The Gun-Brand Read online

  CHAPTER XVII

  A FRAME-UP

  News, of a kind, travels on the wings of the wind across wastes of thefarther land. Principalities may fall, nations crash, and kingdomssink into oblivion, and the North will neither know nor care. For theNorth has its own problems--vital problems, human problems--andtherefore big. Elemental, portentous problems, having to do with lifeand the eating of meat.

  In the crash and shift of man-made governments; in the redistributionof man-constituted authority, and man-gathered surplus of increment,the North has no part. On the cold side of sixty there is no surplus,and men think in terms of meat, and their possessions are meat-gettingpossessions. Guns, nets, and traps, even of the best, insure but abare existence. And in the lean years, which are the seventhyears--the years of the rabbit plague--starvation stalks in theteepees, and gaunt, sunken-eyed forms, dry-lipped, and with the skindrawn tightly over protruding ribs, stiffen between shoddy blankets.For even the philosophers of the land of God and the H.B.C. must eat tolive--if not this week, at least once next week.

  The H.B.C., taking wise cognizance of the seventh year, extends itcredit--"debt" it is called in the outlands--but it puts no more woolin its blankets, and for lack of food the body-fires burn low. But thecold remains inexorable. And with the thermometer at seventy degreesbelow zero, even in the years of plenty, when the philosophers eatalmost daily, there is little of comfort. With the thermometer atseventy in the lean years, the suffering is diminished by the passingof many philosophers.

  The arrest of Bob MacNair was a matter of sovereign import to thedwellers of the frozen places, and word of it swept like wildfirethrough the land of the lakes and rivers. Yet in all the North thoseupon whom it made the least impression were those most vitallyconcerned--MacNair's own Indians. So quietly had the incident passedthat not one of them realized its importance.

  With them MacNair was _God_. He was the _law_. He had taught them towork, so that even in the lean years they and their wives and theirbabies ate twice each day. He had said that they should continue toeat twice each day, and therefore his departure was a matter of nomoment. They knew only that he had gone southward with the man of thesoldier-police. This was doubtless as he had commanded. They couldconceive of MacNair only as commanding. Therefore thesoldier-policeman had obeyed and accompanied him to the southward.

  With no such complacency, however, was the arrest of MacNair regardedby the henchmen of Lapierre. To them MacNair was not God, nor was hethe law. For these men knew well the long arm of the Mounted and whatlay at the end of the trail. Lean forms sped through the woods, andthe word passed from lip to lip in far places. It was whispered uponthe Slave, the Mackenzie, and the Athabasca, and it was told in theprovinces before MacNair and Ripley reached Fort Chippewayan. Alongthe river, men talked excitedly, and impatiently awaited word fromLapierre, while their eyes snapped with greed and their thoughts flewto the gold in the sands of the barren grounds.

  In the Bastile du Mort, a hundred miles to the eastward, Lapierre heardthe news from the lips of a breathless runner, but a scant ten hoursafter Corporal Ripley and MacNair stepped from the door of the cottage.And within the hour the quarter-breed was upon the trail, travellinglight, in company with LeFroy, who, fearing swift vengeance, had alsosought safety in the stronghold of the outlaws.

  Chloe Elliston stood in the doorway and watched the broad form of BobMacNair swing across the clearing in company with Corporal Ripley. Asthe men disappeared in the timber, a fierce joy of victory surgedthrough her veins. She had bared the mailed fist! Had wrested apeople from the hand of their oppressor! The Snare Lake Indians werehenceforth to be _her_ Indians! She had ridded the North of MacNair!Every fibre of her sang with the exultation of it as she turned intothe room and encountered the fishlike stare of Big Lena.

  The woman leaned, ponderous and silent, against the jamb of the doorgiving into the kitchen. Her huge arms were folded tightly across herbreast, and, for some inexplicable reason, Chloe found the staredisconcerting. The enthusiasm of her victory damped perceptibly. Forif the fish-eyed stare held nothing of reproach, it certainly heldnothing of approbation. Almost the girl read a condescending pity inthe stare of the china-blue eyes. The thought stung, and she faced theother wrathfully.

  "Well, for Heaven's sake say something! Don't stand there and starelike a--a billikin! Can't you talk?"

  "Yah, Ay tank Ay kin; but Ay von't--not yat."

  "What do you mean?" cried the exasperated girl, as she flung herselfinto a chair. But without deigning to answer, Big Lena turned heavilyinto the kitchen, and closed the door with a bang that impoverishedinvective--for volumes may be spoken--in the banging of a door. Themoment was inauspicious for the entrance of Harriet Penny. At best,Chloe merely endured the little spinster, with her whining, hystericaloutbursts, and abject, unreasoning fear of God, man, the devil, andeverything else. "Oh, my dear, I am so glad!" piped the little woman,rushing to the girl's side: "we need never fear him again, need we?"

  "Nobody ever did fear him but you," retorted Chloe.

  "But, Mr. Lapierre said----"

  The girl arose with a gesture of impatience, and Miss Penny returned toMacNair. "He is so big, and coarse, and horrible! I am sure even hislooks are enough to frighten a person to death."

  Chloe sniffed. "I think he is handsome, and he is big and strong. Ilike big people."

  "But, my dear!" cried the horrified Miss Penny. "He--he kills Indians!"

  "So do I!" snapped the girl, and stamped angrily into her own room,where she threw herself upon the bed and gave way to bitterreflections. She hated everyone. She hated MacNair, and Big Lena, andHarriet Penny, and the officer of the Mounted. She hated Lapierre andthe Indians, too. And then, realizing the folly of her blind hatred,she hated herself for hating. With an effort she regained her poise.

  "MacNair is out of the way; and that's the main thing," she murmured.She remembered his last words: "Beware of Pierre Lapierre," and hereyes sought the man's hastily scribbled note that lay upon the tablewhere he had left it. She reread the note, and crumpling it in herhand threw it to the floor. "He always manages to be some place elsewhen anything happens!" she exclaimed. "Oh, why couldn't it have beenthe other way around? Why couldn't MacNair have been the one to havethe interest of the Indians at heart? And why couldn't Lapierre havebeen the one to browbeat and bully them?"

  She paced angrily up and down the room, and kicked viciously at thelittle ball of paper that was Lapierre's note. "He couldn't browbeatanything!" she exclaimed. "He's--he's--sometimes, I think, he's almost_sneaking_, with his bland, courtly manners, and his suave tongue. Oh,how I could hate that man! And how I--" she stopped suddenly, and withclenched fists fixed her gaze upon the portrait of Tiger Elliston, andas she looked the thin features that returned her stare seemed toresolve into the rugged outlines of the face of Bob MacNair.

  "He's big and strong, and he's not afraid," she murmured, and startednervously at the knock with which Big Lena announced supper.

  When Chloe appeared at the table five minutes later she was quite herusual self. She even laughed at Harriet Penny's horrified narrative ofthe fact that she had discovered several Indians in the act of affixingrunners to the collapsible bathtubs in anticipation of the coming snow.

  Chloe spent an almost sleepless night, and it was with a feeling ofdistinct relief that she arose to find Lapierre upon the veranda. Shenoted a certain intense eagerness in the quarter-breed's voice as hegreeted her.

  "Ah, Miss Elliston!" he cried, seizing both her hands. "It seems thatduring my brief absence you have accomplished wonders! May I ask howyou managed to bring about the downfall of the brute of the North, andat the same time win his Indians to your school?"

  Under the enthusiasm of his words the girl's heart once more quickenedwith the sense of victory. She withdrew her hands from his clasp andgave a brief account of all that had happened since their parting onSnare Lake.

  "Wonderful," br
eathed Lapierre at the conclusion of the recital. "Andyou are sure he was duly charged with the murder of the two Indians?"

  Chloe nodded. "Yes, indeed I am sure!" she exclaimed. "The officer,Corporal Ripley, tried to get me to put off this charge until his othertrial came up at the spring assizes. He said MacNair could give bailand secure his liberty on the liquor charges, and thus return to theNorth--and to his Indians."

  Lapierre nodded eagerly. "Ah, did I not tell you, Miss Elliston, thatthe men of the Mounted are with him heart and soul? He owns them! Youhave done well not to withdraw the charge of murder."

  "I offered to furnish him with an escort of Indians, but he refusedthem. I don't see how in the world he can expect to take MacNair tojail. He's a mere boy."

  Lapierre laughed. "He'll take him to jail all right, you may restassured as to that. He will not dare to allow him to escape, nor willMacNair try to escape. We have nothing to fear now until the trial.It is extremely doubtful if we can make the murder charge stick, but itwill serve to hold him during the winter, and I have no doubt when hiscase comes up in the spring we will be able to produce evidence thatwill insure conviction on the whiskey charges, which will mean at leasta year or two in jail and the exaction of a heavy fine.

  "In the meantime you will have succeeded in educating the Indians to arealization of the fact that they owe allegiance to no man. MacNair'spower is broken. He will be discredited by the authorities, and hatedby his own Indians--a veritable pariah of the wilderness. And now,Miss Elliston, I must hasten at once to the rivers. My interests therehave long been neglected. I shall return as soon as possible, but myabsence will necessarily be prolonged, for beside my own tradingaffairs and the getting out of the timber for new scows, I hope toprocure such additional evidence as will insure the conviction ofMacNair. LeFroy will remain with you here."

  "Did you catch the whiskey runners?" Chloe asked.

  Lapierre shook his head. "No," he answered, "they succeeded in eludingus among the islands at the eastern end of the lake. We were about topush our search to a conclusion when news reached us of MacNair'sarrest, and we returned with all speed to the Yellow Knife."

  Somehow, the man's words sounded unconvincing--the glib reply was tooready--too like the studied answer to an anticipated question. Sheregarded him searchingly, but the simple directness of his gaze causedher own eyes to falter, and she turned into the house with a deepbreath that was very like a sigh.

  The sense of elation and self-confidence inspired by Lapierre's firstwords ebbed as it had ebbed before the unspoken rebuke of Big Lena,leaving her strangely depressed. With the joy of accomplishment deadwithin her, she drove herself to her work without enthusiasm. In allthe world, nothing seemed worth while. She was unsure--unsure ofLapierre; unsure of herself; unsure of Big Lena--and, worst of all,unbelievable and preposterous as it seemed in the light of what she hadwitnessed with her own eyes, unsure of MacNair--of his villainy!

  Before noon the first snow of the season started in a fall of light,feathery flakes, which gradually resolved themselves into fine, hardparticles that were hurled and buffeted about by the blasts of a fitfulwind.

  For three days the blizzard raged--days in which Lapierre contrived tospend much time in Chloe's company, and during which the girl set aboutdeliberately to study the quarter-breed, in the hope of placingdefinitely the defect in his make-up, the tangible reason for thegrowing sense of distrust with which she was coming to regard him.But, try as she would, she could find no cause, no justification, forthe uncomfortable and indefinable _something_ that was graduallydeveloping into an actual doubt of his sincerity. She knew that theman had himself well in hand, for never by word or look did he expressany open avowal of love, although a dozen times a day he managed subtlyto show that his love had in no wise abated.

  On the morning of the fourth day, with forest and lake and river buriedbeneath three feet of snow, Lapierre took the trail for the southward.Before leaving, he sought out LeFroy in the storehouse.

  "We have things our own way, but we must lie low for a while, at least.MacNair is not licked yet--by a damn' sight! He knows we furnished thebooze to his Indians, and he will yell his head off to the Mounted, andwe will have them dropping in on us all the winter. In the meantimeleave the liquor where it is. Don't bring a gallon of it into thisclearing. It will keep, and we can't take chances with the Mounted.There will be enough in it for us, with what we can knock down here,and what the boys can take out of MacNair's diggings. They know thegold is there; most of them were in on the stampede when MacNair drovethem back a few years ago. And when they find out that MacNair is injail, there will be another stampede. And we will clean up big allaround."

  LeFroy, a man of few words, nodded sombrely, and Lapierre, who wasimpatient to be off to the rivers, failed to note that the nod was farmore sombre than usual--failed, also, to note the pair of china-blue,fishlike eyes that stared impassively at him from behind the goodspiled high upon the huge counter.

  Once upon the trail, Lapierre lost no time. As passed the word uponthe Mackenzie, where the men who had heard of the arrest of MacNairwaited in a frenzy of impatience for the signal that would send themflying over the snow to Snare Lake. Day and night the man travelled;from the Mackenzie southward the length of Slave and up the Athabasca.And in his wake men, whose eyes fairly bulged with the greed of gold,jammed their outfits into packs and headed into the North.

  At Athabasca Landing he sent a crew into the timber, and hastened on toEdmonton where he purchased a railway ticket for a point that hadnothing whatever to do with his destination. That same night heboarded an east-bound train, and in an early hour of the morning, whenthe engine paused for water beside a tank that was the most conspicuousbuilding of a little flat town in the heart of a peaceful farmingcommunity, he stepped unnoticed from the day coach and proceeded atonce to the low, wooden hotel, where he was cautiously admitted througha rear door by the landlord himself, who was, incidentally, Lapierre'sshrewdest and most effective whiskey runner.

  It was this Tostoff: Russian by birth, and crook by nature, whosebusiness it was to disguise the contraband whiskey intoinnocent-looking freight pieces. And, it was Tostoff who selected themen and stood responsible for the contraband's safe conduct over thefirst stage of its journey to the North.

  Tostoff objected strenuously to the running of a consignment in winter,but Lapierre persisted, covering the ground step by step while theother listened with a scowl.

  "It's this way, Tostoff: For years MacNair has been our chiefstumbling-block. God knows we have trouble enough running the stuffpast the Dominion police and the Mounted. But the danger from theauthorities is small in comparison with the danger from MacNair."Tostoff growled an assent. "And now," continued Lapierre, "for thefirst time we have him where we want him."

  The Russian looked sceptical. "We got MacNair where we want him ifhe's dead," he grunted. "Who killed him?"

  Lapierre made a gesture of impatience. "He is not dead. He's lockedup in the Fort Saskatchewan jail."

  For the first time Tostoff showed real interest. "What's against him?"he asked eagerly.

  "Murder, for one thing," answered Lapierre. "That will hold himwithout bail until the spring assizes. He will probably get out ofthat, though. But they are holding him also on four or five liquorcharges."

  "Liquor charges!" cried Tostoff, with an angry snort. "O-ho! so that'shis game? That's why he's been bucking us--because he's got a line ofhis own!"

  Lapierre laughed. "Not so fast, Tostoff, not so fast. It is aframe-up. That is, the charges are not, but the evidence is. Iattended to that myself. I think we have enough on him to keep him outof the cold for a couple of winters to come. But you can't tell. Andwhile we have him we will put the screws to him for all there is in it.It is the chance of a lifetime. What we want now is evidence--and moreevidence.

  "Here is the scheme: You fix up a consignment, five or ten gallons, theusual way, and instead of shooting it i
n by the Athabasca, cut into theold trail on the Beaver and take it across the Methye portage to a_cache_ on the Clearwater. Brown's old cabin will about fill the bill.We ought to be able to _cache_ the stuff by Christmas.

  "In the meantime, I will slip up the river and tip it off to theMounted at Fort McMurray that I got it straight from down below thatMacNair is going to run in a batch over the Methye trail, and that itis to be _cached_ on the bank of the Clearwater on New Year's Day.That will give your packers a week to make their getaway. And on NewYear's Day the Mounted will find the stuff in the _cache_. There willbe nobody to arrest, but they will have the evidence that will clinchthe case against MacNair. And with MacNair behind the bars we willhave things our own way north of sixty."

  Tostoff shook his head dubiously.

  "Bad business, Lapierre," he warned. "Winter trailing is bad business.The snow tells tales. We haven't been caught yet. Why? Not becausewe've been lucky, but because we've been careful. Water leaves notrail. We've always run our stuff in in the summer. You say you'vegot the goods on MacNair. I say, let well enough alone. The Mountedain't fools--they can read the sign in the snow."

  Lapierre arose with a curse. "You white-livered clod!" he cried. "Whois running this scheme? You or I? Who delivers the whiskey to theIndians? And who pays you your money? I do the thinking for thisoutfit. I didn't come down here to _ask_ you to run this consignment.I came here to _tell_ you to do it. This thing of playing safe is allright. I never told you to run a batch in the winter before, but thistime you have got to take the chance."

  Lapierre leaned closer and fixed the heavy-faced Russian with hisgleaming black eyes. He spoke slowly so that the words fell distinctlyfrom his lips. "You _cache_ that liquor on the Clearwater on ChristmasDay. If you fail--well, you will join the others that have beendismissed from my service--see?"

  Tostoff's only reply was a ponderous but expressive shrug, and withouta word Lapierre turned and stepped out into the night.