The Danger Trail

Excerpt

CHAPTER XIII

THE PURSUIT

Behind the sledge ran Howland, to the right of the team ran Jean. Once or twice when Croisset glanced back his eyes met those of the engineer. He cracked his whip and smiled, and Howland's teeth gleamed back coldly in reply. A mutual understanding flashed between them in these glances. In a sudden spurt Howland knew that the Frenchman could quickly put distance between them--but not a distance that his bullets could not cover in the space of a breath. He had made up his mind to fire, deliberately and with his greatest skill, if Croisset made the slightest movement toward escape. If he was compelled to kill or wound his companion he could still go on alone with the dogs, for the trail of Meleese and Jackpine would be as plain as their own, which they were following back into the South.

For the second time since coming into the North he felt the blood leaping through his veins as on that first night in Prince Albert when from the mountain he had heard the lone wolf, and when later he had seen the beautiful face through the hotel window. Howland was one of the few men who possess unbounded confidence in themselves, who place a certain pride in their physical as well as their mental capabilities, and he was confident now. His successful and indomitable fight over obstacles in a big city had made this confidence a genuine part of his being. It was a confidence that flushed his face with joyous enthusiasm as he ran after the dogs, and that astonished and puzzled Jean Croisset.

"Mon Dieu, but you are a strange man!" exclaimed the Frenchman when he brought the dogs down to a walk after a half mile run. "Blessed saints, M'seur, you are laughing--and I swear it is no laughing matter."

"Shouldn't a man be happy when he is going to his wedding, Jean?" puffed Howland, gasping to get back the breath he had lost.

"But not when he's going to his funeral, M'seur."

"If I were one of your blessed saints I'd hit you over the head with a thunderbolt, Croisset. Good Lord, what sort of a heart have you got inside of your jacket, man? Up there where we're going is the sweetest little girl in the whole world. I love her. She loves me. Why shouldn't I be happy, now that I know I'm going to see her again very soon--and take her back into the South with me?"

"The devil!" grunted Jean.

"Perhaps you're jealous, Croisset," suggested Howland. "Great Scott, I hadn't thought of that!"

"I've got one of my own to love, M'seur; and I wouldn't trade her for all else in the world."

"Damned if I can understand you," swore the engineer. "You appear to be half human; you say you're in love, and yet you'd rather risk your life than help out Meleese and me. What the deuce does it mean?"

"That's what I'm doing, M'seur--helping Meleese. I would have done her a greater service if I had killed you back there on the trail and stripped your body for those things that would be foul enough to eat it. I have told you a dozen times that it is God's justice that you die. And you are going to die--very soon, M'seur."

"No, I'm not going to die, Jean. I'm going to see Meleese, and she's going back into the South with me. And if you're real good you may have the pleasure of driving us back to the Wekusko, Croisset, and you can be my best man at the wedding. What do you say to that?"

"That you are mad--or a fool," retorted Jean, cracking his whip viciously.

The dogs swung sharply from the trail, heading from their southerly course into the northwest.

"We will save a day by doing this," explained Croisset at the other's sharp word of inquiry. "We will hit the other trail twenty miles west of here, while by following back to where they turned we would travel sixty miles to reach the same point. That one chance in a hundred which you have depends on this, M'seur. If the other sledge has passed--"

He shrugged his shoulders and started the dogs into a trot.

"Look here," cried Howland, running beside him. "Who is with this other sledge?"

"Those who tried to kill you on the trail and at the coyote, M'seur," he answered quickly.

Howland fell half a dozen paces behind. By the end of the first hour he was compelled to rest frequently by taking to the sledge, and their progress was much slower. Jean no longer made answer to his occasional questions. Doggedly he swung on ahead to the right and a little behind the team leader, and Howland could see that for some reason Croisset was as anxious as himself to make the best time possible. His own impatience increased as the morning lengthened. Jean's assurance that the mysterious enemies who had twice attempted his life were only a short distance behind them, or a short distance ahead, set a new and desperate idea at work in his brain. He was confident that these men from the Wekusko were his chief menace, and that with them once out of the way, and with the Frenchman in his power, the fight which he was carrying into the enemy's country would be half won. There would then be no one to recognize him but Meleese.

His heart leaped with joyous hope, and he leaned forward on the sledge to examine Croisset's empty gun. It was an automatic, and Croisset, glancing back over the loping backs of the huskies, caught him smiling. He ran more frequently now, and longer distances, and with the passing of each mile his determination to strike a decisive blow increased. If they reached the trail of Meleese and Jackpine before the crossing of the second sledge he would lay in wait for his old enemies; if they had preceded them he would pursue and surprise them in camp. In either case he would possess an overwhelming advantage.

With the same calculating attention to detail that he would have shown in the arrangement of plans for the building of a tunnel or a bridge, he drew a mental map of his scheme and its possibilities. There would be at least two men with the sledge, and possibly three. If they surrendered at the point of his rifle without a fight he would compel Jean to tie them up with dog-traces while he held them under cover. If they made a move to offer resistance he would shoot. With the automatic he could kill or wound the three before they could reach their rifles, which would undoubtedly be on the sledge. The situation had now reached a point where he no longer took into consideration what these men might be to Meleese.

As they continued into the northwest Howland noted that the thicker forest was gradually clearing into wide areas of small banskian pine, and that the rock ridges and dense swamps which had impeded their progress were becoming less numerous. An hour before noon, after a tedious climb to the top of a frozen ridge, Croisset pointed down into a vast level plain lying between them and other great ridges far to the north.

"That is a bit of the Barren Lands that creeps down between those mountains off there, M'seur," he said. "Do you see that black forest that looks like a charred log in the snow to the south and west of the mountains? That is the break that leads into the country of the Athabasca. Somewhere between this point and that we will strike the trail. Mon Dieu, I had half expected to see them out there on the plain."

"Who? Meleese and Jackpine, or--"

"No, the others, M'seur. Shall we have dinner here?"

"Not until we hit the trail," replied Howland. "I'm anxious to know about that one chance in a hundred you've given me hope of, Croisset. If they have passed--"

"If they are ahead of us you might just as well stand out there and let me put a bullet through you, M'seur."

He went to the head of the dogs, guiding them down the rough side of the ridge, while Howland steadied the toboggan from behind. For three-quarters of an hour they traversed the low bush of the plain in silence. From every rising snow hummock Jean scanned the white desolation about them, and each time, as nothing that was human came within his vision, he turned toward the engineer with a sinister shrug of his shoulders. Once three moving caribou, a mile or more away, brought a quick cry to his lips and Howland noticed that a sudden flush of excitement came into his face, replaced in the next instant by a look of disappointment. After this he maintained a more careful guard over the Frenchman. They had covered less than half of the distance to the caribou trail when in a small open space free of bush Croisset's voice rose sharply and the team stopped.

"What do you think of it, M'seur?" he cried, pointing to the snow. "What do you think of that?"

Barely cutting into the edge of the open was the broken crust of two sledge trails. For a moment Howland forgot his caution and bent over to examine the trails, with his back to his companion. When he looked up there was a curious laughing gleam in Jean's eyes.

"Mon Dieu, but you are careless!" he exclaimed. "Be more careful, M'seur. I may give myself up to another temptation like that."

"The deuce you say!" cried Howland, springing back quickly. "I'm much obliged, Jean. If it wasn't for the moral effect of the thing I'd shake hands with you on that. How far ahead of us do you suppose they are?"

Croisset had fallen on his knees in the trail.

"The crust is freshly broken," he said after a moment. "They have been gone not less than two or three hours, perhaps since morning. See this white glistening surface over the first trail, M'seur, like a billion needle-points growing out of it? That is the work of three or four days' cold. The first sledge passed that long ago."

Howland turned and picked up Croisset's rifle. The Frenchman watched him as he slipped a clip full of cartridges into the breech.

"If there's a snack of cold stuff in the pack dig it out," he commanded. "We'll eat on the run, if you've got anything to eat. If you haven't, we'll go hungry. We're going to overtake that sledge sometime this afternoon or to-night--or bust!"

"The saints be blessed, then we are most certain to bust, M'seur," gasped Jean. "And if we don't the dogs will. Non, it is impossible!"

"Is there anything to eat?"

"A morsel of cold meat--that is all. But I say that it is impossible. That sledge--"

Howland interrupted him with an impatient gesture.

"And I say that if there is anything to eat in there, get it out, and be quick about it, Croisset. We're going to overtake those precious friends of yours, and I warn you that if you make any attempt to lose time something unpleasant is going to happen. Understand?"

Jean had bent to unstrap one end of the sledge pack and an angry flash leaped into his eyes at the threatening tone of the engineer's voice. For a moment he seemed on the point of speech, but caught himself and in silence divided the small chunk of meat which he drew from the pack, giving the larger share to Howland as he went to the head of the dogs. Only once or twice during the next hour did he look back, and after each of these glances he redoubled his efforts at urging on the huskies. Before they had come to the edge of the black banskian forest which Jean had pointed out from the farther side of the plain, Howland saw that the pace was telling on the team. The leader was trailing lame, and now and then the whole pack would settle back in their traces, to be urged on again by the fierce cracking of Croisset's long whip. To add to his own discomfiture Howland found that he could no longer keep up with Jean and the dogs, and with his weight added to the sledge the huskies settled down into a tugging walk.

Thus they came into the deep low forest, and Jean, apparently oblivious of the exhaustion of both man and dogs, walked now in advance of the team, his eyes constantly on the thin trail ahead. Howland could not fail to see that his unnecessary threat of a few hours before still rankled in the Frenchman's mind, and several times he made an effort to break the other's taciturnity. But Jean strode on in moody silence, answering only those things which were put to him directly, and speaking not an unnecessary word. At last the engineer jumped from the sledge and overtook his companion.

"Hold on, Jean," he cried. "I've got enough. You're right, and I want to apologize. We're busted--that is, the dogs and I are busted, and we might as well give it up until we've had a feed. What do you say?"

"I say that you have stopped just in time, M'seur," replied Croisset with purring softness. "Another half hour and we would have been through the forest, and just beyond that--in the edge of the plain--are those whom you seek, Meleese and her people. That is what I started to tell you back there when you shut me up. Mon Dieu, if it were not for Meleese I would let you go on. And then--what would happen then, M'seur, if you made your visit to them in broad day? Listen!"

Jean lifted a warning hand. Faintly there came to them through the forest the distant baying of a hound.

"That is one of our dogs from the Mackenzie country," he went on softly, an insinuating triumph in his low voice. "Now, M'seur, that I have brought you here what are you going to do? Shall we go on and take dinner with those who are going to kill you, or will you wait a few hours? Eh, which shall it be?"

For a moment Howland stood motionless, stunned by the Frenchman's words. Quickly he recovered himself. His eyes burned with a metallic gleam as they met the half taunt in Croisset's cool smile.

"If I had not stopped you--we would have gone on?" he questioned tensely.

"To be sure, M'seur," retorted Croisset, still smiling. "You warned me to lose no time--that something would happen if I did."

With a quick movement Howland drew his revolver and leveled it at the Frenchman's heart.

"If you ever prayed to those blessed saints of yours, do it now, Jean Croisset. I'm going to kill you!" he cried fiercely.

In a single breath the face of Jean Croisset became no more than a mask of what it had been. The taunting smile left his lips and a gray pallor spread over his face as he saw Howland's finger crooked firmly on the trigger of his revolver. In another instant there came the sound of a metallic snap.

"Damnation! An empty cartridge!" Howland exclaimed. "I forgot to load after those three shots at the cup. It's coming this time, Jean!"

Purposely he snapped the second empty cartridge.

"The great God!" gasped Jean. "M'seur--"

From deep in the forest came again the baying of the Mackenzie hound. This time it was much nearer, and for a moment Howland's eyes left the Frenchman's terrified face as he turned his head to listen.

"They are coming!" exclaimed Croisset. "M'seur, I swear to--"

Again Howland's pistol covered his heart.

"Then it is even more necessary that I kill you," he said with frightful calmness. "I warned you that I would kill you if you led me into a trap, Croisset. The dogs are bushed. There is no way out of this but to fight--if there are people coming down the trail. Listen to that!"

This time, from still nearer, came the shout of a man, and then of another, followed by the huskies' sharp yelping as they started afresh on the trail. The flush of excitement that had come into Howland's face paled until he stood as white as the Frenchman. But it was not the whiteness of fear. His eyes were like blue steel flashing in the sunlight.

"There is nothing to do but fight," he repeated, even more calmly than before. "If we were a mile or two back there it could all happen as I planned it. But here--"

"They will hear the shots," cried Jean. "The post is no more than a gunshot beyond the forest, and there are plenty there who would come out to see what it means. Quick, M'seur--follow me. Possibly they are hunters going out to the trap-lines. If it comes to the worst--"

"What then?" demanded Howland.

"You can shoot me a little later," temporized the Frenchman with a show of his old coolness. "Mon Dieu, I am afraid of that gun, M'seur. I will get you out of this if I can. Will you give me the chance--or will you shoot?"

"I will shoot--if you fail," replied the engineer.

Barely were the words out of his mouth when Croisset sprang to the head of the dogs, seized the leader by his neck-trace and half dragged the team and sledge through the thick bush that edged the trail. A dozen paces farther on the dense scrub opened into the clearer run of the low-hanging banskian through which Jean started at a slow trot, with Howland a yard behind him, and the huskies following with human-like cleverness in the sinuous twistings of the trail which the Frenchman marked out for them. They had progressed not more than three hundred yards when there came to them for a third time the hallooing of a voice. With a sharp "hup, hup," and a low crack of his whip Jean stopped the dogs.

"The Virgin be praised, but that is luck!" he exclaimed....