been closed since the previous spring thaw, Seymour found himself asking again why she had come. Were sisters as devoted as that? As motherly? Never having had a sister, he was unable to answer.
The pair stripped weather boarding from doors and windows, aired the house thoroughly and carried in a supply of wood from the shed. They then closed it tight and built roaring fires in every available stove to remove the winter chill. The native hostler from the post already had shoveled paths through the snow.
So far as the two males could see, but little inside cleaning would be necessary. But the women, on coming to the house presently, revised that verdict and fell to with broom and mop.
The smoke from Mission House stove-pipes probably had been reported to Karmack, for he arrived presently, his interpreter drawing a toboggan loaded with provisions which were presented to the missionaries with compliments from the trading company. The gift was gracious, the supplies being of a sort not found in the somewhat meager store of staples provided by the societies. They were gratefully received.
Came then a second shock from Moira, again an innocent one, in the form of coupled questions.
"But Mr. Karmack, have you locked the store?" she asked first.
"Not much trade these wintry days and if customers come, they'll stick around like summer bull-flies." He accomplished the only laugh of the morning.
"But who is there to tell Oliver, when he comes back, that I've arrived and am waiting?"
Harry Karmack's freshly shaved, usually ruddy face went as white as the girl's natural pallor at this unexpected turn to his attempted whimsicality. He staggered back as if she had struck him a blow. Seymour, standing near, steadied him into a chair.
"That bad heart of yours again, old top?" the sergeant asked quietly.
No one ever had heard of anything being the matter with Karmack's heart, but the timely question served to cover his emotion. Mrs. Morrow noticed it, but did not wonder thereat, Evidently Moira had hit these sons of isolation hard, and there were in prospect interesting sessions, she thought, for Mission House living room that winter.
Seymour decided he had endured enough agony for one morning and so, on the plea of police routine, started for the post. But the thumbscrew of misadventure was to receive one more turn. From the door of Mission House the melodious voice of Moira carried to him.
"Oh, Sergeant Scarlet, please do keep an eye open for my merry brother along Rideau Street, or whatever you call the thoroughfare which passes your headquarters."
"And I'll have him paged at the Chateau Laurier and ask for him out at Brittania Park," he managed to answer in terms of the city of her schooling. But he had no heart for the jest, mindful of the change that soon must come to her happy mood.
He entered the police shack by the back door and looked in for a moment on Olespe. His prisoner from Lady Franklin oblivious of his fate, seemed to revel in the luxury of the guard room's warmth. The sergeant went through and out the front way.
"Rideau Street indeed," ran his thoughts. "What a name for that streak through the snow in Armistice!"
At that, Moira showed that she knew her Ottawa, for Rideau is the street on which face the red brick headquarters of the Royal Mounted. Would that she had never left the capital! Would that he could waft her home again, sacrifice though that would be in this ice-bound isolation!
Straight to Avic's hut he went and broke the seal upon the door, as was his right. Again his eyes were upon all that remained of her "merry brother." He wondered about death and the hereafter and various things that never should enter a Mountie's mind—not when he's stationed north of Sixty-six.
Then, suddenly, his eyes seemed to open as though a mote had been cast from each. Perhaps this was effected by the magic of Moira's charm and beauty. Certainly he saw details that had not impressed him the previous afternoon.
As might a wolverine in defense of her young, he pounced upon the silver fox pelt that lay on the sleeping bench beside the murdered youth—lay in such a way as to indicate its purchase had already been negotiated. He studied the set of the fur and sniffed at the tanning on the inner side. His eyes widened as he held the beautiful exhibit before him and realized the possibilities that were opened up by this definite clue.
"Magic skin," he murmured half aloud after the fashion of men who find themselves often alone in the wilderness. "You widen the mystery; may you help to close it!"
Gently, without shrinking from the cold touch, he removed the last clutch of O'Malley's fingers from the black fox—probably the pelt of ostensible contention. Close examination of this showed the same conditions to exist.
Neither of the foxes had been trapped in the present winter; both had been cured at least a year.
"Magic skin," he repeated, and breathed a wish too fervent for utterance even in the hut where he stood alone.
In the act of wishing, memory put its finger on him. There came to mind that famous tale of Balzac's, "The Magic Skin." The story dealt with the hide of an ass which, with every wish invoked from it, shrank until the greedy owner was threatened with the disappearance of his magic possession.
Perhaps Seymour had best cease wishing. But he recalled he had a pair of magic skins in hand; grew defiant of the venerable myth, and wished again, more fervently even than before that it would fall to his lot to solve the deepened mystery of the Oliver O'Malley murder.
Opening the pea jacket of his winter uniform, he tucked both furs beneath his tunic. Closing and resealing the hut, he strode back to the police cabin. Had he intended to appropriate the silver and black treasures for his own gain, he scarcely could have hidden them more carefully.
CHAPTER VI
REGARD FOR THE LAW
Nowhere in the civilized world, perhaps, is there more respect paid to the coroner and his inquests than in the Dominion of Canada. This regard is not confined to the settled provinces, but reaches beyond the Arctic Circle even to the farthermost post of the Royal Mounted in latitude 76—Ellesmere Island, on the edge of the Polar Sea. This afternoon in Armistice was being devoted to the ancient formality of the law.
As one of the miners, brought in by Constable La Marr from Prospect to serve as juryman, put it in half-hearted protest to Seymour:
"You red coats would hold an inquest at the North Pole if word came to you that some one was violently dead up there."
In his capacity as coroner, Sergeant Seymour first called the inquest over Mrs. Olespe, whose Eskimo name was too complicated with gutturals for English pronunciation. Upon chairs and one of the bunks in the living room of the post sat the jury—the three gold hunters from Prospect and Factor Karmack. At a table beside his superior was Constable La Marr, acting as clerk of court.
The prisoner, more stolid than sullen, was brought in from the guard room and planted on another of the bunks beside Koplock, the interpreter who regularly served the Arctic Traders.
Seymour's first difficulty was to make certain that Olespe understood the warning that had been given him at the time of his arrest, for he had not entirely trusted the ability of the volunteer translator who had served him up North.
"Ask him if he knows who the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are," was the first address to the interpreter.
There followed verbal explosions back and forth.
"Olespe says they are the rich men of the country," reported the interpreter.
Shrugging his shoulders over the apparent hopelessness of the situation, Seymour tried again: "Ask him what he thinks the police came into the country for."
"To make us unhappy," came the report presently.
"In what way—unhappy?"
"By not let us shoot at what is ours to shoot and which we can hit."
Feeling that he was making progress, the sergeant got to the vital point. "Ask him what I said to him when I put him under arrest?"
"He says," translated the interpreter, "you told him he'd get hurt if he talked too much."
Seymour decided to let it go at that and led the way to the outbuilding used as morgue. There Olespe identified the remains of his wife, which had been sledded so many snowy miles because there was no possibility of finding a white jury nearer. The Eskimo added indifferently what was translated into "She no good wife."
Back in the station the sergeant told of his investigations at the scene of the crime, listed possible witnesses and summarized their version of a tragedy all too common among the Eskimo who are prone to the mÉnage À trois. The jury promptly brought in a verdict against Olespe, and Seymour, in his capacity of magistrate, held him to trial.
They were ready then for the second case of the day, the formal inquiry into the death of Oliver O'Malley. As Karmack was to be the most important witness, a change was made in the jury by substituting for him the recently arrived missionary. With these four and his constable clerk, Seymour went down the trail to the hut which Avic had occupied. That Karmack elected to stick by the stove at the post until the jury returned caused the coroner-sergeant secret rejoicing. He saw to it that La Marr did not enter the hut. The jury, seeing the interior for the first time, did not miss the fox-pelt clews which he had appropriated that morning.
Karmack and the Eskimo relative who had loaned Avic the hut, gave the only testimony. This the jury held sufficient on which to find a verdict against the fox hunter and when the fact had been duly recorded the coroner's court was declared closed.
The saddest task of the day was at hand—one from which these strong men shrank, but which none was ready to shirk. Presently a strange procession came up the trail from the hut of tragedy. In the lead was the police team of malamutes, with La Marr beside the foremost dog, holding him by leash to a dignified pace. They drew a sled carrying a blanketed burden. This vehicle Seymour steadied with the aid of a gee-pole. The prospectors and Harry Karmack brought up in the rear with bowed heads.
The way led, naturally, to the newly opened Mission House at the door of which Morrow met them. The dogs were unhitched and taken away by La Marr. The others picked up the sled and carried it into one of the bedrooms. From another room could be heard stifled sobs and words of comfort. Moira O'Malley knew, then, that her sisterly rush into the Frozen North, whatever its real object, had been in vain. The missionary's wife had broken the news of death without the real detail and now was comforting her.
On returning to the post, Seymour was momentarily surprised to see that the police dog team had been hitched to another sled—this one lightly loaded. The native hostler was holding them in waiting. Inside he found La Marr pacing the floor like some animal tenant of a zoo.
"Where away, Charlie?" he asked.
"After Avic. I'm just waiting for you to issue the warrant. You promised me the chance at him, you must remember."
"But why to-night?"
The constable gave him an impatient glance. "I can make that Eskimo camp on Musk-ox to-night; I'll be that far on my way. Haven't we lost time enough through my mistake?"
It took but a moment for Seymour to issue the warrant charging one Avic, Eskimo, with the murder by strangulation of Oliver O'Malley, which was in accord with the verdict.
"Remember the motto of the Force, young fellow," he cautioned as he handed over the document.
La Marr stuffed it into a pocket underneath his parkee.
"Aye—get me man!"
"Not that," said his superior with a frown. "It's 'Never fire first!' See that you bring Avic back alive. There's more depends on that than you know."
The constable looked startled. "You don't mean—— Why it's an open and shut case. The coroner's jury——"
"Bring Avic back alive, that's all. Good luck."
La Marr squared himself for a formal salute and went out into the gathering dusk. He had his orders.
CHAPTER VII
WANTED—AN ESKIMO FOX
After the excitement attending his return from the North patrol, the short winter days and the far longer nights passed slowly for the O.C. of Armistice detachment, now reduced to commanding himself. One week—two weeks—part of a third had been crossed off the calendar without any word coming from his man-hunting constable. Seymour wasn't exactly worrying yet, but he was beginning to wish he had not been so generous about giving young La Marr this chance to redeem himself.
Above all else he desired the custody of Avic, the fox hunter. The body of the accused Eskimo would not satisfy him; no more would a report of his death. Nothing would do but Avic in the quick.
Often in the endless evenings, while intermittent blizzards raged about the shuttered windows, he would take out the black and silver pelts. From various angles he would argue their bearing on the case. More than ever was he assured that they were not of recent trapping. The fur was that of animals which had been through a long, easy winter—one when rabbits had been plentiful. This was not a rabbit winter on the arctic prairies east of the Mackenzie.
These particular foxes had been trapped in the early spring, or he was no judge of fur quality. That this spring had not been the previous one was shown by the seasoned state of the tanning. However, this tanning did not appear to be Eskimo work, but that of Indian squaws further south.
Every Eskimo has a flock of cousins. He had visited several in the immediate vicinity who claimed more or less of that relationship to the missing Avic. He had examined the work of their women on furs. A pronounced difference in process seemed evident to him.
The film of mystery brought into the O'Malley murder by his own knowledge of Eskimo strangling had been intensified into a shroud by his study of the exhibits he had secreted. Yet, speculate as he would, there was no other apparent line of suspicion than that of the native's guilt. He was at loss how to proceed until he had questioned the man for whom the warrant had been issued.
Each time he looked at the pelts, one outstanding fact came to mind:
No Eskimo ever held a pelt, after his woman had cured it, longer than it took to get to the handiest trader. It was against all rhyme and reason that two fox pelts, worth many times their weight in gold, would remain in the hands of a ne'er-do-well like Avic so long after they were marketable. How, then, had the native come by them?
Under ordinary circumstances—rather, under the amity of suffer-isolation-together which had existed prior to the tragedy, he might have gone to Harry Karmack with his problem. At least, the factor could have given him an expert's opinion as to when the skins had become pelts by virtue of trapping and tanning.
But a breach yawned between the two—one unwittingly caused by the fair addition to the limited population of Armistice. It wasn't an open one, so far, but both knew that it existed and bridging it was the last thought of either. They were unadmitted rivals for the favor of Moira O'Malley. Anyone who knew the man, could have read the sergeant's interest in his countenance. Contrary to winter practice of toilers of the trails, his face had been clean shaved from the morning after La Marr's departure. The trader, on his part, showed intensity of his heart-hurt by countless little attentions to the young woman.
The unfortunate brother had been laid away upon the highest knoll near the camp after a simple service conducted by Rev. Morrow. The girl had held up under her bereavement with a courage that commanded all their admiration. No hint of the real cause of Oliver's death had reached her, so guarded had been the four resident whites who knew. From the Eskimo, of course, she learned nothing. She had accepted the report of an "accident of the Arctic" and had asked no embarrassing questions as to details. The finality of death seemed to suffice; nothing else mattered.
A week after the funeral, a stranger would not have known from her manner that suddenly she had been deprived of one of her dearest relatives. She never spoke of having a philosophy of life, but something of the sort seemed to sustain her. Her whole behavior indicated that she was determined not to make others unhappy with her personal grief. They all had their lives to live in a location that made life difficult. Moira O'Malley would do her utmost to make the winter as happy as might be. She did not even ask if it were not possible to send her "Outside," now that the reason for her presence had been removed by Fate.
Harry Karmack, bearing a book to Mission House in the hope that gloomy thought might be diverted thereby, had been the first of the rivals to discover her mental attitude. He had been prompt to act on his important discovery. Besides the volume, he left an invitation to dinner for the girl and her hosts. Sergeant Russell Seymour, official head of the tiny community, was not among those present, having received no invitation.
Now, this was a breach of camp etiquette which could not be overlooked. Far worse than the cut direct, it was nearly as much an insult as a blow in the face. When a handful of whites are segregated in a bronze man's country, they naturally cling to each other as they do to the "alders." Everyone possibly within the pale is invited to everything that approaches a function. Even squaw-men are asked to attend if they retain a semblance of presentability.
There was no possible question that Factor Harry Karmack's dinner was a function. Although it had never been mentioned by Moira or the Morrows, the sergeant had all the details. These had been relayed by his native hostler who had them direct from the Arctic's interpreter, the latter having acted as butler for the all-important occasion. The meal had been served in courses, mind you, for the first time in the history of the camp. The factor's store of delicacies, even to the tinned plum pudding, intended for the Christmas feast, had been freely broached.
Seymour could not hope to equal such a spread from police rations, but he was not to be outdone in hospitality. Miss O'Malley and the Morrows had accepted his invitation to a sour-dough luncheon. The factor had not accepted for an excellent reason that you probably can imagine.