Paulette said, "Oh my heavens, Dudley!" and went straight to pieces.

I don't know that I made much of a job of being calm myself. All I could get out was, "The wolves! We thought they'd eaten you—Paulette found your cap out by the Caraquet road."

Dudley, for whom the whole of La Chance had beaten the bush all one livelong night, whom his own sister had sworn was killed and eaten, Dudley made the best show of the three. He had a flask, of course,—when had he not? He dosed Paulette and me with what was left in it, but even with the whisky limbering my parched throat I hadn't sense to ask a coherent question. Dudley looked from Paulette to me and spoke pretty collectedly to both of us.

"I wasn't eaten, if that's what brought you two here—though judging from your conversation I imagine it wasn't. Thank the Lord you are here though, anyway. I've been pretty wild, tied up here with this snow. But"—sharply—"where the devil's Marcia?"

"Hidden away from Macartney, with Charliet to look after her." It was all I could bring myself to say, except that she thought Dudley was dead.

"Does Macartney think so too?" the corpse demanded.

"He worked hard enough to feel safe in thinking it," I returned bitterly, and came out with the whole story. How Macartney said the wolves had howled around the shack till their noise drove Dudley distracted, and he had slipped out after them unnoticed, with a gun; that Macartney, the two girls and half the men had gone to look for him, when he never returned, till Paulette found his wolf-doped cap torn up by the Caraquet road, and Marcia found him, in the bush—unrecognizable but for what rags of his sable-lined coat were left on his body. And Dudley's hard-boiled egg face never changed with one word of it.

"So that was how it was worked," he reflected quite composedly. "And Macartney thinks it was I Marcia found! Well, it wasn't—though I daresay it was my coat, all right, just as it was my cap Paulette picked up by the road. But it damn well would have been me, if it hadn't been for"—he paused casually, and pointed behind him—"Baker."

"Baker! That good-for-nothing devil who was always trailing after you? Why, Macartney said——" but I remembered Macartney had only said Baker was missing, too. I wheeled on the dimness of the inside cave and saw what I had missed in my flurry over Dudley. A second man—white-faced, black-eyebrowed, slim looking—was standing just where the fire glow did not reach him, staring at Paulette and me. I said, "Land of love, Baker!" And I may be forgiven if I swore.

Baker nodded as undramatically as Dudley. "Yes, it was me. I had sense enough all along to guess Macartney was going to finish Mr. Wilbraham with the wolf dope he'd tried out on you, if the rest of the gang hadn't. And I wouldn't stand for sculduddery like that, for one thing; and for another I thought I'd come out better in the end by sticking to the boss, like you seen me doing often enough! So I just told him he was being lain for and brought him out here. I knew this cave was safe, for I lived here two months before me and the rest of us dribbled into La Chance. And I knew the Halfway wasn't—for the two men who turned Billy Jones out of it, with a sham letter from the boss, were the two who drowned old Thompson! I've played honest in my way, Mr. Stretton, if you never thought so."

"Shut up," Dudley interrupted him indignantly. "I'd be where Marcia thought she found me, if it hadn't been for you. Listen, Stretton! I got fussy after you left for Billy Jones's that afternoon; I'd been hitting it up the day before, and you know how that leaves me! I didn't see why in blazes I hadn't gone with you to Billy's instead of sitting around the house, and a couple of hours after you left I started out to get a horse and follow you. But it's a lie that I heard wolves, or thought of them: there wasn't one around the place. Macartney wasn't around, either. I guess he was out in the bush fixing up the wolf-baited ground that was to get me, for he'd fixed up my coat and cap with it before he started. I thought something smelt like the devil when I put them on, but I never guessed it was my own things. I went out to the stable just as I might on any other day, only nobody happened to see me go, and right there I ran on Baker. I told him to come for a ride with me, but he didn't seem to think much of the horse racket; said he knew a short cut to Billy's, and it would be better for my head if we just walked. It was Baker told me the devilish reek I smelled was coming from my own coat, and I chucked it down by the stable door. God knows which of Macartney's men picked it up and wore it after I left it, for Marcia to find," even Dudley looked sick, "but it wasn't me! I smelt my cap, too, after I'd walked some of the muzziness out of me, and I threw that away—where Paulette found it. We didn't leave a sign of a track, of course; it was long before there was any snow. If I'd known why Baker had me out there, walking away from La Chance, I'd have turned back and defied Macartney, or I'd never have started. But it wasn't till it was black dark, and I'd walked enough sense into myself to ask why we were not getting to Billy Jones's, that Baker took his life in his hands—for you may bet I was fighting mad at having seemed to run away—and told me that you and I and all of us were in a trap that was going to spring and get us, and give Macartney our mine. He let out about Thompson's murder, and you and the wolf dope; and that Macartney'd kicked Billy Jones out of the Halfway with a forged dismissal from me, and had his own men waiting there to get you while he limed the bush and my cap and coat, for the wolves to get me. And you know I'd have been dead sure to go out after them with a gun, just as he said I did, if I'd heard them come yowling around the shack while I was in it! I'd have gone back to face Macartney, even then, only——Well, you've had experience of Macartney's wolves, and you'd know I couldn't! We could hear the row they were making even where we stood, miles away. We set off on the dead run for Caraquet and help, but we had to break the journey somewhere. We couldn't face Macartney's men at Billy's, for neither of us had a gun—and that's another lie to Macartney—and it was no good leaving the devil to run into hell. So Baker brought me here."

"But," I gasped, "I don't see how you missed me! I was here, too, that night!"

"Well, we weren't—till the morning," Dudley snapped in his old way. "It was just beginning to snow when we crawled down the burrow you'd crawled out of and found this place—and your boy."

"But I told him——D'ye mean he just let you find him?"

"He did not," grimly. "He was hidden away somewhere, and I don't suppose he'd ever have come out, if I hadn't happened to use what seems to have been your password! I said out loud that I'd give twenty dollars to any one who'd get me some food; and out comes your friend, and says you told him to trust any one who said that, and where was the twenty? So, after that, we settled down!"

"But——" Dudley's selfishness had always been colossal, yet this time it beat even me. "What did you suppose was going to become of your sister and Paulette—left with Macartney when you'd disappeared, and the Halfway picket had got me?" I burst out.

"My acquaintance with you made me hopeful they wouldn't get you," Dudley began drily, "and as for the girls——" but his sham indifference broke down. "Don't talk of it, will you?" he bellowed. "I did think you'd be all right, but I was in hell for those girls till I could get to Caraquet and take back help for them! Only this cursed snow stopped me. We had to wait till it was packed enough for Baker to sneak down to the Halfway and steal a couple of my own horses, for us to ride to Caraquet. But that's how I'm here—and how Marcia found a half-eaten man in my top-coat, that she thought was me!"

I was speechless. It was all so simple, even to Dudley's twenty dollars and my boy. But before I could say so, Dudley turned on me with his old vicious pounce. "Why in blazes don't you tell me what you left Marcia for, after bullying me because I did? And why are you and Paulette here, if you thought I was killed?"

"We left her because we had to, with a thousand tons of earth between us and the only way we could have got back to her alive," said I wrathfully. "And as for why we're here,"—I poured out the whole story of my return to La Chance, from Dudley's own funeral procession that met me and my bootless fight with Macartney, to the resurrection of Collins and Dunn, and Paulette's and my race across Lac Tremblant. I left out Marcia's share in my defeat, but Dudley gave a comprehending sniff.

"Marcia always was a fool about Macartney! But it's no matter, since she isn't with him—whether he's alive or dead. Only you were a worse fool, Stretton, to cross that lake with a girl in tow. I don't know why you weren't both drowned, like Thompson——" but his voice broke. He was a good little man, under his bad habits, or he never would have done what he had for Paulette. He muttered something about all the decent men who'd met their death because he wouldn't listen to Paulette when she tried to tell him the truth about Macartney, damned him up and down, and turned to Paulette with a sweet sort of roughness:

"You look done up, my girl! Here, get down by the fire and eat what our chef's got ready!" For the crippled boy had gone on with his cooking, regardless of the talk round him, and his rabbit was done.

But Paulette never looked at the food Dudley held out to her. "You're not angry, Dudley?" she asked very low. "I mean—for what I said to Nicky as we came in?"

"I was," but Dudley grinned in the half dark. "It was true enough, only nobody likes to hear their own obituary. But I knew about Stretton long ago, if you hadn't the sense to! You take him, my child, and my blessing. God knows I never asked you to marry an old soak like me!"

He shoved Paulette's hand into mine and stared at the two of us for a second. Then—"By gad," he added, in a different voice, "I hope Macartney's got drowned, or he may walk in on the lot of us!"

"How?" I demanded scornfully. "He couldn't do thirty-two miles in the time Paulette and I did fifteen, even if he knew where to do it to!"

"He doesn't have to, my young son," Dudley stood musing on it. "Baker and I didn't do any twenty, coming here; and it was Macartney's own path we came by. That doesn't go round by any Halfway! If he takes a fancy to come here by it, and strikes your tracks as you two came into Skunk's Misery, the rest wouldn't take him long! I believe—hang on a minute, while I speak to Baker!" He wheeled suddenly and disappeared into the dark of the cave where Baker stood aloof.

"You needn't worry about Macartney," I said to Paulette. "We didn't leave any tracks, once we got into broken snow!"

I turned at a rustle behind me and looked straight into the muzzle of Macartney's revolver and into Macartney's eyes!