CHAPTER XVII A LONELY CABIN

CORPORAL BRACKNELL and Sibou had left the hunting camp of the tribe two days and were following the trail of the white man and the two Indians who had visited it more than a week before. The trail, though it was old, was well defined, for there had been no fall of snow in the interval, and the frozen surface of the wilderness kept the trail fresh, and made it easy to follow. It was evident to both of them that their quarry travelled fast, for the distances between the camping places were greater than was usual, and it was clear that those whom they followed had some need for haste. What it could be the corporal could only guess, and guessing under the circumstances was not a very profitable occupation. And there were other signs which gave room for speculation. Now and again the party ahead of them had halted for a little time, and two of the men had left the dogs and the sled, as their tracks showed. These halting places, as the corporal was quick to observe, always occurred when some small stream fell into the main river, or when some accessible gully or creek opened from the banks.

“What do you make of it, Sibou?” he asked when they had reached the fifth halting place of this sort.

[187]

The Indian who had followed the tracks of two of the gullies to the point where they reversed glanced at those which now lay before them. Then he waved a mittened hand.

“These men be looking for something.”

“Or some one!” commented the corporal thoughtfully.

The Indian gave a grave inclination of his head. “It is not good to follow every trail,” he said in his own tongue. “Sometime perhaps we shall find a trail that does not return on itself, then we know they find what they seek and we follow.”

“Yes,” answered the corporal, “that is the best way, I think. We will push on and not waste time on these excursions.”

They pressed forward and passed two more of these deviations from the main track without troubling to follow them. Just before daylight faded, when they were hugging the bank looking for a suitable camping place, the Indian called the corporal’s attention to a small creek the entrance to which was masked by low-boughed spruce trees.

“Yes,” said the corporal, “that should do. Those banks and trees should break this wind.”

They turned the dogs towards it, and negotiating a snow wreath which the wind was piling up, they entered the sheltering creek. Sibou was leading, packing the trail, and the corporal clinging to the gee-pole of the sled, saw him come to a most unexpected halt. Bracknell moved forward.

“What is the matter, Sibou?”

The Indian did not speak, but pointed silently at the snow, and looking down the corporal saw[188] the unmistakable trail of snowshoes. The tracks were quite fresh, and were so unexpected that Bracknell was himself astonished. He stared at them as Crusoe must have stared when he found the footprints on the shore of his island. Who had left that tell-tale trail? Perhaps a wandering Indian. Maybe some solitary prospector caught by winter, or possibly the man whom he was seeking, the murderer of Rolf Gargrave. His heart beat quickly at the thought and, still staring at the trail which came down the bank of the creek and then turned away from the river, he considered the matter carefully, and then gave instructions.

“Follow it, Sibou, and find out where it goes and who made it. I will pitch camp and wait here for you.”

The Indian nodded gravely and departed and Bracknell busied himself with pitching camp. He had already lit the fire and fed the dogs, and was busy with the beans and bacon when Sibou returned.

“Well?” asked the corporal expectantly. “Did you find him?”

“Yes,” was the reply. “There is one Indian and one white man. They are in a cabin at the head of the creek.”

Bracknell was conscious of a sudden excitement.

“Did you see the white man? Is it——”

Sibou shook his head. “I saw him, but it is not the man we follow; and he is very sick with the coughing sickness!”

The corporal’s excitement died as quickly as it had risen.

[189]

“Did you speak with him, Sibou?”

“No,” replied the Indian. “There was no need. I saw his face as he came to the cabin door. It is not the man.”

Corporal Bracknell bent over the fire. He was disappointed, but he did not show it. He turned the bacon in the pan then he looked up.

“We will have supper first, then I will walk up the creek as far as the cabin, and have a talk with this white man. He may know something of the man we follow.”

Sibou made no reply, and when the meal was ready they ate it in silence, and smoked whilst they drank the coffee. Then Bracknell arose.

“I go now, Sibou. I shall return before sleeping time.”

The Indian offered no objection to this, and knocking the ashes from his pipe the policeman left the camp. Even in the darkness he had no difficulty in following the trail up the creek, and presently the smell of burning wood informed him that he was in the neighbourhood of the cabin. He looked round carefully and descried it in the shadow of the trees on the right bank, and began to ascend towards it. When he reached it there was no clamour of dogs such as might have been expected had there been a team there, and as he rapped upon the door, he reflected that his conjecture about the gold prospector overtaken by the winter was probably the correct one.

The door was flung open, and a tall man whose face he could not discern stood revealed. Inside in front of a makeshift stove was another man,[190] who was taken suddenly by a paroxysm of coughing. For half a minute the corporal stood there, and the man at the door did not move or speak; but at the end of that time, between two spasms of coughing, the other man cried querulously, “Oh, come in and shut that confounded door!”

The man at the door moved aside, and as Bracknell entered, he closed the door behind him, and stood with his back to it, staring at the new-comer with eyes that had in them a savage gleam of hate. The man by the fire was still coughing, and at the end of some three minutes, as the cough left him, he sat there, gasping and wheezing and utterly exhausted. Roger Bracknell watched him, with compassionate eyes. As he recognized, the man was in sore straits, and that cough probably meant that the coming of the Spring was for him the coming of death. As his breath came back the sick man half turned.

“Sit down, can’t——” The remark was broken off half way, and the man started from his seat. “Great Christopher! A Daniel come to judgment! How do you do, Cousin Roger?”

As the voice quivering with excitement rang through the cabin, a startled look came on Roger Bracknell’s face, and he bent forward, and stared at the wasted features of the unkempt man before him. The other laughed harshly.

“Oh, you needn’t stare so hard, Roger; it is I right enough.”

It was Dick Bracknell, and as the corporal realized the fact, the compassion he had felt for a stranger was trebled when he found that the sick[191] man was of his own blood. For a moment he did not reply, but with a shocked look on his face gazed at the ravaged features before him. The “coughing sickness” which Sibou had mentioned had plainly gripped Dick Bracknell and marked him for death. Some of his teeth were gone and the colour of his gums appeared like yellow ochre in the firelight. As he noted these signs of scurvy, the corporal was moved to speak his pity.

“Dick, old man, I am mortal sorry——”

“Then keep your infernal pity for yourself!” cried the other savagely. “You’ll need it all in a minute, for Joe has the drop on you, you—— murderer.”

The corporal started, and swung round. The Indian, Joe, was standing with his back to the door, and the glow of the fire was reflected from the pistol in his hand. He noted the fact quite calmly, and turned to his cousin again.

“Murderer?” he said slowly. “I do not understand. What do you mean?”

“No?” snarled his cousin. “Well, look at me! Would you say that I was a good case for a Life Insurance Society?”

The corporal looked at him, and out of pity was silent.

“Oh, you needn’t be so particular,” continued the other sneeringly. “I’ve seen other fellows whose lungs have been chilled, and I know I am booked, unless I can get to a sanatorium in double quick time. And I know you have a soft heart, but you should have let it speak sooner—before you put this upon me.”

[192]

“Before I put—— I do not know what you mean?”

“No! But you know that you poisoned that dog food that we took from you, don’t you? And you can guess——”

“Good God!” ejaculated the corporal, and the astonishment in his face and voice did more than any protests could have done to convince his cousin that the charge was groundless.

“You didn’t know? No, I see you didn’t!” cried the sick man.

“Of course I didn’t!” replied the policeman quickly. “The dogs you left me died of poison at my first camp, after they had been fed. I blamed your man, because you had told me that he was reluctant to let me go. Now it seems that I was wrong, as you are wrong. Tell me what happened?”

“I will,” said his cousin, “sit down!” As the corporal seated himself on a log, Dick Bracknell turned to the Indian. “You can put down that pistol for the present, Joe. There’s a mystery to be cleared up before there’s any shooting to be done. Put it down, I tell you!”

The Indian obeyed reluctantly, but still stood against the door, and Dick Bracknell explained. “Joe there has it saved up against you. He was sure that you had deliberately poisoned the dog food, so that we should get stranded, and you, with a new outfit, would be able to find us at your leisure. I couldn’t believe it of you at first. It was such a low-down game that I’d have sworn that nobody but a Siwash half-breed would have played it.[193] But the logic of facts seemed convincing, and I’d come to believe it.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“That’s easy enough. When I parted from you, I had an idea of working across to the Behring, where I’d have been off the beat of your confounded patrols. We travelled a week and made a good pace, then one night Joe there fed the dogs with the salmon-roe we took off your sled. They were all dead within two hours; and there we were, stranded in the shadow of the Arctic circle and nearly a thousand miles from civilization.” The sick man broke off, shaken by a fit of coughing, and then as the spasm passed and his breath returned, he said meditatively, “If you’d walked into our camp then we’d have fed you with that roe, and watched you twist as those dogs were twisted, for Joe looked at the food and found strychnine, which he’d used when he was trapping for the H. B. C.... Lucky thing for you that you didn’t! Did you say your dogs died of the same thing?”

“Yes,” answered the corporal slowly, “and now I’m wondering who was responsible.”

“Somebody who was getting at you, and not at us,” answered Dick Bracknell quickly, “for he couldn’t have known that we should collar the food. Had you been using the same stuff all along?”

“No.” The word dropped from the corporal reluctantly. “No. I had laid in a new stock at North Star.”

“Then it was there the thing was done,” replied[194] the sick man with conviction. “The question is, who did it? Joy wouldn’t even dream of such a thing!”

“That at any rate is quite certain!” answered the corporal with conviction.

“But somebody did it; somebody who owed you one, and meant to get rid of you. That’s shown by the fact that your dogs did all right on the food at the beginning. That which you used first wasn’t tampered with, or the dogs would have died at the first camp you made. But they didn’t, for you camped with us, and I remember that more than once, whilst we were waiting for my convalescence, you fed your dogs with the roe. That is positive proof that the top portion of the dog-food was all right, it was only lower down that it had been tampered with.”

“But why——”

“It’s as plain as a barn-door. You were meant to get well away on the trail, and one night you would unknowingly feed the dogs with poisoned roe. They would die, and unless you had wonderful luck you would die too, long before you got back to civilization. That is the amiable plan that somebody thought out for you; and as things turned out he nearly bagged me and Joe instead of you.”

“But he almost got me too,” said the corporal thoughtfully, and gave his cousin a brief account of his adventures.

“You were lucky,” commented the sick man. “A broken leg can be spliced, but who is going to splice a set of frozen lungs?” His face grew[195] suddenly convulsed with passion, and he broke into terrible oaths. “If I had the murderer here—but who was he anyway?”

“There is only one man of whom I can think, and before I tell you his name there are two questions I should like to ask.”

“Fire them off!”

“The first is this, do you know anything of Rolf Gargrave’s death?”

“I know that the bottom dropped out of the trail and that he was drowned—nothing more. What’s that got to do with it anyway?”

The corporal looked at his cousin. The haggard face was clear of guilt, and in that moment he knew that his earliest suspicions when Chief Louis had told him the story of Rolf Gargrave’s death had been utterly wrong. Whatever crimes Dick Bracknell had to his account this was not one of them.

“I’ll explain why I asked you in a moment,” he answered. “There is the second question—yet; and it is this, did you ever inform any one of your marriage with Joy?”

“Yes, one man! When I heard that Rolf Gargrave was dead, I wrote to England and informed his legal adviser, Sir Joseph Rayner, that Joy and I were husband and wife. I never had any answer to the let—— But what’s the matter, man? You look as if you had seen a ghost! What is it?”

There was a look of startled amazement on the corporal’s face. He was staring at his cousin as if what the latter had said was a revelation to him, as indeed it was. A dark suspicion had leapt in[196] his mind, a suspicion that seemed almost incredible, but which persisted and would not be thrust aside. If Sir Joseph Rayner knew, then in all probability his son also knew, and yet having that knowledge he had suggested that the relation between himself and Joy was such as justified his confessed aspiration of making her his wife. Had he been responsible for that second shot at North Star? Or——

Dick Bracknell’s voice broke in again querulously.

“What’s got you, Roger! Spit it out!”

“I can’t at present,” replied the corporal slowly. “You’ve given me news that I must think over before I talk. But there is one thing that I can tell you, and that is that Rolf Gargrave did not die by a mere accident. The trail he was following was sound enough, but the ice was blown up by dynamite. It froze over again in the night, and as I gather there was a little snow, he went on to the thin ice without suspicion, and went through. That’s the story as I’ve recently heard it; and I’m on the trail of the man who plotted the infernal thing, now.”

The sick man pursed his lips to whistle, but no sound came from them. Then he remarked, with a little laugh of bitterness, “So that’s why you asked if I knew anything of my father-in-law’s death, is it?”

“It was just a suspicion that occurred to me,” explained the corporal apologetically. “When I heard the story I wondered who would benefit by Gargrave’s death, and as you had just married Joy,[197] and had fled here from England, it was a natural suspicion——”

“I must have got pretty low down for it to be natural to suspect me of an infernal crime of that sort,” was the other’s bitter comment. “But who do you suspect now?”

“I don’t know! As I told you, I’m after the man. The trail’s a week old, but I’ll find him even if I follow him to the rim of the Polar sea.”

“I hope to heaven you’ll get him, and that he’ll swing at Regina for that job. I wonder if the same man had anything to do with poisoning the dog food.”

“I am wondering that also!” replied the corporal thoughtfully.

“Any idea of the fellow?”

“Just a suspicion, nothing more. Not enough to presume upon—yet!”

“He must have a mind that is diabolic.”

“So it would seem!” replied the corporal, and after a little time his cousin spoke again.

“Many a time while I have sat here wheezing and coughing, I have cursed you from my heart, but now I could pray that you come up with that man, and make him pay for it all. If I were sure you’d get him I could go cheerfully to my appointed place in the pit.”

“I shall get him,” answered the corporal with conviction. “The Indian who is with me was with him when he arranged for Gargrave’s death, and if my suspicions have any bottom in them, then I know him myself.”

“You’ll push on in the morning, of course.”

[198]

“Before daylight! And I shall come up with the man, never fear. He’s travelling fast, but he’s looking for some thing or some one, the latter, I think, and——”

“Who do you suppose he’s looking for?”

“Well, if he’s the man I suspect, I shouldn’t wonder if he were looking for you.”

“For me! What in thunder for?”

“To finish what he began that night when you were shot at North Star!”

“Great Scott! Do you mean that he was the man who——”

“It seems to me to be more than likely. He is the man round whom all these mysteries seem to centre.”

“What is the blighter?” asked the other quickly.

“That I must keep to myself for a little time. I may be mistaken, you know. But if I am not——”

“You’ll let me know? You’ll give me the satisfaction of knowing that the fellow will pay for these lungs of mine?” cried the sick man eagerly.

“Yes,” answered the corporal pityingly. “I will let you know.”

Half an hour later as he left the cabin his face wore a set look that boded ill for the man on whose trail he followed.